Arguments why we should STRENGTHEN OUR HOPE with directions 3/3

SECOND ARGUMENT Continued....

 When David’s faith and hope were under a distemper, then he falls out with all.  The prophet himself that brought him the news of a kingdom cannot escape his censure, and all because the promise stayed longer before it was delivered than he expected —‘I said in my haste, All men are liars,’ Ps. 116:11 —whereas the promise went not a day beyond its due time, but he missed of its true reckoning through his inordinate desire.  But take David in his healthful temper—when his faith and hope are strong—and he is not so hasty then to call for a mercy out of God’s hands; but thinks his estate in God’s hands as safe as if it were paid into his own.  ‘Praise waiteth for thee, O God,’ or, ‘praise is silent for thee,’ so the Hebrew, %-%( %*/$ (dumiyah thehillah), will bear it, Ps. 65:1. As if the holy man had said, ‘Lord, I do quietly wait for a time to praise thee.  My soul is not in an uproar because thou stayest.  I am not murmuring, but rather stringing my harp, and tuning my instrument with much patience and confidence, that I may be ready to strike up when the joyful news of my deliverance first comes.’  You have much ado to make the child quiet till dinner, though he sees preparations for a great feast; but one that is grown up will be soon pacified when he is kept a little longer than ordinary for his meal upon such an occasion.  O Christian, it is our childishness and weakness of grace—especially of our hope—that makes us so soon out of patience to wait God’s leisure.  Strengthen hope, and patience will grow with it.

           In a word, Christian, thou hast great trials and strong temptations to conquer before you enter heaven gates and be clothed with your garments of salvation there.  Now defend thy hope, and that will defend thee in these; strengthen that, and that will carry thee through them.  The head, every member is officious to preserve it.  The hands are lift up to keep off the blow, the feet run to carry the head from danger, the mouth will receive any unsavoury pill to draw fumes and humours from the head.  Salvation is to the soul what the head is to the body—the principal thing it should labour to secure; and hope is to our salvation what the helmet is to the head. Now if he be unwise that ventures his head under a weak helmet in the midst of bullets at the time of battle, then much more unwise he that hazards his salvation with a weak hope. Know, O Christian, the issue of the battle with thy enemy depends on thy hope; if that fail all is lost. Thy hope is in conflicts with temptations and sufferings, as a prince is amidst his army, who puts life into them all while he looks on and encourageth them to the battle, but if a report of the king’s being slain comes to their ears, their courage fails and hearts faint.  Therefore Ahab would be held up in his chariot to conceal his danger from the people, the knowledge of which would have cast a damp on their courage.

           Thy hope is the mark Satan’s arrows are leveled at.  If possible keep that from wounding.  Or if at any time his dart reacheth it, and thy spirit begins to bleed of the wound which he hath given thee by questioning ‘Whether such great sins can be pardoned as thou hast committed? such old festered sores as thy lusts have been can be ever cured? or afflictions that are so heavy and have continued so long can possibly be either endured or removed?’  Now labour, as for thy life, to hold up thy hope though wounded in the chariot of the promise, and bow not by despairing to let the devil trample on thy soul.  So soon as thy hope gives up the ghost will this cursed fiend stamp thee under his foul feet, and take his full revenge of thee, and that without any power of thy soul to strike a stroke for thy defence.  This will so dispirit thee that thou wilt be ready to throw up all endeavour and attendance on the means of salvation; yea, desperately say, ‘To what purpose is it to think of praying, hearing, and meditating, when there is no hope?’  What! should we send for the physician when our friend is dead?  What good will the chafing and rubbing the body do when the head is severed from it?  The army broke up, and every one was sent to his city, as soon as it was known that Ahab was dead.  And so wilt thou cast off all thought of making any head against sin and Satan when thy hope is gone, but fall either into Judas’ horror of conscience, or with Cain, turn atheist, and bury the thoughts of thy desperate condition in a heap of worldly projects.

           I come now to give a few words of counsel, how a Christian may best strengthen his hope.  Take them in these six particulars following.  1. If thou meanest thy hope of salvation should rise to any strength and solidness, study the word of God diligently.  2. Keep thy conscience pure.  3. Resort to God daily, and beg a stronger hope of him.  4. Labour to increase your love.  5. Be much in the exercise of your hope.  6. File up thy experiences of past mercies, and thy hope will grow stronger for the future

Arguments why we should STRENGTHEN OUR HOPE with directions 1/3

           Labour, O ye saints! to strengthen your hope. There is, as a weak faith, so a wavering unsteadfast hope.  This you are by the diligent use of all means to establish and consolidate.  Now, then, hope is firm and solid when the Christian doth not fluctuate formidine opposti—with the fear of being opposed, but, by this anchor hold that hope hath on the promise, is kept from those dejections and tumultuous fears with which they that have no hope are swallowed up, and they whose hope is but weak are sadly dis¬composed and shaken.  Solidum est quod sui solius est plenum—that is a solid body which is compact and free from heterogeneal mixtures.  The more pure gold is from dross, and whatever is of a different na¬ture to itself, the more solid it is.  So hope, the more it is refined from groundless presumption on the one hand, or slavish fear and distrust on the other, the more solid and strong it is.  This in Scripture is called ‘the assurance of hope.’  Now to provoke you to a holy zeal in your endeavour after this, consider, FIRST. It is thy duty so to do.  SECOND. If thou do not thou wilt show thou little esteemest Christ and his salvation.  THIRD. Thou knowest not what stress thy hope may be put to before thou diest.

 ARGUMENTS why we should strengthen our hope. — FIRST ARGUMENT.  Consider it is thy duty so to do.  Indeed by the Papist’s doctrine, no man is bound to labour for such an assurance.  But whether we should believe God or them, judge ye.  What saith the Spirit of God, ‘We desire that every one of you do shew the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end: that ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.’  Observe,

           First.  The thing he exhorts to endeavour for, —‘to the full assurance of hope.’  They whose hope is weak sail with but a scant side-wind.  The apostle would have them go before the wind, and be carried with a full gale to heaven, which then is done when the soul, like a sail spread to the wind, is so filled with the truth and goodness of the promise, that it swells into an assured hope of what is promised, and rejoiceth in a certain expectation of what it shall have when it comes to the shore of eternity, though it be now tossed and weather-beaten with a thousand temptations and trials in its passage thither.

           Second.  Observe whom he presseth this duty upon; not some few choice Christians, as an enterprise laid out for them above the rest of their fellow-soldiers, but every person that will prove himself a Christian.  ‘We desire that every one of you do show the same diligence,’ &c.  In our civil trade, and particular worldly calling, it were sinful for every poor man to propound such a vast estate to himself in his own desires as he sees some few—the wealthiest merchants in a city—have got by their trade, so as no less shall content him.  But in the spiritual trade of a Christian it is very warrantable for every Christian to covet to be as rich in grace as the best.  Paul himself will not think himself wronged if thou desirest to be as holy  man as himself was, and labourest after as strong a faith and steadfast a hope as he had; yea, thou oughtest not to content thyself with what thou hast, if there were but one degree of grace more to be had than what at present thou hast obtained.  And,

           Third.  Observe what he imputes the weakness of the saints’ grace to; not an impossibility of attain¬ing to more, but their sloth and laziness.  And there¬fore he opposeth this to that blessed frame of heart he so much wisheth them, ‘That ye be not slothful,’ Heb. 6:12.  Indeed it is the diligent hand makes rich; as in this world’s goods, so in this heavenly treasure also.