_Third_ and _Last_ place, Exhort you to put the Apostle’s resolution
in practice, and beseech you, with him, to determine, “Not to know any
thing, save JESUS CHRIST, and him crucified.”
I say, _determine_; for unless you sit down first, and count the cost,
and from a well-grounded conviction of the excellency of this, above
all other knowledge whatsoever, resolve to make this your chief study,
your only end, your one thing needful, every frivolous temptation will
draw you aside from the pursuit after it.
Your friends and carnal acquaintance, and, above all, your grand
adversary the devil, will be persuading you to determine not to
know any thing, but how to lay up goods for many years, and to get a
knowledge and taste of the pomps and vanities of this wicked world;
but do you determine not to follow, or be led by them; and the more
they persuade you to know other things, the more do you “determine not
to know any thing, save JESUS CHRIST, and him crucified.” For, this
knowledge never faileth; but whether they be riches, they shall fail;
whether they be pomps, they shall cease; whether they be vanities, they
shall fade away: but the knowledge of JESUS CHRIST, and him crucified,
abideth for ever.
Whatever, therefore, you are ignorant of, be not ignorant of this. If
you know CHRIST, and him crucified, you know enough to make you happy,
supposing you know nothing else; and without this, all your other
knowledge cannot keep you from being everlastingly miserable.
Value not then, the contempt of friends, which you must necessarily
meet with upon your open profession to act according to this
determination. For your Master, whose you are, was despised before
you; and all that will know nothing else but JESUS CHRIST, and him
crucified, must, in some degree or other, suffer persecution.
It is necessary that offences should come, to try what is in our hearts,
and whether we will be faithful soldiers of JESUS CHRIST or not.
Dare ye then to confess our blessed Master before men, and to shine
as lights in the world, amidst a crooked and perverse generation?
Let us not be content with following him afar off; for then we shall,
as _Peter_ did, soon deny him; but let us be altogether christians,
and let our speech, and all our actions declare to the world whose
disciples we are, and that we have indeed “determined not to know any
thing, save JESUS CHRIST, and him crucified.” Then, well will it be
with us, and happy, unspeakably happy shall we be, even here; and what
is infinitely better, when others that despised us, shall be calling
for the mountains to fall on them, and the hills to cover them, we
shall be exalted to sit down on the right-hand of GOD, and shine as the
sun in the firmament, in the kingdom of our most adorable Redeemer, for
ever and ever.
Which GOD of his Infinite mercy grant, &c.