RESOLUTION VI.

I am resolved, by the grace of God, to arm myself with that spiritual courage and magnanimity, as to press through all duties and difficulties whatsoever, for the advancement of God’s glory and my own happiness.

CHRISTIANITY is well termed a warfare, for a warfare it is, wherein no danger can be prevented, no enemy conquered, no victory obtained, without much courage and resolution. I have not only many outward enemies to grapple with, but I have myself, my worst enemy, to encounter and subdue. As for those enemies which are not near me, by the assistance of God’s Spirit, I can make pretty good shift to keep them at the sword’s point: but this enemy, that is gotten within me, has so often foiled and disarmed me, that I have reason to say, as David did of his enemies, ‘It is too strong for me;’ and as he said of the chief of his, ‘I shall one day fall by the hands of Saul:’ so I have too much occasion to say, I shall fall by myself, as being myself the greatest enemy to my own spiritual interest and concerns. How necessary is it, then, that I should raise and muster up all my force and courage, put on my spiritual armour, and make myself strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might? I know I must strive, before I can enter in at the strait gate; I must win the crown, before I can wear it, and be a member of the church militant, before I can be admitted into the church triumphant. In a word, I must go through a solitary wilderness, and conquer many enemies, 154before I come to the land of Canaan: or else I must never be possessed of it. What then? Shall I lose my glory, to baulk my duty? Shall I let go my glorious and eternal possession, to save myself from a seeming hardship, which the devil would persuade me to be a trouble and affliction? Alas! if Christ had laid aside the great work of my redemption, to avoid the undergoing of God’s anger, and man’s malice, what a miserable condition had I been in? And, therefore, whatever taunts and reproaches I meet with from the presumptuous and profane, the infidel and atheistical reprobates of the age; let them laugh at my profession, or mock at what they are pleased to call preciseness; let them defraud me of my just rights, or traduce and bereave me of my good name and reputation; let them vent the utmost of their poisonous malice and envy against me; I have this comfortable reflection still to support me, that if I suffer all this for Christ’s sake, it is in the cause of one who suffered a thousand times more for mine; and, therefore, it ought to be matter of joy and triumph, rather than of grief and dejection to me: especially, considering that ‘these my light afflictions, which are but for a moment, will work out for me a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.’ Upon the prospect of which, I firmly resolve, notwithstanding the growing strength of sin, and the overbearing prevalency of my own corrupt affections, to undertake all duties, and undergo all miseries, that God in his infinite wisdom, thinks fit to lay upon me, or exercise my patience in.