A Commentary on 2 Corinthians 1

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, unto the church of God which is at Corinth, with all the saints which are in all Achaia: Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ (2 Cor 1:1-2).

The preface to this epistle is the same as his other prefaces. Our blessed apostle had written a sharp epistle to the Corinthians, especially reproving their toleration of the incestuous person. That first epistle of his took effect. Though it did not do as much as he desired, it prevailed so far with them that they excommunicated the incestuous person and also reformed various abuses. Yet Corinth was a proud, factious, rich city, an excellent port and market town where many nations flowed together, and there were many proud, insolent teachers there who thought basely of St. Paul. Thereupon he writes this second epistle, the scope of which is partly apologetic, partly exhortatory.

(1) Apologetic, to defend himself. (2) Exhortatory, to instruct them in several duties, as we shall see in its passages.

The general scope of it is this: to show that the labor of the ministry is “not in vain in the Lord” (1 Cor 15:58). The fruit of the first epistle to the Corinthians is seen in this second; the first epistle took effect. Therefore we should not be discouraged, neither we who are ministers of the church nor those who are ministers in their own families, as every man should be. Do not be discouraged at unlikely prospects. There is always some success to encourage us. It may not be as much as we look for in this world, because there is a reprobate generation always set on caviling and opposing; yet some success there will be, as there was here.

A second thing in general out of the whole scope is this: it teaches us to vindicate our credit, when the truth may be wounded through us. So the apostle here stands on his reputation, and labors to free and clear himself from all imputations. He does this especially by his life, for that is the best defense. But because that would not serve, because it would not speak loud enough, he therefore makes an excellent defense in this epistle. But to come to the particulars.

“Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God, and Timothy our brother.” This chapter is apologetic, especially after the preface. He stands in defense of himself against two imputations. The first is that he was a man neglected by God, since he was so persecuted, and oppressed with so many afflictions. The second is the imputation of inconstancy, that he did not come to them when he had made a promise to come. This chapter is especially a defense against these two.

With an excellent heavenly wisdom, he turns off the imputation of afflictions and turns it the clean contrary way. He begins with thanksgiving, “Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, the God of all comfort, who hath comforted us in all our tribulations,” as if God had done him a great favor in them, as we shall see when we come to those words.

As for the preface, it is common to all his epistles, so we do not make it a principal part of the chapter. Yet because these prefaces have the seeds of the gospel in them, the seeds of heavenly comfort and doctrine, I will say something about it. Here is an inscription and a salutation.

In the inscription are the parties from whom this epistle was written, “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,” and the persons to whom it was written, “To the church of God at Corinth, and all the saints in Achaia.”

The salutation is “Grace and Peace,” in the form of a blessing, “Grace and peace.”

From whom they come: “From God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.”

“Paul an apostle…” In this inscription he sets down his office, “an apostle,” and “an apostle of Jesus Christ.” How apostles differ from other ministers is an ordinary point. St. Paul was called to be an apostle by Christ himself: “Am I not an apostle? have I not seen Christ?” (1 Cor 9:1). It was the privilege of the apostles to see Christ. They were taught immediately by Christ, they had a general commission to teach all, and they had extraordinary gifts. All these were in St. Paul eminently. And this was his prerogative, that he was chosen by Christ in heaven, in glory. The others were chosen by Christ when he was in abasement, in a state of humiliation. “Paul an apostle of Jesus Christ.”

“By the will of God.” By the appointment of God, by the designation of Christ; for every man in his particular calling is placed in it “by the will of God.” St. Paul says he was an apostle by the will of God, not by the will of man. This is the same word as is in the beginning of the Epistle to the Ephesians.

In a word, it teaches us this first observation: that we should think of ourselves, in our stations and callings, as being there by the will of God.

And therefore we should serve him by whose will we are placed in that station. Let every man consider, Who placed me here? God. If a hair cannot fall from my head without his providence (Matt 10:30), much less can the disposing of my calling, which is a greater matter. Therefore I will seek his glory, and frame myself and my courses to answer to the will of him by whose will I am in this place.

Men do not have their callings only to get riches and to get preferment. Those are base ends of their own, to serve themselves. God places us in our particular callings not to serve ourselves but to serve him; and in the serving of him in our places he will cast in those riches, honor, preferment, dignity, and esteem, as much of them as is fit for us.

The other party in the inscription, from whom the epistle comes, is “Timothy our brother.” He sends his epistle from Timothy as well as from himself. He does this to win the more acceptance among the Corinthians by the consent of so blessed a man as Timothy was, who was an evangelist. Unity by consent is stronger. And there is a natural weakness in men to regard the consent and authority of others more than the things themselves. And indeed, if God himself in heavenly love and mercy condescends to help our weakness, much more should all who are “led by the Spirit of God” (Rom 8:14). We are prone to call the truths of God into question. Therefore he helps us with sacraments, and with other means and allurements. Although what he says is truth, yet because he would undermine our distrustful dispositions by every means, he uses those courses. So St. Paul, that they might respect what he wrote the more, as coming from a joint spirit, writes, “Paul, and Timothy our brother.”

It was a proof of much modesty and humility in this blessed apostle that he would not seem, as it were, to monopolize their respect for himself, as if all should look to him. Instead he joins Timothy with him; so great an apostle joins an inferior.

There is a spirit of singularity in many. They will seem to do everything themselves, and carry everything before them, and they will not speak the truths that others have spoken before them without some disdain. As a proud critic said, “I wish those who spoke our things before us had never been, so that we might have had all the credit for it.” Oh, no! Those who are led by the Spirit of God are content in modesty and humility to have others joined with them. And they know it is profitable for others as well; they will respect the truth the more.

And this far we yield to the papists when we speak of this question, whether the church can give authority to the word of God or not. In regard to us, the church has some power, in regard to our weakness. But what is that power? It is an inducing power, an alluring power, a proposing power, to set before us the mysteries of salvation. But the inward work, the convincing power, is from the evidence of the Spirit of God and from the Scripture itself. All that the church does is to move, to induce, and to propose this, as far as we are concerned. It has some power in the hearts of men.

The church gives authority to the Scriptures in the hearts of men this far, though it is an improper phrase to say it gives authority; for, as the men said to the woman of Samaria, “Now we believe it ourselves, not because thou toldest us…” (John 4:42). The church allures us to respect the Scriptures; but then there is an inward power, an inward majesty in the Scriptures, and that bears down everything before it.

Again, here is a reason why St. Paul sometimes cited human authority in his epistles and in his dealing with men: because he had to deal with men who would be shamed the more by such authorities. Anything that may strengthen the truth, in regard to the weakness of those with whom we have to deal, may be used by a heavenly policy. “One of your own prophets,” says St. Paul to Titus (Titus 1:12). And so in the Acts of the Apostles he quotes a saying out of an atheist (Acts 17:28).

“Timothy our brother.” “Brother”: he means not only by grace but by calling. As we know, in the law and other professions those of the same profession are called brothers. So Timothy was St. Paul’s brother, not only by grace but by calling, and two bonds bind more strongly. Here is a threefold bond: nature, grace, calling. They were men, they were fellow Christians, and they were teachers of the gospel. Therefore he says, “Timothy our brother.”

Timothy was an evangelist, yet it was a greater honor to him to be a brother to St. Paul than to be an evangelist. A hypocrite may be an evangelist, but none except a true Christian can be a true brother of St. Paul. All Christians are brothers. It is a word that levels all, for it takes down the mountains and fills up the valleys. The greatest men in the world, the mountains, if they are Christians, are brothers to the lowest. And it fills up the valleys: the lowest, if they are Christians, are brothers to the highest. However it may be in worldly respects, these cease in death; personal differences and differences in calling all cease in death. All are brothers; therefore he uses the word as a mark of great respect. St. Paul was a great apostle, Timothy an inferior man, yet both were brothers: “Timothy our brother.”

“To the church of God at Corinth.” We have seen the persons from whom, “Paul and Timothy.” Now here are the persons to whom, “to the church of God at Corinth.” Corinth was a very wicked city, for where there is a great confluence of many people, there is a contagion of the people’s many sins. And yet, for all that, in this Corinth there was a church. For as Christ says, “No man can come to me, except my Father draw him” (John 6:44); so where the Father will draw, who can draw back?

Even in Corinth God has his church. He raises up a generation of men, a church, which is a company of creatures differing as much from the common run as men do from beasts. And yet such is the power and efficacy of the blessed gospel of salvation, with the Spirit of God accompanying it, that even in Corinth, a wretched city, this word and this Spirit raised up a company of men, called here by the name of a church, and saints. And such power indeed the word of God with the Spirit has, not only in wicked places but in our wicked hearts too.

Let a man have a world of wickedness in him, and let him come and present himself meekly and constantly to the means of salvation, and God in time by his Spirit will raise a new frame of grace in his heart; he will make a new creation. At the first he created everything out of nothing, order out of confusion. So too with the heart, which is nothing but a chaos of confusion, of blindness, and darkness, and terror (there is a world of confusion in the heart of man). Out of it God by his creating word (for his word of the gospel is creating, as his word was at the first in the creation of the world; it has a creating power) raises an excellent frame in the heart of a man. He scatters his natural blindness, he sets in order his natural confusion, so that a man becomes a new creature, and an heir of a new world.

Let no people despair, and no person; for God has his church in “Corinth.”

But what has become of this church now? Why, alas! it is under the slavery of the Turks; it is under miserable captivity at this day. At first, Corinth was overthrown by Mummius, a Roman captain, for abusing the Roman ambassadors. It was ruined for its unfitting conduct toward the ambassadors, who would not allow themselves, or the majesty of the Roman empire, to be held in contempt. But Augustus Caesar afterward repaired it. And now, for neglecting God’s ambassadors, the preachers of the gospel, it is under another misery, but a spiritual one; it is under the bondage, I say, of that tyrant.

What has become of Rome, that glorious city? It is now “the habitation of devils, a cage of unclean birds” (Rev 18:2). What has become of those glorious churches to which St. John wrote those epistles in his Revelation, and to which St. Paul wrote? Alas, they are gone! The gospel has now come into the western parts. And shall we think all will be safe with us, as the Jews did, crying, “The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord” (Jer 7:4)?

No, no! Not unless we respect Christ’s blessed gospel of salvation, not unless we bring forth fruits worthy of it, not unless we maintain and defend it, and think it our honor and our crown, and are zealous for it. If we allow its insolent enemies to grow like vipers in the very bosom of the church, what is likely to become of us? If there were no foreign enemies to invade us, we would let slip the glorious gospel of salvation.

God will not allow this indignity to this blessed jewel, his truth; he will not allow the doctrine of the gospel to be so disrespected. You see the fearful example of the church of Corinth. Let those whom it may concern, who have any advantage and authority, put in for God’s cause, put in for the gospel. Let them labor to spread this blessed truth we enjoy and to pass it on to posterity, by suppressing as much as they may those who undermine it. It is an acceptable service. “To the church of God at Corinth.”

“And all the saints in Achaia.” Corinth was the city, Achaia the country in which Corinth stood. There were saints then, holy men, in all Achaia. And St. Paul writes to “all saints,” to weak saints, to strong saints, to rich saints, to poor saints, because every saint has something lovely and worthy of respect in them, something to be respected. The least grace deserves respect from the greatest apostle. And all have one head, all have one hope of glory, all are redeemed with the same “precious blood of Christ” (1 Pet 1:19) (and so I might run on). The many privileges belong to all. Therefore all should have a place in our respect.

“To all saints,” so that the least should not think themselves undervalued. Weakness is most of all given to complaining if it is disrespected. Therefore, in heavenly wisdom and prudence, the apostle puts in “all saints,” in all Achaia whatsoever. Besides the mother city, the metropolis of that country, which was Corinth, there were saints scattered.

God in heavenly wisdom scatters his saints. As seed scattered in the ground does more good than when it lies in heaps in the barn, so God scatters his saints as jewels, as the lights of the world. Here he will have one to shine, and there another. Here he will have one fruitful, to condemn the wicked world where they are, and by their good example and their heavenly and fruitful way of life to draw those with whom they live out of the wicked state of nature. Therefore he will have them scattered here and there, not only at Corinth, but “saints in all Achaia,” besides those scattered in other places.

But we must know, by the way, that these saints had a tie to some particular church. For though it is sufficient to make a Christian to have union with Christ (there is the main thing, the head), yet he must be a branch, he must be a member of some particular congregation. Therefore we have it in Acts: “God added to the church such as should be saved” (Acts 2:47). Those who are added to salvation must be added to the church; a man must be a member of some particular church. So, though these were scattered, they were members of some church. God’s children are like stones in some building, and an influence of grace comes from Christ, the Head, to every particular member, as it does in the body. God does not give life to straggling members that have no tie to any particular church. That I note by the way. “To the church of God at Corinth, and all the saints in Achaia.”

Question. “Saints.” The apostle calls them saints. All believers are called saints. Are they so? Are all in the visible church saints? Yes, say some, and therefore they say that our church is not a true visible church, because many of its people are not saints. So say some who went out from among us.

Answer. I answer, all are, or should be, saints. St. Paul wrote here to those who were sacramental saints, and such as were saints by outward covenant and profession. He does not mean that all of them were inwardly so, but that all should be so. He calls them saints to put them in mind of their duty. To clear this point a little:

1. Sometimes the church of God in the Scripture takes its name from the mixture of good and bad in it. So it is called a field where there is a mixture of good and bad seed (Matt 13:24-25); so it is called a house in which there are vessels of honor and vessels of dishonor (2 Tim 2:20), because there is such a mixture in the visible church.

2. Sometimes the church takes its name from the better part. So it is the spouse of Christ, the love of Christ, “a peculiar people,” “an holy nation” (1 Pet 2:9), and “saints,” as it is here. Not that all are so, but it takes its name from the better part. All should be so, and the best are so, and it is sufficient that a company be named from the better part. As we say of gold ore: though there is much earth mixed with it, yet in regard to the better part we call it gold; we give it that name. So, because the best are saints, and all should be so, he therefore calls them all saints.

Question. Should all in the visible church be saints by profession and by sacrament? Should all who are baptized, and receive the communion, enter into a profession of holiness? What do you say, then, to a profane, atheistic generation who, if you please, make no show of holiness, so that we must look for no holiness from them?

Answer. I say all profane persons are gross hypocrites. Why? Are you members of the church or not? “Yes,” everyone will say. “Will you make me an infidel? Will you make me a pagan?” Well, take your own word, then. What is it to be a member of the church but to be a saint? Must you be a saint? Does not your profession, as you are a member, bind you to be a saint? In baptism, was not your promise to “renounce the devil, the world, and the flesh”? In renewing your covenant in the communion, do you not purpose to cleave to God in all things?

You who take liberty, therefore, in the church of God, under the profession of religion, to live as a libertine, you are a gross hypocrite, and this aggravates your sin and makes it worse than a pagan’s. You are in the bosom of the church, in the kingdom of saints, as it is in Daniel 7:27, “the people of the saints of the Most High,” the people of God in the church of which you are a professed member; and yet do you take liberty grossly to offend God?

Question. What makes a saint?

Answer. In a word, to the constitution of a true saint there belong a separation, a dedication, a qualification, and a way of life.

1. There is a separation at once. When a man is a saint, he is separate from the confused company of the world, from the kingdom of Satan. Therefore those who treat all companies alike, who carry themselves indifferently in all companies, such as men who profess a kind of civility, who are taken up with the fine manners of the times, men who learn the language of the times, who are for all sorts: they do not know what belongs to the high profession of Christianity.

There is a due to all, I confess; there is a benevolence and a beneficence to all. But there is a kind of delight, a sweet familiarity and friendship, which should be reserved to a few, only to those in whom we see the evidences and signs of grace. If there is not a separation in respect of grace, there is no holiness at all; a saint must be separated. Not in place, but in regard to friendship, in regard to intimate friendship.

We see it so in outward things, in some of our houses. There is a court where all come, poor and rich; there is the house where those of nearer acquaintance come; and then there is the innermost room, the private chamber, where only we ourselves and those nearest to us come. So it is in the passages of the soul. There are some remote courtesies that come from us, as men, to all, be they what they will. There are other marks of respect to others who are nearer, whom we admit nearer, who are of better quality. And there are others nearest of all, whom we admit even into the private chamber of our hearts. Those are the ones with whom we hope to have communion forever in heaven, the blessed people of God, termed here “saints.” It is an evidence of our translation from a cursed state to a better when we love such people. “Hereby we know,” says St. John, “that we are translated from death to life, because we love the brethren” (1 John 3:14). There must be a separation.

2. And along with this there must be a dedication of ourselves to the service of God. A Christian, when he knows himself by the word of truth and by the work of the Spirit to be God’s child, dedicates himself to better services than before. He thinks himself too good, he thinks too highly of himself, to be a base blasphemer or swearer, to be a filthy person. He considers himself as “the temple of the Holy Ghost” (1 Cor 6:19), and he uses himself for better purposes, for better studies, to do good.

3. And then with dedication there is an inward qualification, to endow him with light, so as never to forget the image of God. In this the saintship stands, especially in this inward qualification, by which we resemble Christ the King of saints. All our sanctification comes from him. As Aaron’s ointment went down from his head to his beard, and so to his skirts (Ps 133:2), so all our sanctification is from Christ. Every saint is qualified from the Spirit of Christ.

“Of his fulness” (John 1:16) we receive this inward qualification, so that we have another judgment of things than this world has: what is good and what is bad, what is true and what is false, what is comforting and what tends to discomfort. A saint has another conception of things. He has another light than he had before, and than other carnal men have. He has a heavenly light. He has another language. He gives himself to prayer and to thanksgiving. He is given to savory talk. He has other courses in his particular calling and in his general calling than other worthless company have, or than he himself had before his calling. This comes from his qualification.

4. And this qualification and a way of life go together. He has a new way of life. He carries himself even like him who “hath called him out of darkness into marvellous light” (1 Pet 2:9). So a true saint, as every professor of religion ought to be, is dedicated to God, and he is qualified in some degree, as Christ was, by his Holy Spirit. He is a new creature. “He that is in Christ is a new creature” (2 Cor 5:17), and he shows this by his way of life, or else he is no saint.

Question. How shall we know a saint from a merely moral man? (For there are many who live and die in that state, which is to be pitied; and one main end of our calling is not only to bring profane men back to a better fashion of life, but to show moral men their danger.)

Answer. A merely moral man looks to the second table of the law. He is smooth in his conduct and dealings with men, but negligent in his service to God. A moral man looks to his outward conduct, but he makes no conscience of secret sins. He is not “holy in all manner of conversation,” as St. Peter says (1 Pet 1:15). “Be ye holy in all manner of conversation,” in private, in public, in your retired conduct. He makes no conscience of his thoughts, of his speeches, of anything.

You may know a hypocrite in the same way. He carries himself smoothly and acceptably in the eye of the world, but he makes no conscience of his thoughts; he makes no conscience of his affections, of his desires, of his lusts, and such things. He makes no conscience of lesser oaths, nor perhaps of rotten talk. No; they are all for this, that they may pass in the world, that they may carry themselves with acceptance. As for what belongs to the “new creature,” to saints, they do not care; for they have vain notions of these, and judge them to be hypocrites. Such a one knows he would be a hypocrite himself if he did otherwise than he does. Therefore he thinks that others who are above his pitch are hypocrites, making a show of what is not in them; because if he made a show of that, his heart would tell him that he was a hypocrite.

A true saint differs from a hypocrite in many respects, but mainly in this one: a true saint of God is altered in the inward frame and qualification of his soul. He is a “new creature.” Therefore there is a spring of better thoughts, of better desires, of better aims in him than in other men. And he labors more after the inward frame of his heart than after his outward conduct. What he is ashamed to do, he is ashamed to think, he is ashamed to lust after. What he desires to do, he desires to love in his heart. He labors that all may be true in the inward man, because grace, as well as nature, begins from the heart, from the inward parts.

A hypocrite never cares for that. All his care is for the outward parts. He is work made for sale. So long as his conduct is acceptable to others, all his care is taken. He lives for the view. Therefore he looks not to the substance and the truth, but to the shadow and appearance.

Now I come to the salutation itself.

Grace be unto you … (2 Cor 1:2)

“Grace” enters into the whole conduct of a Christian’s life and sweetens even his salutations. I point this out because many people confine their religion to places, to actions, and to times. There is a relish of holiness in everything that comes from a Christian, even in his salutations and courtesies. St. Paul greets them, “Grace and peace from God …” And the use of holy salutations is to show and win love.

To show love and respect. That is why he greets them; and by showing love, to gain love, for there is a lodestone in love. And third, the use of salutations is to convey some good by them. For these salutations are not mere wishes but prayers, indeed, blessings. God’s people are a blessed people, and they are full of blessing. They carry a blessing in their very speech.

Question. What is a blessing?

Answer. A blessing is a prayer, with the application of the thing prayed for. It is something more than a prayer: “Grace be with you, and peace.” It is not only a mere wish, as if to say, I desire it. No, my desire for it comes with an applying of it: “Grace shall be with you, and peace,” and the more because I heartily wish it for you. It is no light matter to have the benediction and salutation of a holy man, especially of those who are superiors, for the superiors bless the inferiors. A grace goes even with the very salutations, with the common prayers of a holy man. It is a comforting sign when God enlarges the heart of a holy man to wish another man well.

And surely the very consideration of that should move us to give them such encouragement from our conduct and demeanor that they may have hearts to remember us at the throne of grace, to give us a good wish, to give us a good desire. For every gracious desire, every prayer, has its effect when it comes from a favorite of God, especially from such a man as St. Paul was: from a minister, a holy man in a calling, a man of God. They have their power with them. They are not empty words, “grace and peace.”

The popes think it a great favor when they bestow their apostolic benediction and blessing. Their blessing is not worth much. Their curse is better than their blessing. But surely the blessing of a man rightly called, of those who are true ministers of Christ, is clothed with power and efficacy from God. “Grace be with you, and peace”: it is no idle compliment.

And here you see likewise what the manner of Christians’ salutations should be. As they ought to greet one another, to show love and to gain love, so all their salutations should be holy. People often take the name of God in vain in their salutations, “God save you,” and it must be done with a kind of scorn. If there is any show of religion, it does not suit them, though that is what should suit them most. What should suit a saint but to carry himself like a saint? And yet people must do it with a kind of scorn, with a kind of graceless grace.

Yet in its religious use it is a comforting and sweet thing, and among God’s children it always has a comforting and gracious effect. Either it takes effect and is made grace to those to whom it is spoken, or it returns to those who speak it. As Christ says to his disciples, “When you come into a house, pronounce peace to them; and if the house be not worthy, your peace shall return to you” (Matt 10:13). So it is with the salutations of a good man. If they are not effectual for the people he greets, if those people are unworthy, rebellious creatures, his salutations return again to himself. They have effect one way or another. Therefore, let it not be done by taking the name of God in vain in a scornful manner, but with gravity and reverence, as befits a holy action.

There is some limitation and exception to this. Salutations may in some cases be omitted.

1. As in serious business: “salute no man by the way,” as Christ says to his apostles (Luke 10:4). A neglect is sometimes good manners, when respect is swallowed up in a greater duty. So it was good manners for David to dance and to carry himself, as it were, in an unseemly way before the ark (2 Sam 6:14), because he was to neglect respect to lesser persons, to forget the respect he was to show to men. Being altogether taken up with higher matters, it was a kind of decency and comeliness. And excessive scrupulousness and fussiness in lesser things, when people are called to greater, is only unmannerly manners. In these cases the lesser things must give way and place to the greater. “Salute no man by the way.” Dispatch the business you are about; that is, if a salutation may be a hindrance along the way, do not salute. This is in respect of time.

2. And as for time, so for persons. A notorious, incorrigible heretic, do not salute. To greet such a person would be, as it were, a connivance at him or an indulgence to him. Salute him not. The denial of a salutation often has the force of a censure. The person neglected may think there is something in him for which he is neglected in that way. In these cases salutations may sometimes be omitted. But I go on to the particulars.

“Grace be unto you and peace.” These are the good things wished. We see the apostle, a blessed man, who had been caught up “in the third heaven” (2 Cor 12:2), who had been taught by Christ what things were most excellent, and who had himself seen excellent things which he could not utter (2 Cor 12:4), when he comes to wishes, we see that out of heavenly wisdom and experience he draws them under two heads, all good things under “grace and peace.” If there had been better things to wish, he would have wished them, but grace and peace are the principal things.

Question. What is meant by grace here?

Answer. Grace in this place is the free favor and love of God from his own tender heart, not for any desert, or worth, or strength of love of ours. It is his own free grace and love, which is shed abroad by the Holy Spirit and springs only from his own goodness and loving nature, and not from us at all. This is grace. It must be distinguished from its fruits, as the apostle distinguishes them: “grace, and the gifts of grace” (Rom 5:15). There is favor, and there are the gifts of favor, which are grace inherent in us.

Here is especially meant the fountain and spring of all the favor of God, with the manifestation of it, with the increase of it, with the continuance of it. He wishes these things, the favor of God, with the manifestation of it to their souls: that God would be gracious to them in such a way that he would show his grace; that he would reveal it and shine upon them; and to that end that he would give them his Holy Spirit, to shed his love into their hearts (Rom 5:5). This shining of God into the heart, this shedding of the love of God into the heart, is the grace meant here: God’s favor, with the manifestation of it to the soul, and with the continuance of it, and the increase of it still.

“Grace unto you.” It is as if he had said: I wish you the favor of God and the report of it to your souls, that as he loves you through his Christ, so he would witness as much by his Holy Spirit to your souls. And I wish you likewise the continuance of it, and the increase of it, and the fruits of it likewise (for that must not be excluded), all particular graces, which are likewise called graces. They have the name of favors because they come from favor, and favor is the chief thing in them. What is the chief thing in joy, in faith, in love? They are graces. They cannot be considered as qualities, as earthly things in us. They proceed from the grace and love of God and have their special value from there. So I wish you the manifestation, the continuance, and the increase of favor, with all the fruits of God’s favor, especially such as concern a better life.

The word is easily understood from its common sense. Grace is the loving and free regard of a superior for an inferior, the regard of a magistrate for those under him. “So-and-so is in grace with the prince,” we say. We do not mean any inherent thing, but free grace. So in religion grace is not any inherent, habitual thing; it is free favor and whatever issues from free favor. This phrase must be the more carefully observed against the papists. We say we are justified by grace, and so do they. What do they mean by being justified by grace? They mean by inherent grace. We say, No; we are justified by grace, that is, by the free favor of God in Jesus Christ. That is the sense in which the word is taken.

But to come to the point, what I will now note is this:

Doctrine. A Christian, though he is in the state of grace and favor with God, still needs the continuance of it.

He stands in need of the continuance of God’s favor. St. Paul here prays for grace and peace for those who were already in the state of grace. Why? The reason is that of ourselves we run into new breaches every day. As long as there is a spring of corruption in us, a cursed outflow of corruption, so long there will be some actions, and speeches, and thoughts issuing from it that would of themselves break our peace with God, or at least hinder the sweet sense of it. Therefore we have continual occasion to renew our desires for the sense and feeling of the favor of God, and to renew our pardon every day, to take out a pardon as a matter of course, as we now have the liberty to do. As often as we confess our sins, he is merciful to forgive us (1 John 1:9). And to win his favor, we still have need of grace every day.

I do not care to enter into conflict here with the papists concerning their opinion. I will only touch on it in passing, to show its danger. They will not have everything be of pure grace. But Christians are under grace while they are in this world. As St. Paul says, all is grace, grace still. Indeed, at the day of judgment: “The Lord show mercy to the house of Onesiphorus at that day” (2 Tim 1:16, 2 Tim 1:18), that is, at the day of judgment. Grace and mercy must be our plea until we come to heaven.

They insist on grace to equip us for the work, so that by the work we may then merit our own salvation. And so they will not have salvation be of grace, of gift, but a stipend, a thing of merit. This is directly contrary to St. Paul. Eternal life, he says, is a gracious gift; the word comes from the word for grace, for gift: The gift of God, a free gift through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 6:23). So from the first grace to eternal life, which is the completion of all, all is grace.

As for the New Testament, it is the covenant of grace. The whole conduct of our salvation is called the covenant of grace because God enters into covenant with us out of grace. He sent Christ out of grace, who is the foundation of the covenant. The fulfilling of it on our part is of grace. He gives us faith. “Faith is the gift of God” (Eph 2:8). “He puts his fear in our hearts that we should not depart from him” (Jer 32:40).

And when he enters into covenant with us, it is out of grace and love. It was out of grace that he sent Christ to be the foundation of the covenant, so that in the satisfying of his justice he might be gracious to us without disparagement to his justice. Out of grace he fulfills the condition on our part. We are no more able to believe than we are to fulfill the law; but as we attend upon the means of salvation, he enables us by his word and Spirit to fulfill the covenant. And when we have done all, he gives us eternal life out of grace. All is of grace.

There is nothing in the gospel but grace. Therefore the apostle insists on it in Ephesians 1:6: “To the praise of the glory of his rich grace.” From election to glorification, all is to the glory of his grace.

We ought to think of God as a gracious Father, withholding his anger, which we deserve to have poured upon us; by the intercession of Christ withholding that anger and its fruits. And although we are in grace, if we neglect to seek God the Father, if we neglect to seek Christ, who makes intercession for us, then, though we are still in the first grace and are not yet cast away, we are sons under wrath. We are under anger, though not under hatred.

Therefore, every day we should labor to maintain the grace of God with the assurance of it. It is a great matter so to carry ourselves that we may live under the sense and feeling of the grace of God. It is not enough to be in the grace of God; we must also have the report of it to our own hearts, and have it shine upon us.

Question. How should we carry ourselves so that we may be in a state of grace, that is, in such a state that we may continually find the sweet evidence and comforting feeling that we are God’s children?

Answer. 1. First of all, there must be a perpetual, daily practice of abasing ourselves, of making ourselves poor. That is, every day we must see the vanity of all things in the world outside us, see the weakness of grace in us, and see the return of our corruptions that foil us every day, so that we may see how much we stand in need of the favor of God. We must consider that all comforts outside us are vanity and that all the graces in us are stained with corruption; and we must consider, besides the stains on our graces, that there is a continual outflow of corruption. These things will make our spirits poor and make us hunger and thirst after the sense and feeling of free pardon every day. This will compel us to renew our charter, to renew our portion in the covenant of grace, to have daily pardon. This should be our daily practice, to enter deeper and deeper into ourselves.

This is to “live by faith” (Gal 2:20). God is continually ready to show us favor in Christ, not only at the first in acquitting us from our sins. He continually shows us favor on all occasions, and is justifying and pardoning and speaking peace to us continually. So there must be an answering action in us, that is, depending upon God by faith, living by faith. This we do by seeing how much we stand in need of grace. “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (Jas 4:6).

2. Then again, so that we may walk in the grace of God and in the sense of it, let us labor every day to have our souls more and more enriched with the endowments and graces of God’s Spirit, that we may be objects of God’s delight. Let us labor to be disposed toward things as he is disposed toward them. Two cannot “walk together except they be agreed” (Amos 3:3). Let us hate what God hates and delight in what God delights in, that we may have a kind of delight in the blessed work of the Spirit of God and be in love with it more and more. Let us labor to delight in those who grow in grace, for the nearer anyone comes to our likeness, the more we grow in familiarity with them. Labor also to preserve a clear soul, that God may shine upon us. God takes no delight in being a stranger to us. His desire is that we may walk in the sense and assurance of his grace and favor.

Question. How shall we know that we are in a state of grace with God?

Answer. I answer, so that we do not deceive ourselves:

1. We must look to the work of God’s grace. God’s grace is a fruitful grace. His favor is fruitful. It is not a barren favor; it is not a winter sun. The sun in winter has a goodly countenance, but it does not heat to any purpose; it does not give life. But God’s grace carries life and heat wherever it comes. Therefore, if we are in a state of grace and favor with God, we may discern it.

But, you may say, in times of desertion, though a person is in grace and favor with God, yet many times he thinks he is not.

That is true. At such times, then, we must not always go to our feeling and to the enlargement of our hearts by the Spirit of comfort, but go to the work of grace. For,

2. Where grace and favor are, there are the graces of the Spirit. As it is not a bare favor in regard of comfort, so it is not a barren favor in regard of graces; for every heart that is in favor with God has some graces of the Spirit. God enriches the soul where he shows favor. His love tokens are graces of some kind. Therefore, if the witness and comfort of the Spirit cease in a case of desertion, let us go to the work of the Spirit, and by that we may know whether we are in grace with God. For God’s people are a “peculiar people,” and God’s children always have some grace peculiar to them. The spouse of Christ has some ornaments, some jewels, which others do not have.

Therefore, examine your heart: what work of God there is, what desire you have after better things, what inward hatred against what is evil, what strength you have against it. Go to some mark of regeneration, of the “new creature,” and these will give evidence that we are in a state of grace with God, because these are favors peculiar to his people. And though we do not feel the comfort, yet there is a work, and that work will comfort us more than the comfort itself will do.

3. And this is one thing by which we may know we are in favor with God: when we can comfort ourselves, and can go to the throne of grace through Christ. When we can go boldly to God, it is a sign of favor. When we can call upon him, when we can go to prayer in any desertion, when in any affliction we can have enlarged hearts, it is a sign of favor with God. A mere hypocrite, or a man who does not have this peculiar grace, trusts in outward things; and when they are gone, when he is in trouble, he does not have the heart to go to God. His heart is shut up and he sinks down, because he relied upon common matters. He did not rely upon the favor of God and its best fruit, which are graces, but upon common favors. Therefore he sinks in despair.

But a sound Christian, take him at his worst, can sigh to God, can go to him and open his soul to him. “By Christ we have an entrance to the Father” (Eph 2:18); “We have boldness through faith” (Eph 3:12). Every Christian has this in the worst extremity: he has a spirit of prayer. Though he cannot enlarge himself in prayer, yet he can sigh and groan to God, and God will hear the sighs of his own Spirit; they are loud in his ears. David at his worst prays to God. Saul at his worst goes to the witch (1 Sam 28:7 and following), and from there to his sword’s point (1 Sam 31:4).

But usually the customary temper and disposition of a man in the state of grace is joy; for, as one says, grace is the begetter of joy, since in the Greek language they both have one root. The same root serves for favor and for joy. So favor usually and ordinarily comes with a sweet enlargement of heart. If it is otherwise, we may thank ourselves, who do not walk as warily and as watchfully as we should.

The reward God gives his children who are careful is a spirit of joy. “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God, and joy in tribulation” (Rom 5:1). For even as it is in human matters, the favor and countenance of the king is like a shower of rain after a drought; it comforts his subjects. There is always a wondrous joy in the favor and grace of great persons. And as the favorable aspect of the heavens upon lower bodies promises good things, and people promise themselves good from that favor, so the favor and grace of God enlarge the soul with joy and comfort. And there is such a measure of joy in those who are in the free favor of God that they will freely honor God by casting themselves upon his mercy.

And it comes with a disesteem of all other things in the world. It is such a joy as works in the soul a low esteem of everything else. St. Paul esteemed all things dross, in comparison of the knowledge of Christ (Phil 3:8) and the favor of God in Christ. So David says of some, “There be many that will say, Who will show us any good?” (Ps 4:6). Any good! It is no matter which. But the Holy Spirit in David says, “Lord, lift up the light of thy countenance upon me” (Ps 4:6). He goes to prayer. He does not say, “Who will show us any good?” no matter what it is or how we come by it, as worldly people desire any earthly good. No; he says, “Lord, show us the light of thy countenance.” He desires that above all things, and so he says, “The lovingkindness of the Lord is better than life itself” (Ps 63:3).

Life is a sweet thing, the sweetest thing in the world; but the grace and favor of God is better than that. For in this, when all comforts fail, the children of God have assurance that “neither life, nor death, nor things present, nor things to come, nor anything, can separate us from the love of God in Christ” (Rom 8:38), which shows itself better than life itself. When life fails, this favor shall never fail. Nothing shall be able to separate us from the favor of God in Christ. It is an everlasting favor, and everlasting for this reason, that it is free. If it were originally in us, it would fail when we fail; but it is an everlasting favor because it is free. God has founded the cause of his love to us in himself. So much for that, “Grace be unto you.”

“And peace.” All that I will say of peace in this place is this, to show:

Observation. True peace issues from grace.

It is to be had from there. By peace we mean here that sweet peace with God, and peace of conscience, and likewise peace with all things, when all things are peaceable to us, when there is sweet success in all our business, with security in a good estate. It is a blessed thing when we know that all will be well with us. This quiet and peaceable estate issues from grace, peace of conscience especially.

I point this out the more because it has been the error of the world to seek peace where it is not, to seek peace in sanctification, to seek it in the work of grace within a person, not to speak of worldly people who seek peace in outward contentments, in recreations, in friends, and the like. Alas! That is a poor peace. But I speak of religious persons of a higher strain. They have sought peace, but not high enough. True peace must be drawn from grace, the free favor in Christ. This will quiet and still the clamors of an accusing conscience. God reconciled in Christ will pacify the conscience; nothing else will do it.

For if our chief peace were fetched from sanctification, as many fetch it from there in error of judgment, alas! the conscience would be dismayed and would always doubt whether it had sanctification enough or not. Indeed, sanctification and grace within are required as a qualification, to show that we are not hypocrites but are in the state and covenant of grace. They are not required as a foundation of comfort, but as a qualification of the persons to whom comfort belongs. Therefore David, and St. Paul, and the rest, who knew the true power and efficacy of the gospel, sought peace in the grace and free favor of God.

Let us lay this up, to put it into practice at the time of death, in the time of spiritual conflict, in the time when our consciences will be awakened and perhaps upon the rack, and Satan will be busy to trouble our peace: that we may shut our eyes to all things below and see God shining on us in Christ; that we may see the favor of God in Christ, by whose death and passion he is reconciled to us. And in the grace and free favor of God in Christ we shall see peace enough.

This is true likewise, besides peace of conscience, of all other peace, peace of success and peace of state. That all creatures and all conditions are peaceable to us, where does it come from? It comes from grace. For God, being reconciled, reconciles all. When God himself is ours, all is ours. When he is turned, all is turned with him. When he becomes our Father in Christ and is at peace with us, all others are at peace too, so that all conditions, all estates, all creatures work for our good. It comes from this: when God is turned, all are turned with him. He is the God of the creature, who sustains and upholds the creature, in whom the creature has its being and working, and therefore he must turn it for the good of those who are in covenant with him. All who are joined in covenant with him he fills with peace, because they are in grace with him.

This should stir up our hearts, above all things in the world, to pray for grace, to get grace, to empty ourselves of self-confidence that we may be vessels for grace, to make grace our plea, to magnify the grace of God.

We must never look in this world for a peace altogether absolute. That is reserved for heaven. Our peace here is a troubled peace. God will have a distinction between heaven and earth. But when our peace is interrupted, when the waters “are come into our souls” (Ps 69:1), what must be our course? When we would have peace, go to grace, go to the free promise of grace in Christ. “Grace and peace.”

“From God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.” The spring of grace and peace is mentioned here.

After the preface, he comes to the argument he intends, and begins with blessing.

One part of the aim of this blessed apostle is to remove the stumbling block of his sufferings, for he was a man of sorrows if ever a man was. Next to Christ, who was a true man of sorrow, the blessed apostle was a man of miseries and sorrow. Now, weak, shallow Christians thought him to be a man deserted by God. They thought it impossible for God to regard a man so forlorn, so despicable as this man was. What does he do? Before he comes to other matters, he wipes away this accusation and clears away this stumbling block. You lay my crosses, and sufferings, and disgraces in the world to my shame! It is your weakness. What you count my shame is a matter of praise. I am so far from being disheartened or discouraged by what I suffer that, “Blessed be God, the Father of Christ, the Father of mercies…”

Blessed be God, the Father of Christ, the Father of mercies… (2 Cor 1:3).

That which to the flesh is a matter of scandal and offense is, to the spirit and to a spiritual man, a matter of glory; so contrary are the flesh and the spirit, and so opposite is the disposition and the current of the fleshly man to the spiritual man. Job was so far from cursing God for taking away that he says, “Blessed be the name of God,” not only for giving, but for taking away too (Job 1:21).

What ground there is in troubles and persecutions to bless God we shall see in the current and passages of the chapter.

To come, then, to the verse itself, where there is first a blessing and praising of God; and in this praising consider the act, the object, and the reasons.

1. The act: “Blessed be God,” which is a praising.

2. The object is “God the Father.”

3. The reasons are wrapped up in the object: “Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

(1) Because he is the God and Father of Jesus Christ, therefore blessed be he. Another reason is,

(2) Because he is the “Father of mercies.” Another reason is,

(3) From the act of this disposition of mercy in God, he is the “God of all comfort,” and as he is full of comfort, so he gives comfort. “Thou art good and doest good,” says the psalmist (Ps 119:68). You are a God of comfort, and you do comfort. For as he is, so he does. He shows his nature in his working: “Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and God of comfort,” of which I shall speak when I come to them.

“Blessed be God, the Father…” We see here that the heart of the blessed apostle, warmed with the sense and taste of the sweet mercy of God, stirs up his tongue to bless God: a full heart and a full tongue. We have here the exuberance, the abundance, of his thankfulness breaking forth in his speech. His heart had first tasted the sweet mercies and comforts of God before he praises God. The first thing we will observe from this is that it is the disposition of God’s children, after they have tasted the sweet mercy and comfort and love of God, to break forth into the praising of God and into thanksgiving.

It is as natural for the new creature to do so as for the birds to sing in the spring. When the sun has warmed the poor creature, it shows its thankfulness in singing. When the little blood and spirits it has are warmed after winter, it is natural for those creatures to do so, and we delight in them.

It is just as natural for the new creature, when it feels the Sun of righteousness warming the soul, when it tastes the mercy of God in Christ, to show itself in thankfulness and praise. It can no more be kept from this than fire can keep from burning, or water from cooling. It is the nature of the new creature to do so.

The reason is that every creature must do the work for which God has enabled it, to which God has framed it. The happiness of the creature is in well-doing, in working according to its nature. The heathen could see that. Now all the creatures, and the new creature especially, are for the glory of God in Christ Jesus. All of the new creature, whatever privileges it has and whatever graces it has, all of it is so that God may have the glory of grace. Why then, it must work in a way that answers to what God created it for. Therefore it must show forth the praise and glory of God. “Blessed be God,” says the apostle (Eph 1:3); and the blessed apostle Peter begins his epistle, “Blessed be the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath begotten us to an inheritance immortal and undefiled, which fadeth not away, reserved for us in heaven” (1 Pet 1:3-4).

I will not need to set down the exposition of the word “blessed”: how God blesses us, and how we bless God. His blessing is a conferring of blessing; our blessing is a declaring of his goodness. It is a thing well enough known. Our blessing of God is a praising of God, a setting out of what is in him.

Only one thing needs to be cleared up. What good, it may be asked, can we do to God in blessing him? He is blessed, though we do not bless him; and he is praised, whether we praise him or not. He had glory enough before he made the world. He contented himself in the Trinity, the blessed Trinity in itself, before there were either angels, or men, or other creatures to bless him; and now he can be blessed enough, though we do not bless him.

It is true that he can be. And he can have heaven, though you do not have it, but are a damned creature; and he will be blessed, whether you bless him or not.

1. Our blessing of him is required as a duty, to make us more capable of his graces: “To him that hath shall be given” (Matt 13:12). To him that has, and uses what he has to the glory of God, more shall be given. We give nothing.

The stream gives nothing to the fountain. The beam gives nothing to the sun, for it issues from the sun. Our very blessing of God is a blessing of his.

It is from his grace that we can praise his grace; and we run still into a new debt when we have hearts enlarged to bless him.

We ought to have our hearts the more enlarged because we can be enlarged to praise God.

2. And to others it is good, for others are stirred up by it. God’s goodness and mercy are enlarged, in regard of their being made known to others, by our blessing of God.

3. Yes, this good comes to our souls. Besides the increase of grace, we shall find an increase of joy and comfort. That is one end for which God requires it of us. Though he himself, in his essence, is always alike blessed, yet he requires that we should be thankful to him always, that we should bless and praise him even in misery and affliction. And why, then?

1. Because, if we can work upon our hearts a disposition to see God’s love, and to praise and bless him, we can never be without comfort. We have some comfort against all estates and conditions by studying to praise God, by working our hearts to a disposition to praise and bless God; for then crosses are light, crosses are no crosses then. That is the reason the apostles and holy men so stirred up their hearts to praise and thanksgiving: that they might feel their crosses the less, that they might be less aware of their discomforts. For undoubtedly, when we search for matter for praising God in any affliction, and when we see there is some mercy still reserved, that we are not consumed, the consideration that there is always some mercy for which we are still unthankful will enlarge our hearts. And God, when he has thanks and praise from us, gives us still more matter for thankfulness, and the more we thank him and praise him, the more matter for praise we have.

Since it is a truth that God’s children, when they have tasted his mercy, break forth into his praise, since that is the end of his favors, and since nature is inclined to it, this should stir us up to this duty. And that we may better perform this holy duty, let us take notice of all God’s favors and blessings. Knowledge stirs up the affections. Blessing God springs immediately from an enlarged heart, but enlargement of heart is stirred up by understanding. For as things are reported to the knowledge, so the understanding reports them to the heart and affections. Therefore it is a duty that we ought to take notice of God’s favors, and, along with taking notice of them,

2. To mind them, to remember them, to forget not all his benefits. “Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits” (Ps 103:2), implying that the cause why we do not praise God is the forgetting of his benefits.

Let us take notice of them, let us register them, let us keep them in mind, let us keep diaries of his mercies and favors every day. He renews his mercies and favors every day, and we ought to renew our blessing of him every day. We should labor to do here as we shall do when we are in heaven, where we shall do nothing else but praise and bless him. We ought to be in heaven, while we are on the earth, as much as we may. Let us register his favors and mercies.

Question. But what favors?

Answer. Especially spiritual favors; no, first of all spiritual favors, without which we cannot heartily give thanks for any outward thing. For the soul will keep reckoning with itself until it feels itself in covenant with God in Christ, until it feels that a man is the child of God.

Indeed, the soul says, I have many mercies and favors. God is good to me. But perhaps all these are only the favors of the traitor in prison, who has the liberty of the tower and everything his heart can desire; but then he looks for an execution, he looks for a writ to draw him forth and make him a spectacle to all. And so this trembling for fear of a future evil that the soul looks for keeps the soul from thankfulness. It cannot be heartily thankful for any mercy until it can be thankful for spiritual favors.

Therefore first let us see that our state is good, that we are in Christ, that we are in the covenant of grace, that though we are weak Christians, yet we are true, that there is truth in the grace wrought in us. And then, when we have tasted the best mercies, spiritual mercies; when we see we are taken out of the state of nature (for then all is in love to us); when we have the first mercy, pardoning mercy, that our sins are forgiven in Christ, then the other mercies are mercies indeed to us, not like favors to a condemned man.

And that is the reason a carnal man has his heart shut. He cannot praise God, he cannot trust in God, because he staggers in his estate, because he is not assured. He thinks: It may be God fattens me against the day of slaughter (Jer 12:3). Therefore I do not know whether I should praise him for this or not. But he is deceived in that. For if he had his heart enlarged to bless God for that, God would show further favor still; but the heart will not yield hearty praise to God until it is persuaded of God’s love. For all our love is by reflection. “We love him, because he loved us first” (1 John 4:19), and we praise and bless him because he has blessed us first in heavenly blessings in Christ.

Let us take notice of his favors, let us call them to mind, let us register them, especially favors and mercies in Christ. Let us often think how we were pulled out of the cursed estate of nature, by what ministry, by what acquaintance, by what speech, and how God has followed that mercy with new acquaintance, with new comfort to our souls, with new refreshings; that by his Spirit he has repressed our corruptions, that he has sanctified us, made us more humble, more careful, that he has made us more jealous over ourselves, more watchful. These mercies and favors will make other mercies sweet to us.

And then learn to prize and value the mercies of God, which will not happen unless we compare them with our own unworthiness. Lay his mercies together with our own unworthiness, and it will make us break forth into blessing God, when we consider what we are ourselves, as Jacob said, less than the least of God’s mercies (Gen 32:10).

We forget God’s mercies every day. He strives with our unthankfulness. Comparing his mercies with our unworthiness, and with our desert on the contrary side, will make us bless God for his goodness and patience, that he will not only be good to us, in not inflicting what our sins have deserved. “Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

And, to name no more but this one, above all, beg of God his Holy Spirit. For this blessing of God is nothing else but a vent from the Spirit. For as organs and wind instruments never sound unless they are blown, as they are dead and make no music until breath is put into them, so we are dead and dull instruments. Therefore it is said that we are “filled with the Holy Ghost” (Acts 9:17). All God’s children are filled with the Spirit before they can praise God. The Spirit stirs them up to praise him, and as it gives them matter to praise him, so it gives the sacrifice of praise itself. God gives to his children both the benefits to bless him for, and he gives the blessing of a heart to bless him. And we must beg both of God: beg a heart able to discern spiritual favors, to taste and relish them, and to see our own unworthiness of them; and beg of God his Holy Spirit to awaken, and quicken, and enlarge our dead and dull hearts to praise his name.

Let us stir up our hearts to it, stir up the Spirit of God in us. Everyone who has the Spirit of God should labor to stir up the Spirit, as St. Paul writes to Timothy (2 Tim 1:6), and as David stirs up himself: “Praise the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, praise his holy name” (Ps 103:1 and following). So we should raise ourselves up, and stir ourselves up, to this duty.

And let us shame ourselves. What! Has God freed me from so great a misery? And has he advanced me to so happy an estate in this world? Does he put me in so certain a hope of glory in the world to come? Do I have a certain promise of being carried to salvation, that neither “things present, nor things to come, shall be able to separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:38-39)? Does he renew his mercies every day upon me? And can I be this dead, can I be this dull-hearted? Let us shame ourselves.

And certainly if a man were to teach a child of God a ground of humiliation, if a child of God who is in the state of grace should ask how he might grow humble and be abased more and more, a man could give no one direction better than this: to consider how God has been good continually, how he has been patient and good, and on what ground we hope that he will be so; and to consider the disposition of our own drooping, drowsy souls. If this will not abase a soul that has tasted the love and mercy of God, nothing in the world will do it. There never was a child of God of a dull temper and disposition who was not ashamed that, being under such a covenant of favor, he should still not have a heart more enlarged to bless God.

To stir us up to this duty, what need is there to use many arguments to persuade us?

1. It should be our duty in this world to be as much in heaven and heavenly employment as we may. “Our conversation is in heaven,” says the apostle (Phil 3:20). How can we be in heaven more than by practicing that which the saints and angels, and the cherubim and seraphim, spend all their strength on there? How do they, who are in that place of joy, spend all that blessed strength with cheerfulness and joy? How do they spend it but in setting forth the praise of God, the wonderful goodness of God, who has brought them to that happiness? Certainly what we shall do forever in heaven, we ought to do as much as we may on earth.

2. And it is, as I said before, in all afflictions and troubles the only special way to mitigate them, to work our hearts to thankfulness for the mercies and favors that we enjoy. We have cause indeed at first to be abased and humbled; but we have more cause to rejoice in working our hearts to comfort, in blessing God. It will ease the cross, any cross whatsoever. I will not dwell further on the point. I shall often have occasion to digress on this duty.

The object of praise here is God, clothed with a comforting description; not God simply, for, alas! we have no hearts to praise God if we take God only as armed with justice, clothed with majesty. Consider God that way, and indeed he deserves glory and praise, but the guilty soul will not praise him so considered, abstracted from mercy, and goodness, and love. Therefore he says, “Blessed be God.” God considered how? “Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

First, he is Father of Christ, and then Father of mercies, and God of comfort. God, so considered, be blessed!

Observation. God, as he is to be prayed to, so he is to be praised, and only God.

This sacrifice, this perfume, this incense must not be misspent on any creature. We have all of his grace, and we should return all to his glory. That is a duty. But consider him as he is described here: first, “the Father of Christ,” and then the “Father of mercies, and God of all comfort.” And it is not to be omitted that he begins first with this.

1. “Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ only as he is God, but the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ as he is man. For God being the Father of the whole Christ, being Father of the person, he is Father of the manhood taken into unity with that person. So he is Father both of God and man. They cannot be divided in Christ. He being the Father of the whole Christ, he is the Father of God and man. And he is first the Father of Christ, and then the Father of us, and the Father of mercies. For, alas! unless he had been the Father of Christ, God and man, mediator, he could never have been the Father of such cursed creatures as we are. But because he is the Father of Christ, of that blessed manhood which Christ has taken into unity of person with the Godhead, therefore he is the Father of us, who by union are one with Christ.

The point, then, is this:

Doctrine. God, thus considered, as the Father of Jesus Christ, is to be praised.

Here is the reason for blessing and praising him: that he is the Father of Jesus Christ, for from this he comes to be our Father. It is a point we do not think of often enough, but it is the ground of all comfort; for we have everything at second hand. Christ has all first, and we have all from him. He is the first Son, and we are sons. He is the first beloved of God, and we are beloved in him. He is filled first with all grace, and we are filled from him: “of his fullness we receive grace for grace” (John 1:16). He was first acquitted of our sins, as our surety, and then we are justified, because he was justified from our sins, being our surety. He has ascended into heaven; we shall ascend. He sits at the right hand of God, and we sit with him in heavenly places. He judges; we shall judge. Whatever we do, Christ does it first. We have it in Christ, and through Christ, and from Christ. God is the Father of Christ, and our Father.

Use 1. Therefore we ought to bless God for Christ, that he would predestinate Christ to be our Head, to be our Savior; that he would take the human nature of Christ and make it one person with his divine nature, and so predestinate us, and elect, and choose us to salvation in him. Blessed be God, that he would be the Father of Jesus Christ!

Use 2. And as this should stir us up to bless God for Jesus Christ, so likewise it should direct us to comforting meditations, to see our nature in Christ first, and then in ourselves. See your nature abased in Christ, see your nature glorified in Christ, see your nature filled with all grace in Christ, and see this, that you are knit to that nature, you are flesh of Christ’s flesh and bone of his bone, and you shall be as he is. As Christ’s nature was first abased and then glorified, this nature shall first be abased to death and dust, and then be glorified. Christ died, “and rose again” (Rom 14:9). You are predestinated to be conformed to Christ. For as his flesh was first humbled and then glorious, so yours must first be humble, and then glorious. His flesh was holy, humble, and glorious, and so must ours be. Whatever good we look for in ourselves, we must see it in Christ first.

And when we hear in the gospel, in the articles of the creed, of Christ crucified, of Christ dying, of Christ rising, ascending, and sitting at the right hand of God, let us see ourselves in him, see ourselves dying in him, and rising in him, and sitting at the right hand of God. For the same God who raised the natural Christ will raise the mystical Christ. He will raise the whole Christ; for he is not glorified by pieces. As the whole natural Christ, in his body and members, was raised, so shall the whole mystical Christ be. Therefore in every article of the creed bless God: bless God for abasing Christ, bless God for raising him up, bless God for raising us up. “Blessed be God, who hath raised us up to an immortal hope, by the resurrection of Christ,” says St. Peter (1 Pet 1:3). Bless God for the ascension of Christ, that our head is in heaven. Let us bless God, not for personal favors only, but go to the spring. Bless God for showing it to Christ, and to us in him.

This point the apostle had learned well. Therefore he begins with praise: “Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” If the Virgin Mary thought herself blessed, “and all generations should call her blessed” (Luke 1:48), for bearing our Savior in her womb and so being his mother, then all generations must surely do this duty, to call God blessed, because he is the Father of Christ. So God the Father is to be blessed as the spring of favors; for he gave Christ. All generations call the Virgin Mary blessed, because she was the mother of Christ; but that was a lower degree than God’s being his Father. This point ought to take up our meditations, to think that we have everything in Christ first. To think of ourselves in Christ is comforting, and Christ shall have more glory by it. God the Father and the Son shall have glory by it, and we shall have comfort.

The second consideration of God is not only as he is the Father of Christ, but as he is:

2. “The Father of mercies.” God is the Father of Christ, and our Father, “and the Father of mercies.” But, as I said before, in this order he is first the Father of Christ, and then our Father, and then “the Father of mercies.” For he could never be the Father of mercies to us unless he were the Father of Christ. For mercy must see justice satisfied. One attribute in God must not devour another. All must have satisfaction. His justice must suffer no wrong, and it suffers none now. It is fully satisfied by Christ.

Therefore God is the Father of Christ, so that Christ in our nature might die for us, and so God might be our Father in spite of our sins, having punished our sins in our surety, Christ. So, being the Father of Christ and our Father, he is the Father of mercies, and his justice suffers no loss by it.

If God had not found a way, out of the tender heart of his mercy, to show good to us, by reconciling mercy and justice in the mediator Christ, by punishing him for our sins in order to set us free, he would never have been a Father of mercy; if he had not been the Father of Christ first, he would never have been so. For God and we stood on such contrary terms, he being holiness, and we nothing but a mass of sin and corruption, that without sufficient satisfaction by an infinite person there could be no reconciliation. Therefore he is the Father of Christ, who died for us. Christ took our nature upon himself to satisfy God’s justice, and then God is Father of us, and so Father of mercy to us.

He may well be the Father of mercies now, being the Father of Christ, and of our nature in Christ; for, as I said, he is the Father of Christ as man, as well as God. Being the Father of our nature, which has been taken into unity with his own Son’s nature (for both make one Christ), he becomes “the Father of mercies.” He is a Father to Christ by nature, to us by grace and adoption.

“The Father of Christ, and Father of mercies.” It is a necessary order, for God apart from Christ is a fountain indeed, but he is a “fountain sealed up.” He is a God merciful and gracious in his own nature, but there is sin that stops the fountain, that stops the current of the mercy. There must therefore be satisfaction to his justice and wrath before there can be reconciliation, before any mercy can flow from him. He is first the Father of Christ, and then the “Father of mercies.” We have everything from Christ. If he were not the Father of Christ, he would be the Father of nobody; for no one is able to appear before God directly, without a mediator.

“Father of mercies.” By Father, which is a kind of Hebraism, is meant that he is the origin, the spring of mercies. He is the “Father of mercies.” Paul does not say the Father of one mercy, but the “Father of mercies.” God’s mercy is one; it is his nature, it is himself. As he is one, so mercy in him is one. It is one in the fountain, but many in the streams. It is one in him, one nature and one mercy. But we have not one sin, but many sins, and we have not one misery, but many, that lie upon this frail nature of ours. Therefore, according to the urgent needs of us wretched creatures, according to our sins and miseries, his mercies stream out. They are conveyed and run out to every kind of sin and misery whatever.

“The Father of mercies.” If all mercies were lost, they would have to be found in him. He is “the Father of mercies.” They are his very heart, as it were, and mercy pleases him as a man is pleased with his own child by birth. “The Father of mercies.” Paul does not say the Author of mercies, but the Father of them. He gives them the sweetest name there can be. He does not say the Father of revenge, or of judgment, though God is the Father of them too; but to his children he is the Father of mercies. A sweet name, under which no one should despair!

But to show some reasons why he is so styled.

(1) There is good reason. Being the Father of Christ, his justice being fully satisfied, sin being taken away that stopped the current of his mercies, and he being naturally merciful, his mercies run freely. “Father of Christ, and Father of mercies.” It follows well. He is the Father of mercies because he is the Father of Christ. And because his justice is satisfied in Christ, and he is naturally merciful, what hinders mercy from running at full force, freely and abundantly, upon those who are in covenant with him in Christ, who are members of Christ? That is one reason, because his justice is satisfied.

(2) And because he is naturally merciful, therefore he is the “Father of mercies.” The sea does not more naturally flow and is not more naturally moist, the sun does not more naturally shine, the fire does not more naturally burn, heavy bodies do not more naturally sink to the center, than God naturally shows pity and mercy where his justice is satisfied; for it is his nature, it is himself.

The apostle does not name other attributes, for, alas, other attributes would scare us. For example, if the guilty conscience considers him as a God of justice, it will reason like this: “What is this to me? I am a sinner, and he will be just in punishing.” If it considers that he is a God of wisdom, the conscience reasons: “He is the more wise to find out my windings and turnings from him, and my covering of my sins; he is the more wise to find me out in my ways, and to shame me.” The apostle does not say that he is a God of power, the father of power. The guilty conscience would then reason: “He is the more able to crush me and to send me to hell.”

Indeed, there is no attribute of God that is not a matter of terror when it is shut off from mercy. But considering God as the Father of mercies, we may then consider all his other attributes sweetly and comfortingly. “He is merciful and good to me; therefore his wisdom shall serve to do me good, to devise good things for me; his power shall serve to free me from my enemies; his justice, to avenge my quarrel; and so all his other attributes shall serve my comfort.” They may be thought upon sweetly where mercy is laid claim to first. Therefore he is called here “the Father of mercies,” and not the Father of other attributes.

“Of mercies.” To unfold the word a little, “mercy” here is the same as grace to a person in misery. Mercy is simply free favor shown to a miserable person. Grace shows the freeness of it, and mercy shows the state of the person to whom it is shown. Always, where mercy is, there is either present or else possible misery.

There was mercy shown to the angels that stood, to free them, to give them grace to stand. They might have fallen as the devils did when they were angels. No one is the subject of mercy except those who either are in misery or may possibly fall into misery. Now, God keeps and upholds the creature from falling into that which he is subject to fall into (he being a creature taken out of nothing, and therefore subject to fall to nothing without assistance). To hold him back from that into which he would fall without being upheld, this makes him the object of mercy, whatever the misery may be, spiritual or outward.

Thus God is the Father of mercy; he upholds his children from that which they would otherwise fall into continually. He is “the Father of mercy” before conversion, offering and urging mercy upon them, that as they would be good to their own souls, they would receive mercy. He joins his glory and his mercy together, so that he will be glorified in showing mercy; and he presses it upon us. What a mercy this is, that he should press mercy upon us for our own good! “Why will ye die, O house of Israel” (Ezek 33:11). And, “Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden” (Matt 11:28). There is mercy before conversion.

And there is mercy in delaying his wrath, in not punishing; and there is mercy in pardoning sin freely, in pardoning all sin, the punishment and the guilt and all. And when we are in the state of grace and have our sins pardoned, it is still his mercy to hold back the punishments due to us, in mitigating his corrections, and in timely corrections. For it is a mercy for God to correct his children in due season. “Therefore we are corrected of God, that we should not be damned with the world” (1 Cor 11:32).

It is a mercy to have timely correction. It is a mercy to have correction mitigated and sweetened with some comforts. It is a mercy, after we are in the state of grace, besides this, to have the continuance of outward blessings.

God renews his mercies every day. “His mercies fail not” (Lam 3:22). His mercies are renewed continually upon us.

So he is the Father of all kinds of mercies: negative mercies, in freeing us from evil, and positive mercies, in bestowing good. Pardoning mercies, healing mercies, preserving mercies, all mercies come from this Father of mercies.

I will not stop to unfold them in particular; for indeed everything that comes from God to his children is a mercy. It is, as it were, dipped in mercy before it comes to us. It is a mercy, that is, there is a freedom in it, and a pity toward his creature. For the creature is always in some necessity and in some dependence. We are in a state of necessities in this life, in some misery or other, and that, as I said, is the object of mercy.

Besides, we are dependent for the good we have. It is at God’s mercy to continue or to take away any comfort he gives us. Everything is a mercy. And in everything we receive from God we ought to see a mercy in it, and to think, “This is a mercy from God.” If we have health, it is a mercy; if we have strength, it is a mercy; if we have deliverance, it is a mercy. All that comes from God comes in the character and relation of a mercy. He is not said to be the father of the thing, but the “Father of mercies.” There is a mercy contained in the thing. They come from the pity and love of God, and that is the sweetest part. Therefore he is said to be the “Father of mercies.”

Question. What use may we make of this, that God is the “Father of mercies”?

Answer. It is a point full of sweet and comforting uses, to those who are not in the state of grace, and to those who are in the state of grace.

Use 1. Those who are not in the state of grace should see here a haven to flee to, a city of refuge to flee to. Only consider, you wretched soul, how God is styled a “Father of mercies” to you, a God of bounty. All of it is to allure you to repentance, to allure you to come in. He is not merciful by accident, but he is naturally merciful in himself. He has a heart of mercy within himself. “Mercy pleaseth him” (Mic 7:18).

Therefore do not despair, you drooping soul, whoever you are that are under the guilt of sin! Come to the Father of mercies! Cast yourself into this sea of his mercy! Hide yourself in this tender heart! Do not be an enemy to your own mercy! As Jonah says, “Refuse not thy own mercy” (Jonah 2:8), the mercy that is offered. There is mercy pressed upon you, mercy with a threat if you do not believe mercy, now that you are called to receive it. The wrath of God hangs over you like a weight, or like a sword ready to fall upon you. As Christ says, “The wrath of God hangs over us” (John 3:36), if we do not receive the mercy offered us.

Do not plead your sins against mercy. Your sins are the sins of a creature; God is the “Father of mercies.” He is infinite. Christ your Savior has made an infinite satisfaction, and your sins are finite, and in that respect there is mercy for you if you will come in, if you will lay hold of and receive mercy.

“One deep calls upon another deep” (Ps 42:7). The depth of your sins and misery draws to itself, and calls upon, the depth of mercy. “The mercy of God is above all his works” (Ps 145:9). It is not only above all his works to cover them all, and under them to uphold them, but it is beyond them all. His mercy exceeds all his other attributes toward the creature. It is above his works, and upon his works, and under his works, and it is above your works too. He is more glorious in his mercy than in any other attribute. He does all for the glory of his mercy, both in the creation and in the gospel. His mercy, therefore, is above his own works, and above your works if you come in.

Oil is of a kingly nature. It swims above all other liquids. So the mercy of God, like oil, swims above all other attributes in him, and above all sin in you, if you will receive it.

“Father of mercies.” In a corrupt state the special mercy is forgiving mercy. If it were not for forgiving mercies, all other gifts and mercies would be to little purpose. For they would be only a reserving of us for eternal judgment, only a feeding of the traitor until the day of execution, a giving him the liberty of the prison, which is nothing unless his treason is pardoned. So forgiving mercy leads to all the rest.

Now these forgiving mercies are unlimited mercies; there are no bounds to them. For he, being the Father of Christ, who is an infinite person, and having received an infinite satisfaction from an infinite Person, may well be infinitely merciful; and he himself is an infinite God. His mercies are like himself. The satisfaction by which he may be merciful is infinite. It is on this ground that he may pardon, and will pardon, all sin without limitation, however great, however many.

I observe this especially to calm the conscience of a sinner when it is pressed down with terror and fear at the greatness of his sins. Consider how God has set himself forth, and will be known and grasped by us, not only as merciful, but as a “Father of mercies,” and not of one mercy, but of all mercies, not only giving, but forgiving especially: “Which forgiveth all thy sins, and healeth all thy infirmities” (Ps 103:3).

I observe this against a proneness in us to despair. We are no more prone, in the time of peace, to presume, than we are, when conscience is awakened, to despair; we are prone to both alike. For here is the poison of man’s corruption: “Is God so merciful? Surely I may go on in sin, and cry ‘God have mercy,’ and there is an end of it. God is merciful; indeed, the Father of mercies.”

Now, in the time of peace, sin is nothing to us. Swearing is nothing, rotten talk is nothing, getting the better of others in our dealing and commerce is nothing, getting an estate by fraud and deceit is nothing. “The bread of deceit is sweet” (Prov 20:17). A loose, licentious, libertine life is nothing. And as for those who do not follow the same excess and are not dissolute, that is a strange matter to us; they are strange people. We think it strange that others do not do likewise, and if they are better than we are, it is only hypocrisy. Men measure everything by themselves. So all is nothing. Great, gross swearing is nothing. Men glory in it, and to scruple at it is this and that; they have terms for it. And what panders to all this? “Oh! God is merciful, and Christ is wondrously merciful; he took our nature that he might die for us …”

That is true indeed. But when the conscience is awakened, then the conscience will teach you another lesson. The conscience will set God forth as just, and Satan will help conscience with accusations and aggravations. “It is true, it is too true.” The conscience will take part with God and with his word: “It is true that you have done this and this. These are your sins, and God is just.”

And especially at the hour of death, when earthly comforts fail and there is nothing but sin set before a man’s eyes, the comforts set before him can do him no good. Then the conscience will hardly receive any comfort, especially the consciences of those who have gone on in a course of sin in spite of good means of grace. The conscience of the kind of man who either refuses or rejects the means because it would favor itself in sin, or a conscience that has been under the means and has had its sins laid bare to it, that conscience will hardly admit any comfort. And there is no one who does not find it a very different matter than they think it. Sin is a blacker thing than they imagine. So it is with the oaths they trifle with, and their dissolute and rotten talk when they should be better disposed, on the Sabbath, and the like. Therefore we ought to look to it.

Well, to press this point of presumption a little further, now that I am on it, we are wondrously prone to abuse this mercy to presumption, and afterward to despair.

I consider this beforehand: however unlimited God’s mercy may be, as indeed it is in itself, it is unlimited in this way to those who repent, and to those who receive and embrace mercy, and mercy of one kind as well as another. It is so to those who repent of their sins. For God is the “Father of mercy” in such a way that he is the God of vengeance too (Deut 32:35). He is a just God too.

The conscience will tell you this well enough, when the outward comforts are taken away, those comforts you now dally with and set up as gods instead of God, drowning yourselves in sensuality and idolatry with the creature, and putting them in the place of God. When they are taken away, conscience will tell you that God is merciful indeed, but that he is just to those who refuse mercies.

Therefore, though his mercy is unlimited to those who are broken-hearted, to those who repent of their sins (for he will glorify his mercy so that he may also glorify his other attributes), he is wisely merciful. If he were merciful to those who go on in sin, he would not be wisely merciful.

Who among men, if he is wise, would be merciful to a child or servant without acknowledgment of the fault?

Was not David over-merciful to Absalom? Yes; it was his fault. Yet out of wisdom he would not admit Absalom into his presence until Absalom was humbled for his fault and had made intercession, though David doted on him (2 Sam 14:28). God is as infinitely wise as he is merciful. Therefore he will not be merciful to the one who goes on in wickedness and sin. This cannot be pressed too often, for wherever we speak, the devil has most hearers in this snare: “God is merciful …” And does the devil not know how to use it? God is so indeed, but it is to repentant souls who mean to break off their course of sin.

Otherwise, if the mercy of God works the other way, listen to your doom. “He that blesseth himself,” says God by Moses, and says, “These curses shall not come to me”; he who blesses himself and says, “Oh, all shall be well, God is merciful …”; “my wrath shall smoke against him” (Deut 29:19-20), and I will not be merciful to him who goes on in his sins. God will “wound the hairy scalp of him that goes on in sin” (Ps 68:21). As the apostle says, the one who abuses the bounty and patience of God, which should lead him to repentance, “he treasureth up wrath against the day of wrath” (Rom 2:5).

Scripture is never more terrible in any case than in this one. In Isaiah 28:15, “You have made a covenant with hell and death,” with God’s judgments; but hell and death have not made a covenant with you. You make a covenant, and think you shall do well; but God is terrible to such people. His wrath shall smoke against those who make a covenant with his judgments, and treasure up wrath against the day of wrath.

Take heed. If the proclamation of mercy does not call you in, if you stand out as a rebel and do not come in, but go on still, then justice lays hold on you. God’s wrath shall smoke against you, as we see in Proverbs 1:26, “I will laugh at your destruction,” speaking of those who would not come in; and as it is in Isaiah 27:11, “He that formed them and made them will have no mercy on them, nor show them favor.” He will have no delight in them. They are ignorant fools, and will not labor to know God and his will, to do and obey it. He that made them will have no delight in them, and he that formed them will reject them.

It is a pitiful thing when God, who made them and formed them in their mother’s womb, whose creatures they are, shall have no delight in them; when he who made them, his heart shall not pity them (Ezek 8:18). The one who goes on in a course of sin presumptuously and does not repent, God’s eye shall not pity him. He that made him will have no delight in him.

Therefore the apostle, because we are disposed and prone to abuse the goodness and long-suffering of God and the mercies of Christ, says, “Be not deceived, be not deceived” (he often presses this), for neither the covetous nor licentious persons shall enter into heaven (1 Cor 6:10).

Though God is merciful, if you live in these sins, do not be deceived, you will never enter into heaven. God will not be merciful to most of those who even now live in the bosom of the church, because they make mercy a bond that ties them to their sinful courses. God will harden himself. He will not bless such people. He has no mercy for such people. To such he is a God of vengeance.

His mercy is for those who are weary of their sinful courses. As I said, he is merciful, but in such a way that he is also wise.

What prince will prostitute a pardon to one who is a rebel, and yet all the while thinks himself a good subject? He is no rebel, he thinks; so does he care for a pardon? And shall he have a pardon when he does not care for it? Those who are not humbled in the sight and sense of their sins, who think themselves in a good state, are rebels who have not sued for their pardon. There is no mercy for them yet. He that made them will not pity them, because they are ignorant, hardened wretches, who live in blasphemy, in swearing, in corrupt courses, in hardness of heart. They live in sins that their own conscience and the conscience of others around them know to be sins, devouring sins that devour all their comfort; and yet, in spite of all this, they dream of mercy. Mercy! Hell is their portion, and not mercy, those who make an idol of God.

Thus it is with us; we are prone to presume upon God’s mercy. I say this so that we may not surfeit on this sweet doctrine, that God is the “Father of mercies.” He is so to repentant sinners, to those who believe. To those, mercy is sweet. We know that oil rises above all liquids. God’s mercy is above all his own works and above our sins. But what is the vessel for this oil? This oil of mercy is put in broken vessels; it is kept best there. A broken heart, a humble heart, receives and keeps mercy.

As for proud dispositions, such as all sinners who go on in a course of sin, the psalmist calls them proud men; he is a proud man who sets his own will against God’s command. “God resists the proud” (Jas 4:6). It is the humble, yielding heart, which will be led and lured by God, that is a vessel to receive mercy. It must be a deep vessel, it must be a broken vessel, deep with humiliation, broken by contrition, that must receive mercy. And it must be a large vessel laid open, able to receive mercy, and all mercy, not only pardoning mercy but healing mercy, as I said from that psalm, “That forgiveth all thy sins, and healeth all thy infirmities” (Ps 103:3).

Therefore those who do not have grace and mercy to heal their corruptions, to dry up that flow in some comforting measure, have no pardoning mercy; and those who do not desire their corruptions to be healed never heartily desire their corruptions to be pardoned. Those mercies go together.

He is not the “Father of mercy” only, but of all mercies that belong to salvation, and he gives every one of them, and whoever desires the one desires the other.

Let us consider how the sweet descriptions of God and his promises work upon us. If they work on us to make us presume, it is a fearful case. It is as bad a sign as can be, to be evil because God is good, “to turn the grace of God into wantonness” (Jude 4).

But as we are thus prone to presume, so when conscience is awakened we are just as prone to despair. Therefore, if they work with us in this way, “There is mercy with God, therefore I will come in,” “therefore I will cast down my weapons at his feet,” “I will cease to resist him,” “I will come in and take terms of peace with him,” “I will yield him obedience for the time to come,” “therefore I will fear and love so good a God”; if it works in us like this, it is a sign of an elect soul, of a gracious disposition. And then, if you come in, never consider what your sins have been; if you come in, God will embrace you in his mercy. Your sins are all like a spark of fire that falls into the ocean and is drowned at once. So are your sins in the ocean of God’s mercy.

There is not more light in the sun, there is not more water in the sea, than there is mercy in the “Father of mercy,” whose tender heart is opened to you, if you are weary of your sinful courses, and come in, and embrace mercy.

In the tabernacle, as we know, there was a mercy seat. We call it a propitiatory. In the ark, which this mercy seat covered, was the law. Now in the law there were curses against all sinners.

The mercy seat was a type of Christ, covering the law, covering the curse. Though you are guilty of the curse a thousand times, God in Christ is merciful. Christ is the mercy seat. Come to God in Christ. There is mercy in Israel in spite of your great sins. If we cast away a purpose of living in sin, and cast away our weapons, and submit ourselves to him, he is the Father of mercies. That is, he is merciful from himself; he is the spring of them, and has them from his own tender heart. They are free mercies, because he is the Father of them.

For he is just by our fault; his severity comes from us, and he takes occasion for it from our sins; but he is merciful from his own tender heart. He is good from himself. We provoke him to be severe and just. Therefore, however miserable we may be in regard of sin and the fruits of sin, he is still the Father of mercy, of free mercy, mercy from himself. “Mercy pleaseth him” (Mic 7:18). He is delighted in it.

Now what is natural comes easily, as water comes from the fountain without violence, and heat comes from the fire without any violence, because it is natural. A mother pities her child, because it is natural. There is a sweet instinct of nature that moves and spurs nature on to that affection of love she bears her child. So it is with God. It is nature in him to be merciful to his own, because they are his. Mercy is his nature. We are his. We being his, and his nature being merciful, he will be merciful to all who are his, to such as repent of their sins and lay hold of his mercy by a true faith.

His word likewise shows his mercy. There is not one attribute set down more in Scripture than mercy. It is the name by which he will be known: in Exodus 34:6 he describes it and tells us his name. What is the name of God? His longsuffering, and mercy, and so on. There is a long description of God in that place. David, in Psalm 103, besides what is in almost every prophet, has the same description of God, to comfort God’s people in his time. In Psalm 86, Psalm 103, and Psalm 145 there is the same description of God as there is in Moses. He is merciful and longsuffering, and so on. He describes himself to be so, and his promises are promises of mercy. At whatever time a sinner repents, and without limitation of sins, all sins shall be forgiven. “The blood of Christ purgeth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).

If there is no limitation of persons, whoever they are, of sins, whatever they are, or of time, whenever it is, here is a ground on which we should never despair. “God is the Father of mercies.”

The prophet has an excellent word, to forestall the thoughts of a dejected soul: “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and return to the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon” (Isa 55:7).

Objection. “Yes, but I have abused mercy a long time; I have lived in sin, and committed great sins.” Well, in spite of that, see how he answers it: “My thoughts are not your thoughts.” You are vindictive. If someone offends you, you are ready to magnify the fault and to take revenge, and so on. “But my thoughts are not as your thoughts, nor my ways as your ways,” says the Lord; “for as far as the heaven is above the earth, so are my thoughts above your thoughts, and my ways above your ways” (Isa 55:8-9). We have narrow, poor thoughts of mercy, because we ourselves are given to revenge, and when we think of our sins we are ready to say, “Can God forgive them? Can God be merciful to such people?” “My thoughts are not as your thoughts, nor my ways as your ways.”

It is good to consider this, and it is a sweet meditation; for the time will undoubtedly come when, unless God’s mercy and God’s thoughts were infinite as he himself is, unless his ways were infinitely above our ways and his thoughts infinitely above ours in mercy, the soul would certainly receive no comfort.

The soul of a Christian acquainted with the word of God knows that God’s mercy is infinite, as he himself is, and that his thoughts in this regard are infinite, as he himself is. Therefore the Scripture sets down the mercies of God by all dimensions. There is the depth of wisdom, but when he comes to speak of love and mercy, as in Ephesians 3:18, it is, Oh, the depth, and breadth, and height of this!

Indeed, for height, it is higher than the heavens; for depth, it fetches the soul from the nethermost deep. We have deep misery, “Out of the deep I cried to thee” (Ps 130:1); yet his mercy is deeper than our misery. O the depth of his mercy! There is a depth of mercy deeper than any misery or rebellion of ours, though we have sunk deep in rebellion. And as for the extent of his mercies, as I said before, “his mercy is over all his works” (Ps 145:9). It extends to the utmost parts of the earth. The Scripture wonderfully enlarges his mercy beyond all dimensions whatsoever. These things are to good purpose; and it is a mercy to us that he sets himself forth in mercy in his word, because the soul, at one time or another when it is awakened, as everyone God delights in is awakened, first or last, needs all there is, and all of it is little enough.

God is merciful to those who are heavy laden, who feel the burden of their sins upon their souls. Those who are touched with the sense of their sins, God always meets halfway. He is more ready to pardon than they are to ask for mercy. We see this in the prodigal. When he had wasted everything, when he was as low as a man could be, when he had come to husks, and when he had despised his father’s admonition, yet upon his resolution to return, when he was stung with the sense of his sins, his father meets him and welcomes him; he does not reproach him with his sin (Luke 15:20 and following).

Take sin with all the aggravations we can, yet if we repent and resolve upon new courses, there is comfort, though we relapse into sin again and again. If we must pardon seventy times seven, as Christ says (Matt 18:22), there certainly cannot be more mercy in the cistern than there is in the fountain; there cannot be more mercy in us than there is in the “Father of mercies,” as God is.

Take sin in its aggravations, in its greatness: Manasseh’s sin, Peter’s denying his Master, the thief on the cross, and Paul’s persecution! Take sin as great as you will, he is the “Father of mercies.” If we consider that God is infinite in mercy, and that the Scripture reveals him as the “Father of mercies,” there is no question that there is abundance, a world of comfort, for any distressed soul that is ready to cast itself on God’s mercy.

Use 2. For those who are converted, who are in the state of grace. Is God “the Father of mercies”? Let this stir us up to embrace mercy, to live by mercy every day, to plead mercy with God in our daily breaches; to love and fear God, because there is mercy with him that “he might be feared” (Ps 130:4).

It is a harder matter to make a daily sweet use of this than people take it to be. Those who are the fittest subjects for mercy think themselves furthest from mercy. Come to a broken soul who is caught in the snare, whose conscience is on the rack, and he thinks, “Alas! There is no mercy for me! I have been such a sinner. God has shown me mercy before, and now I have offended him again and again.” Those who are the subjects of mercy, who are nearest to mercy, think themselves furthest off when their conscience is awakened, and we need to press abundance of mercy, and all of it is little enough to set the soul in order. There is none of us all but will see a necessity of pressing this at one time or another before we die.

David, when he had sinned, knew well enough that God was merciful. Oh, but it was not a slight mercy that would satisfy him. We see in Psalm 51 how he presses God for mercy, and will a little serve him? No! “according to thy abundant mercy” (Ps 51:1). He presses mercy, and abundance of mercy, a multitude of mercies. And unless he had seen infinite mercy, abundant mercy in God, when his conscience was awakened to the foulness of his sin (there being such a cry for vengeance, as his sin called and cried out); if the blood of Christ had not cried above it, “Mercy, mercy,” and abundance of mercy, multitudes of compassion, the soul of David would not have been stilled.

So other saints of God, when they have considered the foulness of sin, how odious it is to God, could not be quieted and comforted except by seeing mercy, and abundance of mercy. As the apostle St. Peter says, “Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, of his abundant mercy, hath begotten us again to a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, to an inheritance, immortal ...” (1 Pet 1:3).

“God is the Father of mercies.” For faith will not have sufficient footing except in infinite mercy. In the time of despair, in the time of torment of conscience, in the time of desertion, it must be mercy, and “the Father of mercies,” and multitudes of compassions, and a heart full of love; and all of it is little enough for faith to fix on, the faith of a conscience on the rack.

But when faith considers God as he is set out, not as Satan sets him forth, a God of vengeance, a “consuming fire” (Heb 12:29), but as he is pictured in the gospel, it sees him the Father of Christ and our Father, and the Father of mercies and God of comfort. Faith sees infinite mercy in an infinite God, and sees mercy triumph over justice and all the other attributes, and here faith has some footing and stays itself. Otherwise the converted, sanctified soul, seeing the odiousness of sin and the clamorousness of sin, is such that it will not be satisfied except with abundant mercy; and God must be presented to it as a “Father of mercy” and compassion before it can have peace.

Therefore, if at any time our conscience is awakened and the devil presses hard upon us, let us think of God as he has made himself known in his word, as a “Father of mercies and God of comfort.” Let us represent him to our souls as he represents himself in his word. Times of desertion, when we seem to be forsaken by God, will force this on us. Times of desertion will come, when the soul will think God has forgotten to be merciful and has shut up his love in displeasure. Oh, no! He is the Father of mercy. He never altogether shuts up his tender heart; he never stops the spring of his mercy. He does so to our feeling, but it is his mercy that he does that; it is his mercy that he hinders the sense of mercy. He does that in mercy. It is to make us more capable of mercy afterward.

Therefore, says the church father, when God comes to us in his love and the sense of it, it is for our good; and when he takes the sense of his love from us, it is for our good. For when he takes away the sense of his love from us, it is to enlarge our souls to be more capable of mercy afterward, to prize it more, to walk warily and watchfully, to look to our corruptions better.

Therefore in the time of desertion think of this, when God seems to forget us. “Can a mother forget her child?” (Isa 49:15). Suppose she should be so unnatural as to do it, which can hardly be believed, that a mother should forget her child, “Yet notwithstanding I will not forget you”; you are “written upon the palms of my hands” (Isa 49:16), that is, I have you always in my eye. So if there were no mercies to be found in nature, no tender compassion to be found in a mother (where usually it is most abundant), there is still mercy to be found in “the Father of mercies.” Therefore in such times let us make use of this.

And there is another thing we ought to learn from this, if God is so in Christ Jesus. We must always add that, for he is merciful with satisfaction. And yet it is his mercy that he would admit satisfaction. His mercy devised a way to content justice. His mercy set everything to work. Mercy is above justice in the work of salvation. Justice has received its contentment from mercy. But that is by the way, to make us have higher thoughts of mercy than of any other attribute of God in the doctrine of the gospel, in that kingdom of Christ. It is a kingdom of grace and mercy, if we have hearts to embrace it.

Let this encourage us to come to God and to cast ourselves into the arms of this merciful Father. If we have lived in other courses before, let the mercy of God work upon our souls. In Romans 2:4 this is pressed excellently: this mercy of God should lead us to repentance; it should encourage us. What makes a thief or a traitor come in, when there is a proclamation out against him? If a pardon is sent after him, it makes him come in; otherwise he runs farther and farther away, while the hue and cry pursues him. But hope of mercy and pardon will bring him in again. So that is what brings us in again to God, the very hope of mercy and pardon.

However evil we are, or however evil we have been, do not put it off, but take this day now; “Now is the time,” now, “while it is called today” (Heb 3:13); take the present time. Here is our error: “If God is ‘the Father of mercy,’ I will cry to him for mercy at the hour of death.” Yes, and you may go to hell with mercy in your mouth. He is merciful to those who truly repent. But how do you know that your repentance on your deathbed will be true? It is not sorrow for sickness, and grief at death, and fear of that. There must be a hatred of sin. And how will conscience tell you, now that you have repented, that it is a hatred of your sinful courses rather than the fear of damnation? That comes rather from the sense of grief. Conscience will hardly be comforted in this, for it will reproach you: “Yes, now, now you would have mercy.”

We see by many who have recovered again, who promised great things in their sickness, that it is hypocritical repentance, for they have been worse afterward than they were before. It is not a sufficient ground to give you comfort that you are much humbled in your sickness and at the hour of death; for it is hard for you to determine whether it is true repentance, or mere sorrow for sin as it brings judgment. Fear of damnation is not sufficient to bring anyone to heaven. Your nature must be changed before you come to heaven. You must love righteousness because it is righteousness. You must love God because he is good. You must hate sin because it is sin.

How can you tell, when you were wicked before affliction, whether affliction has produced this, that you repent only out of hatred of judgment, to shun that, or out of hatred of sin because it is sin? Therefore a little repentance now in your health and in the enjoyment of your prosperity, a little hatred of evil ways now, will comfort you more than a thousand times more prayer and striving will then. If you can do it truly then, the gate of mercy is still open; but your heart will scarcely say it is truly done, because it is forced.

Then, again, perhaps you will not have the honor of it; you will not have the mercy. You who have refused mercy and lived in a loose, profane course, you who have despised mercy all the while, God will not honor you so much as to let you have a good word or a sorrowful word, so that even very grief will not extort it from you. But as you have forgotten God in your life and would not own his admonitions, you will forget yourself in death, and be taken away suddenly, or else with some violent disease that will take away the use of the faculties God has given you, such as inflammation of the spirits or the like, which will take away the use of sound reason. It is madness, and no better, to live as most people live, and to cry, “God is merciful.” You may go to hell for all that. Repentance must come from a true hatred of sin; and what must comfort you must be a disposition you have at present, for then it is unforced.

Therefore all these sweet comforts are for you who come in and leave your wicked courses. If you have been swearers, swear no more; if you have been deceivers, deceive no more; if you have been licentious, be so no more, but break off the course of your sins as God enables you. Otherwise, think of this one thing: what you now daub your conscience with, and go on in sin with, will be the greatest terror to you, and that is mercy. Nothing will vex you so much as mercy afterward.

Then you will think to yourself, “I have heard comforting tidings of the promises and of the nature of God, but I put off and despised it all. I regarded my sinful courses more than the mercy of God in Christ; they were sweeter to me than mercy. I lived in sins, out of the abundance of profaneness, that did me no good; I lived in sins, out of the superfluity of profaneness, that gave me neither profit nor pleasure, and I neglected mercy.” The consideration of mercy neglected, together with continuing in a wretched course, will further aggravate the soul’s torment.

Let us be encouraged to come in. Let those who intend to leave their sinful courses remember that they then come to a Father of mercy who is more ready to pardon than you are to ask for it, as you see in the prodigal son, whom I mentioned before; it is a notable, sweet story. “I have a Father,” he says, when he had spent everything and had come to husks (Luke 15:16). Affliction is a notable means to make us taste and relish mercy. I have a Father, and there is plenty in his house, the son reasons; and he comes and confesses his sin. He had no sooner resolved than his Father, not waiting for him, meets him and kisses him (Luke 15:20 and following).

Let us consider this description of God, the Father of mercy. It should move any who have been in evil and lewd courses before to say, “In my Father’s house there are good things,” and in his heart there is tender mercy. I have a Father, and a Father of mercy. I will go home, and submit myself to him, and say to him, I have been thus and thus, but I will be so no more. You shall find that God, by his Spirit, will be readier to meet you than you are to cast yourselves at the feet of his mercy, and into the arms of his mercy. He will come and meet you, and kiss you. You shall find much comfort upon your resolution to come in, if it is a sound resolution.

The son fears his father’s displeasure; but the father says, “My thoughts are not as your thoughts” (Isa 55:8). Oh, you say, I fear he will not receive me! Yes, yes, he is willing to embrace you. Mercy pleases him; “and why will you perish, O house of Israel?” (Ezek 33:11).

Again, “God is the Father of mercies.” This should stir us up to imitate this our gracious Father; for every father begets in his own likeness, and all the sons of this Father are like the Father. They are merciful. “The kings of Israel are merciful kings” (1 Kgs 20:31), say the servants of the heathen king Ben-hadad; and the God of Israel is a merciful God, and all who are under God are merciful. His sons are “merciful as their heavenly Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). Therefore, if we want to make it good to our own hearts, and to the opinion and judgment others have of us, that we are children of this merciful Father, we must put on tender mercy ourselves, as in Colossians 3:12: “Now, therefore, as the elect of God,” as you would make it good that God has elected you, “put on the bowels of mercy.”

Whatever we have from God comes to us as a mercy, and so it should be with what comes from God’s children. Everything that comes from them to those who are in misery should be a mercy. They should bestow not only the thing, but a sweet mercy with the thing. A child of God pours out his very heart to his brother, as Isaiah says, “Pour out thy bowels…” (Isa 58:10). There are some bowels, that is, there is an affection, in God’s children. They give not only the thing, the relief, but mercy with it, which carries a sweet report to the soul. There is pity, which comforts a sanctified soul more than the thing itself.

We must not do works of mercy proudly. It is not the thing that God stands on, but the affection in the thing. His benefits come with a fatherly pity. So should ours come with a pitying regard, with a tender heart. “The very mercies of the wicked are cruel” (Prov 12:10). If they are merciful, there is some pride of spirit, some taste of a hard heart, of a hypocritical spirit. Something is not as it should be. Their mercies are not mercies. We must in our mercy imitate the Father of mercies.

Alas! It is the fault of our time. There is little mercy for those who are in misery. What a cruel thing it is that so many live in miserable poverty! I wish I could call them Christian souls. I cannot say so, but they are a company of men who have the image of God upon them, such as, for all I know, God’s mercy has purchased with the blood of his Son, and who may belong to God’s kingdom. They have the image of God upon them, yet they live without laws, without church, without commonwealth. They are irregular persons for whom no order has been taken, or at least none is carried out, to restrain the sturdy vagrants among them and to relieve those who ought to be relieved because of age or infirmity.

It is a pitiful thing and a foul blemish on this commonwealth, and it will bring some evil upon our commonwealth, and plague it by means of such irregular persons. God will plague the commonwealth for such enormities. How do they live? As beasts, and worse. They submit themselves to no orders of the church. They have none, and submit to none. Here is an object of mercy for those whom it concerns.

And likewise, mercy ought to be shown to the souls of men, as well as to their miserable and wretched conditions. Is popery antichristian? What mercy is it to tolerate poisoners? What a mercy it would be in a commonwealth to allow incendiaries the liberty to do whatever mischief they pleased, or men who would poison fountains, and all that should refresh and nourish people! Would this be any wise policy for the body? And is it any wise policy to allow such men to poison the judgments of people with heresies against God and treason against their prince, and to draw the affections of men away from religion and the state? Where is mercy all the while?

Oh, is it a mercy to them not to restrain them? Mercy! Is it mercy to the sheep to let the wolves go at liberty? No. If you will be merciful, then to show mercy to the souls of these men is to deal severely with them, so that they may know their error. As things are, they may credit the liberty they have to approval of their cause; and so they are cruel, not only to others, but to their own souls.

I speak of this the more readily because it may be a seasonable word at this time, to enforce good laws in this matter. It is a great mercy. Mercy to the soul is the greatest mercy; and so cruelty to the soul is the greatest cruelty there can be.

But why should I speak of mercy to others? Oh, that we would be merciful to our own souls! God is merciful to our souls. He sent his Son to “visit us from on high,” in tender compassion. He sent Christ, as Zechariah says (Luke 1:78), and yet we are not merciful to ourselves. How many sinful, wretched persons pierce their hearts through with covetousness and other wicked courses, which are more dangerous to the soul than poison is to the body! They stab their souls with cares, and lusts, and other such courses.

What a mockery of God this is, to ask him for mercy when we will not be merciful to our own souls, and to entreat others to pray for us when we will not be merciful to ourselves! Shall we go to God for mercy, when we will not show mercy to ourselves? Shall we desire him to spare us, when we will not spare ourselves? It is a mocking of God to come and offer our devotions here, and to come with the intent still to live in any sin. God will not hear us if we purpose to live in sin. “If I regard iniquity in my heart, God will not hear my prayer” (Ps 66:18). As we ought to be merciful to the souls of others, and to the conditions of others, so we should be to our own souls.

How can those who are governors reform evils abroad, when they do not care to reform themselves? Can those be merciful to the souls of others who are cruel to their own? They cannot. Let mercy begin at home.

This is what the Scripture aims at. Mercy and the right use of it is the way to come to salvation; and the abuse of it is what damns; and those who abuse mercy are damned most. Oh, the sins against the gospel will lie upon the conscience another day. The sins against the law help us, together with the gospel, to see mercy; but sins against mercy set our sins above mercy, and in temptations to despair they make mercy small. Hereafter it will be the very hell of hell that we have sinned against mercy, that we have not embraced it with faith, that we have not repented so as to be capable of it.

Use 3. But to end the point with what is the most proper use of all, which is a use of comfort in all conditions, to go to God in all. “He is the Father of mercy.” And when all is taken from us in losses and crosses, let us think: Well, our fathers may die, and our mothers may die, and our nearest and dearest friends, who have the tenderest pity, may die; but we have a Father of mercy, who has eternal mercy in him. His mercies are tender mercies, and everlasting mercies, as he himself is. We are everlasting. Our souls are immortal. We have an everlasting Father, who is the “Father of mercies.” When all are taken away, God does not take himself away. He is the Father of mercy still.

Now, so that we may make ourselves still capable of mercy, still fit for mercy, let us take this daily course.

1. Let us labor every day to have broken and deep souls. As I said before, it is the broken heart that is the vessel that contains mercy, a deeper heart that holds all the mercy. We need, therefore, to empty ourselves by confession of our sins, and to search our own thoughts and ways, and to afflict our souls by repentance; and then we shall be fit objects for God the Father of mercy to shed mercy into misery. Misery discerned and complained of is the lodestone of mercy. Let us search and see our misery, our spiritual misery especially; for God begins mercy to the soul in his children, he begins mercy there especially. General mercy he shows to beasts, to all creatures; but special mercy begins at the soul. Now, I say, misery being the lodestone of mercy, let us lay before God, by confession and humiliation, the sores and sins of our souls.

And then make use of this mercy every day; for God is not only merciful in pardoning mercy at the first, in forgiving our sins at the first, but every day he is ready to pardon new sins, as it is in Lamentations 3:23: He renews his mercies every day, every morning. God renews his mercies not only for body, but for soul. There is a throne of grace and mercy open every day to go to, and a scepter of mercy held out every day to lay hold on, and a fountain for Judah and Jerusalem to wash in every day (Zech 13:1). It is never stopped up or drawn dry. The fountain is ever open, the scepter is ever held out, and the throne is ever kept.

God does not keep terms, as the courts do. Now the Court of Chancery is open, and now it is shut. But he keeps court every day. Therefore Christ in the gospel enjoins us to go to God every day. Every day we say the Lord’s Prayer, “forgive us our trespasses” (Luke 11:4), implying that the court of mercy is kept every day for us to take out our pardon. Every day a pardon is taken out as a matter of course, “at what time soever a sinner repents…” (Ezek 18:21).

Question. How shall we make good use of this mercy every day?

Answer. 1. Do this: when you have made a breach in your conscience, believe every day that God is “the Father of mercies,” and that he may well be merciful now, because he has been sufficiently satisfied by the death of Christ. “He is the Father of Christ, and the Father of mercies.” Do this every day.

2. And along with this, consider that our condition and estate is a state of dependence. “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). This will drive us to seek mercy: that he would hold us in the same state we are in, and go on with the work of grace; that he would uphold us in health, for that depends upon him; that he would uphold us in peace, for that depends upon him, and he is “the God of peace” (1 Cor 14:33); that he would uphold us in comfort and strength, to do good and resist evil. We are in a dependent state and condition in all good of body and soul. He upholds the whole world and every particular thing in it. Let him take away his hand of merciful protection and sustaining from us, and we sink at once.

3. And every day consider whatever danger surrounds us. Remember, we have compassing mercies as we have compassing dangers, as it is written, “Mercy compasseth us round about” (Ps 32:10). Every day, indeed, we have need of mercy. That is the way to have mercy. Here is a fountain of mercy, “the Father of mercy,” his very heart laid open. The only way to use it is to see what need we have of mercy, and to fly to God; to see what need we have in our souls, and in regard to our outward condition, and to see that our condition is a dependent condition.

Use 4. And lastly, to make a use of thankfulness: “Blessed be God, the Father of mercy,” we have the mercy of continued public peace, when others have war, and their estates are consumed. “Blessed be God, the Father of mercy, we sit under our own vines, and under our own fig-trees” (Mic 4:4). If we have any personal mercies, “Blessed be God, the Father of mercies,” in this way. If he shows mercy to our souls and pardons our sins, “Blessed be God, the Father of mercies,” for mercy of this kind, that he has taken us and redeemed us out of that cursed state in which others walk who are still in their sins. Oh, it is a mercy, and for this we should have enlarged hearts.

And along with this, consider the fearful state of others to whom God does not show mercy, and this will make us thankful. For instance, if a man who has a pardon would be thankful, let him see another executed, that is, broken upon the wheel or the rack, or cut in pieces and tortured, and then he will think: I was in the same state as this man is, and I am pardoned. Oh, what a gracious Sovereign I have!

So consider the fearful state of those outside mercy: what a fearful state those are in who live in sins against conscience, who are ready to drop into hell when God strikes them with death. If they die so, what a fearful state they are in! And then consider that God should give me pardon, and grace to enter into another course of life; that though I do not have much grace, yet I know it is true that I am a child of God. Consider the misery of others, in part in this world without repentance, and especially what they shall suffer in hell; consider the torment of the souls that are not in the state of grace. This will make us thankful for mercies, for pardoning and forgiving mercies, for protecting mercies, seeing that God has left thousands in the course of nature, going on in a willful course of sin. This is what the apostle practices here: “Blessed be God, the Father of mercies.” The other title given here is this:

“The God of all comfort.” The life of a Christian is a mystery, as in many respects, so in this: whereas the flesh in him (though he is not altogether flesh) thinks him a disconsolate man, the spirit finds matter of comfort and glory. From the very place where the world begins discouragement and the flesh begins upbraiding, the Spirit of God in holy St. Paul begins matter of glory. They thought him a man neglected by God, because he was afflicted. No! he says, “blessed be the God of all comfort.” Our comforts are above our discomforts. As the wisdom of the flesh is enmity to God and his Spirit in all things, so it is in this, in its judgment of the cross; for what is bitterest to the flesh is sweetest to the spirit. St. Paul therefore sets his spiritual comforts against his outward disgraces. And because it is unfit to mention any comfort, any good from God, without blessing him who is the spring and fountain from whom we have all, he takes occasion, together with the mention of comfort, to bless God, “the God of all comfort.”

The verse contains a wise prevention of scandal at the cross. St. Paul was a man of sorrows if ever anyone was, next to Christ himself. And so that he might prevent all scandal at his crosses and his disgraceful, afflicted treatment, he shows his comforts under the cross, which he would not have gone without even to be free of his cross. Therefore he begins here by praising God.

We praise God for favors; and indeed the comforts he had in his crosses were more than the grievance he had by them. Therefore he had cause to bless God: “Blessed be God…”

“The God of all comfort.” “The God of comfort, and the God of all comfort.” We must give St. Paul leave to be this expansive, for his heart was full; and a full heart makes a full expression. And he speaks not out of books, but from sense and feeling. Though he knew well enough in that way that “God was the Father of mercy and God of all comfort,” yet these are words that come from the heart, that come from feeling rather than from the tongue. They did not come from St. Paul’s pen only. His pen was first dipped in his heart and soul when he wrote this: “God is the Father of mercy, and God of all comfort.” I feel him to be so, he says; he comforts me in all tribulations.

“The God of all comfort.” To explain the word a little: comfort is either the thing itself, a comforting outward thing, a blessing of God in which comfort is hidden; or else it is reasons, reasons on which comfort is grounded, because man is an understanding creature; or it is a real comfort, inward and spiritual, by the assistance and strength of the Spirit of God, when perhaps there is no outward thing to comfort. And perhaps reasons and discourse are not present at that time, yet there is a presence of the Spirit that comforts, as we often see a man comforted by the very sight of his friend, without any discourse.

To a man endued with reason, whose discomforts are for the most part spiritual, in the soul, the very presence of a man he loves brings much delight. What is God then? “The God of comfort.” His very presence must necessarily comfort. Comfort is taken in many other ways, but these are the principal ones for this purpose.

1. First, comfort is the thing itself. There is comfort in every creature of God, and God is the God of that comfort. In hunger, food comforts; in thirst, drink comforts; in cold, garments comfort; in want of advice, friends comfort, and it is a sweet comfort. “God is the God of all comfort,” of the comforting things. But besides the necessary things, every sense has something to comfort it. The eye, besides ordinary colors, has delightful colors to behold; and so the ear, besides ordinary noise and sounds, has music to delight it; the sense of smell, besides ordinary scents, has sweet flowers to refresh it; and so every part of the body, besides what is ordinary, has something to comfort it. Because God is nothing but comfort to his creature, if it is as it should be, he is God of these comforts, “the God of all comfort,” of the comfort of outward things, of friends, and the like.

2. So he is the God of the second comfort, of comforting reasons and arguments. For a man, especially in inward troubles, must have grounds of comfort from strong reasons. God ministers these. He is the God of these. For he has given us his Scriptures, his word; and the comforts that are fetched from there are strong ones, because they are his comforts. It is his word. The word of a prince comforts, though he is not there to speak it. Though it comes by a letter or by a messenger, yet he whose word it is, is one who is able to make his word good. He is Lord and Master of his word. The word of God is comforting, and all the reasons that are in it, and that are deduced from it upon good ground and consequence, are comforting, because it is God’s word. He is the God of all.

And those comforts in God’s word, and the reasons from it, are wonderful in their variety. There is comfort from the liberty of a Christian laid out there, that he has free access to the throne of grace; comfort from the prerogatives of a Christian, that he is the child of God, that he is justified, that he is the heir of heaven, and the like; comforts from the promises of grace, of the presence of God, of assistance by his presence. These things out of the word of God are wondrously plentiful. Indeed, the word of God is a breast of comfort, as the prophet calls it: “Suck comfort out of the breasts of comfort” (Isa 66:11).

The books of God are breasts of comfort, wells of comfort. There are springs of comfort.

God’s word is a paradise, as it were. In paradise there were sweet streams that ran through; and in paradise the voice of God stirred, not only calling, “Adam, where art thou?” (Gen 3:9), terrifying him, but the voice of God promising Adam the blessed seed.

So in the word of God, there is God rousing us out of sin, and there is God speaking peace to the soul. A sweet current of mercy runs from the paradise of God; and there is the “tree of life” (Rev 2:7), Christ himself, and trees of all manner of fruit, comforts of all sorts whatsoever. And there is no angel there to keep the door and gate of paradise with a fiery, flaming sword. No! This paradise is open for all. And they are cruel tyrants who stop up this paradise, who stop up this fountain, as the papists do. As God is the God of comfort, so he is the God of comfort in that respect.

3. But this is not enough to make him the God of comfort. We may have the word of God, and all the reasons from it, from privileges and prerogatives and examples, and yet not be comforted, if we do not have the God of comfort with the word of comfort, the Spirit of God, who must apply the comfort to the soul and be the God of comfort there.

For there must be application, and working of comfort out of God’s word upon the soul, by the Spirit. The Spirit must set it on strongly and sweetly, so that the soul may be affected.

You may have a carnal man who for fashion or custom reads the Scriptures, and he is as dead-hearted when he has finished as when he began. He never looks to the Spirit of comfort. There must be the Spirit of God to work, and to apply comfort to the heart, and to teach us to discourse and to reason from the word; not only to show the reasons of the word, but to teach us to draw reasons from the word, and to apply them to our particular state and condition. The Spirit teaches this wisdom. And therefore he is well called the Comforter. “I will send you the Comforter” (John 16:7). The poor disciples had many comforts from Christ, but because the Comforter had not come, they were not comforted, but heavy-hearted. What was the reason? Because the Comforter was not come. When the Holy Ghost had come, after the resurrection and ascension of Christ, when he had sent the Comforter, then they were so full of comfort that they rejoiced that they were thought worthy to suffer anything for Christ (Acts 5:41); and the more they suffered, the more joyful, and comforted, and glorious they were.

You see what a comfort is. It is the things themselves, and the word, and reasons drawn from it, and likewise the Spirit of God with the reasons, and with his presence. Sometimes, without any reasons, God establishes the soul with present strength. Together with reasons, there is a strengthening power of the Spirit, a vigor that goes with the Spirit of God, that joins with the spirit of the afflicted person. So whether it is the outward thing, such as reasons and discourse, or the presence of the Spirit, God joining with our spirit, God is the God of that comfort, the “God of all comfort.”

A comfort is anything that allays a malady, that either takes it away or allays and mitigates it. A comfort is anything that raises up the soul. The comforts we have in this life are not such as altogether take away sorrow and grief, but they mitigate them. Comfort is that which is above a malady. It is a remedy strong enough to keep the soul from being cast down overmuch by the grievance, whether it is a grievance felt, one we are now sensing, or such a grievance as is feared. When the soul lays hold of anything to set against the ill we fear that is stronger than that ill, when the soul has something it can set against the present sense of the grievance that is stronger than the grievance, then, though it does not wholly expel it, and the discomfort still remains in some degree, it may well be said to be a comfort.

The reason I speak of this mitigation is that in this life God never so wholly comforts his children but that there will be flesh left in them; and that flesh will murmur, and there will be some resistance against comfort. While there are remainders of sin, there will be ground of discomfort, by reason of the conflict between the flesh and the spirit.

For instance, a man has some cross on him. What does the flesh say? “God is my enemy, and I will take such and such courses. I will not endure this.” This is the voice of the flesh, of the “old man.” What does the spirit say? “Surely God is not my enemy. He intends my good by these things.” So while these fight, here is the “flesh against the spirit” (Gal 5:17). Yet here is comfort, because the spirit is predominant. But it is not fully comfort, because there is the “old man” in him, who withstands comfort in the whole measure of comfort.

Therefore we must accept this degree. We cannot have full comfort till we come to heaven. There all tears shall be wiped from our eyes. In this world we must be content to have comfort with some grief. The malady is not wholly purged.

Sometimes God removes the outward grievance more fully. Many times God helps altogether, as when he brings someone from sickness to perfect health. But I am not speaking of that. Comfort is that which is opposite to misery, and it must be stronger, for there is no prevailing except by something stronger. When what acts is not above what is acted upon, there is no prevailing. There is a conflict till one has gotten the mastery.

“The God of all comfort.” “All,” that is, of all comforting things, and of all divine reasons. It must be most substantial comfort. In some maladies the soul will not be comforted by philosophical reasons. The heathen says, “The disease is stronger than the medicine,” when he considers Plato’s comforts and the like. So we may say of the reasons of philosophical men, Romanists, and moralists. When these reasons come to terror of conscience, when they come to inward grievances, inward stings in a man that spring from his conscience (for all discomforts, when they press hard, usually come with a guilty conscience), what can all such reasons do? To say that this is the condition of other men too, that it is useless to murmur, and I know not what else, such reasons as Seneca and Plato and others have, will scarcely still the conscience for a moment. They are ignorant of the root. Alas! how can they tell the remedy when they do not know the ground of the malady?

It must be God, it must be his word, his truth. The conscience must know it to be God’s truth, and then it will comfort. God is the God of comfort, of the things and of the reasons. They must be his reasons.

And he also is the author of that spiritual presence; he is with his children. When they are in the fire, he goes with them into the water, as it is in Isaiah 43:2. He is with them “in the valley of death” (Ps 23:4). They shall find God with them to comfort them. So there is a kind of presence with God’s comforts, and a banishing of all discomfort.

And this comfort is as large as the maladies, as large as the ills are. He is a God of comfort against every particular ill. If there are diverse ills, he has diverse comforts; if they are long ills, he has long comforts; if there are strong ills, he has strong comforts; if there are new ills, he has new comforts. Take the ills in whatever extent and degree you will, God has something to set against them that is stronger than they, and that is the blessed state of God’s children. He is the “God of all comfort.”

St. Chrysostom, an excellent preacher, yields me one observation upon this very place. It is the wisdom of a Christian to see how God describes himself, there being something in God that answers to whatever is ill in the world. The Spirit of God in the Scripture sets forth God in a way fitted to the particular occasions. Here, where he speaks of his misery and the disgraceful treatment he received, St. Paul, being taught by the Spirit of God, considers God as a “Father of mercies” and a “God of comfort.” Speaking of the vengeance on his enemies, the psalmist says, “Thou God of vengeance, show thyself” (Ps 94:1). In God there is help for every malady.

Therefore the wisdom of a Christian is to single out of God what fits his present occasion. In crosses and miseries, think of him as a “Father of mercies”; in discomforts, think of him as a “God of comfort”; in perplexities and distress, think of him as a God of wisdom; in oppression by others, and in difficulties we cannot wade out of, think of him as a God and Father Almighty, as a God of vengeance; and so in every way think of God as applicable to the present occasion. And though many of us have no great affliction upon us for the present, yet we should lay up a store against the evil day; and therefore it is good to treasure up these descriptions of God, “the Father of mercies, and God of all comfort.”

To explain the word a little: what does he mean by “God” in this place? That he is the God of comfort has a further comfort in it, in the very title by which he is called the God of comfort. In that he is called the God of comfort, it implies two things.

1. It shows that he is a Creator of it; that he can work it out of whatever he will, out of nothing.

2. And then, that he can raise it out of the contrary, as he raised light out of darkness in the creation, and in the government of this world raises his children out of misery. As he raised all out of nothing, order out of confusion, so in his church he is the God of comfort. He can raise comfort out of nothing; out of nothing that is likely to yield comfort. Suppose there were neither medicine, nor food, nor drink, nor anything to comfort us in this world, as we shall have none of those things in heaven; he is the God of comfort who shall supply all our needs. As he shall then be all in all, so he can be in this world, when it is by the manifestation of his glory. When Moses was forty days on the mountain, he lacked outward comforts; but he had the God of comfort with him, who supplied the lack of food and drink and all other comforts, because he is the God of all comfort. In him are all comforts originally and fundamentally; and if there are none, he can create them and make them out of nothing.

God, as God properly, makes something out of nothing. That is to be God; for nothing but God can make something out of nothing. Gods upon earth call men their creatures, in a kind of imitation of God; but that is only a phrase that puffs them up. They are only gods in a kind of sense, and the others are only creatures in a kind of sense; because perhaps they have nothing in them, and in that sense they are deservedly creatures. But it belongs to God alone to make something out of nothing; and so he is the “God of comfort.” Where there is no comfort at all, he can raise comfort, as he made the world out of nothing by his very word.

And what is more, it is the property of God as God, it is peculiar to God, to make comfort out of what is contrary to it. In this he most shows himself to be a God of all. He can raise comfort out of discomfort, life out of death. When Christ had been three days in the grave, he raised him. As it is with the head of comfort, with the head of believers, so it is with every particular Christian. He raises them out of death. Those who sow in sorrow reap in joy. What can he not do, who can raise comfort out of discomfort? And discomforts are often the occasions of the greatest comforts. Let a Christian go back over the former course of his life, and he will find that the greatest crosses he ever suffered yield him the most comfort. And who did this? Certainly it must be God, who can raise all out of nothing, and who can make comfort not only out of comforting creatures that are ordained for comfort, but can draw honey out of the lion’s belly. “Out of the eater came meat, and out of the strong came sweetness,” says Samson in his riddle (Judg 14:14). When a honeycomb comes out of the lion’s belly, certainly this is a miracle; this may well be a riddle. This is the riddle of Christianity, that God, who is the God of comfort, raises comforts out of our chiefest discomforts. He can create it out of what is contrary to it.

Therefore Luther’s saying is very good: “All things come from God to his church, especially in contraries”; as he is righteousness, but it is in sin felt. He is comfort, but it is in misery. He is life, but it is in death. We must die before we live. Indeed, he is all, but it is in nothing, in the soul that feels itself to be nothing. There is the foundation for God to work on. Therefore the God of comfort can create comfort. If there is none, he can make comfort. If the contrary is there, he can raise contraries out of contraries. He is the “God of all comfort.” Every word has emphasis and strength in it.

“The God of all comfort.” Among various other things that flow from this, mark the order. He is the “God and Father of Christ” first, and then the “Father of mercy,” and “the God of comfort.”

Take him out of this order, and you must think of him not as a God of comfort but as a “consuming fire” (Heb 12:29). But take the method of the text, and now he is the “God of comfort” after he is the Father of Christ. This being laid as a ground, the text itself as a doctrine, what subordinate truths arise from it?

First of all, if God is the “God of all comfort,” this conclusion follows: that whatever the means of comfort may be, God is the spring of it.

Christ is the conduit next to God; for he is close to God. God is the God of Christ, and the Holy Ghost is usually the stream. The streams of comfort come through Christ the conduit, from God the Father the fountain, by the graces of the Spirit. But I am speaking of outward comforts. Blessed be God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. All are comforters! God the Father is the father of comfort; the Holy Ghost is the comforter; Christ Jesus likewise is the God of comfort. Whatever the outward means may be, yet God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are the comforters. Take them together. That is the conclusion from this.

I point this out all the more to cure a disposition to atheism in men who look brutishly to the thing. They look to the comfort, and never look to the comforter, even for outward comforts. Wicked men have their bellies filled with the comforts of God, but it is with comforting things abstracted from the comforter. They do not care for the root, the favor and mercy of God. So long as they have the thing, they do not care.

Therefore they are not thankful to God, nor in their needs do they go to the God of comfort. Why? They think they have supply enough; they have friends, they have riches, that are their stronghold (Prov 18:11), and if they have outward necessities to supply and comfort them, that is all they care for. As for the “God of comfort,” they do not trouble their heads with him.

A Christian, whatever the comfort is, if it is outward, knows that the God of comfort sends it, and that is the reason he is so thankful for all outward comforts. If they are the necessities of this life, in food he tastes the comfort of God, in drink he tastes the comfort of God, in the ornaments of this life he tastes the comfort of God. It is God who warms him with fire, it is God who clothes him with garments, it is God who feeds him with food, it is God who refreshes his senses in these comforts.

Therefore the heathen, out of their ignorance, made everything a god that was comforting, out of which they received comfort. They made a god of the fire and of the water. These are only instruments of the God of comfort, but the heathen made gods of them. A Christian does not do so, but he sees God in them, and traces these streams from the fountain. God is seen to be the God of comfort in them all.

Again, considering that God is “the God of all comfort,” this should teach us, as thankfulness to God, so prayer in the lack of any comfort, that he would give both the thing and the comfort of the thing. We may have the thing and the wrath of God with it. “But you who are the God of comfort, grant the outward comforts to us, and grant comfort with them. You who are the God of everything, and of the comfort of the thing, grant both.”

Again, if God is the God of all comfort whatsoever, then here is a ground of various other truths; as, for instance, that if we look for any comfort from the things, or from reasons and discourse, or from God, we should go to God in the use of the thing, before the use, after the use, at all times. Before the use, that God would suggest reasons of comfort, either by reading, or hearing, or the like. In the use, that he would settle and seal comfort to our souls. “Lord, I hear many sweet things. I read many comforting things. These would almost move a stone; yet unless you set them on my soul, they will never comfort me. You are the God of comfort. The materials are from you. But unless you join application with revelation and discovery, none of it will comfort; unless, with revelation and application, you open my soul to join with these comforts.”

3. There must be a discovery and application, and an opening of the soul to them. As there are various flowers that open and shut with the sun, so the soul, by the Spirit of God, opens to comforts. Though comforts are put close to the soul, if the soul does not open to them, no comfort is given; for all is in the application. There is a double application, of the thing to the soul, and of the soul to the thing. God must do all.

Question. What is the reason that many hear sermons and read sweet discourses, and yet when they come to suffer crosses and afflictions they are at a loss?

Answer. They go to the stream, they cut the conduits off from the spring, they do not go to the wellhead, they do not see where comfort is derived from. For comfort to be derived to the soul, it is necessary to take the scales from the eye of the soul. They do not see the necessity of a divine presence to apply it, and to lay it close to the soul, and to open the soul, to join the soul to those comforts. “God is the God of all comfort.” If anything will greatly stir up devotion to pray to God, undoubtedly this will be effective, that whatever the comfort is, whether outward things or reasons and discourses of any kind, we may go to God that he would give it.

Well, this being so, if God is the “God of all comfort,” the well of comfort, the Father of comfort, and has remedies for every malady, then you see here where to go. You see that a Christian in all conditions has ground of comfort, for he is in covenant with the God of comfort.

Question. You will say to me, What is the reason that Christians are no more comforted, having the “God of comfort” for their God?

Answer. I answer:

1. It is partly from ignorance. We have remainders of ignorance, so that we do not know our own comfort. Satan veils the eye of the soul in the time of trouble, so that we cannot see that there is a well of comfort. Poor Hagar, when she was almost undone for thirst, yet had a fountain of water near at hand; but she did not see it, she was so overtaken with grief (Gen 21:15 and following).

2. Ignorance and passion hinder the sight of comfort, when we give way so much to the present malady as if there were no God of comfort in heaven, as if there were no Scripture with breasts of comfort, as full as a breast that is willing to discharge itself of comfort. As if there were no matter of comfort, they feed upon grief, and delight to flatter themselves in grief, as Rachel, “that mourned, and would not be comforted” (Matt 2:18). So out of a kind of ignorance, and passion, and willfulness, they will not be comforted.

3. And again, aggravating the grievance. As Eliphaz says, “Are the comforts of God light to thee?” (Job 15:11). They answer, “These are good words, but my discomforts are greater, my malady is greater.” So the comforts of the Holy Ghost, the comforts of God’s Spirit, seem light to them. Ignorance, and passion, and dwelling too much on the grievance make us neglect comfort. They make us see comfort as no comfort, in a manner. Mary, when Christ was before her eyes, had eyes so swollen with tears, with fear that her Lord was lost, that she could not see him, even when he was before her (John 20:15). So grief and passion hinder the soul so much from seeing God’s comforts that we do not see them when they are before us, when they are present. So men are guilty of their own discomfort. It is their own fault.

4. Again, often forgetfulness. As the apostle says, “Have ye forgotten the consolation that speaks?” (Heb 12:5). Have you forgotten that every son whom God does not chastise is a bastard? Have you forgotten? He implies that if they had remembered this, it would have comforted them. “Have ye forgotten?”

5. And then one especial cause is what I spoke of before, the looking to things present, forgetting the spring, the wellhead of comfort, God himself; the looking too much to the means. “Oh!” some say when they are in distress, “if I had such a book, if I had such a man to comfort me, certainly it would be otherwise with me; I would be better than I am.” Suppose he were with you; alas! he is not at the spring! It is the God of comfort who must comfort you, man, in all your distresses whatsoever. Therefore if you do not attribute more to God than to the creature, indeed than to an angel if he were to comfort you, you will find no comfort. “I, even I, am he that comforts thee” (Isa 51:12). “I am he that pardons thy sins,” which are the cause of all discomfort. That is comfort! That is the sting of all. “I am he that pardons thy sins.”

We, as criers, may speak pardon to the soul; but God must give it. We may speak comfort, but God must give it. He must say to the soul, “I am thy salvation” (Ps 35:3). When men idolize any discourse in books, or any particular man, overmuch (though we may value those who are instrumental above others; there may be a difference of gifts), this resting too much in the creature is an enemy to comfort. And some grow to such willfulness in this that they will neglect everything because they do not have what they would have, whereas if they would look to God, humbler means would often serve the turn, if they would go to the God of comfort.

Who comforteth us in all tribulation (2 Cor 1:4).

Afflictions and crosses, as they are irksome in suffering, so they are likewise disgraceful. As it was in the cross of Christ, there were two things, torment and shame. The one he felt himself, the other he had from others; those were the two. Disgrace belongs properly to the cross. So it is in all the crosses that we suffer: there is some disgrace with them. Therefore St. Paul, to prevent the scandal and disgrace of the cross, as I said before, here begins by praising God even for crosses, in the midst of them: “Blessed be God, the Father of mercies, the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all tribulations” (2 Cor 1:3-4).

“Who comforteth us in all tribulation.” These words make good the former title: he is a God of comfort, and does comfort; he is good, and does good. He fills up his name by his works. He shows what he is. The Scripture especially describes God, not in all things as he is in himself, but as he is and works toward his poor church. And they are useful terms, all of them. He is “the Father of mercy,” because he is so to his church. He is the “God of comfort,” because he is so to his people.

Therefore St. Paul says here that as he is “the God of comfort,” so he comforts us in all tribulation. He does not say, who keeps us out of misery; blessed be the God of comfort, who never allows us to fall into discomfort! No! But “blessed be the God of comfort, that comforts us in all tribulation.” It is more to raise good out of evil than not to allow evil to be at all. It shows greater power, it manifests greater goodness, to triumph over ill when it is allowed to be, and so not to keep ill from us, but to comfort us in it.

He does not speak of time past, who has comforted us, or of what may be, who can comfort us if it pleases him. No! He does it. It is his habit. He does it always. It springs from his love. He never at any instant or moment of time forgets his children. And he does not say that he comforts us in one or two or a few tribulations, but that he comforts us in “all tribulations,” of whatever kind or degree.

Objection. It may be objected, to clear the sense a little, that he does not always comfort, for then there could be no time of discomfort.

Answer. I answer that he always comforts in some degree. For take a Christian at his lowest, yet he has so much comfort as to keep him from sinking. When he is at the depth of misery, there is a depth of mercy lower than he is. “Out of the deep have I cried unto thee, Lord” (Ps 130:1). And this is a comfort that he has in the midst of discomforts, that he has a spirit of prayer; and if not a spirit of prayer, yet a spirit of sighing and groaning to God, and God hears the sighs and groans of his own Spirit in his children. When they cannot distinctly pray, there is a spirit to look up to God. “Though thou kill me, yet will I trust in thee,” says Job (Job 13:15), in the midst of his miseries.

So although God, more openly to the view of the world, sometimes comforts before we come to trouble, that we may bear it better, and sometimes comforts more evidently after we come out of it, yet even so, in the midst of discomforts, he always comforts so far that we do not sink into despair. There is something to uphold the soul. For Solomon says, “A wounded spirit, who can bear?” (Prov 18:14); that is, no one can bear it; it is the greatest grief. Then I would like to know what keeps a wounded spirit from sinking, so that it does not despair. Is it not a spirit stronger than the wounded spirit? Is it not God, who is greater than the wounded conscience? Yes! Then there is comfort greater than the discomfort of a wounded conscience, which keeps it from despair. Those who finally despair are none of God’s. So, take the words in whatever regard or in whatever sense you will, there is still a sweet and comforting sense in them, and the apostle might well say that he is the “God of all comfort, that doth comfort us in all tribulation.”

It is here a ground supposed, that God’s children are subject to tribulation. We are subject here to tribulation of all kinds, for God comforts us in all our tribulations. We are here in a state, therefore, that needs comfort, because we are in tribulation.

And the second is that God answers our state. God comforts his children in all tribulation.

And the ground of this is from himself. “He is the God of comfort.” He only acts like himself when he does it. The God of comfort shows that he is so by comforting us in all tribulations.

First, it is supposed that in this world we are in tribulations.

Indeed, I need not be long on that. We must, at one time or another, be in tribulation of some kind or other. For though, as regards outward afflictions, we are free from them sometimes and have a few holidays, as we say, yet even in the greatest seasons of freedom that God’s children have in this world, there is something that troubles their minds. For either there is some desertion, when God withholds comfort from them in some measure and shows himself a stranger, which humbles them greatly; or else they have strong temptations of Satan to sin by prosperity, and so on, which grieve them as much as the outward cross; or else their grievance is that they cannot serve God with that cheerfulness of spirit. Is there nothing, whoever you are, that troubles you as much as the cross in the day of affliction? Certainly there is something or other that troubles the soul of a Christian. He is never out of one grievance or another.

The life of a Christian is like a web woven of good and ill. He has good days and ill days; he has tribulations and comforts. As St. Augustine says very well, between these two, tribulation on our part and comfort on God’s part, our life runs between these two. Our crosses and God’s comforts are both mingled together.

There is no child of God who does not know what these things mean: troubles either from friends or enemies, or both, domestic or personal, in body or mind, one way or another. That is supposed, and it would not be an improper subject for this text; for when he says “in all tribulations,” it is laid down as a ground that every man suffers tribulation one way or another. But I will have a fitter occasion later to enlarge on this.

Again, we see here that God comforts his children in all tribulation.

And his comforts correspond to their discomforts, and go beyond them. They are stronger, to master all adversaries whatsoever and all grievances. There could be no comfort otherwise. Alas! What are all discomforts when God sets himself to comfort? When he will be a God of comfort, one look, one glance of his fatherly countenance in Jesus Christ, will banish all terrors whatsoever, and make even a dungeon a paradise. “He comforteth us in all tribulation.”

And this he does, as you may perceive by the unfolding of the words, either by some outward thing applied to the outward want or cross, or by some inward reasons opposed to the inward malady, or by an inward presence. His comforts are suited to the tribulation, and to its strength and length and variety. We may know it by his course in this life. What misery are we subject to in this life, but we have comfort fit for it? So good is God.

We may reason thus very well. In our pilgrimage here, in this life of ours, which is only the gallery, as it were, to heaven, in this short life, which is only a way or passage, we have both day and night so many comforts. In the very night, if we look up to heaven, we see what glorious things there are toward the earth here, on this side of heaven, the stars of light, and so on. And upon the earth there are such comforts, especially in the spring and summer. If all this is so, if the very earth, the basest dregs of the world, yields such comfort and delights to all the senses, then a man may reason very strongly: what comforts shall we have at home? If God by the creatures thus comforts us in our outward wants, what are the inward comforts of his Spirit here to his children? And what are the last comforts of all, the comforts reserved at home, when God “shall be all in all” (1 Cor 15:28)?

Now there are some drops of comfort conveyed in smells, some in garments, some in friends, some in diet; here a drop, and there a drop. But when we have immediate communion there with the God of comfort himself, what comforts shall we have there? God comforts us here by providing for us, and giving us things that are comforting.

Or he comforts us by giving reasons and grounds of comfort, which are stronger than the reasons and grounds of discomfort, reasons from the privileges and prerogatives of Christians, and so on. The Scripture is full of them.

But likewise, which is the best of all and the most intended, there is the inward springing of comfort. With the reasons and grounds, he inwardly conveys comforts to the soul, and strengthens and supports the soul. And he does this not only by applying the reasons and the things that we understand to the soul, but by opening the soul to embrace them. For sometimes the soul may be in such a condition that it may reject comfort, so that “the consolation of the Almighty” (Job 15:11) may seem light to it. Sometimes there may be such a disposition of soul that the chief comforts in Scripture yield it no comfort. They are not embraced. The soul is shut to them. God provides reasons and grounds of comfort, and likewise he applies these comforts by his Spirit to the soul, and he inwardly warms and opens the soul to embrace comfort. He opens the understanding to understand, and the will and affections to embrace, or else there will be no comfort.

Many are like Rachel. Her children were gone, and it is said of her, “She would not be comforted” (Matt 2:18). God is the “God of comfort.” As he gives the matter and ground of comfort, and reasons out of his holy word above all discomforts, so by his Spirit he frames and fits the heart to entertain these and to take the benefit of them.

“He comforts us in all tribulation.” To comfort is to support the soul against the grievance past, or felt, or feared.

There may be some remainders of grief for what is past. Present grief presses most, and feared grief. Now God comforts, whatever the grievance is, by supporting the soul against it, as I said before.

We are in tribulation in this life, and yet in all tribulations God comforts us. To add to what I said before on this point, let us therefore go to God in all the means of comfort, because he is the God of it, and he must comfort us.

Therefore, when we send for ministers or read holy books (for we must use all means), we must not set God against his means, but join them together. I add that caution by the way.

We may not, therefore, force the hand of the God of comfort, so that because he comforts us, we therefore neglect reading and prayer, and conference with those whom God has exercised in the school of Christ, who by their office should speak comfort to the weary soul.

No, no! God and his means must be joined together. We must trust God, but not tempt him. To set God against his means is to tempt him, as if because he is the God of comfort, we will therefore use no means, no physician for the body or for the soul. This is absurd. He is the God of comfort in the means. He comforts us “in all tribulation” by means, if they are to be had.

If there are no means to be had, he is the God of comfort; he can create them. And if it goes so far that there are no means, but the contrary, he is a God who can comfort out of discomfort, and can, as I said, make the greatest grounds of comfort out of the greatest discomforts. But he is a God of the means, if they are to be had. If there are none, then let us go to him and say, “You God of comfort, if you do not comfort, no one can comfort; if you do not help, no one can help.” And then he will help, and help strongly.

It is necessary to look to God, whatever the means may be. It is he who comforts by them. Therefore let him have the praise. If we have any friend, any comfort of the outward man, or any solace of the inward man by seasonable speech, and so on, blessed be the “God of comfort,” who has sent this comforter, who has sent me comfort by such and such a person; let him have the praise. Whatever the means may be, the comfort is his.

And that is the reason many have no more comfort. They trust in the means overmuch, or they neglect the means.

Again, if “God comfort in all tribulation,” let Christians be ashamed to be overly disconsolate, who have the “God of comfort” for their God, “who comforteth in all tribulation.” “Why art thou so cast down?” (Ps 42:11). “Is there no balm in Gilead” for you? (Jer 8:22). “Is there not a God in Israel?” (1 Sam 17:46). It is the fault of Christians that they pore too much over their troubles; they look all one way. They look to the grievance, and not to the comfort.

There is a God of comfort who answers his name in every way in the exercise of that attribute toward his church. Therefore Christians must blame themselves if they are too much cast down, and must labor for faith to draw near to this God of comfort.

It should make them ashamed of themselves who think it even a duty, as it were, to walk drooping, disconsolate and deadened, and to have flat and dead spirits. What! Is this becoming in a Christian who is in covenant with God, the “God of comfort,” who answers his title in dealing with his children and is ready to comfort them in all tribulation? What if particular comforts are taken from you, is there not a God of comfort left? He has not taken away himself. What if you are restrained and shut up from other comforts, can anyone shut up God’s Spirit? Can anyone shut up God and our prayers?

Is this not a comfort, that we may go to God always, and that he is with us in all conditions and in all wants whatsoever? So long as we are in covenant with the “God of comfort,” why should we be overly cast down? “Why art thou so troubled, O my soul?” (Ps 42:11). David checks his soul three times together for distrust in God. He is your God, the God of all comfort.

Question. What course shall we take, so that we may derive comfort for ourselves from this God of comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulations?

Answer. 1. Let us consider what our malady and grievance is. Especially let us look to our spiritual grievance and malady, sin, for sin is the cause of all other evils. Therefore it is the worst evil. And sin makes us loathed by God, the fountain of good. It drives us from him, when other evils drive us to him; and therefore it is the worst evil in that sense too.

2. Again, look to the discomforts of sin, especially in the discomforts of conscience of those who are awakened; and Satan uses that as a means to drive them to despair in every cross.

(1) Therefore let us search and try our souls for our sins, for our chief discomforts are from sin. For, alas! What are all other comforts? And what are all other discomforts? If a man’s conscience is quiet, what are all discomforts? And if conscience is on the rack, what are all comforts? The disquiet and vexation of sin is the greatest of all, because then we have to deal with God. When sin is presented before us, and the judgments of God, and God as an angry judge, and conscience is awakened and on the rack, what in the world can settle the quarrel and appease conscience, when we and God are at odds, when the soul speaks nothing but discomfort?

In this case remember that God so far anticipates objections of this kind from the accusations of conscience that he reasons that he will comfort us from the very thing from which conscience reasons against comfort. He does this in the hearts of his children to whom he means to show mercy, as we see in the poor publican. “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner,” he says (Luke 18:13). God taught him that reasoning. Nature would have taught him to reason as Peter did, “Lord, depart from me, I am a sinful man” (Luke 5:8), and therefore I have nothing to do with God.

So our Savior Christ says, “Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden” (Matt 11:28). They think that of all people they ought to run from God; they are so laden with sin that they have nothing to do with God. “Oh, come unto me,” says Christ. Therefore, when your conscience is awakened with the sense of sin, remember what is said in the gospel, “Be of good comfort, he calleth thee” (Mark 10:49). Be of good comfort; you are one whom Christ calls, “Come unto me, ye that are weary and heavy laden”; and “Blessed are those that mourn” (Matt 5:4).

That which you and the devil, with your conscience, would move you to use as an argument to run away, our Savior Christ in the gospel uses as an argument to draw you forward. He comes for such people, to seek, and to save the lost sinners. This is a faithful saying, says St. Paul, that “Christ came to save sinners” (1 Tim 1:15). Therefore, do not believe Satan. He presents God to the soul that is humbled and terrified at the sight of sin as cruel, as a terrible judge, and so on. He hides the mercy of God from such people. To men who are in a sinful course he shows nothing but mercy. Ah, but now there is nothing but comfort for you who are cast down and afflicted in the sense of your sins. For all the comforts in the gospel of forgiveness of sins, and all the comforts from Christ’s incarnation, the end of his coming in the flesh, the end of his death, and of all, is to save sinners.

Look, therefore, to the throne of mercy and grace when your conscience is awakened with the sense of sin, and Satan uses that as an argument to draw you from God. Consider that the Scripture uses this as an argument to drive me to God, to allure me to him. “Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden.” And “Christ came to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10).

Luther, a man much exercised in spiritual conflicts, confessed that this was the balm that most refreshed his soul: “God hath shut up all under sin, that he might have mercy upon all” (Rom 11:32). He shut up all under sin as prisoners, to see themselves under sin and under the curse, that he might “have mercy upon all”; upon all those who are convicted by the sense and sight of their sins. He has shut up all under sin, that he might have mercy upon all those who belong to him.

This raised up that blessed man. Therefore, let us not be much discomforted, but be of good comfort, Christ calls us.

But there are sinners who are given to the sins of the tongue and of the life, to rotten talk, to swearing and the like, who mean to remain so and think their case is good, and who say, “Oh! God is ‘the God of comfort!’” To such, as I said before, I can speak no comfort, and the word of God speaks none. They must have another word and another Scripture; for this word speaks no comfort to those who are sinful and wretched, and will be so, and justify themselves in being so.

All the judgments in the Scripture are theirs. Hell and damnation and wrath, that is their portion to drink.

We can speak no comfort to such people, nor can the word of God that we unfold. It has not a drop of comfort for them. God will not be merciful to those who go on in wicked, rotten, scandalous courses, who think that because hell has not yet taken them they may live long, and so make a “covenant with hell and death” (Isa 28:18), and bless themselves.

Oh! But you have made no covenant with God, nor has he made any with you; and hell and death have made no covenant with you, though you have made one with them. But it takes two words to make a covenant. Death and hell will seize upon you, notwithstanding your covenant.

Those who will live in sin in defiance of the ministry, in spite of afflictions, have no comfort. I speak only to broken hearts, which are fit vessels for comfort. God is “the God of comfort” to such as these.

What shall we say, then, to those who, after they have had some evidence of their good state, that they are Christians, have fallen into sin? Is there any comfort for such people?

Yes. Does not St. Paul, in 2 Corinthians 5:20, desire such people to be “reconciled to God”? We are, as ambassadors of Christ, desiring you to be reconciled, if you have sinned. So God has comfort for those who have sinned. Christ knew that we would every day run into sins unawares. Therefore he teaches us in the Lord’s Prayer to say every day, “Forgive us our debts, our trespasses” (Matt 6:12). There is “balm in Gilead,” there is mercy in Israel, for such daily trespasses as we run into.

Therefore, let no one be discouraged, but fly immediately to the “God of comfort and Father of mercies.” And do not think that he is weary of pardoning, as man is, for he is infinite in mercy; and though he is the party offended, yet he desires peace with us.

Caution. But yet, so that we will not love to run into his debt, he adds, along with the comfort of the pardon of sin when we fall into it, such sharp crosses that we will wish we had not given him occasion to correct us so sharply. We will buy our comfort dear. We had better not have given him occasion.

God forgave the sin of David after he had repented, though he was a good man before; but David bought the pleasure of his sin dear. He wished a thousand times that he had never given God occasion to raise good out of his evil, to turn his sin to his comfort. Yet God will do this, because God would never have us in a state of despair.

2. For other grievances besides sin, the comforts that we are to apply are easier, and they are infinite, if we could reckon the particular comforts with which God comforts his children.

It is good to have general comforts ready for all the kinds of maladies and grievances that this poor, wretched life of ours, in our absence from God, is subject to.

(1) As, for instance, that general comfort, the covenant of grace. That is a spring of comfort, that God is our God and Father in Christ. What can come from a gracious and good God in covenant with us but that which is good? Nothing but what is favorably good, I mean. For the covenant is everlasting. When God once takes it upon himself to be our Father in covenant, he is so forever. While he corrects, he is a Father; and when he smiles upon us, he is a Father.

God in the covenant of grace takes upon himself a relation that ever holds.

As he is forever the Father of Christ, so he is forever the Father of those who are members of Christ; and whatever comes from the Father of mercy, whether he corrects or smiles, whatever he does is in mercy.

(2) Again, in the midst of any grievance, remember the gracious promise of mitigation: God will not suffer us to be tempted above our strength, but he will give an issue to the temptation (1 Cor 10:13). He will give a mitigation, and either he will raise our strength to the temptation, or he will bring the temptation and trial to our strength. He will fit them to each other, and this is a comfort.

(3) There is likewise comfort, in all troubles whatever, from the presence of God. God will be present with us if once we are in covenant with him. He will be present in all trials to assist us, to strengthen us, to comfort us, to raise our spirits. And if God is present, he will banish all discomforts; for God is light, and where light is, darkness vanishes. Now God, being the Father of light, that is, of all comfort, banishes discomfort where he is present, in whatever measure he is pleased to banish it.

Therefore David often reasons from the presence of God to the defiance of all troubles: If God be with me, I will not fear ten thousand that are against me (Ps 3:6). And in Psalm 23:4, “Though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will not fear, for thou art with me.” And “if God be with us, who can be against us?” (Rom 8:31). “And when thou passest through the fire, I will be with thee” (Isa 43:2). “I will be with thee”: not to keep you out of it, but to uphold you, as he did the martyrs. There was a fire of comfort in them above the fire that consumed their bodies. And, as we see, he was with the three children. There was “a fourth, like the Son of God” (Dan 3:25).

So in all tribulations there is another with us, that is, the Spirit of God, who comforts us in all and is present with us in all. The goldsmith, when he puts the wedge of gold into the fire, stands by until the dross is consumed. So God is with his children in the furnace of affliction. He brings them into affliction; he continues with them in affliction; and he brings them at last out of affliction. The presence of God is a main and a grand comfort in all tribulation.

(4) Besides, in all that befalls us whatever, consider the end. All is for a good end. “All things work together for the best to them that love God,” says St. Paul (Rom 8:28). Why do we endure medicine? Because we know the physician is wise, and he is our friend, and he does it to carry away burdensome, hurtful humors. We shall be better and lighter afterward. Do we do this in our common course, in the things of this life? Grace will much more certainly teach us to do it; to reason, “It is from a father, and it is for my good.” Let us look at where it comes from and what it tends to, together with the promise of mitigation and of God’s presence in our troubles. These are main comforts, if we could think of them, if the devil did not take them out of our memory.

(5) And as for the fifth ground of comfort with which God comforts us in all tribulations, it is the promise of final deliverance and final comfort forever. If nothing else will raise our souls, that will, when we consider that it will not be long.

The short afflictions in this world bring an eternal weight of glory (2 Cor 4:17). There will be a final deliverance. Life itself, the subject that receives affliction, is short. Our life is but a moment. Therefore our afflictions must be short (2 Cor 4:17).

Life is longer than discomforts. Only a piece of our life is subject to miseries; and if that life is but a vapor, but a moment, a point between eternity before and eternity after, what are the miseries of this life? Certainly they are but for a moment.

Therefore the promise of final deliverance, when all tears shall be wiped from our eyes, should comfort us, if nothing else would. This, then, is the way in which God usually comforts, by suggesting the heads and springs of comfort.

And indeed there is a daily method of comforting, by which we may comfort ourselves in all crosses, if we would use that daily method and order of comfort. As there is a kind of diet to keep the body in good condition, so there is a kind of spiritual diet to keep the soul in good condition, in a course of comfort, unless it is when God takes the liberty to cast down for some special end, as we see in Job.

Therefore let us take this course. For God, as he comforts us, so he comforts us as understanding creatures; he uses our understanding to consider how we should comfort ourselves. And after we are once in a state of comfort, if we do not fail ourselves, there is no great difficulty in keeping our comfort. There are means to keep daily comfort. God has provided them, and he will be present to make good all his comforts. Granting, therefore, that we are in the covenant of grace, that God is our Father in Christ, and that we take him to be our God, to be all-sufficient, then, to keep ourselves in a daily condition fit for comfort:

[1] Every day let us keep our souls tender, so that we may be capable of comfort. Let us keep the wound open, so that we may receive balm, and so that no deadness may grow upon the heart, considering that while we live here there is always some sin in us that must be worked out by some course or other. Let us test and search our souls, what evil is in the wound; let us keep it open and tender, so that there may be a fitness for mercy, to receive the balm of comfort, which will not happen if we carelessly gloss it over. Certainly it is an excellent course every day to search our hearts and ways, and at once to apply the balm of comfort, the promise of pardon. Take the present moment, when we have searched the wound, to get pardon and forgiveness daily. As we sin daily, Christ bids us ask it daily.

This will make us fit for comfort, by discerning the condition of our souls and the remainders of corruption. What sharpens appetite, and makes the balm of God sweet indeed, is the sense of our wound and the keeping of it open. A daily search into our wants and weaknesses, a daily fresh sight of the body of sin in us, and experience of how fruitful it is in evil thoughts and desires and actions: this will drive us to a necessity of daily comfort.

And certainly a fresh sight of our corruptions is never without some fresh comfort. We see St. Paul in Romans 7 setting himself to this work, to complain of his unfitness by reason of the sin in him. And how does he end that sight and search into his own condition? He ends in a triumphing manner: “Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord: There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 7:25; Rom 8:1), after he had complained, “Oh, miserable man that I am! who shall deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:24). There can be no danger in a deep search into our ways and hearts, if this is first laid as a foundation: that there is more supply and heavenly comfort in God and the promises of God than there can be evil in our souls. Then the more evil we find in ourselves, the more we are disposed to fetch grounds of comfort from God.

[2] And together with this searching of our souls and asking daily pardon, let us for the time to come renew our covenant with God, so that we may have the comfort of a good conscience, to get pardon for our past sins and renew our resolutions for the time to come.

[3] And along with this, so that we may use an orderly course of comfort, let us every day feed on Christ, the food of life; let us every day feed upon something in Christ. Consider the death of Christ, the satisfaction he has made by his death, his intercession in heaven. His blood runs afresh, so that we may every day feed on it.

We may run every day into new offenses against the law, into new neglect of duty, into new crosses; let us feed upon Christ. He came into the world “to save sinners” (1 Tim 1:15), to make us happy, with peace of conscience here and with glory afterward. Let us feed on Christ daily. As the body is fed with cordials, so this feeds and comforts and strengthens the soul.

This is to live by faith, to lead our lives by faith, to feed on Christ every day.

[4] And likewise, if we will keep our souls in a perpetual condition of comfort, let us every day meditate on some prerogatives of Christians that may raise our souls; let us single out one or another. Take, for example, that excellent prerogative to be the “sons of God” (1 John 3:2). What love! says the apostle, that we, who were rebels and traitors, should in Christ be made the sons of God! That from slaves we should be made servants; from servants, sons; from sons, heirs; and from heirs, fellow heirs with Christ! What a prerogative this is, that God should give his Son to make us, who were rebels, sons, heirs, and fellow heirs with Christ (Gal 4:7)!

And let us consider what follows upon this liberty that we have from the curse of the law: to go to God boldly, to go to the throne of grace by prayer through Christ, our elder Brother; to think of eternal life as our inheritance; to think of God above as our Father. Let us think of our prerogatives of religion, adoption, justification, and the rest.

We are driven to it by necessity, if we consider the grievances of this world together with our corruptions. Our corruptions and afflictions and temptations and desertions, one thing or another, will drive us to go out of ourselves for comfort, to feed on the benefits we have by Christ. And consider what he has done. It is for us, the execution of his office, and all for us; what he is, what he did, what he suffered, what he procured, all is for us. When the soul delights itself in these prerogatives, this will keep it in a perpetual state of comfort.

Therefore the Scripture sets forth Christ by every term that may bring comfort. He is the door to let us in. “He is the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), the water and the bread, and so on. In sin, he is our righteousness; in death, he is our life; in our ignorance, he is our way; in spiritual hunger and thirst, he is the bread and water of life: he is all in all. And if we cannot think of some prerogative of Christianity, then think of some promise. As I said before, think of the covenant of grace. There is a spring of comfort in that, that God in Christ is our God to death and forever; and in that promise I speak of, that “All things shall work for the best” (Rom 8:28).

Let us every day think of these things, and suggest them to our own souls, so that our souls may be affected by them and digest them, so that our souls and they may be one, as it were.

[5] And every day let us stir up our hearts to be thankful. A thankful heart can never lack comfort, for thankfulness cannot be practiced without some comfort and cheerfulness. And when God receives any praise and glory, he answers it with comfort. A thankful heart is always a comforted heart.

[6] And let us stir up our hearts to be fruitful in holy actions. The reward of a fruitful life is a comforted life. Besides heaven, God always gives in this life a present reward to any good action. It is rewarded with peace of conscience. Besides, it is a good foundation against the evil day. Every good action, as the apostle says to Timothy, “lays up a good foundation” (1 Tim 6:19). The more good we do, the more we are assured that our faith is not hypocritical, but sound and good, and will hold out in the time of trial. It will be a good foundation that we have had evidence beforehand that we have a sound and fruitful faith.

What do wicked men do, careless, sinful creatures who go on in a course of profaneness and blasphemy and the like? They lay a ground of despair, a ground of discomfort, to be swallowed up in the evil day. Then conscience will be awakened at the last, and Satan will be ready to join with conscience, and conscience will seal all the accusations that Satan lays against them; and where is the poor soul then? As it is with them, so, on the contrary, the Christian soul that does good, besides the present comfort of a good conscience, lays a good foundation against the time to come. For in the worst times it can reason with itself, “My faith is not fruitless; I am not a hypocrite. Though its fruits are weak and mixed with corruptions, yet there is truth in them.” This will comfort us when nothing else will.

Therefore let us every day be setting ourselves in some good way; for comfort is found in courses that bring comfort, and not in evil courses. In God’s ways we shall have God’s comforts. In those ways let us exercise the spiritual strength we have. Let us pray to God and perform the exercises of religion with strength, showing some zeal in them. Let us show some zeal against sin, if occasion arises, if it is in God’s work, in God’s way. Let a man set himself upon a good work, especially when it meets with opposition, for the honor of God and the peace of his conscience. At once there is comfort upon it.

[7] And so that we may not be discouraged by the imperfection of our performances, one way of daily comfort is to consider the condition of the covenant of grace between God and us. In the covenant of grace, our performances, if they are sincere, are accepted; and sincerity is the perfection of the gospel. Sincerity will look God in the face with comfort, because he is with the upright. So much truth in all our dealings, so much comfort.

[8] And with sincerity labor for growth, to grow better and better. God in the gospel means to bring us to perfection in heaven little by little. In the law, present perfection was required; but in the gospel God requires that we should come to perfection little by little, as Christ satisfied for our sins little by little, and not all at once. In the condition of the covenant of grace, we must live and grow by grace, little by little, and not all at once. The condition of the covenant of grace is not made to him who has strength of grace in perfection. But if we believe and labor to walk with God, if there is truth of grace, truth counts as perfection in the covenant of grace. We should labor for sound knowledge of the covenant of grace: that now we are freed from the rigor as well as from the curse of the law; that though we have imperfections, yet God will be our Father, and in this condition of imperfection he will be a pardoning Father. He looks on our obedience, though it is feeble and weak and imperfect, yet as the obedience of children in the covenant of grace; and he accepts what is his own, and pardons what is ours.

[9] And every day labor to preserve the comforts of the Spirit that we have, and not to grieve the Spirit; for comfort comes with the Spirit of God as heat accompanies fire. As wherever fire is, there is heat, so wherever the Spirit of God is, there is comfort; because the Spirit of God is God, and God is with comfort. Wherever comfort is, God is; and wherever God is, there is comfort. If we would have comfort continually, every day, let us carefully watch that we give way to the Spirit of God, by good actions and meditations and exercises.

And by no means grieve the Spirit or resist the Spirit, for then we resist comfort. If we speak anything that is evil, we lose our comfort for that time. Conscience will check us. We have grieved the Spirit. If we hear anything evil with applause, and are not touched by it, we lose our comfort; conscience will tell us that we are dead-hearted, and not affected as we should be. There is a great deal of flesh and corruption that is affected by such rotten talk. And so if we venture upon such occasions, we shall grieve the Spirit, either if we speak something to satisfy others who are wicked, or if we hear something evil from others. Lack of wisdom in this kind often makes us go without comfort: lack of wisdom to choose our company, or else, if we are with such people, doing what may please them, and grieve the Spirit, and hinder our own comfort.

[10] If we would observe these and similar directions, we might walk in a course of comfort. The God of comfort has prescribed this in the book of comfort. These are the courses for God’s children, to walk in a way of comfort until they come to heaven. More especially, if we would at any time take a fuller measure of comfort, then take the book of God into your hand. Those are comforts that refresh the soul. Single out some special portion of Scripture, and there you shall have a world of comfort. For example, let a man single out the Epistle to the Romans. If a man is in any grievance whatever, what a world of comfort is there, fitted for every malady! There is a method for coming to comfort.

There St. Paul, in the beginning, first strips all men of confidence in anything in themselves, and tells them that no man can be saved by works, neither Jews nor Gentiles, but all by the righteousness of God in Christ. “All are deprived of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23), Jews and Gentiles, everybody. And when we are brought to Christ, he tells us, in the latter end of the third chapter, that by Christ we have the forgiveness of all our former sins whatever. “He is the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:2). In the fourth chapter he comforts us by the example of Abraham and David, that they were justified without works by faith, not by works of their own, but by laying hold of the promises of comfort and salvation solely by Christ. And all that St. Paul says is “written for us” (1 Cor 10:11).

But in the fifth chapter especially, because all the miseries of this life come from the “first Adam,” and because we are children of the “first Adam,” so that death and misery come from that, he sets against it the comfort in the “second Adam.” And he shows that there is more comfort by the second Adam than there is discomfort by the first. Righteousness in the second Adam “reigns to life everlasting” (Rom 5:17) and glory. Sin and misery came by the first, but there is the pardon of all sin by the second Adam. He excellently sets them against each other in the latter end of that chapter.

In the beginning of the fifth chapter he shows the method and descent of joy: “Being justified by faith, in Christ, we have peace with God” (Rom 5:1). Considering that by the righteousness of Christ we are freed from sin, “We have peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom 5:1). And we have boldness to the throne of grace, and “we rejoice in tribulation: knowing that tribulation brings forth patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope” (Rom 5:3-4). He sets himself there on purpose to comfort in all tribulation, and he says that in these things we rejoice: “We rejoice in tribulation.”

“Yes,” someone says, “but what about our sins after our conversion, after we are in the state of grace? What comfort is there for them?” There is excellent comfort in Romans 5. If when we were enemies he gave his Son for us: if he saved us by the death of Christ when we were enemies, much more, Christ being alive and in heaven, he will keep it for us, and keep us to salvation now, when we are friends, seeing that he died for us when we were enemies.

“Yes, but the remainders of corruption in this world trouble us. That troubles our comfort, the combat between the flesh and the Spirit.” Would you see comfort for that? You shall see it in Romans 7:24-25: “Oh, miserable man, who shall deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” So he shows there the way to have comfort in the combat between the flesh and the spirit: to search into our corruptions, to lay them open to God by confession.

And then, in the beginning of the eighth chapter, he says, “There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1). Though there is sin, yet there is no condemnation, though there is this conflict between the flesh and the spirit. So he comforts them. And for the afflictions that follow our corruptions in this life, there is a treasure of comfort against them in that chapter. For does he not say, “if we suffer with him, we shall reign with him” (Rom 8:17)? And that the same “Spirit helps our infirmities, and teacheth us how to pray” (Rom 8:26)? We can never be without comfort if we can pray; but there is a promise of the Spirit that stirs up sighs and “groans that cannot be expressed” (Rom 8:26), and a Christian always has a spirit of prayer, at the least of sighs and groans; and God hears the sighs of his own Spirit.

And what a grand comfort is that which I named before, “All things work for the best to them that love God” (Rom 8:28). And “if God be with us, who can be against us?” (Rom 8:31). And he sends us to Christ. If Christ is dead, “or rather risen again, who shall lay anything to our charge?” Christ is “ascended to heaven, and makes intercession at the right hand of God” (Rom 8:34). Though Satan lays our sins to our charge, Christ makes intercession in heaven at the right hand of God. He makes continual intercession for our continual breaches with God. Who shall lay anything to our charge?

“Yes, but all that power of hell and sin! And all of it labors to separate us from God, to breed division between God and us.” In the latter end of that chapter he bids defiance to all: what shall “separate us from the love of God in Christ?” (Rom 8:35). Whatever does so must separate his love from Christ first. God’s love is found in Christ. He will cease to love Christ if he ceases to love us. “Yes, but we may afterward fall into a condition without comfort.” For that he says, “neither things present, nor things to come, shall be able to separate us” (Rom 8:38-39).

What an excellent spring of comfort there is in that reasoning in Romans 8:32: “If God spared not his own Son, but gave him to death for us all, how shall he not with him give us all things else?” How many streams may be drawn from that spring! “If God spared not his own Son, but gave him to death for us all, how shall he not with him give us all things else” necessary in this world, grace, provision, and protection, until he has brought us to heaven? If he has given Christ, he will give all. Whatever is written is written for our comfort. I name this epistle because I would name one instance for all. All is written for our comfort, as he says later in the same epistle (Rom 15:4). Whether it is the written word or the word unfolded, the end of preaching is especially to comfort.

The surgeon opens a wound, and the physician gives a purge, but all is to restore at the last. All that the surgeon aims at is to close up the wound at the last. So all our aim is to comfort. We must cast you down, and show you the misery you are in, and show you that if you continue in that course, hell and damnation belong to you. But this is to make you despair in yourselves, and to fly to the God of comfort. The law is for the gospel. All serve to bring the soul to comfort.

Therefore go to the word of God, any portion, the Psalms or any special part of the Scripture; and that, by the Spirit of God, will be a means to raise the soul. The Spirit in the word, joining with the Spirit in us, will close sweetly together, and comfort us in all tribulation.

[11] And have recourse daily to common principles. All the principles of religion serve for comfort, especially the articles of the creed. “I believe in God the Father Almighty.” What a spring of comfort is in that! What can befall from a father but it shall turn to good, and from a Father Almighty? However strongly he is opposed, yet he will turn it to good. He is a “Father Almighty.”

And in the articles of Christ, every article has ground of daily comfort. Take those of his abasement. In Christ, I see myself. He is my surety, “the second Adam.” I see my sins crucified with him. This is the way to reap comfort when the conscience is disquieted: when I look upon my sins not in my own conscience, but take them out of there and see them in Christ dying and crucified; in the articles of abasement to see our sin and misery, all in Christ. For he stood there as surety, as a public person for all. What a comfort this is! When I see how Christ was abased, I see my own comfort, for he was my surety. If my sins, being laid on him who was my surety, could not condemn him or keep him in the grave, but he overcame the sin that was laid to his charge, surely I shall overcome my corruptions. Nothing that I have shall overcome me, because it could not overcome Christ my surety. His victory is mine.

And so, if the soul is in any desolation and discomfort, there are all the articles of his “glorification and exaltation.” His rising again acquits the soul. Therefore my sins are satisfied for, because my surety is out of prison. And his ascending into heaven shows my triumph. He led captivity captive. And the enemies that are left are for the trial of my faith, and not to conquer me. For Christ has “led captivity captive” (Ps 68:18), and has ascended into heaven. He led all in triumph, and sits at the right hand of God, to rule his church to the end of the world. He sits for me, to overcome my enemies, as St. Paul says excellently: “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s people? It is Christ that died, or rather, that is risen again, who sits at the right hand of God” (Rom 8:33-34).

And if we are troubled by the loss of a particular friend, there is comfort in that article of the “communion of saints.” There are those who have more grace, and that is for me. If my own prayers are weak, “I believe the communion of saints,” and have the benefit of their prayers. Everyone who says “Our Father” brings me in, if I am in the covenant of grace and of the communion of saints. If I have weaknesses in myself, “I believe in the Holy Ghost,” the comforter of God’s elect, and my comforter. If I fear death, “I believe the resurrection of the body.” If I fear the day of judgment, “I believe that Christ shall be my judge.” He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. In all the miseries of this life, considering that they are but short, “I believe the life everlasting.” So indeed, if we would dig springs of comfort for ourselves, let us go to the articles of our faith, and see how streams of comfort flow from every one of them, answering to all our particular emergencies and necessities whatever they may be.

And to close this point, remember: whatever means we use, whatever prerogative we think of, whatever we do, remember that we go to the God of comfort. Let us ask him to bless his word in the ministry, and ask him to work in the communion of saints, and with his Spirit to warm our hearts. Always remember to carry him along in everything, that we may have comfort from “the God of comfort, who comforteth in all tribulations.”

The next words are:

“That we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble.” These words show the end for which God comforts us in all tribulation. One main end is that we should be comforted in ourselves. That is the first. And then, that we, being comforted ourselves, from that ability should be able to pass comfort on to others. “We are comforted in all tribulations, that we should be able to comfort them that are in any tribulation.”

It is not St. Paul’s case only, or that of great men in religion, ministers and the like. It is not their lot and portion alone to be persecuted and troubled, but:

Observation. We are all in this life subject to disquiets and discomforts.

Everyone, “whosoever will live godly in Christ Jesus, must suffer persecution” (2 Tim 3:12). Therefore the apostle does not say only “our tribulation,” but “we may be able to comfort them that are in any trouble.” Trouble is the portion of all God’s children, one with another. I only touch on that in passing.

But what I will dwell on more is the end, one main end, for which God comforts, especially ministers: it is that they should be able to comfort others with the comforts with which God has comforted them. “That we may be able...”

Now you must understand that this ability is not ability alone, without will and practice, as if he meant, “God has given me comfort so that I might be able to comfort others if I will.” That is not God’s end only, that we may be able, but that we may exercise our ability, that it may be ability in exercise. In the same way, God does not give a rich man riches to the end that he may be able to relieve others if he will. No! If you are a child of God, he gives you ability and will too; he gives an inward strength. So the meaning here is not that we may be able to comfort others if we will, but that we may be both able and willing to comfort others.

And we are to comfort others not only by our example, showing that because we have been comforted by God, so they shall be comforted. That is good, but it is not the full extent of the apostle’s meaning, for then the examples of the dead would comfort as well as the living. And indeed that is one way of comfort, to consider the examples of former times. But the apostle’s meaning is that I should comfort them not only by my example of God’s dealing with me, so that they may look for the like comfort. That is only one degree. His meaning therefore goes further: that we should be able to comfort them by sympathizing with them, as indeed it is a sweet comfort to those in distress when others have compassion on their condition.

And not only so, by our example and our sympathy with them, but also that we may be able to comfort them by the inward support, and strength, and light that we have found by the Spirit of God in ourselves. That is what will enable us to comfort others: that very support and inward strength that we have found from God, those graces, and that particular strength and comfort that we have had.

When there is a sweet expressing of our inward comfort to them, showing something in our comfort that may raise them up in troubles like those we were in, then the comfort will not be a dead comfort, since it comes from a man of experience. Acted comfort, when a man takes it on himself to comfort and only speaks comfort but does not feel what he speaks, has little life in it. We are comforted that we may comfort others with feeling, having first been comforted ourselves with feeling and with comforting perceptions in ourselves. The point to consider in the first place, to make way for the rest, is this:

Doctrine. God’s children, all of them, have a rightful share in divine comforts.

St. Paul was comforted that he might comfort others. Divine comforts belong to all. They are the portion of all God’s people. The lowliest have a share as well as the greatest. There is the same spiritual medicine for the poorest subject and the greatest monarch. There is the same spiritual comfort for the lowliest and for the greatest Christian in the world. St. Paul has the same comfort as St. Paul’s children in the faith. What is the reason that these comforts can be shared in this way with all, that they lie open to all?

Reason 1. God is the God and Father of all light and comfort. Christ is the Savior of all. All the privileges of religion belong to all equally. All are sons and heirs, and all are alike redeemed: “The brother of low degree,” and the brother of high degree (Jas 1:9). They may differ in the positions and relationships of this life, but in Christ all are alike.

Reason 2. Besides, it is the nature of spiritual privileges and blessings. They can be shared by all alike without being diminished. If one has more, another does not have less. All have an equal share. Each one’s share is entire; each one has all, without loss or hindrance to others. Take the sun, for instance. Every particular man has all the good the sun can do, as much as all the world has. It is peculiarly and entirely every man’s own. Every man has the use of the whole of it. The sun is not one man’s more than another’s. As with a public fountain or conduit, every man has as much right in it as another.

So in religion, the graces, and privileges, and favors lie open as the prerogatives and privileges of all God’s children, and that is their excellence. In the things of this life it is not so. They are not common to all alike. There is a loss in the division. The more one has, the less another has. And that is the reason the things of this life breed a disposition of pride and envy. One envies another because he lacks what another has, and one despises another because he has more than another has. But in the comforts of God’s Spirit, and the prerogatives that are the ground of those comforts, all have a share alike.

The only difference is in the vessels they bring. If one man brings a large vessel, a large faith, he carries away more, and another who brings a smaller faith carries away less, but it lies open to all alike. As St. Cyprian says, we carry away as much from God as we bring vessels for. But all have a share alike in divine comforts.

Therefore among Christians there is little envy, because in the best things, which they value most, all may have alike; and of what one desires, another may have as much as he. He knows he has none the less for it.

Use. The point is comforting to all, even to the lowliest, and to them especially: however much there may be a difference between others and them in outward things that cease in death (for all differences will soon cease between us and others), yet the best things are common. In this life those things that are necessary are common, such as the light and the elements, fire, water, and so on; and those that are not common are not necessary. But especially in spiritual things, the best things are common. Let no man be discouraged if he is God’s child. Comfort belongs to him as well as to the greatest apostle. The chief comforts belong to him as well as to the chief Christian. Therefore let us envy no one, and despise no one, in this respect.

In the next place, we may observe from this that though these comforts are common, yet God commonly conveys them by the means of men.

This is God’s order in conveying these comforts to the soul. He comforts one that another may be comforted. Not that the comforts themselves that join with our spirits come from men. Rather, together with the speech and presence of men whom we love and respect, and in whom we discern the appearance of the Spirit of God to dwell, together with the speech of persons in whom the Spirit is strong and powerful, the Spirit of God joins, and the Spirit raises the soul with comfort. So the Spirit comforts by comforting others, that they may comfort us.

This is true not only of ministers, but of Christians as Christians. For St. Paul must be considered in some things as an apostle, in some things as a Christian, and in some things as a minister of Christ. As an apostle, he had the care of “all the churches” (2 Cor 11:28). As a Christian, he comforted and exhorted others. One Christian ought to comfort another. Therefore he would have done it as a Christian even if he had not been an apostle. And in some things he is to be considered as a minister of Christ, as a teacher and ambassador of Christ, a teacher of the gospel. Some things he was as an apostle, some as a minister, some as a Christian. Therefore it concerns us all to consider how to comfort one another as Christians. We are all members of the same body, of which Christ is the head. Therefore whatever comfort we feel, we ought to share.

The heavenly bodies will teach us this. Whatever light or influence the moon and the stars receive, they bestow on these lower bodies. They have their light from the sun, and they reflect it again upon the creatures below. In the structure of man’s body there are those official parts, as we call them, those parts and members of the body, the heart and the liver, which are both members and official parts, doing office and service to other parts. They convey and pass on the spirits and the blood to all other parts. They receive strength, partly for themselves first, and then to convey it to other members. The liver is fed itself with some part of the blood, and it conveys the rest to the veins, and so to the whole body. The heart is nourished itself with the purest nourishment, the spirits are increased, and those spirits are spread through the arteries.

The stomach feeds itself with the food it digests and with the strength it has. Being an official part, it serves other parts and strengthens other parts, and if there is a decay in it, there is a decay in all the parts of the body. So a Christian ought to strengthen himself, and then strengthen others. No man is for himself alone. And although, whatever the means may be, the comfort comes from God, yet he will have comfort conveyed to us by men in this way.

Reason 1. Partly to test our obedience, whether we will respect his ordinance. He will have us go to men like ourselves. Now, if we will have comfort, we must look to his ordinance; we must have it from others, and not altogether from ourselves. And that is the reason many go all their lifetime with heavy, drooping spirits. Out of pride and neglect, they scorn to seek it from others. They smother their grief and bleed inwardly, because they will not lay open the state of their souls to others. Although God is “the God of comfort,” he has ordained this order, that he will comfort us by those he has appointed to comfort us. He comforts others, that they may comfort us.

Though God is the God of comfort, yet he conveys it, for the most part, by the means of others. I say for the most part, for he does not tie himself to means, though he ties us to means when we have means. The occasion may come when a man is shut off from all earthly comforts, as in contagious diseases, confinement, and the like. A man may be shut off from all contact with worldly comforts. But even then a Christian is never in such a condition that he does not have one comfort or another. Then God comforts directly, and then he comforts more sweetly and strongly. Then the soul cleaves close to him and says, “Now you must comfort me, or no one will; now the honor is all yours.”

Now the nearer the soul is to the fountain of comfort, the more it is comforted, but the soul is never so near to God as in the extremity of affliction. When all means fail, then the soul goes to the fountain of comfort and gives all the glory to him. But I say, when there are means, God has appointed to convey his comfort by means, when we may have the benefit of the communion of saints, of the word, and so on. God will not comfort us directly while we neglect the means. “He comforteth us, that we might comfort others.” And as he does it to test our obedience,

Reason 2. so he does it partly to knit us in love to one another. For is this not a great bond to knit us to one another, when we consider that our good is hidden in another? The good that is conveyed to us is hidden in others. And this makes us esteem others highly. How sweet are the looks and the sight of a friend! And sweeter still the words of a friend, especially of an experienced friend who has been in the furnace himself.

Thus God, to knit us to one another in love, has ordained that the comfort he conveys should be conveyed by the means of others. Other reasons might be given, but these are sufficient.

Use. If this is so, then we ought to learn from it that whatever we have, we are debtors of it to others, whatever comfort we have, whether outward or inward.

And even as God has disposed and dispensed his benefits and graces to us, so let us be good stewards of them. We will give account of them before long. Let every man reason with himself, “Why do I have this comfort that another lacks? I am God’s steward; God has not given it to me to lay up, but to lay out.”

To speak a little of outward comforts. It is cursed atheism in many rich persons, who think they are to live here only to scrape together an estate for themselves and their children, while in the meantime their neighbors are in want, and God’s children are in want, who are as dear to God as they are, and perish for want of comfort. If they were not atheists on this point, they would think, “I am a steward, and what comfort will I have from scraping much together? That will only increase my account. A steward who desired a great account would be mad. The greater my account is, the more I have to answer for, and the greater will be my punishment if I do not discharge it all well.”

Now men, out of atheism, not believing in a day of judgment, a time of account, hoard comforts for themselves and theirs, as if there were no church, as if there were no afflicted body of Christ. They do not think that they are stewards. Yet the time will come when they will have more comfort from what they have bestowed than from what they will leave behind them to their children. What is wisely dispensed for the comfort of God’s people will comfort us when all that we leave behind will not. Indeed, perhaps the ill getting of it will trouble us.

And so whatever inward comforts we have are for the comfort of others. We are debtors of them. Whatever ability we have, as occasion is offered, if there is a need in those who are of the same body with ourselves, we ought to regard them with pity and compassion. If we saw a poor creature cast himself into a whirlpool, or plunge himself into some desperate pit, would we not be accessory to his death if we did not help him? If we would not pull someone out of the fire? Oh, yes! And is the soul not in as great danger? And is mercy to the soul not the greatest mercy? Shall we see others ready to be swallowed up in the pit of despair, with heaviness of spirit? Shall we see them dejected and not take it to heart? But either we are unable to minister a word of comfort to them, or else unwilling, as if we were of Cain’s disposition, looking to ourselves only: we are none of their keepers (Gen 4:9).

It is a miserable thing to profess ourselves members of that body of which Christ is the head, to profess the communion of saints, and yet to be so dead-hearted in these particular emergencies and occasions. It lies upon us as a duty, if God conveys comforts to us from others; and his end in comforting us in any way, in putting any comfort in our hands, outward or inward, is to comfort others. If we do not do it, we are guilty of sin, of the breach of God’s command, and we frustrate God’s end.

But if this lies upon us as a duty, to comfort others, then it concerns us to know how to be able to do it.

That we may be able to comfort others, let us:

(1) Be ready to take notice of the grievance of others, as Moses went to see the afflictions of his brethren, and when he saw it, laid it to heart (Exod 2:11).

It is a good way to go to “the house of mourning” (Eccl 7:2), and not to shun and avoid our Christian brethren in adversity. God knows our souls in adversity (Ps 31:7), and so should we know the souls of others, if they are knit to us by any bond of kindred, or nature, or neighborhood, or the like. That bond should stir us up, for bonds are like the veins and arteries that convey comfort. All bonds are meant to convey good, whether bonds of neighborhood, or acquaintance, or any other. A man should think to himself, “I have this bond to do my neighbor good. It is God’s providence that I should be acquainted with him, and do for him what I cannot do for a stranger.” Let us consider all bonds, and let this work upon us: let us consider that their grievance is a bond to tie us.

(2) And with this, let us labor to put on the heart of a father and mother, a tender heart, as God puts on a heart of compassion toward us. So St. Paul, being an excellent comforter of others, shows in 1 Thessalonians 2:7 how he carried himself as a father, or mother, or nurse to them. Those who will comfort others must put on the affections of creatures as tender as may be. They must be patient, they must be tenderly affected, they must have love, they must have the graces of communion.

What are the graces of communion? The graces of Christian communion, which fit us in the communion of saints to do good, are a loving, meek, patient spirit. Love makes patient. As we see with mothers and nurses, what can they not endure from their children, because they love them? And they must likewise be wise and well furnished. Those who will comfort others must get wisdom and ability. They must get humility; they must abase themselves that they may be a comfort to others, and not stand upon terms. These are the graces of communion that fit us for the communion of saints.

What is the reason that many are so averse to this duty, and have no heart for it, so that they cannot in fact do it?

The reason is that they do not consider their bonds: they do not consider the poor and needy (Ps 41:1). They do not have the graces of communion. They lack loving spirits, they lack ability, they are empty, they are not furnished, they do not have knowledge laid up in store, they lack humble spirits. The lack of these graces makes us so barren in this practice of the communion of saints. Therefore we should bewail our own barrenness when we should do such duties and cannot.

And let us beg of God the spirit of love and wisdom, that we may do things wisely, that we may speak what is fitting. “A word in season is as apples of gold with pictures of silver” (Prov 25:11). And let us beg a humble spirit, that we may be abased to comfort others. Christ in love to us abased himself. He became man, and when he was man, he became a servant; he abased himself to wash his disciples’ feet, to talk with a simple woman, and to such lowly offices. And if the Spirit of Christ is in us, it will abase us to offices of love, to support one another, to “bear one another’s burdens” (Gal 6:2).

(3) Again, if we would comfort others as we should, let us labor to get experience of comfort in ourselves. God comforts us that we might be able to comfort others. He who is all on fire himself, who is comforted himself, will easily kindle others. He can easily comfort others with that comfort he feels himself. Those who have experience can do it best.

We see this in physicians. Suppose there are two physicians, one of whom has been sick with the disease he is to cure in another. The other perhaps is more excellent than he in other respects, but has never been sick with it. The patient will sooner trust himself to the experienced physician than to the other, for undoubtedly he is better versed in that disease than the other, though perhaps the other may be a more book-learned physician than he. As it is with the physicians of the body, so it is with the physician of the soul: the experienced physician is the best. What is the reason that old men and wise men are the most merciful of all? Because they have had experience of many crosses and miseries. A wise man knows what crosses are; he understands them best.

The way, then, to comfort others is to get experience of divine comforts ourselves. And that we may get experience of God’s comforts, let us mark what was said before about the rules of comfort, and work upon our own hearts whatever may be comforting to others, that we may not be empty trunks, speaking words without feeling.

He who is well may speak very good things to a sick man, but the sick man sees that he speaks without pity and compassion. Those who have been sick of the same disease, when they come to comfort, do it with a great deal of meekness and mildness. Those who are fit to comfort others must be spiritual themselves first, as the apostle says in Galatians 6:1. The wise and holy apostle says, “If any man be overtaken,” as, alas, we are all overtaken with some corruption or other, “ye that are spiritual, restore such a one,” set him in joint, as the word is, “with the spirit of meekness, knowing that thou thyself mayest be tempted.”

The Spirit of God is a Spirit of comfort. The more we have of the Spirit, the fitter we are to comfort others. We see many people who will speak very good things, but they only impersonate sorrow and impersonate comfort. It comes from them without feeling. As one says, “If you believed these things that you speak, would you ever say them so?” Whoever speaks good things without experience speaks as if he never believed them. But those who speak things with experience, who have worked them upon their own hearts and spirits, show in the manner of their speaking such a demonstration of a spirit of love and meekness and compassion that it prevails marvelously.

This is so true that our Savior Christ himself, so that he might have the more tender compassion toward us, made it one end of his incarnation, as is pressed again and again in Hebrews 2 and Hebrews 4. The apostle dwells upon it: It became him to be man, to take upon him our infirmities, that he might be a merciful Redeemer, a merciful high priest (Heb 2:17). It was one end of his incarnation that he might not only save us, but that he might be a merciful Redeemer, that he might have experience of our infirmities. Of persecution: he was persecuted himself. Of want: he went in want himself. Of temptation: he was tempted himself. Of wrath: he felt it himself, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34).

Here is the comfort of a Christian soul, that Christ has gone before it in everything. Therefore it became him to be man, not only to redeem us, but to be a merciful high priest, a comforting high priest.

The way to comfort others, then, you see, is to get our own hearts sensible of spiritual comfort. Two irons, if they are both hot, close together at once, but unless both are hot, they do not join together well. So what makes us join together strongly is when two spirits meet and both are warm. If one godly man comforts another godly man, if one holy man labors to breed an impression of heat in another, there is a knitting of both spirits, and they join strongly together. Therefore we ought to labor to get experience, so that we may comfort others, seeing that none can comfort so well as experienced Christians.

Question. Why does experience so enable us to give spiritual comfort?

Answer. 1. Because it brings the comfort home to our own souls. The devil knows comfort well enough, but he feels none. Experience helps faith; it helps all other knowledge. Our Savior Christ is said to learn by experience, for “he learned obedience in that he suffered” (Heb 5:8). Experience is such a means of increasing knowledge that it bettered the knowledge of Christ, who had all knowledge in him. He had knowledge by looking upon God, being the “wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:24), yet he learned something by experience; he bettered himself by experience. He knew what it was to bear the cross by experience. He knew what infirmities were by experience. He knew what he could suffer by experience. So it added to his knowledge as man.

And so the angels themselves are continual students in the mysteries of the gospel. They gain knowledge by experience in addition to the knowledge that is inborn in them and the knowledge they have by the presence of God. To that they add the knowledge of experience.

So then, if experience bettered and increased the knowledge of our blessed Savior, if his knowledge was in a new way increased by it, and if it adds to the knowledge of the angels, much more will it add to ours.

2. Then, again, it gains great confidence in the speaker; for what we speak with experience, we speak with a great deal of boldness.

3. Again, comforts of experience, those that we have felt ourselves, having likewise felt the grievance, we speak them with such expressions as no one else can, so that in the judgment of the person we comfort, no one does it so well as an experienced person. For he goes about the work tenderly and gently and lovingly, because he has been in the same condition himself. And that is the reason the apostle St. Paul, in the place I named before (Gal 6:1), presses this duty upon spiritual people, especially because they themselves have been tempted and may be tempted. Those who have been tempted, and think they may be afterward, are wondrously fitted by this for the work of comforting others.

But to add a little on this point, to show how to comfort others by our own experience and skill: I spoke before of an art of comforting ourselves. There is a skill likewise in comforting others. By the same method in which we comfort ourselves, we must comfort others. When we comfort ourselves, we must first consider our need of comfort, search our wounds and our maladies, and keep them fresh in our sight, so that we may be forced to seek comfort. And as we ought to do this daily, so when we are to comfort others:

(1) We ought not only to comfort them, but to search them as much as we can, to find what sin is in them and what misery is upon them, and acquaint them with the condition they are in, as far as we can discern it. We may judge of them partly by ourselves. For we must not prostitute comforts by offering them to people who are unprepared, until we see them made fit. God comforts, but it is the cast down. Christ heals, but it is the wounded spirit. He came to seek, but it is those who are lost. He came to give ease, but it is those who are “heavy laden.” Therefore, in order to comfort them to good purpose, we ought to show and disclose to them what condition they are in, so that we may drive them to comfort, if they are not enemies to comfort and to their own souls.

He is an unwise physician who administers cordials before he gives preparatory medicines to carry away the foul humors. The cordials will do little good. We ought therefore to prepare people this way, if we intend to do them good.

(2) And then when we see what need they stand in, bring them to Christ and the covenant of grace. That is the best way to comfort them, to bring them to see that God is their Father, when we discern some signs of grace in them. For this is the main obstacle in all comfort, as there is no one but will find by experience. They are ready to say, “You teach wondrous comforts: that there is an inheritance in heaven that God has provided, and that on earth there is an outcome of everything for good, and a presence of God in troubles! This is true; but how shall I know this belongs to me?” This is the quibble of flesh and blood, which turns its back on the most heavenly comforts there are.

The main and principal thing, therefore, in dealing with others and with our own hearts, is to let them see that there are some signs and evidences that they are in the covenant of grace, that they belong to God. Unless we see that, all the comfort we can give them is to tell them that they have not yet sunk into hell, and that they have time to repent. But as long as people live in sinful courses, and so are not in a state of grace, we can offer them no comfort, unless they will devise a new Scripture, a new Bible. If they do so, they may have comfort. But in this word of God, God speaks no comfort to people who live in sin and intend to go on doing so. We should labor therefore to discern some evidence that they are in the state of grace.

And often those are indeed most entitled to comfort who think it furthest from them. Therefore we should acquaint them with the conditions of the covenant of grace, that God looks to truth of heart. So if we discern any true, broken, humble spirit, a hungering and a thirsting after righteousness and a desire for comfort, “Blessed are those that hunger and thirst” (Matt 5:6); comfort belongs to them, and we may comfort them. If we see spiritual poverty, that they see their wants and long to have them supplied, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matt 5:3); and to such Christ calls, “Be of good comfort” (Mark 10:49). If they see and feel the burden of their sins, we may comfort them. Christ calls them: “Come unto me, ye that are weary and heavy laden” (Matt 11:28). If we discern spiritual and heavenly desires to grow in grace and overcome their corruptions, if we discover and discern this in their practice and obedience, “God will fulfil the desires of them that fear him” (Ps 145:19). And he accepts the will for the deed.

There is a desire for happiness in nature that does not comfort a man. It is no sign of grace to desire to be free from hell and to be in heaven. That is a natural desire. Every creature is well disposed toward heaven. But if there is a desire for the means that lead to heaven, a desire for grace, these are evidences of grace. These are the pulses by which we may find grace: when they see their infirmities and groan under them, and want to be better, and complain that they are not better, and are out of love with their own hearts. There is a combat in their hearts; they are not friends with themselves.

When we see this inward conflict, and a desire to do better and to win victories against their corruptions, then, though there are many corruptions and weaknesses, a man may safely say that they are in a state of grace, that they are on the mend. For “Christ will not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax” (Matt 12:20). “And where he hath begun a good work, he will perfect it to the day of the Lord” (Phil 1:6). He will cherish these weak beginnings; therefore we may comfort them on good ground.

(3) Then, besides that, in our dealing with them, when we have discovered by some evidence that they belong to the covenant, when we see it by some love for good things, and for God’s image in his children, and by other evidences, then we may comfort them boldly. And then, to draw from our own experience, what a comfort that will be to such people, when we can say, “My condition was as yours is. I found those corruptions that you groan under. I did not allow myself in them, just as you do not.” When a man can say from his own experience that, in spite of these, he has evident signs of God’s Spirit that he belongs to God, then he can comfort others by his own experience.

(4) And what a comfort it is to go to the experiences of Scripture! It is an excellent way. For instance, let a man be deserted by God. David will comfort him by his experience (Ps 77:2, 8, 10), where he says he found God as his enemy; and as Job says, the terrors of God drank up his spirit (Job 6:4). Be of good comfort! David would come and comfort you if he were alive. If the terror of God is against you for sin, so that your conscience is awakened, be of good comfort! Christ, if he were on earth, would show you by his own example that he endured that desertion on the cross: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34).

If you are molested and vexed by Satan, Job will comfort you by his example. Most of his book is combat and comfort. And so for all other grievances, go to the Scriptures. Whatever is “written, is written for our learning” (Rom 15:4). Pray to God, and he will hear you as he did Elijah.

Objection. Oh, but Elijah was an excellent man.

Answer. The Scripture anticipates the objection: he was a man subject to infirmities (Jas 5:17). If God heard him, he will hear you. Believe in Christ, in the promised Messiah, as Abraham did, the father of the faithful, and he will forgive you all your sins.

Objection. Oh, but he had a strong faith.

Answer. What does the Scripture have to take away this objection? In Romans 4:23, this was not written for Abraham only, but for those that believe with the faith of Abraham.

Objection. Yes, but I am a wretched sinner; there is little hope of me.

Answer. Yes! St. Paul will come and comfort you by his example and experience: “This is a faithful saying, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief” (1 Tim 1:15).

Objection. Yes, he came to save such sinners as St. Paul was.

Answer. Yes, says St. Paul, “and that I might be an example to all that shall believe in Christ, to the end of the world” (1 Tim 1:16). He takes away that objection. And the apostle is so heavenly wise that where he speaks of privileges, he enlarges them to others: “There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1). “And what shall separate us from the love of God?” (Rom 8:35). But when he speaks of matters of abasement, so that we may see that in regard to his corruptions he was as much humbled as we are, then he speaks in his own person: “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:24). Therefore his comforts belong to you. Now, as these examples in Scripture and the experiences of God’s children there apply to us, so much more does the experience of God’s children who are alive. Therefore we should be willing to do offices of comfort in this way.

Those who are people of means, whether men or women, will have something in their houses to comfort others. They will have strong waters, and cordials, and medicines, and they count it a glory to have something for which their neighbors may be indebted to them. And though they give it freely, yet they think and count it sufficient recompense that they can be of benefit to others. People do this for the things of this life, and think they deserve a great deal of respect for their goodness in this way.

Surely, if we consider, there is a life that needs comfort more than this fading life, and there are miseries that pinch us more than the miseries of the body! Everyone should labor to have something in the house of his soul, some strong waters of comfort, so that he may be able to tell others, “This refreshed my soul; this has done me good. I give you no worse than I took myself first.” This wondrously commends the comfort in the person who gives it, and it commends it to the person who receives it, so that he takes benefit by the comforts of other people. For is it not a strengthening to our case when another says for our comfort, “It was my case”? Is it not sealed by the evidence of two? Surely it is a great assurance when we have another to tell us his experience.

Use 1. Again, if this is God’s order, that he will convey comfort to us by others, then we ought to depend upon God’s ordinance. We ought to expect comfort from one another, especially from the ministers, who are messengers of comfort. I say this all the more because, to whatever degree we neglect any one means that God has ordained to comfort us, then, though he is the God of comfort, in that same measure we are sure to lack comfort. And this is one principal ordinance, the ministry and the communion of saints.

There are some who will neglect the means of salvation. They have dead spirits, and for the most part live and die so. They have great trouble recovering comfort. Those who withdraw themselves, who will work everything out of the flint by themselves, are commonly without comfort. God has ordained one to help another, as in an arch one stone strengthens another. The ministry especially is ordained for comfort.

Use 2. And likewise God has ordained one Christian to comfort another, as well as the ministers. Let us therefore have much regard for the communion of saints. Let one Christian labor to comfort another, and let everyone labor to be fit to receive comfort from others, and labor to have humble and willing spirits. It is so true that God conveys comfort even by ordinary Christians as well as by the ministers, that St. Paul himself (Rom 1:12) desires to see the Romans, that he might receive mutual comfort from them. For a minister may perhaps have more knowledge and book-learning than another Christian who may have better experience than he has, especially in some things. And there is not a Christian so lowly but he may comfort the greatest scholar in the world, and help him by the experience God has shown him, by declaring how God showed him comfort at such a time and upon such an occasion. The experience of God’s people, even the lowliest of them, may help the best Christians. Therefore he will have none neglected.

There is not one member of Christ’s body but has some ability to comfort another; for Christ has no dead members. God will have it so, because he will have one Christian honor another, and honor them from knowing the use and need that one has of another. If God did not convey comfort from one to another in some degree, and from the lowliest to the greatest, one would despise another. But God will not have it so. He will have the communion of saints valued to the end of the world. What regard would one Christian have for another, what regard would weak Christians have for the strong, and what regard would strong Christians have for the weak, if there were not a continual supply from one to another? Therefore God has ordained that by the ministry, and by the communion of saints, we should comfort one another.

Let us not think that this does not concern us. It concerns us all. Therefore when we have any trouble of mind, let us regard the communion of saints; let us regard our acquaintances. And let us know this, that God will hold us in heaviness until we have used all the means he has appointed. If one does not help, perhaps another will; perhaps the ministry will help, perhaps acquaintances will help. But if we do not find comfort in one, let us go through them all.

And would you have more? Christ himself, did he not take two disciples into the garden with him when his spirit was heavy? Did he not know that God had ordained one to comfort another? “Two are better than one” (Eccl 4:9). If one is alone, he will be cold, but if there are two, they heat one another. If there is one alone, there can hardly be true spiritual heat. If two are together and one falls, the other may raise him up (Eccl 4:10), but if one is alone and falls, who will raise him up? Solomon means this spiritually, as well as bodily and outwardly.

We cannot have a better precedent than our blessed Savior. As for solitariness in such times, in spiritual desertion, it is the hour of temptation. When did the devil set upon Christ? When he was alone. It was the fittest time to tempt him, when Christ was separated from others. So the devil sets upon single persons when they are alone, and tempts them, and presses them with a variety of temptations. “Woe to him that is alone” (Eccl 4:10). Christ sent his disciples out two by two, so that one might comfort another and one might strengthen another (Mark 6:7).

Now, though in particular this belongs to ministers in a more eminent way, yet let everyone lay it to heart: you ought to have abilities to comfort others, and to receive comfort from others. And consider that it is an angelic work to comfort others. We imitate God himself, and the most excellent creatures, the angels, whose office is to comfort. Even our very Savior was comforted by them, for they came to comfort him in his greatest extremity. A man is a god to a man when he comforts. When he discomforts, and dejects, and withdraws, he is a devil to a man. In that way men are beasts to men, devils to men. But he who is an instrument to convey comfort is a god to a man. God is the God of comfort. You are in the place of God to a man when you comfort him, and you will save yourself and others.

God honors people with his own title when they comfort. Not only ministers, but others save people. You will “gain thy brother” (Matt 18:15) by your admonition and reproof. What greater honor can you have than God’s own title, to be saviors of one another? It is the office, I say, of angels. They were sent to comfort Christ. It is their duty to pitch their tents around God’s children, to suggest holy thoughts, as the devil suggests evil, and to be about us, though we do not think of it. No, it is not only an angelic work, but the work of God’s Spirit. The sweetest title of the Holy Spirit is to be a “comforter.”

What shall we think of cursed spirits who gloat over others’ misery, who give them gall to eat and vinegar to drink, who add affliction to the afflicted? What shall we say to barren spirits, who have not a word of comfort to say, but come in a profane and dead manner: “I am sorry to see you like this, and I hope you will get better”? Barren soul, like the wilderness! What! A member of Christ, of the communion of saints, and in no way furnished, with no word of comfort for a distressed soul! We may know the comfort we have ourselves to be comfort indeed, and from the grace and favor of God, when we have hearts enlarged to do good to others with it.

How do gifts and grace differ, to add that useful distinction? A man may have a great many gifts and be proud, and full of envy, and have a devilish, poisonous spirit that draws everything to himself, and not be good, but be carried along by self-love, and die a devil, in spite of his excellent abilities. Why? Here are such gifts and abilities, but there is a bitter root of self-love to draw everything to himself, to deify himself, to make an idol of himself. But grace with gifts works otherwise. By a spirit of love and humility, it turns everything to the good of others.

There is no envy in a gracious heart. So far as it is gracious, there is no pride, no scorn of doing good to others. How shall we tell, among people of excellent abilities, whether they are Christians or not Christians? Both of them have wit and memory; both have courage. Yes, but which of them employs his abilities most for the good of others? Which of them has the most humble spirit, the most loving spirit, the most discreet spirit, to be clever at doing good to others at every opportunity? There is the Christian who has God’s grace with his gifts. But as for the other, “Knowledge puffeth up,” says the apostle (1 Cor 8:1). What edifies and builds us? “Love edifieth” (1 Cor 8:1). Knowledge gathers many materials, stone and timber and so on. What builds the house, the body of Christ? It is a loving and humble spirit.

Therefore let us think that we have nothing in Christianity, by any abilities we have, of memory or wit or reading and so on, unless we have a humble spirit, so that we can deny ourselves and abase ourselves to do good to others at all the best opportunities. Otherwise we do not have the spirit of Christ, that sweet spirit of Christ who denied himself to do good to us.

Where grace is once established and is of the right nature, there is a public mind. And it is one of the best signs of a heart fashioned to the image of Christ, who denied himself and became all in all to us, to have a public mind, to have self-love killed, to think, “I have nothing to good purpose, as I should have it, unless I can make use of it for the good of others.” Therefore let us be willing to do good in this way.

And as I said, let us make use of comfort from others. Think that they are reserved for the times and place where you live, so that you might make use of them. Therefore those who need comfort should not flatter themselves in their grief, but humbly depend upon the means God has ordained. And let everyone think, “What if God has hidden my comfort in another person? What if he has given him ‘the tongue of the learned’ (Isa 50:4) to speak a word in season to me?” Let no one think to master his trouble and grief by himself. We are members of the body, and the good that God will convey to us must be from and by others. Therefore it is a mutual duty. Those who have comfort ought to comfort others, and those who need comfort ought to go to others.

It is the ordinance of God, as Job says, for one of “a thousand to show a man his righteousness” (Job 33:23). However wise a man may be, yet sometimes he does not know his own comfort. He does not know the portion of comfort that belongs to him until some other person discloses it to him. Physicians will have others heal them and judge their diseases. And certainly one reason why people who are excellent in themselves have passed their days in darkness has been this, that they think to overmaster their heaviness and distraction of spirit with their own reason and the like, which cannot be. What God will do, he will do by his own means and ordinance.

Use 3. Let us therefore learn from this to see the goodness of God, that besides the ministry he has ordained, and the salvation he keeps for us, and the promises he has given us, and the angels who attend us, and so on, he even ordains others, who are human and have bodies like ourselves, other fellow Christians, to be instruments to convey comfort. He trains them up so that they may be able to comfort us and do us good; and he hides the good he intends for us in them, and conveys it to us by them. It is a special goodness of God that everything should tend to our good. Thus all things are for us. The sufferings of others tend to increase our comfort, and the comfort of others is for our comfort. There is such a sweet prudence in directing us to heaven that God makes everything help; not only the troubles we suffer ourselves, but he sweetly turns the troubles of others and the comforts of others to our good.

This supplies a reason for praising and blessing God, and a reason why we should answer him in like manner. As he has devised all the ways there can be of comforting us, of turning everything to our good, both what we suffer ourselves and what others suffer, so we should study by all means and ways to set forth his glory, and in no way grieve the Spirit of so gracious a God, who thus in every way intends our comfort.

For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolations also abound by Christ (2 Cor 1:5).

Here the blessed apostle shows the reason why his heart was so enlarged, as we see in 2 Corinthians 1:3, to bless God in the midst of his troubles and persecutions. There was good reason, for as his afflictions abounded, so did his consolations. It is likewise a reason for his ability to comfort others, the reason why he was fitted to comfort others: because he found comfort abound in himself in his sufferings. So these words have a double reference to the words before. But let us take the words in themselves.

“As the sufferings of Christ abound …” It is an excellent portion of Scripture, and one that I would have a great deal of encouragement to speak about, if the times and the disposition of the hearers were suited to it; for it is a text of comfort for those who suffer persecution, who suffer affliction for the gospel. Now, because we do not suffer, or at least we suffer no great matter (except perhaps a reproach or the like, which is a thing of nothing, only a chip of the cross, a trifle), we therefore hear these matters of comfort against the disgrace of the cross of Christ with dead hearts. But we do not know what we are reserved for; therefore we must learn something to store up, though we have no present use for it.

The several branches of divine truth that may be observed from these words are, first, this: that the sufferings of Christians may abound. They are many in this world, and they may be more still. “For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us …”

Second, what we ought to think of those sufferings, what judgment we are to have of them. They are “the sufferings of Christ.”

Third, that since they are the sufferings of Christ, he will not leave us destitute of comfort, but our comfort is increased in a proportion answerable to our troubles. “So our consolations …”

The fourth point is by whom and in whom all this is. This strange work is by Christ. As for the balancing of these two so sweetly together, crosses and comforts, they both come from one hand, both from one spring: “the sufferings of Christ,” and the comforts of Christ, and both abound. Our troubles are for him, and our comforts are by him. So here are sufferings and comfort, increase of suffering and increase of comfort, sufferings for Christ and comfort by Christ. You see them balanced together, and you see which weighs down the balance. Comfort by Christ weighs down sufferings for Christ. The good is greater than the ill.

It is a point of wondrous comfort. The ark, you know, mounted up as the waters mounted up, when the waters overflowed the world. So it is here in this verse. There is a mounting of the waters, a rising of the waters above the mountains. Afflictions increase, and grow higher and higher; but be of good comfort, here is the ark above the waters, here is consolation above all. As our sufferings for Christ increase, so our consolations by Christ likewise increase.

For the first, I will be very brief.

Doctrine. The sufferings of Christ abound in us.

There is nobody in this world but, sooner or later, if they live any length of time, must suffer; and according to a man’s degree of goodness, so his sufferings must abound. The better the man, the more the sufferings. Sufferings abounded in St. Paul. Suffering does not abound in all. To abound in sufferings was personal to St. Paul. It does not go beyond the person of St. Paul and such as St. Paul was. All must suffer, but not in like measure. There are various cups. Not all abound in sufferings, just as not all abound in grace and strength. Those who are of a higher rank, their sufferings abound more. God does not use an exact proportion in afflictions, but what we call a geometrical one, a proportion suited to the strength of the sufferer. As Christ had more strength than any, so he suffered more than any; and St. Paul, having an extraordinary measure of strength, suffered more than all the apostles. The sufferings of Christ abounded in him; but all must suffer.

What is the reason for it? What is the reason that troubles abound like this? Surely if we look to God, the devil, the world, and ourselves, we will see reasons enough.

Reason 1. If we look to God and Christ, we are ordained to be conformed to Christ. We must be conformed to Christ in sufferings first, before we are conformed to him in glory. It is God’s decree: we are called to sufferings as well as to believing. We must answer God’s call. Every Christian must resolve to take up his cross every day, some degree of the cross or other. Reproach for Christ’s sake is a suffering. The scorn of the world is the rebuke of Christ. We are called to suffering as well as to glory. It is part of our effectual calling; it is an appendix, a thing accessory to the main. We must take grace with suffering, and it is well that we may have it so too. It is well that we have the state of grace here, and glory hereafter, with suffering.

Reason 2. If we look to the devil, there must be suffering. Satan is the prince of the world. He is the prince of an opposing kingdom.

Reason 3. If we consider what place we live in when we are taken out of the world to the blessed state of Christians, to be members of Christ and heirs of heaven, the world is strange to us, and we are strangers to it. Crosses and afflictions are necessary for those who are travelers. Otherwise we would think that we were at home, and forget our country. Considering the condition we live in, we must have sufferings.

If we consider the disposition of the parties among whom we live, they are people of an opposing spirit. Therefore they malign us, because we are taken from among them. And though no opposition is shown to them, yet it is reproach enough to their cursed state when they see others taken from them. It speaks loudly enough that their course is bad when they see others dislike it. The world, which is led by the spirit of Satan, maligns those who are better than themselves. There is opposition between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. So long as there are wicked men, who are instruments and organs of the devil, God’s children must be opposed. While there is a devil permitted to be “the god of the world” (2 Cor 4:4), and so long as he has so strong a faction in the world as he has, “the children of disobedience” (Eph 5:6), in whom he rules, God’s children will never lack suffering.

Reason 4. If we regard ourselves, we always have in ourselves both good and bad. As for what is good, we need sufferings to exercise it and to know it; for if there were no sufferings, how would we know what good we have?

(1) Is it not a great comfort to a Christian when he knows by suffering that he has more patience than he looked for, that he has more faith than he thought he had, that he has more love to God; that he can endure to suffer more for God than he ever thought he could; that he has more resigning of his heart and giving up of himself than he thought of; that he can deny the world, which he thought he could not have done? What a comfort it is to a Christian when he knows by suffering what he can do and what he cannot do. It is good, therefore, and necessary in regard to ourselves, that we may know our strength.

(2) In regard, likewise, to the evil that is in us, suffer we must. For there must be a daily purging, and the best instruments to scour us are wicked men, the devil’s instruments. It is unfit for God’s children to take that base office on themselves, for one Christian to fall upon another. It is good that there should be an opposing faction in the world, that there should be wicked men, in regard to the ill that is in us. There is something to be scoured and purged out. So we see, whether we look upward or downward, to God, or to the devil, or to the faction of the devil in the world, or to ourselves, for good or evil, it is necessary that there should be some afflictions.

And to speak a little closer to home, there must be sufferings in this regard, because the church always has corruption and grime, especially in prosperity. If a man looks to the churches in Germany, which have suffered much of late, and marks what reports have been given of them, how cold and dull they were in the possession of the gospel, how indifferent they were, how they did not value that invaluable pearl, he will see that suffering was needful to scour them.

Let a man look at the state of this city. Though there are many good people (the Lord increase the number of them), yet let him consider with what cold affections the blessed truth of God is received, which I say is above all. What is all that we enjoy? What is our peace compared with the gospel of peace? What is our prosperity, and what is everything, compared with the blessed truth of salvation? If we did not have that, in what respect would the Turks not be as good as we are? In all other things, would other nations not be as good as we are? Certainly yes. As for government, and other beauty, and ornaments, and rarities, what do we have to lift up our excellency except the continuance of the blessed doctrine of salvation, by which our souls are begotten to God, to “an inheritance immortal, undefiled, reserved in the heavens” (1 Pet 1:4)?

Now, the cold esteem of this will certainly bring on in time a national suffering, unless there is a national repentance. It is true of every individual Christian. As we see, when the rain and the heat join together, they breed weeds as well as grain, so prosperity and the blessings of God have brought up in us many weeds as well as good grain; and there must be a time of weeding and purging, given our state in this world. We are gathering grime every day. There must be a suffering at one time or another.

Objection. But some will say, “What! Do you talk of suffering? Now is a time of peace. We live among Christians, and not pagans and Turks; and as for our adversaries, though they are many, yet they do not show themselves.”

Answer. St. Augustine answers this in his own person: “Only begin to live as a Christian should, and see if you are not used unchristianly by those who are Christians in name, but not in deed.” A suffering from Christians is sharper than one from enemies. Those who are fleshly will be ready to be injurious; those who are carnal, formal professors of religion will be ready to offer some disgrace or other to those who are more spiritual than themselves.

There is a threefold suffering in the church since Christ’s time. The first was over doctrine concerning the natures of Christ. There was persecution about that; for there were Arians who denied the Godhead, and others who denied the manhood of Christ, and other such great enemies of the church. Afterward, in popery, they attacked Christ’s offices, and divided his kingly and priestly and prophetic office among the pope, saints, works, and the like, encroaching upon those offices, and persecuting with fire and stake all those who gave all to Christ and did not sacrilegiously give anything to the creature.

But there is a persecution as bad as any of these, where the nature and offices of Christ are understood well enough, where the power of religion is opposed by others, when as much religion as is necessary to bring a man to heaven is opposed. For it is not the knowledge of the nature, and offices, and benefits of Christ, but a knowledge that has obedience with it, that must bring us to heaven: a knowledge with self-denial, a knowledge with selling and parting with all our lusts and wicked courses that will not stand with the gospel.

Now, where this knowledge is, it cannot be tolerated by any means, and it lies under as great disgrace as heresies did in former times. So it is a matter of reproach to have as much religion as is necessarily required of a man before he can be saved. What the world disgraces is necessary to every man before he can be saved: that is, a strict giving up of himself to God, and a watching over his ways as much as human frailty will permit, a conscientious endeavor in all things to please God, out of conscience and thankfulness to God. We must not think to come to heaven without that. It will not be. Without holiness none shall see God (Heb 12:14). This despised holiness, this maligned holiness, is what is necessary to bring us to heaven, and as much as is necessary to bring us to heaven is disgraced everywhere.

Those who resolve to be Christians in good earnest, and who would have comfort on their deathbed and in times of persecution, must endure to be made light of, to bear the reproach of Christ. They must resolve on this beforehand, so that when these things come to pass, we may not stumble.

Use. Well, then, to make a little use of this. Since there must be troubles and crosses, and they must increase if we will be Christians, let this teach us to judge rightly of those who are often ill thought of in the world, when we see nothing but good in their conduct. Oh, what accusations are laid on them! “You can see what an indiscreet man he was. You can see that he lacked wisdom and prudence; otherwise he might have kept himself out of this trouble.” I would ask such a person: Did Christ not have as much wisdom as you? He was the wisdom of the Father. Did he keep out of reproaches? Was he not reproached as a troublesome man, as an enemy to Caesar, and charged with base things, as a “winebibber” (Matt 11:19), and as one that “had a devil” (John 10:20), and in many other ways?

Was St. Paul not as discreet as we are, we who in our understanding and opinion are ready to think with distaste of men who suffer anything for the gospel? And yet, for all that, all his wisdom did not keep him from the cross, but the cross abides him, he says, everywhere (Acts 20:23). The devil and the cross follow God’s children wherever they go. All their wisdom and holiness cannot keep them from it, because God has decreed it and called them to it, and they must be conformed to Christ.

Therefore, let us take heed that we do not allow men to suffer in our opinion when they suffer in a good cause: the cross of Christ, reproachful things, a base death, and the like. Afflictions are called the cross for this reason, because there is a kind of baseness with them, and carnal men regard them just so. Immediately with the suffering there goes a taint and an abasing, in their opinion, of those men who suffer in a good cause. There is a diminishing opinion in carnal men of that which should be their glory. Our crosses abound (2 Cor 1:5). But what ought we to judge of these crosses?

Doctrine. They are the sufferings of Christ.

Question. Why? Christ suffers nothing; he is in heaven, in glory. How can he suffer? This is to disparage his glorious state, to make him suffer anything.

Answer. I answer, the sufferings of Christ are twofold. There are the sufferings of Christ’s person, what he suffered himself, which were propitiatory and made satisfaction for our redemption; and there are the sufferings of Christ in his mystical body, which likewise is called Christ. For in Scripture “Christ” is taken either for Christ himself, or for the members of Christ, “Why persecutest thou me?” he says to Saul (Acts 9:4), or for the whole mystical body with the head. “So is Christ” (1 Cor 12:12). Christ, Head and members, is called Christ. Now, when Paul calls the sufferings of the church the sufferings of Christ, he does not mean the sufferings of Christ in his own person; for he suffers nothing. He is out of reach of all the malice of persecutors; they cannot reach to heaven to Christ. But Paul means the sufferings of Christ in his mystical body. These are called “the sufferings of Christ.”

Question. Why are these called the sufferings of Christ?

Answer. (1) Partly because they are the sufferings of mystical Christ, the body of Christ, the church. For the church, the company of true believers, are the fullness of Christ; they make up the mystical body of Christ. Therefore when they suffer, he who is the head suffers.

(2) Again, those things that his members and children suffer are called the sufferings of Christ because they are for Christ. They are in his quarrel, they are for his truth, for his cause, and by his appointment he calls us to suffering. It is for his cause. In our intention we mean to suffer for Christ, to maintain his cause. They are the sufferings of Christ likewise in the intent of the opponents and enemies. They persecute us for some goodness they see in us. They persecute the cause and truth of Christ in us. So they are the sufferings of Christ both ways.

(3) Especially, they are the sufferings of Christ by way of sympathy, because Christ imputes them to himself. “The sufferings of Christ”: it is a phrase that springs from the near union between Christ and his members, the church, which is as near as, or nearer than, any natural union between the head and members. From this it comes that we are said to suffer with him, to die with him, to be crucified with him, to ascend with him, to sit in heavenly places with him, to judge the world with him, to do all with him by reason of this union. And he is said to suffer with us, to be afflicted in us, to be reproached with us. He was stoned in Stephen, he was persecuted by Saul, he was beheaded in Paul, he was burned with the martyrs, he was banished with the Christians, and he suffers in all his children. Not that he does so in his own person, but because it pleases him, by reason of the near communion between him and us, to take what is done to his members as done to himself. Therefore they are called “the sufferings of Christ.” He suffers when we suffer, and we suffer when he suffers.

The difference is that all the comfort in our sufferings comes from communion in his sufferings, because he is our surety. For why are we encouraged to suffer by way of sympathy and communion with him?

Because he in love died for us, and was crucified for us, and abased for us, and shamed for us. And when is the soul encouraged to suffer afflictions for Christ? When it has felt a little of the wrath of God that Christ suffered for it. Oh, how much am I indebted to God for Christ, who endured the whole wrath of God! They are “the sufferings of Christ.” This is a wondrously comforting point, and it is a thought that sweetens the bitterest crosses, that they are the sufferings of Christ. Not only are we conformed to Christ in them, suffering as he did, but they are “the sufferings of Christ”: he imputes them as done to him; he suffers with us.

(4) And another reason why they are the sufferings of Christ is that he not only takes them as done to himself, but he is present with them. He was with St. Paul in the dungeon; he was with the three young men in the fiery furnace. There were three put in, and there was a fourth, who was Christ, the Son of God. He goes with the martyrs to the prison and to the stake. He is with them till he has brought them to heaven. He is present with them when they suffer.

Here, before I come to make use of this, I must distinguish between the crosses and sufferings of Christ and our ordinary sufferings as men.

[1] Something in this vale of misery we suffer as creatures: as being subject to mutability and change, because this is a world of changes. In this world beneath the moon there is nothing but changes. Thus we suffer as creatures. All creatures are subject to vanity, and complain and groan under it.

[2] Something we suffer as men. It is the common condition of men. This nature of ours, since the fall, is subject to sicknesses, to crosses, and pain, and accidents. Every day brings new crosses with it. This we suffer as men.

[3] Now the sufferings of Christians as religious, holy men: those are meant here; those are “the sufferings of Christ.” Yet even so, the sufferings we bear as men help, by the Spirit of God, our conformity to Christ. By them the flesh is purged and the Spirit strengthened, and weaning from the world is worked in us, and a desire for heaven.

By the daily crosses we suffer as men, not for religion, we are much bettered; and those in some sense may be called the sufferings of Christ, because by them we are conformed more to Christ in holiness. We grow more out of love with the world and more heavenly minded. This distinction is necessary in order to know which are best: the sufferings of Christians as good men.

Use. It is a point, I say, of wondrous comfort. That we should be conformed in our sufferings to our head Christ Jesus, our glorified head in heaven, is it not a wondrous comfort? More than that, is it not a glory? It is a wondrous glory that God will set us apart to do anything, that God will accept anything from us; much more that he will single us out to be champions in his quarrel; and more still, that he will triumph in us, so that the comfort shall abound.

To give an example: if a monarch should redeem a slave, a traitor, from prison, and take him to fight in the quarrel of his own son, to be his champion, would that not be an honor? So the very sufferings for Christ are an encouragement. The disgraces, and whatever else we suffer in a good cause, are ensigns of honor; they are badges of honor of Christian knighthood. If a Golden Fleece, or a Garter, or such things are so highly prized and gloried in because they are favors and the like, much more should the sufferings for Christ be gloried in, as ensigns of the love of God and of our Christian profession. When we fight under Christ’s banner, we are like Christ. We are conformed to him. He went before, and we follow his steps; “and if we suffer with him, we shall be glorified with him” (Rom 8:17).

Therefore do not be discouraged. What we think to be a matter of discouragement should be our crown. It is our crown to suffer reproach in a good cause. It is a sign God favors us when he takes our good name, our goods, or our life to honor himself by. Is that not an honor to us? Does he take anything from us without giving us something better? He takes our goods, but he gives us himself. He takes our liberty, but he gives us a conscience set at large. He takes our life, but he gives us heaven. If he takes anything from us to seal his truth and to stand firm in his quarrel, then, as Christ says, he gives “an hundredfold” (Mark 10:30) in this world, that is, a gracious spirit of contentment and comfort.

We have God himself. Does not the one who has the spring have more than the one who has twenty cisterns? Those who have riches, and position, and friends have cisterns; but the one who suffers for God and for Christ has Christ, has God, has the spring to go to. If all is taken from him, he has God the spring to go to. If all the particular beams are taken, he has the sun. It is a lasting, wondrous comfort to suffer for Christ’s sake.

Therefore let it encourage us in a good course, in spite of all the opposition we meet with in the world; let us learn here what our duty is. Let the malicious world judge, or say, or do what it will; if God is on our side, “who can be against us?” (Rom 8:31). And if we suffer anything for Christ, he suffers with us and in us, and he will triumph in us over all these sufferings at last.

To set an edge on what I have said, I will add no more than this: since they are “the sufferings of Christ,” we should be encouraged in many ways to suffer for him. For did he not suffer for us that which would have sunk all the creatures in heaven and earth if they had suffered it, the wrath of God? And what good do we have by his sufferings? Are we not freed from hell and damnation? And do we not have title to heaven? Has he suffered so much for us in his person, and shall we not be content to suffer for him and his mystical body, who in his own body suffered so much for us?

Again, when we suffer in his quarrel, we suffer not only for him who suffered for us, but for him who sits at the right hand of God, who is glorious in heaven, “the King of kings, and Lord of lords” (Rev 19:16). Our sufferings are sufferings for him who has done so much for us, and for him who is so able now to overrule all and to crush our enemies; for him who is so able now to minister comfort by his Spirit. This is a notable encouragement, that they are the sufferings of Christ, of one so glorious as he is, who will reward every suffering and every disgrace. We shall be paid well for every suffering. We shall lose nothing.

And will not this likewise encourage us to suffer for Christ’s sake, that he will be with us in all our sufferings? He will not leave us alone. It is his cause, and he will stand by his own cause. He will maintain his own quarrel. He will cause comfort to increase. Is it not an encouragement to defend a prince’s quarrel in his own sight, when he stands by to back us? It would stir even a dull mettle. When we suffer for Christ’s cause, we have Christ to defend us. He is with us in all our sufferings to bear us up. He puts his shoulder under us, by his Holy Spirit, to support us.

We cannot live long in this world. We owe God a death. We owe nature a death. The sentence of death is passed on us. We cannot enjoy the comfort of this world long. And as for the favor and applause of the world, we must leave it, and it will leave us, we know not how soon. And this meditation should compel us to be willing, however it goes with us as to anything here, whether life, or goods, or friends, or standing and reputation, or whatever else, to be willing to seal the cause of Christ with what is dearest to us. “If we suffer with him, we shall be glorified with him” (Rom 8:17).

The very sufferings of Christ are better than the most glorious day of the greatest monarch in the world who is not a Christian. It is better to suffer with Christ than to rejoice with the world. The very abasement of St. Paul was better than the triumph of Nero. Let Moses be judge. He judged it the best end of the scale (Heb 11:26). The very sufferings and reproach of Christ and of religion are better than the best thing in the world. The worst thing in Christianity is better than the best thing outside of Christ.

The best thing outside of Christ is the honor of a king, the honor of a prince, to be a king’s son, and the like. But the reproach of Christ for a good cause is better than the best thing in the world. I say, let Moses be judge, if we will not believe it ourselves till we feel it. The worst day of a Christian is better than the best day of a carnal man; for he has the presence of God’s Spirit to support him in some measure.

Therefore let us not be afraid beforehand. “Fear nothing,” says the apostle, “that thou shalt suffer” (Rev 2:10). And with Moses, let us not be ashamed of the rebuke of Christ (Heb 11:26); but “let us go out of the camp with Christ, bearing our reproach” (Heb 13:13). And because we do not know what God may call us to, let us at once take up a resolution to endure whatever in this world God calls us to; to pass through thick and thin, to pass through all kinds of ways to the hope of our glorious calling (Phil 3:14); “if by any way, by any means,” says St. Paul, “I may attain the resurrection of the dead” (Phil 3:11): if by any means I may come to heaven, by a peaceful death or by a violent death. He scorned reproach, if by any means he might be happy.

And as for others, this is wondrously daunting to the spirits of men who offer any wrong, even if it is only a disgrace. A scoff is a persecution to a Christian in a good cause. When wicked men oppose a Christian in a good cause and course, let us learn what they are doing: they “kick against the pricks” (Acts 9:5). Do they know what they are doing? When they reproach Christians, it is the “reproach of Christ” (Heb 11:26). What was Ishmael’s scorning? A persecution (Gal 4:29). Christ is scorned in his members. Will he endure this at their hands? When good causes are opposed, Christ is opposed, and Christ is scoffed at. This is what strengthens us in our suffering, abasing as it is in itself: Christ counts it as done to him.

The base men of the world think, when they scoff at goodness and wrong the image of God in his children, that they are deriding and despising a company of weak creatures, that they are scoffing at simple people beneath themselves. But they are deceived. They scoff at Christ in them, and he takes it so: “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” (Acts 9:4). The foot is trodden on the earth, and the head speaks from heaven. It is the reproach of Christ; and it will be laid to your charge at the day of judgment that you have scoffed at, and persecuted, and reproached Christ in his members. It will be a heavy indictment.

Men should not regard what they think of things, but what he who must be their judge will think of things before long; and he interprets it as done to his own person. This is true of both good and ill. Whatever good we do to a Christian as a Christian, to a disciple in the name of a disciple, Christ takes as done to himself: “Inasmuch as you have done it to these, you have done it to me” (Matt 25:40).

It should animate us to do good offices to those who are Christ’s. What we do to them, we do to Christ. Let us be willing to refresh the heart of Christ in his members, at home or abroad, as occasion serves; to maintain the quarrel of Christ as much as we can; to relieve Christ. He comes to us in the poor and asks relief. He who shed his blood for us, who died for us, who has given us all, asks a little pittance for himself: that for his sake we would be so good to him in his members as to do this and that; that for Jonathan’s sake we would regard poor, lame Mephibosheth, his son (2 Sam 9:1-13). Christ, though he is gone, has some Mephibosheths, some poor, weak members; and whatever offices we do them, he counts as done to himself. It goes on his account. He will be accountable for every good word we speak in his cause, for every defense, for every act of bounty. It is a point for large meditation, that the crosses and afflictions of Christians are the sufferings of Christ.

Only consider that the Spirit of God intended, in this phrase, to dignify all the disgraces and indignities that are put on us in a good cause and quarrel. Could he have said more in few words? He does not call them disgraces, or losses, or death; but he puts such a comforting title on them as might make us in love with suffering anything, and set us on fire to endure anything in a good cause. They are the “sufferings of Christ.”

“As the sufferings of Christ abound, so our consolations…” The third general point is that our consolations are proportionate to our sufferings. “Our consolations abound.” We suffer in this world. That is hard. Yes, but they are the sufferings of Christ. There is sweetness. And then another degree is that our consolations abound as our sufferings abound.

Consolation, as I showed before in unfolding the word, is an inward support of the soul against trouble felt or feared; and it must be stronger than the grievance, or else the action of comfort will not follow. In every action that prevails there is a disproportion between what acts and what is acted on, or else there is no prevailing. If the comfort is not above the malady, it is no comfort. And therefore no comforts but divine comforts will hold out in the end, because in all other comforts the malady is above the remedy. They make glorious claims, as the philosophers do, Plutarch and Seneca and the rest. But they are like apothecaries’ boxes. They have fine titles, but there is nothing within.

Alas! When there is trouble in the conscience, awakened by the sight of sin and the displeasure of God, what can all those precepts do that compose and settle the soul in petty troubles? They have their place, and surely the neglect of them is often what makes the cross heavier. But alas! In divine troubles, in terror of conscience, it must be divine comfort. It must be of like nature, or else the effect of comfort will never follow; and those are the comforts Paul means here. As our troubles and afflictions abound, so our consolations, our divine supports, abound. The point is this:

Doctrine. Our comforts are proportionate to our sufferings.

What did I say, proportionate? It is above all proportion of suffering. As it is said, “the afflictions of this life are not worthy of the glory that shall be revealed” (Rom 8:18). And indeed in this life the consolations abound as the sufferings abound. For God does not keep everything for the life to come. He gives us a taste, a grape of Canaan, before we come to Canaan. The Israelites sent for grapes to taste the goodness of the land, and they had them brought to them by the spies, by which they might guess at the fruitfulness and sweetness of the land itself. So the taste and relish that God’s children have of that fullness reserved in another world is answerable and proportionate to their sufferings; and in that proportion, the exceeding part is comfort. There is an exceeding, if not for the present, yet afterward. The ark rose together with the water, and comforts rise together with the matter of suffering.

But what is the reason for the proportion? Why do the greatest comforts follow the greatest sufferings? What is the ground of it? The grounds are many.

Reason 1. To name some: first of all, this is a ground, that the more capable the soul is of comfort, the more comfort it receives. But great troubles bring a capacity and capableness of soul, fitting it to receive comfort. How is that? Troubles humble the soul, and humility is a grace, and the vessel of all grace, and of comfort too. A low and meek spirit is a deep spirit, and the lower and deeper and larger the spirit is, the more capable it is of containing heavenly comfort.

We know that the more empty a man is of himself, the more fit he is for comfort; but crosses and afflictions empty us of ourselves, so that we see there is nothing in us, that what we are we must be outside ourselves; and the less we are in ourselves, the more we are in God. And that is the reason St. Augustine says that nothing is stronger than a humble, empty spirit: because it makes the creature go out of itself to him who is strength itself and comfort itself. Now, what makes us go out of ourselves to strength is strong. But crosses and afflictions do this. That is the main reason why the proportion holds.

Reason 2. Again, another reason is this: troubles, and afflictions, and crosses exercise graces; and the more grace is exercised, the more comfort is derived, for comfort follows graces. The comforts of the Spirit follow the graces of the Spirit, as the heat follows the fire, or as the shadow follows the body. Now, the more grace, the more comfort; the more affliction, the more exercise of grace; the more exercise of grace, the more grace itself; as we see, the deeper the root, the higher the tree.

After the sharpest winter there is usually the sweetest spring, and the most fruitful summer and autumn; because in the sharpest winter the ground is mellowed most and the seed sinks deepest, and the ground, the soil, the earth is inwardly warmed and prepared for it. And so, when the outward heat comes to draw it forth, it comes to be abundantly fruitful. We see it in nature, in what we call the surrounding of one contrary by another, which increases the contrary. Whatever is good is increased when it is surrounded by the contrary evil, because they are put to the conflict.

So it is with the soul. It is the showers of affliction that bring the sweet flowers of comfort after. The soul is prepared and fertilized for them. The soul is exercised, and enlarged, and fitted for them in every way. “In the multitude of my sorrows, thy comforts refreshed my soul,” says David (Ps 94:19). In proportion to our discomforts, God’s comforts refresh our souls.

Reason 3. And God is so wise that before we enter into suffering any great matter, he will give us more grace answerable to the greatness of our suffering, and after great suffering he will give great comfort. God is so infinitely loving and wise that he will not call us to suffer great troubles till he gives us some grace answerable to them. As a captain will not set a raw soldier in a sharp brunt, but some experienced man. Whatever wisdom is in man, it is only a drop compared with the infinite wisdom that is in God. He proportions our strength before we suffer, and in suffering he increases it; and after suffering, then comfort comes following at full speed. Indeed, this is so especially after a little while of waiting, for God’s time is the best time.

Reason 4. And we shall have most experience of the presence of Christ and his Holy Spirit at such times. The nearer to the spring of comfort, the more comfort. But in the deepest and sharpest afflictions, we are near to God. Therefore the more comfort.

How is this proved? The more we are stripped of outward comforts, the nearer we are to God, who is styled the “God that comforteth the abject” (2 Cor 7:6); and the nearer to God, the nearer to comfort itself. For all comfort springs from him; and when the outward means that should convey comfort to us fail, then he conveys it directly by himself. I confess he is present at all times; but when comfort is conveyed by the creature, by man, it is not so sweet as when God joins with the soul directly, as he does in great crosses. Such an occasion and such an extremity may come that none can comfort a man but God, by his Spirit.

When Christ comes to the soul directly, what abundance of comfort there is then! When a king does not send a messenger, but comes directly in his own person to visit someone in misery, what a grace it is! So what a grace it is to a soul afflicted and deserted to have Christ directly present! As the martyrs found, when no other creature could comfort them, there was a fire within, above all the outward fire and torment, which abated and allayed the torments that were without. The divinest comforts are kept for the harshest and the worst times. We shall have the presence of Christ in the absence of all other creatures, and he will minister comfort. They may keep outward comforts from us; they can never keep the God of comfort from us. And so long as a Christian soul and God can close together, it cannot lack comfort.

Reason 5. Another reason why comforts increase is because we pray most then. When we pray most, we are most happy. But in our greatest sufferings we pray most, and most ardently. Therefore then we feel most comfort. When God and a Christian soul can talk together and have communion, then though he cannot speak to God with his tongue, yet he can sigh and groan to God. He can pour out his spirit to God. And as long as we can pray we can never be miserable; as long as the heart can ease itself into the bosom of God, there will always be a return of a sweet answer.

Of all the exercises of religion, the exercise that has the most direct communion with God is prayer. Then we speak familiarly to God in his own language and words, and call upon him by his own promises. We plead those promises to him. And this cannot be, we cannot speak and confer and converse with the God of comfort, without a great deal, without a world, of comfort. Great crosses drive us to this, and therefore then we have great comfort.

Use 1. What use may we make of this? First, for ourselves, we should not fear nor faint, neither faint in troubles nor fear troubles. Do not faint in them. We shall have comfort in proportion. And let us not fear troubles before they come, or any measure of them. Proportionable to the measure of our afflictions will be our comfort. Let us not fear anything we shall suffer in this world in a good cause; for as we suffer so we shall receive from God. We fear our own good. For it is better to have the comfort we shall have in suffering anything for a good cause than to be exempted from the suffering and to lack the comfort. There is no proportion between them. The choice is much better, to have comfort with grievance, than to lack the comfort together with the grievance. St. Paul would not have chosen immunity from suffering; he would not have been exempted from the cross and so have lacked his comfort.

For the disproportion is wide and great. The comforts are inward and sweet; the crosses, for the most part, are outward. What are all the crosses and sufferings in this world? Set aside an afflicted conscience, and they are only a brushing of the garment, as it were, some outward thing in the outward man; but the comforts are inward and deep.

But what if there are inward grievances too? Then we have deeper comforts than they. The cross is never so deep but the comfort is deeper. “Oh the depth of the wisdom and love of God!” (Rom 11:33). There is the part and dimension of God’s love, the depth of it! There is a depth in crosses: “Out of the deep have I cried to thee” (Ps 130:1). But there is a deeper depth of comfort; there is a hand under to fetch us up at the lowest. “Thy right hand is upon me, and thy left hand is under me” (Song 2:6), says the church to God. There is comfort lower and deeper than the grievance, though it is inward, spiritual grievance.

No, of all who have grievances (I know what I am speaking of, a little, from my own experience, and it is true in the experience of all ministers and Christians), none have more help than those who are exercised with spiritual temptations of conscience. They are forced to search for deep comforts. Shallow comforts will not serve their turn! And when they have them, they keep them and make much of them. They have more private and deep thoughts of Christ and of comforts than other people, who, as they are strangers to their crosses, so are strangers to their comfort.

There is no degree of proportion between the crosses and the comforts. The crosses are momentary; the comforts are growing. The crosses make us not a whit the worse, and the comforts make us better. Fear nothing, therefore, but go on in the ways of religion, and never be discouraged from suffering in a good cause for fear of men, thinking, “Oh, this will come, and that will come.” No, no; if the sufferings grow, the comforts shall grow with them. Be of good comfort.

Use 2. Again, another use may be that we judge aright of those who are disgraced in the world, if their cause is good; that we should not have distasteful opinions of them, as indeed suffering naturally breeds distaste in men. They love men in a flourishing estate, and feel distaste for them when they suffer; but that is the corruption of men. But God is the nearest to such sufferers then, nearer than he ever was, and their comforts increase with their crosses.

In the conjunction between the sun and the moon, as we see by experience, in the space between the old and new moon there is a time of conjunction. We think the moon is lost in that time, because we do not see her; but the moon is more enlightened then than she ever was in herself. Here is the reason: the light part of the moon is turned sunward, heavenward, and the dark part is turned toward the earth.

So a Christian in crosses and abasement seems to be a dark creature, but he is more enlightened then than ever before. Why? His light part is toward God; it is not seen by the world. The world sees his crosses, but it does not see his comforts. And as the moon is nearer the sun at that time than at other times, so the soul has dealings with God in afflictions. It is nearer to God, and its dark side is toward the world. As the world sees the moon’s eclipse, so the world sees our darkness, but not our inward comfort. Therefore we should judge aright of others in this case.

Use 3. Another use shall be of thankfulness to God: that besides the comforts of heaven (which are not to be spoken of, and which we shall not know until we come to feel them), and besides the great comfort we have in being free from hell, we have a measure of comfort here in this world, in our pilgrimage and absence from heaven, such a measure of comfort as may carry us along with comfort. We ought to be thankful to God, not only for redemption and glorification, but that God comforts us in our pilgrimage, that he mingles crosses with comforts; no, that in this world our comforts are more than our crosses.

Objection. Some may object, “Yes, but my crosses are more than my comforts.”

Answer. Are they so? Do you suffer in a good cause or not? If you do, your comforts are more than your crosses, if there is not a fault in you.

Question. What shall I do, then?

1. Take this direction in suffering: pull out the sting of sin, however good the cause we suffer in; for in one suffering God aims at several things. In your suffering God aims at your correction, as well as at the exercise of your grace and at your comfort. Therefore let affliction have the correcting and amending part first, and then the comforting part will follow. Though the cause is good, yet God’s children often lack comfort until afterward. Why? They have not renewed their repentance and cleansed their souls. They have not pulled out the sting. When they have repented of their personal sins that lie upon them, and gone back to the sins of their youth, and then renewed their covenant with God and their purposes for the time to come, then comes comfort, and not before. Therefore it is no disparagement to a good cause that sometimes Christians do not find present comfort. They have personal sins that hang on them, not repented of, which God intends to amend them of, as well as to honor them by suffering in his cause.

2. Again, if God’s children complain that their sufferings are above their strength and above measure, and desire God to weigh their afflictions, they are so great, as Job says, it is the speech of sense and not of faith; it is the speech of the passing fit, and not of the settled state. There is a fit, and there is a state. It is no matter what they say in their fit; then the flesh and sense speak, and not grace and faith at that time. If they judge by sense, then they judge so; but we know that reason corrects the errors of sense, and faith corrects the errors of reason. But what do they say in their constant state? Their comforts correspond to their crosses, either in suffering or afterward, though not always at the same time. So much for that.

But this will be abused by carnal persons. We speak of abundance of comfort, but it is to those who have a rightful share in it. The book of God speaks no comfort to persons who live in sin and are resolved to do so. We speak comfort to those who are brokenhearted for their sins, who are content to endure the reproach of religion in despite of the world, who will bear the cross of Christ. As for the others, as their jollity increases in the world, so their crosses and troubles shall increase. It is said of mystical Babylon, the Church of Rome, that has flourished in the world a great while, and sat as a queen, and blessed herself, “As she glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her” (Rev 18:7).

So it is true of every wicked man who is in an evil course and is resolved to stay in it, and, as the Scripture phrase is, “blesseth himself in an evil course”: such people shall be sure of the curse of God, and not of comfort. For in what proportion they have delighted themselves in this world in sin, in that proportion they shall have torment of conscience, if conscience is awakened in this world; and in that proportion they shall have torment in the world to come. As sin is growing, so rods are growing for them. Wicked men, says St. Paul, “they grow worse and worse” (2 Tim 3:13). The more they sin, the more they may. They sink in rebellion, and the more they sink in rebellion, the more they sink in the state of damnation. They fill up the measure of their sins, and treasure up the wrath of God against the day of wrath.

Whoever you are who live in a sinful course, and are resolved to do so in spite of God’s ordinance, in spite of the motions of the Spirit, you who have the good motions of the Spirit knocking at your soul, and yet would rather refuse comfort than take comfort together with direction: go on still in this wicked course of yours, but remember, as your comforts increase in this world, so your torment is increasing. And here is the disproportion between God’s children and others. They have their sufferings first, and their comfort afterward; but others have their pleasure first, and their torment after. The sufferings of God’s children are for a time, but the torment of the others is forever. Thus we see what we may comfortably observe from this, that comforts increase as crosses increase.

A word on the fourth and last point.

How does this come about, that as our afflictions abound, so our consolations abound?

Doctrine. They abound by Christ, says the apostle. God the Father is the God of comfort; the Holy Ghost is the comforter. But how does this come about, that we who are not the objects of comfort, but of confusion, should have God the Father to be the “God of comfort,” and the Holy Ghost to be our comforter? Oh, it is that Jesus Christ, the great peacemaker, has satisfied God and procured the Holy Ghost; for the Holy Ghost is procured by the satisfaction and death of Christ, and he was sent after the resurrection and ascension of Christ. Therefore Christ is called “the consolation of Israel” (Luke 2:25), and those who waited for Christ waited for the consolation of Israel.

All comfort is hidden in Christ. He is the storehouse of comfort. We have it through him, and by him, and in him. For God is the Father of comfort because Christ is our mediator and intercessor in heaven; and the Holy Ghost is “the comforter” because Christ sent him. And the comforts of the Holy Ghost are fetched from Christ, from the death of Christ, or the ascension of Christ, from some argument from Christ. Whatever comforts the soul, the Holy Ghost does it by fetching some argument from Christ, from his satisfaction, from his worth, from his intercession in heaven. It is something in Christ. So Christ by his Spirit comforts, and the reasons fetched by the Spirit are from Christ. Therefore it is by Christ.

What is the reason that a Christian soul does not fear God as “a consuming fire” (Heb 12:29), but can look upon him with comfort? It is because God has received satisfaction by Christ. What is the reason that a Christian soul does not fear hell, but thinks of it with comfort? Christ has conquered hell and Satan. What is the reason that a Christian does not fear death? Christ by death has overcome death, and him that had the power of death, the devil. “Christ is mine,” says the Christian soul. “Therefore I do not fear it, but think of it with comfort.” For a Christian is more than a conqueror over all these.

What is the reason that a Christian is not afraid of his corruptions and sins? He knows that God, for Christ’s sake, will pardon them, and that the remainder of his corruptions will work to his humiliation and to his good. “All shall work for the best to them that love God” (Rom 8:28). What is the reason that there is nothing in the world that does not bring comfort to a Christian? When he thinks of God, he thinks of him as a Father of comfort; when he thinks of the Holy Ghost, he thinks of him as a Spirit of comfort; when he thinks of angels, he thinks of them as his attendants; when he thinks of heaven, he thinks of it as his inheritance; he thinks of saints as a communion of which he is a partaker. Where does all this come from? By Christ, who has made God our Father, the Holy Ghost our comforter, who has made angels ours, saints ours, heaven ours, earth ours, devils ours, death ours, all ours, in the outcome.

For God being turned in love to us, all is turned. Our crosses are no curses now, but comforts; and the bitterest crosses yield the sweetest comforts. All this is by Christ, who has turned the course of things and hidden blessings in the greatest crosses that ever were. And this he did in himself, before he does it in us. For did not his greatest crosses tend to his greatest glory? Who in the world was ever abased as our head, Christ Jesus, was, so that it made him cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). All the creatures in the world would have sunk under the sufferings that Christ endured. What abasement compares with the abasement of Christ? And what glory compares with the glory of Christ?

“He humbled himself to the death of the cross; wherefore God gave him a name above all names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, both of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth” (Phil 2:8-10). Now as it was in our head, whose greatest abasement ushered in his greatest glory, so it shall be in us: our greatest crosses come before our greatest comforts. He is our precedent. He is the exemplary cause as well as the efficient, working cause. It is by Christ, all this, that consolations abound in us. It was performed first in him, and shall be by him, by his Spirit, to the end of the world.

Use. The use that we are to make of this is that in all our sufferings, before we come to heaven, we should look to Christ. He has turned all things. Let us study Christ and fetch comfort from him. Our flesh was abased in him. Our flesh is glorified in him now in heaven, in his person. And so it must be in our own persons. Our flesh must be abased, and then as he is glorious in heaven, so shall we be in ourselves. That very Spirit that raised and advanced him at the lowest, that very Spirit (there being only one Spirit in the head and members) shall in our greatest abasement grant us the greatest advancement that we can look for, to sit at the right hand of God, to reign with Christ; “for if we suffer with him, we shall reign with him” (2 Tim 2:12).

And from this you may have a reason, likewise, why Christians have no more comfort. They do not study Christ enough. They do not consider Christ, and the nearness in which Christ is to them and they to Christ, so that both make one Christ. They do not consider how Christ has sweetened all. He has turned God, and turned all to us. He has made God our Father, and in him all things favorable to us. So now the fire is our friend, the stone, and the gout, and all diseases, disgrace and temptation; all are at peace and league with us. All is turned, in its use and outcome, to good, to the help and comfort of God’s children. “All things are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor 3:23). Even the worst thing is at peace with us, because the malignant power it has, tending to damnation, is taken away. Now it does not hurt us, but there is a sovereign curing power to turn it to good.

I confess God’s children are discomforted, but then they wrong their principles, they wrong their grounds, their religion, their Savior. They wrong all the comforts they have a rightful share in, because they do not put them to use when occasion serves, as Job is rebuked, “Hast thou forgot the consolations of the Almighty?” (Job 15:11), or, why do you forget them? So if we have consolations and forget them, and dote and pore upon our grievance, it is just of God to leave us comfortless; not that we lack any comfort, but we flatter our grievance and forget our comfort. Let us change the object of our gaze. When we have looked upon our grievance and been humbled in the sight of our sins, let us look upon the promises, let us look upon Christ in glory, and see ourselves in heaven triumphing with him.

What can terrify a soul? Not death itself, when it sees itself in Christ triumphing. Faith sees me as surely triumphing in heaven, and sitting at the right hand of God, as it sees Christ, for it knows I am a member of Christ; and whatever is between me and that happiness that is reserved for me in heaven, I shall triumph over it.

Christ triumphed in his own person over death, hell, sin, the grave, the devil, and he will triumph in me, his mystical body. What he has done in himself, he will do in me. This faith will overcome the world, and the devil, and hell, and all that is between us and heaven. A Christian who sees himself sitting at the right hand of God with Christ, triumphing with him, is discouraged at nothing; for faith, which makes things to come present, sees him conquering already.

Let us be exhorted to joy: “Rejoice, and again I say rejoice” (Phil 4:4). We have reason to do so, if we look to our grounds. But when we yield to Satan and our own flesh, we rob God of his glory and ourselves of comfort, and we may thank ourselves for it.

But I come to the sixth verse, in which the apostle enlarges on the matter by showing the purpose of his sufferings with regard to the Corinthians, setting down both parts, both affliction and comfort.

Whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation: or whether we be comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation (2 Cor 1:6).

It matters much in everything how the mind is prepared to receive what is spoken. The apostle therefore, to make way for himself in their hearts, removes the scandal from his sufferings. He shows that they were so far from having reason to take offense at them that they ought to do as he did, and bless God for them; for as the sufferings of Christ abounded in him, so his comfort abounded. And so that they should think themselves in no way hurt by his sufferings and base treatment in the world, he tells them in this verse that all was for their good. No one should be offended at his own good. They had no reason to take scandal at what was for their good. But, he says, if you think basely of me for my sufferings, you think basely of your own comfort; for my sufferings are for your good, and my comforts are for your good. Whether I suffer or am comforted, it is for you.

The cross is a distasteful thing to us, and likewise the cross in others is a distasteful thing, not only distasteful and bitter to us, but shameful. St. Paul knew this. And because he wanted, as I said, to work himself into their good opinion, so that he might prevail with them for their good, he says: You ought not to think a bit the worse of me for this, for all is for you. So you see the scope of the words, “Whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation …”

But first he speaks of affliction alone, and then of comfort alone. If we are afflicted, it is for your good; and if we are comforted, it is for your good. His reason is that sometimes afflictions appear without comfort. Therefore he does not say, If we be comforted only, it is for your good, but If we be afflicted, it is for your good. Sometimes comfort comes before our afflictions: that we may endure them the better, God cheers us on to them. Sometimes God sheds his Spirit in affliction, so that there is abundance of comfort in it. But for the most part it comes afterward, after we have waited. Yet in the affliction there is always such a measure of comfort as supports us, so that we do not sink. Still, the special degree of comfort usually comes after. Therefore he speaks of affliction in the first place: If I be afflicted, it is for you.

The point is easy:

Doctrine. The afflictions of the saints are for the good of others.

I mean the afflictions of God’s church, of God’s people, and especially the afflictions of the pastors and leaders of God’s army. God singles out some to suffer for the good of others, and especially for the good of consolation and salvation, these two goods.

Question. How can this be, that the afflictions of God’s people are for the consolation and salvation of others?

Answer. I answer, in many ways, as we will see more particularly afterward; but I mention them now only to make way.

1. Afflictions are for the good and comfort of others, because we have their example in suffering, to train us up how to suffer. Example is a forcible kind of teaching. Therefore, says the apostle, our afflictions are for you, to lead and teach you the way to suffer. Words are not enough, especially in the matter of suffering. There must be some example. Therefore Christ came from heaven, not only to redeem us but to teach us, not only by words but by example, how to do and suffer willingly, cheerfully, and stoutly, in obedience to God, as he did.

2. Again, afflictions do good to others by giving them occasion to search deeper into the cause. When they see the people of God treated in this way, they take occasion from it to inquire what the cause is, and so take occasion to be instructed deeply in matters of religion; for human nature is inquisitive, and grace takes the hint from anything. Why is it that such and such people endure such things? From this, I say, they come to be better grounded in the cause. Little occasions are often the beginnings of great things, because the spirit, as well as the intellect, is of a working nature, and will draw one thing from another.

We see what a great tree rises from a little seed! We see how a little thing, heard by report, works conversion. Naaman the Syrian had a servant, and she told him that there was a prophet in the land of the Jews, a famous man who did great things, and that if he would go to him, he would be cured of his leprosy. When that little occasion had been given, Naaman comes to the prophet, and he was cured of a double leprosy, both of soul and body, and went home a good man (2 Kgs 5:1 and following). So, by giving occasion for inquiry, the sufferings of others do good.

3. And then, seeing the constant and resolute spirits of those who suffer does them good, and comforts them. For, first, it makes them think well of the cause: Certainly these people who suffer constantly and cheerfully have a good cause to suffer for, when they see that the cause produces such resolution and courage in the sufferers. And it makes them fall in love with the persons, and begin to think well of them, when they can deny themselves: Surely these people care nothing for the pleasures and vanities of the world, when they can endure to suffer these things. So Justin Martyr says that when he saw Christians suffer, he thought they were people who did not care for pleasures; for if they had, they would not suffer these things.

4. Besides, they can gather from the presence of God’s Spirit emboldening the sufferers what they may hope for themselves if they should suffer. They may reason in this way: Is God by his Spirit so full and so strong in these who are flesh and blood as we are? Is he so strong in women, in young men, in aged men, that neither their years, nor their sex, nor their tenderness can in any way keep them from these kinds of abasement and sharp suffering? Surely the same Spirit of God will be as strong in me, if I stand firm in the same cause and carry myself as they do. And there is good reason for this, for God is the same God, the Spirit is the same Spirit, the cause is the same cause. Therefore it is no false reasoning. I may, upon a good presumption, hope for the presence and assistance of the Spirit of God to enable and strengthen me as he did them; for the same Spirit of God will be strong in all.

5. And this is partly likewise in the intent of those who suffer. There is a double intent. It is the intent of God to single them out to suffer for the good of others; and it is their intent to suffer so that others may have good. This is one reason why they are willing to suffer shame or bodily punishment rather than keep others from the good they may take from their suffering. So it is God’s end, and their end. It is for your consolation, in God’s intent, and in my intent and purpose, and in the event itself.

Thus you see how afflictions, suffered in a good cause, help toward the consolation and salvation even of others. The example of those who suffer flows into the mind, and works its way into the judgment and affection of the beholders, in many ways.

And the agents of antichrist know this very well; for if there is ever any persecution again, we will hardly see the fire and the stake, so that the sufferers may not give an example. They will come to gunpowder plots and massacres and such violent courses, to sweep away all. They know that if it once comes to a matter of example, the grace of God in his children, and the presence of his Spirit appearing to others, has a wondrous working force. They are wise enough to know that. The devil teaches them that cunning, when he has been driven from all his other shifts.

If it is so that the sufferings of God’s children are for the good of others, then let us make some use of it.

Use 1. Let us not take offense at the cause of religion because of suffering. We ought not to have a poor opinion of a cause because it suffers, but rather to think the better of it. I say this because we have many who will honor the martyrs who are dead and are recorded in the book; but if any suffer in the present view, before their eyes, they count them a disgrace. This should not be.

For, first of all, if the cause is good, the end of good people (by the help of the Spirit of God) is for your good. Was it not a cruel thing in Saul to strike at David when he played on his harp, when he sought Saul’s good and relief (1 Sam 18:10-11)? To kill a nightingale as it sings is a barbarous thing. God’s children, by all that they suffer, intend the good of others. Now, to hurt and malign them in doing good, to persecute those who endure ill for our good, or who labor and do anything for our good, is a barbarous, savage thing.

All is for the elect. “I suffer all for the elect’s sake,” says St. Paul in 2 Timothy 2:10; so my sufferings are for you. We may know that we are elected of God if we take good from the sufferings of others, if we take no scandal and offense, and do not add affliction to the afflicted; for all is, in God’s intent and in their intent, for our good.

For instance (to enlighten the point a little, because it is not usually dwelt on, and it is a notion that may help our conception of the excellent state of God’s children), reprobation, to go as high as we may, is for their good: to show mercy to them, to pass by and neglect so many, and to single them out. The creation of the world is for their sakes. God’s providence directs all for their good. For why does he permit wicked men? It is so that they may be instruments to exercise those who are good. It is by reflection, or in some way for the sake of the good, that the wicked are permitted to be upon the earth.

The administration of the world is not for the rebels who are in it; it is for those who are God’s children; and he tosses and tumbles empires and monarchies. The great men of the world think they do great things; but, alas! all this is for the exercise of the church, and by God’s providence all of it comes back to the church. All their attempts are for the little flock, for a few who are a despised company, whom he means to save, if we had eyes to see it.

So likewise his ordinances are to gather this church, which he has chosen from all the world to himself. The ordinances of the ministry and of the sacraments, the suffering of ministers, the doing and suffering of Christians, all is for their good, as we see in this place, I suffer for your consolation and comfort. Heaven and earth stand for them. The pillars of heaven and earth would be taken apart, and all would come to chaos, and there would be an end of all, if the number of those were gathered who are the blessed people of God, for whom all things are.

As for the doings and sufferings of God’s people, we who are ministers do not indeed know who belong to God and who do not, but our intent is to do good to those who are God’s, and the outcome proves so. As for the rest, God has his end in it, to harden them and bring them to confusion, and to take away excuse from them; but the real good of all our pains and suffering is the elect’s.

Let us examine what good we take from the ordinances of God, and from the sufferings of the present church and the sufferings of the former church. Do their examples animate, quicken, and encourage us to like courses? It is a sign that we are elected of God. There is no greater sign of a good state in grace than a gracious heart, to draw good out of the examples of others, and to draw good out of everything that befalls us, because God’s end in election, and his manner of providence, is to guide all to the good of the elect.

Use 2. Again, we learn another thing likewise: how God overrules in his providence the projects of carnal men, of the devil and his instruments, agents, and deputies. God overrules all things. What in itself is evil, and in the intent of the one who inflicts it is evil, God yet turns to the good of others, and to the good of those who suffer too. Satan intends no such thing, as it is said. Nebuchadnezzar thinks no such thing. “Asshur, the rod of my wrath” (Isa 10:5) intends no such thing. They do not intend the consolation of God’s people when they wrong the saints of God, and so exercise their patience and grace. No! They intend their hurt and confusion.

It does not matter what they intend; for God at the first created light out of darkness, and in his providence does great things by small means. In his providence over his church, he raises contraries out of contraries; he turns the wicked projects of men to contrary ends, and makes all serviceable to his own end.

In statecraft, he is counted the wisest man who can make his enemies instrumental to his own purpose, who can make others serve his own turn, and work his own ends through those who are his opponents; and he needs a great reaching head who can do so. The great providence of heaven does this. God is the wisest statesman in the world. All other statecraft is only a beam from that Sun. He can make his very enemies instrumental and serviceable to him. And this is the torment of Satan, that God outshoots him with his own bow. He outreaches him in his own policy. Where Satan thinks to do most harm, he does most good. In those afflictions by which he thinks to quell the courage of the church, God does exceeding good to them, and enlarges the bounds of the church in this way.

It is a common saying, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” The word of God is the seed of the church; how then is the blood of the martyrs and sufferers the seed of the church? In this way. The word of God is the seed of the church; but how? As it is in the Bible, in the book? No! As it is published in preaching, much more as it is published in confession, and much more as it is published and sealed in martyrdom, by suffering. The word of God is so laid open, as not only spoken but confessed and practiced in life; and not only so, but sealed by enduring anything. In this way it is the seed, and works strongly.

God overrules all inferiors. Though in their own intent they have motions contrary to his, yet he brings them around to his end. As we see, the heavens have a motion contrary to that of the first heaven, which carries the rest, yet they are turned about by another motion, contrary to their own bent. They go one way, and are carried another. As we see in the wheels of the clock, one runs one way, another another; all make the clock strike, all serve the intent of the clockmaker. So one runs one way, and another another. Carnal men offer disgrace and disparagement to God’s people; their intent is to overthrow all, to disgrace and trample on the cause of religion; but God uses contrary wheels to make the clock strike. All turns in the end to his end.

Therefore, though we say in our common speech that the devil is the god of this world (it is the Scripture phrase, 2 Cor 4:4, and it is so in regard to the wicked who are under him), yet he is a god under a God. There is only one monarch of the world. He is a god who has no power over swine further than he is permitted (Matt 8:30 and following). It is a point of wondrous comfort that, though we are treated in this way, yet there is an active providence; there is one monarch, one great king, who rules all.

It is a ground of patience and contentment in whatever we suffer, not to look to the nearest instrument, but to look to the overruling cause, who will turn all in the end to our good. With this Joseph comforted his brothers: You sent me, and with an evil mind too; but God turned it to good. It was no thanks to them, yet that did not matter. He comforted them in this, that God turned their malice to his good, and to their good too, for he was sent as a steward to provide for them.

And it is one ground for thinking more moderately of wicked men, as regards our anger and fierceness against them; it is a ground for pitying them. For, alas! poor souls, what are they doing! Though they intend it out of malice, they are only instruments, and will be overruled to do good contrary to their meaning, as St. Paul says here, “Whether I be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation.” The worst intents and designs of the enemies of religion were for the consolation and salvation of the Corinthians. It is good to think of this beforehand. It is a ground of patience; and not only so, but of comfort and joy, which is a degree above patience. God overrules all in this way. Therefore we should quietly cast ourselves wholly upon him, willing to do and suffer whatever he will have us do and suffer, knowing that he will direct all to the good of the church, to our comfort, and to his own glory.

Use 3. Again, a further use may be this, to teach us to share our condition with others, because it is for their good. Good is diffusive, says St. Paul. All that I do or suffer is for your good, to join comfort and suffering together. If I be comforted, it is for you; and if I suffer, it is for you. It must come about by their taking notice of it. And that is not all, that they ought to take notice; we ought to let them take notice as much as we can. “Come, children, and I will teach you the fear of the Lord” (Ps 34:11). “Come and I will tell you what the Lord hath done for my soul” (Ps 66:16). “The righteous shall compass me about,” says David (Ps 142:7).

As when a man has some great matter to tell, there will be a ring of people around him, eager to hear what he says; so David says, “the righteous shall compass me about.” When David had sweet matter of experience, to tell what God had done for him, how God had been with him in his affliction and delivered him, “the righteous shall compass me about”; I will declare it to others. For God’s children make others’ case their own. They comfort them as they would be comforted by them in turn.

As they ought to do so, so we should take notice of their troubles and deliverances, and how God sanctifies these to them. These things tend to edification. The same reason holds for one saint of God as for all, and God is the same to all in a like case. Proven experience is made much of in other things, in medicine, and judged cases in law, and the like. Tried things in all professions are good. So tried truths should be valued. Now when a man teaches another his experience, it is a judged case, a tried truth. It is not every truth that will steady the soul in the time of a great temptation, but a truth proved, a tried truth.

Therefore it is good for parents and governors, for friends and for all ranks of people, to make it one way of spending their time fruitfully, to talk with others about the blessed experiences they have had of God’s gracious providence in the passages of their life. Abraham will teach his children (Gen 18:19); I will tell it to him, therefore, says God. It is a means for God to reveal many things sweetly to us, when he knows we are of a communicative, spreading disposition. God gains by that means. His glory is spread. Our grace is increased. The good of others is multiplied. But to go on.

“It is for your consolation and salvation.” Whether we are afflicted or whether we are comforted, all is for your consolation and salvation. I will not trouble you here with the different readings of the copies. Some Greek copies lack the word salvation, but most of those the translations follow have both consolation and salvation. Some have consolation and salvation in the first clause, but do not repeat it in the second, “Whether we be comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation.” But because the more current copies have both, we will join both, “it is for your consolation and salvation.”

For the word in the Greek that is here rendered for has a double force. It signifies either to merit, to procure and merit salvation, and we do not understand it in that way here; or it means for your good, a final cause. It includes either a meritorious, deserving cause or a final cause. “Whether I be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation,” not by merit and desert (Christ’s suffering was so), but to help it forward in its execution.

I say this to cut the sinews of a popish point, as I meet it, which is a cheating point of their religion. Indeed it is not a point of religion at all, but a point of Romish policy, a point of cheating; as most of their religion is only a trick for the belly. They have their devices, if you please, of the pope’s treasury. He, being the treasurer of the church, has a treasury; and what must that be filled with? With the merits of saints, with the superabundance. For the saints, so they hold, can deserve and procure heaven for themselves, and do more than obey. There is an overplus of obedience. The superabundance of that is laid up in a treasury. And who should have the benefit of that but the treasury of the church and the pope?

But how will the church come by this abundant satisfaction and merit? People must buy them by pardons, and they do not come to have pardons for nothing, but by purchasing them; and hence come popish indulgences. That is nothing but a dispensing of the satisfaction and merits of the saints, which they did, so they say, for the church, abusing such phrases as these. When the saints had more than their own obedience, so the argument runs, they did good to others, and others had benefit by it.

A shameful opinion, bred in the dark night of popery, when the Scriptures were hidden and people lay in ignorance; and it was merely to advantage themselves. For indeed the Scripture says that God’s children suffered for the church; but that was not as satisfaction for the church, but for the good of the church. Only Christ’s death made satisfaction. Christ is the only treasury of the church, and the satisfaction of Christ. They think they merit by their sufferings, when they suffer for their deserts. And they think they merit not only for themselves but for others too, which is a diabolical sarcasm. The devil mocks them in that way; he makes them ignorant of themselves.

Alas! that a simple, sinful man should think to do enough for himself, and more than enough, enough for others! The wise virgins had only oil enough for themselves; they had none for others. But these wise virgins have more than enough for themselves; they have some for others too. It is not worth dwelling on, to the hindering of better and more comforting things.

The phrase runs in this sense when it is meant of Christ. Christ suffered for our satisfaction, for our redemption. And Leo the pope, one of the best of their popes, and in his rank a holy man in his time, says excellently well on this, “The death of the saints is precious; but the death of no saint is a propitiation for others.” Their death is sanctified, but not propitiatory to others. Therefore each one’s death was his own; all the saints, their death was for themselves. It is an excellent saying, “Christ alone …” Every other person besides Christ, their death was singular. It did not go out of their persons to do others good, otherwise than by an exemplary course, as St. Paul speaks here.

But only Christ it is, in whom all died, in whom all are crucified, in whom all are raised, in whom all ascend, in whom all are glorified. As a public Adam, his death was for all. He was not to be considered in his death as one man, but as a second Adam, who acted by his public obedience. As the first public person by his disobedience infected all, so by this one’s obedience and satisfaction, by his passive obedience especially, when he closed up his obedience in death, all died in him. It was as much as if all had died, as if all had been crucified, and risen in him. The meaning is therefore, “Whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation,” to help it forward, to help forward your comfort, by way of example, and not by way of satisfaction and merit in any kind of way.

Only consider this one reason, and so I will end the point. There was no saint who ever merited heaven by his own satisfaction; therefore he could not do good to others by way of satisfaction. How do you prove that? By that excellent saying, “The sufferings of this world are not worthy of the glory that shall be revealed” (Rom 8:18). All that they suffered was not worthy of the glory to be revealed; therefore they could not merit heaven for themselves by any satisfaction of their own. Why then should we speak of others, of doing any good to others, I mean, by way of satisfaction? But he shows more clearly in the next words how good is done to others: “Whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation.”

“Which is effectual in enduring the same sufferings that we also suffer.” It is read another way in the margin, and most go that way, and the oldest interpreters too. Some translators often have a word in the margin as fit as the one in the text, and they leave it to the readers to take which they will. It is good and useful both ways, but most go that way, and it is clearer. The meaning is this: “Whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation,” which salvation of yours is wrought out “in enduring the same sufferings that we also suffer.” If it is read “effectual,” as it is in the text and not in the margin, then it runs thus: “If we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation,” the assurance of which in you is effectual to make you endure the sufferings that we suffer.

Now one thing here must be made clear: how is salvation wrought by affliction?

I answer, salvation is wrought by Christ, by way of merit and procurement, and purchase and satisfaction to divine justice. But salvation, in regard of the possession of it, is wrought by afflictions; that is, we come to have it by this way. We may consider salvation in purchase and title, and salvation in possession and being invested with it. Salvation in title and purchase is wrought by the death and sufferings of Christ, who has this preeminence, to be called and styled a Savior. But though it is gotten by him, it is not possessed except by a certain way and course. That salvation, the title to which we have by Christ, is not possessed or entered into except by a course of suffering and doing.

God has measured out so many holy actions for every Christian to do, and so many things for every Christian to suffer, so many grievances, if he is of years of discretion. God has a way to save children, which rests with his wisdom, but this is the way God saves those who are grown. They have a cup measured out to them; they have so many afflictions to suffer before they are possessed of what Christ has purchased. So it is wrought in regard of possession, in suffering the same afflictions that others suffer.

There are two ways, doing good and suffering for good, that are the beaten path to obtain salvation, which salvation is wrought by the satisfaction of Christ. Notice here, he says our sufferings tend to your comfort and salvation. How? Because it helps you to endure the same suffering. By seeing others suffer, and by enduring the like, we come to the possession of salvation in the end, because by seeing them suffer we are encouraged to suffer. The point from this is:

Doctrine. Whatever good we receive by the sufferings of anyone, it comes by stirring up and strengthening some grace in us.

Set Christ aside, from whom we likewise receive good by way of example as well as by way of merit, though by way of merit in a singular respect. But as for others, whatever good we receive from them is not direct, it is not immediate, but comes only by stirring up some grace, by strengthening some grace in us. No good is derived from others to me except by confirming and strengthening some grace. That is how I come to have good from them. St. Paul says here: My sufferings increase your salvation. But it is because my sufferings stir you up to suffer the same afflictions. You learn from me, by my conduct and example, to suffer, and so by suffering what I suffer you come to salvation.

This is sufficient to refute that idle opinion I spoke of before. The sufferings of the saints are not conveyed by way of pardon to ignorant people, who do not know what a saint, or a pardon, or suffering, or merit is. But the way of comfort by the suffering of others is by confirming and strengthening some grace, of patience or comfort and so on, in them. All the good that is in the father cannot help the son unless he treads in his father’s steps. If we do not go in the same way as others do to heaven, in the same graces, all their sufferings will do us no good, but will serve to condemn us. The point is clear; because it serves to enlighten other points, I only name it. But what I will dwell on a little more is that salvation is wrought by suffering.

Doctrine. We come to the possession of salvation by patience.

Faith in salvation by Christ stirs us up to suffer, till we come to the possession of that to which we have title. Notice how these hang together. First, a Christian knows that God will save him by the merits, and satisfaction, and obedience of Christ, his surety. He has an assured persuasion of this salvation to which he has title by Christ. But the possession of it is deferred till the next world, and there is a distance of time, and that time is encumbered with afflictions. From this comes the necessity of some special grace to carry us along till we are fully invested with that to which we have title by Christ. There must be some grace between faith and the possession of heaven.

I am assured of the possession of heaven at my first conversion, but I am not invested with it. It is deferred. There is a distance of time which is afflicting, for “hope deferred maketh the heart faint” (Prov 13:12). A thing we have right and title to, when it is deferred, afflicts the soul, and the deferring of good has the character of evil. Good deferred takes on the aspect of evil, for it is a grievance to lack a good I have a right to.

Now it is not only deferred, but my life is a much-exercised life, with many actions and sufferings. What grace must bear me up between me and heaven, and in the tediousness of the prolonged time? Especially the grace of enduring. Therefore faith in Christ, by which I have a title to heaven, stirs up hope, and hope stirs up patience, and that helps me on the way to heaven. It helps me to bear crosses and afflictions, and likewise to endure the tediousness and length of time till I come to heaven. So salvation is wrought by suffering. We do not come to the possession of it except by suffering and enduring. “You have need of patience,” says the apostle (Heb 10:36).

Give me leave to clear the point a little. How does patience enter into this great work of helping our salvation? Patience in enduring affliction helps in many ways.

1. They work salvation, not by way of merit, for that would be to discredit the title we have by Christ, but by way of evidence. They help the evidence of the title. For I have title by Christ. But how do I know that my evidence for that title is good? By afflictions, and the patient suffering of them. Not afflictions alone, but afflictions joined with the grace of patience to endure them; for otherwise they do no good. Afflictions are evil in themselves.

This is how it increases my evidence. Every heir is a son, for heaven is the inheritance of sons; and every son must be corrected; and I am corrected and afflicted in this life; and God gives me grace to endure these things and to see my good in them. These afflictions, therefore, mingled with patient enduring of them, are evidence that I am not a bastard. The apostle proves this in Hebrews 12:8. Everyone who does not have some affliction or other, he is a bastard and not a son. It increases my evidence that I am the child of God, especially if I suffer for a good cause. “If we suffer with him, we shall reign with him” (2 Tim 2:12). Here the evidence is increased. By this I know I am on the way, which is strewn with crosses and afflictions. We must enter into heaven this way. I know it for the way, and so it furthers my salvation. It gives me assurance that my evidence is good.

It is the manner of Scripture to say things are done when the knowledge of the thing is increased: to say we are saved, when we know more assuredly that we shall be saved; to say we are in the kingdom of heaven, when we know we are in the state of the kingdom of heaven. So he says, “grow in grace …” (2 Pet 3:18), for by this means “a further entrance shall be ministered unto you, into the kingdom of God” (2 Pet 1:11). The knowledge of a man’s state in grace is a further entrance into the kingdom of God, which is begun here in this life. To know that I am an heir of heaven is to be in heaven before my time. Thus afflictions joined with patience help salvation, because they help the evidence of salvation. They show that we are sons, and not bastards. They are an evidence of our adoption.

2. And then sufferings, joined with the grace of enduring, help forward salvation by way of qualification. There is a qualification and disposition of soul which is necessary before we come to heaven, because no unclean thing shall ever come to heaven (Rev 21:27).

Now suffering, joined with patience, has a mighty and blessed work this way, to purge us of that soil which we cannot carry to heaven with us. We may not think to carry our unmortified pride and lusts, and base earthly affections, and our pleasures and riches ill gotten, to heaven with us. Oh, no! The presence of heaven is a purer presence than that, and the place will not endure such defilements. We must therefore be cleansed.

Now afflictions endured with patience have a blessed power to subdue what is powerful in us by nature, to purge out those base affections that are contrary to the glorious state we look for. Therefore they help us to heaven; they help the qualification of the person, not the merit and desert of it.

They likewise help the qualification by removing what corruption feeds on; for affliction endured removes what corruption works on and strengthens itself by. Affliction consists in removing either riches, or honors, or pleasures, something that corruption feeds on; for all corruption is about those idols, the greatness, or pleasure, or profit of the world. Now sufferings, crossing us in our reputation, or estates, or body, one way or another, withdraw the fuel that feeds our corruptions, and so help mortification and purgation, and so fit us for heaven. They help our repentance. They make the favor of God sweet, and sin bitter. It is a bitter thing to offend God. We feel it by the afflictions that are laid on us.

3. Again, many positive graces are required before we come to heaven. Affliction endured helps all graces whatever. The only time for grace to thrive in is the time of affliction, for affliction endured helps our zeal and our love. We have experience of the patience of God, and afflictions stir up prayer. All graces are set to work in affliction. “Out of the deep have I cried” (Ps 130:1). Prayers are cries in affliction. They are not cold, dull things, but set on fire; afflictions set the spirit to work to cry to God with earnest, frequent, and fervent prayer.

4. Then again, afflictions endured work salvation and help us to heaven, because they whet and sharpen our desire for heaven. For when we find ill usage here below in our pilgrimage, we have a great desire to be at home, at rest. And that is one main end for which God sends afflictions, to help salvation in this way by sharpening our desires. For were it not for afflictions and the enduring of them, would we ever say, “Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly” (Rev 22:20)? Would we not be of Peter’s mind, “It is good for us to be here” (Mark 9:5)? Would we ever be weary of the world before we are burned out of it and pulled out of it, as Lot was out of Sodom? No.

They help our desire and earnestness. The creature groans (Rom 8:21-22). Those that have received the first fruits of the Spirit, they wait for the adoption of the sons of God (Rom 8:23). Those who have the beginnings of grace wait for its accomplishment. What produces this but the afflictions and troubles of the world? They desire a state in which all tears shall be wiped from their eyes.

So we see, in these and many other ways, though these are the principal, how afflictions, endured as they should be, help salvation, how they work our salvation. Though they do not work the title to it, yet they help us on the way. First, because they assure us that we are the sons of God, and so give evidence that we are in a good state. And then they remove the hindrances and purge us of our sins. And then they help us in all graces, they cherish all graces, and they sharpen and whet the edge of our desires to be out of this world.

And all this must be in every Christian before he comes to heaven. For God never brings a man of years to heaven without giving him cause to see why he would want to be out of this world, either by long sickness or affliction, or by one thing or another. He makes them see that it is better to be there than here; and if it were not for crosses, who would be of that mind?

Therefore, do we not have cause to suspect ourselves, when we are on smooth ways and find no crosses? God gives respite to his children. They have breathing times. They are not always under crosses. He is merciful. Perhaps they do not have strength enough. He will not bring them into the lists, onto the stage, because they are not able; they do not have strength enough. But those who have a continual course of prosperity may well suspect themselves.

If someone has directions to a certain place, and they tell him there are such and such ways, deep waters in which he will be drowned unless he takes care, and holes to step into, and that the ways are craggy; and if he meets with none of these, he may well think he is not on his way. So the way to heaven is through afflictions. We must endure many afflictions, says the apostle here: salvation is wrought by enduring the same afflictions that you see in us. Now, if I suffer and endure nothing, if I cannot endure so much as a flick of the finger, a disgrace, a frown, a scorn for Christ, if the way is too smooth, it is certainly not the way to heaven.

The way is not strewn with roses. We must have our feet “shod with the preparation of the gospel” (Eph 6:15). They must be well shod who go among thorns, and they need to be well fenced who go the way to heaven. It is a thorny, rugged way. But it does not matter what the way is, so long as it brings us to heaven. But certainly, if the way is too smooth, we ought to suspect ourselves.

Now, because it may be objected, many will say, Alas! What do we suffer? And therefore our case is not good.

I answer, every Christian suffers in one of these ways at one time or another, indeed at all times, whether by sympathy with the church or otherwise.

1. Suppose we have no afflictions of our own: do we not sympathize with the church beyond the seas? When you hear bad news, if you are glad to hear it, your case is certainly bad. There is a suffering by sympathy, and that suffering is ours.

2. Then again, there are afflictions and sufferings that arise from scandals that men run into before our eyes, which is a great grief. “Mine eyes gush out with rivers of waters, because men keep not thy law,” says David (Ps 119:136). Is it not a matter of suffering to a Christian soul to see what he would not see, and to hear blasphemies and oaths he would not hear? To have the understanding forced to understand what it would not, living in a world of iniquity, in the kingdom of the devil? It is a great grievance. “Woe is me that I am forced to dwell in Meshech, and to have my habitation with the tents of Kedar” (Ps 120:5). It is a pitiful affliction to the saints of God, to anyone who has the life of grace in his heart, to have the wicked as “goads and thorns,” as the Scripture says the Jebusites should be to the Israelites (Num 33:55); to have thoughts forced on us, and things forced on our souls, that we would not see nor think nor hear of, things that shall never be in heaven.

3. Again, everyone suffers the burden of his calling, which is a great suffering. A man need not whip himself, as the Scottish papists do, if he is only faithful in his calling. It is a notable means of mortification. God often keeps a man from persecution because he has burdens in his calling to exercise him. He has many crosses in his calling. God has joined sweat to labor, and trouble, and pains; and there is no man faithful in his calling as he should be who will not find many crosses.

4. And then there is what afflicts most of all, the affliction of all afflictions: the inward combat between the flesh and the spirit, which God usually calls off in persecution and outward troubles. God’s dear children in persecution find little molestation from their corruptions, because God will not lay more on them than he will give them strength to bear. And now, when he singles them out for outward crosses, he subdues their corruptions, so that they do not vex them as before.

In the time of peace he lets their corruptions loose, sometimes anger, sometimes pride, sometimes one base affection, sometimes another. And do you think this is no grief to them? Oh, yes; it grieves them, and humbles them more than any cross would do. St. Paul was grieved more at this than at all his sufferings. It made him cry out, “Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:24). He does not say, Oh, wretched man, who shall deliver me from crosses and afflictions? Though they made him wretched in the eye of the world, yet he rejoiced in those. But his grief was that he could not do the good he would, and that made him cry out, “O wretched man that I am …”

It is God who ties up our corruptions, so that they do not run so violently on the soul at one time as they do at another, for he has the command of them by his Spirit. There is no Christian who does not suffer in one of these ways in the greatest time of peace. God exercises them especially in this way, that he makes them weary of their lives by this spiritual conflict. If they know what the life of grace means, he makes them know what it is to be absent from heaven. He makes them know that this life is a place of absence; and all this is to help our disposition to salvation, by helping mortification and by helping our desire for heaven.

Those who go on in a smooth course, who do not know what this inward combat means, and are carried away with their sins, are so far from taking scandals to heart that if they see evil men they are ready to join with them, to join with blasphemers and wicked persons. And instead of sympathizing with the church of God, they are ready to join with those who censure it, and so add affliction to the afflicted.

But to proceed.

“Whether we be comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation.” Of “comfort” I spoke in the former verse. The only note I will briefly commend to you is this:

Doctrine. God’s children, come what may, do good.

Cast them into what condition you will, they do good. They are good, and do good. If they are afflicted, they do good by that; if they have comfort, they do good to others by that. No condition is amiss to God’s children, and that is the reason for their perfect resignation. The child of God perfectly resigns himself into God’s hand. Lord, if you will have me suffer, I will suffer; if you will have me afflicted, I yield myself; if you will have me enjoy prosperity, I will. I know it shall be for my good, and for the good of others.

There is an interchange in the life of a Christian. He is now afflicted and now comforted, not for his own sake only, but for the good of others; and when he shall be afflicted, and how long, and what comfort he shall have, and how much, he leaves to the wisdom of God. It is a blessed state, if we could think of it, to be a Christian, that we need care for nothing but to serve God. We need care for nothing, but study to keep a good conscience. Leave all our condition to God; for God will enable us to lack and to abound in our own persons, and he will likewise sanctify our condition for the good of others.

And a Christian will be willing to be tossed, and to be “changed from vessel to vessel” (Jer 48:11), from state to state, for the good of others. If his afflictions may do good to the church, he is content that God should withdraw his blessings from him and humble him with crosses. If his example may be good to others, he is likewise joyful. When God gives him rest, and causes an inward comfort, he knows that this is good for others. He has learned self-denial at his first entrance into Christianity, not to live to himself, but for the glory of God and the good of others, as much as he may.

Use. We should labor therefore to content ourselves in all conditions, knowing that all is for the best, not only for ourselves and God’s glory, but for the good of others. When God takes things from us and afflicts us, and when he comforts us, he intends the comfort of others. So we should reason when we endure anything and when we are comforted: Certainly God intends the good of others by this; therefore I will take special care in suffering to carry it decently and as an example, knowing that the eyes of many are on me. I will carry myself so that God may have glory, and others may have edification and comfort, knowing that I am only God’s steward, to convey this to others who are of the same body with myself.

Therefore in our communion with others, on any good occasion, we ought to express the blessed experience of the comfort of God on us. This is the practice of holy men in their meeting with others, to show them the comforts of God to their souls. “Come, and I will show you what God hath done for my soul,” says the psalmist (Ps 66:16).

All are the better for a good man. He does good to all; and therefore Solomon says, “When a righteous man is advanced, the city rejoiceth” (Prov 11:10). They have cause, for he has a public mind. Nothing more characterizes a true Christian, and nothing is a better stamp of one, than a public mind.

A carnal man, out of self-love, may grieve at his own sins and may labor to comfort himself; but a Christian thinks, Others shall receive good from me. It is the mind of Christ, and it is the mind of all the members of Christ, when a man thinks he has nothing unless he has it to use for the good of others.

A dead, sullen, reserved spirit is not a Christian’s spirit. If we have such a spirit by nature, we must labor to help it with grace; for grace is a thing that spreads and communicates itself, not only in the ministers of God, but in every Christian. Grace will teach them to make their conduct savory to others in this way, that whatever they are, or whatever they can do, or whatever they suffer, they study to turn all to the good of others.

And notice the extent of the loving wisdom and providence of God, how many things he does at once. For often in the same affliction he corrects something in his children, in the same affliction he tries some grace, in the same affliction he witnesses to his truth in them, in the same affliction he does good to others besides the good he does to them. In the same affliction that others inflict, he hastens the ruin of those who inflict it. At one time, and in one action, he hastens the destruction of the one by hastening the good of the other; he ripens grace in his children, making them examples to others, and all in the same action, so large is the wise providence of God.

It should teach us likewise to follow that providence, and to see how many ways anything we suffer, of whatever kind, may extend, so that if one way will not comfort, another may. When we suffer and are grieved, let us consider also that he who does the wrong hastens his own ruin and judgment. As Pharaoh, when he hastened the overthrow of the children of Israel, hastened his own overthrow in the Red Sea. So a pit is dug for the wicked when they dig a pit for the godly (Ps 7:15).

And consider, to comfort yourself, that you have some sin in you, and God intends not only to witness to this truth, but to correct some sin in you, and you must look to that. You have some grace in you, and he intends the trial of that. Look to these things. This shows strong heavenly-mindedness, when there is self-denial. Let us consider what God calls us to, for God looks to many things in the same act. Why does God give us reason and powers of thought, except to be able to follow him in his dealing, as far as we can reach?

But I go on to the next verse.

And our hope of you is steadfast, knowing that as you are partakers of the sufferings, so you shall be also of the consolation (2 Cor 1:7).

This verse is nothing but a strengthening of what St. Paul said before. He had told them that whatever he suffered was for their comfort too; and now he repeats it again and sets a seal on it: “Our hope of you is steadfast, knowing that as you are partakers of the sufferings, so you shall also be of the consolation.” In these words he shows that they shall share with him in the good as well as in the ill, and that the Spirit of God in them would help them to take all the good they could, both by his sufferings and by his comfort. For as he, by the help of the Spirit of God, intended the public good, and intended their good and comfort in everything, whether he was afflicted or comforted, so he says here that he was assured that as they were partakers of his sufferings, so they would likewise be partakers of his comforts.

Here is the truth, and the seal of the truth.

The truth is that they were “partakers of his sufferings,” and should be “partakers of his consolations.”

And the seal is in the manner of affirming these truths: “Our hope of you is steadfast.” And in this order I will speak of them. First:

Doctrine. God’s children are partakers of the sufferings of others.

The Corinthians were partakers of the sufferings of St. Paul. God’s children are partakers of the sufferings of others in many ways.

1. By way of sympathy, taking to heart the state of the church and children of God abroad. It grieved the Corinthians to hear that St. Paul was afflicted; for even as it is in the natural body, so likewise in the mystical body, there is a sympathy between the members.

2. Likewise they partake of the sufferings of others by way of proportion. They suffered in their kind and proportion as he suffered, though perhaps not in the very same individual kind. There is a portion of suffering in the church. Some suffer one way and others another, but all partake of sufferings in some degree or other.

3. Then again, they partook of St. Paul’s sufferings in preparation and disposition of mind. Although they did not now suffer as much as he did, yet, he says, I know that as far as the Spirit of God is in you, you are prepared to suffer; and what we are prepared to do, that we do. Christ says we sell all for the gospel, when upon serious examination of our hearts we find we can part with it. We set ourselves to examination: What can I not part with for Christ? Can I part with my goods? Can I part with my life? If we can once come to a resolution, it is done, just as Abraham is said to sacrifice his son, because he resolved to do it (Heb 11:17), and David is said to build the temple, because he intended to do it (1 Kgs 8:18). God looks on us in our resolutions and preparations. What we resolve to do, that is done. So, he says, you are partakers of my sufferings, not only by sympathy and in proportion of sufferings, but you are prepared (he speaks charitably and lovingly) to suffer whatever I suffer, if God calls you to it.

Reason. And the ground of Christians’ partaking of one another’s sufferings is the communion that is between Christians. They are all members of one body. If the hand suffers, the head suffers. The head thinks itself wronged when the hand or the foot is wronged, because of the sympathy between the members, as I said; and so it is in the mystical body of Christ.

There are these three unions, which depend on one another.

1. The union of Christ with our nature, which is inseparable. It is an eternal union. He never lays aside that blessed mass of our flesh which he took, and this is the ground of all our comfort; for God is now at one with us, because God has taken our nature on himself, and satisfied the wrath of God his Father.

2. Next to the union of Christ with our nature is the union of Christ mystical, that is, Christ and his members. When they suffer, Christ suffers. Their sufferings are the sufferings of Christ.

3. The third is the union of one member with another, so that what one member suffers, another suffers. Therefore the Corinthians were partakers of Christ, because their sufferings were the sufferings of Christ; and they were partakers of St. Paul’s sufferings, because his sufferings were their sufferings.

They were partakers of Christ’s sufferings because of the communion between the head and the members, and they were partakers of St. Paul’s sufferings because of the communion of one member with another. And surely there is not a heart ever touched with the Spirit of God that does not feel it when it hears of any calamity of the church, whether in the Palatinate, in France, in the Low Countries, or in any country in the world. If he hears that the church has taken a blow, it strikes to the heart of any man who has the Spirit of God in him, by a sympathetic suffering.

It is one good sign for knowing whether a man belongs to the mystical body or not, that he takes to heart the grievance of the church. Good Nehemiah did so. He would not take comfort in the pleasures of a court, in the king of Babylon’s court, when it was not going well with his country. When the church was in distress, he took their grievance to heart. So with Moses: the very joys of Pharaoh’s court could not please him when he considered the abasement of his countrymen, and he joined with them; and it is called the “rebuke” of Christ.

So it is with all the people of God. There is a communication of sufferings. “As you are partakers of the sufferings, so you shall be also of the consolation.”

In this two things are to be observed. First, that a necessary precondition of comfort is sufferings. And then the consequence of this, that those who suffer as they should are sure of comfort. These two things unfold the meaning of the Spirit of God here.

Before there is comfort, there must be suffering, for God has established this order. Even as in nature there must be a night before the day and a winter before a summer, so in the kingdom of Christ, in his ruling of the church, there is this divine policy: there must be suffering before comfort. God will sooner break the league and the covenant between day and night than this league of suffering and comfort. The one must come before the other. It was so in our head, Christ. He suffered, and then entered into his glory. So all his members must be conformed to him in suffering, and then enter into their glory.

The reasons for this are various.

Reason 1. First of all, this method and order is first suffering and then comfort because God finds us in a corrupt state, and something must be worked out of us before we can be vessels to receive comfort. Therefore there must be a purging one way or another, either by repentance, or if not by repentance, by affliction, to help repentance. There must be suffering before comfort. The soul is unfit for comfort.

Reason 2. This order commends and sweetens comfort to us. For fire is sweet after cold, and food is sweet after hunger; so comfort is sweet after suffering. God fits us for comfort by this, by purging out what is contrary to comfort. And he endears comfort by this. To those who have felt the cross, comfort is comfort indeed. Heaven is heaven indeed to the one who has had a hell in his conscience on earth, who has been afflicted in conscience, or outwardly persecuted. It sets a price and value on comfort.

Partly, likewise, it is to sharpen our desire for comfort. For suffering breeds feeling, and feeling stirs up desire, and desire is eager. Now suffering makes comforts precious, and sets us in a wonderfully strong desire after them.

And by this means, likewise, God comes to his own end, which is that our comforts may be eternal. Therefore we have what is ill in the first place. Woe to us if it should be said to us, as to Dives in the gospel, “Son, son, thou hadst thy good here, and now thou must have thy ill” (Luke 16:25). God does not intend to deal so with his children; rather, they taste the worst wine first, and better afterward. Because he intends eternal happiness for them, he observes this method: first ill and then good, the best at last.

Use 1. If this is so, then why should we be offended at God’s order? Why should we not take the afflictions that God sends to prepare and fit us for happiness, to sharpen our desire for happiness, to make it precious to us, not only gently and meekly, but joyfully? Certainly it is a ground, not only of patience and meekness, but of joy and comfort, in all the things we suffer. Will a patient be angry with his surgeon for searching his wound? He knows that this is the way to cure him. Will any man take offense at the goldsmith for purging his mass of metal? They know that this is the way to purify it and fetch out the dross.

This is the method in nature. The ground must be plowed and prepared, and then comes the harvest. Let us be content with this method, and rejoice in any suffering, knowing it will have a blessed outcome. And let us not begrudge suffering anything for a good cause in ourselves, or by way of sympathy or support with others, because this is the highway to a better state. If we suffer with the church, or for the church, in any kind of way, we shall be comforted with the church. This is what sweetens the cross, that we are under hope of better still. Who would not endure a little grievance on the way, to have honor in the end? Who would not endure bad treatment in an inn, to go on to a kingdom? All our discomforts and afflictions are only by the way here; and crosses are necessary for travelers, and here we are only in a traveling state. It should, I say, encourage us not to take offense at anything that God exercises us with in this world, nor to be scandalized at the afflictions of the church.

Use 2. And then it should strike terror into those who will not endure so much as a scratch, a scoff, a word, a chip of the cross, who will endure nothing. Do they know that this is God’s order? Do they avoid crosses in any degree, and do they think to have comfort? No! God will not change his order for them. He has established this order, and heaven and earth shall fail rather than God’s order shall not be sure. If we will have comfort, we must suffer. If we will avoid suffering, and think to go to heaven another way than God has ordained, we may take our own way, but we must give him leave to take his way in comforting and advancing whom he will, and that will not be us, because we will not frame ourselves to his order. We must not look for his dignity. If we will not suffer with him, we shall not reign with him (2 Tim 2:12).

The next thing to be observed in the order is this:

Doctrine. Those who suffer as they should are sure of comfort.

There is a threefold conformity with Christ: in suffering, grace, and glory.

Those who are not conformed to him in suffering cannot be conformed to him in grace; and if they are not in grace, they shall not be in glory. He took on himself our nature, abased first; and our nature purified, and our nature glorious, he now has in heaven. So our nature in us must keep this order. First it must be abased, as our flesh was in him, and then filled with grace, little by little, and then made glorious, as our nature is in him. If we will not allow our flesh to be abased and exercised with afflictions, and let God work his own good work as he pleases in this way, we are not conformed to Christ, who was first abased and then advanced. What was worked in his blessed flesh must be worked in his mystical body, in all his members, little by little. Therefore those who are so tender and wayward that they will not endure anything when God calls them to it are enemies to their own comfort. God has set down this order: if they do not partake of the sufferings of the church, they shall not partake of the comfort.

Oh, it is a cursed state to be outside the condition of God’s people, and it is a comforting thing to have a part with those who are good, yes, even if it is in suffering with them. It is better to have communion with God’s people in suffering than to have communion with the wicked in the world, in reigning and triumphing.

And that is the reason the Spirit of God in the prophet made him desire, “Deal with me, Lord, as thou usest to deal with those that fear thy name” (Ps 119:132). He knew God deals well enough with them. “Visit me with the salvation of thy children” (Ps 106:4). He knew that was a special salvation. So to have God deal with us as he deals with his own, and to visit us in mercy and love as he visits his own, is a special favor. It is better to bear the cross with them, so that we may partake with them in the comfort, than to have all the comforts the wicked have and to share with them in the misery afterward. Therefore let us be content to share with God’s people in their suffering. When we hear of any who suffer for a just cause, though we have no sufferings of our own, let us bear a part with them, and with the bond of the communion of saints, help as far as we can.

And it is just as true on the contrary: if we partake with the wicked in their sins, we shall partake with them in their punishment. Therefore the Scripture says, “Come out of Babylon, my people, lest if you partake of her sins, so you partake of her punishments” (Rev 18:4). Now, atheistic people think it nothing to enter into league, friendship, and society with profane people who are openly so, not only through weakness, but people who are branded as such. But what does the Scripture say? And the Holy Spirit does not trifle with us. “Come out of Babylon, my people, lest you partake of her plagues.” This is not meant so much locally, of coming out of the place, as of coming out in disposition, in respect of liking, and association, and secret intimate communion.

Lot’s sons-in-law thought it was only trifling. They scoffed as atheists do now, when they hear the ministers encourage people to make much of religion and to set themselves against those who oppose it. They think the ministers are forced into it, and that it rests on a mistake, and so on, though it is as plain as the light of the sun. They deal as Lot’s sons-in-law did when he warned them to come out of Sodom, and he was pulled out. They would believe nothing until fire came down from heaven and destroyed them all. It was too late then. Therefore let us listen to the counsel of the angel. Let us not make this a matter of scorn, a light matter; but as we desire to have no part in their confusion, so let us avoid their courses. The Scripture is terrible toward those who, after the breaking out of the light, will still be such. There are no Scriptures more direct against any kind of men than those against people who willfully cling to antichrist. Therefore we should not esteem it a light matter, but think of it seriously indeed.

And this holds not only in respect of them, but of all wicked society. Would it not be a pity for people to be severed hereafter from those whose company they will not be severed from now? If you see an adulterer, a blasphemer, a wicked, licentious, atheistic person, and you run into the same excess of riot with him, and will not be drawn by any persuasions, whether of minister or friend, or by your own light, which knows his course to be wicked, to withdraw from his society, do you not think you will share with him afterward in his judgment? As you are all tares, so you shall be bound in a bundle and cast into hell together (Matt 13:30). As the wheat shall be gathered into heaven, so shall the tares be gathered, a cursed company that will cling together though they are damned for it. As they clung together like burs and tares here, so they shall be cast into hell together. That is the end of dissolute, unruly creatures, whom nothing will sever from those whose courses they know in their own consciences to be wicked.

“Our hope of you is steadfast.” There is a double certainty: a certainty of the truth of the thing, and a certainty of the state of the person. The certainty of the truth is this: those who suffer with Christ and his church shall be glorified with Christ and his church. The certainty of the truth is more certain than heaven and earth. Now, besides the certainty of the truth, or thing, there is interposed a certainty of the persons, that as they had a share in the sufferings, so they should in the comforts. And this is true as well as the former. For God’s promises are not mere ideas lacking truth, with no performance in the persons; but if the thing is true, it is true in the person to whom the truth belongs. Suffering goes before glory. Therefore if we suffer we shall be glorified. But this is the condition: if they suffer with Christ. Then St. Paul takes it for certain that they shall be glorified with Christ.

There is not the same certainty of the persons as of the truth itself. The truth is certain by a certainty of faith, but the certainty of the persons is the certainty of a charitable persuasion. I am persuaded that you will suffer with me in sympathy, and therefore I am persuaded, in the certainty of charity, that you shall certainly have the comfort.

“Our hope of you is steadfast.” St. Paul, you see, has a good opinion of them, so that he might encourage them to sympathize with and take to heart his crosses, and to take good from them. A good hope of others has a double efficacy.

1. It has one efficacy in the person who has the good hope of another. It stirs him up to be diligent to take every course that may be for the good of the other. As the saying is, hope stirs up to work; it stirs up endeavor. So it does in the farmer, and in every kind of trade. Hope quickens endeavor. A man will never sow on the sands; he loses his cost. A man will never bestow his pains on those he thinks are hopeless. And what is it that dulls and deadens endeavor? It is this thought: I despair of ever doing such a man good. When those despairing thoughts enter the soul, there is a stop of all endeavor. And surely Christians are much to blame in this way. When they might have ground, if charity were in them, at least for hope of others, they cast off hope on the strength of some hard, despairing opinions, and so neglect all endeavors of doing good to others.

The Spirit of God is wise in the hearts of his children to observe every advantage for doing good. Therefore it is willing to welcome every offer of good in others. If they are only willing to hear reproof, if they are willing to hear comfort and to hear good discourse, it will put a good construction on their errors, if it can, except with those who are maliciously obstinate. It will attribute them to passion, or to bad company, to one thing or another. As far as possible it will admit a good construction. Love in God’s children will admit it; and love stirs up hope, and hope stirs up to deal with them for their good.

I know that charity is not foolish, but still it is willing to think the best. Where there is a probability of good for the present, or where there is a teachableness, where there is a willingness to enter into communion, where there is any inclination, we must be of our blessed Savior’s disposition, “who will not quench the smoking flax, nor break the bruised reed” (Matt 12:20). We must draw all, and drive none away. This is one special fruit and effect that hope has in the person who hopes toward another.

2. Now, as it is good for the speaker to think well of his hearers, so it is a good preparation in the hearer. It has a winning power in the person hoped of. It is a great attraction, for we willingly hear those who think well of us. St. Paul here works on the natural disposition in all, which is that they love to be well thought of; and natural dispositions are strong. It is the natural disposition of every man to love where he is well thought of; and it is not sinful, unless it is in vainglory, to desire to have a good place in the esteem of others. And there a man will labor to carry himself in a way that answers to the good opinion held of him.

There is a conflict in the worst man. Where he is well thought of, he labors to maintain it, except for those who are mightily enthralled, as some wretches are, to blasphemy and to a cursed life, so that they do not care. But otherwise, if they are well thought of, it will stir them up to maintain it. He is a dissolute man, he is not a man, so far as he is careless of this; he is brutish and senseless. St. Paul, in saying “our hope is steadfast concerning you,” wins his way into their good opinion, and by that means he hoped to prevail with them in greater matters. So hope stirs men up to do good, and it makes the other willing to receive good. For it makes them willing to satisfy those who hope well of them.

St. Paul was led by this heavenly wisdom. What made him so industrious was the hope of prevailing, and what made him prevail with others was the good opinion he had of them. He would gain ground with everyone. When he saw Agrippa come on a little, he said, “Agrippa, believest thou the Scriptures?” (Acts 26:27). I know you believe. “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian,” Agrippa says (Acts 26:28), and so he comes in a little. It is good, as much as possible, to have hope of others.

But what is his degree of hope? “Our hope of you” is steadfast. He had a steadfast hope that if they were sufferers, they would be partakers of the comfort.

The observation may be this:

Doctrine. Divine truths are such that we may build a steadfast hope on their performance.

Divine truths, divine comforts, are of such a nature that though we do not yet enjoy them, we may still build on them with certainty. I hope steadfastly that if you are partakers of the sufferings, you shall be partakers of the comforts. A man cannot say so of anything else but divine truths. A man cannot say of anyone else, or of himself, I hope steadfastly to be rich, I hope steadfastly to be great, or I hope steadfastly to live long. The nature of the thing is uncertain. The state of the world is vanity; and life itself, and all things here, will not admit of a certain apprehension. For the certainty in a man’s understanding follows the certainty of the thing, or else there is no proportion between them. When the apprehension is even with the thing, then it is true; but if we apprehend of anything here, that either riches or life or favor will be thus, or last thus long, it is no true apprehension. We cannot build a certain hope on an uncertain ground.

But of divine truths we can say that if we see the one, the other will undoubtedly follow. If we see the signs of grace in any man, that he is strong to endure any disgrace for religion, any discomfort, then we may say with certainty: As you partake of the afflictions of Christ, and of the afflictions and sufferings of his people, his body mystical, so you shall undoubtedly be partakers of the comfort of God’s people. Heaven and earth shall fail, but this shall never fail.

Is this not a comfort to a Christian, that when he is in the state of grace, he has something he may build on when all things else fail? In all the changes and alterations of this life, he has something unalterable: the certainty of divine comforts, the certainty of his state in grace, though he is in an afflicted state. As surely as he is afflicted, so surely he shall be comforted. “If we suffer with Christ, we shall be glorified with him” (Rom 8:17).

On what ground is this certainty built, that if we suffer we shall be glorified?

It is built on our union with Christ. It is built on the communion we have with the church of God. We are all of one body. And it is built on St. Paul’s own experience. As surely as I have been afflicted and have comfort, so you who suffer shall be comforted. What I feel, you shall feel.

For in necessary things the same reason holds from one to all. If one is justified by faith, all are justified by faith; if one suffers and receives comfort, all who suffer shall receive comfort. Divine comforts pass from one to all, from the head to the body, from the body to every member. If Christ suffered, I shall suffer, if I am of his body; if Christ was comforted, I shall be comforted. Divine truths agree in the head and the members. If it is true in one, it is true in all. St. Paul felt it in his own person; and, he says, as I have felt afflictions increase and comforts increase, so it shall be with you. You shall be partakers of the comforts, now or hereafter.

And it is built likewise on God’s promise, which is surer than heaven and earth. “If we suffer with him, we shall be glorified with him,” as the apostle says (Rom 8:17). All these are grounds on which to found this steadfast hope. And then there is the nature of God. He is a just God, a holy God, and when we have taken the ill, we shall find the sweet, as in 2 Thessalonians 1:6: “It is just with God, to render to them that afflict you trouble, and to you comfort.” God has pawned his justice on it, and he will observe this order. Where he begins in trouble, he will end in comfort. It is just with God, and therefore I may be persuaded.

It should be a special comfort to all who are under any sanctified cross, whether it is for a good cause or not. If a man finds that he stands out for a good cause, then there is more matter for joy. It is a matter of triumph then. But if they are crosses common to nature, and a man finds them sanctified (as they are only to God’s children: they learn humility by them, they learn heavenly-mindedness, they learn patience, they learn more carefulness by their afflictions, if it is thus sanctified), then one may say to such a person, “As you partake of the sufferings, so you shall partake of the comfort,” though you do not feel it for the present.

Is it not a comfort for a patient to have his physician come to him, one he knows to be wise and to speak by his book, and say to him: Be of good comfort, you shall never die of this disease; what I give you will do you good; there was never anyone who took this potion but recovered? Would this not revive the patient? Now when the physicians of our souls come and tell a man, discerning his state to be good, discerning signs of grace in his abasement: Be of good comfort, good is intended for you, your sufferings shall undoubtedly end in comfort, we may well be persuaded of this. God will never vary his order.

Therefore, when we are in any trouble, and find God blessing it to us, to abate our pride, to sharpen our desire, to exercise our graces, when we find it sanctified, let it comfort us. It shall turn to our further comfort. We find a present good that is a pledge of a further good. It will make a bitter potion go down, when the physician says it will do you good. How many distasteful things do poor creatures endure and take down to cure this carcass! It would be offensive to name what distasteful things they will take to do them good.

Let us take this cup from God’s hand; let us endure the cross patiently, whatever it may be. It is a bitter cup, but it is out of a Father’s hand, it is out of a sweet hand. There may be a miscarrying in other medicine, but God’s medicine shall certainly do us good. God has said it: “All things shall work for the best to those that love him” (Rom 8:28). He has said it beforehand. We may presume on it, and build our persuasion on this outcome, that all things shall work for our good. What a comfort this is in all the dealings and changes of this life, when we know beforehand that whatever we meet with has a command from God to do us good! It is medicinal, however ill it may seem, to do us good, to work ill out of us, by the blessing of God. But to proceed.

For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life: But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead (2 Cor 1:8-9).

Here St. Paul comes to the particular explanation of what he had spoken of in general before. He had said in general before that he had both comfort and affliction; but now he specifies what afflictions they were. “I would not have you ignorant of the troubles which came to us in Asia …”

“I would not have you ignorant of …” He knew it was needful for them to know; therefore, to work his way further into their regard, he tells them of it. Indeed, to know both together is very sweet and comforting: to know both the afflictions of God’s people and their comforts, as here he tells them what evil he endured in Asia, and how God delivered him. To see how these are linked together in God’s people is very comforting. Therefore, “I would not have you ignorant.”

Now, so that they might not be ignorant, he sets before their eyes the particular grievance he suffered in Asia. And see how he rises by degrees, and represents it to them most vividly.

First of all, he says, “We were pressed out of measure.” There is one degree, “we were pressed.” It is a metaphor. “We were pressed,” as a cart is pressed under sheaves, as a man is pressed under a burden, as a ship that is overladen is pressed deep down with too much burden. So it was with us, he says; we were pressed with afflictions. Afflictions are of a depressing nature; they draw down the soul, as comfort raises it up.

“Out of measure.” There is the second degree; they were not only pressed, but pressed “out of measure.”

“Above strength.” Above my strength, above ordinary strength. And he rises higher still. The waters rise higher, “insomuch that we despaired of life.” We despaired of any escape out of trouble in the present encounter; no, we did not see how we should escape in the time to come.

Indeed, it was so great, in the first place, that we passed the sentence of death upon ourselves. It is an expression taken from condemned criminals. Once the sentence has been pronounced on them, we count them dead men; they regard themselves so, and so do others regard them, the sentence having been passed on them. In the same way, Paul says, I even passed the sentence on myself, seeing no evasion or escape out of the troubles I was in, the sentence of death passed upon me. “We had the sentence of death in ourselves.” It was not passed by God, nor by the world, for they had not decreed to kill him; but he passed it on himself when he saw no way to escape. He was deceived, though, as God’s children often are, for he did not die at that time.

And then afterward he sets down the end for which all this came, a sweet end, a double end: “That we should not trust in ourselves.” What should we trust in then? “But in God that raiseth the dead.”

Let us speak first of his grievance, and then of the reason why God followed him in this way.

“We would not have you ignorant.” By this he forestalls all offense. “I would not have you ignorant.” I am so far from being concerned, or afraid, or ashamed that you should know of the affliction I suffer, that “I would not have you ignorant of it.” For know this, that when you know my afflictions you shall know my deliverance also. St. Paul was wonderfully careful on this point, lest they should take any offense at his sufferings. Indeed, this is the condition of God’s children; their worst cross is sometimes the censures passed on them for the cross, the harsh censures of others in their troubles.

That was the last and the greatest of Job’s troubles, that and his wife together. When his house was overthrown, his children killed, his goods taken away, and he himself stricken with boils, then his indiscreet friends became “miserable comforters” (Job 16:2). Those who should have comforted him became censurers and judges of him, as if he had been a man deserted and forsaken by God, as if all had come from God as a punishment for his sins. This was his greatest cross, as it was his last: that his wife in his bosom, she who should have comforted him most, should solicit him to evil, and that his friends by their rash and vile censures should make his cross heavier.

So it is with God’s children in the world. They cannot endure hardship in the world, they cannot be treated otherwise than their cause deserves, without having also to undergo hard censures; and that grieves them more than the cross itself. It was the case of this blessed apostle. Therefore the Spirit of God in him moves him to mention his affliction with boldness and confidence, yes, with comfort and joy. “I would not have you ignorant.” I am not of the mind of carnal men, who would have it concealed; no, I would not have you ignorant; please understand it. He lays it open to their view, that they might be moved by it as he was; for the things that move us, we speak of at large. He shows that though the misery was past and over, yet he was still moved by it. “We were pressed out of measure above strength.”

Objection. This seems to cross another passage of Scripture, in 1 Corinthians 10:13, God is faithful, and will lay no more upon you than you shall be able to bear; and yet here he says, “we were afflicted above strength.” How can these hang together?

Answer. God will not allow his children to endure anything above strength, above what they are able to bear, especially in spiritual evils. But as for sickness and persecution and the like, he may sometimes lay more upon them than they have present strength to bear.

But suppose St. Paul is speaking here of inward grievance and outward afflictions too, as both usually accompany one another. St. Paul’s meaning here is undoubtedly, “We were pressed above strength,” that is, above ordinary natural strength, so that unless God had made a supply by a new supernatural strength, we could never have endured it. Therefore take it so, above ordinary natural strength; for extraordinary crosses must have extraordinary strength, and crosses with grievance of spirit must have more than natural strength to bear them.

Objection. Again, where it says, “Insomuch that we despaired of life,” as if he cared greatly for his life, this seems to cross another passage, “I desire to be dissolved, and to be with Christ” (Phil 1:23); and here he seems to be very anxious, in a strait, lest he should die.

Answer. We must take St. Paul in different considerations and respects. Considered as having finished his course and done his work, he says, “Henceforth is laid up for me the crown of righteousness” (2 Tim 4:8); so he thinks of nothing but life and glory; he does not care for his life. But take St. Paul in the midst of his course, and so he had a care for his charge. Take St. Paul as he looked to glory, and so he desired to be dissolved; take him as he was moved to edify the church, and so he labored by all means to live. And so he says he despaired of life, as desiring to live to do good to the church.

Objection. Again, it may be objected against the last point, “We received the sentence of death in ourselves.” St. Paul did not die at this time, and he had the Spirit of God in him, to know what he was saying. How then does this agree with his having the sentence of death passed?

Answer. St. Paul spoke according to the probability of second causes, according to the appearance of things. And so he might pronounce of himself without danger, as this was no sinful error: Indeed I am a dead man; I see no hope of escaping. If I look to the probability of second causes, all my enemies are about me, I am in the lion’s mouth, there is but a step between me and death. He does not look here to the decree of God, but to the disposing of present causes. So God’s children are often deceived in themselves in that respect. It is no great error; for what they say is true in regard to second causes, though it is not true in regard to God’s decree.

The objections being satisfied, we may observe some points of doctrine.

And we come to the first part of St. Paul’s trial, which some take to be the one in Acts 19, when at Ephesus Demetrius the smith raised up a trouble against him, when they cried out, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians.” But those are only conjectures. It may have been some great sickness; it may have been some other affliction. The Scripture is silent on the particular of what it was. To come then to the points themselves. In the first part, this is to be considered in the first place, that

God allows his children to fall into extreme perils and dangers.

And then secondly, that they feel it.

For the first,

God allows his children to fall into great extremities. This is clear here; we see how he rises by degrees. “We were pressed above measure, above strength, that we even despaired of life, we received the sentence of death in ourselves.” He rises by five steps, to show the extremity he was in. This is no new thing, that God should allow his children to be exercised in this way.

It is true in the head, it is true in the body, and it is true of every particular member of the body.

It is true of our head, Christ Jesus himself. We see to what exigencies he was brought, in what danger of his life he often was, as when they would have cast him down from the mount (Luke 4:29), and when, in apprehension of his Father’s wrath, he sweated water and blood in the garden (Luke 22:44); and on the cross he cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). None was ever so abased as he was. He “humbled himself to the death of the cross” (Phil 2:8), no, lower than the cross; he was in captivity in the grave three days. They thought they had had their will on him there; they thought they might have trampled on Christ. And no doubt the devil exulted over the grave, and thought he had him where he wanted him. But we see that afterward God raised him again gloriously.

Now, as the head was abased, even to extremity, so it is true of the whole body of the church from the beginning of the world. The church in Egypt was in extremity before Moses came; therefore a learned Hebrew scholar, Capne, who brought Hebrew into these western parts, used to say, “When the tally of brick was doubled, then comes Moses,” that is, in extremity. When there was no remedy, then God sent them deliverance.

In what a pitiful case were the poor church and people of God in Esther’s time. There was only a hair’s breadth between them and destruction. It was decreed by Haman, and they had gotten the king’s decree too. They were, as it were, between the hammer and the anvil, ready to be crushed to pieces immediately, had not God come between. And so in Babylon the church was in extremity, so much so that when deliverance was told them, “they were as men that dream” (Ps 126:1), as if there had been no such thing; they wondered at it. And so in the times of persecution, God has allowed his church to fall into extreme danger, as the church now is at this time in other parts. I might draw this truth along through all ages. It is true of the whole body of the church.

It is true likewise of the particular members. Take the principal members of it. You see Abraham: before God made good his promise, he was brought to a dry body, and Sarah to a dead womb, so that they despaired of all second causes. And David, though God promised him a kingdom, was yet so straitened that he thought many times he would die. “I said in my haste, All men are liars” (Ps 116:11). They tell me this and that, he means, but there is nothing to it. He was hunted as a partridge in the wilderness (1 Sam 26:20).

It was true of St. Paul. We see what extremity he was brought to, as the psalmist says, I was afflicted sore, but I was not delivered to death (Ps 118:18), even as we say, only not killed. It is and has been so with all the members of the church from Abel to this day. Sometime or other, if they live any long time, they shall be like Moses at the Red Sea. We see in what a strait he and his company were there. There were the Egyptians behind them, the mountains on each side of them, the Red Sea before them. What escape was there for Moses?

So it is often with the poor church and children of God. There are dangers behind them, and perils before them, and troubles on all sides. God brings them as low as death’s door, sometimes by sickness, as there is an instance in Psalm 107:18, of those that go down to the sea in ships (Ps 107:23). He brings them to death’s door, says the psalmist.

What is the reason that, by persecution and afflictions, by one grievance or another, God brings his children to such a low ebb?

The reasons are many.

Reason 1. The first may be that he will in this way test what mettle they are made of. Light afflictions, light crosses, will not test them thoroughly; great ones will. Jonah, who slept in the ship, falls to praying in the whale’s belly. He who was petulant out of trouble, and who falls to quarreling with God himself in trouble, falls to praying when he was in the bottom of hell, as he says himself. Little afflictions may coexist with murmuring and complaining, but great ones test indeed what we are. What we are in great afflictions, we are indeed.

Reason 2. Again, to test the sincerity of our state, to make us know ourselves, to make us known to the world and known to ourselves, what good we have and what evil we have. A man does not know how much looseness he has in his heart, and how much falseness, until we come to the cross and to extremity. Before, I thought I had a great deal of patience, a great deal of faith, and a great deal of heavenly-mindedness; now I see I do not have that store laid up as I thought I had. And sometimes a man is deceived on the contrary side. I thought I had no goodness in me; and yet in extremity such a one goes to prayer, he goes to the word of God, to the communion of saints, he delights in good things, and only in those. Extremity makes him discern and know himself for evil and for good, and makes others know him too. That is another end.

Reason 3. Again, God allows us to fall into extremity to set an edge upon our desires and our prayers, to make us cry to him. “Out of the deep I have cried unto thee, O Lord” (Ps 130:1). When a man is in the deep, an ordinary prayer will not serve; he must cry. God loves to hear his children speak to him. He loves the voice of his children. It is the best music he delights in. Therefore he will take such a course that he will be sure to hear from them. And rather than have them neglect prayer, he will allow them to fall into some rousing sin, into such a state and condition that they may dart up prayers, that they may force prayers out of the anguish of spirit, that their prayers may be violent, prayers that will take no denial, that they may be strivings with God, that they may wrestle with God, as we see in Jacob and the woman of Canaan, that they may be importunate, and never leave him, nor take any denial.

Reason 4. Again, God allows his children to fall into this extreme peril and danger, not only to test them, to see what good they have in them, but when he has tested it to exercise it, to exercise their faith and their patience. St. Paul had a great deal of grace in him, and God would be sure to have a great deal of trial and exercise of it; and therefore he allowed him to fall into extreme dangers, so that all the patience and all the faith he had might be set to work. And so it was with Job. God had furnished his champion with a great measure of patience, and then he singles him out for the combat; he brings him into the lists to encounter Satan, and to triumph over Satan and all the evils he suffered whatsoever.

Reason 5. Again, it is to perfect the work of mortification, to let patience have her perfect work, and faith and prayer have their perfect work, to perfect all graces, and so to perfect the work of mortification. For in extreme dangers he weans us perfectly from the world, as much as may be; nothing will do it if these will not. St. Paul came to many cities, and there he often expected to have a great reception; and instead of that, he was whipped and mistreated. God ordered the matter this way to mortify pride and self-confidence in St. Paul. He so scoured him from pride that he should not go out of the city without first being well scoured by mistreatment.

So, rather than allow his children to go to hell, and rather than allow them to live here in the world without glory to their profession, without manifesting grace, to mortify and subdue their base, earthly affections, he will scour them, to subdue their pride and to subdue their earthly-mindedness. We might forestall the bitterness of the cross if we would. We might forestall his mortifying us by afflictions, by the mortification of the spirit; but because we are negligent in that work, to perfect the work of mortification he is forced to lay many crosses and extreme dangers upon us here.

Reason 6. Lastly, God does this for another end, that he might be sure by this means to prepare us for greater blessings. For in whatever deep measure we are humbled by any deep affliction, in that measure we are prepared for some blessing. Humility empties the soul, and crosses breed humility. The emptiness of the soul fits it to receive. God therefore empties us by crosses, that we may be fit vessels to receive some larger measure of grace and comfort. For, as was said before, as our tribulations increase, so our comforts increase. Therefore it is a good sign that God intends much spiritual good to any man when he lays some heavy load upon him in this world. All is to prepare for some greater comfort and some greater measure of grace.

Why does the farmer fall upon his ground, and tear and rend it up with the plow, and the better the ground is, the more he labors to kill weeds? Is it because he has an ill will toward the ground? No. He means to sow good seed there, and he will not plow a whit longer than may serve to prepare the ground. It is the Holy Ghost’s comparison (Isa 28:24). So likewise the goldsmith: the best metal he has, he tempers, he labors to consume the dross of it, and the longer it is in the fire, the purer it comes forth.

So God keeps his children under crosses, and plows them. They neglect to plow themselves, and he is obliged to set plowmen who will do it indeed, some ill-minded men or some cross. If they would plow themselves and examine themselves, they might spare God the labor. But when they are negligent, God takes the labor into his own hand, and sets others to work who will do it thoroughly. But all is to prepare them for heavenly seed, for grace and comfort, so that in whatever measure we have been depressed, as he says here, “we were pressed above measure,” in that measure he means to lift us up by heavenly comfort.

And, as a part of that, that we might set a price upon the comforts when they come. For when he has so prepared us for it, and then we receive it, then comfort is comfort indeed. Comfort in itself is all one, and glory in itself is all one, first and last; but it is not all one to the person. Comfort is endeared to a person who has been kept low and kept on a strict diet beforehand. Then when it comes he sets a great value upon it, when he has been without it so long.

Our nature is such that we value things by the lack of them rather than by the present enjoyment of them. After we have lacked a thing, and have been a long time prepared for it, then when it comes it is welcome indeed. For these and many similar ends we must be willing to approve of God’s holy and wise dispensation in this, in ordering matters so with his children, in bringing them to great dangers of body, into danger of life, and sometimes to spiritual desertions, leaving them to themselves as if he had no care of them. But St. Paul speaks here especially of outward crosses. You see the reasons for it.

Use 1. The use of it is, first, that we should not pass a harsh, unadvised, rigid censure upon ourselves or others for these reasons, for any great affliction or abasement in this world. The world is ready to pass its verdict on a man at once. “Oh, such a one! You see what kind of man he was; you see how God follows him with crosses.” So uncharitable men judge wrongly of “the generation of the righteous” (Ps 14:5). They should set up the court in their own hearts, and begin to censure there, and examine themselves; instead they go out and hold their court out of doors. But I say, do not pass a harsh censure on others or on yourself, no, not for extreme dangers. For God is now making way for great comfort. Let God go on his way, without your censuring him.

Use 2. Again, this should teach us that we should not build too much confidence on earthly things, on the things of this world, neither on health of body, nor on friends, nor on continuance of life. Alas! it is God’s ordinary course to strip us of everything in this world. We set our thoughts on great reputation; but God says, I will take that from you; you shall learn to trust in me. You think you have strong and vigorous bodies, and that you shall live long, and therefore you will venture upon such and such courses. Yes, but God allows his children to come to such extreme dangers and hazards that they think the sentence of death is passed upon them.

And since this is God’s course with the body, and with the members, and with our head Christ himself, shall we think to have immunity, and to escape, and not look to God’s order?

The church is in great misery, and we are negligent in prayer. We think there are many good people, and there are strong munitions, and so on, as if, when God’s people grow complacent and forget him and his blessings, it were not his course to strip them of everything, to allow them to fall into extreme dangers. Do we not have the church before our eyes to teach us? Let us trust, therefore, in nothing in this world.

So much for that point.

The second thing in the first part is this:

Doctrine. As God’s children are brought to this condition, so they feel it.

They are flesh and not steel, they have not the strength of steel, as Job says (Job 6:12). They are men; they are not stones. They are Christians; they are not Stoics. Therefore St. Paul, as he was in extremity, so he felt his extremity; and with all his heart he would have escaped if he could. He looked around for every way of escaping death. God’s children feel their crosses, and they especially feel death, as he says here of himself, “We despaired even of life itself.” The word is very expressive in the original. We were in such a strait that we did not know how to escape with our lives, so that “we despaired of life.” We would have escaped with our lives, but we saw no way to escape. To make this clear, there are three things in God’s children.

There is grace, nature, and corrupt nature, that is, nature with the taint of corruption.

Grace looks upward, to glory and comfort. Nature looks to the present grievance. Nature does not look to things to come, to matters revealed in the word, to supernatural comforts: nature looks to the present cross, even nature without sin. Corrupt nature feels, and feels with a secret murmuring and complaining, with heaviness and dullness; for indeed corrupt nature will always have its turn in crosses; it will always play its part, first or last. There are always these three works in the children of God, in all extremities. Grace works, and it carries us up, up still. “Trust in God.” It looks to heaven; it looks to the end and outcome, that all is for good. Nature fills a man full of feeling and pain, and makes him desire remedy and ease. Corrupt nature stirs a man up to fret and to say, “What does God mean by doing this?” It often stirs a man to use bad means and crooked courses.

St. Paul felt it from a right principle of nature; and, no doubt, there was some taint of corruption with it here. He felt the fear of death. Adam in his innocence would have been affected, and would no doubt have felt it exquisitely, if his body had been wronged; for the purer the bodily constitution, the more keenly it feels any loosening of it. As physicians say, when anything that should be knit together is loosened by sickness or by wounds, anything that by nature should not be hurt but should continue together, it breeds exquisite pain, as when one cuts what should not be cut, or disjoins what should be together. This is in nature.

The schoolmen say, and the reason is good, that Christ’s pains were the greatest pains, because his senses were not dulled and stupefied by sensuality or crooked courses. He had a body of an excellent temper, and he was in the prime of his years when he died. Therefore he received such an impression of grief in his whipping, and when he was crowned with thorns. That was what made him so sensitive to grief, so that when he sweat, he sweat drops of blood, and on the cross it made him cry out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34).

God’s children, out of a principle of nature, feel any grievance to this outward man of theirs, to the body, especially in death, as we see here in St. Paul. And there is most patience where there is most feeling. Otherwise it is only stupidity and blockishness.

Question. Why do God’s children feel grief so keenly, especially in death?

Answer. Oh, there is great cause. Indeed, in some respects, they are not afraid of it; for death is an enemy to nature, but it is no enemy to grace. But I speak now not of grace and glory but of nature.

Reason 1. Does not nature have great cause to tremble at death, when it is an enemy to nature, even to right nature? It is the king of fears, as Job says (Job 18:14). It is that tyrant that makes all the kings of the earth tremble at him. When death comes, it is terrible. Why? Because it strips us of all the contentments of this life, of all comforts whatsoever we have here. Nature without sin is alive to the earthly comforts that God has appointed for nature; and when nature sees an end of them, nature begins to give in and to grieve.

Reason 2. Again, death parts the best friends we have in this world, the body and the soul, two old friends; and they cannot be parted without exquisite grief. If two friends who take contentment in each other, common friends, cannot part without grief, how will these bosom friends, these united friends, body and soul, part without grief? This marriage between the soul and the body cannot be dissolved without exquisite pain, since they are such old acquaintances.

Reason 3. Again, nature abhors death because it hinders us from all employment. It hinders all service of God in church and commonwealth. And so grace, which is beyond nature, does in a small way desire the continuance of life.

But nature, even out of no sinful principle, sees this: “Now I can serve God no longer. I can do God no more service. I can do good no longer in this world.” And therefore it takes it to heart. Our Savior says, “While you have light, walk: the night cometh, when no man is able to work” (John 9:4), the night of sickness and death. So it breeds distress, and is terrible in that way.

Reason 4. Again, in death we leave those who cast their care upon us. We often leave wives and children without husband or father, those who depended on us. And this must work upon nature, upon a right principle of nature. Indeed the excess of it always comes with corruption.

Reason 5. Again, in death there is great pain. They say births come with great pangs, and so they do. Now death is a birth, the birth of immortality. No wonder then if it has great pangs. Therefore nature fears it even for the pangs, the accompaniments that are joined with it.

Reason 6. And then in death, nature considers the state of the body immediately after death: that this goodly body, that strength and vigor I enjoyed before, must now be food for worms. I must say “to the worm, Thou art my brother, and to corruption, Thou art my mother,” and the like, as it is in Job (Job 17:14). That head, which perhaps has ruled the commonwealth, the place where I lived, must lie level with others; and that body others were enamored with must now be so forlorn that the sight of it will not be endured by our best friends. Nature considers what the condition will be there: that it will turn to rottenness before long, that the goodliest persons will be turned to dust, and lie rotting there till the day of the resurrection.

Faith and grace look higher; but because we have nature as long as we are men, these and similar considerations work upon nature and make death grievous.

Reason 7. But besides the mirror of nature, and these things here in the world, look upon it in the law of God, in that mirror; and so nature trembles and quarrels at death. Death! What is it? It is the “wages of sin” (Rom 6:23). It is the end of all comfort, and nature cannot see any comfort after that. It is beyond nature. Nature does not teach us that there will be a resurrection of the body; nature does not teach us that the soul goes to God. Here there must be a great deal of grace and a great deal of faith to convince the soul of this. Nature does not teach it.

Now, when besides this the law of God comes and says that death came in by sin, “and sin is the sting of death” (1 Cor 15:56), then death is armed with sin, and sin comes in with the evidences of God’s anger. Here, unless there is faith and grace, a man is either like Nabal, a stone and a fool in death, or like Judas and Cain, swallowed up with despair. It is impossible for a man who is not a true Christian, who is not a good man, to be anything but either a stone or desperate in sickness and death, without grace. He must be one of them. If he is a wise man, he cannot but despair in the hour of death.

For is it a matter to be dallied with, or to be carried off bravely, as your Roman spirits and atheists think? They count it a glory to die bravely, in a stout manner. Is the terrible of terribles to be put off like that? When all the comforts in this world will end and all employments cease, when there is eternity before a man, and after death, hell and the eternal damnation of body and soul, are these matters to be slighted? It would make a man look about him. If a man does not have faith and grace, he must either despair or die like a stone. None but a good Christian can carry himself well in the hour of death. And yet a good Christian feels death; and till he sees that God’s time has come, he labors to avoid it by all means, as St. Paul does here.

Reason 8. But St. Paul had another ground, beyond nature, for avoiding death. He knew himself ordained for the service of the church; therefore he desired to escape, so that he might serve God a longer time for the good of his church.

Use 1. Do God’s children feel death and the danger of it, out of a principle of nature and of grace too? How then should carnal, wretched men look about them, who have not made their accounts even with God? The report of death should be to them like the handwriting on the wall to Belshazzar (Dan 5:24). It should make their knees beat together and make their faces pale. It should strike them with terror and, as with Nabal, make their hearts die like a stone within them.

Use 2. But it is a use of comfort to poor, deluded Christians. They think, “Alas! Can my state be good? I am afraid of death. I tremble and quake at the name of death. I cannot endure to hear of it, and most of all it affects me to see it. Therefore I fear I have no grace in me; I fear I have no faith in me.”

Do not be discouraged, whoever you are who say so, if you labor to strengthen your faith and to keep a good conscience; for you may do this out of a principle of nature. Nature trembles at death.

A man may do two things from different principles, from different considerations, and both without sin. For example, in fasting, nature without sin desires food, or else fasting would not be an afflicting of a man’s body; but grace has another principle, and it desires to hold out without sustenance, to be afflicted. So here is both a desire and not a desire, and both good in their kind. So a man in the time of sickness and death may by all means desire to escape it and may tremble at it, out of a principle of nature; but out of a higher principle he may triumph: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” (1 Cor 15:55); and they that believe in Christ shall never die (John 11:26). We are in heavenly places together with Christ (Eph 2:6). We are as sure of heaven as if we were there. So out of such principles we may triumph over death, by faith and grace.

So let no one be discouraged. Nature goes one way, and faith and grace another. A man may know when it is nature and when it is grace. When grace subdues nature and subordinates it to a higher principle, a man need not be much troubled.

Christ himself, our head, was afraid of death when he looked on death as death; but when he looked upon death as a service, as a redemption, as a sweet sacrifice to God, then “with a thirsting I have thirsted,” he says (Luke 22:15). He thirsted after death in that respect. Looking to his human nature, to the truth of his manhood, he says, “O that this cup might pass from me” (Matt 26:39); but in another consideration, he willingly gave his soul to God as a sacrifice for sin.

The desire follows the objects as they are presented. Let heaven and happiness be presented, so that death is a passage to them, so that death is the end of misery and the beginning of happiness, and then God’s children “desire to be dissolved, and to be with Christ” (Phil 1:23), as St. Paul did.

But look upon death otherwise, as an enemy to nature, as a stop to all employment in this world and to all service to the church, so that we can do God no longer service; and then a man may desire to live still and be afraid of death. If he looks upon death in the mirror of nature, and likewise in the mirror of the law, as coming in as a punishment of sin, then indeed it is terrible; it is the king of fears. But look upon it in another mirror, in the mirror of the gospel, as it is sweetened and disarmed by Christ, and then it is comforting. “Better is the day of death than the day of birth” (Eccl 7:1); for in our birth we come into misery, and in death we go from it. So upon different considerations we may be differently affected and have different regards toward things; for the soul of man is so framed as to be carried toward the objects present to it. And therefore in a good man, in some respects, at some time, death is terrible; he trembles at what, upon higher considerations and respects, he embraces willingly.

Indeed, it is a sign of a wise man to value life. It is the opportunity and advantage to honor God. After death we are receivers and not doers. Then we receive our wages. But while we are here, we should desire, even for the glory that is reserved for us, to do all the good we can, because the time of life is that blessed advantage of doing good and of taking good. It is to be in heaven before our time, to do others good and to get evidence of heaven for ourselves. This is the second thing: that as God’s children are allowed to fall into extreme dangers, so they feel them keenly, especially in the matter of death, which is the last enemy. There the devil sets upon them indeed. He knows that this is the last enemy, and that there he must get all or lose all; and he labors to make death more terrible than it is or should be.

The way not to fear death, and not to let nature have too much scope, is to disarm death beforehand, to pluck out its sting by repentance. Weaken it beforehand, so that it may not get the better of us, even as we do with our enemies. The way to overcome them is to weaken them, to weaken their forces, to starve them if we can, to intercept all their provisions. What makes death terrible and strong? We put stings into it: our sins, our sins against conscience. The time will come when conscience will awaken, and then, if ever, it will be to our comfort; and then our former sins will stare us in the face, the sins of our youth, the sins we have neglected before now to repent of soundly. Therefore let us labor in this way to make death less terrible.

Again, so that we may not fear it too much, let us look upon it in the mirror of the gospel, as it now is in Christ, as it has been turned clean another way. Now it has sweet names. It is called a dissolution, a departure, a sleeping, a going to our Father’s, and the like. God sweetens a bitter thing, so that it may enter into us with less terror. So it must be our wisdom to sweeten the meditation of it with gospel considerations, with what it is now through Christ.

And along with this, let us meditate on the two terms, from where and to where. What a blessed change it is if we are in Christ! It is a change for the better: better company, better employment, a better place, all better. Who would be grieved at, and afraid of, death? Let us recall the promise of the presence of God. He will be with us to death, and in death. “Blessed are those that die in the Lord” (Rev 14:13). And especially faith in Christ will keep us from fearing death, when we see him, our head, in heaven before us, ready to receive us when we come there, and when we see ourselves in heaven already in him, as truly in faith and in the promise as if we were there. We are set in heavenly places with Christ already. Let us have these and similar considerations to sweeten the thought of death.

But to touch on this, which is an appendix to what was mentioned before:

Observation. God’s children are often deceived concerning their death.

The time of death is uncertain. St. Paul thought he would die when he did not; he was deceived. There is a double error about death. Sometimes we think we will not die, when indeed we are dead men. Sometimes we receive the sentence of death, we pass judgment on ourselves that we cannot live, when God intends our escape. So the hour of death is uncertain to us. Sometimes we are uncertain when it is certain; sometimes we think it certain when it does not turn out so. Both ways we are deceived, because God will have us, while we live here, remain in uncertainty about the very moment of death.

“Our times are in his hand.” Our time of life is in his hand. We came into the world when he thought good. Our time of living here is in his hands. We live just as long as he will have us. Our time of death is in his hand. The prophet says not only, My time is in your hands, but “my times” (Ps 31:15): my time of coming into the world, my time of living in the world, and my time of going out of the world will be when you appoint it for me. Therefore he will have us uncertain of it ourselves till the moment of death comes. St. Paul was deceived. “He received the sentence of death in himself,” but he did not die at that time.

So the manner and circumstances of death are uncertain: whether it will be a violent death or a quiet one, whether it will be by disease or by accident, whether at home or abroad. All the circumstances of death are hidden from us, as well as death itself and the time of it.

And this comes from heavenly wisdom and from God’s love to us, that we should at all times be provided and prepared for our dissolution and change. It is left in this uncertainty so that we might make our state certain, being fitted to die at all times. Let us make that use of it, to provide every day. Oh, it would be a happy thing if we could make every day, as it were, another life, a separate life, and pass sentence on ourselves, a possible and probable sentence: it may be that this day will be the last day.

And let us end every day as we would end our lives. How would we end our lives? We would end them with repentance for our past sins, with commending our souls into the hands of God, with resolution and purpose to please God in all things, with disposing all things wisely in this world. Let us end our days, every day, in that way, as far as possible. Let us set everything right; let us set the state of our souls in order, set all in order as much as may be, every day. It would be a blessed course if we could do so.

And this is one part, one main branch of our corruption, in which it shows itself strongly, that we live in a state we are ashamed to die in. Come to some men and ask them, “How is it with you? Have you repented of your past sins? Have you renewed your purposes for the time to come?” “Yes; we do it solemnly at the communion.” But we should renew our repentance and renew our covenants every day, to please God that day. Do you do so now? If God should seize upon you now, are you in the exercise of faith? In the exercise of repentance? In the exercise of holy purposes to please God? Are you in God’s ways? Do you live as you would be content to die?

But Satan and our own corruption bewitch us with a vain hope of long life. We promise ourselves what God does not promise us; we make certain what God does not make certain. Indeed we are certain of death, but as for the time and manner and circumstances, we do not know them. Sometimes we think we will die when we do not, and sometimes we die when we think we will not.

Oh, some will say, “If I knew when I would die, I would be a prepared man; I would be exact in my preparation.” Would you? You are deceived. Saul knew exactly that he would die. He took it as exact when the witch in the shape of Samuel told him that he would die by this time tomorrow, and yet he died desperately on the sword’s point for all that. He did not prepare himself. It must be the Spirit of God who prepares us for this. Even if we knew ever so surely that we would die ever so soon, we cannot prepare ourselves. Our preparation must be by the Spirit of God. Let us labor continually to be prepared for it.

And let no man resolve to take liberty for a moment, a minute of an hour, to sin. God has left the day of death uncertain. What if that moment and minute in which you resolve to sin should be the moment of your death and departure from here? For it is only a minute’s work to end your days. What if God should end your days in that minute? Let no man take liberty and time to sin, when God gives him no liberty in sin. If God should strike you, you go to hell alive; you must sink from sin to hell. It is a pitiful case, since eternity depends on our watchfulness in this world. But to come to the end and purpose, why he was thus dealt with by God, who carried him through these extremities.

“That we might not trust in ourselves, but in God that raiseth the dead.” Here is the end specified that God intended in allowing him to be brought so low, even to death’s door, so that there was only a step between him and death. The end is double: “That we should not trust in ourselves, but in God that raiseth the dead.” It is set down negatively and positively. First, “That we should not trust in ourselves,” and then that we should “trust in God.” And the method is excellent. For we can never trust in God till we distrust ourselves, till our hearts are taken off from all confidence in ourselves and in created things. And then, when our hearts are taken off from false confidence, they must have something to rely on, and that is God or nothing; for otherwise we will fall into despair. The end of all this was that “we might not trust in ourselves, but in God that raiseth the dead.”

The wisdom of heaven does nothing without an end proportionate to that heavenly wisdom; so all this sore affliction of the blessed apostle, what was it aimed at? To pull down and to build up: to pull down self-confidence, “That we might not trust in ourselves”; and to build up confidence and reliance on God, “but in God that raiseth the dead.”

Since we are in a state contrary to grace and communion with God, this order is necessary: God must use some way so that we will not trust in ourselves, and then bring us to trust in him. So these two are ends subordinate one to the other. “We received the sentence of death, that we might not trust in ourselves.”

From this connection it may be observed that

Doctrine. The certain reckoning of death is a means to wean us from ourselves and to make us trust in God.

The sentence of death, the assured knowledge that we must die, the certain expectation and looking for death, is the way to wean us from the world and to fit us for God, to prepare us for a better life. You see it follows of necessity: “We received the sentence of death, that we should not trust in ourselves.”

The looking for death therefore takes away confidence in ourselves and in created things. Alas! In death, what help can all created things give? What can friends, or medicine, or money help? Honors and pleasures and all leave us then.

I say this the more to point out a corrupt, atheistical course in those who have to deal with the sick, with the extremely sick, who conceal their condition from them and feed them with false hopes of long life. They do ill by persons in extremity when they put them in hope of recovery. Physicians who are not theologians in some measure, what do they do? Against their conscience, against their experience, and against sense they say, “Oh, I hope you will do well.” Alas! What do they do? They hurt their souls; they breed a false confidence. It is a dangerous thing to trust in long life, when perhaps they are snatched suddenly away, before they have made their accounts even with God, before they have set their souls in the state they should.

Therefore the best way is to do as good Isaiah did with Hezekiah, “set thy house in order, for thou must die” (2 Kgs 20:1), that is, in the course of second causes, you will have a disease that will bring you to death, and God had said so. God had a reservation, but it was more than Isaiah knew at that time. “Set thy house in order, for thou must die.” So they should begin with God, and tell them, as we say, the worst first.

It is a pitiful thing that death should be counted the worst, but so it is, because of our fearfulness. Deal plainly with them; let them “receive the sentence of death,” so that they may be driven out of themselves and created things altogether, and be driven to trust in “God that raiseth the dead.” “Put your soul in order. You are no man of this world.” Let them speak so, lest they betray their souls for a little self-regard, perhaps, because they would not displease them.

It may be discreet in some cases to yield, so as to make the means work the better; but where there is nothing but evident signs of death, they ought to deal directly with them, so that they may receive the sentence of death. It worked this good effect in St. Paul: “I received the sentence of death, that we might not trust in ourselves, but in God that raiseth the dead.”

It is God’s just judgment on hypocrites and on many carnal, wretched persons who are led by a false confidence all their life, who trust in created things, trust in friends and riches, who will not trust in God and will not be taught to number their days in their lifetime. It is just of God toward those who to their very death are filled with false confidence, when they come to death, to allow them to perish in their false confidence, and so to sink into hell. It is just of God to allow them to have atheists around them, or weak persons who will say, “Oh, you will do well enough.” Then, out of the very desire to live, they are willing to believe all of it, and so they die without any show of change. As they live, so they die, and they are wretched in both. The life of a wicked man is bad, his death worse, his state after death worst of all. And this is one way in which God allows men to fall into the snare of the devil: he does not allow those around them to deal faithfully with them. St. Paul received the sentence of death so that it might force him not to trust in himself, but in God who raises the dead.

The second thing to observe here, out of this first part, which is the negative part, is this:

Doctrine. God’s children are prone to trust in themselves.

The hearts even of God’s dear children, if they are left to their own bent and weight, are in themselves prone to self-confidence. They will not hold up in faith and trust in God any further than they are lifted and kept up by a spirit of faith, which God puts into them. It was not in vain that God used this course with blessed St. Paul. Here an end is set down, that he “might not trust in himself.” What, was he in peril of trusting in himself? Alas! St. Paul, though he was a holy and excellent man, was still a man. In the best man there is a double principle, a principle of nature, of corrupt nature, and a principle of grace, and he works according to both principles. There is an intermixture of both in all his actions and in all his passions too, in his sufferings. Corruption shows itself in his best deeds and his best sufferings, in everything. “That we should not trust in ourselves,” that is, in anything in ourselves or outside ourselves, in the creature; it is all one.

We see by the example of St. Paul that the best are prone to trust in themselves. All this hard treatment of St. Paul, that he received the sentence of death, was so that “he should not trust in himself.” What, was there danger of St. Paul trusting in himself? Here was a man who had been so exercised with crosses and afflictions as he had been, no man more; one would think he had been scoured enough of pride and self-confidence! The whippings and mistreatment, the stocks, the dungeons, and the rest: would not all this work pride and self-confidence out of the apostle? No!

So deeply is it ingrained in our base nature, this trusting in present things, that we cannot live the life of faith. We cannot depend on God, whom we cannot see except with other eyes than nature has. It is so deeply rooted in our nature that the blessed apostle himself must have this great help, to be taught to go out of himself and to depend on God. We see in what danger he was, in another place, of being lifted up by the revelations. He had to have a “prick in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet him” (2 Cor 12:7).

Hezekiah’s heart was lifted up, as the Scripture speaks, in his treasures, which he showed to the King of Babylon’s ambassadors, as if he were such a rich prince. And so it was with holy David in numbering the people, to show what a mighty prince he was. It was his vain confidence. Therefore God put him to a strange cure. He punished him in the very thing he gloried in: he took away so many of his people. And so Hezekiah was punished in the thing he sinned in. He had to have a purge for it: his treasure was taken away and carried to Babylon. “I said in my prosperity,” says holy David, “I shall never be moved” (Ps 30:6). The best are subject to false confidence, to trusting in themselves.

One reason, in part, is that there is a mixture of corruption in us while we live here, and corruption looks to this false principle in us, which will never be worked out by all the afflictions in the world. Until death makes an end of corruption, there will be a false trust in ourselves and in the creature. We cannot trust God perfectly as we should.

Reason 1. Again, the reason is that the things of this life are useful and profitable to us, and we are nursed up in the use of them. Satan magnifies them in our imagination, so that they seem greater in goodness than they are, and opinion would set a greater worth on them even if there were no devil. But he presents these things in all the luster he can, and so he assists the imagination, which he has more to do with than with all the other parts of the soul. The soul looks at these things in the mirror of opinion, and thinks they are fine, great matters: learning and wisdom, honor and riches.

Looking at them as they are magnified by the false imagination of others and by the competition of the world we live in, everyone is greedy and hasty for these things. Not everyone has faith for better things; therefore they are mad for these. So the competition of others, and the enlarging of our notions of these things above their worth, make us put greater confidence in them. Then we come to trust in ourselves and in them, and not in God.

Reason 2. By nature we cannot see the nothingness of the creature, that as it came out of nothing, so it will turn to nothing. But it is an object of the senses; these good things are perceived by the senses, and are present, and necessary, and useful, and by nature we live by our senses. Therefore we place our delight in them, so that when they are taken away, all the soul goes with them. As a man who leans on a crutch, or on anything else, falls down when it is taken away, so it is with a man by nature. He trusts in these things, and when they go, his soul sinks together with them.

Even as it is with those in a stream, who in a running stream are carried along with it, so all these things go away; they are of a fleeting condition. We do not see them in their passage. When they are gone, we see them as past. We do not see ourselves vanishing little by little out of this life. We do not see the creatures that are present, we do not see death and the other things beyond death, as we should by the eye of faith. So things pass, and we pass with them; the stream and we run together. It must be a great measure of faith that helps this.

We are by nature prone to trust in the things of sense. We know what it is to live by sense. But to live by faith is a remote thing: to lead our lives by reasons drawn from things that are not seen, to live by promises, is a hard thing, when things that are perceived by the senses cannot work on us. When we see men die, and see the vanity of the things of sense, it will not work on us. How then do we think that supernatural things, which are removed far above sense, should work on us? It is a hard thing not to trust in ourselves, we are so addicted to living by sense. And there is some corruption in St. Paul, in the best men, to trust in present things.

Who does not think he will live one day longer, and so trusts in life? As the heathen man could say, “There is not the oldest man but he thinks he may live a little longer, one day longer.” Who makes the use he should of mortality and of the uncertain, fading condition of this life? And all because of a false trust, in the continuance of life as in other things. We see that we are prone to trust, to put base, false confidence in something or other while we live in this world.

Reason 3. Again, our nature, being prone to outward things and sunk deeply into them, can hardly be recovered. It cannot be made sober and brought away from trusting in present things without much ado. You have some men who have everything at will in this world. They never know what faith means. All their life they live by sense. Their conscience is not awakened, outward afflictions do not seize on them, and they have a supply of earthly things. As for what religion means, and what God and heaven mean, they have perhaps heard of these things, but what they thoroughly and inwardly mean they never come to know in this world, unless there are some alterations and changes. They must have some changes. “The wicked have no changes,” says the prophet (Ps 55:19).

But while they remain as they are, they know neither God, nor themselves, nor the vanity of earthly things. We often speak the truth of God to a company of people who are besotted with sensuality and have a perpetual supply of earthly things. Speak to them of faith, and of things remote from sense, and the like, and they hear it as if they were in a dream. Nature is prone to trust in present things, even in the best, in St. Paul himself.

Use 1. Now, our proneness to it justifies God’s dealings in many things, such as these.

(1) Why does God humble great ones with great afflictions? Why does he humble great men, great and excellent Christians, with great falls? So that they might not trust in themselves; no, not in their own present graces. God will not now bring a man to salvation by grace in himself, to give him title to heaven. His graces must serve only to help his evidence that he is not a hypocrite, and to give evidence to others, that others “may see his good works” (Matt 5:16). But if he once comes to trust in them, to set them in Christ’s place, God will abase his pride by allowing him to fall, so that he may go out of himself, to be saved by Christ and to seek mercy in Christ.

(2) And this is the reason why God in his providence does great things by small means, without means, and sometimes against means. When he crosses and curses great means, it is so that we might not “trust in ourselves.” We are prone to self-confidence; and because God will cure it, for we must not carry it to heaven with us, he is forced to take this way of dealing with us.

Proud flesh will always devise something other than what it should do, to uphold itself with. It will not be driven from all its strongholds; God has much ado to work it out of all its strongholds. If it does not have wealth, it will have wit and cunning. Or if it does not have that, it will have a respectable civil life and outward works to trust in and to swell it. But to come and give God the glory of salvation by mercy alone, to depend on God alone, and to see an insufficiency in anything we do, can hardly be brought to pass. So much so that the article of justification by the obedience of Christ alone is a purely spiritual thing, altogether transcending nature.

No wonder we find such opposition from the Church of Rome, and from all except the true church. They do not understand the main article, of salvation by mercy alone, because nature is so desperately prone to self-confidence.

Use 2. Let us take heed of false confidence in the things of this life, of confidence in anything but God.

But let us come to some tests. You will say, “How shall we know whether we put too much confidence in them or not?”

(1) It is an easy matter to know it. We trust them too much when we grow proud on account of anything, when our spirits are lifted up. “Charge rich men that they be not high-minded” (1 Tim 6:17), implying that they are in danger of being high-minded. “If riches increase, set not your hearts upon them,” says the Psalmist (Ps 62:10). There is great danger when the heart is set on them and lifted up, when men think themselves so much the better as they are greater. Indeed, if they weigh themselves in a civil balance it is so; but the corrupt nature of man goes further, and thinks a man intrinsically better, and more beloved of God, for these things. It is a dangerous sign that we trust too much in them.

(2) Again, excessive grief, if any of them is taken away, or if we are crossed in them. The grief in lacking betrays the love in enjoying. It is a sign that Job had gained a great measure of self-denial, not to trust in himself or his riches, though he was a rich man, because when they were taken away, “Blessed be God,” he says, “thou gavest them, and thou hast taken them away” (Job 1:21).

He who can stand when his prop is taken from him, it is a sign that he does not trust too much in his prop. He who is so weak that when his prop is taken away, down he falls, it is a sign that he leans hard. As for those who, when these things are taken from them, when their friends are taken away, or their honors or riches are taken away, can still support themselves on diviner grounds, it is a sign that they did not trust excessively in these things. Nature will have some effect, but excessive grief always betrays excessive love.

Again, which is only a branch of the other, we may know that we set too much by them by fretting at being crossed in any of these things. We may know that Ahithophel trusted too much in his shrewdness and wit: when he was crossed he could not endure it. We see that he did away with himself for very shame (2 Sam 17:23). When a man is crossed in his wit and shrewdness, when he is crossed in the projects he has laid, when he is crossed in his advancement, or riches, or friends, then he is utterly spiritless, he frets, which is more than grieving. When he not only grieves, but with Ahithophel goes to evil courses, it is a sign that he trusted too much, and too basely, in them before.

(3) Again, when the enjoying of these things is joined with contempt and low esteem of others, it is a sign that we rest too much in them. More trust is put in them than they should bear. We should not, in the enjoying of honor, or riches, or pleasures, or anything, think any the less of others.

(4) Especially, a careless complacency shows that we trust too much in them, when we bless ourselves, saying, “I shall do well.” “Soul, soul, thou hast goods laid up for many years,” says the fool (Luke 12:19), and he was indeed a fool for it, to promise certainty on what is uncertain. A man cannot stand in what cannot stand itself. To promise life in a dying condition, to promise anything in this world, when the very nature of these things is uncertain: “Thou fool,” says the Scripture (Luke 12:20). If his soul had been as full of faith as his barns were of grain, he would never have said, “Soul, soul, take thy rest,” for these things, but he would have trusted in God. It is a sign that we trust too much in these things when we assure ourselves that all will be well, and bless ourselves, as the Scripture speaks.

(5) Again, it is a sign that we trust too much in these things when, in confidence of them, we go to evil and unwarrantable courses, and think to be borne out by them. It is so when the younger sort pour themselves out in vanity and are careless of swearing and licentiousness, not caring what they do, telling themselves they will live long enough to repent, and so on. This is a diabolical trust, in which God will give them no security.

So too when men who have riches will venture on bad causes and think to carry it through with their purse. They trust in a matter of oppression, and think to bear the matter out with their friends, or with their position, or with their wits. This is false trust. “Thy wisdom hath caused thee to rebel,” as the prophet says concerning Babylon (Isa 47:10). They thought they had far-reaching heads, and so ventured on rebellious courses. When any of these outward things draw us to unwarrantable, unjustifiable courses, it is a sign that we plant too much confidence in them. And it is a sign, if we belong to God, that he intends to cross us in them. The very confidence in these things has drawn many to evil courses, to do what they should not do, like good Josiah, Hezekiah, David, and the rest.

Thus we see how we should examine ourselves, whether we trust too much in these things or not.

Now, since we are so prone to this false confidence, and since we may discern it in this way, if we discern it in ourselves, how shall we cure it? That comes in the next doctrine: That we might not trust in ourselves. From this, observe:

Doctrine. It is a dangerous state to trust in ourselves.

This evil disposition, to trust in ourselves or in anything outside ourselves, and not only in God, in whom we should trust, is dangerous. For a man may reason this way from the text. God is forced to take desperate courses over this thing, bringing so excellent a man as St. Paul to such extremity, and all so that he should not trust in himself. Therefore it was a thing he was not only prone to, but it was a dangerous state for him. But God brings him to death’s door, so that he “received the sentence of death, that he might not trust in himself,” that he might see the nothingness of all things else. Therefore it was a dangerous state for him to trust in himself.

It is evil in respect of, first, God, and second, ourselves.

1. In respect of God. To trust in ourselves or in the creature is:

(1) To idolize ourselves, or the creature. We make an idol of the thing we trust in. We put God out of his place and set up what we trust in, in God’s place, and so provoke God to jealousy. When men trust their wits in matters of religion, as they do in popery (they serve God after their own inventions), what a dishonor it is to God! It is as if he were not wise enough to prescribe how he will be worshiped. “Go after me, Satan,” says Christ to Peter (Matt 16:23). He calls him a devil. Why? What harm was there in it? Did he not come with a good intention? That in which papists think they please God most, in that they are devils; and the things they teach are “the doctrines of devils” (1 Tim 4:1). “But the wisdom of the flesh is death; it is not subject to the law of God, nor can be subject,” says the apostle (Rom 8:7). So it is dangerous, because it is offensive to God. “There is a way that seemeth right in a man’s own eyes: the issues whereof are the issues of death” (Prov 14:12). It is idolatry in regard to God.

(2) And it is spiritual adultery. For what should take up our affections? Should we not place our joy and our delight, which always follow our trust, for trust carries the whole soul with it? What should take up our joy and delight? Should not God, and heaven, and heavenly things? Should not these things have a place in our hearts in keeping with their own worth? When we take these affections from God and place them on the creature, they are adulterous affections. When we love riches or pleasures better than God who gave us all, it is an adulterous, whorish love. “Oh ye adulterers and adulteresses,” says blessed St. James, “know ye not that the love of this world is enmity with God?” (Jas 4:4).

(3) It is likewise falsehood. For it makes the creature to be what it is not, and it makes God what he is not. We despise him and set up the creature in his place. There is always a false witness in false confidence. Indeed, there are many sins in it.

(4) There is ignorance: not knowing the creature to be as vain as it is. There is ignorance of God: not knowing him to be “all in all” (Col 3:11), as he is.

(5) And there is rebellion, in trusting the creature when God will not have it trusted.

(6) And there is impatience. When these supports are taken away, men grow to murmuring. Almost all sins are hidden in self-confidence and self-sufficiency. You see the danger of it in respect of God.

2. Besides that, it is dangerous to ourselves. It brings us under a curse. “Cursed is the man that maketh flesh his arms” (Jer 17:5), that is, the man who trusts in anything but God. It brings us under a curse, as I said, because it is idolatry and spiritual adultery. And then again, because when we lean on a false prop, and what shored us up before is taken away, down we fall with what we leaned on.

Now, since all things but God are vanity, when we rely on what is vain, our trust is as vain as the thing is. We can hope for no better condition than the things we trust in. They are vain, and we are vain; so there is a curse on them.

Therefore we have great cause to hate that upstart religion, which has been devised for its makers’ own ends, for their own profit, because it would bring us under a curse. They would have us trust in our own works in the matter of salvation, and trust in our own satisfaction to be freed from purgatory, and so on. They would have us trust in creatures, in something besides God; trust in the mediation of saints as our intercessors, and so on. And what does this false trust do? It breeds despair at length.

What is the reason that a well-advised papist, who knows what he is doing, cannot help but despair, or else renounce popery? Because popery carries the soul to false props in the matter of justification. They renounce their own religion at the hour of death, as Bellarmine did. They live by one religion and die by another, which would not be so if their religion were good. For their hearts tell them that they have not done so many works that they may trust in them, and that those works have not been so well done that they may trust in them. It is a dangerous thing. “Cursed is he that trusts in man” (Jer 17:5), or in anything in man.

No, we must not trust our own graces as they are in ourselves, not by way of merit, and no, not by way of strength either. We must not trust our present graces to carry us through without a new supply to further us. That was Peter’s fault. “Though all men deny thee, yet will not I” (Matt 26:35). He trusted in his present strength; he forgot that if he did not have a new supply from the spring of grace, he would miserably miscarry, and so he did.

All our righteousness, to trust in, is a “broken reed” (Isa 36:6). It is worth something, if we put it in its due place, to give us evidence that we are true Christians. But if we trust in it by way of merit, the devil will pick so many holes in that kind of title, and conscience will see so many flaws in it. If we bring no better title than either the holiness in us or the works from us, the devil and our own conscience will spy so many flaws and cracks in it at the time of death that we will not dare to trust in it. We must run out of ourselves to Christ, or else we die in desperation.

Let us know these things. As for all things but God, the more we know them, the less we trust in them. But with God it is clean contrary: the more we know him, the more we will trust in him. The more we meditate and enlarge our hearts in the consideration of his divine essence in every way, the more we will trust in him. “They that know thy name, will trust in thee” (Ps 9:10). Let us trust in no outward thing.

No! Not in the humanity of Christ. I add that further. We are very prone to trust in the things of sense. And as for the apostles, because Christ was present with them and a comfort among them (as indeed he was sweet and loving, bearing with their infirmities and encouraging them on all occasions), oh, they were loath to part with him. He tells them that he must leave them, but that they would not fare the worse; he would send them the Comforter. “The flesh itself profits nothing” (John 6:63), he says, without the Godhead.

Do not trust in the sacraments above their place. It is a dangerous thing to put too much in any creature (God is extremely offended at it), as is done not only by our adversaries the papists, but by proud persons among us, who are weary of the doctrine of the church and will not submit, in their pride, to riper judgments. They attribute too much to the sacraments, as some others attribute too little. They attribute a presence there. They make it an idol. They give it such reverence as they will not give to God himself, and that from a false notion: “Oh, there is I know not what presence.” Therefore the Lutherans must necessarily in a great degree be idolaters, by their consubstantiation, and the papists by their transubstantiation, by their real presence. Coster says, and says truly: If Christ is not there, we are the greatest idolaters in the world.

But there is a more subtle kind of attributing to the sacraments: that God always gives grace with the sacraments, that the sacraments always convey grace. As a plaster has a kind of power to eat out the dead flesh, and as medicine has a power to carry away the bad humors, so the conveying of grace is included in the sacraments. So they tie God’s grace to these things.

Indeed, there is grace by them, though not in them. God gives grace to the humble receiver. But otherwise, to anyone who does not come with a humble, believing heart, they are seals set to a blank sheet. There is no validity in them. All the good use they have is to strengthen faith; and if there is not something there beforehand to be strengthened, and confirmed, and assured, they are only seals set to a blank sheet. In these things it goes according to our faith and according to our preparation. And then God, in the holy, and humble, and faithful use of them, blesses his own ordinance for the increase and confirming of our faith, and for the increase and strengthening of all grace.

So there is not anything in the church but the proud, wicked heart of man will take harm by it, rather than submit to the pure and powerful truth of God. It will have byways to have “confidence in the flesh” (Phil 3:4), one way or another.

And many men, rather than trust in sound repentance and humiliation for sin, will trust in the words of absolution without it, and when those words are said, go to hell with a pardon around their necks. The false heart will trust in outward things though it is damned for it. In their place they are good, if they are used only as helps in their kind. We lay more weight on outward things, on the sacraments, and on the words of the minister than they will bear, and never care for the inward, powerful work of grace. Everything of God is excellent in its order and kind, but our corrupt hearts bring an ill report upon the things.

You see, then, that it is a dangerous disposition to trust any of these too much. It is to idolize them, and to wrong God, to take the honor from God. It is to hurt ourselves, and bring ourselves under a curse; and to wrong the things themselves, to bring an evil report upon them. It is universally true. You will never see a false, bitter heart that will not stoop to God’s plain truth (such people will have by-ways of their own) without finding that in some measure or other they are barren of great things, and given up to some palpable bitterness, to self-conceit, and to self-confidence. They are always punished in that kind, with a spiritual kind of punishment.

We must take heed, therefore, of trusting too much in anything but God himself. God is jealous of our trust. He will have us trust in nothing but himself in matters of salvation. No, and not in matters of common life either, not in matters political and civil. We must not build our trust in any creature so much as to think ourselves happy by them, or to think they cannot deceive us. They are creatures of nothing; therefore they are prone to deceive. They are prone to turn to nothing; therefore we must not build upon them overmuch, no, not in civil matters.

Indeed, if we see the image of God in any man, we may trust him, if we see him faithful, and loving, and good. Yet always trust him as a man, that is, as one who may deceive, and yet may be a man and a good man. So it is with other creatures, in the use of medicine, and wars, and arms, and the like. In danger we may, in some subordinate consideration, trust to them. But we must use them as means, that is, as things God has free liberty to use for good, to help us, and free liberty not to use. We must use them, but not trust to them. “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses; but our trust is in the Lord” (Ps 20:7). And, “Trust not in princes” (Ps 146:3), as the psalmist says. Do not trust in anything.

If we trust in anything, it must be subordinate to our trust in God. It must not be co-ordinate, as we say, that is, not in the same rank, much less above God. Worldlings, for example, trust in their wealth and trust in their friends above God. They do not trust so much in heaven and the happiness there; they do not think themselves as happy for that as they do for earthly things. No, they trust against God, in confidence of their friends and of their purse. A carnal man makes riches his stronghold; he trusts them above God, and against God. We must neither trust them with God, in a co-ordinate proportion with him, nor above God, much less against God. What makes base flesh and blood devilish in that respect, to attempt cursed means against the truth and against good causes?

They prop themselves up with these things. Perhaps the truth crosses them in their designs, and shames them, and frets them. What makes them undermine good causes, and go desperately to kick against the pricks, to dash themselves against wrath that is stronger than they are? They think to prop themselves up with their greatness, with their friends, with some carnal support or other. This is to trust against God, which is worst of all.

And this makes that harlot of Rome so confident against the church of God. “I sit as a queen,” says Babylon (Rev 18:7); not only outward Babylon, which was the type, but spiritual Babylon: “I sit as a queen.” I shall be hereafter as I am now. Therefore God says, “Thy destruction shall come in one day” (Rev 18:8). Your destruction will come irrecoverably and suddenly, because she blessed herself in an evil course; as now, at this day, they think all is sure.

If we trust anything but God, we must trust them as instruments, as helps, in the rank and place where God has set them; so much and no more. “Let a man esteem of us as ministers of Christ,” says St. Paul (1 Cor 4:1). If they esteem us more, it is too much; if less, it is too little. Just so much: as ministers, but “as ministers of Christ.” So there is a due to everything. No more, for then you wrong God; no less, for then you wrong the thing and God too. Just so much as God would have it, and then we shall have just the grace that God intends.

Seeing there is such danger in false confidence, let us by all means take heed of it.

“That we may not trust in ourselves.” That is, in any earthly thing in ourselves or out of ourselves, cleverness, honor, riches, learning, or anything whatever, but God and his truth and promises. Let us labor to have a sanctified judgment in everything: to judge of things in their nature and order and rank as we should, and not be carried away by opinion of things. Judge of them as the Creator of things judges of them, as God judges, and as the Scripture judges.

Now, how does the Scripture judge of all the outward things we are prone to trust in? How does God judge of them? They are uncertain riches. “Riches they have wings” (Prov 23:5). They are nothing, as the prophet says: “Wilt thou set thy heart upon that which is nothing?” (Prov 23:5). They are vanity; they are of nothing, and they tend to nothing.

When the hour of death comes, what, will all these do any good? They are uncertain, and weak, and ineffective for the very thing we trust them for. They will not make us happy. They do not commend us a whit to God. He hates us no more if we lack them. He loves us no more if we have them. They do not make us better in ourselves, but worse. They make us more indisposed to good things.

We say of those who are intoxicated with any kind of frenzy or lunacy that twice as much medicine will not do for them what will do for another, because of the disorder of their brain and the inflammation of their blood and spirits. Certainly it is true of those who are spiritually drunk with the conceit of the creature, with honor, with riches, and the like. Three times, many times as much means will not serve to bring them to goodness as will serve humbler men.

What is the reason the poor receive the gospel?

Because there is a lesser distance between them and the blessed truths of God than there is in others, though perhaps those others belong to God too; for the things of this life will have some effect.

We say of weak brains that strong drink greatly weakens them; and so with weak stomachs, tough meat will not digest in them, it will overcome them. And as for weak brains, though strong liquor does not overcome them, yet it will weaken them. So it is in these things: great gifts and great position set a man further off from the gospel. A great deal of corruption cannot be overcome and digested without a great measure of grace. The proportion of grace must be great; it must be treble for men who have great matters in this world; it must be greater than for poorer men, who are at less distance from heaven.

From this we may see the reasons of God’s dispensation, why God seldom works by great means. I say seldom; sometimes he does, to show that they are good means. As it is said and observed by an ancient father, seldom did he see any good come from General Councils. Why? They are good in themselves, but men trust too much in them, and therefore God disappoints them of what they trust to. Because the wicked nature of man puts too much trust in these things, God will not give the outcome we look for, but, on the contrary, a curse.

Why does God many times not bless great preparations for war, and other such things? Because we put too much trust in them. Here are too many, God says to Gideon (Judg 7, and elsewhere). Take away some; here are too many to go to war. What is the reason that God, where the greatest excellencies are, adds some imperfection to balance them? So that they should not trust in themselves.

What is the reason that in the church God chooses men of lesser gifts and abilities, the disciples being fishermen? If they had been great men, men would have said their position had carried it. If they had been scholars, men would have said their learning had carried it. If they had been clever men, they would have said their cleverness had carried it. It would have been no marvel if such men should win the world. But when they saw they were humble men, fishermen, men sitting at the receipt of custom (and perhaps their gifts were not great), then they might attribute it to the divineness of the gospel, to the divineness of God’s truth, and to God’s blessing upon it.

What is the reason that God allows excellent men to fall foully sometimes, St. Peter himself, and David, and others? So that they should not trust in themselves, not trust in their grace, not trust in anything, no, not in the best things in themselves.

What is the reason that God goes by contraries in the whole conduct of our salvation? “That we should not trust in ourselves.” In our calling, he calls men out of nothing. “He calls things that are not as if they were” (Rom 4:17). In justification, he justifies a sinner, one who despairs of his own righteousness. So that no man should trust in anything he has, or despair if he lacks any perfection, God justifies a sinner who despairs of himself.

In sanctification, God sanctifies a man when he sees no goodness in himself. Then, most of all, he is a vessel fit to receive grace. And he sometimes sanctifies him by his falls. He makes him good by his slips, which is a strange course to take to make a man better. St. Augustine says, “I dare say, and stand to it, that it is profitable for some men to fall; they grow more holy by their slips.” So Peter grew stronger by his infirmity. God takes this strange course. Why so? That we should not trust in ourselves. In our calling, in our justification from our sins, “that we should not trust in ourselves,” nor despair.

So in sanctification. Indeed, he takes a course by which we grow better by our falls, that we may be ashamed of them, and be more cautious and humble, and more watchful for the time to come. In glorification he will glorify us, but it will be when we have first been rotten in our graves; we must come to nothing. So in every stage of salvation he goes by contraries, and all to beat down confidence in ourselves, and that we should not distrust him in any extremity; for then is the time for God to work his work most of all.

“That we might not trust in ourselves.” To help us further against this self-confidence, let us labor to know ourselves well, what we are apart from the new creature, apart from grace and glory. Indeed, in that respect we are something in God. If we go out of ourselves and see what we are in Christ, we are somebody. For we are heirs of heaven, we are kings and rulers over all, and all things are subject to us, hell, and sin, and death. We are somebody there.

But in those things where our nature is prone to put too much confidence, what are we? What are we as we are strong, as we are rich, as we are noble, as we are in favor with great ones? Alas! all is nothing, because before long it will be nothing. What will all be in the hour of death, when we must receive “the sentence of death”? What good will all favors do us? They will be gone. What of all our relations, that we are styled by this and that title, what good will it do? Alas! these end in death; all earthly relations will be laid in the dust. All the honors on earth, all riches and contentments, all the friends we have, what can they do? Nothing! All will leave us there. And for us to trust in what will fail us before long, and what, when it is taken away, gives us a great fall (for he who leans on a thing, if that is taken away, down he falls), what a shame that will be!

As the heathen man said, that great emperor, “I have been all things, and nothing does me good now,” when he was about to die. Indeed, nothing could do him good. “Let not the rich man glory in his riches, nor the wise man glory in his wisdom, nor the strong man in his strength,” says the prophet, “but let him that glorieth, glory in the Lord” (Jer 9:23-24).

Consider the best of the inward things we have, our wisdom. Wisdom, if it is not spiritual, is only a thing for the things of this life, and we are often deceived in it. It often makes God disappoint us, to make us go out of ourselves. We have an excellent place for this in Isaiah 50:11: “Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, and compass yourselves about with sparks, walk in the light of your own fire” (it is a kind of irony), “and the sparks that you have kindled; this you shall have of my hand, ye shall lie down in sorrow.” Walk in the light of your own fire, walk according to your own devices and projects; “this ye shall have at my hand, ye shall lie down in sorrow.” God catches the wise in the imagination of their own hearts; he disappoints the counsel and the projects of Ahithophel. God takes glory in it, to shame the policies and projects of those who will be clever in a separate way against God. The best policy is to serve God and to walk uprightly.

“That we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raiseth the dead.” This is the other branch, what we should trust in: in God. All this humbling of the blessed apostle, even to death’s door, so that “he received the sentence of death,” was first to subdue carnal confidence in himself. He was prone to think himself stronger than he was, or that he would be upheld, that something or other would keep him from death. That he might subdue this carnal confidence, and then that he might trust in God, it was all for these two ends: “that we might not trust in ourselves” (or in any means), “but in God that raiseth the dead.”

Was St. Paul to learn to trust in God, he who had been so long a scholar in Christ’s school, indeed, a master in Israel? Was he to learn to trust in God?

Yes, doubtless he was. It is a lesson that is hard to learn, and it is a lesson we will be learning all our life, to go out of ourselves and out of the creature, and to go further into God, to rely more and more upon him. It is a lesson we can never learn as we ought. Therefore, weak Christians ought not to be discouraged when they find defects and weakness in their trust. Our hearts are false, and prone to trust outward things; but do they groan under their corruptions? Do they complain of themselves? Do they go out of themselves? Their estate is good.

The estate of a Christian is a growing estate, a conflicting estate. He does not come to full trust and confidence in God until he has gathered many experiences, until God has exercised him thoroughly to the proof; therefore, let them not be discouraged. A Christian is not always like himself; he is in a growing estate. There is a weak faith and a strong faith. “O, ye of little faith” (Matt 6:30). The disciples had a little faith, as well as Abraham, “that was strong in faith” (Rom 4:20). As long as we are on the complaining side, and on the striving side, and on the growing side, all is hopeful. St. Paul himself still strove against self-confidence, and still learned to trust in God more and more.

But mark the order. First, God does all this “that we should not trust in ourselves.” But that is not the thing he mainly aims at, but another thing, “that we should trust in God who raiseth the dead.” From this we may observe:

Doctrine. God, to make us trust in himself, has to cast us out of ourselves.

His proper work is not to drive us out of ourselves; that is a work subordinate to a higher one. But the furthest and last work is that we should “trust in him,” as the prophet says. “God doth a strange work” (Isa 28:21). He does a work strange to himself, that he may do his own work. He does a work that does not concern him so properly, that he may do his own work as he is God, that is, to confirm and settle us upon himself. But that he may do this, he must set us out of ourselves by crosses and afflictions. To afflict us and bring us low is not his own proper work, for he is the “Father of mercies.” But that he may do his own work, to bring us to him and then do good to us, he must take this on his way, and do this first.

To make it clear: a carpenter pulls down a house, he takes it in pieces. His art is not to pull down houses but to build them up. But he does what does not properly belong to him, that he may do what does belong to him; for he will not build upon a rotten foundation. So neither will God build upon a rotten foundation. He will not build upon carnal confidence, upon carnal trust, upon pride and covetousness, but he will demolish that rotten foundation with afflictions and crosses. He will use such means that we will have small joy in trusting in sin. He will by crosses and afflictions force us to go from our sins. He will demolish that rotten foundation, that he may raise up an excellent edifice and frame of the new creature, which will endure to everlasting.

The work of a physician is to cure nature, not to weaken it. It is not his work to make people sick, but to make them sound. If the body is disordered, it must be weakened. He must carry off the burden of ill and foul humors before it can be strengthened. To make people sound he must give them strong purges, which will afflict them and affect them as much as the disease for a while. But all this is to make them lighter and stronger afterward, when they are eased of the burden of foul humors; and so it is in every other trade. So God shows his skill in this great matter of bringing us to heaven this way. He does the work that does not properly concern him, to work at last his own blessed good work. He afflicts us to drive us out of ourselves, that we may come at last to trust in him, in whom is all our happiness and good.

The reason for it is clear. For in a succession of contraries, one contrary must be removed before another can be brought in. If a vessel is to be filled with a contrary liquor, the first must have a vent; it must be emptied of the worse, that the better may come. So it is with us. We are full of self-confidence, as a vessel is of bad liquor. Out that must go, that better things may come in. So it is in plowing, and in everything else. This is taken as a principle in nature. The order generally is this: that we should not trust in ourselves, that we might be brought to trust in God. He brings us low, to “receive the sentence of death,” to drive us out of ourselves, that he may bring us to rely on him.

Use 1. The use we should make of it, among many others, is this: that we should not take offense at God when he is about this strange work, as we think it. When he is making us sick with medicine, with afflictions and troubles, let us not think that he hates us. Does the physician hate the patient when he makes him sick? Perhaps he stays away from him a good while, until his medicine has worked thoroughly. But he does not hate him; he gives it time and allows it to have its work, so that the patient may recover. Does the goldsmith hate his precious metal when he puts it into the fire and allows the fire to work upon it? What is lost? Nothing but the dross. What is lost in the body by sickness? The ill humors that load the body and disorder its actions and functions, so that it cannot work as it should. Nothing is lost but what may well be spared.

So when God goes about his work, he afflicts you and follows you with losses and crosses. He takes away friends and credit, this outward thing and that. All this is to give you a purge. He works a strange work, that he may work his own work, that he may bring you to himself.

Therefore let us be far from murmuring at this blessed work of God. Let us rather bless God for his care in this way, that he will not allow us to perish with the world. God might have allowed us to rot upon our dregs, and have no changes, as the world has none. But he has more care of us than that. The farmer will not plow in the wilderness. The heathy ground will go unplowed long enough. He does not love it so well as to sow good seed there. So when God takes pains and goes to expense with any man, when he purges him, and plows him, and hammers him, all this is to consume what is worthless, to plow up the weeds, to fit him for the blessed seed of grace, to fit him for comfort here and glory in another world.

Why then should we murmur against God? Let us rather be thankful, especially when we see the blessed outcome of this, when we see our earthly-mindedness abated, when we see ourselves more heavenly-minded, when we see ourselves weaned from the world, when we see ourselves take more delight in communion with God. Then, blessed be God for crosses and afflictions, that he has taken the pains and would go to the expense with us to exercise us. It is a ground not only of patience but of thankfulness when God humbles us. Do not be discontented, man! Do not grudge! Do not murmur! God does a work that seems strange to you, and which is not his own proper work, that he may do his own work, that he may bring you nearer to himself. Why do you murmur at your own good?

The patient cries out against the physician that he torments him. The physician hears him well enough, but he will not be advised by his patient. He means to advise him, and to rule him. The patient would gladly have comfort. He is in pain, and cries for ease. But his time has not yet come. So let us wait, and not murmur under crosses. God is doing one work to bring to pass another. He brings us out of ourselves, that he may bring us nearer to himself.

Use 2. And another use we may make of it: let us examine ourselves whether our afflictions and crosses have had this effect in us, to bring us to trust in him more. If they have, all is well. But if they make us worse, so that we fret and murmur and feel no good from them, it is a bad sign; for God brings us low so that we may not trust in ourselves, but in him. “Those whom present ills and grievances do not amend, they bring to eternal grievance.” “This is Ahaz,” says the Scripture (2 Chr 28:22): a strange man, a wicked king, who, although God followed him with judgments, still grew worse and worse. This is Ahaz! He might well be branded. When a man belongs to God, everything brings him nearer to God. When a man is brought to be more humble, and more careful, and more watchful in every way, to be more zealous, more heavenly-minded, it is a blessed sign that God is then working a blessed work, to force him out of himself and to bring him nearer to himself, to trust in him. We cannot consider this too much.

Use 3. It should likewise teach us this: that we do not judge amiss of the generation of the righteous when we see God much humbling them. When we see him follow them with sickness, with troubles and disgraces in the world, perhaps with terror of conscience, with desertions, do not be discouraged. If such a one is your friend, do not censure him; do not add affliction to his affliction. Is his affliction not enough? You need not add your unjust censure to it, as Job said to his friends. The more we are afflicted by God, the more good he intends to work in us. The end is to bring us from ourselves to trust in him.

It is a wicked disposition in men who do not know the ways of God. They are ignorant of the ways he takes with his children. When they see men who are Christians humbled and cast down and troubled, they think they are men forsaken by God, and the like. Alas! They do not know God’s manner of dealing. He casts them down that he may raise them up. They “receive the sentence of death” against themselves, that he may comfort them afterward, that he may do them good in their latter end. Let this therefore keep us from censuring other men in our thoughts for this hard course that God seems to take with them.

Use 4. And let us make this use of it: when we are in any grievance, and God still follows us, let us mourn and lament the stubbornness of our hearts, which will not yield. God intends to draw us near to him, to trust in him. If we would do this, the affliction would cease, unless it is for trial, and for the exercise of grace, and for witness to the truth. When God afflicts sometimes for trial and for witness, there is a spirit of glory in such a case, so that a man is never afflicted in mind. But, I say, when God follows us with sickness, with crosses, with loss of friends, and we are not wrought upon, let us censure our hard hearts, which force God to take this course.

And justify God in all this (Job 1:22 and elsewhere). Lord, you know I could not be good without this; you know I would not be drawn without this. Bring me near to yourself, that you may take away this heavy hand from me. The intemperate man who is sick makes the physician seem cruel. It is because I set my affections too much on earthly things that you follow me with these troubles. We force God to do this. A physician is forced to bring his patient even to skin and bone. An intemperate patient sometimes, who has surfeited himself into a long illness, he must bring to death’s door, even almost to death, because the illness is so settled upon him that he cannot otherwise cure him. So it is with God, the physician of our souls. He must bring us wondrously low. We are so prone, so desperately addicted to present things, to trust in them, and to be proud of them, and confident in them, that God must deal as a sharp physician. He must bring us so low, or else we should never be recovered to our perfect health again; and all of it is so that we might trust in God.

From this, let us observe another point:

Doctrine. In all outward things that are ill, God intends the good of the soul.

He takes liberty to take away health, and liberty, and friends, to take away comforts. But whatever he takes away, he intends the good of the soul in the first place. And all the ills he inflicts upon us are to cure a worse ill, the ill of the soul: to cure an unbelieving heart, a worldly, proud, carnal heart, which is too much addicted to earthly things. We see here how God dealt with St. Paul. All was to build up his soul in trust and confidence in God; all was for the soul.

The reason is this: other things are vanishing; the soul is the better part, the eternal part. If all is well with the soul, all shall be well otherwise at last. If it is well with the soul, the body shall do well. Though God takes liberty to humble us with sickness, and with death itself, yet God will raise the body and make it glorious. A good soul will draw the body after it at last, and move God to make the body glorious. But if the soul is bad, let us cherish the body and do what we will with it; both will be bad at last.

This life is not a life for regarding the body. We are dead in that respect while we live. “The sentence of death” is passed. We must die. We are dying every day. “The body is dead because of sin” (Rom 8:10). We are going to our grave. Every day takes away a part of our life.

This is not a life for this body of ours. It is a respite in which to get assurance of an eternal estate in heaven. God takes our wealth, and liberty, and strength, and the like, that he may help our souls, that he may work his own blessed work in our souls, that he may lay a foundation of eternal happiness in our souls.

Therefore we should learn from this to resign our bodies and estates to God. Lord, do with me what you will! Only cure my soul, only strengthen my faith. I give you liberty with all my heart to take what you will, so long as you save my soul. Do not give me up to an unbelieving heart, to a hypocritical, false heart, to false confidence, to trust in false grounds and to perish eternally. As for my estate and body, do what you will. We should be brought to this. Why? Because indeed the state of the soul is the true state, either in good or ill. If all is bad with that, all will be bad at last. We shall prove it to our cost.

And therefore let us even rather thank God, and desire God to go on with his work. Lord, rather than give me up to a hard heart, to a stubborn heart, to perish and have no sound change, rather than let me perish in this way, use me as you will.

And let us thank him when we find any degree of goodness or faith. Lord, you might have followed me with outward blessings, and so have given me up in my soul to hypocrisy and to pride, so that I should never have felt the power of grace, so that I should never have known you, or myself thoroughly, or the vanity of outward things. But this you have not done. You have not given me liberty in outward things, that you might do good to my soul; blessed be your name. Let us not only take it well at God’s hands, but thankfully. To proceed:

“That we might trust in God that raiseth the dead.”

Observation. The soul must have something to trust to. The foundation must be laid; for the soul is a creature, and a dependent creature. It must have something to rely on, as all weak, dependent things have something to depend on. The vine is a weak plant. It must have the elm or something else to rely on. Otherwise it will sink; it will become unfruitful and unprofitable. All things that are weak are supported by something that is stronger. It is an inclination and instinct in things that are weak to look for supply from things stronger than themselves to support them; and it is their happiness to be so. The creatures without reason are guided by those that have reason, by men; and the creatures with reason are guided by superiors, by God, and by angels that are above them and have the care and charge over them. It is the happiness of weaker things to be under the support of what is stronger. And some support the soul will have, good or bad.

The soul, if it does not have God, will have pleasures, will have profit. The worst of men, who think there is little for them in heaven because of their blasphemy and filthy courses, will have base pleasures to go to, which they will trust in, and carnal acquaintances to solace themselves with. The worst of men will have some dirty thing or other to give their souls to, to support themselves with. Something the soul will have.

God loves the soul and has made it for himself. He has made it for himself, to join it with himself, to solace himself in it: “My son, give me thy heart” (Prov 23:26). And as he has made it for himself, so when he takes it from outward things, he will not have it empty, relying upon nothing; he takes it to himself. All this is to take our hearts from ourselves, and from self-confidence, that we may trust in him. God is for the heart, and the heart is for him. As I said, he calls for it: “My son, give me thy heart”; that is, give me your affection of trust, of joy, of delight. All the affections are made for God, and for heaven and heavenly things.

The affections we have are not made for riches. Our souls are not made for them. The soul is larger than they are. They will not content the soul. The soul is a spiritual substance, and they are outward things. The soul is large; they are scanty in their extent. They are uncertain and momentary; the soul is an eternal thing. It outlives those things. And therefore the soul is not made for them, and they are not made for the soul.

They are meant to give contentment to the outward man for a while here. They are made for our pilgrimage, to comfort us on the way to heaven; but the soul is not for them.

The soul is the chamber, and the bed, and, as it were, the inner closet for God himself and Christ alone to rest in.

All outward things must be kept out of the heart. We may use them, but we must keep them out of the heart. It is not for them. We must not rejoice in them, and solace ourselves, and delight in them overmuch, further than we seek God in them and enjoy God in them. But as they are things of the senses, the heart is not for them. Therefore God takes the heart from self-confidence and from other things. He does not let it wander, but he takes it to himself, that we may trust in him.

The next thing, then, that we may observe is that when we go out of ourselves, we must have something to rely on that is better than all things else. We lose nothing by the change; when we are stripped of ourselves and of all earthly things, we have God to go to.

Doctrine. God is the object of trust.

God is the proper object of trust for the Christian soul. He is the object of trust as well as the author of it. He is the cause and worker of it by his Spirit, and he is the object of it. If we trust in other things, it must be as they are God’s instruments, as they are God’s means. But if we trust anything, whether wealth or friends or anything else, so as to neglect the worship of God, or to please ourselves in it, to put our hands to evil courses in confidence of the creature, in confidence of men or anything else, to take any false cause in hand, this is to trust them beyond their proper place. We must trust in them as instruments, as voluntary instruments, which God may use when he pleases, or not use when he pleases. When we use them otherwise, we forget their nature. Then we use them not as instruments, but as the chief. We forget the order.

God is the object of trust. We must rest on him for grace and glory, for the best things, and for the things of this life as far as they are good.

So far as we trust in anything else in a way that moves us to complacency, to rest in those things, or to sin for them, it is a sinful trust. Other things we may trust, but in the nature of vain instruments, changeable instruments, which God may alter and change. He who is rich today may be poor tomorrow. He who has a friend today may have him taken away tomorrow. And so all outward things are changeable and mutable. But we may trust God at all times alike. He is eternal. He is infinitely able, and infinitely wise to know all our grievances. We may trust him with our souls, with our hearts. He is faithful, and loving, and eternal, as our souls are. He gives eternity to the soul. Therefore at all times we may trust in him, in all places, everywhere. He knows our hearts; he knows our grievance everywhere. He has every ground of one who may be trusted. He has power and goodness, and mercy and wisdom. He is the object of trust.

But considered in what way is he the object of trust? Is it God apart from Christ the Mediator?

Oh, no! God in covenant with us in Christ is the object of our trust. Otherwise there is such a distance and contrariety between man’s nature and God that he is a “consuming fire” (Heb 12:29). Since the fall from the covenant of works, we cannot be saved by that; but he has graciously consented to be ours in a better covenant in Christ, in whom “all the promises are yea and amen” (2 Cor 1:20). This good comes from God to us by Christ. Christ first receives it, and he passes it on to us, as our elder Brother and as our head. All the promises are made in him and through him. He receives it for us. We receive it at second hand. God has filled him first. “And of his fullness we receive grace for grace” (John 1:16).

“Without him we can do nothing” (John 15:5). With him we can do all things. So we trust in God reconciled, God made ours in the covenant of grace in Jesus Christ, who has made our peace. Otherwise God is a “sealed fountain.” He is a fountain of good, but a sealed fountain. Christ has opened this fountain. God’s love is open to Christ, and passed on to Christ, in whom our flesh is. He is “bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh” (Eph 5:30), that we might be bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh by being united with him. So now we trust in him as God, the Father of Christ, reconciled. “I believe in God the Father Almighty,” as it is in the Creed. God thus considered is the object of trust. There are two objects of trust: God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and Christ the Mediator.

Use. If this is so, that God reconciled is now the object of trust for all things that are good, not only for salvation but for grace, and for all comforts to bring us to heaven, then we see the vanity of all other confidence whatsoever, as I touched on before.

And is it not a blessed thing that God will be trusted, that he has made himself such a one as we may trust? Now blessed be God for Christ, that having received satisfaction to his justice by him, he may be trusted, and desires that we should trust him; that now in Christ he has made himself a Father, so that we should not fear him or run away from him. It is a great favor that God will be trusted by us, that he will honor us so much.

He counts it an honor when we trust him, but indeed it is an honor to us that we have a throne of grace to go to through Christ; that he has devised a way by which we might trust him and not run from him; that we may go to him in Christ, who sits at his right hand, who is our intercessor, who has redeemed us with his precious blood. It is our happiness that he has made himself a gracious and loving Father, that he calls us to him, and thinks himself honored by our trusting in him.

Again, we see here that:

Doctrine. Trust in God is a main duty.

He is the object of trust, and it is a main duty. It is a spring of duty out of which all comes; for we see here that everything aims at this. Afflictions come to mortify our self-confidence. Self-confidence is subdued that we may trust in God. Our trust must be carried to him. He is the object of it. And this trust in God is a main duty, which we ought to labor for in this world. It is what God aims at, and it is what we should aim at. God aims at it in exercising us; and we should aim at it on our part, in our hearing of the word, in our receiving the sacrament, in everything, that our trust and reliance and confidence may be in God, and that we may grow more and more and more in it.

Well, since God is the object of trust, and trust is such a necessary grace that God does everything to bring us to trust in him, let us come to search ourselves: how shall we know whether we trust in God or not? And then let us come to direction on how to trust in him, and give some means and helps.

1. He trusts in God reconciled in Jesus Christ who flies to him in extremity. What a man trusts in, that is what he flies to when he is pinched. How shall a man know that he is a covetous worldling? If he is in extremity, he goes to his purse; he makes a friend of that. How shall a man know that he trusts in the arm of flesh, that he trusts his friend too much? In extremity he runs to him; immediately he goes to some friend he has. What we run to, that is what our trust is in. A Christian runs to his God; and happy is that Christian who is in covenant, who has a God to run to in all extremities, in sickness, in death, at all times. He is happy who has a God to trust in when all fails.

Would you know, therefore, whether you trust in God or not? Where do you go? A carnal man goes to one earthly prop or other. If God does not answer him immediately, then he goes with Saul to the witch, perhaps to the devil himself. If God does not send him immediate help, he goes to one carnal help or other, to the devices of his wit, to scheming, to cracking his conscience, to brazening things out with impudence. He has not learned to trust in God, and he does not run to him, but to some wicked course or other.

All who do not go to God in the use of good means (for we must put that in: we must go to God in the use of his means, in the use of good means only) do not trust God; for God will not be tempted, but trusted. We must go to him by prayer, and in the use of lawful means, and only of lawful means. Otherwise, if we trust him and do not use the means, we tempt him. We must serve God’s providence in using the means.

2. Therefore, he who trusts in God uses his means. He who trusts God for a harvest must plow, and sow, and do all that belongs to the providence of God.

So a merchant who will increase his estate must get a ship and other provision to do it with, for we must serve God’s providence as well as trust God’s providence. When we neglect good and lawful means, and run into evil courses, and use evil means, we neither serve God nor trust him. Those who grow rich by calling “evil good, and good evil” (Isa 5:20) have not learned to trust in God. Those who think they shall not be happy unless they leave their posterity great, and who therefore will neglect the Sabbath, and neglect everything, to scrape together an estate: is this to trust in God? Have they learned to trust in God, when they sacrilegiously take away the time dedicated to the salvation of their souls and the service of God? Is this one of the means God has ordained in which to trust him? Those who flatter and serve men’s humors when they know them to be in a wicked and evil way: is this to trust God, when they go out of his means and way, and make an idol of flesh and blood to serve their own turn?

Alas! We need not name these things. If only men had learned what it is to trust in God, and to depend upon him in the use of lawful means, and would rather be content to go without in this world than to have anything with a cracked conscience!

I beseech you, let us examine our own hearts in this. There are many who think they trust in God when they do not. They trust their scheming, they trust flesh and blood, and by consequence they trust the devil, if they do not trust in God.

3. In the next place, he who trusts in God, his mind will be quieted in some comfortable measure, when he has used the means that are lawful and cast himself upon God. He will be quiet, and let God work then. When he has taken pains lawfully in his calling and desired God’s blessing, if God sends wealth, so be it; if not, he is not much troubled. He knows that all shall be for the best to those who trust in God. When he cannot have it in the use of lawful means, he is quiet. He who trusts a physician is quiet when he has followed the physician’s direction. He thinks, “He is a wise man, an experienced physician,” and now he will not trouble his mind any longer. If a man vexes himself, and thinks all will not be well, he does not trust his physician. And so in other professions we trust a man’s counsel if we think him wise and honest. We follow his direction, and then we will be quiet.

Now, God is infinitely wise. We must use lawful means and commend the means to God; for as he will be trusted in, so he will be sought: “I will be sought to by the house of Israel for this” (Ezek 36:37). For unless we pray to him, he is not trusted. But when we have prayed to him, in the use of lawful means, let us be quiet. Let us not be distracted with dividing cares about this and that, as if there were not a God in heaven who had care of us, who had a providence over things below. Certainly he has. Do your work, and leave him alone with his work. The care of duty belongs to you. When you have done your duty, rest quiet, or else you do not honor him as a God, you do not trust him, you do not make a God of him. It is a great dishonor to God.

A man thinks himself dishonored when he is not trusted, when we see that he has always been faithful to us, and is so reputed, and yet we call his credit into question and will not be quiet. We should do as children do. They follow their books, and let their father take care of all provision for food and drink, and clothes and such things. They do not beat their heads about it. They know they have a father who will take care of that. If we are true children of God, and have the disposition of heavenly children, we will do so. If we trouble ourselves and beat our heads, it is a sign that we fear that God is not our Father. Therefore I add this to the other signs: a resting of ourselves in quiet. When we are quiet, God will do more than when we vex ourselves. “Be still, and see the salvation of the Lord,” says Moses at the Red Sea (Exod 14:13). So let us be still and quiet, and see the salvation of God. He will work wonders.

4. Again, it is a sign that we trust in God when there are no means, and yet notwithstanding we will not despair, but hope and trust in God. When we see nothing in the eye of flesh and blood, no means of recovery, yet we trust in God. He can work his way though we do not see how; he can make a passage for us. When God is honored in this way, he works wonders. This is to make a God of him: when there are no means, to believe that he can work against means. If my life shall be for his glory and my good, he can recover my life though the physician says I am a dead man. If he has employment for me in this world, he can do it. He can work with means, or against means, or without means. And so in desperate troubles, if God sees it good for me, he can deliver me though there are no means. He is the Creator of means. Do not tie him to his own creature. If all is taken away, he can make new.

5. Again, he trusts in God who labors to make God his friend continually; for we will not provoke the one we trust. Certainly we will not provoke a man whom we mean to make our friend. Those who live in swearing, in defiled courses, in contempt of God and holy things, of the ordinances of God, of the day appointed to holy and religious uses, those who wax stubborn against God (1 Tim 5:11), as the Scripture speaks: do we trust him against whom we walk stubbornly? Will a man trust him whom he makes his enemy by wicked courses? You make God your enemy, and provoke him to his face, to test whether he will pour vengeance upon you or not. He tells you that you shall not go unpunished if you “take his name in vain” (Exod 20:7); yet you will be stubborn, and not make conscience of these things. Do you trust him? No! You provoke him. You may trust him, but it must be to damn you, to give you your reward with rebels; you may trust him for that. But for good things you do not, you cannot trust him in wicked courses.

Who will trust his enemy, especially one whom he has made his enemy by his evil course of life? A man who goes on in an evil course cannot, and does not, trust in God.

6. He who trusts in God’s promise will trust in his threatening. Where there is an evangelical faith, there is always a legal faith. He who believes that God will save him if he trusts in Christ believes that if he does not believe in Christ, God will damn him, if he lives in his natural course without repentance.

There is a legal faith of the curse, as well as an evangelical faith of the promise. They go together. If you do not believe God’s curse upon wicked courses, you will never believe him for the other. Therefore I will add this to make up the evidences of trust in God. True trust looks to God’s truth, and promise, and word in one part of it as well as another. You trust God for your salvation and the promises of that; but you must trust him for the direction of your life too. Faith does not single out some objects: “I will believe this, and not that.” Faith is carried to all the objects; it believes all God’s truths. Therefore, if I do not believe the threatenings and directions, so as to be ruled by them, I do not believe the promises. In whatever measure you believe the promise of mercy to save your soul, in that measure you believe the directions of God’s word to guide your soul. He who receives Christ as a Priest to save him must receive him as a King to rule him.

All the directions, and all the threatenings, and all the promises must be received and believed.

A man has no more faith and trust in God than he has care to follow God’s direction, for faith is carried to all divine truths. All come from the same God. Thousands go to hell thinking, “Oh, God is a merciful God, and I will trust in him!” But how is your life? Is it carried by God’s directions? You are a rebel. You live in sins against conscience. You will trust in God in one part of his word and not in another. You must not be a chooser.

7. Again, the last that I will name at this time: if you trust God for one thing, undoubtedly you will trust him for all. If you trust him with your soul, certainly you will trust him with your children. Some men hope to be saved by Christ. Oh, he will be merciful to their souls! And yet even to their death they use corrupt courses to get an estate and to make their children rich; and unless they have so much, they will not trust in God. If they have nothing to leave their children, they do not consider that there is a God in heaven who is a better Father than they are.

Suppose you have nothing: do you not have God’s blessing? Can you trust your soul with God, and can you not trust him with your family? Is he not the God of your seed? Has he not made the promise to your posterity as well as to yourself? If you trust him for one thing, you will trust him for all. Will you trust him for heaven, and will you not trust him for provision, for daily bread? Will you not trust him for this or that, but must you use unlawful means? He who trusts God trusts him for all truths and for all things needful, with his family, with his body, with his soul, with all. And so much for the trials of whether we trust in God or not.

Let us not deceive ourselves. It is a point of infinite consequence, as much as the salvation of our souls. What brings men to hell in the church? False confidence. They trust in false things, or they think they trust in God when indeed they do not.

The fault of a ship is seen in a tempest, and the fault of a house is seen when winter comes. Your trust is the house that you go to and rest in, and the fault of that house will be seen when you come to extremity. In the hour of death, you then have no God to go to; then your conscience upbraids you. You have lived by your own expedients, in carnal confidence and rebellion against God, and how can you then willingly trust God, whom you have made your enemy all your lifetime?

To turn, then, to some helps. If upon search we find that we do not trust in God as we should, let us lament our unbelieving hearts and complain to God of it. Let us ask God that, whatever else he does, he would honor us so much that we may honor him by trusting in him; for it is his glory and our salvation.

But because I will not go out of the text, the best way is the one that follows: to know God as he is.

How do we come to trust a man? When we know his honesty, his fidelity, his wisdom, and his sufficiency, then we trust him. Therefore St. Paul adds here that we should “trust in God that raiseth the dead,” that is, in God Almighty. From this I draw this general truth:

The best way to trust in God is to know him as he is.

We know his attributes by his principal works. We know his nature by his works, and here one of the principal ones is set down: he is God “that raiseth the dead.” A sound, sanctified trust in God comes by knowing him. “They that know thy name will trust in thee” (Ps 9:10).

There are three ways of the knowledge of God: his nature, promises, and works. That is, to know what he has engaged himself to in all the promises that concern us; then to know his strength, how able he is to make these promises good; and then to know his works, how his nature has enabled him to make those promises good.

1. Especially his nature, as when we consider his goodness and his wisdom. Every attribute, indeed, enforces trust, for he is good freely; he is good to us out of his own tender compassion. We may trust him who has made himself a Father, out of his own mercy in Christ, when we were enemies. His goodness and wisdom are infinite as he himself is, and so are his power and his truth. As the Scripture often says, “Faithful is God that hath promised” (Heb 11:11).

St. Bernard, a good man in evil times, says, “I consider three things in which I pitch my hope and trust: the love of God in making me his child, and the truth of God in performing his promise. His love is such, to make me his child; his truth is such, to perform his promise. Thirdly, I consider his power, that is able to make good that which he has promised.”

This threefold cable is a strong one: his love in adoption, his truth in performing his promise, and his power in making good all this. This threefold cable will not easily be broken. Let my foolish flesh murmur against me as long as it will. For the flesh will murmur, “Who are you, that you dare to trust in God? What is your merit, that you hope for such great glory?” No, no, says Bernard: “I know whom I have believed” (2 Tim 1:12), as St. Paul says. I answer with great confidence against my foolish, murmuring flesh, “I know whom I have trusted.” He is able, he is good, he is true. This is what that holy man had to exercise his faith.

I mention it because it is the temper of all believing souls that are truly so. The believing heart considers the nature of God and the promise of God. And though the murmuring, rebellious flesh says, “What are you? How dare you, who are flesh and blood, look to God?” the heart answers: Oh, he is faithful, he is good and gracious in Christ. He has made himself a father. I know whom I have believed. God is all-sufficient.

Trust and confidence grow in the soul in the same measure and proportion as the knowledge of him in whom we trust grows, and as his strength grows. Suppose the man I trust grows richer and stronger, and more gracious and good, and my knowledge of him increases along with it, so that I see he is so able, so true, so loving a man, a man so affectionately inclined toward me. The more he grows, and my knowledge of him, the more my trust is carried to him. So it is with a Christian: the more he considers the infiniteness of God’s love, of his wisdom and goodness, the more he is carried to it in trust and confidence.

Not to trouble you with many places, Psalm 42 is an excellent psalm for trust and confidence in God. The whole psalm is to that purpose, for the psalmist to stir himself up to trust in God. For that follows knowledge, when upon knowledge we rouse up our hearts. “God is my rock, and my salvation, and defence” (Ps 62:2). Is he so? Then, my soul, “trust in God.” He charges it upon his soul, “Therefore I will trust in God.” And then he blames his soul: Is God so? “Why art thou so disquieted, O my soul?”

This is the exercise of a Christian heart, when, upon sound knowledge, he can charge his soul to trust in God and check his soul: “Why art thou cast down? Still trust in God.” Why do you not trust in him? Is he not true? Is he not wise? He is the “God of my salvation.” And in Psalm 62:8, “Trust in God at all times,” in prosperity, in adversity. Why? “God is my refuge.”

There he sets forth God’s nature. However many our troubles are, there is something in God that answers to them, as in Psalm 28:7, “He is a rock and a shield.” He has something in him that is set against every ill.

And along with this, “pour out thy heart to God,” for where there is trust there is prayer. “Trust in God at all times, and pour out thy heart before him, for he is our refuge.”

And so, “trust not in oppression and robbery. If riches increase, set not your heart upon them; for God hath spoken once, and twice, that power belongs to God” (Ps 62:11). Do not trust in any other thing but God. Power and mercy belong to him. This is a notable way to trust in God, to know that power and mercy belong to him.

If another man loves me, does not God have that other man’s heart in his hand? “The king’s heart is in his hand” (Prov 21:1). Therefore trust in God for the favor of men. Does he not have all the power? The power another man has that affects me is only a power derived from God. God has inclined him to do good to me. All mercy and love are from God, and he turns and disposes them as it pleases him. As the Scripture phrase, the language of Canaan, has it, the heart is in God’s hands; he inclined the heart of such a man. The knowledge of God, with prayer, and stirring ourselves up to trust in God, and checking our souls for the contrary, is a notable means to trust in God.

And though we feel no present comfort from God, trust him for his word, trust him for his promise, though he seems now to be a God hidden. A child in the dark holds his father fast by the hand. He does not see his father, but he knows his father’s hand is strong. And though he does not see him, yet he believes it is his father, and holds him though it is dark.

Men cast anchor in the dark, at midnight. Though they cannot see, yet they know that the anchor will hold fast. Cast anchor upon God in darkness and temptation. Hold God fast in the dark night, although we see nothing. We shall always find this, that he is a God able to fulfill his promise, that he is a true and faithful and able God. Cast anchor in him, therefore. Though you feel or see nothing, be sure in all extremities to trust in God.

2. Besides other things, trust in God is properly and primarily wrought by the promises. Trust in God as far as he has revealed himself to be trusted. I can trust a man no further than I have a writing or a word of mouth from him, or a message from him.

Now, what do we have from God to trust him for? We have his word written, and that is sealed by the sacrament. The way to trust in God, therefore, is to know the promises.

(1) The general promises that concern all Christians and all conditions and estates of men. “God will be a sun and a shield”: a sun for all good, and a shield to keep away all evil. And no good thing shall be wanting to him that lives a godly life (Ps 84:11). Again, there are general promises for the outcome: “All things shall work for good to them that love God” (Rom 8:28). And, “He will give his Spirit to them that ask him” (Luke 11:13). It is a general promise to all askers whatsoever that they shall have the Spirit of God, which is a promise that has all particular graces in it. For the Spirit is the fountain of all grace. He is the Spirit of love, of faith, of hope. All are in the promise of the Spirit, and God has promised this. Let us trust in God for these general things.

(2) And for particular promises. He has made a promise to be a husband to the widow, and a father to the fatherless (Ps 68:5). He will regard the cause of the widow (Ps 146:9), and he is a God “that comforteth the abject” (2 Cor 7:6). He has made promises to those who are afflicted, to all estates and conditions of men. Trust in God for these.

But how? He has made these with conditions in regard to outward things. Let us trust him as far as he has promised, that is, that he will either protect us from dangers or give us patience in dangers. He will give us all outward things, or else contentment, which is better. Take him in that latitude. Trust in him as he will be trusted. For outward things, he will either give the things or give the grace, which is better. He will either remove the grievance, or he will plant the grace, which is better. If he does not remove the evil, he will give patience to bear it. And what do I lose if he does not give me the good thing, if he gives me contentment? I have grace to supply it, which makes me a better man.

If he gives me the thing without the grace, how am I the better? A carnal reprobate may have that.

So let us trust him as he will be trusted. For grace and spiritual things, all shall be for our good without fail; but for the things of this life, he will give either them or else graces.

Let us trust God, therefore, as he will be trusted in his word and promises.

Now, as for this trusting of God (to speak a little to the present purpose, because St. Paul was now in great affliction; when he learned to trust in God, he was in fear of death), let us see how we are to exercise this trust in great crosses and in the hour of death. St. Paul was in these two. The point is very large, and I will take it only according to the present scope.

How does a Christian exercise trust in extremity, in extreme crosses? For then he must go to God; he has no one else to go to.

1. He is beaten away from the creature; and, as I said before, the soul will have something to go to. The poor creatures, the feeble conies, have the rocks to go to, as Solomon says (Prov 30:26). The soul, which has greater understanding, is compelled to trust in God in afflictions. Then the soul must say to God, “Lord, if you do not help, no one can,” as Jehoshaphat said in 2 Chronicles 20:12, “We know not what to do, but our eyes are to thee.” In great afflictions we exercise trust, because we are forced to.

2. And because we are then put to this, we press the promises like a suit at law, the promises made to us for extremity.

(1) He has promised to be with us in the fire, and in the water (Isa 43:2). There is a promise of God’s presence, and the soul makes use of that. “Lord, you have promised to be present in great perils and dangers” (and two of the greatest are specified there, fire and water). “You have promised that you will be present with us in the fire and in the water. Now, Lord, make good your promise; be present.” And when God makes good this promise of presence, then the soul triumphs, as in Psalm 23:4, “Though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will not fear, because thou art with me, Lord.” So in Psalm 27:1 he begins triumphantly, “The Lord is my shield, whom shall I fear? of whom shall I be afraid?” Let us exercise our trust this way in extremity. “God is with us, and who can be against us?” says the apostle (Rom 8:31). Thus the Christian soul lives by trusting in God. In all extremity of crosses whatsoever, the soul is forced to God and claims the promises of presence.

And not only the promise of his presence.

(2) But also the promise of support and comfort, and of mitigation. There is a promise in 1 Corinthians 10:13, “God is faithful, and will not suffer us to be tempted above our strength.” Here faith is exercised: “Lord, I am in a great cross now, I am in affliction; you have promised that you will not allow me to be tempted beyond what I am able to bear.”

“Now make good this promise of yours. Be present, and be present by way of mitigation: either pull down the cross and make it less, or raise up my strength and make that greater. For you have promised that you will not allow us to be tempted beyond our strength.”

3. And then the soul lives by faith in the outcome in great extremities. “I am in great extremity, but I know all shall end well.” Thus we trust in God in all extremity of afflictions whatsoever. In the hour of death, when we receive the sentence of death, how we then exercise trust in God! In Psalm 16:9, “My flesh shall rest in hope, because thou wilt not suffer thy Holy One to see corruption.” Because God did not allow Christ, who is our head, to see corruption, therefore my flesh likewise shall rest in hope when I die. Our Head triumphed over death and is in heaven, and I die in faith. I trust in God, who raised from the dead him who was my Surety. I know my debts are paid; my Surety is out of prison. Christ, who took upon himself to discharge my debts, is out of the prison of the grave, he is in heaven; therefore my flesh shall rest in hope.

We could not speak this way if it were not for this, that Christ is risen. When we have the sentence of death, we look over and beyond the grave, we see ourselves in heaven, as David says, “I should utterly have failed, but that I looked to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” (Ps 27:13). Then faith looks beyond death and beyond the grave. It looks up, and with Stephen it sees Christ at the “right hand of God” (Acts 7:56). We see Christ ready to receive our souls.

Then we trust in God who raises the dead; indeed, we see ourselves, as it were, raised already.

Use. Thus we see how we should trust in God, in great crosses, and in the sentence of death. This, in a word, should be another ground of patience, and not only of patience but of contentment, in extreme crosses and in the hour of death: that all God does is for this, that we may exercise trust in him. And if the soul clasps itself to him who is the fountain of life, the chief good, it cannot be miserable. But this it does by trust. Our trust makes us one with him. It is what brings us to God; and afflictions, and death itself, force us to exercise faith in the promises and drive us to him. So God has overpowered all crosses, extreme crosses, even death itself, in that he has sanctified them to fit us to trust in him. And who can be miserable who trusts in God?

What construction should we put on crosses and afflictions? Surely this: it is to take away false confidence; it is to drive me to God. Shall I be impatient and murmur at that which God has ordained to bring me nearer to himself, to trust in him, to take away all false confidence in the creature?

No! This should cut the sinews of all carnal confidence and make us patient and thankful in all crosses, because God is now seeking our good; he is drawing good out of these crosses. He labors by this to bring us nearer to himself. Blessed is that cross, blessed is that sickness, or loss of friends, or whatever it is, that brings us nearer to God! Why does God take away our dear friends? That we might cling nearer to him, because he will have us see that he is all-sufficient.

What does a man lose when he trusts in God, though he loses all the world? Does he not have him who made the world at the first, and who can make another if he pleases? Suppose a man loses all and has God, as he does who trusts in him and in his word; for God will not deny his word and truth. He who trusts in God has him, and if he has him, what if he is stripped of all? God can make another world with a word of his mouth. Other things are only a beam compared with him; what need has a man to care for a beam, who has the sun?

All the afflictions of this world are to draw or to drive us to God, whether we will or not. As the messengers in the gospel were to force the guests to the banquet with violence (Luke 14:23), so afflictions are to force us to God. This blessed effect they have in all God’s children.

But those who do not belong to God, what do they do in the hour of death and in extremity? They are either blocks, as Nabal was, senseless creatures; or raging, as Cain, Ahithophel, and Judas were: either dull fools, or desperate in extremity. Saul in extremity goes to the witch, to evil means. David in all extremity goes to prayer; he goes to his rock and shield, to God who was his “all in all.” He knew all this was done to drive him to trust in God. “Why art thou disquieted, O my soul? why art thou vexed in me? trust in God” (Ps 42:11). All this is to make you trust in God, he tells his soul. He checks and chides his own soul. A child of God checks himself. When his base heart would have him sink and fall down and go to false means, then he raises himself up: “Trust in God, O my soul.”

But such as Saul, proud, confident hypocrites, when all outward things are taken away, go to the witch, to the devil, to one unlawful means or another, and at the last to desperate conclusions, to the sword itself.

As we desire to have evidence of a good estate in grace, that we belong to God, so let us ask God that we may find him drawing us so near to him by all crosses whatsoever that we may see in him a supply of whatever is taken from us; that if we lose our friends, we may trust God the more. St. Paul speaks this way of the widow in 1 Timothy 5:5. When her husband was alive, she trusted in him; but now that she lacks her former help to go to, she gives herself to prayer, she goes to God, she trusts in God.

So it should be with all. When friends are taken away we should go to God. He will supply what is lacking. Those who are bereft of any comfort should now go to God. What do we lose by that? We had the stream before; now we have the fountain. We shall have it in a more excellent manner in God than we had it before.

And that makes a Christian settled and resolved in this world. He is not much discouraged, whatever he loses. If he loses all, even to his life, he knows he shall have a better supply from God than he can lose in the world. Therefore he is never much cast down. He knows that all shall drive him nearer to God, to trust in God. As St. Paul says here, “We received the sentence of death, that we might not trust in ourselves, but in God that raiseth the dead.”

One means to settle our trust the better in God reconciled to us, in the covenant of grace through Christ, his beloved and our beloved, is the blessed sacrament. And therefore come to it as to a seal sanctified by God for that very purpose, to strengthen our trust in God. In how many ways does God condescend to strengthen our trust, because it is such an honor to him! For by trusting in him we give him the honor of all his attributes, we make him a God, we set him on his throne, which we do not do when we do not trust in him. In how many ways he condescends to strengthen our trust!

(1) We have his promise: “If we believe in him, we shall not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:15).

(2) We have a seal of that promise, the sacrament; and is not a broad seal a great confirmation? If a man has a grant from the king, if he has his broad seal, it is a great confirmation. Though the grant was good already, yet the seal is stronger. So we have God’s promise, and in regard of our weakness a seal is added to it.

(3) If that is not enough we have more; we have his oath. He has pawned his life. “As I live, saith the Lord …” (Ezek 33:11). He has pawned his being. As he is God, he will forgive us if we repent. We have his promise, seal, and oath. Whatever among men may strengthen trust and faith, God condescends to it to strengthen our faith, because he would not have us perish in unbelief.

(4) Besides that, he has given us earnest. A man’s trust is strengthened when he has earnest. Every true Christian has a blessed earnest, that is, the Comforter. He has the Spirit in him, the first fruits. Where God gives an earnest, he will make good the bargain at the last. Where he gives the first fruits, he will add the harvest. God never repents of his earnest. Where “he hath begun a good work, he will finish it to the day of the Lord” (Phil 1:6). An earnest is not taken away, but the rest is added.

(5) And the same Spirit that is an earnest is also a pawn and pledge. We will trust any runaway vagabond if we have a sufficient pawn. Now God has given us this pawn of his Spirit. Christ has given us his Spirit and has taken our flesh to heaven. Our flesh is there, and his Spirit is in our hearts, besides many evidences that we have in this life as pawns.

Indeed, in extremity we must sometimes trust God without a pawn, upon his bare word. “Though he kill me, yet will I trust in him,” says Job (Job 13:15); but God ordinarily gives us many pawns of his love.

The sacrament is not only a seal of the promise, but it also has another relation to strengthen our faith. It is a seizin, a piece of earth that is given to assure possession of the whole. As a man says, “Take, here is a piece of earth, here is my land; here are the keys of my house”; so in the promises sealed by the sacrament, here is life, here is favor, here is forgiveness of sins, here is life everlasting. What more can we have to strengthen our faith? God has condescended in every way to strengthen us, if we will come in and honor him so much as to trust him with our souls and our salvation. Therefore let us come to the sacrament with undoubted confidence. God will keep his credit. He will not betray his credit. He will never forsake those that trust in him (Ps 9:10).

But to answer an objection.

Objection. Oh! All these are confirmations indeed, if I did believe and trust in God, but my heart is full of unbelief. All these are indeed made to some who already believe in some measure. They have this seal, and oath, and earnest, and pawns, and first fruits, and all of it, if they believe; but I cannot bring my heart to trust in God.

Answer. What hinders you?

“I am a wretched creature, a sinful creature.”

Do you mean to stay so? It does not matter what you have been, but what you will be. The greater the sickness, the more honor to the physician in curing it; the greater your sins, the more honor to God in forgiving such sins. Turn the temptation back upon Satan in this way. God works by contraries, and those whom he will make righteous he will make to see their sins; before he will raise us up he will make us rotten in our graves; before he will make us glorious he will make us miserable.

I know that by this God intends that I should despair in myself. God does indeed intend that I should despair, but it is that I should despair in myself, as the text says here, that “we should not trust in ourselves,” when we have a sight of the vileness of our sins, “but in God that raiseth the dead,” who raises the dead soul, the despairing soul, so that it should trust in him. Therefore turn the temptation back upon Satan: because I see my sins and despair in myself, therefore I trust in God. “He that is in darkness and sees no light, let him trust in the Lord his God” (Isa 50:10).

Notice, for your comfort, that the gospel calls those who in their own sense and feeling think themselves furthest off. Is someone poor, and do they see their want? “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matt 5:3). “But I have no grace. Oh, that I had grace!” “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst” (Matt 5:6). If you mourn for your sins, “Blessed are they that mourn” (Matt 5:4). You find a heavy load in your sins: “Come unto me all ye, that are weary, and heavy laden, and I will ease you” (Matt 11:28).

The gospel takes away all the objections and misgivings of the unbelieving heart, so willing is God to come to such a person. Therefore do not stand quibbling; interpret everything in the best light. God will have us despair in ourselves so that we may trust in him; and we are fittest to trust in God when we despair in ourselves. Then we make God all in all. He has righteousness enough, holiness enough, satisfaction enough; he has all that is enough for you.

And as for those who are not yet believers, how wondrously God labors to bring them to a good hope! If they yield themselves and come in, there is an offer to everyone that will come in and take the water of life.

There is a command. He who has commanded, “Thou shalt not murder, Thou shalt not steal,” lays a charge on you that you believe: “This is his command, that we believe in the Son of God” (1 John 3:23). And consider within yourself that you commit a sin against the gospel, which is worse than a sin against the law. For if someone sins against the law, they may have help in the gospel; but if they sin against the gospel, there is not another gospel to help them. God offers you comfort. He commands you to trust in him. And you rebel, you offend him, if you do not believe.

Is there not encouragement here, if you are not more wedded to your sinful course than to the good of your soul? If you will still live in your sins, and will not trust in God, then you will be damned. There is no help for you if you do not believe: “the wrath of God hangs over thy head” (John 3:36). “Thou art condemned already” (John 3:18), by nature. If you do not believe, you need no further condemnation, but only the execution of God’s justice.

By nature you are born a child of wrath, and God threatens you to stir you up and make you come in. Besides the commands and threatenings, he uses sweet allurements: “Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will ease you” (Matt 11:28). And, “Why will ye perish, O house of Israel” (Ezek 33:11). And, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how oft…” (Matt 23:37). God complains of you, he allures you, he sends his ambassadors. We are ministers in Christ’s name to beseech you to be reconciled (2 Cor 5:20), to come in, to cast down your weapons, your sins, to believe in God, to trust in his mercy, and to hope for all good from him. What should keep you away? He is willing to have you believe.

Objection. “Oh, if I were elected…”

Answer. Do not trouble yourself with dark scruples about his eternal decree! Obey the command, obey the threatening, and put that out of doubt. If you yield to the command, if you obey the threatening, if you are drawn by that, you are undoubtedly a child of God. Do not bring in these doubts and wranglings, things that are too high for you until you believe. Indeed, when you believe, then you may comfort yourself: I believe, therefore I know I shall be saved. “Whom he hath chosen, them he calls; and whom he calls, he justifies” (Rom 8:30). I find myself freed from the sentence of condemnation in my heart, therefore I know I am called, I know I am elected. Then you may go to those disputes with comfort, but not before a person obeys. Put those quibbles out, and obey the gospel when salvation is offered, when Satan puts these things to you, when you are threatened and commanded.

How this will justify God at the day of judgment against damned wretches who have lived in the bosom of the church and yet would not believe! They will believe after their own fashion, if God will save them and let them live in their sinful courses. But they will rather be damned than part with them. Are they not worthy to be damned? Judge for yourself. Rather than alter their course and receive mercy with it, rather than receive Christ, whole Christ, as a king and a priest, to rule them as well as to satisfy for them, they will gild over their wicked courses and will have none of him at all. They will rather be damned than take another course; their damnation is just.

If you take whole Christ and yield to his government, he uses all means to strengthen your faith after you believe, and he uses all means to allure you to believe. It is a point of much consequence, and everything depends on it. It is the sum of the gospel to trust in God, in Christ. Therefore I have stayed on it a little longer. Until we can bring our hearts to this, we have nothing.

When we have this, then when everything is taken from us, as it will be before long, all the friends we have and all our comforts, yet our trust will not be taken from us, nor will our God in whom we trust be taken from us. We will have God left, and a heart to trust in God. That will stand us in good stead when all other things fail. “That we might not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead.”

These words have a double force in this place.

First, St. Paul might reason this way: I am brought to death, as low as I can be, even to receiving the sentence of death; but I trust in God, who will raise me when I am dead. Therefore he can raise me out of sickness. Though there are no means, no medicine, he can do it himself. Or if it were persecution, he might reason: I am now persecuted, but God will raise me out of the grave; therefore he can raise me out of this trouble, if it is for my good. It has the force of a strong argument that way.

And it has another force, that is, to suppose the worst: “I received the sentence of death,” that is, if I die, as I look for nothing else, yet I trust that God who raises the dead will raise me. The confidence of the resurrection makes me die comfortably. We sleep quietly because we hope to rise again; and we put our seed into the ground with comfort. Why? We hope to receive it in a more glorious manner at the harvest. So though my body is sown in the earth, it will rise a glorious body. “I trust in God,” though “I receive the sentence of death,” yet I shall sleep in the Lord.

As when I go to sleep I hope to rise again, so I trust that when the resurrection comes, my body will waken and arise. “I trust in God that raiseth the dead.” Because he raises the dead, he can recover me if he will. If not, he will make this body a glorious body afterward. So every way it was a strong argument with St. Paul: “I trust in God that raiseth the dead.”

The apostle draws an argument of comfort from God’s power in raising the dead. And it is a true reason, a good argument. He who will raise the dead body out of the grave can raise out of misery, out of captivity. The argument is strong. Thus God comforts his people in Ezekiel 37, in that parable of the dry bones into which he put life. So the blessed apostle St. Paul speaks of Abraham: “He looked to God who quickeneth the dead, who calleth things that are not, as though they were” (Rom 4:17). What made Abraham trust in God, that he would give him Isaac again? He considered that if God can raise Isaac from the dead, then if he pleases he can give me Isaac back again. And though Isaac was the son of promise, yet he trusted God’s word more than Isaac the son of his love. Why? He knew that God could raise him from the dead, though he had sacrificed him. He trusted in God, “who quickeneth the dead.”

Doctrine. The resurrection, then, is an argument to strengthen our faith in all miseries whatsoever.

It strengthens our faith before death and in death. I will not enter into the general discussion of that point concerning the resurrection; it would be tedious and unjust, because that is not intended here, but it is only used as a special argument. Therefore I will only touch on that point.

Doctrine. God will raise us from the dead.

Nature is more offended at this than at any other thing. But St. Paul makes it clear that it is not against nature that God should raise the dead (1 Cor 15:35 and following). Let me speak a little of it, and then speak of the use the apostle made of it and of the use that we may make of it. The apostle says in that place, speaking to clever atheists who thought to quibble the resurrection from the dead away: You fool, you speak against nature, if you think it altogether impossible.

Look at the seed. Do we not see that God every spring raises things that were dead? We see in the silkworm what a change there is from a fly to a worm, and so on. We see what people can do by art. They make glasses, and out of what? Out of ashes. We see what nature can do, which is the ordinary providence of God. We see what it can do in the bowels of the earth. What are gold, and silver, and pearl? Are they not water and earth, excellently digested, exquisitely concocted and digested? That there should be such excellent things out of so base a created thing! We see what art and nature can do. If art and nature can do such great things, why do we call in question the power of God? If God has revealed his will to do so, why do we doubt this great point of God’s raising the dead?

The ancients had a great struggle with the pagans over this point. They handled it excellently, as they were excellent in those points they were forced to by their adversaries, and indeed they were especially sound in those points. I say they were excellent and full in handling this, but I will not stay on that. It is an article of our creed: “I believe the resurrection of the body.” Indeed, whoever believes the first article of the creed will easily believe the last. Whoever believes in “God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth,” will easily believe the resurrection of the body.

But I will rather come to show the use of it. God will raise the dead. Therefore God’s manner of working is, when there is no hope, in extremity, as I touched on before. He raises us, but it is when we are dead. He does his greatest works when there is least hope. So it is in the resurrection out of troubles, as in the resurrection of the body. When there is no hope at all, no ground in nature, but it must be altogether his power that does it, then he falls to work to raise the dead.

Use. Therefore our faith must follow his working. He raises the dead. He justifies a sinner, but it is when the sinner is furthest from grace, a sinner despairing of all mercy. Then the sinner has the most need of justification. He raises the dead, but it is when they are nothing but dust; then it is time for him to work to raise the dead. He restores, but it is that which is lost. God never forgets his old work. This was his old manner of working at the first, and he still uses it every day: he made all of nothing, order out of confusion, light out of darkness. This was in the creation, and he still does the like. He never forgets his old work. Being acquainted with this, St. Paul fastens his hope and trust on such a God as will raise the dead.

Therefore make the use of it that the apostle does. When the church is in any calamity, which is as it were a death, when it is as in Ezekiel 37, “dry bones,” comfort yourselves. God comforted the church there, that he would raise the church out of Babylon as he raised those dead bones. The one is as easy as the other. So in the government of the church continually, he brings order out of confusion, light out of darkness, and life out of death, that is, out of extreme troubles. When people think themselves dead, when they think the church dead, past all hope, then he will quicken and raise it. So he will never forget this course until he has raised our dead bodies; and then he will finish that manner of dispensation. This is God’s manner of working.

We must answer it with our faith, that is, in the greatest dejection that can be, to “trust in God that raiseth the dead.” Faith, if it is true, will answer the ground of it. But when it is carried to God, it is carried to him who raises the dead. Therefore, though it is desperate every way, yet nevertheless I hope above hope. I hope in him whose course is to raise the dead, who at the last will raise the dead, and who still delights, in a proportion, to raise people from death, out of all troubles and miseries.

Well! This God does, and therefore carry it along in all miseries whatsoever, in soul, in body, or estate, or in the church, and so on.

God raises from the dead, therefore we must feel ourselves dead before we can be raised by his grace. What is the reason that a papist cannot be a good Christian? He opposes his own conversion. What is conversion? It is the first resurrection, the resurrection of the soul. But that which is raised must be dead first. They do not account themselves dead, and therefore they oppose this resurrection. And so, when we are dead in grace or comfort, let us trust in God who raises the dead. And so for our outward condition in this life and the state of the church.

So too the conversion of the Jews, which seems so strange a thing. When someone considers how they are dispersed, and considers their poverty and disgrace, that person thinks, Is this a likely matter? Remember what God has said: he will raise the dead. And because this is a work that seems as hard as the raising of the dead, therefore their calling and conversion is called a kind of resurrection (Rom 11:15). Let us hope for that. He who raises the body will raise that people, as despicable as they are, to be a glorious people and church.

And so for the overthrow of the “man of sin.” The revelation of the gospel, when it came out of the grave of darkness, out of the Egyptian darkness of popery, was it not a raising of the dead?

When Luther arose for the defense of the truth, someone might have said to him, “What! Do you set yourself against the whole world? Go to your cloister, and say, ‘Lord, have mercy upon us.’ Do you hope to reform the world against all the world?” Ah, but he trusted in God “that raiseth the dead,” who raises people to conversion when he pleases, and who raises the church when he pleases, even from death. He raised the church out of Babylon, and he will raise the Jews who are now in a dead state. Why should we doubt these things, when we believe, or profess to believe, the main point, the resurrection from the dead?

And every day in the church God is raising the dead spiritually. The dead hear the voice of Christ every day. When the ministry is in power, when there is a blessing on it, conveying it to the heart, then he is raising the dead. So “wisdom is justified of her children” (Matt 11:19). The gospel is justified as a powerful doctrine, having the Spirit of God clothing it, to raise people from the dead, those who are dead in sin.

No one is ever spiritually raised except those who see themselves dead. And that is the reason we are to abhor popery, because it teaches us that we are not dead in ourselves, and then there can be no resurrection to grace; for the resurrection is of the dead. The more we see a contrariety in nature to grace, the fitter objects we are for the divine power of God to raise. “He raiseth the dead.”

Thus we see how to go along with this. In all troubles God will raise the dead; therefore he will bring me out of this trouble, if he sees it good. Therefore in extremity let us reason with ourselves in this way. Now I do not know which way to turn; “there is but a step between me and death” (1 Sam 20:3). If God has any purpose to use my service further, he who raises the dead will raise me from the grave; “to him belong the issues of death” (Ps 68:20). He can give a way out and an escape if he will. If not, if he will not deliver me, then I die in this faith, that he will raise me from the dead.

This is what upholds a Christian in extremity. This made the martyrs so confident. This made those three young men who were cast into the fiery furnace so resolute. What was their comfort? Surely this: God can deliver us if he will, they say. He is able to deliver us now; but if he will not do this for us, he will raise our bodies. If he will not deliver them here, there will be a final deliverance at the resurrection.

So it was with those blessed men in Hebrews 11:35: they hoped for a better resurrection, and this made them confident.

This makes us confident to stand out against all the threatenings and all the crosses of the world, so that we may hold on to our peace with God, notwithstanding all the enticements and allurements to the contrary, because we trust in God who raises the dead.

Again, let us learn to draw principles contrary to Satan’s out of God’s proceedings. What does he argue when we are dead, either in sin or in misery? “What have you to do with God? God has forsaken you.” “No!” says faith. “God is a God raising the dead. The more dead I am in the eye of the world, and in my own sense, the nearer I am to God’s help. I am a despairing sinner, a great sinner; but all the more will God magnify his mercy, that ‘where sin hath abounded, grace may abound much more’” (Rom 5:20). Turn the argument home; draw contrary principles to him. This is a divine art which faith has.

“Oh, but then you may presume, and do whatever you please,” says Satan.

Not so. Turn the argument back upon him again: if I do so, God will bring me to death, he will bring me to despair; and who delights to have that course taken with him, to be brought so low? So every way we may turn temptations back from this dealing of God. If I am careless, he will bring me as low as hell. I will have little joy in putting the matter to that test with him.

And if you are low, do not despair; you are the fitter object. God raises the dead, therefore I will not add to my sins against the law. I will not add this sin against the gospel, this destroying sin of despair and unbelief; but I will cast myself on the mercy of God and believe in him who raises the dead. I will desire him to speak to my dead soul, which is as rotten as Lazarus’s body, which had been so long in the grave, that he would say to it, “Come forth” out of that cursed state. He has only to speak the word, to bless his word, and then it will come out by faith. It is the art of faith to draw arguments contrary to Satan, and those who belong to God do so in all temptations. But those who do not do this sink lower and lower, having nothing to uphold their souls. They have not learned to trust in God who raises the dead.

God is the God who raises the dead. Therefore let us often think of this; let us think what God means to do with us, so that we may conduct ourselves accordingly: “I trust in God that raiseth the dead.” Therefore let us honor God while we live, with that body which he will raise; let us be fruitful in our place. St. Paul draws this conclusion from the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15:58: “Finally, my brethren, be constant, unmoveable, alway abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” Especially considering that he will raise the dead bodies in a more glorious manner than they are now; he will make a more glorious body. For God’s second works are always better than his first. He raises the dead, and will make our bodies like the glorious body of Christ.

But the point of the resurrection is very large, and perhaps I will have better occasion to speak of it afterward. I only apply it to the present purpose, how it strengthens faith in misery and in the hour of death.

A person is strengthened in faith when they think: Now I am going “the way of all flesh” (Josh 23:14); I am to yield my soul to God, and death is to close my eyes; yet I have trusted in God, and do trust in God, who will raise my body from the grave. This comforts the soul against the horror of the grave, against that confusion and darkness that comes after death.

Faith sees things to come as present. It sees the body, after it has been a long time in the dust, clothed with flesh and made like the glorious body of Christ. Faith sees this, and so a Christian soul dies in faith, and sows the body as good seed in the ground in hope of a glorious resurrection.

And that comforts a Christian soul in the loss of children, of a wife, of friends who have been dearest and nearest to me. I trust “in God that raiseth the dead,” that he will raise them again, and then we will all be forever with the Lord. It is a point of singular comfort. For the main articles of our faith have a wondrous working on us in all the passages of our lives. It is good to think often on the pillars of our faith, as this is one, that God will raise us from the dead.

But I go on to the next verse.

Who delivered us from so great a death, who doth deliver us; in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us. (2 Cor 1:10)

St. Paul describes his troubles to the life, so that he might make himself and others feel more keenly his comforts, and God’s grace and goodness in his deliverance. These words contain his deliverance out of that trouble, his particular deliverance out of a particular trouble. And this deliverance is set down by a threefold distinction of time. As time is either past, present, or to come, so God is the deliverer for all times: “he hath delivered us” for the time past, “he doth deliver us” for the present, “in whom we trust that he will deliver us” for the time to come.

“Who delivered us from so great a death.” After St. Paul had learned to trust in God, after he had mastered that lesson, a hard lesson to learn, one that must be learned by bringing a person to such extremity, I say, after he had learned “to trust in God that raiseth the dead,” God gave him this reward of his diligence in the blessed school of afflictions. He delivered him: “who hath delivered us, and who doth deliver us” continually. He will not take his hand from the work, and for the time to come I hope he will deliver still.

St. Paul here calls his trouble a death. It was not properly a death. It is only his heightening of the trouble that calls it a death, because God’s mercy alone kept it from being a death. It was everything but a death. It was some desperate trouble, some desperate sickness. The particular is not set down in the Scripture. We know what a tumult there was about Diana of Ephesus (Acts 19), and in 1 Corinthians 15:32 we read, “He fought with beasts at Ephesus” (which is in Asia), “after the manner of men.” Whether it was that or some other trouble, we do not know. Whatever it was, he calls it a death. He does not call it an affliction, but a death, and a great death, to make himself feel it the more.

Why do we have souls and understandings, if not to exercise them in setting forth our dangers and the deliverances of God, and to consider things so that they affect us deeply? The apostle here, to affect himself deeply, sets it down as a death.

And often in the Psalms, the psalmist, in Psalm 18:4 and Psalm 116:3, calls his afflictions death and hell, and so indeed they would have been, if God had not delivered him. But to come to the points worth considering here. First of all we may observe this, that

Until God has done his own work, he does not deliver; he brings people to a low ebb, to a very low condition, before he will deliver.

Second, after God has done his own work, then he delivers his children.

Third, he continues the work still, “he doth deliver me.”

Fourth, upon experience of God’s former deliverance, God’s children have founded a blessed argument for the time to come. “He hath, and he will deliver me.” God is always like himself. He is never at a loss. What he has done, he does and will do, keeping in reserve the limitations, as we shall see afterward.

Doctrine 1. God does not deliver his children at the first.

He delivered St. Paul, but it was after he had brought him to “receive the sentence of death,” and after Paul had learned not to trust in himself, but “in God that raiseth the dead.” God defers his deliverance for many reasons. To name a few:

Reason 1. God defers his deliverance when we are in dangers partly, as you see here, to perfect the work of mortification of self-confidence, to subdue trust in any earthly thing. By this St. Paul learned not to trust in himself.

2. And then to strengthen our faith and confidence in God, when we are drawn away from all creatures to learn to trust in him.

3. And to sweeten his deliverance when it comes, to endear his favors; for they are sweet indeed after God has beaten us out of ourselves. Summer and spring are sweet after winter. So it is in this alternation and interchange that God uses. Favor after affliction and crosses is favor indeed. That is what makes heaven so sweet to God’s children when they come there, because they go to heaven out of a great deal of misery in this world.

4. And partly, too, God defers it for his own glory, so that it may be known as his work alone. For when we are at a loss, and the soul can reason thus, God must help or none can help, then God has the glory. Therefore, in love for his own glory, he defers it so long.

5. Again, he is accustomed to defer long so that he might shame the enemies the more at length. For if the affliction comes from the insolence and pride of the enemies, he defers deliverance until they have come to the highest pitch, and then he arises as “a giant refreshed with wine, and smites his enemies in the hinder parts” (Ps 78:65-66). He is, as it were, refreshed on the sudden. And as it is his greatest glory to raise his children when they are at the lowest, so it is his glory to confound the pride of the enemies when it is at the highest. If he should do it before then, his glory would not shine so much in their confusion and that of their enterprises against his children.

One would think he should not have let Pharaoh alone so long, but he gained himself the more glory at the last in confounding him in the Red Sea. So Haman came very far, almost to the execution of the decree he had obtained by his scheming and malice, and then God delivered his church and confounded Haman. These and similar reasons may be given to show that God, in heavenly and deep wisdom, does not immediately deliver his children.

Use. The proper use of it is that we should learn not to be hasty and short-spirited in God’s dealing, but learn to practice what we are so often commanded, to wait on God, to wait for his good leisure.

Especially considering what is the second point, let that satisfy us, that

Doctrine 2. After God has done his work, he will deliver.

Let us wait, for he will deliver at length. Perhaps his time to deliver has not yet come; but usually, when all is desperate, when he may have all the glory, then he delivers. He delivered the three young men, but they were put into the fire first, and the furnace was made seven times hotter, so that he might have the glory in consuming their enemies. So he delivered Hezekiah in his time, but it was when the enemy was just ready to seize the city (Isa 37:14 and following). He promised St. Paul that not one man in the ship should perish, and yet they suffered shipwreck; they went away with only their lives (Acts 27:24, 44). God so delivers his own that he does not allow them to perish in the danger.

Use. Therefore let us stay for his time, and wait. It may be that it is not God’s time yet.

When shall we know that it is God’s time to deliver, so that we may wait with comfort?

(1) God knows his own time best; but usually it is when we are brought very low, and when our spirits are low. It is when we are brought very low, both in regard to human support and in regard to our spirits, when we are humble, when our souls “cleave to the dust” (Ps 119:25). “Help, Lord,” for we are brought very low. “Help, Lord, for vain is the help of man” (Ps 60:11).

When the church can plead so, it is a good plea. It is a good plea when we are at the lowest and the malice of the enemy is at the highest, when the waters swell: “Help, Lord, for the waters are come into my very soul” (Ps 69:1). It is so when we are very low and the enemies very high, as we see in Pharaoh, and so in Herod: when he was in the height of his pride, when he was in all his glory, God takes him there.

Thus God delivers his own and confounds his enemies. I join them both together, for the one does not commonly happen without the other. The harm that comes to God’s children comes from their enemies. Therefore, when he delivers the one, he confounds the other. When the malice of the enemies is at the highest, and the condition of his children is at the lowest, and their spirits are afflicted and cast down by their condition, then is the time when God will deliver.

(2) Again, when our hearts are enlarged to pray, when we can pray from a broken heart. As you see here, Paul joins them together: God will deliver me, but it must be by your prayers. When we have hearts to pray, and when others have hearts to pray for us, that is the time of deliverance. Usually an enlarged heart to pray to God goes before deliverance, as we see in Daniel 9. A little before they came out of Babylon, he had a large heart to pray to God.

And when we can plead God’s promise with him, “Remember, Lord, thy promise wherein thou hast caused us to trust” (Ps 119:49), when we can cast ourselves upon God’s mercy with prayer and plead with God to remember his promise, it is a sign that God means to deliver us. When the heart is shut and closed up so that it cannot speak to God, when there is some sin or other that stifles the spirit so that it cannot pour itself out to God with that liberty, it is a sign that it is not yet the time of God’s deliverance.

God will at length deliver. Therefore, from both of these, that he defers deliverance and that he will deliver at length, let us draw this lesson of waiting. Let us wait, therefore, and wait with comfort. Let us remember these principles.

First, God has a time, as for all things, so for our deliverance.

Second, God’s time is the best time. He is the best discerner of opportunities.

Third, remember that this will be when he has done his work upon our souls, especially when he has made us trust in him. As here, when St. Paul had learned to trust in God, then God delivered him. And why should we desire to do our bodies good, or our estates good, until God has done his cure on our souls? For God intends our souls in the first place. Our souls are, in a manner, the whole person. The welfare of the soul draws the welfare of the body and the welfare of the estate after it. The body will do well if the soul does well.

Therefore we should desire that the Lord would let the affliction stay, rather than that it should depart without the message for which God sends it. Every affliction is God’s messenger. We should desire the Lord to let it stay for the answer for which he has sent it.

And indeed, it will never depart without the answer for which God sends it, until it has humbled us, until it has brought us to trust in God, until we are such as we should be. And a Christian soul would rather be in the furnace, under the affliction, being purged better yet, than have the cross and affliction removed and not be a bit the better for it. Therefore, considering that there will be a time, and that God’s time is the best time, and that this time will be when he has fitted us, we should learn to wait in any cross, and not be overly hasty.

Again, consider that though the time is long, yet he will deliver at length by death. Death will end all miseries.

And consider that however long we endure anything, yet what is that which we endure here, compared with that which we are freed from by Christ? We are freed from misery, from all misery, from the wrath of God, from damnation. And what is that which we can suffer here, compared with the glory and joy that remain for us in heaven? What is all that we can suffer here, compared with what Christ has endured for us? What is all that we can endure here, compared with what we have deserved?

Considering, then, what we are delivered from, what God has reserved for us, what Christ has endured, and what we deserve, it will make us wait, and wait with patience. This is especially so considering, as I said before, that God is working his good work for our good. Though at first, perhaps, for a while we do not see the meaning of the affliction, the meaning of the cross, and cannot read it perfectly, yet in general we may know it is for our good. God, in his infinite wisdom, will not allow a hair to fall from our heads without his providence. “And all shall work together for the best to those that love him” (Rom 8:28).

It is long, then, we see, before God delivers; and why? And at the last he will deliver one way or another; and therefore let us wait quietly. And the saints of God have practiced this in all ages. “Yet, my soul, keep silence to the Lord” (Ps 62:5). The psalmist had a severe conflict with himself when he saw how good causes were trampled on, and saw the insolence of wicked persons, how they lift up their heads: “Yet, my soul, keep silence to the Lord.” So he begins, “Yet God is good to Israel” (Ps 73:1), for all this.

And God lays it upon his people as a charge that they should wait: “If I tarry, wait thou” (Hab 2:3). And the blessing is promised to those who can wait and not murmur, as in Psalm 147:11. It is a duty that we are much urged to, and very hardly brought to practice. Therefore we need to hear it pressed the more: “The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy” (Ps 147:11), in those that trust in his mercy.

You have the like in many places: “Therefore will the Lord wait, that he may be gracious to you; therefore he will be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you: he is a God of judgment, blessed are all that wait for him” (Isa 30:18). So in Lamentations 3: the church waits upon God continually.

How often David charges himself, “Wait, and trust in God, O my soul” (Ps 42:5). Let us learn this upon these grounds, that God is long before he delivers, but at last he will deliver; and that is enough to enforce this duty, to wait continually upon God with patience and silence.

Well, thus we see that God delivers, “who delivered us…” What will he do for the present time? He has delivered, and does deliver, and he will deliver. From all of these jointly together, you see that

Doctrine. God’s people in this world stand in need of deliverance always.

They always have troubles. When one is past, another is present. Deliverance presupposes dangers.

1. There have been dangers, there are dangers, and there will be dangers. Our life is a warfare, a temptation. We are absent from God. We are always exposed to dangers. We live in the midst of devils and of devilish-minded men. We have corruptions in us that expose us to sin, and sin draws judgments after it. We are always in danger, one way or another, while we live in this world.

But our comfort is that as there have been dangers, and are dangers, and will be dangers, so there has been deliverance, there is deliverance, and there will be deliverance. It is a trade that God practices. It is his art. “God knoweth how to deliver his,” as St. Peter says (2 Pet 2:9). He has always exercised it; he is excellent at it. He has delivered his church, he does deliver his church, and he will deliver his church; and so with every particular member, he has delivered, and does, and will deliver them.

Wonderful is the interchange that God uses with his people and their condition. Just as in nature there is a change and interchange of day and night, of light and darkness, of morning and evening, of summer and winter, of hot and cold, so in the life of a Christian there are changes, dangers, and deliverances. There is a “sowing in tears, and a reaping in joy” (Ps 126:5). There is a night of affliction, and a morning of joy and prosperity: “Heaviness may be in the evening, but joy cometh in the morning” (Ps 30:5).

And so we go on until we end our days, until we are taken to heaven, where there will be no change, where “all tears shall be wiped from our eyes” (Rev 21:4).

If we had spiritual eyes, eyes to see our danger, to see how full the world is of devils! And then to consider how many dangers this weak life is subject to, how many accidents! We cannot go out of doors, we cannot take a journey, without being subject to how many dangers! We are surrounded with perpetual dangers. The snares of death encompass us almost everywhere, abroad and at home, in our greatest complacency.

But our comfort is that God encompasses us with mercy, as it says in Psalm 32:10. As dangers are round about us, so God is a “wall of fire about us” (Zech 2:5). We have dangers about us, devils about us. We have a guard about us: we have God about us, we have angels about us, we have all his creatures about us. “All things are yours,” says the apostle (1 Cor 3:21).

It is God who has delivered us, who does deliver us. Who restrains the devils from having their will with us? They are enemies not only to our souls and to our salvation, but to our bodies. They are enemies to our health, as we see in Job. We live in the midst of lions, and often in the midst of enemies. Who restrains their malice? We are preserved from dangers day and night. Who shuts the doors, who watches over us, but he who keeps Israel? It is God who delivers us. Without his deliverance, all deliverances would be to little purpose. All shutting in would be to little purpose, unless he who shut Noah into the ark shuts us in. He must watch over us. It is God who delivers us.

But does he deliver us only outwardly?

2. No! He has delivered, and he does deliver, us spiritually. He has delivered us from the power of hell and damnation. He delivers us from many sins that we would otherwise commit, and when we have sinned, he delivers us from despair. He delivers us from presuming, by touching our hearts with saving grief for sin. If we belong to him, he delivers in one of the two ways: either from the sin or from the danger of the sin; either from committing the sin, or from despairing over the sin or presuming in a course of sin.

Who delivers us from our inbred corruptions? Would we not run every day into the sins that we see others commit? Who cuts short our lusts and suppresses them, so that we are not swearers, so that we are not licentious persons, so that we are not godless persons? Are we not hewn out of the same rock? Who keeps us from sin? Is it any inbred goodness? Are we not all alike tainted with original sin, children of wrath? Who puts a difference between us and others? It is God who has delivered us, and who does deliver us.

It is his mercy that we do not commit sin; that is his preventing deliverance. And when we have committed sin, it is his mercy to pardon it. There is his preserving deliverance from despair after the committing of sin.

All are indebted to God for deliverance. Those who have committed sin are indebted to him because he delivers them from the wrath to come, from the damnation they deserve. And those who have the grace not to commit sin are indebted to him because he delivers them from what their corruptions would otherwise carry them to, if he should take his government from their hearts.

We have an inward guard as well as an outward one, an invisible guard: “We are kept by the Spirit of God through faith to salvation” (1 Pet 1:5). We have a guard that keeps us from despair, from sinking. God delivers us from ourselves by this inward guard. There is not the vilest atheist alive of whom this is not so: let God open his conscience and let him loose upon himself, to see what he deserves, to see what he is ready to sink into; if he does not see God’s mercy to deliver him, if he does not see an intercessor, a mediator to come between God and him, what would become of him? Therefore St. Paul says in Philippians 4:7, “The peace of God which passeth all understanding shall ‘guard’ your hearts and minds”; for so the word is in the original, “shall guard your hearts and minds.”

We have not only an outward guard, but we have a peace in us, the Spirit of God, the strengthening power of God, the sight of the love of God. God delivers us, as from all others, so from ourselves. Judas had no enemies. God let him loose to himself. What became of him? Ahithophel had no enemy. God let him loose to himself too, and then we see what a desperate conclusion he came to.

So, whoever you are who despise religion, who make anything of greater weight and regard than that, suppose you did not have an enemy in the world, but all were your friends, as Judas had all to be his friends. The Pharisees were his friends. He had money from them. But God opened his conscience, and he could not endure the sight of it. It spoke bitter things to him, when God opened an inward hell in his conscience. So God delivers us outwardly and inwardly, and the inward deliverance is double: partly from despair, partly from the rage of corruptions, as I said before. Is it not God who ties up our corruptions? There is such a world of sin in the heart of a man, as he often finds by experience when he meets with a temptation fitted to his disposition, that God’s children complain of themselves that the sins of their hearts have deceived them. So God delivers men from the rage of lusts. He ties up their corruptions, and delivers them from them. And when we fall, and are ready to despair because of them, he delivers us from despair. He does deliver; he is perpetually delivering. It implies that we always stand in need of deliverance.

Therefore, we should always look up to God. He is the breath of our nostrils; “In him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). In him we stand, and in him we are delivered in the midst of all our enemies. It should stir up our hearts to depend thankfully on God. He who has delivered us does deliver us. If he did not continue his deliverance, we would be continually in extreme danger.

“Who hath delivered us, and doth deliver us.” A Christian is never in such great perplexity that God is not delivering him, even in trouble. So the church says, “It is God’s mercy that we are not all consumed” (Lam 3:22).

The church was in a pitiful state then. One would have thought they were almost as low as they could be. Yet, notwithstanding, by the Spirit of God in those blessed men who lived in those times, they saw that they might have been worse than they were; and they saw that there was some danger from which they were delivered: “It is thy mercy that we are not all consumed.” God delivered them from extremity.

Indeed, in troubles God delivers in such a way that there may be a distinction, for the most part, between his own and others. “When I gather my jewels, it shall be known who serves me, and who serves me not” (Mal 3:17-18). God continually delivers, and more especially at some times.

As we say of providence, providence is nothing but a continued act of creation. And it is true. The same power that created all things out of nothing sustains all things. God upholds all things with his right hand.

For even as it is with a stone upheld by a man’s hand, let him withdraw his hand, and down it falls. So naturally all things, as they are raised out of nothing, will fall back to their first principles unless they are sustained by that continual act of creation which we call providence, to maintain them in the order in which they were set at the first. So there is a continual act of deliverance until we are delivered out of all troubles, and set in a place where there will be no more annoyance at all, either from within us or from without us. God still delivers.

Use. Oh, let this move us to a reverence of the eye and majesty of the great God, of the presence of God! Who will willingly provoke the one he stands in need of to deliver him?

Let God withdraw his deliverance, his preventing deliverance or his rescuing deliverance. For, as I said, there is a double deliverance. He prevents us from trouble, delivering us so that we do not fall into it; and when we have fallen into it, he rescues us. If God did not deliver us in this way, there is no harm that any others fall into but we would fall into the like, were it not for his preventing deliverance.

As Augustine says well, a man who is freed from sin ought to thank God as much for the sins he has not committed as for the sins he has had forgiven; for it is an equal mercy that a man not fall into sin as that his sin be pardoned. And so with troubles too. It is God’s mercy to prevent troubles as well as to deliver out of trouble when we have fallen into it.

Who would not reverence this great God? What miscreant wretches they are who train their tongues to swearing, to tear at that majesty! If he should withdraw his deliverance and protection from them, what would become of them?

Where there is perpetual dependence on any man, how it compels reverence and respect, even among men! It is atheism, therefore, for men to train their tongues to speak cursed language, to train their hearts to entertain profane thoughts of God, and to neglect the consideration of his majesty. Holy men in Scripture are said to walk with God, that is, to have God in their eye at all times, in all places, as he had them in his eye, to delight in them, to prevent troubles, and to deliver them from troubles when they were in them.

We should take notice of God’s special providence in this kind, that by deliverance God often gives us our lives; and it should teach us to consecrate our lives to God, “who doth deliver us.”

“In whom we hope,” or trust, or have confidence, “that he will yet deliver us.” Here the holy apostle brings the time to come within his trust. He speaks as if he were as assured of that as of anything past; and he founds his hope for the time to come on what was past and present. As he says in Romans 5:4, experience breeds hope, so it does here in the blessed apostle: “He hath delivered, and he doth deliver,” and why should I not trust in so good a God for the time to come? I hope he will deliver me. And surely we may do the same.

Doctrine. A Christian may rely on God for the time to come.

On what ground, on what pillars, is this confidence of the holy apostle built?

1. On the name of God, the name of his nature, “Jehovah,” “I am,” which signifies a constant being, “I was, I am, and am to come.”

There was danger, there is danger, and there will come danger. There was a God, there is a God, and there will be a God, Jehovah, I am. If there is a flux, a perpetual succession of evil, there is a perpetual being and living of the living Jehovah. So Christ is proved to be Jehovah, because he calls himself “He that was, and is, and is to come” (Rev 1:8), Jehovah, always like himself.

Now, if God is Jehovah, always like himself, then if he has delivered, if he does deliver, he will deliver. He is I AM in himself.

2. Now, as his name is, so are his nature and attributes. He is “I AM” in his love to his church. He is always in the present tense. “Whom he loves, he loves to the end” (John 13:1). He is unchangeable. “I, the Lord your God, change not; therefore, you are not consumed” (Mal 3:6). The reason why, notwithstanding our many provocations of him, we are not consumed is that his love to us is unchangeable. Though we are up and down, “he cannot deny himself” (2 Tim 2:13); and there is the foundation of our comfort, that though we change often, yet he never changes. No outward thing can change him, for then that thing would be God, and not he. No inward thing can change him, for then he would not be perfectly wise. So there is nothing either in himself or in the creatures that can change God. He is always like himself. Therefore, this is a ground of confidence for the time to come.

3. Likewise his covenant and promise. The covenant he has made with his children is an everlasting covenant, that he will be their God to death, and forever; and the gifts and graces of God, his inward love, are without repentance, and their union with Christ is an everlasting union.

4. And also experience built on these grounds, that God is Jehovah. What he has done he will do; and his attributes answer to his name; he is unchangeable, and his promise and covenant are unchangeable. Therefore, experience from the time past comes to be a good argument from these three grounds: because he is Jehovah, “I AM”; and because he is unchangeable, being Jehovah; and because his covenant is everlasting, because he is unchangeable.

For the foundation of all comfort is the name and being of God, Jehovah. From his being issue and flow his attributes, and they are, like him, unchangeable and eternal; and from his attributes it comes that whatever comes from him is unchangeable: his word, and promise, and covenant. Considering then that his name and being are such, that his attributes are such, that his covenant is such, issuing from his nature and attributes, experience of trust in the love and mercy of God is an unanswerable argument against all temptations. He has loved, he does love, and he will love; he has delivered, he does deliver, and he will deliver, and will “preserve us to his heavenly kingdom” (2 Tim 4:18).

It is a good argument. That God who is Jehovah, that God who is unchangeable, that God who is in covenant with me, who is my God and I his, that God of whom I have had experience for the time past, that he has been my God: why should I doubt for the time to come? Unless I will call in question the very being of God, the very attributes of God, and the truth of God in his covenant, and overturn everything, I may as well trust him for the time to come as for the time present: “He hath delivered me, he doth deliver me, and he will deliver me.”

Objection. But it may be objected that God does not always deliver, and therefore this seems not to be a sound truth. How does God deliver his children, when we see how they come to harm in troubles and persecutions, both the church in general and particular Christians, as there are many instances? It seems God does not deliver his own. They die martyrs. St. Paul himself died a bloody death. Therefore, how is this true, so that we may build a certain confidence on it, “he hath delivered, he doth deliver, and he will deliver”?

Answer. I answer that we must take this deliverance in its full breadth.

1. God delivers them in such a way as agrees with their own desires to be delivered; for cases may come in which God’s children will not be delivered. We see this in the three young men: when they were cast into the fire, they would not be delivered out of the fire, but they were delivered in it. And so in Hebrews 11:35 there is a notable example: “Tender women receive their dead again raised to life, and others likewise were tortured, and would not accept of deliverance.” They would have none on evil terms. So sometimes God does not deliver his children; no, nor will they be delivered, because perhaps their deliverance is promised on evil terms: that they may redeem their lives, if they will, by denying God and religion. That is an evil bargain.

2. Again, I answer that although God does not deliver his own from trouble, yet he delivers them in trouble, as in Isaiah 43:2 he promises to be with them, and to deliver them in the fire, and in the water.

God did not keep the martyrs out of the fire, but God was with them in the fire, and in the water, to support them by the inward fire of his Spirit, so that they might not be overcome by the outward fire and flame. So God delivers them in trouble, though not out of trouble.

There is an open deliverance, visible to the world, and a secret, inward, invisible deliverance. There is an open, glorious deliverance, as we see in the deliverance of the three young men, and many other examples. And there is an invisible deliverance, which is felt only by them and by God, who delivers them. He delivers them in the inward man. He delivers them from the evil of troubles, from sin and despair, so that they do not put their hands to sinful courses. He supports them inwardly with comfort, and supports them inwardly in a course of obedience. And that spiritual, inward deliverance is the best, and is what God’s people value more than deliverance out of trouble.

He does not deliver them from suffering evil, but he delivers them from doing evil, as in that notable place, 2 Timothy 4:17-18: “I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion, and the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work.” He does not say that God will deliver him from death, and from suffering the evil works of tyrants. No, but God will deliver him from carrying himself in an unseemly way, unbefitting such a man as he is, so that he may not disgrace his profession of faith. “He shall deliver me from every evil work.” And that is what the saints and martyrs and all good people desire: that God would deliver them, so that they may not sink in their minds, that they may not despair, that they may not carry themselves in an unseemly way in troubles, but as is fitting for the credit of the truth which they seal with their blood. “He hath delivered me, and he will deliver me from every evil work.” And what does he say afterward? “He shall preserve me to his heavenly kingdom.”

He does not say that God will preserve him from death. He knew he would die. But, “he shall preserve me to his heavenly kingdom.” So suppose that God does not deliver from death; yet he delivers by death.

There is a partial deliverance, and a total deliverance. There is a deliverance from this and that trouble, and there is a deliverance from all troubles. God delivers us most when we think he delivers least; for we think, How does he deliver his children, when we see them taken away by death, and oftentimes massacred?

That is one way of delivering them. By death God takes them from all miseries. They are out of the reach of their enemies. Death delivers them from all the miseries of this life, both inward, of sin, and outward, of trouble. All are ended in death. Therefore, when God does not deliver them from death, he delivers them by death, and takes them to his heavenly kingdom.

God oftentimes delivers his own by not delivering them out of trouble; for when he sees us in danger of some sin, he delivers us into trouble to deliver us from some corruption. Of all evils, God’s children desire to avoid being delivered up to themselves, and to their own lusts, to their own base earthly hearts, to a dead heart. He delivers them into trouble, therefore, to deliver them from themselves.

God will deliver us for the time to come, provided that we depend on him, and humble ourselves, and are like ourselves. When God delivers us at the first, it may be we are like ourselves, but perhaps afterward we grow prouder, and self-confident, and will not do what we formerly did. Therefore, though God sometimes puts us in hope of deliverance, yet he will not deliver us, because we are not prepared, we are not thoroughly humbled. We see this in Judges 20. There the Israelites were to attack the Benjamites. They go the first time, and suffer defeat. They go the second time, and are defeated. The third time they set on them with fasting and prayer, and then they have the victory.

What was the reason they did not have it the first time? They were not humbled enough; they did not flee to God with fasting and prayer. It may be there is some sin, some unmortified passion of revenge and anger. When God has subdued that, and brought it under, and brought us to fasting and prayer, then God will deliver us; as at the third encounter they carried away the victory. When we have not made our peace with God, we may come the first and second time, and not be delivered; but when we are thoroughly humbled, and brought low, then God will deliver us.

And then, we must know that these outward promises always carry a reservation for God’s glory and our eternal good. “God hath delivered me,” and he does, and will deliver me, if it may stand with his glory and my good. And therefore the soul says to God, with that reserved speech of the man in the gospel, Lord, “if thou wilt, thou canst heal me” (Matt 8:2). If you will, you can deliver me. If it is for your glory and my eternal good, or for the church’s good, you will do it.

And neither the church nor the particular members of the church desire deliverance on any other terms. But when it may be for the glory of God, and for the church’s good; when they may be instrumental by long life to serve God, and to serve the church; and when it is for their own advantage, to gather further assurance of their salvation, then he has, and does, and will deliver still. This is enough to build the confidence of God’s children on, for their deliverance for the time to come.

God will deliver his church and children, and he will deliver them out of all. He will “deliver Israel out of all his troubles” (Ps 25:22). He will not leave a horn or a hoof, as Moses said (Exod 10:26). He will not leave one trouble. He will deliver us at the last out of all, and advance us to his heavenly kingdom. His heart will melt over his church and children; he is a father, and he has the heart of a mother. This may serve to answer all objections that will arise in our hearts, as indeed we are ready to quibble against divine truths and comforts. Especially in the time of trouble and temptation, our hearts are full of complaints and disputes; therefore I thought it good to answer this.

But what is the argument of the apostle here? Especially experience: “He hath delivered, he doth deliver, and he will deliver me.”

Doctrine. As God will deliver his church for the time to come, so this is one main argument that he will do it: experience of former favors and deliverances.

St. Paul uses this familiarly: “I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion,” and “the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and preserve me to his heavenly kingdom” (2 Tim 4:17-18). A blessed arguing! So David argues, “God delivered me from the bear and the lion, and therefore he will deliver me from this uncircumcised Philistine” (1 Sam 17:37).

So Jacob pleads that God would deliver him from Esau. He had had experience of God’s mercy until then, and therefore he trusted that God would deliver him from Esau.

It is a good argument, to plead experience in order to move God to care for us for the time to come.

It was used by the Head of the church, by the body, the church, and by every member of the church.

1. It was used by the Head, in Psalm 22, which is a psalm made of Christ: “I was cast on thee from my mother’s womb, therefore be not far from me.”

It was true of David as a type, and it was true of the Son of David.

2. So the church pleads with God in various places. In Isaiah 51:2, God calls to his people to make use of former experience: “Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah that bare you.” Look to former times, “to the rock whence you were hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence you were digged.” He who was your God then is your God now. “Look to Abraham, your father,” and from there reason down to now.

So in Isaiah 63:7: “I will mention the lovingkindness of the Lord, and the praise of the Lord, according to the great goodness of the Lord bestowed upon us.” “In all their afflictions he was afflicted.” He speaks of former experience: “In love he bare them, and carried them all the days of old.” So in Psalm 44:1, “Our fathers have told us” this and this.

So both the Head of the church and the church itself plead with God from former experience, and God calls them to former experience: “Remember the rock whence you were hewn.” And he upbraids them because they forgot the works done to their fathers, in Psalm 105 and various others. He charges them with not making use of God’s former favors: “They forgot their Savior, that had done great things in Egypt” (Ps 106:21-22). They forgot his former favors. And in Psalm 106:13: “They soon forgat his works, and waited not for his counsel.”

And so it is with every particular saint of God. They have reasoned from experience of God’s favors, from the time past to the time to come. The Psalms are full of it. Among the rest: “I remembered the days of old, and meditated on all thy works; I mused on the works of thy hands” (Ps 143:5).

And in Psalm 116:3: “The sorrows of death” (as the apostle says here, “I was delivered from so great a death”), “the sorrows of death compassed me, the pains of hell took hold on me. I found sorrow and trouble. I cried unto the Lord: O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul. The Lord preserveth the simple: I was brought low, and he helped me.” What does he build on that? “Return unto thy rest, O my soul; the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. Thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.” What will he do for the time to come? “I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.”

Thus we see how we may plead with God, as the psalmist does so excellently in Psalm 71. There he goes along with God from the beginning of his days: “Thou hast been my hope, Lord, and my trust from my youth; by thee I have been held from the womb; thou tookest me out of my mother’s bowels: my praise shall be continually of thee” (Ps 71:5-6). What does he plead from this now, when he was old? “Cast me not off in the time of my old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth” (Ps 71:9).

Why? You have been my God from my youth; you have held me from the womb; therefore do not cast me off in my old age, do not forsake me when my strength fails. So he pleads with God: “Lord, thou hast taught me from my youth; now when I am old and gray-headed, forsake me not, till I have showed thy strength to this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come” (Ps 71:17-18).

Thus we see how the Spirit of God in his children makes a blessed use of former experience, to reason with God for the time to come; and it will supply us with arguments of every kind. We may reason from former spiritual favors to spiritual favors. For instance, God has begun a good work in us, therefore “He will finish it to the day of the Lord” (Phil 1:6). “His gifts and graces are without repentance” (Rom 11:29).

And we may reason from past spiritual favors to all favors to come that are of a lower nature: “He that spared not his own Son, but gave him to death for us all, how shall he not with him give us all things?” (Rom 8:32). It is a strong reason. He has done the greater, therefore he may well do the less.

We may reason from one favor to another; thus, from temporal to temporal. He has delivered me, therefore if it is for his glory and my good, he will deliver me. We may reason from once to all of the like: “God is my shepherd…” (Ps 23:1). “He hath been with me in the valley of death” (Ps 23:4). He has shown himself to be my shepherd in all my troubles. What does he build on that for the time to come? “Doubtless the lovingkindness of the Lord shall follow me all the days of my life” (Ps 23:6).

Use 1. This should teach us, then, this holy practice: to lay up observations of God’s dealing, and to take them as so many pawns and pledges to move God to regard us for the time to come. It is wondrously pleasing to him. If we come to men, it is no argument that will prevail to say, “You have done this for me, therefore you will,” because man has a finite power which is soon drawn dry. But God is infinite. He is a spring. He can create new. What he has done he can do, and more too. He is where he was at the first, and will be to the end of the world. He is never at a loss.

Therefore it is a strong argument to go to God and say, “Lord, you are my God from the womb. You have delivered me from such a danger and such an extremity. When I did not know what to do, you made a way open. I see by evident signs that it was your goodness. You are always like yourself, to be the same God now.” Therefore we should treasure up observations of God’s dealing with us.

Use 2. And consider with them the promises, and see how God has made good his promise by experience. Then join both together, and we may wrestle with God: “Lord, you have promised thus and thus. Indeed, I have had the performance of this promise in former times. And now I stand in need of the performance of that promise of which I have had experience before.”

Use 3. And desire God by his Spirit to sanctify our memories, so that we may remember fitting deliverances and fitting favors, and so that when the time comes we may have arguments from experience. What is the reason that we sink in temptation? That we are at a loss when troubles come? It comes from baseness of heart. Though God has shown his care and love to us by thousands of experiences, yet we are ready upon every new trouble to call everything into question, as if he had never been a good God to us. This is base unbelief of heart, and our neglect to treasure up blessed experiences of God’s former favor.

It should be the wisdom of every Christian to be well read in the story of his own life, and to turn back in his thoughts to what God has done for him, how God has dealt with him in the time past, what he has wrought in him by his Holy Spirit. Let us make use of it both in outward and in inward troubles, in desolation of spirit and in inward desertions. Let us call to mind whatever good has been wrought in us, by such a means, by such an ordinance, by such a book, by such an occasion.

Let us call to mind how effectually God has wrought in us in former times, and make use of this in the midst of the hour of darkness, when God seems to hide his face from us.

I do not see the sun on a cloudy day, yet for all that the sun is still in the sky. At midnight we hope for the morning. The morning will undoubtedly come, though it is midnight for the present. So David comforted himself in Psalm 77:11: “I will remember the works of the Lord; surely I will remember thy wonders of old, I will meditate of all thy works, and talk of thy doings.”

See his infirmity. When he was in trouble of mind, his sins began to upbraid him that God had left him. “I said in my infirmity, God hath forgotten me… and hath God forgotten to be gracious? hath he shut up his tender mercies in displeasure?” Then he says, “This was my infirmity, but I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High.” And he has the same in many other places, as in Psalm 143:4-5.

It shows the great weakness of our nature, which is ready to distrust God upon every temptation of Satan, as if God had never dealt graciously with us, as if God were changeable like ourselves. Let us labor to support ourselves in the time of temptation with the former experience of God’s gracious goodness, and his blessed work upon our souls. He who delivered us from the power of Satan, and keeps us from him still so that we do not sink into despair, will keep us for the time to come, so that “neither things present, nor things to come,” as the apostle says, “shall be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ” (Rom 8:38-39).

And let us, as it were, make diaries of God’s dealing with us. This is to be acquainted with God, as Job speaks (Job 22:21); this is to walk with God, to observe his steps toward us and ours toward him. It is a thing that will wondrously strengthen our faith, especially in old age, in gray hairs.

What a comforting thing it is when an aged man can look back to the former part of his life, and can reckon how God has given him his life again and again! how God has comforted him in distress! how God has raised him up in the midst of perplexity, when he did not know which way to turn! how God comforted him when he was disconsolate! All these meeting together in our last conflict, when all comfort will be little enough, what a comfort it will be!

And those who by their negligence and carelessness strip themselves of such blessed helps, what enemies they are to their own comfort!

Therefore consider God’s dealing, remember it, observe it, think of it, and desire God’s Spirit to help your minds and memories in this, so that nothing may be lost. For, I say, all will be little enough: the comforts of others, our own experience, the promises of Scripture. Our hearts are so ready to sink and to call God’s truth into question, and Satan will ply us so hard in the time of temptation.

Especially those who are old and advancing in years should be rich in these experiences, and even able to have a story of them. We should be able to make a book of experiences from our childhood. God’s care for every man in particular is as if there were none but he, and there is no man who is a Christian but observes God’s ways toward him, so that he can say, “God cares for me as if he cared for none but me.” Let us, therefore, treasure up experiences.

We see one notable example in David, how he pleads with God from his former experience: “Be thou my habitation, wherein I may continually rest: thou hast given command to save me; for thou art my rock and my fortress” (Ps 71:3). Whatever is comforting in the creature, God has taken the name of it to himself, so that in all troubles we might fly to him as the grand deliverer. For it is he who delivers, whatever the means may be, whether angels or men. It is he who sets all to work. Therefore he is called a “rock” and a “fortress,” and so on.

“Thou hast given command to save me” (Ps 71:3); that is, God has the command of all creatures. He can command the fish to give up Jonah. He can command the devils to go out. Christ did it when he was on earth in the days of his flesh; therefore much more now that he is in heaven. He can command winds and storms, and devils and all troubles. He has the command of all, as he says to Elijah, “Behold, I have commanded a widow to feed thee” (1 Kgs 17:9). “The hearts of kings are in his hand, as the rivers of waters” (Prov 21:1).

He who commands the creatures can command deliverance: “Thou hast commanded to save me,” for the time past. What does he say for the time to come? “Deliver me, O God, from the wicked: thou art my hope and trust from my youth… Cast me not off in mine old age; when my strength faileth me, forsake me not.” It is a good argument: “Thou hast been my God from my mother’s womb, therefore cast me not off in my old age.”

Well! we see here the practice of God’s children in all times. Let it be a pattern for our imitation, that we “do not forsake our own mercy,” as Jonah says (Jonah 2:8).

When God has provided mercy, and provided promises, to help us with experience, let us not betray it all through unbelief, through base despair in the time of trouble. If we had only God’s promise that he will be our God, that he will forgive our sins, would that not be enough? Is it not the promise of God, of Jehovah, who is truth itself? But when he has sweetened his promise by experience, and every experience is a pledge and an earnest of a benefit to come, what a good God we have! He is content not only to reserve the joys of heaven for us, but to give us a taste, to give us the assurance and earnest of the time to come, and, besides his promise, to give us comforting experience, and all to support our weak faith!

But remember also that this belongs only to God’s children, and in a good cause. For wicked men to reason thus, “He has, and therefore he will,” is a dangerous argument. They must not trust former experience. We must hope that God will continue as he has been, upon this ground, that we are his. Otherwise, it is the very ground of the ruin of wicked men: the presumption that God will bear with them as he has done.

The king of Sodom and his people were rescued out of trouble by Abraham and the army that he raised; yet they were pitifully consumed, not long after, by fire from heaven. Pharaoh was delivered by Moses’s prayer. God delivered him from ten plagues. They did not make good use of it, and they afterward perished miserably in the Red Sea. Rabshakeh comes and tells of the former prosperity of Sennacherib: “Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad?” (2 Kgs 18:34). Has not my lord overcome all? Yes, but it was immediately before his ruin.

Herod prospered and had good success in the beheading of James, and therefore he would set upon Peter. He thought to trust in his former success. He was flushed from the execution of James. He thought, “God has given me success and blessed me in this.” He thought God was of his mind, as it is in Psalm 50:21: “Thou thinkest me to be like thyself”; you think I hate those whom you hate, who are my dear children. Therefore Herod presumed to go on and lay hold of Peter. But the church falls to praying, and God strikes Herod with a fearful death. He was eaten up with lice, with worms bred in his body (Acts 12:23).

So I say it is no good argument to say, “I have prospered in wicked courses, I do prosper, and therefore I shall prosper. I have gotten a great deal of goods by ill means, and I have kept such ill company; and though some dislike my courses, yet I hope tomorrow will be as today.” Take heed; do not bless yourself. “God’s wrath will smoke” (Deut 29:20) against such people. “Treasure not up wrath unto thyself against the day of wrath” (Rom 2:5). Do not argue this way from God’s patience.

It is an argument for God’s children: “He has been my God, he is my God, and he will be my God.” For anyone else it is a fallacy, and as the prophet Amos says, “He that hath escaped the lion shall fall into the hands of the bear” (Amos 5:19). So the wicked who escape one danger will at length fall into another. It is no good argument for them to hope for the like of what they have had.

No, rather it is the worst outward sign in this world of a man in the state of reprobation, of a man hated by God, to prosper and have complacency in ill courses. God blesses him and lets him go on in smooth courses. As the streams of Jordan go on smooth and still and then enter into the Dead Sea, so many men live and go on in smooth, easy courses, and we see that at length they end either in despair, as Judas did, or in deadness of heart, as Nabal did.

So of all estates it is the most miserable when a man lives in a wicked course and God does not interrupt him in it with some outward judgment. It is a reason only for the children of God to support themselves with, in a good cause, in which they walk with a good conscience. Then they may truly say, “God, who has been my God until now, will be my God to the end of my days.”

Use. Is God so constant to his children in his love, and in his fatherly care and providence, that whom he has delivered, he does deliver and will deliver? Let us be constant in our service, and love back again. Let us return the echo back again and say, “I have served God, I do serve God, and I will serve God, because he has loved me, he does love me, and he will love me. He has delivered me, he does deliver me, and he will deliver me. As he is constant in love to me, so I will be constant in respect, in reverence and obedience to him.”

Therefore we see this in the saints of God. God loves them from everlasting to everlasting, being Jehovah; as he never alters in his nature, so he does not alter in his love to them; and so they never alter in their love to him. Therefore it is a clause in Scripture expressed by holy men, “To whom be praise for ever” (Ps 111:10). As they knew that he was their God forever and ever, so they purposed to be his people and to praise him forever and ever.

And because they cannot live here always themselves, they desire that there may be a generation to praise him forever and ever, and they lay a plot and foundation, as much as they can, so that God’s name may be known, so that religion may be propagated forever. They know God is their God forever. They know he is constant in love to them, and they are constant in their love to him and for his glory, “To whom be glory for ever.”

See here the happiness of a true Christian who is in covenant with God. He can say, “I have had my happiness and my portion, I have it, and I shall have it forever.” Take a worldling; can he say so? He cannot. God will confound his insolence if he should say so: “I have been rich, I have prospered in my course, I have attained this and that means, I still thrive, and I shall thrive.” Indeed, is it so? No! You are building upon the sands. However God has dealt with you, and however he deals with you now, you cannot secure yourself for the time to come.

Only the Christian who makes God his rock and his fortress, his shield and strong tower of defense, may say that he has had what is certain, and that he enjoys what is immutable and constant. God is his portion, his eternal portion. He has been good, he is good, and he will be good to eternity. No one else, who has a happiness severed from God, can say so.

Take a sound Christian in all references of time, and he is a happy man. If he looks back, God has delivered him from Satan, from hell and damnation, and from many dangers. If he looks to the present, he is surrounded by a guard of angels and by the providence of God. God does deliver him. He has a guard about him that cannot be seen except with the eye of faith. The devil sees it well enough, as we see in Job: “Thou hast hedged him about” (Job 1:10). How can I come at him? He looked about to see if he could get in to Job, to see if the hedge had any breach, but there was none. God’s providence surrounded him. God has delivered and does deliver. And if the Christian looks to the time to come, God will deliver; he sees that “neither things present, nor things to come, shall be able to separate him from the love of God” (Rom 8:38).

And this is true not only of outward dangers, but especially of spiritual ones. God has been gracious. He has given Christ. “How shall he not with him give us all things?” (Rom 8:32). A Christian is in the favor of God now; how shall he not be so forever? He has eternity, world without end, to comfort himself in: that as long as God is God, he has comfort. As long as he has a soul, so long Jehovah, the living God, will be his God, the God of both his body and soul. He is the “God of Abraham,” therefore he will raise his body. He is the God “that raiseth the dead,” and he will forever glorify both body and soul in heaven.

Look which way he will, a Christian has cause for much comfort. Why should he be dismayed by anything in the world? Why should he not serve God with all the encouragement there can be, when he has nothing to care for but to serve him? As for the matter of deliverance and protection, it does not belong to us, but to him. Let us do what belongs to us, and he will do what belongs to him, if “we commit our souls to him as to a faithful Creator in well-doing; he hath delivered us, he doth deliver us, and he will deliver us, and preserve us to his heavenly kingdom.”

You also helping together by prayer for us (2 Cor 1:11).

In these words the holy apostle sets down the subordinate means that God has sanctified to continue deliverance to his children. “He hath delivered, he doth deliver, and he will deliver us for the time to come” (2 Cor 1:10). Was this confidence of St. Paul a presumption without the use of means? He will deliver us, “you also helping together by prayer for us.” The chief cause does not take away the subordinate, but establishes it. And though God is the great deliverer, and “salvation belongeth to the Lord” (Ps 3:8), as the Scripture speaks (salvation and deliverance, that is his work), yet he has nevertheless ordained the subordinate means of deliverance, not for any defect of power, but for the multiplication and manifestation of his goodness. And as he will deliver, so he will deliver in his own manner and by his own means. He will deliver, but nevertheless you must pray: “you also helping together by prayer for us.”

The words have no difficulty in them. “You helping together,” that is, you joining together in prayer with me. I pray for myself, and with you together helping me by prayer, God will deliver me.

The points to consider in these words are these:

First of all, that in the time of peril, or in the lack of any benefit, the means of being delivered from the one and of conveying the other is prayer. God will do this, “you praying.”

The second is this, that God’s children can pray for themselves.

The third is that nevertheless, though they can pray for themselves, yet they seek the joint help of others, and they need the help of others.

The fourth is that our own prayers and the prayers of others, all joining together, are a mighty prevailing means for the conveying of all good and for the removing of any ill. God will “deliver me, you helping by your prayers.”

Doctrine 1. Prayer is a means to convey all good, and to deliver from all ill.

It is because God has established this order: “Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee” (Ps 50:15). He joins deliverance to calling upon him. So in Psalm 91:15, a notable place, besides others. Indeed, the Psalms are wonderfully full of this. “He shall call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him, and honor him.” Mark it: “He shall call upon me, and I will deliver him”; and more than that, for God’s benefits are complete. He not only delivers, but he honors: “I will deliver him, and advance him” (Ps 91:15).

God not only delivers his children by prayer, but he “delivers them from evil works, and preserves them to his heavenly kingdom” (2 Tim 4:18). He delivers them and advances them together. He does not do his work by halves. “The eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open to their cry” (Ps 34:15). His eyes are upon them, to see their miseries and wants. Yes, but though his eyes are open, his ears must be open too, to hear their cry. If his eyes were open to see their wants, and his ears were not open to hear their cry, his children might be miserable still.

Sometimes God delivers wicked men. He preserves them. But the preservation of a wicked man is only a reservation of him for future judgment, feeding him for the slaughter; and that deliverance is not worth speaking of. But as for his children, his eyes are open on them, and his ears open to hear their cry. As they are in misery, so that he sees them, so they must cry, that he may hear them. God has established this order. He will deliver, but prayer is the means.

Now, as for the reason that he has established this order: it is for his glory and our own good.

Reason 1. It is for his own glory, because prayer gives him the glory of all his attributes. For when we go to him, do we not give him the glory of his omniscience, that he knows our hearts and knows our wants? Do we not give him the glory of his omnipotence, that he can help us? Do we not give him the glory of his omnipresence, that he is everywhere? Do we not give him the glory of his truth, that he will make good his promise, which we bring before him and press him with? What a world of glory God has by prayer!

Reason 2. And then, for our sakes he has established this order of conveying everything by prayer.

(1) To show our dependence on him. For since we stand at such a low distance under God, it is good that we should know from whom we have everything. Therefore he will have us pray to him. He commands it. Prayer is an act of self-denial. It makes us look out of ourselves, higher. Prayer acknowledges that what we have, we have not of ourselves but from him. Prayer shows a necessary dependence on him to whom we pray; for if we had it at home, we would not go abroad.

(2) And then again, it does us good, because as it gives God all the glory, so likewise it exercises all the graces in a man. There is not a grace but is put into the fire, quickened and kindled by prayer. For it sets faith to work to believe the promise. It sets hope to work to expect the things prayed for. It sets love to work, because we pray for others who are members of the church. It sets obedience to work, because we do it with respect to God’s command. Prayer sets humility to work: we prostrate ourselves before God, and acknowledge that there is no goodness or desert in us. There is not a grace in the heart but is exercised in prayer.

The devil knows this well enough, and therefore of all exercises he labors to hinder the exercise of prayer, for he thinks that then we fetch help against him; and indeed, so we do. For in one prayer God is honored, the church is benefited, grace is exercised, the devil is vanquished. What a world of good there is in prayer! So God has established this order upon great reasons, drawn from our own comfort and good, and from his glory.

Since God has established this order, away with idle suggestions, partly carnal and partly devilish: “God knows what we lack, and God knew before all time what we need, and he may grant it if he will.” Yes, but that God who decreed, at the same time that he decreed to convey good, decreed at that same time to convey it this way, by prayer. Therefore let us not disjoin what God has joined.

Christ knew that God decreed all, and yet he spent whole nights in prayer. And who knew God’s love more than he? Yet because as man he was a creature, because as man he received good from his Father, to show his dependence he continually prayed; he sanctified everything by prayer. And all the holy men of God from the beginning, the more certain they were of anything by promise, the more eager and earnest and fervent they were in prayer. It was a ground of prayer. They knew that this was God’s order. Therefore, if they had a promise, they turned it into prayer at once.

The means of executing God’s decree and the decree itself of the thing both fall under the same decree. When God has decreed to do anything, he has decreed to do it by these means. So prayer comes within the decree as well as the thing prayed for. In Ezekiel 36:37, I will do this, but I will be inquired of by the house of Judah. I will do it, but they shall ask me, they shall seek to me first. So there is a notable place, Philippians 1:19, “I know that this shall turn to my salvation through your prayers.” We must not, then, reason so as to make the chief cause take away the subordinate means; but let us serve God’s purpose and providence, let us serve God’s order. He has established this order and course; let us serve it. This is the obedience of faith, the obedience of a Christian.

Doctrine 2. The second thing is that God’s children are enabled to pray for themselves. I observe this all the more because the vilest men alive, when they are in trouble, are like Pharaoh: Oh, go to Moses, let him pray for me! He could not pray for himself. He was such a desperate, wretched creature that he knew God would not regard him. Therefore he says, Go to Moses. And so Simon Magus, who was a wretch, yet when Peter pronounced a judgment against him, said, “Pray thou that none of these things light upon me” (Acts 8:24). As if to say, “You are accepted by God; my conscience is so full of terror and horror, and so full of sin, that I dare not pray.” A wicked man may desire others to pray for him; but, alas! his conscience is seized with horror for his sins, and his purposes are so cruel, so earthly, and so base, that he knows he cannot pray with acceptance for himself. God’s children, as they desire the prayers of others, so they can pray themselves. They do not desire that others should do it all, but that they would “help together with their prayers.”

Reason. Now, the reason that God’s children can pray for themselves, and must pray for themselves, is that they are children; and as soon as ever they are new born, they are known by their voice, by crying. A child, as soon as he is born, cries. A newborn child cries as soon as he is new born. He cries, “Abba, Father.” He goes to his Father immediately. In Acts 9:11, as soon as Paul was converted, he cries, he goes to God by prayer. Therefore God, when he directs Ananias to him, says, Go to such a place, and there you will find Paul, “he is praying.” As soon as he is converted he is praying.

God’s children have the spirit of adoption, the spirit of sons. God is their Father, and they exercise the prerogative and privilege they have. They go to their Father and cry to him. In Zechariah 12:10 you have a promise that God would pour the Spirit of supplication upon his children. They cannot pray of themselves, but God pours a Spirit of supplication into their hearts; and his Spirit being poured into them, they can pour forth their prayers to him again.

Use. The use of this is not to content ourselves with turning this duty of prayer over to the minister and to good people: “Oh, pray for us.” Yes, we do so; but pray for yourself. If you want another man’s prayers to do you good, you must help with your own prayers; be good yourself.

Men turn it off with light phrases and speeches: “You must pray for us.”

Alas! What good will our prayers do you if you are a graceless, blasphemous, carnal, brutish person? If your conscience tells you by the light of nature (for the word of God, it may be, you do not care for) that you are so, what good can our prayers do you? If you mean to be so, then though Noah, Daniel, and Job, says God, should stand before me for this people, I would regard them for themselves; I would not hear them for this people (Ezek 14:14). Let us be able and willing to help ourselves, and then we will pray to some purpose.

God loves to hear the cries of his children. The very broken cries of a child are more pleasing than the eloquent speech of a servant. Sometimes the children of God do not have the Spirit of prayer as at other times; and then they must do as Hezekiah did, they must “mourn as a dove, and chatter as a swallow” (Isa 38:14). And so it was with Moses at the Red Sea: he cried, and the Lord heard his prayer, though he did not speak a word. So in Romans 8:26, “The Spirit teacheth us to sigh and groan.”

When we cannot pray, we must strive with ourselves against unbelief and deadness of heart by all means possible. Sighs and groans are prayers to God. “My groans and my sighs are not hid from thee,” says the prophet David (Ps 38:9). And so in Lamentations 3:56, the church, being in distress, says, “Thou hast heard my voice, hide not thine ear at my breathing.” Sometimes the children of God can only sigh and breathe and groan to God; for there is such confusion in their thoughts, they are so bewildered at their troubles, they are so overtaken, that they cannot utter a distinct prayer. And then they sigh and breathe and groan; they help themselves one way or another. If you are a child of God, though you are oppressed with grief, yet cry and groan to God; strive against your grief all you can. And though you cannot cry distinctly, yet mourn as well as you can, and God knows the groans of his own Spirit, and those cries are eloquent in his ears; they pierce heaven.

But this being only laid down as a ground, the third observation is this: as God conveys all blessings by prayer, and God’s children have a spirit of prayer, so God’s children desire the prayers of others, and it is the duty of others to pray for them. “You also helping by your prayer for us.”

Doctrine 3. Christians ought to help one another by prayer.

The holy and blessed apostle was sure of God’s love to him and of his care of him; yet nevertheless he was just as sure that God would use both his own prayers and the prayers of others to continue this his goodness to him. And therefore, the greater the faith, the greater the care of prayer. And where there is no care of prayer, either our own or that of others for us, there is no faith at all.

There is an article of our faith which, I think, is little believed. Though it is said over and over and heard often, yet it is little practiced: “I believe in the communion of saints.” Is there a communion of saints? In what does this communion consist? Among many other things, in this, that one saint prays for another.

This is one branch of the communion of saints. They share in privileges, for they are all the sons of God, they are all heirs of heaven, they are all members of Christ, they are all redeemed by the blood of Christ; and so all other privileges belong to all alike. As there is a communion in privileges, so there is a communion in duties toward one another. One prays for another. There is a mutual exchange of duty. And those who truly believe the communion of saints truly practice the duties belonging to that blessed society; that is, they pray for one another. I mean here on earth. Here we have a command, here we have a promise, here we have mutual necessities. I have need of them, and they have need of me. We have need of one another.

In heaven there is no such necessity; yet there may be, as divines grant, a general wish for the church, because the saints lack their bodies, and because they lack the completion of the elect.

Where there is a lack of happiness, there will be a general desire that God would finish these days of sin; but as for any particular necessities of ours, they cannot know them. “Abraham hath forgotten us, and Israel knows us not” (Isa 63:16). There is a communion of saints, and this blessed communion and society trade in this way, in praying for one another. God commands that we should “pray one for another” (Jas 5:16).

Every Christian is a priest and a prophet. Now the priest’s duty was to pray, and the prophet’s duty was to pray. Now, as the priest carried the tribes on his breast, only to signify that he had them in his heart, and that he was a type of Christ, who has us in his heart always in heaven, to make intercession for us; so in some sense every true Christian is a priest. He must carry the church and people of God in his heart. He must have a care of others. He must not only pray for himself, but for others, as he himself would have an interest in the common prayer, “Our Father,” as Christ teaches us. Not that a Christian may not say, “My Father,” when we have particular ground and occasion to go to God. But Christ, being about to direct the church of God, teaches us to say, “Our Father.” There is therefore a regard to be had by every true Christian for the condition of others.

Reason. The reason is that God’s children sometimes cannot pray so well. Though they always have a spirit of prayer, so that they can groan to God, yet in some cases they cannot pray so well for themselves, as in sickness. Affliction is a better time to pray in than sickness; for affliction gathers and unites the spirits together. It makes a man stronger to pray to God. But sickness disorders the powers of the soul. It disorders the instruments that the soul works by. It disorders the animal spirits which the understanding uses. They are inflamed and disordered and confused. Now, since the spirits that are the instruments of the soul are troubled with sickness, sickness is not so fit a time for a man to pray for himself.

Though God hears the groans of his Spirit, as David says, “My sighs are not hid from thee” (Ps 38:9), yet nevertheless it is good at this time to send for those who can make a more distinct prayer, though, it may be, the sick themselves are great Christians. Therefore St. James says, “Is any man afflicted? let him pray; is any man sick? let him send for the elders of the church, and let them pray for him” (Jas 5:13-14); not that he is not able to pray for himself, but let them help by joining together with him to God. “And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up” (Jas 5:15).

Indeed, I add more, for the illustration of the point: it is so true that God regards the prayers of one for another, that he regards the prayer of weak ones for grand ones. Great Christians are helped by lowly ones; yes, pastors are helped by the people. St. Paul, a man eminent in grace and place, a grand Christian, and for place an apostle, was yet helped by the prayers of the weak Corinthians. So a Christian weak in grace and place may help a greater Christian than himself, both in grace and in place.

Parents are helped by the prayers of their children. Magistrates by those who are under them. The rich are helped by those who are poor. The ministers by the prayers of the people: “You helping by your prayers.” The prayers of the people prevail for the ministers; for though there is a civil difference, which shall all end in death, yet in the communion of saints there is no difference. A poor man may be rich in faith, as St. James says (Jas 2:5), and one may have as much credit in the court of heaven as another. As St. Augustine says well, God has made the rich for the poor and the poor for the rich: the rich to relieve the poor, and the poor to pray for the rich; for herein one is accepted for another.

St. Paul places great weight on the virtue and efficacy of the prayers of the Corinthians, for himself, a great apostle. And so in Romans 15:30, I beseech you for the love of Christ, and for the blessed work of the Spirit, strive by prayer together with us. As ever you felt Christ do good to you, and as ever you felt the efficacy of the Spirit, strive with God, wrestle by prayer for me. And so in every epistle he begs their prayers.

And ministers need the prayers of people to God as well as any others, or rather more; for as God conveys much good to others by them, so Satan maligns them more than other men. “Aim not at small nor great, but at the King of Israel” (1 Kgs 22:31); pick him out. So the devil aims not at small nor great, but at the guides of God’s people, at the leaders of his army. “I will smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered” (Zech 13:7).

Therefore pray for them, that they may have abilities, that they may have parts and gifts, and that they may have a willing mind, a large heart to use them, that they may have success in using them, that they may have strength of the outward man, that they may have protection from unreasonable men: “Pray for us, that we may be delivered from unreasonable and absurd men” (2 Thess 3:1-2). “Absurd men,” for none but absurd men will wrong those by whom God conveys so much good, as he does by the ministry. It is their lot to be vexed with such men often; and therefore, pray for us.

What is the reason of this, that lowly Christians may help great Christians by their prayers?

God will have it so. Great Christians do not have the spirit of prayer alike at all times. Though it is supposed they have it, yet the more help there is, the more hands are put to the work, the sooner it is dispatched. As in the removing of a burden, the more who join together, the sooner it is removed; and so in the drawing of anything, the more hands, the speedier the dispatch.

So when we would draw blessings from heaven, the more prayers there are that offer violence to God, the more we draw from him. If it is a judgment that hangs over our heads, the more there are who labor to put away the judgment by prayer, and to remove the cloud that hangs over our heads, the sooner it passes by. Many help much. As many brands make a great fire, and many little rivers running into a common channel make the river swell greater, so prayer is strong when it is carried by the spirits of many; yes, even of those who are not, perhaps, so well experienced.

But, as I said, sometimes men not only great in place but great in grace need the help of others. The spirit of prayer is not in a like measure in them. Sometimes they are too complacent, sometimes they are too presumptuous, sometimes too negligent and careless in stirring up the grace of God in them; sometimes they are prone to be lifted up too much, sometimes to be cast down too much.

If this is so, what a benefit it is, then, to have the help of others, when often a man lesser in gifts may have as great a measure of the spirit of prayer as another!

Prayer is not a work of gifts, but of grace. It is a work of a broken heart, of a believing heart.

And in prayer there are various gifts which are far more eminent in one than in another, yet all excellently good in their kind. Some have the gift of being fluent, of being large in words, in expressing themselves. Some men do not have so much of that, but they have a broken heart. Some again have it in zeal and earnestness of affections. So there is something in the very action of prayer that helps in many. One helps with his ability, with his large gift of speech; another with his humble and broken spirit; another with his zeal and ardor to wrestle and strive with God to get a blessing.

Moses was a man of a stammering tongue, and yet Moses was a man for prayer. Aaron and Hur were silent, and had to hold up his hands, but Moses must pray; and yet Moses was no man of eloquence, and he offers that as his excuse when he was to go to Pharaoh (Exod 4:10).

Therefore it is a matter of the heart, a matter of grace, of humility, of strong faith, and not a matter of words, though that is a special gift too.

Reason 1. God will have it so in his wise dispensation, because he will have every man esteemed, and because he will have no man be proud. He will humble his own, to let them know that they stand in need of the prayers of the weakest. Every man in the church of God has some gifts, so that none should be despised; and none have all gifts, so that none should presume too much and be proud. In the church of God, in the body of Christ, there is no idle member. In the communion of saints there is no one unprofitable. Everyone can do good in his own kind.

Reason 2. God will have this, because he will have none despised. It was a fault in St. James’s time. The brother of high degree despised the brother of low degree (Jas 1:9); that is, the rich Christians despised the poor Christians. But St. James says, “Hath not God chosen the poor in the world, rich in faith?” (Jas 2:5). Now faith is the ground of prayer. It is a fault in all times. Men have swelling notions of themselves against the lowlier sort, and undervalue them. God will not have it so. He will have us see that we stand in need of the lowliest Christians; and by this he will raise up the dejected spirit of weak Christians.

What a comfort it is, then, that I should be able to help the greatest man in the world! That he should be indebted to me for that duty! So it abases the greatest, that they stand in need of the lowliest; and it raises the lowliest, that the greatest are helped by them; and it knits all into a sweet communion. For when a great Christian thinks, “Yonder poor Christian, he is in favor in the court of heaven! However he may be neglected in the world, he may do me good by his prayers,” it will make him esteem and value that Christian the more, and it will make him value his friendship. He will not disparage him. He will not grieve the spirit of such a one, whose prayer may prevail with God and draw down a blessing for him. We see here the Corinthians helping the apostle by their prayers.

You see the reason of it: that God will knit Christians together, and humble those who think themselves great, and that he might comfort every lowly Christian.

Use 1. Therefore let no Christian slight his own prayers, no, not those who are young ones. It was a good saying of that great divine Paul Fagius, who was a great Hebraist in his time, and one who helped to restore the gospel in England. He used to say, “I wish the prayers of younger scholars; for their souls are not tainted with sin, and God often hears the poor young ones (that are not tainted, and soiled with the sins of the world, as others are) sooner than others. A weak Christian, that has not a politic head and a devilish spirit, meaner persons that are but young ones, they have more acquaintance, many times, with God than others.”

Do not despise the prayer of anyone. And let no one despise his own prayer. Some will say, “Shall I pray to God? I pray! You pray for me.” Why do you not pray for yourself? “I am unworthy.” Unworthy? Do you esteem it so basely, when God is not only willing that you should pray for yourself, but requires you to pray for others? Do you have so low an esteem of this incense? “Let my prayers be directed in thy sight as incense,” says David (Ps 141:2). God esteems this as a sweet fragrance, and will you say, “I am not worthy”? Do not abase what he has been pleased so to honor. God esteems it so highly that he will hear your prayers not only for yourself, but for others.

Use 2. Again, there is no pretext for anyone to be idle in the profession of religion. You have no riches, you cannot give; you have no position, you cannot show favor to others; but if you are a child of God, you have the Spirit of prayer, the Spirit of adoption, the Spirit of a son in you, which enables you to pray for yourself and others. There is no Christian who cannot do this: “You also helping together by your prayers for me.”

The fourth and last observation from these words is this:

Doctrine 4. Prayer is a prevailing course with God.

It prevails for the removing of ill, or for the preventing of ill, or for the obtaining of good. “I shall be delivered”: I shall be continued in the state of deliverance; but still you must pray. Your prayers will obtain and beg this from God.

Reason 1. Prayer is a prevailing course because, as I said, it is obedience to God’s order. He bids us call on him, and he will hear us. Prayer binds him with his own promise: “Lord, you cannot deny yourself, you cannot deny your promise. You have promised to be near all those who call on you in truth; and though with much weakness, yet we call on you in truth; therefore we cannot but be persuaded of your goodness, that you will be near us.” So it is a prevailing course, because it is obedience to God’s order.

Reason 2. And it is a prevailing course because it likewise sets God to work. Faith is in the heart, and faith sets prayer to work, for prayer is nothing but the voice of faith, the flame of faith. The fire is in the heart and spirit, but the voice, the flame, the expression of faith, is prayer. Faith in the heart sets prayer to work. And what does prayer do? It goes into heaven, it pierces heaven, and it sets God to work, because it brings him his promise, it brings him his nature: “Your nature is to be Jehovah, good and gracious, and merciful to your own! Your promise answers to your nature, and you have made rich and precious promises.”

As faith sets prayer to work, so prayer sets God to work. And when God is set to work by prayer (as prayer must bind him, bringing himself to himself, bringing his word to him; every man is as his word, and his word is as himself), God, being set to work, sets everything to work. He sets heaven and earth to work, when he is set to work by prayer. Therefore it is a prevailing course. He sets all his attributes to work for the deliverance and rescue of his church from danger, and for the doing of any good. He sets his mercy and goodness to work, and his love, and whatever is in him.

You see, then, why it is a prevailing course: because it is obedience to God, and because it sets God to work. It overcomes him who overcomes all. It overcomes him who is omnipotent. We see that the woman of Canaan overcame Christ by the strength that she had from Christ. And Moses overcame God: “Let me alone” (Exod 32:10); why do you press me? “Let me alone.” Prayer offers violence to God, it prevails with him; and what prevails with God prevails with all things else. The prayer of faith has the promise. “The prayer of a righteous man,” in faith, “it prevails much,” says St. James (Jas 5:16). Consider now, if the prayer of one righteous man prevails much, what will the prayer of many righteous men do? As St. Paul says here, my prayers and your prayers, being joined together, must prevail.

For instances, the Scripture is full of them, showing how God has granted deliverance by the help of prayer. I will give only a few instances from former times, and some considerations from later times.

For former times: in Exodus 17, you see that when Amalek set upon the people, Moses did more good by prayer than all the army by fighting. As long as Moses’ hands were held up by Aaron and Hur, the people of God prevailed: a notable instance to show the power of prayer. In 2 Chronicles 14, Asa prayed to God and pressed God with arguments, and the people of God prevailed. In 2 Chronicles 20, there you have good King Jehoshaphat. He prays to God, and he brings to God his former experience. He presses God with his covenant, with his nature, and the like arguments spoken of before; and then he complains of their necessity: “Lord we know not what to do, our eyes are towards thee” (2 Chr 20:12). And God’s opportunity is when we are at the worst and the lowest. Then he is near to help. “We know not what to do, but our eyes are towards thee,” says that blessed king, and then he prevailed.

So the prophet Isaiah and Hezekiah both joined together in prayer to God, and God heard the prophet, and the prayer of the king. They spread the letter before the Lord (Isa 37:14) and prayed to God when Rabshakeh railed against God, and they prevailed mightily.

Esther was only a woman, and a good woman she was. The church was in extremity in her time. She took this course: she fasted and prayed, she and her people; and we see what an excellent outcome came of it, the overthrow of proud Haman and the deliverance of the church.

In Acts 12, Herod, having good success in the beheading of James, and being flushed with the blood of James, would set upon Peter too. The church, fearing the loss of so worthy a pillar, fell to praying. See the outcome of it: God struck him immediately. Woe to the birds of prey when God’s turtledove mourns! When God’s turtledove, the church, mourns and prays to God, woe to those birds that violently prey on the poor church! Woe to Herod, and to all bloody persecuting tyrants! Woe to all malignant despisers of the church, when the church begins to pray! For though she does not direct her prayers against them in particular, yet it is enough that she prays for herself, and she herself cannot be delivered without the overthrow of her enemies. You see these instances of old.

I will name only some from later times. What has prayer not done? Let us not be discouraged. Prayer can scatter the enemies, and move God to command the winds, and the waters, and everything against his enemies. What can prayer not do, when the people of God have their hearts quickened and raised to pray? Prayer can open heaven. Prayer can open the womb. Prayer can open the prison and strike off the fetters. It is a picklock. We see in Acts 16 that when St. Paul was cast into prison, he prayed to God at midnight, and God shook the foundations of the prison, and everything flew open (Acts 16:26). So St. Peter was in prison, he prayed, and the angel delivered him (Acts 5:19). What can prayer not do? It is of an omnipotent power, because it prevails with an omnipotent and almighty God.

Oh, that we were persuaded of this! But our hearts are so full of atheism by nature that we do not think of it. We do not think that there is such efficacy in prayer. Instead we cherish base notions, “God may if he will …,” and put everything on him, and never serve his providence and command. He commands us to call on him, and he will do things in his providence, but he will do them in this order. We must pray, first to acknowledge our dependence on him.

If we were thoroughly convinced of the prevailing power of prayer, of what good might be done by it, as has been done in former times, certainly we would beg from God above all things the spirit of supplication. And if we have the spirit of prayer, we can never be miserable. If a man has the spirit of prayer, whatever he lacks, he causes it to come from heaven. He can beg it by prayer. And if he goes without the thing, he can beg contentment, he can beg patience, he can beg grace, and beg acquaintance with God; and acquaintance with God will put a glory upon him.

It is such a thing as all the world cannot take from us. They cannot take God from us, they cannot take prayer from us. If we were convinced of this, we would be much in prayer, in private prayer, in public prayer, for ourselves, for the church of God.

The church of God abroad, you see, is now in flames. If the Spirit of God is in our breasts in any measure and degree, we will sympathize with the state of the church. We wish them well, it may be; but wishes are one thing, and prayer is another. Do you pray for the church? If we could pray for the church, it would be better. We would do more good with our prayers at home than they will do by fighting abroad, just as Moses did more good on the mount by prayer than they did in the valley by fighting. Undoubtedly it would be so.

We may fear that success will be the less, because the spirits of men are so flat and so dead in this matter. The time has been, not long ago, when we were stirred up more to pray, upon the apprehension of some fears, to pray with earnestness and feeling, expressing some desire in wishing their welfare. But now one can hardly converse with any who have so deep an apprehension as they had in former times.

Now therefore, as we desire to have a share in the good of the church, so let us remember to present the condition of the church to God. And let us present the church of God to him as his own, as his turtledove, as his love.

You know that when they would move Christ, they told him, “He whom thou lovest is sick,” Lazarus “whom thou lovest” (John 11:3). So: “Lord, she whom you love, the church, whom you gave your Son to redeem with his blood; the church to whom you have given your Spirit to dwell in; the church in which you have your dwelling among men; the church that alone glorifies you, and in whom you will be eternally glorified in heaven; that church is sick, it is weak, it is in distress, it is in danger.”

Let us make this duty a matter of conscience; let us help the church with our prayers. St. Paul says, I shall be delivered, together with the help of your prayers (Phlm 22). Without doubt the church would be delivered, if we had the grace to help them with our prayers. And God will so glorify the blessed exercise of calling on him that we, I say, will do more good at home than they will do abroad. Let us believe this; it is God’s manner of dealing.

In the book of Judges, in that story of the Benjamites concerning the wrong done to the priest’s concubine, the rest of the tribes of Israel, when they set on the Benjamites, asked counsel of God twice, and went against them, and were defeated. But the third time they came to God: “Then all the children of Israel came to the house of the Lord, and wept, and sat there before the Lord; and fasted that day till the evening” (Judg 20:26). They thought that because they had a good cause, they might prevail without fasting and prayer, and without seeking the Lord; and therefore they went against them twice, and were shamefully foiled, to their great loss. But when at last they came and humbled themselves before God, and fasted, and inquired of God the cause of that ill, after that they had a glorious victory.

Christ tells his disciples that there are some kinds of devils that will not be cast out except by fasting and prayer (Matt 17:21). So there are some kinds of miseries, some kinds of calamities, some kinds of sins, that will not be overcome, and from which God will not deliver the church, except by fasting and prayer.

And so for private Christians: they have some sins that are master sins, personal sins. It is not a slight prayer and a wish that will mortify them. There must be fasting, and prayer, and humiliation; and in that way those devils are cast out. I wish we were persuaded of it, that it is such a prevailing thing, holy prayer, to help ourselves in sin, and to help us in misery, and to help the church of God.

Use. Well, since the prayers even of the lowliest Christians are so prevailing, let us learn to respect them; for as they can pray, so their prayers will prevail. And take heed that we do not grieve the Spirit of God in any poor saint, so that they may pray for us with willingness and cheerfulness. Only consider what a blessing it is to have a stock going, to have our part in the common stock. For there is a common stock of prayer in the church; every Christian can pray, and pray prevailingly. What a blessing it is to be a good Christian, to have a portion in the prevailing prayers of others! When a man is dead and dull, and unfit himself, this may comfort him, that others have the spirit of zeal and will supply his want. It is a blessed thing!

Let us consider the excellency of this duty of prayer, from the prevalence of it, to whet us on to the exercise of it. It is a happiness to have a part in it. It is a blessing by which we can do good to others. We can reach those who are many hundreds of miles off, those who are at the farthest end of the world. When we cannot reach them in other ways, we can reach them by prayer. We cannot speak to them, they are far off, but we can speak to God for them; and he can convey to them the good that we desire. What a blessed condition this is!

Question. But someone may say, “How shall I know that I can pray, that I am in a state to help the church of God, and to prevail for it by my prayers?”

1. I answer, first of all, you will know it if you are as willing to help in other ways, if you can, as by prayer. St. James speaks in his time of certain men who would feed the poor people of God with good words (Jas 2:16). Now good words come cheap, but they will do nothing. They will buy nothing; they will not clothe or feed. So St. James tells them that that is only a dead faith.

So there is a company of people who will only pray for the church when they are able to do otherwise, when they have influence, and estate, and riches, and friends, and position, and many things that they might use for the good of others and for the good of the church. Some will be ready to say, “I pray for the church, and I will pray.” Yes, but are you not able to do something else? When St. Paul wishes them to pray for him, he does not mean prayer only; that duty implies doing all that they pray for, to help their prayers, or else it is a mocking of God. If you pray aright for the church, you are willing to relieve them; if you pray for your friend, you are willing to help him and support him; if you pray for anyone, you are willing to stand by them. That is one test, which reveals many to be hypocrites. If their prayers were worth anything, and the times stood in need of them, it is likely the times would not have them, because these people give only good words and nothing else.

2. Again, he who is in a state of prayer must be such a one as relinquishes in his purpose all wicked, blasphemous, scandalous, profligate courses whatsoever. He who purposes to please God, and to have his prayer accepted by God, must leave them all. For as the Psalmist says, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear my prayer.” For a man to come with a petition to God, with a purpose to offend him, is to come to practice treason in the presence chamber; it is to come into the presence of God with a purpose to stab him with his sins. Do you purpose to live in your filthy courses, in your scandalous evil course of life, to be a blasphemer, a swearer, and yet do you think that God will hear and regard your prayer? “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear my prayer” (Ps 66:18). That is another thing by which you may know whether you are in such a state that you may pray successfully for yourself and for others.

3. In Proverbs 28:9 there is a third means of discovery: “He that turns his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abominable.” You may know by this whether you are in such a state that God will regard your prayers for yourself or for others, so that they may be prevailing prayers. How do you stand affected toward God’s truth and word? How acquainted are you with the reading of the Scriptures, and with hearing the blessed word of God unfolded and broken open by the blessed ordinance of God? How do you attend on God?

Would you have him who is the great God of heaven and earth hear you and regard you, when you will not hear and regard him? You would have him regard your prayers, and you do not regard him speaking by the ministry of his word. You despise his ordinance which he has left with you. He has left you the mysteries of his word, and you do not regard them, but spend your time altogether either about your calling or about some trifling studies, and neglect the main thing, the soul-saving truth. Will he hear your prayer? No, says the wise man: “He that turns his ear from hearing the law, that man’s prayer shall be abominable.”

Since prayer is so prevailing a thing, so pleasing to God, so helpful to the church, and so helpful to ourselves, who would be in such a case that he cannot pray, or if he does pray, that his prayer should be abominable, that God should turn his prayer into sin? It is a miserable case that a man lives in who is in league with sin, who allows himself in any wicked course, in rebellion against God’s ordinance. Such men are in such a state that God does not regard their prayers for themselves or for others. Some so exalt and lift up their pride against God that they do not regard the very ordinance of God. No, not even while they are hearing it, but they set themselves to be otherwise disposed at that very time. How can such people expect that God will regard them? This will be sufficient to press that point. St. Paul says, I shall be delivered by your prayers.

Observation. God will deliver the ministers by the people’s prayers.

God will be good to the ministers for the prayers of the people. This concerns us who are ministers. Prayer is prevailing even for us. And as it is our duty to give ourselves to preaching and prayer, so it is the people’s duty to pray for us likewise, and for these particulars, as I named: to pray for ability; to pray for a willing mind to discharge that ability; to pray for success of that discharge. For we must be able to preach to the people of God, and we must be willing, and there must be success.

It greatly discourages God’s people, and those who are ministers, when they find no success in their labors. The prophet says, “I have laboured in vain” (Isa 49:4). Elijah was much discouraged in his time (Rom 11:4; 1 Kgs 19:18). Isaiah and Elijah were good men, yet they were much discouraged. They saw little fruit of their labor. Therefore let us help the ministers with our prayers in this respect: that God would enable them, and that God would enlarge their hearts with willingness. For there are many who have ability, but they are so proud and so idle that they think themselves too good to preach to those on whom God and the church have called them to bestow their labors. They have ability, but they lack a large heart. And those who have both ability and a large heart, they lack success, they see little fruit, because the people do not pray for them, and perhaps they are negligent in the duty themselves. Their labors are not steeped in prayers.

Again, a fourth thing that we ought to pray for on their behalf is strength and ability of the outward man; and all who fear God and have felt the benefit of the ministry do this, and God answers it.

Likewise, we ought to pray for protection and deliverance from unreasonable men, to pray for strength of spirit, and likewise for protection. For, as St. Paul says, “All men have not faith. Pray for us, that we may be delivered from unreasonable, absurd men: all have not faith” (2 Thess 3:2). Men who do not believe God’s truth, who do not believe God’s word, who are full of atheism, full of contempt and scorn, these are “absurd men.” Though they think themselves the wise men of the world, yet they are unreasonable and absurd men. “Pray for us, that we may be delivered from unreasonable men.”

Likewise, we ought to pray for deliverance from him who is the head of wicked men, the devil. He sees that the ministers are the standard-bearers, that they are the captains of God’s army. They do not stand alone, and they do not fall alone. Many others fall with them. There is no calling under heaven by which God conveys so much good as by the dispensation of his ordinance in the ministry; therefore we should help them by our prayers. There are no men better if they are good, and none more hurtful if they are bad; none worse. As Christ says, “They are the salt of the earth,” to season the unsavory world, “and if the salt have lost the savor, it is good for nothing but to be cast on the dunghill” (Luke 14:34-35). Therefore pray that God would deliver them from the devil, who bears them malice. They are the target of his malice, through his instruments.

There are many who come to hear the word in order to carp and to cavil, and to sit as judges and examine it, but how few there are who pray for the ministers! And surely, because they do not pray, they do not profit. If we could pray more, we would profit more. I beg you, by the tender compassion of Christ, put up your petitions to God that God would teach us (who are inferior to you in other respects, setting aside our calling), so that we may teach you, so that we may instruct his people. As John the Baptist says, the friends of the bride learn of the bridegroom (John 3:29) what to speak to the spouse. So we learn from prayer and from reading; we learn from Christ what to teach you. If you pray to God to teach us so that we may teach you, you will never go away without a blessing.

And therefore, as I said, we see how the apostle asks the Romans to strive and contend with him in prayer. He uses every solemn appeal and earnest entreaty: “For the love of Christ and of his Spirit …” (Rom 15:30). And he says, Pray for us, “that the word may have a free passage, and be glorified” (2 Thess 3:1). In every epistle he still urges, “Pray for us.”

The blessed apostle was so heavenly-minded that he would neglect no help that might further him in the ministry. So if we have Christian hearts, we will neglect no helps, not even the help of the lowliest Christian we are acquainted with. When he who was a great apostle says, “Pray for us, strive in prayer for us,” he is begging for the help of others’ prayer. So the more gracious we are, and the nearer to God, and the more we understand the things of God, the more careful we will be of this Christian duty of prayer, for the ministers, and for ourselves, and for others. We rest upon this ground, that it is God’s ordinance, and nothing established by God will lack a blessing. Therefore if we have faith, we will pray; the more faith, the more prayer; the greater faith, the greater prayer. Christ had the greatest faith, and he prayed whole nights together. St. Paul was mighty in faith; he was mighty in prayer. Where there is little faith, there will be little prayer; and where there is no faith, there will be no prayer. “You also helping together by prayer for us.”

Notice the heavenly art of the apostle. He here insinuates and enfolds an exhortation by taking it for granted that they will pray for him. It is the most skillful way to convey an exhortation, by taking it for granted and by way of encouragement. The Lord will deliver me. He does not say, Therefore I beg you, help me by your prayers. He says, The Lord will deliver me if you help me, and I know I will not lack your prayers. He takes it for granted that they will pray for him; and granted truths are the strongest truths. If we know any good in someone, it is the best way to encourage that person, to take it for granted that they will do so; and so, I shall be delivered, you helping together by your prayers.

“That, for the gift bestowed upon us by the means of many persons, thanks may be given by many on our behalf.” After he has set down the means by which God would convey the blessing, which was prayer, he then shows the end, why God would deliver him by prayer. For the gift of health and deliverance bestowed upon me, by the means of many prayers of many persons, “likewise thanks shall be given by many on our behalf”; that is, on my behalf. Yes, as many will be ready to thank God for my deliverance and health as before prayed to God for it. So in this regard God, in love for his own praise and glory, will deliver me by your prayers, because he will gain praise, and the praise of many.

“That for the gift bestowed …” And first, something about the words.

“For the gift bestowed on us.” Deliverance and health are a gift, and the word means a free gift. If health is a gift, what are greater things? They are much more a free gift. If daily bread is a gift, certainly eternal life is much more a gift. “The gift of God is eternal life” (Rom 6:23).

Away with the fancy of merit! If we do not merit daily bread, if we do not merit outward deliverance, if we do not merit health, what can we do for eternal life? It is a doting fancy, then, a purely foolish fancy, to think that the beggar merits his alms by begging, prayer being the chief work we do. What does the beggar merit by begging? Begging is a disavowing of merit. Health, you see here, is a gift bestowed by prayer: “for the gift bestowed upon us …”

Things come to be ours either by contract or by gift. If it is by contract, then we know what we have to do. If it is by gift, the only way to get a thing by gift is prayer. So what is obtained here by prayer is called a gift, not only a gift for its freeness, but because health and deliverance out of trouble is a great and special gift. For, as it seems, St. Paul here was desperately sick (I rather incline to that than to any other deliverance): “I received the sentence of death.”

Is not health a gift? Is it not the foundation of all the comforts of this life? What comfort would riches give us? What comfort would friends give us? Bring everything to a sick man, and alas! he has no relish for anything, because he lacks the ground of all earthly comforts: he lacks health. Therefore, you know, the Greeks counted that a chief blessing. If they had health, they were content with any condition. A poor man in a humble condition, with a small sufficiency to live on, is happier than the greatest monarch in the world who is under sickness and pain of body.

Health! It is comfort itself, and it sweetens all other comforts.

Therefore it is something we should especially bless God for, both for preserving our health (when God keeps us out of sickness) and likewise for delivering us out of it, for both are like favors. And those who have a constant enjoyment of their health should praise God as well as those who are delivered out of sickness. It is God’s goodness that they do not fall into sickness. There is the ground of sickness in every man. Though he had no outward enemy in the world, yet God can distemper the humors; and when there is a jar and disproportion in the humors, then follows a hurting of the powers and a hindering of the actions, and so on. We should bless God for the continuance of health. It is a special gift. “For the gift bestowed.”

“By the means of many persons.” God bestowed health on St. Paul, but it was by the means of many prayers of many persons.

Question. Would not God have bestowed health upon St. Paul if he had not had their prayers?

Answer. Yes, doubtless. But even so, when there are many prayers, they prevail much more. Many streams make a river run more strongly, and so many prayers prevail strongly. Health is such a blessing as may be begged by others.

Therefore it is a good thing, in sickness and in any trouble, to beg the prayers of others, that they may beg health and deliverance from God for us. The good Corinthians here pray St. Paul out of his trouble. And God so far honors his children, even the lowliest, that they are a means to beg health and deliverance for others, even to pray them out of this or that trouble.

And what a comfort and encouragement this is, that a Christian has so many trading agents working for him! He has all the saints in the world who say “Our Father” praying for him. He must surely be rich who has a world of agents, who has stock going in every part of the world. A Christian has agents all the world over. He is a member of the mystical body, and many prayers are made for him. It is a great comfort.

And it is a great encouragement for us to pray for one another, considering that God will so far honor us. St. Paul’s health here was a gift by the prayers of many.

Objection. But you will object: I am a weak Christian, a sinful creature. What! Should God regard my prayers? Alas! My prayers will do you little good.

Answer. Yes, they will do much, not only for yourself, but for others. What are prayers? Are they not incense kindled by the fire of the blessed Spirit of God? Are they not in themselves good motions, stirred up by the Spirit? In their nature they are good, though they are imperfect and stained. The Spirit who stirs them up is good, the good Spirit of God. “We know not how to pray” (Rom 8:26), but the Spirit teaches us. The Mediator through whom they are offered, who mingles his fragrance with them, is good: “He is the angel that mingleth odors with the prayers of the saints” (Rev 8:3), and he makes them acceptable to God. The person likewise who offers them is good. What is he? Is he not God’s child? Do not parents love to hear the voice of their children? If, therefore, the person is good, though weak, and the prayer is good, and the Spirit good, and the Mediator so good, then let no one be discouraged from praying, not only for himself, but for others.

God would hear the Corinthians, though they were stained with schism and many other weaknesses. They were none of the most refined churches that St. Paul wrote to, as we may see in the first epistle. Yet St. Paul says that his health and deliverance is a gift, and a gift by the prayers of many, weak and strong joining together.

Objection. It is the subtlety of Satan, and our own hearts join with him in the temptation: Why should I pray? My conscience tells me this and that.

Answer. Do you mean to remain so? Then indeed, as it is written, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear my prayer” (Ps 66:18). But if you have repented of your sins, and intend to lead a new life for the time to come, God will hear your prayers, not only for yourself, but for others. God will bestow gifts upon others by means of your prayers.

To go on.

“Thanks may be given by many persons.” God’s end in delivering St. Paul by prayer was that he might have many thanks for many prayers, once they were heard. “That thanks may be given by many on our behalf”; that is, because we are delivered, and restored to health and strength again, to serve the church as we did before.

Observation. You see here how praise follows prayer.

Many prayers, and then many praises; these follow one another. Indeed this is God’s order; and we see in nature that where there is a receiving, there is a giving. We see the earth: it receives seed, and it yields fruit, as Christ says of the good ground, sixtyfold, manyfold. You see that bodies which receive the sun reflect its beams back to the sun again.

The streams, as they come from the sea, so by an unwearied motion return back again to the sea. And men eat the fruit of their own flocks; they reap the fruit of their own orchards and gardens. In nature, whatever receives returns something back again. The influence and light that those heavenly bodies, the stars and the planets and the rest, have from the sun, who is the chief light of all, they bestow upon the lower bodies. You see it in nature; much more is it so in grace. What we receive from God by gift, obtained by prayer, he must have the praise for. Many prayers, many praises. As soon as ever a benefit is received, there is at once an obligation, a natural obligation and a religious obligation. Upon the receipt of a benefit, there must be some thought of returning something at once.

This teaches us what a horrible sin ingratitude is. It is the grave of all God’s blessings. It receives all, and never returns anything back again. So those lepers never came back again to thank Christ, except only the tenth, a poor Samaritan (Luke 17:17). Men are eager to plead with God, restless till they have what they want, but then they are barren and unfruitful; they yield nothing back again. After prayer, there must be praise and thanksgiving. This condemns our backwardness and unwillingness in this regard. We are like little children, who are ready to beg favors, but when they come to thanksgiving they look another way, as if it were irksome to them. So it is with our nature. When we go about this heavenly duty, we give God a formal word or two, “Thanks be to God,” and the like. But we never work our hearts to thankfulness. “That thanks may be given by many.”

As the prayers of many are mighty with God to prevail, so likewise the praises of many are very pleasing and acceptable to God, even as it is with instruments. The sweetness of music arises from many instruments, and from the concord of all the strings in every instrument. When every instrument has many strings, and all are in tune, it makes sweet harmony, it makes sweet concord. So when many give God thanks, and every one has a good heart set in tune, when they are all good Christians, it is wonderfully acceptable music to God. It is sweet incense, more acceptable to God than any sweet scent and fragrance can be to us. That is one reason why God will have many pray to him, that he may have many praises.

God wonderfully honors concord, especially when it is concord in praising him. It is a lovely thing for “brethren to live in unity,” as it says in Psalm 133:1. If to praise God is a lovely thing, and if concord is a lovely thing, then when both meet together, it must be wonderfully beautiful and wonderfully acceptable to God, when many brethren meet and join to praise God. Therefore it is said, in the church’s new conversion, they met all together as one man (Acts 2:46); they were of one heart and one soul, and they were given to prayer and to praising God. What a blessed condition of that beginning church! They were all as one man, of one heart, of one spirit, of one soul.

So the blessed angels and blessed spirits in heaven all join together, as we read in Revelation 14:2-3. That blessed man heard a voice in heaven as the voice of many waters and of great thunder, and he heard the voice of harpers, “and they sang a new song.” There were many harps, but one song, one thanksgiving, one heart, one spirit in all, wonderfully acceptable to God.

This should make us in love with public meetings. Separate thanksgiving is not so acceptable a thanksgiving. God bestows all good upon us in the body, as we knit ourselves together not only in thanksgiving to him, but in love to the church. As all things are derived from God to us in the body, so let our praise return to God in the body as much as we can.

It shows what a hateful thing schism and division in the church is. Besides many other harms, God loses glory by it. God loves to be praised by many joining together. As the apostle says here, “Thanks shall be given by many.” Many! Not as they are many persons, but as they are many godly persons who are led by the Spirit of God.

Use. Therefore, if the praise of many is so acceptable, it should first be an encouragement to union. In John 17:21 our Savior Christ says, “I pray that they may be one, as we are one.” This was the sum of that heavenly prayer, the unity of the church to the end of the world: “That they may be one, as we are one.” The Trinity should be the pattern of our unity. For, I say, all good is in union, and all that comes from us and is accepted by God must be in peace and union.

God so loves peace, and a quiet disposition inclined to peace, that he neglects his own service till we have made peace with one another. “If thou have any offence with thy brother,” if you have done him any wrong, or he you, “go and be reconciled to him, and then come and bring thy offering” (Matt 5:24). God will wait for his own offering; he is content to wait for his own service till we are at peace with one another. Whether it is prayer or praise, if we are not at peace, it is not acceptable.

Again, this should teach us to stir up others when we praise God and others have cause as well as we, “that thanks may be given by many.” When we are in trouble, call upon others; and, as is the common and commendable custom, ask others to pray for us, that prayer may be made by many. And when we receive any favor, any deliverance from any great danger, acquaint others with it, that thanks may be given by many. It was the practice of David, in Psalm 66:16: “Come! I will tell you what the Lord hath done for my soul.” And in Psalm 34:4, and in Psalm 142:7: “Bring my soul out of trouble, that I may praise thy name.” And what will others do? “Then the righteous shall compass me about, for thou hast dealt bountifully with me.” This shows that it is the custom of righteous men, when God has dealt graciously with any of his children, to gather around him, to become acquainted with the dealings of divine providence and God’s goodness toward them: “The righteous shall compass me about, for thou hast dealt bountifully with me.”

Holy David, in Psalm 103:20-22, stirs up every creature to praise God, even the creatures of hail, of storms and winds, and everything, even the blessed angels, as we see in the latter end of that psalm, as if thanksgiving were an employment fit for angels; and indeed so it is. And it is as if all his own praise were not enough, unless all the creatures in heaven and earth should join with him in that blessed melody to praise God: the angels and all creatures praise God. Let us stir up one another to this exercise.

How do the creatures praise God? They praise God by the tongue. They have indeed a kind of secret praise which God hears well enough, for they do their duty in their place willingly and cheerfully; but they praise God in our tongues. Every creature gives us occasion to praise God.

“That thanks may be given by many …”

Many give thanks here for one, for St. Paul, for the minister. We see here God’s end, that many should praise God not only for themselves but for others, especially for those by whom God conveys and passes down good to them, whether outward or spiritual good. The apostle exhorts us “to pray for all men” (1 Tim 2:1-2); “for kings,” yes, though they were persecuting kings at that time. And surely if we ought to pray to God for all mankind, we ought to praise God for all sorts of men, especially for governors and ministers and the like, because by them God bestows his greatest blessings. Obey the magistrate. “Let every soul be subject to the higher powers; for the powers that are, are ordained of God, and he is the minister of God for thy good” (Rom 13:1). So the governors and ministers of God are for our good. We ought therefore both to pray for them, that they may execute their office for our good, and to praise God for the good we have by them. You know David stirred up the people to mourn for Saul, though he was a tyrant. He clothed you and your daughters, he says, with scarlet (2 Sam 1:24). If they should praise God for a persecuting king, and mourn for him when he was gone, much more should we do so for those who are good.

And so likewise with pastors: we ought to praise God for them, and all who have good by them will pray to God and praise God for them. And undoubtedly it is a sign that a man has no good by them when he does not pray for them and does not praise God on their account. We ought to praise God in that proportion, as well as to pray to God for one another.

And this should stir us up to be good to many, that many may praise God not only for themselves, but for us. If it is our duty to pray for those from whom we derive good, and to praise God for them, then let us labor to be such as may communicate good to others. Good spreads itself abroad, and good men are like the box in the gospel: when it was opened, all the house smelled of it (John 12:3).

The heathen philosopher said that a just man, a good man, is a common good, like a public stream, like a public conduit, that everyone has a share in. Therefore, as the wise man says, “When good men are exalted, the city rejoiceth” (Prov 11:10); many rejoice. Who would not, therefore, labor in this respect to be good, to have a public disposition, to have a large heart, to do all the good we can, so that we may not only have more prayers to God for us, but may have more praise to God for us, so that God may gain by it, “that thanks may be given by many on our behalf”?

Let us take notice of our negligence in this regard, and be stirred up to this blessed duty. And therefore consider what it consists in.

1. It consists in our taking notice of the favors of God to ourselves and others, and in valuing the good things that we praise God for, in esteeming them. The children of Israel did not bless God for the manna; they did not value it: “This manna, this manna,” in scorn (Num 11:6). So in Psalm 106:24: they neglected God’s pleasant things, they set light by them. He gave them the great things of his law, and they accounted them as slight, as strange things (Hos 8:12), not worthy to be regarded.

2. Praise consists in taking notice, and not only in taking notice, but in remembering them and keeping them in mind, as in Psalm 103:2: “My soul, praise the Lord, and forget not all his benefits.”

3. And likewise in an estimation of them; and likewise,

4. In expressing this thankfulness in words: “Awake, my glory” (Ps 57:8). Our tongues are our glory, especially as they are instruments to praise and glorify God. We cannot use our language better than to speak the language of Canaan in praising God.

5. Likewise, praise consists in doing good, which is real praise, though we say nothing. Moses cried to God, though he did not speak a word. Evil works have a cry, although they say nothing. Abel’s blood cried against Cain (Gen 4:10). And as evil works, so good works have a cry. Though a man does not praise God with his tongue, his works praise God. Job says, the sides of the poor blessed him (Job 31:20). What! Could their sides speak? No; but there was a real thanksgiving to God. Their sides blessed God. So our good works may praise God as well as our tongues and hearts. The heavens and the earth praise God, though they say nothing, because they stir us up to say something.

Let men see your good works (Matt 5:16), that they may take occasion from them to bless God, says Christ. Otherwise your praising God is nothing but mere complimenting of God, to give him thanks with the tongue and afterward to dishonor him with your lives. “What hast thou to do to take my name into thy mouth, sith thou hatest to be reformed?” (Ps 50:16). What have you to do with taking my name into your mouth, either in prayer or in praise, when you hate to be reformed? “High words are unseemly for a fool,” says the wise man (Prov 17:7). And what higher words are there than praise? Therefore, for a man who lives in a blasphemous course of life, in a filthy course of life, praise is too high a word for a fool. We must praise God in our lives, or else not at all. God will not accept it. Praise consists in these things.

Now some directions for how to perform it for ourselves and others.

1. If we would praise God for ourselves, or for anyone, then let us look about us, let us look above us and beneath us, let us look backward, look to the present, look forward. Everything puts songs of praise into our mouth. Do we not have matter enough of our own to praise God for? Let us look about us, to the prosperity of others. Let us praise God for the ministry, praise God for the magistracy, praise God for the government under which we live. There are many grievances in the best government, but a Christian heart considers what good it has by that government, what good it has by that ordinance, and does not delight only to feed on the blemishes, as flies do on sores. It is a sign of a wicked heart to do so. Although a man should not be insensible of the ills of the times (for otherwise how should we pray against them?), yet he is not so sensible of them as to forget the good he has by them. If we would praise God, let us look to the good, and not so much on the ill.

Look up to heaven, look to the earth, to the sea. David finds occasion for praise in every creature. Every creature supplies matter for praise, from the stars to the dust, from heaven to earth, from the cedar to the hyssop that grows by the wall. Is there not a beam of God’s goodness in every creature? Do we not have use of every creature? We must praise God not only for the majesty and order that shine in them, but for the use of them in respect of us.

And so let us look to the works of providence as well as to the works of creation. Look to God’s work in his church, his confounding of his enemies, his deliverance of his church, the churches abroad, our own church, our own persons, our friends. In this way we should feed ourselves, so that we may have matter for praising God. God gives us matter every day. He renews his favors on the place where we live and on us, as we read: “It is his mercy that we are not all consumed” (Lam 3:22).

Let us look back to the favors we have enjoyed; let us look to the present. What does he do for us? The apostle says here, “God doth deliver us.” Does he not give deliverance, and favor, and grace, inward grace for the time to come? Has he not reserved an inheritance, immortal and undefiled, in the heavens for us? Why does he bestow things present, and why does he reveal things laid up for us for the time to come, except that we should praise him, except that we should praise him for what he means to do afterward?

“Blessed be God the Father, who hath begotten us to an inheritance, immortal and undefiled,” says St. Peter (1 Pet 1:4). God reveals good things that are to come, that we are heirs apparent to the crown of glory. This is revealed so that we might praise him now, so that we might begin the employment of heaven on earth. Let us look upward and downward, let us look about us, look inward, look backward, look to the present, look forward. Everything supplies matter for praise to God.

Yes, even our very crosses. Happy is he with whom God condescends to be angry, so that he does not give him over to a reprobate sense to fill up his sins, but will correct him, to pull him from ill courses. Happy is he with whom God condescends to be angry in evil courses. There is a blessing hidden in ill, in the cross.

“In all things give thanks,” says the apostle (1 Thess 5:18). What! In afflictions? Yes, not for the affliction itself, but for its outcome. There is an effect in afflictions to draw us from the world, to draw us to God, to make us more heavenly-minded, to make us see better into these earthly things, to make us in love with heavenly things. “In all things give thanks.” When we lack matter in ourselves, let us look abroad, and give thanks to God for the prosperity of others.

2. And along with this, when we look about us, let us dwell in the meditation of the usefulness of these things, of the goodness of God in them, till our hearts are warmed. It is not a slight “God be thanked” that will serve; we must dwell on it. Let our hearts dwell so long on the favors and blessings of God that a blessed fire is kindled in us. The best bonfire of all is to have our hearts kindled with love to God in the consideration of his mercy. Let us dwell on it so long that a flame is kindled in us. A slight praise is acceptable neither to God nor to man.

3. And then let us consider our own unworthiness; let us dwell on that. “I am less than the least of all thy favors,” says good Jacob (Gen 32:10). If we are less than the least, then we must be thankful for the least. Humility is always thankful. A humble man thinks himself unworthy of anything, and therefore he is thankful for anything.

A proud man praises himself above the common rate. He overvalues and overprizes himself, and therefore he thinks he never has enough. When he has a great deal, he thinks he has less than he deserves, and therefore he is an unthankful person; and that is what makes a proud man so intolerable to God. He is always an unthankful person, a murmuring person. A humble man, because he undervalues himself, thinks he has more than he deserves, and he is thankful for everything. He knows he deserves nothing of himself. Whatever he has is the mere goodness of God.

The best direction to thanksgiving is to have a humble and low heart. Therefore David, when he would exercise his heart to thankfulness, when the people had given liberally, says, “Who am I, or what is this people, that we should be able to offer willingly after this sort? All comes of thee, and all is thine own that we give” (1 Chr 29:14). What am I, or what is this people, that we should have hearts to give liberally to the temple? See how he abases himself.

And Abraham: “I am dust and ashes, shall I speak to my Lord?” (Gen 18:27). And Job: “I abhor myself in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6), when he considered God’s excellency and his own baseness. A humble heart is always thankful, and the way to thankfulness is to consider our humility. “What am I?” says David. He had a heart to be thankful. “Of thine own I give thee.” Not only the matter to be thankful for, but of your own I give you; when I give you thanks, you give me a thankful heart.

As the sacrifice that Abraham offered was provided by God, so God must provide the sacrifice that we offer, even a thankful heart. Of your own, Lord, I give you, even when I give you thanks.

Therefore you may make that a means to have a thankful heart: pray for a thankful heart. And when we have it, let us bless God for it, so that we may be more thankful. God must grant the portion of a thankful heart along with other blessings. He who gives matter to be thankful must give a heart to be thankful.

4. Again, to make us more thankful, only consider the misery of ourselves if we lacked the blessings we are thankful for, and the misery of others who do not have them. You who have health, if you would be thankful for it, look abroad, look into hospitals, look on your sick friends who cannot go out. You who would be thankful for the liberty of the gospel, look beyond the seas, look into the Palatinate and other countries, and certainly this will make you thankful, if anything will.

If we would be thankful for spiritual blessings, consider the misery of those who are under the bondage of Satan, how there is only a little step between them and hell, so that they are ready to sink into it. There is only the short thread of this life to be cut, and they are forever miserable. If we would be thankful for any blessing, let us consider the misery of being without it.

If we would be thankful for our wits, let us consider those who are out of their minds. What an excellent engine for all things in this life and the life to come is this spark of reason! If we lack reason, what can we do in civil things? What can we do in matters of grace? Grace presupposes nature. If we would be thankful for health, for strength, and for reason, if we would be thankful for common favors, consider the misery of those who lack these things.

Would we be thankful for the blessed ordinance? Only consider the misery of those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, how they are led by Satan and lack the means of salvation. Those who would be thankful for the government we have, let them consider those who live in anarchy, where everyone lives as he pleases, where a man cannot enjoy his own. The consideration of these things should quicken us to thankfulness: the consideration of our own misery if we should lack them, and the misery of those who do lack them.

5. And let us keep a catalogue of God’s blessings. It will serve us, both in regard to God, to bless him the more, and in regard to ourselves, to establish our faith the more; for God is Jehovah, always like himself. Those to whom he has done good, he will do good to. He is constant in his love. “Whom he loves, he loves to the end” (John 13:1). God shall have more thanks, and we shall have more comfort.

Again, to add some encouragements and motives to thankfulness, which may be a forcible means to make us thankful, only consider these.

(1) It is God’s tribute, it is God’s customs duty. Only deny the king his customs, and what will come of it? Deny him tribute, and you forfeit all. So you forfeit all for want of thankfulness.

What is the reason that God has taken the gospel away from countries abroad, and may do so from us if we are not more thankful? Because they were not thankful. It is all the tribute, all the levy he sets on his blessings: I will give you this, but you shall glorify me with thanksgiving. It is all the honor he looks for. “He that praiseth me honoreth me” (Ps 50:23). And “now, O Israel, what doth the Lord require of thee,” for all his favors, but to serve him with a cheerful and good heart? (Deut 10:12), that is, to be thankful.

What is the reason that the earth denies us her own, that sometimes we have unseasonable years? We deny God his own. He stops what is due from the creature, because we stop what is due to him.

When we are not thankful he is forced to make the heavens as iron and the earth as brass. We force him to make the creature otherwise than it is, because we deny him thankfulness.

The running of favors from heaven ceases when thankfulness does not run back again to him. For unthankfulness is a drying wind. It dries up the fountain of God’s favors. It binds God. It will not allow him to be as good as his word. If ever God gives us up to public judgments, it will be because we are not thankful to God for favors and deliverances, such as that by sea in 1588 and that from the gunpowder treason by land.

Was it not a sick state after Queen Mary, when Queen Elizabeth received the crown? The church and commonwealth were sick. Now if we are to praise God for our particular persons when we have recovered our health, much more should we praise God when the state, when the church is delivered, as it was at the coming in of Queen Elizabeth, and afterward in 1588, and in recent times; and he continually delivers us. And if we look for him to deliver us, not only our persons but the state in which we live, let us pray to God that he would do so, and praise God for his former deliverance.

(2) Again, this is another motive: the praising of God for former deliverances invites him to bestow new blessings. On what ground does the farmer bestow more seed? On that which has yielded most in time past. Will anyone sow in the barren wilderness, where it is lost? No, but where he looks to reap most, and has done so before. Where he sees a soil that is fruitful, he will sow it the more; and where the heart is a barren wilderness, so that it yields nothing back again, God takes away what he gave before.

You know there is a debt in giving. There must always be a returning of thanksgiving, and kindness requires kindness. There is an obligation. And where benefits are taken and men are thankful, that is the way to get more: to be thankful for what we have. For God minds his own glory above all things, and he will be especially bountiful to those from whom he sees he has most glory. Therefore those who have been richest in grace and in comfort have always been most in thankfulness, as we see in David, “a man after God’s own heart” (1 Sam 13:14; Acts 13:22), and in various others. Let this encourage us.

First, if we are not thankful, it stops the current of benefits.

Second, if we are thankful, God will give us more mercies and deliverances. When we praise him in our hearts, in our lives, in our bounty to others, in real thankfulness, when we are ready to good works, then he is ready to bestow new ones still.

(3) Again, to stir us up to this duty of praising God for ourselves and others, consider that it is the beginning of heaven on earth. What a happiness it is that, when our persons cannot go to heaven till we die, till our bodies are raised, we can yet send our ambassadors, we can send our prayers and thanksgivings to heaven; and God accepts them as if we came in our own persons. “Let your conversation be in heaven,” says the apostle (Phil 3:20). How is that? By praising God much. What, I ask you, is the employment of heaven, of the angels and blessed spirits? They praise God continually for the work of creation and for the work of redemption. That is their special task in heaven. Our duty is to be much employed this way, in praising God. Self-love often forces prayer, but to praise God comes from a more heavenly affection.

(4) Again, only consider that no creature in the world is unthankful but devils only, and devilish men; and good men only so far as they are corrupt and keep up dealings with their corruptions. For every creature praises God in its kind, setting aside the devil, who is full of envy and pride and malice against God. Therefore, unless we mean to be like the devil, let us be thankful. God has made all creatures to praise him, and to serve us so that we may praise him; and when they praise him, shall we blaspheme him?

May not the swearer think to himself: Every creature blesses God, even the senseless creatures, and shall I dishonor God by my tongue, which should be my glory, to glorify him? Shall I blaspheme him, and be like the devil? Shall I be more base than the senseless creatures?

What glory does God have by many men who live in the church, who blaspheme God, and whose whole life is a witness against God, as the whole life of a Christian, after he is in the state of grace, is a witness for God and a praising of him? His whole life is a thanksgiving. So the whole life of wicked and careless creatures is a dishonor to God; it is a witness against God. There are none but devils and devilish-minded men who do not praise God, even the very dumb creatures. Let us labor to have a part in that blessed music and harmony to praise God. If we do not praise God here, we shall never do it in heaven.

But we must remember, by the way, that this thankfulness must be a fruitful thanksgiving. As for us to pray to God to bless us, and then to do nothing, is a barren prayer, so to thank God, and then to do nothing, is a barren thanksgiving. Our deeds have words, our deeds have a voice to God. They speak, they pray. There is a kind of prayer, a kind of thanks in our works. Works pray to God. They have a kind of cry to God, both ill works and good works. And if good works have a cry to God in prayer, they will have a voice in thanksgiving. This fruitful, this real thanks is what God insists on.

And therefore it is always joined with a study of how to turn the things we thank God for to the best advantage. If we thank God for health, and recovery, and deliverance, we will labor to turn it to God’s glory. If we are thankful to God for riches, for peace, we will turn that to growing in grace and to doing good to others. There is never a thankful heart but it really studies to turn what it is thankful for to good account, so that God may have the glory, and it the comfort and benefit by it; or else it is only a lip labor, only a lost labor.

Let us shame ourselves and condemn ourselves for our unthankfulness; and that will be done by comparing our conduct toward men with our conduct toward God. If a man does us a little courtesy, how confounded we are if we have not returned some thanks! And yet, from God we have all that we have, all that we are, all that we hope to have; and yet how many benefits do we devour, and do not return God thanks?

This disproportion will shame the best Christian: that he is not so quick in his devotion to God, to be thankful there, as he is sensible of small kindnesses done by men. This is a good way to make us more thankful.

And now when we come to the sacrament, let us bless God. The Eucharist is a thanksgiving. Where there are many, there should be thanksgiving. Where there is a communion there are many; and thanksgiving should especially be of many met together to thank God for Christ, and for the good we have by him. For if many joined together in praise for St. Paul, who was only a minister, only an instrument to set forth the praise and the doctrine of Christ, much more should we be thankful to God for Christ himself, who is the gift of all gifts, and for whose sake he gives us all other gifts. If he gives us him, can he deny us anything?

If we are thankful for the health of our bodies, as indeed we should be, if we are thankful for the peace of our humors, much more should we be thankful for the peace of our consciences, when our souls are set in tune, when God and we are friends, when the soul by the Spirit of God is set at peace, and is fit for the praise of God, and is fit to do good; when it is a healthful soul.

As in the body it is a sign of sickness when the actions are hindered, so it is likewise with the soul.

We should bless God for ability to do good, for any health in our souls, more than for health of body. Only consider: if we are to thank God for the instruments of good, much more are we to thank him for the good things themselves. If we should thank God for the ministers (for this is what I am now pressing: many prayers and praises were given to God for St. Paul), much more should we be thankful for what we have by the ministry, that is, for all the blessings of God, for grace and glory, for life and salvation.

It is the ministry of life, “and the power of God to salvation” (Rom 1:16). We should be thankful to God for peace: we are the messengers of peace (Eph 6:15). We should be thankful to God for grace and for his Holy Spirit; the Spirit is given with it. We should be thankful especially for spiritual favors. A man cannot be thankful to God for health and liberty unless he first knows God to be his, so that he can bless God for spiritual favors. “Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Christ” (Eph 1:3). We should be thankful for Christ, and all the benefits we have by Christ, much more than for any other blessings whatsoever.

Therefore, now that we are a communion, let praise be given by many. We have greater matters than the health of a minister (or of any particular person, either ourselves or others) to be thankful for. We have greater cause, being here to bless God for the greatest gift he ever gave, even for Christ. The disposition at a feast is to be joyful and cheerful, to praise God. Now we are to feast with God and with Jesus Christ. Christ is not only the food, but he invites us, he is with us.

What will we do for Christ if we will not feast with him? What a degree of unthankfulness it is when we will not so much as feast with him, when we will not willingly receive him! What will he do for Christ who will not feast with him? How unfit will he be to praise God and to praise Christ, who will not feast when Christ makes a feast of himself, and gives himself together with the bread and wine, representing the benefit of his body and blood, broken and shed for us, and all his benefits? If we will not feed on him, when he stoops so low as to give himself for us and to feed us with himself, what will we do? How can we be thankful for other blessings when we are not thankful for himself? And how can we be thankful for himself when we will not come and partake of him?

Let us stir up our hearts and set ourselves now to take the communion. As for matter of repentance and sorrow, it should be finished beforehand. This is the Eucharist, a matter of thanksgiving. We should raise our hearts above earthly things. We should consider that we are to deal with Christ, and that these are only representations.

When the bread is broken, think of the body of Christ; and when the wine is poured out, think of the blood of Christ. And when our bodies are cheered by these elements, think how our souls are refreshed by the blood of Christ through faith. If we should be thankful to God for bodily deliverance, how much more should we thank him for our souls, being delivered from hell by the blood of Christ, which is the grand deliverance? Let us dispose our hearts to thankfulness. It is a fit disposition for a feast.

And, as I said, take heed of sin. It chokes thankfulness. Therefore examine your purposes, how you come. If you come with a purpose to live in sin, you are an unfit receiver. The place we stand in is holy, the business is holy, we have to deal with a holy God; and therefore if we do not purpose to relinquish wicked courses, and to enter into covenant with God to abstain from sin, we do not come rightly. “When thou comest into the house of God, take heed to thy feet,” says the wise man (Eccl 5:1). Take heed to your affections; consider with whom you have to deal. But if you have renewed your repentance, and your purposes with God for the time to come, come with cheerfulness, with a thankful disposition.

Thankfulness is a disposition for a feast. If it is a disposition for bodily deliverance, it is much more for the deliverance of the soul, and much more for Christ and the blessings we have by him, who is “all in all.” “That thanks may be given by many on our behalf.”

For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience … (2 Cor 1:12).

St. Paul in these words does several things at once.

1. He shows a reason why many should pray for him and give thanks on his behalf. You have cause, he says, “for our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience …” Therefore if many of you give thanks to God for me, it is your duty. My conscience bears me witness that I have carried myself well toward you. You have cause to pray for us and to praise God for our deliverance, for you have received much good through us. God conveys much good through public persons to those who are under them. Therefore there ought to be many prayers and many thanks for them.

2. And again, they ought to pray and give thanks for him because they would not lose their labor, they would not lose their prayers, their incense; because these would be spent on a man who was in favor with God, who had the testimony of his conscience that he walked in simplicity and godly sincerity, as he says, “Pray for us, for we are assured that we have a good conscience” (Heb 13:18). So these words are a reason for what came before.

3. Another thing he aims at is to head off certain accusations. He was accused in their thoughts at least, and by the words of some false teachers who were his worst enemies; for, next to the devil, a minister has no enemy like a minister. If a man would see the spirit of the devil, let him look at some of them. St. Paul had many enemies, many false brethren, who laid false accusations on him to disparage him in the thoughts of others, in the thoughts of his hearers. They accounted him an inconstant man, because he did not come to them when he promised, and they said that he suffered affliction, very likely for something he deserved. They accounted him a contemptible man. He suffered afflictions in the world, they said; he lacked the discretion to keep himself out of the cross. No, he says, whatever you impute to me and lay upon me, “our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience …”

4. Again, he aims at this: to lay the blame on those false brethren who deserved it. They think I am a deceiver, he says; they think I am wily. No! I do not walk that way. I do not walk in fleshly wisdom, as they do who seek themselves and not you. So, I say, St. Paul aims at several things in bringing in these words.

We see here, first of all, this:

Doctrine. The more eminent a man is in place and gifts, the more he should be prayed for, and the more thanks should be given for him.

You have cause, says St. Paul, to do it for me; for our rejoicing is this, that “we have walked in simplicity and sincerity … and more abundantly to you-ward.” St. Paul was a brother, as he was a Christian. He was a father, in that he had called them to the faith; and he was an apostle. In all these regards they ought to praise God for him: because he was a father, because he was the father of them (“you have not many fathers,” he says, 1 Cor 4:15), and because he was an apostle, an eminent man, through whom God conveyed a world of good to the church.

To make way to the main thing, observe this in general:

Observation. Christians are often driven to their own defense.

This is true especially of ministers, the fathers of Christians. Holy men in the church are driven to justify and defend themselves, because those who shine in their own consciences, wicked men labor to darken in their reputation, so that their own wickedness may be the less seen and observed. It has always been the policy of Satan and of wicked men, so that all might seem alike, to lay aspersions on those who were better men than themselves. St. Paul is forced to make his defense, to retire to the testimony of his conscience: “Our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience …”

Use. Therefore make this use of it: not to think it strange if we are driven to our own defense.

Question. But some may say, Is not a person’s life the best defense? As St. Peter says, that you may stop the mouths of gainsayers.

Answer. Yes, of all defenses a life is the best to set against all accusations; but even so it is not enough.

A man is cruel if he does not sometimes make his defense, because the accusations against him tend to the hurt of others. This is so with public persons, especially ministers, who have as much authority in people’s hearts as they can gain by their good life and merit. And if any accusation lies upon them, they are to clear it in words. Their life will not serve the purpose, but they must make their defense for themselves in another way, if it is needful, as St. Paul does here. It is not only lawful but sometimes expedient to speak by way of commending ourselves.

In what cases?

1. Not only in the case of thankfulness to God, to praise God for his graces in us.

2. And likewise in the case of example to others: a man may speak of God’s work in him; he may tell what God has done for his soul, and in his soul, so that God may have glory and others may have benefit.

3. But likewise in the third place, and this was St. Paul’s case here, a man may speak of himself by way of justifying and defending himself, so that the truth may not suffer. It is a kind of betraying the cause for a man to be silent when he is so accused. Though, as I said, a good life is the best defense, and unless there is a good life the spoken defense is to little purpose, yet in public persons the defense of a life is often too little. In these cases we must speak of ourselves, and of the good things of God in us.

Question. But another question may arise here. May a man glory in what is in him, in the grace of God that is in him? Our glorying should be in Christ, in the obedience and righteousness of Christ, and in God reconciled through Christ. Can a Christian glory in anything that is in him, which is imperfect?

Answer. I answer briefly: St. Paul does not here glory in the court of justification, but in the court of Christian conduct. In that court a man may glory in the work of grace in him, in those inward works and the works that flow from them. When a man has to deal with men, he may set forth his life. Indeed, when a man has to deal with God, he may set forth his sincerity; not, I say, in the court of justification, but in the court of sanctification and a holy life. There good works are the ornament of the spouse. They are her jewels. But come to the court of justification, and all are dung, as the apostle says: all are dung and dross (Phil 3:8), not worthy to be named. They are not able; they are not strong enough. All that comes from us, and all that is in us, is not able to bear us out in glorying in the court of justification. All are stained as menstruous cloths (Isa 64:6).

But mark this: St. Paul speaks of glorying before men, of a sanctified life. He glories in his conduct and sincerity not as a title, but as evidence that his title is good. That by which he has his title is only the righteousness of Christ. That he has heaven and is free from hell: that is the title. But what evidence do you have that Christ and his righteousness are yours? There must be something worked in you, and that is sincere walking. So he brings it forward as evidence of his state in grace, that it was good. So we see in what case he gloried in his sincerity.

To come to the words.

As for the words themselves, they contain the blessed temper of St. Paul’s spirit in the midst of disgraces, in the midst of accusations. The temper of his spirit was joyful, glorying.

“Our rejoicing is this.” The ground of it is “the testimony of our conscience.”

The matter of which conscience witnesses and testifies is his conduct. That is the thing testified of.

And the manner, positively, is “in simplicity and godly sincerity.” “In simplicity.” You would think this a simple commendation, to commend himself for simplicity; but it is a godly simplicity, by which we are like God, to be simple without mixture of sin and hypocrisy, without mixture of error and falsehood. That simplicity is despised by carnal wretches who stain and defile their consciences. Call them what you will, so long as you do not account them simple. They despise the term of an honest, simple man.

Simplicity is not taken here for a defect of knowledge, as the word is commonly used, but for an excellence by which we resemble God; that is, being free from all mixture of sin and ignorance. “In simplicity and godly sincerity.” And then, negatively, “not in fleshly wisdom.”

And then, because this setting forth of himself might seem to be ostentation, to set down his glorying in his conscience and in his simplicity, here is a qualification of it likewise. Indeed, he says, I glory in my simplicity and sincerity, that is, in my conduct; but it is by the grace of God. By the grace of God my conduct has been in godly sincerity, and not in fleshly wisdom. For St. Paul was wondrously wary of his heart, for fear of pride. Not I, he says: “I labored more than they all; O, not I, but the grace of God that was in me” (1 Cor 15:10). He was afraid of the least insinuation of spiritual pride, and so he says here, “Our rejoicing is the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and sincerity, by the grace of God.”

And then there is the extent of this conduct, thus in simplicity and sincerity, in regard of its object. It has been this way, he says, “in the world,” toward all men I have had dealings with. They can say as much, wherever I have lived. “And more abundantly to you-ward.” My care and conscience have been to carry myself as I should, “more abundantly to you-ward,” with whom I have lived longest. This is an excellent evidence of a good man, that he is best liked where he is best known. Now St. Paul had lived long among them, and he was their father in Christ; and therefore, he says, my conduct is known, especially toward you.

Many men are best trusted where they are least known. Their public conduct is good and commendable, but their secret courses are vile and wicked, as those know who are acquainted with their private ways. But you, says the apostle, with whom I have lived longest, with whom I have been most, you can bear witness of my conduct, that I have lived in such a way in the world, and more abundantly toward you.

“This is our rejoicing …” We see here the temper and disposition St. Paul was in. He was in a glorying, in a rejoicing state. We see, then, this:

Take a Christian at the worst, and his state is a rejoicing state.

“Our rejoicing is this.” The word in the original is more than joy, for it means a glorying. “Our glorying” is this, which is a joy showing itself in the outward man, when the heart and the spirit seem, as it were, to go outward and, as it were, to meet the thing they rejoice in. A Christian has his joy, his glorying, and a glorying that is proper to himself. It is a spiritual joy, as follows afterward: “Our rejoicing is the testimony of our conscience.”

So good is God that in the worst state he gives his children matter for rejoicing in this world. He gives them a taste of heaven before they come there. He gives them a grape of Canaan, as he did Israel. They tasted of Canaan, what a good land it was, before they came there. So God’s children have their rejoicing. St. Paul swears and protests it: “By our rejoicing in Christ Jesus I die daily” (1 Cor 15:31). As truly as we rejoice in all our afflictions, so this is true that I say, that I die daily.

Use. Therefore we should labor to be of such a temper that we may glory and rejoice. A Christian has his rejoicing, but it is a spiritual rejoicing, like his state. Every creature has its joy, as St. Chrysostom says. We do everything for joy. All that we do is so that we may rejoice at length. It is the center of the soul. As rest is to motion, so the desire of all is to joy, to rest in joy. So heaven itself, happiness itself, is called by the name of joy: “Enter into thy master’s joy” (Matt 25:21). Every creature has the joy proper to it. Every man has his joy. A carnal man has a carnal joy; a spiritual man has a holy joy.

1. He rejoices in his election, which was before all worlds, that his name is written in heaven, as it says: “Rejoice in this, that your names are written in heaven, and not that the devils are subject unto you” (Luke 10:20).

2. And then he rejoices in his justification, that he is freed from his sins: “Being justified by faith we have peace with God through Christ, and we rejoice in afflictions” (Rom 5:1). Being justified first: there is the way this joy comes in. When a Christian is justified by faith and freed from the guilt of his sin, it works joy.

3. And then there is a joy of sanctification, of a good conscience, of a holy life led, as we see here: “Our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience …”

4. And then there is a joy of glory to come. “We rejoice under the hope of glory,” says the apostle (Rom 5:2). So a Christian’s joy is suited to himself.

There is no other man who can glory and be wise, because as for all men but a Christian, “they glory in their shame” (Phil 3:19), or they glory in vanishing things. A Christian is not ashamed of his joy, of his glorying, because he does not glory in his shame. Therefore the apostle here justifies his joy. Our rejoicing is this, he says; I do not care if all the world knows my joy; it is the “testimony of my conscience.” It is as if he said, Let others rejoice in base pleasures that they will not stand by and avow; let others rejoice in riches, in honors, in the favor of men; let them rejoice in what they please; my joy is another kind of joy. “I rejoice in the testimony of my conscience.”

A Christian, as he has a joy, so he has a joy that he will stand by and make good. Every other man, who rejoices in anything baser than himself, who rejoices in outward things, will blush and have shame in his forehead. He cannot stand by it and say, This is my joy. But a Christian has the warrant of his conscience for what he rejoices in, and therefore he is not ashamed of it. Another man dares not reveal his joy.

All the subtlety of the world is to have the pleasures that sin will afford, and yet at the same time they study to cover it so that it may not appear. Where is the joy of the ambitious?

His study, his thought, and his joy is to have respect, like Haman; and yet he studies to conceal this. He dares not have it known. He dares not avow it, “This is my rejoicing,” for then all the world would laugh at him for a vain person.

Again, the joy of the base-minded man is in his pleasure, but he dares not avow this. He dares not say, My rejoicing is this, for then every man would scorn him as a beast. The rich man rejoices in his riches, but he dares not be known for this, for then he would be accounted a base, earthly-minded man. Every man would scorn him. He studies to have all the pleasure and all the comfort these things will afford, and yet to cover them, because he thinks there is a higher matter he should rejoice in, if he were not an atheist.

A Christian is not ashamed of his joy and rejoicing. “I rejoice in this,” he says. For,

1. It is well bred. It is bred from the Spirit of God witnessing that his name is written in the book of life, witnessing that his sins are forgiven, witnessing that he lives as a Christian should, witnessing that he has the evidences of his justification, that he has a holy life, the pledge likewise of future glory. His joy is well bred.

2. Likewise, it is permanent. Other men’s joy and rejoicing is but a flash of thorns, as the wise man calls it, as it were a flame in thorns, as the crackling of thorns, which is soon gone. And it is an unseemly glorying and rejoicing for a man to glory in what is worse than himself and in what is outside himself. All other things are outside a man’s self, and worse and meaner than a man’s self; therefore a man cannot rejoice in them and be wise. It is a disparagement to a man’s wisdom to glory in things that are meaner than himself and that are outside himself. A holy Christian has that in himself, and that which is more excellent than himself, to glory in. “This is our rejoicing, the testimony of our conscience.”

All other rejoicing is vain glory and vain rejoicing. Therefore in Jeremiah 9:23 he says, “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the strong man glory in his strength, let not the rich man glory in his riches”; but if a man will glory, let him glory that he knows the Lord to be his, and that he knows himself to be the Lord’s. When he knows the Lord to be his, and himself to be God’s by faith and a good conscience, then there is matter for glorying.

Of all kinds of men, God hates proud boasters most of all; for glory is the froth of pride, and God hates pride. He opposes pride and sets himself in battle array against it, and who can thrive who has God for his enemy? Boasting and pride in any earthly thing is against almost all the commandments. It is idolatry; it makes what we boast and glory in an idol, whereas we should glory in God who gives it.

And it is spiritual adultery, when we cling in our affections to some outward thing more than to God. It is false witness. Pride is a false glass. It makes the things, and the men themselves who enjoy them, seem greater than they are. The devil amplifies earthly things to a carnal man in a false glass, so that they seem big to him; whereas if he could see them in their true colors, they are false things, they are snares and hindrances in the way to heaven, and such names they have. Scripture gives an ill report of them, “They are vanity and vexation of spirit” (Eccl 1:14), so that we should be discouraged from setting our affections on these things and from glorying in them.

Therefore let us take heed of false glorying. If we will glory, we see here what we are to glory in. “This is our rejoicing, the testimony of our conscience …” And this we may justify and stand by. It is good. It is the “testimony of conscience.”

“This is our rejoicing, the testimony of our conscience.”

The testimony of conscience is a matter and ground of joy to a true Christian. Here we are to consider these things.

First, to consider a little the nature of conscience.

And then, that conscience bears witness; that there is a testimony of conscience.

And that this conscience bearing witness is a ground of comfort.

For the first:

Every man feels and knows what conscience means. There are many rigid disputes about it among the schoolmen, who had leisure enough; and they, of all men, knew as little of it, and felt as little what it was, as any sort of men, living under the darkness of popery and superstition, and being in thralldom to the pope and to the corruptions of the times they lived in. They have much jangling about its description, whether it is the soul itself, or a faculty, or an act.

In a word, conscience is all these in some sort, in different respects. Therefore I will not wrangle with any particular opinion.

1. For what is conscience but the soul itself reflecting upon itself? It is the property of the reasonable soul, and its excellence, that it can return upon itself. The beast cannot, for it runs right forward. It knows it is carried to the object, but it cannot return and recoil upon itself. But the soul of the reasonable creature can, and so it is with all, even from men up to God himself. God understands in the highest degree; and though he does not reason things out as man does, yet he knows himself; he knows and understands his own excellence.

And wherever there is understanding, there is a reflective act by which the soul returns upon itself and knows what it does. It knows what it wills, it knows what it loves, it knows what it speaks, it knows all in it and all outside it. It is the property of the soul. Therefore the original word in the Old Testament that signifies the heart is taken for the conscience. Conscience and heart are all one. I am persuaded in my soul, that is, in my conscience; and the Spirit witnesses to our spirit, that is, to our conscience. Conscience is called the spirit, the heart, the soul, because it is nothing but the soul reflecting and returning upon itself.

Therefore it is called conscience, that is, one knowing joined with another, because conscience knows itself, and it knows what it knows. It knows what the heart is. It not only knows itself, but it is a knowledge of the heart with God. It is called conscience because it knows with God; for what conscience knows, God knows, who is above conscience. It is a knowledge with God, and a knowledge of a man’s self.

And so it may be the soul itself, endowed with that excellent faculty of reflecting and returning upon itself. Therefore it judges its own acts, because it can return upon itself.

2. Conscience likewise in some sort may be called a faculty. The common stream runs that way, that it is a power. It is not one power, but conscience is in all the powers of the soul; for it is in the understanding, and there it rules. Conscience is that by which the understanding is ruled and guided. Conscience is nothing but an application of it to some particular, to something it knows, to some rules it knows beforehand. Conscience is in the will and in the affections: the joy of conscience, and the peace of conscience. And so it runs through the whole soul. It is not one faculty or two, but it is placed in all the faculties.

3. And some insist on having it an act, a particular act, and not a power. When it exercises itself, conscience is an act. When it accuses or excuses, or when it witnesses, it is an act. At that time it is a faculty in act. So we need not wrangle whether it is this or that. Let us comprehend as much in our notions as we can: that it is the soul, the heart, the spirit of a man returning upon itself, and it has something to do in all the powers; and it is an act itself when it is stirred up to accuse or to excuse, to punish a man with fears and terrors or to comfort him with joy, and the like.

Now conscience is a most excellent thing; it is above reason and sense, for conscience is under God and always has an eye to God. An atheist can have no conscience, therefore, because he takes away the ground of conscience, which is an eye to God. Conscience looks to God. It is placed as God’s deputy and vicegerent in man.

Now it is above reason in this respect. Reason says, You ought to do this; it is a becoming thing; it is a thing acceptable to the men among whom you live and converse; it suits your condition as a man to carry yourself this way; it agrees with the rules and principles of nature in you. Thus says reason, and these are good motives from reason. But conscience goes higher. There is a God to whom I must answer, there is a judgment, therefore I do this, and therefore I do not do this. It is a more divine, a more excellent power in man than anything else, than sense or reason or whatever else there is. As it is planted by God for special use, so it looks to God in all.

Therefore the name for conscience in the Greek and Latin signifies a knowledge with another, because it is a knowledge with God. God and my own heart know this. God and my conscience, as we are accustomed to say.

There are three things joined with conscience.

1. It is a knowledge with a rule, with a general rule. That is always the foundation of conscience in a man. For there is a general rule: Whoever commits murder, whoever commits adultery, whoever is a blasphemer, a swearer, a covetous, corrupt person, he shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven, as the apostle says (1 Cor 6:9-10). Here is the general rule. Now conscience applies it: But I am such a one, therefore I shall not enter into heaven. So here the conscience goes to work with a rule. It is a knowledge of those particulars with a general rule. And then,

2. It is a knowledge of me, of my own heart. I know what I have done, I know what I do, and in what manner, whether in hypocrisy or sincerity; I know what I think. And then,

3. It is a knowledge with God; for God knows what conscience knows.

He knows what is thought or done. Conscience is above me, and God is above conscience. Conscience is above me and above all men in the world, for it is directly subject to God. Conscience knows more than the world, and God knows a thousand times more than conscience or the world. It is a knowledge with a general rule, for where there is no general rule there is no conscience. To make this a little clearer: all have a rule. Those who do not have the word, which is the best rule of all, still have the word written in their hearts. They have a natural court of judgment in their souls, their conscience excusing or accusing one another. They have a general rule: you must do no wrong; you must do what is right.

In the soul there is a treasure of rules by nature. The word adds more rules, the law and the gospel. And that part of the soul that preserves rules is called intellectual, because it preserves rules. All men by nature have these engraved in the soul. And therefore the heathen were exact in the rules of justice, in the principles which they had by nature, grafted and planted in them.

Now because the copy of the image of God, the law of God written in nature, had been much blurred since the fall, God gave a new copy of his law, which was more exact. Therefore the Jews, who had the word of God, should have had more conscience than the heathen, because they had a better general rule. And now that we have the gospel too, which is a more evangelical rule, we should be more exact in our lives than they.

But every man in the world has a rule. If men “sin without the law, they shall be judged without the law” (Rom 2:12), by the principles of nature. If they sin under the gospel, they shall be judged by the word and gospel. So conscience is a knowledge with a rule, and with the particular actions that I have done, and a knowledge with God.

In a word, to clear this up further concerning the nature of conscience, know that God has set up a court in man, and in man there is everything that is in a court.

1. There is a registrar to take notice of what we have done. Besides the general rule (for that is the ground and foundation of all), there is conscience, which is a registrar to set down exactly whatever we have done. The conscience keeps diaries. It sets down everything. Nothing is forgotten, though we think it is, when conscience is once awakened. As in Jeremiah 17:1, “The sins of Judah are written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond” upon their souls. All their wit and craft will not erase it. It may be forgotten for a while, through the rage of lusts or one thing or another, but there is a registrar that writes it down. Conscience is the registrar.

2. And then there are witnesses. “The testimony of conscience.” Conscience bears witness: this I have done, this I have not done.

3. There is an accuser with the witness. The conscience accuses or excuses.

4. And then there is the judge. Conscience is the judge. There it judges: this is well done, this is ill done.

5. Then there is an executioner, and conscience is that too. Upon accusation and judgment comes punishment. The first punishment is always within a man, before he comes to hell. The punishment of conscience is a pre-judgment of the future judgment. There is a flash of hell immediately after an evil act. The heathen could observe that God has so framed the heart and the brain that there is a sympathy between them. Whatever is in the understanding that is good and comforting, the understanding in the brain sends to the heart, and it raises some comfort. If the understanding perceives grievous things, evil matters, then the heart strikes, as David’s “heart smote him” (1 Sam 24:5). The heart strikes with grief for the present and with fear for the time to come.

In good things, it brings joy immediately and hope for the time to come, which follow a good, excusing conscience.

God has set and planted this court of conscience in man, and it is God’s hall, as it were, where he holds his first judgment, where he holds his court sessions. And conscience plays all the parts. It records, it witnesses, it accuses, it judges, it executes; it does it all.

Now you see in general what the nature of conscience is, and why it is planted in us by God.

Among the rest, besides his love to us in keeping us from sin, and then in smiting us to drive us to conversion and repentance, to turn from our sins to God, another main end is that it should be a pre-judgment, to make way for God’s eternal judgment; for in it things are judged beforehand. When God lays open the book of conscience, when it is written there by this registrar, we will have a hard time excusing ourselves or pleading that we need many witnesses, for our conscience will accuse us. We shall be self-accusers, self-condemners, as the apostle says. Conscience will take God’s part, and God will take part with conscience. And God has planted it for this main end, that he might be justified in the damnation of wicked men at the day of judgment.

Now I come to the second particular, that conscience gives evidence or witness. This is the evidence or testimony of our conscience. The witness of conscience comes in this order. Upon some general rules that the conscience has laid up in the soul, out of nature and out of the book of God, the conscience applies those generals to the particulars.

First, in directing. This is such a truth in general; you ought to carry yourself thus and thus, to do this, says conscience (so it was with Joseph’s brothers). So it directs, and it is an admonisher before it is a witness. Well, if the admonitions of conscience are regarded and heard, from that comes conscience’s witness that the general rule directing in particulars has been obeyed. And so after it has done its duty in directing, it comes to judge and to witness: this I have done, or this I have not done. So the witness of conscience comes in that manner.

Now if you would know what manner of witness conscience is, it is:

1. A witness against which no exception can be taken. It is a witness that will tell all the truth, and will tell nothing but the truth. It is a witness that will not be bribed; it will not be corrupted long. For a time we may silence it, but that will not last long, nor will it hold in all things. Some sins may be smoothed over, but there are some sins so well known by the general light in nature to be wicked that conscience will accuse. Therefore it is a faithful judge and witness; especially in great sins it is an uncorrupt witness. It is a true registrar. It is always writing and setting down, though for the present we do not know what it writes, being carried away with vanities and lusts. Yet we shall know afterward, when the book of conscience is laid open.

It is a witness that we cannot impeach. No man can say, I had nobody to tell me. Alas! A man’s own conscience will tell him well enough at the day of judgment, and will say to him when he is in hell, as Reuben said to his brothers when they were in prison in Egypt, Did not I tell you, hurt not the boy? (Gen 42:22); that is, do not meddle with him. So conscience will say, Did I not witness? Did I not give you warning? Yes, I did, but you did not regard it. It is a faithful witness. No exception can be taken against it.

2. And then it is an inward witness, a domestic witness, a chaplain in constant attendance, a household divine. It is always telling us, and always ready to put good things into us. It is an eyewitness and an earwitness, for it is as deep in man as any sin can be. If the sin is only in thought, conscience tells me what I think; and conscience tells me what I desire, as well as what I speak and what I do. It is an inward witness and an eyewitness of everything. As God sees all and knows all, who is all eye, so conscience is all eye. It sees everything, it hears everything. It is privy to our thoughts.

As we cannot escape God’s eye, so we cannot escape the eye of conscience. “Whither shall I flee from thy presence?” says David. “If I go to heaven, thou art there; if I go down into hell, thou art there” (Ps 139:7-8). So a man may say of conscience, Where shall I flee from conscience? If a man could flee from himself, that would be something. Conscience is such a thing that a man can neither flee from it nor bid it be gone. It is as inward as his soul. No, the soul will leave the body, but conscience will not leave the soul. What it writes, it writes for eternity, unless it is wiped out by repentance. As St. Chrysostom says, whatever is written there may be wiped out by daily repentance.

You see, then, that it is a witness, and how it witnesses, and what manner of witness conscience is.

Use. Therefore, we should not sin in hope of concealment. What if you conceal it from everyone else, can you conceal it from your own conscience? As one says well, what good is it for you that no one knows what is done, when you know it yourself? What profit is it for him who has a conscience that will accuse him, that he has no man to accuse him but himself? He is a thousand witnesses to himself. Conscience is not a private witness. It is a thousand witnesses. Therefore, never sin in hope of having it concealed. It would be better for all men to know it than for you yourself to know it.

All will one day be written on your forehead. Conscience will be a telltale. If it cannot speak the truth now, though it is bribed in this life, it will have power and efficacy in the life to come. Never sin, therefore, in hope of concealment. Conscience is a witness. We have the witness in us; and, as Isaiah says, “Our sins witness against us” (Isa 59:12). It is in vain to look for secrecy. Conscience will uncover all.

Use. Again, considering that conscience does witness and will witness, let us labor that it may witness well; let us labor to furnish it with a good testimony. Let us carry ourselves in all our conduct toward God and men in such a way that conscience may give a good testimony, a good witness. It will witness either for us or against us.

1. Therefore, first of all, labor to have good rules to guide it, and then labor to obey those rules. Knowledge and obedience are necessary if conscience is to give a good witness. Now, a good witness of conscience is twofold: a true and honest witness, and then a peaceable witness that follows on it; that it may witness truth, and then that it may witness peace for us.

That conscience may witness truly and excuse us, conscience must be rightly instructed, for naturally conscience can tell us many things. The heathen men, the philosophers (we may read it to our shame), made conscience of things which Christians make no conscience of, Christians who are instructed by a further rule than conscience, who have the book of God to correct the inward book of conscience. How many cases they had scruples about: disclosing faults to the buyer when they sold, and dealing truly and honestly, especially in matters of the second table of the law! It should make Christians ashamed.

But besides that rule, we have the rule of the Scriptures. Men are ready to trample on and to erase the writing of conscience, but the book of God they cannot; therefore that is added to help conscience. And God adds his Spirit to his word to convince conscience and to make the witness of the word more effectual. For although the word says thus and thus, yet until the Spirit convinces the soul and settles it that it is so, until he convinces it with a heavenly light, conscience will not be fully convicted.

That conscience, therefore, may be able to witness well, let us regard the notions of nature and preserve them. If we do not, God will give us up to gross sins. Let us labor to have right principles and grounds, to cherish the principles of nature held in common with the heathen, and to lay up principles out of the word of God, to preserve the admonitions and directions and rules of the word.

And let us preserve especially the sweet stirrings of God’s blessed Spirit. For conscience always presupposes a rule: the rule of nature, the rule of the word, and the suggestions of the blessed Spirit with the word.

Therefore, to note this by the way, an ignorant man can never have a good conscience, especially a man who chooses ignorance, because he has no rule. He labors to have none. It is not merely ignorance, but obstinacy along with ignorance.

He will not know what he should, for fear that conscience will force him to do what he knows. What a foolish thing this is! It will be the heaviest sin that can be laid to our charge at the day of judgment, not that we were ignorant, but that we refused to know, that we refused to have our conscience corrected and instructed.

And those who avoid knowledge because they will not do what they know shall know one day that their willful ignorance will be laid to their charge as a heavy sin.

Labor to have right principles and grounds. Why is it that men commonly have such bad consciences? They have false principles. They conclude, May I not do what I please? May I not make what I will of my own? And, every man for himself, and God for us all. Diabolical principles! And so, commonly, if you examine men who live in wickedness, they have false principles: God does not see, God does not care, and it is time enough to repent. The cause of men living wickedly is false principles. That is why they have such vile consciences as they have. Their hearts deceive them, and they deceive their hearts. They have false principles put into them by others. They are deceived, and they deceive their hearts. They force false principles on themselves. Many study to find false grounds to live by for their own advantage.

There are many who are atheistical, who live even under the gospel, and what rule do they have? The example of those by whom they hope to rise. They study their manners. They square their lives by them. This is all the rule they have.

And again, the multitude: they do as most do. And custom, and other false rules. These rules will not comfort us. To say, I did it by such an example, I did as others among whom I live did, or I did it because it was the custom of the times: these things, when alleged, will comfort not at all. For who gave you these rules? Does God say anywhere in his word, You shall be judged by the example of others, you shall be judged by the custom of the times you live in?

No, you shall be judged by my word. The word that Moses spoke, “and the word that I speak, shall judge you” at the last day (John 12:48). Those who do not have the word shall be judged by the word written in their hearts. Those that have sinned without the law shall be judged by that, without the law of Moses (Rom 2:12).

God has acquainted us with other rules. We must take heed of this, therefore, that we get good rules. Take heed that they are not false rules. For want of these directions men come to have evil consciences. Where there is no good rule, there is a blind conscience; where there is no application of the rule, there is a profane conscience; and where there is a false rule, there is an erroneous, a scrupulous, a wicked conscience.

A papist, because he has a false rule, cannot have a good conscience. The abomination of popery is that they sin against conscience; and conscience, indeed, is even with them, for it overthrows most of their principles. They sin against conscience in many ways. I do not mean against their own conscience; they sin against the conscience of others. For what do they do? That they may rule in the consciences of men (for that is the aim of their great prelate, the tyrant of souls), they have false rules, such as that the pope cannot err.

Their rule is the authority and judgment of him who cannot err; and he, for the most part, is a man unlearned in divinity, who has never read through the Scriptures in all his life, and he must judge all controversies. Where this is granted, that the pope cannot err, he sits in the conscience to do what he pleases. And he makes divine laws; and cursed is he, says the Council of Trent, who does not make those traditions equal with the word of God.

From this false rule comes everything, even rebellion itself. If he gives a dispensation from the oath of allegiance, then, because he cannot err, they ought to obey him and rebel against their governors. All rebellion is from that rebellious rebellion that comes from false principles. These men talk of conscience, and they do not come to church for conscience’s sake. What conscience can they have when they have false rules? To equivocate and lie: sins against nature. And other rules that give liberty against the word, that children may disobey their parents and get into a cloister, and so on.

Most of popery, even if there were no word of God, is against nature, against conscience, which God has planted in man as his deputy, his tenant.

And as they sin against conscience, so, as I said, conscience is even with them. For let a man trust to his conscience, and he can never be a sound papist, unless he leaves that and goes on base, false grounds, because other great men do it, and because his predecessors have done it, and so on. I appeal to their own consciences whether any man at the day of death thinks to be saved by his merits. Does not Bellarmine (after long disputing of salvation by merits) disclaim it? Does he not put away merits, because of the uncertainty of his own righteousness? So their own consciences wring away any testimony for trusting in merits.

Again, they say that original sin is no great sin, that it is only the cause of sin, and that it is less than any venial sin. Oh, but when conscience is awakened to know what a corrupt estate it is, it will draw from them what it drew from St. Paul, “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:24). Conscience, when it is awakened, will tell them that it is another kind of sin, and that it is the fountain of all sin.

And so for justification by works. Conscience itself, if there were no book of God, would say it is a false point. And then they plead for ignorance. They have blind consciences. Their clergy are a subtle generation, who have abused the world a long time. Because they would sit in the conscience where God should sit, they “sit in the temple of God” (2 Thess 2:4), and would be respected above what is due to them; they would be regarded as petty gods in the world. Therefore they keep the people from the knowledge of the true rule, and make what they speak equal with God’s word. Now if the people discerned this, they would not be papists long, for no man would willingly be cheated. Let us labor, therefore, for a true rule.

2. And when we have gotten rules, apply them; for what are rules without application? Rules are instrumental things, and instruments without use are nothing. If a carpenter has a rule, and hangs it up beside him, and works by his own fancy, what good is it? So to get a collection of rules by the word of God (to refine natural knowledge as much as we can), and then to make no use of it in our lives, is to no purpose. Therefore when we have rules, let us apply them.

In this, those who have the true rule and do not apply it are better than those who refuse to have the rule, because, as has been said, an ignorant man who does not have the rule cannot be good. But a man who has the rule, and yet does not square his life by it, can still bring the rule to his life. There is close communication between the heart and the brain. Such a man has the rule in his memory; he has it in his understanding. And therefore there is a thousand times more hope of him who cares to know, who cares to hear the word of God, and cares for the means, than of foolish persons who do not care to hear, because they would not do what they know, and because they would not have their sleepy, dull, and drowsy conscience awakened. There is no hope of such a one.

It should be our care to have right rules, and in the application of them to make much of conscience, that it may apply aright in directing, and then in comfort. If we obey it in directing, it will witness and excuse; and upon witness and excuse there will come a sweet paradise to the soul, of joy and peace unspeakable and glorious.

The last thing I observe from these words is this:

Doctrine. The testimony and witness of conscience is a ground of comfort and joy.

The reason for joining these two, the witness of a good conscience and joy, is what I said before in the description of conscience; for

1. From the office of conscience: conscience first admonishes, and then witnesses, and then it excuses or accuses, and then it judges and executes. Now the inward execution of conscience is joy, if it is good; for God has so planted it in the heart and soul that where conscience accuses or excuses, there is always execution. There is always joy or fear. The affections of joy or fear always follow. If a man’s conscience excuses him, that he has done well, then conscience comes to be enlarged, to be a paradise to the soul, to be a jubilee, a refreshing, to speak peace and comfort to a man. For rewards are not kept altogether for the life to come. Hell is begun in an ill conscience, and heaven is begun in a good conscience. An ill conscience is a hell on earth; a good conscience is a heaven on earth. Therefore the testimony of a good conscience breeds glorying and rejoicing.

2. Again, conscience, when it witnesses, it comforts, because when it witnesses, it witnesses with God; and where God is, there is his Spirit, and where the Holy Spirit is, there is joy. For even as heat follows the fire, so joy and glorying accompany the Spirit of God, “the Spirit of glory” (1 Pet 4:14). Now when conscience witnesses rightly, it witnesses with God; and God is always clothed with joy. He brings joy and glory into the heart. Conscience witnesses with God that I am his.

3. And it witnesses with myself that I have led my life in this way: “Our rejoicing is the witness of our conscience.” It is not the witness of another man’s conscience, but my own. Other men may witness, and say I am this and that, but all is to no purpose if my own conscience tells me I am another man than they take me to be. But when a man’s own conscience witnesses for him, rejoicing follows. A man cannot rejoice in the testimony of another man’s conscience, because another man says, I am a good man, unless there is the testimony of my own conscience.

Now an excusing conscience is a sweet benefit, when it witnesses well. Let us see in all the passages of life that a good conscience, in excusing, breeds glorying and joy.

It breeds joy in life, in death, at the day of judgment.

1. In life, in all the passages of life, in every condition, both good and ill.

(1) In a good condition, the testimony of conscience breeds joy, for it enjoys the pleasures of this life, and its comforts, with the favor of God. Conscience tells the man that he has come by the things he enjoys honestly, that he has come by the place and advancement he holds honestly, that he enjoys the comforts of this life with a good conscience, and “all things are pure to the pure” (Titus 1:15). If he has gotten them wrongly, conscience always reproaches him, and therefore he cannot rejoice in the good condition he has. If a man had all the contentments in the world, and did not have the testimony of a good conscience, what would all of it be? What contentment did Adam have in paradise, once he had fallen by sin from the peace of conscience? None at all. “A little that the righteous hath, is better than great riches of the ungodly” (Ps 37:16), because the ungodly do not have peace of conscience.

(2) And so for an ill condition: when conscience witnesses well, it breeds rejoicing.

[1] In false charges, and slanders, and disgraces. So it was here, where it was insinuated to the Corinthians, by false teachers and those who followed them, that St. Paul was this and that. St. Paul says, You may say what you will of me; “my rejoicing is this, the testimony of my conscience,” that I am not the man they make me out to be in your hearts by their false reports. The witness of conscience is a good and sufficient ground of rejoicing in this case. Therefore holy men have in all times retired to their conscience, as you see St. Paul doing here.

So with Job: his conscience carried him through all the false charges of his comfortless friends, who were “miserable comforters” (Job 16:2). They labored to take his sincerity away from him, the chief cause of his joy. You shall not take away my sincerity, he says (Job 27:5). You would make me a hypocrite, and this and that, but my conscience tells me I am otherwise; therefore you shall not take away my innocency from me. And in Job 31:35: “Behold, it is my desire, that the Almighty would answer me, and that my adversaries would write a book against me, I would take it upon my shoulder, I would take it as a crown unto me.” Here was the force of a good conscience in Job’s troubles: if his adversaries should write a book against him, he would still bind it as a crown about him (Job 31:36).

And so David: in all false charges, when they laid things to his charge that he had never done, this was his joy; he takes this for his joy, the comfort of his conscience.

So St. Paul retires to his conscience, and being raised up by the worthiness of a good conscience, he despises all false charges whatsoever. He sets conscience up as a flag of defiance against all the false slanders and charges laid against him, as we see in the story of the Acts, and in this place and others. He says in one place, I pass not for man’s sentence (1 Cor 4:3); I do not care for man’s day. Man has his day; man will have his judgment seat, and will get up on the bench and judge me to be such and such. I do not care for man’s day. There is another judgment seat that I look to, and I look to the testimony of my conscience: “My rejoicing is the witness of my conscience.”

Holy men have cause to retire to their own consciences when they would rejoice against false charges. So holy St. Augustine: what does he say to a Donatist who wronged him in his reputation? “Think of Augustine what you please; as long as my conscience accuses me not with God, I will give you leave to think what you will.”

If such a man’s conscience clears him, he does not care a whit for reports, because a good man looks more to conscience than to fame. Therefore if conscience tells him the truth, though fame lies, he does not care much; for he does not square his life by report, but by conscience. Indeed he looks to a good name, but that is in the last place.

For a good man looks first to God, who is above conscience; then he looks to conscience, which is under God; and then, in the third place, he looks to report among men. And if God and his conscience excuse him, though men accuse him and lay charges on him, this or that, he cares little for man’s judgment. So the witness of conscience comforts in all false charges whatsoever.

[2] Again, it comforts in sickness. Hezekiah was sick. What does he retire to? “Remember, Lord, how I have walked uprightly before thee” (Isa 38:3). He goes to his conscience.

In sickness, when a man can eat nothing, a good conscience is “a continual feast” (Prov 15:15). In sorrow it is a musician. A good conscience does not only counsel and advise, but it is a musician to delight. It is a physician to heal. It is the best cordial, the best medicine. All others are physicians of no value, comforts of no value. If a man’s conscience is wounded, if it is not quieted by faith in the blood of Christ, if he does not have the Spirit to witness the forgiveness of his sins, and to sanctify and enable him to lead a good life, all is to no purpose, if there is an evil conscience. The unsound body, while it is sick, is in a kind of hell already.

[3] Again, take a man in any cross whatsoever: a good conscience bears out the cross; it bears a man up always. For a good conscience, being a witness with God, raises a man above all earthly things whatsoever. There is no earthly discouragement that can dismay a good conscience, because there is a kind of divinity in conscience, put in by God, and it witnesses together with God. So in all crosses it comforts.

So likewise in losses, in want, in want of friends, in want of comforts, in want of liberty: what does the witness of a good conscience do in all these? In want of friends, it is a friend indeed; it is an inward friend, a near friend to us. Suppose a man has not a single friend in the world; still he has God and his own conscience. Where there is a good conscience, there are always God and his Holy Spirit. In want of liberty, in want of outward comforts, he has the comfort of a good conscience.

A man on his deathbed sees that he lacks all outward comforts, but he has a good conscience. And so in want of liberty: when a man is restrained, his heart is at liberty.

A wicked man who has a bad conscience is imprisoned in his own heart. Though he has ever so much liberty, though he is a monarch, a bad conscience imprisons him at home. He is in fetters. His thoughts make him afraid of thunder, afraid of everything, afraid of himself; and though there is nobody else to awe him, yet his conscience awes him. Where there is a conscience under the guilt of unrepented sin, though there is the greatest liberty in the world, there is restraint; for conscience is the worst prison.

Where there is a good conscience, there is an inward enlargement. A good man in the greatest restraint has liberty. Consider Paul and Silas (Acts 16). They were in the dungeon, in the hell of the dungeon, in the worst place of the dungeon, in the stocks; it was the worst time of the day (of the natural day, I mean), at midnight; and they had the worst usage, being mistreated and whipped besides. They had all the discouragements that could be; and yet they sang at midnight, these blessed men, Paul and Silas. Because their hearts were enlarged, there was a paradise in the very dungeon.

As where the king is, there is his court, so it is where God is. God in the prison, in the foul dungeon, by his Spirit so enlarged their hearts that they sang at midnight. Whereas if conscience is ill, even if it were in paradise, conscience would fear, as we see in Adam (Gen 3:8). St. Paul in prison was better off than Adam in paradise once Adam had offended God. Adam had outward comforts enough; but when he had sinned, his conscience made him afraid of the One from whom he should have had all comfort. It made him afraid of God, and made him hide himself among the leaves. Alas, a poor expedient! We see then that conscience does witness, and its witness, when it is good, causes the soul to glory and rejoice, not only in positive ills, in slanders and crosses, but in losses, in want of friends, in want of comforts, in want of liberty.

And so for the time to come, in evils threatened, a good conscience is bold: It fears no ill tidings (Ps 112:7). “My heart is fixed, my heart is fixed,” says David (Ps 57:7). Wicked men are like the trees of the forest. Wicked Ahaz’s heart did tremble and shake as the leaves with the wind (Isa 7:2). The noise of fear is always in their ears. An ill conscience, when it is mingled with ill news, when there are two fears together, must be a great fear.

2. And a good conscience, when it has laid up grounds of joy in life, in the worst state and condition of life, then makes use of joy in death. For when all comforts are taken from a man, when his friends cannot comfort him and all earthly things leave him, then that conscience which has gone along with him, which has been a monitor and a witness all his lifetime, now comes to speak good things to him. Now it comforts him; now conscience is somebody. At the hour of death, when nothing else will be regarded, when nothing will comfort, then conscience does. “The righteous hath hope in his death,” as the wise man says (Prov 14:32).

Death is called the king of fears, because it makes all afraid. It is “the terrible of terribles,” says the philosopher; but here is a king above the king of fears. A good conscience is above the king of fears, death. A good conscience is so far from being discouraged by this king of fears that it is joyful even in death, because it knows that it is then near to the place where conscience shall be fully enlarged, where there shall be no annoyance, no grievance whatsoever.

Death is the end of misery and the beginning of happiness. Therefore a good conscience is joyful in death.

3. And after death, at the day of judgment. There the witness of conscience is a wondrous cause of joy; for there a man who has a good conscience looks on the Judge, his brother. He looks on him with whom he made his peace earlier, in his lifetime, and now he receives that of which he had the beginnings before; then he lifts up his head with joy and comfort. So you see how the witness of conscience causes glory and joy in every condition whatsoever, in life, in death, after death. It speaks for a man there. It never leaves him till it has brought him to heaven itself, where all things else leave a man.

Therefore, how much we should prize and value the testimony and witness of a good conscience! And what madness it is for a man to humor men and displease conscience, his best friend! Of all persons and all things in the world, we should reverence our own conscience most of all. Wretched men despise the inward witness of this inward friend, this inward minister, this inward physician, this inward comforter, this inward counselor. It is no better than madness that men should care that everything else be good and clean, and yet in the midst of it all have foul consciences.

Objection. But to answer an objection, and to untie some knots. It may be said that even when the hearts of people are good, a good conscience does not always conclude for comfort. Where there is faith in Christ and an honest life, conscience should conclude comfort. Here is the rule: this I have obeyed, therefore I should have comfort.

Now we often see this crossed, in that Christians who live exact lives are often troubled in conscience. How can trouble of conscience stand with joy based on the witness of conscience?

Answer. I answer that the witness of conscience, even when it is a good conscience, does not always breed joy.

1. It is because our state is imperfect here, and conscience does not always witness out of its goodness. Sometimes conscience is misled, and so good Christians sometimes take the error of conscience for the witness of conscience.

These things should be distinguished. Conscience, even in the best, sometimes errs, as well as gives a true witness.

If we take the error of conscience for the witness of conscience, trouble of conscience will come, and that deservedly, through our own folly.

Now conscience errs in good men sometimes when they regard rules they should not, or when they mistake the matter and do not argue rightly. For instance, when they reason this way: I do not have grace in such a measure, and therefore I have none; I am not the child of God.

What a rule this is! This is the error of conscience, and therefore it must breed perplexity of conscience. A good conscience, when it is right, cannot witness this way, because the word does not say this. Are a nullity and an imperfection one and the same? No; they differ much in their whole kind. A nullity is nothing. An imperfection, though it is only a small degree, is still something. This is the error of conscience, and from it comes trouble of conscience, which makes men reason badly in many ways. For instance: I do not have as much grace as such a person has, and therefore I have no grace. Now that is false reasoning, for everyone has his due measure. If you are not as great a rich man as the richest in the town, you may still be rich in your kind.

2. Again, when conscience looks to the humor. You are to live by faith, and not by the humor of melancholy. When the instrument of reason that should judge is distempered by melancholy, it reasons falsely from there. Because melancholy persuades me that I am so, therefore conscience, being led by the humor of the body, says I am so. Who told you to live by humor? You must live by rule. Melancholy, when it is in strength, may sometimes tell you that you are made of glass, as it has done to some. It will deceive you in bodily things, where the senses can refute melancholy; much more will it do so if we yield to it in matters of the soul. It will persuade us that we are not the children of God, that we do not have grace and goodness when we do.

3. Again, this is why conscience does not conclude comfort in God’s children: because it looks to the ill, and not to the good that is in them. For there are these two things in God’s children: there is good and ill. Now in the time of temptation they look to the ill, and think they have no good, because they will not see anything but ill. They fix their eyes on the remainders of their rebellious lusts, which are not fully subdued in them, and they look wholly on them. Whereas they should have two eyes, one to look on what is good, that God may have glory and they comfort.

Now they fix their eyes altogether on what is bad, and because they do not, or will not, see what is good, therefore they have no comfort; because they allow conscience to be ill led, so that it does not do its duty.

And conscience in good men sometimes looks to what it should not in others, in regard to others. It looks to the flourishing of wicked men, and therefore it concludes, “Certainly I have washed my hands in vain” (Ps 73:13), since such men thrive and prosper in the world (Ps 37:35 and following). Who told you to look to this, and to be uncomfortable because of it, concluding that your state is not good because it is not such a state? “So foolish, and as a beast was I before thee,” says David (Ps 73:22), because I regarded such things. No wonder if men are uncomfortable who are led away by stumbling blocks. Look to faith; go to the word, to the sanctuary. “I went to the sanctuary,” he says, “and there I saw the end of these men” (Ps 73:17). So conscience must be allowed to have its work, to be led by a true rule.

4. Again, conscience sometimes does not conclude comfort, when there is ground of comfort, from the remainders of corruptions and infirmities; whereas we should be driven by our infirmities to Christ. And conscience in good men sometimes does not exercise its work. It is drawn away by vain delights, even in the best of men.

And the conscience’s awareness of its own unworthiness and of the greatness of the things it looks for, these being joined together, makes a man fail to rejoice when he has cause. For instance, the soul sees that God in Christ has pardoned all my sins, and has granted his Spirit to me, and will give me heaven in the world to come, to such a wretch as I am. Here there is a conflict between the conscience and sense of its own unworthiness and the greatness of the good promised, and the heart begins to stagger and to doubt for want of sound faith.

Indeed, if we look on our own unworthiness and the greatness of the good things promised, we may wonder. But ah, God is infinite in goodness; he transcends our unworthiness. And in the gospel the glory of God’s mercy triumphs over our unworthiness and over our sins. Whatever our sin and unworthiness may be, his goodness in the gospel triumphs over all.

In the state of innocence God would have advanced an innocent man; but the gospel is more glorious. For he comes to sinners, to persons condemned by nature, and yet God triumphs over their sins and unworthiness. He does not regard what we deserve, but what may stand with the glory of his mercy. Therefore we should banish those thoughts, and enjoy our own privilege, the promises of heaven, and happiness, and all comforts whatsoever. So much for the answer to that objection.

Now if we would rejoice in the witness of a good conscience, we must, especially in the time of temptation, live by faith and not by feeling, not by what we feel for the present. As we see Christ in his greatest horror, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34), he goes to my God still; so we must live by faith and not by sense (2 Cor 5:7).

And then, if we would rejoice in extremities, remember that God works by contraries. God will bring us to heaven, but it must be by hell. God will bring us to comfort, but it must be by sense of our own unworthiness. He will forgive our sins, but it must be by sight and sense of our sins. He will bring us to life, but it must be by death. He will bring us to glory, but it must be by shame. God works by contraries; therefore in contraries believe contraries. When we are in a state that has no comfort, we may still rejoice in it if we believe in Christ. He works by contraries.

As in the creation he made all out of nothing, order out of confusion, so he does likewise in the work of the new creation, in the new creature; therefore do not be dismayed.

Remember this rule likewise, that in the covenant of grace God requires truth, and not measure. You are not under the law, but under the covenant of grace. A little fire is true fire as well as the whole element of fire. A drop of water is water as well as the whole ocean. So if it is true faith, true grief for sins, true hatred of them, true desire for the favor of God and to grow better, truth is what is respected in the covenant of grace, and not any set measure.

What does the covenant of grace say? He that believes and repents shall be saved (Mark 16:16), not he who has a strong faith, or he who has perfect repentance. So St. Paul says, as we shall see later, “This is our rejoicing, that in simplicity and sincerity we have had our conversation among you” (2 Cor 1:12). He does not say that our conduct has been perfect. So if we would have joy in the testimony of conscience, we must not deprive ourselves of joy because we do not have a perfect measure of grace, but rejoice that God has worked any measure of grace in such unclean and polluted hearts as ours are. For the least measure of grace is a pledge of perfection in the world to come.

“This is our rejoicing, the testimony of our conscience …” Hence we may gather clearly that:

Observation. A man may know his own state in grace.

I gather it from the place in this way: “Our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity …”

Where there is joy and the ground of joy, there is a knowledge of the state; but a Christian has glorying, and a ground of glorying, in himself, and he knows it. He has that in him which witnesses to that state. He has the witness of conscience; therefore he may know it and be assured of it. If this testimony were not a true testimony, that would be something. But all men naturally have a conscience, and a Christian has a sanctified conscience. And where that is, there is a true testimony, and true joy from that testimony. Therefore he may be assured of his salvation, and have true joy and comfort, a heaven on earth before he comes to heaven itself.

If conscience testifies of itself, and from witnessing gives cause of joy, much more does the Spirit of God coming into the conscience: “The Spirit bears witness with our spirits” (Rom 8:16). If our spirit and conscience bear witness to us of our conduct in simplicity and sincerity, and from that of our state in grace, much more by the witness of two. “By the witness of two or three everything shall be confirmed” (Matt 18:16); but our spirits and conscience, and the Spirit of God, which every child of God has, witness that we are the children of God (Rom 8:14 and elsewhere). “The Spirit witnesseth with our spirits that we are the sons of God” (Rom 8:16). Therefore a Christian may know his state in grace.

The spirit of a man knows himself, and the Spirit of God knows him likewise, and it knows what is in the heart of God. And when these two meet, the Spirit of God that knows the secrets of God and knows our secrets, and our spirit that knows our heart likewise, what should hinder us from knowing our own state? It is the nature of conscience, as I told you, to reflect on itself and on the person in whom it is, to know what is known by it, and to judge, and condemn, and execute itself, by inward fear and terror in ill, and in good by comfort and joy in a man’s self. It is the property the soul has above all creatures, to return and recoil on itself. If this is natural to man, much more to the spirit of a man. For if a man knows what is in himself naturally, his own wit and understanding, which is always with him, bred up with him, much more he knows by his spirit the things that are added, that come from outside him, that is, the work of grace.

If a man, by a reflecting knowledge, knows what is naturally in him, in what part he has it, and how he exercises it; if he knows and remembers what he has done and the manner of it, whether well or ill; then he may know the work of the Spirit, which comes from outside him and works a change in him.

We say of light that it reveals itself and all other things; so the soul is full of light, and therefore knows itself and knows other things.

The Spirit of God is much more full of light. Where it is, it reveals itself and enlightens the soul. It reveals the person in whom it is. As the apostle says in 1 Corinthians 2:12, “We have the Spirit, whereby we know the things that we receive of God.” It not only works in us, but it teaches us what it has worked. Therefore a Christian knows that he is in the state of grace, he knows his virtues and his disposition, except in the time of temptation, and on those grounds named before.

Therefore we should labor to know our state, to examine ourselves whether we be in the faith or no, except we be reprobates and castaways, as the apostle speaks (2 Cor 13:5). A Christian should aim at this, to understand his own state in grace upon good grounds.

Objection. But it may be objected: how can we know our state in grace, when our virtues are so imperfect and our abilities so weak and feeble?

Answer. I answer that the ground for judging rightly of our state is not worthiness or perfection, but sincerity. We must not look for perfection. That is what makes the papists teach that there may be doubting, because they look to false grounds. But we must look to the ground in the covenant of grace, to grace itself, and not to its measure. Where there is truth and sincerity, there is the condition of the covenant of grace, and there is a ground on which a man may build his state in grace.

The perfect righteousness of Christ is what gives us title to heaven. But what lets us know that we have a right in that title is simplicity and sincerity in our walking, in our manner of life, as the apostle says here, “This is our rejoicing…” Therefore, when Christians are set upon by temptations from their own misdoubting hearts and from Satan, they must not go to the great measure of grace that is in others, reasoning that they do not have as much as others and therefore have none. Nor must they go to the great measure of grace that they themselves lack. They must go to the truth of their grace, the truth of their desires and endeavors, the truth of their affections. “Hereby we know that we are translated from death to life, because we love the brethren” (1 John 3:14).

Use. This should stir us up to have a good conscience, that we may rejoice. Why should we labor that we may rejoice? Why? What is our life without joy? And what is joy without a good conscience?

What is our life without joy? Without joy we can do nothing. We are like an instrument out of tune, and an instrument out of tune yields only harsh music. Without joy we are like a limb out of joint. We can do nothing well without joy and a good conscience, which is the ground of joy. A man without joy is a palsied limb that moves awkwardly and unbecomingly. He does not go about things as he should.

A good conscience breeds joy and comfort. It enables a man to do all things becomingly in the sight of God, and comfortably to himself. It makes him go cheerfully through his business. A good conscience is a continual feast (Prov 15:15). Without joy we cannot suffer afflictions. We cannot die well without it. Simeon died comfortably, because he died in peace, when he had embraced Christ in his heart and in his arms (Luke 2:28-29). Without joy and the ground of joy we can neither do nor suffer anything.

Therefore in Psalm 51:12 David, when he had lost the peace and comfort of a good conscience, prays for the free Spirit of God. Alas! Until God had enlarged his heart with the sense of a good conscience in the pardon of his sins, and given him the power of his Spirit to lead a better life for the time to come, his spirit was not free. He could not praise God with a large spirit. He lacked freedom of spirit. His conscience was bound. His lips were sealed up. “Open my lips, and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise” (Ps 51:15). His heart was bound, and therefore he prays to have it enlarged. “Restore to me thy joy and salvation” (Ps 51:12), intimating that we cannot have a free spirit without joy, and we cannot have joy without a good conscience sprinkled with the blood of Christ in the pardon of our sins.

If it is so, that we cannot do anything or suffer anything as we should, that we cannot praise God, that we cannot live or die without joy and the ground of it, the testimony of a good conscience, then let us labor that conscience may witness well to us.

Especially when we consider that an ill conscience is the worst thing in the world. There is no friend so good as a good conscience. There is no foe so ill as a bad conscience. It makes us either kings or slaves. When a man has a good conscience that witnesses well for him, it raises his heart in a princely manner above all things in the world. When a man has a bad conscience, though he is a monarch, it makes him a slave. A bad conscience embitters everything in the world to him, however comfortable those things may be in themselves. What is so comfortable as the presence of God? What is so comfortable as the light? Yet a bad conscience that will not be ruled hates the light, and hates the presence of God, as we see in Adam, who fled from God when he had sinned (Gen 3:8).

A bad conscience cannot rejoice in the midst of joy. It is like a gouty foot or a gouty toe covered with a velvet shoe. Alas! What does that do to ease it? What does glorious clothing do to ease the diseased body? Nothing at all. The ill is within. There the arrow sticks.

And so it is with the comforts of the word, if the conscience is bad. We who are the messengers of comfort may apply comfort to you. But if there is one within who says, “It is true, but I did not regard the word before, I did not regard the checks of conscience,” then conscience will speak more terror than we can speak peace. And after long and willful rebellion, conscience will for the most part admit no comfort. Regard it, therefore, in time; labor in time that it may witness well.

An ill conscience is most terrible when it should be most comforted. At the hour of death we should have the most comfort, if we had any wisdom. But when earthly comforts are taken from us, and at the day of judgment, an ill conscience, look where it will, has matter of terror. If it looks up, there is the Judge armed with vengeance. If it looks beneath, there is hell ready to swallow it. If it looks to one side, there is the devil accusing and helping conscience. If it looks round about, there are heaven and earth and all on fire, and within there is a hell. Where shall the sinner and ungodly appear? “If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the sinner and ungodly appear” (1 Pet 4:18) at that time?

O let us labor to have a good conscience, and to exercise the reflective power of conscience in this world. That is, let us examine ourselves, admonish ourselves, judge ourselves, condemn ourselves, do it all within ourselves. Let us keep court at home first, let us hold the assizes there, and then we shall have comfort at the great assizes.

For this reason God, out of his love, has put conscience into the soul, that we might keep a court at home. Let conscience, therefore, do its worst now. Let it accuse, let it judge; and when it has judged, let it smite us and do execution upon us, that, having judged ourselves, we may not be condemned with the world (1 Cor 11:32).

If we do not allow conscience to have its full work now, it will have it one day. A sleepy conscience will not always sleep. If we do not allow conscience to awake here, it will awaken in hell, where there is no remedy.

Therefore, give conscience leave to speak what it will. Perhaps it will tell you a tale in your ear that you would be loath to hear. It will pursue you with terrors like a bloodhound, and will not let you rest. So, like a bankrupt, you are loath to look in your books, because there is nothing there but matter of terror. But this is only folly, for at the last conscience will do its duty. It will awaken either here or in hell.

Therefore, we are to hope the best of those who have their consciences opened here. There is hope that they will make their peace with God, that they will agree with their adversary while they are in the way (Matt 5:25). If you allow conscience to be sleepy and drowsy until it is awakened in hell, woe to you! For then your state is settled; it will be a barren repentance. Now your repentance may be fruitful; it may force you to make your peace with God. Do you think it will always be this way with you? You stupefy your conscience with sensuality, and say, “Go thy way, and come another time,” as one said to St. Paul (Acts 24:25). I tell you, this peace will prove a tempest in the end.

Conscience, of all things in the world, deserves the greatest reverence, more than any monarch in the world; for it is above all men, it is next to God. And yet what do many men do? They regard the honor of their friends more than conscience, that inward friend who will accompany them to heaven, who will go with them to death and to judgment, and make them lift up their heads with joy when other friends cannot help them but must of necessity leave them in death. Now, for a man to follow the whims of men, to follow the multitude, and to stain conscience, what a foolish wretch he is! However wise such men think themselves, it is the greatest folly in the world to stain conscience to please any man, because conscience is above all men.

Again, as for those who follow their own whims, their own inclinations, and are carried away with their own lusts, it is folly and madness. For the time will come when what their covetous, base lust has carried them to will be taken away: honors, riches, pleasures, which are the fuel of that lust which now makes them neglect conscience. All of it will be taken away in sickness or in the time of despair, when conscience is awakened.

Now, what folly it is to please your own lust, which you should mortify and subdue, and to displease conscience, your best friend! And then, when your lust is fully satisfied, all that has been fuel to it, all that has fed it, will be taken away at the hour of death or in some special judgment. And conscience will be awakened, and will torment you for giving liberty to your base lusts and to yourself.

And as for those eyes of your soul that your offense delighted to shut, some punishment will come, either in this life or in the life to come, that will open those eyes, as Adam’s eyes were opened after his sin. Why? Were they not open before? He had such a strong desire for the apple that he did not regard them; but his punishment afterward opened those eyes which his inordinate desire had shut. So it will be with every sinner.

Therefore, regard no man in the world more than your conscience. Regard nothing, no pleasure, no profit, more than conscience; reverence it more than anything in the world. Happy is the man who carries with him a good conscience, who can witness that he has neither said nor done anything that may vex or grieve conscience. If it is otherwise, whatever a man gains he loses in conscience, and there is no comparison between those two. One crack, one flaw in conscience, will prove more disadvantageous than all the rest will be profitable. You must bring the rest back up again. They are sweet bits downward, but they shall be gravel in the belly (Prov 20:17).

We think that when we have gained anything, when we have done anything, we will hear no more of it, as David said to Joab when he set him to do away with Uriah, “Let not this trouble thee” (2 Sam 11:25). So we say: Do not let this ill gain, do not let this ill speech or this ill conduct trouble you; you will hear no more of this. We take measures to stop and silence conscience, thinking never to hear more of it. Oh, but remember, conscience will have its work; and the longer we defer the witness and work of conscience, the more it will terrify and accuse us afterward.

Therefore, of all men, however great they may be, those are most miserable who follow their wills and their lusts most, who never have any outward check or inward check of conscience, but drown it with sensual pleasures. So it was with Charles the Ninth. At night, when conscience has the fittest time to work, because a man is then retired, he would have his singing boys. This was after he had betrayed them in that horrible massacre, after which he never had peace and quiet. And as Saul sent for David’s harp when the evil spirit was upon him (1 Sam 16:23), so wicked men look for outside helps. But it will not do; for the greatest men with their outside helps are most miserable.

The reason is that the more they sink in rebellion and sin against conscience, the more they sink in terrors. It will be the greatest torment to those who have had their wills most in the world. The more their conscience is silenced and done violence to in this world, the more vocal it will be at the hour of death and the day of judgment.

Therefore judge who are the most miserable men in the world (however much regard they may have in the world besides). They are those who have consciences but will not allow them to work. With sensuality within them, and with the pleasing, flattering speech of those outside them, they keep conscience down, and take measures that neither conscience within nor anyone else without will disturb them. If any do, they will be served as Ahab dealt with Micaiah (1 Kgs 22:27). These men who are thus at peace in sinful courses are of all men most miserable. They enjoy their pleasure here for a little time, but their conscience will torment them forever, and will say to them, as Reuben said to his brothers, I told you this before, but you would not hearken to me, and now you shall be tormented (Gen 42:22).

Conscience is an evil beast. It makes a man rise against himself. Therefore, of all men, those who are disordered in their courses, who neglect conscience and neglect the means of salvation that should awaken conscience, are the most miserable. For the longer they go on, the more they sink in sin; and the more they sink in sin, the more they sink in terror of conscience, if not now, yet hereafter.

If we desire, therefore, to have joy and comfort at all times, let us labor to have a good conscience that may witness well. And therefore let us every day keep an audit at home, every day cast up our accounts, every day draw the blood of Christ over our accounts, every day beg forgiveness of sins and the Spirit of Christ to lead us. In this way we may keep account every day, and make our reckonings even every day, that we may have the less to do in the time of sickness, in the time of temptation, and in the time of death, having discharged our consciences beforehand by keeping session at home in our own hearts.

This should be the daily practice of a Christian, and then he may lay himself down in peace.

He who sleeps with a defiled conscience is like one who sleeps among wild beasts, among adders and toads; if his eyes were open to see them, he would be out of his wits. He who sleeps without a good conscience is an ill-advised man. God may make his bed his grave; he may smite him suddenly. Therefore let us labor every day to have a good conscience, that we may have matter of perpetual joy.

A good conscience, especially, is an evangelical conscience; for no one has a legal good conscience, that is, such a conscience as acquits a man as having obeyed the law exactly in all things. No one has a complete legal good conscience, except in some particular deed; there is a good conscience in a particular deed. So the heathen could excuse themselves, that they were thus and thus (Rom 2:15), and God ministers much joy in that. But an evangelical good conscience is what we must trust to. That is, such a conscience as, though it knows itself guilty of sin, yet knows that Christ has shed his blood for sinners; and such a conscience as by means of faith is sprinkled with the blood of Christ and is cleared from the accusations of sin.

There is an evangelical conscience when, by faith wrought by the Spirit of God in the hearing of the gospel, we lay hold upon the obedience and righteousness of Christ. And such is the obedience and righteousness of Christ that it pacifies the conscience, which nothing else in the world will do. The conscience, without a full obedience, will always stagger.

And that is why conscience confounds and refutes the popish way of salvation by works, and the like. For the conscience always staggers and fears: “I have not done works enough, I have not done them well enough; those I have done have been corrupt and mixed, and therefore I dare not bring them to the judgment seat of God, to plead them as meritorious.” Therefore the papists do well to hold to uncertainty of salvation, because, holding merit, they must of necessity be uncertain of their salvation.

A true Christian is certain of his salvation, because his conscience lays hold on the blood of Christ, because the obedience by which he claims heaven is a superabundant obedience. It is the satisfaction of Christ, as the apostle says in that excellent place, “The blood of Christ, which offered himself by the eternal Spirit” (that is, by the Godhead) “shall cleanse your consciences from dead works to serve the living God” (Heb 9:14). The blood of Christ, who offered himself, his human nature by his divine, to God as a sacrifice, will purge your consciences from dead works. The blood of Christ, that is, the sacrifice, the obedience of Christ in offering himself, fully pacified God and answered the punishment which we should have endured; for he was our Surety. The blood of Christ speaks better than the blood of Abel (Heb 12:24). It speaks better than our sins. Our sins cry vengeance, but the blood of Christ cries mercy.

The blood of Christ outcries our sins. The conscience guilty for sin cries, “Guilty, guilty, hell, damnation, wrath, and anguish”; but the blood of Christ cries, I say, mercy, because it was shed by our surety on our behalf. His obedience is a full satisfaction to God.

Now, the way to have a good conscience is this: upon the accusations of an evil conscience by the law, come to Christ our surety, and get our consciences sprinkled by faith in his blood, get a persuasion that he shed his blood for us, and upon that labor to be purged by the Spirit. There are two purgers: the blood of Christ from the guilt of sin, and the Spirit of Christ from the stain of sin. And upon that comes a complete good conscience, being justified by the blood of Christ and sanctified by the Spirit of Christ. Therefore Christ came not by blood alone, or by water alone, but by water and blood: by blood in justification, by water in sanctification and holiness of life.

Question. Why do we bring this up now with a view to the sacrament?

Answer. We are speaking of a good conscience, which is “a continual feast” (Prov 15:15). How does a good conscience come to be such a continual feast?

An evangelical conscience is a feast indeed, because it feeds on a higher feast: it feeds on Christ. He is the Passover lamb, as the apostle applies it (1 Cor 5:7). He is the “Passover, slain for us”; and there is represented in the sacrament his body broken and his blood poured out for our sins. He came to feast us, and we shall feast with him.

On this basis, if we bring repentance for our past sins, and faith by which we are incorporated into Christ, then our consciences speak peace; and as it is in 1 Peter 3:21, the conscience makes a good demand. It is not baptism, but the demand of a good conscience. When the conscience has fed on Christ, it demands boldly, as in Romans 8:33, of Satan and all enemies, “Who shall lay anything to our charge? It is God that justifieth. It is Christ that died, or rather that is risen again.” It boldly demands of God, who has given his Son. The bold demand of conscience prevails with God, and this comes by faith in Christ. Now, this is strengthened by the sacrament. Here are the visible representations and seals that we are incorporated more and more into Christ; and so, feeding upon Christ once, our conscience is pacified and purged from all dead works, and we come to have a continual feast.

Christ is first the Prince of righteousness, the righteous King, and then “Prince of peace.” First he gives righteousness, and then he speaks peace to the conscience. “The kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost” (Rom 14:17).

So all our feast and joy and comfort that we have in our consciences must come from righteousness. It is a double righteousness: the righteousness of Christ, which has fully satisfied and appeased the wrath of God; and then we must have the righteousness of a good conscience sanctified by the Spirit of Christ. We must always put them together. We can never have communion with Christ and forgiveness of sins without also having a spirit of sanctification. “There is mercy with thee, that thou mayest be feared” (Ps 130:4). Where there is mercy in the forgiveness of sin, there is a disposition to fear it ever after.

Therefore, if for the present you would have a good conscience, ask God to strengthen your faith in the blood of Christ poured out for you; ask God to strengthen your faith in the crucified body of Christ broken for you. Then, feeding on Christ, who is your surety, who himself is yours, and all is yours, you may ever have the feast of a good conscience, which will comfort you under false imputations, which will comfort you in life and in death and at the day of judgment. “This is our rejoicing in all things, the testimony of our conscience”: first purged by “the blood of Christ,” and then purged and sanctified by the Spirit of Christ, that we have had our “conversation in simplicity and sincerity.”

“Our rejoicing is this, that in simplicity and sincerity.” This is the matter of this testimony of conscience, namely simplicity and sincerity. St. Paul glories in his simplicity and sincerity. And mark this by the way: it is no vain glorying, but lawful upon such cautions as I named before. But to add a little, a man in some cases may glory in the graces of God that are in him, but with these cautions.

First, if he looks on them as the gifts of God.

Second, if he looks on them as stained with his own defects, and so in that respect is humbled.

Third, if he looks upon them as fruits of his justification, and as fruits of his assurance of his salvation, and not as causes.

And then, if it is before men that he glories: not when he is to deal with God. When men lay this and that imputation upon a man, he may rejoice, as St. Paul does here, in the testimony of his conscience, “in simplicity and sincerity.”

The matter of the testimony of conscience in which he glories is “simplicity and godly sincerity,” or, as the words may well be read, “in the simplicity and sincerity of God”: such as proceeds from God, and such as aims at and looks to God, and resembles God. For both simplicity and sincerity come from God. They are worked by God, and in them we resemble God. And both of them have an eye to God, a respect to God. So it is in the original, “in the simplicity and sincerity of God.”

There is not much difference between simplicity and sincerity. The one expresses the other. If you want the difference, simplicity especially concerns men, our conduct among men. Sincerity has an eye to God in all things in religion, opposite to hypocrisy in religion. “Simplicity” is opposed to doubleness. Where doubleness is, there is always hypocrisy, which is opposed to sincerity; and where simplicity is, there is always sincerity, truth to God. But it is not good to be very exact and precise in distinguishing these things. Each may express the other very well.

“Simplicity.” St. Paul’s rejoicing was that his conscience witnessed to him his simplicity in his whole conduct in the world, his whole course of life, which Scripture elsewhere calls a “walking” (Acts 9:31). St. Paul means this first of himself, and then he sets himself forth as an example to us.

Question. How was St. Paul’s conduct in simplicity?

Answer. Not only if we consider St. Paul as a Christian, but if we consider him as an apostle, his conduct was in simplicity. It was without guile, without seeking himself, without seeking his own. For rather than be burdensome to the Corinthians, the man of God worked for his own living. Because he would not give them even the least offense, they being a rich people, he preferred to live by his own labor rather than to open their mouth. He did not seek himself. In a word, he did not make the gospel serve himself. He served Christ. He did not make Christ serve himself.

There are many who make the gospel serve themselves, who make religion serve themselves. They care no more for religion than will serve their own turn. St. Paul’s conduct was in simplicity. He had no such aim. He did not preach out of envy, or out of malice, or for gain, as he charges some of the Philippian teachers: “Some preach Christ,” not of simplicity and sincerity, “but of envy” (Phil 1:15).

Then again, as an apostle and a teacher, his conduct was in simplicity, because he mingled nothing with the word of God in teaching. His doctrine is pure. “What should the chaff do with the wheat?” (Jer 23:28). What should the dross do with the gold? He did not mingle his own notions and devices with the word, for he taught the pure word of God, the simple word of God, simple without any mixture of any ulterior aims. So the blessed apostle was simple both in his doctrine and in his intentions, setting himself forth in this as an example to us all. As we hope to hold up our heads with comfort, and to glory in all conditions whatsoever, so our consciences must bear us witness that we carry ourselves in the simplicity and sincerity of God.

Now simplicity is when there is a conformity between what a man professes and what he intends, when there is nothing double, when there is no contradiction between the spirit of a man and his words and outward carriage. That is simplicity, when there is an exact conformity and correspondence in a man’s judgment and speech, in his affections and actions. When a man judges simply as the truth of the thing is, and when his affections follow his judgment, when he loves and hates as he judges, and speaks as he feels and judges, and does as he speaks, then a man is a simple man.

Simple, properly speaking, is that which has no mixture of the contrary. As we say, light is a simple thing; it cannot endure darkness. Fire is a simple body; it cannot endure the contrary with it. So the pure majesty of God cannot endure the least stain whatsoever. So it is with the holy disposition of a Christian. When he is once a new creature, there is a simplicity in him. Though there is a mixture, yet he studies simplicity. He studies to have nothing opposed to the Spirit of God. He studies not to have any contradiction in him. He labors that his heart may not go one way and his carriage another, that what he professes may not be one thing and what he intends another. He bears the image of Christ. You know Christ is compared to a lamb, a simple creature, fruitful to men, innocent in himself. So the Holy Spirit appeared in the shape of a dove, a simple creature that has no way to avoid danger but by flight, a harmless creature.

The devil takes on himself the shape of a serpent, a subtle, wild creature. The Holy Spirit appeared in the shape of a dove. You see then what simplicity is. It is a frame of soul without mixture of the contrary.

1. We must not take simplicity for a defect, as when a man is simple because he does not know how to be clever. Simplicity is sometimes taken in that sense, for a defect of nature, when a man is easily deluded; but here it is taken for a grace. It belongs to a man who knows how to double with the world, how to run counterfeit, how to be false in every kind, but who will not. He knows the world, but he will not use the fashions of the world. So simplicity here is a strength of grace.

2. Likewise, simplicity and plainness must not be taken for rudeness and unnecessary opening of ourselves; for that is simplicity in an evil sense, profane rudeness.

You will find some who will strike out on every side. They do not care what they speak, they do not care whom they smite; but, like Solomon’s fool, they throw “firebrands” (Prov 26:18). They speak what they please, of whom they please, against whom they please. Here simplicity and plainness is no grace. This is no virtue. This is only a relieving of their rotten, corrupt, and vile heart.

We know there are two kinds of sepulchres, open and shut sepulchres. They are both foul. But yet, for all that, your hidden sepulchre is less offensive. The one that is open stinks so that no one can come near it. That is very offensive. A hypocrite is a hidden sepulchre, a painted sepulchre without and nothing but bones within. He has a wicked, rotten heart; yet, for all that, he is not so offensive as the open sepulchre, which offends all who come near it. So with these men who say they cannot dissemble and that they have a plain heart, though they will swear, and dissemble, and detract, and throw firebrands against anyone. Is this a plain heart? It is an open sepulchre, which sends a stench to all who are near.

3. Again, let us take heed that we do not for simplicity take credulity. “The simple man,” says Solomon, “will believe everything” (Prov 14:15). This is simple credulity. A man must not believe everything, for much danger comes by credulity. Jeremiah, and Gedaliah, and others were much harmed by credulity. It is a good fence not to be too hasty to believe, for incredulity and hardness to believe is a good preservative; and he is a wise man who will not believe everything. So you see there are some things that come near this simplicity, such as defect, rudeness, and credulity, which yet are not that simplicity in which St. Paul says he walked.

And this simplicity may well be called the simplicity of God, because God is simple. “He is light, and in him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). There is no mixture of fraud or contrariety. He is pure, simple, and sincere. And as he is in his nature, so he is in his carriage toward men in every way. There is a simplicity to which he testifies in his word. And indeed he has shown that he loves us. Would we have a better evidence of it than his own Son? There is no doubling in God’s dealing with men. And therefore, as this simplicity comes from God, so it resembles God.

For alas! if God had ulterior motives, what would the creature yield him? Does he stand in need of us, or does he need anything we have? All counterfeiting, and insincerity, and doubling is for hope of gain or for fear of danger. Now what can God have from the creature? What cause does he have in us for his dealing toward us? In his giving, in his forgiving, in all his dealing, he is simple.

So everyone who is a child of God has the virtue of simplicity. Simplicity is such a grace as extends to all the parts of our conduct. As the apostle says here, “My conversation in the world hath been in simplicity.”

By nature, since the fall, man is contrary to this simplicity. God made him right and straight and simple, but, as the wise man says, “he sought out many inventions” (Eccl 7:29). So a man without grace is double in his carriage, and that from self-love, from selfish ends and aims.

And for this reason he must be double, for there must be something in him that is good. For otherwise evil is destructive of itself. If there were not something good, men could never continue, nor could the place ever continue. And if all were good, and all were plain and honest, that would destroy the evil which men labor to nourish. Men have carnal schemes to raise themselves, to get riches, and this must be by evil means. There is an idol in their hearts which they serve, to which they sacrifice. Their self-love, whether in honor, or in riches, or in pleasure, sets up something. Therefore a man without grace studies to be strongly evil. And because he cannot be evil unless he is also good, for then all the world would see it, from this comes doubling. Good there must be, to carry the evil he intends the more secretly; evil there must be, or else he cannot have his aim. And from this come dissimulation and simulation, the vices of these times, both opposed to simplicity, and such vices as proceed from want of worth and want of strength.

For when men have no worth to trust to, and yet would have the profit of sin, and the pleasure of sin, and would have reputation, then they carry everything dissemblingly. Where there is strength of worth, and of abilities, and of reputation, there is always less dissembling. It is usually a vice of those who have little or no virtue in them. A man of strength carries things open and fair.

This dissimulation comes from the want of this grace of simplicity, both before, in, and after the scheme.

1. Before, as you see in Herod. He intends mischief when he pretends he would be a worshiper of Christ (Matt 2:8). And so Absalom pretends he has a vow to pay when he intends murder (2 Sam 15:7). This is a dissimulation, pretending good when there is an intention of evil beforehand.

2. So there is a dissimulation in the scheme for the present, which comes from this doubling, when men carry things fairly outwardly to those with whom they live and yet for all that have false and treacherous hearts, as Judas had all the while he kept company with Christ. He covered his evil with good pretexts, a care for the poor, and the like.

3. So after. When the evil is done, what a world of doubling there is to cover the evil, to extenuate it, with excuses and shifting of blame! This is the simplicity that reigns among men where there is no strength of grace. Where there is want of simplicity there is this dissembling.

And with dissimulation there is simulation, that is, when we sometimes make ourselves worse than we are, when we are better than we seem to be. Sometimes that prevails on us too. Then we do not carry ourselves simply.

For if we were good, we would be good everywhere. But a man who uses simulation, if he is in evil company, fashions himself to the company. He speaks that for which his conscience rebukes him, he carries himself vainly and lightly, he keeps in step with the company. So by dissimulation and simulation a fault is committed against simplicity, which yields the testimony of a good conscience.

It is a base fault, this simulation, which we think to be a lesser fault than the other, dissimulation. For whom do we serve? Are we not the sons of God? Are we not the sons of our heavenly Father, the sons of the great King? And for us to carry ourselves as if we were not what we are, in the midst of the wicked world, is a great want of discretion. St. Paul would reveal who he was even before the bar; David would speak of God’s righteous testimonies even before princes, and not be ashamed (Ps 119:46).

And this is what Christ says, He that is ashamed of me before men, of him will I be ashamed before my heavenly Father (Mark 8:38). Let us take heed of dissimulation and simulation, which are opposed to this simplicity.

Again, this simplicity is opposed to fastidiousness and fineness. And so it was with the apostle! Both in his calling and in his conduct, St. Paul lived in simplicity, as a Christian and as an apostle.

As an apostle, he was not overelaborate in words. He reproves those foolish, vainglorious spirits who were so among the Corinthians. He delivered the word plainly, and plainness is best in handling the word of God; for who will enamel a precious stone? We are accustomed to enamel what has no native excellence in itself, but has its excellence from something without. True religion always has this with it, that it is simple, because it has majesty enough of its own.

The whore of Babylon has need of a gilded cup, and pictures, and what not, to set her out; but the true religion is in simplicity.

Christ himself, when he was born, was laid in a manger. He was simple in his carriage and his speeches. It was a common saying in ancient times, when the chalices were gold, the priests were wood. In religion, fineness and fastidiousness carry suspicion of falsehood with them.

Those who overmuch affect fineness of speech are either deceived or will deceive. That which is not native, and does not come from within, will deceive. Some falsehoods carry a better color than some truths, because men always set their wits to work to put some color upon falsehood.

And here take notice of the duty of ministers, that they should utter divine truth in its native simplicity. St. Paul, as a minister, delivered the plain word plainly.

And as Christians in our common course of life, as we should take heed of doubling, so we should take heed of too much fastidiousness. For too much fastidiousness in diet or apparel implies too much care for these things, which hinders our care for better things, as our Savior Christ says to Martha, “Martha, thou art troubled about many things” (Luke 10:41).

The soul is finite and cannot be set about many things at once. Therefore, when there is overmuch fastidiousness in smaller things, it implies little or no care in the main thing. Whatever goes beyond what is decent for one’s place shows carelessness in the main thing. Therefore the apostle, laboring to remove that, bids women that they should not be decked with gold and broidered hair (1 Tim 2:9), but to look to the “hidden man of the heart” (1 Pet 3:4). And therefore Christ drew Martha off from outward things, because he knew it could not be without the neglect of better things. Seriousness in heavenly things carries a carelessness in other things. And a Christian cannot help but reveal a mind that is not earthly and vain. When he is a true believer, he regards other things as poor, petty things that are not worthy of esteem.

A Christian, when he has fixed his end, to be like God, to be simple as God is, still draws toward his end; and therefore he moderates his carriage in all things. What is unnecessary he leaves out. His end is to be like God, and like Christ, with whom he shall live hereafter. Now the best things are the most simple, such as the heavens, the sun, and the stars, and so on. There is diversity, but no contrariety. There is diversity in the magnitude of the stars, but they are of the same nature. So in a Christian there are many graces, but they are not contrary to one another. So a Christian has his main care for better things; he does not care for the world or the things of it. And therefore he accounts them as nothing in comparison with better things. That is the reason he is careless and negligent of those things he formerly regarded, as having better things to take up his thoughts.

We see then that simplicity, as it is opposed to doubling, so it is opposed to fineness and fastidiousness.

And usually where there is fineness and fastidiousness, there is hypocrisy; for it is not for nothing when men affect anything. Affectation usually is a strain above nature. When a man will do what he is not disposed to by nature, but for some forced end, it is hypocrisy. So the Corinthian teachers proved the falseness of their hearts by the fineness of their teaching. They had another aim than to please God and convert souls. Usually affectation toward the world is joined with hypocrisy toward God.

Again, this simplicity is contrary to that corruption in popery, namely, equivocation. What simplicity is that, when they speak one thing and mean another? When there is a mental reservation, and such a reservation that if what is reserved were set down, it would be absurd?

Or else there may be a reservation: a man may reserve his meaning. A man need not speak all the truth at all times, unless he is called to it, in a court of judgment and the like. Otherwise truth, like all good actions, is never good except when it is seasonable; and it is seasonable when the circumstances are suitably furnished, when a man is called to it. For there may be a reservation. A man is not bound to speak all things at all times, but to wait for a fit time. One word in a fit time is worth a thousand out of time. But mental reservation, to speak one thing and to reserve another, is absurd and illogical, and so is dissimulation. There is a lie in fact. The life of a man who is a dissembler is a lie. Dissimulation is wicked.

A man may sometimes make some show of doing something he does not intend. Christ made as though he would have gone further when he did not mean it (Luke 24:28). But dissimulation is that which is intrinsically wicked.

Objection. But someone will say, “Unless I dissemble, I will run into danger.”

Answer. Well! It is not necessary for you to live, but it is necessary for you to live like an honest man and keep a good conscience. That is necessary. For come what will upon true dealing, we ought to deal truly and not dissemble. There are those who plead a necessity: they must do it, they cannot live otherwise, they cannot avoid danger otherwise, unless they dissemble. To them Tertullian says very well, “There is no necessity of sin to them upon whom there lies no other necessity but not to sin.” Christians are men upon whom no necessity lies but not to sin. It is not necessary that they should be rich, it is not necessary that they should be poor, it is not necessary that they should have their freedom and liberty. No necessity lies upon them but that they be good, that they do not sin. Can he plead, “I must sin out of necessity,” who has no necessity imposed upon him by God but to avoid all sin?

As for lying, which is against this simplicity that should be in speech, there are all kinds of lies, officious lies or pernicious lies. Officious lies, told to do a good turn, to help ourselves or others with a lie, are a gross sin. This is condemned by St. Augustine in a whole book which he wrote against lying. Therefore I pass over it. I shall have occasion to speak somewhat of it afterward.

Every lie is intrinsically evil, because it is contrary to the purpose of speech. God has made our reason and understanding to frame speech, and speech to be the messenger and interpreter of reason and of what we conceive. Now when speech is a false messenger, it is contrary to the gift of speech. Speech should be the stream of understanding and reason. Now when the fountain is one thing and the spring another, there is a contradiction. It is against nature, and so it is intrinsically evil. It is not only against the will of God, but it is against the image of God, which is in truth. It is evil, not by inconvenience or by ill consequence; a pernicious lie is inwardly evil. Jesting lies, pernicious lies, officious lies, all lies, let them be what they will, come from the father of lies, the devil, and are hated by God, who is truth itself.

Besides that, it is a sin opposed to society, and therefore by God’s just judgment it is punished by society. All men hate a liar, a false dissembler, as an enemy to society, as a man who offends against that bond by which God has knit men together.

Now, to move us the better to this simplicity, this direct course of life, so that there may be a conformity and harmony between the outward and the inward man, in thoughts, speeches, and actions, so that they may be one:

1. Consider, first of all, that this simplicity is a comely thing. Comeliness and seemliness is a thing delightful to the eyes of God and to a man’s own conscience, and it stands in oneness and proportion. For you know that where there is a comely proportion, all things suit as one; as in a comely body, the head and all the rest of the members are suitable. There is not a young green head upon an old body, or a fair face on a deformed body, for then there are two: the body is one thing, and the complexion another. Beauty and comeliness stand in oneness, when there is a correspondence, a proportion, a harmony in the parts.

In Revelation 13:11 and the verses following, you have a cruel beast with the horns of a lamb. There are two here: there is a goodly profession and show, but there is a beast hidden within. Dissimulation is double, and where there is singleness and doubleness, there is always deformity. It is an ugly thing in the eyes of God, it is a misshapen thing, it is a monster: Jacob’s voice and Esau’s hands, words as smooth as oil, and war in the heart (Prov 5:3; Ps 55:21). It is a monstrous thing. Even as there are monsters in nature, so there are in disposition. Where there is such a gross mixture, the devil and an angel of light, outwardly an angel of light and inwardly a devil, to hide a devil in the shape of an angel of light, there is a horrible deformity.

It is a comely thing, therefore, when all things hold conformity and correspondence in our lives, when they are even among men, when we labor to have sanctified judgments of things, and speak what is our judgment, and have outward expressions answerable to the inward impressions worked by the Spirit of God in every way. Then a man is like himself; he is one. There is not a heart and a heart. Adam at the first was in every way like himself, but after falling from God to the creature, the changeable, corruptible creature, to have his corruptible end, he fell into this doubleness.

2. And as St. James says, “A double-minded man is unconstant in all his ways” (Jas 1:8). That is another reason to move us to simplicity of disposition; for where doubling is, a man is inconstant in all his ways. What does St. James mean by this, where he says a double-minded man is unsettled? He means that a double-minded man looks with one eye to religion and to those things that are good, and with another part of his heart to the world; and for this reason he can never be settled in any way.

Why? Because, having unsettled intentions, having false aims, double aims, he will be crossed continually. He would please God; he would be religious. That is one intention. But now the world and religion come to dash against one another, and then he must be inconstant, because he does not have simplicity. He does not have a “single eye,” as Christ says, “If the eye be single, then the body is light” (Matt 6:22). He does not have a right intention, a right judgment of things. He judges too highly of the world and not highly enough of grace and goodness. And so it comes about that when the world comes to cross his good intentions, having his mind on earthly things, because it is contrary to religion, his mind is unsettled.

Again, through terrors of conscience, a double-minded man, who would please God and yet be a worldling, is inconstant in all his ways. If his eye were single, then all his body would be light; that is, if a man had a single judgment to know what is right, what to hold to in life and in death, all would be single. The judgment and the intentions go together. When a man’s judgment is convinced of the goodness of spiritual things, upon judgment follows intention. When a man desires and resolves to serve God and to please him in all things, then all the body and his affections are full of light. His affections and his outward man go with a single eye. A man who has a false, weak judgment, and thereupon a false, weak, double intention has a dark body, and his conduct is dark. A double-minded man is inconstant in all his ways. Therefore we should labor for this simplicity in all our conduct.

3. Again, we should labor for this simplicity all the more because it is part of the image of God. In it we resemble God, in whom there is no mixture of contraries at all, but all is alike.

4. And as it resembles God, so it upholds us in the presence of God and of our own conscience; as he says here, “Our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity …” Now God is greater than conscience. A man who carries himself in simplicity, and in a uniform, even manner toward God and toward men, has comfort in his conscience and comfort before God.

And of all sins, the time will come when none will lie heavier on us than doubling, both with men and with God, when it will appear that we have not been the men we carried ourselves to be.

The reason is that the more will and the more deliberation there is in a sin, the greater the sin is; and the greater the sin is, the greater the terror of conscience; and the greater that terror is, the more fear and trembling before God, who knows conscience better than we do.

Now where there is doubling, where a man is not one in his outward and inward man, in his conduct toward men, when hatred and ill affections are covered with contrary pretenses, there is deliberation. There is much will, and little passion to uphold a man or to excuse him. He does it, as we say, in cool blood, and that is what makes dissimulation so gross, because it is in cool blood. The more will and deliberation there is in any sin, the greater it is; that is how the aggravation of sin is to be weighed. And where temptations are strong and a man is less himself, there is a diminution and a lesser aggravation, as when a man is carried away by passion, by infirmity, or the like. But usually when men double, they plot.

David plotted before and after his sin. He doubled before and after his sin. That was laid to his charge more than all that he ever did in his life. He was a man after God’s own heart, except in the matter of Uriah (1 Kgs 15:5). Why? Because in that he plotted. We see beforehand how many evasions, windings, and turnings he had to accomplish it. He sends Uriah to Joab, and gives him a letter to place him in the forefront, and uses many schemes.

And after it was committed, how he covered it! And when it was hidden from men, he would have hidden it from God for a great while, until God pulled him from his hiding place and made him confess outright, until he dealt directly with God: “My bones were consumed, and my moisture was turned into the drought of summer” (Ps 32:3-4). He hid it from men, and would have hidden it from God. Therefore, because there was much plotting in that sin, it is set down as the only blemish in all his life. He was a man after God’s own heart, except in the matter of Uriah. Many other faults of David are recorded in the Book of God; but because there might be some excuse, since they came from infirmity, or out of passion, or oversight, and so on, they are not so charged against him. But this was done with plotting. It was in cold blood. There was much will and deliberation in it; therefore this is noted as a great sin.

And if it is in our dealings among men, we should consider who it is we deceive, who it is we get the better of by doubling, who it is we circumvent, and who it is that does it. Are we not all Christians? We are, or should be, all new creatures. And to whom do we do it? To our fellow members and to our brethren. Therefore in Ephesians 4:25, when the apostle dissuades the Ephesians from this double dealing and double carriage toward men, he says, “You are members one of another.” Let us consider who we are and whom we deal with.

Now there are some persons and some courses of life that are likelier and more prone to this doubling than others, for want of this grace of simplicity.

Where there is strength of natural abilities, those abilities are often turned against God and against our brethren. Where grace has not subdued strong imaginations and strong thoughts and brought all under it, those abilities are turned against God and against our brethren. And as it is with particular persons, so some callings are more prone to double-dealing, to this behavior that is neither fair and commendable before God nor comforting to the conscience. As we see these days, it reigns everywhere, in every street.

We see among men of trade, merchants and the like, that there is not that direct dealing. They know one thing and pretend another.

So likewise in the law there are many charges, and I wish they were false, that men set false colors on bad causes; that they gild a rotten post, as we say, and call white black and black white. There is a woe pronounced in Isaiah against those who justify indefensible causes, such “as call evil good, and good evil” (Isa 5:20). It is a greater sin than it is usually taken for.

So go to any rank of men. They have learned the art of dissimulation in their course. They have learned to sell wind, to sell words, to sell nothing, to sell pretexts, to overthrow a man by way of commendations and flattery. Such tricks there are, which are contrary to this simplicity: to cover hatred with fair words; to kill with kindness, as we say; to overthrow a man with commendations; to commend a man before another who is jealous of the virtues he commends him for; to commend a man for valor before a coward; to commend a man and thereby take occasion to send him out of the way; to commend a man and then come in with an exception that mars all; to cover revenge and hatred with fair behavior, so as to get an opportunity for revenge. Such tricks there are abroad, which often expose themselves at length. For God is just. He will expose all these hidden windings and turnings; for plotting makes it more odious. Of all men, doublers are most hateful.

How shall we come to attain this grace, to conduct ourselves in the world in simplicity?

First of all, take it as a rule, though many think it no great matter to be a dissembler, that our nature is full of dissimulation since the fall. The heart of man is unsearchable. There is a deep deceit in man. Take a child, and see what dissimulation he learns. It is one of the first things he learns, to dissemble, to double, to be false. We see the weakest creatures: what evasions, what windings and turnings they have to save themselves!

It is a virtue to be straightforward, for in that a man must go against himself. It is no credit to a man to shuffle and to shift in the world. Nature teaches this, to dissemble, to turn and wind, and so on. A man need not plow to have weeds. The ground itself is a mother to them, though it is a stepmother to good seed. So we need not teach men to dissemble. Every man has it by nature. But it must be strength of grace that makes a man straightforward. Take that as a foundation.

There is a company of foolish men who take it as a great commendation to dissemble; and rather than be known not to dissemble in business, they will muddle clear business. When a thing is fair and clear, they will have schemes beyond the moon, and so carry themselves in it as if they desired to be accounted cheats and dissemblers. Alas, poor souls! Nature teaches men to be wicked in this way well enough. Know therefore, whoever you are that study this art of dissembling and doubling, that your own nature is prone enough to it, and the devil is apt to lead you into it. With this laid as a foundation, how may we carry ourselves in the world in holy simplicity, so as to yield comfort to our conscience in life and in death?

1. Consider that the time will come when we shall deal with that which will not dissemble with us. Let the cunningest dissembler hold out as long as he can; he will meet with sickness, or with terror of conscience; he will meet with death itself, and with the judgment of God, and the torment of hell. Although he now carries himself smoothly, and dances in a net, as we say, and doubles with the world, and though he makes a fair show, yet before long you will meet with that which will deal simply with you, which will deal plainly enough with you. You will be stripped of your disguise and laid open to the world before long. Let us consider this.

We see that a snake or serpent doubles and winds and turns while it is alive, until it is killed, and then it is stretched out at full length. As one said, seeing a snake dead and stretched out, “So,” he said, “it behooved you to have lived.” So the devil, that great serpent, that ancient “old serpent” (Rev 12:9), gets into the snake, into the wily wit, and makes it wind and turn, and shift and shuffle in the world. But then some great cross comes, or death comes, and then a man is stretched out at length to the view of the world. Then he confesses all, and perhaps that confession is sincere when it is wrung out by terror of conscience. Then he confesses that he has deceived the world, and deceived himself, and labored to deceive God also.

If we would have comfort in the hour of death, let us labor to deal plainly and directly. And of all sins, as I said before, remember that this is the one which will lie heaviest on us, as coming nearest the sin against the Holy Ghost. For what is the sin against the Holy Ghost? It is when men rush against their knowledge, in malice against the truth they know. Where there is most knowledge and most will, there is the greatest sin. Now in lying and dissembling and double-dealing, a man comes near to the sin against the Holy Ghost; for he knows that he is doing ill, and he plots the ill that he knows. And when there is plotting, there is time to deliberate; a man is not carried away by passion.

Consider: the time will come when you will be stripped of your disguise, when you will be laid open and naked; and then at that time, of all sins, this will lie heavy on you, your dissembling in the world. Therefore let everyone in his calling take heed of the sins of his calling, and among the rest, of this one of double-dealing.

2. And therefore, that we may avoid it the better, labor for faith, to live by faith. What is the reason that men live by evasions and by doubling in the world? They do not have faith to depend on God in good, plain, straightforward courses. Men are ready to say, “If I did not dissemble and double, and carry things in that manner, how would I live?” Why, where is your faith? The righteous man lives by his faith, and not by his evasions, not by his wits. God will provide for us. Are we not in covenant with God? Do we not profess to be God’s children? Do children live by shifting? No; a child goes about doing his father’s will and pleasure, and he knows that his father will maintain him. It is against the nature of the child of God, as far as he knows himself to be a child of God, to use any indirect course, any windings and turnings in his calling. Let us depend on God as a child depends on his father; and God will provide most of all for those who, in simple honesty, in plain, straightforward dealing, depend on him in doing good.

For God accounts it a prerogative to defend and maintain those who cast themselves on him. He will be their wisdom who can deny their own wisdom and their own natural evasions, and in conscience labor to deal directly. He will be wise for them and provide for them. It is his prerogative to do so, and not to allow his children to be deserted. A little faith therefore would help all this, and would make us walk in simplicity. If once we could make God our all-sufficiency, then we would walk uprightly before God and men.

For what makes men double?

This certainly makes men double: they think they will be undone if they are direct; for if they deal directly, they will lose their liberty, or their lives, or their opportunity of gain, and so on. Well, come what will, deal directly, and know this as a rule: you will have more good in God’s favor, if you are a Christian, than you can lose in the world, if on grounds of conscience you deal directly in whatever estate you are.

If you are a judge, if you are a witness, deal directly, speak the truth. If you are a minister, speak directly in God’s cause, deal out the word of God as in God’s presence. Come what will, whatever you lose in your wealth or liberty, and so on, you will gain in God. Is not all good in him? What is all the good we have? Is it not from him? And the nearer you come to him, the more your happiness is increased; the more you are stripped of earthly things, the more you have in God.

Does he not have men’s hearts in his hands? When you think you will endanger yourselves in this way and that by plain, direct dealing without doubling, if you are called to the profession of the truth, does he not have the hearts of men in his hands, to make them favor you when he pleases? As Proverbs 10:9 says, “He that walketh uprightly, walketh boldly.” He who walks uprightly, not doubling in his courses, walks safely. God will procure his safety. God, who has the hearts of men in his hand as the rivers of water (Prov 21:1), can turn them to favor such a man.

A man’s nature is inclined to favor straightforward men and to hate the contrary. You see the three young men, when they were threatened with fire, come what will: “O king, we will not worship the image of gold which thou hast set up” (Dan 3:18). They would be burned first. What did they lose by it?

However, suppose we should lose, though it is not to be granted that we can lose anything by direct dealing, “For the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof” (Ps 24:1), and the hearts of men are his. But suppose they do lose; yet they gain in better things, in comfort of conscience, and in expectation and hope of better things. Faith is the ground of courage, and the ground of all other graces that carry a man’s courage in a course of simplicity in this world.

Therefore, if we would walk simply and conduct ourselves in the world in this grace, let us labor especially for faith to depend on God’s promises, to approve ourselves to him, to make him, and our communion with him, our final and chief end, and to direct all our courses to that end. This is indeed to set up a throne for him in our hearts and to make him a God: when, rather than displease him or his vicegerent, his vicar in us, which is conscience (which he has placed in us as a monitor and as a witness), we will venture the loss of the creature, of anything in the world, rather than displease that vicar which he has set in our hearts. This, I say, is to make him a God; and he will take the care and protection of such a man. St. Paul here, in all the accusations, in all the crosses in the world, retires home, to himself, to his own house, to conscience; and that upheld him, that in simplicity he had his way of life in the world. The next particular is this:

“In sincerity.” The apostle adds to simplicity this “godly sincerity.” And he may well join these two together, for plainness and truth go together. A plain heart is usually a true heart. Doubleness and hypocrisy, which are the contraries, always go together. He who is not plain with men will not be sincere with God. Simplicity has regard to our whole course with men. Sincerity has an eye to God, though perhaps in matters and actions toward men. Sincerity is always with a regard to God; and so it is opposed to hypocrisy, a vice in religion opposed to God.

Now this sincerity that the apostle speaks of is a blessed frame of the soul, wrought by the Spirit of God, by which the soul is set straight and right in a purpose to please God in all things (and in endeavors answerable to that purpose), and to offend him in nothing.

I give a plain description because I intend practice. There may be some more subtle descriptions.

But, I say, it is a blessed frame of the soul, wrought by the sincere Spirit of God, by which the soul is set straight and right to purpose and to endeavor all that is pleasing in God’s sight; and that with an intention to please God, with an eye to God, or else it is not sincerity. It is such a disposition and frame of soul as does all good and hates all ill, with a purpose to please God in all, with an eye to God.

And therefore it is called “sincerity of God,” or “godly sincerity”; and it is fitly so called, because God is not only the author of it, but God is the aim of it and the pattern of it; for he is the first thing that is sincere, that is simple and unmixed. God is the pattern of it. It makes us like God, and he is the aim of it. A man who is sincere aims at God in all his courses; wherever he does not aim at God, he is not sincere. It comes from God, and it looks to God. For naturally we are all hypocrites. We look to shows. Therefore sincerity is from God.

And it is the sincerity of God especially because, where this sincerity is, it makes us aim at God in all things, it makes us have regard for him in all things, as the creature should have regard for the Creator, the servant for the master, the son for the father, the subject for the prince. The relations we stand in to God should make us aim at him in all things.

The observation from this is as follows:

Doctrine. A Christian who hopes for joy must have his conscience witness to him that his conduct is in the sincerity of God.

As the apostle says here, “This is the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity we have had our conversation …”

Now to go on with this sincerity and lay it open a little. Sincerity is not so much a distinct thing as that which goes with every good thing. Truth and sincerity are not so much a distinct virtue and grace as a truth joined to all graces: sincere hope, sincere faith, sincere love, sincere repentance, sincere confession. It is a grace annexed to every grace. It is the life and soul of every grace, and all is nothing without it.

Therefore it behooves us to consider it, not so much, I say, as a thing distinct from other graces, as that which makes other graces to be graces, without which they are nothing at all. So much sincerity, so much reality. So much as we do not have in sincerity, we have nothing toward God. It is but an empty show, and will be so accounted.

In philosophy, you know, only that which is true has being and consistence. All truth has a being; all falsehood is nothing. It is a counterfeit thing. It is nothing compared with what it is pretended to be. An image is something, but St. Paul calls it nothing, because it is not what it should be, and what the idolater would have it to be. He would have it be a god, but it is nothing of the kind. All is nothing without sincerity. Therefore let us consider it. And that we may consider it the better, let us look at it in every action.

All actions are either good, ill, or indifferent.

How is sincerity discovered in good actions?

1. Sincerity is tried in good actions in many ways.

(1) A man who is sincere in doing what is good will have a mind prepared to know all that is good; to know the good he stands disposed to, to know good, and to learn by all good means. Therefore he has a heart prepared with diligence to be informed in the use of the means. So far as a man is careless and negligent in coming to the means of knowledge, and to being put in mind of good duties, so far he is a hypocrite and insincere.

(2) Again, in regard to good duties, a true, sincere Christian has a universal regard for all that is good. He desires to know all, and when anything is made known to him, he intends to practice all. We are here in the presence of God, says Cornelius, to practice all things that shall be taught us by God (Acts 10:33). “I will have respect to all thy commandments” (Ps 119:6), one and another.

The ground of it is this: sincerity looks at God. Now God commands one thing as well as another; and therefore, if a man does anything that is good in conscience toward God, he must do one as well as another. As St. James says excellently to this purpose, “He that offends in one is guilty of all” (Jas 2:10). Because, abstaining from one sin and doing one good for conscience’ sake, he will do all for conscience’ sake if he is sincere.

Therefore it is true in divinity that a man who repents of one sin repents of all, if he repents of any sin as it is a sin, because all sins are of one nature. We must not single out what pleases us and leave what does not please us. This is to make ourselves gods. The servant must not choose his work, but take the work his master commands him; therefore sincerity is tried in universal obedience.

Partial obedience is insincere obedience. When a man says, “This sin I must keep still; in this, ‘God be merciful to me’; this stands with my profit, I must not leave this; this sin I am attached to,” as we see in Saul, this is insincerity. It is as good as nothing toward God. It may keep a man from shame in the world, and so on, but to God it is nothing. A man must have regard for all God’s commandments. Otherwise it is not done to God.

(3) More particularly, he who is sincere will have regard for the main duties, and he will have regard likewise for the lesser duties, and especially for the lesser, such as are not liable to the censure of men, or to the censure and punishment of the law; for there a man’s sincerity is most tried. In great duties there are great rewards, great encouragements; but for lesser duties there are lesser encouragements. But if a man does them, he must do them for conscience’ sake.

Therefore this is sincerity: to practice good duties though they are lesser duties, and though they are less esteemed in the world and less approved; to practice them though they are frowned on by the devil and by great ones; yet to practice them because they are good; and to love good things that the world does not care for, because they are good.

The practice of private prayer morning and evening is a thing we are not expressly bound to, except as conscience binds us. Therefore if a man is sincere he will make a matter of conscience of that, as well as of any other duty, because God bids us pray always (1 Thess 5:17). So too, he will fear an oath for conscience’ sake, and will not swear common or lighter oaths. (I do not count anyone worthy of the name of a Christian who is an ordinary swearer.) But even lighter oaths a Christian makes a matter of conscience, because he looks to God. Now God looks to little sins as well as to great; and no sin that touches the majesty of God is little indeed.

The practice of all duties, therefore, is a notable evidence of sincerity. Herod did many things, but he had a Herodias, who spoiled all. And so if you obey in many things, and not in all, you have a Herodias, a main sin. Alas! All is to no purpose! You are a hypocrite.

(4) Again, for good things, one who is sincere in respect to God is uniform in his obedience. That is, he does all that is good, and he does it in one place as well as another, and at one time as well as another. He does not do it by fits and starts.

Therefore constancy is required in sincerity. Where sincerity is, there is constancy to do it at all times, in all places. Otherwise it is only a whim. It is not sincerity when a man does it only in good moods, as we say. Therefore a man who is sincere makes a matter of conscience of private duties as well as of public; of personal duties between God and his own soul, as well as of the duties that the world takes notice of; in one place as well as another. He is holy not only in the church, but in his private room; not only in his calling as he is a Christian, but when he is about his particular business. He considers that he is in the presence of God in every place, at all times.

St. Paul everywhere labored to live a good life. When he stood at the bar, he remembered where he was, and he labored to convert others. In prison he converted Onesimus (Phlm 10). When he had his liberty, he spread the gospel everywhere.

So in all places he was uniform, like himself, which showed that he had a good conscience. And therefore he does not say, I do a good action now and then, but my course of life, “my conversation, is in sincerity.” So there must be sincerity in our walking, in our whole conduct. Thus we see how to try our sincerity in good actions.

(5) A sincere man, in the very performance of good duties, is humble, because he does all things in the eye of God. He does it in sincerity with humility. He does all good with reverence, because he does it as to God.

Humility and reverence are a qualification of sincerity, because whatever we do, we do in the eye of God. Therefore we are reverent in our very secret devotions in our private rooms. We carry ourselves reverently, because when no eye sees us, the eye of heaven sees us, in one place as well as another. A sincere Christian is a reverent and humble Christian, and this reverence accompanies all his good actions.

(6) And when he has done all, a sincere Christian who does these things as to God is humble, and then he is thankful; for he knows that he has not done it by his own strength, but by God, and therefore God has the glory.

He is humble, because his good actions are mixed with some infirmities of his. A sincere Christian is always humble, having an eye to God. Though to the eye of the world he has done excellently well, yet he knows that God does not see as he sees. He sees some defects; God sees more, and that humbles him. We see this in David (1 Chr 29:14). He says, “Who am I? or who is this people, that we should be able to offer willingly after this sort? All things come of thee; of thine own I have given thee.” So he humbled himself in thankfulness to God.

2. For evil actions:

(1) A truly sincere Christian intends none beforehand. He regards none in his heart. “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear my prayers” (Ps 66:18). His disposition is to regard none. He is in league with none. If he were, his heart would be false, and his conscience would tell him he was a hypocrite. He is subject to infirmities, but he does not respect them; he does not regard them. He does not intend in his heart to live in them.

(2) Again, if he falls into any sin, he is sincerely grieved for it. His heart is tender, and he sincerely confesses his sins without guile. “Blessed is the man in whose spirit there is no guile” (Ps 32:2), who, when he sees he has sinned, does not guilefully cloak and extenuate his sin. We see the contrary in Saul, who had many evasions and excuses for himself (1 Sam 13:12). A true Christian will lay open his sin with all the aggravating circumstances that his conscience tells him of. As David says, what a fool, “and what a beast was I” (Ps 73:22); what an unthankful creature I was, to sin against so many benefits and favors! He will be ashamed and confounded in himself.

(3) And of all sins, a sincere Christian is most careful to avoid his personal sins. You may know sincerity by that. He who does not take heed to what he is most inclined to will be tripped in it.

A hypocrite and false-hearted man does good, but it is with a purpose to be favored in some sin in which he strengthens himself. He will do something so that God may be favorable to him in other things.

But consider a truly sincere Christian. He may be inclined to some sin more than another by the temper of his body, or by his calling, or by the former custom of his unregenerate life. He may not have shaken some sin wholly off, nor purged himself wholly of the dregs of it, but may still find a proneness to it in his nature. Yet as far as he is sincere, he gets strength especially against that sin. A false-hearted man favors himself especially in those sins, and will swell with indignation if he is found out in them. He will not bear a reproof. But a Christian who is sincere, who intends amendment, who intends to be better, would reform his heart if it is amiss, and is willing to be exposed in his most particular and personal sins that he is prone to.

We may try ourselves by this: not only by hating sin in general and at large, but by how we stand affected especially to those particular sins we are most prone to. Sincerity, as it hates all wicked ways, so it hates those sins that are most sweet, that we are most prone to, as well as any other; no, more than any other, because those especially endanger the soul. A child of God will abstain from all evil. He will be careful not only that others abstain from sin, but he will abstain from sin himself most of all. Loathsome things we hate always, but we hate them most when they are nearest us. Take a toad: we hate it far off, and much more when it is near. So a sincere Christian hates sin most in his own breast.

(4) Now because sincerity has an eye to God, I must hate all sin as well as any, or else I am not sincere.

A man who has the point of his soul turned toward God will hate all manner of evil, little evils as well as great, because all sin agrees in this: all sin is against God. It is contrary to the mind of God, and all sin is pernicious to the soul. All sin is against the pure word of God, and considering that it is so, I must therefore hate all sin, if I hate any; because God hates all, and all sin is contrary to the image of God. And it is not only contrary to the image of God, but contrary to the revealed will of God, contrary to my soul’s comfort, contrary to communion with God, and contrary to the peace of my conscience. Those considerations come in with every sin. Every sin hinders these things.

(5) Again, where the soul and conscience are sincere, there will be a special care for the time to come concerning the sins we have been overtaken with. So we see how this sincerity may be tried in abstaining from evil, as well as in the good we do.

3. For actions that are of a more common nature, that in themselves are neither good nor evil, but as the doer is, and as the doer stands affected, a true Christian may be tried by them in this way:

(1) For the actions of his calling, which, though they are good in their kind, yet are not religious, he stands affected in this way if he is sincere: he does them as God’s work. Common actions are as the doer is affected. A sincere man considers what he does as God’s work. He is commanded to serve God in his calling as well as in the church, and therefore he will not do it negligently. “For cursed is he that doth the work of the Lord negligently” (Jer 48:10).

He will not do it falsely. He will not profane his calling. “I will not prostitute my calling to serve my lust, or to serve my gain. Does not God see it? Is he not the author of my calling? Is it not his work?” says conscience. Yes! And therefore he does common actions with an eye to God, and so he makes them good and religious actions. For the grace of God is a blessed alchemist! Whatever it touches, it makes good and religious. Though the actions are not so in their own nature, it raises the actions; it elevates them higher than themselves.

It makes the actions of our calling, which are ordinary actions, to be holy, when they are done with an eye of sincerity to God. As St. Paul says, the very servant serves God in serving his master.

(2) And so for actions that we account most indifferent, such as recreations and liberty to refresh ourselves. A sincere man considers them as a liberty bought for him by the blood of Christ, and considers himself to be in the presence of God. And therefore, whatever he does, “whether he eat or drink …” (1 Cor 10:31), he still uses his refreshments as in the presence of God, and does all as in the sight of God. His conduct, that is, his whole course, whatever he does, is sincere, with an eye to God. He knows his corruption is such that it watches him most in his liberties; for the more lawful a thing is, the more we are in danger of being entangled in it.

In excess, in open evils, there is not so much danger as in things that seem indifferent, lawful recreations and the like. Recreations and such things are lawful; but to spend whole nights this way, wastefully, basely, scandalously, is not only against religion, but against common decency. In a decent man’s judgment, it is a scandal to the place and the person. Therefore he who has any truth of grace in him will look to himself and look to God in the freest actions of all. You see, then, how we may judge of our sincerity in whatever we do. A sincere Christian stands affected in this way, in some measure, in some degree, in the good he does and in the evil he abstains from. Whatever it may be, he thinks that he has to deal with God.

Use 1. Now to stir us up to this blessed state, to labor for this frame of soul, to be sincere, to have our conduct in sincerity, what more needs to be added than this, that without it all is nothing?

1. All our glorious performances are mere abominations without sincerity. God will say, “You did not do it to me. You did it for vainglory; you did it for custom, or out of upbringing, for vain and ulterior motives, and not to me. And do you look for a reward from me? You did not do it for conscience,” for conscience always looks to God. And what we do not do in conscience and obedience to God, in our general or particular calling, does not stand on our reckoning with God. It is as good as not done, in regard to God and to the life to come. “You have your reward,” says Christ (Matt 6:2). It makes no difference what your motives are here. If you carry yourselves carefully in your place in order to have the credit of men, to gain the favor of men, you have your reward. Will you look for a reward from God, when what you did, you did to the world?

What a pitiful thing this is, that a man should do many things, for many years together, and yet do nothing that may further him on his day of account, because it was not done out of conscience of his duty! His conduct was not in sincerity to God. Now, if we do not have truth we have nothing in religion. St. Paul says, as I said before, “Of an idol, it is nothing” (1 Cor 8:4). Why, it is a piece of wood, or a piece of gold. The material of it is something, but it is nothing compared with what it should be. If a man is not true in religion, he is nothing in it. He is a true hypocrite, but a false Christian. He is nothing in Christianity. He is something in hypocrisy, but that something is nothing.

All the shows in the world, and all the flourishes, are nothing. What is the reason that excellent clerics, men of excellent gifts, often die comfortless? Why, God is not indebted to them for all that they did. They sought their own praise. As the prophet Zechariah says, “When you fasted, did you fast to me?” (Zech 7:5). God may say, “When you did good works, did you do them to me?” There was no truth in it. So much simplicity, so much comfort. Sincerity is all that we can come to in this world. Perfection we cannot attain to. Christ is perfection for us. Truth is all that we can reach to, and without that all is nothing. Therefore we ought to regard it especially.

2. Again, on the other side, this is a great encouragement to be sincere, to be true-hearted in all our courses and actions: because it gives acceptance to whatever we do, and it is that by which God values us. God values us not by perfection, not by glorious shows, but by what we have in truth. So much truth, so much worth. A little pearl is worth a great deal of rubbish.

So it is with a little sincerity, because it is God’s own creature. It is “the sincerity of God”; it is wrought by him; it is his own stuff. It takes an almighty power to work truth in us, for by nature we are all false. God grants some men to carry themselves more decently than others, but it is worth nothing unless God changes a man by grace, because God accepts us according to sincerity. God values us by truth. So much truth, so much esteem from the God of truth.

And where this sincerity is, God bears with many infirmities. It is as in marriage. The husband who is discreet, who knows what belongs to marriage, if the heart of his wife is true, passes by her many womanly infirmities as long as the marriage knot is kept inviolate. So with a Christian: if his heart is true, so that he looks to God in all things, though he has many infirmities, God passes by them. We see this in Asa. How many faults he committed! He trusted in the physicians, he treated the prophet harshly, and he had many other faults; and yet it is said that his heart was upright all his days, because he had truth in him. When he did otherwise in this or that, it was in passion.

So Hezekiah, although he had many infirmities, could still say that he had walked uprightly before God (Isa 38:3), and God esteemed him well for it. And when he speaks of those who were to come to the Passover, he prays, Be merciful to those that prepare their hearts (2 Chr 30:19), that is, those who have true hearts, though they have many weaknesses.

Now, if the heart is false, though a woman has many virtues, yet if she lacks the main thing, if she has a false heart toward her husband, what is all the rest? So with the soul that is married to God, that has sweet communion with God: if the heart and soul are bad, what are all the shows in the world? They are nothing. Let us take it to heart, therefore, and labor to have our hearts and souls approved by God in all that we do, more than our lives and outward conduct by the world. Let them think what they will, so long as God approves of our hearts, and intentions, and purposes. We are not to care what the world judges, as St. Paul says of himself (1 Cor 4:3).

3. Again, this should encourage us to labor for sincerity and truth, because wherever it is, there is a growing to perfection. “To him that hath shall be given” (Matt 13:12). “If we order our conversation aright,” as the psalmist says (Ps 50:23), and labor to please God in all things, the more we do, the more grace we shall have to do; and the more we have, the more we shall have. “To him that hath shall be given”; that is, he who truly has, and does not merely seem to have. But as for him who does not have indeed, who seems to have goodness and has none indeed, that which he has shall be taken from him.

A true Christian is always on the mend. It is a blessed prerogative. He is always mending and bettering by God’s blessing. For where God gives in truth, if it is only a little, if it is only a grain of mustard seed, if it is true, he will cherish it till it comes to be a tree. He will add grace to grace, one degree of grace to another. Where there is truth, it is always honored with growth. It is not only a sign of truth, but where truth is there will be an endeavor of growth. It is a prerogative. Where God bestows truth, he will always add the grace of growth, though not at all times alike. Yet if Christians sometimes do not grow, their not growing and their failings shame them, and make them grow more afterward, and recover from their former backwardness. A true Christian is always on the mend. A hypocrite grows worse and worse continually, till he is exposed altogether and turned into hell. These and similar considerations may stir us up to labor to conduct ourselves in simplicity and godly sincerity.

Use 2. Now, how shall we come to carry ourselves in sincerity, so that we may have comfort in all conditions?

That we may carry ourselves in sincerity:

1. We must get a change of heart. Our nature must be changed. For by nature a man aims at himself in all things, and not at God. A man makes himself his final end. He makes something in the world, either profits, or pleasures, or the like, the goal he looks to. Therefore there must be a change of heart. A man must be a good man, or else he cannot be a sincere man. Such as we are, such our actions will be. Therefore we cannot be sincere till we have our hearts changed.

2. No man can aim at God’s glory except he who has felt God’s love in himself. Therefore, as a particular branch of that, labor to get assurance of the love of God in Jesus Christ; for how can we endeavor to please him unless we love him? And how can we love him unless we are persuaded that he loves us in Christ? Therefore let us establish our hearts more and more in the evidences of his love to us; and then, knowing that he loves us, we shall love him, and labor to please him in all things.

These are grounds that must be laid before we can be sincere: to get assurance of God’s love to us in the pardon of our sins. “Our conscience must be purged from dead works, to serve the living God,” as the apostle says (Heb 9:14); that is, we cannot serve God to our comfort till our consciences are sprinkled with the blood of Christ, which assures us of the pardon of our sins. Therefore Zechariah says, “We are redeemed, that we might serve him in righteousness and holiness before him all the days of our life” (Luke 1:75). So unless a man is redeemed, he cannot serve him in righteousness and holiness “before him” all the days of his life; that is, he cannot serve God in sincerity.

For who will labor to please his enemy? Therefore the papists maintain hypocrisy when they say we ought not to be persuaded of the love of God, for by that reasoning we ought to be hypocrites. For how shall we seek him at the loss of favor, and of credit, and of life itself, if we do not know that his favor will stand us in good stead if we lose these things for him?

3. Again, that we may be sincere, let us labor to mortify all our earthly affections to the world; for how can we be sincere when we seek for honors, and pleasures, and riches, and not for better things? Therefore we must know that there is more good to be had in truth, in a plain, honest Christian profession, than in all worldly good whatever. And if we are hypocrites in our profession, there is more evil in that than in anything in the world. This will make us sincere, when we can be persuaded that we shall get better things by being sincere in religion than the world can give us or take away from us. For why are men insincere and false-hearted? Because they do not think religion to be the true good. They think it is better to have riches than to have a good mind. These things therefore must be mortified; and a man must know that the life of a Christian is incomparably the best life, though it be with the loss of liberty, yes, with the loss of life itself.

Simon Magus grew to false affections in religion, because he thought to have profit by it. So the Pharisees had wicked hearts, and therefore they had no good by religion. No man can profit by religion so long as his heart is wicked, so long as there is some idol in his heart. A good Christian would rather have a large heart to serve God, and would rather grow in the image of God, to be like him, than grow in anything in the world. And that makes him sincere out of a good judgment, because Christian excellence is incomparably the best excellence. For he knows well what all else will be before long. What! Will all these do good, riches, honors, friends? What good will they do in the hour of death? There is nothing but grace, and the expression of it in our whole conduct, that will comfort us. Therefore he values all things in the world below sincerity and a good conscience.

4. Again, that we may have our conduct in sincerity, let us labor in everything we do to show ourselves approved to the eye of God. We see the Scripture everywhere shows that this has made God’s children conscientious in all their courses, even when they might have sinned not only securely, but with advantage. What kept Joseph from committing folly with his master’s wife? “Shall I do this, and sin against God?” (Gen 39:9). And so Job shows what awed him and kept him from evildoing: “Doth not he see my ways, and account all my steps?” (Job 31:4). This was what kept him in awe. So the church of God in Psalm 44, being in great distress, kept themselves from idolatry and from the contagion of the times in which they lived. On what ground? You shall see in Psalm 44:21: If we had done thus and thus, “shall not God search it out? for he knows the very secrets of the heart.”

So when a Christian is persuaded of the eye of God upon him, it makes him sincere. The eye of God is ten thousand times brighter than the sun, for he is light itself. He made the heart, and he knows all the turnings of the heart. The consideration of this will make us sincere in our private rooms, in our very thoughts; for they all lie open and naked to his view.

What is the reason that men practice secret villainy and secret wickedness, and give themselves to filthiness in their imaginations? Because they are atheists. They forget that they are in the eye of God, who sees the plots and projects of their hearts, and the nets that they have laid for their brethren. Therefore David brings them in saying, “Tush! God sees us not” (Ps 94:7). And that is the reason they have no conscience in their desires, in their hearts, in their secret thoughts. It comes from a hidden atheism. For if we considered that the eye of God sees us in all our intentions and actions, and sees in what manner we do everything, and to what end; that he sees every action, with its circumstances, its aims and ends; if the heart pondered this well, it would prevent a great deal of evil.

Conscience is the witness of our conduct, a witness that will keep us from offending. If there were a witness standing by, and that witness were a great person, a judge or the like, it would keep us on our good behavior. Now when a man considers, I have a witness within me, my conscience, and a witness without, which is God, who is my Judge, who can strike me dead in the committing of a sin if he pleases: this would make men, if they were not atheists, afraid to sin.

Let us labor therefore to have our hearts approved by God, as well as our conduct by men. Let us set ourselves in the presence of God, who is a discerner of our thoughts as well as of our actions; and what we would be ashamed to do before men, let us be afraid to think before God. That is another means of coming to sincerity.

5. Another direction to help us to walk sincerely is especially to look to the heart: look to the beginning, to the spring of all our desires, thoughts, affections, and actions, that is, the heart. The condition of the heart is the condition of the man. If the heart is bad, the man is bad. If it is sincere, the man is sincere. Therefore look to the heart. See what springs out from it. If wicked thoughts and desires spring out, suppress them in the beginning. Let us examine every thought. If we find that we so much as think an evil thought, put it to death at once; crush it. For all that is wicked comes from a thought and a desire at the first. Therefore let us look to our thoughts and desires. See whether we do not have false desires, with intentions and thoughts to match.

God is a Spirit, and he looks to our very spirits; and what we are in our spirits, in our hearts and affections, that we are to him. Therefore, as a branch of this, whatever evil we shun, let us shun it from the heart, by hating it first. A man may avoid an evil action from fear, or out of other considerations, but that is not sincerity. Therefore look to your heart. See that you hate evil, and let this come from a sincere looking to God. “Ye that love the Lord, hate the thing that is evil,” says David (Ps 97:10). Not only avoid it, but hate it; and not only hate it, but hate it out of love to God.

And as for what is good, we should not only do it, but labor to delight and rejoice in it. For the outward action is not the thing that God regards; but when there is a resolution, a desire and a delight in it, then God accounts it as done. And so it is with evil. If we delight in evil, it is as if it were done already. Therefore in doing good, look to the heart, rejoice in the good you do, and then do it; and in evil, look to the heart, judge it to be evil, and then abstain from it.

This is the reason for all the errors in our lives. Because we have bad hearts, we do not look to God in sincerity. Judas had a wicked heart. He did not love the Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore he came to a wicked end. What the heart does not do is not done in religion. Thus we see how we may come to order our way of life in sincerity, so that we may rejoice in the testimony of our conscience.

Use. Therefore now, to make a use of exhortation, we should labor for sincerity, and esteem it highly, because God so esteems it. Truth is all that we can plead before God. We cannot plead perfection. St. Paul himself does not say, I have walked exactly or perfectly. No, but he says, This is our rejoicing, that we have walked in sincerity. So, if a man’s conscience can clear him of hypocrisy and double-dealing, though it cannot free him from imperfections, God in the covenant of grace looks not so much at perfection as at truth.

Objection. Here I might answer an objection of some Christians: “Oh, but I cannot pray without distraction. I cannot delight so much in good things,” and so on.

Answer. Though a Christian’s heart cannot free him from this, yet his heart desires to approve itself to God in all things, and his heart is ready to say to the Lord, as David said, “Lord, try me, if there be any way of wickedness in me” (Ps 139:23-24). And therefore he will wait upon all the means of getting this sincerity.

He will be diligent in the word of God, for there the mind of God is plainly seen. The word of God is a begetting word. It makes us immortal; it makes us new creatures. It is truth, and the instrument of truth. Truth will make truth. The true, sincere word of God, not mingled with human devices, will make people what it is. The word of God, being the word of him who is Almighty, has an almighty transforming power from him. It is accompanied and clothed with his Almighty Spirit. Truth will cause truth. Such as it is in itself, such it will work in our hearts.

In that mongrel, false religion, popery, they have traditions and false devices of men, and so they make false Christians. Such as they are, they make. Distill them down to their very essence, and they cannot make a true Christian. Truth makes true Christians. Therefore wait upon God’s ordinance with all reverence, and it will make your heart sound. It is a transforming word. Those who desire to hear the word of God, and to have their consciences informed by hearing it, are sincere Christians; and those who labor to shut up the word of God, so that it may not work upon the conscience, are false-hearted.

A heart that is sincere prizes the word of God that makes us sincere. The word of God has this effect, especially when it is unfolded in its ministry, that a man may say, as Jacob did, “Doubtless God is in this place” (Gen 28:16). Sincerity is all that is ours. Nothing goes on our reckoning but sincerity. For what I have not done truly, conscience says I have not done to God, and therefore I can expect no comfort for it. But what I have done to God, I look to have with comfort, for I know that God regards not perfection, but sincerity. He requires not so much a great faith as a true faith; not so much perfect love as true love. And that I have in truth, as St. Peter said, “Lord, thou knowest that I love thee” (John 21:15-17).

This will make us look God, who is the Judge, in the face. It does not give us title to heaven, for that is only by Christ; but it is a qualification required of us in the gospel. Nothing is ours but what we do in truth.

And again, consider that it will comfort us against Satan at the hour of death. When Satan tempts us to despair because of our sins, as he will, we may comfort ourselves with this, that we have been sincere. We may send him to Christ (for that must be the way), who has fulfilled God’s will and satisfied his Father’s wrath. Satan will say, “This is true. It is the gospel, and therefore it cannot be denied. But it is for those who have walked according to the Spirit, and not according to the flesh; for those who have obeyed God in all things.”

Now when our conscience joins with Satan and says, “You did nothing to God; you have not obeyed him,” how can we answer him? We must necessarily yield to the tempter. But when we can say with Peter, “Lord, thou knowest that I love thee,” and can add, “You know that I have labored to approve my heart to you, and that I have pursued this desire with real endeavor,” this will comfort a man in the time of temptation. Therefore let us labor to order our way of life in sincerity.

It will give us much comfort in this life, as it did St. Paul. St. Paul here was in some grievous sickness, even to death, and he was disgraced as a person who had no regard for his promise of coming to them. Now what does he do in all this sickness and disgrace? What does he answer them? He comforts himself in this: “My rejoicing is, that my conscience doth testify my sincerity.” He runs to God, and to his sincerity, as his stronghold. He approves himself to God.

We shall have something in this life, sooner or later; afflictions, disgraces, and troubles will come. What then is the stronghold of a Christian? Then he runs to his sincerity. What would Hezekiah have done when he received the “sentence of death,” if it had not been that he had walked before God in uprightness and sincerity? Sincerity then is worth more than the world. And when a man will not labor for what is worth more than all the world, it is a sign that he is ignorant of its worth. At the hour of death a man would give up all the world, if he had it, for sincerity.

Therefore let us not part with our sincerity. Let us not offend against sincerity and truth by falsehood in our behavior, or in our tongues, or in our way of life in any manner at all, since it will yield us so much comfort in temptations and afflictions, and at the tribunal and judgment seat of Christ.

Let us not have false aims and ends, and do things in a false manner. It is not action only that God requires, but the manner. If we do not regard the manner, God will not regard the matter. The matter of the Pharisees’ performances was very good as far as the stuff of them went, but their hearts being wicked, God did not regard it. Let us look to the manner of doing all that we do, that we do it to God, that we do it in sincerity, in a holy manner. The Scripture requires this. Receive the sacrament, but in this way: “Examine yourselves” (1 Cor 11:28). “Take heed how you hear” (Luke 8:18). Let your way of life be in the world, but in this way: “in simplicity and godly sincerity.”

St. Paul does not say that he rejoiced in miracles, or in the great works he had done in converting nations and the like, which yet were matters of joy. But when he comes to joy indeed, here is his joy, that his way of life had been in “simplicity and godly sincerity.”

And Christians must take care that they do not reason against sincerity in another way, that is, by concluding that they have no goodness because they see a great deal of corruption and imperfection in themselves. For imperfections may stand with truth. Asa, as I said, had many infirmities in his life, yet notwithstanding it is said that he walked in sincerity. So it is said of Hezekiah that he walked before God uprightly, yet he had many infirmities and imperfections. Indeed, one may well turn this back upon such poor souls, who are witnesses with Satan against themselves in the sight of their sins: the very fact that they know their sins, especially with hatred of them, is a sign of sincerity.

Again, others are ready to say, “I am not sincere, because God follows me with afflictions and distresses.” Do not reason so, for he follows you with afflictions for this very reason, that he would have nothing but sincerity in you. He would make you wholly sincere, and purge you from the dross as metal is purged in the fire. Therefore take care not to sin against sincerity in this way. Do nothing in hypocrisy. And when we are once sincere, let us not sin against it by yielding to the devil.

This comforted Job when his friends alleged his corruptions. Well, he says, you shall not take away my sincerity from me (Job 27:5). He looked to the eye of God that saw him, to whom he approved his heart; and that consideration made him sincere, and from there he comforted himself. So let us comfort ourselves in our sincerity against Satan’s accusations, as a condition of the covenant of grace, which looks not to perfection but to truth.

To add one thing more. As there is an order among other graces, so there is an order in this sincerity we should labor for. There is this order to be kept.

1. We must dig deep. We must lay a sincere foundation. What is that? A deep search into our own hearts and ways by sound humiliation. We say of digestion that if the first stage is bad, all are bad. If the first digestion in the body is bad, there can never be good assimilation; there can never be good blood. So if there is not a good, a sincere foundation, there can never be a sincere building. Therefore many are mistaken, and build castles in the air, come-downs, as we say. They build a frame of profession that comes to nothing in the end, because it is not sincere in this order. They were never truly humbled. They had a guileful heart in the confession of their sins. They never knew what sin was, thoroughly and feelingly.

“Blessed is the man in whose spirit there is no guile” (Ps 32:2). The psalmist especially means and intends this there with regard to downright dealing with God in the confession of sins. For when he himself did not deal plainly and uprightly with God in the confession of his sins, with detestation of them and with a resolution never to commit them again, he was in a pitiful plight both of soul and body; his moisture was turned into “the drought of summer” (Ps 32:4).

2. But when without guile he laid open his soul to God, then he came from sincere humiliation and sincere confession to sincere faith. Therefore, for the order, let us first labor to be sincere in the sight of what is evil in us, in the confession of our sins, and then we shall be sincere, the better to depend upon God’s mercy in Christ by faith.

3. And from there we shall come to sincere love. When we believe that God is reconciled in Christ, we shall love him. Our love is but a reflection of his love to us. When once we know that he loves us, we shall love him in return.

The spring of all duty is sincere love, coming from sincere faith, just as sincere faith is forced out of the sincere sight of our sins, of the evil and miserable state we are in. A man will not go out of himself as long as he sees any hope in himself. And therefore sound knowledge of the evil condition we are in forces out the grace of faith, which forces a man to go out of himself. And then, when he is persuaded of God’s love in Christ, he loves him in return.

Love is what animates, quickens, and enlivens all duties. What are all duties but love? Christ reduces all to love. It is a sweet affection that stirs up and quickens us to all duties. It carries us along to all duties. All are love. What need have I to dwell on sincere patience, sincere temperance, sincere sobriety, and the rest? If a man has sincere love to God, it will carry him to all duties. Remember this order.

Especially every day, enter into your own souls, and search impartially what sin is there unconfessed and unrepented of, and make your peace with God by confession. And then go to sincere dependence on God by faith in the promises. And then stir up your hearts to love him; and from the love of him, to love one another in sincerity, not in hypocrisy.

Thus we have the manner of the blessed apostle’s behavior in the world, on which his rejoicing was founded: “Our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity …”

“We have had our conversation in the world.” I will speak a little of those words before I come to the negative part, “Not in fleshly wisdom.”

“Our conversation.” By the word he uses for “conversation” he means the several turnings of his life, in whatever relation he stood to God or to men, as a minister, as a Christian, as a friend, as a neighbor, at home or abroad, in all estates, in all places, and at all times. His way of life was “in simplicity and sincerity.”

“In the world,” that is, wherever he had lived. And mark how he joins them together. His way of life in the world among men was with sincerity to God. It was that which ruled his way of life in the world. And so it should be with us. Wherever we are, or whatever we do in the world, our behavior here must be directed by a look higher up. The ship, while it is tossed on the sea, is ruled by the polestar. That must guide it. So it is in our way of life in the world. The stuff of our way of life may be the business we have in the world, but the rule, the government of it all, must be from heaven, with an eye to God. I touch on that because he knits these together.

Now where he says that his way of life was in simplicity and sincerity, you may see here then that all the frame, all the passages of his life, were good. This makes good what I touched on before, which has its proper place here, that

Sincerity extends itself to all the frame of a man’s life.

He who is sincere is sincere in all places and at all times, in all the turnings and windings and passages of his life, or else he is not sincere at all. His way of life must be sincere wherever he lives or whatever he does, in prosperity or adversity, at home or abroad.

The very worst hypocrite in the world, does he not have pangs sometimes? Take an oppressor. He thinks that he should not die like this; he thinks, “I must be called to account if I do this.” Does not Ahab lie on his sickbed sometimes? Is not Herod sometimes troubled in conscience? Does not a wicked man sometimes have twitches of conscience which the world does not see, secret checks of conscience? Oh, yes! There is not a man living so vile but that he has his good fits; he has pangs of goodness. But what is this to a way of life? Our way of life must be in sincerity in all its turnings and passages.

God judges us by the tenor of our life, and not by single particular acts. A good man may be bad in a particular act, and an evil man may be good in a particular act. But I say, God does not judge us by a distinct, severed passage, but by the tenor of our life. Uniformity, steadiness, and evenness of life are an undoubted evidence of a good man.

Because he is a new creature; and being a new creature, he has a new nature; and nature works uniformly. Art works unevenly, and by force. Teach a creature something that is against its nature, and it will do something of it, but a lion will have a lion’s trick, and a wolf will have a wolf’s trick. Teach them as much as you will, a lion will be a lion in all places, a wolf will be a wolf, and an eagle will be an eagle. Every creature will keep to its own nature, and be like itself.

A Christian, as far as he is good, as far as he is a Christian, is uniform. His way of life is good; he is like himself in all places, at all times, on all occasions, in prosperity and in adversity. The very word “conversation” shows that the whole of a man’s course must be in sincerity, wherever he is.

God is everywhere, and sincerity has an eye to God. It makes a man good everywhere, or else it does nothing toward God. Does not God see everywhere, abroad and at home in our private rooms? If we plot villainy, he sees it there as well as abroad. Therefore if I do it anywhere, I have no regard for the eye of God.

Again, where he says “our conversation,” it implies constancy as well as uniformity. He was so in all places and at all times. But I noted that before, therefore I pass it by.

“Our conversation in the world.” That is, among other men, wherever I was and have lived. From this we see that

Observation. Christianity may stand with living and moving abroad in the world.

Men need not be walled up in a cloister, as the foolish monks of former times. They thought that religion was a thing confined to solitariness, whereas it often requires greater strength of grace to be alone than to be in company. We know the proverb, “Woe to him that is alone” (Eccl 4:10). A good Christian lives and moves in the world, and does so in simplicity and sincerity. We need not, I say, cloister ourselves up to be good men, to be sincere Christians. We may live and move in the world in sincerity if we have St. Paul’s spirit.

But what I will press more is this, that

Observation. True religion, where it is in strength, carries a man in the world, and yet he is not tainted with the world.

St. Paul lived and moved in the world in sincerity. The world is a hypocrite, as one said of old. The whole world acts a part. It is a hypocrite, and a cruel opposer of sincerity and truth. St. Paul lived abroad in the world, among men who had aims of their own and misused themselves in the world, and yet he walked in “simplicity and sincerity.” He was a good man for all that. A man who is not of the world, but begotten to be a member of a higher world, may carry himself in the world without the corruptions of the world; he may carry himself in the world in such a way that he is not carried away by the world. We see St. Paul did so.

Noah was a good man in evil times, a good man in his generation (Gen 6:9). Enoch, in evil times, “walked with God” (Gen 5:22). In Acts 13:36 we read, “David in his generation served the purpose of God”; and his generation was none of the best. For you know there were Ahithophel and Doeg, who were bad companions, yet in his generation he served the purpose of God. So every man in his time may live and move in the world, and yet not be carried away with the corruptions of the times.

What is the reason?

Reason. The reason is that a true Christian has a spirit in him above the world. As St. John says, “The Spirit that is in you is stronger than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4). The child of God has a spirit in him, a new nature, that sets him in a rank above the world. Christians are an order of men who are above the world. They are men of another world. And therefore, having a principle of grace that raises them above the base condition of the world, they can live in the world without the blemishes and corruptions of the world. They are men of a higher disposition.

Even as sickness in the body does not hurt the rational life, so nothing that a Christian meets with in the world hurts his Christian life, which is his best life, because it is a life of a higher order, of a higher nature. St. Paul’s “conversation was in heaven” (Phil 3:20); it was above the snares here below. He was “crucified to the world” (Gal 6:14). He was a dead man to all that was evil in the world, and to what was good and indifferent in the world. For pleasures, for honors, for food and drink and such necessities, for worldly callings and refreshments and the like, the counsel he gave to others he practiced himself: “The time is short, let us use the world as though we used it not” (1 Cor 7:29-31).

He used indifferent things in the world, which are good or evil according to how they are used, as if he had not used them. He lived in the world as a traveler or passenger. He knew he was not at home. He knew he had another home to go to. “Here we have no continuing city” (Heb 13:14), and therefore he used the world as though he used it not.

A traveler uses things along his way as far as they may help him forward; but let his very staff trouble him, and he throws it away. So a Christian uses indifferent things in the world, which are good or evil according to what he himself is. He uses them well, because “all things are pure to the pure” (Titus 1:15). He uses them in such a way that he does not delight in them, because he has better things to solace himself in. He does not drown himself in these things as worldlings do.

And as for the evils of the world, a Christian in good measure is crucified to the world, and the world to him. And he has his way of life in heaven: “But our conversation is in heaven” (Phil 3:20). Many serve their bellies, “whose end is damnation, but our conversation is in heaven” (Phil 3:19-20).

Now his conduct being heavenly, that is the reason he can live in the world in sincerity, though the world is of another strain.

So you see, then, that a Christian is of a higher nature and a higher condition than the world. He is crucified to the world, and he knows himself to be a passenger and a traveler in the world, and therefore he uses the world as though he did not use it. And besides this, he has his employment above the world. The birds that keep to the air are not caught by snares below as long as they stay there; and Christians who have their conduct above are not ensnared by the things of the world as other men are. We see that St. Paul lived in the world in sincerity.

I note it all the more because this is the common objection of weak and false spirits: “We must do as the world does, or else we cannot live. He who does not know how to dissemble does not know how to live. And the times are bad.” So the evil that is grounded in themselves, they blame entirely on the times.

The times are bad indeed, just as they themselves are. As he said, “There is a circle of human things.” The times are only what they were. Things come back upon the stage. The same things are acted. The persons, indeed, are changed, but the same things are acted in the world to the end of the world. The times were bad before, they are bad now, and they will be so. Villainy is acted upon the stage of the world continually. The former actors are gone, but others are instructed with the same devices, with the same plots. The corruption of nature shows itself in all. Only now, at the end of the world, we have the advantage for acting wickedness, because besides the old wickedness of former times, we have the new wickednesses of these times. All the streams running into one make the channel greater.

Men say, “Alas! Alas! The times are evil.” Were they not so in Noah’s time? Were they not so in David’s time? Were they not so in St. Paul’s time? Men claim that they conform to the world out of a kind of necessity. They must do as others do.

If they were true Christians, it would not be so; for Noah was good in evil times. Nehemiah was good in the court of the king of Babylon. Joseph was good even in Egypt, in Pharaoh’s court. This can be no plea. For a Christian has a spirit to raise him above the corruption of the times he lives in. He also has such a spirit as is above prosperity or adversity, which will teach him to manage both, and to govern himself in all the occasions and occurrences of the world. “I can do all things,” says St. Paul, “through Christ that strengtheneth me!” (Phil 4:13).

As we say, the planets have one course by which they are carried with the first mover every twenty-four hours from east to west, as the sun is, and by this he makes the day. But the sun has a course of his own back again, and so by creeping back again he makes the year in his own course. So too the moon has a course of her own, and yet she is carried another course every day by the first mover.

So a good Christian who lives in the world is carried with the world in common things. He keeps company, does business, trades, and deals with the world. But does he not have a motion of his own, contrary to all this, at the same time? Yes. Though he lives in the world, he is nevertheless thinking of heaven, and he is shaping his course in another direction than the world does. He goes a contrary course; he swims against the stream of the world.

There are some kinds of rivers, they say, that pass through the sea and yet retain their freshness. It seems an emblem to show the condition of a Christian. He passes through the salt waters and yet keeps his freshness; he preserves himself. Therefore, I say, it is no plea to say that the times are bad, and company is bad, and so on. A man is not to fashion himself to the times. A hypocrite, like a chameleon, can turn himself into all colors but white. And water, we say, has no shape of its own, but is shaped by the vessel it is in (if the vessel is round, the water is round; if the vessel is four-cornered, the water is too), since it is a thin, airy, moist body. It has no boundary of its own, but is confined by the body that holds it.

So some men have no religion. They have no firmness, no standing, no strength or goodness of their own; but as their company is, so are they, and they think this will answer for everything: “I must do as others do; it is the fashion of the world.” If they are among swearers, they will swear. If they are among those who are unclean, they will pollute themselves. They shape themselves to all companies. They will be everything but what they ought to be. This will not do.

A Christian may pray for God’s help to keep him in the world, and he may know that God will. What ground does he have? Our Savior Christ says, “Father, I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou keep them in the world” (John 17:15). He prays for his apostles and disciples, that God would keep them in the world from the contagion of sin and from the destruction of the world. St. Paul, you see, lived and conducted himself in the world, wherever he was, in sincerity and simplicity. He was not carried away with the stream and errors of the times in which he lived.

Indeed, to add more, such a setting unites the power of grace and makes a man the better, the worse the company or the place where he lives. We know that in nature a thing hemmed in by its contrary is strengthened; and holy men have often been better in the midst of temptation, and have gathered their forces and strength of grace together more than when they have been more complacent. The envy and malice of the world is quick-sighted, and the more they live among those who are watching them, the more cautious they are of their conduct. You know that this is the apostle’s reason: “Redeem the time, because the days are evil” (Eph 5:16). Be the better because the days are evil. Witness for God in an “evil generation,” in evil times. He does not say, “Sin, because the days are evil.” God’s people always witness for him.

Let me add this as well, to give further light: we must not take occasion from this to conform and fashion ourselves to any company, or to cast ourselves into evil company when we need not. We must not tempt God; for then God is just in allowing us to be soiled by the company. And by our carelessness in this, we offend the godly, who on this account easily take us to be worse than we are. And as we grieve the Spirit of God in them, so we grieve him in ourselves; and we build up and strengthen wicked persons. And therefore this living in the world “in simplicity and sincerity” must be when our calling is such that we live in the world and need no physical separation to sever ourselves. But when, in the world, we are thrown among men without grace by our callings and occasions, we may presume that God will keep us by his Spirit.

Let us not be weary of hearing this point. For before long we must all appear before God, and then what an honor it will be for us that we have witnessed for God in this world! That we have stood for God and good causes in the midst of the world, and “shined as lights in the midst of a crooked generation” (Phil 2:15)! That we have managed the cause of God, and stood for religion, and held our own in the midst of papists and atheists and profane persons, and witnessed for the best things in spite of all, when we have been called to it! We are not to thrust ourselves into unnecessary troubles, no, not for the best things, unless we are called to it; but when we are called, and can witness for the best things, what an honor it will be for us!

And on the contrary, Christ says, “He that denies me, and is ashamed of me before men, of him will I be ashamed before my heavenly Father” (Mark 8:38). What a fearful thing this is! Let us look to God in simplicity and sincerity, and God will keep us, so that the world will not hurt us.

Objection. “What will become of us?” some will say. “We will come into this trouble, and that persecution will fall on us.”

Answer. It is not so. Christ was opposed when he was here on earth, but until his hour had come they could not do anything. Every man has his hour; every man has his time allotted to serve God here. God has measured out his life, and until his hour comes, when God will take him out of the world, God will restrain the efforts of men. Their plots will be to no purpose. God will keep and watch over those who are straightforward. God says, “Because thou hast kept my word, I will keep thee” (Rev 3:8-10). Let us keep the word of God in evil times, and God will keep us; let us stand for God, and he will stand for us.

It is no plea to say, “I will run into this danger and that danger.” “God will be thy buckler and thy shield” (Ps 91:4), if you stand for him. And what brings danger is too much accommodation with the world. When men forsake their sincerity in the world, when men will be on both sides, they carry on their affairs unhappily and unsuccessfully. An outright atheist will carry things on with better success than a halting Christian. For the halting Christian’s policy and subtlety will carry him into unsuitable actions; but then his conscience comes after him when he is in the midst of them, and so dampens him that he cannot go forward or backward.

Therefore the only way is to resolve to live in the world in simplicity and sincerity. If we do so, we may carry on holy business with strength. God will assist us in it. He will increase our light, and make our way plain and clear to us.

But if a man is not sincere, but double and carnal, and pretends to love religion, and yet takes courses and does actions that do not suit religion, it will not succeed well. God will curse it. He will strike him with bewilderment. He will strike his brain with errors in judgment, and so on. So there is no pretext that should make us live falsely and doubly in the world; but we ought to live as St. Paul did, let the world be as bad as it will or as it can be, “in simplicity and sincerity.” God will show himself strong for those who walk uprightly. He will be wisdom to such. But if we walk doubly and falsely, and make religion our pretext, God will show himself our enemy.

Where are your neutrals, then? Where are your politicians in religion, who will keep their religion to themselves? St. Paul lived in the world, wherever he was, in sincerity. He showed what he was. He did not walk according to carnal wisdom, as he says afterward. Where are your Nullifidians, then, who are of all beliefs and yet of no belief, who fashion themselves to all religions? And if they are of the true religion, still it is their wisdom to conceal it. St. Paul did not do so. But I will have occasion to touch on that in the negative part afterward, “not in fleshly wisdom.”

Again, where he says, “My conversation hath been thus in the world,” he means that in this life his conduct here has been sincere. I will touch on that for you. Though it is not the main aim here, it may still well be touched on, that:

Observation. We must, while we live here in this world, conduct ourselves in simplicity and sincerity.

We must not brush this off and live as we please, subtly, politicly, and carnally, and then think to die well. No; we must live “soberly, righteously, and justly in this present world” (Titus 2:12). Do you think you will begin to live well when you are gone from here? No; that is a time of reward, and not a time of work. This world is God’s workhouse; here you must work. This is God’s field; here you must labor. This is God’s sea; here we must sail. Here we must take pains. We must sweat at it. Here we must plow and sow, if ever we will reap.

Do you think you can carry yourself subtly, seeking your own ends in everything here, and then, when death comes, a “Lord, have mercy upon me” will answer for everything? No; you must conduct yourself as a Christian while you live here in this world, “in simplicity and sincerity.” God must have honor from you here. You must take care for your salvation here. Do you think you will have in another world what you do not care for here? Do you think you will have glory in another world, which you did not think of here? Do you think you will reap in another world what you did not sow here? Let us in this world stand for the glory of God, openly and boldly, both for the example of others and for the exercise of our own graces.

A true Christian has his conduct in “sincerity in this world”; all the more blame to the world, then, for defaming their dealings! Why? Because they are lights in the world, and they serve the world to good purpose, if the world would take benefit from them. They shine in the world to lead it the way to heaven. But the world is willing to let them go to heaven alone if they will.

But if the conduct of God’s children is like St. Paul’s, as it truly is, for they are all of one disposition, and they live “in simplicity and sincerity” wherever they are, then wicked, slanderous, malicious, defaming persons are to blame, who charge them with hypocrisy, and this and that, when it is nothing of the kind. God’s children deserve well of this wicked, unthankful world, and God upholds the world for their sakes. “When the righteous are exalted, the city rejoiceth,” says Solomon (Prov 11:10). This is because wherever they live, they live not only in simplicity and sincerity, but fruitfully. The city, the whole community, all the people are the better for it. They make the times and the places in which they live the better, because a good man is a public good.

The Spirit of God, when it makes a good man, puts him out of himself and gives him an affection for the public good. It teaches him to deny himself. It teaches him to love others. It teaches him to employ and improve all that is good in him for the service of God and of men, to serve God in serving men in the place where he lives. Therefore the world is malicious and devilish to defame such men as live in the world in simplicity and sincerity, who serve God and the world by all the means they can. “Our conversation hath been in simplicity and sincerity in the world.”

“But more abundantly to you-ward.” Why? Was it in hypocrisy to others, and in sincerity to them only? No; that is not the meaning. It is this: wherever he had lived in the world, in whatever estate he was, he carried himself in “simplicity and sincerity”; but to you, he says, I have made it more evident than to any other. Why? Because he had lived longer with them, and they were people to whom he was a father in Christ. Therefore he says, I have shown my simplicity and sincerity more abundantly to you than to any other. From this we may observe that:

Observation. A sincere Christian is best where he is best known.

It is a mark of a truly good and sincere man to be best where he is best known, as I touched on when I opened the words. It is otherwise with many. Their conduct abroad is very plausible; but follow them home. What are they in their families? They are lions in their houses. What are they in their private courses and conduct? They do not answer the expectation that is raised of them abroad. They never pray to God. Those who know them best will trust them least. It is not so with a Christian. So Paul means: My conduct in the world has been good wherever it has been. But among you, with whom I have lived more familiarly, who have seen my daily conduct and course of life, among you my conduct was best of all. It is a mark of a man who is sincere that the more he is seen into, the more he shines. The godly are substantially good, and therefore where they are best known, they are best approved.

For Christians are not painted creatures, whom a little discovery will search to the bottom and then shame. They are not gilded, but gold; and therefore the more you enter into them, the more metal you will still find. They have a hidden treasury. The more you search them, the more substance you will still find. Their tongues are as “fined silver,” and their heart is a rich treasury within them. A Christian labors continually for a broken heart. He labors continually to get new grace and new knowledge of the word of God; and the more you keep company with him, the more you see him, the more you will approve and love him, if you are good as he is. Therefore the apostle says, I have carried myself well to all, but especially to you, with whom I have lived longer.

Use. Therefore, if we want an evidence of our sincerity, which is the best evidence we can have in this world, so that we may be able to say that we are sincere and true Christians (which is better than if a man could say he were a monarch, the greatest man in the world), let us labor to carry ourselves in our courses, toward those who know us best and in our most private courses, like Christians. And let us not put on the fashion of religion as men put on their garments, their best garments when they go abroad, and so make good things serve our purpose. Let us be Christians indeed at home, among our friends, among those who know us, when we are not awed, since there is a great deal of liberty among friends. Wherever we are, let us remember that we are always in the eye of God, and let us labor to approve ourselves most to those who know our courses most.

God knows more than men, so let us chiefly labor to approve ourselves to him. And next to God, let us approve ourselves to conscience. Fear conscience more than all the monarchs in the world, because it knows most and will be most against us.

And then again, as for others who know our conduct, good men who keep company with us, let us approve ourselves most to those who have the best and the sharpest judgments.

As a true Christian loves goodness, so he loves most to have it in his own heart. He lives more to God and to conscience than to fame and report. He would rather be than seem to be. And as he hates all evil, so he hates even secret evil. The nearer corruption is, the more he hates it, as a man hates toads and venomous creatures, and the nearer they are, the more he hates them. The most private conduct of a Christian is most holy, and best of all.

Again, where he says, “My conversation hath been in simplicity … to you-ward,” here is a good lesson for preachers: if they look to convert anyone by their doctrine, they must win them by their conduct as well, in simplicity and sincerity. When St. Paul set out to win the Philippians to Christ, he did it not by words only, by arguments of logic and by persuasions only, to convince the understanding of the truth of what he taught; but he demonstrated to them how they should live: “Walk as you have me for an ensample” (Phil 3:17). His meaning is this: I show you by my practice that what I teach is possible. I show high and low how I carry myself. “My conversation hath been in simplicity and sincerity.” Those whom I would convert by my doctrine, I labor to win by my conduct. So, I say, ministers have here a special direction for how to carry themselves.

And so do others likewise who have a disposition to win people, as indeed we should not stand on terms of this and that, but everyone should labor to win others. Would you work upon others, and win them from popery and the like? Then not only show them arguments to convince their judgments, which must be done, that is certain; but also let them see that the things you speak are possible things, things you are persuaded of. And if you are not good, and press them to goodness, you cannot persuade them of the truth of what you speak. They will think it is not possible, for otherwise you would act on it yourselves. But when they see someone go before them, and demonstrate to their eyes how they should carry themselves, this is the way to teach them to be sound Christians indeed. But I hasten to the negative part.

“Not in fleshly wisdom.” Here is a secret swipe, a secret rebuke of the false apostles and teachers. “My conversation hath been in simplicity and sincerity,” whatever you think of me. “Not in fleshly wisdom,” as theirs is.

“Not in fleshly wisdom.” Let me distinguish it a little.

1. There is a natural wisdom planted in the soul of man, even as there is a natural light in the eye, to see both the things that are hurtful and the things that are good for the outward man. So in the soul of man, which is his eye, there is an inborn light of natural wisdom, a common light to discern things and creatures; a natural kind of wisdom, which may be polished and advanced to a higher degree by experience and art, just as the eye of the body sees better when it is helped by an outward, foreign light. This is natural wisdom.

2. There is also a politic or civil wisdom, gained by observation and increased by observation; and besides this, it is a gift of God, though a common gift, as Ahithophel’s was. It was not merely carnal wisdom that was in him, but he had a gift of policy. So some men, though they are not truly religious, are given by God a gift of politic wisdom, to be able to discern the difference of things, to lay states and commonwealths side by side, to be able to judge and resolve, and to execute wisely, politically, and prudently. It is an especial gift of God. The apostle does not aim at this; neither natural nor civil wisdom, though it is a gift of God, I say, which is increased by observation and by other means.

3. Besides this, there is a spiritual, a heavenly wisdom, by which the soul, having a right end and aim set and fixed before it, directs all its courses to that end; by which the soul is able to deliberate, to consult, and to resolve on heavenly things and on what hinders heavenly comfort; and to resolve on good duties and resolve against what is evil, and to resolve about all advantages of doing good to the church, and about all hindrances of ourselves, of the church, and of the places we live in. It is a heavenly kind of prudence to guide our own ways, yes, and to guide others too.

4. But besides all these, there is another wisdom, which is here the “wisdom of the flesh”; and because the flesh is in league with Satan, it is also a devilish wisdom, for the most part. For the devil plows with our heifer. The most mischief he has done in the world has been through the understanding he has with our flesh, our enemy within. The flesh and Satan join together, and all work strongly with the mischievous policy of the world; and therefore it is also called “worldly wisdom.”

And so among Christians who are mere professors, and not sound Christians, some are called flesh, because they are ruled by the flesh. And they are called the world, because they shape themselves to the wisdom and the courses of the world. And if you would dissect them, there is nothing in them but the world, worldly pride and worldly ends. And they are called devils too, as Judas was called a devil (John 6:70). They plot with Satan by carnal wisdom. They yield to Satan. They do not savor the things of God.

Men have their name and designation in the Scripture from what they are ruled by. When they are ruled by the flesh, they are called flesh. When they are ruled by the world and its evil examples, they are called the world. And when they are ruled by Satan, so far as they are ruled by him, they are called Satan. “One of you is a devil,” says Christ (John 6:70).

“Not in fleshly wisdom.” What is meant here by “fleshly wisdom”? If it is fleshly, why is it wisdom? Wisdom is but one. There is but one wisdom. Wisdom in itself, we know, is a knowledge of principles and grounds, and of deductions and conclusions from principles. A wise man knows both the grounds and principles, and he knows what may be raised from them. And a man who is truly wise not only knows them, but knows how to act on them, how to work and act out his principles and conclusions toward an end. He has principles, and conclusions, and workings out of his brain; and when he has done all in the brain, when he has framed the aim of his principles and the manner of acting on them, then he goes to work; and a wise man can work in a way that answers to his end and rules.

Now there is a carnal wisdom that imitates this; for carnal wisdom has aims, and ends, and principles, and it has conclusions from those principles, and it acts toward an end. A true Christian has his ends. His aim is supernatural: to please God in all things, to be happy in another world, to enjoy God, to have nearer acquaintance with him while he lives here. Many such subordinate ends, besides the main end, he has. And some principles likewise he has out of the word of God concerning this end; and then he has directions out of the word of God suitable to those principles. And then he sets to work, and all that he works is in order to his end, and in virtue of the end he sets before him. So it is with a man who travels: every step he goes in his journey, every step, is in the virtue and strength of his first intention and of the end he sets before him, though he does not think of his end in every step; and he consults and asks about the way, and all to that end.

So it is with a carnal man too, he who walks after carnal wisdom. Carnal wisdom has its end, and that is a man’s self; for a carnal man himself is the idol and the idolater. His end is himself, either in his honors, or in his pleasures, or riches, and so on. Himself is the center into which all the lines of his life fall. And he has rules: “Seek yourself in all things. Love yourself above all. And what then? If you love others, love them for yourself, as far as they may serve your turn. Care for no man further than you can make use of him for yourself. Respect him so far, and no further.”

But it may be there are many who stand in the way. Then again he has principles: “Undermine them, ruin them, make way to your own ends by the ruin of as many as you can.” And if another man’s light outshines yours, so that you are nobody beside him, carnal wisdom bids you, “Disparage him, slander him, backbite him. The more vile he seems to be, the less your nakedness shall appear.” Here is carnal wisdom.

There is no envy in goodness, in strength and ability. These would have everyone be so; but baseness is joined with much envy. When it sees another overshadow it, it labors to eclipse him with slanders and base reports. This is a principle of carnal wisdom. And from this comes all that working and undermining, those secret schemes, and that laying of nets for others, as the prophet speaks.

All carnal wisdom has carnal ends, and carnal rules, and carnal courses to match. It consults about attaining its end. It deliberates and consults, and shrewdly too, for it is whetted by Satan. And then it goes with the stream of the world, and therefore it is carried very strongly toward its end. And then it resolves strongly, because fleshly wisdom usually is with the times. And then it executes. God often allows it to come to execution, and to enjoy its plots and projects. And therefore, because it has the same steps as other wisdom, though in a contrary kind, it is called wisdom, though indeed it is not wisdom. And for that reason it has a diminishing term here: it is “fleshly wisdom.”

Now this wisdom is called “fleshly” because it is led by reasons from the flesh, and it tends to the maintenance of the flesh. It comes from it, and it tends to it.

I do not take “flesh” here for one part of a man, his body, but for the unregenerate part, which is carried to changeable things, to created things, and sets up some creature to be an idol, instead of the Creator, “blessed for evermore.”

And that is for this reason: created things, the things below, are near to us and pleasant to us, and we are brought up in these delights of created things that appeal to the senses. And therefore the flesh, the baser part, is ready to draw the soul away to its delights, because its delights are pleasant, and we are trained up in them from the beginning of our life to the end of it.

Now these things below, the profits, and pleasures, and honors, work first upon the senses, upon the outward man. From the senses they ascend to the fancy and imagination; and that, being carnal by nature, esteems them more highly than there is cause, and esteems their contraries as the greatest ills. Oh, poverty is worse than hell to a carnal man! And he would rather be dead than be disgraced. He would rather damn his soul than be denied his pleasure. Imagination makes them such great things, and the devil helps imagination. He has much affinity with that part, with the imagination.

And imagination, when men have strong conceptions of these things, labors to draw the will and affections to itself, to sway that part. So the will, the commanding part of the soul, for the most part yields to these imaginations of base things. It conceives highly of them, and conceives of their contraries as vile and base. And from this the will comes to approve these things and to choose these things. Yes, and so does the understanding part itself, that blessed spark of wisdom left in us, capable of better things and fit for the image of God. Yet by our corruption it has been stripped of the grace it had in the creation; and now, being under original corruption, being under the law of sin, it is led by a carnal will and imagination, and by sense, and is ruled by them. So that which should rule all is ruled by base, earthly things.

The soul of man, while we live here, is between things better than itself and things worse than itself, meaner than itself. Now by corruption it cleaves to things meaner than itself. It is clever to devise them. It is willing to choose them. It delights in them. It bathes itself in them. So whereas it should rule the body, the body and the lower parts rule the soul.

When it yields to that which is better than itself, to the sanctifying Spirit of God and to the word of God, and is clothed with the image of God, when it yields to better things, then they raise it to a degree of excellency even above itself when it was at its best. For a man who is in Christ, who has the image of Christ upon him, is in some sort better than Adam was in innocence. His estate is more sure, and the dignity he is advanced to by Christ is greater than he would have had if he had stood still in Adam. This is the condition of the soul. An excellent creature, it is capable of the image and likeness of Christ, and of God, capable of all grace.

Again, if it submits itself to base creatures, it becomes even as they are; and therefore men are called “the world.” They are called “flesh.” They are called after that which leads them. The very soul itself, as it were, is flesh. For the very body of a holy man in some sort is spirit, and everything in him is spirit, as it shall be at the day of judgment. As St. Paul says, “it shall be raised a spiritual body” (1 Cor 15:44), because it shall be subject to the motions of the Spirit of God in all things, and it shall not be supported by bodily means. And now, on the other side, the very soul is bodily and carnal. Such a degeneration has been worked in man since the fall. His soul was given to guide him in this world, and it was made able to apprehend better things, the things of another world; and this soul he makes the procurer to serve his base lusts and pleasures.

“Not in fleshly wisdom.” Now wisdom is a neutral word. It may be either spiritual or carnal, according to the man in whom it is. If a man has moral honesty in him, and good things in him of that kind, it makes him a good statesman, a wise man, useful in his place. Though he is not a sound Christian, yet he may be a wise man in his place; and God uses such kinds of men in the world, and they have their reward here: they are advanced, and so on.

But if it settles in a devilish nature, in a crooked, oblique nature, then it is malicious, devilish wisdom.

And note this by the way. Not all men who have flesh in them have fleshly wisdom; for some are carried along by the flesh, by the rage of fleshly lusts. As the swine in the gospel were carried headlong into the sea, so they are carried by their lusts to hell, like your common swaggerers and brawlers. So long as they may escape the danger of the laws, they care for neither God nor man: irregular, wild persons. These have flesh, they are ruled by the flesh, but they do not have so much as “fleshly wisdom”; for they take courses to overthrow themselves in the world, to overthrow their names, and their bodies and all. They do not have so much as shrewdness in them, their lusts so reign in them. Such wretches we often have among us, who think themselves somebody, but they do not have so much as carnal wisdom in them to carry themselves better than a devil.

Now in other men the flesh has a wisdom that does not carry them after this fashion; but it whets their wits, and they are as bad in another kind. Take the same man: when he is young he is carried by his brutish lusts, without any wisdom at all, just as the hurry of his lusts carries him and transports him; when he grows old he is carried subtly by the wisdom of the world. He is always under lusts, always under the flesh. When he is young he is carried by base lusts, and when he is old he is under the flesh and fleshly wisdom still. He is carried by slavish covetousness to the world, as formerly he was subject to base lusts in his youth. All this is evil.

Where these differ in the subject, in the person, usually the base lust serves the clever. Those who are carried by base lusts are subject to, and enthralled and overruled by, those who are carried by the wisdom of the flesh. So your subtle men, your usurers and subtle oppressors, great clever men, make other men serviceable to their turn. Other men are slaves to them.

But to come nearer to what I mean to stand on.

“My conversation hath not been in fleshly wisdom.” You may see by the connection of the words, which I will not dwell on, what to judge of “fleshly wisdom.”

Observation. Fleshly wisdom is where there is no simplicity nor sincerity, because he opposes it to them here. Where “fleshly wisdom” is, there is neither “simplicity” nor “sincerity.” For take a subtle wise man: he is all outside, and there is no simplicity in him. He who is not wise to God but to the world wraps himself in ceremonies in matters of religion, and studies the outside of things to approve himself to the world and to attain his own ends; but there is no simplicity or sincerity. He who is wise to the world has no respect to God.

Sincerity has an eye to God; and a sincere man, as far as he is sincere, has an eye to God, and he does this and that because God sees him, and because God is pleased with it. But he who works according to fleshly wisdom has aims contrary to that and distinct from it. Therefore the apostle says, “We walk in the sincerity of God” (as it is in the original), “and not according to fleshly wisdom.”

So you may know from the opposition that fleshly wisdom is where there is no sincerity. Where there is no love to God or to men, there is no simplicity; all is for show. And where all is for show, there is double dealing, not aiming in simplicity at God’s glory. There is “fleshly wisdom.” So much for the connection.

But the point of doctrine proper to this place is this:

Doctrine. God’s children have another manner of rule to live by than the world: the rule that a godly wise man goes by is not fleshly wisdom.

A man who looks for any joy, who looks to be in the blessed estate that St. Paul was in here, must not be ruled by fleshly wisdom. “Our conversation,” he says, “in the world hath not been in fleshly wisdom.” St. Paul, there is no question, had flesh in him, and likewise he had “fleshly wisdom,” because flesh is in all parts, and it mingles itself with all graces. In the understanding there is light and darkness; in the will there is rebellion and pliableness to God. So St. Paul had the stirrings of fleshly wisdom in him. When he was in danger, no doubt the flesh would stir in him: “You may avoid it by shifts if you will.” And when he was before great ones: “You may flatter and betray the truth if you will.”

No doubt, as St. Paul expressed himself in Romans 8, just as he had a conflict in himself in other regards, so there was a conflict between wisdom and wisdom. The wisdom of the flesh did stir against the wisdom of the spirit. Yes, but it is one thing to have fleshly wisdom in us, and it is another thing to make it our rule. It is one thing to have flesh in us, and another thing to “be in the flesh,” as the Scripture phrase is. This conflict wondrously afflicted St. Paul. No doubt it was one sharp conflict.

There is no question that carnal wisdom set St. Paul to shift for himself many times; but by the power of the Spirit he checked it and kept it under. It was not his rule.

Now, the reasons of this doctrine, that the godly do not guide themselves by fleshly wisdom, which has worldly aims and carnal means to bring those aims to pass, are these:

Reason 1. Because God’s children will not cherish that in them, and make that their rule, which is contrary to God, which is enmity to God. But this carnal wisdom, which prowls for the world and looks for ease, and profit, and pleasure, is “enmity to God” (Rom 8:6-8). The apostle proves it at large. Being subject to God, children of God, being under him in every kind of subjection, as servants, as children, as spouses, they will not cherish that which is rebellion to God, which is not subject to God, neither can be. As we may say that a Jesuit-minded papist is neither a good subject nor can be, so the wisdom of the flesh neither is subject to God, nor can be subject. In its nature it is rebellion. It is God’s enemy; it withstands all the articles he has given us to believe. Fleshly wisdom has some opposition against all truth. It opposes every command that God gives us to obey. There is something in flesh and blood to withstand every command. It is the greatest enemy that God has.

(2) And as it is an enemy to God, so it is to us. It is contrary to our good. It is death, “the wisdom of the flesh” (Rom 8:6). The apostle says, “The flesh deceived me and slew me” (Rom 7:11). No wise man will cherish that which is death, and which is God’s enemy, and his own too. The wisdom of the flesh, as it is opposite to God’s Spirit, a rebel and an enemy to him, so it is death to a Christian, and therefore he will not frame his course of life by it.

It brings us to eternal death; it betrays us to Satan. Samson could have had no harm had not Delilah betrayed him; so the devil could not hurt us were it not for fleshly wisdom. The devil is not such an enemy to a man as his own fleshly wisdom.

Reason 2. Again, a Christian knows that as it is contrary to God and contrary to his good, so it is base and unworthy, as well as dangerous. It is base and unworthy for a Christian, who is an heir of heaven, who is raised to be a child of God, to abase his wits to prowl for the world. How base and unworthy is it for him who is born again “to an inheritance, immortal and undefiled, that is reserved for him in heaven” (1 Pet 1:4) to seek the things below?

How unworthy it is for him who has his understanding and all his inward parts and powers dedicated and consecrated to God to make his understanding a procurer for the base purposes of the flesh! The high indignity of the thing makes the child of God ashamed to be ruled by the flesh, to prostitute the strength of his soul to the flesh; to make his soul, which should carry the image of God, carry the image of the devil. He is ashamed to make his wit and understanding a procurer to accomplish earthly things, when God has sanctified them to attain grace and comfort in this world, and to live as a Christian should, that he may die with comfort and enjoy heaven.

Reason 3. Again, God’s children will not be ruled by that which they should mortify and subdue. But this wisdom of the flesh is the object of mortification. They are redeemed from it.

A Christian, as he is redeemed from hell and damnation, so he is redeemed from himself. He is redeemed and set at liberty from the slavery of his soul to Satan, to the world, and to worldly projects. He is redeemed from the base way of life he was in before. What has he to do with being ruled by him from whom he is redeemed? These things might be amplified at large; but you see the truth is evident, what ground a Christian has not to be ruled by fleshly wisdom.

Reason 4. But to make it a little clearer: a Christian has no reason to be ruled by earthly wisdom, for yielding to it does all the mischief in the world. It is the cause of all the misery in the world, to Christians especially. God catches “the wise in their own craftiness” (Job 5:13), though they are shrewd and wise. Especially if a Christian gives way to carnal, scheming wisdom, God will universally shame him. I never knew a Christian to thrive in scheming courses. When he has secret schemes for the world, God crosses him every way, in his reputation, in his projects, and in his purposes.

But consider, to amplify what I gave in a branch before, what reason a Christian has to be ruled by “fleshly wisdom,” when it hinders him from all that is good, if he yields to it, and keeps him in imperfect good.

I speak especially now to those who are not in the state of grace. What reason has any one of you to be ruled by fleshly wisdom, when it keeps you in the state of unregeneracy? It keeps you perhaps in some good, but it is imperfect good. You think you are good enough, and that all is sure, and that God will be merciful, and so on, when a reprobate may go beyond you.

It hinders from good actions with pretenses, for fleshly wisdom will tell us, “There will be danger. You shall be reproached if you do this and that. You shall be accounted thus and thus, and run into disgrace.”

It hinders from doing good. “There is a lion in the way” (Prov 26:13). It forecasts this and that danger. It keeps us in imperfect good that will never save us. It raises objections of danger. The sluggard who will not set his spirit to labor thinks himself wondrously wise in forecasting dangers: “Oh, I shall be in want myself.”

It dulls and distracts us in good. As for him who has a carnal, scheming head, it eats up his soul, so that when he comes to pray, or to hear, or to meddle with spiritual matters, the marrow and strength of his soul is eaten up with carnal projects, and he does things by halves.

What is more, carnal wisdom, as far as it is in us unmortified, sets itself against good by disparaging good, so that we may seem to be mischievous, and ill, and wicked with reason. Men are loath to go to hell without reason. No one ever yet went to hell without wisdom, a great deal of wisdom. And how does their wisdom bring them to hell? As in other respects which I named before, so in this: it whets the poisonfulness of their nature to invent and raise scandals, or to be willing to take up scandals when they are offered.

A carnal wise man, when he knows that such a degree of religion is contrary to his carnal projects, fastens all the disgrace on it that he can, that he may be the less observed. Religious he would be, but with a limitation, with a reservation and restraint, as far as may stand with his carnal projects and purposes. And as much religion as goes beyond that, and exposes him as false and halting, so much he opposes. The wisdom of the flesh is bitter and sharp against all who oppose it, and stirs the cursed nature of man to oppose that which is contrary to it.

Take a carnal man, either in magistracy or ministry, if he is not humbled by pains in his calling and by the word he teaches: what does he most hate in the world? What does he oppose? Is there anything but saving grace? Is there anything but that which God loves most, and which is best for his soul, that is the object of his spite and of his poison and malice?

To be led by this is just as if a man should be led by a pirate, by a thief, by an enemy. And what can become of that man, to be led “as the fool to the stocks,” as Solomon says (Prov 7:22)? He is in the way of death. “There is a way that seemeth good to a man in his own eyes, but the issues of it are death,” says Solomon (Prov 14:12); and that is the way that carnal wisdom dictates to men.

It also hinders from the reforming of ill. Cunning overthrows cunning, as we say. Cunning overthrows commonwealths. Tell a man who is in office, “You ought to reform this abuse and that abuse.” He is ready to think, “Oh, if I am not wary, others will inquire into my life too, and find me out.”

So this cursed cunning, this carnal wisdom, makes men unfruitful in their places by forecasting dangers; and so it hinders from doing good, and from reforming gross abominations and abuses.

So it hinders from suffering when God calls to it. It forecasts: “If you are religious, you must suffer. It will bring your good name in question, it will bring your life in question, it will hazard your estate.” Whereas, indeed, all the world is not worth the truth of God; and a man does not love his life who will not hate it in such a case, if it comes to a case of confession and of standing for the truth in a good quarrel.

But here fleshly wisdom objects this and that danger, as we see in Spira and others. And thus a man, yielding to fleshly wisdom, grows desperate at length.

There are two men in a man, as it were. There is the flesh and the spirit. The flesh says as Job’s wife said, “Curse God and die,” or “Bless God and die,” read it whichever way you will (Job 2:9). There is a murmuring part in us under the cross that bids us curse God. And the flesh speaks as Peter spoke to Christ, Oh! save yourself, this shall not befall you (Matt 16:22); pity yourself, have regard for yourself. When we are called to suffer, the flesh says as Eve said to Adam, as Job’s wife said to him, or as Peter said to Christ: Oh, spare yourself, be wise, be wise.

And to color the matter all the more, there must be a pretense of wisdom, when it is the greatest folly in the world to buy any earthly commodity, even life itself, with the cracking of conscience, with the breach of that “peace which passeth understanding” (Phil 4:7), and perhaps with the loss of our souls. It is the greatest folly in the world; it is to be penny wise and pound foolish. So we see that whenever we are about to suffer, carnal wisdom hinders us.

As it hinders us from good and in good, as it hinders us from reforming evil, and in suffering when we are called to it, so it provokes us to evil. And so that we may swallow down the evil with the greater pleasure, and more deeply, it colors evil with good. We may thank this scheming carnal wisdom that truth and goodness always go about with a scratched face, that they go under disgrace, that they go in a dress contrary to their own, and that hypocrisy goes in its ruff, in its colors. I say we may thank carnal wisdom; for if truth were presented in its own view, it would stir up approval from all. And if men could see vice and wickedness uncased, if they could see them in their own hue, they would all detest them. Carnal wisdom sees that this does not advance the projects it has, and therefore it disgraces what is good and sets false colors on what is evil.

I say, it stirs us up to evil, and it keeps us in evil. Carnal wisdom says: You may do this, you may continue this long. It deceives us with vain hopes of long life.

I might enlarge the point. You see, then, what reason God’s children have not to be ruled by fleshly, carnal wisdom.

By the way, let me give this caution, that often what is accounted carnal wisdom is not so. The weaker sort are often to blame for laying imputations on those to whom God has given greater gifts; they account that carnal wisdom which is not so, but is spiritual prudence. I must add that caution by the way. For example, a man may keep his mind to himself and not speak against evil in all places. “The prudent man shall keep silent,” says the prophet (Amos 5:13). The times and the place may be such that the prudent man may keep silence. It is best to do so.

And likewise a man may be wary, to prevent danger so far as he can without breach of a good conscience. St. Paul, you know, when he was called before the Sadducees and the Pharisees, escaped by an evasion. It was not a sinful evasion. He said he was a Pharisee, and so he set them against each other, and while they fell into contention, St. Paul in the meantime escaped (Acts 23:7). Many things might be done, if we would take heed of carnal wisdom, and that with a great deal of wisdom and approval too.

Jeroboam might have settled his kingdom, and yet he need not have set up the two calves in that cursed policy (2 Chr 13:8, and elsewhere). It was foretold that he should have those tribes, but he would be wiser than God, and he would devise a way of his own.

David might have escaped from Achish the king of Gath. He need not have made himself a fool. Ahithophel might have provided well for himself under David his old master. He need not have proved a rebel. There is nothing carnal wisdom does but heavenly wisdom would do it better, if men could light on it; and God would give them better success in their conduct. But there is a way for heavenly prudence, I say, and that must not be accounted carnal wisdom.

It is for want of this that people are too credulous. Gedaliah trusted too much; he was too credulous in his trust. Considering that men are subject to infirmities, and subject to falseness, it is good to be doubtful, to be suspicious sometimes, and that is no carnal wisdom either. The very lodestone of a lie is credulity. What emboldens people to deal falsely with men? They know them to be credulous and weak. They will believe anything.

But for the most part the error is on the contrary side, excessive suspicion. Your carnal schemers are over-suspicious. Jealous care is good, suspicion is good, considering that we live in a false world; but not to be over-suspicious. We see Herod, who thought, Oh! Christ is born; and out of jealous suspicion he killed a number of poor infants, and his own among the rest. Alas! Christ did not come to take away his kingdom, but to give a heavenly kingdom. So the Jews were very fearful and suspicious that if Christ were not condemned, the Romans would come and take away their kingdom (John 11:48); but what wicked men fear, out of such suspicion, will come upon them. And so the subtlest and most devilish men in recent times grounded the persecution of the poor Protestants on suspicion, absurd suspicion; for the Protestants, by the rules of their religion, walk in sincerity. Their religion ties them from plotting. And yet out of fear and suspicion those men exercised a world of cruelty against them.

And if any man will but consider and read the letters of Stephen Gardiner (a man of devilish suspicion), and see how out of his own wit he projected what harm would come from allowing the gospel to remain, it will seem strange. Alas, poor man! The commonwealths beyond the seas and our own nation never prospered better than by entertaining the gospel. Yet this devilish-witted man, whose wit was set and sharpened by the devil, was in fear and suspicion of the gospel.

And God usually punishes it this way: those subtle heads who are suspicious of those who mean them no harm, but all the good that may be, are usually over-credulous in another way. They trust those who deceive their trust; they trust those whom the weakest, the very dregs of the people, will not trust; they trust those who are notoriously false. God strikes their brains and besots them, so that they trust men whom all the world knows to be underminers. Yet where they should trust, and cast themselves into the bosom of their true-hearted friends, there they are all full of fear and suspicion. But this is a caution by the way.

You see the thing proved, that godly men, when they give their names to God, ought to be ruled by God, and not by carnal policy or fleshly wisdom. You see the reasons for it.

Use 1. The use we will make of it shall be to stir us up to imitation of the blessed apostle St. Paul. I speak to those whose breeding and abilities have raised many of them, I hope, from base, filthy lusts, so that the danger now is of “fleshly wisdom.” The devil is more in the brain than in the heart, as someone said of a cursed schemer. Many men have the devil in their head. He is not altogether in the heart and affections, but in the brain, and there he works his engines. And scheming, subtle men are the great engineers of Satan; and what he cannot do by himself, he does by them.

Therefore, I beseech you, let us not be instrumental to Satan, who was the first author of this carnal wisdom; for by his temptation we offended God, and then came every kind of evasion upon it. You see what evasions came immediately upon Satan’s temptation.

Man naturally desired wisdom, to know good and evil. What wisdom did he get after he had fallen? He had wisdom to flee from God. There was his wisdom, to run from God. So all the wisdom of a man who does not have grace is to evade, to run away from God, and to have helps and supports against God. A foolish thing it is, as if he could do it! And then another of Adam’s evasions was to cover himself with fig leaves, a silly evasion. And then to shift his fault onto another. So this evasive turning of carnal wit came immediately upon the fall. Take heed, therefore, of carnal wisdom; it is devilish. Immediately upon yielding to the temptation of the devil it came in.

And so that you may not make it your rule, and live by carnal wisdom, consider seriously what I said before: how it hinders you from all that is good; how it hinders you from reforming what is evil in your places and callings; how it stirs you up to all that is evil; how it stirs you up to cover evil. It teaches you the wit to do evil, and to cover evil when it is done. As we see in David’s adultery, what a deal of wit there was to carry it out! And then what a number of windings and turnings there were to cover it! But God laid him open, and brought him to shame in this world, good man that he was.

And as I said, who will be ruled by his enemy? If a man is on land, and is ruled by a thief who will lead him out of his way, it is the extremity of stupidity. Or if he is on the sea, and is guided by a pirate, what good can come to that man who is ruled by those who seek his ruin? Now if a man is ruled by carnal wisdom, he is ruled by his enemy; and if all the enemies in the world should plot to do a man the mischief that his own head and carnal wit do him, he would cry out against them. In Isaiah 47:10, “Thy wisdom hath made thee to rebel.” It is wisdom that makes men rebel against God. Too much trusting in the tricks and evasions of carnal wisdom makes men take courses contrary to God, and so provoke him. “Are we wiser than he? are we stronger than he?” (1 Cor 10:22).

Does he not daily and continually make those the targets of his displeasure and wrath who venture their wisdom and policy against his wisdom? Yes, surely! God delights to catch the wise in their own craftiness; he delights to overturn the builders of Babel. It is only a building of Babel to raise up anything by scheming wisdom, contrary to the rules of religion and contrary to the practice of piety. To do anything against conscience and honesty, to do anything against the truth by scheming evasions, is to build a Babel that will fall on our own heads.

It is like the foolish fire that leads a man out of his way. This foolish fire of carnal wisdom leads men to hellish strength; it makes them forsake God’s light, and the light of his Spirit and word, and follow a false light of their own imagination and invention. And therefore you see what the prophet Isaiah says of the people in those times, who plodded much in tricks of policy: “Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks: walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled: this ye shall have of my hand, ye shall lie down in sorrow” (Isa 50:11). So consider this: it often happens that God allows a man to walk in the light of his own fire that he has kindled, and in his own comforts. He will have comforts, and a way distinct from God’s ways; and he will have rules distinct from God’s rule. Well, well! You have kindled a fire; walk in the light of your own fire, but be sure you will lie down in sorrow.

It is the greatest judgment God can show in this world, to give us up to our own wits, to our own devices; for we will wind, and turn, and work our own ruin. And that is the hell of hell in hell, when the soul there will think to itself: I brought myself here. God will be exceedingly justified when men by their own wit damn themselves, when God has revealed it to man, and taught them, this is the way: “O man, I have showed thee what is good, and what doth the Lord require of thee” (Mic 6:8). He has revealed it in his word, do this and do that, and he has given conscience to help; and yet out of policy, to contrive your own pleasures and profits and advantages in the world, you have done the contrary. When a man’s soul reasons like this: My own wit brought me here; I am damned by wit, I am damned by policy. A poor policy it is that brings a man to damnation!

Therefore we should beg of God above all things that he would not deliver us up to ourselves. As Augustine has a good saying, “Lord, free me from myself, from my own devices and policy.” The devil himself is not such an enemy, as I said, as our own carnal wit; for it is that which betrays us to Satan. Satan could do us no harm unless he had a friend within us. Therefore beg of God above all things: Lord, do not give me up to my own brain, to my own devices (for man is a beast by his own knowledge); but let your wisdom and your will be my rule.

Use 2. Again, if we ought not to make this carnal, fleshly wisdom the rule of our life, then let us have a negative voice ready immediately for it. Whenever we find any carnal suggestion in our hearts, say no to it immediately, deny it immediately, be suspicious of it immediately. When any plot arises that is not warranted by the word of God, and that is contrary to conscience and to simplicity and sincerity, deny it immediately. Do not consult with flesh and blood, as St. Paul says of himself, “I consulted not with flesh and blood” (Gal 1:16).

And when you have anything to do, considering that this is not the rule you are to live by, or when you have anything to resist, when you have anything to suffer, consider what God requires; consider what is for the peace of conscience; consider what is for the good of yourselves and for the good of the church. Consult with these advisers, with these informants, and not with flesh and blood. Do not consider what is for your profit, for your pleasure, for your ease, but resolve against them. Get the truth of God so planted in your hearts that it may carry you through all these impediments and all these suggestions whatsoever.

Use 3. And because we cannot do this without a change, because we cannot have a disposition contrary to carnal wisdom without a change (for unless a man is born anew, unless he is a new creature, he cannot have holy aims), you must therefore labor more and more to have the spirit of your mind renewed, and to grow in assurance of a better estate. For what makes men carnally project for this world? They are not sure of a better. They reason like this with themselves: It may be I will have heaven, it may be not. I am sure of the pleasures present, of the profits present, although, alas! it is only for a short time.

But suppose your soul were enlightened with heavenly light, and you were convinced of the excellent estate of God’s children in this world in the state of grace: that a Christian is incomparably above all men in the firstfruits of heaven, in the peace of conscience and “joy in the Holy Ghost” (Rom 14:17), which is above all prosperity and all profit whatsoever; and that in heaven, which is above our capacity and reach, they will be happy in every way. If men were convinced of this, they certainly would not prostitute their brains to work so worldly a work. If they were sure of heaven, they would not plod so for the earth.

Let us therefore labor to grow daily in the assurance of salvation; beg of God his Spirit, to have your minds enlightened.

Use 4. And with this, to join both together, see the vanity of all earthly things, which set carnal wisdom to work. For, first, outward things work on the senses, on the outward man. Profits and pleasures are outward things, and therefore they work on sense, they work on opinion. It is in opinion that they are so, as indeed worldly things are more in opinion than in truth. A carnal, worldly man thinks poverty a hell; he thinks it is such a misery. It is not so.

Labor to have a right judgment of the things of the earth that set carnal wisdom to work, to avoid poverty, to avoid suffering for a good cause. The devil inflames the imagination. Imagination thinks it is a great hurt to be in poverty; imagination thinks it is a great good to be in honor, to be in credit, to have a great place, that other men may be beholden to us. Alas! get a sanctified judgment, to see what these things are that set our wits to work. What are all these things? “Vanity, and vexation of spirit” (Eccl 1:14).

Let our meditations walk between these two. Often think of the excellent estate of a Christian in this world and in the world to come, and that will set heavenly wisdom to work. It will make you plot, and be shrewd for heaven. And then with this see the vanity of all other things, of pleasures and honors and profits and whatever else, so that we may not prostitute our souls to things that are worse than ourselves, so that our souls may not set themselves to work to project and prowl for these things that are worse than themselves.

Let this be your daily practice. The meditation of these two things is worthy to take up your thoughts every day. Consider the vanity, the vexation and uncertainty that accompany all these things when you have got them, as we see in Ahab when he had gotten the vineyard. Besides the vanity of them, consider how you have gotten them, and how miserable you will immediately judge yourselves! How God meets the carnal wits of men in the attaining of things! “The wicked man shall not roast that which he took in hunting” (Prov 12:27). He hunted after promotion, he hunted after riches, to scrape together a great deal for his posterity; how does God deal with such men? He overthrows them utterly, and his posterity perhaps spoil it all. He himself did not roast what he took in hunting. Ahab got much by yielding to the carnal wisdom of Jezebel: “Hast thou gotten, and also taken possession?” (1 Kgs 21:19). What became of Ahab with all his plots and devices?

Ahithophel and others: God may give them success for a while, but afterward he overthrows them. Herod had success for a while in killing James, and therefore he thought to work wisely and get Peter too; God struck him with worms (Acts 12:23). Pharaoh, in the overthrow of God’s people, says, “Let us work wisely” (Exod 1:10). How wisely? They were overthrown and drowned themselves. Their wisdom brought them into the midst of the sea. Consider the vanity of earthly things. And then consider how just it is of God to thwart them, either in their own time, as with the rich fool in the gospel, when he had riches for many years: “This night shall they take away thy soul!” (Luke 12:20). So that we may not walk according to the false rules of fleshly wisdom, let us often think of these things.

And to add another thing out of the text: you see here that St. Paul rejoiced in this, that his conscience could witness that he had not walked in “fleshly wisdom.” So if you do not walk according to the rules of fleshly wisdom, you will have this benefit: your conscience will glory in it.

To make it clear to you, picture in your thoughts a schemer on his deathbed, who has striven so much for riches, who has striven to root himself by policy, to attain to such and such places, to obtain his pleasure and delights in the world. What glory, what comfort does he have in this? There is nothing more opposed to comfort than plotting; for, as I said before when I spoke of simplicity, the more will there is, the more deliberation and plotting there is in sin, the greater is the sin, because it is done coolly, as we say.

So of all persons, usually, if their wits are still their own, the greatest plotters die most desperately. For then their conscience tells them that they have set their wits on the rack, to do this mischief and that mischief; and here his comfort is cooled, his peace of conscience is broken. What comfort can there be, when that which he sinned for, that for which he broke the peace of his conscience, is gone, and he must be taken and hurried away from it? But the wound of conscience, the crack of conscience, remains forever, when he will think: That for which I sinned has vanished, but my terror abides forever.

A man therefore who walks by the rules of fleshly wisdom can never say with St. Paul, “I rejoice.” But on the contrary, let a man be able to witness to himself, as St. Paul could: At such a time my fleshly, subtle wisdom would have discouraged me from doing good, and the wisdom of flesh and blood in others would have discouraged me from reforming such and such abuses; but I knew it was my duty, and I did it. Here now is comfort. At such a time I was moved to such evil by flesh and blood in myself, or perhaps in others (for a man will never lack the devil in his friends; the devil comes to us in our nearest friends). But I had the grace to withstand it. I was not led by such and such rules, by my acquaintance, or by my own devices; but I had grace to resist such promptings. What a wondrous comfort this is!

There is nothing so sharp in conflict as this, to resist carnal wisdom. The sharpest temptation is the one from carnal wisdom; and as the temptation is the strongest, so the comfort answers to it. When Jezebel is offered with her enticements, with her colors, with her paint, and a man can dash her in pieces and cast her out of the window, when a man can maintain sincerity and honesty, what a comfort this is! The greater and stronger the temptation that is resisted, the greater is the comfort when we come to yield our souls to God, when we come to our account. Therefore, do not be discouraged when you are set upon by carnal wisdom, by strong reasons of others or subtle reasons of your own. Is it against the rule? Is it against conscience? Is it against the word? Withstand it! What is sharpest in the conflict will be sweetest in the comfort.

Use 5. Again, carnal, fleshly, worldly wisdom is all one, for the flesh is led by the world, and both conspire together and hold correspondence to betray the soul. If it is such an enemy that it hinders our joy and comfort, and if ever we will have joy we must not be led by carnal wisdom, then we ought in our daily courses to repent, not only of gross sins, but to repent even of carnal devices, and carnal designs. Why? It is the prompting and the counsel of God’s enemy, and of our enemy.

Therefore, consider David in Psalm 37 and Psalm 73. When fleshly wisdom suggested to him carnal promptings to doubt the providence of God, so that he began to think well of the ways of the wicked, and that those prospered who were led altogether by fleshly wisdom, he censures himself (it is the drift of both Psalms): “So foolish was I, and as a beast before thee” (Ps 73:22); as indeed, “Man is a beast by his own knowledge,” as Jeremiah says (Jer 10:14). For all carnal men have fellow feeling either with beasts in base lusts, or else with devils in scheming lusts; either they are like devils, subtle, or like beasts, brutish in all their courses.

Therefore, when any base thought arises in our hearts, opposed to the majesty of God and his truth, and to the Spirit of God moving our hearts, think: This is the prompting of my enemy, of an enemy who lurks in my bosom, of God’s enemy, of a traitor. Let us renounce it, and be abased, and censure ourselves for it, as holy David did: “So foolish was I…” Crush all thoughts and devices of carnal wisdom in the beginning.

We see that the godly neither ought to lead nor do lead their lives by fleshly wisdom. No, take it in the best sense, take it for the rules of reason: they do not lead their lives altogether by the light of nature, but only in those things in which the light of nature and reason may be a judge. For the light of reason, the principle of reason, is given us as a candle in the dark night of this world, to lead us in civil and in common actions, and it has its use. But yet natural reason becomes carnal reason in a man who is carnal. All things are impure to him that is impure, even his very light is darkness (Titus 1:15; Matt 6:23). Not that the light of nature, and that reason which is a part of the image of God, is in itself evil. It is good in itself, but the vessel taints it.

Those who have great abilities of learning, who have great wits, and helps of learning as much as may be, what do they do? They trust in them, and so they stain them. Therefore Luther used to say, “Good works are good, but to trust in good works is damnable.” So nature and reason and learning are good in themselves; but by trusting in them they become carnal, when a man neglects better rules for them. When men scorn religion, as your schemers usually do, then natural reason, because of this taint, becomes carnal. “Not with fleshly wisdom,” or not with natural wisdom as a higher rule of life.

What then will become of a Christian, when he has renounced what is in him by nature? When he has denied his wit and his will? When he has renounced a bad guide, will he have no guide at all? Yes, he will have one! For a man is never lawless. He is always under some guide or other. A man is always under one kingdom or other. When he ceases to be under the kingdom of Satan, he comes under the kingdom of Christ; and when he is not led by the flesh, he is led by the Spirit. God’s children, when they have renounced natural, carnal wisdom, have not renounced all wisdom. They are wise still; but they are wise by a supernatural light, they are wise in supernatural things. Yes, and in natural things after a supernatural manner. They are new creatures, advanced to a higher rank and order of creatures. So their wisdom is a gracious wisdom, when they are Christians.

When a Christian has renounced carnal wisdom, God does not leave him in the storm of the world as a ship without a helm. He does not leave him as having no polestar to guide his course by, but he gives him better direction. He has the word of God, he has the Spirit of God, he has the grace of God to guide him. Therefore, after the negative here, “Not in fleshly wisdom,” the holy apostle tells us how the child of God is led in his own person, but “by the grace of God.”

It is good for inferiors always to be under the government of superiors, and that is how God has framed the world. Beasts, because they have no wisdom of their own, are led and guided by men. And man, because he is, as I said before, “a beast by his own knowledge,” and has only a finite, limited understanding, is guided by a larger understanding: he is guided by God, if he is good. And it is the happiness of the creature to be under the guidance of a better wisdom. All things in the world are guided to their end. Things without life are guided to their end without their own knowledge of it. We see there is an end in everything. There is nothing in nature that does not have its end. From this comes that saying of the philosophers, which is a good one, that the work of nature is a work of deep understanding. Even the very leaves serve to shelter and cover the fruit from the sun and the storms, that it may thrive the better. There is nothing in nature but it is of great use. The work of nature is a work of deep understanding.

Now man, because he has a principle of understanding in himself, is so guided by the wisdom of God to his end that he understands his own end himself. He is so led by the wisdom of God that God has created a work of wisdom in the man himself, so that he, together with God, is carried to his end. Now, as I said, when we are out from under the rule and government of the flesh, we come under the gracious government of God. Therefore the apostle says here, “Not in fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God.”

The holy apostle means here especially the particular grace that stands opposite to fleshly wisdom, that is, spiritual wisdom.

Question. But why should the apostle not say here, “Not with fleshly wisdom, but with spiritual wisdom”? Why should he not say that, rather than this: “Not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God”? Why should he put grace in place of wisdom?

Answer. I answer, he does it for heavenly ends.

1. To show that the wisdom by which we are governed is not from ourselves, but is a grace. He considers wisdom, not so much as it is in ourselves, in the conduit, but as it is in the spring, in the free love of God. It is a divine way of thinking to consider all habitual graces in us, not as streams that have been channeled to us and that rest in us, but as knit to a spring which is never drawn dry, and which besides is a free spring. Therefore they are graces.

And that is the reason for a Christian’s comfort. He knows he will never be left destitute of necessary strength, of necessary comfort, of necessary direction and grace to lead him to heaven, because he considers those things that are necessary in him as graces, not as habits, which was the proud term the philosophers used for them.

We must consider them, not as things in us, invested in our nature, but as things that have their origin in the free, constant, and eternal love of God; for what is so free as grace? So a Christian looks on his disposition wrought by grace, and on every particular grace he has, such as love, wisdom, patience. He looks on all of them as graces, as coming from the free love of God, which is constant; for whom he loves, he loves to the end (John 13:1). And his joy is more in the spring than in the stream; it is more in the sun, in Christ himself, than in grace from him. Therefore the apostle, instead of the abstract, distinct grace of wisdom, or any such thing, says “grace.” There is a savor in the very terms of Scripture, a sweet taste in the very language of the Holy Spirit.

2. And then, to show that we are governed not only by wisdom but by other graces, to show its connection with other graces, he says, “We have had our conversation, not in fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God.”

3. To show likewise that where wisdom fails in us, it is supplied by grace; for the wisdom of God for us is larger than the wisdom of God in us. The wisdom that God works in us by his Spirit teaches us to avoid dangers and teaches us how to lead our lives, but we are led by a higher wisdom. The grace of God for us is higher than that which is in us.

The wisdom of God for us watches over us. It keeps us from more evil and does more for us than that which is in us, although that is spiritual and heavenly. Therefore the apostle does not distinctly name here “gracious wisdom,” which he mainly intends, as we see by the contrast, “Not by fleshly wisdom, but by gracious wisdom.” Why does he not say that, instead of “by grace”? Because our Christian conduct is not only by wisdom in us, but by grace and love, partly in us and partly for us.

For indeed there is a watchful providence, there is a waking love about the guiding of a Christian in his course to heaven, that keeps him on course more than any grace that is in him. And a Christian at the hour of death and at the day of judgment will be able to say from experience, “The wisdom of God for me has been more than any wisdom he wrought in me, even though by the wisdom in me he enabled me to detect many discouragements, to see many needs, and to take many good courses that he blessed for me.

“But his wisdom for me was greater, in forestalling occasions beyond my strength, in offering means I never dreamed of, in fitting occasions and opportunities to me.”

The wisdom of God about and toward a Christian is more than any wisdom that is in him. For, alas! having to do with the devil and with malicious spirits, and with the world, whose stream runs against grace, it goes hard with that beam of wisdom in us, that little wisdom we have, though it is an excellent, spiritual, divine thing. Yet for all that, there is a heavenly wisdom that watches for us, and gives outcome and success to all the good we do, and turns away all evil that is beyond the measure of grace and strength in us. Therefore, he says, our conduct is in the grace and favor of God, not only in me but for me. I find experience of grace, not only the grace that is in me, but grace every way for me in all my courses.

And that is the reason why weaker Christians are sometimes the safer Christians. Another Christian who is wiser perhaps meets with troubles.

Yes, but God knows that the weaker one has only a small measure in him, and therefore God’s wisdom is more for him from outside him. God does wonderful things for infants and weak persons. The lack in them is supplied by his heavenly wisdom.

And that makes Christians confident, not taking thought what they will speak or how to carry themselves more than is fitting; not having distracted thoughts, I mean, or being discouraged in a good cause. A Christian thinks, “I have not only a promise of grace to direct and guide me, but likewise the wisdom of heaven for me, to discourage others, to take away occasions of discouragement from me, to offer me encouragements, and to lift up my spirit when occasion calls for it.”

This is the comfort of a Christian, that God is his strength. “He hath wrought all our works for us,” says the prophet (Isa 26:12). He not only works gracious works in us, but he works all our works for us.

In that the apostle mentions grace when he means the particular grace of wisdom, as the contrast shows, the first thing I will observe from it is this:

Observation. A Christian stands in need of wisdom.

When he is out from under the fleshly government of fleshly wisdom, he stands in need of another wisdom, and that is grace, the wisdom of God.

We stand in need of wisdom; for, alas! what can we do in this world without wisdom? What can we do without light? For bodily harms we have a bodily light, an outward light to show us what is harmful. For the harms that reason can perceive, which our common wits grasp, we have the light of reason.

1. But there are many harms, many dangers to the soul. Now there must be a light of wisdom to match them. We need a heavenly wisdom to avoid devilish harms and dangers to the soul, which we cannot avoid without wisdom.

2. Again, when we have renounced carnal wisdom, there is a necessity of wisdom that is heavenly, because there is such a likeness between that which is good and that which is evil, between truth and falsehood. “Likeness is the mother of error.” Falsehood is wondrously like truth. Evil is often wondrously like good in appearance, when a sophist has the handling and the presenting of it. Though there is as much distance between them as between light and darkness, yet to the eye of man, to his shallow judgment, they are wondrously like one another. Here is need of wisdom to discern and distinguish between them.

3. Again, there is wondrous need of wisdom, because there are a great many hindrances to the doing of what is good. It is good to have wisdom to see how to remove those hindrances. There are a great many advantages to help us to do good. Much wisdom is required to take all the helps and advantages to do what is good; and unless we have wisdom, we cannot take the advantages to do good as we should.

4. Again, good is not good without wisdom. Virtue is not virtue without discretion, when to speak and when not to speak. “A fool speaks all his mind at all times,” says the wise man (Prov 29:11). What is needed is to do things in season, to be trees of righteousness that “bring forth fruit in season” (Ps 1:3). “To speak a word in season it is like apples of gold with pictures of silver” (Prov 25:11). One word in season is worth ten thousand out of season. Good is such a thing that it is never truly good unless it is clothed with all fitting circumstances. One unfitness in the circumstance mars the good thing. And there is need of a world of wisdom to see the things surrounding good actions that help them or hinder them; and if there are helps and advantages, there is need of a great deal of heavenly light to know how to use them. So we stand in need of wisdom. As we stand in need of our eyes to walk in our common ways, so much do we need a heavenly eye in our souls, a heavenly light of wisdom.

5. Again we see, by the cunning of Satan, that what is good, the best good, is hidden under evil. The best wisdom goes under the name of folly and needless scrupulosity, and the vilest courses go under the name of policy and wisdom. Now there is need of much wisdom to uncover things and to see them in their right colors, when things are carried on in this way. In a word, there is such a difference in things that there is need of a great deal of discernment and heavenly wisdom, and of a greater light than a man has by nature, to guide him to heaven. I need not stop to multiply reasons; you see a man has need of a great deal of wisdom.

And, which is the second branch, as he needs it, so he may have wisdom.

He may have this heavenly wisdom. As St. Paul says here, I walk not according to fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God. He means the grace of wisdom, according to heavenly wisdom. As he needed it, so he had it. St. James tells you how you may have it: “If any man lack wisdom” to guide his life either in prosperity or adversity, how to abound without pride and how to bear afflictions, how to handle his prosperity so that it is not a snare to him, “If any man lack wisdom, let him ask it of God” (Jas 1:5), who is the fountain of wisdom. Let him light his candle at God’s light. Carnal wisdom lights its candle at hell-fire. A carnal man, rather than miss his ends, will go to hell, he and his riches and his policy and all. It is otherwise with heavenly wisdom. We have need of wisdom, and wisdom we may have.

The vessel in which we must fetch it is faith, and the outlet of faith is prayer. Faith sends its ambassador, prayer, to God. If any man lack wisdom, let him go to God.

And surely this is what Solomon did. He is an example of it. He saw that he lacked wisdom to govern so great a people as was committed to his charge. God was so well pleased with his petition that he gave him wisdom, and wealth, and honor too.

Use. Make this use of it. Let us consider what relation we stand in, in what rank God has set us. Let us consider what good we are placed to do by the position we are in, what helps we have to do it, and what mischiefs and harms may come. Let every man, in his place and standing, consider what good he may do and what evil he may avoid, and let us go to God for wisdom.

He who is a magistrate, let him do as Solomon did, and desire God above all things to give him wisdom to rule as he should (2 Chr 1:10), that God would give him a public heart for a public place, and God will do it. And those who would have wisdom in their families, to go in and out before them, let them go to God for wisdom, that they may avoid the snares that attend family government: distrustfulness, worldliness, unfaithfulness in their particular calling. And so for personal wisdom, to guide and manage our own persons, let us desire wisdom from God, to know the hidden abominations of our own hearts, the deceits and subtleties of our own hearts, which are beyond measure deceitful; to know our particular sins, to know what hurts us, and to know how to avoid it, and how to carry ourselves in our particular ways, to order “our conversation aright” (Ps 50:23) in every way. We see here that St. Paul led his life and conduct by that wisdom. As it was needful for him, so he had it; and we must all go to the same spring for it. We must go to God.

And we must know that God will not only make us “wise to salvation” (2 Tim 3:15), that he will not only give us wisdom in things that merely concern heaven; but the same love, the same care that gives us wisdom that way, will give us wisdom in our particular callings, to take every step to heaven. The same Spirit of God does it all. He gives us grace necessary to salvation, and he gives us grace likewise for the leading of a Christian life.

Therefore it is an abominable notion to separate religion from policy and government, as if the reasons of religion were one thing and the reasons of state another, and as if these were set one against the other. It is an abominable, atheistic notion; for the same heavenly Spirit of God that reveals the mysteries of salvation reveals likewise to men the mysteries of state.

Christ has the keys of heaven, of the mysteries of God; and he has the keys of all earthly policy whatsoever. He has the greater; does he not have the lesser? Does he guide us by his Spirit in heavenly mysteries, and then, for matters of policy and the government of states and commonwealths, are we to be guided by the devil, by devilish, carnal wisdom? No! He gives all wisdom in its due place, even wisdom for common things.

Therefore consider, when men will not be ruled by God, by wisdom from above, in the rule and government of their lives, how fearfully and shamefully they go astray! This is partly because of the chances of this life and the variety of business. You know that wisdom, as it governs our life concerning the things of this world, deals with things unstable, uncertain, and vain. As Solomon says, they do not continue long in the same state. Therefore, if a man does not have a better wisdom than his own, he will be greatly at a loss. It is partly because of the imperfection of his wisdom. The things are imperfect, and the wisdom, unless it is guided from heaven, is often much at a loss.

Take the wisest man, once he leaves heavenly wisdom. As we see in Solomon, he thinks to strengthen himself by alliance with idolaters who were near to him. Did he not go foully astray? And has not God made the wisest men who ever were in the world examples of gross miscarriage, because they had too much confidence in their abilities and neglected the guidance of God in the course of their lives? Who was more a fool than Ahithophel? Who was a greater fool than Saul, and than Herod?

The emperors had grand notions. Constantine the Great, a good Christian emperor, had the notion that if he could establish a new seat at Byzantium (Constantinople it was called afterward), he would seat the empire there. He would rule Rome through a viceroy, through another, and he would be there himself and rule all the eastern parts of the world. A fine notion he thought it, but this proved the ruin of both east and west.

For upon this, when he was absent from Rome, the pope of Rome came up and grew little by little. The emperors thought they were doing a great thing to advance the pope, who was Christ’s vicar, a spiritual man. They consulted with carnal wisdom, and he came and overtopped them, and ate them out, and outgrew them, as the ivy does the tree that nourishes it. The pope never stopped growing until he had overtopped them. So men, when they go to carnal wisdom, and neglect prayer, and neglect the counsel of God and the wisdom of God to guide them in the matters of this life as well as for the life to come, come to go grossly astray.

Therefore let us take St. James’s counsel. We all lack wisdom; let us beg it of God every day. Let us desire God every day that he would make our way plain before us (Prov 15:19) in our particular goings in and out, that he would show us what is best.

Use. And here I might take occasion to reprove sharply the atheism of many who would be accounted great statesmen, who bring all religion down to reasons of state. They bring heaven under earth, and utterly subvert and overthrow the order of things; and therefore it is no wonder if they go astray. They do not care what religion it is, so long as it may stand with peace. Whether it is false or true, if it may stand with the peace of the state, all is well. Give me leave to touch on it in just a word. It is a most abominable notion. Religion is not so alterable a thing. Religion is a commanding thing. It is to command all other things, and all other things serve it. And it is not a matter of fancy and opinion, as they think out of their atheism, to keep men in awe. It is established upon the same ground as the truth that there is a God: upon the same ground on which we say God is, we may say religion is. It teaches us this, that God is to be honored, and that Christ is equal to him as God and inferior to him in regard of his humanity, and so on. So there is the same ground for saying that there is a God and that there is a religion.

And so again, by the same reason that there is one God, there is but one religion. And it is not just any religion that will serve the purpose, for that one God will be worshiped in his own way. “There is one God, one truth.” And that one religion must be the one in which that one God discloses and reveals himself, and not one which man devises. For will any master be served by the devising of his servant? And will God allow his creature to devise a religion to serve him? Therefore there is of necessity, as one God, so one religion; and that one religion must be the one which that God has left in his word.

Therefore those who are to govern states, as they will answer to that one God, are to establish that religion which he has left to the world in his word, and not just any religion, not one which men have devised. To go a little further.

In that one religion which he has left, care must be taken that the people live by the rules of that one. For this is a rule in nature. Nothing in religion will help him who will not live according to its rules. Therefore it concerns all who are not atheists to labor to establish one religion, and obedience to that one.

And every particular man, as he looks for good from his religion, is not to live by the rules of fleshly wisdom, but by the rules of religion.

And here a man might deplore the misery of poor religion above all other things, above all other arts and trades. In other arts and trades he is accounted nobody who does not work according to his trade, and who has not, besides some speculative skill and rules in his head, the skill to work. He is accounted nobody but a talker, unless he does. But in religion men think it is enough to know. Practice goes under base names. Any ordinary conscience, any ordinary care, and obedience to the rules we must be saved by, is reproached and rejected. Religion will do a man no good unless he is ruled by it. What is the rule for, but to bring things to it? But I will not stay on this point any longer.

There is a necessity of wisdom. And this wisdom may be had. And this wisdom leads not only to salvation, but reaches to the state. And it leads every man in his calling. Well! we may see, to touch on that by the way, in the third place:

Observation. True wisdom touches conduct.

“My conversation hath been by the grace of God,” that is, in wisdom. He puts the general for the particular. There were other graces besides, but together with them there was this wisdom. So wisdom tends to conduct.

Mark what I said: wisdom is not in word, but in work. A man who would be master of his trade must work. When a man can work well, he is master of his trade, and not till then. Religion tends to practice. You know what Christ says, “If you know these things, happy are ye if ye do them” (John 13:17). He ties happiness to doing. “If you know these things”: he does not say, you are happy if you know them. No! “If you know these things, happy are you if you do them.” For indeed true wisdom is not only speculative. This wisdom, understanding, and knowledge, when it is true and spiritual, always tends to practice; and practice is never sound except when it springs from wisdom, from things known. Every article in the creed tends to practice in a Christian’s life, and practice quickens every article. So wisdom tends to conduct.

Now, besides that main wisdom which properly concerns salvation, there is another wisdom which is more particular, which tends to conduct, and which is called spiritual prudence, for particular actions. This comes from the Spirit of God: “I wisdom dwell with prudence” (Prov 8:12). Wherever there is wisdom to salvation, there is prudence for the guidance of a Christian’s life.

Use. But in a word, if wisdom tends to conduct and is joined with it, you may see that all who live wicked lives are nobodies in religion; they are fools in religion. What does knowledge serve for? What does light serve for, but to walk by? What does an instrument serve for, but to work by? What does wisdom serve for, but to guide our lives by? Is it to be matter for discussion and talk? Therefore this clearly demonstrates, to any man who thinks there is any religion or any heaven, who the best Christians are: those who by the Spirit know the wisdom that God has revealed in his word, and apply it in their lives and conduct, to be ruled by it, to work to that end.

Wisdom always sets an end before itself, and those who work to that end are wise men. He is a wise man who works to attain his end. Now no man can attain his end by mere knowledge. He attains his end by working, by doing. Therefore the wisest Christian sets himself to live wisely and holily, and he shows his religion in his particular calling, in everything. If any man be religious, let him show it in a holy way of life, let him be unspotted of the world (Jas 1:26-27). So much for that.

“But by the grace of God.” To give a little further light on the words, grace is either:

1. The free favor of God in himself, issuing from his goodness, from which we have forgiveness of sins and acceptance through Jesus Christ to life everlasting. This is grace resting in the breast of God, which is only received by us, and which of itself works no change in us. Or else,

2. Grace is something from that favor, from that free grace of God, wrought in us. And that grace wrought in us is:

(1) First, the grace of a whole, universal change. For whomever God graciously accepts to life everlasting, he gives them the gifts of grace along with his favor; he changes their nature, so that they may be fit to enjoy fellowship with him. For when by grace he accepts us into favor, if he did not alter our natures, alas, what a state we would be in! Would we be fit for communion with God? No! Therefore, so that we may have communion with God, he alters our dispositions, that we may be holy as he is holy. This change is the first change in Christianity.

(2) Now in this gracious change, which is a work of the gracious Spirit, derived to us by Christ, in whom our nature is filled with all grace, and in whom we receive “grace for grace,” there are graces wrought, such as:

[1] A heavenly light to see a further end than we ever saw before; a heavenly, convincing light to see the love of God, to see life everlasting, to see glorious things.

[2] And with it comes the grace of love, to carry the whole inward man to the things that we see.

[3] Then there is the grace of hope to expect, and patience to endure all, until we possess what our understandings are enlightened to see.

[4] And faith persuades the soul where to have it, and relies on the promise. So particular graces are wrought. That, therefore, is one reason why the apostle does not name wisdom in particular when he says, We have not led our way of life according to carnal, fleshly wisdom, but by grace. His meaning is that a Christian, when he has heavenly wisdom, has all graces and wisdom together. There is a connection, a combination of graces, as I said. So he leads his life by all graces, for all graces are necessary to a Christian life. Therefore instead of wisdom, he puts the word grace.

(3) Now besides these, besides the favor of God accepting us in Christ, and besides the working of these graces in us, in and after our conversion, there is another degree of grace required, which is a particular grace, stirring up, applying, and strengthening. This is required for every good act, to do every good work, to resist every evil, and to enjoy good things as we ought to enjoy them. I say, there is a grace necessary to withstand temptations in all evil, besides the habitual graces wrought in us, of faith, and love, and hope, and the like. Unless these are set in motion and enlivened by the continual work of the Spirit, unless they are brought into action and a new strength is put into them, they are not sufficient for a Christian life. Therefore St. Paul here by grace means not only the graces of the Spirit, habitual graces, but the power of the Spirit acting, enlivening, quickening, and strengthening him against every evil in particular, and to every good work in particular.

“But by the grace of God.” Since the apostle here, though he principally means wisdom, yet names grace, the next point I will observe is this:

Doctrine. All the wisdom that we have comes from grace.

All the wisdom we have comes from grace, purely from grace. And this grace does not fail us when we have renounced our fleshly wisdom. Heavenly wisdom comes altogether from grace. To make this a little clear: whatever is spiritual comes from Christ. Since the fall we have nothing except by special grace. God, being reconciled by Jesus Christ, has placed all fullness of grace in him; he has enriched our nature in him with wisdom and all graces whatever. “All the treasures of wisdom are in him” (Col 2:3), and all other graces. God the Father and our Savior Christ send the Spirit, they communicate the Spirit, who takes of Christ, and enlightens, and quickens, and guides all those who are members of Christ. Everything in particular, all inward things, come from grace. Grace comes from the Spirit, the Spirit from Christ, and this is the descent of grace and wisdom.

Therefore these are used without distinction in Scripture: sometimes to “walk wisely” (Eph 5:15), to walk graciously; sometimes to “walk in the Spirit” (Gal 5:16); sometimes to “walk in Christ” (Col 2:6). It is all one. Sometimes it is to be in Christ: “Whosoever is in Christ…” (2 Cor 5:17). And to walk in the Spirit, and by the Spirit, to pray in the Spirit, and in wisdom, and in faith, or to live by faith, or to live by grace, or in grace, are all one, because they are subordinate one to another. For Christ is the treasure of the church. All that is good for the church is laid up in him, “wisdom,” and everything else. “Of his fullness we receive grace for grace” (John 1:16): grace corresponding to the grace that is in him. He graciously grants us his Spirit.

Now the Spirit does not guide us directly. He works a habit in us, as we call it; he works something in us to dispose us to what is good. And when that is wrought, the Spirit guides us to every particular action. These things that the Spirit works in us are called graces, because they come from outside ourselves, by the Spirit. So wisdom is called grace, because it comes from the Spirit. The Spirit comes from Christ, and Christ has grace, not only grace in himself, but he infuses grace into us. He has not only abundance, but overabundance; not only grace flowing in himself, but grace running over, overflowing to all his members. This is what St. Paul means when he says, “We have had our conversation by the grace of God,” that is, by such blessed habits of wisdom, faith, love, and the like, as are wrought by the Spirit of God; and this Spirit is given us by Jesus Christ our head.

Hence we learn that everything necessary to bring us to heaven is a grace, that is, it comes from outside us. Adam had it within him. He was trusted with his riches himself. But now in Jesus Christ we have all of grace; we have all from outside ourselves. Christ is the Sun. We have all our beams from him, all our light, all our life from him. He is the head. All our motion is from him. And this is true not only of habits, as we call them, that is, a constant work or disposition wrought in God’s children, which for the most part they carry about with them, but likewise in all the particular passages of their life. They need grace for every particular action.

And in this the soul is like the air. The air stands in need of light, and if it is not enlightened by the sun, it is immediately dark. So a man is no wiser in particular actions than God will make him at that moment. Suppose he is a man of a wise spirit for the most part, so that he passes for an understanding man, and is one. Yet unless he has the grace of God’s Spirit, unless he has wisdom to guide him in particular, he is no wiser than God at that time will make him.

You see that all motion in the body comes from the head. Let the spirits in the head be obstructed ever so little, and an apoplexy follows; there will be no motion. So all our wisdom, all the direction we have to lead our lives as becomes Christians, comes from Christ, comes from grace; not only the disposition, but likewise every particular action. For we need grace continually to assist us, to stir up and rouse our powers, and to strengthen them against oppositions; and if the opposition is strong, we need a stronger grace.

There is never a good work we do but it is opposed from within us and from outside us. From within us, by carnal wisdom, as I said before, and by carnal passions and affections. From outside us, by Satan, by the world, and by men who are led by the spirit of the devil. Therefore there is need of a strength above our own. Besides the grace that is in us ordinarily, there is need of a new, particular strength and light for particular actions.

Use. Does all come from God and from his grace? Then when we have anything, let us beware of sacrilegious affections, of attributing anything to ourselves, to our own wisdom, and let us immediately give all to grace. Mark St. Paul’s phrase here, “Not by fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God.” He does not say, by any habit in myself. He does not say, by any wisdom that is in me. But he chooses what is in God, grace and favor, because he would not rob God of any honor.

It was a proud term the philosophers had, as I said: they sometimes called their moral virtues habits. And if we consider them merely as they are in the person, they are habits; but indeed they are graces. Scripture gives them a more heavenly term, “grace,” those things that we guide our lives by, such as wisdom, love, temperance, sobriety. Grace is a fitter word than habit, because then we consider them as they come from God freely. They are graces. They come from grace and favor. And when men differ from one another in wisdom, they differ in grace and favor. God gives more light; he opens the understanding of one more than another. Therefore St. Paul was wise and careful in this, when he speaks of what he had done himself, lest he should rob God. Not I, Oh not I, he says, but the grace of God that was in me; that was all in all (1 Cor 15:10).

For indeed we are what we are, and we do what we do, by grace. Just as by ourselves we are men, we are what we are, and we do what we do, by our souls, by our reason and understanding, so it is with spiritual grace. We are what we are, from outside ourselves, by spiritual grace, and we do what we do by spiritual grace. And when that ceases, when God suspends the blessed motions of his Spirit to humble us, alas, we are dark. A man is a confused creature; he is at a loss; he is in darkness for the particular managing of his life. He does not know what to do, he does not know what to say, he is puzzled in every particular action. And therefore when he has spoken or done what is fitting, he should consider it a grace.

“My conversation hath been in the grace of God,” says the apostle. Therefore let us sanctify God in our hearts in this way. And when we stand in need of any direction, let us ask God of his grace to give us wisdom, and to give us the grace we stand in need of. So much for the phrase. The point, as I told you, was this:

All wisdom comes from grace, and God is ready to give us his grace.

For St. Paul says, “My conversation” has been in grace, which God did minister to me, and has ministered to me to lead my life by.

The reason is this: Christ has undertaken to give us grace if we are his. Men under grace shall never lack grace to lead a Christian life. For Christ has undertaken to be our head, to be our husband, to be our guide in our way to heaven. As our head, he is to give us motion, to move us as his members. As he is our shepherd, as he says, “I am the good shepherd” (John 10:11), so he is to lead us in our ways and passages, in his paths, to conduct us to happiness. And as he is our husband, so he is to be the head of his wife. To guide us is his office. And he works according to his own office.

He is a king to subdue in us whatever is contrary to his good Spirit, to subdue our rebellions, and to bring all our imaginations under his Spirit, as well as a priest to make peace between God and us. He is a king to rule us, and to overrule in us whatever is ill. And he is a prophet to teach us and to guide us. He is the angel of the covenant, the great counselor (Isa 9:6), who has the spirit of counsel in him, not for himself only, but for his church.

Therefore as all things we need come from grace and from the favor of God, so we need not doubt the grace of God in Christ. Being reconciled, he is willing to give us grace.

I observe this to cut off all the quibbles of flesh and blood, and to arm us against all discouragements.

There are two things that greatly hinder us from a Christian course: presumption and despair.

Presumption is to set about things without asking grace of God, without depending on his direction, by the strength of natural abilities, of natural wit.

And then despair, when a man says, “Why should I go about these things? I shall never bring them to pass.” No. First, consider your standing, your place and calling; and then consider the abilities that God has given you. Consider your gifts, consider the duty you are to do. And beg God for assistance and strength; and if it is a thing that belongs to you, go on, set about all the duties that belong to your place, in this confidence, that you shall have grace.

Go to the fountain, to Christ, for grace for the direction of your life. He is the light of life, he is the way, he is “all in all” to bring us to heaven.

What do all the promises serve for, not only of life everlasting but even of grace, except to encourage us to set about holy duties in confidence? They assure us that if we have a will to be out of Satan’s kingdom, and if we have a will to be out of “fleshly wisdom,” God will take us into his kingdom and into his government. “He will give the Spirit to them that ask him” (Luke 11:13). Now the Spirit is a Spirit of direction, a Spirit of assistance, a Spirit of strength and comfort. He serves every need. How many promises are wrapped in that promise of the Spirit? In want of direction he shall be our counselor; in want of strength, he shall assist us; in perplexities, when we do not know which way to turn, he shall advise us; in extremities, when we are ready to sink, he shall comfort us. God will give us his Holy Spirit to supply all our defects at a fit time if we ask him, if we find our need, and if we will renounce our carnal wisdom. Therefore set about those duties that God calls you to.

And with this, do as St. Paul does here (he sets the negative before the affirmative): renounce carnal wisdom, do not be guided by it; trust perfectly to the word of grace and to the Spirit of grace. For the word of grace and the Spirit of grace go together. And then you shall find that God will do “abundantly above all that you are able to ask or think” (Eph 3:20).

When Luther set about the work of reformation, those who saw him at the first might have said, “Get into your cloister, and say, ‘Lord, have mercy upon you,’ for you are setting about an impossible work.” But he saw the abilities that God had given him, that he had wit to understand the abuses of the times, and that God had given him courage. He saw that by his profession he was called to be a theologian. His conscience was awakened to see the abominations of the times, and he set about exposing these things. Did Christ leave him? No! He did not, but gave him success, so that he was wondered at by all.

When all the world was set against one man, yet he prevailed against them all, and this because he walked as St. Paul did here, “in sincerity and simplicity,” that is, he looked to the truth of the cause, and not to his own honor, or profit, or pleasure. He was content to be no wiser than the book of God would have him be, and to be no richer or greater in the world than God would have him; but he committed himself to God “in simplicity and sincerity.” How did God maintain him? Wondrously, to the amazement of all! I give him as an instance to show how base distrust causes things to be carried on no better than they are.

I say this now to encourage you to go to the grace of God, to go to the fountain, and not to be held under carnal wisdom, under these pretexts: “Oh, if I do not listen to carnal wisdom, I shall be a beggar, I shall never rise, I shall never do this or that in the world, I shall never escape this and that danger.” Shame on those base notions! St. Paul here renounces the rule of carnal wisdom. What became of him? Did he lack a guide? Grace took him up. “Not by carnal wisdom, but by the grace of God.” When we come under the government of God, we come under the government of grace. And we shall lack nothing, either for heaven or earth, that is for our good.

Whatever good we had before we were gracious, we keep still, and it is under a better guide. Were we learned before? Were we wise before? Had we authority before? Were we noble before? We lose none of these when we come under Christ; rather he advances and elevates them, he makes them better. If we were wise, he makes us graciously wise; if we were learned, if we were noble, he makes us doubly noble. We lose nothing, but we are under a sweeter government, the government of grace, which is a mild government; a government that tends to advance us above ourselves, that advances us to be the spouse of Christ and the heirs of heaven.

Those who are in Christ Jesus, and are led by his Spirit, are his. In Romans 8:1 and the verses following, the prerogatives they have are excellently set down. For those who lead their lives “in simplicity and sincerity,” those who are in Christ, and in the Spirit, and in grace, there is “no damnation to them.” And then again, if they suffer anything, he says, “The afflictions of this world are not worthy of the glory that shall be revealed” (Rom 8:18). If they have any infirmities, he says, “the Spirit helps our infirmities” (Rom 8:26). The “Spirit teacheth us how to pray” (Rom 8:26), when we do not know how to pray.

If we suffer any evil, God turns all to good. “All things shall work together for the best to them that fear God” (Rom 8:28). For infirmities in other things we have Christ, and he makes intercession in heaven. “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s people” (Rom 8:33) who are in Christ, who are in grace, who are in the Spirit, such as St. Paul was here? “It is Christ that is dead, or rather that is risen again, and makes intercession for us” (Rom 8:34). And “if he have given us Christ, shall he not with him give us all things else?” (Rom 8:32). If he has given us Christ, he will give us grace to bring us to heaven. See the excellent estate of a Christian who is under the rule of Christ, who is led by the Spirit. That chapter may serve instead of all.

And see the sweet combination here, how he knits these things together. “My rejoicing is this, that I have not had my conversation in fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God.” Here is a knitting together of various things that seem to differ, as here is “wisdom” and “simplicity.” I have led my life, Paul is saying, by the grace of God, by wisdom, and yet in simplicity. For it is wisdom to be simple. When a man has strength of abilities, it is wisdom to make them parts of simplicity.

It is wisdom to be simple concerning what is evil; for a man to be simple there is his best way. There is “wisdom” joined with his “simplicity.” Then, again, besides wisdom and simplicity, here are “our conversation” and “God’s grace,” both joined together. St. Paul by grace guided his conduct. So God stirs us to do all that we do. We see, but he opens our eyes to see; we hear, but he opens our ears; we believe, but he opens our hearts to believe.

I say this to reconcile a seeming difference. Does God’s Spirit do all, and we do nothing? We do all subordinately; we move as we are moved; we see as we are enlightened; we hear as we are made to hear; we are wise as far as he makes us wise. We do, but it is he who makes us do.

St. Paul here led his life, but it was grace that moved him to lead it graciously. Well, then, he who joins simplicity and wisdom together, the wisdom of the serpent and the simplicity of the dove; he who trusts in God and grace, and yet in trusting to grace does all that he can, and goes on in a Christian course, he shall rejoice. “Our rejoicing is this,” that we have led our lives in simplicity, and according to the rule of grace, not by fleshly wisdom.

Consider seriously what a joy this will be, that we have led our lives by a rule different from the world, that we have led our lives and courses according to the motion of God’s blessed Spirit! This must bring joy and rejoicing with it in whatever estate we are.

The people of the world join these together, simplicity and sincerity of life, wherever they see them, so that they may slander them and lay accusations upon them. They see that these are courses opposite to their own, and they heap loads on them. But what does God do? Where there is simplicity and wisdom and a holy life, he adds his Spirit, he joins the Spirit of grace, who is always a Spirit of joy. As light and comfort go with the sun, so the Spirit of joy and comfort goes always with the Spirit of grace. St. Paul here, in regard to the world, was afflicted, he received the sentence of death, he was slandered and misused; yet toward God, he says, “Our rejoicing is this,” that we have led our lives according to grace, according to the motion of God’s blessed Spirit, and “not with fleshly wisdom.”

If this is so, that the joy of God’s Spirit goes with the grace of God’s Spirit, and that those who lead their lives by grace have a rejoicing above all accusations and slanders whatever, let this be an encouragement to us to lead a godly life. We all seek for joy. Every creature seeks for joy. If we would have joy within us, if we would have a spring of joy, let us labor to lead our lives by this rule, by grace, by the motion of God’s Spirit, who is ready to guide us if we commit ourselves to his guidance.

“But by the grace of God.” Let us come, then, to an application by way of trial: whether we lead our lives by this gracious wisdom or not, and not by carnal wisdom. And then let us come to direct ourselves how to lead our lives by the grace of God, which is the ground of all joy and comfort, as St. Paul says here.

Question. How shall a man know whether he leads his life by this spiritual, gracious wisdom or not?

Answer. I answer, mark the opposition here: “Not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God.” He leads his life by the “grace of God” who renounces carnal and fleshly wisdom. Carnal wisdom is a false rule, and it cannot stand together with grace; the one expels the other. “A double-minded man,” says St. James, “is inconstant in all his ways” (Jas 1:8), that is, he who has two strings to his bow. He who will be content to be led by the grace of God, and by the word of God, which is the “Word of his grace,” and yet nevertheless will have carnal policies, will have shifts too, is a double-minded man. He is not under the government of grace; he halts and limps, as the prophet tells the Israelites, “Why do you halt?” (1 Kgs 18:21). So he halts between carnal and heavenly wisdom. He is loath to renounce carnal wisdom. No, he thinks that if he does, he shall be a fool, he shall lose this way of getting and that way of rising.

But he who is under the Spirit of God, who is under grace, and is guided by it will renounce the motions and stirrings of carnal wisdom. When carnal wisdom, like Eve, or like Job’s wife, or like Peter, suggests, “Oh, spare yourself! Why will you do this? Why will you go on in these courses?” he is still able to renounce it.

Most of God’s judgments in this world on his children are for this halting. They have much carnal wisdom in them; and God, to work it out of them, is forced to thwart them sharply in their projects and courses. All this is to bring them to rely on grace, to rely on his government in the use of good means; for we must serve God’s providence in the use of good means.

A man may know by God’s afflicting of his children that they deal too much in carnal wisdom. For if it were not for carnal wisdom, if we would submit ourselves to his sweet and easy guidance, and use the lawful means that he has revealed in a lawful calling, if we would keep to lawful courses, alas! we would see a clear light and an easy passage. We would have no need of these devices. But because we cannot do so, we are reluctant to trust him. We are double-minded. We will be ruled by him a little, but we will also be scheming and subtle. Therefore he sends crosses upon crosses upon our carnal ends and projects. Especially those who are his children, he will not allow to prosper in evil courses.

Sign 1. That is one sign: those who are led by the grace of God will not be led by God’s enemy and the enemy of their own souls. Now God and our own souls have no worse enemy than carnal, fleshly wisdom. That is evident from the opposition.

When people deny carnal wisdom, deny themselves, and cast themselves upon God, it is a good evidence. And as it is a sign, so it is a cause. You see in holy Abraham that when he had cast himself on God, and left his country and his father’s house, God guided him; God took him into his government. “I am God all-sufficient, walk before me, and be perfect” (Gen 17:1). God means this: By leaving all other things and cleaving to me, you will lose nothing, you will have all in me, I will be “all-sufficient”; therefore “walk before me, and be perfect,” be sincere.

A man will never know what God will do for him until he casts himself upon God, and ceases to test him, and begins to trust him. Trust him once; honor him by taking him at his word. Do not have a double eye, partly on carnal means and partly on him, but have a single eye to his wisdom, and know that he will reward you and keep his promise. It is an excellent thing to deny carnal wisdom.

How many objections blessed Noah might have raised before he built the ark! The world would scorn him as an old doting man, who would try to be wiser than all the rest of the world. But he denies all carnal reason, rejects the scorn of sinful people, and obeys God; and we see how God protected him and went on with him. And so it was with David and St. Paul.

And to add a little to what I touched on before, God usually thwarts carnal wisdom in strange ways, because men will not deny their carnal will and their carnal wit. There never was any political schemer in the world who, if he lived any length of time in it, did not complain that God had outwitted him. The heathen Cicero says, “I thought myself wise, but I never was so”; and so they may all take up the same complaint. God dashes the imaginations of the proud. Those who are led by carnal wisdom, who will not trust the grace of God, build a Babel, a confusion to themselves and others.

Let no man flatter himself, but let him trust in God, and not rely on carnal wisdom and such courses. As for those who would bring religion down to reasons of state and political scheming, and subject the highest thing in the world to the basest thing, which is carnal wit, as I said before, we see what they do. The nature of man infinitely desires the accomplishment of its own will. We see that where corruption has the greatest advantage through high position, if such people may have their will, they will overthrow a world to have it; their wit is bent to serve their will.

All clever men who count it a heaven on earth to have their will, in place of law and conscience and everything else, strain their wits to serve their will, and so set themselves against God. Is it not God’s honor to set himself against them? “Was there ever any fierce against God and prospered?” says Job (Job 9:4). Denial of fleshly wit and will and wisdom is both a sign and an evidence of grace; and it is likewise a means by which we come to be led by God’s grace. When we deny what is strong in us, God will make up the supply by his grace. We are no losers by it.

Sign 2. Again, you see here in the text that where the life is led by the grace of God, by the Spirit of God stirring us, activating us, leading, moving, and strengthening us, there a man’s courses are in simplicity and sincerity. The soul that is under grace will cast itself simply upon God. That soul will be no wiser than the word of God makes it. It will be no happier, no richer than God makes it. It will use no other means than what God allows. This is plainness and singleness and simplicity of heart.

Again, it will be in sincerity. Where a man leads his life graciously, his actions are sincere. This grace, as it comes from God, so it tends to God. Sincerity looks to God; it does things as to God. So where grace is, it carries a man above himself, to seek the glory of God and life everlasting, to have spiritual and heavenly ends, to seek God in all things. The grace of God in St. Paul guided him to lead his life in the simplicity and sincerity of God, that is, sincerity that looks to and aims at God in all things.

And indeed a gracious man, and only a gracious man, can look out of himself to an end above himself; only a gracious man can aim at God’s glory, at the pleasing of God. Why? Because only a gracious man knows that he has better things in God than in the world. A worldly man makes himself his stopping place; he makes himself his last end, because he knows of nothing better outside himself than in himself. He dares not venture upon God’s favor, to stake everything on that. He does not know whether God is his friend or not. He thinks God is his enemy, as he well may, by his evil courses.

Only the gracious man can cast himself upon God. He knows he is redeemed out of a miserable condition into a glorious estate; and if he should be denied by all the world, he still knows he has more happiness in God than he can look for here. He knows God would be all-sufficient for him. He is assured of his salvation. Therefore he has higher ends; he is sincere in all things.

When God is honored by our trusting him, when in sincerity we make him our wisdom, and make his word our rule, and make the happiness he has promised our chief happiness that we aim at, and rest in him, when we honor him that far, then he supplies all other things. But I spoke of sincerity in full before; I bring it up now only to show how it is a mark of a man who makes the grace of God his guide: he walks sincerely, he seeks the glory of God.

Sign 3. He who walks by the grace of God and in the grace of God, by it as a rule and in it as a principle, he who walks in it and by it and through it: you will see it by the ability in him that is above nature, by the things he does that other men, who do not walk by grace, cannot do. From this, therefore, you have a test of a man who lives by grace. He can go against the common corruptions of the place and the time he lives in. He is not a slave; he is not enthralled to common fears, to common hopes, to the common joys and delights that the world is carried away with.

But as grace is a thing that is mighty and strong and powerful in itself, it is a Spirit (the Spirit is like the wind, as Christ tells Nicodemus in John 3:8); it is a mighty, powerful, strong thing; so it makes him strong. It enables a man’s spirit to do above himself, above what he could do if he did not have grace. It makes him deny himself in matters of pleasure and in matters of profit. It will make him thwart himself in the matter of revenge, as David spared Saul when he had him in his power (1 Sam 24:4). It will make him triumph over all conditions of life. He can abound and he can go in want, as St. Paul says (Phil 4:12).

Other men change with their condition. They are cast down in adversity, they are puffed up in prosperity, they can deny themselves in nothing; they are always enthralled to their base pleasures and profits and honors; they are always swayed by some carnal end or other. Grace raises a man above nature. He can do what another cannot do; he can endure what another man cannot endure. He can die, he can endure shame, he can resist what another man cannot resist.

Sign 4. In a word, you may know grace in a man who has great natural gifts. How shall we distinguish grace from nature in him? Like this: you will find him subduing his gifts to grace and to the rules of religion. If he has a strong wit, he will not make a show of its strength, as though he would break through business by his wit; but he will consult with conscience.

You may know a man who is led by grace, especially where there are great gifts. He can deny not only his corruptions but other things as well, if at that time they do not agree with the will of God. He forbears the ostentation of learning when he sees it is hurtful, when it serves rather to show himself than to get glory to God or to win souls. When a man sees that such and such courses might crush another and advance himself, yet if it touches on conscience, he will not do it. Here is a conflict between gifts on the one side and the grace of God and goodness on the other. Now when a man in this can deny himself, it is a sign that he makes grace his guide.

It is not so easy to see in weaker dispositions; for men sometimes seem to be good when it is only a defect of gifts. But in men of ability it does not proceed from defect or want of gifts; it is the power of grace alone by which they are swayed. Such a man dares not do it. He does not lack ability or skill, but he dares not offend God, he dares not seek himself, he dares not give scope to his wit and to his vain mind. He knows what spirit in him moves such things, and he suppresses them at once and yields to the motions of God’s blessed Spirit.

But even in weaker men one may know when such a person is ruled by grace. It is known in this way: when one sees something in him that strengthens nature; for grace does not take away nature but betters it. When you see a man who is otherwise simple, yet wonderfully skillful in resisting a temptation, skillful in giving advice, skillful in keeping the peace of his conscience, skillful in giving reproof, even above himself, you may know that he has a better schoolmaster: that the Spirit of God, the Spirit of grace, is his schoolmaster.

So whether a man has strong or weak gifts, he may know whether he is led by grace or not. In the weaker, it raises him above himself; in the stronger, when the exercise of his natural gifts and of grace cannot stand together, it makes him deny himself. That he may be led by the one, he denies the other altogether. This is gracious wisdom.

Sign 5. Again, a man may know that he leads his life in gracious wisdom, or by gracious wisdom, when he draws the reasons for his actions, not from things below, but from religion, from conscience, from spiritual things. He does not draw the reason for his actions from this: “This will profit me,” or “I will advantage myself in this way and that.” He draws the reasons and the ground of his actions from higher up: “This is pleasing to God; this agrees with the peace of my conscience; this is for the good of the church, for the good of the state I live in; this is for the good of my Christian brethren.”

The strongest reason of a Christian is the one that makes for religion and for conscience. If he may gain for his own private interest one way, and gain for the state or for religion another way, he does not consider, “What will it advantage me?” but “What is it for religion?” The chief prevailing reason is how he may gain for religion and for the glory of God. He will not redeem his life at the cost of injuring the glory of God and religion. This is a man who leads his life by grace.

Sign 6. Again, where grace is, there graces are together. There is a sweet linking of them. Therefore St. Paul, instead of wisdom, names “grace of God,” all grace. A man, therefore, may know that he is led by grace when there is no solitary grace; for where grace is solitary, it is not there at all; it is only a shadow.

For there is not one grace that is not of special use in managing a Christian’s life and conduct; therefore St. Paul puts grace here instead of wisdom. For instance, there is great necessity of seeing, by a light above nature, things above nature. If a man is to lead a life above nature, there is a necessity of heavenly illumination, and of conviction that there is a better happiness than the world affords. And then there is need of love, to carry the soul to that happiness which is revealed.

But then there are a world of impediments between us and heaven, and the happiness revealed to us in the gospel by Christ Jesus. There must be heavenly wisdom, therefore, to detect the impediments and to remove them. And there are many advantages for attaining our end. We must use this and that means, these and those helps that God has ordained. Here there must be heavenly wisdom to use the advantages and to avoid the hindrances.

But there is a world of troubles between our end and us, between the heaven that is revealed and us. Therefore the apostle says, “Ye have need of patience” (Heb 10:36). And patience is sustained by hope. Hope casts anchor in heaven and assures us of happiness there; and then patience sustains us in whatever befalls us in this world. Therefore the apostle does not say, “I lead my life by wisdom,” but “by grace”; by wisdom, as it has a connection with all other graces.

Therefore a man who, from hearing the word or reading and the like, has it revealed to him that there is a better way than the one he takes, and yet has no love to carry him to it, nor wisdom to remove the impediments, does not work toward his end; there is no grace at all. There is illumination, but it is not sanctified illumination, only a mere common work of the Spirit. For where true wisdom is, there is love and patience and hope and all other graces, to carry the whole soul to that happiness which is revealed.

By this, therefore, you may know a graciously wise man: he always works toward his end. Another man hears and wishes, “Oh, it would be well if I could attain heaven!” But carnal scheming and base affections hold him in a beastly course of life, so that he does not work toward that end. He only hears such things, and thinks that God will be merciful and that Christ has died; and when he can no longer enjoy the world, he will have good words that way. But that will not do. A man who will die and be saved by grace must lead a life in grace. He must work, and carry the whole man with it, and have not only knowledge, but faith and love and all. A man must work with it.

Who is a wise man in outward matters? Is he a wise man who only talks of matters of state out of books he has read? No! It is he who, when he comes to a piece of business to negotiate in the world, can remove hindrances, attain his end, and overthrow the plots of his enemies when it comes to particular actions. Here is a wise man, who can attain his end by working, who does work toward his end until he has attained it. So he proves graciously wise in religion who works toward his end; otherwise he is a foolish man, a foolish builder. As Christ says, “If ye know these things, and do them not” (Matt 7:26), you are like a man who builds on the sands; your profession will come to nothing.

Sign 7. Again, a man may know that he is guided by grace, that he does everything by gracious wisdom, when he provides for himself best in the best things, out of a sanctified judgment, when he judges rightly of differences; when he considers that there is a difference between the soul and the body, between this life and eternal life. There is a great difference between the glorious eternal life in the world to come and this fading life which the soul communicates to the body in this world. When a man judges the difference between true riches and these things we are so set upon, which are only lent to us for a little while; when he judges between the true honor of being the child of God and the fading honors of this world, which will lie down in the dust with us and will all depart and be gone, then it appears that he has a sanctified judgment; he “discerns of things that differ” (Heb 5:14).

And according to this, if he leads his life in gracious wisdom, he makes his provision. He makes his provision as his judgment leads him. His judgment leads him to the best things; therefore he provides for the best things. As Christ says of the children of this world, “they are wise” in their courses, “in their generation.” They provide against beggary, they make friends beforehand, as we see in that unjust steward (Luke 16:8).

So a Christian provides for his soul; he looks to that. He “makes him friends of his unrighteous mammon” (Luke 16:9). He makes himself friends by means of his earthly things, that is, he deserves well of people, so that they pray for him and so help him to heaven. He daily makes his account ready, he cuts off the impediments he meets with on the way, he does not trouble himself with irrelevancies, he spends no more time than necessary on worldly things. He uses them as they may help his work to be better and better in grace, to be fitter and fitter for glory.

As he discerns differences, so he makes his provision to match; he provides for the best in the first place. Otherwise he would be a foolish merchant, a foolish builder, a foolish man in every way. The Scripture says he is no better who cannot discern the difference and provide well for himself when other things fail.

The Scripture does well to call wicked men fools. They have no judgment; they do not provide for themselves; they prefer these things, say what they will, to better things; they are fools in their provision. Ahithophel made provision, he set his house in order, and what became of him afterward? He hanged himself. He made much provision for the world, and at last did not know how to look ahead and provide for his soul. The Scripture calls the rich man in the gospel “a fool” (Luke 12:20). He was wise enough to contrive for himself, yet he was only a rich fool. “The fool,” as the wise man says, “knows not the way to the city” (Eccl 10:15). So a wicked man does not know the way to heaven; he does not discern the difference, he does not provide, he does not know the way there. He cannot do one thing that is gracious, not one action that may further his account.

I might be very full on this point. It is profitable, because we infinitely deceive ourselves in this point, which is of more consequence than the whole world; for the man is as the rule he is led by. Carnal men are led by carnal rules; gracious and holy men guide their lives by heavenly wisdom, by a gracious rule.

Now suppose you find yourselves defective. A good Christian may be defective in this; but if he has listened to carnal wisdom, if he has forgotten himself, if he has troubled himself too much about the world, he will come to his center again, he will come to his old way again, he will not be long out of it; his way and course is by grace. Sometimes he may have a scheme that is not good, as David had, yet his way is gracious. I say, if you find yourselves defective, I will show some helps for how we may guide ourselves “not by fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God,” that is, by gracious wisdom, by the Spirit.

Now the Spirit does not lead us directly, but works graces in us and stirs up those graces in us. The Spirit guides a godly man by working grace in him, by making him better, by using those graces in him. Sometimes the Spirit of God moves a wicked man, but does not make him better. He puts notions into his head and makes him do what he otherwise would not; but the man is not bettered. The Spirit guides a good man by making him better; he works a gracious disposition, a gracious bent in him, so that his judgment concurs with God’s, and his affections concur with the Holy Spirit and make him holy and pure. There is a disposition wrought in a good man like the Spirit who sanctifies him, and like the disposition of Christ, to whose image he is renewed.

Now, that we may guide our lives by the Spirit working in us spiritual and gracious wisdom, first of all, consider what I said before of fleshly wisdom. There is no one who does not have one of these two guides: either the flesh, and consequently the devil; for the devil dwells in our carnal reason. That is his fort, his tower, his castle. Carnal, fleshly imagination is the devil’s forge; there he fashions all his tools, all his instruments. For the devil does not work so much directly as through carnal men who are led by him.

Our wit and scheming and carnal wisdom are the shop, the forge of the devil, in which he works all his mischief to overthrow us. It is the devil’s workshop, where he contrives with all his tools and instruments.

Then, considering that there are only two guides, the flesh, the world, and Satan, which always go together as one, or God’s Spirit and grace:

1. Let us be willing to submit our thoughts and desires, to submit our projects and our aims, and all to the Spirit of grace; to submit to the word of grace and to the motions of the word, the word of God having the Spirit of God accompanying it. The word of grace accompanied by the Spirit of grace is forcible, as the apostle says (2 Cor 10:4). It beats down strongholds, strong imaginations. Satan fortifies himself in strongholds, as the Scripture calls them, in high thoughts, in working, reasoning thoughts. Now when we come to hear the word, which teaches the simple, sincere truth of God, which teaches us how we should be saved and how we should guide our lives, then if we will be guided by grace, if we will yield to God’s simple truth, let him set up a throne in us, and let us lay down everything. When we come to hear the word, let us think: I come to hear the wisdom of heaven itself. I come to hear that word which will make me wise to salvation. I will not entertain schemes, I will not entertain a wisdom that is contrary to it. When such things rise in my soul contrary to the direction of the Spirit and of the word, down they shall go; I will not own them. This is the wisdom of a man who intends to make grace his rule.

Now a carnal hearer, a carnal reader, a common Christian, brings his wicked, proud heart and his lofty notions to the hearing and reading of the word. He comes as a critic, as a judge. He comes to talk of what was said in this passage and in that passage. He does not come as one who hears God speak in his ordinance. He does not come as a humble man. He does not come to hear it with reverence as the ordinance of God. And that makes him come and go out again as a beast. As the beasts that went out of Noah’s ark went out as they came in, so many come into the church and go out again as beasts. They go out worse than they came in, because they do not bring hearts that submit themselves to God and to his word. O, a spirit of subjection is a blessed thing!

Self-denial is some help to this. Be content, in guiding your common life and in guiding your way to salvation, to be no wiser than God’s Spirit and God’s word will make you, and to have no will and no wisdom contrary to his will and wisdom. Rather, you will live as men who have nothing of their own, nothing different from God, no separate will, no will and wit contrary to God’s, but you will let God take the guidance of you himself. And those he guides must come to a happy end, as the psalmist says so excellently, “Thou wilt guide me by thy counsel, and after bring me to glory” (Ps 73:24). Those who submit themselves to be guided by God’s counsel, he will bring to glory.

2. Serviceable to this is what is pressed everywhere in the Scripture: humility. God gives grace to the humble; that is, he gives them not only forgiveness of sins and acceptance to life, but he gives them grace for the rule of their lives. “He gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6). Those who humble their wits to God (for there is a humbling of the wit as well as of the affections) do not care for the “depths of Satan” (Rev 2:24), and they do not care for the tricks of the schools. They care to know nothing but “Christ and him crucified,” as St. Paul says (1 Cor 2:2). God’s word, such a person says, has power and majesty enough to save me; I need not bring my wit to make me acceptable to God. It is truth that is accepted, not a strong brain for quibbling. “God gives grace to the humble.” Those who bring their understandings to be led and taught by God, to them he gives grace.

3. Again, if we would have our thoughts guided by counsel, let us have a high esteem of wisdom, above all precious stones and pearls. Solomon presses this (Prov 4:7, and elsewhere). Have a high estimation of wisdom, of the government of God’s Spirit as the best government. And fall out of love with carnal reason, with carnal affections and their guidance. Count them as base things, not worthy to come into the esteem of a Christian heart. Those who highly prize wisdom, God will lead by it; those who sell all for the pearl shall have it (Matt 13:46). A high price must be set on the guidance of God’s Spirit and on grace, as indeed it is worthy of it, and then we shall have it.

4. Again, if we would lead our lives according to spiritual and heavenly wisdom, according to grace and gracious wisdom, let us learn, as it says in Job 22:21, to be more and more acquainted with God by prayer; for grace does not come from within us. Grace is in Christ as in the root, as in the spring, as in the sun; we have it only as the beam, as the stream. Therefore let us learn to be acquainted with God and with Christ by prayer and meditation, and let us search into his word by reading and by hearing him speak to us, and let us often speak to him.

Let us acquaint ourselves with him by prayer and by hearing his word, and then we shall have his grace to guide us. For grace is a fruit of his special love. He gives grace to his own special people. How do you think he will take a special delight in us if we do not labor to be more and more acquainted with him, by often speaking to him, by often hearing him, by coming into his presence, and by attending as much as we can on his holy ordinances, by keeping company as much as we can with the holy things of God?

Those who want to be warm come under the beams of the sun. Those who would have the Spirit work effectually must come where the Spirit is effectual, where the Spirit works. Now the Spirit is effectual in the word preached. The Spirit fell on Cornelius and the rest when they were hearing St. Peter (Acts 10:44). And the Spirit is where there is fellowship in good company. “Where two or three are met together, I will be in the midst of them,” says Christ (Matt 18:20). If we walk with the wise, we shall be wiser (Prov 13:20).

It must be the heavenly wisdom of a Christian, if he would lead his life by grace, to attend on all the means of grace. Because the Spirit of God is effectual by his own means and works by his own means, use the means that the Spirit has sanctified for the working of grace. I do wonder at a company of vain, besotted creatures who carry themselves according to their vain fancies, according to the whirling of their own brain, in trifles and baubles that come into their heads! They do not care for the hearing of God’s blessed truth. Either they stay away altogether, or else they hear it carelessly, as if it were a thing that did not concern them. Oh, but those who will lead their lives by grace come to it by the Spirit, and the Spirit is effectual only in holy ordinances. It must be our wisdom, therefore, to bring ourselves under some means or other, so that the Spirit may be effectual.

The wisest and the best men in the world are no longer gracious than they are wise in this way. If they neglect good company and good acquaintance, if they neglect the hearing of the word, if they neglect prayer, they will grow dead and dull and carnal-minded; they will be possessed with base thoughts. How do men differ one from another? Not so much by any habitual grace that is in them, as by avoiding all that might harm them in a Christian course, and by using all means by which the Spirit of God may be effectual.

5. Again, the way to be under the grace of God’s Spirit is often to meditate on the grace of God, the free love of God in Jesus Christ; for that is how it comes first. The first grace of all is God’s free love in forgiving our sins and accepting us to life everlasting; and then he alters and changes our natures more and more, he transforms us more and more. When we find, therefore, any defect of grace in our hearts, when we find coldness and deadness and dullness, let us go to the first fire, to the first Sun, to the free grace of God in Christ, pardoning all our sins, accepting us to life everlasting, and promising us grace to lead our lives in the meantime.

If you have fallen into any sin by the temptation of Satan or by your own weakness, do not beg first for grace to alter your course and to sanctify your life. Rather, renew every day your claim on the first grace, on the forgiveness of sins and your acceptance to everlasting life. For until God has pardoned your sins and has witnessed to your souls that you stand reconciled, he will not give the best fruit of reconciliation, which is grace.

Therefore examine your lives every day, whether you have offended God, and on what terms you stand with God. And if you stand on bad terms, if there is any sin against conscience, the best way is not to amend that immediately; for that will not happen unless the heart is warmed first with God’s love and favor in the pardon of your sins, and in his acceptance of you in Christ notwithstanding your sins. For he justifies us every day, not only in the first act of conversion but daily. He acquits our consciences daily from our sins. And therefore in the Lord’s Prayer Christ teaches us to say every day, “Forgive us our sins” (Luke 11:4), and then, after forgiveness of sins, to beg for the particular graces we lack for our lives. I wish this were better considered.

6. Lay claim likewise to the covenant of grace. We have a promise of all grace, and of the spring of all grace. We have a promise of love: God will teach us to “love one another” (John 13:34). We have a promise of fear: he has promised that “he will put his fear into our hearts, that we shall never depart from him” (Jer 32:40). We have a promise of the Holy Spirit. Let us lay claim to these promises every day. So much for the directions on how to lead our lives by grace.

“But by the grace of God.” St. Paul here makes it the ground of his rejoicing that he did not lead his life by “fleshly wisdom, but in simplicity and sincerity,” and “by the grace of God”; and all who are led by St. Paul’s spirit live this way.

There is a religion in the world that carries itself very grandly, on lofty claims of universality, succession, antiquity, and the like, and its people will have it thought to be a spiritual and holy religion. Well! If a man is a carnal man who is led by fleshly wisdom and not by the grace of God, then that religion must be a wicked religion which has its only support and foundation in fleshly wisdom, which is an enemy and opposite to the grace of God, and to simplicity and sincerity.

But popery is just such a religion. Take it in its rule and government, take it in its worship, take it in its opinions: you may draw everything under one of those three heads.

1. For its government. There is a wisdom here, a wondrous wisdom, a fine subordination to one head, the pope, to hear all controversies; and under him the cardinals, and under them the generals, all at Rome; and these have their provincials under them. Here is a wondrously fine subordination, but all this is by “fleshly wisdom.” For this “beast” rises out of the earth and out of the sea, out of the tumult of the people, out of base earthly considerations. Therefore it is said in the Revelation, when the bishop of Rome became pope and was at the highest, that a star fell (Rev 9:1). He fell when he rose. When he was at the highest, he was at the lowest. Why? Because his rising was carnal and earthly; or lower, if you will, it was hellish and devilish.

Their government is opposite to Christ’s government, and being so, it must be mightily opposed by him in return. And therefore it must come down, since its fabric is opposite to the frame of Christ’s government, however wondrously clever it may be. Therefore in the Revelation, 666 is the “number of a man” (Rev 13:18). If you mark the frame of the Romish policy, it is wondrously exact; it goes smoothly, by tens and by hundreds, 666. This Babylon is the number of a man. A fine policy! But it is only the number of a man. It is the device of carnal wisdom itself. Therefore it is devilish wisdom. So it is in its government.

2. And their worship is according to the wisdom of the flesh. There is some wisdom, they think, in not going to God directly, but by saints and angels. What! they say, is it not wisdom in the prince’s court to go first to the favorite, and by him to the prince? So, is it not wisdom not to go directly to God? It is bold rashness, they say, to come to God directly rather than by saints and angels. This is the wisdom of a man, this is the wisdom of the flesh (Col 2:8, and following), this is carnal wisdom. It is set against the truth.

Does not Christ bid us all come to him? Do angels love us better than he does? Is he not the great Favorite of heaven? I will not enter into controversy, but only show how they work by “fleshly wisdom.” Here is wisdom: when we cannot raise ourselves up to God, to bring him down to us! So in the sacrament they show carnal wisdom. Oh! It is a fine thing that Christ’s body and ours should be joined together! It seems a fine point that Christ should be hidden in the bread, and so on. But here there is no spiritual wisdom.

The union that the Scripture speaks of is by faith, ascending into heaven and laying hold on Christ there, and going back to the cross and seeing Christ crucified there; and so “he is meat indeed, and drink indeed” (John 6:55), as we see him crucified and satisfying God’s wrath for us, for our sins.

And so again, is it not a clever wisdom to draw men by pictures and likenesses? Are men not delighted with the images of their friends and of their parents? And therefore is it not a good religious policy to have pictures of Christ, and pictures of God the Father? Here is wisdom corresponding to the dealings and affairs of men, but all this is fleshly wisdom. The Scripture speaks mightily against the making of images; the word of God is directly against it. This is fleshly wisdom. Grace does not rule here.

So too, that souls, being very unclean when they go out of this world, should be purged, that there should be some satisfaction, some purgatory, and so on: here there seems to be wisdom. But what then is the blood of Christ for? That is the only purgatory, which purges from all sins, mortal sins, venial sins, all sins.

Again, is it not a seeming wisdom to come to heaven by our own works, by our own merits, so that we may set the people on to good works? Otherwise, they say, we dull their spirits and efforts. Yes, but this is “fleshly wisdom,” this is devilish wit, and so it will prove in the end; for the Scripture goes only to Christ, only Christ. We are saved by faith (Eph 2:8), only by Christ. I will not enter into the point; I only show you what a seeming wisdom they have. But it is not heavenly; it is merely carnal.

3. And that their religion is carnal, only consider that all the points in which they differ from us may be traced back either to belly-policy or to state-policy, either to ambition and riches or to the belly. What is their monarchy for, and all their great preferments, but to increase their ambition? What are their pardons and indulgences for, but to get money basely, as some of their own writers confess? And their purgatory, and the rest? These things are for carnal ends. It is a religion fitted to their own ends. They make whatever they please serve them. Religion, nature, reason, conscience, whatever is good, they make it all stoop to serve the interest of their own cause. Their orders, that is, their spiritual good, must be their advancement. It is only a color laid over carnal ends. The spiritual good is their own advancement. They aim at their own private interest in all their villainies, as if God stood in need of our lie, as if God’s glory were advanced by the devil.

Their government as well as their religion is lies. It is defended by lies, by equivocation and rebellion, by withdrawing the allegiance of subjects and murdering princes. Laws and religion and everything must stoop to their wisdom, under pretense of the spiritual good. These things are known. I only touch on them to breed a deeper hatred of this religion, which is altogether fleshly and carnal. And so far as they are led by carnal wisdom, they are not led by the grace of God. What is their lying for advantage, their dispensations, and their horrible allowing of anything? Is it not merely carnal wisdom?

In a word, their religion is merely policy, if that is not too good a word for it. It is merely carnal policy. It did not come from heaven, but from the “bottomless pit” (Rev 9:2).

They fell from heaven at the very time they grew to their highest, when they were at their peak. This I thought good to touch on in passing from the text, which describes the temper of a true Christian indeed: he is joyful when he is as he should be. The ground of this is a good conscience, and that good conscience arises out of a course of life and conduct led in simplicity and sincerity toward God. For religion has majesty enough in itself, without far-fetched schemes and devices. And the principle from which it comes is “By the grace of God,” in the evidence of the Spirit, and not according to fleshly and carnal wisdom.

In a word, therefore, labor that from the evidence of the Spirit, having your souls sanctified by the Spirit, you may reflect on yourselves and look into your lives, and say truly, as St. Paul does here: My care in my course of life and conduct has been in simplicity. I have cast myself on God and his government, and have not looked to the world. And in sincerity I have aimed at God in all things; I have had no false aims and no aims on the side. I have not spared even my life out of any carnal aim. I have not served myself either in religion or in my course of life, but I have labored to serve God in serving my brethren, and have led my life by the grace of God and by the word of grace, which I labored to know so that I might follow it.

Let us be able, in some measure, to say this in truth. And then we may say further with St. Paul that “this is our rejoicing, the testimony of our conscience.” We shall never lack joy. And then let the world judge of us as it will. There is such strength and power, such a prerogative and majesty in Christian comfort, when a man can, as I said, reflect on himself in this way, that nothing in this world can daunt it. He can reflect that though in a weak measure, yet in truth, and though his failings have been something, his conduct and course of life have been “in simplicity and sincerity.”

It is above all discouragement, above every eclipse of good name, this testimony of conscience, which has God’s testimony with it.

The witness of two is a strong witness. The witness of God and of conscience will so settle our souls that neither bad reports nor any treatment in the world will daunt us. We shall have comfort in all the passages of our lives, be they what they will. Whereas other men, who do not lead their lives in a constant course of holy simplicity and sincerity, are, as the prophet says, like the leaves of the forest (Isa 7:2), shaken with every change, with every rumor of bad news. But with a sound Christian, even in the worst change, though there may be uproars, though there may be an alteration of the state, yet his “heart is fixed” (Ps 57:7); he is not moved.

Likewise, in the hour of death he can say with Hezekiah, You know, Lord, I have led my life in simplicity (Isa 38:3), that I have served you “with a perfect heart,” that is, in sincerity. I have desired and endeavored to grow better, which is all the perfection we have in this world. Sincerity witnessed by growth, and by strength against the contrary, will comfort us in all the alterations and changes in this world, which is like a sea full of trouble, and at the hour of death likewise, and at the day of judgment. This alone will make us able to look Christ in the face.

Truth has a divinity in it, this simplicity and sincerity, more than any earthly thing. It has that in it which is real and spiritual.

When a man has the grace of God in the truth of it, there is a great deal of majesty in it. There is the greatest majesty in heavenly things when they appear most simple, because of their excellency. There is something of God’s in sincerity. As much as a man has in truth, so much he has of God’s. He partakes of the divine nature, as St. Peter says (2 Pet 1:4), as much as he has in truth, however little it may be. And being a branch of God, it will make him look on God in the day of judgment. Why? Because he knows he is in the covenant of grace, that he has title to heaven by Christ.

When a man’s conscience can tell him that he has led his life not by carnal wisdom but in the truth of grace, it will make him stare down Satan and all the troubles of the world, and look to Christ with comfort. Who would not be in such a state? Thus we see how a Christian leads his life: “Not in fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God.” I will add one thing more, and so finish the verse.

We may see from this that the most religious men are the best statesmen.

I know that proud, carnal, Machiavellian dispositions scorn these positions. They think them austere and poor principles, until they come to death; as that wretch said himself, when he came to die, “That he had provided for all things but for death.” But while they are in the full flush of their pride, they think they can manage states and do everything, when in fact they bring the vengeance of God on their own persons and on the state they live in; for God is neither in them nor with them. He is not in them, for they lack grace and are led by carnal wisdom altogether. And he is not with them. God will not give them good success, unless it is to increase their judgment. He will not give good success to those projects they take up contrary to his rule.

Therefore those who will be guided by reasons of religion, and submit themselves to the guidance of God’s blessed Spirit, are best for the state of their own souls and best for the public estate. For does not God know the mysteries of state better than any man? Is he not a better politician than any Ahithophel in the world? If they have any state policy worth the naming, is it not from him? Is it not a beam from that sun? Yes! Why then, who is the better, setting aside differences of ability? Take them alike, a gracious man and another who is not so; let the one fetch his counsel from hell, from darkness, and the other be ruled by reasons of conscience and religion, and there is no comparison.

God will cross and curse the projects of those who work for their own ends, both in themselves and in the state too.

As for the others, who are under grace and the government of grace, God will be wise in them by his Spirit, and he will be wise for them. “Whatsoever a good man doth, it shall prosper” (Ps 1:3). It is a large promise. How wondrously happy and wise were the children of Israel when they kept the covenant of God! This is your wisdom, to keep the commandments of God (Deut 4:6); and their wisdom made them happy. How happy they were in the time of David, who made the statutes of God “the man of his counsel” (Ps 119:24). How happy the state was in Solomon’s time, until Solomon warped and bent to carnal counsel to strengthen himself. How happy his government was until that time, but never after it. They were surrounded by enemies on every side. But, alas, who could hurt the people of God so long as they submitted themselves to the government of grace! They were always happy.

Therefore it is an idle thing to suppose that there will be any good success from carnal projects. No, the only good statesman is the religious man. And it was never better with the church of God, before or since the time of Christ, than when such men were at the helm. Only think of this often, as St. Jude says, “God only wise” (Jude 25). We must all of us light our candle at that fire.

All wisdom, even this poor spark of reason with which God enlightens “every man that comes into the world” (John 1:9), comes from Christ Jesus. “In him are all the treasures of wisdom” (Col 2:3); he is God, and God-man, only wise. There is no wisdom without him. Therefore let us submit ourselves to his government; let us pray to him, and seek wisdom from him in all things. But I go on to the next verse.

For we write none other things unto you than what you read or acknowledge, and I trust you shall acknowledge even to the end (2 Cor 1:13).

Here St. Paul strengthens himself by another course. First, he retires to his own heart and conscience: “My rejoicing is this, the testimony of my conscience…” (2 Cor 1:12). And he sets this as a bulwark against all the slanders and detractions of his opponents whatsoever. He sets it as a flag of defiance, the testimony of his own conscience.

But to set himself the more upright in the hearts of those he had to deal with, knowing what a great advantage it was to have their good opinion, and to wipe away every accusation, he passes from his conscience to their conscience. He says, in effect: As for my own conscience, my rejoicing is this, that you cannot accuse me of having led my life by carnal, false principles, but only by reasons of religion and by the blessed movements of God’s Spirit. No, I can go further than that. For what I say of my own conscience, I dare say you can say too; for “I write no other things than what you read or acknowledge.”

“What you read.” Some take it as “what you know or acknowledge,” because these are distinct things. The Greek word signifies to know or to read, but usually to read. We may well, therefore, take it as most translate it here: “I write no other thing,” concerning my simplicity, “but what you read or acknowledge.” I write of my simplicity simply. I do not speak of my sincerity insincerely, but what I write, you read or acknowledge.

He says this because St. Paul knew he had a place in their conscience. They could not but acknowledge what kind of man he was, for the Spirit was wonderfully effectual by his ministry in their hearts, and they were his epistle, as he says in another place (2 Cor 3:2). And therefore he appeals to their acknowledgment, to their conscience: “We write no other thing…” And for the time to come: “I trust you shall acknowledge to the end.”

So he appeals to their conscience for the present, and he takes the time to come on trust: what their thoughts of him will be, and what his own state will be. You will have grace to think well of me to the end, he says, because you will have ground to think well of me for my constancy. “I hope you shall acknowledge to the end”; and you will have wisdom, and experience of my goodness, to acknowledge to the end.

I will give these things a touch, because they are useful; and only a touch, because I dwelt somewhat on them before, and will have fit occasion for each of them afterward.

Observation. “We write no other things than what you read.”

This seems strange. Why, how could they read other things than what he wrote? Yes, they could! If he had written falsely, if he had not expressed his thoughts in his writings, then they would have read one thing and he would have been another. It is like a woman who paints her face: there is the visage, and there is the true natural countenance. She is not the woman she appears to be. Her face is one thing and she herself is another. But I am as I express myself.

His meaning is this: I speak of my simplicity and sincerity simply and sincerely. I do not speak of my virtues to overreach you, but I speak sincerely; what I speak, you read. For I do not think he means his former epistle, but what he wrote concerning himself and the leading of his life. That which I speak concerning myself, that you read; and what you read, that I speak. This yields me an observation, which, though I had occasion to speak of it when I handled simplicity, I will touch on now:

A Christian man is one man; he acts one man’s part.

He does not have a heart and a heart; he is not a man and a man. There is a harmony between his thoughts and resolutions, between his speeches and his actions. They all sweetly accord together. What he thinks and resolves on, that he speaks; what he speaks, that he writes; what he writes and speaks, that he does. He is one man in all; he does not deal doubly.

It is the easiest thing in the world to be scheming, to be wicked, to play double. The nature of man teaches a man to be false. Man’s heart is full of wickedness. It is a hard thing for a man to be one; and until a man is a gracious man, he will be a double man.

Therefore you must take heed of a fault which is called the abuse of signs, of those signs that serve to express what a man is inwardly. Let your inward disposition and the signs that express it accord. The signs of expression that pass from one man to another are speech, writing, countenance, and the like.

A man should not be one thing within and his speech another. He should not be one thing and his writing another. He should not be one thing and any other expression another.

This abuse of signs and expressions, when they go one way and the heart another, is odious to God, as being contrary both to his nature and to his word. It is contrary to his nature, for he is simple and sincere, he is one in all, there is no shadow of change in him (Jas 1:17), there is no mixture. As it is contrary to his nature, so it is contrary to his word, which bids us not dissemble nor lie one to another (Col 3:9).

Besides its odiousness to God, it makes a man most like the devil, who never appears in his own shape, but always in another. He comes to us in our friends as “an angel of light” (2 Cor 11:14). He never reveals himself in his own colors. Besides all these and similar considerations, it is the overthrow of human society; it cuts its sinews. For what is the bond of human society but the interchange of speech and writing and the like? Now, if these signs are abused, so that they are one thing and we another, so that we do not express the true thought and impression of our hearts, all society is dissolved.

Therefore we cannot hate too much the popish principle of not keeping faith with heretics, as they call them. It is their custom to deal so. As you know, in a war of theirs with the Turks (the story is well known), when the cardinals had broken their promise, after they had in a manner gained the victory, the Turks even cried to Christ that he would revenge their treachery. And the Turks came upon them again, and overcame them, and gave them a mighty overthrow.

Their gross principle of equivocation, and the like, which consists in the abuse of expressions and signs! Yes, their abuse of the blessed sign and seal, an oath, which is the sign of all truth between man and man! Their abuse of the sacrament too! They have abused all God’s signs, and all to evil purposes, to swear with private reservations; whereas the old principle of Isidore is constantly and everlastingly true: “Conceive the oath as you will, it must be understood as he to whom it is sworn understands it, and not as he that swears.”

Therefore undoubtedly popery must fall every day; and judicious men, though they are not gracious, see that it must fall. It should make us hate them deeply, because the courses they take are the overthrow of society. This is an abuse of expressions, of that excellent gift God has given, namely, the tongue, by which another man may understand what is in my heart; and also writing, by which a man may convey his mind many hundreds of miles. Now, these excellent gifts God has given for society, for men to turn them against God and against society must necessarily provoke the majesty of God.

And as it is a sin against society, so it is a sin that is punished by society. All men must necessarily hate those who do so. Those who have no other argument against popery have argument enough from their equivocation. As for those who are not subtle-headed enough to see other things, when they look at the Gunpowder Treason and at their equivocation, there is argument enough for any plain, simple man to hate popery.

Therefore let us be like ourselves in all that we do toward God or men. I had occasion to press the point when I spoke of simplicity, so I will not dwell further on it.

“I write no other thing than what you read or acknowledge.” He means that they acknowledged it in their heart and conscience. What I write of my conduct, that which you have heard, is no other than what you read, and you acknowledge it too; for they had felt the power of his ministry. From this, first of all, observe:

Observation. Where the minister lives by the grace of God, and not by carnal wisdom, God is not only wise in him, but for him.

He is gracious and good for him; he gives him success in the hearts of others. When a man is led by the Spirit of God, the same Spirit who guides him in speaking guides his hearers in hearing, and gives what he says a sweet and a strong report in their hearts. What I write of myself, Paul says, you acknowledge, that my conduct has been in sincerity; and not only my conduct, but my doctrine. In every way you have acknowledged me. The same Spirit who guided me to do so worked in you an acknowledgment of it in your conscience.

Therefore, if you would have the speeches of the ministers take effect, you should ask God not only to guide them in what they are to say, but also with the same Spirit to work in the hearers. And when the same Spirit works in both, what a glorious success there is! As we see here, St. Paul carried himself graciously, both in his own person and in his ministry, in simplicity and sincerity; for it is meant of both.

He taught simple doctrine without any gloss, without any far-fetched beauty from wit or eloquence or the like; and he looked to God in his life and conduct. And as God guided him, so he stirred them up to pray for him, as the word and prayer are always joined together. The word had a report in their hearts, as it had in his own: “What I speak, you acknowledge…”

It is not for us to deliver our minds and let that be the end of it. When we are to speak, we ought beforehand to look up to God and ask that his Spirit be effectual in us, that we may speak in the wisdom and grace of the Spirit; and likewise that it may be effectual to them, that they may acknowledge it, that they may feel in their souls and consciences the power of what we speak and feel in ourselves. So you see the truth of what I said before, that God was not only wise in St. Paul, but he was gracious and good for him in those he had to deal with.

And there is the glory of a good minister who is a humble man and denies carnal wisdom: that God will delight to honor himself by using him as an instrument to do good to others. God will usually carry the report of what he says to the hearts of others.

As for proud men, who speak what they speak by carnal schemes and carnal wisdom and seek themselves, the hearts and consciences of other men usually give back no report to them. For man is naturally proud, and when he sees that even the most excellent man in the world has private aims, he will not be overreached by him, say what he will. If a man sets up his sails for himself, he does not win others over.

But take a man who shows that he seeks the glory of God and the good of the souls he deals with, who denies himself in what he otherwise could do, who does not use the strength of the abilities he has, because he would reveal the simple word, which is most majestic in simplicity. God, seeing this simple and sincere desire, honors and crowns the ministry of such a man with success in the hearts of the people. Therefore St. Paul says here, “I write no other thing” concerning myself, but God has honored me with the fruit of it in your hearts as well, so that you “acknowledge” what I say.

“You acknowledge.” Acknowledge is a deep word. It is more than to “know.” It is more than a conviction of the judgment. It is when the heart and affections yield, when the inward Spirit yields upon experience: I feel and acknowledge that this is true. It is more, I say, than knowledge. The next point, then, that I observe is this:

Observation. God gives his children who love him in simplicity and sincerity a place in the conscience of men.

He gives them a place in the consciences of those who have conscience; for there are some who have no science, that is, no knowledge, and therefore they have no conscience, such as popish superstitious persons and the like. But as for those who deal faithfully, who live in the church and see the glory of God, God gives them a place in the conscience of those they live among and deal with. And they seek to have a place in their conscience more than in their fancy, more than in their opinion and imagination and whim.

A carnal man, so long as he may have the whim, the fancy, and the imagination of his hearers delighted, does not regard what they may inwardly feel from him. He does not regard how he warms their hearts and consciences, and how they acknowledge him within. And therefore, perhaps, if he has a good word for the moment (“Oh, a glorious man!”), that is all he cares for. But he has no place in their conscience, because they do not feel him working there, and he has no aim to be there. A good man seeks to edify and build up the conscience in sound principles, in good courses, in the faith of Christ, in holy obedience: things that will hold out in life and death. If I were speaking to ministers, I would enlarge the point further.

Use. Let us all in our conduct labor rather to approve ourselves to the consciences of men, that they may acknowledge us to be honest, straightforward, faithful men, rather than to please their whims and fancies. For, as Solomon says, “he that tells a man the truth, shall have more favor at the last, than he that dissembleth” (Prov 28:23). For the other man’s conscience will witness that he has dealt rightly and faithfully with him, that he is an honest man, and goes on in the same principles still.

Let us therefore look first to our own conscience, and then to the conscience of others. And if we cannot approve ourselves to our own conscience and to the conscience of others, alas, what will become of us? How will we approve ourselves to God and to Jesus Christ at the day of judgment? There is no man but a sound Christian who approves himself to the conscience of another man. As for any other man, it is just of God in his judgment to find him out sooner or later. He may wind himself into the conscience for a time, as the superstitious papists do, but sooner or later he is found out to be a dissembler and to bring false wares.

And so it is in civil conduct. No one will have a place in the conscience of other men, so that they think them and their courses good, but those who are sound Christians. As for most, those who are not led by the grace of God’s Spirit, all men’s consciences condemn them. They are smitten and censured there, and judged there.

Besides this, there is their own conscience, which perhaps they will not give leave to tell them something in their ear that they would be loath to hear: This you are, this you did, and this you spoke amiss. They will not allow conscience to speak, but drown it in sensuality and stifle it. They take this course, they think they are well enough, and they never want to be themselves. A carnal man will hardly give conscience leave to speak until it will speak, whether he wants it to or not, at the hour of death and the day of judgment, when God lets it loose upon him.

But let them take this course as long as they will, yet in the conscience of other men they have no place; for they do not live, as St. Paul says here, “in simplicity and sincerity, not by carnal wisdom, but by the grace of God.”

This is the benefit a good man has in this life: however much he may sometimes have the ill words of carnal men and their mood against him, yet nevertheless, if they are in the church and have any illumination, any judgment, he has their conscience for him. No, I say more: they cannot but think reverently of a man of God, of a good Christian (I do not speak of ministers only). They cannot but think reverently of them and reverence them in their consciences, do what they can.

For it is not in men’s power to frame whatever notions they want, to frame whatever opinions they want of men. There is a necessity of reason. The principles, as we say, are so strong that a man cannot say they are false, do what he can, because the light is visible to the understanding. As a man cannot say the sun shines when it is night, when it is dark, because it is a falsehood plain to the senses, so a man cannot deny the principles of any art, if they are principles, because there is such a light of truth that overpowers him and, as it were, compels the inward man.

So it is here. There is such a majesty in grace and in the good courses of a Christian that another man who lives a wicked life cannot think of him what he would. He may force himself to speak what he pleases and force strange opinions of him. But when he is sober himself, if he has any relics of conscience in him, if he is not altogether besotted, he must necessarily think well in his conscience of such a man’s courses. This is the majesty and honor of good things: however much they may have the moods and passions and fancies of men against them, yet they have their conscience for them, yes, even of wicked men when they are themselves.

Take the wickedest man at the hour of death, if he has himself under command, so that his spirits are not disturbed, and ask him whether he justifies the courses of such and such men. He will answer, “Oh yes! I wish I had led them myself.” What is it that besots them? Sensuality and such courses; for men who are not led by the grace of God are led by outward things, which besot the judgment for a time. But when that dullness is past, when a wicked man is stripped of everything and is best able to judge, then he likes such courses.

If the worst men will in their conscience acknowledge the best persons and the best things one day (no, they do it now, if they will allow themselves to be themselves), then let us take such courses as our own consciences may justify, as St. Paul says here, “This is my glorying, the testimony of my conscience”; and likewise the conscience of those I live with: “I write no other thing,” but what you acknowledge in your consciences yourselves.

“And I trust you shall acknowledge to the end.” This word “trust” does not imply, as it usually does in common speech, an uncertainty about a thing, a moral conjecture: I trust or hope it may be so; it may be otherwise, but I hope well. It is not an uncertain notion with the fear of the contrary. Rather, the word implies a gracious disposition of dependence upon God, “I trust in God,” as it is expressed in some other places.

Now you acknowledge me, and “I trust in God you shall acknowledge me to the end.” So here St. Paul sets down what he resolved to be by the grace of God, and what in the outcome he would be; because holy resolutions are seconded with gracious assistance.

And likewise he sets down what they would judge of him to the end: I trust that as you acknowledge me now, so to the end you will have grace to do so, and I will have grace to be so. I will be as I am and have been. I have led my life “in simplicity, and sincerity”; and as you have acknowledged me to be such a one, so you will have grace still to acknowledge me, “I hope, or trust.” I will not enter into any commonplace; I will only speak what the text puts to me.

“I trust you shall acknowledge to the end.” Here he begins with his hope that their judgment of him will continue so to the end.

St. Paul here takes a good view, a good opinion, of his children whom he had begotten to the faith in Corinth. I hope, he says, that as you are, and as you judge of me, so you will judge of me to the end.

Why does St. Paul have such a trust of them as of himself?

Reason 1. Among many reasons this is one. He knew that where God had begun a good work, he would finish it. He saw that God had begun a good work in them, and therefore he knew that God would go on with it.

Reason 2. And then again, God planted in him a good hope and trust of them, because hope and trust stir up endeavor toward the thing hoped for. Desperation quells all courage and cools all endeavor. Now God, because he would have us constant in our conduct and in the expressions of our love to other men, stirs up in us a trust that all will be well with them.

Reason 3. Likewise St. Paul sets down the hope of them that God had put into his heart for his own comfort; for it is a great comfort to a minister, or to a Christian, when he has to deal with such as he trusts are good and will be good. It is a heaven upon earth. And therefore God plants good opinions of other men in us for this end: partly to stir up our endeavor to do all good to them, and partly to comfort us.

For if the final state of any man were revealed to us, that God had no delight in them concerning their salvation, who would do any service of love for them? Or who would have comfort in conversing with them? But when God stirs up in our hearts a good opinion of them, it is partly good for them, to stir up our endeavor to do all good for them; and it is good for us, it is a great comfort.

And again, it was an encouragement to them, when they heard of St. Paul’s trust of them to the end, that they should continue as they were. For to have the good thought and opinion of another man, especially the good thought of a pastor, is a great encouragement. And the best Christians in the world often have need of it, besides their judgment of themselves, which is sometimes shaken by Satan, so that they give a false witness of their own state. Oh, what a comfort it is for a man to have the judgment of a man who looks on without passion and with no temptation upon him: You have been thus, and my trust and confidence is in God and in the promise of God, looking to your former course, that you will be so to the end! He gives no false witness.

St. Paul speaks thus to stir up his own endeavor to do good to them, and to comfort them, that so great an apostle should have so good an opinion of them.

Therefore let us labor, I say, to hold as good an opinion of those among whom we live as their conduct will bear. Two things are usually the object of our hope and trust. While men are here, before their state is settled in hell, God may have mercy on them and deliver them out of the snares of Satan. That hope should stir up some endeavor to pray for them, seeing their states are not desperate; they have not yet sunk into hell. Or else, if we see them in the state of grace, we should express our love in the services and offices of love, because God has already set his stamp on them.

There is no man living of whom we may not have trust and hope, in one way or another. As for those in whom we see no grace, we may, as the apostle says in 2 Timothy 2:24, have patience towards them, to see if at any time God will have mercy on them, to deliver them out of the “snare of the devil” (2 Tim 2:26).

It is not good to give up all good opinion and all hope of any man living. The worst sign is when we see men malicious and opposing known truths, because this comes near the sin against the Holy Spirit. But because we may err in that, it is good to take the safest way. And where we see evidences of grace, even in the smallest measure, let us entertain and cherish a good hope, because it will cherish what we are all bound to, which is to love one another. We are bound to love one another and to show all the offices of love. Now what stirs up love and all the offices of love is hope. Faith works by hope as well as by love. Faith works by love in all duties, and it works by hope in this duty. If we hope that God will have mercy on them, that will stir up our endeavor. But we are not much in this error: we are rather ready to think too well of men than too ill.

“I trust you shall acknowledge to the end.” Besides his good opinion of them to the end, St. Paul here implies his own resolution and purpose to hold on in good courses to the end: my trust in God’s grace is that you shall acknowledge to the end what I have written to you of my own courses. As if he had said, I am Paul now, and you shall find me Paul hereafter. You shall find me always an honest man, like myself. For as he whom I have trusted “is yesterday, today,” tomorrow, “and the same for ever” (Heb 13:8), so likewise by God’s grace I hope to be the same that I have been. I hope I shall be like myself.

The grounds of St. Paul’s trust that he should be so are partly the act itself, together with the endeavor. “I trust” I shall be so “to the end,” because I trust in God to the end, and God is good to those who trust in him. How often this is repeated in the Psalms! He is the God of them that trust in him (Ps 37:3); “he is a sun and a shield” (Ps 84:11). He is all that is good, and he keeps away all evil. All the promises are settled upon trusting in God. Now because I have confidence that God will do so, I stir up my endeavor to show that it is not a presumptuous trust. I trust in him who will perform the conditions of the covenant made to those who honor him by trusting in him.

St. Paul knew what God had done. He knew that he who had bestowed the firstfruits would make up the harvest. He knew that he who had laid the first stone would set up the roof. He knew by experience that God had begun a good work in him, and that he would finish his own work. That he knew by former experience.

And then he knew the promises of God, the promises of the covenant. St. Paul had many such grounds to bear him up, that he should continue to the end in a course of simplicity and sincerity, and in the grace of God.

But along with his trust St. Paul added a holy and heavenly course to come to this end. What course did St. Paul take?

That he might hold out constantly in holy resolutions to the end, St. Paul, first, judiciously considered what might hinder him, between that time and the end of his race and course. He balanced all the things he could possibly suffer, and in the other balance he laid the things he had in hope and promise. And he resolves: all that I can suffer that should shake me off from my course, it is not “worthy of the glory that shall be revealed” (Rom 8:18). If you balance both, he says, you will conclude this.

There are many things that may shake us in our Christian course. St. Paul thought of all Satan’s snares: “I am not ignorant of his enterprises,” he says (2 Cor 2:11). And then as for the world, which might throw its showy trash in his way, he says, “I am crucified to the world, and the world is crucified to me” (Gal 6:14). And as for anything that might happen to him, he knew that the outcome of all things should work for the best to those who love God. He includes himself (Rom 8:28). He says, We know it beforehand; we believe it before troubles or evils come. Come what will, the outcome of all things is in the rule and power of God, and as he pleases, all shall work for the best to those who love God. And therefore as I am, so I will be. What should hinder? If all things help me, nothing can hinder me.

And then St. Paul took this course: he looked forward still. “I press forward to the prize of the high calling” (Phil 3:14). He forgot what was behind, and he resolved to go forward. He had a mind to grow better and better always, and this comforted him that he should hold out to the end. For it is the reward of a growing Christian to have a sweet sense of his present state of grace in God’s favor, and to hold out to the end. Such a man is like the sun, which keeps growing upward until it comes to high noonday, as Solomon says (Prov 4:18). St. Paul took this course. He strove for perfection. He had a crown in his eye, a crown of righteousness and glory, and that will not let a man be idle and cold who has such a thing in his eye. To whet his endeavor, St. Paul looked not only forward but to glory. For as Christ looked to “the glory, and despised the shame” (Heb 12:2), so St. Paul looked to the crown, and despised all his sufferings.

Then besides, St. Paul was conscious of his own sincerity, for grace carries its own witness with it. As he says here, I know my conduct: “This is the testimony of my conscience, that in simplicity and sincerity I have walked before you.” He knew that sincerity is accompanied with constancy and perseverance. It is a rule that constancy and perseverance are always companions of simplicity and sincerity. So St. Paul can say, I have begun in sincerity up to now. Now I am sincere, and have expressed to you the truth of my heart and of my courses. And as I am, so I mean to be. Therefore, having begun in sincerity, I know I shall end in perseverance and constancy.

Truth of grace is accompanied with constancy. All other things are but grass; they are but shows; they will vanish. But sincerity, the truth of grace, is a divine thing. “The word of the Lord,” that is, grace wrought by “the word of the Lord, that endures for ever” (1 Pet 1:25). Where there is truth of grace, even if it is only as a grain of mustard seed, there is perseverance to the end. St. Paul knew this well, and therefore he builds his trust on these things, on these courses that he took.

We should all take the like course. Look to St. Paul’s grounds, and take his courses. Those are the ones that will hold out to the end. Judiciously consider all the difficulties; put into the balance what impediments we shall have from the world, and what will be great to us when it is balanced with the glory to come! And along with that, aim forward still, as St. Paul did. And take another course that he likewise took, to depend upon grace continually. He knew there was a throne of grace open to him always, for the time to come as well as for the time past and present. He knew that Christ in heaven was always full of grace. He knew he should not lack in any emergency when he went to him. He knew that God would not leave destitute or forsake any of his children, those he has called to see the necessity of wisdom, and of courage, and comfort.

Let us do, therefore, as St. Paul was answered from heaven, and say, “His grace is sufficient for us” (2 Cor 12:9); if not to keep us from all sin, yet to keep us in comforting courses, to keep us in sincerity and simplicity. The grace of God is sufficient to bring us to heaven.

Let us persuade ourselves that if we go on in Christian courses, in that confidence, God will give us grace to bring us to heaven. This was St. Paul’s confidence. Therefore he says, “I trust you shall acknowledge to the end,” because I know that I shall continue in simplicity and sincerity to the end. God will keep me; I shall have grace to beg, and he will give me grace; for his gifts of this kind can never be repented of.

Let us take from St. Paul this course and this comfort: this course, to trust in God for the time to come; to have constant resolutions for the time to come, to cleave to God and to good courses.

Let us every day renew our covenants of this kind, and our resolutions to do nothing against conscience and to go on in Christian courses. Let it be our constant course. For as God’s children know they shall continue to the end, so it is wrought from a resolution to do so. And this resolution stirs them up to depend upon God by prayer, that he would “knit their hearts to him, that they may fear his name” (Ps 86:11); that he would give them grace sufficient, and the like; that he would establish their hearts, as David prays.

This resolution drives them to prayer and to all good courses, that God would establish them in every good work, in every good thought and desire, and that he would knit their hearts nearer to him. Resolve, therefore, every day, in dependence upon God, to take good courses, so that whenever any judgment of God shall come, or when the hour of death shall light on us, it may not come as a snare, but may overtake us in good resolutions. It is no matter how we die in outward respects, if we die in good resolutions.

As we resolve, so we are, for our resolutions are full of will. Wishes and resolutions carry the whole man with them, and God esteems a man by his will. For if there are impediments that are not impossible to man, resolution will break through them all. God judges men by their resolutions: “Teach me, O Lord, thy statutes, and I will keep them even to the end” (Ps 119:33). “I have sworn, and I will perform it, that I will keep thy righteous judgments” (Ps 119:106). Every day let us take these promises to ourselves, and bind ourselves with them to God.

In vows, be cautious. I do not speak of them now; I speak of purposes and resolutions. Always take God in with them, saying, I trust in God, and depend upon God in good courses (so that God may not punish us and give us over to desertion for our presumption), and then we may know that our state is good.

Look to St. Paul, and see the mark of a good conscience. It looks back, it looks to the present, and it looks to the time to come. “Our rejoicing is this,” that we have conducted ourselves well up to now. Is that enough for a good conscience? No! You have acknowledged me to be as I have written, to have a good conscience in my ministerial course and in my conduct; and you shall acknowledge me still.

This is the glory of a good life. If a man looks above him, he has God to witness for him. If he looks to the world, to persons who judge rightly, he has them to judge for him. He dares appeal to their conscience. If he looks within him, he has a good witness from his own conscience. Whichever way he looks he has comfort. “You have acknowledged me,” and you shall acknowledge: I know God will not leave me for the time to come.

So what makes up a complete good conscience is looking to the time to come as well as to the time past and present. A good conscience that is purged by the blood of Christ from the guilt of former sins shall always have grace to establish the heart in good resolutions. For where there is a cleansing from the guilt, where there is pardon of sin, there is always given a power against sin for the time to come.

We usually say in divinity that the grace of God and a purpose to live in any sin cannot dwell in one heart. And it is true: if there is not a purpose to obey God in all things, to leave every wicked way (Isa 55:7), if there is an inclination to any iniquity, the heart and conscience is not good. A good conscience gives testimony of the time past, present, and to come.

And always, as I said, remember to take God into all your resolutions, or else you are liable to St. James’s reproof in a higher degree. “Go to now, ye that say, We will do this, today and tomorrow” (Jas 4:13), and that in strength and confidence of your own, not remembering the uncertainty of human events, how many things may fall out by which God may cross it. If it is a presumptuous speech in matters of this life, how much more in matters of grace for the time to come, which God alone has in his keeping, he who “gives the will and the deed according to his good pleasure” (Phil 2:13). Therefore we should “make an end of our salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12).

Let us do as St. Paul did: trust in God. My trust and dependence on God is this, that I shall do so, because I have a constant resolution to be so to my life’s end.

Therefore join them both together. Every day let us renew our dependence on God and his promises. The life of a Christian is a dependent life. Salvation is wrought outside of us by Christ, procured by him; and our being carried to salvation is wrought outside of us by grace coming from Christ. He keeps the fountain, and he lets out the streams more or less as we humbly depend on him. So both salvation is outside of us, and our being carried to salvation is of grace; all is outside of us. How this should make us carry ourselves humbly, in dependence on Christ for salvation and for the carrying to it! And therefore resolve not to offend God in anything, but to trust in God and to look to his word. To trust in God and his word is all one (Ps 130:5). Thus we should take St. Paul’s course, to trust in God, and renew our purposes every day.

And then take St. Paul’s comfort to yourselves. Persuade yourselves that “neither things present, nor things to come,” as St. Paul says (Rom 8:38), nothing shall intercept your crown. For what he said here beforehand, he says of himself from experience in 2 Timothy 4:7-8, a little before he died (this was the last epistle he ever wrote). He says here that they should acknowledge him to the end; and there, when his end had come, what does he say of himself? “I have fought a good fight, I have kept the faith, I have run my race; now henceforth is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.”

It is as if he said, Before this time I depended upon God, that he would carry me to my end, as he has done; and now I am to close up my days, and my sun is to set. All this I have done. God, who was with me from the beginning, is with me to the end. I have done all this, and what remains now but a crown of righteousness?

Therefore, I beseech you, take the time to come into your trust, as well as any time past. Resolve well, and trust along with your resolution. Live by faith and obedience, and join them both together, the one to be the evidence of the truth of the other. Then take into your trust for the time to come all the good that you can promise yourselves from God. You cannot honor him more.

“I trust you shall acknowledge to the end.” St. Paul says of himself that the grace of God should lead him to his end, and that they should acknowledge it. You shall not acknowledge me to the end to be rich, or to be in favor, or the like, but this you shall acknowledge, that I shall be the same man. As for anything in the world, it is uncertain. We cannot promise ourselves, nor can others promise for us. But you shall acknowledge this, that I will be as I have been to the end. “You have acknowledged, and you shall acknowledge …”

Seeing that acknowledging is repeated twice as an evidence of a good Christian, to approve of the image of God in another and to acknowledge it, therefore examine your hearts often as to what you acknowledge. Do you acknowledge that abstaining from evil courses, from fraud and cunning in your callings, that abstaining from sensual living, from carnal scheming, is good? Why then, take that course, and resolve upon it. Are the courses of God’s children good? Why will you oppose them? St. Paul gives an excellent rule in Romans 14:22: We should not condemn ourselves in that which we allow. Do you approve in your judgment and in your conscience the best courses, as indeed you will do one day? Then do not condemn yourselves in the present for them. “Happy is the man that condemneth not himself in that which he alloweth,” says the apostle (Rom 14:22).

Examine often and seriously how your judgment stands in the ways of God, how it is built, whether upon human fancy, to please any man, or upon divine directions, the word of God. If it is built on the word, take heed that you do not condemn yourselves in those courses and those persons that you approve. Do you in your soul justify such persons? Why do you not join with them? Why do you not walk their ways? Are such courses good? Why do you not take them? Your justifying them in the end will be little to your comfort, if you condemn them all your life against your conscience. For afterward it is not so much a work of grace for you to justify good courses and to acknowledge good things. In most men it is not so much a work of grace as it is the evidence of the thing.

And when the cloud of sensuality, and the fume that rises out of worldly pomp, is taken away, then the natural conscience comes to see better things clearly. This is not from the love of them, not that it is changed and transformed with the love of them; but God so reveals it to them, to make them justify his sentence of damnation the more. He revealed to them better courses than they took, and it shall justify their damnation.

We are often deceived about how men end. They acknowledge good ways and good courses; and on the other side some of God’s good children pronounce the contrary. But let no one trust to that. Good courses are so evident and clear that if men are not atheists they must acknowledge them, especially when the impediment that hindered them before is taken away. You must acknowledge, therefore “acknowledge” now; not in your hearts only, but acknowledge them by laying aside your opposition, by casting away your weapons, and by joining with them in good courses. Do not set your hands against good courses and good persons; set your tongues to speak for their good. Take God’s part; stand on God’s side. It is the best side. If you approve it only hereafter, it will be a barren approval, and it will be no comfort to you; it often falls out so.

O beloved! Whatever other courses you take, they will sink and fall. They will sink first in your own souls, and no one will be readier to condemn you than your own conscience. When God makes you wiser, you will censure yourselves. What folly it was! How I was deluded by this bad company and by that! For wicked company is wondrously powerful to infuse bad opinions. So the spies infused discouragement by the speech they made about the giants in the land, and the like, and they altered the mind of the whole people (Num 13:33). It is a dangerous thing to associate with wicked persons. The devil slides into the soul along with their carnal reasoning and alters the judgment for the time, so that those who keep such company are not as wise as conscience would make them, and as they might be, if they did not listen to the hissing of the serpent.

First, if you take any course but a good one, your own conscience is at hand, and will be the first to find you out. For sin is a base thing, a work of darkness. It must be exposed. It is a madness. It must be manifest to all men. Popery and all their tricks must be exposed, and the whore must lie naked and stink. Nothing shall be so abominable as popery and popish persons before long.

Truth will get the victory in the consciences of people, and good courses will win approval. Therefore, if you do not approve them, you shall be unhappy first in this life, and everlastingly hereafter. This shall be the principal torment in hell: that you saw better courses than you lived in, and you would not give your judgments leave to lead you. There was something better, conscience told you, but you gave way to your lusts and to the insinuations of wicked men, instruments of the devil, rather than to the motions of conscience and of God’s Spirit, who awakened conscience.

This, I say, will increase your torment in hell all the more: that you might have done otherwise if you had had grace. But you willingly betrayed yourselves. You silenced conscience. You willingly condemned yourselves in the things you acknowledged were evil. You did what you condemned, and you did not practice what your judgment approved.

God will have little work to do at the day of judgment in condemning most men in the church; for, alas, their own consciences will condemn them. The consciences of all will condemn them, that their courses were evil.

And that is what makes wicked men so cruel, especially if they get into a place of authority. They know they are not approved; they are not acknowledged in the consciences of those who are judicious. They know they are condemned there, and they fret and fume, and think to force another opinion of themselves upon others, but it will not be. And that makes them unable to endure the sight of those who are of a contrary judgment. They think themselves condemned in the hearts of such men, and that makes them cruel, especially those who have some illumination. They cannot bear to let their own conscience take its course; they cannot bear to see themselves. They think themselves condemned in the judgment of others; and those who think that others have prejudged their courses to be evil carry an implacable hatred. It is a desperate case.

Do you know that they think your courses evil, and on good ground, and do you hate them? And do you hate to be reformed yourself? Will this always hold out? No! As I said before, truth is eternal! What you acknowledge must continue. It will be acknowledged. It will get the victory at the day of judgment by men and angels. Truth will have the victory. It is eternal. Take that course for the present, that you may be good for the present and hold out to the end, as we see the Corinthians here: “You do acknowledge me, and you shall acknowledge me to the end.” And testify to the world that you acknowledge the best things and the best persons, that you may be one with them by love here, and in heaven forever hereafter.

“I trust you shall acknowledge to the end.” To close this point, let me seal it up with this. Put this question to yourselves: What state are you in when you come to the communion? Is it well with you or not? If not, why will you live even a little while in a doubtful, in a dangerous, state, given the uncertainty of our lives and their shortness, and the danger of the wrath of God, when there is so little between you and eternal damnation? Are you resolved to be wicked, then? No! If you are not atheists you will not say so. Do you intend to be good, and to come and make your covenant with God? Yes! Why, then, resolve to be so.

A good conscience looks not only back to sins past, to repent of them; but for the time to come it resolves to please God in all things and to hold out to the end.

Some make a mockery of the holy things of God. One part of the year they will be holy, a rotten, foolish disposition of people who are popish. In Lent they will practice a little austerity, and oh, they will please God wondrously! But before and after they are devils incarnate. So they make that part of the year like a good parenthesis in an ignorant and foolish speech. A good parenthesis is unseemly in a wicked speech, and a good patch is unseemly on a ragged garment. So it is with the lives of those who make a good show at that time. (There are few who do so; they are scarce among us. Men are such atheists that there is no outward reformation.) But if there is, if they give themselves leave to behave decently and to respect holy things for a little time, afterward they return to their looseness again.

Does this patching out of a holy life please God? No, no! “I have sworn, and I will perform it, that I will keep thy righteous statutes,” says David (Ps 119:106). And St. Paul says, I have resolved to be so to the end; I will be myself still. So where grace is, there is a resolution against all sin for the time to come. If you do not entertain this resolution, to walk “in holiness and righteousness all the days of your life” (Luke 1:75), acknowledge no benefit by Christ’s redemption, and do not come near the holy things of God.

This is the honest heart that the Scripture speaks of, which receives the seed deep into it; which hates sin above all miseries and ills, and which loves grace above all other good things. Therefore if any infirmity comes, such a man can say it is against his resolution: I did not purpose this, I did not plot it, I do not allow myself in it. Here is an honest heart. The word is fixed deeply in such a heart. It comes with an honest resolution. If you come to the sacrament and purpose to live in sin, you profane the holy things of God. The word of God will do you no good. It will never take deep root to save you. So much for St. Paul’s resolution for the time to come: “I trust you shall acknowledge to the end.”

As also you have acknowledged us in part, that we are your rejoicing, even as ye are ours in the day of the Lord Jesus (2 Cor 1:14).

You have acknowledged us in part, he says, now that you have repented. For when he wrote the former epistle to them, they had many corruptions among them in doctrine and in conduct. About the sacrament they held many corrupt opinions. In conduct they tolerated the incestuous man among them, without casting him out. And many of them doubted the resurrection. Now, when he wrote the first epistle, it had a blessed effect in their hearts. They repented and began to acknowledge St. Paul, although they had taken a dislike to him because of the bad information of some presumptuous teachers. So now he says again, “You have acknowledged us in part that now we are your rejoicing…” Observe this, which I touch on by way of connection with what went before:

Observation. It is a sign of a repentant man, of a man who has repented of his sins and is in a good state, to acknowledge the one who has told him of his sins, to acknowledge his pastor.

For a false heart swells against reproof. If the Corinthians had not been sound-hearted, they would never have endured St. Paul’s sharp epistles. But now, though he tells them their faults plainly (and indeed it is a very sharp epistle in many passages), they acknowledge him to be a good and gracious man, a faithful teacher.

Use. Let it be a test of your state: can you endure a plain, a powerful, an effectual ministry? More particularly, can you endure a plain, effectual friend, who brings what is spoken by the minister more particularly home to your hearts? It is a sign of a good heart, of a repentant heart, that wants to be better. But if not, it is a sign that you have a love held in reserve for some special sin that will be your bane; it is a sign that your souls have not repented. You see this later in another chapter of this epistle, where he sets down the fruits of repentance (2 Cor 7:9-10). And here is one sign: “You have acknowledged us in part…”

In the words,

First, there is the thing itself: “acknowledgment.”

Secondly, the object of it: “that we are your rejoicing, and you are ours.” There is a mutual exchange of rejoicing.

And then the time is set down: “the day of the Lord Jesus,” the second coming of Christ.

To speak a little of “acknowledgment.”

“Acknowledgment” is more than knowledge. For knowledge is a bare, naked grasp of a thing, and acknowledgment is when the will and affections yield to receiving and owning the thing known. So a father not only knows his son but acknowledges him; a king acknowledges his subjects, and the subjects their prince. It is not only a knowledge of such people but an acknowledging of them, acknowledging a relation to them. So you acknowledge us; that is, in the relation in which we stand to you, as faithful and good ministers, and good men too.

What does St. Paul mean by saying, “You have acknowledged us”? Does he mean himself?

No, not altogether. He means, You have acknowledged me in my faithful preaching of Christ to you. Wherever the minister is acknowledged as a minister, Christ is acknowledged. For what are we? We are only the ministers of Christ, no more and no less. St. Paul says, “Let a man esteem of us as of the ministers of Christ” (1 Cor 4:1). If people think of us as more than ministers, as if we could make and coin things of our own, they think too much of us. If they think meanly and basely of us, they think too little of us. “Let a man think of us as of the ministers of Christ,” no more and no less. It is enough that they acknowledge us as such, as the ministers of Christ. So ministers are never acknowledged without Christ being acknowledged through them; for theirs is a relative office, since they are the ministers of Christ.

How then shall we know whether we acknowledge the minister or not?

If we first acknowledge Christ through him.

How shall we know that we acknowledge Christ?

1. To acknowledge Christ as God-man in his natures is to have a great deal of love for him, that he would be born for us, and a great deal of reverence, in that he is God. We must never think of him without a great deal of reverence, and must handle nothing concerning him without much love; he is God-man, God incarnate.

The one who does not despair, who does believe Christ’s full satisfaction to God, and who does not mingle other things with it, popish satisfaction and purgatory for venial sins, acknowledges Christ in his priestly office. The one who goes boldly to God through Christ’s intercession in heaven, and boldly trusts in the satisfaction of Christ amid the clamors of conscience and the accusations of Satan, acknowledges Christ’s priestly office. This is to acknowledge Christ as priest: in our boldness and liberty toward God, and in the confidence of our conscience that our sins are forgiven. To acknowledge Christ as King is to yield subjection to his word and to let him rule us. To acknowledge him as a prophet is to be instructed and guided by him.

But those who are ruled by their own lusts and by the examples of others, and do not care for the spiritual leading of Christ, do not acknowledge him. “Let not this man reign over us,” they say (Luke 19:14). They shake off his bonds; they are “sons of Belial” (Judg 19:22), without a yoke. And at the day of judgment they will be reckoned among those who do not know Christ, because to know him and not to acknowledge him is to no purpose. God knows us well enough; but if he does not know us and acknowledge us to be his, what will become of us at the day of judgment? “I know you not,” he says (Matt 25:12); that is, he does not acknowledge them to be his.

So if our knowledge is to know Christ only in general, without giving ourselves up to be ruled by him and directed by him, this is not to acknowledge him. And to know him and not to acknowledge him will be no comfort to us, just as it will be no comfort to us for him to know us and not to acknowledge us. Those who acknowledge Paul, or any minister, are brought to acknowledge Christ through him.

2. And then, to give you a familiar taste of these things, those acknowledge the minister who acknowledge the word to be the word of God, to be from him. What is that? It is when they are cast into the form and mold of the word, and are willing to be framed, to be such as the word would have them, to be pliable to it: if it threatens, to be terrified; if it comforts, to be raised up; to be fashioned in every way to the word. Then they acknowledge the word; then they feel it to be God’s word. Why? Because they feel it leavening the soul, making all its powers holy and full of comfort. As leaven changes the whole lump, so the word of God, when we are cast into it and embrace it, frames and fashions the whole man to be holy, as the word is holy.

This is to acknowledge the word of God: to hear it as the word of God, to hear it with reverence, as we would hear something from a great potentate, from a judge, from a man who has dealings with us. We know the word of God, and acknowledge him in the minister, when we tremble at it and hear it with obedience. As Cornelius says, “We are all here in the presence of God, to hear whatsoever shall be commanded us of God” (Acts 10:33). “Whatsoever”: without making distinctions, without putting off the word, declining it, and shifting. When there is a willing yielding to everything we are told, and an intention to obey it, this is to acknowledge the word of God; otherwise we do not.

St. Paul says comfortingly to the Thessalonians that they received the word of God, as the word of God (1 Thess 2:13); that is, they acknowledged the word of God, because they heard it with such reverence and obedience and respect.

So you may know that you acknowledge the minister if you acknowledge Christ, if you acknowledge the preacher and the word he preaches. And you acknowledge him when you will be directed by him; when, as he speaks in the name of Christ, you esteem highly the “consolations of the Almighty” (Job 15:11) in his mouth, and let the strongholds of sin be beaten down by his ministry. This is to acknowledge the minister. No good is received from God’s ordinance except where it is not only known but acknowledged.

Christ comes to us in his ministers as well as through the poor, and one day it will be known that we have rejected, not poor men like ourselves, but Jesus Christ. For we ministers are joined with Christ in acceptance, or in neglect and contempt. In what we do faithfully in our ministry, we are joined with Christ in our acceptance. We accept Christ when we accept and esteem the minister; or we reject Christ when we reject and refuse and make light of the ministers of Christ.

The hypocrisy of man’s heart is hardly discerned so much in anything as in this. Let any command come from great men who have power over our bodies or estates, to advance us or debase us. Oh! There is much alarm, and much heed taken. Wondrous heed is paid to penal laws and statutes, so that we do not run under the blow of them! Now God by his ministers threatens hell and damnation, hardness of heart, and throwing us from one sin to another; and we hear these things as judges, if you please, as if they did not concern us. One day it will be known that they are God’s ministers and that it is God’s word, if we have grace to acknowledge them as speaking from God.

This is to acknowledge the minister: to be directed by him, and to hear what he speaks in the name of God. We are ambassadors of God, says St. Paul, and entreat you, as if Christ himself were on earth he would entreat you, to be reconciled to God (2 Cor 5:20). Therefore when you refuse our entreaty, you refuse Christ who comes with us. Those who will not hear him here will hear that sentence hereafter. They must not expect to be regarded by him then. But of that I will speak hereafter.

“As ye have acknowledged us in part.” You acknowledge us as ministers, you acknowledge our doctrine, you acknowledge Christ through us.

How do these Corinthians acknowledge St. Paul in part?

“That we are your rejoicing, even as ye are ours, in the day of the Lord Jesus.” “You have acknowledged us, that we are your rejoicing.” What is the meaning of that? You have acknowledged us, owning that you have cause to rejoice much, right up to the day of judgment. And then you will rejoice in earnest that I was ever your apostle, that you ever had grace to listen to me, that you ever had such a sincere, straightforward apostle, who would tell you the truth and gain you to Christ.

“That we are your rejoicing.” From this we may observe that:

Doctrine. A faithful minister is the rejoicing of the people.

That is, of those people who are good and have any grace in them. And not only here; ministers will be so at the day of judgment as well.

Why?

Reason. Because a faithful minister brings to them him who is the cause of all joy, him who is Isaac, “laughter,” Christ Jesus, at whose very birth there was a message of joy from heaven.

For all joy and all glory is originally and fundamentally in God reconciled. That is certain. There is our joy, in God reconciled. For naturally, before God is reconciled, our hearts are full of confusion; they are so far from joy and glory that they are full of horror. Now God is reconciled by Christ’s satisfaction and obedience, his full satisfaction witnessed by his resurrection. And upon this comes our glorying, to be in Christ, who has brought us to be at one with God, with the God of glory. “Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” says St. Peter, “that hath begotten us to a lively hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ…” (1 Pet 1:3). Now we have a lively hope, we have a glorious hope, we may glory in it, in the resurrection of Christ; considering that his resurrection is an evidence that the debt is paid, since our Surety is out of prison, being risen again.

But all this must be opened to us, and offered to us, and applied to us by the ministry. What Christ has done and what he will do must be opened to us and offered to us, so that we may receive Christ as he thus graciously brings us to God. And faith must be worked in us, to join us to Christ; and this is by the ministry.

Now in the next place, when the ministry does this, it teaches us that God is reconciled by the satisfaction of Christ, and teaches the nature and offices of Christ, and the benefits we have by Christ. It unfolds “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph 3:8). The ministry offers Christ; and God by his Spirit works grace in the ministry, grace to believe and to walk worthy of Christ. Upon this comes glorying in the ministry, in the faithful preaching of Christ, crucified and risen, and in its teaching us to walk worthy of Christ.

So it is not that anyone should glory in the minister for his own sake, but in that he brings us to Christ, and Christ brings us to God, in whom is all our glory. So we see the ground of it, how St. Paul was the rejoicing of the Corinthians: because he brought them to Christ.

The office of ministers is to be wooers, to make up the marriage between Christ and Christians’ souls. Now the rejoicing in a good minister lies here, when we are brought to Christ and then see the riches of our husband unfolded by the ministry. Here is matter for joy, especially at the day of judgment. Then we will rejoice indeed that we ever knew such a minister, that we ever knew such a holy man, who was a means to bring us to Christ and to God.

This is why ministers are said to be a special gift of God (Eph 4:11). “Christ when he ascended on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men” (Eph 4:8). What gifts? Some apostles, some prophets, some pastors, some teachers, to the end of the world, for the building of his church. Christ, when he went in triumph after his resurrection, when in his ascension he went triumphantly to heaven, scattered gifts, as the great emperors scattered money on the day of their triumph. And they were not poor gifts, money and such trifling things. When he went in his triumphant chariot to heaven, he had no better gifts to leave to the world than such gifts as these: he left ministers, apostles, to found a church; he left pastors and teachers to the end of the world. These were the gifts Christ gave when he went in triumph to heaven. Therefore people may well rejoice in the ministers as a special gift of God.

So there is a notable passage in Jeremiah 3:14-15. There is a promise of what he would do if they would turn to God and be a gracious people. “I will give you pastors according to my own heart, and feed you with knowledge and understanding,” implying that it is a special blessing, a blessing above all blessings in this world; indeed, none can compare with it. To live in a place where all solaces are, where all worldly contentments are, and yet to be where the sound of the gospel is not, where the best things are not: that is only a dead place. What is it to be fattened for destruction? What life compares with the life of grace? And how is the life of grace begun and strengthened, except by the means of salvation?

When God gives pastors according to his own heart, to feed his people with understanding and judgment, it is a great blessing, and so it is a matter of rejoicing and glorying. For may not the soul reason this way: Who am I, that when thousands sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, God should send his ambassadors to me, to offer Christ Jesus with all his riches to me, and by his Holy Spirit to effect it, through such and such a ministry working grace in me, to give me the first fruits of glory, the pledge of salvation, the beginning of grace here, when millions of other people sit in darkness? So a Christian rejoices in God first, and then rejoices in the minister. He rejoices in everything that is an occasion of bringing him to heaven.

What is the reason God brings us to heaven by the ministry of men, and does not send angels, or do everything by his Spirit without help?

Among the other reasons, this is one: he would have one person glory in another; he would tie one to another. So this relation ties one man to another, that they may see the need of God’s ordinance, and that people may rejoice in one another as the gift of God. Therefore he calls man by man, to knit man to man, and that they may see God’s love to them in men. The Corinthians saw Christ’s love to them in St. Paul. St. Paul saw Christ’s love to him in them, in their obedience. This is the reason God uses men to call men.

Therefore let those who neglect the ordinance of God, who do not glory in the minister who brings them to Christ, never think of glory by Christ. Therefore in 2 Corinthians 5:19 they are excellently joined together: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.” What then? Someone may ask, What need is there of the ministry if God is reconciled to the world in Christ? God is merciful, and Christ died, and there is an end of it. No; he has entrusted to us apostles, and after us to pastors and teachers, “the word of reconciliation,” and we, “as ambassadors, entreat you in Christ’s stead to be reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:20). So the word of reconciliation is effectual to no one unless we have its efficacy through this embassy; it must be offered by the ministry.

This ministry, despised by the world, must be the means of bringing us to Christ. No benefit is brought to us from God except by the word of reconciliation. Neglect the word, and you neglect reconciliation itself. Therefore it is called “the word of the kingdom,” “the word of grace,” “the word of life,” implying that if we neglect the word unfolded by God’s ordinance in the church, we neglect grace, we neglect life, we neglect the kingdom and everything, because we see they are joined together. I will not be long on this point in this place.

Use. Only this: when God grants anyone, abroad or wherever it may be, or any of us, to partake of his ordinance in an effectual, holy manner, let us rejoice in it. As Solomon says, Inheritance comes by parents, but a good wife is the gift of God (Prov 19:14). So a good minister, or a true Christian friend, is the gift of God that he bestows on men, a special gift, because it is directed to eternal happiness. It is the kind of gift Christ gave when he ascended into heaven. So much for that point, “We are your rejoicing.”

“As also ye are ours.” There is an exchange of joy. We are your rejoicing, “and ye are ours,” in the day of the Lord.

How were they St. Paul’s rejoicing?

They were St. Paul’s rejoicing as they were gained to God and to Christ by his ministry. When he looked on them, he looked on them as people given to him by God. So God said to him concerning those in the ship when they suffered shipwreck, “I have given thee all their lives” (Acts 27:23-24).

It was a great honor to St. Paul that God should give him the lives of all who were in the ship, but a greater honor that God gave him so many souls. It is as if God said, You will have the honor of saving so many souls. Therefore they were his rejoicing, in the day of the Lord especially; but they were his rejoicing now, because by faith he grasped that they would be his special rejoicing when he and they should stand together before the judgment seat of Christ. For faith makes things to come present. “Ye are our rejoicing,” because you will be our rejoicing then more especially. This is the nature of faith, to make absent things present.

For blessed St. Paul, now in heaven, will at the day of judgment stand before Christ with the whole rank of Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, and others about him, and all the churches he converted. He will be surrounded by them as so many brought in triumph under the kingdom of Christ and pulled from the bondage of Satan. (What a world of people he brought to God! What triumph he made over Satan and the corruption of men, bringing men into captivity to Christ!) When all these are set before him, what a glory this will be for holy St. Paul, when he looks on all these blessed people as conquered and brought under Christ’s government by him! And so for all the apostles, St. Peter and the rest. And so for every minister, when he says, “Here I am, and the souls that thou hast given me” (John 17:12). You have honored me so much as to be an instrument to gain them to Christ, to bring them to heaven: a special glory. The point of doctrine or truth I observe from this is:

Doctrine. The people’s proficiency in grace is the minister’s joy.

The people’s good state in grace is the minister’s joy, and will be, especially after the day of judgment. “Ye are our rejoicing.” As he says, “Ye are our crown and our glory” (Phil 4:1). And so, “What is our crown and rejoicing? Is it not you?” (1 Thess 2:19).

In almost every epistle he makes those good and gracious people his hope and joy and crown and rejoicing.

In what sense?

1. Because they were the object of his joy. When he looked on them, he looked on people who yielded him comfort. He could not bring them to his thoughts without thinking of them as a matter of joy. Here, he would think, are the people God has honored me to do much good to. He could not think of them except as the object of his rejoicing. The word is “our rejoicing”: a rejoicing that God had given them to him to bring to heaven.

Love descends, we know, and the workman looks upon his work with a kind of satisfaction. St. Paul could not look upon those on whom he was used as a blessed instrument of good without a special kind of delight. They were the object of his joy.

2. Then again, they were not only the matter of his joy and rejoicing, presenting comforting considerations to his soul, but they also were some means to increase his joy in heaven; for those that convert souls shall shine as the stars in the firmament (Dan 12:3). Those who are honored by God so far as to bring souls to God, they shall shine as the stars in the firmament. Those who convert souls especially will have a degree of honor above others, though the substantial glory is by Christ. It cannot be denied that the accidental, increased glory comes by the increase of the fruit of the ministry. And so with Christians: those who are fruitful Christians, who do much good, will have much glory. St. Paul will have more rejoicing than others who did not do as much good as he did. “Ye are our rejoicing,” because you will be a means of my greater rejoicing. They were the object of his joy and the means of his joy.

3. They were his rejoicing because they were the seal of his ministry, that he was a sound minister. How was it known whether St. Paul was a good minister or not? Behold his works! See how he worked on such and such people! How many he gained to God! When he looked on them, he looked on them as a seal of his ministry, that he was a good minister, and in that respect they were his rejoicing.

4. And in some respect likewise, their being gained was an evidence to his soul that he was a good man. Ordinarily (though God may convert men by bad men, as Judas no doubt might convert some), for the most part God honors his servants; and the one who is heated himself can kindle another. Those who are not heated with grace cannot speak of the efficacy and power of the things they do not feel in their own hearts, as others do. Therefore, no doubt, it comforted him in his state as a Christian that God honored him to be a means of bringing others in to Christ. So in many respects the people’s goodness is the minister’s joy.

Use. If this is so, let those who are under the ministry be good, and not deny themselves that comfort or their ministers that joy. There are many poisonous, spiteful spirits who are in love with damnation, who will cherish the corruptions of their wicked nature in spite of God and everything. Rather than acknowledge that they have been worked on by such and such a person, and are that person’s children, they will stay as they are. They will be broken into a thousand pieces before they will bend to any minister, or yield, on such weak resolutions, to a poor ordinance of man. Here is the devilish pride and poison of man’s corrupt nature. Can we make light of that without at the same time making light of our own comfort and salvation?

How were the Corinthians St. Paul’s joy? Were they not their own joy first? They were a matter of joy to St. Paul because he saw he had gained them to Christ. The good was especially theirs. It reflected on him only by consideration. When he looked on them he was comforted; but they were comforted a great deal more. They had more comfort in his rejoicing than he did. His was only by reflection of their goodness, a comfort that came by consideration. They had the main comfort of their goodness.

It is little comfort for any people to carry themselves so that those who are over them in Christ Jesus can only sigh when they think of them, when they hear their blasphemies, when they cannot gain so much from them as to leave courses that the very light of nature condemns. The filthy disclosures of a rotten heart, their vile words and their offensive conduct: can this be a grief to the minister, and not be for the damnation of their own souls as well? They will find it a heavy and bitter thing to grieve the Spirit of God in others, as well as to wound their own conscience. The two are joined together.

What a happiness this is, that the more a man has a part in the good of another man, the more glory he has, if he is a means of any good in him! That man will have the good, and you will have the glory.

The best things in nature are communicative and diffusive. The sun gives light to the whole world. So the best man is the most fruitful and communicative. He labors to gain all men by his acquaintance with them. He knows this, that he is not for himself. He is redeemed for the honor of Christ. And then he knows, “Another’s good will be my glory. It will increase my glory, and be the object of my glory.”

On the contrary, we see a company of wretched, despicable creatures (let their outward condition be as glorious as it will; I speak of them as Christian eyes judge and esteem them) who draw others on to the same course with them. If they are blasphemers themselves, they glory in making others so. If they are given to sensuality, they labor to make others as besotted as themselves. If they are given to filthiness, they draw others into fellowship with them.

Well! Will those people be much cause of rejoicing to them in the day of the Lord, do you think? What will they do when they think of others, those they have altogether neglected, of whom God gave them charge? The very thought of them, instead of making them rejoice, will leave them aghast. “I betrayed his soul. He was my friend, or my servant, and I let him live in such sins.” Good neglected will torment us hereafter.

But then there is evil infused, by example and by word: “I poisoned him.” Suppose I have repented myself, but perhaps the person I drew into fellowship in my sin has not repented. What a torment this thought will be! Good neglected will be matter of torment; much more evil infused, poison infused. At the day of judgment we will see, instead of a company that we have gained to God and helped toward their salvation, a company that we have infected with our ill example and our evil persuasions. This will be an increase of torment in hell.

One will curse another and say, “You brought me here.” The father will curse the son: “To get riches for you I cracked my conscience and lost my soul.” And the son will curse the father: “By the riches you left me I lived a base and sensual life, whereas otherwise I might perhaps have relied on my own good efforts.” So here there will be cursing. The friend will curse his friend: “You might have told me of this. You strengthened me in evil courses.”

As it will be our glory when we see this one and that one to whom God has used us as instruments of good, so it will be a torment indeed to think, “This one and that one I neglected and betrayed; this one and that one I corrupted.” I beg you, therefore, take heed of it.

And would you have matter of joy in this world, which will give you joy when nothing else will give you joy? St. Paul was often in affliction, and what comforted St. Paul? First, his own conscience, that he was a good Christian, an heir of heaven, a good apostle. But when he lacked joy, what would he do? When he had no liberty but was imprisoned, when he had nothing, then he considered, “How Christ has dignified me to do good to others!” This honor done to him, that he should do this, comforted him more than all his imprisonment and abasement and reproaches could discourage him: the thought that God used him as an honorable instrument, for God’s honor and service, to do good to others.

So the testimony of our conscience that God has used us to do good to others, not only to make me gain heaven but to be an instrument to gain others, this will comfort us in the world, come what will.

Use. This should stir up those who have to deal with the souls of others (not only ministers, but all others who have any committed to them) to labor to make them good, and to work upon them for the good of their souls, that they may have them as the matter and objects of their joy at that day. If they do not, then, as I said, those persons will be presented to them as people they have neglected, and negligently betrayed for lack of instruction and reformation of their lives, and as people they have infected with their ill example, which is worse. Alas, what matter of horror they will be! They will not say of them as St. Paul says here, You are my joy, and my crown, and my glory. They will be matter of horror: “These are the ones I have betrayed, and neglected, and infected, and brought to hell, to this cursed condition with myself.” All those whom we have hurt in any way will be an increase of the torments of hell at that day.

But what then will it be for those who have opposed goodness, who have not only betrayed others by neglect, but have maligned good where they have seen it? What will become of those who are so far from making others good that they have spitefully scorned the image of God in others, and have exercised their bitterness upon Christ in his members and ministers?

To add one thing more. What! These Corinthians, who had so many abuses and such weaknesses, were they the matter of St. Paul’s joy?

Yes! So people must take heed how they leave churches that have corruptions in them. Schism is often a greater fault than the fault they allege as their ground for separation. The things for which they plead a rending of the church are not so great a fault in the church as the lack of charity in them in doing it.

If St. Paul had wanted to take occasion to leave them, what good occasion he had! Alas, how many corruptions they had, in doctrine and in manners too! But yet, as ill as they were, he saw what good was in them and did not look to the evil. He knew that God would perfect the good things that were in them. And he says, Notwithstanding all your infirmities, I see you were ready to reform when I wrote an epistle to you, and therefore I do not doubt that you will be “our rejoicing.”

“In the day of the Lord Jesus.” This is the time. It must be taken inclusively: I am your rejoicing, and you are mine, to the day of the Lord Jesus, and in the day of the Lord. That is what he means here. It is laid down here as a ground:

Observation. Jesus Christ has a day.

It is his day by way of eminency and excellency. Jesus Christ has many days, two especially: the day of his first coming and the day of his second coming. The first coming of Christ was the day of the gospel, when he came to work our salvation. His second coming is to complete our salvation. In his first day he came to be humbled and to be judged, to be a sacrifice for us. In his second, he is to come gloriously to judge the living and the dead. In the first, he came to gain a church for himself; by his second he will come to complete the marriage. Now is the contract; there is the Sabbath. After the six days of this life the day of the Lord will appear, the Sabbath day, the day of jubilee, the solemnization of the marriage, the solemn triumph over all enemies.

The first day was to save our souls, especially from the bondage of sin and Satan. The second day, the one we are speaking of here, will be to save our bodies from the rottenness and corruption in which they have lain rotting in the grave until that day of Christ. As he raised his own body, so at that day he will raise our bodies, and make them “like his glorious body” (Phil 3:21). That is the main day, the day of all days, for then he will come to complete all. That day will never have a night; it will be day forever.

As with the cloud that went before the Israelites to Canaan, the side toward the Egyptians was dark, but the other side was bright toward the Israelites, so this day will be a dark day; it will be both a day of vengeance and a day of glory.

St. Paul says here, You shall be my rejoicing, and I yours at that day. But for those who do not believe the gospel and obey the ministry of it, it will not be a day of rejoicing. It will be a glorious day, when all other glory will vanish. All other glory in the world will be eclipsed, even as the stars are not seen when the sun appears in the firmament. All the glory at that day will be the glory of Christ and of his church. To omit other things that may be said out of other places of Scripture, the point I will observe from this is:

Doctrine. The measure of a Christian’s rejoicing in anything in this world is the consideration of what it will be at the great day of judgment.

I say, the rule by which a Christian judges things, and the measure by which a Christian measures things to be this or that in their excellency and worth, is how they will be esteemed at that day of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here St. Paul says, I am your rejoicing, and you are ours at the day of the Lord Jesus. What! Is this vain glorying, to commend him: “Oh, he is a worthy, learned rabbi, a great, learned apostle!” and then that they were such and such a people? No, no! They had grace worked in them, and St. Paul saw such evidences of grace in them that at that day they would look upon Christ with boldness, because they were sincerely gained to the gospel. So then this must be the rule of the worth of anything: to esteem it as it will be then, at that day, which is a day when all our conditions will be determined, for eternal happiness or eternal misery.

To explain it a little.

We do not value things of short continuance, because they are short, like flowers that are fresh in the morning and cast away at night; but we esteem things that will hold out. So we should consider how our rejoicing and glory and comfort will hold out. “Riches avail not in the day of wrath” (Prov 11:4). Things have just that degree of goodness or evil in them, and just that degree of vanity or seriousness, as they will hold out at that day. What are riches in the day of wrath, even in this world? What then will riches be at the day of the Lord Jesus? Therefore a Christian does not value them; they are not a Christian’s good. He does not esteem the applause of men. And pleasures are nothing. They are momentary; they avail nothing when conscience is awakened. They leave a man, and not only that, but they leave a sting behind them.

If all the good things in the world will do us no good then, what will the sins do that you have made so much of? What will the sins do for which you have betrayed and damned your soul? Your filthiness and your betraying of goodness, what will that do? How will you look the Judge in the face, when nothing in the world that is excellent will hold out and avail at that day?

But what then will avail at that day, when Christ comes to judge both the living and the dead?

Why, this: that you have submitted yourself to acknowledge Christ as your king, and your priest, and your prophet; that by means of the ministry you have been worked on, and the work of the new creature has begun in you, true and sincere grace, so that you dare look on Christ; that you are in the state of grace. This will comfort you in the day of judgment.

By this you may discern who takes the wisest course: he who measures his life by a right measure and rule. Who judges rightly of persons and things? He judges rightly of things who values, and labors to gain a share in, those things that will comfort him in this world and stand by him in the world to come. He has a right judgment and esteem of things.

What are those things?

Grace: a holy, humble, gracious, believing conduct and disposition. When a man gives himself to Christ, and renounces the world, and sees the vanity of all things but the Christian estate, he has in some little measure those things that will be perfected at that day.

Who takes the wisest course? Those who seek to please the whims of men, those who seek to feed their own corruptions and the corruptions of others, those who will have some present glory in the flesh? Yes, but what will they have at the day of the Lord Jesus? Surely it is those who labor to approve themselves in sincerity and truth to Christ Jesus in all things. And so long as they may approve their hearts to him, they do not care what the world judges of them, as St. Paul says, “I pass not what ye judge of me” (1 Cor 4:3). If there is a day of the Lord, when he will be judge, then those are the wisest and the best courses that will hold out at that day. And those that will not, we will be ashamed of them all.

And that is the reason many men of excellent gifts and endowments are comfortless in the time of temptation. They did not think to do things with reference to Christ, in sincerity to please him; for then they might hold up their heads at that day.

There is a great deal of atheism in our hearts. We frame our courses to present contentments, because we have little belief for the time to come.

I beg you, let us often have in our thoughts the second coming of Christ. The best things are still to come. Our chief rejoicing is still to come. Our rejoicing now is our hope that we will rejoice then. The Corinthians were St. Paul’s joy now, because he knew they would be his main rejoicing then. If we rejoice in anything now, let it be that our names are written in heaven, in the testimony of our conscience that we are God’s, that our hearts are worked on, that we have something Christ will acknowledge when he sees his stamp and image on us. When he looks on us and sees his own image upon our hearts, there will be matter of joy in that day.

There will be joy in ourselves, and joy in all the blessed instruments that are under Christ. The ministers will likewise rejoice in us, and all of us will join in rejoicing in Christ; all will meet there. For their joy in St. Paul, and his in them, was that Christ was theirs. And “Christ shall come,” as it is in 2 Thessalonians 1:10, “to be glorified in his saints,” not only in himself, but in his believing members. For his glory will reflect upon them as the sun reflects upon bright bodies. All bright bodies are made bright by the sun. So the “Sun of righteousness” will come, and all who have glory will have it by reflection from him; they will be glorious in him. So he is both the minister’s joy and the people’s. They will all glory in Christ, whose glory is their glory. He will come to be glorious in his saints. Therefore frame your courses that way, to have glory then, to have comfort in the hour of death and at the day of judgment. And to end the point:

Let us labor to be acquainted with him now, before that day. We will never have comfort in the day of the Lord Jesus unless we are acquainted with him and acknowledge him now, in the ministry and in the sacraments. For no one will ever be acquainted with him there who has not been acquainted with him and known him in this world.

How do we come to be acquainted with Christ?

By being present where he is present; and he is present where two or three are met together in his name. He is present now in our meetings; he is present when we hear the word. He is present in the sacrament more especially; we have his very body and blood. As truly as we take the outward signs, so truly Christ is present to our hearts. At the same time, from heaven, he holds out himself to us with all the benefits of his passion. When the minister holds out the bread, Christ holds out his body. As our outward man is refreshed with the elements, so our souls are refreshed with the spiritual presence of Christ. Now he is excellently present in heaven; he is present to our senses in the sacrament, and by his Spirit in the word.

Would you have him at his appearing come and own you, and say then, “Come, ye blessed” (Matt 25:34)? Then be acquainted with him now upon all occasions. Hear the word, receive the sacrament, and come to the sacrament as acknowledging him there.

How is that?

Why, you acknowledge the bread and wine to be seals of him, and of all the blessings that come by him, when you come prepared, when you come to them as his. Otherwise you do not acknowledge them. You know them to be such and such things, but you do not acknowledge them to be set apart for so holy a use unless you come with prepared hearts.

Will anybody grant that a man is going to a great person, when he goes unsightly and in rags? “Do you know where you are going?” some would say to him. He who comes to the sacrament in his old sins does not consider where he is going. Come acquainted with Christ, therefore, to acknowledge him who will be your judge at the last day; therefore come prepared.

And then, because the sacrament is a means to seal to us all the benefits we have by Christ, and to incorporate us more nearly into Christ, he who comes to the sacrament as he should must come with joy. Is it not a joyful thing to be united to Christ, and to have further assurance of all the good things that come by him? Yes! It is a matter of great joy. Therefore, when you have repented of your sins, come with joy.

And come with holiness. The things are holy, as our liturgy has it; let us give holy things to holy persons. Here holy bread and wine are presented, and here you are to deal with Christ. Therefore come with holy reverence in the whole conduct of the business.

And come with faith and assurance, and then you will acknowledge Christ in this ordinance, in the sacrament. You will acknowledge that he does not deal with you as a mere courtesy, feeding you with empty signs, but that you will have himself with his signs. You will have the Lord himself in the word and in the sacraments. With the field you will have the treasure in the field, as the wise merchant had (Matt 13:44). With the word you will have Christ wrapped in the word. And in the sacrament you will have Christ and all his benefits.

Trust in it, and make it your weapon against Satan, for he will tempt you to doubt your share in Christ. Think to yourselves, “Had I grace to receive Christ, to be incorporated more nearly into him? Why should I doubt to renew my covenant? And though I have fallen through weakness, yet I have a gracious intercessor in heaven who makes my peace continually.” Come in faith. Know that God in good earnest here offers Christ with all his benefits.

And come with a purpose and resolution to be led by him. You come to renew your covenant. Here is the covenant, when Christ is given to you and you give yourselves to Christ. Therefore, as I said, if you come with a purpose to live in sin, do not come at all. Christ will not live in a heart where there is a purpose to sin. Therefore resolve to leave all sin, or else you cannot receive him.

To move you to come, and to come in this way, only consider that it will be your joy in this world, and in the world to come, before Christ, that you have been thus acquainted with him here on earth: acquainted with him in the ministry, acquainted with him in the sacrament, in private prayer and meditation, in all the blessed means he has appointed. And then he will look on you as on his old friends.

But now consider him who is a rebel, who goes away, or else comes without acknowledging with whom he has to deal: the one who will be his judge before long, the great God of heaven and earth, who will come in glory and majesty with thousands of his angels. Then he will be “wonderful” indeed, as his name is (Isa 9:6), and as the apostle says in 2 Thessalonians 1:10, where he uses the word: he shall be wonderful in his saints. Then all the world will wonder at the glory of a poor Christian, when he outshines the sun and all the creatures in glory. Consider with whom you have to deal, the one who before long will be wonderful in his saints. Therefore come prepared, come joyfully, come faithfully, come reverently and holily, and you will find a corresponding blessing. This much I thought good to touch on, given the occasion of the sacrament. “Ye are our rejoicing.”

“At the day of the Lord Jesus.” St. Paul esteemed nothing but what would comfort him at that day. Therefore let us often think of the day of the Lord Jesus. Why? What will make us digest labor and pains in dealing with the souls of others, in doing good, and in being fruitful in our places? The consideration of that day. There is a day coming that will make amends for all, and that is the day of the Lord Jesus.

And considering that there is such a day, let us make much of the day of the Lord that is now left to us. What is that? This day. “The Lord’s day.” It is called “The Lord’s day” (Rev 1:10). And as I said, labor to be acquainted with that Lord who must then be judge of the living and the dead. The Lord has a day now in which we may be acquainted with him, by hearing his word and by yielding obedience to his truth unfolded to us. Therefore let us make much of this day, if we would have comfort at that day. “Ye are our rejoicing in the day of the Lord.”

And in this confidence I was minded to come unto you before, that you might have a second benefit, or grace (2 Cor 1:15).

“In this confidence”: in this assurance, in this persuasion, “I was minded to come to you.”

“That you might have a second benefit,” says the latest translation. That diminishes the strength of the word. Therefore go from the text to the margin. You often have a fitter word in the margin.

The word in the original is pregnant with meaning. It signifies grace. If it signifies a benefit at all, it signifies a benefit that issues from grace and favor. “Benefit” is a weaker word. Grace, though it is not so common, is a fit word, and reaches to the strength of the word in the original and to the meaning of the apostle. So it is better to read it this way: “That you might have a second grace.”

St. Paul in this verse sets down what intention he had to come to them, and likewise the end of his intention. In the next verse he sets down the manner in which he would come to them. Fourthly, he shows why he did not come to them: it was “to spare them,” as he says afterward (2 Cor 1:23).

Here in this verse he shows what his intention was: My intention was to come to you. “In this confidence I was minded to come to you.” To what end? “That you might have a second benefit.”

His intention is set down by the inward moving cause, his “confidence”: “In this confidence I was minded to come to you.”

I will speak of his intention and purpose of coming, and of the end of it; and, in his purpose of coming, of the moving cause, his “confidence.”

“In this confidence.” What is that? “In this confidence,” because I am assured that you are my rejoicing, and I yours, in the day of the Lord Jesus; in this confidence that you will be so to me, and I to you. “In this confidence.”

St. Paul had a good opinion of them. The inward moving cause of St. Paul’s coming was a good opinion of them.

Observation. It is good, as far as we possibly can, to cherish a good judgment and opinion of others.

Let others have as good a place in our affections as possibly may be.

Why?

Reason 1. If they are good, we otherwise wrong them even in our thoughts. We wrong people not only in our speech and actions, but in our unfair judgments, in the censures of our minds. Therefore in that regard we should have as good an opinion of people as we possibly can.

Reason 2. And likewise, because confidence and assurance that they have something in them that is good, and that it will be better with them afterward in the day of the Lord, will be a means to stir us up to serve them well. Hope stirs up the will. We have no mind for a thing we have no hope of. And likewise hope stirs up endeavor, and hope keeps us in endeavor. What makes a man labor so long for the good of others? He has some hope that they are good, and will be better. So it stirs up our will; it stirs the very bent of it. After the will, it stirs up endeavor; and it keeps us in endeavor when we hope for good from people.

And therefore we ought not to cast off people, especially those who are young, for their imperfections. The Corinthians were weak and carnal, as you may see in the former epistle; yet in this confidence, that they had repented of their ill treatment of St. Paul, he was minded to come to them. Persons who are the subjects of hope are not free from infirmities. Novices cannot have at the first that perfection which grown Christians have. Consider further what comes from passion and what from the poison of nature; consider what comes from infirmity and what from malice; consider what sins they have been longer accustomed to, and how hard it is for such sins to be suddenly broken off. These considerations would soften our judgment somewhat wherever we see any degree of goodness.

Oh! This now pleases some viciously disposed persons. They think this speaks in their favor.

Not at all. What I am speaking of is where there is any ground to hope well. St. Paul had some ground, for he wrote a sharp epistle to them, and he saw they were amended by it. He saw they yielded, they acknowledged, that is, they reformed by his ministry and by his epistle. So where we discern reformation, where there is a willingness to amend, we must hope well of such people, though they are sometimes overtaken by a fault. And if they are overtaken, we must construe it in the best way. The temptation perhaps was great, and they were not watchful at that time. The subtlety of the opposition and the malice of men was great, and their caution was not so great. In this way we may construe things so as to bear with them, if upon the discovery of their fault they become pliable.

But otherwise, if they arm themselves with malice and bitter poison, and resolve to remain so, there is no hope, no confidence of such people. St. Paul’s confidence here was with evidence from their conduct. They gave him some cause to be so confident.

Therefore it is in vain to think that we are too censorious when we tell you of your faults. To hold that very notion, to think bitterly, and to arm yourselves with resolutions to vex those who instruct you rather than to amend what is amiss: that is as bad a disposition, as bad a state, as can be. We can hope for no good of such people. Yet we ought still to hope of them so far as not to give them up, as St. Paul says, to prove if at any time God will show mercy to them, to deliver them out of the snare of the devil (2 Tim 2:25-26). They are in the devil’s snare, yet we ought still to take pains with them. For we do not know whether it will please God at that time, or at any time, to have mercy on them and deliver them out of the snare of Satan.

If God bears with them, we ought to bear with them as well as teach them; but to have a good opinion of them, when we see them maliciously bent against those who tell them of their faults, we cannot.

Use. If this is so, it should be an encouragement to all those who are under others who inform and instruct them, to give those teachers some good occasion and ground to hope well of them. You would have us hope well of you. What ground do you give? What is your company? Shall we think you are good because you keep company with swearers, with vicious and carnal company? Would you have us blind? Charity indeed interprets the best, but it is not blind. What shall we judge of you by your outward demeanor and conduct, which is often scandalous and offensive, when your speech is filthy and corrupt, joined with blasphemies and oaths, daring God, as it were, to see whether he will allow you to get away with it unrevenged and unpunished or not? Where this abominable corruption of heart discovers itself outwardly in the tongue, how can we entertain a good opinion of you? You think we wrong you by not thinking thus and thus of you. What ground do we have? What hold do we have, from anything that is in you or from you, to think so?

Resolve on this: no grievance can be offered to the minister without your rewarding your own souls with ill. If you are not his joy, it will be your sorrow. You will have the worst of it. And therefore study as much as you can to have the good hope and confidence of others. This will stir up willingness and stir up endeavor, as it did in St. Paul. The good hope he had of them, by their repentance and reformation and pliableness, stirred up his diligence. They gained by it. But I do not mean to dwell on that.

“In this confidence,” that you will be my joy, and I yours, in the day of the Lord.

“I was minded to come unto you.” St. Paul was minded to come unto them.

Observation. You see, then, that personal presence has a special power and efficacy.

Personal presence has more efficacy than writing. For there the holy things delivered are, as it were, acted to the life. People are wonderfully affected when they see gracious things delivered with life and feeling; it works in a wonderfully living way. Therefore St. Paul tells the Romans that besides the learned and worthy epistle he wrote to them, he was desirous also to preach the gospel to them (Rom 1:15).

But some object: reading is preaching, they say, some kind of preaching. But not the kind the apostle meant; for then St. Paul’s epistle would have been preaching, some kind of preaching. But I am not speaking to sophists. But, says St. Paul, I desire to preach the word to you by vocal teaching; it has a special efficacy. It is wonderfully good to pray for others and to write to others; but presence, when the minister is the mouth of God with them and to them, their mouth to God in praying together with them and God’s mouth in speaking to them, this presence is of a wonderful efficacy. Therefore St. Paul says, “I purposed to come to you.”

Use. It should stir up in our hearts an esteem for God’s ordinance of preaching; otherwise we slight it to the injury of our own souls. For does God appoint it for anything but our own good? There is a common objection which I will answer, because it is raised out of this epistle and may be answered out of this epistle.

Objection. “Oh!” say some, “a living voice does not always have that energy, that operation, which writing and reading have; for we see St. Paul’s epistle was more terrible than his presence.” It is the objection of people who content themselves in their own idleness, wresting such passages as this. Among the rest they say, “His bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible” (2 Cor 10:10), but his letters seem terrible. Therefore, they argue, this is not always true, that bodily presence has more efficacy than writing.

Answer. I answer briefly: St. Paul is not here comparing his bodily presence with his letters, as if his letters were more efficacious than his bodily presence. He is comparing his mild dealing when present with his sharp dealing when absent; his letters, indeed, were sharper than his presence. But to take away such cavils, he tells them afterward that they shall know, if they do not reform, that his presence shall be as sharp as his writings. Let such a one think this, “such as we are in word being absent, such will we be when we are present” (2 Cor 10:11). We will be as sharp in our presence, if you do not reform, as we were when absent. So he compares the sharpness of his letter with the sweetness of his presence. It is not to be taken in the sense that his letters were more effective in themselves than his presence, for he says the contrary: You shall know that my presence shall be as sharp as my letter was. Therefore it is only a cavil to think there is more efficacy in reading than in preaching.

“That you might have a second grace.” I come now to St. Paul’s end. His intention and purpose was “to come.” The end of his coming was to bestow a grace on them by his presence.

Observation. In general, observe here that holy men are set to work by holy moving causes and holy aims.

Holy aims are the winds that carry them to their business, and they are the water that drives their mill. So with St. Paul: I come with a holy confidence that you will be my joy; here is my moving cause. What is my aim in coming? It is this, to bestow a grace on you. Holy men have holy aims for holy actions; they have holy grounds and holy moving causes.

When two men do the same thing, yet it is not the same thing; perhaps their aims differ, their moving causes differ. St. Paul comes here to do a good thing from a good end, from a good moving cause: “In this confidence I was minded to come,” to bestow a grace on you.

Use. Let us, therefore, look in all our actions to our moving cause and to our aims. And especially ministers: their aim should not be the fleece, it should not be to gain respect or any advantage to themselves, but to bestow some spiritual good thing. As the apostle says, to bestow some good thing upon you (Rom 1:11), some grace, as he calls it. This should be their aim, not to receive good from their people so much as to do them good. Ministers are fathers, and they should have that tender disposition. Parents do not think of receiving much (they look to that in the second place; that must be maintained), but above all they look to their children’s good. I come to bestow a grace on you. How this is observed I do not care to say, and therefore I leave it and come to what concerns us all. “I was minded to come to you.”

Doctrine. To bestow a grace on you. We see, then, that the preaching of the gospel is a special grace.

It is a free and bountiful benefit of God. Grace implies freedom, and mercy, and bounty. It is a free mercy of God to have the gospel.

Why?

Reason. Because this is the means to work all that is savingly good in us. This is a means to open to us God’s love in Christ, and to work in us a disposition that answers to his love. Therefore it must be a grace. Heaven is a grace, life is a grace, reconciliation is a grace, and the like. Therefore the word, by which all these are communicated, must be a grace. Therefore the word bears the name of these things. It is the word of the kingdom of heaven. The preaching of the gospel is called the kingdom of heaven, because it puts us into the state of the kingdom of heaven. And it is the word of reconciliation, because by it we know our reconciliation with God. By this word reconciliation is offered and worked in our hearts, and faith to apply it. It is the word of life; the life of grace and the life of glory all come by this word. “I commend you to God, and the word of his grace” (Acts 20:32), says the apostle. All grace and spiritual life is worked in us by the word; therefore the word preached is a special grace and favor of God.

St. Paul here calls his coming to them to strengthen and confirm them “a grace.” For all means come under the same decree of God’s eternal love as the end itself. When God out of grace, of his free love, resolves and determines that he will bring a certain person to heaven, he also out of the same grace fits that person with opportunities of persons and means. He furnishes him with all means, for he intends to bring him to heaven in such a way.

And therefore St. Augustine defines predestination well: it is an ordaining to salvation, and a preparing of all means tending to it. Therefore all falls within the compass of grace: both the free favor of God, appointing a man to make him blessed, and likewise the sending of men who have an outward calling, and inwardly furnishing them with gifts and whatever else. All is of grace. The preaching of the word is a grace.

Use. It concerns us, therefore, to esteem it so. Do not many sit in darkness and in the shadow of death? Is it not a grace, therefore, that we partake of the means of salvation? What is there in us by nature better than in Turks and pagans, or than in many other people under Satan and under popish teachers, who so rot away in their ignorance? Nothing. We differ only by the grace of God. Therefore let us esteem it as a grace.

How shall we esteem it as a grace?

Receive it thankfully, as a largess and bounty and free grace of God; receive it as a bounty with thankful hearts. Grace begets grace; it begets thankfulness. So to receive it as a grace is to receive it with thankful minds, to be more thankful for the means of salvation than for any outward thing.

How shall we come to be thankful?

Never, unless we find some grace worked by the word of grace. Therefore to receive it as a grace is to receive it as a free, loving gift of God, and to yield to it. When by it holy promptings are stirred in our hearts, it is not to suppress and quench those holy promptings but to yield to them; not to quench and resist the Spirit, but to yield ourselves pliable to the word. This is to acknowledge it a grace and to be thankful for it, because you find your hearts brought to holy obedience by it.

Give it way in your souls, that it may be an ingrafted word; that the whole inward and outward man may be seasoned with it and savor of it; that the word may season your thoughts and speech and desires, and season your course of life; that what you think may be in the savor and strength of the word, in the strength of some divine truth, and that the guide of your actions may be divine truth, or some motives drawn from it. Then you will give thanks for what is worked on you, when it is an ingrafted word in your souls and all savors of it, your speech and actions and your whole course; when one may know by your conduct that there is something settled and ingrafted in your souls that gives a blessed savor to all the expressions of the outward man. Such a person indeed will account the word a special grace, by a sweet experience worked in his heart. I will not press that point any further.

Doctrine. Again, whereas St. Paul says he would come to bestow a second grace on them, we see here that those who are already in the state of grace need a second grace.

Those who have initial grace, so as to be set in a good course, need confirming and strengthening grace. St. Paul had planted them before. Yes, but he must come to water them. There is always something left for the minister to do until he sees their souls safe in heaven. He always has something to do for the Christian souls under him. For he must not only get them out of Satan’s kingdom into a good state, but he must labor to build them up. He must water them, and fence them, and strengthen them against all discouragements.

A man is never safe until he is in heaven. Therefore he says, I will come to you, but I will come to bestow a second grace on you; you have need of it, and my love to you is such that you shall have it. Let me enforce this a little, because we set limits to our growth and go plodding on in a course, and many years later we are no better than we were at the first. And some, out of a profane fullness, out of a Laodicean temper, think they have enough, that they are rich, when in fact they are empty, and miserable, and wretched, and poor (Rev 3:17); and if temptations set upon them, they have nothing in them.

I want you to see that we stand in need of a second grace, and of a third grace, and of a fourth grace, and that we need continual building up.

Reason 1. Look within, and see what opposition there is to saving goodness within! What rebellion of lusts! What ignorance, and blindness, and darkness, and indisposition! What headway the flesh makes in us against the word of God! Let a man stay away from the means for a little while, and he will see what a growth of corruptions there will be: such a distaste for all the means that he will be ready almost to begin anew with them. Since people have a double principle within them, of grace and of corruption, there is a continual need of strengthening and establishing grace.

Reason 2. Consider outwardly what discouragements come from the evil examples, and allurements, and seducing of others, and from the disgrace that is put on good things; what discouragements and stumbling blocks there are from without!

Reason 3. Again, are there not often new and great temptations, which a man must have a new measure of grace to resist? There is continual occasion for new spiritual strength to oppose new temptations, and for new spiritual strength to endure new crosses and to enjoy new benefits. In all the passages of our life there is a necessity of more grace, of a further supply of grace. With the proportion of strength he had before, a man cannot encounter new temptations; and therefore there must be new grace, and a fresh attending upon the means, while we live here.

Reason 4. Again, unavoidable times will come, when there must be strength of grace. Sickness will come, temptations to despair will come, conflicts with Satan will come. We need not say, “Suppose such and such a case”; it is an unavoidable case. Those times will come, in which a great strength of grace will be necessary. Therefore we cannot be too careful in attending upon the means of salvation, so as to be confirmed and strengthened.

Reason 5. Again, do we not need a great measure of strengthening grace continually? Does not the devil envy goodness and good actions? When we set about praying, when the best men are about the best actions, what a great deal of distraction there is! How Satan confounds them with distractions! What a great deal of confirming grace we need for every good work! When a Christian is taken out of the kingdom of Satan, he is the target, the object of Satan’s malice and of the malice of those who are his instruments. We must pull every good work, as it were, out of the fire. We must use violence against nature and against temptations in every good duty, in order to perform them strongly. We need a second and a third grace, many degrees of grace.

Reason 6. Then again, we are capable of more grace. For our understanding is such that we may know more still, and our will is such that it seeks more still, and the more holy truths are made known to us, the more the will is enlarged to cleave to them. The more we know, the more we may know. Our understandings are wondrously large. There is a great capacity in them, and our adhesion and cleaving to truths grows more and more. The more we know, the more the will cleaves to it, as it is said, they exhorted them, that with full purpose they would cleave fast to God (Acts 11:23).

We must cleave and adhere fast to the truth and to God. Every day we must go deeper, get nearer and closer to God, and labor to be established in good things. St. Paul prays that they might be established more and more; and David prays that he might be established in good thoughts, and desires, and resolutions, in good purposes, that he might be established in everything that is good. Grace is a state that we may grow in, and our souls are fit to be enlarged, for there is a great capacity in the soul. Until we come to heaven, it is not full. We may grow stronger and stronger in every grace. In the examples of holy men in Scripture, it was never well with them except when they were growing. There is a necessity of growing.

Use 1. If this is true, let us set no limit for ourselves, and let us abhor, abhor even as the temptation of the devil, the notion of fullness and of self-sufficiency: to think, “I know enough; what should I know more for?” or perhaps, “I could read at home,” as I said before. The public ministry is God’s ordinance, and cursed is all private study when it is done in contempt of the ordinance of God. Beware of such suggestions of fullness and of standing still. No; we need a second grace, we need many degrees of confirmation and strength, and all of it is little enough. No one ever repented of the careful use of the means. Strengthening, and progress, and growth of this kind are a pledge of perfection, a pledge that God will perfect more and more what he has graciously begun. I beg you, take it to heart that we will always need a further degree of strengthening grace as long as we live in this world.

The strongest Christians are most desirous of strength. Whom do you find hungering most after the means of salvation? Surely those who have the greatest measure of grace, because with grace the capacity of the soul is enlarged to receive more. The soul is so framed by God that the more it has, the more it hungers after; and blessed are those that hunger, they shall be satisfied.

Who care least for the means? Debauched, shallow creatures, those who are popishly minded, those who are ill bred, those who take offense at everything in the communion of saints: at holy exercises, at the frequenting of public and private duties, at making a conscience of calling upon God. A Christian who knows what it is thinks all the means little enough. He will not omit one of them that may be a means of his growth and strength; he thinks that if he neglects one means, he decays in all. Therefore he joins himself to all the means, private duties and then the public duty of hearing the word. And he hears out of season, when he finds himself indisposed. As the ministers are to “preach in season and out of season” (2 Tim 4:2), so he hears in season and out of season. And therefore, of all men, he who is most careful of his growth is the great, the strong Christian. The better he is, the more he hungers after it.

Use 2. Take this as a test: if you do not desire to be strengthened in good things more and more, you have no goodness at all. I will press the point no further at this time, but go on.

St. Paul says, “I was minded to come to you, that you might have a second benefit, a second grace,” that is, a confirming, strengthening grace. We all need, then, a second grace, a confirming grace. Here I might make some application to ministers. I will only touch on it, to show what their duty is to those who are under them. Every man is, as it were, a minister in his place, to strengthen another, and to exhort one another, and to bestow grace upon one another. But ministers should do it especially. They are like those who repair the sea banks. The sea often gets over and eats out the banks; they must be repaired continually, or else they will decay.

The minister’s pains are like the labor of the farmer. When he has sown, he must weed; and when he has weeded, he must fence, to keep the crop from the birds of prey and the violence of beasts, and the like; and he must live by faith until the grain is ready. So with the minister: after he has planted, he must water, and weed, and fence, and all of it is little enough. He must look to the banks, and many times what he gains in one day he loses in another. Indeed, the pitiful condition of a minister is often this, that at the week’s end he has it all to do again.

Another man sees an end to his work, but in this work the devil and corruption have undone everything again. We press good things on people on the Lord’s Day; but within one day, bad company and employment in worldly business overthrow it all. The sea banks are down; they must be repaired anew. Therefore there is a necessity laid on us of the ordinances to our lives’ end, until our souls are in heaven; there is a necessity of repairing the banks. We cannot be too diligent in our places. And let those who have the oversight of others make a conscience of it; it is needful.

And notice here the next point.

Doctrine. The language of Canaan, the language of the Spirit of God, is this: he puts the name of grace upon every benefit, especially those that concern a better life. We usually take grace to be nothing but a gracious frame of heart, the new creature, as we call it. But in fact, in the language of the Holy Spirit, every free gift of God that concerns our souls in any way is a grace. The very ministry is a grace. It is the grace and free love of God to give us the ministry. The very heart to embrace it and to hear it is a grace. The very heart to give alms is a grace. St. Paul says, “Thanks be to God for this unspeakable gift” (2 Cor 9:15), that is, for this unspeakable grace that you had a heart to give. So everything that is good is a grace, a gift of God.

St. Paul conceived of his coming to them as a grace. Indeed, the grace of God moved and directed St. Paul to come to them. It is grace that God directs the preacher to speak to the people. It is a grace that the minister speaks gracious things. It is a greater grace when you embrace and entertain what is spoken. All is of grace. Your ready minds to do good come from God; that is a grace. Your acceptance of God, as well as eternal life, is all of free grace.

The ground of it is this. Augustine, as I said, defines predestination well: it is a destining and ordaining to a supernatural end, to everlasting salvation in the world to come, and a preparing of all means to that end. Now, just as it is a grace that God pulls some men out for an eternal state of salvation in heaven, a supernatural state that they could never attain without his special grace, so the preparing of all means to that end falls within the compass of predestination, within the grace.

So when we have any means prepared to bring us to that end, the offer of the word, and the Spirit of God disposing us to embrace the word, this preparing of the means to that end falls within the compass of predestination, and we may gather our election by it. When we see the word sent in favor, and have gracious hearts to receive it, this is a preparation wrought to bring us to heaven, and a man may know his election by it. All is of grace that falls within the decree of grace. When God decrees to bring a man to heaven, all that helps toward the main thing must of necessity be grace. The minister is a grace, the word a grace, opportunities to do good a grace, the communion of saints a grace; all that helps a man forward is a grace. A gracious heart sees God in everything, it sees God’s love in everything, it considers everything that befalls it as a grace. Why? From this disposition especially, because with the grace there is grace to make a blessed use of everything and to turn it to good account.

Use. If this is so, let us look upon every benefit that concerns salvation, though it is remote, even the very direction of good speeches to us, and account it a grace. It is the grace of God that I have this opportunity, especially the public ministry. St. Paul calls it “a grace”; let us think of it as a grace.

And as we do with clocks, we go from the hammer that strikes to the wheels, and from one wheel to another, and so to the weights that make it strike: we go to the first weight, the first wheel that moves all and leads all. So when we see good done, do not look only to the good done, but go to the wheels, to the weights, that move it and make it strike. What sets everything going? The grace and free love of God. When good things are spoken, when any good is done, go higher, to the first wheel that sets everything going, to the grace and free love of God. This is the language of the Scripture and of the Spirit of God. This is how we must speak and think, to the end that God may have the glory of his grace in whatever good is done or offered.

When Abigail met David, and diverted him from his bloody intention to kill Nabal, and gave him counsel another way, David said, “O blessed be God, and blessed be thou, and blessed be thy counsel” (1 Sam 25:32-34). So when opportunities are offered to do good and to hinder us from evil intentions, let us say, “O blessed be thou, and blessed be thy counsel.” When a benefit is done, if it is a benefit of this life, take it as a grace coming freely from God.

So with a poor man: his alms is a grace. “Thanks be unto God for this unspeakable gift,” says St. Paul (2 Cor 9:15). It is grace in him who has it, that God should respect him so much as to relieve him. It is grace in the one who gives it, that he has a heart enlarged to do it. So when anything outward or spiritual is done that is good, look on it as a grace, put that regard on it, and that will make you holy-minded to give God his own.

Our life should be a praising and blessing of God. We should begin the employment of heaven while we are on earth. How should we do that? “In all things give thanks” (1 Thess 5:18). Every good thing from God, take it as a grace, as a free gift; not as due, not as coming by chance, but as a grace. And this will make us use it as a grace, for the best. It will make us give God the glory and turn it to our own good, when we are thankful for grace, so that we may have cause to account it a grace. Our hearts would not be so full of atheism, and our tongues so full of blasphemies, if we had learned this lesson; our lives would be a praising of God.

And so that we may not lack matter to feed a thankful spirit, always consider that whatever good things we have are of grace. We do not deserve so much as a crumb of bread; therefore we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matt 6:11). Everything is a grace, especially the things of a better life.

How shall I know that the minister is a grace, or that a good speech from a minister is a grace, as St. Paul says here: I intended you a “second grace,” that is, to speak gracious things to you?

I shall know it if by that gracious means, by those gracious speeches, God distills into me a spirit to turn them to gracious purposes. For indeed, God turns all things to a gracious end for his children. He gives them a principle of grace to work good out of everything. They see grace in everything: in affliction they see the love of God. In the worst things, grace will pick out something and make use of it. As God by his providence intends all to good, so his Spirit, with a provident eye to the word, works good out of everything. But to those who do not have grace, these things are not grace; they tend to their further hardening.

To end this point: when you come to the communion, come to it as a grace. It is the grace of God that he has ordained us to salvation. It is the grace of God that he has sent his word. It is the grace of God that he has sent his sacrament to seal that word, and all of it is little enough. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows we have need of all of it, the word and the sacraments, to confirm and help us even to the end of our days, as the apostle says, “To build us up” (Acts 20:32).

The means of grace are necessary not only for the planting but for the building up of the church. And therefore come with this purpose, to have grace confirmed, and receive it as a grace of God with thankfulness, that God will condescend to our infirmity, to give us helps to support our weak faith. It is a true proverb that grace begets grace. It begets thankfulness, where it is apprehended as a grace. Therefore come to the sacrament with a thankful disposition; embrace every ordinance of God with thankfulness. Alas! do not thousands “sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death” (Luke 1:79)? They do; and therefore those who find the benefit of God’s ordinances are disposed, by the same Spirit who works any good in them, to return thankfulness to God again.

“That you might have a second grace.” St. Paul’s purpose was to come to them to bestow “a grace,” not to take from them; to bestow good and gracious speeches on them, which he knew the Spirit of God would make effectual to work some good in them.

Observation. A gracious man is a vessel of grace, and he should take every occasion to give vent to what is good.

When St. Paul says that he intended to bestow a second grace, his meaning is that he would utter things that were gracious, which the Spirit of God would seal to the souls of those who heard him and make effectual.

Therefore every Christian should have this disposition. St. Paul did it as a holy man as well as a minister. Do we think of ourselves as vessels of grace, as the Scripture calls the elect, the children of God, or not? Yes! God forbid it should be otherwise. Now among God’s children, God has appointed some to be vessels of gold and some of silver, as the apostle says to Timothy, some for this use and some for that, and all for good use (2 Tim 2:20). A vessel is to be filled with something and to be used for something. Therefore tap some good thing and let it flow when you have the opportunity, when you are called to it, but not needlessly thrusting yourselves forward. Let the desire of your hearts be to do good upon all occasions. A vessel of grace must not be an empty vessel.

A Christian is a member of Christ, and he has a part in the communion of saints, and he has gifts for that end. There is no Christian who cannot comfort, or instruct, or dissuade from evil when it is proposed. There is no Christian who is not furnished as a member ought to be, in some competent measure. There is no man who has benefit from the communion of saints who does not have grace to fit him for that blessed communion. He is fitted to comfort, upon occasion; and he has some grace, some knowledge to correct. He who does not have it is a dead member, not fit for that communion.

Therefore we should bestow grace wherever we come, and not leave an evil scent behind us, infecting others with filthy speeches and blasphemous oaths, laying open the rottenness of our own hearts in their presence, and so being party to what is evil in them, because we strengthen it by our example and by our words. St. Paul was a good man. “I come to bestow a second grace,” that is, to speak what is gracious, which God’s gracious providence will direct to do you special good. For God’s word is inspired by the Spirit; and the same Spirit who breathed the word of God into its penmen, that same Spirit is with the word in the uttering of it. When it is done by a gracious heart, to a gracious man, it works graciously; it has a blessed operation with it.

Therefore we should speak gracious things upon all good occasions. Divine truths will have a wondrous efficacy. If men would set about it and be more fruitful in this way, they would have occasion to bless God. But alas! the life of a Christian is little known in the world. We have only naked, shallow notions of the glory of heaven, and of the state of a Christian, and of how he lives in this world. And that makes men live such stained, such base lives, lives that are not consistent with comfort in this world or glory in the world to come.

But a Christian should be such a one as frames his disposition to do good wherever he comes; and he has the ability if he is a sound Christian. How graciously God blessed Abigail’s word to David! Yet she was a woman of low station. How do you know but that by uttering gracious words in company, in season (as discretion must guide all our actions, all our words), how do you know but that you may divert another man from sin by a word in season?

I beg you, carry this disposition about with you. As you desire to be thought vessels of grace here and of glory hereafter, to be thought vessels of gold and silver for the use of God, labor to be employed by the Spirit of God for good purposes, so that you may leave a good savor wherever you come; so that others who are acquainted with you in the “time of their visitation” (1 Pet 2:12) may bless God that they were ever acquainted with such a friend: “Blessed be God that I knew him.” As it will be our joy at that day, so it will be one another’s joy here; for God often blesses the exhortations and comforts of friends to one another, as well as those of the ministry.

So I come to the sixteenth verse, how he meant to come to them at Corinth. He says, “I was minded to come to you.”

And to pass by you into Macedonia, and to come again out of Macedonia unto you, and of you to be brought on my way to Judea (2 Cor 1:16).

See what a circuit the blessed apostle made. Indeed, he was industrious after his conversion. He made amends for his harsh conversion by his speedy labors. For he spread the gospel like lightning, through almost all the world. His course was like the course of the sun; he went everywhere spreading the gospel. We see his circuit here, “to pass by you into Macedonia, and to come again from Macedonia to you, and by you to be brought on my way to Judea.”

There is little to be observed here. Because it is a transition to other things, and a matter of circumstance, I will not dwell on it. Only this, in passing, we see here:

Observation. It is a commendable custom among the people of God to bring one another on their way, by way of honor and respect.

Partly this was for Paul’s security and safety, but especially for the honor of his person. And the Corinthians knew that it would not be a barren courtesy, for they knew that he was a man of a blessed spirit, so thankful that he would beguile all the tediousness of the journey by his heavenly conversation. And he intended their good as well as his own. You may see, therefore, that religion establishes courtesy. As the apostle says to the Philippians, “Whatsoever things are of good report, whatsoever things are lovely” (he goes over many instances), “think of these things” (Phil 4:8). The same command of God that urges and presses love also commands all the expressions of love, and all the means to kindle love.

Now their escorting him and going on the way with him was done for the honor and respect of so excellent a person, who deserved so well of them. It was an expression of their love, and a means to preserve it. I need not prove it; it is taken for granted. Those courtesies that express and maintain love are good, when the outward expression and the inward affection go together.

I say this in passing, to show that religion does not countenance incivility. Therefore those who cultivate unnecessary sternness and unnecessary seclusion do not do it out of religion. Religion establishes whatever is good, “whatsoever is of good report,” whatever may maintain love. So far as a man is defective in this, he is defective in religion, unless his affections and intentions at that time are deeply taken up with serious things. For then lesser things must give way to the greater; otherwise there is no excuse. For religion is a thing of large extent. Even duties of civility and courtesy, and whatever may express and maintain love, are established by religion. We see that when Abraham entertained the angels, he led them on their way (Gen 18:16). And so in Acts, the company sent them on their way (Acts 20:4, 36-38). And we see in Scripture many common courtesies.

But I only touch on it in passing, because this whole verse is only a transition to another thing. Therefore I come to the seventeenth verse.

When I therefore was thus minded (to come unto you), did I use lightness? or the things that I purpose, do I purpose according to the flesh, that with me there should be yea, yea, and nay, nay? (2 Cor 1:17)

The apostle still goes on to guard against offense. “Woe to the world because of offences” (Matt 18:7), says our blessed Savior, and this is especially true of offenses taken. Because our nature is so corrupt that it is inclined to take offense where none is given, it will pick quarrels enough to go to hell. Proud men who have only nature in them will not be damned without a reason. “Nonsense! I would have been good,” they say, “but for such and such.” Now St. Paul was a man much tried by the cross. He wipes away the offense of that, as we heard in the first part of the chapter. He says that as his crosses for Christ abounded, so his comforts in Christ abounded. He lost nothing by it.

Again, they took offense that he promised to come to them and did not, especially some who did not wish him well. Therefore he labors to answer that.

And first, so that he might better satisfy them that he was no inconstant man, no unsettled man, he sets down beforehand a description of his own disposition and course of life. He appeals to his own conscience: “This is our rejoicing, the testimony of our conscience” (2 Cor 1:12).

And then he appeals to their conscience. It is a clear mark of a confident man that he dares appeal to his own conscience and to the conscience of another. Men who are open to blame are always afraid, not only of their own conscience, lest it tell them what they would be loath to hear, but of the consciences of others as well. St. Paul appeals to their conscience: “I write no other things than what you read and acknowledge” (2 Cor 1:13).

And so he comes more directly to answer their suspicion of him for not coming to them. In this verse he labors to remove their false charge: “When I was thus minded to come unto you, did I use lightness?”

In this you have St. Paul’s clearing of himself. Here he heads off an objection born of suspicion, which the flesh will stir up in those who have doubtful, suspicious minds: “Why, if you intended to come, why did you not?” He says, “When I was thus minded, did I use lightness?” First, observe from this in general that

Observation. Men are wondrously prone to jealousy and suspicion.

It is the state of God’s children here in this world to have suspicions raised about them. They are exposed to slanders and accusations, and they are forced to defend themselves. Men are prone to suspicion, yes, and good men too. Here, for instance, they took his not coming in the worst sense, by the wrong handle.

This is what suspicion is: when there are two handles to a thing, two ways of understanding it, and the mind is inclined to the worst, to take things in a bad sense. They might have construed it in many better ways than this, but they thought the worst of him: “He is light in his promises. He will say a thing and unsay it again. He is off and on.” This is found in natural men, yes, and in Christians. As far as they have the old Adam in them, they are prone to suspicion.

Where does this come from?

1. Partly it comes from the poison and malice of man’s nature in many, who judge others by themselves. For the worst natures are always the most suspicious, out of an inward awareness of their own bad disposition. Usually those who deserve the worst are the most mistrustful, because there is the most cause. A man’s consciousness of his own imperfections and weakness makes him think others are as he himself is.

2. And again, there is envy in man’s nature, especially toward excellent persons. The malice of man’s nature cannot bear eminence in others. The false teachers among the Corinthians saw that Paul stood in their light, and therefore they labored to eclipse and obscure him all they could. This is why men are so willing to entertain any suspicion. For, being unwilling out of baseness to rise to the greatness and excellence of such persons, they labor by their suspicion to bring them down to their own baseness and meanness, so that all may be bad alike.

Therefore baseness is given to suspicion and to the fruit of suspicion, that is, slander: to take everything with suspicion and to utter it in words. For base men would have men of eminence brought down to their own meanness, and if they cannot do it in fact, they will bring them as low as they can by reports, saying that they speak and unspeak and are as inconstant as other men. There are many causes of this, and therefore St. Paul, seeing the baseness of it, insists on it all the more.

Question. How shall we arm ourselves against this suspicion and the fruit of it? How shall we conduct ourselves against this disposition in the men among whom we live?

Answer. I answer briefly. 1. Labor for innocence, so that if they will speak maliciously, they may at least speak falsely. As St. Ambrose says, our care must be that no man speaks ill of us without a lie. Let us so live that no man may believe them. Labor for innocence, therefore. But that will not do.

2. Therefore patience in the next place. For innocence could not shield Christ himself, who was innocence clothed with our flesh. If innocence will not prevail to make men hold their tongues from speaking their suspicious minds, then labor for patience.

3. But if that will not do either, and men still go on, then prayer. That was David’s course: that God would defend our innocence, take our cause into his hands, and bring forth our innocence as the light, to judge for us.

4. And when nothing else will serve the turn, neither innocence nor patience and the rest, then a just vindication and defense, as we see the apostle here defending himself. For it is not right for public persons to keep silent about slanders, and especially not to allow evil suspicions to rest in the hearts of those who are under them. Therefore the apostle is driven by Christian prudence to his vindication, to wipe away the charge. “When I was thus minded, did I use lightness?” he says. This I observe in general.

Question. Now, because suspicion is a doubtful thing, which may be either good or evil, how shall we know when suspicion is bad and evil?

Answer. 1. When it comes from misconstruction. When it comes from weak grounds or doubtful grounds, then it is bad because of its ground.

2. Or it is bad likewise when it badly affects, sways, and disposes the mind: if it disposes the affections to malice, to the suppression of love; if it shows itself by coming to slander. So here in this place, they immediately thought it was lightness in him. Here was a misconstruction, here was a false ground. What did this incline them to do? From inconstancy they immediately fly to his disposition, from suspicion to slandering his disposition.

They enter into God’s throne: “His purposes and projects, certainly they were bad.” Carnal, proud man will enter into God’s throne and judge a man’s thoughts and purposes and intentions. A man may know that his suspicion is not right when it enters too deep, when it rises from false grounds, from suspicious grounds, and carries men from the actions to the disposition. “Did I use lightness? or the things that I purpose, do I purpose according to the flesh?” that is, carnally, as they thought. This entered into his disposition.

3. Then again, when it stirs us up to speak in slander, when we speak without cause or ground. Then, when it inclines a man to go from an error in one thing to the habitual disposition in all things. So here, because in one thing the apostle was inconstant, as they thought, and did not come to them, they went on to his habitual disposition in all things: “No, you can see what he is. You see what we are likely to have from him in other things. He only purposes things according to the flesh. He has his own aims, I warrant you.” So when from one thing we immediately judge that he purposes other things according to the flesh, that is a bad suspicion: when a man goes from one thing to the habitual disposition.

“When I was thus minded, did I use lightness?” The more to convict them of their suspicion and harsh surmises, he summons them and, as it were, puts formal questions to them. Please answer me, he says: “When I was thus minded, did I use lightness,” as you imagine? “or the things that I purpose, do I purpose according to the flesh?”

Having cleared his purpose earlier and cleared his conscience, he now comes to put the matter to their conscience. For he would have them think that if he was the kind of man he had shown himself to be, with a good conscience in all things and a good affection toward them, they should not have misconstrued that particular failing, that he did not come to them when he purposed. For particular actions must be construed according to a man’s habitual conduct and affection. It is as if he said: “You see how I have labored in all things to have a good conscience. And as for you, you acknowledge that I purposed to come to you. Therefore you should construe my actions according to that intention. Now that I have cleared my disposition and intention to you, you see your error in misconstruing my not coming to you.” So he comes to it at the right time, after he has cleared himself with them.

“When I was thus minded, did I use lightness?” These are the things he disclaims:

1. Lightness or inconstancy.

2. Purposing or deliberating according to the flesh.

3. And then inconstancy in his speeches, that they should be “Yea, yea, nay, nay.”

The point that I observe from the first, concerning lightness, is that

Doctrine. Every Christian, especially ministers and public men, should labor by all means to avoid the just charge of lightness and inconstancy.

The charge of lightness is especially to be avoided by those in office. Lightness and inconstancy! What is that? It is when a man has not fixed his resolutions and purposes on one thing, when a man does not stand by his purposes.

Now, a man must avoid charges of lightness, and especially persons of rank.

Why?

Reason. Not to say all that might be said on the point, it is especially for this end, to preserve authority. Authority is what equips a man in office, in the magistracy or the ministry, to prevail wonderfully and to do good. I do not here mean by authority that which the king or the chief magistrate puts on them. Authority is that high respect the people have for the eminence of their gifts and honesty, an impression of something more than ordinary in them. This is that authority, a beam of excellence that God infuses for the strengthening and fortifying of his own ordinance. What other reason is there that a thousand should be subject to one man, except that God puts a majesty on his own ordinance and on the persons in it? And this respect for it must be maintained by a uniform, constant conduct.

Now, when people see that these men are great, serious, weighty, and firm in their resolutions, as in their place so in their disposition, so that people may build on them and know where they stand, as we say, it breeds authority and maintains authority. For then what they say is regarded. And how their affections stand is regarded too: if it is love, it is much sought after; if displeasure, it is much feared. For they are men of a fixed disposition, and that gains wonderful respect.

Let men be ever so great, if they are such as St. Paul here disclaims being, men who use lightness, they lose their authority. Authority is the special help that governors have to rule and that ministers have to prevail. Now, nothing weakens esteem and authority more than when men are tossed between the waves of contrary affections, when men are such that we do not know where they stand: as we say, off and on, fast and loose, one moment sitting, the next standing. No man will build on them or much regard their love or hatred.

Now you know that authority is a beam of majesty, and God has put it on magistrates above others, and has likewise imprinted the respect for it in the people’s hearts, to maintain the world. The pillars of the earth will shake else, as the psalmist says (Ps 75:3). What would become of the pillars of government, if it were not for authority in those who are above, and respect for that authority, an impression of it in those who are under?

Now there are many grounds of authority, such as success, when God blesses them with it so wonderfully that men marvel, and good gifts, and the like. But one main ground of authority is constancy and firmness. This raises a high respect in the hearts of the people.

I will not multiply reasons why those in office should avoid the charge of lightness. Ministers especially should beware of it, because they are ministers of God’s truth. If they do not beware of it, people will be ready to go from their moral and civil conduct to their doctrine, and to think there is an uncertainty in what they speak, because they do not regard what they say.

But let me add this by the way: likeness is the mother of error. So there is something like constancy in governors and others when they are nothing of the kind, but merely refractory and obstinate. To maintain the reputation of constancy, they will run into the fault of willfulness. Those who are inclined that way need strong wits to rule their strong wills and to guide them, or else woe to those who have to deal with them. I thought it good to add that, lest we mistake.

We should all labor to avoid inconstancy and lightness in our resolutions, in our purposes, and in our affections.

If we ought to avoid it, how shall we come to know it? What is the ground of lightness? The grounds are many.

1. Sometimes it comes from the temper of the body. Some are of a movable temper, of a movable, quick spirit, so that by their constitution they cannot stay fixed long unless they set weights on nature: “I am like this by disposition, but my resolution shall be otherwise.” For where grace and wisdom are, they will fix the temper and fix the resolution and the thoughts: “This I could not do if I yielded to my own disposition, but this I will do, and I should do.” There are many resolutions, as in the young, and some by their very temper are more fixed and resolved.

2. But now consider it as it is in religion. Lightness comes from the disposition of the mind.

(1) Lack of consideration is often the ground, when we do not see the circumstances of a thing we promise or purpose. You know that nothing comes to action without being beset with circumstances. There are advantages for it, and there are stops and hindrances against it. Something may happen. Everything that comes to action is besieged with circumstances. Circumstances, you know, take their name from standing about a business, about a thing.

Now when the things that stand about it, the impediments and the hindrances and the obstacles, are not weighed, a rash man does not see the things and does not consider the things he enters upon. He resolves without considering the circumstances that beset the thing. He never considers what opposition he may meet with, or what advantages there are which perhaps he neglects. He only thinks of the thing, that it is good and suitable to his purpose. He resolves and never considers the circumstances about it, but runs on in confidence of his own wit and abilities, and thinks to rule everything by the strength of his wit, not foreseeing, not casting about in his mind to prevent beforehand what may happen.

It is just of God to put such men to shame. The frustration of their purposes is a just reward of their folly. Therefore we should beware of lack of consideration and have our eyes in our heads, setting the soul to foresee what possibility there is in the business and what may happen. This is the right way, if we would avoid the charge of lightness.

(2) Again, another ground of lightness, and of that decay in authority and respect that comes from it, is the passion of men. That is why they are light. They are carried along by the hurry and wind of their passion. And Satan joins with passion. A passionate man is subject to Satan more than a man who is led by reason or by grace. For that is a beam of God. Even reason itself, judgment, is an excellent thing, and it prevents many temptations.

Do not give way to passion, for passions are unreasonable things. We see this in Saul: in his passion, Satan, the evil spirit, mingled with his passion of anger. So let men be in any passion, overjoyed or overly angry. Let them give the reins to unruly passion, and they give Satan an advantage, so that we cannot settle our souls in any good resolution.

(3) Again, in the things themselves there is cause of lightness and inconstancy, from the nature of things, and then it is not so great a fault to change. Then it is not properly inconstancy. But it is inconstancy when the things are mutable and variable and we do not think of that as we should.

Now the things of this life are variable and uncertain. The outcome of things in this life is wonderfully variable. Grace and glory are certain things, and as for the way God directs us to heaven, those are certain promises and certain grounds. But the things of this life are subject to much change. God takes a great deal of liberty in altering things in this world; they turn out in various ways.

(4) But now, therefore, we must take care that we do not mistake for inconstancy what is not inconstancy. Not every change of opinion and purpose is lightness. It is not inconstancy for a man to change his mind and purpose when the change comes from the things themselves. Men are men, and the things we deal with in the world are subject to variety and inconstancy. For a man to alter according to the variety of things shows no inconstancy, if the aim is good.

For example, a mariner, a seaman, is not inconstant when one time he lowers sail and another time he hoists it. When he tacks back and forth and goes with a side wind, he is going on his way, and his aim is still to come to the haven. He is not inconstant, because he does not change his star. He always aims at the right star, and keeps to the compass and chart that he sails by. He does not vary from his rule. His varying comes from the things, because the winds and the seas vary, because he deals with variable objects. The things vary, but he does not vary. He comes to what he set out for, to the haven, and takes his direction from the North Pole.

So it is with the farmer: sometimes he sows, sometimes he harrows, sometimes he reaps. Is he inconstant, and does he vary? No! The matter he is working on varies. So it is with governors: sometimes they do this, and sometimes that. They are occupied with variable matters, yet here there is no variableness or lightness of disposition, because they deal with mutable, with variable objects.

So it is with God in managing his church’s affairs, in his dispensation on that point. You see he used one dispensation before Christ, and another since Christ. God does not change, but the times have changed. In the infancy of the church one dispensation was required, and now another. Therefore it is not inconstancy for a man to change on good grounds, or when the things themselves change.

Therefore this should have made them think well of St. Paul. His affection for them had not changed, but the business had changed, as we shall see later. Other things hindered him. So with a good man: his honest resolution should not change. His aim to serve God and his country, and to deserve well of mankind, should be constant. But the manner how, the circumstances of time and place, and the ordering of these things, are variable. Such men do not change, but maintain their constancy and resolution in the variety of occasions that arise; for we cannot shape our life otherwise than it is, so as to be invariable.

When a man is guided by a certain principle, though the things of this life are uncertain, and he sometimes varies according to his principle, and aim, and end, yet it is no inconstancy. And it will exceedingly excuse a man’s conscience, when his aim is good, and the rules and principles he goes by are good and honest, if things turn out otherwise than he aims at, even though there is a change in his course, because his heart tells him his rules and his purposes were good.

3. One other main cause of lightness and sinful inconstancy is irreligion: casting ourselves upon future things without a dependence on divine providence. It is an atheistic independence, when we plan things to come and never call upon God to assist us, and never make the divine reservations that we should, but boast, “This I will do,” and sometimes negatively, “This I will not do, I have time enough to do it,” as if we had future times at our command.

St. James excellently rebukes such people: “Go to now, you that say, Today and tomorrow we will go to such a city, and buy, and sell, and get gain” (Jas 4:13). “Go to now”: see here how he shames them by a kind of ironic permission. “Go to now.” You will do great things! “Whereas,” he says, “you know not what shall be tomorrow” (Jas 4:14). God, who has given us the present time to repent in and to do good in, has reserved the time to come in his own power. We do not know what shall be tomorrow.

Here he shows the ground of this atheism, of this rushing upon business without dependence: they forget the condition of this life, that it is a vapor. “What is your life? it is even a vapour that appeareth for a little while, and then vanisheth away” (Jas 4:14). Your life is inconstant. God is the Lord of your purposes. He is the Lord of your life, and of all opportunities and circumstances. “Your life is but a vapour.” Here all things fall under his providence and guidance. You do not consider this, and therefore you plan as you do for the time to come. “What is your life? it is even a vapour …”

Then he comes to direct them how they should entertain resolutions for the time to come: “Ye ought to say, If the Lord will,” or if we live, we will do this and that (Jas 4:15). “If the Lord will”: the Lord in whose power are our intentions, and resolutions, and affections. He guides the inward man and all the things in the world, down to the falling of a hair from our head, to the falling of a sparrow to the ground, even the least things (Luke 12:7). You should say this.

And he calls it vain boasting. What makes God confound insolent attempts? For indeed he triumphs over the insolent attempts of kings and captains, or of anyone at all, who set about great business in a lofty conceit of themselves, saying they will do this and that. St. James says, “You rejoice in your boasting” (Jas 4:16). They boast they will do this and that. It is this that makes God confound them so, because they will be gods to themselves. Man is a dependent creature. Everything is God’s, and we are dependent. “In him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

Though man is a dependent creature, yet he resolves to do this and that as if he had the guidance of his own thoughts and purposes. This provokes God to jealousy, when man makes himself a god, and does not set God before him in his actions. He sets about things without dependence, without prayer or the reservation, if God permits this. Because God rejoices to confound these bold attempts, men never thrive in such attempts.

Therefore a true Christian joins modesty to his plans for the time to come. He will attempt nothing but what he may expect to have God’s protection in. He who thinks God may cross him will do nothing evil in which he fears God will cross him; he will be modest. The best Christians are the most modest. They consider the uncertainty of the things of this life, and the weakness of man in foreseeing things. They see a dependence of all things on the majesty of God, even to the least things; that he guides the things most subject to chance; and that he rules even the hearts of princes, as Solomon says, “as the rivers of water” (Prov 21:1). They are guided by him; they are in his hand.

For this reason a wise Christian becomes modest in his resolutions for the time to come. He undertakes everything with a holy dependence on God, if God wills, and if God permits. He will undertake nothing for the time to come except with warrant, so that he may look for God’s assistance without tempting God. For to go to God to bless us in evil projects is to make God the patron of what is bad, which is contrary to his nature. Therefore he learns to depend upon God for the time to come, and will entertain or enter upon no business except such as he may safely, without tempting God, depend upon him to assist. This is the disposition of a modest Christian.

You see in Psalm 2 how the psalmist taunts those who threaten to do this and that: “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing … against the Lord, and against his Anointed?” As if they would swallow up the church, and Christ the anointed! Why do they do this and that? God who sits in heaven laughs them to scorn. You see the grounds of lightness, as far as is needful. I will name no more.

The way to prevent it may lie in observing these grounds of constancy, especially this:

1. Establish your thoughts with counsel for the time to come; consult, and do not go rashly and headlong about matters. It is not with our common life as with those who run in a race, for there swiftness wins everything. But in matters of government in the commonwealth, the most steady win everything: those who weigh things and then carry them out upon mature deliberation, who ripen things first and do not go about them rawly and without deliberation. Every man takes this for granted, but it is not thought about.

2. Then again, labor to suppress passion in anything that comes from us. Speak nothing in passion, for one of these things will follow. If we carry it out, we are in danger for the things spoken in passion and inconsiderately; if not, we will have the shame of having our words come to nothing. We undergo the shame of lightness, in that we speak in our passion and heat what we afterward retract. One of these inconveniences will follow: either you will do it, and then it will be dangerous; or you will not do it, and then you will be ashamed, a fit reward of rashness.

God gives us passions to be guided and ruled, and not to rule us. They are good servants and only servants, which should be raised up and stirred up only when reason and judgment raise them, and not otherwise. But to go on.

3. Another cure of this rashness is holy dependence on God by prayer, and by faith, to commit our ways to him, our thoughts to him for the time to come. Leave everything to him, and entertain nothing in which we cannot expect his gracious assistance. The best Christian is the most dependent Christian. That is the first thing the apostle disclaims.

What is the second thing?

“Or the things that I purpose, do I purpose according to the flesh?” (2 Cor 1:17). They thought he was a crafty politician, as is sometimes the lot of God’s children. If God has given them abilities, whether of nature or of breeding, carnal, devilish men who are themselves led altogether by plots judge them by themselves. “The things that I purpose, do I purpose according to the flesh?” He puts this question to their conscience, and not idly; he knew that they had a prejudice in them, through his rivals, the false apostles. So here he labors to wipe away that charge as well, showing that he did not purpose and consult about things according to the flesh.

What is flesh here?

“Flesh” is the unregenerate part of man, of which fleshly wisdom is the chief; for that wisdom guides the “old man”; it is the eye of old Adam. Carnal wisdom is the flesh’s counselor in all things; therefore he especially means that.

But why is it called flesh?

For many reasons. Among the many this is one: the soul, so far as it is sinful, is led by things that are fleshly, that are outward, and for that reason a man is called flesh. And the soul itself is called flesh, because it cleaves in its affections and desires to earthly things, and because the poor understanding, which ruled all and should rule all, has now become an underling to the carnal will and carnal lusts. Therefore the understanding itself is likewise called flesh: “The wisdom of the flesh is enmity with God” (Rom 8:7). For now it is swayed whichever way carnal fancy, and opinion, and the flesh lead it.

The reason is that it stands between God and heavenly things on the one side and earthly things on the other. If it were in its right original state, as it came out of God’s hands, being a spirit, it would be led by God, and by God’s Spirit, and God’s truth, by better things than itself (as every weak thing is guided by what is better than itself; as brute creatures are guided by men, and weaker persons by magistrates, who are, or should be, better). But now since the fall, unless grace renews a man, the understanding part of man’s soul, instead of lighting its candle from heaven, often lights it from hell. It is ruled by Satan himself, and takes advice even from things meaner than itself, and plots and schemes altogether for things worse than itself.

God who gave it knows that this soul of ours was not given for that end, to prowl for earthly things, for the ease, and honor, and profits, and pleasures of the world. That excellent jewel, which all the world is not worth, was not given for that end. No! It was given to attain a higher end than this world, to attain communion with God. But now since the fall it is this way with it: it is a slave. Carnal wit is a slave to carnal will, and that carnal will is drawn by carnal affections. Affections draw the will, and the will draws the wit, and makes it plot and devise for what the will stands for, for carnal lusts and affections, which whet the wit that way. Therefore the whole soul is called flesh, even reason itself.

And for this reason wicked men are called “the world.” Why the world? Because they are led by the things of the world, by the guise and fashion of the world.

A man, in the language of the Scripture, is named by what he cleaves to. Therefore if the heart and soul cleave to the flesh and the things of the flesh, it is flesh; if it is led by the world and the things of the world, it is called the world. Wicked men are the world, because the best thing in them is the love of worldly things, and their wit is for worldly things. All the inward parts of their soul are spent on worldly things; therefore they are called flesh, and the world. And sometimes “Satan” himself. A man, as far as he is carnal, is called Satan, yes, even good men: “Go after me, Satan,” says Christ to Peter (Matt 16:23).

A man, as far as he yields to anything, is named from what he yields to. When fleshly things rule a man, he is called “flesh”; when worldly things rule him, profits and pleasures, a man is the “world”; when a man yields to Satan, he is “Satan.”

Use. This should make us take heed by whom we are led, under whose government we come. St. Paul says, “Do I purpose according to the flesh?” That is, according to the profits, and pleasures, and honors that the flesh looks after. Are those my advisers, my informants, my counselors in the things I take in hand? What may serve my honor, my pleasure, my estate, my worldly ease here? No! he says, I do not purpose according to the flesh. The rule from this is as follows.

Observation. A Christian ought by all means to avoid the charge of carnal scheming.

Every Christian, and much more a Christian in authority and position, a minister or magistrate, ought by all means to avoid it. St. Paul here disclaims it: “Did I purpose things according to the flesh?” Was I scheming? I had good occasion to speak at length of it in the former verse concerning fleshly wisdom, therefore I will speak the less of it now. We ought by all means to decline the charge of it, and still more the conscience of it than the report of it; to be holily wise, and to be accounted so too.

Reason. The reason is, it is God’s enemy, and our enemy. Should a Christian consult and deliberate with his enemy? Should he take his enemy to be his judge, and his friend, and counselor? A man who has his enemy to guide him to a place, who has a pirate to guide him in a ship, how can he come to good? He who is led by the flesh consults with his enemy, when he looks to what is for his profit, or his pleasure, and the like. These things we should renounce, as we promised in baptism, when we gave our names to Christ. If we live and deliberate “according to the flesh, we shall die” (Rom 8:13), says the apostle peremptorily. It is a dangerous enemy; death is the outcome of all the counsel of the flesh.

Again, it is a secret enemy, a domestic enemy. It is in all the powers of the soul. We cannot be too suspicious of it. It is a perpetual enemy that accompanies us continually, in all our consultations, in all places, in prosperity, in adversity. It hinders us from all good; it keeps us from the reformation of anything that is evil.

If a magistrate is prompted by anyone else, or by a good impulse of his own, “Do this, reform this,” he says, “Oh! I will run myself into danger, I will incur censure!” So evil is done and stays unreformed, only through consulting with the flesh. And good is neglected: “I will be counted a hypocrite if I do this.”

So there is flesh and blood to hinder in every good thing. The flesh will be slipping in bad ends or bad motives, and the flesh will be ready to keep us from reforming evil through fear of danger. And if we do evil and are in evil, it will be ready to keep us in evil: “Oh! It is time enough to repent,” and so on. The flesh has a thousand such schemes to keep us in evil until we are in hell itself. Who would be advised and take counsel by such an enemy?

Use. Therefore, let us take heed. We have it in us, but let it live in us only, and not rule in us. Although it will be in us as long as we live, yet let us not be ruled by it. Let us not admit it to counsel, but suppress it and keep it under. Especially those who are magistrates, who are called to public business: let them not bring private considerations to public business, but bring public hearts, intent on the good of religion and of their country before any private interest whatsoever. And let them not consult according to the flesh: “If I do this, I will displease such and such.” That does not matter. Even apart from religion, if a man has a public mind, such as the very heathens had, he will lay aside base considerations in public business.

Therefore, I humbly desire such men to examine deeply their intentions and purposes, what they aim at: whether to serve God, and the church, and their country, or to serve themselves, so that if they can only be safe, they do not care what befalls their country, or religion, or anything else. That is what moves God to indignation, to cross their intentions. For when God sees that they set earth above heaven, the present world before the world to come, and the dirt of the world and base considerations before those that are greater, so that they invert the order of things, he crosses them in what they aim at, because they cross him in neglecting their duty. Therefore, as we would have things succeed well, let us labor to consult, not according to the flesh, for our private advantage, but for what may serve religion first, and then the public good.

Again, we may learn from this:

Observation. A ground of lightness is to purpose things according to the flesh.

To purpose according to carnal reason and affection is a ground of lightness. For mark the reason of it. When a man is carried in his deliberations by carnal considerations (“This will be for my profit, this will incline such a man to me, by this I will get such a position,” and so on), when he is led by low and base considerations, it makes him light before God, however good he may be otherwise. Because carnal considerations build on outward things that are uncertain, all resolutions built on outward things and carnal considerations are uncertain.

He who takes fleshly wisdom for his counselor, and adviser, and informant, what does he do? He is led by side interests, by one of the three idols of the world: some honor, or pleasure, or base profit. Now the rule of his deliberation is the flesh, and the flesh carries a man to outward things that are variable. A man who weighs things according to the flesh is always light and inconstant.

What is the reason that a wicked man (though he is not notoriously, outwardly wicked, but a shrewd man who is for himself, who makes himself the end of all his projects), what is the reason that such a man can never be a sound friend? He is never a sound friend. He is a friend only so long as it serves himself, so long as he gets for himself in all things. As the Jesuits are accustomed to say, so it is true of every natural man: they do all that they do, and consult, with a view to spiritual things. They do this and that, and overrule kings and states, and this is for the good of society, and with a view to spiritual things.

A man who does not have grace in him above nature, and above the considerations of nature, can never be a sound friend. For when fleshly advantages come, of pleasures, and profits, and honors, when these arise one way or another, there he leaves the bonds of friendship, because there is a nearer bond between him and the things of this life. He is led by the flesh and deliberates according to the flesh.

And that is likewise the reason why such a man can never be a good Christian. He can never go through the variety of times. Why? Because he consults about things according to the flesh. As long as religion fits with his aims, so that he may enjoy his riches, and his greatness, and the contentments of this life along with religion, so long he is content to be religious. If religion crosses him in these, he has not learned to deny himself, and therefore he is not constant.

Or if times do not turn out so cross, he is still not constant in his disposition; and God looks on him as he is in his disposition, and so he will judge him on that day. Now since he is led by the flesh, his disposition alters and varies.

How shall I know whether I consult according to the flesh or not?

In a word, examine two things: (1) the ground, and (2) the aim of our actions, where they arise from and what they aim at. Do they spring from self-love? Do they aim at our self-contentment and private interest? Then a man is led by the flesh.

To use a familiar instance: in marriage, when a man looks more to wealth than to religion, he takes counsel according to the flesh. So also when a minister regards his living more than anything else that might weigh with his conscience if he were good, he is led by considerations according to the flesh. Those who leave their former good acquaintances and choose only such as they hope to gain by, and forsake those acquaintances they cannot gain by, however good they may be otherwise, are led according to the flesh.

How shall we know that we do not do things, and do not consult about things, according to the flesh?

1. Some men may know it easily; as when men have rich abilities, when the strength of their wit leads them one way, and religion leads them another way, yet in the awe of God they do not go the way that calculating considerations would carry them. They could be as thorough schemers as the best, but they dare not. Here now is a man who is “led by the Spirit,” when it is not for lack of abilities but out of conscience that he does not go wrong by following his enemy. Many times an honest man could be rich by evil means as well as another. He knows the way. It is not for lack of wit, but because he dares not. The awe of conscience and the awe of God lead him to better rules and aims. So it is easily discerned in eminent abilities.

2. And likewise in fitness of opportunities, if abilities are lacking, when a man has all outward advantages to satisfy the flesh, to yield to it, to have his aims, and yet he will not. If a man has power and yet does not revenge himself, he is not consulting with flesh and blood, for he might be revenged if he would. So I say, when there is something that might sway us another way, and yet, out of pure conscience and better rules, we will not, it is a sign that we do not purpose and advise things according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. We are led by better rules than the world is.

Under strong enticements, a Joseph can say, “How shall I do this and offend against God?” (Gen 39:9). “Doth not God see it?” says Job (Job 31:4). So a Christian, in the strength of temptations and solicitations and opportunities to do ill, considers, “Doth not God see? How shall I do this, and offend against God?” Shall I break the peace of my conscience for the gaining of this and that? Why, no. Then a man is not led by carnal wisdom.

3. Again, we may know that we are not led by the flesh and advised by the flesh when we are humble in all our consultations. To be proud is the perpetual companion of carnal wisdom. Knowledge mingled with corruption puffs up.

Question. But how shall we labor to overcome this, since we have the flesh ready beside us in all our consultations? We have this counselor always ready at hand, as St. Paul complains, “that when we would do well, evil is present” (Rom 7:21). It is present at our elbow. No, it is nearer: the flesh is mingled in all the powers of our souls, and with heavenly wisdom there is a mixture of carnal wisdom. What shall we do, so that we may not be tainted by it?

I will give a direction or two.

Answer. First of all, have a prejudice against it. As the holy man St. Augustine says, “Take heed of the evil man, yourself.” Take heed of carnal reason; be suspicious of it. It is an enemy, and the ways it counsels end in death. “There is a way that seems good to a man in his own eyes, the issues whereof are death” (Prov 14:12), and not temporal death only, but eternal death. It is a deadly enemy. Have a prejudice against it, and think of it as it really is. Let us be suspicious of it and of our own selves, especially in things that concern ourselves.

What is the reason that a man is an incompetent judge in his own cause? This: because there is natural self-love and flesh that draws everything to itself. Therefore do not consult with it. Consult with higher rules and principles, with what may make most for the chief end, for the glory of God, for the assurance of our comfort while we live here and a better estate hereafter, with what may make most for the common good. Let us labor to live by right rules and principles; God will value us by that.

Suppose a man is led another way by passion. What is his rule? What is his aim? His aim is not carnal. He may fall through passion and the like. God does not judge us by our passion, but by the tenor of our life. God does not value us by a single, particular, wayward act that a man falls into through passion or thoughtlessness, but by the tenor of our life. Therefore let us labor to have our rules and aims good, so that though we fail in particulars, yet our way may be good; though we step awry, yet our way may be good; so that when judgment comes, when death comes, it may not find us in an evil way, in an evil course.

Therefore let us consult with God, consult with his word, consult with those who are led by the Spirit of God. Let us labor to be under the government of God’s blessed Spirit, to be guided by the Spirit of God and by the word of God.

This should be our care: to labor that God would guide us by his good Spirit in those ways that may lead to our comfort; that of all other enemies in the world, he would not give us up to our own flesh to guide us, but would take the guidance of us to himself; that as he has a right to us by his covenant, so he would take us into his government. And let us desire of Christ that as he is our priest to die for us, so likewise he would be our prophet to instruct us, to subdue all in us. And let divine truth be our counselor, to bring our inner man into subjection, as it says, “The weapons of our warfare are mighty” (2 Cor 10:4), to bring all into captivity, to subject all high devices and reasonings.

“How shall I do this?” someone will say. “I will miss my ends; I will miss my projects.” Oh, but when religion comes and brings everything down, it does not make a man cast away reason. It brings reason under, and brings the soul under God. A man may keep his wisdom and understanding safe still, so long as he keeps it under, and lets divine truth sway and bring everything in us into captivity to itself.

But, alas, the drift of the world is the contrary! Instead of bringing the soul into captivity to God’s truth, to be led by him, to have no thoughts and no aims contrary to God’s will, they make God’s truth a captive and prisoner to their own base affections. As St. Paul says, “They hold the truth” (Rom 1:18); they withhold it as a prisoner under base affections.

And whereas everything should serve the main end and aim at better things, they make a counterfeit love of good things serve their carnal ends. They make heaven serve earth, they make God serve man, they make the Spirit serve the flesh. They turn the order of things clean upside down, which is as contrary to nature, if they had the wisdom to consider it, as that heaven should be under the earth and the water above the air. It overturns everything in religion when we allow carnal wisdom to rule all, to make prisoner to base affections that light which God has put into the heart and conscience, and the light of his word, and do not bring all into captivity to the Spirit and the word.

When we come to hear God’s word, we should consider that we do not come for recreation. We come to a counselor, to that which should sway and direct all our ways and words, to that which is not only our comfort in the time of affliction but our counselor. As David says, it was “the man of his counsel” (Ps 119:24 and elsewhere). So we come here to be counseled, to hear that which must direct us in the way to heaven. We must come with a purpose to be guided by it, to be taught. As Cornelius says, “We are here in the presence of God, to hear what shall be said to us from God” (Acts 10:33).

St. Paul gives this direction: if a man will be wise in heavenly things, let him be a fool first (1 Cor 3:18). It is a strange thing: “Let him be a fool,” that is, let him be content to be esteemed so, let him be content to lose his reputation for wisdom, “that he may be wise.” When he knows others to be fools, let him take a solid course, that the vain world may think him wise.

It is hard counsel, for of all the charges in the world, many, and indeed most, would rather be accounted wicked than be accounted fools. Count them the most utter fools who are unfit to speak; think of them in the highest degree of evil you can. Oh, they have wit enough for that, they have learning and abilities for that. Do not take away their learning and abilities; do not count them fools; count them what you will. Religion masters this base opinion.

St. Paul says, Let a man be a fool, if he will be wise. Let no man deceive himself and think, “Let poor men be so and so. Religion is the private man’s good, and let them make conscience of such things. But as for us who are in place and authority, we must rule by worldly policy, and he who is no politician does not know how to rule.” Let no man deceive himself. No man, great or small, is excepted: if he will be wise for heaven, “let him be a fool”; let him take the courses conscience requires, though he is accounted a fool for his pains.

Let us be suspicious of our own hearts in private and in public. Let us take heed to our own hearts, that the flesh does not come in. Let us labor to be acquainted with Christ, that he may be our counselor and our guide in all things.

Especially now, when we come to the communion. We now renew our covenant with God and our acquaintance with Christ Jesus; we come to feast with him. Do we think to have any good by him, any benefit by his death, unless we make him our king and prophet, to rule and guide us, unless we make him our counselor? Therefore let us consider beforehand that we cannot come as we ought to receive the communion unless we intend beforehand to renounce the flesh, Christ’s enemy. Can you be welcome guests, and resolve afterward to be led and ruled by his enemy?

If you would have good by Christ’s death, as a priest to reconcile you to God (as this sacrament seals the benefits of his death, in the breaking of the bread and the pouring out of the wine), come with a purpose to be ruled and guided by this counselor in all things. He is the great Counselor (Isa 9:6), who is willing to advise us by his word and Spirit in all the particular circumstances of our lives. And the more we enter into acquaintance with him by the sacrament, and maintain it by private prayer and by all sacred means, the more ready he will be to do the office of a friend and counselor, in all the circumstances of our lives, to advise us what is best. I had occasion in verse 12 to speak at large of fleshly wisdom, so I pass over it.

“That with me there should be yea, yea, and nay, nay” (2 Cor 1:17). This sets down the manner of inconstancy, the form of it: “yea, yea,” to be on the affirmative side once, and then “nay, nay,” the negative; to be of one mind, and peremptory in it, and then to be of another mind, and peremptory in that. This is the outcome of carnal wisdom and follows from it: “The things that I purpose, do I purpose according to the flesh, that with me there should be yea, yea, and nay, nay?” This implies that those who purpose things according to the flesh are “yea, yea, and nay, nay.” From this we may first observe (I touched on it a little before, but it arises more properly here from the connection of the words) that:

Observation. Carnal men are always inconstant men.

For a fleshly man, led by the flesh, is led by the things of the world; and since they are inconstant, he must of necessity be like that which rules him. A man cannot stand safely on the ice, because the ice itself is not safe. A man cannot stand on a thing that does not stand, that has no firmness. Now a carnal man has no prop to hold him but the things below. He clings to them, and they are inconstant and variable and uncertain. He who purposes according to the flesh is “yea, yea, nay, nay.” Therefore his love is “yea, yea, nay, nay.” If he may have good by you, he is “yea, yea,” he is for you; but if you can do him no good, he is “nay, nay,” he will not own you then.

Therefore one way to be constant is not to be ruled according to the flesh, as I said before, for those who are so ruled are “yea, yea, nay, nay.”

Therefore take heed how you trust carnal men in near, intimate companionship, as in marriage. Or in near friendship, never take a man who has his own aims and ends, for he will respect you no further than he can advance his own ends by you. “Trust not the wife of thy bosom,” says the prophet (Mic 7:5); if she is carnal, she will have her own ends. So a friend who is carnal will have his own ends. The idol he respects more than you, or than anything on the earth, is his own fleshly wisdom and his own ends. Every carnal man makes himself his god. He reduces everything to himself. His own ends are his idol. Therefore have no intimate companionship with such people.

“That with me there should be yea, yea; nay, nay.” Observe again in this place that:

Observation. Carnal men are vehement.

They are vehement on either side. If they are “yea,” they are “yea, yea,” and yet they will be “nay, nay,” and worthless at the same time. The soul of man will admit contraries and yet still be the same in general: “yea, yea” at one time and “nay, nay” at another time. And usually those who are vehement in business one way are vehement another way, if they are carnal. A carnal man is vehement one way in the pursuit of things, and he is vehement the contrary way if he is crossed.

What is the reason that, of men who are carnal, some stand against religion and some for religion with like eagerness? The one is “nay, nay” as much as the other is “yea, yea.” Both are flesh, and if those who are “yea, yea” were where the others are, they would be “nay, nay.” For instance, a man is religious only for carnal considerations; he is “yea, yea.” Oh, he will have the religion of the times! Why? He could not be safe otherwise, he cannot have his ends otherwise, he was brought up in it, and so on. Another, on the contrary, is just as much for the opposite religion. What is the reason? He was brought up in it, it serves his ends. If a man is religious for reasons that are not religious, he is peremptory and contrary to the man of the opposite religion, and yet they are equally worthless.

A common Protestant has no better ground for his religion than a papist has for his. The same reason a papist has, such a Protestant has: he was brought up in it, and the king is of that religion, and he will attain his ends by it. Does a papist have other reasons? Unless a man is truly changed and altered, he will be “yea, yea” and “nay, nay,” sometimes one, sometimes the other, peremptory in one and peremptory in the other, and all of it worthless.

As, for instance, the sea: sometimes it ebbs, sometimes it flows, sometimes it flows one way and then flows back another way; yet it is always salt and briny, and its nature is not changed. So some men are peremptory, “yea, yea”; they run one way at full force, and then they ebb again, yet they always keep their briny nature. They are sometimes peremptory for good, and when it serves their ends they are peremptory against it. A given cause is so; it is “yea” if it helps their advantage, and it is not so if it does not help that, as if truth itself were, in their judgment, flexible and alterable. Thus a carnal man alters, and yet he is never good in his judgment. St. Paul disclaims this. He was not “yea, yea, nay, nay,” because he did not purpose things according to the flesh.

To come to the point itself: this disclaiming of inconstancy, of “yea, yea,” “nay, nay,” came in St. Paul from hatred of inconstancy and falsehood. For “yea” and “nay,” when a man is of one mind and then another, comes from one of these two grounds in a carnal man:

Either because he is inconstant, so that he is now of one mind and now of another;

Or because he is false and means to dissemble.

Now, both are dispositions contrary to a Christian man. He should be neither light nor false and untrue.

Now, having disclaimed the charge of lightness, St. Paul much more disclaims the charge of falsehood and dissembling, that he should be “yea” when he meant not “yea” but “nay.” For a man may truly say he will, and yet change his mind afterward. But for a man to say he will, and yet not mean it, that is falsehood and dissembling, which is worse. St. Paul intends much more to clear himself of the suspicion of that.

Dissemblers are “yea, yea,” “nay, nay,” not at different times but at the same time. They make yea and nay all at once. We say contradictions cannot be true, that a thing cannot be and not be at the same time; but dissemblers would have contradictions true. They act as if they loved when in fact they hate.

God is the God of truth, the word is the word of truth, and Christ is the truth, and the devil is the father of lies (John 8:44). Therefore, if we would be like God, and if we would be unlike Satan, let us labor for truth in all things. St. Paul here labors to avoid the reputation of dissembling.

How would he regard equivocation, then, when there is yea and nay in one breath? Those who equivocate are not inconstant at different times, but are yea and nay at once, speaking one thing and meaning the contrary, holding reservations of the contrary. It is so odious that I will not spend time speaking of it, only this.

1. If it were allowable, as the best of their writers allow it and practice it (however, even if they did not allow it, their practice is so, but they do allow it), by this means the devil himself would never be a liar; there would be no lie at all. And it would be in vain for God to make prohibitions against lying if there might be equivocation, for there is no lie in the world that may not be salved over with reservations. Therefore the course that clears the devil of being a liar, that frustrates God’s course, and that makes it so that men cannot lie, whatever they do, is an abominable notion and odious to God. But to maintain equivocation is to do all this; for with absurd reservations, what in the world may not be justified?

2. Then again, we are exhorted to suffer martyrdom, to stand for God’s cause. Now, to allow equivocation is to avoid suffering. Where is the honor of martyrdom and of suffering for God’s cause, when men may speak untruths and justify themselves by a lie? It is contrary, I say, to the whole tenor and stream of Scripture.

3. Then again, they may call it equivocation to mince the matter, but it is a lie to speak one thing and reserve another. For what is a lie? To speak falsehood with a purpose and intention to deceive another. Now, they speak falsely and with a purpose to deceive. A lie must be esteemed as it is esteemed by the other who hears it, not by him who speaks it, as it is with an oath. Isidore says, “An oath is to be esteemed as he that I speak to esteems it, not as I in my sense esteem it; as God esteems it, and he to whom I speak.”

So a lie is to be judged as he judges it to whom I speak, because God forbids lying as a breach of charity to others, because he would not have others deceived. If I salve it over in my own thoughts and deceive others, it is a breach of charity and a lie, because it is a speech of untruth that another thinks to be a truth; it is an untruth, and it deceives him. But these men will have yea and nay in one breath. They will say “Yea,” and yet have a reservation of nay at once.

St. Paul would much more reject and abhor this, if he were alive now, when he so disclaimed the charge of inconstancy, of “yea, yea” and “nay, nay,” at different times. Indeed, St. Paul did make this reservation: he promised to come to them if God permitted, with a divine reservation. We may say in all the business we have to do, “This I will do, if God permits, and if God wills.” And indeed, God hindered his journey. But I say of equivocation that the matter is so odious and palpable that if it were not that we do not yet hate these men enough, I would not have spoken of it. Their religion is so abominable and odious, and we do not yet hate it enough; therefore it is good on all occasions to unmask them, and all of that is little enough. But I go on.

As God is true, our word to you was not yea and nay (2 Cor 1:18).

In the former verse the apostle labored to clear himself from the charge of lightness and inconstancy, that he did not come to them as he had promised, and likewise from a charge of scheming for himself, that he purposed things according to the flesh, which is the cause of inconstancy, “of yea, yea, and nay, nay” (2 Cor 1:17).

Now he comes to what he intended more than those particulars. For he was content to be thought to have disappointed them in the matter of his journey, but what he aimed at was to establish them in this, that his doctrine was sound: “As God is true, our word to you was not yea and nay.” As if to say, “Perhaps I promised to come and did not. That is true. But my preaching was not ‘yea and nay.’ All that I taught was sound and certain. You may build your souls on it. It was ‘yea.’” He labors to draw them to be persuaded of the certainty of his ministry, being very unwilling that a defect in his promise about a business of the world should weaken their faith in the truth that he delivered as a minister.

“As God is true, our word to you was not yea and nay.” He seems to make a difference between yea and nay in civil things and in divine things. There is a difference between when a holy man speaks of the things of this life and when he speaks of divine truths. St. Paul promised to come to them. He meant it honestly and did intend it, but it was subject to alteration, because God stops our purposes in this life, even our good purposes, many times. Good things may have variety. One good thing may be more fitting than another.

And the cause why he did not come to them was not his inconstancy but their unfitness. It came from their corruption in manners and in doctrine. They were not ready. As he says later, he did not come, to spare them (2 Cor 1:23). They were unfit until they were humbled by his former epistle, and then, when they were humbled, he purposed to come. But in divine truths, what he spoke to them concerning grace and glory was certain: “Our word to you was not yea and nay.”

Question. A question may be raised briefly: how could St. Paul be deceived in his journey and not in his doctrine? Being so good a man, led by the Spirit of God, how could he promise to come and yet not come?

Answer. I answer that the difference between these two is great. St. Paul had three roles to carry.

He was a man, a Christian man, an apostle.

As a man, he was subject to all the things that men are subject to. That is, he desired in truth of heart to come and visit his friends. He purposed a journey, with a reservation that God might hinder him. And so as a man he might have a “Yea,” that is, a purpose to do a thing, and afterward a “Nay,” owing to the uncertain outcome of the things of this life. So as a man he purposed to come. More than that, as a holy man he purposed a journey for a good purpose, to establish them, but with a reservation, if God permit. God might stop his journey.

But as an apostle, he taught other things than talk of journeys. Those he spoke of only as a man, and as a holy man, always supposing the condition of human things, and under permission, if God permit. But as an apostle he was not yea and nay. There he was certain. As an apostle he spoke divine truths and was guided infallibly by the Spirit of God. He delivered truths without any conditions and exceptions. As an apostle, he did not admit any such uncertainty. There is an eminence and excellency in divine truth. It is stable and firm, and not subject to variety and inconstancy. So his doctrine as an apostle was always “Yea.”

As for his journey and coming to them, he promised his journey in the truth of a friend’s good purpose; but when he spoke of divine truths, he spoke of them in the certainty of the divine Spirit. In the latter, he spoke in the certainty of truth; in the former, in the truth of affection. As a man, he spoke in the truth of a good affection he bore them; but as an apostle, he spoke in the certainty of divine truth.

And you must know this: though God used the apostles and excellent men to write his book, to write the word of God, to be his penmen, yet he did not hinder them from being men. Just as he does not hinder godly men from being men, but they may be saints and men at once, so St. Paul as a good man desired to see them, with a reservation; but as an apostle, he was guided by a certain, infallible assistance of divine truth.

Nathan, as a man, gave David liberty to build the temple. He overshot somewhat in this. But then he goes to God and consults with him whether David should or not, and then Nathan gives David different advice.

So the prophets and apostles, as men, might be alterable without sin. For God will allow men to be men, and subject to mistakes. For nescience, not knowing the possibility of things to come, is no sin in man, because it is an unavoidable infirmity. So St. Paul, as his usual manner is, in promising things to come, things of that nature, promises them under reservation and permission, if God permit, if God will; and he does not sin, though he is frustrated in his intention.

To foresee what will be is not the only part of a wise man. St. Paul did not have the foresight to see whether his journey would be crossed or not; but out of a Christian intention he resolved to come, if God did not cross him. That was as a man, and a good man. But as an apostle, his doctrine was without ifs and ands, without exception, as when we say, “if God permit,” and the like. “No,” he says, “as God is true, our word to you was not yea and nay.” So in the apostles we must consider a difference between divine truths that they delivered as apostles and those things that they purposed as men, and as holy men. Those purposes were subject to be crossed, and without sin too. For God will have men to be men, that is, variable creatures, and such as cannot promise themselves any certain thing for the time to come.

It is God’s prerogative to know things to come. We may know them by their causes. We may know when there will be an eclipse a hundred years from now. But to know what weather there will be, as we may know the eclipse, we cannot, because there is nothing in the cause to show it. I say, God will have men to be men. St. Paul may promise holily, with a reservation to God, as a man and as a holy man, and without sin too. But as an apostle, in his doctrine, he was not so: “as God is true, our word to you was not yea and nay,” but constant as God himself. That will suffice to settle that. Therefore St. Paul makes the difference: “I promised to come, but I did not; but ‘as God is true, our word to you was not yea and nay.’”

Our voyage to heaven, and our relation to a better life, does not stand on uncertainties, as the things here in this world do. St. Paul’s journey to Corinth might be frustrated, but St. Paul had another course, to heaven, and his religious course did not stand on uncertainties. Whatever he taught in that religious course was “yea,” as he says in the next verse, “Christ the Son of God whom we preach, was not yea and nay, but yea” (2 Cor 1:19); that is, infallibly true, perpetually true, necessarily, eternally true.

“As God is true, our word to you was not yea and nay.” St. Paul labors therefore to establish them in a good opinion of his ministry. And that indeed is what made him so much avoid the suspicion of inconstancy in other things, because carnal men are prone to think a man inconstant in his calling, even a preacher in his doctrine, if he is inconstant in his common course.

St. Paul knew their corruption was such that from a suspicion of lightness in his conduct and common course, they would rise to a suspicion of his doctrine. Therefore he was so careful to avoid the charge of lightness in his journey, because he wanted to avoid any charge of lightness in his doctrine. That is what he aims at more. He makes no great matter of the charge of lightness in his journey or such things; but he knew the corruption of men is such that if a man fails in common things, they immediately think he does so in his calling. The nature of man is full of false surmises and suspicions, and as a man is once, they conclude he is always. Therefore, since he had deceived them in not coming, they might think he would do so at other times too. That makes the apostle labor to clear himself, but especially his doctrine, from all suspicion.

“As God is true, our word to you was not yea and nay.” Here is a truth, and the seal of it.

His affirming of the truth is this: “Our word, our preaching,” as it is in the margin. “Our word,” as it was unfolded, was not “yea and nay”; it was not uncertain.

And the proof and seal of it is “God is true,” as it is in the original, which is filled out in the English tongue. In our translation it is “As God is true,” but in the original it is “God is true”; and as he is true and constant and faithful, so our word is constant and faithful. You may build on it. “As God is true”: as God is to be credited and believed, so my word to you is to be credited as “yea,” as a certain doctrine that is not “yea and nay.” It is a kind of oath.

“As God is true.” The apostle here seals it with an oath.

What is an oath?

An oath is a religious calling of God to witness, or to be a judge in doubtful things.

In doubtful things it is a calling of God to be a witness of the truth we speak, and to be an avenger if we do not speak the truth. It is to call God to witness and to judge, to make him both witness and avenger. St. Paul here calls God to witness: “God is true,” and as truly as he is true, “our word to you was not yea and nay.”

You know oaths are either, as we say, assertory, to affirm a thing, or promissory, to do this or that in the time to come; and they are either imposed or voluntary. Now this is an assertory oath, not a promissory one. He affirms and declares outright that as God is true, his word to them was not “yea and nay, but yea.” And it was a voluntary oath, for nobody demanded it of him. But he saw there was a necessity to establish them in the certainty of the doctrine he taught, to seal it with an oath, so that they would as soon doubt the truth of God as doubt his doctrine. “As God is true, my word is true.”

Jeremiah the prophet has three conditions of an oath: It must be in truth, in righteousness, and in judgment (Jer 4:2).

In truth: we must speak and swear true things.

And in judgment: necessary things, with discretion.

And in righteousness.

Now St. Paul observed the conditions wonderfully well here. For St. Paul does it in a true matter, and in judgment, for he was forced to it.

An oath is never good except when it is necessary, not to seal up every idle discourse, as if men would make everything they say as true as an oath. Indeed, the life of a man should be an oath. The life of an honest man is an oath, as true as one; but we must not summon God for every idle, irrelevant thing. St. Paul saw it necessary to call God to witness. It was true and necessary.

I will not enter into a large discourse on oaths, because later I will have better occasion to speak of it. Only this much for now: St. Paul here uses one. He thinks it necessary, to establish their minds the better in his ministry and in a good opinion of it, that it was constant. “God is true, our word to you was not yea and nay.”

Therefore, in such a case we may not make any scruple about an oath, if it is in charity, piety, necessity.

In charity: in matters of controversy in civil life.

In piety: to establish matters of religion.

And in matters of necessity, which cannot be determined otherwise, no scruple is to be made of it.

And where we are told “not to swear at all” (Matt 5:34), that means not in ordinary course, or not to swear by creatures. But if we do swear, it is a part of God’s service, and we must swear by him. And indeed it is a service of God, and to good purpose, when Christians swear to establish and determine truths that otherwise are doubtful.

They were doubtful of St. Paul’s doctrine and his person. He says, “To put you out of doubt of the truth I speak to you, I dare call God to witness that it is true and sound.” The apostle does so once more later in this chapter. Therefore I reserve the further handling of an oath for 2 Corinthians 1:23, because the word there is more explicit: “I call God to record upon my soul…”

The next thing I observe from this is as follows.

Observation. Believing that God’s word is God’s word, and is certain, is a matter of great consequence.

It is of great consequence for God’s people who look to be saved to be established in their opinion and judgment of divine truth, that it is certain, and not flexible and mutable according to our wills and notions and dispositions, but is “yea,” always the same, as God himself, its author.

For laying down as a ground what I said before, that St. Paul takes God to witness, he would not interpose an oath except in a matter of great consequence. Therefore it is a matter of great consequence to be settled in this, that the Scripture is divine truth, unalterable and unchangeable.

An oath is never good, as I said, except when it is necessary. It must not only be in truth, but there must be a necessity. It must not only be taken in righteousness, but in judgment; a man must do it with discretion, when the thing cannot be determined any other way. Therefore it is a matter of great consequence that men take the word of truth not to be like the oracles of Apollo and of the devil, true one way and false another. The devil would escape the charge of a lie, though he is a liar; but God’s oracles are divine, they are “yea.” And it is good that we think them to be so, to be constant, undoubted, certain, and unmovable. Therefore the apostle seals it with an oath. He would not seal a slight truth with an oath, but he says, “As God is true, our word to you was not yea and nay.”

And St. Paul saw a disposition in them to suspect the truth of God, as indeed we are more prone to believe the lies of our own hearts, and the suggestions of Satan, and the counsel of schemers, of carnal friends, than to believe God himself. Therefore, partly because of the indisposition in us, and partly because of the great urgency and necessity of the thing, to believe that God’s word is his word, that it is truth, he seals it with an oath: “God is true.” It is a point of great consequence.

Reason. The reason is that God can have no service otherwise, and we can have no comfort.

If we do not believe the word of God to be undoubtedly true, what proven armor will we have in great temptations and assaults? We can have no comfort or grace. For sometimes subtle and strong temptations to evil come. If the word of God is not more undoubted to me than the present profit or pleasure or whatever it may be, if the temptation is at hand and I am not built and settled on some grounded truth that I know to be true as God is true, then when the temptation is strong and our faith weak, where are we? A man immediately yields to base lusts and temptations.

And so in matters of danger and despair. When a man is tempted to despair, if he cannot build on this, “God is true,” and his word is as true as himself, he wills not the death of a sinner (Ezek 18:32), then a man is swallowed up.

It is no matter how strong the foundation is if the building on that foundation is weak. If a strong man stands in a slippery place, down he falls. If a man stands slippery and has a weak footing on a strong place, on a strong foundation, if he has a weak building on a strong foundation, he will soon be cast off. So the word of God is true in itself; but if we are not persuaded that it is infallibly true, that it is always “yea,” we will be shaken by temptations. When we are tempted to sin, the temptation is present; we are sure of the temptation. If we are not more sure of something against the temptation, something out of the word to beat back the darts of Satan, when we are tempted to sin and to despair for sin, down we go. And therefore it is a matter of infinite consequence to be persuaded of divine truth.

What makes many what they are, in courses that are corrupt in their callings? Nothing but this: they stagger over whether it is true or not that there will be a judgment; they stagger over whether what the Scripture says is true or not. If they were persuaded that it was “yea,” that as true as God is in heaven, as true as they have souls, so surely their souls must be called to judgment for what they speak and do, would they do as they do? Therefore St. Paul establishes them by an oath: “God is true, and as God is true, our word to you was not yea and nay.”

Use. Therefore receive in good part, with thankfulness, the means God has ordained to strengthen our faith and assurance of the word of God and the promises of God. For that purpose he has appointed the sacrament. I say there is nothing in the world so strengthened as the soul of a Christian, if he gives himself to God’s truth to be ruled by it.

For if we will believe God, we have his promise that “whosoever believes in Christ shall not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). We have rich promises, “precious promises” (2 Pet 1:4), as the Scripture calls them. We have not only promises, but they are sealed with an oath. Now an oath is an unchangeable thing (Heb 6:16). We have promises and oath, that we might have “strong consolation” (Heb 6:18). Whatever might secure man, we have. Besides his oath we have his seal, his sacrament.

It was his love to condescend to make any covenant with sinful creatures, that on any terms he would give them life everlasting. It was a higher degree of love to set Christ as the foundation of this peace and of this covenant, so that now God and we may be at peace with satisfaction to divine justice, and he is the foundation of the peace between God and us. Now God may be merciful without wrong, without impairment of his justice. That is a higher degree of mercy, to enter into covenant and to give Christ to be the foundation of all. And then it is a higher degree than that to assure us of the covenant, that Christ is ours, to seal the word with an oath and with the sacrament, which is the seal of the covenant. What more could God do?

What a horrible sin, therefore, is unbelief, which we should tremble at, to call God’s love and truth into question! Yet we are prone to it. Or else why did Christ ordain the sacrament to strengthen and establish our faith and to confirm us, except that he knew our proneness to unbelief?

In the time of ease and prosperity, it is easy to think, God is merciful, and Christ died. But in the time of temptation, all is little enough to shore and prop up the faith of a drooping Christian. Therefore God, out of heavenly wisdom and love to us, has appointed these ordinances for the strengthening of our faith. And all is to no purpose unless our faith is strong in the promises, just as St. Paul takes an oath to build them on the promises he taught them. And so all is little enough: oath and promises and seal and the rest. Therefore we should with all reverence attend upon God’s ordinances for the strengthening of our faith. But to come to the words themselves.

“As God is true, our word to you was not yea and nay.” Take the words out of the form of an oath, and the proposition is this:

Doctrine. God is true and faithful.

In this link of the sentence, “God is true,” first, it is true that God is. He is truly God. His nature is true; his properties are true. Likewise God is true and faithful, not only in his nature and properties, but in his free decrees, in the things that freely come from him. It was free for him to make promises of salvation or not, as it was free for him to make a world or not, and whether he would redeem mankind or not. But when he had promised, unless he should deny himself and his truth, he must send Christ.

So in all the free promises of forgiveness of sins and life everlasting by Christ, if we believe in him, we say they are certainly true, because God who is true has promised. God is true in his nature, and true in his free promises and threatenings; he is true in his works, true in his word, every way true. He is true in his nature; all is true within him and outside him. If anything could change him from within, he would not be himself, he would not be God. And from without nothing can change him, for nothing is stronger than God.

God is true in all his purposes, true in his free and voluntary decrees. It was free for him to decree, but having decreed, there is a necessity of performing. It is from the necessity of his nature as he is God. He is true in his free decrees. They are not free in regard to the outcome, but in regard to the origin, as I said. He might have made a world at the first or not, and have redeemed mankind or not; but having made these decrees, of necessity, as he is God, he must be true in his free decrees.

There is a subordination of truths, of which one is the cause of all the rest. Now all depends on this grand truth, God is. It is the first truth that ever was of all truths in the world, in heaven and earth, that there is a God, that there is such a thing, such an excellency as God, the Author of all things in nature, the Author of all things in grace and glory. I will not need to prove this fundamental truth, this truth of truths, that God is. It implies all other truths. For grant this, that God is, and a man must necessarily grant what follows from it: that God is as a God should be, that is, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, almighty, all-sufficient, with all the blessed attributes, and that he is the Author of all good in the creature. That must necessarily follow. God is the first truth; and then God is so and so, as becomes a God.

And then this must follow in the next place, that he is a God immutable and unchangeable. He must be so in all the manifestations that come from him, in his free decrees, and in the outward manifestations by promises and threatenings and whatever else. And therefore God is true, immutably and unchangeably true, or else he would not be God. He cannot be otherwise and be God.

A man may say of a man, he is a liar, and yet he may be a man. A man may be a man, and a good man, and yet be inconstant and changeable, because he is a creature. But to speak of a God who is not true is to speak of a God and not a God. From the necessity of his nature he must be true. It is not from the necessity of the nature of man to be true. He may be a man and be a liar (“Every man is a liar,” Ps 116:11), because it is not of the essence of man to be true. But God is true out of the necessity of nature. He cannot be God if he is not true, because God cannot deny himself. Man is changeable because he is a creature, as Damascene’s speech is, “All things created are mutable, and man as a creature is changeable.” A man therefore may be alterable and false and still be a man, but God cannot be so and be God.

Objection. It will be objected that God has often threatened and has not performed it, as we see in the Ninevites, and in Hezekiah in his sickness, and so in many others.

Answer. But the answer is easy. God is true in all these. For God’s promises that come from his truth are either absolute or conditional. The absolute are those that have nothing annexed to them but shall certainly be. So God would send Christ without any conditions; Christ was to come without any perhaps, as we say. But some promises have conditions annexed to them: if a nation repents of their sins, God will repent of the evil he has threatened, as it says in Jeremiah 18:8. Now as for those threatenings that are on condition of repentance, if the condition is performed, the sentence is reversed. All the promises are made with an exception for the cross: all must suffer before they come to heaven and are glorified. Now all the promises, with this exception of the cross, are conditional. So God is true both in his absolute promises that are made without condition, and he is true in his conditional promises, because where we perform the condition, he will likewise perform what is tied to the condition. He sometimes changes his sentence and his threatening, but not his decree; for his purpose and decree is to forgive and reverse the sentence if we repent. I say, it is a clear truth that God is true, unchangeably and immutably true.

And it is the prime truth of all truths that God is, and that God is true. As we say of the heavens, unless the heavens were moved, there would be no motion in the earth. For if the sun had no motion in the zodiac, up and down, where would summer and winter be? If it did not have its course, where would night and day be, and the alternation and interchange of all earthly things? If there were no heavenly motion, if those bodies did not move, we could not move, because we depend upon that. So, unless it were true that God is, that there is a God, and that God is unchangeably true, there would be nothing true in the world. For all truth is true for this reason, that it answers to that exemplar truth which is true in God, answers to God’s conception and decree of things.

I note this all the more because it is a fundamental thing. It wonderfully establishes our faith in divine truths when we know they come from God, who is true. If we would seek evidences of our faith, then we must go within ourselves and see what love, what hope, what combat between the flesh and the spirit is there. But if we look for anything to establish our faith, we must go out of ourselves and consider the unchangeable truth of God, whose truth it is.

God, as God, creating a reasonable creature, must give that creature some revealed truth; he could not be worshiped otherwise. How must we know this revealed truth by which he will be worshiped by the reasonable creature (for no man will be served by his servant just as the servant pleases)? How shall we know these certain truths? Because they come from his nature. God is true; and as God is true, “so our word to you was not yea and nay,” that is, it was true. There is the same ground for the certainty of evangelical truth as there is for God himself to be true.

To add a little further on this point, consider the truth of God in every way, the faithfulness of God, as it signifies in the original, “as God is faithful.” Consider what relations God has put upon himself in his divine truth, how he wants to be thought of. And then bring those relations to his nature, for that is where we must settle at last. What is he to us, and how has he revealed himself to us? Thus and thus. What is he in his nature? So and so; and there we must rest.

For instance, the Lord has made many promises. Who is it that has made them? He who is true, and unchangeably true. There the soul rests in the nature of God. But what relations has he put upon himself? He is a God, and a Lord, and a Judge, and a Father, and so on.

Now, as he is God, he is true; therefore he will do all the things that a true God should do. He will uphold his creature for as long as he wills his creature to continue; he will give it life, and being, and motion.

And as a Lord he will do with his own what he pleases, and it is not for us to contend with him about why he will do this or that, why he makes one rich and another poor. He is Lord of all, and a true Lord. Therefore we must give authority to this true Lord.

And then, as he is a Judge, he corrects men for sin and rewards them for the good they do. As a Judge, he sometimes punishes them inwardly in conscience, sometimes outwardly. All the good we have is from this, that he is a faithful and true God; therefore there we must rest. He is a true Judge; he “rewards every man according to his works, whether they be good or evil” (Matt 16:27).

And so in the relation of a Father, he is a true Father. He corrects when the time serves, he rewards and encourages when the time serves, he gives an inheritance to his children, and he has pity and compassion on his children when the time serves. He is a true Father. Other fathers do this and that out of passion, not out of truth and goodness; but he does it out of truth and goodness. So when we consider God in his relations, let us consider the attribute of his truth.

All truth in his word comes from this: God is true. This truth is sealed by this, that our truth to you, our word to you, was not “yea and nay,” uncertain. God’s truth is not uncertain and variable. There is no shadow of change in him (Jas 1:17), and his word is like himself. We commonly say, “On the word of an honest man,” and that is something. “On the word of a priest” was counted a great matter in former times. It should be so indeed. “On the word of a king” is a great matter.

But when God speaks on the word of a God, “The word of the Lord hath spoken so” (Jer 10:1), it is not yea and nay. It was not flexible and doubtful, because it is the word of him who has command of all that he says. It is the word of him who is Lord of heaven and earth. Now when he who says a thing is the Lord of heaven and earth, he is Lord of his own word; therefore what he says is not “yea and nay,” uncertain, for he can make good what he says. There is the same ground for evangelical truth as there is for God himself to be true. I will speak no more in unfolding the point. It is plain that God is true.

Is this true, that God is true, that he is truth itself? Then many things issue from it. It is a ground of many other truths. It was the ground of all the uses St. Paul makes of the word of God. It is profitable every way. I will name some principal ones, to avoid multiplicity in a plain point.

Use 1. God is true, and his word is true. On this ground the threatenings of God must be true, even as true as God himself. If this is so, then unless we will make another Scripture, another word, this word is “yea.” That word which threatens sin, which says that idolaters, and the covetous, and the wanton shall never enter the kingdom of heaven (“Be not deceived,” says the apostle in 1 Corinthians 6:9), that word is “yea.” It is true. God is true. This must follow, therefore, that whatever he says is true; therefore his threatenings are true. It is a truth that has influence on all other truths whatever. St. Paul prefixes it here not only as an oath, “as God is true,” so his word is not yea and nay, but certain. But I say it has influence on all other truths whatever: threatenings, promises, directions, all are true for this reason, because God is true.

Therefore, as for those who shuffle off the threatenings, and think they will do well, and bless themselves, God’s wrath will “smoke against them” (Deut 29:20). For God must alter his nature, and his word must be altered, or else, without repentance, his judgments must stick to them, death and damnation. If God should not be avenged on habitual swearers and blasphemers, if adulterers should live in such sins and ever come to heaven, they must have another God, and another word of God. This word has said that those who live in these sins will not enter heaven. If it is true as God is true, what horrible atheism is in the hearts of men, to think that God will change his nature though they do not change their course, and that the word of God will alter though they will not alter!

What hope can profane, blasphemous persons have, who make only a trifle of swearing, when God has said they will not go unpunished? And what hope can those have who live in a filthy course, when God has said, “Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge” (Heb 13:4)? Without horrible atheism, how can these men hope for favor from God, when he has sealed his word with this, that as he is true, and truth itself, his word is true, and they will never enter heaven?

Use 2. So again, if this is true, that God is true, and that his word therefore is not yea and nay, it serves to comfort us in many ways.

When we are oppressed with the sense of sin, “If we confess our sins, he is merciful to forgive our sins” (1 John 1:9). He who is true has said it, whose word is not yea and nay, but yea. Trust in it. If we doubt of perseverance for the time to come, he who has “begun a good work will perfect it to the day of the Lord” (Phil 1:6). He is yea, and his word is yea; he is true, and his word is true.

Use 3. Again, from this we learn, for our judgment, this truth: that the word of God has the same ground of truth as God himself. Therefore it is the judge of all controversies. Of all things questionable in religion, the word of God is judge, because it is not “yea and nay, but yea,” and it is true, as God is true. And it is judge of this controversy too, whether it is the word of God.

The question between the papists and us is whether the epistles and the prophets are the word of God or not. Is it, or is it not?

I answer from apostolic testimony. St. Paul says, “As God is true,” his word is true, the true word of God; and “All Scripture is given by inspiration” (2 Tim 3:16). The word of God therefore is the judge of all divine truths, because it is most certain, even as certain as God himself.

What are the properties of a chief judge?

He must be true, without error; authoritative, without appeal, such as can decide from himself, with no one higher. He must be infallible, without peril of error. All these belong to God’s truth.

It is yea; it is true without error; it is always yea. And then it is authoritative. There is nothing higher but God himself, whose word it is, and it has the same authority that he himself has: “As God is true,” so it is true. It is authoritative without any appeal. We cannot go higher than God himself in his word. We cannot call God or Christ from heaven. He has left us his word, and therefore it is to be believed on its own account.

And it is infallibly true, without danger of error. The one depends upon the other: As God is true, so our word is true. If God is infallibly true, this follows by consequence, that the Scripture is the judge, and infallibly true, without danger of error.

From this we may know what to judge of that Romish assertion. There are no other judges in the world who can be said to be “yea” always.

Councils are not always yea; they are “yea and nay.” What one council has set down, another has reversed. In the Council of Basel, the pope was above the council. In another council, the council is above the pope.

So one pope’s decrees thwart another’s. The popes are “yea and nay,” and not yea; for many hundreds of years they labored to cross and thwart one another. So councils and popes are “yea and nay,” and not always “yea.”

Traditions of the fathers are “yea and nay,” and not always “yea.” They thwart themselves. St. Augustine, the best of the fathers, to whom the church is most chiefly indebted of all the rest, was “yea and nay.” Does he not retract? He wrote a book of retractions of his former opinions. So then he was “yea and nay,” and yet a holy man.

That which is the judge of controversies must be yea, that is, infallibly true, authoritatively true, so that there is none higher. From all others, from fathers and councils, there may be appeal to Scripture, but from Scripture to none, because it is the voice and word of God. All other things are yea and nay; they are changeable, and they may be so without prejudice to their being. A council may be a good council and inconstant in many things. Fathers may be holy fathers and uncertain. It is the prerogative of God alone to be infallible like himself, unchangeable in his nature; and his word is like himself.

Use 4. From this likewise issues this: that whatever does not agree with the word of God, which is not yea and nay, is false and worthless. Therefore those opinions of the Church of Rome, which says it cannot err, if they are not yea with this yea, then they are not yea; for only the word of God is not “yea and nay, but only yea,” that is, only certain and true. All other religions that are not divine are yea and nay. Popery is not grounded upon the word of God, because it is “yea and nay,” that is, it is uncertain. See how they cross in many ways this word of God, which is always yea, and true as God himself is true.

Is it “yea” that the people saw no image of God, and that therefore they must make and worship no image? “Nay,” says the Church of Rome. They have a nay for this yea: they will make images and worship them, the image of Mary and of other saints. “Yea,” says the Scripture, “drink ye all of this” (Matt 26:27). “Nay,” says the Church of Rome. They have a “nay” for this “yea”: only the priest must drink the wine. “Let the word dwell plenteously in you” (Col 3:16) is the “yea” of Scripture. The Church of Rome has a “nay” for this “yea.” It is dangerous for the people to read the Scripture, and therefore they are forbidden it.

We must pray with the understanding as well as with a good affection (1 Cor 14:15), that is, we must know how we pray. It is excellently proved there at length. Nay, understand or do not understand, so long as the intention is good, says Rome; pray in Latin, or however you may. There is their nay to this yea. “Let every soul be subject to the higher powers” (Rom 13:1) is the “yea” of God’s book; therefore the souls of the clergy too, and of anyone else. The Church of Rome has a “nay” for this “yea.”

Therefore their doctrine is bad; for only God is true, and his word alone is “not yea and nay, but always yea,” infallible. Therefore what is contrary to it must be false. If only yea is true, then what is contrary to it must be false.

And likewise again, if God’s word is not “yea and nay,” that is, not inconstant, then whatever is inconstant, and thwarts itself in contradictions, is not God’s word. Popery is full of inconstancy, full of contradictions to itself.

1. Besides inconstancy and uncertainty, it is full of contradictions: it is “yea and nay.” For a body to be in many places at once, and yet be a true body; to be in a hundred, in a million places at once, as they would have Christ’s body to be in the sacrament, here is to be and not to be. It is a body and no body, for it does not have the properties and quantity of a body; for a body can be in only one place at one time. Here is yea and nay.

For Christ to be a perfect Redeemer, and yet nevertheless to need the help of other mediators and intercessors, here is yea and nay. It is a contradiction.

They say that the church of Rome is the catholic church; but if it is Roman, it is not catholic. The universal catholic Roman church is as much as to say the “universal particular church.” It is a contradiction. One thing overturns another.

The sacrifice of the mass is called an unbloody sacrifice. But a sacrifice is the killing of a thing that was alive; a sacrifice is with blood. The offering of Christ in the bread is an unbloody sacrifice: a sacrifice, and not a sacrifice. Here is yea and nay, a contradiction. So besides their thwarting of Scripture, they thwart and contradict themselves in their fundamental points; they are “yea and nay.”

2. And then they are full of uncertainties; they are not undoubtedly “yea.” There is no papist in the world who would end his days resting on them, if he is not drunk, if he is well advised, if he is not surprised by passion, if he does not forget himself. Come to a papist and ask him: What are the main points of popery that you believe are always yea? Can you say, when you confess your sins, that you confess them all? No. Can you then say that you have a perfect absolution, which depends upon your confession? No! It is an uncertain thing. What an absurd thing popish religion is! It racks the conscience of people.

Can you say that the priest intends consecration in these words, “This is my body”? No! And if the priest’s intention is not there, then Christ is not there, and then you are idolaters. Can you tell for certain that transubstantiation depends upon his consecration? No! How full of uncertainties and contradictions popery is! You cannot say the points of popery are always yea. Perhaps they are yea in life, but are they yea in death? It is yea in life that they merit salvation by works, but is it yea in death? No! Bellarmine disclaims it. It is safe, he says, not to trust in our own merits, for danger of vainglory and the like, but to trust only in the mercy of God in Christ.

So their doctrine is yea in life, to sin by, to live riotously by, but then it is nay in death. They reverse it if they belong to God. They disclaim their works and other things and cleave only to Christ, and there is hope for those who have grace truly to do so. So their doctrine is not a yea that they can stick to in life and death.

To go on a little further, and lay open the grossness of their tenets and the danger of their religion: we stand on a better foundation than they do, we who make the word of God our rule and ground, which is not yea and nay, but yea. Take the canonization of saints. The pope makes saints of Garnet, a traitor, and Thomas Becket. How can he know that these whom he canonizes were saints? He who makes a saint must know the hearts of men and search the heart, for the truth of grace is there. Now, it is the privilege of God to know the heart. So popery is full of uncertainties and pitiful perplexities.

Indeed, they maintain the doctrine of doubting, that we must doubt; as if our nature were not prone enough to doubt, but we must get arguments to make us doubt; as if infirmities were needed to establish grace in us. Alas! We are too prone to doubt, and the devil is ready to make us stagger in the time of temptation.

Again, the invocation of saints is a point wonderfully full of uncertainties. Can they know and say for certain that the saints hear them? They cannot know that one saint, having a finite power, should hear a hundred petitions at once. A finite creature has only a finite power, to hear one thing at one time distinctly. How can they be persuaded that a finite saint in heaven should at one time distinctly hear many thousands who put up their petitions at once? Can a man who is only a creature of limited capacity, though glorified, such as Peter or Mary and the rest, distinctly consider a thousand petitions that are made? They cannot. How then can they think the invocation of saints a certain truth?

The main ground of all their religion is “yea and nay.” The pillar of it, what is that? The infallible judgment of the pope. But how can they tell when he speaks from the papal chair? For they have nine or ten exceptions and tricks about when he speaks so as to be built on, and when not. How can poor souls know when he speaks in such a way that the people may infallibly build on his judgment? For many times he is an illiterate man, who knows nothing of the divine things in which he is to judge. So the very foundation of popery is yea and nay; that is, a most uncertain thing.

And then the ground of that, that he is the successor of Peter: there is no place of Scripture for it, and they dare not bring any. It is only a tradition. It is somewhat uncertain whether Peter was ever at Rome. That he was bishop there is more uncertain. But that the pope should be his successor is the most uncertain and impossible of all.

So indeed the religion of popery is a rack to conscience, especially to a conscience that is awakened and knows what religion means at all. Why is it a rack to them? There is no certainty in it, in its main tenets.

It is not only contrary to God’s “yea,” but it is “yea and nay,” uncertain in itself. Now, here the apostle frees his preaching from this charge, “our word to you was not yea and nay”; and he calls God to record, “God is true,” and as he is true, “my word to you was not yea and nay,” but was certainly “yea.” Thus you see what use we are to make of it for the refutation of error and the conviction of our own judgments.

Question. Some perhaps may raise this: How does it appear, how shall we know, by what argument, that it is yea, and not yea and nay?

Answer. 1. The testimony of St. Paul here is that it is so, and his appeal to God with a solemn affirmation, “as God is true.”

2. But our own experience tells us that the word of God is certain and true, if we belong to God; for we stand convinced in our judgment by many arguments, which I will not repeat now.

Question. But how shall any man certainly know that it is yea, that the word is the undoubted word of God, unchangeable wherever it is? In a word, you may know that it is so.

Answer. 1. He thinks it is so if he yields obedience to it, as to such a word, absolute obedience to God’s truth without questioning. When once a thing is clearly agreeable to God’s truth, and he yields obedience to it, then it is “yea.” If it is a duty, he must do it; if it is a threatening, he must avoid it by repentance; if it is a promise, he must believe it. This is absolute obedience.

2. Likewise reverence in hearing it, as Cornelius did (Acts 10:33): to hear it as the word of God. “To tremble at the word of God,” as it is in Isaiah 66:2. To tremble at it as men do at thunder. The thunder is said to be “the voice of God.” “The voice of God shakes the cedars of Lebanon” (Ps 29:5). So it is with the voice of God’s word. Shall the lion roar, and the beasts of the forest not tremble? (Amos 3:8). Shall God threaten for sins to which we are liable, and shall we not tremble at his threatenings?

Therefore, however we may hear it as if it were yea and nay, yet it is yea. So let us not think we can go on in sin, and escape, and do well enough. No! It will not be so. He who thinks it is the word of God trembles at his word, and has affections answerable to all the parts of God’s word. If God directs, he follows; if God threatens, he trembles; if he promises, he believes; if he commands, he obeys. He has a pliable disposition toward every passage of divine truth, or else we do not believe it.

What shall we say then of those who do not come as far as the heathen man did? We know of Felix, “when he heard of justice, and temperance, and judgment to come, he trembled” (Acts 24:25). When he heard of things he was loath to hear, that he would be called to a reckoning for the course of his life, he trembled and quaked. If we hear these things, and live in a course perhaps worse than his, and do not tremble, where is our faith that the word of God is yea, that it is undoubtedly true?

Let us therefore examine ourselves as to what power and efficacy the word has. It is a word that changes and alters the whole man. It transforms the whole man. It is a word of life. If we find it has so altered and changed us, we can say from experience that it is “yea.”

And likewise from particular promises. If we observe God’s promises made good to us, if we find peace of conscience upon the confession of our sins, we can say God’s word is “yea.” If upon committing sin we find God punishing and correcting us, we can say God’s word is yea, and that it is a bitter thing to offend God.

I find that carefulness is the best course to please God. He finds me out in my sins, and it is a bitter thing to offend God. This is the best way to say in truth, without hypocrisy, that God’s word is “not yea and nay, but yea.”

Thus we see this truth, that God is true, and what follows from it. His word is true as he himself is, and not inconstant, yea and nay. Besides all that I have said, let us make this use of it: not to think God’s word too good to be true, but to yield obedience to it; to yield the obedience of faith to it in the promises. Here is a foundation for faith. The foundation of faith is outside us. The evidences of faith are within us, by love, by purging our hearts, by stirring us up to pray, and so on. But the foundation is outside ourselves. Here is a foundation and pillar for faith to lean on. God is true, and his word is true, and not yea and nay. It is eternally true.

Therefore apply all the promises in the Old and New Testaments to yourself. It was not yea to Abraham and not to you. God’s promises of forgiveness of sins were not yea to David and not to you. They were not yea to Manasseh and not to you. But God’s truth is yea, eternally yea. “Whatsoever was written heretofore, was written for our comfort” (Rom 15:4); and we are now the Davids, and the Manassehs, and the Abrahams of God; we are now the beloved of God. For all people in their age are as those men were in theirs. And as the promises of God were yea to them, and saved their souls because they trusted in them, so certainly every promise of God is a shield for those who will have recourse to it. “The name of God is a strong tower” (Prov 18:10); and his word is his name, by which he will be known in his promises.

Have recourse to it on all occasions; rely on the word; wrestle with him when his dealings seem contrary, even though his dealings with us seem to be yea and nay. We have been God’s children; he has assured us that we were in the state of grace; but now he deals with us as if we were not his children; he afflicts us; he allows Satan to be let loose on us to tempt us. Here flesh and blood is ready to say, “Certainly I am not God’s child. Can I be, pursued in this way as I am?” No, no! God’s “gifts are without repentance” (Rom 11:29). Have you ever had grace? God has said it, who is truth itself, that his “gifts are without repentance.” Build on it, therefore. If you ever had any grace, where he has begun he will make an end. “Where he hath begun a good work, he will perfect it to the day of the Lord” (Phil 1:6).

Therefore wrestle with God in all temptations. When things seem contrary, still allege God’s nature to him, and his word, for both are true; and the one is true because the other is true.

He is true in his nature and true in his word, and free in his decree, whatever his actions seem to be. Yet, Lord, you cannot deny yourself; you are unchangeable; you are truth itself. And your word, which has promised regard and respect to humble sinners who repent and come to you, is unchangeably true, as you yourself are. Therefore, Lord, “I will not leave thee, though thou kill me,” as Job says (Job 13:15). Here is a ground of wrestling, as Job did. Allege the nature of God and the word of God against his dealing. Let his dealing be what it will, his nature is true, and his word is true. Therefore his promises are true, which are a branch of his word, that if we repent and confess our sins, he will be merciful to us.

Therefore let us not forsake our own mercy. This will uphold us, as in all temptations, so in divine temptations, when God seems to forsake us. So Christ himself, our blessed head, did. We cannot have a better pattern. When God left him on the cross, and left him to his human nature, to wrestle with the devil’s temptations, and the pains of his body, and the sense of God’s wrath, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34), yet he upheld himself with this, that God was his God still; and so likewise in the former example of Job. I say it is a special comfort that God’s word is not “yea and nay.” As I said, it is not doubtful like the oracles of the Gentiles, the oracles of the devil; but God’s word is certain. Whatever it was to any saint of God in the past, it is to every believing, to every humble afflicted soul now, and shall be to the end of the world. So much for that.

For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, by me, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in him is yea (2 Cor 1:19).

In these words the apostle shows in particular what he preached among them, and we have in them these particulars, briefly to be unfolded:

1. That Christ Jesus, in his nature and his offices, is the chief and main object and subject matter of preaching.

2. That to make him profitable to us, he must be preached.

3. That the agreement of theologians and preachers helps faith.

4. That Jesus Christ, being preached by the apostles, is an undoubted “yea,” that is, an undoubted ground and foundation to build on, in all the uncertainties of this life, in all the uncertainty of religion. Jesus Christ, preached by St. Paul and other holy men of those times, was not “yea and nay, but yea.”

Doctrine 1. Christ Jesus is the main object of preaching.

It would be out of place here to dwell on particulars, to show you how Christ is the Son of God, for he is brought in here as the object of preaching. Only, in a word, we must of necessity believe that Christ Jesus is the Son of God. For how wondrously this establishes our faith, when we believe in a Savior who is God: the Son of God, Jesus Christ, by eternal generation!

In a word, here are these prerogatives of Christ’s generation above all other sons whatsoever. Other fathers are before their sons; this Son of God was eternal with his Father. Other fathers have a distinct essence from their sons: the father is one and the son another, and they have distinct existences. But here there is one common essence to the Father and the Son. Other fathers beget a son outside themselves, but this Father begets his Son within himself. It was an inward work. So it is a mystical, divine generation, which indeed is a subject for wonder rather than for explanation, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Son of man.

This was typified in the ark. The ark was a type of Christ. The ark had wood, and gold that covered that wood. Christ’s human nature was the wood, and his divine nature that contained it was the gold. But I would be too long, and would go beside the scope of the text, if I were to unfold this point. I only touch on it in passing.

Christ Jesus, in his natures as he is God and man, in his offices as Jesus Christ, that is, anointed as king, priest, and prophet, and in his states of abasement and advancement, is the main subject matter of preaching. For what can we say that must not lead back and be brought to Christ? If we open men’s consciences by the law, and tell them what a terrible state they are in, what are we doing but driving them to the physician? What is the law, but what John the Baptist was to Christ: to prepare the way, to level the soul, to pull down the high thoughts and imaginations, to make way and passage for Christ?

And then, in Christ, when we preach Christ, we preach his natures, God and man, and his offices as king, priest, and prophet, as he is predestined and sealed and anointed by God the Father for that purpose, so that we may have a strong Savior, strong in himself and authorized by his Father. And we preach his states of abasement, as he was crucified and suffered for our sins, and his state of exaltation, as he arose and ascended into glory. These things belong to the preaching of Christ.

And then there are the benefits we have by him: reconciliation to his Father by his death, and peace of conscience, and joy in the Holy Spirit, and such like wondrous benefits that we have by him.

And then there is our duty to him in return, which is faith and a way of life worthy of him: to embrace all that is offered by Christ, so that it is not lost for lack of laying hold of it. Christ Jesus is the subject matter of our preaching: in his natures, in his offices, in the benefits we have by him, in the duties we owe to him, and in the instrument of receiving it all, which is faith. For in preaching, that faith which we require for laying hold on Christ is worked.

For preaching not only makes known the benefits we have by Christ, but is a potent instrument of the Spirit of God to work this qualification, to make Christ profitable to us. Now all that we preach of holy duties is either to humble us if we do not have them, to make us fly to Christ by faith, or, when we believe, to make us walk in keeping with our faith. So whatever we preach leads back to Christ, either to prepare us or to equip us to walk worthy of Christ.

Indeed, Jesus Christ is all in all in our preaching, and he should be so in your hearing. Of all things, you should desire to hear most of Christ. The awareness of your sinfulness should drive you to Christ. The hearing of duties should be to make you adorn your Christian religion, which you have taken upon you.

Naturally men love to hear flashy sayings, witty fancies, and moral points wittily unfolded; but all these, at their very furthest reach, only civilize men. It must be Christ unfolded, and God’s love and mercy and wisdom in him, reconciling mercy and justice together: the wondrous love of God in Christ, and his justice and mercy; and the love of Christ in undertaking to work our redemption; and the benefits by Christ, his offices, states, and conditions. These things work faith and love. These things do us good.

All other things, take them at their best, only shape our conduct a little; but what enlivens the soul and gives it life is Jesus Christ.

Use. Therefore we should, of all other things, be desirous to hear of Jesus Christ. It is a point that the very angels are students in. For the ark, which I named before, had the law and the mercy seat in it, the mercy seat to cover the law. Now Christ has satisfied the law and reconciled his Father; he has freed us from the curse of the law, and has given full satisfaction to the law. He is the mercy seat, by whom we have access to God the Father.

Now the angels were upon the mercy seat, facing one another and peering down upon the mercy seat. This intimated that the reconciling of God’s justice and mercy by that infinite wisdom of God in Christ is a matter for angels to peer into: that our sins should be punished in Christ, and yet God be merciful to us; that he should punish our surety for us; that he should join these attributes together, in a way that all the creatures in heaven and earth could not devise. The very frame of the ark signified this.

And shall we not be students in those mysteries that the angels themselves desire every day more and more to understand? If Christ is the main thing we are to rest on, let us labor more and more to understand “Christ, and him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2). Let us see our nature in him advanced now in heaven, to make us heavenly-minded. Let us see our nature in him punished. Let us see our sinful nature in him cleansed and purged by his death and abasement. Let us see our nature in him enriched.

Let us consider him as a public person, and see our share in his humiliation and in his exaltation in glory, because he is the second Adam. These things should wondrously raise up our thoughts to think of his humiliation and his exaltation, and of the love and mercy of God in him.

And then think of what you will, and nothing is discouraging. Think of death, of hell, of the day of judgment; think of Satan, of the curse of the law. They are terrible things. Yes, but think of the Son of God, of Christ anointed by God the Father to satisfy the law, to satisfy his justice, to overcome Satan, to crush his head, to be our Savior as well as our Judge at the day of judgment. These things will make it all vanish.

Things that are most terrible to the nature of man, apart from the thought of Jesus Christ the Son of God, are all most comforting when we think of him. Now when we think of Satan, we think of one crushed and trodden underfoot, as he will be before long. When we think of judgment, we think of a Savior who will be our Judge. When we think of God, we think of God reconciled in Christ. We have access by Christ to the throne of grace. He is now in heaven, and makes intercession for us. When we think of death, we think of a passage to life, where we will be with him: “I desire to be dissolved, and to be with Christ” (Phil 1:23). So take the things that are most uncomfortable, yet bring the thought of them to Christ, exalted in heaven, who has triumphed over all these in our nature and sits at God’s right hand. The thoughts of these things are comforting meditations.

Indeed, think of what is the most terrible of all, the justice of God, his anger for sin: it is a matter of comfort above all others. God is just to punish and avenge sin. What then? Because he is just, he will not punish one thing twice. His justice is fully satisfied and contented in his Son Christ Jesus, whom he himself has anointed, predestined, and sent; and he must of necessity acknowledge the satisfaction made by him whom he himself has sent. From this we come to think comfortably of God’s justice.

God outside of Christ is a “consuming fire” (Heb 12:29). There is nothing more terrible than God without Christ; but now in Christ we can think of the most terrible thing in God with comfort. Therefore St. Paul makes it the main scope of his preaching, and so should we of ours; and you should make something concerning Christ your main desire in hearing and the main subject matter of your meditating.

Let us often think of our nature in him, now exalted in heaven, and that we will follow him before long. Our head has gone before, and he will not allow his body to rot in the earth forever. Let us think of his natures and his offices, and all the blessed prerogatives that we have by him, and all the enemies that are conquered by him: that in him we have God reconciled and the devil vanquished; we have heaven opened and hell shut; we have our sins pardoned and our imperfections cured little by little. In him we have all in all.

There are four things the apostle speaks of, which include all: “Of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made to us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption” (1 Cor 1:30). Christ Jesus is all in all. If we are ignorant, he is our “wisdom.” If we lack righteousness and holiness to stand before God, he is our righteousness. We stand righteous, being clothed with his righteousness. If we lack grace, “Of his fullness we receive grace for grace” (John 1:16). He is sanctification to us.

If we are miserable, as we will be so far as we can feel, for our bodies will be turned to rottenness, he is our redemption, not only of the soul but of the body. He will make our bodies “like his glorious body” (Phil 3:21). As he makes our souls glorious, by his Spirit conforming them to his own image here in this life, so the redemption meant here is of our bodies from corruption, as well as of our souls from sin. He is all in all. In sin, he is sanctification; in death, he is life; in ignorance, he is wisdom. There is nothing evil in us for which there is not abundant satisfaction and remedy in Christ. I say this all the more to show what reason St. Paul had to insist on this, that all his preaching was to bring Christ Jesus among them. I go on.

“The Son of God, Jesus Christ, preached among you.”

Doctrine 2. All the good we have by Christ is conveyed by the ministry.

Despise that, and you despise Christ himself. Therefore whatever benefits we have by Christ are attributed to preaching; they are attributed to the gospel as it is preached and unfolded. That is why it is called “The gospel of the kingdom,” “The word of reconciliation,” “The word of life,” “The word of faith.” All these are by Christ. But no matter: whatever we have by Christ, we must have by Jesus Christ unfolded in the ministry of the word.

Despise the ministry, which is contemptible to flesh and blood, and you despise Christ himself; you despise the kingdom, and life, and all. For Christ preached is what we must rely on, Christ unfolded. The bread of life must be broken, the sacrifice must be dissected and laid open, Christ Jesus the Son of God must be preached. He does not profit us except as he is preached. His riches must be unfolded, “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph 3:8). Therefore God, who has appointed us to be saved by Christ, has appointed and ordained preaching, to lay open Jesus Christ among us.

But to come to the third point.

Doctrine 3. The agreement of ministers is a help to faith.

Why does he bring in agreement to help? “By me, and Silvanus, and Timotheus.” Would his own authority not serve the purpose?

I answer: no, sometimes it would not. In itself it will, but in view of the weakness of men, it is necessary to join the agreement of others. St. Paul was an apostle of Christ, but he knew that they were so weak that they would regard his testimony the more for the joint testimony of “Timotheus and Silvanus,” and the rest.

God considers not so much what is true in itself as how to establish our faith in it. So it is in the sacrament. Would God not give Christ and his benefits without it? Is he not true to his word? Yes! But he gives the sacrament for our sake. His promises are sure enough, yet he condescends to our weakness, to add sacrament and oath and all the props that can be. So the men of God, who are led by the Spirit of God, though their own authority was sufficient, yet condescend to the weakness of others. Therefore St. Paul brings in with himself “Silvanus and Timotheus,” to strengthen them the better.

Then again, agreement is a lovely thing, and proceeds from love. How sweet a thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! Therefore we ought to set great store by agreement, if it may persuade us. But as Cyprian says well, “it must be agreement in the truth.” Agreement that is not in the truth is not properly concord but conspiracy; it is agreement in a lie, in falsehood. The builders of Babel had an agreement among themselves when they came together for a wicked purpose, as we often see in Scripture. Agreement must be in the truth, in what is good, or else it is not agreement but conspiracy.

Because of our weakness, agreement is useful, and that is the reason why in doubtful cases we may appeal to antiquity: not that the word is not sufficient in itself, but to help our weakness, to show that we do not turn aside from the truth, but that it is a truth vouched for by others before us. In doubtful cases this is warranted. He brings it in likewise to enforce obedience the more, since it was a truth brought to them by so many. But that is not a thing I mean to dwell on; a touch is enough.

What I will spend a little more time on is the next thing, which is this:

Doctrine 4. Gospel doctrine now is most certain.

I spoke something of it before, in the former verse, but I have reserved something to speak of now. The Son of God, preached by St. Paul with the agreement of these blessed men, was not “yea and nay”; that preaching was not inconstant. Gospel truth is not yea and nay, and its preachers, the apostles, were not “yea and nay” in the delivering of it. As it is true in itself, so it was true in the delivery of it. They were constant in it; some of them sealed it with their blood.

Question. How shall we know that the doctrine of the gospel concerning Christ is yea, undoubtedly true?

Answer 1. I answer, how do we know the sun shines? I know it by its own light, and by a light that I have in my eye. There is an inward light joined with the outward light. So it is in this matter. How do we know that divine truth out of the book of God is divine? By the light in it, by the majesty of the Scriptures, by the agreement of the Old and New Testaments, by the opposition of its enemies and the confusion at the last of those who have been its opposers, by its miraculous preservation, and the like; but especially by its powerful work on the heart, by the experience of this blessed truth.

I know this to be an undoubted truth. I find it quelling my corruptions, changing my nature, pacifying my conscience, raising my heart, casting down high imaginations, turning the stream of nature another way, to make me do what I thought I would never have done, only because I have a strong light of divine truth and comfort. There is this experience of Christ that a man finds in his soul. It silences him, so that he can say nothing but that it is divine truth, because he finds it so.

Answer 2. Besides this, there is the testimony of the Spirit of God, and the work of the Spirit in him. For as seeing requires an outward light and an inward light in the eye, so to see divine truth there must be a light in the truth itself, a divine sparkle in God’s book, in every passage; but yet I must have an eye to see it too. I cannot see it unless God witnesses to my soul that these things are divine, that they are yea, that they are certainly and infallibly true.

There is a great difference between us and our adversaries. I can only touch on it, and I need only touch on it. They say we must believe, and we must believe because of the church. I say no. The church, we believe, has a kind of working here, but that is in the last place. For God himself in his word is the chief. The inward arguments from the word itself and from the Spirit are next. The church is the remotest witness, the remotest help of all.

For the church is only to propound God’s truth, to lay it open, to be, as it were, the candlestick. Now the candlestick does not shine, but upholds the candle while the candle shines. So the church is only to propose, to set up divine truth, which of itself, being set up, will give light well enough. The church is to set out the word and to publish it by the ministry, and that word of itself will shine. The work the church has, therefore, is the last and the inferior, for the Spirit of God and the inward majesty of the word are of more force.

Suppose a messenger comes and brings a report, or brings a letter from someone, and tells me many things about the man. Yes, but I doubt the messenger, because for all I know he may be false. But when I see the man’s hand and seal, and his handwriting and style, which show such a spirit to be in him, I know certainly by his own handwriting that this comes from the hand of that man. Now, the messenger brings it and gives it, but I believe it because I see the handwriting and hand and seal of such a person, that it is a truth.

So the church propounds. It is the messenger that brings the truth of God to us; but when a Christian soul hears the truth and sees God’s seal upon it, there is a majesty and power that works on the soul. Now we believe not for the messenger, but for the thing itself. Here is the difference. We believe the Scripture for the seal of divinity that is in it; they believe it for the messenger, as if a doubtful messenger, who is not certain, should come, and a man should believe the things he brought for his sake. We believe and receive the messenger for the message’s sake, not the message for the messenger’s sake. Our faith is better built than theirs.

Objection. But they say that it all comes to this in the end: God speaks by the church as well as by the Scriptures; therefore the church is to be believed more than the Scripture itself.

Answer. I answer, God does indeed speak in his church by his Spirit and by his word; but his speaking by his word is the cause of his speaking in the church. For what is the church but something begotten by the seed of the word? How is the church a church except by the word? Therefore he speaks first by the Scriptures. There is a majesty and a spirit in the Scriptures. And then he speaks by the church, as it cleaves to the Scriptures, in a secondary manner. He speaks by the church indirectly, because it goes to the word, which speaks directly. The word was written by men led directly by the Spirit of God; and as the church relies on that, he speaks by them in the church, but primarily by his word. Having just cause, I thought I would touch on this.

Undoubtedly, all who are not led by partiality see that our faith is built on an incomparably better foundation than theirs. They have a rotten foundation. They talk of a church, and when all is said and done, the church their mother is nothing but the pope their father. What is their church but the pope himself? For they run from the essential church to the representative church. They run to councils, and when we press them with the fact that councils may err, then the pope is the church in effect. So, I say, the church their mother is nothing but the pope their father; and what kind of men the popes have been, histories tell us well enough. We see on what ground they build.

Jesus Christ, that is, the gospel by him, is not “yea and nay, but yea”; that is, it is certainly, and infallibly, and eternally true.

Question. From this we may answer that overcurious question that has been asked, and now is asked, everywhere: how we may know whether our church was before Luther’s time or not, as they idly say; how we may know that the faith we profess is the ancient faith.

Answer. I answer from this. Take these grounds:

1. There is but one faith. Men have varied, but faith has not varied, as St. Augustine says well. For there is but one faith, as there is one God, one heaven, and one happiness. There was one faith from Adam. The times vary, but not the faith of the times; the same fundamental truth has existed in all times. Sometimes it has been more explained and unfolded, as we have the canon enlarged now, in the time of the New Testament, in many books. There is not a new faith, but a larger explanation of the old faith. Divine truth is always the same. It was one faith from the beginning of the world, from the first promise to Adam in paradise, until now. Abraham believed as we do now. So they were all saved by faith (Heb 11).

Even as there is one catholic church, consisting of all the members, the triumphant being the greater part, from the beginning of the world to the end of the world, so there is one faith. Take that as a ground. Indeed, the church varies as a man varies when he is a child and when he is a man. He has one kind of clothes when he is a child, and another when he is a man. So the church varies in clothes. It was clothed with ceremonies then, which were cast off in Christ; but this is only a variation of garments. The church had one faith.

2. From this comes a second ground: there is one catholic church, which is built on that one faith, one essential church, one catholic company of those who believe in Christ, from the beginning of the world to the end of the world, which we believe in the Apostles’ Creed. Well then, this being so, as it is undeniable that it is so, what church is built upon that one faith that was “yea” in the apostles, and was “yea” before then, as the apostle says here, our preaching was yea, certain and true, you may build on it, what church builds on that? That church has existed all along; for there is but one faith and one truth that runs through all ages, which is the seed of the church. Therefore there must be a church in all ages that is a branch of the catholic church. Why? The church must be built upon that one faith. Therefore all particular churches before us, which were branches of the general church, were built upon that preaching of the apostle which he says was “yea.” There is but one faith, and therefore all churches that are true are built upon that one faith. If we can prove that the apostolic doctrine agrees with our times, that ours is of one blood with the apostles’ doctrine, then our church existed before we did, ever since the apostles. It has always been yea, for there is but one truth.

The church is built upon the foundation of the prophets and apostles. And when Peter said to Christ, “Thou art the Son of God,” Christ said, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock” (that is, upon this confession of yours) “will I build my church” (Matt 16:18). So the confession of faith is the rock of the church. Now there is always one rock of the church that is always yea. If our church is built upon that rock, then it is founded upon apostolic doctrine, upon the prophets and apostles. It existed before we did. And if there was any church, then it was ours, which professes that one faith.

If we solemnly charge the papists to answer, they are silent; they dare say nothing. Dare they say that their doctrine is nearer to the apostolic than ours? They dare not deny that ours is nearer. Why, then, our church is built upon the foundation of the apostles. Why so? All the churches since have been built upon one foundation, because there is one faith and one church. Unity of faith makes the unity of the church.

The seed of the church is the gospel, is divine truth. Now if divine truth has always existed, there has always been a church; and if there has always been a church, there has always been divine truth that has been “yea.” Now it is an article of our faith in all times to believe a catholic church. Therefore there is a certain truth that is always yea, to be the seed and foundation of that catholic church. Therefore we must search out what that “yea” was, what the apostolic doctrine was, the positive doctrine in those apostolic times, in the virgin times of the church, before the church was corrupted. The church was not long a virgin, as the church father said.

What was the yea of those truths? There must always be some who have held apostolic truths in all ages. Our church holds that positive truth which the apostles held; for directly, in so many words, we defend the apostolic faith out of the apostles. Therefore we say that our church existed before Luther, because our doctrine is apostolic, and the church has continually been apostolic, because it was built upon the apostles’ doctrine.

Our church has no doctrine contrary to the apostles’ in its positive fundamental points; therefore our church has continued. Suppose we cannot name the men, as they idly and ridiculously press us to do: what is that to the purpose? Shall we go from ignorance of particular men to ignorance of the church? We must believe that there is a catholic church; and there must always be a positive doctrine and truth, the seed of that church.

Objection. The papists cavil at us and say that we possess a negative religion. “You cut off our opinions,” they say, “but what do you have of your own? What affirmatives do you have?”

Answer. It is most certain that all our affirmatives have stood ever since the apostles’ time; for we and the papists do not differ in affirmatives, only they add patches of their own. Religion consists chiefly in affirmatives; that is the first ground. For we believe negatives because they do not agree with affirmatives. We believe a lie to be a lie because it is contrary to positive truth, and the truth comes before a lie; the affirmation comes before the negation; a thing is, before its contrary is not. Laying this down as a ground, that affirmatives are truths, the positive truths that we hold were held in the apostles’ times, before and since, even in the Church of Rome a thousand years after; and even now the affirmatives that we hold are held there.

Do they not believe the Scriptures to be the word of God? Yes! But they add patches of their own, the Apocrypha and their own traditions, to be the word of God too.

Do they not believe that Christ is Mediator? Yes! But in their teaching he is the only Mediator for redemption, and not for intercession. They join others with him, saints and angels.

We are saved by faith: that is the affirmative, and so say they. But they add of their own that we are saved by faith and works.

Then again, we say there are two sacraments, baptism and the Lord’s Supper; and so say they, but they add five of their own. So I might run through all their opinions. Whatever we hold, they hold. Therefore, by their own confessions, our affirmatives have stood ever since the apostles’ times. If they had any church, we had a church, because our foundations are included in their religion. All that we say, they say; but then again, they say many things that we do not. Therefore they account us heretics, because we do not make what they hold to be our yea too.

Again, the negatives, the things that they believe and we do not believe, are only novelties, as experience shows; they are not of the ancient apostolic faith. That the Apocrypha should be held in equal authority with the word of God in Scripture: alas! such a notion was not thought of for six hundred years after the apostles. That the people should not read the Scriptures arose only the other day. Transubstantiation came in only since the Council of Lateran, a thousand years after Christ. That the pope should be supreme and depose princes: such a thing was not heard of for a thousand years after Christ. That he should have authority to canonize saints arose only the other day. Equivocation is only of late date. And so with their idle babbling of divine service in Latin, and twenty other pieces of trumpery.

So the things that we deny, which are gross and abominable in the judgment of every man who knows anything, arose only the other day; they were not yea in the apostles’ times. Then, since the apostolic church was not built on them, they must have been devised afterward. As indeed, for a thousand years after Christ most of these were never heard of. Most of the points of popery in which they differ from us were never established by a council until the Council of Trent; nay, not any of them was, except transubstantiation, by the Council of Lateran, which was a thousand years after Christ.

The affirmatives that we hold, and they hold too, we say are constant from the apostles’ time; they have been maintained and affirmed in all ages.

Our positive points we ground on St. Paul and on the Scriptures; we seek the old way and the best way, as Jeremiah advises us (Jer 6:16). There was none of the popish trash in Abraham’s time, in the patriarchs’ time, in Christ’s and his apostles’ time, or for many hundred years after. These things came in little by little, for their own advantage, a mere policy to get money and to abuse people. I say, they hold all our positive truths; but their error is in addition.

Question. Now this question may be raised: may their additions be dangerous or not? For it may be supposed that some among them will say that heresy lies not in addition, but in contrariety to the faith and in detracting from it; and that when someone holds more than they should, that is no heresy, because something superabounds. “Now,” they will say, “we hold the truth, and more too.”

Answer. I say that is gross and false; for if additions did not overthrow the foundation, there would never be any idolatry, nor any heresy, in these times. What was idolatry, especially in the church of God? Among the Jews, was there not the worshiping of the true God? Yes! but before an image. Their additions, their false manner, overthrew the true. None of these things are fundamental points, as we call them, though they make them fundamental. They make their traditions of as much authority as the word of God, and their follies of as much as the articles of faith. They overthrow the main foundation. They are such additions as are destructive: to join traditions with the word of God. To worship God under another form and kind is to be an idolater. Though they worship the true God, if it is after a false manner, it is prohibited.

St. Paul says, and with a solemn denunciation, “If I or an angel from heaven teach otherwise” (Gal 1:8). Besides, suppose it is not plainly and directly contrary: if he teaches other things that are not necessary to be believed, “let him be accursed.” We ought not to go from the Scriptures in any fundamental point of faith, under pain of a curse. Therefore popery is a cursed religion, in respect of their very additions.

Does not St. Paul tell the Galatians that they were fallen from Christ (Gal 5:4) if they added circumcision to Christ? He does not say, if they did what was directly contrary to faith. No! But in adding circumcision and works to Christ, they were fallen from Christ. Whole Christ, or no Christ. In some cases additions are heresies, and overthrow the foundation.

Question. If this is so, we may easily answer another question. The apostolic doctrine, you see, is only yea: is it then safer to be a papist or a Protestant, considering that whatever we hold, they hold?

Answer. I answer that to be a Protestant is safer in any man’s judgment, because all that we say, they themselves say; it has been apostolic. We can prove our affirmatives in all ages of the church; we have a catalog of witnesses in all ages who held what we say. It was founded in the apostles and then came down to all ages. But for what they say that is distinct and different from us, they do not have the like testimony. Indeed they are so beaten that Bellarmine has this: “The authority of all councils and fathers, and all, depends upon the authority of the present church.” Bring councils and fathers to them, and it is, “Tush, tush! All authority depends upon the present church.” What authority does the present church give, when twenty years later the church varies? What certainty is there, when all the authority of former times shall depend upon the present church?

In those things in which they differ from us, and which we deny, any understanding, reasonable man may see that they are novelties and corruptions. As for the pope deposing princes, if a man has only his natural understanding, he may see that it is abominable. To pray in a “strange tongue,” to debar the people from the wine when Christ says, “Drink ye all of it” (Matt 26:27): who with ordinary discretion will not think it absurd? There is nothing in which we differ from them where a man with only his natural understanding will not condemn their position.

Therefore ours is a great deal safer by their own confession; the most learned of them confess that it is enough to believe as we do. Do we not believe the articles of the creed? Do we not believe the first four general councils? We do. Who then will not say that these, being understood and believed, are sufficient to keep a man from being a heretic?

Question. From this I may answer another question: whether a papist may be saved or not. It is an overly curious question, you will say; but it is so commonly asked that I must say something.

Answer. I answer, no doubt many of them are saved. How does that come about? They reverse their false grounds and stick to those positive truths that they and we hold together; they reject their own works and the help of saints, and go to Christ only; for, as I said, popery is full of contradictions. Now when a papist comes to have his conscience awakened, he leaves the pope’s indulgences, their five sacraments, and justification by works, and then embraces Christ only, and then he comes over to our side. They live by their religion and die by ours. So the question is, whether living or dying?

Luther says that if they live and die resolutely holding all the points professed in the Council of Trent, they cannot be saved. But no doubt the Lord has mercy on many of them, to open their eyes to see the vanity of their works and of all their follies, which those who are wise and have their consciences enlightened then cast off, and so may be saved. But it must be by reversing the grounds of their religion and sticking to ours, which is agreeable to the word.

Nay, to speak a little more of it, I say that we believe more safely. We are safer, and on better grounds, even when led into some lesser errors, than they are in believing main truths. It may seem strange, but it is most true.

For if a sound Protestant maintains an error, it is because he thinks it is in the Scripture, that it is in the word; if it is shown out of the word of God to be an error, he leaves it. So with St. Cyprian and other fathers, blessed saints in heaven: they held some errors, but if they saw that the Scripture held otherwise, they had minds prepared to believe otherwise. Therefore, holding the main fundamental truths, though they held particular errors, they were saved.

The papists maintain fundamental truths with us. They believe the word of God, they believe in Christ, and that they are saved by mercy; but upon what grounds? They believe the truth upon heretical, devilish grounds. For example, upon what grounds do they believe the articles of the faith to be so, and the Scriptures to be so? Because the church says so. Who is the church but the pope? And what man is the pope, oftentimes? A man, if we believe their own writers, led by a devilish spirit; some of them have been magicians.

If they believe the truth, they do not believe it as divine truth. They believe the truth for its matter; but the grounds of believing those truths are human, nay, worse, many times devilish. For you know that in the Revelation the beast is inspired with the spirit of the dragon, with the spirit of the devil, and teaches the doctrine of devils (1 Tim 4:1). Now to teach what is materially true upon reasons that are diabolical or human (at the best it is but human), as the testimony of the church is: what an unsafe thing this is!

Nay, I say, it is the most horrible witchery, the most horrible abomination that ever was since the beginning of the world, this principle, that their church cannot err: that is the reason for their believing all divine truths. Upon this they come to practice most abominable treacheries; upon this they defend lies; upon this they kill princes and dissolve the bonds of allegiance that subjects owe to princes. And all things human and divine, all the light of nature and Scripture, all becomes a nullity. Why? Because, they say, the church cannot err. And this they have from their holy father the pope. He, they say, is above all councils and everything, and cannot err.

We know that if principles are false, all other things are false. An error in principles is a dangerous error. An error in the ground is the worst thing in the world. So to maintain that treason is lawful is worse than to be a traitor; for the traitor’s judgment is convicted already, but he who maintains a false principle is a dangerous man indeed. So from holding this abominable principle, that the church, that the pope cannot err, have come all those dangerous practices in this commonwealth ever since the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s time.

Had God not given up bitter, proud, poisonous spirits, vain spirits that rejected the word of God, who would have thought that men of ability and understanding should ever be so besotted as to believe such a thing: that a wretched, ignorant man should get into the chair, and should judge infallibly of truths he never knew in his life, being of another profession, as some are canon lawyers and not divines? But I leave that point.

To touch on one thing more that borders a little upon this: divine truth is of an inflexible nature, whatever men think of it. And that crosses another rule of theirs, that they will give whatever sense they please to the Scriptures, and that the current of the present church must judge all former councils. Now does truth vary according to men’s judgments, according to the present church? Must we bring the rule to the crooked timber, or the timber and the things to be measured to the rule? Shall the judgment of any man be the rule of truth? Shall it be the rule at one time and not at another? Shall present men interpret it thus and say it is so now, and others who succeed them say, whatever it was before, thus it must be believed?

Upon this likewise, if it is the constant nature of truth always to be believed, it comes to cross another thing, their dispensation. No man can dispense with God’s law; truth is truth, beyond all dispensation. Laws divine and natural admit no dispensation, because they are alike in all things. Reason is reason in Turkey as well as here. The light of nature is the light of nature in any country as well as here. Principles of nature do not vary as languages do: they are inbred things.

If the principles of nature are invariable and beyond dispensation, much more are divine principles, says the heathen. Filthiness is filthiness, whether you think it to be so or not. Opinion is not the rule of things, but the nature of the thing itself.

Therefore whatever is against nature, none can dispense with. “God cannot deny himself!” (2 Tim 2:13). What was wicked in one age is wicked in another, and is wicked forever. Whatever is divine or natural admits no dispensation. No monarch in the world can dispense with the law of nature, or the divine law, the word of God; for the opinion of any man in the world is not the rule of his course, but the undoubted light of God, whether the light of nature or the light of divine truth.

I speak this all the more to cross base parasites. When God calls them to stand for true causes, what do they make their rule? Not God’s constant “Yea”; they bend and bow to opinion, as if the opinion of any man in the world were the rule of their faith and obedience. This is to make men, and no men. Is not the written word of God the word of God? Is not the law the law? (I do not speak of civil laws.) Shall a man yield to men’s opinion, especially if the word does not warrant it? Shall he yield to any man living, who is inconstant by his disposition?

There is truth which is certain, which a man must maintain to the death. It is not only he who maintains religion that is a martyr. John the Baptist was a martyr, who stood out in a matter that was not against heresy, but in standing out against Herod. He did not yield, as many thousands would have done in such a case. “Thou must not have thy brother Philip’s wife”; it is unlawful (Mark 6:18).

Men ought to suffer for the truths of nature, and not deny truth of any kind, because it is a divine sparkle from God. If it is any truth whatsoever, it must be stood by, because it is constant; and it is the best thing in the world next to divine and saving truth.

Use. If this is so, that the gospel and divine truth are “yea,” and that the church at all times has been built on that, and that whoever is saved is saved by that yea, let us labor to have a faith corresponding to our truth. We say, and distinguish well, that there is a certainty of the thing and a certainty of the mind apprehending the thing. It is certain that the sun is bigger than the earth; but you will never persuade a simple countryman that it is so. There is a certainty of the object, but not of the person apprehending it. He will never believe it, because it is against sense. But now there must be both in a Christian. The apostle’s doctrine, the truth he believes, the truth in the Scripture is “Yea”; that is, it is certain and true, and not “yea and nay”; it is not flexible. It is not as the heathen oracles were, that is, doubtful and wavering. Let our assent correspond to the truth; let us build soundly on a sound foundation.

As with a ship that is to rest in the midst of the waves, a double certainty is necessary: that the anchor-hold be good in itself, and that it be fastened upon something firm. If it is a weak anchor, or if it is fastened upon ground that will not hold, the ship is tossed about by the waves and so split upon some rock or other. So our souls require a double certainty. We must have an anchor of faith as well as an object of faith; we must have an anchor of hope as well as an object. As for the object, we may cast anchor there. It is divine truth, which will hold. There is no doubt of that. It is yea. But then our anchor must be firm, our faith and trust. Let us labor to build soundly and strongly upon it. It should be our continual endeavor to establish our faith, to establish our hope, that we may know on what terms we live and on what terms to die.

Just consider the difference between an understanding, strong Christian and another. Take a Christian who is judicious and understanding, and ask him in what state he is. Why, comfortable! What is the ground of his faith? Why, this: “I live in no known sin, I confess my sins to God, my doctrine is ‘yea,’ and I labor to bring my life to my doctrine.”

Ask another, “What do you mean by living so loosely and carelessly? Why will you stand thus? Will you be content to die so?” Perhaps he does not know sound doctrine, or if he does, it is confusedly; he does not build on that rock, on that foundation.

Oh, let us labor to build stronger and stronger on the truth! Our building strongly makes us eternal. God’s truth is eternal truth, because it makes us eternal. Is it not a strange thing that man, who is chaff and vanity and smoke, whose life passes as a tale that is told, yet notwithstanding, if he builds on this yea, which is certain and infallible, the doctrine of the gospel, it will make him a rock, a living stone, it will make him eternal? “All flesh is grass, but the word of God endures for ever” (1 Pet 1:25).

What a comfort this is! Our life is a vapor and vanity, growing to nothing, and the time will shortly come when we shall be no more, no more in this world; and then to have divine truth that will make us eternal! Moses, a good man, saw men drop away. He says, “Thou art our eternal habitation from generation to generation” (Ps 90). What is the meaning of that? That is, we dwell in you. Here in our pilgrimage to Canaan we drop away, but “thou art our habitation from generation to generation.” So when a Christian considers that his life is uncertain, and that all things that support this life are vanity, yet notwithstanding, he says, “I have a ‘yea’ to build on, the divine truth. ‘The word of the Lord endures for ever,’ and it will make me endure forever. It is a rock itself, it makes me a rock; it will make me a living stone, built on that foundation, so that all the gates of hell shall not prevail against my faith and hope.”

What a comfort this is! We have nothing without this “yea.” We are “yea and nay,” and our happiness is “yea and nay.” We are happy now in such a way that we may be miserable tomorrow. Let us labor to build on divine truth, which is always like itself, that in all the changes of the world we may have something that is unalterable, that is as unchangeable as God himself. As St. Paul here brings in God himself: “as God is true, my word to you was not yea and nay, but yea.” So much shall suffice for that verse. I go on to the twentieth verse.

For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him amen (2 Cor 1:20).

This comes in after this manner. My preaching to you, he says, was invariable and constant, because Christ himself is always “yea.” If Christ, the matter of my preaching, is always “yea,” and I preach nothing but Christ, then my preaching is invariable and constant. How does he prove the minor premise? How does he prove that Christ is always “yea”? “All the promises of God in him are yea, and in him amen.” Christ is invariable, and my preaching of him was not “yea and nay.” Christ is not “yea and nay,” because “all the promises of God in him are yea and amen.”

“The promises of God in him are yea,” that is, they are constant; “and in him they are amen.” There is some diversity in reading the words. But the best expositors most consistently have it as this translation has it, “all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him amen.” The literal meaning is this: “all the promises of God in Christ are yea,” that is, they are certain, they are made in him; “and in him they are amen,” that is, they are accomplished in him. In him they are made, and in him they are accomplished.

I might spend a great deal of time showing how the word “amen” is taken, but it is not pertinent to my purpose.

“Amen” here means certain, undoubtedly certain, as it serves here to make way for what is to be understood.

There are three main senses of “amen.” It signifies that a thing is positively so, and not no; it is so. “Yea and amen” signify that such a thing is, as in “let your yea be yea” (Jas 5:12): such a thing is. But now “amen” is more: not only that a thing is, but that it is so truly and so unchangeably. It is “yea and amen.” The promises are “yea”; they are made in Christ. And then they are true in him, undoubtedly, eternally, unchangeably true.

So take it in the strictest, in the strongest, sense you can. All the promises of God in Christ are so true that they are invariably, constantly, eternally true in him. They are made in him and performed in him; “they are yea in him, and amen in him.” So the whole carrying out of the promises is in Christ alone.

The truths we are to deliver out of the words are these.

First of all we must know that since the fall of man it has pleased the divine nature, the three persons in the Trinity, to establish a covenant of grace, and so of salvation, in Jesus Christ; and to make him a second principle, a second Adam, by whom mankind is restored to a better estate than we ever had in the first Adam. God now, since the fall, takes another course to bring us back again to him. He does not leave us as he left the angels that fell, in a state of perdition forever. But as we fell by unbelief and distrust of him, so now we are recovered again by promises, and by faith in them.

There can be no dealings between God and man except by some promise on his part.

Observation. God deals with man by promises.

Reason 1. The reason is this: how can man dare to claim anything from the great majesty of God without a warrant from himself? How can the conscience be satisfied? The conscience looks to God. It is a knowledge together with God; how can conscience rest except in what it knows comes from God? Therefore for any good that I hope for from God, I must have a promise.

Reason 2. For this is God’s constant dispensation: while we live in this world we are always under hope. We are children of hope. “We are saved by hope” (Rom 8:24); “we rejoice in the hope of glory” (Rom 5:2); and hope looks to the promises, of which some part is unperformed. How do heaven and earth differ? Heaven is all performance. Here there is some performance to encourage us, and there is always some promise still unperformed. We are always under some promise, and therefore the manner of our apprehending God in this world differs from heaven. Here it is by faith and hope, there by vision. Vision is fit for performance. Faith and hope always look to the promise here.

Therefore God rules his church by promises; partly, I say, to secure the soul of man. We cannot have anything from God except by the manifestation of his own good will. How can we look for anything from God except by promise? Can we look for anything from God by our own imaginations? That is a fool’s paradise.

Further, God wills to have his church ruled by promises in all ages, to exercise faith, and hope, and prayer, and dependence upon God. God will test what credit he has among men, whether they will depend upon his promise or not; so that, knowing by the promise that he is true, they may be certain that they will have performance in time. He gives men promises to see if they will trust him.

Reason 3. God wills this manner of dispensation, ruling his church by promises, to arm us in this world against fears and discouragements; therefore we always have some promise. He might have done us good and given us no promise. But now, having given us promises, he will test the graces that are in us, and arm us against all discouragements and difficulties, until the thing promised is performed. For we must know that a promise is a divine thing, better than any earthly performance. Let God give a man ever so much in the world: if he does not have a promise of better things, all will come to nothing at the last. Therefore God supports the souls and spirits of his children with promises, to arm them against all temptations on the right hand and on the left that would draw them from trusting in his promise. He will have them live by faith, and faith always has relation to the promise.

Question. This, then, is a general ground: that God, now in Christ Jesus, has appointed this way of governing the church with promises. Now what is a promise?

Answer. A promise is nothing but a manifestation of love, an intention of bestowing some good and removing some ill. A manifestation of our mind of that kind is a promise of conferring a future good or removing a future ill; therefore it comes from love in the one promising.

There are three degrees of loving steps, of which a promise is the last. The first is inward love; the second is real performance; and the third is a manifestation of the intended performance before it takes place. And this, I say, is a degree of love. For love concealed does not comfort in the interim, in the time between.

Now God, who is love, not only loves us, and not only will show his love in time, but, because he will have us rest sweetly in his bosom and settle ourselves on his gracious promises in the meantime, gives us rich and precious promises. He is not only love, and shows it in deed, but he expresses it in word. And we may well build on his word as surely as if he had performed it in deed, for whatever he says is “Yea, and Amen.” This is the nature of a promise. It is not only love, and the expression of love in deed, but the expression of it in word, when he intends to solace, and comfort, and establish, and stay the mind of man until the good promised is performed.

Therefore, even from this we see how God loves us: not only does he have an inward love in his breast, and do good to us, but he manifests it by word. He would have us, as I said, live by faith, and establish ourselves in hope.

Faith and hope are two graces that come altogether from promises. If there were no promise there could be neither faith nor hope. What is hope? Nothing but the expectation of the things the word speaks of. And what is faith, but a building on the word of God? Faith looks on the word that God will give such a thing, and hope looks upon the thing that the word promises. It is a good distinction: faith looks to the word of the thing, and hope looks to the thing in the word; faith looks to the word promising, hope looks to the performance of the thing promised.

Faith “is the evidence of things not seen” (Heb 11:1), because it sets the things that are absent as if they were present; hope is for the accomplishment of it. If there were no promise to hope in, what need would there be of hope? And where would there be a foundation for faith? Now God, being willing to exercise faith and hope, feeds them both and satisfies both, that we may be heavenly-wise in trusting and believing, and not foolish like men in the world. Therefore God has given us promises and sealed them with an oath, as we will see afterward.

Now since all promises come from love, what love can there be in God toward us since the fall, unless it is grounded on a better foundation than ourselves? If God loves us, it must be in one who is first beloved.

Observation 2. Hence the ground of the promises comes to be Jesus Christ, God-man. For all dealings between God and us must be in him who is able to satisfy God. In the covenant of grace God will enter into covenant and league with us in such a way that his justice has full satisfaction; he will be satisfied. And therefore he who will be the foundation of dealings between God and us must be God-man, perfectly able to satisfy divine justice. He must be a friend of God’s and a friend to us. Hence the promises must come from God’s love in Jesus Christ; and he must first receive all good for us, and we must have it at second hand from him. Hence it is said here that “all the promises of God in him are yea and amen.”

1. It is a rule that the first in any kind is the cause of all the rest. Now Christ is the first beloved thing; therefore in Colossians 1:13 he is called “the Son of God’s love.” Christ being the only begotten Son of God, God looks on him first, before he looks on anything else. And whatever is lovely he looks on as it is in him in whom his love is first, because, he being his only begotten Son, he is the first object of all the regard God has. Therefore whatever is beloved is beloved as it has its standing in Christ. Therefore Christ must first be loved, and then we in him. So it is when we consider him as the Son of God.

2. Consider him as man. He is the first beloved, being a holy man above all other men, for the nature of man has a subsistence in the second person in Christ. Therefore Christ as man is beloved before all others, having a subsistence in his Godhead, which is first beloved. He is the prime and most excellent creature as man. God looks first upon Christ as his only begotten Son, and upon Christ as man secondarily; upon the church in the third place, as united to Christ; and upon all other creatures in reference to the church. And therefore there never was anything in the world, nor will be, that ever was or will be loved except in the first-beloved Christ Jesus.

3. Again, Christ is first because Christ is the mediator between God and man by office. Consider what relation he has between God and man, and we may easily see that God regards him first, and us for his sake. For Christ being God and man, and therefore Mediator between God and man, he is loved by both. He is a friend to both, to bring both together. He is first regarded as Mediator, and then we for whose sake he is Mediator.

4. Then again, consider Christ, not as he is between God and us, but as he is to us; so he is first beloved. To God, he is his first begotten; to God and us, a mediator. To us a head, to us a husband, to us a brother: a head from whom comes all influence of life and motion; a husband from whom we have all riches. He is all in all to us in the relations in which he stands to us. Therefore he is first in all things, as the apostle says, “In all things he must have the pre-eminence” (Col 1:18); and it is fitting that it should be so.

This is especially so since the fall. Leave aside the consideration of Christ, and this may be a reason. Consider us since the fall, as we are in the mass of corruption: are we fit objects for God’s love? Are we not fuel for consuming fire? Is he not a “consuming fire” (Heb 12:29), and we stubble for his wrath? Is not our nature defiled and tainted, and can it be lovely in any other way than when considered as knit to him who is first lovely, that is, Christ? It cannot be. So look to Christ as the Son of God’s love, whether as God or as man; look to his office as mediator; look on him in relation to us as our husband and head; look on us without him: you may see that God’s love is first founded in Christ, and then in us.

I mean with regard to the carrying out of the stages of our salvation. For at first it was a free love that gave Christ to us and us to Christ: “So God loved the world, that he gave his Son” (John 3:16). That was the first thing, which set all the world in motion. But in the carrying out, from predestination to glorification, before all worlds he loved us in Christ to everlasting. From everlasting in election to everlasting in glory, all is in Christ with regard to its carrying out.

We subsist in him, we are sanctified in him, we are justified in him, his righteousness is ours, we are glorified in him, we are loved in him. God blesses us with all spiritual blessings in him: “God hath made us accepted in his beloved” (Eph 1:5-6), in him who is his beloved Son, in whom he is well pleased; not only “with whom,” but “in whom”; in him and all who are his; in him as the mystical Christ, head and members. God now looks upon our nature as it is united to the person of his only begotten Son, and on that account our nature is lovely in the eyes of God, and enriched, and honored, and advanced in Christ.

Even as a woman of low degree is advanced by marriage with a great person, so it is with our nature. It was lowly in itself, and he took it when it was defiled with sin (though that particular mass was sanctified by the Holy Spirit), and it was much advanced and ennobled by having a subsistence in the second person. So God looks on us in Jesus Christ, and loves us in him, and bestows all spiritual blessings in Christ.

Therefore whatever we have, Christ must have it first for us; whatever is done to us must be done first to Christ. Christ is first predestined, as we find in 1 Peter 1:20. He is the predestined Lamb of God. He was ordained before all worlds to be a sacrifice for us and to be the head of his church. He was ordained before we were ordained. Christ is first beloved, and then we are beloved in his beloved. God is well pleased in him, and then in us. He is first loved, and then we. He is predestined, and then we. He is the Son of God’s love by nature, therefore we are sons of God’s love by adoption and grace. What we are by adoption, he is by nature first of all. Therefore we are said to be elected in him and sanctified in him.

He first of all removes all ill, and then we have it removed, because he has removed it. He is first justified from our sins, he is first acquitted and freed from our sins, when he took them upon himself and on the tree satisfied the wrath of God. “He bore our iniquities, and by his stripes we are healed” (Isa 53:5). If he had not been freed from our sins, we would have lain under them forever. Therefore St. Paul says, “If Christ be not risen, you are yet in your sins” (1 Cor 15:13 and following). We are free from our sins because Christ our surety is out of the prison of the grave. He is in heaven.

He must first rise from the dead. “He is the first fruits of them that sleep” (1 Cor 15:20); “the first begotten from the dead” (Rev 1:5). For though some rose before, yet it was in the power of Christ, who rose altogether by his own strength. Therefore he has made a “living way” to heaven. “We are born again to a lively hope by the resurrection of Christ from the dead” (1 Pet 1:3). We have a lively hope, a hope that makes us lively in good works, because our surety is in heaven. Now we hope for an inheritance immortal and undefiled. Because he has risen, we will rise. He has ascended, therefore we will ascend. We do ascend in the certainty of faith now, and will ascend in very deed hereafter.

Whatever we do, he does it first; and whatever we have from God, it is at second hand. He has it first and conveys it to us, the natural Son to the adopted sons. Therefore all the promises come to be made in him, and not directly to us alone, abstracted from Christ.

Use. It is a point we should often think of and seriously consider, for it wondrously establishes our hearts. Does God love me, and does he do good to me abstracted from Christ, myself alone? No; for then, alas! I would flee from his presence. But he looks upon me and considers me as I am in his Son. Therefore in John 17:23, in that blessed prayer of Christ, he says, “That thou mayest love them with the same love wherewith thou lovest me.” God loves us with the same love with which he loves his Son. “That the love wherewith thou lovest me, may be in them” (John 17:26). He loves him first, and then he loves us with that love with which he loves him. Here is the reason that God looks on us with a forbearing eye, notwithstanding all the matter of anger and wrath in us. He looks on us in his Son, as members of his Son. His love to us is founded on his love to his Son.

From this, in turn, comes our boldness toward God the Father: we go to him in his beloved Son and present his Son to him. “Lord, look on your Son, whom you have given for us, in whom we are members. We come not as in ourselves, but in your beloved.” For as all things descend from God to us, so our souls should ascend to him. All descends from God to us in his Son. Why, all our comforting thoughts of God must be in his Son Christ. On that ground we have boldness toward God through him, not in ourselves but in and through Christ. Let us bring “Benjamin” with us (Gen 42:36 and following); bring Christ, and then we will be welcome. If we come in the garments of our Elder Brother, then we will get the blessing.

But God cannot endure to look on us as we are of ourselves. Therefore it is a heathenish notion in our prayers to presume to go to God in any other way than as he has clothed himself with the comforting relation of a Father in Christ. If we consider him as a just God, as a God of vengeance, as a holy God, the more it tends to our terror, if we are not stupefied. But go to him as he now is in his Son Christ, and go boldly. The heathens conceived otherwise of a God, waveringly and doubtingly. Alas! Since they conceived of him apart from Christ, he was nothing but a “consuming fire” to them (Heb 12:29).

How dare the man who knows himself and knows God, how dare he think of God? He thinks basely of God who can think of him and not think of him as he is to him in Christ. Do you dare to think of God, who is a “consuming fire,” and not think of him as he is pleased and pacified in your nature in Christ, who has taken your nature to be a foundation of comfort, to be a “second Adam,” a public person for all who are in him and members of him? When you see God fully appeased in him who is God-man, then you may think of him with comfort. Never think of the promises of grace or comfort, or of anything, without Christ.

Therefore St. Paul says, “Now to Abraham and his seed was the promise made; he saith not to seeds, as to many, but to thy seed” (Gal 3:16); as speaking of one, even Christ. All the promises of good to us are made to Christ, and conveyed from Christ to us: the promises, and likewise the things promised. “He hath promised to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son” (1 John 5:11); and so with grace and whatever else: it is in him. The promises and the things promised are conveyed from God to Christ, and so to us. They are a deed of gift. We have them from and by Christ.

Why are the angels attendants upon us? The angels attend upon Jacob’s ladder, that is, Christ. It is he who knits heaven and earth together. So the angels, because they attend upon Christ first, become our attendants. Whatever we are, whatever privileges we have, it is in Christ first. It belongs to us no further than we are made one with Christ by faith.

Thus we see that whatever we have from God is by promises. And these promises are not abstracted from love, for they are the fruits of love; and this love is seated in Christ, who has satisfied God’s justice. We have promises, and promises in Christ.

Observation 3. In the third place, the apostle says that all the promises of God in him are yea. They are constant and sure in him; they will be performed.

All promises are either Christ himself, or by Christ, or from Christ, or for Christ. All the promises that were ever made to God’s people were either of Christ himself, when he was promised, or such as were promised for Christ. The promise of Christ himself is the first grand promise, that he should be made man, the promise in his own person. But whatever promises were made by the prophets and apostles were made by his Spirit; they were made for him, for his sake, and in him, and they were made to those who are in him too. For as God’s love is founded in him toward those who are in him mystically, as the Son of his love, so the promises of all good are made and given over to him. He takes all the promises of good from God for us, and then they are made to us as we are in him.

He himself is the first promise, which runs along through all the Scripture; and all the promises of Christ are “yea,” for whatever was promised of Christ before he came was fulfilled when he came. For all types were fulfilled in him, and all prophecies, and all promises; they were all accomplished in him.

1. All types, whether of persons or of things.

(1) For personal types, he was the “second Adam.” Adam was a type of him. He is the true Adam. He was the true Isaac, the ground of laughter. He is the true Joseph, advanced now to the kingdom, to the right hand of God. He is the steward of his church, to feed his church here and bring her to heaven with himself afterward. He is the true Joshua, who brought Israel out of the wilderness to Canaan. He brings us from Moses, from the law, to heaven. He is the true Joshua who brings us through Jordan, from death and miseries in this world to heaven. He is the true Solomon, the prince of peace. So all personal types of kings and priests (as Aaron was a type of him, and so on) were “yea” in him; they were fulfilled in him.

(2) And all types of things. He is the true “mercy seat,” in whom God would be heard and prayed to, for he covers the law, the curse of it, as the mercy seat did. He is the true “brazen serpent,” so that whoever looks on him with the eye of faith “shall not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:15). He is the true “manna,” the bread of life. That type had its “yea” in Christ. He is the true sacrifice, “the passover lamb,” the lamb of God “that takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). If our hearts are sprinkled with his blood, the destroying angel has nothing to do with us. The passover has its “yea” in him.

Therefore what is affirmed of the passover is affirmed of him: “Not a bone of it shall be broken” (Exod 12:46). What was performed in the type is attributed to Christ. What was spoken of the passover is applied to Christ, to signify the identity of the type and the thing signified. He was the “yea” of that, and of all comforting types, of things and of persons; all have their “yea” in him.

Therefore our Savior Christ says, in almost his last words on the cross, “All is finished” (John 19:30): all the types, of things and of persons.

2. And all promises and prophecies have their “yea” in Christ. The first promise, what was it but Christ? “The seed of the woman shall break the serpent’s head” (Gen 3:15). It was nothing but Christ. It was “yea” when he was born; and when he died he crushed the serpent’s head. “By death he overcame him that had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb 2:14). So too with the promise that was renewed to Abraham, “In thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed” (Gen 22:18), that is, in Christ. And so too with David, that Christ should come out of his family. And that particular promise of Isaiah, that a virgin should conceive (Isa 7:14). And the Baptist points him out, “Behold the Lamb of God” (John 1:29). All the particular things that befell Christ in time were prophesied beforehand, and Christ was the “yea” of them all; that is, all had their determinate truth in Christ when he came.

This is one reason why St. Paul says, “All the promises in Christ are yea.” Whatever was promised or foretold concerning Christ was “yea” in him: concerning his birth and the place of it; concerning his death and the manner of it; concerning his resurrection and ascension; concerning his offices. All was foretold. As we see in the Scripture of the New Testament, the refrain at the foot of many verses is “it might be fulfilled”; so what was foretold in the Old was fulfilled in the New. So Christ is the first promise, and whatever was said of him is “yea and amen.” Whatever was spoken of Christ was “yea” in the Old Testament and “amen” in the New; the promise was made to them in the Old Testament and performed in the New.

And what are the Old and New Testaments but this syllogism? The one who is the blessed seed, that is, the Son of the Virgin Mary, born in Bethlehem, who shall come at the end of Daniel’s weeks, who shall come when the scepter has departed from Judah, and so on, he is the true Messiah, the true Christ, says the Old Testament. Here is the “yea.” “Amen,” says the New Testament to this. But Christ is the Son of the Virgin Mary; he suffered these things that it might be fulfilled. So all is “amen” in the New Testament. I say, this is the main reason that all is built on. He in whom all these agree is the true Messiah. But, says the New Testament, all these are “amen” in Christ. Therefore Christ, the Son of the Virgin Mary, is the true Messiah. We see that whatever was prophesied concerning Christ himself was “yea.”

3. And not only so, but all the prerogatives and good things that come by Christ are “yea.” They are undoubted in Christ, and they were “yea” before he came. He did good before he came. He was “yea” to Adam. For although he who was the seed of the woman did not come until the latter end of the world, until four thousand years or thereabouts after the beginning, yet the faith of Adam and of Abraham made him present. Abraham saw Christ’s day, and rejoiced (John 8:56). A power flowed from Christ to all former ages. They all had benefit by Christ, as is proved at length in Hebrews 11. And in Acts 15:11, “We hope to be saved by Christ, as well as they,” implying that they hoped to be saved by Christ as well as we. So he was “yea” for comfort to all who were before him, as well as now. All the promises were “yea,” even to the patriarchs and prophets.

It is as if a man were to undertake to pay, three or four years from now, a debt owed by someone who is liable to be carried off to prison, on the condition that this man shall be set free: “I undertake to pay such a debt at such a time.” Then, though the debt is paid three or four years later, the one who was liable to go to prison for the debt is let go free, even though it is yet to be paid.

So it was with Christ. He, the second person in the Trinity, undertook it, being so appointed by God the Father. The blessed Trinity established this: that Christ should pay the debt by death; that the debt to divine justice should be satisfied by the cursed death of the cross; and that those who came before, who would otherwise have gone to hell for the debt, should all be freed, as many as had any part and interest by faith in Christ, who should pay the debt afterward. Christ undertook at such a time to become incarnate and to pay it for us. God the Father, to whom we were liable and who was the creditor, let them go on the strength of that payment four thousand years later. So Christ was yea to them; they had benefit by Christ’s death.

On this ground the prophets spoke of him as something present: “To us a Son is born, to us a child is given” (Isa 9:6). Faith mounts over many years. In the prophet it mounted six hundred years before Christ, and made the time of Christ’s coming and his death present, because they had benefit by him as if he had been present. There is only this difference: in the time itself, when Christ came in the flesh, they had some comforting enlargement of grace. When he came in the flesh, I say, there was a new world, as it were; grace was poured out in abundance.

So you see that all the promises concerning Christ were performed; they were “yea and amen,” and so were the good things that come by Christ. St. Paul says excellently, “Christ yesterday, today, and the same for ever” (Heb 13:8). Yesterday to the patriarchs, today for the present time he is “yea,” and for the time to come he is “yea,” always the same.

He is yea to all ages. He is yea to us as well as to those who lived in Christ’s time. Christ is crucified to you when you believe in Christ crucified. If we now by faith look to Christ, crucified and sent from his Father to take our nature on him, we have as much benefit by Christ as those who beheld him crucified. As they before looked forward by the eye of faith, so we look backward. We have benefits by Christ. He is “yesterday, today, and the same for ever.” “All the promises are yea in him,” that is, they are constantly “yea” for all ages. The promises of Christ, like the vital spirits in the body, run through all ages of the church. Without him there is no love, nor mercy, nor comfort from God. As I said before, God cannot look on our cursed nature outside of Christ; therefore whoever would grasp anything merciful in God must grasp it in Christ, the promised seed. “All the promises in him are yea.”

He is called Logos, the Word. Why is he so called? Both actively and passively. Actively he is “the Word,” because how could we ever have known the mind in the breast of God, hidden and sealed there, unless Christ had been the Word? For a word is expressed from reason. There is a word that is essential, which is reason, Logos; and so there is the word coming from it, speech, the issue of reason. So Christ is the essential Word, by nature and by office the Word, to reveal the inward will and purpose of God to us. All the promises of God are revealed by Christ, as the Angel of the covenant. And passively he is the Word, the one of whom all the prophets spoke, as Peter says (Acts 3:18), and who was signified beforehand by all the types, as I showed. Christ is truly all in all.

Use. It is a comforting way to study Christ, to go about it like this: to see him foretold in the Old Testament and to see the accomplishment in the New, to set the Old and New Testaments side by side. It is an excellent way of studying the gospel. For we know that men are delighted to know various things at once. When a man’s knowledge is enriched in various ways at once, it delights him, as when a man knows the history of a thing and the truth with it; when he knows a promise and the truth; a type and the truth, how it delights him!

When a man sees the type in the Old and the truth in the New, the history there, the promise and the accomplishment here, it is a wonderfully delightful thing. For why does proportion delight the eye, except that it is an agreement of different things, a sweet harmony of different things? Why does music so please the ear? Because it is a harmony of different things. When we see a type different from the truth performed, and a promise different from the performance, and yet a sweet agreement, a man is delighted by that agreement. A man is not delighted with colors as colors, but as they hold proportion with the rest of the body. He is not delighted with a limb as a limb, but as it holds proportion with the man; if there is no proportion and comeliness, it does not delight. So in this case it is good to consider both together. God therefore, for this end and purpose, would have truths conveyed in the Old Testament by way of types and prophecies and promises, that it might delight us now to hear them and to study them the more; for, as I said, when we know many things at once, it is delightful.

That is the reason why comparisons and allusions are so delightful, because we know both the comparison and the thing to which it is compared. And that is the reason why our Savior Christ, besides types and figures, and promises and prophecies, is set out in the Scriptures by whatever is excellent in nature. There is nothing excellent in nature but something is taken from it to set forth the excellency of Christ. He is the “Sun of righteousness”; he is the “water,” he is the “way,” he is the “bread,” he is the “vine,” he is the “tree of life.” Whatever is excellent in nature, either in heaven or earth, serves to set forth the excellency of Christ. Why? To delight us, that we may be willing and cheerful to think of Christ; that together with the consideration of the excellency of the creature, some sweet meditation of Christ, in whom all those excellencies are knit together, might be presented to the soul.

When we see the sun, we should often think of that blessed Sun who quickens and enlivens all things and scatters the mists of ignorance. When we look on a tree, we should think of the Tree of righteousness; on the way, of him who is the Way; on life, of him who is the true Life. When we think of anything that is excellent, let us think of God’s love in Scripture in setting out Christ, that he would shadow him in everything; for he is the true Sun. All creatures must vanish before long, and whatever is excellent in the creature; and what will stand then? Only he in whom all these excellencies are comprised in one. “All the promises in him are yea and amen.”

If this is true, then, that the promise of Christ himself, who is the chief good promised, is “amen” in the New Testament, and that all of him is “yea and amen,” then this comes as a deduced truth: all other promises must of necessity be “yea and amen.” For God, who performed the grand promise in giving Christ in the fullness of time, will for Christ’s sake perform all other promises. Therefore the incarnation, the life, the death and the resurrection of Christ our blessed Savior are a pawn and pledge to us of the performance of all things to come.

God promised the Jews that they should come out of Babylon; he promised that he would deliver them from the enemy. And he usually sets this promise in front of it: “A virgin shall conceive and bear a son” (Isa 7:14); and “to us a child is born, and a son is given” (Isa 9:6). This was to signify that they should have deliverance for this very reason, that God would give them a better thing than that. He would give them Christ, in whom all the promises are “yea and amen.” And because Christ should come of that people, they should not miscarry in captivity under their enemies; for then how should Christ come of them?

Therefore, because “a virgin should conceive,” and because “a Child shall be born, and a Son given,” therefore you shall have outward deliverance. All other things are “yea and amen” for Christ’s sake, as St. Paul divinely reasons: “If he spared not his only begotten Son, but gave him to death for us all, how shall he not with him give us all things else?” (Rom 8:32). All other promises are made in Christ and performed for his sake. And since the grand promise itself is now “amen,” that Christ has come, it is a pledge of all other things that are to come. Has Christ come in the flesh according to the promise? Has he done all and suffered all according to the prophecies, as it was written of him? Then why should we not look for the accomplishment of all that are to come, on the same ground? Do we not have a pledge? Why should we not look for the resurrection of the body, for the day of judgment, for the second coming of Christ? Is not his first coming a pledge of it?

When God has become man, and was mortal, why should we doubt that man, being mortal, should be immortal? Is not the greater already performed? Is it not a greater matter for God to become man and to die in our nature than for us who are mortal to become immortal by Christ? Why should we not expect what is to come, since the greater is done? Why should we doubt that we shall be taken up to God, since he has come down to man? Therefore, since it rests on the same ground, let us look for the performance of all to be “yea and amen.”

Since the coming of Christ, many promises have been performed in the church, and many yet remain. Some have been performed, such as the calling of the Gentiles, and the revealing of antichrist foretold by St. Paul, and the consuming of him in part. Some things are unfulfilled: the conversion of the Jews, the overthrow of antichrist, the resurrection to glory with Christ, and so on. Why should we doubt those that are to come, having such a pledge of the truth of God and Christ in the real performance of what is past? Let us not doubt it; for in Revelation 16:17 and elsewhere, when the destruction of antichrist is spoken of, “It is done, it is done,” says the angel. As Christ said when he was on the cross that all was finished, so it is just as true of his adversaries that all is done; it is as sure as if it were done already.

Therefore the church and people of God should comfort themselves for the time to come with the destruction of the implacable, malicious enemies of the church, who glory in the flesh, who set up an outward religion opposed to the power of Christ. Let them take comfort that the time shall come when all shall be done to those enemies, and that all other promises shall be finished. For as in the first coming of Christ all was finished for the working of our salvation, so in his second coming there will be a time when it will be said, All is finished, for the accomplishment of what was done in his first coming. Therefore let us establish our souls in the expectation of the blessed promises, for “all the promises in Christ are yea and amen,” and shall be for ever.

All the promises are infallibly true, as God and Christ himself are true. Christ would as soon fail, and God would as soon fail, as any promise made to us in the gospel, if we lay hold of it in Christ and believe it in Christ.

Use 1. Here then you see, for the direction of our judgment, what to think of a rotten opinion held by some who are unacquainted with divine truth, with the all-sufficiency of Christ and the mercy of God in Christ, and who do not consider the vileness of our nature and the infinite majesty of God. They will have the Gentiles saved by the light of nature, the Jews by the law of Moses, and Christians by the gospel of Christ, as if there were some other means of coming to heaven and to the favor of God than by Christ. But now all that we have must come by promises, and all the promises we have are in Christ. They are all yea in him. Without him there are no dealings between the majesty of God and us.

Therefore “there is no name under heaven whereby we can be saved, but by the name of Jesus” (Acts 4:12). This confutes not only the devilish opinion and notion that some have, but also the charitable error of others, who think that the heathen who never heard of Christ will be saved. I leave them to their Judge. We must go to the Scriptures. All the promises are in Christ. In him they are “yea,” in him they are made; in him they are “amen,” in him they are performed. Out of him we have nothing; out of the promises in him we have nothing.

Use 2. How we ought to magnify God that we live in the sunshine of the gospel, that in Christ we have precious and rich promises! A precious Savior we have, and precious faith to lay hold on him, and precious promises. All is precious, both the promises to be believed and our Savior in whom they are laid hold of. He is “a precious stone” (1 Pet 2:6); and the faith that lays hold on him is “precious” (1 Pet 1:7). How we ought to bless God that we have these advantages, that we have Christ laid open, and precious and rich promises, by which we may have precious faith to lay hold on these precious promises! We ought greatly to bless God for it.

Use 3. Again, are all the promises of God in Christ, and in him yea and amen? This should direct us in our dealing with God, not to go directly to him, but by a promise; and when we have a promise, to look to Christ, in whom it is performed. Let us go to God in the blessed promises that we have for Christ’s sake, that he would perform all. If we ask anything of God in Christ’s name, we shall receive it (1 John 5:14), because the promises are in him. If we thank God for anything, it must be in Christ, for what we have in him.

What a comfort this is, that we may go to God in Christ and claim the promises boldly! For we see that out of the love he bears to Christ he loves us, and has made us promises in him, and that as truly as he loves him, so he loves us, and will perform all his gracious promises to us. If we lay fast hold on Christ, I say, he can as soon alter his love to Christ as to us; for he loves us with the same love with which he loves Christ; he loves us in his beloved. He has “blessed us with all spiritual blessings in him” (Eph 1:3); he has made us sons in him who is the natural Son. And as his love to his Son is unchangeable, so it is to us in Christ.

If a prince’s love to any man is founded and grounded upon the love he bears to his son, so that if he loves his son he loves that man because his son loves him, surely that man may have great comfort that it will hold! Because the prince’s affection is natural and unalterable, he will always love his son. Therefore he will always love the one whom his son loves. Now Christ is the Son of God, and God loves us in his Son; he has given us rich promises in his Son. He has given him, the first promise, and all other promises of forgiveness of sins and life everlasting in and through him. As long as he loves Christ, he will love us, and as surely as he loves Christ, he will love us.

Nothing in the world can separate his love from his own Son, and nothing in the world can separate God’s love from us, because it is in his Son. Christ loves his mystical body as well as his natural body; and God loves the mystical body of Christ as he loves his natural body. He has advanced that natural body to glory at his right hand, and will he leave his mystical body, the church? Will he not advance that? Does he not love the whole Christ? Yes! God loves the whole Christ. Our nature, which Christ has taken to himself, is the chief thing, the most lovely thing in heaven or earth, next to God; and he loves all who are in him, his mystical body. For indeed he gave us to Christ. He has sealed and anointed him. He is anointed by God the Father for us.

Upon what an unchangeable, eternal ground the love of God is built, and the faith of a Christian! How can the gates of hell prevail against the faith of a Christian, when it carries him to the promises, and from the promises to the love of God, and from there to Christ, upon whom the love of God is founded? Before the faith of a Christian can be shaken, the promises must be of no effect; they must be “yea and nay,” and not “yea.” And if the promises are shaken, the love of God must be uncertain, and Christ uncertain. Heaven and earth must be overturned to overturn the faith of a Christian. There is nothing in the world so firm as a believing Christian who casts himself on the promises, which are always “yea”; and to make them “yea,” they are founded on Christ, the Son of God’s love.

Well, these promises, coming from such love, may be ranked into various ranks. I will touch on some of them, to show how we are to carry ourselves so as to make comforting use of this, that “all the promises are yea and amen in Christ.”

(1) There are some universal promises, for the good of all mankind, as that God would never destroy the world again.

(2) Or there are promises that concern more particularly his church. And those are promises either of outward things, or of spiritual and eternal things, of grace and glory.

Now, as for the manner of promising, they admit of this distinction in all the promises that God has made to us.

(1) Either they are absolute, without any condition. So was Christ. God promised Christ, let the world be as it will; Christ did come and would have come. And so with the promise of his glorious coming: he will come, let men be as they will. There will be a resurrection.

(2) Some promises are conditional in the manner in which they are set forth, but yet absolute in their real performance. Take, for example, the promises of grace and glory to God’s children. Take the promise of forgiveness of sins: God will forgive their sins if they believe, if they repent. They are set forth conditionally, but in the performance they are absolute, because God performs the covenant himself; he performs our part and his own too. For since Christ came, though God has set forth the promises of the gospel with conditions, yet he performs the condition. He stirs us up to attend upon the means, and by his Spirit in the word he works faith and repentance, which is the condition. Faith and repentance are his gift.

He “writes his law in our hearts” (Jer 31:33), and teaches us how to love. So, though they are set forth conditionally (for God deals with men as men, by way of commerce; he sets it forth by way of covenant and condition), yet in the covenant of grace, which is truly a gracious covenant, he not only gives the good things but also performs the condition, by the Spirit working on our hearts to believe and to repent.

Again, there are promises set forth conditionally not only of grace and comfort, but of outward things. All outward things are promised conditionally, in this way. God has promised protection from contagious sicknesses, from war, and from troubles. There are general promises of protection everywhere. God will be a hiding-place (Ps 91:2), and he will deliver his children. There are privative promises, and then positive promises, that he will do this and that good for them; but these are conditional, so far as in his wise providence he sees it may serve spiritual good things, grace and the inward man. For God takes liberty with our outward estate and with our bodies, to afflict them or to do them good, as may serve the main thing.

For do what we will, these bodies will turn to dust and vanity, and we must leave the world behind us; but God looks to the main state in Christ, to the new creature. Therefore as far as outward blessings may encourage us, and as far as deliverances may help the main thing, so far he will grant them, or else he denies them. He takes liberty in outward things.

Therefore promises of that sort are conditional, with the reservation of necessary affliction. For as to the blessings of this life, whether positive good things or deliverances from ill, we cannot always be delivered and have blessings. Our corrupt nature is such that unless we have something to season them, we will surfeit on them: we cannot digest them. And therefore they all come with the reservation of the cross. As Christ says, whoever does anything for him will have “an hundredfold here” (Matt 19:29), but with affliction and persecutions; he will be sure of that. Whatever else he has, let him look for that. All the crosses we have in the world are to season the good things of this life. Many other distinctions and differences might be given to lay open the kinds of promises in Scripture, but this will suffice to give you a taste. Now, all these are made in Christ and performed in Christ, so far as is for our good.

Use. Are all the promises, of whatever kind, spiritual or outward, temporal and eternal, all made to us in Jesus Christ, and are they certain, yea and amen in him? Then make this use of it: let us renew our former exhortation: get into Christ by all means; for out of him we have nothing savingly good.

Objection. But you will say, Does not God do many good things to those who are out of Christ? Does not the rain fall on the evil as well as the good? And does he not fill the bellies of the wicked with good things (Ps 17:14)?

Answer. Yes, he does, he does! But are they blessings? No! They are not. But as God says to Moses, if you do this and that evil, I will curse you in your dough, I will curse you at home and abroad, I will curse you in your children, and so on (Deut 27-28). They are cursed in their blessings (Mal 2:2). Every carnal, brutish man, though he lives and has revenues and pleasures, is cursed in his blessings. For what? Is he made for this life only? No! He is only fatted on to the day of destruction; his blessings are “snares” to him (Josh 23:13).

How do you know they are snares? Because they make him complacent and careless of the worship of God; they make him profane; they make him despise the power of religion. A man may see by his way of life that they are snares. They are not promises in Christ, for then they would come to him out of God’s love. Therefore get into Christ; rest in nothing abstracted from Christ. Let us not rest in any blessing unless we have it in God’s love in Christ.

And I may know that I have anything in this world, any deliverance from ill or any positive good thing, from God’s love in Christ, if I have it with a heart won over to the best things, to value Christ and to account all dung in comparison of him. When I esteem my being in Christ above all beings, above being rich or honorable or in favor, then I say, Alas! this I know is fading, but my being in Christ is “yea and amen”; that will stand by me when all these beings fail. This is comforting: if I can do this and have other things, I have them with the love of God and Christ. Let us get into Christ therefore.

For this purpose, attend upon the means of salvation, that the word may be effectual, by his Spirit accompanying his own ordinance, to open the excellencies of Christ to us, to make us love him and get our affections into him. How are we in Christ? By knowing him; and then knowledge carries our hearts. For our wills cleave to what we know to be excellent and necessary. Christ is revealed as excellent and necessary, and so the will cleaves to him as a good so revealed; and the affections follow the will. When the will cleaves to Christ as excellent and necessary, then I love him, then I rest on him, then I have peace in him.

I may know that I am in Christ from my knowledge of him and cleaving to him, and from finding peace in my conscience. For he who is in Christ has rest. Faith in Christ has a resting, establishing power. If I am in Christ, my soul rests, for I know that all is “yea and amen in him.” My soul rests in him. Whatever I find in the world to unsettle me, though things are amiss and otherwise than I would have them, yet I rest in the love of God in Christ. Let us get into Christ by knowledge; let the will follow that, and our affections follow that; and then we will find the rest and peace that will assure us that indeed we are in Christ.

Alas! What is a man out of Christ? He is like a man in a storm who has no clothes to hide his nakedness, to cover him from the violence of the storm; like a man in a tempest who has no house to hide him; like a stone out of the foundation, scattered here and there as neglected; like a branch out of the vine, out of the root. What shape is in such a branch? It will be cast into the fire afterward. A man out of Christ, who is not clothed with him, who is not built on him and settled on him and planted in him, is a man destitute.

We pity the case of such men in the world; but if we had spiritual eyes to look on these men, on profane, merely civil wretches who pride themselves on a little morality (and perhaps have scarcely that) and neglect grace and the mystery of Christ, we would see that such a man deserves pity. There is only a step between him and hell, if he is out of Christ and lives and dies so; and at the day of Christ he will account him so.

Oh! says St. Paul, “I account all dung and dross in comparison of Christ, not having my own righteousness, but to be found in him” (Phil 3:8), having the righteousness of God in Christ. O happy man in death and at the day of judgment, who is found in Christ and not in himself, not in his own righteousness! That righteousness must be there, though not to give us title to heaven. The best thing is to be found in Christ, to have his righteousness and obedience. That is so excellent that St. Paul accounted all “dung and dross” in comparison of that, of being found in that. Get into Christ by all means; for in him all the promises are “yea and amen,” not out of him.

Use. If all the promises are “yea and amen” in Christ, then here again see the stability of a Christian’s estate, who has promises to uphold him. Compare it with a man who has present things only, with an Esau who has the things of this life (Heb 12:16). The men of this world, as the psalmist calls them, have present things; they have performance. He gives them their portion here, as he says to Dives, “Thou hadst thy good” (Luke 16:25): what you cared for, you had here; and Lazarus had pain and misery and poverty here. Now the case is altered: he is advanced, and you are tormented.

A Christian, as a Christian, has a great many promises. Some of them are performed, for God is delivering him and comforting him and protecting him and speaking peace to his conscience; but the greatest part are yet to be performed, the perfection of grace and glory to come. He is a child of the promise, a son of the promise; here is his estate. Another man has present payment, and that is all he cares for. He has something, and he swells with the conceit of it, that he is somebody. What is the difference? What does he have but a great deal of nothing? What does Solomon say, who had tried all the world? “All is vanity and vexation of spirit” (Eccl 1:14). All is uncertain, and we are uncertain in the use of these things, if we have no better life than the life of nature. But the promises are “yea”; they are certain; they contain undoubted, certain good things that will stick by us when all else leaves us.

Take a Christian and strip him in your thoughts of all the good things in the world, and he is a happier man than the greatest monarch in the world who is out of Christ. Why? The monarch has nothing but present things, with a great addition of misery, and his greatness makes him more sensitive to his misery. It makes him more tender and apprehensive than other men.

The Christian lacks many comforts of this life; he lacks the performance; he is rich in bills and bonds. God is bound to him; he has promised he “will not forsake him” (Deut 4:31), but will be his God in life, to death, and for everlasting. He has title to all the promises: “Godliness hath the promises of this life, and of that which is to come” (1 Tim 4:8). Happy man! He has as much performance for the present as is useful for his safe conduct to bring him to heaven. He will have daily bread: he who will give him a kingdom will not deny him bread; he who will give him a country will give him safe conduct. And besides what he has here by performance, he has rich and precious promises, and they are all “yea and amen”; they are certain.

His life is uncertain, his estate in the world here is changeable, his life is like a vapor; and the comforts of life are less than life. When life itself, the foundation of these comforts, is only a vapor, so uncertain, what are all the comforts of life? Yet a Christian has comfort here: the promises are invested in him and lodged in his heart and made his own by faith. Faith has a wondrous power of making things one’s own. It makes a man own what is generally set forth in the gospel. Now faith makes the promises his own, and they are certain. Take a Christian at all uncertainties: he has something to build on that is “yea and amen,” that is undoubtedly constant and certain, that will stick by him when all things fail him.

I speak this to commend the estate of a believing, repentant Christian, to make you in love with it. In all the changes and varieties in this world, a Christian has something to take to. And likewise in all the dangers of this life, he has a rock to go to, a hiding place. God has chambers of providence, as it is in Isaiah 26:20, where he bids the church, “come into thy chambers.” God has a hiding place and secret rooms to hide children in when it is good for them, in the time of pestilence and war, in the time of public disturbance. When there is a confusion of all things, “come into thy chambers.” God is a resting place and a hiding place. He is styled so everywhere in the Psalms: “my rock and my shield” (Ps 18:2), as if David had said, I have many troubles in the world, but in God is my defense; for he is my rock, my shield, and all. Whatever is defensive, I have it in him.

What a comfort this is in all dangers! A Christian knows he will be safe either here or in heaven, and therefore he rests. “He dwells in the secret of the Almighty” (Ps 91:1), that is, in the love and the protection of God Almighty; and as Moses says, “Thou art our habitation from everlasting to everlasting” (Ps 90:1), that is, God is a dwelling place for him who builds on his promise, for God and his word are all one. “Thou art our dwelling-place…”

Moses saw that they were dropping away in the wilderness by the wrath of God, as we do now by the pestilence, and he made that psalm. He took occasion to meditate on the frailty of man’s life. We are like grass, like a tale that is told; but what is our estate in God, in the promises? “Thou art our habitation from everlasting to everlasting” (Ps 90:2). We do not dwell long in the world; sickness may come and sweep us away, but “thou art our habitation.” We dwell in God when we are dead, when we are out of the world; we dwell in God in Christ forever. Our estate in Christ is an everlasting estate.

Therefore in Psalm 112:7 the psalmist says of the righteous man there that he is not troubled for ill news. He is not without feeling; he feels very keenly; but for all that he is not shaken from his rest, from his rock and stay, by any ill news or tidings. Why? The psalmist gives the reason: “his heart is fixed.” On what foundation? On the promises and providence of God. God has promised to provide for him. He is his Father, and therefore he is not afraid of ill tidings.

What a blessed estate it is, then, to be in Christ, and to have promises in Christ to be protected and preserved here, so far as is for our good, and to have such a state in God, with him as our habitation and hiding place from everlasting to everlasting! If our hearts are fixed here, let us hear of ill tidings, of war, of this sickness and contagion, let it be what it will; if our hearts are fixed, blessed men are we. But if we have nothing to take to when trouble comes, we are, as I said before, like a man in a storm without a hiding place.

Now every word of God, says the psalmist, “is a tried word, as silver tried in the fire” (Ps 12:6). The promises are tried promises, so that we may rest on them. And as we are Christians, what are we but men of promise? The best is yet to come, and what is our comfort in this world? God lets down his love to us in gracious promises, and he gives us a taste of the performance. As children have something of their inheritance in their minority to keep them, so we have something of heaven to comfort our souls, but the main thing is to come, and the performance is left until then. Therefore we cannot consider this comforting point too much. Consider how many promises we have in the word; the certainty of them, that they are “yea and amen”; and in whom they are founded, in him who is “Amen” himself; for Christ is “Amen, the true and faithful witness” (Rev 3:14). These are comforting considerations.

Are the promises of God in Christ “yea and amen”? Let us divide men as to who may make any use of them. All men are either those who are in Christ or those who are not in Christ.

Question. All the promises being made in Christ, what comfort or what good can those who are not yet in Christ have from the promises?

Answer. I answer, until they are in Christ, none at all; for a man out of Christ is out of the favor of God. God cannot look on such a man except as the object of his wrath and as fuel for his vengeance; and therefore there is no hope for such a man until he is in Christ. All other things in the world cannot comfort such a man; for, alas! his being in the world, his being rich, his being in favor with such and such, what are they? Fading beings that fail, and himself with them. He stands on the ice. They slip and he slips with them. What are all beings in death, if a man does not have a more stable being in Jesus Christ?

Question. What comfort is there then for such a man from the promises in Jesus Christ?

Answer. This, that while there is life, there is hope to get into Christ and so to gain an interest in the promises; for the promises are free. The very word for them means free promise. It is not a promise on this or that condition, but a free promise out of mere love, a mercy. So though you are still in the state of corruption in old Adam, yet the promise is free.

Objection. But I have no worthiness in me, you will say; I have no faith, no grace in me at all.

Answer. But remember that the promise is free. The condition is only if you will receive Christ, which is not properly a condition of worth in you. It is not set forth as a condition of any worth, but you must come with an empty hand, with a receiving hand; as a man must let fall what he has before he can hold and take anything.

A man must let go other things; he must let go his hold of the creature. He must not be so proud of the creature and so confident in it as he was; he must see the emptiness of the creature and of all things in the world. You must see that if you are not in Christ, you are a wretched, damned creature. The hand of your soul must be empty, and then a sight of your unworthiness is all that is required before you come to Christ and the promises: a sight of your unworthiness and a coming to grasp Christ and the promises. For what is faith but a beggar’s hand, empty of all things, coming to receive a benefit? They are most worthy who find themselves most unworthy.

Objection. But you will say, the promise is made to the poor in spirit and to those who hunger and thirst.

Answer. That is true, but it is by way of forestalling an objection from these men who are cast down at the sight of their unworthiness. It is as if Christ had said, You think these men the unworthiest men in the world who are poor and hungry and thirsty; you think you are destitute and have nothing; but you are “blessed,” you have an interest in Christ and in the promises; they are for you. Let no man therefore be discouraged; the promises are free. Therefore do not be rebellious; do not stand out against God’s command. God lays a command on you. Though you are not in Christ and have no right to the promises, he lays a command on you to believe.

Question. You will ask, what ground, or title, or right do you have to believe, to claim Christ and the promises?

Answer. This right you have: you have the offer of God’s love in Christ. And you have not only God’s offer but his command. God commands you to do it. As St. John says in 1 John 3:23, he has commanded us to believe in his Son Christ, as well as not to commit adultery or murder. And you are as guilty if you break this command as if you break the other, of murder or adultery. And men who live under the hearing of the gospel will be damned more at the day of judgment for disobeying this command, for not receiving Christ, than for the other; for the breach of all other commands may be forgiven if this were obeyed. Therefore there is an offer of Christ, with a command to receive him, and a promise that if you receive him all will be well, all your sins will be forgiven. Is this not encouragement enough?

And then there is an invitation: “Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden” (Matt 11:28). And suppose you have nothing; even so, “come and buy without silver,” says the prophet (Isa 55:1). If you say you have nothing, yet all is free here: “Come whosoever will, and drink of the water of life” (Rev 22:17).

And he threatens damnation if you will not; the wrath of God hangs on you if you do not come in.

Yes, but I am a sinner, you will say.

But where sin has abounded, “Grace shall more abound” (Rom 5:20). So if a man stands out of Christ and does not come in to him, there are many encouragements for him to come, and terrible denunciations of wrath if he does not come. The wrath of God hangs over his head (John 3:36). For if he is not in Christ, he sinks into hell when this short life is ended.

So there is this to encourage a man: there is God’s command and his sweet invitation, “Come unto me.” And add to that his beseeching: “We are ambassadors in Christ’s name, to beseech you to be reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:20), to come to Christ, to come out of the state of nature and out of the curse of God that you are under, to come out of the uncertain condition that the world affords. We beseech you to be reconciled to God, to cast away your weapons by which you are enemies to God; he seeks to you for your love. And if you have nothing, come and buy without money. Do you have a will to come? If you are besotted and will continue in your estate, then be damned and rot in your estate; but if you will, “come and drink of the waters of life freely” (Rev 21:6).

Let none be discouraged: Christ and the promises are open to all. Therefore how fully will God’s vengeance be justified at the day of judgment, when these courses have been taken and still men will not come in? As Christ said to the Jews, “You will not believe in me, that you might have life” (John 5:40). Men will not. Men are in love with profits and pleasures and fading things; they will not embrace the promises that are “yea and amen.” It is nothing but willful rebellion that keeps men off, so that rather than leave their sins and come under the government of Christ, they will reject the offers of mercy. If they cannot have Christ with their sins, away with mercy. If they can have him to lead them to hell, to swear and cheat and the like, then welcome Christ: if he will come on those terms, he is welcome. But rather than have him on his own terms, they reject him.

So there is great reason for God to justify the damnation of wretched, hard-hearted persons who, rather than alter their course, will reject mercy and Christ and all. If they may have half of Christ, they will. They will have him with mercy to forgive them, but they will not have the whole Christ as a King to govern them. So there is ground for those who are not yet in the state of grace to come to Christ, if they will receive him on his own terms, to take him as a King as well as a Priest, to take him as a King to rule them as well as a Priest to reconcile them to his Father. No, more: God, as I said, in the ministry entreats them to receive Christ, to cast away the weapons of their rebellion, to come under his government, and all will be well with them.

But for those who are in Christ, who have embraced and clasped him in some comfortable measure, what comfort is it for them that all the promises in Christ are “yea and amen”?

I answer, when we are once in Christ and believe in Christ, all the Scripture speaks comfort to us. If we come in and receive him as he is offered, on his terms, to be our governor, our king, our priest, and prophet, then all the promises are “yea and amen” to us.

Take, for instance, forgiveness of sins: if we receive Christ, God will forgive us our sins and be reconciled to us for Jesus Christ’s sake. “We have an advocate with the Father, and he is the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:2). “The blood of Christ shall cleanse us from all sins” (1 John 1:7). These promises will be “yea and amen” to you; if your sins trouble you, they will be done away. How many promises to this purpose we have of the forgiveness of sins!

Again, if you find a want of grace, all the promises in Christ are “yea and amen.” He has promised his Holy Spirit to those who ask him (Luke 11:13). There is a promise that will be “yea and amen,” if you beg it. He has promised the fundamental graces. “He will put his fear in our hearts, that we shall never depart from him” (Jer 32:40). “He will teach us to love one another” (1 Thess 4:9). You are taught of God to love one another. In this same kind he has promised blessings that take evil away, “to circumcise, and cut off the foreskin of our hearts” (Jer 4:4). If a wicked and stony heart vexes you, “he will take away that and give thee an heart of flesh” (Ezek 11:19), a tender heart.

So these promises in Christ will be “yea and amen,” if we apply and believe them, to take away our corruption and subdue it, and to give and plant graces; he has promised to do this. Therefore make use of them, not only of the promises of pardon and forgiveness of sins, but of necessary grace.

Do you feel your imperfections, that you cannot go about the duties of religion and of your particular calling? What does God say to Moses? “Who gives a mouth?” (Exod 4:11). Is it not God who gives a mouth? And, Be not afraid, says Christ, you shall have speech (Mark 13:11), and a spirit given you that none will be able to withstand. Do not be afraid; God who calls us will enable us.

You have a promise of sufficiency of gifts. “If any man lack wisdom, let him ask it of God” (Jas 1:5). If any man lacks wisdom to manage his affairs, to bear crosses and afflictions, let him ask it of God: a rich promise in that kind.

And so, are you doubtful about the time to come, what will befall you? God in Christ Jesus has made a promise that where he has begun he will make an end: “He that hath begun a good work will finish it to the day of the Lord” (Phil 1:6). Christ is “Alpha and Omega,” too (Rev 1:8); and “What shall separate us from the love of God in Christ? Neither things present, nor things to come, nor anything else” (Rom 8:35-39). Why? Because it is the love of God in Christ. God’s love is founded in Christ, and he will love you eternally. There is a ground of perseverance.

Therefore be sure to take the time to come into your trust as well as the present: he will be your God for the time to come as well as for the present; he will be your God to death. Jesus Christ “is yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and the same for ever” (Heb 13:8). “He was, and is, and is to come” (Rev 1:8). He was good to you before he called you; he is good to you now in the state of grace, and he will be forever. Why should you stagger for the time to come? Take into your trust all that will befall you for the time to come as well as for the present; for he is “yea and amen” himself, and “all his promises are yea and amen.” Christ is “Amen,” the true witness. “Thus saith Amen” (Rev 3:14), and all his promises are like himself, “amen.”

Objection. Oh, but I may fall away! My grace is weak, I stagger often!

Answer. But are the promises founded on you? No! The promises are founded in Christ. Christ receives grace for you, and he is a King forever and a Priest forever, to make intercession for you, and he is faithful. He is beloved forever, and as long as he is beloved, you will be beloved, because you are in him. God is in Christ, and you are in Christ; how can you come to ruin? God is in Christ forever, and you are in Christ. Will he lose a limb? Will he lose a member? No! The promises are “yea and amen” in him, and not in you. They are “yea and amen” in you, and you have the benefit of them, because they are “amen” in him first.

Yes, you say, but what about the troubles of this world, afflictions and crosses? What promises do we have to build on for them?

God in Christ is “yea and amen” to us, and the promises are “yea and amen” in that respect too, in all things necessary for this life. “Let your conversation be without covetousness: for he hath promised he will not fail thee nor forsake thee” (Heb 13:5). It has been carried along from Joshua’s time. It was a promise made to Joshua, and it is enlarged to all Christians. “He hath promised, he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.” Therefore “let your conversation be without covetousness,” implying the reason why men are covetous: they do not trust that promise, “I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.”

For if men in their calling would trust in God, as they should, without putting out their hands to evil means, their conduct would be free of scheming and covetousness. Therefore covetous men are faithless men. They do not believe the promise that God will not fail them nor forsake them; for then they would not live by their wits and by their schemes, but by faith in this very promise, which is “yea and amen” to all who believe it.

“God is a sun and shield, and no good thing shall be wanting to those that lead a godly life” (Ps 84:11). Would you have more? He is a sun, for all good; he is a shield, to keep us from all evil. “I am thy buckler, and thy exceeding great reward,” God says to Abraham (Gen 15:1). “I am thy buckler,” to keep you from all evil; “and thy exceeding great reward,” to bestow all good. Having these promises, why should we stagger? They are “yea and amen” in Christ; God is all-sufficient in Christ.

And what of the outcome of our labors? Oh, we say, what will become of it? We take pains to no purpose; we rise early and go to bed late, and what will become of it all in the end? What does St. Paul say? “Be constant, alway abounding in the work of the Lord: be ye abundant in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labour is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Cor 15:58). Therefore abound in the work of the Lord. Let the outcome go to God. You have a rich promise: “Knowing this, that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.”

Therefore you know how, when Peter had fished all night and had caught nothing, and Christ told him to cast the net into the sea, he said, “We have fished all night, and catched nothing” (Luke 5:5); what is the use of casting it? Yet on your word, at your command, I will cast it. He obeyed, and he drew in so many that the very net broke with the fish.

So, I say: It is your command, Lord, that I should go on in the duties of my calling, that I should do what belongs to me, and in well-doing commit myself to you “as to a faithful Creator” (1 Pet 4:19) and a gracious Redeemer, and cast myself on your promises; do what you will. Then you will see, as the apostle graciously says, “Your labour shall not be in vain in the Lord” (1 Cor 15:58). “Cast your care on him; for he cares for you” (1 Pet 5:7).

Yes, you say, but when we have done our work, so many imperfections cling to what we do that they discourage us. Why, look, the promise is “yea and amen” for acceptance. A cup of cold water is accepted (Matt 10:42). Offer what you do in the mediation of Christ, and God will pardon what is faulty and accept what is good. So we have promises of acceptance in Christ: God will pardon, and spare us as a father spares his child (Ps 103:13). Does a father not accept the effort of his poor child, and pardon his weakness, when the child cannot do as he would like? God looks on us as a father looks on his children.

Therefore let us not fear this. We have a promise that what we do will be accepted, though it is weak and maimed and lame obedience. If we cannot do as much as others, still bring “two turtles” (Lev 5:7), that is, turtledoves. Those who could not bring an ox, a great sacrifice, had a lesser one accepted, two pigeons. If you cannot do as much as others, a little sacrifice will be accepted.

Oh, that we had faith! We might run through all the passages of our life: justification, sanctification, perseverance for the time to come, the duties of our calling, the outcome of our labors, whatever you can imagine. There is no passage of our life in which our souls would not be supported, if we could think that these promises are “yea and amen” in Jesus Christ. There is no condition we are in that has no promises made to it. There is no good we lack for which we do not have a promise of supply; there is no evil we are under for which we do not have a promise either of its removal or of its sanctifying, which is better.

We may enlarge this likewise to posterity. If the promises in Christ are “yea and amen,” that means they are true to us and to those who succeed us; for, as I said, Christ “is yesterday, today, and the same for ever” (Heb 13:8). He was yesterday to our ancestors, today to ourselves, tomorrow to our posterity. Therefore Peter says to the believing Jews, “The promise is made to you, and to your children” (Acts 2:39). Your children are in the covenant, and God is the “God of thee and of thy seed” (Gen 17:7), for the “promises in Christ are yea and amen.” They are constant to us and to our children, to the end of the world.

It is a comfort to parents who can leave their children no inheritance: they leave them God in covenant, and he is a good portion. “I will be thy God” (Jer 7:23); for the grand promise is the promise of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God has promised to be a Father, and the Father gives his Son, and the Father and Son give the Holy Spirit. Well then! God is the God of us and of our children; he is the Father of us and of our children; Christ is the Christ of us and them; the Holy Spirit is the Spirit who sanctifies us and them. Is this not a comfort to those who can leave their children nothing else, that they leave them God in covenant?

And this is a comfort for children, if they have good parents, that they may say when they pray, “O God of my father Abraham” (Gen 32:9). And as David says, “I am thy servant, and the son of thy handmaid” (Ps 116:16): I am your servant myself, and the son of one who was your servant. Is it not a comfort to a Christian to say, I am your servant and the son of your servant, so there is a double bond why you should regard me? I cast myself on you, and I am the son of a believing father, of a believing mother. Oh, it is a blessed thing to be in covenant with God, so that those who can leave their children little else can leave them a place in the covenant by their own goodness and faith.

Wicked parents are cruel. They damn their own souls, and they are cruel to their posterity. Jeroboam hurt his posterity more than all the rest of the world did. For his sin God cursed his posterity. “They walk in the ways of Jeroboam” (1 Kgs 15:34). Many times God will not punish men themselves, but their posterity. As for wicked kings, sometimes God spares them themselves, but he punishes their posterity. Jeroboam was spared for his own life, but his posterity was punished. When wicked men die, others applaud their wisdom. They die thus and thus, and their posterity applaud their wisdom. Therefore God curses their posterity, who walk in their ways.

Jeroboam’s children, I say, had cause to curse their father. They were prejudiced by his example. They thought him a very wise man, able by setting up the calves to make such a rift, but it turned to their destruction. I say, such parents are cruel to their posterity, for God avenges their sins on their posterity. Let this be a strong motive to men to believe in Christ, so that they may leave a good posterity, a posterity in covenant with God.

In this point men are downright atheists; for they are a great deal more careful to leave their children rich, to leave them great, than to leave them good. And so they leave them a few goods, perhaps, but they leave the curse and vengeance of God with them. I beg you, therefore, to enlarge this comfort: that the promises of God concerning all good things are made in Christ, and that they are yea and amen to ourselves and to all who are ours, to our posterity.

Thus I have labored to lay open the promises to you a little. You may enlarge them yourselves. Therefore take this course:

First, consider your present condition, if you want to make use of this portion. It is our portion. The promises are our best inheritance, and indeed they are a good child’s portion. Though the world takes everything from us, though God strips us of everything, if he leaves us his promises, we are rich men. Therefore the psalmist calls them his portion and his inheritance; and indeed that is what they are, because they are so many bonds by which God is bound to us; they are so many obligations.

A wretched, grasping man thinks himself as rich as his bonds make him, though he does not have a penny in his purse. He who has a thousand pounds in bonds thinks himself richer than he who has a hundred pounds in money, and he thinks he has reason to, because he has good security. If that is so, then certainly a Christian who has rich faith in the rich promises is a rich man, because he has many bonds; and when he pleases he can sue on his bonds, and God is well pleased with it. Therefore there is indeed little difference between a Christian in poverty and a rich Christian. Only the one has more for the present, but God is the riches of the other. As for a worldling, he has only a cistern when he has the most; the other has the spring, for he has God in covenant, and God’s promises.

Let us therefore consider every day the emergencies we are in, whether we lack grace, or lack assistance and necessities, or lack comfort; and according to that, let us consider what we are to do. Are we at our wits’ end now? Is there no hope for this in Israel? Yes! God has left us rich and precious promises. Let us look to them.

In the next place, then, from our wants look to the promises, and proportion the promises to our wants. Rank the promises. It would be a good work. Oh, that we should have so many promises and yet be at a loss for them when the devil besieges us! He lays siege to shake our consciences, and we are at a loss in the time of temptation. Let us remember the promises that answer to our necessities.

If we are troubled with sin, call to mind the promise of forgiveness. If we are troubled with want, call to mind the promise of supply. If we are troubled with fear for the time to come, call to mind the covenant of grace, the marriage for everlasting. God, whom he loves, he loves to the end (John 13:1). God loves us in Christ. He loves Christ forever. Therefore he will love us forever. So, as I said before, suit the promises to our present condition.

And from the promises rise higher yet: go to him in whom they are made. They are rich promises indeed, good promises. But how shall I know they will be performed? In whom are they made? In whom? God loves you in Christ. What is he? God and man. He is God, and therefore able to perform them; he is man, and therefore he loves you as his own flesh, and therefore he will perform them. He is “the Son of God’s love.” God for his sake, as Mediator, will perform them. Heaven and earth will conspire for your good, rather than you should miss the performance of the least promise.

Therefore from your wants go to the promises, and from the promises go to Christ, and consider him. He is anointed by God for you. He is anointed that he might be your Christ and your Jesus, that he might be your Savior, “Immanuel, God with us” (Isa 7:14), that he might reconcile God to us, that he might be so by office, that he might bring God and us together. Consider him.

And then go to God, and consider what relation in Jesus Christ God has put upon himself. In Christ God is a Father, and what can a father deny to his adopted son in Christ, whom he looks on in his natural Son Christ?

Yes, and to settle our minds the more, let us consider the relations that God and Christ have put upon themselves, and the relations we stand in, and the many promises we have in Christ, who is anointed and sealed by God the Father to be our Savior and to bestow good on us. God has become our Father. What a world of promises is in that word Father! What will a father deny to his son? What if God had not left particular promises in Scripture? If he had left only the relation of a father, it would have been promise enough. What can a father deny his child?

And then Christ, what relation has he taken on himself? He is our husband. What a world of promises is there in that! What can a loving husband deny his spouse, for whom he has given himself?

He has taken on himself to be our head. What lack of influence can there be from such a head, who has taken everything on himself for the body? The head sees and hears and does everything for the body; so Christ hears and sees and does everything for us. What a world of promises is in this relation of a head, even if there were no particular promise!

Again, Christ sweetly styles himself our brother. What a world of promises are in these relations! God the Father is ours, Christ is ours. Here is the grand promise, “I will be your God,” and will give you my Son.

And then, in the third place, he has promised his Spirit. He will “give his Spirit to them that beg him” (Luke 11:13). What a world of promises is in that promise of the Spirit! He is a comforting Spirit, a sanctifying Spirit, a life-giving Spirit, a strengthening Spirit; everything is in the Spirit. As our soul does all that the body does, so all the grace and all the comfort we have is by virtue of the Spirit. God has promised himself, and Christ, and the Spirit, the whole Trinity. There is the grand promise: I will be your God, Christ shall be your Christ, and I will give you my Spirit. If we had no other promises, what a world of comfort we have in these!

Now in what relation do we stand to these? We are children, we are heirs, we are “temples of the Holy Ghost” (1 Cor 6:19). Suppose our memories do not serve to call particular promises to mind in the time of trouble. Consider in Christ how God loves you: he is your God in Christ. Consider how Christ loves you: he has taken your nature on himself to be your husband; he woos you and desires you to be reconciled. And the Spirit is given to you by Christ; he has promised to give him if you ask him. The Holy Spirit is the “Spirit of promise” (Eph 1:13). Therefore think of what is general, of the covenant of grace and of these relations that have the force of promises; for sometimes, perhaps, particular promises may not come to our mind, and these will establish a man against the gates of hell and against all particular temptations.

This course we ought to take, then, to feed our thoughts with the promises. The promises are the food of faith. Let our faith not languish and famish for want, for want of meditating on God and Christ and the relations they have put upon themselves, and for want of meditating on particular promises of all kinds. How well our faith might thrive, if we would often think of these things!

And to make us think of these things all the more, consider all other things. Alas, what are they, when we have no promise of them in Christ? They are all vain, fading things; they will all come to nothing. What we have by promise, grace and comfort and glory, is ours forever. God is ours forever, Christ is ours forever, the Spirit is ours forever, the relations we are in are forever. All other things are nothing; they will come to nothing before long. This course we ought to take, then, so that we may have comfort by the promises.

Again, in the next place, we may look to the kinds of the promises, whether the promises for this life or the promises of grace.

1. If they are promises of this life, take heed that we do not deceive ourselves in them. There have been gross failures, even from the beginning of the world, and there will be to the end of the world, in the false application of outward promises. We see that the Jews cried, “The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord” (Jer 7:4), as if God had tied himself to that by a perpetual promise. “Trust not to lying words,” says the prophet (Jer 7:4). You think you are God’s people and that he will always keep you out of captivity. Do not claim temporal promises without reservation and subjection to God’s will, as he shall see good. Babylon says, I sit as a queen, and I shall for ever.

So mystical Babylon in the Revelation says, “I sit as a queen” (Rev 18:7), until her judgment and destruction come in one day, because she trusted in her present temporal condition. Let no man promise himself what God does not promise in his word, immunity from the cross; for whatever promise of protection and provision we have, all is with the exception of the cross. Remember therefore to construe the promises rightly.

2. Then again, another rule about the promises is that it is usual with God to perform them in a wondrous manner, so that men do not know how. He does perform them, notwithstanding. Take that for a rule. How is that? As Luther used to say, God’s dealing is by contrary means; he performs them wondrously.

He promised Abraham a child, but first Abraham’s body was in a manner dead, and Sarah’s womb. He promised Joseph to raise him up so high, but alas! the iron entered into his soul first. He promised that Christ should come, but first everything was desperate: The sceptre was departed from Judah (Gen 49:10). So he has promised that we will rise from the dead, but we must rot in our graves first. He has promised forgiveness of sins, that he will be merciful to us, but first he will waken our consciences to see our desperate condition, that we are forlorn creatures, unworthy of any regard from him. He has promised us happiness. We who are Christians are the happiest creatures in the world, yet in the sense and eye of the world, for the present, we are the most forlorn creatures there are. Yet he performs his promise with comfort here, and at last he will fully manifest his love to us. So at the last his promises will be wondrously performed.

God does not perform his promises according to human calculation. He will not do thus because we expect he should do thus and thus. He will cross our expectation, and yet perform his promise. St. Paul expected to come to Rome (Rom 1:15), but he did not think of coming to Caesar by whipping and peril and shipwreck. Moses knew he would come to see Canaan, but did he think he would have such a conflict in the wilderness? Alas! He did not think of it. God performs his promises in wondrously strange ways, by contraries. He directly crosses our imaginations and notions, and yet he is true to his promise.

3. Another branch of this is that though God’s promises are “yea and amen” in his time, yet he usually defers his promises for a time. And why? Among many other reasons, to mortify self-confidence and to fit us for his blessings! For unless he deferred them, we would not be fit for them. He defers them so that we may be fitted for them long before they come, so that we may mortify self-confidence and see that it is he who directly and graciously performs his promise. And he defers them so that in the meantime he may exercise faith and repentance and desire and prayer. But they are amen at last, though he defers.

God’s time is better than ours; he knows better than we do. The physician knows his time better than the patient does. From this a duty follows as a consequence of this dispensation of God. If he performs his promises wondrously and unexpectedly, and performs them with delay, let your duty answer to his dealing: wait, wait upon God. Do not tie him to such and such courses. He can transcend and go beyond your imagination, and do more than you are able to conceive, as the apostle says. Therefore wait for his good time. “He that shall come will come” (Heb 10:37). Wait for God’s leisure; do not get ahead of him; do not run before him.

And as he does things by contraries, so when you are in contraries, look for contraries. When you are in sin and feel it on your conscience, believe that he is made righteousness to you. He has promised it. It is “yea and amen” in Christ. When you are turned to dust in the grave, believe that he will raise your body. This promise is “yea and amen,” and as a pledge of it Christ has gone to heaven. When you are miserable, remember the promise: you will be glorious with Christ as he is glorious. “All his promises are yea and amen.” In contraries believe contraries, because in contraries he performs contraries; and say as Job does, “Though he kill me, yet will I trust in him” (Job 13:15). I know you cannot deny yourself, and your “promises are yea and amen.”

In the worst condition that befalls us, let us learn to wrestle with God in the promises and to plead his promises with him. Why, Lord, you have promised forgiveness of sins to those who ask it; you have promised grace and mercy and favor. Remember your promise. You cannot deny yourself, you cannot deny your gracious promise, your word is yourself, you are Amen, and your word is “yea and amen.” Only give me grace to wait your good leisure; yet I will not let you depart without a blessing. I will hold you until I have received a gracious answer, as Jacob wrestled with him until he had the blessing (Gen 32:24 and following). Let us labor to answer the promise with our faith, and labor to bring our souls to be like his promises. They are “yea and amen.” Though they are not performed immediately, let us constantly believe a constant promise. Let us cleave to God; let us have an “amen” for God’s “amen.” Are the promises amen? Then let the soul say Amen. Lord, “So be it.” So it shall be. I will seal your amen in your promise with my amen in my faith.

So let us have an amen for Christ’s amen. They are all, and will all be, amen in Christ in the fitting time. All the gracious promises will be “yea and amen”; let our souls echo and say, Amen. For our faith must answer the promises. Faith and the promises are correlatives, for the promise is nothing unless it is applied. Let faith answer the promise. Let us labor to be established in the promises in God’s word.

Shall we have certain promises, and shall we waver and stagger? Therefore let us complain: Lord, your promises are sure and certain, as you have said; what is the reason I cannot build on them? Oh, my unfaithful heart! Let us condemn our unbelieving, our lying hearts, which call the truth of God into question, and make what is “yea and amen” to be “yea and nay.” We make truth a lie, and we believe our own lying hearts rather than God’s immutable and unchangeable promises. Therefore let us see the foulness of our hearts, and complain of them to God, and desire him to cure it and redress it, and he will do it.

This is to give glory to God indeed. We cannot honor God more than by believing his promises and building on him. This will breed love, when we feel the comfort of the promises. Foolish people think to honor God by compliments, by dead performances. Silly people consider that the principal honor in the world. But to God, the principal honor is to seal his truth, so that you do not make him a liar. Has he promised all things in the world? Get faith. That will honor him, and he will honor your faith.

What makes God honor faith so much? The one who believes, he will bring to heaven. Faith honors him. It gives him the glory of his truth, the glory of his goodness, of his mercy, of his truth, and so on. As it honors him, he honors it.

The believer will come to heaven, when the idle, fashionable Christian, who thinks to serve God with empty, vain shadows, will vanish with his fancies. Honor God, O man, with the obedience of faith. Cast yourself upon him, trust in him in life and death, and then you give him the honor that he requires at your hands. For as the honor of his mercy is the greatest honor he will have in this world, more than that in the creation, so you honor him more in the gospel by casting yourself on him for forgiveness of sins and life everlasting, and for the guidance of your daily course of life. You honor him more in this than by looking on the creature, or by doing him any service. He is honored more by faith in Christ than in any other way. Let faith go to him; as faith honors him, so he will honor it: “Let it be according to thy faith” (Matt 15:28).

Let not all be lost. Let us bring vessels for the precious promises, the vessel of a believing heart. Shall all this be lost because of a vain heart that will not lodge these promises? Shall we have a rich portion and neglect it? Shall we have so many promises, and not improve them and make use of them?

Therefore I beseech you, let it be our continual practice every day to make the promises, of all portions of Scripture, the most familiar to us; for duties follow promises. If we believe the promises with our heart, they are quickening promises. We will love God and perform other duties. “Faith works by love” (Gal 5:6). If we believe, love will follow naturally. Therefore the apostle says here, “All the promises are yea and amen,” implying that all is included in the promises.

Let us empty our hearts of confidence in anything, and fill them with the promises in Christ that are “yea and amen.” Let us establish our hearts with the promises; let us warm and season and refresh our hearts every day with these.

In these times of infection, what do we do? Those who are careful of themselves and go out into dangerous places have preservatives. They take something to preserve their spirits and to strengthen them against the contagion abroad. And it is wisdom to do so. It is folly to neglect it, and to tempt God by not being careful in this way; it is very well done. But what is all this, if you do not fence your soul and your spirit, and take a fresh draught of the promises every day?

Let us take out our pardon every day as a matter of course, the pardon for the forgiveness of sins. We sin every day; let us go for our pardon. “If we sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, and he is the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:1-2). “And the blood of Jesus Christ shall purge us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). And he is still at work justifying us every day; he is acquitting our souls, and there is a pardon to be taken out every day as a matter of course. Let us renew and refresh our hearts with the promises of pardon and forgiveness of sins every day. Let us strengthen our souls by renewing the promises of grace for that day, to walk comfortably before God: that he will keep us by his Spirit from sin, that he will be a shield and a sun to us, that he will give us wisdom to carry ourselves as we should, and that he will give us his Holy Spirit if we beg for it.

Let us every day take these promises as cordials in these dangerous times; and then come life, come death, all will be welcome. Why? Because we are in Christ, and have embraced the promises and Christ, and all in Christ is “yea and amen”: it will go well with us. What a wonderfully comfortable life a Christian’s life would be, if he could yield the obedience of faith that answers to the promises! What a shame it is that, having such rich promises, we should be so loose, so changeable, that we should be cast down by crosses and lifted up by prosperity!

It is because we do not believe the promises of better things that we are proud of present things, and cast down by present crosses, and are fast and loose. Now we have good things for the present; afterward the devil comes between us and the promises, and makes us let go our hold. Religion stands on this, which makes me press it all the more. If this were well taken to heart and digested, we would know what religion means. If we know Christ and the promises, all other things will follow. All others are but formalities. They will never comfort without the consideration of knowing God in Christ, and the rich promises to us in Christ.

Likewise, if this is so, that the promises of God in Christ are “yea and amen,” this teaches us how to make use of all former examples of others, and of all former goodness to ourselves. Was God merciful to Abraham and to David? “Our fathers trusted in thee, and were not confounded” (Ps 22:4). Therefore the psalmist reasons, If I trust in God, I will not be confounded; for the “promises are yea and amen.” They are true to one as well as another. And “whatsoever was written afore, was written for our comfort” (Rom 15:4).

And this is a singularly good use we may make of reading the stories of the Scripture and of holy men: that the same God lives forever, “his arm is not shortened” (Isa 59:1), “he that was, is, and is to come” (Rev 4:8). Therefore we should read histories with application. Did God make his promises sure to them? Surely he will make his promises sure to us. Did David have forgiveness of sins upon his confession? Surely so will we. “Abraham believed, and it was accounted to him for righteousness” (Gal 3:6), and so it will be to us if we believe. It is cited for that very purpose. And St. Paul sets his example before all posterity: God was merciful to me, and not so only, but to all that believe in him (1 Tim 1:16).

This is a use we may likewise make of the story of our own lives as well as the story of others. For consider former times: Why, Lord, your promises up to now have been “yea and amen.” You have delivered me from such and such dangers; you have been so good, and so good to me; you are not changed. Let us store up experience out of the story of our own lives. God is “Yea and Amen,” and “his promises are yea and amen,” constant to all his children and to their children; and they are alike in all ages, from generation to generation, as Moses says, Thou art our God from generation to generation for ever (Ps 90:1).

Thus we see how to make use of the promises; for promises, we must know, are either made directly to particular persons, or implied. A promise made directly to anyone, to any person in particular, is an implied promise to me by general equity, in matters of grace and glory, or the removal of some true misery. What was made to Joshua is applied to all the church (Heb 13:5). What was directly promised to him is an implied promise to all who will make use of that example.

Again, if all the promises of God are “yea and amen,” that is, certain and constant in Christ, this should comfort us when men deal loosely with us, and fail in their promises, on which perhaps we have built too much, when men deal falsely with us. And indeed, nothing makes an honest heart wearier of this wicked world than the consideration of the falsehood of those in whom they trust. Oh, it is a cruel thing to deceive someone who, unless he had trusted you, could never have been deceived by you! It is a treacherous thing, but this world is so full of such treacherous dealing that a man can hardly trust legal assurances, much less words.

But there are things you may trust, if you have a heart set on the best good. There are promises that are “yea and amen”; there is a God who keeps covenant. It is his glory to do so from generation to generation. Here is the comfort of a Christian, when he finds falseness in the world: to retire to his God and hide himself there.

And in the uncertainty of all things below, in all changes (as this world is full of changes: now poor, now rich; now in favor, now out of favor), why, what does a Christian have to cast himself on? The promises of God in Christ. They are “yea and amen”; they are promises that never fail. “They that know thy name will trust in thee” (Ps 9:10). What is the reason? It follows, Thou never failest those that trust in thee.

Therefore in the vicissitude and interchange of all earthly things under the moon, which are like the moon, changeable, let us establish our souls upon what is unchangeable, and what will make us unchangeable if we build on it, “For the word of the Lord endures for ever” (Isa 40:8). This is cited by Peter in 1 Peter 1:24-25: “All flesh is grass, and as the flower of the grass”; that is, it fades as the grass and as the flower of the grass. All the excellence of wit and learning is but as the flower of the grass, but “the word of the Lord endures for ever.”

How does the word of the Lord endure forever? St. John expounds it (1 John 2:17). A true Christian endures forever by the word of the Lord. He who believes in the word endures forever, because his comforts endure forever; they are “yea and amen.” His grace endures forever. God’s love endures to him forever. Therefore by building on what is certain, we make ourselves certain too.

When the word is engrafted (it is St. James’s phrase), when it is engrafted into our hearts, it turns our hearts to be like itself. It is eternal itself, and it makes us eternal. “He that doth the will of the Lord abides for ever,” says St. John. “The world passeth, and the lust thereof, but he that doth the will of the Lord abides for ever” (1 John 2:17). And “the word of the Lord abides for ever,” as it says in another place (1 Pet 1:25). The one expounds the other; that is, we, by believing and doing the word of the Lord, abide forever.

To stir us up to rely constantly on this word, the promises, and the grace of God brought to us by the promises: as I said before, shall we have certain promises of God that never lie, and shall we not build on them? What is there in the world to build on, if we cannot build on this? And yet the perverse heart of man will believe anything rather than God’s truth.

The merchant commits his estate, his goods, to the sea. He has no promise that they will come back. It rests only on the providence of God; God has made no promise for it. The farmer commits his seed to the ground, though he has nothing left of his seed. And though he sows in tears, yet he commits all to the earth in hope of a return; and yet he has no promise for this but God’s ordinary providence, which may sometimes fail.

Are we in such hope when we commit our seed to the ground, and when we commit our goods to the sea, to the waves, and yet have no promise for this but God’s ordinary providence, which often fails? For he has not bound himself that it will always be so, because God will show himself the God of nature, who can command nature. And shall we not trust him when we have his providence and his promise too? When he is bound by his promise, when he has made himself a debtor to us? When the free God, who is most free, has made himself a debtor by his promise, and has sealed his promise by an oath and by sacraments?

Alas! God has made all things faithful to us; therefore we trust them. But we do not trust him who has made other things so, and who is so faithful to us. Therefore let us build on these promises in Jesus Christ.

Now to direct us a little further, to train ourselves to make use of the promises of God in Jesus Christ:

1. Observe every day how God fulfills his promises in lesser matters. Parents train up their children by education, so that the children may trust them for their inheritance. So God trains us up to believe his providence, that he will provide for us without our cracking our consciences by evil means. Will we believe his promises for these things, and will we not believe him for life everlasting? No, certainly we cannot. Therefore let us exercise faith to believe the promises for provision, that “he will not fail us, nor forsake us” (Josh 1:5), but will be with us in our callings as we use lawful means for the things of this life.

2. Sometimes, again, take another method. When faith begins to stagger over the things of this life, quicken it with the grand promises. Will God give me life everlasting? And has he given me Christ? Are his promises in him “yea and amen”? Will he give me the greater, and will he not give me the less? Sometimes by the lesser, be encouraged to hope for the greater; sometimes quicken our deadness and dullness in believing the lesser with the undoubted performance of the great. Will God give me life everlasting, and will he not give me provision on my pilgrimage until I come there? Undoubtedly he will. “Fear not, little flock, it is your Father’s will to give you a kingdom,” says Christ (Luke 12:32). They were distrustful over the things of this life. Do you think, he says, that he who keeps a kingdom for you will not give you the things of this life? “Fear not.”

3. Again, when we hear any promise in the word of God, turn it into a prayer; put God’s bond in suit, as it were. His promises are his bonds. Sue him on his bond. He loves to be sued on his bond, and he loves us to wrestle with him by his promises. Why, Lord, you have made this and this promise. You cannot deny yourself, you cannot deny your own truth, you cannot cease to be God. You can as well cease to be God as deny your promise, that is, yourself.

So let us put the promises into suit, as David did (if the psalm is his): “Lord, remember thy promise, wherein thou hast caused thy servant to trust” (Ps 119:49). It is as if God had forgotten his promise. “Lord, remember thy promise”: I put you in mind of your promise, “wherein thou hast caused thy servant to trust.” If I am deceived, you have deceived me. You have made these promises and caused me to trust in you, and “thou never failest those that trust in thee” (Ps 9:10).

What makes a man faithful? Trust in a man makes him faithful. So when God is honored by our trusting him, it makes him faithful. Let us therefore put in suit his promises of provision and protection every day in the way of our calling, and his promises of necessary grace and comfort, that he will not fail us in any necessary grace to bring us to heaven, considering that he has filled our nature with all grace in Christ.

4. Again, let us take this course: when we hear of the rich and precious promises that are made, labor to know them. What? Shall we have an inheritance, a portion, and not labor to know it? Let us labor to know all our portion, and to know it from those who search the word of God, and be glad to hear anything concerning the privileges and prerogatives of a Christian. From those who dig the mines of the Scripture, which is the office of the ministers, let us labor to know all our privileges.

Let not Satan rob us of one privilege. Every promise is precious. They are rich promises. Yet they are no more than God thought necessary for us. He thought all of them little enough to establish our faith. Let us not lose one. We cannot do without one. Let us labor to know them.

And when we know them, work them upon our hearts by meditation, and shame ourselves by it. Say: Is it true? Are these promises so? Is it true that God has revealed these things in his word? To whom has he made them? To angels or to beasts? No! To men, to sinners, to men in the world, to comfort them. They are their provision, their inheritance, as David says, “Thy word is my inheritance, and my portion; they are sweeter than the honey and the honeycomb” (Ps 119:57, 103).

Are they so? Do I believe this, or do I not believe it? Yes, I do. If I do, can I believe them and be so comfortless? Let us shame ourselves. Do I believe the promises of life everlasting, the promises of perseverance, the promise that God will hide me in danger, that he will be my habitation and my hiding place? And do I look to unlawful means? Do I live without God in the world, as if there were no promise? What a shame this is! There is a weakness in my faith, certainly. When a branch withers, there is a fault in the root. So there is a defect in the root grace, in that it does not draw sap out of the promises as it should. There is a defect in my faith. Therefore I will look to where the defect is, and strengthen my faith.

Thus we should shame ourselves. Can I hear these promises and be no more joyful, and be no more affected? Can I use indirect means, and yet believe that God is all-sufficient to me in the covenant? Certainly I cannot.

Therefore let us come to the test, to a few evidences that a man does believe the promises.

He who believes the promises of God in Christ to be “yea and amen” will doubtless be affected in a way that answers to the things promised. David says, “Thy statutes they are the joy of my heart” (Ps 119:111).

1. The promises will be the joy and rejoicing of our heart. Whoever can hear of promises and not be affected certainly does not believe them. When a man thinks of his inheritance and of his title deeds, that they are clear, that he will enjoy it without lawsuit or trouble, it comforts him; he cannot think of it without comfort. Can a man not think of a little paltry wealth of the earth without comfort, when he knows he has assurance of it? And shall we think of heaven and happiness and not rejoice? Will not these be the joy of a man’s heart? Certainly they will affect him. When good things are apprehended by faith, will they not work upon the affections? Certainly they will.

2. Again, where the promises are believed, they will quicken us to all cheerful obedience. Certainly, if God will assist me with strength and comfort if I go on in his ways, and in the end of all give me life everlasting, this will quicken me to all obedience. Therefore those who go on lifelessly and dully, as if they had no encouragement here nor promise of glory after, do not believe the promises. For God does not set us to work as Pharaoh set the children of Israel to make brick without straw; but when he bids us do anything, he promises us grace and gives us his Spirit, and after grace he gives glory. If people did believe this, they would go about God’s work without dullness and staggering. So far as we are dull and stagger in the work of God, so far our faith in the promises of God is weak.

3. Again, as they quicken in regard of comfort, so they purge in regard of holiness; for they make people study mortification and sanctification, as in 2 Corinthians 6:18 and the beginning of the seventh chapter: “Having these promises, let us purge ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfect sanctification in the fear of God” (2 Cor 7:1). “Having these promises.” So the promises, as they have a quickening power, so they have a purging power; and that upon sound reasoning. Does God promise that he will be my Father and I will be his son? And does he promise me life everlasting? And does that estate require purity, and will no unclean thing come there? Certainly these promises, being apprehended by faith, as they have a quickening power to comfort, so they purge with holiness.

We may not think to carry our filthiness to heaven. Does the swearer think to carry his blasphemies there? Filthy persons and liars are banished from there: there is “no unclean thing.” He who has these promises purges himself, “and perfecteth holiness in the fear of God.” “He that hath this hope purifieth himself, as he is pure” (1 John 3:3). So these promises affect, and quicken, and purge.

4. And then the promises do settle the soul, because they are “yea and amen”: they make the soul quiet. If a man believes an honest man on his word, he will be quiet; if he is not quiet, he does not believe. So much faith, so much quiet. “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom 5:1). So much faith, so much peace. “In nothing be careful, but let your desires be known to God in prayer, supplication, and thanksgiving” (Phil 4:6); and when you have done this, “The peace of God which passeth all understanding, shall preserve your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:7). So where there is prayer and thanksgiving and the doing of duty, the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep the mind in Christ. And where there is no quiet and peace to preserve the heart and mind, there has been neglect of duty beforehand, a failure to commit ourselves to God’s promises and to build on them.

5. Again, where there is a believing of the promises, the soul is held steady not only in general, but when all things are gone, when all things are contrary. That is the nature of faith in the promises. Suppose that a Christian of the right stamp has nothing in the world to turn to, only God’s word and promises. He surely knows they are “yea and amen.” It is the word of God all-sufficient. He is Jehovah; he gives being to his word and to all things else; that is why he has the name Jehovah. Therefore the soul thinks, “Though I have nothing, yet I have him who is the substance of all things. All other things are only shadows; God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the substance that gives all things being; and therefore I will cast myself on God.”

Here now is the triumph of faith. When there is nothing else to trust in, indeed, when all things else are contrary; when it is faith against faith, and “hope against hope”; when there is such a conflict in a man that he sees nothing but the contrary: here faith will shut the eye of sense, and not look too much on present things. It says, “Though I see all things contrary, though I see signs of anger rather than otherwise, yet I will hope and believe in God for this or that.”

Here is the wisdom of a believing Christian who believes the promises: he will shut his eyes, and not look on the waves, on the troubles. They will carry him away and dazzle him. But he looks to the constant love of God in Christ, and to the constant promises of God. God’s nature is constant, and his truth is as his nature. He cannot deny himself and his own word, when he has made himself a debtor by his promise and bound himself by his word.

Therefore when things are contrary, say as Job did, “Though he kill me, yet will I trust in him” (Job 13:15). True faith, when it is in strength, will uphold a man when all fails; indeed, it will hold a man when all is contrary. Our Savior Christ, in whom “all the promises are yea and amen,” taught us this excellently by his own example. All was contrary, and our blessed Savior felt the wrath of God, which made him sweat drops of blood and made him cry out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). Yet here faith wrestled with “My God, my God,” still, even under the wrath of God. He broke through the seeming wrath of God into the heart of God.

Faith has a piercing eye. It will strive through the clouds, however thick they are, through all the clouds of temptation. Christ had so piercing a faith that it broke through everything. He saw a Father’s heart under an angry appearance. So a Christian triumphs by faith in the face of what opposes faith. When all is contrary to faith, he can nevertheless still say “My God.” This is an evidence of a strong faith in the promises.

6. Again, an evidence of faith in the promises is faithfulness in ourselves, in our promises to God; for surely the soul that expects anything of God, expecting him to be faithful, studies to be faithful in the covenant. “All the ways of God are mercy, and truth” (Ps 25:10). All his dealings with his children are mercy and truth, “to them that keep his covenant.” For you know the promises have conditions attached; and where God fulfills his promise, he gives grace to perform the condition, to walk before him, to allow ourselves in no sin. For if we allow ourselves in any sin, we do not perform the covenant on our part. Now God will give grace to perform the covenant where he will perform his own. Therefore for those who are unfaithful in their covenant, and yet think God will be faithful to them, it is presumption.

When we come to the communion, we think we do God a great deal of service. But we must consider that we enter into covenant with God, as well as he binds himself to us. He gives us Christ and all his blessings. He reaches out Christ with all that is in him, if we will receive him. Yes, but we bind ourselves to God, to lead a new life, and to be thankful, and to show it in obedience. And so in baptism. We do not only receive in the sacraments, but we yield, we bind ourselves to God. And we must be careful of what we promise to God, as well as expect what he promises to us. If we expect his truth, we must be faithful, and careful to perform our covenants to him.

Question. “Oh, but how shall I do that?” says the distressed soul. “I have no grace.”

Answer. God knows that well enough; therefore he who promises also promises grace to perform the condition. That is one part of the covenant, to give grace to fulfill the covenant. For he who says, “If we believe and repent…,” will give us hearts to repent, if we ask for them. He has promised to circumcise our hearts, to give us new hearts, and to give us his Holy Spirit if we ask him. “Why, Lord, you know I have no grace in myself to fulfill the covenant. No, but you must perform both parts; you give the grace and good thing promised, and grace to keep the covenant too.” Therefore let no one be discouraged.

Many things are required, it is true; but the things that are required are promised, if in the use of means we depend on him by prayer. For the promises are legacies as well as promises. What is the difference between a legacy and a covenant? A covenant is with condition, with stipulation; a legacy is an absolute thing, when a man gives something freely without any condition. So, though the promises are set forth by way of covenant, with stipulations to and fro in their transactions, as a covenant is, yet in regard of God’s gracious performance to those who depend on him, all the promises are legacies.

Therefore God’s promises and God’s covenant are called a testament, as well as promises. They are called a will: a will showing what God will give us freely in the use of means, as well as what our duty is in the covenant. Therefore our state in Christ is happy, if we depend on God in the use of means. He will give us all things that are necessary that he has promised; indeed, he will give grace to fulfill the covenant, if we beg for it.

If a man is careless and lives in sins against the covenant, he cannot perform the covenant; and let him not plead this, that he cannot, for God will give grace to those who are careful to fulfill it. Let such a man as neglects the performance on his part expect no good from God while he is like this. Let him expect vengeance; for all the threatenings of God are “yea and amen,” as well as his promises, to those who live in sins against conscience. For those who will not look for grace to serve him in the time to come, all the threatenings are “yea and amen.” There is no comfort for such people.

I beg you therefore to consider that it is a terrible thing to live in a state without God and without Christ; to have no care to perform what we have bound ourselves to God to do by the sacrament and in our particular vows; for his threatenings are as effectual as his promises. In Zechariah 1:5 he tells the Jews of the prophets who had threatened many things. The prophets who threatened your fathers are dead, he says; but for all that, the threatenings fell on them. The prophets, where are they? They were only men, but when they were gone, the threatenings fell on your fathers. Jeremiah died, but the captivity he threatened did not die; they were carried captive for seventy years.

So we threaten the vengeance of God on obstinate sinners who will not come in to the gospel. We ourselves are not “yea and amen” in regard of our being; we die. But our threatenings are “yea.” If they are not reversed by repentance, the threatenings are “amen,” as well as the promises. It is an evidence, therefore, that we do not believe, if we have no care to make good the covenant on our part.

7. Again, another evidence of a child of the promises, of a man who believes the promises, is inward opposition of the flesh, and hatred of fleshly men; for as it says in Galatians 4:29, the son of the bondwoman persecuted the son of the freewoman. A true, sincere believer is a son of the freewoman, a son of promise; and the flesh in us opposes it, like Ishmael, like Job’s wife, and like Sarah, who laughed when the promise was made. We have an Ishmael and a Sarah in us. “Yes, but can this promise of life everlasting when I am rotted away, and this promise of forgiveness of sins, and that goodwill, be good to me if I do not crack my conscience? If I take this and that course, shall these promises be performed?” Here is opposition. We cannot believe the promises without much opposition.

So with carnal men: they mock and deride the counsel of the poor, as the psalmist says (Ps 14:6). The children of the promise, who depend on God’s mercy in Christ, are persecuted by fleshly self-justifiers; and those who look to be saved by themselves without a promise will not be so much beholden to God. Their proud, swelling hearts rise against Christians who honor God by trusting in his promises and will be saved by promises.

A proud popish person’s heart rises against a holy Christian who is a son of the promise, and he scorns him: “You intend to be saved by the righteousness of another. No! We will not be so much beholden to God. We will satisfy for ourselves; we will merit heaven ourselves. God shall not be beholden to us for trusting in him; we will bring something ourselves, we will buy it out.” Can these men have humble hearts? Rather, can they have any other than malicious, persecuting hearts against humble, believing Christians who honor God by trusting in his promises?

You know Isaac was “a son of the promise.” How was he born? Not according to the course of nature. Sarah’s womb was dead. Christ was the Son of the promise. How was he born? Not according to the course of nature, for his mother was a virgin. So a Christian is a son of the promise. He is begotten where nothing in the course of nature makes it likely, where there is breeding for sin, no works, no righteousness; then he believes in Christ. Isaac was a notable type of Christ and a son of promise. He was begotten outside the course of generation. So a Christian is not begotten as a proud self-justifier is, by works; but he shows himself in this to be a true believer. He is begotten against the course of nature when he sees a barren heart, and sees as little disposition in his heart to be a Christian as there was in the virgin’s womb for Christ to be born.

How was the promise made to the virgin? She could not conceive how this could be, since she had known no man. The reply came, “The Holy Ghost shall overshadow thee” (Luke 1:35). Her heart embraced that word, and Christ was conceived then. So it is with the barren heart of a Christian, if it can believe that his sins shall be forgiven and that he shall have life everlasting, if he can honor God by believing that God will keep him in life and death. Let the heart embrace these promises, and a Christian is begotten. He is a son of the promise.

As for the proud self-justifier, who will have something in himself to boast of and will persecute others who are true Christians, he relies on no promise. A Christian, when he sees nothing to rely on but the promise, embraces the promise, and Christ is begotten in him at that very instant.

To name no more evidences, you see how we may examine ourselves whether or not we trust in and cast ourselves on the promises of God. If we do, we shall find them “yea and amen.”

Consider it therefore, and be glad of these promises; and when you have them, go to God in Christ for the performance of them. Take the counsel of that blessed man who in these latter times brought the glorious light of religion to light, Luther, I mean (to whom we are beholden for the doctrine of free grace more than to any other theologian of later times). Go to God in Christ in the promises. Christ is wrapped up in the promises. The promises are the swaddling clothes in which Christ is wrapped, as he says.

We must not think of God apart from Christ. There is, he says, God absolute in himself; so considered, he is “a consuming fire” (Heb 12:29). But there is God incarnate. Go to God incarnate, to God making good his promises in Christ incarnate. Go to Christ sucking at his mother’s breast, lying in the manger, living humbly, talking with a sinful woman, inviting sinners to come to him, keeping company with sinful creatures, altering and changing their natures, who never refused any who came to him.

Do not go to God absolute. He is a “consuming fire.” Go to Christ incarnate, God-man; go to him abased, and there is sweet fellowship for your faith; for “all the promises are made in him yea and amen.”

I beg you, therefore, to become acquainted with the mystery of Christ more and more. We have the promises in him. And you must know besides that the Father and the Holy Spirit have a part, a hand, in Christ’s abasement; for Christ did all by his Father’s appointment, and therefore it is as much as if the Father had been abased; for Christ was anointed to be so. Therefore think that God the Father allures and invites you when Christ does it, because he is anointed to invite you. Think that the Father is as peaceable as Christ was, because Christ was so by his Father’s appointment, by his anointing.

See all the three Persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in Christ. See God incarnate making all the promises beforehand, and as the ground of all that is made good to us. See the wondrous love of God incarnate. And then go and see Christ raising that flesh in which he was abased; see him ascended into heaven, and sitting in it at the right hand of God. Then think of God in Christ glorious; think of Christ as a public person, and all of us in him. So as Leo says, “Only Christ was he that died, in whom all died; he was crucified, in whom all were crucified; and he rose again, in whom all rise, he being a public person; other particular men died, and themselves died only.” Let us look on God incarnate, and see ourselves in him; see God in Christ, see Christ a public person. For this is why the second Person took manhood, that he might be a public person.

Christ took not our persons but our nature, so that with our nature knit to the second Person, he might be a public person, as Adam was a public man for all mankind. Therefore think of all the promises in Christ as God-man, that he was the man Christ, made man for us. This is wonderfully comforting; let us solace ourselves with it.

Take away Christ and the promises in Christ, and what is there in the world? Nothing but idolatry and superstition, staggering and wavering, darkness and blindness, popery and devilishness. Who reigns in the world but the devil and antichrist, heathenism and paganism, and all filthiness? Take away Christ, the sound knowledge of Christ incarnate, and the sound knowledge of the promises, the clear, settled promises in Christ, and what is the life of man but a horrible confusion, even a hell on earth? Where Christ is not known, what are the lives of men, the utmost quintessence of them, but only scheming for an estate here in this world, and then slipping into hell? To live a civil life, as morality perhaps may fit a man to do, and then to be cast into hell.

Outside Christ there is no salvation, no certain comfort, no life, no light, nothing to be reckoned on outside Christ and the promises in Christ. Therefore let us love them and build on them, and make much of the truth we have, and get into Christ; for “all the promises in him are yea and amen.” God has no direct dealings with us, but only by Christ the Mediator, through whom he looks on us, and in whom he conveys all good to us.

Scripture is termed a paradise. It is like a paradise, in which we have the streams of the water of life, and the tree of life, Jesus Christ, and in which we have the promises of life. And there is no angel to guard the door or gate or entrance of this paradise; rather, we are allured to come to it to refresh ourselves. There is God himself walking; there is Christ himself, the tree of life. Therefore we should make the Scriptures wonderfully familiar to us, and especially single out the promises and make use of them. Learn what it is to live by faith in the promises, for “all the promises in Jesus Christ, in him are yea and in him amen.”

“To the glory of God by us.” The end of all this, that God will bind himself by promises, that he will establish these promises so surely in Christ Jesus the Mediator, God and man, that he will make them “yea and amen” in him, is his own glory, and “to the glory of God” by us ministers; for we preach these promises to the people, and the people believe them, and in believing they give glory to God.

Observation. God’s glory is manifested in the gospel, especially when it is believed in the promises.

What wondrous glory God has in the promises in Christ! More by a great deal than in the creation. In the creation man was made according to God’s image. Now, in the gospel we are created according to Jesus Christ, God-man. There God added light to light, comfort to comfort. He made man good, and would have kept him good. But here is the glory of his mercy and goodness in Christ. Here he does good to sinners. He raises a sinner to mercy. He does not add light to light, but brings light out of darkness. In the gospel mercy strives with misery, and strives with sin, and overcomes all our ills. It is God’s will in the gospel to do good to sinners. Mercy is added to sinful men, contrary against contrary, God’s goodness triumphing over the misery of man.

The righteousness Adam had was the righteousness of a creature, of a man; but the obedience we have in Christ is the obedience of God-man. Therefore, being imputed to us, it is a more exquisite righteousness. It brings us to God and entitles us to heaven. It is infinitely more than Adam’s was. God manifests greater glory than in the creation. There is greater love, and greater mercy, and greater goodness manifested in the gospel than to Adam in innocence.

Our state in Christ is more perfect. Adam’s state was not “yea and amen,” for it was “yea” today and “nay” tomorrow. He stood only a while. But in Christ the “promises are yea and amen.” He had no promise; we have. Our state by promises in Christ is better than Adam’s ever was, as we are in a better root than he, for he was not in Christ the Mediator. We by faith are united to Christ the Mediator; and by virtue of the promise, where God begins, he will make an end; where he is Alpha, he will be Omega.

What a glory this is to God, that he can repair man to a better state than he ever had at the first, as God’s mending is always for the better! The state of grace and glory is better than the state of nature ever was; spiritual is better than natural. Therefore it is much for the glory of the wisdom of God that he can in Christ reconcile justice and mercy, and show more mercy than he ever did in making man out of the dust of the earth, and all is to the glory of God. These attributes especially are glorious in the promises in Christ.

His justice is glorious in punishing sin in Christ. There sin is shown to be odious in the punishing of Christ, God-man; if we speak of justice, there is justice. If of mercy, to lay it on our surety, for God to give his Son for us, there is transcendent mercy and transcendent justice in the punishing of our sin. How could it be punished more greatly?

And then the glory of his wisdom, to bring these together, infinite mercy and infinite justice, in Christ.

Infinite power, for God to become man, and, without sin, to be so far abased; a humble omnipotence, to descend so low that God could be mortal, and then to raise himself again.

And then the glory of his truth, that whatever was promised to Abraham, to David, to the prophets, all was performed in Christ, all the types. Here is glory by Christ of mercy, justice, wisdom, truth; for all are “yea and amen” in Christ. Therefore he may well say all this is “to the glory of God.”

Therefore consider how the glory of God shines in the face of Jesus Christ, as the apostle says. If you would see God, see him shining “in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6). See his mercy shining in Christ, and his justice in the punishing of our sin in Christ. See his truth, his power, his wisdom shining in Christ, and shining more than in the creation or in anything else in the world.

Can you honor God more than by believing the gospel? Can you dishonor him more than by calling his truth into question, which is “yea and amen”? If you believe the gospel, you “set to your seal that God is true” (John 3:33). What an honor this is, that God will be honored by you! In setting to your seal that he is true, you give him the glory of all his attributes. In not believing, what a dishonor you do to God! You deny his mercy, his wisdom, his justice, his truth; you deny all his attributes; “you make God a liar” (1 John 5:10). What a horrible sin unbelief is!

Therefore fortify your faith. The devil lays siege to our faith above all other things. If he can shake that, he shakes everything; for holy life goes when faith goes. Who will love God or obey God when he does not know whether he is his God or not? Let faith flourish, and it will awaken life in the heart. Let the promises grow in the heart, and the word be grafted in the heart, and all will flourish in a Christian’s life. All will come off clearly and freely. Obedience will be cheerful and free when we see God reconciled in Christ.

Then love will be full of devising. “When I see God’s love to me, what shall I do to show love in return, to show thanks to God? Where is there anyone to whom I may do good for God’s sake? How shall I maintain the truth, and resist all opposers of the truth? Can I do too much for him who has done so much for me?” Love gives life.

The devil knows that if he can shake faith he shakes everything. Let us fortify faith, and we glorify God more than by anything else. He is glorious in the gospel, and how shall he be so by us, unless we set our hearts to believe him? Therefore let us seal God’s truth by our faith, and “set to our seals that God is true.” God condescends to be honored by weak sinful men believing him; and the faith that honors him he will be sure to honor.

“By us.” By us ministers. How? When the gospel is preached, God is carried in triumph, as it were, and his banner is set up, and the promises are displayed, and sinners are called to him. God is glorified by the disclosing of these things, and faith is worked in the people to whom they are disclosed. And they glorify God when they believe; they bless God that they ever heard these tidings. So in every way God is glorified.

The ministers open, as it were, the box of sweet ointment, so that its fragrance may be in the church and spread far. They lay open the tapestry, the rich treasure of God’s mercies; they dig deep and find out the treasure. Therefore these promises in Scripture, being so made and performed in Christ, tend to God’s glory, but by us, by our ministry. God, to knit man and man together, will convey the good he means to convey by the despised ministry.

The enemies, therefore, of the ministry of the gospel, what are they? Here is a double charge against them: they are enemies of the glory of God and of the comfort of God’s people, for God’s people glorify God in the sense of his mercy. When it is unfolded to them, God gets glory, and they get comfort.

What do we think, then, of popish spirits, who feed the people only with dead and dull ceremonies? But let them go. I go on to the next verse, having dwelt somewhat long on this.

Now he that stablisheth us with you in Christ is God, who hath anointed us … (2 Cor 1:21)

As the riches of a Christian consist in the promises of God, which, as we have heard, in Christ “are all yea and amen” (2 Cor 1:20), so unless he is established and built upon this strength, all is nothing. How little it helps a man to stand on a rock, if he is not built on it! How little it helps that the foundation is ever so strong, if he is not established on it! It is not enough that the promises are established; we must be established upon them. The soul might say, “The promises of God are indeed ‘yea and amen,’ but what is that to me?” Therefore the apostle adds that he who gives the promises will establish us upon the promises.

“Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ is God” (2 Cor 1:21). The first thing I will observe, before we come to the particular handling of the words, will be only this in general, from the connection and knitting together of this verse with the former one:

Observation. There must be a double amen.

1. There is an amen in the promises. They are true in themselves. There must likewise be an amen in us. We must say amen to them; that is, we must be established upon them. There must be an echo in a Christian’s heart answering God. As God says, “These and these things I promise, and they are all amen,” so the soul by faith must echo back, “These things are for me; I believe them.”

For, as we say in the schools, and to good purpose, there is a double certainty, a double firmness: a certainty of the object and a certainty of the subject. There is a firmness of the promises in Jesus Christ, and there must be a firmness in us upon those promises. It does not matter how certain the thing is that we are to build upon, if there is no certainty in the person, if there is no building on that thing. God will lose the glory of his truth, and we the comfort, unless we are certain just as the promises are certain. It does not matter what the garment is, if it is not put on. It does not matter, as I said before, how firm the rock is, if we do not plant ourselves upon it. And therefore, besides the writing of God’s word on tablets, unless he writes it likewise in our hearts, unless our hearts are established on that truth which is certain in itself, so that it may be certain to us, all is to no purpose.

You see, therefore, the absolute necessity of the application of the soul to those truths which are certain and sure in themselves. There must be an establishing of us, as well as an establishing of the promises. There is a necessity of applying the promises to ourselves, so that they may be true to us. Christ is a garment; then we must put him on. He is the robes in which we appear glorious before God, but we must put him on by faith. Christ is the food of life. He is indeed, but then he must be digested. Unless food is applied, unless the stomach works nourishment out of it by application and so digests it to all the parts, the body has no nourishment from it.

Christ is the foundation of his church, yes, but there must be application. We as living stones must be built on him. Let the foundation be ever so strong; if the stones are not laid on the foundation, the stones cannot stand. Though Christ is the spouse of the church, and though he is ever so rich, there must be application and consent. We must strike up the bargain and the match between Christ and us. There must be our consent to tie ourselves to him, to give ourselves up to him. So look at all the comforting relations that our blessed Savior has taken upon himself in the book of God; they all demand application.

The ground, I say, is this: though there is ever so much certainty in the thing, yet if there is no certainty in the person to found application upon, all is to no purpose.

These two therefore must go together, and they are sweet counterparts: promises on God’s part, and faith on our part. The promises and Christ are nothing without faith. For there must be a touch to draw out power. If faith has ever so slight a touch of Christ, it will draw out power; but there must be a touch, there must be application. Christ is nothing without faith, and faith is nothing without Christ and the promises.

For what is the difference between faith and presumption? Presumption is an empty, groundless, fruitless fancy. Faith builds on the promises of the word; we can cite the promise. It counts for nothing when a madman assumes himself to be king of another country. Why? He has no promise. The man who reckoned that all the ships coming into the harbor were his was only playing the part of a lunatic, and so he was regarded. So when a man thinks his state is good, yet does not build himself upon the promise and has no ground for it from God’s word, it is only a presumptuous, mad fancy. The promises are nothing without faith, and faith is nothing without the promises. There must be application. This I thought good to observe first in general. To come now more particularly to the words themselves.

“He that stablisheth us with you …” In the words you have, first, a gracious act of building, or establishing.

Secondly, the basis, the foundation of that establishing or building, and that is Christ.

Thirdly, the author of this establishing: God.

Lastly, the persons who are built and established on that foundation: “with you.” “He that stablisheth us with you in Christ is God.”

The first thing is the act, “stablishing.”

The point is this, first:

Observation. Establishing, settling grace is necessary.

It is necessary that there be an establishing, confirming grace. It is not enough that we are brought out of the kingdom of Satan, for when we have gotten out of his hands and strength, he pursues us with continual malice. Therefore there must be the same power to establish us still in grace that first brought us into the state of grace. For as providence is a continual creation, so establishing grace is the continuance of the new creature. The same grace that sets us in the state of the new creation in Christ is the same that establishes us. Establishing grace is necessary. It is necessary in many ways.

Man of himself is an unstable creature. Take him at his best, and he is only a creature. God found no stability in the angels. Take the best of creatures: even as creatures they are unstable. For God wills that a creature, as a creature, be a thing dependent on the Creator, who has his being of himself, Jehovah. There is no stability in any creature. Man in his best state was an unstable creature. Since then, we are very unstable, ready to be carried away in our judgment by the wind of any false doctrine, ready to be blown over by every little temptation. More than that, even now in the state of grace we are very unstable in ourselves, ready to fly off at once; and therefore we need to be established by God.

Reason 1. It is necessary because of the indisposition of our nature to supernatural truths. In ourselves we are an unprepared subject for them. As for the law, we do have some principles of it; but of the gospel there are no seeds at all in us. That is the reason there are so many heresies against the gospel, and none against the law. And therefore, since divine truths are contrary to our disposition, just as there must be a supernatural beginner, so there must be a supernatural strengthener. He who is Alpha must be Omega. There must be a mighty subduing of the heart to make it a vessel to receive these truths, an almighty power to lay the soul on this foundation, because of the contrariety of the truth to the natural heart of man. So also there is need of nothing less than a divine and supernatural establishing.

Our natures are very inconstant and unsettled and wayward. Take us at our best, before the fall: you see how soon we fell, being left to ourselves and having no establishing grace. Much more now, since the fall, is there a necessity of divine establishing. When we come to know the truth, we are subject to fall away. Like little children who are ready to sink if they are not held up by their parents or nurse, we must be upheld and propped and shored up by God; otherwise we sink at once. Moses was only on the mountain a while, and we see how soon the Israelites fell into idolatry. Paul only left the Galatians a little, and they were at once removed from Christ to false teachers (Gal 1:6). The nature of man is wonderfully unstable, very loose and unsettled. Divine truths are supernatural. Therefore we need establishing.

2. Again, establishing grace is necessary because of those oppositions that are made against us once we are in Christ. For with what malice Satan pursues a Christian once he is taken out of his kingdom! And the world runs on a clean contrary bias in its various examples. How many scandals arise daily even in the very church itself! How many things in our natural disposition join with them! All of this will make a man fly off and will unsettle him, if he is not established in grace.

And indeed, what is the difference between one Christian and another who lives in the bosom of the church, between a time-server and another? The difference lies only in their rooting, in their establishing. For all have the general knowledge of the truth. But here is the difference: the true Christian is planted and rooted in the truth; a false Christian is not. And so when temptations come, either from within, from conscience, or from without, from Satan and the world, the false Christian falls away, because he is not rooted; but the other holds on, because he is established.

3. And the best of us all need establishing, for there are degrees of truths, degrees of faith, in all the parts of faith. There is conjecture, a kind of suspicious knowledge; and there is opinion, which goes with fear of the contrary; and there is knowledge; and there is faith, which is founded upon the authority of the speaker. And yet this faith, though it is founded upon the word of God, may receive further and further strength in all its parts. In assent there may be a higher degree; in trust there may be a higher degree, and so on. And therefore the best of us all need strengthening.

But where shall we find it?

Christ is the basis, the foundation, of all our stability. Now, in the covenant of grace, we are established in him, not in ourselves. The point is this:

Observation. Christ is the ground of our firmness.

As all the promises are made to us in Christ with regard to their being carried out, so God brings us Christ. All is conferred on us in Christ. As the promises are made, so they are carried out. God establishes us in Christ. He draws us to Christ. “None come to me, but God the Father draws” (John 6:44). Therefore God reveals Christ to us in our conversion, and our establishing is in him. Our salvation is so certain for this reason, that it is laid upon one who is so certain in himself, Jesus Christ.

And how happy it is that we are established in him who loves us so well, who is both a lowly high priest, who will pity us, and a great high priest, equal with God, able to do all things toward God for us, and between God and us.

Adam, we know, had his strength in his own keeping, and when he was left to himself, we see what became of him. The angels had their strength in their own keeping, and we know how soon they fell. But since the fall, we are founded and grounded upon a surer foundation. Now we do not stand by our own strength, but we are established in Jesus Christ. We are surer than the angels were before they fell, surer than Adam was in paradise, for now we are established in Christ the Mediator, God and man. And because we could not keep our stability in ourselves, we are established in him who worked it for us, who possesses it for us in heaven, and who keeps it for us. And as it is laid up and kept for us, so we are kept for it. “You are kept by the power of God to salvation” (1 Pet 1:5).

And therefore, as there are many differences which advance the state of grace above the state of nature, this is one: our state in grace is more stable and firm, as being established upon a better ground, even upon Jesus Christ the second Adam. God never mends without mending for the better, and he never restores without restoring for the better. The new heaven and the new earth will be better than the first. So the new creature, the new Adam, is more glorious than the first. And as what we recover in Christ is more and better than what we lost in Adam, so the certainty and security of our state in grace is far beyond the other, since this one is established in Christ.

But what in us is established in Christ? And in Christ considered in what way?

1. Our judgment is established in the truths of the gospel concerning the natures and the offices of Christ, and concerning the privileges we have through him. And this is the ground of all other establishing. We cannot firmly cleave with our will and affections to that which we do not clearly apprehend with our understandings. When we have a clear and judicious apprehension of things, then a firm affection to them follows. The adhering and cleaving of the will and affections comes from the discerning of the understanding. And therefore, as we say of the first digestion that if it is bad, all is bad, and if it is good and sound, it makes way for all the digestions after it, so if things are well digested in the judgment, if there is a sound illumination and apprehension of divine truths, it makes way for a constant and firm adhesion. Therefore the first establishing is of our judgments.

2. As our judgments, so our wills are established, in cleaving to Christ and making choice of him above all things in the world. As he became man to sue for our love and to become our husband, so we marry him when, upon judging what an excellent person he is and how fit for us, we choose him and cleave to him constantly without any separation, for better, for worse, in our joy, in our love and delight. For indeed he is the only excellent object, and the very fittest for our affections to be placed on. Whatever other things we place our affections on too much make us worse than ourselves. Only he who can raise us higher can advance us to a better state than we are in.

3. In a word, the whole soul, judgment, will and affections, and all the inward man (for the apostle takes it in that broad sense in Ephesians 3:16) is established in Christ, and this carries the outward man with it. We are established in Jesus Christ, not in ourselves.

Now when we are established in Christ, whatever Christ has or is, is ours. It is a most excellent condition to be in Christ and to be established in him, for to be established in Christ is to be in a firm state, in an everlasting state. Once Christ’s, and forever his. It is a glorious state, for he has conquered all enemies whatsoever, and his conquest is ours.

Well then, we see the foundation of the church, and of every individual Christian: Christ Jesus. Where does the stability and firmness of the church come from, “that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt 16:18)? It is built upon the rock, upon Christ. So all the establishing a Christian has comes from this rock, from his being built upon Jesus Christ. If we were built upon man, we could not stand; if we were built upon angels, we could not stand; if we were built upon anything in the world, we could not stand. But being built upon Jesus Christ, who is “all in all” to a soul that is established in him, there must necessarily be an everlasting establishing.

It is a foolish objection of some, and an unlearned one, against the principles of divine truth, that we may fall just as Adam did in paradise, just as the angels did in heaven; as if there were not a wide and broad difference between the state of grace and the state of nature. A Christian has more strength than the angels in heaven, or than Adam in paradise ever had. He has a firmer standing, because he stands by grace. “By grace we stand,” as the apostle says (Rom 5:2). A Christian has promises of perseverance; Adam and the angels had none. And therefore, to draw a reason for falling away from grace out of the likeness we have to that condition is a mere sophism, which does not rightly discern the disparity. It is not the same with the angels and Adam and us, for we stand by grace, outside ourselves, being established in another.

We have not only a promise of happiness. The angels and Adam had happiness and a blessed state, but they had no promise to stand and be confirmed. A poor, weak Christian has a promise to be established and confirmed. Therefore those proud sectarians who stand between us and the papists, and who side with them rather than with us, and who trouble the church so much, make an idle objection concerning falling away from grace when they say, “Did not Adam fall away?” What is that to the purpose? Was Adam under the same covenants as we are now in Christ? Is there not a new promise made to us in Christ, better than Adam could ever attain to?

Besides, we are founded upon a better Adam, upon the second Adam, the God-man. We have not only a better foundation but better promises, which Adam and the angels themselves lacked. And therefore the covenant of grace is said to be “an everlasting covenant.” “I will marry thee to myself for ever” (Hos 2:19).

A Christian is not to be considered in the abstract, or alone, for then indeed he is a weak creature, as weak as other men are. But consider him in his rock, on whom he is built; consider him in his husband, to whom he is united and knit; consider him in his head, Christ; look upon him as he is thus founded and established. Oh, he is an excellent person!

See him in the difference between him and others. Those who are not established by a firm judgment and will and affection, and so by faith in Jesus Christ, what confidence, what stability do they have? For those whose firmness lies in the favor of men, it is only vanity. Those whose firmness lies in riches, what are they? How soon do they leave it all? Those whose firmness lies in dependence upon any creature, however great it may be, alas, they are nothing, they are all vanity. Both we ourselves in depending and the things we depend upon are vanity. We are vanity because we fasten upon that which is vanity. Things have no more firmness than that upon which they lean has. Those who have only a weak prop to support them fall together with it when it falls. Now those who are not founded upon Christ by knowledge and love, and united to him by faith, alas, what standing have they, when all things else besides God are vain! For nothing has a being but God, and a Christian so far as he leans upon God. Were not all things taken out of nothing? And shall they not all turn to nothing? Must not this whole world be consumed with fire?

There must be a new world, “a new heaven and a new earth” (2 Pet 3:13); but this world and all the excellencies in it, as they were raised out of nothing, so they shall come to nothing. God is “I am that I am,” he says (Exod 3:14); and Christ is yesterday, today, tomorrow, and the same for ever (Heb 13:8). A man cannot say of any creature in the world that it was yesterday, and shall be tomorrow and for ever. We may say it of Christ: he is Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, he was, and is, and is to come (Rev 1:8). Therefore those who are founded upon him, who have their happiness in him, are firm as he is firm; and those who build upon anything else vanish as that thing vanishes.

Nothing in the world has such a being that it is not subject, in time, to cease to be. It is only a Christian who is in Christ that is as firm as Christ is; and Christ can never be anything but what he is, for of necessity God must always be like himself. He is Jehovah, “I am, I am” at all times; and Christ is Jehovah. A Christian, therefore, and none but a Christian, has a firm establishing in Christ. Without this establishing in Christ, what are we? What are wicked men? Chaff, that the wind blows away! They are grass and the like, things of nothing, carried away with every blast. But a Christian is a stone, a rock, built upon Christ Jesus.

But to come to the person: who is it that establishes? “He that stablisheth us in Christ, is God.”

In this we may consider these two branches:

God must establish.

God will establish.

Can none establish the soul upon Christ but God?

No! For God is the only maker of the marriage between Christ and the church. The same God who brought Adam and Eve together in paradise brings the church and Christ together. And as he gives Christ to the church, and has sealed and appointed him to be “wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption” (1 Cor 1:30) (being made by God to us for that purpose, as the apostle says), so he works the consent of the church, a consent in heart and spirit to take and embrace Christ. Now it is God alone who can work the heart to Christ. “None can come unto me, except God the Father draw him” (John 6:44). It is God who gives Christ to be the husband of the church, and who brings the spouse, the church, to Christ.

1. For it is God by his Spirit who reveals to the soul its hideous, desperate, and woeful condition without Christ; and by the Spirit in the ministry of the word, he lays open the riches and excellency that are in Christ, and the firmness and stability to be had in him. And so he draws us with the cords of a man, with reasons, revealing an absolute necessity of getting into Christ, and of having him as our husband, unless we are willing to lie under the wrath of God and be damned; and, along with this, revealing the fullness and excellency that are in Christ.

2. Again, it is God alone who must establish the soul, all the parts of it, both judgment and conscience. For, I beg you, what can any human creature, what can anything under God, work upon the soul? I mean so firmly as to establish it. And therefore our controversy with the papists is just and good.

We say that the reason and ground of our believing the word of God to be the word of God must not be the testimony of the church and its authority. For, alas! what can the judgment of man, what can the judgment of the church, do? It may incline and move the will by persuasive arguments, and so cause a human consent. But to establish the soul and conscience, and to assure me that the word of God, which is the ground of my faith, is the word of God, it must be God by his Spirit who does it; the testimony of the church will never do it.

The same Spirit who inspired holy men to write the word of God works in us a belief that the word of God is the word of God. The argument that establishes must come by the power of God’s Spirit. God, joining with the soul and spirit of a man whom he intends to convert, causes him, besides that inbred light that is in the soul, to see a divine majesty shining forth in the Scriptures. So there must be an infused establishing by the Spirit to settle the heart in this first principle, and indeed in all other divine principles, that the Scriptures are the word of God.

3. And, to go on a little further, this is a fundamental error in our practice. For what is the reason we have so many apostates? What is the reason so many are so fruitless in their lives? What is the reason that men despair in death, but this very thing, that men are not built and established aright? God’s Spirit never established their souls in divine truths.

For, first, concerning apostasy, ask them why they are of this or that religion, and they will say they have been taught so, they have been brought up to it, the company they have kept have been devout men and have always been led by this opinion, and they see no reason to oppose it.

Is that all? Has the Spirit not worked these things in your heart? Has he not given you a taste of them? Has he not convinced you in your judgment that it is so? Have you not found the power of the Spirit working upon your soul, changing you, raising you, drawing you out of the world nearer to God? Have you not, I say, felt the power of the Spirit in this way?

“No,” they answer, “but this is how I was catechized, this is how I was brought up, and this is what I have heard in the ministry.” And in no other way? Alas! it will never hold out; there will be a falling away. For when a man does not have what he believes from the Spirit of God, he will be ready, when dangerous times come, when the adversaries make an onset, to fall, and to fall clean away, as we see it was in the time of popery. For whatever is not spiritual, whatever knowledge is not divine and from the Spirit of God, never holds out.

Therefore, I beg you, what is the reason that you have many unlearned men who set themselves upon the truth and hold out to the end, while, on the contrary, many who seem great scholars, skilled in the learning of the schools and in other authors, do not? The reason is this: the one has the truth from the Spirit, who reveals all the objections that the heart of man can make against it, and the strength that is in the truth to answer and silence all those objections. The other man has only a reasoning knowledge, an ability to gather one thing from another and to prove one thing by another, by strength of natural abilities. But the Spirit of God never revealed to him the tricks and the corruptions of his heart, never fastened and settled his heart upon the truth; he never had experience of the truth. For indeed, nothing establishes so much as the experience of the truth on which we are established.

4. Again, what is the reason for that unfruitfulness that is among men, but that truths were never settled in the soul by the Spirit of God? What men know out of the word of God concerning Christ and the privileges that come by him, they were never persuaded of in their hearts; therefore they do not come to a fruitful way of life. It is impossible that men who have spiritual apprehensions of divine things, of gospel truths, should not be abundantly fruitful. From this comes all our unthankfulness and undervaluing of the gospel. The gospel in itself is a priceless thing. However we esteem it, God values it highly. We do not value it, because our apprehensions of it are customary and formal, gotten by upbringing, and education, and discourse, and not by the Spirit; we do not feel the spiritual and heavenly comforts of those truths we think we know.

5. How, likewise, does despair in time of temptation, and in death, come about, but only because men lack this establishing by the Spirit of God? Men go on in evil courses, trusting to a formal, dead, human knowledge, gotten by human means, and not settled in them by the Spirit of God, who has not sealed the truth in their hearts. And so, when sharp trials come, they despair, because they have no feeling of the truths of the gospel. And when conscience is awakened and smarts, it clamors and cries out against all their formal and human knowledge. For since they have no spiritual sense of the mercies of God in Christ, and the persuasions of comfort are not so near to support the soul as the temptations, and vexations, and torments are, how can they do anything but despair?

Now who can still the conscience but the Spirit of God? Why now, if the knowledge men had were spiritual and heavenly, then in all accusations of conscience it would put conscience down and still it. “I am a sinner indeed,” such a man would say, “I am this and this, but I have felt the sweet mercies of God in Christ. God has said to my soul, ‘I am thy salvation’ (Ps 35:3); he has intimated to my spirit, by a sweet voice, ‘Son, thy sins are forgiven thee’ (Mark 2:5).”

Where there is, I say, a knowledge and an apprehension of these gospel truths worked by the Spirit, it puts conscience down and stills it, though the heart rage at the same time. There are thousands in the very bosom of the church who miscarry because of this, resting in a literal, outward, formal knowledge, gotten only by discourse, and by reading, and by dealings with others, and they never labor to have their hearts established in Christ by God’s Spirit.

You see here, then, the necessity of God’s writing his truth in our inmost parts. He says in the covenant of grace, “I will write my law in their inward parts” (Jer 31:33), that is, I will teach their very hearts; the knowledge they have shall be spiritual.

For, beloved, the knowledge that must save us must not only be of divine things, but it must be divine; it must not only be of spiritual things, but it must be spiritual. The light we have of spiritual things must answer to the things themselves; we must see them by their own light. We cannot know spiritual and heavenly things by a human light; but as the things themselves are spiritual, so we must have the Spirit of God, that by the Spirit we may come to know spiritual things spiritually.

Ask God, therefore, to grant us his Spirit, to teach us and convince us of the truth of those things we read and hear. God must do it; he must persuade and bow the heart, and will, and affections. And so he will do it, and does do it for those who rely upon him. And this is the second branch.

Observation. As God must do it, so God will do it.

What is the reason for that?

1. It is this: he will do it because he is constant. Where he begins a good work, he will finish it to the day of the Lord (Phil 1:6). He will do it because in the covenant of grace he has undertaken both parts, both his own and ours. He undertakes his own part, which is to give us eternal life and to give us Christ; and he undertakes our part too, which is to believe, and to cleave to Christ, and so on. He makes this good himself. He works this in the heart by the Spirit. For this is why it is called the covenant of grace: God himself is graciously pleased to do both parts. This must be remembered for our comfort against an objection that flesh and blood will make: “I might indeed come to God and Christ, but I am an unworthy, empty creature; I have no faith.”

Come and attend upon the means of grace; the gift of application, and confirming, and establishing, is part of the covenant. The covenant God makes with you is not only to give you life everlasting and glory, but to give you grace as well. Faith is the gift of God. He who establishes us, and confirms us upon what is certain in itself, is God.

Lay this up against a time of temptation as a pillar and ground of your faith, that here God does both. He gives us promises, and gives us Christ on whom the promises are founded; and he also establishes us, and seals us, and so on. He does it all. So as none can establish the soul but God by his Spirit, so he will do it. It is an excellent reason of the apostle in Romans 5:10: If when we were enemies, God gave us his Son to reconcile us, how much more now shall we be saved! If we were saved by the death of Christ when we were enemies, much more shall we be preserved by his life, now that he lives in heaven! So I say, if God, when there was nothing in us and we were in a state clean opposite, did begin spiritual life in us, much more will he establish what he has begun in us.

And this establishing, as well as the beginning of grace, likewise comes from God. For take grace in its whole breadth and extent, take all that can be in grace, and all comes graciously from God: the offer of it, the beginning of it. This manner of it, that it should be strong, the strengthening of grace, comes from God. He strengthens us in grace as well as begins it. So grace itself, and this manner of it, that it is strong and firm, that it should hold out, all comes from God.

A Christian needs not only converting grace but establishing grace. The God who converted him must establish him, and build him up, and confirm him. Peter was in the state of grace, and yet when God did not establish him, you see how he fell. So David was an excellent man, but when God did not establish him, you see how he fell. The weakest, with the establishing grace of God, will stand; and the strongest, without the establishing grace of God, will sink and fall.

The apostle does not say he has done it, but that he does “stablish” us. This must be considered: the life of a Christian is a perpetually dependent life. Not only in his conversion does he live by faith, when he has his first life; but ever after he lives by faith, that is, by dependence on God for assistance, and protection, and strength in the whole course of his life.

Ignorance of this makes us subject to fail. For when we trust to grace received and do not seek a new supply, we fall into Peter’s case: “Though all men forsake thee, yet will not I” (Matt 26:33). Upon this Peter fell foully. He had too much confidence in grace received.

Therefore God has to humble his children, to teach them dependence. And for this reason, usually in Scripture, where some special grace is given, he has joined something with it, to remind them that they do not stand by their own strength. In the same chapter where Peter makes a glorious confession, “Thou art the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:16), and is honored by Christ for that confession, Christ nevertheless calls him Satan in the same chapter (Matt 16:23), and he forsakes his Master. A strange thing! And it is to teach us that we do not stand of ourselves. When we are strong, it is by God; when we are weak, it is by ourselves.

Jacob wrestled and was a prevailer with God, but he had to limp for it. He was struck with limping all the days of his life, though he had the victory and overcame God, who, as I said before, took on the role of an enemy to strive with him. Yet God, to remind him that he had the strength by which he prevailed from God and not of himself, made him limp all his days. We need perpetual dependence upon God.

Therefore let us set about nothing in our own strength, as Hannah says comfortingly, “No man is strong by his own strength” (1 Sam 2:9). God is all our sufficiency. Man’s nature aspires to a kind of divinity; he would be a god to himself. But God will teach him that he is not a god, but a dependent creature. He aspires to divinity. Thus he will set about things in confidence of his own wisdom, without prayer, and thinks to work things with the strength of his own abilities, to bring things about with his own wit, to bring things to a good outcome. O no! It will not be so. We read in Proverbs 3:6, “Acknowledge God in all thy ways,” that is, acknowledge him in your enterprises, in anything; acknowledge him in the progress, that you need establishing grace; acknowledge him in the outcome, that you need his blessing upon all your endeavors; acknowledge God in all our ways.

Therefore, what do we do but make ourselves gods, when we set about business, especially weighty business, without calling on God and depending on him? A Christian is wondrously weak; a man is vanity in himself. But take him as he is built upon the promises, and as he is in the love of God and Christ, and he is a kind of almighty man. Then “I can do all things in Christ that strengtheneth me” (Phil 4:13). A Christian is omnipotent if he depends upon the promise and commits his ways to God; but he is impotent and weak in himself.

It is God who must establish us. A man who is vanity, he makes firm; a man who is weak, he makes strong; a man who is unsettled, he settles. The word is a firm thing, and God who builds us on the word is as firm, and Christ in whom we are built is as firm. Peter, when he built on the word, was wondrously firm; he was a rock too. A man who stands on a rock is firm. Now in believing the gospel, and in being built on the gospel, upon the prophets and apostles, upon apostolic truth, we who are weak in ourselves are firm.

The weakest creatures have the strongest shelters; and weakness is turned by God into a help, for consciousness of weakness makes us seek strength outside ourselves. You know the conies, as Solomon says: they hide themselves in the rock (Prov 30:26); they flee to their burrows. The birds, because snares are laid for them below, build their nests on high, to secure themselves that way. We see that the vine, a weak plant, has the elm to prop it. Weak things must have a strong support. So man, being weak in himself, weak in judgment, weak in affections, is established by God, God herein triumphing in our weakness over strength.

For we have strong adversaries, and we are weak. Satan is a strong enemy. God himself sometimes puts on the mask of an enemy, as in Job’s case, and in Christ’s on the cross, when God plays the part of an enemy and the devil is a real enemy. The devil’s instruments, heretics and seducers, are strong, strong in wit and abilities in every way. And we are weak to encounter God, to wrestle with him; and we are weak to encounter “principalities and powers” (Eph 6:12), and men of stronger abilities, who are besotted and intoxicated with satanic temptations, and who labor to draw all into the snare of the devil along with themselves. Now when God in weakness triumphs over strength, here is glory to God in establishing us. It is God who must establish us.

And as God alone must do it, so he is ready to do it; for in the covenant of grace it lies upon him. God has promised there to confirm it, and therefore the apostle binds it with the faithfulness of God: “Faithful is he that hath promised, who also will do it” (1 Thess 5:24). God is content that our confirmation should lie upon his faithfulness; and therefore, when he accepts us into the covenant of grace, he performs our part as well as his own. “God is faithful,” says the apostle, “who hath called us to the fellowship of Christ” (1 Cor 1:9), who will confirm us to the end. He is content to hazard his reputation, as it were, and otherwise to be counted unfaithful. So strengthening grace is of God. He has bound himself by his faithfulness to confirm and to establish those who are his.

Mark here, by the way, before I come to handle the doctrine of perseverance, what an invincible argument you have to prove that a man who is once in Christ can never fall away.

“God indeed for his part is ready to maintain us, to do this,” they say, “but we for our part are subject to fall away.” As if the carrying of us along in the course of grace to salvation did not lie upon God and Christ! God is faithful to confirm us to the end. Once we are in the covenant of grace, he does our part and his own too. How then can those who are in the state of grace ever finally fall away?

Now God confirms us by working in us, by his Spirit, such graces as establish us. For instance, “I will put my fear into their hearts, that they shall never depart from me” (Jer 32:40); he establishes us by fear. “Make an end of your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that works in you both the will and the deed” (Phil 2:12-13). He puts into a man a spirit of jealousy over his corruptions, and a reverential, filial fear, which keeps him from presuming.

And likewise he preserves us by wisdom, as it is written: “When wisdom entereth into thy heart, discretion shall preserve thee, and understanding shall keep thee” (Prov 2:10-11).

And by faith: “you are kept,” says the apostle, “by the mighty power of God through faith to salvation” (1 Pet 1:5).

And by peace of conscience, which is worked in the heart by the Spirit: “The peace of God which passeth all understanding shall guard,” for so the word signifies, “your hearts and minds” (Phil 4:7). That is, a true believer who is once in Christ finds such joy in the Holy Ghost, such inward peace of conscience, as preserves and guards him from despair, from the temptations of Satan, from the seeming wrath of God. So God, as he establishes us, establishes us in a way that becomes Christians, that becomes men, by sanctifying our understandings, by working grace in our hearts, the grace of fear, of wisdom, of faith, of peace, and so on. So a Christian now cannot presume, except in a holy kind of presumption, that God will finish his own good work. But of this, I say, I shall have a fitter occasion to speak hereafter.

To conclude, therefore: God, you see, must establish, and God will establish. It is a point of great comfort every way: comfort from the foundation and root in whom we are established, and from him who has taken upon himself to establish us, God by his Holy Spirit. If a Christian should fall, God would have to be unstable, or Christ the foundation would have to be unstable, or the Holy Spirit by whom we are established would have to be unstable. But it would be blasphemy to think so.

I come now to the last thing, the subject, that is, the persons who are established: “us with you.”

“He that stablisheth us with you.” We should have honorable thoughts of all Christians. There is an ointment that runs down upon the very skirts of Aaron’s garment (Ps 133:2). There is not a Christian so low but that he receives something from Christ the head. Perhaps you have one grace in an eminent degree. It may be that he has another more eminent than you have. You may have more knowledge, he may have more humility; you may have more strength of judgment, he may have more sense of his own wants. There is something in every Christian that is valuable, that is estimable and precious, not only in the eye of God, who valued him so much as to give his Son for him, but it should be so also in the eye of stronger Christians.

Therefore St. Paul here, a strong Christian, out of the sweetness of his spirit, joins “us with you.” He does not say “you with us,” but as if they were as firmly set in Christ as himself, he says “us with you.” He puts them together with himself. For indeed all of us, one with another, weak Christians and strong Christians, fetch all that we have from one fountain, draw all from one spring, and are all led by one Spirit.

You have here also the character of a sound Christian: he loves and values all Christians. A carnal man may value excellent Christians who have excellent gifts, from whom he hopes for kindness in some particular respect, but he does not love all the saints. Love to all Christians as they are Christians, because they have some anointing of the Spirit, some earnest, something in them to be valued, is a mark of a good and sound Christian.

Another reason why he joins “us with you” is to show that the working of the Spirit is not in the members severed from the body, but as they are in the body. The Spirit works in us, but in us with you, and in you with us. That is, as all the vital spirits come from the head and heart to the several members of the body, so the members must be united, they must be in the body, before they can have the benefit of those spirits. There must be a union with Christ the head and with the rest of the members before we can have the Spirit to strengthen us and anoint us. Those who tear themselves from the body cannot hope for establishing from the head.

This should be a bond to tie us to the communion of saints. We have all that we have in the body; we all grow in the body; we are all stones in one building, of which Christ is the foundation. Therefore, as stones in an arch strengthen one another, so should we. Let us look for grace to be given in the communion of saints. It is a bad sign when any man will be a solitary Christian and will stand alone by himself. As we are knit to Christ by faith, so we must be knit to the communion of saints by love. What we have of the Spirit we have in the communion of saints. This is worth observing, the better to cherish Christian lovingness.

Thus you see the parts of this sentence, in which we have the grace itself here spoken of, “stablishing.” In whom we are established: “In Christ.” By whom? “By God.” And who those are that are established: “Us with you.”

Now to make some application of it all.

Use. If it is God who establishes us, let us make this use of it: let God have the glory of our establishing. If we have it in dependence upon God by prayer, let us return all by praise and thanksgiving. All comes from his pure grace; let all return to his pure glory. “Not unto us, but unto thy name give the praise” (Ps 115:1). It is the song of the church on earth and the song of the church triumphant in heaven that all glory be to God in the whole course of salvation. The promises are his; establishing is his. That he would make a covenant, that is his; that he will perform his covenant to us, that is his; that he will enable us to perform the covenant, that is by his strength. All is his. Therefore, both in the church here and in the church in heaven, our song should be: Great, and gracious, and merciful is the true God, who is so gracious and righteous in all his promises.

Let us labor, I beg you, for establishing, especially in these times. Is it not a shame that we have gained no more ground now than we had sixty years ago? Indeed, that we are rather calling principles into question? The pope has been antichrist; traditions have been counted as traditions, and not equal with the word. What, shall we now stagger in the foundation? Is this our progress? Oh, beloved, labor to be established in the present truth, that you may not be a prey for every subtle man.

And here I would speak especially to the younger sort, that they should labor for this establishing early, before they are engaged in the world and before other business possesses them too deeply. For falsehood has more agreement with our corruption and suits it better, especially if it is urged by subtle wits. It prevails much with unstable dispositions. Those who are uncatechized and ungrounded are soon led away. Therefore, along with other studies we should study the truth, and remember that our best calling is to be a Christian, and our best honor to be able to stand for the truth we profess.

Labor to have fundamental graces established, and then all will be established. If the root is strengthened, the tree stands fast; root graces must be strengthened.

1. Humility. The foundation of religion is very low, and humility and self-abasement are in all parts of religion. Every grace has a mixture of humility, because our graces are from God; they are dependent things. Now humility is an emptying grace, and acknowledges that in myself I am nothing. Spiritual poverty with humility acknowledges that in myself I am a dependent creature. If God withholds his influence, if God withdraws his grace, I shall be as other men, as Samson was when his hair was cut. Our strength is in God altogether.

Let us pray that we may be humble: “God gives grace to the humble” (Jas 4:6). “When I am weak,” says blessed St. Paul, “then I am strong”; that is, when I am humble, and feel and acknowledge my weakness, “then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10). Otherwise a man is not strong when he is weak, but when he feels and acknowledges his weakness. Therefore let us labor to grow in humility and self-denial, and we shall grow in strength.

2. Then again, another root grace to be established is faith. Depend upon God altogether. For since our strength is outside ourselves, and faith is a grace that goes out of ourselves and lays hold of what is outside ourselves, faith is necessary to our establishing. “Believe, and ye shall be stablished,” says the prophet (Isa 7:9). Though the promise is sure in itself, yet we must be established by faith. How does God establish us? By working a spirit of faith. Therefore strengthen faith, and you strengthen all other graces. All of them have their issue from faith.

3. And faith comes from sound knowledge; therefore knowledge has the name of faith: “This is eternal life, to know thee” (John 17:3). Strengthen and increase knowledge. Historical faith is nothing but knowledge, when we know the word of God to be as it is; and that is the ground of justifying faith and dependence. For the more I know God in covenant as he has revealed himself, and the more I know the promise, and the more I know Christ, the more I shall depend upon him and trust in him. “They that know thy name will trust in thee” (Ps 9:10).

Therefore let us labor for certainty of knowledge, that we may have certainty of faith. What is the reason that our faith is weak? Because men do not care to increase their knowledge. The more we know of God, the more we shall trust him. The more we know of a man we hold bonds from, that he is an able man and true to his word, the more we shall trust him, and the more our security upon his promise and bond is increased. So the more we know of God as he has revealed himself in his word, and the voluntary covenant he has made with us, and performed in the examples of Scripture, the more we know him, the more we shall trust him.

And this must be a spiritual knowledge, not only a bare, naked reading; it must be spiritual, like the truth itself. We must see and know spiritual things in their own light. To know them by their own light is to know them by the Spirit. You know that the Spirit dictated the Scripture to the prophets and apostles. The Spirit did all; they wrote as they were moved by the Spirit. Now the same Spirit must inform our understanding and take away the veil of ignorance and unbelief. I say, the Spirit must do it. We must know spiritual things in their own light.

Therefore a carnal man can never be a good theologian, however much knowledge he may have. An unlearned man of another calling may be a better theologian than a great scholar. Why? Because the scholar has only notional knowledge, reasoned knowledge, gathering one thing from another by the strength of his natural abilities. Theology is a kind of art, and as far as it is an art of proving one thing by another, a natural man may do wonders in it, and yet know nothing in its own spiritual light. That is the reason the devil himself knows nothing. He is a spirit of darkness because he knows nothing spiritually and with comfort. Therefore, as there must be humility and faith for our establishing, so there must be spiritual knowledge.

It is said here that God establishes us. The same God who establishes us must give us the faith by which we are established, and he must give us knowledge. Beg God to grant us his Spirit. When we read the Scriptures, beg God to open our understanding by his own Spirit, that as there is light in the Scriptures, so there may be in us.

You know an eye must have light before it can see the light. Light in itself is full of the revealing of things. I can see nothing unless there is light in my eye too. There must be a double light. So there must be a Spirit in me, as there is a Spirit in the Scripture, before I can see anything. God must open our eyes and give us spiritual eye-salve to see, and then the light of the Scripture and our light together are sufficient to found a saving faith on, as well as an establishing faith.

What is the reason that a Christian stands to his profession, though he is weak, when the most learned men in the world flinch in persecution? The knowledge of the Christian is spiritual and heavenly; he has light in him. The learned man has no divine, spiritual light. When light is joined with light, the light in the soul with the light in the Scripture, it makes men wondrously confident.

1. To this end, labor to be acquainted with God’s word. Study the Scriptures and other treatises of that kind, that you may be able to hold fast the truth, so that it is not wrung from you on any occasion. And in reading, it is a good course to observe the main, principal, undeniable truths, such doctrinal truths as are clear and evident, and to lay them up, and often to put questions to ourselves: Do I understand this or not? Yes, I do; this I know is true. Build on it then, and ground the soul upon it. And so if it is a matter of promises: These promises are undeniably true; I will rest my soul upon them. And so when we meet with plain evidences in the Scriptures that cross our corruptions, that confront our known sins, then regard those places as jewels, and lay them up that you may have use of them as occasion serves.

Not all things in Scripture have an equal certainty to us. Some things we may hold with an implicit faith, but the main things we must clearly apprehend. There are some things that teachers are more concerned to know than others are, because of their standing in the church. In such things it is sufficient that in preparation of mind we are ready to embrace further truths that shall be revealed; but with fundamental truths it is not so. We must have our hearts established upon them, that as they are certain in themselves, so they may be certain to us. And let us often examine ourselves: Would I die in this, and for this? Would I stand in the defense of this against anyone? This will make us prize as much truth as we know, and labor to grow in truths of that kind.

2. And do not stumble when you hear that any who are of great reputation shrink from the profession of the truth and the maintaining of it. Was Christ the worse for Judas’s betraying him and for Peter’s denying him? Was Paul’s truth the worse because he had many enemies, Elymas the sorcerer and others? Is the truth the worse because there are many who have a carnal, outward dependence, who seem to shrink when they should stand firm? The truth is not the worse. It is the same truth still. Truths are eternal in themselves, and in the good they bring, if they are believed. The word of God endures forever. It is not variable, as man is. And therefore do not be discouraged, though men discountenance it. Remember whose truth it is, and for whose good it is given. The word of God is a soul-saving truth.

3. And retain the truth in love. Love is an affection with which we should receive the truth, or else God will give us over to uncertainties. The people in 2 Thessalonians 2:10 had the truth, “but because they received not the love of the truth,” therefore God sent them “strong delusions,” that they should believe a lie.

Oh, how lovely is the truth! The certainty of our estate in Christ; the glorious privileges that come by him; that the gifts of God are without repentance; that God looks on us, not for foreseen faith or works, but such as he had decreed to work himself: how comfortable! How lovely are these truths, being the word of God, even though some seek to shake them! These very truths should be retained in love. And indeed, the truth is not in its own place until it is fixed in the heart and affections and in a good conscience, which St. Paul likewise makes the vessel of the truth; and those who do not care for a good conscience make shipwreck of the truth.

4. And what truths you know, labor to practice, and then you shall be established. “If any man do the will of my Father,” says our Savior, “he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself” (John 7:17). Be true to known truths; do not be false by disobeying them. “To him that hath shall be given” (Matt 13:12). We have a little establishing; by a uniform obedience to the truth we shall have more. God will increase it.

I say, let us be faithful to the truths we have, and not cross them in any sinful course. Let us not keep the truth prisoner to any base affection, as those did in Romans 1:21 and following. They had only the light of nature, yet because they imprisoned it and held it in unrighteousness, and lived in sins contrary to the light that God had kindled in them, though I say it was only the light of nature, God gave them up to sins not to be named. Much more will he do so to us if we withhold the light of the gospel. Take heed, therefore, that we do not enslave the truth to any base lust whatsoever, and that is a means of being established in the truth.

5. And be often in holy conversation with others. Conversation, if it is rightly used, is a special means of establishing us. That is most certain which is certain after doubting and debate, because what is doubted at first we come to be resolved about at last, by comparing reason with reason, always remembering that saying of St. Ambrose, that there must be no striving for victory, but for truth. And then, when we have tried all, we must keep what is good, and not always be like iron between two lodestones, pulled this way and that way, always doubting and never resolved. There must be a time of resolution. The apostle observes this to be an excellent way of establishing, often to confer about doubtful things.

6. And labor to get experience of the truth in ourselves; nothing establishes more than experience. In John 6:68, when many left our Savior Christ out of dullness, not understanding the spiritual things he taught (like many whose wits will serve for matters of the world, and to make them great among men, but when they come to heavenly things they have no understanding and cannot apprehend them), he asks his disciples, “Will you go away also?” (John 6:67). Peter, who had his heart opened by the Spirit of God, says, “Lord, whither shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life,” implying that the experience he had of the power of the truth Christ taught so established him in the present truth that, with a holy kind of indignation at the question, he replies, “Whither shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.” As if he said, I have found your words to have a spiritual life in them.

So when we once come to have an experiential knowledge of the truths we learn, then our hearts are established. Indeed, then it is an “ingrafted word,” as St. James says (Jas 1:21); then the word is true leaven, when it alters and changes the soul. In such a case there is no separating from fundamental truth, when it is one with ourselves and digested into us.

7. And pray to God often, as David did (Ps 86:11), to knit our hearts to fear his name. Lord, my heart is loose and ready to fall away of itself. Oh, knit my heart! It is unsettled. Oh, settle my unsettled heart! Settle my judgment and affections. This should be our meditation.

8. And because it is God who establishes, always maintain spiritual poverty in the soul, that is, a perpetual dependence upon God. See the insufficiency that is in ourselves, that we cannot stand firm. What is the reason that God allows great men to fall from the defense of the truth, and from the profession of it in their lives, as we see in the case of Peter? To show that we do not stand by our own strength. Therefore we should always be in this temper of spiritual poverty, knowing that as Samson’s strength was in his hair, so our strength is in God. God is my strength; of myself I have no strength. And therefore at every new defense of the truth, when we are called to it, we should lift up brief prayers and dart up strong desires to God, that God would strengthen and establish our souls, that we may not be traitors to the truth, but that we may stand by it; for in his own strength no man shall be established.

9. And grow every day more and more in detestation of a lukewarm temper. Your double-minded ones, as Cyprian calls them, your doubtful flatterers of the times, who have their religion depending upon the state and the times, who are neither fish nor flesh, bats, as we say, that are neither mice nor birds, but of a doubtful religion, who out of carnal expediency are fit to entertain anything: oh, this is a devilish temper! However we, in our lukewarm disposition, value the truth, God values it highly. It was purchased by Christ’s blood and sealed by the blood of martyrs, and shall we not transmit it to our posterity as safe and as firm, and retain it, come what will?

Let us grow into dislike of this temper, a temper that we should hate as much as God hates it. It is such a temper as is in popery, where they are in a temper of indifference in religion, a lukewarm, cold temper, a temper of religion according to reasons of the flesh and reasons of expediency. This will make us be spewed out of God’s mouth at the last. Do we think we will lose religion alone? Oh no; never think to part with religion alone. It came with peace and prosperity, and if we do not keep this deposit, this truth delivered to us, God will take it away, and that for which we betray it, peace and plenty.

Use 1. Let us labor, therefore, to be rooted in our judgment, in our affections, in our love, in our faith, in our whole inward man, in the truth revealed. To be established in the truth is our best inheritance; it is what will stand by us when all leaves us.

What firmness does a man have outside the truth? Are you rich or honored? Death will drive you out of all your riches and honors in the world, and strip you of all. What establishing does any man have but in Christ, in the truth? Take a man who has no foundation, who is not fastened on Christ: he is the most changeable creature in the world, he is vanity, he is nothing.

Oh, love this state, so that we may say, “Though I am variable here, though I am not as rich as I was, or do not have the favor of great ones that I have had, or it is not with me as it has been, yet in all changes I have something that is unchangeable. My soul is settled upon Christ, and upon the truth in him, which is certain.” As it is a glorious being to be found in Christ, so it is an eternal and an everlasting being: once Christ’s, and forever his; he will never lose a member. Let us labor therefore to be established in Christ in all the changes and alterations in the world, and then we will have something unchangeable to fix and stay ourselves upon, even in the hour of death.

Use 2. Again, in the second place, to make a use of examination, I beg you, examine yourselves whether you find this establishing in your hearts or not, whether your hearts are thus settled or not by the Spirit of God. For, beloved, it is worth the labor and pains to get this grace, and to be assured that you have it. Establishing in Christ is most necessary, and we stand in need of a great deal of spiritual strength. Do we know what times may come? If dangerous times come, if we are not established, what will become of us? Oh, it is a happy state, a Christian who is established in the sound knowledge and faith of Christ! I beg you therefore to consider it. Let me give you an evidence or two by which you may discern whether your hearts are settled and established.

1. A man has the grace of establishing and confirmation when it is upon the word, when God establishes him upon the promises.

2. And then, again, by the effect of it. A man is established by the Spirit of God when his temptations are great and his strength to resist is little, and yet notwithstanding he prevails. Satan is strong. If we prevail against Satan’s temptations, we are established. God is strong, too strong for us. If we can break through the clouds when he seems an enemy, as Job did, “Though thou kill me, yet will I trust in thee” (Job 13:15), here is a prevailing, an established faith. In great afflictions, when clouds are between us and God, when we have faith that will break through those clouds and see God through them shining in Christ, here is a strong, an established faith, because here are mighty temptations and oppositions.

The strength is known by the strength of the opposition and the weakness of the party. In the times of martyrdom, there was fire and stake, and the frowns of cruel persons. Who were the persons who suffered? Children, women, old men sometimes, all weak. Children, a weak age; women, a weak sex; old men, a withered, melancholy, dry age, fearful of constitution. But when the Spirit of God was so strong in young ones, in weak women, in old withered men, as to enable them to endure the torment of fire, to enable them to endure threatenings and whatever else, as we see in Hebrews 11:35-37, here was a mighty work in weak men.

A man may know that here is establishing grace, because unless there were something above nature, where would a man be in such a case? A man may especially know that there is establishing grace when he sees something above nature prevailing over the temptation and confirming the weak nature of man. That is the best evidence we have of God’s establishing grace. Sometimes those who are stronger at some times are weaker at other times; but, as I said before, that is to teach them that they have their strength from God.

3. Again, if your hearts are soundly based and founded and grounded on Christ and the promises of God in him, then you will be freed at least from all victory of, and slavery to, base fears, and base cares, and base sorrows, and base passions.

A man who has no settled being on Christ is tossed up and down with every passion. He is full of fears and cares for the world, which distract the soul on every occasion, and full of unseasonable and needless sorrows and griefs, which vex and perplex the soul continually. Oh, how he fears for the time to come! “What will become of me if such a thing happens? How will I be able to live in such a time…?”

If he were settled upon God in Christ as his Father, if he were established upon the promises of God in Christ: “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee” (Heb 13:5); “Fear not, little flock, it is the Father’s will to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32); and “Why do you fear, O you of little faith?” (Matt 8:26); and, he who provides for the birds of the air, for the sparrows, for the lilies of the field, for the poorest creature, will he not much more provide for you (Matt 6:25 and following)? If, I say, we were thus established upon Christ and the promises, there would be no disquiet. Those are the fears and griefs that usually perplex and enslave the minds of men. But where there are these distracting cares, and vexing sorrows, and needless fears, it shows an unsettled heart, though perhaps there may be some faith notwithstanding.

Let us often examine ourselves in this particular: how is it with us when such thoughts arise? What if trouble should come? What if change and alteration should come? He who has truly settled his heart will say, “If they do come, I am fixed. I know whom I have believed. I know I am a member of Christ, an heir of heaven, and that God is reconciled to me in his Son. I know God has taken me out of the condition I was in by nature, and has advanced me to a better condition than I can have in the world. And when the world is turned upside down, I know, when all things fail, I shall stand.”

The man whose heart can answer him this way is firm. A good man, says the psalmist, “shall not be afraid of evil tidings” (Ps 112:7). Why? His heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord; and again, “His heart is stablished, therefore he shall not be afraid” (Ps 112:8). If our hearts are established, then we will not be afraid of evil tidings, nor afraid of wars, nor of troubles, nor of loss of friends, nor of loss of favors, or the like. A righteous man is afraid of no evil.

He who has his heart established in Christ, and who has peace of conscience wrought by the Spirit of God in the promises, has a fixed heart. In all alterations and changes, he has something that is unchangeable. Even when he ceases to be in this world, he has a perpetual, eternal being in Christ. If he dies, he goes to heaven. He has his being there, where he enjoys a nearer communion with Christ than he can have in this world. So everything moves toward the better for the man who is established in Christ; for to be established in Christ is not the act of one day. God does it more and more until death, and then comes a perfect consummation of this establishing. “We shall be for ever with the Lord,” says the apostle (1 Thess 4:17). A man, then, who is established in Christ is fixed, he is built on a rock; come what can come, he is not afraid.

Alas! Others who are not so are like wicked Ahaz in Isaiah 7:2. He was boisterous out of trouble, but in trouble he was just as fearful. His heart shook “as the leaves of the forest,” as the leaves of the forest when the wind comes. They are shaken because they are not properly knit to the tree, because they have no stability.

All those whose hearts are not firmly settled in the knowledge of Christ and the excellent prerogatives that come by him, when trouble comes, are as the leaves of the forest; or, as you have it in Psalm 1:4, “As the chaff that the wind driveth to and fro,” because it has no consistency, it is a light body; or as “the dross” (Ps 119:119), God shall destroy the wicked as dross. See how the Scripture compares men, not only for their wickedness but for their misery, men who have no certain being except on earthly things. However great they are, and however deeply rooted, as they think, when troubles come they are as dross, they are as chaff that has no firmness before the wind; when the wind of judgment comes, they are as stubble, immediately wasted and brought to nothing.

I beg you therefore, without deceiving our own hearts, let us enter into our own souls and examine, for our knowledge first, and then for our boldness.

What do you know in religion that you would die for, or die in? We are established to good purpose in no more than we would die for. Are those truths you know so firmly wrought in you by the Spirit of God? Do you have such experience of them, such spiritual sense and taste of their goodness, that you would be content to part with your life rather than part with them? Then you are established by the Spirit of God in Christ. I do not speak of every little truth; a man need not die for that. But I speak of fundamental truths. Can you prove them to be so out of the Scripture? And do you find the testimony of Jesus Christ witnessing to your heart that they are true? Then you are confirmed and established in these truths.

I beg you, let us often examine upon what grounds, and how firmly, we know what we know. For do we not have many who, if the adversaries should come, would conform to popery and join themselves to Rome, because they cannot back their principles with Scriptures, and because they have no spiritual understanding and apprehension of divine truths? Now he who is established stands firm against temptations and against arguments; he will not be won away from his faith, but remains immovable.

Therefore, I say, let us often examine ourselves in this particular. “I believe this and this against the papists and others. Yes, but how will I stand firm for this? If trials should come, am I able to prove this from the Scriptures as clearly as if it were written, as one says, ‘with a sunbeam’?” The temptation and assaults of the devil, by men’s subtle wits and arguments, will shake our judgments; they will hurt more, and if the time should come, will try us better than fire and stake.

As for those spies who brought an evil report upon the land of Canaan, we see that the land, when it was won, was fruitful enough, and the conquest of it honorable, and in this those spies revealed their own weakness. Yet when they had made that shrewd speech, and brought subtle arguments to the eye of flesh and blood, we see, I say, how the people were discouraged and how they staggered (Num 13:33 and following). So a man who is not established may sometimes have shrewd men to deal with, perhaps atheists, papists, Jesuits, and the devil joining with them to unsettle men; and they will prevail if men are not well settled and established beforehand.

4. And so for the course of our life and conduct among men, we should examine how we are established in that; for we are to stand firm not only in cases of religion, but in causes of honesty. John the Baptist was as good as a martyr, though the cause he died for was not religion, but a bold telling of Herod, when John thought he took an unlawful course in keeping his brother’s wife (Mark 6:18).

An honest man may die and suffer much for civil matters. Therefore examine yourselves in this. “I have undertaken this cause: upon what ground? In what confidence? How far would I willingly go in it? Could I be content to lose the favor of great ones? To die in the quarrel if need be?” So far as a man is established by God’s Spirit, so far is he settled also in this.

You have had heathen men who would stand firm even to the death, against all disfavor, against all losses and crosses, in witness to civil truths, as the story is told of Papinian, an excellent lawyer, who in the defense of right stood forth to the loss of his life; and there have been many other examples like it. But the Spirit of God establishes men much more. “This I understand, this is good, this I will stand in, come what will, when I am called to it.”

Let us often call ourselves to account: what we believe, and upon what ground; what we do, and upon what ground we undertake it; whether on grounds of conscience, or out of spite and passion. When a man undertakes things on natural grounds, in great temptations, if God does not assist him, he will sink. Take the bravest spirits there are: if they have no more than nature, though they may stand firm sometimes, to the shame of Christians, yet in some cases they will show themselves to be only mere natural men.

And therefore labor for the Spirit to establish us. It is not necessary that we should enjoy our wealth, nor the favor of men, nor our life itself; but it is necessary that we should keep a good conscience, it is necessary that we should be saved, it is necessary that we should look upon our Judge with confidence at the day of judgment.

It becomes Christians, who besides the light of nature have the Spirit to establish them, to be settled in their courses, to see that the conscience is good, the cause good, the aim good. If such a one gives up when the cause is clear and good, it is a sign that his heart is not established by the Spirit of God in Christ. He either has corrupt aims, or else he is weak, and does not understand the grounds of religion and the vanity of this life as he should.

There are none who flinch and give up in a good quarrel but it is either from hypocrisy, in that he pretends to believe in Christ and life everlasting and yet does not; or else it is from extreme and astonishing weakness, which, if he belongs to God, he will recover from, as Peter did, and will stand more strongly another time.

It is only a forced, a false encouragement and establishing, when a man who does not have the Spirit of God makes light of death, though perhaps he dies in a good quarrel and with some comfort. For when a man knows that after death there is a judgment, and that God has many things to lay to his charge, when his conscience tells him that he is guilty of a thousand deaths, if he is not in Christ and his pardon is not sealed by the Spirit of God in the blood of Christ, is it not madness to be courageous in that which he cannot conquer?

It is good for a man to be courageous in time of conquest. It is a dastardly thing for a Christian to be cowardly, because he has death and hell conquered, and everything is made serviceable to help him to heaven. But for another man to make light of these things is mere madness. No man but a Christian can be stout and courageous, unless it is from a false spirit; especially in things that are above man’s natural power, as death is: it is eternal, and what man can stand firm against the eternal wrath of God?

And therefore those who put on a Roman stoutness and courage, though they seem to have strong spirits, have only a false strength; either they are besotted with sensuality, or else with a spirit of pride. When they look before them and see eternity, and see their sins, and that they must all appear at the day of judgment, they cannot be strong. Let us labor therefore to have our hearts established by the Spirit of God; and let us try ourselves often by putting questions: How do we do things? With what minds, and upon what grounds?

5. Again, another evidence by which we may know that we have spiritual strength and stability in Christ wrought in us by the Spirit of God is this: when it makes us desire the coming of Christ; when it makes us think of death and of the time to come with joy and comfort; and when for the present it gives us boldness to the throne of grace in extremities. When a man can go to God in Christ in extremity, it is a sign his heart is established.

Hypocrites in extremity fly to desperate courses, as Saul and Ahithophel did; but in extremity the soul that is established goes to God. “My God, my God,” says Christ (Mark 15:34); so Job, “Though he kill me, yet will I trust in him” (Job 13:15). I say, it is an evidence of a soul established upon Christ by the Spirit of God to have “boldness to the throne of grace” (Heb 4:16) in extremity; indeed, even when God seems to hide himself, which is the principal extremity of all, as in divine temptations, when God seems to be an enemy. Then for a man to fight and wrestle with God, and tug with the temptation, and not to let God go, though God should kill him, this is a true Israel, a conqueror of God; this is a heart fortified by the Spirit.

It is a proof of an established heart when, besides the present, a man can for the time to come cheerfully and boldly think how it will be with him when death comes: that he will go to Christ, that the match begun by God between Christ and him will be fully made up (for the contract is in this world, but the nuptials are celebrated in heaven), and in confidence of this can say, “Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly” (Rev 22:20).

A heart that is not established says, “Oh, do not come!” “Wherefore art thou come to torment us before our time?” (Matt 8:29), say the devils to Christ. So an unestablished heart, at the hour of death, is afraid it will be tormented before the time; and therefore “Do not come, do not come,” says such a soul. But the soul that is established upon Christ, and upon the promises in Christ of forgiveness of sins and life everlasting by the Spirit of Christ, that soul says, “Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.”

I have been longer on this point than I intended. These unsettled times moved me to speak a little more than ordinary, that we might labor to have our hearts established, so that whatever comes, we may have something certain to stick to; that our state in Christ may be sure, whatever becomes of our state in the world otherwise.

Who hath anointed us, and also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts (2 Cor 1:22).

The apostle, having earlier laid open the riches of a Christian, comes in this verse to show his strength. His riches consist in the promises of God in Christ; his strength, in being established on those promises. Now what he had spoken of more generally in the word “stablishing,” he unfolds in three borrowed terms, “anointing,” “sealing,” and “earnest,” implying in them the manner in which the Spirit establishes a Christian. “He who stablisheth us”: how is that brought about? By the Spirit “anointing,” by the Spirit “sealing,” and by “the earnest of the Spirit.” All three of these terms argue assurance.

For you know that in the old law kings, priests, and prophets were anointed; that is, they were authorized and confirmed in their offices. And as for sealing, writings among ourselves are “sealed” for security. And an “earnest” secures contracts and bargains. So whatever may serve to strengthen a Christian’s faith and assurance is laid down here. God, to help our souls by our senses, draws it from human affairs, applying words borrowed from earthly commerce, by a heavenly and ascending sense, to spiritual things.

First, the sure estate of a Christian is set down in general by “stablishing”; and then in particular, we are “anointed and sealed,” and have “the earnest of the Spirit.”

God, in the covenant of grace, does our part and his own too. He gives faith, and strengthens faith, and seals us. He gives us promises, he establishes us on those promises, and he works our hearts to embrace them. He anoints us, and seals us, and gives us “the earnest of the Spirit.” All in the covenant of grace depends on the faithfulness of God and not on ours, or on ours only in dependence on him, as he is faithful in establishing us.

Now, because the holy apostle would have us settled in the excellency of the state of a Christian in the covenant of grace, you see how large-hearted he is. He uses four words implying one and the same thing, “stablishing,” “anointing,” “sealing,” and giving “earnest,” all of them words used in ratification among men.

God is pleased to stoop to speak to us in our own language, to speak of heavenly things in an earthly manner; and therefore he sets down the certain estate of a Christian in borrowed terms. This is a gracious condescending of God, stooping, as it were, lower than himself. And indeed he always abases himself in this way when he deals with man, coming down far below himself.

To come to the words in particular.

“And hath anointed us.” This word has a double reference. The Holy Spirit carries our minds, first, to the relation and proportion between the graces of the Spirit of God and the ointment with which in former times they were anointed in the Jewish polity. And it has reference and relation likewise to the persons who were anointed. The persons were kings, priests, and prophets.

Now God has anointed us in Christ. The order is this:

First, Christ himself, as Mediator, is “anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows” (Ps 45:7), but for his fellows. The ointment is first poured on the head of the spiritual Aaron, and then it runs down to all the skirts of his garment, that is, to the lowliest Christian. Even as the smallest finger and toe are animated, and enlivened, and moved by the same soul and spirits as the head and the chief vital parts are, so it is with every Christian. Though he is only as the toe or the foot, yet all have it communicated by the Spirit from Christ the head.

So the third person, the Holy Spirit, who sanctified the human nature of Christ, who filled and enriched it with all grace, and who anointed Christ, is the same Spirit who enriches all his mystical members. As there is one Spirit in Christ and in that sacred body he took on himself, so in the mystical body there is only one Spirit, quickening, and enlivening, and moving the head and the members. He is a head of influence as well as a head of eminence. “Of his fulness we have all grace for grace” (John 1:16). He is first anointed, and then we are anointed in him.

We will speak of it first as it has reference to the ointment, and then as it has reference to the persons anointed.

In the first place, then, why are graces here called anointing?

I answer, they are called “anointing” with reference to that compounded ointment in Exodus 30:22 and following, where you have the composition of the holy oil laid down.

But more particularly, you may observe these six points in which the relation stands.

1. Ointment is a supereminent liquid: it will have the highest place, it will have the eminence and be above all other liquids, and in that respect it is a royal liquid. So the graces of God’s Spirit are of an eminent nature. Spiritual gifts are above the gifts of nature, and spiritual blessings are above earthly things. The grace of God is a supereminent, a royal thing. It will be above all, even above our natural abilities. If a man has a strong wit by nature, grace will subdue his wit, so that he will be wise only to salvation, and strong only to defend the truth and to do nothing against it. He will subject and subordinate his abilities and whatever excellency he has by nature to grace, and cast all at Christ’s feet, and count all as dung, in comparison of the excellent knowledge of Christ (Phil 3:8).

And so again, grace is above corrupt nature, above all our corruptions. It will bring them under. It will subdue corruptions, temptations, afflictions, anything you like that is either natural or diabolical; for grace is spiritual, and that which is spiritual is above all that is below. Grace is of an invincible nature. It will bear sway little by little. It is little in quantity, but it is mighty in operation.

And it is above any outward excellency whatsoever. If a man is a king, and if he has this anointing, it makes him better than himself. He is better in that he is a Christian, in that he has this sacred anointing, than for any other created excellency under heaven whatsoever, yes, though he were an angel. Grace has its derivation and influence from Christ, who is higher than all and will be above all; and so will grace. That is the first. Other liquids, the best of them, will lie beneath, but oil will be above all.

2. Grace is compared to ointment because ointment is sweet and delightful. So was the ointment that was poured on our Savior by the woman in the gospel. Therefore the spouse speaks of Christ in this way: “Because,” she says, “of the savour of thy good ointments, thy name is an ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love thee” (Song 1:3). The graces that are in Christ are so sweet that they draw the virgins; they draw all believers after him.

So grace in a Christian makes us sweet; it sweetens our persons and our actions. It sweetens our persons to God. God delights in the fragrance of his own graces. It makes us delectable, fit for Christ and his Holy Spirit to lodge in our souls as in a garden of spices. It makes us sweet to the church, to the communion of saints. A man of grace, who has his corruptions subdued, is wondrously sweet. His heart is like fine silver; everything that comes from him is sweet. When the woman poured the box of ointment on Christ, the whole house was filled with its fragrance (John 12:3). So the whole church is filled with the fragrance of the graces of good men, who either live in the present times or have left their graces in writing to posterity.

A wicked man is an abomination to God, and so are all his actions. He who is in the flesh “cannot please God” (Rom 8:8). As for the civil, respectable man who does not have this anointing, all that he does is abominable to God. All things are unclean to the unclean (Titus 1:15): even their best actions have a tincture of defilement from their corruption. Without this ointment we are not sweet, either to God or to others. Therefore the Scripture calls men in the state of nature swine and goats, stinking creatures. And so indeed those who do not have this anointing are stinking goats, and they will be set at Christ’s left hand, unless they have grace to sweeten their understandings and affections and to draw them higher than nature can.

Likewise grace is full of sweetness to a man’s own self. It sweetens our nature and our actions to ourselves. A “good conscience,” being privy to the work of grace in itself, “is a continual feast” (Prov 15:15). The conscience of a Christian, once renewed by grace, enlarges the soul and fills it with sweet peace and joy in believing.

3. The graces of the Spirit are called anointing because anointing strengthens. Therefore warriors and combatants among the heathen who were about to fight were usually anointed first. So there is a spirit of strength in all who are true Christians, which they have received from God, by which they are able to do what worldlings cannot do. They are able to deny themselves, to overcome themselves in matters of revenge and the like. They are able to be in want and to abound, to bear crosses, to resist temptations, and, as the apostle says, “able to do all things” (Phil 4:13). Nothing can stand in the way of a man of grace, no, not the gates of hell. He who is in him, that is, grace, is stronger “than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4). The smallest measure of grace, though it is only as a “grain of mustard seed,” is stronger than the greatest measure of opposition, though strengthened with all the power of hell.

4. Ointment makes the joints of the body nimble. So this spiritual anointing oils the joints of the soul, as I may say, and makes them nimble and ready to serve God “in newness of Spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter” (Rom 7:6). God’s people are called “a willing people” (Ps 110:3), and a cheerful people, ready for every good work. And there is good reason for it, for they have an inward spiritual anointing that makes them active and nimble in everything they do. That Spirit who sanctifies them tells them what Christ has done for them, that “there is no damnation to them” (Rom 8:1), that God is reconciled to them, that they are freed from the greatest dangers, that all is theirs. And so their joy and nimbleness come from good reason; and there is a spirit of love in them toward God and Christ, which makes them nimble.

When a man is without grace, he goes about the service of God sluggishly and heavily. He is dragged and forced to prayer, and to hearing the word, and to spiritual conversation and meditation. He is dead and dull, and frozen to good works. But when a man has received this sweet anointing of the Spirit, his heart is enlarged to all duties whatsoever, and he is prepared for every good work.

5. Again, oil makes cheerful. So does grace. It makes us cheerful in adversity, cheerful in death, cheerful in those things that dismay the spirits of other men; so much grace, so much joy. For even as light and heat follow the fire, so the spirit of joy follows this spiritual anointing. A Christian’s awareness of the interest he has in the favor of God in Christ, and the evidences of grace stamped on his heart, and an assurance of a better estate in the world to come, wonderfully enlarge the soul with spiritual joy.

That which makes a man sluggish, and heavy, and earthly is not the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God is a Spirit of joy, and he puts a gracious cheerfulness in the heart of a Christian. If there is mourning, it is so that the heart may be more cheerful; for “light is sown to the righteous” (Ps 97:11), sometimes in mourning. “God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor 9:7), and a cheerful thanksgiver; all must be sweetened with cheerfulness. Now this comes from the Spirit of God, and he who is anointed with the Spirit partakes in some measure of spiritual joy and cheerfulness.

6. Again, ointment, you know, is of a healing nature, as balm and other sweet ointments have a healing power and virtue. The Scripture mentions the “balm of Gilead” (Jer 46:11); so grace has a healing power. Repentance! That is of a purging nature, and spiritual joy of a healing nature. There must, you know, be first a cleansing, and then a healing and strengthening; so some graces are purgative and cleansing, and others again are strengthening and healing.

Repentance is a good purgative. It carries away the malignant and evil matter. But the cordial that strengthens the soul is joy. “The joy of the Lord is your strength” (Neh 8:10). And so the grace of faith and of love tends to cherish and fortify the soul. So, I say, these graces, this balm of the Spirit, has a special sovereign power to heal us, to heal us both from the guilt of sin and from the dominion, and rule, and filthy stain of sin. It has both a purging and a cordial power.

Thus you see that on good grounds the graces of God’s Spirit, which he communicates to the elect, and only to those who are in Christ, are called “anointing”; and they will have the effect of an ointment in us, if we receive this anointing.

Let us therefore test ourselves by these things, whether we are anointed or not. What cheerfulness is there? What joy? What strength? What nimbleness toward that which is good? What sovereignty does grace have in our hearts? You have a company of people who profess religion but make it serve their own turn, who make heaven come under earth, who make the service of God stoop to other ends. Beloved, grace is a superior thing, and religion makes all things subordinate. Grace and religion, wherever they are in truth, are of a ruling nature; and so they are sweet, and they are strong, wherever they are. They are curing, and purging, and cleansing wherever they are. Therefore, I beg you, let us not deceive ourselves.

I need say no more on this point; you may enlarge it in your own meditations. I come to the persons.

As this anointing has reference to the ointment, so it has relation to the persons who were anointed.

Now the persons anointed were first dedicated by anointing; they were consecrated to God and separated from the world. And as they were dedicated and separated, so they were dignified by this anointing. It raised them above the common condition. And likewise with this anointing God gave them suitable qualifications.

You have three eminent persons who were anointed, and so raised above the common condition of other men.

Prophets, to teach the people.

Priests, to offer sacrifice.

Kings, to govern them.

Now Christ is principally all these. He is the principal Prophet of his church, “the Angel of the covenant” (Mal 3:1). He is the Word (John 1:1), because as the inward word, the mind of a man, is known by the outward word, so Christ is called the Word because, as a Prophet, he reveals his Father’s mind and makes known his Father’s will to us.

And he is the great High Priest. He makes atonement between God and us; he stands between his Father and us.

And he is the great King of his church, who rescues it from all its enemies, to protect and defend it.

But though Christ has received this anointing primarily, and “above his fellows” (Ps 45:7), yet, as I said before, he has received it for his fellows. Every Christian has his anointing from Christ’s anointing: all our graces and all our ointment are derived from him. “He,” says the apostle, “hath loved us, and washed us in his blood” (Rev 1:5). He loved us first, which is the cause of all, and then he washed us in his blood. He did not only shed his blood for us, but he “washed us in his blood.” He has applied his blood to our souls, and by applying it and sprinkling it on our souls, “he hath made us kings and priests to God his Father” (Rev 1:6).

And indeed, the great King of heaven and earth is and will be attended by none but kings and priests. He has no servants but such as are anointed. He is followed by none but eminent persons, such as are separated from the world and dignified above all other people; for the glory of his followers tends to his honor. Therefore those whom God chooses to be his attendants he qualifies, giving them the hearts of kings, royal qualifications, and the hearts of priests, and the hearts of prophets. But this is in general.

To show it, therefore, in particulars.

A Christian is anointed: he is a person severed from the world, dedicated to God, and dignified above others, and that for good reason, because God has given him an inward qualification, which is the foundation of all.

1. He is a true prophet, for he has received “the anointing” of the Spirit (1 John 2:27), by which he is enabled to discern things. He knows what true honor is: to be the child of God. He knows what true riches are: grace. He knows what true nobility is: to be “born of God” (1 John 2:29). He knows what true pleasure is: peace of conscience, and joy in the Holy Ghost (Rom 14:17). He can discern between seeming things and real things, and only he who has received this “anointing of the Spirit” can do so.

And again, as a prophet, he knows not only the things but the doing of the things. With the anointing of the Spirit he has the ability to do what he knows. The grace of God teaches him not only the duty, that he should live “justly, and soberly, and godly” (Titus 2:12), but teaches him to do the things. For God writes his laws in his inward parts, that is, in his affections. He can love and rejoice in God, and hate sin, and overcome revenge, and the like. The Spirit shows him divine things by a divine light. He sees heavenly things with a heavenly light; and divine and spiritual knowledge is a working knowledge, of the same nature as the things known.

The poorest Christian in the world, having this anointing, sees good things with such a convincing light, and evil things with such a convincing hatred, that he is doing and acting. But a Christian who does not have the Spirit may know heavenly things by a natural light, by a reasoning knowledge. He may know what he should do, and so perhaps he may talk, but he cannot do. He may talk of death, but he cannot die. He may talk and discourse of suffering, but when it comes, he cannot suffer. He may speak much of patience, but he cannot practice patience when the occasion comes. A true Christian has the knowledge of doing things.

And likewise he is able “to speak a word in due season,” to reprove, to admonish, to comfort (2 Tim 4:2). Every member in the communion of saints has some qualification in regard to knowledge, when he is put to it.

But especially he has received this anointing as a priest and a king.

2. As a priest, to stand before God and to offer up prayers for himself and others. Every Christian is a favorite in heaven. He has much credit there. He has God’s ear open at all times, and he puts it to use for the good of the church, for the good of others as well as for his own. And as we are to pray for ourselves and others, so we are to bless ourselves and others. That was one part of the priest’s office; and so, as the Scripture says, we are called to blessing. Therefore those who are given to cursing are not priests.

And again, a Christian who has received this anointing as a priest keeps himself “unspotted of the world” (Jas 1:27). You know the priests were to touch no unclean thing, nor to defile themselves with any manner of pollution. So every Christian in some measure is enabled to abstain from the common pollutions of the times, to hate “even the garment spotted with the flesh” (Jude 23). He is not carried along with the stream of the times; he will not keep friendly company with those who may stain him, except as his calling leads him, lest he contaminate his spirit.

And likewise a Christian has his heart always as the “holy of holies,” so that he may offer up thanks and praise to God. There is a disposition in him always to praise God. As the fire in the sanctuary must never go out, so the fire that is kindled by the Spirit of God in the heart of a Christian never goes out. The Holy Spirit maintains it continually. The Christian is ready to praise God on all occasions, and ready to offer himself to God as a sacrifice. The sacrifices of a Christian are a broken heart. And as in the law the sacrifices for sin had first to be killed and then offered, so now in the gospel it is the work of every Christian to mortify, to kill and slay those beasts, those corruptions in him that are contrary to God. A Christian must not offer himself to God as a sinner; he must first slay his corruptions. He must mortify his sins, and then offer himself up slain to God.

Therefore our care must be to mortify every corruption, every faculty of the soul, and every part of the body. We must circumcise our eyes, so that they do not behold vanity; and our ears, so that they do not hear or delight in unchaste things; and our thoughts and every part, our wills and affections. And then we must offer up soul and body as a living sacrifice to God, that all may be dedicated and sanctified to him; and then it is a sweet sacrifice. Then, when a Christian has dedicated himself to God, it is an easy matter to give his goods to God when God calls for them. Then he will be ready to let all go, as the apostle says of the Macedonians, they first gave themselves to God, and then to others (2 Cor 8:5).

Other sacrifices will follow when we have first given ourselves to God. Therefore the first sacrifice is to kill our corruptions and to offer ourselves to God, and then we will be ready to offer our estates and to have nothing except at God’s disposal: “O Lord! From your hand I have my body and my life, my goods and all. I give them to you. If you will have me enjoy them, I do; but if you will have them sacrificed, I am a priest. I am willing to offer myself to you as a burnt sacrifice, even to the death, and all other things whenever you are pleased to call for them.” And indeed, all other sacrifices of our goods, and thankfulness in words, will come off easily when we have offered ourselves, as I said before.

What is the reason that men will not part with a penny for good uses? They have not given themselves as sacrifices to God. Therefore in the Scripture we are pressed to give ourselves to God first, and it uses arguments to that purpose, such as that “we are not our own, but bought with a price” (1 Cor 6:20).

And so to the kingly office.

3. Every Christian by this anointing is made a king: “He hath loved us, and washed us, and made us kings” (Rev 1:6).

But how are we kings? I ask this to take away an objection that arises in the hearts of carnal men. “Oh,” they say, “these people talk as if they were kings, when perhaps they do not have a penny in their purse. They talk as if they were kings, when all the while they are underlings in the world. Here are kings indeed!” So think profane, conceited persons.

Indeed, all other things are only shadows; these are the realities. This is a kingdom in earnest. You live by sense and by fancy. Otherwise, if you had the spiritual eye-salve, if you had your eyes open to see the dignity of a Christian, you would judge him to be the only king in the world. Therefore I do not enlarge on this point to paint matters in fine colors; indeed, I rather speak under the truth. There is no excellency we can think of in this world that rises high enough to set out the state of a Christian. He is indeed a king.

For, I beseech you, what makes a king? Victory and conquest, that is what makes a king. Is he not a conqueror who has that in him which conquers the world and all things else? Others, who are not Christians, are slaves to lusts and pleasures. A Christian is the chief conqueror in the world. He conquers the world in his heart, and all temptations are inferior to him; he sees them as things he has gotten the mastery of. He subdues the principal enemy. A Christian does not fear death, he does not fear judgment, he does not fear the wrath of God. He knows that God is reconciled in Christ, and so all things are reconciled with him. God being at peace, all things else are at peace. So he is a conqueror. He has a kingdom in himself. Others have kingdoms outside themselves, and in themselves they are slaves. He is such a king as has a kingdom in himself. He has peace and joy, and rest from base affections and terror of conscience.

Is he not a king who is lord and master of all things? A Christian is master of prosperity. He conquers it, and he can make it serve his purpose: to be thankful to God, to be ready to distribute to others. He is master of adversity. “I can want and I can be abased, I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me,” says blessed Paul (Phil 4:12-13). He is an omnipotent king in some sense: he can do all through him that strengthens him.

He has conquered the king of fears, death. What makes the greatest monarch in the world shake and tremble, a Christian can think of with comfort. He can think of God’s wrath with comfort, as appeased in Christ, staunched with his blood. He can think of the day of judgment with comfort, knowing that his Savior will then be his judge, and that he will stand at the right hand of God. He can think of afflictions with comfort. He is sanctified to all things, and all things are sanctified to him, and all things shall work for his good (Rom 8:28); nothing shall be able to separate him from God’s love to him in Christ, neither things present nor things to come (Rom 8:38).

That which terrifies the Belshazzars of the world, and makes their knees smite one against another, as that handwriting did to him; that which makes others quake to think of, a revenging God, before whom they must appear and answer for all their misdeeds, and their neglect of precious time, and abuse of their positions: this Christians can think of with joy and comfort.

He has conquered himself and his own heart. He can subdue the carnal part of him and bring it under the Spirit. All others, though kings, if they are not Christians, are slaves to some reigning lust or other.

He is a king likewise in regard of possession, which is a second thing that makes a Christian an excellent person. As he is a great conqueror, so he is a great possessor; for all is yours, says the apostle, things present and things to come, life and death, afflictions and crosses, and all is yours (1 Cor 3:22). How? To help him to heaven. Things present are his: comforts are his, if they are present; afflictions are his, to purge him and fit him for heaven. Things to come are his: heaven is his, and terrors to come, all serve him. Even evil things are his in their benefit and outcome. Though by disposition they are not his, but have a hostile disposition in them, they are all overpowered by the love of God; and Christ, the king of heaven and earth, overrules all to the good of his own.

And so all good things are his, though not in legal possession, but as far as the great governor of all things sees fit. What a king this is! And therefore the word is not too great, to say that a Christian is a king. He is indeed the most excellent person in the world.

And he likewise has a kingly spirit; that is, he does with love and freedom of spirit the things that others do under compulsion. For he has the royal law of love, as the apostle says (Jas 2:8), written in his heart. What is that? The royal law of love is this: when a man does what he does from love and from a princely spirit, when he is not compelled. That which others do not do at all, or which is wrung from them by force, he does out of the princely spirit that is in him, because his spirit is enlarged and anointed by the Spirit of God to every good work.

These things might be enlarged, but a taste of them is sufficient, and they are very useful to raise our hearts to consider that there is another kind of estate than the world thinks of. There are spiritual and excellent kings and priests, and this will stand by us when all other excellencies fail. “All flesh is grass, and as the flower of the grass” (1 Pet 1:24). But this dignity, this anointing which we have by the Spirit and by the word of God, endures forever, and abides to all eternity.

Now, not to go on to more particulars, let us make some use of this. Surely this is true in some degree of every Christian, that he is a prophet, to discern of things that differ (Heb 5:14), and he has a supernatural, heavenly light that answers to the things, a spiritual light to judge spiritual things. And he is a priest, to stand before God continually. And he is a king, by conquest, by possession, by inward fitness. I say this is undoubtedly true of all spiritual persons, those who are anointed.

As it is said of Saul that when he was anointed he had another spirit (1 Sam 10:9), so God never makes a Christian without giving him the spirit of a Christian. God’s calling comes with fitness for it. It is not a mere anointing in title; another spirit goes along with this anointing than there was before the calling. Though men are trained up from their infancy in the truth, yet when they are anointed by the Spirit of God, another kind of spirit will appear in them than was ever in them before, or than that which is in the world.

Therefore I beseech you, think often of the excellent estate we are advanced to in Christ. For dignity prepares and stirs us up to duty; a man never carries himself so well in his place and condition as when he thinks of his condition. It will put us in mind of a fitness and disposition to answer to it, so that, as the apostle often presses it, we may walk worthy of our calling (Eph 4:1), that we may walk worthy of this dignity.

When we are tempted, therefore, to sin and to base courses, let us say as good Nehemiah did when he was urged to flee, “what, shall such a man as I flee?” (Neh 6:11). So we should say to any temptation to base courses of life, “What! Shall such a man as I do this?” Why, if I am a Christian, if I am not only a Christian in title (which is sufficient only to damn me, and not to do me good), but if I am a real Christian, I must be a priest. I must keep myself unspotted of the world, and undefiled, and not touch any unclean thing. I must be in a state and condition to pray to God. Shall I regard iniquity, that God should not hear my prayer? (Ps 66:18).

If I am a Christian, I am a king. Shall I debase myself? Shall I cast my crown in the dirt? God has raised me and made me an heir of heaven. Shall I abase myself to sins and to base lusts, so that I cannot rule my own members, and yet profess myself to be a king? For a Christian who is a king, who has a guard of angels about him, who is the most excellent creature in the world, to abase himself to the world; for one who is bred from heaven to have no higher thoughts than the things below, to have an earthly mind and earthly thoughts: this is a strong presumption that he is only a Christian in title, and has not received this inward and spiritual anointing.

It was a saying of the martyrs in the primitive church. When they were asked their names, they gave this answer, “I am a Christian,” and that satisfied all questions. So when we are basely tempted to courses unbefitting our dignity, let us answer such temptations from our baptism: “I am baptized into Christ, and so have become a Christian, and this is unbecoming the profession of Christianity.”

I beseech you, let us remember our calling. We are called to be prophets, kings, and priests, and we will be so not only here, but in the world to come. We must not think to be kings in heaven unless we begin it here.

It is with a Christian as it was with David. He was anointed many years before he was actually a king on the throne (1 Sam 16:13). While Saul lived, he did not enjoy the kingdom. So we are anointed in this world, and in part we are kings while we are here, kings over ourselves and over the world. A Christian sees all that is worldly under him; he treads the moon under his feet. But our anointing has its effect especially when we are in heaven, as David’s anointing had its special effect when Saul was dead. We must now carry ourselves as those who will be kings. Those who are not kings here will never be kings hereafter; those who are not priests here will never walk with Christ in heaven in long white robes forever. Eternal life is begun here, in all the parts of it.

And therefore I beseech you, if our memories are so shallow that we cannot remember other bonds, let us remember our baptism; let us read our duty in our baptism. What are we baptized into? Into Christ, that is, to take the name of Christ upon us, to be Christians; and that name implies these three, to be a king, priest, and prophet. What do we do, then, when we sin? We reverse our baptism in some sort.

Let this then make the sin weigh more heavily when we are tempted: “It is treason to God. I would be leaving my Captain, under whose banner I have vowed to fight against ‘the devil, the world, and the flesh,’ and to forsake my colors is the greatest treachery.” Indeed, it is sacrilege. And so God accounts it when you profane your eyes and your ears in seeing and hearing vanity, as you do when you frequent playhouses and the like. I say, it is sacrilegious. Kings and priests were dedicated persons, and to employ dedicated things in any other business than for God is sacrilege; it is committing folly with your soul.

Men have slight notions of religion, and scarcely a tincture of it. If they deeply considered what religion is, that it seizes upon the soul, that it alters and changes it, that whoever will have benefit by the promises must have an inward fitness and be anointed with the Spirit, they would have better notions of it than they have. It is from these slight notions that men make so little conscience of giving liberty to their ears and eyes to hear and see vanity, and of defiling themselves in evil courses, and of cleaving to the occasions of sin.

Let us often, I beseech you, be stirred up to think of our high prerogatives with high admiration. What love, what love God has shown, “that we should be called the sons of God” (1 John 3:1), that we should be made kings and priests to God the Father! And if you ever hope to have comfort by religion, you must find this anointing in yourselves, raising you above other men to holy duties, to be kings, and priests, and prophets.

“Who hath anointed us, and sealed us …” You see then that a Christian is established in Christ this way, because he is anointed by the Spirit of God; he is dedicated and consecrated to God. Hence, before I go on to what follows, since the apostle couples anointing, and sealing, and earnest to the promises, observe this briefly:

No one has any share in the promises of mercy, no one can find comfort by them, except those who find some change in themselves.

The promises of God, as I have often said, are the riches of a Christian and his inheritance. Take all from him, you must still leave him this. You cannot take this from him. And as a usurer thinks he is a rich man, though he does not have two pennies in his house, but all that he has is in notes and bonds, so a Christian, though perhaps he does not have much in actual possession, is yet rich in that he has God’s bonds in the promises.

But now a man cannot say that he has a share in the promises, that he can lay claim to them, if he is an unfruitful man, an unhallowed man, who does not have the sweet ointment of the Spirit changing him, as it is said of Saul, into another man. For wherever God reconciles himself and gives any promise of favor and mercy, there he works a fitness. It must necessarily be so, because he is reconciled to friendship. Now in friendship there must be a corresponding likeness of disposition and sympathy. And as long as we are in our natural state, and remain unhallowed and defiled, we are on such terms that God and we cannot meet in friendship. Therefore wherever the promises of the favor of God and reconciliation are in force, there must be a change. When God intends to show favor to anyone, he alters and changes them, so that they may be such as he can have contentment, pleasure, and delight in.

We see then that there is a necessity of examining ourselves on this point. If you are anointed, examine yourself: what inward power of grace do you have, what sweet work of the Spirit? Do you find in you a principle above corruption, that makes you rule over what the world is enthralled to? Undoubtedly, as our title to heaven is outside ourselves, by the promises we have of salvation and reconciliation in Christ, so the evidences must be found in ourselves. There must be anointing, and sealing, and the earnest of the Spirit. Therefore I beseech you, think seriously about what I have delivered on that point before. But we will have occasion in the particulars afterward to speak more of this. I go on therefore to the second word.

“Who hath sealed us.” The same God who anoints us seals us. Anointing and sealing go together. Both are to secure to us our estate in Christ, and both are wrought by the Spirit of God.

Now Christ is the first sealed: “Him hath God the Father sealed” (John 6:27). Christ is sealed to be our redeemer; that is, God has set Christ apart from others, has distinguished him, and sealed him, and set a stamp upon him to be the Messiah. He sealed him to the great work of redemption, first by the graces of the Spirit, for he is full of them, having received the Spirit above measure (John 3:34). And not only so, but he sealed him by many miracles, by the resurrection from the dead, by which he was declared to be the Son of God, by the calling of the Gentiles, and by many other things.

Christ being sealed, he sealed all that he did for our redemption with his blood. And for the strengthening of our faith, he has added outward seals, the two sacraments, to seal our faith in this blood, and in him who is sealed by the Father.

But here in this place another kind of sealing is meant. For what is meant here is not the sealing of Christ, but the sealing of us who have communion with Christ. The same Spirit that sealed the Redeemer seals the redeemed.

What is our sealing?

Sealing, as we know, has this use.

1. It imprints a likeness of the one who seals upon the wax that is sealed. When the king’s picture or image is stamped or sealed upon the wax, everything in the wax answers to that in the seal, face to face, eye to eye, hand to hand, foot to foot, body to body. So we are said to be sealed when we carry in our souls the image of Jesus Christ. For the Spirit sets the stamp of Jesus Christ upon every Christian, so that there is the likeness of Christ in all things; understanding answers understanding, in proportion. As a child, you know, answers to the father, having limb for limb, foot for foot, finger for finger, not in quantity but in proportion and likeness, so it is in the soul that is sealed by the Spirit. There is a likeness to Christ, something of every grace of Christ.

There is understanding of the same heavenly, supernatural truths. There is a judging of things as Christ judges. And the affections go as Christ’s do: such a one loves what Christ loves, and hates what he hates, and rejoices in what Christ delights in. Every affection of the soul is carried, in proportion, the way the affections of our blessed Savior are carried. Everything in the soul answers to Jesus Christ, and there is no grace in Christ but there is the like in every Christian in some small measure. The obedience of Christ to his Father, even to the death, is in every Christian. The humility by which Christ abased himself is in every Christian. Christ works a likeness to himself in the soul that receives him.

And this is an undoubted mark of a Christian. The soul that believes in Christ does not only believe in him for his own sake, to be forgiven of his sins. Together with believing, feeling the forgiveness of his sins, and that Christ has so loved him and done such things for him, he is ambitious to express Christ in all things, and it stirs him up with desire to be like him. For he thinks, “Is there such love in Christ to me? And is there such grace and mercy in God to me? And was Christ so good as to do and to suffer such things for me? Oh, how shall I make the most of things for him! Oh, that I might be like him! Lovely in his eyes!”

This, I say, must necessarily be so. These desires are undoubtedly in the souls of all without exception who partake of Christ. It is the nature of the thing to be so. We will desire to be transformed more and more to Christ, every way to bear the image of the second Adam, who is, as the apostle says, from heaven, heavenly. And so we will be heavenly-minded as he was heavenly-minded on earth, talking and discoursing of the kingdom of heaven, and fitting people for the kingdom of heaven, and drawing others from this world to meditate on a better estate. There is a likeness to these things in the soul of every believer. And that is the reason why Christ’s offices are put together in all those he saves, so that whoever he is a priest to, to die for their sins, to them he is a prophet to teach them, and a king to subdue their corruptions, and to change them, and alter them, and to rule them by his Spirit.

You have carnal men whose presumption leads them to destruction: they sever what is joined in Christ. They will take benefit from Christ, but they do not care for his likeness; they will have him as priest, but they do not respect him as king. Now all who are Christ’s have the stamp of the Spirit upon them. Desires are worked in them by the Spirit of God to that purpose, and a Spirit of sanctification that makes them in every way like Christ, in their measure.

And that is an evidence of the sealing of such a soul, because the soul of itself has no such impression. For the soul of itself is a barren wilderness, a stone that is cold and incapable of impression. When, therefore, the soul can command nature, which is stiff and hard and dead, we see an impression of a higher nature, and a man may know that undoubtedly the Spirit of God has been in his soul. For we see a loving spirit, a humble spirit, a gracious, a believing, a broken spirit, a spirit obedient to every commandment of God; the soul can yield itself wholly to the will of God in all things. Certainly, I say, the Spirit of God has been here, for these things do not grow in a natural soul.

A stone, you know, is cold by nature, and if a man feels a stone to be hot, he may undeniably conclude that certainly the sun has shone upon this stone. Our hearts are very cold by nature. Undoubtedly, when they are warmed with the love of God, so that they are made pliable to duties, the Sun of righteousness, Christ, has shone on this cold heart. God’s Spirit can work on marble, can work on brass, as Jeremiah says (Jer 6:28). It was the commendation of one of the fathers that he could work on brass. God can work on our souls, which are as brass, and make an impression of grace there. And therefore when a man sees an impression upon such hard metal, he may certainly know that the finger of God’s Spirit has been there. So the work of sanctification is an undoubted seal of the Spirit of God.

2. A second use of a seal is distinction. Seals are given for distinguishing; for, you know, sealing is a stamp set upon some few out of many. So this sealing of the Spirit distinguishes Christians from others, as we shall see more at large afterward.

3. Then again, a seal serves for appropriation, for men seal those things that are their own. Merchants seal those wares that they either have or mean to have a right to. Men seal their own sheep and not others’, and stamp their own wares and not others’. God here stoops so low as to make use of terms that are used in human matters and contracts; and by sealing he shows that he has appropriated his own to himself, chosen and singled them out for himself to delight in.

4. Again, sealing further serves to make things authentic, to give authority and excellency to things. Magistrates and officers go with their broad seal, and deliver under seal the things they want carried out with authority; and the seal of the prince is the authority of the prince. So a seal serves to make things authentic, to give validity to things in keeping with the value and esteem of the one who seals.

These are the four principal uses of sealing. Now, God by his Spirit does all these. For God by his Spirit sets the stamp and likeness of Christ upon us; he distinguishes us from others, from the great refuse of the world; he appropriates us to himself; and likewise he authorizes us and puts an excellency upon us to secure us against all. When we have God’s seal upon us we stand against all accusations. “Who shall separate us from the love of God?” (Rom 8:35). We dare to defy all objections and all accusations of conscience whatever. A man who has God’s seal stands impregnable, it so authorizes him in his conscience; for it is given for our assurance, and not for God’s. God does not seal because he is ignorant; he knows who are his (2 Tim 2:19).

But what then? Is the Spirit himself this seal, or the graces of the Spirit, or the comforts of the Spirit? What is this seal? For that is the question now: whether it is the Spirit himself, or the work of the Spirit, or the comfort and joy of the Spirit.

I answer: indeed, the Spirit of God, wherever he is, is a sufficient seal to us that God has set us apart for his own. For whoever has the Spirit of Christ is his, and whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ is none of his. But the Spirit is the author of this sealing, and the sealing that is in us is worked by the Spirit. So unless you take the Spirit for that which is worked by the Spirit, you do not have the right understanding of sealing. And so the Spirit, with that which the Spirit works, is the seal, for the Spirit is always with his own seal, with his own stamp.

Other seals are removed from the stamp, and the stamp remains though the seal is gone. But the Spirit of God dwells and keeps a perpetual residence in the heart of a Christian, guiding him, moving him, enlightening him, governing him, comforting him, doing all the offices of a seal in his heart, until he has brought him to heaven, for the Holy Spirit never leaves us. He is the sweetest inhabitant that lodging was ever given to. He does all that is done in the soul, and he is perpetually with his own work in joy and comfort. Though he sometimes seems to be in a corner of the heart, and is not discernible, yet he always dwells in us; the Spirit is always with the stamp he sets upon the soul.

What is that stamp, then? To come to the matter more particularly, what is it that the Spirit especially seals us with? What is that work?

I answer: the Spirit works in this order for the most part, and in some of these points universally.

1. The Spirit, together with the word, which is the instrument of the Spirit, the chariot in which he is carried, convinces us of the evil that is in us, and of the evil state we are in because of it. He convinces us that we are sinners, and of the fearful state we are in by sin. This is the first work of the Spirit on a man in the state of nature: he convinces us of the evil that is in us, and of the evil due to us, and thereupon he humbles us. Therefore he is called “the Spirit of bondage” (Rom 8:15), because he makes a man tremble and quake until he sees his peace in Christ.

2. When the Spirit has done that, then he convinces a man by a better, by a sweeter light, revealing a remedy in Christ, who is sealed by God to reconcile God and us. And as he enlightens the soul, and convinces it of the all-sufficiency that is in Christ, and the authority that he has, being sent and sealed by God for that purpose, so he works on the affections: he inclines the heart to go to God in Christ, and to cast itself on him by faith.

Now, when the soul is thus convinced of the evil that is in us and of the good that is in Christ, and with this convincing is inclined and moved by the Holy Spirit (as, indeed, the Holy Spirit does all), then upon this the Spirit grants an added work, as the Spirit is always adding to his own work. He adds a confirming work, which is here called “sealing.” That seal is not faith, for the apostle says, “After you believed, ye were sealed” (Eph 1:13). So this sealing is not the work of faith, but a work of the Spirit upon faith, assuring the soul of its state in grace.

But someone will ask, “What need is there of confirmation when we believe? Is faith not confirmation enough, when a man may know by a reflective act of the soul that he is in the state of grace by believing?”

It is true that as the natural conscience knows what is in a man, and as the natural judgment can reflect, so the spiritual understanding can reflect. When a man believes, he knows that he believes, without the Spirit, by the reflective act of the understanding, unless he is under temptation. What need is there, then, of sealing?

This act of ours in believing, and the knowledge of our believing, is often terribly shaken. And God is wonderfully desirous, as we see by the whole course of the Scripture, that we should be sure of his love. He knows that otherwise he can have no glory and we can have no comfort. And therefore, when we by faith have sealed to his truth, he knows that we still need further sealing, that our faith may be genuine and good, and to strengthen our faith, for all is little enough in the time of temptation.

And therefore the single witness of our soul by the reflective act, knowing that we believe when we do believe, is not strong enough in great temptations. For in some trials the soul is so carried and hurried that it cannot reflect upon itself, or know what is in itself, without much difficulty. Therefore, first the Spirit works faith, by which we seal God’s truth: “He that believes hath put to his seal that God is true” (John 3:33). When God by his Spirit moves me to honor him by sealing his truth, that whosoever believes in Christ shall be saved (John 3:18), then God seals this belief of mine with an addition of his Holy Spirit. So this sealing is a work upon believing; and as faith honors God, so God honors faith with an added seal and confirmation.

But we have not yet come particularly enough to know what this seal is. When we honor God by sealing his truth, then the Spirit seals us; certainly, then, the Spirit does it by presence, by being with us in our souls. What, then, does the Spirit work when we believe? How shall we know that there is such a spiritual sealing?

I answer: the Spirit in this sealing works these four things.

First, a secret voice or witness to the soul, that we are “the sons of God.”

Second, a voice or speech in us back to God, causing us to have access to the throne of grace “with boldness.”

Third, a work of sanctification.

Fourth, peace of conscience, and “joy in the Holy Ghost” (Rom 14:17).

By these four ways we may know the sealing of the Spirit after we believe, and that our faith is a sound faith, and that we are in the state of grace indeed.

1. I say that the Spirit speaks to us by a secret kind of whispering and intimation, which the soul feels better than I can express. “Be of good comfort, thy sins are forgiven thee” (Matt 9:2), he says to the soul; “I am thy salvation” (Ps 35:3). There is, I say, a sweet joining, a sweet kiss given to the soul: “I am thine, and thou art mine” (Song 6:3). God by his Spirit says as much. There is a voice of God’s Spirit speaking peace to his people upon their believing.

2. And then, the Spirit of adoption stirs up the speech of the soul to God, so that as he says to the soul, “Because you believe, you are now honored to be my child,” so the Spirit stirs up in the soul a spirit of prayer to cry, “Abba, Father.” It can go boldly to God as to a Father; for that “Abba, Father” is a bold and familiar speech.

There are two things in the prayer of a Christian that are impossible to any carnal man. There is an inward kind of familiar boldness in the soul, by which a Christian goes to God as a child goes to his father when he wants anything. A child does not consider his own worthiness or lowliness, but goes to his father familiarly and boldly. So, I say, the Spirit of God speaks to us from God, and tells the soul, “I am thine,” “I am thy salvation,” “thy sins are forgiven thee, be of good comfort”; and the soul speaks back to God, pouring itself out with a kind of familiar boldness and earnestness, especially in extremity and in time of trouble, and it can wait in prayer and depend upon God. When this happens, this spiritual speech of God to the soul, and of the soul to God, is a seal of the Spirit that we are indeed true believers, because we can do what none but Christians can do.

God speaks to our souls, he raises our souls, and by his Spirit he puts a spirit of supplication into us and helps our infirmities. For we do not know what to ask, but he helps our weakness, and enables us to lay out the wants of our souls to God. These are evidences of the presence and of the seal of the Spirit.

3. This sealing of the Spirit after we believe is known by the sanctifying work of the Spirit. For, as I told you before in unfolding the point, the Spirit seals our spirits by stamping the likeness of the Spirit of Christ on us. So when a man finds in his soul some lineaments of that heavenly image of Christ Jesus, when he finds some love, he may know by that love that he is translated from death to life (1 John 3:14). When he finds his spirit subdued, so as to be humble and obedient, when he finds his spirit to be heavenly and holy as Christ was, when he finds this stamp upon the soul, surely he may reason, “I do not have this by nature. Naturally I am proud; now I can humble myself. Naturally I am full of malice; now I can love, I can pray heartily for my enemies, as Christ did. Naturally I am dull and heavy; now in afflictions I can rejoice in the Holy Spirit. I have something in me contrary to nature. Surely God has granted his Spirit, upon my believing in Christ, to mark me, to seal me, to stamp me for his own. I now carry the image of the second Adam. I know the Holy Spirit has been in my heart; I see the stamp of Christ there.”

“Know you not that Christ is in you, except you be castaways?” says the apostle (2 Cor 13:5). So upon search, the Christian soul always finds something of Christ in the soul, to give a sweet evidence that he is sealed to the day of redemption.

4. The fourth evidence that the Spirit of God has been in a man’s heart is the joy of the Holy Spirit and peace of conscience. Sanctification is the ordinary seal that is always in the soul; this is an extraordinary seal, peace and joy. When the soul needs encouragement, then God is graciously pleased to add this further, to give such spiritual raptures, which are as the very beginnings of heaven, so that one may say of a Christian at such times that he is in heaven before his time, he is in heaven upon earth.

But God does this especially when he will have his children suffer, or after suffering, after some special conflict, after we have combated with some special corruption, with some sinful disposition, with some strong temptation, and have gained the victory: “To him that overcometh will I give of the hidden manna, and a white stone, and a new name that none can read it, but he that hath it” (Rev 2:17). That is, he shall have assurance that he is in the state of grace, and the sweet sense of the love of God, and that sweet heavenly manna that none else can have.

Thus God dealt with Job. After he had exercised that champion for a long time, at last he revealed himself to him in a glorious manner. So it usually is after some great cross, or in the midst of some great cross, when God sees that we must be supported with some spiritual comfort, or else we sink. Then there is place and time for spiritual comfort, when earth cannot comfort. Thus St. Paul in the midst of the dungeon, when he was in the stocks, being sealed with the Spirit, sang at midnight (Acts 16:24-25). Alas! What would have become of blessed Paul? His spirit would have sunk if God had not stamped it with “joy in the Holy Ghost” (Rom 14:17). And so with David, and the three young men in the fiery furnace, and Daniel in the den.

God then does as parents do, who smile upon their children when they are sick and need comfort. So above all other times God reserves this hidden sealing of his children with a spirit of joy for when they need it most: sometimes in the midst of afflictions, sometimes as a reward when they come out of their afflictions, sometimes before. So our Savior Christ had James and John with him upon the mountain, to strengthen them against the stumbling block of suffering afterward. So God, when he has a great work for his children to do, some suffering for them to go through, enlarges their spirits with the joy of the Holy Spirit as an encouragement beforehand.

And sometimes also, after a holy and gracious disposition in the ordinances of God, God adds an excellent portion of his Spirit, an extraordinary seal. For indeed, God thinks nothing enough for his children until he has brought them to heaven: seal upon seal, and comfort upon comfort. And the more we depend upon him in the means of salvation, and the more we conflict with our corruptions, the more he increases the sweet comforts and the hidden manna of the Spirit.

Thus we see how the Spirit seals. I beseech you, therefore, let us examine ourselves by what has been spoken. After we believe, God seals those who believe. We honor him by believing; he honors us by sealing us with his Spirit. Has God spoken to your soul by the witness of the Spirit, and said, “I am thy salvation,” “thy sins are forgiven thee”? Does God stir up your spirit to call upon him, especially in extremity, and to go to him with boldness and earnestness? Surely this boldness and earnestness is an evidence of the seal of the Spirit; for a man who has no seal of the Spirit cannot go to God in extremity. Saul in extremity goes to the witch; and Ahithophel and Judas in extremity go to desperate conclusions.

A man who does not have the Spirit of God speaking peace to his conscience, to whom God has not given the spirit of adoption to cry, “Abba, Father,” in every kind of emergency, sinks as lead to the bottom of the sea. So heavy is the soul that is not raised by the Spirit of God; he finds no resting place until he comes to the center, to hell. Have you ever felt the sweet joy of the Spirit after conflict with corruptions, and after gaining ground on them, and in holy duties and the like? It is a sign that God has sealed you.

But you will say, “How can something be a seal that is not always there? A seal remains with the thing sealed. God’s children do not always find peace. The joy of the Spirit comes after the work of the Spirit. How then can this be a seal?”

I answer, Yes, it can; for whether or not it is always felt, it is always a seal. Though we do not always have the joy of the Spirit, yet we have the spirit of joy. A Christian does not have the joy of the Spirit at all times, for that comes and goes; but he always has the spirit of joy, which spirit, though it is not known by joy, is yet known by its operation and working. There is the work of the Spirit where there is not always the joy of the Spirit.

And therefore when that fails, go to the work of sanctification, and see what stamp and resemblance of Christ there is. See if your heart is humble and broken, if you have a loving disposition in you like Christ’s, if you hate what Christ hates, if you see a division in yourself. I say, when the joy of the Spirit ceases, go to the work of the Spirit, and to this work of the Spirit, namely, the voice of the Spirit. Can you cry to God with prayer and supplication? And if you cannot pray with distinct words, can you mourn and groan to God? This sighing and groaning is the voice of God’s Spirit, and God knows the voice of his own Spirit.

But to return to the question proposed: the soul of a Christian knows, when it does not find extraordinary comfort from God’s Spirit, that God’s love is constant. It can reason thus: “Though I do not find the comfort of the Spirit, yet I have the spirit of comfort, because I had the Spirit in former times, and God’s Spirit is unchangeable. And therefore, though it is not with me now as in those raptures of the Spirit, yet the love of God is the same, though my feeling is not the same. For though I am off and on, and my feelings ebb and flow, yet his love is not so.”

And upon this ground the extraordinary feeling of the Spirit, which is added as an extraordinary seal, may be a sound seal of comfort from the constancy of God who gave it. And he gave it for this end, that we might have recourse to it, and go back in our thoughts, and argue, “It was thus and thus with me.” Then we remember the times of old, as David says (Ps 77:6), and help ourselves with our former feelings.

He who always has life is not always stirred alike. Christ may be begotten and live in us, but he does not always stir alike. So though the Spirit of sanctification is in us, and stirs in us, yet his stirring is not always equally sweet. And as for the stirring of the Spirit, though it is not constant, yet the Spirit is always there. So the soul may have recourse to what is unchangeable and constant, even God himself, and his love is as himself.

But to take a Christian in his worst time, in the worst and greatest afflictions, how shall he know then that he is sealed by the Spirit? When corruption, temptation, and affliction meet together in the soul; when temptation is joined with our corruption, and afflictions yield ground to temptations (for Satan uses the afflictions we are in as temptations to shake our faith), the temptation says, “Can you be a child of God, and be so tried? Is this grace?” So affliction is a weapon for temptation, for Satan to help his fiery darts with. Now how shall a man know that God has any part here?

1. He may know that he is sealed by the Spirit of God if he has a spirit to thwart these, if he rows against the stream, if he goes contrary to all these; if he finds a spirit resisting Satan’s temptations, and raising itself above afflictions, and standing against and combating with his corruptions, and checking his carnal soul when it is drawing him down. “Why art thou discomforted, O my soul?” says David (Ps 42:11; Ps 43:5). He found corruptions, and afflictions, and Satan’s temptations working with them, pressing his soul downward. Then, having the Spirit in him, he says, “Why art thou disquieted within me? Trust in God.” He first chides his soul, “Why art thou so?” and then he lays a charge upon it, “Trust in God.”

So I say, when this is in the soul in the greatest extremity, when I can check my soul, “Why art thou thus? yet trust in God”; when whatever there is in the world, yet there is hope in heaven, though there is little comfort upon earth: this is a sign that I am sealed with the Spirit of God. And thus in the worst temptations that can come, and so in the worst times, a man may know that he is in the state of grace.

2. One use of a seal, as I told you before, was to distinguish. If a man, therefore, finds in himself something that distinguishes him from the errors of the times, he may know that he is “sealed.” “Many walk,” says the apostle, “of whom I have told you oft, their end is damnation, their belly is their god, they mind earthly things” (Phil 3:18-19). But what did St. Paul do in the meantime? What did the Spirit work in him? “But our conversation is in heaven,” he says (Phil 3:20). The whole world was overspread with a deluge of sin; but what of Noah and his family? God by his Spirit distinguished them; they went a contrary course to the world. And so did Lot in Sodom. So a man may know that he is sealed when the Spirit leads him another way, so that he is not led with the errors of the times.

Thus we have unfolded to you the sealing of the Spirit, and you see that the Spirit of God not only anoints but seals. Now we should labor to have our hearts sealed in this way by the Spirit. Can we desire our deeds sealed, and never be at rest until they are sealed, until our releases from debt are sealed, until our charters are sealed? And shall we sit patiently with our souls unsealed?

Let us labor by all means to have the image and likeness of Christ stamped upon our souls especially. It is a wonderful comfort when we can find something in us like Jesus Christ.

To encourage us in this, let us consider that death and judgment will come, and God will set no one at his right hand but his sheep that have his mark. Those on whom he sets his stamp and image, those he will set on the right hand in the day of judgment.

And how comfortably can the soul commend itself to God in the hour of death, when it sees itself stamped and sealed by the Spirit of Christ! When it can say to Christ, “Lord Jesus, receive my soul” (Acts 7:59), and can add, “the soul you have redeemed by your blood, that you have sealed by your Spirit, and on which you have set your own stamp; acknowledge your own likeness, though it is not as it should be,” what a comfort, I say, the sealed soul has at the hour of death! And so in all other extremities, and in times of trouble and danger, those in whom God sees his own image and likeness he will own, and to those he will always show a distinct and attentive love in hard times.

What a difference there is between that soul and others in the time of affliction, as in the time of pestilence and war! The soul that is sealed knows that it is marked out for God, for happiness in the world to come, whatever befalls it in this world; and it knows that in all the confusion of the times God knows his own seal. Those who are sealed, I say, God has a special care of. Therefore in Ezekiel 9:6 they are said to be marked in their foreheads. Not that there was any visible mark on them; it is a phrase to signify what special care God had of his people, especially in times of destruction. God will, as it were, set them apart in those times and make special provision for them.

Thus Josiah was taken away from the evil to come, and Lot was taken out of Sodom when fire and brimstone were to come from heaven, and Pella, a little village, was delivered when the general destruction came upon Jerusalem. So, I say, God has a special care of his little ones in this life; and if he takes them away, yet their death is precious in his sight. He will not part with them except upon special consideration. He sees that if they live it will be worse for them; he sees that it is better for them to be gathered to himself, and to the souls of men made perfect in heaven.

And as he has a special care of them in regard to outward miseries and calamities, so he has in regard to spiritual contagion and infection, as in Revelation 7:3 and following. There God’s holy ones were sealed, so many of such a tribe, and so on, which signifies to us that God always has some whom he will keep and preserve from the universal infection and contagion of Antichrist in the worst times. God always has a church in the worst times. In the most obscure age of the church, eight or nine hundred years after Christ, especially nine hundred years after, when Egyptian darkness had overspread the world and there was little learning and goodness in the world, God always had sealed ones, marked ones, whom he preserved from the danger of dark times. And so he will always take care of his own, that they are not led away with that soul-hurting error, popery, which is a very different kind of mischief than men take it for.

Scripture is more exact in setting down the danger of those who are carried away with that sin, especially in the church’s times of greater light, than of those carried away with any other sin whatsoever. They have a contrary mark. The mark of the beast that they have is contrary to the mark of Christ; that implicit, bloody faith is far from being the mark and seal of the Spirit. Theirs is the bloody church, pretend what they will, and they hold out to the point of blood in defense of all their cruel, superstitious, and bloody decrees. Those persons, I say, who are deeply dyed in popery, who have the mark of the beast, are in a condition clean opposite to those who are marked with the Spirit, whom Christ marks for his own.

Let us not fear, therefore, I say, if we have the Spirit of God stamped upon us, though only in a small measure. If it is true, let us not fear death; Christ knows his own mark even in death and out of death. And let us not fear afflictions or evil times; Christ will know his seal. He has a book of remembrance for those who are his (Mal 3:16), for those who mourn for the sins of the times, and when he gathers his jewels, those shall be his. He will gather his jewels as a man in his house gathers his jewels, while he lets his baggage burn in the fire. So God, in common calamities, lets the baggage, wicked men, go to wreck, but he will free his own.

Let us labor, therefore, for this seal: to have our souls stamped with the Spirit of God, to have further and further evidence of our state in grace, that in the time of common calamity we may be free from danger, free from error and destruction.

But you will say, “What shall I make of it if there is only a little sign of grace?”

Do not be discouraged. When the stamp in wax is almost gone, it is still valid in law. Suppose the stamp of the prince is on an old coin (as we sometimes see it on a King Harry groat); yet it is current money, even though it may be a little cracked. So suppose the stamp of the Spirit is, as it were, almost worn out. It is our shame, and ought to be our grief, that it is so; yet there are some evidences, some pulses, some sighs and groans against corruption. We mourn in our spirits, we do not join with corruption, we do not allow ourselves in sin. There the stamp of the Spirit remains, though it is so overgrown with the dust of the world that we cannot see it.

Sometimes God’s children, though they have the graces of the Spirit in them, yield so much to their corruptions that they can read nothing but their corruptions. When we bid them read their evidences, they can see nothing but worldliness, nothing but pride and envy, and the like. Though there is a stamp on them, yet God keeps the soul from seeing it, so that they can see nothing but corruption. This is for their negligence. God gives them up to mistake their condition, because they will not stir up the graces of the Spirit, because they grieve the Spirit and quench the Spirit by doing what is contrary to the Spirit.

Let us therefore, that we may have the more comfort, keep the stamp of the Spirit fresh by the exercise of all grace, and by communion with God, and by obedience, and by faith. Honor God by believing, and he will honor you by stamping his Spirit on you more and more. And let this be our work every day, to have the stamp of the Spirit clear. Oh, what a comfort it is to have this in us at all times! If a man has nothing in him better than nature, if he has nothing in him in regard to grace, if he does not have Christ’s image upon his soul, then though he is a king or an emperor, he shall be stripped of everything before long, and be set on the left hand of Christ, and be sentenced to eternal torments.

It is the folly of the times, come up of late, that there is much laboring after statues and curious workmanship of that kind. Some pride themselves greatly in it and count it great riches to have an old statue. Alas, alas! What a poor delight this is in comparison with the joy that a Christian has by the seal of the Spirit! And what is this compared to the ambition of a Christian, to see the image and representation of Christ stamped in his soul? He aims to be like the second Adam, to be transformed more and more by looking on Christ and seeing himself in Christ, to love him, considering that he has loved us so much (for we cannot see the love of Christ to us without loving him the more and being transformed into him). Now this transforming of ourselves into the image of Christ is the best picture in the world; therefore labor for that every day, more and more.

There is, besides the common broad seal of God, his privy seal, as I may call it. It is not sufficient that we have the one, that we have admittance into the church by baptism; we must have this privy seal, which Christ sets and stamps upon the soul of the true Christian. Alas, the outward seals and outward privileges are excellent in themselves, yet for a man to build only on them, to stand upon them, betrays many souls to the devil in times of distress.

It is another kind of seal than the outward seal in the sacrament that will satisfy and comfort the conscience in the apprehensions of wrath, at the hour of death or otherwise. It must be this privy seal, and then comes the use of those public, open, known seals, the broad seals. Then a man may think with comfort upon his baptism and upon his receiving of communion, when he has the beginnings of faith worked in him by the Spirit of God. When a man finds the beginnings of faith in him, then he may make use of the broad seal as a help to his faith.

We must not be so profane as to think slightly and irreverently of God’s ordinances. They are of great and high consequence. For when Satan comes to the soul and shakes its confidence, and says, “You are not a Christian, and God does not love you,” why, the soul says, “God has loved me and pardoned my sins. He has given me promises, and has sealed them particularly in the sacrament. Here is the excellency of the sacrament: it comes closer to home than the word; it seals the general promise of God particularly to myself. I am sealed in the sacrament, and along with that I find the stamp of the Spirit in my heart. And therefore, having the inward work of the Spirit, and God having fortified the inward work and strengthened my faith by the outward seal, I can stand against any temptation whatsoever.” They are excellent both together, but the special thing that must comfort must be the hidden seal of the Spirit.

Let us labor therefore to be sealed inwardly, and to observe God’s sealing days, as we are accustomed to call them. Though that may be every day, if we are in spiritual exercises, yet it is especially on the Lord’s day, for then his ordinance and his Spirit go together.

Now as there is a sealing of our estates, that we are the children of God, so there is a sealing of truths, and both are in the children of God. For instance, this is a truth: “Whosoever believes in Christ shall not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). Now the same Spirit that stirs up the soul to believe this seals it in the soul, even to death and in all times of temptation. And likewise there is no promise but that, upon the believing of it, it is sealed by the Spirit upon the soul; for only those truths abide firm in the soul that the Spirit of God sets upon it.

What is the reason that many forget the comforts and consolations they hear? Because the Spirit does not set them upon the soul; the Spirit does not seal them. What is the reason that unlearned men hold out in their profession to the point of blood, whereas those who have a discursive kind of learning yield? The reason is this: the knowledge of the one is sealed by the Spirit. It is set fast upon the soul; the Spirit brings the knowledge and the soul close together. But the knowledge of the other is only a notional, floating knowledge; it is not spiritual.

Therefore those who will hold out to the end and not apostatize, those who will stand firm in the hour of death against temptation, and those who will hold out in the time of life against solicitations to sin, must have a knowledge suitable to the things they know. That is, they must see and know heavenly things by a heavenly light, spiritual things by the Spirit of God.

And therefore when we come to hear the ministers of God, we should not come with strong notions of our own, in the strength of our wit, but with reverent dispositions, with dependence upon God for his Spirit, that he would teach us together with the ministers, and close with our souls, and set the truths we hear upon our souls. Otherwise we shall never hold out.

And it must be the Holy Spirit who does this; for what must settle and seal comfort to the soul must be greater than the soul, especially in the time of temptation, when the terrors of the Almighty are upon us, and when the hell within a man lies open, when God lays open our consciences and “writes bitter things against us” (Job 13:26), and our consciences tell us our sins wondrously close to home. They are written, as it were, “with a pen of iron, and the point of a diamond,” upon our souls (Jer 17:1). Now I say, the truths that must satisfy a conscience so turmoiled must be set upon it by what is above conscience. Only the Spirit of God, who is above our spirits, can settle our spirits, and keep them from quarreling and contending against the truth, and quiet the conscience; and this the Spirit does in setting the truth upon the soul.

And therefore when our souls are disquieted and troubled, and we hear many comforting truths, let us lift up our prayers to God; let there be short prayers darted from our spirits to God: “Now, Lord, by your Holy Spirit set and seal this truth to my soul, that as it is true in itself, so it may be true to me likewise.”

This is a necessary observation for us all. Oh, all of us desire in the hour of death to find such comforts as may be standing comforts, that may uphold us against the gates of hell, and against the temptations of Satan and the terrors of conscience. Why, nothing will do this but spiritual truths spiritually known; nothing but holy truths set upon the soul by the Holy Spirit of God.

But what course shall we take when we lack comfort, when we lack joy and peace?

In 1 John 5:7-8 there are three witnesses in heaven, and three in earth, to secure us of our state in grace and the certainty of our salvation. The three witnesses upon earth are “the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three agree in one”; and the “three that bear witness in heaven” are “the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost”; and the three on earth and these three in heaven agree in one.

Now the Spirit is the feelings and the sweet motions of the Spirit. The water may well be that washing of the Spirit, sanctification. The blood is the shedding of the blood of Christ, and justification by it. When therefore we find that that part of the seal, that extraordinary seal I spoke of before, the joy of the Spirit of God, is not in us, what shall we do? Shall we despair? No; go to the water. When we do not find spiritual joy and comfort, when the witness of the Spirit is silent, go to the work of the Spirit in sanctification.

“Yes,” you say, “but what shall we do if the waters are troubled in the soul? For sometimes there is such confusion in the soul that we cannot see the image of God upon it in sanctification, we cannot see the stamp of God’s Spirit there, there is such a chaos in the soul.” God can see something of his own Spirit in that confusion, but our spirit itself cannot.

Then go to the blood of Christ! There is always comfort. The fountain that is opened for Judah and Jerusalem to wash in is never dry. Go therefore to the blood of Christ. That is, if we find sin upon our consciences, if we do not find peace in our consciences or sanctification in our hearts, go to the blood of Christ, which is shed for all those who confess their sins and rely on him for pardon, though we find no grace. For although, as an evidence that we are in Christ, we must find the work of the Spirit, yet before we go to Christ it is sufficient that we see nothing in ourselves, no qualification. For the graces of the Spirit are not the condition of coming to Christ, but the promise to those who receive Christ, which comes after. Therefore go to Christ when you feel neither joy of the Spirit nor sanctification of the Spirit; go to the blood of Christ, and that will purge you and wash you from all your sins.

This I only touch on as a direction for what to do when our souls lack comfort, when perhaps we cannot see the seal of the Spirit in sanctification so clearly.

To go on now to the next.

“And given us the earnest of the Spirit” (2 Cor 1:22). Here is the third word borrowed from human affairs to set out the work of the Spirit in our souls. “Anointing” we had before, and “sealing”; now here is “earnest.”

The variety of the words shows that there is a great remainder of unbelief in the soul of man, since the Spirit of God is obliged to use so many words to express God’s dealing with the soul to bring it to believe, to be assured of salvation. And indeed it is so. However wonderfully prone we are to presume in the time of prosperity, when all things go well with us, yet in the hour of death, when conscience is awakened, we are prone to nothing so much as to call everything in question, and to believe the doubts and fears of our own hearts more than the undoubted truth and promise of God. Therefore God takes every course to establish us. He gives us rich and precious promises, he gives us the Holy Spirit to establish us on the promises, he seals us with his Spirit, and gives us “the earnest of the Spirit,” and all to settle this wretched and unbelieving heart of ours.

So desirous is God that we should think well of him; he loves us better than we love ourselves. He so prizes our love that he labors by all means to secure us of his love to us, because unless we know his love to us, we cannot love him in return, and we cannot rejoice in him, and so on. But I say that only in general.

Here is earnest, and “the earnest of the Spirit.” That is, in plain terms, he gives us the Spirit with the Spirit’s graces and comforts, and the Spirit does in our hearts what an earnest does among men.

But what is the Spirit an earnest of?

It is an earnest of our inheritance in heaven, of our blessed estate there. We are sons now, but we are not heirs invested with the blessed estate we have title to. God does not abandon us in the meantime, while we are on our pilgrimage. He does not keep everything for heaven, but gives us something to comfort us in our absence from our Husband, from our Lord and King, Christ. He gives us the earnest of the Spirit; that is, he gives the Holy Spirit into our hearts, who is the earnest of that blessed, everlasting, glorious condition we shall have in heaven hereafter. That is the meaning of the words.

In what respect is the Spirit called an “earnest”?

1. An earnest is for the security of bargains and contracts. So the Holy Spirit assures the soul of salvation, being present with his graces and comforts; the Holy Spirit is given for security.

2. An earnest is part of the whole bargain. Though it is a very little part, yet it is a part. And so the Spirit of God here, and the work of the Spirit, and the graces and joy of the Spirit, are a part of that full joy and happiness that shall be revealed. The Spirit does not dwell fully in anyone. He dwells no further than he sanctifies and revives. But that is an earnest for the time to come, that the Spirit shall be all in all, when we shall have no resistance, nor anything to exalt itself against the sure rule of the Spirit.

3. An earnest is little in comparison with the whole bargain. So the work of the Spirit, the comforts, the joy, the peace of the Spirit, are little in comparison with what shall be in heaven, in regard to the fullness of the Spirit we shall have there. An earnest, though it is little in quantity, is yet great in security and assurance. A shilling may perhaps secure a bargain of a thousand pounds. So the Spirit may be little in quantity, but is great in assurance. And we value an earnest not for the size of the piece (for, alas, it may be only little), but we value and esteem it for what it is an earnest of. So the work of the Spirit, the joy and peace of the Spirit, the comforts of the Spirit, though they are little, are yet great in security, and are to be prized according to that excellent bargain and possession of which they are an earnest.

4. An earnest is given rather for the security of the party who receives it than in regard to the one who gives it. So God gives “the earnest of the Spirit,” grace and comfort. This is not so much in regard to God, for God means to give us heaven and happiness. (He has passed his word, and he is master of his word; he is “Jehovah,” who gives a being to his word as well as to every other thing.) But nevertheless, having to deal with doubtful, mistrustful persons, he does it for our security; he does not regard himself so much as us. He works in keeping with his own greatness, strongly; but he speaks according to our weakness, and therefore the term “earnest” is borrowed here for this purpose.

5. And lastly, an earnest is never taken away, but is completed with the bargain. So it is with the Spirit of God. Its graces and comforts are never wholly taken from a Christian, but are fulfilled in heaven. “I will leave you the Comforter,” says our Savior Christ, “that shall abide with you for ever” (John 14:16).

So in these and other such respects, the Spirit of God in itself, together with its graces and the comforts it brings (for they both go together), is called an “earnest.”

Now that the words have been cleared in this way, we may observe some particular doctrines from them. First, from the first property of an earnest, that it secures the whole bargain, I observe this:

Observation. A Christian ought to be, and may be, assured of his state in grace.

For, as I said before, an earnest is given for security, and that not so much for God’s sake as for our sakes. This, then, must necessarily follow: either no one has this earnest, or those who have it may be assured, or else God is fickle and plays fast and loose with his children, which is blasphemy to affirm. If no one has this earnest, then the apostle speaks falsely when he says here that God establishes us, and gives us the earnest of his Spirit, and us with you, both together. Ordinary Christians as well as great ones, as well as Paul, may be assured of their salvation.

And if this is so, then either those who have this earnest, this seal of the Spirit, may be assured or they may not; and if not, where is the fault? Does God not mean it in good earnest toward them when he gives them this? Undoubtedly he does. And why is it given but for assurance? He desires that we should be persuaded of his love in all things, and therefore God’s children may be, and ought to be, assured of his love in this world.

It is a point we often have occasion to meet in other portions of Scripture. So I speak of it here only as a ground drawn from this place: since the Spirit of God, together with the graces and comforts, is called an “earnest,” I say from this that we may be assured of our salvation.

I beseech you, what is the aim of the Epistles to the Romans and to the Ephesians, and of the Epistle of St. John, but to stir up those to whom they wrote to be persuaded of God’s love to them, and to show what excellent things we have by the love of God in Christ? And St. John’s Epistle, in respect of its substance, is for nothing else but to give evidences of how we may know that we are the sons of God.

Why did God become man? Why was Christ himself sealed to his office by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit when he was baptized? And why did he die and rise again? And why does he make intercession in heaven? Was it so that we should doubt God’s love, when he has given us what is greater than salvation, what is greater than all the world, his own Son? Would we have a greater pledge of his love? Is not all this so that we should not doubt his love to us, if we cast ourselves upon him by faith?

Christians may have assurance, ought to have it, and have had it. These here had assurance, and the Scripture speaks of such as had it. They have had it. We may have it, because the Spirit is a seal and an earnest. And we ought to have it, because God has framed both his word and his sacraments, and all his dealing with man, so as to persuade us of his love.

Caution. Yet add this caution, that Christians do not have an equal assurance of their salvation at all times. Not all Christians have it at all times, and even the best do not have it at all times. For there is an infancy of grace, when we do not know our own state and condition; and there is a time of temptation after infancy, when we likewise stagger in our assurance. There are also times of desertion, when God, to make us look better to our footing, leaves us a little, as if he would forsake us, when in fact he leaves us in order to draw us after him, so that we may cleave more closely to him; for this shaking is to settle us deeper. So there are times and seasons in which, though we are assured, we cannot at that time know our own assurance.

And this assurance differs among Christians, for some have more and some less. It differs even as the constitution of the body differs. Some are of a melancholy constitution, which helps Satan in his temptations, and they are subject to fearing and mistrusting. And as there is a difference in regard of temperament, some being brought to be persuaded with more difficulty than others, so there is likewise a difference in care and diligence, for those who use more care and diligence have more assurance. There is likewise a difference in growth and continuance in Christianity: some are fathers, and some are babes. As the difference of constitution, of care and diligence, and of age and growth in Christianity is, so is the difference of assurance.

What is more, it is possible that for a long time God’s child may lack this act of assurance, for there is a double act of faith.

(1) An act by which the soul relies upon God as reconciled in Christ, and relies upon Christ as given by God, and relies upon the promise. And then,

(2) There is a reflecting act, by which, knowing that we do this, we have assurance.

Now, a man may perform the one act and not the other. We may do the deed that could found our assurance, if the waters of the soul were not troubled; that is, we may believe and yet lack assurance, because that is another distinct act that follows upon our casting ourselves upon God. And so many of the dear children of God can sometimes hardly say that they have any assurance. Yet nevertheless they can say, if they do not belie themselves and bear false witness against themselves, that they have cast themselves upon God’s mercy. They have performed the first act of faith, and this faith is not altogether fruitless.

Now, there are many things that may hinder this other act, namely, the act of faith by which I am assured of my state in grace. Sometimes God, together with my believing, will present such things to the soul as wholly take it up, so that a man cannot have definite thoughts about what God would have him think of. So it is when God will humble a man for his boldness in venturing upon sin. He does not take away the spirit of faith; but to humble him thoroughly, God sets his anger before him, sets terror before him, even hellish terrors, that will put him in a state little different from a reprobate for the time. So he is far from saying that he has any assurance at that time.

Yet nevertheless he does not leave off; he still casts himself upon God’s mercy. Though God “kill him, yet he will trust in him” (Job 13:15), and yet he feels nothing but terror. And this, I say, God does to school him, and to humble him, and to prepare him for the feeling of assurance afterward.

We must observe these things, so that we do not give false evidence about ourselves. Though we do not have such assurance as we have had and as others have, yet, I say, there is always some ground in us on which we may be assured that we are God’s, if we could search it out. Such people ought to labor for assurance, and such people will in time come to assurance. And therefore we should be far from allowing that doctrine which is as if a man should light a candle before the devil, as we commonly say, to help him against our hearts by a doctrine of doubting, as if our wicked hearts were not ready enough of themselves to doubt.

It is the profaneness of the world that they will not use the means God has appointed to this end. Indeed, they would rather stagger, and take contentment and assurance in their own ways. They say, “If God will love me in a loose course, so be it. But as for ‘to give diligence to make my calling and election sure’ (2 Pet 1:10), I would rather believe the popish doctrine that I ought to doubt, and only be of a good hope.” But we ought constantly to labor to be assured of our state in grace, so that God may have more honor, and that we may have more comfort from him in return, and walk more cheerfully through the troubles and temptations that are in the world.

A carnal, proud person swells against this doctrine, because he feels no such thing, and he thinks that whatever is above his measure is hypocrisy. He makes himself the measure of other Christians, and so he values and esteems others by his own dark state; for a carnal man’s heart is like a dungeon. A man in a dungeon can see nothing, because he has no light, but he who has the light can see the dungeon. The heart of a Christian has a light in it (the Spirit is in him), and therefore he can see his own state, and can tell what is in him upon due search.

Now, in a carnal man all is dark. He sees nothing, because his heart is in a dungeon, his eye is dark, his heart is full of darkness. All is alike to him; he sees no difference between flesh and Spirit, and therefore he holds on in a doubting hope and a confused disposition and temper of soul. But a Christian who labors to walk in the comforts of the Holy Spirit is not content with such a confused state. Therefore we ought by all means to abhor that doctrine of doubting, and to uphold this doctrine, that we ought to have, and may have, assurance of salvation in this world.

The second thing I observe, which I join to the former, is the doctrine of perseverance. An earnest, as you know I told you, is completed with the bargain, but it is never taken away. So the point is this, that as God’s children may be assured of their salvation, so also:

Observation. They may be assured that they will hold out to the end.

I think many of you consider these two points so clear that it is unnecessary to divide them. For if we are assured of our salvation, there must necessarily be perseverance to the end; for what kind of assurance is it to be in the state of grace today, and not to be tomorrow?

But consider some degenerate followers of Luther, who leave him in his sweet and comfortable doctrines and take up some of his errors, and some others who would divide these points. If you ask them, they are hot against the papists for denying the doctrine of assurance of salvation; but when they come to perseverance, they hold that a Christian may fall away altogether. These things cannot stand together, for undoubtedly it is most sure and just and right that these truths follow one upon the other, assurance of salvation and perseverance. And therefore, if they maintain that we ought to be assured of salvation and not doubt God’s love, then surely they cannot, with the same spirit and on the same ground, doubt that God, who has begun a work, will finish it to the day of the Lord.

There is no question that the one follows the other, because an earnest, as it assures us of salvation, so it assures us of perseverance. Herein an earnest differs from a pawn or pledge. A pledge is given, but it is taken away again; but an earnest, once it is given, is never taken away again. As it is a part of the bargain, so it is filled out and completed with the bargain. So grace is a part of glory, and is never taken away, but is completed with the perfection of glory.

From this we see, then, that he who is in the state of grace cannot forfeit it; he perseveres to the end, because he has the earnest of the Spirit. If God were to take away his Spirit from him, he would take away his earnest; and if he took away his earnest, he would take away the very thing for which he gives it, assurance of salvation, and so would overthrow everything. But God never repents of his earnest. A man often repents of his earnest, and wishes he had not made such a fruitless bargain; but God never does. Where he gives the first-fruits, he completes the harvest; where he lays the foundation, he completes the building; where he gives earnest, he completes the bargain; where he begins a good work, he finishes it to the day of the Lord. Once his, forever his.

We cannot be as sure of anything as we may be of God’s love for the time to come. We have a common saying among us: “I know what I have, but what I will have I do not know.” It is a bad saying. You do not know what you have; for as to these worldly things, a man has them today in such a way that they may take to themselves wings and be gone tomorrow, for they are but vanity. I may be as rich as Job in the morning, and as poor as Job at night. So a man does not know what he has. But for the time to come, for grace and glory, he may say, “Though I do not know what I have, or how long I will have it, I know what I will have: ‘I know that neither things present, nor things to come, shall be able to separate me from the love of God in Jesus Christ’ (Rom 8:38-39).”

So you see here a foundation of the sweet and comfortable doctrine of perseverance. Grace is the earnest of glory, and differs from it only in degree. The beginning of glory is here in grace, the consummation of it hereafter. We are anointed kings here; we will be kings in heaven. We are sons here in this world; we will be heirs in heaven. We will be adopted there in soul and body; here we are adopted in soul. For in this life Christ’s first coming was for the soul; his second coming is for body and soul. Therefore the resurrection is called the day of regeneration (Matt 19:28), because then it will be perfected; here regeneration is only begun.

So, in that the work of the Spirit and the graces of the Spirit are called an “earnest,” we may know and be assured of perseverance in grace, and that what we now have in its beginning will be fulfilled.

Oh, how this should set us upon desires to have the blessed work of the Spirit upon us, to have the Spirit set his seal upon us, to be Christ’s, to have this earnest, and to get more and more earnest until we have the full bargain fulfilled in heaven!

Thirdly, I told you that an earnest is part of the whole; therefore those who do not have the earnest cannot look for the bargain. The observation from this is:

Observation. Those who look to be happy must first look to be holy.

This point I mean to touch very briefly. I am loath to pass it by, though it is not the principal thing I aim at, because it may serve as a kind of trial, whether a man has any right to heaven or not.

It is the ordinary presumptuous error of common Christians to think to go to heaven out of unclean courses, with “Lord, have mercy upon us.” But miserable wretches are those who do not have this “earnest” of the Spirit in them, an earnest of heaven beforehand, in grace, and peace, and joy. We must all read our happiness in our holiness. And therefore it is that happiness in heaven and holiness here, which is happiness begun, both bear one title, to show that we cannot have the one without the other. We must enter into heaven here in this life.

The stones, you know, were hewn before they were brought to the building of the temple; they were all made and fitted beforehand. And so all who will be stones in heaven must be hewn, and prepared, and fitted here; there must be no knocking and fitting of them there.

So then you see these three things touched: that the Holy Spirit, together with its graces and comforts, is called an “earnest,” and therefore that it is a part of the whole, an assurance of the whole, and that it will never be taken away.

Now for the fourth, that an “earnest” is little in regard of the whole (and indeed the holy apostle aims at this partly, as well as at anything else). An earnest is little; perhaps we have but a shilling to secure us of many pounds. So then the point is this:

Observation. Although we may be assured of our state in grace, and likewise that we will hold out, yet the ground of this assurance is not any great measure of grace; but though grace is little in quantity, it may be great in assurance and security.

We value an earnest not for the worth that is in itself, but because it assures us of a great bargain; we have an eye more to the consummation of the bargain than to the quantity of the earnest. So it is here. Grace is but an earnest; yet though it is little, as an earnest is, it is nevertheless great in assurance of validity, in proportion to what it has to assure us of.

There is nothing smaller than a “grain of mustard-seed,” but there is scarcely anything in the world so little in proportion that comes at length to be so great as the graces of God and the work of the Spirit. The crocodile, a huge creature, comes from an egg, and the oak rises to its greatness from an acorn. But what are these compared with the wondrous work of the new creature, who comes to be the heir of heaven, rising from such little, despised beginnings: from a little light in the understanding, from a little heat in the affections, from a little strength in the will, compared for their littleness to a grain of mustard-seed!

Indeed, grace grows, a man does not know how. As Christ says of the seed sown in the earth, it grows up first to a blade, and then to a stalk, and then to an ear, and then to be corn (Mark 4:28), but a man cannot tell how. So it is with the work of grace and the comforts of the Spirit. When the Spirit together with the word works upon the soul, there is a blade, a little, and then a stalk, and then corn.

First there is a babe in Christ, little at the first; and as it is little, so it is much opposed. So we see with the sun when it is weak in its rising in the morning. A great many vapors gather to besiege the sun, as it were, as if they would put out its light, until it comes to fuller strength, and then it consumes them all and shines gloriously in the heavens.

So it is with the work of the Spirit of grace. When it first arises in the soul, a great many doubts and discomforts gather about it. The flesh rises and casts up all the dirt and mud it can to trouble the blessed waters of grace, until grace has gotten fuller and fuller strength to consume them all, as it does when a man comes to be a strong Christian. Yet as little as it is, seeing it is an “earnest,” and “the first fruits,” as the apostle says, which were but little in regard of the whole harvest, it is still of the nature of the whole, and so it comes to secure us.

A spark of fire is but little, yet it is fire as well as the whole element of fire; and a drop of water is water as well as the whole ocean. When a man is in a dark place (suppose it is a dungeon), if he has a little light shining in to him from a little crevice, that little light reveals that the day has broken, that the sun has risen. Suppose there is but one grape on a vine; it shows that it is a vine, and that the vine is not dead. So, suppose there is but the appearance of a little grace in a Christian. Perhaps the Spirit of God appears in only one grace in him at that time; yet that one grace shows that we are vines, and not thistles, or thorns, or other base plants, and it shows that there is life in the root.

The Spirit of God does not appear in all graces at once; it appears at one time or another in some one grace. We see in plants that their vital strength appears in different ways. In winter it lies in the root; in the springtime, in the bud and the leaf; in the summer, in the fruit. It is not in all parts alike. So it is with the Spirit: as it is an “earnest,” it does not appear in all graces in a flourishing manner at the first. Sometimes it appears in the root, in humility; sometimes in faith; sometimes in love; sometimes in one grace, sometimes in another. Though the Spirit is in every grace, yet in appearance, to a man himself and to others, it appears in only one. An “earnest” is little, especially at the first.

Weak Christians therefore should not be discouraged. “Despise not the day of little things” (Zech 4:10). There is cause for mourning. We who have received the “first-fruits” of the Spirit mourn because we have only the first-fruits, and we would have the full harvest. But as there is cause for mourning because we have only the first-fruits, so there is cause for comfort because it is the first-fruits. It is only an “earnest,” and not the whole bargain, and therefore we have cause to mourn that it is so imperfect, that it is as weak as it is. Yet there is cause for comfort, because though it is not the whole, it is a part, and secures us of the whole.

And therefore Christians should labor to mingle duties, and let one grace temper another; for indeed a Christian is a mixed creature. His comforts are mixed, and his mourning is mixed. With a carnal man it is altogether otherwise. If he mourns, he is utterly dead in spirit, because he has no goodness; if he rejoices, he is mad, and his mirth is madness.

A Christian rejoices indeed, and sometimes he has “joy unspeakable and glorious” (1 Pet 1:8), because he looks to his hope and its fulfillment. And yet he mourns, because he has only the “earnest,” because he has only the beginnings, because he has only the first fruits here.

Use 2. And therefore again, as this should comfort us if we have anything at all, so it should exhort us to examine the truth of any grace rather than its measure. We have examined the truth: it is the truth of this “earnest,” the truth of grace and comfort.

It is an excellent saying of our Savior Christ to the church of Philadelphia in Revelation 3:8: “Because thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name.” A great promise is made to the church of Philadelphia, and why? “Because thou hast a little strength.” How is that shown? “Thou hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name.”

So then, if that little is true, God does not regard that little as it is little in quantity, but as he means to make it before long. He looks upon the “earnest” as one who means to complete the bargain; he looks upon the foundation as one who means to raise a goodly building; he looks upon the first-fruits as one who means to add the harvest. And therefore in Ephesians 1:4 and other places, “We are elected to be holy and blameless in his sight.” So it is in Ephesians 5:27: “He purgeth the church, that she may be presented to him without spot.” So Christ looks upon his church as he is purging and washing it, until he has made it holy in his sight. We are elected, not to an “earnest,” not to “first-fruits,” but to be “unblameable”; we are elected to perfection. It is the comfort of Christians that God looks upon his own, not as they are imperfect here, but as they are in their beginning, as they are growing, and as he intends to bring them to perfection afterward.

For all things are present to him, as we know, even the time to come and what we shall be. He considers us as if we were in heaven already; and so we are, in our degree and in our faith. So now “we sit in heavenly places” (Eph 2:6). Therefore, as he looks on us as we shall be, so faith answers his look, when we are shaped by the Spirit for comfort. Faith does not look upon the weak “earnest,” the poor beginnings, but upon us as we shall be afterward in heaven, “without spot and wrinkle” (Eph 5:27).

Yes, but how shall we know the truth of his “earnest,” that it is true, though it is little? Let me speak a word or two on that, by way of testing ourselves.

Where the Spirit of God is present in the character of an “earnest,” he is an “earnest” by way of grace and comfort. For the Spirit reveals himself in us in those two ways: by sanctifying our nature, or by comfort and peace and joy and the like.

1. Then it stirs up the soul to mourn that it is but an “earnest,” as I said before, and to wait for the fulfillment, as the apostle says in Romans 8:23: We that have received the first-fruits of the Spirit, mourn in ourselves, that it is no better with us than it is; and along with that,

2. We wait for the redemption of the sons of God, the adoption of the sons of God; we wait for the fulfillment hereafter. It is the nature of the Spirit of God, therefore, as it is an earnest, to stir up the spirits of God’s children to mourn in some measure, and likewise,

3. To wait patiently, to wait for the complete fulfillment hereafter; and, as a fruit of their waiting, to endure quietly, patiently, and comfortably whatever lies between the earnest and its fulfillment. And therefore God gives them the grace of hope and constancy and perseverance until all is fulfilled. For there is the tediousness of the time between, which is irksome; there is hope deferred, and the tediousness of deferring; and there are many afflictions besides.

Now God’s children who have the earnest of the Spirit have a spirit to wait as well. And so that they may be strengthened to wait, they have,

4. The spirit of constancy, a spirit of patience to endure trouble, to persevere, and to hold out against the tediousness of the time; so that they may not give up their religious ways, though they do not have it fully here, but may go on still, and wait. And likewise those who have the earnest of the Spirit, who have the Spirit as it bears this character of an earnest, are stirred up by it,

5. To shape themselves in keeping with the complete fulfillment; for “He that hath this hope,” says the apostle, “purgeth himself” (1 John 3:3). He who finds some little beginnings of grace and comfort, the beginnings of heaven upon earth, shapes himself for the perfect state in heaven. For it is the nature of faith and hope, wherever they are, to shape the disposition of the person in whom the Spirit has planted those graces to the condition of the soul that believes and hopes; it lies in the nature of the thing that it should be so. For does not hope, in any man who hopes to appear before some great person, make him change his clothes and fashion his bearing and behavior so as to be acceptable to the person he is going to? And do not faith and hope of better things, where they are in truth, fashion and dispose every man to be such as may be fit for heaven?

We have the title to heaven, indeed, by Christ; but the soul knows there must be a qualification: “No unclean thing shall enter into heaven” (Rev 21:27). And therefore, where the “earnest” is, there is a continual desire to be better, a continual relinquishing of corruption more and more, a perfecting of the work of mortification and the work of grace more and more. For the same Spirit that is an earnest, and gives us any beginning of a better life, likewise stirs us up, and fits and prepares us for that state that is kept for us. It is impossible that it should be otherwise. In whatever strength the “earnest” is, in that same strength are sanctification and mortification.

And therefore as for persons who live in sins against conscience, who defile their tongues and defile their bodies, let them talk as they will, it is only a presumptuous notion. It is not the voice of God’s Spirit, but of carnal presumption. For wherever the Spirit is an “earnest” of heaven, it is always preparing and fitting the soul for that glorious and happy state. And likewise, wherever this earnest of the Spirit is, wherever this grace is begun in truth,

6. There is a desire of fulfillment, an earnest desire for the coming of Christ to finish all, to finish the bargain. “The Spirit and the spouse say, Come” (Rev 22:17); that is, the spouse at the direction of the Spirit, where the spouse is guided by the Spirit. And so far as the spouse is guided by the Spirit, she says, “Come, come, Lord Jesus, come quickly” (Rev 22:20).

Cautions. This holds except in two cases.

(1) Except when the Christian has grieved and wounded his conscience, grieved the Spirit; and then it is loath to depart.

(2) Unless, likewise, the spirit of a Christian is careless, and would settle things in better order before he goes to Christ. For this is the fruit of presumption and carelessness: it grieves the Spirit of God, and the Spirit, being grieved, grieves them. He makes that which should be their comfort, their going to Christ by death, terrible to them. For as we see that a weak eye cannot endure the light, so a galled, guilty conscience trembles to think of Christ’s coming. Though the “earnest” is there, yet if the soul trembles, if the soul is wounded, it cries, Wait a while! “O stay!” says the psalmist, “before I go hence, and be no more seen” (Ps 39:13). When the wife has been negligent, she would have her husband stay away; but when she has been diligent, then the wife is willing for her husband to come. But perhaps things are not settled as they should be, and therefore she does not desire his coming as at other times.

But take a Christian in his right state of mind, and he is willing to die. Indeed, he is willing and glad and joyful to go to Christ. Then he knows that the earnest will be fulfilled with the bargain. Then he knows that what God has begun he will perfect. Then he knows that all the promises will be performed, when all imperfection will be removed and all enemies will be conquered, and so on. A carnal man does not say as the Spirit speaks in the spouse, “Come, Lord, come,” but, Stay away, Lord, stay away; and he speaks like the devil that possessed that person, “What have we to do with thee? Art thou come to torment us before our time?” (Matt 8:29). They think of it with quaking. But those who have the earnest of the Spirit have joyful thoughts of it, and wishes to match those thoughts.

7. Again, wherever this earnest is in truth, the earnest of the Spirit, there is growth. For it is the nature of imperfect things to come to their perfection, so that they may contend with whatever is contrary to them, and may carry out the functions by which they are fitted to serve God.

Now God has fitted the new creature to serve him, and to go through all the impediments in this world and all the crosses; and where he has begun this work, it will labor to come to perfection. As in the natural body we are not content to live, but when we have life we desire health, and when we have health we are not content with that, but we desire strength (not only health, but strength to perform what we should do), so where the spiritual life is begun, the living soul is not content merely to live, to find an “earnest,” some little beginnings.

If he has that, he would have health. He would not have any spiritual disease lying on the soul that might hinder it in its functions. And together with health, it desires fuller and fuller strength, because it has many temptations to contend with, many corruptions to resist, many actions to do, and perhaps many afflictions to bear, all of which require a great deal of strength. Wherever grace is in truth, it is always with a desire of growth, and in keeping with that desire will be the use of all the means of growth. Again, to name one or two more, and so end:

8. Wherever the Spirit is as an “earnest,” it does as the seal does, which I spoke of before: as it has a quieting power, an assuring power, it quiets the soul. Wherever it is, it is given to steady the soul, to comfort it that the whole will be performed in time. And therefore in the soul that has the “earnest of the Spirit,” so far as he has this “earnest,” it quiets and steadies the soul. A man may tell true faith from false, and the true earnest from presumption, by this, as we know other things. I say, it stills and quiets the soul, and

9. It will endure the test. We say of alchemy gold that it is counterfeit; it will not strengthen the heart. True gold has a fortifying power to strengthen the heart (whether that is so or not, let the alchemists look to it). But this is true: the true “earnest,” the beginnings of faith, though it is only in a small measure, has a quieting, a stilling, a strengthening power, to strengthen and fortify the soul, for it is given for that purpose. And a man who has the least grace will endure the search, as true gold will endure the touchstone; the false will not.

And it is a sign that a man has true grace in him, although with much imperfection, when he desires to be searched in preaching, hearing searching sermons, and desires to be searched in conversation, and does not fear his conscience, but would be searched thoroughly. When men fret at the searching of their sins, when they will not be searched, and are content to go on in presumptuous ways and think all is well, it is a sign that there is not so much as an “earnest.” But not to go further, that passage in the Revelation shows the truth of a little grace. What does he say? “Thou hast a little strength.” What does that little strength move the church of Philadelphia to do? “Thou hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name” (Rev 3:8).

10. Where there is a little strength, there will be a keeping of the word in obedience, a keeping of it in conduct. Where there is no regard for God’s word, no molding of the soul into it in obedience to it, there is not so much as a little strength of grace. And therefore those who live in rebellious ways do not have so much as an earnest. Yet it is said, “Thou hast kept my word,” and along with that, “thou hast not denied my name.”

11. Where there is a little strength, they will not deny Christ’s name; they will hold out in the profession of the truth, and confess it if occasion calls for it. And therefore where any are slight in their profession, giving in when they are about to run up against anyone’s displeasure, if they have to risk their estates or the like, then they are ashamed of Christ and of the profession they took upon themselves. They deny his name, or at least they do not own it. They do not have so much as a little strength, if they do not recover. Peter was in such a temptation, but he recovered his strength, and gained more strength, and a firm standing by it. The shaking of Peter was for the rooting of him.

So God, to shame his children, sometimes allows them to have cowardly spirits; but they recover themselves, and are ashamed of it. But consider those who play the common politician in this matter, who will not stand out in a good cause to maintain their truth and profession when God thrusts his cause into their hands, especially at such times when God says to them, “Who is on my side? who?” (2 Kgs 9:32). Now, then, is the time to appear. If they do not have a word for God, if they will not own the quarrel and cause of God and religion, they do not have even a little strength. For those who have a little strength here keep the word and have not denied the name.

Those, therefore, who can fashion themselves to all religions and to all companies, who will have a religion changeable and flexible to their occasions, where is the earnest of the Spirit in them? The Spirit, in whatever measure he is present, is strong and vigorous and powerful. These men, who are like water that is fashioned to the vessel it is in, do not have so much as a little strength. They are like the Samaritans, as Josephus, the historian of the Jews, writes of them. When the Jews prospered, oh, then they would be Jews! When the Jews had ill success, then they were great enemies to the Jews. So you have many who are no friends to the afflicted, to the disgraced truth. As long as the cause of religion is carried on with the support of the State, with the favor of great ones, so far they will own it; but if Christ once comes to be abased, they will not know Christ or his cause.

I beseech you, let us take notice of it. It is a sign that there is no grace at all where there is such a habitual disposition without shame or grief or repentance. For God’s children may sometimes be overtaken with a spirit of cowardice, which afflicts them sorely afterward, so that they gather more strength. A man in such a state may know whether he is God’s child. For it is universally true that God’s children are never overtaken with a spirit of cowardliness and fear without regaining their strength and growing stronger by it, as we see in Cranmer and others. God sometimes purposes to let them see what they are in themselves, without his support and strength; but afterward they gather new resolutions, new purposes to stick more firmly to the truth than ever before. I might add many other things, but I go on to what follows.

You see here now how we may test whether we have any true “earnest” in us at all or not.

Now I beseech you, let us labor to have this “earnest,” if we do not have it, and especially to have this assurance. Let me urge those of you who are younger to labor to have the seal of this Spirit, and the “earnest,” before you are further and further engaged in the world, and before you are so hardened that you will not receive a stamp contrary to your corruptions. It is a wondrous advantage that gentlemen and others who are young have, before the world has soiled them, and before their understandings are darkened and their affections are crooked and carried away much with the stream and errors of the time. They have much advantage above others, for they have spirits fitter for grace, fitter to receive the impression of this seal of the Spirit, and fitter for the “earnest.”

Let us labor for this earnest early. What a comfortable thing it will be to carry along with the “earnest” an assurance of a better state, from our youth to our maturity, and from our maturity to our old age, and so to heaven with us! What a great deal of comfort young people deprive and rob themselves of, who will not be people of grace early! Let us labor to have the stamp of the Spirit set on us in our prime, in the strength of our years. But I will press the point afterward, if the time allows.

Now we must know that God gives this earnest not for himself, but for us, to assure us; and that is one reason why it is called an earnest.

Besides bargaining, there is another state and condition to which “earnest” is applied, which perhaps the apostle has in view, namely marriage. Whatever came before the consummation of the marriage was a kind of “earnest,” to assure the affection of the betrothed persons who loved one another, until the consummation of the marriage.

So Christ now betroths us on the earth. Having love for us, and taking our nature upon him so that he might woo us in our own flesh and in our own nature, taking upon him the “earnest” of our flesh, he gives us the “earnest” of his Spirit. And to assure us that he loves us, and that he means to complete the bargain afterward, he sends us love tokens: graces, and comfort, and joy. Even so Isaac, when he was to marry Rebekah, sent by his servants bracelets and jewels and such things to assure her of his love (Gen 24:53).

So Christ in heaven, intending the consummation of the match, sends us here the graces and comforts of the Spirit, and all to assure us. All is for us, I say. I point this out the more because I want to raise your hearts to hate unbelief and distrust exceedingly, since God labors to undermine it by every means possible.

Why does he use so many terms here, of “sealing,” “anointing,” and “earnest,” with words and sacraments, and all that may confirm you? The Holy Spirit applies it to us. All this is so that we may not doubt of the favor of God. And therefore, when we find any goodness in us, let us count it a horrible sin to give false witness against ourselves; it is to make God a liar. God stands upon his credit. And therefore let us take heed of saying (especially if we have found the work of grace in former times, any “earnest”) that we have no grace. God does this for our assurance. All his dealing in word and sacraments, in earnest and oath, and all that may be, is to assure us. And therefore we should not cross the goodness of God by cherishing such a disposition as is most contrary to him, which he labors to undermine by every means.

And therefore here is the poison of popish religion: it maintains doubting, and leaves men doubting. Indeed they do well to maintain it in their doctrine, for they lay a false foundation for a man upon satisfaction, a false foundation upon purgatory and merits, and the foundation they give a Christian soul is uncertain. And therefore they may well teach doubting; it suits the course they take. But I say it is very corrupt, for God uses all means so that we should not doubt. And therefore it is idly objected that God for his part will, but for our part we have reason to doubt. Why, he stoops to us in all things; he labors to assure us; and therefore in the covenant of grace he does his part and ours too.

But I hasten to what follows, because I want to end on time. Let me touch on this a little, distinctly and by itself: the Spirit does all, the “earnest of the Spirit.” For indeed, though the word Spirit is not added to the establishing, yet the Spirit establishes by Christ; and the Spirit anoints; and the Spirit “seals to the day of redemption” (Eph 4:30); and it is “the earnest of the Spirit.”

So it is the Holy Spirit who does all. Here you have the three Persons of the Trinity. We have three grand enemies, “the world, the flesh, and Satan.” Now here are the three Persons of the Trinity, stronger than all our enemies. “He which stablisheth us” is God the Father, by his Spirit. Upon whom? Upon Christ, “in Christ”; and he gives “us the earnest of his Spirit.” You have, I say, the three Persons of the Trinity here. But why does the Spirit give us the earnest? Why does the Spirit give us grace and comfort, seal us, do all, and establish us?

1. I answer, because now, since the fall, we have no principles of supernatural good; and therefore it must be a principle above our nature that works both grace and comforts in our barren hearts.

2. Again, as there is no principle toward what is supernaturally good, so there is opposition to what is supernaturally good; and therefore there must be something to overpower the corruptions of our nature.

(1) But why the Spirit, rather than the Father and the Son? He comes from both; and proceeding from both, he is fit to witness the love of both. For the Holy Spirit is in the breast of the Father and the Son, and proceeds from both, and he knows the secret love of the Father to us, and the love of Christ Jesus the Mediator to us.

Now the Spirit knows the secrets of God. As a man’s spirit, says the apostle, knows his own secrets, knows his love, and knows whom he loves, so the Spirit of God, knowing the affection of the Father and the affection of Jesus Christ to us, is fit to be an “earnest,” fit to be a “seal.”

Indeed all things in grace are worked by the Spirit for application. The merit is from the Son, and originally from the Father; but in regard of the application of what is worked by the Son, all is by the Holy Spirit. Both graces and comforts the Holy Spirit takes from Christ. For if grace is worked, it is with divine reasons from the love of God in Christ. If grace is worked, it is from the wondrous love of God reconciled in Christ, in whom heaven is opened and hell is vanquished. It is by reasons fetched from Christ; and so “he takes of mine,” as Christ says, “He shall take of mine, and give to you” (John 16:15). He, the Holy Spirit, takes reasons from Christ, by which he makes all. The application is altogether by the Spirit.

(2) And it must be by the Spirit, again, because the Spirit of God, and no less than the Spirit, can quiet our spirits. For when the soul is disordered, it is like a disordered lock that no key can open. So when the conscience is troubled, what creature can settle the troubled conscience? What creature can open the winding passages of a troubled conscience in such perplexity and confusion? And therefore, to settle the troubled conscience aright, it must be something above conscience; and that which must quiet the spirit must be such a Spirit as is above our spirits. The work of the Holy Spirit in this kind is excellently set down in this epistle, in 2 Corinthians 3. But I cannot dwell on it now at this time. I go on.

It is likewise in 1 Corinthians 2:11, and that one place shall stand instead of all: “What man knows the things of a man, but the spirit of a man that is in him? So the things of God no man knows but the Spirit.”

Now, “We have received the spirit, not of the world, but the Spirit of God, to know the things that are freely given us of God” (1 Cor 2:12). If our spirits were in the heart and soul of another man, in the breast of another man, we would know what that other man thinks. If a man had a spirit within another man’s spirit, surely he would know all his thoughts and all his affections.

Now the Holy Spirit of God is in the breast of the Father and the Son, and he knows our spirits better than we know our own spirits. He searches; he is a “searcher,” as the word is in the original. The Spirit is a searcher. He searches our own hearts, and he searches the secret love of God to us. That is to say, the Spirit must establish us.

Well then, if the Spirit does all, how shall we know that we have this Spirit? A mark or two, and so I will go on.

1. How may we know that we have this Spirit of God to seal us and to be an earnest? (I will not say all that might be said, but only a little; for indeed all comes from the Spirit.) It is even as with our souls. How may a man know that he has a soul? By living and moving, by vital actions, and the like. So we may know that a man has the Spirit of God by those actions that come only from the Spirit, who is to the soul what the soul is in the body. For as all beauty and motion comes from the soul to the body, so all comes to the soul from the Spirit. All comes from the Spirit, and therefore every saving grace is a sign that the Spirit is in us.

2. In a word, the Spirit is in us in the nature of fire, as in other things, so in this: in transforming. Wherever the Spirit dwells, he transforms the soul; he transforms the person to be like himself, holy and gracious. Those therefore who find the Spirit transforming and changing them in the use of the ordinance of the word may know that they have the Spirit sealing them and being an earnest to them.

3. They may know likewise that they have it wrought by the Spirit, as to every single grace: you may know that spiritual graces come with conflict. For what is true comes with a great deal of resistance to what is counterfeit.

Comforts and graces that are not the earnest of the Spirit come with little conflict. But where there are true comforts and graces of the Spirit, wrought by the Spirit, it is with much conflict, with Satan and with the man himself. For there is a great deal of envy in the devil against the man who walks in the Spirit. He thinks, “What! Such a base creature as this to have the ‘earnest’ of heaven, to walk here as if he were in heaven already, and to defy all opposing powers! No, I will trouble his peace. He shall go mourning to heaven, if he goes there.” This is the reasoning of the cursed spirit, and on this ground he labors to shake a Christian’s assurance and persuasion. So the grace and comfort of a Christian come with much conflict and temptation, not only with Satan, but with his own heart.

Our hearts misgive us when we are guilty of some sins, as there is always guilt on the soul. So much guilt, so much doubt. Until the soul is free from guilt, it will never stop casting up doubts. And therefore there is always resistance in us, and there must be a higher power than the heart and soul of a man to set the heart down and quiet it. It is always in conflict.

4. They may know it also by supernatural obedience. The graces and comforts of the Spirit, wrought by the Spirit, are always in the use of means, holy means. And this grace carries a man above the strength of nature. It carries him to the practice of what he could not do by nature: to pardon his enemies, to pray for them, to overcome revenge, and to enjoy prosperity without pride, in a comforting measure. It enables him to practice the last commandment, to be content with his own estate and not lust after that of others; and the first commandment as well. The graces of the Holy Spirit enable a man to love God, and to rejoice in him above all as his best portion. They make his joy spiritual, and they make him delight in all things of kindred nature, things that are like the Spirit, since whatever is spiritual is of one nature with the Spirit.

If a man has the graces of the Spirit, he rejoices in spiritual company, he rejoices in the presence of God, he hates sin as being contrary to the “earnest of the Spirit,” he hates terror of conscience and the way to it. He will look on good things as God looks on them and as the Spirit looks on them, and he relishes everything that is spiritual: “he savours the things of the Spirit” (Rom 8:5).

Now, because I do not want to draw your thoughts away, there are some six or seven properties of the Spirit in one chapter, Romans 8, so that you may have them all together. I will not name them all, but only such as are easy.

5. First of all, it is said in Romans 8:9 that wherever the Spirit is, he dwells, as in a house. Now, wherever the Spirit is, he is dwelling and ruling; for the Holy Ghost will not be an underling to lusts. And he repairs and makes up the breaches of the soul. Where the Spirit dwells, all the breaches are made up. He turns ignorance to knowledge; he begets knowledge, and affection, and love. He prepares all; he prepares his own dwelling, and it is familiar and constant to the Spirit. A dwelling implies familiarity and constancy. He is not in us as he is in wicked men who have the Spirit. As Augustine says, “The Spirit of God knocks at their hearts, but he does not dwell there.”

To go on, that is the first: the Spirit dwells in us, if we have the Spirit.

6. And then the Spirit subdues what is contrary. For when the Spirit comes into a man, he pulls down all the “strongholds”; he makes way for himself. And therefore he is said to “mortify the deeds of the flesh” (Rom 8:13). If you mortify the deeds of the flesh by the Spirit, you are led by the Spirit. Those, therefore, who subdue their corruptions by the help of the Spirit, by spiritual reasons, are led by the Spirit. Those who cherish corruptions do not have the Spirit; nor do those who mortify them, not by spiritual reasons, but out of civil considerations, to carry authority among men, and who therefore would be free from such aspersions as might damage their reputation.

7. Third, as many as are led by the Spirit are the sons of God (Rom 8:14); the Spirit leads them. As the angel went before the Israelites from Egypt to Canaan, so the Spirit of God, like the angel, goes before us, leads us the way, and removes the hindrances. He leads us, I say, sweetly and not violently; it is the devil who leads violently those of his who are possessed with his spirit. So those who have the Spirit working grace and comfort in them, he leads sweetly, and yet strongly too. It is strongly, because it is against corruption and opposition from without; but yet sweetly, preserving the liberty and freedom of the soul. By nature we are like children or blind men; we cannot lead ourselves, and therefore the Spirit leads us. Those therefore who have the Spirit, he leads, and they submit themselves to the guidance and leading of the Spirit. That is another evidence.

8. A fourth is this: he is a spirit of adoption. He assures us that we are the sons of God; he gives us assurance of our adoption, that we are the sons of God. The same Spirit who sanctifies us witnesses to us; he makes us holy. He witnesses to us that we are the sons of God.

9. And then again, the Spirit stirs up “sighs and groans that cannot be expressed” (Rom 8:26) when we are not of ourselves able to pray. This is an evidence of the “earnest” of the Spirit, when we can send our sighs and groans to God. I say, God will hear the groans, the voice of his own Spirit. For where do those sighs and groans to God come from? Why, should we not rather sink in despair in our troubles, were it not that the Spirit is in us? Those therefore who in extremity have nothing to comfort them, and yet are able to send forth sighs and groans to God, may certainly know that they have the Spirit.

10. And likewise, the Spirit makes us mourn and wait for the adoption of the “sons of God.” Those who mourn and wait have the evidence of the Spirit. For a worldling does not mourn for his imperfections, for his corruptions. He does not mourn that he is absent from his Savior, neither does he wait for the accomplishment of what will be bestowed on the saints, because he has his portion here. Therefore those who can mourn for their corruptions, for those things the world is not able to reproach them for, because they cannot serve God with the enlargement of the Spirit that they would; and who wait also without despair, or without discouragement, until God has finished their course, are led by a better Spirit than the world.

Though I should name no more, what a number of sweet evidences are here to show a soul truly moved, and guided, and led by the Spirit! But these shall be sufficient for this time.

Well then, the Spirit does all. He anoints and seals and gives the “earnest” of grace and comfort and all, until he brings us to heaven, being Christ’s Vicar (for Christ has no other vicar on earth but his Spirit). Indeed he does all, for God to us and from us to God. Whatever God does to us is by the Spirit: he anoints and seals and sanctifies by the Spirit. And whatever we do to God is by the Spirit, or else it is not acceptable. We sigh and groan in the Spirit; we pray in the Holy Ghost, says Jude (Jude 20). What God does to us comes immediately from the Spirit, and all that we do to God is in the Spirit. If the Spirit does all this, if this is so, if it is an undoubted truth, oh then, we should labor by all means for this Spirit of God! Let me give some directions in a word, and so end.

1. Labor, I say, to have the Spirit and to groan in the Spirit. And to this end, because the word is the chariot of the Spirit, in which the Spirit is carried, attend upon the ordinances of God, and use all kinds of spiritual means, in which the Spirit is usually effectual; for the Spirit will work only with his own means. All those bastard inventions and devices fetched from the Church of Rome, human devices in God’s service, are worthless. God’s Spirit will not be effectual with popish devices, and therefore Rome is “the habitation of devils” (Rev 18:2). God’s Spirit has nothing to do there, because they have set up a worship contrary to God’s worship. They have set up a covenant contrary to Christ’s covenant; they have set up the covenant of works, and deny, in a manner, a covenant of grace. Christ is not taught there as he should be.

Now, wherever the Spirit is, it is with the clear teaching of the gospel. “Received you the Spirit by hearing of the law, or of faith preached?” (Gal 3:2). Therefore let us attend upon the unfolding of Christ Jesus in the gospel; for the Spirit is given with a clear and true unfolding of Christ. And let us omit no spiritual means in which the Spirit is effectual, such as meditation, reading, and the like.

For a man working in a garden, though he does not think of it, perhaps draws in a sweet scent from the flowers; there is a tincture from the air that is round about him.

So the word of God is composed by the Spirit of God, and in holy company we are led by the same Spirit. A man, then, either by reading the word, or in holy company, or by spending time in good books, will draw a spiritual sweetness from the word or from those he has to deal with.

The spirit of a man is like water that runs from minerals. As we see, baths have their warmth from the minerals they run through, and they have a tincture from them, to be hot in this or that degree, in this or that quality. So it is with the soul. When it runs through holy things, when it has to deal with good books and good company and the like, it draws a spiritual tincture. And therefore, if we would have the Spirit of God to guide us, let us be much in those things that the Holy Ghost has sanctified for us to that end, at all times when we have liberty from our callings.

2. And also, take heed that we do not grieve the Holy Ghost in any way, if we would have the Spirit to “seal” us and to increase our earnest.

How do we grieve the Holy Ghost?

(1) By cherishing contrary affections, and lusts, and desires. And do not resist the Holy Ghost. As now, when you hear the word of God, if you close your resolutions against it, if you shut your hearts and resolve not to give way to any instruction that will be delivered, this is a resisting of the Holy Ghost. God now knocks at the hearts of those who are here, by his word and Spirit; and therefore we should open the everlasting doors, and let the King of glory come in (Ps 24:7, 9).

We should lay open all to the Spirit. Oh, when the Spirit, when Christ is so willing to give the Spirit, it cannot be anything but our own fault if we are no more spiritual than we are; for indeed there is nothing, in a manner, required in order to be spiritual but not to resist the Spirit.

The Holy Ghost presses upon us in the word such reasons for heavenly-mindedness, for despising earthly things, for purging ourselves from the corruptions in the world, such reasons to be good, that indeed none are damned in the bosom of the church but those who set a bar against the Spirit of God in their hearts, with a cursed resolution that they will not be better, that they will not part with their cursed lusts. Therefore they are damned, because they are determined to be damned. Let the preachers say by the word and Spirit what they will, they think it better to be as they are than to entertain such a guest as will mar and alter all that was there before. Take heed therefore of resisting the Spirit, and of grieving the Spirit by anything in ourselves, or by conversing with company that will grieve him.

He who has the Spirit of God in him cannot endure carnal company; for what will he hear, what will he draw in at his senses, but what will be vexation of spirit to him? Therefore it is said of Lot that his righteous soul was vexed with the unclean way of life of the Sodomites (2 Pet 2:7). It is an undoubted sign of a man who has no grace, not to care for the company of one who has grace.

(2) Likewise yield all obedience and subjection to the Spirit, and to all the motions of the word and Spirit. Bring our hearts into subjection; lay ourselves, as it were, before the Spirit; allow ourselves to be moved and fashioned and framed by him. For God gives his Holy Spirit to them that obey him (Acts 5:32).

(3) And beg for the Spirit also as the principal thing. “God gives the Spirit,” says Christ, “to them that ask him” (Luke 11:13). By his manner of speaking there, Christ intimates, as if he should say, “What can I give you better than the Holy Ghost? And yet this I will give you, if you ask him.” That is the good thing that God gives; for indeed, that is the seed of all graces and of all comfort. And therefore a world of promises are included in that promise, that he “will give the Spirit to them that ask him.”

Labor by these and such like means for the Spirit. And then, if you have the Spirit, the “earnest” of the Spirit and the “seal” of the Spirit, mark what will come of such a temper of soul. That will go through all conditions whatsoever, come what will; for the Spirit is above all, and the comforts of the Spirit are above all earthly comforts, and the graces of the Spirit are able to encounter all temptations.

So a man who has the Spirit stands impregnable. The work of grace cannot be quenched, because it is the effect and the work of the Spirit. All the powers of all the devils in hell cannot stir it. God may hide his comfort for a time, to humble us; but as for quenching the work of the Spirit once wrought in the heart, all the power of all the devils in hell cannot quench the least spark of saving grace. It will carry us through all opposition whatsoever.

Let a man never balk or decline in a good cause, for anything he may suffer; for the “seal” and the “earnest” of the Spirit are never stronger than when we have no other comfort by us but that, when we can draw comfort from the wellhead, from the spring. Therefore we should labor for the earnest of the Spirit; for it will fit us for all conditions whatsoever.

What makes a man differ from himself? What makes a man differ from another? Take a man who has the “earnest” of the Spirit: you will find him defying death, the world, Satan, and all temptations. Take a man who is negligent in laboring to increase his earnest: you will find him weak, and not like himself.

The apostle Peter, before the Holy Ghost came upon him, was dismayed by the voice of a weak damsel; but afterward, how willing he was to suffer anything! Therefore let us not labor much to strengthen ourselves with the things of this life, or to value ourselves by our dependence upon others. If you have grace, you have that which will stand by you when all other things fail. For all other things will be taken away, but the Comforter shall never be taken away; he goes along with us continually.

1. First, he works “earnest” in us, and then he stamps upon us his own mark, and then he leads us from grace to grace. And in the hour of death, then especially he has the work of a Comforter, to present to us the fruits of a good and holy life, and likewise the joys of heaven. When we are dead, the Spirit watches over our bodies, because they were “the temples of the Holy Ghost.” At the day of judgment the same Spirit will knit body and soul together. And afterward the same Spirit who has done all this will be all in all to us in heaven forever. And then our very bodies will be spiritual, whereas now our souls, even the better part of them, are carnal. Even as when fire possesses a piece of iron, the iron is all fire, so our bodies will be all spiritual.

What a blessed thing this is, to have the Spirit! What are all friends compared with the Holy Ghost, who will speak to God for us? The Spirit will make request with sighs and groans, and God will hear the voice of his own Spirit.

What prison can shut up the Spirit of God? Above all, labor to have more of the Spirit of God. As we have more or less of him, this will make us more or less fruitful, more or less glorious in our profession of faith, more or less willing to die. Labor to increase this “earnest,” that the nearer we come to heaven, the more we may be fitted for it.

Consider just this reason, if you lack this: alas, we can never be thankful to God for anything if by the Spirit we do not have assurance that our state is the state of grace. For otherwise we might think that God gives us all in anger, as a carnal man always fears that God is fattening him like an ox for the slaughter. What a fearful case this is, that a man cannot be thankful for what he has!

2. Labor for the Spirit, that we may be thankful to God for everything, that we may see the love of God in everything, in every refreshment we take; that the same love of God that fits us for heaven, and that fits heaven for us, gives us our daily bread. The earnest of the Spirit will make us thankful for everything.

3. Again, labor for the “earnest” of the Spirit, that we may be joyful in all conditions. How can a man suffer willingly who does not know that he is sealed with the Spirit, who does not know that God has begun a good work in him? Alas, he is dull and heavy under the cross.

What makes a man bear the cross willingly but this assurance? What makes him deny himself in temptations and corruptions? “Oh!” says the child of God, “the work of the Spirit is begun in me, sealing me up to life everlasting. Shall I grieve and quench this Spirit for this base lust?” But a man who does not have the Spirit says, “I might as well take this pleasure as have none at all; for all I know, I shall have none.” He sees no greater pleasure than following his lust.

So none can resist temptations but he who has the Spirit giving him earnest in a comforting measure; and when we resist temptations for spiritual reasons, it is a good sign that the Spirit is working it.

4. Again, unless we have this earnest of the Spirit in our hearts, we can never be content to end our days with comfort. He who has the earnest of the Spirit is glad of death when it comes. Then there will be an accomplishment of all the bargain. Then the marriage will be consummated; then will be the year of Jubilee, the Sabbath of rest forever. Then is the triumph, and then all tears shall be wiped from our eyes (Rev 7:17).

But now let a man stagger and doubt whether he is the child of God or not, so that he cannot find any mark of the child of God in him, so that he cannot read the evidences of a Christian state in his soul, they are so dim. He sees nothing but corruption in him; he sees no change, no resistance of corruption; he has no earnest. Alas, what a miserable case such a man is in when he comes to die! Death, with the eternity of misery after it, who can look it in the face without hope of life everlasting, without assurance of a happy change after death? Therefore we should labor for the Spirit. However we grow or decay in wealth and reputation, leave that to God; but above all, beg of God that he would increase in us and renew the earnest and the stamp of the Spirit, that we may have something in our souls in which we may see the evidences of a Christian estate.

I might add many things to this purpose, but this is sufficient for any judicious Christian, to encourage us to labor for the Spirit above all things in the world. All other things are but grass, but fading. But grace and glory, grace and peace and joy, no, the very “earnest” of the Spirit, is better than all earthly things; for the earnest of it is “joy unspeakable, and glorious” (1 Pet 1:8), and “peace that passeth all understanding” (Phil 4:7).

If the promise and the earnest here are so, I beseech you, what will the accomplishment of the promise be? If the promises, laid hold of by faith, so quicken and cheer the soul, and if the giving of a taste of heaven lifts a Christian’s spirit above all earthly discouragements, what will it be when the Spirit is all in all in us, if the earnest is so comforting? But I go on to the next verse.

Moreover, I call God to record upon my soul, that to spare you, I came not yet to Corinth (2 Cor 1:23).

In this verse the apostle labors to remove the suspicion of lightness and inconstancy. There were suspicions in the minds of the Corinthians, and these were further stirred up by some vainglorious teachers among them, who labored to undermine St. Paul in the hearts of the Corinthians, as if he had not loved the Corinthians as well as those teachers did. Therefore he is so careful to clear himself in their thoughts from the suspicion of inconstancy and of lack of love for them, because suspicion grounded on lightness in his conduct might reflect upon his doctrine.

He knew well enough the malice of man’s nature, and therefore he is very careful and industrious to make a clear passage for himself into the hearts of these Corinthians by every means possible, as we heard in part from 2 Corinthians 1:17.

“Moreover, I call God to record…” St. Paul is here still purging himself, to clear his name.

First, he labors to clear himself from the suspicion of inconstancy and of lack of love for them in not coming.

Secondly, he sets down the true cause why he did not come: “I came not, to spare you.”

In effect he says: You were much to blame in many things, and among the rest of the abominations among you, you cherished the incestuous person, and many of you doubted the resurrection. I would have been very severe if I had come; therefore “I came not, to spare you,” hoping that my letter would work upon your spirits, so that I need not be severe with you. Therefore do not suspect that I stayed away out of any ill will, for it was to spare you, that I might not be forced to be severe.

Then the third thing is the sealing of this speech with a serious oath: “I call God for record upon my soul, that I came not, to spare you.” So here is the wiping away of suspicion, the setting down of the true cause why he did not come, and the ratifying and confirming of it by an oath: he clears himself here by an oath. These three things I will briefly touch on.

First of all, you see here that he clears himself of the suspicion of lightness which the Corinthians had of him, partly through the false suggestion of proud teachers among them. These teachers fomented their suspicious dispositions, because they wanted to weaken the esteem in which St. Paul was held among the Corinthians. The Corinthians had the notion that he was an uncertain man: he promised to come and did not. Now here he puts that suspicion away from himself.

Here, first, observe these two things briefly.

First, that the nature of man is inclined to suspicion.

And secondly, that it is the duty of men to avoid it as much as possible, and to wipe it away if it cannot be avoided.

Observation. Man’s nature is prone to suspicion.

Man’s nature is prone to suspect ill of another, however good that other may be. Christ could not avoid it. Because he mixed sociably with other men, he was thought to be a “wine-bibber,” a companion of sinners. And God himself was suspected by Adam in his innocence. The devil is so cunning that he calls God himself into question, as if God had not meant so well toward Adam. What will that shameless spirit not do, when he will bring the creature to suspect him who is goodness itself? He says, “God knows that when you eat, your eyes shall be open, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:5). Do you think that God intends you any good in forbidding you to eat…? The devil did not spare Christ, innocence itself clothed with man’s flesh; and will he spare others, and not bring uncharitable suspicions upon them? Surely he will not. And then man’s nature of itself is prone to suspect and think ill of another, on many grounds:

1. Sometimes out of experience of the common infirmities that men meet with in the world. Out of the experience of the falsehood of men, they are many times prone to suspicion.

2. But most commonly it is out of guiltiness that men think ill of others, because others have cause to think ill of them. None are so prone to suspicion as those who are worst themselves, because they judge others by their own hearts.

The better sort of people think of others as they are, and as they themselves deserve; but the others, because they are wicked, think that others are so too. Because they deserve ill, they think others have deserved an ill opinion of them. So it many times comes from guilt, because we are not as we should be.

Then again, it arises from a guilty conscience in another respect. We think men have cause against us, though they themselves have suffered no wrong; yet because our own hearts tell us that we are bad, we suspect them. So it often comes from an uncharitable disposition and guiltiness of conscience.

3. Then again, it comes sometimes from the concurrence of probabilities, the fitting together of circumstances that makes things somewhat probable, on which suspicion may be fastened. Sometimes, when there is a concurrence of probabilities about the likelihood of things, men’s suspicion is prone to rise; for suspicion is not a determining of a thing, but only a slight kind of notion. It is more than a fear and less than a judgment of a thing. It is more than fear, for the one who fears does not suspect. Suspicion is a step toward judgment. It does not fully judge, for then it would not be suspicion. It is more than fear; the fearful person does not suspect, but fears. It forms a slight notion that such a thing was done, and yet the person dares not say it is done.

Suspicion is nothing else but an inclination of the soul to think and imagine ill of another, a prying look under a thing or a person. As we are accustomed to say, envy pries into things. An envious person searches. So a suspicious person looks underneath, to see if he can find any matter of evil on which to fasten his evil soul. So it inclines the soul to think ill on slight grounds.

Now this often arises from, and is fed by, seeming probability. Christ conversed with wicked men. Here was some pretext for them to conjecture that he was such a man.

We say that things have two hands, a right hand and a left. Now suspicion always takes hold of the left hand. If things will admit of a double interpretation, suspicion always takes hold of the worst; suspicion takes hold of the evil part. That is the nature of a diseased soul, to take things by the wrong hand. We see, then, that it is a disposition we are naturally subject to, and it is cherished by Satan and by Satan’s instruments, wicked men.

And why does the devil so cherish suspicion and a mistrustful disposition?

Oh, it has been wonderfully useful to Satan! I dare say there is no disposition or frame of soul that has been the occasion of more bloodshed, of more injustice in church and state, from the beginning of the world than a mistrustful disposition, especially in great ones. Therefore the devil labors to breed suspicions of God, and likewise of God’s church and children, from the beginning. Was it not always the disposition of ill-minded men to put suspicions into people’s hearts, especially the hearts of those in authority, concerning men far better than themselves? Was this not Haman’s policy? When the Jews had angered him, his word was: Oh, they are a people who do not care for the laws. Perhaps they were more obedient than he was. Would it not have been the occasion of their ruin, if God had not been more merciful?

Herod had a jealousy and suspicion that Christ, when he was born, would turn him out of his kingdom, and all Jerusalem was in an uproar (Matt 2:3). Alas! Christ came to give a heavenly kingdom, and not to take away earthly ones; yet this jealousy cost the lives of the poor infants.

So in the primitive church there were wicked men who put suspicions concerning the Christians into the heads of the emperors, when, alas, the Christians reverenced the emperors above all, next to God. Yet there were always wicked instruments who sought to domineer and to have their own ends under the emperors. They conveyed suspicions, and from that came so much bloodshed.

In later times in popish countries, if a man reads the histories, where did that bloodshed come from? This was one chief cause: mistrust and suspicions cast into the heads of popish princes by wicked men around them, set to work by Satan himself. Oh, they would say, these are such as will turn you out of your state, a people who are rebellious and unquiet.

This was the policy among us in former times. We may consider later times, to see the disposition of a man who was a great statesman in his time, and a man of great gifts and learning, but of a very fierce and cruel disposition: I mean Stephen Gardiner. The chief harm done in that magnanimous prince’s time was done by him. And how? By suspicions, as appears from his letters. Oh, he would say, if these things prevail, this and that will come! He cast such suspicions as frightened that great prince: Oh, other princes will fall out with you if you do not maintain these things; they will break with you! And so on his deathbed he said: This doctrine of justification, if the people once know it, all is gone.

God shows that all these suspicions are only follies; for everything Gardiner feared came to pass. In good Queen Elizabeth’s time, the religion he was so suspicious of was established, and she did not care for friendly relations with princes of other religions any further than might stand with reasons of state. And did she not flourish, and her people live in quiet, all her time, in spite of all the former suspicions, as if religion, once established, could not stand with peace? So the outcome proved what kind of suspicions these were.

Do we think, then, that a great deal of harm is not done among private persons, when such a world of harm is done in states by Satan and his instruments? Well! Let us therefore take notice of our disposition, and of the inclination of men this way, that we may the better prevent it. And that will appear in the second thing:

Observation. We should labor by all means to avoid suspicion, and to keep clear of it as much as we can.

It should be the care of ministers and others (it belongs generally to all Christians) to free themselves from any evil suspicion in the hearts of others as much as they can, as St. Paul did here with the suspicion of inconstancy, lightness, and lack of love for them, in that he did not come among them.

Suspicion is a canker that eats into the soul where it lodges, and it will consume and waste all love. It is the very venom of love and friendship. A little thing will breed it, but will not work it out. Therefore we ought first of all to take great care that we give no ground for suspicion at all; or if we do, to be careful to get it out as soon as we can. For usually where it takes hold, it boils until it breaks out into words, and then words, when they come to light, breed estrangement, and that breeds other troubles.

And we should labor to avoid it all the more because that which is suspected is made unprofitable. For when a man unwarrantably suspects another thing, it is unprofitable to him. We gain little good from those we suspect to be bad, or ill-disposed toward us, and then we do little good to them, for love is much daunted by the ill opinion we have taken up against them. A man cannot do the good he might when he is suspected. There lies a bar in the way, an evil suspicion in the other party, which is an obstruction between him and the good he might do. Therefore, even for the love of others, we ought to avoid suspicion as much as possible, that they may receive good from us.

As we ought not uncharitably to suspect others, that we may do good to them, so we ought by all means to avoid suspicion from them, lest it be a bar to the good we might do toward them. Let us labor to clear ourselves, as far as we can, from all suspicion of lack of love and of bad conduct, that there may be nothing between our spirits and theirs to hinder the good that might come from us to them, but that all may pass clear. You see how careful holy men have been in all times to avoid suspicion as much as they could.

Even God himself (we cannot have a more glorious pattern): what course has he taken with mankind from the beginning of the world? He has condescended and stooped to man’s weakness, to clear himself of the suspicion of unkindness toward man, that man might not cherish the suspicion that God does not love him. For there is such poison in the cursed nature of man that, do what God can, man will lay accusations upon God, to bear himself out in stubborn courses, as if God did not delight in him or regard him.

And as you have it in Ezekiel 18:2 and the verses following, man complains: I am punished for other people’s sins; God deals hardly with me, and brings the sins of my fathers upon me; and, “the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” God knows the cankered disposition of man since the fall. Satan lies upon the disposition of man and broods upon it, to make it like himself, malicious even against God himself. God, as it were, puts himself on trial to clear himself, even with no less than an oath: “As I live, saith the Lord, I will not the death of a sinner” (Ezek 33:11). You think I am severe with you, he says; and men will rather impute it to God’s severity than to their own sin. That is the pride of man’s nature.

A sinner is exceedingly proud until he comes to destruction itself and the book of conscience is opened. Sin will have something to shelter itself with; sin is a proud thing. God clears himself by an oath: “As I live, saith the Lord, I will not the death of a sinner.” If you die, you may thank your own sins. Though you are so bad, if you will repent, “I will not the death of a sinner, but rather that he return, and live.” Yet in spite of this, man, to countenance himself in sin, will perhaps fly to the decree of God: Perhaps God does not delight in me. Whereas the rule of our life is, “He hath showed thee, O man, what is good” (Mic 6:8), to do good and abstain from evil, and then that question, whether you are God’s or not, will be beyond question. But man will force upon himself the thought that God does not regard him, that he may sin with more freedom.

So it was with the unfaithful servant: “I knew thou wert a hard master, that exactest that that thou hadst not given” (Matt 25:24), and therefore I hid my talent. The bad servant forces upon himself the thought of hardness in his master, when he was not so, that he might be idle. So men force upon themselves the thought of something hard in God, that God’s dealings are such and such, that they may take more liberty. For if God is as loving and as gracious as he has revealed himself to be, their hearts would melt; they would never live in such courses, but would rather put everything to the venture than clamor against God’s justice. Therefore God himself clears himself of any disposition of unkindness and unmercifulness: “As I live, saith the Lord, I will not the death of a sinner.” So his whole course is to show that he loves us.

And what is our Savior Christ’s whole course, but to free men from the suspicion of lack of love? Did he ever turn anyone back from him, except those who went away of themselves? Did he not shed tears for those who shed his blood, so merciful and gracious was he? If holy men of all times have labored to clear themselves to others, we ought not to rage against the evil dispositions of men. If we were as good as God and as Christ, men would still have false suspicions of us. No innocence in the world will free a man from suspicion, that wicked, poisonous disposition the devil stirs up against him. Therefore do not rage against it, but bear it with a spirit of moderation.

And let us keep clear of it as much as we can, and free the hearts of people from evil suspicion; and if we cannot avoid it, let us still bear it without discontent, considering that it is the lot of God’s children to be suspected, as we see here that St. Paul was.

“To spare you, I came not to Corinth.” St. Paul, besides laboring to remove suspicion, sets down here the true cause of his not coming to them. It was not lightness and inconstancy; it was “to spare you.” They had many abuses among them, and amended they must be; that was a settled conclusion. But the question concerns the manner: whether by gentle means, by writing an epistle and waiting a while, or afterwards by coming and telling them their sin to their face, and by being severe and terrible among them?

Now he concludes: I did not come among you for this very reason, that I might not be so severe and terrible among you as by office I would have had to be, if you had not amended before I came. And indeed they did amend, for they cast out the incestuous person and reformed other abuses, to their comfort. They forestalled St. Paul’s severity with their reformation. They had not at first cast out the incestuous person, and they had factions among them; they had atheists among them who doubted the resurrection; many abuses had crept in among them. St. Paul wrote an earlier epistle from a desire to reform these, and a blessed reformation was worked. St. Paul did not delight in austerity; therefore he put off his coming, that he might have more joy and contentment than sorrow.

“To spare you, I came not.” Before I come to the points, take this as a ground:

Observation. Sin must be judged and censured when it is committed.

It must be undone by repentance, or by eternal punishment in hell. It must be censured here or hereafter.

For it is against God’s nature and God’s word: “The soul that sinneth shall die” (Ezek 18:4). It must of necessity be repented of, or be eternally punished in hell. Censured it must be, one way or another, for it is of such a contrary nature, so opposite to the holiness of God. That is a ground.

Now with this laid as a ground, the question is, What is the best way to take away sin, by gentle means or by severe? By gentle means, if it may be; if not, then by severe. St. Paul would not have spared them if he had come, if they had not amended. So the points are two.

First of all, that the best way of redressing sin is by gentle means, if it may be.

Secondly, if that will not do, then by severe, if men would not have men damned.

“I came not, to spare you,” because I desired that gentler courses might prevail. So I say, the first point is this:

Doctrine. If gentler courses will prevail, they ought especially, and in the first place, to be taken.

It should be the care both of ministers and of all who deal with others first of all to use mild, winning, and gaining courses.

Now to prove this.

Reason 1. They are more suitable to the nature of man; for the nature of man is best worked on by rational courses suited to his nature, suited to his principle. Man is a reasonable creature; therefore rational courses will prevail with a rational man, a course of persuasion and of laying things open. Take a man who is not beastlike: only tell him the danger of his sin, tell him its peril in gentle words, and he will amend, provided he is not hardened by God to destruction, or God does not reserve him for a more severe redress. Gentle courses ought to be used first, because they agree with the nature of man.

2. Again, they suit God’s disposition best; for “God is love” (1 John 4:8), and his course toward man is love. If he takes any course contrary to love, it is not his own work. As he says, to punish man is not his own work; he is always forced to that. To show love and mercy, that is his work, that which comes from his own principle, from his mercy: “he is love.” He does not say he is justice or rigor, but that he is love. It agrees with the nature of God to deal mercifully. If he deals otherwise, it is forced from him by us.

3. It suits the whole conduct of our salvation, these courses of love and gentleness first of all; for we are saved by a manner of love. We are saved by God giving his Son, and by his Son giving himself. We are saved by a course of entreaty. The ministers of God are ambassadors to desire us to be “reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:20). God having saved us by a manner of love, he will have us taught by a manner of love, especially in the gospel; because God’s aim is to gain our love, and what way can that be done but by a way of love?

For the nature of man is such that it will never love until it knows it is loved first. Therefore God stoops to a way of love, because he wants our love, which he would never have by other courses, because they are contrary to our nature.

4. It is the practice of God. His custom corresponds to it: for first he always deals by gentle means, and then afterward, if those will not prevail, he goes to severe means; and in severe means he proceeds by degrees, first less, then more violent, and then violent indeed. God would never descend to sharper courses if milder ones would serve the purpose. You know he told his own people, before they set upon anyone in a hostile manner, to give them fair warning, to give them conditions of peace; so it is his course to offer conditions of peace. So he did to the old world, and so he does to us. Before he corrects, he offers conditions of peace. You see how sparing Christ was, and how full of love: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem…” (Matt 23:37).

5. Again, they are courses that ordinarily promise the best success; for the proud nature of man will raise itself up and harden itself against severe courses. Man naturally, as I said, will be led and not forced. His nature will rise against forced, violent courses; therefore for the outcome itself this is the best.

6. Again, they are courses that are more lasting. What is gained by love is constant; what we prevail on men to do by reason will hold. Other courses are not so faithful; they will not hold. In what we gain from men by fear, there is shame, that a man should be forced to anything, and nature will break out. But what is gained by way of love and reason will hold best.

Use. Therefore let us imitate God in this. When we have to deal with anyone, let us not take violent courses in the first place, but deal with men as men, deal with them by love and reason. Let us not stand upon our own pride and greatness, and take delight, as it were, in commanding others, in having a destructive power, a power that can quash and crush men, and show it to the utmost, and pride ourselves in it. If God should deal so with such people, where would those proud creatures be? Where, if God were not a forbearing, indulgent, sparing God?

Therefore you may see what disposition those are of who are all for fire, for violent courses, rigorous courses. That is not the way God uses. It is not the way Christ used. It is not the way ministers use who have the Spirit of God.

You have some kind of people for whom, if a man is not always on matters of damnation, his sermon is nothing. So you have some who are so violent in their courses that they know nothing moderate; and yet perhaps they are good too, but they cherish a violent disposition too much. Now St. Paul, though he was a very zealous, holy man, still would not put himself upon violent courses except when there was great necessity. He is more a butcher than a physician who loves to torment his patient. You see what course is to be taken first. I need not be long on so clear a point; therefore I will spend no more time on it, but come to the second, which is more generally useful. Because men indeed are such that gentle means will hardly prevail with them, what must be done then? “Not spare them.”

Doctrine. When gentle means will not serve, then we must not spare.

St. Paul did not come, that he might “spare them.” Now, if they had not amended, what would St. Paul have done, do you think? Would he have allowed them to cherish the incestuous person among them, that wicked person who had committed what was intolerable among the heathen? Would he have cherished proud, factious men among them, who would disgrace St. Paul’s doctrine to win authority for themselves? Would he not have told them to their face the danger of their sin, and have made them ashamed? Undoubtedly he would: he would not “have spared.” So I say, if gentle means will not prevail, men must not be spared. Neither minister nor magistrate must spare, especially in dangerous courses that are harmful to the souls of others.

Why?

Reason. We must spare none, that God may spare all. We who are ministers must spare no sin, that God may spare all. “Lift up thy voice like a trumpet,” says God, and tell Israel of their sins (Isa 58:1). If gentle means will not reform them, “lift up thy voice like a trumpet.” Cast out Jezebel with her painted face. Though sin paints and colors itself, it must be cast out. Jonah must go out of the ship, or else the ship will perish. Achan must be stoned. We must tell men of their danger, not with hatred of their persons, but to prevent an eternal punishment.

You know well that justice that prevents is better than justice that executes. Is not discipline better than execution? Is it not better to hear of our faults bluntly, when other means will not prevail, than to cherish what will be our eternal destruction? Is not searing and cutting better than killing? Is it not better that a limb be seared and cut, than that all be clean cut off and the whole body perish? Is not the pain of surgery, or of medicine that makes a man sick for a while, better to be endured than the pains and terrors of death itself? These preventing courses are the best courses; therefore we must spare none, but tell them of their danger faithfully.

Only, liberty of speech must not be a cover for roughness, or a cover for the venting of evil humors, as sometimes it is. For flesh will never prevail with flesh. Flesh and pride in the speaker will never prevail with pride in the hearer. It must rather be a spiritual kind of severity, laying open the danger to those we speak to with a spiritual, holy affection and a spirit of love, though with severity. For there is a severity of love and gentleness, and it will prevail when it comes from such a spirit. But if flesh shows itself, not only in ministers but in those who deal with others, flesh will rise against flesh. A man may sometimes find fault with another with greater corruption than the thing he finds fault with in the other; he may be more to blame for his dealing than the other for his fault. “I came not, to spare you.”

Use. Therefore, when ministers are plain in laying open the danger of the times, the danger of the persons, and of the places where they have to deal, people must hear them as they love their own souls. If they have any quarrel, let them quarrel with their master; for what we speak is from the word of God. We come as his ambassadors and servants, and should be regarded as ambassadors. Therefore, considering whose message we bring, they must take it in good part to be told of their sins in a good manner. As Augustine says very well: Christ, he says, speaks to the sea, and it was quiet. Christ said, “Be still,” the sea heard, and the waves were still; but he speaks to us in the ministry to stop our violent courses in sin, and we puff and swell when we are told of our faults. Is this good, do you think? No. If we do so, it is a sign that God intends to seal us to destruction. As we know, when Eli’s sons did not listen to their father, God had appointed them to destruction. As for those who will not listen to ministerial reproof, it is a sign that God has sealed them over to destruction.

If we would not have ministers or others be severe in telling us, let us be severe with our own sins first. People are like children: first they foul and defile themselves, and then they cry when they are washed. So people soil themselves with sins, and cry when they should be purged of them. If we cannot endure being told of our faults, how will we endure being tormented for our faults in hell? Those who are so tender that they will not endure a word contrary to their dispositions, how will they endure that sentence, “Go ye cursed” (Matt 25:41), when they are turned into hell? Consider what will come of it, if we live in sin.

I beg you therefore, bear with the word of exhortation at our hands. Our salvation depends on it. If we see the danger of the sins of the people to whom we speak and do not expose it, we will perish for it, because we are unfaithful in our embassy. Therefore, for your own souls, and likewise so that we may discharge our duty as we should, sit patiently and quietly under exhortation and reproof, not only public but private, if occasion requires.

O beloved! At the latter day it will be a matter of vexation that we were indulged too much in our ways. Do you not think that the damned spirits in hell wish this: “O that we had been told! O that we had been dealt with violently, that we had been pulled out of this flame!” There is an excellent place in Jude’s epistle, “Have mercy upon some.” Use some gently, those who are of tractable dispositions; and pull “some out of the fire with fear” (Jude 23), with threats of eternal damnation, with terrible measures, that they may have cause to fear. Do this first with admonitions; and if that will not prevail, with suspension, with further censure; and if that will not prevail, with excommunication, casting them out of the church, as with this incestuous Corinthian, “that their souls may be saved in the day of the Lord” (1 Cor 5:5).

There is a threefold correction, or finding of fault, in degrees one after another, and these ought to be in force in the church at all times.

1. A friendly telling of a fault, between man and man, if we see anything dangerously amiss.

2. Then, when a man takes another man before company, when he takes him before those he respects, when privately he will not amend.

3. Then correction, if the admonition of friends will not do: “tell the church” (Matt 18:17), rather than let his soul perish.

These steps and degrees were observed in the best times of the church, and if they were observed now, many souls would be saved. This is what St. Jude speaks of, “Save some, pulling them out of the fire,” that is, snatch them out by violent means, by excommunication, that “their souls may be saved in the day of the Lord.” Those who are in hell wish that they had been pulled out with fear, with violent measures. “O that we had been told of our filthy ways, of our swearing, of our injustice, that we had had violence done to us rather than to have come into this place of torment!” O, those who are so dealt with will bless God another day for that gracious violence. And those who are let alone will curse everyone another day; ministers, friends, and parents, they will curse them all, that no more violent measures were taken with them, to stop them on their way to hell, and to deal plainly with them. It is the best mercy that can be shown, to be faithful in this way.

Therefore, while there is time, bear with the word of exhortation and reproof. Otherwise the time will come when you will condemn yourselves for having been so impatient, and will wish, “O that we had had those who would have dealt more violently with us!” It is as cruel a pity as can be for ministers to be flatterers and to whitewash, or for parents and those who govern others to dissemble with them in their ways and not tell them of it. It is the most cruel pity of all; it is betraying them to eternal torments. For sin, as I said, must be judged and censured here or hereafter. If it is not here, there is more reserved for the time to come, when God will open the treasures of his wrath. We put into his treasury fast enough; and the time will come for opening all the treasuries of his vengeance, when he will pour out the vials of his wrath upon sinners who are not reformed. So much for that point.

“I call God for a record upon my soul.” St. Paul, to clear himself of suspicion, seals all this with an oath. In this he shows his great love for them and his care over them, that he would so seriously clear himself to gain their love and their good opinion of him. It was proof of the great esteem he had for them. He was willing for them to think that he greatly desired the love and the good opinion of those for whose sake he would swear and clear himself by an oath. God shows how much he esteems man’s love when he condescends so far as to seal his love and promise with an oath; God would have us think that he values and esteems our respect very much. In the same way, St. Paul would have them think that he esteemed them much, since he would make such a solemn oath for their sakes. Now to speak a little about an oath.

An oath, as we know, is made either in judgment before a magistrate or in particular cases between private persons. And it is either assertory, of a thing past, or promissory, of a thing to come. Now this oath of St. Paul’s is an assertory oath of a thing that was past, to assure them that the reason he did not come to them was this, that he had a mind to spare them. It was no promise of anything to come, but an assertion of a thing that was past.

An oath is either an assertion or a promise, with a calling of God to be a witness and a judge: to be a witness of the truth, or a judge if the one swearing says what is false. You have the description of an oath in this text. I say, it is either an assertion of a thing past or a promise of a thing to come, and a sealing of this by calling God to witness the thing we say, and to avenge the falsehood if we say what is false. So St. Paul does here: “I call God to record,” that what I say is true, “and upon my soul,” if I say what is false.

Many conclusions concerning an oath might be drawn from the text.

1. Concerning the person who makes an oath, he should indeed be a gracious, a holy, and a good man. As St. Paul says, “I call God to witness, whom I serve in my spirit” (Rom 1:9). A man who is not good in other respects is scarcely fit to swear, for swearing is a part of God’s worship. Will he care for the religion of an oath, who has no religion in him? The man whose oath should be taken should be such a man as St. Paul, in some degree, a man whose oath should be taken. The Turks are careful of this, to the shame of Christians; they will not take an oath from a common swearer. It must be a man who has something in him who will have his oath regarded.

2. Again, we see by whom an oath should be taken: by the name of God. We ought not to swear by creatures, but by God himself; nor to swear by any idol, as by the mass, and by Mary, and the like. It is a taking of God to witness. An oath is a part of God’s service, a part of divine worship, as it is in Deuteronomy 29:12 and other places. Now we ought to serve God only; therefore we ought not to use the name of any creature in an oath. He by whom we swear must know the heart, whether we speak what is true or not. Now who knows the heart but God? Therefore we must swear only by the name of God. These things are easy, so I only name them.

3. We see here again the two grand parts of an oath: besides the assertion or promise of the truth, there must be a calling of God to witness, and imprecation. Though these are not always set down, they are implied. Sometimes the Scripture sets down the one part, but the other is always implied. There is imprecation in every oath. Sometimes imprecation implies both, as in God do so and so. Sometimes there is a calling of God to witness without imprecation, yet it is always implied. For whoever swears calls God to witness the truth, and asks that if it is not true, God would punish him.

These three go together in an oath. God, who can discover it, knows my heart, whether I say what is true or not. And he is judge, and thereupon an avenger. In an oath, God is considered not only as a judge, but as a judge and avenger; not only as a discoverer, but as a judge and avenger, if it is false. Therefore it is a part of divine worship, because it is with prayer; and imprecation is always implied, if it is not expressed. So we see in this text what an oath is, and by whom it is to be taken, and the parts of it.

4. Again, we see here in the text that an oath ought to be taken in serious matters. The rule of an oath is excellently set down in Jeremiah 4:2. I know of no one place of Scripture that speaks more fully, and therefore I name it. “Thou shalt swear,” how? “The Lord liveth, in truth, in judgment, and in righteousness.”

(1) We must swear in truth, that is, not only must the thing we swear be true (we must look to that), but we must think it so too. The thing must be true, and we must apprehend it so. We must swear in truth.

(2) And then in judgment, that is, with discretion. We must thoroughly understand the matter we swear about, and what an oath is. Therefore persons under age ought not to take an oath, because they cannot swear in judgment, knowing what the weight and validity of an oath is, and when it is a fit time to take one. It must be taken in serious business, as St. Paul does here to clear himself to the souls of the Corinthians, whom he labored to edify. When he saw that their ill opinion of him hindered their edification, he therefore cleared himself by an oath.

(3) It must be in justice, that is, we must not bind ourselves by an oath to anything that is evil: it is a rule of long standing. Herod bound himself by an oath of that kind (Matt 14:9). But an oath must never be a bond of injustice; it must be taken in righteousness.

Therefore here the equivocation and reservation of the papists is condemned. They will swear before a magistrate, but with equivocation. This is not in righteousness; for it is a rule that an oath must be taken in the sense in which the one to whom we swear takes it. That is a constant rule among all theologians, because the oath is to persuade him of the truth of what we swear. It is for his sake and the sake of others; and as he and others take it, so it must be taken. Therefore equivocations with absurd reservations are wicked, because they are absurd if they are expressed. He will swear that he is not a priest; he means, after the order of Melchizedek. It is a mocking and profaning of an oath; it is not to swear in justice and righteousness. But it is so foul and abominable a course that it is almost unfit to be spoken of, and they are ashamed of it themselves.

St. Paul’s oath was all this. He swore in truth; he was truly persuaded of the truth of his own affections toward them. And then in judgment; it was done in discretion. For being otherwise unable to clear himself, having no witness on earth, he goes to heaven for someone to clear him, he goes to God himself for a witness; he fetches strength from heaven. There was no one on earth who knew St. Paul’s affection but the Spirit of God and his own spirit; and he thought his own spirit was not sufficient. It is as if he said, My own spirit tells me that “I came not, to spare you”; but if you would know my mind better, “I call God to witness,” and to be an avenger if I speak falsely, that the reason I did not come was this, that I might spare you, to prevent the rigor and severity that I would have used toward your sin.

An oath should be true and weighty; but that is not enough. It must be in matters that cannot otherwise be determined. For if a thing may be determined without an oath, we should never use one. The end of an oath is to end controversies; for if St. Paul could have persuaded them of his gracious and loving heart, that he felt toward them as he did, he would not have used an oath. But having no other means of doing it, he goes to heaven for a witness.

It would be only a waste of time to show that an oath is lawful. Do we have Anabaptists among us, who call this into question? No! We have many atheists. It is dangerous atheism in the Anabaptists to question whether they may take an oath. We have the example of St. Paul, we have the example of God himself. Shall we think it unlawful when God himself swears, and the angel swears, and Christ swears, and the apostle swears?

Where we are forbidden to swear, it is meant that we should not swear in our ordinary talk, where we need not seal every light speech with the solemnity of an oath. People will not put on their best clothes every day; so people ought not to use solemn things on every occasion, but only on holy and grand occasions.

Our Savior Christ forbids swearing, first by the creature at all, and swearing in ordinary talk at all. “Whatsoever is more than yea and nay,” in ordinary talk, is sin (Matt 5:37). Therefore, considering that St. Paul does it in a serious matter, we ought to learn not to swear except in great matters: when we are called before a magistrate, or when we have to clear ourselves of evil suspicion before our Christian friends. We see St. Paul doing this here with the Corinthians; he calls God to witness against his soul, if it were not true.

Objection. But you will say, “People will not believe me unless I swear, and therefore I swear so often.”

Answer. Then live better, for shame, so that people may believe you for your honest life. If your honest life is not better than your oath, they will not believe you for swearing. For he who swears often swears falsely, and “in many words there cannot want iniquity” (Prov 10:19); much more, in many oaths iniquity cannot be lacking. And he who swears much, beyond doubt, often perjures himself.

Objection. Oh, it is my custom, and I cannot break a custom.

Answer. Use that excuse with a judge. Though criminals are none of the most modest creatures, will any of them say, “It is my custom to rob and steal”? Will not the judge say it is his custom to cut them off? You say it is your custom. It is God’s custom to damn such persons. Therefore that is an aggravation of your sin.

But here we who are ministers may take up a complaint. When we have to deal with the wretched disposition of people in things concerning their souls and a better life, do what we can, we cannot prevail on them to leave what brings them no profit and no good. They are not driven to it by any fear. It is only out of a superfluity of pride and malice against God, out of the abundance of profaneness.

Can we think to prevail on people to deny themselves in greater matters, to forsake their unlawful gains, or to venture suffering evil for a good cause, and to renounce pleasures that are lawful? Do we think to win people to these things, when we cannot win them from superfluities that they are not forced into by any violence, that bring them no gain or credit, except among a company of debauched men like themselves? Yet this is our case. In the world we deal with a company of persons, to get them to leave what brings them no gain except the wrath of God, and yet we cannot prevail.

Objection. Oh, but you will say, “I live with such company that I must swear.”

Answer. What a shame it is for you that carnal company should prevail more with you than the vengeance of God and the authority of God in the ministry! What a heart you have, that a base person like yourself should move you to do what God himself and the authority of his ordinance cannot move you to forbear! It is proof of a base nature. How dare you look God and Christ in the face another day, when for his sake you will not give up a superfluous, profane oath? You regard a wicked companion more, because you will not be mocked by him. You will swear for company, or because you want to please him, so that he may think you to be so and so, a companion fit for him. To please him, you will displease God and Christ, before whom you will be judged before long. If people were not mad and sold to destruction, they would consider these things.

Indeed, these things are so clear and so odious in themselves that we need not press them. We should spend the little time we have preaching of more sublime matters than coming to dissuade people from swearing. Alas! Under the glorious gospel that we have lived under so long, have we gained so little that we are forced to spend our time dissuading people from swearing? We should look to the mysteries of religion, and draw people on to further perfection. But such are the times we have fallen into, and we must be content with it, and I wish we could gain anything by exposing the danger of these things.

An ordinary course of swearing shows a very vile heart wherever it is, carry it off as boisterously as they will. It shows this venom in the heart: “Well! I cannot offend against the second table, but the laws of the kingdom will hamper me! I cannot steal or murder, but there is something I can do in spite of God himself, and the worst that can come of it is only a trifling matter.” What venom is in people’s hearts, that where there is only the least damage they will be restrained; and here, because there is no present execution upon a sinner of this kind, they profane and abuse the glorious name of God!

1. When God’s name is abused by swearing and blasphemy, usually the origin of it, among other things, is atheism. If we thought that God were such as the Scripture shows, we would not trifle so much. When people lead others into bad ways, it is from the height and depth of atheism. Make the best of it, it is a great degree of irreverence to the glorious Majesty of God. For when God says, “He that takes my name in vain, shall not carry it away guiltless” (Exod 20:7), what will he do, do you think, to him who swears idly and profanely, when the taking of God’s name in vain without an oath, the vain trifling with the name of God, will not escape? When people do not reverence and fear an oath, as it is in Ecclesiastes 9:2, it shows much irreverence.

And indeed, it is worse in the principle than in the thing itself. Though the words are heinous, yet the principle from which it arises is worse, that is, unbelief and atheism, and always irreverence and want of fear of the glorious Majesty of God; this ground makes it more odious. Therefore, let those who are subject to it, if they would amend it, remove the ground.

2. Sometimes, again, it is cherishing too much passion. So, because they cannot be sufficiently revenged on their poor brethren, God must smart for it; they will tear the glorious name of him who never did them wrong. What a mad passion this is! Has God done them any wrong? Therefore, I say, let us labor to remove the ground of it, and labor to plant the contrary in our hearts, the true fear of God, that we may fear an oath. Let us labor to subdue unruly passion.

3. Again, in some others affectation is the cause. Many of the frothy sort think it a commendable thing to fill up their discourse with these parentheses, with oaths; which perhaps do them the service of knitting their wounded discourse together. So this foolish and sinful affectation is one cause. People desire to be thought somebody by swearing. They would have the world think that they are valorous men, who can be so bold with God himself, and that other men had therefore better take heed how they meddle with them, when God himself smarts for it; as if he who could swear the most had the most courage.

4. And in many it comes from a sinful shame, because they will keep in step with the company, and they are afraid of being thought strict. That they may be thought free from any suspicion of overmuch conscientiousness in their ways, they will not let the world think that they are men who make any conscience of strictness; they can be bold with the name of God. So, because they would have others think that they are men who do not stand upon terms of conscience and strictness, they will swear: they are men for the world, they are serviceable for any purpose.

People who make conscience of anything make conscience of all; but a man who makes conscience of an oath, or any such thing, is in their eyes a stiff man, he is not serviceable, he is not fit for the purpose. Now, because people would be thought by others not to be of that strain, to make any conscience, they break out into profaning the name of God. As for such persons, who out of sinful weakness labor and apply themselves more to satisfy sinful men than the great God, how dare they look God in the face? Jesus Christ says, “He that is ashamed of me before men”; he who is ashamed to own religion, indeed, to own justice, to own even common good behavior, rather than offend others; he who is ashamed of me in such small things as these, “I will be ashamed of him before my Heavenly Father” (Mark 8:38).

If other reasons will not move us to leave this sin, let love for the state and kingdom we live in do it. Jeremiah says, “for oaths the land shall mourn” (Jer 23:10). Indeed, there is a fine for this, except that people make light of it. And God, I hope, will be merciful to the state, for the censure of the state upon profanation is a very worthy act. But if that is not executed, or if people do not grow to make more conscience of it, the land will mourn for it; because where the magistrates cease to do their office, God will do his office. Where sin is punished, God will not punish. Where the magistrate spares, God will not spare. He will punish. Therefore where this sin is not censured and punished, the land will mourn for it.

If care for the kingdom will not move them, yet care for their own houses and families should. In Zechariah 5:1, the prophet speaks of a flying book of judgments that would come upon the house of the swearer and consume the posts of his house. And the wise man says in Ecclesiasticus (though it is apocryphal), “The plague shall not depart from the house of the swearer” (Sir 23:11). God’s vengeance accompanies even the very family and house of the swearer.

And to avoid this, I wish more conscience were made of those oaths that border on gross oaths. I will not dispute the matter. Take it for granted that they are no oaths, but solemn affirmations, such as calling their truth in question, and their confidence in matters of religion. Who will lay a thousand pounds in pawn for a matter of sixpence? Who, if he is discreet and considerate, will lay his faith and religion in pawn for every trifle in common talk? Faith is the most precious thing in the world. For a man to lay a great matter in pawn for a twopenny or sixpenny debt is odious among men. Certainly, it is idle at the best among men to lay solemn affirmations of religion, without ground, on every trifle. He who will avoid danger must not come near it; he must avoid all that borders on it. I wish therefore that more care were taken even of these.

I will add only one thing more. Whereas he calls God “for a record upon his soul,” let those who are overmuch given to rash calling upon the name of God, to rash swearing, know this, as I said, that there is an imprecation implied in every oath: they do, as it were, curse themselves. If the thing is not true, their damnation is sealed under a curse; they call God to record upon their souls against themselves.

Let us so live that our life may be a kind of oath: the life of a Christian should be so. An oath is a calling of God to witness, a calling of God to curse if it is not so. A Christian should live in such a way that he may call God to witness every action he does, and he should often bring himself to an oath, under a curse, as it is in Ezra, and often in Scripture, If I do not so and so (Ezra 10:5). Because our nature is unstable and shies away from holy duties, we should bring ourselves to duties with an oath, under a curse.

It is an excellent thing when we can live as in God’s presence, doing all we do in the presence of God. God is a witness whether we call him or not. Therefore we should so carry ourselves that we might call God to witness the sincerity of our aims and of whatever we do. He is a witness, and he will be our judge. Therefore, whether or not we formally call him in the manner of an oath, that is not the point; but let us know and think that he is, and will be, so.

I beg you, consider the sweet comfort that will arise from it. He who will live and think and love and speak in the presence of God, so that he may call God to record of the sincerity of his intentions, of all that he speaks and thinks and does, how comfortably will he live, and give his account to God, having lived as in the presence of God all his days! He who has presented to his soul, as it were, the bar of Christ in his lifetime, who has lived as one who could give an account and reckoning, when he comes to the point that he must give up his account, how joyfully and comfortably will he do it! So much for that verse.

I come now to the last verse of the chapter.

Not that we have dominion over your faith, but are helpers of your joy; for by faith ye stand (2 Cor 1:24).

St. Paul is still clearing himself; he is still making his defense. “Not that we have dominion over your faith…” That is, I do not tell you that it was to “spare you” that I did not yet come, as if I meant to domineer over your faith when I came. Those words, “I came not yet, to spare you” (2 Cor 1:23), might seem to carry some haughtiness, some lordliness with them, as if the apostle would have taken much on himself. Therefore he corrects those words in this verse: “Not that we have dominion over your faith…” So in these words he removes a suspicion of spiritual tyranny over them. Because he had said before that he did not come, in order to spare them, they might think, What would he have done if he had come? Would he have forced us? But Paul answers, Oh no! Indeed, your reformation has spared me a labor and you a chiding; but if I had reproved you sharply, it would have been for your good.

Then he sets down the true cause: “We are helpers of your joy.” If I had come, he says, and told you of your faults, if I had not spared you, it would have been to help your joy; and now that I do not come to you, it is to help your joy. My aim in everything is to be a furtherer of your joy. So these words are a reason for the former, showing why he did not come to domineer over their faith: “For by faith ye stand.” You stand by faith, and you hold out by faith against all opposition whatsoever. Therefore your faith must not lean on me. I must not domineer over what you stand by. If your faith should rely on me, I am only a man. Faith must rely on God. It must have a better pillar than myself. You must stand on divine strength; therefore “you stand by faith.” And if you stand by faith, we have no reason to have dominion over your faith.

Many interpreters shy away from these words. They do not know what the connection is. But this is the best connection of the words: we do not domineer or rule over your faith, because by faith you stand, as on a foundation; you stand against all adverse power by faith. Therefore you need to have it well founded. You need to plant your faith well, the faith by which you stand against all opposing power and against all human authority.

For a man may be a liar and still do good in many things. A man has a deceitful nature, so far as he has a corrupt principle in him. He may deceive and yet be a good man too; in particular cases he may show himself a changeable creature. But there must be no falsehood or uncertainty in faith, for it is a grace that must have truth and certainty. It must have immovable and unchangeable truth to build on. Therefore we do not domineer over your faith. God forbid that we should do so! For faith is the grace by which you stand; if you should build on us as men, you could not always stand. The point is clear:

Doctrine. No creature can have dominion over the faith of another.

A person’s faith is subject only to the Spirit of God, to God, and to Christ. And by the way, St. Paul charges those false apostles and false teachers who labored to creep into people’s consciences, to have a higher place in people’s hearts than they should have, so that they might rule the people as they pleased. Now that should not be the minister’s aim, to have dominion over the faith of others; for the ministry is a ministry, not a magistracy. A minister, so far as he is a pastor, is a minister; that is, he is to deliver things from God that may establish the soul, not to domineer over people’s faith, as if he would prescribe what they should believe.

Now to unfold this point, I will first show what it is to have no dominion over people’s faith, and then what it is to have dominion and rule over other people’s faith, and who are guilty of this.

1. It is not having dominion over another person’s faith when a church enforces subscription to the articles of religion. To draw people to conformity in the same religion, in its substantials, is not to have dominion over the faith of others (though some who seek extravagant liberty perhaps lay that charge). It is done in all churches.

2. Again, it is not to domineer over faith to suppress what they have lately called in neighboring countries a liberty of prophecy, to suppress a liberty of preaching whenever people please, to suppress this, that people should have an unbridled license. We see in Poland and other countries what an abundance of heretics there are, where there is more liberty to preach and to publish whatever people please. Those countries are like Africa, where, they say, there are always new monsters. Or they are like Egypt: when the Nile overflows it leaves a slime behind, and when the sun works on that slime it breeds many imperfect, strange creatures. So in those countries where there is liberty of religions, there are always some strange, novel opinions, some monsters. The experience of foreign countries shows this to be too true. Therefore to hinder that extravagant liberty is not dominion over faith.

Indeed, to force people to the means of faith is not to domineer over faith. St. Augustine himself was once of this mind, that people were not to be forced. It is true. But they may be compelled to the means, though they cannot be compelled to believe. People may be compelled to the means by fines and other measures of state. And it is a happy necessity when people are forced to the means, under which, by God’s blessing, they may be brought back to a better habit and temper of soul.

Therefore it is cruelty to neglect this care, and to leave people to their own liberty to attend on the means or not to attend on them. Therefore our state is justified, and may well be justified, in those violent courses toward recusants. And many of them afterward bless God that it was done, and they have cause. For there is a majesty in the ordinances of God. If people were brought under the means, God’s Spirit would make the means effectual. And there is no greater snare of the devil, by which he holds more in the Romish church in perdition, than persuading them that it is a dangerous thing to come to our prayers and to attend on the means of salvation, when in our liturgy there is nothing that may justly offend. Therefore to force people to the means is not to domineer over faith, because it is only a drawing, by outward enforcement, to the use of the means.

3. Again, it is not a ruling over faith, nor a base slavery, when people hear the word of God opened directly and clearly, when some persuade others according to their own judgment that this is so, and when others yield. There is some faith that may be called in some degree implicit faith and obedience that is not sinful, but good and discreet. For example, some men, by their standing in the church and by their experience and holiness of life, are thought to be men who speak in agreement with the ground of Scripture, though they do not have a direct rule and place of Scripture for it. Other people’s consciences may follow what they say. I have been directed by such men at such times, who by reason of their calling have opportunity to advise.

But this frees it from base servitude, that it must be with reservation, until it appears otherwise by some place of Scripture, or until better counsel may be given. Obedience to others with reservation, and taking counsel with others, is no domineering, because it is done reserving ourselves for a further discovery and a further light. That is what the moralists usually call the opinion of an honest man. Where the law does not speak, it is much to be esteemed, especially the opinion of an honest, discreet Christian, when the law of God does not speak directly. Then he who speaks out of conscience and some light may persuade another, with this reservation, until further light is discovered. This is no domineering over faith.

I might clear away many things that might breed a suspicion that we domineer over the faith of others when we do not.

But let me come to show you this positive truth, what this tyranny over the faith of others is, and where it is practiced.

1. Those tyrannize over the faith of others who equate human traditions, some canons of their own, with the word of God, and press them with equal violence, perhaps more, because they are brats of their own brain. Those who devise a voluntary worship of God, and so entangle people and tell them, This you must do, when there is no ground for it in the word of God: that is will-worship. God loves willing worship, when we worship him willingly; but he does not love will-worship, when it is the device of our own brain how we will serve him. It is as if a servant or a slave must devise how his lord will be served. What impudence this is, if we consider what God is! They tyrannize over people’s consciences who put their own foolish fancies, though they count them clever devices, and their own inventions on a level with the worship of God; who jumble everything together, as if conscience were as much bound to any device of their own as to God’s word.

2. Again, those tyrannize over the faith of others who think they can make articles in religion to bind conscience. Those who think to free themselves from the danger of error, as if what they said were infallible, tyrannize over others. Those who for trifles excommunicate whole churches, because they do not keep agreement with them in their errors, tyrannize over the faith of others. So do those who withhold the means of knowledge, so that in a dark time all their fooleries may be the more admired. We see that masques and other such superficial things must have the recommendation of some light that is not so glorious as the sun, to win people’s admiration. So those who would win admiration for their fooleries shut people in darkness as much as they can, that they may have their persons and everything else held in admiration. This is to tyrannize over faith, and to hinder people from what is the means to reform them better.

Question. But who are guilty of all this?

Answer. We see what church especially is guilty of this domineering over the faith of others, that is, the church of Rome.

1. The Council of Trent equates traditions with the word of God. They divide the word of God into the written and the unwritten, and under a curse they pronounce that all must be received with the same reverence.

2. And then they have devised a will-worship of their own, and they follow and force their will-worship with greater violence than the worship of God. And they set God’s stamp on all their fooleries, to gain authority under the name of Christ’s church and the word of God. By this they carry everything.

3. Again, you know, they hold the church to be infallible. They hold the judgment of the pope, the “man of sin” (2 Thess 2:3), to be infallible: he cannot err. And on this basis whatever he says must bind conscience, because he is in his chair and cannot err; whatever he says is the intent of God’s word, infallible. And this is a fundamental error, as we call it, a first lie, a leading lie. This is what moves to error; this is the mover that moves all other errors under it.

For on what ground are all the abominations of popery justified? They are justified by this: though they seem ridiculous, gross, and blasphemous, they came from the church, and the church is virtually in the pope. (An absurd position, that the whole church should be virtually in one man; yet that is the Jesuitical opinion.) And the church, they say, cannot err; therefore it is good, because these tenets come from him whose judgment is infallible. That is the error that leads to and establishes all other errors under it: it is the first lie. And among lies there is a leading; one goes under another; they never go alone. So this is the leading lie of all popery, that the pope cannot err. By this means they domineer over the faith of others, and make the people into beasts indeed.

But to see how unworthy this is, that the pope cannot err: it is the greatest error of all, and it prevents all amendment on their side. Do you think that they will ever amend their opinion, when they hold this which is a block in the way of all reformation, that the pope cannot err? For deny that, and you call the whole fabric of their religion in question; and grant that, and it stops all reformation on their side. What reformation may we hope for on their side, who hold this position, that they cannot err? From this come all their treasons and rebellions. They have some dispensation from the pope, and he cannot err, though he prescribe rebellion and treason.

4. Another opinion they have is that the church is the judge of all controversies, in which people’s faith must be resolved at last; but it is the pope that the Jesuits mean. Now this is indeed to domineer over faith, to make a man of sin judge over all points of faith, and to have faith resolved at last into that, into the judgment of the church.

The church has an inducing power, a leading power, persuading to the belief of the Scriptures and to hear what God says in his word. But after that, there are inward, intrinsic grounds in the word that make us know the word without the church. Now they would have the authority of the word depend on the church, and so overrule people’s consciences in that matter. But all that the church has is a leading, inducing, persuading to hear the word, under which word and ordinance we shall see such light and majesty in the Scriptures that from inward grounds we shall be persuaded that the word of God is the word of God. Therefore the church is the first inducer to believe the word of God, not the last object into which all is resolved.

For they themselves contradict it in their tenets when they speak carefully. Is this opinion so and so? The church holds it, they say. But what authority does the church have to maintain it? Where is the authority of your church? Then they bring some place of Scripture: “I will be with you to the end of the world” (Matt 28:20). And, “he that heareth you, heareth me” (Luke 10:16).

I only uncover to you a little of the danger of this error. They make the word of God to be believed because the church says so; they make truth to be believed because their man of sin, on whom they depend, says so. Do we believe the Trinity, or that Christ is our Redeemer, because the church says so? Should we not believe it unless the church says so? What if the church teaches the “doctrine of devils” (1 Tim 4:1), as they do? They cannot shake it off: we must believe because the church says so. So on equal grounds they will teach the doctrine of devils and the doctrine of Christ, because the church says so.

As it was said anciently, he who believes two things, the one for the sake of the other, does not believe two, but in effect one, because he believes the one for the sake of the other. So in effect they believe nothing but the church; that is, they themselves believe the truth to be divine because they say so. So they may believe any devilish error because they say so; so any treason or rebellion must pass as current because they say so, because they cannot err. You see how they domineer over the faith of others. Shall Christ not be Christ, nor God be God, nor the devil be the devil, unless the church says so?

5. Again, in the very matters themselves, in the points that they themselves do not urge, the church of Rome domineers and tyrannizes over the souls of people. For example, they hold that the intention of a minister in the sacrament makes it effectual. What a fear this breeds in people’s souls, that they do not know whether they are baptized or not, because it must be in the intention of the minister!

And then in confession, they must confess everything. What a tyranny this is to people’s souls, when perhaps there is something they have not confessed, and so their confession is worth nothing!

And in satisfaction: perhaps I have not made satisfaction enough by the injunction they laid on me, and therefore I must satisfy in hell. What a rack this is to the conscience!

So, what a rack to the conscience is that opinion, that the pope cannot err, when I cannot tell, perhaps, whether he is the right pope or not! What if he came in by simony, or is not in his chair? And they have many conditions to settle that point. If any of those conditions is not observed, he is not the man he should be. What tyranny they force on people over their faith! Therefore they are called “scorpions” in the book of Revelation (Rev 9:3, 10); indeed they are spiritual scorpions that sting the soul of God’s people.

The devil is the king of darkness; and is he not the prince of darkness who maintains ignorance of the word of God, so that all his old tenets and opinions may have the better sway, and so that he may sit in the blind and dark consciences of people? It is said that he “sits in the temple of God” (2 Thess 2:4), that is, in the church. Indeed, he labors to have another temple, to sit in a person’s soul, which is the temple of the Holy Spirit. It is not enough for him who is the man of sin to have any other place; he must sit in the very souls and consciences of people.

Satan has a special malice to sit in the place of God. Since he was turned out of heaven and cannot come there, he will come, if he can, to that place on earth where God should be. And where will God be? God will especially be in the hearts of his people, in the souls and consciences of his people. Conscience is God’s throne. Satan, being thrust out of heaven, labors to establish his throne there.

Now those who are Satan’s vicars, led by his spirit, are of the same mind. Let them be whatever kind of great ones they will, they desire to sit in God’s throne, in the conscience; and if a person will not tie his conscience to them, he is nobody to them. This is the property of antichrist in the highest degree: they will not be satisfied unless people’s consciences are tied to them, and people must deny all honesty and justice and law, and everything, to please them and to gratify them with particular kindness. As far as any are given to this, so far they are led by the spirit of antichrist and of the devil himself, who labors to sit in God’s throne, that is, in the hearts and consciences of people. And therefore, as I said, they labor to keep people in darkness for this very purpose, that people may let them into their consciences, and they may rule them as they please.

As with Samson, when they had put out his eyes, they led him to base services, so they do with God’s people: they put out their eyes, and then they lead them to grind in the mill (Judg 16:21), to all the base services they can. Words cannot tell of the brutish slavery and ignorance in Spain and other countries where that devilish Inquisition reigns, which is a great help to popish tyranny.

What should I say of the state of the Romish church? Indeed its main aim is to subdue all to them, to subdue all kings and kingdoms to them. That is the grand aim of the greatest of them. Others have their particular aims for their bellies and base ends; but those among them who have brains, who are governors, aim to bring all under their girdle. And how shall they do this? They cannot bring people’s persons unless they bring their consciences, for where the conscience is, the person will follow at once. Therefore they labor to lay a tie on the conscience of prince and people, on everyone, so that they may domineer and rule over their consciences. And for that end they labor to nourish them up in blindness, for by blindness they rule in the conscience; and ruling their conscience, they may rule their persons and kingdoms. This is their main aim; this has been their plot for many hundreds of years.

So the Romish religion indeed is nothing but mere carnal, devilish statecraft, to bring others to be subject to them, and to make not only kings and princes, but God and Christ and the Scriptures, whatever is divine or human, to make all serve their aims. What do they do with Christ, but serve themselves under the name of Christ? What do they do with the church, but carry on their own ends under the name of the church? What do they do with the names of saints and angels, Peter, Mary, and the rest, but under a plausible pretense carry on their own ends, and set up a visible greatness in this world corresponding to the Caesarian monarchy? This is plain and evident to all who will see it; and one main way to attain their ends is to rule over the conscience.

And so that they may help everything forward all the better, they have raised up in the church a kind of faith which they call an implicit and infolded faith: that people must believe what the church teaches, though they do not know in particular what the church teaches. And so they lead people blindfolded wherever they themselves please.

To make some use of this briefly:

Use. Let us labor to bless God who has freed us from this spiritual tyranny. Oh, beloved! It is a great tyranny when the conscience is awakened, to be racked and tormented and stung by scorpions; to have conscience tormented with popish errors. As in the point of satisfaction, most of them, if their eyes are open, die in terror. Oh, it is a blessed liberty that we are brought out of antichristian darkness, that we know that we believe, and on what terms we believe; and that we are taught to submit our conscience only to the blessed truth of God; that the soul is, as it were, the bed only for Christ and his Holy Spirit to dwell in and to lodge in; and that no man may force the conscience with any opinion of his own, further than it is demonstrated out of the word of God. What a sweet enlargement of spirit we live in now! And our unthankfulness may perhaps give God occasion to bring us into some degree of popish darkness again.

I beg you, let us stand for the liberty of Christ, and the liberty of our consciences, against the spiritual tyrant of souls. Let us maintain our liberty by all we can, by all laws and the execution of laws, by all that may uphold our spiritual liberty; for there is no bondage like that of the soul. Only consider a little the misery of the implicit faith that those of the popish sort are under, that enfolded, wrapped-up faith, in which they are bound to believe, without searching, what the church determines. On this ground they swallow all doctrines that tend to superstition, that tend to rebellion, that tend to treason. They swallow up everything under this implicit faith, as if God had set an ordinance and ministry in the church against himself; as if he had advanced any ministry against his own ordinance.

When you think of popery, do not consider so much its particular follies, such as those about images, transubstantiation, relics, and the like, but consider the very life and soul of popery in this opinion, the error that leads all the others: the tyranny over people’s souls, and holding them in blindness and darkness. This is no device of mine. Only read the Council of Trent in some editions. There the late Pius IV, who sat there daily, made more articles than the apostles, distinct articles, not proved by Scripture; he made articles of his own to be believed. People were bound, on the necessity of salvation, to believe them, and to believe them with that faith which is due to Scripture.

And it is a common tenet among them that every man is bound to be under the authority of the church of Rome, on peril of damnation. There is the grand error, that it is a matter necessary to salvation to be under their tyranny.

By this they excommunicated all the Eastern churches, and all former times when they were not under the Roman tyranny, for that tyranny is only of late date, from six hundred years ago. They condemned St. Cyprian’s time, and other times. And they made articles of religion, and established them with this sentence, that upon pain of damnation men must believe these things as well as the articles of the creed, such as transubstantiation, invocation of saints, purgatory, and such things. They are so many articles, indeed; as I say, they have more articles than the twelve articles of the apostles.

We say that an error in the foundation is not mended afterward, and that if the first digestion is bad, all that come after it are bad. If there is not good digestion in the stomach at the first, the blood is bad, and all is bad. So this is a fundamental error, and a ground of all errors, that they hold they cannot err; and on this basis they come to tyrannize over the consciences and souls of people.

Therefore, I say, let us bless God, who has set our souls in spiritual liberty, so that now we see God in the face of Christ, now we see the means of salvation. We see the bread of life broken to us, we see Christ unveiled, we see what to found our consciences upon. We cannot be sufficiently thankful for this. Thankful we may be for the peace of the kingdom that we have enjoyed for so long a time, and for the outward prosperity we have had so long; but above all, be thankful for the peace of religion, for the peace of conscience, for the liberty of soul that we enjoy. And, as I said, if anything moves God to strip us of everything, it will be our unthankfulness, and our practice bearing witness to our unthankfulness, by valuing no more highly the blessed state of the gospel we enjoy.

“Not that we have dominion over your faith.” This disposition to domineer over the faith of others arises from abominable grounds:

Partly from pride and tyranny, in that they would set themselves in the temple of Christ, where he should rule in the hearts of his people.

And partly out of idleness. They raise the credit of their own traditions so that they may not be forced to take the labor of instructing the people. Therefore they fasten a greater virtue upon outward things than can be in them, only to avoid the labor of instruction.

And then it arises partly from guilt. They are such in their lives, especially if they are looked into inwardly, that they cannot endure that people should have knowledge. They are afraid that people should know much, lest they know them too well, and their courses and errors. So, partly from pride, partly from idleness and sloth, and partly from guilt, they domineer over the faith of God’s people.

“But are helpers of your joy.” The end of the ministry is not to tyrannize over people’s souls, to sting and vex them, but to minister comfort, to be helpers of their joy; that is, to help their salvation and happiness, which is here termed joy because joy is a principal part of happiness in this world and in the world to come. Now, the end of the ministry is to set people’s hearts into a gracious and blessed liberty, to bring them into the kingdom of grace here, and to fit them for the kingdom of glory, to help forward their joy.

This is the end both of the word and of the dispensation of the word, in the ordinances of salvation, in the sacraments, and in everything: that our joy may be full; as our blessed Savior says, “These things have I spoken, that your joy may be full” (John 15:11). It is the end of all our communion with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and with the ministry, and with one another; as it is in 1 John 1:4, “These things have I written that your joy may be full.” You have communion with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and with us, “that your joy may be full.” All is for spiritual joy.

“We are helpers of your joy.” The meaning is, we are helpers of your faith, from which joy comes more especially; for he does not repeat the word again, “We have not dominion over your faith, but are helpers of your faith,” but instead of that he names joy, as that which accompanies true faith.

The points worth considering in this clause are these:

1. That joy is the state of Christians, which they either are in or should labor to be in, because the apostle names it for all happiness here. All who have given their names to Christ should labor to rejoice. Either they do rejoice, or they should labor to come to it. That is assumed as a foundation. I will be the briefer in it.

2. That the ministers are helpers of this blessed condition.

3. That they are but helpers. They are helpers, and only helpers. They are not authors of joy, but helpers. We are but helpers of your joy, says the apostle. I will speak briefly of these three things out of these words. First:

Doctrine 1. Joy is that frame and state of soul that all who have given their names to Christ either are in or should labor to be in.

For this doctrine is drawn from the principle of nature. We do all things with joy. All that is done in our callings is done with joy. What do men do in their trades, but work that they may have something to rejoice in when they have it? It is an old observation of St. Chrysostom, “We do all, that we may have joy.” Ask any man why he takes so much pains and is a drudge in his place. It is that he may get something to rejoice in in his old days. So, out of the principle of nature, this ought to be the aim of all: to rejoice.

Now, as for those who are Christians, God requires it at their hand as a duty: “Rejoice alway, again I say, rejoice” (Phil 4:4). And to those who are Christians he prepares and gives matter enough for joy.

(1) For whether we consider the evils they are freed from, the greatest evils of all: they are freed from sin and the wrath of God, they are freed from eternal damnation, they are freed from the sting of death, from the greatest and most terrible evils.

(2) Or whether we regard the state that God brings them into by believing: being in the favor of God, they enjoy the fruits of that favor, “peace and joy in the Holy Ghost” (Rom 14:17). And then for the life to come, they are under the “hope of glory.” The state of a Christian is a state of joy every way, whether, I say, we regard the evil he is freed from, or the good he is in for the present, or the hope of eternal good for the time to come. A Christian, whichever way he looks, has matter for joy. God the Father is his, Christ is his, the Holy Ghost is his Comforter, the angels are his, all are his, life or death, things present or things to come, all are his (1 Cor 3:22). Therefore there is no question of this: everyone who has given his name to Christ is in a state of joy, if he answers his calling, or he should labor to be in it; otherwise he wrongs his condition.

Why should they labor to be in that state?

Reason 1. Among many reasons, one is that God, who gives them such matter for joy, may have glory from them. For what should the life of a Christian be, who is freed from the greatest evil and advanced to the greatest good? His life should be a perpetual thanksgiving to God; and how can a man be thankful who is not joyful? Joy is, as it were, the oil, the anointing. It makes a man cheerful; it makes the countenance of his soul cheerful.

Reason 2. It makes him active in good, when he is anointed with the oil of gladness. Now every man should have a desire to be good, to be diligent and active in all that is good. Therefore we should labor for this spiritual anointing, that we may be ready for every good work, “Vessels of mercy prepared for every good work” (Rom 9:23; 2 Tim 2:21).

Reason 3. And then for suffering, we have many things to go through in this world. How shall a man suffer with joy those things that lie between him and heaven, unless he labors to bring himself to this temper of joy?

Reason 4. And then for others, every man should labor to encourage others. We are all fellow passengers on the way to heaven. Therefore, even to bring on others more cheerfully, we ought to labor to be in a state of joy. Those who do not rejoice bring a bad report upon the way of God, as if it were a desolate, disconsolate way. As the spies brought a bad report upon the land of Canaan, so that the people were disheartened from entering into it, so those who do not labor to bring their hearts to spiritual joy bring a bad report on the ways of God, and dishearten others from entering into those ways.

Whichever way we look, we have reasons to encourage us to joy: that God may have more glory, and that we may do him more service; that we may endure afflictions better, and encourage others, and take away the reproach of religion among those who think it a melancholy course of life. Such people indeed do not understand what belongs to the state of a Christian, for the state of a Christian is a state of joy.

And if a Christian does not rejoice, it is not because he is a Christian, but because he is not Christian enough, because he favors the worse principle in him, because he favors himself in some work of the flesh.

God in the covenant of grace is all love and mercy. He would have us in our pilgrimage to heaven “finish our course with joy” (Acts 20:24); and he knows we can do nothing unless we have some joy. It is the oil of the soul, as I said, to make it nimble and fit for all actions and for all sufferings. It gives a luster and grace to whatever we do. Not only does God love a cheerful performer of duties, but joy wins acceptance from all others, and makes the worker himself wondrously ready for any action. This I mention only as a foundation. A Christian who has given his name to Christ is either in a state of joy or else should labor for it.

The second, which is the main point, is this:

Doctrine 2. The word of God, as it is unfolded, is that which helps this joy.

“We are helpers of your joy,” we ministers. St. Paul spoke of himself as a minister. The word of God is a helper of joy, especially as it is unfolded, considered as it is dispensed in the ministry. You know that the word of God is called “the word of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:19), because it unfolds the covenant between God and us. It is called “the word of the kingdom,” the “word of life,” and so on, all of which are causes of joy; therefore the word breeds joy (Ps 19).

One commendation of the statutes of God is that they comfort the heart (Ps 19:8), and refresh the heart. He follows out the commendation of the word at length: “The statutes of God are perfect, converting the soul; the testimonies of God are sure, making wise the simple” (Ps 19:7-9). And among the rest of the commendations, as a commendation issuing from the rest, “The statutes of God are right, rejoicing the heart.” The word of God is a cordial, especially to refresh and solace the heart.

St. Paul, in Romans 15:4, makes it the scope of the word: “Whatsoever was written aforetime, was written for our learning, that we, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope.” So likewise, “He that prophesieth speaketh to men to edification, to exhortation, and to comfort” (1 Cor 14:3-4). “He that prophesieth,” that is, he who unfolds the word, “he speaketh to men to edification, to exhortation, and to comfort.”

So the end of the word, and the end of prophesying, the ministry of the word, is to help our joy, our comfort, to support us against all evils, either felt or feared, by arguments greater than the evil is. For that is what it is to comfort and gladden, to make anyone rejoice. It is to support the soul against all grief, either spiritual or outward, either felt or feared, and that from arguments stronger than the griefs are. If they are equally balanced, it is no comfort; if the comfort is inferior, it is no comfort.

As the heathen man complained of the comforts he had, “I know not how it is, but the medicine I have to cure the grief of my mind, it yields to the malice of the disease; the disease is above the cure.” So it is true of all philosophical comforts that are fetched out of the shop of nature: the medicine yields to the disease; the malady or disease exceeds the remedy, and therefore there is no comfort. Comfort is when the inward support is greater and stronger than the grief is, whatever it may be.

Now such comfort must be fetched only out of the word. The Scripture is a common treasury of all good and comforting doctrines, but especially as it is dispensed in the ministry, as it is divided by the ministers of God. According as they see the necessity of God’s people, and the straits they are brought to, they should draw comfort out of this common treasury. Hence what Christ says of himself, “Thou hast given me the tongue of the learned, to speak a word in season to the weary soul” (Isa 50:4), is true of all the true ministers of Christ, who have that spiritual anointing, who have the same Spirit that Christ had. “God hath anointed them, that they might speak a word in season” to poor distressed souls. God has given them the tongue of the learned for this very end and purpose. God has given them a healing tongue for a wounded soul. Indeed, they carry medicine in their tongues, and the very leaves, the very words, have a medicinal force.

When those who are true ministers speak a word in season to a wounded, distressed soul, the Spirit goes with the word, and it has wondrous power for the comfort and raising up of the soul. Experience shows this.

Now to give a few instances of how it is done, how the ministers do it, how they are “helpers of our joy.”

1. They do it, first of all, by acquainting people with the evil state they are in; for all sound comfort comes from the knowledge of our grief, and freedom from it. They acquaint people with their state by nature: that they are in the state of damnation, that they are under the “curse” of God, under the “wrath of God,” that they are in a spiritual bondage. They labor, together with the spirit of bondage, to make people see their state of bondage. For they must plow before they sow, and the law must go before the gospel. The law shows the wound, but the gospel heals the wound. Now people must know the wound, and this is the work of the commanding part, all the threatening part, of the word. They must know what they are before they can know their comfort.

Therefore John the Baptist came before Christ; he made way for the sweet doctrine of Christ, who came with blessing in his mouth: “Blessed are the poor in spirit”; “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst”; “Blessed are those that suffer persecution…” (Matt 5:3, 6, 10). Even as a strong wind came to Elijah before the still voice (1 Kgs 19:12), so there must be something to rend and to open the heart before this oil of comfort can be poured in. Now that is the first thing: the ministers help people to comfort by helping them to understand themselves, what they are in the state of nature. They labor to search the wound first, to cure the soul as much as they can of all guile of spirit, so that the soul may not be guileful and misunderstand itself.

2. And when they have done this, then they breed joy by setting forth and showing the remedy which is in Jesus Christ. Then they open the riches of God’s love in Christ, then they open the sweet “box of ointment” in Christ, they show man his righteousness. You have an excellent passage in Job 33:14 and following on the whole force of the ministry, where what the minister does to bring a man to joy is followed out at length.

He begins at verse 14: “God speaks once and twice, but man perceives it not; in visions and dreams by night, when deep sleep falls upon them; then he opens the ears of man, and seals instruction…” “He chastiseth him with pain upon his bed, and the multitude of his bones with strong pain; so that his life abhors bread.” He speaks of a man who is brought down by the sight of sin. “His flesh is consumed away, it cannot be seen, his bones stick out…” It is a strange description of a man in a disconsolate state. His “soul draws near to the grave, and his life to the destroyers.”

What of all this? What is the way to bring him out of this? “If there be a messenger with him, an interpreter, one of a thousand,” one who has the tongue of the learned, “to show a man his righteousness, then God is gracious to him, and delivers him from going to the pit. I have found a ransom…” The messenger, “one of a thousand,” the man of God who has “the tongue of the learned,” has shown him where his ransom is to be had; he has shown him his righteousness.

Thus did St. Peter. After he had brought them to “Men and brethren, what shall we do to be saved?” (Acts 2:37-38), he then pointed them to Jesus Christ. Therefore the ministry is called “the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:18) and the ministry of peace (Eph 2:17); ministers are called messengers of peace. You know that joy comes from reconciliation with God in Christ; joy comes from peace. Now ministers are messengers of reconciliation and messengers of peace, and therefore messengers of joy: “They bring glad tidings of joy” (Luke 1:19).

You see how ministers are helpers of joy, by showing man his evil, and then by showing man his good and comfort in Jesus Christ. They show that “where sin hath abounded, grace abounds much more” (Rom 5:20). They dig the mine, to let people see what riches, what treasure they have in the word of God, and what comfort they have there.

3. And then in the continual course of life they are “helpers of joy.” For what do ministers do, if they are faithful in their places, but advise in cases of conscience what people should do? So their office is to remove all scruples, and hindrances, and obstacles to spiritual joy, by advising them what to avoid and what to do.

We know that light is a state of joy. The ministry of the gospel is light. It sets up the light of God’s truth. It shows them the way they should go in all the course of their life, and in this way it makes them rejoice. The word of God is a lantern, especially in the ministry.

Spiritual liberty and freedom make people joyful. And the end of the ministry is to set people more and more at liberty, both from the former state that I named, and likewise daily, by their office, to set them at liberty from corruptions, and temptations, and snares; to bring them to an enlarged state.

Victory and triumph are a state of joy. Now the ministers of God teach God’s people how to fight God’s battles, how to handle their weapons, how to answer temptations, how to conquer all, and at length how to triumph. Therefore in that regard they are helpers of their joy. They encourage them against discouragements, against infirmities and afflictions, against Satan’s temptations, showing them grounds of joy out of the Scriptures.

4. Then they are “helpers of their joy” by pressing it upon them as a duty: “Rejoice evermore, and again I say, rejoice,” says St. Paul (Phil 4:4). They are like guides among the rest of the travelers, who encourage them on the way to heaven: “Come on, let us go cheerfully.” As the apostles in all their epistles stir people up to joy and cheerfulness, so should those do who are guides to God’s people. Travelers need refreshments of wine and the like. Now in this way the ministers of God help the people of God in their spiritual travel to heaven. If the people of God faint at any time, then they refresh them with apples and wine (Song 2:5), with the comforts of the Holy Ghost. They are ready to support and comfort them in all their spiritual falls, when they are ready to sink.

We see by experience, in all places where the ministry of the word is established, with how much comfort people live, and die, and end their days, above other people “that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death” (Luke 1:79). So we see that this is true: ministers help joy, because they help what breeds joy. And they help it not only at the first; they continually help the joy of the people of God, even to death.

5. And then in death itself, the end of the ministry is to help joy: to help them to heaven, to help them to a joyful departure from here, to give them a good and comforting release out of this world. Ministers draw comfort out of the word for this purpose; for whatever the minister does, it is by drawing comfort out of the word. They show the people that the sting of death is taken away, that death is now reconciled and has become a friend to us in Christ, that it is only a passage to heaven, that it is now the end of all misery and the beginning of all happiness: “Blessed are those that die in the Lord” (Rev 14:13). So they assist and help them in those last agonies.

The dispensing of the word has a special use in all conditions while we live, and at the hour of death. You see that it is clear, and I need not enlarge the point further: ministers, by reason of the word, which indeed is the main thing that comforts, are helpers of the joy of God’s people.

Objection. But you will say, “They help God’s people to sorrow, and they often vex and trouble them.”

Answer. Indeed, carnal men think so. As it is said of the two witnesses in Revelation, “They vexed the men upon the earth” (Rev 11:10). So indeed the faithful witnesses of God do vex earthly-minded, base men. As Ahab said of Elijah, “Thou art he that troubleth Israel” (1 Kgs 18:17). He counted Elijah as one who troubled Israel, when it was Ahab himself who troubled Israel. These ministers are counted as those who mar all the mirth in the world. A man who is given to pleasures and delights trembles at the sight of them, as men opposed to his delights and his carnal course. He cannot bear the very sight of them. So it is with a carnal man.

But we may make a use of this, to judge of what spirit they are who judge and think so: they are not true believers. For there is no man who has given his name to Christ, and who makes it good by his life that he is a good Christian, who does not account the ministers “helpers of his joy.” Those who do not are in an evil course; and what is worse, they resolve to be in an evil course.

Therefore let us make much of the ordinances of God, as that which is the joy of our souls. Let us make much not only of the word of God, but of the word of God in the ministerial dispensing of it; for we often find, by the opening of the word of God, a comfort that our own reading and private endeavors could never help us to. Experience shows that. We see that when the eunuch was to be converted, it was he who read, but Philip was sent to open the word to him, and then “he went away rejoicing” (Acts 8:39). And so with the poor jailer: when the word was opened and applied to him, then he rejoiced (Acts 16:34). Therefore, as we care for our own comfort, let us regard the ministry.

Objection. Many object as Naaman the Syrian did: “I can have as much comfort by reading.”

Answer. I wish they were so well occupied. But God gives a curse to private means when they are used with neglect of the public means. And joy comes from God’s Spirit. God will not wait on our pleasure to give us joy and delight in what we single out, but gives it in his own course and way. And if Naaman the Syrian, who thought the rivers of Damascus were as good as Jordan, and therefore thought it a foolish thing to wash there, had not yielded to the counsel of his servants, he would have gone home a leper as he came; but he was wiser (2 Kgs 5). So those who cavil at the ordinance of God may live and die lepers, for all I know, unless they attend upon the ordinance with meekness of spirit.

Objection. But you will say, “Those who are true Christians and good men are often cast down by the ministry, and brought to pangs of conscience. What joy, then, can there be? How are ministers ‘helpers of their joy’?”

Answer. If they do so, yet it is that they might rejoice. St. Paul did bring the Corinthians to sorrow here, but he brought them to sorrow that they might rejoice, as you have it excellently set down: “For though I made you sorry with a letter, I do not repent, though I did repent” (2 Cor 7:8). As if he said, I was sorry that I was forced to be so bitter against you; for I perceive that the same epistle made you sorry, though only for a season. “Now I rejoice, not that you were made sorry” (here is a sweet way of winning them), but that you were sorry to repentance; “for you were made sorry after a godly manner, that you might receive damage by us in nothing” (2 Cor 7:9). So the sorrow that is worked by the ministry in the hearts of the people is a sorrow to repentance, a sorrow tending to joy.

We say of April that the showers of that month dispose the earth to flowers in the next. So tears and grief worked in the heart by the ministry breed delight in the soul; they frame the soul to a delightful, joyful temper afterward. And that is part of the scope of this very text, “we are helpers of your joy”; and therefore Paul’s meaning is, if I had not spared you, but had come in severity, all would have been for joy. So whether the minister opens comfort or direction, it is for the people’s joy. If ministers do not see them in a fit state, then it is their office to lay open to them their sin and danger, and to tell them that they must be purged by repentance before they can receive the cordial of joy. But all is for joy in the end.

A physician comes and gives sharp and bitter purges. The patient says, “I thought you had come to make me better, and I am sicker now than I was before.” But the physician bids him be content: “All this is for your health and strength, and for your joyfulness of spirit afterward. You will be the better for it.” So, in confidence of that, the patient drinks down many a bitter potion. So it is with those who sit under the ministry of God. Though it is sharp and severe and crosses their corruptions, yet it is healing medicine for their souls, and all will end in the health of the soul, in joy afterward.

Objection. It will be objected again, “The word of God and the dispensing of it are for doctrine, to teach and to instruct, and not especially for joy. That should not be the main end; for we see in Romans 15:4, ‘Whatsoever was written, was written for our learning.’ So in 1 Corinthians 14:3, he who speaks, speaks to ‘edification and exhortation,’ as well as to comfort.”

Answer. It is true; but all teaching, and all exhortation, and all reproof tend to comfort. Even doctrine itself tends to comfort. For as it is with various kinds of food, which have in them both a cherishing virtue to strengthen and a healing virtue to cure, so it is with the word of God: the doctrinal part of it has a comforting force. And indeed doctrine is for comfort. For what is comfort but a strengthening of the affections from some sound grounds of doctrine imprinted upon the understanding, of which it has been convinced before? The understanding is convinced thoroughly before the soul can be comforted thoroughly. Therefore the Scripture, tending to doctrine, that being one end of it, tends likewise to comfort, because comfort is the issue of doctrine. For what is comfort but doctrine applied to a particular comforting use?

As in plants and trees, what is the fruit of the tree? Nothing but the juice of the tree applied and digested into fruit. So indeed doctrine is what runs through the whole life of a Christian, and the strength of doctrine is in comfort. Comfort is nothing but doctrine sweetly digested and applied to the affections. He will never be a good comforter who does not first establish the judgment in some grounds of doctrine, to show where the comfort flows from. So although there are many things in Scripture that are doctrinal, yet in the use of them those doctrinal points tend to joy and comfort.

As I said, in food there is the same thing, something that both nourishes and also refreshes, like a cordial. So the word of God both nourishes the understanding and is like a cordial to refresh and comfort; and it is a kind of joy to the soul to have it established in sound doctrine: that is the ground of comfort. So, notwithstanding anything that can be objected, the end of the word of God, especially in the dispensing of it, is joy and comfort.

Use. This should teach people to regard the ministry in this respect, that it is a helper of their comfort, and not to grieve those who help their comfort. For what is the end of a minister, as a minister, but to make others rejoice, so that both God in heaven, and the angels, and ministers, and all may rejoice together in the conversion of a Christian? Now for people to vex those who, by virtue of their calling, labor to help forward their joy is very unkind treatment. Yet it was the reception that our blessed Lord and Master himself found in the world; and St. Paul himself says, “The more I love you, the less I am loved of you” (2 Cor 12:15).

And then it should move people to lay open the case of their souls to their spiritual physicians on all good occasions. People do so with the physicians of their bodies; they do so in doubtful cases for their estates. Is all so well in our souls that we need no help or comfort? No removing of objections that the soul makes, no untying of the knots of conscience? Is all so clear? Or are men in a kind of numbness and deadness and atheism, so that they think it no matter if they put all to a venture, and think all is well? It would be better for the souls of many if they had better acquaintance with their spiritual pastors than they have. For the calling of pastors is to help the joy of the people; and how can they help it unless the people lay open their condition to them on good occasion? What do people do by this but rob themselves of joy? They are their own enemies.

I pass to the third.

Doctrine 3. They are helpers of joy, and only helpers.

They only utter and set forth matter of joy, grounds of joy from the word of God; but it is the Spirit of God that rejoices the heart. “The fruit of the lips is peace” (Isa 57:19). It is true, but it is when the Spirit of God speaks peace to the soul together with the lips: “God creates the fruit of the lips to be peace,” says Isaiah. The fruit of the lips is peace, but God creates it to be so. So ministers are comforters, but God says, “I, even I, am thy comforter” (Isa 51:12). We speak matters of comfort and grounds of comfort, but God seals them to the heart by his Holy Spirit. God is the comforter himself: “He is the Father of comfort, and the God of all consolation” (2 Cor 1:3).

And the Spirit is called “the Comforter,” to show us that however the materials of comfort may be tapped and set flowing for God’s people in the ordinances, yet what speaks peace to the heart, and presses those comforts home upon the soul and conscience, is the Spirit of God, God himself. So there is the outward preaching and the spiritual preaching. He has his chair in heaven who teaches the heart, as St. Augustine says. St. Paul speaks, but God opens the heart of Lydia; he has the key to open the heart.

Therefore you have all attributed to the Spirit of God. In John 16:5 and following: I go hence, but I will send you the Comforter, that is, the Holy Ghost. And what will the Comforter do? “He shall convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and judgment.” Do not plead, therefore, your own inability, that you are unable to comfort, or to cast down, or to seal their righteousness to people. Do what is your duty: set forth grounds of direction and of casting down, of righteousness and of judgment, and of holy life afterward. Then the Holy Ghost will go with you; the Comforter will do this to the hearts of people; the Holy Ghost will convince. “What is Paul, or what is Apollos, but ministers?” (1 Cor 3:5). Paul may plant, and Apollos may water; but if God does not give the increase (1 Cor 3:6), what is all of it?

Therefore Christ promises his disciples that the Holy Ghost will accompany their teaching. They might have objected, “Alas! We are to teach the world, people who are Gentiles, who are obstinate persons, hardened in superstition.” Do not fear, he says: “I will send the Holy Ghost.” He will fall upon you and furnish you. Now the Holy Ghost was in them, and the Holy Ghost in their hearers too, together with the word inspired by the Holy Ghost; and when the Spirit meets in these three, wonders are worked. When the Spirit of God is in the teacher, and the Spirit of God in the hearers, and the Spirit of God in the word, I say, when there is one Spirit in the teacher, and in the hearers, and in the word, there are wonders worked of conversion and comfort.

It is the Spirit that must do all. We are nothing but ministers. “Let a man conceive of us as ministers and dispensers of the gospel” (1 Cor 4:1). Ministers of comfort we are, and only ministers; just so we are “helpers of your joy,” but we are only helpers. Those who do not account us helpers of joy do not know our calling; and those who account us more, as if we were able to comfort people by the word, turn the preaching of the word into magic, into a charm. We can speak the word; but God must speak to the heart at the same time.

It is as with medicinal water. There is the water, and there are many strong things in it. What! Does the water cure or purge? It is a dead thing; it has no active quality except to cool, and the like. Where does its power come from? There are some cool herbs, some strong things in it, and then it does wonders. So what is the infusion of the word but water, but water of life, the dew of heaven, the dew of the sun? Why is it so? Is it as water? No; there is a divine influence and vigor in it that refreshes and quickens the soul. It does not do this of itself; it has a divine influence of the Spirit.

So we see that though ministers are helpers of joy, they are only helpers. They are only the conduits that convey what comes from the Spirit of God. They are instruments of the Spirit.

1. You see it clearly, then, that God alone speaks comfort; because the Spirit of God alone knows our spirits thoroughly. The Spirit of God alone can comfort, because he knows all the discomforts of our hearts; he knows all our griefs, all the corners of our hearts. That the minister cannot do. The minister may speak general comforts; but the Spirit of God knows all the windings and turnings of the heart, and all the disconsolate pangs of the heart and soul. Every little pang and grief, the Spirit of God knows it. Therefore the Spirit of God is the Comforter. He strikes the nail, and seals the comfort to the soul; we are only helpers.

2. Then again, the Spirit of God must do it, because the soul must be settled by what is stronger than itself. It must be so convinced and settled that it has more to say against the grief or temptation than can be alleged by the devil himself. The soul, before it is comforted, must be quieted and stilled. Now who is above the soul, and Satan who tempts the soul? Let Satan be let loose to tempt the soul, and the soul has a hell in itself, if God leaves it alone. Who is above those unspeakable torments of conscience, if they are not allayed by the Spirit of God? Who is above the soul but the Spirit of God? Will the soul allay itself? No, it never will. Therefore the Spirit of God, who is stronger and wiser than the soul, and is the Spirit of light and strength, must settle and quiet and calm the soul, so that it has nothing to say against the comfort he brings, but quiets itself and says, “I must rest. I must see that this is from heaven. I am quiet.” This the Spirit does.

Use. Therefore make this use of it: in all our endeavors to procure peace for our consciences and spiritual balm for the wounds of our souls, let us go to this heavenly Physician. Let us not depend overmuch on the ministry, or reading, or any outward task; but in the use of all things let us lift up our hearts to God, that he would comfort us by his Spirit, that he would send the Comforter into our souls.

Though the disciples had comfort upon comfort from Christ, yet until the Comforter came, whose office it was to do it, to seal his word to their souls, alas! they were dead-hearted people. But after the resurrection, when the Comforter came and refreshed their memories and convinced their understandings, then they could remember all the sweet comforts that our blessed Savior had taught them before. So it is with us. We hear many sweet comforts day after day out of God’s book, comforts against sin, comforts against trouble, outward and inward and all; but until the Comforter comes, until God sends his Holy Spirit, we will not make use of them. Therefore let us labor to have more communion with God before we come to hear the word; and after we have heard it, let us have communion with God again, that he would seal whatever is spoken to our souls, and make it effectual to us.

Therefore we must learn to give the ordinance of God its just due, and not to idolize it: to make it the means of comfort, and not to make it the chief Comforter, but to make the Spirit of God so, working by it. What is Paul or Apollos? What are we but ministers of faith, and by consequence ministers and helpers of comfort, but not the authors of comfort?

“Oh! If I had such and such here, I would do well, I would be so and so,” you say. Alas! All is to no purpose unless you have the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God. He can help by weak means. Therefore we must not tie comfort and joy to this or that means; but in all means we must look to the ground of comfort and the spring of all, the Holy Ghost.

The reason why men do not profit more, why they are not more cheered and lifted up by the ministry of the word (which is a word “of reconciliation,” and of joy and comfort), is that they are more careful in the use of means than in going to God for his Spirit to bless the means. Now these must go together: a care to use the means, and a care to pray to him that he would give us wisdom and strength and blessed success in the use of all means. If we would then join these two together religiously and conscientiously, the use of all means conscientiously, and in the use of all the lifting up of our hearts to God to bless them, we would find wonderful success upon the ministry, and upon all other good means likewise. So much for that.

I go on to the last clause of the chapter.

“For by faith ye stand” (2 Cor 1:24). Why does the apostle vary the word: “We have not dominion over your faith, but are helpers of your joy,” whereas the sequence, it seems, might run thus: “We do not domineer over your faith, but are helpers of your faith”? He puts joy instead of faith; and afterward he brings in faith again: “for by faith ye stand.”

This is one main reason: because joy rises from faith, therefore he names it instead of faith. For the Holy Ghost is not fastidious about words, but when the same Spirit works both, he names what he thinks will best suit the purpose.

Observation. Faith breeds joy.

How is that?

1. Because faith, first of all, shows us the freedom from what is the cause of all discomfort whatever; it takes away all that may discourage. For it takes away the fear of damnation for our sins; it shows our reconciliation in Jesus Christ. Faith shows liberty and deliverance; and so, revealing deliverance by a Mediator, it works joy. Is not a prisoner joyful when he is set at liberty?

2. Then likewise faith reveals to us the face of God shining on us in Jesus Christ: it shows not only deliverance, but favor. It shows us the ground of all, the righteousness and obedience of our Savior, by which we are delivered and brought into favor.

Now from this comes peace. From the knowledge of our deliverance and acceptance with God, founded upon the obedience of the God-man, a Savior, there comes in peace, and peace breeds joy. Because faith reveals all these, the ground of reconciliation with God in Jesus Christ, and thereupon peace, therefore it causes joy.

For this is the pedigree and descent of joy, as the apostle has it: “The kingdom of God is in righteousness, and peace, and joy” (Rom 14:17). There must first be righteousness, that of a Mediator, to satisfy the wrath of God and procure his favor. From righteousness comes peace, peace with God, peace of conscience. From peace comes joy. There is no joy without peace, no peace without righteousness.

And this whole pedigree of joy, as it were, is excellently set down: “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom 5:1), and have access to the throne of grace, by which grace we stand, and not only so, but rejoice. So there is justification by the righteousness of Christ, and thereupon peace with God; and from peace, boldness and access to God, and thereupon joy. So we see how faith brings in joy: it shows the spring from which joy comes. It shows peace, and peace rises from reconciliation, and reconciliation from the righteousness of Christ the Mediator, by which we are delivered from all that we may fear and set in a state of true joy, God being our friend. When God is reconciled, all is reconciled, all is ours. Do we not have cause for joy, then?

Therefore the apostle says, “The God of peace fill you full of joy in believing” (Rom 15:13), showing that faith is the cause of all spiritual joy. And you have the same in 1 Peter 1:8: “In whom ye rejoiced, after ye believed, with joy unspeakable and glorious.” “In whom, after ye believed” (that is, in Christ), “you rejoiced with joy unspeakable and glorious.” And therefore you see the apostle might well put joy in the place of faith, because joy springs and rises from faith in Jesus Christ, the Mediator.

Use. From this we may come to make this use of trial: how may we know whether our joy is good or not? Among many other evidences, this is one.

1. Spiritual joy is good if it springs from the word of faith, if it springs from the ordinance of God unfolded in the word, showing us the ground of believing. For he who truly rejoices can show the ground of his joy.

In this, joy differs from presumption, from presumptuous, swelling conceits. True joy (that is, not the joy of a hypocrite) shows where it comes from; it rises from grounds taken out of divine truth.

2. Then again, this joy springs more immediately from faith in the word, from assurance that God is ours and that Christ is ours, that God is at peace with us and that we are at peace with him. It rises from the peace that is worked by faith.

3. Then again, this joy, if it is sound, is such a joy as St. Peter says is an unspeakable and glorious joy. Joy that rises from the word of God, and from faith and peace, is above discouragement, because we have in the word of God cause for joy above all discouragements and all allurements whatsoever. It is a joy above the joy of riches, or pleasures, or profits. Why? Because the word shows cause for joy above all these. The prophet David rejoiced in the word of God above gold and silver, “as one that had gotten great spoils” (Ps 119:162). You see how often he repeats it. It was sweeter to him than “the honey and the honeycomb” (Ps 19:10). It puts his soul out of all taste for other things.

This joy of the Spirit puts such a relish in the soul that it makes the soul undervalue all other things whatsoever. The price of other things falls when a man rejoices in the Holy Spirit, because this joy rises from the grounds of faith, from peace and righteousness.

And likewise, if this joy looks forward, it rises from the hope of life everlasting and the favor of God, the ground of all. It rises from things that are above all other contentments: the lovingkindness of the Lord (which faith apprehends, and which is the ground of joy), it is above life itself (Ps 63:3). Now, life is the sweetest thing on earth, but the lovingkindness of God is better than that.

Therefore consider those who lose their souls in base contentment and rejoice in the dirty things of this life. These things are not fit for the soul to fasten on or to place its contentment in; they are only to be used as those who take a journey use things to refresh themselves. Those who are swallowed up in these things do not know what spiritual joy is, the joy that rises from the word of God, from divine truth, from faith. For if they did, this joy would raise them higher, above all earthly contentments whatsoever.

4. Then again, where this joy is, this spiritual enlargement of soul which is called joy, it comes from true grounds, and it is with humility. For the same word that reveals cause for joy reveals cause for humility and grief in ourselves, because of the remnants of sin and what we ourselves deserve. So true joy is a tempered and qualified joy. It is not joined with pride and swelling, because it rises from those grounds that teach us what we are in ourselves. Alas! We are such that we have no need to be proud in ourselves; but if we will glory, we must glory in God (1 Cor 1:31).

Well, that is not what I chiefly mean to stand on. I speak of it only because joy is placed here for faith, as it springs from faith: “We are helpers of your joy.” To hasten, then, to what follows.

“For by faith ye stand.” This depends principally on the first words, “We have not dominion over your faith,” because faith is such a grace as you stand by in all conditions. Now, what you stand by must be firm; it must rest on a good foundation. And what is firm must not be human, but divine. Therefore we have no dominion over your faith, “for by faith ye stand.”

Standing is a military word. “By faith ye stand”: that is, first of all, faith gives a standing, a sure standing, before any conflict. It gives a standing in Christianity; it sets the soul in a frame, in a standing.

More than that, faith helps us. We stand by faith, not only in a frame of Christianity and furnished with spiritual strength, but we are then fit to encounter opposition. By faith we stand our ground, and stand against all opposition. We stand, and stand our ground, by faith.

And standing likewise implies continuance in carrying on Christianity and in opposing all enemies whatsoever. By faith we stand, and continue standing; we hold out in all opposition.

Standing likewise, in the next place, implies a kind of safety, together with victory at length. “By faith ye stand.” You stand in such a way that you are not wounded to death. You stand in such a way that you are kept safe, especially from mortal wounds, and altogether safe so far as you use faith as a shield, till you have gained perfect victory and faith ends in triumph. So faith is that grace by which we stand, by which we are in a frame of religion fit to stand, and by which, so standing, we encounter oppositions, continue so encountering, and preserve ourselves safe till victory is obtained. This is the full expression and comprehension of the word, “By faith ye stand.”

Question. Now, why is it by faith that we have this standing?

Answer. Because faith is that grace in the new covenant that makes the soul go out of itself. It empties the soul of all things in itself, and goes out to something else on which it stands. For in the new covenant, since Adam’s fall, all our strength is in the second Adam, our Head; we fetch it from there. And faith is the hand of the soul.

Now, faith in the new covenant is an emptying grace; and as it is a grace that empties the soul, so likewise it fastens on another thing on which it relies. For faith is a uniting grace as well as an emptying grace. Faith, then, by emptying and uniting, makes us stand.

And likewise faith makes us stand as it draws. It has a drawing power, an attractive force. It is a root grace. Like a root, when it knits to Christ it sucks out and draws power from him. Every touch of faith draws spiritual strength and power; so it causes us to stand by the attractive power it has.

And then it is likewise the force of faith to make things present, for in this it differs from hope. Hope looks on things as absent. Now, the things that hope looks on as remote and distant in time and place, faith makes present. Therefore it is said to be “the evidence of things not seen” (Heb 11:1). Now, what makes the soul strong and able to stand must be something present. The full possession of things may be reserved, not for faith, but for vision, for those who fully grasp them in heaven, where faith ends and is finished. Yet for all that, faith draws so much for the present. It sets things to come so far present, with such evidence and force, that it upholds the soul and makes it stand.

“It is the evidence of things not seen,” and so it has a kind of omnipotent power to make things that are not, to be. Heaven and glory and happiness are not here for the present; but faith, looking on them in the authority of God and the divine promises, makes them present by a kind of almighty power that it has, laying hold on an Almighty power. And from this it upholds the soul. It is the prop and stay of the soul, as in Hebrews 11:1 and following, where it signifies to stay up, to hold up as a pillar; and this it has even from the power it has to make things to come present.

You see, then, what it is to stand, and how faith is fitted for this purpose, because, as I said, it is the grace of the new covenant, emptying us and drawing us to Christ, from whom we draw all power, and because it makes things to come as present.

By faith we are set in a right frame and condition again, as by want of faith we fell. The same grace for want of which we fell must set us right.

How did we come to fall at the first? You know that Adam listened to his wife Eve, and she listened to the serpent. They did not trust in God; they began to stagger at the promises, to stagger at the word of God. Satan robbed them of the word. He still observes and continues the same art, to take the word from us and to make us stagger and doubt whether it is true or not. He comes between us and our rock, the word of God. So Adam fell. Now we must be restored by the contrary of that by which we fell. We fell by unbelief and distrust, by calling God’s truth in question; we must learn to stand again by the contrary grace, by faith. Thus you see the terms somewhat unfolded: “By faith ye stand.”

To clear it a little further, there are four degrees of assent that the soul gives to anything.

1. The first is a slight assent, which we call opinion, that is, assent with some fear that the thing may be otherwise. That is a weak, a swaying assent. It is a wavering assent; it does not yield a certain assent. Opinion is a weak thing: it may be so; yes, but it may not be so. It is with a fear of the contrary.

2. The second degree of assent is one that has a better ground, that is, the assent to grounds of reason. A man has reason to yield and assent to the thing, and those reasons satisfy the soul and rest it somewhat, according to their strength. And that assent we call knowledge, or science. This is founded on grounds of reason.

3. There is a third kind of assent and yielding that the soul gives, which we call believing. This is merely on the credit of the one who speaks, though we know no reason why the thing should be so. Only the person, it may be, is a person of credit and wisdom and knowledge; and according as we think well of him, we fasten our faith and assent to his authority. So that assent to the authority of the speaker we call belief.

4. The fourth degree of assent is when we assent to the thing not only because we have reason and arguments for doing so, or because we have some man to confirm it by authority, but because we feel it to be so by experience and by taste. So a man assents that fire is hot, and that sweet things are sweet, not altogether from reason, or from the speech or report of another man, but because he feels it so indeed. He assents to it from experience.

Now you will say, “How, then, do we come to stand by faith?”

As faith especially relies on the authority of God, on God’s word, so we stand by faith because it assents to an authority. But God’s word gives reasons too. Therefore faith assents to the authority of God’s word first, and then we see divine reason enough too, once we believe God.

And then there is experience in divine things too. After we believe, there is an incredible sweetness in divine things; there is a knowledge with a particular taste. There is not one divine truth but has an evidence in it, once a man believes it, so that he may say from experience, “I know whom I have believed” (2 Tim 1:12). Let the speakers of these things be what they will; let them apostatize from what they have spoken. After a man believes, he will see that the things themselves have divine reason in them, as well as divine authority establishing them.

Some divine truths rest altogether on divine authority. We see no other reason but that God has said it. But some truths are both credible and intelligible: credible, because God has said it, and there is reason to prove it. So a man may prove by divine reason that “all shall work for the best” (Rom 8:28). Why? The apostle says, “We love God, and God hath called us according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28). Therefore all things shall work for those whom God has called, for those who answer his divine call. There is both reason and comfort. So it is credible as it has divine truth, and intelligible as it has comfort. There are reasons of a like kind together with divine authority. God not only presses us with authority, but gives us reasons.

Besides this, there is experience. For the doctrine of divine providence, and of the corruption of nature, and the doctrine of comfort in the Mediator Christ altogether, the doctrine of faith, the doctrine of the issue of all troubles for good: we find these by experience. The teacher who teaches them may perhaps have no sense of them himself; let him apostatize and do what he will. Our faith stands on them, partly because God says so (that is the chief reason), and because there is reason for them, and because we find it so by experience. In many divine things these three, reason, authority, and experience, concur in faith. But to come a little further.

Question. What does faith itself, by which we stand, stand on most? That which we stand on must itself stand. Let us examine a little what faith itself stands on, by which we stand.

Answer. I showed you this partly before: divine authority and experience, which gives some light to it. But we will follow it a little further. That faith by which we stand must itself stand; therefore it cannot be opinion, it must be faith. Nor must it be bare knowledge; it must be knowledge that has faith; faith must come in. Now faith looks especially to divine revelation; it looks to truth revealed from God. And faith, looking to the word of God, builds and pitches and grounds itself on divine truth, divine authority, divine revelation, which we call the first truth, the first verity.

And not only so, but faith, that it may stand the better, has the seals together with the word of God. For God has added sacraments as seals to the word, which help the word, to us at least. God’s word is true enough of itself in regard of him; but he condescends to us, and therefore, that faith may stand the better and that we may build on his word, there are his sacraments. There are seals together with his word, and his oath too.

Again, that his word may be the better foundation for faith, it is conceived in the manner of a covenant (the evangelical part of it, the covenant of grace), in which God in Christ promises to forgive our sins and to accept us to life everlasting, if we believe in Christ. It is a gracious covenant. God condescends to make a covenant that faith may stand. Shall I not believe him who has made a covenant, and bound himself by covenant that he will do so?

Indeed, in the covenant of grace faith lays hold on this, that he will fulfill and perform both conditions himself, both his part and our part. For the same truths that are a covenant are a “testament” too in the gospel. A testament bequeaths things without a covenant, and in this it differs from a covenant. A testament is: I bequeath and give this. Now, whatever Christ requires in the covenant he makes good in the gospel, and because of this the covenant is a testament: if we believe and repent (John 3:36). Now he has promised to give repentance and belief in the covenant of grace to all who attend on the means and expect the performance of the covenant from him.

For we can no more perform the conditions of the covenant of grace of ourselves than those of the covenant of the law. Nature cannot do it, because it must be done altogether by the Spirit. Now here is a foundation for faith to stand on. God condescends so far as to give his word, and his seal, and his oath with his word; to convey that word by way of a covenant; to make that covenant a testament and will to us, that he will do this; and to seal that will with his own blood. For “a testament is of no force till the testator be dead” (Heb 9:17). His own blood has sealed the testament. You see here what ground there is for faith to stand on.

Then, again, there is the sweet relation that God has taken on himself in Christ. He is our Father. Faith does not build on naked God, stripped of his sweet relations, for then he is a “consuming fire” (Heb 12:29). It builds on God a Father in Christ. What a sweet thing it is to consider God a Father! In Christ the nature of God is fatherly to us, and our nature is sweet to him. We are sons in Christ. His nature is sweet to us, and ours to him. He will surely make good his relations to us. For in Christ he is a Father, not in creation only, but in the covenant of grace. Faith relies on the word of God, on the covenant and testament, and on God himself, altered and changed in the covenant of grace to be a sweet Father.

But what is a further ground of this? The nature of God himself, who is a Father. For if God himself were not clothed with properties that might satisfy faith and satisfy the soul fully, then even though he were a Father, it would not be a sufficient ground for faith. But now, who has taken the relation of a father on himself? God, who is infinitely good, infinitely merciful above all our sins. It must be infinite mercy; faith would not have footing otherwise. For in the sense of sin the soul will so upbraid itself that, if God were not a Father, and a Father infinite in mercy, it would find no satisfaction. Nothing but infinite mercy will satisfy the soul when conscience is awakened, and infinite power to subdue all enemies, and infinite wisdom to go beyond the reach and subtlety of all the devils in hell.

God is such a Father as in his nature is of infinite mercy and wisdom and power. Here indeed is a foundation for faith to lay hold on: to have a Father, and such a Father who is Jehovah. There we must rest, in his essence. He is “Jehovah, I am.” He is eternal and immutable, an eternal being of himself; he gives being to all, and all things depend on him. The devils in hell and wicked men: he can quell them all, take away their being, and turn them back to their first nothing from which they came.

You see, if we trace all back to “Jehovah, I am,” to the eternity of God; and then to his nature, clothed with power and wisdom and mercy; and then to his relation of a Father; and then to how he condescends to convey himself sweetly by way of covenant and testament, I beseech you, is there not here a foundation for faith to build on in the word of God, when God has thus opened himself to us? You see what this standing is, and how by faith we stand, and what faith stands on, and may well stand on. To come, then, to some observations.

First of all, observe from this:

Observation. The foundation of faith must be outside a man’s self.

The ground on which a man must lay his soul must be outside himself. It must be divine; it must be God. For the soul does not rest till it comes to God. And if the word were not God’s word, the soul would not rest on it. God must open himself by his word. It must be divine revelation that the soul stands on, and there at last it must resolve to pitch and build and rest.

It must not be human authority, therefore, not the authority of any creature, that the soul stands on, because what the soul stands on must itself stand. Now nothing has a firm consistence but what is divine. I prove it this way. There is no creature but, though it is true and good, it is changeably true; it may be otherwise than it is, and yet be a creature still, and a good creature. There is no man but is changeable, and changeable as a creature; as a creature, severed from the consideration of sin, he is changeable. The very angels are changeable as they are creatures. All things created are mutable. This is the observation of John of Damascus.

Now that which is the foundation of faith must not only be true, but infallibly and unchangeably true. There must be no danger of error in what faith lays itself on. It is an old rule that falsehood cannot be under faith, because faith must lie on truth, infallible and immutable truth. And who is so but God? And what revealed truth is so but divine truth? Therefore faith relies only on the first good and the first truth, on God and his truth.

Therefore we may see what to judge of that controversy between us and our adversaries, who would have our faith finally rest on the authority of the church, and not of the Scriptures, and consequently not on the authority of God himself.

The question is, Who has the best standing, the papists or we? We say we stand by faith, and therefore we stand better than they do. They say they stand by faith too, but how? Their faith comes down at length to the authority of the church, and there they rest. But I say, even by their own confession, or that of any reasonable man, the word of God is more divine than the authority of the church can be. For the authority of the church is infallible and true for this reason, that the word of God says so: that he will be with the church and save his church. Its ground is settled upon the word.

Now the word to which they turn to prove that they cannot err must itself be trusted before them. If they get their credit from the word, the word must be believed before them, before men. For if God speaks by any man at all, he speaks by him only so far as that man understands the Scripture and builds upon the Scriptures first. Therefore we must first found ourselves upon the Scriptures, and upon men only as far as they agree with the Scriptures.

If the Scriptures were not the word of God indeed, they could not be the foundation of faith, and we could not stand upon them. But they are the word of God indeed, for men wrote as they were inspired by the Holy Ghost (2 Tim 3:16). Now what comes from men is not infallibly the word of God. If they speak anything that is good, it is good so far as it agrees with the first truth, the word of God.

Indeed, the final ground into which they resolve their faith is very rotten and unsound, and it betrays what their church is. For at length, in the grand point of all, they come down to mere traditions. What is the present church? With them the pope is, in effect, the church. How do they know that he cannot err? Because, they say, he is Peter’s successor! How do they know he is so? The Scriptures do not say so. It is tradition. So the foundation of their religion is mere tradition, a thing passed from hand to hand, questionable and uncertain. That is the foundation of all their religion. What a final ground for faith this is!

We, on the other hand, stand upon this against the gates of hell, and against all temptations and trials whatsoever: we believe, and fasten our souls upon this truth. Why? It is the word of God. How do we know it is the word of God? Indeed, the church first of all has an inducing, leading power, persuading us to read and to hear the word of God, and it unfolds the word by the ministry. And that is all that the church does.

But when we hear this, there is a divine, intrinsic majesty in the word itself, by which I know the word to be the word. How do I know light to be light? From itself. It gives evidence from itself. So divine light in the Scriptures gives light of itself to all those for whom the Scripture was penned. For whom was the Scripture penned? For God’s people. To all who have gracious hearts, the word carries its own evidence with it. As light carries its own evidence, and reveals itself and all things else, so do the Scriptures: “You have a sure word of the prophets” (2 Pet 1:19).

Our Savior Christ himself founds what he teaches upon the word. Shall we not, then, ground our faith upon the word, when he who was the head of the church brings everything to the word in his teaching? Therefore we have a better final ground for our faith than they have.

For indeed, to tell the truth, as we may say of their kind of prayers, when they pray to saints and the like, “They worship they know not what” (John 4:22), so we may say of their faith: they believe they know not what. They believe in a sinful man, for the present pope is all their church. Many times he is a man ignorant in the Scriptures; perhaps he has never read them. And yet he must settle controversies, and get into the chair, and judge that which shall judge him before long. He must judge the Scripture that must be his judge, and the judge of all mankind. I do not wish to enlarge on this point; a little exposure is enough.

I hasten to something more practical. We see, then, that faith has an establishing power, for it is by faith that we stand. From this we may see these truths, which I will only touch upon.

1. Faith is certain. It is a certain thing, and it makes the soul certain. It is not a weak notion.

2. Again, in that it is said here, “By faith ye stand,” we see here the perseverance of faith.

But you will say that the faith by which we stand is changeable, and therefore we may fall. No. St. Peter makes a comment upon this place: “We are kept by faith to salvation”; and “receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Pet 1:5, 9). We are kept through faith to salvation. So God by his power keeps that faith which keeps us. There is a divine power that keeps faith, so that faith may keep us. So we stand by faith, and that faith stands to salvation, because it has firm ground to stand on, and because it is kept by God himself. “We are kept by the power of God through faith to salvation.” Notice how it runs along to salvation. Salvation is not only certain in itself, but the faith that lays hold on salvation is sure. “By faith we stand,” not only for the present, but we continue by faith, and stand even to the death.

3. Again, and this follows from the other, faith is a certain thing in itself, and we are assured of our continuance. We are assured that we shall be saved; he who believes may be assured that he shall be saved. First, faith is a certain thing in itself, laying hold upon a strong foundation, the word of God. And it is sure to continue, for it builds upon the rock. Therefore a man may believe, and he may know that he shall be saved; he may know that he shall continue in a sure faith. There is a latitude, a breadth in faith. Sometimes there is doubting and sometimes faith, but yet there is always faith, more or less. There is a little faith and a great faith, but there is always faith. “By faith we stand.” These things need no further enlargement. I only show how they spring from this text.

4. In a word, from this we learn that it is by faith that we stand, and withstand all opposition whatsoever. For faith is our victory: “That is your victory, even your faith” (1 John 5:4). By faith we overcome the world; by it we stand, and stand against all opposition whatsoever.

To make it a little clear, the reason is partly that faith presents to the soul greater good than the world can. Therefore nothing on the right hand can shake the soul of a believing Christian. Shall pleasures, and profits, and the honors of the world draw a Christian from his faith, when faith presents better honors, better pleasures at the right hand of God, “pleasures for evermore” (Ps 16:11)? No, they cannot. For there is nothing in the world but there is better in religion, incomparably better. There is no comparison between the pleasures of religion and those of the world, between the honor of being a child of God and the honors that the world can give. Therefore there is nothing on the right hand in the world that can overcome the faith of a Christian; he can stand against all of it, even if it is a kingdom.

“Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter” (Heb 11:24). Why? Faith presented him with greater honors in the church of God. He accounted the very “reproach,” the worst thing in the church, better than the best thing in the world: “the reproach of Christ better than the treasures of Egypt” (Heb 11:26).

Let discouragements be offered to faith by Satan and the world, let them come with all the terrors and threatenings they can, faith is victorious and triumphant against them all. It stands against them all, because it sets before the soul greater good than the ill that the world can inflict, and sets before the soul greater ills, if it apostatizes, than the world can inflict.

The world says, “If you do not do thus and so, you will be cast into prison, or perhaps you will lose your life.” “Oh,” says the soul, “but if I yield to the temptations of Satan and my own vile corruptions, I shall be cast into hell. Is that not worse?” Nothing terrible can be presented to the soul but faith will present to it things more terrible. Therefore if there is faith in the soul, it will stand against all those terrors whatsoever. “Fear not them that can kill the body, when they have done their worst”; if you must fear, I will tell you whom you should fear: “Fear him that can cast both body and soul into hell” (Matt 10:28).

So if we are forced to suffer the loss of anything that is good in the world, or are cast into any ill condition, what does St. Paul say? The troubles and afflictions of the world are not worthy of the glory that shall be revealed (Rom 8:18). Let us set that glory before us, and that will prevail against all that the world can threaten or take from us. What is all of it compared to that glory? Nothing. Therefore “by faith we stand”: we keep our own standing, and withstand all oppositions whatsoever.

Question. Oh! But what if more subtle temptations come, and the Lord himself seems to be our enemy: that we have sin, and God is angry, and we see that he follows us with afflictions that are evidences of his anger? How shall we stand now, and keep ourselves from despair?

Answer. This is a fiery dart of Satan, when a man has sinned and his conscience is awakened, to make him sink in despair. Oh, but faith will make the soul stand in these great temptations against those fiery darts. Faith puts a shield into the hand of the soul, to beat back all those fiery darts. For faith will present Christ to God: “Indeed I have been a sinner, but you have ordained a Savior. He is of your own appointing, of your own anointing, a Savior of your own giving. And you have made a promise that ‘whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life’ (John 3:16). I cast myself upon your mercy in him.”

In this way faith comes to withstand all such fiery temptations whatsoever, yes, even against God himself: “Lord, you cannot deny your own Savior. You seem to be an enemy, and though I am a sinner and have deserved to be cast into hell, yet I come to you in the name of your Son, who is at your right hand and pleads for me by virtue of his blood shed for me. I come in his name; you cannot refuse your own Son.” For in all temptations, when a man has faith in him, it will send Satan to Christ to answer for him: “Go to Christ. He is my husband. He has paid my debts. He has satisfied for my sins.” So whatever the temptation is, make it as subtle as you will, there is a skill in faith to stand against it, and to beat back all the fiery darts of Satan.

Therefore, to end all, we see here what an excellent condition a Christian is in above all others: he has a better standing than others have. He has not only a better standing in religion than the papists have; within the profession of religion too, he has a better standing than ordinary professors. Why? He stands by faith, by sound faith. He does not stand upon opinion, or because he was brought up that way. He does not stand upon his own wit, because he sees reason for it. He stands upon faith, and faith stands upon divine authority. He stands partly upon his own experience, which seconds faith.

Those, then, who do not care for religion, what standing do they have? Those who stand only in pleasures and profits, and in the favor of great men, what standing do they have? They stand, as the psalmist says, “in slippery places” (Ps 73:18). Every man who does not have faith stands on slippery ground, however great he may be. Even if he is a monarch, alas, what is it to stand for a while? All those things are only uncertain. Though they yield present content, they are only uncertain contentments. The wise man says they are nothing but “vanity” (Eccl 1:2). They are like “the reed of Egypt” (2 Kgs 18:21), which will not hold a man up. They will not sustain the soul in the time of trouble. If a man is not religious, there is nothing he can stand upon and fasten his soul upon that will hold out so much as a fit of fever, nothing that will hold in the pangs of death, even at their first entrance, nothing that will hold in terrors of conscience.

How small a trouble will blow away all those who stand on so weak a foundation as an earthly thing! For they have only an imaginary good to speak of, and that imagination is driven out by the feeling of its contrary. Let contrary troubles come, and all their fools’ paradise, and the happiness they had before, is at an end. It goes no deeper than imagination.

Nothing in all this world establishes the heart. Those who do not stand by faith in the favor of God in Christ, let their standing be what it will, will soon have it overturned by any temptation. They can stand out against nothing.

Therefore let us labor, above all things in the world, to have that faith strengthened by which we stand. Let us often be encouraged to strengthen our faith by all means, that we may stand the better upon it. And let us try our faith before we trust it. It is that which we must trust to, and stand to, in life and death.

Therefore let us often think, Is my faith good? Is it well built? Let us often put this query to our souls: I believe the religion I profess, but upon what grounds? I believe the truths in the word of God, but upon what grounds? Do I have a clear understanding of them, because they are divine? Does the Spirit of God open them, and show a light in the Scripture that is divine? Does the Spirit of God give me a relish of the Scriptures above all the pleasures in the world? Do I find God speaking to my heart in the word? Do I find the Spirit of God with his ordinance? Then my knowledge and my faith will hold out. I can stand by that faith in the word which is wrought by the Spirit, and fastened upon the word with the Spirit.

But if I believe the religion I profess only because the State does so, and if the king and State should do otherwise I would change my religion; or if it is because my parents were of it, or because my friends and the patron I depend upon are of that religion; or because I see greater seeming reason for this than for the other, and can hold argument for this and not for the other: alas, this will not hold. Let us rather labor to know the truth of the word of God by experience as much as we can, and by the Spirit of God giving evidence to our souls, from the inward grounds of Scripture, that it is the word. “I know whom I have trusted” (2 Tim 1:12). I know the promises are good. I have felt them in my soul. The Spirit has reported them to my soul. They are sweeter than all the things in the world. It is a sure word; I ground myself upon it. I have found the comfort of it before, therefore I will build upon it.

We can never stand unless we can make our knowledge spiritual. Otherwise it is only acquired knowledge.

We fall vilely in three things, unless we labor that our knowledge of religion be spiritual, and fetched divinely out of the word of God, together with the Spirit.

1. We fall into sin from this very ground. For why do men fall into sin? Because at that time they do not stand upon the word of God, revealed by conscience to be the word of God. Ask them why they swear, if they do believe the truth. The word says, “I will not hold them guiltless that take my name in vain” (Exod 20:7). “But,” the swearer must answer, “I am not convinced by the Spirit assuring my soul that it is the word of God.” If men did believe it, would they bring a curse upon themselves?

And so with whoremongers. The word of God says, “Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge” (Heb 13:4). Would men live in these sins if they did believe this truth? But they have only an opinion of these things: “I hear that these things are divine; perhaps they are not so.” And the knowledge that we have is not divine; faith is not mingled with the Spirit.

2. Then again, from sin we fall into despair for sin at last. Why? Because our knowledge of divine truths is not spiritual, nor drawn from inward grounds of Scripture felt by experience, with the Spirit sealing the Scripture to my heart by some spiritual experience. And so men fall into despair for sin at length. For Satan plies them with temptations from their own guilty conscience. The grounds of their fears are present, and the grounds of their terrors are present to their souls, for they are there, as it were, sealed and branded in their very souls. But their comforts are superficial, the promises are superficial. The word is not rooted in their hearts by faith; it is not sealed there by the Spirit of God; the sanctifying Spirit never brought the word and their souls together. So they fall into desperation, when their terrors are present and their comforts are superficial.

However sound a foundation a man has, if he does not stand on it but floats upon it, he may fall and sink. However weak a man is, if he lies on a rock, the strength of the rock is his. So in our temptations, if we have a strong foundation but do not rest on it, the foundation will not uphold us. Now how can those rest on it who stagger in it, who were never convinced by the Spirit that these things are so, and who have had no spiritual experience? Satan draws thousands of souls to perdition because their terrors are present and their comforts are superficial. They are not built upon divine truth by the Spirit of God.

3. Again, as for apostasy, in the times when religion is altered: why do men alter as the State alters? They are ready to have a new faith every month, if the times and government alter. Why? Because they were never convinced by the Spirit of God of divine truths. They had it from outside arguments. “The former state of things countenanced this way, now another state countenances another opinion, therefore I will be of the safest.” This is because the soul was never convinced of the truth.

Therefore I beseech you, labor to have arguments from the experience of the power of the word in your souls, and arguments from the Spirit of God to your spirits that it is the word of God. “I will stand to divine truth. I find such a majesty, such a humbling, pacifying, satisfying power in it for all my perplexities and doubts, that it cannot but be the word of God. It stays my soul in all oppositions, in all temptations and corruptions. It gives a stay and foundation to my soul that no other truth in the world can give.”

When the soul is brought to such a frame, such a soul will not fall into gross sins while it is in such a frame, much less will it despair for sin. And if religion is altered a thousand times, it stands as an unmovable rock, because it knows from inward grounds, from the word of God itself, sealed by the Spirit to my spirit, that it is the word of God. Such a soul will hold out, and only such a soul.

We should labor, therefore, by all means to have our faith strengthened, and among other means by the use of the sacrament, in which God sweetly conveys himself to us by way of a banquet, strengthening our faith in Christ. He presents Christ to us as the food of our souls to refresh us, even as the bread and wine do. Our blessed Savior is wiser than we are. He knows what we stand in need of, that we have need to strengthen our faith. For we have need to strengthen that which must be our strength, which is faith.

And what is the ordinance of God to strengthen faith? Is it not the sacrament? The proper use of the sacrament is to strengthen faith, which the sacrament does by being a visible sermon to us. For here we see in the outward things Christ’s body broken and his blood shed. It is a lively representation, a visible crucifying of Christ, a breaking of his body and a pouring out of his blood. And along with this, here is an offer of Christ to us in the elements, a sealing of what it represents to our souls, if we come prepared.

God does not feed us with empty signs, but together with the outward things themselves he gives the spiritual to the soul that is a worthy receiver.

Therefore come with a humble stooping to God’s wisdom in appointing these ordinances to this end, to strengthen faith. And come with a desire to have faith strengthened. That will uphold us against all temptations to sin, or to despair for sin.

Oh, beloved! If we knew what good our faith must do us before long, we would labor to have it strengthened by all means. What will become of us in the hour of death, and in great temptations? We shall be as chaff driven with the wind. If we have no consistence and stability in divine truth, if our souls are not built on that, if we do not have faith by which our souls may be rooted in Christ, we shall be nothing but a prey for Satan. Consider, then, that faith is of such wondrous consequence. It is the root of all other graces whatsoever, as the apostle says here, “By faith ye stand.” He does not say by patience, or by hope, or the like. They are drawn from faith. Strengthen that, and you strengthen all the others that are infused from it.

It is as with a tree: we do not cast water on the branches, but on the root. All the branches are cherished by the root. So strengthen faith. We strengthen love, and hope, and all the rest, if we strengthen faith and assurance of God’s love in Christ. Thus I have at length gone over this fruitful portion of Scripture.

To the triune God be glory!