Evangelical truth and uprightness

Second kind of sincerity. We proceed to the sec­ond kind of truth of heart or uprightness, which I called an evangelical uprightness.  This is a plant found growing only in Christ’s garden, or the inclo­sure of a gracious soul.  It is by way of distinction from that I called moral, known by the name of a ‘godly sincerity,’ or the sincerity of God.  Our re­joicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom but by the grace of God, we have had our conversa­tion in the world, II Cor. 1:12.  Now in two respects this evangelical sincerity may be called godly sincerity.  1. Because it is of God.  2. Because it aims at God, and ends in God.

1. Because it is of God.  It is his creature —begotten in the heart by his Spirit alone.  Paul, in the place forementioned, II Cor. 1:12, doth excellently derive its pedigree for us.  What he calls walking in ‘godly sincerity’ in the first part of the verse, he calls ‘having our conversation by the grace of God’ in the latter part; yea, opposeth it to ‘walking with fleshly wisdom in the world’—the great wheel in the moral man’s clock.  And what doth all this amount to, but to show that this sincerity is a babe of grace, and calls none on earth father? But this is not all.  This ‘godly sincerity’ is not only of divine extraction—for so are common gifts that are supernatural—the hypocrite’s boon as well as the saint’s—but it is part of the new creature, which his sanctifying Spirit forms and works in the elect, and none besides.  It is a covenant-grace. ‘I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you,’ Eze. 11:19.  That ‘one heart,’ by which the hypocrite is so often descried in the word.
2. Because it aims at God, and ends in God.  The highest project and ultimate end that a soul thus sincere is big with, is how it may please God.  The disappointment such a godly sincere person meets with from any other, troubles him no more than it would a merchant who speeds in the main end of his voyage to the Indies, and returns richly laden with the prize of gold and silver he went for, but only loseth his garter or shoe-string in the voyage.  As the master's eye directs the servant's hand—if he can do his business to his master's mind, he hath his wish, though strangers who come into the shop like it not—thus ‘godly sincerity’ acquiesceth in the Lord’s judgment of him.  Such a one shoots not at small nor great, studies not to accommodate himself to any, to hit the humour of rich or poor; but singles out God in his thoughts from all others, as the chief object of his love, fear, faith, joy, &c.; he directs all his endeavours like a wise archer at this white, and when he can most approve himself to God, he counts he shoots best. Hear holy Paul speaking, not only his own private thoughts, but the common sense of all sincere be­lievers: ‘We labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him,’ II Cor. 5:9.  The world’s true man is he that will not wrong man.  Though many go thus far, who can make bold with God, for all their demure carriage to man; some that would not steal the worth of a penny from their neighbour, yet play notorious thieves with God in greater matters than all the money their neighbour hath is worth.  They can steal that time from God—the Sabbath-day I mean—to gratify their own occasions, which he hath inclosed for himself, and lays peculiar claim to, by such a title as will upon trial be found stronger, I trow, than we can show for the rest of the week to be ours.  Others will not lie to man possibly in their dealing with him—and it were better living in the world, if there were more of this truth among us—but these very men, many of them, yea, all that are not more than morally upright, make nothing of lying to God, which they do in every prayer they make, promising to do what they never bestow a serious thought how they may perform. They say they will sanctify God's name, and yet throw dirt on the face of every attribute in it; they pray that the will of God may be done, and yet, while they know their sanctifi­cation is his will, they content themselves with their unholy hearts and natures, and think it enough to beautify the front of their lives—that part which faceth man, and stands to the street, as I may so say—with a few flourishes of civility and justness in their worldly dealings, though their inward man lies all in woeful ruins at the same time.  But he is God’s true man that desires to give unto God the things that are God's, as well as unto man the things that are man's—yea, who is first true to God and then to man for his sake.  Good Joseph—when his brethren feared as strangers to him (for yet they knew no other) [that] they should receive some hard measure at his hands —mark what course he takes to free their troubled thoughts from all suspicion of any unrighteous deal­ing from him.  ‘This do,’ saith he, ‘and live; for I fear God.’ Gen. 42:18—as if he had said, ‘Expect nothing from me but what is square and upright, for I fear God.  You possibly think because I am a great man, and you poor strangers where you have no friends to intercede for you, that my might should bear down your right; but you may save yourselves the trouble of such jealous thoughts concerning me, for I see one infinitely more above me, than I seem to be above you, and him I fear—which I could not do if I should be false to you.’  The word II Cor. 1:12, for sincerity is emphatical, "—a metaphor from things tried by the light of the sun, as when you are buying cloth, or such like ware, you will carry it out of the dark shop and hold it up to the light, by which the least hole in it is discovered; or, as the eagle, say some, holds up her young against the sun, and judg­eth them her own if able to look up wishly against it, or spurious if not able. Truly that is the godly sincere soul, which looks up to heaven and desires to be determined in his thoughts, judgment, affections, and practices, as they can stand before the light which shines from thence through the word—the great lu­minary into which God hath gathered all light for guiding souls, as the sun in the firmament is for di­recting our bodies in their walking to and fro in the world.  If these suit with the word, and can look on it without being put to shame by it, then on the sincere soul goes in his enterprise with courage; nothing shall stop him.  But if any of these be found to shun the light of the word—as Adam would, if he could, the seeing of God—not being able to stand by its trial, then he is at his journey's end, and can be drawn forth by no arguments from the flesh; for it goes not on the flesh's errand but on God’s, and he that sends him shall only stay him.  Things are true or right as they agree with their first principles.  When the counter­pane agrees with the original writing, then it is true. Now the will of God is standard to all our wills, and he is the sincere man that labours to take the rule and measure of all his affections and actions from that. Hence David is called ‘a man after God's own heart,’ which is but a periphrasis of his sincerity, and is as much as if the Spirit of God had said he was an up­right man—he carries on his heart the sculpture and image of God's heart, as it is engraved on the seal of the word.  But enough for the present.  This may serve to show what is evangelical uprightness.

SINCERITY COVERS THE CHRISTIAN’S UNCOMELINESS - Girt about with truth 2/2

 

 [A twofold caution.]

Caution. To the sincere Christian.  May there be found a kind of uprightness among men that are carnal and destitute of God's sanctifying grace?  O then look you to it, in whose hearts dwells the Spirit of grace, that you be not put to shame by those that are graceless, which you must needs be when you are taken tardy in those things that they cannot be charged for.  Many among them there are, that scorn to lie.  Shall a saint be taken in an untruth?  Their moral principles bind them over to the peace, and will not suffer them to wrong their neighbour; and can cheating, over-reaching oppression follow a saint’s hand?  Except your righteousness exceeds their best, you are not Christians.  And can you let them exceed you in those things, which, when they are done, leave them short of Christ and heaven?  It is time for the scholar to throw off his gown, and dis­claim the name of an academic, when every school-boy is able to dunce and pose him; and for him also to lay aside his profession, and let the world know what he is, yea, what he never was, who can let a mere civil man, with his weak bow only backed with moral principles, outshoot him that pretends to Christ and his grace.  I confess it sometimes so falls out, that a saint under a temptation may be outstripped by one that is carnal in a particular case; as a lackey, that is an excellent footman, may, from some prick or pres­ent lameness in his foot, be left behind by one that at another time should not be able to come near him. We have too many sorrowful examples of moral men’s outstripping even a saint at a time, when under a temptation.  A notable passage we meet with con­cerning Abimelech’s speech to Sarah, after her dissembling and equivocating speech, that Abraham was her brother.  ‘And unto Sarah he said’—that is, Abimelech said to her—‘Behold, I have given thy brother a thousand pieces of silver; behold, he is to thee a covering of the eyes, unto all that are with thee, and with all other,’ Gen. 20:16. 

Now mark the words which follow. ‘Thus she was reproved.’  How? where lies the reproof.  Here are none but good words, and money to boot also.  He promiseth protection to her and Abraham—none should wrong him in wronging her—and tells her what he had freely given Abraham. Well, for all this, we shall find sharp reproof, though lapped up in these sweet words, and silvered over with his thousand pieces.  First. She was reproved by the uprightness of Abimelech in that business wherein she had sinfully dissembled.  That he who was a stranger to the true God and his worship, should be so square and honest, as to deliver her up untouched, when once he knew her to be another man’s wife, and not only so, but instead of falling into a passion of anger, and taking up thoughts of revenge against them, for putting this cheat upon him—which, having them under his power, had not been strange for a prince, to have done—for him to forget all this, and rather show such kindness and high bounty to them, this must needs send a sharp reproof home to Sarah’s heart.  Especially it must, considering that he a heathen did all this; and she—one called to the knowledge of God, in covenant with God, and the wife of a prophet—was so poor-spirited, as, for fear of a danger which only her husband, and that without any great ground, surmised, to commit two sins at one clap—dissemble, and also hazard the loss of her chastity.  The less of the two was worse than the thing they were so afraid of.  These things, I say, laid to­gether, amounted to such a reproof, as no doubt made her, and Abraham too, heartily ashamed before God and man.  

Again, Abimelech in calling Abraham her ‘brother,’ not her husband, did give her a smart rebuke, putting her in mind how with that word he had been deceived by them.  Thus godly Sarah was reproved by a profane king.  O Christians, take heed of putting words into the mouths of wicked men to reprove you withal!  They cannot reprove you, but they reproach God.  Christ is put to shame with you and by you.  For the good name’s sake of Christ —which cannot but be dearer to you, if saints, than your lives—look to your walking, and especially to your civil converse with the men of the world.  They know not what you do in your closet, care not what you are in the congregation, they judge you by what you are when they have to do with you.  As they find you in your shop, bargains, promises, and such like, so they think of you and your profession.  Labour therefore for this uprightness to man; by this you may win some, and judge others.  Better vex the wicked world with strict walking, as Lot did the Sodomites, than set them on work to mock, and reproach thee and thy profession by any scandal, as David did by his sad fall.  They that will not follow the light of thy holiness, will soon spy the thief in thy candle, and point at it.

           2. Caution.  The second word of caution is to those that are morally upright and no more.  Take heed this uprightness proves not a snare to thee, and keeps thee from getting evangelical uprightness.  I am sure it was so to the young man in the gospel.  In all likelihood he might have been better, had he not been so good.  His honesty and moral uprightness were his undoing, or rather his conceit of them, to castle him­self in them.  Better he had been a publican, driven to Christ in the sense of his sin, than a Pharisee kept from him with an opinion of his integrity.  These, these are the weeds, with which, many, thinking to save themselves by them, keep themselves under water to their perdition.  ‘There is more hope of a fool,’ Solomon tells us, ‘than of one wise in his own conceit;’ and of the greatest sinner, than of one con­ceited of his righteousness.  If once the disease take the brain, the cure must needs be the more difficult. No offering Christ to one in this frenzy.  Art thou one kept from these unrighteous ways wherein others walk?  May be thou art honest and upright in thy course, and scornest to be found false in any of thy dealings.  Bless God for it; but take heed of blessing thyself in it.  There is the danger.  This is one way of being ‘righteous overmuch’—a dangerous pit, of which Solomon warns all that travel in heaven road, Ecc. 7:16.  There is undoing in this overdoing, as well as in any underdoing.  For so it follows in the same verse, ‘why shouldst thou destroy thyself?’  Thou art not, proud man, so fair for heaven as thou flatterest thyself.  A man upon the top of one hill may seem very nigh to the top of another, and yet can never come there, except he comes down from that where he is.  The mount of thy civil righteousness and moral uprightness, on which thou standest so confidently, seems perhaps level in thy proud eye to God’s holy hill in heaven; yea, so nigh that thou thinkest to step over from one to the other with ease.  But let me tell thee, it is too great a stride for thee to take.  

Thy safer way and nearer, were to come down from thy moun­tain of self-confidence—where Satan hath set thee on a design to break thy neck—and to go thy ordinary road, in which all that ever got heaven went.  And that way is just by labouring to get an interest in Christ and his righteousness—which is provided on purpose for the creature to wrap up his naked soul in, and to place his faith on; and thus thy uprightness, which before was but of the same form with the heathen’s moral honesty, may commence, or rather be baptized Christian, and become evangelical grace. But let me tell thee this before I dismiss thee, that thou canst not lay hold of Christ’s righteousness till thou hast let fall the lie—thy own righteousness —which hitherto thou hast held so fast in thy right hand.  When Christ called the ‘blind man’ to him, it is said that ‘He, casting away his garment, rose, and came to Jesus,’ Mark 10:50.  Do thou so, and then come and welcome.

SINCERITY COVERS THE CHRISTIAN’S UNCOMELINESS - Girt about with truth 1/2

Sincerity or truth of heart in all our ways covers all the Christian’s uncomeliness.  In handling this point, this is our method: First. We shall inquire, which is the truth and sincerity that covers the Christian’s uncomeliness.  Second. We shall inquire, what uncomelinesses they are that sincerity covers. Third. How sincerity covers them.  Fourth. Why sincerity doth this; or some account given for all this.

What is the truth which covers the Christian’s uncomeliness.

           First Inquiry. Which is that truth and sincerity that covers all uncomelinesses and deficiencies in the Christian.  Here we must distinguish of a twofold sincerity, one moral, another evangelical.

           [Moral truth and uprightness.]

           First kind of sincerity. There is a moral truth, and uprightness, which we may call a field flower, because it may be found growing in the wild and waste of nature.  It cannot be denied, but one that hath not a dram of sanctifying saving grace, may show some kind of uprightness and truth in his actions. God himself comes in as a witness for Abimelech, that what he did in taking Sarah, was in the uprightness of his heart: ‘I know,’ saith God, ‘that thou didst this in the integrity of thy heart,’ Gen. 20:6, that is, thou didst mean honestly as to this particular business, and didst not intend any wrong to Abraham, whose wife she was unknown to thee.  Joab, though a bloody man, yet dealt very uprightly and squarely with David concerning the rendition of Rabbah, when he had a fair advantage of stealing away the honour from his prince to himself.  Many such instances may be given of men that have been great strangers to a work of grace on their hearts; but this is not the uprightness that we mean in the point laid down.  It doth indeed render a person very lovely and amiable before men to be thus upright and honest in his dealings; but methinks I hear the Lord saying concerning such, as once he did to Samuel of Eliab, ‘Look not on their countenance,’  so as to think [that] these are they which he accepts.  No, he hath refused them; ‘for the Lord seeth not as man seeth,’ God’s eye looks deeper than man’s, I Sam. 16:7.  There are two great defects in this uprightness which God rejects it for.

1. Defect. It grow, not from a good root—a re­newed heart.  This is a hair on the moral man’s pen, which blurs and blots his copy, when he writes fairest. It is like the leprosy to Naaman; that same ‘but he was a leper,’ took away the honour of his greatness at court, and [of his] prowess in the field.  So here it stains the fairest actions of a mere moral man—‘But he is a Christless, graceless person.’  The uprightness of such does others more good in this world than themselves in another.  They are by this moral hon­esty profitable to those that have civil commerce with them; but it doth not render themselves acceptable to God.  Indeed, had not God left some authority in conscience to awe and keep men, that have no grace, within some bounds of honesty, this world would have been no more habitable for the saints, than the forest of wild beasts is now for man.  And such is the uprightness of men void of sanctifying grace.  They are rather rid by an overpowering light of conscience that scares them, than sweetly led by an inward prin­ciple inclining them to take complacency in that which is good.  Abimelech himself—for whom, as we heard, God so apologized—is yet let to know that his honesty in that matter came rather from God’s re­straint upon him, than any real goodness in him.  I also withheld thee from sinning against me; therefore suffered I thee not to touch her, Gen. 20:6.
2. Defect. This moral uprightness falls short of the chief end indispensably necessary to make a per­son upright indeed.  This is ‘the glory of God,’ I Cor. 10:31.  ‘Whatever ye do, do all to the glory of God.’ The archer may lose his game by shooting short, as well as by shooting wide.  The gross hypocrite shoots wide, the uprightest moralist shoots short.  He may, and oft doth, take his aim right as to the particular and immediate end of his action, but ever fails in regard of the ultimate end.  Thus, a servant may be faithful to his master, scorn to wrong him of a farth­ing, yea, cordially seek his master’s profit; and yet God may not be looked at or thought of in all this, and so all is worth nothing, because God, who is prin­cipally to be regarded, is left out of the story.  Ser­vants are commanded to do their ‘service as to the Lord and not to men,’ that is, not only, not chiefly to man, Eph. 6:7.  It is true, the master is to be looked at in the servant’s duty, but in this way, only as it leads to the glory of God.  He must not, when he hath de­sired to please his earthly master, sit down as at his journey’s end, but pass on—as the eye doth through the air and clouds to the sun where it is terminated —to God, as the chief end why he is dutiful and faithful to man.  Now no principle can lead the soul so high as to aim at God, but that which comes from God.  See both these excellently couched together. ‘That ye may be sincere,…being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ unto the glory and praise of God,’ Php. 1:10, 11.  Where you may observe: (1.) That the sincerity of the right stamp, is that which brings forth fruits of righteousness to the praise of God, that is, where the glory of God is the end of all our actions.  (2.) That such fruit cannot be borne, but ‘by Christ.’  The soul must be planted into Christ, before it can be thus sincere, to bear fruits of righteousness to the praise of God.  Hence these fruits of righteousness are said to be ‘by Jesus Christ.’ What men do by themselves, they do for themselves. They eat their own fruit, devour the praise of what they do.  The Christian only that doth all by Christ, doth all for Christ.  He hath his sap from Christ, into whom he is graffed, that makes him fruitful; and therefore he reserves all the fruit he bears for him. Thus we see how this mortal uprightness is itself fundamentally defective, and therefore cannot be that girdle which hides and covers our other defects.  Yet before I pass on to the other, I would leave a twofold caution for improvement of what hath been said con­cerning this uprightness.  The one is to the sincere Christian, the other is to such as have no more than a moral uprightness.

        

TRUTH OF HEART OR SINCERITY AS A GIRDLE FOR THE WILL - Having your loins girt about with truth

         

  We come now to the second kind of truth—commended to the Christian under the notion of the soldier’s girdle—and that is, truth of heart.  Where it would be known, First. What I mean by truth of heart.  Second. Why truth of heart is compared to a girdle.

           First. What I mean by truth of heart.  By truth of heart, I understand sincerity, so taken in Scripture, ‘Let us draw near with a true heart,’ that is, with a sincere heart,  Heb. 10.22.  We have them oft con­joined, the one explaining the other: ‘Fear the Lord, and serve him with sincerity and truth,’ Joshua 24:14.  We read of ‘the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth,’ I Cor. 5:8.  Hypocrisy is a lie with a fair cover over it.  An insincere heart is a half heart.  The in­ward frame and motion of the heart comports not with the profession and behaviour of the outward man, like a clock, whose wheels within go not as the hand points without.

           Second. Why truth of heart is compared to a girdle.  Sincerity, or truth of heart, may fitly be com­pared to a girdle, in regard of the twofold use and end for which a girdle, especially a soldier's belt, is worn.

           First. The girdle is used as an ornament put on uppermost, to cover the joints of the armour, which would, if seen, cause some uncomeliness.  Here—at the loins I mean—those pieces of armour for the defence of the lower parts of the body are fastened to the upper.  Now because they cannot be so closely knit and clasped, but there will be some little gaping betwixt piece and piece, therefore they used to put over those parts a broad girdle, that covered all that uncomeliness.  Now, sincerity doth the same for the Christian, that the girdle doth for the soldier.  The saint’s graces are not so close, nor his life so exact, but in the best there are found infirmities and defects, which are as so many gapings and clefts in his ar­mour, but sincerity covers all, that he is neither put to shame for them, nor exposed to danger by them.

           Second. The girdle was used for strength.  By this his loins were staid, and united, and the soldier to fight or march.  As a garment, the closer it sits, the warmer it is; so the belt, the closer it is girt, the more strength the loins feel.  Hence God, threatening to enfeeble and  weaken a person or people, saith ‘their loins shall be loosened.’  ‘I will loose the loins of kings,’ Isa. 45:1; and, ‘he weakeneth the strength of the mighty,’ Job 12:21—Heb. ‘he looseth the girdle of the strong.’  Now sincerity may well be compared in this respect to the soldier’s girdle.  It is a grace that doth gird the soul with strength, and makes it mighty to do or suffer.  Indeed it is the very strength of every grace. So much hypocrisy as is found cleaving to our graces, so much weakness.  It is sincere faith, that is the strong faith; sincere love, that is the mighty love. Hypocrisy  is to grace as the worm is to the oak—the rust to the iron—it weakens them, because it corrupts them.  The metaphor thus opened affords these two doctrinal conclusions, in handling of which I shall comprise what I have to say further of this piece of armour.  FIRST. That sincerity or truth of heart in all our ways covers all the Christian’s uncomeliness. SECOND. That truth of heart or sincerity is of ex­cellent use to strengthen the Christian in his whole course.

Three sorts of pretenders to truth 4/4

   

In a word, truth is victorious.  It is great, and shall prevail at last.  It is the great counsel of God, and though many fine plots and devices are found in the hearts of men—which show what they would do —yet the counsel of the Lord shall stand.  All their eggs are addled when they have set longest on them. Alas! they want power to hatch what their malice sits brooding on.  Sometimes, I confess, the enemies to ‘truth’ get the militia of this lower world into their hands, and then truth seems to go to the ground, and those that witness to it are even slain; yet then it is more than their persecutors can do to get them laid underground in their grave, Rev. 11:9.  Some that were never thought on, shall strike in on truth's side, and forbid the burial.  Persecutors need not be at cost for marble to write the memorial of their victories in, dust will serve well enough, for they are not like to last so long.  ‘Three days and a half’ the witnesses may lie dead in the streets, and truth sit disconsolate by them; but within a while they are walking, and truth triumphing again.  If persecutors could kill their successors, then their work might be thought to stand strong, needing not to fear another to pull down what they set up, and yet then their work would lie as open to heaven, and might be as easily hindered, as theirs at Babel.  Who loves not to be on the winning side? Choose truth for thy side, and thou hast it.  News may come that truth is sick, but never that it is dead. No, it is error is short lived.  ‘A lying tongue is but for a moment;’ but truth's age runs parallel with God’s eternity.  It shall live to see their heads laid in the dust, and to walk over their graves, that were so busy to make one for her.  Live, did I say? yea, reign in peace with those who now are willing to suffer with and for it.  And wouldst thou not, Christian, be one among that goodly train of victors, who shall attend on Christ’s triumphant chariot into the heavenly city, there to take the crown, and sit down in thy throne with those that have kept the field, when Christ and his truth were militant here on earth?  Thus, wouldst thou but in thy thoughts wipe away the tears and blood which now cover the face of suffering truth, and present it to thy eye as it shall look in glory, thou couldst not but cleave to it with a love ‘stronger than death.’

           Direction Second. If yet there remains any qualm of fear on thy heart, from the wrath of bloody men threatening thee for thy profession of the truth, then to a heart inflamed with the love of truth, labour to add a heart filled with the fear of that wrath which God hath in store for all that apostatize from the truth.  When you chance to burn your finger, you hold it to the fire, which being a greater fire draws out the other.  Thus when thy thoughts are scorched and thy heart seared with the fire of man’s wrath, hold them awhile to hell-fire, which God hath prepared for the fearful, Rev. 21:8, and all that run away from truth’s colours, Heb. 10:39, and thou wilt lose the sense of the one for fear of the other.  Ignosce imperator, said the holy man, in carcerem Deus gehennam minatur—pardon me, O emperor, if I obey not thy command; thou threatenest a prison, but God a hell.  Observable is that of David, ‘Princes have persecuted me without a cause: but my heart standeth in awe of thy word,’ Ps. 119:161.  He had no cause to fear them that had no cause to persecute him.  One threatening out of the word—that sets the point of God’s wrath to his heart—scares him more than the worst that the greatest on earth can do to him.  Man’s wrath, alas, when hottest, is but a temperate climate to the wrath of the living God.  They who have felt both have testified as much.  Man's wrath cannot hinder the access of God's love to the creature, which hath made the saints sing in the fire in spite of their enemies’ teeth.  But the creature under God’s wrath, is like one shut up in a close oven—no crevice open to let any of the heat out, or any refreshing in to him.

Three sorts of pretenders to truth 3/4

3. Answer. Be much in the meditation of the transcendent excellency of truth.  ‘The eye affects the heart;’ this is the window at which love enters.  Never any that had a spiritual eye to see truth in her native beauty, but had a heart to love her.  This was the way that David’s heart was ravished with the love of the word of truth: ‘O how love I thy law! it is my medita­tion all the day,’ Psalms 119:97.  While his thoughts were on it, his love was drawn to it.  David found a great difference betwixt meditating on the truth’s of God's word, and other excellences which the world cries up so highly.  When he goes to entertain himself with the thoughts of some perfection in the creature, he finds it but a jejune , dry subject compared with this.  He soon tumbles over the book of the world’s excellences, and can find no notion that deserves any long stay upon it; ‘I have seen’ saith he, ‘an end of all perfections;’ he is at the world’s end presently, and in a few thoughts can see to the bottom of all the world’s glory; but when he takes up the truths of God into his thoughts, now he meets with work enough for his admiration and sweet meditation—‘Thy command­ment is exceed­ing broad.’ Great ships cannot sail in narrow rivers and shallow waters, neither can minds truly great with the knowledge of God and heaven, find room enough in the creature to turn and expatiate themselves in.  A gra­cious soul is soon aground and at a stand when upon these flats; but let it launch out into the meditation of God, his word, the mysterious truths of the gospel, and he finds a place of broad waters, sea-room enough to lose himself in.  I might here show you the excellency of divine truths from many heads.  As from the source and spring-head whence they flow, the God of truth; or from their opposite, that misshapen monster, er­ror, &c.  But I shall only direct your meditation to a few enamouring properties which you shall find in these truths.  You may meet a heap of them together in Psalm 19:7, and so on.

           Truth is ‘pure;’ this made David love it, Ps. 119:140.  It is not only pure, but makes the soul pure and holy that embraceth it.  ‘Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth,’ John 17:17.  It is the pure water that God washeth foul souls clean with.  ‘I will sprinkle clean water upon you  and ye shall be clean, from all your filthiness...will I cleanse you,’ Eze. 36:25. Foul puddle-water will as soon make the face, as error make the soul, clean.

           Truth is ‘sure,’ and hath a firm bottom, Ps. 19:7. We may lay the whole weight of our souls upon it and yet it will not crack under us.  Cleave to truth and it will stick to thee.  It will go with thee to prison, banishment, yea, stake itself and bear thy charges wherever thou goest upon her errand.  ‘Not one thing,’ saith Joshua, ‘hath failed of all the good things which the Lord your God spake concerning you; all are come to pass unto you, and not one thing hath failed thereof,’ Joshua 23:14.  Whatever you find there promised count it money in your purse.  ‘Fourscore years,’ said Polycarp, ‘I have served God, and found him to be a good master.’  But when men think by forsaking the truth to provide well for themselves, they are sure to meet with disappointments.  Many have been flattered from truth with goodly promises, and then served no better than Judas was by the Jews, after he had betrayed his Master into their bloody hands, ‘look thou to that.’  Though persecutors love the treason, yet they hate the traitor.  Yea, oft—to show their devilish malice—they, when some have got to wound their consciences by denying the truth, have most cruelly butchered them, and gloried in it, as a full revenge to destroy the soul and body together. Again,

           Truth is ‘free,’ and makes the soul ‘free’ that cleaves to it.  ‘The truth shall make you free,’ John 8:32. Christ tells the Jews of a bondage they were in, which that brag people never dreamed on.  ‘Ye are of your father the devil, and his lusts you will do,’ ver. 44.  Such slaves are all sinners.  They must do what the devil will have them, and dare no more displease him, than a child his father with a rod in his hand.  Some witches have confessed that they have been forced to send out their imps to do mischief to others that they might have ease themselves; for till they did send them abroad upon such an errand they were them­selves tormented by them.  And he who hath a lust sucking on him, finds as little rest if he be not always serving of it, and making provision for it.  Can the world, think you, show such another slave as this poor wretch is?  Well, though all the bolts that the devil hath—lusts I mean—were locked upon one sinner, and he shut up in the closet dungeon of all his prison, yet let but this poor slave begin to be acquainted with the truth of Christ, so as to open his heart to it, and close with it, and you shall soon hear that the founda­tions of the prison are shaken, its doors thrown open, and the chains fallen off the poor creature’s legs. Truth cannot itself be bound, nor will it dwell in a soul that lies bound in sin's prison; and therefore when once truth and the soul are agreed, or rather Christ and the soul, who are brought together by ‘truth,’ then the poor creature may lift up his head with joy, for his redemption and jail-delivery from this spiritual bondage draws nigh; yea, the day is come, the key is in the lock already to let him out.  It is impossible we should be acquainted with ‘truth as it is in Jesus’ and be mere strangers to this liberty that attends it, Eph. 4:19-21.

        

Three sorts of pretenders to truth 2/4

  

  Question. If any now should ask, how they may get their hearts inflamed with this heavenly fire of love to truth?  I answer,

1. Answer. Labour for an inward conformity of thy heart to truth.  Likeness is the ground of love.  A carnal heart cannot like truth, because it is not like to truth.  Such a one may love truth as one did Alexan­der, regem non Alexandrum—the king, not the person that was king.  Truth in its honour and dig­nity, when it can prefer him, but not naked truth itself.  How is it possible an earthly soul should love truth that is heavenly?—an unholy heart, truth that is pure?  O it is sad indeed, when men's tenets and principles in their understandings, do clash and fight with the principles of their hearts and affections —when men have orthodox judgments, and heterodox hearts!  There must needs be little love to truth, because the judgment and will are so unequally yoked.  Truth in the conscience reproving and threat­ening lust in the heart! and that again controlling truth in the conscience!  Thus like a scolding couple, they may a while dwell together, but taking no con­tent in one another, the wretch is easily persuaded to give truth a bill of divorce at last, and send her away, as Ahasuerus did Vashti, that he may espouse other principles, which will suit better with his corrupt heart, and not cross him in the way he is in.  This, this I am persuaded hath parted many and truth in these licentious days.  They could not sin peaceably while they kept their judgements sound.  Truth ever and anon would be chiding them, and therefore to match their judgements with their hearts, they have taken up principles suitable to their lusts.  But soul, if truth hath had such a power upon thee to transform thee, by the renewing of thy mind, into its own like­ness, that as the scion turns the stock into its own nature, so truth hath assimilated thee, and made thee bear fruit like itself, thou art the person that will never part with truth.  Before thou canst do this, thou must part with that new nature, which, by it, the Spirit of God hath begot in thee.  There is now such a near union betwixt thee and truth, or rather thee and Christ, as can never be broken.  We see what a mighty power there goes along with God's ordinance of marriage—that two persons, who possibly a month before never knew one another, yet—their affections once knit by love, and their persons made one by marriage—they can now leave friends and parents for to enjoy each other.  Such a mighty power, and much greater, goes along with this mystical marriage be­tween the soul and Christ, the soul and truth;—that the same person who, before conversion, would not have ventured the loss of a penny for Christ or his truth, yet now, knit to Christ and his truth by a secret work of the Spirit, new-forming him into the likeness thereof, can bid adieu to the world, life, and all, for these.  As that martyr told him that asked whether he did not love his wife and children, and was not loath to part with them, ‘Yes,’ saith he, ‘I love them so dearly, that I would not part with any of them for all that the Duke of Brunswick—whose subject he was —is worth; but for Christ's sake and his truth, farewell to them all.’
2. Answer. Labour to get thy heart more and more infired with the love of God, and this will work in thee a dear love to his truth.  Love observes what is precious and dear to its beloved, and loves it for his sake.  David’s love to Jonathan made him inquire for some of his race, that he might show kindness to, for his sake.  Love to God will make the soul inquisitive to find out what is near and dear to God—that by showing kindness to it, he may express his love to him.  Now upon a little search, we shall find that the great God sets a very high price upon the head of truth.  ‘For thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name,’ Ps. 138:2.  That is God's name, by which he is known.  Every creature hath God’s name upon it—by it God is known—even to the least pile of grass.  But to his word, and truth therein written, he hath given pre-eminence above all other things that bear his name.  Take a few considerations whereby we may a little conceive of the high value God sets of truth.

(1.) God, when he vouchsafeth his word and truth to a people, makes account that he gives them one of the greatest mercies they can receive or he give; he calls them ‘the great things’ of his ‘law,’ Hosea 8:12.  A people that enjoy his truth, are by Christ’s own judgment ‘lift up to heaven.’  Whatever a people have at God’s hands, without this, bears no more comparison with it than Hagar’s loaf of bread and bottle—which was Ishmael’s portion—would with Isaac’s inheritance.  God, that knows how to prize and rate his own gifts, saith of his word which he showeth to Jacob, and testimonies he gives to Israel, that ‘he hath not dealt so with any nation,’ Ps. 147:20; that is, not so richly and graciously.  (2.) Consider God’s especial care to preserve his truth.  Whatever is lost, God looks to his truth.  In shipwrecks at sea, and scare-fires at land, when men can save but little, they use to choose not lumber, and things of no worth, but what they esteem most precious.  In all the great revolutions, changes, and overturning of kingdoms, and churches also, God hath still pre­served his truth.  Thousands of saints’ lives have been taken away, but that which the devil spites more than all the saints, yea, which alone he spites them for, is his truth.  This lives and shall, to triumph over his malice.  And sure, if truth were not very dear to God, he would not be at this cost to keep it with the blood of his saints; yea, which is more, the blood of his Son, whose errand into the world was by life and death ‘to bear witness to the truth,’ John 18:37.  In a word, in that great and dismal conflagration of heaven and earth, when the elements shall melt for heat, and the world come to its fatal period, then truth shall not suffer the least loss, but ‘the word of the Lord endureth for ever,’ I Peter 1:24.  (3.) Consider the severity of God to the enemies of truth.  A dreadful curse is denounced against those that shall take away from it, or add to the least of it—that embase or clip this heavenly coin, Rev. 22:18.  The one pulls upon him all the plagues that are written in the word of truth; from the other shall be taken away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things—that is, the good things of the promises —which are written in this book.  All these speak at what a high rate God values truth; and no wonder, if we consider what truth is—that truth which shines forth from the written word.  It is the extract of God’s thoughts and counsels which from everlasting he took up, and had in his heart to effect.  Nothing comes to pass but as an accomplishment of this his word.  It is the most full and perfect representation that God himself could give of his own being and nature to the sons of men, that, by it, we might know him and love him.  Great princes used to send their pictures by their ambassadors to those whom they woo for mar­riage.  God is such an infinite perfection, that no hand can draw him forth to life but his own, and this he hath done exactly in his word; from which all his saints have come to be enamoured with him.  He that abandons the truth of God, renounceth the God of truth.  Though men cannot come to pull God out of his throne, yet they come as near this as it is possible, when they let out their wrath against the truth.  In this they do, as it were, execute God in effigy.  There is reason we see why God should so highly prize his truth, and that we that love him should cleave to it.

Three sorts of pretenders to truth 1/4

           First Sort. Such as embrace truth for carnal ad­vantage.  Sometimes truth pays well for her board in the world’s own coin, and so long every one will invite her to his house.  These do not love truth, but the jewel in her ear.  Many are observed in Henry the Eighth’s time to be very zealous against the abbeys, that loved their lands more than they hated their idolatry.  Truth finds few that loves her gratis.  And those few only will suffer with truth and for it; as for the other, when the worldly dowry that truth brought be once spent, you will find they are weary of their match.  This kitchen-fire burns no longer than such gross fuel of profit, credit, and the like, does feed it. If you cannot love naked truth, you will not endure to be disgraced for truth; and what usage truth finds, that her followers must expect.

           Second Sort. Such as commend truth, and cry it up highly, but who, if you mark them, do but compli­ment with it all this while.  They keep at a distance, and do not suffer truth to come within them, so as to give law unto them; like one that entertains a suitor, speaks well of him, holds discourse with him, but will not hear of marrying him.  It is one thing —really to love, another —merely to kiss or caress.  Bucholcerus would oft say, multi osculan­tur Christum, pauci vero amant—many kiss Christ, but few love him.  True love to Christ is conjugal. When a soul delivers up itself, from an inward liking it hath to Christ as to her husband, to be ruled by his Spirit, and ordered by his word of truth, here is a soul that loves Christ and his truth.  But where truth has no command, and bears no rule, there dwells no love to truth in that heart.  She that is not obedient cannot be a loving wife, because love would constrain her to be so; and so would love in the soul enforce obedi­ence to the truth it loves.  Nay, he that doth not obey truth, is so far from loving it, that he is afraid of truth; will sooner prove a persecutor of truth, than a sufferer for truth.  So true is that of Hierome, quem metuit, quis odit; quem odit, perisse cupit—whom we fear, we hate; whom we hate, we wish they were destroyed. Saul feared David, and that made him more indus­triously seek his ruin.  Herod feared John, and that cost him his life.  Slavish fear makes the naughty heart imprison truth in his conscience, because, if that had its liberty and authority in the soul, it would imprison, yea, execute every lust that rules the roost; and he that imprisons truth in his own bosom, will hardly lie in prison himself as a witness for truth.

           Third Sort. Such as have no zeal against truth’s enemies.  Love goes over armed with zeal; this is the dagger she draws against all the opposers of truth. Qui non zelat, non amat—he that is not zealous doth not love.  Now right zeal acts like fire, ad ultimum sui posse—to its utmost power, yet ever keeping its place and sphere.  If it be confined to the breast of a private Christian, whence it may not flame forth in punishing truth's enemies, then it burns inwardly the more for being pent up, and preys, like a fire in his bones, upon the Christian's own spirits, consuming them, yea, eating him up for grief to see truth trodden under foot of error or profaneness, and he not able to help it up.  It is no joy to a zealous lover to outlive his beloved.  Such there have been who could have chose rather to have leaped into their friends' grave, and lain down with them in the dust, than to pass here a disconsolate life without them.  ‘Let us go and die with him,’ said Thomas, when Christ told them Laza­rus was dead.  And I am sure zealous lovers of truth count it as melancholy living in evil times, when that is fallen in the streets.  The news of the ark’s taking, frightened good Eli's soul out of his body, and this may charitably be thought to have given life to Elijah’s wish, yea, solemn prayer for death, ‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life,’ I Kings 19:4.  The holy man saw how things went among the great ones of those wicked times.  Idolaters, they were courted, and the faithful servants of God carted, as I may so say, yea, killed; and now this zealous prophet thinks it a good time to leave the world in, rather than live in torment any longer, to see the name, truth, and servants of God trampled on by those who should have shown most kindness to them.  But if zeal hath any power put into her hands, wherein she may vindicate truth’s cause, as when she is exalted into the magistrate’s seat, then truth's enemies shall know and feel that she ‘bears not the sword in vain.’  The zealous magistrate as he will have an arm to relieve and defend truth —the Israelite, so a hand to smite blasphemy, error, and profaneness—the Egyptian—when any of them assault her.  O how Moses laid about him—that meek man, who stood so mute in his own cause, Num. 12—when the people had committed idolatry!  His heart was so infired within him, that, as well as he loved them, he could neither open his mouth in a prayer for them to God, nor his ear to receive any petition from them, till he had given vent to his zeal in an act of justice upon the offenders.  Now such, and such only, are the persons that are likely to suffer for the truth when so called upon, who will not let it suffer if they can help it.  

But as for neutral Gallio-like spirits, that can see truth and error scuffling, and not do their utmost to relieve truth—by interposing their power and authority, if a magistrate—by preaching the one up and the other down, if a minister—and by a free testimony to, fervent prayer for, and affectionate sympathizing with truth, as it fares ill or well, if a private Christian—I say, as for such—who stand in this case, as some spectators about two wrestlers, not caring much who hath the fall—these are not the men that can be expected to expose themselves to much suffering for truth.  That magistrate who hath not zeal enough to stop the mouths of truth's enemies when he may, will he open his mouth in a free profession of it when death and danger face him?  That minister who hath neither love nor courage enough to apologize for truth in the pulpit, can it be thought that he would stand to her defence at the stake?  In a word, that private Chris­tian whose heart is not wounded through truth’s sides so as to sympathize with it, will he interpose himself betwixt truth and the blow that bloody persecutors make at it, and choose to receive it into his own body, though to death, rather than it should light on truth? If the fire of love within be out, or so little that it will not melt the man into sorrow for the wrongs done to truth by men of corrupt minds; where will the flame be found, that should enable him to burn to ashes, under the hand of bloody men?  He will never endure the fire in his body, that hath no more care to keep that sacred fire burning in his soul.  If he cannot shed tears, much less will he bleed for truth.

       

Directions for the girding of truth close to us, in the profession of it

      

    But how may a soul get to be thus girt with truth in the profession of it?  I answer, First. Labour to get a heart inflamed with a sincere love to the truth. Second. To a heart inflamed with the love of truth, labour to add a heart with the fear of that wrath which God hath in store for all that apostatize from the truth.

           Direction First. Labour to get an heart in­flamed with a sincere love to the truth.  This only is able to match the enemies of truth.  The worst they can do is bonds or death; and ‘love is stronger than death.’  It kills the very heart of death itself.  It makes all easy.  Commandments are grievous to love, nor doth it complain of sufferings.  With what a light heart did Jacob, for the love of Rachel, endure the heat of the day and cold of the night!  It is venturous. Jonathan threw a kingdom at his heels, and conflicted with the anger of an enraged father, for David's sake.  Love never thinks itself a loser so long as it keeps its beloved; yea, it is ambitious of any hazardous enter­prise, whereby it may sacrifice itself in the service of its beloved, as we see in David, who put his life in his hands for Michal.  How much more so when our love is pitched upon so transcendent an object as Christ and his truth!  Alas, they are but faint spirits which are breathed from a creature! weak beams that are shot from such sorry beauties!  If these lay their loves under such a law that they cannot but obey, though with the greatest peril and hazard; what constraint then must a soul ravished with the love of Christ be under!  

This has made the saints leap out of their estates, relations, yea out of their bodies with joy, counting it not their loss to part with them, but to keep them with the least prejudice to the truth, Rev. 12:11.  It is said there, ‘they loved not their lives unto the death.’  Mark, not to the loss of some of the comforts of their lives, but ‘unto the death.’  Life it­self they counted an enemy when it would part them and truth.  As a man doth not love his arm, or leg, when it hazards the rest, but bids cut it off; ‘cannot we live,’ say these noble spirits, ‘but to the clouding of truth, and calling our love to it and Christ into question?—welcome then the worst of deaths.’  This kept up David’s courage when his life was laid for: ‘The wicked have waited for me to destroy me: but I will consider thy testimonies,’ Ps. 119:95.  A carnal heart would have considered his estate, wife, and children, or at least his life, now in danger.  But David's heart was on a better subject; he considered the testimonies of God, and so much sweetness pours in upon his soul while he is rowling them in his meditation, that he cannot hold.  ‘O how I love thy law!’ ver. 97.  

This made him set light by all the troubles he met with for his cleaving to the truth.  It is a great mystery to the world, that men for an opin­ion, as they call it, should run such desperate hazard. Therefore Paul was thought by his judge to be out of his wits.  And that question which Pilate asked Christ, seems rather to be slightingly, rather than seriously spoken, John 18.  Our Saviour had told him, ver. 37, that the end why he was born, and came into the world, was, that he should ‘bear witness to the truth.’  Then Pilate, ver. 38, asks Christ, ‘What is truth?’ and presently flings away, as if he had said, Is this now a time to think of truth, when thy life is in danger?  What is truth, that thou shouldst venture so much for it?  But a gracious should may better ask in a holy scorn, What are riches and honours, what the fading pleasures of this cheating world, yea, what is life itself, that any or all these should be set in opposition to truth?  O sirs, look what has your love that will com­mand purse, credit, life and all.  Amor meus pondus meum—every man goes where his love carries him. If the world has your love, on it you will spend your lives; if truth has your hearts, you will catch the blow that is made at it in your own breasts, rather than let it fall on it.  Only be careful that your love to truth be sincere, or else it will leave you at the prison door, and make you part with truth when you should most appear for it.  There are three sorts of pretenders to truth, whose love is not like to endure the fiery trial.

Application of the Christian's Duty

   Let this stir us up to get the girdle of truth closely girt to us, that we may be able to hold fast the profession of it, even in the face of death and danger, and not be offended when persecution ariseth. Blessed be God it is not yet come to that.  We have the truth at a cheaper rate, but how soon the market may rise we know not.  Truth is not always to be had at the same price.  Buy it we must at any, but sell it upon no terms.  And let me tell you, there hath [been], is, and will be, a spirit of persecution in the hearts of the wicked to the end of the world; and as Satan was considering Job before he laid his foul hands on him, so now, persecution is working in the spirits of the ungodly.  There are engines of death continually preparing in the thoughts and desires of Satan and his instruments against the sincere profes­sors of the truth.

It is already resolved upon what they would do, might power and opportunity be given to put their malice in execution.  Yea, we are half-way already towards a persecution.  Satan comes first with a spirit of error and then of persecution.  He first corrupts men’s minds with error, and then enrageth their hearts with wrath against the professors of truth. It is impossible that error, being a brat of hell, should be peaceable.  It would not then be like its father. That which is from beneath can neither be pure nor peaceable.  And how far God hath suffered this sul­phurous spirit of error to prevail, is so notorious, that no apology is broad enough to cover the nakedness of these unhappy times.  It is therefore high time to have our girdle of truth on, yea, close girt about us in the profession of it.  

Not every one that now applauds truth, will follow it when once it comes to show them the way to prison.  Not every one that preacheth for it, or disputes for it, will suffer for it.  Arguments are harmless things—blunt weapons—they fetch no blood; but when we suffer, then we are called to try it with truth’s enemies at sharps.  This requires some­thing more than a nimble tongue, a sharp wit, and a logical head.  Where then will be the wise, the dis­puter, the men of parts and gifts? alas, they will, like cowardly soldiers, be wanting in the fight, though they could be as forward as the best at a muster or training, when no enemy was in the field—when to appear for truth was rather a matter of gain or ap­plause than loss and hazard.  No, God hath chosen the foolish to confound the wise in this piece of service—the humble Christian, by his faith, patience, and love to the truth, to shame men of high parts and no grace.