of man. Thousands are the heresies which now beset the church. Oh children of God! fight the Lord’s battles for truth. I am astonished, and yet more astonished when I come to think it over, at the want of earnestness that there is in the Protestantism of the present age. How do you imagine that Cardinal Wiseman pays for all his splendours, and that the Roman Catholic church is supported? Fools and slow of heart, you find much of their wealth for them. If he is to preach in any place, who is it that crowds the chapel full, and pays for admission? The Protestants; and the Protestantism of England is the paymaster of the Pope. I am ashamed that sons of the Reformers who have Smithfield {b} still in their midst unbuilt upon, should bow themselves before the beast, and give so much as a single farthing to the shrine of the devil’s firstborn son. Take heed to yourselves, you Protestants, lest you be partakers of her plagues; do not touch her, lest you become defiled. Give a drachma to her, or a grain of incense to her censors, you shall be partakers of her adulteries and partakers of her plagues. Every time you pass the house of Popery let a curse light upon her head. Thus says the Lord: — “Come out of her, my people, so that you do not become partakers in her sins and so that you do not receive her plagues. For her sins have reached to heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double to her double according to her works: in the cup which she has filled, fill to her double. How much she has glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her; for she says in her heart, I sit as a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judges her.” — {Revelation 18:4-8} How soft some men’s minds are growing; how effeminate in the battle. I hear then speaking of Puseyism, {c} — and what is that except Popery made worse than it was before by being more despicable and deceptive than even Popery itself. Do you not hear men talk about the Puseyites in these days and say, “Ah! well, they differ only a little from us.” Do not the evangelical party in the Church of England seem at the present moment to make common cause and communion with the Puseyite? Else how is it that the great preachings have been alternatively conducted by High and Low Church? It is all very well with that Church when it is separated from her heretical sons, and a great gulf fixed, but all that helps to bridge that gulf must mar her glory and destroy her power. We must have no truce, no treaty with Rome. War! war to the death with her! There cannot be peace. She cannot have peace with us — we cannot have peace with her. She hates the true Church; and we can only say that the hatred is reciprocated. We would not lay a hand upon her priests; we would not touch a hair of their heads. Let them be free; but we would destroy their doctrine from the face of the earth as the doctrine of demons. So let it perish, oh God, and let that evil thing become as the fat of lambs. Into smoke let it consume: yes into smoke let it consume away.
12. We must fight the Lords battles against this giant error, whatever shape it takes; and so must we do with every error that pollutes the church. Slay it utterly; let none escape. “Fight the Lord’s battles.” Even though it is an error that is in an Evangelical Church, yet we must strike it. I love all those who love the Lord Jesus Christ; but, nevertheless, I cannot have any truce any treaty with various errors that have crept into the church, nor would I have you regard them with complacency. We are one in Christ; let us be friends with one another; but let us never be friends with one another’s error. If I am wrong, rebuke me sternly; I can bear it, and bear it cheerfully; and if you are wrong, expect the same from me, and neither peace nor parley with your mistakes. Let us all be true to one another, and true to Christ; and as soon as we perceive an error, though it is only as the shadow of one, let us root it out and drive it from us, lest it plague the whole body, and put leprosy into the entire fabric of the church. No peace with sin, no peace with falsehood. War, war, war without deliberation: war for ever with error and deceit!
13. And yet again, it is the Christian’s duty always to have war with war, but not to have bitterness in our hearts against any man who lives is to serve Satan. We must speak very harshly and sternly against error, and against sin; but against men we have not a word to say, though it would be the Pope himself: I have no enmity in my heart against him as a man, but as antichrist. The Christian is one with all men. Are we not every man’s brother? “God has made of one flesh all people who live upon the face of the earth.” The cause of Christ is the cause of humanity. We are friends to all, and are enemies to none. We do not speak evil, even of the false prophet himself, as a man; but, as a false prophet, we are his sworn opponents. Now, Christians, you have a difficult battle to fight, because you fight with all evil and hostility between man and man: you are to be peacemakers. Go wherever you may, if you see a quarrel you are to mediate it. You are to pluck firebrands out of the fire, and strive to quench them in the waters of lovingkindness. It is your mission to bring the nations together, and weld them into one. It is yours to make man love man, to make him no more the devourer of his kind. This you can only do by being the friends of purity. Peace with error is war with man: but war with error is peace with man. Strike error, strike sin, and you have done your best to promote happiness and union among mankind. Oh, go, Christian, in the Spirit’s strength, and strike your own anger — put that to the death, strike your own pride — level that, and then strike every other man’s anger. Make peace wherever you can; scatter peace with both your hands. Let this be the very air you breathe; let nothing drop from your lip except words of healing, words of tenderness, words which shall abate the strife and noise of this poor distracted world. And now you have a battle before you, — a battle against sin and against error, and then, also, a battle against strife, — the battle of love.
14. II. And now FOR THE LORD’S SOLDIERS: who are those who are to fight the Lord’s battle? Not everyone. The Lord has his army, his church: who are they? The Lord’s soldiers are all of his own choosing. He has chosen them out of the world; and they are not of the world, even as Christ is not of the world. But if you want to know the Lord’s soldiers, I will tell you how you may ascertain whether you are one. When the Lord Jesus enlists a soldier in his church, the first thing he does with him is, he tells him that he must first take off every rag of the old garments that he was accustomed to wear. “Now,” Jesus says to him, “your rags must be relinquished; your sins and your self-righteousness must both be forsaken. Here is the regimental, here is the inner garment of my imputed righteousness, and here is the outward garment of divine sanctification. Put on these, and you are mine. But in your own robes, I will have nothing to do with you; you shall still continue an heir of wrath, and I will not enlist you among the heirs of grace.” As soon as a man has his rags taken off, if Christ has enlisted him, the next thing he is required to do is, to wash. He is washed, from head to foot, in a matchless bath of blood; and when washed, he is arrayed, and clothed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ. When this is done, he is taken into the midst of the army and introduced to his comrades; and he is led to love the whole army. “Well,” one says, “I love my own rank.” Do you? Then you do not belong to it, if you do not love the other ranks too. He who is a true soldier of Christ, wears his regimentals, and he loves the whole army. He keeps to his own regiment, and he likes its banner — the flag that has so often braved the battle and the storm; still he loves the whole army, however much the colours may differ. He loves all those who serve the Lord Jesus Christ. “By this also you shall know whether you are his disciples, if you love one another, even as Christ has loved you.”
15. Once brought into the army, there is one mark by which you may know Christ’s soldier, namely, that he is not his own. If you meet him, he will say, “From head to foot I belong to my Captain, every inch of me; and what is more, I have given up goods and chattels, wife and children, time and talents, everything to him. I am not my own, I am bought with a price.” He is a consecrated man. Come, then, ask these questions of yourselves. Have you been washed in the blood of Christ? Do you boast in the imputed righteousness of Christ? And are you clothed with the sanctification of his Spirit? Have you given up everything for his cause, and for the love you bear his name are you willing to live or willing to die, as he shall please, if you may only promote his honour? Well, then, you are his soldier, and therefore I shall not need to draw any further lines of distinction; but go to the third point, which is —
16.
