The double argument of Paul enforcing his request for the prayers of believers. ‘For which I am an ambassador in bonds.’ 4/5

 Now, let us see what he expects at the sinner’s hand.  Not to purchase this his favour  with a ransom out of his own purse!  No, he empties his Son’s veins to pay that.  But he requires us, (a) To lay down the weapons of our rebellion—for he cannot in honour treat with us while we have that sword in our hand with which we have fought against him.  (b) To accept our pardon and peace at the hands of free grace; at­tributing the glory of it to the mere mercy of God as the moving, and Christ’s satisfactory obedience as the meritorious cause.  (c)That we shall swear fealty and allegiance to him for the future.  How reasonable these are, those that now reject them shall confess with infinite shame and horror for their folly, when Christ shall pack them to hell by his irrevocable sentence.

           [4.]  When in all this a prince is real in the offers of peace he makes, and gives full security for the per­formance of what he promiseth, this must needs make the ambassador that brings them still the more welcome.  Treaties of peace among men are too often used but as a handsome blind for war—they intend least what they pretend most.  But when an ambas­sador comes plenipotentiary, and enabled to give full security and satisfaction against all fears and jeal­ousies that may arise in the breasts of those he treats with, this gives a value to all the rest.  Now, the great God hath wonderfully condescended to satisfy the querulous hearts of poor sinners.  Guilt hath made man suspicious of God; his own unfaithfulness to God makes him jealous of God’s faithfulness unto him.  Could Satan make Eve so question the truth of God's promise?  He saith but, ‘Ye shall not surely die?’ and she is presently shaken out of her faith on her Maker to believe her destroyer.  O how easy then is it for him to nourish those suspicions which do nat­urally breed now in our unbelieving hearts!  How oft are we putting it to the question, Will God forgive so great, so many sins?  May I venture to believe?  Now God gives his ambassadors full instructions from his word to satisfy all the doubts and scruples which he injects, or which may arise from our own misgiving hearts.  Tota Scriptura hoc agit, saith Luther, ne dubitamus sed certò speremus—the whole Scripture drives at this, to satisfy our doubts, and assure our hopes in the mercy of God.  St. Paul hath a passage something like this, ‘Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope,’ Rom. 15:4.

           There are many expedients men use to satisfy the minds of those they deal with concerning the truth of their promises and certainty of their perform­ing them.  Sometimes they ratify them with their seal set to the writing.  Thus God gives the broad seal of the sacraments, and privy seal of his Spirit, to assure the believer he will perform all he hath promised in his word.  Sometimes witnesses are called in for further security of the conveyance.  Thus in the pur­chase Jeremiah made of his kinsman’s field, he took witnesses to the bargain, Jer. 32:10. See witnesses both in heaven and earth, ready to vouch the truth of what God promiseth, and all agree in their verdict, I John 5:7, 8.  If all these will not do, then an oath is taken, and this useth to be ‘an end of controversies.’  To this also doth God graciously condescend.  Not that God’s promise needs the suretiship of his oath to make it surer—for it is as impossible God should lie when he promiseth as when he swears—but to make our faith stronger, which needs such supporters as these to stay and strengthen it; as is hinted in that sweet place, from which one flower the sincere believer may suck honey enough to live comfortably upon in the hardest longest winter of affliction that can befall him: ‘Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath: that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation,’ &c., Heb. 6:17, 18.   Now, the greater the security God enables his am­bassadors to offer poor sinners for the salvation they preach in his name, the more prodigiously provoking is their unbelief and impenitency who reject it.  When Titus Vespasian came into Jerusalem, and saw the unspeakable miseries which the besieged had endured from those three sore plagues, sword, pestilence, and famine, that had so long raged among them, it is said that he broke out into these words, ‘I am not guilty of all this blood which hath been shed, nor of the miseries this people have endured; that by their obstinacy have brought it upon their own heads.’  O how much more may the ambassadors of Christ wash their hands over the heads of impenitent sinners, to whom they have so oft offered pardon and peace in God's name, but they would not hearken, and say, ‘We are free from your blood; it is your own obstinacy and desperate impenitency hath undone your pre­cious souls.  Would you have accepted life at the hands of mercy, you should not have been cut off by the sword of his justice.’