Thirdly, God useth these temptations for the advancing of the whole work of grace in the heart. One spot occasions the whole garment to be washed. David, overcome with one sin, renews his repentance for all, Psa. li. A good husband, when lie secth it rain in at one place, sends for the workmen to look over all the house. This indeed differcnceth a sincere heart from an hypocrite, whose repentance is partial, soft in one plot, and hard in another. Judas cries out of his treason, but not a word of his thievery and hypocrisy. Tlie hole was no wider in his conscience than where the bullet went in ; whereas true sorrow for one breaks the heart into shivers for others also.
Section II. — Secondly, Satan by tempting one saint, hath aniischiovous de- sign against others, either by encouraging them to sin by the example of such a -one, or discouraging them in their holy course by the scandal he hath given ; but God here befools him.
First, Making the miscamages of such a seasonable caveat to others to look to their standing. Dost thou see a meek Moses provoked to anger ? What watch and ward hast thou need keep over thy urundy heai-t! Though loud winds do some hurt by blowing down here a loose tile, and there a turret, (which was falling before,) yet the common good surmounts the private damage of some few ; these being as a broom in God's hand to sweejD and cleanse the air ; so, though some (that are wicked) are by God's righteous judgment for the same hardened into further abominations by the saints' falls, yet the good which sincere souls receive by having their formality and security in a further degree purged, doth abundantly countervail the other, who are but sent a little faster whither they were going before.
Secondly, God makes his saints' falls an argument for comfort to distressed consciences. This hath been, and is as a feather (when the passage seems so stopped that no comfort can be got down otherwise) to drop a little hope into the soul, to keep the creature alive from falling into utter despair; some have been revived with this when next door to hell in their own fears. David's sin was great, yet found mercy ; Peter fell foully, yet now in heaven. Why sittest thou here, O my soul, under the hatches of despair? Up, and call upon thy God for mercy, who hath pardoned the same to others.
Thirdly, God hath a design in sutt'ering Satan to trounce some of his saints by temptation, to train them up into a fitness to succour their fellow-brethren in the like condition : he sends them hither to school, (where they are under Satan's fenila and lash,) that his cruel hand over them may make them study the word and their own hearts, by which they get experience of Satan's policies, till at last they commence masters in this art of comforting tempted souls. It is an art by itself, ' to speak a word in season to the weary soul : ' it is not serving out an apprenticeship to himian arts will furnish a man for this : great doctors have proved great dunces here, knowing no more how to handle a wounded conscience, than a rustic the surgeon's instrument in dissecting the body when an anatomical lecture is to be read. It is not the knowledge of the Scripture (though a man were as well acquainted with it as an apothecary with his pots and glasses in his shop, able to go directly to any promise on a sudden) will suffice. No, not grace itself, except exercised with these buffetings and soul- conflicts. Christ himself we find trained up in this school, Isa. 1.4: ' He wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned.' Even as the tutor calls up his pupil to read to him ; and what is the lecture which is read to Christ, that he may have the tongue of the learned to speak a word in season to the weary soul ? see ver. 5. ' The Lord hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned I away my back ; I gave my back to the smiters,' &c. His sufl(?rings (which were all alongmingled with temptations) were the lecture from whicli Christ came out so learned, to resolve and comfort distressed souls. So that the de\'il had better have let Christ alone, yea, and his saints also, who do him but the greater disservice in comforting others ; none will handle poor souls so gently as those who remember
'J2 THAT YE MA5f BE ABLE TO STAND