paitli God, ' deliver such a one unto Satan;' and if a saint be the prisoner, and the devil the keeper, you may guess how he shall be used. O how he will tear and rend tliy conscience ! though that dreadful ordinance is not used, as it should be, in the church, yet God's covu-t sits, and if he excom- municates a soul from his presence, he falls presently into Satan's clutches. Well, if through his subtilty thou hast been overtaken, take heed thoii stayest not in the devil's quarters ; shake the viper off thy hand, haste thee to thy surgeon ; green wounds cure best, but if thou neglectest, and the wind get to it, thy conscience will soon fester. Ahab, we read, 1 Kings xxii. 35, was wounded in battle, and was loth to yield to it : it is said, ' he was held up in his chariot,' but he died for it: when a soiil hath received a wound, committed a sin, Satan labours to bolster him up with flattering hopes, holds him up, as it were, in the chariot against God ; what, yield for this ? afraid for a little scratch, and lose the spoil of thy future pleasure for this ? O take heed of listening to such counsel ; the sooner thou yieldest, the fairer quarter thou shalt have. Every step in this way sets thee further from thy peace. A rent garment is catched by every nail, and the rent made wider. Renew therefore thy repentance speedily, whereby this breach may be made up, and worse pre- vented, which else will befall thee.
Section II. — Secondly, Study that grand gospel-truth of a soul's justification befoi'e God; acquaint thyself with this in all its causes; the moving cause, the free mercy of God, being justified freely by his grace, Rom. iii. 24 ; the merit- orious, which is the blood of Christ ; and the instrumental, faith, with all the sweet privileges that flow from it. An effectual door once opened to let the soul into this truth, would not only spoil the pope's market, as Gardner said, but the devil's also; when Satan comes to disquiet the Christian's peace, for want of a right understanding here, he is soon worsted by his enemy ; as the silly hare which might escape the dogs in some covert or bun'ow that is at hand, but, trusting to her heels, is by the print of her own feet and scent, which she leaves behind, followed, till at last, weary and spent, she falls into the mouth of them. In all that a Christian doth there is a print of sinful infirmity, and a scent by which Satan is enabled to trace and pursue him over hedge and ditch ; this grace and that duty, till the soul, not able to stand before the accusation of Satan, is I'eady to fall down in despair at his feet; whereas here is a hiding- place, whither the enemy diu'st not come, the clefts of the rock, the hole of the stairs, which this truth leads unto. When Satan chai-geth thee for a sinner, perhaps thou interposest thy repentance and reformation, but soon art beaten out of those works, when thou art shewn the sinful mixtures that are in them ; whereas this ti-uth will choke all his bullets, that thou believest on him who hath said, ' Not unto him that worketh, but to him that believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is imputed for righteousness,' Rom. iv. 5. Get, therefore, into this tower of the gospel covenant, and roll this truth, as she that stone on the head of Abimelech, on the head of Satan.
Section III. — Thirdly, Be sure. Christian, thou keepest thy plains. Take heed that Satan coop thee not up in some straits, where thou canst neither well fight nor fly. Such a trap the Egyptians hoped they had the Israelites in when they cried, ' They are entangled, they are entangled.' There are three kinds of straits where he labours to entrap the Christian ; nice questions, obscure scriptures, and dark providences.
First, He labours to puzzle him with nice and scrupulous questions, on pur- pose to retard the work, and clog him in his motion, that, meeting with such intricacies in his Christian course, which he cannot easily resolve, thereby he may be made either to give over, or go on heavily ; therefore we have particular charge not to trouble the weak heads of young converts with ' doubtful dispu- tations,' Rom. xiv. 1. Sometimes Satan will be asking the soul how it knows its election ; and where he finds one not so fully resolved as to dare to own the same, he frames his argument against such a one's closing with Christ and the promise ; as if it were presumption to assume that (which is the only portion of the elect) before we know ourselves of that number. Now, Christian, keep the plains, and thou art safe. It is plain we are not to make election a ground for our faith, but our faith and calling a medium or argument to prove our election.
AGAINST THE WILES OF THE DEVIT. ^5