Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himself

Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himself

CHRIST DYING AND DRAWING SINNERS TO HIMSELF

JOHN 12:27-28. Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name.

IT is a question, whether these words of our Saviour's soul-trouble be nothing but the same words and prayer, which Matthew, chap. 26 and Luke 22 relate, to wit, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, when his soul was troubled in the garden, in his agony: some think them the same, others not. It is like they are words of the same matter: for, First, When Christ uttered these words, he was near his sufferings, and on the brink of that hideous and dark sea of his most extreme pain, and drew up against hell, and the armies of darkness; as the story sheweth. But that the Lord uttered these same words in the garden, and not before, is not apparent; because upon this prayer it is said, Then came there a voice from heaven, &c. A voice speaketh to him from heaven: now, Mat. 26; Luke 22 no voice is like to have come from heaven; for when he prayed in his agony, there were no people with him, as here; because of the voice, the people being present, Some said, it thundred: others said, an angel spake from heaven: there being now with Christ in the garden, when he prayed, O my Father, &c. none save Peter, James, and John, the three famous witnesses of his extreme suffering, and of his young heaven, of his transfiguration on the mount, when he acted the Preludium and the image and representation of heaven before them; as is clear, Mat. 26 ver. 37. And he was removed from them also, Mat. 26:39; Luke 22:41 and they were sleeping, in his agony, Mat. 26:40, 43, 45. But now there is a waking people with Christ, who heard this voice. But I deny not but it is the same prayer in sense: even as suppose it were revealed to a godly man, that he were to suffer an extreme, violent, and painful death; and withal, some fearful soul-desertion, as an image of the second death; it should much affright him to remember this, and he might pray that the Lord would either save him from that sad hour, or then give him grace with faith and courage, in the Lord, to endure it: so here; Christ, God and man, knowing that he was to bear the terrors of the first and second death, doth act over afore-hand (the time being near) the sorrow and anguish of heart that he was to suffer in his extreme sufferings: as it were good, ere the cross come, to act it in our mind, and take an essay and a lift of Christ's cross, ere we bear it, to try how handsomely we would set back and shoulders under the Lord's cross. I do not intend that we are to imitate the martyr, who put his hand in the fire, the night before he suffered, to try how he could endure burning-quick; but that we are to lay the supposition, What if it so fall out? (as Christ, being persuaded his suffering was to come, acted sorrow, trouble of soul and prayer beforehand) and to resolve the saddest, and antedate the cross, and say with our own hearts, Let the worst come; or to suffer our fear to prophesy, as Job did, chap. 3 ver. 25. Yet, suppose the hardest befal me, I know what to do; as the unjust steward resolveth on a way, beforehand, how to swim through his necessities, Luke 16:4. The Lord acteth judgment, and what they shall pray in the time of their extremity, who now spit at all praying and religion; they shall be religious in their kind, when they shall cry, Rev. 6:16. Mountains and rocks, fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. You cannot believe that a Lamb shall chase the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and every bond-man, and every free-man, into the dens and the rocks of the mountains, to hide themselves. But the Lord acteth wrath and judgment before your eyes. Men will not suppose the real story of hell. Say but with thyself, Oh! shall I weep and gnaw my tongue for pain, in a sea of fire and brimstone? Do but fore-fancy, I pray you, how you shall look on it, what thoughts you will have, what you shall do, when you shall, 2 Thess. 1:9 be punished with everlasting destruction, from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power. 1. Foreseen sorrows have not so sad an impression on the spirit. 2. Grace is a well-advised and resolute thing, and has the eyes of providence to say, in possible events, What if my scarlet embrace the dunghill, and providence turn the tables? 3. It is like wisdom (grace is wise to see afar off) to fore-act faith, and resolve to lie under God's feet, and intend humble yielding to God; as 2 Sam. 15:25, 26.

In the complaint we have, 1. The subject matter of it, The Lord's troubled soul. 2. The time; Now, is my soul troubled. 3. Christ's anxiety, wrought on him by this trouble; What shall I say? or, which is the sense, What shall I do? 4. And a shore is seen at hand in the storm, a present rock in the raging sea: what shalt thou say? Lord Jesus, what shalt thou do? Pray: And he prayeth, Father, save me from this hour: 5. There is a sort of correction, or rather a limitation But for this cause came I to this hour. The Lord, forgetting his pain, embraceth this evil hour. 6. Going on in his resolution to embrace this sad hour, he prayeth, ver. 28. Father, glorify thy name.

Touching the first, the soul-trouble of Christ, we are to consider, 1. How it can consist with peace. 2. How with the personal union. 3. What cause there was. 4. What love and mercy in Jesus, to be troubled for us. 5. What use we must make of this.

1. Pos. This holy soul, thus troubled, was like the earth before the fall, out of which grew roses, without thorns or thistles, before it was cursed. Christ's anger, his sorrow, were flowers that smelled of heaven, and not of sin: all his affections of fear, sorrow, sadness, hope, joy, love, desire, were like a fountain of liquid and melted silver; of which the banks, the head-spring, are all as clear from dross, as pure crystal: such a fountain can cast out no clay, no mud, no dirt. When his affections did rise and swell in their acts, every drop of the fountain was sinless, perfumed and adorned with grace; so as the more you stir or trouble a well of rose-water, or some precious liquor, the more sweet a smell it casts out: or, as when a summer soft wind bloweth on a field of sweet roses, it diffuseth precious and delicious smells through the air. There is such mud and dregs in the bottom and banks of our affections, that when our anger, sorrow, sadness, fear, do arise in their acts, our fountain casteth out sin. We cannot love, but we lust; nor fear, but we despair; nor rejoice, but we are wanton, and vain and gaudy; nor believe, but we presume: we rest up, we breathe out sin, we cast out a smell of hell, when the wind bloweth on our field of weeds and thistles; our soul is all but a plat of wild corn, the imaginations of our heart being only evil from our youth. O that Christ would plant some of his flowers in our soul, and bless the soil, that they might grow kindly there, being warmed and nourished with his grace! If grace be within, in sad pressures it comes out. A saint is a saint in affliction; as an hypocrite is an hypocrite, and every man is himself, and casts a smell like himself, when he is in the furnace. Troubled Christ prays. Tempted Job believes, Job 19:25. The scourged Apostles rejoice, Acts 5:41. Drowned Jonah looks to the holy temple, Jonah 2:4.

2. Christ's affections were rational; reason starts up before fear: reason and affection did not outrun one another. John 11:33 when Christ sees his friends weep, he weeps with them; and that which is expressed in our text by the passive verb ἡ ψυχὶ τετάρακται. My soul is troubled, is there expressed by an active verb, He groaned in the spirit, καὶ ἐταραξεν ἑκυτόν, and he troubled himself: he called upon his affections, and grace and light was lord and master of his affections. There were in Christ three things, which are not in us; First, The Godhead personally united with a man, and a man's soul had an immediate influence on his affections. This was Christ's personal privilege; and to want this, is not our sin; to have it, was Christ's glory: but the nearer any is to God, the more heavenly are the affections. Secondly, When God frameth the human nature and human soul of Christ, he created a more noble and curious piece than was the first Adam: it is true, He was like us in all things, except sin, and essentially a man; but in his generation there was a cut of the art of heaven in Christ more than in the forming of Adam, or than in the generation of men, suppose man had never sinned; as Luke 1:35. The power of the Most High shall overshadow thee: never man was thus to be born. Whence give me leave to think, that there was more of God in the human nature of Christ, as nature is a vessel coming out of the potter's house, than ever was in Adam, or living man; though man had never sinned: and so, that he had a human soul of a more noble structure and fabric, in which the Holy Ghost, in the act of sanctification, had a higher hand, than when Adam was created, according to the image of God; tho' he was a man like us in all things, sin excepted.

3. Pos. Undeniably, grace did so accompany nature that he could not fear more than the object required. Had all the strength of men and angels been massed and contemperated in one, they should have been in higher measure troubled, than Christ was: so how much trouble was in Christ's affections, as much there was of reason, perfumed and lustred with grace. He was not as man in his intellectuals, wise, or desirous to be wise, (as Adam and Eve, and men now are taken with the disease of curiosity) above what was fit: so neither were his affections above banks: he saw the blackest and darkest hour that ever any saw; suppose all the sufferings of the damned, for eternity, were before them in one sight, or came on them at once, it should annihilate all that are now, or shall be in hell. Christ now saw, or foresaw as great sufferings; and yet, 1. Believed, 2. Prayed, 3. Hoped, 4. Was encouraged under it, 5. Suffered them to the bottom with all patience, 6. Rejoiced in hope, Psal. 16:9. Now our affections rise and swell before reason: (1.) They are often imaginary, and are on horseback and in arms at the stirring of a straw. (2.) They want that clearness and serenity of grace that Christ had, through habitual grace following nature from the womb. (3.) We can raise our affections, but cannot allay them: as some magicians can raise the devil, but cannot conjure, or command him; or, some can make war, and cannot create peace. It is a calumny of Papists, that say, that Calvin did teach there was despair, or any distemper of reason in Christ; when as Calvin saith, He still believed with full assurance. And this extremity of soul-trouble was most rational, coming from the infallible apprehension of the most pressing cause of soul-trouble, that ever living man was under.

4. Pos. Christ had now and always moral peace, or the grace of peace, as peace is opposed to culpable raging of conscience. First, He never could want faith, which is a serenity, quietness, and silence of the soul, and assurance of the love of God. Secondly, He could have no doubting, or sinful disturbance of mind; because he could have no conscience of guilt, which could overcloud the love and tenderest favour of his Father to him. But as peace is opposed to pain, and sense of wrath and punishment, for the guilt of our sins; so he wanted physical peace, and was now under penal disturbance and disquietness of soul. So we see some have peace, but not pardon; as the secure sinners, 1 Thess. 5:3. 2dly, Some have pardon, but not peace; as David, Psal. 38:3 who had broken bones; and complaineth, ver. 8. I am feeble and sore broken, I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart. And the troubled church, Psal. 77:1, 2, 3, 4. Some have both peace and pardon; as some, like Stephen, that are so near to the crown, as they are above any challenges of conscience: it is like, Satan giveth over, and despaireth of these, whom he cannot overtake, being so near the end of the race. When the sun riseth first, the beams over-gild the tops of green mountains that look toward the east, and the world cannot hinder the sun to rise: some are so near heaven, that the everlasting Sun hath begun to make an everlasting day of glory on them; the rays that come from his face that sits on the throne, so over-goldeth the soul, that there is no possibility of clouding peace, or of hindering daylight in the souls of such. Some have neither peace nor pardon; as those in whose soul hell hath taken fire. Christ never needed pardon, he was able to pay all he was owing: he needed never the grace of forgiveness, nor grace to be spared; God spared him not. God could exact no less blood of him than he shed; but he received an acquittance of justification, never a pardon of grace, 1 Tim. 3:16. Justified in the Spirit.

The second point is, How a troubled soul can stand with a personal union. Can God, can the soul of God be troubled? I shall shew, 1. How this must be. 2. How this can be. It must be, First, Because the loss of heaven is the greatest loss. To ransom a king requireth more millions, than pence to ransom slaves. When we were cast and forfeited, more than an hundred and forty four thousand kings (in the Lord's decree they were kings) were cast out of heaven: where was there gold on earth to buy heaven, and so many kings? And yet justice must have payment: a God-troubled Saviour, and a soul-troubled God was little enough. Oh, saith love to infinite justice, What will you give for me? Will you buy me, my dear children, the heirs of eternal grace? A price below the worth of so many kings, justice cannot hear of; equal it must be, or more.

Secondly, Law cannot sleep satisfied with a man's soul-trouble: for as sin troubles an infinite God's soul, so far as our darts can fly up against the sun; so must the soul-trouble of him who is God, expiate sin.

Thirdly, Heaven is not only a transcendent jewel, dear in itself; but our Father would propine rebels with a sonship and a kingdom, which is dear in our legal esteem. What standeth my crown to God? Why, it could not possibly be dearer? The soul of God was weighed for it: that not only freedom, but the dearest of prices, might commend and cry up, above all heavens, Christ's love.

Fourthly, If my soul, or your souls, O redeemed of the Lord, could be valued every one of them worth ten thousand millions of souls, and as many heavens, they could not overweigh the soul of God, the soul that lodges in a glorious union with God: and the loss of heaven to the troubled soul of this noble, and high and lofty One, tho' but for a time, was more, and infinitely greater than my loss of heaven, and the loss of all the elect for eternity.

Fifthly, I love not to dispute here, but God, if we speak of his absolute power, without respect to his free decree, could have pardoned sin without a ransom, and gifted all mankind and fallen angels with heaven, without any satisfaction of either the sinner, or his surety; for he neither punisheth sin, nor tenders heaven to men or angels by necessity of nature, as the fire casteth out heat, and the sun light; but freely: only, supposing that frame of providence, and decrees of punishing, and redeeming sinners, that now is, the Lord could not but be steady in his decrees; yet this is but necessity conditional, and at the second hand. But here was the business, God, in the depth of his eternal wisdom, did so frame and draw the design and plot of saving lost man, as salvation was to run in no other channel, but such an one, the bank whereof was the freest grace and tenderest love that can enter into the heart of men or angels; for he drew the lines of our heaven through grace, all the way.

Secondly, Grace hardly can work but by choice and voluntary arbitration: choice and election is suitable to grace. Hence grace casts lots on man, not fallen angels; and the eternal lot of transcendent mercy must fall on the bosom of Jacob and some others, not on Esau and others. And our Lord contrived this brave way, to out his grace on us.

Thirdly, And he would not have love to lodge for eternity within his own bowels, but must find out a way how to put boundless mercy to the exchange or bank, that he might traffic with love and mercy, for no gain to himself; and therefore freely our Lord came under bail, and lovely necessity, to strain himself to issue out love, in giving his one Son (he had not another) to die for man: he framed a supernatural providence of richest grace and love, to buy the refuse of creatures, soul sinners, with an unparallel'd sampler of tender love, to give the blood-royal of heaven, the eternal Branch of the princely and kingly Godhead, a ransom to justice. You sin (saith the love of loves) and I suffer; You did the wrong, I make the mends; You sin and sing in your carnal joys, I sigh, I weep for your joy. The fairest face that ever was, was foul with weeping for your sinful rejoicing. It was fitting that free love, in the bowels of Christ, should contrive the way to heaven through free love: we should never in heaven, cast down our crowns at the feet of him that fits the throne, with such sense and admiration, if we had come to the crown by law-doing, and not by gospel-confiding on a rich ransom-prayer. O that eternal banquet of the honey-comb of the love-debt of the Lamb, that redeemed us for nothing! All the shoulders in heaven are for eternity on an act of lifting-up, and heightening Christ's free love, who has redeemed them with so free a redemption; but they are not all able, tho' angels help them, to lift it up high enough: it is so weighty a crown that is upon the head of the Prince. Redeemer, that in a manner it wearies them, and they cannot over-extol it.

Now, this must be a mystery: for tho' the essence of God, and more of God than can be in a creature, were in Christ, and in the most noble manner of union, which is personal; yet, as our soul united to a vegetive body, which doth grow, sleep, eat, drink, doth no grow, sleep, or eat; and as fire is mix'd or united with an hot iron, in which is density and weight, and yet there's neither density nor weight in the fire; so here, tho' the Godhead, in its fulness, was united, in a most strict union, with a troubled and perplexed soul, and the suffering nature of man, yet is the Godhead still free of suffering, or any penal infirmities of the soul: the vigour and colour of a fair rose may suffer by the extreme heat of the sun, when yet the sweet smell doth not suffer, but is rather enlarged by exhalation. Yet is there great halting in these comparisons; because, tho' the soul cannot be sick when the body is distempered, for there is nothing of the elementary nature, nor any contemperation of physical humours in it, because of a more sublime and pure constitution; yet there is such alliance and entire society between the soul and the body, that the soul, through concomitancy and sympathy, does suffer; as the indweller is put to the worse, if the house be rainy and dropping: the soul findeth smoke and leakings of pain, in that 'tis pinned in a lodging of sick clay, and so put to wish an hole in the wall, or to escape out at door or window; as often our spirits are overswayed so with distaste of life, because of the sour accidents that do convey it, that they think the gain of life not so sweet, as it can quit the cost. But the blessed Godhead, united to the manhood, cannot so much as for company's cause be sick, pained, or suffer; nor can the Godhead be weary of an union with a troubled soul: we conceive' in the grave and death, that glorious fellowship was never dissolved.

Secondly, Many things may suffer by invasion of contraries; as, shoot an arrow against a wall of brass, some impression may remain in the wall, to witness the violence that has been there; and we know that, They shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail: but the blessed Godhead in Christ is uncapable of an arrow, or of repercussion; there is no action against God; he is here not so much as a coast, a bank, or bulwark, capable of receiving one spitting or drop of a sea-wave: only the man Christ, the rose of heaven, had in his bosom, at his root, a fountain; O how deep and refreshing, that kept the flower green, under death and the grave! When it was plucked up, it was fair, vigorous, green before the sun; and thus plucked up, and above earth, blossomed fair!

Thirdly, Not only the influence and effect of the glorious Godhead did water the flower, and keep strength in Christ, (so, I think, God can keep a damned man in the doubled torments of everlasting wrath, with strength of grace, courage, faith, the love of Christ for ever, as he could not be overcome by hell and devils) but there was the fulness personal of the Godhead, that immediately sustained the man Christ: it was not a delegated comfort, nor sent help, nor a message of created love, nor a borrowed flowing of a sea of sweetness of consolation; but God in proper person, infinite subsistence, the personality of the Son of God bottomed all his sufferings: the manhood was imped and stocked in the subsistence of the tree of life. 'Tis true, God is a present help to his saints in trouble; but his helping is in his operation and working; but he is not personally united to the soul. 'Tis abominable that some Familists teach, that as Christ was once made flesh, so he is now first made flesh in us, ere we be carried to perfection: because, not any saint on earth can be so united to God, as the Son of Man; for he being made of a woman, of the seed of David, the Son of Man, and not any but he, is the eternal Son of God, God blessed for ever. The Child born to us, is the mighty God, the Father of Age, the Prince of Peace, Isa. 9:6; Rom. 9:5; Gal. 4:4. There is a wide difference between him the second Adam, and all men, even the first Adam in his perfection, 1 Cor. 15:47. If Christ suffered without dissolving of the union, God keeping the tent of clay, and taking it to heaven with him in a personal union, then God can in the lowest desertion dwell in his saints. We complain, in our soul-trouble of Christ's departure from us; but he is not gone: our sense is not our bible, nor a good rule; there is an error in this compass.

The third was the particular cause. What cause was there? Papists say, There was no reason of Christ's soul-suffering, except for sympathy with the body. We believe, that Christ becoming surety for us, not his body only, but his soul especially, came under that necessity, that his soul was in our soul's stead; and so, what was due to our souls for ever, our surety of justice behoved to suffer the same. Isa. 53:10. He made his soul on offering for sin. Sure for our sin. Nor must we restrict the soul to the body and temporary life, seeing he expresseth it in his own language, And now is my soul troubled.

Secondly, There was no reason of Christ's bodily sufferings, when, in the garden, he did sweat blood for us; nor had any man at that time laid hands on him; and all that agony he was in, came from his soul only.

Thirdly, Nor can it be more inconsistent with his blessed person, being God and man, and the Son of God, that he suffered in his soul the wrath of God for our sins, than that his soul was troubled, and exceeding sorrowful, heavy to the death, in an agony; and that he complained, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And the cause of this soul-trouble was for sinners; this was surety-suffering. The choicest and most stately piece that ever God created, and dearest to God, being the second to God-man, was the princely soul of Christ, it was king's soul; yet death, by reason of sin, passeth upon it; and not a common death, but that which is the marrow of death, the first-born and the strongest of deaths, the wrath of God, the innocent pain of hell, void of despair and hatred of God. If I had any hell on me, I should choosean innocent hell, like Christ's: better suffer ill a thousand times, than sin; suffering is rather to be chosen, than sin. It was pain, and nothing but pain: damned men, and reprobate devils, are not capable of a godly and innocent hell, they cannot chuse to suffer hell, and not spit on fair and spotless justice; because Christ's blood was to wash away sin, he could not both fully pay, and contract debt also, but if it be so, that death finding so precious a surety, as Christ's princely and sinless soul, did make him obey the law of the land, ere he escaped out of that land; what wonder that we die, who are born in the land of death? No creature but it travelleth in pain, with death in its bosom, or an inclination to mother-nothing, whence it came. God only goeth between the mightiest angel in heaven, and nothing: all things under the moon must be sick of vanity and death, when the heir of all things, coming in amongst dying creatures, out of dispensation, by law must die. If the Lord's soul, and the soul of such a Lord die and suffer wrath, then let the fair face of the world, the heavens, look like the face of an old man, full of trembling, white hairs, and wrinkles, Psal. 102:26. Then let man make for his long home; let time itself wax old and gray-haired. Why should I desire to stay here, when Christ could not but pass away?

And if this spotless soul that never sinned was troubled, what wonder then many troubles be to the sinner? Our Saviour, who promiseth soul-rest to others, cannot have soul-rest himself: his soul is now on a wheel sore tossed, and all the creatures are upon a wheel, and in motion; there is not a creature since Adam sinned, sleepeth sound. Weariness and motion is laid on moon and sun, and all creatures on this side of the moon. Seas ebb and flow, and that's trouble; winds blow, rivers move, heavens and stars these five thousand years, except one time, have not had six minutes rest; living creatures walk apace toward death; kingdoms, cities, are on the wheel of changes, up and down; mankind run, and the disease of body-trouble, and soul-trouble on them, they are motion-sick, going on their feet, and kings cannot have beds to rest in. The six days' creation hath been travelling and shouting for pain, and the child is not born yet, Rom. 8:22. This poor woman hath been groaning under the bondage of vanity, and shall not be brought to bed, while Jesus come the second time to be midwife to the birth. The great All of heaven and earth, since God laid the first stone of this wide hall, hath been groaning and weeping for the liberty of the sons of God, Rom. 8:21. The figure of the passing-away world, 1 Cor. 7:31 is like an old man's face, full of wrinkles, and soul with weeping: we are waiting when Jesus shall be revealed from heaven, and shall come and wipe the old man's face. Every creature here is on its feet, none of them can sit or lie Christ's soul now is above trouble, and rests sweetly in the bosom of God. Troubled souls, rejoice in hope. Soft and childish saints take it not well that they are not every day feasted with Christ's love, that they lie not all the night between the Redeemer's breasts, and are not dandled on his knee; but when the daintiest piece of the man Jesus, his precious soul, was thus sick of soul-trouble, and the noble and celebrious head-heir of all, the first of his kingly house, was put to deep groans, that pierced skies and heaven, and rent the rocks, why but sinners should be submissive, when Christ is pleased to set children down to walk on foot, and hide himself from them? But they forget the difference between the inns of clay, and the home of glory. Our fields here are sown with tears, grief grows in every furrow of this low land. You shall lay soul and head down in the bosom, and between the breasts of Jesus Christ; that bed must be soft and delicious, it is perfumed with uncreated glory. The thoughts of all your now soul-troubles shall be as shadows that passed away ten thousand years ago, when Christ shall circle his glorious arm about your head, and you rest in an infinite compass of surpassing glory; or when glory, or ripened grace, shall be within you, and without you, above and below, when feet of clay shall walk upon pure surpassing glory. The street of the city was pure gold: there is no gold there, but glory only; gold is but a shadow to all that is there.

It were possibly no less edifying to speak a little of the fourth, What love and tender mercy it was in Christ, to be so troubled in soul for us.

1. Pos. Self is precious, when free of sin, and withal self-happy. Christ was both free of sin, and self-happy; What then could have made him stir his foot out of heaven, so excellent a land, and come under the pain of a troubled soul, except free, strong and vehement love, that was a bottomless river unpatient of banks? Infinite goodness maketh love to swell without itself, John 15:13. Goodness is much moved with righteousness and innocency; but we had a bad cause, because sinners: but goodness (for every man that hath a good cause, is not a good man) is moved with goodness: we were neither righteous nor good; yet Christ, tho' neither righteousness was in us, nor goodness, would dare to die for us, Rom. 5:7, 8. Goodness and grace (which is goodness for no deserving) is bold, daring, and venturous. Love, which could not flow within its own channel, but that Christ's love might be out of measure love, and out of measure loving, would outrun wickedness in man.

2. Pos. Had Christ seen, when he was to engage his soul in the pains of the second death, that the expence in giving out should be great, and the income small, and no more than he had before, we might value his love more: but Christ had leisure from eternity, and wisdom enough to cast up his counts, and knew what he was to give out, and what to receive in; so he might have repented and given up the bargain. He knew that his blood, and his one noble soul, that dwelt in a personal union with God, was a greater sum, incomparably, than all his redeemed ones. He should have in little, he should but gain lost sinners; he should empty out (in a manner) a fair Godhead, and kill the Lord of glory, and get in a black bride. But there's no lack in love; the love of Christ was not private, nor mercenary. Christ, the buyer, commended the wares ere he bargained, Cant. 4:7. Thou art all fair, my love, there's not a spot in thee. Christ judged he had gotten a noble prize, and made an heaven's market, when he got his wife, that he served for, in his arms, Isa. 53:11. He saw the travel of his soul, and was satisfied: he was filled with delight, as a full banqueter. If that ransom he gave had been little, he would have given more.

3. Pos. It is much that nothing without Christ moved him to this engagement. There was a sad and bloody war between divine justice and sinners: love, love pressed Christ to the war, to come and serve the great king, and the state of lost mankind, and to do it freely. This maketh it two favours. 'Tis a conquering notion to think, that the sinner's heaven bred first in Christ's heart from eternity; and that love, freest love, was the blossom, and the seed, and the only contriver of our eternal glory: that free grace drove on from the beginning of the age of God, from everlasting, the saving plot and sweet design of redemption of souls. This innocent and soul-rejoicing policy of Christ's taking on him the seed of Abraham, not of angels, and to come down in the shape of a servant, to the land of his enemies, without a pass, in regard of his sufferings, speaketh and crieth the deep wisdom of infinite love. Was not this the wit of free grace, to find out such a mysterious and profound dispensation, as that God and man personally should both do and suffer, so as justice should want nothing, mercy should be satisfied, peace should kiss righteousness, and war go on, in justice, against a sinless Redeemer? Angels bowing and stooping down to behold the bottom of this depth, 1 Pet. 1:12 cannot read the perfect sense of the infinite turnings and foldings of this mysterious love. O love heaven, and fairest of beloveds, the flower of angels, why camest thou so low down, as to bespot and under-rate the spotless love of all loves, with coming nigh to black sinners? Who could have believed that lumps of hell and sin could be capable of the warmings and sparkles of so high and princely a love? Or that there could be place in the breast of the high and lofty One, for forlorn and guilty clay? But we may know in whose breast this bred; sure none but only the eternal love and delight of the Father could have outed so much love: had another done it, the wonder had been more. But of this more elsewhere.

Use 1. We may hence chide our soft nature: the Lord Jesus his soul was troubled in our business; we start at a troubled body, at a scratch in a penny broad of our hide. First, There is in nature a silent impatience if we be not carried in a chariot of love, in Christ's bosom, to heaven; and if we walk not upon scarlet, and purple under our feet, we flinch and murmur.

Secondly, We would either have a silent, a soft, a perfumed cross, sugared and honeyed with the consolations of Christ, or we faint; and providence must either brew a cup of gall and wormwood, mastered in the mixing with joy and songs, else we cannot be disciples. But Christ's cross did not smile on him, his cross was a cross, and his ship sailed in blood, and his blessed soul was sea-sick, and heavy even to death.

Thirdly, We love to sail in fresh waters, within a step to the shore; we consider not, that our Lord, tho' he afflict not, and crush not, Millebbo, from his heart. Lam. 3:33 yet he afflicteth not in sport: punishing of sin is in God a serious, grave, and real work: no reason the cross should be a play; neither Stoicks nor Christians can laugh it over; the cross cast a sad gloom upon Christ.

Fourthly, We forget that bloody and sad mercies are good for us: the peace that the Lord bringeth out of the womb of war, is better than the rotten peace that we had in the superstitious days of prelates. What a sweet life, what a heaven, what a salvation is it, we have in Christ? And we know the death, the grave, the soul-trouble of the Lord Jesus, travelled in pain to bring forth these to us. Heaven is the more heaven, that to Christ it was a purchase of blood. The cross to all the saints must have a bloody bit, and lion's teeth; it was like itself to Christ, gally and sour, it must be so to us. We cannot have a paper-cross, except we would take on us to make a golden providence, and put the creation in a new frame, and take the world, and make it a great leaden vessel, melt it in the fire, and cast a new mould of it.

Fifthly, The more of God in the cross, the sweeter: as that free grace doth bud out of the black rod of God, to the soul that seeth not, and yet believeth, and loveth; the cross of Christ drops honey, and the sweetest consolations. We sigh under strokes, and we believe. The first Adam killed us, and buried us in two deaths, and sealed our grave in one piece of an hour; he concluded all under wrath. Now how much of Christ is in this? Omnipotency, infinite wisdom, (when angels gave us over, and stood aloof at our misery, as changed lovers) free grace, boundless love, deepest and richest mercy in Jesus Christ opened our graves, and raised the dead. Christ died and rose again, and brought again from the dead all his buried brethren.

Sixthly, We can wrestle with the Almighty, as if we could discipline and govern ourselves, better than God can do; murmuring fleeth up against a dispensation of an infinite wisdom, because 'tis God's dispensation, not our own, as if God had done the fault, but the murmuring man only can make amends, and right the slips of infinite wisdom. Why is it thus with me, Lord? (saith the wrestler) Why dost thou misjudge Christ? He who findeth fault with what the Creator doth, let him be man or angel, undo it, and do better himself, and carry it with him.

Seventhly, We judge God with sense, with the humour of reason, not with reason; the oar that God rolleth his vessel withal, is broken (say we) because the end of the oar is in the water: Providence halteth (say we) but what if sense and humour say, a straight line is a circle? The world judgeth God in person a Samaritan, one that had a devil; if we misjudge his person, we may misjudge his providence and ways. Suspend your sense of God's ways, while you see not his ends that are under ground, and instead of judging, wonder and adore; or then believe implicitly, that the way of God is equal; or do both, and submit, and be silent. Heart-dialogues and heart-speeches against God, that arise as smoke in the chimney, as challengings and summonings against our highest landlord, for his own house and land.

Use 2. If Christ gave a soul for us, he had no choicer thing: the Father had no nobler and dearer gift, than his only begotten Son; the Son had nothing dearer than himself, the man Christ had nothing of value comparable to his soul, and that must run a hazard for man. The Father, the Son, the man Christ, gave the excellentest that was theirs, for us. In this giving and taking world, we are hence obliged to give the best and choicest thing we have for Christ. Should we make a table of Christ's acts of love, and free grace to us, and of our sins and acts of unthankfulness to him, this would be more evident; as there was (1.) Before time in the breast of Christ an eternal coal of burning love to the sinner: this fire of heaven is everlasting, and the flames as hot to day as ever; our coal of love to him in time, hath scarce any fire or warmness, all fire is hot: Oh, we cannot warm Christ with our love; but his love to us is hotter than death, or as the flames of God: We were enemies in our minds to him, by wicked works. Col. 1:21. Heirs of wrath by nature. Christ began with love to us, we began with hatred to him.

2. The Father gave his only begotten Son for us: how many fathers and Elies will not let fall one rough word to all the sons and daughters they have for the Lord? God spared not his own Son, but gave him to the death for us all. Earthly fathers spare, clap their sons, servants, friends; magistrates, flattering pastors, their people in their blasphemies for him.

3. Christ gave his soul to trouble, and to the horror of the second death for you: consult with your heart, if you have quit one lust for him. Christ laid aside his heaven for you; his whole heaven, his whole glory for you, and his Father's house: are you willing to part with an acre of earth, or house, and inheritance for him?

4. In calling us out of the state of sin, to grace and glory: Oh! I must make this sad reckoning with Jesus Christ. Oh, Christ turneth his smiling face to me, in calling, inviting, obtesting, praying, that I would be reconciled to God: I turn my back to him; he openeth his breast and heart to us, and saith, friends, doves, come in and dwell in the holes of this rock; and we lift our heel against him. O what guilt is here, to scratch Christ's breast, when he willeth you to come, and lay head and heart on his breast? This unkindness to Christ's troubled soul, is more than sin; sin is but a transgression of the law. I grant it is an infinite but; but it is a transgression of both law and love, to spurn against the warm bowels of love, to spit on grace, on tenderness of infinite love. The white and ruddy, the fairest of heaven offereth to kiss black-moors on earth; they will not come near to him. It is a heart of flint, and adamant, that spitteth at evangelic love: law-love is love; evangelic love is more than love, it is the gold, the flour of Christ's wheat, and of his finest love. Cant. 5:6. I rose up to open to my Beloved, but my Beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone; my soul passed away when he spake. There be two words here considerable, to prove how wounding are sins against the love of Christ. 1. My Beloved hath withdrawn himself; the text is, Vedodi hamak, and my Beloved hath turned about. Ari. Mont. circumjerat, Pagnin in the margin, verterat se, the old version, declinaverat. Christ being unwilling to remove, and wholly go away, he only turned aside, as Jer. 31:22. How long wilt thou go about, Tithhammakin, O thou backsliding daughter. This intimateth so much, as Christ taketh not a direct journey to go away, and leave his own children; only he goeth a little aside from the door of the soul, to testify he would gladly, with his soul come in. Now what ingratitude is it, to shut him violently away? 2. My soul was gone; the old version is, my soul melted at his speaking? Gnabar, my soul passed over, or went away; to remember his ravishing words it broke my life and made me die: (so is the word elsewhere used) that I remembered a world of love in him, when he knocked, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove; to sin against so great a bond as grace, must be the sin of sins, and amongst highest sins, as is clear, in these that sin against the Holy Ghost; then it must be impossible to give grace any thing, we but pay our debts to grace; we cannot give the debt of grace to grace in the whole sum.

Use 3. It cannot then be a sin so intrinsically, and of itself to be troubled in soul, if Christ was under soul-trouble, for sins imputed to him.

Hence let me stay a little on these two; First, What a troubled conscience is: Secondly, What course the troubled in soul are to take in imitation of Christ. A soul troubled for sin must either be a soul feared and perplexed for the penal displeasure, wrath and indignation of God, or the eternal punishment of sin, as these come under the apprehension of the evil of punishment; or for sin as it saileth against the love of God, or for both. In any of these three respects, it is no sin to be soul-troubled for sin, upon these conditions: 1. That the soul be free of faithless doubting of God's love. Now Christ was free of this, he could not but have a fixed, entire, and never-broken confidence of his Father's eternal love. If we have any sin in our soul-trouble for sin, it is from unbelief, not from soul-trouble; if there be mud and clay in the streams, it is from the banks, not from the fountain. Or, 2. If the soul fear the ill of punishment, as the greatest ill, and as a greater than the ill of sin, there is more passion, than sound light in the fear; this could not be in Christ. The aversion of the Lord's heart, from the party in whom there is sin, either by real inherence, or by free imputation, and the indrawing of rays, and irradiations, and outflowings of divine love, is a high evil in a soul that hath any thing of the nature of a son in him: now there was much of a son in Christ, as a man's nature could be capable of; and the more of God that was in Christ, as the fulness, the boundless infinite sea of the Godhead, overflowed Christ all over the banks; then for Christ to be under a cloud, in regard of the outbreathings of eternal love, was, in a sort, most violent to Christ, as if he had been torn from himself: and therefore it behoved to be an extreme soul-trouble; Christ being deprived, in a manner, of himself, and of his only soul's substantial delight and paradise. And this could not be a sin, but an act of gracious soul-sorrow, that sin and hell intervened between the moon and the sun; the soul of Christ, and his Lord. The more of heaven in the soul, and the more of God, the want of God and of heaven is the greater hell. Suppose we, that the whole light in the body of the sun were utterly extinct, and that the sun were turned in a body as dark as the outside of a caldron, that should be a greater loss, than if an halfpenny candle were deprived of light. Christ had more to lose, than a world of millions of angels. Imagine a creature of as much angelic capacity, as ten thousand times ten thousand of angels, all contemperated in one; if this glorious angel were filled, according to his capacity, with the highest and most pure and refined glory of heaven; and again were immediately stript naked of all this glory, and then plunged into the depth and heart of hell, and of a lake of more than hell's ordinary temper, of fire and brimstone; or suppose God should add millions of degrees of more pure and unmixed wrath and curses, this angel's soul must be more troubled than we can easily apprehend; yet this is but a comparison below the thing: but the Lord Jesus, in whose person, heaven in the highest degree was carried about with him, being thrown down from the top of so high a glory, to a sad and fearful condition, an agony, and sweating of blood, (God knows the cause) that shouting and tears of this low condition, drew out that saddest complaint, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? His loss must be incomparably more than all we can say in these shadows.

This sheweth the cause, why there is not among troubles any so grievous, as the want of the presence of God, to a soul fattened and feasted with the continual marrow and fatness of the Lord's house. No such complaints read you, so bitter, so pathetic, and coming from deeper sense, than the want of the sense of Christ's love. It is broken bones, and a dried-up body to David; it is bitter weeping and crying, like the chattering of a crane to Hezekiah; it is more than strangling, and brings Job to pray, he had been buried in the womb of his mother, or that he had never been born, or his mother had been always great with him; it is swooning, and the soul's departure out of the body, sickness and death to the spouse, Cant. 5:5, 6, 8. It is hell and distraction to Heman, Psal. 88:15. It is to Jeremiah the cursing of the messenger that brought tidings to his father, That a man child was born, and a wishing that he never had being nor life. It is death to part the lover from the beloved; and the stronger love be, the death is the more death.

But in all that we have yet said, Christ's greatest soul-trouble as a Son (for that he was essentially) was, in that his holy soul was sadded and made heavy even to death, for sin, as sin, and as contrary to his Father's love. The elect sinned against the Lord, not looking to him, as either Lord or Father; but Christ paid full dear for sin; eyeing God as Lord, as Father. We look neither to Lord, to law, nor to love, when we sin; Christ looked to all three, when he satisfied for sin. Christ did more than pay our debts; it was a sum above price that he gave for us; it is a great question, yea out of all question, if all mankind redeemed came near to the worth, to the goodly price given for us.

So, according to the sense of any happiness, so must the soul-trouble for the loss of that happiness be, in due proportion. First, As we love, so is sorrow for the loss of what we love. Jacob would not have mourned so, for the loss of a servant, as of his son Joseph. Now, no man enjoying God could have a more quick and vigorous sense of the enjoyed Godhead, than Christ; so his apprehension and vision of God must have been strong. 2. Because the union with the Godhead, and communion of fulness of grace from the womb, must add to his natural faculties, a great edge of sense; his soul, and the faculties thereof, were never blunted with sin; and the larger the vessel be, the fulness must be the greater: what, or who of the highest seraphims, or dominions, or principalities, among angels, had so large and capacious a spirit, to contain the fulness of God, as Christ had? When Solomon's heart was larger than the sand on the sea-shore, and he was but a shadow of such a soul as was to dwell personally with the fulness of the Godhead bodily; O how capacious and wide must the heart of the true Solomon be! It being to contain many seas and rivers of wisdom, love, joy, goodness, mercy, above millions of sands, in millions of sea-shores. What bowels of compassion and love, of meekness, gentleness, of free grace must be in him? Since all the thousands of elected souls sat in these bowels, and were in his heart, to die, and live with him; and withal, since in his heart was the love of God in the highest. Love must make a strong impression in the heart of Christ; and the stronger, purer, and more vigorous that Christ's intellectuals are, the deeper his holy thoughts and pure apprehensions were, and more steeled with fulness of grace; his fruition, sense, joy, and love of God, must be the more elevated above what angels and men are capable of. Hence it must follow, that Christ was plunged in an uncouth, and new world of extreme sorrow, even to the death, when this strong love was eclipsed. Imagine, that for one spring and summer-season, that all the light, heat, motion, vigour, influence of life, should retire into the body of the sun, and remain there; what darkness, deadness, withering should be upon flowers, herbs, trees, mountains, valleys, beasts, birds, and all things living and moving on the earth? Then, what wonder, that Christ's soul was extremely troubled? His blessed sun was now down, his spring and summer gone; his Father a forsaking God, was a new world to him. And I shall not believe, that this complaint came from any error of judgment, or mistakes or groundless jealousies of the love of God: as his Father could not at any time hate him; so neither could he at this time, actu secundo, let out the sweet fruits of his love: the cause of the former is the nature of God, as the ground of the latter is a dispensation above the capacity of the reason of men or angels. We may then conclude, that Jesus Christ's soul-trouble, as it was rational, and extremely penal, so also it was sinless, and innocent. Seldom have we soul-trouble sinless but it is by accident of the way; for our passions can hardly rise in their extremity, (except when God is their only object) but they go over score, yet soul-trouble intrinsically is not a sin.

Then to be troubled for sin, tho' the person be fully persuaded of pardon, is neither sin, nor inconsistent with the state of a justified person; nor is it any act of unbelief, as Antinomians falsely suppose. For, (1.) To be in soul-trouble for sin (which cannot, to the perfect knowledge of the person troubled, eternally condemn) was in Jesus Christ; in whom there was no spot of sin. And Antinomians say, sin remaining sin essentially, must have a condemnatory power; so as 'tis impossible to separate the condemnatory power of the law, from the mandatory and commanding power of the law. (2.) Because, as to abstain from sin, as it offendeth against the love of God shewing mercy, rather than the law of God inflicting wrath, is spiritual obedience; so also to be troubled in soul for sin, committed by a justified person, against so many sweet bonds of free love and grace, is a sanctified and gracious sorrow and trouble of soul. (3.) To be troubled for sin, as offensive to our heavenly Father, and against the sweetness of free grace and tender love, includeth no act of unbelief, nor that the justified and pardoned sinner, thus troubled, is not pardoned, or that he feareth eternal wrath, (as Antinomians imagine) no more than a son's grief of mind for offending a tender-hearted father, can infer, that this grief doth conclude this son under a condition of doubting of his state of sonship or filiation, or a fearing he be disinherited. We may fear the Lord and his goodness, Hos. 3:5 as well as we fear his eternal displeasure. (4.) Sanctified soul-trouble is a fouly commotion and agony of spirit, for trampling under feet tender love, spurning and kicking against the lovely warmness of the flowings of the blood of atonement; checks, and love-terrors, or love-fevers, that Christ's princely head was wet with the night-rain, while he was kept out of his own house, and suffered to lodge in the streets; and fear that the Beloved withdraw himself, and go seek his lodging elsewhere, as Cant. 5:4, 5; Psal. 5:9, 10 and that the Lord cover himself with a cloud, and return to his place, and the influence of the rays and beams of love be suspended; are sweet expressions of filial bowels, and tenderness of love to Christ.

Libertines imagine, if the hazard and fear of hell be removed, there is no more place for fear, soul-trouble, or confession: therefore they teach, That there is no assurance true and right, unless it be without fear and doubting. 2. That to call in question whether God be my dear Father, after, or upon the commission of some heinous sins (as murder, incest, &c. doth prove a man to be under the covenant of works. (3.) That a man must be so far from being troubled for sin, that be must take no notice of his sin, nor of his repentance. Yea, Dr. Crisp. vol. 3. serm. 1. page 20, 21, 22 saith, There was no cause why Paul (Rom. 7) should fear sin, or a body of death; because in that place Paul doth (saith he) personate a scrupulous spirit, and doth not speak out of his own present case, as it was at this time, when he speaks it; but speaks it in the person of another, yet a believer: and my reason is, Paul in respect of his own person, what became of his sin, was already resolved, chap. 8:1. There is now no condemnation, &c. He knew his sins were pardoned, and that they could not hurt him.

Answ. Observe, that Arminius, as also of old, Pelagius, exponed, Rom. 7 de semi regenito, of a half renewed man, in whom sense, which inclines to venial sins, fights with reason; that so the full and perfectly renewed man might seem to be able to keep the law, and be free of all mortal sin. And Crisp doth here manifestly free the justified man of all sin: why? because he is pardoned. So then, there is no battle between the flesh and the spirit in the justified man, by the Antinominian way to heaven; which, on the flesh's part, that lusteth against the spirit, deserveth the name of sin, or a breach of the law. Only 'tis Asinus meus qui peccat, non ego; as the old Libertines in Calvin's time said, The flesh does the sin, not the man; for the man is under no law, and so cannot sin. But that Paul, Rom. 7 speaks in the person of a scrupulous and troubled conscience, not as 'tis the common case of all the regenerate, in whom sin dwells, is a soul and fleshly untruth. (1.) To be carnal in part, as verse 14 to do what we allow not, to do what we would not, and what we hate to do, is the common case, not peculiar to a troubled conscience only, but to all the saints, Gal. 5:17 (2.) Paul speaketh not of believing, as he must do, if he speaks only of a scrupulous and doubting conscience; but he speaketh of κατεργάζεαδαι ποιειν θέλω of working, verse 15 doing, 17, 18 willing, 15, 19 not of believing only, or doubting: now, it is not like the apostle does personate a scrupulous soul, of whom he insinuates no such thing. (3.) A scrupulous and troubled conscience will never yield, so long as he is in that condition, that he does any good, or that he belongs to God; as is clear, Psal. 88; Psal. 38; Psal. 77:1, 2, 3, 4, &c. But Paul in this case yieldeth, he does good, hates evil, delights in the law of the Lord in the inner man; hath a desire to do good; hath a law in his mind that resisteth the motions of the flesh. (4.) Yea, the apostle then had no cause to fear the body of sin, or to judge himself wretched; this was his unbelief, and there was no ground of his fear, because he was pardoned; he knew that he was freed from condemnation. It was then Paul's sin, and is the sinful scrupulosity of unbelievers, to say, being once justified, "Sin dwells in me, and there is a law in my members, rebelling against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity unto the law of sin; and I am carnal, and sold under sin; and I do evil, even that which I hate;" for all these are lies, and speeches of unbelief: the justified man sinneth not, his heart is clean, he doth nothing against a law. But I well remember, that our divines, and particularly Chemnitius, Calvin, Beza, prove against Papists, that concupiscence is sin after baptism, even in the regenerate; and it is called eleven or twelve times with the name of sin, Rom. chapters 6; 7; 8. And they teach that of Augustine as a truth, Inest non ut non sit, sed ut non imputetur. So we may use all these arguments against Libertines, to prove we are, even being justified, such as can sin, and do transgress the law; and therefore ought to confess these sins, be troubled in conscience for them, complain and sigh in our fetters, tho' we know that we are justified and freed from the guilt of sin, and the obligation to eternal wrath. But sin is one thing, and the obligation to eternal wrath is another thing: Antinomians confound them, and so mistake grossly the nature of sin, and of the law, and of justification. Some impudently go so far on, that they teach, "That believers are to be troubled in heart for nothing that befals them, either in sin, or in affliction." If their meaning were, that they should not doubtingly, and from the principle of unbelief, call in question their once sealed justification, we should not oppose such a tenet; but their reasons do conclude, "That we should no more be shaken in mind with sin, than with afflictions, and the punishment of sin;" and that, notwithstanding of the highest provocation we are guilty of, we are always to rejoice, to feast on the consolations of Christ, 1. "Because trouble for sin ariseth from ignorance or unbelief; that believers understand not the work of God for them, in the three persons; the Father's everlasting decree about them; the Son's union with them, and headship to them, his merits and intercession; the Holy Spirit's inhabitation in them, and his office toward them, to work all their works for them, till he make them meet for glory. 2. Because such trouble is troublesome to God's heart, as a friend's trouble is to his friends; but especially, because the spirit of bondage never returns again to the justified," Rom. 8:15. But I crave leave to clear our doctrine, touching soul-trouble for sin in the justified person.

Asser. 1. No doubting, no perplexity of unbelief, de jure, ought to perplex the soul once justified and pardoned. 1. Because the patent and writs of unchangeable purpose to save the elect, and the subscribed and resolved-upon act of atonement and free redemption in Christ standeth uncancelled and firm, being once received by faith; the justified soul ought not so to be troubled for sin, as to misjudge the Lord's bypast work of saving grace. 1. Because the believer, once justified, is to believe remission of sins, and a paid ransom: if now he should believe the writs once signed, were cancelled again, he were obliged to believe things contradictory. 2. To believe that the Lord is changed, and off and on, in his free love and eternal purposes, is a great slandering of the Almighty. 3. The church, Psal. 77 acknowledgeth such misjudging of God to be the soul's infirmity, Psal. 77:10. "I said, this is my infirmity."

Asser. 2. Yet, de facto, David "a man according to God's heart," 1 Sam. 12:12, 13 fell in an old fever, a sit of the disease of the spirit of bondage, Psal. 32:3. "When I kept silence, my bones waxed old, thro' my roaring all the day long." Ver. 4. "For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me, my moisture is turned into the drought of summer." So the church in Asaph's words, Psal. 77:2. "My sore ran in the night, and ceased not:" either his hand was bedewed with tears in the night, as the Hebrew beareth: or a boil of unbelief broke upon me in the night, and slacked not. Ver. 7. "Will the Lord cast off for ever? will he be merciful no more?" Then faith and doubting both may as well be in the soul, with the life of God, as health and sickness in one body at sundry times; and it is no argument at all of no spiritual assurance, and of a soul under the law or covenant of works, to doubt: as sickness argueth life, no dead corpse is capable of sickness, or blindness; these are infirmities that neighbour with life: so doubting, with sorrow, because the poor soul cannot, in that exigence, believe, is of kin to the life of God: the life of Jesus hath infirmities, kindly to it, as some diseases are hereditary to such a family. 2. The habit or state of unbelief is one thing, and doubtings and love-jealousies is another thing. Our love to Christ is sickly, crazy, and full of jealousies and suspicions. Temptations make false reports of Christ, and we easily believe them. Jealousies argue love, and the strongest of loves, even marriage-love. 3. By this, all acts of unbelief in souls once justified, and sanctified, should be impossible. Why, then the Lord's disciples had no faith, when Christ said to them, "Why doubt ye, O ye of little faith?" It haply may be answered, that the disciples, Mat. 8 doubted not of their sonship, but of the Lord's particular care in bringing them to shore in a great sea storm. To which I answer, its most true, they then feared bodily, not, directly, soul shipwreck; but if it was sinful doubting, of Christ's care of them, Master, carest thou not for us? the point is concluded, that doubting of Christ's care and love may well infer, a soul is not utterly void of faith, that is in a doubting condition. 4. The morning dawning of light, is light; the first springing of the child in the belly, is a motion of life; the least warnings of Christ's breathings is the heat of life: when the pulse of Christ new-framed in the soul moveth most weakly, the new birth is not dead; the very swooning of the love of Christ cannot be incident to a buried man. 5. When Christ rebuketh little faith and doubting, he supposeth faith: he who is but a sinking, and crieth to Christ, is not drowned as yet. 6. The disciples' prayer, Lord, increase our faith; Christ's praying that the faith of the saints, when they are winnowed, may not fail; the exhortation to be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might, prove the saints' faith may be at a stand, and may stagger and slide. 7. The various conditions of the saints; now its full moon, again no moon-light at all, but a dark eclipse; evidenceth this truth. The believer hath flowings of strong acts of faith, joy, love; supernatural passions of grace arising to an high spring-tide, above the banks and ordinary coasts; and again, a low ground-ebb. The condition of ebbings and flowings, in full manifestations and divine raptures of another world, when the wind bloweth right from heaven, and the breach of Jesus Christ's mouth and of sad absence, runneth through the Song of Solomon, the book of Psalms, the book of Job, as threads through a web of silk, and veins that are the strings and spouts carrying blood through all the body, less or more.

Asser. 3. The justified soul once pardoned, receiveth never the spirit of bondage, Rom. 8:15 to fear again, eternal wrath; that is, this spirit in the intension of the habit, such as was at the first conversion, when there was not a grain of faith; doth never return, nor is it consistent with the spirit of adoption. Yet happily it may be a question, if a convert brought in with much sweetness, and quietness of spirit, shall fall in some heinous sin, like the adultery and murther of David, have not greater vexation of spirit, than at his first conversion, but more supernatural.

But yet this must stand as a condemned error, which (a) Libertines do hold, That frequency or length of holy duties, or trouble of conscience for neglect thereof, are all signs of one under a covenant of works. And that which another (b) of that way, saith in a dangerous medicine for wounded souls. Where there is no law, (as there is none in, or over the justified soul) there is no transgression; and where there is no transgression, there is no trouble for sin, all trouble arising from the obligement of the law, which demandeth a satisfaction of the soul, for the breach of it, and such satisfaction as the soul knows it cannot give, and there by remains unquiet; like a debtor that hath nothing to pay, and the law too, being naturally in the soul, as the apostle saith, the conscience accusing, or else excusing; it is no marvel, that such souls should be troubled for sin, and unpacified, the law having such a party, and engagement already within them; which holding an agreement with the law, in tables and letters of stone, must needs work strongly upon the spirits of such as are but faintly and weakly enlightened, and are not furnished with gospel enough to answer the indictments, the convictions, the terrors, the curses which the law brings. And a third, (c) And indeed, God's people (saith he) need more joys after sins, than after afflictions, because they are more cast down by them; and therefore God useth sins, as means by which he leads in his joys into them in this world, and also in the world to come, their sins yield them great joys: indeed, in some respects, they shall joy most at the last day, who have sinned least; but in other respect, they have most joy, who have sinned most; (for sin they little or much they all shall enter into joy at last,) &c.

Now all this is but a turning of faith into wantonness; whereas faith, of all graces, moveth with lowest sails: for, faith is not a lofty, and crying, but a soft, moving, and humble grace; for then David being moved, and his heart smiting him at the renting of king Saul's garment, should be under a covenant of works, and so not a man according to God's own heart, for a smitten heart is a troubled soul. David, Abraham, Rom. 4 and all the fathers under the law, were justified by the imputed righteousness of Christ apprehended by faith, as we are, Rom. 4:23. Now it was not written for Abraham's sake only, that it was imputed to him; verse 24 but for us also, &c. David ought not to have been troubled in soul for sin, for his sins were then pardoned; nor could the Spirit of the Lord so highly commend Josiah's heart-melting trouble at the reading and hearing of the law; nor Christ own the tears and soul-trouble of the woman, as coming from no other spring but much love to Christ, because many sins were pardoned, if this soul-trouble for sin had argued these to be under the law, and not in Christ; nor can it be said, that the saints of old were more under the law, than now under the gospel, in the sense we have now in hand; that is, that we are to be less troubled for sin than they, because our justification is more perfect, and the blood of Christ had less power to purge the conscience, and to satisfy the demands of the law before it was shed, than now when it is shed; or that more of the law was naturally in the hearts of David, Josiah, and the saints of old; and so, more naturally, unbelief must be in them, than in us, by nature, under gospel-manifestations of Christ. Indeed, the law was a severer pedagogue to awe the saints, than, in regard of the outward dispensation of ceremonies, and legal strictness; keeping men as malefactors in close prison, till Christ should come. But imputation of Christ's righteousness, and blessedness in the pardon of sin, and so freedom from soul-trouble for eternal wrath; and the law's demanding the conscience to pay, what debts none were able to pay, but the surety only, was one and the same to them, and to us; as Psal. 32:1, 2 compared with Rom. 4:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and Psal. 14 with Rom. 3:9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 19, 20 and Gen. 17:9. Chap. 22:18; Deut. 27:26 with Gal. 3:10, 11, 12, 13, 14; Heb. 6:13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. Who dare say, that the believing Jews died under the curse of the law, Deut. 27:26. For so they must perish eternally. Gal. 3:10. For as many as are of the works of the law, are under the curse: Then there must be none redeemed under the Old Testament, nor any justified, contrary to express Scriptures, Psal. 32:1, 2; Rom. 4:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; Gal. 3:14; Acts 15:11; Acts 11:16, 17; Rom. 10:1, 2, 3. Now, Acts 15:11. We believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus, we shall be saved as well as they. And as they were blessed, in that their transgression was forgiven, and their sin covered, and that the Lord imputed no iniquity to them, Psal. 32:1, 2 our blessedness is the same, Rom. 4:6, 7, 8 and Christ, as he was made a curse for them, so for us; that, Gal. 3:14 the blessing of Abraham might come on us the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit, through faith: and God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law; for the Jews, who as heirs were under tutors, as we are under the moral law by nature, that we might be redeemed by him, That we, who are under the law, might receive the adoption of sons, Gal. 4:1, 2, 3, 4. And God gave the like gift to the Gentiles, that he gave to the Jews, even repentance unto life, Acts 11:16, 17. Then the law could crave them no harder than us; and they were no more justified by works, than we are: Yea, following righteousness, they attained it not, because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law; for they stumbled at the stumbling stone laid in Zion, Rom. 9:31, 32, 33. And they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God, Rom. 10:1, 2, 3 and so came short of justification by grace; so do we. If then, to the justified Jews, There was no law, no transgression, and so no trouble for sin; all trouble of conscience arising from the obligement of the law; as it must be, because they were freed from the curse of the law, and justified in Jesus Christ, by his grace, as we are: then were they under no smiting of heart, nor wounding of conscience, more than we are; which is manifestly false in David, and in Josiah, and many of the saints under the Old Testament. Hence what was sinful and unbelieving soul-trouble for sin to them, must be sinful soul-trouble to us in the same kind. The law did urge the Jews harder than us, in regard of the Mosaical burden of ceremonies and bloody sacrifices, that pointed out their guiltiness, except they should flee to Christ; 2. In regard of God's dispensation of the severer punishing of law-transgression, and that with temporary punishments, and rewarding obedience with external prosperity: 3. In urging this doctrine more hardly upon the people, to cause them not rest on the letter of the law, but seek to the promised Messiah, in whom only was their righteousness; as young heirs and minors are kept under tutors, while their nonage expire: But, (1.) Who dare say, that the saints under the Old Testament, who lived and died in the case of remission of sins, of salvation, and of peace with God, Gen. 49:18; Psal. 37:37; Psal. 73:25; Prov. 14:32; Isa. 57:1, 2; Heb. 11:13; Psal. 32:1, 2; Micah 7:18, 19; Isa. 43:25; Jer. 50:20; Psal. 31:5 and were undoubtedly blessed in Christ, as we are, Psal. 119:1, 2; Psal. 65:4; Psal. 1:1, 2, 3; Psal. 144:14, 15; Psal. 146:5; Job. 5:17; Psal. 84:4, 5 and died not under the curse of God, or were in capacity to be delivered by Christ, after this life, from the wrath to come, and the curse of the law? (2.) That they were to trust to the merit of their own works, or seek righteousness in themselves, more than we? (3.) Or that they believed not, or that their faith was not counted to them for righteousness, as it is with us? Gen. 15:5, 6; Rom. 4:3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8; Psal. 32:1, 2. (4.) Yea, they believing in the Messiah to come, were no more under the law, and the dominion of sin, than we are, Rom. 6:6, 7, 8, 9; Rom. 7:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7; Rom. 8:1, 2; Micah 7:18, 19; Isa. 43:25; Jer. 50:20; Psal. 32:1, 2 but under grace, and pardoned, and saved by faith, as we are, Heb. 11:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13; Gal. 3:10, 13; Acts 11:16, 17; Rom. 9:31, 31, 33. (5.) Yea, the law was no less a letter of condemnation to them, than to us, Rom. 8:3; Rom. 10:3; Deut. 27:26; Gal. 3:10, 13; 2 Cor. 3:7, 8, 13, 14, 15. (6.) They drank of the same spiritual rock with us, and the rock was Christ, 1 Cor. 10:1, 2, 3, 4; Heb. 13:8 and were saved by grace, as well as we, Acts 15:11.

2. 'Tis true, Josiah's tenderness of heart, David's smiting of heart, the woman's weeping, even to the washing of Christ's feet with tears, Peter's weeping bitterly for the denying of his Lord, as they were woundings, and gospel-affections, and commotions of love issuing from the spirit of adoption, of love, grace, and nothing but the turtle's love-sorrow; so it is most false, that they were no soul-trouble for sin, as if these had been freed from all the law of God, and these soul-commotions were not from any sense of the curse, or the law, or any demands of the law, to pay what justice may demand of the self-condemned sinner; yet were they acts of soul-trouble for sin, as sin: and it shall never follow, that the parties were under no transgression, and no law, because under no obligement to eternal wrath; for such an obligation to eternal wrath, is no chain which can tie the sons of adoption, who are washed, justified, pardoned; and yet if the justified and pardoned say, they have no sin, and so no reason to complain under their fetters, and sigh as captives in prison, as Paul doth, Rom. 7:24 nor cause to mourn for indwelling of sin, they are liars and strangers to their own heart, and do sleep in deep security; as if sin were so fully removed, both in guilt and blot, as if tears for sin as sin should argue the mourning party to be in the condition of those who weep in hell, or that they were no more obliged to weep; yea, by the contrary, to exercise no such affection, but joy, comfort, and perpetuated acts of solace and rejoicing; as if Christ had, in the threshold of glory, with his own hand, wiped all tears from their eyes already.

3. Nor see I any reason why any should affirm, That the law is naturally as a party in the soul, of the either regenerate and justified, or of those who are out of Christ. (1.) For the law's indwelling, as a party engaging, by accusing and condemning, is not naturally in any son of Adam; because there is a sleeping conscience, both dumb and silent naturally in the soul: and if there be any challenging and accusing in the Gentile conscience, Rom. 2 as stirring is opposed to a silent and dumb conscience that speaketh nothing, so the law-accusing is not naturally in the soul; a spirit above nature (I do not mean the spirit of regeneration) must work with the law, else both the law and sin lie dead in the soul: the very law of nature lieth as a dead letter, and stirreth not, except some wind blow more or less on the soul, Rom. 7:8, 9. (2.) That the law weakeneth any sinner, and maketh the drunken and mad sinner see himself in the sea, and sailing down the river to the chambers of death, that he may but be occasioned to cast an eye on shore, on Jesus Christ, and with a landing on Christ, is a mercy that no man can father on nature, or on himself. (3.) All sense of a sinful condition, to any purpose, is a work above nature; though it be not ever a fruit of regeneration. (4.) 'Tis true, Christ teacheth a man's soul, through the shining of the gospel-light, to answer all the indictments of the law, in regard that Christ the ransomer stops the law's month with blood, else the sinner can make but a poor and faint advocation for himself; yet this cannot be made in the conscience without some soul-trouble for sin. (5.) 'Tis strange that God's people "need more joy after sin, than after affliction;" and that in "some respect, they have most joy, who have sinned most:" sure, this is accidental to sin, this joy is not for sin; but 'tis a joy of loving much, because much is forgiven. Forgiveness is an act of free grace, sin is no work of grace: sin grieves the heart of God, "as a friend's trouble is trouble to a friend:" the believer is made the friend of God, John 15:15 and it must be a cursed joy that lay in the womb of that which is most against the heart of Christ; such as all sin is. Yea to be more troubled in soul for sins, than for afflictions, smelleth of a heart that keeps correspondence with the heart and bowels of Christ, who wept more for Jerusalem's sins than for his own afflictions and cross. As some ounces of everlasting wrath in the law, with a talent-weight of free gospel-mercy would be contempered together to cure the sinner; so is there no rational way to raise and heighten the price and worth of the soul-redeemer of sinners, and the weight of infinite love so much, as to make the sinner know how deep a hell he was plunged in, when the bone acheth exceedingly: for that the gospel tongue of the physician Christ should lick the rotten blood of the soul's wound, speaketh more than imaginable free love. Nor do we say, that gospel-mourning is wrought by the law's threatenings, then it were servile sorrow; but 'tis wrought by the doctrine of the law, discovering the foulness and sinfulness of sin, and by the doctrine of the gospel; the spirit of the gospel shining on both: otherwise, sounds, breathings, letters of either law or gospel, except the breathings of heaven shine on them, and animate them, can do no good.

Asser. 4. Sins of youth already pardoned, as touching the obligation to eternal wrath, may so rise against the child of God, as he hath need to ask the forgiveness of them, as touching the removing of present wrath, sense of the want of God's presence, of the influence of his love, the cloud of sadness and deadness, through the want of the joy of the Holy Ghost, and ancient consolations of the days of old Psal. 90:7. "We are consumed in thy wrath, and by thy hot displeasure we are terrified." verse 8. "Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, and our secret sin in the light of thy face." This was not a motion of the flesh in Moses the man of God. Antinomians may so dream. "The fury of the Lord waxed hot against his people:" so saith the spirit of God: nor is this conceit of theirs to be credited against the text that Moses speaketh in regard of the reprobate party: Moses, by immediate inspiration, doth not pray for the "beauty and glory of the Lord," in the sense of his love, to be manifested on a reprobate party. Antinomian preachers in our times confess sins in public, but 'tis the sins of the reprobate and carnal multitude, that are in the society mixed with the godly; they think it a work of the flesh to confess their own sins: this is to "steal the word of the Lord from his people." So David, Psal. 25:7. "Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions." The sins of his youth, as touching obligation to eternal wrath were pardoned, I question it not; but in regard, God was turned from him in the flamings of love, and his sins sealed up in a bag, in regard of innumerable evils that lay on him: he prayeth; ver. 16. Turn thee unto me. Heb. Set thy countenance on me. God's favour in the sense of it was turned away. And ver 18. "Look upon mine affliction and pain, and forgive all my sins;" the word [Nasa] with a point in the left side of [Shin] is to carry away. Jerome aufer, Take away all my sins, Isa. 53:4 he carried, "or did bear as a burden, our iniquities." Vetablus, portavit. pagnin. parce, condona, "Spare or pardon all my sins:" Then sin here is pardoned only according to the present pain and grief of body and soul that was on David, Psal. 39:4. "For mine iniquities are gone over mine head: as a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me." We have no reason to believe that David thought himself already a condemned man, and now in hell, tho' some sparks of hell's wrath and fire, not in any sort as satisfactory to divine justice, or as a fruit of God's hatred and enmity, can fall on the children of God; yet 'tis not imaginary, but real anger. God was really angry with "Moses at the waters of strife." The thing that David did against "Uriah displeased the Lord;" not in David's opinion only. And though the hell for a time in the soul of God's children, and the hell of the reprobate, differ in essence and nature, in that the hell of the reprobate is a satisfactory pain, 2. And that it floweth from the hatred of God; but the hell of the godly not so: yet, in this materially they are of the same size; that the one as well as the other, are coals and flames of the same furnace; and neither are imaginary. Then again, sins of youth long ago pardoned, though sometimes dearly beloved, are like the ghost of a dear friend some years ago dead and buried, that re-appeareth to a man, as dead Samuel did to Saul; look how loving and dear they were when alive, they are now as terrible and dreadful, when they appear to us living out from the land of death; so are sins of youth, when they rise from the dead, and were pardoned in Christ long ago; they appear again to David and Job, and the saints with the vail and mask or hue of hell, and sealed with temporary wrath. Psal. 99:8. "Thou wast a God that pardonest, or forgavest them, though thou tookest vengeance of their inventions." The same word [Nakam] is given to God, when he taketh vengeance on his enemies, Num. 22:2; Isa. 1:24. "I will be avenged of mine enemies." 2 Kings 9:7. "That I may avenge the blood of my servants the prophets. So is the word [Nakam] vengeance used Deut. 32:43. He will render vengeance to his adversaries. And if one and the same temporary judgment in the two thieves that were crucified with Christ, be so differenced, that mercy is stamped on the same death to the one, and wrath to the other; we may well say, there is a temporary vengeance and wrath, that befalleth both the saints and the reprobate in this life; and the difference is in the mind and intention of God, in both. And that God pardoneth sin, when he removeth temporary wrath; so 2 Sam. 12:13. Nathan saith to David, The Lord also hath caused thy sin to pass away; Why? Thou shalt not die. This is meant of temporal death especially; as the context cleareth, v. 10. The sword shall not depart from thine house; and ver. 14. The child born to thee shall surely die. Then the Lord's putting away of David's sin, was in loosing him from the sword, in his own person, not in his house and children; for by proportion of divine justice, (tho' tempered with mercy) the sword was punished with the sword. I do not exclude relaxation from eternal punishment, but remission going for relaxation of punishment. Then, as there be two sorts of punishments, one temporary, and another the eternal wrath to come; so there are in scripture two sorts of remissions, one from the temporary, another from eternal punishment. Therefore sin is put for punishment, Gen. 4:13. Mine iniquity (saith Cain) is more than I can bear; or, My punishment is more than I can bear. Lev. 24:15. He that curseth his God shall bear his sin, Ezek. 23:49. And ye shall bear the sins of your idols. Num. 9:13. The man that is clean—and forbiddeth to eat the passover—that man shall bear his sin. So when God layeth sin to the charge of the sinner, in punishing it he is said to lay a burden on the sinner, 2 Kings 9:25. And to remove this burden is to pardon the sin, 2 Chron. 7:14. If my people humble themselves, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land; by removing the locusts and the pestilence. See, the pardoning of their sin is exponed to be the removing of the locusts and pestilence. And to call sins to remembrance, is to punish sin: the Shunamite saith, 1 Kings 17:18. Art thou come to me (O man of God) to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son? Job complaineth, chap. 13:26. Thou makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth. Now, though out of unbelief he might apprehend, that he was cast off of God, and a man rejected of God, and that his sins were never pardoned, and he himself never delivered from the wrath to come; these legal thoughts might keep Job in a distance from God, to his own sinful apprehension; yet it shall be impossible to prove, that Job in all these complaints had no other but a mere legal esteem of God's dispensation; and that, 2. God stamped not temporary wrath, and the pain of a hidden and overclouded God, the subtraction of the sense of divine manifestations of love, (the Lord standing behind the wall) in all these afflictions. Now 'tis known, that, as these are often trials of the faith of the saints, yet they are sour fruits of our fleshly indulgence to our carnal delights, and of our not opening to our beloved, when he knocketh, Cant. 5:2, 3, 4, 5, 6. And though the godly do stedfastly believe their salvation is in a castle, above losing; yet in reason, sin bringing broken bones, Psal. 51:10 a sad cloud, the damming up of a spring of Christ's love spread abroad in the heart, a temporary hell in the soul, it must be sorrowed for, hated, mourned for, confessed; and yet in all these there is no necessity of such a law-spirit of bondage to work these, nor is faith in any sort diminished, but put to a farther exercise. And the same sad fruits follow from the sins of the saints under the New Testament, as may be cleared from Rev. 2:5, 16, 22; Rev. 3:3, 17, 18; 2 Cor. 1:8, 9, 10; 2 Cor. 2:7; 2 Cor. 7:5, 6, 7; Rev. 3:20; John 14:1. Nor can we think, that the strictness of the law gave those under the law an indulgence not to be a whit troubled in soul for sin, as it overclouded the influence and flowings of divine love, suppose they had assurance of freedom from the wrath to come, as is evident in the spouse, Cant. 5:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and chap. 2:16, 17. chap. 4:7. Nor is it true, that gospel-grace and liberty entitleth the saints now to such wantonness of peace, as that persons fully assured of deliverance from the curse of the law, are never to be troubled for sins committed in the state of free justification; nor are they any more to mourn, nor groan under sin's captivity, nor to confess sin, in regard that Christ's blood hath washed soul, and eyes, and faces from all tears; and the salvation of the saints in this life is not in hope only, as wheat in the blade, but actual, as in the life to come; and therefore, "Holy walking and good works can no more be means or the way to the kingdom, (as M. Towne and other Antinomians say.) than motion within the city, can be a way to the city, in regard the man is now in the city, before he walk at all."

Asser. 5. If Jesus Christ had soul-trouble, because of divine wrath, for our sin, and was put to a sweat of blood, God roasting Christ quick in a furnace of divine justice, tho' every blobe of sweat in the garden was a sea of free grace, not his eyes only, but his face and body did sweat our of free love from his soul, Luke 22:44; Heb. 5:7. What must soul-trouble be in a fired conscience? 'Tis no wonder that wicked men wresthng with everlasting vengeance, cannot endure it. The devil's predominant sin being blasphemous despair, he tempts most to his own predominant sin; the issue and final intent of all his temptations is despair: because devils are living and swimming in the sphere and element of justice, they cannot bear it; they cry to Christ, the whole company and family making the despiting of Christ a common cause, Art thou come hither βατανὶσαν, to torment us before the time? Mat. 8:29; Prov. 18:14. The spirit of a man will bear his infirmity, the spirit is the finest metal in the man; but a wounded spirit who can bear that? So the Hebrew readeth. Any thing may be borne; but break the man's soul, and break the choicest piece in the soul, the conscience, who can then stand? As conscience is the sweetest bosom-friend of man, so it is the sorest enemy. David is persecuted by his prince, and he beareth it; Jeremiah is cast in the dungeon by the rulers, priests and prophets, and he overcometh it; Job is persecuted by his friends, and he standeth under it; Christ is betrayed and killed by his own servants and kinsmen, and he endureth it; the apostles are killed, scourged and imprisoned by the Jews, and they rejoice in it: but Judas is but once hunted by the fury of hell in his breast, and he leaps overboard, into a sea of infinite wrath: Cain, Saul, Ahitophel, cannot endure it: Spira roareth as a bear, and crieth out, O that I were above God; tho' we may hope well of his eternal state. Nero, after, to his other bloods, he had killed his mother, Agrippina, he could not sleep, he did often leap out of the bed, and was terrified with the visions of hell. Eternity, the resurrection, and the judgment to come, are virtually in the conscience. 2. What is fear? A tormenting passion. To hang a living man by an untwisted thread, over a river of unmixed pure vengeance; and let the thread be wearing weaker and weaker, what horror and paleness of darkness must be on the soul? 3. What sorrow and sadness, when there is not a shadow of comfort? But 4. Positive despair, rancour, and malice against the holy majesty of God; when the soul shall with, and die of burning desire, to be above and beyond the spotless essence of the infinite majesty of God; and shall burn in a fire of wrath against the very existence of God, and blaspheme the Holy One of Israel, without date. Job saith of such, (chap. 27:20) in this life, terrors take hold of him as waters, and a tempest stealeth him away in the night.

But consider what it is to the saints; Job complaineth, chap. 14:16. Doest thou watch over my sin? ver. 17. My transgression is sealed up in a bag, and thou fewest up mine iniquity. Vatabl. "Thou appearest to be a watchful observer of mine iniquity," and addest (as Ari. Monta.) "Punishment to punishment, sewing sin to sin, to make the bag greater than it is. Now, tho' there be a misjudging unbelief in the saints, yet it is certain, that God doth inflict penal desertions, as real pieces of hell, on the souls of his children, either for trial, as in Job; or punishment of sin, as in David; whose bones were broken for his adultery and murder, Psal. 51:10 and whose moisture of body was turned into the drought of summer, through the anger of God in his soul, till the Lord brought him to the acknowledgment of his sin, and pardoned him, Psal. 32:3, 4, 5, 6. But some will say, can the Lord inflict spiritual punishment, or any of hell, or the least coal of that black furnace upon the souls of his own children? to which I answer, it is but curiosity to dispute, whether the pains of hell, and the flames and sparkles of real wrath, which I can prove to be really inflicted on the souls of the saints in this life, be penalties spiritual, different in nature. Certain there be three characters sealed and engraven on the pains of the damned, which are not on the real soul punishments of divine wrath on the souls of the saints; as, 1. What pieces of hell, or broken chips of wrath, are set upon the souls of deserted saints, are honied and dipped in heaven, and sugared with eternal love. God's heart is toward Ephraim as his dear child, and his bowels turned within for their misery, even when he speaks against them; Jer. 31:20, 21. But the coals of the furnace cast upon reprobates, are dipt in the curse of God; yea, so as in a small affliction, even in the miscarrying of a basket of bread, and the loss of one poor ox, there is a great law-curse, and intolerable vengeance, Deut. 27:26. chap. 28:17, 31. And again, in-the in breaking of a sea and flood of hell in the soul of the child of God, a rich heaven of a divine presence, Psal. 22:1, 8, 9; Psal. 18:4, 5, 6. (2.) The hellish pains inflicted on reprobates, are law-demands of satisfactory vengeance, and payment to pure justice; but fire-flashes, or flamings of hell on the deserted saints, are medicinal, or exploratory corrections; tho' relative to justice and punishments of sin, yet is that justice mixed with mercy, and exacteth no law payment in those afflictions. (3.) Despair, and blasphemous expostulating and quarrelling divine justice, are the inseparable attendants of the flames and lashings of wrath in reprobates; in the godly there is a clearing of justice, a submission to God, and a silent psalm of the praise of the glory of his justice, in this temporary hell, no less than there is a new song of the praise of free grace in the eternal glory of the saints, perfected with the Lamb.

Nor should this seem strange, that God punisheth the sins of his children with such spiritual plagues of unbelief, and jealousies, and lying misjudgings of God in their sad desertions, more than that the Lord punish the lifted-up heart of Hezekiah, with leaving him to fall on his own weight; and David's idleness and security, with letting him fall in adultery; and Peter's self-confidence, with the soul denying of his Lord. But 'tis a sad dispensation, when God cleaveth a saint with a wedge of his own timber; and linketh one sinful misjudging of God, in his fever of soul-desertion, to another; and justice seweth (in a permissive Providence) one sin to another, to lengthen the chain, if free grace, a link of gold, did not put a period to the progress thereof. Now, we are not to look at this as an ordinary calamity; Job's expressions are very full, chap. 6:4. For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit: the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me. An arrow is a deadly weapon when it is shot by a man, or by an angel: but it is soft as oil in comparison of the arrow of the Almighty. 1. It is the arrow of [Schaddai] the almighty did frame and mould, and whet it in heaven. 2. The arrow was dipt in poison, and hath art from hell and divine justice. One devil is stronger than an host of men; but legions of devils are mighty strong, when such archers of hell are sent to shoot arrows that are poisoned with the curse and bloody indignation of heaven. 3. What a sad stroke must it be, when the arms of omnipotency draweth the bow? The arms of God can shog the mountains and make them tremble, and can move the foundation of the earth out of its place, and take the globe of heaven and earth, and can cast it out of its place, more easily than a man casts a slung-stone out of his hand. When he putteth forth the strength of omnipotency against the creature, what can the man do? 4. Every arrow is not a drinking arrow, the arrows of divine wrath drink blood: suppose a thousand horse-leeches were set on a poor naked man, to drink blood at every part of his body, and let them have power and art to suck out the marrow, the oil, and sap of life, out of bones and joints; say also, that one man had in his veins a little sea of blood, and that they were of more than ordinary thirst and power to drink the corpse of the living man, as dry as straws or flax: what a pain would this be? Yea, but it were tolerable. 5. Arrows can but drink blood; arrows are shot against the body, the worst they can do, is to drink life out of liver and heart, and to pierce the strongest bones; but the arrows of the Almighty are shot against spirits and souls: the spirit is a fine, subtile, immortal thing. Isa. 31:3. The horses of Egypt, are flesh, and not spirit: the spirit is a more godlike nature, than any thing created of God. The Almighty's arrows kill spirits, and souls: there's an arrow that can pierce flesh, joints, liver, heart, bones, yea, but through the soul also: Never an archer can shoot an arrow at the soul; but this the Almighty can do. Say, your arrow killed the man, yet the soul is saved. 6. Many love not their life to death, as the witnesses of Jesus: death, as death, is clothed with apprehensions of terror; no man is wretched, actu secundo, within and without, but he that believeth himself to be so; here are terrors, self-terrors: Jeremiah could prophecy no harder thing against Pashur, The Lord (saith he) hath not called thy name Pashur, but Magor-missabib, Jer. 20:3. Thou shalt be a terror to thyself. Compare this with other pains: Job would rather chuse strangling, or the dark grave; and the grave to nature, is a sad, a black and dreadful house; but a believer may get beyond the grave. What do the glorified spirits fear a grave now? Or are they afraid of a coffin, and a winding sheet, or of lodging with the worms and corruption? Or, is burning quick a terror to them? No, not any of these can run after, or overtake them, and they know that. But self-terrors are a hell carried about with the man in his bosom, he cannot run from them. Oh! he lieth down, and hell beddeth with him; he sleepeth, and hell and he dream together; he riseth, and hell goeth to the fields with him, he goes to his garden, there is hell. It is observable, a garden is a paradise by art; and Christ was as deep in agony and wresthngs of hell for our sin, in a garden, a place of pleasure, as on the cross, a place of torment. The man goes to his table, O he dare not eat! he hath no right to the creature; to eat is sin, and hell; so hell is in every dish: to live is sin; be would fain chuse strangling; every act of breathing is sin and hell. He goes to church; there is a dog as great as a mountain before his eye: here be terrors! but what, one or two terrors are not much, tho' too much to a soul spoiled of all comfort. 7. The terrors of God (God is always in this sad play) do set themselves in battle array against me. Or, chap. 16:13. His archers compassed me about round. Heb. His great ones; or, his bow-men (because they are many, or, because the great ones did fight afar off) have besieged me. So, 2 Chron. 17:9; 1 Sam. 7:16. Samuel went in a circuit to Bethel, and Gilgal, and Mizpeh. And Josh. 6:3. Ye shall besiege Jericho. The wrath of God, and an army of terrors, blocked up poor Job, and stormed him. Now, here be these sore pressures on the soul. 1. The poor man cannot look out to any creature-comfort, or creature-help. Say, that an angel from heaven would stand for him, or a good conscience would plead comfort to him, it should solace him; but the man cannot look out, nor can he look up, Psal. 40:12. The enmity of God is a sad thing. 2. A battle array is not of one man, but of many enemies: say the man had one soul, it should be his enemy; and that he had a hundred souls, he should have a hundred enemies; but as many millions of thoughts, as in his wearisome nights escape him, he has as many enemies; yea, as many creatures, as many stones of the field, as many beasts, of many enemies, Job 5:23; Hos. 2:8. Christ gave to the Father proportions of peace, and to the poor soul under sense of wrath, they are nothing: the fear of hell is a part of real hell to the man who knows no other thing, but that he is not reconciled to God. Creatures behind him, and before him, heaven above, and earth below, and creatures on every side, within and without, stand with the weapons of heaven, and of an angry God against him; friends, wife, servants, acquaintance have something of wrath and hell on them; the man in his own thought is an out-law to them all; and the leader of all these archers is God. God, God is the chief party. See Job 19:12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. And there you see, brethren, acquaintance, kinsfolk, familiar friends, man-servant, maid-servant, wife, young children, bone, skin, flesh, are all to Job as coals of the fire of hell. And Isa. 8:21, 22. Men in this shall curse their king and their God.

Asser. 6. These being materially the same soul-troubles of deserted and tempted saints, and of plagued and cursed reprobates, do differ formally and essentially according to God's heart, his dispensation and intentions, his mercy and his justice regulating them: so I shall speak of the difference between Christ's troubled soul, and the saint's trouble. 2. Of some ways of God's dispensation, in the soul-trouble of the saints. Touching the former; there was in Christ's soul-trouble, 1. No misjudging of God; but in a strong faith, in that he still named God his Father, and God. 2. In that as this trouble came to a height, and more fuel was added to the fire of divine wrath, Luke 22:44. ἐκτενεστερον προσηύχετο, he prayed with more extension of body and spirit; he extended himself in fervour of praying. And, Heb. 5:7. He offered prayers, and ἱκετηριας humble supplications of the poor, or oppressed, that make their address to one who can help them: he put into God an humble petition, and a bill to his Father, as an overwhelmed man, and he offered this bill, κατά κραυγης ἰσχυρᾶς with an hideous cry and tears. Rev. 14:18. The angel cried with a loud voice. To cry with a full and lifted up voice, or with a shout; so is the verb used, John 18:40. When men cry, and cast away their clothes, and cast dust in the air. 3. His soul-trouble and death was satisfactory to divine justice, for our sins; he being free of sin himself: which can agree to no soul-trouble of the holiest saint on earth. But touching the second: these positions may speak somewhat, to clear the way of the soul-trouble of saints.

1. Position. Conscience, being a mass of knowledge, and if there be any oil to give light, 'tis here; 'tis then likest itself, when it most bears witness of well and ill-doing. Now, we are more in sinning than obeying God; and because of the corruption of nature, the number of natural consciences that are awake to see sin, are but very few. And when the renewed conscience is on the work of feeling and discerning guiltiness in its best temper, the more life, the more sense: sick ones in a swoon, or dying persons that do neither hear, see, nor speak, are half-gate amongst the dead. The conscience sick of over-feeling, and so under over-sense of sin, is in so far in a fever: for often a fever is from the exsuperancy of too much blood, and rankness of humours, the vessels being too full; and therefore 'tis like a river that cannot chuse but go over banks, the channel being a vessel too narrow to contain it all.

2. Pos. Therefore often the time of some extreme desertion and soul-trouble is, when Christ hath been in the soul with a full high spring-tide of divine manifestations of himself. And if we consider the efficient cause of desertion, which is God's wise dispensation: when Paul hath been in the third heaven, on an hyperbole, a great excess of revelations, God thinketh then good to exercise him with a messenger of Satan; which by the weakness and spiritual infirmity he was under, wanted not a desertion, less or more, whatever the messenger was; as it seems to be fleshly lust, after a spiritual vision. Paul was ready to think himself an angel, not flesh and blood; and therefore, 2 Cor. 12:7 he saith twice in one verse, This befel me, ἵνα μὴ ὑπερωμαιν. That I should not be lifted up above ordinary comets, up among the stars. But if we consider the material cause, it may be, that extreme and high overflowing of Christ's love break our weak and narrow vessels: Cant. 5:1 there is a rich and dainty feast of Christ, I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse, I have gathered my myrrh with my spices, I have eaten my honey-comb with my honey, I have drunk my wine with my milk: eat, O friends, drink, yea, drink abundantly, O Beloved. Yet in that song, the Spirit of God speaketh of a sad desertion in the next words, I sleep, but mine heart waketh: It is the voice of my Beloved that knocketh, &c. There is not only impiety, but want of humanity, that the church had rather that wearied Jesus Christ should fall down and die in the streets, in a rainy and snowy night, when his locks were wet with rain, than that he should come in and lodge in the soul. And let us not think that the thread and tract of the scripture's coherence, one verse following on another, as the Spirit of God hath ordered them, is but a cast of chance or an human thing: when the spouse rideth on the high places of Jacob, and saith, Isa. 49:13. Sing, O heavens, and be joyful, O earth, and break forth into singing, O mountains: for God hath comforted his people, and will have mercy on his afflicted. Yet this was nothing to the afflicted people; verse 14. But Sion said, the Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me. When the Lord's disciples, Mat. 17 are in the sweetest life that ever they were in, at the transfiguration of Christ, when they saw his glory, and Peter said, Master, it is good for us to be here, even then, they must appear to be weak men; and Christ must forbid and rebuke their faithless fear, ver. 6. They fell on their faces, and were sore afraid. I leave it to the experience of the godly, if Jeremiah his singing praise in one verse, chap. 20:13 and his cursing the day that he was born on, in the next verse, ver. 14 the order of scripture being of divine inspiration, do not speak God's dispensation in this to be such, as to allay and temper the sweetness of the consolation of a feast of God's high manifestation, with a sad desertion. So John his glorious soul-ravishing comforts, in seeing the seven golden candlesticks, any the Son of Man in such glory and majesty, Rev. 1:12, 13, 14, 15. Yet it appears to be a desertion that he is under, when Christ forbiddeth him to fear, and when he must have the hand of Christ laid on his head, and when he falleth down at Christ's feet as dead. ver. 17, 18. And when Isaiah saw the glorious vision, chap. 6. The Lord sitting on his throne high and lifted up; it must be a throne higher than the heaven of heavens, that be sitteth on, and his train filling the temple. 'Tis a desertion that he falleth in, ver. 5. Then said I, woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts; he was a pardoned man before. 'Tis so with us, while the body of sin dwelleth in us, that we cannot, being old bottles, bear new wine; and therefore the fulness of God, breaketh crazy lumps of sinful flesh and blood: as a full tide is preparatory to a low ebbing; and full vessels in the body, to a fever. Would Christ, in his fulness of the irradiations of glory, break in upon us; he should break the bodily organs, and over-master the soul's faculties, that all the banks of the soul should be like broken walls, hedges, or clay channels; which the inundation of a river has demolished, and carried away from the bottom. Flesh and blood is not in a capacity of over-joy, and can hold but little of heaven, no more than earth could bear such a glorious creature as the sun: we must be both more capacious, and wider, and stronger vessels, before we be made fit to contain glory; we are leaking and running out vessels, to contain grace. Manifestations, and rays of divine love are too strong wine that grew up in the higher Canaan, for our weak heads.

Asser. 3. Desertion cometh under these considerations: 1. As 'tis a cross, and a punishment of sin; 2. As a trial from mere divine dispensation: 3. As 'tis a sin on our part, full of sinful misrepresentations of Christ.

In the first consideration, we are to submit to any penal overclouding of Christ: 1. Because the eye cannot water to look on any cross of Christ, where faith's aspect goeth before, and faith, Though I sit in darkness, yet I shall see light. 2. There is required a sort of patience under sin, as 'tis either a punishment of another sin, as David was submissive to the sinful railing of Shimei, and the wicked treasons, and incestuous pollutions of his concubines, by his son Absalom: or as sin dwelleth in us, and in divine dispensation must be our cross, as well as our sin; we are to be grieved at our sins, as they cross God's holy will: but as they are our own crosses, and thwart our own desires, and now are committed by us, or dwell in us, we are not to bite at, and utter heart-railings against divine providence, who might have prevented, and efficaciously hindered these sins; and yet did not hinder them. 6. This dispensation should be adored, as a part of divine wisdom; that broken souls are not wholly cured, till they be in heaven. Sin is a disunion from God: Jesus doth not so compleatly solder the soul to God, but the seam hath holes and gapings in it, by reason of the indwellings of sin, Rom. 7:17, 18, 19, 22, 23. And since Libertines will confound justification with regeneration, we say, their justification we speak of, is never perfected in this life. And because sin, as sin, which remaineth in our flesh, must make God and the soul at a distance, there cannot be such perfect peace as excludeth all soul-trouble; the blue scar of the wound remaineth so, and the dregs of that domestic falling-ill, that we have of our first house of Adam, are so seated in us, that as some diseases recur, and some pain of the head, when an east wind bloweth; so the disease we have in our head, the first Adam, sticketh to us all our life; and when temptations blow, we find the relics of our disease working, and foaming out the smell of the lees, and scent that remaineth. Christ has need to perfume our ill odours, with his merits; for our begun sanctification is so imperfect, as that yet our water smells of the rotten vessel, the flesh; and we cannot but have our ill hours, and our sick days, and so a disposition to sinful desertions. 4. Unbelief naturally stocked in the body of sin, is humorous and ill-minded to Christ: there is a liar in our house, and a slanderer of Christ, that upon light occasions can raise an ill same of Christ, That he is a hard man, and gathers where he did not sow: that Christ is nice and dainty of his love; that he is too fine, too excellent and majestic to condescend to love me: and take this as the mother-seed of all sinful desertions, to blame Christ's sweet inclination to love us, as well as his love. I knew thou wast a hard man; 'tis dangerous to have ill thoughts of Christ's nature, his constitution, actu primo. The next will be to censure his ways, his sowing, and his gathering; which I take to be the current objection of old Pelagians, and late Arminius. O! he must gather where he did never sow, if he command all to believe under the pain of damnation, and yet he judicially, in Adam, removed all power of believing: so he putteth out the poor man's eyes, and cutteth off his two legs, and commanded him to see with no eyes, and walk with no legs, under pain of damnation. Men believe not they hate Christ by nature; and hatred hath an eye to see no colour in Christ, but blackness; as the instance of the Pharisees doth clear; who saw but devilry in the fairest works of Christ, even in his casting out of devils.

Asser. 4. Desertions, on the Lord's part, are so often mere trials, as we may not think they are greatest sinners who are most deserted. Desertion smelleth more of heaven, and of Christ deserted for our sins, than of any other thing; 'tis the disease that follows the royal seed, and the king's blood; 'tis incident to the most heavenly spirits, Moses, David, Heman, Asaph, Hezekiah, Job, Jeremiah, the church, Psal. 102; Lam. chap. 1. chap. 2:3, 4 it is ore that adhereth to the choicest gold. But how is it, say some, that you read of so little soul-desertion in the apostles, and believers under the New Testament, and so much of it under the Old Testament? Is it not, because it belongeth to the law and the covenant of works, and to the spirit of the Old Testament, and nothing to the gospel of grace? So Antinomians dream. I answer, We read indeed of heavier and stronger external pressures laid on men, to chace them to Christ under the law, than under the gospel: because the gospel speaketh of curses and judgment in the by; and the law more kindly, and more frequently, because of our disobedience; and of the preparing of an infant-church, under non-age, for Christ. But tho' the gospel speak less of God's severity in external judgments, as in killing so many thousands, for looking into the ark, for idolatry; yet the apostle saith, that these things were not merely pedagogical, and Jewish; so as, because the like are not written in the New Testament, it followeth not, they belong not to us: for (saith he) 1 Cor. 10:6. Now these things were our examples. Verse 11. Now all these things happened unto them for examples, and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. Ergo, The like for the like sins, do, and may befal men under the gospel. Moreover, never greater plagues were threatened than by Christ's own mouth; never wrath to the full came upon any, in such a measure, as upon the city of Jerusalem, and the people of the Jews, for killing the Lord of Glory. And tho' no such desertions be read of in the apostles, as of Job, (who was not a Jew, and yet more deserted than David, Heman, or any prophet) Hezekiah, the church, Lament. chap. 2 and 3 yet we are not hence to believe, that there were never such desertions under the New Testament: for as external judgments, so internal soul-trials, are common to both the saints under the Old and New Testament; as is evident in Paul, 2 Cor. 1:8, 9; 2 Cor. 5:11; 2 Cor. 7:4, 5, 6; 1 Pet. 1:6, 7. And as both were frequent under the Old Testament, so were they written for our learning. And if it were to the Jews merely pedagogical, to have terrors without, and sears within, and to be pressed out of measure; or to afflict their souls for sin, were a work of the law; then to be afflicted in conscience, were a denying that Christ is come in the flesh, and simply unlawful: whereas the Lord's absence is a punishment of the church's not opening to Christ, Cant. 5:4, 5, 6 and God's act of withdrawing his lovely presence, is an act of mere free dispensation in God, not our sin. For this would be well considered, that the Lord's active desertion, in either not co-operating with us when we are tempted, or, 2. His not calling, or the suspending of his active pulsation and knocking at the door of our soul, or, 3. The not returning of a present comfortable answer, or, 4. The withdrawing of his shining manifestations, his comforts, and the sense of the presence of Jesus Christ, cannot be formally our sins: indeed, our unbelief, our sinning, which resulteth from the Lord's non-co-operating with us, when we are tempted, our misjudging of Christ, (as if it were a fault to him to stand behind the wall) which are in our desertions passive, are sins.

Asser. 5. Saddest desertions are more incident to the godly, than to the wicked and natural men; as some moth is most ordinary in excellent timber, and a worm rather in a fair rose than in a thorn or thistle. And sure, tho' unbelief, fears, doubtings, be more proper to natural men, than to the saints; yet unregenerate men are not capable of sinful jealousies of Christ's love, nor of this unbelief, which is incident to the desertion we now speak of; even as marriage jealousy falleth not on the heart of a whore, but of a lawful spouse. 2. According to the measure and nature of love, so is the jealousy, and heart suspicions for the want of the love, whence the jealousy is occasioned: the soul which never felt the love of Christ, can never be troubled, nor jealousy displeased for the want of that love. And because Christ had the love of God in another measure, possibly of another nature, than any mortal man; his soul-trouble, for the want of the sense and actual influence of that love, must be more, and of a higher, and it may be of another nature, than can fall within the compass of our thoughts: never man in his imagination, except the man Christ, could weigh, or take a lift of the burden of Christ's soul-trouble; the lightest corner or bit of Christ's satisfactory cross, should be too heavy for the shoulders of angels or men. You may then know how easy it is for many to stand on the shore, and censure David in the sea; and what an oven, and how hot a fire must cause the moisture of his body turn the drought of summer. The angels, John 20 have but a theory and the hearsay of a stander-by, when they say, Woman, why weepest thou? She had slept little that night, and was up by the first glimmering of the dawning, and sought her Saviour with tears, and an heavy heart, and found nothing but an empty grave; O they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him. And the daughters of Jerusalem stood but at the sick spouse's bed-side, and not so near when she complains, I am sick of love. To one, whose wanton reason denied the fire to be hot, another said, put your finger in the fire, and try if it be hot. Some have said, all this soul-trouble is but melancholy and imagination: would you try whether the body of an healthy and vigorous man, turned as dry as chaff, or a withered half-burnt stick, through soul-pain, be a cold fire, or an imagination: and what physic one of the smallest beams of the irradiation of Christ's smiling countenance is to such a soul; you would not speak so.

Asser. 6. Why some of the saints are carried to Abraham's bosom, and to heaven in Christ's bosom, and for the most, feast upon sweet manifestations all the way, and others are oftener in the hell of soul-trouble, than in any other condition, is amongst the depths of holy sovereignty. (1.) Some feed on honey, and are carried in Christ's bosom to heaven; others are so quailed, and kept under water, in the floods of wrath, that their first smile of joy is when the one foot is on the shore, and when the morning of eternity's sun dawns in at the window of the soul. Some sing, and live on sense all the way; others sigh, and go in at heaven's gates weeping, and Christ's first kiss of glory dries the tears off their face. (2.) Christ walks in a path of unsearchable liberty, that some are in the suburbs of heaven, and feel the smell of the dainties of the king's higher house, ere they be in heaven; and others, children of the same Father, passengers in the same journey, wade through hell, darkness of fears, thorns of doubtings, have few love-tokens, till the marriage-day. (3.) There be not two sundry ways to heaven; but there are (I doubt not) in the latitude of sovereignty, hundreds of various dispensations of God, in the same way. Jerusalem is a great city, and hath twelve, and many ports, and angles and sides to enter at; but Christ is the only way: he keeps in all, and brings in all; he keeps in angels that never come out, he brings in his many children to glory. But some go to heaven, and till the twelfth hour know nothing of sin, death, God, Christ, heaven and hell. Grace took a short cut, and a compendious way with the repenting thief. Christ can not only run, but fly post with some in few hours to heaven: grace hath eagles' wings to some; and some wrestle with hell, fight with beasts, make war with lusts, and are dipt in and out, as the oars in the river, in floods of wrath from their youth, and a long time. Caleb and Joshua for two generations were in the journey to Canaan; many thousands not born when they entered the journey, yea, new generations arose, and entered into that good land with them, and were there as soon as they.

Asser. 7. In consideration of desertions, as actively they come from God, and passively they are received in us, and consecutively, or by abused resultance are our sins, they have sundry and divers causes.

1. Sorrow for the withdrawing sense and influence of Christ's love, as formally a desertion passive in us, is not sinful; except sorrow, which is a luxuriant and too indulgent passion, exceed measure. For, 1. 'Tis a mark of a soul that liveth and breatheth much on Christ's love: now, if love be the life of some, it must be continued in sense, or some fruition of love, less or more. Now, as the irradiation of the sun's beams and light in the air yesterday, or the last year, cannot enlighten the air and earth this day; and the meat I did eat a year ago, the sleep I slept the last month, cannot feed and refresh me now, but there must be a new application of new food, and new sleep; so the irradiation of the manifested love of Christ in the years of old, must go along with us: tho' as experiences of old favours, they may set faith on foot again, when it is fallen; yet the soul that liveth by fruition of divine love, must have a continuated influence of that love: and to live on divine love, of itself, can be no sin. O 'tis a life liable to many clouds, overcastings of sadness and jealousies, that lives on the manifestations of Christ's love: 'tis sweet and comfortable, but has mixtures of hardest trials; for such set on no duties comfortably, without hire in hand, as it were; when Christ's love-letter from heaven miscarries, and is intercepted, the soul swoons: 'tis surer to live by faith.

2. To murmur, and impatiently to sorrow, as if God had forgotten to be merciful, is sinful sorrow; 1. Because the object of it is materially, blasphemous: the strength of Israel cannot lie, nor repent; nor can any change fall on him. 2. 'Tis most unjust to complain and quarrel with him, who hath jus, ἀντεξκσίαν, right, law, full and unconstrained liberty to do with his own what he pleaseth; but the heavenly irradiations and outshinings of Christ's love, and the influence of his free grace, are all his own, and most free; for if the seaman have no just cause to quarrel with God, because the wind bloweth out of the east, when he desireth it may blow out of the west; and the husbandman cannot in reason plead mal-government in the Almighty, because he restrains the clouds, and bindeth up the womb of heaven, in extreme drought, when he crieth for rain and dew to his withered earth and meadows, and valleys; so neither is there any just pleading (a sinless desire of the contrary is a far other thing) with the Lord, because he bindeth up the bowels of Christ from outing his love, or restraineth the winds and breathings of the Spirit from blowing. 3. We may desire the wind of the Lord to blow, because it is an act of free grace in him so to do; but to contend with the Lord, because he will not act himself in works of free grace, at our pleasure, is to complain that grace is grace; for if grace were obnoxious, in all its sweet spirations and motions, to my will, or to your desires, it should not be grace, but a work of my hiring and sweating. 4. This sorrowing must accuse the free, holy, and innocent love of Christ, as if his love were proud, nice, humorous, high, passionate; whereas infinite freedom, infinite majesty, and loveliness and meekness of tenderest love, do all three concur admirably in Jesus Christ. Love cannot be hired, Cant. 8:7. If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned. And for the strength of tenderness of love, the same place pleadeth; Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it. And Paul asserteth, Eph. 3:18 the breadth, and length, and depth, and height of it. 5. There is required a submission under such a divine dispensation; else we upbraid grace, and will be wicked, because God will not be (actu secundo) as gracious in his influence, as we are humorous in our sickly desires. 6. If we could understand the sense of divine dispensation, the Lord often intendeth grace, when he suspendeth grace; and his desertions are wrapped up in more invisible love and free grace, than we are aware of: and why should not we, in faith, believe his way of dispensation to be mercy?

Asser. 8. Sometimes (2) God's immediate lashes on the soul, is the occasion of our sinful misjudging of God; Psal. 38:2. Thine arrows stick fast in me, and thine hand presseth me sore. Hence cometh a sad reckoning, ver. 4. Mine iniquities are gone over my head, as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me. And Psal. 77:4. Thou holdest mine eye waking: I am so troubled, that I cannot speak. And what followeth from this? A great misjudging of God. Ver. 7. Will the Lord cast off for ever? will he be favourable no more? Verse. 8. Is his mercy clean gone for ever? doth his promise fail for evermore? Verse 9. Hath God forgotten to be gracious? 'Tis but a poor ground of inferring that God hath forgotten to be merciful, and Christ is changed, because there is night and winter on your soul: Is the God of nature changed, because 'tis not ever summer, and day-light? because a rose withereth, and a flower casteth its bloom, and the sun is over-clouded, therefore God hath forgotten himself? Dispensations of God are no rules to his good pleasure; but his good pleasure regulates all his dispensations. If the soldiers of Christ quarter in the dry wilderness, not in the suburbs of heaven, their leader is wise.

3. Darkness and night are blind judges of colours; in desertion, 'tis night on the soul; and imaginations are strongest and biggest in the darkness; the species of terrible things plough deep furrows of strong impressions on the fancy in the sleep, when the man walketh in darkness, and hath no light, either of sound judgment, or soul-comfort: 'tis night with the soul, and then a bush moved with the wind, is an armed man; every conviction of conscience is condemnation. 2 Cor. 1:8. We are pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of our life: Ver. 9. But we had the sentence of death; there were loads and weights laid on us above strength: darkened souls put on Christ deep representations of wrath, and blackness of indignation; and change him in their apprehensions into another Christ.

4. Satan can drink up at one draught, a grieving and sorrowing spirit, 2 Cor. 2:7 and he hath access to the fancy, and out-works of the soul of the child of God, so he can enlarge the species to a double bigness; let it be considered, if the grammar of Heman, be not a little swelled in more than ordinary rhetoric, Psal. 88:4. I am counted as these that go down to the pit as a man that-hath no strength. Verse 5. Free amongst the dead, like the wounded that lie in grave, whom thou rememberest no more, and they are cut off by thy hand. Ver. 7. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. It God forgot him as a buried man, and not a wave of God's wrath, but was gone over his soul, what could God do more? And job's words are a little beyond the line, chap. 13:24. Wherefore hidest thou thy face from me, and takest me for thine enemy? Words arise up to mountains. Job was not holden of God to be an enemy: Satan can make every pin in the cross an hell, and put a new sense on God's dealing, other than ever he meaned. When Christ opens a vein to blood a conscience, Satan, if he may have leave, shall shut in his lion-teeth to tear the vein, and make the hole of the wound as wide as heart and life may come out; and therefore he raiseth up apprehension, and sows strife and pleas with Christ, and waters his own seed. Can love kill thee? Were it Christ that doth all this, would he not once come to the bedside of a sick son? Can Christ's love throw a poor friend to hell, and leave him there? He hath forgotten thee. Satan can argue from dispensation and trials to the state. Which is false logic. This thou sufferest: Ergo, thou art not in the state of adoption. It is not good that such a minion as Satan, have the ear of a deserted soul; he can carry tales between Christ and the soul, to separate between friends. Never believe ill of Christ; Love thinks no ill. If you love Christ, two hells may cast water on your fire of love, but cannot quench it. Christ will believe no ill of you, let Satan speak his will.

5. Even the love of a saint to Christ, under an hard dispensation, is sick with jealousy, and travelleth in birth with fancied suspicions of Christ's love. Our love is swayed with misgivings; 'tis full of cares, and fears, and doubtings; because 'tis not always edged with heavenly wisdom. It takes life from sense and felt embracings, from presence, and reciprocation of warmness from Christ's bowels: and when face answereth not face, and Christ's love doth not echo, and resound to our love, then it fainteth. We too often measure Christ's love by our foot; we calculate Christ's love by our own elevation, not by his: and Christ's mysterious dispensation, should not point the hour; nor is the full moon, nor the noon-day sun of Christ's love, the compass that our affections and love should fail by. Yea, having not seen Christ, 1 Pet. 1:8 nor felt him, yet we love him, and believe in him; and this is most spiritual love, and has most love in it; the more jealousy without ground, the less love of Christ, at least the less solid constancy of love.

6. Unbelief is a special cause of soul-trouble. 1. In bodily diseases, pain doth not create itself; but sinful passive desertion does create itself. Christ cannot own unbelief, as coming within the compass of his creation; though by him all things were created. Unbelief spinneth out new calumnies of Christ, addeth oil to the fire, and maketh desertion a thousand talent-weight heavier than it would be. This may be evidenced in all the complaints of the saints under desertion; in which more is laid on Christ's name, than is true. Unbelief is a querulous thing. Isa. 49:14. But Sion said, unbelieving Sion said, The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me; this was an untruth, and is confuted in the next verses. Mary Magdalene thought they had taken away her Lord; and he was as near her, as the turning about of her body, and she within speaking to him face to face. And when unbelief doth raise such thoughts, as Christ hath forgotten to be merciful; Christ is changed, he loveth not to the end; what pain must be at the soul's bottom, where such misjudging of Christ, and his love, is in the brim? And yet there is a coal of the love of Christ, smoaking in the bottom of the soul? A loving opinion of Christ is hardly expelled; especially, one particular misreport should not make me receive a misunderstanding of Christ. I never heard ill of Christ before, but much of his excellency and sweetness; and why should I admit of an untried impression, that the sun that giveth light to all, is dark; that fire is cold? 'tis not true like, that Christ is an enemy, if once a friend. Had we a storehouse, and a high bended habit of honourable, sublime, and high thoughts of Jesus Christ, his excellency, the weight of his preciousness, eminency, we should the more hardly give way to the lies that our unbelieving heart raiseth against him.

2. Our second misgiving from unbelief, is in believing our state. Psal. 31:22. I said in my haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes. I am nane of Christ's is a too ordinary mistake; as (he is changed, and not mine) often goeth before. We often find more fault, and first blame in Christ, if not only, ere we see our own provocations. Hence the complaints of Job, chap. 6. chap. 13. chap. 16. chap. 19 and of Jeremiah, chap. 20. chap. 15 of Hezekiah, Isa. 38 of Asaph, Psal. 17 of Heman, Psal. 88 of the church, Isa. 49:14, 15; Isa. 63. chap. 64; Psal. 102; Psal. 6; Psal. 42; Psal. 31 run more on the strain of complaining of God, and his unkind dispensation, than of the plaintiff's sins and provocations; and where there is one mistake of ourselves under desertion, the reader may find out ten mistakes of Christ; and when the deserted soul misjudgeth his own state, it issueth from, and reflecteth on the misjudged apprehension of Christ.

3. From unbelief issueth the misjudging of our own actions: I do no good; or if I do, 'tis not bene, on the right motives, and for the right end, the good that I do. The antecedent is true, but not the consequences: there is a cloud in our fairest sun, and clay in our water; but because good works are not our Saviour's, 'tis no good ground to say, they have no influence in the way of our salvation; and they are not way-marks in our journey, because they are no part of the ransom that bought heaven. We have a grand opinion of our own righteousness, and when we miss it, we think we miss Christ himself; which is a great misjudging, and argueth a believing in ourselves, not in Christ. And often soul-trouble ariseth from defects, omissions, and sins in ourselves. If simple grief for sin as offensive to love arise, that's good soul-trouble; but such soul-trouble as shaketh the bottom of faith, and turneth the soul of Christ to seek righteousness in itself, is damnable: as 'tis hard for an unregenerate man to see sin in its dreadfullest colours, and not despair; so 'tis hard for a regenerate person to see sin, as sin, and not to fall on unbelief, and doubting of Christ's love. Antinomians think any anxiety for sin, which expelleth actual rejoicing in Christ, or turning off Christ, and our casting of the conscience again under the spirit off bondage, and work of the law. Which is contrary to truth, and the command of James, to be afflicted and mourn; and Christ's saying, Blessed are they that mourn, for, they shall be comforted; and Peter, who saith, there may be need, that the saints be in heaviness for a season.

'Tis a great point of wisdom, 1. To know how far forth our spiritual walking may be a seed of comfort; we may easily err on either hands. 2. The logic would be humble; Lord, I am not haughty, ergo, I am comforted in thee. Paul saith well, I know nothing by myself, yet I am not hereby justified; we would not build a tower on a mole-hill. 3. From our sinful walking we may draw grounds of godly sorrow, yet not grounds of unbelief; faith and godly sorrow are consistent together. 4. 'Tis not safe to argue that we are not in Christ, from the wants adhering to our sincere performances. While we slander ourselves, we may slander the Spirit of God. 5. The measure of our obedience, cannot be a warrant to counter-argue Christ, as want is no warrant to stand far off from Christ: no more than it is good logic to flee from the fire, because you are cold; or to be at odds with gold, because you are needy and poor; poverty may conclude a sailing with low sails, and humility, but not unbelief; your want of all things, should not empty rich Jesus Christ.

7. Absence of Christ, misapprehended through unbelief, occasioneth soul-trouble. In which there is something which evidenceth saving grace in the troubled soul, as is aforesaid. For the want of the thing loved, cannot but here be a gracious torment to the lover. The spouse is sick, and dieth, when she wanteth him whom her soul loveth, Cant. 2:5. chap. 5 verse 6, 8. David so expresseth himself, Psal. 84:2. My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth, or dieth, or is at an end, for the courts of the Lord; my flesh and my heart crieth out for the living God. The word [Chalab] is to desire, or to be consumed, or to make an end of any thing. David's desire of enjoying God, was such, as it was his death to want God; it may hold forth, as Pagnins observeth, that David's soul, either extremely desired the Lord, or died upon the absence of God. But to be anxiously troubled in an unbelieving manner, is the sinful soul-trouble. Why doth the soul doubt of Christ's winter, more than of his summer? Absence and presence, his coming, and his departing, are both his own works. God hath liberty in the one as in the other; as it is God's liberty to make fair weather and storms, to make a fair day, and a cloudy day; to make David a king, and his brethren shepherds and common soldiers; so hath he his own freedom in the breathings of his own Spirit, and the blowing of his own wind, or of the drawing a curtain over his own face, and hiding himself: and neither in this, nor in any of his ways of freedom, can we challenge the Lord, or plead against him. And if we think we do well to be angry, even to the death, at the motions and breathings of Christ's free love, then we may compel Christ to be kind, and visit us, as we think good. Whatever ye be, Christ is Lord of his own presence and visits, and 'tis good the king's chamber of presence be a dainty, and Christ's wine be not so common as water: nor can we here force kindness, or acts of heavenly manifestations on him; he hides himself. Why, he is as reasonable, and wise, in his going as in his coming.

2. Should we take on us to steward and husband the kisses and embracements of Christ, better than he can do himself; and should quarrel because the Lord hath not thought fit to make heirs and minors, that are yet under non-age. Masters and lords of their own young heaven; this were not a good world for us. Christ's love is better than wine, Cant. 1. Neither our head, nor our heart could endure to drink, at our own will, of this new wine of the higher kingdom. Better for us it is that Christ bear the key of the well of life, than children have it; and if the government of the higher and lower family be upon the shoulders of Christ, the leading of this or that single person to heaven, is worthy Christ's care.

3. And consider, that Christ goeth not behind the mountain, or hideth himself upon mere hazard, but for weighty reasons, that love may be sharpened through absence; that the house may be adorned with new hangings, and Christ's bed made green; that care may be had, when he resteth in his love, not to stir up, nor awake the Beloved, until he please; that the high tides and rich feasts of Christ's love, after sad and heavy desertions, may heighten the worth and esteem of Christ; that faith and love may with more of the violence of heaven, lay hold on Christ, after long seeking, and not part with him on so easy terms, Cant. 3:1, 2, 3, 4 that we may know, what weakness is in our clay-legs, under desertion, and how we are to walk on Christ's legs, which are pillars of marble set on sockets of gold; that absence and presence, the frownings and smilings of Christ, may be to the saints the little images of hell and heaven, and broken men may read their debts in Christ's count book of free grace, with tears in their eyes, and songs of praise in their mouth; that we may be in high love, and sick for absent Christ, and may be at the pains through thick and thin to seek him, and learn to live less by sense, and more by faith, and resolve to die believing; and be charitable of Christ absent, and kiss his vail, when we can see no more; and be upon our watch-tower, and know what of the night, and observe a soul-communion with God; which the spirit of the world cannot do.

4. Nothing doth more cry aloud the softness and baseness of our nature than our impatience under sad dispensations, when we are positively resolved upon this, that God loveth us; yet, because of a cloud over our sun, and one scruple of gall in our joy, to lodge a new opinion, that Christ is changed into another God, and that his love doth plot, and contrive our destruction, argueth a weak and soon shaken faith. It speaketh lightness of love to Christ, that it is loosed at the root, with the scratch of a pin; he hides himself, and you say, Oh 'tis not Christ, but some other like him; for Christ would not so go and come. Well rooted friendship can scarce suffer you to believe so much of a brother, or a companion. But when ye thus misjudge Christ, we may gather, if he should appear in the garments of vengeance, as he doth to the damned; 'tis to be feared, this would drink up our faith and love, if Christ were not more gracious, than we are constant: Lord, lead us not into temptation.

5. I deny not but seeming wrath, and Christ's intercepting of messengers of love, and flamings of hell's fury on the soul, are prodigious like comets, glimmering over a trembling conscience; and that 'tis much to keep orthodox, sound, and precious thoughts of Christ, when the christian is not himself; yet when the child mileth about in a round, to say, the earth runneth about in circle, or to think the shore or the rock saileth from the ship that carrieth you, when the ship moveth and the shore standeth still, are but signs of a weak-headed and green sailor: so, because you are deeply affected with a sad absence, to believe Christ's love runneth a circle, and that you stand still as a rock, and the change is in Christ, argueth a green, raw wit, and instability of faith; and that the sea-sands can no more easily drink up a gallon of water, than that temptation would swallow up the poor man's faith thus fainting, if the invisible strength of the advocate, who intercedeth for the saints, did not uphold him.

Now is my soul troubled

2. The second circumstance in the text, is the time, νοω, Now is my soul troubled. There is an emphasis in this Now: Christ had a troubled soul before, and was sensible of afflictions; but Now, he saw more in this cross than in afflictions; he saw the curse of the law, and the wrath of God, stamped on this cross. Christ had never any now, or juncture of time, before or after, comparable to this Now. Observe, that Christ and his followers, must look for growing and swelling crosses, Matth. 26:37. Jesus began to be sorrowful, and very heavy: he had all his life, Isa. 53 sorrow; verse 3 he was a man of sorrows; as every piece of Christ had been sorrow, and had acquaintance with grief: [Vinduang holi] and was known and noted to all, marked out to all, by his griefs; but now he wadeth deeper in troubles. Let all Christ's followers look for a growing cross, and a sadder and sadder Now. Psal. 3:1. Lord, how are they increased that trouble me? Psal. 25:17. The troubles of my heart are enlarged. Heb. become most broad. Psal. 42:7. Deep calleth unto deep, at the noise of thy water-spouts, all thy waves and thy floods are gone over me. One cross calleth to another; God raineth them down, as one wave of the sea calleth another. So Job's afflictions came on him, in a growing way. David, Psal. 69:2. I sink in the deep mire, where there is no standing. I wade deeper and deeper, till I lose ground and bottom. I am come into the deep waters, where the floods overflow me. (2.) Christ's sufferings are called a cup; it behoved to be filled to the brim, and Christ weigheth out in ounces and drams, so much gall in the cup, and yet some more; and because that worketh not the cure, yet an ounce more. (3.) Christ can appoint clothes for us, as we have cold; and a burden answerable to the bones and strength of the back. It is a doubt if David's faith would reach so far, as that he should bear it well, that another should sacrifice a wicked son Absalom to God's justice: O! how did David mourn that he was killed? Yet the Lord measured out to Abraham a cup of deeper gall, to kill with his own hand, his only son, a believing son, an heir of the promise. (4.) What if twelve years bloody issue be little enough for to work a woman to necessity of seeking to Christ? yet another must be eighteen years; and a sick man thirty and eight years. Our physician knoweth us well. Let us study for a growing faith to growing crosses: and if a cross as broad and as large as all Britain, and a sword as public as three kingdoms, yea, as all the bounds of Christendom come; so that there be no peace to him that goeth out, or cometh in, we are to be armed for it. Nor, 2. Is it enough after pestilence and the sword, to sit down, and say, Now I'll die in my nest, and multiply my days as the sand. Stay, in heaven only, there be neither widows, nor killed husbands, nor beggars, nor plundered houses; understand the sense of providence right; We have not yet resisted unto blood; we have yet seas and floods of blood to swim through, ere we come to shore. A private cross is too narrow a plaister to our sore; and therefore public one, as broad as all Scotland, as all your mother country and church, is little enough. It must be yet broader, and we must yet lose more blood.

What shall I say?

3. The third circumstance in Christ's soul-trouble is his anxiety of mind. What shall I say? It is as much as, What shall I do? But, what meaneth this anxiety of Christ? It is like a doubting of the event; but there is neither doubting nor despairing in it. There is fear exceeding great heaviness and sorrow in it: and as an anxious man, through extremity of suffering, is put to his wits-end, as destitute of counsel, to say, I know neither what to do, nor say; so Christ had a sinless anxiety Learned divines acknowledge, there was an innocent and sinless oblivion in the sensitive memory, in regard it was intent only upon the extreme agony, and no obliged in all differences of time to remember every duty: and affirmative precepts oblige not in all, an every juncture of time.

2. Nor is faith actually, always, without exception to believe: It is possible, that faith in the act, and extreme fear in the same act, be physically inconsistent 3. Neither were Christ's sensitive affections, in their physical and natural operations, so awed and restrained by a divine law, as that they may not put forth themselves to the utmost and highest degree of intention, when the light of reason sheweth the object in the superlative degree of vehemency. Reason and light could never shew to any suffering man, at one time, such a great death of evil of loss, and positive evil of sense, as it did shew to Christ, at this instant of time. To be suspended from an immediate, full, perfect, personal, intuitive fruition, and vision of God, is a greater eclipse, than if ten thousand suns were turned into pieces of sackcloth of hair, and the light totally extinguished; or, than if all the angels, all the glorified saints, that are, or shall be, in heaven, were utterly excluded from the comfortable vision of God's face. You cannot imagine what a sad suspension of the actual shining of the immediately enjoyed majesty of God this was; and what a positive curse and wrath was inflicted on Christ, so as his anxiety could not exceed.

4. Christ was to suffer in his natural affections, of joy, sorrow, confidence, fear, love, yet without sin; and tho' I could not shew how this anxiety and faith could consist, yet it cannot be denied; for grace doth not destroy nature, nor could the vision of personal union hinder the exercise of all human, affections and infirmities in Christ, in the state of his humiliation, as clothes of gold cannot allay the pain of the head and stomach: grace is a garment of cloth of gold, and the union personal, the perfection of grace; yet it hindered not Christ from being plunged in extreme horror and anxiety.

5. There were in Christ, at this time, some acts of innocent and sinless darkness in the sensitive soul, that he actually thinking of the blackness and dreadful visage of the second death, was now like a man destitute of counsel. But, 1. This was merely penal, and out of dispensation; for Christ's soul-pain is an excellent screen and shadow, or a sconce between the soul-troubled believer and hell; and Christ's anxiety, and his, What shall I say? is a bank and a great high coast between a distressed conscience, who is at, What shall I do? whither shall I go? where shall I have relief and help? and the extremity of his forlorn condition.

2. Christ's anxiety was not opposite to any light of faith, or moral holiness; as the simple want of light is not night, an eclipse of the sun removeth no light, nay, not at all one beam of light from the body of the sun; all is light that is on the other side of the covering, it removeth only light from us, who are on this side of the interposed covering, which causeth the eclipse. This anxiety was only opposed to the actual happiness and natural fruition of God enjoyed in the personal union, not to any light of a moral duty required in Jesus Christ. But, 2. We are not to conceive that Christ's anxiety, fear and sorrow, were only imaginary, and supposed upon a mistake, that had not any fundamentum in re, ground in the thing itself; as Jacob mourned and would not be comforted, at the supposed death of his son Joseph, thinking he was torn with wild beasts, when the child was alive, and safe; and as the believer will sorrow that God hath forsaken him, and hath forgotten to be merciful, and that he is turned of a friend an enemy, when it is not so, but a great mistake; God hath not forgotten to be merciful; The strength of Israel cannot repent and change. Christ's darkness in this negative, and natural negative, he looking wholly on real sadness, death, wrath, the curse of the law; but not privative, or moral and culpably privative; for Christ had never a wrong thought of God, he did never believe God to be changed; nor did he, upon a misjudging of God, conceive God had forsaken him, when as he had not forsaken him, as if Christ's spiritual sense were deceived, in taking up a misapprehension of God, or his dispensation. And therefore that complaint, Why [lamah] hast thou forsaken me? hath not this meaning, as it hath in many places of scripture, There is no cause why thou shouldst forsake me: for there were just causes, why the Lord, at this time, should forsake his Son Christ. And therefore the forsaking of Christ was real; because grounded upon justice. The elect had forsaken God; Christ stood in their place, to bear their iniquities, Isa. 53 that is, the punishment which the elect should have suffered eternally in hell for their own iniquities: and in justice, God did for a time forsake his Son Christ, not only in sense and apprehension, but really. 2. Satan doth so mist and delude the weak believers, that because they will not mourn nor be humbled, for real objects, sins, unbelief, misspending of time, which are true causes of sorrow and mourning, they waste sorrow needlessly and sinfully; the righteous dispensation of God intervening for false and supposed causes, as through ignorance, for these things that are not sins, yet are falsely conceived to be sins; or through misapprehension, imagining that the Lord is changed, and become their utter enemy, when he cannot forget them, Isa. 49:14, 15, or through misjudging their own estate, conceiving they are reprobates, when there is no such matter. So, when we will not duly object, place and time our affections, 'tis righteousness with God, that we lose our labour, and spill and seed away our affections prodigally, in a wood of thorns, for nothing; because we do not give them out for Christ; and so we must sow and never reap. But Christ could not thus lavish away this fear, sorrow, sadness. I know there is a forsaking in God, joined with hatred: God neither in this sense forsook Christ, nor did Christ complain of this forsaking: God's forsaking of him, was in regard of the influence of actual vision, 2. Of the actual joy and comfort of union, 3. Of the penal inflicting of the curse, wrath, sorrow, sadness, stripes, death, on the man Christ.

Use. If Christ was put to, What shall I say? what shall I do? What a sad and forlorn condition are sinners in? how shiftless are they? Isa. 10:3. When God asketh of them, What will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the desolation that shall come upon you from far? to whom will ye flee for help? where will ye leave your glory? Jer. 5:31. What will ye do in the end? guiltiness is a shiftless and a forlorn thing. Take a man pained and tormented with the stone, he cannot lie on this side, he turneth to the other; he cannot lie, his couch cannot ease him; he casteth himself out of the bed to the floor of the house, he cannot rest there; no place, not paradise, say a man were tortured up in heaven before the throne, the place of glory, simply considered, should not ease him. What a desperate course do the damned take, to seek dens and rocks of the earth to hide themselves in? Canst thou lodge under the roof of the creature, when the Creator armed with red and fiery wrath pursueth thee? And when that faileth them, and they dare not pray to God, they petition hills and mountains to be graves above them, to bury such lumps of wrath quick, Rev. 6.

2. I defy any man, with all his art, to be an hypocrite, and to play the politician in hell, at the last judgment, in the hour of death, or when the conscience is wakened. A robber doth never mock the law and justice at the gallows, whatever he do in the woods and mountains. Men do cry, and weep, and confess sins right-down, and in sad earnest, when conscience speaketh out wrath; there is no mind then of fig-leave-coverings, or of colours, vails, masks, or excuses.

3. Conscience is a piece of eternity, a chip that fell from a deity, and the nearest shadow of God, and endeth as it begins. At first, even by its natural constitution, conscience warreth against concupiscence, and speaketh sadly out of Adam, while it is hot, and not cold dead; I was afraid, hearing thy voice, I hid myself; and this it doth, Rom. 1:19. chap. 2:15. While lusts buy and bribe conscience out of office, then it co-operateth with sin, and becometh dead: in the end when God shaketh an eternal rod over conscience, then it gathereth warm blood again, as it had in Adam's days; and hath a resurrection from death, and speaketh gravely and terribly, without going about the bush. O how ponderous and heavy! How far from tergiversation, clokings, and shifting, are the words that dying atheists utter, of the deceitfulness of sin, the vanity of the world, the terrors of God? Was not Judas in sad earnest? Did Saul speak policy, when he weepeth on the witch, and saith, I am sore distressed? Did Spira dissemble and sport, when he roared like a bear against divine wrath?

What shall I say?

This saith, that Christ, answering for our sins, had nothing to say; the sufferer of satisfactory pain, has no words of apology for sin. The friend that was to be cast in utter darkness, for coming to the supper of the great king, without his wedding garment, ἐφιμθωη, his mouth was muzzled, as the mouth of a mad dog; he was speechless, and could not bark. When divine justice speaketh out of God, Job, chap. 40 answereth, v. 4. Behold, I am vile, what shall I answer thee? I will lay my hand on my mouth. When the church findeth justice pleading against her; 'tis thus, Ezek. 16:63. That thou mayst remember (thy sins) and be confounded, and there may be no more an opening of a mouth, because of thy shame, when I am pacified toward thee, for all that thou hast done, saith the Lord. I grant, satisfactory justice doth not here put men to silence, but it proveth how little we can answer for sin. Even David, remembring that Shimei, and other instruments, had deservedly afflicted him, in relation to Divine justice, saith, Psal. 39:9. I was dumb, I opened not my mouth, because thou didst it. There were three demands of justice given in against Christ, all which he answered: justice put it home upon Christ, 1. All the elect have sinned, and by the law are under eternal wrath: to this claim, our Advocate and Surety could say nothing on the contrary; 'Tis true Lord. Christ doth satisfy the law, but not contradict it. The very word of the gospel answereth all these. In this regard, Christ's silence was an answer; and to this, Christ said, What shall I say? I have nothing to say.

2. Thou art the sinner in law. To this Christ answered, A body thou hast given me. The Son of man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give himself a ransom for many. Mat. 20:28. The whole gospel saith, Christ, who knew no sin, was made sin for us.

3. Thou must die for sinners; this was the third demand. And Christ answereth it, Psal. 40; Heb. 10. Thou hast given me a body, here am I to do thy will. To all these three Christ answered with silence; and tho', in regard of his patience to men, it be said, Isa. 53:7. He was brought as a Lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before the shearer is dumb, so he opened not his mouth; yet it was most true, in relation to Divine justice, and the Spirit of God hath a higher respect to Christ's silence (which was a wonder to Pilate) before the bar of God's justice. O! could we by faith see God giving in a black and sad claim, a bill written, within, and without, in which are all the sins of all the elect, from Adam to the last man; and Christ with watry eyes receiving the claim, and saying, Lord, 'tis just debt, crave me, what shall I say on the contrary? We should be more bold, not barely to name our sins, and tell them over to God, but to confess them, and study more for the answer of a good conscience, by faith to substitute an advocate, to answer the demands of justice for our sins: and if men believed that Christ, as surety satisfying for their sins, could say nothing on the contrary, but granted all; they should not make excuses and shifts, either to wipe their mouth with the whore, and say, I have not sinned, nor be witty to make distinctions, and shifts, and excuses to cover, mince, and extenuate their sins.

Father, save me from this hour

The fourth part of this complaint, is an answer that faith maketh to Christ's question, What shall I say? What Shall I do? Say praying-wise (saith faith) Father, save me from this hour. A word of the coherence; then of the words. We often dream, that in trouble, help is beyond sea, and far off, as far as heaven is from the earth; when help is at our elbow: and if the Spirit of adoption be within, the prisoner hath the key of his own jail within, in his own hand. God was in Christ's bosom, when he was in a stormy sea, and the light of faith saith, Behold, the shore at hand. Death taketh feet and power of motion from a man; but, Psal. 23:4 yet faith maketh a supposition, that David may walk and live, breathe in the grave, in the valley of the shadow of death. 'Tis the work of faith to keep the heat of life in the warm blood, even among clods of clay, when the man is buried. This anxious condition Christ was in (as other straits are to the saints) is a strait and narrow pass; there was no help for him on the right hand, nor on the left; nor before, nor behind, nor below. Christ, as David his type, Psal. 141:4. Looked round about, but refuge failed him, no man cared for his soul; but there was a way of escape above him, it was a fair easy way to heaven. The church was in great danger and trouble of war and desolation, when she spake to God, Psal. 46. Yet their faith seeing him to be very near them; God is our refuge and strength: true, he can save (saith sense) but that is a fowl flying in the woods, and over-sea-hop, far off: not far off (faith saith) A very present help in trouble; or a help easily, or [Meod] exceedingly found in trouble. So Psal. 44:9. Thou hast cast us off. Heb. Thou art far from us, thou hast put us to shame. What lower could the people be? v. 19. We are in the dungeon, in the place of dragons, we are in the cold grave, beside the worms and corruption; and thou hast covered us with the shadow of death, a cold bed. Yet then see what faith saith, verse 20. We have not forgotten the name of our God. Our God is a word of great faith. And to come to Christ; his soul was troubled; he was at, What shall I say? in a great perplexity. Yet he hath a strong faith, both of his Father, and of his own condition. He believed God to be his Father, and calleth him Father. Yea, in this hell, he applieth the relation of a Father to himself, Mat. 26:39. O my Father; this is the warmest love-thought of God: and when his comfort was ebbest, his confidence in the covenant strongest; My God, my God, &c. 'Tis much glory to our Lord, that faith sparkle fire and be hot, when comfort is cold and low. O what an honour to God! the man is slain, and cold dead, yet he believes strongly the salvation of God! Christ kills the poor man, and the man's faith kisseth and hangeth about Christ's neck, and says, If I must die, let Christ's bosom be my death-bed. Then he must believe, if God was his Father, by good logick, he must be the Son of God; and if God was his God, then the heir of all must claim the privileges of all the sons of the house in covenant. God (I may say) was more than Christ's God, and more than in covenant with God; as he was more than a servant, so more than a son, than a common one: and Christ's faith is so rational, and so binding with strength of reason, that he will but use such a weapon, as we may use, even the light of faith, and he will claim but the common benefit of all the sons in covenant, when he saith, My God, my God. Whatever Papists say, if ever Christ was in hell, it is now; but see, he hath heaven present with him in hell. If God could be apprehended by faith, in hell, as a God in covenant, then should hell become heaven to that believing soul. Christ took God, and his God, and his Father, as Jonah, a type of him, down to the bowels of hell with him: and as we see some dying men, they lay hold on something dying, and die with that in their hand, which we call the dead-grip; so Christ died with his Father by faith, and his spouse in regard of love stronger than the grave, in his arms. This was Christ's death embracings, his death-kiss; and Job professeth so much. Lower he could not be, than he complaineth he is, chap. 19, in all respects, of body, which was a clod of bones and skin; in regard of wife, servants, dear friends, of the hand of God in his soul: Yet, verse 25. I know that my Goel, my kinsman, Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the last man on the earth.†

Use. This leadeth us, in our forlorn perplexities, to follow Christ's footsteps, both under evils of punishment and sin. The people in their captivity in Babylon, Ezek. 37 were an host of dead, and (which is more) dry bones; the churches in Germany, in Scotland, are dry bones, and in their graves; the churches in Scotland and England, in regard of the sinful divisions and blasphemous opinions in the worship of God, are in a worse captivity, and lower than dry bones; and our woes are not at an end: yet the faith of many seeth, that deliverance and union there must be, and that our graves must be opened, and that the wind of the Lord must breathe upon the dry bones, that they may live. God hath in former times opened our graves, when strange lords had dominion over us: I would we were freed of them now also, but our yoke is heavier than it was; but God shall deliver his people from those that oppress them.

Again, as you see in great perplexity Christ believed God to be his Father, and that he himself was a Son; so are we, under pressures of conscience, and doubtings because of sin, to keep precious, high, and excellent love-thoughts of Jesus Christ.

Objection 1. "But what if a soul be brought to doubt of its conversion; because he findeth no good he either doth, or can do? True faith, is a working faith."

Answer. Some so cure this, as they prove physicians of no value to poor souls, I mean, Antinomians: for, say they, This is the disease, that you, in doubting of your faith, because you find not such and such qualifications in you, therefore seek a righteousness in yourself, and not in Christ. I should easily grant, that man's inherent righteousness is, in his carnal apprehension, his very Christ and Redeemer; but in the mean time, these are two carnal and fleshly extremities, and faith walketh in the middle between them. 1. 'Tis a fleshly way to say, that, because I find sin reigning in me, I have killed my brother, saith a Cain, I have betrayed the Lord of glory, saith a Judas; yet I am not (saith a Libertine) to question, whether I believe or no; for this putteth fleshly and profane men on a conceit, Be not solicitous what you are; take you so fear of serving sin and divers lusts, but believe, and never doubt, whether your faith be a dead, or a living faith, tho' you go on to walk after the flesh; but believe, and doubt not whether you believe or no. The other extremity is of some weak christians, who because they find that in them, that is, in their flesh, dwelleth no good, and they sin daily, find much untowardness and back-drawing in holy duties; therefore (say they) I have no faith, I am none of Christ's: This is a false conclusion, drawn from a true antecedent, and springeth from a root of self-seeking, and righteousness which we naturally seek in ourselves; for I am not, being once justified, to seek my justification in my sanctification; but being not justified, I may well seek my non-justification in my non-sanctification. As Libertines say, this is the fault of all, when it is the fault only of some weak misjudging souls; so do they take the saints off from all disquietness and grief of mind for neglect of spiritual duties, as if all godly sorrow and displeasure of our sinful omissions, were nothing but a legal sorrow for want of self-righteousness and a sinful unbelief: but 'tis formally not any such thing, but lawful and necessary to make the sinner go with a low sail, and esteem the more highly of Christ; and 'tis only sinful, when abused to such a legal inference, I omit this and this, I sin in this and this; ergo, God is not my Father, nor am I his son.

But I hold this position, as evidently deducible out of the text, In the roughest and most bloody dispensation of God toward saints, neither soul-trouble, nor anxiety of spirit, can be a sufficient ground to any, why they should not believe, nor question their sonship and relation to God, as their Father. 'Tis clear that Christ in his saddest condition believed and stood to it, that God was his Father: the only question will be, if sinful and fleshly walking be a good warrant. To which I answer, if any be a servant of sin, and walk after the flesh, and be given up to a reprobate mind to commit sin with greedness, such a one hath good warrant to believe that God is not his Father, and that he is not in Christ; because, 2 Cor. 5:17. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. If any be risen with Christ, he seeketh the things that are above, where Christ is at the right-hand of God. He is dead, and his life is hid with Christ in God. And he mortifieth his members on earth, Col. 3:1, 2, 3, 4. He is redeemed from this present evil world. Gal. 1:4. He is dead to sin, and liveth to righteousness. 1 Pet. 2:24. He is redeemed from his vain conversation. 1 Pet. 1:18. He is the temple of the Holy Ghost; he is not his own, but bought with a price; and is, being washed in Christ's blood, a king over his lusts, a priest to offer himself to God, on holy, living and acceptable sacrifice, 1 Cor. 6:16, 20; Rev. 1:5, 6; Rom. 12:1. But he that remaineth the servant of sin, and walketh after the flesh, and is given up to a reprobate mind, &c. is no such man; ergo, such a man hath no claim to God as his Father: and upon good grounds may, and ought to question his being in Christ. Only let these cautions be observed. 1. It is not safe to argue from the quantity of holy walking; for many sound believers may find untowardness in well-doing, yet must not cast away themselves for that. A smoking flax is not quenched by Christ, for that it hath little heat, or little light; and therefore ought not by us. 2. Beware we lean not too much to the quality of walking holily, to infer, I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all I have; then, God I thank him, I am not an hypocrite, as the publican, and a wicked man. Sincerity is a sensible speaking grace; 'tis seldom in the soul without a witness. Lord, thou knowest that I love thee (saith Peter) he could answer for sincerity, but not for quantity; he durst not answer Christ, that he knew that he loved him more than these. Sincerity is humble, and walketh on positives, Lord, I love thee; but dare not adventure on comparatives, Lord, I love thee more than others. 3. There be certain hours, when the believer cannot make strong conclusions, to infer, I am holy, therefore I am justified; because in darkness we see neither black nor white, and God's light hides our case from us, that we may be humbled, and believe. 4. Believing is surer than too frequent gathering warmness from our own hot skin.

Saltmarsh, and other Libertines make three doubts that persons have as sufficient grounds, to question their being in Christ: 1. Backsliding. 2. The man's finding no change in the whole man. 3. Unbelief. Give me leave therefore in all meekness to offer my thoughts, in sifting and scanning this doctrine.

"This is then (saith he*) your first doubt, that you are not therefore beloved of God, or in Christ, because you fell back again into your sin, so as you did. Suppose I prove to you, that no sin can make one less beloved of God, or less in Christ.

Answer. "Then I shall conclude, that sin cannot hinder the love of God to my soul.

Question "This I prove, 1. The mercies of God are sure mercies, his love, his covenant everlasting: Paul was persuaded that neither life, nor death, &c. could separate him from the love of God. The Lord changeth not in loving sinners. 2. Whom the Lord loveth, he loveth in his Son, he accounts him as his son; for he is made to us, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. But God loveth his Son always alike; for he is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever: Ergo, Nothing can make God love us less; because he loves us not for ourselves, or for any thing in ourselves, &c. 3. God is not as man, or the son of man. Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's chosen? The foundation of God standeth sure. God's love is as himself, ever the same."

Answer 1. The thing in question to resolve the sinner, whether he be loved of God, from eternity, as one chosen to glory, is never proved, because no sin can make one less beloved from eternity; and sin cannot hinder the love of God, (non concluditur negatunt;) for 'tis true, sin cannot hinder the flowings and emanation of the love of election, it being eternal; else not any of the race of mankind, God seeing them all as guilty sinners, could ever have been loved with an eternal love. But the consequence is nought, Ergo, backsliders in heart, and servants of sin, have no ground to question, whether they be loved with the love of eternal election, or not.

2. This physician lays down the conclusion in question, which is to be proved, to the resolving of the man's conscience, that he may be cured; the thing to be proved to the sick man, say, he were a Judas wakened in conscience, is, that notwithstanding his betraying of Christ, yet God loved him with an everlasting love, and he is in Christ. Now he cureth Judas thus, God's love is everlasting, his covenant everlasting, no sin can hinder God to love Judas, or separate a traitor to Christ, from the love of Christ. Separation supposeth an union; less loving, supposeth loving: So he healeth the man thus; no disease can overcome or hinder the art of such a skilled physician to cure a dying man. But what if this skilled physician will not undertake to cure the man, nor to move his tongue for advice, nor to stir one finger to feel the man's pulse; ergo, The man must be cured. For if the man be a backslider in heart, and a servant of sin, Christ never touched his pulse. He hath as yet sure grounds to question, whether he be loved of God, or be in Christ, or no; for, except you prove the man to be loved with an everlasting love, you can prove nothing: and your argument will not conclude any thing for the man's peace, except you prove him to be chosen of God; which is his only question. But say that he is loved from everlasting, and that he is in Christ, by faith, 'tis easy to prove, that his sins cannot change everlasting love, nor make him less beloved of God, nor separate him from the love of God. You must then either remove the man's doubting, from signs inherent in the man, (and if he be a backslider in heart, you fetch fire and water from beyond the moon to cure him;) or you must fetch warrants to convince him, from the mind, eternal counsels of love and free grace within God; and that is all the question between the man and you. You cannot prove God hath loved him from everlasting, because he hath loved him from everlasting. If Libertines in this argument intend to prove, that a chosen convert in Christ hath no ground to question, that he is not beloved of God and not in Christ, 1. That is nothing to the thesis of Antinomians, maintained by all, that sinners, as sinners, are to believe God's eternal love in Christ to them; and so all sinners, elect or reprobate, are to believe the same. 2. 'Tis nothing to the universal commandment, that all and every one in the visible church, wearied and loaden with sin, or not wearied and loaden, are immediately to come to Christ, and rest on him, as made of God to them, their righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, without any inherent qualification in them. 3. 'Tis nothing to the point of freeing all, and building a golden bridge to deliver all who are obliged to believe, elect or reprobate, from doubting whether they be in Christ or not, that they may easily come to Christ, and believe his eternal love and redemption in him, though they will be in the gall of bitterness and bonds of iniquity, and that immediately. Which golden paradise to heaven and Christ, Antinomians liberally promise to all sinners as sinners. I cannot believe that 'tis so easy a step to Christ.

For the second: Tis a dream that God loveth sinners with the same love every way, wherewith he loveth his own Son, Christ. And why? Because God loveth us only for his own Son, and for nothing in us: ergo, far more it must follow, 'tis a far other, an higher, fountain love, wherewith the Father loveth his own eternal and consubstantial Son, the mediator between God and man; and that derived love wherewith he loveth us sinners. As the one is, 1. Natural, the latter free. 2. The love of the Father to the Son, as his consubstantial Son, and so far as 'tis essentially included in his love to Jesus Christ mediator, is not a love founded on grace and free mercy, which might never have been in God; because essentially, the Father must love his Son, Christ, as his Son; and being mediator, he cannot for that renounce his natural love to him, which is the fundamental cause, why he loveth us for Christ his Son as mediator; but the love wherewith the Father loveth us for his Son, Christ, is founded on free grace and mercy, and might possibly never have been in God. For, 1. As he could not but beget his Son, he could not but love him; nature, not election, can have place in either; but it was his free will to create a man, or not create him. 2. He cannot but love his Son, Christ, but God might either have loved neither man nor angel, so as chuse them to salvation, and he might have chosen other men and angels, than these whom he hath, chosen; God hath no such freedom in loving his own consubstantial Son. 3. 'Tis an untruth, that God loveth his chosen ones, as he doth love his Son; that is with the same degree of love wherewith he loves his Son; I think that not far from either gross ignorance, or blasphemy. It possibly may be the same love by proportion, with which the Father tendereth the Mediator or Redeemer, and all his saved and ransomed ones; but in regard of willing good to the creature loved, he neither loveth his redeemed with the same love where with he loveth his Son; except blasphemously we say, God hath as highly exalted all the redeemed, and given to them a name above every name, as he hath done to his own Son; nor doth he so love all his chosen ones, as he conferreth equal grace and glory upon all alike; as if one star differed not from another star in glory, in the highest heavens. Our own good works cannot make our Lord love us less or more, with the love of eternal election; but they may make God love us more with the love of complacency, and a sweeter manifestation of God in the fruits and gracious effects of his love. According to that, John 14:23. Jesus said, if a man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

The third reason is the same with the first, and proveth nothing but a major proposition, not denied by the disquieted sinner, which is this: Whoever is justified and chosen, cannot be condemned; whomever the Lord once loveth to salvation, be must always love to salvation; for his love is like himself, and changeth not. But the disquieted sinner is chosen and loved to salvation. This assumption is all the question; and the truth of a major proposition can never prove the truth of the assumption.

Saltmarsh, Free Grace, chap. iv. p. 83, 84, 85.

"Because you feel not yourself sanctified, you fear you are not justified. If you suppose that God takes in any part of your faith, repentance, new obedience, or sanctification, as a ground upon which he justifieth or forgiveth; you are clear against the word: For if it be of works, it is no more of grace. 2. It must then be the only evidence you seek for; and you ask for sanctification to help your assurance of justification: but take it in the scripture's way.

1. "In the scriptures, Christ is revealed to be our sanctification. Christ is made unto us righteousness, sanctification. I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. Ye are Christ's, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus. He hath quickened us together with Christ. We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works. Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone. That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. That new man, which after God was created in righteousness and true holiness. We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. And being found in him, not having mine own righteousness. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. But Christ is all in all. Your life is hid with Christ in God, Heb. 13:20, 21. All these set forth Christ as our sanctification, the fulness of his, the All in all. Christ hath believed perfectly for us, he hath sorrowed for sin perfectly, he hath obeyed perfectly, he hath mortified sin perfectly; and all is ours, and are Christ's, and Christ is God's.

The second thing is faith about our own sanctification. We must believe more truth of our own graces than we can see or feel; the Lord in his dispensation hath so ordered, that here our life should be hid with Christ in God, that we should walk by faith, not by fight: so we are to believe our repentance true in him, who hath repented for us; our mortifying sin true in him, thro' whom we are more than conquerors; our new obedience true in him, who hath obeyed for us, and is the end of the law to every one that believeth; our change of the whole man true in him, who is righteousness and true holiness. And thus, without faith, 'tis impossible to please God. This is scripture assurance, to see every one in himself as nothing, and himself every thing in Christ. Faith is the ground of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen. All other assurances are rotten conclusions from the word, invented by legal teachers, not understanding the mystery of the kingdom of Christ. The scriptures bid you see nothing in yourself, or all as nothing: These teachers bid you see something in yourself; so as the leaving out Christ in sanctification, is the foundation of all doubts, fears, distractions. And he that looketh on his repentance, on his love, on his humility, on his obedience, and not in the tincture of the blood of Christ, must needs believe weakly and uncomfortably."

Answer. If a servant of sin, any Cain, wakened with the terrors of God, see his sins, feel hell in his soul for them, and have no warm thoughts of love, and far-off affiance, at least in Christ Jesus; but flee from Christ, and go to the enemies of Christ for comfort, as Judas did; he may strongly conclude, I feel I am not sanctified, I hate the physician Christ, and run from him; Ergo. I am not justified, And from a true real non-feeling of sanctification, 'tis a strong consequence, there's no justification. But from a misprizing of grace and sanctification in myself, I cannot conclude, I am not justified. We know, Papists, in point of certainty of salvation, argue so; many deluded hypocrites believe, or imagine, they have oil in their lamps, yet they are deceived; therefore the saints can have no certainty they are in Christ. 'Tis just like the answer now in hand: a misjudging of sanctification, cannot argue no justification; Ergo, a true and real judgment of no sanctification in hypocrites, and slaves of sin, cannot argue the persons to be justified, who thus argue. It is as if I should argue thus; a frantick and a sleeping man cannot know that he is frantick, and sleeping; therefore a sober and waking man cannot know that he is sober, and waking. For a deserted child of God is in some spiritual phrensy and sleep, and does misprize Christ in himself, and sanctification; and therefore argueth often, that he is not in Christ, upon false principles. But a wakened conscience in Cain, and Judas, do strongly conclude, I am not a new creature, but a servant of sin; Ergo, I am not justified, and not in Christ: and Cain in this consequence is sober, and not asleep.

2. Not any protestant divine, whom the author calleth legal teachers, ignorant of the mystery of the gospel; did ever teach, that faith, new obedience, repentance, are grounds upon which God justifieth a sinner. Antinomians, who make repentance and mortification all one with faith; and, as Mr. Den saith, they are but a change of the mind, to seek righteousness and mortification in Christ, not in ourselves; (thus much μετανόια doth signify) must say, As we are justified by faith, so also by repentance and mortification; if repentance be nothing but faith, as they say.

3. We seek only the evidence of justification in our holy walking; as the scripture doth, 1 Pet. 1:24; Gal. 1:4; 1 Pet. 1:18; 1 John 3:14. Infinite places say, these that live to Christ, and are new creatures, must be in Christ, and justified, 2 Cor. 5:17; 1 Cor. 6:9, 10, 11, 12; Gal. 2:20; Col. 3:1, 2, 3, 4. Then the arguing from the effect to the cause can be no rotten conclusion, except by accident, in a soul distempered under desertion and weakness.

4. These places that make Christ our sanctification' and Christ to live in us, and believers to be the work manship of Jesus, created in him, unto good works, &c. make not these to be acts of Christ formally repenting perfectly in us, sorrowing for sin, mortifying sin perfectly in us; as if we were mere patients, and were only obliged to repent, sorrow, mortify sin, when the Spirit breatheth on us, and not otherwise, as Libertines explain themselves; which I hope to refute hereafter. 2. Nor do these places make justification and regeneration all one; as Mr. Towne*, with other Antinomians do: for, we are not regenerated by faith, but that we may believe; but we are justified by saith. 2. Regeneration putteth in us a new birth, the image of the second Adam; justification formally is for the imputed righteousness of Christ, which is in Christ, not in us. And it seems to me, that they make justification and sanctification all one: for, the author saith, that Christ not only repenteth in us, but for us; Christ obeyed for us, and is the end of the law to every one that believeth. Now, what mysterious sense can be here, I cannot dream; sure, it is no gospel secret: if the meaning (that Christ repenteth, and obeyed for us,) be, that Christ, by his grace, worketh in us repentance, and new obedience, and mortification, and the change of the whole man; 'tis a good and sound sense. But then, how must all assurances from repentance and new obedience, be the rotten conclusions of legal teachers? To see all these wrought by Christ, as the efficient and meritorious cause, and to ascribe them to the Spirit of Jesus, and thence conclude, we are justified, as all Protestant divines teach, is no rotten conclusion of legal teachers. For sure, if we ascribe them to nature, to free will, to ourselves, and confide in them, as parts of our righteousness; and from them, in that notion, draw the assurance of our justification, as Papists and Arminians do, and as the saints out of fleshly presumption may do; this is no doctrine of Protestants. Is the sun obliged to me, because I borrow light from it? or the floods and rivers beholden to men, because they drink out of them? The new man is a creature of Christ's finding. Cursed be they that sacrifice to free will; it is a strange God. The kingdom of grace, is a hospital of free graces to sick men: all we do, the least good thought, or gracious motion in the soul, is a flower, and a rose of Christ's planting, and an apple that grew on the tree of life; a sinner is the stock, but free grace the sap, Christ's Father the husbandman; life and growing is from Jesus the vine-tree; we are but poor twigs that bring forth fruit in Christ. But I fear the sense of this, that Christ repenteth for us, and obeyeth for us, he being the end of the law to every one that believeth; be far otherwise, to wit, That Christ's obedience of the law, he being the end of the law, as also his passive obedience, is ours. If this be the intended sense, then all our sanctification is nothing, but the sanctification and holy active obedience of Christ. I yield this to be a broad, a fair and easy way to heaven. Christ doth all for us, Christ weeped for my sins, and that is all the repentance required in me; if I believe that Christ was mortified, and dead to the world for me, that is my mortification; and if I believe, that the change of the whole man was truly in Christ, this is my true holiness: then my walking in holiness cannot be rewarded with life eternal, nor have any influence, as a way, or means leadeth to the kingdom. 2. Christ's active obedience, imputed to the sinner, can be no evidence of justification, because it is in Christ, not in me; any evidence, or mark of justification, must be inherent in the believer, not in Christ. 3. And one and the same thing cannot be a mark and a sign of itself. Now, the active obedience of Christ, imputed to the sinner, is holden to be a part of justification.

5. The scripture doth indeed bid you see nothing in yourself, that can buy the righteousness of Christ, or be an hire and wages to ransom imputed righteousness; and legal teachers, not any Protestant divines, bid you see something, a great something of merit, and self-righteousness in yourself. And Antinomians say, That (a) the new creature, or the new man mentioned in the gospel, is not meant of grace, but of Christ. The scripture maketh Christ and justification the cause, and sanctification and the new creature the effect, 2 Cor. 5:17. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. And this assertion maketh sanctification, as formally distinguished from Christ and justification, just nothing. And Antinomians say, (b) That in the regenerate and saints, There is no inherent righteousness, no grace or graces in the souls of believers, but in Christ only. And Mr. Saltmarsh saith the same, That our sorrow, repentance, mortification, and change of the whole man, are nothing in us; but they are in Christ, and must be apprehended by faith as things unseen: Whereas, the divine nature is in the saints, 2 Pet. 1:4. Faith dwelleth in us. 2 Tim. 1:5. The new creation and image of Christ is in the mind, Eph. 4:23. The seed of God abideth in us, 1 John 3:9. The anointing that teacheth all things, εν υμὶν μενέι remaineth in you. 1 John 2:27 and Ezek. 36:26. I will give you an heart of flesh, and I will put my Spirit [Bekirbechem] in the inner part, or the midst of you.

Antinomians teach, (c) "That true poverty of spirit doth kill and take away the sight of grace." And, (d) "Sanctification is so far from evidencing a good state, that it darkens it rather; and a man may more clearly see Christ, when he seeth no sanctification, than when he sees it; the darker my sanctification is, the brighter is my justification." So Saltmarsh, "The scriptures bid you see nothing in yourself, or all as nothing; these teachers bid you see something in yourself. And 'tis a walking by faith, and not by sight; and a life hid with Christ in God, to believe more truth in our own graces, than we see or feel." Now, 'tis true, the saints out of weakness, misprize the Spirit's working in them; and while they undervalue themselves, they under-rate the new creation in themselves, and tacitly upbraid and slander the grace of Christ, and lessen the heavenly treasure, because it is in an earthen vessel; but poverty of spirit and grace will see, and do see grace inherent in itself, tho' as the fruit of grace, Cant. 1:5. I am black (O daughters of Jerusalem,) but comely, as the tents of Kedar. v. 11. While the King sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof. The saints, as they make a judgment of Christ and his beauty, so also of themselves; My heart waked. I am sick of love. Psal. 116:16. O Lord, truly I am thy servant. Psal. 63:1. My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth after thee. Psal. 73:25. Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee. Psal. 130:6. My soul waiteth for the Lord, more than they that watch for the morning, So Hezekiah, Isa. 38:3 Paul, 2 Cor. 1:12; 2 Tim. 4:7, 8; 1 Cor. 15:9, 10 and others have set out in its colours, the image of Christ in itself; but not as leaving out Christ, and taking in merit: Nor doth the sense of sanctification darken justification, or lessen it to nothing, except where we abuse it to merit, and self-confidence, as Peter did; who, in point of self-confidence ought to have forgotten the things that are behind. 2. Yea, to say, We see justification more clearly, when we see no sanctification, is to make the water and the Spirit, 1 John 5:8 dumb, or false witnesses, that either speak nothing, or tell us lies. 3. It is against the office of the Spirit, which is to make us know τα ὑεὸ Θεοῦ χαριαθεντα the things that are freely given us of God, such as faith, repentance, love, mortification, Acts 5:3; 2 Tim. 2:25; Phil. 1:29; Eph. 2:8; Rom. 5:5; Gal. 2:20. I grant, by accident, when sin appeareth to a saint out of measure sinful, and he seeth how little good he hath, that he is blind, naked, poor, and hath no money, nor price, that he is sold as a wretched man under a body of sin, Rom. 7:14, 24 it heighteneth the excellency and worth of the ransom and blood holden forth in justification: and white righteousness, free and glorious, set beside black guiltiness, and no sanctification compearing as price or hire, maketh Christ appear to be choicer than gold or rubies. Yea, when I see no sanctification to buy Christ, then justification is more lovely, eye-sweet, taking, and soul-ravishing; as the more light, the more darkness is discovered; and the more sin, the higher is Jesus Christ. And by all this, the saints professing their own integrity, and holy walking before God, should see something in themselves, not understanding the mystery of the gospel, and err miserably with legal teachers, and darken free justification by grace: and one grace of God should obscure and destroy another; for to see, feel, and profess sanctification, is an act of supernatural feeling, and of grace: how then can it darken the faith of the remission of sins in Christ?

But, it may be asked, when the saints cannot be assured that God is their Father, in regard of sin, unbelief, and present deadness, what reasons would you use to raise their spirits up to the assurance of their interest and relation to God, as to their Father?

Ans. There is no way of arguing saints out of their unbelief, except he that laboureth to strengthen them, being an Interpreter, one of a thousand, who can shew a man his righteousness, be so acquainted with the condition of the afflicted soul, that he see in him some inherent qualification, that may argue to the physician, there is some, less or more, of Christ in the soul of the man; else, if he know him to be a person yet utterly void of Christ, sure he must deal with him that is under the law, in a more legal and violent manner, than with him whom he conceiveth to be under the gospel; for one and the same physic cannot suit with contrary complexions. The author professeth he dealeth with sinners as sinners, and so with all sinners; as if physic for the gout were fit physic for the stone in the bladder. I go not So high, but Speak to a weak son, who hath God for his Father, but, under soul-trouble, doubteth whether God be his Father or not.

If he lay down a principle, that he was never in Christ, because of such and such sins; you are not, whoever intends to cure him, to yield so much, and to deal with him according to a false supposal, as if he were not in Christ; but must labour to prove he is in Christ; which to no purpose is done, by proving fair generals, as Saltmarsh, with other Libertines, doth; that is, you but till the sand, and beat the air, to prove, That God's love is eternal, and his covenant and decree of election to his chosen, so stable and unalterable, as no sin can hinder the flowings of eternal love; when you make not sure to the man, that he is loved with an everlasting love.

Hence these considerations, for easing the afflicted conscience of a weak child of God.

Asser. 1. The soul labouring under doubts, whether God be his Father, is to hold off two rocks, either confiding or resting on duties, or neglecting of duties: the former is to make a Christ of duties as if Christ himself were not more lovely and desirable, than the comfortable accidents of joy, comfort, and peace in doing duties. Yea, take the formal vision of God, in an immediate fruition in heaven, as a duty, and as in that notion contradistinguished from the objective vision of Christ; then Christ is to be enjoyed, loved, rested on, infinitely above the duties of vision, beatific love, eternal resting on him, yea, above imputed righteousness, assurance of pardon, reconciliation; as the king is more than his bracelets of gold, his myrrh, spikenard, persumes, ointment, kisses; the tree more desirable than a fleece of apples that groweth on it for the fourth part of a year. 2. Sin, it must be to sue and woo the king's attendants and courtiers by himself, or to make duties Christ, and Christ but a man-servant and mediator to duties, sense, comfort, assurance, or the like. 3. The whelps of the bear are taken from her by swift riding away with them, and by casting down one of them, that she may lose time in gaining the rest, while she returneth back again so many miles to bring that one to the den. And the smell of some delicious fields, they say, so taketh the dogs, that they forget the prey, and follow it no more. To smell so much in duties, and to be so sick and impotent in loving and resting on them, as to lie down in the way, and seek Christ no more, is doubtless a neglect of Christ. And thus high our doctrine never advanced sanctification, nor enthroned any acts, duties, or qualifications, under the notion of witnesses, or creators of peace or reconciliation; how our hearts may abuse them, is another thing.

Asser. 2. What, advise you then a deserted soul to go on in duties, and seek righteousness in himself? By no means; to seek righteousness in himself, that is highest pride: but will you call it pride, for a starving man to beg? Is it self-denial for such a one to be stark dumb, and to pray none in his famishing condition for food? Did the spouse seek herself in this duty? Cant. 3. Watchmen, saw ye him whom my soul loveth? Was this a resolution of pride? chap. 3:2. I will rise now, and go about the city, in the streets, and in the broad ways, I will seek him whom my soul loveth. And is it self-righteousness for the spouse to send her hearty respects of service to Christ, then the cannot have one word from him, nor one smile? Cant. 5:6. Tell my Beloved, that I am sick of love. Nor do I think Mary Magdalene was in a distemper of pharisaical righteousness, when she rose and prevented the morning-sky, and came weeping to the grave; O angels, saw ye the Lord? Gardener, whither have you carried him? May I not do these duties, when I miss him? May I not wake in the night? May I not do well to feed a love-fever for the want of him? May I not both pray, and say, Daughters of Jerusalem, pray for me? May I not make a din through all the streets and the broad ways, and trouble all the watchmen and shepherds, and pray them, Can you lead me to his tent, and tell me where he lieth? O but all these were to be done in faith: true, but are they not duties of love-sickness I owe to Christ also? I know they cannot bring me to everlasting righteousness; but is not seeking and knocking, stairs to finding and opening?

Asser. 3. Another counsel is, force not a law-suit, seek not, buy not a plea against Christ. Conscience, a tender piece under jealousies, faith, O he loveth not me, Christ hath forgotten me: join not in such a quarrel with conscience. Have not cold and low thoughts of Christ's love to you; because he is out of sight, he is not out of languor of love for you.

Asser. 4. Unbelief is a witch, an inchantress, and covers Christ's face with a vail of hatred, wrath, displeasure. Examine what grounds of reason you have to misbelieve or break with Christ; say he had broken with you, yet because you know it not for suspicion, lose not such a friend as Christ; if you get never more of him, you may swear and vow to take to hell with you (if so he deal with you) the pawns, and love-tokens you once received, that they may be witnesses what Christ is, and may be the remnants, seeds, and leavings, of the high esteem you once had of him.

Asser. 5. A time Christ must have to go and come, and therefore must be waited on. We give the sea hours to ebb and flow, and the moon days to decrease and grow full; and the winter-sun and summer-sun months to go away and return; and whether we will or no, God and nature take their time, and ask us no leave: why has God given to us eyes within and without, but that David may wear his eyes, while they be at the point of failing, in looking up, and in waiting for God? Psal. 69.

Asser. 6. And though you were in hell, and he in heaven, he is worthy to be waited on; the first warm smile of a new return, is sufficient to recompense all sorrow in his absence, to say nothing of everlasting huggings and embracings.

Asser. 7. Nor is this a good reason;|| I find sin, rottenness, and so a deserved curse, in all my works of sanctification; therefore, why should I make them any bottom for assurance? But I must take in Christ here for sanctification: for if works of this kind be not done in faith, to the knowledge of the doer; they can witness nothing, but bear a false testimony of Christ: nor do we ever teach, that Christ is to be discourted from our works of sanctification; but even faith itself, which is a bottom of peace to Antinomians, by this reason, must be cashiered. For as the love of Christ, our prayers, humility, are not formally sins, but only concomitantly, in regard that sin adhereth to them; as muddy water is not formally clay and mud, but in mixture 'tis clayey and muddy; so our faith is concomitantly sinful; both because often it is weak, and so wanting many degrees, and mixed with sin, deserves a curse, as well as works of sanctification; but it apprehendeth Christ and righteousness in him, and so it bottometh our assurance: if by apprehending, you mean to bring to you certain knowledge, and assurance that Christ is made my righteousness; then you beg the question, if you deny this to works of sanctification. For, 1 John 2:3. Hereby we know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. Ver. 5. And whoso keepeth his word, in him verily the love of God is perfected: Hereby, (that is, by keeping his word, called twice before, ver. 3, 4. The keeping of his commandments; and verse 6 walking as he walked:) Hereby (saith he,) know we, that we are in him, in Christ our propitiation and righteousness; and thus we are justified by keeping the commandments of God, because by this we apprehend, and know that we are justified. 2. But then all that are justified, must be fully persuaded of their justification, and that faith is essentially a persuasion and assurance of the love of God to me in Christ; 'tis more than I could ever learn to be the nature of faith, a consequent separable I believe it is. 3. If by apprehending Christ and his righteousness, be understood a relying, and fiducial acquiescing and recumbency on Christ for salvation: it is granted in this sense, that faith is a bottom to our assurance of our being in Christ; but that it breedeth assurance, in a reflect knowledge, always that a believer is in Christ, is not true: for, 1. I may believe, and be justified, and not know; yea positively doubt, that I believe, and am justified; as thousands have pardon, and have no peace nor assurance of their pardon, and have faith in Christ, and in his free love, and have no feeling of Christ, and of his free love. For we believe (a) more truth of our own graces (and so of our faith and assurance of our pardon) than we can see or feel, which is God's dispensation, that our life should be hid with Christ in God; Ergo, the life of faith, by which the just doth live, is hid; and above the reach of feeling at all times. 2. As faith, which is the direct act of knowing and relying on Christ for pardon, is a work of the Spirit above the reach of reason; so also the reflect act of my knowing and feeling, that I believe and am in Christ, which proceedeth sometimes from faith, and the immediate testimony of the Spirit; sometimes from our walking in Christ, 1 John 2:3, 4; 1 John 3:14 is a supernatural work, above the compass and reach of our free will, and is dispensed according to the spirations and stirrings of the free grace of God; and as the keeping of his commandments, actu primo, and in itself, giveth testimony that the soul is in Christ, and justified, even as the act of believing, in itself doth the same; yet that we, actu secundo, efficaciously know and feel that we are in Christ, from the irradiation and light of faith, and sincere walking with God, is not necessary, save only when the wind of the actual motion and flowing of the Spirit concur with these means; just as the gospel-promises of themselves are life and power, but they then only actually, actu secundo, animate and quicken withered souls, when the Lord is pleased to contribute his influence, in the shinings of his Spirit. Otherwise I may walk in darkness, yea, believe, pray, love, die for pain of love, and have no light of reflect knowledge and feeling that I am in Christ, Isa. 50:10. I may be sick of love for Christ, call, knock, pray, confer with the watchmen and daughters of Jerusalem, and be at a low ebb in my own sense; yea the Beloved may to my feeling and actual assurance have withdrawn himself, Cant. 3:1, 2, 3, 4, 5; Cant. 5:5, 6, 7, 8 and all my inherent evidences cannot quicken me in my tolerable assurance. 'Tis true, sanctification may be darkened, yea, and faith also, when there is nothing to the faith-failing and outer dying but this only of Christ the head, all the life of a saint retiring not to his faint heart, but to his strong head, I have prayed for you that your faith fail not: but the dark evening of David's, both faith and sanctification, and of Peter in his denying of his Master, and his judaizing, Gal. 2. When he and others, ver. 14. οὐκ ὀρθοποδοῦσιν πρὸς τὴν ἀλήθειαν τοῦ εὐαγγελιου, do crook and halt between grace and the law, as the people did between Jehovah and Baal; their profession of Jehovah and Christ's grace being long, and their practice short, and inclining too much to Baal, and salvation by the law: as halting is a walking with a long and a short leg, the body unevenly inclining to both sides of the way: this darkening (I say) was in the second acts of faith and sanctification; but life and sap was at the root of the oak-tree, when it was lopt, hewed, and by winter storms spoiled of the beauty of its leaves. We do not say, that sanctification doth at all times, actually bear witness, or alike sensibly, and convincingly, that the soul is justified, is in Christ; and there be degrees, and intermission, and sick days, both of faith and sanctification. But we say, roses and flowers have been ever since the creation, and shall be to the end of the world, because though they vanish in winter, yet in their causes they are as eternal as the earth; so is faith and the bloomings, and green blossomings of sanctification, always; but there is a summer when they cast forth their leaves and beauty.

Asser. 8. To press duties out of a principle of faith, is to press Christ upon souls; nor can the seeing of beams, and light in the air, or of wine-grapes on the tree, be a denying of the sun to be in the firmament, or of life and sap to be in the vine-tree: to see and feel in ourselves grapes, and fruits of righteousness, except we make the grace of Christ a bastard, and mis-father it, is no darkening of Christ, and free grace, 1 Cor. 15:9, 10.

Asser. 9. There is a great difficulty, yea, an impossibility, when the Lord hides himself, and goeth behind the mountain, to command the flowing and emanations of free-grace.

1. Because desertion were not desertion, if it were under the dominion of our free-will. For desertion, as a punishment of sin, cannot be in the free-will of him that is punished; every punishment, as such, is contrary to the will of the punished: and desertion, as an act of free dispensation for trial, must be a work of omnipotent dominion.

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