CHAPTER XI.

_Of the temptation to distrust upon the failure of ordinary means.—Of the power of that temptation, and the reasons of its prevalency.—Of unwarrantable attempts for relief, with the causes thereof.—Of waiting on God, and keeping his way.—In what cases a particular mercy is to be expected._

I have particularly insisted upon the aims of Satan in this temptation in their variety, and also the cunning connexion and coherences of them. I have also singled out his chief design. I am now in the last place to present you with the suitableness and respects that the subordinate means carry to the principal, and that proportion which may be found in all these to the end designed by them.

The chief means in reference to the end designed, was a distrust of providence, and the subordinate means to bring on that distrust, was the failure of ordinary means of supply: for so he endeavoured to improve his hunger and want in the wilderness, as a manifest neglect of providence towards him, for which, as he tacitly suggests, there was no ground to wait or rely upon it any further, but to betake himself to another course. Hence note,

_Obs._ 13. _That the failure of ordinary means of help is by Satan improved as his special engine to bring men to a distrust of providence, and from thence to an unwarrantable attempt for their relief in an extraordinary way._

That the failure of ordinary and usual supplies hath by the devil’s subtlety brought a distrust of providence, and run men beyond all hopes of help, is a thing commonly and notoriously known. When men are afflicted, and brought unto unusual straits, and the ordinary ways of relief are out of sight, they are soon tempted to distrust God and man; and to conclude they are cut off, and that their ‘hope is perished,’ and that ‘their eye shall no more see good.’ David distressed, proclaims ‘all men liars:’ concludes that he should at last ‘be cut off,’ Ps. cxvi. 11, xxxi. 22. Jonah, in the whale’s belly, thought that all hope was gone, and that he was cast out of God’s sight, chap. ii. 4. The church of Israel in captivity, ‘forgot prosperity,’ notwithstanding the promise of deliverance after seventy years, and thought no less than that ‘her hope and strength was perished,’ Lam. iii. 18. And from the scriptures mentioned, we may also see the strength and prevalency of the temptation, especially when it is reduced to particulars. As,

(1.) First, _It is not a thing altogether of no weight that such a temptation should prevail against such persons_; as David and Jonah, and the whole church of Israel, that the manifold experiences that some of them have had of God’s faithfulness in delivering, and the seasonableness of help at times of greatest hazard, the particular promises that all of them have had—how dismal and black soever things have seemed—have given the fullest assurances imaginable, that what he had spoken should certainly be performed; the gracious qualifications of such persons as eminently holy and skilled in the duties of trust, and in the ways of providence, and the special advantage which some of them, as prophets, have had above others, to enable them to improve that skill, experience, knowledge, and grace, to a firm adherence to such special promises: that all these things should not be sufficient to keep them off distrust, though at present the ways of deliverence were hid from them, seems strange.

(2.) Secondly, It is wonderful _to what a height such a prevailing temptation hath carried some of them_. David seems to be a little outrageous, and did upon the matter call God ‘a liar,’ when he said, ‘All men are liars;’ which however that some interpret[392] as if it had been David’s trust in God, and his confident avouchment of his enemies’ prognostications of his ruin, to be but lies, and that this he spake from his firm belief of the promise, ‘I believed, therefore have I spoken;’ yet the acknowledgment of his ‘haste,’ which, compared with Ps. xxxi. 22, is declared as his weakness, will force us to conclude it an ingenuous confession of his distrust at the first, when he was greatly afflicted, though he recovered himself afterwards to a belief of the promise; and that in that distemper he plainly reflected upon Samuel, and calls the promises of God given by him ‘a very lie.’

(3.) Thirdly, It is strange also _that present instances of God’s providences working out unexpected deliverances should not relieve the hearts of his saints from the power of such distrust_; that when they see God is not unmindful of them, but doth hear them in what they feared, they should still retain in their minds the impression of an unbelieving apprehension; and not rather free themselves from their expectations of future ruin by concluding, that he that hath and doth deliver will also yet deliver. David had this thought in his heart, that he should ‘one day perish by the hand of Saul,’ 1 Sam. xxvii. 1, even then when God had so remarkably rescued him from Saul, and forced Saul not only to acknowledge his sin in prosecuting him, but also to declare his belief of the promise concerning David. See chap. xxvi. One would have expected that this should have been such a demonstration of the truth of what had been promised, that he should cast out all fear; and yet, contrariwise, this pledge of God’s purpose to him is received by a heart strongly prepossessed with misgiving thoughts, and he continues to think that for all this Saul would one day destroy him.

(4.) Fourthly, _The pangs of this distrust are also so remarkable, that after they have been delivered, and have found that the event hath not answered their fears, they have in the review of their carriage under such fears, recounted this their weakness among other remarkable things_, thereby shewing the unreasonableness of their unbelief, and their wonder that God should pass by so great a provocation, and notwithstanding so unexpectedly deliver them. David in the places before cited was upon a thankful acknowledgment of God’s love and wonderful kindness, which be thought he could not perform without leaving a record of his strange and unworthy distrust; as if he had said, ‘So greatly did I sin, and so unsuitably did I behave myself, that I then gave off, and concluded all was lost.’

To open this a little further, I shall add the reasons why Satan strikes in with such an occasion as the want of means to tempt to distrust, which are these:—

[1.] First, _Such a condition doth usually transport men beside themselves_; puts them, as it were, into an ecstacy, and by a sudden rapture of astonishment and fear, forceth them beyond their settled thoughts and purposes. This David notes as the ground of his inconsiderate rash speaking: ‘It was my haste,’ I was transported, &c. Now as passion does not only make men speak what otherwise they would not, but also to put bad interpretations upon actions and things beyond what they will bear, and hasten men to resolves exceedingly unreasonable; so doth this state of the heart, under an amazement and surprise of fear, give opportunity to Satan to put men to injurious and unrighteous thoughts of the providence of God, and by such ways to alienate their minds from the trust which they owe him.

[2.] Secondly, _Sense is a great help to faith_. Faith then must needs be much hazarded when sense is at a loss or contradicted, as usually it is in straits.

That faith doth receive an advantage by sense, cannot be denied. To believe what we see, is easier than to believe what we see not; and that in our state of weakness and infirmity God doth so far indulge us, that by his allowance we may take the help of our senses, is evident by his appointment of the two sacraments, where by outward visible signs our faith may be quickened to apprehend the spiritual benefits offered. Thomas, resolving to suspend his belief till he were satisfied that Christ was risen, by the utmost trial that sense could give, determining not to credit the testimony of the rest of the disciples till by putting his finger into his side he had made himself more certain, Christ not only condescended to him, but also pronounceth his approbation of his belief, accepting it, that he had believed because he had seen. But when outward usual helps fail us, our sense, being not able to see afar off, is wholly puzzled and overthrown. The very disappearing of probabilities gives so great a shake to our faith that it commonly staggers at it; and therefore was it given as the great commendation of Abraham’s faith, that he, notwithstanding the unlikelihood of the thing, ‘staggered not at the promise;’ noting thereby how extraordinary it was in him at that time to keep up against the contradiction of sense, and how usual it is with others to be beaten off all trust by it. It is no wonder to see that faith, which usually called sense for a supporter, to fail when it is deprived of its crutch. And he that would a little understand what disadvantage this might prove to a good man when sense altogether fails his expectation, he may consider with himself in what a case Thomas might have been if Christ had refused to let him see his side, and to thrust his finger into the print of the nails. In all appearance, had it been so, he had gone away confirmed in his unbelief.

[3.] Thirdly, _Though faith can act above sense, and is employed about things not seen, yet every saint at all times doth not act his faith so high_. Christ tells us that to believe where a man hath not had the help of sight and sense, is noble and blessed, John xx. 29; yet withal, he hints it to be rare and difficult: ‘he that hath not seen, and yet hath believed,’ implies that it is but one amongst many that doth so, and that it is the conquest of a more than ordinary difficulty. Hence it is, that to love God when he kills, to believe when means fail, are reckoned among the high actings of Christianity.

[4.] Fourthly, _When sense is nonplussed, and faith fails, the soul of man is at a great loss_. Having nothing to bear it up, it must needs sink; but having something to throw it down, besides its own propensity downward to distrust, it hath the force of so great a disappointment to push it forward; and such bitterness of spirit, heightened by the malignant influence of Satan, that with a violence like the angel’s throwing a millstone into the sea, it is cast into the bottom of such depths of unbelief, that the knowledge of former power and extraordinary providences cannot keep it from an absolute denial of the like for the future. Israel in the wilderness, when they came to the want of bread, though they acknowledged he ‘clave the rock,’ and gave them water in the like strait, yet so far did their hearts fail of that due trust in the power and mercy of God, which might have been expected, that though they confessed the one, they as distrustfully question and deny the other. ‘He clave the rock, but can he provide flesh? can he give bread?’ [Ps. lxxviii. 20.] Strange unbelief, that sees and acknowledgeth omnipotency in one thing, and yet denies it in another!

[5.] Fifthly, _Providence hath been an old question_. It is an atheism that some have been guilty of, to deny that God ordereth all affairs relating to his children here below, who yet have not so fully extinguished their natural impressions as to dare to deny the being of God. That God is, they confess, but withal they think that he ‘walketh in the circuit of heaven,’ and as to the smaller concerns of men, neither doth good nor evil. This being an old error, to which most are but too inclinable; and the more because such things are permitted—as the punishment of his children, and their trials, while others have all their heart can wish—as seem scarce consistent with that love and care which men look for from him to his servants, they are apt enough to renew the thoughts of that persuasion upon their minds—for which the failure of ordinary ways of help seems to be a high probability—that he keeps himself unconcerned, and therefore there seems to be no such cause of reliance upon him. The psalmist so expresseth that truth, ‘Men shall say, Verily there is a God that judgeth in the earth,’ [Ps. lviii. 11;] that it is discovered to be a special retrievement of it, by many and signal convincing evidences, from that distrust of God and his providences that men usually slide into upon their observation of the many seeming failures of outward means of help.

Secondly, The other branch of the observation, _that from a distrust of providence he endeavours to draw them to an unwarrantable attempt for their relief_, is as clear as the former. Sarah being under a distrust of the promise for a son, because of her age, gave her handmaid to Abraham, that in that way, the promise seeming to fail, she might obtain children by her, Gen. xvi. 2. David, because of the many and violent pursuits of Saul, not only distrusted the promise, thinking he might ‘one day perish’ by him, but resolves to provide for his own safety by a speedy escape into the land of the Philistines, 1 Sam.