How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
— Hebrews 9:14
Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.
— Hebrews10:22
Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:
— Romans 5:1
The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ:
— 1 Peter 3:21
And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men.
— Acts 24:16
Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; and as thy days, so shall thy strength be.
— Deuteronomy 33:25
How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!
— Isaiah 52:7
Second Kind of Peace: Peace of Conscience, the Blessing of the Gospel, by William Gurnall. The following contains an excerpt from Chapter Ten of his work, “The Christian in Complete Armour.”
And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; Ephesians 6:15
We come now to the second kind of peace, and that is peace of consolation, or peace of conscience. By the former—peace of reconciliation—the poor sinner is reconciled to God; by this, he becomes anima pacata sibi—a soul reconciled to itself. Since man fell out with God, he could never be truly friends with his own conscience. This second peace is so necessary, that he cannot taste the sweetness of the first, nor indeed of any other mercy, without it. This is to the soul what health is to the body, it sugars and sweetens all enjoyments. A suit, though of cloth of gold, sits not easy on a sick man’s back. Nothing joyous to a distressed conscience. Moses brought good news to the distressed Israelites in Egypt, but it is said, ‘They hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit,’ Ex. 6:9. Hannah, she went up to the festival at Jerusalem with her husband, but it is said, ‘She wept, and did not eat,’ I Sam. 1:7. Truly, thus the wounded soul goes to the sermon, but doth not eat of the feast before it; hears many precious promises, but her ear is shut up from receiving the good news they bring. Tell one in trouble of conscience, here is your dear husband, (your) sweet children, will you not rejoice with them; alas, the throes such a one feels are so amazing, that he regards these things no more than Phinehas’ wife in her sore travail did the woman that joyed her with the birth of a son. Set the most royal feast before such a soul that ever was on prince’s table, and, poor heart, it had rather go into a corner and weep, than sit and eat of those delicacies. ‘A wounded spirit who can bear?’ yea, who can cure? Some diseases are, for their incurableness, called ludibrium medicorum—the physician’s shame and reproach. To be sure this spiritual trouble of an accusing conscience puts all the world to shame for their vain attempts. Many have attempted to conjure this evil spirit out of their own bosoms and others’; but have found it at last to leap upon them, and prevail against them, as the ‘evil spirit’ did by the sons of Sceva, Acts 19:14.
No, peace of conscience, I am now to show, is the blessing of the gospel, and only of the gospel. Conscience knows Jesus, and the gospel of Jesus; these and none else it will obey. Two particulars considered will demonstrate the truth of the point. First. If we consider what is the argument that pacifies and satisfies conscience. Second. If we consider what the power is and strength required to apply this argument so close and home to the conscience as to quiet and fully satisfy it. Both these will be found in the gospel, and only in the gospel.
THE ARGUMENT which gives peace to the conscience.
First. Let us inquire what is the argument that is able to pacify conscience when thoroughly awakened. Now to know this, we must inquire what is the cause of all those convulsions of horror and terror with which the consciences of men are at any time so sadly rent and distorted. Now this is sin. Could this little word—but great plague— be quite blotted out of men’s minds and hearts, the storm would soon be hushed, and the soul become a pacific sea, quiet and smooth, without the least wave of fear to wrinkle the face thereof. This is the Jonah which raiseth the storm—the Achan that troubles the soul. Wherever this comes, as was observed of a great queen in France, a war is sure to follow. When Adam sinned, he dissolved another manner of jewel than Cleopatra did, he drank away this sweet peace of conscience in one unhappy draught, which was worth more to him than the world he lived in, Heb. 10:2. No wonder that it rose in his conscience as soon as it was down his throat—‘they saw that they were naked.’ Their consciences reproached them for cursed apostates. That therefore which brings peace to conscience must prostrate this Goliath—throw this troubler overboard —pluck this arrow out of the soul—or else the war will not end, the storm will not down, the wound will not close and heal which conscience labours under. Now the envenomed head of sin’s arrow, that lies burning in conscience, and, by its continual boking and throbbing there, keeps the poor sinner out of quiet—yea, sometimes in unsupportable torment and horror—is guilt. By it the creature is alarmed up to judgment, and bound over to the punishment due to his sin; which, being no less than the infinite wrath of the eternal living God, must needs lay the poor creature into a dismal agony, from the fearful expectation thereof in his accusing conscience. He, therefore, that would use an argument to pacify and comfort a distressed conscience that lies roasting upon these burning coals of God’s wrath kindled by his guilt, must quench these coals, and bring him the certain news of this joyful message—that his sins are all pardoned; and that God, whose wrath doth so affright him is undoubtedly, yea everlastingly, reconciled to him. This and no other argument will stop the mouth of conscience, and bring the creature to true peace with his own thoughts. ‘Son, be of good cheer,’ said Christ to the palsied man, ‘thy sins be forgiven thee,’ Matt. 9:2. Not, be of good cheer, thy health is given thee (though that he had also); but, thy ‘sins are forgiven thee.’
If a friend should come to a malefactor on his way to the gallows, put a sweet posy into his hands, and bid him ‘be of good cheer, smell on that,’ alas! this would bring little joy with it to the poor man’s heart, who sees the place of execution before him. But if one comes from the prince with a pardon, which he puts into his hand, and bids him be of good cheer; this, and this only, will reach the poor man’s heart, and overrun it with a sudden ravishment of joy. Truly, anything short of pardoning mercy is as inconsiderable to a troubled conscience towards any relieving or pacifying of it, as that posy in a dying prisoner’s hand would be. Conscience demands as much to satisfy it as God himself doth to satisfy him for the wrong the creature hath done him. Nothing can take off conscience from accusing but that which takes off God from threatening.
Conscience is God’s sergeant he employs to arrest the sinner. Now the sergeant hath no power to release his prisoner upon any private composition between him and the prisoner, but listens whether the debt be fully paid, or the creditor be fully satisfied; then, and not till then, he is discharged of his prisoner. Well, we have now only one step to go further, and we will bring this demonstration to a head.From what quarter comes this good news, that God is reconciled to a poor soul, and that his sins are pardoned? Surely from the gospel of Christ, and no other way besides. Here alone is the covenant of peace to be read betwixt God and sinners; here the sacrifice by which this pardon is purchased; here the means discovered by which poor sinners may have benefit of this purchase; and therefore here alone can the accusing conscience find peace. Had the stung Israelites looked on any other object besides the brazen serpent, they had never been healed. Neither will the stung conscience find ease with looking upon any besides Christ in the gospel promise. The Levite and the priest looked on the wounded man, but would not come near him. There he might have lain and perished in his blood for all them. It was the good Samaritan that poured oil into his wounds. Not the law, but Christ by his blood, bathes and supplies, closeth and cureth, the wounded conscience. Not a drop of oil in all the world to be got that is worth anything for this purpose besides what is provided and laid up in this gospel vial. There was abundance of sacrifices offered up in the Jewish church; yet, put all the blood of those beasts together which was poured out from first to last in that dispensation, and they were not able to quiet one conscience or purge away one sin. The ‘conscience of sin,’ as the apostle phraseth it, Heb. 10:2—that is, guilt in their conscience— would still have remained unblotted notwithstanding all these, if severed from what was spiritually signified by them. And the reason is given, ver. 4, ‘for it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.’ There is no proportion betwixt the blood of beasts, though it should swell into a river—a sea, and the demerit of the least sin. Man’s sin deserves man’s death, and that eternal, both of body and soul, in hell. This is the price God hath set upon the head of every sin. Now, the death of beasts being so far beneath this price which divine justice demands as satisfaction for the wrong sin doeth him, it must needs be as far beneath pacifying the sinner’s conscience —which requires as much to satisfy it, yea, the very same, as it doth to satisfy the justice of God himself. But in the gospel, behold, joyful news is brought to the sinner’s ears, of a fountain of blood there opened, which for its preciousness is as far above the price that divine justice demands for man’s, as the blood of bulls and beasts was beneath it, and that is the blood of Jesus Christ, who freely poured it out upon the cross, and by it ‘obtained eternal redemption for us,’ Heb. 9. This is the door all true peace and joy comes into the conscience by. Hence we are directed to bottom our confidence and draw our comfort here, and nowhere else: ‘Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience,’ Heb. 10:22. Mark that, ‘sprinkled from an evil conscience.’
Conscience, by office, is appointed to judge of a man’s actions and state, whether good or bad, pardoned or unpardoned. If the state be good, then it is to acquit and comfort; if evil, then to accuse and condemn him; therefore the ‘evil conscience’ here, is the accusing conscience. From this ‘evil conscience’ we are said to be ‘sprinkled,’ that is, freed by the blood of Christ sprinkled on us. It is sin the evil conscience accuseth of, and wrath, the due punishment for that, it condemns the poor creature unto; and to be sprinkled with the blood of Christ is to have the blood of Christ applied to the heart by the Spirit, for pardon and reconciliation with God. Sprinkling in the law did denote the cleansing of the person so sprinkled from all legal impurities; yea, the believing soul from all sinful uncleanness by the blood of Christ, which was signified by the blood of those sacrifices. Therefore David prays, ‘Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean,’ Ps. 51:7—that is, apply the blood of Christ to my troubled conscience, as they did with the bunch of hyssop did the blood of the beast into which it was dipped upon the leper, to cleanse him, ‘then,’ saith he, ‘I shall be clean,’ Lev. 14:6.
This sin, which now doth affright my conscience, shall be washed off, and I at peace, as if I had never sinned. To this sprinkling of blood the Holy Ghost alludes, where we are said in the gospel administration to be ‘come…to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel,’ Heb. 12:24, that is, ‘better things’ in the conscience. Abel’s blood, sprinkled in the guilt of it upon Cain’s conscience, spake swords and daggers, hell and damnation; but the blood of Christ sprinkled in the conscience of a poor trembling sinner speaks pardon and peace. Hence it is called ‘the answer of a good conscience toward God, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ,’ I Pet. 3:21. An answer supposeth a question, an ‘answer toward God’ supposeth a question from God to the creature. Now the question God here is supposed to propound to the poor creature may be conceived to be this, viz. what canst thou say —who art a sinner, and standest by the curse of my righteous law doomed to death and damnation—why thou shouldst not die the death pronounced against every sinner?
Now the soul that hath heard of Christ, and hearing of him hath received him by faith into his heart, is the person, and the only person, that can answer this question so as to satisfy God or himself. Take the answer as it is formed and fitted for, yea, put into the mouth of every believer, by the apostle Paul, ‘Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us,’ Rom. 8:34. Such an answer this is that God himself cannot object against it, and therefore St. Paul, representing all believers, triumphs in the invincible strength thereof against all the enemies of our salvation, ‘who shall separate us from the love of Christ? ver. 35, and proceeds to challenge in death and devils, with all their attendants, to come and do their worst against believers who have got this breast-work about them, and at last he displays his victorious colours, and goes out of the field with this holy confidence, that none—be they what they will—shall ever be able to hurt them: ‘I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities,…shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord,’ Rom. 8:38, 39. In him he lodgeth his colours, and lays up all his confidence. But I am afraid I have been too long; if I can be said to be too long on this subject—the richest vein in the whole mine of gospel treasure.
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