Chapter XV: The Saints are to Prepare Themselves for Greater Trials
Lastly, How many poor Christians among us are to this day dark and cloudy in their evidences for heaven? Had they walked closely with God, being laborious in the disquisition and search of their own hearts, they had long since obtained a clearness and satisfaction about the state of their own hearts: But as the case stands with them, how unfit are they for bonds or death. Oh! it is a sad case, when inward and outward troubles meet together, as you may see, Gen. 42:21, 22 when there shall be fightings without, and fears within: When such a pang as that, Lam. 3:17,
18. shall come over thy heart, what wilt thou do?
By all that hath been said, it appears that the most of professors are in a very unready posture for sufferings; so that as troubles come to an height, we are like to see many sad spectacles: Many offences will come; religion is like to be wounded in the house of its friends. Oh! what a day of mercy have we enjoyed? What helps and choice advantages, above any precedent age, and yet unready? How sad and inexcusable is this?
Chapter XV: The Saints are to Prepare Themselves for Greater Trials Containing another use of the point, by way of exhortation, persuading all the people of God, whilst the Lord respites, and graciously delays their trials, to answer the end of God therein, and prepare themselves for greater trials; where several motives are propounded to excite to the duty.
UP then from your beds of sloth, awake from your security, O ye saints, get upon your watch-towers, tremble in yourselves, that
ye may rest in the day of evil, Hab. 2:1, 3, 16. "Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand in the evil day, and when you have done all, to stand," Eph. 6:11. O let it never be said of your dwellings, as it is said of the tabernacles of the wicked, Job 21:9. "Their houses are safe from fear."
Augustus hearing of one that was deeply in debt, who yet slept heartily, sent for his pillow, supposing there was some strange virtue in that pillow. I wonder what pillow ye have gotten, O ye drowsy saints, that you can sleep so quietly upon it, now that all things about you are conspiring trouble, and threatening danger.
Can you sleep like Jonah, when seas of wrath are tumbling and roaring round about you, and threaten to entomb you and all your enjoyments? Behold, "The stork in the heavens knows her appointed time," Jer. 7:8 and hath not God made you wiser than the fowls of the air, Job 35:11. It may be the sound of some present judgment may a little startle you, like a sudden clap of thunder in the air; but how soon doth sloth and security prevail, and overcome you again. They say poison by being habituated, may be made innocent: We are so used to, or rather hardened under calamities, that nothing moves or effectually awakens us.
Lord, what will the end of these things be? Wilt thou surprise thy people at unawares? Shall thy judgments find them secure, and leave them desperate? O that God would persuade you
"togather yourselves together, yea, to gather together," (not in an unlawful and seditious way, but in the way of duty,) "before the decree bring forth, and the day pass as the chaff," Zeph. 2:1,
2. O prepare to meet your God, Amos 4:12. Prepare your faith, love, courage, &c. before God call you to the exercise of them.
And to excite you to this duty, besides all the forementioned benefits of a prepared spirit, consider these following particulars by way of motive.
Motives 1. Motive. The many calls which God hath given you to this work. The Lord hath uttered his voice, and called from heaven unto you; will you be deaf to his calls? He hath called upon you,
(1.) By the word: God would have it cry to you first, because he would give the first honour to his word. He hath given all his prophets one mouth, Luke 1:70 and they have warned you faithfully. (2.) By the rod: this also hath a loud voice, Mic. 6:9.
Psal. 2:5. Men of understanding will hear this voice; and those that will not hear it shall be lashed by it even till they are sick with smiting, verse 13. (3.) By prodigious and portentous signs in the heavens and earth, such as no age can parallel, these have a loud voice to all that regard the works of the Lord, or the operations of his hands. Eusebius calls them God's sermons to the world*. O that we were wise to consider what God's ends are in these things! one observes, 'That as they are the plainest and most obvious to sense, so they are commonly the last sermons which God intends to preach to nations, before he inflicts his punishment on them, if they repent not.' O let not God, speaking in ordinary and extraordinary ways to you, still speak in vain.
Your preparations for sufferings, is the most probable means of preventing your fall and ruin by those sufferings.
2. Motive. Sufferings prove fatal and destructive to some; but it is to secure and careless ones; Such as are diligent and faithful in
the use of God's means, are secured from the danger. Christ lays our constancy and perseverance very much upon our forecasting the worst that may fall out, Luke 14:28. "Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand," Eph. 6. He that hath first severed Christ in his thoughts from all worldly advantages, and puts the case thus to his own soul, O my soul, canst thou embrace or love a naked Christ? Canst thou be content to be impoverished, imprisoned, and suffer the loss of all for him? He is most likely to cleave faithfully to him, when the case is really presented to him indeed. And can it seem a light thing in your eyes, to be enabled to stand in such an evil day? If you fall away from Christ, then all you have wrought is lost, Ezek. 33:13. Gideon's one bastard destroyed all his seventy sons. This act renders all former actions and professions vain. If you fall, you shall thereby be brought into a more perfect bondage to the devil than ever, Mat. 12:23. Yea, ordinarily, apostates are judicially given up to be persecutors, Hos. 5:12. 1
Tim. 1:20 and are seldom or never recovered again by grace, Heb. 6:4, 6. They that lick up their vomit, seldom cast it up any more. It is a fall within a little as low as the unpardonable sin, whence never any rise again. In some cases the judge will not allow the offender his book. And is it not then a choice and desirable mercy to escape and prevent such a fall as this? O good souls, ply your preparation-work close then; prepare, or you perish.
3. Motive. This will best answer the grace of God, in affording you such choice helps and advantages as you have enjoyed. How long have you enjoyed the free liberty of the gospel, shining in its lustre among you? This sun, which to some other nations
hath not risen, and to divers on whom it hath shined, yet it is but as a winter's sun, remote, and its beams but feeble; but you have lived, as it were, under the line, it hath been over your heads, and shed its richest influences upon you. Yea, God's ministers, who are not only appointed to be watchmen, Ezek. 3:16 but trumpeters to discover danger, Num. 10:8. These have faithfully warned you of a day of trouble, and given you their best assistance to make you ready for it. And is not their joy, yea, life, bound up in your stability in such a day of trial? Doth not every one call upon you in the words of the apostle, Phil. 4:1.
"Therefore, my brethren, dearly beloved, and longed for, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved." Will it not cut them to the very heart, if after all their spending labours among you, they still leave you unready? enemies still to the cross of Christ, impossible to be reconciled and persuaded to suffering-work for Christ.
I remember I have read of the Athenian Codrus, who being informed by the oracle, that the people whose king should be slain in battle should be conquerors: he thereupon disrobed himself, and in a disguise went into the enemies quarters, that he might steal a death to make his people victorious.
Oh! how glad would your ministers be, if you might conquer and overcome in the day of temptation, whatever become of their lives and liberties! Yea, and if they be offered up upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, they can rejoice, and joy with you all. Such is their zeal and longing after your security and welfare. But if still you remain an unready people, and do become a prey to temptation, Oh how inexcusable will you be!
4. Motive. Remember how ready the Lord Jesus was to suffer the hardest and vilest things for you. He had a bitter cup put into his hands to drink for you, into which the wrath both of God and man was squeezed out. Never had man such sufferings to undergo as Christ,* whether you consider, (1.) The dignity of his person, who was in the form of God, and might have stood upon his peerage and and equality with him; he is the sparkling diamond of heaven, Acts 7:56 the darling of the Father's soul,
Isa. 42:1. glorious as the only begotten of the Father, John 1:14. yea, glory itself, Jam. 2:1. yea, the very brightness of glory, Heb.
1:3. He is the deliciæ Christiani orbis, fairer than the sons of men; And for him to be so debased, below so many thousands of his own creatures, become a worm, and no man; this was a wonderful humiliation. It was Jeremiah's lamentation, that such as were brought up in scarlet, embraced dunghills; that princes were hanged up by the hands, and the faces of elders were not reverenced: But what was that to the humiliation of the Lord of glory? Or, (2.) That he suffered in the prime and flower of his years; when full of life and sense, and more capable of exquisite sense of pain than others: for he was optime complexionatus,† of a singular constitution; and all the while he hanged on the tree, his sense of pain not at all blunted or decayed, Mark 15:37, 39.
Or, (3.) The manner of his death. It was the death of the cross, which was a rack to Christ: for in reference to the distention of his members upon the cross is that spoken, Ps. 22:17. "I may tell all my bones." Or, (4.) That all this while God hid his face from him. When Stephen suffered, he saw the heavens opened. The martyrs were many of them ravished and transported with extasies of joy in their sufferings; but Christ in the dark. He