The Bruised Reed and Smoking Flax

By Richard Sibbes

Scripture is quoted from the ESV.

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Dedication

To Sir Horatio Vere, Lord Vere of Tilbury, General of the English Forces serving the High and Mighty Lords the States General of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, and to his devout wife, Lady Mary Vere

Increase of grace, and every blessing.

Right Honourable,

Soldiers who carry their lives in their hands need, more than anyone, to carry grace in their hearts. Then, having made peace with God, they are fit to face men; and having disarmed death through faith in Christ before they die, they can give up their lives with greater courage and comfort. To neglect this, when it is a matter of eternity, is not bravery but desperate madness. In this business, as in the oversights of war, there is no room for a second repentance, because the first mistake can't be undone. Where evils are beyond our strength to overcome or our patience to endure, God has planted the instinct of fear in us, to stir us to escape the danger by running to him in Christ. If he is our friend, it hardly matters who our enemy is. We may be killed, but we can't be hurt. It is that safe to serve under the one who has command over death, hell, judgment and everything else we most fear.

Yet such is our nature that familiarity with danger hardens us to it by degrees, without our noticing. We come to look no further than death, as if dying were only giving up the ghost and then an end of everything. That is why men who follow the wars are generally thought not to be very religious. All the more respect, then, is due to those of that profession who have learned on what terms to live and die, who are sure of a better life before they leave this one, and who have laid up their life in Christ. Among these, Right Honourable, the world has long taken notice of you. In you, religion and military service, gentleness of spirit and height of courage, humility and honour, have met in a rare and happy combination. You have done much to clear your profession of the common charge against it. You have shown that godliness can enter tents and follow armies, and that God has his Joshuas and his Corneliuses in every age. But I will not say much about yourself to yourself, because although you have done much that may and will be spoken of, you don't like to hear or speak of what you have done.

It may seem unfitting to offer a discourse on a "bruised reed" to such a strong and flourishing cedar. But experience shows that the strongest plants in God's house are sometimes exposed to the strong winds of temptation and get bruised, so that they may know better by whose strength they stand, and so that the greatest may learn to go out of themselves to the same rock and fountain of strength as the humblest. David was a valiant man; yet through his repeated failures and recoveries he became, before God, like a weaned child. Lowliness of mind toward God and greatness of spirit against his enemies go well together, for the way to rise above everything else is first to submit to God.

Besides, this text speaks of the prevailing government of Christ in his church and in his children. That may encourage your Lordship to go on owning the cause of Christ in these times, when men are ashamed of what they should boast in and boast in their shame; and also to fight the Lord's battles when called to it and help him against the mighty, for in the end victory goes with Christ. God may suffer his enemies to prevail for a time, to avenge the quarrel of his covenant and to harden them further. Even so, they have taken up a damned cause, and however justly the church has provoked God, the cause itself will stand unshaken against every created power of devils and men. We all naturally desire victory, and many desire it more than truth or goodness, which alone are victorious. So, out of a warped judgment, they work against their own desires, seeking to win where it would be safer for them to lose. Such people are sure to meet shame in the end instead of victory, unless we deny that Christ is King of his church and Judge of the world.

Press on, Honourable Lord, to stand for Christ in peace and in war. It will be found to your honour when Christ comes "to be glorified in his saints" (2 Thessalonians 1:10, ESV), and counts you worthy to be honoured by him, while those who oppose or betray his cause for base ends will not dare to lift up their heads.

I wouldn't want to separate you from your Honourable Lady. I am indebted to you both, and you are one, as in other bonds so in that bond above nature, your love for the best things. You are both examples in every godly course, and both, in your places, have been employed in great services for the common good, so that not only this country but foreign states are bound to bless God for you both. As you go on in these ways, you will find God keeping his promise to honour those who honour him.

I don't overvalue this poor work so far as to think it worthy of your Honours. I simply thought it right to show my deserved respect to you both. If I am to blame for letting these sermons, preached long ago, come out like this, others must share the blame with me, since matters had reached the point where I almost had to take this course. May the Lord continue to bless your Honours and all your family, and keep his grace alive in you, "until he brings justice to victory" (Matthew 12:20, ESV).

Your Honours' servant in the Lord,

RICHARD SIBBES

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To the General Reader

Why these sermons are published, and what they are for

To head off a further inconvenience, I was drawn to let these notes go out after some review. Some people who hadn't taken them down accurately were planning to publish them, and these were the sermons nearest to hand. I had also recently been thinking afresh about this subject through dealing with some people whose chief trouble was that they hadn't considered the gracious nature and office of Christ. A right understanding of that is the spring of all service to Christ and all comfort from him.

Christ's gentle heart

God has laid up all grace and comfort in Christ for us, and has planted a wonderful sweetness of pity and love in his heart toward us. As God his Father fitted him with a body (Hebrews 10:5), so he fitted him with a heart to be a merciful Redeemer. What do the Scriptures speak of but Christ's love and tender care for those who are humbled? And besides the mercy that rests in his own heart, he works the same impression in his ministers and others, so that they comfort the feeble-minded and bear with the weak (1 Thessalonians 5:14). Ministers, by their calling, are friends of the Bride, whose work is to bring Christ and his Spouse together. So they should take every good opportunity to lay open all the excellencies of Christ. He is highborn and mighty, the one "in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom" (Colossians 2:3, ESV); but he is also gentle, good-natured and gracious.

It can't help but cheer the heart of the Spouse, amid all the weaknesses and miseries she is subject to, to know that she has a husband of a kind disposition, who knows how to show the weaker vessel the honour of gentle treatment. He is so far from rejecting her because she is weak that he pities her the more. And as he is kind at all times, he is kind above all when it is most needed. He will "speak tenderly to her", especially in the wilderness (Hosea 2:14).

Satan's work against this comfort

The more glory this brings to God, and the more comfort to a Christian soul, from believing and applying these truths, the harder the enemy of God's glory and of human comfort works to breed false persuasions about them. If he can't keep people from heaven and bring them into the cursed condition he is in himself, he can at least trouble them on the way. Some of them, and not the worst, he prevails with so far that they neglect the means of grace, for fear that, being so sinful, they would dishonour God and add to their sins. So they lie smothering under this temptation, bound hand and foot by Satan, not daring to come out to Christ, and yet secretly held up by a spirit of faith that shows itself in hidden sighs and groans to God. These people are deceived by false pictures of Christ, when all his ways toward them are ways of mercy and all his thoughts are thoughts of love.

The more Satan labours to keep the soul in darkness, the more care we should take to settle the soul on what will hold it up. There are many grounds on which to build our faith:

- the free offer of grace to all who will receive it (Revelation 22:17);
- the gracious invitation to all who are weary and burdened (Matthew 11:28);
- the call to those who have no money to buy (Isaiah 55:1);
- the command that binds us to believe (1 John 3:23);
- the danger of not believing, since unbelief shuts us up as prisoners under the guilt of every other sin (John 16:9);
- the sweet entreaty to believe, and the appointing of ambassadors to plead for peace (2 Corinthians 5:20), with tender affections put into them to match their calling;
- the sacraments, ordained to seal the covenant.

Besides all these and similar moving reasons, there is one that gives strength and vigour to the rest: they all come from Christ, a person with full authority, and from the heart that moved him not only to become a man but to become a curse for us. That is why he "will not quench a smouldering wick" or flax. It strengthens faith to remember that every expression of his love flows from his nature, and his nature doesn't change.

The greatness of mercy, and the Spirit who makes it ours

God knows that just as we are prone to sin, so when conscience is thoroughly awakened we are just as prone to despair over sin. So he wants us to know that in the covenant of grace he sets himself to triumph in Christ over the greatest evils and enemies we fear. His thoughts are not our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8). He is God and not man (Hosea 11:9). There are heights and depths and breadths of mercy in him, far above all the depths of our sin and misery (Ephesians 3:18). We can never be in such a forlorn condition that there is ground for despair, since our sins are the sins of men and his mercy is the mercy of an infinite God.

Yet although it is clearer than the sunbeams that a broken-hearted sinner ought to embrace mercy so strongly pressed on him, there is no truth the heart shuts itself against more, especially when it feels its misery, which is just when the soul is most ready for mercy. It stays shut until the Holy Spirit sprinkles the conscience with the blood of Christ and pours his love into the heart, so that the blood of Christ in the conscience may cry louder than the guilt of sin. Only God's Spirit can lift the conscience above guilt with comfort, because only he is greater than the conscience. People may speak comfort, but only Christ's Spirit can comfort. Peace is "the fruit of the lips" (Isaiah 57:19, ESV), yet it has to be created to be so. No creature can take wrath off the conscience except the one who put it on. We can use every persuasive argument there is, but it works only when the Holy Spirit persuades effectively, by a kind of divine rhetoric. That should lift our hearts to the one who is the Comforter of his people, that he would seal this comfort to our souls.

God deals with people as thinking creatures, and so the way he works on their consciences is by friendly conversation: entreaty, persuasion, and a showing of his love in Christ and of Christ's gracious readiness to receive even the weakest and lowest of men. Loquitur Deus ad modum nostrum, agit ad modum suum: God speaks in our way, but acts in his own. So, since he is pleased to enter the heart and settle peace there by such means, we should reverently value all these sanctified helps. Among them is this comforting description of Christ given by God the Father, which lets us go boldly to the throne of grace in every need.

Comfort is for those who submit to Christ's rule

But we must know that this comfort belongs only to those who give themselves up to Christ's government, who are willing to be ordered by him in everything. In this passage of Scripture two things are joined: mercy to bruised reeds, and government that gradually overcomes corruption. Christ favours weak ones in such a way that he shapes their souls into a better condition than they are in. It can't be otherwise. A soul looking for mercy will at the same time submit to be guided. The relationships of husband, head and shepherd imply not only gentleness and mercy but government too. When we become Christians in earnest, we aren't set free from all service; we only change our Lord.

So if anyone living an evil life snatches at comforts before they are offered, let them know they do it at their own risk. It is like an ignorant man walking into a chemist's shop stocked with every kind of medicine and taking whatever is nearest, poison perhaps instead of medicine. There is not one word of comfort in the whole book of God meant for people who cherish sin in their hearts (Psalm 66:18), even if they don't act on it in their lives. Their only comfort is that the sentence of damnation hasn't yet been carried out, and so there is still time for safer thoughts and resolutions. Otherwise they stand not only convicted but condemned by the word, and Christ, who rides the white horse (Revelation 6:2), will spend all his arrows on them and wound them to death. If anyone congratulates himself in an evil way, God's wrath will burn against him to the depths of hell.

We can expect no more comfort from Christ than we show care to please him. To make him a backer of a lawless and loose life is to turn him into a fantasy, and worse, into the likeness of the one whose works he came to destroy (1 John 3:8). That is the most detestable idolatry of all. One way the Spirit of Christ prevails in his people is by keeping them from such thoughts. Yet we see people building themselves a religion that pleases the flesh and suits their own ends. Being empty in substance, it will prove empty in fruit, like a house built on sand.

The aim of it all

The main aim of everything that follows is to draw us to welcome Christ's mild, safe, wise and victorious government, and to leave people with no excuse for refusing to let Christ rule over them, when they see salvation not only strongly won but sweetly dispensed by him. His government is not for his own pleasure but for our good. We are saved by a way of love, so that love may be kindled in us toward God in return, because this affection melts the soul and moulds it to every duty and every acceptable way of doing it. What God looks for is love in our duties, more than the duties themselves. This is the true gospel disposition, which comes from Christ's love for us and our love for him in return. It is not a fear of coming to him as if we were taking an elephant by the tooth. It is almost a basic mistake to think God delights in slavish fears, when the fruits of Christ's kingdom are "righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" (Romans 14:17, ESV). From that mistake come weak, slavish, superstitious ideas.

Two things trouble the peace of Christians very much: their weaknesses clinging to them, and the fear of not holding out in future. This text contains a remedy for both. Christ is shown here as a mild Saviour to weak ones, and for the time to come his powerful care and love never let up "until he brings justice to victory". That is why the means of salvation, the grace worked through those means, and glory, which is grace made perfect, all come so often under one name, the kingdom of God: those whom he brings to grace by means, he will bring to glory by grace.

This also makes the thought of the last judgment comforting. The one who will then be our judge can't help but judge in favour of those who have been ruled by him here. Those he guides with his counsel he brings to glory (Psalm 73:24). If our faith were only as firm as our standing in Christ is secure and glorious, what sort of people we would be!

A word about the manner of the book

If I had tried to write in a lofty style, I would have missed my aim and worked against my subject. Shall we who are servants snuff out the weak sparks that our Lord himself is pleased to cherish? I would rather risk the criticism of some than hinder the good of others, and if these few observations further that good in any way, I have what I aimed at. I never meant a treatise, only an opening up of a text. Whatever more I am drawn to do in this kind will come by degrees, as leisure allows amid many interruptions. May the Lord guide our hearts, tongues and pens, for his glory and the good of his people.

RICHARD SIBBES

Chapter 1

The Text Opened: What the Reed Is, and What the Bruising Means

"A bruised reed he will not break, and a smouldering wick he will not quench, until he brings justice to victory." (Matthew 12:20, ESV)

The prophet's vision of Christ

The prophet Isaiah is lifted up and carried on the wing of the prophetic Spirit. He passes over all the time between himself and the appearing of Jesus Christ in the flesh, sees Christ as present with the eye of prophecy and the eye of faith, and presents him in God's name to the spiritual eye of others in these words: "Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights" (Isaiah 42:1, ESV). Saint Matthew quotes this passage as now fulfilled in Christ (Matthew 12:18). Two things are set out in it:

First, Christ's calling to his office.
Secondly, how he carries it out.

Christ's calling

God calls him here his righteous servant. Christ was God's servant in the greatest piece of service there has ever been: a chosen servant, and a choice one. Everything he did and suffered, he did and suffered by commission from the Father. Here we see God's sweet love for us, that he counts the work of our salvation through Christ his greatest service, and will put his only beloved Son to it.

He might well put "Behold" in front, to raise our thoughts to the highest pitch of attention and wonder. In times of temptation, troubled consciences look so hard at the trouble they are in that they need to be roused to behold the one in whom their distressed souls can find rest. In temptation it is safest to look at nothing but Christ, the true bronze serpent, the true Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Looking at him has a special power to comfort the soul, especially if we look not only at Christ but at the Father's authority and love in him. In all that Christ did and suffered as Mediator, we must see God in him "reconciling the world to himself" (2 Corinthians 5:19, ESV).

What a support to our faith this is: God the Father, the one offended by our sins, is so well pleased with the work of redemption! And what a comfort, that since God's love rests on Christ, and he is pleased with him, we may conclude that he is just as pleased with us, if we are in Christ! His love rests on the whole Christ, on the mystical Christ as well as the natural, because he loves Christ and us with one love. So let us embrace Christ, and in him God's love, and build our faith safely on a Saviour who has been given so high a commission.

See here, for our comfort, the sweet agreement of all three persons. The Father gives the commission to Christ; the Spirit equips and sets him apart for it; Christ himself carries out the office of Mediator. Our redemption rests on the joint agreement of all three persons of the Trinity.

How he carries out his calling

His way of carrying it out is described as modest, without noise, without raising dust by any grand arrival, as princes do. "He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street" (Isaiah 42:2, ESV). His voice was in fact heard, but what voice? "Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden" (Matthew 11:28, ESV). He cried out, but how? "Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters" (Isaiah 55:1, ESV). And as his coming was modest, it was also mild, which is said in these words: a bruised reed he will not break. In this we may notice three things.

First, the condition of those Christ had to deal with. They were bruised reeds, and they were smouldering flax.

Secondly, Christ's conduct toward them. He did not break the bruised reed or snuff out the smouldering flax. More is meant than is said: he will not only not break the bruised reed or snuff out the flax, he will cherish them.

Thirdly, the constancy and progress of his tender care, "until he brings justice to victory". That is, until the sanctified frame of grace begun in their hearts is brought to such perfection that it prevails over all the corruption that opposes it.

The condition of those Christ deals with

Take the first. The people he had to deal with were bruised reeds and smouldering flax: not trees but reeds, and not whole reeds but bruised ones. The church is compared to weak things: to a dove among the birds, to a vine among the plants, to sheep among the beasts, to a woman, who is the weaker vessel. And here God's children are compared to bruised reeds and smouldering flax. We will speak of them first as bruised reeds, and then as smouldering flax.

They are bruised reeds before their conversion, and often after. Before conversion all are bruised, except those brought up in the church whom God has been pleased to show his grace from childhood; and even they are bruised in different degrees, as God sees fit. People differ in temperament, abilities and manner of life, and God also differs in what he intends to use them for in future. Usually he empties people of themselves and makes them nothing before he uses them in any great service.

So this bruised reed is a person who:

1. is, for the most part, in some misery, as were those who came to Christ for help;
2. is brought by that misery to see that sin is the cause of it, for whatever pretences sin makes, bruising and breaking is where it ends;
3. feels sin and misery even to the point of being bruised;
4. sees no help in himself and is driven by a restless desire to be supplied from another, with some hope that lifts him a little out of himself toward Christ, though he doesn't dare claim any present share in mercy.

This spark of hope, opposed by doubts and fears that rise from corruption, makes him like smouldering flax. So the two together, bruised reed and smouldering flax, make up the state of a poor, distressed person. Our Saviour calls such a person "poor in spirit" (Matthew 5:3, ESV): someone who sees a lack, sees that he is in debt to divine justice, and sees no way of supply from himself or any creature. So he mourns, and on some hope of mercy from the promise and from the examples of those who have received mercy, he is stirred up to hunger and thirst for it.

Chapter 2

Those Christ Deals With Are Bruised: Why Bruising Is Needed Before and After Conversion

Why we need bruising before conversion

This bruising is needed before conversion, for several reasons.

First, so that the Spirit may make a way for himself into the heart by levelling all proud, high thoughts, and so that we may understand ourselves to be what we really are by nature. We love to wander away from ourselves and be strangers at home, until God bruises us with one cross or another. Then we come to our senses and come home to ourselves, like the prodigal son (Luke 15:17). It is a marvellously hard thing to bring a dull and shifty heart to cry for mercy and mean it. Our hearts are like criminals: until they are beaten from every evasion, they never cry for the mercy of the Judge.

Secondly, this bruising makes us set a high price on Christ. Then the gospel is the gospel indeed, and the fig leaves of morality will do us no good.

Thirdly, it makes us more thankful, and fourthly, out of thankfulness, more fruitful in our lives. What makes so many people cold and barren, but that being bruised for sin never made God's grace precious to them?

Fifthly, it steadies us in God's ways, having had knocks and bruises in our own. This is often the reason for relapses and abandonment of the faith: people never smarted for sin at the start, and weren't under the lash of the law long enough.

So this lesser work of the Spirit, bringing down proud thoughts (2 Corinthians 10:5), is necessary before conversion. And for the most part, to further the work of conviction, the Holy Spirit joins some affliction to it, which, when sanctified, has a healing and purging power.

Why we need bruising after conversion

We need bruising after conversion too, for two reasons.

First, so that reeds may know themselves to be reeds and not oaks. Even reeds need bruising, because of the pride that remains in our nature, and to show us that we live by mercy.

Secondly, so that weaker Christians won't be too discouraged when they see stronger ones shaken and bruised. Peter was bruised when he wept bitterly (Matthew 26:75). Until he met that bruise, this reed had more wind in him than pith: "Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away" (Matthew 26:33, ESV). God's people can't do without such examples. The heroic deeds of the great saints don't comfort the church so much as their falls and bruises do. So David was bruised (Psalm 32:3-5) until he came to a free confession with no deceit in his spirit; his sorrows even grew, in his own feeling, to the sharp pain of broken bones (Psalm 51:8). So Hezekiah complains that God "breaks all my bones" like a lion (Isaiah 38:13). So Paul, the chosen vessel, needed a messenger of Satan to torment him, lest he be puffed up beyond measure (2 Corinthians 12:7).

What we learn from this

From this we learn not to pass too harsh a judgment on ourselves or others when God exercises us with bruise upon bruise. We are to be conformed to our Head, Christ, who "was crushed for our iniquities" (Isaiah 53:5, ESV), so that we may know how much we owe him. Godless people, ignorant of God's ways in bringing his children to heaven, condemn broken-hearted Christians as desperate, when God is doing a gracious and good work with them. It is no easy matter to bring a person from nature to grace, and from grace to glory, so stubborn and unmanageable are our hearts.

Chapter 3

Christ Will Not Break the Bruised Reed

The mercy of Christ

The second point is that Christ will not "break the bruised reed". Physicians may put their patients to a great deal of pain, but they won't destroy nature; they raise it up by degrees. Surgeons will lance and cut, but they won't dismember. A mother with a sick and fretful child doesn't throw it out. And shall there be more mercy in the stream than in the spring? Shall we think there is more mercy in ourselves than in God, who plants the instinct of mercy in us?

To say more about Christ's mercy to all bruised reeds, consider the comforting relationships he has taken on himself, husband, shepherd, brother and the rest, which he will fulfil to the utmost. Shall others, by his grace, do what he calls them to do, and not he, who out of love has taken these relationships on himself, so firmly founded on his Father's appointment and his own free undertaking? Consider the names he borrows from the gentlest creatures, lamb, hen and so on, to show his tender care. Consider his very name, Jesus, Saviour, given him by God himself. Consider his office, which fits his name: he is to "bind up the brokenhearted" (Isaiah 61:1, ESV). At his baptism the Holy Spirit sat on him in the shape of a dove, to show that he would be a dove-like, gentle Mediator.

The gracious way he fills his offices

See how graciously he carries out his offices. As a prophet, he came with a blessing in his mouth: "Blessed are the poor in spirit" (Matthew 5:3, ESV). He invited to himself the very people whose hearts brought up the most objections against themselves: "Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden" (Matthew 11:28, ESV). How his heart went out when "he saw the crowds" and "had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd" (Matthew 9:36, ESV)! He never turned away anyone who came to him, though some went away of their own accord.

As a priest, he came to die for his enemies. In the days of his flesh he gave his disciples a form of prayer and put petitions to God into their mouths, and he puts his Spirit to intercede in their hearts. Now he makes intercession in heaven for weak Christians, standing between God's anger and them. He shed tears for those who shed his blood.

As a king, he is meek. He will let mourners into his presence; he is a king of poor and afflicted people. As he has beams of majesty, so he has the heart of mercies and compassion: "Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6, ESV). Why was he tempted, if not so that he could help those who are tempted (Hebrews 2:18)? What mercy may we not expect from so gracious a mediator (1 Timothy 2:5), who took our nature on himself so that he could be gracious?

The physician who still has the same heart

He is a physician good at every disease, and best at binding up a broken heart. He died so that he could heal our souls with a plaster made of his own blood, and by that death save us, though we ourselves brought it on by our sins. Does he not have the same heart in heaven? "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" (Acts 9:4, ESV), cried the Head in heaven when the foot was trodden on, on earth. His exaltation has not made him forget his own flesh. It has freed him from passion, but not from compassion toward us. The Lion of the tribe of Judah will tear in pieces only those who "did not want me to reign over them" (Luke 19:27, ESV). He won't show his strength against those who throw themselves down before him.

Three uses

Use 1. What should we learn from this, but "with confidence draw near to the throne of grace" (Hebrews 4:16, ESV) in all our troubles? Shall our sins discourage us, when he appears there only for sinners? Are you bruised? Take comfort: he calls you. Don't hide your wounds; open them all before him, and don't keep Satan's counsel. Go to Christ, even trembling. Like the poor woman, if we can only touch "the fringe of his garment" (Matthew 9:20, ESV), we shall be healed and get a gracious answer. Go boldly to God in our flesh; he became flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone for this very purpose, that we might go boldly to him. Never be afraid to go to God, since we have such a Mediator with him, who is not only our friend but our brother and husband.

Well might the angels announce from heaven, "I bring you good news of a great joy" (Luke 2:10, ESV). Well might the apostle urge us to "rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice" (Philippians 4:4, ESV). He was well advised about the grounds on which he said it. Peace and joy are two main fruits of Christ's kingdom. Let the world be as it will; if we can't rejoice in the world, we may still rejoice in the Lord. His presence makes any condition comfortable. "Do not be afraid," he says to his disciples when they were afraid, thinking they had seen a ghost. "It is I" (Matthew 14:27, ESV), as if there were no cause for fear wherever he is present.

Use 2. Let this steady us when we feel bruised. Christ's way is first to wound, then to heal. No sound, whole soul will ever enter heaven. In temptation, think: Christ was tempted for me, and according to my trials will be my graces and comforts. If Christ is merciful enough not to break me, I will not break myself by despair, nor hand myself over to the roaring lion, Satan, to be broken in pieces.

Use 3. Thirdly, see how opposite Christ is to Satan and his instruments. Satan attacks us when we are weakest, as Simeon and Levi attacked the Shechemites "when they were sore" (Genesis 34:25, ESV). But Christ will repair in us every breach that sin and Satan have made; he is the one sent "to bind up the brokenhearted" (Isaiah 61:1, ESV). As a mother takes the most care of her sickest and weakest child, so Christ most mercifully leans toward the weakest. He also puts an instinct into the weakest things to rely on something stronger than themselves. The vine holds itself up on the elm, and the weakest creatures often have the strongest shelters. The church's awareness of her weakness makes her willing to lean on her Beloved and hide under his wing.

Chapter 4

Signs of One Truly Bruised: The Means and Measure of Bruising, and Comfort for Such

How can we know we are bruised in the right way?

Objection. But how shall we know whether we are the kind of people who may expect mercy?

Answer. First, by bruising I don't mean those who are brought low only by crosses, but those who are brought by them to see their sin, which bruises most of all. When conscience is under the guilt of sin, every judgment brings a report of God's anger to the soul, and all lesser troubles run into this great trouble of conscience over sin. As all the bad humours of the body run to the diseased and bruised part, and as every creditor falls on the debtor once he is arrested, so when conscience is awakened, all former sins and present crosses join together to make the bruise more painful. A person bruised like this will be content with nothing but mercy from the one who bruised him. "he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up" (Hosea 6:1, ESV). Lord, you have bruised me, and deservedly, for my sins; bind up my heart again.

Here are the further signs:

2. A person truly bruised judges sin the greatest evil and the favour of God the greatest good.
3. He would rather hear of mercy than of a kingdom.
4. He thinks little of himself, and thinks he isn't worth the ground he walks on.
5. Toward others he is not censorious, being occupied at home, but is full of sympathy and compassion for those under God's hand.
6. He thinks those who walk in the comforts of God's Spirit the happiest people in the world.
7. He "trembles at my word" (Isaiah 66:2, ESV), and honours the very feet of those blessed messengers who bring him peace (Romans 10:15).
8. He is more taken up with the inward exercises of a broken heart than with outward form, and yet is careful to use every sanctified means for receiving comfort.

How do we come to this temper?

Question. But how shall we come to have this temper?

Answer. First, we must think of bruising either as a state God brings us into or as a duty we are to perform. Both are meant here. We must join with God in bruising ourselves. When he humbles us, let us humble ourselves and not stand out against him, or he will redouble his strokes. Let us justify Christ in all his chastisements, knowing that everything he does toward us is meant to make us return into our own hearts. His work of bruising serves our work of bruising ourselves. Let us grieve over our own stubbornness and say, Lord, what a heart I have, that needs all this, so that none of it could be spared! We must lay siege to the hardness of our own hearts and make sin as heavy as we can. We must look on Christ, who was bruised for us, and look on him whom we have pierced with our sins.

But none of these directions will work unless God by his Spirit convinces us deeply, setting our sins before us and bringing us to a halt. Then we will cry out for mercy. Conviction breeds contrition, and contrition humility. So let us ask God to bring a clear and strong light into every corner of our souls, and to send with it a spirit of power to lay our hearts low.

The measure of bruising

No set measure of bruising ourselves can be prescribed. But it must go far enough that, first, we prize Christ above all and see that a Saviour must be had; and second, that we reform whatever is wrong, even if it means cutting off our right hand or pulling out our right eye.

There is a dangerous slighting of the work of humiliation. Some use the saying that Christ will not break the bruised reed as an excuse for going lightly with their own hearts. They must know that not every sudden terror or short grief makes us bruised reeds. A little hanging our heads like a bulrush (Isaiah 58:5) is not enough. What is needed is working our hearts to such a grief that makes sin more hateful to us than punishment, until we offer a holy violence against it. Otherwise, by sparing ourselves, we make work for God to bruise us, and for sharp repentance afterward.

I admit that in some cases, with some temperaments, it is dangerous to press this bruising too hard or too long, because they may die under the wound and burden before they are raised up again. That is why in mixed congregations it is good to mingle comfort, so that every soul gets its proper portion. But if we take it as a ground that there is more mercy in Christ than sin in us, there can be no danger in thorough dealing. It is better to go bruised to heaven than whole to hell. So let us not take ourselves out of the process too soon, or pull off the plaster before the cure is done, but keep ourselves under this work until sin is the bitterest thing and Christ the sweetest. And when God's hand is on us in any way, it is good to turn our sorrow for other things toward the root of all, which is sin. Let our grief run mostly in that channel, so that as sin bred grief, grief may consume sin.

Do we grieve more for sin than for suffering?

Question. But are we not bruised unless we grieve more for sin than we do for punishment?

Answer. Sometimes our grief over outward troubles may lie heavier on the soul than grief over God's displeasure. In such cases the grief works on the whole person, outward and inward, and has nothing to hold it up except a little spark of faith, which, under the violent impact of the trouble, is suspended in its exercise. This is felt most in sudden distresses that come on the soul like a torrent or flash flood, and especially in bodily illnesses. Because soul and body feel for each other, these work on the soul so far that they hinder not only spiritual acts but often natural ones too. That is why James advises us to pray for ourselves in affliction, but in sickness to send for the elders (James 5:14), who can offer the sick person to God in prayer, as those in the Gospels did, since he can't present his own case. And God accepts such a plea based on the sharpness and bitterness of the suffering, as in David, Psalm 6 and elsewhere. "he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust" (Psalm 103:14, ESV); our strength is not the strength of steel.

This is part of his faithfulness to us as his creatures, which is why he is called "a faithful Creator" (1 Peter 4:19, ESV), and "God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability" (1 Corinthians 10:13, ESV). The Jews called certain commandments the hedges of the law. To fence people off from cruelty, God commanded that they should not take the mother bird with the young, nor "boil a young goat in its mother's milk" (Exodus 23:19, ESV), nor "muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain" (1 Corinthians 9:9, ESV). Does God care for animals and not for his nobler creature? So we should judge charitably the complaints of God's people that are wrung from them in such cases. Job was counted a patient man by God, in spite of those passionate complaints. Faith that is overborne for the moment will recover ground. And grief for sin, though it falls short of grief for misery in violence, goes beyond it in constancy, as a running stream fed by a spring holds out when a sudden swollen brook fails.

Comfort for the bruised

To conclude this point, and to encourage us toward thorough bruising and patience under God's bruising of us, let everyone know that none are fitter for comfort than those who think themselves furthest from it. For the most part, people are not lost enough in their own feeling to want a Saviour. A holy despair in ourselves is the ground of true hope (Hosea 14:3). "In you the orphan finds mercy." If people were more fatherless, they would feel more of God's fatherly love from heaven. For God, who dwells in the highest heavens, dwells also in the lowest soul (Isaiah 57:15).

Christ's sheep are weak sheep, lacking something or other, and so he applies himself to the needs of each one. "I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak" (Ezekiel 34:16, ESV). His tenderest care is over the weakest. He carries the lambs in his arms (Isaiah 40:11); "Feed my lambs" (John 21:15, ESV). He was most familiar and open with troubled souls. How careful he was that Peter and the other apostles should not be too downcast after his resurrection: "Go, tell his disciples and Peter" (Mark 16:7, ESV). Christ knew that the guilt of their unkindness in leaving him had cast down their spirits. How gently he put up with Thomas's unbelief, and stooped so far to his weakness as to let him put his hand into his side!

Chapter 5

Grace Is Little at First

For the second branch of the text: God will not snuff out the smouldering flax, or wick, but will blow it up till it flames. In smouldering flax there is only a little light, and that weak, unable to flame, and even that little is mixed with smoke.

Two observations follow. First, in God's children, especially at their first conversion, there is only a small measure of grace, and that little is mixed with much corruption, which, like smoke, is offensive. Secondly, Christ will not quench this smouldering flax.

Grace begins small

On the first: grace is little at the start. There are different ages among Christians, some babes, some young men. Grace is like "a grain of mustard seed" (Matthew 17:20, ESV). Nothing is so little as grace at first, and nothing more glorious afterward. The things of greatest perfection are the longest in coming to their growth. Man, the most perfect creature, comes to maturity little by little. Worthless things, such as mushrooms, spring up fast like Jonah's gourd, and just as fast vanish. A new creature is the most excellent work in all the world, and so it grows up by degrees. In nature, a mighty oak rises from an acorn.

It is with a Christian as it was with Christ, who sprang out of the dead stump of Jesse, out of David's family, when it was at its lowest (Isaiah 53:2), and yet grew higher than the heavens. The trees of righteousness are not like the trees of paradise, which were created perfect from the first. The seeds of all the creatures in this fair frame of the world lay hidden in the chaos, in that confused mass at the beginning, out of which God commanded every creature to arise. In the small seeds of plants lie hidden both trunk and branches, bud and fruit. In a few first principles lie hidden all the comforting conclusions of holy truth. All the glorious fireworks of zeal and holiness in the saints began from a few sparks.

Don't be discouraged by small beginnings

So let us not be discouraged at the small beginnings of grace. Let us look at ourselves as those "that we should be holy and blameless before him" (Ephesians 1:4, ESV). Let us look at our imperfect beginning only to spur ourselves to strive on toward perfection, and to keep ourselves humble. And when we are discouraged, let us consider ourselves as Christ does, who sees us as people he means to fit for himself. Christ values us by what we shall be, and by what we are chosen for. We call a little plant a tree, because it is growing to be one. Who has "despised the day of small things" (Zechariah 4:10, ESV)? Christ would not have us despise little things.

The glorious angels don't disdain to attend on little ones, little in their own eyes and little in the eyes of the world.

Grace, though little in quantity, is great in vigour and worth. It is Christ who raises the worth of little and humble places and people. Bethlehem was the least (Micah 5:2, Matthew 2:6), and yet not the least: the least in itself, but not the least in view of the fact that Christ was born there. The second temple came short of the outward magnificence of the first (Haggai 2:9), yet was more glorious than the first, because Christ came into it. The Lord of the temple came into his own temple.

The pupil of the eye is very small, yet it sees a great part of the heavens at once. A pearl, though small, is of great value. Nothing in the world is of such good use as the least grain of grace.

Chapter 6

Grace Is Mixed With Corruption

The smoke with the fire

Observation two: grace is not only little but mixed with corruption, which is why a Christian is called smouldering flax. We see that grace does not consume corruption all at once, but leaves some to struggle against. The purest actions of the purest people need Christ to perfume them, and that is part of his office. When we pray, we need to pray again, that Christ would pardon the defects of our prayers.

Look at some examples of this smouldering flax. Moses at the Red Sea, in great perplexity, not knowing what to say or which way to turn, groaned to God. There was no doubt a great struggle in him. In great distress we don't know what to pray, but the Spirit makes requests for us "with groanings too deep for words" (Romans 8:26, ESV). Broken hearts can only offer broken prayers.

When David was before the king of Gath and disfigured himself in an unseemly way (1 Samuel 21:13), there was some fire in that smoke too. You can see what an excellent psalm he made on that occasion (Psalm 34), in which, out of experience, he says, "The LORD is near to the brokenhearted" (Psalm 34:18, ESV). In Psalm 31:22 he says, "I had said in my alarm, 'I am cut off from your sight.'" That is the smoke. "But you heard the voice of my pleas for mercy." That is the fire.

"Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" (Mark 4:38, ESV), cry the disciples. There is the smoke of unbelief, yet enough light of faith to stir them to pray to Christ. "I believe": there is the light. "Help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24, ESV): there is the smoke.

Jonah cries, "I am driven away from your sight": there is the smoke. "yet I shall again look upon your holy temple" (Jonah 2:4, ESV): there is the light.

"Wretched man that I am!" (Romans 7:24, ESV), says Paul, feeling his corruption; and yet he breaks out in thanks to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

"I slept, but my heart was awake," says the church in the Song of Songs (5:2). The seven churches, called "seven golden lampstands" for their light (Revelation 1-3), most of them had much smoke with their light.

Why God allows the mixture

The reason for this mixture is that we carry about with us a double principle, grace and nature. Its purpose is especially to keep us from the two dangerous rocks our natures are prone to wreck on, complacency and pride, and to force us to rest our weight on justification and not on sanctification, which, besides being imperfect, has some stain.

Our spiritual fire is like our ordinary fire down here, mixed; but fire is purest in its own element above. So shall all our graces be when we are where we long to be, in heaven, which is our proper element.

Use

This mixture is why God's people have such different judgments of themselves. Sometimes they look at the work of grace, and sometimes at the corruption that remains, and when they look at that, they think they have no grace. Though they love Christ in his ordinances and in his people, they don't dare claim so close an acquaintance as to be his. Like a candle burning down in its socket, which sometimes shows its light and sometimes seems to lose it, so sometimes they are well persuaded about themselves and sometimes at a loss.

Chapter 7

Christ Will Not Quench Small and Weak Beginnings

Why Christ keeps the spark alive

Now for the second observation: Christ will not quench the smouldering flax. First, because this spark is from heaven. It is his own, kindled by his own Spirit. Secondly, because it serves the glory of his powerful grace in his children that he preserves light in the midst of darkness, a spark amid the swelling waters of corruption.

There is a special blessing in that little spark. "As the new wine is found in the cluster, and they say, 'Do not destroy it, for there is a blessing in it'" (Isaiah 65:8, ESV). We see how our Saviour put up with Thomas in his doubting (John 20:27), and with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, who wavered over whether he was the one to redeem Israel (Luke 24:21). He didn't quench that little light in Peter, which was smothered: Peter denied him, but he didn't deny Peter (Matthew 26). "Lord, if you will, you can make me clean," said one poor man in the Gospels (Matthew 8:2). "If you can do anything," said another (Mark 9:22). Both were smouldering flax, and neither was quenched. If Christ had stood on his own greatness, he would have rejected the man who came with his "if". But Christ answered his "if" with a gracious and unconditional grant: "I will; be clean." The woman with the issue of blood only touched, with a trembling hand, and only the hem of his garment, and yet went away both healed and comforted. In the seven churches (Revelation 2-3), we see he acknowledges and cherishes anything good in them. When the disciples slept out of weakness, overcome with grief, our Saviour made a kind excuse for them: "the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak" (Matthew 26:41, ESV).

If Christ were not merciful, he would miss his own ends: "with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared" (Psalm 130:4, ESV). Now everyone is willing to come under that banner of love which he spreads over his people: "to you shall all flesh come" (Psalm 65:2, ESV). He acts with moderation and care, lest the spirit of man grow faint before him, and the souls he has made (Isaiah 57:16). Christ's heart went out to the crowd, the text says, when he saw them without food, "lest they faint on the way" (Matthew 15:32, ESV). How much more will he care to prevent our spiritual fainting!

Christ's pattern for us

Here see the opposite dispositions of Christ's holy nature and man's impure nature. For a little smoke, man will quench the light; Christ, as we always see, cherishes even the least beginnings. How he put up with the many imperfections of his poor disciples! If he checked them sharply, it was in love, and so that they might shine brighter. Can we have a better pattern to follow than this one, from the one by whom we hope to be saved? "We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak" (Romans 15:1, ESV). "I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some" (1 Corinthians 9:22, ESV). Oh, that this winning, gaining disposition were more common! Many, as far as it lies with us, are lost for lack of encouragement.

See how that faithful fisher of men, Paul, works to catch his judge: "King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know that you believe" (Acts 26:27, ESV). Then he wishes him every saving good, but not the chains. He could have added those too, but he would not discourage someone who had made even a small offer, so he wished Agrippa only what was good in religion. How careful our blessed Saviour was of little ones, that they should not be offended (Matthew 12:13)! How he defends his disciples from the malicious charges of the Pharisees! How careful he was not to put new wine into old wineskins (Matthew 9:17), not to put off new beginners with the harshness of religion (as some do, unwisely). He says, "then they will fast in those days," when the bridegroom is taken away, and they will have strength to fast when the Holy Spirit has come on them.

Gentleness toward beginners

It is not the best way to fall on young beginners at once over some lesser vanities. Show them a more excellent way, and bring them up in positive grounds, and the other things will soon lose their credit with them. It is no bad thing to conceal their faults, to excuse some failings, to praise their efforts, to encourage their promise, to remove every stumbling block from their way, and to help them in every way to bear the yoke of religion more easily, to bring them to love God and his service, lest they dislike it before they know it. For the most part we see that Christ plants in young beginners a love we call, in the words of Revelation 2:4, "the love you had at first", to carry them through their profession with more delight, and does not expose them to crosses before they have gathered strength, as we raise young plants and shelter them from the weather until they are rooted.

Mercy to others should often move us to deny ourselves our lawful liberties when weak ones might be offended. It is "these little ones" who are caused to stumble (Matthew 18:6). The weakest are the quickest to think themselves despised, so we should be most careful to satisfy them. It would be a good contest among Christians, one labouring to give no offence, the other labouring to take none. The best people are strict with themselves and tender toward others.

Two cautions

Yet people should not tire out and wear down the patience of others. Nor should the weaker so far demand gentleness from others as to shelter behind their indulgence, resting in their own weaknesses, to the danger of their own souls and the scandal of the church. Nor should they, on the strength of this, make light of the gifts of God in others, which grace teaches us to honour wherever they are found. Let them know their abilities and their place, and not undertake anything beyond their measure, which could make them and their case a target of scorn. When blindness and boldness, ignorance and arrogance, weakness and wilfulness meet in one person, it makes him hateful to God, a burden in society, dangerous in counsel, a troubler of better plans, stubborn and incapable of better direction, and miserable in the end.

Where Christ shows his gracious power in weakness, he does it by letting people understand themselves well enough to breed humility, and to magnify God's love for people such as they are. He does it as a safeguard against discouragement from weakness, since weakness brings people nearer to grace, being an advantage to poverty of spirit, whereas greatness of position and gifts supplies fuel for pride to our corrupt nature. Christ refuses no one for weakness of abilities, so that no one need be discouraged; and he accepts no one for greatness, so that no one should be puffed up over something so lightly regarded by God. It matters little how dull the pupil is when Christ takes on himself to be the teacher, who, as he prescribes what to understand, also gives the understanding itself, even to the simplest.

Gentleness and firmness together

The church suffers much from weak ones, so we may claim liberty to deal with them, as often directly as mildly. The aim of true love is to make the person better, and that is often hindered by concealment. With some, a spirit of meekness works best, but with some, a rod. Some must be saved by "snatching them out of the fire" (Jude 23, ESV), even by force, and they will bless God for us on the day of their visitation. We see our Saviour piling woe on woe when he had to deal with hard-hearted hypocrites (Matthew 23:13), for hypocrites need stronger conviction than open sinners, because their will is perverse, and so their conversion is usually violent. A hard knot needs a matching wedge, or in a cruel pity we betray their souls. A sharp rebuke is sometimes a precious pearl and a sweet balm. The wounds of complacent sinners won't be healed with sweet words. The Holy Spirit came in tongues of fire as well as in the likeness of a dove, and the same Holy Spirit gives a spirit of prudence and discretion, which is the salt to season all our words and actions. Such wisdom will teach us "to know how to sustain with a word him who is weary" (Isaiah 50:4, ESV), and also to speak to the complacent soul. Indeed, whoever is to raise up or cast down needs "the tongue of those who are taught" (Isaiah 50:4, ESV).

But here I am speaking of gentleness toward those who are weak and feel it. These we must bring on gently and drive softly, as Jacob did his flocks (Genesis 33:14), at their own pace, as his children were able to bear. Weak Christians are like glass, which is hurt by the least rough handling but lasts a long time if handled gently. This honour of gentle use we owe to "the weaker vessel" (1 Peter 3:7, ESV), and by it we shall both preserve them and make them useful to the church and to ourselves.

In an unhealthy body, if you purge out every bad humour you purge out life and all. So although God says he will "refine them as one refines silver" (Zechariah 13:9, ESV), yet he says in Isaiah 48:10, "Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver", that is, not so exactly that no dross remains, for he has regard for our weakness. Perfect refining is for another world, the world of the spirits of the righteous made perfect.

Chapter 8

Tenderness Required in Ministers Toward Young Beginners

Don't strain the marks of grace

Preachers need to take care how they deal with these people in several particulars.

First, let them be careful not to strain things too high, making general and necessary evidences of grace out of things that don't match the experience of many a good Christian, and resting salvation and damnation on things that can't bear so great a weight. People are cast down by this, for no good reason, lower than they can quickly be raised again by themselves or others. The ambassadors of so gentle a Saviour shouldn't be overbearing, setting themselves up in people's hearts where Christ alone should sit as in his own temple. Too much deference to man was one of the doors by which popery came in. "This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ" (1 Corinthians 4:1, ESV), neither more nor less, just so much. How careful Paul was, in matters of conscience, not to lay a snare for any weak conscience.

Speak plainly

They should take care, too, not to hide their meaning in dark speech, speaking in the clouds. Truth fears nothing so much as concealment and wants nothing so much as to be laid open clearly to the view of all. When it is most naked, it is most lovely and powerful. Our blessed Saviour, as he took our nature on himself, took on himself our ordinary way of speaking, which was part of his willing lowering of himself. Paul was a profound man, yet he became like a nurse to the weaker sort (1 Thessalonians 2:7).

That spirit of mercy that was in Christ should move his servants to be content to lower themselves for the good of the least. What made the kingdom of heaven "take it by force" (Matthew 11:12, ESV) after John the Baptist's time, but that comforting truths were laid open with such plainness and clarity that the people were so moved by them that they took hold of them with a holy violence?

Christ chose those who had felt the most mercy to preach mercy, such as Peter and Paul, so that they might be examples of what they taught. Paul "become all things to all people" (1 Corinthians 9:22, ESV), stooping to them for their good. Christ came down from heaven and emptied himself of majesty out of tender love for souls. Shall we not come down from our high ideas to do any poor soul good? Shall man be proud after God has been humble? We see Satan's ministers turn themselves into every shape to "make a single proselyte" (Matthew 23:15, ESV). A Jesuit will be every man. We see ambitious men study how to fit themselves to the tempers of those by whom they hope to be raised; and shall we not study to fit ourselves to Christ, by whom we hope to be advanced, indeed are already seated with him in the heavenly places? After we have been won to Christ ourselves, we should work to win others to Christ. A holy ambition and holy covetousness will move us to put on the disposition of Christ. But we must put off ourselves first.

Don't burden them with disputes

Thirdly, we should not rack their wits with curious matters or with "quarrel[ing] over opinions" (Romans 14:1, ESV), for then we distract and tire them, and give them reason to throw off all care. The age of the church most fertile in fine questions was the most barren in true religion. It makes people think religion is only a matter of wit, tying and untying knots. The brains of people who incline that way are usually hotter than their hearts.

Even so, when we are cast into times and places where doubts are raised about main points, people ought to work at being established. God often lets questions arise to test our love and exercise our abilities. Nothing is so certain as what is certain after doubts. Nil tam certum quam quod ex dubio certum. Shaking settles and roots. In a contentious age it takes some wit to be a Christian and to know where to fix one's soul. It is an act of love here to take away the stones and smooth the way to heaven. So we must take care that, under pretence of avoiding disputes, we don't let an opposing party gain ground on the truth. That way we could easily betray both the truth of God and the souls of men.

Don't drive troubled souls away

And those also fail who, by too much severity, drive troubled souls back from having comfort through them. By this conduct many smother their temptations and burn inwardly, because they have no one into whose heart they can pour their grief and ease their souls.

We must not bind where God looses, nor loose where God binds, nor open where God shuts, nor shut where God opens. The right use of the keys is always successful. In applying truth to a person we must take great care, for a man may be a false prophet and yet speak the truth, if it is not true for the person he is speaking to. If he grieves by untimely truths those whom God "does not willingly afflict or grieve" (Lamentations 3:33, ESV), or offers comfort to someone in an evil way, the hearts of the wicked may be strengthened. One man's meat is another man's poison. If we look at the general temper of these times, rousing and waking Scriptures are most fitting. Yet there are many broken spirits who need soft and oily words. Even in the worst times the prophets mingled sweet comfort for the hidden remnant of faithful people. God has comfort: "Comfort, comfort my people" (Isaiah 40:1, ESV), as well as "Lift up your voice like a trumpet" (Isaiah 58:1, ESV).

A caution about mercy

Here too a warning is needed. Mercy doesn't rob us of right judgment, so that we take stinking firebrands for smouldering flax. Those whose due portion is severity are the very ones who claim mercy most from others. This example doesn't excuse lukewarmness, or too much indulgence for those who need quickening. Cold diseases need hot remedies. It was to the church of Ephesus's just credit that "you cannot bear with those who are evil" (Revelation 2:2, ESV). We should bear with others in a way that shows we dislike evil. Our Saviour would not hold back a sharp rebuke where he saw dangerous weaknesses in his most beloved disciples. A curse falls on anyone "who does the work of the LORD with slackness" (Jeremiah 48:10, ESV), even where it is a work of just severity, such as sheathing the sword in the body of the enemy. And those whom we allow to be betrayed by their worst enemies, their sins, will have just cause to curse us one day.

It is hard to keep the right bounds of mercy and severity without a spirit above our own, which we ought to ask to be led by in everything. That wisdom which "dwell[s] with prudence" (Proverbs 8:12, ESV) will guide us in these particulars, and without it virtue is not virtue and truth not truth. The rule and the case must be laid side by side, for if we have no close insight, a surface likeness between conditions will breed mistakes in our judgments of them.

The fiery, stormy and destructive spirits in popery, who seek to advance their religion by cruelty, show themselves strangers to the wisdom from above, which makes people gentle, peaceable and ready to show the mercy they have first received themselves. To prevail by some forbearance and moderation suits Christ, and suits human nature too.

False and proud moderation

Yet we often see a false spirit in those who call for moderation. They only want to carry their own plans with greater strength, and if they gain the upper hand, they will hardly show others the moderation they now ask from others. And there is a proud kind of moderation too, when people take it on themselves to judge both parties, as if they were wiser than both, although, if the spirit is right, an onlooker may see more than those in the conflict.

Chapter 9

Governors Should Be Tender Toward Weak Ones, and Private Christians Too

Church discipline

Secondly, in the censures of the church, it fits the Spirit of Christ better to lean toward the milder side, and not to kill a fly on a forehead with a mallet, or shut people out of heaven over a trifle. The very snuffers of the tabernacle were made of pure gold, to show the purity of the censures by which the light of the church is kept bright. The power given to the church is given for building up, not for destruction. How careful Paul was that the repentant man at Corinth should not be "overwhelmed by excessive sorrow" (2 Corinthians 2:7, ESV).

Civil magistrates

As for civil magistrates, they must, for civil needs and reasons of state, let the law take its course. But they should imitate this mild king in this much: not to mix bitterness and passion with authority that comes from God. Authority is a beam of God's majesty and prevails most where there is least mixture of what is man's. It takes more than ordinary wisdom to handle it rightly. This string must not be stretched too tight, nor let too loose. Justice is a harmonious thing. Herbs too hot or too cold beyond a certain degree kill. We see even contrary elements kept together in one body by a wise blending. Justice in rigour is often extreme injustice, where some considerable circumstances should incline it to moderation; and the reckoning will be easier for having bent toward moderation rather than rigour.

Insolent behaviour toward miserable people who are humbled is unseemly in anyone who hopes for mercy himself. Misery should be a magnet for mercy, not a footstool for pride to trample on.

Those under authority

Sometimes it happens that those under the government of others are the most unjust, by perversity and harsh judgments, disparaging and discouraging the efforts of their superiors for the public good. In the great weakness of human nature, and especially in this shaky age of the world, we ought to take in good part any moderate happiness we enjoy through government, and not be altogether like a nail in the wound, making things worse by misreading them. Here love should have a cloak to throw over the lesser errors of those above us. Often it is the poor man who is the oppressor, by unjust clamour. We should work to put the best interpretation on the actions of governors that the nature of the actions will possibly bear.

What private Christians owe the weak

Lastly, there is something for private Christians, for all of us in our ordinary relations, to take notice of: we are debtors to the weak in many things.

First, let us be watchful in the use of our liberty, and work to be inoffensive in our conduct, so that our example doesn't force them. An example has a commanding force, as with Peter (Galatians 2). A loose life is cruelty to ourselves and to the souls of others. We can't keep those who will perish from perishing, as far as the outcome goes. But if we do what is of itself likely to destroy the souls of others, their ruin is chargeable to us.

Secondly, let people take care not to take up Satan's office, of running down the good actions of others, as he did Job's: "Does Job fear God for no reason?" (Job 1:9, ESV), or slandering their persons and judging them by the wickedness in their own hearts. The devil gains more by such discouragements, and by the reproaches cast on religion, than by fire and faggot. These, like untimely frosts, nip all gracious beginnings in the bud, and as far as in them lies, like Herod, they labour to kill Christ in young believers. A Christian is a hallowed and sacred thing, Christ's temple; "If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him" (1 Corinthians 3:17, ESV).

Thirdly, among the things to be avoided is a bold presumption of passing judgment on others, without considering their temptations. Some will unchurch and unbrother a person in a passion. But fits of temper don't change true relationships. Though the child in a tantrum should disown its mother, the mother will not disown the child.

Not too many judges

So in these judging times there is good ground for James's warning that "not many of you should become teachers" (James 3:1, ESV). We should not strike at one another with hasty judgments, especially in things of an indifferent nature. Some things are as the mind of the person doing them or not doing them; either may be done to the Lord. A holy aim in matters of middle importance makes the judgments of people, though seemingly opposite, not so much to blame. For the good aims he sees in us, Christ overlooks any wrong in our actions, so far as not to charge it to our account.

We must not be too curious in prying into the weaknesses of others. We should rather look at what they have that is for eternity, to incline our hearts to love them, than at the weakness which the Spirit of God will in time consume, and which would estrange us. Some think it is strength of grace to put up with nothing in the weaker, whereas the strongest are readiest to bear with the weaknesses of the weak. Where there is most holiness there is most moderation, wherever that can be without harm to piety toward God and the good of others.

Christ's pattern of holiness with moderation

In this text we see in Christ a marvellous blend of absolute holiness with great moderation. What would have become of our salvation if he had stood on his rights and not stooped so low to us? We needn't try to be holier than Christ. It is no flattery to do as he does, so long as it builds up.

The Holy Spirit is content to dwell in smoky, offensive souls. Oh, that that Spirit would breathe into our spirits the same merciful disposition! We put up with the bitterness of wormwood and other distasteful herbs only because we have some experience of a wholesome quality in them. Why should we reject people of useful gifts and graces just for some harshness of disposition, which is as offensive to us as it is grievous to themselves?

Grace, while we live here, is in souls that are imperfectly renewed and live in bodies subject to various humours, which will incline the soul sometimes to excess in one passion and sometimes in another.

Bucer was a deep and moderate divine. From long experience he resolved to refuse no one in whom he saw aliquid Christi, something of Christ.

The best Christians in this state of imperfection are like gold that is a little too light, which needs a few grains of allowance to make it pass. You must grant the best their allowance. We must supply out of our love and mercy what we see lacking in them.

The church of Christ is a common hospital, in which everyone is in some measure sick of some spiritual disease or other, so that we all have ground to practise on one another the spirit of wisdom and meekness.

Two ways to do this

First, to do this better, let us put on the Spirit of Christ. The Spirit of God carries a majesty with him. Corruption will hardly yield to corruption in another; pride is intolerable to pride. "The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh" (2 Corinthians 10:4, ESV). The great apostles would not start on the work of the ministry until they were "clothed with power from on high" (Luke 24:49, ESV). The Spirit will work only with his own tools. And we should think what affection Christ would carry toward the person in this case. That great physician, as he had a quick eye and a healing tongue, had also a gentle hand and a tender heart.

Secondly, let us put ourselves in the position of the person we are dealing with. We are, or have been, or may be, such as they are. Make the case your own, and consider how near a relation a Christian stands to us, as a brother, a fellow member, an heir of the same salvation. So let us take on ourselves a tender care of them in every way, and especially in cherishing the peace of their consciences. Conscience is a tender and delicate thing and must be handled so. It is like a lock: if the wards are disturbed, it will be hard to open.

Chapter 10

Rules for Testing Whether We Are the Smoking Flax Christ Will Not Quench

If we want to know whether we are the smoking flax that Christ will not quench, we need two things: first some rules to test ourselves by, and then some signs to look for. Here are the rules.

1. Keep two eyes open

We need two eyes: one to see the faults in ourselves and others, and the other to see what is good. "I am very dark, but lovely," says the bride in the Song of Solomon (Song 1:5). People who quarrel constantly with themselves are the ones who go without comfort. Because of their weaknesses they are prone to feed on bitter things that only make worse the sickness they already have. They love to look at the dark side of the cloud and nothing else.

2. Don't always judge by what you feel

We must not judge ourselves by present feeling. In a time of temptation we will see nothing but the smoke of anxious, distrustful thoughts. Fire can be banked up in the ashes without being seen, and in winter the life of a tree is hidden in the root.

3. Beware of false reasoning

Don't argue, "My fire doesn't blaze like other people's, so I have no fire at all." That kind of false conclusion leads us to break the commandment against bearing false witness, because we bear false witness against ourselves. The prodigal son didn't say he was no son. He said he was no longer worthy to be called one (Luke 15:19). We must neither trust false evidence nor deny true evidence. If we do, we dishonour the work of God's Spirit in us, and we lose the help of the very evidence that would warm our love for Christ and arm us against Satan's discouragements. Some people are so bad at this that they might have been hired by Satan, "the accuser of our brothers" (Revelation 12:10, ESV), to argue his case for him by accusing themselves.

4. Remember that the covenant of grace asks for the truth of grace, not a certain measure of it

In the covenant of grace God requires real grace, not some fixed amount. A spark of fire is fire just as much as the whole element is. So we must look for grace in the spark as well as in the flame. Not everyone has a faith equally strong, but all have a faith equally precious (2 Peter 1:1), and by it they take hold of the perfect righteousness of Christ and put it on. A weak hand can receive a rich jewel. A few grapes show that the plant is a vine and not a thorn. It is one thing to lack some grace and quite another to lack grace altogether.

God knows we have nothing of ourselves. So in the covenant of grace he asks no more than he gives, he gives what he asks, and he accepts what he gives. "If she cannot afford a lamb, then she shall take two turtledoves" (Leviticus 12:8, ESV). What is the gospel itself but a merciful moderating of the demand, in which Christ's obedience is counted as ours and our sins are laid on him, and in which God changes from judge to father, forgiving our sins and accepting our obedience, though it is feeble and flawed? Under the covenant of grace we are brought to heaven by a way of love and mercy.

5. Learn the difference between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace

It is a special help to know clearly the difference between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace, between Moses and Christ. Moses, with no mercy at all, breaks every bruised reed and quenches every smoking flax. The law demands obedience that is personal, perpetual and perfect, and from a perfect heart. It demands this under a terrible curse, and it gives no strength to meet the demand. It is a hard taskmaster, like Pharaoh, who required the full count of bricks and gave no straw. Christ comes with blessing after blessing, even for those Moses had cursed, and with a healing hand for the wounds Moses made.

The same duties are required under both covenants. For example, we are to love the Lord with all our heart and all our soul (Deuteronomy 6:5). Under the covenant of works this has to be taken in its full rigour. Under the covenant of grace it means a sincere endeavour in proportion to the grace received. That is how we should understand it when Scripture says of Josiah and others that they loved God with all their hearts. It carries a gospel gentleness with it.

The gospel sweetens the law, and the law becomes a delight to the inner person (Romans 7:22). Under this gracious covenant sincerity counts as perfection. The poison in the pot of the Roman religion is that it confuses the two covenants, and this kills the comfort of drooping souls because they can't tell the difference between them. So they let themselves be held in bondage when Christ has set them free (Isaiah 61:1), and they stay in the prison when Christ has thrown the doors wide open.

6. Grace can be so small that we can't see it

Sometimes grace is so small that we can't make it out. The Spirit sometimes works secretly in us in ways we don't know about at the time, though Christ knows. In the bitterness of a temptation, when the Spirit is struggling against a sense of God's anger, we are inclined to think of God as an enemy. A troubled soul is like troubled water: you can see nothing in it, and until it settles it throws up mire and dirt. It is full of objections against itself. And yet, for the most part, we can still make out something of the hidden life and of those smothered sparks.

On a gloomy day there is still enough light to tell that it is day and not night. In the same way there is something in a Christian under a cloud that shows he is a true believer and not a hypocrite. In the state of grace there is no pure darkness. There is always some beam of light, so that the kingdom of darkness never wholly wins.

Chapter 11

Signs of the Smoking Flax That Christ Will Not Quench

With those rules in place, here are the signs by which we can test ourselves.

1. The fire is kindled from heaven

If there is any holy fire in us, it was lit from heaven by "the Father of lights," who "has shone in our hearts" and "said, 'Let light shine out of darkness'" (2 Corinthians 4:6, ESV). It is lit through the use of the means of grace, and it is fed the same way. The light in us and the light in the word spring from one another, and both from the one Holy Spirit. That is why people who pay no attention to the word are people who have "no dawn" (Isaiah 8:20, ESV). Heavenly truths need a heavenly light to see them by. Natural people do see heavenly things, but not in their own proper light, only by an inferior one. In every converted person God puts a light into the eye of the soul, matched to the light of the truths revealed to them. A worldly eye will never see spiritual things.

2. The least divine light carries some heat with it

Light in the understanding breeds the heat of love in the affections. To the degree that the sanctified mind sees something to be true or good, to that degree the will embraces it. Weak light breeds weak inclinations, and strong light breeds strong ones. Even a little spiritual light is strong enough to answer the strong objections of flesh and blood, and to see through earthly allurements and obstacles and recognise them as far less than the heavenly things it has in view.

Any light that is not spiritual gives way to every small temptation, because it lacks the strength of sanctifying grace. It gives way most easily when the temptation is fitted to a person's own inclinations. This is why Christians whose light is small in quantity but heavenly in quality hold out when people of greater learning go under.

Light prevails in the soul like this because, along with the spirit of illumination, the godly receive "a spirit not of fear but of power" (2 Timothy 1:7, ESV). It subdues the heart to the truth revealed and puts into the will a taste for the sweetness of that truth. Without that, the merely natural will rises up against supernatural truths, having an enmity and dislike for them. In the godly, holy truths come by way of taste. Gracious people have a spiritual palate as well as a spiritual eye. Grace changes what we relish.

3. The light shows us the right way to walk

Where this heavenly light is kindled, it guides. It is given for that purpose: to show us the best way and to direct us in the particular turnings of life. If it doesn't do that, it is only common light, given for the good of others. Some people have the light of knowledge and yet don't follow it. They are guided by worldly reason and cunning, like those the prophet speaks of: "Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who equip yourselves with burning torches! Walk by the light of your fire, and by the torches that you have kindled! This you have from my hand: you shall lie down in torment" (Isaiah 50:11, ESV). God delights to confound worldly wisdom, because it is hostile to him and robs him of his place as the only wise God. So we must walk by his light and not by the blaze of our own fire. God must light our lamp (Psalm 18:28), or we shall stay in the dark. Sparks that were not kindled from heaven aren't strong enough to keep us from lying down in sorrow, even though they may make a bigger blaze and show than the light from above. Madmen do greater things than sane people, but by a false strength. In the same way the excess of these people's joy comes from a false light: "the light of the wicked is put out" (Job 18:5, ESV).

The light some people have is like lightning. After one sudden flash it leaves them in deeper darkness. They love the light while it shines, but hate it when it exposes and directs. A little holy light, by contrast, will enable a person to keep Christ's word and not betray religion or deny his name, as Christ says of the church in Philadelphia (Revelation 3:8).

4. The fire separates things of different natures

Fire separates gold from dross. It tells flesh from spirit and shows what comes from nature and what from grace. Nothing is wholly bad in a bad action or wholly good in a good one. There is gold in the ore, and God and his Spirit in us can tell it apart. A worldly person's heart is like a dungeon, where nothing can be seen but horror and confusion. This light makes us discerning and humble, because we see more clearly God's purity and our own uncleanness, and it makes us able to recognise the work of the Spirit in other people.

5. The more spiritual a person is, the more they delight in light

The more spiritual a person is, the more they welcome light. They are glad to be shown anything wrong so that they can mend it, and any further service so that they can do it, because they truly hate evil and love good. If they act against the light they have been given, they are soon brought back, because the light has a friend inside them. So at the first glimpse of their mistake they are open to counsel. David was, when he meant to kill Nabal, and afterwards he blessed God for stopping him in a wrong course (1 Samuel 25:32).

In a worldly person it is different. The light breaks in on them and they work to shut every opening. They have no pleasure in coming into the light. Until the Spirit of grace has subdued the heart, it cannot help sinning against the light. It either resists the light, or keeps it prisoner under base lusts and buries it, so to speak, in the ground. Or it twists the light and makes it a servant of the flesh, hunting out arguments to plead the flesh's cause. Or it uses the small amount of light it has to shut out a greater, higher and more heavenly light, until finally that little light becomes a guide leading it astray into utter darkness. The reason is that the light has no friend within. The soul is in the opposite frame, and light always disturbs the sinful peace people are keen to speak to themselves. We often see it enrage them more, as the spring sun breeds fevers because it stirs the humours of the body and doesn't dry them up. Nothing in the world is more restless than the heart of a wicked person who sits under the means of knowledge, until like a thief he has put out the candle so that he can sin with less to check him.

Spiritual light is distinct. It sees spiritual good and applies it to ourselves. Common light is confused and lets sin lie quiet.

6. Where there is fire, it fights what is against it

God put an irreconcilable hatred between light and darkness at the beginning, and so between good and evil, flesh and spirit (Galatians 5:17). Grace will no more join with sin than fire will join with water. Fire mixes with no opposite. It keeps its own purity and is never corrupted as the other elements are. So those who plead and plot for the liberties of the flesh show themselves strangers to the life of God.

Out of this conflict gracious people often complain that they have no grace. But they contradict themselves in the complaint, like a man who sees and yet complains that he can't see, or who complains that he is asleep. The very complaint, springing from displeasure at sin, shows that there is something in them opposed to sin. Can a dead man complain?

Some things, though bad in themselves, still reveal something good, as smoke reveals some fire. A rash on the skin shows the strength of the constitution. Some weaknesses reveal more good than some seemingly beautiful actions. Excess of passion in opposing evil, though it can't be justified, shows a better spirit than a calm temper where there is just cause to be moved. It is better for water to run a little muddy than not to run at all. Job had more grace in his distempers than his friends had in their seemingly wise behaviour. Actions stained with some weakness are more acceptable than polished performances for show.

7. Fire, even the least, is active

Where fire is present in the least degree, it is active in some measure. So the least measure of grace is at work, because it springs from the Spirit of God, who by his working nature is compared to fire. Even in sins, when it seems that nothing is active but corruption, there is a contrary principle that breaks the force of sin, so that it is not as sinful as it could be, as it is in those who are wholly carnal (Romans 7:13).

8. Fire makes metal pliable

Fire makes metals soft and workable, and grace does the same wherever it has begun. It makes the heart pliable and ready for every good impression. Stubborn spirits show that they are not even smoking flax.

9. Fire turns everything it can into fire

Grace works to produce the same impression in others and to make as many good as it can. Grace also puts even natural and everyday things to a gracious use and makes them spiritual. What another person does merely as a civil matter, a gracious person does as holy service. Whether he eats or drinks or whatever he does, he does it all to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31), making everything serve the final end.

10. Sparks fly upward

By nature sparks fly upward, and in the same way the Spirit of grace carries the soul heavenward and sets before us holy and heavenly aims. As the fire was kindled from heaven, so it carries us back to heaven. The part follows the whole: fire rises, and every spark goes to its own element. Where the aim and bent of the soul is toward God, there is grace, even if it is opposed.

The least measure of grace is holy desire, springing from faith and love. We can't desire anything unless we first believe it exists, and the desire for it comes from love. For this reason desires are counted in some measure as part of the thing desired. But these desires must have certain marks. First, they must be constant. Constancy shows they are supernaturally natural and not forced. Second, they must be directed to spiritual things, like believing and loving God. They must not arise only from some special pinch, because someone thinks that if they had grace they might escape some danger. They should be like a loving heart drawn to the thing it loves for the sake of what is excellent in it. Third, there is grief when the desire is hindered, and this stirs us to prayer: "Oh that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes!" (Psalm 119:5, ESV); "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me?" (Romans 7:24, ESV). Fourth, desires keep pushing us onward: Oh, that I might serve God with more freedom! Oh, that I were freer from these offensive, foul and noisome lusts!

11. Fire grows, and the higher it rises the purer it burns

If fire has anything to feed on, it works itself into a wider compass and climbs higher and higher, and the higher it rises, the purer the flame. So where there is true grace, it grows in measure and in purity. Smoking flax will grow into a flame, and as it increases it works out what is opposed to it and refines itself more and more. The brighter a fire burns, the less it smokes.

So it is the sign of a false heart to set a limit on our grace and rest in beginnings, arguing that Christ will not quench the smoking flax. Christ's merciful disposition is joined with perfect holiness, shown in his perfect hatred of sin. Rather than let sin go without its deserved punishment, he made himself a sacrifice for sin, and in that sacrifice his Father's holiness and his own shone most of all. Besides this, in the work of sanctification, though he cherishes his own work in us, he does not cherish sin in us. He will never take his hand from his work until he has taken sin away, even its very existence, from our nature. The same Spirit who purified that blessed body from which Christ was made cleanses us step by step to fit so holy a head. He shapes the judgment and affections of everyone to whom he shows mercy to agree with his own, in labouring to advance his purposes by abolishing sin from our nature.

Chapter 12

Scruples That Keep Us from Comfort, Answered

From these rules and signs, much comfort can come to the souls of the weakest. So that there may be more of it, let me add something to help them past a few common objections and private thoughts against themselves. These get inside the heart and often keep people down.

1. "I have no faith at all, because I have no full assurance"

Some think they have no faith because they lack full assurance. But the finest fire there can be will still have some smoke, and the best actions smell of the smoke. A mortar in which garlic has been crushed will always smell of it. In the same way all our actions will have something of the old self about them.

2. "My body is weak, so my grace must be dying"

In bodily weakness some think grace is dying, because their performances are feeble and their strength is spent, and the body's strength is the instrument the soul acts through. They forget that God pays attention to the hidden sighs of those who lack the strength to express them outwardly. He pronounces blessed the one who considers the poor (Psalm 41:1), and he will have the same merciful consideration for them.

3. "I am haunted by terrible thoughts of God, of Christ, of his word"

Some are tormented by hideous images in their imagination and by vile, unworthy thoughts about God, about Christ, about the word. Like pestering flies, these disturb and plague their peace. Satan throws them in like wildfire, and we can tell it by three marks: their strangeness, their strength and violence, and their horribleness even to our corrupt nature. As one godly writer put it, "I would like to be kept safe, Lord, but my thoughts will not allow it." A devout soul is no more guilty of these thoughts than Benjamin was guilty of Joseph's cup, which was put into his sack.

Godly writers prescribe various helps, such as loathing these thoughts and turning away to other things. Let this be one of them: complain to Christ about them, flee under the wings of his protection, and ask him to take our side against his enemy and ours. Shall every sin and blasphemy of man be forgiven, and not these blasphemous thoughts that have the devil for their father? Christ himself was troubled in this way so that he could help all poor souls in the same case.

There is, though, a difference between Christ and us. Satan had nothing of his own in Christ, so his suggestions left no mark on Christ's holy nature. They were like sparks falling into the sea and put out at once. Satan's temptations of Christ were only suggestions on Satan's part, and on Christ's part an awareness of how vile they were. To be aware of evil suggested by another is not evil. It was Christ's grief, but Satan's sin. Christ let himself be tempted so that he might sympathise with us in our conflicts and train us to use our spiritual weapons as he did. He could have defeated Satan by power, but he did it by argument.

When Satan comes to us, he finds something of his own in us, something that answers to him and is in league with him. There is in our nature an enmity to God and goodness, to some degree, like Satan's own, and so his temptations usually leave some stain on us. Even if there were no devil to suggest evil thoughts, sinful thoughts would still rise from within. We have a mint of them inside. If the soul dwells on such thoughts long enough to draw some sinful delight from them, they leave a heavier guilt, hinder our sweet fellowship with God, interrupt our peace, put a contrary taste in the soul, and make it ready for greater sins. Every scandalous outbreak is only a thought at first. Evil thoughts are like little thieves who creep in at the window and open the door to bigger ones. Thoughts are the seeds of actions. When Satan helps them along, they make the life of many good Christians almost a martyrdom.

In this situation it is unsound comfort when some minister tells them that evil thoughts arise from nature, and what is natural can be excused. We must know that nature, as it came from God's hands at the beginning, had no such risings in it. The soul as God breathed it had no such foul breathings. But since the soul betrayed itself by sin, it has become in a way natural for it to forge sinful imaginations and be a furnace of such sparks. This makes natural corruption more sinful, not less: it is so deeply rooted and so widely spread in our nature.

It helps humility to know the full breadth and depth of sin. And the fact that our nature, so far as it is unrenewed, is so unhappily fruitful in evil thoughts brings this comfort: it is not our case alone. Some have been tempted to think, almost to despair, that their condition is different from everyone else's: no one has such a loathsome nature as I have. That springs from ignorance of how widely original sin has spread. What can come from an unclean thing but what is unclean? "As in water face reflects face, so the heart of man reflects the man" (Proverbs 27:19, ESV), wherever grace has not made a difference.

As with attacks from Satan, so here the best way is to lay our complaints open to Christ and cry with Paul, "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:24-25, ESV). When he had poured out his distressed soul like this, he immediately found comfort, for he broke into thanksgiving: "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" It is good to use this to hate this foul body of death all the more and to draw closer to God. That is what the psalmist did after his "brutish and ignorant" thoughts (Psalm 73:22, 28). It is good to keep our hearts close to God, to season them with heavenly meditation in the morning, to store up good matter so that the heart may be a good treasury, and to beg Christ for his Holy Spirit to stop this cursed flow and become a living spring of better thoughts in us.

Nothing humbles holy people more, those who want to delight in God after escaping the common defilements of the world, than these unclean flows of the spirit. They are so contrary to God, who is a pure Spirit. But the very irksomeness of them yields comfort against them. They drive the soul to spiritual exercises, to watchfulness and a closer walk with God. They push it to lift itself to thoughts of a higher kind, and the truth of God, his works, the fellowship of the saints, the mystery of godliness, the terror of the Lord, the excellence of a Christian's state and a life to match are all abundant material for such thoughts. These troubles show us our need of daily cleansing and pardoning grace and of seeking to be found in Christ, and so they often bring the best of us to our knees.

But our chief comfort is that our blessed Saviour, who told Satan to be gone after letting him go on in his impudence for a while (Matthew 4:10), will command him to be gone from us too, when it is good for us. He must leave at a word. In his due time Christ can and will also rebuke the rebellious and wandering stirrings of our hearts, and bring every thought of the inner person into subjection to himself.

4. "I feel the smoke of corruption more than I used to, so I must be worse"

Some think that when they begin to be troubled by the smoke of corruption more than before, they must be worse than they were. It is true that corruptions show up more now than before, but they are less.

First, the more sin is seen, the more it is hated, and so the less it becomes. Specks of dust are in a room before the sun shines, but only then do they show.

Second, the nearer opposites are to each other, the sharper the conflict between them. Of all enemies the spirit and the flesh are the nearest to each other. Both are in the soul of the regenerate person, in the faculties of the soul, and in every action that springs from them. No wonder, then, that the soul, the seat of this battle and divided against itself, is like smoking flax.

Third, the more grace, the more spiritual life, and the more spiritual life, the more dislike of its opposite. So no one is so sensitive to corruption as those with the most living souls.

Fourth, when people give themselves over to fleshly liberties, their corruptions don't trouble them, because they are not held back or tied up. But when grace begins to restrain their wild and licentious excesses, the flesh boils, resenting its confinement. Yet they are better now than before. The matter that gives off smoke was in the torch before it was lit, but it isn't offensive until the torch begins to burn. Let such people know that if the smoke has become offensive to them, it is a sign there is light. It is better to have the benefit of light with smoke than to be altogether in the dark.

Smoke is not as offensive as light is comforting, since it gives evidence of real grace in the heart. So though it is troublesome in the conflict, it is comforting as evidence. It is better for corruption to offend us now than to give way to it and buy a little peace at the cost of comfort later. So let those who are at odds with their corruptions take this text as their portion of comfort.

Chapter 13

Press on with Duties in Spite of Weaknesses

Here is a lesson of encouragement toward duty: Christ will not quench the smoking flax but will blow it up into a flame. Some people are reluctant to do good because they feel their hearts rebelling and their duties come off badly. But we shouldn't avoid good actions because of the weaknesses that cling to them. Christ looks more at the good in them, which he means to cherish, than at the evil in them, which he means to abolish.

A sick man, though in eating he may feed his disease a little, will eat anyway, so that nature may gain strength against the disease. In the same way, though sin clings to what we do, let us do it, since we have to deal with so good a Lord. The more struggle we meet, the more acceptance we find. Christ loves to taste the good fruit that comes from us, even though it will always taste a little of the old stock.

Prayer, even when it is poor

A Christian complains that he can't pray. "I'm troubled with so many distracting thoughts, and never more than now." But has God put into your heart a desire to pray? He will hear the desires of his own Spirit in you. "We do not know what to pray for as we ought" (and we don't do anything else as we ought either), "but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words" (Romans 8:26, ESV), and these are not hidden from God. "My sighing is not hidden from you" (Psalm 38:9, ESV). God can pick sense out of a confused prayer. These desires cry louder in his ears than your sins do. Sometimes a Christian's thoughts are so confused that he can say nothing, but cries as a child does, "Father!" without being able to show what he needs. That was Moses at the Red Sea.

Such stirrings of the spirit touch the heart of God and melt him into compassion toward us, when they come from the Spirit of adoption and from a striving to be better.

Objection. "But is it possible," asks the doubting heart, "that so holy a God would accept such a prayer?"

Answer. Yes. He will accept what is his own and pardon what is ours. Jonah prayed from the belly of the fish (Jonah 2:1), weighed down by the guilt of his sin, and God heard him. So let our weaknesses not discourage us. James takes this objection away (James 5:17). Someone might say, "If I were as holy as Elijah, my prayers might be heard." But James says, "Elijah was a man with a nature like ours." He had his passions as well as we have. Do we think God heard him because he was without fault? Surely not. Look instead to the promises: "Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you" (Psalm 50:15, ESV); "Ask, and it will be given to you" (Matthew 7:7, ESV), and others like them.

God accepts our prayers, though weak, for three reasons. First, because we are his own children and our prayers come from his own Spirit. Second, because they are according to his will. Third, because they are offered through Christ's mediation, and he takes them and mingles them with his own incense (Revelation 8:3). Not one holy sigh and not one tear we shed is lost. And as every grace grows by exercising itself, so does the grace of prayer. By prayer we learn to pray.

The same in every other duty

In the same way we should guard against a spirit of discouragement in all other holy duties, since we have so gracious a Saviour. Pray as you are able, hear as you are able, strive as you are able, do as you are able, according to the measure of grace you have received. God in Christ will look graciously on what is his own. Did Paul do nothing because he couldn't do the good he wanted? No, he "pressed on toward the goal" (Philippians 3:14, ESV). Let us not be cruel to ourselves when Christ is so gracious.

There is a certain meekness of spirit by which we thank God for any ability at all and rest quietly with the measure of grace we have, since it is God's good pleasure that it should be so. It is he who gives both the will and the deed (Philippians 2:13). But we don't stop there. We rest from none of our further endeavours.

When we come short of what we want to be, and short of what others are, even after faithful effort, we may know for our comfort that Christ will not quench the smoking flax. Sincerity and truth, as I said before, with an endeavour to grow, is our perfection. It is comforting to hear what God says: this one alone "shall come to the grave, because in him there is found something pleasing to the LORD" (1 Kings 14:13, ESV). Only something, but something. "I believe; help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24, ESV): that is a weak faith, but it is faith. I love you with a faint love, but it is love. I endeavour in a feeble way, but I do endeavour. A little fire is fire, though it smokes.

Since you have taken me into your covenant to be yours, who was once your enemy, will you cast me off for these weaknesses, which displease you and are the grief of my own heart?

Chapter 14

When the Heart Is Unwilling, and Other Discouragements

1. Should we do our duties when our hearts are altogether unwilling?

From what has been said, with a little added, it is not hard to answer the question some people need help with: should we perform duties when our hearts are altogether unwilling? To settle it we need to know several things.

First, our hearts of themselves hanker after liberty and are brought under the yoke of duty only with difficulty. The more spiritual the duty, the more reluctant they are. Corruption usually gains ground with every neglect. It is like rowing against the tide: one stroke missed won't be made up in three. So it is good to keep our hearts close to duty and not listen to the excuses they are ready to make.

Second, when we set ourselves to duty, God strengthens his own party in us. We find a warmth of heart and an increase of strength, as the Spirit goes along with us and raises us by degrees until he leaves us, so to speak, in heaven. God often delights to take advantage of our unwillingness to show his work more clearly, so that all the glory is his, whose is all the strength.

Third, obedience is most direct when nothing else sweetens the action. Even though the sacrifice is imperfect, the obedience with which it is offered is accepted.

Fourth, what is won as spoil from our corruptions will bring as much comfort afterwards as it cost us trouble at the time. A sense of freedom and ease of spirit is often kept back until the duty is done. Reward follows work. In duty and after it we find an experience of God's presence that we might wait a long time for without obedience and still go without. This doesn't hinder the Spirit's freedom to blow on our souls when he wishes (John 3:8). We are speaking only of a soul that is becalmed and has to row, as it were, against the current. In sailing, the hand must be on the helm and the eye on the star. So here, put forth the little strength we have toward duty and look up for help, which the Spirit will give as freely as he gives it at the right time.

Two cautions. First, in duties that need the body as well as the soul, we may stop for a while until our strength is restored. Sharpening a blade doesn't hinder the work but prepares for it. Second, in sudden passions we should take time to compose and calm the soul and to put the strings in tune. The prophet asked for a musician to bring his soul into frame (2 Kings 3:15; compare 1 Samuel 16:16-17).

2. Discouragement in suffering

We are also prone to discouragement in suffering, because of our impatience. "Alas! I shall never get through such a cross." But if God brings us into the cross, he will be with us in it and at last bring us out more refined. We shall lose nothing but dross (Zechariah 13:9). Of our own strength we can't bear the least trouble, and by the Spirit's help we can bear the greatest. The Spirit will put his shoulder to the load and help us bear our weaknesses. "The LORD upholds his hand" (Psalm 37:24, ESV). "You have heard of the steadfastness of Job," says James (James 5:11). We have also heard of his impatience, but God was pleased mercifully to overlook it.

This brings comfort in desolate conditions as well, such as contagious sicknesses and the like, where we are more directly under God's hand. Then Christ has a throne of mercy at our bedside, and he counts our tears and our groans.

3. Discouragement before the Lord's Supper

And to come to the matter we are now on, the Lord's Supper was ordained not for angels but for men, and not for perfect men but for weak ones. It wasn't ordained for Christ, who is truth itself, to bind him, but because we, with our guilty and unbelieving hearts, are ready to call truth itself into question. So it was not enough for his goodness to leave us many precious promises. He gives us seals to strengthen us. And if we are not as prepared as we should be, let us pray as Hezekiah did: "May the good LORD pardon everyone who sets his heart to seek God, the LORD, the God of his fathers, even though not according to the sanctuary's rules of cleanness" (2 Chronicles 30:18-19, ESV). Then we come to this holy sacrament with comfort and with much fruit.

4. What displeases us will not harm us

This should carry us through all duties with cheerfulness: if we hate our corruptions and fight against them, they shall not be counted as ours. "It is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me," says Paul (Romans 7:17). What displeases us will never hurt us. We shall be counted by God to be what we love, desire and labour to be. What we desire to be, we shall be, and what we truly desire to conquer, we shall conquer, for God "fulfills the desire of those who fear him" (Psalm 145:19, ESV). The desire is a pledge of the thing desired.

How little encouragement it takes to get us going in the affairs of this life! And yet all the help God offers hardly moves our backward natures. Where, then, do discouragements come from?

5. Discouragements don't come from the Father, the Son or the Spirit

They do not come from the Father. He has bound himself by covenant to pity us "as a father shows compassion to his children" (Psalm 103:13, ESV) and to accept our weak endeavours as a father does. What is lacking in the strength of our duty, he lets us make up from his gracious indulgence, and so we honour that grace in which he delights as much as we would by more perfect performances. Your ability is your measure.

They do not come from Christ, whose office is not to quench the smoking flax. We see how Christ gives the best fruits of his love to people who are lowly in condition, weak in abilities, and flawed by weaknesses, even by grosser and more offensive falls. He does this first to confound the pride of the flesh, which usually measures God's love by some outward excellence. Second, he delights to show the freedom of his grace and his royal prerogative, so that "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord" (1 Corinthians 1:31, ESV).

In Hebrews 11, among that cloud of witnesses, we see Rahab, Gideon and Samson ranked with Abraham, the father of the faithful (Hebrews 11:31-32). Our blessed Saviour, as he was the image of his Father, was of the same mind in this. He thanked his Father for revealing the mystery of the gospel to simple people and passing over those with the greatest reputation for wisdom in the world (Matthew 11:25).

It is worth remembering what Augustine says of a simple man in his own time, who almost entirely lacked the use of reason. He was patient under every injury done to himself. Yet from reverence for religion he would not endure an injury done to the name of Christ. He would throw stones at those who blasphemed, and in that matter he would not spare even his own rulers. This shows that no one's abilities are so low as to be beneath the gracious regard of Christ. Where it pleases him to make his choice and exalt his mercy, he passes by no level of intelligence, however plain.

They do not come from the Spirit either. He helps our weaknesses and by office is the Comforter (Romans 8:26). If he convinces us of sin and so humbles us, it is to make way for his office of comforting us. Discouragements, then, must come from ourselves and from Satan, who labours to fasten on us a loathing of duty.

Chapter 15

Weakness Is No Reason to Despair: Who Has It, and How to Recover Lost Peace

Scruples and ignorance

Among other causes of discouragement, some people are badly troubled by scruples, even about the best duties. This comes partly from bodily distemper, which Satan's malice makes use of to throw dust in their eyes on the way to heaven. It comes partly from some leftover ignorance, which breeds fears the way darkness does. They are ignorant of other things, and above all of this merciful disposition in Christ, whose certainty would easily drive away false fears. They picture him as someone lying in wait to catch them out at every turn. In that they wrong not only themselves but his goodness.

This scrupulosity is for the most part a sign of a godly soul, as some weeds are a sign of good soil. So these people are the more to be pitied, for it is a heavy affliction, and in most it arises not so much from trouble of conscience as from sickness of the imagination. Christ came to free us from all such groundless fears.

Weaknesses don't break the covenant

Some still have so little understanding of the comfortable condition we are in under the covenant of grace that they are much discouraged by it. So we must know three things.

First, weaknesses do not break covenant with God. They do not break it between husband and wife, and shall we make ourselves more pitiable than Christ, who holds himself up as the pattern of love for all other husbands?

Second, weaknesses do not shut us out from mercy. They move God to show it all the more (Psalm 78:39). Mercy is part of the church's marriage settlement: "I will betroth you to me... in steadfast love and in mercy" (Hosea 2:19, ESV). A husband is bound to bear with his wife as "the weaker vessel" (1 Peter 3:7, ESV), and shall we think Christ will exempt himself from his own rule and not bear with his weak bride?

Third, if Christ were not merciful to our weaknesses, he would have no people to serve him.

So even if we are very weak, as long as we are not found among the malicious opponents and underminers of God's truth, let us not give way to thoughts of despair. We have a merciful Saviour.

What counts as a weakness

But lest we flatter ourselves without ground, we must know what weaknesses are. They are one of four things. They may be imperfections that cling to our best actions. They may be actions that come from a lack of age in Christ, while we are still babies. They may come from lack of strength where there have been few means of grace. Or they may be sudden, unplanned outbreaks, contrary to our general bent and purpose, while our judgment is overcast by the cloud of a sudden temptation. After such a fall we are aware of our weakness, we grieve over it, and out of grief we complain. In complaining we strive and labour to reform, and in labouring we gain some ground against our corruption.

Weaknesses understood like this, though they call for humbling and are the object of our daily putting to death of sin, can still stand with boldness before God. A good work is neither extinguished by them nor tainted so far that God no longer accepts it.

But to plead for a weakness is more than a weakness. To allow ourselves in weaknesses is more than a weakness. Defending evil seals the lips, so that the soul can't call God "Father" with a child's freedom or enjoy sweet fellowship with him, until peace is made by shaming ourselves and renewing our faith. People who have once been bruised for sin are soon restored if they fall. Peter was restored by a gracious look from Christ, and David by the words of Abigail. Tell a thief or a vagrant that he is off the road and he pays no attention, because his aim is not to walk any particular road, only to go wherever it serves his turn.

Four marks of the person whose failings are only weaknesses

To make this clearer, we should understand four things.

First, wherever sins of weakness are found, the life of grace must already have begun in that person. There can be no weakness where there is no life.

Second, there must be a sincere and general bent toward the best things. A godly man may be drawn or driven aside in some particulars for a moment. But because the Spirit of Christ has a claim on him, and because his aims are right at bottom, he will either recover by himself or yield to the counsel of others.

Third, there must be a right judgment that approves the best ways. Otherwise the heart is rotten and passes corruption into the whole life, so that all their actions are infected at the spring. Such people justify looseness and condemn God's ways as too strict. The principles they work by are not good.

Fourth, there must be a marriage love for Christ, so that on no terms will they change their Lord and husband or give themselves up to be ruled by their own lusts or the lusts of others. A Christian's conduct toward Christ may in many ways be very offensive and cause some estrangement. Still he will own Christ and Christ will own him. He will not settle on any course that he knows means breaking with Christ.

Christ passes over many weaknesses

Where the heart has these qualities, we must know that Christ counts it his honour to pass over many weaknesses. In weaknesses he even perfects his strength. There are some almost unconquerable weaknesses, such as forgetfulness, heaviness of spirit, sudden passions and fears. Though natural, they are for the most part tainted with sin. If the life of Christ is in us, we are weary of them and would gladly shake them off, as a sick man shakes off a fever. Otherwise it should be reckoned not so much weakness as wilfulness, and the more will there is in it, the more sin. When God wakes the conscience and "lay[s] the charge before you" (Psalm 50:21, ESV) for even little sins, they will prove great burdens. They will not only bruise a reed but shake a cedar.

God's children never sin with their full will, because there is a contrary law of the mind that breaks the dominion of sin and always has some secret working against the law of sin. Even so, there can be enough will in a sinful action to waste our comfort wonderfully afterward and keep us long on the rack of an uneasy conscience, while God, in his fatherly management, withholds the sense of his love. The more we give way to our will in sinning, the farther we set ourselves from comfort. Sin against conscience is like a thief in the candle, which wastes our joy and so weakens our strength. We must know, therefore, that wilful breaches in sanctification will greatly hinder the sense of our justification.

How to recover lost peace

Question. What should such people do to recover their peace?

Answer. They must pass a sharp sentence on themselves and yet throw themselves on God's mercy in Christ, as they did when they first turned to him. Now they need to cling to Christ all the tighter, as they see more need in themselves. Let them remember the mildness of Christ in this text, who will not quench the smoking flax.

We often see that after a deep humbling Christ speaks more peace than before, to witness the truth of the reconciliation. He knows Satan's schemes for pushing such people lower, and he knows they are abased in themselves and ashamed to look him in the face because of their unkindness. God did not only pardon David. After much bruising he gave him wise Solomon to succeed him in the kingdom. In the Song of Solomon, after the bride has been humbled for slighting Christ, he welcomes her sweetly back and bursts into praise of her beauty (Song 6:4).

We must know for our comfort that Christ was not anointed for this great work of mediator only for lesser sins, but for the greatest, if we have but a spark of true faith to take hold of him. So if there is any bruised reed, let him not make himself an exception when Christ makes no exception of him: "Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden" (Matthew 11:28, ESV). Why should we not make use of so gracious a disposition? We are poor only because we do not know our riches in Christ. In time of temptation, believe Christ rather than the devil. Believe the truth from truth itself, and do not listen to a liar, an enemy and a murderer.

Chapter 16

Don't Believe Satan's Picture of Christ

Since Christ has been set before us so comfortingly, let us not believe Satan's portraits of him. When we are troubled in conscience for our sins, Satan's way is to present Christ to the afflicted soul as a most severe judge armed with justice against us. At those times let us put before our souls the Christ God himself has offered to our view: holding out a sceptre of mercy and opening his arms to receive us.

A mirror of all meekness

When we think of Joseph, of Daniel, of John the Evangelist and others, we picture them with delight as gentle and sweet persons. How much more, when we think of Christ, should we picture him as a mirror of all meekness. If the sweetness of all flowers were in one flower, how sweet that flower would be! In Christ all the perfections of mercy and love meet. How great, then, must the mercy be that lives in so gracious a heart! Whatever tenderness is scattered among husband, father, brother and head is only a beam from him, and it is in him in the highest degree.

We are weak, but we are his. We are deformed, but we carry his image. A father looks not so much at his child's blemishes as at his own nature in him, and so Christ finds a reason for love in what is his own in us. He sees his own nature in us. We are diseased, but we are still his members. Who ever neglected his own limbs because they were sick or weak? No one ever hated his own flesh. Can the head forget its members? Can Christ forget himself? We are his fullness, as he is ours.

He was love itself clothed in human nature, which he united so closely to himself that he might share his goodness more freely with us. He did not take our nature when it was at its best, but when it had been brought low, subject to all the natural and common weaknesses of our condition.

The devil's old trade

So let us hate all suspicious thoughts, as either thrown in or nursed by that damned spirit. He tried to divide the Father from the Son by planting jealousy: "If you are the Son of God..." (Matthew 4:6, ESV). His daily study is to divide the Son from us, by breeding wrong ideas of Christ in us, as if there were no such tender love in him for people like us. It was his art from the beginning to discredit God with man by calling God's love into question, as he did with our first father Adam. His success then keeps him ready with the same weapon now.

"But I don't feel Christ like that. He seems an enemy."

Objection. "For all this," says the smoking flax, "I don't find Christ like that to me. I find the opposite. He seems to be an enemy to me. I see and feel evidence of his just displeasure."

Answer. Christ may play the part of an enemy for a little while, as Joseph did with his brothers, but it is to make way for playing his own part of mercy at a more fitting time. He can't hold in his compassion for long. He seems to wrestle with us as he did with Jacob, but he supplies us with hidden strength to get the better of it in the end. Faith pulls the mask from his face and sees a loving heart under contrary appearances.

At first, when the Canaanite woman cried out after him, he answered her not a word. Then he refused her. Then he gave an answer aimed at insulting her, calling her a dog, as one outside the covenant. Yet she would not be driven off that way, for she considered the purpose of his coming (Matthew 15:21-28). His Father was never nearer to him in strength to hold him up than when he was farthest off in the feeling of favour that would comfort him. In the same way Christ is never nearer to us in power to uphold us than when he seems most to hide his presence. The influence of the Sun of righteousness goes deeper than his light.

In such cases, whatever Christ's present conduct toward us, let us set his nature and office against it. He cannot deny himself. He cannot fail to discharge the office his Father has laid on him. Here the Father has undertaken that he shall not quench the smoking flax, and Christ in turn has undertaken for us to the Father, appearing before him for us until he presents us blameless before him (John 17:6, 11). The Father has given us to Christ, and Christ gives us back again to the Father.

"That would be good comfort if I were even smoking flax"

Objection. "This would be good comfort if I were even smoking flax."

Answer. It is well that your objection presses on yourself and not on Christ. It is well that you give him the honour of mercy toward others, though not toward yourself. But do not wrong the work of his Spirit in your heart. Satan slanders Christ to us, and he slanders us to ourselves.

If you are not even smoking flax, why don't you renounce your claim on Christ and disown the covenant of grace? You dare not. Why don't you give yourself wholly to other pleasures? Your spirit won't let you. Where do these restless groanings and complaints come from? Lay this present state of yours beside this office of Christ for people like you, and do not despise the consolation of the Almighty or refuse your own mercy. Throw yourself into the arms of Christ, and if you perish, perish there. If you don't, you are sure to perish. If mercy is to be found anywhere, it is there.

Christ's care for you shows in this: he has given you a heart that is to some degree sensitive. He might have given you up to hardness, carelessness and profane-mindedness, which is the greatest of all spiritual judgments. He died for his enemies. Will he turn away those whose souls long for him? He asks us through his messengers to be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:20). Will he put us off when we earnestly seek it from his hand? Surely not. When he has gone before us by kindling holy desires in us, he is ready to meet us in his own ways. When the prodigal set out to return to his father, the father didn't wait for him but met him on the road. "You will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear" (Psalm 10:17, ESV). Christ cannot bring himself to hide from us for long.

Anchoring in the dark

If God should bring us into such a dark condition that we see no light from himself or from any creature, let us remember what he says through Isaiah: "Let him who walks in darkness and has no light," no light of comfort, no light of God's face, "trust in the name of the LORD and rely on his God" (Isaiah 50:10, ESV). We can never be in a condition where there is just cause for utter despair. So let us do as sailors do and cast anchor in the dark. Christ knows how to pity us in this case. Whatever comfort he felt from his Father in his own breaking (Isaiah 53:5), we shall feel the like from him in our bruising.

The sighs of a bruised heart carry some word of our affection for Christ and of his care for us. The eyes of our souls cannot turn toward him unless he has first cast a gracious look on us. The least love we have for him is only a reflection of his love shining first on us.

Christ suffered what he calls us to suffer

Christ did in his own example everything he commands us to do. He also suffered in his own person everything he calls us to suffer, so that he might better learn to relieve and pity us in our sufferings. In his desertion in the garden and on the cross he was willing to go without that unspeakable comfort of his Father's presence, both to bear the Lord's wrath for a time on our behalf, and to know better how to comfort us in our greatest extremities.

God sees fit that we should taste of that cup from which his Son drank so deeply, so that we may feel a little of what sin is and of what his Son's love was. But our comfort is that Christ drank the dregs of the cup for us and will help us, so that our spirits do not utterly fail under the small taste of his displeasure we may feel. He became not only a man but a curse, a man of sorrows for us. He was broken so that we should not be broken. He was troubled so that we should not be desperately troubled. He became a curse so that we should not be accursed.

Everything we could want in a comforter

Whatever could be wished for in an all-sufficient comforter is found in Christ:

1. Authority from the Father. "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me" (Matthew 28:18, ESV).
2. Strength in himself. His name is "Mighty God" (Isaiah 9:6, ESV).
3. Wisdom, and that from his own experience, to know how and when to help.
4. Willingness, since he is flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone.

Chapter 17

A Warning to Those Who Sin Against Christ's Mercy, and a Word on Not Quenching the Spirit

We now need to notice several kinds of people who offend deeply against this merciful disposition of Christ.

1. Those who say it is useless to go to Christ

Some carry on in every kind of evil way of life on the notion that it is pointless to go to Christ, their lives have been so bad. Yet as soon as we look to heaven, every encouragement is ready to meet us and draw us on. One of the strongest is that Christ is ready to welcome us and lead us further. No one in the church is damned except those who choose to be.

Others force hard thoughts of Christ on themselves so that they will have some show of reason for finding their satisfaction elsewhere. That was the unprofitable servant, who decided that his master was a hard man in order to flatter himself in his unfruitful course, and in not making use of his talent (Matthew 25:24-30).

2. Those who hope Christ will let them walk the road to hell and still bring them to heaven

All comfort ought to draw us nearer to Christ. If it doesn't, it is a lying comfort, either in itself or in the way we apply it.

3. Those who pour water on the sparks Christ is lighting in them

They do it because they don't want to be troubled by the light.

Such people must know that the Lamb can be angry. Those who will not come under his sceptre of mercy shall be broken by his sceptre of power (Psalm 2:9). He will graciously tend and keep the least spark of true grace. But where he finds no spark of grace, only resistance to his Spirit as he strives with them, his wrath once kindled will burn to hell. There is no juster provocation than kindness churlishly refused.

When God would have healed Babylon and she would not be healed, she was given up to destruction (Jeremiah 51:9). When Jerusalem would not be gathered under Christ's wing, her house was left desolate (Matthew 23:37-38). When wisdom stretches out her hand and people refuse, wisdom will laugh at their calamity (Proverbs 1:24-26). Salvation itself will not save those who spill the medicine and throw away the plaster. It is a pitiful case when this merciful Saviour is left to delight in destruction, when he who made them "will not have compassion on them" (Isaiah 27:11, ESV).

"Oh," say the rebels of our time, "God did not make us to damn us." Yes, but if you will not meet Christ in the ways of his mercy, it is only right that you "eat the fruit of [your] way, and have [your] fill of [your] own devices" (Proverbs 1:31, ESV).

This will be the hell of hell, when people think how they loved their sins more than their souls, and think of the love and mercy that were almost forced on them, and yet they chose to perish. The more we have contributed to bringing judgment on ourselves, the more the conscience will be thrown into confusion, when they have to acknowledge Christ free from all blame and themselves without excuse.

If people appeal to their own consciences, their consciences will tell them that the Holy Spirit often knocked at their hearts, willing to kindle some holy desires in them. How else could they be said to resist the Holy Spirit, unless the Spirit was readier to draw them to a higher degree of goodness than their own wills were? That is why those in the church who are damned have already condemned themselves. We needn't look for higher causes when people carry sufficient cause in their own hearts.

4. The best of us, if we presume on this mercy

Even the best of us can offend against this merciful disposition, if we are not watchful against the liberty our fleshly nature is ready to take from it. We reason like this: "If Christ will not quench the smoking flax, why should we fear that any neglect on our part could bring us into a comfortless condition? If Christ will not do it, what can?"

Answer. You know the apostle's warning: "Do not quench the Spirit" (1 Thessalonians 5:19, ESV). These cautions against quenching are made holy by the Spirit as means of not quenching. Christ performs his office of not quenching by stirring up fitting endeavours in us. No one is more careful in using the means than those who are most sure of success. The ground is this: the means God has set apart for bringing anything about fall under the same purpose he has to bring that thing to pass. We take this for granted even in ordinary matters. If a farmer knew in advance it would be a fruitful year, would he hang up his plough and neglect tilling?

So the apostle stirs us up from the certain expectation of a blessing (1 Corinthians 15:57-58). The encouragement here, from the good outcome of final victory, is meant to stir us up, not to take us off. If we are careless in exercising the grace we have received and in using the means prescribed, if we let our spirits be weighed down by the many cares of this life and don't watch out for the damps of the times, God in his wise care often lets us fall into a worse condition, as far as feeling goes, than those who were never so enlightened. Yet in mercy he will not let us be such enemies to ourselves as to neglect altogether these sparks once kindled. If it were possible for us to be given up to abandon all endeavour completely, we could expect no other outcome than quenching. But Christ will tend this spark and cherish this small seed, so that he always keeps in the soul some degree of care.

#### The means by which Christ keeps grace alive

To make a comforting use of this, we should consider all the means by which Christ keeps grace alive once it is begun.

First, holy fellowship, by which one Christian warms another: "Two are better than one" (Ecclesiastes 4:9, ESV). "Did not our hearts burn within us?" said the disciples (Luke 24:32).

Second, still more, fellowship with God in holy duties such as meditation and prayer. These not only kindle the soul but give it a lustre.

Third, we find by experience that the breath of the Spirit goes along with the breath of the minister. That is why the apostle ties the two together: "Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies" (1 Thessalonians 5:19-20, ESV). Nathan with a few words blew up the dying sparks in David. Rather than let his fire in us die, God will send some Nathan or other. And something is always left in us to join with the word, as being at home with it, as a coal that has fire in it quickly catches more. Smoking flax will easily take fire.

Fourth, grace is strengthened by exercising it. "Arise and work! The LORD be with you!" David said to his son Solomon (1 Chronicles 22:16). Stir up the grace that is in you, for in this way holy motions turn into resolutions, resolutions into practice, and practice into a ready preparedness for every good work.

A caution. Grace is increased by exercise, not by the power of the exercise itself, but because Christ by his Spirit flows into the soul, brings us nearer to himself the fountain, and puts such comfort into the act that the heart is further enlarged. The heart of a Christian is Christ's garden, and his graces are so many sweet spices and flowers, which his Spirit, blowing on them, makes send out their fragrance (Song 4:16). So keep the soul open to welcome the Holy Spirit. He brings in fresh forces continually to subdue corruption, and most of all on the Lord's day. John was "in the Spirit on the Lord's day," even on Patmos, the place of his banishment (Revelation 1:10). At such times the breezes of the Spirit blow more strongly and sweetly.

As we look for the comfort of this teaching, then, let us not indulge our natural laziness. Instead let us "train yourself for godliness" (1 Timothy 4:7, ESV). Let us work to keep this fire always burning on the altar of our hearts, trim our lamps daily and put in fresh oil, and wind up our souls higher and higher still. Resting in a good condition is contrary to grace, which cannot help pressing on to a further measure. Let no one turn this "grace of our God into sensuality" (Jude 4, ESV). Weaknesses are a ground for humility, not an excuse for negligence or an encouragement to presumption. We should be so far from doing wrong because Christ is good that these coals of love should melt us. So those in whom the thought of Christ's mildness does not work this way may well suspect themselves. Where grace is, corruption is "like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes" (Proverbs 10:26, ESV).

Such people will labour, for their own comfort and for the credit of religion and the glory of God, to let their light break out. If a spark of faith and love is so precious, what an honour it will be to be rich in faith! Who would not rather walk in the light and in the comforts of the Holy Spirit than live in a dark, perplexed state? Who would not rather be carried to heaven under full sail than be tossed always by fears and doubts? The present trouble of fighting against a sin is not so great as the disquiet that any favoured corruption will bring on us afterward. True peace is in conquering, not in giving in.

The comfort intended in this text is for those who would gladly do better but find their corruptions dragging at them. It is for those who are in such a mist that they often can't tell what to think of themselves. They would gladly believe, and yet often fear they don't believe, and think it can't be that God would be so good to such sinful wretches as they are, and yet they do not allow themselves in these fears and doubts.

5. Those who want other mediators than Christ

How they wrong themselves and him, those who want other mediators with God than him! Is anyone more compassionate than he, who became man for the very purpose of being compassionate to his own flesh? Let everyone at all times come to this gentle Saviour and offer all our petitions in his prevailing name. Why should we knock at any other door? Can anyone be more tender toward us than Christ?

What encouragement we have to commend the state of the church in general, or of any broken-hearted Christian, to him in our prayers! We may speak to Christ as the sisters spoke of Lazarus: Lord, the church that you love and gave yourself for is in distress. Lord, this poor Christian, for whom you were bruised (Isaiah 53:5), is bruised and brought very low. It cannot fail to touch his heart when the misery of those so dear to him is spread before him.

6. Those who are cruel in the name of the gentle Christ

Considering this gracious nature in Christ, let us think: when he is so kind to us, shall we be cruel against him, in his name, in his truth, in his children? How will those who delight in being so terrible to "the meek of the earth" hope to look so gracious a Saviour in the face? Those who are so rough with his bride will know one day that they had to deal with himself in his church.

It cannot fail to cut the hearts of those who have felt this love of Christ to hear him wounded who is the life of their lives and the soul of their souls. This makes those who have felt mercy weep over Christ, whom they have pierced with their sins. There must be a mutual and quick sympathy between the head and the members. When we are tempted to any sin, if we will not pity ourselves, we should at least spare Christ by not putting him to new torments. The apostle could find no more heart-breaking argument to move us to sacrifice ourselves to God than to plead with us "by the mercies of God" (Romans 12:1, ESV).

7. Those who tear the church apart

This mercy of Christ should also move us to feel for the state of the poor church, torn by enemies without and tearing itself apart by divisions at home. It must move any soul that has ever felt comfort from Christ to consider how affectionate Paul's appeal is for agreement in judgment and affection: "If there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind" (Philippians 2:1-2, ESV). It is as if he were saying, "Unless you will disown all comfort in Christ, work to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." What a joyful sight this is to Satan and his side, to see those who are separated from the world fall to pieces among themselves! Our discord is our enemy's music.

The more to blame are those who, for private ends, make a show of differing from others and will not let the wounds of the church close and come together.

This should not be taken as if people should hide their judgment on any truth where there is just cause to speak. The least truth is Christ's and not ours, so we are not free to affirm or deny it as we please. There is a due in a penny as well as in a pound, so we must be faithful in the smallest truth when the occasion calls for it. Then our words are "like apples of gold in a setting of silver" (Proverbs 25:11, ESV). One word spoken in season will do more good than a thousand out of season.

But in some cases peace, by keeping our conviction to ourselves before God (Romans 14:22), matters more than openly declaring some things we take to be true. Human nature is so weak that hardly any difference of opinion can be brought into the open without some cooling of affection. So far as people are not of one mind, they will hardly be of one heart, unless grace and the peace of God (Colossians 3:15) rule strongly in the heart. So open display of difference is never good unless it is necessary. Some, out of a desire to be somebody, turn into side roads and give way to a spirit of contradiction. Yet if Paul is to be the judge, "are you not of the flesh?" (1 Corinthians 3:3, ESV). If it is wisdom, it is wisdom from beneath, for "the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable" (James 3:17, ESV).

When our blessed Saviour was about to leave the world, what did he press on his disciples more than peace and love? And in his last prayer, how earnestly he begged his Father "that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you" (John 17:21, ESV)! What he prayed for on earth, we shall enjoy perfectly only in heaven. Let that make the thought of that time the sweeter to us.

8. Those who profit from other people's distress, or despise the humility of the gospel

Think what spirit those must be of who take advantage of the bruisedness and weakness of people's spirits to relieve them with a false peace for their own worldly ends. A wounded spirit will part with anything. Many of the profitable teachings of the Roman church, such as confession, satisfaction, merit and purgatory, spring from here. But they are worthless physicians, or rather tormentors and no physicians at all. Being delivered from "the torment of a scorpion" (Revelation 9:5, ESV) is a greater blessing than we are thankful for. Spiritual tyranny is the worst tyranny, and worst of all when it is exercised where most mercy should be shown. Even there some, like cruel surgeons, take pleasure in long cures that serve themselves out of the misery of others. It brings people under a terrible curse because, as the psalm says, "he did not remember to show kindness, but pursued the poor and needy and the brokenhearted, to put them to death" (Psalm 109:16, ESV).

Join with these the ones who build their fortunes by betraying the church and are unfaithful to the trust given to them. The children cry for the bread of life and there is none to give them. So the people of God have the heavy judgment of a spiritual famine brought on them, and Christ is starved in his members. Shall we repay so good a Saviour like this, who counts the love and mercy shown in obeying "Feed my lambs" (John 21:15, ESV) as shown to himself?

Last of all, they treat Christ very unkindly who stumble at his low stooping to us in his government and ordinances, who are ashamed of the simplicity of the gospel and count preaching foolishness. Out of the pride of their hearts they think they can do well enough without the help of word and sacraments. They think Christ did not take on enough state, and so they will improve matters with their own inventions, which give more satisfaction to flesh and blood, as in popery. What greater ingratitude can there be than to despise any help that Christ in mercy has provided for us?

In the days of his flesh the proud Pharisees took offence at his familiar mixing with sinful people, though he did it only as a physician to heal their souls. What defences Paul was driven to make for himself for his plainness in laying out the gospel! The more Christ, in himself and in his servants, comes down to lift us up, the more we should welcome that love with all humility and readiness, and magnify the goodness of God, who has put the great work of our salvation, and laid the government, on so gentle a Saviour, who will conduct himself so mildly in everything he has to do between God and us, and between us and God. The lower Christ comes down to us, the higher let us lift him up in our hearts. So will everyone do who has ever experienced Christ's work in their heart.

Chapter 18

What Christ's Judgment in Us Is, and What Its Victory Means

We come now to the third part of the text: the constant progress of Christ's gracious power, until he has set up in us such an absolute government that it will prevail over all corruptions. The text says he will cherish the beginnings of grace in us "until he brings justice to victory." By "justice" or "judgment" here is meant the kingdom of grace in us, that government by which Christ sets up a throne in our hearts.

Why this rule is called judgment

Among the Jews governors were first called judges and then kings, and so this inward rule is called judgment. It is also called judgment because it agrees with the judgment of the word, which the psalmist often calls judgment (Psalm 72:1-2), because it agrees with God's judgment. People can read their sentence in God's word: what it judges of them, God judges of them. By this judgment set up in us, good is discerned, approved and done, and sin is judged, condemned and executed. Our spirit, being under the Spirit of Christ, is governed by him, and so far as it is governed by Christ, it governs us graciously.

Christ and we are of one judgment and one will. He has his will in us, and his judgments are so planted in us that they become our judgment, since we carry his law, which by his Spirit he has written "on [our] hearts" (Jeremiah 31:33, ESV). The law in the inner person and the written law answer each other like two copies of the same deed.

Grace goes forward until all opposition is brought under

The meaning, then, is that the gracious frame of holiness set up in our hearts by the Spirit of Christ shall go forward until all opposing power is brought under. The spirit of judgment will be "a spirit of burning" (Isaiah 4:4, ESV), to consume whatever opposes it, as rust that eats into the soul. If God's builders fall into errors and build straw on a good foundation, God's Spirit, like a spiritual fire, will reveal it in time (1 Corinthians 3:12-13) and burn it up. By a spirit of judgment they will condemn their own errors and courses.

Judgment and wisdom

The whole work of grace in us is set out under the name of judgment, and sometimes of wisdom, because judgment is the chief and leading part of grace. That is why the gracious work of repentance is called a change of mind and an after-wisdom. In the learned languages, too, the words for wisdom imply the whole soul's taste and savour. They suggest the judgment of taste more than that of sight or any other sense, because taste is the most necessary sense and requires the closest contact with its object. So in spiritual life it is most necessary that the Spirit should alter the taste of the soul, so that it savours the things of the Spirit so deeply that everything else loses its relish.

Victory for each Christian and for the whole church

As it is true of every individual Christian that Christ's judgment in him shall be victorious, so it is of the whole body of Christians, the church. The government of Christ, and his truth, by which he rules as with a sceptre, shall in the end be victorious in spite of Satan, antichrist and all enemies. Christ rides on his white horse, with a bow, and goes out conquering (Revelation 6:2; 19:11) in the ministry of the word, so that he may overcome either to conversion or to confusion.

Why "judgment" means his rule within us first

Still, I take judgment chiefly to mean Christ's kingdom and government within us. First, because God especially requires the submission of the soul and conscience as his proper throne. Second, because if judgment prevailed in everyone else around us and not in our own hearts, it would give us no comfort. That is why it is the first thing we ask for when we pray, "Your kingdom come": that Christ would come and rule in our hearts. The kingdom of Christ in his ordinances serves only to bring Christ home to his own place, our hearts.

Now that the words are explained, and we see that judgment includes the government of mind, will and affections, there are several conclusions that follow naturally from them.

Chapter 19

Christ Is Gentle, and Yet He Governs Those Who Enjoy His Gentleness

The first conclusion from the connection of this part of the verse with the one before is that Christ is mild on these terms: he will set up his government in those over whom he is so gentle and tender. He forgives us, but he will be obeyed as king. He takes us as his bride, but he will be obeyed as husband. The same Spirit who convinces us that we need his righteousness to cover us also convinces us that we need his government to rule us. His love for us moves him to shape us to be like himself, and our love for him stirs us to be such as he can delight in. We have no more faith or hope than we have care to be made pure as he is pure.

He makes us under-governors, yes, kings under himself, giving us grace not only to stand against our base affections but to subdue them in some measure. It is one main fruit of Christ's exaltation that he may turn every one of us from our wickedness (Acts 3:26). "For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living" (Romans 14:9, ESV). God has bound himself by an oath to grant us that "we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him" (Luke 1:74-75, ESV). That means before him, and not only in the sight of the world.

1. A test of who may claim Christ's mercy

This serves as a test for discerning who can rightly claim Christ's mercy. It belongs only to those who will take his yoke and count it a greater happiness to be under his government than to enjoy any liberty of the flesh. It belongs to those who will take the whole Christ and not pick out of him whatever suits their present contentment, who will not divide Lord from Jesus and so make a Christ of their own. No one ever truly desired mercy that pardons without desiring mercy that heals. David prayed for a new spirit as well as for a sense of pardoning mercy (Psalm 51:10).

2. Christ is our sanctification and not only our righteousness

This shows that those are misled who make Christ our righteousness only, and our sanctification only by imputation. It is a great part of our happiness to be under such a Lord, who was not only born for us and given to us, but has "the government shall be upon his shoulder" (Isaiah 9:6, ESV). He is our Sanctifier as well as our Saviour. He saves us from the power of sin by the effective power of his Spirit as well as from its guilt by the merit of his death.

Remember, though, that the first and chief ground of our comfort is that Christ as priest offered himself as a sacrifice to his Father for us. The guilty soul flees first to Christ crucified, made a curse for us. From that comes Christ's right to govern us, and from that he gives us his Spirit as our guide to lead us home.

3. When we fall, go first to mercy and then to the Spirit

In the course of our life, after we are in a state of grace and are overtaken by some sin, we must remember to go first to Christ's mercy to pardon us, and then to the promise of his Spirit to govern us.

4. When we are cold, warm ourselves at his love

When we feel cold in affection and duty, the best way is to warm ourselves at this fire of his love and mercy in giving himself for us.

5. His rule is love, and it is also power

Remember too that Christ rules us by a spirit of love, out of a sense of his love, and so his commands are easy to us. He leads us by his free Spirit, a Spirit of liberty. His subjects are volunteers. The only constraint he lays on his subjects is that of love: he draws us sweetly "with cords of kindness, with the bands of love" (Hosea 11:4, ESV).

Yet remember also that he draws us strongly, by a Spirit of power. It is not enough for us to have motives and encouragements to love and obey Christ from that love by which he gave himself for us to justify us. Christ's Spirit must also subdue our hearts and make them holy to love him, and without that all motives would be ineffective. Our disposition must be changed. We must be new creatures. Those who look for spiritual love in an unchanged heart are looking for heaven in hell.

When a child obeys his father, it is partly because of reasons that persuade him, and partly because of a childlike nature that gives those reasons their strength. It is natural for a child of God to love Christ, so far as he is renewed, not only because reason leads him to, but also from an inward principle and work of grace, from which those reasons get their chief force. First we are made sharers in the divine nature, and then we are easily moved and led by Christ's Spirit to spiritual duties.

Chapter 20

Christ's Rule in Us Is Joined with Judgment and Wisdom

The second conclusion is that Christ's government in his church and in his children is wise and well ordered. The prophet calls it judgment, and judgment is the life and soul of wisdom. This conclusion has two branches. First, the spiritual government of Christ in us goes hand in hand with judgment and wisdom. Second, wherever true spiritual wisdom and judgment are found, there the Spirit of Christ brings in his gracious rule.

A well-guided life is the most reasonable life

Take the first branch. A life guided by the rules of Christ stands on the strongest and highest reason of all. That is why holy people are described as the "children" of wisdom (Luke 7:35), able to defend every way of wisdom by reason and by experience. The opposite courses are folly and madness. So Paul says that the spiritual person "judges all things" that concern them, yet is judged by no one of lower rank (1 Corinthians 2:15). Those others lack the spiritual light and sight to judge. Still, they will go on judging. They "blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant" (2 Peter 2:12, ESV). They leap from ignorance to prejudice and rash censure without ever stopping to form a right judgment, and so their verdict comes to nothing.

The judgment of the spiritual person, so far as they are spiritual, will stand, because it agrees with the nature of things. Things are in their judgment what they are in themselves. God is in himself infinite in goodness and majesty, and he is that to them; in their heart they give God his divinity and all his excellencies. Christ is in himself the only mediator and "all, and in all" (Colossians 3:11, ESV), and so he is to them, because they make him so in their heart. Everything is "rubbish" compared to Christ, and so it was to Paul, a sanctified man (Philippians 3:8). The worst thing in religion, "the reproach of Christ," is better than "the fleeting pleasures of sin," and so it was to Moses, a man of right esteem (Hebrews 11:25-26). "For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere," and so it was to David, a man of reformed judgment (Psalm 84:10).

A good person's judgment matches things as they are in themselves. It sees difference where God has put difference, and agreement where God has put agreement. Truth is truth and error is error, and what is unlawful is unlawful, whether people think so or not. God has fixed an eternal difference between light and darkness, good and evil, and no creature's opinion can alter it. No one's judgment is the measure of things except so far as it agrees with the truth God has stamped on them. And because a wise person's judgment agrees with the truth of things, such a person may in a sense be called the measure of things, and the judgment of one holy, wise person is to be preferred before a thousand others.

People like this are usually as steady as the sun in its course, because they think, speak and live by a rule. "As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD" (Joshua 24:15, ESV), whatever others do. They run against the world because their judgment leads them the other way.

Why Satan hates the judgment

This is why Satan has a particular spite against the eye of the soul. He wants to put it out with ignorance and false reasoning, because he cannot rule anyone until he has taken away or twisted their judgment. He is a prince of darkness, and he rules in the darkness of the understanding. So he must first be cast out of the understanding, by the truth prevailing and being planted in the soul. Those who are enemies of knowledge help Satan and antichrist, whose kingdom, like Satan's, is a kingdom of darkness, to build their throne.

That is why Christ promises that the Holy Spirit "will convict the world concerning... judgment" (John 16:8, ESV). He is determined to set up a throne of government, because the great lord of misrule, "the ruler of this world," stands condemned by the gospel and the Spirit that goes with it. His impostures are uncovered and his schemes laid open. When the gospel spread, the oracles fell silent, and Jesus saw Satan "fall like lightning from heaven" (Luke 10:18, ESV). People were "transferred... to the kingdom of his beloved Son" (Colossians 1:13, ESV).

Where error prevails by lies, discovery is victory. "They will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men" (2 Timothy 3:9, ESV). Once error is exposed, it is stopped, for no one wants to be deceived. Give truth full scope, without check or restraint, and let Satan and his tools do their worst; they will not prevail. Jerome said as much to the Pelagians of his day: the discovery of your opinions is the defeat of them, and your blasphemies show themselves at first sight.

Use: the mind needs supernatural light

So we learn that the understanding must be furnished with supernatural knowledge if we are to manage a Christian life well. There must be light to show us a further end than nature knows, the end for which we are Christians. There must be a rule that suits that end, which is the will of God in Christ, showing his good pleasure toward us and our duty toward him. It is in the strength of this discovery that we do everything we do that can in any way further our final reckoning. "If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light" (Matthew 6:22, ESV). Otherwise both we and our whole way of life are nothing but darkness.

The whole life of a Christian is nothing else but knowledge digested into will, affection and practice. If the first digestion in the stomach goes wrong, the liver cannot make good of it. In the same way, an error in judgment spoils the whole practice, as a flaw in the foundation spoils the building. God wants no blind sacrifices and no thoughtless service (Malachi 1:8). He wants us to love him with all our mind (Matthew 22:37), that is, with the understanding, as well as with all our heart, the affecting part of the soul.

This order, Christ ruling through judgment, suits the soul. God delights to preserve the way of working that is proper to human beings, which is to act out of judgment. Grace presupposes nature and is built on it, and so the frame of grace keeps the frame of nature. Christ brings all the good in the soul through judgment, and so gently that many people fall into a dangerous mistake. They think the good in them, and the good that comes from them, is their own, and not the powerful work of grace.

Evil is the opposite case. The devil leads us so subtly along the stream of our own nature that people think he had no hand in their sin. Here the mistake costs little, because we are evil enough of ourselves, and the devil only promotes the evil he finds in us. But there are no seeds of supernatural goodness in us at all. God finds nothing in us but enmity. All he has engraved in our nature is an inclination, in general, toward whatever we judge to be good. So when he shows clearly what is good in particular, we are carried toward it. And when he shows convincingly what is evil, we hate it as freely as we embraced it before.

A test: do you do good out of judgment?

From this we can tell whether we are acting as we should. Do we act from inward principles? Or do we fall in with what is good only because we were brought up to it, or because someone we respect does so, or because we want to maintain a side and so turn religion into a faction? The right way is this: what we do that is good, we first judge in ourselves to be good, and what we avoid that is evil, we first judge from within to be evil.

A sound Christian, as they enjoy the better part, first chose it, as Mary did (Luke 10:42). They establish their plans by counsel (Proverbs 20:18). God does use unspiritual people for very good service, but without thoroughly changing and convincing their judgment. He works through them, but not in them. They neither approve the good they do nor hate the evil they hold back from.

Chapter 21

Where There Is True Wisdom, Christ Sets Up His Rule

The second branch is this: wherever true wisdom and judgment are found, Christ has set up his government. Wisdom does not only direct us to understand; it directs us to order our ways rightly. Where Christ by his Spirit teaches as a prophet, he also by his Spirit subdues the heart, as a king, to obey what is taught.

Teaching that reaches the heart

This is the teaching God promised: not only the head but the heart itself is taught. People do not merely know what they should do; they are taught the very doing of it. They are not only taught that they should love, fear and obey; they are taught love itself, fear itself and obedience itself. Christ sets up his chair in the heart. He changes its frame, and makes his subjects good as he teaches them to be good. Other rulers can make good laws, but they cannot write them on their people's hearts (Jeremiah 31:33). That is Christ's own prerogative. He pours his own Spirit into his subjects. "The Spirit of wisdom and understanding" rests on him, and also "the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD" (Isaiah 11:2, ESV). The knowledge we have of him from himself is a transforming knowledge (2 Corinthians 3:18).

The same Spirit who enlightens the mind breathes gracious inclinations into the will and affections, and pours strength into the whole person. As a gracious person judges rightly, so they feel and act as they judge. Their life is a commentary on their inner self. There is a sweet harmony between God's truth, their judgment and their whole way of life. The heart of a Christian is like Jerusalem at its best, "a city that is bound firmly together" (Psalm 122:3, ESV), where "thrones for judgment" are set up (Psalm 122:5). Judgment should have a throne in the heart of every Christian.

I do not mean that judgment alone will bring about the change. Grace must also alter the bent and sway of the will before it will yield to the understanding. But God has so joined the two that whenever he shines savingly on the understanding, he gives a soft and pliable heart. Without the Spirit of God working on the heart, it follows its own inclination toward whatever it loves, whatever the judgment may say to the contrary. There is no natural match between an unsanctified heart and a sanctified judgment.

An unchanged heart will not let the judgment conclude calmly and soberly what is best. Think of a sick man whose fever has ruined his taste: he would rather please his craving than listen to what the doctor says. Judgment has no power over itself while the will is unsubdued. The will and affections bribe it to give sentence in their favour whenever profit or pleasure competes with what the judgment, in general terms, thinks good. So for the most part it lies in the power of the heart what the understanding will judge and decide in particular matters.

Where grace has brought the heart under, unruly passions do not throw such a mist before the understanding. In the particular case, a person sees what is best. Base motives born of self-love do not tilt the judgment the other way. What is good in itself is good to us, even if it crosses our worldly interests.

Use: begin with judgment, and ask for a changed heart

I have explained this more fully because the right understanding of it bears on practice. It teaches us the right method of godliness: begin with judgment, and then ask God to give us, along with enlightenment, holy inclinations of will and affection. In that way a perfect government may be set up in our hearts, and our "knowledge" may be joined with "all discernment" (Philippians 1:9, ESV), that is, with experience and feeling. When the judgment of Christ is set up in our judgment, and from there, by his Spirit, carried into our hearts, it is in its proper place and on its throne. Until then truth does us no good; it only helps to condemn us.

The Christian life is a life lived by rule. "Peace and mercy" are on all who walk by the rule of the new creation (Galatians 6:16). But "he who despises his ways will die" (Proverbs 19:16, ESV), the one who loves to live loose, seeking every liberty for the flesh. Paul confirms it: "If you live according to the flesh, you will die" (Romans 8:13, ESV).

Those who live badly have no true judgment

We learn too that people whose lives are ill governed have no true judgment. No wicked person can be a wise person. Without Christ's Spirit the soul is in confusion, without beauty or form, like everything in the chaos before the creation. The whole soul is out of joint until it is set right by the one whose office is to "restore all things." The baser part of the soul, which ought to be subject, rules everything. It keeps under the little truth that is in the understanding and holds it captive to base desires. By way of corruption Satan takes all the strongholds of the soul, until Christ, who is stronger than he, comes and drives him out. Christ then takes possession of every power and part of soul and body, to be weapons of righteousness in his service. New lords make new laws. Christ, as a new conqueror, changes the fundamental laws of old Adam and sets up a government of his own.

Chapter 22

Christ's Government Is Victorious

The third conclusion is that this government is victorious. Here are the reasons.

Why it must win

1. Christ has already conquered everything in his own person. He is "God over all, blessed forever" (Romans 9:5, ESV), and so he is over sin, death, hell, Satan and the world. As he has overcome them in himself, so he overcomes them in our hearts and consciences.

We say that conscience makes a person either a king or a coward, because it is planted in us to judge for God, either with us or against us. If natural conscience is so forceful, what will it be when, besides its own light, it has the light of divine truth put into it? It will certainly prevail, either to make us hold our heads up with boldness or to bring us lower than ourselves. If it submits by grace to Christ's truth, it looks down boldly on death, hell, judgment and every spiritual enemy. Then Christ has set up his kingdom in the conscience and made it a kind of paradise.

The sharpest conflict the soul has is between the conscience and God's justice. If a conscience sprinkled with the blood of Christ has prevailed over assaults drawn from that justice, now satisfied by Christ, it will prevail over every other opposition whatever.

2. The enemies we face are accursed and doomed. If they begin to fall before the Spirit in us, they will fall. If they rise again, it is only to have a greater fall.

3. The Spirit of truth, to whose care Christ has committed his church, and the truth of the Spirit, which is Christ's sceptre, last for ever. So the soul born of the Spirit's immortal seed (1 Peter 1:23) must not only live for ever but prevail over all that oppose it. Both word and Spirit are mighty in operation (Hebrews 4:12). If the evil spirit is never idle in those God gives up to him, we cannot think the Holy Spirit will be idle in those whose leading and government is entrusted to him. As he lives in them, so he will drive out everything that rises against him, until he is all in all.

What is spiritual is eternal. Truth is a beam of Christ's Spirit, both in itself and as it is grafted into the soul. So truth, and the grace it works, however small, will prevail. A little thing in the hand of a giant does great things. A little faith, strengthened by Christ, will work wonders.

4. "To everyone who has will more be given" (Matthew 25:29, ESV). A victory over any corruption or temptation is a pledge of the final victory. When Joshua set his foot on the necks of the five kings he had conquered, he said, "Thus the LORD will do to all your enemies against whom you fight" (Joshua 10:25, ESV). Heaven is ours already; we only strive until we have full possession.

5. Christ as king brings a commanding light into the soul. He bows the neck and softens the iron sinew of the inner person. Where he begins to rule, he rules for ever: "of his kingdom there will be no end" (Luke 1:33, ESV).

6. Christ came to destroy the works of the devil, both for us and in us (1 John 3:8). The resurrection was meant to seal to us the assurance of his victory. By it Christ quickens our souls from the death of sin. He frees them from the snares and sorrows of spiritual death that go with the guilt of sin. He raises them up more comfortable, as the sun breaks out more gloriously from a thick cloud. He raises us up stronger out of particular slips and failings. He raises us out of every troubled and dark condition of this life. And at last he will raise our bodies out of the dust. The same power the Spirit showed in raising Christ our head from the sorrows of death and the lowest point of his humbling, power won by his death from a God now appeased by that sacrifice, the Spirit will show in the church, which is his body, and in every member of it.

This power is conveyed by faith. By faith, once we are united to Christ in both his humiliation and his exaltation, we see ourselves not only "dead with Christ" but "raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 2:6, ESV). We take hold of the fact that we are dead and risen, and therefore victorious over all our enemies in our head. We take hold of the fact that his aim in all this is to make us like himself. And so by this faith we are changed into his likeness (2 Corinthians 3:18) and become conquerors of all our spiritual enemies, as he is, by the power we draw from him, the storehouse of all spiritual strength for his people. In the end Christ will have his purpose in us, and faith rests assured of it. This assurance is very active, stirring us up to join with Christ in his purposes.

The church will win too

The same is true of the church as a whole. By Christ it will have its victory. Christ is the stone "cut out by no human hand," which smashed the great image (Daniel 2:34-35), that is, all opposing government, until it became "a great mountain and filled the whole earth." So the stone cut from the mountain becomes a mountain itself in the end.

Who are you, then, O mountain, to think of standing against this mountain? All will lie flat and level before it. He will bring down every lofty, exalted thought and lay the pride of all flesh low. When chaff struggles against the wind, when stubble struggles against the fire, when the heel kicks against the goads, when the clay pot argues with the potter, when man fights against God, it is easy to see which way the victory will go. The winds may toss the ship in which Christ sits, but they cannot overturn it. The waves may dash against the rock, but they only break themselves on it.

An objection, and four answers

Objection. If this is so, why does it go as it does with the church of God and with many a gracious Christian? The victory seems to go to the enemy.

Answer. Remember four things.

First, God's children usually overcome by suffering. Here lambs overcome lions and doves overcome eagles, by suffering, so that in this they may be like Christ, who conquered most when he suffered most. Alongside Christ's kingdom of patience there was a kingdom of power.

Second, this victory comes by degrees. People are too hasty who want to conquer the moment they strike the first blow and to reach the end of the race as soon as they set out. The Israelites were sure of victory on their journey to Canaan, yet they had to fight it out. God does not want us to forget quickly what cruel enemies Christ has overcome for us. "Kill them not, lest my people forget" (Psalm 59:11, ESV). By feeling the trouble they cause us, we are kept afraid of coming under their power again.

Third, God often works by contraries. When he means to give victory, he lets us be beaten first. When he means to comfort, he first terrifies. When he means to justify, he first condemns. Those he means to make glorious he first humbles. A Christian conquers even when conquered: when some sins beat them, they win a victory over others more dangerous, such as spiritual pride and security.

Fourth, Christ's work, in the church and in the hearts of Christians, often goes backward so that it may go forward the better. Seed rots in the ground in winter and then comes up better, and the harder the winter, the more flourishing the spring. So we learn to stand by falling, and to gain strength from weakness once it is found out. Weakness is the guardian of strength. We take deeper root by being shaken, and torches burn brighter for being waved. This is how it pleases Christ, in his freedom, to maintain his government in us.

Let us labour here to exercise a faith that answers Christ's way of dealing with us. When we are beaten, let us believe we shall overcome. When we have fallen, let us believe we shall rise. Jacob, after his hip was wrenched, would not stop wrestling until he had the blessing (Genesis 32:25-26). Let us never give up either, but tie the beginning, the progress and the end together in our thoughts, and we shall see ourselves in heaven, out of reach of every enemy. Let us be sure that God's grace, even in this imperfect state, is stronger than human free will was in the state of first perfection, because it is now founded in Christ, who as he is the author will be "the founder and perfecter" of our faith (Hebrews 12:2). We are under a more gracious covenant.

Weak faith and the assurance of salvation

Some say that rooted faith continues but weak faith may come to nothing. This text seems to cut across that. The strongest faith may be shaken, and equally the weakest faith, where it is true, is rooted far enough that it will prevail. Weakness with watchfulness will stand when strength with overconfidence fails. Weakness that owns itself is the fittest seat and subject in which God can perfect his strength, because awareness of our infirmities drives us out of ourselves to the one in whom our strength lies.

It follows that weakness can stand together with the assurance of salvation. The disciples, in spite of all their weaknesses, were told to rejoice that their names were written in heaven (Luke 10:20). Failings in sanctification, so long as there is a struggle against them, should not weaken the peace of our justification or the assurance of our salvation. What matters is not so much what evil is in us as what good, not what corruptions, but how we feel about them; not what our particular failings are, but what is the thread and tenor of our lives. Christ's dislike of what is wrong in us does not become hatred of our persons. It becomes the victorious subduing of all our infirmities.

Some people, after a conflict, have wondered at the goodness of God, that so little and shaky a faith should have held them up in so great a fight, when Satan had all but caught them. And it is truly a wonder how much a little grace will do with God for acceptance, and over our enemies for victory, if the heart is upright. Such is the goodness of our sweet Saviour that he still delights to show his strength in our weakness.

Use 1: comfort for poor and weak Christians

For the great comfort of poor and weak Christians, then, let them know that a spark from heaven, though kindled in green wood that sobs and smokes, will in the end consume everything. Love once kindled is strong as death. "Many waters cannot quench love," and it is called "the very flame of the LORD" (Song of Solomon 8:6-7, ESV), kindled in the heart by the Holy Spirit. The little that is in us is fed by an everlasting spring. As the fire that fell from heaven in Elijah's day licked up the water to show it came from God (1 Kings 18:38), so this fire will burn up all our corruption. No affliction from outside and no corruption from within will put it out.

In the morning we often see clouds gather around the sun as if to hide it, but the sun wastes them little by little until it comes to its full strength. At first, fears and doubts hinder the breaking out of this fire, until at length it rises above them all and Christ prevails. Then he backs up his own graces in us. Grace conquers us first, and then by grace we conquer everything else, whether corruptions within us or temptations outside.

The church of Christ, born by the word of truth, has the teaching of the apostles for her crown and treads the moon, which is the world and all worldly things, "under her feet" (Revelation 12:1, ESV). "Everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world" (1 John 5:4, ESV). Faith, by which Christ chiefly rules, sets the soul so high that it looks down on everything else as far below, since the Spirit of Christ sets before it riches, honour, beauty and pleasures of a higher kind.

Two things to find out

To make sure we do not fall short of the comfort intended, there are two things we should notice. First, whether there is in us the kind of judgment and government to which this promise of victory is made. Second, what rules and directions will help us carry ourselves so that the judgment of Christ in us may indeed be victorious.

Signs that Christ's judgment in us will win

These are the evidences by which we can know that the judgment of Christ in us is of a kind that will prevail.

1. If from experience we can justify all Christ's ways, whatever flesh and blood may say against them. If we can willingly agree to the course God has taken in Christ to bring us to heaven, and still approve and plan for a further measure of grace than we have yet reached. No one else can justify their ways when conscience wakes.
2. When reasons for religion are the strongest reasons with us, and weigh more than reasons drawn from worldly policy.
3. When we are so true to our ends and so fast to our rule that no hopes or fears can sway us another way, and we are always looking at what agrees or differs with the rule.
4. When we "cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth" (2 Corinthians 13:8, ESV), because it is dearer to us than our lives. Truth does not have this sovereignty in the heart of any unspiritual person.
5. When, if we were free to choose whose government to live under, we would, out of delight in the inner person, choose Christ's alone above any other. That shows we are of one mind with Christ, a free and willing people, compelled to his service only by the sweet constraint of love. When we are so far pleased with the government of Christ's Spirit that we are willing to give ourselves up to him in everything, then his kingdom has come to us, because our wills have been brought to his will. It is the bent of our wills that makes us good or evil.
6. A well-ordered, steady life, not one of fits and starts, shows a well-ordered heart. In a clock, when the hammer strikes right and the hand points right, you know the wheels are set right.
7. When Christ's will comes into competition with some earthly loss or gain, and in that particular case the heart still bows to Christ, that is a true sign. The truest test of the power of grace is in particular cases that touch us nearest, for there our corruption makes its strongest stand. When Christ came near home to the rich young man (Matthew 19:21-22), he lost a disciple.
8. When we can practise duties that please Christ though they go against the flesh and the course of the world. When we can overcome ourselves in the evil our nature is prone to, which the times favour and in which others lie enslaved: the desire for revenge, hatred of enemies, private ends, and the like. Then it is clear that grace in us is above nature, heaven above earth, and will win.

Three degrees of victory

To clear this further and help us in our trial, we should know there are three degrees of victory. The first is when we resist though we are beaten. The second is when grace gets the better, though with a fight. The third is when all corruption is perfectly subdued.

Suppose we have strength only to resist. Even so we may know that Christ's rule in us will win. What is said of the devil is said of all our spiritual enemies: "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you" (James 4:7, ESV). "He who is in you," who takes the part of his own grace, "is greater than he who is in the world" (1 John 4:4, ESV). If we may hope for victory on bare resistance, what may we not hope for when the Spirit has gained the upper hand?

Chapter 23

Means to Make Grace Victorious

Now for the second matter, the directions.

We must know that although Christ has undertaken this victory, he accomplishes it by training us to fight his battles. He overcomes in us by making us "wise for salvation" (2 Timothy 3:15, ESV). To whatever degree we believe Christ will conquer, to that degree we shall work by his grace to conquer too, for faith is an obedient and wise grace. Christ makes us wise to ponder and weigh things, and then to rank and order them, so that we may choose the better what is best.

Rules to help us judge

Here are some rules to help us in judging.

1. Judge things by whether they help or hinder the main thing.
2. Judge them by whether they further or hinder our final reckoning.
3. Judge them by whether they make us more or less spiritual, and so bring us nearer to the fountain of goodness, God himself.
4. Judge them by whether they will bring us peace or sorrow in the end.
5. Judge them by how far they commend us to God, and in what we shall most approve ourselves to him.
6. Judge things now as we shall judge them later, when the soul is best able to judge: under some public calamity, for instance, or at the hour of death, when the soul gathers itself away from everything else into itself.
7. Look back to former experience. See what agrees with it best, and what was best in our worst times. If grace was best then, it is best now.
8. Labour to judge things as the one who must judge us does, and as holy people do who are led by the Spirit.
9. More particularly, consider what those judge who have no interest in any benefit that may come from the matter in question. Outward things blind the eyes even of the wise. We see that papists are most corrupt in the matters where their honour, ease or profit is involved. But in the doctrine of the Trinity, which touches none of these, they are sound.

Keeping the judgment ready and strong

But it is not enough for judgment to be right. It must also be ready and strong.

First, where Christ establishes his government, he breathes in a care to keep the judgment clear and fresh. While the judgment stands straight and firm, the whole frame of the soul stays strong and impregnable. True judgment in us advances Christ, and Christ will advance it. All sin comes from false principles, or ignorance, or inattention, or unbelief of the true ones. Eve lost her hold at the first through lack of consideration and weak assent (Genesis 3:6). It is good, then, to store up true principles in our hearts and refresh them often, so that on the strength of them our affections and actions may be more vigorous.

When judgment is fortified, evil finds no way in, and good things have a party within us to welcome them. While true, convincing light continues, we shall not commit the smallest sin to escape the greatest punishment. "In vain is a net spread in the sight of any bird" (Proverbs 1:17, ESV). While the soul is kept aloft, there is little danger from snares below. We lose our high estimation of things before we can be drawn to any sin.

Second, because knowledge and affection help each other, it is good to keep up our affections of love and delight by every sweet inducement and divine encouragement. What the heart likes best, the mind studies most. Those who can bring their hearts to delight in Christ know most of his ways. Wisdom loves those who love her. Love is the best host of truth. When truth is not loved, like the truth those "refused to love" (2 Thessalonians 2:10, ESV), lovely as it is, it leaves the heart and will stay no longer.

It has often been the winning way to begin by withdrawing the love, in order to corrupt the judgment, because we usually judge as we love. That is why it is hard to be both passionate and wise about earthly things. In heavenly things, where the judgment has first been rightly informed, the more our affections grow, the better and clearer our judgment will be, because our affections, however strong, can never rise high enough to match the excellence of those things. We see it in the martyrs. Once the sweet teaching of Christ had won their hearts, all the torments that cruelty could devise could not get it out again. If Christ has once possessed the affections, there is no dispossessing him. A fire in the heart overcomes all fires outside.

Third, wisdom teaches us where our weakness lies and where our enemy's strength lies. That stirs up in us a jealous fear that keeps us safe. Out of this godly jealousy we keep provoking things, which are active and working, away from what is passive and catching in us, as we keep fire from gunpowder. Those who would prevent the breeding of vermin stop the conception first, by keeping male and female apart. This jealousy will be much helped by watching closely what has helped or hindered a gracious temper in us. It will make us take care not to take counsel with flesh and blood, in ourselves or in others. How can we think Christ will lead us out to victory if we take counsel with his enemies and ours?

Fourth, Christ makes us careful to attend every means by which fresh thoughts and affections can be stirred up and kept in us. Christ so honours the use of means, and the care he puts into us, that he ascribes both our preservation and our victory to our care in keeping ourselves. "He who was born of God protects him" (1 John 5:18, ESV), but not by himself; by the Lord, in dependence on him, in the use of means. We are safe no longer than we are wise enough to put ourselves in the way of every good advantage, such as the company of godly people. By going out of God's paths we go out of his government, lose our frame, and soon find ourselves overgrown with the opposite disposition. When we draw near to Christ in his ordinances, he draws near to us (James 4:8).

Fifth, keep grace in exercise. It is not sleepy habits but grace in exercise that preserves us. While the soul is busy in some civil or sacred employment, the corruptions within us are much suppressed, Satan's passages are stopped, and the Spirit has a way open to enlarge himself in us. The guard of angels then also attends us most closely. This course often does more against our spiritual enemies than direct opposition. It stands on Christ's honour to maintain those who are about his work.

Sixth, in all these directions we must look up to Christ, the life-giving Spirit, and resolve in his strength. We are told to "remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose" (Acts 11:23, ESV), yet we must pray with David, "LORD... keep forever such purposes and thoughts in the hearts of your people, and direct their hearts toward you" (1 Chronicles 29:18, ESV). Our hearts are in themselves very loose and unsettled. "Unite my heart to fear your name" (Psalm 86:11, ESV). Without him our best purposes fall to the ground. It is a pleasing request, out of love to God, to ask of him a frame of soul in which he can take delight. So in the use of all means we must send our desires and complaints up to heaven for strength and help. Then we may be sure that he will "bring justice to victory."

Seventh, it helps the soul to know what frame it should be in, so that we may order our souls accordingly. We should always be fit for fellowship with God, and heavenly-minded in earthly business, and willing to be drawn away from that business to redeem time for better things. We should be ready at any time to depart from here, and live in a condition in which we would be content to die. We should have hearts prepared for every good duty, open to every good occasion and shut to every temptation, keeping watch and always armed and ready.

As far as we come short of these things, we have just cause to be humbled. Yet we should press on, to gain more ground over ourselves and make these things more familiar and lovely to us. When we find our souls falling downward in any way, it is best to raise them at once by some waking meditations: the presence of God, the strict reckoning we must make, the infinite love of God in Christ and its fruits, the excellence of a Christian's calling, the short and uncertain time of this life. How little good all the things that steal away our hearts will do us before long! How it will be for ever with us hereafter, according as we spend this little time well or ill! The more we let such considerations sink into our hearts, the nearer we shall rise to the state of soul we shall enjoy in heaven.

When we grow careless of keeping our souls, God recovers our taste for good things by sharp crosses. David, Solomon and Samson were recovered in this way. It is much easier to keep than to recover.

Two answers to the soul that seems to stand still

Objection. But for all my striving, I seem to stand still.

Answer 1. Grace, like the seed in the parable, grows, we know not how (Mark 4:27). At last, when God sees fit, we shall see that all our endeavour has not been in vain. The tree falls with the last stroke, yet all the earlier strokes helped it along.

Answer 2. Sometimes victory is held back because some Achan has not been found out (Joshua 7), or because we are not humble enough, as Israel had the worst of it against the Benjamites until they fasted and prayed (Judges 20:26). Or it is because we betray our own helps, do not stand on our guard, and do not yield at once to the promptings of the Spirit, who always reminds us of the best things if we would listen. Our own consciences will tell us, if we let them speak, that some sinful self-indulgence is the cause.

The way to prevail in this case is, first, to win the victory over the pride of our own nature by taking shame to ourselves in humble confession to God. Second, to overcome the unbelief of our hearts by yielding to the promise of pardon. Third, in confidence of Christ's help, to set ourselves against the sins that have prevailed over us. Once we prevail over ourselves, we shall easily prevail over all our enemies and conquer every condition we are brought into.

Chapter 24

Everyone Should Side with Christ

Use 2. If Christ will have the victory, the best course for nations and states is to "kiss the Son" (Psalm 2:12, ESV), embrace Christ and his religion, side with Christ and own his cause in the world. His side will prove the stronger side in the end. Happy are we if Christ honours us so far as to use us to come "to the help of the LORD against the mighty" (Judges 5:23, ESV). True religion in a state is like the main pillar of a house, or the pole of a tent, which holds up everything else.

The same goes for families. Let Christ be the chief governor of the family. And let every person be a house of Christ, where he lives familiarly and rules. Where Christ is, all happiness must follow. If Christ goes, everything goes. Where Christ's rule in his ordinances and by his Spirit is found, all subordinate government will prosper. Religion breathes life and grace into everything else. Without it, all other virtues are like a fair picture without a head. Where Christ's laws are written in the heart, all other good laws are best obeyed. None despise human law except those who first despised Christ's. No one scorns human authority who has not first scorned the divine.

Of all persons, one guided by Christ is the best. Of all creatures in the world, one guided by their own will and desire is, next to the devil, the worst. The happiness of weaker things lies in being ruled by stronger. It is best for a blind man to be guided by one who can see. It is best for sheep and such helpless creatures to be guided by a human being. And it is happiest for a human being to be guided by Christ, because his government is so victorious that it frees us from fear and danger from our greatest enemies, and tends to bring us to the greatest happiness our nature can hold.

This should make us rejoice when Christ reigns in us. When Solomon was crowned, the people shouted so loud "that the earth was split by their noise" (1 Kings 1:39-40, ESV). How much more should we rejoice in Christ our king!

Wanting Christ to reign in those we love

For those whose souls are dear to us, our aim should be that Christ may reign in them too: that they may be baptised by Christ with this fire (Matthew 3:11), and that these sparks may be kindled in them. People work to nourish the spirit and mettle, as they call it, of those they train up, because they think they will need it in the many affairs and troubles of this life. Oh, but let us nourish the sparks of grace in them. A natural spirit will fail in great troubles, but these sparks will make them conquerors over the greatest evils.

Use 3. If Christ's judgment will be victorious, then popery, being an opposing system set up by human wit to maintain stately idleness, must fall. And it has already fallen in the hearts of those on whom Christ has shone. It is a lie, and founded on a lie, on the supposedly infallible judgment of a man who is subject to sin and error. When what is taken for a principle of truth becomes a principle of error, the more people rely on it, the greater the danger.

Chapter 25

Christ's Government Will Be Openly Victorious

It is not only said that judgment will be victorious, but that Christ will bring it openly to victory. From this we learn that grace will become glory, and will run into the eyes of all.

Now Christ does conquer and does reach his own ends, but in a way that is, in a sense, unseen. His enemies within and outside us seem to have the better of it. But he will bring justice through to victory in the view of all. The wicked, who now shut their eyes, will see it to their torment. It will not be in the power of clever people to see or not see as they please. Christ will have power over their hearts. As his wrath will seize their souls at once against their wills, so he will have power over the eyes of their souls, to see and know what will increase their misery. Grief will be fastened to all their senses, and their senses to grief.

The masks come off

Then all the false colourings they put on things will be wiped off. People want the reputation of being good and the sweetness of being bad. Nothing is so heartily opposed by them as the truth that lays them open to themselves and to the eyes of others, their chief care being how to plaster over things for the world and for their own consciences. But the time will come when they are driven out of this fools' paradise, and the cleverer their dealings have been, the greater their shame.

Christ, whom God has chosen to display the chief glory of his excellencies, is now veiled in his body the church. But before long he will come "to be glorified in his saints" (2 Thessalonians 1:10, ESV), and he will lose the clear showing of none of his attributes. He will declare to all the world what he is, when there will be no glory but that of Christ and his bride. Those who are now like smoking flax will then "shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father" (Matthew 13:43, ESV), and God will bring forth their justice "as the noonday" (Psalm 37:6, ESV).

The image of God in Adam had a commanding majesty in it, so that all creatures revered him. How much more will the image of God in its perfection command respect from all. Even now there is a secret awe in the hearts of the greatest toward those in whom they see any grace shining. That is why Herod feared John the Baptist. But what will it be on the day of their bringing forth, which Scripture calls "the revealing of the sons of God" (Romans 8:19, ESV)?

The day when things are what they are

There will be more glorious times, when "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ" (Revelation 11:15, ESV), and he will reign for ever. Then judgment and truth will have their victory. Then Christ will plead his own cause. Truth will no longer be called heresy and schism, nor heresy called catholic doctrine. Wickedness will no longer go masked and disguised. Goodness will appear in its own lustre and shine with its own beams. Things will be what they are: "nothing is covered that will not be revealed" (Matthew 10:26, ESV). Iniquity will no longer be carried on in secret. Deep pretenders who think to hide their plans from the Lord will no longer walk invisible, as in the clouds. As Christ will not quench the least spark that he himself has kindled, so he will put out the fairest blaze of fine appearances that does not come from above.

Use: sincerity, and a warning

If this were believed, people would think more of sincerity, which alone will give us boldness, and would not hunt for cover for their shame. The confidence of such cover makes people more presumptuous now, and it will expose them to greater shame later.

If judgment will be brought through to victory, then those who have been ruled by their own deceitful hearts and a spirit of error will be brought out to disgrace. The God who has joined grace and truth with honour has joined sin and shame together at the last, and all the wit and power of humanity can never sever what God has coupled. Truth and piety may be trampled on for a time. But as the two witnesses in Revelation were slain, and rose again, and stood on their feet (Revelation 11:11), so whatever is of God will in the end stand on its own bottom. There will be a resurrection not only of bodies but of reputations.

Can we think that the one who threw the angels out of heaven will let dust and worms' meat run the opposite course and carry the day for ever? No. As surely as Christ is "King of kings and Lord of lords" (Revelation 19:16, ESV), he will dash to pieces all those pieces of earth "like a potter's vessel" (Psalm 2:9, ESV). Has anyone ever defied God and prospered (Job 9:4)? No. The rage of man will certainly turn to Christ's praise (Psalm 76:10). What was said of Pharaoh will be said of all headstrong enemies, who would rather lose their souls than their own way: they are only raised up so that Christ may get glory for himself in their ruin.

Let us then take care not to follow the ways of those whose end we shall tremble at. There is no more fearful judgment that can fall on human nature than to be given up to a reprobate judgment of persons and things, for there is a woe on those who "call evil good and good evil" (Isaiah 5:20, ESV). How they will be loaded with curses another day, those who abuse the judgment of others with sophistry and flattery, "deceiving and being deceived" (2 Timothy 3:13, ESV)! Then the complaint of our first mother Eve will be taken up, but to no purpose: the serpent deceived me (Genesis 3:13); Satan in this or that person deceived me; sin deceived me; a foolish heart deceived me. It is one of the highest points of wisdom to consider on what grounds we are risking our souls. Happy are those who have, by Christ's light, a right judgment of things, and let that judgment prevail over their hearts.

Drowned in the senses

The soul of most people is drowned in their senses and carried away by weak opinions raised from common mistakes and shadows of things. Satan is ready to enlarge the imagination of outward good and outward evil, and make it greater than it is, and spiritual things smaller, showing them through false glass. So people trust in vanity and defeat themselves in their own imaginations.

It is a woeful condition when both we and what we highly esteem vanish together. This will be as certain as that Christ's judgment will come to victory. And in whatever measure the vain heart of man has been stretched to imagine a greater good in the things of this world than there is, by so much will the soul be stretched to feel misery when it sees its error. Here is the difference between a godly wise person and a deluded worldling: what the one now judges to be vain, the other will later feel to be vain, when it is too late. But such is the folly of our nature that although we shun above all things being deceived and mistaken in present matters, in the greatest matters of all we are willingly ignorant and misled.

Chapter 26

Christ Alone Advances This Government

The fifth conclusion is that this government is set up and advanced by Christ alone. He brings justice through to victory. We fight and prevail "in the strength of his might" (Ephesians 6:10, ESV), and we overcome by the Spirit, won by "the blood of the Lamb" (Revelation 12:11, ESV).

It is he alone who "trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle" (Psalm 144:1, ESV). Nature, as corrupted, favours its own being and will defend itself against Christ's government. Nature simply considered cannot lift itself above itself to spiritual actions of a higher order. So the divine power of Christ is needed to carry us above all our own strength, especially in duties where we meet the greatest opposition. There not only nature will fail us, but ordinary grace too, unless a stronger and fresh supply comes. If you take up a burden heavier than usual, and your strength is not greater in proportion to the weight, you will go down under it. So for every strong encounter there must be a new supply of strength. Peter is the example (Matthew 26:69-75). When he was assaulted by a stronger temptation, and was not held up and shored up by a mightier hand, he fell foully, for all his former strength.

And once we have fallen, it is Christ who must do the work of raising us up again. He does it first by removing, or second by weakening, or third by suspending the things that stand in the way. And fourth, he does it by advancing the power of his grace in us to a further degree than we had before we fell. So when we have fallen and got a bruise from the fall, let us go to Christ at once to bind us up again.

Use: do not look to yourself for what only Christ can give

Let us know, then, that it is dangerous to look for from ourselves what we must have from Christ. Since the fall all our strength lies in him, as Samson's lay in his hair (Judges 16:17). We are only subordinate agents, moving as we are moved and working as we are first worked upon, free only so far as we are freed, and no wiser or stronger than he makes us for the moment in anything we undertake. It is his Spirit that moves and enlivens and applies the knowledge and strength we have, or else it fails and lies useless in us. We work only on a present strength. So dependent spirits are the wisest and ablest. Nothing is stronger than humility, which goes out of itself, and nothing weaker than pride, which rests on its own bottom. In vain does he strive who does not lean.

This should be noted all the more because by nature we aim at a kind of divinity, setting about our actions in the strength of our own gifts. Yet Christ says to the apostles, who were in a state of grace, "Apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5, ESV). He does not say you can do a little, but nothing.

Of ourselves, how easily we are overcome! How weak to resist! We are like reeds shaken by every wind. We shake at the very noise and thought of poverty, disgrace, loss. We give in at once. We have no power over our eyes, tongues, thoughts or affections, but let sin pass in and out. How soon we are overcome by evil, when we ought to overcome evil with good! How many good purposes stick in the birth and have no strength to come out! All this shows how much we are nothing without the Spirit of Christ.

We see how weak the apostles themselves were until they were clothed with power from on high. Peter was blasted by the words of a servant girl. But after the Spirit of Christ came on them, the more they suffered, the more they were encouraged to suffer, and their comforts grew with their troubles. So in all our struggles, and especially the hard ones, let us lift up our hearts to Christ, who has Spirit enough for all of us in every need. Let us say with good Jehoshaphat, "We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you" (2 Chronicles 20:12, ESV). The battle we fight is yours, and the strength with which we fight must be yours. If you do not go out with us, we are sure to be beaten.

Satan knows that nothing can prevail against Christ, or against those who rely on his power. So his aim is to keep us in ourselves and in the creature. But we must carry this in our minds always: what is begun in self-confidence will end in shame.

Why Christ lets us feel our need

The way Christ brings justice through to victory is by letting us see that we must depend on him. This is the reason for those spiritual desertions in which he often leaves us to ourselves, in grace and in comfort, so that we may know that the springhead of these is outside ourselves. It is why God is most clearly seen "on the mountain," that is, in extremities (Genesis 22:14). It is why we are saved by the grace of faith, which carries us out of ourselves to rely on another, and why faith works best alone, when it has least outward support. It is why we often fail in lesser conflicts and stand firm in greater ones: in the lesser we rest more on ourselves, and in the greater we fly to the rock of our salvation, which is higher than we are (Psalm 61:2). It is why we are stronger after a fall: the hidden corruption we had not seen is now found out, and so we are brought to make use of pardoning mercy and supporting power.

One main ground of this dealing is that we should know it is Christ who gives both the will and the deed, as a free work of his own good pleasure. And so we should "work out [our] own salvation with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12, ESV), lest by irreverent and presumptuous walking we give him cause to suspend his gracious influence and leave us to the darkness of our own hearts.

What Christ's people feel

Those under Christ's government have the spirit of revelation. By it they see and feel a divine power sweetly and strongly enabling them to keep faith when they feel the opposite, hope in a hopeless state, and love to God under signs of his displeasure; to stay heavenly-minded in the midst of worldly affairs and allurements pulling the other way. They feel a power preserving patience, and even joy, in the midst of reasons to mourn, and inward peace in the midst of assaults.

Where else does it come from, that when we are assaulted by temptation, and surrounded by troubles, we have stood out, but from a secret strength holding us up? To make so little grace so victorious over so great a mass of corruption requires a spirit more than human. It is like keeping fire alive in the sea, and a part of heaven, as it were, in hell. Here we know where to get this power and to whom to give the praise for it.

It is our happiness that it is so safely hidden for us in Christ, who is so near to God and to us. Since the fall God will not trust us with our own salvation. It is both bought and kept by Christ for us, and we are kept for it through faith, which is worked by the power of God and lays hold of that same power. Paul sets this power out gloriously: it is a great power, an incomparably great power, a working and mighty power, such a power as was at work in raising Christ from the dead (Ephesians 1:19-20).

A grace that is only a persuasive offer, which we are free to take or leave, is not the grace that brings us to heaven. God's people feel a powerful work of the Spirit. He does not only show us our misery and our deliverance through Christ. He empties us of ourselves, as people redeemed from ourselves, and pours new life into us. After that he strengthens us, and quickens us when we droop and hang the wing, and never leaves us until the conquest is complete.

Chapter 27

There Is No Victory Without a Fight

The sixth conclusion is that this prevailing government will not come without fighting. There can be no victory where there is no combat. In Isaiah it is said, "he will faithfully bring forth justice" (Isaiah 42:3, ESV); here Matthew says he will "bring justice to victory" (Matthew 12:20, ESV). The word "send forth" is stronger in the original: to send forth with force. It shows that where his government is in truth, it will be opposed until he gets the upper hand.

Nothing is so opposed as Christ and his government, both within us and outside us. Within us it is opposed most in our conversion. Corruption does not prevail so far as to make the powerful work of grace void. Yet there is not only a possibility of opposing but a proneness to oppose, and not only a proneness but an actual withstanding of the Spirit's work, in every action. Still, the resistance never prevails so far as to cancel the work of grace. In the end corruption yields to grace.

There is much ado to bring Christ into the heart and set up a tribunal there for him to judge from. There is an army of lusts in mutiny against him. The utmost effort of most people's endeavours and gifts goes to keeping Christ from ruling in the soul. The flesh still labours to keep its own rule. So it runs down the credit of whatever crosses it, such as God's blessed ordinances, and prizes highly anything, however dead and empty, that gives way to the liberty of the flesh.

Why Christ's rule is opposed

No wonder the spiritual government of Christ is so opposed.

1. Because it is government. It limits the course of the will and puts a bridle on its wanderings. Everything natural resists what opposes it. So the corrupt will labours to bear down all laws, and counts it a noble thing not to be awed, and a sign of a low spirit to fear anyone, even God himself, until unavoidable danger seizes people. Then those who feared least out of danger fear most in danger, as we see in Belshazzar (Daniel 5:6).

2. Because it is spiritual government, and so the flesh is the less willing to endure it. Christ's government brings the very thoughts and desires, the most immediate and free issue of the soul, into obedience. A man might be so well composed that his whole life was free from outward offensive breaches, yet with Christ, as Paul says, "to set the mind on the flesh is death" (Romans 8:6, ESV). He looks on a worldly mind with greater detestation than any one particular offence.

But Christ's Spirit is found in those who are in some degree earthly-minded. True; but he is there not as one who allows and maintains this, but as one who opposes, subdues and in the end conquers. Unspiritual people would gladly bring Christ and the flesh together, and could be content to submit to Christ with some reservation. But Christ will be no underling to any base desire. So where there is allowance of ourselves in any sinful lust, it is a sign that the keys were never handed over to Christ to rule us.

3. Because it is judgment, and people do not love to be judged and censured. Christ in his truth arraigns them, gives sentence against them, and binds them over to the final judgment of the great day. So they take it on themselves to judge the truth that must judge them. But truth will be too good for them. Man has a day now, which Paul calls a "human court" (1 Corinthians 4:3, ESV), when he gets up on his bench and usurps a judgment over Christ and his ways. But God has a day when he will set everything straight, and his judgment will stand. And the saints will have their time, when they will sit in judgment on those who now judge them (1 Corinthians 6:2). In the meantime Christ will rule in the midst of his enemies (Psalm 110:2), even in the midst of our hearts.

Use: a quiet heart is no good sign

It is no sign of a good condition, then, to find everything quiet and nothing at odds. Can we think that corruption, which is the elder in us, and Satan, the strong man who holds many strongholds in us, will yield possession quietly? No. There is not so much as a thought of goodness that Satan notices but he joins with corruption to kill it in the birth. As Pharaoh's cruelty was especially against the male children, so Satan's malice is especially against the most religious and manly resolutions.

This, then, we should always expect: wherever Christ comes, there will be opposition. When Christ was born, all Jerusalem was troubled (Matthew 2:3). So when Christ is born in anyone, the soul is in an uproar, and all because the heart is unwilling to give itself up to Christ to rule it.

Wherever Christ comes he breeds division: first between a person and themselves, then between one person and another, and then between church and church. Christ is no more the cause of this disturbance than medicine is the cause of trouble in a diseased body, where the bad humours are the real cause. The end of medicine is the peace of the humours. But Christ thinks it right that the thoughts of people's hearts should be uncovered, and he is as much for the falling as for the rising of many in Israel (Luke 2:34-35).

The madness of refusing his yoke

So the desperate madness of people is laid open. They would rather be under the guidance of their own lusts, and so of Satan himself, to their endless destruction, than put their feet into Christ's fetters and their necks under his yoke. Yet Christ's service is the only true liberty. His yoke is easy (Matthew 11:30), and his burden is only like the burden of wings to a bird, which makes her fly the higher.

Satan's government is more a bondage than a government. Christ gives up to it those who shake off his own, since, as Paul says, they "refused to love the truth and so be saved" (2 Thessalonians 2:10, ESV). Take him, Jesuit, take him, Satan; blind him and bind him and lead him to perdition. Those who take the most liberty to sin are the most perfect slaves, because they are the most willing slaves. The will in everything is either the best thing or the worst. The further people go on in a wilful course, the deeper they sink in rebellion. And the more they cross Christ and do as they please, the more one day they will suffer what they would not.

In the meantime they are prisoners in their own souls, bound over in their consciences to the judgment of the one after death whose judgment they would have none of in their lives. And is it not fair that they should feel him a severe judge to condemn them, whom they would not have as a mild judge to rule them?

Chapter 28

Go On Cheerfully, with Confidence of Prevailing

To conclude, here is a general application of all that has been said, to ourselves.

The victory does not rest on us

We see the conflicting but sure and hopeful state of God's people. The victory rests not on us but on Christ, who has undertaken to conquer for us and to conquer in us. It rests neither on our own strength to win it, nor on our enemies to defeat it. If it rested on us, we might justly be afraid. But Christ will maintain his own government in us and take our part against our corruptions, for they are his enemies as well as ours. "Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might" (Ephesians 6:10, ESV).

Let us not look so much at who our enemies are as at who our judge and captain is, and not at what they threaten but at what he promises. We have more for us than against us. What coward would not fight when he is sure of victory? None are overcome here except the one who will not fight. So when any base faintness seizes us, let us lay the blame where it belongs.

Discouragement, rising from the unbelief and ill report that the spies brought on the good land, moved God to swear in his wrath that they should not enter his rest (Numbers 14; Hebrews 3:18). Let us take care that a spirit of faint-heartedness, rising from seeming difficulty and disgrace cast on God's good ways, does not provoke God to keep us out of heaven.

What we may look for from Christ

See here what we may look for from heaven. Beloved, it is a comfortable thing to conceive of Christ rightly, to know what love, mercy and strength are laid up for us in his heart. We say that a good opinion of the physician is half the cure. Let us make use of his mercy and power every day in our daily combats.

Lord Jesus, you have promised not to quench the smoking flax and not to break the bruised reed. Cherish your own grace in me. Leave me not to myself. The glory shall be yours.

Let us not let Satan make Christ out to us to be other than he is to those who are his. Christ will not leave us until he has made us like himself, "glorious" within and without, "without fault" and presented blameless before his Father with great joy (Jude 24). What a comfort this is in our conflicts with our unruly hearts, that it will not always be like this! Let us strive a little while, and we shall be happy for ever.

A shield for the fiery darts

Let us think, when we are troubled by our sins, that Christ has this in charge from his Father: that he shall not quench the smoking flax until he has subdued all. This puts a shield in our hands to beat back "all the flaming darts of the evil one" (Ephesians 6:16, ESV). Satan will say, You are a great sinner. We may answer, Christ is a strong Saviour. He will say, You have no faith, no love. Yes, a spark of faith and love. But Christ will not regard that. Yes, he will: "a smouldering wick he will not quench." But this is so little and weak that it will vanish and come to nothing. No, Christ will cherish it until he has brought justice through to victory.

And this much comfort we already have: even when we first believed, we overcame God himself, as it were, by believing the pardon of all our sins, in spite of the guilt of our own consciences and his absolute justice. Having been prevailers with God, what can stand against us, if we learn to make use of our faith?

Oh, what a confusion this is to Satan, that he should labour to blow out a poor spark and not be able to quench it! That a grain of mustard seed should be stronger than the gates of hell! That it should be able to remove the mountains of opposition and temptation that Satan and our rebellious hearts throw up between God and us! Abimelech could not bear that it should be said, "A woman killed him" (Judges 9:54, ESV). It must be a torment to Satan that a weak child, a woman, a frail old man, by a spirit of faith, should put him to flight.

Count the grace you have

Since there is such comfort where there is a little truth of grace, that it will be so victorious, let us often test what God has worked in us. Let us search our good as well as our evil, and be thankful to God for the least measure of grace, more than for anything outward. It will be of more use and comfort than all this world, which passes away and comes to nothing. Let us be thankful, too, for the promised and assured victory, on which we may rely without presumption, as Paul does: "Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 15:57, ESV). See a flame in a spark and a tree in a seed. See great things in little beginnings. Look not so much at the beginning as at the perfection, and so we shall be in some degree joyful in ourselves and thankful to Christ.

Nor must we reason from the denial of a great measure of grace to the denial of any at all in us. Faith and grace do not stand in an indivisible point, so that whoever lacks such and such a measure has none. As there is a great breadth between a spark and a flame, so there is a wide gap between the least measure of grace and the greatest. Whoever has the least measure is within the compass of God's eternal favour. Though they are not a shining light, they are a smoking wick, which Christ's tender care will not let be quenched.

An invitation

Let all that has been said draw those who are not yet in a state of grace to come under Christ's sweet and victorious government. Though we shall have much opposition, if we strive, he will help us. If we fail, he will cherish us. If we are guided by him, we shall overcome. And if we overcome, we are sure to be crowned.

The church and the end of all things

As for the present state of the church, we see how forlorn it is. Yet let us comfort ourselves that Christ's cause will prevail. "Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool" (Psalm 110:1, ESV), not only to trample on but to help him up to mount higher in glory. "Mighty is the Lord God who has judged her," and Babylon will fall (Revelation 18:8). Christ's judgment, not only in his children but against his enemies, will be victorious, for he is "King of kings and Lord of lords" (Revelation 19:16, ESV). God will not always let antichrist and his supports revel and swagger in the church as they do.

If we look at the present state of the church of Christ, it is like Daniel in the midst of lions, a lily among thorns, a ship not only tossed but almost covered with waves. It is so low that its enemies think they have buried Christ, in his gospel, in the grave, and think to keep him from rising. But as Christ rose in his person, so he will roll away all stones and rise again in his church. How little support the church and cause of Christ has at this day! How strong a conspiracy there is against it! The spirit of antichrist is lifted up and marches furiously. Things seem to hang on a small and invisible thread.

But our comfort is that Christ lives and reigns, and stands on Mount Zion in defence of those who stand for him (Revelation 14:1). When states and kingdoms dash against one another, Christ will care for his own children and cause, since there is nothing else in the world that he much esteems. Even now the deliverance of his church and the ruin of his enemies are in the making. We see nothing in motion until Christ has done his work, and then we shall see that the Lord reigns. Christ and his church, when they are at the lowest, are nearest rising. His enemies, at the highest, are nearest a fall.

The Jews have not yet come in under Christ's banner. But God, who persuaded Japheth to come into the tents of Shem, will persuade Shem to come into the tents of Japheth (Genesis 9:27). The fullness of the Gentiles has not yet come in (Romans 11:25). But Christ, who has been given "the ends of the earth" as his possession (Psalm 2:8), will gather all the sheep his Father has given him into one fold, so that there may be one flock and one shepherd (John 10:16). The faithful Jews rejoiced to think of the calling of the Gentiles; why should we not rejoice to think of the calling of the Jews?

The course of the gospel has hitherto been like that of the sun, from east to west, and in God's time it may go yet further west. No creature can hinder the course of the sun, or stop the influence of heaven, or hinder the blowing of the wind. Much less can anything hinder the prevailing power of divine truth, until Christ has brought all under one head. Then he will present them all to his Father: These are the ones you gave me. These have taken me for their Lord and King, and have suffered with me. My will is that they be where I am, and reign with me. And then he will hand over the kingdom to his Father, and put down all other rule, authority and power (1 Corinthians 15:24).

Resolve, then, to do good

Let us then bring our hearts to holy resolutions, and set ourselves on what is good and against what is evil, in ourselves or others, according to our callings, on this encouragement: that Christ's grace and power will go with us. What would have become of that great work of reforming religion in the latter springtime of the gospel, if people had not been armed with invincible courage to step over all hindrances, on this faith, that the cause was Christ's and that he would not fail his own cause? Luther frankly confessed that he often carried matters rashly and with a mixture of passion. But God did not take advantage of his errors. The cause was God's, and Luther's aims were holy, to promote the truth. He was a mighty man in prayer and strong in faith, and God kindled through him a fire that all the world will never be able to quench.

As our faith is, so is our encouragement to every duty. So let us strengthen faith, that it may strengthen all other graces. The very belief that faith will be victorious is a means of making it so. Believe it, then: though faith is often like smoking flax, it will prevail. If it prevails with God himself in trials, will it not prevail over all other opposition? "Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will work for you today" (Exodus 14:13, ESV).

A closing prayer

May the Lord reveal himself more and more to us in the face of his Son Jesus Christ. May he magnify the power of his grace in cherishing those beginnings of grace in the midst of our corruptions. May he sanctify the thought of our own infirmities to humble us, and of his tender mercy to encourage us. May he persuade us that, since he has taken us into the covenant of grace, he will not cast us off for those corruptions, which as they grieve his Spirit, so they make us vile in our own eyes.

And because Satan labours to darken the glory of his mercy and to hinder our comfort by discouragements, may the Lord add this to the rest of his mercies: that since he is so gracious to those who yield to his government, we may make the right use of this grace, and not lose any portion of the comfort that is laid up for us in Christ. And may he let the prevailing power of his Spirit in us be an evidence of the truth of grace begun, and a pledge of final victory, at that time when he will be all in all, in all his people, for all eternity. Amen.