The Communicant's Companion
there is occasion. Our time not our own, but as a servant's time, to be spent according to our Master's directions, and some way or other to our Master's glory, every day being in this sense our Lord's day. Our estates not our own, to be spent or spared by the direction of our lusts, but to be used as God directs: "God must be honored with our substance,"—" and our merchandise and our hire must be holiness to the Lord." Our interest not our own, with it to seek our own glory, but to be improved in seeking and serving God's glory; that is, God's glory must be fixed and aimed at, as our highest and ultimate end, in all the care we take about our employments, and all the comforts we take in our enjoyments. "As good stewards of the manifold grace of God," we must have this still in our eye, "that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ." By this pious intention common actions must be sanctified, and done "after a godly sort." Our giving up ourselves to be to God a people, is thus explained: it is "to be to him for a name, and for a praise, and for a glory."
2. To resign ourselves to God, "is to subject and submit ourselves to his power;" to the sanctifying power of his Spirit, the commanding power of his law, and the disposing power of his providence. Such as this is the subjection to which we must consent, and it has in it so much of privilege and advantage, as well as duty and service, that we have no reason to stumble at it.
(1.) We must submit ourselves to the sanctifying power of God's Spirit.— We must lay our souls as soft wax under this seal, to receive the impressions of it; as white paper under this pen, that it may write the law there. Whereas we have resisted the Holy Ghost, quenched his motions, and striven against him when he has been striving with us, we must now yield ourselves to be led and influenced by him, with full purpose of heart in every thing to follow his conduct, and comply with him. When Christ in his gospel breathes on us, saying, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost," my heart must answer, "Lord, I receive him," I bid him welcome into my heart; though he comes as a spirit of judgment, and a spirit of burning, as a refiner's fire, and fuller's soap, yet, "blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." Let him come and mortify my lusts and corruptions, I do not desire that any of them should be spared; let them die, let them die by the sword of the Spirit, Agag himself not excepted, though he comes delicately. Let every thought within me, even the inward thought, "be brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ." Let the blessed Spirit do his whole work in me, and fulfil it with an almighty power.
(2.) We must submit ourselves to the commanding power of God's law.
The law, as it is in the hand of the Mediator, is God's instrument of government; if I yield myself to him as a subject, I must in every thing be observant of, and obedient to, that law: and now I covenant to be so, in all my ways to walk according to that rule; all my thoughts and affections, all my words and actions, shall be under the direction of the divine law, and subject to its check and restraint. God's judgments will I lay before me, and have respect to all his commandments; by them I will always be ruled, overruled. "Let the word of the Lord come," as a good man once said, "and if I had six hundred necks, I would bow them all to the authority of it."
Whatever appears to me to be my duty, by the grace of God, I will do it, how much soever it interfere with my secular interest; whatever appears to me to be a sin, by the grace of God I will avoid it, and refrain from it, how strong soever my corrupt inclination may be to it: "All that the Lord shall say to me, I will do, and will be obedient."
(3.) We must submit ourselves to the disposing power of God's providence. This must be the rule of our patience and passive obedience, as the former of our practice and active obedience. All my affairs relating to this life, I cheerfully submit to the divine disposal; let them be directed and determined as infinite wisdom sees fit, and I will acquiesce. Let the Lord save my soul, and then as to every thing else, "let him do with me and mine as seemeth good unto him." I will never find fault with any thing that God does. "Not as I will, but as thou wilt." I know I have no wisdom of my own; I am a fool, if I lean to my own understanding; and therefore I will have no will of my own: "Father, thy will be done." The health of my body, the success of my calling, the prosperity of my estate, the agreeableness of my family, the continuance of my comforts, and the issue of any particular concern my heart is upon, I leave in the hands of my heavenly Father, who knows what is good for me, better than I do for myself. If in any of these I be crossed, by the grace of God I will submit without murmuring or disputing. All is well that God does, and therefore welcome the will of God in every event; while he is mine and I am his, nothing shall come amiss to me.
(v.) We must resolve to abide by it as long as we live, and to live up to it.
In our covenanting with God, there must be, not only a present consent— Lord, I do take thee for mine, I do give up myself to thee, to be thine,—but this must be ripened into a resolution for the future, "with purpose of heart to cleave unto the Lord." We must lay hold on wisdom, so as to retain it; and choose the way of truth, so as to stick to it. "The nail in the holy place must be well clenched, that it may be a nail in a sure place." Many a pang of good affections, and many a hopeful turn of good inclinations, comes to nothing for want of resolution. It is said of Rehoboam, that he "did evil,