The Measures of Christian Obedience, Book 3 · Chapter 5
CHAP. V. Of the second sort of integrity, an integrity of times and seasons.
The CONTENTS.
Of the second sort of Integrity, viz. that of Times and Seasons. Of the unconstancy of many mens obedience. Perseverance necessary unto bliss. The desperate case of Apostates, both as to the difficulty of their recovery from sin, and the greatness of their punishment.
BUt besides the Integrity of our powers and faculties, or the Integrity of the Subject, whereof I have discoursed hitherto; there is a second sort of Integrity which is plainly necessary to make our obedience available to our salvation at the last day; and that is an Integrity of seasons and opportunities, or our obeying the forementioned Laws, not now, and then, but at all times.
We must not think to please God by an obedience that comes and goes by fits; or by serving him only at such times as we are in humour, or have no temptation to the contrary. But our service of him must be constant and uniform, we must obey him at all times, and wilfully transgress in none. For although all other things have their proper season, yet sin has not; it is alwayes forbidden, and alwayes threatned; so that whensoever we commit it, it puts us under the curse, and makes us liable to death and hell.
Some indeed there are who parcel out their time, and divide it betwixt God and their sins. They observe a constant course of transgressing and repenting, of sin and sorrow. For they are alwayes won when they are tempted, and they are alwayes sorrowfull when they have done. They are all holy purpose and good resolution before they are tryed; but when the temptation comes they can make but a poor resistance, for all their good thoughts quickly vanish, and they are taken. They are never constant either in pious purposing, or in well-doing. Their actions are not all of a piece, but a medly of good and bad; for they still keep on in an uninterrupted vicissitude and succession of works of obedience and sin.
Others again there are who act more agreeably to themselves, and, whilst they are for God, are more constant in their obedience; who yet fall off at last, and sin against him for altogether. For either they grow faint and weary by the tediousness and length of their journey; or they are turned out of the way by some great difficulties; or drawn aside by the importunate allurements of some temptation: and when once by any of these wayes they are put beside their duty, they turn their backs thenceforward upon God, and never more obey him. They are seduced by ill company, or drawn away by interest, or frighted by persecution; and from that time their care slackens, and their lusts encrease, and grow too hard for Grace and the Gospel. And thus, what from inducements from within, and what from occasions from without, they are quite cut off from the service of God and Religion, and give themselves up to serve their lusts for altogether, and to an uninterrupted obedience of sin.
But now as for such a broken service and obedience as this; God will by no means accept of it, nor shall any man be ever the better by it. For when Christ comes to Judgment, he will pass Sentence upon men according to what they are then, and not according to what they have been formerly. If the righteous man turn away from his righteousness, saith Ezekiel, and commit iniquity, and do according to all that the wicked man doth; shall he live? No, by no means. For all his righteousness that he hath done formerly shall not be mentioned, but in his trespass that he hath since trespassed, and in his sin that he hath sinned; in them shall he dye, Ezek. 18.24. It is only if you continue in my Word, saith our Saviour, that you are my Disciples indeed, John 8.31. You must persevere in obedience if you expect to have the reward of it. For he only who endures to the end shall be saved, Matth. 10.22; and none but they, who by PATIENT CONTINVANCE in well doing seek for Glory and Immortality, shall inherit eternal life, Rom. 2.6, 7. Perseverance is the indispensable condition of bliss, we cannot have it cheaper; Be thou faithful unto death, and then, saith Christ, I will give thee a Crown of life, Rev. 2.10.
But as for all those who fall off from a good course, and turn Apostates from obedience; their case is desperate, and their condition extreamly damnable. For they grow wicked to the highest degree, and their state is almost irrecoverable. They have, by their continued rebellion and provocations in spite of all the suggestions of Gods Grace, and the checks of their own Conscience, not only grieved, but even quenched the Spirit of God. So that God, for the most part, leaves them to themselves, and seeks no further to reduce them. For if men are idle, and will not use it; and much more if they scornfully cast it from them, and reject it; Christ hath told us plainly that the Grace which any man hath shall be taken from him, Matth. 25. 29. And when once God and his good Spirit have deserted them, they are under nothing but an unbridled lust, and run on, without all restraint, into an exorbitant pitch of wickedness.
And this any man may easily observe in the world. For who is usually so evil as the backsliding Sinner? Who is ordinarily so irrecoverable as the Apostate Saint? They are quite lost to all goodness, and sin beyond all bounds and past all retrieve. No Creatures in the World were ever so much out of all capacity to be restored to Heaven, as those Angels that fell from it; and no men on Earth are so hardly reclaimed from a wicked to a holy life, as they who once knew what it was, and yet utterly renounced it. For God for the most part lets them alone to enjoy their own choice, and to go on in their own way; and the good Spirit, which has been almost quenched by them, contends no more with them, nor acts any more upon them. They have trampled already upon all spiritual aids, and benummed and silenced their own Consciences, and quite hardened themselves in their wickedness; so that now they have nothing to hinder them, but advance to work all manner of sin with greediness and wantonness, and thereby fall under the severest curse that can be met with in Hell and damnation.
And as for this progress of all Renegado Saints and revolting Sinners, both in sin, and also in suffering; the Scripture is express and plain. When the unclean Spirit, which is once gone out of a man, returns into him again, says our Saviour, he taketh unto himself seven other Spirits, which are more wicked than he himself is, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is made worse in all respects by this means, than the first, Matth. 12.43, 44, 45. The man becomes a greater Sinner, and a greater Sufferer than otherwise he ever would have been. For if after men have once escaped the pollution of the world, through the knowledg of Christ's Gospel, they are again entangled therein, and overcome by it; then is the latter end worse with them than the beginning. For it had really been by much the better for them not to have known the way of righteousness at all; than after they have known and walked in it, to put such a slur upon it, and to revolt and turn from the holy Commandment, which was delivered unto them, and for some time embraced by them, 2 Pet. 2.20, 21.
As for an obedience then which goes but half way, and breaks off before it has got to the end: so far is it from availing us unto pardon and life, that in very deed it renders our present case more desperate, and our future punishment more insupportable.
But that obedience which God will accept, and in which alone we may safely place our confidence; must be, as of our whole man, so of our whole time likewise. We must persevere in it through all Seasons, and take care both to live and dye in it. For our reward will be dispensed out to us according to the nature of our service at the time of payment, and he only, as our Saviour says, that endureth to the end shall be saved, Matth. 10.22.