scudderpage022

Page 22

Christ,) being careful in nothing: but in every thing, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, to make your request known unto God, which if you do, the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall so establish your heart and mind, in and through Christ Jesus, that you may live in a heaven upon earth, and may be joyous and comfortable in all estates and conditions of life whatsoever.

That you should walk with God in uprightness, is commended to you in the cloud of examples, of Enoch, Gen. v. 22, 24; Noah, Gen. vi. 9; Job, Job i. 1; David, 1 Kings ix. 4; Zacharias and Elizabeth, Luke i. 6: with many others, renowned in Scripture; and is commanded to Abraham, and, in him, to all the faithful, Gen. xvii. 1.

To live by faith (which is, to frame your heart and life according to the will of God revealed in his word) and to walk with God, are all one. Enoch was said to have walked with God, Gen. v. 24; what was this else, but to rest and believe on God, whereby he pleased him? Heb. xi. 5, 6. For according to what we live, according to that we are said to walk, Colos. iii. 7. The moral actions of man's life are fitly resembled by the metaphor of walking, which is a moving from one place to another. No man, while he liveth here, is at home in the place where he shall be, Heb. xiii. 14. There are two contrary homes, to which every man is always going, either to heaven, or to hell. Every action of man is one pace or step whereby he goeth to the one place or the other. The holiness or wickedness of the action is the several way to the place of happiness, or place of torment.

So that God's own children, while they live in this world as pilgrims and strangers, are but in the way, not in the country which they seek, which is heavenly, Heb. xi. 3 - 16.

This life of faith and holiness, 1 Thess. i. 9, 10, what is it, but a going out of a man's self, and a continual returning to God (by Christ Jesus) from the way of sin and death, and a constant perseverance in all those acts of obedience which God hath ordained to be the