John Flavel · 30 of 34

Sermon 7. Matth. 16:26 · Part 4

The first way to hell barred

1. Let all parents consider, what a fearful thing it is to be the instruments of ruining for ever, those that received their beings instrumentally from them, and to seek whose good they stand obliged, by all the laws of God and nature.

In vain are all your cares and studies for their bodies, while their souls perish for want of knowledge. You rejoiced at their birth, but they will have cause to curse the day they were born of you, and say, "Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which I was conceived." You were solicitous for their bodies, but careless of their souls; earnest to see them rich, but indifferent whether they were gracious; you neglected to teach them the way of salvation, but the devil did not neglect to teach them the way of sin. You will one day wish you hall never been parents, when the doleful cries of your damned children shall ring such notes as these in your ears: "O cursed father! O cruel, merciless mother! whose examples have drawn me after you, into all this misery. You had time enough, and motives enough to have warned me of this place and misery while my heart was tender, and my affections pliable: Had it not been as easy to have put a Bible as a play-book before me? To have chastised me when I provoked God by sin, as when I provoked you about a trifle? One word spoken in season might have saved my soul; one reproof wisely given and set on by your example, might have preserved me. Had it not been the same pains to have asked me, child, what will you do to be saved? As, what will you do to live in this world? Or, had I but observed any serious religion in you, had I but found or heard my father or mother upon their knees in prayer, it might have awakened me to a consideration of my condition. In my youth I was shame faced, fearful, credulous, and apt to imitate; had you but had wisdom as other parents have, to have taken hold of any of these handles in time, you had rescued my soul from hell. Nay, so cruel have you been to your own child, that you allowed me no time (if I had had a disposition) for any exercise of religion; yea, you have quenched and stifled the sparks of convictions and better inclinations that sometimes were in my heart. O happy had it been if I had never been born of you, or seen your faces." This must be the result and issue of your negligence, except God, by some other hand (which is no thanks to you) rescue them from their impending ruin.

2. Let all children, whose unhappy lot it is to be born of, and educated by, carnal and irreligious parents, consider, God has endued them with reason, and a conscience of their own, to enable them to make a better choice than their parents did, and that there is no taking sanctuary from the wrath of God in their parents’ examples. We read, in 1 Kings xiv. 13, of a good Abijah, "in whom was found some good thing towards the Lord God of Israel, in the house of Jeroboam." Here was a child that would not follow his wicked father to hell, though he had both the authority of a father, and of a king over him. "You must honour your parents, but still you must prefer your God before them". God will never lay it to your account as your sin, but place it to the account of your duty, and comfort, that you refused to follow them in the paths of sin and destruction. No law of God, no tie of nature binds you to obey their commands, or tread in their steps, farther than they command in God’s authority and name, and walk in his ways. Your temptations, indeed, are strong, and disadvantages great; but the greater will the mercy of your deliverance be: It will be no plea for you, at the judgement seat, to say, Lord, my father or mother did so and so, before me, and I thought I might safely follow them; or thus, and thus, they commanded me, and I thought I was bound, by their command, to obey them. Therefore look to your own souls, if they are so desperate as to cast away their own. If some children had not minded their own salvation more than their parents minded it, they had never been saved.

3. Let this consideration work upon the hearts, and bowels of all serious Christians, to pity, and help those that are like to perish under this temptation; and if their parents be so ignorant, that they cannot, or so negligent, that they do not instruct and warn their own children; you that at any time have an opportunity to help them, have compassion on them, and do it. It is true, they are none of your children by nature; but would it not be a singular honour, and comfort to you, if God should make them so by grace? Thousands of children (and, it may be some of you) are more indebted to mere strangers, upon this account, than to their nearest relations; you know not how much good an occasional word may do them: All have not ability to be so publicly useful this way, as a late worthy minister of our own nation has been, who, in compassion to the dark, and barbarous corners in Wales, where ignorance and poverty shut up the way of salvation to them, at a vast expense procured the translation, and printing of the bible in their own tongue, and freely sent it among them. O you that have the bowels of Christians in you, pity, and help them! What is it, for the saving of a precious soul, to drop a serious exhortation, as you have opportunity, unto them, to bestow a bible, or suitable book upon them? Believe it, these little sums of shillings, and pence, so bestowed, will stand for more, in the audit-day, than all the hundreds, and thousands, other ways expended.

The second way to hell discovered

II. A second way to hell, in which multitudes are found hastening to their own damnation, is the way of affected ignorance. The generality of people, even in a land enlightened with the gospel, are found grossly ignorant of Christ, the true and only way to heaven, and of repentance and faith, the only way to Christ; and thus the people perish for want of knowledge, Hos iv. 6. If the tree of knowledge had been hedged in from the common people, as it is in Popish countries; and it had been criminal to find a bible in our houses, there might have been some cloak and pretence for our ignorance: But to be stupidly ignorant of the most obvious, plain and necessary truths, and yet bred up among bibles and ministers! O how ominous a darkness is this, foreboding, the blackness of darkness for ever! For if the hiding of the gospel from the hearts of men be a token to them that they are lost souls, how much notional light soever they may have; much more must they be lost to all intents, from whose hearts and heads too it is judicially hidden. They that know not God are in the catalogue of the damned, 2 Thess. i. 8, and if this be life eternal to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom he has sent; then this must be death eternal to be grossly and affectedly ignorant both of God, the eyed, and Christ the way, by the rule of true opposition, John xvii. 3.

Look over the several countries in the professing world; go into the families of country farmers, day labourers, and poor people, and except here and there a family, or person, into whose heart God has graciously shined; what barbarous, brutish ignorance overspreads them: They converse from morning to night with beasts, though they have souls which are fit companions for angels, and capable of sweet converse with God. The earth has opened her mouth, and swallowed up all their time, strength, thoughts, and sotuls, as it did the bodies of Corah and his company. They know the value of a horse or cow, but know not the worth of Christ, pardon, or their own souls: They mind daily what work they have to do with their hands, but forget all they have to do upon their knees; their whole care is to pay their fine or rent to their landlord, but not a thought who shall pay their debts to God. They are so far frown putting unnecessary business aside to make way for the service of God, that God’s service is put aside as an unnecessary business, to make way for the world: The world holds them fast till they are asleep, and will be sure to visit them as soon as their eyes are open, that there may be no vacancy or door of opportunity left open for a thought of their souls, or another life, to slip in: Or, it at any time they think, or speak of these matters, then the world, like Pharaoh, when Israel spake of sacrificing, is sure to speak of more work.

And thus they live and die without knowledge; there is no key of knowledge (as it is fitly called, Luke xi. 52.) to open the door of the soul to Christ; he and his ministers, therefore, must stand without; pity they may, but help they cannot, till knowledge open the door: Satan is ruler of the darkness of this world, Eph. vi. 12, that is, of all blind and ignorant souls. Ignorance is the chain with which he binds them fast to himself, and till that chain be knocked off by Divine illumination, they cannot be emancipated, and made free of Christ’s kingdom; Acts xxvi. 18. "To turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God." Ignorance, indeed, incapacitates a man to commit the unpardonable sin; but what is he the nearer while it disposes him to all other sins which damn as well as that? By ignorance it is, that all the essays of the gospel for men’s salvation are frustrated; that naked assent is put in the place of saving faith, morality mistaken for regeneration, a few dead duties laid in the room of Christ and his righteousness. Indeed it would fill a greater book than this is, to show the mischievous effects of ignorance, and how many ways it destroys the precious souls of men: but seeing I can speak but little in this place to it, let me bar up this way to hell, if it be possible, by a few serious considerations.

The second way to hell shut up

1. Let the ignorant consider, God has created their souls with a capacity of knowing him and enjoying him as well as others that are famed in the world for knowledge and wisdom. There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding. The faculty is in man, but the wisdom and knowledge that enlightens it from God; as the dial shows the hour of the day when the sun-beams fall upon it. If, therefore, God be sought unto in the use of such helps and means as you have, even the weakest and dullest soul has a capacity of being made wise unto salvation. Psal. xix. 7. "The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple."

Augustine tells us of a man so weak and simple, that he was commonly reputed a fool in all the neighbourhood; and yet says, I believe the grace and fear of God was in him; for when he heard any swear, or take the name of God in vain, he would throw stones at them, and show his indignation against sin by all the signs he could make.

2. You that are so grossly ignorant in the matter of your salvation, are many of you very knowing, prudent, and subtle persons in the affairs of the world. Luke xvi. 8. "The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light." Had those parts which you have, been improved and heightened by study and observation about spirituals, as they have been about earthly things, you had never been so ignorant or dead-hearted as you are: You might have been as well versed in your bibles, as you are in the almanacs you yearly buy and study. You might have understood the proper seasons of salvation as well as of husbandry. The great and necessary points on which your salvation depends, are not so many or so abstruse and intricate, but your plain and inartificial heads might have understood them, and that with less pains than you have been at for your bodies: What though you cannot comprehend the subtilties of schoolmen, you may apprehend the essentials of Christianity. If you cannot strictly and scholastically define faith, what hinders, if your hearts were set upon Christ and salvation, but you may feel it? Which is more than many learned men do that can define and dispute about it. You cannot put an argument in mood and figure; no matter, if you can by comparing your bibles and hearts together, draw savingly and experimentally this conclusion; I am in Christ, and my sins are pardoned. You cannot determine whether faith goes before repentance, or repentance before faith; but for all that you might feel both the one and the other upon your own souls, which is infinitely better. It is not, therefore, your incapacity, but negligence and worldliness that is your ruin.

3. How many are there of your own rank, order, and education, all whose external advantages and helps you have, and all your encumbrances and discouragements they had, who yet have attained to an excellent degree of saving knowledge and heavenly wisdom? How often have I heard such spiritual, savoury, experimental truths, in conference and prayer from plain rustics, such spiritual reasonings about the great concerns of salvation, such judicious and satisfying resolutions of cases depending upon the sensible and experimental part of religion, as have humbled, convinced, and steamed me, and made me say surgunt indocti, &c. these are the men that will take heaven from the proud and scornful ingeniosi of the world; not many wise, not many learned and acute. Many knowing and learned heads are in hell, and many illiterate and weak ones gone to heaven; and others in the way thither who never had better education, stronger parts, or more leisure than yourselves: So that you are without excuse.

To conclude, Would you heartily seek it of God, and would the Spirit (which he hath promised to give then that ask him) become your teacher, how soon would the light of the saving knowledge of God in the face of Christ shine into your hearts! No matter how ignorant, dull, and weak the scholar be, if God once become the teacher. You are not able to purchase, or want time to read many books; but if once you were sanctified persons, the anointing you would receive from the Father would teach you all things, 1 John ii. 27. your own hearts would serve you for a commentary upon a great part of the bible; it would make you of a quick understanding in the fear of the Lord: One drop of your knowledge should be more worth than all learned arts and sciences in the world to you. And is God so far from you, and his illuminating Spirit at such a distance, that there is no hope for you to find him? Is there never a private corner about your houses or barns, or in the fields, where you can turn aside, if it be but a quarter of an hour at a time, to pour out your souls to God, and beg the Spirit of him? Miserable wretch! Is your whole life such a cumber and clutter of cares and puzzles about the world, that you have no leisure to mind God, soul, or eternity? O doleful state! The Lord in much mercy pity and awaken you. Will you not once strive and stumble to save your soul? What, perish, as it were, by consent! How great then is that blindness!

The third way to hell discovered

III. A vast multitude of precious souls are lost for ever by following the examples, and being carried away with the course of this world: It is indeed a poor excuse, a silly argument, that the multitude do as we do; yet, as Junius rightly observes, men’s consciences take sanctuary here, and they think themselves safe in it: For thus they reason, If I do as the generality do, I shall speed no worse than they speed: and certainly God is more merciful than to suffer the greatest part of mankind to perish. They resolve to follow the beaten road, let it lead whither it will.

Thus the Ephesians, in their unregenerate state, "walked according to the course of this world,: Eph. ii. 2. and the Corinthians "were carried away unto dumb idols, even as they were led", 1 Cor. xii. 2, just as a drop of water is carried and moved according to the course and current of the tide: For look as every drop of water in the sea is of one and the same common nature, so are all carnal and unsanctified persons; and as these waters being collected into one vast body in the ocean, unite their strength, and make a strong current, this way or that; so does the whole collective body of the unregenerate world, all the particular drops move as the tide moves. Hence they are said "to have received the spirit of this world," 1 Cor. ii. 12. One common spirit or principle acts and rules them all; and therefore they must needs be carried away in the same course. And there are two special considerations that seem to determine them by a kind of necessity to do as the multitude do; the one is, that they find it easiest and most commodious way to the flesh, here they meet with quietness and safety: hereby they are exempt from reproaches, losses, persecutions and distresses for conscience sake. Rest is sweet, and here only they think to find it. The other is, the prejudice of singularity, and manifold tribulations they see that little handful that walk counter to the course of the world involved in; this startles them from their company, and fixes them where they are. Against such sensible arguments, it is to no more purpose to oppose spiritual considerations, motives drawn from the safety of the soul, or importance of eternity, than it is for a man to turn the tide or course of a river with his weak breath.

Add to this, That as one sinner confirms and fixes another, wedging in each other, as men in a crowd, who must move as it moves; so they make it their business to render all that dither from them odious and ridiculous: So the apostle notes their practice and Satan’s policy in it, 1 Pet. 4:4, wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them into the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you, ξενιζονται; they gaze strangely at them. And that is not all; they not only gaze at them as a strange generation, making them signs and wonders in Israel, as the prophet speaks, but they defame, revile, and speak evil of them, representing them as a pack of hypocrites, as turbulent, factious, seditious persons, the very pests of the times and places they live in; and all this, not for doing any evil against them, but only for not doing evil with them, because they run not with them into the same excess of riot. Thus the world smiles upon its own, and derides those that are afraid to follow them to hell, by which it sweeps away the multitude with it in the same course.

The third way to hell shut up

But O! if the Spirit of God would please to set on, and follow home the following considerations to your hearts, you would certainly resolve to take a persecuted path to heaven, though few accompany you therein, rather than swim like dead fishes with the stream into the dead sea of eternal misery.

1. Though you go with the consent and current of the world, yet you go against the express law and prohibition of God: He has laid his command upon you, "not to be conformed to the world," Rom. xii. 2. "That you live not the rest of your time to the lusts of men, but to the will of God," 1 Pet. 4:2. "That you follow not a multitude to do evil," Exod. 23:2. "That you go not in the way of evil men." Prov. iv. 14. "That you have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness." All these, and many more, are commands flowing from the highest sovereign authority, obliging your consciences to obedience under the greatest penalties; by them your state must be cast to all eternity in the day of judgment. You may make a jest of the precept, but see if you can do so of the penalty.

2. Other men, in all ages of the world, that were as much concerned in the world as you, and valued their lives, liberties, and estates as well as you, have yet got out of the crowd, disengaged themselves from the way of the multitude, and taken a more solitary and suffering path out of a due regard to the safety of their souls: And why should not you love them as well, and care for them as much as ever any that went before you did? Noah walked with God all alone, when all flesh had their ways. Elijah was zealous for the Lord, when he knew of none to stand by him, but thought he had been left alone; Job was upright with God in the land of Uz; Lot stood by himself, a godly nonconformist, in a vile, debauched Sodom; David was a wonder to many; so was Jeremiah, and those few with him, for signs and wonders in Israel; I demand of your consciences what discouragements have you that these men had not? Or what encouragements had they that you have not? Why should not the salvation of sour souls be as precious in your eyes as theirs was in theirs? Shall you be impoverished and persecuted if you embrace the way of holiness? So were they. Shall you be reproached, scorned, and reviled: So were they. All your discouragements were theirs, and all their motives and encouragements are yours.

3. Is not the way which you have chosen marked out by Christ as the way to destruction? And that which you dare not chase and embrace as the way to life? See the marks he has given you of both in that one text, Mat. 7:13, 14. "Enter ye in at the strait gate; for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat; because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." And where now is your encouragement and hope that God will be more merciful than to damn so great a part of the world? If you will do as the many do, dream not of speeding as well as that little flock, separated by sanctification from the multitude, shall speed. You have your choice, to be damned with many, or saved with few; to take the broad, smooth beaten road to hell, or the difficult, suffering, self-denying path to heaven. O then make a seasonable, necessary stand, and pause a while; consider your ways, and turn your feet to God’s testimonies: It is a great and special part of your salvation to says ourselves from this untoward generation.

The fourth way of losing the soul opened

IV. Multitudes of souls are daily lost by rooted habits, and long continued custom in sin. When men have been long settled in an evil way, they are difficultly reclaimed: Physicians find it hard to cure a cacheary, or ill habit of body; but it is far more difficult to cure an ill custom and habit in sin. Jer. xiii. 23. "Can the leopard change his spots, or the Ethiopian his skin? Then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil. The spots of a leopard, and the hue of an Ethiopian, are not by way of external, accidental adhesion; if so, washing would fetch them off: But they are innate and contempered, belonging to the constitution, and not to be altered, so are sinful habits and customs in the minds of sinners. By this means it becomes a second nature as it were, and strongly determines the mind to sin. A tencris assuescere medium est. It is a great matter to be accustomed to this way, or that, said Seneca; yea, Caput rei est, hoc vel illo modo, hominem assuefieri,— It is the very head or root of the matter to be so or so accustomed, says Aristotle. Very much of the strength of sin rises from customary sinning. A brand that has been once in the fire easily catches the second time. Every repeated act of sin lessens fear and strengthens inclination. A horse that took an ill stroke at first breaking, and has continued many years in it, is very difficultly, if ever, to be brought to a better way. What men have been accustomed to from their childhood, they are tenacious of in their old age. Hence it is that so few are converted to Christ in their old age. It was recorded for a wonder, in the primitive times, that Marcus Caius Victorius became a Christian in his old age. Time and usage fix the roots of sin deep in the soul. Old trees will not bow as tender plants do. Hence all essays and attempts to draw men from the course in which they have walked from their youth, are frustraneous and unsuccessful. The drunkard, the adulterer, yea, the self-righteous moralist, are by long continued usage so fixed in their course, and all this while conscience so stupefied by often repeated acts of sin, that it is naturally as impossible to remove a mountain, as a sinner will thus confirmed in his wickedness. However, let the trial be made, and the success left to him to whom no length of time nor difficulty must be objected or opposed.

The fourth way to hell shut up by two considerations

IV. Let it be considered, the longer any man has been engaged in, and accustomed to the way of sin, the more reason and need that man has speedily and without delay to repent and reform his course; there is yet a possibility of mercy, a season of salvation left. How far soever a soul is gone on towards hell, none can say it is yet too late. When Mr. Bilney the martyr heard a minister preaching thus, O you old sinner, you have gone on in a course of sin these fifty or sixty years; do you think that Christ will accept you now, or take the devil’s leavings? Good God, said he, what a preacher of Christ is here! Had such doctrine been preached to me in my troubles, it had been enough utterly to have discouraged me from repentance and faith. No, no, sinner, it is not yet too late, if at last your heart be touched with a real sense of your sin and danger. The Lord is plain, Isa. lv. 7. "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon."

An abundant pardon you need; your sins, by long continued custom and frequent repetitions, have been abundantly aggravated; and an abundant pardon is with God for poor sinners: he will abundantly pardon, but then you must come up to his terns: you must not expect pardon or mercy when your sins have forsaken you, but upon your forsaking them; yea, such a forsaking as includes a resolution or decree in your will to return to them no more, Hos. iv. 8. There must be a chance of your way, and that not from profaneness to civility only, which is but to change one false way to heaven for another, or the dirty road to hell for a cleaner path on the other side of the hedge; but a total and final forsaking of every way of sin, as to the love and habitual practice of it; yea, and your thoughts too, as well as your ways. There must be an internal, as well as an external change upon you; yea, a positive, as well as a negative change; a turning to the Lord, as well as a turning from sin; and then how long, soever you have walked in the road towards hell, there will be time enough, and mercy enough to secure your returning soul safe to beaver.

2. Can you not forbear your customary sin, upon lesser motives than the salvation of your soul? And if you can, will you not much more do it for the saving of your precious, immortal soul? Suppose there were but a pecuniary mulet, of an hundred pounds, to be certainly levied upon your estate, for every oath you swear, or every time you are drunk, would you not rather choose reformation than beggary? And is not the loss of your soul a penalty infinitely heavier than a little money? But, as the wise heathen observed, Ea sola emi putamus, pro quibus pecuniam solvinus; ea gratuita vocamus pro quibus nos ipsos impendimus. We reckon those things only to be bought, which we part with money for; and that we have those things gratis, for which we pay ourselves. Is nothing cheap in our eyes but ourselves, our souls! Do we call that gratis, what will cost us so dear? Darius threw away his messy crown when he fled before Alexander, that it might not hinder him in his flight. Sure your souls are more worth than your money, and all the enjoyments you have in this world. It had been an ancient custom among the citizens of Antioch, to wash themselves in the baths; but the king forbidding its they all presently forbore, for fear of his displeasure: whereupon Chrysostom convinced them of the vanity of that plea for customary sinning. "You see, (says he), how soon fear can break off an old custom; and shall not the fear of God be as powerful to overmaster it in us, as the fear of man?" O friends, believe it, it "is better for you to cut off a right hand, or pluck out a right eye, than having two hands, or eyes to be cast into hell, where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched."