Armatura Dei, or, A preparation for suffering in an evil day showing how Christians…Armatura Dei, or, A preparation for suffering in an evil day shewing how Christians…

2. We must secure good Hearts. It is said of the Children of Ephraim, that being armed, and carrying Bows, they turned back in the day of Battle, Psal. 78.9. and the reason of this we have in the precedent Verse, they set not their hearts aright. Unless the Heart be good, as well as the Cause, men will turn back from God, and the pure Religion: Corrupt Hearts will ⟨p. 19⟩fall in with the World, and ever be on the Sunny side: In Diocletian's time they can be Pagans; in Constantine's Christians; in Constantius's Arians; in Julian's Pagans again.¹ It is the good Heart only that is sit for Sufferings. Now two things are requisite to make a good Heart; it must be purged from sin; and again, it must be furnished with principles of Grace. 1. It must be purged from sin; from the guilt and power of it: It must be purged from the guilt of sin. A man that hath inward wounds is unfit to bear outward ones. Guilt upon Conscience, like a Boil upon the Back, makes one uncapable to bear the burden of a Cross. They, that are partakers of Christs Sufferings in Martyrdom, had need first partake of them for Remission: They, that wash their Robes in the Blood of the Lamb, by suffering for him, had need first wash their Consciences in it to take away their Guiltiness. It is not imaginable that a man can piously embrace a Temporal Death, when immediately after it he shall fall into an Eternal one: Or that he can patiently bear the wrath of Man, when the wrath of God is to ensue upon it. It was a very forlorn Case with the Egyptians, when they were drowning in the Sea, and God looked through the Cloud upon them; and so it will be with Christians, if the World be as a troubled Sea to them and withal; ⟨p. 20⟩God look with an angry Face upon them: Therefore it much concerns them to get a pardon sealed in the Blood of Jesus Christ, that, when they come to suffer, they may have nothing to bear but the single Cross, without any pressure of Guilt upon Conscience to aggravate it. Again, It must be purged from the power of Sin. Every Lust is a Delilah, an Exhauster (as the Hebrew word signifies,) it takes away the Heart, drains and debases the man, makes him vile and impotent, and by consequence altogether uncapable of so heroical a thing as suffering for God is: He that hath sin reigning in his Heart, will comply with it reigning in the World;