Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himself, Part 1 (2 of 6)

Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himself · Part 1 (2 of 6)

p. 39But consider what it is to the Saints; Job complaineth, chap. 14.16. Doest thou watch over my sinne? V. 17. My transgression is sealed up in a bag, and thou sewest up mine iniquity. Vatabl. Thou appearest to be a watchfull observer of mine iniquity, and addest (as Ari. Monta.) punishment to punishment, sewing sin to sin, to make the bag greater then it is. Now though there be a mis-judging unbeleefe in the Saints, yet it is certaine God doth inflict penall desertions, as reall peeces of hell, on the soules of his children, either for triall, as in Job; or punishment of sin, as in David; whose bones were broken for his adultery and murther, Psal. 51.10. and whose moisture of body was turned into the drought of summer, through the anger of God in his soule, till the Lord brought him to the acknowledgement of his sin, and pardoned him, Psal. 32.3, 4, 5, 6. But some will say, Can the Lord inflict spirituall punishment, or any of hell, or the least coale of that black furnace upon the soules of his owne children? To which I answer, Its but curiosity to dispute whether the paines of hell, and the flames and sparkles of reall wrath, which I can prove to be really inflicted on the soules of the Saints in this life, be penalties spirituall, different in nature.Difference between the soul-torment of the damned, and of the Saints, in 3. points. Certaine there be three characters sealed and engraven on the paines of the damned, which are not on the reall soule-punishments of divine wrath on the soules of the Saints. As 1. What peeces of hell, or broken chips of wrath are set on upon the soules of deserted Saints, are honied and dipped in heaven, and sugared with eternall love. 1Gods heart is toward Ephraim as his deare child, and his bowels turned within for their misery, even when hee speaks against them; Jer. 31.20, 21. But the coals of the furnace cast upon reprobates, are dipt in the curse of God; yea so as in a small affliction, even in the mis-carrying of a basket of bread, and the losse of one poore oxe, there is a great Law-curse, and intolerable vengeance; Deut. 27.26. Chap. 28.17, 31. And againe, in in the in-breaking of a sea and floud of hell in the soule of the child of God, a rich heaven of a divine presence, Psal. 22. V. 1, 89. Psal. 18.4, 5, 6. (2.) The hellish paines inflicted on reprobates, 2are Law-demands of satisfactory vengeance, and payment to pure justice; but fire-flashes, or flamings of hell on the deserted Saints, are medicinall, or exploratory corrections, p. 40though relative to justice and punishments of sin, yet is that justice mixed with mercy, and exacteth no Law-payment in those afflictions. 3. Despaire, and blasphemous expostulating and 3quarrelling divine Justice, are the inseparable attendants of the flames and lashings of wrath, in reprobates; in the godly there is a clearing of justice, a submission to God, and a silent Psalme of the praise of the glory of this justice, in this temporary hell, no lesse then there is a new Song of the praise of free grace in the eternall glory of the Saints, perfected with the Lamb.

God punisheth sometimes the sins of his children with spirituall punishments.Nor should this seem strange, that God punisheth the sins of his children with such spirituall plagues of unbeleefe, and jealousies, and lying mis-judgings of God in their sad desertions, more then that the Lord punished the lifted-up heart of Hezekiah with leaving him to fall on his owne weight; and Davids idlenesse and security, with letting him fall in adultery; and Peter's selfe-confidence, with a foule denying of his Lord. But its a sad dispensation, when God cleaveth a Saint with a wedge of his own timber; and linketh one sinfull mis-judging of God, in this feaver of soule-desertion, to another: and justice seweth (in a permissive providence) one sin to another, to lengthen the chaine, if free Grace, a linck of Gold, did not put a period to the progresse thereof. Now wee are not to look at this as an ordinary calamity: Job's expressions are very full, chap. 6.4. For the arrowes of the Almighty are within me, The place Job 6.4. The arrowes of the Almighty, &c opened.Job 6:4the poyson whereof drinketh up my spirit: the terrours of God doe set themselves in aray against me. An arrow is a deadly weapon, when its shot by a man, or by an Angel; but its soft as oyle in comparison of the arrow of the Almighty. 1. Its the arrow of foreign. The Almighty did frame and mould, and whet it in heaven. 2. The arrow was dipt in poyson, and hath art from hell and divine justice. One Devill is stronger then an hoast of men; but legions of Devills are mighty strong, when such Archers of hell are sent to shoot arrowes that are poysoned with the curse and bloudy indignation of heaven. 3. What a sad stroke must it be, when the armes of Omnipotency draweth the bow? The armes of God can shogge the mountaines and make them tremble, and can move the foundation of the earth out of its place, and take the globe of heaven and earth and can p. 41cast it out of its place, more easily then a man casts a slung stone out of his hand. When hee putteth forth the strength of Omnipotency against the creature, what can the man doe? 4. Every arrow is not a drinking arrow, the arrowes of divine wrath drinke bloud: Suppose a thousand horse-leeches were set on a poore naked man, to drink bloud at every part of his body, and let them have power and art to suck out the marrow, the oyle, the sap of life, out of bones and joynts; say also that one man had in his veins a little sea of bloud, and that they were of more then ordinary thirst and power to drink the corpse of the living man, as dry as strawes or flaxe; what a paine would this be? Yea, but it were tolerable. 5. Arrowes can but drink bloud; arrowes are shot against the body, the worst they can doe is to drink life out of liver and heart, and to pierce the strongest bones; but the arrowes of the Almighty are shot against spirits and soules: The spirit is a fine, subtile, immortall thing. Isai. 31.3. The horses of Egypt are flesh, and not spirit. The spirit is a more God-like nature, then any thing created of God. The Almighty's arrowes kill spirits, and soules: There's an arrow that can pierce flesh, joynts, liver, heart, bones, yea but through the soule also: Never an Archer can shoot an arrow at the soule; but this the Almighty can doe. Say your arrow killed the man, yet the soule is saved. 6. Many love not their life to death, as the Witnesses of Jesus: Death is death, as clothed with apprehensions of terror; no man is wretched, actu secundo, within and without, but hee that beleeveth himselfe to be so: here are terrors, selfe-terrors: Jeremiah could prophesie no harder thing against Pashur; The Lord (saith hee) hath not called thy name Pashur, but Magor-missa…ib. Jer. 20.3. Thou shalt be a terror to thy selfe. Compare this with other paines; Job would rather chuse strangling, or the dark grave; and the grave to nature is a sad, a black and dreadfull house; but a beleever may get beyond the grave. What doe the glorified spirits feare a grave now; or are they affraid of a coffin, and a winding-sheet, or of lodging with the wormes and corruption? or is burning quick a terror to them? No, not any of these can run after or over-take them; and they know that. But selfe-terrors are a hell carried about with the man in his bosome, hee cannot run from them. Oh! hee lieth down, and hell beddeth with him; hee sleepeth, and hell and hee dreame together; he p. 42riseth, and hell goeth to the fields with him; hee goes to his garden, there is hell. Its observable, a Garden is a Paradise by art; and Christ was as deep in the agonie and wrestlings of hell for our sins, in a garden, a place of pleasure, as on the crosse, a place of torment. The man goes to his table, O! hee dare not eat, hee hath no right to the creature; to eat is sin, and hell; so hell is in every dish: To live is sinne, hee would faine chuse strangling; every act of breathing is sin and hell. Hee goes to Church, there is a dog as great as a mountaine before his eye: Here be terrors. But what, one or two terrors are not much; though too much to a soule spoyled of all comfort. 7. The terrors of God (God is alwayes in this sad play) doe set themselves in battell array against me. Or, Chap. 16.13. His archers compassed me about round. Hebr. his great ones; or, his bow-men (because they are many, or because the great ones did fight afarre-off) have besieged me. So 2 Chron. 17.9. 1 Sam. 7.16. Samuel went in a circuit to Bethel, and Gilgal, and Mispeh. And Josh. 6.3. Yee shall besiege Jericho. The wrath of God and an army of terrors blocked up poore Job, and stormed him. Now here be these sore pressures on the soule, 1. The poore man cannot look out …o any creature-comfort, or creature-help▪ Say that an Angel from heaven would stand for him, or a good conscience would plead comfort to him, it should solace him; but the man cannot look out, nor can hee look up, Psal. 40.12. The enmity of God is a sad thing. 2. A battell array is not of one man, but of many enemies: Say the man had one soule, it should be his enemy; and that hee had a hundred soules, hee should have a hundred enemies; but as many millions of thoughts, as in his wearisome nights escape him, hee hath as many enemies; yea, as many creatures, as many stones of the field, as many beasts, so many enemies. Job 5.23. Hos. 2.8. Christ gave to the Father Propositions of peace, and to the poore soule under sense of wrath, they are nothing: The feare of hell is a part of reall hell to the man who knowes no other thing, but that hee is not reconciled to God. Creatures behind him, and before him, heaven above, and earth below, and creatures on every side, within and without, stand with the weapons of heaven, and of an angry God, against him; friends, wife, servants, acquaintance, have something of wrath and hell on them; the man in his owne thought is an out-law to them all; and the p. 43Leader of all these Archers is God. God, God is the chiefe party. See Job 19.12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. And there you see, brethren, acquaintance, kinsfolke, familiar friends, man-servant, maid-servant, wife, young children, bone, skin, flesh, are all to Job as coals of the fire of hell. And Isai. 8.21, 22. Men in this shall curse their king, and their god.

Asser. 6. These being materially the same soule-troubles of deserted and tempted Saints, and of plagued and cursed Reprobates, doe differ formally and essentially according to Gods heart, his dispensation and intentions, his mercy and his justice regulating them:Christ soule-trouble different from ours So I shall speake of the difference betweene Christs troubled soule, and the Saints trouble. 2. Of some wayes of Gods dispensation, in the soule-trouble of the Saints. Touching the former; there was in Christs soule-trouble, 1. No mis-judging of God; but a strong faith, in that hee st…ll named God his Father, and God. 2. In that as this trouble came to a height, and more fewell was added to the fire of divine wrath, Luk. 22.44. foreign, hee prayed with more extension of body and spirit: hee extended himselfe in fervour of praying. And, Heb. 5.7. Hee offered prayers, and foreign, humble supplications of the poore, or oppressed, that make their addresse to one who can help them: hee put in to God an humble Petition, and a Bill to his Father, as an overwhelmed man, and hee offered this Bill, foreign, with an hideous cry and tears. Revel. 14.18. The Angel cryed with a loud voyce. To cry with a full and lifted up voyce, or with a shout; so is the Verb used, Joh. 18.40. When men cry. and cast away their clothes, and cast dust in the aire. 3. His soule-trouble and death was satisfactory to divine justice, for our sinnes; hee being free of sin himselfe: which can agree to no soule-trouble of the holiest Saint on earth. But touching the second: These Positions may speak somewhat, to cleare the way of the soule-trouble of Saints.

1. Position. Conscience, being a masse of knowledge, and if there be any oyle to give light, its here; its then likest it self,The causes of soule-disertions. when it most beares witnesse of well and ill-doing. Now, we are more in sinning, then obeying God; and because of the corruption of nature, the number of naturall consciences that are awake to see sin, are but very few. And when the renewed conscience is on the worke of feeling and discerning guiltinesse, in p. 44its best temper, The more life the more sense: Sick ones in a swoon,Soule-dissertions, sharpened with sense. or dying persons that doe neither heare, see, nor speak, are halfe-gate amongst the dead. The conscience sick of over-feeling, and so under over-sense of sin, is in so farre in a feaver: for often a feaver is from the exsuperancy of too much bloud, and ranknesse of humours, the vessels being too full; and therefore its like a river that cannot chuse but goe over banks, the channell being a vessell too narrow to containe it all.

2. Pos. Therefore often the time of some extreme dissertion and soule-trouble is,Dissertions after evident and full manifestations of God. when Christ hath been in the soule with a full, high spring-tyde of divine manifestations of himselfe. And if wee consider the efficient cause of dissertion, which is Gods wise dispensation: when Paul hath been in the third heaven, on an hyperbole, a great excesse of revelations, God thinketh then good to exercise him with a messenger of Satan; which by the weaknesse and spirituall infirmity hee was under, wanted not a dissertion, lesse or more, what ever the messenger was; as it seems to be fleshly lust, after a spirituall vision. Paul was ready to think himselfe an Angel, not flesh and bloud; and therefore, 2 Cor. 12.7. hee saith twice in one Verse, This befell me, foreign, That I should not be lifted up above ordinary Comets, up among the starres. But if wee consider the materiall cause, it may be, that extreme and high overflowing of Christs love brake our weake and narrow vessells: Cant. 5.1. there is a rich and dainty feast of Christ, I am come into my garden, my Sister▪ my Spouse, I have gathered my myrrhe with my spices, I have eaten my honey-comb with my honey, I have drunk my wine with my milke: eat, O friends, drinke, yea drinke abundantly, O beloved. Yet in that Song, the Spirit of God speaketh of a sad dissertion in the next words, I sleep, but mine heart waketh: it is the voyce of my Beloved that knocketh, &c. There is not onelyonly impiety, but want of humanity, that the Church had rather that wearied Jesus Christ should fall down and dye in the streets, in a rainy and snowie night, when his locks were wet with raine, then that he should come in and lodge in the soule. And let us not thinke that the threed and tract of the Scriptures coherence, one Verse following on another, as the Spirit of God hath ordered them, is but a cast of chance, or an humane thing: When the Spouse rideth on the high places of Jacob, and saith, Isai. 49.13. Sing, p. 45O heaven, and be joyfull, O earth, and break forth into singing, O mountaines: for God hath comforted his people, and will have mercy on his afflicted. Yet this was nothing to the afflicted people; Verse 14. But Sion said, The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me. When the Lord's Disciples, Mat. 17. are in the sweetest life that ever they were in, at the transfiguration of Christ, when they saw his glory, and Peter said, Master, it is good for us to be here, even then, they must appeare to be weak men; and Christ must forbid and rebuke their faithlesse feare, Vers. 6. They fell on their faces, and were sore affraid. I leave it to the experience of the godly, if Jeremiah his singing of praise in one Verse, Chap. 20.13. and his cursing of the day that hee was borne on, in the next Verse, vers. 14. the order of Scripture being of divine inspiration, doe not speak Gods dispensation in this to be such, as to allay and temper the sweetnesse of the consolation of a feast of Gods high manifestation, with a sad dissertion. So John his glorious soule-ravishing comforts, in seeing the seven golden Candlesticks, and the Sonne of man in such glory and majesty, Revel. 1.12, 13, 14, 15. Yet it appeares to be a dissertion that hee is under, when Christ forbiddeth him to feare, and when hee must have the hand of Christ laid on his head, and when hee falleth down at Christs feet as dead, V. 17.18. And when Isaiah saw the glorious vision, Chap. 6. The Lord sitting on his throne, high and lifted up; it must be a throne higher then the heaven of heavens, that he siteth on; and his traine filling the Temple. It's a dissertion he falleth in. vers. 5. Then said I, woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of uncleane lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seene the King, the Lord of Hoasts; he was a pardoned man before. It's so with us, while the body of sin dwelleth in us, that we cannot, being old bottles, beare new wine; and therefore the fulnesse of God, breaketh crazie lumps of sinfull flesh and blood: as a full tide, is preparatorie to a low ebbing; and full vessels in the body, to a feaver. Would Christ in his fulnes of the irradiations of glory, breake in upon us; he should breake the bodily organs, and over-master the soules faculties, that all the banks of the soule, should be like broken wals, hedges, or clay channels; which the inundation of a river, has demolished, and carried away from the bottom. Flesh and p. 46blood is not in a capacitie of over-joy, and can hold but little of heaven, no more then earth, cold beare such a glorious creature as the Sunne: we must be both more capacious, and wider, and stronger vessels, before we be made fit to containe glory; wee are leaking, and running-out vessels, to containe grace. Manifestations, and rays of Divine love; are too strong wine that grew up in the higher Canaan, for our weake heads.

Desertion under a threefold consid… tions.Asser. 3. Dissertion commeth under these considerations: 1. As it's a crosse, and a punishment of sinne; 2. As a triall from meere Divine Dispensation: 3. As it's a sinne on our part, full of sinfull mis-representations of Christ.

In the first consideration; wee are to submit to any penall over-clowding of Christ: 1. Because the eye cannot water to looke on any Crosse of Christ, where Faiths aspect goeth before, and saith, Though I sit in darkenesse, yet I shall see light. 2. There is required a sort of patience under sinne, as 'its either a punishment of an other sinne,Patience requisite under soule-trouble. as David was submissive to the sinfull railing of Shimei, and the wicked treasons, and incestuous pollutions of his Concubines, by his son Absolom. Or as sinne dwelleth in us, and in Divine Dispensation must be our Crosse, as well as our sinne; we are to bee grieved at our sinnes, as they crosse Gods holy will: but as they are our owne crosses, and thwart our owne desires, and now are committed by us, or dwell in us, we are not to bite at, and utter heart-raylings against Divine providence, who might have prevented, and efficaciously hindred these sinnes; and yet did not hinder them. 3. This Dispensation should be adored, as a part of Divine wisdome; that broken soules are not wholly cured, till they be in heaven. Sinne is a dis-union from God: Jesus doth not so compleatly soder the soule to God, We are not so freed from sin, even being justified, but there is a ground of dis-union between the Lord and us.but the seame hath holes and gapings in it, by reason of the in-dwellings of sinne, Rom. 7.17.18.19.22.23. And since Libertines will confound Justification with Regeneration, we say, ther Justification they speak off, is never perfected in this life. And because sinne, as sin which remaineth in our flesh, must make God and the soule at a distance; there cannot be such perfect peace as excudeth all soule-trouble; the blew scarre of the wound remaineth so, and the dreggs of that domestick falling-ill, that we have of our first house of Adam, are so s…ated in us, that as some diseases recurre, and some paine of the head, when p. 47an East-wind bloweth; so the disease wee have in our head, the first Adam, sticketh to us all our life; and when temptations blow, wee find the relicts of our disease working, and foaming out the smell of the lees, and sent that remaineth. Christ has need to perfume our ill odours, with his merits, for our begun Sanctification is so unperfect, as that yet our water smelles of the rotten vessell, the flesh; and we cannot but have our ill houres, and our sicke daies, and so a disposition to sinful dissertions. 4. Unbeliefe naturally stocked in the body of sin, is humerous and ill minded to Christ: Mis-judging thoughts of Christ in us by nature.there is a lyar in our house, and a slanderer of Christ, that upon light occasions can raise an ill fame of Christ, That he is a hard man, and gathers where he did not sow: that Christ is nice and dainty of his love, that he is too fine, too excellent, and majestick to condiscend to love me: and take this as the mother-seed, of all sinnefull desertions, to blame Christs sweet inclination, to love us as well, as his love. I knew thou wast a hard man; it's dangerous to have ill thoughts of Christs nature, his constitution, actu primo. The next will bee to censure his waies, his saveing, and his gathering; which I take to bee the currant objection of old Pelagians, and late Arminius. O, he must gather where he did never sow, if he command all to beleeve under the paine of damnation, and yet he judicially in Adam, removed all power of beleeving: so hee putteth out the poore mans eyes, and cutteth off his two leggs, and commandeth him to see with no eyes, and walke with no leggs, under paine of damnation: men beleeve not they hate Christ by nature; and hatred hath an eye to see no colour in Christ, but blacknesse; as the instance of the Pharisees doth cleare; who saw but devilry in the fairest works of Christ, even in his casting out of Devils.

Asser. 4. Dissertions on the Lords part, are so often meere trials;Sin not ever the cause of desertion. as we may not thinke they are greatest sinners who are most disserted. Dissertion smelleth more of Heaven, and of Christ disserted for our sinnes, then of any other thing; it's the disease that followes the Royall seed, and the Kings blood; it's incident to the most heavenly spirits; Moses, David, Heman, Asaph, Ezechiah, Job, Jeremiah, the Church, Psal. 102. Lament. chap. 1. chap. 2.3.4. it is oare that adhereth to the choisest gold. But how is it, say some, that you read of so little p. 48soule-dissertion in the Apostles, and Beleevers under the New-Testament, and so much of it under the Old-Testament? Is it not, because it belongeth to the Law and the Covenant of Works, and to the Spirit of the Old Testament, and nothing to the Gospel of Grace? So Antinomians dreame. I answer, We read indeed of heavier and stronger externall pressures laid on men, to chase them to Christ under the Law, then under the Gospel: Because the Gospel speaketh of curses and judgement in the by;Externall heavy judgements, and soule-dissertions not Pedagogicall, but common to the Saints under the New Testament. and the Law more kindly, and more frequently, because of our disobedience; and of the preparing of an infant-Church, under none-age for Christ. But though the Gospel speake lesse of Gods severitie in externall judgements, as in killing so many thousands, for looking into the Arke, for Idolatrie; yet the Apostle saith, that these things were not meerely Pedagogicall, and Jewish: so, as because the like are not written in the New-Testament, it followeth not, they belong not to us; for (saith he) 1 Cor. 10.6. Now these things were our examples vers. 11. Now all these things happened unto them for examples, and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. Ergo, the like for the like sins do, and may befall men under the Gospel. Moreover, never greater plagues then were threatned, by Christs owne mouth; never wrath to the full came upon any, in such a measure, as upon the City of Jerusalem and the people of the Jewes, for killing the Lord of glory. And though no such dissertions, be read of in the Apostles, as of Job (who yet was not a Jew, and yet more disserted then David, Heman, or any Prophet) Ezechiah, the Church, Lament. Chap. 2. and 3. Yet we are not hence to beleeve, that there were never such dissertions under the New-Testament. For as externall judgements, so internall soule-trials, are common to both the Saints under the Old, and New-Testament: as is evident in Paul 2 Cor. 1.8, 9. 2 Cor. 5.11. 2 Cor. 7.4, 5, 6. 1 Pet. 1.6, 7. and as both were frequent under the Old-Testament, so were they written for our learning. And if it were to the Jewes meerely Pedagogicall, to have terrors without, and feares within, and to be pressed out of measure: or to afflict their soules for sinne, were a worke of the law; then to be afflicted in conscience, were a denying that Christ is come in the flesh. And simply unlawfull, whereas the Lords absence is a punishment of the Churches, not opening to p. 49Christ, Cant. 5.4, 5, 6. And Gods act of with-drawing his lovely presence, is an act of meere free dispensation in God, not our sinne. For this would be well considered, that the Lords active dissertion, in either not co-operating with us,Active d…ssertion is not … sinne, but the Lords …ying of us. when wee are tempted, or 2. his not calling, or the suspending of his active pulsation and knocking at the doore of our soule, or 3. the not returning of a present comfortable answer, or 4. the with-drawing of his shining manifestations, his comforts, and the sense of the presence of Jesus Christ, cannot be formally our sinnes: indeed, our unbeleefe, our sinning which resulteth from the Lords non-co-operating with us, when wee are tempted, our mis-judging of Christ, (as if it were a fault to him to stand behind the wall) which are in our dissertions passive, are sinnes.

Asser. 5. Saddest dissertions are more incident to the godly, Dissertions more proper to Saints then to the unregenerate.then to the wicked and naturall men; as some moth is most ordinary in excellent timber, and a worme rather in a faire rose then in a thorne or thistle. And sure, though unbeleefe, fears, doubtings, be more proper to naturall men, then to the Saints, yet unregenerate men are not capable of sinfull jealousies of Christ's love, nor of this unbeleefe, which is incident to dissertion wee now speak of; even as marriage jealousie falleth not on the heart of a Whore, but of a lawfull Spouse. 2. According to the measure and nature of love, so is the jealousie, and heart-suspitions for the want of the love, whence the jealousie is occasioned: The soule which never felt the love of Christ, can never be troubled, nor jealously displeased for the want of that love. And because Christ had the love of God in another measure, possibly of another nature, then any mortall man, his soule-trouble, for the want of the sense and actuall influence of that love, must be more, and of an higher, and it may be of another nature, then can fall within the compasse of our thoughts: never man in his imagination, except the man Christ, could weigh, or take a lift of the burden of Christ's soule-trouble. The lightest corner or bit of Christ's satisfactory Crosse,Christs dissertion of another … then ours. should be too heavie for the shoulders of Angels and Men. You may then know how easie it is for many to stand on the shore, and censure David in the sea; and what an oven, and how hot a fire must cause the moisture of his body turne to the drought of summer. The Angels, Joh. 20. have but a theory p. 50and the hear-say of a stander-by, when they say, Woman, why weepest thou? Shee had slept little that night, and was up by the first glimmering of the dawning, and sought her Saviour with teares, and an heavie heart, and found nothing but an empty grave; O they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him. And the daughters of Jerusalem stood but at the sick Spouses bed side, and not so neare when shee complaines, I am sick of love. To one whose wanton reason denyed the fire to be hot, another said, Put your finger in the fire,Dissertion not me…a…choly, and try if it be hot. Some have said, All this soule-trouble is but melancholy and imagination: Would you try whether the body of an healthy and vigorous man, turned as dry as chaffe, or a withered halfe-burnt stick, through soule-paine, be a cold fire, or an imagination; and what physicke one of the smallest beames of the irradiation of Christ's smiling countenance is to such a soule, you would not speake so.

Asser. 6. Why some of the Saints are carried to Abraham's bosome, and to heaven in Christ's bosome, and for the most, feast upon sweet manifestations all the way,The various dispensations of God in leading soules to heaven. and others are oftner in the hell of soule-trouble, then in any other condition, is amongst the depths of holy Soveraignty. (1.) Some feed on honey, and are carried in Christ's bosome to heaven; others are so quailed and kept under water, in the flouds of wrath, that their first smile of joy is when the one foot is on the shore, and when the morning of eternities Sunne dawnes in at the window of the soule. Some sing, and live on sense all the way; others sigh, and goe in at heavens gates weeping, and Christ's first kisse of glory dryes the tears off their face. (2.) Christ walkes in a path of unsearchable liberty, that some are in the suburbs of heaven, and feele the smell of the dainties of the Kings higher house, ere they be in heaven; and others, children of the same Father, passengers in the same journey, wade through hell, darknesse of feares, thrones of doubtings, have few love-tokens till the marriage-day. (3.) There be not two sundry wayes to heaven; but there are (I doubt not) in the latitude of Soveraignty, hundreds of various dispensations of God, in the same way. Jerusalem is a great City, and hath twelve, and many ports and angles and sides to enter at; but Christ is the one onelyonly way: hee keeps in all, and brings in all; hee keeps p. 51in Angels that they never came out, hee brings in his many children to glory. But some goe to heaven, and till the twelfth houre know nothing of sinne, death, God, Christ, heaven and hell. Grace tooke a short cut, and a compendious way with the repenting Thiefe. Christ cannot onelyonly runne, but fly post with some in few houres to heaven: Grace hath Eagles wings to some; and some wrestle with hell, fight with beasts, make warre with lusts, and are dipt in and out, as the oars in the river, in flouds of wrath from their youth, and a long time. Caleb and Joshua for two generations were in the Journey to Canaan; many thousands not borne when they entered the Journey, yea new generations arose, and entered into that good land with them, and were there as soone as they

Asser. 7. In consideration of dissertions, as actively they come from God, and passively they are received in us,Divers causes of d…ssertions in divers respects. and consecutively, or by abused resultance are our sinnes, they have sundry and divers causes.

1. Sorrow for the with-drawing sense and influence of Christ's love, as formally a dissertion passive in us, is not sinfull; except sorrow, which is a luxuriant and too indulgent passion, exceed measure. For 1. Its a mark of a soule that liv…th and breatheth much on Christ's love: now, if love be the life of some, it must be continued in sense, or some fruition of love, lesse or more. Now,Continuated manifestations of Christ necessary. as the irradiation of the sunne's beames and light in the aire yesterday, or the last yeare, cannot enlighten the aire and earth this day; and the m…at I did eat a yeare agoe, the sleep I slept the last monethmonth, cannot feed and refresh me now; but there must be a new application of new food, and new sleep: So the irradiation of the manifested love of Christ in the yeares of old, must goe along with us; though as experiences of old favours, they may set faith on foot again, when its fallen; yet the soule that liveth by fruition of divine love, must have a continuated influence of that love: and to live on divine love, of it selfe, can be no sin. O its a life liable to many clouds, over-castings of sadnesse and jealousies, that lives on the manifestations of Christ's love: Its sweet and comfortable, but has mixtures of hardest trialls; for such set on no duties comfortably, without hire in hand, as it were: when Christ's love-letter from heaven miscarries, and is intercepted, the soule swoons: its surer to live by faith.

p. 522. To murmure, and impatiently to so sorrow, as if God had forgotten to be mercifull, Divers reasons why we are not to quarrell with divine d…spensation in dissertions.is sinfull sorrow. 1. Because the object of it is materially blasphemous, The strength of Israel cannot lie, nor repent; nor can any change, or shadow of change fall on him. 2. Its most unjust to complaine and quarrell with him, who hath jus, foreign, right, law, full and unconstrained liberty to doe with his owne what hee pleaseth; but the heavenly irradiations and out-shinings of Christ's love, and the influence of his free grace, are all his owne, and most free; for if the Sea-man have no just cause to quarrell with God, because the wind bloweth out of the East, when he desireth it may blow out of the West; and the Husband-man cannot in reason plead male-government in the Almighty, Gods … his owne, and most free.because hee restraines the clouds, and bindeth up the wombe of heaven, in extreme drought, when hee cryeth for raine and dew to his withered earth, and meddowes, and valleys; so neither is there any just pleading (a sinlesse desire of the contrary is a farre other thing) with the Lord, because hee bindeth up the bowels of Christ ▪ from outing his love, or restraineth the winds and breathings of the Spirit from blowing. 3. Wee may desire the wind of the Lord to blow, because its an act of free grace in him, so to doe; but to contend with the Lord, because hee will not act himselfe in works of free grace, at our pleasure, is to complain that grace is grace; for if grace were obnoxious, in all its sweet spirations and motions, to my will, or to your desires, it should not be grace, but a work of my hireing and sweating. 4. This sorrowing must accuse the free, holy, and innocent love of Christ, as if his love were proud, nice, humorous, high, passionate; whereas infinite freedome, infinite majesty, and lovelinesse and meeknesse of tenderest love, doe all three concurre admirably in Jesus Christ. Love cannot be hired; Cant. 8.7. If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned. And for the strength of tendernesse of love, the same place pleadeth; Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the flouds drown it. And Paul asserteth, Ephes. 3.18.Submission required & …harity to Gods dispensations under dissertions. The breadth, and length, and de…th, and height of it. 5. There is required a submission under such a divine dispensation; else wee upbraid grace, and will be wicked, because God will not be (actu secundo,) as gracious in his influence, as wee are humorous in our sickly desires. 6. If wee could p. 53understand the sense of divine dispensation, the Lord often intendeth grace, when hee suspendeth grace; and his dissertions are wrapped up in more invisible love and free grace, then wee are aware of: and why should not wee, in faith, beleeve his way of dispensation to be mercy?

Asser. 8. Sometimes (2.) Gods immediate lashes on the soule, is the occasion of our sinfull mis-judging of God; Psal. 38.2. Thine arrowes stick fast in me, and thine hand presseth me sore. Hence cometh a sad reckoning, Vers. 4. Mine iniquities are gone over my head, as a heavie burden they are too heavie for me. And Psal. 77.4. Thou holdest mine eye waking▪ I am so troubled that I cannot speake. And what followeth from this? A great mis-judging of God. Vers. 7. Will the Lord cast off for ever? will hee be favourable no more? Vers. 8. Is his mercy cleane gone for ever? doth his promise faile for evermore? Vers. 9. Hath God forgotten to be gracious? Its but a poore ground of inferring that God hath forgotten to be mercifull, and Christ is changed, because there is night and winter on your soule: Is the God of Nature changed, because its not ever summer, and day-light? because a rose withereth, and a flower casteth its bloome, and the sunne is over-clouded, therefore God hath forgotten himselfe? Dispensations of God are no rules to his good pleasure; but his good pleasure regulates all his dispensations. If the Souldiers of Christ quarter in the dry wildernesse, not in the suburbs of heaven, their Leader is wise.

3. Darkenesse and night are blind judges of coulours; in dissertion, it's night on the soule;Apprehensions biggest and most terrible in d…ssertion, because of the darknesse of the mind. and imaginations are strongest and biggest in the darkenesse; the species of terrible things plow deepe furrowes of strong impressions on the phancie in the sleepe, when the man walketh in darknesse, and hath no light, either of sound judgement, or soule-comfort: it's night with the soule, and then a bush moved with the wind, is an armed man; every conviction of conscience is condemnation. 2 Cor. 1.8. Wee were pressed out of measure, above strength, in so much that we dispaired even of our life, Ver. 9. But we had the sentence of death, there were loads and weights laid on us above strength: darkned soules put on Christs deepe representations of wrath, and blacknesse of indignation; and change him in their apprehensions, in another Christ.

p. 544. Satan can drinke up at one draught, a grieving and sorrowing spirit,Sathan can raise our apprehensions to swelling thoughts of Gods dispensation, as too grievous to be borne. 2 Cor. 2.7. and he hath accesse to the phancie, and out-workes of the soule of the child of God, so hee can enlarge the species to a double bignesse; let it be considered, if the Grammer of Heman, be not a little swelled, in more then ordinary Rhetorick, Psal. 88.4. I am counted as these that go downe to the pit, as a man that hath no strength. Vers. 5. free amongst the dead, like the wounded that lie in grave, whom thou remembrest no more; and they are cut off by thy hand. Ver. 7. Thy wrath lyeth hard on me, and thou hast afflicted mee with all thy waves. If God forgot him as a buried man, and not a wave of Gods wrath, but was gone over his soule, what could God doe more? And Jobs words are a little beyond the line, Chap. 1….24. Wherefore hidest thou thy face from mee, and takest me for thine enemy? Words arise up to Mountaines. Job was not holden of God to bee an enemy: Sathan can make every pinne in the Crosse an hell, and put a new sense on Gods dealing, other then ever he meaned. When Christ opens a veine, to bloud a conscience, Sathan if hee may have leave, shall shut in his Lyon-teeth to teare the veine, and make the hole of the wound as wide as heart and life may come out; and therefore hee raiseth up apprehensions, and sowes strife, and pleas with Christ, and waters his owne seed. Can love kill thee? Were it Christ that doth all this, would he not once come to the bed-side of a sicke Sonne? Can Christs love throw a poore friend into hell, and leave him there? He hath forgotten thee. Sathan can argue from dispensation and trialls to the state. Which is false Logicke. This thou sufferest: ergo thou art not in the state of adoption. It's not good that such a Mineon as Sathan, have the eare of a disserted soule; he can carry tales between Christ and the soule, to separate between friends. Never beleeve ill of Christ; Love thinks no ill. If yee love Christ, two Hells may cast water on your fire of love, but cannot quench it. Christ will beleeve no ill of you, let Sathan speake his will.

Our love is swayed with jealousie▪ and misgivings.5. Even the love of a Saint to Christ, under an hard dispensation is sicke with jealousie, and travelleth in birth with phancied suspitions of Christs love. Our love is swayed with mis-givings; it's full of cares, and feares, and doubtings; because it's not alwaies edged with heavenly wisdome. It takes p. 55life from sense, and felt embracings, from presence, and reciprocation of warmenesse from Christs bowels: and when face answereth not face, Divine Disp…s…tion not our Rule.and Christs love doth not eccho and resound to our love, then it fainteth: we too often measure Christs love by our foot; wee calculate Christs love by our owne elevation, not by his: and Christs mysterious dispensation, should not point the houre; nor is the full Moone, nor the noone-day Sunne of Christs love, the compasse that our affections and love, should saile by. Yea, having not seen Christ, 1 Pet, 1.8. nor felt him, yet wee love him, and beleeve in him; and this is most spirituall love, and has most of love in it; the more jealousie without ground, the lesse love of Christ, at least, the lesse solid constancie of love.

6. Unbeliefe is a speciall cause of Soule-trouble.Vnbeliefe is qu…r…lous. 1. In bodily diseases paine doth not create it selfe; but sinnefull passive dissertion does create it selfe. Christ cannot owne unbeliefe, 1as comming within the compasse of his creation; though by him all things were created. Unbeliefe spinning out new calumnies of Christ, addeth oyle to the fire, and maketh desertion a thousand talent weight heavier then it would bee. This may be evidenced in all the complaints of the Saints under dissertion; in which more is laid on Christs name, then is true. Unbeliefe is a querulous thing. Isai. 49.14. But Sion said, unbeleeving Sion said, the Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me; this was an untruth, and is confuted in the next verses. Mary Magd…len, thought they had taken away her Lord, and he was as neere her, as the turning about of her body; and shee within speaking to him face to face; and when unbeliefe doth raise such thoughts, as Christ hath forgotten to be mercifull; Christ is changed, he loveth not to the end. What paine must be at the soules bottome, where such mis-judging of Christ, and his love is in the brimme? and yet there is a coale of the love of Christ, smoaking in the bottome of the soule? A loving opinion of Christ is hardly expelled. Especially, one particular mis-report should not make me receive a mis-understanding of Christ, I never heard ill of Christ before, but much of his excellency and sweetnesse, and why should I admit an untried impression, that the Sunne that giveth light to all, is darke; that fire is cold, it's not true-like; that Christ is an enemie, if once a friend▪ Had we a store-house, and a high-bended p. 56habit of honourable, sublime, and high thoughts of Jesus Christ, his excellencie, the weight of his preciousnesse, eminencie, wee should the more hardly give way to the lies that our unbeleeving heart raiseth against him.

Beleeving of our state to frequent in d…ssertion, but more of Christ.2. Our second mis-giving from unbeliefe, is in beleeving our state. Psal. 31.22. I said in my haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes. I am none of Christs, is a too ordinary mimistake; as (he is changed, and not mine) often goeth before. 2We often find more fault, and first blame in Christ, if not only, ere we see our owne provocations. Hence the complaints of Job, chap. 6. chap. 13. chap. 16. chap. 19. and of Jeremiah, chap. 20. chap. 15. of Ezechiah, Esai. 38. of Asaph, Psalm. 77. of Heman, Psal. 88. of the Church, Esay 49.14, 15. Esay 63. chap. 64. Psal 102. Psal. 6. Psal. 42. Psalm. 31. runne more on the straine of complaning of God, and his unkind dispensation, then of the Plaintiffes sinnes, and provocations; and where there is one mistake of our selves under dissertion, the reader may find out ten mistakes of Christ, and when the disserted soule mis-judgeth his owne state; it issueth from, and reflecteth on the mis-judged apprehension of Christ.

3. From unbeleefe issueth the mis-judging of our own actions: 3I doe no good; or if I doe, its not bene, on the right motives,Mis…judging of ou… a…tions frequent in d…ss…rtion. and for the right end, the good that I doe. The antecedent is true, but not the consequence: There is a cloud in our fairest sun, and clay in our water; but because good works are not our Saviours, its no good ground to say, they have no influence in the way of our salvation; and they are not way-marks in our journey; because they are no part of the ransome that bought heaven. Wee have a grand opinion of our owne righteousnesse, and when wee misse it, wee think wee misse Christ himselfe; which is a great mis-judging, and argueth a beleeving in our selves, not in Christ. And often soule-trouble ariseth from defects, omissions, and sinnes in our selves. If simple griefe for sin as offensive to love arise, that's good soule-trouble; but such soule-trouble as shaketh the bottome of faith, and turneth the soule off Christ, to seek righteousnesse in it self, is damnable: as it's hard for an unregenerate man to see sinne in it's dreadfullest colours, and not despaire: so it's hard for a regenerate person to see sinne, as sinne, and not to fall on unbeliefe, and doubting of Christs love. Antinomians thinke any p. 57anxiety for sinne, which expelleth actuall rejoycing in Christ, our turning off Christ, Ant…nomians mistake touching anxietie for sinne.and our casting of the conscience againe under the Spirit of bondage, and worke of the Law. Which is contrary to truth, and the command of James, to be afflicted and mourne; and Christs saying, Blessed are they that mourne, for they shall be comforted; and Peter, who saith, there may be need, that the Saints be in heavinesse for a season.

It's a great point of wisdome, 1. to know how farre forth our spirituall walking may be a seed of comfort, we may easily erre on either hands. 2. The Logick would bee humble; Lord I am not hauty, Ergo, I am comforted in thee. Paul saith, well, I know nothing by my selfe, yet am I not hereby justified; we would not build a Towre on a Moale-hill. 3. From our sinnefull walking, we may draw grounds of godly sorrow, yet not grounds of unbeliefe; Faith and Godly sorrow are consistent together. 4. It's not safe to argue that wee are not in Christ, from the wants adhering to our sincere performances. While we slander our selves, we may slander the Spirit of God. 5. The measure of our obedience, cannot bee a warrant to counter-argue Christ, as want is no warrant to stand farre off from Christ: no more then it's good Logicke; to flee from the fire, because you are cold; or to bee at odds with gold, because you are needy, and poore; poverty may conclude a sayling with low sayles, and humility, but not unbeliefe; your want of all things, should not empty rich Jesus Christ.

7. Absence of Christ mis-apprehended through unbeliefe, occasioneth soul-trouble. In which there is something which evidenceth saving grace in the troubled soule, as is afore said. For the want of the thing loved, cannot but here be a gracious torment to the lover. The Spouse is sicke, and dyeth, when she wanterh him whom her soule loveth,We are extremly to long for Christ absent, but there be many reasons why we may not mis-judge him in his absence. Cant. 2.5. chap. 5. vers. 6, 8. David so expresseth himselfe, Psalm. 84.2. My soule longeth, yea even fainteth, or dyeth, or is at an end, for the Courts of the Lord, my flesh and my heart cryeth out for the living God. The word foreign is to desire, or to bee consumed, or to make an end of any thing. Davids desire of injoying God, was such, as it was his death to want God; it may hold forth, as Pagnine observeth, that Davids soule, either p. 58extremely desired the Lord, or dyed upon the absence of God. But to be anxiously troubled in an unbeleeving manner, is the sinnefull soule-trouble. Why doth the soule doubt of Christs Winter, more then of his Summer? Absence and presence, his comming, and his departing, are both his owne workes. God hath liberty in the one, as in the other; as it is Gods liberty to make faire weather and stormes, to make a faire day, and a cloudy day; To make David a King, and his brethren shepherds and common souldiers, so hath he his own freedome in the breathings of his owne Spirit, and the blowing of his own winde, or of the drawing a curtaine over his owne face, and hiding himselfe: and neither in this, nor in any of his waies of freedome, can we challenge the Lord, or plead against him. And if we thinke we doe well to be angry, even to the death, at the motions and breathings of Christs free love, then may we compel Christ to be kind, and visit us, as we think good. What ever yee be, Christ is Lord of his owne presence and visits, and it's good the Kings Chamber of presence be a Dainty; and Christs wine bee not so common as water: nor can wee here force kindnesse, or acts of heavenly manifestations on him; he hides himselfe. Why, he is as reasonable and wise, in his going, as in his comming.

2. We should take on us to steward and husband the kisses 2and embracements of Christ, better then he can doe himselfe; and should quarrell, because the Lord hath not thought fit to make Heires and Minors, that are yet under Non-age, Masters and Lords of their owne young heaven; this were not a good world for us. Christs love is better then wine, Cant. 1. Neither our head, nor our heart could endure to drinke, at our own will, of this new wine of the higher Kingdome. Better for us it is that Christ beare the key of the Well of life, then children have it; and if the Government of the higher and lower familie 3bee upon the shoulders of Christ, the leading of this or that single person to heaven,Divers considerable reasons of Christs absence, to wit, 13. is worthy Christs care.

3. And consider, that Christ goeth not behind the mountaine, or hideth himselfe upon meere hazard, but so weighty reasons, that love may bee sharpened through absence; that the 1house may be adorned with new Hangings, and Christs bedde 2made greene; that care may bee had, when he resteth in his 3love, not to stirre up, nor awake the beloved, untill he please; p. 59that the high Tydes and rich Feasts of Christs love, after sad and heavy desertions, may heighten the worth and esteeme of 4Christ; that faith and love, may with more of the violence of ven, lay hold on Christ, after long seeking, and not part with 5him, on so easie termes, Cant. 3.1, 2, 3, 4. that we may know, what weakenesse is in our owne clay legs, under desertion, and 6how we are to walke on Christs legges, which are pillars of marble set on sockets of gold; that absence and presence, the frownings and smilings of Christ, may bee to the Saints the little images of hell and heaven, and broken men may read their 7deb…s in Christs count-booke of free grace, with teares in their eyes, and songs of praise in their mouth. That wee may bee in high love, and sicke for absent Christ; and may be at the pains 8through thicke and thin to seeke him. And l…arne to live lesse 9by sense, and more by faith, and resolve to die beleeving; and 10be charitable of Christ absent, and kisse his veile, when we can 11see no more; and be upon our watch-towre, and know what 12of the night, and observe a soule-communion with God; which 13the Spirit of the world cannot doe.

4. No thing doth more allowd cry the softnesse and baseness of our nature, then our impatiencie under sad dispensations,Mis…judging a…gue… s…ftn…sse of nature and weaknesse of judgmens. when we are positively resolved upon this, that God loveth us; yet because of a cloud over our Sunne, and one scruple of Gall in our joy, to lodge a new opinion, that Christ is changed in another God, and that his love doth plot, and contrive our destruction, argueth a weake, and soone shaken Faith. It speaketh lightnesse of love to Christ, that it's loosed at the root, with the scratch of a pinne; hee hides himselfe, and you say, oh, it's not Christ, but some other like him; for Christ would not so goe, and come. Well rooted friendship can scarse suffer you to beleeve so much of a brother, or a companion. But when ye thus mis-judge Christ, wee may gather, if he should appeare in the garments of vengeance, as he doth to the damned; it's to be feared, this would drinke up our faith and love, if Christ were not more gracious, then we are constant; Lord, leade us not into temptation.

5. I deny not but seeming wrath, and Christ's intercepting of messengers of love, and flamings of hell's fury on the soule, are prodigious-like Comets, glimmering over a trembling conscience; and that its much to keep orthodox, sound, and precious p. 60thoughts of Christ, when the Christian is not himselfe; yet when the child myleth about in a round, to say, the earth runneth about in a circle, or to think the shore or the rock saileth from the ship that carrieth you, when the ship moveth, and the shore standeth still, are but signes of a weak-headed and green Sailer: So because you are deeply affected with a sad absence, to beleeve Christ's love runneth a circle, and that you stand still as a rock, and the change is in Christ, argueth a green, raw wit, and instability of faith; and that the s…a-sands can no more easily drink-up a gallon of water, then that temptation would swallow-up the poore mans faith thus fainting, if the invisible strength of the Advocate, who intercedeth for the Saints, did not uphold him.

Now is my soule troubled.

2. The second circumstance in the Text, is the time, foreign, Now is my soule troubled. There is an Emphasis in this Now: Christ had a troubled soule before, and was sensible of afflictions; but now hee saw more in this crosse, then in all afflictions; hee saw the curse of the Law, and the wrath of God stamped on this crosse.Saints must looke for a growing crosse. And the reasons. Christ had never any Now, or juncture of time, before or after, comparable to this Now. Observe that, Christ and his followers must look for growing and swelling crosses. Mat. 26.37. Jesus began to be sorrowfull, and very heavie. He had all his life, Isai. 53. sorrow; vers. 3. hee was a man of sorrowes; 1as if every piece of Christ had been sorrow, and had acquaintance with griefe: Hebr. foreign and was knowne and noted to all, marked out to all, by his griefes; but now hee wadeth deeper in troubles. Let all Christ's followers look for a growing crosse, and a sadder and sadder Now. Psal. 3.…. Lord, how are they increased that trouble me? Psal. 25.17. The troubles of my heart are enlarged. Hebr. become most broad. Psal. 42.7. Deep calleth unto deep, at the noyse of thy water-spouts, all thy waves and thy flouds are gone over me. One crosse calleth to another, God raineth them downe, as one wave of the sea calleth another. So Job's afflictions came on him in a growing way. David, Psal. 69.2. I sink in the deep mire, where there is no standing. I wade on deeper and deeper, till I lose ground and bottome. I am come into the deep p. 61waters, where the flouds over-flow me. (2.) Christ's sufferings 2are called a Cup; it behoved to be filled to the brim, and Christ weigheth out in ounces and drams, so much gall in the Cup, and yet some more; and because that worketh not the cure, yet an ounce more. (3.) Christ can appoint clothes for 3us, as wee have cold; and a burden answerable to the bones and strength of the back. Its a doubt if David's faith would reach so farre, as that hee should beare it well, that another should sacrifice a wicked sonne Absalom to God's justice; O how did David mourne that hee was killed! Yet the Lord measured out to Abraham a Cup of deeper gall, to kill with his owne hand his one sonne, a beleeving sonne, an heire of the promise. (4.) What if twelve yeares bloudy issue be little enough 4for to work a woman to a necessity of seeking to Christ; yet another must be eighteen years; and a sick-man thirty and eight years. Our Physician knoweth us well. Let us study for a growing faith to growing crosses:A growing faith for growi…g crosses. and if a crosse as broad and large as all Britaine, and a sword as publike as three Kingdoms, yea as all the bounds of Christendome come; so that there be no peace to him that goeth out, or cometh in, we are to be armed for it. Nor 2. is it enough after pestilence & the sword to sit down, and say, Now Ile die in my nest, and multiply my dayes as the sand. Stay, in heaven onelyonly there be neither widdowes, nor killed husbands, nor beggars, nor plundered houses; understand the sense of providence right; wee have not yet resisted unto bloud: wee have yet seas and flouds of bloud to swimme through, ere wee come to shore. A private crosse is too narrow a plaister to our sore; and therefore a publike one, as broad as all Scotland, as all your Mother-Countrey and Church is little enough. It must be yet broader, and wee must yet lose more bloud.

What shall I say?

3. The third circumstance in Christ's soule-trouble, is his anxiety of mind, What shall I say: it is as much as,Anxiety in Christ. What shall I doe? But what meaneth this anxiety of Christ? Its like a doubting of the event; but there is neither doubting nor despairing in it. There is feare, exceeding great heavinesse and sorrow in it; and as an anxious man through extremity of suffering is put to his wits end, as destitute of counsell, to say, I p. 62know neither what to doe, nor say; so Christ had a sinlesse anxiety. Learned Divines acknowledge there was an innocent and sinlesse oblivion in the sensitive memory,A sinl…sse oblivion in Christ. in regard it was intent onelyonly upon the extreme agonie, and not oblieged in all 1differences of time to remember every duty: And affirmative precepts obliege not in all, and every juncture of time.

2. Nor is faith actu…lly, alwayes, without exception, to beleeve: 2Its possible that faith in the act, and extreme feare in the same act, be physically inconsistent.

33. Neither were Christ's sensitive affections, in their physicall and naturall operations,How Christs sensitive affections are under a law. so restrained and awed by a divine Law, as that they may not put forth themselves to the utmost and highest degree of intension, when the light of reason sheweth the object in the superlative degree of vehemency. Reason and light could never shew to any suffering man, at one time, such a great death of evill of losse and positive evill of sense, as it did shew to Christ, at this instant of time. To be suspended from an immediate, full, perfect, personall, intuitive fruition,Chris…'s l…sse great. and vision of God, is a greater ecclipse, then if ten thousand sunnes were turned into pieces of sack-cloth of haire, and the light totally extinguished; or, then if all the Angels, all the glorified Saints that are, or shall be, in heaven, were utterly excluded from the comfortable vision of God's face. You cannot imagine what a sad suspension of the actuall shining of the immediatly enjoyed majesty of God this was; and what a positive curse and wrath was inflicted on Christ, so as his anxiety could not exceed.

4. Christ was to suffer in his naturall affections, of joy, sorrow, 4confidence, feare, love, yet without sinne; and though I could not shew how this anxiety and faith could consist,The personall union hindred not the operations of sinless humane infirmities. yet it cannot be denyed; for Grace doth not destroy Nature, nor could the vision of personall union hinder the exercise of all humane affections and infirmities in Christ, in the state of his humiliation, as clothes of gold cannot allay the paine of the head and stomack: Grace is a garment of cloth of gold, and the union personall, the perfection of grace; yet it hindred not Christ from being plunged in extreme horror and anxietie.

5. There were in Christ at this time some acts of innocent and sinnelesse darken…sse in the sensitive soule,Christ's anxiety sinlesse. that hee actually thinking of the blackness and dreadful visage of the second death, p. 63was now like a man destitute of counsell. But 1. This was meerely penall, and out of dispensation; for Christ's soule-paine is an excellent skreen and shaddow, or a sconce between the soule-troubled beleever and hell; and Christ's anxiety, and his, What shall I say? is a bank and a great high coast between a distressed conscience who is at, What shall I doe? whither shall I goe? where shall I have reliefe and help? and the extremity of his forlorne condition.

2. Christ's anxiety was not opposite to any light of faith, or morall holinesse; as the simple want of light is not night, an ecclipse of the sun removeth no light, nay not at all one beame of light from the body of the sun; all is light that is on the other side of the covering, it removeth onelyonly light from us, who are on this side of the interposed covering which causeth the ecclipse. This anxiety was onelyonly opposed to the actuall happinesse and naturall fruition of God enjoyed in the personall union, not to any light of a morall duty required in Jesus Christ. But 2. Wee are not to conceive that Christ's anxiety, feare and sorrow, were onelyonly imaginary, and supposed upon a mistake that had not any fundamentum in re, ground in the thing it self;No mistake in Christs soul deserted. as Jacob mourned and would not be comforted, at the supposed death of his sonne Joseph, thinking hee was torne with wild beasts, when the child was alive and safe; and as the beleever will sorrow that God hath forsaken him, and hath forgotten to be mercifull, and that hee is turned of a friend an enemy, when its not so, but a great mistake; God hath not forgotten to be mercifull, The Strength of Israel cannot repent and change. Christ's darknesse in this was negative, and naturally negative, hee looking wholly on reall sadnesse, death, wrath, the curse of the Law, but not privative, or morally and culpably privative; for Christ h…d never a wrong thought of God, hee did never bel…eve God to be changed; nor did hee upon a mis-judging of God conceive God had forsaken him, when as hee had not forsaken him, as if Christ's spirituall sense were deceived, in taking up a mis-apprehension of God, or his dispensation. And therefore that complaint, Why foreign hast thou forsaken me? hath not this meaning, as it hath in many places of Scripture,Psal. 2.1. Psal 74.1. Christ's desertion reall.Ps 2:1Ps 74:1 There is no cause why thou shouldest forsake me; for there were just causes why the Lord, at this time, should forsake his Son Christ. And therefore the forsaking of Christ was reall; because p. 64grounded upon justice. The elect had forsaken God, Christ stood in their place, to beare their iniquities, Isai. 53. that is, the punishment which the elect should have suffered eternally in hell, for their owne iniquities: And in justice God did for a time forsake his Son Christ, not onelyonly in sense and apprehension, but really. 2. Satan doth so myst and delude the weake beleevers,The judiciall mispending of our affections, and the cause thereof. that because they will not mourne, nor be humbled, for reall objects, sins, unbeleefe, mis-spending of time, which are true causes of sorrow and mourning, they waste sorrow needlesly and sinfully, the righteous dispensation of God intervening, for false and supposed causes, as through ignorance, for these things that are not sins, yet are falsly conceived to be sins; or through mis-apprehension, imagining that the Lord is changed, and become their utter enemy, when hee cannot forget them, Isai. 49.14, 15. or through mis-judging their owne state, conceiving they are reprobates, when there is no such matter. So when wee will not duely object, place and time our affections, its righteousnesse with God that wee lose our labour, and spill and feed away our affections prodigally, in a wood of thorns, for nothing; because wee doe not give them out for Christ: and so wee must sow, and never reap. But Christ could not thus lavish away his feare, sorrow, sadnesse. I know there is a forsaking in God, In what respect▪ Christ was forsaken.joyned with hatred: God neither in this sense forsook Christ, nor did Christ complaine of this forsaking. God's forsaking of him, was in regard of the influence of actuall vision, 2. of the actuall joy and comfort of union, 3. of the penall inflicting of the curse, wrath, sorrow, sadnesse, stripes, death, on the man Christ.

Vse. If Christ was put to, What shall I say? what shall I doe? How shiftlesse the sinner is in judgement.what a sad and forlorne condition are sinners in? how shiftlesse are they? Isai. 10.3. When God asketh of them, What will yee doe in the day of visitation, and in the desolation that shall come upon you from farre? to whom will yee flee for help? where will yee leave your glory? Jer. 5.31. What will yee doe in the end? Guiltinesse is a shiftlesse and a forlorne thing. Take a man pained and tormented with the stone, hee cannot lie on this side, hee turneth to the other, hee cannot lie, his couch cannot ease him; hee casteth himselfe out of the bed to the floore of the house, hee cannot rest there; no place, not Paradise, say a man were tortured up heaven before the throne, the place of p. 65glory, simply considered, should not ease him. What a desperate course doe the damned take, to se…ke dennes and rocks of the earth to hide themselves in? Canst thou lodge under the roofe of the creature, when the Creator armed with red and fierie wrath pursueth thee? And when that faileth them, and they dare not pray to God, they petition hills and mountaines to be graves above them, to bury such lumps of wrath quicke, Revel. 6.

2. I defie any man, with all his art, to be an Hypocrite,No hypocrites formally in hell and at the last judgment. and to play the Politician in hell, at the last judgement, in the houre of death, or when the conscience is wakened. A robber doth never mocke the Law and Justice at the Gallowes, what ever he doe in the woods and mountaines. Men doe cry, and weep, and confesse sinnes right downe, and in sad earnests, when Conscience speaketh out wrath, there is no mind then of Fig-leave-coverings, or of colours, veiles, masks, or excuses.

3. Conscience is a peece of eternity, a chip that f…ll from a Deity, and the neerest shaddow of God, Conscience endeth with the sinner, as it beginnes.and endeth as it begins. At first, even by it's naturall constitution, Conscience warreth against Concupiscence, and speaketh sadly out of Adam, while it is hot, and not cold-dead; I was afraid, hearing thy voice, I hid my selfe; and this it doth, Rom. 1.19. chap. 2.15. While lusts buy and bribe conscience out of office, then it cooperateth with sinne, and becommeth dead, in the end, when God shaketh an eternall rod over conscience, then it gathereth warme bloud againe, as it had in Adams daies; and hath a resurrection from death, and speaketh gravely, and terribly, without going about the bush; O how ponderous and heavy! How farre from tergiversation, cloakings, and shifting, are the words that dying Atheists utter, of the deceitfulnesse of sinne, the vanitie of the World, the terrours of God? Was not Judas in sad earnest? did Saul speake policie, when he weepeth on the Witch, and saith, I am sore distressed? Did Spira dissemble and sport, when he roared like a Beare against divine wrath?

What shall I say?

This saith,A truely wakened Conscience is spechlesse. that Christ answering for our sinnes had nothing to say; The sufferer of Satisfactorie paine, has no words of Apologie for sinne. The friend that was to bee cast in utter darknes, for comming to the Supper of the great King, without his wedding p. 66Garment, foreign, his mouth was muzled, as the mouth of a mad dog; he was speechlesse and could not barke, when Divine justice speaketh out of God. Job chap. 40. answereth ver. 4. Behold, I am vile, what shall I answer thee? I will lay my hand on my mouth. When the Church findeth justice pleading against her; It's thus, Ezech. 16.63. That thou mayest remember (thy sinnes) and be confounded, and there may bee no more an openining of a mouth, because of thy shame, when I am pacified toward thee, for all that thou hast done, saith the Lord. I grant, satisfactory justice doth not here put men to silence, but it proveth how little we can answer for sinne. Even David remembring that Shimei, and other Instruments had deservedly afflicted him, in relation to Divine justice, saith, Psalm. 39.9. I was dumbe, I opened not my mouth, because thou didst it. Three demands of Justice given in against Christ and answered by him.There were three demands of justice given in against Christ, all which hee answered: Justice put it home upon Christ. 1. All the elect have sinned, and by the law are under eternall wrath: To this claime, our Advocate and Suretie could say nothing on the contrary. It's true Lord. Christ doth satisfie the Law, but not contradict it. The very word of the Gospel answereth all these. In this regard, Christs silence was an answer; and to this, Christ said, What shall I say? I have nothing to say.

2. Thou art the sinner in Law; to this Christ answered, A body thou hast given me. The Sonne of man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give himselfe a ransome for many. Matth. 20.28. The whole Gospel saith, Christ who knew no sinne, was made sinne for us.

3. Thou must die for sinners. This was the third demand; and Christ answereth it, Psal. 40. Hebr. 10. Thou hast given me a body, here am I to doe thy will. To all these three Christ answered with silence: and though in regard of his patience to men, it be said, Esai 53.7. Hee was brought as a Lambe to the slaughter, and as a sheepe before the shearer is dumbe, so he opened not his mouth. Yet it was most true, in relation to Divine justice, and the Spirit of God hath a higher respect to Christs silence (which was a wonder to Pilate) before the bar of Gods justice. O could we by faith see God giving in a black and sad claime, a bill written within, and without, in which are all the sinnes of all the elect, from Adam to the last p. 67man; and Christ with watery eyes receiving the claime, and saying, Lord, It's just debt, crave me, what shall I say on the contrary? We should be more bold, not barely to name our sinnes, and tell them over to God, but to confesse them, and study more for the answer, of a good Conscience; by faith to substitute an Advocate, to answer the demands of Justice for our sinnes; and if men beleeved that Christ, as suretie satisfieing for their sinnes, could say nothing on the contrary, but granted all; they should not make excuses and shifts, either to wipe their mouth with the whoore, and say, I have not sinned, nor be witty to make distinctions, and shifts, and excuses to cover, mince, and extenuate their sinnes.

Father save me from this houre.

The fourth part of this complaint,Helpe neerer in trouble then we apprehend. is an answer that Faith maketh to Christs question. What shall I say? What shall I doe? Say praying wise (saith Faith) Father, save me from this houre. A word of the Coherence, then of the words. Wee often dreame, that in trouble, helpe is beyond Sea, and farre off; as farre as heaven is from earth. When help is at our elbow; and if the Spirit of Adoption bee within, the prisoner hath the Key of his owne Jayle within, in his owne hand. God was in Christs bosome, when he was in a stormy Sea, and the light of Faith saith, behold, the shore at hand. Death taketh feet and power of motion from a man; but, Psal. 23.4. yet Faith maketh a supposition, that David may walke and live, breathe in the grave, in the valley of the shaddow of death. It's the worke of Faith to keep the heate of life in the warme bloud, even among clods of clay, when the man is buried. This anxious condition Christ was in, as other straits are to the Saints, is a strait and narrow passe, there was no help for him on the right hand, nor on the left; nor before, nor behind, nor below. Christ, as David his type, Psal. 141.4. Looked round about, but refuge failed him, no man cared for his soule; but there was a way of escape above him, it was a faire easie way to heaven. The Church was in great danger and trouble of warre and desolation, when shee spake to God, Psalm. 46. Yet their faith seeing him to bee very neere them; God is our refuge and strength: true, he can save (saith sense) but that is a fowle flying in the woods, and over-Sea-hop, farre off: Not p. 68far off (saith Faith) A very present help in trouble: or a help easily, or foreign Exceedingly found in troubl…. So Psalm. 44▪9. Thou hast cast us off. Hebr. Thou art farre from us, thou hast put us to shame. What lower could the people be? Vers. 19. We are in the dungeon, in the place of dragons: We are in the cold grave, beside the wormes and corruption; and thou hast covered us with the shaddow of death, a cold bed. Yet then see what Faith saith, Vers. 20. Wee have not forgotten the name of our God. Our God is a word of great faith. And to come to Christ; his Soule was troubled; He was at, What shall I say? In a great perplexitie. Yet he hath a strong faith, both of his Father, and of his owne condition. He beleeved God to bee his Father, Christ used f…ith in tro…ble for our cause.and calleth him Father. Yea, in this hell, hee applyeth the relation of a Father to himselfe, Matth. 26.39. O my Father; this is the warmest love-thought of God; and when his comfort was ebbest, his confidence in the Covenant strongest. My God, my God, &c. Its much glory to our Lord, that Faith sparkle fire and bee hot, when comfort is cold and low. O what an honour to God, the man is slaine, and cold dead, yet he beleeves strongly the salvation of God. Christ kills the poore man, and the mans faith kisseth and hangeth about Christs neck, and sayes, If I must dye, let Christs bosome be my death-bed. Then hee must beleeve, if God was his Father, by good Logick, he must be the Sonne of God, and if God was his God, then the heire of all must claime the priviledges of all the Sons of the house in Covenant. God (I may say) was more then Christs God, and more then in covenant with God, as he was more then a servant, so more then a Sonne, then a common one, and Christs faith is so rationall, and so binding with strength of reason, that he will but use such a weapon, as we may use, even the light of Faith, and hee will claime but the common benefit of all the Sonnes in covenant, when he saith, My God, my God. What ever Papists say, if ever Christ was in hell, it is now; but see, hee hath heaven present with him in hell. If God could be apprehended by faith, in hell, as a God in covenant, then should hell become heaven to that beleeving soule. Christ tooke God, and his God, and his Father; as Jonah, a type of him, downe to the bowels of hell with him: and as we see some dying men, they lay hold on some thing p. 69dying, and dye with that in their hand; which wee call the dead-gripe: so Christ died with his Father, by faith,Christ's death-gripe. and his Spouse, in regard of love stronger then the grave, in his arms: this was Christ's death embracings, his death-kisse; and Job professeth so much. Lower hee could not be, then hee complaineth hee is, chap. 19. in all respects, of body, which was a clod of bones and skin; in regard of wife, servants, deare friends, of the hand of God in his soule. Yet vers. 25. I know that my goel, my kinsman, Redeemer liveth, and that hee shall stand the last man on the earth.

This leadeth us, in our forlorn perplexities,Vse. to follow Christ's foot-steps, both under evills of punishment and sin. The people in their captivity in Babylon, Ezek. 37. were an hoast of dead and (which is more) dry bones; the Churches in Germany, in Scotland, are dry bones, and in their graves▪ the Churches in England and Scotland, in regard of the sinfull divisions, and blasphemous opinions in the worship of God, are in a worse captivity, and lower then dry bones, and our woes are not at an end; yet the faith of many seeth, that deliverance, and union there must be, and that our graves must be opened, and that the wind of the Lord must breathe upon the dry bones, that they may live. God hath in former times opened our graves, when strange lords had dominion over us, I would wee were freed of them now also, but our yoke is heavier then it was; but God shall deliver his people from those that oppresse them.

Again, as you see in great perplexity Christ beleeved God to be his Father, and that hee himselfe was a Son; so are wee under pressures of conscience, and doubtings because of sinne, to keep precious, high, and excellent love-thoughts of Jesus Christ.

Object. 1. But what if a soule be brought to doubt of its conversion; because hee findeth no good hee either doth, Object. 1.or can doe? true faith, is a working faith.

Answ. Some so cure this, as they prove Physicians of no value to poore soules, I mean, Antinomians: For, say they, This is the disease that you in doubting of your faith, Doubtings from want of qualifications how cured.because you find not such and such qualifications in you, therefore seek a righteousnesse in your selfe, and not in Christ. I should easily grant that man's inherent righteousnesse is, in his carnall apprehension, p. 70his very Christ and Redeemer; but in the mean time, These are two carnall and fleshly extremities, and faith walketh in the middle between them. 1. Its a fleshly way to say, that, because I find sinne reigning in me, I have killed my brother, saith a Cain;Saltma…sh, Free grace. c. 5. p 92, 93 I have betrayed the Lord of glory, saith a Judas; yet I am not (saith a Libertine) to question whether I beleeve or no; for this putteth fleshly and prophane men on a conceit, Be not solicitous what you are, Two false wayes in …uring doubtings whether the soule be in Christ or no.take you no feare of serving sin and divers lusts, but beleeve, and never doubt, whether your faith be a dead, or a living faith, though you goe on to walk after the flesh; but beleeve, and doubt not whether you beleeve or no. The other extremity is of some weak Christians, who because they find that in them, that is in their flesh, dwelleth no good, and they sinne daily, find much untowardnesse and back-drawing in holy duties; therefore (say they) I have no faith, I am none of Christ's: This is a false Conclusion, drawn from a true Antecedent, and springeth from a root of selfe-seeking, and righteousnesse which wee naturally seek in our selves; for I am not, being once justified, to seek my justification in my sanctification; but being not justified, I may well seek my non-justification in my non-sanctification: as Libertines say, this is the fault of all,To argue from faint performance of duties no faith, is unjust reasoning. when it is the fault onelyonly of some weak mis-judging soules; so doe they take the Saints off from all disquietnesse and griefe of mind for neglect of spirituall duties, as if all godly sorrow and displeasure for our sinfull omissions, were nothing but a legall sorrow for want of selfe-righteousnesse, and a sinfull unbeleefe: but its formally not any such thing, but lawfull and necessary, to make the sinner goe with a low sayle, and esteem the more highly of Christ; and its onelyonly sinfull, when abused to such a legall inference, I omit this and this, I sinne in this and this, ergo, God is not my Father, nor am I his sonne.

But I hold this Position, as evidently deducible out of the Text, In the roughest and most bloudy dispensation of God toward Saints, neither soule-trouble, nor anxiety of spirit can be a sufficient ground to any, why they should not beleeve, or question their son-ship and relation to God, as their Father. Its cleare that Christ in his saddest condition beleeved, and stood to it, that God was his Father: The onelyonly question will be, If sinfull and fleshly walking be a good warrant. To which I answer, p. 71If any be a servant of sin, and walk after the flesh, and be given up to a reprobate mind to commit sin with greedinesse,How f…rre we may a…g…e to conclude no faith, from sinfull walking. such a one hath good warrant to beleeve that God is not his Father, and that hee is not in Christ; because, 2 Cor. 5.17. If any man be in Christ, hee is a new creature. If any be risen with Christ, he seeketh the things that are above, where Christ is at the right hand of God. Hee is dead, and his life is hid with Christ in God. And, Hee mortifieth his members on earth. Col. 3.1, 2, 3, 4. Hee is redeemed from this present evill world, Gal. 1.4. Hee is dead to sinnes, and liveth to righteousnesse. 1 Pet. 2.24. Hee is redeemed from his vaine conversation. 1 Pet. 1.18. Hee is the Temple of the Holy Ghost; hee is not his own, but bought with a price; and is, being washed in Christ's bloud, a King over his lusts, a Priest to offer himselfe to God, an holy, living, and acceptable sacrifice, 1 Cor. 6.19, 20. Revel. 1.5, 6. Rom. 12.1. But hee that remaineth the servant of sin, and walketh after the flesh, and is given up to a reprobate mind, &c. is no such man; ergo, such a man hath no claime to God as his Father: and upon good grounds may, and ought to question his being in Christ. OnelyOnly, let these cautions be observed. 1. It is not safe to argue from the quantity of holy walking; for many sound beleevers may find untowardnesse in wel-doing, yet must not cast away themselves for that. A smoking flaxe is not quenched by Christ, for that it hath little heat, or little light; and therefore ought not by us. 2. Beware we lean not too much to the quality of walking holily, to inferre, I fast twice a weeke, I give tithes of all I have; then, God I thanke him, I am not an hypocrite, as the Publican, and a wicked man. Sincerity is a sensible, speaking grace; its seldome in the soule without a witnesse. Lord, thou knowest that I love thee (saith Peter;) hee could answer for sincerity, but not for quantity: hee durst not answer Christ, that hee knew that hee loved him more then these. Sincerity is humble, and walketh on positives, Lord, I love thee; but dare not adventure on comparatives, Lord, I love thee more then others. 3. There be certain houres, when the beleever cannot make strong conclusions, to inferre, I am holy, therefore I am justified; because in darknesse wee see neither black nor white, and Gods light hides our case from us, that wee may be humbled, and beleeve. 4. Beleeving is surer then too frequent gathering warmnesse from our own hot skin.

p. 72Saltmarsh, and other Libertines make three Doubts that persons have, as sufficient grounds, to question their being in Christ: 1. Back-sliding. 2. The mans finding no change in the whole man. 3. Unbeleefe. Give me leave therefore in all meeknesse to offer my thoughts, in sifting and scanning this Doctrine.

This is then (saith hee) your first doubt, that you are not therefore beloved of God, Saltmarsh in hi… Free-grace, or flowings of Christs bloud, &c. c. 4. p. 79 80.or in Christ, because you fell backe againe into your sin, so as you did. Suppose I prove to you, that no sin can make one lesse beloved of God, or lesse in Christ.

Answer.

Then I shall conclude, that sinne cannot hinder the love of God to my soule.

Question.

Antinomians doubts touching the spirituall state of a s…ule, discussed and improved.This I prove▪ 1. The mercies of God are sure mercies, his love, his covenant everlasting: Paul was perswaded that neither life, nor death, &c. could separate him from the love of God. The Lord changeth not in loving sinners. 2. Whom the Lord loveth, hee loveth in his Sonne, hee accounts him as his Sonne; for hee is made to us, righteousnesse, sanctification, and redemption. But God loveth his Sonne alwayes alike; for hee is the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever: ergo, Nothing can make God love us lesse; because hee loves us not for our selves, or for any thing in our selves, &c. 3. God is not as man, or the sonne of man. Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's chosen? The foundation of God standeth sure. God's love is as himselfe, ever the same.

Answer 1. The thing in question to resolve the sinner, whether hee be loved of God, The immutability of Gods love no ground but multitudes may doubt whether they be in Christ or not.from eternity, as one chosen to glory, is never proved, because no sinne can make one lesse beloved from eternity; and sin cannot hinder the love of God, (non concluditur negatum;) for its true, sinne cannot hinder the flowings and emanation of the love of election, it being eternall; else not any of the race of mankind, God seeing them all as guilty sinners, could ever have been loved with an eternall love. But the consequence is nought, ergo, back-sliders in heart, and servants of sinne, have no ground to question, whether they be loved with the love of eternall election, or not.

2. This Physician layes downe the conclusion in question, which is to be proved, to the resolving of the mans conscience, p. 73that hee may be cured; the thing to be proved to the sick man, say hee were a Judas, wakened in conscience, is, that notwithstanding his betraying of Christ, yet God loved him with an everlasting love, and hee is in Christ. Now hee cureth Judas thus, God's love is everlasting, his covenant everlasting, no sin can hinder God to love Judas, or separate a traitor to Christ, from the love of Christ. Seperation, supposeth an union; lesse loving, supposeth loving: so he healeth the man thus; no disease can overcome or hinder the Art of such a skilled Physitian, to cure a dying man. But what if this skilled Physitian will not undertake to cure the man, nor to move his tongue for advice, nor to stirre one finger to feel the mans pulse: Ergo, The man must be cured. For if the man be a back-slider in heart and a servant of sinne, Christ never touched his pulse. He hath as yet sure grounds to question, whether he be loved of God, or be in Christ, or no; for except you prove the man to be loved with an everlasting love, you can prove nothing: And your argument will not conclude any thing for the mans peace, except you prove him to be chosen of God; which is his onelyonly question. But say that hee is loved from everlasting, and that hee is in Christ, by faith, its easie to prove, that his sinnes cannot change everlasting love, nor make him lesse beloved of God, A necessity of inherent signes and qualifications to doubting soules.nor separate him from the love of God. You must then either remove the mans doubting, from signes inherent in the man, (and if hee be a back-slider in heart, you fetch fire and water from beyond the Moone to cure him;) or you must fetch warrants to convince him, from the mind, eternall counsells of love and free grace within God; and that is all the question between the poore man and you. You cannot prove God hath loved him from everlasting, because hee hath loved him from everlasting. If Libertines in this Argument intend to prove, that a chosen convert in Christ hath no ground to question, that hee is not beloved of God, and not in Christ ▪ 1. That is nothing to the Thesis of Antinomians, maintained by all, that sinners, as sinners, are to beleeve Gods eternall love in Christ to them; and so all sinners, elect or reprobate, are to beleeve the same. 2. Its nothing to the universall commandement, that all and every one in the visible Church, wearied and loaden with sin, or not wearied and loaden, are immediatly to come to Christ and rest on him, as made of God to them their righteousnesse, sanctification, p. 74and redemption, without any inherent qualification in them. 3. Its nothing to the point of freeing all, and building a golden bridge to deliver all who are oblieged to beleeve, elect or reprobate, from doubting whether they be in Christ or not, that they may easily come to Christ, and beleeve his eternall love and redemption in him, though they be in the gall of bitternesse, and bonds of iniquity, and that immediatly. Which golden Paradise to heaven and Christ, Antinomians liberally promise to all sinners, as sinners. I cannot beleeve that its so easie a step to Christ.

How God loveth his Son Christ, and beleeve…s wit… with the same love.For the second: It's a dreame, that God loveth sinners with the same love every way, wherewith hee loveth his owne Sonne Christ. And why? Because God loveth us onelyonly for his owne Sonne, and for nothing in us Ergo, Farre more it must follow, its a farre other, an higher, fountaine love, wherewith the Father loveth his owne eternall and consubstantiall Sonne, the Mediator betweene God and man; and that derived love wherewith he loveth us sinners. As the one is 1. Naturall; the latter, free? 2. The love of the Father to the Sonne, as his consubstantiall Son, and so farre as it's essentially included in his love to Jesus Christ Mediator, is not a love founded on grace and free-mercy, which might never have beene in God; because essentially, the Father must love his Sonne Christ, as his Sonne; and being Mediator, he cannot for that renounce his naturall love to him, which is the fundamentall cause, why hee loveth us for Christ his Sonne, as Mediator; but the love wherewith the Father loveth us for his Sonne Christ, is founded on free Grace and mercy; and might possibly never have been in God. For, 1. as he could not but beget his Sonne, he could not but love him; nature, not election can have place in either: but it was his Free will to create a man, or not create him. 2. He cannot but love his Sonne Christ, but God might either have loved neither man nor Angel, so as to chuse them to Salvation, and he might have chosen other Men and Angels, then these whom he hath chosen; God hath no such freedome in loving his owne Consubstantiall Sonne. 2. Its an untruth, that God loveth his chosen ones, as he doth love his Sonne; that is, with the same degree of love, wherewith he loves his Sonne; I thinke that not farre from either grosse ignorance, or blasphemie. It possibly may bee the same love by proportion, with p. 75which the Father tendereth the Mediatour, or Redeemer, and all his saved and ransomed ones; but in regard of willing good to the creature loved, he neither loveth his redeemed with the same love, wherewith hee loveth his Sonne; except blasphemously we say, God hath as highly exalted all the redeemed, and given to them a name above every name, as he hath done to his owne Sonne; nor doth he so love all his chosen ones, as hee conferreth equall grace and glory upon all alike; as if one starre differed not from ano…her starre in glory, in the highest heavens. Our owne good works cannot make our Lord love us lesse or more, with the love of eternall election; but they may make God love us more with the love of compl…cency, and a sweeter manifestation of God in the fruits and gracious effects of his love. According to that, John 14.23. Jesus said, if a man love me, he will keepe my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

The third reason is the same with the first, and proveth nothing but a Major Poposition, not denied by the disquieted sinner, which is this: Who ever is justified and chosen, cannot be condemned; whom ever the Lord once loveth to salvation, he must alwaies love to salvation; for his love is like himselfe, and changeth not. But the disquieted sinner is chosen and loved to salvation. This Assumption is all the question: and the truth of a Major Proposition, can never prove the truth of the Assumption.

Saltmarsh, Free Grace, Chap. 4. Pag. 83.84, 85.

Because you feele not your selfe sanctified, you feare you are not justified. If you suppose that God takes in any part of your faith, repentance, new obedience, or sanctification, as a ground upon which he justifieth or forgiveth 1. you are cleare against the Word; for if it be of Workes, it is no more of Grace. 2. It must then be the onelyonly evidence you seeke for; and you aske for sanctification to helpe your assurance of justification: but take it in the Scriptures way.

1. In the Scriptures, Christ is revealed to be our sanctification. Christ is made unto us righteousnesse, sanctification. I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. Yee are Christs, but yee are sanctified, but yee are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus. He hath quickned us together with Christ. Wee are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good workes. p. 76Jesus Christ himself being the chiefe corner stone: That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that new man which after God was created in righteousnesse and true holinesse; Wee are members of his body, of his flesh, and his bones. And being found in him, not having mine own righteousnesse. I can d…e all things through Christ which strengthneth me. But Christ is all in all. Your life is hid with Christ in God, Heb. 13.20, 21. All these set forth Christ as our sanctification▪ the fulnesse of his, the all in all. Christ hath beleeved perfectly for us, he hath sorrowed for sinne perfectly, he hath obeyed perfectly, he hath mortified sinne perfectly; and all is ours, and we are Christs, and Christ is Gods.

2. The second thing is Faith about our owne sanctification we must beleeve more truth of our owne graces then we can see or feele: the Lord in his Dispensation hath so ordered, that here our life should be hid with Christ in God, that we should walke by faith, not by sight: So we are to beleeve our repentance true in him, who hath repented for us; our mortifying sinne true in him, through whom we are more then conquerors, our new obedience true in him, who hath obeyed for us, and is the end of the Law to every one that beleeveth, our change of the whole man true in him, who is righteousnesse and true holinesse. And thus without faith, its unpossible to please God. This is Scripture-assurance to see every one in himselfe as nothing, and himselfe every thing in Christ, Faith is the ground of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen. All other assurances are rotten conclusions from the Word, invented by Legall Teachers not understanding the mystery of the Kingdome of Christ. The Scriptures bid you see nothing in your selfe, or all as nothing. These teachers bid you see something in your selfe: so as the leaving out Christ in Sanctification, is the foundation of all doubts, feares, distractions. And he that looketh on his repentance, on his love, on his humility, on his obedience, and not in the tincture of the bloud of Christ, must needs beleeve weakely and vncomfortably.