TO THOSE WITHOUT DOORS—our Neighbours 2/2

 

 In a word, dost thou think to commute with God, so as, by a greater semblance of outward zeal to God in the first table, to obtain a dispensation in point of righteousness to man in the second?  Will thy pretended love to God excuse the malice and ran­cour which thy heart swells with against thy neigh­bour?—thy devotion to God, disoblige thee from pay­ing thy debts to man?  God forbid thou shouldst think so.  But if thou dost, Peter’s counsel to Simon Magus is mine to thee.  ‘Repent of this thy wicked­ness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee,’ Acts 8:22.  In the name of God I charge every one that wears Christ’s livery, to make conscience of this piece of righteousness, as you would not bring upon your heads the vengeance of God for all those blasphemies, which the nakedness of some professors in this particular—yea, the base practices of some hypocrites—have given occasion to be belched out by the ungodly world against Christ and the good ways of holiness.  Now the power of holiness, as to this particular, will be preserved, when these two things are looked to.

1. When our care is uniform,and equally distrib­uted to endeavour the performing of one duty we owe to our neighbour as well as another.  For we must know, there is a righteousness that, as one saith, runs through every precept, as it were the veins of every law in the second table; and calls for obedience due to parents natural, civil, ecclesiastical, in the fifth command; our care to preserve our neighbour's life in the sixth; chastity in the seventh; estate in the eighth; good name in the ninth; and the keeping of our de­sires in their due bounds, against coveting what is our neighbour’s, in the tenth.  Now, as health in the body is preserved by keeping the passages of life open, for the spirits freely to move from one part to another —which once obstructed from doing their office in any part, the health of the body is presently in danger —so here the spirit and life of holiness is preserved in the Christian, by a holy care and endeavour to keep the heart free and ready to pass from doing one duty he owes his neighbour to another, according to the several walks that are in every command for him to move in.
2. As our care must be uniform, so the motive and spring within that sets us at work, and makes all these wheels move, must be evangelical.  The com­mand is a road in which both heathen, Jew, and Christian may be found travelling.  How now shall we know the Christian from the other, when heathen and Jew also walk along with him in the same duty—seem as dutiful children, obedient wives, loyal subjects, loving neighbours, as the Christian himself?  Truly, if it be not in the motive from which and end to which he acts, nothing else can do it.  Look therefore well to this, or else thou art out of thy way while thou seemest to be in thy road.  It is very ordinary for men to wrong Christ when they do their neighbour right, and this is done when Christ is not interested in the action, and love to him doth not move us thereunto. Without this thou mayest go for an honest heathen, but canst not be a good Christian.  Suppose a servant were intrusted by his master to go and pay such a man a sum of money, which he doth, yet not out of any dutiful respect to the command, or love to the person of his master, but for shame of being taken for a thief; in this case the man should have his due, but the master a great deal of wrong.  Such wrong do all mere civil persons do the Lord Jesus.  They are very exact and righteous in their dealings with their neighbours, but very injurious at the same time to Christ, because they do not this upon his account.  This makes love to our neighbour evangeli­cal, and, as Christ calls it, ‘a new commandment,’ John 13:34, when our love to our brother tales fire from his love to us.  We cannot, in a gospel sense, be said to do the duty of any com­mandment, except we first love Christ, and then for his sake do it.  ‘If ye love me, keep my command­ments,’ John 14:15.  Where, observe, that as God pre­fixes his name before the deca­logue, so Christ for the same reason doth before the Chris­tian’s obedience to any of them, that so they may keep them, both as his commandments, and out of love to him who hath brought us out of a worse house of bondage than Egypt was to Israel.

TO THOSE WITHOUT DOORS—our Neighbours 1/2

Second. The power of holiness is to appear to others, must not stay within doors, but walk out into the streets, and visit thy neighbours round.  Thy be­haviour to and con­versation with them, must be holy and righteous.  In Scrip­ture, ‘righteousness,’ and ‘living righteously,’ do oft import the whole duty of the Christian to his neighbour; and so, these terms stand distinguished from ‘piety,’ which hath God for its immediate object, and from ‘sobriety’ or ‘tem­perance,’ which immediately respects ourselves.  See them all together, Titus 2:12, where ‘the grace of God that bringeth salvation,’ is said to teach us to ‘live soberly righteously, and godly in this present world.’ He that would be the death of all these three, needs do no more, but stab one of them, no matter which, the life of holiness will run out at any one door, here or there, wherever the wound is given.  It is true indeed that there is a moral righteousness, which leaves us short of true holiness; but there is no true holiness that leaves us short of moral righteousness. Though the sensitive soul be found in a beast without the rational, yet the rational soul is not found in man without the sensitive.  

Grace and evangelical holiness being the higher principle, includes and comprehends the other within itself.  This is the dignity and honour due to Christianity, and the principle it lays down in the gospel—its enemies being judges—that though some who profess it, are none of the best, yet they learn not their unrighteousness of it.  Most true it is what one saith, ‘No Christian can be bad, except he be a hypocrite.’  Either therefore renounce thy bap­tism, or abominate the thoughts of all unrighteous­ness.  To be sure thou mightest escape better, if thou wouldst let the world know thou didst claim no kin­dred with Christ, before thou practised such wicked­ness.  Some are unresolved where to find Aristides, Socrates, Cato, and some few other heathens eminent for their moral righteousness—whether in heaven or hell; but, were there ever any that doubted what would become of the unrighteous Christian in the other world?  Hell gapes for these above all others.  ‘Know ye not,’ saith the apostle, ‘that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?’ I Cor. 6:9; as if he had said, ‘Sure you have not so far lost the use of your reason as to think that there is any room for such cattle as these in heaven.’  And if not the unrigh­teous, what crevice of hope is left for their salvation, whose unrighteousness hath a thousand time more malignity in it, than any other’s in the world is capable of?        

   The heathen shall, for their unrighteousness, be indicted, and condemned as rebels to the law.  So shall the unrighteous Christian also; and that more deeply.  But the charge which is incomparably heavi­est, and which will lay weight upon him far above the other, is that which the gospel brings in, viz. that, by his unrighteousness, he hath been an ‘enemy to the cross of Christ,’ Php. 3:18.  Indeed, if a man had a mind to show his despite to the height against Christ and his cross, the devil himself could not help him to express it more fully, than to clothe himself with a gaudy profession of the gospel, and with this wrapped about him, to roule himself in the kennel of sordid, base practices of unrighteousness.  O how it makes the profane world blaspheme the name of Christ, and abhor the very profession of him, when they see any of this filth upon the face of their conversation, who take to themselves the name of saints more than others do.  What! shall that tongue lie to man, that even now prayed so earnestly to God?—those eyes be sent on lust’s or envy’s errand, that a few moments past thou tookest off the Bible from reading those sacred oracles?—those hands in thy neighbour’s pocket to rob him of his estate, which were not long ago stretched forth so devoutly to heaven?—those legs carry thee to-day into thy shop or market to cheat and cozen, which yesterday thou wentest with to worship God in public?