Satan’s Stratagems to Disarm the Christian of his Breastplate Defeated 4/4

2. It is a life with God.A gracious soul, he walks in God’s presence, and keeps communion with him. If you would meet a saint, you know his haunt, what company he keeps.  ‘That ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ,’ I John 1:3.  See the ingenuity of a holy soul, ‘truly our fellowship’ is with God, we tell you no lie.  An unholy heart dares not be thus free, I warrant you, and tell what company his soul walks with from day to day.  We see there is no danger of going among holy men; they will bring you acquainted with no ill company; they will carry you to God where their greatest resource lies.  And tell me now, must not that man live a pleasant life that walks with God?  Let it be but a man you ride with in a journey, one that loves you well, and is able to enter­tain you with good and cheerful discourse; doth not the delight you take in his company, strangely, yet sweetly, beguile you of the tediousness of the way?  O what joy must God bring with him then to that soul he walks with!  ‘Blessed is the people,’ saith the psalmist, ‘that know that joyful sound, they shall walk, O Lord, in the light of thy countenance; in thy name shall they rejoice all day.’  The sound of the trumpet, which called them to their religious assem­blies, is called there ‘the joyful sound,’ because in his worship God sis especially manifest himself to his people.  The heaven of heavens is to be where the Lord is; surely then, that which the saint hath of God's presence here is enough to make the Chris­tian’s life joyous.  O Christians, is it not sweet to walk with God, to God!—to walk with God here below, by his assisting, comforting presence, to God manifesting himself in all his glory above in heaven!  O all you that are for pleasant prospects in your walks, and out of your windows, see here one that the world cannot match—the prospect that a gracious soul hath, walking in the paths of righteousness.  He may see God walking with him, as a friend with his friend, and manifesting himself to him; yea, he hath not only the sweetness of God’s present company with him, but he hath the goodly prospect of heaven before him, where God is leading him, and in this way of holiness will certainly bring him at last.  Whereas the unholy wretch, walking in the company of his lusts, though they sweeten his mouth with a little frothy pleasure at present, that soon is melted off his tongue, and the taste forgotten, yet they show him the region of dark­ness before him, whither they will bring him, and where they will leave him, to repent of his dear-bought pleasures in torments easeless and endless.
3. It is the life of God himself.  Read the expres­sion, ‘being alienated from the life of God,’ Eph. 4:18.  That is the life of godliness.  A holy life is the life of God.  But how?  Not only as God is the author of it; so he is of the beast's life.  Thus the wicked are not alienated from the life of God, for they have a natural life which God gave them.  But the expression carries more in it, and that is this.  The life of God is as much as a life which God himself lives.  He is a living God, and his life is a holy life.  Holiness is the life of his life.  Now, I pray, friends, do you not think God himself lives a life of pleasure?  And what is the pleasure of his life but holiness?  He takes pleasure in the graces of his saints, Ps. 149:4; how much more in his own essential holiness, from whence those beams which shine so beautifully to his eye in his children were first shot!  Thou, whoever thou beest, hast an art above God himself, if thou canst fetch any true pleas­ure out of unholiness and unrighteousness.  And let me tell thee also, it is not the lowest of blasphemies for thee to charge the way of righteousness and holi­ness, to be an enemy to true pleasure, for in that thou chargest God himself to want true joy and pleasure: who has no pleasure if holiness will not yield it.  But away with such putrid stuff as this is.  The devils and damned souls themselves, that hate God with the most perfect hatred of any other, yet dare not say, they cannot say so.  They know God to be glorious and happy, yea, ‘glorious in holiness,’ and the crea­ture’s bliss and glory to consist in a participation of that holiness which makes God himself so blessed and glorious.  This, Christian, is the utmost that can be said of thy happiness, either here or in heaven hereafter.  That makes thee glorious which makes God glorious.  Thy joy and pleasure is of the same kind with the pleasure God delights himself in. ‘Thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures,’ Ps. 36:8.  Mark that phrase, ‘the river of thy pleasures.’  God hath his pleasures, and God gives his saints to drink of his pleasures.  This is the sweet accent of his saints’ pleasures.  When a prince bids his servants carry such a man down into the cellar, and let him drink of their beer or wine, this is a kindness from so great a personage to be valued highly.  But for the prince to set him at his own table, and let him drink of his own wine, this I hope is far more.  When God gives a man estate, corn, and wine, and oil—the com­forts of the creature—he entertains the man but in the common cellar.  Such as have none but carnal enjoyments, they do but sit with the servants, and in some sensual pleasures they are but fellow-com­moners with the beasts.  But when he bestows his grace, beautifies a soul with holiness, then he prefers the creature the highest it is capable of.  He never sends this rich clothing to any, but he means to set such by them, at his own table with him, in heaven’s glory.

Satan’s Stratagems to Disarm the Christian of his Breastplate Defeated 3/4

2. The Christian has more true pleasure from the creature than the wicked,as it comes more re­fined to him than to the other.  The unholy wretch sucks dregs and all—dregs of sin and dregs of wrath —whereas the Christian’s cup is not thus spiced.  (1.) He sucks dregs of sin.The more he hath of the crea­ture’s delights given him, the more he sins with them. Oh, it is sad to think what work they make in his naughty heart!  They are but fuel for his lusts to kin­dle upon.  Away they run with their enjoyments, as the prodigal with his bags, or like hogs in shaking time; no sight is to be had of them, or thought of their return, as long as they can get anything abroad, among the delights of the world.  None so prodigi­ously wicked as those that are fed high with carnal pleasures.  They are to the ungodly as the dung and ordure is to the swine, which grows fat by lying in it. Their hearts grow gross and fat, their consciences more stupid and senseless in sin by them; whereas the comforts and delights that God gives in to a holy soul by the creature, turn to the spiritual nourishment of his graces, and draw these forth into exercise, as they do the others’ lust.  (2.) The unholy man sucks dregs of wrath.  The Israelites had little pleasure from their dainties when the wrath of God fell upon them before they could get them down their throats, Ps. 78:30.  The sinner’s feast is no sooner served in, but divine justice is preparing to send up a reckoning after it; and the fearful expectation of this cannot but spoil the taste of the other.  But the gracious soul is entertained upon free-cost.  No amazing thoughts need discompose his spirit, so as to break his draught, or make him spill any of the comfort of his present enjoyment from the fear of an approaching danger. All is well.  The coast is clear.  He may say with David, ‘I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety,’ Ps. 4:8.  God will not—all beside cannot—break his rest. As the unicorn heals the waters by dipping his horn in them, that all the beasts may drink without danger, so Christ hath healed creature-enjoyments, that there is no death now in the saints’ cup.

           Answer Third.  I answer by way of affirmation. The power of holiness is so far from depriving a man of the joy and pleasure of his life, that there are in­comparable delights and pleasures peculiar to the ho­ly life, which the gracious soul finds in the ways of righteousness, enjoys by itself, and no stranger inter­meddles with.  They lie inward indeed, and therefore the world speaks so wildly and ignorantly concerning them.  They will not believe they have such pleasures till they see them, and they shall never see them till they believe them.  The Roman soldiers, when they entered the temple, and went into the holy of holies, seeing there no image, as they used to have in their own idolatrous temples, gave out in a jeer that the Jews worshipped the clouds.  Truly thus, because the pleasures of righteousness and holiness are not so gross as to come under the cognizance of the world’s carnal senses, as their brutish ones do, therefore they laugh at the saints, as if their joys were but the child of fancy, and that they do but embrace a cloud, in­stead of Juno herself—a fantastic pleasure for the true.  But let such know that they carry in their own bosom what will help them to think the pleasures of a holy life more real than thus.  The horror, I mean, which the guilt of their unholy and unrighteous lives does sometimes fill their amazed consciences with, though there be no whip on their back, and pain in their flesh, tells them, the peace which results from a good conscience, may as well fill the soul with sweet joy, when no carnal delights contribute to the same, as at any other time.  There are three things consid­ered in the nature of a holy righteous life, that are enough to demonstrate it to be the only pleasant life. It is a life from God; it is a life with God; it is the very life of God.

           1. It is a life from God, and therefore must needs be pleasant and joyous.  Whatever God makes is good and pleasant in its kind.  Now life is one of the choicest of God’s works, insomuch that the poor­est, silliest gnat, or fly, in this respect, exceeds the sun in its meridian glory.  To every life God hath appoint­ed a pleasure suitable to its kind.  The beasts have a pleasure suitable to the life of beasts, and man much more to his.  Now, every creature we know, enjoys the pleasure of its life best when it is in its right temper. If a beast be sick, it droops and groans; and so does man also.  No dainties, sports, or music please a man that is ill in his health.  Now holiness is the due tem­per of the soul, as health is of the body, and therefore a holy life must needs be a pleasant life.  Adam, I hope, in paradise, before sin spoiled his temper, lived a pleasant life.  When the creature is made holy, then he begins to return to his primitive temper, and with it to his primitive joy and pleasure.  O sirs! men fall out with their outward conditions, and are discon­tented with their rank and place in the world, but the fault lies more inward—the shoe is straight and good enough, but the foot is crooked that wears it.  All would do well if thou wert well, and thou wilt never be well till thou art righteous and holy.

Satan’s Stratagems to Disarm the Christian of his Breastplate Defeated 2/4

        

   (2.) They are sinful when not rightly timed.  Fruit ate out of its season is nought.  We read of ‘a time to embrace and a time to refrain,’ Ecc. 3:5.  There are some seasons that the power of holiness calls off, and will not allow what is lawful at another time.  As,

(a) On the Lord’s-day.  Then all carnal, creature-pleasures are out of season.  God calls us them to higher delights, and he expects we should lay the other aside, and not put our palates out of taste with those lower pleasures, that we may the better relish his heavenly dainties.  ‘If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words; then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord,’ Isa. 58:13, 14.  Mark! we can neither taste the sweetness of communion with God, nor pay the honour due to God in sanctifying his day, except we deny ourselves in our carnal delights.  If a king should at some certain times of the year invite some of his poor subjects to sit and feast with him at his own royal table, they should exceedingly dis­honour their prince, and wrong themselves, to bring their ordinary mean fare with them to court.  

Do glor­ified saints in heaven call for any of their carnal de­lights, or miss them, while they are taken up in heav­en praising God, and feeding on the joys that flow from the full-eyed vision of God?  And doth not God make account he gives you to enjoy heaven in a figure, when he admits you the service of his holy day?  (b) In days of solemn fasting and prayer.  We are on such occasions to afflict our souls, and creature-pleasures will fit that work no better than a silver lace would do a mourning suit.  (c) In times of public calamity in the church abroad, especially at home.  And this a gracious heart cannot but count reasonable, that he should deny himself, or at least tie up himself to a very short allowance in his creature-delights, when Christ in his church lies a‑bleeding. Sympathy is a debt we owe to our fellow‑saints —Christ mystical.  And truly the cords of others’ af­flictions will be little felt through our soft downy beds, if we indulge ourselves, I mean, to a full enjoyment of our ease and carnal delights.  What child that is mer­ry and pleasant in his own house, and hath a father or mother lying at the same time in great misery at the point of death, but unknown to him, will not, when the doleful news at last comes to him, change his note, yea, mourn that he did not know it sooner, and had not rather have been weeping for and with his dear relations in the house of mourning, than passing away his time pleasantly at home?  Hitherto I have answered by concession, confessing what pleasures a holy and righteous life denies and forbids, and I hope they appear to be no other than such as may, without any loss to the believer’s joy, be fairly dismissed.

           Answer Second.  Now, in the second place, I come to answer by way of negation; viz. that though a holy righteous life denies the Christian the pleas­ures forementioned, yet it doth not deprive him of any true pleasure the creature affords; yea, so far from this, that none doth or can enjoy the sweetness of the creature, like the gracious soul that walks in the power of holiness, as will appear in these two particulars.

1. The gracious person hath a more curious pal­ate,that fits him to taste a further sweetness in, and so draw more pleasure from, any creature-enjoyment, than an unholy person can do.  The fly finds no honey in the same flower from whence the bee goes laden away.  Nor can an unholy heart taste the sweetness which the saint doth in a creature.  He hath indeed a natural fleshly palate, whereby he relisheth the gross carnal pleasure the flesh affords, and that he makes his whole meal on; but a gracious heart tastes something more.  ‘All’ Israel drank of the rock, ‘and that rock was Christ,’ I Cor. 10:4.  But did all that tas­ted the water’s natural sweetness, taste Christ in it? No, alas! they were but a few holy souls that had a spiritual palate to do this.  Samson's father and mother ate of the honey out of the lion's carcass, as well as Samson, and may be liked the taste of it for honey as well as Samson; yet he took more pleasure sure than they.  He tasted the sweetness of God’s providence in it, that had delivered him from that very lion that now affords him this honey, Judges 14.

Satan’s Stratagems to Disarm the Christian of his Breastplate Defeated 1/4

First. Satan attempts to make the Christian throw away his breastplate of righteousness, by pre­senting it as that which hinders the pleasure of his life.

           Second. He endeavours to make the Christian throw away his breastplate, as being prejudicial to his worldly profits.

           Third. He endeavours to make the Christian throw away his breastplate, by scaring him with the contradiction, opposition, and feud which it brings from the world.

Satan’s first stratagem defeated; that, viz. in which he represents the Christian’s breastplate as hindering the pleasure of life

           First Stratagem. Satan attempts to make the Christian throw away his breastplate, by presenting it as that which hinders the pleasure of his life.

           He labours to picture a holy righteous life with such an austere sour face, that the creature may be out of love with it.  ‘O,’ saith he, ‘if you mean to be thus precise and holy, then bid adieu to all joy.  You at once deprive yourselves of all those pleasures which others pass their days so merrily in the em­braces of, that are not so strait-laced in their con­sciences.’  How true a charge this is, that Satan lays upon the ways of holiness we shall now see.  And tru­ly he that desires to see the true face of holiness in its native hue and colour, should do well not to trust Satan, or his own carnal heart, to draw its picture.  I shall deal with this objection first, by way of con­cession, then by way of negation, and lastly by way of affirmation.

           Answer First. I answer by way of concession, viz. that there are some pleasures which, if they may be so called, are inconsistent with the power of holiness.  Whoever will take up a purpose to ‘live righteously’ must shake hands with them.  They are of two sorts.

1. Sort.  All such pleasures as are in themselves sinful.  Godliness will allow no such in thy embraces. And art thou not shrewdly hurt, dost thou think, to be denied that which would be thy bane to drink?  Would any think the father cruel that should charge his child not to dare so much as taste of any rat’s-bane?  Truly, I hope, you that have passed under the new work of the Spirit, can call sin by another name than pleasure.  I am sure saints in former times have not counted themselves tied up, but saved, from such pleasures.  The bondage lies in serving them, and the liberty in being saved from them.  The apostle be­moans the time when himself, and other saints, were ‘foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures,’ Titus 3:3; and he reckons it among the prime benefits they received by the grace of the gos­pel, to be delivered from that vassalage, ‘but accord­ing to his mercy he saved us’—how?—not by pardon­ing only, but—‘by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost,’ ver. 5.  However the devil makes poor creatures expect pleasure in sin, and promiseth them great matters of this kind; yet he goes against his conscience, and his own present sense also.  He doth not find sin so pleasant a morsel to his own taste that he should need to commend it upon this account to others.  Sin’s pleasure is like the pleasure which a place in the West Indies affords those that dwell in it.  There grows in it most rare luscious fruit, but these dainties are so sauced by with the intolerably scorching heat of the sun by day, and the multitude of a sort of creatures stinging them by night, that they can neither well eat by day nor sleep by night to digest their sweet-meats.  This made the Spaniards call the place ‘comfits in hell;’ and truly what are the pleasures of sin but such comfits in hell? There is some carnal pleasure they have which de­lights a rank sensual palate, but they are served in with the fiery wrath of God, and the stinging of a guilty, restless conscience; and the fears of the one, and the anguish of the other, are able sure to melt and waste away that little joy and pleasure they bring to the sense.
2. Sort.  There are pleasures which are not in their own nature sinful.  Such are creature comforts and delights.  The sin lies, as to these, not in the us­ing, but in the abusing of them.  This is done in two ways.

           (1.) When a due measure is not kept in the use of them.  He cannot live holily and righteously in this present world that lives not soberly also.  Godliness will allow thee to taste of these pleasures as sauce, but not to feed on them as meat.  The rich men's charge runs thus, ‘ye have lived in pleasure on the earth,’ James 5:5.  They lived in pleasures as if they had lived for them, and could not live without them.  When once this wine of creature contents fumes up to the brain, intoxicates the man’s judgment, that he begins to dote of them, and cannot think of parting with them to enjoy better, but cries, loath to depart—as those Jews in Babylon, who, beginning to thrive in that soil, were very willing to stay and lay their bones here for all Jerusalem, which they were called to re­turn unto—then truly they are pernicious to the pow­er of holiness.  Though a master doth not grudge his servant his meat and drink, yet he will not like it if, when he is to go abroad, his servant be laid up drunk and disabled from waiting on him by his intemper­ance.  And a drunken man is as fit to attend on his master, and do his business for him, as a Christian, overcharged with the pleasures of the creature, is to serve his God in any duty of godliness.