Secondly: Ye say, that ye know not what to do. Your Head said once the same word, or not far from it. "Now is My soul troubled, and what shall I say?" (John xii. 27). And faith answered Christ's "What shall I say?" with these words: "O tempted Saviour, askest Thou, 'What shall I say?' Say, 'Pray, Father, save Me from this hour.'" What course can ye take but pray and frist Christ His own comforts? He is no dyvour; take His word. "Oh," say ye, "I cannot pray?" Answer--Honest sighing is faith breathing and whispering Him in the ear. The life is not out of faith where there is sighing, looking up with the eyes, and breathing toward God. Hide not Thine ear at my breathing (Lam. iii. 56). "But what shall I do in spiritual exercises?" ye say. Answer--1. If ye knew particularly what to do, it were not a spiritual exercise. 2. In my weak judgment, ye should first say, "I would glorify God in believing David's salvation, and the Bride's marriage with the Lamb, and love the church's slain Husband, although I cannot for the present believe mine own salvation." 3. Say, "I will not pass from my claim: suppose Christ should pass from His claim to me, it shall not go back upon my side. Howbeit my love to Him be not worth a drink of water, yet Christ shall have it, such as it is." 4. Say, "I shall rather spill twenty prayers, than not pray at all. Let my broken words go up to heaven: when they come up into the Great Angel's golden censer, that compassionate Advocate will put together my broken prayers, and perfume them." Words are but the accidents[422] of prayer.
[422] The incidental accompaniments.
"Oh," say ye, "I am slain with hardness of heart, and troubled with confused and melancholious thoughts." Answer--My dear brother, what would ye conclude thence? That ye know not well who aughteth you? I grant: "Oh, my heart is hard! oh, my thoughts of faithless sorrow! _Ergo_, I know not who aughteth me," were good logic in heaven amongst angels and the glorified; but down in Christ's hospital, where sick and distempered souls are under cure, it is not worth a straw. Give Christ time to end His work in your heart. Hold on, in feeling and bewailing your hardness; for that is softness to feel hardness. 2. I charge you to make psalms of Christ's praises for His begun work of grace. Make Christ your music and your song; for complaining and feeling of want doth often swallow up your praises. What think ye of those who go to hell never troubled with such thoughts? If your exercises be the way to hell, God help me! I have a cold coal to blow at, and a blank paper for heaven. I give you Christ caution, and my heaven surety, for your salvation. Lend Christ your melancholy, for Satan hath no right to make a chamber in your melancholy. Borrow joy and comfort from the Comforter. Bid the Spirit do His office in you; and remember that faith is one thing, and the feeling and notice of faith another. God forbid that _feeling_ were _proprium quarto modo_[423] to all the saints; and that this were good reasoning, "No feeling, no grace." I am sure ye were not always, these twenty years by-past, actually knowing that ye live! yet all this time ye are living. So it is with the life of faith.
[423] This is a term of logic, and refers to the fourth kind of categorical proposition, in which some particular point is proved in the negative.
But, alas! dear brother, it is easy for me to speak words and syllables of peace; but Isaiah telleth you, "I create peace" (Isa. lvii. 19). There is but one Creator, ye know. Oh that ye may get a letter of peace sent you from heaven!
Pray for me, and for grace to be faithful, and for gifts to be able, with tongue and pen, to glorify God. I forget you not.
Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,