CHAPTER XX.—The spiritual government of Christ is joined with judgment and wisdom
5. Again, remember this, that Christ, as he ruleth us, so it is by a spirit of love from a sense of his love, whereby his commandments are easy to us. He leadeth us by his free Spirit, a Spirit of liberty: his subjects are voluntaries. The constraint that he layeth upon his subjects is that of love: he draweth us with the cords of love sweetly.
Yet remember withal, that he draweth us strongly by a Spirit of power, for it is not sufficient that we have motives and encouragements to love and obey Christ from that love of his, whereby he gave himself for us to justify us; but Christ's Spirit must likewise subdue our hearts, and sanctify them to love him, without which all motives would be ineffectual. Our disposition must be changed, we must be new creatures; they seek for heaven in hell that seek for spiritual love in an unchanged heart. When a child obeys his father, it is so from reasons persuading him, as likewise from a childlike nature which giveth strength to these reasons: it is natural for a child of God to love Christ so far as he is renewed, not only from inducement of reason so to do, but likewise from an inward principle and work of grace, whence those reasons have their chief forces; first, we are made partakers of the divine nature, and then we are easily induced and led by Christ's Spirit to spiritual duties.
CHAPTER XX.
The spiritual government of Christ is joined with judgment and wisdom.
The second conclusion is, that Christ's government in his church and is his children is a wise and well-ordered government, because it is called judgment, and judgment is the life and soul of wisdom. Of this conclusion there are two branches: 1. That the spiritual government
of Christ in us is joined with judgment and wisdom. 2. Wheresoever true spiritual wisdom and judgment is, there likewise the Spirit of Christ bringeth in his gracious government. For the first, a wellguided life by the rules of Christ standeth with the strongest and highest reason of all; and therefore holy men are called the 'children of wisdom,' Luke 7:31, and are able to justify, both by reason and experience, all the ways of wisdom. Opposite courses are folly and madness. Hereupon St Paul saith, that a 'spiritual man judgeth all things,' 1 Cor. 2:15, that appertain to him, and is judged of none that are of an inferior rank, because they want spiritual light and sight to judge; yet this sort of men will be judging, 'and speaking ill of what they know not,' 2 Pet. 2:12; they step from ignorance to prejudice and rash censure, without taking right judgment in their way, and therefore their judgment comes to nothing. But the judgment of a spiritual man, so far forth as he is spiritual, shall stand, because it is agreeable to the nature of things: as things are in themselves, so they are in his judgment. As God is in himself infinite in goodness and majesty, &c., so he is to him; he ascribes to God in his heart his divinity and all his excellencies. As Christ is in himself the only mediator, and all in all in the church, Col. 3:11, so he is to him, by making Christ so in his heart. 'As all things are dung in comparison of Christ,' Phil. 3:8, so they are to Paul, a sanctified man. As the very worst thing in religion, 'the reproach of Christ is better than the pleasure of sin for a season,' Heb. 11:26; so it is to Moses, a man of a right esteem. 'As one day in the courts of God is better than a thousand elsewhere,' Ps. 84:10, so it is to David, a man of a reformed judgment. There is a conformity of a good man's judgment to things as they are in themselves, and according to the difference or agreement put by God in things, so doth his judgment differ or agree.
Truth is truth, and error, error, and that which is unlawful is unlawful, whether men think so or no. God hath put an eternal
difference betwixt light and darkness, good and ill, which no creature's conceit can alter; and therefore no man's judgment is the measure of things further than it agrees to truth stamped upon things themselves by God. Hereupon, because a wise man's judgment agrees to the truth of things, a wise man may in some sense be said to be the measure of things; and the judgment of one holy wise man to be preferred before a thousand others. Such men usually are immoveable as the sun in its course, because they think, and speak, and live by rule. 'A Joshua and his house will serve God,'
Josh. 24:15, (whatsoever others do, and will run a course contrary to the world, because their judgments lead them a contrary way. Hence it is that Satan hath a spite at the eye of the soul, the judgment, to put out that by ignorance and false reason, for he cannot rule in any until either he hath taken away or perverted judgment: he is a prince of darkness, and ruleth in darkness of the understanding, Therefore he must first be cast out of the understanding by the prevailing of truth, and planting it in the soul. Those therefore that are enemies of knowledge help Satan and antichrist, whose kingdom, like Satan's, is a kingdom of darkness, to erect their throne. Hence it is promised by Christ, that 'the Holy Ghost shall convince the world of judgment,'
John 16:8; that is, that he is resolved to set up a throne of government, because the great lord of misrule, 'Satan, the prince of the world,' is judged by the gospel, and the Spirit accompanying it, his impostures are discovered, his enterprises laid open; therefore when the gospel was spread, the oracles ceased, 'Satan fell from heaven like lightning,' Luke 10:18; men were 'translated out of his kingdom into Christ's,' Col. 1:13. Where prevailing is by lies, there discovery is victory; 'they shall proceed no further, for their folly shall be manifest to all,' 2 Tim. 3:9. So that manifestation of error giveth a stop to it, for none will willingly be deceived. Let truth have full scope without check or restraint, and let Satan and his instruments do their worst, they shall not prevail; as Jerome saith of
the Pelagians in his time.* The discovery of your opinions is the vanquishing of them, your blasphemies appear at the first blush.
Use. Hence we learn the necessity, that the understanding be principled with supernatural knowledge, for the well managing of a Christian conversation.
There must be light to discover a further end than nature, for which we are Christians, and a rule suitable directing to that end, which is the will of God in Christ, discovering his good pleasure toward us, and our duty towards him; and in virtue of this discovery we do all that we do, that any way may further our reckoning: 'The eye must first be single, and then the whole body and frame of our conversation will be light,' Matt. 6:22; otherwise both we and our course of life are nothing but darkness. The whole conversation of a Christian is nothing else but knowledge digested into will, affection, and practice. If the first concoction in the stomach be not good, that in the liver cannot be good; so if there be error in the judgment, it mars the whole practice, as an error in the foundation doth the building: God will have 'no blind sacrifices, no unreasonable services,' Mal. 1:13, but will have us to 'love him with all our mind,'
Rom. 12:1, that is, with our understanding part, as well as 'with all our hearts,' Luke 10:27, that is, the affecting part of the soul.
This order of Christ's government by judgment is agreeable unto the soul, and God delighteth to preserve the manner of working peculiar unto man, that is, to do what he doth out of judgment: as grace supposeth nature as founded upon it, so the frame of grace preserveth the frame of nature in man. And, therefore Christ bringeth all that is good in the soul through judgment, and that so sweetly, that many out of a dangerous error think, that that good which is in them and issueth from them is from themselves, and not