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peace and comfort is not come; know it is on the way to them, and comes to stay everlastingly with them; whereas your peace is going from you every moment, and is sure to leave you without any hope of returning to you again. Look not how the Christian begins, but ends; the Spirit of God by his convictions comes into the soul with some terrors, but it closeth with peace and joy as we say of the month of March, it enters like a lion, but goes out like a lamb. "Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace." Psal. xxxvii. 36.

SECT. III.

This reproves those that think to heal their consciences with other than Gospel-balm; who leave the waters of living comfort, that flow from this fountain, opened in the Gospel by Christ, to draw their peace and comfort out of cisterns of their own hewing; and they are two: a carnal cistern, and a legal cistern.

First, Some think to draw their peace out of a carnal cistern. There is not more variety of plasters and foolish medicines used for the cure of the ague of the body, than there is of carnal receipts, used by self-deceiving sinners, to rid themselves of the shaking ague, which the fear of God's wrath brings upon their guilty consciences. Some, if they be but a little awakened by the Word, and they feel their hearts chill within them, from a few serious thoughts of their wretched undone condition, fall to Felix's physic; who, as soon as his conscience began to be sick at Paul's sermon, had enough of the preacher, and made all the haste he could to get that unpleasing noise out of his head: "Felix trembled, and answered, Go thy way." Acts xxiv. Thus many turn their back on God, run as far as they can from those ordinances, that company, or any thing else, that is likely to grate.upon their consciences, and revive the thoughts of their deplored state, which all their care is to forget. Such a one I have heard of, that would not be present at any funeral, could not bear the sight of his own grey hairs, and therefore used a black-lead-comb to discolour them; lest by these, the thoughts of death (which he so

abhorred) should crowd in upon him. A poor cowardly shift, God knows; yet all that this wretch had, and many more have, betwixt them and a hell above ground in their consciences. Others their light is so strong, and glares on them so constantly, that this will not do; but wherever they go, though they hear not a sermon in a month, look not on a Bible in a year, and keep far enough from such company as would awake their consciences; yet they are haunted with their own guilt; and therefore, they do not only "go from the presence of the Lord," as Cain did, Gen. iv. 16. but as he also made diversion of those musing thoughts which gathered to his guilty conscience, by employing them another way in building a city, verse, 17. so do they labour to give their consciences the slip in a crowd of worldly businesses. This is the great Leviathan that swallows up all the thoughts of heaven and hell in many men's hearts. They are so taken up with that project and this, that conscience finds them not at leisure to exchange a few words with them of a long time together. Conscience is as much spighted among sinners, as Joseph was among the patriarchs. That which conscience tells them likes them no better than Joseph's dream did his brethren; and this makes many play the merchants with their consciences, as they did with him; which they do by bribing it with the profits of the world. But this physic is found too weak also; and therefore Saul's harp, and Nabal's feast, is thought on by others; with these they hope to drown their cares, and lay their raving consciences asleep, like some ruffian that is under an arrest for debt, and hath no way but now to prison he must go, except he can make the serjeant drunk in whose hand he is, which he doth, and so makes an escape. Thus many besot their consciences with the brutish pleasures of sin; and when they have laid it as fast asleep, in senseless stupidity, as one that is dead drunk, then they may sin without controul till it wakes again. This is the height of that peace which any carnal receipt cau help the sinner unto; to give a sleeping potion that shall bind up the senses of conscience for a while, in which time the wretch may forget his misery, as the condemned

man doth when he is asleep; but as soon as it awakes, the horror of his condition is sure again to affright him worse than before. God keep you all from such a cure for your troubles of conscience, which is a thousand times worse than the disease itself. Better to have a dog that will by his barking tell us a thief is in our yard, than one that will sit still, and let us be robbed before we have any notice of our danger.

Secondly, Some draw their peace of conscience from a legal cistern: all the comfort they have is from their own righteousness; this good work and that good duty they bless themselves in; when any qualm comes over their hearts, the cordial drink, which they use to revive and comfort themselves with, is drawn, not from the satisfaction which Christ by his death hath given to God for them poor sinners, but from the righteousness of their own lives; not from Christ's intercession in heaven for them, but their own good prayers on earth for themselves; in a word, when any spark of disquiet kindles in their consciences (as it were strange, if where so much combustible matter is, there should not at one time or other some smothering fire begin in such a one's bosom) then, not Christ's blood, but their own tears are cast on to quench it. Well, whoever thou art that goest this way to work, to obtain peace of conscience, I accuse thee as an enemy to Jesus Christ and his Gospel. If any herb could be found growing in thy garden to heal the wounds of thy conscience, why did the Lord Christ commend for such a rarity the balm which he came from heaven on purpose to compound with his own blood? Why doth he call sinners from all besides himself as comforters of no value, and bid us come to him, as ever we would find rest for our souls? Matt. xi. 28. No: know, poor creature, and believe it (while the knowing of it may do thee good) either Christ was an impostor, and the Gospel a fable, which I hope thou art not such an infidel (worse than the Devil himself) to believe, or else thou takest not the right method of healing thy conscience wounded for sin, and laying a sure bottom for solid peace in thy bosom. Prayers and tears (repentance I mean) good works and duties, these are not to be ne

glected, nay, thou canst never have peace without them in thy conscience, yet these do not, cannot, procure this peace for thee, because they cannot obtain thy peace with God; and peace of conscience is nothing but the echo of pardoning mercy, which, sounding in the conscience, brings the soul into a sweet rest with the pleasant music it makes, and the echo is but the same voice repeated; so that, if prayers and tears, good duties, and good works, cannot procure our peace of pardon, then not our peace of comfort. I pray remember I said, you can never have inward peace without these; and yet not have it by these. A wound would hardly ever cure, if not wrapt up from the open air, and also kept clean; yet not these, but the balm cures it. Cease therefore, not from praying and the exercise of any other holy exercise of grace or duty, but from expecting thy peace and comfort to grow from their root; or else thou shuttest thyself out from having any benefit of that true peace which the Gospel offers. The one resists the other, like those two famous rivers in Germany, whose streams, when they meet, will not mingle together. Gospel-peace will not mingle and incorporate, as I may so say, with any other; thou must drink it pure and unmixed, or have none at all. "We (saith holy Paul for himself, and all other sincere believers) are the circumcision, which worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh." Phil. iii. 3. As if he had said, We are not short of any in holy duties and services; nay we exceed them, for "we worship God in the Spirit;" but this is not the tap from whence we draw our joy and comfort; we "rejoice in Christ Jesus, not in the flesh;" where, that which he called worshipping God in the Spirit, now, in opposition to Christ and rejoicing in him, he calls flesh.

SECT. IV.

They are to be proved from hence, who do indeed use the balm of the Gospel for the healing of consciencewounds; but they use it very unevangelically. The matter they bottom their peace and comfort on is right and good, Christ and the mercy of God through him in

the promise to poor sinners: what can be said better? But they do not observe Gospel rule and order in the applying it. They snatch the promise presumptuously, force and ravish it, rather than seek to have Christ's consent; like Saul, who was in such haste that he could not stay till Samuel came to sacrifice for him, but boldly falls to work before he comes, flat against order given him. Thus many are so hot upon having comfort, that they will not stay for the Spirit of God to come and sprinkle their consciences with the blood of Christ in Gospel order; but profanely do it themselves, by applying the comfort of those promises which indeed at present does not belong to them. O sirs, can this do well in the end? should he consult well for his health, that will not stay for the doctor's direction, but runs into the apothecary's shop, and on his own head takes his physic without the counsel of the physician, how to prepare it or himself for the taking of it? This every profane wretch doth that lives. in sin, and yet sprinkles himself with the blood of Christ, and blesseth himself in the pardoning mercy of God. But let such know that, as the blood of the Paschal lamb was not struck on the Egyptians' doors, but the Israelites'; so neither is the blood of Christ to be sprinkled on the obstinate sinner, but sincere penitent. Nay, further, as that blood was not to be spilt on the threshold of an Israelite's door, where it might be trampled on, but on the sideposts, so neither is the blood of Christ to be applied to the believer himself, while he lies in any sin unrepented of, for his present comfort. This were indeed to throw it under his foot to be trod upon. David confesseth his sin with shame, before Nathan comforts him with the news of a pardon.

CHAP. X.

WHERE WE HAVE A TRIAL OF OUR PEACE FROM FOUR CHARACTERS OF GOSPEL-PEACE OR COmfort.

USE 2. Let this doctrine be as a touchstone to try the truth of your peace and comfort. Hath it a Gospel

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