God is ready to permit them to die when they may honour him. God is not prodigal of our lives. A\Tien our lives may save his truth, he will permit our lives into the mercy of merciless men, and they have bloody minds. Their malice is more than their power ; their cruelty is more than their ability oftentimes, but their hearts are altogether bloody. And so a Christian is always prepared for the worst, as the apostle saith. For, beloved, as soon as over a Christian becomes a Christian, the first lesson in religion is self-denial. And in what respect must he deny himself? In regard of goods or honour ? Not only so, but in the grand matter of life itself. He must hate, that is, not love, father, mother, not life itself, if tlie question be for God's glory and the good of the church ; if they come in competition with divine truths of the gospel. We must give up our lives for Christ and his church ; we must have resigned minds. This we must do in preparation of spirit. God indeed calleth not always for it. There be more difficult times sometimes than other, and the times of the gospel be sweet times of rest ; for in the Acts it is said the churches had rest, ix. 31 ; but we must be prepared for it. St Paul saith to the Corinthians,! that when they ' gave themselves to Christ,' they gave their
* Qu. ' to ' ?— Ed, t Qu. ' disobedience ' ?— Ed. % The Macedonians.— G.
428 COMMENTARY ON
goods to Christ, 2 Cor. viii. 5. And when a Christian givcth himself to Christ, he givcth his goods and himself to Christ. It is no hard matter, when a man hath given himself to Christ, to part with any things else that servo only for necessary comforts and provision, and then he takes all back again when he hath his life. Lord, it is thy life ; thou hast bought me and my life, I am thine ; thou hast paid a dear price for me, and thine it shall be when thou callest for it. If thou wilt have my credit, my state, my liberty, thou shalt have it ; if my life itself, thou shalt have it ; of theo I have it, to thee I return it again, if it may be for thy glory and thy church's good. And this should be the disposition of every Christian, to count nothing his own so much as not to be ready to part with it when Christ callcth for it. Beloved, a Christian is a sacrifice, and the end of all the favours of Christ is, that from a free willing spirit ' he should offer himself a free willing sacrifice to God,' as the apostle speaks excellently, Eom. xii. 1. When he had spoken of all the favours of God in Christ, election, justification, sanctification, the comforts of his children in trouble, the end of all is, ' that we should offer ourselves as a willing, reasonable sacrifice to God ' as the end of all. And therefore reservation in our spirits of anything that we will have limitations in : we profess religion, but with reservation of liberty, and not offend so and so, and not endanger their skin in hazard, or reputation, and life ; it cannot stand with the truth of Christianity. No man is a true Christian that hath such reserva- tion. He never knew what faith and implantation into Christ meant ; he hath not entered into the first form of religion ; he hath not learned to deny himself. ' Whoever will be a disciple of me, let him take up his cross,' Mat. xvi. 24. There be two hindrances of religion, one within, another without ; within us ourselves, that we must deny ; without us is the cross, and that we must take up ; and he that doth both these, is fit to follovr Christ. And none but those.
And therefore thou must be content, as the apostle saith, to be ' always delivered to death for Jesus' sake.' So is Christ himself our head. He was delivered to death, as I named before. God permitted them by little deaths to afflict him, and misuse him ; at length God gave him up to death itself. They thought to have swallowed him up continually, and to have made an end of him ; at length God gave him indeed. And he was him- self a willing sacrifice, ready to die. So we must be as Christ was, ready to part with this life, as Christ did part with all for us ; else we are not suitable members of so glorious and gracious a head. He gave himself for us, and shall not we give ourselves back again to him, specially when it is the only way to save ourselves ? ' He that loseth life, shall get his life ; and he that will spare his life, shall lose his life,' Mat. x. 39. It will prove so in the end. You will say these be good things, and true matters, but they be not for us in these times. The more we are to bless God, beloved. And yet we are delivered to death if we regard that sympathy that should be between us, and the mystical body of Christ. In France now and in Spain, and in many places of Germany, and Italy, Christ hath a church. And are not the poor souls there continually, as it were, delivered to death? Are they not always between the block and the hatchet, either killed or ready for death, continually as sheep to the slaughter ? The persecutor makes no more bones of killing them, than a butcher makes conscience of killing a sheep, or a man to eat bread when he is hungry.