‘Having your loins girt about with truth’ (Eph. vi. 14).
Gurnall presents us with “a double design Satan hath to rob Christians of truth,” and a corresponding “twofold girding about with this truth.” The first was an understanding of the truth. The second is a determined conviction to profess the truth.
Second Girding About.
[It is the Christian’s duty to make a free and bold profession of the truth.]
Since Satan comes sometimes as a lion in the persons of bloody persecutors, and labours to scare Christians from the truth with fire and faggot; to defend us against this design, we need to have truth girt about us, so that with a holy resolution we may maintain our profession in the face of death and danger. The second way that truth is assaulted is by force and violence, the devil pierceth the fox’s skin of seducers with the lion’s skin of persecutors. The bloodiest tragedies in the world have been acted on the stage of the church; and the most inhuman massacres and butcheries committed on the harmless sheep of Christ. The first man that was slain in the world was a saint, and he for religion. And as Luther said, Cain will kill Abel unto the end of the world. The fire of persecution can never go out quite, so long as there remains a spark of hatred in the wicked’s bosom on earth, or the devil in hell to blow it up. Therefore there is a second way of having truth girt about the Christian’s loins, as necessary as the other, and that is in the profession of it. Many that could never be beaten from the truth by dint of argument, have been forced from it by the fire of persecution. It is not an orthodox judgment will enable a man to suffer for the truth at the stake. . . . Truth in the head, without holy courage, makes a man like the sword-fish, which Plutarch saith hath a sword in the head, but no heart to use it. Then a person becomes unconquerable, when from heaven he is endued with a holy boldness to draw forth the sword of the Spirit, and own the naked truth, by a free profession of it in the face of death and danger. This, this is to have our ‘loins girt about with truth.’—William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour (Banner of Truth Trust, 2002), 1:304–305.
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