Line On Line

[Coconut]

LINE ON LINE.

MOSES, in God’s name, did counsel Joshua, Deut. xxxi. 23: Be strong, and of a good courage, for thou shalt bring the children of Israel into the land which I sware unto them. God immediately did command him, Josh. i. 6: Be strong, and of a good courage; and again, ver. 7: Only be thou strong and very courageous; and again, ver. 9: Have not I commanded thee? be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed. Lastly, the Reubenites 108and Gadites heartily desired him, ver. 18: Only be strong and of a good courage.

Was Joshua a dunce, or a coward? did his wit or his valor want an edge, that the same precept must so often be pressed upon him? No doubt neither; but God saw it needful that Joshua should have courage of proof, who was to encounter both the froward Jew and the fierce Canaanite.

Though metal on metal, colour on colour, be false heraldry, line on line, precept on precept, [Is. xxviii. 10.] is true divinity.

Be not therefore offended, O my soul, if the same doctrine be often delivered unto thee by different preachers: if the same precept, like the sword in Paradise, which turned every way, [Gen. iii. 24.] doth hunt and haunt thee, tracing thee which way soever thou turnest, rather conclude that thou art deeply concerned in the practice thereof, which God hath thought fit should be so frequently inculcated into thee.


Good Thoughts in Bad Times.
Fuller, Thomas (1608-1661)

 

[Coconut]

A NEW PLOT.

WHEN Herod had beheaded John the Baptist, some might expect that his disciples would have done some great matter in revenge of their master’s death. But see how they behave themselves. And his disciples came and took up the body and buried it, and went and told Jesus. And was this all? and what was all this? Alas, poor men, it was some solace to their sorrowful souls that they might lament their loss to a fast friend, who, though for the present unable to help, was willing to pity them.

Hast thou thy body unjustly imprisoned, or thy goods violently detained, or thy credit causelessly defamed? I have a design whereby thou shalt revenge thyself, even go and tell Jesus. Make to him a plain and true report of the manner and measure of thy sufferings: especially there being a great difference betwixt Jesus then clouded in the flesh, and Jesus now shining in glory, having now as much pity and more power to redress thy grievances. I know it is counted but a cowardly trick for boys, when beaten but by their equals, to cry that 126they will tell their father. But, during the present necessity, it is both the best wisdom and valour, even to complain to thy Father in heaven, who will take thy case into his serious consideration.

 

[Coconut]

WORSE BEFORE BETTER.

STRANGE was the behaviour of our Saviour toward his beloved Lazarus; informed by a messenger of his sickness, he abode two days still in the place where he was. [John xi. 6.] Why so slow? bad sending him on a dying man’s errands. But the cause was, because Lazarus was not bad enough for Christ to cure, intending not to recover him from sickness, but revive him from death, to make the glory of the miracle greater.

England doth lie desperately sick of a violent disease in the bowels thereof. Many messengers we despatch (monthly fasts, weekly sermons, daily prayers) to inform God of our sad 136condition. He still stays in the same place, yea, which is worse, seems to go backward, for every day less likelihood, less hope of help. May not this be the reason, that our land must yet be reduced to more extremity, that God may have the higher honour of our deliverance?

 

[Coconut]

A NEW DISEASE.

THERE is a disease of infants (and an infant disease, having scarcely as yet gotten a proper name in Latin) called the rickets; wherein the head waxeth too great, whilst the legs and lower parts wain too little. A woman in the west hath happily healed many, by cauterizing the vein behind the ear. How proper the remedy for the malady I engage not, experience ofttimes outdoing art, whilst we behold the cure easily effected, and the natural cause thereof hardly assigned.

Have not many now-a-days the same sickness in their souls? their heads swelling to a vast proportion, and they wonderfully enabled with knowledge to discourse? But, alas! how little their legs, poor their practice, and lazy their walking in a godly conversation! Shall I say that such may be cured by searing the vein in their head, not to hurt their hearing, but hinder the itching of their ears.
141

Indeed, his tongue deserves to be burnt that talks of searing the ears of others; for faith cometh by hearing. But I would have men not to hear few sermons, but hear more in hearing fewer sermons. Less preaching better heard (reader, lay the emphasis not on the word less, but on the word better) would make a wiser and stronger Christian, digesting the word from his heart to practise it in his conversation.

 

[Coconut]

PRAYER MUST BE QUOTIDIAN.

AMONGST other arguments enforcing the necessity of daily prayer, this not the least, that Christ enjoins us to petition for daily bread. New bread we know is best; and in a spiritual sense, our bread, though in itself as stale and mouldy as that of the Gibeonites, 156is every day new, because a new and hot blessing, as I might say, is daily begged, and bestowed of God upon it.

Manna must daily be gathered, and not provisionally be hoarded up. God expects that men every day address themselves unto him, by petitioning him for sustenance.

How contrary is this to the common practice of many. As camels in sandy countries are said to drink but once in seven days, and then in praesens, praeteritum, et futurum, for time past, present, and to come, so many fumble this, last, and next week’s devotion all in a prayer. Yea, some defer all their praying till the last day.

Constantine had a conceit, that because baptism washed away all sins, he would not be baptized till his death-bed, that so his soul might never lose the purity thereof, but immediately mount to heaven. But sudden death preventing him, he was not baptized at all, as some say, or only by an Arian bishop, as others affirm. If any erroneously, on the same supposition, put off their prayers to the last, let them take heed, lest long delayed, at last they prove either none at all or none in effect.

 

[Coconut]

LOVE AND ANGER.

I SAW two children fighting together in the street. The father of the one passing by, fetched his son away and corrected him; the . other lad was left without any check, though both were equally faulty in the fray. I was half offended, that being guilty alike, they were not punished alike: but the parent would only meddle with him over whom he had an undoubted dominion, to whom he bare an unfeigned affection.

The wicked sin, the godly smart most in this world. God singleth out his own sons, and beateth them by themselves; whom he loveth he chasteneth. [Heb. xii. 6.] Whilst the ungodly, preserved from affliction, are reserved for destruction. It being needless that their hair should be shaved with a hired razor, [Is. vii. 20.] whose heads are intended for the axe of divine justice. [Matth. iii. 10.]

 

[Coconut]

UPWARDS, UPWARDS.

HOW large houses do they build in London on little ground! Revenging themselves on the narrowness of their room with store of stories. Excellent arithmetic! from the root of one floor to multiply so many chambers. And though painful the climbing up, pleasant the staying there, the higher the healthfuller, with clearer light and sweeter air.

Small are my means on earth. May I mount my soul the higher in heavenly meditations, relying on Divine Providence; He that fed many thousands with five loaves, [Matth. xiv. 17.] may feed me and mine with the fifth part of that one loaf, that once all mine. Higher, my soul! higher! In bodily buildings, commonly the garrets are most empty, but my mind, the higher mounted, will be the better furnished. Let perseverance to death be my uppermost chamber, the roof of which grace is the pavement of glory.

 

[Coconut]

LOST AND KEPT.

THIS seeming paradox will, on examination, prove a real truth, viz. that though Job lost his seven thousand sheep consumed by fire of God, Job i. 16, (understand it, by his permission, and Satan’s immission,) yet he still kept the wool of many of them.

For Job, in the vindication of his integrity, (not to praise but purge himself,) doth relate, how the loins of the poor blessed him, being warmed with the fleece of his sheep (Job xxxi. 20). So much of his wool (in the cloth made thereof) he secured in a safe hand, lending it to God (in poor people), Prov. xix. 17, as the best of debtors, being most able and willing to repay it.

Such as have been plundered of their estates in these wars may content and comfort themselves with this consideration, that so long as they enjoyed plenty they freely parted with a proportion thereof to the relief of the poor: what they gave, that they have; it still remaineth theirs, and is safely laid up for them in a place where rust and moth do not corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal.

 

[Coconut]

BEAT THYSELF.

I SAW a mother threatening to beat her little child for not rightly pronouncing that petition in the Lord’s prayer: And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. The child essayed and offered as well as it could to utter it, adventuring at tepasses, trepasses, but could not pronounce the word aright. Alas! it is a shibboleth to a child’s tongue, wherein there is a confluence of hard consonants together; and therefore if the mother had beaten defect in the infant for default, she deserved to have been beaten herself.

The rather because what the child could not pronounce the parents do not practise. O how 226lispingly and imperfectly do we perform the close of this petition: As we forgive them that trespass against us. It is well if with the child we endeavour our best, though falling short in the exact observance thereof.

 

[Coconut]

A GOOD ANCHOR.

ISAAC, ignorantly going along to be offered, propounded to his father a very hard question, Gen. xxii. 7: Behold the fire and wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?

Abraham returned, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt-offering.

But was not this gratis dictum of Abraham? Did not he herein speak without book? Where and when did God give him a promise to provide him a lamb?

Indeed, he had no particular promise as to this present point, but he had a general one, Gen. xv. 1: Fear not, Abraham, I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward. Here was not only a lamb, but a flock of sheep, yea, a herd of all cattle promised unto him.

It hath kept many an honest soul in these sad times from sinking into despair, that though they had no express in Scripture that they should be freed from the particular miseries relating to this war, yet they had God’s grand charter for it, Rom. viii. 28: And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

 

[Coconut]

CALEB, ALL HEART.

I WAS lately satisfied in what I heard of before, by the confession of an excellent artist, (the most skilful in any kind are most willing to acknowledge their ignorance,) that the mystery of annealing of glass, that is, baking it so that the colour may go clean through it, is now by some casualty quite lost in England, if not in Europe.

Break a piece of red glass, painted some four hundred years since, and it will be found as red in the middle as in the outsides; the colour is not only on it, but in it and through it.

Whereas, now all art can perform is only to fix the red on one side of the glass, and that ofttime so faint and fading, that within few years it falleth off, and looketh piebald to the eye.

I suspect a more important mystery is much lost in our age, viz. the transmitting of piety clean through the heart, that a man become inside and outside alike. O the sincerity of the ancient patriarchs, inspired prophets, holy apostles, patient martyrs, and pious fathers of 246the primitive Church, whereas only outside sanctity is too usual in our age. Happy the man on whose monument that character of Asa (1 Kings xv. 14) may be truly inscribed for his epitaph: Here lieth the man whose heart was perfect with the Lord all his days. Heart perfect, O the finest of wares! All his days, O the largest of measures!

 

[Coconut]

COURTESY GAINETH.

I HAVE heard the royal party (would I could say without any cause) complained of, that they have not charity enough for converts, who came off unto them from the opposite side; who, though they express a sense of and sorrow for their mistakes, and have given testimony, though perchance not so plain and public as others expected, of their sincerity, yet still they are suspected as unsound; and such as frown not on, look but asquint at them.

This hath done much mischief, and retarded the return of many to their side; for had these their van-couriers been but kindly entertained, possibly ere now their whole army had come over unto us; which now are disheartened by the cold welcome of these converts.

Let this fault be mended for the future, that such proselytes may meet with nothing to discourage, all things to comfort and content them.
263

Let us give them not only the right hand of fellowship, but even the upper hand of superiority. One asked a mother who had brought up many children to a marriageable age, what art she used to breed up so numerous an issue; “None other,” said she, “save only, I always made the most of the youngest.” Let the Benjamins ever be darlings, and the last born, whose eyes were newest opened with the sight of their errors, be treated with the greatest affection.

 

[Coconut]

PREPARATIVE.

TWILIGHT is a great blessing of God to mankind: for, should our eyes be instantly posted out of darkness into light, out of midnight into morning, so sudden a surprisal would blind us. God, therefore, of his goodness, hath made the intermediate twilight to prepare our eyes for the reception of the light.

Such is his dealing with our English nation. We were lately in the midnight of misery. It was questionable whether the law should first draw up the will and testament of dying divinity, or divinity first make a funeral sermon for expiring law. Violence stood ready to invade 265our property, heresies and schisms to oppress religion.

Blessed be God, we are now brought into a better condition, yea, we are past the equilibrium; the beam beginning to break on the better side, and our hopes to have the mastery of our despairs. God grant this twilight may prove crepusculum matutinum, forerunning the rising of the sun, and increase of our happiness.

 

[Coconut]

SILENCE AWHILE.

HAD not mine eyes, as any other man’s may, read it in the printed proclamations of King Edward the Sixth, (when the pulpits, generally Popish, sounded the alarm to Kett’s rebellion, and the Devonshire commotion,) I would not have believed what followeth:—

2 Edw. VI. Sept. 13.

“By these presents, Wee inhibite generally all manner of Preachers whatsoever they be, to preach in this meane space,4343This lasted in full force but for some few weeks. to the intent that the whole Clergy might apply themselves in prayer to Almightie God, for the better atchieving of the same most Godlie intent, and purpose of Reformation.”

What hurt were it if in this juncture of time all our preaching were turned into praying for one month together, that God would settle a happy peace in this nation?
268

However, if this be offensive to any, and giveth cause of distaste, the second motion may be embraced: that for a year, at least, all pulpits may be silent as to any part of differences relating to our times, and only deliver what belongeth to faith and good works.