all this and still wait If mercy seem like that unjust Judge to stop its ears anger to sit in the countenance of the the most high he will submit and yet throw self upon the mercy of an angry and offended God Mic. 7. 9. 4. He is resolved that if God will accept him witness his love to him and acknowledge him in Christ his free mercy shall have the full and whole Glory of it and he will engage his heart to magnifie mercy by degrading himself and keeping in mind his own unworthiness God shall have the praise of all his heart shall eccho grace grace through all his life and heaven shall ring with these glorious acclamations to all eternity This is the true Gospel humility which the spirit of God worketh in every soul whom he draws home to himself This is a true qualification of Repentance of Faith and the modification of it in respect of the term to which the sinner returnes viz. God and those that so come shall find mercy For the Reasons why God brings the soul thus to his foot they are such as these Reas 1. To take away all boasting from the creature that the soul may have nothing at all before it to confide in man is emptied of himself as long as there is any self-soveraignty remaining in him he doth not cannot acknowledge all to come from God till he utterly relinquish the disposal of himself He cannot see that his Salvation is wholly out of himself as long as he thinkshe may capitulate with God about it Now God will hide pride from man 2. That his glorious Soveraignty may be fully subscribed to Hence God will save none till they do yield that he might damn them and hath no obligation from them to do otherwise God will be seen in his royalty to dispense grace from a throne or not at all hence we are to go to a throne of grace Heb. 4. 16. God's Soveraignty is a most precious pearl in his Royal Diadem and he will not suffer it to be pluckt out Job shall be convinced of this before he returnes his captivity 3. That the grace of God may not lift them up but keep them low and humble That they may not despise others nor think of themselves beyond what is meet that they may not be high minded but fear that they may always remember who hath made them to differ from others and may dwel upon that that it is by Grace they are saved and not of themselves USE Give me leave here to improve the former and present Doctrine in a serious word of Exhortation as you would prove your selves true penitents to get and keep humble before God Ply this work of humiliation and exercise the grace of humility get humble walk humbly before the Lord Renounce self-sufficiency and cast off self-soveraignty For Motive 1. Consider how acceptable an humble soul is to God and how displeasing pride is to him God takes great delight in those that are humble he dwels with them Isa 57. 15. If any are like to have more of Gods refreshing and comforting presence than others it is those that are humble where this grace is in exercise God will give more grace Their services are highly esteemed by God Psal 51. 17. he hath a peculiar respect to them Isa 66. 2. 2. Consider how much reason and how many causes you have to be humble to see and count your selves vile creatures and to ly low before God 1. Your sins should make and keep you humble The sin of your heart the leprosie of your nature the body of death that heart-ful of filthiness and corruption your daily sins of act in omission of duty in transgressing the command especially your particular enormities Psal 51. 1. This evil It will be a truth for ever that you have committed things worthy of death and are not worthy to be called sons and daughters of God an hyred servants place is too good for you 2. Your duties should humble you Hast thou done any thing for God it was not thou didst it of thy self but the spirit in thee And in all your duties you may see humbling confiderations how cold your affections how little impression had they on your hearts of how little continuance even as the morning dew How little sincerity how much hypocrisie How little grace how much corruption 3. All your afflictions should humble you God hath hung many weights on thy heart to crush thee and thou shouldest be ashamed that they have brought thee no lower All personal all publick rebukes of God's Providence all Wilderness Tryals are to humble the people of God Deut. 8. 15 16. 4. All God's mercies should humble you you have not deserved them but the contrary The mercies of your being preservation special deliverances above all those saving mercies the grace of God in Christ and the promise of eternal life In a word whoever thou art whether Believer or unbeliever thou hast abundant cause to be alwayes affecting thy heart unto a low frame and to bring thee down to the foot of the great God and ly there as a poor despicable nothing resigning thy self up to and placing all thy hope upon his meer love mercy in Christ and endeavouring that that may have the praise and glory of all SERMON XVIII THe Directions may be 1. To the awakened sinner to come humbly to and wait humbly upon God for his grace 2. To the believer to carry humbly all his dayes 1. Art thou one who finding thine own misery and hearing of God's plenty art thinking to make proof of it Wouldest thou speed â— then in a deep sense of thy own unworthiness Throw thy self down at his feet would you find God merciful be you sure to be humble And for help 1. Remember how much you have done to provoke God to reject you and hide his face from you Think what manner of lives you have led and in special how you have slighted the Gospel despised the Calls counsels reproofs encouragements that have been given you how often you have refused to accept of tendered Grace and Salvation and therefore well may God refuse to hear you when you cry unto him and bid you go to the Gods that you have served Jer. 2. 28. 2. Think how useless and unprofitable creacures you are in your selves no wayes fit to be active in glorifying of him The whole world is become unprofitable Rom. 3. 12. Have neither will nor power of their own to glorifie God till he restore it Philip. 2. 13. What can you do for him till your enmity be taken away your rebellion subdued Nothing but his grace can fit you to do him any the least service 3. See that you have nothing by which you can challenge the least favour from him It is true the Gospel saith If you believe you shall be saved but it also tells you this believing is not of your selves Eph. 2. 9. Till you believe you are under
are under Tutors and Guardians the while but then they shall take possession of all the Glories of Heaven and fulness of Christ they now rejoyce that their names are written in Heaven then they shall themselves be there placed upon thrones and wear Crowns Reas 2. From the different degrees of their fruition They have something now to live upon by Faith there is something of heaven that doth come down into the souls of Believers here upon earth but they are but earnests like a bunch of grapes to refresh them in a wilderness which though it be sweeter than all that is in the world yet it is but little to that Canaan where these grow in abundance they have spiced draughts here but then the mountain of spices Psal 16. ult fulness of joy is in thy presence Reas 3. From the mixture and allays of their joyes here which shall not be in another world The joyes of Believers are here sometimes interrupted a cloud intercepts the Sun a curtain is drawn before their window they are in the dark and see no light Though Faith be never lost yet sense is many times taken away they have broken bones to pain them Yea all along the presence of sin that captivating power of the body of death put them into mourning their clearest sun-shine is attended with showers so that their present joyes cannot be full but there no cloud doth arise that upper world enjoyes a perpetual serenity There is no sin to molest them no frown of a father to deject them nothing to cut off their full and endless communion with Jesus Christ the fountain of life and glory USE 1. This may help to strengthen and augment a Believers present joy There is a vast difference between a meer penny and an earnest penny Though we see but a little light just at day breaking yet this is the comfort of it that it is an harbinger to and witness of the Suns rising shortly so though they be but weak and faint beams of comfort that are glimmering upon our hearts yet this is our happiness that they dart in to tell us that we shall ere long be put into possession of all that felicity which Christ hath bought and paid for USE 2. Let this also serve to sweeten to our thoughts the apprehension of our change If a drop doth so refresh thy soul as to fetch it again to life when just dying think how blessed then are they who dwel by the fountain and drink their fill of it every day Ah what will it be to be in his armes everlastingly Didst thou hear his voice in an Ordinance it was so full of charms that thy ravished soul could hardly keep in from quitting its mortal tabernacle What will it then be to feel his everlasting embraces How welcome should this make the messenger of Death yea how pleasantly may it make thee to meditate upon and put into thee a desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ which is best of all SERMON XXVI Vers 25. Now his elder Son was in the field and as he came out and drew nigh unto the house he heard musick and dancing Vers 26. And he called one of the servants and asked him what these things meant Vers 27. And he said unto him thy brother is come and thy father hath killed the fatted Calf because he hath received him safe and sound Vers 28. And he was angry THe third part of the Parable hath been spoken to and therein I have have given an account of the main matter intended in the this discourse viz. To make discovery of the wretchedness and unworthiness of a sinner the riches of the grace of God in his Conversion the nature also and quality of converting grace I shall very briefly pass over this fourth and last part in which we have described the carriage of the elder son by whom we observed in the beginning our Saviour aims at the scribes and Pharisees whose murmuring at his familiarizing of himself with Publicans and sinners gave occasion to this and the foregoing Parable He is called the Elder because these men looked upon themselves as the proper heirs and inheriters of the Promises took themselves to be the only men of merit and thought that all favour shewn to Publicans was misapplyed In this part of the Parable there are two parts 1. The offence which this son took at his father's carriage to his younger brother vers 25. to 31. 2. The Father 's vindicating the righteousness and equity of the carriage vers 31 32. 1. In the offense we may observe 1. The ground of it viz. The information given him of his brothers entertainment partly by his ears confused vers 25. and partly by information upon enquiry vers 26 27. further illustrated by the place where he was when all this was done vers 25. 2. The offence it self described 1. Positively vers 28. 2. In its aggravations vers 28 29 30. where he justifieth himself against his father's entreaties condemns his brother and accuseth his father of ingratitude if not injustice I shall give you some brief hints from these several passages 1. We may take notice where this Elder son was when all this was done viz. in the field about his business following his vocation hard at work Hence DOCT. 1. Outward careful attendance upon the visible service of God is no sure sign of a sincere Christian. The eldest son was in the field and where could he have been better He was getting mony while the other was spending it The Scribes Pharisees were great sticklers in the law and outward worship of God hear how he boasts of himself Luk. 18. 11. and yet all this may be where there is no sincerity see Mat. 5. 20. A man may do abundance and be a stranger to saving grace Reas 1. Because a man may do all this upon false and unsound principles for 1. There may be bodily service where there is not the heart Ezek. 33. 31. It is the censure which our Saviour passed upon the Pharisees of his time applying the saying of the Prophet to them Mat. 15. 7 8. and declared it to be vain service vers 9. Hence that 1 Tim. 4. 8. Bodily exercise profiteth little 2. Men may do all this for outward credit and applause When Religion is in fashion there are many that court it meerly for fashion sake many love to be as the times are Many are very Religious only in complement to be talked of commended c. This fault also our Saviour found in the Pharisees and chargeth hypocrisie on them for it Mat. 6. 1 and 5. 3. Men may do a great deal because they hope to be saved for their doing As there is in all men a reaching desire after happiness so there is also a natural pride they are willing to be their own saviours in quest of which men will take much pains and when they apprehend life to be had by doing they will do much this
with reason for wisdom and counsel is out of his reach If you fetch all the Topicks in Logick and all the Tropes and figures in Rhetorick you may move a stone sooner than him from his notions Thus unregenerate men are unteachable you may teach an Ox and an Ass sooner Isa 1 3 Tell them of the evil of their wayes the unreasonableness of their courses bring the witness of natural conscience the testimony of reason the light of Scripture and all will not move or perswade them Plead intreat woo sollicit by all that can be said or thought of surdo canis They are deaf adders Psal 58 4 5 Which will not hearken to the voice of charmes charming never so wisely 6. They are easily cheated and imposed upon though they will not hear reason yet they are readily begulled and abused by fair and fallacious pretences they may be cogged to give all they have away for a trifle Truly thus doth Satan that great jugler abuse unregenerate men he leads them about at his pleasure rooks them out of all that is good perswades them to neglect God's day of grace turn their backs upon heaven despise a Saviour trample upon the pearl of price and all for the sake of a few fading perishing shews of carnal content and vain delight Thus he beguiled our first Parents with an Apple and daily gulls multitudes of sinners with rattles and noises and poor empty gay things to the eternal loss of their souls 7. They mischief themselves and all they come near when let loose and left to themselves It is a property of madness to be mischievous Fools throw fire-brands and say they are in sport Thus unregenerate men delight in nothing but mischief undoing their own souls and the souls of all they have to do with as much as in them lyes they run themselves to everlasting ruine and destruction and draw as many after them as they can they will entise allure perswade others to be their companions Pro. 1. 10. Cast in thy lot with us 8. They are most angry at those that endeavour to do them the most good He that binds or stops a mad-man though he loveth him yet he vexeth him he accounts them for his greatest enemies that would give him any hinderance in his mad pranks it is as safe meeting a Bear robbed of her whelps as standing in his way Thus unrenewed men cannot bear to be told of their wayes and courses they will count a Paul their enemy if he tells them the truth endeavour never so gently and compassionatly to perswade them that they are going away from good and bringing mischief upon their own heads it is theway to be hated back-bitten reviled and spitefully used by them Ahab hates Micajah and thinks he never prophesies good to him And takes Elijah to be the troubler of Israel because he reproved his wicked courses 9. Correction or punishment will not reclaim them and bring them to better frame but rather make them more mad Pro. 17. 10. A reproof enters more into a wise man than an hundred stripes into a fool An hundred nay if it were a thousand his folly would remain with him yea you may separate his soul from his body but not him from his folly although you reduce him to atomes yet his foolishness abides still Prov. 27. 22. Thus are unregenerate men so rivetted to their sin it is so intrinsecally seated in them and diffused through them that all the awful judgments of God make no impression upon them to reclaim them God may smite till he is weary of smiting but they are as bad as ever and worse Isa 1. 5. Why should ye be smitten any more ye will revolt more and more Like Ahaz in their affliction they will sin more than ever 10. Folly and madness discovers it self in all they do A wise word or action may steal unawares from them but this is the tract of their life you may read it in the tenor of their course so spiritual madness is in all that unconverted men do what is the life of the proud and ambitious but a pleasing and priding themselves in a gay Coat an handful of dirt a cap and a knee an empty title which is meer foolery How looks the covetous man who like a boy spends his time in rolling up a great snow ball which melts before the sun What but madness are all the actions of the voluptuous who put off man and put on beast being brutish in all their prosecutions what doth the passionate man but scatter coals and throw about fire-brands as if he had nothing else to do but set the world in a flame USE 1. It may teach us not to wonder at all the exorbitancies and confusions which we see acted in the world when fools and mad-men have gotten the reins in their necks and act all their own pleasure without any control what better can be expected The workers of iniquity all of them have no knowledge no marvel then that they act so foolishly Nay much rather have we cause to wonder at the power and wisdom of God that so wisely orders and powerfully manageth this great Bedlam as to carry on his own ends and designs in it without control or let causing even the folly of men to pay tribute to his wisdom USE 2. Here we see a reason why the means of Grace where they are never so powerfully dispensed are yet so ineffectual to the conversion of sinners why convictions fasten not threatnings take not place promises allure not the Children of men but they continue sensless under all the wise man gives the reason of it Prov. 24. 7. Wisdom is too high for a fool The saving knowledge and spiritual improvment of these things is out of their reach It is labour lost to go about to instruct a man that is beside himself hence it is not in the power of means to work it none but God who can restore lost man to his wits again and bring him to himself is able to give efficacy to any endeavours of this nature and till then line upon line and precept upon precept are but as so much water spilt upon a rock USE 3. It may also teach us how to carry it towards unregenerate sinners in their unregeneracy viz. as we would do to a man that is beside himself i. e. First pity and pray for them we are not wont to be enraged at a frantick though he play mad tricks because we know it comes from his distemper Thus our Saviour Luk. 23. 34. Father forgive them they know not what they do And so Stephen Act 7. 60. Lay not this sin to their charge They need your pity and prayers who can do nothing for themselves 2. Be not afraid to anger them so you may but do them good Think it not hard to be scorned reviled when you rebuke and entreat them Alas if we should say or do nothing to them but what they like we should let
this resolution is ascribed to the Prodigal as his act therefore our Repentance prevents the Grace of God Our Saviours design being not to describe conversion by its Author but by its subject and by the effects on the subject If it be enquired whence Repentance comes there are other Scriptures which point us to the Author but if we ask how Repentance works here we have it But I come to look more particularly into the words and here if we consider when and how the Prodigal came to draw up this conclusion by referring it to the vers foregoing we shall find that it ariseth from the discoveries made of his fathers fulness of benignity whence we might observe this DOCT. I. The goodness of God is the great motive to true Repentance Rom. 2. 4. God wins the soul to himself nextly not by terrours but his benignity It is true God prepares them to entertain his kindness by terrible discoveries that so he may make it the more welcome but still these do but terrifie amaze make afraid but this is that which wins the soul breaks the heart encourageth hope and by this way the spirit worketh the soul to Repentance Hence that Job 13. 20 21. USE Thus may teach us that for Ministers to preach nothing but terrours or for poor awakened souls to look upon nothing but terrours is not the way to promote the work of the Gospel or conversion of Souls This drives only to despair All our Doctrines and all our hopes must center in the free Grace of God But I come to the words themselves 1. The first part of his resolution is general viz. that he will return to his father I will arise and go to my father In this the work of Repentance is generally and comprehensively intimated in which there is 1. The terminus â quo the place from whence he came viz. his farr Country where he was though not locally yet spiritually distant from God far from him in heart and life this is it he will leave 2. The terminus ad quem or whether he will go to his father How God may be said to be his father who is an unregenerate profligate sinner I here intend not to make particular enquiry though it may possibly be intimated to us by this words being so often used in the parable that by vertue of the Everlasting Covenant of Redemption every Elect Person in his greatest degeneracy and Prodigality is looked upon as a Child chosen in Christ to the Adoption of Children But it here mainly intends his going to God as a Father of Mercies 3. The form of Repentance it self I will arise and go Where is the beginning of that motion I will arise and the progress and go or the respect that it bears to both the termes to the far country I will arise i. e. I will sit or tarry no longer here I will leave it to his father I will go to him In the Greek it is rising I will go And the word rise properly signifies rising again q. d. after some fall and hence the nown is used for a resurrection either from sin or from the grave and because this Anastasie presumes a former Apostasie hence DOCT. I. If ever the perishing sinner hopes to be saved he must rise again and go to God As he formerly went away from him so now he must return to him Hence God in the proclamation of his Grace thus invites Jer. 3. 12 13. 4. 1. Hos 14. 1. In the Explication we may consider 1. The import of this rising and going to his father 2. Thereasons of the Doctrine 1. The import of this rising and going we heard in general that it denotes the act of Repentance not as separated from but as the first fruit of saving Faith and therefore both implying and including of it Faith and Repentance are propounded in the Gospel as conjunct Mark 1. 15. Repent and believe the Gospel Because they are practically inseparable Now this Repentance of Faith is sutably expressed by these two phrases and if they be well pondered they will give light to the nature of it Repentance is of two sorts Legal and Evangelical it is the latter of these we are now speaking of which is a saving turning from sin to God Of the motives and means of it I shall not here speak only of the act resembled by these allusions of rising an going 1. Rising implyes these things 1. Rising being an Anastasie implyes the sinner before conversion to be in a state of Apostasie or a fallen state it speakes that man was once in a good state but now hath Iost it God therefore useth this as an argument to quicken them to Repentance Hos 14. 1. Thou hast fallen by thine iniquity A man that never was up may rise but he was once standing that riseth again God made man upright in our first Parents we once had a standing in God's favour but have lost it by Sin and now the whole race of mankind till Grace raiseth them ly groveling in iniquity nay they are dead in Sin for this rising is a resurrection Eph. 2. 1. And this shews that it is not a man 's own strength but the Almighty power of God that giveth Repentance 2. It implyes that in order to true Repentance the soul must be furnished with a new principle of spiritual life Self-motion such as rising is is a life act and supposeth a life habit It is the property of dead things to ly still and move no further then they are forcibly moved they are only living things that move by a power implanted in them It therefore presumes that the Spirit of God hath been at work moving upon the dead soul and breathing into it the breath of life our Saviour saith it is the spirit that quickeneth He gives life to dry bones and then they rise and walk else they had never forgone their Graves A dead carcass cannot so much as will to arise 3. It implyes that in true Repentance there must be a forsaking of all Sin we must not ly in Sin if we will return to God those are directly opposite terms Sin and God are contraties the farr Country in which the Prodigal was is the Kingdom of Sin which he must leave else he can never come to his father nor can a sinner ever come to God till he hath rejected and abandoned his sinful life and way Hence that counsel Isa 55. 7. Let the wicked forsake his way There is no salvation to be had by sitting still 2. Going to his father implyes these things 1. That every natural man in his unconverted state is at a great distance from God Sin is therefore said to make a separation Isa 59. 2. This means not a local distance for Gods Omnipresence fills all places and is with the sinner to eye and observe diligently all his wayes but it intends a distance in heart and affection an alienation that God and the sinner are enemies he