Application or Use For Information On Two Points as To Holiness

          

 Use First.  The information afforded in the preceding, bearing on those two particulars, viz. as to maintaining the power of holiness, and as to the pos­sibility of doing so.

1. If we are thus to endeavour the maintaining of the power of holiness, then sure there is such a thing as righteousness and unrighteousness—holiness, and sin that opposeth it.Yet there is a generation of men that make these things to be mere fancies, as if all the existence they had were in the melancholy imagina­tions of some poor-spirited timorous men, who dream of these things, and then are scared with the bugbears that their own foolish thoughts represent to them.  Hence, some among us have dared to make it their boast and glorying that they have at last got from under the bondage of that tyrant conscience; they can now do that which we call swearing, lying, yea, what not, without being bearded and checked by an im­perious conscience; yea, they assert that there is no sin to any but him that thinks so.  These are worse fools than he the psalmist speaks of, Ps. 14:1.  He doth but ‘say in his heart there is no God;’ but these tell the world what fools they are, and cannot hide their shame.  I do not mention these os much to confute them—that were to as little purpose, as to go prove there is a sun shining in a clear day because a mad frantic man denies it—as rather to affect your hearts with the abominations of the times, ye holy ones of God.  O how deep asleep were men, that the enemy could come and sow such tares as these amongst us! Perhaps they thought such poisonous seed would not grow in our soil, that had so much labour and cost bestowed on it by Christ’s husbandmen; that such strong delusions would never go down with any that had been used to so pure a gospel diet!  But alas! we see by woeful experience that, as a plague when it hits into a city that stands in the purest air, oft rageth more than in another place, so when a spirit of delu­sion falls upon a people that have enjoyed most of the gospel, it grows most prodigious.  It makes me even tremble to think what a place of nettles England, that hath so long continued—without wrong to any other church Christ hath in the world—one of his fairest, fruitfullest garden‑plots, may at last become, when I see what weeds have sprung up in our days.  I have heard that reverend and holy Master Greenham say, he feared rather athe­ism than Popery would be Eng­land’s ruin.  Had he lived in our dismal days, he would have had his fears much increased.  Were there ever more atheists made and making in England since it was acquainted with the gospel, than in the com­pass of a dozen years last past?  I have reason to think there are not.  When men shall fall so far from profession of the gospel, and be so blinded that they cannot know light from darkness, righteousness from unrighteousness, are they not far gone in atheism? This is not natural blindness, for the heathen could tell when they did good and evil, and see holiness from sin without scripture light to show them, Rom. 2:14, 15.  No, this blindness is a plague of God fallen on them for rebelling against the light when they could see it.  And if this plague should grow more common, which God forbid! woe then to England!
2. If we be to maintain the power of holiness, then surely it is possible.God would not command what he doth not enable his own peculiar people to do; only here, you must remember carefully the dis­tinction premised in the opening of the text, between a legal righteousness and an evangelical righteous­ness.  The latter of these is so far from being unat­tainable, that there is not a sincere Christian in the world but is truly holy in this sense, that is, he doth truly desire, and conscionably endeavour—with some success of his endeavour through divine grace assisting—to walk according to the rule of God’s word.  I confess all Christ’s scholars are not of the same form.  All his children are not of the same stature and strength.  Some foot it more nimbly in the ways of holiness than others, yet not a saint but is endued with a principle of life that sets him at work for God, and to desire to do more than he is able.  As the seed, though little in itself, yet hath in it virtually the bigness and height of a grown tree, towards which it is putting forth with more and more strength of nature as it grows, so in the very first principle of grace planted at conversion, there is perfection of grace contained in a sense;—that is, a disposition putting the creature forth in desires and endeavours after that perfection to which God hath appointed him in Christ Jesus.  And therefore, Christian, when­ever such thoughts of the impossibility of obtaining this holiness here on earth are suggested to thee, reject them as sent in from Satan, and that on a design to feed thy own distrustful humour—which he knows they will suit too well, as the news of giants and high walls, that the spies brought to the unbe­lieving Israelites, did them—and all to weaken thy endeavours after holiness, which he knows will surely prove him a liar.  Do but strongly resolve to be conscientious in thy endeavours, with an eye upon the promise of help, and the work will go on.  Thou needest not fear it, ‘for the Lord God is a sun and shield: the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly,’ Ps. 84:11.  Mark that ‘grace and glory,’ that is, ‘grace unto glory.’  He will still be adding ‘more grace’ to that thou hast, till thy grace on earth commenceth glory in heaven.