1. You have heard much against sin : are vou hearers ; or are vou scholars ? I low many sermons have you heard against co- vetousness, that it is the root, on which pride, idolatry, treason do grow ? 2 Tim. iv. 2. and 4. One calls it a metropolitan sin ; it is a complex evil, it doth twist a great many sins in with it. There is hardly any sin, but covetousness is a main ingredient into it; and yet are you like the two daugh- ters of the horse-leech, that cry, *' Give ! give !" How much have you heard against rash anger, that it is a short frenzy, — a dry drunkenness, — that it rests in the bnsoiu of fools, — and upon the least occasion do your spirits begin to take fire ? How much have you heard against swearing ? It '\h Christ's express mandate, " swear not at all," Mat. V. 34. This sin of all others may be termed the unfruitful work of dark*
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iiess, Eph. V. 11. It is neither sweetened with pleasure, nor enriched with ])rofit, the usual vermilion wherewith Satan doth paint sin. Swearing is forbidden with a subpoena. While the swearer shoots his oaths, like flying arrows at God to pierce his glory, God shoots *' a flying roll" of curses against him, Zech, v. 2. And do you make your tongue a racket by which you toss oaths as tennis-balls ? Do you sport yourselves with oaths, as the Pliilistines did with Samson, which will at last pull the house about your ears ? Alas ! How have they learned what sin is, that have not learned to leave sin ! Doth he know what a viper is, that will play with it.
2. You have heard much of Christ : have you learned Christ? The Jews, as Jerom saith, carried Christ in their Bibles, but not in their heart ; their sound " went into all the earth," Rom. x. 18. The prophets and apostles were as trumpets, whose sound went abroad into the world ; yet many thousands who heard the noise of these trumpets, had not learned Christ, " they have not all obeyed," ver. 16.
(1.) A man may know much of Christ, and yet not learn Christ : the devils knew Christ, Mat. i. 24.
(2.) A man may preach Christ, and yet not learn Christ, as Judas ai>d the pseudo- apostles, Phil. V. 15.
(3.) A man may profess Christ, and yet not learn Christ : there are many ])rofessors in the world that Christ will profess against. Mat. vii. 22, 23.
Quest. JVhat is it then to learn Christ ?
Ans. I. To learn Christ is to be made like Christ, to liave the divine characters of his holiness engraven upon our hearts. " We all with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image," 2 Cor. iii. 18. There is a me- tamorphosis made; a sinner, viewing Christ's image in the glass of the gospel, is trans- formed into that image. Never did any man look upon Christ with a s])i ritual eye, but he went away quite changed. A true saint is a divine landscape or pictiue, where all the rare beauties of Ciirist are lively pourtrayed and drawn forth ; he hath the pame spirit, the same judgment, the same will, with Jesus Christ.
A. 2. To learn Christ, is to believe m him ; " My Lord, and my God," John xx 28. : when we do not only credere Deum, but in Deum ; which is the actual application of Christ to ourselves, and as it were the spreading of the sacred medicine of his blood upon our souls. You have heard much of Christ, and yet cannot with an humble adherence say, " My Jesus ;" be not offended if I tell you, the devil can say his creed as well as you.
A. 3. To learn Christ, is to love Christ. When we have Bible-conversations, our life like rich diamonds cast a sparkling lustre in the church of God, Phil. i. IT., and are, in some sense, parallel with the life of Christ, as the transcript with the original. So much for the first notion of the word.
Chap. IIL Concerning the Second Pro- position.
IL This word, " I have learned," is a word imports difficulty, — it shews how hardly the apostle came by contentment of mind, — it was not bred in nature. St. Paul did not come naturally by it, but he had learned it. It cost him many a prayer and teal', it was taught him by the Spirit. Whence our second doctrine : Good things are hard to come by. The business of re- ligion is not so facile as most do imagine. " I have learned," saith St. Paul. Lideed you need not learn a man to sin, this is na- tural, Ps. Iviii. 3., and therefore facile, it comes as water out of a spring. It is an easy thing to be wicked ; hell will be taken without storm ; but matters of religion must be learned. To cut the flesh is easy, but to prick a vein, and not cut an artery is hard. The trade of sin needs not to be learned, but the art of divine contentment is not achieved without holy industry: " I have learned." There are two pregnant reasons, why there must be so much study and exercitation :