Part 685

How many of us have been here deceived, and have fainted in the day of trial! Amongst you there are some of this stamp. I shall be sorry if my acquaintance A. T. hath left you: I will not believe that he dare to stay away from Christ's side. I desire that ye shew him this from me; for I loved him once in Christ, neither can I change my mind suddenly of him. But the truth is, that many of you, and too many also of your neighbour Church of Scotland, have been like a tenant that sitteth mail-free and knoweth not his holding whill his rights be questioned. And now I am persuaded, that it will be asked at every one of us, on what terms we brook Christ; for we have sitten long mail-free. We found Christ without a wet foot; and He and His Gospel came upon small charges to our doors: but now we must wet our feet to seek Him. Our evil manners, and the bad fashions of a people at ease from our youth, and like Moab not casten from vessel to vessel (Jer. xlviii. 11), have made us (like the standing waters), to gather a foul scum, and, when we are jumbled, our dregs come up, and are seen. Many take but half a grip of Christ, and the wind bloweth them and Christ asunder. Indeed, when the mast is broken and blown into the sea, it is an art[395] then to swim upon Christ to dry land. It is even possible that the children of God, in a hard trial, lay themselves down as hidden in the lee-side of a bush whill Christ their Master be taken, as Peter did; and lurk there, whill the storm be over-past. All of us know the way to a whole skin; and the singlest heart that is hath a by-purse that will contain the denial of Christ, and a fearful backsliding. Oh, how rare a thing it is to be loyal and honest to Christ, when He hath a controversy with the shields of the earth! I wish all of you would consider, that this trial is from Christ; it is come upon you unbought. (Indeed, when we buy a temptation with our own money, no marvel that we be not easily free of it, and that God be not at our elbow to take it off our hand.) This is Christ's ordinary house-fire, that He maketh use of to try all the vessels of His house withal. And Christ is now about to bring His treasure out before sun and moon, and to tell His money, and, in the telling, to try what weight of gold, and what weight of watered copper, is in His house. Do not now jouk, or bow, or yield to your adversaries in a hair-breadth. Christ and His truth will not divide; and His truth hath not latitude and breadth, that ye may take some of it and leave other some of it. Nay, the Gospel is like a small hair, that hath no breadth, and will not cleave in two. It is not possible to twist and compound a matter betwixt Christ and Antichrist; and, therefore, ye must either be for Christ, or ye must be against Him. It was but man's wit, and the wit of prelates and their godfather the Pope (that _man without law_[396]), to put Christ and His prerogatives royal, and His truth, or the smallest nail-breadth of His latter will, in the new calender of indifferences, and to make a blank of uninked paper in Christ's testament that men may fill up; and to shuffle the truth, and matters which they call indifferent, through other, and spin both together, that Antichrist's wares may sell the better. This is but the device and forged dream of men whose consciences are made of stoutness, and who have a throat that a graven image, greater than the bounds of the kirk-door, would get free passage into. I am sure that when Christ shall bring us all out in our blacks and whites, at that day when He shall cry down time and the world, and when the glory of it shall lie in white ashes, like a May-flower cut down and which hath lost the blossom, there shall be few, yea none, that dare make any point, which toucheth the worship and honour of our King and Lawgiver, to be indifferent. Oh that this misled and blindfolded world would see that Christ doth not rise and fall, stand or lie, by men's apprehensions! What is Christ the lighter, that men do with Him, by open proclamation, as men do with clipped and light money? They are now crying down Christ some grain-weights, and some pounds or shillings; and they will have Him lie[397] for a penny or a pound, for one or for a hundred, according as the wind bloweth from the east or from the west. But the Lord hath weighed Him, and balanced Him already: "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him!" His worth and His weight stand still. It is our part to cry, "Up, up with Christ, and down, down with all created glory before Him." Oh that I could heighten Him, and heighten His name, and heighten His throne! I know, and am persuaded, that Christ shall again be high and great in this poor, withered, and sun-burnt Kirk of Scotland; and that the sparks of our fire shall fly over the sea, and round about, to warm you and other sister churches; and that this tabernacle of David's house, that is fallen, even the Son of David's waste places, shall be built again. And I know the prison, crosses, persecutions, and trials of the two slain witnesses, that are now dead and buried (Rev. xi. 9), and of the faithful professors, have a back-door and back-entry of escape; and that death and hell, and the world, and the tortures, shall all cleave and split in twain, and give us free passage and liberty to go through toll-free: and we shall bring all God's good metal out of the furnace again, and leave behind us but our dross and our scum. We may then beforehand proclaim Christ to be victorious. He is crowned King of Mount Zion: God did put the crown upon His head (Ps. ii. 6, and xxi. 3), and who dare take it off again? Out of question, He hath sore and grievous quarrels against His church: and therefore He is called, "He whose fire is in Zion, and whose furnace is in Jerusalem" (Isa. xxxi. 9). But when He hath performed His work on Mount Zion, all Zion's haters shall be as the hungry and thirsty man, that dreameth he is eating and drinking, and behold, when he awakeneth, he is faint, and his soul empty. And this advantage we have also, that He will not bring before sun and moon all the infirmities of His wife. It is the modesty of marriage-anger or husband-wrath, that our sweet Lord Jesus will not come with chiding to the streets, to let all the world hear what is betwixt Him and us. His sweet glooms stay under roof, and that because He is God.