Now I shall handle the necessity, use, and power of the word to work faith.
1. The necessity of the word preached ; it is the ordinary means. It is a nice dispute whether God can work without it. God can enlighten the world without the sun. It is clear ordinarily he doth not work without the word ; we are bound, though the Spirit is free : ' How shall they believe on him of • whom they have not heard ? ahd how shall they hear without a preacher ? ' Horn. x. 14. It is the means to
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convey faith into the hearts of the elect ; it is as necessary to faith, as faith to prayer, and prayer to salvation. It is a means under a promise. You see how necessary it is ; they that voluntarily neglect the means, put a scorn upon Grod^s institution. Men will say, I can read at home. Are you wiser than he ? Men think that, of all other things, preach- ing might best be spared ; and of all offices, hearing is least necessary. The ear received the first temptation ; sin and misery broke in that way ; so doth life and peace. The happiness of heaven is expressed by seeing, the happiness in the church by hearing. This is our great employment, to wait upon the word preached ; next to Christ's word, it is a great benefit to have the word written ; next to the word written, the word preached. Christ sent ' first apostles, then pastors and teachers.' God could have converted Paul without Ananias, taught the eunuch without Philip, instructed Cornelius without Peter. Do not hearken to those that cry up an inward teaching, to exclude the out- ward teaching ; as if the external word were but an empty sound and noise, as the Libertines in Calvin's time. Faith, confirmed by reading, is usually begotten by hearing.
2. The use of the word : it is our warrant. What have we to show for our great hopes by Christ but the word? It is our excitement, a means and instrument to show us God's heart and our own, our natural face, and the worth of Christ, the key which God useth and openeth our hearts by. Ministers are Christ's spokesmen ; if we will not open the ear, why should God open the heart ?
3. The power of the word is exceeding great. It is ' the power of God to salvation.' The first gospel sermon that ever was preached, after the pouring forth of the Spirit, had great success : Acts ii. 41, * The same day there were added to the church about three thousand souls.* It was a mighty thing that an angel should slay 185,000 in one night in Sennacherib's host ; but it is easier to kill so many than to convert one soul. One angel, by his mere natural strength, could kill so many armed men ; but all the angels in heaven, if they should join all their forces together, could not convert one soul. There were single miracles of curing one blind or one lame ; ay ! but the apostle's word could work three thousand miracles : 1 Cor. iii. 5, ' Who is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man?'
Why doth God use the word ? I answer — Because it pleased him : 1 Cor. i. 21, ' It pleased God, by the foolishness of preaching, to save them that believe.'
[1.] It is most suitable to man's nature. Man is made of body and soul, and God will deal with him both ways, by internal grace and external exhortations. Man is a reasonable creature ; his will is not brutish ; God will not ofier violence to the principles of human nature. Man is not only weak, but wicked ; there is hatred as well as impo- tency. God will overcome both together, by sweet counsels, mixed with a mighty force ; he useth such a remedy as our disease requireth ; the gospel is not only called ' the power of God,' but ' the wisdom of God,' 1 Cor. i. 24. There are excellent arguments which the heart of man could not have found out.
[2.] It is agreeable to his own counsels to try the reprobate by an
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outward rule and offer, wherein they have as much favour as the elect ; they shall one day know ' that a prophet hath been among them,' and so be * left without excuse,' Eom. i. 20. The rain falleth on rocks as well as fields ; the sun shineth to blind men as well as those that can see. [3.] It commendeth his grace to the elect. Their faith must be ascribed to grace. When others have the same means, the same voice and exhortations, it is the peculiar grace of God that they come to imderstand and believe. Whence is it that the difference ariseth ? that whereas wicked men are by the word restrained and made civil (there being a use of wicked men in the world, as of a hedge of thorns about a garden), they are by the same word converted and brought home to God ? It is from the grace of God.