Chapter V: A Real Work of Grace Upon the Heart Necessary to fit a Man for Suffering for Christ
though they forsook him for a time, yet he received them again; though they fled from him, yet they all returned again and appeared boldly for Christ afterwards, and sealed their confession of him with their blood. And that which recovered them again was this, that their fall and departure was contrary to the resolution, and standing frame, and bent of their hearts; for they resolved all to cleave to him to the death, Mat. 26:35 whereas those that engaged in a profession of him inconsiderately, and never resolved, nor prepared for the worst, fell off from him, and never returned any more, John 6:66. So then, upon the whole, you cannot but grant, that it is a very blessed and excellent thing, to prepare thus for the greatest suffering that can befal us for Christ. We come next to shew wherein it lies.
Chapter V: A Real Work of Grace Upon the Heart Necessary to fit a Man for Suffering for Christ Evincing the necessity of a sound and real work of grace upon the heart, to fit a man for suffering for Christ.
HAVING shewed you that God doth sometimes put his dearest people upon very hard services for him, and what an excellent thing it is to prepare ourselves to obey the call of God to them:
In the next place I come to shew you, wherein this preparation, or readiness for suffering consists, and how many things concur and contribute their assistance to this work.
Now there is a twofold preparation or readiness for suffering; the one is habitual, the other actual: That habitual readiness is nothing else but the inclination of a soul to suffer any thing for Christ: which inclination ariseth from the principles of grace infused into the soul: But then as fire, though it have a natural inclination to ascend, yet may be violently depressed and hindered, that it cannot ascend actually, so may it be in this case; and therefore, before a man can be fitted for sufferings as Paul was, there must, to this habitual, be superadded an actual readiness, which is nothing else but the rousing of grace out of the sleepy and dull habits, and awakening it to its work in a time of need: as the lion is said to lash himself with his tail, to rouse up his courage before he fight. The former is a remote power, the latter a proxim and immediate power. I must handle the former in this chapter, and you are to know that it consisteth in a sound and real work of grace or conversion wrought upon the soul; without which I shall make it evidently appear to you, that no man can be fit or ready to suffer as a Christian.
Whatever stock of natural courage, moral principles, or common gifts of the Spirit be lodged in any man's breast, yet all this
(without special grace) can never fit him to suffer for Christ. And had not this work been really and soundly wrought upon the heart of this blessed man, as indeed it was, Acts 9:3, 4, 5 he had quickly fainted under his sufferings: and so will every soul sooner or later do, that suffers not upon the same principles that he did.
1. For first, No man can suffer for Christ until he be able to deny himself. See Matth. 16:24. Self-denial goes in order of nature
before sufferings. Beloved, in a suffering hour the interest of Christ and self meet like two men upon a narrow bridge, one must of necessity go back, or the other cannot pass on: If you cannot now deny self you must deny Christ. The yoke and dominion of self must be cast off, or else Christ's yoke and burden cannot be taken on.
It is confessed self may not only consist with, but be a motive to some kind of sufferings: Ambition and applause may carry a man far this way: pride is a salamander that it seems can live in the flames of martyrdom, 1 Cor. 13:3. But to be a servant to self and a true sufferer for Christ is incompatible. Self may make you the devil's martyrs, but grace only can make you Christ's martyrs. So that let a man be seemingly carried for a while with never so high a tide of zeal for Christ, yet if self be the spring that feeds, those self-ends, like so many little ditches joined to the brink of a river, will so suck and draw away the water into themselves, that the lofty stream will sink and come to nothing ere it have ran far: So then, of necessity, self must be dethroned in the hearts of Christ's suffering servants.
But now it is real grace only that disposes self, and subjects its interest to Christ's; for sanctification is nothing else but the dethroning of exalted self, and the setting up of Christ's interest above it in the soul. This is it that alters the property of all a man hath, and superscribes them with a new title, Holiness to the Lord, Isa. 23:18. Zech. 14:20, 21. Thenceforth a man looks at himself as none of his own, but past into another's right, 1 Cor.
6:19; and that he must neither live, nor act ultimately for himself, but for Christ, Rom. 14:7. Heb. 13:7, 3. Phil. 1:20. He is
no more as proprietor, but a steward of all he hath; and so holds upon these terms, to lay it out as may best serve his Master's ends and glory.
All that he is or hath, is by grace subordinated to Christ; and if once subordinated, then no more opposed to him, subordinata non pugnant. This is it that makes him say, I care not what becomes of me or so Christ may be glorified, "Let Christ be magnified in my body, whether it be by life or death," Phil. 1:20.
By conversion Christ enters the soul, as an army doth an enemy's garrison by storm, and when he is possessed of it by 2
Cor. 10:5 grace, he presently divides the whole spoil of self betwixt himself and his church. This is the first thing that evinces the necessity of a work of grace to prepare the heart for sufferings.
2. And then in the next place, it is as evident that a man can never be fit to suffer hard things for Christ until his spirit be enlarged, raised, and ennobled, so that he be able to despise dangers, and look all difficulties in the face. That low and private spirit must be removed, and a public spirit must possess him. If a man be of a feeble and effeminate spirit, every petty danger will daunt and sink him; delicacy and tenderness is as unsuitable to a Christian as to a soldier, 2 Tim. 2:3. They that mean to enter into the kingdom of God, must resolve to make their way through that break of troubles betwixt them and it, 2 Tim. 3:12.
They that will be crowned with victory, must stand to it, and play the men, as that word imports, 1 Cor. 16:13. Look over all the sacred and human histories, and see if you can find a man that
ever honoured Christ by suffering, that was not of a raised and noble spirit, and in some measure able to contemn both the allurements and threats of men. So those three noble Jews, Dan.
3:16, 17. So Moses, Heb. 11:27. And so our apostle, Acts 20:24.
And the same heroic and brave spirit was found in the succeeding ages amongst the witnessess of Christ. When Valence the emperor endeavoured to draw Basil from the faith by offers of preferment, 'offer these things (saith he) to children;' when he threatened him with torments, 'threaten these things (saith he) to your purple gallants that live delicately.' And the same Basil relating the story of the forty martyrs, saith, That when great honours and preferments were offered them to draw them from Christ, their answer was 'Why offer you these small things of the world to us, (O emperor) when you know the whole world is contemned by!' So Luther, money could not tempt him, nor the fear of man daunt him. 'Let me (said he in his letter to Staupicius) be accounted proud, covetous, a murderer, guilty of all vices, rather than of wicked silence and cowardice in the cause of Christ.' Thus you see to what an height, and holy greatness, the spirits of suffering saints in all ages have been raised.
But now it is grace that thus raises the spirits of men above all the smiles and honours, frowns and fears of men; and no other principle but grace can do it. There is indeed a natural stoutness and generosity in some which may carry them far, as it is said of Alexander, that when any great danger approached him, his courage would rise, and he would say, Jam periculum par animo
Alexandri; Here is a danger fit for Alexander to encounter: So Pompey, when dissuaded from a dangerous voyage, answered,
Necesse est ut eam, non ut vivam. 'It is necessary that I go, not that I live.' But this being fed only by a natural spring, can carry a man no higher than nature, and will flag at last. If applause, and the observation of the world supply it not, it quickly ebbs and fails.
But as grace raises men much higher; so it maintains it even when there is nothing to encourage without; when forsaken of all creatures and visible supports, 2 Tim. 4:10. And this it doth three ways: (1.) By giving him that hath it a view of far greater things, which shrinks up all temporary things, and makes them appear but trifles and small matters, Rom. 8:18. 2 Cor 4:18. By grace a man rises with Christ, Col. 3:1. It sets him upon his high places, and thence he looks down upon things below as very poor and inconsiderable. The great cities of Campania seem but little spots to them that stand on the top of the Alps. (2.) By teaching him to value and measure all things by another thing than he was wont to do. He did once measure, life, liberty, riches, honours by sense and time; and then they seemed great things, and it was hard to deny them, or thus to slight them; but now he values and measures all by faith and eternity; and esteems nothing great and excellent but what hath a reference to the glory of God, and an influence into eternity. (3.) Grace raises and ennobles the spirit thus, because it is the divine nature; it is the Spirit of Christ infused into a poor worm, which makes a strange alteration on him, transforms him into another manner of person; as much difference betwixt his spirit now and what it was, as betwixt the spirit of a child that is filled with small matters, and taken up with toys, and of a grave statesman that is daily employed about the grand affairs of a kingdom.
3. A man can never suffer as a Christian till his will be subjected to the will of God. He that suffers involuntarily, and out of necessity, not out of choice, shall neither have acceptance nor reward from God. Of necessity the will must be subjected; a man can never say, Thy will be done, till he can first say, Not my will.
But it is grace only that thus conquers and subjects the will of man to God's, Psal. 110:3. This is that which exalts God's authority in the soul, and makes the heart to stoop, and tremble at his commands. It is that which makes our will to write its fiat at the foot of every command, and its placet under every order it receives from God. No sooner was grace entered into the soul of Paul, but presently he cries out, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" Acts 9:6. The will is to the soul what the wheels are to the chariot; and grace is to the will what oil is to those wheels.
When we receive the Spirit of grace, we are said to receive an unction from the Holy One, 1 John 2:20. And when the soul is made as the chariots of Aminadab, Cant. 6:12. Non tardat uncta rota, it runs freely after the Lord, and cheerfully addresseth itself to the very service 4. A man can never suffer as a Christian until his heart be composed, fixed, and determined to follow the Lord through all hazards and difficulties. As long as a man is hesitating and unresolved what to do, whether to go forward, or return back again to the prosperous world, when a man is at such a pause, and stand in his way, he is very unfit for sufferings. All such divisions do both weaken the soul, and strengthen the temptation: The devil's work is more than half done to his hand in such a soul, and he is now as unfit to endure hardship for
Christ, as a ship is to ride out a storm that hath neither cable, anchor, nor ballast, to hold and settle it, but lies at the mercy of every wave, Jam. 1:8. "The double minded man is unstable in all his ways." But it is grace, and nothing besides, that brings the heart to a fixed resolution and settlement to follow the Lord, it is grace that establishes the heart, Heb. 13:9 and unites it to fear the name of God, Psal. 86:11. This gathers all the streams into one channel, and then it runs with much strength, and sweeps away all obstacles before it. So that look as it is with a wicked man that hath sold himself to do wickedly, if he be set upon any one design of sin, he pours out his whole heart and strength into the prosecution of that design, which is the ground of that saying, Liberet me Deus ab homine unius tantum negotii, let
God deliver me from a man of one only design. He will do it to purpose: So is it also in grace; if the heart be composed, fixed, and fully resolved for God, nothing shall then stand before him.
And herein lies much of a Christian's habitual fitness and ability to suffer.
5. The necessity of saving grace in all sufferers for Christ, will farther appear from this consideration, that he who will run all hazards for Christ, had need of a continual supply of strength and refreshment from time to time. He must not depend on any thing that is failable; for what shall he do then when that stock is spent, and he hath no provision left to live upon? Now all natural qualifications, yea, all the common gifts of the Spirit, are failable and short-lived things; they are like a sweet flower in the bosom, that is an ornament for a little while, but withers presently: Or like a pond or brook occasioned by a great fall of rain, which quickly sinks and dries up, because it is not fed by
springs in the bottom, as other fountain-waters are; and hence it is they cannot continue and hold out when sufferings come, Mat.
13:21. Because there is no root to nourish and support. The hypocrite will not always call upon God, Job 27:10. Though they may keep company with Christ a few miles in this dirty way, yet they must turn back at last, and shake hands eternally with him,
John 6:66. These comets may seem to shine for a time among the stars, but when that earthly matter is spent, they must fall and lose their glory.
But now grace is an everlasting principle, it hath springs in the bottom that never fail. "I shall be in him (saith Christ) a well of water springing up into eternal life," John 4:14. The Spirit of God supplies it from time to time, as need requires. It hath daily incomes from heaven, 2 Cor. 1:5. Phil. 4:13. Col. 1:11. So that it is our union with Christ the Fountain of grace, that is the true ground of our constancy and long suffering*.
6. And then lastly, it will appear by this also, that there is an absolute necessity of a real change by grace on all that will suffer for Christ; because although we may engage ourselves in sufferings without it, yet we can never manage our sufferings like Christians without it. They will neither be honourable nor acceptable to God, nor yet beneficial and comfortable to ourselves or others, except they be performed from this principle of grace: For upon what principle soever beside this any man is acted in religion, it will either cause him to decline sufferings for Christ; or, if he be engaged in them, yet he will little credit religion by his sufferings. They will either be spoiled by an ill management, or his own pride will devour the praise