The FIVE PROPERTIES Of a Joyful Message Found In The Gospel 2/2

3. The gospel doth not tell us news we are little concerned in—not what God has done for angels, but for us.‘Unto you,’ saith the angel, ‘is born a Saviour, Christ the Lord.’  If charity made angels rejoice for our happiness, surely then, the benefit which is paid into our nature by it, gives a further pleasure to our joy at the hearing of it.  It were strange that the mes­senger who only brings the news of some great empire to be devolved on a person should sing, and the prince to whom it falls should not be glad.  And, as the gospel’s glad tidings belong to man's nature, not to angels; so in particular, to thee, poor soul, whoever thou art, that embracest Christ in the arms of thy faith.  A prince is a common good to all his kingdom —every subject, though never so mean, hath a part in him—and so is Christ to all believers.  The promises are so laid that, like a well‑drawn picture, they look on all that look on them by an eye of faith.  The gos­pel’s joy is thy joy, that hast but faith to receive it.
4. The glad tidings of the gospel were unheard of and unlooked for by the sons of men.  Such news it brings as never could have entered into the heart of man to conceive, till God unlocked the cabinet of his own good pleasure, and revealed the counsel of his will, wherein this mysterious price of love to fallen man lay hid far enough from the prying eye of the most quick-sighted angel in heaven, much more from man himself, who could read in his own guilty conscience within, and spell from the covenant without, now broken by him, nothing but his certain doom and damnation.  So that the first gospel-sermon preached by God himself to Adam, anticipated all thoughts of such a thing intended to him.  O who but one that hath really felt the terrors of an approaching hell in his despairing soul, can conceive how joyous the ti­dings of gospel mercy is to a poor soul, dwelling amidst the black thoughts of despair, and bordering on the very marches of the region of utter darkness! Story tells us of a nobleman of our nation, in King Henry VIII.’s reign, to whom a pardon was sent a few hours before he should have been beheaded, which, being not at all expected by him, did so transport him that he died for joy.  And if the vessel of our nature be so weakly hooped that the wine of such an inferior joy breaks it, how then could it possibly be able to bear the full joy of the gospel tidings, which doth as far exceed this as the mercy of God doth the mercy of a mortal man, and as the deliverance from an eternal death in hell doth a deliverance from a temporary death, which is gone before the pain can well be felt?
5. The glad tidings of the gospel are certainly true.It is no flying report, cried up today, and liked to be crossed tomorrow—not news that is in every one’s mouth, but none can tell whence it came, and who is the author of it; we have it from a good hand —God himself, to whom it is impossible to lie.  He from heaven voucheth it—‘This is my beloved Son: hear him,’ Luke 9:35.  What were all those miracles which Christ wrought but ratifications of the truth of the gospel?  Those wretches that denied the truth of Christ’s doctrine, were forced many times to acknowledge the divinity of his miracles, which is a pretty piece of nonsense, and declares the absurdity of their unbelief to all the world.  The miracles were to the gospel as seals are to a writing.  They could not deny God to be in the miracles, and yet they could not see him in the doctrine!  As if God would set his seal to an untruth!  Here, Christians, is that which fills up the joy of this good news the gospel brings—that we may lay our lives upon the truth of it.  It will never deceive any that lay the weight of their confidence on it.  ‘This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all accepta­tion, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,’ I Tim. 1:15.  This bridge which the gospel lays over the gulf of God's wrath, for poor sinners to pass from their sins into the favour of God here, and [into the] kingdom of God hereafter, is supported with no other arches than the wisdom, power, mercy, and faithfulness of God; so that the believing soul needs not fear, till it sees these bow or break.  It is called the ‘everlasting gospel,’ Rev. 14:6.  When heaven and earth go to wreck, not the least iota or tittle of any promise of the gospel shall be buried in their ruins.  ‘The word of the Lord endureth for ever; and this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you,’ I Peter 1:25.

The FIVE PROPERTIES Of a Joyful Message Found In The Gospel 1/2

Five ingredients are desirable in a message, yea, must all conspire to fill up the joyfulness thereof into a redundancy.

           First Property.  A message to be joyful must be good.  None rejoice to hear evil news.  Joy is the dila­tion of the heart, whereby it goes forth to meet and welcome in what it desires; and this must needs be some good.  Ill news is sure to find the heart shut against it, and to come before it is welcome.

           Second Property.  It must be some great good, or else it affects little.  Affections are stirred according to the degrees of good or evil in the object presented.  A thing we hear may be so inconsiderable, that it is no great odds how it goes, but if it be good, and that great also, of weighty importance, this causeth rejoicing proportionable.  The greater the bell, the more strength is required to raise it.  It must be a great good that raiseth great joy.

           Third Property.  This great good must intimately concern them that hear it.  My meaning is, they must have propriety in it.  For though we can rejoice to hear of some great good befallen another, yet it affects most when it is emptied into our own bosom.  A sick man doth not feel the joy of another’s recovery with the same advantage as he would do his own.

           Fourth Property.  It would much add to the joy­fulness of the news if this were inauditum or insper­atum—unheard of and unlooked for—when the tidings steal upon us by way of surprise.  The farther our own ignorance or despair has set us off all thoughts of so great enjoyment, the more joy it brings with it when we hear the news of it.  The joy of a poor swineherd’s son, who never dreamed of a crown, would be greater at the news of such a thing conferred on him, than he whose birth invited him to look for it, yea, promised it him as his inheritance.  Such a one’s heart would but stand level to the place, and therefore could not be so ravished with it, as another, who lay so far below such a preferment.

           Fifth Property.  To fill up the joy of all these, it is most necessary that the news be true and certain, else all the joy soon leaks out.  What great joy would it afford to hear of a kingdom befallen to a man, and the next day or month to hear all crossed again and prove false?  Now, in the glad tidings of the gospel, all these do most happily meet together, to wind up the joy of the believing soul to the highest pin that the strings of his affections can possibly bear.

1. The news which the gospel hath in its mouth to tell us poor sinners is good.It speaks promises, and they are significations of some good intended by God for poor sinners.  The law, that brings ill news to town.  Threatenings are the lingua vernacula legis —the native language of the law.  It can speak no other language to sinners but denunciations of evil to come upon them; but the gospel smiles on poor sinners, and plains the wrinkles that sit on the law’s brow, by proclaiming promises.
2. The news the gospel brings is as great as good.It was that the angel said, ‘I bring you good tidings of great joy,’ Luke 2:10.  Great joy it must needs be, be­cause it is all joy.  The Lord Christ brings such news in his gospel as that he left nothing for any after him to add to it.  If there be any good wanting in the ti­dings of the gospel, we find it elsewhere than in God, for in the covenant of the gospel he gives himself through Christ to the believing soul.  Surely the apos­tle’s argument will hold: ‘All things are yours and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s,’ I Cor. 3:22, 23.  The gospel lays our pipes close to the fountain of goodness itself; and he, sure, must have all, that is united to him that hath that is all.  Can any good news come to the glorified saints which heaven doth not afford them?  In the gospel we have news of that glory. ‘Jesus Christ, hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel,’ II Tim. 1:10.  The sun in the firmament discovers only the lower world; absignat cælum dum revelat terram—O it hides heaven from us, while it shows the earth to us!  But the gospel en­lightens both at once—‘Godliness hath the promise of the life that is now, and of that which is to come,’ I Tim. 4:8.

WHAT IS MEANT BY THE GOSPEL

       

  What is meant by the gospel.  Gospel, according to the notation of the original word, signifies any good news, or joyful message.  So, Jer. 20:15, ‘Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, A man child is born unto thee; making him very glad’—.  But usually in Scripture, it is restrained, by way of excellency, to signify the doctrine of Christ, and salvation by him to poor sinners.  ‘I bring you good tidings,’ said the angel to the shepherds, ‘of great joy,’ Luke 2:10. And, ver. 11, he addeth, ‘unto you is born....a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.’  Thus it is taken in this place, and generally in the New Testament, and affords this note.

           Doctrine.  The revelation of Christ, and the grace of God through him, is without compare the best news, and the joyfullest tidings, that poor sinners can hear.  It is such a message that no good news can come before it, nor no ill news follow.  No good news can come before it, no, not from God himself to the creature.  He cannot issue out any blessing to poor sinners till he hath shown mercy to their souls in Christ.  ‘God be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause his face to shine upon us,’ Ps. 67:1.

           First.  God forgives and then he gives.  Till he be merciful to pardon our sins through Christ, he cannot bless or look kindly on us sinners.  All our enjoyments are but blessings in bullion, till gospel grace —pardoning mercy—stamp, and make them current.  God cannot so much as bear any good-will to us, till Christ makes peace for us; ‘on earth peace, good-will toward men,’ Luke 2:14.  And what joy can a sinner take, though it were to hear of a kingdom befallen to him, if he may not have it with God’s good-will?

           Second.  Again, no ill news can come after the glad tidings of the gospel, where believingly embraced. God’s mercy in Christ alters the very property of all evils to the believer.  All plagues and judgments that can befall the creature in the world, when baptized in the stream of gospel-grace, receive a new name, come on a new errand, and have a new taste on the believer's palate, as the same water by running through some mine, gets a tang and a healing virtue, which before it had not.  ‘The inhabitant shall not say, I am sick: the people that dwell therein shall be forgiven their iniquity,’ Isa. 33:24.  Observe, he doth not say ‘They shall not be sick.’ Gospel grace doth not exempt from afflictions, but ‘they shall not say, I am sick.’  they shall be so ravished with the joy of God’s pardoning mercy, that they shall not complain of being sick.  This or any other cross is too thin a veil to darken the joy of the other good news.  

This is so joyful a message which the gospel brings, that God would not have Adam long without it, but opened a crevice to let some beams of this light, that is so pleasant to behold, into his soul, amazed with the terror of God’s presence.  As he was turned out of paradise without it, so he had been turned into hell immediately; for such the world would have been to his guilty conscience.  This is the news God used to tell his people of, on a design to comfort them and cheer them, when things went worst with them, and their affairs were at the lowest ebb, Isa. 7:15; Micah 5:5.  This is the great secret which God whispers, by his Spirit, in the ear of those only [whom] he embraces with his special distinguishing love, Luke 10:21; I Cor. 2:12, so that it is made the sad sign of a soul marked out for hell, to have the gospel ‘hid’ from it, II Cor. 4:3.  To wind up this in a few words, there meet all the properties of a joyful message in the glad tidings of the gospel.

Use For Exhortation Of The Saints 4/4

      

         (2.) Often meditate on the holiness of man’s in­nocent state.  It is true now, if a believer, thou hast a principle of holiness planted in thee; but, alas! what is that at present to what thy nature once had?  They who saw the second temple, and remembered not the first, which Solomon built, thought it, no doubt, a glorious fabric; but others, whose eyes had seen the stately work and goodly buildings of the other, could not but rejoice with tears in their eyes.  ‘Many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers, who were ancient men, that had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid,....wept with a loud voice,’ Ezra 3:12.  O! it revived the sad thoughts of the sacking of that glorious structure; and so may this little beginning upon a new foundation of the new covenant, remind thee, with sorrow, to think of the ruins that man, in all his glory, fell into by Satan’s policy!  It is true, in heaven thou shalt have the odds of Adam in paradise, but thou shalt have many a weary step before thou gettest up that hill.  When a man that hath had some thousands a-year hath now but a few pounds per annum allowed him, and the rest sequestered from him for thirty or forty years; it is sad, though comfortable also to think, it shall at last return, and may be, with a great overplus; but at present, he is put to many straits, and fain to make a hard shift to rub through, so as to live anything like his noble descent and family.  Thus it is joyous to the saint to think of heaven when all his means shall come into his hands; but truly his imperfect grace, and the many expenses he is at—from afflictions at God's hands, temptations at Satan’s, mutinies and intestine broils from remaining lusts within doors —do put him into so many sad straits, that the poor soul is fain oft to snap short in his comfort, yea, much ado he hath to keep shop windows open with the little stock he hath.  Hence, the Christian’s getting to heaven is set out as a business of so much difficulty. ‘If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?’ I Peter 4:18.  The wise virgins had no oil to spare.  The Christian shall hold out, and that is even all.  Think of this, and let thy plumes fall.

           (3.) Often meditate on thy own personal mis­carriages,  especially in thy unregenerate state.  This kept Paul so humble.  How oft does his unregenerate wicked conversation rise, though not in his con­science, to darken his comfort, yet in his mind, to qualify the thoughts of his gifts and grace, I Cor. 15:9, 10, where he speaks how he ‘laboured more than  them all.’  O how he waylays his pride that possibly might follow such his glorying too close at his heels! and therefore, before he dare speak a word of his present holiness, he bolts the door upon pride, and first falls upon the story of that black part of his life. O how he batters his pride, and speaks himself all to naught!  No enemy could have drawn his picture with a blacker coal, I Cor. 15:7.  He calls himself one ‘born out of time,’ ver. 9, ‘for I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.’  And now having suf­ficiently besmeared and doused himself in the puddle of his former sins, how humbly doth the holy man speak of his transcendent graces! ver. 10.  ‘By the grace of God I am what I am,....and I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God.’  O this is the way of killing this weed of pride, to break up our own hearts, and turn the inside out­ward—I mean humble and abase ourselves for our former abominations.  Pride will not easily thrive in a soul where this plough often walks.  Pride is a worm that bites and gnaws out the heart of grace.  Now you know they are bitter things that must break the bag of worms that are gathered in the stomach.  All sweet things nourish them; they are bitter that scatter and kill them.  O Christian, take some quantity of this aloes often, and with God's blessing thou shalt find ease of that which, if a Christian, thou art troubled withal.  And do not think that this worm breeds only in children—weak Christians, and young novices.  I confess that it is the most ordinary disease of that age. But aged and stronger Christians are not out of dan­ger.  Old David had this worm of pride crawling out of his mouth when he bade Joab number the people. And dost not thou too, oft take thyself in numbering the duties and good works thou hast done, and the sufferings thou hast endured for thy God, with some secret self-applauding thoughts that tickle thee for them?

Use For Exhortation Of The Saints 3/4

3. Be humble when thou art most holy.  Which way soever pride works—as thou shalt find it like the wind—sometimes at one door, sometimes at another —resist it.  Nothing more baneful to thy holiness; it turns righteousness into hemlock, holiness into sin. Never art thou less holy than when puffed up with the conceit of it.  When we see a man blown up and swelled with the dropsy, we can tell his blood is naught and waterish, without opening a vein for the trial.  The more pride puffs thee, the less pure blood of holiness thou hast running in the veins of thy soul. ‘Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright,’ Hab. 2:4.  See an ecce! [behold!] like a sign, is set up at the proud man's door, that all passengers may know a naughty man dwells there.  As thou wouldst not, therefore, not only enfeeble the power of holiness, but also call in question the truth of thy holiness, take heed of pride.  Sometimes, possibly, thou wilt be ready to despise others, and bid them, in thy thoughts, stand off, as not so holy as thyself; this smells of the Pharisee, beware of it.  It is the nature of holiness to depress ourselves, and to give our breth­ren the advantage in measuring their gifts or graces with our own.  ‘In lowli­ness of mind let each esteem other better than them­selves,’ Php. 2:3.  At another time, possibly, thou mayest find a spice of the justi­ciary’s disease hanging about thee—thy heart lean­ing on thy righteousness, and lifting up thyself into confidence of it, so as to expect thy acceptation with, and salvation from, God for that.  O take heed of this, as thou lovest thy life!  I may say to thee as Constantine did to Acetius the Novatian, ‘Set then up thy ladder, and go to heaven by thyself, for never any went this way thither;’ and dost thou think to be the only man that shall appear in heaven purchaser of his own happiness?  Go, first, poor creature, and meas­ure the length of thy ladder by the extent of the holy law, and if thou findest it but one round short of that, thou mayest certainly conclude it will leave thee short of heaven.  If, therefore, thou hast beheld—to allude to that in Job 31:27—thy righteousness, when it hath shined, and thy holiness walking in its brightness, and thy heart thereby hath been enticed secretly, or thy mouth hath kissed thy hand; know this is a great wickedness, and in this thou hast denied the God above.  Thou hast given the highest part of divine worship unto a creature, the created sun of thy inher­ent holiness, which God hath appointed should be given alone to the uncreated Sun of righteousness, the Lord Jesus, ‘the Lord our righteousness.’ Renounce thy plea, as now thou hast laid it, for life and salvation, or else give up thy cause as lost.  Now the more effectually to keep down any insurrection of pride from the conceit of thy holiness, be pleased to take often these soul-humbling considerations into thy serious thoughts.

           (1.) Often meditate on the infinite holiness of God.  When men stand high their heads do not grow dizzy till they look down.  When men look down up­on those that are worse than themselves, or less holy than themselves, then their heads turn round. Looking up would cure this disease.  The most holy men, when once they have fixed their eyes a while upon God’s holiness, and then looked upon them­selves, they have been quite out of love with them­selves, and could see nothing but unholiness in them­selves.  After the vision the prophet had of God sitting on his throne, and his heavenly ministers of state, the seraphim, about him, covering their faces and crying, ‘Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts:’ how was this gracious man presently smitten with the sense of his own vileness?  They did not more cry up God as holy, than he did cry out upon himself as ‘unclean,’ Isa. 6:3, 5.  So Job, ‘Now mine eye seeth thee, wherefore I abhor myself,’ Job 42:5, 6.  Never did the good man more loathe himself for the putrid sores of his ulcerous body, when on the dunghill he sat and scraped himself, than now he did for the impurities of his soul.  We see ourselves in a dark room, and we think we are fine and clean; but would we compass ourselves with the beams of God’s glori­ous majesty and holiness, then the sun rays would not discover more atoms in the air, than the holiness of God would convince of sin to be in us.  But it is the trick of pride not to come where it may be outshined; it had rather go where it shall be adored, than where it is sure to be put to shame.

Use For Exhortation Of The Saints 2/4

 Again, the gospel-shoe will not come on thy foot so long as swelled with any sinful humour—I mean any unrighteousness or unholy practice—till assuaged and purged out by repentance.  Consider the gospel in its preparation.  Art thou in a fit case to suffer cheerfully for God, or patiently for God, as thou art? No more than a soldier in a disease, sick abed, is to make a hard march.  Unholiness weakens the soul as much as sickness doth the body, and indisposeth it to endure any hardship.  ‘O spare me’ a little, ‘that I may recover strength, before I go hence, and be no more,’ Ps. 39:13.  David was not yet recovered out of that sin, which had brought him exceeding low, as you may perceive, vv. 10, 11.  And the good man cannot think of dying with any willingness till his heart be in a holier frame.  And for the peace of the gospel —serenity of conscience and inward joy—alas! all unholiness is to it as poison is to the spirit which drinks them up.  Throw a stone into a brook, and though clear before, it presently is royled and muddy. ‘He will speak peace unto his people,....but let them not turn again to folly,’ Ps. 85:8.  Mark, here, what an item he gives, ‘But let them not turn,’ and as if he had said, ‘Upon their peril be it, if they turn from holy walking to folly; I will turn from speaking peace, to speak terror.’

           Again by thy negligence in thy holy walking thou endangerest thy faith, which is kept in a good con­science, as the jewel in the cabinet.  Faith is an eye. All sin and unholiness casts a mist before this eye.  A holy life, to faith, is as a clear air and medium to the eye.  We can see farther in a clear day.  Thus faith sees farthest into the promise, when it looks through a holy, well-ordered conversation.  Faith is a shield; and when does the soldier drop that out of his hand but when dangerously wounded?  And if faith fail, what will become of hope, which hangs upon faith, and draws all her nourishment from her, as the sucking child doth from the nurse?  If faith cannot see a pardon in the promise, then hope cannot look for salvation.  If faith cannot lay claim to sonship, then hope will not wait for the inheritance.  Faith tells the soul it hath ‘peace with God,’ then the soul ‘rejoiceth in the hope of glory,’ Rom. 5:1, 2.  And now, Christian, what hast thou yet left for thy help?  Wilt thou betake thyself to the sword of the Spirit?  Alas! how canst thou wield it when, by thy unholy walking, thou hast lamed thy hand of faith that should hold it? This sword hath two edges.  With one it heals, with the other it wounds—with one it saves, with the other it damns.  O it is a dreadful weapon when it strikes with its wounding, damning side; and for the other side thou hast nothing to do with it while in any way of unholiness.  Not a kind word in the whole Bible spoken to one sinning.  Now, poor creature, think, and think again; is there any sin worth hazarding all this confusion and mischief, which, if thou beest resolved to have it, will inevitably befall thy soul?

Use For Exhortation Of The Saints 1/4

Use Third.  The preceding doctrine may be for exhorta­tion to the saints in several particulars.  I shall only name three, because I have directed myself, in the whole discourse, to them.

1. Bless God that hath furnished thee with this breastplate.  Canst thou do less, when thou seest such multitudes on every hand slain before thy face by the destroyer of souls, for want of this piece to defend their naked breasts against his murdering shot?  Had God made thee rich and great in the world, but not holy, he had but given thee stock to trade with for hell.  These would have made thee a greater booty for Satan, and only procured in the end a deeper dam­nation.  When an enemy comes before a city that hath no walls nor arms to defend it, truly, the richer it is, the worse it fares.  When Satan comes to a man that hath much of the world about him, but nothing of God in his soul to defend him, O what miserable work doth he make with such!  He takes what he pleaseth, and doth what he will; purse, and all the poor wretch hath, is at his command.  Let a lust ask never so unreasonably, he hath not a heart to deny it. Though he knows what the gratifying of it will cost him in another world, yet he will damn his soul rather than displease his lust.  Herod throws half his king­dom at the foot of a wanton wench, if she will ask it; and because that was thought too little by her, he will sacrifice his whole kingdom to his lust—for so much the blood of John Baptist may be judged to have cost him in this life, being, so wakeful was divine provi­dence, shortly after turned out of his throne—besides what he pays in the other.  But when God made thee a holy man or woman, then he gave thee gates and bars to thy city.  Thou art now able, through his grace, to stand on thy defence, and with the continual suc­cours heaven sends thee to withstand all his power. Thou wert once, indeed, a tame slave to him, but now he is a servant to thee.  That day thou becamest holy, God did set thy foot on the serpent’s head.  Thy lusts were once the strongholds with which he kept thee in awe, and out of which he did come and do thee so much hurt; but now these are out of his hand.  O what joy is there in a town when the castle that com­manded it is taken from the enemy.  Now, poor soul, Satan is dislodged and unkennelled.  Never more shall he play rex in thy soul as he hath done.  In a word, when thou wert made a holy righteous person, then did God begin heaven in thy soul.  That day thou wert born again, an heir to heaven was born.  And if such acclamations be at the birth of a young prince, heir to some petty territories, hast not thou more cause, that then hadst heaven’s glory settled on thee, in reversion, especially if thou considerest where all thy inheritance lay a little before, that thou couldst lay claim to?  Paul joins both together to make his doxology full: ‘Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son,’ Col. 1:12, 13.  O blessed change! to step out of the devil’s dark dungeon, where thou wert kept in chains of sin and unrighteousness, prisoner for hell, into the kingdom of Christ’s grace, where thou hast the gold chain of holiness, and righ­teousness put about thy neck as heir-apparent to heaven.  Such honour have all his saints.
2. Look thou keepest thy breastplate on, Chris­tian.  Need we bid the soldier be careful of his ar­mour?  When he goes into the field, can he easily for­get to take that with him, or be persuaded to leave it behind him?  Yet some have done so, and paid dear for their boldness.  Better thou endure the weight of thy plate, though a little cumbersome to the flesh, than receive a wound in thy breast for want of it.  Let this piece fall off, and thou canst keep none of the other on.  If thou allowest thyself in any unholiness, thy sincerity will presently be called into question in thy conscience.  I confess we find that Peter, a little after his sad fall in denying his Master, had the testi­mony of his uprightness, ‘Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee,’ John 21:17.  After Christ had thrice put it to the question, he could confidently vouch his sincerity.  But we must know, (1.) That sin was not a deliberate sin.  The poor man was surprised on a sudden.  And, (2.) There had intervened his bitter sorrow between his sin and this his profession; and the renewing of his repentance so speedily, conduced much to the clear­ing of his sincerity to his conscience.  But David found it harder work who sinned more deliberately, and lay longer soaking in his guilt, as you may per­ceive, Ps. 51:10, where he pleads so earnestly that God would ‘renew a right spirit within him.’

Use for reproof of several sorts of persons 4/4

           

Well, sirs, of what sort soever you are, whether atheistical mockers at holiness, or such as mock at true holiness in the disguise of a false one, take heed what you do; it is as much as your life is worth.  ‘Be not deceived, God will not be mocked,’ nor suffer his grace to be mocked in his saints.  You know how dearly that scoff did cost them, though but children, that spake it to the prophet, ‘Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head,’ II Kings 2:23, where, they did not only revile him with that nickname of bald-head, but made a mock and jeer of Elijah’s rapture into heaven.  As if they had said, ‘You would make us be­lieve your master has gone up to heaven, why do you not go up after him, that we may be rid of both your companies at once?’  And we need not wonder that these children should rise to such a height of wicked­ness so soon, if you observe the place where they lived —at Bethel—which was most infamous for idolatry, and one of the two cities where Jeroboam did set up his calves, I Kings 12:28, so that this seems but the natural language which they learned, no doubt, from their idolatrous parents.  God met with Michal also, for despising her husband, merely upon a religious ac­count, because he showed a holy zeal for God, which her proud spirit, as many others since have done, thought it too mean and base to do.  Well, what is her punishment? ‘Therefore Michal, the daughter of Saul, had no child unto the day of her death.’  The service of God was too low for a king in her thoughts, therefore shall none come out of her womb to sit on the throne or wear a crown.

           It is great wickedness to mock at the calamity of another.  ‘He that mocketh the poor reproacheth his Maker,’ Prov. 17:5.  Yea, to laugh at and triumph over a saint’s sin is a heavy sin.  So did some sons of Be­lial, when David fell into that sad temptation of adul­tery and murder!  And they are upon that account indicted for blaspheming God.  What then is it to mock one for his holiness?  Sin carries some cause of shame, and gives naughty hearts an occasion to re­proach him they see besmeared with that, which is so inglorious and unbecoming, especially a saint.  But holiness, this is honourable, and stamps dignity on the person that hath it.  It is not only the nobility of the creature, but the honour of the most high God himself.  So runs his title of honour, ‘Who is like thee, glorious in holiness?’ Ex. 15:11, so that none can mock that, but, upon the same account, he must mock God infinitely more, because there is infinitely more of that holiness which he jeers at in the crea­ture, to be found in God, than all the creatures, men and angels in both worlds, have among them.  If you would contrive a way how to cast the greatest dis­honour upon God possible, you could not hit upon the like to this.  The Romans, when they would put contempt upon any, and degrade them of their nobil­ity, commanded that those, their statues and por­traitures, which were set up in the city or temples to their memory, should all be broken down.  Every saint is a lively image of God, and the more holy, the more like God; when thou therefore puttest scorn on them, and that for their holiness, now thou touchest God’s honour nearly indeed.  Will nothing less con­tent thee but thou must deface that image of his, which he hath erected, with so much cost, in his saints, on purpose that they might be a praise to him in the earth?  Was it such horrible wickedness in those heathens to ‘cast fire into the sanctuary,’ and to ‘break down the carved work thereof,....with axes and hammers,’ Ps. 74:6, 7, of which the church makes her moan, ‘O God, how long shall the adversary re­proach? shall the enemy blaspheme thy name for ever?’ ver. 10.  What then is thy devilish malice, whose rage is spent, not on wood and stones, but on the carved work of his Spirit—the grace and holiness of his living temples?

Use for reproof of several sorts of persons 3/4

1. What was the ground of the quarrel.  It was this.  His brother ‘was born after the Spirit,’ and this, he, being ‘born after the flesh,’ hated.
2. Observe how the Spirit of God phraseth this his scorn­ful carriage to his brother—it is called perse­cuting him.  To aggravate the evil of a scornful spirit, and a mocking tongue, which stands for so little a sin in the world’s account-book—who count none perse­cutors but those that draw blood for religion—God would have the jeerer and scoffer know among what sort of men he shall be ranked and tried at Christ’s bar—no less sinners than persecutors.  But this I con­ceive is not all.  This mocking of holiness is called persecuting, because there is the seed of bloody perse­cutions in it.  They who are so free of their tongue to jeer, and show their teeth in fleering at holiness, would fasten their teeth also on it, if they had power to use their cheek-bone.
3. Observe this was not barely the cross disposi­tion of Ishmael’s personal, peevish, and froward tem­per, so to abuse his brother, but it is laid as the charge of all wicked men.  As he did persecute his brother, because born after the Spirit, ‘even so it is now.’  This mocking spirit runs in the blood.  The whole litter are alike, and if any seem more ingenuous and favourable to the holy ones of God, we must fetch the reason from some other head than their sinful natures.  God rides some of them with a curb bit, who, though they open not their hearts to Christ savingly, yet truth is got so far into them by a powerful conviction, that it makes conscience say to them concerning their holy neighbours, what Pilate’s wife by message said to her husband of Christ, Matt. 27:19, ‘Have thou nothing to do with these just men, for I have suffered much con­cerning them.’  But though there were ever mockers of holiness among the saints, because there were ever wicked to be their neighbours, yet the Spirit of God prophesieth of a sort of mockers to come upon the stage in the last days, that should differ from the ordinary scoffers that the people of God have been exercised with.  And still the last is the worst.  You know those who mock and jeer at holiness used to be men and women that pretended nothing to religion themselves—such as walk in an open defiance to God, and wallow in all manner of wickedness—but the Spirit of God tells us of a new gang that shall mock at holiness under a colour of holiness.  They shall be as horribly wicked, some of them, as the worst of the former sort were, but wicked in a mys­tery.  ‘But, beloved, remem­ber ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, how that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts,’ Jude 17, 18.  But mark! lest we should expect them at the wrong door, and so mis­take, thinking they should arise as formerly from among the common swearers, drunkards, and other notorious sinners among us, he in the next words gives you as clear a character of them as if they carried their name on their forehead, ‘these be they who sep­arate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit,’ ver. 19.

Learned Master Perkins reads these words thus, ‘These be sect-makers, fleshly,’ not having the Spirit. Sect-makers! those that separate themselves!  Do not our hearts tremble to see the mockers arrows shot out at this window?  These are they who pretend more to purity of worship than others, and profess they separ­ate on account of their conscience, because they can­not suffer themselves so much as touch them that are unclean by joining with them in holy ordinances. And they mockers? they fleshly?  Truly, if the Spirit of God had not told us this, we should have gone last into their tent, as Laban did into Rachel’s, as least suspecting that any mocker of holiness could stay there.  Yea, God forbid that we should lay it in gen­eral as the charge of all who have separated from communion in the public, many of whom, my con­science tells me, are lovers of holiness, and led, though out of their way, by the tenderness of their consciences, which, when God hath better enlight­ened, will bring them as fast back to their brethren, as now it carrieth them from them.  And truly I think it might give a great lift to the making of them think of a return, if they would but, in their sad and serious thoughts, consider how far many of those who went from us with them, are gone—even to mock at the holiness of those from whom once they parted, be­cause they were not holy enough for their company (God the searcher of hearts knows that I speak this with a sad heart), so that were they to come and join with us again in some ordinances, such scandal hath been given by them, that they who durst not join with us, ought not, as they are, to be admitted by us.  How many of those have you heard of, that began with a separation from our assemblies, who mock at Sab­baths, cast off family duties, indeed all prayer in se­cret by themselves, yea, drink in those cursed opin­ions that make them speak scornfully of Christ the Son of God himself, and the great truths of the gos­pel, which are the foundation of all true holiness, so that now, none are so great an object of their scorn as those who walk most close to the holy rule of the gospel.

Use for reproof of several sorts of persons 2/4

  

        

 O friends! be serious.  If you will trade for holi­ness, let it be for ‘true holiness,’ as it is phrased, ‘Put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness,’ Eph. 4:24.  Two phrases are here observable.  Holiness is called the ‘new man after God,’ that is, according to the likeness of God—such a sculpture on the soul or image as is drawn after God, as the picture after the face of a man.  Again, ‘true holiness,’ or holiness of truth, either respecting the word, which is the rule of holi­ness, and then it means a Scripture holiness, not pharisaical and traditional; or else it respects the heart, which is the seat of truth or falsehood.  True holiness in this sense is holiness and righteousness in the heart. 

There must be truth of holiness in the inner parts.  Many a man’s beauty of holiness is but like the beauty of his body, skin deep, all on the outside.  Rip the most beautiful body, and that which was so fair without will be found within, when opened, to have little besides blood, filth, and stench; so this counterfeit holiness, when unbowelled and inside exposed to view, will appear to have hid within it nothing but abundance of spiritual impurities and abominations.  ‘God,’ said Paul to the high priest, ‘shall smite thee, thou whited wall,’ Acts 23:3.  Thus say I to thee, O hypocrite! God shall also smite thee, thou whited wall, or rather painted sepulchre, that thy paint without in thy profession doth not now more dazzle the eyes of others into admiration of thy sanc­tity, than thy rottenness within, which then shall ap­pear without, will make thee abhorred and loathed of all that see thee.

3. Those who are so far from being holy them­selves, that they mock and jeer others for being so. This breastplate of righteousness is of so base an ac­count with them, that they who wear it in their daily conversation do make themselves no less ridiculous to them than if they came forth in a fool's coat, or were clad in a dress contrived on purpose to move laughter.  When some wretches would set a saint most at naught, and represent him as an object of greatest scorn, what is the language he wraps him up in but ‘there goes a holy brother, one of the pure ones!’  His very holiness is that which he thinks to disgrace him with.  This shows a heart extremely wicked.  There is a further degree of wickedness appears in mocking holiness in another, than har­bouring unholiness in a man’s own bosom.  That man hath a great antipathy indeed against a dish of meat who not only himself refuseth to eat of it, but cannot bear the sight of it on another’s trencher without vomiting.  O how desperately wicked is that man with whom the very scent and sight of holiness, at such a distance, works so strange an effect as to make him cast up the gall and bitterness of his spirit against it! The Spirit of God bestows the chair upon this sort of sinners, and sets them above all their brethren in iniquity, as most deserving the place.  ‘Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful,’  Ps. 1:1.  The scorner here is set as chairman at the counsel-table of sinners.  Some read the word for scornful, ‘rhetorical mockers.’ There is indeed a devilish wit that some show in their mocks at holiness; they take a kind of pride in polish­ing those darts which they shoot against the saints.  The Septuagint read it ‘the chair of pestilent ones.’ Indeed, as the plague is the most mortal among dis­eases, so is the spirit of scorning among sins.  As few recover out of this sin as any whatever besides.  The Scripture speaks of this sort of sinners as almost free among the dead.  [There is] as little hope of doing them good for their souls, as of those for their bodies who cannot keep the physic administered to them, but presently cast it up before it hath any operation on them; and therefore we are even bid to save our physic, and not so much as bestow a reproof on them, lest we have it cast on our faces: ‘Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate thee,’ Prov. 9:8.  All we can do is write ‘Lord, have mercy on them,’ upon their door—I mean, rather pray for them than speak to them.

           There hath of old been this sort of mocking sin­ners min­gled amongst the godly.  A mocking Ishmael was in Abraham’s family, Gen. 21:9.  And observable it is, what interpretation the Spirit of God makes of his scornful car­riage towards his brother: ‘As then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now,’ Gal. 4:29.  Pray, mark,