compared with that blessing which sanctifies the heart to use them for God's glory. And this is the ordinary portion of the waiting soul, and that not only in outward comforts, but inward also. The joy and inward peace which the sincere soul hath thus, makes it more humble, holy, heavenly ; whereas the comfort which the hypocrite comes so quickly by either degenerates into pride and self-conceit, or empties itself into some other filthy sink, sometimes even of open profaneness itself, before it hath run far.
Section III. — Hope assures the soul, that while God stays the performance of one promise, he shall have the absence thereof supplied with the presence of another. And this is enough to quiet the heart of any that imderstands himself. God hath laid things in such a sweet method, that there is not one point of time wherein the soul of a believer is left wholly destitute of comfort, but there is one promise or other that stands ready to minister unto his present wants. Sometimes haply he may want what he strongly desires, yet even then care is taken for his present subsistence : one promise bears the Christian company while another comes. And what cause has the sick man to complain, though all his friends do not sit up with him together, if they take it by turns, and never leave him without a suflScient number ? We read of a ' tree of life, ' Rev. xxii. 2, which ' bears twelve manner of fruits, and yields her fruit every month,' so that it is never with- out some hanging on it. What can this tree be better conceived to be than Christ, who yields all manner of fruit in his promises, and comfort for all times, all condi- tions? The believer can never come, but he shall find some promise ripe, with Avhich he may well stay his stomach, till the other hangs for farther ripening. Here you see the Christian hath provision for all the year. When Christ returned to heaven he gave his disciples this to comfort them, that he would come again, and carry them with him unto his Father, where now he lives himself in glory, John xiv. 2. This is sweet indeed; but, alas! what shall they do in the meantime to weather out those many storms which intervene between this promise and the time when it shall be performed ? This, also, our Saviour considered, and tells them he does not mean to leave them comfortless, but gives them another promise to keep house with in the meantime, that is, a promise of his Spirit, who should be with them on earth, John xiv. 16, until he took them to be with him in heaven. The Christian is never at such a loss, wherein hope cannot relieve it, Jer. xvii. 7, 8 : ' Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is : for he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat Cometh, but her leaf shall be green ; and shall not be carefid in the year of drought, neither shall cease fi-om yielding fruit.' These waters are the pro- mises, from which the believcV draws continual matter of comfort ; as a tree planted by the river fioiu'isheth, however the year goes, so doth he, whatever God's exterior providence is. Possibly the Christian is in an afflicted state, and the promise for deliverance comes not ; yet then hope can entertain him in the absence of that, at the cost of another promise, that though God doth not at present deliver him out of the aflliction, yet he will support him under it, 1 Cor. X. 13. If yet the Christian cannot find this promise sufficient to discharge him of all impatience, distrust, and other sinful distempers, (which, to his grief, he finds too busy in him, for all the promise,) then hope hath another window to let out the smoke at ; and that is, by presenting the soul with those promises which assure the weak Christian that pardoning mercy shall cover those defects which assisting grace did not fully conquer, Mai. iii. 17 : 'I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.' So Micah vii. 18 : ' Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage ?' And certainly God would not have suffered so much impatience to have broken out in Job, but that he would have some- thing left for pardoning mercy to do at the close of all, to which that holy man should see himself beholden, Ijoth for his deliverance, and that honourable tes- timony also which God himself gave of him before his uncharitable friends, who, from his great afflictions, and some discomposure of spirit in them, did so unmercifully burden him with the heavy charge of being an hypocrite.
AND TAKE THE HELMET OF SALVATION. 537
CHAPTER VIII.
A TRIAL OF WHAT METAL OUR HELMET OF HOPE IS MADE.