The Spiritual Feelings of
Believers and Hypocrites Compared -
The Difference between the Pleasant
Spiritual Impressions peculiar to true Believers,
and those which
Hypocrites may have in the Ways of Religion.
(This is not a full sermon - just some extracts, with
precious truths drawn out.)
1. True and saving impressions are sociable;
they accompany one another and go hand in hand together: for example holy fear
does not cast out love nor love cast out fear: holy triumph in the Lord does
not take away trembling at his presence; nor holy trembling take away triumph:
joy does not destroy godly sorrow for sin; nor godly sorrow remove spiritual
joy: faith does not destroy repentance; nor repentance destroy faith: the man's
humility does not destroy his boldness before God; nor his boldness of access
destroy humility.
His low thoughts of himself does not destroy his high
thoughts of Christ; nor his high thoughts of Christ destroy his low thoughts of
himself: his self-diffidence does not destroy his holy confidence; nor his holy
confidence destroy self-diffidence. Nay, instead of destroying one another,
they advance and harmoniously help and forward one another.Whereas the
hypocrite's joy destroys his sorrow; his faith and false confidence destroys
and excludes his repentance; his fear destroys his love; and his pretended love
to God destroys his fear of him: one good impression he has, destroys another;
they cannot keep company together. Whereas spiritual impressions in believers
excite and quicken one another.
2. True and saving impressions are
unlimited and unstinted; the good frames of hypocrites stinted and limited;
insomuch that they rest satisfied without their attainments: so far they go,
and reckon they need go no farther, if they think they have so much as will
keep them out of hell, or bring them to heaven.
But true believers have
restrained measures of grace: whatever holy impressions are made upon them,
they still desire more, and more, and more; pressing after consummate
perfection: "I count not myself to have apprehended; but this one thing I do,
forgetting those things that are behind, and reaching forth unto those things
that are before, I press toward the mark, for the prize of the high calling of
God in Christ Jesus," Phil. 3:13.3.
True and saving impressions are
habitual impressions; they are like the believer's daily bread: though a man be
not always eating or drinking, yet the taking of food for the nourishment of
the body, is a man's daily habitual activity: so though the believer be not
always under a divine impression, or in a spiritual frame of mind, but has his
variations, yet he is habitually in this activity; and if any days pass wherein
he is destitute of these meals, they are to him as days of famine, and
spiritual scarcity; his soul pines and languishes, and is uneasy for the lack
of what it would be according to his desires. Whereas hypocrites can be quite
easy in the lack of these things, without ever giving a longing look towards
the Lord for his returning to them. But the believer dies when he experiences
penury and deprivation: these are his melancholy days, his sighing days, till
he recover all again, by the Spirit of the Lord returning, and reviving his
heart, and restoring his soul. It is true, the established believer learns, in
the absence of perceptible enjoyments, to live by faith on the Son of God
indeed, but still that faith gives many a long look for the Lord's returning to
its sweet and sensible embraces.
4. These impressions, in believers, are
not only habitual, but natural. If the hypocrite can have any such impressions,
they are not natural to him, they are not his element; he has no new nature
corresponding thereto: and therefore he cannot endure to be long under any good
and spiritual impressions because his carnal unrenewed recoils against it. His
carnal mind, being enmity against God, and he is content that the impressions
be gone. But to a child of God, these impressions are natural: they are his new
nature, his element; they are like the very breath of his new nature; natural
to his sanctified part, as breath is to his body: yea, so natural to him, that
they are like a part of his life, and the removal of them is like death to him:
and hence, when under these sweet and heavenly impressions, he is disposed to
give, as it were, a charge to all the world, to beware of disturbing him, and
bereaving him of his joy: "I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes
and by the hinds of the field, that you stir not up nor awake my Love till he
please," Song 2:7.
In a word, the hypocrite and the godly differ as clock
in their motions and affections, as the motion of a clock differs from the sun;
the one moves by art, the other by nature: the hypocrite's motions and
impressions are like artificial clockwork, under the influence of the common
operations of the Spirit, working upon him by some outward means and
providences: but the impressions of believers are natural, under the influence
of the Spirit dwelling in them: and whatever secondary purposes outward
providences and ordinances may have for advancing them, yet they are the fruits
of the special operation of the Spirit that is in him, "as a well of water
springing up to eternal life." So that their impressions differ as much as a
land flood, that quickly dries up, being only maintained with rain from the
clouds, differs from a living spring, which is never altogether dried, even
when the flood is abated.
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