Section I. — The elect, who for a time, tlirough ignorance and prejudice, are joined with the saints' enemies, as busy sticklers and bloody persecutors as the worst, — the word of God is a sacrificing knife, to rip open their hearts, and let out the hot blood of their sins, which made them so mad against the church of God, yea, and to prepare them also, by converting grace, as an offering acceptable unto God, as the apostle sheweth, Rom. xv. IG. Thus the murderers of oiu- blessed Lord, we find by one sermon of Peter so strongly wrought upon that they presently vomit up his blood, and, at one prick which the point of this sword gave them, crying for quarter at God's hands, yea, throwing down their persecuting arms, and most freely entering their names into his muster-roll, whose life but a few days before they had so cruelly taken away, about three thousand of them at once being baptized in his name. Acts ii. 41. Yea, Paul himself, (whom I may call, as Erasmus doth Augustine, before his conversion, the great whale, that did so much mischief to the church of Christ,) what hook did he use to strike him with but the word? Never had Christ a more furious enemy in the world than this man : his heai't was so inflamed with rage against the saints, that the fiery stream thereof came out of his lips as from the mouth of a hot furnace, breathing slaughter against them wherever he went, Actsix. 1. Now, what force of arms, besides the word preached, did Christ send to take the castle of this bloody man's heart? First, Christ himself took him immediately to task, preaching such a thundering sermon from his heavenly pulpit as dis- mountecl this proud rider, and sent him bound in the fetters of his own troubled sold prisoner even to that place where he thought to have shut up others, and then left his Spirit to carry on the work of his conversion, by applying and keeping the plaster of the word close to his heart ; and how powerfully it wrought on him, he himself tells us, Rom. vii. 9 : ' When the commandment came, sin revived and I died ;' that is, when the law came by the convictions of the Spirit to rake in his soul and pierce his conscience, then sin revived those lusts ; which law, like a sleepy lion, now in his awakened conscience, roared so dreadfully that he was as it were struck dead with the teiTor of them, as a poor damned creature, and would undoubtedly have gone away in that swoon of horror and despair, had not the joyful news of the gospel grace been by the same word and spirit applied seasonably, to bring him to the life of hope and comfort again. Thus was this boisterous, furious enemy of the saints chained and tamed by the terrors of the law, changed and renewed by the gentleness and mercy of the gospel, that he became more ready to lay down his own life now for the defence of the gospel, than, before conversion, to take away their lives that professed it.
Section II. — The saints' persecuting enemies vanish, when mined and destroyed. Indeed, if they continue impenitent, and harden themselves against the truths and servants of God, that is the end they must all come to. They are like ravenous beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, 2 Pet. ii. 12, and they may know beforehand, as the certainty of their ruin, so what shall procure it, and that is the word of God : ' If any will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies.' It is spoken of those that shall dare to oppose and persecute the faithful preachers of the gospel, fire comes out of their mouths to destroy them. Though they have their will on the bodies of the saints, butchering and burning them, yet the word they preach will be their destruction : that lives, and stays behind to pay the saints' debts, and avenge them on their enemies. God has resolved they must and shall in this manner be killed : the word must give them the fatal stroke. Julian confessed as much when bleeding under his deadly wound ; though the aiTow came out of a Per- sian bow, yet the wretch knew it was sent by a higher than a Persian hand : Vicisti Galileos! — O Galilean, thou hast overcome, and been too hard for me ! His conscience told him that his spite against the truth of Christ was his death ; and many more besides him have acknowledged as much when under the hand of justice. The word of God, which they have opposed, hath appeared to them as engraven upon their judgments. O this sword of the word, it hath a long reach ! It is at the breast of every enemy God and his saints have in the world ; and though at present they cannot see whence their danger shoidd come, (they are so great and powerful, so safe and secure, as they think,) yet the word of God having set down their doom already, God will sooner or later let in their
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