Sivut kuvina
PDF
ePub

L.

SWEET USE OF POWER.

I SEE that great, wise, and holy God, who might most justly make use of his absolute power; yet proceeds sweetly with his creature, in all his ways. He might force some to salvation, in spite of their will: he might damn others, merely for his pleasure, without respect to their sin: but he doth not, he will not do either of these; but goes along graciously and gently with us, inviting us to repentance, and earnestly tendering to us the means of salvation; on the one side, with effectual persuasions, and strong motives, and kindly inclinations to an answerable obedience; on the other side, laying before us the fearful menaces of his judgments denounced against sinners, urging all powerful dissuasions, and using all probable means to divert us from all the ways of wickedness, and, when those prevail not, justly punishing us for our wilful disobedience, impenitence, and infidelity. O God, how should we learn of thee to proceed with all our fellow-creatures, but much more with our Christian brethren, not according to the rigour of any pretended prerogative of power; but in all merciful tenderness, in all gentle and fair means of their reclamation on the one side, and, on the other, in an unwilling and constrained severity of necessary justice! And, how much doth it concern thee, Ŏ my soul, not to stay till thy God shall drag thee to repentance and salvation; but gladly to embrace all those happy opportunities, and cheerfully to yield to all those merciful solicitations, which thy God offers thee for thy full conversion; and carefully to avoid those ways of sin and death, which he hath, under so dreadful denunciations, graciously warned thee to shun: else, thy God is cleared, both in his justice and mercy; and thy perdition is of thyself!

LI.

THE POWER OF CONSCIENCE.

IT is a true word of the Apostle, God is greater than our conscience; and, surely, none but he: under that great God, the supreme power on earth is the conscience. Every man is a little world within himself; and, in this little world, there is a court of judicature erected, wherein, next under God, the conscience sits as the supreme judge, from whom there is no appeal; that passeth sentence upon us, upon all our actions, upon all our intentions; for our persons, absolving one, condemning another; for our actions, allowing one, forbidding another. If that condemn us, in vain shall all the world beside acquit us; and, if that clear us, the doom, which the world passeth

upon us, is frivolous and ineffectual. I grant this judge is sometimes corrupted, with the bribes of hope, with the weak fears of loss, with an undue respect of persons, with powerful importunities, with false witnesses, with forged evidences, to pass a wrong sentence upon the person or cause; for which he shall be answerable to him, that is higher than the highest ; but yet this doom, though reversible by the tribunal of heaven, is still obligatory on earth: so as it is my fault, that my conscience is misled; but it is not my fault, to follow my conscience. How much need have I therefore, O my God, to pray, that thou wouldest guide my conscience aright; and keep this great judge in my bosom, from corruption and error! and what need hath this intestine arbiter of mine, to take special care, that he may avoid all misinformations, that may mislead his judgment; and all the base suggestions of outward advantage or loss, that may deprave his affections! And, O thou, that only art greater than my conscience, keep me from doing_ought against my conscience: I cannot disobey that, but I must offend thee; since that is but thine officer under thee, and only commands for thee.

LII.

PROUD POVERTY.

THAT, which wise Solomon observed in the temporal estates of men, holds no less true in the spiritual: There is, that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing: there is, that maketh himself poor, yet hath great riches; Prov. xiii. 7. On the one side, we meet with a proud, but beggarly Laodicean, that says, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; which will not know that he is wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked; Rev. iii. 17: this man, when the means of further grace are tendered him, can say, as Esau did of the proffered herds, I have enough, my brother; and, with the bragging Pharisee, can boast of what he is not, and of what he is; of what he hath, of what he doth; admiring his own nothing, and not caring to seek for more, because he thinks he hath all: this fond Justiciary can over-do his duty, and supererogate; contemning the poverty of souls better furnished than his own, and laying his merits in the dish of the Almighty. On the other side, there is an humble soul, that is secretly rich in all spiritual endowments, full of knowledge, abounding in grace, which, out of the true poverty of spirit, undervalues himself; and makes no shew of ought, but a bemoaned disability: as we have seen those grounds, wherein the richest mines are treasured, bewray nothing but barrenness in their outside. O my soul, what estimation soever others may

set upon thee, thou art conscious enough of thy own wants: be thankful for the little thou hast, and abased for the much thou lackest; and, if thou wilt needs be advancing thyself above others, let it be in the contestation of thy greater humbleness and lower dejection: thy grace shall be no less, because thou thinkest so; but shall rather multiply, by a modest diminution. And, O Blessed Lord, thou, who resistest the proud, and givest grace to the humble, give me more humility, that I may receive more grace from thee: and thou, whose gracious rain shelves down from the steep mountains and sweetly drenches the humble vallies, depress thou my heart more and more with true lowliness of spirit; that the showers of thy heavenly grace may soak into it, and make it more fruitful in all good affections and all holy obedience.

LIII.

THE HAPPIEST SOCIETY.

I FIND, O Lord, some holy men, that have gone aside from the world into some solitary wilderness, that they might have their full scope of enjoying thee freely, without any secular avocations; who, no doubt, improved their perfect leisure to a great entireness of conversation with thee. Surely, I could easily admire the report of their holiness, and emulate their mortified retiredness, if I did not hear them say, The wolf dwells in the wood; and that they could as soon leave themselves, as the world behind them. There is no desert so wild, no mountains or rock so craggy, wherein I would not gladly seek thee, O my God, and which I would not willingly climb up to find thee, if I could hope that solitude would yield a spiritual advantage of more enjoying thee: but, alas, I find our weak powers are subject to an unavoidable lassitude; and we can no more contemplate always those divine objects, than our bodily eyes are able to fix themselves on the body of the sun in his brightest splendour: so as, if our minds should not be sometimes taken off with a safe variety of cogitations we should be overwhelmed with thy glory; and, with too much light, blinded. By this means it comes to pass, that these small interspirations set an edge upon our reassumed speculations, and renewed devotions: although also, in the mean time, I should hate all secular diversions, if they should take thee for a moment quite out of my sight; if I did not find, that I may refer them to thee, and enjoy thee in them. O God, do thou so fix my soul upon thee, that whatever occasion shall take me up, I may never be out of thy blessed society; and make me so insensible of the noise of the world, that, even in the midst of the market, I may be still alone with thee.

LIV.

HONEY FROM THE ROCK.

O God, thou didst miraculously refresh thy murmuring Israel of old with water, out of the rock, in that dry wilderness: and now I hear thee say, If they had hearkened to thy voice, and walked in thy ways, with honey out of the rock thou wouldest have satisfied them; Psalm lxxxi. 16. Lo, that, which thou wouldest have done to thine ancient people, if they had obeyed thee, thou hast abundantly performed to thine Evangelical Israel with honey, out of the Rock, hast thou satisfied them: the Rock, that followed them, was Christ my Saviour; 1 Cor. x. 4. Lo, out of this Rock hath flowed that honey, whereby our souls are satisfied. Out of his side, saith the Evangelist, came water and blood. This Rock of our Salvation affordeth both what Israel had, and might have had. Surely, O my God, there can be no honey so sweet, as the effect of the precious blood of my Saviour to the soul of the believer by that blood, we have eternal redemption from death, and remission of all our sins; Heb. ix. 12. Eph. i. 7: by that blood, are we justified in the sight of our God, and saved from the wrath to come; Rom. v. 9: by that blood, we have our peace made in heaven, and are fully reconciled to our God; Col. i. 20: by that blood, we are cleansed and purged from all our iniquity; Heb. ix. 22: by that blood we are sanctified from our corruptions; Heb. xiii. 12. 1 Pet. i. 2: by that blood, we receive the promises and possessions of an eternal inheritance; Heb. ix. 15. O the spiritual honey so sweet, that the material honey is but bitterness to it! Jonathan of old did but dip his spear, in the honey of the wood; and, but with one lick of that sweet moisture, had his eyes cleared, and his spirits revived; 1 Sam. xiv. 29. O God, let me but taste and see how sweet the Lord Jesus is, in all his gracious promises, in all his merciful and real performances, I shall need no more to make me happy. Thy Solomon bids me to eat honey; Prov. xxiv. 13. Lo, this is the honey, that I desire to eat of: give me of this honey, and I shall receive both clearness to my eyes, and vigour of my spirits to the foiling of all my spiritual enemies. This is not the honey, whereof I am bidden not to eat too much; Prov. xxv. 16. No, Lord, I can never eat enough of this celestial honey: here I cannot surfeit; or, if I could, this surfeit would be my health. O God, give me still enough of this honey out of the Rock: so shall my soul live, and bless thee, and be blessed of thee.

LV.

SURE EARNEST.

O MY God, what a comfortable assurance is this, which thou hast given to my soul! Thou hast, in thy great mercy, promised and agreed to give me heaven; and now, because thou dost not put me into a present possession, thou hast given me earnest of my future inheritance; Eph. i. 14: and this earnest is that Good Spirit of thine, which thou hast graciously put into my soul. Even we men, whose style is deceitful upon the balance, think ourselves sure, when, in civil transactions, we have received an earnest of the bargain; and, much more, when we have taken that small piece of coin, as part of the bargained payment: how then can I fear thee to fail, my God, whose title is Faithful and True; whose word is Yea and Amen? It is ordinary with the world, to cheat my soul with fair promises and faithless engagements, of yielding me those contentments, which it neither can, nor meant to perform: but, for thee, O Lord, heaven and earth shall pass away, but not one jot of thy word shall pass unfulfilled; Matth. xxiv. 35. Hadst thou then but given me that word of thine, I durst have set my soul upon it with all firm confidence; but, now that thou hast seconded thy word with thy earnest, what place can be left for my doubt? What then, what is it, that thou canst stick at, O my soul? Canst thou make question of the truth of the earnest? thou knowest, that thou canst not: the stamp is too well known, to be disdoubted: the impressions are full and inimitable: this seal cannot be counterfeit: the graces of the Spirit, which thou hast received, thou feelest to be true and real: thou findest in thyself a faith, though weak, yet sincere; and unfeigned repentance, joined with a hearty detestation of all thy sins; a fervent love of that infinite goodness, that hath remitted them; a conscionable care to avoid them; a zealous desire, to be approved to God, in all thy ways: flesh and blood cannot have wrought these graces in thee: it is only that Good Spirit of thy God, which hath thus sealed thee to the day of redemption. Walk on, therefore, O my soul, confidently and cheerfully, in the strength of this assurance; and joyfully expect the full accomplishment of this happy contract, from the sure hands of thy God: let no temptation stagger thee, in the comfortable resolutions of thy future glory; but say boldly, with that holy Patriarch, O Lord, I have waited for thy salvation.

LVI.

HEAVENLY MANNA.

VICTORY itself is the great reward of our fight; but what is

« EdellinenJatka »