An Exhortation to Peace and Unity, John Bunyan [ebook reader with highlight function TXT] 📗

wars in countries: where wars are, the ground lieth waste and untilled, none takes care of it. It is love that edifieth, but division pulleth down. Divisions are as the north-east wind to the fruits, which causeth them to dwindle away to nothing; but when the storms are over, every thing begins to grow. When men are divided, they seldom speak the truth in love; and then no marvel they grow not up to him in all things, who is the head.

 

It is a sad presage of an approaching famine (as one well observes), not of bread nor water, but of hearing the word of God, when the thin ears of corn devour the plump full ones; when the lean kine devour the fat ones; when our controversies about doubtful things, and things of less moment, eat up our zeal for the more indisputable and practical things in religion which may give us cause to fear, that this will be the character by which our age will be known to posterity—that it was the age that talked of religion most, and loved it least.

 

Look upon those churches where peace is, and there you shall find prosperity. When the churches had rest, they were not only multiplied, but, walking in the fear of the Lord and the comforts of the Holy Ghost, they were edified; it is when the whole body is knit together, as with joints and hands, that they increase with the increase of God.

 

We are at a stand sometimes, why there is so little growth among churches, why men have been so long in learning; and are yet so far from attaining the knowledge of the truth; some have given one reason, and some another; some say pride is the cause, and others say covetousness is the cause. I wish I could say these were no causes; but I observe, that when God entered his controversy with his people of old, he mainly insisted upon some one sin, as idolatry, and shedding innocent blood, &c., as comprehensive of the rest; not but that they were guilty of other sins, but those that were the most capital are particularly insisted on: in like manner, whoever would but take a review of churches that live in contentions and divisions, may easily find that breach of unity and charity is their capital sin, and the occasion of all other sins. No marvel then, that the Scripture saith, the whole law is fulfilled in love: and if so, then where love is wanting, it needs must follow the whole law is broken. It is where love grows cold that sin abounds; and therefore the want of unity and peace is the cause of that leanness and barrenness that is among us; it is true in spirituals as well as temporals, that peace brings plenty.

 

7. Where unity and peace is wanting, our prayers are hindered; the promise is, that what we shall agree to ask shall be given us of our heavenly Father: no marvel we pray and pray, and yet are not answered; it is because we are not agreed what to have.

 

It is reported that the people in Lacedemonia, coming to make supplication to their idol god, some of them asked for rain, and others of them asked for fair weather: the oracle returns them this answer, That they should go first and agree among themselves. Would a heathen god refuse to answer such prayers in which the supplicants were not agreed, and shall we think the true God will answer them?

 

We see then that divisions hinder our prayers, and lay a prohibition on our sacrifice: “If thou bring thy gift to the altar,” saith Christ, “and there remember that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave thy gift, and go, and first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer it.” So that want of unity and charity hinders even our particular prayers and devotions.

 

This hindered the prayers and fastings of the people of old from finding acceptance; Isa. lviii. 3. The people ask the reason wherefore they fasted, and God did not see nor take notice of them.

He gives this reason, Because they fasted for strife and debate, and hid their face from their own flesh. Again, Isa. lix., the Lord saith, his hand was not shortened, that he could not save; nor his ear heavy, that he could not hear: but their sins had separated between their God and them. And among those many sins they stood chargeable with, this was none of the least, viz., that the way of peace they had not known. You see where peace was wanting, prayers were hindered, both under the Old and New Testaments.

 

The sacrifice of the people, in the 65th of Isaiah, that said, “Stand by thyself, I am holier than thou,” was a smoke in the nostrils of the Lord. On the other hand, we read how acceptable those prayers were that were made with one accord, Acts iv. 24, compared with verse 31. They prayed with one accord, and they were all of one heart, and of one soul: And see the benefit of it, “They were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and spoke the word with all boldness;” which was the very thing they prayed for, as appears verse 29. And the apostle exhorts the husband to dwell with his wife, that their prayers might not be hindered; 1 Pet. iii. 7. We see then want of unity and peace, either in families or churches, is a hinderance of prayers.

 

8. It is a dishonour and disparagement to Christ that his family should be divided. When an army falls into mutiny and division, it reflects disparagement on him that hath the conduct of it. In like manner, the divisions of families are a dishonour to the heads, and those that govern them. And if so, then how greatly do we dishonour our Lord and governor, who gave his body to be broken to keep his church from breaking, who prayed for their peace and unity, and left peace at his departing from them for a legacy, even a peace which the world could not bestow upon them.

 

9. Where there is peace and unity, there is a sympathy with each other; that which is the want of one will be the want of all. “Who is afflicted,” saith the apostle, “and I burn not?” We should then “remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being ourselves also of the body;” Heb. xiii.

3. But where the body is broken, or men are not reckoned or esteemed of the body, no marvel we are so little affected with such as are afflicted. Where divisions are, that which is the joy of the one is the grief of another; but where unity and peace and charity abound, there we shall find Christians in mourning with them that mourn, and rejoicing with them that rejoice; then they will not envy the prosperity of others, nor secretly rejoice at the miseries or miscarriages of any.

 

IV. Last of all, I now come to give you twelve directions and motives for the obtaining peace and unity.

 

1. If ever we would live in peace and unity, we must pray for it.

We are required to seek peace: of whom then can we seek it with expectation to find it, but of him who is a God of peace, and hath promised to bless his people with peace? It is God that hath promised to give his people one heart, and one way; yet for all these things he will be sought unto: O then let us seek peace, and pray for peace, because God shall prosper them that love it.

 

The peace of churches is that which the apostle prays for in all his epistles; in which his desire is, that grace and peace may be multiplied and increased among them.

 

2. They that would endeavour the peace of the churches, must be careful who they commit the care and oversight of the churches to; as (1.)—Over and besides those qualifications that should be in all Christians, they that rule the church of God should be men of counsel and understanding. Where there is an ignorant ministry, there is commonly an ignorant people, according as it was of old—

Like priest like people.

 

How sad is it to see the church of God committed to the care of such that pretend to be teachers of others, that understand not what they say, or whereof they affirm. No marvel the peace of churches is broken, when their watchmen want skill to preserve their unity, which of all other things is as the church’s walls; when they are divided, no wonder they crumble to atoms, if there is no skilful physician to heal them. It is sad when there is no balm in Gilead, and when there is no physician there. Hence it is, that the wounds of churches become incurable, like the wounds of God’s people of old, either not healed at all, or else slightly healed, and to no purpose. May it not be said of many churches this day, as God said of the church of Israel, That he sought for a man among them that should stand in the gap, and make up the breach; but he found none?

 

Remember what was said of old, Mal. ii. 7, The priest’s lips preserve knowledge: and the people should seek the law at his mouth. But when this is wanting, the people will be stumbling, and departing from God and one another; therefore God complains, Hos.

iv. 6, That his people were destroyed for want of knowledge; that is, for want of knowing guides; for if the light that is in them that teach be darkness, how great is that darkness! and if the blind lead the blind, no marvel both fall into the ditch.

 

How many are there that take upon them to teach others, that had need be taught in the beginning of religion; that instead of multiplying knowledge, multiply words without knowledge; and instead of making known God’s counsel, darken counsel by words without knowledge? The apostle speaks of some that did more than darken counsel; for they wrested the counsel of God; 2 Pet. iii. 16. In Paul’s epistles, saith he, “are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction.” Some things in the Scriptures are hard to be known, and they are made harder by such unlearned teachers as utter their own notions by words without knowledge.

 

None are more bold and adventurous to take upon them to expound the dark mysteries and sayings of the prophets and Revelations, and the 9th of the Romans, which I believe contains some of those many things which, in Paul’s epistles, Peter saith, were “hard to be understood;” I say none are more forward to dig in these mines than those that can hardly give a sound reason for the first principles of religion; and such as are ignorant of many more weighty things that are easily to be seen in the face and superficies of the Scripture; nothing will serve these but swimming in the deeps, when they have not yet learned to wade through the shallows of the Scriptures: like the Gnosticks of old, who thought they knew all things, though they knew nothing as they ought to know. And as those Gnosticks did of old, so do such teachers of late break the unity and peace of churches.

 

How needful then is it, that if we desire the peace of churches, that we choose out men of knowledge, who may