And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!
— Romans 10:15
How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince’s daughter! the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman.
— Song of Solomon 7:1
Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.
— 1 Corinthians 1:10
Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them.
— Romans 16:17
Exhortation to Saints to Maintain and Promote Peace, by William Gurnall. The following contains an excerpt from Chapter Ten of this work, “The Christian in Complete Armour.”
And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;
— Ephesians 6:15
Use Third. What we have learned of gospel peace as a peace of love and unity, brings a seasonable exhortation to all the saints, that they would nourish peace what they can among themselves. You all profess to have been baptized into the spirit of the gospel, but you do not show it when you bite and snarl at one another. The gospel, that makes wolves and lambs agree, doth not teach the lambs to turn into wolves and devour each other. Our Saviour told the two disciples whose choler was soon up, that they would be fetching fire from heaven to go on their revengeful errand, that they little thought from what hearth that wild-fire of their passion came: ‘Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of,’ Luke 9:55. As if he had said, Such fiery wrathful speeches do not suit with the meek Master you serve, nor with the gospel of peace he preacheth to you. And if the gospel will not allow us to pay our enemies in their own coin, and give them wrath for wrath, then much less will it suffer brethren to spit fire at one another’s faces. No, when any such embers of contention begin to smoke among Christians, we may show who left the spark —no other but Satan; he is the greatest kindle-coal of all their contentions. If there be a tempest, not in the air, but in the spirits of Christians, and the wind of their passions be high and loud, it is easy to tell who is the conjurer. O it is the devil, who is practicing his black art upon their lusts, which yet are so much unmortified as gives him too great an advantage of raising many times sad storms of division and strife among them. Paul and Barnabas set out in a calm together, but the devil sends a storm after them —such a storm as parted them in the midst of their voyage: ‘And the contention was so sharp between them, that they departed asunder one from the other,’ Acts 15:39. There is nothing, next Christ and heaven, that the devil grudged believers more than their peace and mutual love. If he cannot rend them from Christ, stop them from getting heaven, yet he takes some pleasure in seeing them go thither in a storm; like a shattered fleet severed one from another, that they may have no assistance from, nor comfort of, each other’s company all the way; though, where he can divide he hopes to ruin also, well knowing this to be the most probable means to effect it. One ship is easier taken than a squadron. A town, if it can be but set on fire, the enemy may hope to take it with more ease; Let it therefore be your great care to keep the devil’s spark from your powder. Certainly peace among Christians is no small mercy, that the devil’s arrows fly so thick at its breast. Something I would fain speak to endear this mercy to the people of God. I love, I confess, a clear and still air, but, above all, in the church among believers; and I am made the more sensible what a mercy this would be, by the dismal consequence of these divisions and differences that have for some years together troubled our air, and filled us with such horror and confusion, that we have not been much unlike that land called Terra del Fuego—the land of smoke, because of the frequent flashings of lightnings and abundance of smoke found there. What can I compare error to, better than smoke? and contention to, better than to fire? a kind of emblem of hell itself, where flames and darkness meet together to increase the horror of the place. But, to press the exhortation a little closer, give me leave to provoke you by three arguments to peace and unity.
1. Argument. The Christian should seek peace for Christ’s sake. And methinks, when begging for his sake I should have no nay. When you pray to God and do but use his name in the business, you are sure to speed. And why should not an exhortation, that woos you for Christ’s sake, move your hearts to duty, as a prayer put up by you in his name, moves God’s heart to mercy? Indeed, how can you in faith use Christ’s name as an argument to unlock God’s heart to thee, which hath not so much credit with thyself as to open thy own heart into a compliance with a duty, which is so strongly set on his heart to promote among his people? This appears,
(1.) By the solemn charge he gave his disciples in this particular: ‘A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another,’ John 13:34. I pray observe how he prepares their hearts to open readily, and bid his commandment kindly welcome. He sets his own name upon it—‘a new commandment I give unto you.’ As if he had said, ‘Let this command, though as old as any other, Lev. 19:18, yet go under my name in an especial manner. When I am gone and the fire of strife begins at any time among you, remember what particular charge I now give you, and let it quench it presently.’ Again, observe how he delivers this precept, and that is by way of gift and privilege. ‘A new commandment I give unto you.’ Indeed, this was Christ’s farewell sermon, the very streakings of that milk which he had fed them withal. Never dropped a sweeter discourse from his blessed lips. He saved his best wine till the last. He was now making his will, and amongst other things that he bequeaths his disciples, he takes this commandment, as a father would do his seal-ring off his finger, and gives it to them. Again, thirdly, he doth not barely lay the command before them, but, to make it the more effectual, he annexeth in a few words the most powerful argument why they should, as also the most clear and full direction how they might, do this, that is possible to be given—As I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
O Christians, what may not the love of Christ command you? If it were to lay down your lives for him that loved you to death, would you deny them? and shall not this his love persuade you to lay down your strifes and divisions? This speaks enough, how much weight he laid upon this commandment. But then, again, observe how Christ, in the same sermon, over and over again minds them of this; which if he had not been very solicitous of, should not have had so large a room in his thoughts at that time, when he had so little time left in which he was to crowd and sum up all the heavenly counsel and comfort he desired to leave with them before his departure. Nay, so great weight he lays on this, that he seems to lock up his own joy and theirs together in the care that they should take about this one command of loving one another, ‘These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full,’ John 15:11. What these things were appears by the precedent verse, ‘If ye keep my commandment, ye shall abide in my love.’ These were the things that he spake of in order to keep his joy in them, and theirs in him, that they would ‘keep his commandments.’ Now, to let them know how high a place their obedience to this particular command of love and unity had in his heart, and how eminently it conduced to the continuing his joy in them, and filling up their own; he chooseth that above any for this instance, in order to what he had said, as you may see, ver. 12, ‘This is my commandment, That ye love one another.’ Observe still, how Christ appropriates this commandment to himself. ‘This is my commandment;’ as if he would signify to them that as he had one disciple, who went by the name of ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved,’ so he would have a darling commandment, in which he takes some singular delight, and that this should be it, ‘their loving one another.’
But we are not yet at the last link of this golden chain of Christ’s discourse. When he hath put some more warmth into their affections to this duty, by exposing his own love to them in the deepest expression of it, even to die for them, ver. 13, then he comes on more boldly, and tells them he will own them for his friends, as they are careful to observe what he had left in charge with them, ver. 14, ‘Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.’ And now taking it for granted that he had prevailed upon them, and that they would walk in unity and love as he had commanded them, he cannot conceal the pleasure he takes therein, yea and in them for it. He opens his heart to them, and locks no secret from them, yea bids them go and open their heart to God and be free to him, as he is to them. And mark from what blessed hour all this familiarity that they are admitted to, bears date. ‘From henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth,’ ver. 15, that is from the time you walk dutiful to me and lovingly to one another. One would think he had now said enough; but he thinks not so. In the very next words he is at it again. ‘These things I command you, that ye love one another,’ ver. 17, as if all he had left else in charge with them had been subservient to this.
(2.) A second thing that speaks Christ’s heart deeply engaged in the promoting of love and unity among Christians, is his fervent prayer for this. Should you hear a preacher with abundance of vehemency press a grace or duty upon the people in his pulpit, and as soon as sermon is done, you should go under his closet window, and hear him as earnestly wrestling with God that he would give his people what he had so zealously pressed upon them; you would easily believe the man was in earnest. Our blessed Saviour hath taught us ministers whither to go when we come out of the pulpit, and what to do. No sooner hath he done his sermon to them, but he is at prayer with God for them. And what he insisted on most in preaching he enlargeth most upon in prayer. Unity and peace was the legacy he desired so much to leave with them, and this is the boon he puts in strongly with God to bestow on them: ‘Father, keep through thine own power those whom thou hast given me,’ John 17:11. And why all this care?—‘that they may be one, as we are.’ As if he had said, ‘Father, did we ever fall out? was there ever discord betwixt us? why then should they, who are thine and mine, disagree?’ So, ver. 21, and again, ver. 23, he is pleading hard for the same mercy. And why so oft? is it so hardly wrung from God, that Christ himself must tug so often for it? No, sure; but as Christ said of the voice that came from heaven, ‘This voice came not because of me, but for your sakes;’ John 12:30, so may I say here. This ingeminated zeal of Christ for his people’s unity and love was for their sakes.
(a) He would by this raise the price of this mercy in their thoughts. That is sure worth their care which he counted. Worth his redoubled prayer—when not a word was spoken for his own life—or else he misplaced his zeal, and improved not his time with God for the best advantage of his people.
(b) He would make divisions appear more scareful and dreadful things to his people, by putting in so many requests to God for preventing them. Certainly if Christ had known one evil worse than another like to come upon his people at his departure, he would have been so true and kind to his children as to deprecate that above all, and keep that off. He told his children what they must look for at the world’s hand—all manner of sufferings and torments that their wit could help their malice to devise —yet he prays not so much for immunity from these, as from unbrotherly contentions among themselves. He makes account, if they can agree together, and be in love, saint with saint, church with church, that they have a mercy that will alleviate the other, and make it tolerable, yea joyous. This heavenly fire of love among themselves will quench the flames of the persecutor’s fire, at least the horror of them.
(c) In a word, Christ would, as strengthen our faith to ask boldly for that which he hath bespoke for us, so also aggravate the sin of contention to such a height, that all who have any love to him, when they shall see they cannot live in strife, but they must sin against those prayers which Christ with strong cries put up for peace and unity, may tremble at the thoughts of it.
(3.) The price that Christ gave for the obtaining of this peace and unity. As Christ went from preaching up peace to pulling down peace from heaven by prayer, so he went from praying to paying for it. Indeed Christ’s prayers are not beggar’s prayers, as ours are; he prays his Father that he may only have what he pays for. He was now on the way to the place of payment, Calvary, where his blood was the coin he laid down for this peace. I confess peace with God was the chief pearl that this wise merchant, Christ, bought up for his people. But he had this in his eye also, viz. love to the brethren; and therefore the sacrament of the Lord’s supper, which is the commemoration feast of Christ’s death, as it seals our peace with God, so it signifies our love one to another, I Cor. 10. And need I now give you any account why our dear Lord pursued his design so close of knitting his people in peace and unity together? Truly the church is intended by Christ to be his house, in which he means to take up his rest. And what rest could he take in a house all on fire about him? It is his kingdom; and how can his laws be obeyed, if all his subjects be in a hubbub one against another? Inter arma silent leges —laws are silent amid arms. In a word, his church are a people that are called out of the world to be a praise to him in the sight of the nations, as Peter saith, ‘God did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name,’ Acts 15:14—that is, a people for his honour.
But a wrangling divided people would be little credit to the name of Christ. Yea such, where they are found—and where alas are they not to be found?—are to the name of Christ as smoke and dirt to a fair face. They crock and disfigure Christ, so that the world will not acknowledge him to be who he saith he is; they lead them even into temptation to think basely of Christ and his gospel. Christ prays his people may be made perfect in one, and mark his argument—‘That the world may know that thou hast sent me,’ John 17:23. Whose heart bleeds not to hear Christ blasphemed at this day by so many black mouths? and what hath opened them more than the saints’ divisions?
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