Thomas Manton · 11 of 67

Verse 2. · Part 2

9. Consider your own experiences. We have not only heard that God is merciful, but we have known it. All men may speak of patience, and common mercy, and outward deliverances, but few improve them to a spiritual use and purpose. (1.) Consider God’s patience; how long hath he waited for your conversion? and he that hath spared you can save you. It is said, ‘The wages of sin is death.’ Rom. vi. 23. The word implieth that God is bound to pay it by virtue of an implicit bargain and agreement between him and the creature. But as yet the hand of God hath not found you out; you are indebted to justice, but mercy stoppeth the arrest of vengeance. Many others have been taken away in their sins by a sudden arrow and dart from heaven; vengeance hath trodden upon the heel of sin; as Zimri and Cosbi unloaded their lusts and their lives together; the angels for an aspiring thought were turned out of heaven; Gehazi was blasted with leprosy just upon his lie; and Lot’s wife turned into a stone for a look, a glance upon Sodom; and Herod smitten with lice in the midst of his pomp and vainglory: and some have ‘perished in the midway,’ Ps. ii., in the very heat of some carnal and wicked pursuit. God can do the like to you; therefore reason thus: If mercy would not save me, why hath mercy spared me? God might have sued out the bond long since; what is the meaning of the dispensation? Is God weak or unjust? or hath he a mind to be gracious? Surely he would not have spared me all this while, if he had not a mind to save my soul. Such reasonings as these many times give us the first encouragement to apply ourselves to God. Wicked men, like spiders, draw other conclusions, Ps. l. 21. But should not his patience, &c., Rom. ii. 4. (2.) Consider God’s goodness in giving thee food, and clothing, and honour, and gladness of heart, and all this without thy desert. Say, Certainly all these benefits are but so many baits to catch my soul. I see the sun riseth every day with a fresh countenance, and shineth upon the fields of just and unjust; to what purpose, but to show that God is gracious without hire? This bodily sun is but an obscure type of the Sun of Righteousness, that is willing to display his beams and wings over a poor languishing soul. Common mercies are the tastes of God’s love while you are sinners, and the common fruits of Christ’s death, that you may be invited to come for more. Why hath he given me ‘the unrighteous mammon,’ but that I may look after ‘the true riches’? What a vile unthankful heart should I have, if I should be contented with mammon without Christ, and be like Judas, with the bag in my hand, and the devil in my heart! God’s children are wont to make these gifts a step to higher dispensations: they know God, like the good householder, bringeth forth the best at last; therefore they must have something above and beyond all these things. Common hearts are contented with common mercies; but they are still waiting when the master of the feast will bid them sit higher. I may have this and be damned; where are the arguments of his special love? (3.) Consider deliverances from imminent dangers. Then the curse began to seize upon you; but God-snatched you out of the fire like ‘brands out of the burning,’ Amos iv. 11; or like a debtor that escapeth out of the sergeant’s hands. Every deliverance is a temporary pardon: see Ps. lxviii. 38, ‘Then he, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not;’ the meaning is, respited vengeance, as appeareth by the context. So Mat. xviii. 32, ‘He forgave them the debt;’ yet it was after required; the meaning is, spared them for the present. Thus when God taketh you out of the teeth and jaws of wrath, when you are delivered out of sickness and apparent danger, you have a reprieve or a temporary pardon. Oh! if you had died, you had died in your sins, and so been eternally miserable: if the Lord had taken the present advantage, you had been howling a sad note among the screech-owls of darkness. For ever blessed be that mercy that made a rescue!

10. Consider God’s invitations. Mercy pointeth and beckoneth to thee to come and be saved. How many means hath God used to call thee to himself! Every good motion is a call, every preacher a messenger sent from heaven to invite thee to Christ, every sermon a new summons. Plead with thyself, Though God hath not drawn me, yet he hath warned me. The elect have no more favour in the general means than thou hast. Though God’s grace be limited by the pleasure of his wisdom, yet thou hast a fair warrant and encouragement, and every way as good a ground to come to Christ as others have: ‘Whosoever,’ &c., John vi. 37. When the gospel doth not exclude me, why should I exclude myself? Doubts that God will not accept me if I come, are but foolish jealousies without a cause. But it is time to leave off this meditation upon God’s mercy, which hath carried me out so far, and to come to the uses.

Use 1. It informeth us that those that would apply themselves to God must make mercy their only plea and claim. Returning sinners have this form put into their mouths, Hosea xiv. 2, ‘Take away all iniquity, receive us graciously,’ Lord, we desire to be entertained by mercy, to have our suits dispatched by mercy. So David professeth that he had no other claim: Ps. xiii. 5, ‘I have trusted in thy mercy.’ Upon which Chrysostom sweetly glosseth: If any others have any thing to allege, let them plead it; Lord, I have but one thing to say, one thing to plead, one thing upon which I cast all my hopes, and that is thy mercy. So must you come to the throne of grace: Lord, my plea is mercy, all the comfort I expect to receive is from mercy. The apostle, I remember, maketh a challenge: Rom. xi. 35, ‘Who hath first given him, and it shall be recompensed to him again?’ Is there any man that can enter this plea, This is due to me? Lord, give me what thou owest, I desire no more; let me have no blessing till I do deserve it. Merit-mongers are best confuted by experience. Let them use the same plea in their prayers which they do in their disputes; let them say, Give me not eternal life till I deserve it at thy hand; let them dispute thus with God or with their own consciences, when they are in the agonies of death, or under the horrors of the Lord’s wrath. Surely men that cry up the merit of works are men of little spiritual experience, and seldom look into their own consciences. Dare they plead thus with God in their agonies and horrors? The best claim God’s dearest servants can make is mercy. Possidius, in the life of Austin, reporteth of Ambrose, when he was about to die, he said thus, Though I have not lived so that I should be ashamed to live among you, yet I am not afraid to die; not that I have lived well, but because I have a good and gracious Master. This hath still been the ground of the saints’ confidence.

Use 2. It exhorteth us to use this encouragement to bring our souls into the presence of God. Think of the mercies of God; the vile abuse of this doctrine hath brought a suspicion and prejudice upon it: but children must not refuse their bread because dogs catch at it. When Benhadad was dejected, and in danger not only of losing his kingdom but his life, his servants comforted him with this fame, 1 Kings xx. 31, ‘We have heard that the kings of Israel are merciful kings.’ You have heard how the God of Israel delighteth in mercy. When you come for mercy, you speak to his very bowels. You shall read in 2 Sam. xiv. 1, that ‘when Joab perceived the king’s heart was to Absalom,’ then he setteth the woman of Tekoah a-begging. The king’s heart is to show mercy; he hath sworn that he hath no pleasure in thy destruction, Ezek. xviii. 32; therefore take courage and come to him. He hath sent Christ to you as a pledge of his good will and mercy; why will you not come to him? He that had love enough to give us Christ, hath bowels enough to give us pardon, and bounty enough to give us heaven, and whatever we stand in need of. Fear not his justice; justice and mercy are made friends, Rom. iii. 25, 26, and 1 John i. 9. Christ hath taken up the quarrel between them; so that nothing hindereth but that God may act according to the natural inclination of his own grace. And let not the multitude of your sins discourage you: ‘The free gift is of many offences to justification.’ Rom. v. 16. Take it for the offences of many persons, as the context seemeth to carry it, and it is an encouragement to think of the multiplied instances of mercy, and how many monuments of free grace we shall see when we come to heaven, and that all this while mercy is not tired. Or take it for the many offences of the same person, and still it is an encouragement that mercy can so often bear with our vanity and folly, and not only pardon several sorts of sin, but frequent relapses into the same sin. He will ‘multiply to pardon,’ Isa. lv. 7. If the soul still draw back, and be under discouragement, consider your own need. If the Lord were never so tenacious and hard to be entreated, yet such is your need that you should follow him with incessant complaints. It is blasphemy to wrong his mercy by lessening thoughts. But grant the sinner his supposition, yet you should be instant, and try what he will do for importunity’s sake. See Luke xi. 8, δια τὴ ἀναιδείαν, and Luke xviii. 5, ἵνα μὴ ὑπωπιάζη μὲ, &c. In those parables there is a kind of condescension and yielding to our unbelief; as if the Lord had said, If you will not believe all this that is said concerning my mercy, yet your want is great; that is enough to make you earnest and frequent in your addresses to me; come and see what I will do for your importunity; the unjust judge was moved with the widow’s clamour: be it as you imagine, that I have no bowels for creatures’ miseries, nor ears for their requests, which yet is a blasphemy confuted by every object in the world; the young ravens will tell you otherwise, Job xxxviii. 41; Mat. vi. 26; Luke xii. 24; but be it so; you are undone if I be not merciful; see what I will do for constant asking. Upon all these encouragements be persuaded to make an essay: faith at first standeth but upon one weak foot. ‘Who knoweth but that God will be gracious?’ Jonah iii. 9; Joel ii. 14. There is encouragement enough to venture, though we do not know what will come of it. Take up a resolution to make trial; you will find better welcome than you can expect. God desires to exercise mercy as much as you desire to feel it.

Use 3. It presseth us in all our enjoyments to acknowledge mercy. The saints are wont to do so, Eph. ii. 4; 1 Tim. i. 13; Gen. xxxii. 10; Phil. ii. 27. It is good to refer all things to their head and proper fountain. Everything that we enjoy is the fruit of mercy, especially saving grace. It is a sure sign a man hath received no benefit by grace if his heart be not stirred up to praise it. We have cause to praise God for his mercy above the angels. I mean, not only the bad angels, with whom God entered not into a treaty; he dealt with them in justice and not in mercy; but even the good angels; in some respects we have more cause to bless God than they have. Gratitude respecteth the freeness and graciousness in giving, rather than the greatness of the benefit. God was bountiful to the angels in making them such excellent creatures out of nothing; but he is merciful to us, notwithstanding the demerit of our sins. There was no let in his doing good to the angels; goodness floweth out freely from a holy God to righteous creatures: but wronged justice interposed, and put in a bar against us: so that his justice must be satisfied before mercy can have a free course. We are a generation of sinful men, the wretched offspring of fallen Adam: we had forsaken God, and cast him off, which the angels had not; and therefore, though they have a large experience of God’s goodness, yet they wonder at the grace showed to us, 1 Peter i. 12. But now much more is this mercy to be acknowledged if we consider the difference between us and other men, who, it may be, excelled us in moral accomplishments; but God hath passed them by, choosing us poor things of nought, poor base creatures, that the glory might entirely redound to his own grace. But especially should this mercy affect us. when it hath made a distinction between us and others that were involved in the same guilt; when ‘one is taken and another left;’ as the bad thief went to his own place, when the good thief was taken to paradise; and many of God’s elect were as deep in sin as those in hell. I say, in all such cases we should still be crying out Mercy, mercy; for certainly justice could make no such distinction; it awardeth a like punishment to all that are found in a like crime; but God’s infinite and eternal mercy only maketh the difference.

Use 4. It is caution. Do not wrong grace and mercy, if it be the cause of all the good which we enjoy. This is to close up the fountain, and to make mercy our enemy; and if mercy be our enemy, who shall plead for us? If mercy be an accuser, where shall we get an advocate? But how do we wrong grace? I answer—Partly by neglecting the offers of it, when you make God speak in vain, 2 Cor. vi. 2. It is a great affront we put upon God, to despise him when he speaketh to us in the still voice, and all the wooings and pleadings of mercy do not move to look after our salvation; though you do not despise, there is danger in bare neglect, Heb. ii. 3. When all the charms of mercy do no more work with you than a story of golden mountains, or rubies and diamonds fallen from heaven in a night dream, this neglect argueth a greater suspicion and distrust of God’s mercy than doubts and troubles of conscience do. Mercy speaketh to them, and they do not think the message worth the hearing or regarding. Again, you wrong grace by refusing it out of legal dejection, for by this means you straiten the riches, and darken the glory of it; as if there were not more in grace than there is in sin, or as if an emperor’s revenue could not discharge a beggar’s debt. The prodigal could say, there was ‘bread enough in his father’s house.’ If we perish, it is not for want of mercy, but for want of faith. Grace is God’s treasure; he is ‘rich in mercy,’ Eph. ii. 4. As far as we straiten grace, we make him a poorer God. Again, we wrong grace and mercy by intercepting the glory of it. It is the greatest sacrilege that can be to rob God of his glory, especially of ‘the glory of his grace;’ for that is his great aim in all his transactions with man, to make his grace and mercy glorious; see Eph. i. 6. Now when you think God accepteth you rather than others for some worth and good qualities that he seeth in you more than others, it may be in this light of the gospel which we now enjoy such thoughts are not expressed, but if they lurk secretly in the heart, you think God foresaw you would bring him more glory, Deut. ix. 4; you take the crown from grace’s head, and put it upon your own. So also you wrong grace when you ascribe anything to your power and strength. As Joab sent for David to take the honour of winning Rabbah: 2 Sam. xii. 28, ‘Lest I take the city, and it be called after my own name;’ so send for God to take the honour: ‘Not I, but grace,’ 1 Cor. xv. 10. Throw the crown at grace’s feet. The industrious servant said, ‘Thy pound hath gained ten pounds,’ Luke xix. 16; not my industry, but thy pound. Once more, we wrong grace by turning it into wantonness; see ver. 4. It is made there to be a heavy charge and black note when men presume on grace, and use it only as a dung-cart to carry away their filth. Grace must bear all, and pardon all; as riotous children that have a rich father care not how they spend; his estate shall pay for all. It is a mighty wrong to grace this, when you make it pliable to such vile purposes, and father the bastards of your own carnal hearts upon gospel encouragements. It is the devil’s covenant, not God’s, when you think that you may live as you list, be at your own dispose, and mercy shall be at your beck, and you shall have comfort when you please; and that you may sin freely because God pardoneth freely, as if mercy gave you a privilege and liberty to sin. In short, if a man slacken any part of his duty for mercy’s sake, or lets loose the reins to vile affections with more freedom, upon the presumption that God will not be rigorous, he wrongeth grace exceedingly. I say, if he grow more careless, secure, negligent, not so constant in duty, not so watchful and strict in conversation, or abateth aught of his humiliation for sin, he is a spider that sucketh poison out of this flower. Lastly, we wrong grace by slighting it after a taste. At first coming to Christ we make an essay and trial, and usually then God giveth us a taste to engage us to look for more, 1 Peter ii. 3; Heb. vi. 4-6. Now after trial you are not satisfied, but return to your sinful courses again, and so do, as it were, proclaim to the world that you found carnal comforts and pleasures to be better than communion with God. This is but the interpretation of your apostasy. The whole aim of the word is to persuade us to make trial of the sweetness of grace. Now you that have once tasted of it, and grow weary, do by your practice tell the world that there is no sweetness in it at all, which is a great wrong to grace and mercy.

It is high time now to speak of the second thing prayed for, which is peace; whence observe that peace is a great blessing, one of the main privileges of the gospel.

I shall, first, Show you what it is; secondly, Give you some obser vations concerning it; and thirdly, Come to application.

1. What it is. It is a tranquillity of mind arising from the sense of a sure estate with God. To this peace two things concur. First, a sure estate, or terms of amity with God. This is called in scripture ‘peace with God,’ and is the immediate effect and fruit of actual justification, Rom. v. 1. And then, secondly, there is a sense of this sure estate, or the reflex of this amity upon the conscience, and is usually called ‘peace of conscience,’ and is a special privilege of Christ’s spiritual kingdom. See Rom. xiv. 17; the apostle speaketh there of a ‘peace,’ which is ranked with ‘joy in the Holy Ghost.’ But it will be better opened to you in the ensuing propositions.

[1.] Man by nature is at enmity with God, and upon ill terms with him. When we lost God’s image, we lost his favour. This enmity is mutual; man is an enemy to God, and God is an enemy to man. On God’s part there is wrath, which is all that we are born to by nature, Eph. ii. 3; and on man’s part there is hatred; we hate God because we love sin, Col. i. 21. God’s enmity is suspended in the day of his patience. Now and then wrath breaketh out, but it is not executed to the full; sentence is passed, but not executed. Nay, it may be reversed if we take sanctuary at grace; for God is now upon a treaty with us, or offer of peace; therefore it is said ‘peace on earth,’ Luke ii. 14. The next world is a time of vengeance and recompense; but during our earthly state God wooeth us and inviteth us to lay down the weapons of our defiance, and accept of terms of peace. Thus matters stand on God’s part. But now on our part this enmity is carried on with a great deal of spite. We seek to destroy God, and to deface all the memorials of him that are impressed upon the conscience; we ungod him in our thoughts and affections. It is a pleasing thought to us to suppose if there were no God, as guilty prisoners wish there were no judge, no assizes, that they may not be called to account.

[2.] Man being at enmity with God, all God’s creatures are at enmity with him. Angels, men, fire, air, water, they are all at God’s beck, and are ready to destroy man whenever the Lord biddeth them; as good subjects take part with their prince against rebels. The angels ‘hearken for the voice of his word,’ Ps. ciii. If he do but ‘hiss for the fly of Egypt,’ Isa. vii. 18, it is ready presently. It is ill contesting with him that can command legions. The fire saith, Let me burn his house or dwelling-place; the water saith, Let me drown his ships; the earth, Let me swallow him up quick, as I did Korah and his accomplices. Certainly the Lord cannot want instruments of vengeance. Man as God’s creature is his own enemy. God needeth not fetch forces from without, there is enough within; the humours of the body, the passions of the mind, all these are willing to serve God as creatures for our punishment; so that if God should but arm our own thoughts, our own affections against us, man is soon overwhelmed. Who can bear the wounds given him by his own conscience?

[3.] We, being in this estate, can only be reconciled by Jesus Christ. He obtaineth it by his merit, and conferreth it by his power. For his merit, see Col. i. 20, and Isa. liii. 5, ‘The chastisement of our peace was upon him.’ It will not stand with the majesty of God to make peace with us without satisfaction. That there might be no wrong done to his sovereignty, his law, his truth, his justice, his holiness, it was meet that we should be chastised either in our own persons or in our surety; and also all the notions of the Godhead are kept inviolable. Then for his power: He worketh it at first, and then maintaineth and keepeth it afoot between God and us. He worketh it at first, and bringeth it about thus, by opening the gospel, wherein God is revealed as pacified in Christ; which is the only doctrine that can calm the conscience, and establish the soul in peace and hope. All false religions are accompanied with scruples and jealousies: Jer. vi. 16, there is no ‘rest for the soul.’ And then he applieth the gospel by his Spirit. The gospel is a sovereign plaster, but Christ’s own hand must make it stick. There is a double ground of enmity in man’s heart—the guilt and power of sin. Christ wipeth guilt out of the conscience by the application of his own blood, and weakeneth the power of sin more and more. Sin is the makebate, and Christ is the ‘Prince of peace,’ Isa. ix. 6. The great end for which God set him up, was to plant grace in our hearts, and so to work a friendship between God and us. But Christ is not only the author, but the great conservator of the peace between us and heaven. Partly by his intercession: as foreign states have their agents in princes’ courts to preserve a mutual correspondence, so Christ taketh up all differences that fall out between us and God, that no breach may ensue, Heb. ix. 24. Partly by a further declaration of God’s love to the conscience, Isa. xxvi. 3. Partly by stirring us up to watchfulness, that no occasion may be given on our part by ‘returning to folly,’ Ps. lxxxv. 8. Thus you see what Christ doth: all is briefly summed up by the apostle in 2 Cor. v. 19, ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world.’ Where note, that our peace with God is a reconciliation or a peace after a breach, and this reconciliation is mutual. God appeareth in a form of grace and mercy to us, and we lay down our enmity against God; he is gracious to us, and we love and serve him. Only observe, that God beginneth first, though he be the wronged party; he ‘was reconciling.’ And mark again, it is ‘in Christ’ to show it is sure. Those that are reconciled to men are still in umbrage and suspicion with them; they that have once been enemies, they may be again; therefore they do not return to perfect grace; when the wound is cured, the scars remain. But our reconciliation with God, it is like the soldering of a vessel, which is strongest in the crack; or as a leg broken, if well set, it is the stronger; so are we upon firmer terms than we were in innocency; there was a possibility of being at odds with God, which is now taken away.

[4.] God being reconciled in Christ, all things else are at peace with us, tranquillus Deus tranquillat omnia. For his league with us is offensive and defensive: ‘My horses are as thy horses, and my chariots as thy chariots.’ God and all his confederates are in the league, or rather God and all his subjects, as a prince doth not only contract for his person, but his subjects and estates. Angels are at peace with us; instead of being instruments of vengeance, they become ‘ministering spirits,’ Heb. i. 14. A Christian hath an invisible guard; Satan is sensible of it, though we be not; he saith of Job, ‘Thou hast hedged him round about.’ God’s heirs are well attended; angels wait upon them at Christ’s direction. Other creatures serve us, as if they were in league and covenant with us; stars, winds, seas, beasts: Job v. 23, ‘Thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field, and the beasts shall be at peace with thee.’ They are included in God’s league, which is as much as if there were an express covenant between us and them that they shall not do us harm: they are at the beck of providence, and therefore, so far as it conduceth to our good, at our service. So Hosea ii. 18, ‘I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, and the fowls of the heaven,’ &c. So for men; they are wolves one to another, yet God can change them. The gospel civiliseth, and pulleth the beast out of men’s bosoms where it worketh least, see Isa. xi. 7-9. The hearts of men are in God’s hands; he can either destroy their persons, or restrain their rage, or turn out their respects to you: ‘When a man’s ways please the Lord, he maketh his enemies to be at peace with him,’ Prov. xvi. 7. We think to carry all by force and violence many times, but obedience to God is the best way to gain the respects of men, as a key openeth a door sooner than an iron bar. If you be in with God, you stop enmity and strife at the fountainhead. So for peace with the saints; Jesus Christ breaketh down the partition wall, Eph. ii. 16-18, removeth prejudices and jealousies, changeth interests, cleareth up truths, and by his Spirit meekeneth their hearts that they may be at one. Surely his blood is the best cement and bond of friendship. Christ hath called us into a body, that there might be peace in the church, Col. iii. 15. Brothers have defaced the feelings of nature, but fellow-members are wont to care one for another. Peace with fellow-saints was his dying charge, his legacy, John xiv. 27, his prayer, John xvii., and his constant care now he is in heaven. Then for peace with ourselves. Sin rendeth and teareth a man from himself; it maketh a mutiny in his own heart, Rom. ii. 15, ‘thoughts accusing and excusing by turns,’ μετ᾽ ἀλλήλων. A man and his conscience are at odds, and a man and his affections. Now, we being reconciled to God, the foundation is laid for peace of conscience, that we and our hearts may talk together as loving friends, without scolding, without reproaching. And then grace giveth us a calm and contented spirit, which easeth us of a great deal of trouble, for a discontented man is his own burden. We need the peace of God not only in our consciences, but to bear rule in our hearts, Col. iii. 16, that we may refer all matters to God’s disposal, Ps. iv. 8.