Читать книгу Christ: The Way, the Truth, and the Life - John Brown - Страница 5

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CHRISTIAN READER,

If thou answer this designation, and art really a partaker of the unction, which is the high import of that blessed and glorious name called upon thee, thine eye must affect thy heart, and a soul swelled with godly sorrow must at last burst and bleed forth at a weeping eye, while thou looks upon most of this licentious and loathsome generation, arrived at that height of prodigious profanity as to glory in their shame, and boast of bearing the badge and black mark of damnation. But, besides this swarm who savage it to hell, and make such haste hither, as they foam themselves into everlasting flames, carrying, under the shape and visage of men, as devils in disguise; the face of the church is covered with a scum of such, who are so immersed in the concerns of this life, and are so intense in the pursuit of the pleasures, gain, and honours thereof, as their way doth manifestly witness them to be sunk into the deep oblivion of God, and desperate inconsideration of their precious and immortal souls. But in the third place, besides these who are hurried into such a distraction with the cares of this life, that they, as natural brute beasts made to be destroyed, are never at leisure to consider either the nature and necessity of their noble souls, or to converse with the notion of a Deity. Thou may perceive a company of self-deceiving speculatists, who make broad the phylacteries of their garments, and boast of some high attainments in religion; yea, would have others look upon them as arrived at the very porch of heaven, and advanced to a high pitch of proficiency in the ways of God, because they can discourse a little of the mysteries of salvation, and without ever diving farther into the depth and true nature of religion, dream themselves into a consideration of being saints, and conclude themselves candidates for glory.

This is that heart-moving object which presents itself to thy eye and observation this day. This is that deplorable posture, wherein thou mayest perceive most men at the very point of perishing eternally, who are within the pale of the visible church, some dancing themselves headlong in all haste into the lake of fire and brimstone, some so much concerned in things which have no connexion with their happiness, as to drop unconcernedly into the pit, out of which there is no redemption; and others dreaming themselves into endless perdition: and all of them unite in a deriding at, or despising the means used, and essays made, in order to their recovery.

But if his servants, in following their work closely, seem to have gained a little ground upon men, and almost persuaded them to be Christians, Satan, to the end he may make all miscarry, and counterwork these workers together with God, and poison poor souls by a perversion of the gospel, beyond the power of an antidote, hath raised up, instigated and set on work a race of proud rationalists, for they are wiser than to class themselves amongst those poor fools, those base things, those nothings, to whom Christ is made all things, to whom Christ is made wisdom that he may be righteousness, sanctification, and redemption to them; nay, they must be wise men after the flesh, wise above what is written. A crucified Christ is really unto them foolishness and weakness, though the power of God and the wisdom of God: they will needs go to work another way; they will needs glory in his presence, and have a heaven of their own band-wind. O my soul, enter not into their secrets! and, O sweet Jesus, let thy name be to me, The Lord my righteousness; thou hast won it—wear it; and gather not my soul with such who make mention of any other righteousness but of thine only! to bring in another gospel amongst us than the gospel of the grace of God. As they determine to know some other thing than Christ and him crucified; so with the enticing words of man's wisdom they bewitch men into a disobedience to the truth, setting somewhat else before them than a crucified Christ; and this they do, that they may remove men from those who call them into the grace of Christ, unto another gospel. A Christ, it is true; they speak of; but it is not the Christ of God, for all they drive at (O cursed and truly antichristian design!) is, that he may profit them nothing, while they model all religion according to this novel project of their magnified morality. This is that which gives both life and lustre to that image which they adore, to the Dagon after whom they would have the world wonder and worship.

That there is such a moralizing or muddizing, if I may be for once admitted to coin a new word to give these men their due, of Christianity now introduced and coming in fashion, many of the late pieces in request do evince. Now that Christianity should moralize men above all things, I both give and grant; for he who is partaker of the divine nature, and hath obtained precious faith, must add virtue to his faith. But that it should be only conceived and conceited as an elevation of nature to a more clear light, in the matter of morality, wherein our Lord is only respected as an heavenly teacher and perfect pattern proposed for imitation, is but a proud, pleasing fancy of self-conceited, darkened, and deluded dreamers, robbing God of the glory of his mercy and goodness; our Lord Jesus Christ of the glory of his grace and merit. The spirit of the efficacy of his glorious and mighty operations; and themselves and their pilgrimages, who give them the hand as guides, of the comfort and fruit of all.

It cannot escape thy observation, how busy Satan is this day, upon the one hand, to keep men, under the call of the gospel to give all diligence to make their calling and election sure, idle all the day, so that no persuasion can induce them to engage seriously to fall about a working out their own salvation in fear and trembling; and, on the other, equally diligent and industrious to divert men from trusting in the name of the Lord, and staying upon their God; setting them on work to go and gather fuel, and kindle a fire, and compass themselves about with sparks, that they may walk in the light of their own fire, and in the sparks that they have kindled, knowing well that they shall this way most certainly lose their toil and travel, and have no other reward at his hand of all their labour, but to lie down in everlasting sorrow, while the stout-hearted and far from righteousness and salvation, shall get their soul for a prey, and be made to rejoice in his salvation, and bless him who hath made them meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.

I am neither the fit person for so great an undertaking, nor do these limits, within which I must bound myself, permit me to expatiate in many notions about the nature of this excellent and precious thing, true gospel holiness. Oh! if, in the entry, I could on my own behalf and others, sob out my alas! from the bottom of my soul, because, be what it will, it is some other thing than men take it to be. Few habituate themselves to a thinking upon it, in its high nature, and soul enriching advantages, till their hearts receive suitable impressions of it, and their lives be the very transumpt of the law of God written in their heart; the thing, alas! is lost in a noise of words, and heap of notions about it; neither is it a wonder that men fall into mistakes about it, since it is only the heart possessed of it that is capable to understand and perceive its true excellency. But if it be asked what it is; we say, it may be shortly taken up, as the elevation and raising up of a poor mortal unto a conformity with God. As a participation of the divine nature, or as the very image of God stamped on the soul, impressed on the thoughts and affections, and expressed in the life and conversation; so that the man in whom Christ is formed, and in whom he dwells, lives, and walks, hath while upon the earth, a conversation in heaven; not only in opposition to those many, whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things; but also to those pretenders unto and personaters of religion, who have confidence in the flesh, and worship God with their own spirit, which in the matters of God is flesh and not spirit, and have somewhat else to rejoice in than in Christ Jesus, and a being found in him, not having their own righteousness.

True gospel holiness, then, consists in some similitude and likeness to God, and fellowship with him founded upon that likeness. There is such an impression of God, his glorious attributes, his infinite power, majesty, mercy, justice, wisdom, holiness, and grace, &c., as sets him up all alone in the soul without any competition, and produceth those real apprehensions of him, that he is alone excellent and matchless. O how preferable doth be appear, when indeed seen, to all things! And how doth this light of his infinite gloriousness, shining into the soul, darken and obscure to an invisibleness all other excellencies, even as the rising of the sun makes all the lesser lights to disappear. Alas! how is God unknown in his glorious being and attributes! When once the Lord enters the soul, and shines into the heart, it is like the rising of the sun at midnight: all these things which formerly pretended to some loveliness, and did dazzle with their lustre, are eternally darkened. Now, all natural perfections, and moral virtues, in their flower and perfections, are at best looked upon as aliquid nihil. What things were formerly accounted gain and godliness, are now counted loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus the Lord, and the soul cannot only suffer the loss of them all without a sob, but be satisfied to throw them away as dung, that it may win him, and be found in him. Now, the wonder of a Deity, in his greatness, power, and grace, swallows up the soul in sweet admiration. O how doth it love to lose itself in finding here what it cannot fathom? And then it begins truly to see the greatness and evil of sin; then it is looked upon without the covering of pleasure or profit, and loathed as the leprosy of hell. Now the man is truly like God in the knowledge of good and evil, in the knowledge of that one infinite good, God; and in the knowledge of that one almost infinite evil, sin. This is the first point of likeness to him, to be conformed to him in our understanding, that as he knows himself to be the only self-being and fountain-good, and all created things in their flower and perfection, with all their real or fancied conveniences being compared with him, but as the drop of a bucket, or nothing; yea, less than nothing, vanity (which is nothing blown up, by the force or forgery of a vainly working imagination, to the consistence of an appearance), so for a soul to know indeed and believe in the heart, that there is nothing deserves the name of good besides God, to have the same superlative and transcendent thoughts of that great and glorious self-being God, and the same diminishing and debasing thoughts of all things and beings besides him. And that as the Lord seeth no evil in the creation but sin, and hates that with a perfect hatred, as contrary to his holy will; so for a soul to aggravate sin in its own sight to an infiniteness of evil, at least till it see it only short of infiniteness in this respect, that it can be swallowed up of infinite mercy. But whence hath the soul all this light? It owes all this, and owns itself as debtor for it to him, who opens the eyes of the blind. It is he who commands the light to shine out of darkness, who hath made these blessed discoveries, and hath given the poor benighted soul, the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ. These irradiations are from the Spirit's illumination; 'tis the Spirit of wisdom and revelation that hath made day-light in the darkened soul. The man who had the heart of a beast, as to any saving or solid knowledge of God or himself, hath now got an understanding to know him that is true. Now is Christ become the poor man's wisdom, he is now renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him; he might well babble of spiritual things, but till now he understood nothing of the beauty and excellency of God and his ways; nay, he knew not what he knew, he was ignorant as a beast of the life and lustre of those things which he knew in the letter; nothing seemed more despicable to him in the world, than true godliness; but now he judgeth otherwise, because he hath the mind of Christ. The things which in his darkness he did undervalue as trifles to be mocked at, he now can only mind and admire, since he became a child of light; now being delivered from that blindness and brutishness of spirit, which possesseth the world, (and possessed himself till he was transformed by the renewing of his mind) who esteem basely of spiritual things, and set them at nought, he prizeth as alone precious. The world wonders what pleasure or content can be in the service of God, because they see not by tasting how good he is; to be prying into and poring upon invisible things, is to them visible madness, but to the enlightened mind, the things that are not seen are only worth seeing, and while they appear not to be, they only are; whereas the things that are seen appear but to be, and are not. Though the surpassing sweetness of spiritual things should be spoke of to them, who cannot favour the things of God, in such a manner as the glorious light of them did surround men; yet they can perceive no such thing; all is to them cunningly devised fables; let be spoke what will, they see no form, no comeliness, no beauty in this glorious object—God in Christ reconciling sinners to himself. Alas! the mind is blinded; the dungeon is within; and till Christ open the eyes, as well as reveal his light, the soul abides in its blindness, and is buried in midnight darkness; but when the Spirit of God opens the man's eyes, and he is translated by an act of omnipotency out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his dear Son, which is a kingdom of marvellous light, O what matchless beauty doth he now see in these things, which appeared despicable and dark nothings to him, till he got the unction, the eye-salve, which teacheth all things. Now he sees (what none without the Spirit can see) the things which God hath prepared for them that love him, and are freely given them of God; and these, though seen at a distance, reflect such rays of beauty into his soul, that he beholds and is ravished, he sees and is swallowed up in wonder.