CHAPTER VI: Five cautions more added to the former two, to prevent such misjudging—
never, by all the watchfulness in the world, be brought on to duties, but so much as is in the heart will discover itself either in opposition to them or a hypocritical joining in them. Although the Papists may be kept by a waking State from venting that malice of their hearts in rebellion, yet they cannot be brought to join with us in holy duties; no more will corruption, unless in hypocrisy; and therefore so much as is doth still discover itself in them.
CHAPTER VI
Five cautions more to prevent such misjudgings.
3. A THIRD caution to prevent misjudging: If a man will not be mistaken in judging his growth in mortification comparatively with others or with himself, he must consider his occasions and opportunities to draw him out. Thus, a man when he had more corruption, yet less occasions and provocations to sin, may have corruption less stirring in him than when he is more grown up in grace, if his temptations were then greater. The same tree standing in the shade, where also the rain comes not to it, when transplanted where both sun and rain fall upon it, may be more fruitful than formerly. David, when under afflictions in the wilderness, and wanting opportunities, how strict was he, and 'kept himself from his iniquity!' Ps. 18:23. But when he came to the delicacies of a kingdom, though he was grown up more and more in grace, yet how did he fall!
As to aggravate the sin of not growing more, the proportion of means
every one hath had is to be considered; and for one who hath had much means to grow much, for him is less than one who hath leas means: so in the stirring or declining of sin, opportunities and occasions are also to be considered; as if a man be transplanted out of a full condition into an empty, if then many of his lusts do not stir so much as before, no wonder. Even as if a man when cast into a sweat by reason of multitude of clothes, it is no marvel if, when clothes are taken off, he sweat less.
4. A fourth thing to be considered, to keep us from mistakes herein, is, that he whose spirit is naturally active, his lusts, though weaker than another man's whose spirit is slower, may be yet more quick and apt to break forth more than his. Peter was of a bold spirit, and so spake often rashly, and vented corruption more than the other disciples, insomuch as he once provoked Christ to call him Satan, not that he had less grace, but a more active spirit. Yea, he might have more grace, and less of corruption stirred in him, only a more forward natural spirit, that was apt to put itself forth. As an angry man, whose spirit is quick, may soon be stirred, and in the forwardness of his spirit to action, give a man a blow, when one given to malice will scarce give you an ill word, whose lusts of revenge yet burn inwardly more. Gunpowder will take and fall into a blaze sooner than lime, yet lime hath more innate heat, and burns more within; some have speedier vent. Those two brethren, John and James, 'sons of thunder,' as Christ calls them, how soon was their choler up! They had quick and hot spirits, as Christ tells them, 'Ye know not what spirit ye are of,' Luke 9:55.
5. Fifthly, if we would judge aright what measure of true mortification is in us, we must not take into the reckoning what restraining grace doth in us, but observe that apart, and cast that up in a sum by itself. For this you must know, that even in the regenerate, all their abstinence from sins is not from mere mortification, but restraining grace continues even after regeneration to contribute to it, and so make mortification seem the greater. It was not merely and only mortification of the lust of anger
that made Moses so meek; for at another time, when he was left, what a chafe was he in, when he called them all rebels, and said in a heat that he must fetch water out of the rock for them! It was his temper and disposition of nature helped to mate him so eminent in ruling that passion above any other, that he is said to be 'the meekest man on earth.' It was not simply, merely mortification that made that great apostle, Paul, so eminently chaste; but over and besides what mortification helped him in it, he had a 'peculiar gift,' as he calls it, 1
Cor. 7:7; he speaks of it as of a gift, not a grace, such as might be in reprobates. 'For,' says he there, 'every one hath his proper gift.' So it was not mere mortification that made Luther never troubled with covetousness, but the freeness and generousness of his spirit that helped him in it.
Now, if all these would have cast up what grace and mortification they had attained to, they must have reckoned restraining grace by itself, (which may be observed by what our virtues were before conversion,) which though now sanctified,—that is, helping forward sanctification, and making the abstinence easier,—yet is not to be reckoned true sanctification. As goldsmiths mingle in all the silver they work some other metals to make it more malleable, so are those common graces mingled with true in this life, where sanctification is imperfect, which do help them and eke them out. Grace set in a good nature seems a great deal more, and goes further than in a bad. Wine that is of itself somewhat pleasant, a little sugar will make it sweeter to the taste than a great deal of sugar will do sour wine. Therefore let every one consider what natural ingenuity, and modesty, and education did in him before conversion; and let him know that, now he hath true grace, these help him still, and stand him in stead as much as ever, although he hath a further new principle of grace in him beyond these. Grace in this life, and whilst imperfect, takes not away such common gifts, but sanctifieth and useth them, as the reasonable soul doth a quick fancy or memory, which are sensitive faculties, and do make his ability to abstain from such and such sins more easy. Indeed all such gifts will be swallowed up in glory. And therefore many who have less grace, yet seem in many carriages
more mortified than those who have more grace, they will be less impatient in a cross, less stirred and provoked with an injury. A man who hath been less helped by retraining grace before conversion, and had his lusts more outrageous, if he hath them now under, it is a sign he hath much more mortification in him than one who was naturally civil. And I appeal to every godly man's conscience, it is not only simply mortification that makes him always to abstain from sins, but shame, modesty, terrors of conscience strike in at a pinch, when strength of mortification had failed him else; and many accidental things, ordered by God's providence, hinder and keep God's people from sinning. And as David was fain to make use of Goliah's sword, and take in discontented persons that had not the same ends that he had, to strengthen himself against Saul; so is grace fain to take in fleshly dislikes and discontents against sin, to help it in a pinch, till it hath got the victory. For instance, it was not Judah's grace so much kept him from killing Joseph, foe then he would not have consented to sell him, but nature wrought in him, and made him abhor the killing him: 'Is it not our brother, and our flesh? and what profit is it to kill him?' Gen. 37:26. So God prevented David in his murdering
Nabal's family by an external means, whenas his grace else had not kept him from revenging himself causelessly upon his family, for they were in no fault; his grace alone had not done it, for his passion was up, and he in a rage, and fully resolved to do it. But God used another means, and sent Abigail submissively to meet him; and her lowly submission and elegant oration won him, and cooled him: though this David acknowledgeth God's hand in it, and was glad he was so kept, as a godly man will, and hath cause, when he is hindered of his purpose in sinning. As he says, Phil. 1:18, 'I rejoice that Christ is preached, though out of envy,' so if sin be abstained from, though by any means; yet God did rather by this means restrain him than by his fear of God, or the grace in his heart; but God kept him by her coming, 1 Sam. 25:34. 'For in very deed,' says David, 'as the Lord liveth, which hath kept me back from hurting thee, except thou hadst hasted and met me, surely there had not been left a man unto Nabal.'
So shame moved Judah. Fear of being destroyed moved Jacob to reprove the sin of his sons, and is all the argument he useth, Gen.
34:30. So that in an evening, when thou castest up thy abstinences of that day, think not how mush thou hast abstained from sin or denied thyself, but how much out of hatred of it, and the spirit of mortification, how much of that there is in thy abstinence, and accordingly measure thy growth in it.
6. Sixthly, another false rule is, when men judge of their mortification, and the measure of it, by their present listlessness of the heart to sin: which though it be true, that where true mortification is there is a listlessness and a deadness, and so much mortification, so much deadness, Rom. 6:2, 'How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?'—and indeed, to live in it is to take pleasure in it;—but yet this you must know, there are many things which in a godly man may add to his deadness to sin besides true mortification, and so make it seem greater than it is in truth; and therefore it may be a false rule to judge by, if it be not warily considered and distinguished. Sickness breeds a listlessness; when we are sick, our lusts are sick together with us; and as we gather strength, they gather up their crumbs again: Job 33:19, 20, then his
'soul abhors dainty food.' Suppose he be a glutton, old age brings a listlessness: Eccles. 12:1, 'When the evil days come, wherein a man says he hath no pleasure in them;' as Barzillai had no taste in his meat, by reason of old age. So when our expectations or desires are crossed, or are like to be, and we begin to fail of those main props of the comfort of our lives, we are apt to have a listlessness to all other pleasures; when some one thing that was a sauce to all the rest is gone, or like to go, we then have no stomach to all the rest, and we are weary of living, as David was when Absalom was gone: 'Would I had died for thee!' Some great cross coming may, like thunder, sour all our joys and delights, and make them stale to us, and as dead drink to the stomach. Terror of conscience may, like an eclipse, overspread our spirits, and then all things lose their beauty and lustre, as things in the dark use to do; as Job gays of himself in his desertion, that his soul had no more sweetness in all comforts than in 'the white of an egg.' For such occasions as these do draw the intention another way, and do take the mind up about God's wrath,
or the afflictions we are in, so as it cannot run out to sin; and intention, you know, is the cause of all pleasure. As therefore, when by study the spirits are drawn up to the head, a man's stomach decays to that meat he most loved, so when terrors drink up the spirits, as Job speaks; but when that heat is over, and intention dismissed, a man recovers his stomach again: and so do men their appetites to sin, when they come forth of terrors.
And this will help you to find out the true reason why that young Christians are often more dead to all pleasures of sin than those who are grown up, or than themselves are when grown up. They are often then altogether dead to all mirth and other contentments, and yet they are not more mortified than afterwards, for then legal humiliation adds to their deadness. And besides that first deadly blow which Christ gave their lusts then in part, the law also and the bitterness of sin did lay that part of their lusts which remained unkilled in a swoon, that one would think all were dead. 'Sin revived,' saith Paul, 'and I died,' Rom. 7:9. He speaks of that time when he lay humbled for sin, during which time, we read in the Acts, he fasted.
He had no mind to meat nor drink; for three days he forgot all. And again, as then they are usually so taken up about pardon of sin, and the obtaining thereof, that all the spirits retire to the heart to relieve it, and to encourage it to seek out for pardon, and so sin is left in a swoon, and it seems quite dead; but by degrees men come out of that swoon, and sin revises, and then men think they decay in mortification. Again, young Christians sometimes, and others afterwards, for some honeymoons of their lives, are entertained with raptures and ravishments, joy unspeakable and glorious, and then they seem in a manner wholly dead to sin, and walk so; but as the others are in a swoon, so they are in an ecstasy; but when they are out of it, then sin comes to itself again. Those joys, whilst they last, make a man's actual present deadness to sin seem more than habitually and radically it is indeed. As a man that hath tasted some sweet thing, whilst the impression upon his palate lasteth he hath no relish of meat, so whilst the impressions of spiritual joy; but when their mouths are washed once, and their sense of that sweetness
gone, they find their wonted relish of them. Thus spiritual joys do, for the time they are upon the heart, much alter the taste; but yet much of that alteration is adventitious and not wholly radical, or altering the sinful faculty itself; though it doth add much that way, yet not so much as they seem to do at that present, the sense of that sweetness is fresh in his heart.
Now therefore, to give a help or two to difference what is real and true mortification from this seeming listlessness and deadness to it:
— (1.) First, true mortification makes a man not only listless to sin, but to have a quick hatred against it, a hatred aiming at the destruction of it; but false listlessness takes but the heart off it, doth not set it against it. How often are these yoked together in Ps. 119, 'I hate sin, and every false way,' with this, 'Thy law do I love!' The heart being quickened with love to God and to his law, is carried out against sin, and not only taken off from it to have no mind to it, but to have a mind against it to destroy it. There is the same difference between mortification and listlessness that there is between true patience and senselessness. Senselessness is a dull, stupid bearing of pains, but patience is joined with a quick sense of them, which ariseth from strength of spirits, that, being quick and vigorous, are the more sensible of pain or pleasure; so true mortification is joined with an active hatred that flies out against sin, which comes from liveliness of affection to the contrary.
(2.) Secondly, true mortification is joined with activeness and life in the contrary duties: Rom. 6:11, 'Reckon yourselves dead unto sin, and alive unto God.' That false listlessness is but a dead palsy that doth take these members of sin, but true mortification is with a new life, a resurrection, strengthening a man to walk so much the more nimbly in the ways of God, Rom. 6:4, 5. Young Christiana, and such as have a false listlessness and deadness, yon shall find them complain that their mortification is more than vivification; they will find they are more dead to the world than quickened to God. True
mortification doth not dull the spirits, but sets them at liberty, as purging the humours out doth. It makes the body more light and nimble; whereas false listlessness causeth a deadness, a dulness to everything else. Those false causes of listlessness contract the mind, as a bladder that is clung, and dried, and 'hung up in the smoke,' as David compared his condition in terrors of conscience; but mortification empties it of the sin, and fills it with grace, so as the mind is as full and wide as before, only filled with grace now instead of sin.
7. Seventhly, a man is not to judge of his growth in mortification simply by the keenness of his affection against sin, though that is good and blessed, but by his strength against it. As there is a fond love, which is not so strong and solid, which will not do so much for one, or hold, if it come to the trial and be put to it, that yet hath a more seeming edge in it; so there is a keenness of hatred that hath not so much strength. A man that is angry seems to have more keenness of affection against him he falls out with, and in his rage vows never to be reconciled, and could eat him up; whenas yet a malicious man hates more strongly. So do young Christians their sins, having lately felt the bitterness of them; and then many other inconveniences, besides the contrariety of them to God, do egg on and provoke their spirits against them; but like as a sharp knife that is weak, the edge is soon turned and blunted, so in a temptation, they are for all their edge soon overcome. For all those concurring inconveniences and apprehensions of their hurt by them makes their spleen indeed greater, but it adds not to their strength and courage to resist them; like a stomachful boy, that cries he cannot have the victory, yet is weak, and easily laid on his back; his stomach is more than his strength. The hurt that comes by sin to us at first lately felt, helps to sharpen the edge, but adds no metal, and so our weapons are beaten to our heads again when we use them. What an edge of spirit had Peter raised up against denying Christ! He would die rather; he spake then as he thought, and he would have died in the quarrel, for he drew his sword, but afterwards he wanted strength to his stomach; how easily was he overcome, being yet but weak in