The Saints’ Inheritance and the Worldling’s Portion

It has been God’s way, in speaking to people and drawing their hearts to himself, to come to them through the things they have skill in and know well. When Christ was revealed to the wise men who came from the East, it was by a star. They were astronomers who spent much of their time studying the stars, and God spoke to them accordingly. When our Savior called fishermen to follow him, he told them that he would make them fishers of men (Matt 4:19). He expressed himself to them in their own way.

And perhaps the suitability of these subjects may invite some to read this treatise. That is all the more likely because many who heard these sermons, and found some work of God on their hearts through them, wanted to have them at hand. At first I was unwilling to let things prepared so hastily appear so publicly. But I considered that they may be useful in some way, and that a little good is worth a great deal of my time and labor. Who knows what a truth, what a hint fitted to people’s understanding in their own way, may do? So here you have it, and may the Lord prosper it to you.

Yours in Christ, Jeremiah Burroughs

From men of the world, who have their portion in this life (Ps 17:14).

This psalm is David’s lament to God under Saul’s persecution. Without doubt, as Molerus says on it, the psalmist aims at Saul in it. In it we have these four things.

First, he appeals to God to judge the uprightness of his heart toward Saul: “Let my sentence come from thy presence” (Ps 17:2). From Saul and his courtiers comes a hard sentence. They call me traitor; they call me rebel. But Lord, do not leave me to their sentence; let my sentence come from your presence. That, I know, will be a very different sentence from the one that comes from them, for “thou hast proved me and tried me, and findest nothing in me” (Ps 17:3). That is the first thing.

Second, his prayer to God to keep him in his way, in his goings, and his footsteps from sliding (Ps 17:5). Lord, whatever Saul’s wrath against me may be, let neither that nor anything else put me out of your way. Keep my heart close to you, and keep my paths in your way; do not let my footsteps so much as slide from you. For, Lord, they watch for my halting. If they can find even the least slip in me, they take every possible advantage of it, and I am a poor, weak creature. Therefore, Lord, keep me, so that my footsteps may not slide.

Third, he prays for deliverance: “Show thy marvelous loving kindness to me, O Lord” (Ps 17:7). My straits are marvelous. I do not know what to do or where to turn, but my eyes are toward you. As my straits are marvelous, so let your loving kindness be marvelous toward me. “And keep me as the apple of thy eye, O Lord” (Ps 17:8). I am no better than a dog, a vile creature in the eyes of Saul and those around him. But blessed be your name, I can look up to you and know that I am dear to you, as “the apple of thy eye.”

All the saints of God are dear to God at all times, but persecuted saints are the apple of God’s eye. If they are ever dear to God, they are so especially when they are most persecuted; then they are the apple of his eye. And the apple of the eye, you know, is weak and little able to resist any hurt, which makes people all the more tender of it. The weaker and more helpless God’s people are to shift for themselves, the more tender the Lord is over them.

And one argument the psalmist uses in praying against his enemies, and a special one, is this: that they prospered so much in this world. They “are enclosed in fat” (Ps 17:10), and they have their heart’s desire; “thou fillest their bellies with thy hid treasure” (Ps 17:14); they leave it to their babes; “they have their portion in this life.” Lord, keep me from them.

Lastly, he professes his resolution to go on in the ways of God, notwithstanding all the dangers he was in, and he expects a gracious outcome. “But I,” he says, “will behold thy face in righteousness” (Ps 17:15). Indeed, I cannot behold the face of the king without danger. There are a great many who run to kill me, and I desire to see his face. But though I cannot see his face, yet, Lord, I shall behold your face. I will behold your face, and it shall be “in righteousness”: I will still keep on in the ways of righteousness. “And when I awake” (for I believe these troubles will not last long; I shall not sleep a perpetual sleep, but I shall be delivered), I shall be “satisfied with thy likeness.” There shall be such a manifestation of your glory to me as will satisfy me for all the troubles I have endured for your name’s sake, so that my soul will say, “I have enough.” This is the sum of this psalm.

Now the words read to you are a description of David’s adversaries, and they imply an argument for why he would be delivered from them. They are described as men of this world; only such men were his adversaries. And it must surely be a comfort to the saints of God to see that none are their enemies but worldly persons, men of this world, who have their portion in this life. They have something here, and here is all they are likely to have.

Second, the words imply the argument for why he would be delivered. Lord, deliver me from them, he prays, because they are men of this world, who have their portion in this life. Where does the force of this argument lie, that he would be delivered from them because they were men of this world, who have their portion in this life?

It consists, first, in this: Lord, they do not care what injustice they do. They have no regard for anything but what is in this world. So, right or wrong, if only they may have their lusts in this world, that is all they care about. Lord, deliver me from such men.

Second, here is all their good. Their portion is in this life, and therefore they are greedy for it. If they may have this, let it come with the ruin of ever so many people. Though it means raising their estates by my ruin, and by the ruin of others who are ever so innocent, what do they care? They are greedy to have their lusts satisfied, for here is all their portion. They do not care for religion; they will make use of pretenses of religion in any way that serves their own ends. What do they care what pretenses of religion they make? So long as they may thrive in the world, they regard nothing in religion, provided they may have their own ends. Lord, deliver me from such men.

Third, they have their portion in this world, and this is why their hearts are so swollen with pride in their lusts and so heated, and their malice is so inflamed that it is outrageous. “O let not the foot of pride come upon me” (Ps 36:11). Deliver me from proud men who are flushed with the enjoyment of their hearts’ desires. As long as they may have their own ends and fulfill their lusts, they will be exceedingly hardened in their own ways. They will give no glory to you, but will be all the more enraged against your people, taking their success as an argument that their ways are good. Lord, therefore, deliver me from those men. They scorn prayer, or anything that is said about tenderness of conscience; they despise conscience and prayer. Lord, let me never fall into the hands of such men. Deliver me from the men of this world, who have their portion in this life.

To open the words: “from the men of the world,” that is, from mortal men, from men who, though they are of the world, are not likely to enjoy the world long. So some translate it. “Remember how short my time is,” says David (Ps 89:47). How short, how little time I have in this world! The men of this world shall have only a little time here.

The Hebrew word translated “men,” with a change in the position of one dot, signifies dead men as well as men. I say, with the change not of a dot, but only of the position of one dot, one point, it signifies dead men. They are men of the world, but such men as are within one dot of death, within one point of death, however they rejoice in this life. They are men who have all they have only leased for their lives. No, not even so much as leased: they have at most an estate for life, and this present life serves them in place of all lives.

There are these two doctrinal conclusions in the words, lying plainly before you. The first is that there is a generation of men to whom God gives some outward good things for a while, but these are all they are ever likely to have; they shall never have any more good from God than what they have here for the present. The second is that God’s saints desire to be delivered from such men. These two contain what the Holy Spirit intends in the words.

Doctrine 1. There is a generation of men to whom God gives out a portion, some comforts in this world, and here is all they are likely to have.

And now set your hearts, I beg you, on what I have to say on this subject. For in considering what to settle on for such an assembly, I could not decide on any subject that I thought might reach the hearts of those to whom I was to speak more than this one. And I hope that before I have finished, you will find it such a serious subject that it concerns us all.

I have read of Gregory that when he was advanced to preferment, he professed that no Scripture went so to his heart, struck such trembling into his spirit, and daunted him so much as this Scripture: “Here you have your reward”; “Son, in your lifetime you have had your pleasure.” Oh, this was a dreadful Scripture that sounded in his ears continually! Jerome speaks in the same way of that Scripture, “Arise, you dead, and come to judgment”: night and day he thought that Scripture sounded in his ears. So it was with Gregory here: “You have your reward in this life; you have had your pleasure.” This was the Scripture that sounded in his ears night and day.

Oh, that it might please God to help me so far this day that I might make this Scripture ring in your ears, even when you lie on your beds after the sermon is done, so that you may not forget the sound of it: “Men of this world, who have their portion in this life.” If this Scripture should prove to be the portion of any one of you, even of the richest in this place, woe to him that he was ever born! I shall shortly make this out fully to you.

But you will say, “Do you think you are preaching to men who have their portion here in this life?” I fear I may meet with some in this congregation whom it closely concerns. Therefore let none of you be too ready to put this off from yourselves and to think yourselves out of the danger of this Scripture. For it was spoken concerning Saul, and for all I know, Saul might have had as strong arguments of God’s love to him as many of you, I fear, have this day.

1. Saul was a man chosen directly by God himself to be the first king that ever reigned over his own people; and was not that a great favor?

2. In his person, Saul was one of the finest-looking men in all Israel, taller than any of them from his shoulders upward. And as for his endowments, he was a man whom God endowed with admirable gifts of government; God caused another spirit to come upon him. He was a man who, when he heard of his preferment, seemed to be very humble, judging himself unworthy of such a dignity, and saying, Who am I, and what is my father’s house, that I should be thus exalted? (1 Sam 9:21). And when he had been chosen, and some would reject him notwithstanding God’s honoring of him, Saul had mighty power over his own spirit; he was a very meek and quiet man. For the text says, “he held his peace,” when the children of Belial said, what have we to do with him (1 Sam 10:27).

3. Yes, though he was quiet in his own cause, he showed himself to have an excellent spirit in a public cause. He was full of anger when it concerned the good of the people he governed. When he heard of a dishonor done to the people of Israel, the text says that his anger did rise within him (1 Sam 11:6). Here is an excellent pattern for all governors, for all in public places: to be very silent, quiet, and self-denying, putting up with wrongs in their own cause, but to be full of zeal for the public cause, reserving their spirits for the public good. Many, when they are angered in their private cause, are so full of violence and spend their spirit there so much that they have no spirit at all left when it comes to a public cause. Saul went beyond them in this.

Further, Saul was one who was much troubled at the people’s sin against God. He had not only a spirit to vindicate public wrongs, but when he saw the people sin against God, his heart was much troubled and grieved at it, and he was very solicitous and careful to prevent sin among the people. You have this in 1 Samuel 14:33. They told Saul there that the people had sinned “in eating with blood.” Upon that, Saul showed himself displeased. “Come,” he said, “and do not sin against the Lord; roll a stone here.” He would see with his own eyes that they slaughtered the cattle and poured out the blood, so that they might not sin against God “in eating blood.” This was his care. Yes, he was very diligent to inquire of God what he should do in matters of great consequence; he would not go out until he had first inquired of God (1 Sam 14:37).

Yes, more than all this, he was a man who held the prophets of God in very reverent esteem. When Samuel came to him, Saul said to him, “O thou blessed of the Lord” (1 Sam 15:13). And when Samuel showed him what his sin was, he came and confessed it before the people, saying, “I have sinned, I have sinned against the Lord” (1 Sam 15:30), and that merely at the conviction of one prophet.

And God seemed to be very much with Saul, showing him great respect and making him an instrument of much good to Israel. He granted him as glorious a victory as any man ever had in this world, for so we may call it. If any outward thing in the world might be taken as an argument of God’s love, such a remarkable victory as he had over his enemies might well be. You will find the victory in 1 Samuel 13-14, where the Philistines rose up against him. There were thirty thousand chariots of his adversaries, and six thousand horsemen, and people as the sand of the sea for multitude. Well, here was a mighty enemy; what did Saul have to oppose them? You will find that there were only six hundred men with Saul.

On one side there were thirty thousand chariots, six thousand horsemen, and people as the sand of the sea without number; and Saul had only six hundred with him at this time. Yes, and of those six hundred there was not one who had a sword except Saul and Jonathan. For the Philistines were wise enough to disarm all whom they counted malignants, and would not let so much as a smith be among them. They would not only take away their arms, but would watch them to see that no arms were supplied to them; that was the wisdom of the Philistines. Yet we find, if you read further in the Scripture, that God was so far with Saul, and blessed him, that he gave him victory over all these. Besides all this, God blessed Saul with a very gracious child, a godly son of a sweet nature, Jonathan. Indeed, if any outward thing in the world might be an argument of God’s love, that might be.

Now put all these things together, and yet here is the man who has his portion in this world. I now challenge anyone who has certain evidence of a mighty work of God upon him in Christ: let him show me greater arguments of God’s love to him than Saul might have shown. And yet it proved to be Saul’s condition to have his portion only in this world. God shows in this that his mercy is his own, and that he will let out his mercy as he pleases: “it is your Father’s pleasure to give you a kingdom” (Luke 12:32). The Father deals out the portion to his children as he pleases. God will let the line of his mercy run this far to one and stop there, and so far to another and stop there, and then come in again to him by a cross line.

God so disposes of his mercy that there are some who shall have heaven and earth for their portion, and their portion is blessed indeed. There are some who shall have earth but not heaven, and their portion is poor and sad. There are others who shall have heaven but not earth, and their portion is rich and blessed. There are others who shall have neither heaven nor earth, and their portion, you will say, is miserable indeed. God’s mercy is his own, to dispose of as he will.

We read of Abraham: he calls for Ishmael and Hagar, gives them a piece of bread and a bottle of water, and sends them away, and there is an end of them (Gen 21:14). So with Jehoshaphat: he gave his other son (says the text) “gifts,” but the kingdom he gave to Jehoram (2 Chr 21:3). So God has people to whom he gives pieces of bread and bottles of water, yes, some to whom he gives great gifts in this world; but he keeps his inheritance for his Isaacs, he keeps the kingdom for Jehoram. Esau had his portion in this world, and such a portion as he thought a very good one too: “Brother,” he says, “I have enough” (Gen 33:9).

Most rich men do not go as far as Esau: they have their portion and yet complain of it. Esau had his portion and thought he had enough. Christ’s hearers in Luke 6:24 had their portion in this world. Woe to you, here is your consolation, says Christ to them. Oh, dreadful speech! Woe to this man, woe to such wretches: here is their consolation. Dives had his portion in this world: “Son, remember in thy lifetime thou hadst thy pleasure” (Luke 16:25). “In thy lifetime,” and thou “hadst thy good things.” They were your good things, the things that were measured out for you; you had them in your lifetime.

In handling this subject, I shall divide what I have to say into these six particulars, so that every one of you may go along with me more readily: first, why God will deal out something to wicked men in this world, why they shall have any portion at all; second, that this portion of theirs is confined to this life, and why; third, some corollaries that you will see flow naturally from those two; fourth, we shall consider the condition of these men who have their portion in this world; fifth, we shall endeavor to show you who these men are, to pick out of the congregation which man and which woman is likely to have their portion in this world; and then, sixth, I shall conclude with words of exhortation to you all.

First, then: why God gives anything to wicked men. God does give wicked men a portion; he deals out something to them in this world.

1. He does so because they are his creatures. Jehu said concerning Jezebel, Go, take away this cursed woman; show her some respect, do not let her lie in the streets, for she is a king’s daughter (2 Kgs 9:34). So God says, “Well, though these are vile persons, yet they are my creatures. They shall have some respect from me; I will communicate some good to them.”

It is not a strong enough argument that because you are God’s creatures, God should therefore be merciful to you eternally. But it may be a strong enough argument that because you are his creatures, you shall have something here. For this time of life is the time of patience, the day of God’s long-suffering, and therefore you shall have something.

2. Wicked men do something for God here, some kind of service that is at least materially a service for God, and God will not have them clamor against him that they have nothing for their work. God will repay everyone for what they do for him, however little it is. You have a famous passage for that in Ezekiel (Ezek 29:18-20). Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, caused his army to do great service against Tyre, yet he had no wages for it. Therefore God inquires about this, and seems to complain that Nebuchadnezzar should be without his wages all this while. Therefore, “behold, I will give the land of Egypt unto him, he shall take her spoil, and her prey, and that shall be his wages.”

God makes use of many wicked men in various services, and his churches shall have much refreshment and good from them. The Lord causes the very earth to help the woman, earthly men to be of use to the church; and God will not be beholden to them for their work. A thorn may serve to stop a gap. Though it is only a thornbush, if it serves to stop a gap and is of any use, it gains some benefit by it: all that while it is kept from the fire, whereas if it were of no use, it might immediately be brought to the fire.

Here, by the way, is an argument for everyone to be of as much use to the church of God as they possibly can; it may be that this is the very thing that keeps them from the fire. You are a thorn, but God has use for you, and therefore he does not bring you to the fire. But once you come to be useless, the fire is the next thing you will hear of.

I remember that Augustine, speaking of the Romans who enjoyed such a flourishing condition for a while, gives this as one reason for it: the Romans had brave spirits. They were men of excellent morality and heroic spirits; they were free from the baseness of spirit that other peoples had; and therefore God showed them some kind of respect. Many instances of this kind might be given.

3. God gives wicked men a portion here to show the world how little good there is in all the things here below. Certainly, if there were much good in them, the wicked would never have them. It is an argument that there is no great excellence in strength of body, for an ox has more of it than you. It is an argument that there is no great excellence in agility of body, for a dog has more of it than you. It is an argument that there is no great excellence in showy clothes, for a peacock has them more than you. It is an argument that there is no great excellence in gold and silver, for the Indians, who do not know God, have more of them than you.

And if these things had any great worth in them, God would certainly never give them to wicked men. As the saints’ being so much afflicted is an argument that there is no great evil in afflictions in this world, so the wicked’s enjoying so much of this world is an argument that there is no great good in it. Luther has an expression like this: “The Turkish Empire, as great as it is, is but a crumb that the master of the family casts to dogs.” Such was Luther’s esteem of the whole Turkish Empire.

And indeed God, in giving worldly goods to Turks and wicked ones who are his enemies, shows that there is not much excellence in them. God therefore casts them indiscriminately up and down the world, because he looks on them as worthless things. God does not much regard whether those who receive them are prepared to give him his glory for them or not. “You shall have them anyway,” he says; he is content to risk them.

Indeed, when God comes to his choice mercies in Christ, there he looks to have glory from them. He never gives them to anyone without first preparing them so that they may give him the glory of those mercies. But it is otherwise with the rest. Suppose you see a man gathering crab apples: although swine are under the tree, he does not much care to drive them away. They are only crab apples; let them have them. But if he were gathering some choice and precious fruit and any swine came under the tree, he would drive them away. So it is with outward things, which are only crab apples: the Lord lets the swine of the world come grunting and pick them up. But when he comes to the choice mercies in his Christ, there he makes a distinction: “Oh, that is precious fruit.” A blacksmith working on iron pays no attention, though a great many cinders and little bits of iron fly up and down; but a goldsmith working on gold saves every sliver and every speck of gold. A lapidary working on precious stones will be sure to save every little bit. A carpenter who is only hewing timber hardly cares if chips fly up and down, but it is not so with a lapidary. So these outward things are only like the chips and cinders and similar trash, and therefore God gives wicked men a portion out of them.

4. And further, God knows that he has time enough to show his justice upon them; he has an eternity hereafter for declaring his justice against sinners. Therefore he lets them have something for a while. You know how natural it is for everyone, when they see a man going to his execution who is not likely to live more than an hour or two, to be ready to pity him and to do him any kindness they can. “Oh,” says one, “the man will not have comfort long. We cannot do much for him; he will have misery enough shortly.” And it is worth observing that if a man goes to execution for wickedness, everyone pities him; but if a man should suffer for godliness, then perhaps they will not be so full of pity toward him.

I remember that in the Book of Martyrs there is a story of Mr. John Frith, a learned and godly minister, and Andrew Hewet, who were martyrs and were to suffer for their consciences. The story tells us of one Dr. Cooke, a parson in London, who openly admonished the people that they should pray for them no more than they would for a dog. That is the charity they talk so much about, such as it is toward those who suffer for conscience. And as it is among Papists, so it is among ungodly men: let a man suffer for conscience, and they will rather rail at him; and when such people are in their sufferings, they will rather give them gall and vinegar to drink, as they once did to Christ on the cross. Yet in other sufferings they will pity men.

5. By what God gives to the wicked, the Lord shows what great things he has reserved for his own children. Surely, if the dogs have so much, the Father keeps a generous house; if the hangers-on may get such handouts, certainly there is good provision for the children within. By the afflictions of the saints, God declares to wicked men that fearful things are likely to befall them, and he would have them draw this argument from it: if judgment begins at the house of God, where shall the wicked and ungodly appear (1 Pet 4:17-18)? In the same way, by the prosperity that wicked men have in this world, God declares to his children, and would have them argue from it, what he has reserved, then, for his beloved ones, for his saints, for his children who are so dear to him.

6. God draws a great deal of glory from this; he brings about his own ends very much by the portion that wicked men have. Sometimes he does it so that they may stumble at it, harden their hearts and break their necks on it, and so that their sins may ripen; that is why he lets them go on a long time and have their way. “Woe to thee who spoilest, and wert not spoiled, and dealest treacherously, and wert not dealt treacherously withal; when thou shalt cease to spoil, thou shalt be spoiled” (Isa 33:1). It is as if God said: I will let you go on; you may spoil as much as you will, and when you have done spoiling, you will be spoiled yourself.

Sometimes God does it to bring about this end, namely, to chastise his own people by the prosperity of the wicked. I have read of one who, being a monk, was advanced to a bishop’s seat. Being a lewd and wicked man, he began to be proud of his advancement, whereupon he heard a voice saying these words: “Why are you so proud, O unhappy man? You are not advanced because you are worthy of this honor, but because this city is so bad that it deserves such a prelate over it.” It was done by way of judgment on that place. God advances some men by way of heavy judgment on others. He gives them such a portion not out of love to them, though they are ready to draw that argument, but out of his displeasure toward others.

And then, he gives a plentiful portion to many to teach us all to do good to our enemies: not only, as the saying is, to human nature, but to the man; not only to human nature, but to men, even to men who are wicked. Some good must be done to them.

Besides, the Lord would show by this that he would have no argument of love or hatred drawn from these outward things; and indeed, that he would not have them expect anything more. It may be that many ungodly men who prosper in this world draw this argument: that therefore God loves them and intends mercy to them. No; you may rather draw the argument quite the other way. It is because God intends no further good to you hereafter that you have so much now. When men come for their dole a second time, we usually answer them, “Why do you come again? You have had your dole already.” So God will answer many men when they cry to him for mercy on that day: “Why do you come to me for more? You have had your dole already. Have you not already had more than your works come to, more than you have done? You have had your part and portion already.”

Indeed, men speak much of God’s mercy, and we acknowledge the mercy of God to be very great and glorious. Well, God does show himself glorious in mercy in this, that you, being so wicked, have as much as you have in this world. And therefore, though you should be denied eternal mercy hereafter, you still have cause to tell the devils and damned creatures who will be your company that God was very merciful to you while you lived in this world.

Second, the portion of the wicked is confined to this life: here is all that you are ever likely to have.

1. Because there are some men whose names are “written in the earth” (Jer 17:13), whereas the saints are described as men who are “redeemed from the earth” (Rev 14:3). It is their happiness to be redeemed from the earth, and all the happiness you have is that you are written in the earth.

2. Here is their portion because they are vile in the eyes of God. If you were asked why you give bones to the dog and swill to the swine and nothing else, the answer would be: because it is a dog that has it, and because it is a swine; it is dog’s food. Certainly God speaks exceedingly contemptuously of all ungodly ones in the world, however great they may be in regard of outward things. “A vile person shall arise,” says Daniel (Dan 11:21). Who is this vile person? Interpreters generally agree that it means Antiochus Epiphanes, who was a mighty great prince, such a prince that when the Samaritans wrote to him, they wrote, “To Antiochus, the great god.” His very name shows him to be a great one: Antiochus Epiphanes means as much as Antiochus the illustrious, the famous. And yet when the Holy Spirit speaks of him, it is Antiochus, a vile person. They are vile in the eyes of God. If there is anyone in a family whom you do not care much for, you make no great provision for them. “Doth God take care for oxen?” (1 Cor 9:9). They have something, but little. Does God take care for ungodly men?

3. Here is their portion, confined to this life, because they chose it themselves, and in that they suffer no wrong; they make choice of this portion themselves. Moses, speaking to the people, says, “I set before you life and death” (Deut 30:19). So do the ministers of God in preaching to you: they set before you life and death. What do you choose now? You choose the way that leads to death; you have only your choice. You choose vanity to be your portion, and God does you no wrong in giving you vanity. Now you who will bargain with God for your penny cannot take it ill if, when the end of the day comes, God puts you off with your penny.

You know that those in the vineyard who agreed for their penny did indeed begin to murmur when they came to receive their wages; but the master of the vineyard said, “Did you not agree with me for that?” So you agree with God. All you aim at in God’s service is to have some present comfort in this world; you dare not trust God for the future. And here is how God will show his infinite displeasure against the sin of distrust. In this day of grace the Lord now sets such glorious and blessed things before the children of men, and for all you know any of you may have your portion in them as well as others; and yet you dare not trust God for these gracious things. You think rather to yourselves, “Let me have something now, something for the present. What is present is real; what you talk of is still to come, and I do not know whether it is imagination or not.” It seems, then, that you mean to serve God for present pay, and present pay you will have, and no more.

There are some servants, your day laborers, who expect their pay at night, and if you give them that, there is an end of it. But there are other servants who will serve you in expectation of a future estate and of preferment, especially when they serve noblemen and princes. Though they have no pay given them at night, they still go on cheerfully in their service, for they expect some great future estates and leases and preferments afterward. And though they have nothing at present, when the other befalls them, they and their descendants are enriched.

This is precisely the difference between the men of the world and God’s children. The men of the world will do nothing without present pay; what is right before them they must have, and their hearts are on that. But the saints hear what a blessed thing God has revealed in his word, what a blessed covenant of grace there is, what rich promises of glorious things to come. They believe God and trust in God for these, and they say, “Lord, let me have my portion in the life to come, and whatever you do with me here, I do not care.” As Augustine said, “Lord, here burn, here cut me, but spare me hereafter.” I am content, Lord, to be burned, to be cut, to endure anything in the world; only hereafter I look for something else, and I will wait for hereafter.

You will not wait for hereafter; you must have it now, and that is the reason you are put off here. Oh, it is a serious thing I am speaking of to you. Many a soul will wring its hands and curse itself eternally that it was not content to trust God for hereafter but would have present pay. You who are great merchants: if you buy something that is only a trifle, you pull out your purse and put the money down immediately. But suppose you go to the Exchange and bargain for £1,000; there you may put a little down now, but the great payment must come on pay days afterward; no one expects it to be done immediately.

So there are some men in the world who will trade with God, but they trade with God for piddling things, for their credit and applause, for their preferments and estates. God pays down at once: you shall have it; there is your money right now; it is done. But there are others, God’s saints, who trade with God for great things, for immortality and glory, and a kingdom, and the crown of eternal life. They do not expect to have it paid down at once; they are content to wait. Oh, these are the best traders, the best merchants, who will trade with God for great things and are content to wait.

4. Further, the things that are here are the only things suited to your hearts, and what would you do with anything more hereafter? These things please you exceedingly and give you contentment as agreeable to you, while the things that are to come are disagreeable. What would men who are carnal and wicked now do, what would they do in heaven? Certainly, if you hate God’s saints now, when they have only a little grace, you would hate them infinitely more afterward, when they are perfect in grace and when all your common gifts are taken away, for so it will be. Now the things of God are unsuited to you, though you now have many common gifts, and you now abhor the grace of God, though it is imperfect. What then, when all common gifts are taken from you and grace is made perfect? How unsuited it will be to you then! Therefore expect nothing hereafter.

5. Again, you abuse the portion you have now. What would you do with more? Who will trust you with the true riches (Luke 16:11), when you abuse what you have? Indeed, men of the world who are wicked and very rich, and promoted to places of honor and power, oh, what a deal of mischief they do in the world! What dreadful evils they are to the earth! How such men abuse their portions! It is as with a tooth in a man’s head. A tooth, indeed, is given an eminent place in the head, but when the tooth becomes rotten and painful, what do we do but pull it out and throw it away? So, though God promotes men to eminent places, when through their wickedness they grow rotten and do harm, the Lord plucks them out in his anger. They abuse their portion and do a great deal of mischief; therefore they must expect to be thrown away.

But above all, the argument is this: they have no interest in Jesus Christ. The rich treasures of the infinite grace of God are let out in Christ. God has various conduit pipes of his grace, so to speak, to let it out to his creatures. There are some lesser conduit pipes, and these may be opened through the general bounty of God. But the Lord has the great current of his eternal mercies for some to whom he intends eternal good, and this great current of his is stopped by justice. The infinite justice of God stops this great current, so that it cannot be opened to let out any drop of that mercy until divine justice is satisfied. In the meantime the other, smaller pipes run; the general bounty of God still flows. Therefore Christ, out of pity to mankind, so that they may not be put off with these general outward comforts, comes and satisfies God’s infinite justice, so that he might open the current, the sluice of his infinite and eternal grace, to others.

Now happy are those creatures who have an interest in the Lord Christ, for this is his work: to satisfy the justice of the Father, so that the great pipe may be opened, and then in flows all grace, infinite eternal grace. Once that is opened, no wonder we hear of such glorious things that the saints of God have in the life to come. No wonder, for Christ comes and opens the great sluice of God’s infinite grace and mercy to them. As for the men of the world, they have only a few drips of God’s general bounty through some crannies, but the floodgates of God’s grace are opened in Christ. Therefore, until divine justice is satisfied, there can be no further good for poor man, but merely the fruits of God’s general bounty and patience.

There are some creatures whom the Lord has left to the course of justice; they will have what they earn and no more. There are others on whom God has set his heart, and whether they earn or not, God intends eternal mercies to them. Here is the difference between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. And therefore the one is left to himself, while for the other, Christ, the head of the covenant, comes to undertake what he cannot do. Those who are not children must not expect children’s portions. Many of you rich men, when you die, will leave your servants some legacy; perhaps you will give every servant in your house £5 or so. But when you come to write in your will what such a son and such a daughter will have, that is another kind of business than forty shillings or £5. Great things you leave to them.

So the world may be divided between children and servants. For though the truth is that all men are in defiance of God, yet God makes them servants one way or another, and there is some little legacy that servants will have; but they must not expect the children’s portion. Therefore they have it here, but must not have it hereafter.

Thus says the Lord: if the prince gives a gift to any of his sons, the inheritance shall be his sons’; but if to his servant, then it shall be his only until the Jubilee (Ezek 46:16-17). This was God’s law: if a prince gave a gift to his son, his son would inherit it forever; but if he gave it to a servant, it would continue with him only for a while. Here is the difference in God’s administration of all his gifts. He gives some to servants, and these will continue for a time; within a little while all will be called for again. All the good and all the comfort you have, God will call for again. But what he gives to his children they will have forever; their pleasures are lasting and their mercies everlasting.

Again, the portion that the world has here comes from God’s patience, and there will be an end of the manifestation of the glory of patience in this world. As there are some graces of the Spirit of God in the saints that will have an end in regard of their exercise in this world, so there are some attributes of God that will have an end in regard of their manifestation in the way God now manifests them in this life; and that is the patience of God toward ungodly ones. Now if they hold everything on patience (mark this: they hold everything on patience), then when that expires, all their good is at an end.

And ungodly men will have to deal with God directly in the world to come (I beg you, just observe this answer). Now they have to deal with God through creatures, and while they deal with God through creatures, they may get a great deal and may make shift for much; but when they come to deal with God directly, it will be otherwise with them. For example, there are a great many hangers-on at great men’s houses. Perhaps when they have to deal with the servants, they get some bits and scraps and many things from the servants; but if they know they can have nothing except from the very hand of the knight or lord of the house himself, then they will expect no great matter.

So it is with wicked men in this world: they are like hangers-on, and all they have is only like scraps from the servants. They deal only with creatures; they look no further. But hereafter things will be settled another way. All things will be weighed by God himself in a balance of justice and distributed directly by the hands of God himself, and then things will be carried on in another manner; the Lord himself will come to dispose of things.

There is the saying of a German divine. Though he was a good man and had lived very innocently, when he lay on his sickbed and expected death, he was in great terrors of spirit, mightily troubled. Some of his friends came and asked him, “Why should you be so troubled, when you have lived as good a life as you have?” This was his answer: “The judgments of God are one thing, and the judgments of men are another. I now have to deal with God.” It is true, I lived this way before men, and men gave their verdict of me as good and thought I was in a good condition; but oh, “I am now to go to God, and to deal directly with him,” and God’s judgments and man’s judgments are different things.

When God comes to weigh out all men’s portions, as he will, then it will be so much righteousness, so much happiness. You will say, then, “Lord, what will become of us all? All our righteousness is as the menstruous cloth” (Isa 64:6). Yes, but for the saints, the righteousness of Christ will be put into one scale and their portion into the other, and their portion will be weighed by the righteousness of Christ. Now when you come to God, you must come to the scale. You will put in your good services of God, and your coming to church, and some good civil actions and moral things you have done; you will put them in the scale. God will say, “What you have had already outweighs all those.” Have you nothing to put into the scales but this? You have had your reward already for all this, and much more. Then, if there is nothing to put into the scale but this, you are undone, and there is nothing for you for eternity.

And these are the first two things.

Third, now for some corollaries from this, and then we will proceed to the rest.

Use 1. Is it so, that wicked men have a portion here and that this is all they will have? Then we may see a reason why the men of the world are so cunning in the things of the world, why they can fend for themselves in the world better than other men can. Why, here is their portion; their very happiness and good is here. No wonder they succeed as well as they do. “We have not received the spirit of the world,” says the apostle (1 Cor 2:12). We do not know how to fend for ourselves in the world as other men do, for indeed we look further than these things.

You know that a swine, though it goes off all day wandering up and down, knows the way to the trough at night; but if a sheep wanders a little out of its place, it does not know how to come back again, but wanders up and down until it is lost. Swine are not like that. Ungodly men, though they go wandering up and down, know how to come to their trough at night. They have better skill in the world; they are more artful in the things of this life. As the Scripture speaks, “the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light” (Luke 16:8). Why is that? Why, their portion is in this world.

Use 2. Here we see the reason why there are great ones in the world who regard religion so little as they do, and the ways of God, and the church of God. Why, it is not their portion. Things that concern another life are no part of their portion. They mind what concerns the present life, because this is their portion. When many come into places of dignity and power, what are their thoughts? Why, now they think of gratifying their servants; now they think of the respect and honor they will have abroad in the world, and of being accounted somebody; now they think of revenging all their wrongs, of making good all their defective titles, and the like. This has formerly been very common among men advanced among you. These are all their thoughts. As for doing service for God and for the church, and vindicating the truth of God and his honor, that scarcely enters their thoughts at all, for they do not look upon that as part of their portion.

Here is the reason why so many magistrates are like Gallio, “caring for none of those things” (Acts 18:17). They were to him only a matter of words, and yet they concerned the great fundamental points of religion: whether Christ was the true Messiah, and whether he was God or not. But to Gallio these things were only a matter of words. And so the great things of God and religion are, to carnal hearts, things of no great consequence. Yes, when the rude multitude of the city rose up to seize Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, for countenancing Paul, Gallio cared for none of these things. What did he care about setting right anything that was amiss in religion?

“Oh, let us,” say those who have their portion here, “whatever becomes of things, let us have peace,” they say, “so that we may live peaceably in our houses and enjoy what we have quietly.” They look no further than that, because their portion is here. As for truth, how they reject it and despise it! A speech has come from a citizen here, as is credibly reported, so cursing the truth that had he lived among the Jews he would certainly have been stoned to death: “Let us have peace, and a pox on truth.” I say, such a speech as this would have caused him to be stoned to death among the Jews, being such horrible blasphemy.

But how many are ready to say with Pilate, when Christ talked to him of truth, “What is truth?” (John 18:38). It is as if he had said, “What a strange man this is! The man is in danger of his life, and he talks of truth.” “What is truth?” says Pilate, and turns it back on him at once. Just so, for all the world, are the hearts of many. They think, “Why should we look to truth, or to anything now, but to preserving our lives and estates and outward comforts in the world? What is truth?”

They say, “These are a company of mad-brained fellows, factious and seditious, who talk of truth but do not know what they are saying. Come, let us have peace, though it be on any terms.” Who is there in this place who does not desire peace? The Lord knows that peace is the desire of those who are most accused of lacking desire for it. Yes, we dare challenge any of you with this challenge: let those who have been most at the throne of grace begging God for peace for England carry the day. Those who have put forth the most prayers for peace before the throne of grace, we are willing that they should have the day.

We read that among all the tribes that came up in a warlike way to help the people of God against oppression in Judges (Judg 5:18), Naphtali was the only tribe that joined with Zebulun, who risked their lives in the cause of God and would take up arms to defend themselves and the people against oppression. Surely these two tribes were at that time accounted very factious and very seditious by the others, who would not venture themselves: “What, only they, Zebulun and Naphtali?” Yet this is worth observing: though none joined with Zebulun but Naphtali alone, there is no tribe of which so much is said, that it was a tribe full of courtesy and civility, of a peaceable and quiet disposition, as Naphtali was. You will find that if you read the forty-ninth chapter of Genesis. Two things are said there of Naphtali: first, that he was as a hind let loose and gave goodly words (Gen 49:21). But, you may say, these may be only words of compliment, and false. No; when Moses comes with the blessing (you will find these two places, one in Genesis and the other in Deuteronomy), when Moses comes with the blessing on Naphtali, Naphtali is filled with favor and with the blessing of the Lord (Deut 33:23). What is the meaning? Naphtali was the tribe that had the most courtesy and civility of all. It is compared to a goodly hind, of a quiet disposition and courteous language, one that had the favor of God and the favor of men. And yet this Naphtali was the tribe that, above all others, would risk their lives and take up arms in defense of the people of God against oppression in those times.

And Phinehas, who was so zealous and would make use of the sword: God said he would make a covenant of peace with him (Num 25:12-13). Even with Phinehas, such a fiery hot man, a covenant of peace must be made, and by God himself. For indeed he did procure peace for Israel by that way. So the text says there in that place of Numbers: because Phinehas was so zealous, it was (says God) “that I might not consume them in my jealousy” (Num 25:11). It is as if he had said, “If there had not been some among them who were zealous, and, as they count it, fiery, I would have been zealous myself and fiery myself, and consumed them.” It was well that they had such men among them. And one day those who cry out against such men may come to see cause to bless God for them.

We have had such men, men who would not let the world be put off and fooled with the fair name of peace. We know the devil has made much use of words in former times, and he would gladly make use of this one now, as if those who desire truth most were not the greatest friends of peace. God forbid that it should be otherwise! Why, it is true that we do not think we have our portion here, and therefore we would not have peace on any terms. Indeed, we confess that our portion lies higher, and that in which our portion consists we would have on any terms. Therefore we desire with Paul, “If by any means” I may attain to the resurrection of the dead (Phil 3:11). So, if by any means, on any terms, I may have peace at the great day, whatever I endure here.

We would be glad if all our mountains were mountains of Olivet, but we would be loath to have them mountains of corruption. You read in Kings of a “mountain of corruption” (2 Kgs 23:13), or “of offense,” as it is in the old Latin. Now if we compare one Scripture with another, we shall find that this was none other than Mount Olivet. Mount Olivet was made a mountain of corruption. There Solomon built idolatrous temples for the honor of the gods of his queen, the gods his queen worshiped (1 Kgs 11:7). Solomon built temples to gratify her, and it was on the mount before Jerusalem, which was the Mount of Olivet. Now you know that Mount Olivet had its name from the olives that grew there, and olives were emblems of peace. And yet Mount Olivet may be made a mount of corruption. We would be glad if we might live on Mount Olivet all our days, but we are loath that this Mount Olivet should be made a mount of corruption.

Give me leave, in just a few words, to put some considerations to you; and if I do not speak reason in them, reject them. First, because you are so greedy of comforts in this world, you would gladly have peace. But I hope it is a safe peace you want, and that is all we desire. If the peace is not safe, oh, the blood that may follow after! We read in Acts 27:13 that there was indeed a calm, and the south wind blew softly for a while; but presently there arose a tempestuous wind called Euroclydon. Let us take heed, brothers and sisters, that we are not deluded by the softly blowing south wind. Take heed that there is not a Euroclydon that blows presently after. If we were sure to be delivered from that Euroclydon, we would be glad of the soft blowing of the south wind to continue.

Can you think it a safe peace to live under any arbitrary government? “No,” you will say, “and that is why we count our condition bad now. For we still have arbitrary government among us. Does not Parliament itself govern in that way?”

Give me leave to answer this in a word. Consider the difference between the arbitrary government that Parliament complains of and what you feel now. First, that was at a time when the kingdom was in a settled condition, and especially when there was no opposing arbitrary power to resist it; and yet it went on then, and surely it was only making way for a worse arbitrary government. But now this happens at a time when the kingdom is unsettled, and when there is a necessity of some help beyond the ordinary course of law because of an opposing arbitrary power that is set against it. Is it possible for any man who has any wisdom or understanding not to see the difference between these two?

But I will show you a greater difference than this. In that former case, those who governed then suffered nothing in it themselves but gained everything. Now those who are accused at present, if what they do is arbitrary, suffer themselves as much as we do, and their posterity suffers as much as ours. Therefore the thing is far different from what it was before.

And further, if you would not be carried away with words, but judge righteous judgment, consider this. Can you think that if the adversaries should prevail, you would be at the disposal of the King only? Do you not think that you must lie at the mercy of those who are with him, who give such strength and assistance to him, too? And will that be safe for you? I put it to every man’s conscience whether he can think it safer for church or commonwealth to be governed by the King with those who are now about him and an army of Papists, or to be governed by the King with his two Houses of Parliament, which is the safest way in the conscience of any man living.

Further still, consider, if you have eyes in your heads, that perhaps what you aim at as your end, your adversaries may aim at as their means. And what will become of you then, if what you would have as an end they look on only as a means? Consider what consequences may come of that.

And lastly, you who desire peace so much in order to preserve your own portions here: would you not willingly have such a peace that those who have appeared for you, in the Houses of Parliament, in the City, in the ministry, and who have been most active, may be preserved too? Are you so desirous of peace as to be willing to leave them to the fury and rage of their adversaries? Would this not be one of the most horrible wickednesses that was ever committed in a kingdom, if men, from a desire to save their own particular estates, should betray those who have been faithful to them in their places of trust?

It was a saying of Demosthenes to someone who very much wanted peace: “It is a vain and preposterous thing to desire peace with the flock upon this condition, that the keepers of the flock be betrayed.” The fair name of peace will never prevail with a wise man when this comes to be its condition. The good people in Chrysostom’s time thought it so great a thing to have the mouth of just one Chrysostom stopped that they declared that if the sun should turn back and hold in its rays, it would be more tolerable than that the mouth of John Chrysostom should be stopped. They had such a high esteem of a faithful minister in those times. Therefore, if you would be faithful to God, and to his kingdom, and to those who have appeared for you, look for such a peace that you and they may both be safe in it.

God knows they would have been willing to be as silent as you. But suppose all the ministers of the kingdom, and all the men who had ability to appear publicly, had been silent, so that the cause had been wholly betrayed. And suppose that at length an army of Papists had risen, when you had no help to resist them. Would you not have cried out to ministers? Would you not have cried out to magistrates? Would you not have cried out to Parliament men? If they have ventured themselves to be faithful for you, know that you can have no peace unless they have it. It would be an unworthy thing to think of your own safety without theirs.

But you will say, “We would not have our estates and our peace like this (as you put it) on any terms, without any regard to religion. We have our portion in religion as well as you, and we have our consciences to look after as well as you. God forbid it should be otherwise; we want religion to prosper along with our peace. But we would not have such sects maintained in the kingdom. Let us have truth and religion, but away with the sectaries!”

1. First understand who they are that you speak of. Do you know in what you and they differ? You cry out against them as if they were of another religion, whereas, when it comes to be examined, the difference between you and them will prove not to be so great.

2. But further, I put this to you: do you spend as much breath in praying for these kinds of men as you do in railing at them? If so, then something may be said.

3. But it is a vain thing to think that true religion can be maintained and have its liberty without some difference of opinion among us. Indeed, the Turks have as much peace in their religion as any religion in all the world has, and there is as little difference of opinion among the Turks as in any religion whatsoever. But well may that coat have no seam that has no shape! If the truth of religion comes to appear, it is certainly impossible that many differences of opinion should not come. And it is a most intolerable pride of heart and tyranny in anyone whatsoever to think by violent means to force everyone to hold the same opinions they hold, in matters that are not of the foundation, and that may also stand with the peace of a commonwealth. In that you take more upon yourself than Christ does, more than the apostles ever did.

But you will say, “If men are in error, why should they not be forced? Shall every man be left to his own opinion, to do what he will?”

No, I do not plead for that either. Therefore I except all opinions, first, that are against the foundation of religion, and second, that are against the foundation of civil government. Set those two aside, and then for other opinions that are of a lower, inferior nature, I say you take too much upon yourself, whoever you are, if you think to force men to be of the same opinion as you are. And there is no way so sure to make a disturbance in churches and commonwealths as to force men to be of the same opinion in things that are of an inferior nature.

“Yes,” you will still say, “but if it is an error, they must not be left to live in it, if it is an error.” No, stop there. A man may be in an error, and yet you have no business offering violence to him to bring him out of his error. You may seek to convince him as much as you can, but in offering violence you undertake more than God has given you commission to do, whoever you are. And I give you this Scripture for it, which is clear, in Romans: “One believeth that he may eat all things, another eateth herbs; let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not, and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth; for who art thou that judgest another?” (Rom 14:2-4). “Who art thou that judgest?” Certainly one of these was a sin at that time. But even though one was a sin, those who were in the right must not by violence force those who were in the wrong to their opinion; they must leave them to God. I say, in matters of such consequence as these, it is a point of antichristian tyranny and notorious pride in men to take so much upon themselves as to force everyone to be of the same opinion. This is certainly not the way to true peace. But so much for the second corollary. The third follows.

Use 3. If men have their portion in this world, here is the reason why men make such a stir in the world to maintain this portion of theirs. What rending and tearing there is among men to preserve their estates! Especially if they have a higher portion in the world than others, oh, what a great deal of stir there is to keep up their honor and reputation! There was such striving for the papacy in the days of Henry the Fourth that it cost many thousands of men’s lives. Such a blustering do men make to be great in the world! It cost the blood of twenty thousand persons merely to satisfy the wills of a few. Certainly the world will one day be wiser, and understand that they are men and not dogs, to be subject to the humors and lusts of others, and that no man now has any further power over them than what he has by agreement from them. I hope men will be wise enough to understand this, and not sacrifice their lives to satisfy the wills of a few men in the world. It is their god, and they say, “Do you ask what ails me, when you have taken away my gods?” Here is the ground of all the stirs and upheavals in the world: carnal hearts look on what they enjoy as their portion.

But how does it come to pass that men are so greedy of this portion of theirs? Is it such an excellent portion that they are so greedy of it? Is it worth so much that they contend so about it? This makes way for me to slip into the fourth particular.

The fourth particular is to inquire what kind of portion this is that these men of the world have. Consider, therefore, first, what poor things they are that they make such a stir about; second, the tenure on which they hold whatever they enjoy; third, the mixture of evil there is in what they enjoy; fourth, the blessed portion that they lose; and lastly, the dreadful end there will be for such men who have their portion here.

First, the poor things that men have here in this world: what are they? Their comforts, for the most part, are only imaginary. In Hosea, Ephraim feeds on the wind (Hos 12:1). When a bladder is full of wind, one prick lets it all out; so when death comes, it lets out all their comforts. Will you set your heart on that which is not? It is not; it has no reality in it. In Acts 25:23, when Bernice and Agrippa came with great pomp into the assembly, what you have translated in your books as “great pomp” is in the Greek “great fancy.” All the pomp and jollity of the world is only a mere fancy, and this is their portion.

And second, what they have is of a very low nature. This would be a subject we might philosophize on, if it were fitting or if we had time, but I will pass quickly over these things. All the portion they have here is of a very low nature and does not much concern the soul. That is why the text says here, “thou fillest their belly” (Ps 17:14). It is only a bellyful, and what is that to the soul? Indeed, the rich man in the Gospel could say, “Soul, take thy ease, eat and drink…” (Luke 12:19). “Soul, take thy ease,” because you have goods laid up, and because you may eat and drink! What is all this to the soul? Ambrose has a saying on this place: “If the man had had the soul of a swine, what else could he have said?” For indeed these things were suited to the soul of a swine. You will find that a man is not one whit the better because of outward things. The heart of the wicked is little worth. His estate may be worth something, his house may be worth something, his lands may be worth something; but “the heart of the wicked is little worth,” says Solomon (Prov 10:20).

And would you not think it a great evil if, when you go about abroad, you knew for certain that no one gives you any entertainment or any respect except for the sake of the servant who waits on you? Would that not trouble you? You come to someone’s house, and he seems to make you welcome, and you are entertained. Yes, but you come to know afterward that it was not for your sake but for your servant’s sake that he loved you. Would that not discourage you? The truth is just so. All that you have in this world, you have for your servants’ sake: for your goods, your house and lands. It is not for any worth that is in you. Socrates once said to someone who had a fine house and many splendid things, “What! There are many who come to see your house and your fine things, but nobody comes to see you. They know there is worth in your fine house and in your fine furniture, but they see no worth in you.” Indeed, all these things are not the soul’s food. It is not man’s food they feed on; it is only ashes. It is nothing to the soul of a man.

And further, suppose it were for your soul: what you have here is only a very poor pittance. You do not have all the world either, though you have your portion in this world. If you had the whole world at your command, yes, if God should make a thousand more worlds for you to command, it would all be only a poor pittance to put off an immortal soul with. But what you have is only a tiny bit of the world. All the nations of the earth are only as the dust of the balance and a drop of the bucket to God; what then is your dust? What then is your house and land? Socrates wittily rebuked the pride of Alcibiades when he was very proud of having so much land lying together. He brought him the map of the world and said, “Please show me where your land lies here.” One prick of a pen would make a picture of it all.

England, Ireland, and Scotland are only three little spots compared to the world, and what are your farms and your manors? You have only a little portion; if you had it all, it would be no great matter. The truth is, all you have in this world cannot be enough for you to live in the world in a manner fitting a man. It is not enough, I say, to live like a man in the world: to live like one who has an immortal soul, like one who has the image of God on him, and who was sent here into the world to do such great services as every one of you was sent here to do. Therefore it is only a mean thing, and you have little cause to rejoice in it.

It is true that those who are godly count themselves unworthy of the least thing they have here in the world. But I will tell you a mystery of religion now, a practical maxim of religion that is a great mystery to the world. It is this: though a gracious heart thinks himself unworthy of the least crumb of bread, yet all the creatures in heaven and earth will not serve him for his portion; they will not satisfy him. He has a heart that will be satisfied with anything, counting himself unworthy of the meanest condition in this world as a present gift of God. But if God should give him heaven and earth, he has so unsatisfiable a heart that he would not be satisfied with heaven and earth unless God gave him himself too. Therefore your portion is certainly only a very little portion.

Besides, the things you have are things that will vanish and quickly come to nothing. It is said of the whole world that it hangs on nothing (Job 26:7); so do all the things of the earth. That is why it is said of Abraham that he sought a city that had foundations (Heb 11:10). All other things are like things that have no foundation at all. There is a worm in every creature that will consume it in time, and the Scripture calls all our riches “uncertain riches” (1 Tim 6:17).

Christian, you are made for an eternal condition, and these things are fading. When you come to enter on your eternal estate, if you should then ask, “What shall I have now? I have had this much and this much in my whole life, but what shall I have now that I come to enter on my eternal estate?” Truly, nothing at all. Suppose a man were going on a great voyage to the Indies, and all the provision he made was this: he got a vessel that could manage to carry him as far as Gravesend, and he provided for what he needed as far as Gravesend, or perhaps to the Downs. He goes on, and now he must go on from the Downs and begin his voyage to the Indies, and he has gotten out into the ocean; and alas, his vessel is a rotten vessel! Would this not be an unwise man? Truly, this is the condition of thousands in the world. Man, woman, you are made for an eternal condition. God intends eternity for every mother’s child who is here this day, and God expects that your life should be spent in making provision for this eternal estate of yours. And you think of nothing but how you may provide for a few years here, and live in some fashion, and be somebody in the world. Oh, when you come to enter on the ocean of eternity, you will give a dreadful shriek and cry out, “I am undone, I am undone! I have nothing provided for eternal life!”

Again, consider that whatever you have in this world is nothing but what may stand with the eternal hatred of an infinite God toward you. It may be the portion of a reprobate; and will this serve your turn? Will this satisfy you? Will what may be the portion of a reprobate satisfy your soul? There are many who are now sweltering under the wrath of the infinite God who have had twenty times as much as any of you who are here before the Lord this day. They have had greater estates than you and lived merrier lives than you, and yet they are now under the wrath of God. Will a reprobate’s portion serve your turn? Therefore consider that to enjoy dominion over all the world may stand with God’s eternal hatred, but to have the least dram of saving grace entitles men to the favor of God, which is better than life. What a difference there is, then, between having the least dram of grace and the enjoyment of all the world! And what a fine portion is this that you rejoice in so much? Certainly your heart must be narrow, since you think these things so big. In a narrow vessel a thing will look big, but in a very wide vessel it looks little. So when the Lord by grace widens and enlarges your heart, all the things of the world will be little to you.

Indeed, if a man is down here below, he looks upon anything near him that has any size to it as something great. But if a man were raised up high, to the top of a pinnacle, what seemed great would appear only little to him. So the men of the world who are here lie groveling below, the curse of the serpent is upon them, and they think the things of the world great matters. But grace lifts the heart up on high to God and Christ and mounts it up to eternity, and then we look upon all things here below as mean.

This was the reason that when Luther had great gifts sent to him by many of the great men of Saxony, he began to be afraid lest the Lord should reward him here in this world. He has this expression: “I did vehemently protest, God should not put me off so.” Those are his words, in his own manner of speaking. This is how he speaks: when the things of the world came in, and he began to be tickled with honor, and great men respected him, “Oh,” he thought, “I will be somebody in the world now.” So corruption began to work, but grace prevailed, and he breaks out with this expression: “I did profess, God should not put me off so.” That is, the Lord will not put me off with worldly honors and dignities. There are other things I look for, things that are better and higher. These are poor pittances to put off this soul of mine with. There are other things I must have from the Lord, or else I cannot be satisfied.

That is the first thing: the poor things of the world, which are the portion of wicked men.

Second, consider the tenure by which they hold it. All you have in the world, you do not hold by a very good tenure; it is not held in chief, directly from the Crown. I confess this: I do not think the men of the world are usurpers of what they lawfully get in the world. I do not think they will have to answer merely for their using what they do, merely for their right to use what they have; but they will answer for not using it rightly. They will not answer (I say) for their right to use, but for their not using rightly. They have some right, but what right is it?

There is a threefold right. First, there is a right of justice, by which we may claim a thing as our due; what is not your right, you cannot claim. Second, there is a right of creation, which God gave to man at first; you have lost that right now. Third, there is a right of promise: God has promised all good things to his people, and you do not have that right either. You have neither the right of justice to claim, nor the right of your creation, nor the right of promise. What right, then?

There is a fourth right, and that, I confess, you have: a right of donation. God is pleased to give to you. And this is how you who are ungodly men hold all your honors and estates, just this way. Think of a man who is condemned to die, and is reprieved for two or three days before his execution, and the prince out of his indulgence gives orders to have provision made for him according to his rank: if he is a gentleman, he is to have such provision; if a knight or a nobleman, he will have provision according to his rank, until his execution. Now no one can say this man usurps. Though he has forfeited all his right to his lands and estates, yet if the king will give him this refreshment, he is no usurper. But it is a poor right he has; it is a right of donation. And this is how God gives the ungodly men in this world their right to outward comforts. You have your portion, but you see how you hold it.

The next thing to consider is that this portion here, as it is poor in regard of the mean things and the tenure, so it has a great deal of mixture in it. The truth is, all the good things wicked men enjoy in this world will hardly cover the expenses. That is, they meet with so much trouble in this world along with their portion that what they have will hardly cover the costs. If a man goes on a voyage, we do not usually count anything he spends along the way as part of his treasure. Now all we have here in this world is only spending money to cover our expenses in religion. God knows we will be put to a great deal of expense, and will meet with afflictions here.

But besides this, there is a mixture of curse in every portion of an ungodly man. Suppose one of you thinks you have made a rich match: you marry an heiress who is a very rich match, and you get her portion. If it is in money, off you go and fetch away the bags of gold that are her portion. But if it should prove that every bag of gold you have of your wife’s portion had the plague in it, it would be a poor portion. Certainly it is like this with all ungodly people in the world. All the while they live, whatever they enjoy (as long as they continue wicked men), they have a curse of God that goes along with it and makes way for eternal misery for them. As those who are godly have the blessing of God in outward things, which makes way for their eternal good, so you have the curse of the Lord mingled with all your outward things, which makes way for eternal evil to you.

Then consider what portion you lose. You have got one, but you lose a great deal more. Suppose a man had been at the Exchange and made a bargain over some petty thing, and afterward, when he comes home, learns that by not being at home he has lost a purchase that would have made the fortune of him and his descendants. He has little cause to rejoice in that bargain. So though you have got a portion that may seem to satisfy you somewhat, know that you have lost a portion of infinite worth and value.

It is impossible to show you what this portion is. The devil could show Christ all the glory of the world in the twinkling of an eye; but if I were to come to show you the glory of heaven, I would need eternity to show you what the portion of the saints is. But though I cannot show you all of it, I will give you only a hint or two, so that you may know something of what it is.

First, it is such a portion as is fit for the bride of the Lamb, fit for one who is to marry the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity. Second, it is such a portion as is fit and suitable for an heir of life and glory, an heir of heaven and earth. Yes, it is such a portion as God gives men for this very end: to declare what the infinite power of God is able to do to raise a poor creature to the height of happiness. What do you think this must be, when (I say) it must be done for this very purpose, that it might declare to angels and all creatures what the infinite power of God is able to do to raise a poor creature to happiness and glory? This must be something.

Again, it must be a portion in which God attains the great design he had from all eternity in making heaven and earth, which was to magnify the riches of his grace to a company whom he had set apart for glory. It must be such a portion; and guess what this must be.

Yes, it is such a portion as requires the infinite power of God to uphold a creature to bear the weight of that glory, and all this is to last to all eternity. I remember that when Esau only heard Isaac his father tell what a blessing he had given to Jacob, he fell to weeping. Oh, that God would strike the hearts of men in the same way, men who have cared so little for anything but the world! You hear only a few words about what the Lord has reserved for his saints to all eternity; but compare that with what your portion is, and you have cause to weep.

Yes, but you will have more cause to weep still if you consider the last thing, and that is what the end of all your portion in this world is likely to be. If indeed you could swagger your way through this world and enjoy your heart’s desire, and that were the end of it, it would be something. Oh, but there is something else that remains afterward.

For first, oh, the perplexity of spirit any worldly man will have when death comes, when he sees an end of all the comforts of this world! “Now farewell house, farewell lands, and farewell friends, farewell acquaintance and all merry meetings and jovial times; I will never have comfort in you again.” It was like the speech of Pope Adrian when he was about to die: “O my soul, my soul, where are you going? Where are you going? You will never have more jests, nor be merry, nor be jocund any more. Where are you going?” So a man who has his portion in this world may say at his death, “Where is this poor soul of mine going? I have lived here so many years, and I have had many merry meetings. I have eaten with the strongest and have drunk the sweetest, and gone about in fine clothes; but now my day is gone. What will become of me? What peace do I have now, when all is gone?”

I remember that Latimer has a story, in one of his sermons that he preached before King Edward, of a rich man who lay upon his sickbed. Someone came to him and told him that certainly, by all the reason they could judge by, he was likely to be a man for another world, a dead man. As soon as he heard these words, he cried, “What, must I die? Send for a physician! Wounds, sides, heart, must I die? Wounds, sides, heart, must I die?” And so he went on, and nothing could be got from him but “Wounds, sides, heart, must I die?” Must I die, and go from all these things? Here was all; here was the end of this man who made his portion in this world.

Another rich man, who lived not far from the place where I myself lived formerly, when he heard that his sickness was deadly, sent for his bags of money and hugged them in his arms: “Oh, must I leave you? Oh, must I leave you?” And another, lying upon his sickbed, laid a bag of gold to his heart, and then told them to take it away: “It will not do, it will not do.” When another lay upon his sickbed, his servants came to him and said, “What do you lack? Would you like some beer? What do you want?” “Oh,” he said, “I want only one thing, peace of conscience. That is what I would have. It is not beer, nor friends, nor an easy pillow I want, but ease of conscience.” Oh, consider whether there is not likely to be perplexity in your spirits.

And then, brothers and sisters, you must be called to account for everything, though (as I told you before) not to account for your right to use, but for not using rightly. Just think to yourselves: if you now have so much that you cannot reckon it up, how will you then be able to reckon for it? If you cannot count it now, how will you be able to give an account at the last day, especially when you have given no thought to this beforehand?

There will be a dreadful portion indeed at the day of judgment. Oh, the shame and confusion that will be on the faces of the men of the world in that hour, when they see their poor neighbors have their portion with Christ in glory! Perhaps a poor servant in the house will be advanced to glory while they stand on the left hand to be cast out. Perhaps some of these poor hospital boys will be advanced to eternal glory, while some of you who are their great masters will be cast out eternally. What an infinite shame and confusion this will be to you!

Then each of them will cry, “Oh, now I see what it is to trust in God and not to trust in him! Those are happy who would trust him for what was to come, but I am miserable, who dared not trust him.” “The Lord will rain snares, and fire, and brimstones” (Ps 11:6): here is the portion of the ungodly at last. “Appoint him his portion with hypocrites,” says Christ, “where there is weeping and wailing, and gnashing of teeth” (Matt 24:51). That is the portion of hypocrites in the end. Now here you see the end of all. What do you think of your portion now? Think of just one text, and I am done.

“What hope hath an hypocrite though he hath gained, when God takes away his soul?” (Job 27:8). Notice: there are many hypocrites who aimed to get estates in the world but cannot thrive; God crosses them. Well, but suppose you aim to gain, and have got all you could desire: “what hope hath an hypocrite, though he hath gained?” Though he has grown ever so rich and got all he desires, what hope has he when God takes away his soul? This time is coming. It will be before long, and it may be suddenly, the portion of some who are here present. And perhaps this text of mine may then ring in their ears when they lie upon their sickbeds, perhaps within a month or six weeks, when God’s time comes. And then conscience may repeat in your ears: “I heard on such a day that there was a generation of men who have their portion in this world, and now I am afraid I am one of them. And there is an end of my portion; only I must go to my other portion, which will be very dreadful.”

“But,” you will say, “whom have you been speaking to all this while? Who is the man who has his portion in this world? It is a poor portion, as you have set it out to us; but everyone will go away and say, ‘I hope it is not I. I hope God has a better portion for me than this.’” Therefore give me leave to speak to you in the name of God, and out of his word, to point out the man and the woman who are likely to have their portion here, living and dying in such a condition.

The first sign of a man whose portion is in this world is this: the man to whom God gives in this life nothing but what belongs to this life is plainly the man. If God gives you your estate, and does not give you something besides your estate, that is, a principle, a seed of eternal life in you, then certainly he never intends good to you in the world to come. There are many men who have a great deal in this world, and they say they hope God will be merciful to them in the world to come. Now this is a certain truth: the man to whom God denies spiritual mercy in this world, God will deny eternal mercy in the world to come. This, therefore, should be your care: “Does God increase my estate in this world? Oh, that the Lord would give a proportionate measure of grace, or else it is nothing! Lord, you give me a great estate here; if you do not give me along with it a proportionate measure of grace to use it for your name, I would have been better off without it.”

Is this your care? I put it to your conscience. As your estate increases, are you earnest at the throne of grace that the Lord would give you a proportionate measure of grace to manage your estate for his glory? Then peace be to you; you are not the man.

You may examine it further by the workings of your hearts about your present portions. First, consider whether you enjoy what you have for its own sake, and whether your hearts come to rest and stop in what you enjoy. One who is godly has his portion beyond these things. He enjoys the creatures, yes, but it is God that he enjoys in them: “That is sweet to me in which I can see and taste the love of God.” But a carnal heart enjoys the creatures and runs away with them, and stops there; it looks much at the creature, but little at God.

It is as with many of your hospital children here. They look more at the men who were their friends in bringing them into the hospital, when they were fatherless and motherless and helpless, than they look at the founders of the hospital. They think little of the founders, or of thanking God for them; but if they meet the man who was the nearest cause of bringing them in, they will thank him for his kindness. So it is with most men: they look at outward means and secondary causes. But a godly heart looks at the root of all things. I remember one who came into the treasure house of Venice, where he saw tables of gold and silver, and he pointed down, looking at the bottom of the table. Someone asked him, “Why is your eye on the bottom like that?” “Oh,” he said, “I am looking at the root of all this.” Alas, it is a small matter for a man who has a great trade to have a great stock.

A godly man, though he has only a little, still looks at the root, at the love of God and the covenant of grace, which is the spring of all, and that is the chief thing that satisfies his heart. It is the goodness of God that satisfies a gracious heart, and not the bare creature.

Therefore examine how your hearts are set upon these things of the world, whether your hearts go out to them with full strength. If you make your bellies your god, then your end will be destruction. The man whose heart is swallowed up in the world is like Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, who were swallowed up in the earth: if the things of the earth are a gulf to swallow your heart up, there is another gulf to swallow you up hereafter.

Consider how the loss of the things of the world affects your heart. Do you not count yourself an undone man when you have lost some comforts? Do you not come home to your wife and children and say, “I am an undone man”? Why, what is the matter? “I have lost some part of my estate.” Oh, carnal heart! One who is God’s child may have some crosses, but no losses at all, because he enjoys all in God, and still has God. The truth is, if you were truly godly, then whatever afflictions you met with, you could put all your crosses in your eyes, just as we say a man may put all his gain in his eye and see none the worse for it. You are that far from being undone.

Examine, then, whether these things of the world are not the only things suited to your hearts, and whether you do not bless yourselves in them as your happiness. The ivy will clasp about a rotten tree, and cannot be taken off it without tearing; and so the heart of a worldling will clasp about these rotten comforts as the only agreeable things. You may hear them sometimes tell with joy, “We were at such a place, and we were so merry, and had the finest gathering!” And what was there? There was singing and drinking and blaspheming of the name of God, and yet it was the finest gathering there could be.

When did you ever come from an ordinance of God and say, “Oh, it was a fine day for me; the Lord has spoken to my heart this day”? Have you never gone from the word with as merry a heart, and rejoiced in it among your friends, as you have from a merry meeting? Then you may fear you are the man who has his portion here.

If I were to give only one evidence of whether a man has grace or not, I would give this as soon as any. Suppose you have got some estate in the world; I put this to you: what do you count the chief good of your estate being more than it was before? A man who has got more of an estate than he had before thinks to himself, “Now I may live in better fashion than I could. Now I may have more freedom than before. Now I may have more credit in the world than I had. Now I may have my own way, and satisfy my lust more than I did, or more than another man can.” Is not this the thing you rejoice in most?

Yes, more: is it not true that some of your hearts rejoice most in this (if your hearts were ripped open, this would be their language), because by it you have the most fuel for your lusts? A poor man does not have as much fuel for his uncleanness as you have, nor as much fuel for his pride and malice as you have. And many rich men count the blessing and happiness of their estates to consist in this very thing, that now they may have a larger scope for their lusts than ever they could before. Alas, a poor man cannot go out and drink as you can; a poor man cannot lay out as much upon a whore and an unclean wretch as you can; and you rejoice in this. If this man does not have his portion in this world, who does? The Lord strike your wretched heart!

When God blesses a gracious man in this world, though there is only a little grace in him, it will work like this: “The Lord has raised my condition above my brother’s, and why? The Lord gives me a larger opportunity to do him service than my brother has, or than I had before. There is such and such a poor man; he is an honest man, but (God knows) he can do only a little in the place where he is; he has little means. But God has given me means, and these means enlarge my opportunities to do God service, and for this my soul blesses God. I count my estate happier than before, because now I may be of more use and do God more service than I otherwise could.” Do you rich men have such workings in your hearts? If you do not, never be at rest until you get your hearts working in this way. This will be a blessed testimony that God gives you a portion here and intends another portion for you in the world to come.

Again, what is the thing you strive hardest to make sure? Whatever a man strives hardest to make sure, that is where he counts his happiness to lie. Oh, for your land and your debts, you strive with all your might to make them sure; but as for the matter of your salvation and your peace in Christ, you have a good hope of it, but you take no pains to make it sure.

See what it is you most admire men for. “Oh, such a man is happy! He has so much coming in; he has so much a year.” But do you call the vile man happy? That is a sign that your eye has not been enlightened. Can you look upon those who are poor and lowly in this world as the happiest creatures, because the Lord gives them the grace of his Spirit? Can you think, “Well, it is true that I have a greater estate than such a poor man who is my neighbor, or than such a poor kinsman; but God knows he does God more service than I do. He prays more, and more heartily, in one day than I do in a whole year. Oh, the Lord has prayers and sighs of another kind coming from his poor cottage than he ever had from my fine palace. I have my city house and my country house, but they were never so perfumed with prayers. Some who live in poor cellars send up more prayers, and God has more honor from them than he has from me. In my family, perhaps, there is cursing and blaspheming of God; in such poor cottages there is, perhaps, blessing and praising of God”? Now, can you look upon them as the happiest people in the world?

Lastly, what are you most careful to lay up for your children? If the things of the world take up most of your care for your children, it is an argument that you think your children will have a good portion if you can leave them so many thousands. And it is likely that it is your portion too, if you count it theirs.

Examine also what your services are. Do you put God off with slight services? Then know that your portion is likely to be of God’s slight mercies. Again, are you hypocritical in your service? Do you aim at the praise of men in outward duties? That is a sign that you have your reward here. And are your services forced, so that you are compelled? Is it merely conscience that compels you, and not an inward agreement between the frame of your heart and holy things? Then it is likely that a servant’s portion will be yours, and not a child’s portion.

Further, have you formerly been forward in professing religion, and have you now forsaken the ways of God? I will give you a dreadful Scripture for this, in Jeremiah 17:13: “All you that forsake the Lord shall be ashamed, and they that depart from me shall be written in the earth.” If you were forward in the past, and now that you are grown older you are dead, and dull, and cold, here is a text for you. Go home and tremble, lest you be a man whose name is written in the earth.

And does not God curse your portion even now? You find that the more you have, the worse you grow. If a man ate food at someone’s table and, as soon as he had eaten it, began to swell, he would certainly conclude that the food was poisoned. So when your estate rises and your heart rises with pride, surely it was poisoned with the curse of God that was in it.

Again, I will name only one sign more. What do you say to this: the man who spends his days without having any fear lest God should put him off with the things of this world? There may be some danger of that. It is said of some that they feed themselves without fear (Jude 12). You can go to a merry gathering, feast on the good cheer and eat without fear, but never have such a thought in your heart as this: “What if God should put me off with these things? I hear, indeed, that there are some men who are put off so. What if that should prove to be my portion? What a miserable creature I would be!” I fear there are some men who have never had such a thought in their lives: “What if it should prove so with me? What a miserable creature I would be!”

I have one word of exhortation for you all, and then I am done; and this exhortation must be divided.

First, to you who have some evidence that God has given you a better portion, that God has not put you off with the portion of this world: oh, bless the Lord for his goodness to you, that he has ever shown you better things than the world affords. Your line has fallen in good ground; you have a goodly inheritance. Though you do not have as much as others have, yet you have what will make you happy forever.

I have read of one Didymus, a learned and godly preacher, who was blind. He complained of it and was much troubled for his want of sight, whereupon a Christian friend rebuked him sharply. “What!” he said. “Has God given you what is the excellency of an apostle, of a minister of Christ, and are you troubled for want of your sight, which an ant may have, which a brute beast may have? Are you troubled for want of your sight, which the rats and mice may have, and not rather taught to bless God, who has given you so great a mercy as to make you such an instrument of his service?” So I may say to you who are godly: Has God given you Jesus Christ? Has he given you his Son? Has he given you his Spirit? Has he given you himself to be your portion? And are you troubled that you do not have more of what beasts may have as well as yourselves? Oh, be ashamed of any mournful discontent for want of the comforts of this world.

Second, do not envy wicked men for their outward prosperity. I remember a story of a poor soldier who was condemned to die merely for taking a bunch of grapes from a vine. There was a strict law that whoever took anything from the place they marched through should die for it. Now he had taken a bunch of grapes and was condemned to die; and as he went to his execution, he went along eating his bunch of grapes. Some came to him and said, “Are you going along eating your grapes? You should be thinking of something else.” He answered, “I beg you, sir, do not envy me my grapes; they will cost me dear.” So I may say of all the men of the world: we have no need to envy them anything they have; it will cost them very dear one day.

Third, live like those whom God has not put off with the portion of this world. Make it plain in your conduct that you look for higher and better things than this world affords. Show that these things are slight in your eyes. Look upon your estates as despicable. Be willing to employ them all for the public good; yes, to risk not only your estates but your names, your liberties and your lives in a public cause. The world may look upon those who do so as being in a sad condition and say, “Oh, such a man is likely to be ruined, and his life is in danger.” But I tell you, whoever is willing, out of a good principle, to venture life and estate and to stand up for God, that man shall be most honored and found to be the happiest man at last. And indeed in this he shows himself to be a man who looks for a higher portion than these things here, like those in Hebrews: by what they said and did, they showed plainly that they looked for another country (Heb 11:14). So you see men who might live as comfortably in outward things as you, and who, if their consciences would allow it, could be as quiet as you. But conscience puts them to it, so that, seeing God calls them to a public place, they are content to lay everything at God’s feet.

Now though you may think that such men are in the greatest danger, they show plainly that they are men of another country, and they should be most honored. And take this principle with you: the more anyone gives up his estate to God, the more comfort he has in his estate, whether in enjoying it or in losing it. I express it this way: when someone resigns all he has, his estate, liberty, name, life, to God, the oftener it comes into God’s hands, the better it comes back when God gives it to him again. A carnal heart, once he has these things, will not trust God with them; he will have them in his own keeping. But a gracious heart, though he has all these from God, is willing every day to give them all up to him and to trust God with them again. Though he is a rich man, he is willing every day to come and beg his bread at his Father’s gate and to give up everything. Now he gives up all to God in the truth of his heart, and God gives it all back to him again; as long as he enjoys it in a lawful way, he has it afresh from God.

This, I say, is the point: the oftener anything comes out of God’s hand, the sweeter and the better it is. Wicked men’s estates come out of God’s hands only once, and therefore there is not so much comfort in them. But a godly man’s estate comes from God a hundred and a hundred times, for every resignation gives it to God, and God gives it to him again; and in that there is comfort. Oh, blessed are those who live in such a way that they declare they look for another country, and that their portion is not here! Let the men of the world think them foolish for venturing themselves so; God and his saints have declared that their portion is not here.

And now to you all, the word of exhortation from God is that every one in this place would press on to make more sure of another portion besides the portion of this world. Press on, I say, for you are all made capable of higher and better things than the things of the world. There is not one here who does not have an immortal soul and is not capable of communion with Father, Son and Holy Spirit; and that is business of another kind than eating and drinking and having pleasure with the flesh here for a while. God has made your natures capable of such glory. Do not debase yourselves by resting satisfied with husks when you may have food enough in your Father’s house.

And therefore press on. Let the poorest sort press on, who have only a little portion here. Yet there is as fair a way for you to have the God of heaven and earth as your portion, to have whatever Jesus Christ has purchased by his blood as your portion, to have eternity and immortality as your portion. I say, there is as fair a way to it for you as for the greatest princes on earth; you may come to have a portion in this.

Indeed, many a poor apprentice may say, “My father is dead and has left me no portion.” Yes, but you who are poor apprentices, and others, and the poor hospital boys who live on charity: it is possible that some poor wretches there may come to have their portion in God and Christ and immortality, as well as the greatest and richest of all. Therefore lift up your hearts here, you who are the poorest and lowliest, and know that you are born for high things.

If I should come and tell a poor boy who now wears a blue coat, “Whatever you are now, such a rich man will adopt you as his child and make you his heir,” that would lift up his heart. Well, however poorly you live now, you may be a glorious creature hereafter, if only you have a heart now to set about it and to seek after it as your portion.

But you will say, “Lord, what should we do so that our portion may be a higher portion than one in this world?”

The first thing I would urge on you is this: let the whole course of your life be steered, as it were, by the fear of God. Keep a continual jealousy lest God should put you off with the things of this life. Hold this out in every action, so that anyone may see by your conduct, “Surely this man, this woman, has some fear lest God should put him off with a portion in this world.” And especially you who have great portions in this life and have done God little service: you know there are many poor people living on alms who have done God more service than you. You have the most cause to fear. Those who are rulers and governors have mighty cause to fear, unless they have good evidence in their hearts. Chrysostom, on Hebrews 13, speaking of those who are governors, says, “I wonder that any governor should be saved.” He has such a saying there. I will not say so, but there is a great deal of hazard. Christ tells us that for a man who has a great portion in this world, though it is possible he may have more hereafter, yet it is doubtful whether he will inherit heaven.

It was the counsel of one man to a king. “I desire only this favor,” he said, “that every day you would think of this text: ‘What profits it a man to gain the whole world, and to lose his own soul?’ (Mark 8:36). Spend some little time considering it every morning when you rise and every night when you lie down: what will it profit me to be great here and miserable hereafter?” I give you the same counsel. Pray to God daily to make you understand what there is in this text, that there is a generation of men who have their portion in this world only.

Second, if you would not have your portion here, labor to take your hearts off all outward comforts. “He that will be rich shall fall into many temptations” (1 Tim 6:9). Know that it is not necessary that you should have an estate in this world, but it is necessary that you should make your peace with God. It is necessary that I provide for my soul; but how things go with me here is not so necessary.

Third, set the glory of heaven and eternity daily before your eyes, and be trading for higher things than the world affords. Many poor people go up and down the streets crying some cheap ware, and think they do well if they get eighteen pence in a whole day. But a rich merchant can go out in the morning and make a bargain, and perhaps gain £500 in an hour; that is trading to some purpose. So the men of this world labor for the food that perishes; but a godly man has communion with God, and in a quarter of an hour gains what he would not lose for thousands.

It was a saying of Cleopatra to Antony: “You are not to fish for gudgeons and trout, but you are to angle for castles and cities.” So I may say: if you have an immortal soul within you, you are not so much to angle for food and drink and clothes, to make provision for the flesh, but for heaven and immortality.

The next thing is this: “Honor God with thy substance” (Prov 3:9). Lay out your portion here for God. Oh, that I could convince you of just one more principle of divinity, and it is this: there is more excellency and good in one virtuous action than in all the creatures in heaven and earth (apart from the blessed angels and the glorious saints above; I mean the rest of the creatures, excepting these). Take all the creatures, sun, moon, stars, seas, earth, all the pearls and jewels of the world, and put them all together; yet this is true divinity, that there is more excellency in one virtuous action than there would be if you had all these things as your possession. If men were convinced of this, they would abound in good works. You think it a fine thing to have so much coming in by the year. Only do one good action for God out of an upright principle, and there is more excellency in that one action than in your great revenue, even if a thousand times more were added to it.

I would think this should make those who are rich rich in good works. So the Scripture says: “Charge them that are rich in this world … that they be rich in good works” (1 Tim 6:17-18). Oh, there is a richness in good works as well as in great revenues. Oh, improve your estate; lay it out now for God. Ambrose says, on that passage about the rich man, “Is it not more honor that so many children should account you their father than that so many pieces of gold should call you their lord?” These pieces of gold do, as it were, call you lord; and there are two or three children who would call you father. And is it not more excellent, while you are alive in this world, to have a couple of poor orphans call you father than to have so many bags of gold call you master? Oh, therefore, give a portion to six and to seven.

Again, if you would not be put off with a portion in this world, be sure that all the services you perform to God are choice services. If you expect choice mercies, let your services be choice services. Be sure that all your works are supernatural works. You will say, “How shall I know that?” If I had time, I could make it out clearly. A supernatural work is one that has a supernatural principle and is done to a supernatural end and in a supernatural manner. A supernatural principle: that is grace, which makes the work suitable to my heart, so that I do not do it merely out of conviction of conscience. And a supernatural end: that is, when I aim at God and not at myself in any duty.

But what is this supernatural manner of serving God? I will explain it this way. Seneca, in giving his rule for knowing when the affections are natural and when they are not, says, “You shall know a natural affection by this: if it is kept within bounds, it is natural; if it is out of bounds, it is not natural.” I will make use of this in another way. When you come to the service of God, if you think to limit God in his service, this is only a natural service: you will go so far and stop there. But if it is a supernatural service, you will let out your hearts to God infinitely, if that were possible. You cannot be infinite, that is true; but you will set no bounds or limits to your service. And this is indeed the truth of grace, when it bears the stamp of a gracious infiniteness. Infiniteness is that by which God is without all limits; so when the soul is without all limits and bounds in the way of grace, it desires to honor God in an infinite way, if that were possible. These are supernatural works.

Lastly, if you would not have your portion in this world, be willing to cast away whatever part of your portion you have gotten sinfully. This I declare in the name of God as a special thing, so take it home with you. Whatever man or woman in this place would not have his portion in this world, but would have his portion in the world to come: whatever part of your portion you have gotten in a sinful course, cast it away at once. Never sleep with it; do not lie down one night with it; do not rest until you are cleared of it.

It is an old rule, but a true one: all the repentance in the world, and all your sorrowing for sin whatever, will never obtain pardon without restitution. Unless you restore what you are able to, you can never have comfort of the pardon of that sin. If you got it when you were young, as an apprentice or when you first set up in business, away with it; otherwise it will spoil everything, and you will never have any other portion from God. These hands of mine once had something given them to restore that had been gotten wrongfully fifty years before. The wrong was done fifty years earlier, yet after a space of fifty years the man’s conscience troubled him, and he came to make restitution and make good the wrong he had done, desiring me to convey it to such a man, whom he had wronged in such a place.

Know, therefore, that all the sweet morsels you have at any time swallowed down so delightfully must come up again; therefore part with them willingly. Resolve before you leave this place not to keep for one minute whatever you have gotten wrongfully. And do it willingly; otherwise you can have no comfort here or hereafter. If there is any true divinity in the world, this is true divinity; and yet it is hard to convince covetous men who have gotten their means this way.

If there are any who have done wrong in things entrusted to them, such as those who are masters of hospitals, be sure that you do not keep it, for you will certainly curse the time you ever took it. Therefore let the charge of God lie heavily upon you this day: cast out whatever you have gotten falsely. I have read a story of one man who, hearing that passage of Scripture read, “Woe to them that join house to house” (Isa 5:8), burst out in a loud cry, “Woe to me, and to my children, then!” So you who are enriched through fraud and the cheating of others have cause to say, “Woe to me and my family! What will become of us if this is true?” Oh, cast away this lumber, this trash; prefer your soul before all things whatever.

And if you would have your portion in another life, be willing to join with those who suffer for Christ. So Moses did: though he was in the way of advancement, yet he chose “rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season” (Heb 11:25). Prize the saints; associate with them rather than with the jolly blades of the world. It is safer joining with sufferers than with those fine spirits who scorn goodness, the jolly blades of the world; it is safer to join with the sufferers than to join with those who are the jolly and the fine spirits.

And so I am done. I only desire that the Lord would settle it all home upon your spirits, if it may be. For something may not be as pleasing to everyone’s palate as something else; but if for that reason you should reject what has been said, and go away and slight this word of God, know that this text may one day prove to be like scalding lead in your consciences, and that what is said concerning Doeg in Psalm 52:7 may prove to be your portion. It is spoken of Doeg: “This is the man,” says the psalmist, “that made not God his trust, but that trusted in his great riches.” This is the man. So you may be pointed out one day: this is the man. Doeg was a great courtier, and because he was an officer to King Saul and had his favor, he trusted in the favor of the king and in his riches; and what did he care for David?

Yet it appears from the text that he was one who made some show of religion too. In 1 Samuel 21:7, “He was detained before the Lord.” Tremellius thinks it was either out of some religious vow, or to keep the Sabbath, or for something concerning that law, that he was detained before the Lord. And yet he was a vile, malignant enemy of David, and all because he trusted in the great favor he had at court. Now this is the man “that made not God his trust, but that trusted in his great riches.” The Lord forbid that this Scripture should be made true of any of you!

I leave this text with you who are rich men: take heed. I leave this text with you who are in places of dignity and honor: take heed. I leave this text with you who are voluptuous men, given up to your pleasure: take heed that you do not one day hear this: “Son, remember in thy lifetime thou hadst thy pleasure” (Luke 16:25). I leave it with all who will not trust God for a portion to come. And above all, I leave it with all hypocrites: let them take heed that it is not said to them, “Here is your reward.” Consider what has been said, and the Lord give you understanding.

But to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent in whom is all my delight (Ps 16:3).

Those who understand the whole psalm as foreseeing the Messiah and foretelling Christ make this place parallel with that in John: “And for their sake I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth” (John 17:19). But here at the beginning of the psalm David prays to God for preservation and for deliverance out of some great evil that, it seems, was upon him, or that he was in danger of.

The argument he uses is, first, his trust in God, as in the first verse: “Preserve me O God, for in thee do I put my trust” (Ps 16:1). And it was not an ungrounded and unwarranted trust. It proceeded from the interest he had in God, as in the second verse: “O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my Lord” (Ps 16:2). That is, you are mine, and my only God, in whom is all my confidence.

But what if David should now perish in this distress? Would God be any loser by it? David seems to acknowledge this: that though he should not be preserved, yet God was bound to preserve his own name and his own cause. So it follows in the second verse, “my goodness extendeth not to thee” (Ps 16:2). Though I should live, it is little that I could do for you. “But to the saints that are in the earth.” Though my goodness does not extend to you, yet I may be of use to your people and to your saints while I live. For it extends to them, and they are the ones my soul cleaves to and delights in. Oh, this is why I desire to live and to be preserved: that I may be useful to those who are your saints.

It is a great argument to prevail with God, when any of you are in danger and seek preservation, if your hearts work toward God in this way: that the reason you desire to be preserved is so that whatever you are, and whatever you can do, may extend to the saints, and that you may live to be of use and service in the world to God’s people. When many of you see yourselves in trouble, you cry to God to be preserved. But to what end? Why would you be preserved? Why would you live? If we may judge your ends by your practice, you would live so that you may have more time to satisfy your lusts, more time to dishonor God, and more time to do mischief in the places where you live. This is in the heart, and God sees it. God sees whatever comes afterward in your lives; God saw beforehand what was in your hearts when you cried to be preserved.

But one who is gracious desires to be preserved for this reason. “Oh,” he says, “that I might live to be of use in the place where God has put me! If God should take me away now, my conscience tells me that I have done him little service. I have been of little use in the place where God has set me. Oh, that I might be preserved for this end: that what I am, or have, or have been might extend to the saints on earth, even the excellent, in whom is all my delight.”

So you have the scope of the words and how they hang together. And in them two things are to be observed.

Observation 1. The high esteem of the saints: they are the excellent of the earth.

Observation 2. The sweet delight that David’s heart had in them: “in whom is all my delight.”

For the first, the high esteem that David had of the saints, the saints that were on earth, the excellent, the point is this: the saints of God, those who are godly, are the excellent in the earth.

Then, second, from his saying “in whom is all my delight,” observe this: a gracious heart, above all things in this world, takes the most contentment in the saints of God; he is greatly delighted in them.

The first is only a preparation for the second, so I will pass over it briefly. They are the excellent in the earth; therefore my delight is in them.

They are the excellent in the earth. Let them be what they will in regard of their outward lowliness, yet there is an excellency in them. Job scraping on the dunghill and Jeremiah stuck in the mire in the dungeon had more glory and beauty upon them than the greatest potentates of the earth had as they sat on their thrones. Though they lie among the pots (as the psalmist says), yet they are as doves; their wings are the wings of doves, “whose feathers are of gold, and silver” (Ps 68:13), beautiful and glorious.

You know the judgment the Holy Spirit passes upon the saints of old who were outwardly low enough. There was as much lowliness upon them as the malice of the world could put there. The text says, “they had trials of mockings, of scourgings, of bonds, and imprisonments, they were sawn asunder, they were tempted, they wandered in sheepskins, and goatskins: destitute, afflicted, tormented” (Heb 11:36-37). What kind of creatures were these? Surely they were some wretched men and women, to be hunted up and down like this, wandering in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, afflicted and tormented? No such thing. They were people “of whom the world was not worthy” (Heb 11:38). That is the judgment of the Holy Spirit upon such people: the world was not worthy of them.

The men of the world would have thought, and did think, that they were not worthy to live in the world. But the judgment of the Holy Spirit was that the world was not worthy of them. I remember that Chrysostom gives this interpretation of the phrase: they are such as are worth more than all the world, more than many thousands of the world; one of them is worth more than all the other people of the world. And it is true. One saint of God, however mean, one poor youth, one servant who is truly gracious, is worth more than all the other people in the world who are not so. All the monarchs and princes on earth do not have the excellency in them that one poor child or servant has who is gracious and belongs to God.

But the ordinary interpretation is this: they have such excellency that the world is not worthy to enjoy them. The world is not worthy of their presence, not worthy that they should so much as live among them. They are fitter to be set as stars in heaven and to be before the Lord in his glory. The world is not worthy of them.

But what is there in the saints that makes them the excellent in the earth? The saints that are the excellent. The word in the original signifies the magnificent ones, those who have magnificent spirits and are exceedingly glorious.

There is this in them (so that I may pass briefly over this first point).

First, they have the image of God upon them, and therefore they must be the excellent on earth. The image of God makes them resemble God in what the creature is able to conceive of as the height of God’s excellency. It is true that whatever is in God is God himself. Yet as we conceive of God, according to our manner of speaking, there is something of God that appears most excellent and glorious. And it must be so, given the very expression, for grace is called the image of God. Now when we draw the image of a thing, we draw it as near as we can to what is the most proper excellency of that thing.

If I want to draw the image of a man, I do not draw the likeness of a piece of flesh; a beast has that as well as a man. Nor do I draw the feet or legs or the back parts of a man. When the image of a man is drawn, the chief concern is to draw his face, which is the most excellent part of a man. There we try to express his life and spirit as much as we can, for that is the most excellent part. And though the spirit cannot be drawn, and there can be no picture of it, yet because it shows itself most in the face, it is drawn there, as near as we can come to it.

So the image of God is that in which the creature resembles God in the height of his excellency and glory. Not every resemblance of God is God’s image. There are some things that set out some of the glory of God, and they are called only God’s footsteps, or his back parts. All the resemblance of God in his creatures, and the expressions of his power and wisdom, the invisible things of God that we see in the creature, are all only his footsteps and back parts. They are not his image. Why? Because they do not resemble God in what he has set out to us as the height of his glory.

What is that? The holiness of God; that is the height of his excellency. Therefore it is said of God himself, “holy and reverend is his name” (Ps 111:9). God’s name comes to be reverend by holiness. Were it not for his holiness, his name would not be reverend, notwithstanding all the rest (if it were possible to separate them). Therefore when the saints in heaven glorify God for his chiefest excellency, it is this way: “holy, holy, holy” (Isa 6:3; Rev 4:8). We do not find in Scripture any of God’s attributes repeated three times, “Wise, wise, wise,” or “Almighty, almighty, almighty,” but “holy, holy, holy,” because the excellency of God consists chiefly in holiness. The Lord only is holy (Rev 15:4).

Now where grace is in the creature, resembling this holiness of God, there is a principle by which the creature is able to act as God himself acts. For that is what holiness is: God’s working toward his own end in all things, suitably to his nature. So when the creature works toward God as its last end, and in some measure acts suitably to the God with whom it has to do, here is the image of God.

Therefore the Scripture expresses grace by these four things: the image of God, the life of God, the glory of God, and the divine nature. These are the four expressions for the work of grace.

It is the image of God: it resembles God in his excellency. It is the life of God himself, as in Ephesians 4, “alienated from the life of God” (Eph 4:18); that signifies acting like God himself. And then it is the glory of God himself, and the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4). So there must be excellency in the saints who have grace of this nature.

Certainly there is more of God in the meanest saint, in the meanest gracious man or woman, more of the glory of God, than in all the world besides, than in heaven and earth. Take all the creatures, all the glory of God in the heavens, in the sun, moon and stars, and put it all into one. Take all the glory of God in the seas, those vast oceans, and put that into one. Take all the glory of God that appears in the earth, all the riches of the earth, and all arts and sciences, and whatever you like; put it all into one. The meanest youth or servant who has the least degree of grace has more of the glory of God than all of this. There is more of the shining of God in the least degree of grace in the poorest Christian in the world than there is in all these creatures. If the very essence of all excellency and glory were extracted and drawn out and put into one, yet there would not be so much of God in it. God could not see as much of himself in that one creature, though it had the excellency of all creatures put together, as he sees in the meanest saint who has the work of grace.

And surely, then, they are the excellent of the earth, if there is so much of God in them.

The work of grace is that which has the most of God in it. Wherever it is, it is the proper work of God’s eternal love; it is a beam of that love, and therefore there is a great deal of excellency in it. Take all other creatures: it is possible to enjoy all the good there is in all the creatures in heaven and earth (excepting only this, the grace of God) through the bounty and good pleasure of God.

There is nothing the creature has that may not be communicated as a fruit of God’s general bounty, except spiritual blessings in Christ. But wherever this grace is, though in the least degree, it is of such a nature that it can come only from the eternal election of God. It is the principle of eternal life. Wherever it is, it will grow up into eternal glory.

No common gifts will ever grow up into glory, though they grow up to the height of glory. But the grace of God, true grace, is of the same nature as eternal glory. Therefore, in its kind, it is the greatest good that God ever did or ever will communicate to any creature for all eternity. I say, wherever God has communicated any dram of grace, that is the greatest good that God ever did or ever will communicate to any of his creatures, to all eternity. Therefore it is exceedingly excellent.

I except only the work of God in the hypostatic union of the two natures, in which he joined the human and the divine nature together in one person. Excepting that, the work of grace in any soul is, in its kind, the greatest work that God ever did from all eternity, or ever will do.

Now that which has so much of God in it, which comes from the eternal election and love of God, which is the greatest work that ever was done or ever shall be done, and the greatest good that ever was or shall be communicated to any creature forever, truly must be the greatest excellency. For God made the world for this end, that he might communicate his excellency and glory to the world, to the creature. Now that which was the greatest thing God intended from all eternity for the communicating of all his glory must make the creature excellent.

This is the first thing: the saints are the excellent on earth in regard of the image of God upon them and the work of grace in them.

Second, they are the excellent of the earth in regard of God’s separating them for himself. They are those on whom God set his thoughts from all eternity, that they might enjoy him. The great counsels God carried on from all eternity were set to work especially on this great thing: separating certain creatures for himself from the rest of the world.

Now when God sets his thoughts and counsels to work from all eternity (to speak after the manner of men) to set apart a few creatures for himself, then if we can know who they are, we certainly cannot help looking on them as the excellent on earth. And wherever we see the work of grace in anyone, we may know by it that these are the ones God has separated for himself, setting his infinite wisdom to work on this from all eternity. That was the thing he was most occupied with before the world was made: the work of separating such and such people for himself.

The psalmist says, “O ye sons of men, how long will ye turn my glory into shame? How long will ye love vanity and seek after leasing? But know, that the Lord hath set apart him that is godly, for himself” (Ps 4:2-3). Here you see that God has set apart the godly for himself. They are dedicated and consecrated to God, and therefore a wonderful excellency is put upon them.

You know that anything dedicated and consecrated, however mean in itself, once it is dedicated, once it is made a consecrated thing, has a great deal of excellency put upon it. So it was in the law. If it were only a piece of wood in the tabernacle, or only a badger’s skin, or only brass or goats’ hair or any such thing that was mean in itself, yet if it was once consecrated and made holy to God, they looked upon it as having a great deal of excellency upon it.

Now I reason this way. If a piece of wood, or a little hair, or leather consecrated to God had an excellency in it, what then of an immortal soul that has the graces of the Spirit like so many pearls in it, when that soul is consecrated and set apart to God, to the glory and praise of his grace for all eternity? Here there must be great excellency and the most eminent preeminence.

When a thing is consecrated, we no longer look on it according to the quality of the thing itself, but according to its consecration. I remember reading of some people in India who, when they have lost nothing more than an ape’s tooth that was consecrated to their god, will pay an unspeakable sum of money to redeem it again, because it was a thing consecrated to their god. So too I have read of another man who was raised from a mean birth and took this way to make himself highly esteemed by the people. He had a golden basin that he used to wash his feet in. He took it and made an idol of it and consecrated it, and then everyone fell down and worshiped it once it was consecrated. “Why,” he said, “if this thing, which was mean before it was set apart to this use, comes to be honored like this, then I, who am mean by birth, being set apart to govern, may just as well be honored by you.”

So then, if the superstition and will of man, having consecrated a thing, thinks it puts so much excellency on it, how much more when God himself consecrates! It is the great and special work of the Holy Spirit, the work he is appointed to, a special work of his office, to consecrate souls to God and to set them apart for him. What an excellency must this be that is put upon them! They are the excellent of the earth. That is the second.

Third, consider the relation the saints have to God. They are the nearest relations that can be expressed. There is the relation of children to parents: they are the children of God. There is the relation of a spouse to her husband: they are the spouse of Jesus Christ, the second person in the Trinity. And in that regard, in being the spouse of the Son of God, they are more nearly united to God than the angels themselves are. Yes, they are the very members of his body. In that respect they have a nearer relation to the divine nature, to the second person in the Trinity, than the angels themselves, for the angels do not have such a relation as this. Therefore they are the excellent of the earth.

Fourth, if we consider the great privileges the saints have, we shall see that they are the excellent of the earth. I will not speak of their deliverance from sin and guilt, or of the immunities they have that others do not. But consider that they have this privilege: God, in all his attributes and works, is continually working for their good.

This is an excellent prerogative of the saints: there is no attribute of God that is not continually working good for every saint of God. There is no work of God’s providence that does not work and act continually for their good.

It would be a mighty and excellent honor put on any man if so honorable an assembly as the Parliament should take thought for him, and if all their purposes, plans and counsels, all the time they were sitting, should tend to his good in particular, taking particular notice of him. It is what I said: all the wisdom, power, mercy and faithfulness, and the infinite all-sufficiency of God, are continually, every moment, working, not only for the good of those who love God in general, but for every particular saint of God. God takes special notice of them and sets all his attributes continually to work for their good and well-being.

And the heavens continually work for them. They have this privilege: the whole world is made for them. God has given them the world; they are the heirs of the world, as it is said of Abraham that he was the heir of the world (Rom 4). Abraham had little himself, yet he had the world. Now children inherit their father’s estate. If the world was Abraham’s inheritance, then it is the inheritance of every child of Abraham, for the children of Abraham are heirs to all that Abraham had, that is, as far as it concerns them. Therefore those who are his heirs are heirs of the world as well. So the apostle says, “All are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor 3:22-23). So God and the creatures are theirs. Here is a mighty privilege indeed!

Then there are the privileges they have in all the good of the covenant of grace. Whatever good there is in the covenant of grace, all the rich promises in the covenant of grace, are the privileges of the godly saints. The privileges that the precious promises of Scripture speak of are admirable, and to have an interest in them all is an admirable thing.

Besides, there are not only the promises but also the immunities that come from the covenant of grace, such as this: the saints are not to stand or fall for their eternal state by anything they are able to do themselves. They are freed from this; their eternal state does not hang on what they can do. But others, who are not saints and are not in the covenant of grace, have their eternal state hanging on their own endeavors and actions, since God deals with them, while they are in that condition, according to the covenant of works. They may indeed be such as will later come to be saints, such as God has elected and may look on in love according to what he intends toward them. But for the present they are in such a condition that, for all they know, their eternal state depends on what they do themselves.

Now to be delivered from this, to have this immunity, so that a thing of such consequence as our eternal state depends on a sure foundation, on what has been done by Christ and done already, is an infinite privilege. Others cannot claim for themselves the privilege that God will accept their endeavors. Let them do what they can, those endeavors are not accepted, because they are not in the covenant of grace. That God is pleased to accept the will for the deed is one of the privileges of the saints that comes by the covenant of grace. But it does not belong to others; they have nothing to do with this immunity and privilege. I might name various others, but then I would go too far.

Again, there is the glorious privilege of access to the throne of grace, to come to God in prayer. God gives them the key to all his treasures, to come and open them and take what they will. It is a glorious privilege that belongs to the saints in any condition. God gives them a gracious, praying heart, and that is the key to all the treasures of God, to all the excellencies of God, so that they have liberty to come and take out what they will: “Be it unto thee as thou wilt” (Matt 15:28). Those who have these privileges are the excellent of the earth.

Fifth, they are the excellent of the earth in regard of what comes from them. As the work of grace is so excellent, as has been spoken of, so in every gracious action that comes from a gracious heart there is a wondrous excellency. There is not one gracious action that does not have more excellency in it than heaven and earth. Not only grace itself, but any action that comes from grace, has more of God in it than all other things in heaven or earth, and God delights more in it than in them all.

Luther has an expression to this purpose. Though he was a great advancer of faith, he was also an advancer of holiness as well as of faith. Speaking of any gracious work of a godly man or woman, he says, “It is more precious than heaven and earth.” Then he goes on with another expression: “I would rather be able to perform any one gracious act of the poorest woman or maid, of the poorest Christian there is, than be able to do all that Alexander or Julius Caesar ever did.” He would rather be able to do the least act that comes from faith, from a sanctified heart, than win all the victories of Julius Caesar and Alexander. All their triumphs and trophies were nothing compared with the least breathing of the work of grace in those who are godly. What comes from them is exceedingly excellent.

Now I reason this way: they must necessarily be excellent who have such excellent things come from them. When such excellent things came from the body of Paul, things that had such virtue in them, it showed that God had conferred a great deal of excellency on that apostle and that a great deal of honor was put on him. So when such precious liquid, such precious things as a holy action is, come flowing from the saints, it shows that there is a great deal of excellency in them.

Use. This, by the way, should teach us to abound in holy duties. Though our actions, as they come from us, are corrupted, and we look on them as despicable, yet know that God looks on them, on any breathing of a gracious heart, as the most glorious things in the world. Therefore he does not despise the broken heart, nor the sighing of a contrite spirit (Ps 51:17). God can despise the monarchs and princes of the world, but God cannot despise a broken heart, or any breathings that come from it. Though you may despise it yourself and look on it as despicable, the Lord cannot despise it. He sees so much excellency in it, though it is mixed with your corruptions. There is still that remainder of excellency in it; if there is only so much in it that it may be called a gracious act, it is a glorious thing in the eye of God.

Lastly (to name no more), the excellency of the saints appears in the great use they are to the world. Especially this: in them God attains his great aim and end in creating the whole world. If it were not for a few gracious men and women, what glory would God have in all the world? They are the ones who hold up the glory of God in the world, those through whom God has his glory actively, for that is what God aims at. It is true, God can force glory from men in spite of their hearts; he will be glorified in spite of devils. But God has no active glory except from gracious, godly people (I speak of this lower world); it is only the godly from whom God has glory. Therefore, if it were not for them, God would (in a sense) have made the whole world for nothing.

Now those who are employed in so great a work, and are of such great use in the world as to bring God what he made the world for, the main and great end for which he made heaven and earth, are certainly principal in God’s esteem, and excellent. God can say, “I have my end in these.” Take any town where there are only two or three who are godly: what glory does God have there except from these? So for other places: where does God have glory except from a few contemptible ones? These are the ones God glorifies with high and great services. These are the lights of the world, the salt of the earth. These are the blessings of the world wherever they are; it is for them that the world continues as it does.

There is a notable expression in Isaiah: “In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt, and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land, whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance” (Isa 19:24-25). Wherever they are, in a kingdom, a family or a town, they are a blessing in that kingdom, in that town and in that family. Israel shall be a blessing in the midst of the land. These are the ones who are the excellent of the earth.

I would gladly be past this now, so that I may come to the other point, except that there is a word or two of application, and it is this.

First, it shows what a vast difference there is between the godly and the wicked. I might show many things that Scripture expresses about the wicked in all their glory. Let all the glory of the world be put on them, yet Scripture speaks of them with exceeding contempt. I must not spend time on those expressions; I will give only one, and that is in Daniel: “And in his estate shall stand up a vile person, to whom they shall not give the honor of the kingdom: but he shall come in peaceably, and obtain the kingdom by flatteries” (Dan 11:21). It is spoken (as most interpreters take it) of Antiochus Epiphanes; he is called a vile person. We may observe that David here sets out more fully the love and affection he bears toward those who fear God by its contrary effect, the hatred with which he pursues the wicked, as in this psalm (Ps 16:4), and in the foregoing psalm, where the psalmist says, “In whose eyes a vile person is contemned; but he honoreth them that fear the LORD” (Ps 15:4).

Three things are observed of this Antiochus, and yet he is called a vile person. First, he was a great enemy to many sins. Second, when the Jews wrote to him because they feared his wrath (he was a persecutor of the Jews), there were some living in Samaria, Samaritans who were not Jews themselves, who wrote to him to seek his favor. Josephus says they wrote to him in this style: “To Antiochus … Antiochus the mighty god.” They gave him this title of honor. Where he lived he was accounted a great man on earth, and among the Samaritans a mighty god; yet Scripture calls him a vile person. And then there is his name, Epiphanes, which means illustrious or glorious. He had the title of almighty god, and of illustrious and glorious, and yet he was a vile person. So it is wherever God does not see the work of grace.

Second, considering this might give us some hope that a time will come when God will appear for his saints. It is not likely that God will always allow his jewels to be trodden underfoot in the world, that God will always look on those who are the excellent of the earth and see them so abused in the world and made so contemptible as they are. Surely this will not always be so. God has his time to make it manifest to the world that they are the excellent of the earth. They are jewels now, yet jewels lying in the dirt, and so they are despised and scorned. But there is a promise that “the Lord their God shall save them in that day as the flock of his people: for they shall be as the stones of a crown, lifted up as an ensign upon his land” (Zech 9:16). Like the stones of a crown, God will lift them up and make them honorable.

And there is another text well worth observing, for everyone to take notice of God’s intention to make these excellent ones famous on earth: “The governors of Judah shall say in their heart, The inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be my strength in the Lord of hosts their God” (Zech 12:5). There was a time when the governors of Judah despised those who were gracious and godly. But God has promised that the governors of Judah will be convinced of their error and will say in their hearts, “The inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be my strength in the Lord of hosts their God.” Now, through the slanders of the world and the reproaches cast on the saints of God, it often happens that even the governors of Judah despise and scorn them. They say they are a deluded people, factious and turbulent; and so their hearts are against them, they hate and abhor them, and they look on them with an evil eye, as people they call Puritans. Yet a time is promised when the governors of Judah will say in their hearts that the inhabitants of Jerusalem are their strength in the Lord of hosts.

O you inhabitants of Jerusalem! God’s church and people, his sanctified ones (for Jerusalem typified the state of God’s people under the gospel, God’s sanctified ones under the gospel), shall be such that the governors of Judah will say in their hearts, “My strength is in them. I see they are my best subjects; my chief strength is in them, they are of principal use to me, my kingdom is upheld in peace because of them, and the blessing of God is on them. They shall be my strength in the Lord of hosts their God. Now I see that God is their God; God hears their prayers and has done much for them. We are convinced of it.” Oh, this will be a blessed time, when the governors of Judah say so!

Blessed be God that they do say so in any measure, that the governors of Judah say at all of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, of the godly, that their strength is in them, so that they may see those who are the excellent of the earth to be, in any measure, truly the excellent of the earth.

It would be a rueful spectacle, one to draw tears of blood, to see the excellent ones receive the treatment they have received. But now to see those excellent ones countenanced in a public way, especially in public courts of justice, is glorious, when the governors of Judah do it. And we are to pray for this, that it may be seen more and more among us.

To say no more, let us learn to honor those whom God has honored. Since they are excellent ones, and God has put excellency on them, you do the same: look on them as God esteems them. It is observed that in the time of the law God did not require his people to offer lions and eagles in sacrifice, those splendid creatures, but would have lambs and doves offered, humble creatures. So God does not regard the splendid spirits of the world who strut about; but if any are gracious and godly, though they are ever so poor and lowly, like lambs and doves, God honors and respects them. They are a sacrifice to him; the broken heart is a sacrifice to God: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O Lord, thou wilt not despise” (Ps 51:17).

Therefore, when God would lift himself up in glory, he says, “He that dwells in the high and lofty place.” What of him? He looks to “those that are of humble and contrite hearts” (Isa 57:15), and “saveth such as be of a contrite spirit” (Ps 34:18). As if there were no other subject in the world worth looking at, he looks only to them. As a man’s eye is fastened on something before him that he prizes, so God looks on them as if they were the only object worth looking at. Therefore let us look on them with reverence in our hearts; it is fitting that we should honor those whom God honors.

Therefore there is something worth observing in the message of the king of Babylon to Hezekiah. When Hezekiah was sick, God gave him a sign of his recovery: the sun went backward. It was a wondrous honor God put on him, that the sun should go backward. The ambassadors of the king of Babylon came to congratulate Hezekiah after his recovery. But what was their business? Not only to congratulate him on his recovery, but to inquire about the great miracle. So the text says: “the ambassadors of the Prince of Babylon were sent unto him to inquire of the wonder that was done in the land” (2 Chr 32:31). Why did they inquire about this wonder? There were many wonders done, but they were not sent to inquire about the others, only about this one.

It was because they worshiped the sun as their god, and their god had put such an honor on Hezekiah. They perceived the change in the sun, that it went backward, and they inquired into the matter concerning this alteration in the sun; and after inquiry, word came that it was for Hezekiah’s sake. Now because they worshiped the sun as their god, and so understood that their god had put such an honor on Hezekiah, they honored him too. Though Hezekiah was king of the Jews, and they were enemies to one another, Jerusalem and Babylon, yet when God had honored him they sent their congratulations, and on that occasion they showed honor and respect to one another.

That should teach us. If the heathen, when they see their god put honor on anyone, honor those whom their god honors, then when you see or hear that God honors gracious and godly men and women, you do the same. Prize them; let them have a high place in the esteem of your hearts. You have heard today what honor God puts on his saints; therefore learn to honor them. And much might be said to draw the hearts of all people to love the people of God. Something might be said to the people of God: that they should walk as excellent ones and not defile one another. And to others: if they would be among those in this world who are excellent and glorious, it is not the outward things of the world that hang on you, such as clothes and riches, that make you excellent ones in the eye of God, but grace and godliness. By faith the fathers obtained a good report (Heb 11:2).

Some think there is no way to gain esteem except by outward show, great estates, fine clothes and the like. Men think that the way to be accounted more eminent than others is to be rich, to wear fine clothes, to get honors and such things. But these are fading and do not last. So there are many ministers who think they will gain esteem if they are honored before great men and go about in fine array. But you know by experience that a faithful, godly minister, who walks faithfully and conscientiously, gains more esteem in the hearts and consciences, not only of the godly but of those who have enlightened consciences, than a hundred of those others. And they are vexed that people should esteem him so. Why? They set about it in a way meant to get them more esteem, but they are deceived; they look for excellency where it is not. It is not such things, but the work of grace, that prevails with the consciences of men.

When Boniface the martyr was asked whether he might have the sacrament if he drank it from a wooden chalice, he said, “The time was that there were wooden cups and golden priests, but now there are golden cups and wooden priests.” In the primitive times they were very lowly and were content with wooden vessels, but the men were gold in grace and godliness, and so they were highly esteemed. But now they have golden cups, that is, a great deal of show and glory, but they have wooden priests, men with no true excellency in them. “The heart of the wicked is little worth” (Prov 10:20). His estate, his houses and his lands may be worth something, but what is his heart worth? He has nothing in himself to commend him. But the excellency of God’s people lies in that very thing: it is in the soul and heart.

It would be a discouraging thing to any of you if you had a servant with you wherever you went, and all the respect you received was for your servant’s sake. If anyone entertained you in their house, it was not out of respect for you but for your man; they loved your man, and for his sake they entertained you. It would dishearten you to know that you were respected for no good in yourself, but only for your servant’s sake. So it is with the men of the world. They have respect, but what is it for? For their riches, their honor, their fine clothes, their money; and these are all servants beneath them. They are respected for nothing in themselves; they have no spiritual excellency. Especially when they have to deal with God and with men’s consciences, they have no respect at all. But godly men do not have so many servants to gain them respect by outward things. Whatever respect they have from God’s saints and in the consciences of men, they have from an inward excellency. But let this go.

The second point follows: the excellent of the earth, in whom is all my delight.

I see that only a little can be done with it, though it is the point I intended most. What has been said already makes way abundantly into the heart for this: if they are the excellent of the earth, there is cause for us to delight in them.

Observation. That is the point: a gracious heart takes great delight in the saints on earth.

It delights first in their persons, or second in their society and communion with them. Or rather, put it this way: gracious hearts take delight in them severally and jointly.

If they look on any one saint of God, they delight in him; but they have more delight in looking on all the saints together, jointly. So they can say that their souls delight in them; there is a sweet satisfaction taken in them jointly. And that is what I shall speak to at this time: the delight that is to be taken in the saints jointly together. There is delight in the saints because of the sweetness of their society and communion. For this delight of David is to be taken in a large sense: not only in one particular respect, because of the good he saw in their persons, but in regard of all the good he saw in them, and by them in joining with them, taking them all together jointly, all the good that came from them. So he delighted in them. There is a great deal of delight and contentment to be had in the saints of God, especially jointly.

If you look at one alone, sometimes (though in ever so lowly a condition) there is a great deal of delight there. So Dr. Taylor the martyr, whom we read of in the Book of Martyrs, on coming to Bradford, professed that it outweighed all his trouble in prison that he had become acquainted with that angel of God, John Bradford, meaning him in particular. And another professed that he would rather be with Cato (a heathen) in prison, for his moral excellencies, than with Caesar in the Senate in all his pomp. To be shut up with one godly man brings a great deal of delight and contentment. What a great deal of delight is there, then, in their being together, and in that way in which most of their excellencies appear! Such delight there is in them jointly.

First, gracious hearts delight in the saints jointly because the most comforting communion possible is enjoyed with them and in them. For:

(1) Is it not a most delightful thing to see a company of godly people together and behold the resplendent beauty and glory of the graces of God’s Spirit? If there were nothing else, what a delightful thing it is, says the heart! The very sight of good men is pleasing and delightful to those who look on their faces; wisdom makes their faces shine. Seeing the resplendent grace of God in them is very delightful. What is the delight of God but seeing the shining of his glory in his works? And above all when God sees what is the shining of his highest glory, his own grace and holiness: in that God delights most. So when a gracious man sees his own image, the grace God has wrought in him, shining resplendently in others, it is a delightful object to him.

(2) Again, there is a comforting communion with them in regard of the fragrance of grace. The beauty of grace is delightful, but the fragrance, the breathings of grace, are sweet to the heart. Beholding it is delightful to the eye, but the workings of their grace are exceedingly sweet and comforting to the heart. Therefore the church says, “Let my beloved go down into the gardens, among the beds of spices to feed in the gardens, and to gather spices” (Song 6:2). All the churches of God in the world are like the garden of Christ; every particular church in that garden is like a bed of spices; and every particular saint is like the several parts of that bed, and above all the fragrant smell is very sweet.

It is said of Alexander that his very body was of such a constitution that wherever he went a sweet savor came from it. Certainly, where there is even one of God’s children, sweetness comes from him; but where there is a company of them together, a wonderful, unspeakable sweetness comes from them. It is exceedingly comforting to a gracious heart to be among them.

(3) Again, their communion together is comforting and delightful because of its nearness, there being no communion under heaven in which there is such nearness of one to another as that of the saints. Observe this, so that you may see how near they come together and are made one, and so are exceedingly delightful to one another: the more spiritual anything is, the more it is united; the more bodily it is, the less union. A heap of stones is not united in the way the many beams of the sun are; a thousand of them are united in one point, because they are of a spiritual nature. So it is with the spirits of men. The more carnal any man or any society is, the less union there is. Therefore the reason the people of God are many times divided and not united is that they are carnal. “Are ye not carnal?” says the apostle, when there were divisions among them (1 Cor 3:3). If you were spiritual, you would be more united to one another; but carnal men are carnally minded.

It is with spiritual society, in regard of spiritual union, as it is with the society of wickedness. There is bodily, fleshly wickedness, and there is spiritual wickedness. Now those who join together in gross bodily wickedness are not so closely united as those who join in spiritual wickedness. Companions of drunkards or of whoremongers take delight in one another and join in wickedness, but it is bodily, and therefore they soon fall out and fly in one another’s faces. But those who join in spiritual wickedness, such as scheming, ambitious men, men who join in mischief in a spiritual way, keep mightily close, and you cannot easily break their bond of union. They will suffer much before they will betray one another and break union with one another, because their union is in a way of spiritual wickedness. So, on the contrary, when any are united in the spirit of holiness, they are mightily united; there is no union under heaven like that.

We read in Exodus 26 of the curtains of the tabernacle. Some of them were made of purple and scarlet and fine linen, and the clasps that held them together were of pure gold. Others were of goats’ hair, and their clasps were of brass. This may set out the different condition of men in the church. There are some in the church who are truly gracious and godly, who excel in grace, and they are united by clasps of gold; their union is mightily strong and glorious in their hearts. There are others in the church, outward professors of religion who are carnal, who are goats’ hair, goats in the church. They maintain a union too, but it is only brass; the ground and bottom of their union is but mean. It is not such a golden union as the union of the hearts of God’s people. There are no people under heaven so united as they are.

It is true that through their corruption there is a great deal of dissension among them, as there is corruption in the best; but that is only so far as they are carnal. The more spiritual they grow, the nearer their union with one another and the more entire their love. “My beloved is one,” says Christ to his church, “she is the choice of one of her that bare her, and the daughters saw her and blessed her” (Song 6:9). There is a oneness and an entireness in the hearts of the saints, and this makes them blessed by those who behold them, and makes their communion very delightful.

That is the first particular: their communion is the most delightful of all communions. Therefore David says that all his delight is in them, taking them together.

But then in the second place, a gracious heart must surely delight in the saints taken jointly, because when they are together, there God is worshiped. The most solemn worship God has comes from the saints joined together. As I told you before, the glory that God has in the world comes from them all; but the solemnity of God’s worship can come only from them jointly together. Therefore the great delight of a gracious heart is to be with the saints when they are jointly together, because there the name of God is honored, and they worship God in a solemn way; God is honored among them.

Christ himself greatly delights in the saints when they are joined together in the duties of holy worship. Just compare two texts of Scripture, which will both make us love the saints and delight in joint communion with them: compare Psalm 22:22 with Hebrews 2:12. The psalm is a prophecy of Christ. Interpreters generally all take it this way, and it appears from the psalm that Christ especially is meant. The text says, “I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee.” It is Christ’s promise to declare his Father’s name to his church and people, and in the midst of the congregation he shall praise God. Mark it: in Hebrews the apostle applies it to the saints joined together, saying, “I will declare the name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee.” This was after Christ had been in the flesh, and yet the apostle applies it to the church: “in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee.”

From this they gather that Christ delights to be with his people when they are jointly together, because of the solemn worship of God that they offer to God; and he joins with them in it as a delightful work. As they are together to praise God, Christ is praising him; as they worship, Christ is worshiping. Now every saint of God has the Spirit of Christ in him, and so he delights in the society of the saints on this ground, because there God is worshiped and is solemnly praised among them. If there is any place in the world where God has solemn worship, it cannot but grieve a gracious heart that he is not with them. His heart is with them; he delights to be with them, especially in such a work as that, and it grieves him that he cannot be there.

It is a note of an interpreter I have met with on Isaiah 6. Where the angels cry, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord of hosts,” the prophet cries, “Woe unto me, for I am undone…” This, the interpreter says, was on this ground: because he could not join with those blessed creatures and so magnify and praise and worship God. Because through his sinfulness he was not able to join with them, he cries, “Woe is me, I am undone.” So when any gracious heart only hears that there is a people in the world who are precious ones, the excellent on earth, who join in the worship of God, honor God in his own way, and enjoy communion with God, and I cannot join with them, then woe is me that there should be any obstacle or hindrance, so that I cannot come and join with them! For my heart is there; my delight is in the saints when they are jointly together, because God’s solemn worship is there.

But third, my delight is in the saints jointly because of the wonderful delight God has in them. A gracious heart must surely delight in them, because God himself takes so much delight in them, but especially when they are jointly together. There are special expressions in Scripture of God’s taking delight in the saints jointly, as in Zephaniah: “The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty: he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy: he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing” (Zeph 3:17). What expressions are here of God’s delight in his people! “The Lord thy God will rejoice, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will love, he will rest in his love, and joy, and joy over thee with singing.” And in Isaiah you shall find that the church is called Hephzibah, God’s delight: “Thou shalt no more be termed, Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed, Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land, Beulah: for the Lord delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married” (Isa 62:4). It is a wondrous delight that God has in his saints.

There are wonderful expressions in Scripture to manifest God’s delight, even to the point of wonder, especially in the church jointly together. They are such expressions as we could never have thought of or invented. For instance, he calls his people his portion, “his pleasant portion,” “for the Lord’s portion is his people: Jacob is the lot of his inheritance” (Deut 32:9). God calls them his inheritance, “the lot of his inheritance.” He calls them “the dearly beloved of his soul” (Jer 12:7). He calls them his peculiar treasure: “Now therefore if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people” (Exod 19:5). God has treasures in the world, the creatures, which are called “the good treasures of the Lord” (Deut 28); but his people are called his peculiar treasure. There is something special and particular in it. There is another kind of excellency in the people of God’s delight than in all other creatures: the creatures are his common treasure, but his people are his peculiar treasure.

God calls them his glory: “I will glorify the house of my glory, I will place salvation in Zion for my glory” (Isa 60:7; Isa 46:13). He calls them “the crown of his glory” (Isa 62:3). He calls them the throne of his glory: “Thou shalt be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God” (Isa 62:3). He does so in several places that I cannot stay on: his glory, the house of his glory, the crown of his glory, the throne of his glory. He calls them the royal diadem; he calls them his ornament, an ornament set in majesty and glory. These are the expressions of God’s delight in his people, and I might name more. Therefore, if God delights in them and finds satisfaction in them, much more should we.

Christ says of his church, “O my sister, my spouse, my heart is ravished with thee” (Song 4:9). It is a strange expression, that Christ himself should be ravished with his people. It would be a fitting expression for the church to have said to Christ; but for Christ to say it to the church is wonderful. And again, “My love, my dove, my undefiled one” (Song 5:2), and that at the very time when the church was in a state of careless complacency. That Christ should call her his love, his dove, his undefiled: all this is to express the abundance of his delight in his people. Well, if God has such delight in them, much more should the saints.

Again, if we consider further the presence of God among his people, it is another argument why the saints of God should take so much delight in other saints, especially when they are joined together: because God is present there. “The Lord is here” is the name of all their assemblies. “The Lord dwells, and hath his tabernacle in Zion” (Ps 9:11). It is a strange expression concerning the presence of God, that he makes his people his habitation. As the people of God call God their habitation (Ps 90), so God calls his church his habitation: “God dwells in Zion.” Would you not delight to keep house with God? Where God’s people are, God keeps house; and we should long to have it as our own house, and not come as strangers.

A man may come into a family as a stranger, take a bite, and be refreshed; but it is not his house. But when God’s people go to others of the saints, they see God there, and they have that house for their own house. It is called, as I told you, “the house of his glory,” the house God desires to dwell in. He has a mighty love for that house, to dwell among his people. In Psalm 132 there are many great and excellent expressions: “For the Lord hath chosen Zion, he hath desired it for his habitation” (Ps 132:13-14). God desires Zion. And what is Zion but his saints and people joined together? Zion was a type of the church, so now all the saints of God together are Zion. Now God has a desire for this habitation. God dwells in the high and holy place; the highest heaven is God’s habitation. Yet though God has such a house in heaven, he is not, as it were, content with that house; he desires another house. He has a desire for Zion to be his habitation, the house where his honor dwells.

You know a prince may have some houses of lesser regard; when he goes off for his sport, he may have a mean house to lodge in for a while. But his palace, where he shows his majesty and honor, is more glorious. So the people of God, the church, is called the house of God’s honor. It is not a mean house, but a house of honor.

Further, it is the house he means to dwell in forever, he loves it so well. It is as though he says: This is my house; I will dwell in it forever. I am so well pleased with it that I will rest in it forever. Surely we have cause to rest our hearts in God’s people, when God finds rest there, and that forever.

It may be that some of you are acquainted with the people of God for a time and at first delight in them; but your hearts being carnal, you soon grow weary of them. It is not so with God. He delights in his people and rests there, and rests there forever.

Question. But you will say, “How is God present with his saints more than in other places? Why is God said to dwell among his people, his saints?”

Answer. I answer that in two respects God is said to dwell among his people in a special manner.

1. Because he makes himself known to his people more than to all the world besides. None know the counsel and mind of God as his saints do. “God is known in Judah” (Ps 76:1). There God opens himself: “In his temple every man speaks of his glory” (Ps 29:9).

2. Because God communicates himself most among his people. God is said to be in heaven. Why, but because he manifests his glory there more than in other places? Therefore heaven is his habitation. If that is his habitation where he manifests himself more, then his people are his habitation, because he manifests himself most there. And second, heaven is the place of God’s residence because he communicates himself most there; then God’s people are his residence too, for he communicates himself there. And he communicates himself to them in a special manner in four respects: he communicates more choice mercies to his people; he communicates mercies more fully; he communicates mercies more powerfully; and he communicates them more universally than to others.

(1) He communicates goodness among his people and saints more choicely: the more choice mercies of God. There is a remarkable place in the Psalms: “The Lord that made heaven and earth bless thee out of Zion” (Ps 134:3). He does not say, The Lord who made heaven and earth bless you out of heaven or out of earth, but out of Zion, as noting that the choice mercies God has to communicate come out of Zion, among his people joined together in the way of worship. Would you desire that God should bless you with the chief mercies he has? Look upon God as blessing out of Zion. Out of Zion God communicates his choicest mercies. Therefore it concerns everyone to be in Zion, so that they may have God bless them out of Zion. There indeed runs the sweetest of God’s mercies, in Zion.

(2) God communicates his mercies more fully among his people than in any other way: “How excellent is thy loving kindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings. They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures” (Ps 36:7-8). They shall be abundantly satisfied. How? Not with the creatures, but with “the fatness of thy house”; nor only with what you communicate to them when they are alone. God has abundance of mercies for his saints when they are alone; but when they are among the saints jointly together, then they shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of his house, and he shall make them drink of his rivers of pleasures. While they are alone in corners, they may have many sweet drops of pleasure from God; but when they are joined with the saints, rivers of pleasure and delight come to their hearts. Therefore there is great delight to be had in the saints of God when they are joined together.

(3) He communicates them more powerfully. Mark this: “As the dew of Hermon, and the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the Lord commanded a blessing, even life for evermore” (Ps 133:3). There was blessing, and the Lord commanded it. A powerful work of God’s grace went upon the hearts of the people there when they were joined together in Zion; there God commanded the blessing. If you would have God speak powerfully to command a blessing on your souls, you must be among his people; you must join in holy fellowship with his people. There God commands it.

(4) All the goodness of God is communicated more universally among his people. Therefore the church is called “the perfection of beauty” (Ps 50), which some translate “the universality of excellence and beauty.” There is a universality of everything among the church and people of God. And in another place: “All my springs are in thee” (Ps 87), speaking of joining with the people of God. That is: all my springs of truth that are revealed to me, all the springs of comfort communicated to my soul, all the springs of grace I have to quicken me, are all in you; in joint society and communion with God’s people I find all. Thus we see the presence of God among his people in regard of his communicating himself to them, and therefore what great cause there is to rejoice and delight in the saints jointly together.

Again, further, there is abundant cause to delight in them joined together because of their admirable privileges as they are joined together. They have privileges when they are alone; but as they are joined, they have committed to them “the oracles of God” (Rom 3:2), all the ordinances by which God conveys himself. To them is committed the seal of the covenant; you cannot have the seal of the covenant singly, but only joined with the people of God, closing with them. To them is committed the very power of Jesus Christ. As the apostle says, when you are gathered together, it is with the power of Jesus Christ (1 Cor 5:4), a glorious privilege. Yes, further, take this one thing: they are heirs to all the promises God ever made to the church from the beginning of the world. There is no society of saints that joins in Christian fellowship but they are such heirs. See a remarkable place for that: “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper, and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn: this is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord” (Isa 54:17). The promise God made to the churches before, this is their heritage.

And understand this one thing now, which is of great use: all that is said in Scripture concerning God’s delight to be among his people and in Zion was only to typify the excellent condition of God’s church in the times of the gospel. Most of the expressions of God’s delight among his people come from the time of the law; but know that all those expressions were mere types, and there is a great deal more in the antitype than in the type. Therefore the saints of God joined together under the gospel have far more of the glory of God, of the presence of God, and of privileges than Zion had or Jerusalem could have, because that was only a type of their happy condition in the time of the gospel.

Observation. It is a remarkable place we have in Hebrews, where it is said concerning the state of the church that “the law had but a shadow of good things to come,” and not the very image of the things (Heb 10:1). It was not so much as an image. Observe: a shadow is not so much as an image, and an image is not so much as the thing itself; but that was not an image, but a shadow. When a painter makes a likeness, he first draws the dark shadow with a piece of charcoal, and there is a great deal of difference in beauty between that shadow and the finished image. Just so much difference there is between all the glory of God in the church in the time of the law and the glory of God that is among his people in the time of the gospel.

We may safely say there is the same difference between God’s manifesting himself to his people then and now as between a dark shadow drawn with charcoal and an image. But mark: that was only a shadow of the image, and what we have now is only an image. As there is not so much in a shadow as in the image, so there is not so much in the image as in the thing itself. The presence of God, and all his goodness to his people, and his glory to his people now, is only an image compared with what shall be. There shall be another presence of God, another communication and revelation of God hereafter, of another kind than there is now. All that we have now is only an image of what shall be; all that was in the law was only a shadow of that image. Therefore we should have a great deal of delight in the saints.

Much might be said further for delighting in them now, because they are the ones we shall live with forever in heaven hereafter. Look at the saints, especially together: they are those with whom we shall live eternally in heaven, and therefore they are those we should delight in. They are those with whom we shall be joined forever in everlasting hallelujahs before him who sits upon the throne, and the Lamb. Look upon any saint, however lowly he is in gifts and abilities: you and he shall forever rejoice in the presence of God in glory.

Yes, to be among God’s people is heaven itself. They are not only those we shall be with in heaven; it is heaven. “Behold,” says the Lord, “I create a new heaven and a new earth” (Isa 65:17). The state of the church is called heaven. For what is there in heaven that is not here? I might show the resemblance of heaven, and that what is in heaven is here among us. And therefore, if heaven is a place to be delighted in, so are the saints.

Therefore have a high esteem of the saints. Close with them, and come into as near communion with them as is possible. If they are so excellent and so much to be delighted in, then especially when they are joined together, labor, all of you, to come in and join with the saints in the nearest union possible, in that fellowship in which you may, as near as can be, have fellowship with them only, especially with those who have the appearance of being such.

The mixture in our communion greatly hinders our delight. Throw dirt into the fire and it will damp it; so the mixture of ungodly ones, their spots and blemishes, hinders the delight of God’s people in one another. But now, to come among those your hearts may close with, of whom you have comfortable evidence that they are not mere talkers about religion and loose professors of it, but that the image of God is on them, oh, what closing of hearts there is with them, and what admirable good we might enjoy in their communion and society! Therefore know that it is one of the greatest blessings you are capable of in this world to have the nearest communion with the saints, next to your immediate communion with God himself. It is something you should greatly esteem, and your hearts should work after it.

Mark that text, Psalm 36, and what is said there of our joining with the people of God: “How excellent is thy loving kindness!” Where does the excellence appear? “They shall be satisfied with the fatness of thy house.” It is a fruit of the excellence of the loving kindness of God for people to be of God’s house and to partake of its fatness. To have abundance of God’s creatures, and to have an estate and friends, is a fruit of God’s kindness; but to join with God’s people in a way of worship and in the nearest union is a fruit of the excellent loving kindness of God, to the point of wonder. “How excellent is thy loving kindness!” It was so excellent that he was not able to express its excellence.

Scripture makes it the proper inheritance even of the elect of God. To enjoy communion with the people of God, in the type, is a fruit of the very inheritance of the elect of God, so that it is set against all the vanities of the world. Mark what God says by Isaiah: “Vanity shall take them away, but he that putteth his trust in me shall possess the land, and shall inherit the holy mountain, and shall say, Cast ye up, cast ye up, prepare the way, take up the stumbling block out of the way of my people. For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy, I dwell in the high and holy place; with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones” (Isa 57:13-15).

Here is a firm inheritance indeed: the saints shall possess the holy mountain. God dwells on high, in the highest heavens, and the saints who are of a contrite and humble spirit dwell with him. Do you not perceive a joyful revolution for the saints? They shall dwell with God himself in eternity. Job says that he shall see his Redeemer with these very eyes. Though for a while these eyes are, as it were, closed up in darkness, yet at last they shall be glorified. Yes, more: every part of the bodies of the saints shall be glorified. Christ shall make our vile bodies like his glorious body, says St. Paul. There is no question but that his body is glorified throughout; there cannot be the least shade of darkness in it, for he is the Sun of righteousness. And so shall all the just be: they shall shine as the sun.

Every glorified saint shall shine by reflection upon one another, not only of their minds but of their visible bodies; by a mutual exchange of their beams, every one shall shine in every one. The glory of the soul shall pour itself into the body and overflow to it. St. Paul in effect says as much: it is sown a natural body, it rises a spiritual body. As the soul here is swallowed up by the body, so the body shall, as it were, be swallowed up by the soul. In a word, both soul and body shall be turned into glory, and the glory shall be “to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent, in whom is all my delight” (Ps 16:3).

Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not. (Jer 33:3)

The prophet Jeremiah, in this and the preceding chapter, lays down various eminent mercies that God intends for the good of his elect people, notwithstanding their provoking him by their repeated relapses and many backslidings. And though their enemies also threatened them with utter desolation, that they should be desolate “without man, and without inhabitant, and without beast,” yet “the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the voice of them that shall say, Praise the LORD of hosts, for the Lord is good, for his mercy endureth for ever” (Jer 33:10-11): this voice shall belong to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

But by what means shall these mercies be bestowed on them? In this text he tells them: wherever they are afflicted, or in any great distress, “Call unto me, and I will answer thee.” As Christ in the Gospel, when he was in the synagogue and the book of the prophet Isaiah was delivered to him, read a part of it, then closed the book and began his sermon to the people, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears” (Luke 4:21), so I may say of this text that we have read to you out of this prophecy:

Behold, this day the Lord has fulfilled this word of his in our ears, before our eyes. And that is why we are all met here before the Lord this day: that we may bear witness to this good word and promise of his, “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.” In the last two verses of this chapter, the Lord promises to establish a covenant with David, to raise up deliverance for the seed of Jacob, and to cause them to return out of their captivities; and he will have mercy on them.

What he says to his people, he speaks plainly and openly: “I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth” (Isa 45:19). The heathen gods spoke darkly and ambiguously to their worshipers, so that they did not know what to make of their words. But I have not done so with you, says God. They would have you worship them, but when you have done so, they cannot help you. It is not so with me. “Thus saith the Lord, if my covenant be not with day and night, and if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth, then will I cast away the seed of Jacob” (Jer 33:25-26), that is, the church of God, the saints.

You will say, Why are the people of God called the seed of Jacob, rather than the seed of Abraham or the seed of Isaac? Why the seed of Jacob? The reasons may be these two. First, because all Jacob’s posterity were the church of God. All Jacob’s children, the patriarchs, were every one of them of the church. All who came from Abraham were not so; Ishmael was not. All who came from Isaac were not so; Esau was not. But all Jacob’s children were. Therefore, when he speaks of the people of God, of the church that is to continue to the end of the world, they are said here to be the seed of Jacob, rather than the seed of Abraham or of Isaac.

Then, second, he says the seed of Jacob because the Lord is speaking here of the blessing of his seed, namely, in the hearing of their prayers: “Call unto me, and I will answer thee.” Now Jacob was the most eminent in prayer. No doubt Abraham and Isaac were mighty with God in prayer too, yet the Scripture does not put such eminence on either Abraham or Isaac for prayer as it puts on Jacob. You have here the most eminent expression for prayer that was ever spoken of any man; there was never the like: “And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed” (Gen 32:28). Oh, how eminent he was in prayer! Therefore it is said the seed of Jacob, rather than of Abraham or Isaac.

But you will say, Then they should rather have been called the seed of Israel, for his name Israel was given him upon his prevailing with God.

We must not be too inquisitive. These names are used interchangeably. But this is one reason that is given, and it seems to have probability in it.

In Scripture, when God speaks of the church in a low condition, he puts the name of Jacob on them rather than Israel: “Fear not, thou worm Jacob,” and it follows, “ye men of Israel” (Isa 41:14). By this name rather than Israel he reminds them of their low condition: “Fear not, thou worm Jacob.” For you know what a low condition and what straits Jacob was in before his name was changed. So here, the Lord, speaking of his church’s deliverance out of distress, calls them the seed of Jacob, so that they might see how they were brought out of their straits by their prayers, as Jacob was brought out of his straits by prayer. When he was Jacob, before he was Israel, he was in great straits; so shall the church be until they seek God. “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”

That is, first: I required it of them, and my requiring prevailed with them. I did not exhort them to it, or require it, only to have my words fall to the ground while they did not call on me; what I required of them was brought about in them. When God speaks to a people and they do not do what he requires, his word may seem to be slighted, as if there were no power in his words to prevail. But God says, “Call unto me, and I will answer thee”; that is, I did not call on my people to call on me while they went their own way; what I spoke to them prevailed with them and in them, and they did what I required. It is a blessed thing when we do what the Lord requires of us. That is the first observation.

Second, “Call unto me, and I will answer thee”: that is, I did not only command, but I also promised to answer them. When they called on me in a right manner, by the way and means I directed them, I promised to answer their desires whenever they called on me.

I take it that the principal scope of the Holy Spirit is what the words plainly present to our view: that we must call on God before he will hear and answer our requests. God requires his people to call on him, and he is pleased to be found by them, and not only to answer them, but to do abundantly for them.

So then this point arises plainly out of the words: When God requires a people to call on him, he will make good to them that he will answer them.

Before I open this point, I will give you a Scripture or two, one in the Old Testament and another in the New. “For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him for?” (Deut 4:7). Here is a proof from experience of the fruit of calling on God. It is spoken to show the honor of God’s people, the privilege of the seed of Jacob, and the eminent condition they were in. God is near them in all things they call on him for; therefore they are not required to seek God in vain.

So also: “And all things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive” (Matt 21:22). A very strange expression! There might seem to be a needless repetition here. One would think it would have been broad enough to say, “Whatsoever ye shall ask, ye shall receive”; but here it is “all things whatsoever.” We would not speak so in ordinary language: “I will give you all things whatsoever.” Yet perhaps something is intended by it, and I believe it is. “And all things”: here is the general promise, that all things you ask you shall receive. And “whatsoever” may refer to particulars: every particular thing you ask you shall receive.

You will say that anyone who understands reason or logic knows that particulars are included in the general. But there is this illogical reasoning in unbelief: though we agree to the premises in general, yet when we come to particulars, we think they will not be made good to us. I suppose you find your unbelieving hearts so irrational that, though they believe the general promise, yet when it comes to particulars, even when you cannot help admitting that this particular is included in the general, your hearts still will not come up to it. Therefore our Savior says not only “all things” in general, but also “whatsoever” in particular.

So also: “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (Jas 5:16). There is only one word in the original, the working prayer; but it is translated by two, “effectual, fervent.” Surely, then, prayer and seeking God is the ordinance he has appointed for turning about the great affairs of the world. This is the engine that does it, working from within. There are indeed a great many outward wheels in use, but the spring of all is within: prayer turns everything about. God never made use of any created power so much as of this. He never did such great things by any created power as by the ordinance of prayer. The Word is appointed for the converting of souls, but a great part of the blessing of the Word depends on prayer.

In opening this point I will, first, give you some evidences of it; second, show you what great things prayer will do; third, show wherein its efficacy and power lie; fourth, take up the objections of troubled, unbelieving spirits against it; and then come to apply it all.

First, the evidences. The first evidence of it is the many famous records in Scripture of the noble and glorious exploits of prayer. If any of you should come to me and ask, as that king asked the prophet’s servant, “What great things hath thy master done?” (2 Kgs 8:4), so what great things prayer has done in the world, truly, we might spend hours and days returning you an answer, since a great part of Holy Scripture is spent on this very subject. And it is a very good exercise for you in the night, when you cannot sleep, or at other times when you are troubled, to do as that king did (Esth 6:1) and call for the book of the records of prayer. You who read the Scriptures, mark what you read. The word of God will tell you how prayer has stopped the sun in the sky, opened heaven and shut it again, raised from death to life, opened the prison doors, and what not!

Second, all God’s people are able to tell you great stories of what they have gotten by prayer. “This poor man cried,” says David of himself, “and the Lord heard him” (Ps 34:6). Who is there who cannot tell histories of God’s gracious dealings with him when he called on him? To be sure, our nation has many things to say along these lines, and every particular godly soul has many things to say. They would not lose their income from prayer for all the world.

Third, surely it is not in vain to call on God, for there was never any soul who would leave off seeking him; he would continue seeking him as long as he lived; he would seek his face evermore. If he had had no answer, he would have left off. When we see a bee stick to a flower and refuse to be driven off, or, if she is driven off, come back again, we certainly conclude that she finds honey there. So all the saints of God who have ever sought God truly would never be beaten off from this way.

Let the world do what it will: let it persecute them, set spies to watch them in their meetings for prayer, punish and imprison them; let all the malice and rage of men be against them. Yet it cannot hinder them, either from praying in their private rooms or from enjoying the benefit of the communion of saints in prayer. Daniel would rather lose his life than be kept from his prayers, even for a single day. Pray he would, and that openly, yes, three times a day, as he was accustomed to do; he would not leave off even once. He stuck to prayer, finding honey and sweetness in it. Oh, how unlike Daniel we are! Though performing this duty was exceedingly dangerous for Daniel, yet he would not be deterred from it; but every light trifle draws our hearts away.

It is not in vain even for wicked men to call on God, though they are not able to seek God as they ought. “The prayer of the wicked is abominable,” says Solomon (Prov 15:8). That is not to be understood of the prayer of every man who is unregenerate; wickedness is not to be taken in that sense in that place. For we know that God has regarded the prayers of unregenerate men. The prayers and fasting of Nineveh were regarded by God; the praying and fasting of Ahab were regarded by God. God has granted the wicked some mercies; he has looked on them as his creatures. Though God sees enough in their prayers to cast them off, yet God has shown his regard for them. Therefore, if it is not in vain for the wicked to call on the Lord, much less is it in vain for the seed of Jacob, the elect of God, to call on him.

Yes, the Lord hears the cry of the very ravens and the beasts (Ps 147:9; Ps 104:21, 27-28). That is why the people of Nineveh would have the beasts eat nothing, so that they might cry to God (Jonah 3:7-8). Surely, if the brute beasts and the birds are heard when they cry, it is good for the people of God to call on him.

There is very great reason why we should call on God, because the people of God who have been wise, who have conversed with God and have known much of the mind of God, have given up themselves and all their strength to the duty of prayer. Now it would be a weak and idle thing for anyone to give up his strength and all his might to something from which, in reason, we could expect nothing, and by which no great thing is to be obtained. It is said of Jehoshaphat that “he feared, and set himself to seek the Lord” (2 Chr 20:3). It is also translated “he set his face”: he gave himself up fully to seek the Lord. Those who give themselves up wholly to seek God know what they are doing.

Indeed, carnal hearts condemn the people of God because they see them so earnest in things that carnal hearts think frivolous. For it argues weakness in any man to give himself with all his strength to things that are vanity and have no strength in them. So, because carnal men look on the way of religion as a thing that serves no end, they think it foolish for men to be so earnest as to give up their strength and their whole souls for it. But the saints of God know what they are doing when they give themselves up to seek the Lord: they know that if they call on him, he will answer them.

Again, this is an evidence that there is much advantage in prayer: wise and holy men have so prized the prayers of the saints and set such a high value on them. Mark the expression of the apostle, writing to the saints for their prayers: “Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that you strive together in prayer with me in your hearts to God for me” (Rom 15:30). The apostle Paul, so great a man, and one who had a mighty spirit in prayer, writing to private Christians in the church of Rome, begs them for the Lord’s sake and for the love of the Spirit to strive in prayer for him. He knew there was much to be had this way.

Yes, further, God is “found of them that sought him not” (Isa 65:1); then surely the people of God who call on him shall receive an answer from him.

Yes, further still: when God intends to show no mercy, he gives his people a strict charge not to pray, or he shuts up their hearts so that they are not able to pray. This is an argument that prayer prevails; for when God will not show mercy, he would not have such a precious thing lost and spent to no purpose.

Lastly, it is not in vain, because if it were, a praying heart would not always be a mercy from God; but it certainly is. Therefore, though perhaps you cannot find the thing granted that you pray for, yet know that to have a continual praying heart is a great mercy from God. And those who are spiritual often prize the continuance of a praying heart more than the granting of the thing they pray for. All these put together are full evidences that it is not in vain to call on the Lord.

There are many other evidences, which I pass by on purpose, so that I may have as much time as possible for application.

Second, what prayer does. But now, wherein does it appear that it is not in vain to seek the Lord? What does prayer do?

First, it would not be in vain to seek God if there were nothing else in prayer but the right exercise of the faculties of our souls and of our graces; this alone would be worth our time. The graces of our souls must be exercised about something, and prayer serves for the exercise of all the graces.

Second, it would not be in vain if it were nothing but the performance of our duty as creatures to God. There are many people who are weary of prayer because they do not get from it what they expect. But know that there are two arguments for prayer: the performance of duty and the obtaining of mercy. If there were only the former, that alone should suffice to keep you praying as long as you live.

Third, it would not be in vain if it were nothing but the rendering of the homage and worship that we owe to God. Prayer is not only a duty, but a great part of the worship God has in the world. While we are worshiping God, it is worth the time.

Again, it would not be in vain if there were nothing in it but this: that we come and show what side we are on, that we join and side with God against his adversaries and for his people. But these are not the things intended here.

Further, it is not in vain, because there was never a faithful prayer made but God accepts it in heaven. There was never one of the seed of Jacob who put up a faithful petition to God but God took it in his hand and read it. When you come with a petition, a king or any superior may refuse to take it; but God never refuses to take any petition from a faithful soul. Therefore the psalmist says, “The Lord hath heard my supplication, the Lord will receive my prayer” (Ps 6:9). He will take it, and look at it, and read it. And not only so, but he will also accept it and take pleasure in it. A prince may take a petition and look at it, and afterward frown and show anger in his face; but God does not do so with the prayers of his people: “The prayer of the upright is his delight” (Prov 15:8). He never reads a petition his people present to him but with a smiling face. If it is a faithful petition, he accepts it from them and receives it graciously.

Luther has an expression, speaking of the prayer of a contrite heart: “The least sigh of a contrite heart so fills heaven with noise, that there is no noise of anything in heaven or earth heard at that time, but only the noise of prayer.” Certainly a faithful prayer takes the heart of God very much. Yes, every faithful prayer is recorded in heaven. You keep your letters on file, so that you may readily find them when you have occasion to look at such and such a letter sent from such and such a country. So God has his file in heaven, where all faithful prayers are kept on record. As princes have their record offices, where the transactions between one state and another are kept, so the Lord has his prayer office, where he keeps all the prayers of his saints that were ever put up to him.

“Another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer, and there was given him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints” (Rev 8:3). Where were those prayers of all the saints, that he must take a censer and offer incense with them? God had them recorded with him, and now they were to be offered to him. And see what great things follow upon the offering of the prayers of the saints: “The smoke of the incense which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand. And the angel took the censer… and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake” (Rev 8:4-5). These things followed upon the prayers of the saints.

This signified the time when all should come into remembrance before the Lord, as if an angel were offering them; yes, Christ, the Angel of the covenant, has a time to take the prayers presented long ago and to offer them to God with his own incense. They are all recorded in heaven; therefore they are not in vain. When a petition is taken and put on record, the petitioner does not petition in vain; his petition is not thrown out. God takes all the petitions of the saints and records them; they are all filed away in heaven.

Yet further, there is no faithful petition but God writes his “Let it be done” at the bottom of it the instant it is put up to him. A decree for mercy is issued in heaven at the very instant the petition is put up. In this matter God does not deal with us as men do who are counted very gracious if they are pleased to tell us they will consider our petition. No, your petition is granted at once. When time is taken to consider a petitioner’s petition, he trembles and shakes for fear it will not be granted; but the petitions of the saints of God are granted at once.

When Daniel had been seeking God at the time of the evening sacrifice, an angel came to him and told him that at the beginning of his prayer there was a decree to grant it, and that he was sent to him at the beginning of his prayer (Dan 9:23). So also: “When I cry unto thee, then shall mine enemies turn back: this I know, for God is for me” (Ps 56:9). Did not David cry often, and yet his enemies did not turn their backs when he cried? He cried often when his enemies prevailed; yet he says, “When I cried then mine enemies turned back,” and “this I know.” Why? “For God is for me.” The meaning must be this: at the instant he cried, there was a decree in heaven; the thing was done. He looked on it as done, as certainly as if he had seen it with his eyes.

This is the reason why the saints, after they have prayed, fall to praising and blessing God, though the thing is not yet actually done. We have a notable example in Jehoshaphat, of whom we read that, being in great fear, he “set himself to seek the Lord, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah” (2 Chr 20:3). He did not seek God slightly, but “set himself to seek the Lord.” And what his prayer was you may see in 2 Chronicles 20:6-12: “And Jehoshaphat said, O Lord God of our fathers, art not thou God in heaven, and rulest over all kingdoms?” Mark how he pleads with God for the covenant he had made, speaking of the sanctuary they had built for his name’s sake (2 Chr 20:8): “If when evil cometh upon us, as the sword, judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we stand before this house, and in thy presence, (for thy name is in this house) and cry unto thee in our affliction, then thou wilt hear and help” (2 Chr 20:9).

He urges the promise made to Solomon at the dedication of the temple. For that prayer of faith which Solomon made, and which God accepted, has the strength of a promise in it. “O our God,” he says, “wilt thou not judge them? for we have no might against this great company that cometh against us, neither know we what to do, but our eyes are upon thee” (2 Chr 20:12). Though he confessed that his enemies were so many that he did not know what to do, and that they had no might to resist them, yet after his prayer was done, and before the battle began, when he had consulted with the people, he appointed singers to the Lord who should praise the beauty of holiness as they went out before the army, and say, “Praise the Lord, for his mercy endureth for ever” (2 Chr 20:21).

Mark: he had not yet gotten the victory; the battle was not yet fought. Yet as soon as he had ended his prayer, he praised the Lord, “for his mercy endureth for ever.” He reckoned the thing as done: it was decreed in heaven. Therefore surely the people of God are answered when they call on him.

More than that, it is not only decreed, but before long God will satisfy his people and fill their longing souls with goodness (Ps 107:9). A time will come when they will say that their prayers are heard and that they have enough. Yes, the Lord sometimes gives more than his people mention in their prayers. They ask for temporal blessings, and he bestows spiritual ones; indeed, he gives them himself, and that is all in all. Surely, then, the prayers of the saints are heard and answered.

Third, wherein its power lies. But where does the power of prayer lie? What makes prayer so powerful with God?

One thing is that God delights in mercy and in communicating himself to the children of men. He takes more pleasure in doing good than anyone can take in seeking it, or even in enjoying it from him. Our hearts can never be set as strongly on seeking any mercy from God as he is set on communicating mercy to us. “Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? he retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy” (Mic 7:18).

Another thing that makes prayer so effective is God’s covenant and promise to his people. It was the saying of Archimedes, “Give me a place to set my engine in, and I will shake the whole earth.” Let prayer have a sure foundation to set its foot on, and it will do mighty things. Now the promises are the foundation of prayer, and we have a great abundance of them. In Numbers 23, when Balaam was brought to curse the people, you will find an abundance of promises to the saints of God. But in Deuteronomy 33 there are admirable promises: “There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rideth upon the heaven in thy help, and on the sky in his excellency. The eternal God is his refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms: and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee, and shall say, Destroy them. Israel then shall dwell in safety alone, the fountain of Jacob shall be upon a land of corn and wine, also his heavens shall drop down dew. Happy art thou O Israel, who is like unto thee, O people saved by the Lord, the shield of thy help, and who is that sword of thy excellency, and thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee, and thou shalt tread upon their high places.”

Here are promises to the saints of God. They will have all things that are good, and God will show himself, especially against his enemies. There must be a mighty power in such a plea when there are such large promises. So too, in the fourteenth chapter of the book of Isaiah there are various promises for God’s people: “For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel and set them in their own land, and the stranger shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob, and the people shall take them and bring them to their place: and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord for servants and handmaids: and they shall take them captives, whose captives they were, and they shall rule over their oppressors. And it shall come to pass that in the day that the Lord shall give thee rest from thy sorrow and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve…” (Isa 14:1-3).

I have no doubt that some of God’s people have been pleading this promise in prayer, where the Lord has promised to have mercy on Israel and to give him relief from his sorrows and fears and hard bondage. It was hard bondage that we were made to serve in not long ago. Here is a promise that God will give us rest from it, and upon the pleading of this promise God has made it good to his people.

And in Isaiah 41:8 there are large promises to the saints of God, throughout that chapter: “But thou Israel my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend, Thou whom I have taken from the ends of the earth.” Here are promises for prayer to set its foot on. No wonder it has so much power and effect!

There are various others, and much more remains to be said about the power of prayer as it depends on the promise and covenant that God has made with his people. For every promise is only a particular branch and expression of God’s covenant, and therefore we are to refer them all to the covenant. I will give you only one Scripture: “Therefore fear thou not, O my servant Jacob, neither be dismayed O Israel: for lo, I will save thee from afar, and thy seed from the land of their captivity, and Jacob shall return and be in rest and quiet, and none shall make him afraid. For I am with thee saith the Lord, to save thee: though I make a full end of all nations, whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee: but I will correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished” (Jer 30:10-11). There is something that God does to them; yet even so, in the midst of affliction he still remembers his promise, that he will leave none of it undone. Therefore, though his people are under great afflictions, the Lord will be good to them according to his promise.

Again, the Lord will regard the prayers of his people, and the power of their prayers depends on this: prayer is God’s own work. What is the work of God is not in vain; God made none of his works in vain. Now all their calling on God comes from God. It is God’s own work, and a most glorious piece of the work of God. Every prayer that comes from the poorest of God’s saints, every gracious and faithful prayer, is a glorious piece of God’s work. It is a work of the Holy Spirit, and therefore it is not in vain.

Again, just as their prayers come from God (they seek God from God), so they seek God for God; they seek the Lord for himself. If the people of God sought God only for corn and wine and oil, if they sought him only for their own ease and outward liberties and comforts, and for the lives of their enemies, perhaps they might seek in vain. No, but when they seek God, they seek God for God, and that is why they prevail so much with God. “Ye ask amiss, that ye may spend it on your lusts” (Jas 4:3).

You often pray to God to be delivered from enemies, and (at such a time as this) you think your prayers come to nothing. No wonder, if what you pray for is that you may have liberty to trade and relief from taxes. These things may be sought; but the house of Jacob seeks God for his name, that it may not be dishonored, and for his gospel, that it may not be taken away and the power of godliness trodden like dirt in the street. When they seek God for God, there is no question that God will hear and answer.

But the great power of prayer is this: it is part of what the blood of Christ purchased. That God would hear the prayers of the saints comes from the merits of Christ. It is part of his purchase that God should regard them. It is in his name that we pray; so we are taught. It is by Christ that we have access to the throne of grace, and our privilege of seeking God is something Christ has purchased by his blood. So our seeking of God is not only a duty, and beneficial to us; it is a high privilege purchased by the blood of Christ. By him we have access with boldness; the word means with freedom of speech. This freedom of speech, that we may come before the Lord and open our minds fully, comes by the blood of Christ. Certainly there is a great deal of power in prayer. Whatever our prayers are as they come from us, and though they are vain as they come from us, yet take them as Christ’s purchase: here lies the great power of prayer.

Do not think that the power of prayer lies in earnestness or in being enlarged in prayer. It is a comfort, and an evidence, when God enlarges us by his Spirit (it is not natural gifts that enlarge us, but the Spirit). But the virtue of prayer does not lie here. The strength by which prayer does great things lies in secret, in the purchase of Christ.

Again, Christ takes all the prayers of his people and presents them to his Father for acceptance. We have a more glorious way of coming to God than Adam had in his innocence, and in some respects a more glorious way than the angels themselves, because we have such an Intercessor, who takes all our prayers and carries them to his Father.

And not only that, but he joins with us in coming to the Father. There is a place in Hebrews, quoted from the Psalms, that shows that Christ praises God in the congregation. It is not only the saints who praise God, but Christ himself: “I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praises unto thee” (Heb 2:12). Christ sings praise to God in the midst of the church. When people meet to praise God, Christ praises him. This is a mighty encouragement in praising God. So it is in prayer: when we meet to seek God, Christ seeks him, for he is at the right hand of the Father, making continual intercession for the saints. Christ himself joins with them in the work, so that their prayers may be heard and answered.

Again, the style and title God glories in is to be a God who hears prayer; therefore he will hear and answer.

Again, prayer is the pouring out of one’s spirit to God, a spirit so beautified with the graces of his own Spirit. Now the pouring out to God of such a precious spirit, so beautified and furnished with the principles of the graces of the Holy Spirit, cannot but be answered by God. Indeed, the Scripture says of the heart of the wicked that it is “little worth” (Prov 10:20). Let their heart be poured out; God takes little notice of it or regard for it. But the heart of the righteous is worth much; it is very precious before God. Therefore, when their hearts are poured out and God sees the beauty and glory of his graces on them, it is exceedingly delightful to him, and such outpourings of their hearts are heard and answered. If God has a bottle for all their tears, he also has a bottle for all their words and for the pouring out of their hearts in prayer.

Further, the exceeding delight that God has in his saints must make him regard their calling on him. They are his darlings, and no one likes to refuse a request from someone he delights in.

Lastly, it would not be for the honor of God if his people called on him and were not answered, and did not receive the comfort they pray for. It is reported of Titus, though he was a heathen emperor, that he would not have anyone go away sad from the presence of the prince. God counts it an honor that no one should go away sad from his presence. That is why those who seek the Lord are called on to rejoice: “Let the hearts of them rejoice that seek the Lord” (Ps 105:3). It does not say only, let the hearts of those rejoice who find the Lord, who obtain what they seek; but those who seek the Lord should rejoice in seeking him, even while they are still seeking.

But now I will only remove that great objection and reasoning against this point that lies in many people’s hearts, and then come to the application.

Objection. “You tell us that the prayers of God’s people are not in vain, but that when they call on him he will answer them. By God’s mercy we have now and then found some comforting answer from heaven, but ordinarily we find it otherwise. How many prayers have we put up to God without seeing the outcome? We pray and pray, and the enemies prevail, though now and then God gives us help.”

Now, to remove all unbelieving reasonings against this point, I will not go beyond the text at this time.

So the first answer is this. You say you have sought God and do not have what you want, and therefore God has not answered when you have called. Perhaps what you say now carries some weight, yet it does not make the text void. Remember what has happened before. In the past you have sought God, and God has answered your seeking. Remember the times of old, and let that steady you a little for the present. That was what steadied the psalmist. He began to reason as you do, that he had sought God without an answer: “Will the Lord cast off for ever? and will he be favorable no more? is his mercy clean gone for ever? doth his promise fail for evermore?…” (Ps 77:7-8). Here seems to be as much unbelief as there is in your reasoning. But notice what follows: “And I said this is my death: but I will remember the years of the right hand of the most high” (Ps 77:10). As if he said, “Oh, it is my sin and weakness that I should reason this way; I do not consider what I am doing when I reason this way. But I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High.” Then: “I will remember the works of the Lord: surely I will remember the wonders of old. I will meditate also of all thy works, and talk of thy doings. Thy way O God is in the sanctuary: who is so great a God as our God? Thou art the God that doest wonders, thou hast declared thy strength among the people. Thou hast with thine arm redeemed thy people, the sons of Jacob and Joseph” (Ps 77:11-15).

Notice how at length he recovers himself with this. Though present things seemed to go hard, he remembered what God had done. Do the same in your case. In this book of Isaiah you have a complaint of unbelieving hearts, as if God had been sought in vain: “Why sayest thou O Jacob, and speakest O Israel, my way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God” (Isa 40:27). Are you one of the seed of Jacob? Have you sought God, and do you say you have had no answer? God reasons the case and will refute their unbelief: “Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary and they shall walk and not faint” (Isa 40:28-31). Has God not done great things in the past, in 1588 and in the Gunpowder Plot and at other times? And though we are in some straits now, remember what God did before.

This should quiet your hearts. What if you do not have an immediate hearing for the thing you seek? Still think, “I am dealing with a God whose understanding I cannot search.” It may be that God sometimes lets the adversary prevail. You say, “I cannot tell what glory God may get by it; I cannot conceive how God can bring about his own glory when Israel flees before the Philistines.” But why do you say so, O Jacob? There is no searching of God’s understanding. God sees further than you can see. The very thing you think will work against his name may work for it. Therefore lay your hand on your heart.

“He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might…” God waits until people have no might, until they faint and are ready to fail, and then he comes and helps them. That is the meaning of that Scripture in Luke where Christ says that God will avenge his elect who cry to him night and day; though he delays, he will avenge them, he will hear their prayers, he will answer their requests (Luke 18:7). But it follows immediately: “notwithstanding when the Son of man comes shall he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8). I truly think that this lack of faith refers especially to that very promise, that God will hear his elect who cry to him. God may wait so long that the very time when he comes to perform it, and intends to do it, may be a time when their faith is overcome and fails in the promise, so that they begin to give up and think they have sought God in vain. And usually the time when God comes to fulfill his promise and to answer the prayers of his people is the very time when they are failing and ready to sink.

So that may be another argument: perhaps you have not believed this promise. You say you have prayed, and you think you have no answer. But have you believed this promise in the text? Have you relied on it? God has commanded it; have you done as he commanded, with belief? “Call unto me, and I will answer thee” (Jer 33:3).

The word of God will be made good, but how? Upon our faith. It will be made good to us upon our believing. However godly we may be, and however well we may pray, if we want the promises made good, it must be upon believing. If you have not laid the weight of your soul on the promise, you have no reason to say that God has not made his word good. It may be that you do not have faith. Learn to believe the word, and then you will have it fulfilled. You would like it made good first, and then you would believe it. No, you must first believe the word, and then expect God to fulfill his promise.

Again, the God we call on is a great God, and it is fitting for us to wait, and to wait long. He is great, and we call for great things, and we are poor, mean, vile wretches. God has his prerogative: sometimes he answers at once, sometimes not. Elijah was a great man of prayer; he is set forth as an example of prayer. At one time he prayed for fire to come down on the sacrifice, and the fire came down at once. Another time he prayed for rain, and then he prayed seven times, and bowed his head between his knees, and sent his servant, and sent him again and again. At one time God comes in at the first; at another time not until the seventh hour. It is God’s prerogative.

And take note of this: it is a true sign of a gracious spirit when, though God delays, the soul still clings to God and thinks well of God, of the ways of God, and of the duty of prayer. It is an excellent sign, and the ready way to find favor with God.

Sometimes you have two beggars following you for alms. One perhaps has real need, pure need, and is of a soft, tender spirit; the other is a hardened, surly beggar. You refuse them both. The one who has pure need and a soft, tender spirit thinks himself unworthy that you should be generous to him, and he begins to weep. Yet he thinks well of you, and will be ready to beg from you on another occasion; he has good thoughts of you. But the surly beggar rails and breaks into an angry, passionate mood, and he will ask no more. Which of them is likely to prevail, the soft spirit with an open-hearted disposition, or the surly spirit that soon breaks off?

So there are many passionate hearts that are not peevish with men, but with God. They come and ask mercy from God, but their hearts are stiff and peevish and surly. If they do not get what they want, they immediately break off and say, “Why should we wait on God and cry to him? It is in vain to seek the Lord.” But now one of a gracious, tender, open-hearted disposition, though the thing he prays for does not come, justifies God in everything. He speaks well of God and well of prayer, and still loves prayer, and waits on God in that way. This is the soul that is likely to prevail.

But further (to answer from the text), it may be that you have not called on God. “Call unto me,” says God. Perhaps it is something other than God that you have sought in prayer. Though you name God in your prayer, perhaps your heart has been set on help from creatures. You have made more of the help of the creature, of armies and strength; you have counted on them to do it rather than prayer. And if there is no help but prayer, you think it a dry business.

When a carnal-hearted man hears of an army of twenty thousand men, well clothed and the like, he thinks much may be done; but as for the prayers of God’s people, such men think they are nothing. Now if you have sought help from creatures rather than from God, you have not been seeking God all this while. Or if it has been only outward safety that you have sought, and not the face of God, you have not sought God. “Seek my face,” says God (Ps 27). “This is the generation of them that seek thy face, O Jacob” (Ps 24). You do not seek God unless you seek God’s face, unless you seek God for himself. And ordinarily it is not God who is sought, but your estate; you cry out because of the danger you are in.

Therefore you have no reason to say it is in vain. Look to your prayers; take your prayers up again. Do as fishermen do. If they find that nothing comes up and they are not catching anything, they take up their net; perhaps there is a hole, a tear in the net. And so with the angler: if the fish do not bite, he takes up the bait; perhaps something is missing on the hook. So look to your prayers. Perhaps it is not God that you have sought. Take them up and see what is wrong with them.

Another answer is this: perhaps your prayers have been vain, and then it is no wonder if nothing but vanity comes of them. “Surely God will not hear vanity” (Job 35:13). If there is nothing but vanity in them, how can you expect God to hear them? Our prayers are ordinarily without form and void; that is, there is nothing but vanity in them. Not that God cares much about setting a person’s words handsomely in order, for the groans and sighs of the Spirit of God are accepted though they are not methodical, like making a speech to men; God does not look at that. But many pray without knowing why, except that others do; they do not set before themselves the true end of prayer.

I appeal to your conscience: when you have gone to pray to God, have you set this end before yourself? “I am going to offer up the worship and homage that I, a poor creature, owe to the infinite, glorious first being of all things.” You sometimes call your families to come to prayer and never think what you are doing or what you aim at. “I and my family are now going to seek the great God in prayer.” “I am now going to join with my father,” or “with my master, now that we are all together in this family, to offer up the worship and homage that we poor creatures owe to that infinite, glorious first being of all things, and so to testify our high respect and esteem for him.” Now if your prayer is only prayer by custom, it is vanity; it does not have the right end.

Perhaps you go to prayer merely to satisfy your conscience. Or some have this ulterior end in prayer, a wicked end: they think to satisfy God for their former sinful, wicked ways. They take liberty in company to drink and please the flesh, and as they served themselves then, so now they will serve God, and set the one against the other. Sometimes they will give the flesh liberty to take its pleasure that way, but they will not always do so; sometimes they will be devout and serve God. No one is so wicked as to be always in acts of wickedness. They think God must have his turn, and they must have their turn sometimes. And this is the prayer of many people: they put their sins in one scale and so many devout prayers in the other, and the one will balance the other. This is vanity; this is not the end of prayer.

When God does not see your words filled with the graces of the Spirit, this is vanity. Beware of vain expressions, when there is nothing but nature in prayer. However much earnestness there is in prayer, if there is only a natural spirit in it, it is vanity. We must pray in the Spirit, as the Scripture speaks.

And beware of sluggishness in prayer; that makes it vanity. The breath that comes from life in a man’s body is warm, but the breath that comes from a bellows is artificial and cold. Some people’s breath in prayer is artificial and cold, but the prayer that comes from life is warm breath that rises up to God.

Again, this is vanity in prayer: when everything is eaten out by vain thoughts, when your heart roves in prayer and you do not know where you are, so that you cannot call what you are making a prayer. A prayer full of vain thoughts is like beer or wine that has gone flat and lost its spirit. Vain thoughts are worms that eat out the strength of a duty. Would you present your superior with a dish that was worm-eaten, or that had been gnawed on before? When we let our thoughts wander in our duties and then present them to God, they are worm-eaten and torn; their strength is quite gone.

And after you have prayed, beware of making your prayers vain by not looking after them for their fulfillment, or by being proud of your prayers and gifts, resting in them.

And again, it is vanity when you undo everything as soon as you have finished, by going contrary to your prayer in your life and not adding watchfulness to prayer. If a man takes pains to weave a piece of cloth, and spends so many hours on it, and then unravels it, he spends his time in vain. So do most people with their prayers. They pray for mercy and grace, and as soon as they have finished they go quite the contrary way, and unravel and undo it all. Is this not vanity? No wonder you think it is in vain, when there is nothing but vain thoughts in your prayers.

And beware of making the prayers of others vain. Luther wrote angrily to Melanchthon about his fear of the power of his adversaries: “You make our prayers void,” he said. The same may be said to many who are cold and lukewarm and dead-hearted, who do not take God’s cause to heart, and who fear the displeasure of this person and that person: “You make our prayers void.” You who have praying relatives, perhaps fathers and mothers who are dead, whose prayers have gone up to heaven, beware of making their prayers void. Do not give them cause, if they were to come back to life from the dead, to weep and cry out, “Oh, how our prayers are made void by the prayers of such and such!”

But you will say, “Lord, what will become of us? We have an abundance of vanity in our prayers.”

So that you may not be discouraged, know this. Though there are many vain thoughts in prayer, yet if there is sighing and mourning and humbling of the soul, and panting of the heart after God in groaning and sighing, then, though there is a mixture of vanity, there is still a working of the Spirit of God and of grace in the heart after God. Know that the Lord will not charge this vanity to you; the Lord will do away with your sin. Therefore do not let that discourage you. The power does not lie in the excellence of your prayer, but in the merits of Christ and his mediation. Only, Christ will have something of your own self in your prayer: he will have your heart pant and work after him. But there may be abundance of vanity in it. You draw a line and make a blot, and then another line and another blot; Christ draws it all out fair again and presents it to his Father.

But here is another question. You say it is vain to pray. Can you prove that you are one of the seed of Jacob? This privilege belongs to them. It may be that you are of the seed of Esau.

What, you ask, is the seed of Esau?

The apostle tells us what Esau’s way was, and says, take heed that none of you be such as Esau, “lest there be any fornicator or profane person as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright” (Heb 12:16). Now if you prove to be a fornicator, you are of the seed of Esau; or if you are a profane person. What is that? For one morsel of meat he sold his birthright. That is, to please and satisfy and content the flesh, he sold his birthright. That birthright was the land of Canaan, and so it typified the privileges of the church of God; it was even a type of heaven. His birthright had a spiritual meaning: it had reference to the spiritual privileges that the saints of God have to this day in all the ordinances of God.

The man or woman who prizes any carnal contentment above spiritual privileges is of the seed of Esau, and not of Jacob. You think there is some savor in money, and in a good trade, and in good cheer. You think a day like this one, the fifth of November, is better than a fast day because of the good cheer. But as for the spiritual duties of this day, to come and magnify God and to attend upon his word, you think they are mere circumstances and side matters, and you are troubled if the sermon is so long that it keeps you from your dinner. You are a profane Esau. All that I have said does not belong to you. You do not belong to Jacob but to Esau, you who prefer carnal things for the flesh before the spiritual privileges of the saints.

But how shall I know that I am one of the seed of Jacob?

How do you know a certain man’s child, but by his likeness to his father? One who has the spirit of Jacob is of the seed of Jacob. The Scripture says many things about Jacob; see whether you answer to them.

First, Jacob was a mighty man in prayer. He was a wrestler with God. He wrestled until the day broke (Gen 32:24), and he was as strong at the last as at the first. Do you have the spirit of your father Jacob? Are you not discouraged in prayer? Though mercy does not come at once, do you still wrestle all night, and resolve that whatever comes, if you die, you will die wrestling? Here is a child like the father; therefore you are of the seed of Jacob.

Second, Jacob was one who feared God. When God appeared to him, he looked on the presence of God as dreadful: “How dreadful is this place!” (Gen 28), because God was there. Do you look on the presence of God as dreadful in the same way, so that you can say the fear of the great God is on your soul when you come into his presence? Mark this, for this is the very expression in the Psalm: “Ye that fear the Lord, praise him; all the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye seed of Israel” (Ps 22:23). If you would be sure not to seek God in vain, but to praise him in seeking him, fear the Lord, all you seed of Jacob.

Third, Jacob’s heart was disengaged from the creature; a little of the creature would serve his turn. “Lord,” he says, “if you will give me food to eat and clothing to put on” (Gen 28). He looked no further; he aimed at no great matters. That is why, in Psalm 24, where the generation of Jacob is described, one mark is this: “he that hath not lift up his soul to vanity.” The men of the world have great things in their eyes. Those things are vanity in God’s eye, though they are great in theirs, and they lift up their hearts to them. But the sons of Jacob do not lift up their hearts to vanity. Though the things of the world are set before them, their hearts do not stir; they do not rise. But if God and Christ and heavenly things are presented, their hearts are lifted up. If your heart is lifted up to vanity, if your heart is like iron, and the vanities of the world come and draw it up, you are not a son of Jacob. A little would serve Jacob, though he was a great heir. “He was a plain man and dwelt in tents” (Gen 25), and he had a plain spirit. He did not look after great things, whereas Esau looked after great things abroad.

Again, he was a man of a tender spirit. Therefore where it is said that he prevailed with the angel, it is also said that “he wept, and made supplication unto him: he found him in Bethel, and there he spake with us” (Hos 12:4). That story of Jacob concerns us: it shows how God dealt with our father. If you now have a tender spirit as he had, if when you go into the presence of God you find your spirit yield and melt and relent, you are like your father Jacob.

Further, in the time of his straits Jacob turned to the covenant. That was a great satisfaction to his heart. He looked to the covenant, he fastened on it, and there he held, as the main support of his spirit. “And Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, the Lord which saidst unto me, Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee…” (Gen 32:9). He heard that Esau was coming against him with a great company, and what does Jacob do? He goes to God: “O God of my father Abraham, and of my father Isaac, the Lord which said unto me, Return into thy country…” He turns to the covenant: Remember your covenant with Abraham and Isaac, and with me too; I went at your word. Here was the way of Jacob. In a strait, can you get hold of a word and a promise, brood over it with your soul, clasp it close, and say, “This is the promise that must and will do me good”?

Again, Jacob was of a humble spirit: “I am not worthy of the least of thy mercies” (Gen 32:10). He marveled at the mercy of God that he had anything at all, and God’s mercies made him more humble. This is an excellent disposition. We are often humble and lowly when we are under the hand of God in affliction. But when mercies make us humble, so that the more gracious God is, the more vile we are in our own eyes, this is excellent.

And he looked back to his former condition. He looked upon his poor beginning and gave God the glory: “I passed over this Jordan with my staff” (Gen 32:10). Many of you came with your staff, and God has given you two bands; you have grown great. Are you willing to think of it, to acknowledge the poor estate you were once in, and to give God the glory? “I was such and such, of poor parentage, and see how God has dealt with me.”

Another remarkable thing is that Jacob contented himself with God alone. He counted that he had enough in God alone. Though all were taken from him, he did not look upon himself as undone; he had that which might make him forever. Compare Genesis 33:9, 11, and you will find a notable difference between Esau and Jacob. Yet the word in our Bibles is the same in both, and this Scripture is much wronged by the translation. When Esau comes to Jacob, and Jacob wants to give him his present, Esau says, “What meanest thou by all these droves which I met?” Jacob said, “These are to find grace in the sight of my lord” (Gen 33:8). And Esau said, “I have enough, my brother.” It was a strange speech from Esau. A covetous wretch who is always pining and murmuring because he has no more, and thinks he will come to want before he dies, does not come as far as Esau; for Esau could say, “I have enough.” Are there not many of you who never say you have enough? “Please take my present,” says Jacob, “for I have all things.” “No,” says Esau, “I have enough.” The one says, “I have enough”; the other says, “I have all things,” for that is what the word there means: all.

Esau had enough. He was not in want; he had food and drink, and he saw no one to disturb him. He was satisfied with his estate as his portion. He had enough, and he cared for nothing more; others might talk of other things, but that was enough for him. Jacob comes and says, “I have enough,” but this was another kind of enough. Esau’s enough is his estate, but Jacob’s enough is God, for he says, “I have all.” Jacob was poorer in his outward condition than Esau, for he had nothing but what he had gotten in hard servitude. Now Esau says, “I have enough”; Jacob says, “I have all.” That is, God is enough in the want of all. If Esau were to strip him of all he had, he still had all in God. So it is for one who is of the seed of Jacob in a time of want. Some of you may be plundered, and then, you say, all is gone. No; if you are of the seed of Jacob, if you have God, you have all. There is such a promise: “He that overcometh shall inherit all things.” How is that? “And I will be his God” (Rev 21:7). Therefore whatever you lack, if God is yours, if you are God’s child, you have all.

Further, one of the seed of Jacob is one of the church of God, for all Jacob’s posterity was so. That is why the blessing in Ruth is, “The Lord bless thee like Rachel and Leah,” the two who built up the house of Israel (Ruth 4:11). Why is it not, “The Lord bless thee as Rebekah,” or “as Sarah,” but “as Rachel and Leah”? (It was a blessing upon a marriage.) The reason is that from Rachel and Leah came only those who were of the church, who were members of the church of God. But others came from Rebekah as well; and though from Sarah came only Isaac, Abraham’s posterity was otherwise. And the church that existed then was only a type of the church that would come after: a company of people elected and called out from the world to be partakers of the privileges of Jesus Christ. The people of the Jews, the seed of Jacob, were the church of God, as the seed of one man. And this typified the church that would come after, a company taken out of the world to partake of the privileges of Jesus Christ.

Can you say that you are of the church? The word we translate “church” means a company called out from the world. Can you ever tell of a work of God separating you from the world, so that when you were going along with the world, God gave you a mighty call that made a separation between you and the world? For so it is said of the seed of Jacob: “From the tops of the rocks I saw him, and from the hills I behold him: lo, the people shall dwell alone, they shall not be reckoned among the nations” (Num 23:9). All the seed of Jacob are called out of the world. They are separated from it by a mighty work of God, to partake of Christ and to be members of him.

And upon this, such a person mightily longs after all the outward privileges of the church, to enjoy all the outward ordinances of Christ in his way. Those who are of the seed of Jacob prize the excellency of Jacob as the greatest excellency. Their hearts are toward it, and they rejoice in it above all the excellency in the world. If you ask what this excellency of Jacob is, it is the joining of God’s people in the way of ordinances and the duties of God’s worship in their purity. In Scripture this is called the excellency of Jacob: “He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom he loved” (Ps 47:4). It is an excellent Scripture. Oh, it is a blessed thing to give all to God, to let God choose our inheritance! What is our inheritance? The excellency of Jacob whom he loved. What was that? The worship of God and his ordinances, joining with the people of God in the way of his ordinances, in his temple. Those were the ordinances of God in those times, and they are called the excellency of Jacob. And so now, too, it is the excellency of a people to enjoy God’s ordinances.

You have another expression to the same purpose: “And I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob, and out of Judah an inheritor of my mountain, and mine elect shall inherit it, and my servants shall dwell there” (Isa 65:9). What is the mountain of God? God’s ordinances in his church. “I will bring a seed out of Jacob, and Judah, and they shall inherit my mountain.” So the greatest inheritance of the seed of Jacob is the mountain of the Lord: communion with the church of God and his ordinances. If you are of the seed of Jacob, your hearts prize this and rejoice in it. And in Psalm 24:3-6 you will find how the seed of Jacob prize the enjoyment of God in his ordinances: “Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lift up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation. This is the generation of them that seek him, that seek thy face, O Jacob.”

That is how it reads in our Bibles, but the word “O” is not in the original. Therefore it may be read this way: “That seek the face of Jacob.” It may be read as naming whose face it is (“of Jacob”) as well as calling upon Jacob (“O Jacob”): “This is the generation of them that seek him, even of Jacob,” and then he turns to God, “that seek thy face.” But because his heart was full of this, of seeking God’s face, even though he intended to mention what generation it was (the generation of Jacob), he puts that in first: the generation of Jacob that seek thy face. That is, this is the generation that so prize God in his ordinances, and count it such a blessing of God; that join themselves to the church of God, and set up his ordinances and ways. This is the blessed generation; these are the ones who seek God truly.

We do not seek God truly unless we seek him in his own ways. Unless we seek him in all his ordinances, we cannot comfort our souls that we seek him in truth. For as in the way of obedience we cannot have comfort that our obedience is true unless it extends to all God’s commandments, so we cannot have comfort that our seeking is true unless it is in all his ordinances and ways. Therefore we must be of the generation of those who seek the face of the church, who “seek thy face, O Jacob.” So it follows in that place: “Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, that the King of glory may come in” (Ps 24:7). Where should the King of glory come but into his church? “Who is the King of glory? The Lord, strong and almighty” (Ps 24:8). Still the church is called on to entertain Christ in his glory, so this is spoken of the church. In this way you may know whether you are of the seed of Jacob.

Again, if you are the seed of Jacob, you have the inheritance of Jacob and count it your inheritance. What was Jacob’s inheritance? “The Lord came from Sinai and from his right hand came a fiery law” (Deut 33:2). The law of God is a fiery law. Yet it goes on: “Moses commanded us a law, even the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob” (Deut 33:4). So though the law is a fiery law, a strict law, a severe law, yet it is the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob. If you are of the congregation of Jacob, you count the law of God a part of your inheritance. It is not only something you are bound to, something you must obey whether you will or not; you rejoice in the law of God as your inheritance. For my part, I know no surer mark of a gracious heart than this: one who rejoices in God’s law as his inheritance. You know what expressions David uses: he rejoiced in it more than in gold and silver, more than in honey and the honeycomb. It is one thing to obey God’s law, and another to rejoice in it as an inheritance. If you are of the seed of Jacob, you have the inheritance of the seed of Jacob.

Another mark is this: one who is of the seed of Jacob is faithful in the place where God has set him. Jacob, in serving Laban, though Laban was churlish, professes that with all his power he served his father-in-law (Gen 31:6). It is an excellent text for servants. You would gladly have time to seek God, and God forbid that even the poorest and meanest servant should not be allowed some time to seek God alone. But are you of the seed of Jacob? Then be like him in this: serve with all your power, though you have a perverse master or mistress, as Laban was. Though they treat you harshly, still show godliness in that relation. Some servants, to seem godly, must go and hear this sermon, this man and that man, and be very earnest. I do not blame them for loving the word and desiring it. But for servants to be earnest in hearing the word and enjoying the ordinances, and in crying out against superstition and antichristianism, and yet to be sluggish and unfaithful in their service, so as to give just offense to those who govern them, is a dishonor. Show your godliness in your relation. Certainly no man or woman is godly except those who are godly in the relations and places in which they are set. Therefore show yourselves to be the seed of Jacob in this way.

Again, the seed of Jacob is a taught seed; God teaches them. “He hath not dealt so with other nations, he gave his law to Jacob, and his word to Israel” (Ps 147:19). So in Deuteronomy 33:10, Levi is appointed to teach Jacob. There is not one of the seed of Jacob who is ignorant, who is a fool in matters of religion. He is taught.

And then, one of the seed of Jacob is one who cares for his family. So we read of Jacob: “God said to Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there, and make there an altar unto God that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother. Then said Jacob to his household and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean” (Gen 35:1). When he was to go into God’s presence, he labored to reform his family. When God calls you to fast days and to the Sacrament, do you cleanse your families? Do you look into what evils are in your families, and put out your power to cleanse them?

But there is one more that I must not omit. When Jacob was about to die, though he himself was to go the way of all flesh, this was his great comfort, and the comfort of those he left behind: that God would make good his word to his church and people. “And Israel said to Joseph, Behold, I die, but God will visit you, and bring you again to the land of your fathers” (Gen 48:21). Behold, I die, but I die in faith of the promise. Because I am taken away, shall I think the promise will be of no effect? No; God will bring you to the land of your fathers. Now when God casts you on your sickbed, can you say, “Behold, I die; but you go on. God will make good his word. I die in faith that it will go well with the churches of God. There will be a time when they will get the victory, when Christ will reign, and the saints will be delivered from their oppressors”? Here was the spirit of Jacob. If you are such a seed of Jacob, you will not seek God’s face in vain; when you call on him, he will answer you.

But you will say, “It is true, some may call on God and he will hear them. But I am a poor, contemptible, wretched creature, and if I call on him, he will not hear me or answer me.”

That place in the Psalm fully answers any objection about our poverty, or the poverty of our prayers: “He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and will not despise their prayers” (Ps 102:17). “The prayer of the destitute”: the word signifies a poor shrub in the wilderness, a contemptible shrub that is trodden on by the feet of beasts and that no one regards. God regards such prayers.

“If I could make an excellent prayer, that would be something.” No; he does not despise your prayer. It may be that your prayer is such that you despise it yourself, and others would despise it, but God will not despise it.

“But perhaps this was spoken to some in those times.”

Mark what follows: “This shall be written for the generation to come.” This Scripture, this promise of God, “it is written for the generations to come. And the people that shall be created shall praise the Lord” (Ps 102:18). We who were not made then, but have been created since, let us praise the Lord for this Scripture: that God will regard the prayers of poor shrubs and not despise them.

“But the things I stand in need of are great, and it may be vain for me to pray for such great things at God’s hands. Perhaps if I prayed for ordinary things there might be hope, but I have to pray for great things, mercies for the church, and for the kingdom, and for the people of God. Is it not vain for such a poor wretch as I am to pray for such great things?”

We may think that the things we pray for at God’s hands are too great for us to beg, but they are not too great for God to give. It is told of Perillus that when Alexander wanted him to ask a dowry for his daughter, Alexander at once promised him fifty talents. “It is too much,” Perillus said; “ten talents are enough.” Alexander answered him, “If it is too great for you to ask, it is not too great for me to give.” God loves his people to ask great things of him; indeed, he loves even the poorest and meanest of his people to ask him great things. That is why he says in this text, “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things” (Jer 33:3). This is a promise to every one of the seed of Jacob.

“But when I pray in a time of affliction, when God’s hand is on me, will it not be vain to call on him then?”

It is true that to neglect God in former times and then to pray only in affliction is a dangerous condition. But this temptation comes upon those who have sought God before: “Yes, now you seek God, but this is in your affliction; and will God regard you now?” I speak this only to comfort those who are careful to seek God in the time of their health. Yet even if you have been negligent, it is possible that God may regard you in the time of affliction. Jonah prayed, and said, “I prayed and cried by reason of mine affliction to the Lord, and he heard me” (Jonah 2:2).

“But suppose it is affliction for sin?” For the objection may arise that way: “It is true that if I called on God in an affliction that God sent for trial, God might perhaps hear me. But suppose God’s hand is on me for sin; will God hear my prayers?”

That one notable example of David may help the people of God against such a temptation. God’s hand was on him for his sin when he fled before Absalom; God had threatened that war should not depart from his house. Yet David then prayed against that wicked politician and counselor, that the Lord would turn his counsel to folly. And God heard David’s prayer in an affliction that was for sin: the Lord turned the counsel of Ahithophel to folly. Let us not be discouraged, however craftily politicians may work. Though God’s hand is on us, and our conscience accuses us and says, “Yes, this is for your sins, that God leaves you like this in the hands of your enemies, that God gives them such power, that they find such favor with the prince as they do”; though this is for our sins, yet let us seek God to turn the counsel of Ahithophel to folly. It will not be in vain, and it has not been. We have found it so: in our affliction, even affliction for sin, as we cried to God to turn the counsel of Ahithophel to folly, God has graciously done so, and has encouraged us more and more to cry and call to him for that end.

“But what need do I have to seek God? God has decreed and determined what he will do. What God intends to do, he decreed from eternity. Therefore, whether we pray or not, it will come to pass; if we do not pray, it will still come to pass. If God has intended to deliver me from a sickness, it will be done whether I pray or not. When anyone’s time has come, they will die; and so when the time of a kingdom has come, it will be destroyed, and not until then. So what good can prayer do?”

Though I suppose you cannot help being satisfied, and think that this objection has little weight, yet by way of answer I will give you a Scripture or two. In Psalm 2 we read, “I will declare the decree.” This is the decree of God concerning the advancement of Christ in his resurrection, and so concerning the success of the work of Christ’s mediation. “I will declare the decree, the Lord hath said, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee: Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for thy possession.” God’s giving Christ the heathen for his inheritance and the utmost parts of the earth for his possession was decreed by God; yet Christ must ask it of his Father, notwithstanding God’s decree.

Another remarkable text is in the prophecy of Daniel, where the text says, “In the first year of his reign, I Daniel understood by books the number of the years whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolation of Jerusalem. And I set my face unto the Lord God to seek by prayer and supplications” (Dan 9:2). Mark this: Daniel understood by books what God had determined concerning Jerusalem. What need was there for Daniel to go further? He knew God’s mind, what he would do, whether he prayed or not. But mark what follows: “I set my face to seek the Lord” (Dan 9:3). He did this after he knew what God had decreed, and what he would do, and what he had promised. Now we do not know God’s decree. But even if we did certainly know God’s decree to show mercy to the land, it could in no way hinder us; it would rather encourage us to set our faces to seek the Lord, and to seek him more earnestly. Therefore that is a vain objection.

Again, it is not in vain to call on the Lord, if we examine all we have had already. Though we do not have all we would like to have, yet if we consider the supporting mercies, the preventing mercies and the guiding mercies that God has granted us, we will find that it has not been in vain to seek him. There are abundant mercies you have had already. It is an evil thing to complain of God’s grace when God has bestowed such mercies. You think you have nothing because you do not have all you would like to have, like a peevish child that throws everything away because it does not have every single thing to its liking. God has been exceedingly gracious to us. Other souls would have adored God and blessed him with their faces to the ground if they had had even a hundredth part of the mercies we have; yet because we do not have all we desire, we are ready to think it is in vain. Oh, let us take heed of dishonoring the grace of God!

And further, you think it is in vain because God sometimes denies in granting, and grants in denying.

Many times God grants what we pray for by denying it, and denies what we pray for by granting it: our denials are grants to us. Woe to us if everything we pray for were granted to us! Much good may be gotten out of God’s denials. God denies us to do us good and to prepare us for mercies. Therefore it is not in vain that you have sought God, because it is not in vain that you are denied.

But further, it may be that God delights more in your praying voice than in your praising voice. Therefore, though you do not have what you sought, give God leave to delight in you whichever way he pleases. There is the praying voice and the praising voice of God’s people. You delight that God should hear your praising voice; it may be that God delights to hear your praying voice, and perhaps he would not hear it if you had what you want. God says to the church, “Let me hear thy voice, for it is sweet” (Song 2:14).

No one will think the king denies his petition as long as the king loves to read it. If someone presents a petition to the king, the king does not say he will do it at once. But if he reads it, and when he has read it calls for it again and again, will anyone think it was in vain to put up that petition? As long as the king hears it and delights to read it, it is not in vain. So, as long as God loves to hear your voice and to read your petition, it is not in vain.

As for your praising voice, God shall have enough of that in heaven, but there he shall have none of your praying voice. Why, then, should you not be willing that God should have more of your praying voice here? All that God shall ever have of your praying voice is in this world, and after a little time God shall never hear us pray again. Therefore let us be willing to go on and continue in prayer, and not wonder why God keeps us on in a way of praying. All the time God shall ever have to delight himself in the praying voice of his people is in this world. As for our praising voice, we would gladly spend all our days praising God for his mercies, but that is reserved for another world.

Further, it may be God’s way to wait until he can bring a great deal of mercy together, and not give it by bits and drops. When people deal with great merchants, they do not expect to be paid by sixpences or shillings or crowns at a time. Though two or three or ten pounds are due, they do not stand on that, but wait for a greater sum. Now little traders who deal by retail take it in by pence and little sums. Christians, who have to deal with God, deal for great things, and there are great transactions between God and a gracious heart. Therefore do not think it much that God holds back for a greater sum.

For as God deals with the wicked in the way of justice, so he deals with godly people in a way of mercy. He lets wicked men go on a great while. He does not come to judgment for sin, but waits until all comes together, until a great sum of wrath and judgment has come together. So he deals with the saints. He does not come with lesser mercies, but waits until abundance comes; and when God’s time has come, mercies will come to the full indeed.

Further, it may be that God has so much mercy that you do not have a vessel able to hold it. Only know that heaven and earth and everything are working for you. Is the plowing and the sowing of the farmer, and all the showers, in vain because the grain is not yet in the barn? We do not count it so. So we must not count our prayers lost because the thing we pray for is not immediately granted and our prayers answered. Now for application.

1. If it is so that God says, “Call upon me, and I will answer thee,” then certainly there are great things for the church to build on. God is going to do marvelous things for his people in these latter days. Why? Because all the saints from the beginning of the world have been seeking God, not only for their own times but for the church to this very day. All their prayers are on file, and they must be answered one day. Oh, what a glorious harvest it will be! Blessed are those who shall live to share in it. We have a little, but certainly there are glorious things for the church, because every prayer shall be answered.

2. You who are the saints of God, know your honor. However poor you are otherwise, God has given you what makes you rich. You have the key of heaven; you may open the treasures in heaven, and it shall never be in vain. God’s people are exceedingly honorable in the eyes of God, and in this respect: they have credit in heaven, so that their prayers shall be heard and answered. Bathsheba says to Solomon, “I desire one petition of thee, I pray thee, say me not nay” (1 Kgs 2:20). Some translate it, “Confound not my face.” Indeed, the denying of a petition is a dishonor and a confounding of the face; but God will not confound the faces of his people.

Oh, see here your privilege and your riches! All the prayers you have made in your lifetime are trading in heaven; they are not lost. If a man has ventured a stock abroad to the Indies and does not hear of it for a long while, he thinks it is lost and gone. But if he hears certain news that all his stock is safe, and in the place where he would have it, and that those who are there are faithfully improving it, he is revived by this. It rejoices his spirit, and he can say, “Blessed be God, I hope to be a rich man for all this.” I say to you, be of good comfort: your stock is not lost. It is trading in heaven, and every prayer you have put up is there. We should count our prayers as riches, as ventures sent to heaven, and not be like children who shoot arrows and pay no mind to where they go.

And then learn this: it is a great privilege to have a praying friend, a praying companion. Many of you love friends who are delightful, of a cheerful nature, and merry; but are they praying ones? Praying friends are the special friends, because prayer can prevail with God. To have a friend at court who can obtain any petition we think a privilege; to have one great friend in heaven is a great privilege. Many people, when they lie on their sickbeds, send to such and such to pray for them. Why do they not send to their companions, the ones they drank with and swore with, to pray for them? Oh, they dare not. Here is enough to convince anyone’s conscience who the best people are, whatever they say.

Suppose your condition were this: you lay on your deathbed, and your life depended on the prayers of four or five men. Suppose God should speak thus from heaven: “You are at the brink of destruction. Only this favor you shall find: you shall have leave to choose any four or five men you will to pray for you, and as they pray, so it shall be with you. You have liberty to choose whomever you will through the whole world.” I appeal to you: would a drunkard choose four or five drunkards, or a swearer choose swearers, or the unclean choose the unclean companions they most delighted in all their lifetime? If everything depended on it, you would not choose such people. Therefore you are convinced in your conscience. You know that those are not precious in God’s eyes (however your lust has prevailed), but that the others, who are gracious and have more credit in heaven, are better men. Learn to prize praying friends, who can prevail with God.

And let us set the crown upon prayer’s head in the mercies we have from God, both in public mercies and in private deliverances of friends. Do not attribute it to second means, to fortune and chance; take heed of denying God his glory.

It is a sign of a carnal spirit, when God has glorified himself in answering the prayers of his people, to attribute it to any other means.

As I remember, I have read of the Porphyrian atheists, who followed the atheism of Porphyry. They darkened God’s work in delivering the children of Israel out of Egypt through the Red Sea. They say that Moses had learned from the Egyptians, who were great astronomers, and that Moses knew when it would be low tide and what constellations there would be at that time. He knew that the tide would then prove lower than it had ever been in the age of man, and so Moses took the very nick of time and led them through the sea. This is how atheists would darken the works of God and put them off onto natural causes.

I find the same thing related of the old prophet in Jeroboam’s time. Josephus relates of him that, concerning Jeroboam’s stretching out his hand, he told Jeroboam it happened by accident: Jeroboam had been wearied all day long, and so he had the palsy, and afterward his hand was restored again. What was done by prayer, he would have done by natural means.

It is just so now. God has so magnified his mercy to England and worked such wonders, and yet many carnal, atheistic spirits say this was an accidental thing, and that the policy of such and such men brought it to pass. They attribute everything to natural causes. It is a sign of a wretched, profane heart. For if God ever magnified prayer, he has done it in these days. There are two or three scriptures that have never, since the world began, been more magnified than by God’s working at this day.

One is in Exodus: “In the thing wherein they dealt proudly, God was above them” (Exod 18:11). Never since the world began has that been more fulfilled. A second is in the Psalms: “The wicked are snared in the work of their own hands” (Ps 9:16). If ever there was a fulfilling of that scripture since the beginning of the world, it is at this day. A third is this one in the text: “I said not to the seed of Jacob; Seek ye my face in vain” (Isa 45:19). God (as I said) has raised a spirit of prayer among the seed of Jacob beyond any the world ever knew. There was never the like spirit of prayer raised, nor ever the like things done in answer to prayer.

And the Lord has honored the ordinance of prayer all the more now because men so dishonored and persecuted it before. The people of God could not meet and assemble to fast and pray without its being immediately branded a conventicle, and they were persecuted as factious people. Because God saw this way despised, he has honored it. The former and the latter mercies we have received we are to attribute to the goodness of God by prayer: they were obtained by prayer. Let us still be encouraged to call on God for what we would have, for God has said, “Call upon me, and I will answer thee.”

There are many of us now who can do little else. If God has delivered you from sickness and other evils, know that God has delivered you to pray. The less you can do otherwise, the more you should do in prayer. I have read of a heathen, Numa Pompilius, that he would never go about anything without first going to the temple to pray. You who are instruments entrusted with our lives and liberties, you need to pray much. Go into your private rooms and sanctify all your thoughts and resolutions by prayer, so that your help and assistance may not be in vain to us. And all others need to assist you by seeking God in prayer.

This encouragement we have: not one of us seeks God alone, but we join with thousands. Why should our place be found empty? Why should our prayers not join with the rest? We shall meet many prayers in heaven: the prayers of our forefathers, the prayers of those who are dead and gone, who did not live to enjoy the fruit of their prayers. Yet when we pray for mercies, our prayers meet with theirs in heaven. Therefore let us be encouraged to call on the Lord.

And if mercies should come, how it would daunt our hearts that mercies have come and we have not sought them! And if mercies do not come, conscience will fly in our faces that we have been sensual, carnal creatures, and that it is for our neglect of calling on God that God has denied us the mercies we expected.

And then this should serve to rebuke those who begin to seek God and do not continue. O wretch, why have you left off? Where will you go? Is it in vain to serve the Lord? Certainly you were never acquainted with God and his ways. You will find it a dreadful change when it appears that you have left God, the fountain of living water, and have sought after vanity and forsaken your own mercy.

But the main thing of all should have been to apply this to the present occasion. The Lord has made good his word this day: “Call unto me, and I will answer thee.” This day testifies that it is true that prayer has done great things. I heard many years ago, by credible testimony, that on this fifth of November, when we received such a great mercy so many years ago, it was known that on that very day a great many godly people in the city were keeping it in fasting and prayer. It was so eminently known that it was passed from hand to hand among them in the city at that time; and you know what God did.

But what has he done of late? If our fathers should rise out of their graves, and we should tell them that now the High Commission (which so troubled them) is down, that there shall be no more Star Chamber, that the cutting off of ears is gone, they would wonder how this could come to pass. And whereas Parliaments used to be snapped asunder, this Parliament is to continue by as firm an act as anything in the land is made by. And as for oppressors, all the courts and bishops’ chanceries are down and gone; God has rooted them out. They were first cast out of the House, and now out of the kingdom. And though an army rose and sought to bring us into slavery, yet God has given us victory (though some have suffered hard things) and brought the adversaries so low that they surrender their towns and castles and arms. And here we are to rejoice in God and to bless him for all of it.

If many of our ancestors should rise and hear what we are saying, how we lift up our hands and bless God, with what hearts they would join in praising God, and wonder that such things should ever be done! Let not the grace of God be in vain, just as God has not said to us, “Seek my face in vain.”

What use, then, shall we make of it?

Let us give him real praise. Let us not only come to repeat it and tell God of it, but make his praise glorious, and put a glory on it. We do that when we make a right use of his mercies, when we do not receive his mercies in vain.

What is it to make use of the memorial we celebrate?

1. The remembrance of these mercies must humble us. That is a sweet humbling: it is better to be melted by the beams of the sun than by the scorching of the fire.

You will say, “Humbled? For what?”

There are three things we have cause to be humbled for when we consider the mercy of God toward us.

(1) The sin of unbelief. Consider how, whenever we were in straits, when we heard bad news that our armies had fled and come into danger, our spirits sank as if all were gone. Let us check our hearts. God rebuked us in a kindly manner; we might have had a furious rebuke.

(2) Be humbled for all our murmuring and repining and discontent: “Oh, we did not think the wars would have lasted so long! And oh, what taxes are laid on us, and all our estates torn away!” And how many there are who would rather that all the good God has done for his people since these times had never been done, than that they should suffer in their outward estates! Be rebuked for all your murmuring and repining at such difficulties as you have met with in the great cause of God.

(3) The third thing this mercy should make us humbled for, and look back on, is any time this thought has risen in our hearts: “It would have been better for me if I had never appeared so much. I see how things are likely to go. The enemy prevails and is likely to overrun everything. Would it not have been better if I had not engaged myself so much, if I had not appeared so much? Are not they wiser men who have kept themselves quiet and silent, and done as little as they could, nothing but what they were forced to? And when the King’s party comes, if they tax us, they can do no more than force us.”

If you have had such a thought, pray God to forgive that thought. Let what God has done rebuke you. Are you sorry for what you have done? You see that God will do it without you. If you have been a public instrument and have done good, and yet, in fear of how things would turn out, you have repented of it, God rebukes you this day.

2. Labor to love prayer as long as you live. As David says, “I will call upon God as long as ever I live” (Ps 116:2). Prayer turns the scale and has the advantage.

(1) The other side did not fear to suffer much if they were overcome. They think they have a head, and they would be where he was, and he would countenance them and make good their condition for them. But this side, if they had been overcome, would have been utterly undone. What a mighty advantage there was on one side more than on the other!

(2) If the King’s side had prevailed, he had places of dignity to bestow. If the Parliament’s side prevails, we are only where we were. We only maintain our own; we cannot expect to raise our condition. But how many broken gentry expected to raise their condition on the other side! As is said concerning the Pope and the general council: the Pope prevailed in spite of the general council, though the council was above him. Why? The Pope had cardinalships and deaneries to bestow, but the council had none. They had the advantage that way.

(3) Again, those who appeared on the one side, how extraordinarily discouraged they were! On the other side they were encouraged to the utmost. On the one side, how unfaithful they have been! On the other side they have kept to their principles, because their principles suit the flesh. But there are many on this side who do not have gracious principles and yet have had a public cause, and therefore they have been unfaithful. We make use of men who have no principles to act by, but all those on the other side go according to their own principles.

The one party acts so as to gratify men’s lusts, and the generality of the world loves that. They know that if the one party prevails, they shall have liberty and licentiousness, but if the other prevails, they shall live under laws. Now men would have their lusts. So when they see that on the one side they shall have their lusts, and on the other side they shall be more curbed, they strive hard for their lusts.

At first I wondered that men should be so vile as to fight to make themselves slaves. But when I considered that they shall have slaves under them and have their lusts, while the other side would curb them more, then I was satisfied. And then I wondered that God should turn the scale the other way, since they had all the advantages in a carnal way more than the other side. Only here it is: we have people who have prayed, and this has turned the scale. Love prayer and praying people, and join with them. Be on their side, for God is with them and will not let them pray in vain. A praying Christian is a useful Christian in the world.

3. Make this use of all that has been done. However far you think the adversaries would have been hardened if they had prevailed against the cause of God, be that much more resolute in the cause of God. If they had prevailed, how they would have blasphemed! And many thousands more would have been made atheists than there were before. What a mighty offense and stumbling block this would have been! Now, since God has turned it the other way, justify God and his cause. Settle your hearts in the love of God and his cause, and settle yourselves more strongly in the reformation in hand.

4. Let us give him real praise, so that we may not receive the grace of God in vain. By this grace, we hope, he has given us our estates, which we were afraid would have been torn from us; we have the continuance of our liberties and of the gospel. Let our hearts be engaged to God to give up our estates to him this day. Let us renew our engagements to God in secret, between God and our souls: “Lord, you might have let the spoilers take away my estate. It came near to it; and you have done this to others of my brothers and sisters. And is mine continued? The estate that would have been spent for their lusts I am resolved to spend in your service, who have preserved it. And I count it a great mercy that I have an estate with which to honor your name; I feared I would not.”

God expects that from now on you will make a more holy use of your estates than before. And call your hearts to question: “What do I do with my estate for God? What honor does God have from my estate more than before?” God expects more. Otherwise God may justly say, “In vain have I preserved this wretched estate. There are many of my servants who, if I had preserved their estates, would have improved them in the towns and places where they lived. And here is a wretch whose estate I have preserved, and he is greedier than before and scrapes up for himself, and all his thought is how to repair what he has lost by taxes.” The Lord may repent of what he has done, and the curse of God may follow such a man’s estate. Take heed; know that there is an engagement upon you after this time.

And so for the liberty of the gospel: God expects that you should prize the gospel more than ever. “Lord, we were afraid the gospel would have been gone if you had given us up into the hands of our enemies. Our eyes would not have seen our teachers; we would not have heard the things that refresh our hearts. Shall we have the gospel, and may we hope that our posterity shall have it? We hope that we shall never provoke you, as we have done before, to take it away.” A man who has been in danger of losing his estate and has recovered it will be careful afterward. Our slighting of the gospel, because we had it so ordinarily, might have caused God to take it from us. And has God restored it? Let us take heed that we do not provoke God now, but attend on the word more than ever we did.

5. Lastly, does God say to us, “Call upon me, and I will answer thee”? Then when God seeks us, let us be found by him. There is all the reason in the world for it. If God is so gracious to poor, base worms, sinful creatures, that if we only chatter, our prayers are answered, is it not reasonable that when God calls upon us we should call upon him? When God calls to you out of his word to perform such and such duties, God is seeking you. Then make use of this text: “I have called upon God, and he has answered my requests. And now I go to hear the word, and out of the word he calls to me and seeks me. Let me say, ‘Lord, what do you say to your servant?’” The Lord is ready to hear your call; be ready to receive his answer. And go on, go on with encouragement; the Lord has encouraged us this day. And let all your prayers and endeavors break through all difficulties, and the Lord’s mercy shall break through all oppositions, for he has said, “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not” (Jer 33:3).