Faith’s Victory Over The World Distinguished From That Attained By Some of The Better Heathens

           Objection.  But some may say, if this be all faith enables to, this is no more than some heathens have done.  They have trampled on the profits, pleasures of the world, who never knew what faith meant.

           Answer.  Indeed, many of them have done so much by their moral principles, as may make some, who would willingly pass for believers, ashamed to be outgone by them who shot in so weak a bow.  Yet it will appear that there is a victory of faith, which, in the true believer, outshoots them more than their moral conquest doth the debauched conversations of looser Christians.

1. Distinction.  Faith quenches the lust of the heart.  Those very embers of corruption, which are so secretly raked up in the inclination of the soul, find the force and power of faith to quench them.  Faith purifies the heart, Acts 15:9.  Now none of their con­quests reach the heart. Their longest ladder was too short to reach the walls of this castle.  They swept the door, trimmed a few outward rooms; but the seat and sink of all, in the corruption of man’s nature, was never cleansed by them; so that the fire of lust was rather pent in than put out.  How is it possible that could be cleansed, the filthiness of which was never known to them?  Alas! they never looked so near themselves to find that enemy within them which they thought was without.  Thus, while they laboured to keep the thief out he was within, and they knew it not.  For they did either proudly think that the soul was naturally endued with principles of virtue, or vainly imagined it to be but an abrasa tabula—white paper, on which they might write good or evil as they pleased.  Thus you see the seat of their war was in the world without them, which, after some sort, they con­quered; but the lust within remained untouched, be­cause a terra incognita—an unknown region to them.  It is faith from the word that first discovers this unfound land.
2. Distinction.  Faith’s victory is uniform.  Sin in Scripture is called a ‘body,’ Rom. 6:6, because made up of several members, or as the body of an army, con­sisting of many troops and regiments.  It is one thing to beat a troop or put a wing of an army to flight, and another thing to rout and break the whole army. Something hath been done by moral principles, like the former.  They have got some petty victory, and had the chase of some more gross and exterior sin; but then they were fearfully beaten by some other of sin's troops.  When they seemed to triumph over ‘the lust of the flesh’ and ‘eye’—the world’s profits and pleasures—they were at the same time slaves to ‘the pride of life,’ mere gloriæ animalia—creatures of fame—kept in chains by the credit and applause of the world.  As the sea which, they say, loses as much in one place of the land as it gains in another; so, what they got in a seeming victory over one sin they lost again by being in bondage to another, and that a worse, because more spiritual.  But now, faith is uni­form, and routs the whole body of sin, that not one single lust stands in its unbroken strength.  ‘Sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace,’ Rom. 6:14.  ‘Sin shall not’—that is, no sin; it may stir like a wounded soldier on his knees—they may rally like broken troops, but never will they be long master of the field where true faith is seen.
3. Distinction.  Faith enables the soul not only to quench these lusts, but, the temptation being quenched, it enables him to use the world itself against Satan, and so beat him with his own weapon by striking his own cudgels to his head.  Faith quen­ches the fire of Satan’s darts, and then shoots them back on him.  This it doth by reducing all the enjoy­ments of the world which the Christian is possessed of into a serviceableness and subordination for the glory of God.

           Some of the heathens’ admired champions, to cure ‘the lust of the eyes,’ have from a blind zeal plucked them out; to show the contempt of riches, have thrown their money into the sea; to conquer the world’s honour and applause, have sequestered them­selves from all company in the world—a preposterous way that God never chalked.  Shall we call it a victory or rather a frenzy?  The world by this time perceives their folly.  But faith enables for a nobler conquest. Indeed, when God calls for any of these enjoyments, faith can lay all at Christ's feet.  But while God allows them, faith’s skill and power is in sanctifying them. It corrects the windiness and flatulent nature of them so, that what on a naughty heart  rots and corrupts, by faith turns to good nourishment in a gracious soul.  If a house were on fire, which would you count the wiser man—he that goes to quench the fire by pulling the house down, or he that by throwing good store of water on it, doth this as fully, and also leaves the house standing for your use?  The heathen and some superstitious Christians think to mortify by taking away what God gives us leave to use; but faith puts out the fire of lust in the heart, and leaves the crea­ture to be improved for God’s glory and enjoyed to the Christian’s comfort.