Thomas Manton · 12 of 67

Verse 2. · Part 3

[5.] Though all things are at peace with us; yet some troubles are left for our exercise, but not for our hurt and destruction. The peace of God it is a very riddle: Phil. iv. 7, ‘It passeth all understanding.’ To sense who more wretched than God’s children, hated, reviled, persecuted, afflicted? How are they at peace with God and all his creatures? I answer—The privileges of Christ’s kingdom are spiritual: whatever troubleth the saints, nothing can harm them, 1 Peter iii. 13. They may harm the man, but not the Christian. All things are at peace with them, because they are at the disposal of a wise and gracious providence, and cannot do hurt to the better part: they work for good. Death is at peace with them, which doth the greatest hurt to the body. Ask old Simeon and he will tell you so: Luke ii. 29, ‘Lord, now lettest thy servant depart in peace,’ &c. They are sent for by their friend; the king of fears is a grim messenger, but they know his errand, and therefore are not afraid.

[6.] In heaven there is a perfect peace; in the new Jerusalem all is quiet: ‘It is just with God to give you that are troubled, ἄνεσιν, rest,’ 2 Thes. i. 7; and ‘there is a rest that remaineth for the children of God,’ Heb. iv. 9. There we rest both from our sorrows and our labours; there is no trouble nor affliction more; all privileges are at the height; no more apprehensions of God’s wrath, fears of death. There we are not only free from hurt, but danger; our exercise is at an end: there we do immediately behold the king’s face, which is not granted us here; now we are in Absalom’s condition, pardoned, reconciled, but cannot see the king’s face. So much for the nature of this peace, and the observations that open it to you. Let us now apply all.

Use 1. If peace be such an excellent blessing, and a main privilege of the gospel, then it puts us upon trial. Are we at peace with God through Christ? If it be so, then—(1.) Enmity is laid aside; God’s enemies will be yours, and yours will be God’s; otherwise what peace? What! do we talk of peace with God, as long as we are in league with God’s enemy? ‘What peace as long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel are so many?’ Our league with God is defensive and offensive. There is a war with Satan, if we be at peace with God: the spiritual conflict is the best evidence we have of our unity with God. With the wicked, God is at open war: ‘There is no peace,’ &c., Isa. lvii. 21. The devil may be at a secret peace with them, but God is at a distance, and abhorreth all communion with them. Christ is called ‘the Prince of peace,’ Isa. ix. 6; but it is to those that submit to his government; to his subjects, he saith, ‘Take my yoke upon yon, and ye shall find rest,’ Mat. xi. 29. We are not in a capacity to receive this blessing till we take an oath of allegiance to Christ, and continue in obedience to him. (2.) The next note is, delight in communion with God: Job xxii. 21, ‘Acquaint thyself with him, and be at peace.’ A man that is at peace with God will be often in his company: bondage and servile awe keepeth us out of God’s presence; we cannot come to him, because we cannot come in peace. A man never delighteth in duties of commerce with God when either he hath a false peace or no peace: duties disturb a false peace; and when we are raw and sour, we are unfit for work. When a peace is concluded between nations that were before at war, trading is revived: so will it be between God and you; commerce will be revived, and you will be trading into heaven, that you may bring away rich treasures of grace and comfort.

Use 2. It presseth us to make peace with God by Christ. We speak to two sorts—the careless and the distressed. (1.) To the careless. Consider you are born enemies to God: they that loved him from their cradle upward, never loved him. You must make peace with God, for you cannot maintain war against him: ‘Are you stronger than he?’ What! will you arm lusts against angels? And do you know the terror of his wrath? One spark of it is enough to drink up all your blood and spirits, Job vi. 4. The present life is but a vapour, soon gone. If God be angry, he can arm the least creature to kill you: the whole creation taketh part with God: Adrian was strangled with a gnat. But death will not end your sorrows. None can punish their enemies as God can; he can ruin your body and soul for ever and for ever. How will you screech and howl like dragons? But your torments are without end and without ease. Be wise, then, and do not sleep when your ‘damnation sleepeth not,’ 2 Peter ii. 3; now is the time to make your peace with God. Ah! that ‘you knew in this your day the things that belong to your peace,’ Luke xix. 41. Peace must be had now, or else it can never be had hereafter. The day of patience will not always last; therefore let us get into the ark before the flood cometh. It is a dreadful thing to be under the wrath of God, and you know not how soon it will light: our care should be to be ‘found of him in peace,’ Peter iii. 14. Christ is now a Saviour, then a judge: you will yell and howl for mercy when it is too late. (2.) I am to speak to distressed consciences. Lift up your heads, God offereth you peace; he sent angels from heaven to proclaim it, Luke ii. 14. The ground of the offer is good-will, and the end of the offer is only his own glory. God hath no other reasons to move him to it but his own good-will, and no other aim than to glorify his grace; see Eph. i. 6; and therefore take hold of his covenant of peace, as it is called, Isa. liv. 10. He is content we shall have peace upon these terms, and peace assured us by covenant. Certainly it is not a duty to doubt, nor a thing accept able to God, that we should always be upon terms of perplexity, and keep conscience raw with a sense of wrath and sin: wherefore did Christ bear ‘the chastisement of our peace’? God is more pleased with a cheerful confidence than a servile spirit, full of bondage and fear.

Use 3. It is caution. If peace be a privilege of the gospel, let us take care that we settle upon a right peace, lest we mistake a judgment for a blessing. It is the greatest judgment that can be, to _be given up to our own secure presumptions, and to be lulled asleep with a false peace. When the pulse doth not beat, the body is in a dangerous estate; so when conscience is benumbed, and smiteth not, it is very sad. The grounds of a false and carnal peace are—(1.) Ignorance of our condition. Many go hoodwinked to hell; a little light breaking in would trouble all, Rom. vii. 9. Sluttish corners are not seen in the dark. Things are naught that cannot brook a trial; so you may know that it is very bad with men when they ‘will not come to the light,’ John iii. 20, or cannot endure to be alone, lest conscience should return upon itself, and they be forced to look inward; their confidence is supported by mere ignorance. (2.) Sensuality. Some men’s lives are nothing else but a diversion from one pleasure to another, that they may put off that which they cannot put away; there is bondage in their consciences, and they are loath to take notice of it: Amos vi. 3, ‘They drink wine in bowls, and put far away the evil day.’ This is to ‘quench the spirit’ without a metaphor. All their pleasures are but ‘stolen waters, and bread eaten in secret;’ frisks of mirth when they can get conscience asleep. Cain’s heart was a trouble to him, therefore he falleth a-building of cities. Saul, to cure the evil spirit, ran to his music; and so usually men choke conscience either with business or pleasures. (3.) From formality and slightness in the spiritual life. First, either they do not seriously perform duty; that will make men see what carnal, unsavoury, sapless spirits they have. He that never stirreth doth not feel the lameness of his joints. Formal duties make men the more secure; as the Pharisee thought himself in a good case, because, &c., Luke xviii. 11; but spiritual duties search us to the purpose, as new wine doth old bottles. Or else, secondly, they do not exasperate their lusts, and seriously resist sin. Tumult is made by opposition. When a man yieldeth to Satan, no wonder that Satan lets him alone: Luke xi. 21, ‘The goods are in peace,’ because the devil’s possession is not disturbed; he rageth most when his kingdom is tottering, Rev. xii. 12. Please the worst natures, and they will not trouble you. There is no tempest where wind and tide go together. You let Satan alone, and he lets you alone; this is a peace that will end in trouble.

I now come to speak of the third thing prayed for, and that is love, which, being taken here, not for God’s love to us, but our love to God, may be thus defined:—It is a gracious and holy affection, which the soul, upon the apprehension of God’s love in Christ, returneth back to God again by his own grace. The grounds and causes of it are two; the one worketh by way of argument and suasion, the other by way of efficacy and power.

1. It ariseth from the sense and apprehensions of God’s love in Christ. Love is like a diamond, that is not wrought upon but by its own dust: 1 John iv. 19, ‘We love him, because he loved us first.’ Love is like an echo, it returneth what it receiveth; it is a reflex, a reverberation, or a casting back of God’s beam and flame upon himself. The cold wall sendeth back no reflex of heat till the sun shine upon it, and warm it first; so neither do we love God till the soul be first filled with a sense of his love. And as radius reflexus languet, rays in their reflection are more faint and cold, so our love to God is much weaker than God’s love to us. Valdesso saith, God loveth the lowest saint more than the highest angel loveth God. Once more, the more direct the stroke and beam is upon the wall, or any other solid body, the stronger always is the reflection; so the more sense we have of the love of God, the stronger is our love to him.

2. The next cause of love is the grace of God. There is not only an apprehension of love, but the force of the spirit goeth along with it. Our thoughts, our discourses upon the love of God to us in Christ, nay, our sense and feeling of it, is not enough to beget this grace in us. Love is a pure flame, that must be kindled from above, as the vestal fire by a sunbeam: 1 John iv. 7, ‘Love is of God;’ that is, of a celestial or heavenly original. There is in the soul naturally a hatred of God, Rom. i. 30, θεοστυγεῖς, and a proneness to mingle with present comforts, which can only be cured by the Spirit of grace. Our naked apprehensions will not break the force of natural enmity; and it is God that must circumcise and pare away the foreskin of the heart before we can love him, Deut. xxx. 6. There is a natural proneness to dote upon the creature and hate the Creator. Base creatures neglect God, and pollute themselves with one another; and there is no help for it till the heart be overpowered by grace. Thus for the causes of love.

The object of love is God himself; not merely as considered in himself, for so he is terrible to the creature, but as God in Christ, for so he will be known and respected by us in the gospel, and so we have the highest engagement to love him; not only upon the respects of nature, as our Creator, but of grace, as our God and father in Christ. Now God is the supreme object of love, and other things are loved for God’s sake, because of that of God which we find in them; as his word, which is the copy of his holiness, his engraven image, as the coin beareth the image of the prince. So it is said, Ps. cxix. 47, ‘I will delight myself in thy commandments which I have loved.’ And then his saints, which are his living image, as children resemble their father; so it is said, Ps. xvi. 3, ‘To the saints, and to the excellent of the earth, in whom is my delight.’ And then other men, because of his command, 2 Peter i. 5, ‘Add to brotherly kindness, love.’ So his creatures, because in them we enjoy God, the effects of his bounty. But chiefly his ordinances, as they exhibit more of God than the creatures can. So that love respects God, and other things for God’s sake.

Again, in the description I take notice of the essence or formal nature of it, and call it the return of a gracious and holy affection to God. Love is carried out to its object two ways—by desire and delight. Our necessity and need of God is the ground of desire; and our propriety and interest is the ground of delight. Desires are the feet of love, by which it runneth after its object; and delight is the rest and contentment of the soul in the enjoyment of it. Because of our imperfect fruition in this life, love bewrayeth itself by desires mostly, or pursuing after God; see Ps. lxiii. 8, ‘My heart followeth hard after thee.’ It noteth those sallies and earnest egressions of soul after the Lord, that we may have more communion and fellowship with him. In short, the radical (if I may so speak) and principal disposition of love is a desire of union; for all other effects of love flow from it This it is that makes the soul to prize the ordinances, because God is. to be enjoyed there, and these are means of communion with him: Ps. xxvi. 8, ‘I have loved the place where thine honour dwelleth.’ This maketh sin terrible, because it separateth from God, Isa. lix. 2. This maketh heaven amiable; the fairest part of our portion in heaven is a closer and nearer communion with Christ, Phil. i. 23. This maketh the day of judgment sweet, for then we shall ‘meet with our beloved in the air,’ 1 Thes. iv. 17. In short, this maketh the soul to take such contentment in thinking of God, and speaking of God; it is the feast of the soul: ‘My meditation of him shall be sweet,’ Ps. civ. 34. Their souls cannot have a greater solace than to think what a God they have in Christ.

Having in some manner described the love of God, let me use some arguments to press you to it.

First, God hath commanded it; the sum of the law is love. When the scribe came to Christ, Mat. xxii. 36, ‘Master, which is the great commandment in the law?’ Jesus said unto him, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and all thy soul, and all thy might,’ Mark, ‘this is the first and great commandment,’ to love God; it is not a sour command, but sweet and profitable. God might have burdened us with other manner of precepts, considering his absolute right; to offer our children in sacrifice, to mangle our flesh with whips and scourges; but these are cruelties proper to the devil’s worship. The Lord is a gentle master, and only desireth the love of his servants; we have cause to thank him for such a gracious precept. If he should require us not to love him, this were hell itself; that is the hell of hell, that they which are there do not love God. It is our privilege as much as our duty. God loveth all his creatures, but hath commanded none to love him again but man and angels; so that it is the great privilege of the saints to love God. It had been a great favour if God had given us leave to love him; as it would be a great favour if a king should give leave to one of his meanest subjects to have the key of his privy chamber, to come to him and visit him, and be familiar with him when he pleaseth; how would this be talked of in the world! Yet this is not so wonderful, since the king and the peasant are both men; in their natural being they are equal, though in their civil distinction and condition of life there be a difference. But what a favour is this, that he who is the ‘King of kings, and Lord of lords,’ doth not only permit his creature made by his own hands to come to him, and love him, and deal with him when he pleaseth, but hath expressly commanded it! Nay, this is ‘the great commandment.’ Certainly God is very desirous of our love, when he layeth such an obligation upon us. Was there ever such a master, that made this to be his servants’ chiefest duty, that they should love him? Again, I observe in God’s command that the precept runneth thus: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.’ The Lord would not lose one grain of the creature’s love. Surely he valued it when he is so solicitous about it. If we should see a wise man careful to preserve the relics of what we counted a neglected weed, it would make us think there were some what in it. We lavish away our love upon trifles, and God prizeth every grain of it. You see he speaketh as if he would not lose one dust of love: ‘All thy soul, all thy heart, and all thy might.’ When he biddeth us love our neighbour, he sets limits to it, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself;’ but when he biddeth us love God, he requireth all the heart. The only measure is to love him without measure. The next place that I shall take notice of, where the precept is recorded, is Deut. x. 12, ‘And now Israel, what doth the Lord require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, and to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord with all thy heart, and with all thy soul.’ God doth not require of us things without the sphere of duty; that we should go into the depths of the sea, toss mountains in the air, pluck the stars from heaven, &c. These things lie out of the power of man. He doth not require of us barbarous austerities—to offer our first-born, to lance ourselves, to mangle our flesh with whips and scourges. He doth not require of us absolutely such things which some men can and ought to perform; not such a measure of alms, what then would become of the poor? not such a degree of wisdom and learning, what then would become of the simple and unlearned? But, ‘O Israel, what hath the Lord required of thee, but that thou shouldest love the Lord thy God?’ A duty to be performed by poor and rich, learned and unlearned. Whatever their estate and condition be, they may all love God. There are many in heaven that never were in a condition to give, but to receive, that were never learned and skilled in sciences; but none that never loved God.

Secondly, God hath deserved love. Let us a little take notice of God’s love to us. He beginneth and loveth us that we may love him again, 1 John iv. 19. If God should hate us, we were bound to love him, because of his excellency, and because of our duty and obligation as we are creatures. How much more when God hath loved us, and bestowed so many benefits upon us? Love is an affection which God will have repaid in kind. When he chideth us, he doth not expect that we should chide him again. When he judgeth us, we must not judge him again. In these things the creature is not to retaliate. It is true, we do it too often, but still to our loss and blame. But now when he loveth us, he willeth us to love him again. He loveth us for no other cause but that he may be loved. Love must be paid in kind. As water is cast into a pump when the springs lie low to bring up more water, so God sheddeth abroad his love into our hearts, that our love may rise up to him again by way of gratitude and recompense. Now in the love of God we may take notice of—(1.) The properties; and (2.) The effects of it.

First, For the properties of God’s love, consider:—

1. The ancientness of it: Ps. ciii. 17, ‘From everlasting to everlasting,’ &c. With reverence we may speak, ever since God was God he was our God. You may track his love from one eternity to another. Before the world was he loved us, and when the world is no more he loveth us still. His love began in eternal purposes of grace, and it endeth in our eternal possession of glory. It is not a thing of yester day. He is our ancient friend. He loved us not only before we were lovely, but before we were at all. We adjourn and put off our love of God to old age, and thrust it into a narrow corner. When we have wasted and spent our strength in the world, we dream of a devout retirement. But the Lord thinketh he could never love us early enough. ‘From everlasting to everlasting,’ &c. We receive the fruits and effects of love in time, but all cometh out of God’s ancient and eternal love. This grace was provided for us before we were born. Yea, look upon God’s love in time. How merciful was God to us before we could show the least sign of thankfulness to him? He loved us a long time before ever we had a thought of him. In infancy we could not so much as know that he loved us. When we came to years of discretion we knew how to offend him before we knew how to love and serve him. How many are there of whom it may be said, ‘God is not in all their thoughts;’ and yet all this while God hath ‘thoughts of peace’ and blessing towards them.

2. Consider the freeness of God’s love. The value of all benefits ariseth from the necessity of him that receive th, and the good-will of him that giveth. God wanted not us, our love is no benefit to him; but we wanted him, we are undone without him. Yet he hath more delight in pardoning than we in salvation, and he is more ready to give than we to ask. He often calleth upon us to call upon him; as if he were afraid we would not ask, or not enough, or not soon enough, or not often enough. A man would think that our wants should be importunate enough to put us upon requests, and that we needed not enforcements to prayer; yet you see God doth not only prevent the request, but make the prayer, and stirreth us up to utter it. But we are not only needy creatures, but guilty creatures; and that God should love us 1 When we were in our blood and filthiness, it was ‘a time of loves,’ Ezek. xvi. 7. This is the great miracle of divine love, that a time of loathing is a time of loves. And we will wonder at it more if we consider the active and endless hatred of his holiness against sin, and therefore why not against sinners? The holiness of his nature and essence sets him against them; and natural antipathies and aversions can never be reconciled, as a man can never be brought to delight in a toad, or a lamb in a wolf. And consider again his infinite wisdom. We may love that which is not lovely, because we are often blinded by inordinate affection; but now God’s love is not blind and overcome with the vehemency of any passion, as man’s is. This maketh the wonder, there is no blindness and passion in him that loveth, and yet the thing that is loved is vile and uncomely.

3. The frequency of the expressions of his love. It would weary the arm of an angel to write down God’s repeated acts of grace: Rom. v. 16, ‘The free gift is of many offences unto justification.’ We carry loads of experiences with us to heaven. God’s book of remembrance is written within and without. This will be our wonder and amazement at the last day, to see such huge sums cancelled with Christ’s blood: every day pardoning mercy is put in: our past lives are but a constant experience of our sinning and God’s pardoning. We are weary of everything but sin; we are never weary of that, because it is natural to us. The very refreshments of life by continuance grow burden some: meat, drink, music, sleep, the chiefest pleasures, within a while need to be refreshed with other pleasures; man is a restless creature, and loveth shift and change. But now we are never weary of sin; we have it from the womb, and we keep it to the grave; and yet all this while we subsist upon God. We subsist upon him every moment; we have life, and breath, and hourly maintenance from him, whom we thus grieve and offend. Dependence should beget observance, but in us it is otherwise. As a dunghill sendeth out vapours to obscure the sun that shineth upon it, so do we dishonour the God of our mercies, and grieve him day by day. How long hath God been multiplying pardons, and yet free grace is not tired and grown weary!

4. Consider the variety of the expressions of his love. We have all kind of mercies; we eat mercy, we wear mercy, we are ‘encompassed with mercy as with a shield.’ The apostle saith, 2 Peter i. 3, ‘He hath given us all things that pertain to life and godliness;’ that is, as I would interpret, all things that are necessary to life natural, to life spiritual, to maintain grace here, and to bring us to glory here after. He that hath an interest in Christ, his portion is not straitened; be hath a right to all things, and a possession of as much as providence judgeth needful; therein we must not be our own carvers. A man of mortified affections thinketh he hath provision enough if he hath things necessary to life and godliness; and will you not love God for all this? Certainly we do not want obligations, but we want affections. Look, as too much wood puts out the fire and causeth smoke, so the multitude and daily experience of God’s mercies lesseneth the esteem of them. We have but too many mercies, and that maketh us unkind and neglectful of God. What shall I tell you of sabbaths, ordinances, food, raiment? If a man would be but his own remembrancer, and now and then come to an account with God, he would cry out, ‘O the multitude of thy thoughts to us-ward, how great is the sum of them!’ Ps. cxxxix. 17. Or if a man would but keep a journal of his own life, what a vast volume would his private experiences make; how would he find mercy and himself still growing up together! Shall I show you a little what a multitude of mercies there are? I will not speak of the higher and choicer mercies, such as concern the soul, but of such as concern the body. What a deal of provision is there for the comfort and welfare of the body! I instance in these mercies, partly because they are so common that they are scarce noted; partly because carnal men prize the body most; they prefer it above the soul. Now the Lord would leave them without excuse; they that love the body shall not want arguments to urge them to love God, since he hath bestowed so much of his love and care upon the body, to gratify all the senses not only for necessity but delight. There is light for the eye; the poorest man hath glorious lamps to light him to his labours; for the taste, such variety of refreshments of a different sap and savour; for the smell, delicious infusions into the air from flowers and gums and aromatic plants; for the ears, music from birds and men; and all this to make our pilgrimage comfortable, and our hearts better. How many creatures hath the Lord given us to help to hear burdens? how many things for meat and medicine? If man had not been created last, after the world was settled and furnished, we should have seen the want of many things which we now enjoy and do not value. First God provided our house, and then furnished our table; and when all was ready, then man is brought in as the lord of all. We are not affected with these mercies. How can we sin against God, that can look no where but we see arguments and reasons to love him? As Christ said, ‘Many good works have I done amongst you; for which of these do you stone me?’ so may the Lord plead, I have done many things for you; you cannot open your eyes but you see love, you cannot walk abroad but you smell love and hear love, &c.; for which of those do you grieve me, and deal so despitefully with me?