The Bruised Reed: With An Introductory Essay

by Richard Sibbes

“I said in my haste, I am cast out of thy sight;” there is smoke: “yet thou heardest the voice of my prayer;” there is fire. “Master, carest thou not, that we perish?” (Matt. 8:25), cry the disciples; here is smoke of infidelity, yet so much light of faith as stirred them up to pray to Christ. “Lord, I believe:” there is light; “but help my un- belief ” (Mark 9:24): there is smoke. Jonah cries, 2:4, “I am cast out of thy sight:” there is smoke; “yet will I look again to thy holy temple:” there is light. “O miserable man that I am” (Rom. 7:24), saith St. Paul upon sense of his corruption; but yet breaks out into thanks to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. “I sleep,” saith the Church in the Canticles, “but my heart wakes” (Cant. 5:2). In the seven Churches, which for their light are called, “seven golden candlesticks” (Rev. 2—3), most of them had much smoke with their light. The ground of this mixture is, that we carry about us a double principle, grace and nature. The end of it is especially to preserve us from those two dangerous rocks which our natures are prone to dash upon, security and pride; and to force us to pitch our rest on justification, not sanctification, which, besides imperfection, hath some soil.