3. Consider the necessity of standing to God's law, whatever perse- cutions and sufferings you meet with. There is no other way to be saved : John vi. 68, ' Lord, whither shall Ave go ? thou hast the words of eternal life/ Such as have a mind to quit Christ have need to con- sider where they shall find a better master. Change where they will, they change for the worse. Obedience to the word of God is the only way to eternal life ; and whatever law you make to yourselves, God will judge you by his own law.
4. Be established in the peace of God, and never break this peace to obtain your outward peace. What a wound will it be to thy soul ! and how shiftless and helpless wilt thou be when, to make thy peace with the world, thou hast broken thy peace with God ! Therefore rise up against temptations, as the trees refused in Jotham's parable to be ruler over the rest. Shall I lose my fatness ; another, my sweetness, to rule over the trees ? Shall I, to please men, put my conscience to a continual torment and anguish ? sell the birthright for one morsel of meat ? The remembrance will come into your minds, when you had joyful communion with God and his people, whose company you have abandoned ; every day of solemn assembly will be a new torment to you.
5. When troubles surprise you, consider how unbeseeming it is to take offence at God's providence. It is an ill sign to be so apt to pick. quarrels with God and godliness ; it argueth little love either to God or his law ; for love thinketh no ill of those whom we love. They are murmurers that said the ways of the Lord are not equal, or what profit is there if we serve the Lord ? Mai. iii. 14.
6. Consider, the greatest hurt Satan intendeth you is not to hurt your bodies but your souls, to bring you to be offended at the holy and righteous ways of the Lord. He would let you enjoy the pleasures of sin, to rob you of your delight in God and celestial pleasures ; let you have all the world, if it were in his power, Mat. iv. 9.
7. Consider how short is the prosperity of the wicked, and those that turn aside to the ways of sin, Ps. xvii. 14. They shall be cut off, they are soon withered and dried up, and all their outward glory perishes with them. It is a more prudent course to adhere closely to God : Job v. 3, 'I have seen the foolish taking root, but suddenly I cursed his habitation.' It is a prediction ; he foretold that there was a curse at the root of all his prosperity.
218 SERMONS UPON PSALM CXIX. [SeR. CLXXXI.
SERMON CLXXXI.
Lord, I have hoped for tliy salvation, and done thy commandments. —
Ver. 166.
TnE man of God had said, ver. 165, ' Great peace have they that love thy law, and nothing shall offend them ;' now he particularly applieth to himself what he had generally spoken before. It is sweet when we can thus comfortably apply promises, and make out our own title and interest. This is David's work in this and the following verses. Here he niaketh profession of two things — his hope and obedience ; which indeed are the two great things that belong to a Christian ; graces much praised and little practised. Quarum multa sunt elogia, pauca exampla. They are fitly coupled together in his plea, ' I have hoped, I have done ;' for our confidence in God's mercy is no greater than our fidelity in his precepts ; and they are both professed before God, who searcheth the heart and trieth the reins : ' Lord, I have hoped for thy salvation, and done thy commandments.'
Doct. Sound hope of salvation is and must be joined with a care of keeping God's commandments.
1. I shall speak of the several branches of this profession apart.
2. Then of their conjunction. First, Separately ; and there —
First. Of the profession of his hope, ' Lord, I have hoped for thy salvation.'
1. The object and thing hoped for is salvation. Salvation is tem- poral or eternal, of the body or of the soul. Eabbi David Kimchi understandeth it of the latter, but it seemeth rather to imply help and deliverance out of dangers and distresses. Indeed, neither can be well excluded ; not eternal salvation, for without that, temporal deli- verance is but a reprieve for a time, not a total exemption from evil : not temporal salvation, because before we come to look for our full and final deliverance, God will try us by the way, and train us up in the expectation of other things ; as men learn to swim in the rivers and shallow waters, that afterwards they may swim in the ocean and deep waters. So by expecting lesser things we learn to wait for greater. Both must be hoped for, but with a difference ; eternal salvation absolutely, but temporal with submission to God's will. We have not temporal things always in specie, in kind, but sometimes in value, for these things may be recompensed and made up another way ; but no recompense can be given us for eternal life. The apostle speaketh with submission as to his temporal case, but is peremptory as to his eternal state : 2 Tim. iv. 17, 18, ' Notwithstanding, the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me, that by me the preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear : and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion. And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and preserve me to his heavenly kingdom.' Again, though we are not to neglect the meanest promise, yet our hearts should run more upon the things of another world. A Christian honoureth God by his faith about temporal things, when he will not