Conscience, it is either the greatest friend or the greatest enemy in the world. It is the chiefest friend when it is privy to itself of this resolute answer, that it hath obeyed God in all things. Then conscience is our friend, it speaks to God for us at all times. Then again at the hour of death, what a comfort it is that we have this answer of a good conscience, especially at the day of judgment, when we can look God in the face. A sincere heart, a conscience that hath laboured to obey the gospel, and to keep covenant with God, it can look God in the face. For what in the covenant of grace goes for perfect obedience, but sincerity and truth? God requires that. When the heart can say with Hezekiah, ' Lord, thou knowest that I have walked perfectly before thee,' Isa. xxxviii. 3 ; Lord, I have believed, and laboured to express it in my life and conversation, though with much weakness, yet in truth ; this sincerity will make us look God in the face, in the hour of death, and at the day of judgment, and in all troubles in this life.
A Christian that hath the answer of a good conscience, he hath Christ to be his ark in all deluges (h). Christ saves us not only from hell and damnation, but in all the miseries of this life. If anything come upon us for the breach of God's covenant, — as God threateneth. Lev. xxvi. 21, seq. ' to send war and famine,' &c., for the breach of his covenant, — what a comfort is it then for such as have kept the covenant ! For then God hath an ark for such in ill times ; for every deliverance in evil times, it comes from the same ground as the deliverance from hell doth. Why doth God deliver me from hell and damnation ? Because he loves me in Christ, and that moves him to deliver me in evil times, if I keep a good conscience ; and that love that gives me heaven, gives me the comforts of this Hfe. If I labour to have this answer the apostle speaks of, what a comfort is this in the worst times ?
Those that live in rebellion, and make no conscience of their vows and covenants to God, that they have made and repeated ofttimes, and renewed in taking of the Lord's supper, but go on still in their sins, alas ! what comfort can such as these have ! How can they look for an answer from God of any promise that he hath made, when their hves are rebellious. Their con- science tells them that their lives do not witness for God in keeping covenant with him, but they rebel against him. Their hearts tell them they cannot look to heaven for comfort. They carry a hell in their bosom, a guilty conscience ; they do not labour to be purged by the blood of Christ, nor
THE DEMAND OF A GOOD CONSCIENCE. 491
labour for the Spirit of God to sanctify them, in renewing them to holy obedience to God. Those that have their conscience thus stained, espe- cially that purpose to live in sin, they can look for nothing but vengeance from God. It is not known now who are the wisest people. In the times of trouble, and at the hour of death, at such times it will be known that they are the wisest people that have made conscience of keeping their covenant with God, of renewing their covenant with God, first, in all things that would serve him better, and then when they have renewed their covenant with God, as we have cause now indeed, if ever, to renew them, when we are warned by public dangers ; or when we have cause to take occasion to renew our covenants that we made with God in baptism, to bind our consciences to closer obedience ; and those that have renewed their covenant, and have grace to keep it, those are wise people. We see in the current of Scripture, in dangerous times there was still renewing of their covenants with God. And those that God delights in, he puts his Spirit into them, that they shall be able, by the help of his Spirit, to keep their covenant in some comfortable measure ; and those God will choose and mark out in the worst times.
NOTES.
(a) P. 480. — * One of the chief of them, a great scholar, he will have the water itself to be elevated,' &c. Query, Bellarmine ? It is, however, a commonplace of the Baptismal controversy.
(6) P. 490. — ' He hath Christ to be his ark in all deluges.' This recalls the title of one of Brooks"s most searching and valuable books, viz., his ' Ark for all God's Noahs iu a Gloomy Stormy Day,' 16G2. G,
A GLIMPSE OF GLORY/^
7 *
Accordinrj to his divine jwiver, vho hath (liven rwto vs all things that jiertaiii to life and godliness, throngh the knowledge of him wiio liath called 2is unto glory and virtue. — 2 Peter I. 3.
You have often heard in these two verses, how the apostle lays down the groundwork of that his prayer, which he had made in the second verse, wherein he wishes the multiplication of grace and peace unto them, ' through the knowledge of God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.' And further, in these verses he makes manifest, that we have a grant and gift given us of all things pertaining to life and godliness, by that same way by which he had formerly wished unto them the multiplication of grace and peace, ' through the knowledge of him who hath called us unto glory and virtue,' which in the fourth verse he clears, and shews that by the virtue of God's caUing on his part, and our acknowledgment on our part, he hath given unto us those precious promises by which we may be, and are, made partakers of the divine nature, of which a sure sign and evidence is, that such ' do fly the corruption which is in the world through lust.'