FOUR CONSIDERATIONS pr3/3 oving the sin of despair to exceed all others together 3/3

Consideration 3.  Despair strengthens and en­rageth all other sins in the soul.  None fight so fiercely as those who look for no quarter.  They think them­selves dead men, and therefore they will sell their lives as dear as they can.  Samson despaired of ever getting out of the Philistines’ hands—his eyes being now lost, and he unfit to make an escape.  What doth he meditate, now his case is desperate, but his ene­mies’ ruin, though it costs him his own?  He cares not though he pulls the house on his own head, so it may but fall on the Philistines’ also.  Absalom, when by the cursed counsel of Ahithophel he had, as he thought, made himself so hateful to David as to put him past all hope of being treated with, then breaks out with a high rage and seeks the ruin of his royal father with fire and sword.  So cruel a thing is despair, it teaches to show no respect where it looks for none. But most clearly it appears in the devil himself, who, knowing himself to be excepted from the pardon, sins with a rage as high as heaven.  And the same sin hath the same effects in men that it hath in the devil, ac­cording to the degrees of it that are found in them. ‘They said, There is no hope: but we will walk after our own devices,’ Jer. 18:11, 12.  Did you never see a sturdy beggar—after a while knocking at a door, and concluding by the present silence or denial that he shall have nothing given him—fall into a cursing and railing of them that dwell there?  Even such foul lan­guage doth despair learn the sinner to belch out against the God of heaven.  If despair enters it is im­possible to keep blasphemy out.  Pray, therefore, and do thy utmost to repel this dart, lest it soon set thy soul on a flame with this hell‑fire of blasphemy.

           Hear, O you souls smitten for sin, that spend your life in sighs, sobs, and tears for your horrid crimes past, would you again be seen fighting against God as fierce as ever?  As you would not, take heed of despair.  If thou once thinkest that God's heart is hardened against thee, thy heart will not be long hardening against him.  And  this, by the way, may administer comfort to the thoughts of some gracious but troubled souls, who can find no faith that they have, yea, who are oft reckoning them­selves among despairers.  Let me ask thee who art in this sad con­dition, this one thing, Canst thou find any love breathing in thy heart towards God, though thou canst find no breath of love coming at present from him to thee?  And art thou tender and fearful of sin­ning against him, even while thou seemest to thy own thoughts to hope for no mercy from him?  If so, be of good comfort; thy faith may be weak, but thou art far from being under the power of despair.  Desperate souls do not use to reserve any love for God, or care for the pleasing of him.  There is some faith surely in thy soul which is the cause of these motions, though, like the spring in a watch, it be itself unseen, when the other graces moved by it are visible.

           Consideration 4.  The greatness of this sin of despair appears in this, that the least sin envenomed by it is unpardonable, and without this the greatest is pardonable.  That must needs of all sins be most abominable which makes the creature incapable of mercy.  Judas was not damned merely for his treason and murder; for others that had their hands deep in the same horrid fact, obtained a pardon by faith in that blood which through cruelty they shed; but they were these heightened into the greatest malignity possible, from the putrid stuff of despair and final impenitency with which his wretched heart was filled, that he died so miserably of, and now is infin­itely more miserably damned for.  Such being despair, then, oh, let us shrink from the woful gulf!

FOUR CONSIDERATIONS proving the sin of despair to exceed all others together 2/3

           O my soul, saith faith, thou didst ill, yea, very ill, in breaking the holy laws of God, and dishonouring the name of the great God of heaven and earth there­by; let thy heart ache for this.  But thou dost far worse by despairing of mercy.  In this act thou rejectest Christ, and keepest him off from satisfying the justice of the law that is injured by thee, and from redeeming the honour of his name from the reproach thy sins have scandalized it with.  What language speaks thy despair but this?  Let God come by his right and hon­our as he can, thou wilt never be an instrument active in the helping of him to it, by believing on Christ, in whom he may fully have them with advantage.  O what shame would despair put the mercy of God to in the sight of Satan his worst enemy!  He claps his hands at this, to see all the glorious attributes of God served alike and divested of their honour.  This is meat and drink to him.  That cursed spirit desires no better music than to hear the soul ring the promises, like bells, backward; make no other use of them than to confirm it in its own desperate thoughts of its dam­nation, and to tell it hell‑fire is kindled in its conscience, which no mercy in God will or can quench to eternity.  As the bloody Jews and Roman soldiers exercised their cruelty on every part almost of Christ’s body, crowning his head with thorns, goring his side with a spear, and fastening his hands and feet with nails; so the despairing sinner deals with the whole name of God.  He doth, as it were, put a mock crown on the head of his wisdom, setting it all to naught, and charging it foolishly, as if the method of salvation was not laid with prudence by the all‑wise God.  He nails the hands of his almighty power, while he thinks his sins are of that nature as put him out of the reach and beyond the power of God to save him. He pierceth the tender bowls of God through his mercy, of which he cannot see enough in a God that not only hath, but is, mercy and love itself, to per­suade him to hope for any favour or forgiveness at his hands.  In a word, the despairing soul transfixeth his very heart and will, while he unworthily frames no­tions of God, as if he were unwilling to the work of mercy, and not so inclined to exercise acts of pardon and forgiveness on poor sinners as the word declares him.  No, despair basely misreports him to the soul, as if he were a lame God, and had no feet—affec­tions, I mean—to carry him to such a work as forgiving sin is.  Now, what does the sum of all this amount to?  If you can, without horror and amaze­ment, stand to cast it up, and consider the weight of those circumstances which aggravate the flagitiousness of this unparalleled fact, surely it riseth to no less than the highest attempt that the creature can make for the murdering of God himself; for the infinitude of God’s wisdom, power, mercy, and all his attributes, are more intrinsical to the essence and being of God, than the heart‑blood is to the life of a mortal man. Shall he that lets out the heart‑blood of a man, yea, but attempts to do it, be a murderer—especially if he be a prince or a king the design is against—and des­ervedly suffer as such a one? and shall not he much more be counted and punished as the worst of all murderers that attempts to take away the life of God —though his arm and dagger be too short for the purpose—by taking from him in his thoughts the infinitude of those attributes which are, as I may say, the very life of God?  Surely God will neither part with the glory, nor suffer the dishonour, of his name at the hands of his sorry creature; but will engage all his attributes for the avenging himself on the wretch that attempts it.  O tremble therefore at despair. Nothing makes thy face gather blackness, and thy soul hasten faster to the complexion of the damned souls, than this.  Now thou sinnest after the similitude of those that are in hell.

FOUR CONSIDERATIONS proving the sin of despair to exceed all others together 1/3

Consideration 1.  Despair opposeth God in the greatest of all his commands.  the greatest command without all compare in the whole Bible, is to believe.  When those Jews asked our Lord Jesus, ‘What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?’ mark his answer, ‘This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent,’ John 6:28, 29.  As if he had said, The most compendious way that I am able to give you, is to receive me into your hearts by faith; do this, and you do all in one.  This is the work that is instar omnium—all in all.  All you do is undone, and yourselves also, till this work be done, for which you shall have as much thanks at God’s hands as if you could keep the whole law.  Indeed, it is accepted in lieu of it: ‘To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness,’ Rom. 4:5; where ‘he that worketh not,’ is not meant a slothful lazy sinner that hath no list to work, nor a rebellious sinner whose heart riseth against the work which the holy law of God would employ him in; but the humbled sinner, who desires and endeavours to work, but is no way able to do the task the law as a covenant sets him, and therefore is said to have a law‑sense not to work, because he doth not work to the law’s purpose, so as to answer its de­mands, which will accept nothing short of perfect obedience.  This man’s faith on Christ is accepted for righteousness; that is, God reckons him so, and so he shall pass at the great day by the judge’s sentence, as if he had never trod one step awry from the path of the law.  Now, if faith be the work of God above all other, then unbelief is the work of the devil, and that to which he had rather thou shouldst do than drink or drab.  And despair is unbelief at the worst.  Unbelief among sins is as the plague among disease, the most dangerous; but when it riseth to despair, then it is as the plague with the tokens that bring the certain message of death with them.  Unbelief is despair in the bud, despair is unbelief at its full growth.

           Consideration 2.  Despair hath a way peculiar to itself of dishonouring God above other sins.  Every sin wounds the law, and the name of God through the law's sides.  But this wound is healed when the peni­tent sinner by faith comes to Christ and closeth with him.  God makes account, reparations now are fully made through Christ—whom the believer receives —for the wrong done to his law, and his name vindi­cated from the dishonour cast upon it by the crea­ture’s former iniquities; yea, that it appears more glorious because it is illustrious, by the shining forth of one title of honour, not the least prized by God himself—his forgiving mercy—which could not have been so well known to the creature, if not drawn forth to act upon this occasion.  But what would you say of such a prodigious sinner that, when he hath wounded the law, is not willing to have it healed? when he hath dishonoured God, and that in a high provoking man­ner, is not willing that the dirt he hath cast on God’s face should be wiped off?  Methinks I see every one of your choler to rise at the reading of this, against such a wretch, and hear you asking, as once Ahasu­erus did Esther, ‘Who is he, and where is he, that durst presume in his heart to do so?’ Est. 7:5.  Would you know?  Truly, the adversary and enemy is this wicked despair.  The despairing soul is the person that will not let Christ make satisfaction for the wrong that by his sins he hath done to God.  Suppose a man should wound another dangerously in his passion, and when he hath done, will not let any chirurgeon come near to cure the wound he hath made.  Every one would say his last act of cruelty was worse than his first.