Second object of deprecatory prayer - How the Christian is to pray against temporal sufferings 4/4

   It was the speech of a gracious woman when on the very marches of death: ‘O Lord, send me not to hell among such filthy company, which thou knowest I have not liked on earth.’  But as for those that can fadge very well with their lusts, and the company of the wicked here, I know not how they can thus depre­cate that place where they shall meet with that which pleaseth them so much on earth.  David, Ps. 26, first protests his abhorrency against the ways and society of the wicked: ‘I have not sat with vain persons, neither will I go in with dissemblers; I have hated the congregation of evil-doers; and will not sit with the wicked,’ ver. 4, 5: then his zeal for God, and delight he had in his house to praise and serve him, ver. 6-8.  After which, he breaks out into this prayer, ‘Gather not my soul with sinners, nor my life with bloody men,’ ver. 9.  As if he had said, I am not of their knot in my life, O let me not be of their bundle at my death.  I have praised thee on earth, send me not to blaspheme thee in hell.  I have loved the habitations of thy house here, let me not dwell with unclean spirits hereafter.

           (b) Hell is a state of separation from the blissful presence of God.  Pray to be delivered from it under this notion—as it is the last, yea, everlasting excommunication of the creature from God.  ‘Go, ye cursed,’ that is, never to see my sweet face more—called therefore ‘outer darkness,’ because not the least beam or stricture of his favour to enlighten the souls of the damned, nor the least crevice is left open for hope to expect it.  The heat of hell-fire is not so dismal, as the want of this light.  This makes them cursed; ‘Go, ye cursed.’  The curse lies in their depar­ture from God, the fountain of all blessing.  All be­sides this were tolerable.  Would God cast but one kind look upon those miserable souls, as they swim in this lake of fire and brimstone, it were able to change the property of the place, and the joy thereof were enough to take away the sense of their torment.  The three worthies in Daniel could walk in the fire, having God to bear them company, as if they had been only in the sunshine.  That which a saint prizeth most in heaven is the presence of God: ‘So shall we ever be with the Lord,’ I Thes. 4:17.  And hell is most dreaded by them, because a gulf is fixed between the souls in it and God, that no communion can be had with him to all eternity.  O how few pray against hell under this notion! how few cry out with David, ‘Cast me not away from thy presence!’ Ps. 51:11.  If this were the thing above all they feared should befall them in the other world, would they so willingly live without ac­quaintance with God in this world?  Surely no.

           (c) Hell is a state wherein the damned can never actually satisfy God’s justice; for their debt being infinite, and they, because creatures, but finite, will ever be paying.  But the last farthing can never be paid, which is the only reason they lie forever in prison, because it can never be said, ‘Now God hath his due.’  But Christ, the saints’ pay-master, dis­charged their whole debt at once, and took in the bond, which he nailed to his cross, leaving no back-reckoning unpaid, to bring the believer afterward into any danger from the hands of divine justice. Now, as an ingenuous debtor desires his freedom at his cred­itor’s hands, that thereby he may be capable of paying his debt, as well as to escape the misery that himself should endure by his imprisonment; so an ingenuous soul—and such is every saint—deprecates hell, as well with an eye to God’s glory, as to his own ease and happiness.  Lord, saith the sincere soul, if thou pack­est me away to hell, there I shall pay thee, it is true, by my just torments something in a dribbling way by retail, but never be able to discharge the whole sum; but at Christ’s hands thou mayest receive to the full what thy justice can demand at mine, and also make me thy poor creature a trumpeter of thy praise to eternity.  O send me not to blaspheme thee among that wretched crew of damned souls and unclean spirits, who so much desire to join with the choir of holy angels and saints in singing hallelujahs to thy holy and glorious name.

Second object of deprecatory prayer - How the Christian is to pray against temporal sufferings 3/4

   (d) Thou mayest not only deprecate these evils in thy affections, but also pray believingly for a happy issue out of them all.  The darkest lane of suffering shall, to the saint, have a lightsome end.  And all, we say, is well that ends well.  ‘Ye have heard of the pa­tience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful,’ James 5:11.  This is that which God so fully intends in all his saints’ troubles, that he takes pleasure in thinking of it beforehand: ‘I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace,’ Jer. 29:11.  And that petition comes in a happy time to court, which finds the king thinking of the very business it prays for.

           (2.) Eternal suffering.  The second kind of suf­fering is eternal in hell.  This is the center in which all the lines of sin and of misery meet—the common shoal into which they all disgorge themselves, as rivers do their streams into the vast ocean.  And as rivers, when they are fallen into the sea, lose their several names in one that comprehends them all—the ocean; so all the evils of this life, when resolved into this, forget their private names—sickness, pains, poverty, &c,—and are called hell.  Not that these are all for­mally and literally there, but virtually, in that the torment of the damned doth not only amount to, but, beyond expression, exceed them all.  As in heaven there is no belly-cheer, yet a feast; no silks and satins worn, yet all in glorious robes; as silver is in gold, and gold in a jewel, so all these are in heaven—because that which is of infinite more value and worth than such things as are of highest reckoning on earth. Thus the great miseries of this life are incomparably less than the least torment of hell.  Never can the creature say he is completely miserable, till the devouring jaws of that infernal pit inclose him.  Were the worst of his punishment what he feels here, he might in a manner bless himself; as Paul, on the contrary saith, he should judge the saint miserable above others, if all his hope were here.  But there is the sinner’s easeless endless state.  There is not so much as one well day to release him a while from his pain, but he shall con­tinue forever in the height of his paroxysm; no change of weather or hope of clearing, but a perpetual storm set in to rain fire and brimstone upon him to all eternity, for so long it will be before the arm of the Almighty is weary of pouring out his wrath, or his heart be brought in love with sin, and reconciled to the sinner.  Now, in deprecating this, we should endeavour to keep this threefold notion of hell in our thoughts, for which above all we are to desire to be delivered from it.

           (a) Conceive of hell as a state of sin as well as of suffering, yea, in its utmost height.  Earth is a middle place betwixt heaven and hell.  Neither sin in the wicked, nor grace in the saint, come here to their full ripeness.  Grace being an outlandish slip brought from heaven’s paradise, riseth not to its just height and procerity Tallness; highth of stature. — From Webster’s, till it be transplanted and set in its native climate from whence it came.  And sin, being a brat of hell, comes not to its full complexion and monstrosity, till it be sent back to the place it came from.  Here poor wretches are tolled on to sin by the pleasure it promiseth.  But there they sin out of mal­ice, for nothing else can invite them where this morsel is eaten with such sour sauce.  On earth the sinner is maidenly, and conceals the venom that is bagged in his heart; but in hell he spits it out in blasphemies against heaven. In a word, here he sins with wavering thoughts, and some weak purposes of repenting, but there he is as desperate as the devil himself—hard­ened beyond all relenting.  Now, under this notion, thou shouldst pray to be delivered from hell, that thou mayest never be one of that damned crew, who think it not enough to fight against God their Maker on earth, but carry the war with them into the other world also, and there continue their feud with implac­able enmity to eternity.  Certainly the saints—to whom the notions of sin in this life are so grievous, above all the crosses and losses that befall them, and who count a few years’ neighbourhood among the wicked so great an affliction, that they cry, ‘Woe is me, that I sojourn in Meshech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar’—must needs deprecate that dismal state with their utmost vehemency of spirit, wherein they should be everlastingly yoked with sin, and cooped up with unclean sinners, both which they loathe so perfectly.

        

Second object of deprecatory prayer - How the Christian is to pray against temporal sufferings 2/4

  [2.] Affirmatively—how he may and should pray against sufferings; and in these particulars following.

           (a) Deprecate the vindictive justice and wrath of God in all temporal sufferings.  Thus Jeremiah shapes his prayer, ‘O Lord, correct me, but with judgment; not in thine anger, lest thou bring me to nothing,’ Jer. 10:24, and, ch. 17:17, ‘Be not a terror unto me: thou art my hope in the day of evil.’  He declines not suffering but deprecates wrath.  As if he had said, ‘Let trouble come, but not with this message—to tell me thou art mine enemy; shoot thy darts, my breast is open to re­ceive them; but let them not be envenomed arrows headed with thy punitive justice.’  Without this sting all suffering is innocent and harmless.  But if the creature does fear—though without just cause—that they are shot out of justice's bow, then they drink up his spirits and exanimate him presently.  ‘When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth,’ Ps. 39:11.  That holy woman, I Kings 17:18, was not so much distressed for her son's death as for the reflec­tion this sad providence made upon her conscience: ‘Art thou come...to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son?’  Thou canst not therefore be too passionately importunate in deprecating this.

           (b) Deprecate the snare and temptation that suf­fering may expose thee to.  Satan commonly finds it easy to make some sinful impression upon the saint when he is heated, and his ‘heart made soft,’ as Job phraseth it, ‘in the furnace of affliction.’  He is a rare Christian in whom the stream of his grace runs clear upon such royling.  Job was a man of a thousand —God’s nonesuch: ‘None like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man,’ Job 1:8; yet bewrayed many weaknesses in his troubles, and would have done more, had not God in pity to his poor servant taken the devil off before he had quite run him down. Christ teacheth us to pray against suffering under the notion of temptation: ‘Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.’  That is, let us not be led into sin when we fall into suffering, let us not fall into thy hands and Satan’s together.  This discovers a holy frame of heart—to be more tender of our conscience than skin; not so much to fear affliction from God, as, left in it, we should be have ourselves unseemly and unholily towards him.  Agur is not so much ashamed to beg as afraid to steal, and so take the name of his God in vain, upon which account he chiefly prays against poverty, Prov. 30:8, 9.  There is nothing lost by serving God first and preferring his honour before our own private interest in our prayers. Self‑denial is the best for self‑seeking; for, by neg­lecting ourselves for God's sake, we oblige him to take the care of us upon himself, and he is the only happy man who hath his stake laid up in God’s hands.

           (c) Deprecate the excess of suffering—that thou beest not overladen, thy burden too heavy for thy back.  This is promised.  Thou mayest therefore pre­sent it in faith: ‘I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have driven thee: but I will not make a full end of thee, but correct thee in measure;’ Jer. 46:28.  The patient doth not intrench upon the physician’s art by desiring him to proportion his dose according to the weakness of his body, if, when he hath done this, he acquiesceth in his skill and faith­fulness for the same.  Indeed, to desire God to con­sider our weakness, and then not to rely on his wis­dom and care, but continue jealous and suspicious, or to murmur at his prescriptions, as if the physic he gives were too churlish and strong, this makes a dis­honourable reflection upon God.  Sometimes the physician exceeds the proportion that his fearful pa­tient thinks strong enough, but withal tells him, ‘You are not so weak as you take yourself to be.  Your body may bear so many grains more in the composition. Leave me to my art and all shall be well.’  Thus God, who knows our frame exactly, deals with his people, and is highly pleased to see them satisfied with what he orders them out: ‘In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly,’ Job 1:22; @Û6 §*T6,< •ND@Fb<0< Jè 2,è—so the Septuagint reads it—he did not impute folly to God; indeed the word {Hebrew Characters Omitted} (tiphlah), is a noun.  The meaning of the place is, Job did not make any unworthy reflection upon God for the evils he suf­fered by his providence, as if anything were wanting in his care or wisdom, like some rash physician, who fails either in timing or tempering his physic.

        

Second object of deprecatory prayer - How the Christian is to pray against temporal sufferings 1/4

2. Object.  The second object of deprecatory prayer is suffering.  Sin brought suffering into the world.  Sin is indeed the elder twin, but suffering stayed not long after it; for it took it by the heel, presently arresting Adam upon the very place where he committed his trespass, and ever since follows it as close as the shadow doth the body.  It leaves not the saint till death parts him and his sin, but pursues the wicked with their sins into the other world also.  So that this distribution of suffering into temporal and eternal shall content us at present—they being comprehensive of all the miseries which sin hath brought upon the sons of men.  Now my work in this place shall be only to direct the Christian how to frame his prayer in deprecating the one and the other also.  (1.) Temporal sufferings—how the Christian is to deprecate and pray against them.  (2.) Eternal suffering.

           (1.) Temporal sufferings—how the Christian is to deprecate and pray against them.

           [1.] Negatively—The Christian is not to pray for an immunity from all temporal sufferings.  There is no foundation for such a prayer in the promise; and what God thinks not fit to promise we must not be bold to ask.  Temporal promises are to be under­stood, saith Melancthon, cum exceptione crucis —with exception of the cross.  God had one Son without sin, but he will have none in this life without suffering.  John writes himself, ‘Your brother, and companion in tribulation,’ Rev. 1:9.  He hath too high an opinion of himself that would have God lead him dryshod on a fair causeway to heaven, while he sees the rest of his brethren march through thick and thin to the same place; or who thinks he needs not this thorn‑hedge of suffering, to keep him as well as others from wandering out of his way to glory.  The rod and ferule are not more needful among children at school than suffering is to the saints while in their minority here on earth.  If thou wert come to that ripeness of ingenuity as to have worn off all thy childishness, thou shouldst stay here no longer under the lash; but while thou art subject to sin thou must submit to his disciplinary rod.  Valetudinarious bodies can as well spare food as physic, and saints in this their crazy state may as well live without ordinances as without sufferings.  In a word, to pray absolutely against all suffering is to desire one of the greatest punishments on this side hell.  When God said, ‘I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom,’ Hosea 4:14, he meant them no good by sparing his rod.  If we count him an unwise father that, when he puts his child to school, indents with his master not to whip him; surely much more folly were it in thee to desire God to privilege thee from all suffering.