To the Church of God in the Precinct of Black-Friars, London
Christian and respected Friends,
IT cannot seeme strange, that I who have lately given my selfe to the service of your soules, should now dedicate my Booke to you for that purpose. Nor can any wonder, since you have lately imitated your Predecessors, in the loving and unanimous Call of your (though now unworthy) Pastor; that he should endeavour to follow the steps of those excellent servants of Christ your former Ministers, who in their times both by Preaching and Printing bestowed their labours upon you for your spirituall benefit.
I have frequently heard, that Black-fryars is one of those places in London, commonly accounted and called by the name of Priviledged, in respect of sundry civil Immunities bestowed upon it. But what are all those Political, in comparison of the Spiritual priviledges which God hath afforded to you of this place? in regard whereof I much question, whether any Congregation in London (I think I may take a far larger compass) hath been equal to you in the priviledg of enjoying so long a continuance of an Able, Orthodox, Soul-saving Ministry. Those two excellent and eminently faithful Servants of Christ, Mr. Egerton, and Doctor Gouge (lately deceased) spent (as I am informed) about seventy years in their Ministerial Labors among the people of Black-fryars.
The Gospel in your Congregation hath continued (I think) beyond the remembrance of the oldest, (the Lord grant that it may outlive the youngest) now living among you. God hath, as it were, made his Sun to stand still upon your Gibeah, and his Moon upon your Ajalon, to give you light to overcome your spirituall Enemies. How many learned, and pithy expositions, savoury discourses, and excellent tractates have had their conception in your Parish, and their birth in your pulpit! You have enjoyed the monthly administration of the Lords Supper, (as your late reverend Pastor informed me) these five and forty yeares, without any interruption. I mention not these things to occasion your glorying in men, or any outward priviledges, but onely to put you upon self-reflexion, and holy examination, how you have thriven in holinesse under all these enjoyments: Church priviledges (I grant) are excellent mercies, in their kinde: Without the Ordinances, places are commonly as void of Civility as Christianity; They are but magna latrocinia, dens of robbers, and places of prey, darke places of the Earth fill’d with violence. Church-priviledges, (so far forth as they are visibly owned) make men visible (saints in opposition to the world; yea and in their due and holy use, real and true saints in opposition to hypocrites. But notwithstanding all these, the meanes of grace, without grace by those meanes, leave those who injoy them, in the same condition (in respect of any saving benefit) with those who want them. Jer. 9.25, 26. Is. 29.1. 2 Hag. 12.14. Rom. 2.25.28, 29. The Arke at Shiloh, the sacrifices devoured by Ariel, Circumcision in the flesh, The temple of the Lord, The Rock and Mannah, The Lords Supper at Corinth, &c. 1 Cor. 11.20. Jer. 7.12. were priviledges which did not savingly profit the enjoyers, who were not holy by their holy things, but their holy things rather were made unholy by them. Nay, bare outward priviledges increase condemnation. The valley of vision hath the heavyest burden. The Israelites who had (not monthly but) daily sacraments, eating and drinking them every meal, were most severely destroyed. These were but as Uriahs letters, which they carryed to their owne destruction. The higher Corazin and Bethsaida’s elevation was, the greater was their downfall. Justice will pluck the unreformed, from the Altar of priviledges. Sermons do but heat hell, and Sacraments are but oyl and pitch to make its flame scald and consume the more painfully. The barren oak was not so near cursing, as the barren fig-tree. Nor are weeds on the dunghill so near plucking up, as those in the Garden; by none is the name of God so much dishonoured, mercy so much abused, hypocrisie so odiously veiled, the power of godlinesse so bitterly hated, Joh. 8.33. Rom. 1.27. as by many who have most enjoyed Church priviledges. Put not off your souls therefore (dear Christians) with outward Priviledges without inward grace by those Priviledges. What is it more to have a name to live, and to be spiritually dead, to have titular sanctity and real impiety, then for a starving man to be voiced up for a plentiful house-keeper? When God had bestowed upon Abram a new name, and changed it to Abraham he gave him also a new blessing. The unprofitable under the means of grace, are therfore worse then those who want those means, because they are not better, the more aship is laden with gold, the deeper she sinks, the more you are laden with golden priviledges, the deeper (if you miscarry) wil be your destruction Though the Ministers industry without success, acquits him, yet it condemns his people. He may be sincere, yet unsuccessfull; but then the people in the mean time, if unprofitable, shew themselvs hypocritical. You never commend your Ministers but by getting the saving impressions of what they preach upon your hearts. Christ reproved the young man for calling him good Master, because (saith Calvin) he had never received any saving good from Christ. The sheep onely prayse the care of the carefull shepherd, by their wool, milk, fruitfulnesse and fatness. Let it never be said, that God gives the food of life to you, (as a rich man gives a nurse good dyet for the benefit of his child) onely for the thriving of strangers. Be not as Indians, who go naked and beggarly in the midst of all their heaps of gold. Let not sermons be as jewels onely to hang in your ears, but let them be lockt up in the cabinets of your hearts. Consider, ordinances are never yours, till you get the savour of them upon your spirits; Meat upon the table may be taken away, but not when by eating, ‘tis turned into a mans substance. Books may be stoln out of a Scholars study, but a thousand theeves can never take away the learning which he hath gotten into his head, by studying those Books. The grace of priviledges is onely safe. You shall be stript of these when you come to dye, but the grace of them will stick by you for ever. Christ may say to those at the last day, depart, who have eat and drunk with him, and cast out devils, but never will he say so, to those who having eat and drunk with him, have also eat and drunk himself, who have cast lust out of their souls, and gotten a broken heart for sin, or obtained the least dramme of sanctifying grace. Oh how much is a drop of inward holinesse, better then a sea of outward priviledges!
This book with which I here present you, is the second part of my Exposition upon the divine and excellent Epistle of Jude. The Apostles scope in writing this Epistle was to stir up these Christians to oppose those who would have seduced them to libertinism, and to contend for the faith, against those who turned the grace of God into wantonnesse, who allowed themselves to live, or rather (like beasts) to wallow in all filthinesse, under pretence of advancing free grace; and who laboured to make the Saints by being Christians to become Heathens, as the Apostles had made them of Heathens to become Christians. The endeavor of satan was to drive people from one extream to another, and since he could not by keeping some under Judaism, cause them to deny that Christ had purchased for them any liberty at all, he most earnestly laboured by driving them to Atheism and looseness, to make them beleive that now they had liberty to be as had as they would, and that the worse they were, the better they were, & the lower they were in sin, the higher in Christian perfection: And hence it was that these later Epistles (one of the last whereof this of Jude was) are principally spent in opposing a feigned, workless lifeless faith, and in administring antidotes against those doctrines of prophaneness and libertinism, wherewith the times grew the more infested, as the doctrine of grace grew the more to be cried up and advanced.
It is now a compleat year since I began to put pen to paper for the preparing this second Part for the presse: And it might long since have been finished, had not my many other employments hindred. It hath cost me (I confess) some studious hours; but the kind acceptance which my other Part hath found from the Church of God, encouraged me to look beyond the difficulty of the work, and made me unwilling to leave this Commentary longer unfinished. I shal conclude with my earnest & humble supplication to the Father of lights that this endeavour (among others) may advance the spiritual progress of the Church, and principally of you (my dear and beloved friends) so in grace here, that you may be fitted for glory hereafter. So prayes, Sirs,
Black-friers, Feb. 22th. 1653. Your affectionate and faithfull Servant, for the good of your soules, WILL. JENKYN.
