I now come to show you —
2. Why.
[1.] Because of the charge that is put upon us to testify for God, and justify his ways: Isa. xliii. 10, 'Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord.' They that are most acquainted with God can most witness for him. So wisdom's children can most justify her. They are acquainted with her promises and precepts, and have experience of the virtue and power of them in comforting and changing the heart. A report of a report is a cold thing ; they that have felt somewhat in their hearts, that which they have seen and felt they can speak of. The world needeth some witnesses for God, some testimony and preparative inducement to invite them to embrace the ways of God. iliracles served for that use heretofore : Acts v. 32, ' And we are his witnesses of those things, and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him.' And in the place of miracles, there succeeded good conversation, or the wonderful effects of his Spirit. Grace in the heart and lives of his children, this is apt to beget wonder, as miracles did, 1 Peter iv. 4. When they can renounce the lusts which most are mastered by, and grow dead to worldly interests, live in the world above the world, in the flesh contrary to the flesh. A miracle strikes a little wonderment at first, but this sinketh and soaketh to the heart. When men are so strictly holy, so ravishingly heavenly, and bear up upon the hopes and encouragements of the other world, and are so conscientious in all duties to God and man, you show that religion is not a notion or an imagination.
[2.] Wisdom deserveth to be justified by us. What is there in all the Christian religion but what is justifiable, or that we should be ashamed of ? Is it the hopes of it ? The hopes of it are such as are
110 WISDOM IS JUSTIFIED [Mat. XL 18, 19.
fit to be propounded to man, sought after by all the world, but nowhere discovered witli such certainty and distinctness as in the gospel Nothing doth refine and ennoble the heart so much as these hopes. The heavenly spirit, that can support itself with the hopes of an unseen glory, is the only true sublime spirit ; an earthly spirit is a base spirit, so a sensual, the dregs of mankind. Amongst men, the ambitious, who aspire to crowns and kingdoms, and aim at perpetual fame by tlieir heroic virtues and exploits, are judged persons of far greater gallantry than covetous muckworms or brutish epicures ; yet they are poor, base-spirited people in their highest thoughts and designs to that noble and divine spirit Avliich worketh in the breast of those who sincerely and heartily seek heavenly things. For what is the honour of the world to approbation with God, temporal trifles to an everlasting kingdom ? Is it the way and means, the first, the terms of settling our souls in the way of faith and repentance ? What more rational? Should we return to our creator's service without acknowledging our ofience in straying, or humbling ourselves for our errors, and purposing for the future to live in his love and obedience ? Or can we expect mercy without returning ? Reason will say our case is not compassionable. Or should God quit his law without satisfaction ? Or should we not own our benefactor, the person satis- fying ? Certainly there is nothing more reasonable. So also for new obedience. Therefore wisdom deserveth to be justified by us.
[3.] Those that condemn wisdom, yet do in some measure at the same time justify it. They condemn it with their tongues, but justify it with their consciences : they hate and fear strictness : Mark vi. 20, ' Herod feared John, because he was a just man and a holy, and observed him.' They scoff at it with their tongues, but have a fear of it in their consciences : they revile at it while they live, but what mind are they of when they come to die ? Then all will speak well of a holy life, and the strictest obedience to the laws of God : Num. xxiii. 10, ' Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his ;' and Mat. xxv. 8, ' Give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out.' Oh that they had a little of that holiness and strictness which they scoffed at, whilst they were pursuing their lusts ! How will they desire to die H As carnal and careless sinners, or as mortified saints ? They approve it in thesi, and condemn it in hypothesi. All the opposers and scoffers at godliness, within the pale of the visible church, have the same Bible, baptism, creed, and pretend to believe in the same God and Chri.st, which they own with those whom they oppose. All the difference is, the one are real Christians, the other are nominal ; some profess at large, others practise what they i)rofess ; the one have a religion to talk of, the other to live by ; they approve it in the form, but hate it in the power. A picture of Christ that is drawn by a painter they like, and the forbidden image of God made by a carver they will reverence and honour, and be zealous for ; but the image of God framed by the Spirit in the hearts of the faithful, and described in the lives of the heavenly and the sanctified, this they scorn and scoff at.