Means to quicken us to pray with more fervour for the leading of the Holy Spirit 2/3

           Second Means.  When thou hast thus possessed thy heart with the dread of being led into any corrupt opinion, then strengthen then thy faith from those comfortable scriptures which assure thee that no sin­cere saint shall be left to fall finally into any soul-damning error.  Christ is as able for, and faithful in, his prophetic and kingly offices, as his priestly. Surely he will not have the least care of his people’s under­standing, which is guide to their whole man, and is that faculty which he first practiseth upon in the work of conversion. Thou hast therefore as strong ground to believe he will preserve thee from damnable princi­ples as damnable practices.  It would be little advan­tage to be kept from one enemy, and left open to the will and power of another.  Christ’s hedge comes round about his people.  Solomon tells us, ‘The mouth of strange women is a deep pit: he that is abhorred of the Lord shall fall therein,’ Prov. 22:14. And so is the mouth of the seducer, who comes with strange doctrines—whorish opinions.  Now who is this pit digged for?  Indeed, if we look at Satan’s design, it is a trap chiefly laid to catch the saint; he would, if possible, ‘deceive the very elect.’  His great­est ambition is to spread his banners in this temple of God, and defile them whom God hath washed.  But if we eye God’s intention, it is a pit he suffers to be made for hypocrites and false gospellers—such who would never heartly close with Christ and his truth. These are they whom God abhors, and therefore they are left by him to become a prey to those that go a birding for souls with their corrupt doctrines. ‘Because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved; and for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness,’ II Thes. 2:10-12.  These, like the outsetting deer, are shot, while they within the pale are safe; or, like the sub­urbs, taken by the enemy, but those within the city escape their fury.  It is the outward court that is left to be trampled underfoot, Rev. 11:2.  And in the fore-quoted place in the epistle to the Thessalonians —though he gives up hypocrites to be deceived by false teachers, as once Ahab by those knights of the post his false prophets—yet, ver. 13 he speaks com­fortably to the elect, and shows that the same decree which appointed them to salvation provided also for their embracing the truth, as the necessary means leading thereunto. ‘But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and be­lief of the truth.’  And if God had got possession of the head by his truth, and of the heart by his sancti­fying grace, he will keep them out of Satan’s clutches.

           Go, therefore, and plead the promise for thy preservation.  The promise improved by faith at the throne of grace will be thy best antidote in these times of general infection. Never fear speeding when the promise bids thee ‘go and prosper.’  The mercy is granted before thou askest it; only God will have thee by prayer lay claim to it, before thou beest possessed of it.  And for thy help I have set down some sweet promises of this nature, with which, if thou acquaint­est thyself, thou mayest be furnished both with grounds for thy faith, and arguments for thy prayer in this case, Matt. 24:24; John 7:12; 10:5, 29; I Cor. 11:19; Php. 3:15; I John 2:19, 20.

           Direction Fifth.  Compare scripture with scripture.  False doctrines, like false witnesses, agree not among them­selves.  Their name may be called ‘Legion, for they are many.’  But truth is one; it is homogeneal.  One scripture sweetly harmonizeth with another.  Hence it is, though there were many pen­men of sacred writ, and those of several ages, one after another, yet they all are said to have but one mouth; ‘As he spake by the mouth of his holy proph­ets, which have been since the world began,’ Luke 1:70. All had one mouth, because they accord so perfectly together.  The best way, therefore, to know the mind of God in one text is to lay it to another.  The lapi­dary useth one diamond to cut another.  So should we one place of Scripture to interpret another.  Scrip­tures compared, like glasses set one against another, cast a light each to the other.  ‘They (i.e. the Levites) read in the book in the  law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading,’ Neh. 8:8.  Et exponendo sensum dabant intelligentiam per Scripturam ipsam—so Tremelius reads the words—they gave them the meaning of what they read, by the Scripture itself.

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           First Means.  Let the dread of those scriptures which set forth the danger of errors and false doc­trines fall upon thee, that thou mayest not think thou goest upon a slighty errand, when praying to be pre­served from them, as if the odds were not great, whether thou hast thy request or hast it not.  It is one of the devil’s master-policies, by sinking the price of errors in the thoughts of men, to make them thereby the more vendible.  Many think they shall not pay so dear for an error in judgment as for a sin in practice. Yea, some have such a latitude, that they fancy a man may be saved in any religion—a principle that must needs tend to make them that hold it careless and incurious in their choice.  That sin shall not want cus­tomers which men think they shall pay little or noth­ing for.  Some can be content to be drunk on free cost, that would not, were they assured their own purse should pay soundly for the reckoning.  How comes fornication to abound so much among the Romish clergy, but because it is counted so petty a sin by them?  And I wish that error and heresy—which are the fornication of the mind—were not by many among ourselves sized as low.  But woe to those clerks of the devil’s market, that tempt and toll men on to sin by setting cheaper rates on their head than the word of God hath done.  If once the dread of a sin be word off the conscience, no wonder then if we see men as boldly leap upon it, as the frogs in the fable on the log, that lay so still and tame at the bottom of the river.  Fear makes the body more apt to take in­fection, but it preserveth the soul from the infection of sin.

           Now that thou mayest the more stand in fear of drinking in the poison of any corrupt and unsound doctrine, let thy mind ponder on a few scriptures, which show both their detestable, and also damning nature of them.  Gal. 5:19, there heresy is called ‘a work of the flesh,’ and reckoned among those sins which shut the doors of them out of heaven; ‘they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God,’ ver. 21.  They are called ‘doctrines of devils,’ I Tim. 4:1.  And if they come from the devil, whither must they lead but to hell? Such as are against the fundamental principles of the gospel are inconsistent with the love and favour of God.  He that ‘abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God,’ II John 9.  And who, think you, shall have him that hath not God? Were there no other scripture against this kind of sin, but that one, II Peter 2:1, it were enough to strike the heretic through his loins, and make the knees of every seducer, like Belshazzar’s at the sight of the ‘handwriting on the wall,’ to knock one against the other.  ‘But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heres­ies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.’  So that if a man hath a mind to get the start of other sinners, and desires to be in hell before them, he need do no more than open his sails to the wind of heretical doctrine, and he is like to make a short voyage to hell of it; for these bring upon their maintainers ‘swift destruction.’ Nay, the Spirit of God, the more to aggravate their deplored state brings in three most dreadful instances of divine vengeance that ever was executed upon any sinners, viz. the detrusion of the apostate angels from heaven to hell, the drowning of the old world, and the conflagration of Sodom and Gomorrah by raining hell, as it were, out of heaven upon them.  I say, he brings these as patterns and pledges of that vengeance which shall certainly befall this kind of sinners.  And by this time I hope thou wilt be warm in thy prayer against this dangerous enemy.  But,

Directions how to use the sword of the word against heretics 2/2

    Direction Second.  Make not thy own reason the rule by which thou measurest Scripture truths.  Is that fit to try the revelations of the word by, which is dunced and posed with so many secrets in nature? Doth not the word reveal such things to us as are not only above sense, for eye hath not seen them, nor ear heard them; but also above the ken of reason? being such as never ‘entered into the heart of man,’ I Cor. 2:9.  Indeed the whole system of gospel truths speaks in a foreign and outlandish tongue to reason; it can make no sense of them, except faith be the inter­preter.  The Scriptures are like the Red Sea, through which the Israelites by faith passed safely, but the Egyptians attempting to do it, for want of that guide were drowned.  A humble believer passeth through the deep mysteries of the word safely, without plung­ing into any dangerous mistakes; whereas those sons of pride, who leave faith and take reason for their guide, we see how they are drowned in many dam­nable errors, Arianism, Pelagianism, Socinianism, and what not.  The most dangerous errors fathered upon the Scriptures have sprung from this womb.  This was the Sadducees’ ground on which they went for their denying the resurrection of the dead.  They owned the book of Moses for the word of God, and yet denied the resurrection asserted therein; because it seemed so impossible a thing to their reason that our bodies, after so many alterations into slime and dust, should stand up in life.  This their reason laughed at; for so our Saviour’s answer plainly shows, ‘Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God,’ Matt. 22:29.

           Direction Third.  When thou consultest with the word, take heed thou comest not with a judgment pre-engaged to any party and opinion.  He is not like to hold the scales even whose judgment is bribed be­forehand.  A distempered eye sees the object of that colour with which itself is affected; and a mind pre­possessed will be ready to impose its own sense upon the word, and so loseth the truth by an overweening conceit of his own opinion.  Too many, alas! read the Scriptures not so much to be informed by them, as confirmed in what already they have taken up!  They choose opinions, as Samson his wife, because they please them, and then come to gain the Scriptures’ consent.  Thus the Jews first made up the match with their idols, and then ask counsel of God what they should do, Eze. 14:4.  It is a just judgment of God, that such should not see the truth when it lies fair before them, but be given up to an injudicious heart, to be­lieve the word favours their fancies, and chimes as they think.  ‘I the Lord will answer him...ac­cording to the multitude of his idols: that I may take the house of Israel in their own heart,’ Eze. 14:4, 5.  And when is a man taken in his own heart, if not when ensnared in the fancies and follies which his erroneous mind hath weaved?

           Direction Fourth.  Go to God by prayer for a key to unlock the mysteries of his word.  It is not the plodding but the praying soul that will get this treasure of Scripture-knowledge.  St. John got the sealed book opened by weeping, Rev. 5:5.  God oft brings a truth to the Christian’s hand as a return of prayer, which he had long hunted for in vain with much labour and study; there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, Dan. 2:22.  And where doth he reveal the secrets of his word but at the throne of grace? ‘From the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words,’ i.e. for thy prayer, Dan. 10:12.  And what was this heav­enly messenger’s errand to Daniel but to open more fully the Scripture to him? as appears by ver. 14, compared with ver. 21.  This holy man had got some knowledge by his study in the word, and this sets him a praying, and prayer fetched an angel from heaven to give him more light.  If ever we know the mind of God, we must be beholden to the Spirit of God for it. ‘When he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth,’ John 16:13.  And the Spirit is the fruit of Christ’s intercession: ‘I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter,’ &c.  Now there must be a concurrence of our prayers with his intercession.  While our High-priest is offering in­cense within the vail, we are to be praying without for the same thing that he is interceding within.  Now to quicken thee up to pray with more fervent impor­tunity for this manuduction of the Holy Spirit to lead thee into truth

Directions how to use the sword of the word against heretics 1/2

           Now the second enemy that comes forth against the Christian is the heretic or seducer, who is so much more to be feared than the former by how much it is worse to part with God's truth than our own life; to be corrupted in our minds than to be tortured in our members; in a word, to have our souls damned by God than our bodies killed by man.  If the martyrs had feared death more than heresy, they would not have leaped into the persecutors’ flames rather than consent to their doctrine.  Now, that thou mayest be able to lift up this sword of the Spirit—the only weapon to defend thee—with victory against this dan­gerous enemy, apply thyself in the use of the best means with thy utmost care to find out the true sense and meaning of the Spirit in his word.  This sword in another’s hand will defend thee not.  No, it must be in thy own, or else thou canst not have the benefit of it.  The phrase and outward expression are but the shell, the sense and meaning is the pearl, which thou, like a wise merchant, shouldst seek for.  To tumble over a chapter and not reach the mind of God therein held forth, and to tumble over a prayer in an un­known tongue, are both alike, ‘He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; Rev. 2:7.  We are to listen what the Spirit saith in the word as we hear or read it.  And he that hath an ear for the Spirit will not have an ear for the seducer.

           Now to help thee in thy search for the sense and meaning of the word, these directions, I hope, may stand thee in some stead.  First. Take heed thou comest not to the Scriptures with an unholy heart.  Second. Make not thy own reason the rule by which thou measurest Scripture truths.  Third. Take heed thou comest not with a judgment preengaged to any party or opinion.  Fourth. Go to God by prayer for a key to unlock the mysteries of his word.  Fifth. Compare scripture with scripture.  Sixth. Consult with thy faithful guides which God hath set over thee in his church.

           Direction First.  Take heed thou comest not to the Scriptures with an unholy heart.  If ever you know the mind of God in his word, the Spirit must impart it to you.  And will he that is so holy take thee by thy foul hand, thinkest thou, to lead thee into truth?  No, thy doom is set: ‘None of the wicked shall understand,’ Dan. 12:10.  The angel who took Lot’s daughters into the house smote the Sodomites with blindness, that they might grope for the door and not find it.  And so are those like to be served that come with unclean hearts to the word.  ‘Without are dogs:’ not only without heaven at last, but without the true knowledge of God on earth.  The wicked have the word of God, but the holy soul hath ‘the mind of Christ,’ I Cor. 2:16.  Therefore the same apostle ex­horts us that we ‘be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God,’ Rom. 12:2.  And what amounts this to, but if we will have truth for our guest, and be acquainted with the mind and will of God, we must prepare a holy heart for its lodging?  They commonly are taken captive by seducers who were before prisoners of their lusts, ‘and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,’ II Tim. 3:6, 7.  When David would beg understanding in the word, he makes his purpose for a holy life the argument with which he urgeth God: ‘Teach me, O Lord, the way of thy statutes; and I shall keep it unto the end. Give me understanding, and I shall keep thy law; yea, I shall observe it with my whole heart,’ Ps. 119:33, 34.

       

Provision in the promises for the two sorts of sorrows to which believers are prone 2/2

  Second.  Believers are at times prone to be troubled for the cause of Christ which they bear testi­mony unto, lest that should miscarry.  As for this trouble, though God takes the good-will to his cause and church very kindly, from which those thy fears arise, yet there is no need of tormenting thyself, be­liever, with that which is sure never to come to pass. The ark may shake, but it cannot fall; the ship of the church may be tossed, but it cannot sink, for Christ is in it, and will awake time enough to prevent its wreck. There is therefore no cause for us, when the storm beateth hard upon it, to disturb him, as once the dis­ciples did, with the shrieks and outcries of our unbe­lief, as if all were lost.  Our faith is more in danger of sinking at such a time than the cause and church of Christ are.  They are both by the promise set out of the reach of men and devils.  The gospel is an ‘everlasting gospel,’ Rev. 14:6.  Heaven and earth shall pass away, but not one iota of this shall perish, Matt. 5:18.  ‘The word of the Lord endureth for ever,’ I Peter 1:25, and shall be alive to walk over all its enemies’ graves, yea, to see the funeral of the whole world, when, at the great day of the Lord, it must be everlast­ingly buried in its own ruins.  And for the church, that is built upon a rock, impregnable.  ‘The gates of hell shall not prevail against it,’ Matt. 16:18.  It hath been oft in the sea, but never drowned; seldom out of the fire, but never consumed; sometimes swallowed up to reason, but, like Jonah in the whale’s belly, cast up again, as too heavy a charge for the strongest stomach that ever persecutor had to digest.  The faith of this hath carried the blessed martyrs to the grave, when they swam to it in their own blood with joy, because they knew the church should have the day at last, and that they left others behind in pursuit of the victory on earth, while themselves were taken out of the field to triumph in heaven.  Yea some, by prophetic spirit have foretold the very time when the persecuted truths, that were then buried with so much ignominy and scorn, should have a happy resurrection and vic­tory over their proud enemies.  Thus John Huss cited his enemies to answer him a hundred years after, comforting himself, that though they then ‘burned the goose’—alluding to his own name—‘a swan’ would come in his stead, that should fill the air with his sweet singing, which was fulfilled in Luther, whose doctrine went far and near, and charmed the hearts of multitudes everywhere.  And Hiltenius, another Ger­man divine, alleviated the miseries he endured in his stinking prison—where he died for rubbing the monks sores too hard—with this, that another, naming the very time, 1516, should arise after him, that would ruin the monks’ kingdom—whose abuses he had but gently reproved—and that they should not be able to resist his power, nor so much as fasten a chain upon him; which came to pass in Luther; for, to a miracle, he was kept out of the hands of his bloody enemies, though never man’s blood more thirsted for.

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           First.  Believers are at times prone to be troub­led for their own persons and private affairs.  To meet this there is in the promises an ample provision.  Ac­quaint thyself with those promises that concern thy­self as a sufferer for Christ, and see where any crevice is left unstopped, if thou canst, that may let in the least air of suspicion in thy mind to disturb thy peace and discompose thy joy.  The promises are so many, and fitted so exactly to every particular query of which the soul can desire satisfaction, that it will require thy study and diligence to gather them.  God having chosen rather to scatter his promises here and there promiscuously than to sort them and set every kind in a distinct knot by themselves, we may think on pur­pose that we might be drawn into an acquaintance with the whole Scripture, and not leave any one cor­ner unsearched, but curiously observe it from one end to the other.  And let not the present peace of the church cause thee to think it needless work.  The apothecary gathers his simples in the summer which haply he may not use [i.e. until] winter.  And how soon persecution may arise thou knowest not.  The church ever hath had, and shall have, its vicissitudes of summer and winter.  Yea, sometimes winter strikes in before it is looked for; and then who is the man most likely to be offended?  Surely he that received the word with joy in the prosperous estate of the church, but laid not in for foul weather.  Well, what is thy fear? whence comes thy discouragement?  Art thou scared with the noisomeness of the prison? or doth the terror of the fire, and torture of the rack, affright thee?  Know for thy comfort, if thy strength be too weak to carry thee through them, thou shalt never be called to such hot service and hard work. The promise assures thee as much, he ‘will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able,’ I Cor. 10:13.

           God who gives the husbandman his discretion with what instrument to thrash his corn, as it is hard­er or softer, will not let the persecutor’s wheel come upon thee that art not able to bear it.  God gives us this very account why he led his people the further way about—at their first coming out of Egypt—rather than by the land of the Philistines—the far shorter cut of the two—‘for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt,’ Ex. 13:17.  See here God considers their weak­ness.  They cannot yet bear war, and therefore they shall not be tried with it until more hardened for it. But if thou beest called into the field to encounter with these bloody fiery trials, the promise takes the whole care and charge of the war off thy hands: ‘When they deliver you up, take no thought’—that is, disquieting, distrustful—‘how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak,’ Matt. 10:19; and, it is ‘the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you,’ ver. 20.  There is no mouth that God cannot make eloquent; no back so weak which he cannot make strong.  And he hath promised to be with thee wherever thy enemies carry thee; fire and water shall not part thee from his sweet company.  These promises make so soft a pillow for the saints’ heads that they have professed, many of them, never to have lain at more ease than when most cruelly handled by their merciless enemies. One dates his letter ‘from the delectable orchard his prison;’ another subscribes herself, ‘Your loving friend, as merry as one bound for heaven.’  They have been so far from pitying themselves in their sufferings, that their chief sorrow hath been, that they could be no more thankful for them.  And whence had they their strength?  Where drew they their joy?  Had they not both from the same Spirit applying the promises to them?

         

DIRECTIONS how to use the sword of the word AGAINST PERSECUTORS 3/3

   DIRECTION THIRD.  Be sure thou givest up thy lusts to the sword of the Spirit before thy life is in any danger from the sword of the persecutor.  He is not likely to be free of his flesh for Christ, when called to suffer at man’s hand, that is dainty of his lusts, and cannot bear the edge of the Spirit’s sword, when he comes to mortify them.  Canst thou be willing to lay down thy life for Christ, and yet keep an enemy in thy bosom out of the hand of justice, that seeks to take away the life of Christ?  Persecutors tempt as well as torture, Heb. 11.  They promise the honours of the court as well as threaten the hardship of the prison and cruelty of the devouring fire.  Now, if thy love to the world be not mortified, it is easy to tell what choice thou wilt make, even the same that Demas did, thou wilt embrace the ‘present world,’ and leave Christ in the plain field.  Or if thou shouldst through a natural stoutness bear up under sufferings, even to give thy body to be burned, rather than renounce the true religion thou professest, yet if any lust should at last be found to have been fostered by thee, thou shalt have no more thanks at Christ’s hands than he who in the law offered up an unclean beast to God.  It is pos¬sible for one to die in the cause of Christ and not be his martyr.  Thy heart must be holy thou sufferest with as well as the cause holy thou sufferest for.  Thy behaviour must be gracious in suffering, as well as the cause just that brings thee to suffer. He alone is Christ’s martyr that suffers for Christ as Christ himself suffered.  For he hath not only left us his truth to maintain to blood when called thereunto, but his example to follow also in our sufferings.  ‘If when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God; for even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps;...who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not,’ I Peter 2:20, 21, 23.

           This is hard work indeed, in the very fire to keep the spirit cool, and clear of wrath and revenge towards those that throw him so unmercifully into the devouring flames!  But it makes him that by grace from above can do it, a glorious conqueror.  Flesh and blood would bid a man call for fire from heaven, rather than mercy to fall upon them that so cruelly handle them.  He that can forgive his enemy is too hard for him, and hath the better of him: because his enemy’s blows do but bruise his flesh, but the wounds that love gives pierce the soul and conscience.  Saul was forced to confess that David, persecuted so furiously by him, was the better man, ‘Thou art more righteous than I,’ I Sam. 24:17.  And the people went from the execution of Christ, whom they were so mad to have crucified, sick of what they had done, shaking their heads as if all were not right {what} they had done against so good a man, Luke 23.  Now, when two contraries are in a contest, that overcomes which preserves its own nature, and turns the other into some likeness unto itself; as we see fire transfuseth its own heat into the water, forcing it to assimilate and yield to it. Thus a holy charitable spirit, by forgiving an enemy, if it doth not prevail to turn an enemy’s heart to him in love, yet then it turns an enemy’s conscience against himself, and forceth him to condemn himself, and justify him whom he persecutes wrongfully.

           DIRECTION FOURTH.  Fortify thy faith on those promises which have an especial respect to such a condition as persecution.  This is the saints’ victory over the world, even their faith.  Thus David, when Saul seemed to have him under his foot, and had driven him from living in a court to earth himself for his safety in a cave of the wilderness, yet by faith triumphed over his proud enemy, and sung as pleasantly in his grot and earth hole as the merriest bird in the wood, ‘My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise,’ Ps. 57:7.  Saul had his body higher fed, but not his heart fixed as David’s was, and therefore could not sing David’s tune.  A thousand thoughts and fears distracted his head and heart, while David lives without fear and care, even when his enemies are in the field a hunting for his life.  Faith on the promise will, like the widow’s oil, not only set thee out of debt to all thy worldly fears and cares which by thy troubles thou mayest contract, but afford thee enough to live comfortably besides, yea, with joy unspeakable and glorious.  There are two sorts of sorrows that do usually distress gracious souls most in their sufferings for Christ.  First. They are prone to be troubled for their own persons and private affairs.  Second. For the cause of Christ which they bear testimony unto, lest that should miscarry.  Now there is abundant provision laid up in the promises to ease the Christian’s heart of both these burdens.