Chapter VIII
That the thoughts of God s excellent love in bringing us out of this ivoful state
of sin into a state of grace, should enkindle in us sacred zeal andfervency of
spirit to live in all holy obedience to him. And what a dreadful condition
they are in who make an ill use of the doctrine of grace, by abusing it to an
encouragement of carelessness, negligence, or licentiousness.
III. As the considerations of God s love in changing our state may thus
inflame love, so they may enlarge obedience, which springs from love, and
112 THE WORK OF THE HOLY GHOST [BOOK II.
may excite thee to fruitfulness, and abounding in the work of the Lord, and to be willing to do or suffer any for him. It inflamed Paul s zeal, in somuch as none of the apostles laboured so much as he. His spirit was never at rest ; he thought he could never do enough. Peter denies his
Master, it is true, and he did it thrice ; and you know how Christ came upon him for it, with a higher care of work and labour from him : Feed my lambs. He says it thrice too in the forementioned John xxi. So as indeed Christ in that place, to which I have recourse again, would have Peter make these three commensurable : 1. That as Christ had loved him more, in pardoning more than to the rest ; so, 2, he expected that he should love him more ; and, 3, that proportionably to that love, he should give de monstration of it in his care over his lambs. To move Peter the more to be willing to do and suffer for him to the last of his days, Christ gives him a little touch, as I understand it, of some wildness and youthfulness that had been in Peter s spirit afore Christ had to do with him : ver. 18 of that
chapter, Verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst
thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest : but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thine hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. Peter had had his vagaries, and lived
as he listed ; and further, as may seem, had given an instance lately of what kind of activities (as I may call them) his youth had delighted in (as many young men do in bodily exercises, and shewing their strength and
vigour that way, with too much excess of delight and pride in them), in the 7th and 8th verses. He being in a ship (ver. 7, 8), and spying Christ,
girds his fisher s coat about him, and makes no more ado but casts him
self into the sea. The other disciples were of a more sober spirit, and came into the ship by land,* which he might have done as well as they, being not far off land ; but as it would seem, he gloried in such feats and
active pranks, and would shew his Master one, who was now risen from the dead, and was not taken with such things ; and yet there was some love
mingled with this. That which moves me to think Christ had a purpose to mind Peter of the way of his spirit wherein he had so much delighted, is that he seems to speak of the whole course of his youth, wherein he had taken liberty to do what he listed : When thou wert young, thou wentest whither thou wouldest, that is, didst live to thine own lusts ; which Peter, in his Epistle, involving himself with others, acknowledgeth
: he was as a
loose unruly heifer. And indeed many such things, in themselves inno cent and lawful, young men are addicted unto ; yet when there is a pride,
vanity, vain glory, excess of delight, with expense of time, they are in God s
eye great sins.-] j As also is the vanity of those scholars who adore learning too much, and too inordinately love it, from a desire to gain reputation and esteem. This was Lipsius his confession on a great fit of sickness : I have not been (said he) covetous nor vicious, Sola mihi placuit dulcis pellacia musa; only the harlotry of learning took his heart. Christ, you see, makes this use to Peter of his former wanderings, to move him to be the more willing to be carried whither God would have him, even to the cross, as that whereby God ordained to glorify himself in him. And seeing he had delighted himself in such activities, as a man of mettle and courage, God therefore would serve himself of this spirit of resolution in him in a way of trial contrary to the way of his spirit. He was to be hung up by the heels upon a cross (the worst of crucifyings), to be bound to his good behaviour thereon. And Peter (says Christ), see that thou, remembering * Qu. in the ship to land ? ED.
CHAP. VIIL] IN OUR SALVATION. 113
what thou wert when young, shew thy valour, thy resolution, when thou comest to that conflict ; and Peter remembered it, and was moved by it, 2 Pet. i. 14. If this conjecture should not hold, sure I am I find Peter
himself in his epistles urging this as a most provoking argument to quicken to future obedience. And he puts himself in among the number of those
that had so walked in vanity and sin, for which the popish commentators would find excuses. He speaking of the genius and spirit of a Christian, he says, 1 Pet. iv. 3, he is one whose heart this principle hath taken hold
of and prevails upon him, that he no longer should live the rest of his time
in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God : For the time past of our lives may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles. The
strength of this persuasive lies in these two things
1. They had a long time of their lives already lived in the sins of such an estate. They had served their lusts, and done nothing for God all that
while ; and there is but a remaining remnant of it left, rov S TriXoiKov tv tfagx/, which is as a brand plucked out of the fire. Oh ! bestow that wholly upon God, with grief and sorrow that so much is spent and burned out in sinning
! Do as much for God as ever you did for the devil.
* As you have yielded your members servants to uncleanness, to iniquity unto iniquity, adding one iniquity to another, and thinking you had never done enough for your
lusts, and growing worse and worse, so now yield your members servants
to righteousness unto holiness. And if there were anything higher than
holiness, they should reach at that too. And, 2, He edgeth it with this,
that the time past might suffice to have served their lusts, if they could
suppose it to be lawful for any space of time to neglect God s service, and
please and indulge their lusts ; yet those lusts had had sufficient time of
their lives already, and indeed too great a share, and therefore it may well
suffice. If a lust of thy former ignorance tempt thee, is it not an answer, a sufficient answer, You have been served already, you have your time out, and too much ? And if it urgeth thee to take a little pleasure for a moment, and then to serve God again, yield not, no, not for a moment, as Paul speaks, Gal. ii. Your lusts have had too many moments spent upon them, and
your whole time was due to God, and he hath too little left. For as the
* We owe nothing to the flesh, to live after
apostle reasons, Rom. viii. 12,
the flesh, we have no reason to do the least kindness for it, nor to give
it a crumb, though it were to save a lust s life ; so nor to afford it one moment of our time, but to give the whole unto God. Now, therefore, it behoves you to redeem the time remaining to the utmost, to live much in
a little, to do all for God, from a holy grudging that Satan hath had so much. The apostle Paul makes this of itself an argument to more holi
ness, that by how much less of a man s time is left in the flesh, he should be the more holy
: Heb. x. 25, So much the more, as he sees the day approaching. And Peter adds this to it, by how much of the time past hath been lost to God, we ought to take our measure, that the more of what is to come be consecrated to him. And in 1 Pet. i. 15, 18, his scope being to exhort to holiness (as that is the main drift and errand of his
epistles), he sets together in opposition and in view their vain conversation
(ver. 18) with that holiness of conversation which God now expected
: ver.
15, Be holy in all manner of conversation, for ye are redeemed from a vain conversation. He sets conversation to conversation, and holy to vain. Be holy in all manner of conversation, for you have been altogether vain in your former conversation ; let the total corruption that was in the one
therefore provoke to a total sanctification in the other. And indeed such VOL VI. H
1 14 THE WORK OF THE HOLY GHOST [BOOK II.
grounds as have lain long fallow, you expect the greater crop from them.
IV. The last advantage which we may have by occasion of such an estate
of sinning, is to remember it, to keep our spirits low and humble for ever,
after conversion wrought ; and the like use ought to be made of any great
fit of sinning. You shall therefore find that the apostle Paul, who had as
high manifestations of God as ever man had, for no man ever since or
before him had the like (our Lord and Saviour Christ himself, though he was transfigured upon the mount, yet he had never been rapt up to paradise, nor into the third heaven, as Paul was, but lived by faith as we do), yet that which kept him low all his days, was the remembrance of what he had been. You find two expressions to this purpose. The one in 1 Cor.
xv. 9, I am, saith he, the least of the apostles, that am not worthy to be called an apostle, though he doth profess elsewhere, that he laboured more than they all. But if you look into Eph. iii. 8, which is the next
text, he goes lower : To me, says he, who am less than the least of all
eaints. The one phrase (viz., that which he useth in the Corinthians) is a diminutive expression, sXa^iffros, the least of the apostles, and yet there he compareth himself with apostles. But in that place of the Ephesians he compares himself with saints, and useth a more diminutive expression,*
if there be anything lower than the least, he humbleth himself to it ; and
that not in relation to apostles, but in relation to saints. Now what was
it that kept Paul, that had all his grace in him, and all the cause in the world to be rapt up above the rest of saints and apostles in privileges vouchsafed to him ? You shall find it in that 1 Cor. xv. 9 (that which I
quoted even now), where having said, I am the least of all the apostles, that am not worthy to be called an apostle ; in what follows, you find it was the remembrance of his former .condition, and of what he had been,
persecuting the church of God, that moved him to such humble thoughts and words. You know when he speaks of his unregenerate estate in 1 Tim.
i. 11, I was a persecutor, saith he, and injurious, &c. This was it he bore the scars of, in his own spirit, to his dying day. And you may observe how he did grow up into this humility and into this lowness in his own
eyes. When he wrote that Epistle to the Ephesians, he was an aged man : he styles himself there Paul the aged ; he had written to the Corinthians
long afore. You see he grows to a deeper sense ; he was the least of the
apostles then, but now the least of all saints. And what was it that did make him thus low, and that he did grow up into a daily sensibleness, the more God loved him and revealed himself to him ? Even his own vileness, the consideration of what once he had been. Because (saith he) I have
persecuted the churches. Why Paul, he had thought of that sin a thousand
times, but still the older he did grow, the more it did sink into his spirit, and humble him the more. Hast thou had any manifestations of God to
thy spirit ? Hast thou prayed well to-day ? And art thou proud of it ? Hath God lifted thee above others in spiritual privileges ? Come, take but a turn in thy unregenerate condition. Let me bring to thy remem brance thy old walks ; what wert thou ten, twenty, or thirty years ago ? And what wert thou doing of then ? Dost thou not remember ? Suppose a man had lived with Nebuchadnezzar after he had come out of the wilder ness from amongst beasts, and should have heard him talk as presump tuously as before, Is not this great Babel I have built ? If one should
* Namely, iXa^/cTor^w. ED.
CHAP. VEEI.] IN OUR SALVATION. 115
but have minded him, and bade him go to the wilderness where he was two
or three years ago, it would have pricked his bladders and let out the wind ; BO it will have the same effect in thee.
I have made many uses, you see, of this great point for you ; there is one use more (it is a bad one), which I am afraid some of you will make
for yourselves ; it was Paul s fear, also his fear to prevent it ; and that is, that seeing a man who hath lived in a a state of sinning often hath, and may have, this event, to be converted at last, I will even continue in sin, that grace may abound, or at least I will presume still to continue as I am.
1. I will give the apostle s answer, Bom. iii. 8, Let us do evil that good may come ; whose damnation is just. He throws hell-fire back again upon them, and that is all the answer ; that if God, upon such an arguing of
thine, should pronounce such a sentence on thee, and swear against the 3 in his
wrath, thy damnation were just ; and this God often doth against many. For in thus arguing, besides thy abuse of the sweetest attribute of mercy, thou assumest to thyself God s highest sovereignty and prerogative, which,
if ever in anything, lies in this, that he can bring so great a good out of so much evil ; and yet in so doing he barely permits the creature to go on, leav
ing them to their own ways. But thou art active in all thine, and by this proclaimest thyself, ipso facto, the greatest rebel that God hath on earth. You know that great and terrible place, Deut. xxix. 18-20. God was
7 Paul s application of that sermon, Eom. x., and by the first verse of that chapter. And he
tendering that day the covenant of grace, as is clear b}
bids them take heed, lest there be a root of bitterness, an evil heart in one, that says, I shall have peace, though I walk on in the imagination of my
* The Lord will not spare that man, but then (even whilst he is thinking such a cursed thought), the anger of the Lord shall smoke against that man, and
heart, and add drunkenness to thirst, that is, to satisfy my lusts.
all the curses in this book shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall separate him unto evil, single him forth of all the tribes, &c. But shall I close with thee now at last ? Dost thou begin to be sensible thou hast gone on in such a condition to this hour ? Go home and tell God of it ; there is no remaining in it, no, not for an hour, for the wrath of God abides upon thee. Yet say not there is no hope (as they in Jer. ii.), for you have heard, it is one of God s greatest designs to exalt grace, love, and mercy upon men, by and in that way. Let all that is in God encourage thee. Thy way out of it hath been made plain before thee ; it is regenera
tion, that passage from death to life. Oh, begin to seek to obtain it ; if thou hast a mind to Christ, assure thyself he hath much more mind to
thee. Art thou wambling ? Art thou whimpering ? I assure thee he is
gone forth to find thee ; Luke xv. 4. He goes out to seek that which is
lost, long before he finds it. He will meet thee half way (as you have it in
the same 15th chapter of Luke, verse 20). Only let me persuade thee to turn now to him. Thou art not only perhaps undone else, but if ever thou
dost hereafter turn, thou wilt repent thou didst it no sooner. Yea, thou
wilt repent for nothing more, than that sin had so much more time after God had moved thee. It is the ingenuity of true grace (which is love to
God) so to work. Come, it may be a match between Christ and thee
before midnight yet; it was so to the jailor, Acts xvi., in a less space. Come ! I have spoke thy heart, and have hold of it. I will not let thee go. What thou and God will alone together make out of it, I know not ; there may be but an inch between thee and eternal glory ; wilt thou defer ? Oh, unkind ! If thou hopest to go to heaven, shall God have no glory out of
116 THE WORK OF THE HOLY GHOST [BOOK II.
thee, in amends to what is past ? Shall thy no longer to live to the lusts
of men, be thy no longer to live ? Tell me how many years hast thou
lived in sin ? What is thirty or forty years ? May not that suffice to an
enemy that will destroy thee ? In a word, I have told you a long story of God s design in suffering the bulk of his elect to go on to years of discretion,
ere he converts them ; and that his design therein is glory to himself. But it
is meet for me withal to tell you, yea, indeed end in telling you it, that
as God s design is to shew love in it, so wisdom also. And therefore
ordinarily his design, is so to convert, after such a time of sinning, as pro
vidently to have such a time in thy years remaining, as to have a glory out
of thee in thy fruitfulness and obedience. There are but few instances of
late repentance. All the epistles of the apostles speak of men that had
formerly been in such a condition of sin, but they were yet written to them,
whilst alive, and now turned, and as remaining surviving subjects of exhor
tations to all holiness, and left to give demonstration thereof. My brethren, God is so wise, as he will compass and grasp both ends. As he will leave
a time in which you may have experience of such an estate, so he will
ordinarily so convert, or not at all, as there may be a time to shew forth
% is made the end of conversion
the contrary graces for his glory, which
1 Peter ii. 9. And of the two, you may well give God leave to project the
latter for the longer time, for a little of the other sufficeth. I observe it in
this epistle to Titus, that this grace and love (which Paul says appeared to
ns who were sometime disobedient, in this third chapter), is in chap. ii. 12
said so to appear, as that men may afterwards give demonstration of their
living soberly, righteously, and godly, according to that grace, even in this
present world ; for otherwise, whilst they are in the world, God would lose
his design.
CHAP. I.] IN OUR SALVATION. 117