Exhortation to saints to maintain and promote peace 6/8

           (3.) Consider the sad consequences of your contentions.

           (a) You put a stop to the growth of grace.  The body may as well thrive in a fever, as the soul prosper when on a flame with strife and contention.  No, first this fire in the bones must be quenched, and brought into its natural temper, and so must this unkindly heat be slaked among Christians before either can grow.  I pray observe that place, ‘But speaking the truth in love’—or being sincere in love—‘may grow up into him in all things,’ Eph. 4:15.  The apostle is up­on a cure, showing how souls that at present are weak and their grace rather wan and withered than growing, may come to thrive and flourish; and the recipe he gives is a composi­tion of these two rare drugs, sincerity and love.  Preserve these, and all will do well; as ver. 16, where the whole body is said to ‘edify itself in love.’  There may be preaching, but no edifying, with­out love.  Our times are a sad comment upon this text.

           (b) You cut off your trade with heaven at the throne of grace.  You will be little in prayer to God, I warrant you, if much in squabbling with your brethren.  It is impossible to go from wrangling to praying with a free spirit.  And if you should be so bold as to knock at God's door, you are sure to have cold wel­come.  ‘Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift,’ Matt. 5:24.  God will not have the incense of prayer put to such strange fire; nor will he eat of our leavened bread, taste of any perform­ance soured with malice and bitterness of spirit.  First the peace was renewed, and a covenant of love and friendship struck between Laban and Jacob, Gen. 31:44, and then, ‘Jacob offered sacrifice upon the mount, and called his brethren to eat bread,’ ver. 54. The very heathens thought no serious business could be well done by quarrelling spirits.  Therefore the senators of Rome used to visit the temple dedicated Jovi depositorio, because there they did deponere inimicitias—lay down all their feuds and controversies, before they went into the senate to consult of state affairs.  Durst not they go to the senate, till friends? and dare we go up to God’s altar, bow our knees to him in prayer, while our hearts are roiled and swollen with anger, envy, and malice?  O God humble us.

           (c) As we cut off our trade with heaven, so with one another.  When two countries fall out, whose great interest lies in their mutual traffic, they must needs both pinch by the war.  Truly, the Christians’ great gains come in by their mutual commerce, and they are the richest Christians commonly who are seated with the greatest advantage for this trade.  As no nation have all their commodities of their own growth, but needs some merchandise with others; so there is no Christian that could well live without bor­rowing from his brethren.  There is ‘that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part,’ Eph. 4:16.  Paul himself is not so well laid in, but he hopes to get something more than he hath from the meanest of those he preacheth to.  He tells the Christians at Rome, Rom. 1, he longs to see them, as to impart some spiritual gift to them, ver. 11, so, saith he, ‘that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me,’ Rom. 1:12; yea, he hopes to be ‘filled with their company,’ Rom. 15:24.  As a man is filled with good cheer, so he hopes to make a feast of their com­pany.  Now contentions and divisions spoil all intercourse between believers.  They are as baneful to Christian communion, as a great pestilence or plague is to the trade of a market town.  Communication flows from communion, and communion that is founded upon union.  The church grows under per­secution.  That sheds the seed all over the field, and brings the gospel where else it had not been heard of. But divisions and contentions, like a furious storm, wash the seed out of the land, with its heart, fatness, and all.

Exhortation to saints to maintain and promote peace 5/8

  Again, among men, though the father shows not so much partiality in his affection, yet oft great ine­quality in the distribution of his estate.  Though all are children, yet not all heirs, and this sows the seed of strife among them; as Jacob found by woeful exper­ience.  But Christ hath made his will so, that they are all provided for alike, called therefore the ‘common salvation,’ Jude 3, and ‘the inheritance of the saints in light,’ Col. 1:12, for the community.  All may enjoy their happiness without justling with or prejudicing of one another, as millions of people who look upon the same sun, and at the same time, and none stand in another’s light.  Methinks that speech of Christ looks a little this way, ‘The glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one,’ John 17:22.  By ‘glory’ there I would understand heaven’s glory prin­cipally.  Now saith Christ, ‘I have given it,’ that is, in reversion, I have given it them; not this or that fav­ourite, but ‘them’—I have laid it out as the portion of all sincere believers, and why? ‘that they may be one,’ that all squabbles may be silenced, and none may en­vy another for what he hath above him, when he sees glory in his.  It is true indeed some difference there is in Christians’ outward garb—some poor, some rich —and in common gifts also—some have more of them, some less.  But are these tanti? of such weight, to commence a war upon, among those that wait for the same heaven?  If the father clothes all his children in the same cloth, it were sad to see them stab one another, because one hath a lace more than the other; nay because one’s lace is red, and the other’s green; for indeed the quarrel among Christians is sometimes, not for having less gifts than another, but because they are not the same in kind, though another, as good and useful, which possibly he wants whom we envy.

           (2.) Consider where you are, and among whom. Are you not in your enemies’ quarters?  If you fall out, what do you but kindle a fire for them to warm their hands by?  ‘Aha! so would we have it,’ say they. The sea of their rage will weaken this bank fast enough; you need not cut it for them.  The unseasonableness of the strife betwixt Abraham’s herdsmen and Lot’s is aggravated by the near neighbourhood of the heathens to them: ‘And there was a strife between the herdmen of Abram’s cattle and the herdmen of Lot’s cattle: and the Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelled then in the land,’ Gen. 13:7.  To fall out while these idolaters looked on—this would be town-talk presently, and put themselves and their religion both to shame.  And I pray, who have been in our land all the while the people of God have been scuffling? Those that have curiously observed every uncomely behaviour among them, and told all the world of it —such as have wit and malice enough to make use of it for their wicked purposes.  They stand on tiptoes to be at work; only we are not yet quite laid up and dis­abled, by the soreness of those our wounds, which we have given ourselves, from withstanding their fury. They hope it will come to that; and then they will cure us of our wounds, by giving one, if they can, that shall go deep enough to the heart of our life, gospel and all.  O Christians! shall Herod and Pilate put you to shame?  They clapped up a peace to strengthen their hands against Christ; and will not you unite against your common enemy?  It is an ill time for mariners to be fighting, when an enemy is boring a hole at the bottom of their ship.

Exhortation to saints to maintain and promote peace 4/8

           (3.) The price that Christ gave for the obtaining of this peace and unity.  As Christ went from preaching up peace to pulling down peace from heaven by prayer, so he went from praying to paying for it.  In­deed Christ’s prayers are not beggar’s prayers, as ours are; he prays his Father that he may only have what he pays for.  He was now on the way to the place of payment, Calvary, where his blood was the coin he laid down for this peace.  I confess peace with God was the chief pearl that this wise merchant, Christ, bought up for his people.  But he had this in his eye also, viz. love to the brethren; and therefore the sacra­ment of the Lord’s supper, which is the commemoration feast of Christ’s death, as it seals our peace with God, so it signifies our love one to another, I Cor. 10. And need I now give you any account why our dear Lord pursued his design so close of knitting his peo­ple in peace and unity together?  Truly the church is intended by Christ to be his house, in which he means to take up his rest.  And what rest could he take in a house all on fire about him?  It is his kingdom; and how can his laws be obeyed, if all his sub­jects be in a hubbub one against another?  Inter arma silent leges—laws are silent amid arms.  In a word, his church are a people that are called out of the world to be a praise to him in the sight of the nations, as Peter saith, ‘God did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name,’ Acts 15:14—that is, a people for his honour.  But a wrangling divided peo­ple would be little credit to the name of Christ.  Yea such, where they are foun d—and where alas are they not to be found?—are to the name of Christ as smoke and dirt to a fair face.  They crock and disfigure Christ, so that the world will not acknowledge him to be who he saith he is; they lead them even into temptation to think basely of Christ and his gospel. Christ prays his people may be made perfect in one, and mark his argument—‘That the world may know that thou hast sent me,’ John 17:23.  Whose heart bleeds not to hear Christ blasphemed at this day by so many black mouths? and what hath opened them more than the saints’ divisions?

2. Argument. The second argument shall be ta­ken from yourselves; for your own sakes live in peace and unity.

           (1.) Consider your obligations to love and unity; your relations call for it.  If believers, Paul tells you your kindred, ‘Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus,’ Gal. 3:26; not only children of God, so are all by creation, but by faith in Jesus Christ also.  Christ is the foundation of a new brotherhood to be­lievers.  O Christians! consider how near you are set one to another.  You are conceived in the same womb of the church, begotten by the same seed of the word to this new creation, whereby, as one saith, you be­come brethren of the whole blood, and therefore there should be more unity and dear affection among you than among any others.  Joseph’s heart went out more to Benjamin, than any of the rest of his brethren, because he was his brother both by father and mother.  If you fall out, who shall agree? what is it that can rationally break your peace?  Those things which use to be bones of contention, and occasion squabbling among other brethren, Christ hath taken care to remove them all, so that of all others, your quarrellings are most childish, yea sinful.  Sometimes one child finds himself grieved  at the partiality of his parents’ affection, more set on some others than him­self, and this makes him envy them, and they despise him.  But there is no such foundling in his God’s family—all dear alike to Christ: ‘Walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us,’ Eph. 5:2, that is, for one as well as another.  Christ in the church is like the soul in the body, he is totus in toto, et totus in qualibet parte—every member in Christ hath whole Christ, his whole heart and love, as if there were none besides himself to enjoy it.

Exhortation to saints to maintain and promote peace 3/8

           But we are not yet at the last link of this golden chain of Christ’s discourse.  When he hath put some more warmth into their affections to this duty, by exposing his own love to them in the deepest expression of it, even to die for them, ver. 13, then he comes on more boldly, and tells them he will own them for his friends, as they are careful to observe what he had left in charge with them, ver. 14, ‘Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.’  And now taking it for granted that he had prevailed upon them, and that they would walk in unity and love as he had com­manded them, he cannot conceal the pleasure he takes therein, yea and in them for it.  He opens his heart to them, and locks no secret from them, yea bids them go and open their heart to God and be free to him, as he is to them.  And mark from what bless­ed hour all this familiarity that they are admitted to, bears date.  ‘From henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth,’ ver. 15, that is from the time you walk dutiful to me and lovingly to one another.  One would think he had now said enough; but he thinks not so.  In the very next words he is at it again.  ‘These things I command you, that ye love one another,’ ver. 17, as if all he had left else in charge with them had been subservient to this.

           (2.) A second thing that speaks Christ’s heart deeply engaged in the promoting of love and unity among Christians, is his fervent prayer for this. Should you hear a preacher with abundance of vehe­mency press a grace or duty upon the people in his pulpit, and as soon as sermon is done, you should go under his closet window, and hear him as earnestly wrestling with God that he would give his people what he had so zealously pressed upon them; you would easily believe the man was in earnest.  Our blessed Saviour hath taught us ministers whither to go when we come out of the pulpit, and what to do.  No soon­er hath he done his sermon to them, but he is at pray­er with God for them.  And what he insisted on most in preaching he enlargeth most upon in prayer.  Unity and peace was the legacy he desired so much to leave with them, and this is the boon he puts in strongly with God to bestow on them: ‘Father, keep through thine own power those whom thou hast given me,’ John 17:11.  And why all this care?—‘that they may be one, as we are.’  As if he had said, ‘Father, did we ever fall out? was there ever discord betwixt us? why then should they, who are thine and mine, disagree?’  So, ver. 21, and again, ver. 23, he is pleading hard for the same mercy.  And why so oft? is it so hardly wrung from God, that Christ himself must tug so often for it?  No, sure; but as Christ said of the voice that came from heaven, ‘This voice came not because of me, but for your sakes;’ John 12:30, so may I say here.  This ingeminated^[12] zeal of Christ for his people’s unity and love was for their sakes.

           (a) He would by this raise the price of this mercy in their thoughts.  That is sure worth their care which he counted.  Worth his redoubled prayer—when not a word was spoken for his own life—or else he misplaced his zeal, and improved not his time with God for the best advantage of his people.

           (b) He would make divisions appear more scareful and dreadful things to his people, by putting in so many requests to God for preventing them. Certainly if Christ had known one evil worse than another like to come upon his people at his departure, he would have been so true and kind to his children as to deprecate that above all, and keep that off.  He told his children what they must look for at the world’s hand—all manner of sufferings and tor­ments that their wit could help their malice to devise —yet he prays not so much for immunity from these, as from unbrotherly contentions among themselves. He makes account, if they can agree together, and be in love, saint with saint, church with church, that they have a mercy that will alleviate the other, and make it tolerable, yea joyous.  This heavenly fire of love among themselves will quench the flames of the per­secutor’s fire, at least the horror of them.

           (c) In a word, Christ would, as strengthen our faith to ask boldly for that which he hath bespoke for us, so also aggravate the sin of contention to such a height, that all who have any love to him, when they shall see they cannot live in strife, but they must sin against those prayers which Christ with strong cries put up for peace and unity, may tremble at the thoughts of it.

Exhortation to saints to maintain and promote peace 2/8

1. Argument. The Christian should seek peace for Christ’s sake.  And methinks, when begging for his sake I should have no nay.  When you pray to God and do but use his name in the business, you are sure to speed.  And why should not an exhortation, that woos you for Christ's sake, move your hearts to duty, as a prayer put up by you in his name, moves God’s heart to mercy?  Indeed, how can you in faith use Christ’s name as an argument to unlock God’s heart to thee, which hath not so much credit with thyself as to open thy own heart into a compliance with a duty, which is so strongly set on his heart to promote among his people?  This appears,

(1.) By the solemn charge he gave his disciples in this particular: ‘A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another,’ John 13:34.  I pray observe how he prepares their hearts to open readily, and bid his commandment kindly welcome.  He sets his own name upon it—‘a new commandment I give unto you.’  As if he had said, ‘Let this command, though as old as any other, Lev. 19:18, yet go under my name in an especial manner.  When I am gone and the fire of strife begins at any time among you, re­member what particular charge I now give you, and let it quench it presently.’  Again, observe how he delivers this precept, and that is by way of gift and privilege.  ‘A new commandment I give unto you.’ Indeed, this was Christ’s farewell sermon, the very streakings of that milk which he had fed them withal. Never dropped a sweeter discourse from his blessed lips.  He saved his best wine till the last.  He was now making his will, and amongst other things that he be­queaths his disciples, he takes this commandment, as a father would do his seal-ring off his finger, and gives it to them.  Again, thirdly, he doth not barely lay the command before them, but, to make it the more effectual, he annexeth in a few words the most powerful argument why they should, as also the most clear and full direction how they might, do this, that is possible to be given—As I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

O Christians, what may not the love of Christ command you?  If it were to lay down your lives for him that loved you to death, would you deny them? and shall not this his love persuade you to lay down your strifes and divisions?  This speaks enough, how much weight he laid upon this commandment.  But then, again, observe how Christ, in the same sermon, over and over again minds them of this; which if he had not been very solicitous of, should not have had so large a room in his thoughts at that time, when he had so little time left in which he was to crowd and sum up all the heavenly counsel and comfort he de­sired to leave with them before his departure.  Nay, so great weight he lays on this, that he seems to lock up his own joy and theirs together in the care that they should take about this one command of loving one another, ‘These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full,’ John 15:11.  What these things were appears by the precedent verse, ‘If ye keep my commandment, ye shall abide in my love.’  These were the things that he spake of in order to {keep} his joy in them, and theirs in him, that they would ‘keep his commandments.’  Now, to let them know how high a place their obedience to this particular command of love and unity had in his heart, and how eminently it conduced to the continuing his joy in them, and filling up their own; he chooseth that above any for this instance, in order to what he had said, as you may see, ver. 12, ‘This is my command­ment, That ye love one another.’  Observe still, how Christ appropriates this commandment to himself.  ‘This is my commandment;’ as if he would signify to them that as he had one disciple, who went by the name of ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved,’ so he would have a darling commandment, in which he takes some singular delight, and that this should be it, ‘their loving one another.

Exhortation to saints to maintain and promote peace 1/8

Use Third. What we have learned of gospel peace as a peace of love and unity, brings a seasonable exhortation to all the saints, that they would nourish peace what they can among themselves.  You all profess to have been baptized into the spirit of the gospel, but you do not show it when you bite and snarl at one another.  The gospel, that makes wolves and lambs agree, doth not teach the lambs to turn {into} wolves and devour each other.  Our Saviour told the two disciples whose choler was soon up, that they would be fetching fire from heaven to go on their revengeful errand, that they little thought from what hearth that wild-fire of their passion came: ‘Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of,’ Luke 9:55.  As if he had said, Such fiery wrathful speeches do not suit with the meek Master you serve, nor with the gospel of peace he preacheth to you.  And if the gospel will not allow us to pay our enemies in their own coin, and give them wrath for wrath, then much less will it suffer brethren to spit fire at one another’s faces.  No, when any such embers of contention begin to smoke among Christians, we may show who left the spark —no other but Satan; he is the greatest kindle-coal of all their contentions.  If there be a tempest, not in the air, but in the spirits of Christians, and the wind of their passions be high and loud, it is easy to tell who is the conjurer.  O it is the devil, who is practicing his black art upon their lusts, which yet are so much un­mortified as gives him too great an advantage of rais­ing many times sad storms of division and strife among them. 

 Paul and Barnabas set out in a calm together, but the devil sends a storm after them —such a storm as parted them in the midst of their voyage: ‘And the contention was so sharp between them, that they departed asunder one from the other,’ Acts 15:39.  There is nothing, next Christ and heaven, that the devil grudged believers more than their peace and mutual love.  If he cannot rend them from Christ, stop them from getting heaven, yet he takes some pleasure in seeing them go thither in a storm; like a shattered fleet severed one from another, that they may have no assistance from, nor comfort of, each other's company all the way; though, where he can divide he hopes to ruin also, well knowing this to be the most probable means to effect it.  One ship is easier taken than a squadron.  A town, if it can be but set on fire, the enemy may hope to take it with more ease; Let it therefore be your great care to keep the devil’s spark from your powder.  Certainly peace among Christians is no small mercy, that the devil’s arrows fly so thick at its breast.  Something I would fain speak to endear this mercy to the people of God. I love, I confess, a clear and still air, but, above all, in the church among believers; and I am made the more sensible what a mercy this would be, by the dismal consequence of these divisions and differences that have for some years together troubled our air, and filled us with such horror and confusion, that we have not been much unlike that land called Terra del Fuego—the land of smoke, because of the frequent flashings of lightnings and abundance of smoke found there.  What can I compare error to, better than smoke? and contention to, better than to fire? a kind of emblem of hell itself, where flames and darkness meet together to increase the horror of the place. But, to press the exhortation a little closer, give me leave to provoke you by three arguments to peace and unity.

The sin of ministers who stir up strife 2/2

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