This is something of what I had to offer unto you, and, I hope, both seasonable and useful. However, it is what I can attain unto in these times of reproach, scorn, and contempt, that are cast upon us, and persecutions approaching. I say, faith will discover to us that efficacy, sweetness, power, and advantage in spiritual ordinances, as to make us willing to undergo any thing for them. Faith will bring our souls into such subjection unto the authority of Christ, as Head of the church, and Lord over the. whole creation, that we shall not be terrified with what man can do unto us. Faith will furnish us with examples of the saints of God, whom he hath helped and assisted to go through sufferings, and who are now crowned and at rest in
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heaven. Faith will help us to keep our eye fixed, not upon the things of this world, but upon the eternal recompense of another world, and glory therein. And faith will also work by patience, when difficulties shall be multiplied upon us.
SERMON XII.1
THE USE OF FAITH, IF POPERY SHOULD RETURN UPON US. " The just shall live by his faith." — Hab. ii. 4.
Our inquiry is, how we may live by faith, with reference unto those difficulties we have, or may have, to conflict with in the days wherein we live. The last head we spake to was, how we may live by faith in reference to all the reproaches and scornful contempt that are cast upon that way of worship, that order and fellowship of the gospel, which we cleave unto, and the persecutions which we may undergo upon that account. I now proceed :—
2. The second difficulty that we have, or may have, to conflict with, is, the return of Pope7*y into this land. Half the talk of the world is upon this subject. I have nothing to say to some among ourselves; but I verily believe, that those who have the conduct of the papal, antichristian affairs throughout the world are endeavouring to bring it in upon us. I remember what holy Latimer said when he came to die, " Once I believed Popery would never return into England; but," said he, " I find it was not faith, but fancy." I wish it prove not so with many of us. Now, that which I am to speak unto is this, — how we should live by faith, both in the prospect of the danger of it, and if it should come upon us. I shall name unto you a few things which I exercise myself with. If you have more supporting thoughts, and a better guidance of light, I pray God confirm it unto you.
(1.) The first thing I would exercise my thoughts upon, and that my faith rests in, in this case, is this, — that there is a fixed, deter- minate time in the counsel of God, when Antichrist and Babylon, and idolatry and superstition, together with that profaneness of life which they have brought in, shall be destroyed. It is so fixed, that it shall not be altered: all the wisdom of men, all the sins of men, and all our unbelief, shall not hinder it a day; it shall assuredly come 1 This sermon was preached May 7, 1680.
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to pass in its appointed season. This time is reckoned up in Scripture by days, by months, by years; — not that we should know the time of it, but that we should know the certainty of it ; for if it hath but so many days, but so many months and years, then it must have a certain period.
Under the Old Testament we see this all along. Saith God to Abraham, " Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and they shall afflict them four hundred years ; and also that nation will I judge," Gen. xv. 13, 14. They knew not the beginning nor the ending of this four hundred years; but they knew that at the end of them it should be as God had said : and " the self-same day it came to pass," Exod. xii. 41. Likewise God threatens the Jews with a seventy-years captivity in Babylon : " And it shall come to pass/' saith God, " when the seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation for their iniquity," Jer. xxv. 11, 12. The church knew not when they began, or when they would end; but this they knew, that the same day they were accomplished it should be as God had said. And so it was.
The fixing and computing of the time of the Man of Sin, of Anti- christ, by days, and months, and years, is to secure our faith in the punctual determination of the season, but not to satisfy our curiosity when the season should be. But the consideration of this, that there is such a time, or a determinate season, is a great foundation of faith and patience. Isa. lx. 22, " A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation: I the Lord will hasten it in his time." But if there be a fixed time for the accomplishment of this promise, you may ask, "How can it then be hastened?" Why, if you live in the exercise of faith and patience, it shall surprise you; it shall come when you do not think it will, nor expect it : "I will hasten it in his time;" — "I will not bring it before its time, be ye never so patient or impatient; but exercise faith and patience, and I will so order it, that it shall be a sweet surprisal unto you." And it is a means of patience, Hab. ii. 3, " If the vision" seem to "tarry, wait for it ; for it will surely come." When we know it will come, when we know there is such a determinate time, and that it will surely come, it is a great ground of patience to wait for it. This is a great con- sideration with me, and I leave it with you. Here I can exercise faith, without fancy or conjecture, that there is a certain determinate time in the counsel of God wherein he will pour out all his judg- ments and plagues upon the antichristian world, until Antichristian- ism be destroyed and rooted out.