SERMON LXIV.

DELIVERANCE FROM TEMPTATION THE PRIVILEGE OF THE RIGHTEOUS.

PART I.

"The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations." -2 PETER, ii. 9.

I do not know a greater and a juster ground of discouragement to wise and thinking men, with reference to the high concerns of their immortal souls, than to consider, that, over and above that innate corruption brought with them into the world, and so mightily strengthened and improved by the continual restless working of the same in the actual commission of sin ever since, that there should, I say, besides this, be an external agent and evil spirit incessantly blowing up this fire within us, exasperating, stirring up, and drawing forth this active quality in the several mischievous actings thereof and this evil spirit, withal, of such force, such sagacity, and such unspeakable vigilance for the compassing of men's destruction, as far surpass all that men themselves can be brought to do even for their own salvation. A sad case certainly, and such as must needs cast the issue of the war between them upon very unequal terms; where the superior in malice .s as much the superior in strength too; and where (to make tlie odds yet greater) man on the one side must venture all, and the tempter on the other has nothing to lose.

It is true, indeed, that the will of man can never be forced by any created or finite spirit, good or bad, but may still stand its ground against all attacks from without. Nevertheless, there are so many ways to allure, inveigle,

VOL. II.

and persuade it, by ill, but suitable objects from abroad, that this bare natural power, or rather possibility, of resisting them, in the issue of the matter, proves but a very poor security to it, being so often urged and overborne (as it is) by the powerful impressions which such objects are almost continually, and with so much success, still making upon it.

Nor is it only the present state of corrupt nature which gives force and efficacy to these importunate assaults; but it is altogether as manifest, that the forementioned qualifications of this subtle agent, even in the state of innocence itself, made him so much too hard for our first parents, that, under all the advantages of that blessed estate, he got ground of them so speedily and so effectually, that he made a shift to out them of paradise and their innocence too, before they had passed one whole day in either.

Whereupon a universal contagion seizing the whole mass of human nature, and all mankind (the second Adam only, by his miraculous conception, excepted) being ever since born in sin, and not only born, but fatally grown up in it, and made slaves to it too; how almost could it be imagined, that there should be so much as room for any farther addition to the forlorn and miserable estate of a creature so weak, so wretched, and so wholly biased to his own ruin, as man, upon this account, undeniably is? Indeed, with so mighty a bias is he now carried on towards it, that (one would have thought) it might have given even this restless and malicious spirit himself (were he capable of it) his quietus est: it being hard to judge, to what purpose so skilful an artist (and so perfectly acquainted with his business) should employ himself in planting engines and laying trains to blow up one, who, by the freest choice of his own will, and in spite of all the principles of self-preservation, is upon every turn so ready to destroy himself. He who will needs

venture into the deep, with neither strength nor skill to encounter the boisterous element, will quickly find the stream alone more than sufficient to bear him down and sink him, without the concurrence of either wind or tide to speed his destruction.

And this, God knows, is but too much our case. Every one of us, from the bare sway of his own inherent corruption, carrying enough and enough about him to assure his final doom, without any farther impulse from without, to push home and finish the killing stroke. He who is ready to breathe his last by a fever, surely needs not to be despatched with a sword.

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But this is not the worst nor saddest of a man's condition, with reference to temptation, neither for though it be too certain, that the corruption of man's nature is such, that it is sufficient to destroy him without the tempter's doing any thing towards it, yet it is as certain also, that it never actually destroys him, but the tempter has a hand in that fatal work. Such an adversary have we, the sons of Adam, to contend with; an adversary, who, in conjunction with his two grand allies, the world and the flesh, will be always carrying on an implacable war against souls. For God has declared so much, and men have found and felt it; and (whatsoever atheism or infidelity may object) neither must the justice of the one be disputed, nor the experience of the other be denied. Nevertheless, from what has been said, this, I think, may very rationally be inferred, that there cannot be a stronger argument to evince the necessity of a superior good spirit to assist and bear men through the difficulties of a Christian course, than this one consideration, that, besides a man's own natural corruption, there is an evil spirit continually active and intent to seduce and draw him from it. Upon which account most certainly it is, that the heart of man, so weak in itself within, and so assaulted from without, if not borne up and assisted by something mightier than itself, is by no means an equal match for the tempter.

In the prosecution of the words, I shall consider these two things,

1st, Who are here to be understood by the godly. And,

2dly, What is here meant by temptation. And here,

First, for the first of these: we may take this for a certain, though perhaps an obvious direction of our inquiries in this matter, namely, that we are not to look or seek for the godly, here spoken of by the apostle, where we may be sure beforehand not to find them; that is to say, amongst such as, with the highest confidence, or rather impudence, not only arrogate, but engross this great character to themselves; such as measure their godliness by looks, postures, and phrases, by a jargon

of scriptural cant, and a flow of some warm, rapturous, and fantastic expressions; all according to the sanctified whine and peculiar dialect of those times of infatuation, when noise and nonsense so mightily bore down sense and reason, and the godliness then in vogue turned religion quite out of doors. It was the very shibboleth of the party; nothing being so much in fashion with them as the name, nor more out of fashion, and out of sight too, than the thing itself.

But godliness (blessed be God) is not a mere word or pretence, a trick of state, or political engine to support a party or serve a turn, and much less an occasional cover for a stated hypocrisy. No, it springs from a nobler soil and a deeper root, and, like the great object of it, God himself, "is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever;" in its original, divine; in its rule, unchangeable.

And therefore, since bare negatives are not to be rested in, where so high a perfection is to be accounted for, (a perfection comprehending in it all the graces of a Christian, and no less than the image of God himself new stamped upon the soul,) he and he only can lay claim to so glorious a qualification, who is actually in covenant with God, and that not only by external profession, but by real relation; a relation entitling him to all the benefits of a federal estate, by coming up to the conditions of it; or, to be yet more particular, he who with a full and fixed resolution of heart has taken the whole law of Christ in the several precepts of it, with the utmost hardships attending them, for his portion in this world, and the promises of it for his inheritance in the next: he who rules his appetites by his reason, and both by his religion: he who makes his duty his business, till at length he comes to make it his delight too: he whose sole design is to be pious, without affecting to be thought so he who lives and acts by a mighty principle within, which the world about him neither sees nor understands; a principle respecting all God's commands without reserve; a principle carrying a man out to a course of obedience, for the duration of it constant, and for the extent of it universal and lastly, in a word, he and he only ought to pass for godly, according to the stated, unalterable rules and measures of Christianity, who allows not himself in the omission of any known duty, or the commission of the least known sin. And this certainly will, and nothing less, that I know of, can, either secure a man from falling into temptation, or (which is yet a greater happiness) from falling by it. All other measures not coming up to this standard are vain, trifling, and fallacious, and to all the real purposes of religion wholly ineffectual. They give us but a godliness of a man's own making, and consequently of his own rewarding too,

if ever it be rewarded at all. And thus much for the explication of the first thing; namely, who and what the godly are, to whom the text promises so great a privilege, as to be "delivered from temptation."

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2dly, The other thing to be inquired into and explained by us is, what is here meant by temptation, a thing better known by its ill effects, than by the best description. The Greek word is upaσμos, which signifies trial, and so imports not so much the matter, as the end of the dispensation. So that any thing whatsoever which tends to try and discover what is in the heart or will of man, is and may be (in one respect or other) called a temptation. In which sense, outward crosses and afflictions are so called, and the people of God are bidden by the apostle "to rejoice, when they fall into divers temptations," (James, i. 2.) And according to the several ways and methods, whereby God draws forth and discovers what is lodged in the hearts of men, good or bad, God himself is said to tempt them," that is, to try or prove them. In which respect he was said to have tempted Abraham, (Gen. xxii. 1.) But (the common and most received use of the word having added something of malignity to its first and native signification) generally in scripture it denotes not only a bare trial, but such an one as is attended with a design to hurt or mischieve the people so tried. In which sense the scribes and pharisees are so often brought in by the evangelists tempting our Saviour; that is, they were still trying him with captious, ensnaring questions, as we find in Luke xi. 54, and elsewhere, "to get something out of his mouth to accuse and destroy him." But chiefly and most frequently the scripture means by it such a trial, as is intended to supplant and ruin a man in his spiritual concerns, by inducing him to sin, and so subjecting him to the fatal effects and consequents thereof. And thus, on the contrary, it is said of God, "that he tempts no man," (James, i. 13.) This sort of temptation always proceeding from a man's own inherent corruption and concupiscence, set on work by their trusty confederate and co-worker the devil, whose peculiar province and perpetual business being to tempt men this way, he has accordingly, by way of eminence, appropriated the odious name of tempter to himself. And therefore, to give a full account of this whole matter in short; any thing or object whatsoever, whereby a man, either through the instigation of the devil or his agents, or the corruption of his own heart, or the particular circumstances of his condition, or all of them together, is apt to be drawn or disposed to some sinful action or omission, is that which the scripture principally and most properly calls a temptation.

And this, I conceive, gives us so true and

full an account of the general nature of temptation, that no particular sort of it can be assigned, but what is directly comprehended in it, or fairly reducible to it.

As for the sense in which the word ought to be taken here, it may be, and no doubt with great truth is, in the full latitude of it, applicable to both sorts of temptation: it being no less the prerogative of God's goodness and power to deliver men from such trials as afflict them, than from such as are designed to corrupt them. Nevertheless, I think it also as little to be doubted, that the text chiefly respects this latter signification, and accordingly speaks here most designedly of such a deliverance as breaks the snares, and defeats the stratagems, by which the great and mortal enemy of mankind is so infinitely busy, first to debauch, and then to destroy souls.

Nor can the very reason of the words (so far as I can judge) infer any thing else; forasmuch as all the instances here given by the apostle in the foregoing part of this chapter, as first, of "persons seduced and drawn aside by false prophets and teachers bringing in damnable doctrines amongst them," in the first verse; and then of Noah delivered from that general inundation of sin, by which one deluge (as I may so express it) brought upon the world another, in the fifth verse; and lastly, of righteous Lot's deliverance from the filthy conversation of the Sodomites, in the seventh verse, are all of them but so many notable examples of several persons, some delivered to, and others delivered from, such a sort of temptation, as without affecting the outward man, were to shoot their poison and pollution only into the inmost powers of the soul or spirit, wounding and working upon that by secret and more killing impressions.

Add to this, that the deliverance from temptation here insisted upon, is set forth as a singular privilege and special act of favour vouchsafed by God to the righteous, and that in a very distinguishing way, (as shall be shewn presently ;) whereas a deliverance from temporal crosses and calamities can hardly, with any congruity to other places and passages of scripture, be termed so; since such crosses, for the most part, are there declared to be the lot and portion of the godly in this world, the known mark of their calling, a proof of their saintship, and the very badge of their profession.

Nevertheless, allowing this sense of the word not to be wholly excluded here, the argument we may draw from thence, for our present assertion, will run, a fortiore, thus: That if it be so signal a mercy for God to deliver the saints from the mere outside and surface of misery, in those temporal pressures and adversities, which, though possibly they may

sometimes incommode the man, yet can never reach the saint, and though they break the casket, can never come at the jewel, certainly it nust needs be a mercy of a much higher rate, to deliver them from such temptations as carry nothing but hell and death along with them, and are of so strong, so malign, and so fatal an influence upon the soul, as to drive at nothing less than its utter ruin and damnation.

And now, if upon what has been sauit he here inquired, whether they are the rigatous only whom God delivers from temptation, and that no such deliverances are ever vouchsafed by him to any of the contrary character?

I answer, that I can find nothing in scripture or reason to found such a doctrine upon; but that such deliverances both may be and sometimes are vouchsafed to persons, far enough from being reckoned godly, either in the accounts of God or man. And first, that

they may be so, we need no other reason to evince it than this, that God, in these cases, may very well restrain the actions, without working any change upon the will or affections. And this, both with reference to the evil spirit himself, whom he may control, and keep from tempting; as likewise with reference to wicked men, from whom he may, in several instances, cut off the opportunities of sinning, or complying with the tempter, and yet leave them as habitually wicked as they were before God's restraining grace often extending itself to such as his sanctifying grace never reaches. And in the next place, that such deliverances not only may be, but sometimes actually are afforded to persons represented under no note of piety or virtue, but much otherwise, those three memorable examples of Abimelech, Esau, and Balaam, the first in the 20th of Genesis, the second in the 33d of Genesis, and the other in the 22d of Numbers, sufficiently demonstrate.

So that we may rationally conclude, that even wicked persons also are sometimes sharers in such deliverances; but still so, that this by all means ought to be observed withal, that the said deliverances are dealt forth to these two different sorts of men upon very different grounds; namely, to the former upon the stock of covenant or promises; to the latter upon the stock of uncovenanted merey, and the free, overflowing egress of the divine beniguity, often exerting itself upon such as have no claim to it at all. The sovereign Author of all good, in this, as in innumerable other cases, scattering some of the bounties of his common grace, as well as those of nature, amongst the sons of men, for the wise and just ends of his providence in the government of the world; which would quickly dissolve and sink into confusion, should even the wickedest of men be always as wicked as the tempter (if he had his wif) would assuredly make them.

Now this exposition of the words thus premised, I shall cast the prosecution of them under these three particulars:

1st, To shew how far God delivers persons truly pious out of temptation.

2dly, To shew what is the grand motive or impulsive cause inducing God thus to deliver them. And,

3dly and lastly, To shew why and upon what grounds this is to be reputed so great a mercy and so transcendent a privilege.

And first for the first of these, namely, How far God delivers persons truly pious from temptation. This I shall endeavour to shew, by considering them with reference to temp tation these three ways:

1st, As before they enter into it.

2dly, As they are actually entered into it. And,

3dly and lastly, As they are in some degree prevailed upon by it.

All ways of deliverance from it being accordingly reducible to, and comprehensive within the compass of these three, namely,

1st, Of being kept from it; as the church of Philadelphia was, in the third of Rev.

ver. 10.

2dly, Of being supported under it; as Joseph in the 39th of Genesis, and Saint Paul in the 2d of Corinthians, 12th chap. and 9th ver. (we read) were. And,

3dly and lastly, Of being brought out of it, as in Luke xxii. 31. we find Saint Peter to have been, and as all true penitents and sin

cere converts never fail to be.

Each of which particular heads shall be distinctly considered by us. And,

First of all; God delivers by way of prevention, or keeping off the temptation; which of all other ways is doubtless the surest, as the surest is unquestionably the best. For by this is set a mighty barrier between the soul and the earliest approaches of its mortal enemy. Whereas, on the contrary, the first step in any destructive course still prepares for the second, and the second for the third; after which there is no stop, but the progress is infinite; forasmuch as the third more powerfully disposes to the fourth, than the first to the second; and so the advance proportionably goes on.

Which being so, and the soul no less than the body, being subject to so many distempers, too likely to prove fatal to it, must not preventing remedies in all reason be both the gentlest and the safest for it too? Distance from danger is the strongest fence against it: and that man needs not fear burning, (be the fire never so fierce,) who keeps himself from being so much as scorched.

If we consider the sin of the fallen angels themselves, there might, without dispute, have been a prevention of it, though no recovery after it; and a keeping of their first

station, (as the apostle expresses it,) though, when once quitted, no postliminous return to it, no retrieving of a lost innocence or a forfeited felicity.

For which causes the preventing methods of grace may deservedly pass for some of the prime instances of the divine mercy to men in this world. For though it ought to be owned for an eminent act of grace to restore one actually fallen, yet there are not wanting arguments to persuade, that it is a greater to keep one from falling. Not to break a limb is more desirable, than to have it set and healed, though never so skilfully and well. Preservation in this, as in many other cases, being better a great deal than restoration; since, after all is done, it is odds but the scar will remain when the wound is cured, and the danger over. *

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And therefore happy, no doubt, by a distinguished sort of happiness, are those favourites of heaven, who have both omnipotence and omniscience, infinite power and infinite wisdom, jointly engaged by infinite mercy, so to guard and watch over them through all the various turns and hazardous encounters in their Christian course, as to bring them off from the enemy safe and untouched, and to work their deliverance rather by rescue than recovery. It is a work in which God, as I may so speak, shews his art and skill. God knows how to deliver the godly," says the text. The whole action is carried on by preventing grace, under the conduct of that high attribute of God's knowledge; and especially that noble branch of it, his foreknowledge, by which he has the remotest futurities and the loosest contingencies under a certain and exact view. For though, indeed, the divine knowledge (as all other knowledge) be of itself inoperative; (the proper nature of knowledge being only to apprehend and judge of what comes before it, and rather to suppose than to work upon its object;) yet if the divine knowledge did not certainly and infallibly foresee and comprehend every turn, motion, and foredetermination of man's will, with reference to every object or motive that can possibly be presented to it, how could God so steadily and effectually ward off all those evils and temptations, which the several events, accidents, and occasions of our lives (all of them variously affecting our wills) would from time to time expose us to? Omnipotence itself could not certainly prevent a danger, if omniscience did not foresee it. For where there is no prescience there can be no prevention. And this is a demonstration that all such preventive deliverances are so peculiarly and wholly from God, that, for want of this perfection, no man living can possibly thus deliver himself. "I will guide thee with

* See Sermon XXII. Vol. I. p. 178, concerning Prevention of Sin.

mine eye," says God, (Psalm xxxii. 8.) Next to the protecting shelter of God's wing is the securing prospect of his eye.

Numerous are the deliverances that God works for us, which we see, but infinitely more those which we do not see, but he does. For how often is the scene of our destruction contrived and laid by the tempter! how often are his nets spread for us, and those of too curious and fine a thread to be discernible by our eye, and we go securely treading on to our own ruin, when suddenly the mercy of a preventing Providence stops us in our walk, and pulls back our foot from the fatal

snare!

Unspeakable are the advantages vouchsafed to mankind by God's preventing grace; if we consider how apt a temptation is to diffuse, and how prone our nature is to receive an infection. It is dangerous dwelling even in the suburbs of an infected city. Not only the touches, but also the very breath of a temptation is poisonous; and there is sometimes (if I may so express it) a contagion even without

a contact.

And if the conscience has not wholly lost its native tenderness, it will not only dread the infection of a wound, but also the aspersion of a blot. For though the soul be not actually corrupted and debauched by a temptation, yet it is something to be sullied and blown upon by it, to have been in the dangerous familiarities of sin, and in the next approach and neighbourhood of destruction. Such being the nature of man, that it is hardly possible for him to be near an ill thing, and

not the worse for it.

For if we accurately observe the inward movings and actions of the heart, we shall find that temptation wins upon it by very small, secret, and almost insensible gradations. Perhaps in its first converse with a tempting object, it is not presently surprised with a desire of it; but does it not hereby come to lose some of its former averseness to it? Possibly, at first view, it may not esteem it amiable, but does it not begin to think it less ugly? Its love may not be yet kindled, but is not its former loathing something abated? The encroaches of a temptation are so strangely insinuating, that no security under it can be comparable to a being remote from it and therefore, if we hate its friendship, let us dread its acquaintance, shun its converse, and keep aloof off from its company. For he who would gain a complete triumph over it, must know, that to grapple with it is at best a venture, but to fly from it is certain victory.

And if so, where can a man be so safe as in the arms of sin-preventing grace? the sovereign influence of which will appear, not only from those peculiar effects of it upon the pious and the virtuous, but also from those great things done by it even for the worst and