2 Cor. II. 11 .J against satan's devices. 45
their insides, you will easily find that they fill the head full of cares, and the heart full of fears. What if the fire should consume one part of my estate, and the sea should be a grave to swallow up another part of my estate ! what if my servants should be unfaithful abroad, and my children should be deceitful at home ! Ah, the secret fretting, vexing, and gnawing that doth daily, yea hourly, attend those men's souls whose hands are full of worldly goods !
It was a good speech of an emperor, ' You,' said he, ' gaze on my purple robe and golden crown, but did you know what cares are under it, you would not take it up from the ground to have it.' It was a true saying of Augustine on the 26th Psalm, ' Many are miser- able by loving hurtful things, but they are more miserable by having them.'1 It is not what men enjoy, but the principle from whence it comes, that makes men happy. Much of these outward things do usually cause great distraction, great vexation, and great condemna- tion at last, to the possessors of them. If God gives them in his wrath, and do not sanctify them in his love, they will at last be witnesses against a man, and millstones for ever to sink a man in that day when God shall call men to an account, not for the use, but for the abuse of mercy.
Remedy (6). The sixth remedy against this device of Satan is, seriously to consider the end and the design of God in heaping up mercy upon the heads of the wicked, and in giving them a quietus est, rest and quiet from those sorrows and sufferings that others sigh under. David, in Psalm lxxiii. 17-20, shews the end and design of God in this. Saith he, ' When I went into the sanctuary of God, then I understood their end : surely thou didst set them in slippery places, thou castedst them down into destruction. How are they brought into desolation as in a moment : they are utterly consumed with terrors. As a dream, when ooe awaketh, so, 0 Lord, when thou awakest, thou shalt despise their image.'2 So in Ps. xcii. 7, ' When the wicked spring as grass, and when all the workers of iniquity do flourish, it is that they shall be destroyed for ever.' God's setting them up, is but in order to his casting them down ; his raising them high, is but in order to his bringing them low: Exod. ix. 16, 'And in very deed, for this cause have I raised thee up, for to shew in thee my power, and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth.' I have constituted and set thee up as a butt-mark,3 that I may let fly at thee, and follow thee close with plague upon plague, till I have beaten the very breath out of thy body, and got myself a name, by setting my feet upon the neck of all thy pride, power, pomp, and glory. Ah, souls, what man in his wits would be lifted up that he might be cast down ; would be set higher than others, when it is but
1 Multi amando res noxias sunt miseri, habendo miseriores. — Augustine on Psalm xx vi. — G.
2 Valens, the Eoman emperor, fell from being an emperor to be a footstool to Sapor, king of Persia. Dionysius, king of Sicily, fell from his kingly glory to be a school- master. The brave Queen Zenobia was brought to Rome in golden chains. Valens an emperor, Belisarius, a famous general, Henry the Fourth, Bajazet, Pythias, «reat Pompey, and William the Conqueror, these, from being very high, were brought very low ; they all fell from great glory and majesty to great poverty and misery.
3 Arrow-mark or target. — G.
46 TRECIOUS REMEDIES [2 COR. II. 11.
in order to his being brought down lower than others? There is not a wicked man in the world that is set up with Lucifer, as high as heaven, but shall with Lucifer be brought down as low as hell. Canst thou think seriously of this, O soul, and not say, O Lord, I humbly crave that thou wilt let me be little in this world, that I may be great in another world ; and low here, that I may be high for ever hereafter.1 Let me be low, and feed low, and live low, so I may live with thee for ever; let me now be clothed with rags, so thou wilt clothe me at last with thy robes ; let me now be set upon a dunghill, so I may at last be advanced to sit with thee upon thy throne. Lord, make me rather gracious than great, inwardly holy than outwardly happy, and rather turn me into my first nothing, yea, make me worse than nothing, rather than set me up for a time, that thou mayest bring me low for ever.
Remedy (7). The seventh remedy against this device of Satan is solemnly to consider, That God doth often most plague and punish those whom others think he doth most spare and love ; that is, God doth plague and punish them most with spiritual judgments — which are the greatest, the sorest, and the heaviest — whom he least punishes with temporal punishments.2 There are no men on earth so internally plagued as those that meet with least external plagues. Oh the blindness of mind, the hardness of heart, the searedness of conscience, that those souls are given up to, who, in the eye of the world, are re- puted the most happy men, because they are not outwardly afflicted and plagued as other men. Ah, souls, it were better that all the temporal plagues that ever befell the children of men since the fall of Adam should at once meet upon your souls, than that you should be given up to the least spiritual plague, to the least measure of spiritual blindness or spiritual hardness of heart, &c. Nothing will better that man, nor move that man, that is given up to spiritual judgments. Let God smile or frown, stroke or strike, cut or kill, he minds it not, he regards it not ; let life or death, heaven or hell, be set before him, it stirs him not ; he is mad upon his sin, and God is fully set to do justice upon his soul. This man's preservation is but a reservation unto a greater condemnation ; this man can set no bounds to himself ; he is become a brat of fathomless perdition ; he hath guilt in his bosom and vengeance at his back wherever he goes. Neither ministry nor misery, neither miracle nor mercy, can mollify his heart, and if this soukbe not in hell, on this side hell, who is ? 3
Remedy (8). The eighth remedy against this device of Satan is, To dwell more upon that strict account that vain men must make for all that good that they do enjoy.4 Ah ! did men dwell more
1 Da Domine, ut sic possideamus temporalia, ut non perdamus neterna. Grant us, Lord, that we may so partake of temporal felipity, that we may not lose eternal. — Bernard.
s Psalm lxxxi. 12, lxxviii. 2C-31, cvi. 15. He gave thorn their requests, but sent leanness into their soul. It is a heavy plague to have a fat body and a lean soul ; a house full of gold, and a heart full of sin.
* It is better to have a sore than a seared conscience. It is better to have no heart than a hard heart, no mind than a blind mind.