Christ Exalted and Wisdom Justified, Tract 1 · Application 3
3. USE.
3. USE shall be for Examination, examine your selves whether you are in the faith: Whether you are sincere Believers, and whether Christ be precious unto you, yea or no. And that shall appear by these few following Markes.
1. Mark. If Christ be precious, Sin will be odious. Ye that love the Lord see that ye hate the thing that is Evill, and the more you love Christ the more hatefull Sin will be unto you; Joseph had the love of God rooted in his heart, and observe how he startles at his Mistresses temptation, How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? (i. e.) It were a monstrous ingratitude, and I were a Monster and no man to yeeld to it. Paul was under the power of Christs constraining love, and had prayed and laboured to be rooted and grounded in love, and to know the length and bredth and height and depth, and to know that love of Christ which passeth knowledg, and to be filled with all the fullness of God, Eph. 3.17, 18, 19. And what thoughts had he of sin, Rom. 6.1, 2. Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid: How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? This were a Paradoxe unheard of, a most Monstrous indign…ty. The wise Merchant in the Gospell, though he were exceeding rich, when he had found the pearl of great value, he did not stick at a selling all to purchase it: and he that did make a stumbling block at an omnia deseras, and because he would not forsake all, did forsake more than all, and turn his back upon Christ, stands there upon record for a notorious fool, and is as it were hang'd up in a g…bbet to the astonishment and warning of all succeeding generations. Right Eyes must be pulled out (i. e.) sinns of pleasure must be shaken hands with; Right hands and feet must be cut off (i. e.) sinns of profit, and sinns of company must be abandoned, by all such as will walk with a right, and upright foot. The plague of every ones own heart must pack, the Achan must be found out and stoned; and all sin abominated without a reservation. And as sin will be odious where Christ is precious, So the Company of Sinners will be odious. Away from me ye wicked, saith David, I will keep the Commandements of my God. Ps. 119.115 and Ps. 1.1. he proclaimes blessedness to such as have not walked in the Counsell of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, and have not sate in the seat of scorners. And Salomon Davids son was of the same mind, and having fared so ill himself by consenting to inticements, he gives faithfull experimentall Counsell to others to avoid those rocks at which he had suffered Shipwrack, for next to the fear of God, which he makes t…e Alpha or beginning of his Counsell, Pro. 1.7. and obedience to Parents, which he makes the second precept. v. 8. In the third place he enters his Caveat against sinfull Company. My son, if sinners intice thee, Consent thou not. v. 10. As if he had sayd, what ever be forgotten, remember this, or farewell all fear of God, and reverence to man, except this be heeded.
2. Mark. Those that unfainedly prize Christ, do love what he loves, and delight in those that love him. If ye love me keep my Commandements, is Christs touchstone to try sincerity from hypocrisy, golden from drossy love, Joh. 14.15. And the Apostle Saint Iohn answers it like an Echo. 1. Joh. 5.3. This is the love of God, that we keep his Commandements, and his Commandements are not grievous: Jacob testifyed the truth of his love to Rachell by serving so contentedly one Apprentiship after another, 7. and 7. yeeres, and all seemed but short for the love that he bare to her. As the Lovers of Christ doe hate sin and error, and whatsoever he hates, so they love truth, and holiness, and grace, and duty, and what he loves: Lovers and intimate friends will be all of a mind, and of like affections, not only to one another, but with one another. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, saith the Apostle, Phil. 2.5. and Believers, to whom Christ is precious, doe indeavour to walk after this rule in an universall hatred of sin, and an universall love of holiness. And let as many as be upright be thus minded. And as many as walk according to this rule, grace be multiplyed upon them, and peace shall be unto them and upon the whole Israel of God.
And as grace and obedience will be delightfull, and as meat and drink, and health, and sleep, and Musique, and recreation to such; So will the Society of the Saints be delightfull unto them. They love the Brotherhood. 1. Pet. 2.17. The Communion of Saints is their heaven upon Earth. David said all his delight was in the Saints and in such as excell in vertue.
They are in their esteem the only men of the Earth, the Charets and horsemen of Israel, the very pillars of Church and State, whom wicked men doe look asquint upon, as a few precise fooles, the troublers of Israel, and the scumne and of scouring of the world.
3. Mark. If you are sincere Believers, and Christ be precious indeed unto you, then Your hearts will be dead to all other delights, and alive only to Christ, and to things that please him. Christ hath out-bid all the things that you counted vantage: hear Paul, the things that were gain unto me I count losse for Christ, yea, doubtless and I doe count all things but losse, he did it and he doth it, and did resolve to goe on doing it, yea, to count them dung foreign doggs dung, that I may win Christ. As the starrs set when the sun rises, so doe all the twinkling, and tinkling delights of the world and flesh vanish, when Christ the sun of righteousness arises, and makes it day in you hearts, which were before darkness. The profits, pleasures and honours are like the white of an egge, rastless things with you, and the lusts of the flesh have no more savour than a chip, yea, they are the very gall of bitterness to such as are gotten out of the gall of bitterness, and bond of iniquity. When you are truely brought over unto Christ, That day Salvation comes unto your house, and the Lord Jesus only will be exalted in that day.
4. Mark: If Christ be pretious, You will daily covet more and more of him, I forget that which is behind, sayth the Apostle, and reach out unto the things that are before, and presse forward towards the mark for the price of the high calling which is in Christ Jesus. Philip. 3.13, 14. Those that like the spouse in the Canticles are love sick for Christ are like such as are sick of a dropsy: quo plus sunt potae plus sitiuntur aquae, the more they drink, the more they thirst: Whosoever eat of that bread of life shall never hunger, and whosoever drink of that water of life shall never thirst: Longè aberit a siti satietas, longè à satietate fastidium, quoniam sitientes saturabimur, & saturati sitiemus: To be filled with Christ is a fullness far from lacking, and from loathing, for the more believers do hunger, the more they are filled, and the fuller they are the more they hunger: True grace is like true light, progressive still, waxing more and more unto the perfect day, adherence will be reaching after Evidence, faith after feeling: When a Mother hath conceived, and feeles the babe stirring in her womb, she will be ever a longing till she have him in her armes, and when old Simeon had Christ in's armes, he had not enough of that, he desired then to depart in peace, to depart from him to be ever with him: Old Moses, the more God was upon the yeelding hand the more he coveted, All his grace to goe before him would not quiet him, he must see his glory, see, Exod. 33.18, 19. And Paul the aged, having enjoyed much consolation by Christs being with him, he must have more, to be with Christ, though he dyed for it, Phil. 1.23. I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ, which is far better. foreign in the originall, a positive and two comparatives, much more, better; or as others render it foreign a positive, comparative, and superlative; much, more, most excellent, a degree, though the highest that art uses, yet many degrees too low to expresse the Excellency of the happiness there spoken of.
5. Mark. If Christ be precious, and you be true Believers indeed, then you will be willing to doe, to suffer, to be any thing for Christ.
1. To doe: though they be most costly duties and Services: What said David when that noble Jebusite Araunah offered to him gratis a sacrifice to offer to his God? Nay but I will have it at the full value, neither wil… I offer unto my God a sacrifice that shall cost me nothing. 2. Sam. 24.24. Costly serv…ces are our cleerest Evidences of sincerity, and bring us in the largest Incomms of sweetest Consolations. The hardest piece of self-denyall, and sowrest knot of Mortification will not be scrupled and layd by, by a sound believer, and one that accounts Christ precious. To forgive wrongs, especially aggravated ones, To pray for Enemies, especially stubborn ones, duri sermones, they are hard sayings, but the soul bound for heaven is resolved to goe through thick and thin, rather than lose that testimony of an excusing conscience to be able to say with the marking angel. Ezek. 9.11. Lord all is done that thou hast commanded.
2. To suffer. 1. Losse of Name is nothing, when Christ raises their bodies, he will raise their names too, if he doe not cleer up their innocency before death, and make their righteousness as cleer as the light, and their just dealing as the Noon day.
2. Losse of Estate is little set by, Caracciolus that noble Marquesse being sollicited with variety of temptations to renounce the Gospel, and return to Popery, chose to forsake Father, Wife, Children, Friends, Patrimony and all, saying to this effect. Let their riches perish with them that think the wealth of the whole world, though it could be injoyed for ever, to be worth one daies freedome in injoying the Lord Jesus Christ. See Calvin. his Epistle dedicatory before his Commentary on 1. Cor.
3. Thirdly losse of liberty is nothing, the Martyrs, and Saints have not only found Gods service, but sufferings for Christ to be perfect freedome: We read that God was with Joseph when he was in prison, and his closest imprisonment with such Company must needes be sweeter than his freest inlargment; some of the Martyrs have dated their Letters, which the spirit of God indited, from the Paradise of such and such a Prison, and God usually gives out himself most unto his servants, when they have the least of the world to hinder the enjoyment: The promise runs so and heaven and Earth shall sooner passe away, than the least tittle of it shall be falsifyed, Mark. 10.29, 30. Jesus answered and sayd, verily I say unto you. There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or Sisters, or Father, or Mother, or Wife, or Children, or lands for my sake, and the Gospells, but he shall receive an hundred fold now in this time, Houses, and Brethren, and Sisters, and Mothers, and Children, and Lands with persecutions, and in the world to come Eternall life.
3. Losse of life is much undervalued by such as prize Christ. Tell Paul of going to prison, and he replies, I am not ready only to be bound, but to die also for the name of the Lord Jesus. As Baldassar that undaunted Dutchman, and valiant Champion of Jesus Christ, When Oecolampadius wrote to h…m to forearm him by forewarning him of his sufferings, replyed most couragiously, and as it became the Lord Jesus Christ. Veniat verbum domini, veniat, Et submittemus illi sexcenta, si nobis essent, Colla: Let the word of the Lord come, let it come, and we will submit to it, if we had sixe hundred lives.
3. To be: When Michol scoffed David for dauncing before the Ark, he replyed, I will be yet more vile for the Lord, when he that thought it no robbery to be equall with God, took upon him our nature, the form of a servant, and our sin, and shame, and became obedient to death, even the death of the Cross, oh what low estate of being should we submit to, to advance Christ, as John Baptist gloried that he must decrease in Christs increasings: Moses and Paul chose to be castawaies, and separated from God and Christ, that God and Christ might receive glory by it, yea, we should choose not only to be vilifyed, but to be nullifyed, not only to be little, but to be nothing, so that Christ may be exalted.
6. Mark, If Christ be precious, then you will indeavour to be like him. Whom will men imitate most, but those whom they love best, and prize most. Be ye followers of me, saith the Apostle, as I am a follower of Christ. 1. Cor. 11.1. Learn of me, saith Christ, Mat. 11.29. Be ye followers of Christ as dear Children, sayth Saint Paul, Eph. 5.1. It is suitableness that causes delight and Estimation: Simile gaudet simili: Saints must be holy as Christ is holy, if they would delight themselves in him. What is it that makes the heaven of happiness to be heaven, and to be accounted the place of happiness unto them; but because they are brought thither through an heaven of holiness, and conducted through the porch of grace into the pallace of glory.
7. Mark, If Christ be precious unto you, you will desire to be with him. You will not only look back with a loving eye upon Christ come in the flesh, but you will look forward with a longing Eye upon his second coming. The lovers of Christ doe love his appearing, 2. Tim. 4.8. They will wait for their change with Job, Job. 14.14. They will look for it and live for it, as Saint Peter expresses, 2. Pet. 3.12. What manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, waiting for and hasting to the coming of that day of God. And because they think his Charriot wheeles are long a coming, they doe not only pray thy Kingdom come, Mat. 6.10. But they cry, come Lord Jesus, come quickly, Revel. 22.20.