The double argument of Paul enforcing his request for the prayers of believers. ‘For which I am an ambassador in bonds.’ 3/5

           [2.] When such a puissant prince sends his am­bassadors for peace to a people that have already felt the impressions of his power, and are pining under the bleeding miseries which their war with him has brought upon them, O how would they run to open their city gates to his ambassador!—as willingly surely as Noah opened the window to receive the dove that brought the olive‑branch after that dismal flood.  This is the deplored state which the ministry of the gospel finds mankind involved in.  What a forlorn condition hath our war with heaven brought us into! Do we not feel the arrows of divine vengeance sticking in our very hearts and consciences?  The curse of God cleav­ing to every faculty of our souls and member of our bodies?  Are not all the creatures in arms against us? and doth not hell from beneath open its devouring mouth upon us, ready to swallow us in everlasting destruction?  And yet we are so stout that we can find no lodging in our town for his ambassadors, but a prison? no entertainment to the offers of peace they make, but contempt and scorn?

           [3.] When the terms of peace he brings are hon­ourable.  Gold, we say, may be bought too dear, and so may the peace of one state with another; as when Nahash the Ammonite offered peace to the men of Jabesh‑Gilead, but upon condition that they should have ‘every one his right eye thrust out, to lay it as a reproach on Israel,’ and therefore was rejected with just indignation; they resolving rather to die with hon­our than live with shame.  It is the custom among many of this world’s princes to make their demands according to the length of their sword.  When their power is great it is hard to have peace on easy terms. Now this, one would think, should make the min­isters of the gospel and their message infinitely wel­come to poor sinners, that, though they come from the great God that may make his own demands—for who may say to God, ‘What doest thou?’—and might not only require the eye out of your head, but force the very heart out of your body; yet offers peace on such gracious terms, that we could not possibly have framed them so to our own advantage, had we been left to draw them, as he of his own free grace is pleased to propound them; there being nothing in the whole instrument of peace provided for himself, besides the securing of his own glory in our salvation. See, a little, what he offers to poor sinners, and what he requires of them again.  He offers to seal an act of oblivion, wherein all wrongs done to his crown and dignity in the time of our hostility against him shall be forgiven and forgotten.  So runs the promise, ‘He will forgive them their iniquities, and remember them no more.’  He will not only forgive what is past, but receive our persons into favour for the future.  A prince may save a malefactor's life, but forever banish his person from court.  But God promiseth access into his presence.  ‘By whom also we have access by faith into this grace (or favour) wherein we stand,’ Rom. 5:2.  Yea, he promiseth to restore the sinner to all that by his rebellion was forfeited.  Treason taints the blood, degrades from honour, and confiscates the estate; God offers to take off the whole curse which befell the sinner for his rebellion, and restores him to his primitive dignity.  He ‘gives them power to be­come his children,’ John 1:12, and, as his children, makes them his heirs, and that not to a Cabul here below only, but to heaven itself, an inheritance in light beyond all expression glorious; for godliness hath both the promise of this life and that which is to come.