Satan's doing it foi' thee ; yet be not oppressed into discouragement by them. Remember how God hath answered the like objections formerly, and saved thee notwithstanding ; if these could have hardened his bowels against thee, hadst thou been alive, yea, out of hell at this day ? Didst thou ever receive a mercy of which God might not have made stoppage upon this very account that makes thee now fear he will not help thee ? Or, if thou hast not an experience of thy own at hand, which were strange, then borrow one of other saints ; David is an instance, beyond exception. This very circumstance with which his deli- verance was enamelled, did above all affect his heart : ' I said in my haste, all men are liars ; what shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits V Psa. cxvi. 11, 12. He remembered his sinful and distempered carriage; this he mentions, to take shame for the same, and to wind up his heart to the highest pitch of thankfulness : he knows not how to praise God enough for that meixy which found him giving the lie to God's messenger, even Samuel himself, who was sent to tell him what was coming. And he doth not only make this cir- cumstance an incentive to praise for what is past ; but lays it down as a ground of hope for the future ; Psa. xxxi. 22 : ' I said in my haste, I am cut off" from before thine eyes ; nevertheless, thou heardest the voice of my supplications when I cried imto thee.' As if he had said, When I prayed with so little faith, that I, as it were, unprayed my own prayer, by concluding my case in a manner desperate ; yet God pardoned my hasty spirit, and gave me that mercy which I had hardly any faith to expect : and what use doth he make of this experience, but to raise every saint's hope in a time of need ? ' Be of good coui-age, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord,' ver. 24.
CHAPTER XIV.
AN EXHORTATION TO THEM THAT WANT THIS HELMET OF HOPE.
Be you exhorted, who are yet without this helmet, to provide yourselves with it. Certainly, if you be in your right mind, it is the first thing you will go about, and that with earnestness, especially if but three considerations take place in your thoughts.
Section I. — How deplorable a thing it is to be in a hopeless state ! The apostle, Ephes. ii. 12, makes him to be withovit God that is without hope, — having no hope, and being without God in the world. God to the soul is what the soul is to the body : if that be so vile and noisome a thing, when it hath lost the soul that keeps it sweet, what is thy soul, when nothing of God is in it ? ' The heart of the wicked is little worth,' saith Solomon, and why, but because it hath not God to put a value on it? If God, who is light, be not in thy un- derstanding, thou art blind ; and what is an eye whose sight is out fit for, but to help thee to break thy neck ? If God be not in thy conscience to pacify and comfort it, thou must needs be full of horror or void of sense ; a raging devil, or a stupid atheist : if God be not in thy heart and affections to purify them, thou art but a sink of sin : if God be not in thee, the devil is, for man's heart is a house that cannot stand empty ; in a word, thou canst not well be without this hope, neither in life nor death : not in life, for what comfort canst thou take in this life, without the hope of a better ? A sad legacy it is which shuts the rebellious child from all claim to the inheritance. Thou hast an estate, it may be, but it is all you must look for : and is it not a dagger at the heart of thy joy, to think thy portion is paid thee here, which will be spent by that time the saint comes to receive his ? Much less tolerable is it to be without this hope in a dying hour. AVho can, without horror, think of leaving this world, though full of sorrows, who hopes for no ease in the other ? The condemned male- factor, as ill as he likes his smoky hole in the prison, had rather be there, than accept of deliverance at the hangman's hand ; he had rather live still in his loathsome dungeon, than exchange it for a gibbet. And greater reason hath the hopeless soul (if he understands himself) to wish he may spend his eternity on earth, though in the poorest hole in it, and that under the most exquisite torment, than to be eased of pain here, and receive hell's torment hereafter. Hence is the sad confusion in the thoughts of guilty wretches, when their souls are summoned out of their bodies : this makes the very pangs of death stronger
AND TAKE THE HELMET OF SALVATION. 557