An expository comment, doctrinal, controversial, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…An expository comment, doctrinal, controversal, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…

Fourthly, The principle of flesh and blood doth notoriously press to do any ¹sinful action, neglect any duty, so that we may come out of such troubles. And this affection or sense within a man hath a most immediate opposition to the work of grace within him. It is with the flesh in this case, as it was with Peter to our Saviour, Master (saith he) save thy self; But with what indignation did Christ rebuke him, saying, Get thee behind me Satan? Mat. 16. 23. for thou savourest not the things of God, but of man. Such a Peter, such a Satan is the flesh to thee, that saith, Save thy self, do any thing to escape these troubles: It is not any matter for righteousness or holiness, but look to thy safety. When these whisperings are within thy heart, then rise up in an holy zeal against them: Say, Get thee behind me Satan; This is not to savour the things of God. Had David been filled with such holy zeal, as he was sometimes, against his wife Michol, despising him for his adoration of God, then he had not used so many unlawful shifts as he did to escape danger; his counterfeiting himself mad, his pretending to join with Achish, and to fight against Israel. These were sad snares that he fell into, because he did not ask counsel of the Lord, but consulted only with flesh and blood. Do thou then in thy troubles, as Paul in his extraordinary Call, Obeying immediately the heavenly vision, and not consulting with flesh and blood. In thy troubles ⟨p. 276⟩wait on God, take his way, put not forth thy hand to any sin: Say, it is better to have misery upon thee, then the guilt of sin. It was Abraham's defect of faith, though he was the Father of the faithful, and though his faith staggered not in the trial about offering up of his son, yet in a far more inferior, and less temptation, there he began to reel out of the way, and from carnal fear did use sinful equivocation to Abimeleoh, saying, Sarah was his sister, when she was his wife. This unlawful shift he used to prevent those things he feared. But as Jonah could observe by his own experience, Jon. 3. 8. So it will always prove true, Those that observe lying vanities, forsake their own mercies; when we take not Gods way, we forsake that mercy we might have had, and so make our selves miserable for fear of misery. Raynardus the Jesuit, (Lib. de Mart. part. 1. cap. 21.)