The sin of ministers who stir up strife 2/2

1. Christians are unevangelical in their judgments; ‘they know but in part, and prophesy but in part,’ I Cor. 13:9.  He that pretends to more than this boasts without his measure, and doth thereby discover what he denies—his ignorance, I mean, in the gospel. And this defect and craze that is in the saints’ judgments exposeth them sometimes to drink in principles that are not evangelical.  Now, these are they that make the bustle and disturb their peace and unity.  All truth is reducible to a unity; like lines they lovingly meet in one center—the God of truth—and are so far from jostling and clashing, that, as stones in an arch, they uphold one another.  They then which so sweetly agree in one them­selves cannot learn us to divide.  No, it is this strange error that creeps in among the saints, and will needs be judge; this breaks the peace, and kindles a fire in the house, that in a while, if let alone, will be seen at the house-top. Wholesome food makes no disturbance to a healthy body; but corrupt food doth presently make the body feverish and untoward, and then, when the man is distempered, no wonder if he begins to be pettish and peevish; we have seen it by woful experience.  Those from whom we had nothing but sweetness and love while they fed on the same dish of gospel truth with us, how strangely froward are they grown since they have taken down some unevangelical and erroneous principles!  We know not well how to carry ourselves towards them they are so captious and quarrelsome; yea, at the very hearing of the word, if they have not yet forgot the way to the ordinance, what a distasteful behaviour do many of them show, as if every word went against their stomach, and made them sick!  O sirs, let us not blame the gospel, it is innocent as to these sad contentions among us.  Paul tells us where to find a father for this brat of strife.  See at whose door he directs us to lay it: ‘Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and of­fences contrary to the doctrine ye have learned,’ Rom. 16:17.  I pray observe how he clears the gospel here. This dividing quarrelling spirit is contrary to the gos­pel; they never learned it in Christ’s school.  And then he tacitly implies that they have it somewhere else, from some false teacher and false doctrine or other.  ‘Mark them,’ saith he, as if he had said, ‘Ob­serve them well, and you shall find them tainted some way or other.’  They have been warming themselves at Satan’s fire, and from thence have brought a coal with them, that does the mischief.
2. Christians are in part unevangelical in their hearts and lives.The whole root of sin is not stubbed up at once; no wonder some bitter taste remains in the fruit they bear.  Saints in heaven shall be all grace, and no sin in them, and then they shall be all love also; but here they are part grace, part corruption, and so their love is not perfect.  How can they be fully soldered together in unity never to fall out, as long as they are not so fully reconciled to God, in the point of sanctification, but now and then there are some breeches betwixt them and God himself?  And the less progress the gospel hath made in their hearts to mortify lust and strengthen grace, the less peace and love is to be expected among them.  The apostle con­cludes from the contentions among the Christians at Corinth, that they were of little growth in grace, such as were not past the child’s spoon and meat.  ‘I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able, for ye are yet carnal,’ I Cor. 3:2.  Nay, he conceives this to be so clear evidence, that he appeals to their con­sciences if it be not so.  ‘For whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not car­nal, and walk as men?’ ver. 3.  But as grace strengthens, and the gospel prevails on the hearts of Christians, so does love and a spirit of unity increase with it.  We say ‘older and wiser;’—though children, when young, do scratch and fight, yet when they get up into years, they begin to agree better.  Omne invalidum est naturá quærulum—those that are young and weak are peevish and quarrelsome.  Age and strength bring wis­dom to overcome those petty differences that now cannot be borne.  In the controversy between the servants of Abraham and Lot, Abraham, who was the elder and stronger Christian, was most forward for peace, so as to crave it at the hands of his nephew, every way his inferior.  Paul, who was a Christian higher by the head than others—O how he excelled in love!—he saith of himself, I Tim. 1:14, ‘The grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus;’ where, saith Calvin, fides incredulitati opponitur; dilectio in Christo sævitiæ quam exercuerat  adversus fideles—faith is opposed to his former obstinate unbelief, when a Pharisee; love in Christ Jesus, to the cruelty he expressed against Christians, when, breathing slaughter, he went on a persecuting errand to Damascus.  Now he was as full of faith as then of unbelief, now as fire-hot of love to the saints as then of cruelty against them.  But that I quote chiefly the place for, is to see how this pair of graces thrive and grow together; if abundant in faith, then abundant in love.

The sin of ministers who stir up strife 1/2

           Use Second.  Is the gospel a gospel of peace in this sense as taken for unity and love?—this dips their sin into a deep die, who abuse the gospel to a quite contrary end, and make it their instrument to promote strife and contention withal.  Such the apos­tle speaks of, ‘Some indeed preach Christ even of en­vy and strife,’ Php. 1:15.  The gospel of peace is a strange text, one would think, to preach division and raise strife from; and the pulpit as strange a mount for to plant the battering pieces of contention on.  O how strangely do these men forget their Lord that sent them, who is a Prince of peace! and their work, which is not to blow a trumpet of sedition and confusion, or sound an alarm to battle, but rather a joyful retreat from the bloody fight wherein their lusts had engaged them against God and one another.  Indeed there is a war they are to proclaim, but it is only against sin and Satan; and I am sure we are not fit to march out against them till we can agree among our­selves.  What would the prince think of that captain who, instead of encouraging his soldiers to fall on with united forces as one man against a common ene­my, should make a speech to set his soldiers together by the ears among themselves? surely he would hang him up for a traitor.  Good was Luther’s prayer, A doctore glorioso, à pastore contentioso, et inutilibus quæstionibus liberet ecclesiam Deus—from a vainglorious doctor, a contentious pastor, and nice questions, the Lord deliver his church.  And we, in these sad times, have reason to say as hearty an amen to it as any since his age.  Do we not live in a time when the church is turned into a sophister’s school? where such a wrangling and jangling hath been that the most precious truths of the gospel are lost already to many. Their eyes are put out with the dust these contentions have raised, and they have at last fairly disputed themselves out of all their sober principles; as some ill husbands that light among cunning gamesters, and play all their money out of their purses.  O woe to such vile men, who have prostituted the gospel to such devilish ends!  God may have mercy on the cheated souls to bring them back to the love of the truth, but for the cheaters, they are gone too far towards hell that we can look for their return.

          This gives us the reason why there is no more peace and unity among the saints themselves.  The gospel cannot be faulted that breathes peace.  No! it is not because they are gospellers, but because they are but imperfectly gospelized, that they are no more peaceful.  the more they partake of the spirit of the gospel, the less will they be haunted with the evil spirit of contention and strife.  The best of saints are in part unevangelical in two particulars, from which come all the unkind quarrellings and unbrotherly contests among them.