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3. The act of faith upon this object, and that is resting on Christ crucified for pardon and life.I know there are many acts of the soul antecedent to this, without which the creature can never truly exer­cise this.  As knowledge, especially of God and Christ, upon whose authority and testimony it relies: ‘I know whom I have believed,’ II Tim. 1:12.  None will readily trust a stranger that he is wholly unacquainted with. Abraham indeed went he knew not whither, but he did not go with he knew not whom.  The greatest thing God laboured to instruct Abraham in, and satisfy him with, was—

           (1.) The knowledge of his own glorious self —who he was—that he might take his word and rely on it, how harsh and improbable, soever it might sound in sense or reason’s ear, ‘I am Almighty God, walk before me, and be thou perfect.’

           (2.) Assent to the truth of the word of God.  If this foundation-stone be not laid, faith's building cannot go on.  Who will trust him that he dares not think speaks true?

           (3.) A sense of our own vileness and emptiness. By the one he means us see our demerit, what we deserve, hell and damnation; by the other, our own impotency, how little we can contribute—yea, just nothing, to our own reconciliation.  I join them together, because the one ariseth out of the other. Sense of this emptiness comes from the deep apprehensions a soul hath of the other’s fulness in him. You never knew a man full of self-confidence and self-abasement together.  The con­science cannot abound with the sense of sin and the heart with self-conceit at the same time.  ‘When the commandment came, sin revived, and I died,’ Rom. 7:9—that is, when the commandment came, in the accusations of it, to his conscience, sin, like a sleepy lion had lain still, and he secure and confident by it, when that began to roar in his conscience, then he died—that is, his vain-confidence of himself gave up the ghost.  Both these are necessary to faith—sense of sin, like the smart of a wound, to make the creature think of a plaster to cure it; and sense of emptiness and insufficiency in himself or any creature to do the cure necessary to make him go out to Christ for cure.  We do not go abroad to beg what we have of our own within doors. These, with some other, are necessary to faith.  But the receiving of Christ, and resting on Christ, is that act of faith to which justification is promised.  ‘He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God,’ John 3:18.  Now every one that assents to the truth of what the Scripture saith of Christ, doth not believe on Christ.  No; This believing on Christ im­plies an union of the soul to Christ and fiduciary re­cumbency on Christ.  Therefore we are bid to take hold of Christ, Isa. 27:5, who is there called God’s ‘strength,’ as elsewhere his arm—‘that we may make peace with God, and we shall make peace with him.’ It is not the sight of a man's arm stretched out to a man in the water will save him from drowning, but the taking hold of it.  Christ is a stone.  Faith builds upon Christ for salvation.  And how? but by laying its whole weight and expectation of mercy on him.  What Paul, II Tim. 1:12, calls ‘believing’ in the former part of the verse, he calls in the latter part a ‘committing to him to be kept against that day.’

           (4.) The fourth and last branch in the description, is the warrant and security that faith goes upon in this act.  And this it takes from the promise.  In­deed, there is no way how God can be conceived to contract a debt to his creature but by promise.  There are ways for men to become debtors one to another, though never any promise passed from them. The fa­ther is a debtor to his child, and owes him love, provi­sion, and nurture.  The child is a debtor to his parent, and owes him honour and obedience, though neither of them promised this to each other.  Much more doth the creature stand deep in God’s debt-book, and owes himself with all he hath to God his Maker, though he hath not the grace voluntarily to make these over to God by promise and covenant.  But the great God is so absolute a Sovereign, that none can make a law to bind him but himself.  Till he be pleased to pass an act of grace, of his own good-will, to give this or do that good thing to and for his poor creatures, no claim can be laid to the least mercy at his hands.  There are two things therefore that are greatly to be heeded by the soul that would believe.

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Second. I shall answer affirmatively, what justi­fying faith is, and in the description of it I shall con­sider it solely as justifying.  And so take it in these few words—It is the act of the soul whereby it rests on Christ crucified for pardon and life, and that upon the warrant of the promise.  In the description observe,

1. The subject where faith is seated, not any single faculty, but the soul.  2. The object of faith as justifying—Christ crucified.  3. The act of faith upon this object, and that is resting on Christ crucified for pardon and life.  4. The warrant and security that faith goes upon in this act.
2. The subject where faith is seated,not any sin­gle faculty, but the soul.  Of this I have spoken some­thing before, and so pass on to the second point.
3. Here is the object of faith as justifying,and that is Christ crucified.  The whole truth of God is the object of justifying faith.  It trades with the whole word of God, and doth firmly assent unto it; but, in its justifying act, it singles out Christ crucified for its object.  (1.) The person of Christ is the object of faith as justifying.  (2.) Christ as crucified.

           (1.) The person of Christ.  Not any axiom or proposition in the word.  This is the object of assurance, not of faith.  Assurance saith ‘I believe my sins are pardoned through Christ.’  Faith’s language is, ‘I believe on Christ for the pardon of them.’  The word of God doth direct our faith to Christ, and terminates it upon him; called therefore, a ‘coming to Christ,’ Matt. 11:28, a ‘receiving of him,’ John 1:12, a ‘believing on him,’ John 17:20.  The promise is but the dish in which Christ, the true food of the soul, is served up; and, if faith’s hand be on the promise, it is but as one that draws the dish to him, that he may come at the dainties in it.  The promise is the marriage-ring on the hand of faith.  Now we are not married to the ring, but with it unto Christ.  ‘All the promises,’ saith the apostle, ‘are yea and amen in him.’  They have their excellency from him, and efficacy in him—I mean in a soul’s union to him.  To run away with a promise, and not to close with Christ, and by faith become one in him, is as if a man should rend a branch from a tree, and lay it up in his chest, expecting it to bear fruit there.  Promises are dead branches severed from Christ.  But when a soul by faith becomes united to Christ, then he partakes of all his fatness; not a promise but yields sweetness to it.

           (2.) As Christ is the primary object of faith, so Christ as crucified.  Not Christ in his personal ex­cellencies—so he is the object rather of our love than faith—but as bleeding, and that to death, under the hand of divine justice for to make an atonement by God’s own appointment for the sins of the world.  As the handmaid’s eye is to her mistress’s hand for direc­tion, so faith’s eye is on God revealing himself in his word; which way God by it points the soul, thither it goes.  Now there faith finds God, intending to save poor sinners, pitched on Christ, and Christ alone, for the transacting and effecting of it, and him whom God chooseth to trust with the work—him and him alone—will faith choose to lay the burden of her confidence on.

           Again, faith observes how Christ performed this great work, and accordingly how the promise holds him forth to be applied for pardon and salvation. Now faith finds that then Christ made the full payment to the jus­tice of God for sin, when he poured out his blood to death upon the cross.  All the prece­daneous acts of his humiliation were but preparatory to this.  He was born to die; he was sent into the world as a lamb bound with the bonds of an irreversible decree for a sacrifice.  Christ himself when he came into the world understood this to be the errand he was sent on, Heb. 10:5.  ‘Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me;’ i.e. to be an expiatory sacrifice.  Without this, all he had done would have been labour undone. No redemption but by his blood, ‘In whom we have re­demption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins,’ Eph. 1:7.  No church without his blood, ‘The church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood,’ Acts 20:28.  E latere Christi morientis exstitit ecclesia— the church is taken out of dying Jesus’ side, as Eve out of sleeping Adam’s.  Christ did not redeem and save poor souls by sitting in majesty on his heavenly throne, but by hanging on the shameful cross, under the tormenting hand of man’s fury and God’s just wrath.  And therefore the poor soul, that would have pardon of sin, is directed to place his faith not only on Christ, but on bleeding Christ, Rom. 3:25: ‘Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood.’

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2. Justifying faith is not assurance.  If it were, St. John might have spared his pains, who wrote to them that ‘believed on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life,’ I John 5:13.  They might then have said ‘We do this already.  What else is our faith, but a believing that we are such as through Christ are pardoned, and shall through him be saved?’ But this cannot be so.  If faith were assurance, then a man’s sins would be pardoned before he believes, for he must necessarily be pardoned before he can know he is pardoned.  The candle must be lighted before I can see it is lighted.  The child must be born before I can be assured it is born.  The object must be before the act.  Assurance rather is the fruit of faith.  It is in faith as the flower is in the root.  Faith, in time, after much communion with God, ac­quaintance with the word, and experience of his deal­ings with the soul, may flourish into assurance.  But, as the root truly lives before the flower appears, and continues when that hath shed its beautiful leaves, and gone again; so doth true justifying faith live before assurance comes, and after it disappears.  As­surance is, as it were, the cream of faith.  Now you know there is milk before there is cream, this riseth not but after some time standing, and there remains milk after it is fleted off.  How many, alas! of the precious saints of God must we shut out from being believers, if there is no faith but what amounts to assurance?  We must needs offend against the generation of God’s children, among whom some are babes, not yet come to the use of their reflex act of faith, so as to own the graces of God in them to be true, upon the review that they take of their own actings.  And, must not the child be allowed to be a child, till he can speak for himself, and say he is so? 

Others there are in Christ's family, who are of higher stature and great­er experience in the ways of God, yet have lost those apprehensions of pardoning mercy, which once they were, through the goodness of God, able to have shown—shall we say their faith went away in the de­parture of their assurance?  How oft then in a year may a believer be no believer? even as oft as God withdraws and leaves the creature in the dark.  Assur­ance is like the sun-flower, which opens with the day and shuts with the night.  It follows the motion of God’s face.  If that looks smilingly on the soul, it lives; if that frowns or hides itself, it dies.  But faith is a plant that can grow in the shade, a grace that can find the way to heaven in a dark night.  It can ‘walk in darkness,’ and yet ‘trust in the name of the Lord,’ Isa. 50:10.  In a word, by making the essence of faith to lie in assurance, we should not only offend against the generation of God's children, but against the God and Father of these children; for at one clap we turn the greater number of those children he hath here on earth out of doors.  Yes, we are cruel to those he is most tender of, and make sad the hearts of those that he would have chiefly comforted.  Indeed if this were true, a great part of gospel provision laid up in the promises is of little use.  We read of promises to those that mourn, ‘they shall be comforted,’ to the contrite, ‘they shall be revived,’ to him that ‘walks in darkness,’ and the like.  These belong to believers, and none else.  Surely then there are some believers that are in the dark, under the hatches of sorrow, wounded and broken with their sins, and temptation for them.  But they are not such as are assured of the love of God; their water is turned into joy, their night into light, their sighs and sobs into joy and praise.

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Second Inquiry.  What is this justifying faith as to its nature?

           I shall answer this, First. Negatively.  Second. Af­firmatively.

           First. Negatively, in two particulars.

1. Justifying faith is not a naked assent to the truths of the gospel.This justifying faith doth give; but this doth not make it justifying faith.  A dogmat­ical faith, or historical, is comprehended in justifying faith.  But dogmatical faith doth not infer justifying faith.  Justifying faith cannot be without a dogmatical; it implies it, as the rational soul in man doth the sen­sitive.  But, the dogmatical may be without the justi­fying, as the sensitive soul in the beast without the ra­tional.  Judas knew the Scriptures, and without doubt did assent to the truth of them, when he was so zeal­ous a preacher of the gospel; but he never had so much as one dram of jus­tifying faith in his soul.  ‘But there are some of you that believe not.  For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him,’ John 6:64.  Yea, Ju­das’ master, the devil himself—one far enough, I sup­pose, from justifying faith—yet he assents to the truth of the word.  He goes against his conscience who denies them.  When he tempted Christ he did not dispute against the Scripture, but from the Scripture, drawing his arrows out of this quiver, Matt. 4:6. And at another time, he makes as full a confession of Christ, for the matter, as Peter himself did, Matt. 8:29, compared with Matt. 16:17.  Assent to the truth of the word is but an act of the understanding, which reprobates and devils may exercise; but justifying faith is a compounded habit, and hath its seat both in the under­standing and will; and therefore [it is] called a ‘believing with the heart,’ Rom. 10:10; yea, a ‘believing with all the heart,’ Acts 8:37.  ‘Philip said, If thou be­lievest with all thine heart, thou mayest.’  It takes all the powers of the soul.  There is a double object in the promise—one proper to the understanding, to move that; another proper to the will, to excite and work upon that.  As the promise is true, so it calls for an act of assent from the understanding; and as it is good as well as true, so it calls for an act of the will to embrace and receive it.  Therefore, he which only no­tionally knows the promise, and speculatively assents to the truth of it, without clinging to it, and embracing of it, doth not believe savingly, and can have no more benefit from the promise, than nourishment from the food he sees and acknowledgeth to be wholesome, but eats none of.

The Kind of Faith Here Meant

           First Inquiry.  What faith is it that here is commended?  This will soon be known, if we consider the use and end for which it is commended to the Christian, and that is to enable him to ‘quench all the fiery darts of the wicked;’ i.e. of the wicked one, the devil.  Now, look upon the several kinds of faith, and that among them must be the faith of this place which enables the creature to quench Satan’s fiery darts, yea, all his fiery darts.  Historical faith cannot do this, and therefore is not it.  This is so far from quenching Satan’s fiery darts, that the devil himself, that shoots them, hath this faith.  ‘The devils believe,’ James 2:19.  Temporary faith cannot do it.  This is so far from quenching Satan’s fiery darts, that itself is quenched by them.  It makes a goodly blaze of profession, and ‘endures for a while,’ Matt. 13:21, but soon disappears.  Miraculous faith, this falls as short as the former.  Judas’ miraculous faith, which he had with other of the apostles—for aught that we can read —enabling him to cast devils out of others, left himself possessed of the devil of covetousness, hypoc­risy, and treason; yea, a whole legion of lusts, that hurried him down the hill of despair into the bottomless pit of perdition.  There is only one kind of faith remains, which is it the apostle means in this place, and that is justifying faith.  

This indeed is the grace that makes him, whoever hath it, the devil’s match.  Satan hath not so much advantage of the Christian by the transcendency of his natural abilities, as he hath of Satan in this cause and this his weapon.  The apostle is confident to give the day to the Christian before the fight is fully over: ‘Ye have overcome the wicked one,’ I John 2:13, that is, ye are as sure to do it as if you were now mounted on your triumphant chariot in heaven.  The knight shall overcome the giant; the saint, Satan; and the same apostle tells us what gets him the day. ‘This is the victory that over­cometh the world, even our faith,’ I John 5:4.

APPLICATION of The Influences and Privileges of the Gospel Peace

  Use First. The preceding doctrine informs our judg­ments in two particulars.  1. What to judge of their patience in affliction that have no interest in the gospel’s peace.  2. What to think of their peace who, in affliction, have no patience at all.

1. What we are to judge of their patience in af­fliction who have no interest in the gospel’s peace. Some you shall see very still and quiet in affliction, yet mere strangers to this peace, ignorant of Christ the Peace-maker, walking in opposition to the terms God offers peace in the gospel upon, and yet very calm in affliction.  Certainly all is not right with this poor creature.  If he had any sense how it is with him, he would have little patience to see himself under the hand of God, and not know but it may leave him in hell before it hath done with him.  When I see one run over the stones and hard ways barefoot and not complain, I do not admire his patience, but pity the poor creature that hath benumbed his feet, and, as it were, soled them with a brawny, dead kind of flesh, so as to lose his feeling.  But, save your pity much more for those whose consciences are so benumbed and hearts petrified into a senseless stupidity, that they feel their misery no more than the stone doth the ma­son’s saw which cuts it asunder.  Of all men out of hell, none [is] more to be pitied than he that hangs over the mouth of it, and yet is fearless of his danger, while thus the poor wretch is incapable of all means for his good.  What good does physic put into a dead man’s mouth?  If he cannot be chased to some sense of his condition, all applications are in vain.  And if afflictions—which are the strongest physic—leave the creature senseless, there is little hope left that any other will work upon him.
2. What are we to think of their peace who, in affliction, have no patience at all—those that are great pretend­ers to gospel peace, yet cannot think with any patience of suffering from God or for God. Certainly, so far as the creature is acquainted with this peace, and hath the true sense of God's love in Christ lying warm at his heart, he cannot but find pro­portionably his heart stand ready to submit to any suffering that God lays out for him.  And therefore it behooves us well to try our peace and comfort.  If thou hast no heart to suffer for God, but choosest a sin to escape a cross, thy peace is false.  If thou hast but little patience under ordinary afflictions, to com­pose thy spirit from murmuring, and sustain thy heart from sinking, thy faith on the promise is weak.  ‘If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small,’ Prov. 24:10.

           Use Second. Let this doctrine stir thee up, Christian, to be very tender and chary of thy peace with God and thy own conscience.   Keep this peace clear and unbroken, and it will keep thy heart whole, when the whole world breaks about thee.  So long as this peace of God rules in your hearts, you are safe from fear or danger, though in a prison or at a stake. But if thou sufferest it to be wounded, then thy ene­mies will come upon thee as Simeon and Levi on the men of Shechem when sore, and be too hard for thee. O it is sad, friends—you will find it so—to go with sore and smarting consciences into a suffering condition.  A thorn in the foot will make any way uneasy to the traveller; and guilt in the conscience any condition uncomfortable to the Christian, but most of all a suffering one.  Now, if you will keep your peace unbroken, you must bestow some attendance on it, and set as it were a life-guard about it.  The choicest flowers need most looking to.  The richer the treasure the safer we lay it.  This peace is thy treasure; look well where thou layest it.  Two ways our Saviour tells us that worldly treasure, such as silver and gold is, may be lost—by thieves that break in and carry it away, and by rust that eats and corrupts it, Matt. 6:19.  There are two ways something like these, wherein the Christian may go by the loss in this his heavenly treasure of inward peace and comfort.

1. Presumptuous sins, these are the thieves that ‘break through and steal’ the saint’s comfort away.  When the Christian comes to look into his soul after such a bold act, and thinks to entertain himself, as formerly, with the comforts of his pardoned state, in­terest in Christ, and hopes of heaven through him, alas! he finds a sad change.  There is no promise that will give out its consolations to him—the cellar-door is locked, Christ withdrawn, and the keys carried away with him.  He may even cry out with a sad com­plaint, as Mary when she found not Christ’s body in the sepulchre, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.’  Thus the Christian may, with aching heart, bemoan his folly, ‘My pride, my uncleanness, my earthly-mindedness, they have taken away my treasure, robbed me of my comfort.  I could never have a comfortable sight of God’s face in any duty or promise since I fell into that foul sin.’  And therefore, Christian, have a care of such robbers of thy peace as this.  ‘The spirit of man’ is called ‘the candle of the Lord,’ Prov. 20:27. Hath God lighted thy candle, Christian—cheered thy spirit, I mean, with the sense of his love?  Take heed of presumptuous sins.  If such a thief be suffered in this thy candle, thy comfort will soon sweal out.  Hast thou fallen into the hands of any such presumptuous sins as have stolen thy peace from thee?  Send speedily thy hue and cry after them—I mean, take thy sad moan to God, renew thy repentance out of hand, and raise heaven upon them by a spirit of prayer.  This is no time to delay.  The farther thou lettest these sins go without repentance, the harder thou wilt find it to recover thy lost peace and joy out of their hands.  And for thy encouragement know, God is ready, upon thy serious and solemn return, to restore thee ‘the joy of his salvation,’ and do justice upon these enemies of thy soul for thee by his mortifying grace, if thou wilt prosecute the law upon them closely and vigorously, without relenting towards them, or being bribed with the pleasure or carnal advantage that they will not spare to offer, so their lives may be spared.
2. Again, as presumptuous sins are the ‘thieves’ that with a high hand rob the Christian of his comfort; so sloth and negligence are as the ‘rust,’ that in time will fret into his comfort and eat out the heart and strength of it.It is impossible that the Christian who is careless and secure in his walking, infrequent and negligent in his communion with God, should long be owner of much peace or comfort that is true. What if thou dost not pour water of presumptuous sins into the lap of thy joy to quench it?  It is enough if thou dost not pour oil of duty to feed and maintain it.  Thou art murderer to thy comfort by starving it, as well as by stabbing of it.

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 (2.) The sense of this peace will enable the Christian to deny himself in his carnal enjoyments.  And these the Chris­tian finds his great pull-backs from suffering.  As the heart burns in the hot fit of love to the pleasures and profits of this world when he abounds with them, in that degree will his shaking fit of fear and grief be when Christ calls him to part with them.  What the sweet wines and dainty fare of Capua was to Hannibal’s soldiers, that we shall find any intemperance of heart to the creature will be to us.  It will enervate our spirits, and so effeminate us, that we shall have little mind to endure hardship when drawn into the field to look an enemy in the face.  Now the sense of this gospel peace will deaden the heart to the creature, and facilitate the work of self-denial as to the greatest enjoyments the world hath.  ‘God forbid,’ saith Paul, ‘that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world,’ Gal. 6:14.  Paul’s heart is dead to the world.  Now mark what gave the death's wound to his carnal affections. ‘By whom,’ saith he, ‘the world is crucified to me, and I unto it;’ that is, Christ and his cross.  There was a time, indeed, that Paul loved the world as well who most.  But, since he hath been acquainted with Christ, and the mercy of God in him to his soul —pardoning his sins and receiving him into favour and fellowship with himself—he is of another mind. He leaves the world, as Saul his seeking of the asses, at the news of a kingdom; his haunt lies another way now.  Let the Zibas of the world take the world, and all they can make of it with their best husbandry.  He will not grudge them their happiness, forasmuch as his heavenly Lord and King is come in peace to his soul.  None can part with the comfort of the creature so cheerfully as he who hath his mouth at the fountain-head, the love of God himself.  Parents are near, and friends are dear, yet a loving wife can forget her father's house, and leave her old friends’ company, to go with her husband though it be to a prison. How much more will a gracious soul bid adieu to these, yea life itself, to go to Christ, especially when he hath sent the Comforter into his bosom, to cheer him in the solitariness of the way with his sweet company?

4. Influence. This peace, where it is felt, promotes the suffering grace of patience.  Affliction and suffering to a patient soul are not grievous.  Patience is, as one calls it, BXR4H J0H RLP0H—the concoctive faculty of the soul —that grace which digests all things, and turns them into good nourishment.  Meats of hard digestion will not do well with squeamish weak stomachs, and therefore they are dainty and nice in their diets; whereas men of strong stom­achs, they refuse no meat that is set before them; all fare is alike to them.  Truly thus there are some things which are of very hard digestion to the spirits of men.  The peevish, passionate, short-spirited pro­fessor will never concoct reproaches, prison, and death itself,  but rather quarrel with his profession, if such fare as these attend the gospel.  ‘When tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended,’ Matt. 13:21.  This will not stay in his stomach, but makes him cast up even that which else he could have kept—a profession of Christ—might he have had it with a quiet life and a whole skin.  But now the patient soul, he makes his meal of what God in his providence sets before him. If peace and prosperity be served up with the gospel, he is thankful, and enjoys the sweetness of the mercy while it lasts.  If God takes these away, and instead of them, will have him eat the gospel feast with sour herbs of affliction and persecution, it shall not make him sick of his cheer.  It is but eating more largely of the comforts of the gospel with them, and they go down very well wrapped up in them.  Indeed the Christian is beholden to those consolations which flow from the peace of the gospel for his patience.  It were impossible for the people of God to endure with what sometimes they meet with from men and devils also, as they do, had they not sweet help from the sense of God’s love in Christ, that lies glowing at their hearts in inward peace and joy.  The apostle resolves all the saints' patience, experience, and hope, yea, glorying in their tribulations, into this, as the cause of all, ‘Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us,’ Rom. 5:5.  Sin makes suffering intolerable.  When that [sin, viz.] is gone, the worst part of the trouble is removed. A light cart goes through that slough easily, where the cart deeply laden is set fast.  Guilt loads the soul, and bemires it in any suffering.  Take that away, and let God speak peace to his soul, and he that raged before like a madman under the cross, shall carry it without whinching and whining.  ‘The peace of God shall keep your hearts and minds,’ Php. 4:7.  Now what is patience but the keeping of the heart and mind composed and serene in all troubles that befall us? But a word or two for application.

How Gospel Peace Prepares the Soul for Suffering BY ITS INFLUENCES 2/3

3. Influence. This peace enjoyed in the Christian’s bosom hath a sweet influence into his self-denial—as grace so necessary to suffering, that Christ lays the cross, as I may so say, upon the back of it.  ‘Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me,’ Mark 8:34. Another, with Simon of Cyrene, may be compelled to carry Christ's cross after him a little way.  But, it is the self-denying soul that will stoop willingly, and down on his knees, to have this burden laid on him at Christ's hand.  Now the sense of a soul’s peace with God will enable the creature in a twofold self-denial, and by both, sweetly dispose him for any suffering from or for Christ.

           (1.) The sense of this peace will enable the Christian to deny himself in his sinful self.  Sin may well be called ourself; it cleaves so close to us, even as members to our body.  [It is] as hard to mortify a lust as to cut off a joint.  Some sins too are more ourself than others, as our life is more bound up in some members than others.  Well, let them be what they will, there is a good day, in which, if Christ asks the head of the proudest lust among them all, he shall have it with less regret than Herodias obtained the Baptist’s at Herod’s hands.  And what is that gaudy day, in which the Christian can so freely deny his sin, and deliver it up to justice, but when Christ is feasting him with this ‘hidden manna’ of pardon and peace? A true friend will rather deny himself than one he loves dearly, if it be in his power to grant his request. But, least of all can he deny him, when his friend is doing him a greater kindness at the same time that he asks a less.  No such picklock to open the heart as love.  When love comes a begging, and that at a time when it is showing itself in some eminent expression of kindness to him at whose door she knocks, there is little fear but to speed.  Esther chose that time to engage Ahasuerus' heart against Haman her enemy, when she expressed her love most to Ahasuerus, viz. at a banquet.  When doth God give, or indeed when can he give, the like demonstration of his love to a poor soul, as when he entertains it at this gospel banquet?  Now sure, if ever, God may prevail with his child to send the cursed Amalekite to the gallows, his lust to the gibbet.  Do you think that Mary Magdalene, when that blessed news dropped from Christ into her mournful heart, that her ‘sins, which were many, were all forgiven her,’ could now have been persuaded to have opened the door to any of her for­mer lovers, and gone out of these embraces of  Christ’s love to have played the whore again?  No, I doubt not but she would sooner have chosen the flames of martyrdom than of lust.  Indeed, that which can make the creature deny a lust, can make the creature it shall not deny a cross.

How Gospel Peace Prepares the Soul for Suffering BY ITS INFLUENCES 1/3

 Second.  Gospel peace prepares the heart for suffering, as it is influential unto the saint’s graces and affections, exciting them, and making them act to such a height, as lifts him above the fear of trouble and suffering.

1. Influence. This peace where it is felt, makes the Christian unconquerable in his faith.  Nothing is too hard for such a one to believe, that carries a par­don in his con­science, that hath his peace with God sealed to him.  Moses was to meet with many difficulties in that great work of conducting Israel out of Egypt towards Canaan.  Therefore, to make them all a more easy conquest to his faith, when he should be assaulted with them, God gives him at his very first entering upon his charge an experiment of his mighty power in some miracles—as the turning {of} his rod into a serpent, and that again into a rod, making his hand leprous, and then restoring it again to be as sound as before—that he might never think anything too hard for that God to do towards their salvation and deliverance, even when things seem most desperate.  And how unconquerable Moses was after these in his faith, we see.  Truly, when God speaks to a poor soul, he gives such a testimony of his almighty power and love, that, so long as the sweet sense of this lasts in the soul, the creature's faith cannot be posed.  What doth God in his pardoning mercy, but turn the serpent of the law—with all its threatenings, from which the sinner fled, as that which would sting him to death—into the blossoming rod of the gospel, that brings forth the sweet fruit of peace and life?  And which is the greater miracle of the two, think you?—the leprous hand of Moses made clean and sound, or a poor sinner's heart, leprous with sin, made clean and pure by washing in the blood of Christ?  Certainly this miracle of mercy, where it is strongly believed to be done, will make it easy for that soul to trust God in a sea of temporal sufferings, and cheerfully follow him through a whole wilderness of troubles in this life.  When David hath comfortable apprehensions of God's pardoning mercy, then his faith is up, and can strongly act on God for tem­poral deliverance.  We find him, Ps. 32:5, under the sweet sense of his peace with God, able to vouch God as reconciled to him.  ‘I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.’  And now see, ver. 7, to what a height his faith acts on God as to outward troubles.  ‘Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance.’  He spells this, which is the less, from the other, that is incomparably the greater mercy.

           2. Influence. This peace with God, where it is felt, fills the heart with love to Christ.  The Chris­tian’s love to Christ takes fire at Christ’s love to him.  And the hotter Christ’s love lies on the soul, the stronger reflection doth the creature make of love to him again, ‘she loved much,’ to whom much was ‘forgiven,’ Luke 7:47.  And the more love, the less fear there will be of suffering.  We will venture far for a dear friend.  When Christ told his disciples Lazarus was dead, Thomas would needs go and die with him for company, John 11:16.  So powerful is love, even as strong as death.  ‘For a good man,’ saith the apostle, ‘some would even dare to die’—that is, a merciful kind man, whose had endeared him to them.  How much more daring will a gracious soul be to sacrifice his life for a good God?  ‘Thy name,’ saith the spouse of Christ, ‘is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love thee,’ Song 1:3.  Then Christ’s name is poured forth, when the love of God through him is shed abroad in the soul.  Let this precious box be but broke, and the sweet savour of it diffused in the heart, and it will take away the unsavoury scent of the most stinking prison in the world.  This heavenly fire of Christ’s love, beaming powerfully on the soul, will not only put out the kitchen fire of creature love; but also the hell fire, as I may call it, of slavish fear.  What makes us so aghast at the thoughts of death, especially if it comes towards us in a bloody dress, and hath some circumstances of persecutors' cruelty, to put a further grimness on its unpleasing counte­nance?  Surely this comes from guilt, and  unac­quaintance with Christ, and what he hath done for us; who came partly on this very errand into the world, ‘To deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage,’ Heb. 2:15.  And how hath he done it, but by reconciling us to God, and so reconciling us to the thoughts of death itself, as that which only can do us this kind office—bring us and Christ, that hath done all this for us, together

How Gospel Peace Prepares The Soul For Suffering BY ITS PRIVILEGES

 First. Gospel peace prepares the heart for suf­fering, as it brings along with it, and possesseth the soul where it comes, with such glorious privileges as lift it above all danger from any sufferings whatever, from God man, or devils.  If a man could be assured he might walk as safely on the waves of the sea, or in the flames of fire, as he doth in his garden, he would be no more afraid of the one than he is to do the other.  Or, if a man had some coat of mail secretly about him, that would undoubtedly resist all blows and quench all shot that are sent against him, it would be no such scareful thing for him to stand in the midst of swords and guns.  Now, the soul that is indeed at peace with God, is invested with such privi­leges as do set it above all hurt and damage from suf­ferings.  ‘The peace of God’ is said ‘to garrison the believer’s heart and mind,’ Php. 4:7.  He is surrounded with such blessed privileges, that he is as safe as one in an impregnable castle.

1. Privilege. A person at peace with God becomes then a child of God.  And when once the Christian comes to know his relation, and the dear love of his heavenly Father to him, afflictions for or sufferings from him, dread him not, because he knows it is inconsistent with the love of a father, either to hurt his child himself, or to suffer him to be hurt by another, if he can help it.  I have often wondered at Isaac’s patience to submit to be bound for a sacrifice, and see the knife so near his throat, without any hideous outcries or strugglings that we read of. He was old enough to be apprehensive of death, and the horror of it, being conceived by some to be above twenty years of age.  That he was of good growth is out of doubt by the wood which Abraham caused him to carry for the sacrifice.  But, such was the authority Abraham had over his son, and the con­fidence that Isaac had in his father, that he durst put his knife into his hands; which, had the knife been in any other hand, he would hardly have done.  Whoever may be the instrument of any trouble to a saint, the rod or sword is at God's disposure.  Christ saw the cup in his Father’s hand, and that made him take it willingly.
2. Privilege. Every soul at peace with God is heir to God.  This follows his relation.  ‘If children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ,’ Rom. 8:17.  This is such a transcendent privilege, that the soul to whom the joyful news of it comes is lift up above the amazing and affrightening fears of any suf­fering.  The apostle having, in the forenamed place, but a little sweetened his thoughts with a few meditations on this soul-ravishing subject, see how his blessed soul is raised into a holy slighting of all the troubles of this life: ‘I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us,’ Rom. 8:18.  He will not allow his own soul, or any that hath the hope of this inheritance, so far to undervalue the glory thereof, or the love of God that settled it on them, as to mention the greatness of their sufferings in any way of pitying themselves for them.  As if he had said, ‘Hath God made us his heirs, and bestowed heaven upon us in reversion, and shall we be so poor-spirited to sit down and bemoan ourselves for our present sor­rows, that are no more to be compared with the glory that we are going to, than the little point of time, into which our short life with all our sufferings are contracted, is to be compared with the vast circumference of that eternity which we are to spend in endless bliss and happiness?’  He is a poor man, we say, that one or two petty losses quite undoes; and he is a poor Christian that cries out he is undone by any cross in this life.  We may safely conclude such a one either is heir to nothing in the other world, or hath little or no evidence for what he hath here.