Means to quicken us to pray with more fervour for the leading of the Holy Spirit 2/3

           Second Means.  When thou hast thus possessed thy heart with the dread of being led into any corrupt opinion, then strengthen then thy faith from those comfortable scriptures which assure thee that no sin­cere saint shall be left to fall finally into any soul-damning error.  Christ is as able for, and faithful in, his prophetic and kingly offices, as his priestly. Surely he will not have the least care of his people’s under­standing, which is guide to their whole man, and is that faculty which he first practiseth upon in the work of conversion. Thou hast therefore as strong ground to believe he will preserve thee from damnable princi­ples as damnable practices.  It would be little advan­tage to be kept from one enemy, and left open to the will and power of another.  Christ’s hedge comes round about his people.  Solomon tells us, ‘The mouth of strange women is a deep pit: he that is abhorred of the Lord shall fall therein,’ Prov. 22:14. And so is the mouth of the seducer, who comes with strange doctrines—whorish opinions.  Now who is this pit digged for?  Indeed, if we look at Satan’s design, it is a trap chiefly laid to catch the saint; he would, if possible, ‘deceive the very elect.’  His great­est ambition is to spread his banners in this temple of God, and defile them whom God hath washed.  But if we eye God’s intention, it is a pit he suffers to be made for hypocrites and false gospellers—such who would never heartly close with Christ and his truth. These are they whom God abhors, and therefore they are left by him to become a prey to those that go a birding for souls with their corrupt doctrines. ‘Because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved; and for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness,’ II Thes. 2:10-12.  These, like the outsetting deer, are shot, while they within the pale are safe; or, like the sub­urbs, taken by the enemy, but those within the city escape their fury.  It is the outward court that is left to be trampled underfoot, Rev. 11:2.  And in the fore-quoted place in the epistle to the Thessalonians —though he gives up hypocrites to be deceived by false teachers, as once Ahab by those knights of the post his false prophets—yet, ver. 13 he speaks com­fortably to the elect, and shows that the same decree which appointed them to salvation provided also for their embracing the truth, as the necessary means leading thereunto. ‘But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and be­lief of the truth.’  And if God had got possession of the head by his truth, and of the heart by his sancti­fying grace, he will keep them out of Satan’s clutches.

           Go, therefore, and plead the promise for thy preservation.  The promise improved by faith at the throne of grace will be thy best antidote in these times of general infection. Never fear speeding when the promise bids thee ‘go and prosper.’  The mercy is granted before thou askest it; only God will have thee by prayer lay claim to it, before thou beest possessed of it.  And for thy help I have set down some sweet promises of this nature, with which, if thou acquaint­est thyself, thou mayest be furnished both with grounds for thy faith, and arguments for thy prayer in this case, Matt. 24:24; John 7:12; 10:5, 29; I Cor. 11:19; Php. 3:15; I John 2:19, 20.

           Direction Fifth.  Compare scripture with scripture.  False doctrines, like false witnesses, agree not among them­selves.  Their name may be called ‘Legion, for they are many.’  But truth is one; it is homogeneal.  One scripture sweetly harmonizeth with another.  Hence it is, though there were many pen­men of sacred writ, and those of several ages, one after another, yet they all are said to have but one mouth; ‘As he spake by the mouth of his holy proph­ets, which have been since the world began,’ Luke 1:70. All had one mouth, because they accord so perfectly together.  The best way, therefore, to know the mind of God in one text is to lay it to another.  The lapi­dary useth one diamond to cut another.  So should we one place of Scripture to interpret another.  Scrip­tures compared, like glasses set one against another, cast a light each to the other.  ‘They (i.e. the Levites) read in the book in the  law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading,’ Neh. 8:8.  Et exponendo sensum dabant intelligentiam per Scripturam ipsam—so Tremelius reads the words—they gave them the meaning of what they read, by the Scripture itself.