Others, or produce holy shame ; or when they make the blood of Christ more precious and dear to the soul ; or when they engage a Christian so much the more to watch and pray, and pray and watch, that he may either be kept from the hour of temptation, or in the hour of tempta- tion ; or when every fall makes sin more bitter to the soul than ever, and Christ more sweet to the soul than ever, and all the means of grace more delightful to the soul than ever, and heaven more desirable to the soul than ever ; or when sin is made the prevention of sin; or when sin, through the over-ruling hand of grace, is made an occasion of more grace, as that good man said, ' As I get hurt by my graces, so I get good by my sins.' You know all the falls, and knocks, and blows, that chil- dren get that are learning to go, do but make them cleave the closer and hang the faster upon the nurse's skirts, or about the mother's neck. So when all a Christian's falls do but work him to cleave the closer and hang the faster upon the strength of Christ, and to be still a-drawing more and more virtue and power from Christ, then is the prevalency of sin made serviceable to holy and gracious ends ; and where God ordi- narily thus works, there is certainly a work of God in power upon that soul : 2 Cor. vii. 11, ' For, behold, this self-same thing that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge ! In all things you have ap- proved yourselves to be clear in this matter.' This scripture I have fully opened in my eighth sign of godly sorrow in this book, and to that I refer you. The mother, by suffering the child to get one fall, keeps the child from many a fall ; and so it was with these Corinthians. Adam's fall was an inlet to abundance of grace, and his unrighteousness did usher into the world the most glorious righteousness of Jesus Christ. Hezekiah falls, and by his fall God gives him a clearer and fuller sight of his own heart than ever he had before in all his days, 2 Chron. xxxii. 25, 26, 31. Sin is no gainer, but a loser, by every fall of the saints. God does and will, by the over-ruling hand of his grace, make the very miscarriages of his people to be glorious inlets to more eminent degrees of grace and holiness. God hath a great revenue of glory from the very infirmities of the saints ; and the saints have a great revenue of comfort from their very miscarriages, by the wise, powerful, over-ruling, and sanctifying hand of God. God is that powerful, that skilful physician, that can make an antidote and sovereign remedy of sin, that is the most deadly poison in all the world. God does and will make the very sins of his people to further the salvation of his people, according to that golden promise, Rom. viii. 2S. God never sufiers his people to fall into any sin, but out of a design to break the neck and back of that sin they fall into. God suffered David to fall into those two great sins of mur- der and adultery, but by these very falls he broke the very back of those sins, for we never read tliat ever he fell into those sins the second time. And so God suffered Peter to deny him once, but by that sore fall God broke the neck of that very sin ; for we never read that ever he denied Christ any more at the voice of a damsel ; yea, it is very ob- servable that Peter's courage and bohlness for the truth received a very hio-h advance by those deep wounds that he had formerly given them, when he denied the Lord that bought him. After his sore falls, for
Chap. II.] a cabinet of jewels. 321
courage and boldness he carries the bell from all the apostles, as you may see in Acts iv. 12. It is the nature of true grace to gather strength by every wound. Grace gathers strength by contraries, as fire doth when it is compassed about with coldness, by an antiperistasis.^ By all a Christian's falls, his graces grow brighter and stronger. At the long run, a Christian by all his falls loses nothing but his dross, his chaff, his scum, his filth. Now, he that finds his sins thus over-ruled for the good of his soul, he is certainly a gracious soul. O sirs ! remember this for ever, viz., that the oftener an hypocrite or a formalist falls, the more ground and strength his sins get upon him, and so will continue to do till all that grace and goodness which he seemed to have had be quite extinguished. But,