There are some professors who have a name among the first three of the worthies of our Lord; have the site and the aspect of stars of the first magnitude, and are ranked among the chief of saints, who have risen high in the easier and sweeter, but less significant parts of religion; who have got the language, and tasted, (as they imagine) of the milk and honey of Canaan, and learned much of the more pleasing manners of that good land; who seem to be of the more intimate acquaintance of the sublimer spirit and power of the gospel, and to be much elevated in the spirituality of their notions and duties, above the attainments of vulgar Christians; and hence are grown up in their own and others’ apprehensions, to be as the cedars of the Lord among the lower shrubs; who yet, if we enquire into, about those severer points of mortification, self-denial, and crucifixion to the world, possibly they may be found in these things as low as the least of saints: the faith of these, if it prove to be the faith of God’s elect at all, yet sure it will be found to be by many degrees less than it appears; and they must yet, for the real spirit of faith and holiness, come behind the little ones of the flock. Where there is but little power over the world, there is but little faith.
Growth in grace is then proved to be most real, when ’tis most equal and universal; ’tis an imperfection in nature, where one member out-grows the rest; as grace and peace have their due proportions each to other: great peace, and little grace, will make it questionable, whether that peace be peace; something of one grace, and nothing of another, will make it as doubtful, whether that grace be grace; high in knowledge, and low in love; strong in confidence, and loose in conscience; hot in affection, and cold in practice; in the solaces of the Spirit, and yet walking in the flesh: behold a Christian like Nebuchadnezzar’s image, the head of gold, and the feet of iron and clay.
Oh how different are many of us from ourselves, our practices from our principles, our doings from our sayings; and yet how little differing from others; you pray as others do not, you hear as others do not; you swear not as others, you curse not as others; but do you not covet as others? are you not carnal as others? Consider your ways; who more intent upon their present commodity, who more hot upon the chase of an earthly inheritance, than some of those who profess to have laid up their treasure in heaven? Are there none to be found who pretend to the greatest confidence of divine love, to the highest pitch of spirituality and divine communion; who seem to pant after the Lord, and breathe out their souls in their warm and passionate duties, and yet are eaten out, and swallowed up of the cares of this life?
It is an amazing thing to consider, what a strange degree of earthliness is to be found among such; what insatiable hunger, what indefatigable labour, after an increase of their estates? how little respect to soul or conscience, where their gain is concerned? how ordinarily dispensing with lying, promise breaking, and almost any unrighteousness, when ’tis for their advantage? how many grains must there be allowed them, ere charity itself can judge them honest?
And where is all bestowed that is thus got in? how little goes out for God, or any of his? how many hypocritical bemoanings of the hard case of the poor, to one liberal alms? Some gather only that they may lay up, others that they may have to spend upon their lusts, to build them houses, and furnish their tables, to trim their carcases, to please their eye, or their palate; and all this either justified and allowed, or at least made up with some such hypocritical complaints—Woe is me—this world is too hard for me—O it eats up my time—O it steals away my heart—how, am I overcharged—how is my soul even choaked within me—what shall I do to help it? And when the complaint is thus made, the matter is mended; now a good Christian, now ease, and joy, and conscience return; and then on again the same course.
Brethren, be serious; consider yourselves, feel your own pulse, view your own faces and ways, observe your heart, see where their daily walks are; may you not find them ten times walking to and fro through the earth, to once or twice casting a look towards heaven?
What are their daily tasks? what is the work you every day put them upon? Instead of those higher and nobler offices of vessels of honour, waiting before the throne of God, standing in his courts, hearing his name, beholding his face, setting forth his praises; have not our hearts been made hewers of wood, and drawers of water, carriers of burdens, servers of tables, purveyors for the flesh, caterers for the appetite, servants to the back and belly, the great traders and merchants of the earth, to buy in provision for lust? Worthy employment for immortal souls! as if the utensils of the temple, the golden altar, the golden table, the candlesticks, the bowls and the basons, all of beaten gold, should have been fetched out for the service and the pleasure of every drunken companion.
Christians, consider, is this your faith? is this your victory over the world? is this to be mortified? is this to be crucified with Christ? or to have your conversation in heaven? or can you think yourselves beIievers, especially of so high a form, when so earthly and carnal?
What think you of those Jews, of whom the Lord speaks, “They come unto thee as the people cometh, they sit before thee as my people; they hear thy words, but they will not do them, with their mouth they shew much love, but their heart goes after their covetousness,” Ezek. xxxiii. 31. Are these the people of God, all whose religion is to come to hear, and to pray? to have a mouth full of God, a mouth full of love, and an heart full of covetousness.
Give me leave to interpose a word or two to the carrying on the former conviction, as to many professors of religion, in order whereto let us a little consider that scripture, Phil. iii. 18, 19, where the Apostle speaks of a sort of professors much of this earthly make, and he speaks with tears in his eyes. “Many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ; whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is their shame, who mind earthly things.”
He points with the finger at some among them, who though they professed Christ with them; and worshipped God with them, and walked with them, yet they walked not after them, and sets this brand upon them, “They are the enemies of the cross of Christ; whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, who mind earthly things.”
Here are the men and their censure; here are their mark and their brand; their mark or description, “whose god is their belly, who mind earthly things;” their brand and their doom, “the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction.”
Professor, is thy face like the faces of these? Is thy heart and thy way as the heart of these? So shall the judgment be: you say as the Apostle, ver. 3, “We are the circumcision,” we are Christ’s, we worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.” But yet have you not fellowship with the flesh? Do you not walk after the flesh, even whilst you pretend to rejoice in Christ Jesus, and to worship God in the spirit?
Oh brethren, if we could speak of these with the heart of the Apostle, we should with tears also; we should speak weeping, that they are the “enemies of the cross of Christ;” the wounds, and the sore, and the scabs, the shame and the reproach of the profession of the gospel: good had it been for the gospel, if never a good word of it had ever proceeded out of such mouths; and better had it been for such souls, if they had never known, nor so much as heard of the gospel of Christ.
Friends, if you do not yet weep for yourselves, for your hypocrisy, your carnality; for your self-seeking, and self-deceiving, my soul, weep thou in secret for them: Oh that mine head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I may weep day and night for you, till either this earth be thrown out of your hearts, or the name of Christ out of your mouths: O for more of the gospel, or for less; for more of the power, or nothing of the name; for more of its holiness, or less of its hopes, and boastings; come ye and be crucified to this world, or talk no more of the cross of Christ.
“Be not deceived, God is not mocked; as you sow, so shall you also reap;” your sowing to the flesh, even while you boast of the Spirit, is conviction enough whose you are, and what your end will be, whose end is destruction.
Obj. But I mean not, for all this, to cast away my confidence; God forbid that I should think, that I have professed in vain, that I have heard, and prayed, and believed all this while in vain; I know whom I have believed, I feel that I love God, and I am persuaded that nothing shall separate me from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord; whatever corruptions I have, yet the Spirit witnesses with my spirit, that I am the child of God, I am sealed by that Holy Spirit unto the day of redemption, and I will not cast away my confidence.
Sol. The meaning of all these good words may be no more than this, you will hold your opinion against the greatest evidence of Scripture and reason: for what is that which thou callest the witness and the seal of the Spirit, but an opinion of thy own; a voice within thee, or a strong persuasion of thine own heart, that thou art of God? which because it is attested by some gifts of the Spirit, and some affectionate workings of thine heart, at times, heavenward, thou takest to be the voice of the Divine Spirit, though it be never so contradictory to the word of God; and so wilt hold thy confidence, notwithstanding what the word speaks to the contrary.
But the Spirit of the Lord, as it works grace in the heart, so it gives light to the eye: it brings men’s persuasions and opinions to the word, and compares them with that; it searches the Scriptures, and shews the soul what Christ’s mark is; it irradiates the heart, and shews the very same mark which is written in the word, stamped upon the soul, and thereby establishes it in power; if there be no such mark found there, but the quite contrary to it, the peace that is spoken is not of the Spirit of God, but of the devil.
But beloved, I am persuaded better things of you to whom I am now speaking; even “you of little faith;” though it may be of a great name: yet with you also must I plead awhile, and tell you from the Lord that I have “somewhat against you:” and Oh were it but a little somewhat, that I have to speak, even against you: but sure there is very much to be spoken, unless, you will save me the labour, and speak against yourselves. So much may be said, as if it be duly considered may take you down many rounds lower than you imagine yourselves to have ascended? how few of you that are risen with Christ, but are too often letting your affections run down again to this earth? In whom, though Christ may be really formed, yet there appears little conformity to his life or death. To whom, though he had been long since said, “Lazarus come forth,” yet to this day you have scarce got your heads above ground: whose bellies creep upon the dust, whilst your eyes and your hopes are in heaven: in whom there is such a mixture of flesh and spirit, that it is hard to discern which hath the predominance: whose hearts seem still so divided betwixt Christ and the world, that nobody that knows you can tell which hath the better part; whose time, and whose care, and whose labeur, run out on things so much below, that without some great charity, it may be judged your hearts are there also: and yet, by some clearer insight into the mysteries of the gospel; by some affectionate intercourses with God in your secret recesses and retirements from the world, by your serious heats and enlargements in your duties with others, by some tastes and relishes of the pleasure of ordinances, by some raptures of joy, and the seeming serenity and uncloudiness of your spirits, by not considering what abatement the carnality and earthliness of your course must necessarily make upon you, are grown to an hope and opinion that you are the highly favoured of the Lord, and his greatly beloved.
But do you not blush then at your unworthiness? are you not ashamed that such love, and such hopes, should no more wean your hearts from these breasts of vanity, from which you suck nothing but filth or froth that you should defile such an heavenly treasure, by lodging it in such earthly vessels; that you should so disgrace that divine portion which you count is yours, as that it should not be enough for you but leave you as hungry as if you had no God, nor hope in him? that you should so disgrace your Father’s table, by your unnatural appetite after coals and dirt? Is your profession that God is your happiness, your treasure, your all? Is your None but Christ, come to no more than this? Hath your covenanting with God, for renouncing the world, mortifying the flesh, denying yourself, brought forth no better fruits than these? Oh the imprudence and disingenuity of our hearts, that can carry the conscience of such treachery before the throne of grace, without shame and consternation; how can you lift up your face before the Lord, without hanging down your head?
Nay, do you not fear that your hearts also have deceived you, and that matters may not be so well with you as you sometimes conclude? that your hopes are but delusory, that your joys are but dreams, and all your comforts are but the lying divinations and prophecies of your own deceived heart? Is it out of question with you, that you are risen with Christ, and ascended with Christ, when your hearts are got no further up out of these graves?
Believe it, Christians, the severities of religion will be a surer testimony to you, than all its suavities: an humble, patient, contented, self-denying, mortified Christian, under all his doubts and fears, under all his complaints of deadness, is fairer for heaven than you all.
Those are the joys of faith, which spring up out of the ruins of carnal joys; those are the genuine comforts and delights of the saints, that arise up out of the ashes of earthly delights, those are the confidences of true believers, which grow out of their contempt of the world; then will the world think better of our religion, and then may we hope better of ourselves, when the joy of the Lord is our strength, and the joys of the earth are strangers to us, and despised by us.
Oh brethren, let us no longer dishonour our God, nor delude ourselves; let not the world any longer say in our reproach, These men are even as we: let them see that our ways are not as their ways, that our joys are not as their joys, and then they will know, our hope is not as their hope, our rock is not as their rock.
Children of the kingdom, (if I may be bold to call you so,) where is the proof of your heavenly extraction? where is your Father’s Spirit? how can you be patient with yourselves, whilst you are such degenerate plants? how can you satisfy yourselves, that you are the genuine offspring of God, when so unlike your Father? how can you without weeping, behold the glory of these latter temples fall short of those that were in the ages before us? where are the primitive spirituality, the mortification and self-denial of the primitive Christians? how have the stars changed their orbs from moving in the celestial spheres? how seem they now to be fixed in the earth? how can you count yourselves stars and not comets, when your highest elevation is seldom above the middle region, you hang betwixt heaven and earth?
Is this your redemption, to bewail your captivity? But when shall it be better? when shall it be said to these prisoners, Go forth? when for the other world? when for God alone, for nothing but the everlasting kiugdom? Arise O captive, put off thy prison-garments, get thee up out of this house of bondage; unclog, unfetter thy soul: get thy foot out of the snare, and away for thy holy land: leave this earth to its heirs, let the men of this world take to their portion, and be the only servants to it, but go thou and serve the Lord: let God and the world take their own; whilst worldlings will not be the servants of Christ, let it no longer be said, that Christians are the servants of the world.
Richard Alleine. The World Conquered.
