HEB. 13. 9.
IN the former part of this Epistle, Paul (for we take him to be the Author of it) doth like a kinde father crack the shell of those Jewish Ceremonies, and give the kernell to believers; he opens the spiritual sense and meaning of all those typical prefigurations, making them shadowes onely of Christ to come; so that as the blossome fals when the fruit cometh, thus they vanished, when Christ arose: and because they were onely shadows, he thereupon argueth their insufficiency for any spiritual effect, making Moses in all his administrations, no more then the Prophets servant with his Masters staff, that could not raise the dead man. But in the later part of the Epistle, he enjoyneth many practical and plain Duties; as in this Chapter vers. 7. he exhorteth them to follow the faith of their spiritual Governours and Teachers, which is to be supposed, as Paul in the like case, while they follow Christ. This duty he enforceth from a two-fold Argument.
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The joyful and profitable end of their Pastors conversation.
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That Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever. Christ that helped his servants in former times, will still help them. Christ is still the same, though we be not those worthies that went before us: an excellent point of comfort.
In the next place he dehorts from the contrary sinne. Be not carried about with divers and strange Doctrines; carried about, as light, empty chaff is with every winde; divers, that is, different Doctrines one with another, for all errours disagree among themselves, as well as with the truth; strange Doctrines, because brought in against the sense and meaning of the Scripture: now to make this Dehortation prevalent, he declareth that grace in the heart is farre better then any learning in the head, by the Proposition in the Text, it is good, the positive is for the comparative, it is better to establish, or have the heart established (the word is in the middle voice) by grace, that is, the inward works and gifts of Gods sanctifying Spirit, then with meats, that is, dispute and controversies about the difference of meats: you know how that Question troubled the Church of God in her infancy. Some indeed expound meats of the Legal Sacrifices, for the Jews thought themselves made more holy by eating thereof. Insomuch that some are brought in pleading this at the day of Judgement, Have we not eat in thy presence? Others relate it to those banquets, and dainty feastings, the Nicolaitans entertained their Disciples with: but the first exposition is to be preferred. By grace also some understand the Doctrine of faith; others the grace of the Gospel, and the sense of it in our hearts. But the phrase, Establish the heart with grace, doth carry it for some gift of God wrought in the soul, confirming and setling it in the truths and commandments of God, by saith and obedience, which we call sanctifying grace; so that as I have handled the work of godlinesse, under the notions of regeneration and a New Creature; so I shall out of this Text speak of it, under that usual and frequent name of grace, the work of grace in a mans heart; but there is one profitable and necessary Doctrine lieth in the way, before we enter into the bowels of that Point. That whereas the Apostle dehorting from following strange and divers Doctrines, doth urge as a special help and remedy hereunto, to get grace in our hearts, whereas in probability we should have thought, he would have prescribed, to study controversies, to spend our time in Disputes, that so we may finde out the truth, he adviseth not to such a course, but to study the exercise of grace, and to have our hearts established with practical godlinesse, as if an heart bu[…]ed and diligent in the practical power of grace, were the best bulwark in the world against all false Doctrines. Observe then,
That its far better to have the heart filled with the power of grace, then the head with disputes and controversies in Religion.
Its better to have faith setling thy heart upon Christ, then to dispute whether faith justifie. Its more comfortable to be a Saint, then to argue, Whether Saints only are members of a visible Church.
For opening this, I shal first shew, What it is to have grace establish the heart, and then give the grounds of the Point. Only you must know, that as grace is here said to establish the heart; so in other places this effect is attributed to God, 1 Pet. 5. 10. The Apostle there prayeth that God would stablish, strengthen, settle them: there God doth it, and here Grace; for its usual in Scripture to attribute the same effect to the instrumental and principal cause; Grace doth only establish the […] of a man formally, as the instrument of Gods Spirit; and indeed grace in the heart being also a creature, though of a supernatural excellency, needeth it self a daily strengthning and preservation from God. Hence the Apostle when he exhorteth us to put on the whole armour of Christ; when all this is done, he concludeth, Praying alwayes, Ephes. 6. 18. A Christian in all his spiritual strength must pray as earnestly, and depend as solely upon the power and might of God, as if he had no grace at all.1