Ed Walsh
Puritan Board Senior
Greetings, fellow sinners, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus called to be saints (1 Cor 1:2),
There is nothing more beautiful in God's sight than a contented Saint. So says Thomas Watson. So taken is Christ by His contented one that we go to Biblical poetry to come close to its description.
My hope in posting this beginning of Thomas Watson's treatise on divine contentment is that it will lead to a discussion group where we will post installments of the entire treatise a little bit at a time.
My thesis is this, whatever else we may lack in this Christian life of ours, nevertheless, if we learn to be content with all of God's providential workings in our lives, grasping the truth of Paul's words in Rom. 8:28, we will, together with our Lord, have overcome the world.
Any takers?
THE ART OF DIVINE CONTENTMENT
Thomas Watson
Phil. 4:11
“I have learned, in whatsoever state I am,
therewith to be content.”
Chap. I. The Introduction to the Text
These words are brought in by way of prolepsis, to anticipate and prevent an objection. The apostle had, in the former verses, laid down many grave and heavenly exhortations; among the rest, “to be careful for nothing,” ver. 6. Not to exclude, 1. A prudential care; for, he that provideth not for his own house, “hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel,” 1 Tim. 5:8. Nor, 2. A religious care; for, we must give all “diligence to make our calling and election sure,” 2 Pet. 1:10. But, 3. To exclude all anxious care about the issues and events of things; “take no thought for your life, what you shall eat,” Mat. 6:25. And in this sense it should be a Christian’s care not to be careful. The word careful in the Greek comes from a prmitive, that signifies ‘to cut the heart in pieces,’ a soul-dividing care; take heed of this. We are bid to “commit our way unto the Lord,” Ps. 37:5. The Hebrew word is, ‘roll thy way upon the Lord.’ It is our work to cast away care, 1 Pet. 5:7. And it is God’s work to take care. By our immoderacy we take his work out of his hand. Care, when it is eccentric, either distrustful or distracting, is very dishonourable to God; it takes away his providence, as if he sat in heaven and minded not what became of things here below; like a man that makes a clock, and then leaves it to go of itself. Immoderate care takes the heart off from better things; and usually, while we are thinking how we shall do to live, we forget how to die. Care is a spiritual canker that doth waste and dispirit; we may sooner by our care add a furlong to our grief than a cubit to our comfort. God doth threaten it as a curse, “They shall eat their bread with carefulness,” Ezek. 12:19. Better fast than eat of that bread. “Be careful for nothing.”
Now, lest any one should say, yea, Paul thou preachest that to us which thou hast scarce learned thyself,—hast thou learned not to be careful? the apostle seems tacitly to answer that, in the words of the text “I have learned, in whatever state I am, therewith to be content:” A speech worthy to be engraven upon our hearts, and to be written in letters of gold upon the crowns and diadems of princes.
The text doth branch itself into these two general parts.
Chap. II. The First Branch of the Text, the Scholar, with the First Proposition
I begin with the first:
The scholar, and his proficiency,—“I have learned.” Out of which I shall by the bye, observe two things by way of paraphrase. 1. The apostle doth not say, I have heard, that in every estate I should be content: but, I have learned. Whence our first doctrine, that it is not enough for Christians to hear their duty, but they must learn their duty. It is one thing to hear, and another thing to learn; as it is one thing to eat, and another thing to concoct. St. Paul was a practitioner. Christians hear much, but it is to be feared, learn little. There were four sorts of ground in the parable, Luke 8:5.; and but one good ground: an emblem of this truth, many hearers, but few learners. There are two things which keep us from learning.
1. Slighting what we hear. Christ is the pearl of price; when we disesteem this pearl, we shall never learn either its value, or its virtue. The gospel is a rare mystery; in one place, Acts 20:24., it is called ‘the gospel of grace;’ in another, 1 Cor. 4:4., ‘the gospel of glory;’ because in it, as in a transparent glass, the glory of God is resplendent. But he that hath learned to contemn this mystery, will hardly ever learn to obey it; he that looks upon the things of heaven as things by the bye, and perhaps the driving of a trade, or carrying on some politic design to be of greater importance, this man is in the high road to damnation, and will hardly ever learn the things of his peace. Who will learn that which he thinks is scarce worth learning?
2. Forgetting what, we hear. If a scholar have his rules laid before him, and he forgets them as fast as he reads them, he will never learn, James 1:25. Aristotle calls the memory the scribe of the soul; and Bernard calls it the stomach of the soul, because it hath a retentive faculty, and turns heavenly food into blood and spirits; we have great memories in other things, we remember that which is vain. Cyrus could remember the name of every soldier in his huge army. We remember injuries: this is to fill a precious cabinet with dung; but, quam facilis oblivio boni? as Hierom saith, how soon do we forget the sacred truths of God? We are apt to forget three things: our faults,—our friends,—our instructions. Many Christians are like sieves; put a sieve into the water, and it is full; but take it forth of the water, and all runs out: so, while they are hearing of a sermon, they remember something; but like the sieve out of the water, as soon as they are gone out of the church, all is forgotten. “Let these sayings, (saith Christ) sink down into your ears,” Luke 9:44. In the original it is, ‘put these sayings into your ears,’ as a man that would hide a jewel from being stolen, locks it up safe in his chest. Let them sink: the word must not fall only as dew that wets the leaf, but as rain which soaks to the root of the tree, and makes it fructify. O how often doth Satan, that fowl of the air, pick up the good seed that is sown!
Use. Let me put you upon a serious trial.
Some of you have heard much,—you have lived forty, fifty, sixty years under the blessed trumpet of the gospel,—what have you learned? You may have heard a thousand sermons, and yet not learned one. Search your consciences.
1. You have heard much against sin: are you hearers; or are you scholars? How many sermons have you heard against covetousness, that it is the root, on which pride, idolatry, treason do grow? 2 Tim. 4:2. and 4. One calls it a metropolitan sin; it is a complex evil, it doth twist a great many sins in with it. There is hardly any sin, but covetousness is a main ingredient into it; and yet are you like the two daughters of the horse-leech, that cry, “Give! give!” How much have you heard against rash anger, that it is a short frenzy,—a dry drunkenness,—that it rests in the bosom of fools,—and upon the least occasion do your spirits begin to take fire? How much have you heard against swearing? It is Christ’s express mandate, “swear not at all,” Mat. 5:34. This sin of all others may be termed the unfruitful work of darkness, Eph. 5:11. It is neither sweetened with pleasure, nor enriched with profit, the usual vermilion wherewith Satan doth paint sin. Swearing is forbidden with a subpœna. While the swearer shoots his oaths, like flying arrows at God to pierce his glory, God shoots “a flying roll” of curses against him, Zech. 5:2. And do you make your tongue a racket by which you toss oaths as tennis-balls? Do you sport yourselves with oaths, as the Philistines did with Samson, which will at last pull the house about your ears? Alas! How have they learned what sin is, that have not learned to leave sin! Doth he know what a viper is, that will play with it.
2. You have heard much of Christ: have you learned Christ? The Jews, as Jerom saith, carried Christ in their Bibles, but not in their heart; their sound “went into all the earth,” Rom. 10:18. The prophets and apostles were as trumpets, whose sound went abroad into the world; yet many thousands who heard the noise of these trumpets, had not learned Christ, “they have not all obeyed,” ver. 16.
(1.) A man may know much of Christ, and yet not learn Christ: the devils knew Christ, Mat. 1:24.
(2.) A man may preach Christ, and yet not learn Christ, as Judas and the pseudo-apostles, Phil. 4:15.
(3.) A man may profess Christ, and yet not learn Christ: there are many professors in the world that Christ will profess against, Mat. 7:22, 23.
Quest. What is it then to learn Christ?
Ans. 1. To learn Christ is to be made like Christ, to have the divine characters of his holiness engraven upon our hearts. “We all with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image,” 2 Cor. 3:18. There is a metamorphosis made; a sinner, viewing Christ’s image in the glass of the gospel, is transformed into that image. Never did any man look upon Christ with a spiritual eye, but he went away quite changed. A true saint is a divine landscape or picture, where all the rare beauties of Christ are lively pourtrayed and drawn forth; he hath the same spirit, the same judgment, the same will, with Jesus Christ.
A. 2. To learn Christ, is to believe m him; “My Lord, and my God,” John 20:28.: when we do not only credere Deum, but in Deum; which is the actual application of Christ to ourselves, and as it were the spreading of the sacred medicine of his blood upon our souls. You have heard much of Christ, and yet cannot with an humble adherence say, “My Jesus;” be not offended if I tell you, the devil can say his creed as well as you.
A. 3. To learn Christ, is to love Christ. When we have Bible-conversations, our life like rich diamonds cast a sparkling lustre in the church of God, Phil. 1:17., and are, in some sense, parallel with the life of Christ, as the transcript with the original. So much for the first notion of the word.
End Chapter 2.
There is nothing more beautiful in God's sight than a contented Saint. So says Thomas Watson. So taken is Christ by His contented one that we go to Biblical poetry to come close to its description.
Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, Comely as Jerusalem,
Terrible as an army with banners.
Turn away thine eyes from me, For they have overcome me:
My dove, my undefiled is but one;
She is the only one of her mother, She is the choice one of her that bare her.
The daughters saw her, and blessed her;
Yea, the queens and the concubines, and they praised her.
Song 6:4-5, 9
My hope in posting this beginning of Thomas Watson's treatise on divine contentment is that it will lead to a discussion group where we will post installments of the entire treatise a little bit at a time.
My thesis is this, whatever else we may lack in this Christian life of ours, nevertheless, if we learn to be content with all of God's providential workings in our lives, grasping the truth of Paul's words in Rom. 8:28, we will, together with our Lord, have overcome the world.
John 16:33
These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace.
In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer;
I have overcome the world.
Any takers?
THE ART OF DIVINE CONTENTMENT
Thomas Watson
Phil. 4:11
“I have learned, in whatsoever state I am,
therewith to be content.”
Chap. I. The Introduction to the Text
These words are brought in by way of prolepsis, to anticipate and prevent an objection. The apostle had, in the former verses, laid down many grave and heavenly exhortations; among the rest, “to be careful for nothing,” ver. 6. Not to exclude, 1. A prudential care; for, he that provideth not for his own house, “hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel,” 1 Tim. 5:8. Nor, 2. A religious care; for, we must give all “diligence to make our calling and election sure,” 2 Pet. 1:10. But, 3. To exclude all anxious care about the issues and events of things; “take no thought for your life, what you shall eat,” Mat. 6:25. And in this sense it should be a Christian’s care not to be careful. The word careful in the Greek comes from a prmitive, that signifies ‘to cut the heart in pieces,’ a soul-dividing care; take heed of this. We are bid to “commit our way unto the Lord,” Ps. 37:5. The Hebrew word is, ‘roll thy way upon the Lord.’ It is our work to cast away care, 1 Pet. 5:7. And it is God’s work to take care. By our immoderacy we take his work out of his hand. Care, when it is eccentric, either distrustful or distracting, is very dishonourable to God; it takes away his providence, as if he sat in heaven and minded not what became of things here below; like a man that makes a clock, and then leaves it to go of itself. Immoderate care takes the heart off from better things; and usually, while we are thinking how we shall do to live, we forget how to die. Care is a spiritual canker that doth waste and dispirit; we may sooner by our care add a furlong to our grief than a cubit to our comfort. God doth threaten it as a curse, “They shall eat their bread with carefulness,” Ezek. 12:19. Better fast than eat of that bread. “Be careful for nothing.”
Now, lest any one should say, yea, Paul thou preachest that to us which thou hast scarce learned thyself,—hast thou learned not to be careful? the apostle seems tacitly to answer that, in the words of the text “I have learned, in whatever state I am, therewith to be content:” A speech worthy to be engraven upon our hearts, and to be written in letters of gold upon the crowns and diadems of princes.
The text doth branch itself into these two general parts.
I. The scholar, Paul; “I have learned.”
II. The lesson; “in every state to be content.”
Chap. II. The First Branch of the Text, the Scholar, with the First Proposition
I begin with the first:
The scholar, and his proficiency,—“I have learned.” Out of which I shall by the bye, observe two things by way of paraphrase. 1. The apostle doth not say, I have heard, that in every estate I should be content: but, I have learned. Whence our first doctrine, that it is not enough for Christians to hear their duty, but they must learn their duty. It is one thing to hear, and another thing to learn; as it is one thing to eat, and another thing to concoct. St. Paul was a practitioner. Christians hear much, but it is to be feared, learn little. There were four sorts of ground in the parable, Luke 8:5.; and but one good ground: an emblem of this truth, many hearers, but few learners. There are two things which keep us from learning.
1. Slighting what we hear. Christ is the pearl of price; when we disesteem this pearl, we shall never learn either its value, or its virtue. The gospel is a rare mystery; in one place, Acts 20:24., it is called ‘the gospel of grace;’ in another, 1 Cor. 4:4., ‘the gospel of glory;’ because in it, as in a transparent glass, the glory of God is resplendent. But he that hath learned to contemn this mystery, will hardly ever learn to obey it; he that looks upon the things of heaven as things by the bye, and perhaps the driving of a trade, or carrying on some politic design to be of greater importance, this man is in the high road to damnation, and will hardly ever learn the things of his peace. Who will learn that which he thinks is scarce worth learning?
2. Forgetting what, we hear. If a scholar have his rules laid before him, and he forgets them as fast as he reads them, he will never learn, James 1:25. Aristotle calls the memory the scribe of the soul; and Bernard calls it the stomach of the soul, because it hath a retentive faculty, and turns heavenly food into blood and spirits; we have great memories in other things, we remember that which is vain. Cyrus could remember the name of every soldier in his huge army. We remember injuries: this is to fill a precious cabinet with dung; but, quam facilis oblivio boni? as Hierom saith, how soon do we forget the sacred truths of God? We are apt to forget three things: our faults,—our friends,—our instructions. Many Christians are like sieves; put a sieve into the water, and it is full; but take it forth of the water, and all runs out: so, while they are hearing of a sermon, they remember something; but like the sieve out of the water, as soon as they are gone out of the church, all is forgotten. “Let these sayings, (saith Christ) sink down into your ears,” Luke 9:44. In the original it is, ‘put these sayings into your ears,’ as a man that would hide a jewel from being stolen, locks it up safe in his chest. Let them sink: the word must not fall only as dew that wets the leaf, but as rain which soaks to the root of the tree, and makes it fructify. O how often doth Satan, that fowl of the air, pick up the good seed that is sown!
Use. Let me put you upon a serious trial.
Some of you have heard much,—you have lived forty, fifty, sixty years under the blessed trumpet of the gospel,—what have you learned? You may have heard a thousand sermons, and yet not learned one. Search your consciences.
1. You have heard much against sin: are you hearers; or are you scholars? How many sermons have you heard against covetousness, that it is the root, on which pride, idolatry, treason do grow? 2 Tim. 4:2. and 4. One calls it a metropolitan sin; it is a complex evil, it doth twist a great many sins in with it. There is hardly any sin, but covetousness is a main ingredient into it; and yet are you like the two daughters of the horse-leech, that cry, “Give! give!” How much have you heard against rash anger, that it is a short frenzy,—a dry drunkenness,—that it rests in the bosom of fools,—and upon the least occasion do your spirits begin to take fire? How much have you heard against swearing? It is Christ’s express mandate, “swear not at all,” Mat. 5:34. This sin of all others may be termed the unfruitful work of darkness, Eph. 5:11. It is neither sweetened with pleasure, nor enriched with profit, the usual vermilion wherewith Satan doth paint sin. Swearing is forbidden with a subpœna. While the swearer shoots his oaths, like flying arrows at God to pierce his glory, God shoots “a flying roll” of curses against him, Zech. 5:2. And do you make your tongue a racket by which you toss oaths as tennis-balls? Do you sport yourselves with oaths, as the Philistines did with Samson, which will at last pull the house about your ears? Alas! How have they learned what sin is, that have not learned to leave sin! Doth he know what a viper is, that will play with it.
2. You have heard much of Christ: have you learned Christ? The Jews, as Jerom saith, carried Christ in their Bibles, but not in their heart; their sound “went into all the earth,” Rom. 10:18. The prophets and apostles were as trumpets, whose sound went abroad into the world; yet many thousands who heard the noise of these trumpets, had not learned Christ, “they have not all obeyed,” ver. 16.
(1.) A man may know much of Christ, and yet not learn Christ: the devils knew Christ, Mat. 1:24.
(2.) A man may preach Christ, and yet not learn Christ, as Judas and the pseudo-apostles, Phil. 4:15.
(3.) A man may profess Christ, and yet not learn Christ: there are many professors in the world that Christ will profess against, Mat. 7:22, 23.
Quest. What is it then to learn Christ?
Ans. 1. To learn Christ is to be made like Christ, to have the divine characters of his holiness engraven upon our hearts. “We all with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image,” 2 Cor. 3:18. There is a metamorphosis made; a sinner, viewing Christ’s image in the glass of the gospel, is transformed into that image. Never did any man look upon Christ with a spiritual eye, but he went away quite changed. A true saint is a divine landscape or picture, where all the rare beauties of Christ are lively pourtrayed and drawn forth; he hath the same spirit, the same judgment, the same will, with Jesus Christ.
A. 2. To learn Christ, is to believe m him; “My Lord, and my God,” John 20:28.: when we do not only credere Deum, but in Deum; which is the actual application of Christ to ourselves, and as it were the spreading of the sacred medicine of his blood upon our souls. You have heard much of Christ, and yet cannot with an humble adherence say, “My Jesus;” be not offended if I tell you, the devil can say his creed as well as you.
A. 3. To learn Christ, is to love Christ. When we have Bible-conversations, our life like rich diamonds cast a sparkling lustre in the church of God, Phil. 1:17., and are, in some sense, parallel with the life of Christ, as the transcript with the original. So much for the first notion of the word.
End Chapter 2.
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