Secondly, The breastplate, by defending this principal part, emboldens the soldier, and makes him fearless of danger, and that is as necessary in fight as the other ; it is almost all one for an army to be killed or cowed. A dead soldier, slain upon the place, will do in a manner as much good as a dead- hearted soldier that is dismayed with fear; his heart is killed while he is alive; and a naked breast exposeth the tmarmed soldier to a trembling heart, whereas one, otherwise cowardly, having his breast defended with a plate of proof, will more boldly venture upon the pikes. Thus righteousness, by defending the conscience, fills the creature with courage in the face of death and danger; whereas guilt, which is the nakedness of the soul, puts the stoutest sinner into a shaking fit of fear. ' The wicked flee when no man pursueth, but the righteous are bold as a lion,' Prov. xxviii. 1. They say sheep are scared with the clatter of their own feet as they run ; so is the sinner with the din of his guilt. No sooner Adam saw his plate ofl", and himself to be naked, but he is afraid at God's voice, as if he had never been acquainted with him. Never can we recover truly our courage, till we recover our holiness : ' If our heart condemn us not, then have we boldness with God,' 1 John iii. 21.
CHAPTER II.
a short point from the connexion of this piece of armour with the first; righteousness with truth.
The words thus opened, the observations are now easy to be drawn from them ; but the copulative ' and,' with which this piece of armour is so closely buckled to the former, bids us make a little stand to take notice how lovingly trutli and holiness are here conjoined; like the sister-curtains of the tabernacle, so called in the Hebrew, Exod. xxvi. 3 ; and it is pity any should unclasp them, which God hath so fitted each to other. Let that, then, be the note from hence.
Note. — That tnith and holiness must go together.
First, Take truth for truth of doctrine. An orthodox judgment with an unholy heart and ungodly life is as uncomely as a man's head would be on a beast's shoulders. That man hath little cause to boast that what he holds is truth, if what he doth be wicked. Poor wretch, if thou art a slave to the devil, it matters not to what part thy chain is fastened, whether head or foot ; he holds thee as sure to him by thy foot, in thy pi-actice, as he would by thy head, if heretical and blasphemous; yea, thou art worse on it, in some respects, than they who are like themselves all over. Thy wickedness is greater, because committed in the face of truth. The mistakes of the erroneous judgments of many betray them unto the unholiness of their practice; their wicked lives are the conclusion which follows necessarily upon the premises of their errors ; but thy judgment lights thee another way (except thou meanest further to accumu- late thy sin by fathering thy unholiness on truth itself). They only miss their way to heaven in the dark, or are misled by a false light of an erroneous judg- ment, which possibly rectified, would bring them back into the path of holiness; but thou sinnest by the broad light of truth, and goest on boldly to hell at noon- day ; like the devil himself, who knows truth from error well enough, but hates
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to be ruled by it. Should a minstrel sing to a sweet tune with her voice, and play to another with her hand that is harsh and displeasing, sxich music would more grate the judicious ear than if she had sung to what she ])layed. Thus to sing to truth with our judgment, and play wickedness with our heart and hand in our life, is more abhorring to God, and all good men, than where the judgment is erroneous as well as the life ungodly. Nahash had not en- raged David so much if he had come with an army of twenty thousand men into the field against him, as he did by abusing his ambassadors so basely. The open hostility which many express by their ungodly lives, does not so much provoke God as the base usage they give to his truth, which he sends to treat with them, yea, in them. This kindles the fire of his wrath into a flame to purpose, when he sees men put scorn upon his truth, by walking contraiy to the light of it, and imprisoning it from having any command over them in their lives, and j-et own it to be the truth of God.