Thomas Hooker
The various means of grace, such as preaching, prayer and the sacraments are the pipes through which God communicates faith. But I focus on those which are necessary for feeble Christians, to bring them into the blessed state of rightly believing.
1. Vain help. We must, as much as in us lies, labour to pull away all those carnal outward stays that the soul leans upon and every other similar refuge for relief and help. Then, when all these are taken from us, we may be forced to go for relief where right help is to be had. It is natural to us all, even from our first parents, to desire to be able to supply ourselves with all that is necessary, without being obliged to others.
Therefore the way to make the soul lean on Christ is to pluck away all those deceiving props. The last thing we flee to is the promise; if we could find good anywhere except in Christ, we would never go to Him for it. God hears last from us; therefore in this we should do as the enemy does with the besieged city when he would make the inhabitants yield to him – or those that keep it. The way he takes is to starve them, to cut off all provision and stop all entrances, so that no one can come to relieve them. Then they yield at once to the mercy of the assailant. So it is with our nature: seeing we are still trusting to our own strength and relying on something of our own, the best way is to starve the heart by cutting off all the comforts by which it is succoured and quietened – but not rightly in Christ. For when the heart is thus famished, it will seek the Saviour and go to Him, because there is nothing else to help it.
The poor woman in the Gospel had spent all her goods on the physicians (Mk 5:26,27), and if she had just a little left – just one farthing – she would never have gone to Christ, for anything that I know. But when all these means failed, she was forced to seek to Christ, who was ready and willing to do that for her, and more than she desired. Our souls must have something to lean upon; they must have some supports. Therefore, when all our carnal hopes are taken from us, we must lean upon the promise, because we have nothing else to rest on. Yet, though I thus speak, a man is not required to cast away all outward comforts such as God grants him temporarily here; yet, though he may have much in this way, he must labour to get his heart to see and acknowledge the insufficiency and nothingness of them all. He must so labour till he have Christ above all, who is the superlative comfort,
1An extract, as edited, from The Poor Doubting Sinner Drawn to Christ by Hooker (1586-1647), a Puritan minister who emigrated from England to America.
and not rest in them as some do, making them their whole contentment and their only rest, for then they are but lying vanities and broken staves, which will not only deceive us, but pierce us deeply too.
Now when the soul sees that these things cannot succour it, but bring it into a worse case, a man will then be content to have his heart divorced from them. And the soul is as Noah’s dove, when the ark began to rest on the mountain of Ararat: Noah then sent out the dove, but it found no rest for the sole of her foot. No doubt there were many dead carcasses to settle on, but the dove found no rest till she came to the ark again. So when a man finds no rest in any created thing and can get no footing for the soul, he goes to Christ, the ark; he goes home to the promise and rests there, and expects from it what he needs.
As in the art of swimming, he that will swim, must lift his feet from the bottom and commit himself to the stream to bear him up, so in our purpose to get to heaven, we must draw up our hearts from these vain things below. Even though we have honour and promotion, we must put no confidence in them, but pluck our affections from them – as if we were to lift our feet – and learn by believing to commit ourselves wholly to the power of the promise, and thence to receive comfort and permanent abiding.
Let not the gods of this world, such as honour, profit and pleasures, deceive you. Did the pride of Pharaoh’s heart deliver him? Did the riches of the rich man in hell save him? Did Herod’s applause do him any good? Did these gods bring them security? No, did they not leave them in the lurch? Therefore let us take our hearts off these things, and in comparison to those of our better life, have a low esteem of them, and see so great vanity, emptiness and insufficiency in them all that we may be forced to seek to Christ and, as David, seek the Lord’s help, “for vain is the help of man”. Let us labour further to see the secret wiles of our own hearts and hunt out all those mazes, turnings and windings in our subtle souls, for it is amazing to see how the soul is ready to seek comfort in every corner. Now when you see your heart thus seeking comfort in vain helps, call it away from them, and pluck them up by the roots, and see the emptiness of them. Then your heart will be ready to go to Christ.
2. Relying on the promises. When this is done, a way is made, in some degree, for the promise to come into your soul. Therefore strive to have your heart possessed thoroughly, and persuaded effectually, by the fulness of the good which is in the promise and persuaded of the satisfactory mercy and freeness of grace in Christ. Thus the soul may be established with that full content which is to be had in the riches of the promise. But mark what I say: let us persuade our hearts first, and not content ourselves that we are able to
argue somewhat fully about the excellence of the promise and of the riches in it, through the free grace of God in Christ. What good is it that the heart knows this but, knowing it, never comes to rely on the promise? Therefore do not leave till your heart values the promise on the basis of what the Word truly speaks of it. I say, do not leave your heart till you see that the promise of grace is most beautiful, and your heart gets some sense of the goodness of God and the riches of His grace towards you.
And here bring your heart to know that the promise is better than all the riches and honours that you can have, or the world can bestow, for so we read, “They that know Thy name will put their trust in Thee: for Thou . . . hast not forsaken them that seek Thee” (Ps 9:10). If you know and will believe this, this kind of knowledge and persuasion cannot but breed confidence and resolution, and consequently quieten the heart. We dare trust a friend whose faithfulness we have tested, and we rest upon what we know by experience. The promises of God are all as true as the gospel. Seek from one end of the heaven to the other; turn all the Bible over; and see if any man ever leaned on the promise and the Lord did not perform what He had promised for the good of his soul. “Unless Thy law had been my delights, I should then have perished in mine affliction” (Ps 119:92). “My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever” (Ps 73:26).