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Second Duty.  Live up to thy hopes, Christian. Let there be a decorum kept between thy principles and thy practices, thy hope of heaven and walk on earth.  The eye should direct the foot.  Thou lookest for salvation; walk the same way thy eye looks.  This is so often pressed in the word, as shows both its ne­cessity and difficulty.  Some times we are stirred up to act ‘as becometh saints,’ Rom. 16:2; Eph. 5:3.  Sometimes ‘as becometh the gospel of Christ,’ Php. 1:27. Sometimes ‘as becometh those who profess godli­ness,’ I Tim. 2:10.  There is a JΠBDXB@<—a decorum, and comely behaviour, which, if a Christian doth not observe in his walking he betrays his high calling and hopes unto scorn and contempt.  To look high, and to live low, O how ridiculous it appears to all men! When a man is dressed on purpose to be laughed at and made a jeering‑stock, they put on him some­thing of the king and something of the beggar, that, by this patchery of mock‑majesty with sordid baseness to­gether, he may appear the greater fool to all the company.  And certainly, if the devil might have the dressing of a man, so as to cast the greatest shame and ignominy upon him, yea, upon Christ and the profession of his gospel, he could not think of a read­ier way than to persuade a wretch to pretend to high and glorious hopes of heaven, and then to have noth­ing suitable to the high‑flown hopes in his conversa­tion, but all base and unworthy of such royal claims. If ye should see one going into the field with a helmet of brass on his head, but a wooden sword in one hand, and a paper shield on the other, and the rest of his armour like to these, you would expect he was not likely to hurt his enemies, except they should break their sides with laughing at him.  Such a goodly spec­tacle is the brag professor, who lifts up his head on high with a bold expectation of salvation, but can show never a grace beside to suit with the great hope he hath taken up; he may make the devil sport, but never do him any great hurt, or himself good.

Question.  But may be you will ask, How is the Christian to live up to his hopes?

Answer.  I answer, in general, he is to be careful to do nothing in which he may not freely act his hope, and from the promise expect that God will, for Christ’s sake, both approve the action, and reward his person for it.  Ask thy soul this question seriously before thou engagest in any work, ‘May I hope that God will bid me good speed?  Can I look for his countenance in it, and his blessing on it?’  It is very unworthy of a Christian to do anything sneakingly, as if he were afraid God or his conscience should be privy to his work.  ‘Whatsoever is not of hope is sin, because it cannot be of faith.’  O how would this hedge in the Christian’s heart from all by-paths!  Pos­sibly thou hast a grudge against thy neighbour.  The fire is kindled in thy heart, though it flames not presently out into bitter words and angry behaviour; and thou art going to pray.  Ask now thy soul, wheth­er God will accept that sacrifice which is kindled with such strange fire?  Yea, bid thy soul bethink herself how thy hopes of pardoning and saving mercy from God can agree with thy wrathful unforgiving spirit towards thy brother?  Certainly, as the sun cannot well be seen through a disturbed air, so neither can the eye of hope well see her object—heaven’s salva­tion—when the soul is tumultuous and roiled with anger and unchristian passion.

But, to instance in some particulars wherein you must comport with your hopes of salvation.

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        SECOND POINT OF IMPROVEMENT.  Exhortation to those who have this helmet of hope.   For exhortation of you, believers, who upon trial are found to have this helmet of hope.  Several duties are to be pressed upon you as such.  First. Be thankful for this unspeakable gift.  Second. Live up to your hopes.

Duties which possession of the helmet of hope involves.   First Duty.  Be thankful for this unspeakable gift.  I will not believe thou hast it if thy heart be not abundantly let out in thankfulness for it.  Blessed Peter cannot speak of this but in a doxology.  ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which hath begotten us again unto a lively hope,...to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away,’ I Peter 1:3, 4.  The usual proem to Paul’s epistles is of this strain, Col. 1:5; Eph. 1:3.  Hast thou hope in heaven?  It is more than if thou hadst the whole world in hand.  The greatest monarch the earth hath will be glad, in a dying hour, to change his crown for thy helmet.  His crown will not procure him this helmet, but thy helmet will bring thee to a crown, when he shall have none to wear—a crown, not of gold, but of glory, which once on shall never be taken off, as his is sure to be.  O remember, Christian, what but a while since thou wert—so far from having any hope of heaven, that thou wert under a fearful expec­tation of hell and damnation.  And are those chains of guilt with which thy trembling conscience was weighed down unto despair, taken off, and thy head lift up to look for such high preferment in the celes­tial court of that God whose wrath thou hadst, by thy horrid treasons, most justly incensed against thee? Certainly, of all the men in the world, thou art deep­est in debt to the mercy of God.  If he will be thanked for a crust, he looks, sure, thou shouldst give him more for a crown.  If food and raiment, though coarse and mean—suppose but roots and rags—be gratefully to be acknowledged; O with what ravishment of love and thankfulness are you to think and speak of those rarities and robes with which you hope to be fed and clad in this heavenly kingdom! especially if you cast your eye aside, and behold those that were once your fellow-prisoners—in what a sad and dismal condition they continue—while all this happiness has befallen you!  It could not, sure, but affect his heart into ad­miration of his prince's mercy and undeserved favour to him, who is saved from the gibbet only by his gra­cious pardon, if, as he is riding in a coach towards his prince's court—there to live in wealth and honour —he should meet some of his fellow‑traitors on sleds, as they are dragging full of shame and horror to exe­cution for the same treason in which they had as deep a hand as any of them all.  And dost thou not see, Christian, many of thy poor neighbours, with whom haply thou hast had a partnership in sin, pinioned with impenitency and unbelief, driving apace to hell and destruction, while thou, by the free distinguishing mercy of God, art on thy way for heaven and glory? O down on thy knees, and cry out, ‘Lord, why wilt thou show thyself to me, and not to these?’  How easy had it been, and righteous for God, to have directed the pardon to them, and the warrant for damnation unto thee!  When thou hast spent thy own breath and spir­its in praising God, thou hadst need beg a collection of praises of all thy friends that have a heart to contribute to such charitable work, that they would help thee in paying this debt; and get all this, with what in heaven thou shalt disburse thyself to all eternity, in better coin than can be expected from thee here—where thy soul is embased with sinful mix­tures—it must be accounted rather an acknowledg­ment of what thou owest to thy God, than any pay­ment of the least part of the debt.

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           But may be thou hast more yet to say for thyself than this comes to.  Thou art not only a knowing per­son but a reformed also; the pollutions in which once thou layest, now thou hast escaped; yea, thy reformation is embellished and set forth with a very gaudy profession of religion, both which have gained thee a very high opinion in the thoughts of all thy neigh­bours; so that if heaven might be carried by thy hands, thou couldst haply have a testimonial for thy unblam­able and saint-like behaviour among them; yet, let me tell thee, if thou meanest to be faithful to thy own soul, thou must not rest in their charitable opinion of thee, nor judge of thy hopes for heaven by what comes under their cognizance, to wit, the behaviour of thy outward man—for further their eye and observation reacheth not—but art to look inward to thy own bos­om, and inquire what spring thou canst find thereto have been the cause of this change and new motion that hath appeared in thy external conversation.  This, and this alone, must decide the controversy, and bring thy thoughts to an issue, what to judge of thy hope, whether spurious or legitimate.  It is not a new face that colours our outward behaviour, but a new principle that changeth the frame of the heart within, will evince thy hope to be good and genuine. ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope,’ I Peter 1:3.  The new birth entitles to a new hope. If the soul be dead, the hope cannot be alive.  And the soul may be dead, and yet put into a very handsome dress of external reformation and profession, as well as a dead body may be clad with rich clothes.  A beggar’s son got into the clothes of a rich man’s child, may as well hope to be heir to the rich man's land, as thou, by an external reformation and profession, to be God's heir in glory. The child's hopes are from his own father, not from a stranger.  Now, while thou art in a natural estate —though never so finished—old Adam is thy father; and what canst thou hope from him who proved worse than nought, and left his poor posterity noth­ing, except we should put a crazy mortal body, a sinful nature, and a fearful expectation of death tem­poral and eternal from the wrathful hand of a pro­voked God—which indeed he left all his children —into his inventory?  O sirs, how can you give way that any sleep should fall upon your eyes, till you get into this relation to God!  Hannah was a woman of a bitter spirit till she got a child from God; and hast not thou more reason to be so, till thou canst get to be a child of God?  Better a thousand times over that thou shouldst die childless than fatherless; my meaning is, that thou shouldst leave no child to inherit thy estate on earth, than to have no father to give thee an inher­itance in heaven when thou art taken hence.

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   Now, hope of the right make, is a rational well-grounded hope.  ‘Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you,’ I Peter 3:15. Alas! how can they give an ans­wer to others, that have not any to give to their own consciences to this question, ‘Why dost thou hope to be saved, O my soul?’  There is no Christian, be he never so weak in grace, but hath some reason bot­tomed on the Scripture—for other I mean not—for the hope he professeth.  Do you think, yea, can you be so absurd as to think, your own bold presumption, without any word of promise to build upon, can en­title your souls to the inheritance in God’s kingdom? Should one come and say your house and land were his, and show you no writing under your hand by which you did ever grant him a right thereunto, but all he can say is, he dreamed the last night your house and land were his, and therefore now he demands it; would you not think the man mad, and had more to the bedlam than to your estate?  And yet there are many hope to be saved, that can give no better reason than this comes to for the same, and such are all grossly ignorant and profane sinners.  As it is enough for a saint to end the trouble which his fears put him into, to ask his soul why it is disquieted within him, would he but observe how little reason his heart can give for the same; so [would it be enough] to dis­mount the bold sinner from his prancing hopes, if he might be prevailed with to call himself to an account, and thus to accost his soul sometimes, and resolve not to stir without a satisfactory answer.  ‘In sober sadness tell me, O my soul! what reason findest thou in the whole Bible, for thee to hope for salvation, what livest in ignorance of God, or a trade of sin against God?’  Certainly he should find his soul as mute and speechless as the man without the wedding garment was at Christ’s question.  This is the reason why men are such strangers to themselves, and dare not enter into any discourse upon this subject with their own hearts, because they know they should soon make an uproar in their consciences that would not be stilled in haste. They cocker their false hearts as much as David did his Adonijah, who in all his life never displeased him so much as to ask him, ‘Why dost thou so?’  Nor they their souls to the day of their death by asking them, ‘Soul, why hopest thou so?’  Or if they have, it hath been as Pilate, who asked Christ what was truth, John 18:38, but had no mind to stay for an answer.

           May be thou art an ignorant, soul, who knowest neither who Christ is, nor what in Christ hope is to fasten its hold upon; but only with a blind surmise thou hopest God will be better to thee than to damn thee at last.  But why thou thus hopest, thou canst give no reason, nor I neither.  If he will save thee as now thou art, he must make a new gospel for thy sake; for in this Bible it damns thee without hope or help.  The gospel is ‘hid to them that are lost,’ II Cor. 4:3.  But if knowledge will do it, thou haply canst show good store of that.  This is the breast-work un­der which thou liest, and keepest off those shot which are made at thee from the word, for those lusts which thou livest and liest in as a beast in his dung, defiling thyself with them daily.  And is this all thou hast to prove thy hopes for salvation for hopes true and solid? Indeed, many make no better use of their knowledge of the Scripture, than thieves do of the knowledge they have of the law of the land, who study it not that they mean to keep it, but to make them more cunning to evade the charge of it when called in question by it.  So many acquaint themselves with the word—especially those passages in it that display the mercy of God to sinners at the greatest breadth—that with these they may stuff a pillow to lay their wretch­ed heads on, when the cry of the abominations in which they live begins to break their rest.  God deliver you, my dear friends, from such a hope as this.  Sure­ly you mean to provide a better answer to give unto Christ at the great day than this, why ye hope to be saved by him; do you not?  Will thy knowledge, thinkest thou, be as strong a plea for salvation, as thy sins which thou wallowest in, against that knowledge, will be for thy damnation? If there be hope for such as thee, then come Judas and Jezebel, yea devils, and all ye infernal spirits, and strike in for this good com­pany for a part with them, for some of you can plead more of this than any of them all.

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           Having shown now what the helmet of salvation is, and several of its offices to the Christian, we pro­ceed to bring out how its doctrine applies alike to those who have, and to those who have it not, and the several points of improvement which naturally flow from it.  These may be classed as four.  First. A trial of what metal our helmet of hope is made.  Second. An exhortation to those who, upon trial, find it genu­ine, in which two duties are pressed on them.  Third. Arguments why we should strengthen our hope, with directions how we may do so.  Fourth. An exhorta­tion to those who want this helmet of hope. 

FIRST POINT OF IMPROVEMENT Trial of what metal our helmet of hope is made.   For trial, whether we have this helmet of hope on our heads or no—this helmet, I say, commended to us in the text.  As for such paltry ware, that most are contended with for cheapness’ sake, it, alas! de­serves not the name of a true hope, no more than a paper cap doth of a helmet.  O, look to the metal and temper of your helmet in an especial manner, for at this most blows are made.  He that seeks chiefly to defend his own head—the serpent I mean—will aim most to wound yours.  None but fools and children are so credulous as to be blown up with great hopes upon any light occasion and slight ground.  They who are wise, and have their wits about them, will be as wary as how they place their hopes, especially for sal­vation, as a prudent pilot, that hath a rich lading, would be where he moors his ship and casts his anchor.  There is reason for our utmost care herein, because nothing exposeth men to more shame than to meet with disappointment in their hopes.  ‘They were confounded because they had hoped; they came thith­er and were ashamed,’ Job 6:20; that is, to miss of what they hoped to have found in those brooks.  But there is no shame like to that which  a false hope for eternal salvation will put sinners to at last; some shall rise ‘to shame everlasting,’ Dan. 10.  They shall awake out of their graves, and out of that fool’s paradise also, wherein their vain hopes had entertained them all their lives, and see, instead of a heaven they expected, hell to be in expectation of them, and gaping with full mouth for them.  If the servants of Eglon were so ashamed after their waiting awhile at their prince’s door, from whom they expected all their preferment, to find him, and their hopes with him, dead on the floor, Judges 3:25; O, whose heart then can think what a mixture of shame and horror shall meet in their faces and hearts at the great day, who shall see all their hopes for heaven hop headless, and leave them in the hands of tormenting devils to all eternity!  Hannibal’s soldiers did not so confidently divide the goldsmiths’ shops in Rome among themselves —which yet they never took—as many presumptuous sinners do promise themselves heaven’s bliss and happiness, who must instead thereof sit down with shame in hell, except they can, before they die, show better ground for their hope than now they are able to do.  O what will those fond dreamers do in the day of the Lord’s anger, when they shall see the whole world in a light flame round about them, and hear God —whose piercing eyes will look them through and through—calling them forth before men and angels to the scrutiny!  Will they stand to their hope, and vouch it to the face of Christ, which now they bless themselves so in?  Surely their hearts will fail them for such an enterprise.  None then will speak so ill of them as their own consciences shall do.  God will in that day use their own tongues to accuse them, and set forth the folly of their ridiculous hope to the confusion of their faces before all the world.  The prophet foretells a time when the false prophets ‘shall be ashamed every one of his vision, when he hath prophesied; neither shall they wear a rough garment to deceive, but he shall say, I am no prophet, I am an husbandman,’ &c., Zech. 13:4, 5.

           Truly the most notorious false prophet that the world hath, and deceives most, is this vain hope which men take up for their salvation.  This proph­esies of peace, pardon, and heaven, to be the portion of such as [it] never once entered into God's heart to make heirs thereof.  But the day is coming, and it hastens, wherein this false prophet shall be con­founded.  Then the hypocrite shall confess he never had any hope for salvation but what was the idol of his own fancy’s making; and the formalist shall throw off the garment of his profession by which he de­ceived himself and others, and appear to himself and to all the world in his naked colours.  It behooves therefore everyone to be strict and curious in the search of his own heart, to find what his hope is built upon.