May 26

Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles, that whereas they speak against you as evil doers, they may, by your good works which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation.—1 Peter 2:12.

As the sovereign power of drawing good out of evil resides in God, and argues his primitive goodness, so he teacheth his own children some faculty this way, that they may resemble him in it. He teacheth them to draw sweetness out of their bitterest afflictions, and increase of inward peace from their outward troubles. And as these buffetings of the tongue are no small part of their sufferings, so they reap no small benefit by them many ways: particularly in this one, that they order their conversation the better, and walk the more exactly for it.

And this, no doubt, in Divine providence, is intended and ordered for their good, as are all their other trials. The sharp censures and evil speakings that a Christian is encompassed with in the world, is no other than a hedge of thorns set on every side, that he go not out of his way, but keep straight on in it between them, not declining to the right hand nor to the left: whereas, if they found nothing but the favor and good opinion of the world, they might, as in a way unhedged, be subject to expatiate and wander out into the meadows of carnal pleasures that are about them, which would call and allure them, and often divert them from their journey.

And thus it might fall out, that Christians would deserve censure and evil speakings the more, if they did not usually suffer them undeserved. This then turns into a great advantage to them, making their conduct more answerable to those two things that our Saviour joins, watch and pray; causing them to be more vigilant over themselves, and the more earnest with God for his watching over them and conducting of them. Make my ways straight, says David, because of mine enemies; the word is my observers, or those that scan my ways, every foot of them; that examine them as a verse, or as a song of music; if there be but a wrong measure in them, they will not let it slip, but will be sure to mark it.

And if the enemies of the godly wait for their halting, shall not they scan their own paths themselves, that they may not halt? shall they not examine them to order them, as the wicked do to censure them: still depending wholly upon the Spirit of God as their guide, to lead them into all truth, and to teach them how to order their conversation aright, that it may be all of a piece, holy and blameless, and still like itself?

Honest: fair and beautiful: the same word doth fitly signify goodness and beauty, for that which is the truest and most lasting beauty grows fresher in old age, as the psalmist speaks of the righteous, those that be planted in the house of God. "Could the beauty of virtue be seen," said a philosopher, "it would draw all to love it." A Christian, holy conversation hath such a beauty, that when they who are strangers to it, begin to discern it at all aright, they can not choose but love it; and where it begets not love, yet it silences calumny, or at least evinces its falsehood.

The goodness or beauty of a Christian's conversation consisting in symmetry and conformity to the word of God as its rule, he ought diligently to study that rule, and to square his ways by it; not to walk at random, but to apply that rule to every step at home and abroad, and to be as careful to keep the beauty of his ways unspotted, as those women are of their faces and attire who are most studious of comeliness.

But so far are we who call ourselves Christians from this exact regard of our conversation, that the most part not only have many foul spots, but they themselves, and all their ways, are nothing but defilement, all one spot; as our apostle calls them, blots are they and spots. And even they who are Christians indeed, yet are not so watchful and accurate in all their ways as becomes them, but stain their holy profession either with pride, or covetousness, or contentions, or some other such like uncomeliness.

Let us all, therefore, resolve more to study this good and comely conversation, the apostle here exhorts to, that it may be such as becometh the gospel of Christ. And if you live among profane persons, who will be to you as the unbelieving Gentiles were to these believing Jews who lived among them, traducers of you, and given to speak evil of you, and of religion in you, trouble not yourselves with many apologies and clearings when you are evil spoken of, but let the track of your whole life answer for you, your honest and blameless conversation: that will be the shortest, and most real and effectual way of confuting all obloquies; as when one in the schools was proving by a sophistical argument that there could be no motion, the philosopher answered it fully and shortly by rising up and walking. Be avenged on evil speakings by well-doing, shame them out of it.