VeE. 23.] SERMONS UPON ROMANS VIII. 195
aches and diseases, stone, gout, strangury, death itself, tumbled up and down, and tossed from prison to prison ; but then redeemed from all evil and misery.
Use 2. Is exhortation. To rouse up our languid and cold affections, that we may more earnestly groan and long for heavenly things. If we look to this world, the pleasures of it are dreams and shadows ; the miseries of it many and real ; we find corruptioa within, temptations without, grievous afHictions, oppressing the bodily life ; but above all, we do too often displease and dishonour God. If to the other world, the pleasures of it are full, glorious, and eternal. God is fain to drive us out of this world, as he did Lot out of Sodom, yet loath to depart. Have we not smarted enough for our love to a vain world? sinned enough to make us weary of the present state ? If heaven be not worth " our desires and groans, it is little worth. There is the best estate, the best work, and the best company.
Question. But how shall we do to get up our hearts from this world to a better ? These things are necessary :
[1.] The illumination of the Spirit, that the mind be soundly per- suaded : 2. Cor. v. 1, ' For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.'
[2.] Strong inclination, or an heart fixed on heavenly things : Mat. vi. 21, ' For where yom- treasure is, there will your heart be also.' Col. iii. 1, 'If ye bo risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. Set your affections upon things above, and not upon the earth.'
[3.] Love to Christ : Phil. i. 23, ' For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.' They that love Christ will desire to be with him ; they delight in his presence, count it their honour to be miserable with him, rather than happy without him.
[4.] Some competent assurance of our own interest : 2. Tim. iv. 8, ' Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me at that day, and not uuto me only, but unto all that love his appearing.'
[5.] Some mortification, that the heart should be dead to the world, weaned from the pleasures and honour thereof : Gal. vi. 14, ' God for- bid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.' While our hearts are set upon worldly profits and pleasures, and gratify the vices and lusts of the body, we are loath to depart : ' They have their portion in this life,' Ps. xvii. 14.
Use 3. Do we groan and wait ? If so —
[1.] There will be serious waiting, and diligent preparing: 2 Pet. iii. 14, ' Wherefore, beloved, if ye look for such things, be diligent that you may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless.'
[2.] It will frame our lives : Phil. iii. 20, ' For our conversation is in heaven.'
[3.] It will put us upon self-denial. That maketh the christian labour and suffer trouble and reproach ; desire is the vigorous part of the soul : 1 Tim. Iv. 10, ' For therefore we labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God.'
196 SERMONS UPON ROMANS VIII. [SeR. XXXI.
SERMON XXXI.
For toe are saved by hope, but hope that is seen is not hope : for lohat a man seeih, tvhy doth he yet hojje/or? — Eom. VIII. 24.
In this verse the apostle giveth a reason why believers do groaningly expect the adoption, the redemption of their bodies, and so, by conse- quence, salvation — because yet they had it not. And in this reason there is secretly couched a jirolepsis, or an anticipation of an objection ; as if the apostle had said, If any shall object, We are adopted already, redeemed already, saved already, tliis I would answer him : We are not actually saved, but in right and expectation only ; salvation indeed is begun in the new birth ; but is not complete till body and soul shall be glorified in the day of judgment; then we are redeemed or saved from all evils, and then do presently enter into the actual possession of the supreme happiness or glory which we expect. He proveth it by the nature of hope, because hope is of a future thing : ' For we are saved by hojie ; but hope,' &c.
In the words two things : 1. An account of the present state of a believer; ' For we are saved by hope.'
2. The proof of it by two reasons. The first is talcen from the nature of hope : ' For hope that is seen is not hope.' The second from the absurdity of the contrary ; ' For what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for ? '
1. An account of the present state of a believer, ' We are saved by hope.' A christian is already saved ; but he is only now saved by hope, spe, non re ; he hath complete salvation, not in actual possession, but earnest expectation ; that is the apostle's drift here. He doth not show for what we are accepted at the last day, but how saved now ; he doth not say we shall be saved by liope, but we are saved by hope, which expecteth the fulfilling of God's promises in our salvation.