Exhortation to believers to preserve the ‘shield of faith.’ 1/2

           I now turn myself to you that are believers in a double exhortation.  First. Seeing faith is such a choice grace, be stirred up to a more than ordinary care to preserve it.  Second. If faith be such a choice grace, and thou hast it, dent not what God hath done for thee. Faith is to be preserved with exceeding care because of its pre-eminence among graces.

           Exhortation First.  Seeing faith is such a choice grace, be stirred up to a more than ordinary care to preserve it.  Keep that, and it will keep thee and all thy other graces.  Thou standest by faith; if that fails thou fallest.  Where shall we find thee then but under thy enemies’ feet? Be sensible of any dan­ger thy faith is in; like that Grecian captain who, being knocked down in fight, asked as soon as he came to himself where his shield was.  This he was solicitous for above anything else.  O be asking, in this temptation, and that duty, where is thy faith, and how it fares?  This is the grace which God would have us chiefly judge and value ourselves by, because there is the least danger of priding in this self-emptying grace above any other.  ‘I say through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith,’ Rom. 12:3.  There were many gifts which the Corinthians received from God, but he would have them think of themselves rather by their faith, and the reason is, that they may ‘think soberly.’

           Indeed all other graces are to be tried by our faith; if they be not fruits of faith they are of no true worth.  This is the difference between a Christian and an honest heathen.  He values himself by his pa­tience, temperance, liberality, and other moral virtues which he hath to show above others.  These he ex­pects will commend him to God and procure him a happiness after death; and in these he glories and makes his boast while he lives.  But the Christian, he is kept sober in the sight of these—though they com­mence graces in him that were but virtues in the heathen—because he hath a discovery of Christ, whose righteousness and holiness by faith become his; and he values himself by these more than what is in­herent in him.  I cannot better illustrate this than by two men—the one a courtier, the other a countryman and a stranger to the court, both having fair estates, but the courtier the greatest by far.  Ask the country gentleman, that hath no relation to court or place in the prince’s favour, what he is worth; and he will tell you as much as his lands and monies amount to. These he values himself by.  But, ask the courtier what he is worth; and he—though he hath more land and money by far than the other—will tell you he values himself by the favour of his prince more than by all his other estate.  I can speak a big word, saith he: ‘What my prince hath is mine, except his crown and royalty; his purse mine to maintain me, his love to embrace me, his power to defend me.’  The poor heathens, being strangers to God and his favour in Christ, they blessed themselves in the improvement of their natural stock, and that treasure of moral virtues which they had gathered together with their industry, and the restraint that was laid upon their corruptions by a secret hand they were not aware of. But the believer, having access by faith into this grace wherein he stands so high in court favour with God by Jesus Christ, he doth and ought to value himself chiefly by his faith rather than any other grace.