28. 13. Psal 119. 8. and forsaketh his sins shall have mercy Then shall I not be confounded when I have respect to all thy Commandments So we must be broken from our sins Psal 119. 101. 104. and for our sins not only to leave and abhor some sins but every way of wickedness utterly to abhor To hate Rom. 12. 9. Psal 19. 12. Psal 18. 23. every false way and to refrain our feet from every evil way abhor that which is evil even secret sins and beloved sinners to keep our selves from our iniquity That beloved sin which we have long used and is even natural and customary to us and that sin which doeth Heb. 12. 1. so easily beset us which may be as dear to us as the right hand or the right eye yet to pluck out these sins Matt. 5. 29 30. and cut them off and cast them from us And not only to hate sin but to abhor Job 42. 6 Ezek. 6. 9. 20. 43. our selves for it and loath our selves in our own sight for all those evils we have committed This this is true repentance which unless we have and attain unto we shall never be saved Deut. 9. 7. Psal 27. 7. It is not enough to repent once we must remember our former sins the sins of our youth yea our original sin for we were shapen in iniquity and in sin did our mother conceive us Eccles 7. 20. Prov. 24. 16. Daily let us renew our repentance as we sin every day A just man falleth seven times and riseth up again that is many times a certain number for an uncertain Even as a candle newly blowen out and yet smoaking is kindled and revived by a little breath So a Soul is delivered from ordinary dangers and streights by a timely viz. a dayly repentance A member out of joint must be set as soon as may be else a callous substance may grow in the Cavity and hinder the placing of it in again So unless we renew our repentance daily a callous hardness may grow on our hearts and hinder our renewing again by repentance Thus far of the first step of our recovery out of a natural condition into a state of Life and Salvation for God will bring us as by the gates of Hell unto Heaven first He will bring us low before He will raise us up A child is about four weeks in the dark cell of the womb and thence it comes out through difficulties and pains which makes it cry when it comes into the World Even so a child of God is held sometimes in the dark to make him see his misery in a natural lost condition and then with pain and grief through the mortification of sin He comes into newness of life to be born again by the Word and Spirit and so is made the child of God Except a John 3. 5. man be regenerate and thus born again He cannot enter into the kingdom of God Now the second step is And believe the Gospel So we see that repentance and Faith are the ordinary means our blessed Saviour here prescribeth to Salvation The word Faith hath five acceptations in Scripture 1. Faith is taken by a metonymie of the adjunct for the subject for the doctrine of Faith or the Gospel which we do believe Holding Faith and a 1 Tim. 1. 19. good conscience which some having put away concerning Faith have made Shipwrack Holding the mysterie of Faith 1 Tim. 3. 9. 1 Tim. 4. 1. Jude 5. Jam. 2. 19. in a pure conscience 2. Faith is taken for historical or dogmatical Faith Thou believest there is one God thou doest well the devils also believe and tremble This Faith which is common both to the reprobate and elect consists in a bare assent 3. There is a temporary Faith which is the knowledg and joyful assent of the mind yielded to Gods promises for a time till afflictions come He that Mat. 13. 20 21. receiveth the seed into stony places is he that heareth the word and anon with joy receiveth it yet hath he not root in himself dureth but for a while for when tribulations or persecutions come because of the word by and by he is offended 4. There is a Faith of miracles which is a certain perswasion of some strange effects and works to be done by the power of God If I have Faith so that I could remove mountains If you 1 Cor. 13. 2. Mat. 17. 20. have Faith ye should say to this mountain remove hence to yonder place and it shall remove and nothing shall be impossiâ—le to you This Faith was granted but for a certain time and was given to reprobates also as appears by the example of Judas Iâ—oariot to whom the gift of working miracles was given as well as to the rest of the Apostles 5. But there is a saving Faith which we define thus A virtue by which adhering to Gods faithfulness we rest upon Him that we may obtain what He hath promised to us Or it is a firm and constant apprehension of Christ and all His merits as they are promised and offered in the Word and Sacraments Or once more it is the gift of God by which an elect man applies to himself all the free promises of Christ made known in the Gospel and so he most sweetly resteth upon them The just shall live by Faith this is the Rom. 1. 17. Faith of Gods elect which is proper to the elect and which none can have but the elect and chosen of God As Titus 1. 1 2. Acts 13. 48. many as were ordained to eternal life believed The general object of true saving Faith is the whole Truth of Goâ— revealed but the special object of Faith as it justifies is the promise of remission of sins by the Lord Jesus So theâ— God when he gives this Faith 1. Hâ— enlightneth the understanding to see thâ— truth and preciousness of the rich offerâ— of Grace in the Lord Jesus The lighâ— shineth in darkness now we have received John 1. 5. 1 Cor. 2. 11 12. 14. the spirit which is of God that we might know the things which are freely given to us of God 2. God enables the will to embrace these rich offers of grace and to stretch out all the desires of the Soul after them and to rest and build everlasting comfort upon them The things of God as they are 1 Cor. 1. 18. 2. 14. foolishness to mans natural judgment so they are enmity to his natural will And therefore when God gives Faith He gives a new light to the understanding and new motions and inclinations to the heart As the Covenant of grace is I will give them a new heart Ezek. 36. 26. It must be a mighty power to turn the heart of man upside down and cause him to pitch all the desires of his Soul on a supernatural object No man John 6. 44. Eph. â— 19 20. can come to me
do Q. But God is said in Scripture frequently for to swear A. God frequently addeth an oath to His promises but seldom to His threatnings which should make us to acknowledge the great good-will of God to men and His bearing with our infirmities He knows our incredulity and aptness to doubt of His promises especially when we are under afflictions and temptations Therefore He vouchsafeth so far to condescend to our infirmities that He joyns the sanctity of an oath to confirm and strengthen us Wherein God Heb. 6. 17 18. willing more abundantly to shew to the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel confirmed it by an oath that by two immutable things viz. His word and oath in which it was impossible for God to lye we might have a strong consolation c. Q. But sith an oath is an invocation of God by which He is prayed to preâ—erve him that speaks the truth and to punish him that falsifyeth it how can an oath fall on God because there is none that He can wish to be punished by if He deceives A. That desinition of an oath agreeth with the creature and not with the Creator That it may agree with both the Creator and the creature we must define an oath more largely namely an obliging of himself to punishment if wittingly he doth deceive To swear therefore by another is to acknowledge and set him as the knower and revenger of perjury and to oblige himself to bear punishment inflicted by him that is to the loss of soul or body or life or goods or honour if he doth not so intend and mean as he speaks And therefore they that sweat by creatures commit idolatry Men can oblige themselves to bear punishment from men if they keep not their promise but to swear by any except by God cannot be without Idolatry and Sacriledge to the honour of God For they make him by whom they swear the knower of their hearts a witness of their mind and will and a judge and revenger of perjury Therefore it is said Men truly swear â—â—â— 6. by the greater and an oath given for confirmation is to them an end of all strife but when God made promise to Abraham because He could swear by none greater He sware by Himself c. Men have a higher and greater than they who can bring them to punishment whether they will or no however they may deceive men and either by force or fraud escape their judgment Therefore when the truth can be found out no way else then we have recourse to an oath Because men judge by natural consent that he that takes an oath is not so prophane and wicked a wretch of such desperate audaciousness and impudency and so prodigal of his own Salvation that of his own accord he would provoke God to punish and plague him or to think if he lies that he shall escape unpunished But God hath none greater than Himself that is conscious to or a witness 1 Cor. 2. 11. Job 9. 12. of His secret will or able to punish Him if He saith or thinketh otherwise Therefore God swears by Himself that is He obliges Himself and gives Himself this Law that if He deceives and is not found to do that is not seriously to will what He saith He willeth let Him then be accounted and declared by all His creatures to be vain a lier changeable weak or unjust which is not to be God But there is an unutterable zeal in God of His glory for which He created all things Here we may see as the wonderful great and inexpressible compassion of God towards men in respect of our weakness and diffidence to confirm His Divine truth and promises to us by an oath and what a horrid wickedness it is not to believe God when He swears to us For God by His oath layes His glory as it were to pawn unto us obliging Himself voluntarily to suffer the loss of His glory if he doth not perform His promises Therefore in the same sence the Scripture Gen. 22. 16. Isai 45. 23. saith that God sware by Himself By my Self have I sworn saith the Lord c. I have sworn by my Self c. And that God sware by His holiness Psal 89. 39 Once have I sworn by my holiness c. So Hos 4. 2 The Lord hath sworn by his holiness c. And we read also that God sware by his right hand Isai 62. 8. and by the arm of his strength and by Jeâ— 44. 26. his great name And by his soul or his life Isai 49. 18. As I live saith the Lord 22. 24. Ezek. 5. 11. 14. 16 c. His heart is harder than the nether-milstone and a self-condemned person who doth not believe God when He thus swears Hence may we gather how much comfort may accrew to all those pious souls who suffer affliction from their enemies for the testimony of a good Conscience and for bearing witness to the truth If God so solidly and faithfully hath fulfilled whatsoever He spake of His delivering His people from temporal and corporal afflictions how much more from hell and everlasting damnation from which we are redeemed by the blood of His only-begotten Son Now I will only set down what is required in the third Commandment and so close up this discourse though much more might have been written In the third Commandment is required Mat. 6. 9. Psal 111. 9. that we sanctifie God's name as it is holy and reverend and labour by all we can to extol and lift it up that others may be moved by us more to love serve and honour him That we use God's titles and proper names as Jehovah Jesus c. His properties and attributes His works and actions His Word Sacraments Prayer the whole Worship of God with all reverence and circumspection to such uses as they are appointed by God In a word that we have a careful watch to all things that may advance God's glory and use all sincere and diligent behaviour therein And to take heed of swearing falsly superstitiously or prophanely Lest God swear in his wrath that we shall never Heb. 3. 11. enter into his rest Six Corollaries 1. Let us be humbled for all our ungodly and unsavoury words and speeches and for our irreverend use of Gods holy name His attributes word works and of all His holy ordinances that we have not so sanctified Him therein as we ought and as He requires Levit. 10. 3. of us 2. Let us bewail and lament the great dishonour done to God in prophaning of His holy name by the oaths cursings and execrations of others as the Land mourns for them let us mourn also As Lots righteous soul was vexed from day to day as with seeing the wicked deeds of â—â—â— Sodomites so with hearing their 2 Pet. 2. 8. â—ilthy and ungodly speeches Like David also who said my tears have been my meat day and night
an anxious and solicitous care of which before we spake which distracteth the mind that it cannot wholly be intent to God's Service as is required And this doth partly arise from covetousness and partly from diffidence and distrust in God's Promises and Providence as before we said So we must regulate our desires of these outward things in subserviency to God's Will His Glory and our own Salvation and to desire heavenly things in the first place before and above all earthly things Spiritual things we may pray for absolutely and there let us open our mouthes wide be large in our desires for them and God will fill us Blessed are they that hunger and thirst Psal 81. 10. Mat. 5. 6. after righteousness for they shall be satisfied God takes it well at our hands when we ask heavenly things in the first place then He will give us earthly things as an advantage So God did to Solomon because he asked not riches or honour or the necks of his enemies but because he asked Wisdom therefore said the Lord Wisdom and knowledg is granted unto thee and I will give thee 2 Chron. 1. 10 11 12. also riches and wealth and honour such as none ever had before thee c. Take we heed yet that we seek not earthly things inordinately or over-earnestly Gen. 30. 1. as Rachel said Give me children or else I dye Nor to seek them by sinful or unlawful means to the hazard of our souls and everlasting Salvation A Christian can be set in no estate or condition wherein the abundant care of God is not seen over him and commonly in the greatest straights He sheweth the greatest care of us As water runs strongest in the narrowest passages so when we walk in darkness and have Isa 50. 10. no light when we seek water and there is none and our tongue faileth for thirst Isa 41. 17. then is Gods fittest time to help us and then is our most needful time to stay our selves upon Him God many times takes our extremity for His opportunity to do us good In the mount will the Gen. 22. 14. Lord be seen Many will say they trust in God aye but most commonly it is when their Coffers and Barns are full then it is an easie thing for them to say they depend upon God But the tryal of a Christians Faith is if God doth strip him naked and bare of worldly comforts and enjoyments deprives him of humane helps yet then to rest on the Name of Isa 50. 10. the Lord and to stay himself upon his God then to live by Faith upon the promises as the Apostle Habakkuk Hâ—b 3. 17. 18. said although the Figg-tree shall not blossom neither shall fruit be in the Vines the labour of the Olive shall fail and the fields shall yield no meat the flocks shall be cut off from the fold and there shall be no herd in the stalls Yet I will rejoyce in the Lord and will joy in the God of my Salvation The Lord is my strength c. Here is the tryal of Faith and of a holy dependance upon God if God bring us into such or the like streights and we never let go our hope and confidence in God but still trust in Him like Job who said though He kill me Job 13. 19. yet will I trust in Him then we glorifie God by believing and greatly engage Him so that He will doubtless appear for our help succour and relieve us for Psal 44. 26. His mercy and truths sake For He that said Call upon Me in Psal 50. 15. the day of trouble I will hear thee and give the cause to glorifie Mee None that wait upon God shall be ashamed Rom. 10. 11. We shall never be ashamed of our faith and hope and confidence in Him For that engageth God to succour help and supply us because we have trusted in Psal 33. 21. His holy Name Blessed are all they that thus wait and hope and trust in God as in regard of Spiritual and Everlasting Isa 30. 18. blessings especially so also in regard of these Temporal and outward supplies This is a great argument we have to prevail with God in prayer that in Christ we call Him Father as God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ by Eternal Generation so in and through Christ He is our God and Father also by Grace and Adoption Therefore said our Saviour I ascend to my Father John 20. 17. and your Father to my God and your God We present our selves before God as His own Children and Servants we make mention of no other Lord or Name over us but His alone we are called Isa 63. 8 19. by His Name and therefore He cannot deny us those things which are good for us These outward things are necessary for us in a Three-fold respect 1. In respect of Nature to the sustaining of Nature as food and rayment Having food and rayment let us therewith 1 Tim. 6. 8. be content It was Jacob's desire and wish if God will be with me and Gen. 28. 20 21. keep me in the way that I go and will give me bread to eat and rayment to put on so that I come again to my Fathers house in peace then shall the Lord be my God c. 2. Necessary in regard of Persons when we have sufficient for our selves and those that belong unto us He that 1 Tim. 5. 8. provideth not for his own and especially for those of his own house he hath denied the Faith and is worse than an infidel If I have not wherewithal I cannot provide for them 3. Necessary in respect of State when we have that which is sufficient to maintain us in that rank place and calling wherein God hath set us These things we may lawfully desire and beg of God Contrary to these are 1. A voluntary affectation of poverty as in the Popish begging Fryers commending that for a vertue and a degree of perfection which the Spirit of God hath taught us to pray against give me Prov. 30. 8. neither poverty nor riches c. 2. The immoderate affectation of riches and honour and that in a greater measure than is needful for us If we have more than is needful or necessary we are apt to be proud therewith to have our hearts lifted up with pride and so to fall into the condemnation of the Devil For riches are a snare and are 1 Tim. 6 9. ver 17. apt to drown men in destruction and perdition they are also uncertain they soon flee away as an Eagle towards heaven Prov. 23. 5. and yet they are to us as a stone or a piece of Lead ty'd to a Bird hindering our soaring upwards in heart and affection towards heaven they are desiling also for we cannot tell a sum of money but it will foul our singers but worst they are apt to deâ—ile our hearts and