2. How contented the people of God should be in a mean condition, if God reduce them thereunto. [See Sermon on Mark x. 23.]
Use 2. Is caution to us all. Now we must turn Abraham's memento, * remember,' into a cave, ' beware.' Beware that you do not receive your good things in this life. I must turn the exprobration into counsel and admonition. Prevention is better than remembrance.
1. Be satisfied with nothing which may stand with the hatred of an eternal God. The enjoyment of all the world may, but sanctifying grace cannot. The highest worldly happiness may consist with God's hatred, and the greatest adversity of the saints with his love. The first is verified in Christ's supposition : Mat. xvi. 24, ' If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.' And the latter is verified by that of the apostle : Kom. viii. 35-39, ' Who shall separate us from the love of Christ ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, nakedness, or peril, or sword ? As it is written, for thy sake we are killed all the day long, we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.' A man may rejoice in the love of Christ in the want of other things.
2. Be satisfied with nothing but what will stead thee, and serve thy turn in the other world ; for all must be measured with respect to eternity : 1 Tim. vi. 19, ' Laying up in store a good foundation for tliemselves, against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life ; ' and Mat. vi. 19-21, ' Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, wliere neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.'
VOL. XVIIL
SERMON UPON 1 CORINTHIANS XIII. 4-8.
Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, hut rejoiceth in the truth; heareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth : but lohether there be prophecies, they shall fail ; whether there be tongues, they shall cease ; tuhether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. — 1 Cor. xiii. 4-8.
I HAVE a long time had a desire to open the nature of this divine and heavenly grace of charity. I know not how the argument will relish with you, but my aim is rather to profit than to please. We are defective in our duties to God, the Lord knoweth ; but what and if I show that we are as defective in our duties to man, wherein we think natural conscience is a sufiicient guide to us. A little serious reflection upon this scripture will discover it. In the context observe,
1. The excellency and necessity of charity above all other gifts.
2. The nature and properties of it.
1. For the excellency and necessity of charity. Gifts are of several sorts, as on the same tree grow leaves, flowers, fruit. None adpompam, for show, but all ad usum, for use. But in the gifts for use, some make us profitable, others acceptable. Though they have their use, yet they profit not to salvation : ' Though I speak with the tongue of men and angels, and have not charity, I am become as a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge ; and though I have faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have no charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burnt, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.' A man may sacrifice a stout body to a stubborn^ mind, yet if it be not for God's glory, and to edify others, it availeth not.
2. The nature and properties of it, in the text ; where the properties of this excellent grace of charity are reckoned up : ' Charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly,' &c.
In all these predications there is a metonymy, either of the subject or of the efiect. Of the subject ; charity doth thus, that is, the man endowed with this heavenly gift or grace. If of the effect, then the
SERMON UPON I CORINTHIANS XII I. 4-8. 307
meaning is, that where this habit is impressed and rooted, it is the cause that these effects ensue ; that a man is long-suflfering, kind, &c.