Reasons Why We Should Be Serious In The Trial Of Our Faith 2/2

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2. Reason.  Consider the excellency of true faith makes false faith so much the more odious.  Because a king’s son is an extraordinary personage, therefore it is so high a crime for an ignoble person to counterfeit him­self to be such a one.  It is by that we ‘become the sons of God,’ John 1:12.  And what a high presumption is it then that, by a false faith, thou committest? Thou pretendedst to be a child of God, when no heaven-blood runs in thy veins, but hast more reason to look for thy kindred in hell and derive thy pedigree from Satan.  This passeth for no less than blasphemy in the account of the Scripture.  ‘I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan,’ Rev. 2:9.  God loathes such with his heart.  A false friend is worse than an open enemy in man’s judgment; and a hypocritical Judas more abhorred by God than a bloody Pilate. Either, therefore, get true faith, or pretend to none. The ape, because he hath the face of a man, but not the soul of a man, is therefore the most ridiculous of all creatures.  And of all sinners, none will be put more to shame at the last day than such as have aped and imitated the believer in some exterior postures of profession, but never had the spirit of a believer so as to perform one vital act of faith.  The psalmist tells us of some whose ‘image’ God will ‘despise,’ Ps. 73.20. It is spoken chiefly of the wicked man’s temporary pros­perity—which, for its short continuance, is compared to the image or representation of a thing in the fancy of a sleeping man, that then is busy and pl easeth us with many fine pleasing objects, but all are lost when our sleep leaves us—this God will despise at the great day; when he shall not give heaven and glory by the estates and honours that men had in the world, but tumble them down to hell if graceless, as well as the poorest beggar in the world.  But, there is another sort of persons whose image God will at that day despise more than these, and that is the image of all temporary believers and unsound professors, who have a fantastical faith, which they set up like an image in their imaginations, and dance about it with as many self-pleasing thoughts as a man doth that is dreaming himself to be some great prince; but this great idol shall then be broken, and the worshippers of it hissed down to hell with the greatest shame of any other.
3. Reason.  Consider that none stand at greater disadvantage for the obtaining of a true faith than he who flatters himself with a false one.  ‘Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit?  There is more hope of a fool than of him,’  Prov. 26:12, that is, there is more hope of persuading him.  Of all fools the conceited fool is the worst.  Pride makes a man incapable of receiving counsel.  Nebuchadnezzar’s mind is said to be ‘hardened in pride,’ Dan. 5:20.  There is no reasoning with a proud man.  He castles himself in his own opinion of himself, and there stands upon his defence against all arguments that are brought.  Bid a conceited professor labour for faith, or he is undone; and the man will tell you that you mistake and knock at the wrong door.  It is the ignorant person, or profane, you should go to on the errand.  He thanks God he is not now to seek for a faith, and thus blesseth himself in his good condition, when God knows ‘he feedeth on ashes: a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?’ Isa. 44:20.  The ignorant profane person, like the psalmist’s ‘man of low degree,’ is plain ‘vanity.’  It is not hard to make themselves to acknowledge as much as that they have nothing, de­serve nothing, can look for nothing as they are but hell and damnation.  But, such as pretend to faith, and content themselves with a false one, they are like the ‘men of high degree’ ‘a lie,’ which is vanity as well as the other, but with a specious cover over it that hides it.  Therefore the devil is forward enough to put poor silly souls on believing, that he may forestall, if he can, the Spirit's market, and prevent the creature’s obtaining of a true faith, by cheating of it with a counterfeit.  It is like the wicked policy of Jeroboam, who, to keep the Israelites from going to Jerusalem, and hankering after the true worship of God there, set up something like a religious worship nearer hand, at home, in the ‘golden calves;’ and this pleased many well enough, that they missed not their walk to Jeru­salem.  O friends, take heed therefore of being cheat­ed with a false faith.  Every one, I know, would have the living child to be hers and not the dead one.  We would all pass for such as have the true faith and not the false.  But, be not your own judges; appeal to the Spirit of God, and let him, with the sword of his word, come and decide the controversy.  Which faith is thine, the true or false?

Reasons Why We Should Be Serious In The Trial Of Our Faith 1/2

           Use Second.  Is faith the chief of graces?  Let this make us the more curious and careful that we be not cheated in our faith.  There are some things of so inconsiderable worth, that they will not pay us for the pains and care we take about them; and there to be choice and scrupulous is folly; to be negligent and incurious is wisdom.  But there are other things of such worth and weighty consequence, that none but he that means to call his wisdom in question can be willing to be mistaken and cozened in them.  Who that is wise would pay as for a precious stone, and have a pebble, or at best a Bristol-stone, put upon him for his money?  Who, when his life is at stake, and knows no way to save it but by getting some one rich drug which is very scarce, but to be had, would not be very careful to have the right?  O my dear friends, doth it not infinitely more concern you to be careful in your merchandise for this pearl of precious faith?  Can you be willing to take the devil's false sophisticated ware off his hand? a mock faith which he would cheat you with, rather than obtain the ‘faith unfeigned,’ which God hath to give unto his children —called therefore the 'faith of God’s elect?’  Will the devil’s drugs, that are sure to kill thee, serve thy turn, when thou art offered by God himself a rich drug that will cure thee?  When thou goest to buy a garment, thou askest for the best piece of stuff of cloth in the shop.  In the market thou wouldst have the best meat for thy belly; when with the lawyer the best counsel for thy estate; and of the physician the best directions for thy health.  Art thou for the best in all but for thy soul?  Wouldst thou not have a faith of the best kind also?  If a man receives false money, who doth he wrong but himself? and if thou beest gulled with a false faith, the loss is thy own, and that no small one. Thyself will think so when thou comest to the bar, and God shall bid thee either pay the debt thou owest him, or go to rot and roar in hell’s prison.  Then how wilt thou be confounded!  When thou producest thy faith and hopest to save thyself with this—that thou believest on the Lord Jesus—but shalt have thy confi­dence rejected, and God tell thee to thy teeth it is not faith but a lie in thy right hand that thou hast got, and therefore he will not accept the payment, though it be Christ himself that offerest to lay down; nay, that he will give thee up into the tormentor’s hand, and that not only for believing, but also for counterfeiting the King of heaven’s coin, and setting his name on thy false money; which thou dost by pretending to faith, when it is a false one thou hast in thy bosom.  This were enough to awaken your care in the trial of your faith, but to give some further weight to the exhorta­tion we shall cast in these three conditions.

1. Reason.  Consider that as thy faith is, so are all thy other graces.  As a man's marriage is so are all his children, legitimate, or illegitimate.  Thus, as our marriage is to Christ, so all our graces are.  Now, it is faith by which we are married to Christ.  ‘I have es­poused you to one husband,’ saith Paul to the Corinthians, II Cor. 11:2.  How, but by their faith?  It is faith whereby the soul gives its consent to take Christ for her husband.  Now, if our faith be false, then our mar­riage to Christ is feigned; and if that be feigned, then all our pretended graces are base-born.  How goodly soever an outside they have—as a bastard may have a fair face—they are all illegitimate; our humility, patience, temperance—all bastards.  And, you know, ‘a bastard was not to enter into the congregation,’ Deut. 23:2.  No more shall any bastard grace enter into the congregation of the just in heaven.  He that hath children of his own will not make another’s bastard his heir.  God hath children of his own to inherit heaven’s glory, in whose hearts he hath by his own Spirit begotten those heavenly graces which do truly resemble his own holy nature; surely he will never settle it upon strangers, counterfeit believers, that are the devil's brats and by-blows.