light. Wherefore, when your courage begins to shrink at the difficulty of your warfare, do but lift up your eyes to the recompense of reward; and to be sure, if you have any heart, that will inspire you with such a brave resolution, as nothing will be too hard for you but what is absolutely impossible. For how can we be disheartened at any superable difficulty, so long as we are animated with the persuasion, that if we have our fruit unto holiness, our end shall be everlasting life? SECT. V. Concerning those duties which appertain to the perfection and consummation of our Christian warfare, shewing what they are, and how effectually they conduce to the perfecting us in the virtues of the heavenly life. I PROCEED now to the third and last part of our Christian warfare, viz. the consummation of it; which is final perseverance: for after we have actually engaged, and made some progress in it, our next care and duty is, that we do not relapse, and basely retreat from what we have so prosperously undertaken, and hitherto so effectually prosecuted, but that so long as we live, we persist in an open defiance to our sins, and endeavour to pursue and mortify our inclinations to them, and persevere in the practice of all virtue; still endeavouring thereby to improve and grow on to perfection, that so we may die as we have hitherto lived, and consummate our warfare in a final victory; and that when our Lord shall come, or send his herald, death, to summon us off from the field, we may be found fighting under his banner against sin, the world, and the Devil, and finally die as we have lived, his faithful soldiers and followers. For this he indispensably exacts of us, viz. that we should be faithful unto death, Rev. ii. 10. that we should patiently continue in well doing, Rom. ii. 7. that we should endure to the end, Matt. x. 22. and hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end, Heb. iii. 14. that we should keep his works to the end, and finally overcome as well as fight, Rev. ii. 26. In a word, that haring set our hands to the plough, we should not look back, Luke ix. 62. but that we should be always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as we know that our labour is not in vain in the Lord, 1 Cor. xv. 58. The sense of all which is, that we should not only begin this our Christian warfare, and prosecute it for a while, but that we should proceed and persevere in it as long as we breathe, and never lay down our arms till we lay down our lives. In order to which, as we must still persevere in the practice of those duties which appertain to the course and progress of our warfare, so there are sundry other duties which we must practise, and which have a more direct and immediate influence upon the final success and consummation of it. All which I shall reduce to the following particulars : 1. That while we stand we should not be overconfident of ourselves, but still keep a jealous eye upon the weakness and inconstancy of our own natures. 2. That if at any time we wilfully fall and miscarry, we should immediately arise again by repent ance. 3. That to prevent the like falls and miscarriages for the future, we should endeavour to withdraw our affections from the temptations of the world, but more especially from those which were the occasions of our fall. 4. That we should more curiously search into the smaller defects and indecencies of our nature, in order to our reforming and correcting them. 5. That, so far as lawfully we can, we should live in a close communion with the church, whereof we are members. 6. That we should not, out of a fond opinion that we are good enough already, stint our progress in religion to any determinate degree or measure of goodness. 7. That we should frequently entertain ourselves with the prospect of our mortality, and endeavour to compose ourselves beforehand into a good posture of dying. 8. That, in order thereunto, we should be wondrous careful to discharge our consciences of all the relics and remains of our past guilt. 9. That to compensate for these, so far as we are able, we should take care to redeem the time we have formerly spent in sinful courses, by being doubly diligent in the exercise of all the contrary virtues, and the doing all the contrary good we are able. 10. That we should labour after a rational and well-grounded assurance of heaven. I. To the perfection and consummation of our Christian warfare, it is necessary that while we stand, we should not be over-confident of ourselves, but still keep a jealous eye upon the weakness and inconstancy of our own natures. For thus the apostle declares it to be the will of God, that we should not trust in ourselves, i. e. rely too much upon our own strength and ability, 2 Cor. i. 9. and elsewhere he admonishes, Let him that thinks he stands (or, the present being put for the future, as it is very frequently, Let him that thinks he shall stand) take heed lest he fall, 1 Cor. x. 12. so also Rom. xi. 20. Thou standest by faith; be not highminded, but fear; i. e. it is thy faith that upholds thee; but be not too secure of thy support, lest thou also fall and perish, as thy brethren the Jews have done before thee. And hence we are bid to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, Phil. ii. 12. i. e. with a holy solicitude and jealousy, lest one time or other we should be tempted and overcome, and at the last finally miscarry. And indeed there is nothing doth more expose men to the hazard of falling, than too much confidence in their own strength. This makes them venture upon a thousand temptations which they might have fairly, and much more prudently avoided; and hurries them hand over head into such inviting occasions and opportunities of sinning, as do too often inveigle and betray them, in despite of all their good resolutions to the contrary. Whereas, had they but suspected themselves, and not presumed too much upon their own steadfastness, they would many a time have kept out of harm's way, and avoided the snares that did entangle them but by venturing, like Samson, to lay down their heads in a Delilah's lap, in confidence of the strength of their own resolution, they have been insensibly enticed, after some coy refusals, to betray themselves into the snare of the Devil. And as through an overweening confidence of our own strength we expose ourselves to many needless temptations, so we do also too often provoke God to withdraw his grace and assistance from us, and to leave us to contend alone with those temptations whereunto we do so confidently expose ourselves. For as he is always ready to assist us, so he always expects that we should acknowledge our need of and dependence upon him, and not presume too much upon our own strength, which, without his gracious concurrence, is weakness and impotence. When therefore without God's call and warrant we will needs rush into temptations, in confidence of our own ability to resist and conquer them, he many times leaves us without his aid and assistance, that so he may chastise our presumption, by permitting us to be defeated, and convince us, by the woful experiment of our fall, how unable we are to stand without his aid and support. It is our daily prayer that God would not lead us into temptation; but if for our trial he thinks meet to do so, we have all assurance, that if we be not wanting to ourselves, he will not suffer us to be tempted above what we are able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that we may be able to bear it, 1 Cor. x. 13. But if we will lead ourselves into temptation, in confidence of our own ability to contend with and break through it, God is so far from being obliged to second us in our folly and unwarrantable rashness, that he is justly provoked by it to abandon us to ourselves, and, as a certain consequence of that, to permit us to be vanquished and led captive. Wherefore as we hope to persevere to the end, and to bring our warfare to a happy conclusion, it is highly necessary that we should always keep a jealous eye upon ourselves, and not confide too much in our own strength and ability. |