THE Discourses contained in the three last volumes of the present edition, with the exception of the Appendix, were first published in the year 1744, with the following title:
“Five additional Volumes of Sermons preached upon several Occasions. By Robert South, D.D. late Prebendary of Westminster, and Canon of Christ-Church, Oxon. Now first printed from the Author’s Manuscripts. With the chief Heads of the Sermons prefixed to each Volume: and a general Index of the principal Matters. London: printed for Charles Bathurst, opposite St. Dunstan’s Church in Fleet-Street. M.DCC.XLIV.”
The editor is said to have been Dr. William King, Principal of St. Mary Hall in the University of Oxford. See Nichols’s Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, vol. II. p. 608.
These Sermons do not appear to have been prepared or even intended for the press by the author,
from whose rough drafts they were evidently printed
in so careless and incorrect a manner, as in many
passages to be absolutely unintelligible. In the present edition it has been deemed proper to have recourse occasionally to conjectural emendation of the
He that descended is the same also that ascended far above all heavens, that he might fill all things. P. 1.
Christianity, in those great matters of fact upon which it is founded, happily complies with man’s mind, by affording proper objects to affect both the pensive, sad, and composed part of the soul, and also its more joyful, serene, and sprightly apprehensions; which is instanced in many pas sages of Christ’s life, from the humble manger, attended with angels, to his descent into the grave, followed by his miraculous resurrection and ascension, 1. This last great and crowning passage, however true, still affords scope for the noble actings of faith; and since faith must rest itself upon a divine word, such a word we have here in the text, 3. Wherein are four things considerable:
I. Christ’s humiliation implied in these words, he that descended, 4.
The Socinians answered concerning Christ’s descent according to his divine nature, 5. And an inquiry made as to
the place whither he descended, the lower parts of the
earth, 5. which, 1. Some understand simply of the earth, as
being the lowermost part of the world, 6. 2. Some of the
grave, 6. 3. Some of hell itself, the place of the damned, 6.
4. The Romanists by the help of this text have spied a
place called purgatory; or rather the pope’s kitchen, 7.
These words may bear the same sense with those in Psalm
1. Because the former expositions have been shewn to be unnatural, forced, or impertinent, and there is no other be sides this assignable, 8.
2. Since Paul here uses David’s very words, it is most probable that he used them in David’s sense, 8.
3. The words descending and ascending are so put together in the text, that they seem to intend a summary account of Christ’s whole transaction in man’s redemption, which was begun in his conception, and consummate in his ascension, 8.
II. Christ’s glorious advancement and exaltation, he ascended far above all heavens; that is, to the most eminent place of dignity and glory in the highest heaven, 9.
III. The qualification and state of Christ’s person, in reference to both conditions: he was the same. He that descended, &c. which evinces the unity of the two natures in the same person, 11.
IV. The end of Christ’s ascension, that he might fill all things, 15. All things may refer here, 1. To the scripture prophecies and predictions, 15. 2. To the church, as he might fill that with his gifts and graces, 15. Or 3, (which interpretation is preferred,) to all things in the world, 16. which he may be said thus to fill in a double respect.
1. Of the omnipresence of his nature, and universal diffusion of his godhead, 16.
2. Of the universal rule and government of all things committed to him as mediator upon his ascension, 19.
It remains now that we transcribe this into our lives, and by being the most obedient of servants, declare Christ to be the greatest of masters, 21 .
That he might fill all things. P. 22.
These words are capable of a threefold interpretation, 22.
1. All things may refer to the whole series of prophecies and predictions recorded of Christ in the scriptures, which he may be said to fulfil by his ascension, 22.
St. Paul vindicated against the Jews’ charge of perverting the prophet’s meaning in that eminent prediction,
2. All things may refer to the church: which sense is here most insisted on, 25.
The church, from its very nature and constitution, has unavoidably a double need or necessity, which it is Christ’s prerogative to fill, 26.
1. In respect of its government. Hereupon he gave some, apostles; some, evangelists; some, prophets; some, pastors and teachers, 26.
2. In respect of instruction: for this Christ made a glorious provision by the diffusion of the Holy Ghost upon the apostles, 27. In which passage two things are observable:
I. The time when, 27. Which is remarkable in respect,
1. Of Christian religion itself, it being about its first solemn promulgation, 27.
2. Of the apostles. It was when they entered upon the full execution of their apostolic office, 29-
II. The manner how the Holy Ghost was conferred; namely, in the gift of tongues, 33. And as these tongues were a proper representation of the gospel, so the peculiar nature and efficacy of this gospel was emphatically set forth by those attending circumstances of the fire and the mighty wind, both of which are notable for these effects; 1. To cleanse. 2. To consume and destroy, 34.
The night cometh, when no man can work. P. 36.
The sense of the text naturally lies in three propositions.
I. That there is a work appointed to every man to be performed by him, while he lives in the world, 36.
Man, as he is, 1. a part or member of the body politic, hath a temporal work, whereby he is to approve himself a good citizen, in filling the place of a divine, lawyer, &c. 38.
2. As a member and subject of a spiritual and higher kingdom, he has also a spiritual calling or profession of a Christian; and the work that this engages him to is three fold, 40.
1. Making his peace with God, 41.
2. Getting his sins mortified, 42.
3. Getting his heart purified with the proper graces and virtues of a Christian, 44.
II. That the time of this life being once expired, there is no farther possibility of performing that work, 46.
The word by which the time of this life is expressed, viz. a day, 46. may emphatically denote three things.
1. The shortness of our time, 46. 2. The sufficiency of it for our work, 47. 3. The determinate stint and limitation of it, 48.
III. That the consideration of this ought to be the highest argument for using the utmost diligence in the discharge of this work, 49. Which requires all our diligence; 1. From its difficulty, 49. 2. From its necessity, 50.
I will make thee unto this people a fenced brasen wall: and they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee: for I am with thee to save thee and deliver thee, saith the Lord. P. 54.
Presbytery, derived by some from Jethro, came first from
Midian, an heathenish place, 54. Their elders are mentioned
sometimes in the Old Testament, but their office not described, 54. A superintendency of bishops over presbyters
may be argued from the superiority of the priests over the
Levites, much better than they can found their discipline
1. That such a superiority is not in itself absolutely irregular and unlawful, 55.
2. That neither does it carry in it an antipathy and contrariety to the power of godliness, 55.
And yet upon these two suppositions, as if there was something in the very vital constitution of such a subordination irreconcileable to godliness, are all the presbyters’ calumnies commenced, 55.
In the words are three things considerable.
I. God’s qualification of Jeremy to be an overseer in his church; I will make thee a fenced brasen wall, 56.
Now a wall imports, 1. Enclosure, 57. 2. Fortification, 58. This metaphor of a wall, as applied to a church-governor being explained; to make good that title he must have, 1. Courage, 59. 2. Innocence and integrity, 60. 3. Authority, 62.
II. The opposition that the church-governor thus qualified will be sure to meet with in his office: They shall fight against thee, 64. And this they are like to do,
1. By seditious preaching and praying, 64.
2. By railing and libels, 65.
3. Perhaps by open force, 66.
III. The issue and success of this opposition: They shall not prevail against thee, 68.
It is bold to foretell things future, which fall under human cognizance only two ways: 1. By a foresight of them in their causes, 68. 2. By divine revelation, 69. And from both these there is ground of hope to the church, 69.
The arguments against this answered, 1. That the enemies of the church in the late confusion did not prevail against her: for that only is a prevailing which is a final conquest, 70. 2. That he who is pillaged or murdered in the resolute performance of his duty is not properly prevailed against, 70.
Wherefore the governors of the church may with confidence
Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s elect, and the acknowledging the truth which is after godliness. P. 73.
The end of all philosophical inquiries is truth; and of all religious institutions, godliness; both which are united and blended in the constitution of Christianity, 73.
I. In this expression of the gospel’s being the truth which is after godliness, three things are couched.
1. That it is simply a truth, 74.
2. That it is an operative truth, 75.
3. That it operates to the best effect, 75.
The words may have a double sense, 76. 1. That the gospel is so called, because it actually produces the effects of godliness in those that embrace it, 76. 2. That it is, in its nature, the most apt and proper instrument of holiness, 76. and the truth which has thus an influence upon godliness consists of two things, 76.
1. A right notion of God, 77.
2. A right notion of what concerns the duty of man, 77.
II. Three things are deduced from this description of the gospel, 79.
1. That the nature and prime design of religion is to be an instrument of good life.
This cleared by these arguments. 1. That religion designs the service of God, by gaining to his obedience man’s actions and converse, 80. 2. It designs the salvation of
man, who is not saved as he is more knowing, but as he is
more pious than others, 80. 3. That the excellency of
Christianity does not consist in discovering more sublime
truths or more excellent precepts than philosophy, (though
it does this,) but in suggesting better arguments to enforce
2. That so much knowledge of truth as is sufficient to engage men in the practice of godliness, serves the necessary ends of religion, 82. For,
If godliness be the design, it ought also to be the measure of men’s knowledge in this particular, 83.
3. That whatsoever does in itself, or its direct consequences, undermine the motives of a good life, is contrary to and destructive of Christian religion, 83.
The doctrines that more immediately concern a good life are,
1. Such as concern the justification of a sinner, 83.
And herein the motives to holy living are subverted,
1. By the doctrine of the covenant of grace without conditions of performance on man’s part, but only to believe that he is justified: taught by the antinomians, 84. 2. By the doctrine of acceptance with God by the righteousness and merits of other saints: taught by the Romanists, 85.
2. Such as concern the rule of life and manners, 87.
And here the motives to godliness are destroyed,
1. By that doctrine of the antinomians, that exempts all believers from the obligation of the moral law, 87.
2. By that doctrine of the church of Rome, which asserts any sin to be in its nature venial, 89. The church of Rome herein resembling the Jewish church corrupted by the Pharisees, who distinguished the commandments into the great and the small, 91. 3. By the Romish doctrine of supererogation, 93. 4. By that doctrine, that places it in the power of any mere mortal man to dispense with the laws of Christ, so as to discharge any man from being obliged by them, 95.
3. Such as relate to repentance, 99.
The doctrine of repentance may be perverted in a double respect:
1. In respect of the time of it: as is done by the Romish
The improvement of all lies in two things:
1. To convince us how highly it concerns all, but especially the most knowing, to try the doctrines that they believe, and to let inquiry usher in faith, 106.
2. It suggests also the sure marks, by which we may try them, 107. As, 1. It is not the pleasingness or suitableness of a doctrine to our tempers or interests, 107. nor, 2. The general or long reception of it, 108. nor, 3. The godliness of the preacher or asserter of any doctrine, that is a sure mark of the truth of it: but if it naturally tends to promote the fear of God in men’s hearts, and to engage them in virtuous courses, it carries with it the mark and impress of the great eternal truth, 1 09.
A man that flattereth his neighbour, spreadeth a net for his feet. P. 111.
The words being plain, the matter contained in them is prosecuted under three general heads, 111.
I. What flattery is, and wherein it does consist, 112.
Though we cannot reach all the varieties of it, the general ways are,
1. Concealing or dissembling the defects or vices of any person, 112. And here are shewn two things:
First, Who they are that are concerned to speak in this case; namely, 1. Such as are intrusted with the government of others, 114. 2. Persons set apart to the work of the ministry, 115. 3. Those that profess friendship, 116.
Secondly, The manner how they are to speak: as, 1. The reproof
should be given in secret, 117. 2. With due respect to and distinction of the
condition of the person reproved, 119. 3. With words of meekness and
commiseration,
2. The second way of flattery is the praising and defending the defects or vices of any person, 129.
Under this species, the distinction between a religious and a political conscience observed, and censured, 132. And two sorts of men charged as the most detestable flatterers:
1. Such as upon principles of enthusiasm assure persons of eminence and high place, that those transgressions are allowable in them, that are absolutely prohibited and condemned in others, 134.
2. The Romish casuists, who persuade the world, that many actions, which have hitherto passed for impious and unlawful, admit of such qualifications as clear them of all guilt, 135.
This kind of flattery is of most mischievous consequence, and of very easy effect: 1. From the nature of man, 137. 2. From the very nature of vice itself, 137.
3. The third kind of flattery is the perverse imitation of any one^s defects or vices, 138.
4. The fourth consists in overvaluing those virtues and perfections that are really laudable in any person, 141.
II. The grounds and occasions of flattery on his part that is flattered, 144.
Three mentioned. 1. Greatness of place or condition, 144. 2. An angry, passionate disposition, and impatient of reproof, 146. 3. A proud and vainglorious disposition, 148.
III. The ends and designs of the flatterer. He spreads a net for his neighbour’s feet, 152.
The flatterer is influenced by these two grand purposes;
1. To serve himself, 152.
2. To undermine him whom he flatters, and thereby to
effect his ruin, 154. Which he does, 1. As he deceives
him, and grossly abuses and perverts his judgment, which
should be the guide of all his actions, 155. 2. He brings
him to shame and a general contempt, 156. He effects his
Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me. P. 160.
These words suggest three things to our consideration.
1. The thing prayed against; presumptuous sins, 160.
2. The person making this prayer; one adorned with the highest elogies for his piety, even by God himself, 160.
3. The means he engages for his deliverance; namely, the divine grace and assistance, 160.
The words are discussed under two general heads.
I. Shewing what these presumptuous sins are.
II. Shewing the reason of this so holy person’s praying so earnestly against them.
The first head is handled in three things.
1. Shewing in general what it is to presume, 160.
The scripture description of presumption. Three parts go to make up a presumptuous sin. 1. That a man undertake an action, known by him to be unlawful, or at least doubtful, 161. 2. That, notwithstanding, he promise to himself security from any punishment of right consequent upon it, 162. 3. That he do this upon motives utterly groundless and unreasonable, 162.
The presumptuous sinner is divested of the two only pleas for the extenuation of sin. As, 1. Ignorance, 163, 2. Surprise, 165.
Distinction between sins of presumption and sins of infirmity.
Three opinions concerning a sin of infirmity, 167. The
1st, Derives the nature of it from the condition of the agent; affirming that every sin committed by a believer, or a person truly regenerate, is a sin of infirmity, 167. This doctrine is considered and refuted, 168.
2. Some, from the matter of the action; as that it is
committed
3. Some, from the principle immediately producing the action, viz. that the will is carried to the one by malice, to the other by inadvertency, 171.
But for our better conduct is shewn, first negatively, what is not a sin of infirmity: as, 1. When a man ventures and designs to commit a^, sin upon this ground, that he judges it a sin of infirmity, 172. 2. That sin, though in itself never so small, that a man, after the committing of it, is desirous to excuse or extenuate, 173. 2. Positively, what is: namely, a sin committed out of mere sudden inadvertency, that inadvertency not being directly caused by any deliberate sin immediately going before it, 173.
II. Assigning some of the most notable kinds of presumptuous sins, 175. As,
1. Sin against the goodness of God, manifesting itself to a man in great prosperity, 175.
2. Sins committed under God’s judging and afflicting hand, 178.
3. Committing a sin clearly discovered, and directly pointed at by the word of God, either written or preached, 181.
4. Committing a sin against passages of Providence, particularly threatening the commission of it, 182.
5. Sins against the inward checks and warnings of conscience, 184.
6. Sins against that inward taste, relish, and complacency, that men have found in their attempts to walk with God, 186.
7. The returning to and repeated commission of the same sin, 188.
III. Proposing some remedies against these sins. As,
1. Let a man endeavour to fix in his heart a deep apprehension
2. Let him most seriously consider and reflect upon God’s justice, 194.
3. Let him consider, how much such offences would exasperate even men, 195.
Second general head: shewing the reason of the Psalmist’s so earnest praying against these sins, 197.
The prosecution of the first head might be argument enough: but yet, for a more full discussion of the point, these further reasons, which might induce him to it, are considered.
1. The danger of falling into these sins. 1. From the nature of man, which is apt to be confident, 198. 2. From the object of presumption, God’s mercy, 199- 3. From the tempter, who chiefly concerns himself to engage men in this kind of sin, 199-
2. The sad consequences of them, if fallen into. Amongst which are, 1. Their marvellous aptness to grow upon him that gives way to them, 201. 2. That of all others they prove the most difficult in their cure, 203. 3. They waste the conscience infinitely more than any other sins, 204. 4. They have always been followed by God with greater and fiercer judgments than any others, 205.
Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. P. 209.
The metaphorical expressions in the text being explained, 209. this doctrinal observation is gathered from it; viz.
That God knows, and takes strict and accurate notice of the most secret and retired passages of a man’s life; which is proved by reasons of two sorts.
I. Such as prove that it is so, that God knows the most secret passages of our lives, 212.
1. He observes them, because he rules and governs them,
2. Because he gives laws to regulate them, 215.
3. Because he will judge them, 216. First, in this life, wherein he often gives the sinner a foretaste of what he intends to do in the future, 217. 2. At the day of judgment, 218.
II. Such reasons as shew whence it is that God takes such notice of them.
He observes all hidden things:
1. From his omniscience, or power of knowing all things 219.
2. From his intimate presence to the nature and being of all things, 220.
The application of the whole lies in shewing the uses it may afford us: which are,
1. A use of conviction, to convince all presumptuous sinners of the atheism of their hearts, 221.
2d use. It speaks terror to all secret sinners, 223. Now secret sins are of two sorts, both of which God perfectly knows. As,
1. The sins of our thoughts and desires, 224. And he will judge of men by these, 1. Because they are most spiritual, and consequently most opposite to the nature of God, 226. 2. Because man’s actions and practice may be overruled, but thoughts and desires are the natural and genuine offspring of the soul, 228.
2. Such sins as are not only transacted in the mind, but also by the body, yet are covered from the view of men, 229.
3. As God’s omniscience is a terror to secret sinners, so it speaks no less comfort to all sincere-hearted Christians, 231.
Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were letter than these? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this. P. 233.
In the days of Solomon, when Jerusalem was the glory
The words run in the form of a question, yet include a positive assertion, and a downright censure, 234. The inquiry being determined before it was proposed, now the charge of folly here laid upon it may relate to the supposition, upon which it is founded, in a threefold respect; viz.
I. Of a peremptory negation, as a thing absolutely to be denied, that former times are better than the following.
II. As of a case very disputable, whether they are so or no.
III. As admitting the supposition for true, that they are better, 234.
In every one of which respects this inquiry ought to be exploded. And,
I. That it is ridiculous to ask, why former times are bet ter than the present, if they really are not so, 235. And that they are not, is evinced, 1. From reason, 236. 2. From history and the records of antiquity, 237.
II. Supposing the case disputable; which being argued, 1. On the side of antiquity, 240. 2. Of succeeding times, 241. this inquiry is shewn to be unreasonable,
1. In respect of the nature of the thing itself, 243.
2. In respect of the incompetence of any man living to judge in this controversy, 243.
III. Supposing it true, that former times are really best; this querulous reflection is foolish,
1. Because such complaints have no efficacy to alter or remove the cause of them, 244.
2. Because they only quicken the smart, and add to the pressure, 246.
3. Because the just cause of them is resolvable into ourselves, 247, &c.
Agree with thine adversary quickly , whiles thou art in the
Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing. P. 250.
In these words, Christ enforces the duty of an amicable concord and agreement betwixt brethren, from the unavoidable misery of those obstinate wretches that persist in and perpetuate an injury, 250.
Some understand the words in a literal, some in a figurative sense, 251.
The several terms therein explained in the spiritual sense of them; according to which, by the word adversary is meant the divine law, or a man’s own conscience, as commissionated by that law, 251. By the way, the time of this life, or rather the present opportunities of repentance, 252. By judge, the great God of heaven, 252. By officer, the Devil, 253. By prison, hell, 253. By paying the utmost farthing, the guilty person’s being dealt with according to the utmost rigour and extremity of justice, 253.
The text is parabolical, and includes both senses. For the better understanding which, a parable is explained to contain two parts. (1.) The material, literal part, contained in the bare words. (2.) The formal, spiritual part, or application of the parable; which is sometimes expressed, and sometimes understood, as in this place, 254.
The sense of the text is presented under three conclusions:
1. That the time of this life is the only time for a sinner to make his peace with God, 256.
2. That this consideration ought to be a prevailing, unanswerable argument to engage and quicken his repentance, 256.
3. That if a sinner lets this pass, he irrecoverably falls in to an estate of utter perdition, 256.
The second conclusion, the subject of this discourse, the truth whereof made appear three ways:
I. By comparing the shortness of life with the difficulty of this work of repentance, 256.
The difficulty of repentance appears,
1. Because a man is to clear himself of an injury done to an infinite, offended justice, to appease an infinite wrath, and an infinite, provoked majesty, 259.
2. Because a man is utterly unable of himself to give God any thing by way of just compensation or satisfaction, 261.
II. By comparing the uncertainty of life with the necessity of the work, 263.
III. By considering the sad and fatal doom that will in fallibly attend the neglect of it, 266.
The misery and terror of this doom consists in two things: 1. That it cannot be avoided, 267. 2. That it cannot be revoked, 268.
Application in urging over the same duty from another argument, namely, that so long as there is enjoyment of a temporal life, there may be just hope of an eternal. Therefore kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and so ye perish from the way, 270.
But all their works they do for to be seen of men. P. 272.
This notable instance of religious ostentation in the pharisees leads to an inquiry, how far the love of glory is able to engage men in a virtuous and religious life, 272.
I. A love of glory is sufficient to produce all those virtuous actions that are visible in the lives of those that profess religion: because,
1. It has done so: this shewn from the examples of the noblest and most virtuous of the heathens, 273. from the abstinence of the ancient athletics, 274. from the character of the ancient pharisees, 275. and from that of many modern Christians, 276.
2. There is nothing visible in the very best actions, but what may proceed from the most depraved principles, if acted by prudence, caution, and design, 277.
II. The reasons, whence this affection comes to have such an influence upon our actions, are these:
1. Because glory is the proper pleasure of the mind; it being the complacency that a man finds within himself arising from his conceit of the opinion that another has of some excellency or perfection in him, 279.
2. Because it is founded in the innate desire of superiority and greatness that is in every man, 282.
3. Because a fair reputation opens a man’s way to all the advantages of life: as in the times of the rebellion, when the face of a dissembled piety gave men great credit and authority with the generality, 284.
III. This principle is insufficient to engage mankind in virtuous actions, without the assistance of religion: two considerations premised, viz.
1. That virtue and a good life determines not in outward practices, but respects the most inward actions of the mind, 285.
2. That the principle of honour or glory governs a man’s actions entirely by the judgment and opinion of the world concerning them, 287.
These considerations premised, the principle of honour appears to be utterly insufficient to engage and argue men into the practice of virtue in the following cases:
1. When, by ill customs and worse discourses, any vice, (as fornication, theft, self-murder, &c.) comes to have a reputation, or at least no disreputation, in the judgment of a nation; the shame God has annexed to sin being in a great measure taken from it by fashion, 288.
2. When a man can pursue his vice secretly and indiscernibly: as, first, when he entertains it in his thoughts, affections, and desires; secondly, when, though it passes from desire into practice, yet it is acted with such circumstances of external concealment, that it is out of the notice and arbitration of all observers, 291.
If then honour be the strongest motive nature has to enforce virtue by, and this is found insufficient for so great a purpose, it is in vain to attempt such a superstructure upon any weaker foundation, 294.
IV. Even those actions that a principle of honour does
1. In respect of the cause, from which they flow; inasmuch as they proceed only upon the apprehension of a present interest, which when it ceases, the fountain of such actions is dried up, 295.
2. In respect of the end to which they are directed; which end is self, not the glory of God, 296.
In both these respects, the most sublime moral performances of the heathens were defective, and therefore have been always arraigned and condemned by Christian divinity, 297.
Two things inferred, by way of corollary and conclusion:
1. The worth and absolute necessity of religion in the world, even as to the advantage of civil society; and the mischievous tendency of atheistical principles, 297.
2. The inexcusableness of those persons who, professing religion, yet live below a principle inferior to religion, 298.
For by faith ye stand. P. 300.
Faith more usually discoursed of by divines than explained, 300. Three sorts of faith mentioned in scripture. 1. A faith of simple credence, or bare assent, 300. 2. A temporary faith, and a faith of conviction, 301. 3. A saving, effectual faith, (which here only is intended,) wrought in the soul by a sound and real work of conversion, 301 . Two things considerable in the words. I. Something supposed, viz. that believers will be encountered and assaulted in their spiritual course, 302. In every spiritual combat are to be considered,
1. The persons engaged in it, 303. which are believers on the one side, and the Devil on the other.
2. The thing contended for by it, 304. This assault of the Devil intended to cast believers down from their purity and sanctity of life, 304. and from their interest in the divine favour, 305.
3. The means by which it is carried on, 307. The Devil’s own immediate suggestions, 307. The Devil assaults a man, by the infidelity of his own heart, 308. by the alluring vanities of the world, 309. and by the help of man’s own lusts and corruptions, 311.
II. Something expressed; viz. that it is faith alone that in such encounters does or can make believers victorious, 313. For making out which, is shewn,
1. How deplorably weak and insufficient man is, while considered in his natural estate, and void of the grace of faith, 313.
2. The advantages and helps faith gives believers for the conquest of their spiritual enemy, 315. It gives them a real union with Christ, 316. It engages the assistance of the Spirit on their behalf, 317. And lastly, gives them both a title to, and a power effectually to apply, God’s promises through Christ, who is the rock of ages, the only sure station for poor sinners, and able to save, to the uttermost, all those that by faith rely upon him, 319.
The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works. P. 323.
Mercy, as it is ascribed to God, may be considered two ways, 323.
I. For the principle itself, 323.
II. For the effects and actions flowing from that principle, which, in the sense of the text, are such as are general and diffusive to all, 324.
The words are prosecuted by setting forth God’s general mercy and goodness to the creature in a survey of the state and condition,
1. Of the inanimate part of the creation, 324.
2. Of plants and vegetables, 325.
3. Of the beasts of the field, and the fowls of the air, 328.
4. Of man, 329.
5. Of angels: in respect of their nature, 331. of their place of habitation, and of their employment, 333.
A deduction from the precedent discourse, to settle in the mind right thoughts of God’s natural goodness to men, 334. with arguments against the hard thoughts men usually have of God, drawn from two qualities that do always attend them, 336.
1. Their unreasonableness, 337.
2. Their danger, 339.
But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. P. 342.
The explication of these two terms being premised,
1. What the apostle means here by being tempted, 342.
2. What is intended by lust, 343.
The prosecution of the words lies in these particulars:
I. To shew the false causes upon which men are apt to charge their sins. And that,
1. The decree of God concerning things to come to pass is not a proper cause for any man to charge his sins upon, 344. Objection to this stated, and answered, 345.
2. The influences of the heavens and of the stars imprint nothing upon men that can impel or engage them to do evil, 347.
3. Neither can any man charge his sins upon the constitution and temper of his body, as the proper cause of them, 349.
4. No man can justly charge his sins upon the Devil, as the cause of them, 350.
Though these be not the proper causes of sin, they are observed to be very often great promoters of it, where they meet with a corrupt heart, 352.
II. To shew, that the proper cause of sin is the depraved will of man; which being supposed sufficiently clear from scripture, is farther evinced by arguments and reasons.
1. From the office of the will, 354.
2. From every man’s experience of himself and his own actions, 354.
3. From the same man’s making a different choice of the same object at one time from what he does at another, 355.
4. From this, that even the souls in hell continue to sin, 355.
III. To shew the way by which a corrupt will, here expressed, is the cause of sin. And,
1. It draws a man aside from the ways of duty, 356.
2. Entices him, by representing the pleasure of sin, stript of all the troubles and inconveniencies of sin, 357. and by representing that pleasure that is in sin greater than indeed it is, 359. But
The exceeding vanity of every sinful pleasure is made to appear by considering,
1. The latitude or measure of its extent.
2. The duration or continuance of it, 360.
For it Is a people of no understanding: therefore he that made them will not have mercy on them, and he that formed them will shew them no favour. P. 362.
The prophet, after eloquently describing a severe judgment to be inflicted on the Jews in the deplorable destruction of Jerusalem, 362. does in the next words assign a reason for it: For it is a people of no understanding. This ignorance is here explained to be not that of an empty understanding, but of a depraved heart and corrupt disposition, and therefore the highest aggravation, 363.
From the words of the text are deduced two observations;
I. The relation of a Creator strongly engages God to put forth acts of love and favour towards his creature, 365. The strength of which obligement appears,
1. Because it is natural, 366. 2. Because God put it upon himself, 366.
There are three engaging things, implied in the creature’s relation to God, that oblige him to manifest himself in a way of goodness to it:
1. The extract or original of the creature’s being, which is from God himself, 366. which includes in it two other endearing considerations. (1.) It puts a likeness between God and the creature, 367. (2.) Whatsoever comes from God, by way of creation, is good, and so there naturally does result an act of love, 368.
2. The dependence of its being upon God, 368.
3. The end of the creature’s being is God’s glory, 370.
II. How sin disengages, and takes off God from all those acts of favour that the relation of a Creator engaged him to, 371.
1. It turns that which, in itself, is an obligation of mercy, to be an aggravation of the offence, 371.
2. It takes away that similitude that is between God and the creature, which (as has been observed) was one cause of that love, 373.
3. It takes off the creature from his dependence upon God; that is, his moral dependence, which is a filial reliance and recumbency upon him, 375.
4. It renders the creature useless, as to the end for which it was designed, 376.
In an application of the foregoing, the first use is to obviate and take off that common argument, in the mouths of the ignorant, and in the hearts of the knowing, that God would never make them to destroy them; and therefore, since he has made them, they roundly conclude that he will not destroy them, 378.
Now the reasons upon which men found their objections may be these two:
1. A self-love, and a proneness to conceive some extraordinary perfection in themselves, which may compound for their misdemeanours, 380.
2. Their readiness to think that God is not so exceeding jealous of his honour, but he may easily put up the breach of it, without the ruin of his creature, 381.
These pleas and objections of men answered by considering and comparing the offence of a child against his natural parent, with that of a creature against his Creator, 383.
The second use is to inform us of the cursed, provoking nature of sin, 385. And,
The third use may shew us under what notion we are to make our addresses to God; not as a Creator, but a reconciled God, 386.
When the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions. P. 389.
After reflecting upon the command that gave occasion to this sorrow under these three degrees; 1. Go sell that thou hast. 2. Give to the poor. 3. Come and follow me, 390. and likewise stating and answering some abuses in the doctrine of the papists concerning this scripture, 391. the words of the text are observed to contain in them four things considerable:
1. The person making the address to Christ, who was one whose reason was enlightened to a solicitous consideration of his estate in another world, 393.
2. The thing sought for in this address, viz. eternal life, 393.
3. The condition upon which it was proposed, and upon which it was refused; namely, the sale and relinquishment of his temporal estate, 393.
4. His behaviour upon this refusal: he departed sorrowful, 393.
Which are all joined together in this one proposition, viz.
He that deliberately parts with Christ, though for the greatest and most suitable worldly enjoyment, if but his natural reason is awakened, does it with much secret sting and remorse, 393. In the prosecution of this is shewn,
I. Whence it is, that a man, acted by an enlightened reason, finds such reluctancy and regret upon his rejection of Christ: it may proceed from these causes:
1. From the nature of conscience, that is apt to recoil upon any error, either in our actions or in our choice, 394.
2. From the usual course of God’s judicial proceeding in this matter, which is to clarify the eye of reason to a clearer sight of the beauties and excellencies of Christ, in the very moment and critical instant of his departure, 396.
3. Because there is that in Christ, and in the gospel, even as they stand in opposition to the best of such enjoyments, that answers the most natural and generous discourses of reason, 397. For proof hereof, two known principles of reason produced, into which the most severe commands of the gospel are resolved:
(1.) That the greatest calamity is to be endured, rather than the least sin to be committed, 397.
(2.) That a less good is to be forsaken for a greater, 400. To reduce this principle to the case in hand, two things are demonstrated. 1st, That the good promised by our Saviour to the young man was really greater than that which was to be forsook for it, 401. 2dly, That it was proposed as such with sufficient clearness of evidence, and upon sure, undeniable grounds, 403.
Here, to omit other arguments, the truth of the gospel seems chiefly to be proved upon these two grounds,
1. The exact fulfilling of prophecies in the person of Christ, 403.
2. His miraculous actions; the convincing strength of which is undeniable upon these two most confessed principles. (1.) That they did exceed any natural created power, and therefore were the immediate effects of a divine, 404. (2.) That God cannot attest, or by his power bear witness to a lie, 404.
II. The causes are shewn why, notwithstanding this regret, the soul is yet brought in the issue to reject Christ.
(1.) The perceptions of sense overbear the discourse of reason, 406.
(2.) The prevailing opposition of some corrupt affection, 408.
(3.) The force and tyranny of the custom of the world, 410.
Now the inferences and deductions from the words thus discussed are these:
1. We gather hence the great criterion and art of trying our sincerity, 412.
2. That misery which attends a final dereliction of Christ; whereby a man loses all his happiness. (1.) That which is eternal, 415. And, (2.) even that which is temporal also, 417. Now we may conclude, that unbelief is entertained upon very hard terms, when it not only condemns a man to die, but also (as it were) feeds him with bread and water till his execution; and so leaves him wretched and destitute, even in that place where the wicked themselves have an in heritance, 418.
Who, being reviled, reviled not again. P. 419.
A Christian’s duty is fully comprised in his active and his passive obedience, 419. Christ’s example shews, that he was not only able to do, but also to suffer miracles: and all his actions are usually reduced to three sorts. 1. His miraculous, 420. 2. His mediatorial, 420. 3. His moral actions; which last he both did himself, and also commanded others to do: wherefore it is our positive duty to imitate this particular instance of Christ’s patience, 421.
The words are discussed in three particulars.
I. In shewing what is implied in the extent of this duty of not reviling again. It implies two things:
1. A suppressing of our inward disgusts, 423.
2. A restraint of our outward expressions, 424.
A caution given for our regulation in this duty, that a due asperity of expression against the enemies of God, the king, and the public, is not the reviling in the text, the scene of which is properly private revenge, 425.
II. In shewing how the observation of this duty comes to be so exceeding difficult.
It is so, 1. From the peculiar, provoking quality of ill
language, 428, 2. Because nature has deeply planted in
III. In shewing by what means a man may work himself to such a composure and temper of spirit, to observe this excellent duty.
Nothing less than God’s grace can subdue the heart to such a frame; but we may add our endeavours, by frequently and seriously reflecting, that to return railing for railing is utterly useless to all rational intents and purposes, 432. This is made appear inductively, by recounting the several ends and intents to which, with any colour of reason, it may be designed.
1. The first reason should be to remove the cause of the provocation received, 432. 2. May be by this means to confute the calumny, and to discredit the truth of it, 433. 3. To take a full and proper revenge of him that first reviled, 434. 4. To manifest a generous greatness of spirit, in shewing impatience of an affront, 436.
By severally unravelling of which is shewn, how unfit reviling again is to reach or effect any of them. And St. Paul writes, If any one that is called a brother be an extortioner or a railer, not to keep company with such an one, no, not to eat; but especially at the Lord’s table: and he that is thus excommunicated and excluded the company of the saints in this world, is not like to be thought fit for the society of angels in the next, 437.
Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath. P. 438.
This description of God’s anger is supposed to come from Moses, who might well be sensible of its weight, 438.
Anger (and the like affections) cannot properly be said
to be in the infinitely perfect God at all; but is only an extrinsical denomination of a work wrought without him,
The prosecution of the words is managed in four particulars.
I. Two preparatory observations are laid down concerning God’s anger.
I. That every harsh and severe dispensation is not an effect of it, 440. 2. That there is a great difference between God’s anger and his hatred, 442.
II. Those instances are shewn in which this unsupportable anger of God does exercise and exert itself.
1. It inflicts immediate blows and rebukes upon the conscience, 444.
2. It imbitters afflictions, 445.
3. It curses enjoyments, 447.
III. Those properties and qualifications are considered, which set forth and declare the extraordinary greatness of it.
1. It is fully commensurate to the very utmost of our fears, 449.
2. It not only equals, but infinitely transcends our fears, 451.
3. Though we may attempt it in our thoughts, yet we cannot bring it within the comprehension of our knowledge, 453.
4. The greatness of God’s anger appears, by comparing it with that of men, 454.
IV. Some use and improvement made of the whole. As,
1. It may serve to discover to us the intolerable misery of such as labour under a lively sense of God’s wrath for sin, 455.
2. It may discover to us the ineffable vastness of Christ’s love to mankind in his sufferings for them, 456.
3. It speaks terror to such as can be quiet, and at peace within themselves, after the commission of great sins, 457.
4. All that has been said of God’s anger is a warning against
sin, that cursed thing which provokes it. Therefore men are advised to begin
here, and not expect to extinguish
Fear not them which Mil the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both body and soul in hell. P. 460.
Christ in this chapter is commissioning his twelve apostles for their evangelical expedition: from the fifth verse almost to the end of the chapter we have an explication of their commission. 1. In respect of the place where they were to administer it, 460. 2. In respect of the doctrine they were to preach, 460.
Christ’s instructions are reducible to these two. (1.) A caution against the luxury of the world, 461. (2.) An encouragement against the cruelty of the world, 462.
And to make his admonitions more effectual, he descends to those particular things he knew they chiefly feared. 1. Bodily torments, 464. 2. Disgrace, 464. 3. Death, 465.
Which last he cautions them against for these three reasons. (1.) Because it is but the death of the body, 465. (2.) Because hell is more to be feared, 465. (3.) Because they live under the special care of God’s overseeing Providence; and therefore cannot be taken away without his special permission, 465.
An objection concerning the fear of men stated, and answered, 465.
These things premised, the words of the text are pregnant with many great concerning truths. As,
1. That it is within the power of man to divest us of all our temporal enjoyments, 467.
2. That the soul of man is immortal, 467.
3. That God has an absolute and plenary power to destroy the whole man, 468.
4. That the thought of damnation ought to have greater weight
to engage our fears, than the most exquisite miseries
I. In shewing what is in these miseries which men are able to inflict, that may lessen our fears of them. Seven considerations ought to lessen our fears of those miseries.
(1.) That they are temporal, and concern only this life: as, l. Loss of reputation. 2. Loss of an estate. Or, 3. Loss of life, which of itself is quickly past, 469-
(2.) They do not take away any thing from a man’s proper perfections, 470.
(3.) They are all limited by God’s overruling hand, 473.
(4.) The good that may be extracted out of such miseries as are inflicted by men, is often greater than the evil that is endured by them, 474.
(5.) The fear of these evils seldom prevents them before they come, and never lessens them when they are come, 475.
(6.) The all-knowing God, who knows the utmost of them better than men or angels, has pronounced them not to be feared, 476.
(7.) The greatest of these evils have been endured, and that without fear or astonishment, 478.
II. In shewing what is implied in the destruction of the body and soul in hell, which makes it so formidable, 480.
After running over several common considerations, this gives a sting to all the rest; that it is the utmost the al mighty God can do to a sinner, 482.
Some objections about total annihilation and diminution of being, here answered, 483.
Application in exhorting us, whenever we are discouraged
from duty, or tempted to sin by man, on one side conscientiously to ponder man’s inability, and on the other God’s infinite power to destroy. The power of the latter consideration
instanced in the case of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; of Joseph, and of the
apostles perseverance in preaching; and the neglect of the former consideration
in
2d Use. That it is not absurd to give cautions for the avoiding eternal death, even to those whose salvation is sure, and sealed up in the purpose of God, 489.
3d Use. This speaks reproof to that slavish sort of sinners who are men-pleasers. Flattery of men always carries with it a distrust or a neglect of God: it is ignoble as a man; and irreligious as a Christian, 490.
For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham. P. 492.
The dark and miserable ignorance considered, that had overspread almost all the world for four thousand years before the coming of Christ, who was born to be the great mediator and instructor of mankind; which he was to do by the strongest methods, and most miraculous condescensions to our likeness, 492.
A critical exposition of the words to vindicate the translation of the text, 494. which is prosecuted in two particulars.
I. In shewing what is naturally inferred from Christ’s taking on him the seed of Abraham. Four things follow, and are inferred upon it.
1. The divine nature of Christ is unavoidably consequent from hence, 497.
2. The reality of Christ’s human nature, 498.
3. The truth of his office, and the divinity of his mission is deducible from the same ground, 500.
4. Christ’s voluntary choice and design, to assume a condition here upon earth low and contemptible, 501 .
II. In shewing why Christ took upon him the nature of man, and not of angels. The reasons whereof (besides that it was the divine will, which is a very sufficient one, 504.) may be these two:
1. The transcendent greatness and malignity of the sin of the angels above that of men; (1.) As being committed against much greater light, 505. (2.) As commenced upon a greater liberty of will and freedom of choice, 506.
2. Without such a Redeemer the whole race and species of mankind had perished, as being all involved in the sin of their representative; whereas though many of the angels sinned, yet as many, if not more, persisted in their innocence, 507.
We are exhorted to a return of gratitude, and to a remembrance that Christ made himself the Son of man, that, by the change of our nature, we might become the sons of God, 508.
He that descended is the same also that ascended Jar above all heavens, that he might fill all things.
IF religion were not to bear only upon the unshakeable bottom of divine authority, but we might propose to ourselves in idea what could be fittest to answer and employ those faculties of man’s mind that are capable of religious obligation, reason would contrive such a religion as should afford both sad and solemn objects to amuse and affect the pensive part of the soul, and also such glorious matter and bright representations as might feed its admiration, and entertain its more sprightly apprehensions: for the temper of all men in the world is either sad and composed, or joyful and serene; and even the same man will find that he is wholly acted, in the general tenor of his life, by the vicissitude and interchange of these dispositions.
Accordingly Christianity, in those great matters
of fact upon which it is founded, happily complies
with man’s mind by this variety of its subject. For
we have both the sorrows and the glories of Christianity, the depressions and the triumphs, the mournings
and the hosannahs: we have the affecting sad nesses of Christ’s fasting, his
bloody agony, his crucifixion, and the bitter scene of his whole passion in
its several parts and appendages: on the other side
The first sort of these naturally suit with the composed, fixed, and monastic disposition of some minds, averse from all complacency and freedom; the second invite the joys of serener minds, happier constitutions, and brisker meditations.
Nay, such a divine chequer-work shall we find in the whole contexture of the story of our religion, that we have the light still with the advantage of the shade, and things exhibited with the recommending vicinity of their contraries; so that it is observed, that in the whole narrative of our Saviour’s life, no passage is related of him low or weak, but it is immediately seconded, and as it were corrected, by another high and miraculous.
No sooner was Christ humbled to a manger, but
the contempt of the place was took off with the
glory of the attendance, in the ministration of an
gels. His submission to that mean and coarse ceremony of circumcision was ennobled with the public
attestation of Simeon concerning him; his fasting
and temptation attended with another service of
angels; his baptism with a glorious recognition by
a voice from heaven. When he seemed to show
weakness in seeking fruit upon that fig-tree that
had none, he manifested his power by cursing it to
deadness with a word. When he seemed to be over
powered at his attachments, he then exerted his
mightiness, in causing his armed adversaries to fall
backwards, and healing Malchus’s ear with a touch.
When he underwent the lash and violent infamy of
Which great and crowning passage of all that went before it, however it is most true, and therefore most worthily to be assented to, yet still it affords scope for the nobler and higher actings of faith: for reason certainly would now very hardly be induced to believe that upon bare testimony and report, which even those who then saw it with their eyes, that is, with the greatest instruments of evidence, scarcely gave credit to.
For it is expressly remarked in
It seems things were not so clear as to answer all
the objections of their eyes, or at least of their in
credulity. But he ascended in a cloud, as it is said;
there was some darkness, something of mists and
obscurity that did attend him. Yet a lively potent
faith will scatter all such clouds, dispel such mists,
conquer this and much greater difficulties: which
faith, since it must rest itself upon a divine word,
such a word we have here; and that a full, a pregnant, and a satisfying word,
which, from the pen of a person infallibly inspired, assures us, that he who
In the words we have these four things considerable.
I. Christ’s humiliation intimated and implied in those words; he that descended.
II. His glorious advancement and exaltation; he ascended far above all heavens.
III. The qualification and state of his person in reference to both these conditions; he was the same. He that descended is the same also that ascended.
IV. The end of his exaltation and ascension; that he might fill all things.
Of all which in their order. And when I shall have traversed each of these distinctly, I hope I shall have reached both the full sense of the text and the business of the day.
I. And first of all for Christ’s humiliation and descension. As every motion is bounded with two periods and terms, the one relinquished, the other to be acquired by it; so in Christ’s descension we are to consider both the place from which it did commence, and the place to which it did proceed. The place from whence, we are told, was heaven.
But the difficulty is, how Christ could descend from thence:
according to his divine nature he could not; for, as God, he filled the
universe; and all motion supposes the mover to be sometimes out of the place to
which he moves, and successively to acquire a presence to it; so that nothing
that adequately fills a place, can move in that place, unless it moves
circularly; but progressively, or in a direct line, it is impossible. Whither
then should the divine nature move where it is not prevented by its own
ubiquity?
This argumentation, we see, is clear and undeniable; how then shall we make out Christ’s descension?
The Socinians, who allow Christ nothing but an human nature, affirm, that he is said to descend from heaven only in respect of the divinity of his original and production; as it is elsewhere said, that every good and perfect gift descends from above, namely, because it is derived from a divine principle. But his descending being here in the text opposed to his ascending, clearly shews, that there is a further and more literal meaning imported in the word.
I answer therefore, that Christ descended according to his divine nature, not indeed by a proper and local motion, as the former arguments sufficiently demonstrate, but because it united itself to a nature here below; in respect of which union to an earthly nature, it might metaphorically be said to descend to the place where that nature did reside: and thus much for the way and manner how Christ did descend.
We are now to direct our next inquiry to the place whither he descended; and for this we are to reflect an eye upon the former verse of this chapter, which tells us, that it was into the lower parts of the earth; but what those lower parts of the earth are, here lies the doubt, and here must be the explication.
There are several opinions to be passed through
1. Some understand it simply of the earth, as being the lowermost part of the world. But why then could not the apostle have said, that Christ descended εἰς τὰ κατώτερα τοῦ κόσμου, and not τῆς γῆς, to the lower parts of the world, not of the earth? but to call the earth the lower part of itself is an apparent violence to the naturalness of the expression, and indeed not more forced than ridiculous.
2. Some understand it of the grave, which is
called the heart of the earth in
3. Some understand it of hell itself, the place of
the damned; and our creed tells us, that Christ descended into hell: but to this I answer, that it relates not at all to our present purpose, whether
Christ descended into hell or no; but the thing to
be proved is, that hell, or the place of the damned,
is the lower parts of the earth; which we deny, as
being contrary both to the judgment of the church
and of reason; it being hard to conceive what capacity there can be within the earth for the reception,
not only of the souls, but of the bodies of all the
4. But 4thly, the quicksighted Romanists, (forsooth,) who can see further into the earth than other men, have by the help of this text spied in it a place called purgatory, or rather the pope’s kitchen, for certain it is that nothing so much feeds his table. Now here, they say, are those lower parts of the earth, whither Christ descended: but before they prove that Christ came down hither, I would have them prove that there is such a place.
They say they prove it from
And thus having shewn the nullity of this argument, I think it
is clear that Christ descended not into purgatory, for that which is not cannot
be descended
5. In the fifth and last place therefore, I conceive
these words in the text to bear the same sense with,
and perhaps to have reference to, those in
That this is so, yet with submission to better judgments, I judge upon these grounds.
1. Because the former expositions have been clearly shewn to be, some of them, unnatural and forced, and others impertinent: but those four being removed, there is no other besides this assignable.
2. It is usual for the apostles to transcribe and use the Hebrew phrases of the Old Testament: and since Paul here uses David’s very words, it is most probable that he used them in David’s sense.
3. I add, that these words of Christ’s descending
and ascending are so put together in the text, that
they seem to intend us a summary account of Christ’s whole transaction of that great work of man’s
redemption from first to last; which being begun in
his conception, and consummate in his ascension, by
what better can his descending be explained, than
by his conception, the first part and instance of this
great work, as his ascension was the last? So that
And thus much for the first thing, Christ’s humiliation and descension, both as to the manner how, and the place whither he did descend.
II. I come now in the next place to consider his exaltation and ascension. For shall he so leave his glory, as never to re-assume it? Shall such a sun beam strike the earth, and not rebound?
As for the way and manner how he ascended, I affirm, that it was according to his human nature, properly and by local motion; but according to his divine, only by communication of properties, the action of one nature being ascribed to both, by virtue of their union in the same person.
As for the place to which he advanced, it is, says
the apostle, far above all heavens. In the exposition of which words it is strange to consider the
puerile fondness of some expositors, who will needs
have the sense of them to be, that Christ ascended
above the empyrean heaven, the highest of all the
rest, and there sits enthroned in the convexity and
outside of it, like a man sitting upon a globe: for,
say they, otherwise how could Christ be said to have
ascended above the heavens? But if they will stick
to this term above, let them also stick to the other,
far above, and then they must not place him just upon the empyrean
heaven, but imagine him strangely
But the words of the text have something of figure, of hyperbole, and latitude in them; and signify not, according to their literal niceness, a going above the heavens by a local superiority, but an advance to the most eminent place of dignity and glory in the highest heaven.
Besides, the very common use of the word does not of necessity enforce the former interpretation; for we think we say properly enough, that a man is upon the top of an house or tower, if he be but in one of the uppermost parts of it, without his standing upon the weather-cock: but it is the usual fate of such over-scrupulous adherers to words and letters, to be narrow men and bad interpreters.
I have nothing else to add for explication of Christ’s ascension, but only to observe and adore God’s great and wise methods of exalting, exemplified to us by an instance in his dearest Son. He, we see, is depressed before advanced, crucified before enthroned, and led through the vale of tears to the region of eucharist and hallelujahs. He was punished with one crown before he was rewarded with an other, and disciplined by the hardships of shame and servitude to the glories of a kingdom.
And do we now think to have our whole course spun in one even thread? to live deliciously in one world, as well as gloriously in another? to tread softly, and to walk upon paths of roses to the mansions of eternal felicities?
No, it is the measure of our happiness, and ought
The way of salvation must needs be opposite to that of damnation. We must (as I may so speak) descend to heaven; for it was Adam’s aspiring that brought him down, and Lucifer’s fall was but the consequent of his ascension.
III. I come now to the third thing, which is the qualification and state of Christ’s person, in reference to both these conditions: he was the same; He that descended is the same also that ascended. Which to me seems a full argument to evince the unity of the two natures in the same person; since two several actions are ascribed to the same person, both of which, it is evident, could not be performed by the same nature.
As for Christ’s descending, I shew that it could not be by his human nature, for that received its first existence on earth, and therefore could not come down from heaven; but it was to be understood of his divine nature, though improperly, and only so, as it became united to a nature here below: but as for his ascending, it is clear that Christ did this by his human nature, and that properly and literally; and yet it is here affirmed, that it was the same Christ who both ascended and descended; a great proof of that mysterious economy of two natures in one hypostasis.
The school of Socinus, we have heard, affirms
Christ to have descended from heaven, only in respect of his divine and heavenly origination: but
But though they will not allow the union of two complete natures in the same person, yet they and all the world must grant, that two distinct sub stances, the soul and the body, go to compound and integrate the man: and I know, according to their usual appellation of him, they will allow him to be the man Christ Jesus.
Now I demand of them upon what principles of reason or
philosophy they will prove that to be the same compound, when one entire half,
that goes to the making of it, is wholly another thing. When we take white, and
mingling it with red, make a third distinct colour; if we could now separate
that white from the red, and join it to a blue, do we think that this
conjunction would make the same kind of colour that the former mixture did? In
like manner can I affirm, that the same soul, successively united to two
several bodies of a kind wholly diverse,
Neither let them reply, that this argument savours too much of philosophy; for by saying so, they say only that it savours too much of reason.
I confess there are some passages that fell out after Christ’s resurrection, that seem to persuade us that the body he then appeared in was not of the same nature with our bodies nowadays, nor with that which he himself had before his death; for we read, that he vanished out of some of the disciples’ sight, and that he came into them, the doors being shut.
Which considerations, I suppose, drove Origen to assert, that Christ’s soul had such a command over his body, and his body such a ductility to comply with those commands, that the soul could contract or expand it into what compass, or transfigure it into what shape it pleased; so as to command it through a chink, or crevice, or represent it sometimes under one form, sometimes under another.
But to this I answer, that however Christ’s body, as every body else, is capable of continuing the same, notwithstanding the alteration of its qualities and outward form; yet, that a body of such a dimension should be contracted to such a thinness, as to pass through a chink or crevice, cannot be effected without a penetration of the parts, and a mutual sinking into one another: which those who under stand the nature of body know to be a contradiction, and consequently impossible.
As for those scriptures which seem to give colour
The first is in
For the second place in
So Christ did not enter, the doors continuing shut, but the doors that he found fast shut, he by a strange power opened, and so came amongst his disciples, which was enough to affright and amaze them.
But to reduce this to a familiar instance: Sup pose a stranger or suspicious person should come into an house, and the master of the house should ask his servant, whether the doors were shut or open when he came in? Surely his meaning is not, did he pass through the door while it was shut? But his sense is, did he find the door shut, and so broke it open, or did he find the door standing open, and so entered? This exposition is natural, and so clears the doubt, that the difficulty itself vanishes, and is but an apparition: and so much for the third thing.
IV. I proceed now to the fourth and last thing; which is, the end of Christ’s ascension, that he might fill all things.
This also is capable of various interpretation, for this term, all things, may refer,
1. Either to the scripture, that he might fill, or rather fulfil, (for the Greek πληρόω signifies both,) all those prophecies and predictions recorded of him in the books of the prophets.
2. Or secondly, it may refer to the church, that
3. In the third place, it may relate to all things in the world, within the whole compass of heaven and earth; and since the words so taken afford us an eminent proof, both of Christ’s essential deity, as also of the power with which he was endued as mediator; we shall not let so great a prize slip out of our hands, but prefer and follow this as the most genuine interpretation.
Now Christ may be said thus to fill all things in a double respect.
1. In respect of the omnipresence of his nature and universal diffusion of his godhead. The schools, in stating the manner how one thing is in another, whereas they make bodies present by circumscription, finite spirits definitive, that is, by being so here, as at the same time not to be there; not improperly, I think, make God to be in all things by repletion; that is, he is so in them, that they are rather in him; spreading such an immense fulness over all things, as in a manner swallows and folds them up within himself.
Such a fulness has Christ as God, by which he
fills, or rather overflows the universe, et ad omnia
praesentialiter se habet. Could there be a more
full and apposite proof of this than that place,
But what I say of Christ, as to his divine nature, should I assert the same of his human, it would be both an error in divinity, and a prodigious paradox in philosophy.
Yet the Romanist will have Christ’s whole body to be in ten thousand places together, and at once; namely, wheresoever their host is celebrated, and in every particle of that host; which certainly is the greatest absurdity and most portentous piece of non sense that ever was owned in the face of the rational world.
And the Lutherans, who, by a dough-baked reformation, striking off from the Romish errors, have rather changed than corrected this grand absurdity, they assert a consubstantiation, and the consequent of it, the ubiquity of Christ’s human nature.
But certainly they have some unanswerable arguments that force their assent to such uncouth propositions. What they are, we shall hear. They argue thus:
Christ, in respect of his human nature, sits at God’s right hand; but God’s right hand is every where, and consequently Christ’s human nature must be so too.
If I might answer a foolish argument according to
its folly, I might demand of them, if God’s right hand
be every where, where then will they place his left?
But do not they know that Christ’s sitting at God’s
But they proceed. If Christ’s human nature be united to the whole divine nature, then, wheresoever his divine nature is present, there must be also his human. But supposing that his human nature is not every where, and that his divine is, then in those places where the human nature is not, the divine is there without it; and so consequently in those places it is not united to it: for things intimately united must be present together in the same places.
But what pitiful, thin sophistry is this! whatever at the first sight it may appear: for they distinguish not a spiritual union from that which is corporeal, and between things having quantity. If indeed Christ’s human nature were united to his divine by way of adequate commensuration one to the other, it would then follow, that if one was where the other is not, the union so far would cease; but the union between these two natures is only by intimate, indissolvable relation one to the other; so that wheresoever the divine nature of Christ is present, though his human is not there present too, yet it still holds the same relation to it, as to a thing joined with it in one and the same subsistence. And so much in answer to a sophistical argument brought to defend a misshapen, monstrous assertion.
We see here the first way how Christ fills all things
in the world; namely, by the essential omnipresence
of his divine nature. But yet this is not the filling
all things directly intended in the text; for that was
2. In the second place therefore, Christ may be said to fill all things, in respect of the universal rule and government of all things in heaven and earth committed to him as mediator upon his ascension. This is the only filling all things that the school of Socinus will allow him; forasmuch as they make him to be God only by office, not by nature; and that his full deity bears date from his ascension; at which time he took possession of the government of the world.
But in this, I must confess, they are so much the less injurious to Christ, since they allow the Father himself to fill all things no otherwise: they acknowledge him indeed to have such an extent of power as to reach all places, persons, and things; but his omnipresence they deny, and confine his being to a circumscribed residence within the highest heaven; as we may see in Crellius’s book de Attributis Dei, chap. 1. So little ought we to wonder at their denying the deity of the Son, when they have even torn the fairest perfections out of the godhead of the Father.
But to look back upon Christ, now enjoying the
end of his ascension, even the sovereignty of all things.
This is he, that is now King of kings, and Lord of
lords; who wields the sceptre of heaven and earth,
and wears the imperial crown of the universe. Heaven
He now shines in the head of that glorious army of martyrs, and, wearing the trophies of conquered sin and death, possesses the kingdom of the world by the two unquestionable titles of conquest and in heritance. The angels, those immediate retainers to the Almighty, and ministers of Providence, are his attendants; they hear his will, and execute his commands with a quick and a winged alacrity.
All the elements, the whole train and retinue of nature, are subservient to his pleasure, and instruments of his purposes. The stars fight in their courses under his banner, and subordinate their powers to the dictates of his will. The heavens rule all below them by their influences, but them selves are governed by his. He can command nature out of its course, and reverse the great ordinances of the creation.
The government, the stress and burden of all things, lies upon his hands. The blind heathen have been told of an Atlas that shoulders up the heavens; but we know that he who supports the heavens is not under them, but above them.
And to give you yet a greater instance of his sovereignty, he extends his dominion even to man’s will, that great seat of freedom, that, with a kind of autocracy and supremacy within itself, commands its own actions, laughs at all compulsion, scorns restraint, and defies the bondage of human laws or external obligations.
Yet this, even this absolute principle, bends to
the overpowering insinuations of Christ’s spirit; nay,
It remains now that we transcribe this article of our creed into our lives, express his sovereignty in our subjection, and, by being the most obedient of servants, declare him to be the greatest of masters: even the blessed and only Potentate, who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto.
To whom, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.
—that he might fill all things.
THESE words exhibit to us the great end and design of Christ’s ascension, and, without any strain or force laid upon them, are capable of a threefold interpretation; a distinct survey of each of which shall be the business of the present exercise.
1. In the first place then, this term all things
may refer to the whole series of prophecies and predictions recorded of Christ in the scriptures; which
he might be said to fill, or rather to fulfil by his ascension; which signification, as it is most proper to the
force of the Greek word, (forasmuch as all other
places which we translate fulfil,) are expressed by this word
πληρόω, so it is most agreeable to the method of
the scriptures, speaking of Christ; of whom we never
find any great action recorded, which was before
pointed at by some prophecy, but it is immediately
added, that it was done ἵνα πληρώσῇ,
that such or such a scripture might be fulfilled. And for Christ’s
ascension, and the consequent of it, his diffusion of the
gifts of the Spirit, we have an eminent prediction of
that in
Concerning which place it must be confessed, that
But to repel their calumny, and to salve the credit of our apostle, there may be a double answer applied to this.
1. That the apostle did not precisely tie himself to the very words, but followed only the design and sense of the text: and this was the same in both those different words, ἔλαβε καὶ ἔδωκε, he received and he gave. For the prophet, speaking of it as of a thing at that time future, says, that Christ received gifts, namely, from his Father: which gifts he was afterwards, in the fulness of time, to pour forth upon men. But the apostle, speaking of it as of a thing in his time past and fulfilled, mentions only his giving and actual bestowing those gifts, which in deed was the end for which he first received them of his Father.
2. But, secondly, if the Hebrew be rendered, not
he received gifts for men, but from or amongst
them, as the Jews contend that it ought; forasmuch as the prophet, in that psalm, relates the conquest God gave his people over their enemies; where
upon he is said to have received gifts from them;
as it is the custom for conquerors to set apart and
consecrate some of their spoils to their god: I say,
if this be admitted, as the plea is very plausible, we
affirm then, that it was not Paul’s design to use
these words, he gave gifts unto men, by way of citation
But here, for the further illustration of Christ’s filling all things in this sense, I cannot pass over that useful observation of Grotius about the word πληρόω, that it does not signify only a bare giving an event to a prophecy, many of which, though applied to Christ by the apostles, yet indeed were fulfilled before him; as particularly that place in Matt. ii, I have called my son out of Egypt, was fulfilled in the children of Israel, of whom it was first spoke. But because those prophecies had not only a literal and historical, but also a further and a mystical intention, therefore this word πληρόω signifies a completion even to a redundancy, a fulfilling them over and above; namely, such a one, as not only reaches their first and historical event, but also verifies their mystical and more remote sense.
And such a filling or fulfilling of the old prophecies and predictions was proper and peculiar to Christ, to whom they all pointed, and in whom they all ended, as in their utmost period, their only centre, their great and last design. And thus much for the first interpretation.
2. But 2dly, the term all things may refer to the church; which sense I shall most insist upon, as carrying in it the subject-matter of this day’s commemoration.
Now Christ, it seems, would not have the fabric of his church inferior to that of the universe: it being itself indeed a lesser world picked or rather sifted out of the greater, where mankind is brought into a narrower compass, but refined to a greater perfection. And as in the constitution of the world, the old philosophy strongly asserts that nature has with much care filled every little space and corner of it with body, there being nothing that it so much abhors as a vacuity: so Christ, as it were, following the methods of nature in the works of grace, has so advantageously framed the whole system of the church; first, by an infinite power making in it capacities, and then by an equal goodness filling them.
Chasms and emptinesses are the infelicities of the work, but the disgrace of the workman. Capacity unfilled is the opportunity of misery, the very nature and definition of want. Every vacuity is, as it were, the hunger of the creation, both an undecency and a torment.
Christ therefore would have his body the church
not meager and contemptible, but replenished and
borne up with sufficiency, displayed to the world
Now the church being a society of men combined together in the profession of Christian religion, it has unavoidably a double need or necessity emergent from its very nature and constitution. That is, one of government, the other of instruction; the first agreeing to it simply as a society, the second as it is such a society. And it is Christ’s great prerogative to fill it in both these respects.
1. And first in respect of its government, of which excellent and divine thing in general we may say this, that, as at first it could be nothing else but the invention of the infinite, eternal mind; so now it is the vital support, and very sinew that holds together all the parts of society. And being of such universal necessity, there must be a policy in church as well as state. The church indeed is a spiritual body, but government is the very spirit of that.
Hereupon it follows in the next verse, that Christ gave some, apostles; some, evangelists; same, prophets; some, pastors and teachers; part of which are names importing rule and jurisdiction.
But yet in all this catalogue of ecclesiastical officers we find no lay-elders, no church-aldermen, no spiritual furs; nor yet in the whole current of antiquity, till they dropped from the invention of a late impostor, who, being first expelled by the popular rout, became afterwards obnoxious to it, and so had no way to make himself chief in the government, but by allowing them a share.
But Geneva certainly is not the mother-church of
the world, nor are Mr. Calvin and Mr. Beza fit correctors
2dly. The church being thus framed into the economy of a governed body, stands equally in need of instruction. For inasmuch as the doctrine it professes grows not upon the stock of natural principles, so as to be deducible from thence by the strength of reason and discourse, but comes derived from immediate and divine revelation; it requires the helps and assistances of frequent inculcation, to water and keep it alive upon the understanding and the will, where nature gives it no footing from any notions within, but what it receives from the force and arts of external impression.
Now for this also, Christ made a full and glorious provision by that miraculous diffusion of the Holy Ghost, after his ascension, upon those great pastors and representatives of his church, the apostles.
In which notable passage of his conferring the Holy Ghost, we have these two things observable.
I. The time when.
II. The manner how it was given.
As for the time in which it was conferred, this is remarkable in a double respect.
1. In respect of Christian religion itself, it being about its first solemn promulgation; which though it was a doctrine most true and excellent, yet certainly it was also very strange and unusual. And this we may observe, that there is no strange institution that can ever be of long continuance in the world, but that which first enters and ingratiates itself by something signal and prodigious.
The beginning of every thing has a strange and potent influence upon its duration: and the first appearances usually determine men either in their acceptance or dislike. Nothing stamps itself so deep in the memory as that which is fresh and new, and not made contemptible by a former acquaintance; and the freshness of every thing is its beginning.
Had not Christ therefore ushered in his religion by miracle and wonder, and arrested men’s first apprehensions of it by something grand and super natural, he had hindered its progress by a disadvantageous setting forth, exposed it naked to infidelity, and so rendered it first disputable, and then despised. It had been like the betraying a sublime and noble composition by a low and creeping prologue, which blasts the reputation of the ensuing discourse, and shuts up the auditors approbation with prejudice and contempt.
Moses therefore, by the appointment of God, bringing in a new religion, did it with signs and wonders, the mountain burning, and the trumpet sounding; so that it was not so much the divine matter of the law, as the strange manner of its delivery, that took such hold of the obstinate Jews; and possibly Moses should never have convinced, had he not first frighted their belief.
And this is so necessary upon the very principles of nature,
that even those impostors who have introduced false religions into the world,
have yet endeavoured to do it by the same methods by which
the true was established. Thus Numa Pompilius
settled a religion amongst the old Romans, by feigning strange and supernatural converse with their
supposed goddess Egeria. Apollonius Tyanaeus, who
But however, this shews how the mind of man is naturally to be prevailed upon; and that in the proposal of so great a thing to it as a new religion, the natural openness and meeting fervours of men’s first acceptance are by all means to be secured and possessed; which is more successfully done by a sudden breaking in upon their faculties, with amazement and wonder, than by courting their reason with argument and persuasion.
2. But secondly, the time of Christ’s sending the Spirit is very remarkable in respect of the apostles themselves. It was when they entered upon the full execution of their apostolic office, and from followers of Christ became the great leaders of the world.
During the time of their discipleship, and Christ’s converse with them upon earth, we read of no such
wonderful endowments, such variety of tongues, such
profound penetration into the mysteries of the gospel. But, on the contrary, with many instances of
very thick ignorance, childishness of speech, and stupidity of conception, as appears from their many
weak and insignificant questions proposed to Christ;
their gross dulness to apprehend many of his speeches,
in themselves very plain and intelligible: so that
Christ is almost perpetually upbraiding them upon
this account, as in
But when Christ brings them forth upon the stage of a public office, to act as his commissioners and ambassadors, to gather and to govern a church in his name; immediately, like Saul upon his being anointed king, they step forth men of another spirit, great linguists, powerful disputants, able to cope with the Jewish sanhedrim, to baffle their profoundest rabbies, and to out-reason the very Athenians. With their faculties strangely enlarged, their apprehensions heightened, and their whole mind furnished with that stock of endowments and rare abilities, that in others are the late and dear-bought acquisitions of large parts, long time, and severe study.
I confess there is something in office and authority
that of itself raises a man’s abilities; and the very
air and genius of government does, as it were, inspire
him with that largeness and reach of mind, that never
appeared in the same person yet in the state of privacy and subjection: so that government oftentimes
does not only indicare virum, but
facere; insensibly
mould and frame the man that has it, to a fitness for
it; and at length equals him to his employment;
raising him above all the personal defects and little
nesses of his former condition; sublimating his parts,
changing his thoughts, and widening his designs.
Now that the apostles felt these natural influences from their apostolic employment, we have no reason to deny. Yet certainly these could not work in them such a stupendous change. This could be ascribed to nothing, but to those omnipotent assistances of the Spirit descending upon them from heaven, and investing them in their office by so magnificent and miraculous an installation.
And here I cannot but reflect upon the brutish folly and absurd impudence of the late fanatic decriers of the necessity of human learning, in order to the ministerial function, drawing an argument from this, that the first and greatest ministers of the church were persons illiterate, and not acquainted with the academy, but utterly ignorant of the arts and sciences, the study of which takes up so much of our time, and draws after it so much of our estimation.
Which argument though they vaunt in as their greatest and most plausible, yet there is none that so directly strikes at the very throat of their cause. For whereas God found the apostles upon their first access to the ministry thus naked of those endowments, he by a miracle supplies what their opportunities permitted them not to learn, and by immediate power creates in them those abilities which others by their industry acquire.
Had not the knowledge of tongues and the force
of disputation been necessary to a divine, would God
have put himself to a miracle to furnish the apostles
Now concerning the time of the effusion of the Holy Ghost, upon comparing one scripture with an other, there seems to me a very considerable doubt, very near a contradiction, and therefore worthily deserving our explication.
The giving of the Holy Ghost is, by many clear
scriptures, affirmed to be after Christ’s ascension:
nay, his ascension is made not only antecedent, but
also causal to it,
To which I answer, that if the giving of the Holy
Ghost be in both places to be understood for one and
the same thing, they certainly contradict one another.
Wherefore, to avoid this, we must allow a double
giving of the Holy Ghost: one, in which Christ
conveys the ministerial power; the other, in which
he confers ministerial gifts and abilities. Now it was
the first of these that happened before Christ’s ascension, as is clear from the following words in
But this solemn giving of the Holy Ghost after Christ’s ascension, was a conferring gifts, graces, and abilities upon the apostles, to fit them for the discharge of their ministerial office and power, which had been conveyed to them by the former giving of the Holy Ghost before Christ’s ascension. And thus we have given a fair accommodation to these places of scripture.
And so having considered the first thing observable in Christ’s giving the Holy Ghost, viz. the time when; I pass now to the
Second; which is, the manner how it was conferred. And here the more brevity is required, the
thing being so eminently known to us all upon that
full description of it in
But the design of this great action being to signify and to transmit spiritual notices by sensible conveyances, it must not wholly be passed over in silence.
Briefly therefore, it exhibits to the world the
great means chosen by God for the propagation
of the kingdom of Christ. The apostles, beating upon
that general misconceit of the Jews about the kingdom of the Messiah, in the preceding chapter,
But suddenly, by a new kind of warlike preparation, they receive no other weapons but tongues, the proper badges of him that is the eternal Word, weapons that draw no blood, break no bones; their only armour and artillery was variety of languages, that fitted them more to travel over than to conquer the world: and thus was that first cause of the world’s confusion made the great instrument of its salvation.
And as these tongues were a proper representation of the gospel, so the peculiar nature and efficacy of this gospel was emphatically set forth by those attending circumstances of the fire and the mighty wind, both of which are notable for these two effects.
I. To cleanse. 2. To consume and destroy. The
gospel came like a great and mighty wind, to dry
and cleanse a dirty and polluted world; like a fire, to
purge and carry off that dross that had spread and
settled itself in the inmost regions of our nature. The
design of Christianity was nothing else but to make
virtue as universal and as natural to men as vice,
as desirable to their thoughts, and as suitable to their
affections. Christ’s intent was not so much to amuse
men’s reason with the belief of strange propositions,
And therefore he that, in the profession of so pure and noble a religion, thinks not of the design of it, but only hears, and never feels the word; to whom it comes only in the sound of the wind, but not in the force and efficacy of the fire: who, in the midst of all spiritual helps, of the several methods of amendment and renovation; as, seasonable sermons, continual prayers, frequent sacraments, and the like; yet carries his old, base inclinations fresh and lively about him; and cannot say that he ever conquered so much as one habitual sin, nor got the better of any one vile appetite; but remains sordidly obnoxious, and a slave to all its motions and returns; so that by a desperate vicissitude of sin and duty, he hears and sins, prays and sins, partakes and sins; and that perhaps with a better stomach than before; till, by such a continual mockery of God, he comes at length to have finished the fatal round of reprobation: such a one will find, that that Word which could not cleanse him will be a wind to blast, and a fire to consume him; and that the same Spirit, that only breathed in gentle, but neglected persuasions, will at length, like a resisted tempest, rage in the sad effects of incurable breaches and a final confusion.
—The night cometh, when no man can work.
THESE words, as they lie in the context, are a general maxim or assertion, assigned as a reason of Christ’s constancy and assiduity in the particular discharge of those works, which, as mediator, he was to perform while he was yet conversant in the world. And for the figurative scheme of the words, there is nothing more usual in the dialect of scripture, than to set forth and express the time allotted for this life by day; and the time and state after life, which is death, by night: the reasons of which similitude being very natural and obvious, to be exact and particular in recounting them would be but to tell men what they know already, and consequently a work both precise and superfluous.
The sense of the text seems most naturally to lay itself forth in these three propositions.
I. That there is a work allotted, begun, cut out, and appointed to every man, to be performed by him while he lives in the world.
II. That the time of this life being once expired, there is no further opportunity or possibility of performing that work.
III. That the consideration of this ought to be the
highest and the most pressing argument to every
I. For the first of these, That there is a work cut out, &c. we must observe, that every man may be considered under a double capacity or relation.
1. As he is a part or member of the body politic, and so is not his own, but stands included in and possessed by the community. In which capacity he is obliged to contribute his proportion of help to the public; as sharing from thence with others the benefits of society, and so being accountable to make it some retribution in his particular station and condition.
2. A man may be considered as he is a member and subject of a spiritual and higher kingdom. And in this capacity he is to pursue the personal, yet great interest of his own salvation. He is sent into this world to make sure of a better; to glorify his Maker by studying to save himself; and, in a word, to aim at enjoyments divine and supernatural, and higher than this animal life can aspire unto.
Now these two capacities are very different; by
the former, a man is to approve himself a good citizen; by the latter, a good Christian: and though
these relations have their precise limits and distinctions, yet we are not to be ignorant of the subordination of one to the other, as its superior. So that
if they chance to clash and thwart, the inferior must
give way; nor must a man do any thing to preserve
a civil interest that is contrary to a spiritual, and the
greater obligations lying upon him with reference
to the good of his soul, and the invaluable concerns
of felicity in the other world. The distinction of a
politic and a private conscience is a thing that true
We have seen then how every man sustains a double capacity; according to which he has also a double work or calling.
1. A temporal one, by which he is to fill up some place in the commonwealth by the exercise of some useful profession, whether as a divine, lawyer, or physician; a merchant, soldier, mariner, or any inferior handicraft; by all which, as by so many greater and less wheels, the business of the vast body of the public is carried on, its necessities served, and its state upheld.
And God, who has ordained both society and order, accounts himself so much served by each man’s diligent pursuit, though of the meanest trade, that his stepping out of the bounds of it to some other work (as he presumes) more excellent, is but a bold and thankless presumption, by which the man puts himself out of the common way and guard of Providence. For God requires no man to be praying or reading when the exigence of his profession calls him to his hammer or his needle; nor commands any one from his shop to go hear a sermon in the church, much less to preach one in the pulpit.
God, as the lord and great master of the family
of the universe, is still calling upon all his servants
to work and labour; a thing so much disdained by
the gallant and the epicure, is yet that general standing price that God and nature has set upon every
enjoyment on this side heaven; and he that invades
the possession of any thing, but upon this claim, is
Some perhaps think they are not born to labour, because they are born to estates. But the sentence that God passed upon Adam is universal; we find in it no exception or proviso for any noble or illustrious drone: no greatness can privilege a man to lie basking in sloth and idleness; and to eat the labours of the husbandman’s hand, and drink the sweat of his brow; to wallow and sleep in ease only, as an useless lump of well clothed, well descended earth: earth for heaviness only, but not for fruitfulness, serves no other end of society, but only to make one in a number.
But it may be replied, Shall those whom God has
blessed in the world, and, as it were, by a particular
mark of his providential favour exempted from the
general curse of toil and labour, be obliged to work
in a trade, or to be of such or such a laborious profession? No, I answer, that they need not, nor is
this the thing contended for, but simply that they
should labour and fill up all the hours of their time
by employing themselves usefully for the public; and
there are superior and more noble employments in
which this labour may be sufficiently exerted. For
is any one so rich or high as to be above the labour
of doing good to a whole neighbourhood, of composing differences, studying the customs of his country,
reading histories, and learning such arts as may render
If it be answered, that he stands in need of none
of all these, as being already abundantly supplied
with all the plenties and supports of life: to this also
I rejoin, that they are not only a man’s own personal
needs, but the general needs of society, that command
a supply and relief from his labour; add to this also,
in the second place, that the obligation to labour, lying upon men, is not founded upon their needs and
necessities, but upon God’s command, as its proper
reason; which command he has laid universally and
impartially upon all; and he that excuses himself
from all labour, the common lot of mankind, by loading it with the odious name of servility, should do
well to consider whether the custom of a place, the
vogue of his dependants, and his own little arts of
evasion, will be able to bear him out in so broad a
contempt of an express command; and to rescue
him from that thundering sentence leveled so directly at him in
2. Correspondent to a Christian’s other, that is, his spiritual capacity, he has also a spiritual calling or profession; and the work that this engages him to, is that grand one of working out his salvation; a work that a life is too little for, had a man any thing more than a life to bestow upon it; a work that runs out into eternity, and upon which depends the wo or welfare of an immortal soul.
Now this work is threefold.
1. To make our peace with God.
2. To get our sins mortified.
3. To get our hearts purified with the contrary graces.
1. And first, for the first of these, the making our peace with God. We know how tedious a work it is to reconcile or appease a potent enemy amongst men; frequent addresses must be made, great and irksome submissions must be digested. Days must be spent in attending, and nights in projecting how to assuage, and qualify, and remove the swelling disgust, and recover a place in that breast that has been boiling with rancour and enmity, and designs of mischiefs. Many years perhaps go over a man’s head, before he gets any ground upon such an one, if, peradventure, he succeeds at last; so hard, so troublesome, and discouraging a task it is, to win back a lost affection. Now every man must know, that, upon his very first coming into the world, he has this huge task upon him, to appease and pacify a great enemy; an enemy so much the harder to be pacified, because once a friend. This enemy is God, and therefore his enmities must be commensurate to his person, that is, infinite and unlimited. And it has this property also, that it is an enmity not commencing upon a mere grudge, but upon an injurious violation of his justice, and consequently not to be laid down without satisfaction. This satisfaction was to be infinite, and so impossible to be exhibited by a finite nature. The case being thus, Christ, the eternal Son of that offended God, was pleased to offer himself as a surety and a ransom in our behalf; so as to answer and satisfy all the demands of offended justice.
A satisfaction therefore there is made for us, but
But how is it possible to establish a peace between natures of the widest distance and the fiercest opposition? such as is the most holy, pure, and just nature of God, and the nature of man, polluted and envenomed by original corruption. Can fire and stubble strike a league together, and be friends? Can guilt and justice unite and embrace? No, nothing of any reconcilement was to be expected, till such time as repentance should cleanse this Augean stable, and the Spirit of God infuse into the soul a new principle called faith; which principle shall really translate a man into another family, advance him to the privilege of adoption, and so make him a son and an heir to the God of heaven, by the merits of the second Adam, who was an outlaw and a traitor by the first.
2. The second work that we are to do, is to get
our sins mortified. For after we are transplanted
from the state of nature into a state of grace, we are
not presently to think that our work is wholly done.
For after the Israelites were possessed of Canaan,
The sharpest, the most afflicting, and yet the most concerning part of a Christian’s duty, is the mortification of his sin. For it is, as it were, a man’s weeding of his heart; he shall find it a growing evil; an evil, that, by a cursed fertility, will sprout out after the cutting. For scarce any weed is fetched up at once; the gardener’s hand and hook must be continually watching over it; and he accounts his ground preserved, if it is not overrun.
Let a man make experiment in any one vice;
only let it be such an one as is agreeable and incident
to the several ages of man; as for instance, be it
pride: for the extirpation of which, we will suppose
a man, by the influences of a preventing grace, very
early in his attempts against it, and laying the axe
to the root of this towering vice in his very youth.
Yet, does it fall before him suddenly and easily? does
the first foil or blow make him victorious, and enable him to set his foot upon the neck of his conquered enemy? No, there are many vicissitudes in
the combat; sometimes he seems to get that under,
sometimes that seems to be above him. And what
through the strength of its hold, and the treachery
Now what I say of this is equally true of all other vices; and he that has a voluptuous, an intemperate, or a covetous heart to deal with, will find work enough laid out for him for this life. And let him beware that he ply his spiritual warfare so, that after forty, fifty, or threescore years, his vice is not as lively in his aged bones, and under his hoary hairs, as ever it was; and he die a decrepit, aged sinner, but yet in the youth and vigour of his sin.
3. The third work incumbent upon every man from his Christian calling, is to get his heart purified and replenished with the proper graces and virtues of a Christian. Christianity ends not in negatives. No man clears his garden of weeds, but in order to the planting of flowers or useful herbs in their room. God calls upon us to dispossess our corruptions, but it is for the reception of new inhabitants. A room may be clean, and yet empty; but it is not enough that our hearts be swept, unless they be also garnished; and that we lay aside our pride, our luxury, our covetousness, unless humility, temperance, and liberality, rise up and shine in their places. The design of religion would be very poor and short, should it look no further than only to keep men from being swine, and goats, and tigers, without improving the principles of humanity into positive and higher perfections. The soul may be cleansed from all blots, and yet still be left but a blank.
But Christianity, that is of a thriving, aspiring
I shewed before the difficulty of mortification, and we are not to think that it is at all less difficult to make a depraved heart virtuous, to force the soil of an ill temper, and, as it were, to graft virtuous ha bits upon the stock of a vicious nature. We see those that learn a trade, and the habit of any mechanic art, must yet bestow time and toil in the acquiring of it; though perhaps they have also a natural propensity to the art they are in pursuit of. Which being so, with how much more difficulty may we imagine a man to get humility or heavenly-mindedness, while all the appetites, and the very nerves of his soul, strive against it, and endeavour to pull down as fast as he can build up.
True it is therefore, that there is not one virtue that is produced in the soul of fallen man, but is in fused into it by the operation of God’s Spirit. And if any one should hereupon except, first, To what purpose then is our endeavour in this matter, if the Spirit of God works all? And secondly, Whence is it that these virtues are not in an instant conveyed into the heart in their full perfection, but appear and shew themselves only gradually, and by certain steps and increases?
To both these doubts this one answer will give full
satisfaction, namely, that habits, though they are in
fused, do yet come after the manner of such as are
acquired. Though our working produces not those
And thus I have finished the first proposition, and shewn that there is a work appointed to every man, to be performed by him while he lives in the world; as also the several parts of that work. I come now,
II. To the second proposition, namely, that the time of this life being once expired, there remains no further opportunity or possibility of performing this work.
There is no repenting when we are once nailed up in our coffins; no believing in the grave; no doing the works of charity and temperance in the dust, or growing new creatures amongst the worms; life is the adequate space allotted by the wisdom of Heaven for these matters, which being ended, there is no after-game, or retrieving of a bad choice. And so much seems couched under that one word, by which the time of this life is expressed, namely, a day, which, as it is applied to life, may emphatically denote three things.
1. The shortness of it. What is a day, but a few
minutes sunshine; one of the most inconsiderable
proportions of time; such an one, as we never grudge
to bestow upon any thing; an indiscernible shred of
that life that is itself but a span. Yet in these reckonings, God is pleased to rate it by a narrower and
a more contemptible measure. God will not dally
with us in the great affairs of eternity. He allows
us our day, and but our day, to choose whether or
2. A day, as it denotes the shortness, so it implies also the sufficiency of our time. A day, as short as it is, yet it equals the business of the day. God, that knows the exact proportions of things, took the measure of both, and found that the compass of our lives would fully grasp and take in all our occasions. Are there not twelve hours in the day? says our Saviour: implying that that was time enough for any man to discharge all the work, that God, and nature, and his profession could, for that space, impose upon him.
And if any one here object the shortness of the time allotted for a Christian’s work against the sufficiency of it; though it must be confessed, that, should we live never so long, we could not have too much time to do the works of repentance, and to honour God in; yet, according to the economy and measures of the gospel, in which God accepts our services according to their truth, not their bulk, we have space enough assigned us, even in this short life, to do all that is necessary to bring us to a better.
And he that repents not and turns to God in the
space of fifty, or threescore, or perhaps seventy years,
would, for any thing that is in him, live and persevere in the same impenitence, should God add five
3dly and lastly, By a day is denoted to us the determinate stint and limitation of our time. For none must think that the great and wise Governor of the world has left a matter of so high a concernment, and of so direct an influence upon the business of the world, as the life of man is, loose and unfixed. God has concluded all under a certain and unchangeable decree; and we have our bounds, be yond which we shall not pass. For as, after such a number of hours, it will unavoidably be night, and there is no stopping of the setting sun; so, after we have passed such a measure of time, our season has its period; we are benighted, and we must bid adieu to all our opportunities.
It is not in the power of man to carve out a longer life to himself. The disposal of times and seasons is part of the divine prerogative: and we know not whether God will allow the figtree to grow one, or two, or three years in his vineyard; but sure it is, that, when its appointed time is come, it must cumber the ground no longer. God has allotted to men talents of time, as well as of other things; to some ten, to some five, to some one. But still we see each man’s proportion is set. And he that has but five, must not think to traffick at the rate of him that has ten.
And thus we have taken some survey of the second proposition, namely, that the time of this life
I descend now to the third and last,
III. Which is, that the consideration of this ought to be the highest and the most pressing argument to every man to use his utmost diligence in the discharge of this work.
The enforcing reason of diligence in the undertaking of any work, is the difficulty of the performance of that work. Which difficulty here in our case will appear by comparing of the work to be done, with the time allowed for the doing of it. The time I shewed was both short and limited, so, on the other side, the work to be done is both difficult and necessary.
1. And first for its difficulty: though this has been sufficiently intimated in what was discoursed of before, yet, for the further declaration of it, it is observable, that there is no action of mankind that carries any thing of hardship with it, but the scripture expresses the work and duty of a Christian by it. It calls it a warfare; and is there any thing so hard and uneasy as what befalls men in the wars? It calls it a wrestling with principalities and powers: and is there any thing that employs and distends every joint and fibre of the body so much as wrestling does? It calls it a resisting of the Devil, and, what is more, a resisting unto blood: and do men shed their blood and expose their lives to the point of the rapier, and the fury of the enemy, with so much pastime?
But no expressions are so emphatical as those of
our Saviour, who calls this work a taking up of one’s
But above all, there is a place in
And now, when we have seen the work to be done so highly difficult, and the time to do it in so very short, can there be a more cogent argument, to induce a man to be covetous of every moment, and to make his industry piece out the scantiness of his opportunities? He that has far to go, and much to do, surely is concerned to rise very early; to count not only hours, but minutes, to make his work keep pace with his time; and, in a word, to mate the difficulty of the business with the diligence of the prosecution.
2. Next to the difficulty of the work, let us take
an argument from its necessity. So far as it is necessary for a man to be saved, so far this work is necessary.
But when a man comes at last to reflect upon his past days, and the little sand that is left him to run; when his feet are stumbling upon the dark mountains, and the shadows of his long night have overtaken him, he never asks the question then, how to pass away time, and to spend the day. None of his hours then lie upon his hands.
Now, when amidst all this, his great accounts shall also press hard upon him, and the terror of past sins lie heavy upon his conscience; it is worth considering his behaviour in this condition. None, surely, ever heard such a one calling religion pedantry, deriding a divine, or jesting upon the scriptures. How much soever a wretch and a scoffer lie was before, his note is changed now; and we may hear him with the most earnest, humble, and lamentable outcries plying his offended God.
Lord, spare me for a while: Lord, respite me but
And then for this spiritual guide, whom, perhaps, not long since, he could scoff out of his company with disdain, he can now bespeak in a more abject and entreating dialect. Sir, do you think that there is any mercy, any hope for such a one as I? Have I not outsinned the line of grace? Do you not perceive any mortal symptoms upon my sins? Do you think that my repentance is sincere, that it reaches the conditions of the covenant, and that I may venture my salvation upon the reality of it? Can you give me any solid argument from scripture, or the judgment of divines, that the promises of mercy can extend to a man that has committed such and such sins, and that under such and such circumstances? And that I do not all this while abuse and flatter myself, and only prepare for an eternal disappointment? Never did any client, with so much scruple and solicitousness, inquire of his counsel about the strength or weakness of his title, when he was to go to law for all his estate, and to see his whole fortune canvassed at the bar, as a man in this condition will dispute his title to heaven, and argue his several doubts and misgivings with his spiritual guide or confessor.
No sinner, be he never so hardy and resolved,
must think to keep up the same stoutness of heart,
when he is just a stepping into the other world. No;
these are usually the sad accents and language of the
dying sinner, when he perceives his time spent, and,
Oh that I were to live over my former days again! that I could command back some of those portions of time that I sacrificed to my vice, to the humour of my companions, and to those vanities that now serve only to remind me of my folly, and to upbraid me to my face! Oh that I had employed myself in those severities, that I then laughed at as the need less, affected practices of brainsick, melancholy persons! my work had not been now to do, when my time of working is expired.
I shall close up all with that excellent counsel of
the preacher,
Which God of his mercy at last bestow upon us all, to whom be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.
I will make thee unto this people a fenced brazen wall: and they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee: for I am with thee to save thee and deliver thee, saith the Lord.
I SHALL not pretend to derive episcopacy from the Old Testament, as some do presbytery from Jethro, in his humble petition and advice to Moses concerning the government of the Jews. Which presbytery, though some call the rod of Aaron, yet it more resembles those rods of Jacob, as being designed to midwive a piebald, mixed, ringstraked progeny of church-governors into the world. How ever, it is well that we see from whence it first came, even from Midian, an heathenish place, and unacquainted with the true worship of God, then confined only to the Jews.
But it is pity that the Old Testament does not
describe the office of those elders, as well as mention
the name; we reading scarce any thing of them
there, but that some of them scuffled with Moses
and Aaron in the classis of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. As also of their idolatry,
I say, I shall not derive episcopacy from the Jewish model; though, if I would take their liberty to
use allusions for arguments. I might argue a superintendency of bishops over presbyters from the superiority of the priests over the Levites, much better
than they can found their discipline upon the word
elder, catching at the bare letter, and. according to
their custom, stripping the word from the sense: and
also with much more probability than their corypheus in queen Elizabeth’s time argued their
discipline from
But surely this I may argue solidly: that if God instituted such a standing superiority and jurisdiction of the priests over the Levites. then these two things follow.
1. That such a superiority is not in itself absolutely irregular and unlawful.
2. That neither does it carry in it an antipathy and contrariety to the power of godliness.
And yet upon these two suppositions, as upon two
standing truths, all their calumnies are commenced;
as if there were something in the very vital constitution of such a subordination, that was irreconcileable
to the power of godliness. As in respect of the civil
power, Calvin, in his commentary upon
But to come yet closer to the matter; I do not say that Jeremy was a bishop, nor, with an exact parallel, argue from one to the other. But we know, that, in things of a most different nature, we may yet so sever their peculiar, determining differences, as to leave some one general reason in which they may unite and agree; so here, setting aside the peculiar differences of the Jewish and the Christian economy, there is a general nature of government in which both correspond. And therefore, what concerned Jeremy, as a church-governor, may with good logic be applied to a bishop.
Though indeed the correspondence here may extend to more peculiar and personal resemblances; for
might not our bishops lately take up and appropriate
to themselves that complaint of Jeremy, in
But now to enter upon the words; we have in them these three things considerable.
I. God’s qualification of Jeremy to be an overseer in his church; I will make thee a fenced brazen wall.
II. The entertainment that he should meet with in the administration of his office, they shall fight against thee.
III. The issue and success of this opposition, that, through God’s eminent and peculiar assistance, they should not prevail against him.
I. And first for the first of these, God’s qualification of Jeremy to his charge, I will make thee a brazen fenced wall. Now a wall imports these two things.
1. Enclosure.
2. Fortification.
1. It implies enclosure. God did not think fit to leave his church without enclosure, open, like a common, for every beast to feed upon and devour it. Commons are always bare, pilled, and shorn as the sheep that feed upon them. And our experience has shewn us, as soon as the enclosures of our church were plucked up, what a herd of cattle of all sorts invaded it. It contained, as commons usually do, both multitude and mixture.
God said to Moses, Pull off thy shoes, for the place upon which thou standest is holy ground; which command would have been but of little force amongst us, where the ground has been therefore counted common because holy; church-lands have been every one’s claim, free and common to all but to churchmen; even as common as the churchyard itself; one to be possessed by the living, the other by the dead.
And the offices of the church were as prostitute as
her revenues; every one would be a labourer in that
field from whence they expected so fair an harvest.
Here a brewer, here a cobbler, there a butcher; a fair
We have Christ comparing the kingdom of heaven, that is, the church, to traffick, to merchandise: but we might compare ours to a fair, in which there was a general confluence and appearance of all tradesmen; and he that had broke in any, presently set up in divinity.
Wherefore to stave off the profane intrusions of the rabble for the future, we must have an enclosure, and an hedge will not serve turn. So many rotten stakes of lay-governors will not raise a fence; an hedge that surrounds an orchard may harbour those thieves that intend to rob it.
No, one brazen wall, one diocesan bishop, will better defend this enclosed garden of the church, than a junto of five hundred shrubs, than all the quicksets of Geneva, all the thorns and brambles of presbytery.
2. A wall imports fortification. No city can be secure without it. It is, as it were, a standing inanimate army; a continual defence without the help of defenders.
There is no robbery, but the wall is first broke;
no invasion, but it enters through the ruins of this.
And therefore David puts up this for Sion in
Something must encircle the church that will both discriminate and protect it. And the altar must be railed in, not only for distinction but defence.
And such a thing is a church-governor, a well-qualified bishop. It is he that must secure the church,
It was Moses, and not the elders of Israel, that stood in the gap; and for our own parts, if we would determine upon whom to place our government, certainly, of all others, those persons are most unfit to stand in the gap that first made it.
We have seen now what is imported in this metaphor of a wall, as applied to a church-governor. Which title that he may make good and verify, there are required in him these three qualifications.
1. Courage, which leads the way to all the rest; a wall, nay, a brazen wall, will not sometimes prove a defence, if it is not well manned. Every church man should have the spirit of a soldier. And pray let us make an exchange; the soldiers have sufficiently invaded the ministers offices; let ministers now borrow a little of the soldiers courage.
Peter was a resolute and a bold man, and therefore fit to feed Christ’s lambs. But he that is timorous and flexible, apt to decline opposition when he can, and, when he cannot, to yield to it, will be jaded and rid like an ass; and, like a pitcher, he will be took and emptied by his own handle, to the ruin of the church and the reproach of his function. He will be used, instead of being obeyed; and men will make him their instrument, instead of their governor.
He that does not find in himself a courage to
withstand the boldness and violence of a proud seducer or a popular schismatic, betrays his charge in
the very undertaking it. A servile temper in any
one is unworthy; but a spirit of servitude in the
The greatest attempts in the world that have failed, have miscarried by the treachery of this one quality, irresolution. Fear is a base thing, it enslaves a man’s reason to his fancy; and for the most part proceeds from, but always looks like guilt.
And it agrees to no man living so ill, as to a prelate of the church; of whose qualities if we take a survey, we shall find that, though learning be his ornament, piety a necessary property, yet resolution is his very essence; and now, especially, is the want of it inexcusable, when the ground is firm under you, and the heavens, as yet, fair above you; and all the prudent and judicious for you, that are about you.
Shall those be able to nose and outbrave you, who take all their courage from guilt and from despair? They deride and tax you for bowing and cringing; pray therefore, whatsoever you do, do not bow and cringe to them.
2. There is required innocence and integrity. A brazen wall admits of no cracks and flaws; but that which is made of the baser materials of mud and mortar, of a corrupt conscience, and a corrupter conversation, it gapes into chinks and holes, and quickly totters, being weak and obnoxious.
Hic murus ahencus esto,
Nil conscire sibi.
Let our governors expect reproaches and calumnies,
but being thrown at brass, they will never stick, upon
mud they will; clay cannot mingle with brass or
A bishop’s integrity is the best way to silence a factious minister. Let men first wash their hands in innocency, and then let them compass the altar.
In these stars of God’s right hand, it is their power indeed that gives them an influence, but it is their innocence that makes them shine. Unblameableness of life, an untainted pureness of manners, it defends the person and confirms the office; as cleanliness, it both refreshes, and, at the same time, also strengthens the body. Rust, it not only defaces the aspect, but also corrodes the substance; and a. rusty sword does execution upon nothing but its own scabbard.
Nothing that is vicious can be lasting; vice is
rotten, and it makes so. Whatsoever is wicked is
also weak;
The enemies of the church may fear your power, but they dread your innocence. It is this that stops the open sepulchre, and beats back the accusation upon the teeth of the accuser. The innocent white, it is a triumphant colour.
And believe it, when all these calumniators shall have spit their venom, it will be found, that an unspotted life will be to them both a confutation and revenge.
For sin they love, that is, to enjoy it in themselves, and to accuse it in others; but God forbid that we should so far gratify their malice, as to verify their invectives, or that any crime should sit blushing upon the mitre.
And certainly it were a strange and a shameful
thing, to behold vice installed, debauchery enthroned;
3. The third and last qualification that I shall mention is authority; it is to be a fenced, as well as a brazen wall. The inward firmness of one must be corroborated by the exterior munitions of the other.
Courage is like a giant with his hands tied, if it has not authority and jurisdiction to draw forth and actuate its resolution. Courage is nothing, if it is not backed with a commission.
There are those who absolutely deny any jurisdiction to belong to the church; affirming, that all the apostolical sanctions were rather advice than law; thus making the church-officers to be only like a college of physicians, who when they consult about, and determine any matter in physic, and prescribe to their patients, their prescriptions command no thing by way of authority, but only propose by way of counsel. Whence it is the less wonder, that Erastus, a physician, should endeavour to reduce the church to such an imaginary power.
Others, amongst which a person of great learning and discontent, though they proceed not to a plain, barefaced denial of the church’s jurisdiction, yet they deny the derivation of it from Christ; and derive it from the consent of the primitive Christians, voluntarily choosing governors and a government, and then submitting themselves to their jurisdiction.
But God forbid that the church should be forced either to follow Erastus’s prescriptions, or to try her title and plead her cause at an adversary’s bar.
Certain it is, that the New Testament makes
mention of several acts of ecclesiastical jurisdiction
performed by the apostles and others. And we find
But thanks be to God that our church has not only its jurisdiction from Christ, but also a superadded overplus of confirmation from the secular power, which has piously and prudently provided those laws, that will certainly bind up her breaches, and bring order out of confusion, if they be executed with the same courage with which they were enacted.
But if the governors and trustees of the church’s power fly back, and shrink, and bury a noble law as soon as ever it is born, may not those that made it object to us, that they would have healed us, but we would not be healed? May they not also use that speech of our Saviour to us, Behold, now your house is left to you desolate? You have lost your advantages, and overlooked your opportunities.
Does it become a man, with a sword by his side, to beseech? or a governor, armed with authority, to entreat? He that thinks to win obstinate schismatics by condescension, and to conjure away those evil spirits with the softer lays and music of persuasion, may, as David in the like case, have a javelin flung at his head for his pains, and perhaps escape it as narrowly.
There is a strange, commanding majesty in two
And let faction look and speak big in a tumult, and in the troubled waters of rebellion; yet I dare vouch this as a truth of certain event, and that without the spirit of prophecy, that courage assisted with law, and law executed with courage, will assuredly prevail.
Come we now to the second thing, namely,
II. The opposition that the church-governor thus qualified will be sure to meet with in the administration of his office, expressed in those words, they shall fight against thee; and this they are like to do these three ways.
1. By seditious preaching and praying.
2. By railing and libels.
3. And thirdly, perhaps, by open force.
1. And first of all, they will assault their governors with seditious preaching and praying. To preach Christ out of contention is condemned by the apostle; but to preach contention, instead of Christ, certainly is most abominable. We have seen men preached into schism, lectured into sacrilege, and prayed into rebellion; the very pulpit has been made to undermine the church.
We have been robbed and plundered in scripture phrase, and have heard rapines and bloodshed not only justified, but glorified.
People in the mean time thronging to the church,
not like doves to their windows, but like eagles to
their prey; to have their appetites enraged, to have
Read the collections of sermons upon their bloody thanksgivings, and their bloodthirsty humiliations, and upon other occasions before the two houses, which are so many satires against government, so many declamations against the church; every line and period almost spitting poison against monarchy, against discipline and decency; to the reproach of that exercise, to the shame of their calling, and (so far as it lay at the mercy of their practices) to the blot of Christianity:
I say, let any one read that collection, or, to speak more properly, that magazine of sermons, and then let him confess that it was the sword of the tongue that first drew and unsheathed the other.
He that would hear an invective against the ministry, let him not go to a tavern, to a camp, or to an exchange, but let him repair rather to a church. And when his occasions shall carry him to the market-town, to furnish himself with other commodities, if he would be furnished also with a stock of arguments against loyalty and the church, let him leave the market-place a while, and step aside into the lecture.
2. Their second way of fighting against the officers of the church will be by railing and libels. I may seem to commit an absurdity, I confess, in making this a different head from their preaching and praying. But, considering that they speak from the press as well as from the pulpit, and in other places besides the church, we must admit of this distinction.
And for this way of opposition, by virulent, unseemly language, odious terms, and vilifying words, none ever improved their talent to such an height of perfection.
The reverend fathers of the church were the chief mark at which their virulence was levelled: and for these, the more moderate of their opposers were contented to call them by no worse names than whited walls, hypocrites, painted sepulchres, scribes and Pharisees, implacable enemies of godliness, limbs of Antichrist, retainers to the whore of Babylon. But others, who had a greater measure of this gift, be stowed upon them higher titles, as, devils incarnate, murderers of souls, dumb dogs; and some, that would tip their virulence with more than ordinary wit, have thought fit to call them dumb dogs that could only bark at God’s people.
I could give you a larger catalogue of these gentle, pious, Christian expressions, used by the brotherhood in queen Elizabeth’s days; though since much augmented with several additions and enlargements never before extant, by their worthy successors and true posterity; persons, whose mouths are too foul to be cleansed, and too broad to be stopped.
But they are in nothing so copious and eloquent, as when they amplify and declaim upon that old, beaten, misapplied theme of persecution. Which charge, if true, yet they, of all men living, were the most unfit to make it. But I shall not busy my self to confute, much less to retaliate their aspersions.
3. In the third and last place, they may oppose
the governors and government of the church by
open force; and this is fighting indeed; but yet the
The reason of the thing itself does evince this, and, what is yet a greater reason, experience; and he that will not believe what he has felt, nor credit the experience of twenty years, deserves to undergo it for twenty years more.
As the trumpet gives an alarm to the battle, so bold invectives do as certainly alarm the trumpet; it is the same breath by which men utter the one and blow the other.
What insurrections, what attempts, what tumults they may make, we know not; but we know their principles, and we have sufficiently seen them illustrated in their practices; and therefore from what has been done, do but rationally collect what may.
We have heard much of the power of godliness, by which indeed is meant only the godly party being in power; and the godly party with them are those who have sworn the destruction of monarchy and of the church, and have bewitched the people with a fardle of strange, canting, insignificant words.
And let men know, that, notwithstanding the disguise of a whining expression and a demure face, there is no sort of men breathing who taste blood with so good a relish, and who, having the power of the sword to second their power of godliness, would wade deeper in the slaughter of their brethren, and with the most savage, implacable violence, tumble all into confusion, ruin, and desolation.
The quicksilver of Geneva is a thing of a violent operation, and cannot lie still long, but it will force its vent through the bowels of a nation; and God grant, that it may be throughly purged out, before it becomes mortal and incurable: and give us the defence of a prudent jealousy, to beware of those whose loyalty and submission lies only in their want of occasion.
We have now despatched the two first things considerable in the text; in which, as in a set battle, we have seen the armour and preparations of defence in the first place, and the assault and opposition in the second. It remains now,
III. That, as in all fights, we see the issue and success, which is exhibited to us in these words; but they shall not prevail against thee.
It is a bold venture to foretell things future, be cause it is infamous to lie under the shame of a mistaken prediction, and some, if they had prophesied less, perhaps would have preached better.
Things future fall under human cognizance only these two ways:
1. By a foresight of them in their causes.
2. By divine revelation.
For the first of these, moral causes will afford but a moral certainty; but so far as the light of this shines, it gives us a good prospect into our future success.
For which is most likely to prevail, a force marshalled into order, or disranked and scattered into
confusion? A force united and compacted with the
strength of agreement, or a force shrivelled into parties, and crumbled into infinite subdivisions? A government confirmed by age, and rooted by antiquity,
But besides the arguments of reason, we have the surer ground of divine revelation. God has engaged his assistance, made himself a party, and obliged his omnipotence as a second in the cause: I am with thee to save thee and deliver thee, saith the Lord. We have something more to plead than God’s providence, their old heathenish argument.
We have his word for our rule, and his promise for our support. He that undertakes God’s work, may, by a legitimacy of claim, challenge his assistance.
Yet neither are we destitute of arguments from providence, so far as they may be pleaded. For has God, by a miracle, raised a church from the dead, only to make it capable of a second destruction? has he buoyed it up from the gulfs and quicksands of faction and sacrilege, only to split it upon the rocks of a new rebellion? Has he scattered those mists of delusion, discovered the cheat of a long, religious fallacy, and so strangely opened men’s eyes, that he may more strangely put them out again? Or will Christ invert the order of his works, and having cured us, do another miracle only to make us blind?
No certainly; for as God does not create but with a design to preserve, so he does not deliver but with a purpose to defend.
But you will say, Does not our own late experience stare us in
the face, and confute this assertion? For has not the church been exposed to the
lust, fury,
To this I answer two things, with which I shall conclude.
1. That even those enemies of the church, in the late dismal swing of confusion, did not prevail against her. For that only is a prevailing, that is a final conquest.
But this was only a cloud that hindered the sun shine for a while, but did not put out the sun. A veil drawn over the church’s face, not to extinguish her beauty, but to hide it for a time. In short, it was only an interruption, not an abolition of her happiness.
2. But secondly, I add, that he who is pillaged or murdered in the resolute performance of his duty, is not properly prevailed against.
It has been a constant tradition of the church, that Jeremy himself, to whom this very promise was made, was barbarously knocked o’ the head and killed in Egypt for his impartial prophesying; yet still this promise was the word of God, and therefore doubtless could not fall to the ground, however the prophet might.
There is a great deal of difference between a murder and a conquest.
So that should God again let loose the reins to the
former tyranny; should he once more give the sword
to faction, ignorance, and discontent, and arm the
Such an one may be plundered indeed, and yet not undone; he may be sequestered, imprisoned, yea, and slain, and yet, according to the soberest judgment of reason, not conquered.
Some may now think that the work of this exercise is not discharged, unless directions are given for the management of the episcopal office; but I persuade myself, that our government advances none to this office, but such as are able to direct themselves. However I, for my part, had rather promise obedience, than proffer counsel to my superiors.
The business I undertook was to speak encouragement to those that shall sit at the stern of the church in such a discouraging age, and to tell them, that God will make them fenced brazen walls. And he that strikes at a wall of brass may maul his own hands, but neither shake nor demolish that.
Wherefore, let the furies of a new confusion break forth, let the spiritual trumpets sound another march to rebellion, and the pulpit drums beat up for volunteers for the Devil, and threaten the church once more.
Yet the governors of it may here take sanctuary in the text; and, with confidence from hence, be speak their opposers.
Who shall fight against us? it is God that saves.
To which God, fearful in praises, and working wonders, be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.
Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s elect, and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness.
IN the last words of this verse, about which only our present discourse shall be concerned, we have a full though compendious account of the nature of the gospel, ennobled by two excellent qualities. One, the end of all philosophical inquiries, which is truth; the other, the design of all religious institutions, which is godliness; both united, and as it were blended together in the constitution of Christianity.
Those who discourse metaphysically of the nature of truth, as to the reality of the thing, affirm a perfect coincidence between truth and goodness; and I believe it might be easily made out, that there is nothing in nature perfectly true, but what is also really good. For although it is not to be denied, that true propositions may be framed of things in themselves evil, yet still it is certain that the truth of those propositions is good. Nothing so bad as the Devil, or worse than a liar; yet this affirmation, that the Devil is a liar, is hugely true and very good.
It would be endless to strike forth into the elogies of truth; for as we know it was the adored
prize for which the sublimest wits in the world have
always run, and sacrificed their time, their health,
I. Now in this expression of the gospel’s being the truth which is after godliness, these three things are couched.
1. That it is simply a truth.
2. That it is an operative truth.
3. That it is operative to the best of effects, which is godliness.
And first for the first of these; it is a truth, and upon that account dares look its most inquisitive adversaries in the face. The most intricate and mysterious passages in it are vouched by an infinite veracity; and truth is truth, though clothed in riddles, and surrounded with darkness and obscurity: as the sun has still the same native, inherent brightness, though wrapt up in a cloud.
Even those transcendent enigmas of the Trinity, the incarnation of the Son of God, and the resurrection of the dead, they all challenge our assent upon the score of their truth. And that three is one and one three, is altogether as true as that three is three, though far from being so plain. It is hard indeed to conceive a reparation of the same numerical body having been transformed by so many changes, yet we have the divine word for it; and death itself is not more sure, than that men shall rise from the dead.
Now the gospel being a truth, it follows yet further, that if we run through the whole catalogue of
its principles, nothing can be drawn from thence, by
legitimate and certain consequence, but what is also
true. It is impossible for truth to afford any thing
2. The next advance of the gospel’s excellency is, that it is such a truth as is operative. It does not terminate in notion, or rest in bare, unactive speculation, but from the head it shoots forth into the hand, and sets all the faculties of our nature at work. It does not dwell in the mind like furniture, only for ornament, but for use, and the great concernments of life. Most sorts of human knowledge are like the treasures of a covetous man, got with labour and much industry; and being got, they lie locked up and wholly unemployed: and indeed the very nature of them abstracts from practice. The knowledge of astronomy, geometry, arithmetic, music, and the like, they may fill the mind, and yet never step forth into one experiment; but the knowledge of the divine truths of Christianity is quick and restless, like an imprisoned flame, which will be sure to force its passage, and to display its brightness.
3. The third and highest degree of its perfection
is, that it is not only operative, but also operative to
the best of purposes, which is to godliness: it carries on a design for heaven and eternity. Some
things are indeed active, but the design of their action is trivial, cheap, and contemptible; so that, in
effect, it is no more than a sedulous and a laborious
doing of nothing; which kind of actions, should
they be arrested with that question, Cui bono? the
vanity of such performances would quickly appear,
that they were but a shooting without any aim, a
raising of a bubble, and a pursuing of the wind.
Every thing is ennobled by its design; and an action is advanced in its worth, when it drives at an
Which words may admit of a double sense.
1. That the gospel is so called, because it actually produces the effects of godliness in those that embrace and profess it. 2. That it is directly improvable into such consequences and deductions, as have in them a natural fitness, if complied with, to engage the practice of mankind in such a course.
In the former of these senses, the gospel cannot universally sustain this appellation; forasmuch as in many hearts it is no sooner conceived but it proves abortive; and like the seed falling upon stony ground, it is choked by the thorns of cares and lusts, and other corruptions growing up and hindering it, so that it never brings forth fruit to perfection. Many entertain principles which they defy by their practices, and unlive all that they have believed; so that that which was intended for the cure of sin, by accident becomes its aggravation. Wherefore the latter sense only can take place here; that is, that the gospel, in its nature, is the most apt and proper instrument of holiness in the world, the most naturally productive of holy living and a pious conversation; unless a man prevaricates with the articles of his faith, runs counter to his profession, and acts contradictions.
Now the truth that we have declared to have thus an influence upon godliness, consists in these two things.
1. A right notion of God.
2. A right notion of what concerns the duty of man.
These two are the foundations of all sound and rational piety; and as it is a matter of great moment, so it is also of great difficulty, so to assert and state each of these, both in their just latitude, and yet within their due limits, that one may not in trench upon or evacuate the other.
It highly concerns us so to discourse of God in the matter of religion, that his prerogative of being the first cause of all things, and both the author and finisher of man’s salvation, be not infringed by such assertions as of necessity infer the contrary. And yet, on the other side, this prerogative of God is to be defended with such sobriety, as not in the mean time to leave the creature no scope of duty, or to render all exhortations and threatenings, and other helps of action, absurd and superfluous. The difficulty of doing right to both which, appears from this; that those who endeavour to assert one, usually encroach upon the other.
As for instance; some of those who manage the
defence of God’s prerogative in being the first cause
of all things, and sovereign author of our salvation,
assert that the creature never advances into action,
but by an irresistible predetermination of the faculty
to that action; upon the presence of which predetermination the faculty cannot but act, and upon the
absence or defect of which, it cannot possibly move or
determine itself. And then, over and above this
predetermination, they assert a concurrence of God
to that action of the power or faculty, perfectly the
same with that action. Which assertions, in spite of
On the contrary; those who would redeem the will from this inactivity, usually extend the freedom of it to that compass, as to make God a mere stander by in the great business of the soul’s salvation; it being at the courtesy of the will’s choice and acceptance, whether all that God does towards the saving of a man shall, in the issue, become effectual or not effectual to that purpose. Such will not allow any thing to be liberty of will, but a perfect equilibrium and indifferency of choice as to good or evil; which for papists to assert, who in this assertion lay the foundation of their pretended merits, is no wonder; but why protestants should be so fond of it, I see no reason: for that this indifferency to good and evil is not of the intrinsic nature and essence of the will’s liberty, is clear from this; that then the saints, who are confirmed in the love of God and goodness, so that they cannot sin, or choose that which is evil, could not be said to love God freely; nor the devils to sin freely, for they cannot choose but sin; nor Christ to have done actions of holiness freely, for he could not do otherwise. Besides that the supposition of original sin, and the total depravation of man’s nature, renders such a liberty in those that are not renewed by baptism strangely absurd; for it is an apparent making of a corrupt tree to bring forth good fruit.
But you will say, that this nullifies all exhortations
I am not ignorant, that in giving an account of these matters there is a knot on both sides; and that, upon a nice screwing of consequences, not easily to be resolved; yet surely it concerns us so to discourse of these points in general, as neither to clip the divine prerogative, nor yet, on the other hand, to tie up the creature so, as to undermine duty by taking away the energy of precepts, threatenings, and exhortations.
II. To proceed therefore. There are three things that I shall deduce from this description of the gospel’s being the truth according to godliness.
1. That the nature and prime essential design of religion is to be an instrument of good life, by administering arguments and motives inducing to it.
2. That so much knowledge of truth as is sufficient
For I shew, if godliness were the design, it ought also, by consequence, to be the measure of men’s knowledge in this particular.
3. That whatsoever doth in itself or its direct consequences undermine the motives of a good life, is contrary to and destructive of Christian religion.
1. That the nature and prime essential design of religion is to be an instrument of good life, by administering arguments and motives inducing to it.
It were to be wished, that to produce reasons and proofs for such a proposition were wholly needless and vain; yet since the capricious and fantastic notions of some men have made it much otherwise, I shall endeavour to clear up the assertion I have laid down by these arguments.
1. The first is, because religion designs the service of God, by gaining over to his obedience that which is most excellent in man, and that is, the actions of his life, and continual converse. That these are the most considerable is clear from hence; because all other actions naturally proceed in a subserviency to these. As the actions of a man’s understanding, directing, and of his will commanding, they are all designed for the regulation of his constant behaviour; and that which is the end to which other things are designed, is, as such, more excellent than those things designed to that end.
2. The design of religion is man’s salvation: but
men are not saved as they are more knowing or
assent to more propositions, but as they are more
pious than others. Practice is the thing that sanctifies knowledge; and faith without works expires,
3. A third argument is from hence, that the discriminating excellency of Christianity consists not so much in this, that it discovers more sublime truths, or indeed more excellent precepts than philosophy, (though it does this also,) as that it suggests more efficacious arguments to enforce the performance of those precepts, than any other religion or institution whatsoever. Compare the precepts of Pythagoras, of the stoics, and of Christian religion: Does Christian religion commend piety towards God, and justice to our neighbour? Does it arraign vicious affections and corrupt desires? So do they. Wherein then has it the preeminence? Why in this; that after they had taught the world their duty, what they were to do, and what not to do, they had no arguments prevalent with the nature of men, above their contrary propensions, to bind them over to such practices.
But Christianity has backed all its precepts with
eternal life and eternal death to the performers or
neglecters of them; whereas philosophy could do
4. The fourth and last argument is from this; that notwithstanding the diversity of religions in the world, yet men hereafter will generally be condemned for the same things; that is, for their breaches of morality. Men shall be condemned for being false, lustful, injurious, profane, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, and the like. But these are the sins of all nations, and are universally found in the profession of all religions.
It is confessed there shall be an accession to men’s guilt, and more or less fuel added to their torments, according as the religion they lived under administered to them clearer or obscurer notions of duty, and more or less pregnant instructions to the exercise of piety; otherwise, men shall not so much be condemned for not believing of riddles and hard sentences, as for not practising of plain duties: for this is that which religion drives at; not to subtilize men’s conceptions, but to rectify their manners.
And these are briefly my reasons for the first deduction from the words, namely, that the nature and prime essential design of religion is to be an instrument of good life, by administering arguments and motives inducing to it.
2. A second inference from the gospel’s being the truth according to godliness is this.
That so much knowledge of truth as is sufficient
to engage men’s lives in the practice of godliness,
3. The third and great consequence, from the gospel’s being the truth according to godliness, shall be this.
That whatsoever does in itself, or its direct consequences, undermine the motives of a good life, is contrary to and destructive of Christian religion.
Now the doctrines that more immediately concern a good life are reducible to these three heads.
1. Such as concern the justification of a sinner.
2. Such as concern the rule of manners.
3. And such as concern repentance.
All which things are such vital ingredients of religion, that an error in any of them is like poison in a fountain, which must certainly convey death and contagion to every one that shall taste the streams. It will be of some moment therefore to bring the doctrines that lie under these several heads to a particular examination, that so, having a distinct view of life and death before us, we may both secure our choice and direct our practice.
First of all then, concerning the justification of a
1. First then, that doctrine that holds that the covenant of grace is not established upon conditions, and that nothing of performance is required on man’s part to give him an interest in it, but only to believe that he is justified; this certainly subverts all the motives of a good life. But this is the doctrine of the antinomians: and the foundation of this they have laid in another wild, erroneous assertion, that every believer was actually justified from eternity, and that his faith is only a declaration of this to his conscience, but no ways effective of any alteration of his state or condition. Justified in the sight of God he was before his belief, but his belief at length gives him the knowledge of it; and so makes him not more safe, but more confident than he was before.
But certainly this inevitably takes away the necessity of godliness: for it asserts that a sinner, and
an ungodly person, while such, may stand justified
before God. For the better understanding of which
we must observe, that a man may be said to be a
sinner in a double respect: 1. In respect of the law,
as having not continued in all things written in the
As for the former of these respects, all men are sinners upon a legal score, as not having performed an entire, indefective, legal obedience. But in the latter sense, upon evangelical allowances, a man that believes is not counted to be in a state of sin, though legally he is.
Now the forementioned doctrine allows justification to these sinners also; for if a man is actually and perfectly justified from all eternity, whereas he comes but in some period of his life to believe and repent, does it not invincibly follow, that he was justified before that belief and repentance; and, consequently, while he was under an estate of unbelief and impenitence? which assertion is the very bane of all piety and gospel obedience. It dashes all industry in the ways of holiness, lodges a man’s hands in his bosom, and renders a pious life superfluous and precarious.
2. That doctrine that teaches that a man may be
accepted with God for the righteousness and merits
of other saints, poisons and perverts the nature of
justification, so as to render it utterly ineffectual to
engage men in a course of godliness. For if there is
a treasury of good works and merits deposited in
the custody of the church, and to be dispensed by
her to whom she pleases, for all the purposes of salvation, a man need not be rich in good works of his
own, provided he be rich enough in money to purchase himself a propriety in those of other men. So
that it is not a good life, but a good purse that is
But it will be objected, perhaps, that the doctrine of the imputed righteousness of Christ does equally evacuate all motives to a good life; for if his righteousness, which is infinitely perfect and exact, be imputed to us, what need we produce any of our own? To this I answer, that the reason is not the same. For though the righteousness of Christ be imputed to us, yet it renders not a good life on our part needless, since this is made the very condition of that imputation. That is, if we fill the measures of sincerity, in doing the utmost that we are able, Christ’s righteousness shall be imputed to us for justification, notwithstanding our failing in many things, which, by reason of the infirmities of our nature, we have not done. Thus, therefore, the imputation of Christ’s righteousness is suspended upon a man’s own personal righteousness, as its necessary antecedent condition.
But now it is otherwise in the imputation of the
merits of the saints to any man, since this cannot
proceed upon any such condition of personal obedience on his part. For thus the argument against it
will run: either that man does the utmost that he is
able, and lives as well as he can, according to the
terms of e\ angelical sincerity, or he does not; if he
does, then what need can he have of the righteousness and merits of the saints, who themselves were
able to do no more while they lived in the flesh?
But if he does not acquit himself in an holy life, and
it be admitted that the righteousness of the saints
How much the great God has been dishonoured, and how many poor souls have been murdered, by such assertions as these, is sad to consider: for they have been abused into a confidence in, and reliance upon, such supports; which, in the invaluable concernments of eternity, have deceived and given them the slip, and let them fall without remedy into the bottomless gulf of endless perdition. God amend or rebuke such pernicious impostors.
In the next place, let us consider the doctrines that relate to the rule of life and manners, which is the law of God.
1. First then, that doctrine that exempts all believers from the obligation of the moral law is directly destructive of all godliness; which doctrine is taught and asserted by the antinomians, who from thence derive that name, as being opposers of the law. But now, if there be no obligation upon men to the duties of the moral law, how can it be necessary for them to perform any such duties? and consequently the command of loving God with all their strength and all their soul, of not worshipping images, of not dishonouring God’s name, of obeying parents, of not committing murder and adultery, and the like, concerns not these persons. But if this be their opinion, it is well that they are not able to escape the force of human laws, as they do the obligation of the divine.
I confess the apostle Paul oftentimes opposes the law to grace, and affirms of believers, that they are not under the law, but under grace. But what does he mean by these expressions? why his meaning is founded upon a twofold acceptation of the law.
1. That it may be taken as a covenant conveying life upon absolute, entire, indefective obedience, and awarding death to those who fail in the least iota or punctilio.
2. It may be taken as a rule of life and a transcript of the duty of man.
Now it is in the former sense only that believers are not under the law; for if they were, they could not possibly be saved, since all men have sinned; and the law, as a covenant, promises life only upon the terms of such an exact obedience, as excludes all sin. But the covenant of grace, under which believers are, promises life upon condition of such obedience as is sincere, though legally imperfect: that is, such an one as is not absolutely exclusive of all sin, but only of the reign, and power, and dominion of sin.
Yet all this does not loose them from the obligation of the law as it is a rule of life, to which they are to conform their actions. The law tells believers what they are to do, and withal obliges them to do it; but what measure of obedience will be accepted of a man, in order to his salvation, that is deter mined not by this rule, but by the covenant of grace declared in the gospel; which, upon the account of Christ’s merits, pardons and dispenses with many deviations from that strict rule, and condemns for none, but such as are inconsistent with a state of sincerity.
The forementioned persons, who cashier this obligation of the law also, and admit it for not so much as a rule, resigning themselves up to the sole conduct of their own heart, which they call the spirit; these, I say, as needs they must, assert also, that believers cannot sin: for since sin is a transgression of a law, it roundly follows, that those who are obliged to no law can be guilty of no transgression.
But this doctrine is so broadly impious, that it does not undermine a good life, but directly blow it down. And therefore I shall only say this of the abettors of it, that those who can own themselves to be without sin, demonstrate themselves to be without shame.
2. That doctrine which asserts any sin to be in its nature venial, that is, such as God cannot in justice punish with damnation, tends to subvert a good life: but the doctrine of the church of Rome asserts this; and lays the foundation of this assertion in a distinction between works done against the law, and works done beside the law. Now they say a thing is done beside the law, when though it is a deviation from the law, yet it is not contrary to the end of the law, which is love to God, but very fairly consistent with it: that is, though a man does such and such things, yet the doing of them ejects not the love of God out of his heart, and so long the design and purpose of the law is served and complied with, notwithstanding all such diminutive transgressions.
But this discourse is very weak and impertinent.
For when they say, that some actions destroy not
the creature’s love to God, and so are only beside
But if, on the other side, they assert, that these kind of sins interrupt not the actual exercise of the creature’s love to God, they will prove that which I believe was never yet proved; namely, that it is possible for a man, in one and the same action, to deviate from the law of God, and yet to exert an act of love towards him; which indeed amounts to a plain contradiction: for since to love God is to perform his commands, if we assert that that love is not for the present hindered or intermitted by some transgressions of those commands, does it not clearly follow, that a man may perform the command, and yet transgress it at the same time and in the very same action?
But it is not directly my business to insist here
upon the absurdity of this doctrine, but to demonstrate the impiety of it, so far as it tends to abate
men’s endeavours in the pursuit of a stricter course
of holiness; which surely it does with a very great
But there are no two things that seem to bear so
great a resemblance one to another, as the state of
the Christian church perverted by the doctors of the
church of Rome, and the state of the Jewish church
corrupted by the glosses and doctrines of the Pharisees. For as the Romists hold fast the distinction
of mortal and venial sins; so the Pharisees, with
the same result, distinguished of the divine precepts
and commandments, that some were great, that is,
necessary to be observed, and some small, that is,
such as did not bind the conscience with so strict an
obligation, but that the violation of them might,
with a very fair comportment with the divine justice, be dispensed with. And it is with direct allusion to this distinction of theirs, that our Saviour
speaks in
The meaning and design of those words was
And no question, but, were he now amongst us, he would rebuke the modern Pharisees, and patrons of venial sins, in the same manner; who, by that unhallowed distinction, have lopped off a large proportion of that obliging force that belongs to every divine precept, and so in effect have made the law itself faulty and defective; not obliging where men are pleased not to be obliged; and making that to be no duty, which licentious persons are unwilling should be so. Indeed he that sins against the law is bad enough, but he that makes even the law to sin, that he may discharge himself, is incurable and in sufferable.
—The acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness.
3. THAT doctrine that asserts, that it is in men’s power to supererogate, and to do works of perfection over and above what is required of them by way of precept, tends to the undermining and hinderance of a godly life. Works of evangelical perfection or supererogation are defined, such as a man may without sin not do, but, if he does them, they entitle him to a greater reward. Which assertion carries along with it this visible impiety, that a man is not obliged to do the utmost, in the way of holiness, that he can; for the law is the measure of men’s obligation, and no man is obliged to any thing as his duty, but what the law obliges him to: but if it is in his power to do some sublime works of holiness, over and above what the law exacts of him, it clearly follows, that without sin he may omit the doing of them; for where there is no law there is no sin: and here we suppose the obligation of the law not to extend thus far.
Now surely there can be no greater a stop to an
active endeavour, than to state the proportions of
men’s duty less than the proportions of their strength
and ability; and to assure them, that they do all
that is necessary for them to do, though they do
But if this were so, how shall we make out the sense of those precepts that command us to strive to enter in at the strait gate; and to press forward to the mark of the prize of the high calling; and to use our utmost diligence to make our calling and election sure; that having done all, we may be able to stand; and the like. Certainly these are expressions that stretch endeavours to the highest, and determine in no less compass than the whole that a man by all the powers and faculties of his soul can perform.
Nor can it avail the persons that we contend with to reply, that God vouchsafes us those assistances of grace, that are able to bear men beyond the lines of mere duty; for the dispensations of grace would, upon these terms, put us into the same condition of perfection, that we are to expect only in a state of glory. Grace indeed extinguishes the reign of sin, but it does not wholly extirpate the inherence of it as to all the remainders. It makes a man that he will not devote and give himself over to the practice of sin, but it does not wholly rescue him from the surprise of many infirmities.
And were not these men fuller of pride than perfection, and more Pharisees than Christians, they
would acknowledge so much, and let down those
Besides, to assert that the perfection, commanded by the law, is less than the perfection that the power of man can raise itself to, seems an high imputation upon God’s wisdom and holiness, as he is a legislator; the design of which must needs be to work up the creature to the highest conformity to himself, that a created nature is capable of. But he that, in stead of stretching himself to the latitude of the law, contracts the law to his own measures, will find that God, when he comes to deal with him, will have recourse to his own rule, and not correct a true original by a false copy.
4. That doctrine that places it in the power of any
mere mortal man to dispense with the laws of Christ,
The laws of men are dispensable, because the nature of them subjects them to the reason of dispensation; that is, because no human lawgiver is of that wisdom, as to provide against all future inconveniences in the constitution of laws, but that the observation of them may sometimes run men upon greater mischiefs, than the making of them was designed to prevent: but Christ was of that infinite wisdom and knowledge, as to enact laws of that universal compliance with all the conditions of man, that there can be no new, emergent inconvenience unforeseen by him, that should at any time make the obligation of them to cease.
It is possible indeed, that the law may cease to
oblige, upon the removal or want of the matter of
the obligation. As it is every man’s duty to give
alms; but if a man has nothing, he can give nothing:
and to communicate is a duty, but if the materials of
the sacrament, bread and wine, cannot be had, to
communicate is impossible, and so no man can be
But since bold encroachments seldom venture themselves without pretences, it concerns us to see what reason the pope assigns for his exercising such a power over the laws of Christ. Why his spiritual janizaries, the schoolmen and casuists, tell us, that where the observation of any command is impeditiva majoris boni, a stop and hinderance of a greater good than the non-observance of it would occasion, there the pope has power to dispense with the observation of that command, and to discharge men from it.
As for instance: a man has bound himself with a
lawful vow or oath, and accordingly proceeds to the
execution of it; but the priest finds, that the greatness of their church would be considerably advantaged
And now, who is there that deserves the name of
a Christian, whose heart does not rise against such
horrid and impious usurpations upon the prerogative
of Christ? such gross and open methods of promoting the course of sin? If a command of Christ thwart
that which the pope, in the behalf of his own inter
est, will judge a greater good, the command must
stand back, and his dispensation take place. All
such bands upon the conscience are like the withes,
or the cords, upon Samson; they fly asunder like flax
burnt with fire; they are of no force or efficacy at
The truth is, he exposes the precepts of Christ to sale, and he that will bid most for the breach of a command shall carry it: which is such an intrenching upon all the offices of Christ, such an impudent defiance of that supremacy of which he pretends to be the vicar and substitute, that it is apparent that St. Peter’s pretended successor sells Christ’s power, as much as ever Judas did his person. Here is the making merchandise of religion, and with that of souls: here is the groundwork of indulgences, the quick market for pardons, by which the gospel, from the law of liberty, is turned into the instrument of licence; and the sure asylum for such as would live sinners, and yet die saints.
And thus much for the doctrines that tend to the undermining of a pious life, by perverting the great rule of living, the law of Christ. I come now to the third sort, which,
III. Are those that relate to repentance.
This follows in order of nature; for after a law is broke, there is no recovery but by repentance; so that the depravation of the nature of this, is a sin against our last remedy; and he that, having transgressed the divine law, abuses his conscience with false rules of repentance, does like a man, that first by his intemperance brings himself into a disease, and then puts poison into his physic.
Now the doctrine about repentance may be perverted in a double respect.
1. In respect of the time of it.
2. In respect of the measure.
1. And first for the doctrine that states the time of repentance destructively to a pious life. And for this, it cannot but be very grievous and offensive to persons possessed with a real piety and sense of religion, to consider the assertions and positions of the Romish casuists touching this particular. Their answer to this question, When shall a sinner repent? is, in general, At any time whatsoever. Which indefinite assertion has by some been drawn out into particular determinate periods of time. As some affirm, that it is a man’s duty to act repentance on the grand holydays, as Christmas, Whitsuntide, but especially at Easter. But others except against this as too severe, and say, that since God has not determined the time of repentance, we are to presume that the church also is so favourable as to leave it undetermined too: and therefore some blush not to state the matter thus; That the time in which a sinner is bound to repent, or to have contrition for his sins, is the article of imminent death, whether natural or violent. In a word, they say a man is bound to repent of his sins once; but when that once shall be, he may determine as he shall think fit.
Before I come to examine these profane assertions,
I shall carefully premise this observation; that in
this whole matter we are by no means to confound
the duty of repentance with the success or issue of
repentance. For although it is not to be denied, that
a man, having sinned, and afterwards defers his repentance for a long time, may yet, by the grace of
God, repent savingly and effectually at last; yet this
makes nothing for the proving that it was not that
This premised by way of answer to the Romish casuists, I reply, that that sentence of the church, “At what time soever a sinner repenteth him of his sins, God will blot out his iniquities from before him,” speaks only of the consequent event and success of a true repentance, but determines nothing antecedently of the time in which that repentance is to be gin; which, in opposition to the foregoing blasphemies, we are undoubtedly to hold to be the very next instant after the commission of the sin: then is the time in which it is the duty of a sinner to repent; from that very moment there is an obligation upon him to recover himself by an hearty contrition and humiliation; and that I prove by this argument: Either a man is bound immediately to repent after he has sinned, or the impenitence remaining upon him in that subsequent portion of time is no sin; and if so, then, in case he should die in that time, he could not be chargeable before God for that impenitence. Chargeable indeed he would be for the sin he had committed; but for not repenting of that sin no charge could lie upon him. But this is an assertion of such barefaced, intolerable impiety, so directly contrary to the whole tenor of the gospel, that it can need no confutation.
However, it is worth considering, to see upon
But to this I answer, first, that this supposition, that repentance is properly a punishment, is, in a great measure, false. For repentance is properly the amendment of a man’s life, and a passing from a state of sin to a state of holiness; but this is not a punishment, but a perfection and a privilege. It is indeed accompanied with afflictive actions, such as sorrow and remorse for past sins; but this is only by accident; because a man cannot recover himself to newness of life, without such sorrowful reflections upon what is past; otherwise, if amendment of life could be compassed without them, we should find that sorrow for sin was not the thing directly and chiefly intended in the precept of repentance.
It is clear therefore, that repentance is not properly a punishment; but whether it were so or no,
that which was argued before from the nature of it,
and the sinfulness of impenitence, sufficiently evinces
that the practice of it is to be immediate: no man
can without sin defer it till the morrow, any more
than to the year after, or to that, than to his death.
For the words being indefinite, respect not one time
more than another, and therefore the determination
Add to this, that every moment passing without repentance adds to the guilt and strength of sin unrepented of; which lies not idle or unactive, but fixes its possession deeper and deeper; the mind, by reflecting upon it with relish and complacency, grows into more intimate unions with it; so that, in effect, by the internal actions and approbations of the will, it is repeated and reacted without any external commission. There is nothing more absolutely destructive of the very designs of religion, than to stop a sinner in his return to God, by persuading his corrupt heart that he may prorogue that return with safety, and without any prejudice to his eternal concernments. Upon the best issue of things, it amounts to an exhortation to him to reap the pleasures of sin as long as he can; and then, at last, that he may not also reap the fruits of sin, to submit to repentance as a less evil, but not to choose it as a good. But whether he that has these notions of repentance is ever like to arrive to the truth of repentance, he alone knows, who knows whether he will give such an one another heart or no. The doctrine therefore of a deferred repentance is a mischievous and a devilish doctrine, and like to bring those that trust in it to the Devil.
2. The next pernicious error about repentance relates to the measure of it. And here we will sup
pose the Romish casuists to recede from the former
error, and to be fully orthodox as to the time of repentance, and to enjoin it immediately. But then,
Now, though they enjoin the former, and recommend it, yet not as absolutely necessary to the forgiveness of sins: for they hold, that a man dying with attrition, that is, a less sorrow, and commenced upon lower motives than the love of God, if attended with confession to the priest, and absolution from him, shall undoubtedly be saved. An assertion of such high venom and malignity, that it even opens the floodgates to all wickedness, and confirms men in a resolved pursuit of their sin, by securing them a passport to heaven and happiness upon those easy terms, that it is scarce possible for the vilest of sinners but they must come up to.
For imagine a man, after threescore years’ debauchery, laid at length upon his deathbed, without
any hope of recovery, and then for the priest to ask
him, whether he is not troubled for his sins, and whether
This therefore is short of that which is itself short
of repentance; that is, it is short of real sorrow for
sin: and sorrow for sin (whatsoever some may imagine) is not repentance. It is indeed a part, or rather an adjunct of it, there being no true repentance
without sorrow. But repentance is properly a man’s engaging in a new course of life; not a weeping for
sins past, but a vigorous resistance and mortification
of sin for the future. The contrary opinion has undoubtedly deceived many, and betrayed them into
that place, where they are repenting too late of the
errors of their former repentance. Let no man account himself to have repented, who has not changed
his life. And as the apostle says of circumcision and
uncircumcision, so say I here, that neither mourning
And thus I have traversed those pestilential doctrines, that, like worms, He gnawing at the root of all godliness; doctrines, that only purvey for licentiousness. And I dare avouch, that, if these carry in them the true sense of Christian religion, a man may, with full and perfect compliance with the rules of Christianity, make as plentiful a provision for the gratification of his corrupt desires, as if he were a mere atheist or epicure. And therefore I wonder not that many pass from our church to the church of Rome; for being sick in conscience, and yet impatient to undergo the rigours of a thorough cure, they are willing to make up all with a skinning plaster, and to relieve their minds upon as easy terms as they can. And of this they cannot fail in the church of Rome, which has contrived her doctrine to a perfect agreement with all interests and dispositions: so that to frame and bend all discourses of divinity to the humours and corruptions of men, is with them religion, as with us it is, for the most part, accounted prudence.
I have now finished the third and last conclusion drawn from the words; namely, That whatsoever does in itself or its direct consequences undermine the motives of a good life, is contrary to and destructive of Christian religion.
The improvement of all that has been delivered shall lie in these two things.
1. To convince us how highly it concerns all, but especially the most knowing, to try the doctrines that they believe, and to let inquiry usher in faith.
It is noted of the Bereans,
He that embraces and believes a truth, if he does it without trial, owes the Tightness of his judgment not to understanding, but chance. But truth is too great a prize to be the reward of laziness. God never made it but for the trophy of a laborious and a searching intellect. No man can rationally build upon an implicit faith, that is, upon another’s knowledge, but he that has given his name to that church, which allows a man to be saved by other men’s righteousness. We are commanded to try all things; and therefore certainly that thing that is worth all the rest. In a word, since truth is the way to happiness, and since there is no promise of finding but to him that seeks; he that will not be at the trouble to seek out the way, does not deserve to attain the end.
2. As what has been delivered convinces us of the necessity of trying all doctrines; so it suggests also the sure marks by which we may try them.
1. As first negatively; it is not the pleasingness
2. The commonness, and the general or long reception of a doctrine, is not a sufficient argument of the truth of it. This relies upon the former consideration, that the suitableness of any doctrine does not evince it to be true; but it is certain, that doctrines are oftentimes generally received, because they are suitable, and serve an interest: witness most of those that are held in the church of Rome; they were introduced by fraud, and continued by force: for there is something of pleasure or profit in the bottom of almost every one of them.
But falsity does not cease to be falsity, by having the good fortune to be generally believed a truth; any more than a plague ceases to be a plague, by spreading itself over all places. It is indeed the more dangerous and formidable, and so may be more hardly conquered, but for the very same cause it is to be the more earnestly opposed.
Neither does long continuance sufficiently commend a doctrine; for it is possible that it may be no more than agedness of error, and no gray hairs can make that venerable. The impostures of Mahomet have lasted now a thousand years; and should they last a thousand more, they would be as false as they were at their first beginning. Age alters the circumstance, but not the nature of things.
3. It is not the godliness or virtue of the preacher or asserter of any doctrine, that is a sure mark of the truth of it; for godliness makes no man infallible. It is possible that a man may think a principle true or pious, which, in its consequences, may be false or impious; because he has not force of reason enough to discern all the conclusions into which a proposition may be improved.
It is the infelicity of truth, and the great hinderance both of science and religion, that the greatness or goodness of some persons should imprint the same authority upon their words. And error has never such an advantage to prevail and insinuate, as when it is propagated by a person of reputation for wisdom or piety. It has been observed, that most heretics have been such; by virtue whereof they have conveyed their poison to the world success fully. And our own schismatics took the same course; for had they not gained such an opinion for sanctity with the rout, they could not have countenanced and christened all those black villainies that were acted in the late rebellion.
But a doctrine is to be tried by its consequences;
as a way is to be chosen or shunned, according as
the end is to which it leads. It concerns every man
to preserve his reason from fallacy and deception;
But if a doctrine naturally tends to promote the fear of God in men’s hearts, to engage them in the prosecution of virtuous courses, to persuade them to be sober, pious, temperate, charitable, and the like; it carries with it the mark and impress of the great eternal truth; and so is no more capable of being a lie, than a He is capable of being good; or than God, the fountain of truth and goodness, is capable of being contrary to himself.
A man that flattereth his neighbour , spreadeth a net for his feet.
HE that shall set himself to fight against a custom, will find that the match is not equal; and that by speaking against a generally received practice, he only treads the dry paths of duty, without any reward or recompence, but only to be slighted for his pains. But since neither custom nor credit must authorize a vice so far, as to set it out of the preacher’s reach; surely an ill practice may be very safely and discreetly reprehended, while, in the mean time, persons are spared.
That which the text here offers for the subject of this discourse, is flattery; a thing condemned by the mouth of one who could very well judge, as being a king, and therefore experimentally acquainted with the ways and arts of flatterers; a sort of cattle that usually herd in the courts of princes and the houses of great persons.
The words of the text are so plain, that they can need no explication, and therefore I shall immediately fall upon the prosecution of the matter contained in them, which I shall manage under these three general heads.
I. I shall shew what flattery is, and wherein it does consist.
II. I shall shew the grounds and occasions of it on his part that is flattered.
III. I shall shew the ends and designs of it on his part that flatters.
I. And first for the first of these, what flattery is. It surely must be a very difficult thing to bring it under any certain description, the very nature and property of it being to put on all forms and shapes, according to the exigence of the occasion: as it is reported of a creature called a polypus, that it still assumes the exact colour of that thing to which it cleaves. And therefore he that would paint flattery must draw a picture of all colours, and frame an universal face, indifferent to any particular aspect whatsoever. But though we cannot reach all the varieties of it, we may yet endeavour to give some account of those general ways in which it does exercise and shew itself.
1. The first is the concealing or dissembling of the
defects or vices of any person. Indeed to publish a
man’s defects to others is malice, but to declare them
to himself is friendship and sincerity; for it is to
awake him out of his sleep when his house is afire,
and to tell him that he is under a distemper that
may prove mortal, if not prevented by timely applications: but flattery is like that devil mentioned in
the gospel, that is both blind and dumb; it will pretend not to see faults, and if it does, it will be sure
not to reprove them; a temper of all others the most
base, cruel, and unchristian: for it declares a man
unconcerned in the misery and calamity of his brother, such an one as will not put himself to the expense of a word, to recover a perishing soul from
the mouth of ruin and damnation. It shews him
It is indeed, in the estimation of the world, accounted a piece of prudence, to let things go as they will, without interposing to interrupt or alter their course: and no question but if a man, according to our modern politics, makes himself the sole centre of all his actions, and thinks upon nothing but the improving and securing his private interest, it is the safest and most prudential course to stand still and say nothing, though he sees never so many destroying themselves round about him. But had the world heretofore acted by those principles that pass for prudence nowadays, perhaps it would not have stood so long as it has; for had no man espoused the cause of the public, nor thought himself at all obliged, upon the common accounts of humanity, to contribute to the good and advantage of others, men could never have united or embodied; or being once embodied, and gathered into corporations, they must presently again have been scattered and dissolved; there being (upon supposition of that temper that we have been discoursing of) no common cement to bind and hold them together.
Now this is the only ground upon which the flatterer’s silence can be accounted prudence; but unless to be base is to be prudent, I suppose it will
have another esteem with those who are the most
competent judges of such things. It is indeed a pest
and a disease, and so to be looked upon and detested
by those minds that have the least tincture of virtue
and generosity. It breeds only in narrow, paltry,
self-serving spirits, that lie upon the catch, and make
But now, as to be silent of men’s defects and vices is a piece of flattery, and flattery a degenerous and unworthy thing; yet, that all people may not promiscuously think themselves called upon to reprove and declare against whatsoever they see amiss in others, and so mistake that for charity and duty, which is indeed nothing else but sauciness and impertinence, it will be convenient to shew,
1. First, who they are that are concerned to speak in this case.
2. The manner how they are to speak.
And first for the persons: I conceive they may be brought under these three sorts:
1. First such as are intrusted with the government of others. All government makes the actions
and behaviour of him that is governed, in some sense,
the actions and behaviour of him that governs: and
consequently a governor is as really obliged to observe and regulate what is done by those that are
under him, as what he does himself. And therefore
as no man is to flatter himself, so neither is such an
one to flatter others. No man is to be abused into
a destructive persuasion, that his vices are virtues,
and his faults perfections; which without an impartial discovery will certainly follow, from that opinion
that self-love begets in every man of his own actions,
though never so ugly and irregular. He that says
nothing of the miscarriages of a person under his government betrays a trust, and forgets, that as every
father is a governor, so every governor ought, in
some respect, to be a father: and surely no father
2. The second sort of persons, to whom it belongs to tax and take notice of miscarriages, are those who are intrusted with the guidance and direction of others; such as are persons set apart to the work of the ministry. It may possibly be looked upon as a piece of presumption to say, that they are to guide or to direct, who of all men are accounted the most ignorant and impertinent; yet such is their unhappiness, that the sins of those that think themselves much wiser, if not reproved and testified against by them, will be charged by God upon their score. That preacher that shuts his eyes and his mouth where he sees a bold and a reigning vice, prevaricates with his profession, and deserves to be removed from it by some remarkable judgment from Heaven, for being too wise to discharge his duty.
He is silent, it seems, for fear of interrupting a great sinner’s repose. The galled conscience must not be touched, for fear the beast should kick, and do him a shrewd turn.
And therefore there must not be a word cast out,
that may so much as border upon a reprehension, or
but hint his sin to his suspicion; for if that takes
fire, so as to make him worry, and at length ruin
the preacher, all the pity he shall find, for being
faithful so much to his own disadvantage, shall be
to be upbraided for want of experience, and for not
knowing men. However this and a much sharper
calamity cannot take off the obligation that Christ
3. The third sort of persons to whom this duty belongs are those that profess friendship. Every man is to challenge this as a debt from his friend, to be told impartially of his faults: and whosoever for bears to do it, fails in the highest office of kindness. For to what purpose does a man take another into that intimacy as to make him in a manner his second conscience, if he will not be bold and impartial, and do the office of conscience, by excusing or accusing, according as he has done well or ill? Two things are required in him that shall undertake to reprove another; a confidence in, and a kindness to the person whom he reproves: both which qualifications are eminently to be found in every real friend. For who should a man confide in, if not in himself? and who should he be kind to, if not to himself? and is it not a saying as true as it is common, that every friend is another self?
But is it possible that that man should truly love me, that leaves me unguarded and unassisted, when the weakness and inadvertency of my own mind would expose me with all my indecencies and imperfections to the observation and derision of the world? No; it is the nature of love to cover a multitude of sins; which are by no way so effectually concealed and covered from the eyes of others, as by being faithfully discovered and laid open to him who commits them.
It puts him upon his defence, and upon all the
arts of securing himself, by watching and criticising
And thus I have shewn who the persons are to whom it belongs to discover and to reprove faults: but since, though the work is fitted to the person, there may still be a fault in the manner, we shall, in the next place, see how these reprehensions are to be managed: concerning which I shall set down these rules.
1. First, let the reproof, if possible, be given in secret; for the design of it is not to blazon the crime, but to amend the person. Let it not be before malicious witnesses, such as shall more enjoy the man’s shame, than hate his vice. The publication of a miscarriage, instead of reforming the offender, may possibly make him desperate or impudent; either to despond under the burden of his infamy, or to harden his forehead like a flint, and resolve to out face and outbrave it; neither of which are like to conduce any thing to the purposes of virtue, or to promote the person’s recovery.
Shame indeed is a notable instrument to deter a
man from vicious and lewd practices, but then it is
not shame as it is actually endured, but as it is yet
feared; for the endurance of it puts an end to the
fear; and if the man is of a bold and a daring temper,
is like to make him ten times more a wretch and a
villain than he was before: for now he thinks he
But such is partly the malice, partly the unskilfulness of most persons, in their taxing the faults of others, that the man that is most concerned in the report perhaps comes to hear of it last; it being first communicated to another, and so, through many hands, is at length conveyed to him: or peradventure it is at the very first proclaimed upon the house top; so that the man, instead of being gradually reduced, is at once blown up and undone; and this is all the charity and discretion of some reprovers.
But the method prescribed by Christ is very different. Has thy brother offended thee? first tell him his fault between him and thee; and if that prevail not, then take unto thee a witness; but if neither this will do any thing, then tell it him before two or three witnesses: and at last, upon contempt of all these, then bring it to the church. All which excellent proceeding consists of so many steps of prudence and humanity; of tenderness to our brother’s reputation, as well as to his soul; and of his comforts in this world, as well as of his salvation in the next: a course worthy the imitation of all, but especially those who are to study the great wisdom of winning souls.
The vices of most natures have in them this property of the dirt, that the sight of the sun hardens, but never dissolves them. When the crime is made public, the criminal thinks it not worth while to retreat. His ignominy is now in the mouths and memory of all men, and so not to be cancelled or brought into oblivion by any after-practices of virtue or regularity of living.
The end of every reproof is remedy; but to shame a man is revenge; and such an one as the bitterest adversary in the world cannot act a sharper or a more remorseless: and therefore the church of Rome, which practises and requires confession of sins to the priest, thinks no penalty too severe to be inflicted upon that confessor that should disclose any thing revealed to him in confession. A practice most wise and charitable; and though used by them perhaps upon grounds of policy, yet to be enforced in the like instances upon the highest accounts of religion.
For it is a piece of inhuman barbarity to afflict a man, but in order to his consequent good; and I have shewn, that the publication of a man’s shame, that might otherwise be concealed, can contribute nothing to the making of him better. It may sink his spirit or exasperate his vice; but any other effect upon him it can have none. A sore is never to be ripped up, but in order to its cure.
2. Let a reproof be managed with due respect to,
and distinction of the condition of the person that is
to be reproved. He that at any time comes under
the unhappy necessity of reprehending his superior,
ought so to behave himself, that he may appear to
acknowledge him his superior no less in the reproof,
than in the most solemn acts of reverence and sub
mission; for religion teaches no man to be rude or
uncivil, nor takes away the difference of persons and
the inequality of states and conditions, but commands a proportion of respect suitable to all: and he
that reproves a prince or a great person in the same
manner that he would a peasant, or his equal and
companion, shews that he is acted rather by the
spirit of a Scotch presbytery, than of Christ. But
All persons called to the ministry are undoubtedly commissioned by Christ to bear witness to the
truth, by testifying against the enormities of the
greatest as well as of the meanest sinners; but no
man’s particular personal indiscretion is any part of
his commission. It is possible indeed that it may,
nay, very certain that it will make the execution of
it very useless and ineffectual to most of the great
purposes to which Christ designed it; for truth unseasonably and unmannerly proposed comes with a
disadvantage, and is in danger to miscarry through
the unskilfulness of the proposer: and as we say of
some commentators and interpreters of scripture,
that the text had been clearer, had they not expounded, or, indeed, rather exposed it; so it is like
that some persons had not been so vicious and lewd,
to the degree of incorrigible, had not their vice and
lewdness been indiscreetly reproved; for that has
made them bid defiance to virtue, and turn their
backs upon the reproof; imputing (by an unjust in
deed, but yet by an usual inference) the faults of the
person upon the office and the religion; in which
I question not, but it had been very lawful for Abraham to have reproved his father’s idolatry, and to have declared and represented the unreasonableness of such a worship to him. But yet while he was doing so, I cannot believe that he was in the least discharged from the eternal obligation of the law of nature, exacting a due honour to be paid to parents: for a true doctrine could never have excused an undutiful behaviour.
With what humility, reverence, and distance did
Daniel reprove Belshazzar! Though a most impious,
insulting heathen, and one that had but newly, in a
drunken revel, even spit in the face of the God of
heaven, by a profanation of the sacred vessels of the
temple amongst his unhallowed parasites and concubines; yet he did not fly in his face, or call him
profane or sacrilegious prince, and tell him that divine vengeance would pay him home for his insolence and unthankfulness to God. No; Daniel
did not speak as some, that nowadays pretend to interpret, utter themselves to princes. But after he
had recounted the signal mercies and judgments of
God upon his father Nebuchadnezzar, all the reproof he gives him runs in these gentle and sober
words,
Great ones, whose state and power makes their will absolute and formidable, must, for the most part, be pleased before they can be convinced; and therefore must be brought to love before they will obey the truth. Upon which account it is infinitely vain to cast the issue and success of persuasion upon the sole force of truth or virtue addressing itself to the mind, with all its severities bare and unqualified by a winning behaviour in him that is to persuade. He that presumes upon the mere efficacy of truth, forgets that men have affections to be caressed, as well as understandings to be informed; which is the reason, that a reprehension can never be grateful to persons of high place, but as it comes disguised with ceremony, and attended with all the expressions and demonstrations of honour and due respect; all which will be found little enough to keep them from thinking themselves affronted, while they are only faithfully admonished; and from throwing back an unpleasing truth in the teeth of him that brings it.
What men’s pride and ill-nature may carry them
to, is not in the preacher’s power to remedy or prevent; only it concerns him, that the reproof which
men’s sins have made necessary should not, by any
failure of duty on his part, be made ineffectual.
God has not made it a virtue in any man to have no
respect of persons: and therefore let him that shall
3. Let him that reproves a vice, as much as is possible, do it with words of meekness and commiseration. Let the reprehension come not as a dart shot at the offender’s person, but at his crime. Let a man reprehend so, that it may appear that he wishes that he had no cause to reprehend. Let him behave himself in the sentence that he passes, as we may imagine a judge would behave himself, if he were to condemn his own son, brought as a criminal before him; that is, with the greatest reluctancy and trouble of mind imaginable, that he should be brought under the necessity of such a cruel accident, as to be forced to speak words of death to him, whose life he tenders more passionately than his own.
Now this being the temper and disposition that is
required in a reprover, it easily appears, that nothing
can be more deformed and uncharitable than scoffs
and bitter sarcasms thrown at a poor guilty person;
than to insult over his calamity, and to seem, as it
were, to taste and relish his distress. A jeering reprover is like a jeering judge, than which there
cannot be imagined, either in nature or manners, a
thing more odious and intolerable. And therefore
the Roman orator, discoursing of sceptical urbanity,
or jesting, how far it was allowable in speeches and
pleadings, lays down an excellent rule, fit to be
But then further; as reproofs are not to be managed with bitter and scurrilous reflections upon the offender, so neither is the offence itself to be aggravated by higher and blacker expressions, than the nature of the thing or the necessity of the occasion requires. He that is to reprove is to remember, that his business is not to declaim and shew his parts, but to work a cure. And some actions are so confessedly lewd, that but to hint them to the offender is sufficient to cover him with shame and sad remembrances, without a morose and particular insisting upon the description of their vileness; which being to tell the guilty person no more than what he knew before, cannot properly serve to in form, but only to upbraid and afflict him; which is none of the works of charity, as every reprehension ought to be.
David was not to be informed of the enormity of
the sins of murder and adultery, and to have long
harangues made before him, to aggravate and set
forth their filthiness; and therefore, when the prophet Nathan was to bring him a reproof from heaven,
Before I pass from this rule of managing reproofs
with words of meekness, candour, and compassion;
I cannot but think this also necessary to be added,
that they are to be managed without superciliousness, and a certain spiritual arrogance, by which
the reprover looks upon the guilty person with disdain, in comparison of that higher measure of holiness
He that has a criminal and a vicious person under his reproof, should speak as one that thankfully ascribes it to God’s mere grace, that he is not as bad himself, having the same nature, and the same natural corruptions, to betray him to all the evil and villainy that can be, if God should but desert and leave him to his own strength. By this means he treats the offender as his equal, his brother, and naturally standing upon the same ground, the vantage being entirely from divine favour; of which a man may have cause to be glad indeed, but no cause to boast.
For let that proud pharisee that shall reprove a publican with words of insultation and boasting, that he is not such an one as he, tell me how he knows, that, had he been placed under the same circumstances and opportunities of sin, he should not have been prevailed upon to do the same for which, with so much arrogance, he reproves or rather baits another. Was it not the mercy of Providence, that cast the scene of his life out of the way of temptation? that placed the flax and the stubble out of the reach of the fire? And what cause has he then to be bitter and insolent upon him, that God thought fit to deny these advantages to, though otherwise of no worse mould or make, or less merit than himself?
But this is not to be passed by, that, as God most
peculiarly and directly hates such an arrogant disposition, as is apt to crow and insult over the failings
and lapses of others; so it is ten to one but that,
And therefore, surely, I should think it concerned
every one, about to reprove any vicious persons what
soever, first to allay his spirit, and to compose himself to mildness and moderation, with that excellent
admonition of the apostle,
4. The fourth and last rule that I shall mention, for the completing of our direction about this duty, is, that a reproof be not continued or repeated, after amendment of that which occasioned the reproof. For this is both malicious and useless; malicious, because it renews a man’s torment, and revives his calamity; and then useless, because the man is al ready reformed.
Pardon is still to be accompanied with oblivion;
not that it is in our power to forget a thing when
we will; but it is in our power to behave ourselves
as if we had forgot it; with that friendliness of address, that unconcernment of speech, that openness
But to be still sarcastically reminding of a penitent amended person of his former miscarriages, which perhaps stand cancelled in heaven, and even blotted out of the book of God’s remembrance; it is like the breaking open of graves, to rake out bones and putrefaction, and argues not only an unchristian, but an inhuman, wolfish disposition.
Let this suffice to render every such person inexcusable to himself, that he would not endure to wish that either God or man should deal so by him; and if so, there can be no such true and infallible demonstration of his baseness, as the impartial measure of this rule.
And thus much for the first thing, wherein flattery does consist; namely, the concealing and not reproving the defects and faults of obnoxious persons; which, understood with those due limitations hither to laid down, will be able to keep him, whose place or condition may at any time call him to this work, both from a sordid, undutiful silence on one hand, and from a saucy, meddling, bitter impertinence on the other.
A man that flattereth his neighbour spreadeth a net for his feet.
2. THE second thing wherein flattery consists is,
the praising and defending the defects or vices of any
person. This is a step much higher than the first,
which was (as we may so call it) the negative part
of flattery, as consisting only in silence, and a not reproving those things that both deserved and needed
reproof. And as it goes higher, so it is much more
inexcusable, and uncapable of those apologies that
may be alleged, though not in justification, yet at
least in mitigation of the former. For partly the
timorousness, partly the bashfulness of some tempers, (affections not always at our command,) may
silence the tongue, and seal up the lips from uttering those things which the mind and judgment frequently suggests upon these occasions. A man may
be sometimes even dazzled and astonished into silence by the presence of some
glistering sinners; so as to be at a loss both for words and confidence to vent
those reproofs that fill the conscience, and are even struggling to break forth.
Certain it is, that this or any other consideration can by no means warrant a
silence there, where religion bids a man cry aloud; nor can any one plead his
modesty in prejudice of his duty: yet surely there is something
For pusillanimity must first pass into a prostitute impudence, before a man can arrive to that pitch as to vouch himself the encomiast of sin, and to speak panegyrics upon vice: many a man may favour a malefactor, and wish his crime concealed or passed over, who yet would never endure to be his advocate. It is one thing for a man to shut his eyes, and so resolve not to see that which is black; an other for him, with an open eye and a shameless front, to affirm black to be white; and to undertake to persuade the world so much.
But so does he that attempts the commendation of any thing lewd or vicious: he transforms the Devil into an angel of light: he confounds the distinction of those things that God has set at an infinite distance: he outfaces the common judgment of sense and reason, and the natural, unforced apprehensions of mankind.
And though one would think that there is that
commanding majesty in truth, as even to awe men
into an acknowledgment of things to be as really
they are, and generally do appear; and withal that
ingenuity bred in every breast, as not to own any
broad defiance of the clearest evidence: yet experience shews, that there is a sort of men in the world,
that have wrought themselves to that hardiness, as
to venture to tell one that has done passionately and
rashly, that he did courageously and discreetly; that
shall applaud him in all his follies; assuring him,
that if men speak amiss of his behaviour, it is rather
upon the account of envy and malice to his person,
They shall tell him further, that though possibly such and such actions were faulty, and unbecoming in others, yet the difference of his condition alters the case, and changes the very quality of the action. For what should a great person have to do with humility? or the rich and the wealthy with temperance, industry, and sobriety? Why should a states man or politician restrain himself to the punctilios of truth and sincerity? These are the virtues of mean employments and lower minds; they may perhaps be commendable in country gentlemen and farmers, but persons that move in an higher sphere, must have a greater latitude and compass for their motion; and it were infinite weakness and inexperience to stick at a lie or an oath, or the taking away an innocent life, when reason of state requires it, and so unshackles its ministers from the bonds of those nice rules that are to hold and direct other mortals.
And if these actions have a cleanly and a successful issue, they shall certainly find sycophants enough
to extol them for the greatest prudence and wisdom that in such grand and difficult affairs could
be shewn: they shall at least be vouched necessary,
and consequently lawful, or as good; and the authors of such actions seldom seek for or desire any
But that people may not be wicked without some plea or pretence to cover and protect them from being thought so, there has a very serviceable distinction been found out and asserted by some, between a religious and a political conscience, in every one that is a governor; the former is to guide him as such a particular person, having a soul to save; the other to rule and direct him, as a person intrusted with the good, safety, and protection of those that are under his government, and consequently empowered to use all those courses that serve as means absolutely necessary to compass such an end: which two capacities, as they are very different, so it seems that they cannot both proceed by the same rule. Forasmuch as a governor, in many junctures and circumstances of affairs, cannot reach the ends of government, in protecting and se curing his people, but by sometimes having recourse to those ways and actions that perhaps are not allowable upon the strict rules and measures of religion, which, if rigidly and unseasonably adhered to in such instances, may possibly throw all into ruin and confusion.
For answer to which: it is not for me to inter
pose in what concerns government and governors;
it has its mystery, and those that manage it are to
be presumed best to understand it: but as for this
distinction between a religious and a political conscience, I shall make bold to give it its due, in
saying, that in all those cases in which it comes to
be practised, it subverts religion. For to affirm that
Besides the gross absurdity of placing the same man under two contrary rules; which is to bring him under two contrary duties; and to make him at the same time obliged to do a thing, and yet upon another score discharged from that obligation; which is a ridiculous contradiction.
Many things indeed are distinguished in speculation, that perfectly coincide, and are inseparably the same in practice. And though it is not to be denied, that the capacity of a man and of a governor differ in apprehension; forasmuch as to be a man and to be a governor are not the same thing: yet when we come to behold those two capacities, as they really exist in nature, we shall find, that what is done by one is also done by the other, and what befalls one consequentially befalls the other. If the governor sins, the man will not be innocent;. and if the man is sick, the governor will find himself but ill at ease. He that breaks the law under one capacity shall suffer under both, and then, set ting aside all the niceties of speculation, if God condemns king Ahab, I believe it will be hard to distinguish the man Ahab out of the same condemnation.
But now, if to persuade men out of the acknowledgment of the evil and unlawfulness of their actions, be flattery; and further, to use arguments and
acts to settle them in such a persuasion, be one of
the grossest and most detestable sorts of it, especially
1. Such as, upon principles of enthusiasm, assure persons of eminence and high place, that those transgressions of the divine law are allowable in them, that are absolutely prohibited and condemned in others. For thus they reason: That the divine laws and precepts were intended only for the ordinary rules of life; but such as are extraordinary persons, raised up by God for some extraordinary work, are exempted from those common obligations; as being directed by an higher rule, namely, the immediate dictates of the Spirit speaking and acting within them, which Spirit, being God, is able to dispense with his own laws, and accordingly does so, as the exigence of those works, that he calls such persons to, shall require. So that for them to rob and plunder is as justifiable as for the Israelites to rob the Egyptians; and to slay and murder, though it be princes, is but like Phinehas’s standing up and executing justice; the inward motions of the Spirit countermanding the injunctions of the outward letter.
But to raise in any such an opinion of themselves,
is surely one of the vilest and most destructive pieces
of flattery that can be used by one man to another:
for it is to make religion minister the same scope
and licence to the most impious actions that atheism
itself can allow; and that with this advantage, that
it does not trouble the mind with the same stings
and remorses that the professed despiser of religion
usually feels in the midst of all his extravagancies:
for if a man is brought to believe that he breaks the
divine law with as good a conscience as others keep
I cannot believe that the authors of our late confusions could have ever acted in such a barefaced opposition to all laws, both human and divine, with so much satisfaction, serenity, and composure of mind, had not their seducing prophets throughly leavened them with this principle; that being the select people of God, and so stirred up and peculiarly called to serve him in their generation, (as the phrase then ran,) they were privileged from those ordinary rules and measures by which the lawfulness and morality of other men’s actions were determined. The saints indeed might do the very same actions which in other men were sinful, but yet they in so doing could not sin; and this was that persuasion that still patched up their conscience, after all the blows and wounds it had received by dashing against the divine precepts.
Such was the soul-destroying flattery by which those impostors encouraged many thousands in the way of damnation; like that lying prophet, that bid Ahab go and prosper, when he sent him to the battle in which he was to fall and perish.
2. The other sort of persons chargeable with this kind of flattery are the Romish casuists, who have made it their greatest study and business to put a new face upon sin, and to persuade the world that many of those actions that have hitherto passed for impious and unlawful, are indeed nothing such, but admit of such qualifications as clear them of all guilt and irregularity.
They are not indeed so absurdly impudent as to
It were infinite to draw forth all particulars; but these are some of the ways by which these religious sycophants have poisoned the fountains of morality, and flattered mankind with such doctrines and assertions as shall soothe them up, and embolden them in the most vicious and lewd courses imaginable. They have opened a well, not only for sinners, but even for sin itself to wash in, and to be clean. So that if there be any persons in the world who may be justly accused for calling good evil, and evil good, these are the men; and they do it too, diligently, co piously, and voluminously; and consequently have the fullest and the fairest claim to the curse that is joined to that accusation.
But now this kind of flattery is so much the more
to be abominated, because as it is of most mischievous consequence, so it is also of very easy effect, and
Of which a double reason may be assigned.
1. The first taken from the nature of man.
2. The other from the very nature of vice itself.
1. For the first of which; it is too apparent how fond and credulous most men are, and even desirous to be persuaded into a good estimation of whatsoever they do; and therefore as some people will buy and use flattering glasses, though they know them to be so, because they had rather please themselves with a false representation, than view their deformity by a true; so some will catch at any colour or dress, (though never so thin,) to give some varnish and better appearance to their vice.
A perverted, disordered mind, if it cannot have arguments and solid reasons to allege for the legality of what it does, it will content and satisfy itself with flourishes and shows of probability; and that deceiver that shall labour to furnish it with such, shall be welcome and honourable; his dictates shall be received as oracles, and never sifted by questions and examinations; for people are naturally averse from inquiring after that which they are unwilling to know; and therefore such an one shall be even prevented by a willing, forward assent. But it is easy for a man to finish his visit, that is met three parts of his way.
2. The other reason is from the very nature of
vice itself, which oftentimes bears a great affinity to
virtue, and so admits of the harder distinction. Upon
which account, it is no difficult matter to persuade
the prodigal person, that he is only very liberal; it
Now from these two considerations we may easily gather, how open the hearts of most men lie to drink in the fawning suggestions of any sycophant that shall endeavour to relieve their disturbed consciences by gilding their villainies with the name of virtues, and so smoothing the broad way before them, that they may find no rub or let in their passage to dam nation. This therefore is the second thing wherein flattery consists.
3. The third is, the perverse imitation of any one’s defects or vices, which seems to carry it higher than the former, forasmuch as actions are much more considerable than words or discourses. A man, for many causes, may be brought to commend that which he will never be prevailed upon to follow: but for any one to transcribe and copy out in himself whatsoever he sees ridiculous or impious in another, this argues a temper made up of nothing but baseness and servility.
And to any generous and free spirit it is really a
very nauseous and a fulsome thing, to see some prostitute their tongues and their judgments by saying
as others say, commending what they commend, dispraising whatsoever things or persons they dispraise,
and framing themselves to any absurd gesture or
But surely few would be so sottish and servile, as to break a leg or an arm, or put out an eye, because they see the great person whom they depend upon and adore, deprived of any of these parts. And if so, do they not consider, that a man is to be more tender of his manners and the dignity of his soul, than of any thing that belongs to his body, which would give him but a small preeminence above the brutes, were it not animated and exalted by a principle of reason?
Every kind of imitation speaks the person that imitates inferior to him whom he imitates, as the copy is to the original: but then to imitate that which is mean, base, and unworthy, is to do one of the lowest actions in a yet lower instance; it is to climb downwards, to employ art and industry to learn a defect and an imperfection; which is a direct reproach to reason, and a contradiction to the methods of nature.
And so much the more intolerable is it, because
such persons are seldom seen to imitate the excellencies and the virtues of him whom they flatter;
these are looked upon with distance and lazy admiration: but if there be any vice that sullies and
takes off from the lustre of his other good qualities,
that shall be sure to be culled out, and writ upon
their lives and behaviour. Alexander had enough to
imitate him in his drunkenness and his passion, who
I am confident there is none that does not deride and condemn this silly piece of officiousness, as scarce to be reconciled to common sense; yet we may find as bad daily in the behaviour of most parasites, who think they can never honour their great masters, but by exposing themselves. Which practice, though it is most irrational, yet it has this to encourage and continue it, that such grandees are wonderfully pleased to see their vices and defects aped by their followers and retainers; indeed much more than to see their perfections drawn into imitation.
And that, I conceive, for this reason; because vice, being
weak and shameful, is glad to have any countenance and credit shewn it; which is
done by no way so much as by having many followers. To be vicious alone is a
great shame, and few natures are able to bear it; and therefore company gives a
kind of authority to sin, and brings vice into fashion, which is able to commend
and set off any thing. Nero’s killing his mother could not but be looked upon as
an hideous and unnatural thing, for all the senate’s public thanking of him for
it, and his courtiers applauding of the action; because in this, humanity was
too strong for flattery, and suffered
4. The fourth and last thing that I shall mention, wherein flattery consists, is an overvaluing those virtues and perfections that are really laudable in any person. This is a different sort from all the former, which had no foundation of good at all to work upon, but were wholly employed in giving appearances where there was no substance, in painting of rotten sepulchres, and belying vice into the reputation of virtue.
But this is more modest and tolerable, there being some groundwork of desert, though much too narrow for those huge superstructures of commendation that some raise upon it; which therefore turn into flattery, which consists in a partial representation of any thing to be greater and better than indeed it is: for truth suffers as much by this as by the former; it being violated by any disproportion between the thing as it is expressed and as it does exist.
The flatterer views every little virtue or good quality in him whom he resolves to extol, as it were, with a microscope; such an one as shall swell a gnat into an elephant, and an elephant into a mountain. Ordinary, plain, homespun sense shall be magnified for extraordinary wit and fancy; and good, honest, flat words shall pass for propriety and exactness of expression.
But to go higher. Let a star be accounted, as in
deed it is, a bright and a glorious thing; yet we are
For look, as the detracter represents the perfections of him whom he hates, lessened and diminished from what they really are, partly by a malicious concealment, partly by calumny and direct slander; so the flatterer, whose design is managed by a contrary way, (though perhaps in itself the same,) greatens and advances every thing beyond the bounds of its real worth; describing all in hyperboles, high strains, and words of wonder, till he has puffed up that little thing that he commends, as we see men do a bladder, which owes all its bulk only to air and wind, upon the letting out of which, it returns and shrinks into a pitiful nothing.
And just so must the opinion, that a man conceives of himself from the delusions of flattery, vanish and have its end: for, like a feather, it was raised by a breath, and therefore, when that breath ceases, it must fall to the ground again.
And thus I have finished the first general head
But these are enough to serve as a rule by which both to direct our own actions, and to judge of the actions and behaviour of other men. They may convince us how vast a difference there is between flattery and friendship, and between the crafty, low mind of a flatterer, and the generous disposition of a friend. But when I have said all of the baseness of this art, yet so long as men find it beneficial, and withal see the world full of those that are willing to be made fools of by it, I believe all that I shall persuade men of will be this, that they are like to get more by practising of it, than any one else shall get by speaking against it.
A man that flattereth his neighbour spreadeth a net for his feet.
II. THE second general head proposed for the prosecution of these words, was to shew what were the grounds and occasions of flattery on his part that is flattered. I shall mention three.
1. Greatness of place or condition. There is no thing that secures a man from flattery more than the confident and free access of ingenuous persons. But confidence and freedom are seldom found but where there is a parity of conditions: reproof being of the nature of those things that seldom ascend and move upwards; but it either passes to an equal, or descends upon an inferior. He that is great and potent casts an awe and a terror round about him, and, as it were, shuts and barricadoes himself in from all approaches, like mount Sinai, where the fire burning, and the voice thundering, would suffer none to come near it; so that such an one is still treated with silence and distance; his faults are whispered behind his back; he is scoffed at in little rooms and merry meetings, and never hears the severe, healing truths that are spoke of him; but lives muffled and blind fold, unacquainted with himself and the judgments of men concerning him.
Upon which account, great persons, unless their
For in this case men consider, first, the great danger of speaking freely to great persons what they are not willing to hear: it may enrage, and make them their mortal enemies. It may render them as great in malice as they are in power and condition. It is at best a very bold venture, and greatness is not so tractable a thing, as to lay itself quietly open to the reprehender and the faithful admonisher, who speak for the man’s advantage more than for his pleasure, and bring him physic instead of sweetmeats. The experience men have in the world usually makes them fearful to engage in unpleasing offices. Especially when they consider further, how easy it is to be safe and silent; and how little it concerns them to court a trouble, a danger, and a potent displeasure, by endeavouring to do a man good against his will. They think it a great folly to put themselves upon an harsh, and the same also a thankless employment; to lose an interest, and a great friend, only for doing that which they could with much more ease have let alone.
Men see also how ill it has fared with such as
have presumed to be free with the grandees of the
world, in point of reproof and animadversion: they
For all which causes, persons of evil or low minds, which make up much the greater part of the world, are willing to follow their game, and to cajole and flatter a vicious greatness, since it turns so much to their profit and reputation; while the great one, that is abused according to his own heart’s desire, bids the flatterer sit at his right hand; in the mean time making his impartial friend and reprover his foot stool, slighting him for his upright dealing, and sending him to his own virtue for a reward.
2. The second ground of flattery, on his part that
is flattered, is an angry, passionate disposition, and
impatient of reproof. This also frights and deters
men from doing the office of friends in a faithful reprehension. For some minds are more raging and
tumultuous than the sea itself; so that if Christ himself should rebuke them, instead of being calm, they
would rage and roar so much the louder. That admonition that would reclaim others, does but chafe
and provoke them; as the same breath of wind that
cools some things, kindles and inflames others. No
sooner do some hear their behaviour taxed, though
with the greatest tenderness and moderation, but
their choler begins to boil, and their breast is scarce
able to contain and keep it from running over into
the heights and furies of bitterness and impatience.
The man, instead of correcting his fault, will redouble
Now it requires a person not only of friendship and fidelity, but also of courage and valour, to under take to be a reprover here; forasmuch as to reprove such an one, is, in effect, to give him battle: he must be able to bear, and, what is more, to slight and tame his rage; he must not sneak and fly back at every great word, nor suffer himself to be talked and vapoured out of countenance.
But few people are able, and fewer willing, to put themselves to so great an inconvenience for another’s good, and to raise a storm about their own ears, to do an odious, ungrateful piece of service for an ungrateful person; and therefore men usually deal with such currish, sharp natures as they do with mastiffs, they are fain to stroke them, though they deserve to be cudgelled. They flatter and commend them, to keep them quiet, and to compose the unruly humour which is ready to grow and improve upon the least check or opposition.
From the consideration of which we easily see the great misery and disadvantage of passionate, angry persons; their passion does not only bereave them of their own eyes, but also of the benefit of other men’s; which he that is of a gentle and a tractable nature enjoys in the midst of all his errors: for his friend sees, and judges, and chooses for him, when the present precipitation of his mind hurries him besides the steady use of his reason. He is reduced by counsel, rectified and recalled by one that sees his fault, and dares tell him of it; so that the cure is almost as early as the distemper.
We may observe of brambles, that they always grow crooked; for by reason of their briers and thorns no hand can touch them, so as to bend them straight. And so it is with some dispositions; they grow into a confirmed, settled obliquity, because their sharpness makes them unfit to be handled by discipline and admonition. They are a terror and a grievance to those that they converse with: and to attempt to advise them out of their irregularities, is as if a chirurgeon should offer to dress a wounded lion; he must look to perish in the address, and to be torn in pieces for his pains.
It was surely of very great importance to Nabal,
mentioned in
Many would be willing to recover a person from his follies, but they are not willing to be snapt and railed at for so doing; they would be ready enough to pluck a brand out of the fire, might they do it without burning their fingers. But to be foolish and to be angry too, is for a man first to cast himself into a pit, and then to hinder others from pulling him out.
3. The third and last ground of flattery, on his
part that is flattered, is a proud and vainglorious
disposition. To tell a proud person of his faults, is
to tell infallibility that it is in an error, and to spy
A proud person, who, with the worst kind of
idolatry, adores himself, and what is more, the worst
part of himself, his defects and vices, thinks that his
doing of any action is sufficient to stamp it decent and virtuous. As it is reported of Cato being
drunk, that one should say of him, by reason of his
reputation, so much too great for any slander, that
it would be easier to prove that drunkenness was
no vice, than that Cato could be vicious; so some
people, though they spoil every thing by an undue
management of it, lose opportunities, and overlook
occasions, yet they must be thought to be still
carrying on designs of policy, to err and mistake
prudentially; the world must persuade itself out of
its own experience, and believe surmises, though
contradicted by effects. It must be willing to be
Now those that would have the world maintain such an opinion of them, are the fairest and the broadest mark for the flatterer to shoot at that can be, the fittest persons to be made buffoons of: for do but commend and praise them to their face, and you may pick their pockets, cut their throats, and cheat them of their estates. Nor need the flatterer fear that they will look through his design, and so discover and loathe all his feigned encomiums; for let them be never so gross and palpable, let him lay it on never so thick, yet pride and conceitedness will swallow all, and look upon itself obliged too, for being so kindly abused.
And it has been sometimes seen, that a man, while he has been flattering and extolling an opinionative fool, (who has with much pleasure heard and embraced him, for the glorious things he so liberally spoke of him,) he has now and then turned his head aside, and flouted and laughed at him to his companions, for suffering himself to be held by the nose by such pitiful arts, so easily discerned and detested by any person of discretion.
Upon an easy observation we shall find, that there is nothing
that renders a man more ridiculous, in most of the passages of his life, than
much credulity; there is nothing that more certainly makes him a prey to the
deceiver and the cheat: but now this is the inseparable property of pride and
self-estimation. Every such person carries a belief about him so strong and so
great, that it is impossible to overwork
Which being so, if a man be great and potent as well as proud, it is no wonder if he is always plied with flatterers, and if they resort to him as the crows do to a carcass, always fluttering and chattering about him; for alas! he thinks they are only doing him right, and admiring him for that which he himself admires much more. Pride makes him lift his eyes upward, which is the reason that he never turns them inward; and so being unknown to himself, he must believe the deceiver upon his own word.
Now the deduction that I shall make from all this is, that of the many arguments and signs of real friendship, none is so sure and infallible, as a readiness to reprehend impartially and seasonably whatsoever needs reprehension. For it is clear, that he that does so, prefers the good of him whom he reprehends before his own interest. He knows not but his proud and impatient humour may make him disgust and persecute him for giving him so free and true a view of himself; but yet he ventures all to redeem him from shame and disorder: in a word, he resolves to do the part of a friend, though his very doing so makes him forfeit his being thought so. He that carries on no design for his own advantage in what he does, gives an unfailing demonstration of his sincerity; and he that tells a man what he knows, will find but a small acceptance with him, (as the story of his faults is like to do,) hazards his friend’s favour, and with that his own emolument; and really makes himself and his hopes a sacrifice to the other’s reputation.
Having thus finished the second general head, and
Third and last, which is, to shew the ends and designs of it on his part that flatters: and those are briefly comprised in these words of the text, He spreads a net for his neighbour’s feet.
It is a metaphor borrowed from the practice of hunters or fowlers: and now, as there is no man that spreads a net, but does it with this double intention, first to catch and destroy the thing for which he spreads it, and then, by so doing, to advantage himself, as either in his pleasure or his profit; so accordingly every flatterer, in all his fawnings and dissimulations, is acted and influenced by these two grand purposes.
1. To serve himself.
2. To undermine him whom he flatters, and there by to effect his ruin.
1. And first, he designs to benefit and serve himself. In all that artificial scene that he lays, by adoring and commending this or that great person, he intends not so much to praise as to be what the other is. He would be great, rich, and honourable; and that puts him upon the dissembler’s drudgery to enslave himself to all his humours, to extol his impertinences, and adore his very villainies. It is not for want of wit or apprehension, that the flatterer speaks such paradoxes; for he sees through that great and glorious bauble that he so cringes to; he despises him heartily, while he harangues him magnificently; his thoughts and his words are at a perpetual jar and distance; he thinks satires, while he speaks panegyrics.
Nay, and perhaps he hates and abhors his own ill
But it is evident, that every flatterer designs only his own advantage, whether there be or be not any real foundation of worth in him whom he pretends to admire; and that, from this one consideration, that the same person, in case he falls from his greatness and power, is presently deserted, and finds all his parasites’ encomiums turned into scoffs and invectives. The man’s virtue, if he had any, remains untouched, and perhaps by his calamity improved. He can be as valiant, as just, and temperate, as he was before: but what is that to the purpose? He cannot reward or prefer; he cannot frown an enemy into ruin, or smile a friend or a dependent into a fair fortune. And if so, the flatterer thinks he should but lose his time and his breath to declaim and be eloquent upon so dry a subject. No; his game lies another way; he bids good night to the setting, and reserves his devotion for the rising sun. Men may be both wise and virtuous; but it is their power that makes them commended for being so.
And from this it is also that we may observe in
flatterers such great difference in the behaviour of
the same person at one time, from what it is at another. While he is yet upon the chase, and a get
ting, none so humble, so abject, so full of all servile
compliances; but when his nest is feathered, and his
2. His second is to undermine and ruin him whom
he flatters. He finds his interest and affairs cast so,
that he is not like to be considerable without the
downfall of such or such a person, who yet is so
great and powerful, that he despairs to shake him
by violence and direct force, and therefore he endeavours to circumvent him by art; to which purpose,
he pretends himself an admirer of his extraordinary
parts and virtues, tickles his ears with perpetual applauses of all his words and actions; and by this
means he gets the esteem of a friend, and with that
an opportunity of working under ground. But all
this while he is big with a design of mischief; he is
only taking aim where he may shoot him surely and
mortally; so that all the fair speeches and fine flowers that he strews in the other’s way, are only to
cover and conceal the fatal gin and trap that he has
placed, to catch and bring him into the hands of the
1. First, By this means he deceives him, and grossly abuses and perverts his judgment, which should be the guide and director of all his actions. A right judgment is to the soul what a strong and an healthful constitution is to the body; it will, by its own force, work off all lesser inconveniences and distempers. Though a man be sometimes driven aside by his passions and his irregular appetites, yet so long as his mind and understanding has an habitually true notion and apprehension of things, it will recover the man, and prevent the error from being in finite. And therefore, according to that advice given to the soldier, τὴν κεφαλὴν πεφύλαξο, secure your head; so is every one to be careful to preserve his judging faculties entire, that he may not be abused into false choices, and imposed upon by undue and fallacious conclusions: for a flaw in these leaves the soul like an army without conduct, exposed to all the miseries of dispersion and confusion.
He that is thoroughly deceived, is in the very next disposition to be ruined; for cast but a mist before a man’s eyes, and whither may you not lead him? He marches on with as much confidence into a slough or a pitfall, as he would tread the direct paths that lead to his own house. None plays the fool confidently, but he that verily believes he does wisely. He is flattered into mistakes and false measures of his actions, and views all the passages of his behaviour by a false light, the consequences of which must needs be destructive and miserable.
And therefore every flatterer who endeavours to delude and blind the judgment of a man, properly gives him a fatal wound in the head; and if that be crazed and giddy, it is not the absolute, entire perfection of all the other parts of the body, that can suffice to regulate and direct so much as any one action of life. The whole tenor of a man’s behaviour in this case is like the motion of a watch that has a fault in the spring; he is rendered utterly use less, as to all great and considerable purposes.
2. The flatterer undermines, and perhaps, in the issue, ruins him whom he flatters, by bringing him to shame and a general contempt; for he deals with him like one that pins some ridiculous thing upon another’s back, and then sends him with it into the market-place, where he finds himself hooted and laughed at by all, but walks on wholly ignorant of the cause. The flatterer tells an impertinent, talking grandee, that his discourse wonderfully becomes him; that he utters himself with extraordinary grace and exactness of speech: he accordingly believes him, and gives his tongue no rest, but is still proclaiming his emptiness and indiscretion in all companies. He tells another passionate furioso, that it argues height and gallantry of spirit, not to endure the least under valuing word, the least shadow of an affront; and he accordingly, upon every trivial occasion, takes fire, and flames out into all the expressions of rage and revenge; and, for his pains, is despised by some, hated by others, and opposed by all; and these are the effects and favours of flattery.
In a word, the flatterer deals with the flattered
person as the Philistines did with Samson, first put
ting out his eyes, and then making him a mock and
Shame and contempt casts a man under the feet of those whom he converses with; in which case, we cannot presume upon any such redundancy of compassion and good nature amongst men, as to imagine that any one can be under foot without being trampled upon. He that slights me himself cannot possibly be my friend; but he that endeavours to make others slight me too, must needs be my mortal enemy.
3. The flatterer undermines and effects the ruin
of him whom he flatters; forasmuch as by this means
he renders his recovery and amendment impossible.
Every fault in a man shuts the door upon virtue,
but flattery is the thing that seals it. Solomon gives
his judgment in the case fully and unanswerably,
He that makes another sick, and brings him under a distemper, does not presently destroy him, because there is still a remedy in physic; but he that persuades a sick, distempered person that he is well, and so keeps him from the use of physic, he certainly is preparing a coffin for him, and designs no thing but to bring him to his grave.
Every flatterer, by infusing into a man a good opinion of his defects and vices, endeavours to fasten and rivet them into his behaviour for ever; for no man leaves what he cannot dislike. Persuade a prisoner, or a captive, that his prison is a paradise, and you shall never hear him petition for a release. Vice indeed captivates and enslaves wheresoever it prevails; but flattery strives to make the mind in love with its slavery, and so to render that slavery perpetual and unalterable; it would fain intoxicate and charm a man into a kind of stupidity and impotence to help himself. In short, it uses him as Jael did Sisera; it pretends to refresh and entertain him kindly, but it designs only to nail his head to the ground.
And thus I have endeavoured to lay open the
flatterer’s ends and purposes. Where, upon the result of all, it is perhaps a disputable case, whether of
the two is a worse thing, to flatter or to be flattered; to be so sordid, and withal mischievous, as
to practise the one, or so blind and sottishly easy as
to suffer the other. But the truth is, this latter is
the object of pity, as the former is of the justest
Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me.
THESE words, running in the form of a prayer or petition, may suggest these three things to our consideration.
1. The thing prayed against; presumptuous sins.
2. The person making this prayer; king David; one adorned with the highest elogies for his piety, even by God himself.
3. The means that he engages for his deliverance from the thing he prays against; namely, the divine grace and assistance: Keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins.
All these things lie naturally and evidently in the text; and there is no doubt, but that it may be most pertinently handled in a distinct prosecution of them. But I shall choose rather to frame my thoughts into another method, and designing to take in and comprehend all these in the progress of the following discourse, I shall cast the discussion of the words under these two general heads.
I. To shew what these presumptuous sins are.
II. To shew the reason of this so holy and excellent person’s so earnestly praying against them.
As for the first of these, what presumptuous sins are. In the handling of this, I shall do these three things.
1. I shall shew in general what it is to presume.
2. 1 shall assign some of the most notable kinds of presumptuous sins.
3. I shall prescribe some remedies against them.
And first for the first; what it is in general to presume: where, before we proceed to any strict and positive definition of it, we may briefly take notice of the description it lies under in the word of God, which sets forth this sin by various, and those very significant expressions. It calls it a man’s hardening of his heart: hardening his neck, hardening his face, and, in a word, hardening himself against God. It calls it a walking frowardly, and a walking contrary to God; as also a resisting of the Holy Ghost; and a grieving and doing despite to the Spirit of grace. It is likewise expressed by a man’s going on in his own ways, and refusing to be reformed, with the like: that is, all the several evils and provoking malignities that are in obstinacy, stubbornness, impudence, and direct contempt of God, like so many lines in their centre, meet and concur for the making up of the character of presumption.
But that we may yet view the nature of it more closely, and define what it is: to presume, or to commit a presumptuous sin, is for a man, in the doing of any unlawful or suspicious action, to expect and promise himself impunity upon those grounds that indeed afford no reason for any such expectation.
So that, to the making up of such a sin, these three integral parts are required.
1. That a man undertake an action, known by him to be unlawful, or at least doubtful.
2. That notwithstanding this, he promise to himself security from any punishment of right consequent upon it.
3. And lastly, that he do this upon motives utterly groundless and unreasonable.
In this order therefore does presumption accomplish its course of acting in the heart of the presuming sinner. For, as for the thing that he is about to
do; he either doubts whether it be lawful or no; or
he certainly knows that it is unlawful: whereupon,
if on either hand he proceeds to the doing of it, he
infallibly bolts upon a sin, because he certainly acts
against conscience, either doubtful or knowing; both
of which will involve him in sin: for to act against
a knowing conscience is apparently sinful; and to
act also against the doubting, from the mouth of the
apostle receives the express sentence of condemnation; He that doubteth is damned if he eat,
Now the presuming sinner, knowing the action he is attempting
to be unlawful, or at the best suspecting it as doubtful, proceeds,
notwithstanding this dissatisfaction, to deliberate and advise with himself,
whether he should undertake it or no; he argues the case with himself on both
sides. On one side he pleads the unlawfulness, or at least the suspiciousness of
it, and the great danger that may follow upon either: on the other, he thinks of
the pleasure, the profit, and the advantage of the thing under debate, together
with a supposed probability of escape and impunity, though he does commit it.
And hereupon, as the result and upshot of his deliberation, he comes to fix, and
to resolve that he will do it, be the consequence
From what has been said, we may here observe, that the presumptuous sinner is utterly divested of those two only pleas that can be alleged for the extenuation of sin, as, 1. Ignorance. 2. Surprise.
And first, as for ignorance. Though the case is
such in the rules of morality, that no ignorance of
things, lying under necessary practice, can be totally
inculpable, and so cannot wholly excuse the guilt
of the action occasioned by it; yet as to an extenuation of the degree, we find the plea of it frequently
admitted in scripture; as the servant that knew
not his lord’s will, and did things worthy of stripes,
was therefore beaten but with few stripes,
But now the presumptuous sinner cuts himself off from all such plea; for he sins with an high hand, with an open and a seeing eye. His conscience is all the time awake, like a thief that breaks open an house in the face of the sun, and amidst the resorts of a market. The motto of a presuming sinner may be, Veni, vidi, et peccavi. The Devil told Eve, that her and her husband’s eyes should be opened, upon their eating of the forbidden fruit; and accordingly most of their posterity have since inherited the power of sinning knowingly and seeingly, of offending their Maker with counsel and deliberation. Their eyes are opened indeed with a mischief: but for that very cause their sin is heightened; and it were better for them that they were blind; for then, as said our Saviour to the pharisees, they would have had no sin; that is, no sin in comparison: their sin would not have borne so deep a tincture, and been set off with such crimson aggravations.
As sin leaves the soul, so presumption leaves sin itself naked, by drawing from it its covering; and also helpless, by taking away its last asylum and retreat. In both of which it had a fair accommodation from ignorance, which, like darkness, invites sleep; and so is the parent of a little rest and transient quiet to sick, guilty, and disturbed consciences.
Ignorance is looked upon as so plausible a defence,
that I have heard and read of those that have studiously been ignorant of the evil of an action, where
they have passionately desired the pleasure of it:
they have endeavoured to shift off the light, and to
convey themselves from the inspection of their own
consciences, that so their sinful delights might proceed with the greater relish and the less interruption.
But such must know, that ignorance affected, and voluntarily procured, is so far from giving any mitigation or excuse to other actions, that it is not able to excuse itself. For who can defend an action, by pleading that he did it ignorantly, when it was in his power not to have been ignorant, when the means of knowledge were before him, and the neglect of them was his choice? Presumption and such an ignorance may walk hand in hand, forasmuch as it may be resolved into presumption. It is a blindness brought upon a man, because he would not see; otherwise all ignorance, that is merely negative and inculpable presumption, is utterly inconsistent with, and makes absolutely unpleadable.
2. Presumption excludes all plea from surprise: a plea admitted in human courts for the diminution of the malignity of many crimes. An action not being perfectly evil, but as committed by perfect choice, which is much weakened and disturbed by the hurry of a surprise. And there is no doubt but the mercies of the court of Heaven also have some grains of allowance for those actions that men are thus, in a manner, thrown headlong into. But now where there is deliberation, there can be no surprise; forasmuch as a surprise prevents and takes a man off from all previous deliberation: and presumption is still accompanied with deliberation; it is a sin that proceeds gradually, it destroys the soul soberly, and with design.
But before I go any further, when I say that surprise takes off from the nature of presumption, so
that every presumptuous sin must be supposed to be
A man drinks himself into a present rage, or distraction of mind; in which condition he is perhaps
carried to commit a rape or a murder, which action
is indeed in itself sudden and indeliberate: but, since the man at first engaged
in drinking with full choice and deliberation of mind, his passion being caused
by that drink, and the murder being caused by that passion, are both of them
virtually deliberate, as being resolvable into a foregoing choice: upon which
score they contract the guilt and foulness of presumptuous
But here, because there is much and frequent discourse in divinity, of a distinction between sins of presumption and sins of infirmity; and since very much depends upon the right or the wrong apprehending of it in a casuistical theology, as also in the daily practices of men; it will not be amiss to inquire into the ground or reason of this distinction.
What a sin of presumption is, we have declared already; so that the whole business will lie in this, to see what that is hat makes a sin to be a sin of infirmity.
Three opinions there are in this matter.
1. The first derives the nature of it from the condition of the agent, or him that commits it.
2. The second derives it from the matter of the action.
3. The third and last, from the principle producing it.
We shall consider each of them in their order.
1. First of all then, there are some who derive the nature of a sin of infirmity from the quality or condition of him that commits it; affirming every sin committed by a believer, or a person truly regenerate, to be a sin of infirmity; partly, because they say, that there is not that absolute and full concurrence of the inward principle in such a one to the commission of the sin; but chiefly because such persons, being supposed to be fixed in an unchangeable possession of the divine favour, so that they cannot possibly fall from it, no sins can be able to alter their estate; whereupon their sins lose their full effect, and become only lapses and infirmities.
For answer to this; it is not necessary here, either to assert or to deny the perpetuity and unalterable tenor of a regenerate man’s estate: but this I affirm, that to take the nature of his actions merely from the condition of his person, is hugely absurd; for that can only infer the pardon of his sins upon another account: but surely a sin changes nothing of its nature by this, that in one man it is pardoned, in another not.
This indeed has been eagerly asserted by some; and in this assertion they laid a foundation for all licentiousness; for, according to the tenor of their doctrine, it was but for them, first to put on a bold front, and to persuade themselves and others that they were of the number of the converted and the regenerate; and then, whatsoever sins were after wards committed by them, sunk to a wonderful low degree of guilt, as being chargeable with no higher than what arises from infirmity. In the strength of this doctrine, some would hold David’s murder and adultery to have been only sins of infirmity; though each of them complicated, and made up of so many several base sins, and ripened with such deliberate contrivances, that it is hard to commit, or indeed to imagine, sins of a blacker hue.
But, for a fuller vindication of the truth, I shall, even upon the supposition and grant of this principle, that a regenerate person never so loses his ground by any sin, as to be cut off from his interest in the favour of God, and his title to heaven; I shall, I say, yet shew the falseness and unreasonableness of the doctrine perversely built upon it; and that by these following arguments.
1. First: whereas it is said, that persons regenerate
2. But in the second place, I demand further, whether this estate of regeneration does not, according to their own supposition, raise the persons so qualified to the privilege of being the sons of God? And if so, I would fain know, whether the unworthy behaviour of a son is not of a more provoking nature than the same deportment from a stranger? A son is capable more of presuming upon his father than a slave or servant upon his master; for one of fends only against authority, the other against authority mixed with love, and endeared with the nearest relation. I conclude therefore, that this is so far from degrading a sin to the smallness of an infirmity, that it stamps it ten times a greater presumption than it would be, if committed by another person.
3. And lastly, If the sins of persons regenerate
must all pass for infirmities, then how comes David
here (who surely was not the last or meanest of this
number) to pray so earnestly to be kept from sins of
presumption? If the nature of his condition secured
him from all possibility of falling into them, where
was the danger? And if no danger, where was the
2. Some derive the nature of sins of infirmity from the matter of them; as that they are committed only in thought or desire, or sometimes in word, but pass not into outward and gross action.
But this also is most false and pernicious, and directly opens a gate to the encouragement of the vilest impieties. For though it must be granted, that our thoughts and desires, and sometimes our words, are less under command than our outward actions; yet to affirm, therefore, that whatsoever is sinfully transacted in these, must presently be baptized but an infirmity, is an assertion no ways to be endured.
And for answer to it, I affirm,
1. First, that there is no act producible by the
soul of man, that either is or ever was under the
power and command of man’s will, but is capable of
receiving all the poison and guilt, that the will (which
is itself the fountain of all sin) is able to infuse into
it; and consequently of being a sin of presumption.
But now both thoughts, words, and desires are controllable by the will, which is able to make the soul
cease thinking and desiring of any particular thing,
by diverting and applying it to other objects. And
if the will has now lost some of the absoluteness of
its primitive dominion, yet when we come to state
the morality of actions, we are to consider the power
it had naturally, and in man’s innocency, and has
since lost by its own fault; but stands therefore no
2. But secondly, let us hear the voice of God in
the scriptures concerning this matter. There, I am
sure, are loud complaints of the sins of men’s thoughts.
And then for desires; we know that in God’s account they stand for actions. In
But that evil desires carry so high a guilt with them, is no less evident from mere reason: for if the evil of the thoughts lies under so great a condemnation before God, that of the desires must needs lie under a greater; forasmuch as desire is a further step and advance of the soul into sin; and is indeed the very pulse of the soul, naturally showing the temper and inclination of it.
And so much for the second opinion.
3dly and lastly. The difference of a sin of presumption and of infirmity may be drawn from the principle immediately producing the action; as namely,
Certain it is therefore, that malice is that that constitutes the nature of presumption, and inadvertency that makes a sin to be but an infirmity. But then to draw this down a thesi ad hypothesin, and to determine the bounds of each, by showing exactly where malice ceases, and where a faultless inadvertency begins; this, I confess, is most difficult, and perhaps, by any one common rule, constantly and universally appliable to every particular action, not to be effected.
But for our better conduct in a case of such importance, I shall shew first negatively, what is not a sin of infirmity; 2dly, what positively is.
As for the negative part, we are to observe,
1. That whensoever a man ventures and designs
to commit a sin upon this ground, that he judges
it a sin of infirmity; that sin, by such antecedent
thought and design beforehand, is changed from a
sin of infirmity into a sin of presumption. For though
an infirmity be comparatively but a little sin, yet it
is far from an infirmity to account any sin little, and
much more upon that ground to commit it. Men
are apt to say, (in their hearts at least,) that such or
such a thing is no great matter; and therefore,
surely, they need not so much scruple the doing of
2. That sin, though in itself never so small, that a man after the committing of it is desirous to excuse or extenuate, by charging it upon surprise, passion, weakness, company, or the like, does by such excuse cease to be an infirmity: for when a man comes to defend his sin, it shews that he has an hearty kindness for it, and dislikes nothing in it but the consequent danger; than which temper of mind few actual sins are more loathsome and provoking in the sight of God.
But in the next place, to pass from negatives, and
to shew positively what a sin of infirmity is; I conceive it may not unfitly be defined, a sin committed
out of mere, sudden inadvertency, that inadvertency
not being directly caused by any deliberate sin immediately going before it. The reason of this has
been given already, viz. that the consequent actions
follow the guilt and nature of the antecedent action
that caused them. But for the better clearing of the
thing discoursed of to our apprehensions, that I may
also give an instance of this kind of sin; I suppose,
when a man, being suddenly urged and provoked vehemently, conceives an angry thought,
or utters an
hasty word, that that thought and that word may be
reckoned for infirmities. And when an unlawful desire suddenly strikes the mind, but a man’s heart
immediately smites him for it, so that he presently
checks that desire, this also, 1 conceive, may be reputed a sin of infirmity. But, God knows, few sins
And thus I have finished the first branch of the first general head; which was to shew, what it was in general to presume, and wherein the nature of a presumptuous sin did consist.
Now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, be ascribed all honour, might, majesty, and dominion, now and for ever. Amen.
Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins.
II. I COME now to the second, which is to as sign some of the most notable kinds of presumptuous sins.
Concerning which, I shall premise this in general; That there is no sin committible by man, as to the kind of it, but by circumstances is capable of being made a sin of presumption. Upon which account it would be infinite to set down all the several kinds; and therefore I shall only insist upon some of the greatest remark for their malignity, and such as it most concerns the souls of men to be clear and se cure from.
For a man to sin upon hopes or confidence of pardon or mercy, I cannot reckon as a particular kind of presumptuous sin; this being the general nature of presumption running through all the respective kinds and species of it. For he that presumes to offend, promises himself pardon from God’s mercy, without any warrant from God’s word.
The particular kinds therefore of presumptuous sin, that I shall cull out and insist upon, are these that follow.
1. The first is, to sin against the goodness of God,
manifesting itself to a man in great prosperity.
Every beam of God’s favour to a sinner in these
But when mercy shall rise higher, and from the benefit of a bare subsistence serve his convenience, and, what is more, his abundance; when Providence shall make his increase bigger than his barns, and his incomes to upbraid the narrowness of his coffers; when it shall add a lustre to his person, and at the same time multiply and advance his family; when it shall appoint angels for his guardians, and, in a word, set an hedge about all that he has: for such a one to rise up and spurn against his Maker, to make all his plenty and greatness the drudge of his luxury and ambition; so that his sins shall outvie his substance, and the very effects of mercy be made the weapons of unrighteousness; for him therefore to sin, because he is great, and rich, and powerful, that is, because Providence has by all this obliged him not to sin; is not this the height of ingratitude, as ingratitude is the height of baseness?
Samuel upbraided David for his two great sins,
by recounting what God had done for him, and how
openhanded Providence had been to him, in heaping
upon him all external blessings, even to the anticipation and exceeding of his desires.
Behold, says
But to go a little further: while he is thus provided for, (as we have observed,) not only as to convenience, but also supplied as to affluence; can he
tell me, why he is all this time permitted to live, and
to tread the earth? why he is not in hell, roaring
in the flames, and bemoaning himself in the regions
of the damned? whether his sins have not long since
deserved it, and whether both the mercy and justice
of God might not be glorified in his destruction? and
whether many, whose sins were fewer and smaller
than his, have not been cut off from the earth in
wrath, and disposed of into that remediless estate of
torment? Can he ascribe this reprieve to any thing
but to mercy, to mere undeserved mercy, that places
But now is there any gross sin, that such a one can commit, that is not a direct defiance to the designs of this mercy? There is not any temporal blessing that a man enjoys, that shall not be reckoned upon his eternal account. That sentence shall appear fresh and fierce against him, Son, thou receivedst thy good things. And it is not so much his having sinned that shall condemn him, as his having sinned in pomp, in plenty, and magnificence. His having sinned against the bounties and endearments of Providence; this is that, that shall rank him with those leading sinners, whose portion lies deeper in the bottomless pit than that of ordinary offenders.
2. A second sort of presumptuous sins, are sins committed under God’s judging and afflicting hand; than which there cannot be a more open and professed declaring of an opposition to God; it being little short of sending a challenge to Heaven. It is a striking of God, while God is striking us; and so, as it were, a contention who should have the last blow. For a child to commit that fault under the rod, for which the rod is upon him, shews an incorrigible disposition, and a malice too great to be chastised into amendment.
What does God send forth his arrows for, and
shoot this man with sickness, another with poverty,
and a third with shame, but to reclaim and to recover them? to embitter the sweet morsels of sensuality to them, and to knock off their affections
from sinful pleasures? For God makes not the miseries
God would make men better by soft and persuasive means, he would
draw them with the cords of
a man; but when these prevail not, he is drove to
the use of his whips and his scorpions: but if these
prove ineffectual too, the man is too great a sinner
to be corrected, and consequently to be saved. When
a man comes three or four times out of God’s furnace with his dross about him, it is a sign of a
reprobate and a castaway. God complains of the
house of Israel,
But such persons must know that their sins are
rendered infinitely more daring and provoking by
the distress of their condition. God throws them
upon the ground, and they, instead of being humbled, rage and rave, and throw the dirt in his face.
There is never an affliction that befalls any man, but it comes with this motto written upon it by the finger of God himself; Go, sin no more, lest a worse evil come unto thee. Has any man felt the hand of God upon his body, his estate, or his family, or any concernment that is dear unto him? Why let him hear his voice also; his admonishing, his counselling voice, Sin no more, lest a worse evil happen unto thee. Has God snatched away a man’s child? God can snatch away his estate too. Has God took away his estate? he can take away his friends also. Has he bereaved him of his friends? he can likewise bereave him of his reputation. Has he blasted his reputation? he can proceed to touch him in his health, and with the most miserable of distempers to smite him with madness, phrensy, and distraction. And after all this, God has more ways to plague his rebel creature, than our poor, short apprehensions can reach unto.
But now for a man to sin against all this; to
laugh at all these warning periods of Heaven; what
is it but a kind of waging war with God? Well may
every serious person be still putting up this prayer,
3. A third sort of presumption is, to commit a sin clearly discovered and directly pointed at by the word of God, either written or preached. The word sometimes meets the sinner with that power and clearness, that his conscience even forces him to cry out and arraign himself; This is my sin, and I am that sinner that is preached against. He finds it not in the power of his invention, by any art or evasion, to elude or shift off the charge, it comes so home and close to his condition. It is to his sin, as a looking-glass to his face; it represents it in every shadow, lineament, and proportion: so that the preacher might be even thought to have had a correspondent in the man’s breast, and to have held intelligence with his heart: he gives him so exact and particular an account of the several ways, methods, and actings of his sin.
Now for a man to turn his back upon all these bright discoveries of his sin, to commit it, as it were, with the word yet sounding in his ears, and full and quick in his memory; it is like a man’s offending, not only against a law, but a law rubbed up, renewed, and set afresh before men’s eyes, by the king’s proclamation.
It is but too usual to see some persons, who at
church feel their consciences searched and lanced,
and the word even lashing their sin over the face;
yet presently, like Samson after the Philistines had
been upon him, to go out and shake themselves a
little, and forthwith become the very same men that
they were before. They are as ready for their cups,
But the word of God will not be baffled and put off so: where it finds no reception, it will be sure to leave a guilt, and no man can despise it securely: the more clearly it informs, being rejected, the more fiercely it condemns. For surely we cannot imagine that the great God of heaven is so cheap in his addresses to men’s souls, as, according to his own expressions, to wait, to rise up early, and all the day long to stretch forth his hands to the sons of men, in setting out the nature and danger of sin before them; only that they may have opportunity to shew how little these things change and move them; how hardy and obstinate they can be in holding fast their vice, as it were, in spite of Heaven, and maugre all the divine warnings, threats, and admonitions.
This is none of the least degrees of presumption: for supposing that the sinner has not shook off the first principle of self-preservation; while he ventures and proceeds confidently in a sin marked out for vengeance by the voice of God himself, he must needs question either his truth, that he will not, or his power, that he cannot, make good what he says, by punishing as severely as he threatens.
4. A fourth sort of presumption is, to commit a sin
against certain passages of Providence, particularly
thwarting, and, as it were, lying cross to the commission of it. God is so merciful to and careful of
It were infinite to recount particulars; each man may collect enough from his own observation. The drunkard’s merry meetings are put off and defeated by the interposal of emergent, unexpected business; the designs of the revengeful person, by the intervention of company, perhaps by sickness, or some other misfortune disabling him for the execution of his malicious purposes: nay, and sometimes the frustration and disappointment shall be so repeated, and withal so strange, that the sinner’s conscience can not but tell him that the finger of God is in the whole affair, and that the Almighty himself with stands him: in which case, for him still to hold on his wicked design, and to look for new opportunities to bring it to birth; to make fresh attempts, and to try other courses; it argues a man furiously and invincibly set upon offending God, and pursuing the satisfaction of his sin over all those mountains of opposition that Heaven has raised in his way.
Thus we see nothing could withhold Pharaoh and
his host from following the Israelites; for in
And then for Balaam, whose story we have in the
Those who break through all those mounds and hinderances that God has laid between them and the gratification of their vice, imitate Balaam’s sin, and may expect to inherit his damnation.
5. A fifth kind of presumptuous sins are, sins
against the inward checks and warnings of conscience about the evil of any course or action. We
may call them the checks of conscience, though I
doubt not but that sometimes they are the immediate whispers of God’s Spirit in the soul; but it
matters not much which they are, it coming all to
one result; whether God speaks immediately by himself, or by his interpreter, for so is the conscience
littering every thing in the name and authority
of God: that there are such inward checks and startings of the soul at the attempt of any great sin is
most certain; and I appeal to the mind of every particular person that hears me, whether lie has not
often found a struggle within himself, and a kind of
pull-back from the sin that he has been about to engage in, raising such questions in his heart as Joseph
Now from whence and for what can all these suggestions be sent into the heart? What is the reason that there is such a kind of thing within us, ready, as it were, to catch us by the arm, and to bid us hold our hand when we are putting it forth to the commission of any sin? Surely they are the spiritual engines of God, planted by him in the soul to wield it this way and that way, to the prosecution of virtuous, and from the pursuit of vicious courses: they are the characters of every man’s duty drawn and engraven upon his heart; they are the expositors and faithful reporters of the mind of God to a man concerning the quality of every action that he is about to do.
And to thwart and trample upon them, is to presume upon God to that degree that is called
a resisting of his Spirit. It is to extinguish the eternal
light; and to shut our eyes, that we may the more
boldly leap down this dismal precipice into the arms
and embraces of our sin. However, such presumers
must learn, that he who now warns us from sin in a
still voice, when he comes to reprove and judge for
sin will do it in thunder. And there is not one of
these inward, gentle, and (as they think,) inconsiderable movings and endeavours of the conscience
against sin, but shall one day come into account,
So that if we should imagine a sinner pleading the excuse of his sin before God, that he was pushed on to the acting of it by a clamorous, furious principle within him, his violent affections, his mouth would quickly be stopped, and all his plea cut off by this one demand; Whether he did not find another principle within him, as much protesting against that sin, as passionately dissuading and drawing him off from it, painting the evil of it before his eyes, and laying the sad consequents of it home to his heart. All this will and must be granted; and therefore he that sins against these inward checks, presumes, and, what is more, he presumes inexcusably.
6. A sixth sort of presumptuous sins are, sins
against that inward taste, relish, and complacency
that men have found in their attempts to walk with
God, and comply with the precepts of the gospel.
The former are sins against the sight, these against
the taste of God’s favour. For the explication of
which we must observe, that some persons, wrought
up and warmed by the word into good resolutions,
set forth for heaven, and intend with themselves a
dereliction of the world, and a living up to those
divine rules of piety taught and proposed by the
Saviour of the world, the great instructor of souls.
Hereupon, by reason of the native suitableness of
those excellent things taught by him to the generous principles of virtue, naturally planted in every
mind, a man, upon the least compliance with them,
finds a strange, exalting pleasure and satisfaction
arising from thence, much superior to all the poor delights of sensuality. This is called, in
Now this is that relish and inward complacency that I spoke of, and which I said might be sinned against. For I doubt not but God gratifies new beginners in the ways of piety with certain strictures and tastes of spiritual pleasure, in vain to be sought for any where else: they are transient discoveries of himself; the very glimpses of heaven, and drops of an overflowing bounty.
And I doubt not also, but many, who have been admitted to a participation and experience of these privileges, have yet, through the force of temptation, the entanglements of the flesh, and the deceitfulness of their own hearts, been so far turned aside, as to have all these impressions worn off their minds, and in the issue prove wretched apostates. For these are not the peculiar mercies of the elect, who are loved with an everlasting love, but kindness of a lower degree. God may drop such manna upon those that shall never enter into Canaan: many, like Moses, may have a short view of that which they shall never enjoy.
But this is that that we drive at, that every apostasy and sinful backsliding after the soul has been
thus treated by God, is thereby inflamed to the nature of a great unkindness and a vast presumption.
For can a man do any thing more heinous than this?
After God has met him in his prayers, embraced him
in sacraments, and given him hope of the pardon of
his sins; after all this, to turn rebel? to hear the
And let this be observed, that if such persons, who, like Agrippa, were almost Christians, and have been, as it were, in the skirts and out-courts of heaven, chance to apostatize finally, and to perish, the consideration of this will make the worm of conscience bite much more terribly, and the everlasting flame burn ten times more violently, than if they had gone to hell at the common rate of sinning, with such as never thought of any other god but their belly, nor any religion beside their sensuality.
7. The seventh and last sort of presumptuous sins that I shall mention is, the returning to and repeated commission of the same sin; which surely is the greatest demonstration of a bold, stiff, resolved sinner that can be. Flies are accounted bold creatures, and that for a very good reason; for drive them off from a place as often as you will, yet presently they will be there again. It is not a thing so clear, but it has been disputed by divines, whether a relapse into the same sin, if a gross one, be pardonable. There is great cause to conclude, that it may and is: the contrary assertion being a limitation of mercy, where the word sets no limits to it: yet surely the case is dangerous, and those two things may be very well consistent, that a disease is curable, and yet not one of five hundred ever cured of it.
And if one, of so many sinning presumptuously in
this nature, has been, by the singular grace of God,
This is a sinning against the common methods of nature, as well as the obligations of grace. For it is natural to all men, nay, even to most brute animals, to avoid that thing or place where they have met with some notable mischief or disaster. There is a lasting horror of it imprinted upon the spirits, that presently works and shews itself upon the sight of the hurtful thing. Some stomachs never can abide a liquor or meat wonderfully grateful to them before, after they have had some loathsome physic conveyed to them in it: now there can no reason be assigned why men should not be thus affected also as to spirituals.
A man commits a gross sin, and by it makes a
great breach upon the peace of his conscience, loses
all present sense and feeling of the favour of God,
and perhaps, over and above, finds some outward,
fierce expressions of his wrath in the discomposure
of his worldly affairs, so that both within and with
out the man is distempered and disordered, and in
finitely at a loss how to resettle himself in his former
calm condition. But at length, by divine favour, he
does regain his former ground; and perhaps, within
a while, his former sin also presents itself to him
If he does, let him know that he is incorrigibly presumptuous, he crucifies the Son of God afresh, is a professed despiser of mercy, and by this daring return to his former sin, that had so fearfully mauled and shattered him, has, to say no more, put his repentance, his recovery, and salvation, under a very great improbability. And thus much for the second branch of the first general head, which was, to assign some of the most notable kinds of presumption.
Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins, lest they get the dominion over me.
THE prosecution of these words was first disposed under these two general heads.
I. To shew what these presumptuous sins was.
II. To shew the reason of this so excellent and holy person, the Psalmist’s, so earnest praying against them.
The first of these I proposed to be handled under these three particulars.
1. To shew what it was in general to presume.
2. To shew and assign some of the most remarkable kinds of presumption.
3. To propose some remedies against these sins.
The two first of which being despatched, I proceed now to the third and last.
The grand and general remedy against presumptuous sins surely must be, to arm the understanding, and to check the exorbitance of the will, by consideration: for the employment of which, with matter in reference to the sins we are treating of, these three things offer themselves to be considered.
1. Let a man endeavour to fix in his heart a deep
apprehension and persuasion of the transcendent evil
of the nature of sin in general: which is no less than
a direct affront to our Creator and Governor in a
But since it is difficult to view the nature of a thing immediately in itself, let men read the nature of sin in the dismal history of the effects and consequents of it. And for this, let them first see the ruin of a whole species, and the fall, not of man only, but of mankind, effected by it. Let them view Adam tumbled out of paradise, embased in his nature, and cursed in his actions, with a perpetual toil and misery entailed upon his descending posterity. Let them also see a deluge breaking in upon the earth, and the whole world lying under the destroying element; and they shall find that it was sin that opened the sluices of heaven, and brake up the fountains of the great deep. Sin was the thing that made God almost unravel the works of an whole creation, and deface the draughts of his own hand.
He that shall read the several captivities, bondages,
dispersions, and massacres of the Israelites, reads so
many comments upon sins, so many lively descriptions of the destructive force of a mighty guilt. But
he that would bring the matter to a compendium,
And lastly, to add a later, since there can be no greater instance of the malignity of sin: when we shall have the fabric of this beautiful frame of all things unfixed and torn down about us, the elements melting with fervent heat, and the heavens passing away with a noise; when the universe shall be reduced to its first principles, and time shall be no more; when the judgment shall be set, and the books opened; then we shall understand that it was sin that made all these desolations, that kindled these fires, and will be yet kindling much greater.
Now let a sinner consider all these passages, and when he has considered them, let him know, that there is unspeakably more evil in sin than in all these. For God can destroy and confound a world, but he cannot sin: and Christ could submit to all the violences of cruelty, all the loads of contumely; but he who could do all this, could not be brought to commit the least sin.
Nor is this to be wondered at; for as every quality flows much more plentifully in the cause than in
2. Let a man most seriously consider and reflect upon God’s justice. The hands of justice are not so tied up by mercy, but that they are loose enough upon those who have no title to mercy: and such the greatest part of the world are, who may possibly, by a redundant bounty, enjoy, but they cannot claim it; for as God deals with men upon a double account, either of the gospel or of the law, the tenor of the former of which is, that there is no condemnation to such as are in Christ Jesus; that is, to such as believe and repent, and become new creatures: and the tenor and voice of the latter is, Cursed be every one that continueth not in all things written in the law to do them; so these two dispensations divide and comprehend all mankind; whereupon those who are not under one are certainly ranged under the other. Those who have not, by sincere repentance and the fruits of it, reached the conditions of the gospel, are under the lash and dint of the law. In the execution of whose sentence the divine justice reigns and shews itself, as the other is the proper scene of mercy.
But now, while a sinner presumes and sins confidently,
So that, as presumptuous, he is the proper object for wrath and justice to discharge itself upon. Mercy indeed wards off all these dreadful blows; but it does not this universally and promiscuously for all, but for those only who by certain conditions are qualified for the proper subjects of mercy, as others are of justice. Where we may observe, that each of these attributes confine their working within their proper object, and encroach not upon the respective bounds of each other. He that is a vessel of mercy is out of the reach of justice; and he whom the law consigns over to justice, so long can have no protection from mercy.
The impartial thought of which, surely, should be sufficient to disabuse the confidence of the presumptuous, and to rectify his wild, unlimited apprehensions of that pardoning grace, which speaks pardon to none while they presume upon it.
3. Let a man correct his presumptuous humour,
No man of spirit will endure that his clemency should prostitute his honour to the saucy invasions of a bold and a growing impudence. No father will endure that his son should abuse his goodness, as if it served for nothing else but only to suffer and for give. And this is a thing so known to men, so implanted in them by nature, that such as have not wholly shook off all modesty, dread the very sight of a man whom they have much presumed upon: and though they fear no punishment from him, yet they find those rejolts from humanity, that deject their countenance, and make them sneak, and fly the presence of an affronted person.
Which being so, has not every presumptuous sinner reason thus to school and upbraid himself: Shall
I fear to deal thus and thus with a man, a sinful man
like myself; a worm, a piece of living dirt; one
whose breath and life are in his nostrils? and shall
I venture to pass the same and greater affronts upon
the omnipotent Creator of the world, that can crush
me to nothing, that can frown me into hell, and even
look me into endless destruction? Shall I fear an
anger that lasts but a moment, and can do but little
Men see and converse with that every day, in the ordinary passages of common life, that might invincibly argue them into a better behaviour towards their Maker. Could we but treat God as a king, as a magistrate, or a master, of all sins those of presumption would be the fewest. For in the courts of men people seldom expect to be pardoned the second time. But as for God, his mercy, they say, is infinite; and therefore they resolve that their rebel lions shall be so too, since there is no exhausting, no coming to the bottom of an infinite: and thus they presume to be pardoned so often, that in the issue they fall short of being pardoned once.
And thus much for the third and last branch of the first general head; which was, to prescribe remedies against sins of presumption.
II. I proceed now to the other general head proposed at first for the handling of the words; which is, to shew the reason of this holy and excellent person’s, the Psalmist’s, so earnest praying against these sins.
I suppose the prosecution of the first head, which
was to declare to us what presumptuous sins were,
might be argument enough to declare to us the second also, in shewing the cause why the Psalmist so
fervently prays against them. He prays against
them, as against so many pests, so many direful
causes of God’s wrath, so many devourers of souls;
and every prayer made against such things carries
But yet, for a more full and explicit discussion of the point in hand, I shall endeavour to give some more particular account of the reasons inducing this holy person with so much zeal to engage his prayers against presumptuous sins. And I conceive the principal of them may be brought under these two heads.
1. The danger of falling into these sins.
2. The sad consequences of them, if fallen into.
And first for the danger of falling into them; this appears in several respects.
1. In respect of the nature of man, which is generally apt to be confident, and to measure its belief by its desires; still presaging the best, flattering itself, and building broad superstructures upon narrow foundations. Few men feel their conditions so bad, but they find room for hope: and that which is hope in some cases, will rise into arrogance and presumption in others.
Most men are of a debonair, sanguine, jolly disposition, which never fails to supply those builders with materials, who are apt to rear castles in the air: so that we may well avouch, that where despair has slain its thousands, presumption has slain its ten thousands.
For despair seldom breeds but in the melancholy
temper, that inclines men to be thoughtful and suspicious, or in such breasts as have been forced into a
preternatural melancholy by conversing with unskilful spiritual guides, of an indiscreet severity, and pinning their faith upon ill-managed discourses about
predestination. But these are but a very small portion
of mankind, in comparison of the other: these go in
2. The second reason is from the object of presumption, God’s mercy: which though I shew was limited, and not as boundless and absurd as some men’s imaginations; yet there is no doubt but, according to the present economy of God’s actings, the exercise of it is of much more latitude and extent than the exercise of his justice. The time of this life is a time of mercy, and God delights to make the experiments of it splendid and illustrious.
Hereupon presumption strikes in, and advances it into endless and irrational; and uses it not only as an argument for repenting of past sins, (the sole proper use of it,) but as an antecedent inducement to warrant sin for the future. The largeness of mercy has made it apt to be abused by the corruption of man’s heart, which is ready to suck poison out of the fairest flowers of God’s garden; and to make the most amiable of his attributes serve the interest of its vilest affections.
Let both law and gospel denounce death against the commission of such or such a sin; and presumption shall interpose, and tell the sinner in the Devil’s own words, Thou shalt not surely die; and then mercy shall be alleged for a proof of this assertion: that shall be brought for an encouragement, that God intended only for a cure of sin.
3. Thirdly and lastly. A third reason of the danger of falling into presumptuous sins is from the
tempter, who chiefly busies and concerns himself to
It is clear therefore, that the Devil lays a more
than ordinary stress upon this; and if so, he will be
sure to employ all his engines to push his design forward; for he knows that one great sin does his
work compendiously, and destroys at a blow. He
knows also, that his design, like a twoedged sword,
may chance to cut both ways. For first he will make
a man presume to commit a sin, and then, if possible,
he will make him despair for having committed it.
Wherefore, if all the arts and stratagems of our mortal
And thus much for the first reason of David’s so earnest praying against presumptuous sins, namely, the danger of falling into them; as also the several causes from whence that danger does arise.
I proceed now to the other reason, which is, the sad consequences of these sins, if once fallen into: amongst which we may reckon these that follow.
1. This kind of sin is marvellously apt to grow
and prevail upon him that gives way to it; which ill
consequence of it is deservedly mentioned by me, in
the first place, it being that great and only one that
David mentions instead of all the rest; Keep, says he,
thy servant from presumptuous sins, lest they get
the dominion over me. Every presumption is properly an encroachment, and all encroachment carries
in it still a further and a further invasion upon the
person encroached upon. It enters into the soul as
a gangrene does into the body, which spreads as well
as infects, and, with a running progress, carries a venom and a contagion over all the members. Presumption never stops in its first attempt. If Caesar comes
once to pass Rubicon, he will be sure to march further on, even till he enters the very bowels of Rome,
and break open the capitol itself. He that wades so
When the tenderness of the soul is lost, and its first awe of God and religion broke by a bold sin, it grows venturous, and ready to throw itself upon all sorts of outrages and enormities. It does not demur and tremble as it used to do, when any thing gross and foul was proposed to it; but it closes with it readily, and steps undauntedly into that stream that is like to carry it away, and swallow it up for ever.
This growing, encroaching mischief perhaps first fastens but upon the thoughts, and they take the liberty to settle upon some unlawful, base thing, like flies upon a carcass; from these it advances a step further, and seizes the desires, which presently are carried out with a restless eagerness after the same vile object; and these at length meet with some friendly opportunity, by the help of which they break forth into actual commission; which actual commission grows from one into many, and comes to be frequent and repeated, till it settles into a custom, and fixes itself immoveably and for ever in a man’s behaviour.
This is the nature and quality of presumption;
much like what our Saviour says of the mustard seed,
which at first is the least of all seeds, but being
grown up is greater than all herbs, so that the birds
of the air lodge in the branches of it. In like manner presumption first sows itself in a thought, the
least of all sins for the matter of it; but from thence
shooting up into a custom and an habitual practice,
it grows mighty and wide, opens its arms, and
spreads out its branches for every unclean bird, every
No man can assign the limits, the ne plus ultra of presumption, where it will stay, and with what pitch of villainy it will be contented: it is as unruly as power, as boundless as rebellion; and therefore, he that would preserve his conscience, and the peace of it, has cause to keep a perpetual guard upon his heart, to stave it off from a first admission.
2. The second ill consequence of presumptuous sins is, that of all others they prove the most difficult in their cure, forasmuch as they take away that which is the proper disposition to it, tenderness of conscience; leaving the heart fixed and hardened, and not easily capable of any healing impression. It is impossible for any man to be brought off from sin, but by the sense and feeling of sin: which sense, every presumption does by degrees weaken and dull, and in the issue utterly extinguish.
For I shew before, that the proper effect of such
sins w^as custom in sinning; and with what difficulty that is removed we are told in
Custom and frequency in sin breeds a familiarity
with it that produces an affection to it, and ends in
a resolved continuance in it. And as it is said by
the apostle upon another occasion, that perfect lone
3. As sins of presumption are more difficultly
cured, so they waste the conscience infinitely more
than any other sins. As really as blows and wounds
and bruises weaken the body, and by degrees dispose it to its final dissolution; so certainly do some
sins shake, and batter, and tear down the constitution
of the soul. Guilt upon the conscience, like rust
upon iron, both defiles and consumes it, by degrees
gnawing and creeping into it; as that does, till at
length it has eat out the very heart and substance
of the metal. The inward as well as the outward
man has his proper health, strength, and soundness
naturally belonging to him; and in proportion, has
also his diseases and distemper, arising from an irregular course of living. And
every act of presumption is to him as a spiritual debauch or surfeit:
David was a sufficient example of this, who complained in
4. Fourthly and lastly. These sins have been
always followed by God with greater and fiercer
judgments than any others; and for this also we
need go no further than David for an eminent in
stance and demonstration: for after those two horrid sins committed by him, did not God raise up a
rebel against him, not only out of his own house, but
also out of his own loins? one that defied him both
in the relation of a father and of a king, that
trampled upon his authority, and abused his wives
And to proceed to other instances: Did not the villainy and lewdness of a few Benjamites, set and resolved upon their sin against all admonition, almost consume and reap down an whole tribe? Did not the violence and uncleanness of Hophni and Phinehas, bring a disaster and a defeat upon the armies of Israel? and withal perpetuate an hideous destructive curse upon their father’s house? Did not the apostasy and ingratitude of Solomon against that God that made him shine like a star of the first magnitude amongst all the neighbouring princes, rend away ten tribes from his son at once?
But above all, take that notable instance of Manasses, whose sins indeed were of that high strain,
that they seemed to surpass all those of the kings of
Israel and Judah, that were either before or after
him; yet, notwithstanding this, both he himself
proved a penitent and a convert at the last; and as
for his son and successor Josiah, he was as eminently transcendent for his piety, as his father had
been for his sin; and extended a reformation every
way as large and wide as the former’s corruption.
So that one would have imagined that he had
cleansed the land, and even atoned his father’s
And now for the sinner that we have been hitherto discoursing of; if all the former considerations will not move him, yet let him at least arrest his presumption with this last. Perhaps the growing, contagious nature of his sin moves him not; the difficult cure of it, peradventure, prevails upon him as little; and it is like, that its aptness to waste, and harden, and debauch the conscience may make but small impression upon him; yet shall not the effects of it, the confusion, the disaster, and the curse that it is big with, the curse that will descend like rottenness into his bones, and strike like a dart through his liver; shall not all this terrify him into caution and prayer, into reformation and amendment?
It is the concernment of God’s justice and his
honour, to meet and confound an audacious sinner in
his course with some remarkable instance of his vengeance. It is a clearing of his Providence to the
And no sinner can assure himself but that, after
all his prayers, and tears, and humiliations, nay, and
what is more, his reconcilement with God, as to his
eternal estate, yet, as to his temporal, the anger of
the same God may, for the guilt of some gross,
presumptuous sin, stick in his skirts, and never cease
to pursue and dog him to his grave, sealing his
offence with that dreadful sentence in
To whom be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.
Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.
IN this Psalm David endeavours to possess himself with an holy admiration of the excellency of God’s knowledge, which is one of those divine perfections which we call attributes; all of which, though they are so many expressions of God condescending to our capacities, yet they are so exceeding glorious in themselves, that when we study to search them out, we must needs conclude, that they are objects much fitter for our admiration than our understanding. And one of the greatest of these is that which we are now about, to wit, God’s knowledge.
It is such a knowledge as sees and comprehends
all things, but is comprehended by none; and the
best of human knowledge is so far from equalling of
it, that it is its greatest perfection to be able to express it. But when we have said all concerning it
that we can, when we have spent our inventions and
our words, we must set down and confess with David, that such knowledge is too wonderful for us;
since our highest and most devout expressions of God
rather testify our reverential desires of honouring
him, than at all express his nature. Now the knowledge of God is chiefly wonderful, in respect of the
extent and latitude of its object, as it takes in all
things knowable. But here the prophet considers it
That God knows and takes strict and accurate notice of the most secret and retired passages of a man’s life.
In the prosecution of this doctrine I shall only prove it by some reasons, and afterwards make application, which I chiefly intend.
The reasons shall be of two sorts.
I. Such as prove that it is so, that God knows the most secret passages of our lives.
II. Such as shew whence it is, that he takes such notice of them.
The first reason proving that God does observe
the secret passages of man’s life is, because he rules
and governs them. Government is such a thing, as requires the highest and most perfect endowments of
knowledge: the very wheel and hinge even of human government is intelligence. Can a man
deprived of his sight manage a chariot through by
and dark ways with a steady hand? Can God that
carries the rule of all things in so constant and fixed
a course, and yet not observe those things? Certainly
he could not govern the world by his power, unless
he governed his power by his knowledge. In
The Spirit of God attributes the like knowledge
to Christ in his providential ruling the church;
1. He governs them by discovering of them. Now
how is it possible for any one to make that known
to another which he does not know himself. God
prudently overrules most plots by a seasonable revealment of them, as the sun may be said to
rule the
day, as it is in
2. He governs the most secret intentions by preventing of them. For assuredly, if God should
permit all the sin that men conceive in their thoughts
to break forth into action, the world would not be
able to continue, by reason of the overflowing sinfulness of men. God does therefore prevent and hinder it, and as it were stifles it in the very birth. Now
to be able to prevent an evil, argues a clear knowledge of its approach. How many secret villainies,
thought of and intended, and even ready for execution, have been turned aside, by God’s interposing
providence! In
3. God governs the secret designs of men, by directing them to other ends than for which they were
intended. Man may resolve, but God often secretly
blows upon his counsels, and scatters all his resolutions. In vain do the Syrians take counsel to invade
Judah, when God says, in
The second reason proving the same is, because he
gives laws to regulate the most secret passages of our
lives, and therefore he must needs know and observe
them. It is absurd for any governor to impose laws
upon men in respect of those actions which cannot
come under his knowledge. Hereupon all human
laws tend only to the regulation of the outward man,
and proceeds no further. But God extends his law
to the most secret behaviour of men, even to the
thoughts. Hence our Saviour interprets the lust of
the heart, and the first motions thereof to uncleanness, to be adultery,
The third reason is, because he will judge the
most secret passages of our lives, therefore they
are manifest to him. Knowledge is so requisite to
judgment, that our earthly judges cannot judge
rightly in matters that they do not know: hence
Job, to shew how uprightly he judged, said, that he
searched out the cause that he knew not,
2. The second season wherein God judges the
secret passages of our sins is at the day of judgment. In respect of which our Saviour says, that
there is nothing hid but shall be made manifest,
And thus much concerning the first sort of reasons, which prove that it is so, that God knows and
observes the secret passages of our lives. I proceed
now to the second sort of reasons, that prove whence
1. And the first reason shall be drawn from God’s omniscience, or his power of knowing all things:
from whence it follows, that nothing can be hid
from him; and this is that light which no man can
keep off, any more than he can in the opening hinder the day from shining upon him; it is a light
shining in every dark place: as it has no obscurity
itself, so it permits nothing else to lie obscure: and
that it is universal and infinite, appears from this,
because otherwise it would not bear a full proportion
to the rest of God’s perfections. Now in respect of
this, it is said in
2. The second reason may be drawn from God’s intimate presence to the nature and being of all things,
from whence is also inferred his knowledge of them:
for since there is no real distinction between the being and knowledge of God, but only in the manner
of our conceptions, it follows, that where he is present in respect of his being, he must be also present
in respect of his knowledge. But now the being of
God is diffused through the whole and every part of
the universe, as the soul insinuates itself into all the
members of the body: not that God is thus present to
all the world by way of identity with it, (as some profane philosophers have affirmed, who, in a literal sense,
may be said to have known no God but the world;)
but he is present with it by way of nearness and
inward proximity to it. Without which, the creature could not derive continual influence from him
for the upholding of its being, but must of necessity
fall back into its first nothing. From this universal
presence of God the scripture often proves the universality of his knowledge: in the
If it is thus certain that God takes strict notice of the most secret passages of our lives, both because he overrules them, and prescribes laws to them, and judges them; and also because that his omniscience and omnipotence, then, in the first place, it may afford, [Sic in ed. 1744.]
1. A use of conviction, to convince all presumptuous sinners of the atheism of their hearts. I know
the proof of this point, that God sees in secret, may
seem to have been superfluous; since the general
vogue of the world is ready, not only to meet, but
even to prevent us in their acknowledgment of God’s
Second use. It speaks terror to all secret sinners:
God sees and observes them in all their secrecies; he
spies out all their private haunts and their sly recourses to their beloved sin. Let such men consider
how unwilling they would be that men should know
of their concealed villainies, of what they act by
themselves: surely they would rather forfeit their
lives, and all that was near unto them, than their
secret sins should be divulged; and then let them
know that God sees them, and that it was better
that they were known to all the world that they so
fear, than to him. For he sees more filth in them,
than one of the most discerning and carping judgment can find in the faults of his adversary; and he
does more detest them, than the most holy and up
right man can do the most grossest and notorious
sin. Let them also consider, that the greatest
ground of all their sins, which is secrecy, is by
God’s all-seeing eye taken away. For assuredly
the confidence of concealment is the greatest inducement for an hypocrite to commit the vilest sins.
1. Such as are wholly transacted in the mind,
without the service and ministration of the body;
and these are the sins of our thoughts and desires,
which are locked up from the knowledge of men or
angels. No court of human judicature pretends to
judge or punish the thoughts and intentions: they
1. Because the sin of the thoughts and desires is
most spiritual, and consequently most opposite to
the nature of God: spiritual wickedness is properly
contrary to spiritual holiness, and it is that by virtue whereof Satan has strongest possession of the
soul, as being that wherein most men resemble him,
who being destitute of a body is not capable of
corporal, fleshly sins: hence, in
2. He judges a man by these, because his actions
and practice may be overruled, but thoughts and desires are the natural and genuine offspring of the
soul. Experience tells us, that we have not that
command and dominion over our thoughts that we
have over our actions; they admit neither of order
nor limitation, but are the continual, incessant bubbling up of sin out of the mind: for we may observe,
that those acts that may immediately result from
the faculty, without the interceding command of
the will, are scarcely controlled by it. How will
the unruly imaginations of a vain fancy range and
wander, in spite of all the dictates and commands
of reason. There is nothing more easy or usual than
2. The second sort of secret sins are such as are
not only transacted in the mind, but also by the
body, yet are covered and kept close from the view
of men. Such was David’s sin in the matter of
Uriah,
3. As it speaks terror to all secret sinners, so it
speaks no less comfort to all sincere-hearted Christians. The same sunrising and break of day that
terrifies the robber, is a comfort to the honest traveller. Thou that art sincere, God sees that sincerity in
thee that others cannot discern; yea, he often sees
more sincerity in thy heart, than thou canst discern
thyself. This may uphold the drooping spirits of a
disconsolate soul, when the black mouths of men,
steeled with ignorance and prejudice, shall be opened
in hard speeches against him. For indeed nowadays,
when a man cannot find fault with his brother’s outward conversation, which only he can behold, he
will censure him in respect of spirituals, which no
man can discern, any more than I can know what is
in a man’s mind by the colour of his clothes. Such
men speak as if God did not only make them partake of his mercies, but also of his prerogative.
And when it should be their work to resemble God
in holiness, they arrogantly pretend to be like him
in omniscience. How severely, though blindly, do
they judge of men’s hearts! Such a man is profane;
another is carnal, and a mere moralist; another proud,
and as to the bent and frame of his spirit, a contemner of religion. But here the sincere soul may
comfort itself, when with one eye it can reflect upon
Say not thou. What Is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this.
IN the days of Solomon, when Jerusalem was the glory of the whole earth; when it flourished as the metropolis, not only of religion, but of the riches of the world; when gold was made as common as silver, and silver as the stones of the street, (so that its in habitants might even tread and trample upon that which so much commanded the hearts of others;) when their exchequer was full, and their fleets at Ophir; when religion was established, and the changing, ambulatory tabernacle fixed into a standing temple, and all crowned with a peace under Solomon after the afflictions and wars of David; when they flowed with plenty, and were governed with wisdom; yet, after all, the text here gives us a clear intimation, that plenty passed into surfeit, fulness into loathing, loathing into discontent, and that (as it always happens) into complaints of the times, viz. that former days were better than these.
When yet, upon a small reflection backward, we
have the calendar of the former times red with the
bloody house of Saul, with the slaughter of the
priests, and with the rebellions of Sheba and Absalom; nothing but tumults, changes, and vicissitudes;
But we see there may be folly even in Israel; and, if they were all of this mind, Solomon may justly seem to have monopolized all the wisdom to himself. We have him here chastising the sottishness of this inquiry: indeed the fittest person to encounter this exception, as being a king, and so able to control; being a preacher, and so able to confute it; furnished with power for the one, and with wisdom for the other.
This is therefore the design of the words, either to satisfy or silence this malecontented inquiry: and supposing it to carry in it its own confutation, he confutes it, not by argument, but reproof; not as a doubtful problem, but as a foolish question: and certainly the case must needs be carried, where the fool makes the question, and the wisest of men gives the answer.
The matter in controversy is the preeminence of the former times above the present; when we must observe, that though the words run in the form of a question, yet they include a positive assertion, and a downright censure.
The inquiry being determined before it was proposed, now the charge of folly here laid upon it may relate to the supposition upon which it is founded in a threefold respect, viz.
I. Of a peremptory negation, as a thing absolutely to be denied, that former times are better than the following.
II. As of a case very disputable, whether they are so or no.
III. As admitting the supposition for true, that really they are better, and so bear away the preeminence.
Yet in every one of these three most different respects, this inquiry ought to be exploded as absurd, impertinent, and irrational.
1. And first of all, that it is ridiculous to ask why former times are better than the present, if really they are not better, and so the very supposition it self proves false; this is too apparently manifest to be matter of dispute, and that it is false we shall endeavour to prove and evince in the ensuing discourse: but before I enter upon the proof of it, this one observation must be premised.
That time is said to be good or bad, not from any such quality inherent in itself, but by external denomination from the nature of those things that are and do subsist in such a space of time. Time is the great vehicle of nature, not only for its swift passage and career, but because it carries in it the system of the world, from one stage and period of duration to another.
Now the world may be considered either in its natural or moral perfections. Some hold, that for the former, there is a continual diminution and an in sensible decay in nature, things growing less and less, the very powers and faculties of them being weakened and shrunk; and the vital spirit, or humidum radicale, that God and nature first infused into the great body of the universe, being much exhausted, so that now, in every following age, the lamps of heaven burn dimmer and dimmer, till at length they dwindle into nothing, and so go out of themselves.
But that this cannot be so, is clear from these
Wherefore it being sure that the whole fabric of the world stands in the same vigour and perfection of nature which it had at first, we come next to that in which we are now most concerned, to see whether or no it be impaired and sunk in its moral perfections, and what is the consequent of that in political.
We have here an aphorism of Horace much inculcated. Terra mulos homines nunc educat atque pusillos. But poetry never yet went for argument: and perhaps he might speak this, being conscious of his own manners, and reflecting upon his own stature. But that in the descent of succeeding generations, the following are not still the worse, I thus evince.
1. By reason: because there were the same objects to work upon men, and the same dispositions
and inclinations in men to be wrought upon, before,
that there are now. All the affairs of the world are
the births and issue of men’s actions; and all actions
come from the meeting and collision of faculties with
suitable objects. There were then the same incentives of desire on the one side, the same attractiveness
in riches, the same relish in sovereignty, the same
And these are the wheels upon which the whole visible scene of affairs, ethic and politic, turns and depends. The business of the world is imitation, and that which we call novelty is nothing but repetition. The figure and motion of the world is circular, and experience no less than mathematics will evince, that, as it turns round, the same part must be often in the same place: one age indeed goes before another, but precedency is not always preeminence; and it is not unusual for a worse to go before a better, and for the servant to ride before and lead the way to his master.
2. But 2dly, the same may be proved by history and the records of antiquity; and he who would give it the utmost proof that it is capable of from this topic, must speak volumes and preach libraries, bring a century within a line, and an age into every period. But what need we go any further than the noblest and yet the nearest piece of antiquity, the book of Moses.
Is the wickedness of the old world forgot, that we do so aggravate the tempest of this? Was it destroyed with waters of oblivion? and has the deluge clean overwhelmed and sunk itself? In those days there were giants in sin, as well as sinners of the first magnitude, and of the largest size and proportion.
And to take the world in a lower epocha, what
after-age could exceed the lust of the Sodomites, the
idolatry and tyranny of the Egyptians, the fickle levity of the Grecians? and that monstrous mixture of
all baseness in the Roman Neros, Caligulas, and Domitians,
And for the very state of Israel, in which this envious inquiry was first commenced, was that worse in Canaan, under the shadow and protection of a native royalty, than under the old servitude and tyranny of Egypt? Was their present condition so bad, that while Solomon was courting Pharaoh’s daughter, they should again court his yoke? woo their old slavery, and solicit a match with their former bondage? Was it so delightful a condition to feed Pharaoh’s cattle, and to want straw themselves? instead of one prince, to have many taskmasters? and to pay excise with their backs to maintain the tyrant’s janizaries, and to feed their tormentors? But it seems, being in a land flowing with honey, they were cloyed with that, and so, loathing the honey, they grew in love with the sting.
But to bring the subject to our own doors; if we would be convinced that former ages are not always better than the following, I suppose we need not much rack our memories for a proof from experience.
I conceive the state of the Christian church also
may come within the compass of our present discourse. Take it in its infancy, and with the
properties of infancy; it was weak and naked, vexed
with poverty, torn with persecution, and infested
with heresy. It began the breach with Simon Magus, continued it with Arius, Nestorius, Eutyches,
Aerius, some rending her doctrine, some her discipline; and what are the heresies that now trouble
it, but new editions of the old with further gloss and
enlargement? What is Socinus, but Photinus and Pelagius blended and joined
together in a third composition?
But as for those who clamour of the corruptions of our present church, and are so earnest to reduce us to the primitive model; if they mean the primitive truth, and not rather the primitive nakedness of it only, we know this, for doctrine and discipline, it is the very transcript of antiquity. But if their design be to make us like the primitive Christians, by driving us into caves, and holes, and rocks; to tear down temples, and to make the sanctuary itself fly for refuge; to bring beasts into churches, and to send churchmen into dens; at the same time to make men beggars, and to take away hospitals; it is but reason to desire, that they would first begin and exemplify this reformation in themselves; and, like the old Christians, with want and poverty, wander about in sheepskins and goatskins: though, if they should, that is not presently a sheep that wears the skin, nor would the sheep’s clothing change the nature of the wolf.
I conclude therefore, that all these pompous declamations against the evil of the present times, set
off by odious comparisons with the former, are the
voice of error and envy, of the worst of judges, malice and mistake: though I
cannot wonder if those assert
And thus much for the first consideration of the suppositions: as a thing false, and to be denied. I shall now,
II. In the second place, remit a little of this, and take it in a lower respect; as a case disputable, whether the preceding or succeeding generations are to be preferred: and here I shall dispute the matter on both sides.
1. And first for antiquity, and the former ages, we may plead thus. Certainly every thing is purest in the fountain, and most untainted in the original. The dregs are still the most likely to settle in the bottom, and to sink into the last ages. The world cannot but be the worse for wearing; and it must needs have contracted much dross, when at the last it cannot be purged but by an universal fire.
Things are most fresh and fragrant in their beginning. The first-born is the most honourable, and it is primogeniture that entitles to the inheritance: it is not present possessions, but an early pedigree, that gives nobility.
The older the world grows, the more decrepit it must be: for age bows the body, and so causes an obliquity: every course of time leaves its mark be hind it; and every century adds a wrinkle to the face of nature.
As for knowledge, the former age still teaches the latter; and which is likely to be most knowing, he that teaches, or he that is taught? The best and most compendious way of attaining wisdom is the reading of histories; but history speaks not of the present time, but of the former.
Besides, it was only the beginning of time that saw men innocent. Sin, like other things, receives growth by time, and improves by continuance: and every succeeding age has the bad example of one age more than the former. The same candle that refreshes when it is first light, smells and offends when it is going out.
In the alphabet of nature, it is only the first letter that is flourished. In short, there is as much difference between the present and former times, as there is between a copy and an original; that indeed may be fair, but this only is authentic. And be a copy never so exact, yet still it shines with a borrowed perfection, and has but the low praise of an imitation: and this may be said in behalf of the former times.
2. But secondly, for the preeminence of the succeeding ages above the former, it may be disputed thus.
If the honour be due to antiquity, then certainly the present age must claim it; for the world is now oldest, and therefore upon the very right of seniority may challenge the precedency: for certainly the longer the world lasts, the older it grows. And if wisdom ought to be respected, we know that it is the offspring of experience, and experience the child of age and continuance.
In every thing and action, it is not the beginning, but the end that is regarded: it is still the issue that crowns the work, and the amen that seals the petition: the plaudite is given to the last act: and Christ reserved the best wine to conclude the feast: nay, a fair beginning would be but the aggravation of a bad end.
And if we plead original, we know that sin is strongest in its original; and we are taught whence to date that. The lightest things float at the top of time; but if there be such a thing as a golden age, its mass and weight must needs sink it to the bottom and concluding ages of the world.
By having the histories of former ages, we have all their advantages by way of overplus, besides the proper advantages of our own; and so standing upon their shoulders, or rather upon their heads, cannot but have the further prospect.
Though the flourish begins the line, yet it is the period that makes the sense. As for the infirmities of age, we confess that men grow decrepit by time, but mankind does not. Policy, arts, and manufactures improve; and nature itself, as well as others, cannot be an artist, till it has served its time.
And, in religious matters, for the church, we know that it is Christ’s body, and therefore its most natural, commending property is growth: but growth is the effect of duration, and if it had had its greatest perfection at the first, growth would have been impossible.
Besides, we confess that prophecy was a thing appropriate to the first days of the church: but then it is not prophecy spoken, but fulfilled; not the promise made, but performed, which conveys the blessing; and though the giving of prophecies were the glory of the first times, yet their completion is the privilege of the latter.
But do we not see all this while, that by thus
ascribing the preeminence to former ages, we tacitly
reflect a reproach upon the great Maker and Governor of the universe? For can Omnipotence be at a
In sum, it was the fulness of time which brought Christ into the world; Christianity was a reserve for the last: and it was the beginning of time which was infamous for man’s fall and ruin: so in scripture they are called the last days, and the ends of the world, which are ennobled with his redemption.
But lastly, if the following ages were not the best, whence is it, that the older men grow, the more still they desire to live?—Now such things as these may be disputed in favour of the latter times beyond the former.
Having here brought the matter to this poise, to this equilibrium, that reflexive inquiry in the text concerning the worth of former times above the present, is eminently unreasonable in these two respects.
1. In respect of the nature of the thing itself; which we have seen is equally propendent to both parts, and not discernible which way the balance inclines: and nothing can be more irrational, than to be dogmatical in things doubtful; and to deter mine, where wise men only dispute.
2. In respect of the incompetence of any man
living to be judge in this controversy; and he that
is unfit to judge, I am sure is unable to decide. Now
that incompetence arises from this: that no man
can judge rightly of two things, but by comparing
them together; and compare them he cannot, unless
he exactly knew them both. But how can he know
But you will reply, that he may know them by the histories of those that writ of their own times.
To this I answer, that history may be justly suspected partial; and that historians report the virtues of their own age, selected and abstracted from the vices and defects; and if sometimes they mention the vices also, (as they do,) yet they only report the smaller, that they may with less suspicion conceal the greater. Now it is an unequal comparison to compare the select virtues of one age, with both the virtues and the vices of another.
History, stripped of partiality, would be a poor, thin, meager thing, and the volume would shrink into the index. I conclude therefore, that he who would decide this controversy, whether the former or latter times ought to have the preeminence, by the historians of those times, he properly does this; he first calls a man into question, and then makes him judge in his own cause, and at the best sees only by another’s eyes.
Come we now to the third and last ground.
3. That admitting this supposition as true, that the former ages are really the best, and to be preferred; yet still this querulous reflection upon the evil of the present times stands obnoxious to the same charge of folly; and if it be condemned also upon this supposition, I see not where it can take sanctuary: now that it ought to be so, I demonstrate by these reasons.
1. Because such complaints have no efficacy to
alter or remove the cause of them. Thoughts and
States are not altered, nor governments changed, because such an one is discontented, and tells us so in a sermon, or writes it in a book, and so prints himself a fool. Sad, undoubtedly, were our case, should God be angry with a nation as often as a preacher is pleased to be passionate, and to call his distemper the word of God.
A quill is but a weak thing to contest with a sceptre, and a satirical remonstrance to stand before a sword of justice. The laws will not be worded out of their course. The wheel will go on, though the fly sits and flutters and buzzes upon it.
It would be well if such persons would take Luther’s advice to Melancthon, and be persuaded to leave off to govern the world, and not to frame new politic ideas; not to raise models of state, and holy commonwealths, in their little discontented closets; nor to arraign a council before a conventicle; and being stripped of their arms, to fly to revelation; and when they cannot effect, at least prophesy a change.
Though there be a lion, a bull, a venomous ser
pent, and a fiery scorpion in the zodiac; yet still
the sun holds on his way, goes through them all,
brings the year about, finishes his course, shines,
and is glorious in spite of such opposition. The
maunderings of discontent are like the voice and
behaviour of a swine, who, when he feels it rain,
2. Such complaints of the evil of the times are irrational, because they only quicken the smart, and add to the pressure. Such querulous invectives against a standing government, are like a stone flung at a marble pillar, which not only makes no impression upon that, but rebounds, and hits the flinger in the face. Discontent burns only that breast in which it boils; and when it is not contented to be hot with in, but must boil over in unruly, unwarrantable expressions, to avoid the heat, it wisely takes refuge in the fire: hence, when the sea swells and rages, we say not improperly, that the sea itself is troubled.
Submission is that which either removes or lightens the burden. Giving way either avoids or eludes the blow; and where an enemy or an affliction is too strong, patience is the best defiance.
And herein does the admirable wisdom of God
appear, in modelling the great economy of the world, so uniting public and
private advantages, that those affections and dispositions of mind, that are
most conducible to the safety of government and society, are also most
advantageous to every man in his own personal capacity: for does not an humble,
compliant subjection at the same time strengthen the hands of the magistrate,
and bless the person that has it with the privileges of quiet and content? He
who has content, has that for which others would be great; he both secures and
enjoys himself: but, on the contrary, he that frets, and fumes, and is angry, he
raises tumults abroad, and feels the same within: as
he that cries, and roars, and makes a noise, first
In short, discontent is as laborious as useless: and he who will rebel must reckon upon the cost and conduct of an army; and endure the trouble of watching, as well as use the dissimulation of praying.
3. Thirdly and lastly, these censorious complaints of the evil of the times are irrational, because the just cause of them is resolvable into ourselves. It is not the times that debauch men, but men that derive and rabb a contagion upon the time: and it is still the liquor that first taints and infects the vessel.
Time is harmless; it passes on, and meddles with none: the sun rises, the year proceeds, and the sea sons return, according to the decrees of nature, and the inviolate constancy of a perpetual course. And is it not irrational for a man to cast the errors of his choice upon the necessity of fate? or to complain that men speak low, because his hearing is decayed? and to utter satires and declamations against those times which his own vice has made bad? and, like Amnon, defile his sister, and then loathe her for the wrong he did her?
Thus we use to say, it is the room that smokes, when indeed it is the fire which is in the room: and it is still the fault of the common banter or way of speaking, to disjoin the accusation and the crime, and to charge a land with the vices of its inhabitants.
But I should think, that it might not be so difficult a thing to find out a way both to remedy the
But it is a sure, though no new observation, that the most obnoxious are still the most querulous: that discontent, and the cause of it, are generally from the same person: and that, when once the remorses of guilt and villainy improve into discontent, it is not less difficult to make such persons contented, than to make them innocent.
Rigour and contempt are the best correctors of
this distemper. And he who thinks that such persons may be pacified, may as well attempt to satisfy
For where interests are contradictory, (as in all societies or companies of men some must needs be,) there an universal satisfaction is just in the same measure possible, in which contradictions are reconcileable. And doubtless there have been those, who have heartily cursed that rain or sunshine, for which others have as heartily prayed.
Even our blessed Saviour himself, we read, in
To whom be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.
Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him: lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.
Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.
IN these words Christ endeavours to enforce that high and noble duty of an amicable concord and agreement betwixt brethren; the greatest bond of society, and the most becoming ornament of religion: and since it is to be supposed that men’s frailty and passion will sometimes carry them out to a violation and breach of it, and, if not prevented, settle in a fixed and lasting rancour; he prescribes the antidote of a speedy reconcilement, as the only sovereign and certain remedy against the poisonous ferment of so working a distemper. If an injury be once done, Christ will have the repentance almost as early as the provocation; the rupture drawn up as soon as made; the angry word eaten as soon as uttered, and in a manner disowned before it is quite spoke; that so men’s quickness in the one may in some measure answer and compound for their hastiness in the other.
And since those are always the strongest and most effectual addresses to the mind of man, that press a duty not only by the proposal of rewards to such as perform, but also of punishments to such as neglect it, Christ therefore shews us the necessity of immediately making peace with our injured brother, from the unavoidable misery of those obstinate wretches that persist in and (as much as in them lies) perpetuate an injury; and being mortal them selves, yet affect a kind of immortality in their mutual hatreds and animosities.
As for the words, some understand them in a literal, and some in a figurative sense.
Those who take them literally affirm, that Christ intended no parable in them at all, but by adversary meant any man whom we had injured, any one that has an action against us; and by way, a way, properly so taken; and by a judge, officer, and prison, an earthly judge, officer, and prison. And thus Chrysostom understands them, according to the strict acceptation of the letter, affirming that Christ’s whole scope and intent was to terrify men from being injurious to their brethren, by shewing what severe, inexorable usage would attend such as should offend in this kind.
Others will have the whole scheme of the text figurative, and to be understood only in a spiritual sense: according to which opinion, it will be requisite to give some short account of the several terms contained therein, and to shew briefly and distinctly what may spiritually be meant by each of them.
1. And first for the word adversary. Not to traverse the various and differing opinions of commentators; if the form of the words should be only tropical
2. By the way is meant the time of this life; or rather the present opportunities of repentance, which last not always as long as life lasts. These are the happy seasons of making up all differences with a threatening law and an accusing conscience; the great pathway of peace, in which we may meet and join hands with our angry adversary, and so close up all those fatal breaches through which the wrath of an ireful judge may hereafter break in upon us.
3. By judge is meant, as we have intimated al
ready, the great God of heaven, who at the last and
great day shall judge the world. We may behold
4. By officer, as we also hinted before, is to be meant the Devil, the great gaoler of souls, the cruel and remorseless executioner of that last and terrible sentence, which the righteous Judge of heaven and earth shall award to all impenitent sinners.
5. By prison, no doubt, is meant hell, that vast, wide, comprehensive receptacle of damned spirits, from whence there is no redemption or return. As for that larger signification that some would fasten upon the word here, there is no solid ground for it, either in the context or the reason of the thing itself. Hell is a prison large enough already, and we need not enlarge it by our expositions.
6. And lastly, by paying the uttermost farthing must be signified the guilty person’s being dealt with according to the utmost rigour and extremity of justice. For when the sinner is once lodged in that sad place, his punishment can have neither remission nor extenuation: but there must be an exact commensuration between the guilt and the penalty; which must be adjusted according to the strictest measures of the law. For mercy has no more to do, when justice is once commanded to do its office.
All these things are very easy and obvious, and I cannot but think it needless to insist any longer upon them.
And thus I have given you both the literal and
the figurative sense of the words; and if it be now
asked, which of them is to take place, I answer, that
First, that every parable is made up of two parts.
1. The material, literal part, which is contained in those bare words and expressions in which it is set down.
2. The formal, spiritual part, or application of the parable; which consists of those things that are further signified to us under those literal expressions.
The other thing to be observed is, that this spiritual part, or application of the parable, is some
times expressed and positively set down in terminis:
as in St.
Now these two rules thus premised, we are to observe further, that in the application of the parable,
and bringing the two parts of it together, the literal
and the spiritual, we are not to search after a nice
and exact agreement between them in every particular; but to attend only to their correspondence in
the design, drift, and purpose of the parable. Which
design doubtless in these words is no other than to
You know that in matters between man and man,
when one has trespassed against another, if the party
offending, while he has opportunity to make his
peace with the party offended, shall neglect it, so
that the matter comes at length to be brought before
the judge, he is then to look for nothing but the
most rigorous penalty of the law without mitigation.
Just so it is between God and man: if any one sins
against God, whether by offending his brother, or by
any other kind of sin whatsoever, if he does not
speedily and prudently lay hold on the opportunity
of reconciling himself to God in this life, when God
shall enter into judgment with him in the next, there
will then be no mercy for him, but, according to the
exact tenor of a righteous, indispensable law, he
must abide the woful, irreversible sentence of eternal
death. This is a compendious paraphrase upon the
text, setting forth the full meaning of our Saviour in
it. So that from what has been laid down, I shall
1. That the time of this life is the only time for a sinner to make his peace with, and to reconcile himself to God.
2. That the consideration, that the time of this life is the only time for a sinner to reconcile himself to God in, ought to be a prevailing, unanswerable argument to engage and quicken his repentance.
3. That if a sinner lets pass this season of making his peace with God, he irrecoverably falls into an estate of utter perdition.
I shall single out the second for the subject of the present discourse, and take in the rest under the arguments by which I shall prove it.
The proposition therefore to be handled is this, That the consideration, &c. Now this shall be made appear these three ways.
I. By comparing the shortness of life with the difficulty of this work.
II. By comparing the uncertainty of life with the necessity of it. And,
III. and lastly, by considering the sad and fatal doom that will infallibly attend the neglect of it.
I. And for the first of these. Let us compare
the shortness of life with the greatness and difficulty
of the work here set before us. What is a man’s whole life, but the inconsiderable measure of a span?
and yet the vast business of eternity is crowded
into this poor compass. It is a transitory puff of
wind; while it breathes, it expires. The years of
our life are but too fitly styled in holy writ the days
of our life. Man takes his breath but short, and
that is an argument that it is always departing.
And now, if upon this transient survey of the
shortness of life we could find that our business
were as small as our age is short, it would be some
relief to us however. But on the contrary, the
work of our lives is long, difficult, tedious, and comprehensive, such as could easily exhaust and take
up the utmost period of the most extended age, and
still cry out for more. And if so, then certainly, to
have a large task enjoined, and but a poor pittance
of time to discharge it in, to have a large tale of
brick required, and a small allowance of straw to
prepare it with, cannot but be a great and heart-discouraging disadvantage. Yet this is our case;
our sin has cut short our time, and enlarged our
work: as it is with a man going up an hill, and falling backwards; his journey is thereby made longer,
and his strength weaker. Seneca, speaking of the
shortness of life, says, that we did not first receive it
short, but have made it so. But by his favour, nature gave it but short; and we, by ill husbanding it,
have made it much shorter; spending vainly and
Now the difficulty of this business will appear from these considerations.
1st, Because in this business thou art to clear thy
self of an injury done to an infinite, offended justice,
to appease an infinite wrath, and an infinite, provoked majesty. And this must needs be no small
or ordinary work; for who can stand before them!
Wherefore it is the highest prudence to engage in it
betimes, and to take up injuries between God and
thy soul as speedily as may be. For if God should
go to law with thee, or thou with him, thou wert
undone for ever. He who goes to law with this
king, is like to have but bad success. No flesh
living (says the Psalmist) shall in thy sight be justified. Certainly the consideration of thy debts should
2dly, The other cause of the difficulty of making
thy peace with God appears from this, that thou art
utterly unable of thyself to give him any thing by
Can a man pay his old debts by discharging his
present? Can the creature oblige God by any good
duty, when it is God himself that enables him to
perform that duty? It may be said, that Christ has
engaged to make the soul’s peace, to clear off his
debts to God. True: but then the soul engages in
a new debt of faith and obedience to Christ. And
here all the stress of the business lies, how the soul
will be able to pay off this, and to secure itself a
well-grounded interest and confidence in Christ; to
take him in respect of all his offices; not only to be
saved, but also to be ruled by him; not only as a
priest, but also as a king. This will drink up and
engross all that the soul can do and endeavour: all
the strength and time allotted in this world is little
enough to do such works as may prove the sincerity
of its faith. For whatsoever relation faith may have
to works, whether as to a part, or to a consequent
to it; it is certainly such a thing as indispensably
obliges the whole of a man’s following life to a
strict, constant, and universal obedience to the laws
of Christ. But that which ought chiefly to quicken
the soul to a sudden improvement of the perishing
time of this life, in making its peace with God, is
And thus much concerning the first argument to prove the doctrine, drawn from our comparing the shortness of life with the greatness and difficulty of the work.
II. The second argument is taken from our comparing the uncertainty of life with the necessity of the
work. Life, as it is short, so it is dubious; like a
problematical question, concise, but doubtful. None
can promise beyond the present. Who can secure
to himself the enjoyment of a year, nay of one day,
one hour? Thou fool, this night shall thy soul be taken from thee,
Now this being considered and duly pondered in
one scale of the balance, and the necessity of making
our peace in the other, how should it incite us to a
serious, present endeavour for the accomplishment
of this work! Can two walk together, unless they
be agreed? says the prophet Amos, iii. 3. Canst
thou walk quietly with God, while he is thy adversary? Will not the consideration of this, that thou
art going to the judge, and the way is short, and
thy adversary ready to give in an accusation against
thee, whet thy importunity to make an agreement
with him? Thy endeavours are not serious and rational, unless they are present and immediate. That
endeavour is only rational, which is according to the
exigency of the thing. Now the business of thy
soul is the matter thou art to engage in, and thou
art only sure of the present time to manage it in.
Unless this be laid hold of, thou dost really trifle in
the business of eternity, and dost only embrace a
pretence, instead of a serious intention. Things that
are earnestly desired, and withal not to be delayed,
are effected with an immediate expedition. If I am
uncertain when my enemy will invade me, I will
And thus much concerning the second argument drawn from the uncertainty of life, compared with he necessity of the work.
III. The third argument to prove that the consideration, that the time of life is the only time of
making peace with God, ought to quicken us to a
speedy repentance, may be taken from considering
Now the misery and terror of this doom consists in two things.
1. That it is inevitable, it cannot be avoided.
2. That it is irreversible, it cannot be revoked. And this takes in the substance of the third doctrine, viz. That if a soul let pass this season of making its peace with God, it immediately falls into a state of irrecoverable perdition.
1. This doom is inevitable, it cannot be avoided. When we have
to do with a strong enemy, if we cannot fly from him, we must of necessity fall
by him. If we cannot outrun vengeance, we must endure it. The poor soul is now fallen into an ocean
of endless misery, and if it cannot swim, or bear up
itself, must sink. The place of torment is before
thee, and an infinite power behind thee, to drive
thee into it; therefore in thou must, there is no remedy; no ways to escape, unless thou canst either
outwit God or overpower him. All possibility of
escaping an evil must be either by hiding one’s self
from it, and so keeping ourselves from that; or by
repulsing it, and so keeping that from us. But either
of these are impossible for thee to do, when thou art
environed on this side by an omniscience, on the
other by an omnipotence. We read of those that
shall cry unto the mountains to fall upon them, and
to the rocks to cover them from the face of the
Lamb, and of him that sitteth upon the throne,
2. This doom is irreversible, it cannot be revoked.
It is proper to any word, when once spoken, to fly
away beyond all possibility of a recall; but much
more to every decretory word of God, which the deliberate resolutions of an infinitely wise judge have
made unchangeable. The word is gone out of God’s mouth in righteousness; it shall not return: God’s condemning sentence admits of no repeal.
The
Strength of Israel is not a man, or the son of man,
that he should repent,
If the sinner falls into destruction, there he must
lie for ever without recovery. I sink, says David,
in the mire, where there is no standing,
All the application I shall make shall be to urge
over the same duty enjoined in the text upon the
score of another argument, and that also couched in
the words, Agree with thine adversary quickly,
whiles thou art in the way; yea, for this very reason, because thou art in the way.
As long as there
is life, there is hope, we say; and so, as long as
there is the enjoyment of a temporal life, there may
be just hope of an eternal. These days of thy respite, they are golden days: every hour presents
thee with salvation; every day lays heaven and happiness at thy door. Wherefore
go forth, and meet thy adversary; do not fly off and say, There is a lion in the
way; that he is austere, and hard to be appeased. No, he does not come clothed with thunder
and terror, but with all the sweetness and inviting
tenderness that mercy itself can put on. Thou hast
O consider then this thy inestimable advantage,
that thou art yet in the way, yet in a possibility,
nay in a probability of reconcilement. Thou art not
put to sue for terms of peace, but only to accept of
those that are freely offered and prepared to thy
hand. Close in with such a potent adversary; it is
thy wisdom, thy eternal interest, thy life; thou
mayest so carry the business, as to turn thy enemy
into thy Saviour. Wherefore take that excellent
advice of the Spirit, with which I shall conclude,
But all their works they do for to be seen of men.
IT is strange to consider the great difference both of the principle and quality of most of those actions that in the world carry the same reputation. Of this we have here a notable instance in a sect of men amongst the Jews called the pharisees; who made as glorious an appearance, and had as high a vogue for piety, as the best. Their righteousness and good works so glistered, that they even dashed the judging faculties of those who judged more by seeing than by weighing: and doubtless they were in shew so exactly good, that no argument from appearance could decide the difference.
And yet, like those trees which are fair and flourishing at the top from the dung that lies at the root, the principle of all these good works was a sinful appetite, an appetite of glory, an ambitious desire; sinful perhaps in itself, but certainly so in its application to such a design. Yet, however sinful it was in the nature of an appetite, we see it was very strong and operative in the nature of a principle; and such an one as wrought men to great heights in the outward and splendid side of religion.
My design at this time is from these words to inquire into the force of this principle in reference to
And this I shall do under these four heads.
I. I shall shew that a love of glory is sufficient to produce all those virtuous actions that are visible in the lives of those that profess religion.
II. I shall shew whence this affection comes to have such an influence upon our actions.
III. I shall shew the inability of it to be a sufficient motive to engage mankind in virtuous actions, without the assistance of religion.
IV. I shall shew that even those actions that it does produce are yet of no value at all in the sight of God.
For the first of these, that the love of glory is able to produce all those virtuous actions that are visible in the lives of those that profess religion.
This I prove first from this, that it actually has
produced them, and therefore it is able to produce
them: for this, let the noblest and most virtuous of
the heathens be an instance; whose outward virtues
few Christians equal, but none transcend: yet they
were acted in all by a thirst of that glory that followed
those performances. For into what will you resolve
the industry of the philosophers, the chastity of Scipio and Alexander, the liberality of Augustus, the
severity of Cato, the integrity of Fabricius, but into
a desire of being famous for each of these perfections?
See what a round and open profession of this Tully
makes in his defence of Archias the poet! We know
he had behaved himself with great virtue and resolution in the behalf of his country against Clodius
and Catiline; but what induced him? Was it either
love of the virtuous action itself, or hopes to gain by
And after that he had proved that other great men acted upon the same principle; for how came they else to be so fond of poets and historians, the great instruments and propagators of their fame? he then gathers up all into this general conclusion; Nullam virtus aliam mercedem laborum periculorumque desiderat praeter hanc laudis et gloriae: qua quidem detracta, quid est quod in hoc tam exiguo vitae curriculo, et tam brevi, tantis nos in laboribus exerceamus? You see now the springhead from whence streamed all the splendid and renowned moral actions of these persons.
Nay, in persons of a much inferior rank and apprehension, we have the same principle working them
to a degree of abstinence equal to the greatest austerities and instances of mortification seen nowadays
in persons religious. Those that used to run and
wrestle in the public games, what strange abridgments did they suffer both as to the kind and measure of their food! what abstinence from wine and
women, and all other luxury, did they constantly tie
themselves up to! The apostle Paul gives them this
testimony in
But further, that even in those that profess religion, religion is not always the commanding, producing principle of their best actions, the very example
of the pharisees will demonstrate. For what almost
could be outwardly done, which these men did not
do with great advantage, pomp, and solemnity of
performance? They were frequent in prayer, they
gave alms, they were exact in their tithings even to
mint and cummin; they sat in the seat of Moses,
and taught sometimes so well, that Christ, in
We have seen what the pharisees did; but what was the first moving cause that bore them up to such a pitch of acting? Why, that they might be talked of and admired; in a word, that they might be seen of men. They gave alms indeed, but it was with trumpets and proclamations. They prayed; but it was standing in the streets, with a design more to be seen here below, than to be heard above. They fasted; but then they disfigured themselves, wore a sad countenance and a drooping head, that they might gain notice and observation, and so feed their ambition. They pretended great zeal to the law; but carried it more in their phylacteries than their hearts, and in the borders of their garments more than their lives. All their teaching was in order to be called rabbi; to be treated with public and pompous salutations; to be cringed to in solemn meetings; to be at the top of every public feast and assembly. The whole design of all that pageantry and show of piety that they amused the world withal, was nothing but noise, and vogue, and popularity: this was the breath that blew up their devotion to such an high and a blazing flame.
And are not many Christians, though differing from them in religion, yet the very same men; and owe all those shows and forms of godliness, which they have clothed themselves withal, to the influence of the same spurious principle? How many appear devout, and zealous, and frequent in the service of God, only to court the esteem of the world, or perhaps to acquit themselves to the eye of a superior!
How vast a distance is there between their inside
and their outside; between the same men as they
open themselves in private, and as they sustain an
2. That the love of glory is sufficient to produce all those virtuous actions, that are visible in the lives of those that profess religion, appears further from hence; that there is nothing visible in the very best actions, but what may proceed from the most depraved principles, if acted by prudence, caution, and design. And if piety be not requisite to their production, I am sure the next principle, for influence and activity, is a man’s concernment for his reputation.
Now that a principle, short of piety, is able to exert the fairest performances that bear the name of pious, is clear from this, that there is no external discrimination of the hypocrite from the sincere person: what one does, the same is done by the other. He that should see a stone that is shot from a sling, and a bird fly in the air at the same time, were he ignorant of their nature, could not, by any mark of discovery inherent in the motions themselves, know one to be natural, and the other to be violent. And Christ pronounces, that in the great day of disco very, many that are first shall be last; that is, those who had the highest esteem for piety, grounded upon the gloss of an outwardly virtuous behaviour, shall be found to have had but little reality, and so be rewarded accordingly.
This therefore being proved, who can deny but a
sense of honour, and a touch of ambition, may sup
ply the room of a better principle in those outward
We know designs much inferior to this are able to bear a man up to such a pitch. The designs of gain, which are the lowest and basest that can be, and put a man upon the most sordid and inferior practices: yet these are able to inspire him with such an impetus, as is able to raise him to a shew of piety; so that the vilest person shall appear godly, when, in a literal sense, he shall find that godliness is great gain.
Nay, the design of pleasure and sensuality may make a man undergo many religious austerities, and sacrifice a less pleasure to the hope of a greater. For in the great instance of mortification, which is fasting, what were all the fasts and humiliations of the late reformers, but the forbearing of dinners? that is, the enlarging the stowage, and the redoubling the appetite, for a larger supper; in which the dinner was rather deferred, than took away.
But now the design of glory is as much above these, as the mind of a Caesar above the mind of a farmer or an usurer; or the applauses of the learned and the knowing above the entertainments of a kitchen. And therefore, if those ignoble appetites were able to advance a man to so high a strain, certainly the other, which has the same activity, and a greater nobility, must needs do it much more. And thus much for the first thing.
II. I come now to the second, which is to shew, whence this affection comes to have such an influence upon our actions.
The reasons, I conceive, may be these.
1. Because glory is the proper pleasure of the mind. That which pleases is by the Latins called jucundum: and I find this jucundum, by a certain author, of some repute in the world, divided into that of the body, and that of the mind. That of the body is properly the perception of those pleasing objects that respectively belong to the five senses; but that of the mind he affirms to be glory: which, I think, may be properly defined or described, the complacency that a man finds within himself, arising from his conceit of the opinion that another has of some excellency or perfection in him. For as pride is the opinion that a man has of his own perfection, so glory is the pleasure that he takes, from the opinion that another has of it. And experience shews, that the perception of harmonious sounds do not more please the ear, nor sweet things the taste, than the opinion of this does affect and please the mind. It was the speech of Dionysius, concerning his parasites and flatterers, that though he knew that what they said was false, yet he could not but find himself pleased with it. And Themistocles, being pointed at in the public theatres and meetings, confessed, that the pleasure he took in it did amply reward all those great exploits that he had done for his country.
Now that this so intimately affects the mind with
pleasure, appears from the great regret and trouble
that the mind feels from its contrary, which is scorn
and disgrace. There is nothing that pierces the apprehensive mind so keenly and intolerably as this.
It depresses the spirits, restrains the freedom, and
contracts the largeness of the thoughts. A man that
From whence it follows, since glory so much enamours, and disgrace so much afflicts the soul of man, that it is no wonder, if the acquiring of one, and the avoiding of the other, so potently commands all our actions. For what are actions, but the servants of our appetites? And what are all the labours of men laid out upon, but to acquire to themselves such objects as either please their senses, or gratify their more noble desires?
And certainly there are some tempers in the world, that can set up as late, and rise as early, and endure as much trouble, to purchase the pleasure of their mind, as others do for that of the senses. Sallust, in the character that he gives of Lucius Sylla the dictator, amongst other things, sets down this, and it is for his commendation, that he was voluptatum ciipidus, sed gloriae cupidior: though he loved his cups and his women too well, yet still he commanded them as well as his army; and had rather court honour with the hardships and dangers of the field, and with hunger and thirst, and toilsome watchings, arrive at length to the glories of a triumph.
And no wonder; for the pleasures that lie in the
gratifications of the senses are transient, and short,
and perishing, as those gratifications are themselves:
but the pleasure of a glorious object is lasting; it is
treasured up in the memory, and the mind may have
recourse to it as often as it will. He that eats a
luscious morsel, or sees a fine picture, is pleased as
The same also holds in the contrary of glory, which is disgrace, compared to all those pains that afflict the body, which are afflictive just so long as they actually possess the part which they aggrieve; but their influence lasts no longer than their presence. Nobody is therefore in pain to-day, because his head ached a month ago; nobody feels the torments of a cured gout, nor languishes with the remembrance of a removed sickness. Nay, he is rather so much the more refreshed, by how much a former pain gives a man a quicker sense of his present ease.
But it is otherwise in the afflictions of dishonour: this, wheresoever it fastens, leaves its marks behind it. It torments the mind with an abiding anguish. A man cannot lay it down; it incorporates into his condition. It is a pain not to be slept away, and a scar not to be worn off. He eats, he travels, he lies down and rises up with it. It is an emblem of hell, irksome and perpetual.
And being so, we need seek for no further cause
why these affections so entirely command a man, as
to every faculty both of body and soul. A man
would do any thing to secure his honour and his
reputation; that is, to live while he is alive, and not
to be the scorn and laughingstock of a company of
worthless, pitiful, and contemptible persons, who
2. The second reason, that this affection of glory comes to have so strong an influence upon our actions, is from this; that it is founded in the innate desire of superiority that is in every man. One man desires to be greater and better than another, and consequently to be thought so. Nature has placed us in the lower region of the world, but for all that we aspire; it has cast us upon the earth, but still we rebound.
If it be here demanded, whence this desire arises, and upon what it is founded; I answer, that it is founded upon the very natural love that we bear to our being, and the preservation of it. For every degree of superiority, or greater perfection, is a further defence set upon a man’s being: as he that is powerful, rich, wise, or the like, has those means of securing his being, that he, who is destitute of power, riches, and wisdom, has not. So much as any man is above another, so much he thinks himself safer than another.
But now it is the great effect of glory and fame thus to raise a man: hence the very word, by which we express the praising of one, is to extol him; that is, to lift him up: for honour properly sets a man above the crowd; it makes him, like Saul, higher by the head than the rest of his brethren.
Hereupon, since the desire of superiority is such a
restless affection, engaging a man in the highest and
hardest attempts; and since the desire of glory is
grafted upon it, and indeed is subservient to it; it
is a matter of no hard resolution to find out, whence
For what is it that makes the practice of religion irksome and difficult, but that it thwarts the inferior appetites of sense? which being thwarted, will be sure to make a considerable opposition. But now, if an appetite stronger and more active than those of sense strikes in with religion, it will render its conquest over them easy and effectual: and such an one I affirm to be the appetite of glory; which certainly rules more or less in every one, who has not degenerated into a brute so far, as to have fastened his designs to the earth, and his desires to his trencher.
But besides a desire of superiority, there is also a
desire of greatness, (for I know no other name to
give it,) which is equally predominant in men, and
equally served and promoted by fame and honour:
for does not this, as it were, diffuse a man, and extend him to the wideness and capacity of the world?
That little bulk that is contained in this or that
room, in its fame carries a circumference greater
and larger than a nation. Glory makes a man present in ten thousand places at once, and gives him
a kind of ubiquity, and that without labour or motion: while he sits still, he travels over the universe;
he crosses the seas, and yet never passes the continent; he visits all nations, and perhaps never stirs
abroad. But his fame, like lightning, makes him
shine from one end of the heavens to the other. No
wonder therefore, since glory itself is able thus to
3. The third and last reason that I shall assign, why this affection of glory comes to have such an influence upon our actions, is, because it is indeed the great instrument of life to have a fair reputation, and really opens a man a way into all the advantages of it. For who would employ a profane person, or trust a known atheist? And he that is counted neither fit to be employed or trusted, may go out of the world, for he is like to find but little happiness in it. The repute of a man’s principles, his conscience and honesty, is that which represents a man worthy to be used and preferred; and the repute of a man’s principles grows out of the external fairness of his practices.
All the accommodations of life, as power, wealth,
offices, and friends, are often derivable from the
good opinion that men have procured themselves by
the outward and seeming piety of their behaviour.
For the proof of which, take but the instance of the
late times: more than a show of piety I think none
will allow them, that well understood them; but a
show they had, and so wisely did they manage it,
that the opinion which the vulgar had of their saintship was such an engine in their hands, that by it
they could turn and wield them to all their designs
and purposes as they pleased. They plundered, and
oppressed, and robbed men of their estates: yes, but
they did it preaching and praying, and abstaining
from swearing, drinking, and the like, and composing themselves to the rigours of an appearing virtue
and sobriety. Not but that they had an appetite to
Let this therefore pass for another great cause, why the affection of glory so engages and rules the practices of men, viz. that it does indeed serve a real interest, and is resolved into the utile, the idol of profit so much adored by mankind. It is to very great purpose for a man to be esteemed; for he that is so, will at length be something more. Fame is indeed but a breath and a wind; yet even the wind is that which carries the ship, and brings the treasure into the merchant’s bosom.
And thus much for the second general head proposed for the handling of the words, viz. to shew whence this affection comes to have such an influence upon men’s actions.
III. Pass we now to the third; which is to shew the inability of it to be a sufficient motive to engage mankind in virtuous actions without the assistance of religion.
In order to the proof of which, I shall premise two considerations.
1. That virtue and a good life determines not in outward
practices, but respects the most inward actions
Piety lodges in the regions of the heart; and when the body is immured in prison, or withered by sickness, an active soul feels none of those impediments, but is free to the exercise of virtue or vice; and by inward volitions or aversations can supply the want of outward performances.
A man may act like a saint before men, and like a devil before God; and on the contrary, appear but mean outwardly, and yet be all-glorious within. Otherwise virtue would be but an outside, and sit but as a varnish upon the forehead; and he that looked upon the body would be as competent a judge of it, as he that searched the heart. But colour is not health; he that looks pale, may be sound and vigorous; and he that wears the rose upon his cheeks may have rottenness in his bones.
Virtue and vice are the perfection and pollution
of the soul; that is, of a being in its nature spiritual,
and consequently invisible; whereupon they must be
such also themselves. The scene of their acting is
the conscience; and conscience has an eye over a
man’s most inward and retired behaviour; it spies
out the first infant essays and inclinations of virtues,
and encourages them, and discerns the first movings
and ebullitions of concupiscence, and severely checks
So that a man is indeed condemned before the world knows him to be an offender, and has made a very great progress in sin before he comes to execute and declare it by visible practices. But yet the man is a vile person, a stranger to virtue and goodness, as well when he is concealed, as when the light shews him to a public detestation. The swine is as filthy when he lies close in his stye, as when he comes forth and shakes his nastiness in the street. Let this therefore be the first previous consideration, that virtue and vice chiefly respect the inward, invisible behaviours of the soul.
2. The second consideration is this; that the principle of honour or glory governs a man’s actions entirely by the judgment and opinion of the world concerning them. The grand proposals, that a man acted by this principle makes to himself upon every undertaking, and which either licenses or rescinds his designed action, is, What will the world say of me, if I do thus or thus? He never says, Is it pious, or generous, or suitable to a rational soul? or is it contrary to all these, and unbecoming the strictness of the religion I profess, and the ingenuity of being really what I am thought to be? Is it such an action as would blush in the dark, and needs not the sun and the day to discover its deformity?
No, these are none of the questions or the demurs, that such an one troubles himself withal; if
the action be safe and secret, let it be dirty, and ill-favoured.
Now these two considerations premised, I affirm that the principle of honour is utterly insufficient to engage and argue men into the practice of virtue, in these following cases.
1. When by ill customs and perverse discourses a vice comes to have a reputation, or at least no disreputation in the judgment of a nation: and that this so falls out sometimes is evident. Some nations have allowed of simple fornication; some have so far perverted that which we call nature, as to count it lawful, nay laudable, for a son to have his own mother in marriage, as Quintus Curtius reports of some of the Persians. The Lacedemonians would commend and reward their children when they could thieve and rob dexterously. Many have counted self-murder in many cases an heroic action, and be coming a man of courage and philosophy. For a son to defraud his parents, and to give that which he purloined from them, or at least withheld from them in their indigence and necessity, to holy uses, was, in the judgment of our Saviour, a great sin, and a perversion of the divine law: yet the pharisees from Moses’s chair authorized it, as hugely suitable to that law, and an action of sublime devotion.
Now that the forementioned practices were highly
unlawful, and inconsistent with piety and virtue, is
most certain; yet passing current in the world by
public warrant, and the countenance of general use,
But now, God would have made but very short provisions to engage men in duty, if he had not bound it upon them by such a principle, as should universally be able to oblige them in all cases, and in all circumstances of condition, in which it concerned them to be virtuous, and to abhor and shun the contrary vices. But it is clear, that a man’s tenderness of his honour cannot be that principle; for that looks only upon what is allowed and countenanced: but sin is sin, and consequently damnable, whether custom revenges it with a gibbet, or adorns it with a garland. And the divine tribunal will punish an incestuous person, a pilfering Lacedemonian, a self-murdering Roman or Athenian, and an undutiful Jew, as much as it would a person guilty of these crimes in any of those nations, where they are cried down, detested, and revenged by the hand of public justice; did not the infamy of such actions in those places by accident state the guilt of the persons that committed them under an higher aggravation.
And this, in my judgment, may be one reason
amongst others, why God is so severely angry at
national sins; or such sins as have at least an influence upon the manners of a nation, though committed by a few persons, viz. that by this means
there is a reputation given to sin, and the shame
But now by this, one of the great instruments by which Providence governs the societies of men, and controls the course of sin, is made utterly frustrate to this purpose. This instrument is the shame that attends upon base and wicked actions; a great curb to the fury of some men’s inclinations, and consequently a great mound and bank against that torrent of villainy, that would otherwise break in upon society: for the better understanding of which, we must observe, that as God, in the great work of governing the world, has several purposes upon several men, so he effects those purposes by several means.
Some men he intends to save, and to prepare for
another world, and their hearts he renews and
changes by a supernatural, ineffable, and prevailing
operation of his grace. But others he intends only
to civilize, and to fit them to converse in this world;
and these he governs, not by any supernatural change
wrought upon them, but by the principles of natural
affections, as fear, shame, and the like; which shall
suit them to society, by restraining their extravagant
and furious appetites within bounds and measures.
And of all these principles, there is none such a
bridle in the jaws of an unregenerate person, as the
dread of shame upon the commission of things unlawful and indecent. But now, if custom and countenance takes off the shame, and paints the Jezebel,
and gives a gloss and a reputation to a vile action,
why this cord is snapt asunder; and the principle
If to have been a rebel is no shame, provided a man be rich, potent, or factious; and to have been loyal is no honour; but to be poor, though loyalty were the cause of it, is a great dishonour; I would fain know, what principles of honour could engage a man to draw his sword in his prince’s defence, or tie his hands when it lies fair for his advantage to rebel. Nothing but conscience and a sense of duty can have any obliging influence upon him in this case; for all arguments from credit or reputation dissolve, and break, and vanish into air.
Now certainly the thought of this should add caution to the behaviour of persons of eminence, and such as sit at the top of affairs, and attract the eyes of a nation: for their practice of any sin leaves a colour, and imprints a kind of an authority upon it; so that the shame of it comes at length to be took away, and with that the strongest dissuasive that averts the natural ingenuity of man from vile and enormous practices.
And this is the first case in which a principle of honour, without the aid of religion, is insufficient to engage men in the practice of virtue, viz. when the contrary vice comes, in the general judgment of a people, to lose its infamy and disrepute.
2. Another case, in which the same principle is in sufficient for the same purpose, is, when a man can pursue his vice secretly and indiscernibly; and that he may do two ways.
(1.) When he entertains it in his thoughts, affections, and desires. These are the cabinet councils of
the soul; and it is certain that God does not take
But now, if a man shall take a pleasure to gratify and cherish a corrupt humour by the services of fancy, and desire, and imagination representing to it suitable sinful objects; why he knows himself out of the reach, and consequently out of the awe, of any moral inspection; there is no prying into the transactions of thought, no overhearing the whispers of fancy, no getting into the little close cabals of desires and affections, when they contrive and reflect upon their own pleasures, and laugh at all external spectators. And if so, what influence can the care of credit and honour have upon them, which only regards and fears those eyes that can look no further than the body? The credit of any action is safe, where it is not discerned; for as no vicious person, though ever so slavishly tender of his credit, would be afraid to do an indecent thing before a blind man, or to speak indecent words before the deaf; so the greatest enormities may be securely thought over and desired even in the concourse of theatres and the face of the world.
(2.) The other instance of a man’s pursuing his vice secretly is, when though it passes from desire into practice, yet it is acted with such circumstances of external concealment, that it is out of the notice and arbitration of all observers. This, I confess, from the very nature of the thing, is not altogether so secure as the former; yet it is sufficient to render all checks or restraints from credit utterly inefficacious.
There is none indeed who loves his sin so well, as to dare to own the satisfaction of it in the market place, in a church, or upon an exchange; common sense of honour is able to overrule the luxuriancies of vice upon these occasions and places: for there is no generally condemned practice so impudent, as to desire to be public, to be gazed and pointed at, and run down by an universal outcry and detestation.
But when a man has contrived and cast the commission of his sin into such opportunities of darkness and retirement, that, in the sinful satisfaction of his flesh, he acts as invisibly as if he was a spirit; what stop can the fear of shame give to him in such practices? For shame never reaches beyond sight; and we suppose the sinner now to have placed himself out of the eye of every thing but of omniscience and of conscience; which also, in the present case, we suppose him not to fear.
For he that has no principle to withhold him from villainy, but the dread of infamy, has no God but public opinion, and no conscience but his own convenience. And therefore having, by much dress, and secrecy, and dissimulation, as it were periwigged his sin, and covered his shame, he looks after no other innocence but concealment, nor counts any thing a sin, provided it be a work of darkness; nor cares to be thought a sheep for any other purpose, but that he may act the wolf, and worry with more reputation.
And thus I have shewn the cases in which a bare
principle of honour, unassisted by religion, has no efficacy at all to engage men in virtuous practices: in
a word, he that does all such works, only that he
may be seen of men, will do none, when he is sure
It is possible indeed, that some tempers have so degenerated, as to be acted by principles much inferior, when arguments from honour make no impression upon them at all: as there are some who follow no lure like that of gain; and others who are tempted by no bait like that of pleasure. But for the first of these, the desire of gain is but the quality of some men, or at least but of some ages; for youth is little prevailed upon by it: so that this is an unfit instrument of virtue, the motive to which ought to be universal. And for designs of pleasure, they cannot constantly carry the mind to virtuous practices, be cause, when those designs arrive to enjoyment, such enjoyments are for the most part contrary to a virtuous course, which is never more exercised than in the severities of abstinence and great abridgments. These principles therefore, are unable to effect that, in which the principle of honour is deficient.
Concerning which it is to be observed, that I take
it not only in the positive sense, according to which,
honour is a desire of a further degree and access to
a man’s reputation; but also, nay chiefly, in the negative sense, as it imports an abhorrency of shame.
Now, though the former of these is principally no
table in minds of a more noble and refined mould,
vulgar tempers being seldom concerned to heighten
and propagate their fame; yet the latter sense of
IV. I proceed now to the fourth and last particular; viz. to shew, that even those actions that a principle of honour does produce are of no value in the sight of God; and that upon the account of a double defect.
1. In respect of the cause from which they flow.
2. In respect of the end to which they are directed.
1. And first of all, they are deficient in respect of their producing cause, which should be a real love to virtue itself, upon the score of its worth and excellency; otherwise they are forced and violent, and proceed only upon the apprehension of a present interest, which when it ceases, the fountain of such actions is dried up, and then the actions themselves must needs fail.
But when the heart is carried forth to duty by an
inward, vital principle of love to the thing it practises, it renders every such performance free and connatural to the soul, and
consequently of value in the sight of God, who in every action requires not only
what it is, but whence it comes; and never accepts the bare deed, but as it is animated and spiritualized by the desire. But interest and design are
a kind of force upon the soul, bearing a man often
times besides the ducture of his native propensities
If care of my credit brings my body to church, when in the mean time my choice and my will places me either at the table of the epicure or in the embraces of an harlot, will God, think we, value this shadow and surface of devotion, and be satisfied with the attendance of the body, when the free, natural, uncontrolled flight of my desires has carried away my soul to an infinite distance from it? Yet honour can command only the former; but the spirit, with which only he that is a spirit will be served, is wholly out of its reach and dominion.
2. All actions of virtue, performed from a principle of honour, are deficient in respect of the end to which they are directed. This end is self; whereas it should be the glory of God, a thing diametrically, irreconcileably opposed to it. God’s displeasure is never so high, as when it arrives to jealousy: and then God is properly jealous, when he finds that man thrusts his own glory into the place of his; which he never does more than when he makes the divine worship the instrument and engine of his own reputation, and uses piety only as a handmaid to fame, and a convenient means to slide him into the esteem and acceptance of the world. This is properly for a man, instead of serving God, to make God serve him.
But it is great reason, that a servant, whose condition declares him not his own, but another’s, should
be concerned only to serve the interest and occasions
It was for the two forementioned defects, that the most sublime moral performances of the heathen have been always arraigned and condemned by Christian divinity; namely, that they proceeded from an heart unrenewed and unsanctified, and so under the pollutions of original pravity; and withal were designed only to derive a reputation and fair esteem upon their names and persons, to make so many glorious pages in their story, or so many glittering epitaphs upon their monuments. Thus were managed their best actions. But whether an arrow be shot from an ill bow, or levelled and directed by a false aim, it must both ways equally miss of the mark.
Now, from the subject hitherto discoursed of, by way of corollary and conclusion, I shall infer these two things.
1. First, the worth and the absolute necessity of
religion in the world, even as to the advantages of
civil society. I have shewn how weak, and short, and
insignificant, as to these effects, the best and noblest
principle, that grows upon the stock of bare nature,
will be found. It is not able to abash a secret sinner;
and yet the greatest and the most mischievous villainies in the world are contrived in darkness and
concealment. But religion never leaves a man with
out a thousand witnesses, and that in his own breast:
But now let any one tell me, what hold can be took of an atheist in these opportunities of secrecy? His principles are as large and wide as hell itself. What can make him restore a trust, if he can safely and dexterously conceal it? What can make him true to his prince, his friend, or any relation of human life, if his reputation conspire with his advantage so, as to serve one without endangering the other?
Surely there is no such pest to society as such a person, who owns no concernment beyond himself; but having shook off the bonds of those principles and persuasions by which mankind are governed, and by which they are, as it were, put upon equal grounds, in reference to a common intercourse, he ought to be exterminated like a wolf, or a tiger, and as a common enemy to human converse: for such is the scope that the atheist gives himself, that nothing can keep him from doing his neighbour mischief, but shame or impossibility.
2. The other thing that we infer from the precedent discourse
is, the inexcusableness of those persons, who, professing religion, yet live
below a principle much inferior to religion. We need not repair to Christianity
for arguments to run down a drunkard,
He that pursues his vice notoriously, has not so much religion as the fear of men would suggest to the discourses of an ordinary reason. To perjure one’s self publicly, to talk obscenely or profanely in company, it may be condemned out of the lives of the pharisees, and the writings of Cicero or Seneca: it is to be short of that perfection which will carry many to hell, viz. a form of godliness. It is to have all the venom and malignity without the wisdom of the serpent: for surely no wise atheist ever, in his discourse, thought it becoming to speak irreverently of God, or to scoff at religion.
Those, who do so, have cause to make this prayer, if ever they make any; That God would give them so much discretion as to fit them for this life, since he denies them grace to prepare them for a better.
—For by faith ye stand.
THERE can be none here ignorant, that the great evangelical virtue so frequently spoken of, so highly commended, and upon which the whole weight of man’s salvation leans and depends, is faith; a thing more usually discoursed of by divines than explained, and consequently more easily took up by their hearers than understood: there being scarce any who will not with much zeal and vehemence pretend to it, and by all means wear the reputation of the name, though they are wholly strangers to the nature of the thing. For it being the great and glorious badge of the citizens of heaven, the sons of God, and heirs of immortality; it is no wonder if every man has his mouth open to profess and boast of his faith: and those possibly the most loudly of all others, who entertain it only in opposition to good works.
But that I may give some account of the nature of it, I shall observe, that the scripture makes mention of three several sorts of faith.
1. The first is a faith of simple credence, or bare
assent; acknowledging and assenting to the historical truth of every thing delivered in God’s word.
And such a faith is not here meant; for the devils
may have it, who, the apostle St. James tells us, in
2. The second sort is a temporary faith, and (as I may so call it) a faith of conviction. Such an one as by the present convincing force of the word is wrought in the heart, and for a time raises and carries out the soul to some short sallies and attempts in the course of godliness; nevertheless, having no firm fixation in the heart, but being only like the short and sudden issue of a forced ground, it quickly faints and sinks, and comes to nothing, leaving the soul many leagues short of a true and thorough change of its estate.
3. The third and last sort, and which here only is intended, is a saving, effectual faith, wrought in the soul by a sound and real work of conversion. It takes in both the former kinds, and superadds its own peculiar perfection besides. And if it be now asked, what this faith is, I must answer, that it is better declared by its effects and properties, than it can be set forth by any immediate description of the thing itself. However, this seems to be no improper representation of its nature; that it is a durable, fixed disposition of holiness, immediately infused by God into the soul, whereby the soul in all its faculties is changed, renewed, and sanctified, and withal powerfully inclined to exert itself in all the actions of a pious life.
It is not a bare persuasion or conviction resting
In the words we have these two things considerable.
I. Something supposed; which is, that believers will be encountered and assaulted in their spiritual course.
II. Something expressed; which is, that it is faith alone that in such encounters does or can make them victorious.
I. And first for the first of these, the thing sup
posed. The words of the text are a manifest allusion to a person assaulted or combated by an enemy.
From which the Spirit of God in scripture frequently borrows metaphors, by which to express to us the
condition of a Christian in this world. Sometimes
setting it out by wrestling, as in
Now in every such contest or combat, there are three things to be considered.
1. The persons engaged in it.
2. The thing contended for by it.
3. And lastly, the means and ways, by which it is managed, and carried on.
Of each of which in their order; and,
1. For the persons engaged in this conflict; they
are such, whose hatred of one another is almost
as old as the world itself, as being founded in that
primitive enmity sown by God himself between the
seed of the woman, and the seed of the serpent, in
None, that gives up his name to Christianity,
must think that he enters upon a state of ease, softness, and fruition. For though it is called indeed
the way of peace, yet it is of peace only in another
world, or of peace with God and our own consciences,
We see, then, who the persons are, concerned in this spiritual combat; namely, believers on the one side; that is, persons truly sanctified and justified, and consequently in a state of grace and favour with God; and, on the other side, the great enemy of mankind, the tempter, with all his hellish retinue, all the powers of darkness (as it were) drawn out into battalia, and headed by him, to defy the armies of the living God. It follows now, that we see what is the thing designed and contended for by him, in the assault he makes upon believers, which is the second thing here to be considered. And it is, in short, to cast them down from that state of happiness in which he finds them; which happiness consisting partly in God’s image, which is holiness, and partly in an interest in God’s favour, which indeed is but a consequence of the former, the loss of one naturally drawing after it the loss of the other; therefore the Devil does the utmost he is able, wholly to divest the soul of both.
1. And first, he designs to cast believers down from that purity and sanctity of life, that the Spirit of regeneration has wrought them up to: for the Devil, having lost all holiness himself, perfectly ab hors it in all others. A pious person is an eyesore to him; and to be holy is to begin his hell here upon earth, and to torment him before his time.
As he was the first and grand apostate from God,
so he is restless and indefatigable to propagate that
2. The Devil designs to cast believers down from their interest in the divine favour. After the angels were fallen from heaven, the door was presently, without either delay or pity, shut upon them: nor was there any reserve of mercy, to recover them to their lost estate. Whereupon their envy and malice were inflamed against the sons of men, whom God treated upon gentler terms, not taking them upon the first advantage; but allowing them means of pardon and restitution, and so cancelling the handwriting that stood against them, by reason of the law. He spread open the arms of an evangelical and better covenant to receive them.
No wonder, therefore, if the Devil strives to cast the soul from that pitch of happiness which he finds denied to himself. And if he grudges to see men so much superior to him in the felicity of their estate, whom he knows to be so much inferior to himself in the perfection of their nature; no wonder, I say, if the pride of Lucifer disdains to see poor men ascend to that from which he fell, and so would lay them in the dust again, from whence they were first took. The Devil would make us God’s enemies by sinning, that so God may be our enemy in punishing. For the thing that he so earnestly drives at, is to sow an immortal enmity between God and an immortal soul, and to embroil the whole creation in a war against heaven.
The divine grace, he knows, is a thing never to be aspired to by him; the everlasting gates are made fast against him; and therefore he would give himself that fantastic pleasure, at least of having company in the same condemnation, and consequently of getting the whole race of mankind excluded and cut off from the enjoyment of that, of which he himself has no hope. He would gratify his envy and his implacable virulence, by feeding upon the sight of others’ misery, and solacing himself with the despair and wretchedness of unpardoned sinners. He would have others hate God as much as he does, to the intent that they may be as much hated by him.
For, believe it, how little soever men may value
the grace, mercies, and forbearances of the gospel;
yet the Devil, who knows the worth of them, by
wanting them, would never be so much concerned
to bereave us of the benefit of them, did he not
3. I come now to the third thing considerable in this spiritual combat, which are the ways and means by which it is managed and carried on.
I shall mention four.
(1.) The Devil’s own immediate suggestions. The
Devil, being a spirit, can operate upon the mind
and the imagination, raising in it evil thoughts, and
frequently filthy desires, by the representation of objects suitable to our beloved and most predominant
affections. And this course of working is so subtle,
and withal so efficacious, that he can slide into the
hearts of men, without any resistance, or indeed any
observation. Thus he is said to have filled the hearts
of Ananias and Sapphira,
(2.) The second means, by which the Devil assaults a man, is by the infidelity of his own heart. A quality that, of all others, does his work the most compendiously and the most effectually. It was the engine by which he battered down that goodly fabric of the divine image in our first parents: and wheresoever he can fix this instrument, like another Archimedes, he will turn about the world, and make every one of his assaults against the souls of men successful and victorious.
This is such a thing, as was even able to counter
work the miracles of Christ, and, as it were, to bind
those hands of omnipotence by which he wrought
his mighty wonders. For in
The Devil was to induce Eve to eat the apple,
against God’s express prohibition, guarded and confirmed by a severe threatening: an hard task, one
would think, to undertake to bring a person, both innocent and very knowing, to such an horrid prevarication, and to eat the forbidden fruit, though served
up to her with certain death;
3. The third means by which the Devil assaults
and combats the soul, is by the alluring vanities of
the world. Look over the whole universe, and you
will find it to be the Devil’s grand and plentiful magazine; there being scarce any thing in it, but what he sometimes uses either as
a weapon or a snare: the whole way and course of it being a professed enmity and opposition to God; so that he that loves
one cannot possibly love the other,
While we live in the world, we walk upon traps
and pitfalls, and such things as have a strange and
peculiar energy to work our destruction. Even the
most beautiful and desirable things of it are deadly
One man is taken with the riches of it, which he pursues, follows, and at last worships, till he has even made his gain his god; but at length he finds, that his god deserts him, and leaves him in the hand of the Devil. Another has his eyes dazzled with the glories and glistering honours of the world; and being mad upon them, lists himself a servant of the Devil in the practice of all baseness imaginable, that so he may at length rise by him and like him; not considering that the Devil carries the aspiring wretch up to such a pinnacle, only that he may persuade him to throw himself thence down headlong. Another man is catched and inveigled with the pleasures of the world, and so suffers himself to be carried away with that general torrent of voluptuousness that runs violently, and drowns certainly. He first makes himself a swine, and then the Devil enters into him, and hurries him into the gulph of eternal perdition.
And if the world cannot get that hold of a man,
as to captivate him into a slavish pursuit either of
the riches, honours, or pleasures of it; yet the very
custom, the compliance, and fashion of it, insensibly
cools, and at length freezes up that ardent principle
of love to God and holiness, that should animate and
bear up the soul in the ways of duty. Nay, the very
wisdom of the world (which is the best part of that
bad thing) pollutes and deflours the heart, and
4. Fourthly and lastly, the Devil assaults and encounters men by the help of their own lusts and corruptions. The world, the flesh, and the Devil, are those three formidable enemies, that we stand jointly engaged against by our very baptism. Our own bodies are armed against our souls; for the scriptures tell us, that the lusts of the flesh war against the soul, or spirit. So that it may be said, that a man’s enemies are not only those of his own house, but also of his own flesh; not only of the house he lives in, but also of the house he carries about him: and surely a bosom-enemy must needs be as great a mischief, as a bosom-friend is a blessing. The body of sin and lust that dwells within us is an adversary that will be always annoying us, a domestic tempter, always at our elbow to seduce, and thereby to ruin us.
So that which way soever we cast our thoughts,
we shall find enemies ready to attack us in all our
spiritual concerns. For if we consider the invisible
And thus I have finished the first general head proposed from the words; namely, the thing implied or supposed in them; which was, that believers should be encountered and assaulted in their spiritual course.
But now, as all kind of opposition or assault includes in the very nature of it an endeavour in the assailant to conquer and cast down the person as sailed by him from his present station, which we have been hitherto discoursing of; so, in the second place, it implies also an endeavour in the person assaulted to maintain and make good that his station against all the force and opposition of his adversary.
And he that is so victorious as to keep his ground,
maugre all such encounters, is said to stand in the
day of battle; which is a word expressing the posture of a combatant defending himself with success:
It remains therefore now, that we shew how and by what means this is to be effected; and the text tells us, that it must be by faith; by faith ye stand: which introduces the
Second general head proposed, which is the thing positively expressed in the words; namely, that in all these spiritual assaults made against believers by their implacable enemy, it is faith alone that does or can render them victorious.
For the making out of which, I shall shew,
1. In what condition man is, considered according to his mere natural estate, and void of the grace of faith.
2. What advantages and helps faith gives believers, for the conquering of all that opposition that shall be made against them by their spiritual enemy.
And first for the first of these, the condition that
man is in, considered according to his natural estate,
and void of the grace of faith; which, we may be
sure, is bad and deplorable enough: and to prove it
so, there needs no other argument than this, that if
bare nature, since the fall of Adam, were not infinitely insufficient to work out its own recovery, the
divine grace would never have put itself to the expense of little less than a miracle, to
work in it such
qualifications as may in some measure enable it to
acquit itself in the keeping of God’s commands. For
so very strong is the sway and bias of nature to contrary courses, that if those inclinations were not
controlled and overpowered by some superior principle,
It is with the body of sin as with our natural body, which, if there be strength of nature, will by degrees work out all those obstructions that grieve or offend it. So strength of natural corruption will of itself gradually work off all those convictions that restrain it.
Nay, after it has been in some measure hampered
and oppressed by those convincing works, it will then,
upon the least recovery of itself, act so much the
more strongly against them; it being the property
of any active principle, whensoever it is opposed,
then to exert its strongest actions in order to its own
So that, till a thorough change pass upon our sinful nature, in the renovation of all its powers, faculties, and inclinations, the soul remains as weak and naked as it first came into the world, without either strength or weapons to defend itself; and when an alluring temptation comes in its way, it will run with fury through all its convictions to embrace it, and is no more able to abstain from it, than an hungry wolf to forbear his prey. Nature has corruption enough to be its own tempter; and if want of grace leaves the door of the heart unguarded or open, sin needs no other invitation to enter: nor has the soul only, while unrenewed by faith, a readiness and propensity to sin, but also a cursed suitableness to and compliance with every thing that may any ways induce it to sin: so that, in this forlorn, faithless condition, it is like a city, about which there is an army besieging it, and within which there is treachery betraying it, and no arms to defend it. And thus much for the first way of proving that it is faith alone that can render a man victorious in his conflicts with his spiritual adversaries; namely, by shewing his deplorable weakness and insufficiency to deal with such opponents, while considered in his natural estate, and void of faith.
The other way of proving the same assertion is, by shewing what advantages and helps faith gives believers for the conquest of these their spiritual enemies.
I shall mention three.
1. It gives them a real union with Christ; concerning which we must know, that as the union of
the soul to the body is the cause of life natural, so
the union of Christ to the soul is the fountain of life
spiritual. Christ being to the soul like armour, he
then only defends it, when he is close united to it.
And that such a nearness to him will afford us such
protection from him, is evident from the nature of
those things, by which this union between him and
believers is expressed. In
Aristotle observes, that union is never perfect between complete natures of a different kind. But now it is faith alone that denominates and makes us new creatures; and consequently gives us a spiritual cog nation with Christ, without which it is no more possible for us to be united to him, than for the dead to incorporate with the living, for darkness to hold communion with light, or hell with heaven.
In short, the result of all is this: want of a true and lively faith in Christ speaks want of union to him; and want of union to him speaks want of influence from him; without which no sin can be really opposed, much less overcome. It is from Christ, and from Christ alone, that there must issue forth strength for the subduing of our corruptions; from him alone that there must come an healing virtue for the stanching of this bloody issue of sin, or, in spite of all our plasterings and dressings of it, it will prove incurable: it is from him that there must come a continual supply of assisting grace, to support and bear us up in a course of evangelical obedience; and without this, miserable experience will convince us that we are not able to stand.
2. Faith helps believers in the conquest of their
spiritual enemies, by engaging the assistance of the
Spirit on their behalf; without whose special influence it is impossible for the soul to do any thing in
the ways of duty effectually, or to oppose any sin
with success; for still we find all ascribed to this.
It is through the Spirit that the deeds of the flesh
are to be mortified,
From whence it is evident, that the heart must be borne up and acted by the Spirit of God, or of necessity fall away. Every man naturally moves that way that the temptation moves; and if he goes a contrary way, he must needs do it, not as he is led by himself, but by another. As in the motion of the celestial orbs, when we see the inferior ones snatched about with a motion contrary to their own proper motion, we collect thence, that they are moved by a superior.
This is most certain, that it is not in the power of
3. And lastly, faith helps believers in the conquest
of their spiritual enemies, by giving them both a title
to, and a power effectually to apply God’s promises.
We all (as has been shewn) stand engaged in a spiritual warfare, and strength we have none, but what
we fetch from God. God conveys none but through
Christ: whatsoever Christ gives is by the Spirit; and
the Spirit works by the promises, putting those weapons into our hands; and faith is properly that spiritual
hand into which they are put. Every promise is indeed a spring of living water;
but it is water in a well, and faith is the bucket that must fetch it up both
for our use and comfort. There is enough in every promise, if apprehended by a
lively faith, to enable any intelligent nature to defy and look all the powers
of hell in the face. That one promise,
For God having so framed the nature of man, that
every one of his actions is the prosecution of some
thing first desired; and since nothing moves desire,
but so far as it is apprehended good and beneficial;
it follows, that since the Devil has engaged our actions and desires in his service by the pleasures and
profits of the world, and such other things as affect
the sense; if ever those desires be took off from
thence, and pitched upon the service of God, it must
be by proposing to them some greater good, obtainable in such a course, than can be had in the other:
and greater good there seems to be none, but heaven
and immortality. Which things falling not under the
apprehension of sense, but only being represented in
the divine promise, they are only apprehensible by
believing, and by that faith that apprehends the promise: for till I either know or believe that there is
an heaven, and a state of immortal glory, these can
have no more influence upon my practice, than if
there were no such things at all. So that it is faith
that does, as it were, realize and make these things
as present to a rational understanding, as the eye
makes a desirable object present to the sense. Where
upon, in
Thus, therefore, does faith empower believers to stand it out against all the fiery onsets of their spiritual enemies; namely, by enabling them to see better and more desirable things in God’s promises to engage them to obey his precepts, than any that the Devil can propose to them in his temptations to allure them to the commission of sin.
Wherefore, it being evident, from what has been
delivered, both that believers will be fiercely encountered in their spiritual course, and that faith is
the only thing that can preserve and defend them in
those encounters, we collect hence both the necessity and excellency of this grace; for it is this alone
that will bear us victorious through all that opposition, that would otherwise wholly crush and extinguish us. It is this that will set us above all our
enemies, by setting us above our own weaknesses.
To whom, therefore, be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.
The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.
HE that undertakes to discourse of any of God’s attributes, must profess that he undertakes to discourse of that which he does not thoroughly under stand, if so be that he understands himself. For how can a finite comprehend an infinite? or how can any one express what he cannot comprehend? But of all God’s perfections, his mercy especially is a theme so great, that none but an infinite person can worthily enlarge upon it. However, since God is pleased to call us to the study and contemplation of himself, we may, I conceive, without any presumption or injury to his greatness, frame to ourselves the best apprehensions and discourses, that the condition of our nature can afford us of a thing, of which we have no explicit knowledge.
Now mercy, as it is ascribed to God, may be considered and taken two ways.
I. For the principle itself; which is nothing else but the simple, undivided nature of God, as it does manifest and cast abroad itself, in such and such acts of grace and favour to the creature. Which very same essence or nature, according to different respects, is called wisdom, justice, power, mercy, and the like.
II. It is taken for the effects and actions flowing from that principle, by which it does so manifest and exert itself.
Which also admit of a distinction into two sorts.
1. Such as are general, and of equal diffusion to all.
2. Such as are special, and peculiarly relate to the redemption and reparation of fallen man; whom God was pleased to choose and single out from the rest of his works, as the proper object for this great attribute to do its utmost upon.
Now it was the former sense that was intended by the Psalmist in the text, as is evident from the universality of the words. It was such a mercy as spread itself over all his works; such an one as reached as wide as creation and providence. It was like the sun and the light, to shine upon all without exception. And therefore we are not at all concerned here to treat of the miracles of God’s pardoning mercy, as they display themselves in the satisfaction and ransom paid down by Christ for sinners: for it would be a great deviation from the design of the words, to confine the overflowing goodness of a Creator to the more limited dispensations of a Redeemer; and so to drown an universal in a particular.
For the prosecution of the words, there is no way that seems more easy and natural, and withal more full, for the setting forth of God’s general mercy to the creature, than to take a distinct, though short, survey of the several parts of the creation, and there in to shew how it exerts and lays itself out upon each of them.
1. And first, to begin at the lowest step of creature-
2. But secondly, to proceed further to plants and
vegetables, which have a little higher advance of
perfection, and enjoy something like life; that is,
something that is enough to make them grow and
But this goodness stops not here: but when those things seem to have finished their course, and then to wither and die, and at last bury themselves in the bowels of the same earth that bore them; why then, the same Providence vouchsafes them a resurrection and a return to life. Every season has, as it were, its commission and command from Heaven, to furnish the world anew with the very same things: and when the spring comes, the decrepit tree grows young and blossoms, the grass rises from the dead, and the flowers step forth, as if the whole winter’s interval had been but a sleep, and the places upon which they grew were indeed beds, without a metaphor. Thus the goodness of Heaven, while it provides for the creature, proceeds in a constant circle; and as a circle has no end, so neither has that. For it first produces these things into being, then preserves them, and at last, being dead, recovers them; and by that gives them some resemblance of an immortality, so far as the proportions of their nature will admit.
And if it be now said, What good can all this be to such creatures as have no sense of it? I answer, that every thing that is perfect and regular is a credit and a glory to itself, as well as to its author, whether it knows so much or no. Different natures have different capacities of good: things endued with sense and apprehension receive what is good by apprehending and being sensible of it. But to say, that therefore inanimate things, whose nature is wholly different, must do so too, or be utterly uncapable of good, this is a great fallacy and error in discourse; it being to rate the most different things by the same measure.
For as the brutes are, in their way, capable of receiving the benefit and good that is properly fitted to their nature and condition, though they cannot take it in by the sublimer and higher apprehensions of reason; so these inanimate beings, that are void of sense, have also their proper good things belonging to them, though they cannot enjoy them by hearing, seeing, tasting, and the like, which are the peculiar fruitions of sensible creatures. The herb feeds upon the juice of a good soil, and drinks in the dew of heaven as eagerly, and thrives by it as effectually, as the stalled ox, that tastes every thing that he eats or drinks. Providence has suited each nature with its enjoyment; and therefore the tender mercies of God may be said to be over these things also.
3. From hence let us now, in the third place,
advance a little higher, to the sensible parts of the
creation, the beasts of the field, and the fowls of the
air; amongst which we shall find even the chiefest
and the strongest of them constant retainers and
pensioners to the bounty of their Creator; the lion,
who, one would think, was pretty well able to provide for himself: yet David tells us,
How has God given every creature a power most
particularly to pursue and compass that which makes
for the welfare of its being! Where he denies strength,
he usually gives sagacity and quickness of sense; and
withal implants in every one a certain instinct, that
teaches and prompts it to make use of that faculty
4. In the fourth place, proceed we now one step further, and take a survey of rational creatures, men and angels. And first for man; who is, as it were, an epitome, or rather an union of the two worlds; as by his body relating to the earth, and by his soul to heaven: nothing can more declare the goodness of his Creator to him, than that he made him after his own image.
But passing over the bounty of God to man in his
state of innocence, as not sufficiently to be expressed
by any since the loss of it; I shall remark only those
blessings and favours, which men, even since the fall
And surely to be rich, healthy, and honourable, are favours and blessings, and such as are the prizes that the most excellent and renowned part of the world strive for: yet experience will shew, that these are not the badges of saintship, or the certain marks of God’s peculiar mercies. A man may affront and offend all that is above him, and yet command and enjoy all that is beneath him: for were not the four monarchies of the world successively in the hands of heathens, who worshipped false gods, while they subsisted and flourished by the beneficence of the true? Nay, and to go even to Israel itself, were not almost all of its kings enemies to and contemners of that God, whose peculiar people they reigned over? Which shews, that they enjoyed these privileges and prerogatives, not upon the score of any federal endearment, or any interest in a promise that they could lay claim to. These and many other examples declare, that the benignity of Providence seems to be promiscuous and universal, and as undistinguishing as the air and the elements, which equally dispense themselves to the necessities of all.
And now, we cannot but judge it an instance of a strange, and almost an invincible goodness, for a prince to clothe his rebels in scarlet, and to make his traitors fare deliciously every day. Yet the wicked and the profane ones of the world, who stand in the same defiance of the majesty and supremacy of Heaven, are treated with as great obligingness and favour by him, whom they so defy.
And besides, how many are the casual, unforeseen dangers, that the hand of Providence rescues them from! How many little things carry in them the causes of death! and how often are men, that have escaped, amazed that they were not destroyed! Which shews that there is an eye that still watches over them, that always sees, though it is not seen; that knows their strengths and their weaknesses, where they are safe, and where they may be struck; and in how many respects they lie open to the invasion of a sad accident. And though it be ten to one, but that in the space of a year or two a man is attacked by one or other of those many thousand casualties that he is obnoxious to; yet we see that most men make a shift to rub out, and to be safe, to grow old, and to be well. In a word, every man lives by a perpetual deliverance; a deliverance, which for the unlikelihood of it he could not expect, and for his own unworthiness, I am sure, he could not deserve.
5. And now, in the last place, we are arrived at
the very top of the creation, the angels; those more
lively and bright resemblances of the Deity, whose
raised endowments and excellencies speak the goodness of their Creator to them in that degree, that it
would nonplus the tongue of angels themselves to
Nothing but omniscience can outdo the knowledge of angels; a knowledge that dives into all the recesses of nature, and spies out all the secret workings of second causes by a certain and immediate view; which the quickest human intellect pursues by tedious meditation, dubious conjectures, short experiments, and perhaps after all is forced to sit down in ignorance and dissatisfaction.
Nor do they excel in knowledge only, but also in
power and activity. Men indeed raise armies, and,
by much ado and much time, rout an enemy or sack
a city; but we shall find a destroying angel in one
night slaying an hundred, fourscore, and five thousand men,
Neither do the angels move by certain periods and
steps of progression, as we are fain to do, who carry
our own weights and hinderances about us; but they
And now, as God has been so bountiful to the an gels, by ennobling them with such excellent qualities, so he has yet further manifested the same bounty to them in a double respect.
1. In respect of the place of their habitation or abode.
2. In respect of their employment.
1. And first, for the place of their abode: it is the
highest heaven, the place of God’s immediate residence; even the presence-chamber of the Almighty.
2. In the next place, as for their employment, that is twofold.
1. To be continually worshipping and speaking
praises to God; to behold and admire him in the full
brightness of his glory; to contemplate upon all his
2. Their other employment is immediately to execute God’s commands about the government of the world: they are the great ministers of Providence, and it is their glory so to be; their service is their privilege: as in the courts of princes every attend ant is honourable, or at least thinks himself so. The angels are still despatched by God upon all his great messages to the world; and therefore their very name in Greek, which is ἄγγελος, signifies a messenger: in short, they have the most illustrious employment that can be, which is to be ambassadors extraordinary from the King of kings.
And thus I have traced the divine goodness to the creature, beginning at the lowest, and from thence ascending to the highest parts of the creation: which subject, though it has been general, yet, as to the use and improvement of it, may very well have a particular reference and application to us men. And therefore the deduction that I shall make from all the precedent discourse, shall be to instate and settle in our minds right thoughts of the natural goodness and benignity of God towards men.
How many and vast endearments might we draw from God barely as a Creator! Suppose there had never been any news of a redeemer to fallen Adam; no hope, no aftergame for him as a sinner: yet let us peruse the obligations that lay upon him as a man.
Was it not enough for him, who but yesterday was
nothing, to be advanced into an existence, that is,
Was it no favour to make that a sun, which he might have made but a glowworm? no privilege to man, that he was made lord of all things below? that the world was not only his house, but his kingdom? that God should raise up one piece of earth to rule over all the rest?
Surely all these were favours, and they were the early, preventing favours of a Creator; for God then knew no other title, he bore no other relation to us: there was no price given to God, that might induce him to bid Adam rise out of the earth a man, rather than a spire of grass, a twig, a stone, or some such other contemptible superiority to nothing.
No; he furnished him out into the world with all this retinue of perfections, upon no other motive but because he had a mind to make him a glorious piece of work, a specimen of the arts of Omnipotence, to stand and glister in the top and head of the creation.
Which consideration alone,! should think, might be
able to compose the murmurs and the grudgings that
lie festering in many men’s hearts against God, caused by a surmise of God’s hard dealings with them.
But may we not say of such, Is this their kindness to their friend? Are these the best returns of gratitude that they can make to their Creator? For God, as their Creator, was their friend, had he never took upon him any other respect; their very production was an obligation, and their bare essence a favour above a recompence: for why should God put a greater lustre upon one piece of the chaos than upon another?
The fallen angels, who will never have any other relation to God, but as to a Creator, will upon this very score, had they no other sin to condemn them, stand inexcusably condemned for ingratitude, in that they sinned against that God that obliged them with so excellent a nature, with the nearest similitude to his own substance; that they sinned against him, who made them so able not to have sinned.
But now God’s relation of a Creator reflects the same obligation upon men that it did upon the an gels; and that so great, that though they chance to perish for their sins, yet they will go to hell obliged, and carry the marks of God’s favour with them to their very destruction.
Wherefore all the hard thoughts men usually have of God, ought by all means and arts of consideration to be suppressed: for the better effecting of which, we may fix our meditation upon these two qualities that do always attend them.
1. Their unreasonableness.
2. Their danger.
1. And first for their unreasonableness; all such thoughts are not any true resemblances of our Creator, but merely our own creatures. All the sad appearances of rigour that we paint him under are not from himself, but from our misrepresentations: as the fogs and mists we sometimes see about the sun issue not from him, but ascend from below, and owe their nearness to the sun only to the deception of the spectator.
Is it possible for him, who is love itself, to be cruel, harsh, and inexorable; to sit in heaven contriving gins and snares to trapan and ruin his poor creatures; and then to delight himself in the cries of the damned, and the woful estate of tormented souls?
There is, I confess, a sort of men, sons of thunder, (but, by a new way, they thunder from hell, not from heaven,) who delight to represent God with all the terror and hostility to men, that their own base spirit and sordid melancholy can suggest. They so account him a maker, that they scarce allow him to be a preserver: they describe him as a father without bowels; they make him to triumph, and please, and as it were recreate himself in the confusion of all his works: as if our destruction had been the sole end of our creation, and God only made us, that he might afterwards have the pleasure of destroying us. As men use to nourish and breed up deer, and such kind of beasts, only that they may hunt and worry them.
With what pleasure may we hear some persons
tell men that they are damned! Indeed with so
much, that they seem to taste the expression more
than if they had heard that they themselves should
be saved; persons fitter to blow the trumpet upon
mount Sinai, or, according to their old note, to curse
The divine nature is the light and the refreshment of a rational creature; God is of all beings the most amiable, suitable, and desirable: all the loveliness, the beauty, and perfection that is diffused and scattered here and there through the whole creation, and which is so apt to excite and win our affections, is in an infinite, inexhaustible manner treasured up in God. And shall we now court the stream, and in the mean time throw dirt into the fountain?
Nay, to proceed further; the very design of a creation unanswerably speaks the goodness of the Creator. For why should he communicate himself? why
should he diffuse any of those perfections which he
was so fully master of by an ineffable acquiescence
in himself? But his goodness was so vastly, so infinitely full, that he seemed unquiet and unsatisfied,
till he had as it were disburdened himself by some
communications of it. One would have thought
that these perfections had been too rare to be communicated, so much as in resemblance, and that God
would have folded them up within his own essence
for ever; so that he who now contents himself with
the prerogative of being the best and the greatest
Being, might have been the only Being: but he chose
rather to draw out, than only to possess his own fulness, to scatter something of his image upon the
creature, and to see himself in effigy. From all
2. The other argument against men’s entertaining such thoughts of God is the consideration of their exceeding danger. Their malignity is equal to their absurdity: for whosoever strives to beget or foment in his heart such persuasions concerning God, makes himself the Devil’s orator, and declaims his cause, whose proper characteristic badge it is to be the great accuser or calumniator; for that is the force of the Greek word διάβολος.
And as he is the constant accuser of us to God, so, by a restless circle of malice, he is no less industrious and artificial in accusing God to us. The first engine by which he battered down our innocence, and brought sin into the world, was by insinuating into Eve’s mind thoughts that God rather envied than designed their happiness, in forbidding them to eat of that one tree: and we know what success it had, to bereave man of an almighty friend, only by a false supposal that he was his enemy.
Despair, which is the greatest instrument next to that of presumption, by which the Devil draws men headlong into the fatal net of perdition, how and by what means does he cause it? Why, by representing God to the soul like himself, a tyrant and a tormentor; by tragical declamations upon his vindictive justice: that he is one full of eternal designs of revenge, rigid and implacable, exacting the utmost farthing from a poor bankrupt creature, that is not worth it. By such diabolical rhetoric does he libel and disgrace God to the hearts of his creatures.
And he well knows, that by these arts he does
And from hence it is, that those who give directions to distressed, afflicted consciences, for the re-obtaining of comfort, wisely lay the foundation here; first of all, to fasten in the heart a deep and thorough persuasion of God’s natural goodness and benevolence to all his creatures, to mankind especially, one of the choicest and most beloved parts of the creation.
And by such thoughts we are to antidote the poison of the contrary; which of themselves would quickly ripen into blasphemy, and from thence pass into a confirmed malice against God; the proper sin and character of the Devil.
We are to assure ourselves of the infinite agreeableness of the divine nature to ours; that God’s goodness is not only full, but exuberant; the first is his glory, the second our advantage. Indeed so full is it, that when it is said, that God cannot shew or exercise mercy, it is not from any defect either in him or in that, but merely for want of a suitable object; he has always a liberality inclining him to give, but we have not always a capacity fitting us to receive.
But, as I shew at first, the divine goodness and
To which God be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.
But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust., and enticed.
IT is natural for men, in the commission of sin, to design to themselves as much of the pleasure, and as little of the guilt of sin, as possibly they can: and therefore, since the guilt of sin unavoidably remains upon the cause and author of sin, it is their great business to find out some other cause, upon which to charge it, beside themselves. Accordingly the apostle here directs these words and the foregoing, as an anticipation of, and an answer to a secret objection that might possibly arise in some minds against God himself, as if he were the great impeller and inducer of men to sin; in which answer he clears God, by stating sin upon its true cause and original.
In the prosecution of the words, I shall only premise the explication of these two terms, and so descend to their further discussion.
1. What the apostle here means by being tempted.
2. What is intended by lust.
1. For the first of these: it is as certain, that the
scripture affirms some men to have been tempted by
God, and particularly Abraham, as that it is positively affirmed in the verse before the text,
that God
tempts no man; and therefore this word must needs
be of various signification. In the sense that it is
Second thing to be explained. By lust the apostle here means, not that particular inordination or vice that relates to the uncleanness of the flesh; but that general stock of corruption that possesses the whole soul through all its respective faculties. But principally is it here to be understood of the prime and commanding faculty of all, the will, as it is possessed and principled with sinful habits and depraved inclinations. And this is the grand tempter, that tempts and seduces, so as actually to engage and determine a man to the choice of sin.
Now, though the apostle seems, by stating the
cause of sin upon this, directly and principally to
have it in his design only to clear and discharge God
from this imputation; yet the nature of the proposition is of a wider compass, and carries it to the
exclusion of all other external causes whatsoever. And
therefore, in compliance with this, the business of
the ensuing discourse shall be to demonstrate, that
The prosecution of which shall lie in these three particulars.
I. To shew those false causes upon which men are apt to charge their sins.
II. To shew positively, that lust is the true and proper cause of them.
III. To shew the way by which it causes them; and that, the text tells us, is by seducing and enticing. Every man is tempted, when he its drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.
I. And for the first of these, the mistaken causes of sin; in the number of which we may reckon these that follow.
1. The decree of God concerning things to come to pass, is not a proper cause for any man to charge his sins upon; though perhaps there is nothing in the world that is more abused by weak and vulgar minds in this particular. I shall not concern myself to dispute how God decrees the event of sins: but this I shall affirm in general, that be the divine decree never so absolute, yet it has no causal influence upon sinful actions; no, nor indeed upon any actions else: forasmuch as the bare decree or purpose of a thing produces or puts nothing in being at all. It is, as the schools call it, an immanent act; that is, such an one as rests wholly within God, and effects nothing without him. A decree, as such, is not operative or effective of the thing decreed.
Besides, whensoever God decrees that a thing shall
come to pass, he decrees the manner of its production also, and that suitably to the way of working
But it will be replied, Does not every thing decreed by God certainly and necessarily come to pass? And then, how can we prevent it? And if so, is there not a force upon us from Heaven to do the thing that is thus decreed?
I answer, No; for there is a great deal of difference between a mere illative necessity, which consists only in the logical consequence of one thing
upon another, and between a causal necessity, which
efficiently and antecedently determines and puts the
faculty upon working. But so does not the divine
decree: it exerts no force or impulse upon man’s will, but leaves it to its own natural liberty. How
ever, it is certain, that, by the former kind of merely
illative necessity, the thing decreed will assuredly
have its event. But this is no greater a necessity,
than God’s foreknowledge puts upon the event of
the thing foreknown: for it is impossible that God
should not foreknow all things that shall come to
pass; and it is equally impossible, if God foreknows
a thing shall come to pass, that that thing should
not come to pass. And yet, I suppose, that none
will say, that God’s foreknowledge of a man’s actions
does, by any active influence, necessitate that man
to do those actions: albeit, that this consequence
stands unshakeable, that whatsoever God foreknows
a man will do, that shall certainly and infallibly be
done. Otherwise, where is God’s omniscience and
his infallibility? He knows the last point to which
Now let any one compare these two, God’s decree and his foreknowledge, and he will find, that, as to the event, the same necessity passes both upon the thing decreed and the thing foreknown. And therefore, if men will confess that God’s foreknowledge does not force or push a man upon the doing of any thing, it will follow also, that neither does his decree. But if, in the scanning of either, there occurs any difficulty, to our apprehensions not resolvable, it is because God is infinite; and because an infinite mind, both in its knowledge and purposes, proceeds not according to the methods and measures of a finite understanding. And upon this account, all the arguments, that, with so much noise and confidence, are urged against God’s decrees, will be found but popular and fallacious, and grounded upon the application of men’s ways of acting and apprehending to God; and consequently tend to disprove God’s infinity, as much or more than any thing else.
Let no bold or ignorant sinner, therefore, think
to take sanctuary here; or to allege God’s decree
as an excuse for those villainies, which, with full purpose and choice of will, he committed. If God, by
the unsearchable counsel of his will, designs, fore
sees, and orders, what yet the sinner does most
freely, what is that to him? That alters not the nature of his action, any more than if I had a design
to kill my enemy, and another, without any knowledge of such a design of mine, should of his own
accord kill him. Would this free him from bearing
2. The influences of the heavens and of the stars imprint nothing upon men that can impel or engage them to do evil; and yet some are so sottish, as to father their vices and villainies upon these: they were born (forsooth) under such a planet, and therefore they cannot choose but be thieves, or whoremasters, or rebels, all their life after. But it is strange, that heaven should prepare men for hell, and imprint those qualities upon them, that should hinder them from ever coming to heaven. This would be highly injurious to the great artificer and maker of those bodies, that he should provide such storehouses of mischief, such irresistible conveyers of the seeds of sin into men’s minds. To be born under any planet would in this case be worse than not to be born at all. And to what purpose should God allow men the means to save them, if he places them under such an influence as must certainly damn them?
But these are mere fopperies; the fables and
But admitting that the heavens have an influence and operation upon inferior bodies, and that those glorious lights were not made only to be gazed upon, but to control as well as to direct the lesser world; yet still all communication between agent and patient must be in things that hold some proportion and likeness in their natures; so that one thing can pass no impression upon another, of a nature absolutely and in every respect diverse from it, provided it be also superior to it; and such a thing is a spirit in respect of body.
Upon which grounds, what intercourse can there
be between the stars and a soul? How can the sun
or moon, or any planet, move or incline the will
this way or that way? and carry the freedom of
its choice to one thing rather than another? This is
absurd and unimaginable, and contrary to all the
principles of philosophy as well as religion. And
therefore let no man think himself under a necessity
of sinning from any such superior influence; it is
not that which he sees over his head, but that which
he feels within his heart, that he is to look to. The
will scorns the control of any creature, either in
3. Neither can any man charge his sins upon the constitution and temper of his body, as the proper cause of them. The body was made to serve, and not to command. All that it can do, is only to be troublesome; but it cannot be imperious. If the soul will but maintain its right, and resolve to keep the throne, it may easily make the fleshly part, not only its subject, but its instrument; not only quiet, but useful. They are not the humours of the body, but the humours of the mind, to which men owe the irregularities of their behaviour.
The sensitive appetites having their situation in the body, do indeed follow the peculiar complexion and temper of it: but reason is a thing that is placed solely and entirely in the soul, and so depends not upon those inferior faculties; but though it is some times solicited by them, yet it is in its power, whether or no it will be prevailed upon. And for all the noise, and hurry, and tumult, that is often raised amongst them; yet reason, like the upper most region of the air, is not at all subject to the disturbances that are below. And so long as the soul listens to reason, the inferior appetites may bawl indeed, but they cannot persuade. Let a beg gar be never so impudently craving and importunate, yet the door may be shut against him, and then he must be either quiet, or only troublesome to himself.
In vain therefore does any man for his excuse
allege the solicitations of his appetites, against the
If indeed reason shall give way to these sensual motions, and take the bit into its mouth, and suffer itself to be rid; there is no doubt, but it may be made a servant of servants, a slave and a drudge to all the tyrannies of a domineering sensuality. But this will be no apology before God, who endued it with a perfect sovereignty, and put the government of the whole soul into its hands.
And besides, there have been some in the world, who by the conduct of their reason have made their way to virtue, through all the disadvantages of their natural constitution. Philosophy has done it in many, and religion may do it in all. Let no man therefore charge his sins upon that part of himself, that cannot possibly sin without the consent of his will.
4. And lastly, to proceed yet higher: no man
can justly charge his sins upon the Devil, as the
cause of them; for God has not put it into the power
of our mortal enemy to ruin us without ourselves;
which yet he had done, had it been in the Devil’s power to force us to sin. The Devil can only tempt
and allure, but compel he cannot; he may inveigle,
The Spirit of God assures us, that he may be resisted, and that upon a vigorous resistance he will fly. He never conquers any, but those that yield; a spiritual fort is never taken by force, but by sur render. And when a man is as willing to be ruined, as he is to ruin him, it is that, that makes the Devil triumphant and victorious. How slily and creepingly did he address himself to our first parents! which surely his pride would never have let him do, could he have effected their downfall by force, with out temptation.
It is confessed indeed, that the guilt of those sins that the Devil tempts us to will rest upon him; but not so as to discharge us. He that persuades a man to rob a house, is guilty of the sin he persuades him to, but not in the same manner that he is who committed the robbery; for it was in his power, after all the other’s persuasions, to have for borne the fact, and to have maintained his innocence: for no man is a thief or a villain against his will.
In vain therefore do men shift off their sins upon
the Devil, whose greatest arts they may frustrate,
whose strongest solicitations they may make ineffectual: for it is in their power (as I may so say)
in some respect to make the Devil himself innocent.
But still the load of all must lie upon him; and it is
not he that commits, but he that tempts to sin, that
must be the sinner. It seems to be with the Devil,
But howsoever men may mock themselves with such evasions, yet God will not be mocked, who knows that he left the soul in its own keeping, and made the will free, and not to be forced: and therefore these figleaves will fall off, when he shall come to scrutiny and examination. Every man shall bear his own burden, and the Devil himself shall have but what is his due.
And thus I have done with the first particular proposed, namely, to shew and remove the mistaken causes upon which men are apt to charge their sins; concerning which, before I proceed any further, I shall remark this by way of caution: that though I deny any of these to be the proper causes of sin, yet it is not to be denied, but that they are often very great promoters of sin, where they meet with a corrupt heart and a depraved will. And it is not to be questioned, but that many thousands now in hell might have gone thither in a calmer and a more cleanly way at least, had they not been hurried and pushed on by impetuous temptations, by an ill constitution, and by such opportunities and circumstances of life, as mightily suited their corruption, and so drew it forth to a pitch of acting higher and more outrageous than ordinary.
For there is no doubt, but an ill mind in an ill-disposed body
will carry a man forth to those sins, that otherwise it would not, if lodged in
a body of a better and more benign temperament. As a sword covered with rust
will wound much more dangerously,
All this is very true; and therefore, besides those internal impressions of grace, by which God sanctifies the heart, and effectually changes the will, many are accountable to his mercy for those external and inferior assistances of grace. As, that he restrains the fury of the tempter; that he sends them into the world with a well-tempered and rightly-disposed body; and lastly, that he casts the course of their life out of most of the snares and occasions of sin: so that they can with much more ease be virtuous than other men; and if they sin, they sin merely upon the stock of an internal, overflowing malice; which is instead of a tempter, a devil, and all sinful occasions to itself.
But on the other side, where God denies a man these advantages, and casts him under all the forementioned disadvantages of virtue, and decoys to sin; it is yet most certain that they lay upon him no necessity of sinning. The will is still entire, and may break through all these impediments: it may be virtuous, though indeed at the price of a greater trouble, and a more afflicting endeavour.
II. I come now to the second particular; namely, to shew, that the proper and effectual cause of sin is the depraved will of man, expressed by the apostle here under the name of lust. The proof of which is not very difficult; for all other causes being removed, it remains that it can be only this. We have the word of Christ himself, that it is from within, from the heart, that envyings, wrath, bitterness, adulteries, fornications, and other such impurities do proceed. To heap up all the several places of scripture that bear witness to this, would be infinite and end less: and therefore supposing it sufficiently clear from scripture, that a corrupt will is the sole cause of all sinful actions, I shall endeavour yet further to evince the same by arguments and reasons.
1. The first shall be taken from the office of the will, which is to command and govern all the rest of the faculties; and therefore all disorder must unavoidably begin here. Nothing can be done without a commission from the will; whereupon, if any thing be done sinfully, the fault lies in him that issued out the commission. The economy of the powers and actions of the soul is a real government; and a government cannot be defective without some failure and defect in the governor.
2. The second argument shall be taken from
every man’s experience of himself and his own actions; upon an impartial survey of which he shall
find, that before the doing of any thing sinful or suspicious, there passes a certain debate in the soul about
it, whether it shall or it shall not be done; and
after all argumentations for and against, the last
issue and result follows the casting voice of the will.
This is that which turns the balance, that gives the
3. A third reason is from this, that the same man, upon the proposal of the same object, and that under the same circumstances, yet makes a different choice at one time from what he does at another; and therefore the moral difference of actions, in respect of the good or evil of them, must of necessity be resolved into some principle within him; and that is his will. Which remaining one and the same, according to its own absoluteness and freedom, some times turns itself to one thing, sometimes to another.
4. The fourth and last reason shall be from this, that even the souls in hell continue to sin; and therefore the productive principle of sin must needs be the will.
The consequence appears from hence, because those sins cannot possibly proceed from the body, or the irregular motions of the sensitive appetite, since the soul in this estate is divided from these: nor yet from the temptations of the Devil, for he tempts only that he may bring the soul to hell; but when he has it once there, of a tempter he becomes a tormentor. Wherefore they must needs flow from some principle inherent in the soul; and that is the will, which is as inseparable from the soul, as its own substance.
I shall not insist upon any further proofs of so
plain a truth: let these suffice to persuade every
man to turn his eyes inward, to seek for the traitor
in his own bosom; for here is the source and fountain of all those enormities that stream forth in a
man’s conversation. And therefore it is a great
vanity to declaim against any thing without us, as
Some are so stupid as to patronize their sins with a plea, that they cannot, they have not power to do otherwise; but where the will is for virtue, it will either find or make power. The truth is, men are in love with their vices, their will is enthralled, and here is all the restraint that is put upon them; they suffer no violence, but from delight; no captivity, but from pleasure. But if a man binds his own hands, it will be but a poor excuse to plead that he had no use of them, when his work shall be required of him.
III. I come now to the third and last thing; and that is, to shew the way by which a corrupt will, here expressed by the name of lust, is the cause of sin; and that is, by drawing a man aside, and enticing him.
1. And first for the first of these: it seduces, or
draws a man aside; it actually takes himself from
the ways of duty: for as in all motion there is the
relinquishment of one term before there can be the
acquisition of another; so the soul must pass from
Now the first and leading attempt of lust, is to possess the mind with a kind of loathing and disgust of virtue, as a thing harsh and insipid, and administering no kind of pleasure and satisfaction; all the paths of it are represented as planted with thorns, as full of horror, as made up of nothing but the severities of discipline, and the rigours of unnatural abridgments: and by these means lust disgraces and libels virtue out of practice; it brings it out of favour with the will and the affections; and then we know that the natural consequence of being out of favour with them, is to be laid aside by them.
This being done, and the mind clear, it is now ready for any new impression, and to receive the offers and proposals of vice: and vice and virtue are like other enemies; one never supplants the other, but with a design to step into its place; and amongst contraries, when one is drove out, the other usually takes possession.
Prevail but with a man to remit the prosecution of his duty, and he lies open to all vicious practices imaginable; he offers his mind, as it were, a blank for sin to write what he pleases upon it: and seldom was it known, that omissions of virtue went alone, but were presently followed with enormous commissions of sin.
2. The other course that lust takes to entangle a man in sin, is by enticing; that is, by using arguments and rhetoric, to set off sin to him with the best advantage and the fairest gloss.
And this it does these two following ways.
1. By representing the pleasure of sin, stript of all the troubles and inconveniences of sin. There is no sin but is attended and surrounded with so many miseries and adherent bitternesses, that it is at the best but like a single drop of honey in a sea of gall. Who can extract and fetch it out? It is to be done only by fancy and imaginary speculation. But when a man comes to the real instances of practice and experience, he will find the bitter to intermingle with the sweet, and that with a very great predominance: he will find the sweetness to vanish and disappear, and to be swallowed up in those unequal mixtures of sharpness that are conveyed with it.
But now it is the act of lust, to shew the quintessence and the refined part of a sinful action, separate from all its dregs and indecencies, so to recommend it to the apprehension of a deluded sinner. It will present you only with the fair side, and tell you what pleasure and satisfaction you shall reap from such or such an action: but it never reminds you of the regret and remorse of conscience that will accompany it; of the shame and vengeance that will follow it. No; lust is too skilful a sophister, and has at least this part of perfection, to conceal its imperfections.
Lust never deals impartially with the choice, so as
to confront the whole good with the whole evil of an
object; but declaims amply and magnificently of
one, while it is wholly silent of the other. And it
is observable, that there are few things that present
so entirely bad an appearance, but admit of very
plausible pleas and flourishes of commendation. Sin
prevails upon the affections, not so much by the
As for instance, should I tell a thirsty man that I had for him a drink of a noble colour, a quick taste, and a fragrant smell, surely there could be nothing in this description but must raise and inflame his appetite: but should I tell him that it was poison that was of this so rare a taste, colour, and smell, this would be a full allay to his desire, and a sufficient countercharm to all its other alluring qualities.
It is no question but Judas’s covetousness addressed his sin to him in this manner, and struck his apprehension with the convenience of having so much money, and gaining it with so much ease; but it told him nothing of the black despair and the disastrous death that was to follow it. For had this been offered to his thoughts at the same time, it is no doubt but it must have dashed the temptation, and made it cheap and contemptible.
2. Lust entices, by representing that pleasure that is in sin greater than indeed it is: it swells the proportions of every thing, and shews them, as it were, through a magnifying-glass, greatened and multiplied by desire and expectation; which always exhibit objects to the soul, not as they are, but as they would have them be.
Nothing cheats a man so much as expectation; it
conceives with the air, and grows big with the
wind; and, like a dream, it promises high, but performs nothing. For the truth is, even in lawful
enjoyments God has put an emptiness, and made it
the very specific and inseparable property of the
creature. So that Solomon, who had both the
They are cursed like the earth, not only with barrenness, but with briers and thorns; there is not only a fallacy, but a sting in them: and consequently they are rendered worse than nothing; a reed that not only deceives, but also pierces the hand that leans upon it.
But the exceeding vanity of every sinful pleasure will appear, by considering both the latitude of its extent, and the length of its duration.
1. And first, for the latitude or measure of its extent: it seldom gratifies but one sense at a time; and if it should diffuse an universal enjoyment to them all, yet it reaches not the better, the more capacious and more apprehensive part of man, his soul: that is so far from communicating with the senses, that in all their revels it is pensive and melancholy, and afflicted with inward remorses from an unsatisfied, if not also an accusing conscience.
2. And then secondly, for its duration or continuance: it is but for a moment; it affects and leaves
the sense in an instant, and scarce affords so much
scope as for reflection: the whole course of such
pleasures passes like a tale that is told; a tale, that
But when sin entices, it takes no notice of these littlenesses and flaws in the enjoyment: it speaks loftily, and undertakes largely; it offers mountains and kingdoms, and never suffers a man to purchase a right judgment of it, but at the dear rate of a disappointment: and then he finds how those offers sink and dwindle into nothing; and what a pitiful skeleton of an enjoyment that is, that at first dazzled his apprehensions with such glistering pretences and glorious overtures of pleasure.
He therefore that would stand upon his guard against all the enticements of his corruption, must fortify himself with this consideration, that sin never makes any proposal, whatsoever shew of advantage it may have, but it is with an intent to abuse and deceive him. And consequently, that it is an infinite folly to seek for pleasure or satisfaction but in the ways of duty; the only thing that leads and unites to the great, inexhaustible fountain of satisfaction: in whose presence is fulness of joy, and at whose right hand there are pleasures for evermore.
For it is a people of no understanding: therefore lie that made them will not have mercy on them, and he that formed them will shew them no favour.
THIS chapter is one of the eloquent strains of the
most oratorical of the prophets, describing a severe
judgment to be inflicted on the Jews, in the deplorable destruction of Jerusalem, the demolishing their
stately buildings, and the wasting their pleasant and
delightful habitations. All this is set down in the
1. They may be either understood literally, and
so they set forth the destruction of Jerusalem, in the
devastation of the pleasant gardens and vineyards;
which shall be left so desolate, that the vines and
2. Another sense of these words is figurative and metaphorical: and so this expression, When the boughs thereof are withered, they shall be broken off, signifies thus much: when the inhabitants have filled up the measure of their sins, when they are spiritually withered and dead, and fruitful to no good work, then they shall be broken off, and ruined with the heaviest destruction. And to aggravate this judgment, to put an edge upon this misery, it is added in the next words, that women shall come and set them on fire: that is, a womanish and effeminate generation of men (for such were the Babylonians) shall triumph over them. A hint of their luxury we have in the seventh chapter of Joshua; it was a Babylonish garment that enamoured Achan. We know how Lucian brings in Menippus, speaking of Sardanapalus, one of the womanish kings of Babylon. Ἐπίτρεψον μὴ ὦ Ἑρμῆ τὴν Σαρδανάπαλον πατάξαι κατὰ κόῤῥης. Now a generous spirit, that has the least spark of honour and virility, does not feel so much smart in the punishment, as in the unworthiness of the hand that does inflict it. And this was the emphasis of Samson’s disgrace, to be held in captivity by a woman. And it is the height and aggravation of this judgment, for men to be fired and destroyed by women; the valiant to be made a prey to the luxurious.
And thus having described the judgment, he does
in the next words assign a reason of it; for it is a
Here we ought also to note, in what strange terms God expresses his anger. It is not said, the Lord, the just God will punish them; this was not so wonderful: little to be expected from God’s justice but a sinner’s misery. No; God assumes the most endearing titles, and under them gives the severest judgments: he joins the creator and the destroyer, such expressions as almost confute one another: he clothes himself in the robes of mercy, and in these pronounces the sentence of death upon the sinner.
From the words thus explained, we may naturally deduce these two observations.
I. The relation of a Creator strongly engages God to put forth acts of love and favour towards his creature.
This is clear from the strength of the antithesis in the words, he that made them will not save them: where, for the advantage of the expression, it is redoubled; he that formed them will shew them no favour. As if he should say, It may seem strange to you that your Creator, which very name speaks nothing but bowels of love and tenderness, should break and ruin, utterly confound and destroy you. Yet thus it must be; though the relation make it strange, yet your sins will make it true.
II. Sin does totally disengage God from all those acts of love and goodness to the creature, that the relation of a Creator can engage him to.
Or more clearly thus:
There is more provocation in sin for God to destroy, than there is obligation upon him as a Creator to preserve the creature.
Conclusion the first, viz. That the relation of a Creator strongly obliges God, &c.
The strength of this obligement appears in these two considerations.
1. That it is natural; and natural obligements, as well as natural operations, are always the strongest.
2. That God put this obligement upon himself; therefore it must needs be a great and a strong one: and this is clear, because the relation of a Creator is, in order of nature, antecedent to the being of the creature; which not existing, could not oblige God to create it, or assume this relation.
There are three engaging things, that are implied in the creature’s relation to God, that oblige him to manifest himself in a way of goodness to it.
1. The first is, the extract or original of the creature’s being, which is from God himself. It is the
nature of every artificer to tender and esteem his
own work: and if God should not love his creature,
it would reflect some disparagement upon his workmanship, that he should make any thing which he
could not own. God’s power never produces what
his goodness cannot embrace. God oftentimes, in the
same man, distinguishes between the sinner and the
creature; as a creature he can love him, while as a
sinner he does afflict him. Hence arises that dearness between the parent and the child: what wonder
is it to see him in his father’s arms, who before lay
in his loins? or to see that child admitted to the
bosom, that before lay in the womb? It is mentioned
as a sign of strange, unnatural disaffection in the
Now the creature’s deriving its being from God, includes in it two other endearing considerations.
(1.) It puts a certain likeness between God and the
creature. The foundation of love is laid in the likeness that is between things: now the likeness that is
between the creature and the Creator consists in
this, that he has taken it into the participation and
society of that great privilege of being: and it is in
respect of this that the creature is a copy of God, a
rough draught of some perfection that is in his Maker.
What is written in a large, fair character in him, is
imprinted upon the creature in a small. Now although God loathes and abominates any likeness
that we make of him, yet he loves and embraces
the likeness that he has drawn of himself. And as,
in respect of holiness, it is not the perfection of it
only that God accepts, but he is ready to cherish our
very breathings and longings after righteousness; he
will embrace purity, not only in practice, but in inclination. So for the perfections of being; though he
does absolutely acquiesce in the contemplation of his
own, yet he does not despise those weaker draughts
of it, visible in created things; but is ready to own
whatsoever he sees of himself in the creature: and,
like the sun, can, with much serenity, behold his
image in the lowest waters. Every thing has a
(2.) Whatsoever comes from God, by way of creation, is good; and so, by reason of the native agreement that is between that and the will of God, there naturally does result an act of love: for where there is nothing but goodness on the creature’s part, there can be nothing but love on God’s. Although the acts of God’s love do not always presuppose a moral goodness; for he loves the persons of the elect, while they are unconverted: yet it is probable, that the acts of dislike presuppose a want of that goodness. Though a man is not always good before God loves him, yet many are so favourable as to think, that he is always evil before he hates him; those especially that are of this judgment, that in the very act of man’s reprobation, God did not reprobate him as a man, but as a sinner. Now the creature as such, and immediately issuing from the hands of God, has no evil cleaving to it, to provoke his detestation; but, like a sword, comes shining out of the hands of the artificer, though afterward it chance to gather rust. God made man upright; however since, he has sought out to himself many inventions. And this is the first consideration that endears the creature to God, viz. the original of its being.
2. The second thing that bespeaks God’s love to
the creature is, the dependence of its being upon
God. As the fruit is produced by the tree, so it
hangs upon the tree. If by creation the creature is
endeared to God, then much more by its dependence
upon him; for this is founded upon a continual creation. Every creature is upheld from relapsing into
3. The third consideration that engages the love
of God to the creature is this; that the end of the
creature’s being is God’s glory. Now God, that loves
his own glory, must needs also respect the instrument that advances it. There is no artificer, that
intends a work, that would break his tools. Why
does a man tender and regard his servant, but be
cause he is for his use? The ability and aptness of
the creature for the serving of God’s use, does induce God so far to preserve him. For he that has
a rational respect to the end, must of necessity bear
a suitable affection to the means. The being of the
creatures stands related by the tie of a natural connection to God’s glory; they are the materials of
his praise. Hence we have the business excellently
stated by the prophet
II. I proceed to the second proposition, to shew how sin disengages and takes off God from all those acts of favour, that the relation of a creation engaged him to.
1. It turns that which, in itself, is an obligation of
mercy, to be an aggravation of the offence. True it
is, to make a creature, to give it being upon a rational ground, is an argument of love. But for a
creature to sin against him from whom it had its
whole being; and that a puny creature, the first
born of nothing, a piece of creeping clay, one whom,
as God created, so he might uncreate with a breath;
for such an one to fly in his Creator’s face! this
gives a deeper die to sin; this makes it ten times
more sinful. What, my son! the son of my womb!
the son of my vows! dost thou give thy strength to
women? What, my creature! the work of my hands!
the product of my power! and the object of my
care! dost thou sin against me? dost thou dishonour me? The treason of an Absalom, the stab of a
Brutus, is doubled by the circumstance of so near
a relation. The nearer the party that offends, the
distance is so much the wider. Nemo tam prope, tam proculque; none so near in respect of alliance,
2. Sin disengages God from shewing love to the
creature, by taking away that similitude that is between God and him; which, as has been observed,
was one cause of that love. The creature, indeed, still
retains that resemblance of God, that consists in
being; but the greatest resemblance, that consists in
moral perfections, this is totally lost and defaced. A
mere existence or being is an indifferent thing, (it is
a rasa tabula,) that may be coloured over with sin
or holiness: and accordingly it receives its value
from these; as a picture is esteemed not from the
materials upon which it is drawn, but from the
draught itself. Holiness elevates the worth of the
being in which it is, and is of more value than the
being itself. As in scarlet, the bare dye is of greater
value than the cloth. Sin debases the being in which
it is; and makes the soul more unlike God, in respect of its qualities, than it is like him in respect of
its substance. It is not the alliance of flesh and
blood, but the resemblance of virtue, that makes the
greatest likeness between the father and the son.
Consanguinity and likeness of features will not so
much incite him to love, as a dissimilitude, by reason
of vice, will cause him to disinherit him. Better have
no son, than a prodigal, profane, unclean son; better
not to be a man, than an irreligious man; better an
3. Sin discharges God from shewing love to the
creature, by taking off the creature from his dependence upon God. I know it cannot dissolve its
natural dependence: for in God we live, and move,
and have our being,
4. Sin disengages the love of God to the creature,
because it renders the creature useless, as to the
end for which it was designed. Things, whose
essence and being stand in relation to such an end,
have their virtue and value from their fitness to attain it. Every thing is ennobled from its use, and
debased as far as it is useless. As long as a man
continues an instrument of God’s glory, so long his
title to life and happiness stands sure, and no longer.
But now, sin in scripture, and in God’s account, is
the death of the soul;
Application.
First use, is to obviate and take off that usual and
common argument, that is frequently in the mouths
of the ignorant, and in the hearts of the most knowing; that certainly God would never make them to
destroy them: and therefore since he has made
them, they roundly conclude that he will not destroy
them. Erasmus said, that he could not presume so
far as to hope for heaven; but he thought God was
too merciful to send him to hell. Now the very design of the Spirit, in these words, is to anticipate
and forestall this objection, which he knew was apt
to rise in the hearts of men, who, upon the hearing
of God’s fiery judgments, are ready to shelter them
selves under such poor, groundless considerations.
How does a poor soul strive to dispute and baffle
itself into this persuasion! but how feeble and in
consequent are all his arguments! God made thee,
1. A self-love, and a proneness to conceive some
extraordinary perfection in themselves, which may,
as I may so speak, compound for their misdemeanours.
Certainly, says the proud heart, God could not be
without the service and attendance that he receives
from me; he could not well want that revenue of
honour that he receives from my prayers and praises.
Though I may have slipt and sinned, yet the excellency of my being will outweigh the merit of my
sin; not at all considering, why it should not be as
easy for God to create -a new innocent world, as to
preserve an old sinful one. It is natural for every
carnal heart, upon the commission of sin, instead of
repenting for sin, to look out for some good in itself
that may countervail the sin. When it lays its sins
in one balance, it will lay its perfections in the
other. If it must acknowledge its magna vitia, it
will take shelter here by opposing non minores virtutes. What is spoke of true, evangelical love, may
in another sense be said of this self-love, that it
covers a multitude of sins. The soul will never
view any of its sinful actions, but through those that
are religious; and we may be very confident, that
2. The second reason is, our readiness to think
that God is not so exceeding jealous of his honour,
but he may easily put up the breach of it, without
the ruin of his creature. Nay, we are even apt to
And moreover, what is this sin? Is it not a mere
privation? a nothing? so weak, so low, that we can
not ascribe any active influence or operation to it?
And shall such a nothing, such a mere deficiency, be
expiated by nought under the eternal ruin of an immortal soul? Is this such a thing, for which God
should keep anger for ever? especially since it is
that which gives him so fair an opportunity for the
glorifying his dearest attribute, his mercy. For the
proper, formal act of mercy is to pardon and to spare:
and if the creature had not sinned, how could God
have pardoned? Such reasonings as these the soul is
apt to mutter out against God. Hence it is that
God so often in scripture sets his face against this
imagination; he tells us over and over, that he is a
jealous God,
But now to clear off all these pleas and objections of men, I shall state and answer this question, viz.
Whence is it, that the offence of a child against a
parent does not disengage him from acting according to the relation of a father? I speak of ordinary
offences; for there are some that do, as it were,
even dissolve this relation, as has been already specified in him that cursed his father, that was incorrigible,
In answer to this, to omit this consideration, that a man owes infinitely more to God than to an earthly father, even in respect of those things that he received from his father; God gave him his life, the parent only conveyed it. And shall we owe as much to the casket that brought the jewel, as to the friend that sent it?
But I say, to pass by this,
1. The reason that every ordinary offence does not disentitle
a son to the love of his father, as it does the creature to the protection and
favour of his Creator, is not from the obliging nature of that relation
2. Every offence of a child against a parent, though it immediately strikes him, yet it is ultimately resolved not into him, but into God, of whose righteous command and law it is a breach and violation. But every offence against God is ultimately resolved into God, and no other. And therefore a father is not so much concerned in an injury offered him by his son, as God in the offence of the creature; and, consequently, he is not so much provoked by that, to let fall the tenderness of a father, as God to lay aside the affection of a Creator.
3. That which hinders an offence from pardon, is the vindicative justice of him against whom the of fence is committed. But there is no such thing as vindicative justice in men one towards another, naturally and from themselves; for they are all equal, and this is founded in God’s essential sovereignty. All coaction, (as Grotius observes,) of which punishment is the greatest, being peculiar τῇ ὑπερεχούσῃ ἐξουσίᾳ: and God himself says, Vengeance is mine. Wherefore there is not the same reason for God to forgive a sinful creature, that there is for one man to forgive another.
I think these considerations sufficiently clear the
question. But before I leave this use, I shall add
When I say the sin of the creature disengages God from shewing him any favour, it is not hence to be gathered, that it must therefore engage him to shew him none; for this was no less to put a bond of restraint upon God, than if we should admit of a contrary obligation. As for those that say, that God, after the sin of man, is so engaged by the necessity of his nature, that he can with no accord to his justice shew him any mercy, till a full satisfaction be paid down; J think they cannot say, that God’s giving of Jesus Christ did presuppose any satisfaction given before; which if so, it may be left to the impartial consideration of any one, Whether for God, being so offended by man, yet upon the free, spontaneous motion of his own will, to find out, give, and constitute a mediator for him, be not as great or greater mercy, than, when a mediator is given, to accept of a satisfaction from him in man’s be half?
Second use. This may serve to inform us of the
cursed, provoking nature of sin. Certainly there is
something in it more than ordinary, that should
make the great and merciful God take a poor creature, and shake it almost into nothing, to rid his
hands of it, to disown and let it fall out of his protection into endless, unspeakable woe and misery;
that should make a Creator the executioner of his
own creature; a loving father the butcher of his
own child; that should sour the sweet relation of a
maker into the terrible name of a revengeful destroyer. O let him that commits sin with pleasure
and delight, consider this, and tremble; him that
Third use. This may inform us under what notion we are to make our addresses to God; not as a
Creator, for so he is no ways suitable to our necessities. He is offended and provoked, and we stand as
outlaws and rebels to our Maker. Under this notion,
no sinner can see God, and live. He is, to such an
one, a consuming fire, an everlasting burning, no
thing but wrath and vengeance. And can we find
any comfort in a consuming fire? Is there any refreshment in an everlasting burning? If we cast
ourselves upon his mercy, his justice will break forth
upon us, and devour us. But you will then say,
What shall poor sinners do? whither shall they repair? Why there is yet hope: God’s wisdom has
reconciled his justice to his mercy, and consequently
us to himself. And now he represents himself under
a more desirable relation, as a reconciled God. And
although, under the former relation, he drives us
from him; yet, under this, he tenderly invites us to
him. He therefore that trembles at the name of an
offended Creator, yet let him comfort himself in the
title of a reconciled Father. Though we have cause
to dread the tribunal of his justice, yet let us come
confidently to the throne of his mercy: let us come
And could we now have a greater or an happier instance of his reconcilement to us, than the present solemnity that we are engaging in? in which we have the very arts and inventions of omniscience to endear us to himself. Could we have a more pregnant demonstration of a reconciled God, than a sacrificed Son; nay, than the blood of that Son? and that so mysteriously, and yet so really, conveyed to us? that he does not only invite us to come to him, but to come within him; not only to an embrace, but to an union; and by ineffable and seraphic in corporations for us to be in him, and for him to be in us: not only endearing, but amazing us with his affection; and at the same time feeding our necessities, and entertaining our admiration.
Only let us see that we so come to him, that we
do not put him to receive sins as well as sinners.
For though Christ is willing to make us part of his
body, yet he is not willing to unite himself to ulcers
and putrefaction. And therefore he that comes hither with a Judas’s heart and hypocrisy, will find a
Judas’s entertainment: and though he may receive
the morsel from Christ’s hand, yet he will find that
the Devil will enter and go along with it. It will
be only the nutriment of his sin, and the repast of
When the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.
IT is a truth of general acknowledgment, because of universal experience, that there is no misery comparable to that which follows after a near access to happiness; nor any sorrow so quick and pungent, as that which succeeds a preconceived, but disappointed joy. Such a sorrow we have here; for certainly it must be no small matter, that can make a man sorrowful in the midst of great possessions.
We have this young heir driving a bargain with
Christ, and that for no less a thing than eternal life;
and driving it so near a close, that only one thing
was lacking; a thing, though perhaps in itself great,
yet, compared to the purchase, small and inconsiderable: in the
Neither was the proposal unreasonable, because
usually practised, even by the most worldly; it being
frequent with men to sell an estate in one place, to
buy another in a more convenient. So that he was
not so much commanded to leave, as to change his
Now the words here importing the young man’s sorrow, upon something enjoined him by Christ; the natural method of proceeding will require that we reflect upon the command, that was the occasion of this sorrow: and we shall find that it branched itself into these three parts or degrees.
1. The first was this; Go, sell that thou hast. This was not the duty itself, but the preparative and introduction to it. For barely to sell his estate, was only to alter, not to diminish it, and, as we usually say, to turn a long estate into a broad.
2. The second branch was, Give to the poor. It was not to throw it away, like the morose philosopher: for the duty here urged, was not to impoverish himself, but to benefit others; not so much to cast it from him, as to secure it to him in other hands.
3. The third and last article of the command was, Come and follow me; without which, the other two were utterly insignificant: like two propositions that conclude nothing; or like preparing for a journey, without setting forth. It is the taking up of the cross, that makes our following of Christ feasible; but it is our following of Christ, that makes our taking up of the cross acceptable.
We have here seen the command; and we may
be sure that Christ, whose precepts never outweigh
their motives, would second it with an argument no
less ponderous. And therefore, here he enforces it
with a reason as commanding as the precept; even
They, to establish their works of supererogation, have invented a distinction between precepts and counsels. A precept they define a command, so obliging to duty, that the omission of it obliges to punishment. But a counsel not so much commands, as recommends some perfection, beyond what is enjoined in the law; for the omission of which, a man shall not incur punishment; and for the performance of which, he shall have a more eminent reward: and therefore it is called a counsel of evangelical perfection.
That popery undermines the law, and perverts the gospel, we are not now to learn: but in this it is hard to judge which is greater, the arrogance or the absurdity. The first, in that they pretend to surpass the limits of all legal perfection: the second, in that they assert, that there may be some perfection that is not contained in the law, which is the unalterable rule and standard of all created holiness.
Let them strive, and strain, and stretch the very sinews of their souls to the highest pin of austerity and alms; yet, unless they can prove that this is to love God more than with all their heart, with all their soul, and with all their strength, (which the very letter of the law exacts,) all their evangelical perfection is already drank up and forestalled in the vast comprehensive verge and latitude of the precept. And therefore, this distinction of precepts and counsels is illogical and ridiculous, one member of the distinction grasping within itself the other.
Now to these counsels they refer this injunction given to the young man, to sell all, and give to the poor; which they further prove, because to the performance of it Christ promises not only heaven, but treasure in heaven, which imports a more accumulate degree of felicity. But to this
I answer, that the word treasure in heaven does not of necessity signify any such superlative degree or pitch of happiness, but simply the thing itself; which appears from this, that the nonperformance of this precept not only degrades from an higher degree of glory, but utterly excludes from any entrance into it at all, as in the twenty-fourth verse.
But you will say, if this be not a counsel, but a command, to which of the ten is it to be reduced? I answer, to the first, of serving God with all the heart and with all the strength.
You will reply then, that all stand obliged to sell their estates, inasmuch as the obligation of that command is universal.
I answer, that this precept commands some things absolutely, which oblige all; some things only hypothetically, that is, in case God shall discover it to be his will to be obeyed in such particular instances: and consequently oblige there only, where God shall make such discoveries.
And here we must observe, that there is a vast difference between a new precept and a new instance of obedience; one esse formale (which is that that gives unity to the precept) may extend itself to the whole objective latitude of many undiscovered particulars.
The precept commands us, in general, to love God
with all our hearts. Christ here requires this young
Having thus cleared our way to the words them selves, we may observe in them these four things considerable.
1. The person making the address to Christ, who was one whose reason was enlightened to a solicitous consideration of his estate in another world.
2. The thing sought for in this address, viz. eternal life.
3. The condition upon which it was proposed, and upon which refused; namely, the sale and relinquishment of his temporal estate.
4. His behaviour upon this refusal; he departed sorrowful.
Having thus, as it were, analyzed the text into its several distinct parts, I shall here resume and join them together in this one proposition, viz.
He that deliberately parts with Christ, though for the greatest and most suitable worldly enjoyment, if but his natural reason is awakened, does it with much secret sting and remorse.
In the prosecution of this, I shall do these two things.
I. I shall shew whence it is, that a man, acted by an enlightened reason, finds such reluctancy and regret upon his rejection of Christ.
II. I shall shew the causes why, notwithstanding
this regret that the conscience feels upon its rejection
I. For the first of these; that an enlightened reason is affected with such remorse, upon its rejection of Christ: it may proceed from these causes.
1. The first may be taken from the nature of conscience, that is apt to recoil upon any error, either in our actions or our choice.
There are some innate principles of turpe and honestum; the standing causes of all religion, that supervise all our actions: and according to their agreement to, or deviation from these principles, there follows in the soul a complacency or regret.
And the verdict of these is so infallible, that a man may know the good or evil of his actions, by the temper of his mind after their performance. After a good action, though never so difficult, so grim, and unpleasant in the onset, yet what a light some, refreshing complacency does it leave upon the mind? what a fragrancy, what a cheerfulness upon the spirits? So, on the contrary, an action morally evil and irregular, though recommended with the greatest blandishment and sweetness of allurement to the appetite, yet how empty, and false, and hollow is it found upon the commission! What a sad damp is there upon the heart! what a confusion and displeasedness covers the whole soul!
A man no sooner displeases God, but he presently
displeases himself; according to that excellent and
divine saying of the satirist; Prima est haec ultio,
quod se judice nemo nocens absolvitur. Hence the
expression of forum conscientiae is not a metaphor,
but a truth; for there is a severe inquest, an undeniable
No sooner is the action past, but conscience makes the report. As soon as David cut off a piece of Saul’s robe, how quickly did his heart smite him! An impure heart, like a foul gun, never vents itself in any sinful commissions, but it recoils.
It is impossible to sequester and divide sin from sorrow. That which defiles, will as certainly disturb the soul. As when mud and filth is cast into a pure fountain, it is not so much said to pollute, as to trouble the waters.
Things good and reasonable have a right to our choice, and a claim to our obedience. There is that overawing majesty, that commanding regency in piety to the conscience, that there is in truth to the intellect. Conscience will not be defied: no stifling the first notions of good and evil, the necessary and eternal dictates of reason.
And this is one cause of the remorse that a sinner feels upon his rejection of Christ. And do you think that this young man had not the experience of this? did not his conscience vex and quarrel with him for his sinful and absurd choice? As soon as ever he turned his back, these thoughts dogged him at the heels. He departed indeed, but it was sorrowful, his conscience ringing him many sad peals within, hitting him in the teeth with the murder of his soul; that he had foolishly and irrationally bartered away eternity for a trifle, and lost a never-returning opportunity: an opportunity, in its improvement unvaluable, and in its refusal irrecoverable.
2. The second cause of this trouble and reluctancy,
that men find in the very instant of their rejecting
For when the affections have resolved upon a refusal of Christ, it is but just with God to tantalize and vex the understanding with a livelier discovery of a forsaken advantage.
And here undoubtedly God has many ways of working upon the understanding, even beyond the understanding; and can affect it with a sudden, instantaneous view of a good, which he no sooner discovers, than withdraws: which, though it enlightens, and, as it were, gilds the apprehension, yet it changes not the will.
It is like a sudden lightening, that flashes in the face, but alters not the complexion: it is rather vision than persuasion. God here represents the beau ties of the kingdom of heaven to the sinner, as Satan did the beauty and glory of this world to Christ, by a sudden, transient representation; which, we know, did rather amuse than persuade him: it struck his apprehension, but never changed his resolution.
And that this dealing of God should effect no more upon the mind, is suitable to its proper design and purpose; it being intended by God not to in form, but to afflict the reason: that since it refused a full draught of the waters of life, it might, before the final loss of them, have its memory quickened with a taste.
Now this clearer, transient discovery of Christ
3. The third and last cause of the anxiety that a sinner feels upon his relinquishment of Christ, if his reason be enlightened, is because there is that in Christ and in the gospel, even as they stand in op position to the best of such enjoyments, that answers the most natural and generous discourses of reason.
For the proof of which, I shall produce two known principles of reason, into which the most severe, harsh, and mortifying commands of the gospel are by clear and genuine consequence resolved.
(1.) The first is, that the greatest calamity is to be endured, rather than the least sin to be committed. That this principle grows upon the stock of bare natural reason, may be demonstrated by the united testimony of those, who had no other light but that of reason; all sealing to the truth of this, that the evil of sin is greater than the evil of pain or affliction.
So that it grew into a standing maxim in their philosophy, that no wicked man was happy. But he that is wicked may be rich, learned, beautiful, victorious: he may engross all the perfections, and the very quintessence of nature. It is clear therefore, that their reason told them that these were not happiness; since, notwithstanding these, a man might be wicked, and consequently, upon their own principle, not happy.
Hence Cicero reports, that Socrates would often
curse him, that first made that triple division of
The happiness of every thing is to act suitably to its nature; and reason tells us, that those actions most perfect nature, that perfect the best part of it, the soul. All external miseries and enjoyments can not reach this, but the morality of our actions does. Every sin, every moral irregularity, does as really imprint an indelible stain upon the soul, as a blot falling upon the cleanest paper.
The satirist calls virtue the end and design of living, the vivendi causam; and to save one’s life with the loss of one’s innocence, is to purchase the means with the loss of the end.
Cicero, in the first of his Offices, peremptorily asserts, that nothing can be stated rightly in that subject, but by those qui honestatem propter se dicunt expetendam. Seneca is full of the like assertions. And however they might live below what they spoke, and their practice contradict their principles, yet their principles discovered their reason.
Having thus proved, that natural reason suggests
the choice of the greatest misery before the least
sin; as being a thing in itself irregular, and therefore irrational, and consequently contrary to nature:
it follows, that we are equally to choose it, rather
than to engage in that, which by certain and native
consequence will occasion sin. For the same reason
If reason tells me, that it is more misery to be covetous than to be poor, as our language, by a peculiar significance of dialect, calls the covetous man the miserable man; and if I find that retaining my wealth, I cannot avoid covetousness; the same reason that tells me, I must avoid the sin, will convince me also, that I am to wash my hands of the temptation. And had the philosopher thrown his wealth into the sea upon this motive, it was more custom than reason that vouched his action ridiculous; it being only a throwing overboard his riches, to keep his conscience from shipwreck.
That reason which tells one, in honour it is better to be despised than to be proud, if with his honours he cannot but be proud, if the popular air will get in, and taint all; why, the same reason will command him to lay them down, and rationally to trample upon them: for if we dread being caught, it is absurd walking upon the snare.
Now what did Christ enjoin in this seemingly
severe command to the young man, that a natural
reason, acting naturally, might not upon this principle have enforced? For doubtless he saw him so
riveted into a confidence and love of his possessions,
and perhaps foresaw what he neither did nor could,
that they would certainly occasion luxury, epicurism,
with all its impure consequences; and that therefore
there was no remedy by plastering, but by cutting
off the sore; nor by allowing him the use of his
possessions, when he saw something in his temper,
And without question, the young man who, from Christ’s miracles and life, could not but collect his intimate acquaintance with the mind of God, could not but collect also, that he would propose no command, but of which he knew an excellent reason. No wonder therefore, if he rejected it with reluctancy; and if this rejection, being contrary to reason, was troublesome: for trouble is, when the object grates upon the faculty, either by its disproportion or contrariety.
And thus much for the first principle of reason, upon which the severest commands of the gospel do proceed.
(2.) A second principle is this; that a less good is to be forsaken for a greater: an aphorism attested to by the natural, untaught, universal judgment of reason. And this is so clear, that those who observe how the will is drawn by its object, find that in choice, a less good compared to a greater, is rejected, not formally as a less good, but as absolutely bad.
Hence all deliberation in choice is caused by our apprehension of an equality of goodness, in two things proposed; and as the disproportion grows clearer and clearer, a man begins less to deliberate, and more to determine. But where this disparity of less and greater is evident, there deliberation has no place, but determination is immediate. And this is the reason of the thing from philosophy.
Add weight to one scale, and the balance will no
longer be indifferent which way to incline. Did
ever any man in his wits prefer brass before gold, a
Suspense in the choice, is from indifference in the object, when both parts are equally attractive: like a needle between two loadstones, it inclines to both, but it adheres to neither; but lay it between a load stone and a flint, and you shall quickly see to which it clings.
Now to reduce this principle to the case in hand, we are to demonstrate two things.
1st, That the good promised by our Saviour to
the young man was really greater than that which
was to be forsook for it. The greatest, the severest,
and most unpracticable duty of Christianity, is enforced upon this very principle of reason: as in
For what person of sobriety and recollection
would not crucify his sin rather than damn his soul?
and endure the severity, and live under the discipline
There is no proportion between the miseries or the felicities of this life, with those that are exhibited to us by Christ in the gospel; and where the disparity of things is so great, as to meet our first apprehensions, there to make parallels is superfluous, and to produce proofs rather supposes the case doubtful, than makes it at all clearer.
Christ opposed eternal life to the young man’s possessions; and what compare is there between these upon terms of bare reason? between the narrow compass of a few moments, and the vast spaces of eternity? between the froth and levity of these comforts, and between an exceeding weight of glory, between durable, solid, massy happiness?
What equality between the life of a traveller and the reign of a prince? between the transient titillations of a bewitched, sickly appetite, and those in effable pleasures that stream eternally from the beatific vision?
Reason can say nothing for one before the other, unless perhaps it may reply, that a present good is rationally to be preferred before a future. But to this I answer, that a good is not barely to be measured by its immediate presentiality; but by its adequate coexistence to the soul, whose duration being immortal, reaches more to the future, than it possesses of the present. And this we have to say of the greatest temporal happiness, that though it is present, yet it will quickly be past; and of that which is eternal, that though it be now future, yet it will once be always present; and so even upon this score also it is to be preferred.
We see therefore that natural light joins in with divine revelation, acknowledging the goods of a future estate, incomparably more desirable than any in this. So that when Christ gave this command, reason echoed back the same; and together with the voice redoubled the obligation.
2dly, The second thing to be demonstrated is, that the good promised by our Saviour was not only greater in itself, but also proposed as such with sufficient clearness of evidence, and upon sure, undeniable grounds. For though a thing be really better in itself, yet if it does not appear to be so, no man can be blamed for not embracing it. Now it being proved above, that the eternal life promised by Christ did by infinite degrees of difference exceed the young man’s revenues; the only thing remaining was, whether he promised it upon such grounds, that in reason he ought to have believed him.
Here, to omit other grounds and arguments, the truth of the gospel seems chiefly to be proved upon these two grounds.
1. The exact fulfilling of prophecies in the person of Christ.
2. His miraculous actions.
1. For the first of these, it cannot be denied, but
that it affords a solid proof to those that will be
convinced; but not so convincing to a sceptical disputer, or to an obstinate Jew. Forasmuch as those
prophecies make the kingdom of the Messias, as it is
represented in the letter of the scripture, far different from what it fell out to be in the person of
Christ; so that we cannot apply them to him, but
2. But, secondly, for his miracles: the convincing strength of these was upon all grounds of reason undeniable; and that upon these two most confessed principles.
(1.) That they did exceed any natural, created power, and therefore were the immediate effects of a divine.
(2.) That God cannot attest, or by his power bear witness to a lie.
Now, when Christ avouched to the world such precepts, promises, and threatenings for truths; and to prove his words cured the lame and the blind, raised the dead, stilled the winds and the seas with a word, fed four thousand with three or four loaves; and all this before his enemies, who spitefully, and therefore thoroughly sifted all his actions, and yet confessed the miracle: if, I say, Christ did these miracles to confirm his doctrine; either God must have employed his divine power to ratify and confirm a falsity, or the doctrine so confirmed must needs be a truth. This to me seems so pregnant, so full of convincing evidence, that it leaves the unbeliever inexcusable.
Undoubtedly, Christ knew his own strongest argument, when he still remits his subtlest and most
inquisitive enemies to his miracles; as in
Questionless in this very instance, the young man’s reason, upon this severe and startling command of Christ, could not but discourse the case in this manner:
“He positively tells me, that if I would obtain eternal life, I must sell my estate, and give it all to the poor: is this true, or is it not? If not, and if he only deludes me, how could he back his words with such works as apparently carry in them the finger of God? For God does not hear sinners, he cannot lend the use of his power to a sycophant, to a deceiver; therefore certainly as what he does cannot but be the works of God, so what he says cannot but be the mind of God; and consequently eternal life, which he promises, will be a thing of certain event: and since I cannot have it otherwise, but by relinquishing my temporal estate, relinquish it I must, or never obtain it.”
Here observe, that his reason having convinced itself, beyond all evasion, of the truth of Christ’s words, and consequently of the necessity of his own obedience; his will not being able to comply with that command as good and convenient, which his reason did enforce as true and necessary, he departed sorrowful; there was a tumult in his soul, his judgment and his will were together by the ears: and hereupon he was full of secret trouble and horror, upon the terrifying, irksome, lashing presages of a miserable eternity.
And thus much for the first general head, viz. to
But now it may be naturally inquired, that if there is so much trouble and reluctancy upon an awakened reason, when it breaks and parts with Christ; whence comes it to pass that they break and part at all? If they cannot bid farewell but with tears in their eyes, what necessity is there but that they may forbear parting, and so prevent the sorrow?
And this introduces me to the second general head proposed to be insisted on, which is,
II. To shew the causes, that, notwithstanding all this remorse of conscience, the soul is yet brought in the issue to reject, and shake hands with Christ.
(1.) The first cause is from this, that the perceptions of sense overbear the discourses of reason. Reason discoursing upon grounds of religion, builds only upon another world; but sense fixes upon this. And since religion borrows much from reason, and reason itself has all conveyed to it by sense; it is no wonder, if all knowledge and desire resolves into sense, as its first foundation.
And here it is unfortunately verified, that the elder must serve the younger; that understanding must veil to sense; that the eye must do obeisance to the window, and discourse submit to sensation.
Yet thus it is, sense rebels against reason, and
like those captains among the Israelites, it slays its
master, and reigns in his stead. Though reason
would argue the soul into obedience, by mediums
grounded upon divine revelation; yet sense more
forcibly persuades to sin, upon the undeniable experiment
And herein properly consists the difficulty of believing; that we must part with a good, which we see, taste, and enjoy, for a good that is invisible, and of which there is no idea conveyed to the apprehension; which therefore comes recommended to our desires at a great disadvantage.
The happiness of heaven, for which we are to forego all, is said to be the vision of God, which we find hardly desirable, because not intelligible. For we cannot imagine, and frame in our minds, what it is to see God, since he never was nor can be seen by our senses.
The young man desired eternal life; but he had no notion of the pleasure of it, what kind of thing it was: but he knew and found the sweetness of an estate, so that the sensible impressions of this quickly overcame and swallowed up the weak and languid conceptions that he had of the other.
In short, the very condition of our nature stakes us down, both to the judgment and the inclination of sense: for as there is nothing to any purpose in the understanding, but what was first in the sense; so there is scarce any thing in the will, but what has first passed the appetite.
And this is the reason, that men, though convinced of the excellency of Christ, yet rather choose
the world, of which they have such strong, lively,
and warm apprehensions. Sense and appetite out
vote reason, in which thing alone is summed up the
misery of our nature, and the very cause that so few
(2.) The second cause or reason of this final rejection of Christ, is from the prevailing opposition of some corrupt affection: which being predominant in the soul, commands the will, and blears the eye of the judgment; shewing it all things in its own colour, by a false and a partial representation. It is through the tyranny of these affections, that when the will goes one way, the practice is forced another.
Come to the sensual and voluptuous person, and convince him that there is a necessity of his bidding farewell to all inordinate pleasure, in order to his future happiness; perhaps you gain his reason, and in some measure insinuate into his will: but then his sensual desire interposes, and outvotes and unravels all his convictions. As when by much ado a vessel is forced and rowed some pretty way contrary to the tide, presently a gust of wind comes, and beats it further back than it was before.
Come to a covetous, worldly man, and convince him, that Christ invites him, and he must come; yet covetousness will stand forth, and tell you, that he has bought a farm or a yoke of oxen, and they draw him another way, and he cannot come. And the truth is, it is impossible that he should, till his corruption is subdued, and the bias of his affections turned.
If Christ ever wins the fort of the soul, the conquest must begin here: for the understanding and
will seem to be like a castle or fortified place; there
And this probably was the case of this young man: had his affection been true to his reason, had he not been worldly as well as rich, Christ and he had never parted for a piece of land, that is, for such a compass of dirt. But the ruling corruption of his mind, the peculiar minion of his affections, was worldliness; and to tell this temper of mind of selling all, that he might be happy, it would have been to that as absurd and ridiculously incredible, as if he had bid him sell and give away all, that he might be rich.
This therefore is the second cause, that though reason and judgment would veil to Christ, yet the man does not, because his affections lord it. It is indeed natural for a man to have the dominion over the acts of his will: but he is in this thing like the centurion; though he has some under him, and bids such an one go, and he goes, yet he is also a man under authority himself: though he commands his will, yet he is commanded by his affections.
And perhaps this may be one reason, not contemptible, of the different judgments of men
concerning the freedom or servitude of the will; that
they are not so much determined by arguments
from without, as by experience from within; that
some have strong natural passions and affections,
others but weak and moderate: the former of which
finding their will so potently swayed by such passions, think it is not free, and cannot but do what it
In sum, the economy of the soul in this case is like a public council sitting under an armed force; let them consult and vote what they will, yet they must act as the army and the tumult will have them. In this sense every soldier is a commander: in like manner, let both the judgment and the will be for Christ, yet the tumult of the affections will carry it; and when they cannot out-reason the conscience, they will out-cry it.
(3.) The third cause, inducing men to relinquish Christ contrary to the judgment of their conscience, is the force and tyranny of the custom of the world. It is natural for all men to live more by example than precept; and it is the most efficacious enforcement of duty, to clothe it in a precedent. As a physician by his receipts, persuasions, and discourses cannot win a froward patient to take a bitter potion; but by drinking of it himself, he presently overcomes and shames him into an imitation.
It is the world, and the fashion of it, that ruins
souls. It is the shame of men, and the vogue of the
times, that frights men out of their consciences:
and could we see the secret movings and reasonings of men’s hearts, when Christ by the convictions
of his Spirit debates the case between himself and
the soul, we should see the non-conversion of most
Christ easily runs down the swearer, the drunkard, and the epicure, and convinces them of the wretched destructive consequences of their riots: but then, this whispers them another lesson; What would the world say of me, should I renounce my garb and jollity, and sneak into a course of severe and religious living? How would my companions despise and post me for a base, pusillanimous spirit, as void of the generosity and air of courtship, and a stranger to the genius of true nobility!
And this temptation is so much the stronger, because it is founded upon the most unyielding corruption of our nature, which is pride; a quality, which will put a man upon doing any thing to keep up the post of his station and reputation in the world: hereupon, if it comes to a justle and competition, gentility must go before Christianity, and fashion take the wall of religion.
It was this that made the Jews suppress their
convictions;
And amongst other dissuasives from following of
Christ, the young man could not but be assaulted
with such as these: What! part with all for a new
notion of another world? sell land to buy hope? be
Now observe, here was the eye of the needle that could not be passed; here Christ and he broke; the power of custom, and the quick apprehensions of shame, staved him off from salvation. He would do like the world, though he perished with it; swim with the stream, though he was drowned in it; rather go sociably to hell, than in the uncomfortable solitude of precise singularity to heaven; the jollity of the company made him overlook the broadness and danger of the way.
Precedency is not only alluring, but authentic: for can a man have any greater warrant for the reasonableness of an action, than the practice of the universe? But certainly, there will be a time one day, when a man shall curse himself for not having had the courage to -outbrave and trample upon the common apprehensions and censures of the world, when Christ and that stood rivals for his soul; and for having been so stupidly a coward, as to be baffled of his salvation by words and opinion.
Now the inferences and deductions from the words thus discussed are these.
1. We gather hence the great criterion and art of
trying our sincerity; which is, by the test of such
precepts as directly reach our peculiar corruptions.
Every man’s sincerity is not to be tried the same way. He that should conclude a man pious, be cause not covetous, would bring but a short argument; for perhaps he may be lustful or ambitious, and the stream be altogether as strong and violent, though it runs in a different channel.
The reason of this assertion is, because no man bears an equal propensity to all sins. There is not only a contrariety between vice and virtue, but also between one vice and another. Nay, perhaps, the distance between the two latter is far the greater; forasmuch as there is a longer passage from extreme to extreme, than from an extreme to the middle, which we know is the situation of virtue. No wonder, therefore, since a man’s corrupt appetite bears not an equal inclination to all sins, that it is not equally to be tried by all precepts. Things peculiar and specific are those that must distinguish and discover.
Now as in a tree, it is the same sap and juice
that spreads itself into all that variety of branches;
some straight, some crooked, some of this figure,
some of that: so it is the same stock and furniture
But much more ineffectual, if not also absurd, is a reprehension misplaced. He that should preach damnation to prodigality and intemperance before a company of usurers, what did he else but administer indirectly an occasion to them, to measure their piety by their distance from that vice; while, in the mean time, they stood chargeable with a worse. A man may, with as much propriety, and success of action, angle for birds, or lay lime-twigs to catch fish, as think to convince a man of the sin of prodigality, by loud and sharp declamations against covetousness.
Both, indeed, are sins; but their particular quality makes their agreement, in the general nature of sin, scarce considerable. Was a minister to deal with a luxurious, debauched congregation, how toothless and insipid would it be to make harangues against faction; a sin wholly of another nature, and dwelling in another disposition.
When Paul preached before Felix, he might have
directed his sermon against idolatry and superstition, against heresy, or against rebellion; but he
chose rather to discourse of justice, temperance, and
of judgment to come. Why? but because he determined
Now it concerns every man to get the best assurance he can of his sincerity; to attain which, he must follow the method that Christ used towards this young candidate for eternal life. He must arraign his corruption before that precept that particularly strikes at it; otherwise he will find, that he puts a fallacy upon his conscience, if he misapplies the rule; and if his sin being theft, he tries himself by a law made against murder.
2. The issue of the whole action, in the young man’s not closing with Christ’s proposals about eternal life, and his sorrowful departure thereupon, lays before us a full account of that misery which attends a final dereliction of Christ. Now the happiness that man is capable of being twofold, temporal and eternal, and misery being properly a privation of happiness, the greatness of this misery consists in this, that it adequately deprives a man of both these.
(1.) Of that which is eternal. I mention this first, because it is the greatest, and the best. Unbelief eternises nothing but our miseries. The terms are short and absolute. No leaving possessions, no eternal life; no casting away our goods, no escaping the shipwreck.
Our dearest corruptions are to be mortified, our fairest enjoyments relinquished; this world to be left, or no admission into a better. Yet though the proposal be so evident, and the arguments enforcing it so strong and rational; men, for all this, will not be brought to bend under the power and necessity of this truth: but the heart is still apt to relieve itself with a secret persuasion, that Christ and possessions, future happiness and present ease, are consistent; and that all assertions to the contrary are but the brainsick notions of melancholy spirits, that would impose unnecessary penance upon the world; and therefore they must have their pleasures, their humours, their profits, and their garb, and that in the most eager and slavish pursuit of them; though truth itself has expressly said, that we cannot serve God and mammon. And I am sure, that if they cannot be served, they cannot be so enjoyed together.
But certainly we shall one day find, that the strait gate is too narrow for any man to come bust ling in, thracked with great possessions, and greater corruptions.
These are interests that can never be joined: continual pleasure here and hereafter are incompatible. Heaven and earth are at too great a distance to be united. And, if so, then we see where our unbelief leaves us, even in the regions of horror and despair, in that place of torment and separation from God; where, who knows but this unhappy young heir, with the other rich ones of the world, is now weeping and wailing over his present estate, cursing and crying out of his soul-ruining possessions.
The sorrow he felt before was only an earnest
of this damnation, a taste and prelibation of future
(2.) But, secondly, it bereaves even of temporal happiness also; even that which it promises, and which only it designs, and for the retaining of which it brings a man to part with his hopes of that which is future and eternal. That it does so is evident; for what delight, what taste or relish is there in the greatest affluence of all a man’s worldly possessions, when a grim, offended conscience shall stand by him, and protest against all his pleasures? And however men may put the best face upon things, yet certainly there is no such pain or torment, as an aching, angry conscience, under a merry aspect.
When a man shall look upon his rich farms and
fair houses, and his conscience in the mean time
whisper him, that this is all that he must expect for
ever; when he shall eat and drink the price of his soul,
and pay down eternity for every morsel; so that he
never sits down to his full table, but, like Esau, he
sees his birthright served up to him in a mess: when,
by whatsoever he looks upon, whatsoever he wears,
upon whatsoever he treads, the remembrance of the
sad price is still revived upon his conscience: this
takes away the heart and life of the comfort; and
Now this certainly is the sum of all miseries; and since we can go no further, we may conclude that unbelief is entertained upon very hard terms, when it robs the unbeliever of his last modicum; even of that little slender remain of happiness, that he promised himself in this world: and not only condemns him to die, but also, as it were, feeds him with bread and water till his execution; and so leaves him wretched and destitute, even in that place, where the wicked themselves have an inheritance.
Now to Him who is able to make us wise in our choice here, and happy in our enjoyment here after, the great consequent of a wise choice here; even to Him be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.
Who, being reviled, reviled not again.
IF we run over the whole train and catalogue of duties that are incumbent upon a Christian, we shall find that they are fully comprised under these two heads; his active and his passive obedience. Concerning which, it may be doubted whether of the two, as to the worth and value of the thing itself, ought to have the preeminence. For though all duties expressly enjoined, are by virtue of such injunction equally necessary, yet it follows not that they are in themselves equally excellent. If we here measure the greatness of the virtue by the difficulty of its exercise, passive obedience will certainly gain the precedency: for that this is the most difficult appears undeniably from this reason, that there is much in human nature that inclines a man to action, so that without it there would be no enjoyment; but, on the contrary, there is no proneness or inclination in nature to suffer, but a great abhorrence and aversion from it. So that every instance of voluntary passive obedience must commence entirely upon a dereliction of our own will, and a compliance with a superior.
The Spirit of God in this portion of scripture reads
Before I enter upon the words, it may be questioned, whether or no this particular instance of Christ’s patience may be a sufficient ground for our general imitation. For as in matters of argument we cannot from a particular infer an universal conclusion; so there seems to be the same reason in matters of action, that the particular example of one should not oblige the practice of all.
But to this it may be answered, that divines usually reduce all Christ’s actions to these three sorts.
1. His miraculous actions, such as issued from his divine nature. As, his raising the dead, stilling the sea and the winds with a word, and feeding thousands with a few loaves. In all these it is our duty to admire, not to imitate him; for by these he shews us not what we were to do after him, but only what we were to believe concerning him.
2. The second sort were his mediatorial actions;
such as concerned his offices, to which he was advanced as mediator. As, his governing and disposing of all the world for the good of his church: his
dispensing of the gifts and graces of the Spirit, which
are acts of his kingly office: his satisfying for sin,
3. The third and last sort were his moral actions, which he both did himself, and also commanded others to do. Such were his praying, his giving alms, and his gentle behaviour to all men: and to these we are all equally engaged. And the reason is, because Christ performed all these duties, under that relation in which we all stand obliged, as well as Christ.
He performed them as a man, as a rational creature subject to the law of his Creator; and so we are all. Now under this rank comes his patient endurance of the injurious behaviour of men. And in this respect every Christian should be not only a disciple to his doctrine, but a representative of his person: he should transcribe him in his practice, and make his life a comment and illustration upon his master s.
Having thus answered this query, let us now enter upon the words themselves; the scope and design of which is to recommend to us one excellent branch of the great evangelical virtue of patience: the entire exercise of which adequately lies in these two things.
First, In our behaviour towards God.
Secondly, In our converse with men.
And this is that which is now to be discoursed of: that
composedness of mind, that temper of spirit,
Having thus shewn the design and purport of the words, I shall endeavour to give a full account of it, in the ensuing discussion of these three particulars.
I. I shall shew what is implied in the extent of this duty, of not reviling again.
II. I shall shew how the observation of this duty comes to be so exceeding difficult.
III. I shall shew by what means a man may work himself to such a composure and temper of spirit, as to be able to observe this so difficult a duty. Of each of which in their order. And,
I. For the first of these; what is implied in the duty here expressed to us by not reviling again. We must here observe, that as every outward, sinful action is but the consummation of a sin long before conceived in the thoughts, fashioned in the desires, and then ripened in the affections; from whence it comes to birth, by issuing forth in actual commission: so there is no way to secure the soul from the danger of the commission, but by dashing it in the places of its conception and antecedent preparation; and so to keep it from seeing the world, by stifling it in the womb.
Accordingly this command implies two things.
(1.) The not entertaining the impression of injuries with acrimony of thought and internal resentment.
(2.) The not venting any such resentment in virulent, vindictive language.
Or briefly thus;
1. A suppressing of our inward disgusts.
2. A restraint of our outward expressions.
1. Concerning the first of which; no sooner does the foul tongue give us the alarm, hut straight all the powers of the mind are awakened, the concerns of reputation begin to rise, thoughts of defiance to take up arms, and the whole soul boils within itself, grows big with the injury, and would fain discharge and disburden itself in a full revenge.
This is the posture of the mind in this case; and it will quickly proclaim itself by a loquacity of countenance, and a significance of gesture: and though the tongue perhaps should forbear, yet a man will speak his mind with his very face; he will look satires, and rail with every glance of his eye.
If the mind be full and embittered, it will assuredly have its vent, and, like unsettled liquors, work over into froth and foulness. But admit that it refrains, yet still the man shall find a civil war within himself, a great scuffle and disturbance, his thoughts divided between contrary principles, the clashings of prudence and revenge.
But now all these must be composed; for God hears the language of the heart, the outcry and tumult of the affections, the slander of the thoughts, and the invectives of the desires. And that man that can entertain the anger that he dares not utter, and hug the distastes that he will not speak; so that, in that respect, his heart is never at his mouth: he may indeed have more prudence, but never the less malice; or his malice may be buried, but not dead.
For suppose that his concealed wrath never flies out in words, yet the virulence and ugliness of the mind, the anarchy and confusion of the passions, is still the same. It is like thunder without a shower. The inward chafings and ravings of the heart make it a very unfit seat for reason or religion. Christ and religion are usually asleep in such a storm, and do not actually exert themselves in such a soul.
Wrath is wrath, and has all the deformities of that passion, whether it frets in a concealed disgust, or speaks out in open slander and calumny. As a body is altogether as unsound while it festers by an inward putrefaction, as when it casts abroad its rottenness by flux and suppuration.
2. There is required a restraint of the outward expressions. We must hush our discontents, put our mouths in the dust, and there bury our passion.
I confess, when anger and the tongue, that is, the two unruliest things in the world, and both so impatient of control, do meet and concur, the restraint must needs be difficult and arduous; yet the command of Christ is here indispensable, the precept high and exact. We must be all ear, to hear our own disgraces; and be as quietly attentive to an injurious slander, as to an homily of patience, or a lecture of perfection.
If a man vents his anger against his brother,
even by those undervaluing terms of fool and rascal,
Christ awards him the sentence of hell and judgment,
Has anger therefore prevailed so far as to fire
But here, for our regulation both in the apprehension and practice of this duty, I shall subjoin this caution: namely, that a due expression of asperity against the enemies of God, the king, and the public peace, is not the reviling mentioned or intended in the text: the scene of which is properly private revenge; not a zealous espousal of the public injuries.
He that treats a rebel, and a murderer of his prince, in terms suitable to those actions, is not a reviler. But he that conceals or smooths a villain in the execrable practices of a public mischief, he is truly a reviler and a slanderer; for he reviles his conscience, and slanders his religion. It is a duty that every man owes to the public, to call vice and villainy by its own name; which name, if it be in famous, the cause is in him that deserves, not in him that bestows it.
For observe, that the great standard by which
the text bids us measure ourselves in this duty, is
Jesus Christ: who though in his own cause, in his
own personal affronts, opened not his mouth, but
passed over all with a meek and a silent sufferance;
When St. Peter himself went to cross him in the great business of the world’s redemption, his passion and crucifixion, in what language did Christ answer him? No appellation but that of Satan was thought fit for him.
With what severity of speech did he also treat those public enemies of piety, and patrons of hypocrisy, the scribes and pharisees! Whited walls, rotten sepulchres, generation of vipers, with other such like terms, were their constant titles: and may indeed serve indifferently for the scribes and pharisees of all ages; even those of ours also, did they not prevail above their progenitors in the several arts and more improved methods of hypocrisy.
By warrant therefore of the grand exemplar of meekness and patience, we are empowered to give great and public villains, and disturbers of society, names proper to their actions and merits. He that called Herod fox, does not command us to call a fox a sheep, nor a vulture a dove; nor to give rebels and murderers occasion to think themselves innocent, by never telling them that they are otherwise. To soothe and flatter such persons, would be just as if Cicero had spoke commendatories of Antony, or made panegyrics upon Catiline.
He that commends a vile person, upbraids the
virtuous; whose virtue never receives so fair a character, as by an impartial representment of the ugly
lineaments and appearances of vice. Nay, he that
commends a villain, is not an approver only, but a
party in his villainy. Besides, the fruitless frustraneous
And what I say against a commendation, or smoothing of such unworthy persons, I may with the same reason affirm of a degenerous passing over and concealing their base actions: to bury them in silence, is to give them too honourable a funeral.
To what purpose is a ministry, if the ambassador of God must come with a tongue and conscience enslaved to the guilt and pleasure of an obnoxious auditory? when conscience must be reduced to that which fools call prudence, and even that prudence measured by a sordid compliance?
Must robbers and usurpers carry away the prey and booty, without so much as an hue and cry raised after them? It is a pitiful thing to imitate the lamb in nothing else, but in being dumb before those that have sheared us.
Let this therefore be fixed upon for the right stating of this duty; that it reaches not the sharp reprehensions of public persons, (as all lawful preachers are,) directed against public malefactors; but is properly a restraint of the expresses of a man’s private revenge. In which, we confess, a man ought to be wholly passive, to lie open to the wrong, and to turn both ears to the railer, as well as both cheeks to the smiter; answering him as David did Shimei, Let him rail on; give him scope, till he runs himself out of breath, and wearies himself into silence, and a better behaviour.
Having thus declared the extent and nature of
II. The second general thing proposed; which is to shew whence it is, that this duty comes to be so exceeding difficult.
It is so, I conceive, upon these grounds and causes.
1. From the peculiar, provoking quality of ill language. Upon observation, we shall find that most of the bitter hatreds and irreconcileable enmities that disturb the world, and sour the converse of mankind, have commenced merely upon the score of vilifying words.
And what the reason of it is, I know not; yet certain it is, that men are more easily brought to forgive injuries done, than injuries said against them. One undervaluing speech shall dash the service of many years, and be looked upon as a sufficient forfeit of all the hopes of a laborious and long attendance.
Have not most of the duels that were ever fought, been undertook upon the affront of provoking words? Have they had any trumpet to alarm them into the field, but that of a reviling tongue?
But we shall have a more lively discovery of the
provocation of such virulent language, above real
acts of injury, by comparing it with the contrary
effects of smooth and fawning speeches. What a
strange bewitchery is there in flattery! How, like a
spiritual opium, does it intoxicate and abuse the understanding, even sometimes of men wise and judicious! So that they have knowingly, with their
Nay, I have known men, grossly injured in their affairs, depart pleased, at least silent, only because they were injured in good language, ruined in caresses, and kissed while they were struck under the fifth rib. And therefore it has been observed, that the greatest usurpers and the falsest deceivers have still been fair spoken; in the strength, or at least in the gloss of which, they have usurped and deceived successfully.
And, according to the difference of men’s tempers this way, it is really true, that some judges shall with less offence pronounce sentence against a man, than some for him. To be condemned with words of softness and commiseration, is more pleasing than to be absolved with taunting gibes, insulting sarcasms, and imperious, domineering exprobrations.
The world is generally governed by words and shows: for men can swallow the same thing under one name, which they would abominate and detest under another. The name of king was to the old Romans odious and insufferable; but in Sylla and Julius Caesar they could endure the power and absoluteness of a king, disguised under the name of dictator.
Certainly therefore there is some peculiar energy, some charm in words, that they are able thus to overrule the very discourses of men’s reason, and the clearest discernments of sense.
And I hope that, both by the very nature of the
thing, and the advantage of its contrary, I have discovered
2. Another reason of its difficulty is, because nature has deeply planted in every man a strange tenderness of his good name, which, in the rank of worldly enjoyments, the wisest of men has placed before life itself. For indeed it is a more enlarged and diffused life, kept up by many more breaths than our own. It is the soul that keeps the body sweet, and a good name that keeps the soul. It is this that recommends us to converse, and preserves us from being noisome to society.
A good name is properly that reputation of virtue that every man may challenge as his right and due in the opinions of others, till he has made forfeit of it by the viciousness of his actions. But now every slander is an invasion upon that, and puts a virtuous person into the same condition of disrepute with the vicious, leaving him the severities and difficulties of being virtuous, without the reward of being thought so.
No wonder, therefore, if the mind of man rises with
all its might against such as would make an inroad
upon the prime enjoyment and most endeared part
of its happiness. No wonder if it catches at all
means to repel or retaliate so destructive an opposition, and so comes, at length, to the remorseless
A man’s reputation is his freehold, his birthright, and no man will endure to be tamely bereaved of it by the aspersion of a calumny, who has wit enough to resent, and power to revenge it. He that tears away a man’s good name, tears his flesh from his bones, and, by letting him live, gives him only a cruel opportunity of feeling his misery, of burying his better part, and surviving himself.
When a man is dead indeed, he is the portion of rottenness and worms, and whatsoever else will gnaw upon or insult over him; but while he is alive, it is but the privilege of his nature to defend himself. When he shall be laid in his grave, men may fling what dirt they will upon him; but while he is above ground, no marvel if, to keep himself clean, he throws it back again.
And with the more care and solicitousness may we allow him to manage his own preservation in this respect; forasmuch as a good name, though, while it continues whole and entire, it is bright and glistering, yet it has the other property of glass, to be also very brittle, and being once broke, to admit of no repair, no perfect sodering, and making up the breach.
And thus much for the grounds and reasons upon
which I conclude it so hard and irksome a thing for
a man, being slandered and reviled, not to revile
again, and return the slander. Indeed, nothing under that amazing Christian duty of absolute self-denial, can work a man to an unconcerned behaviour
III. I come now to the third and last thing, which is, to shew by what means a man may work himself to such a composure and temper of spirit, as to be able to observe this great and excellent duty. And here, when we consider what obstructions are to be conquered and removed, we must acknowledge, that nothing under an omnipotent grace can subdue the heart to such a frame. But as the workings of God do not exclude the subordination of our endeavours, so something must be done on our part towards it: and the best course that reason can find out is to discipline and check our unruly passions by a frequent consideration of, and serious reflection upon, the disadvantages of the humour we contest against, and to discommend this of returning railing for railing, slander for slander, both to our practice and affection. I shall fasten only upon this one consideration, namely, that it is utterly useless to all rational intents and purposes: and this I shall make appear inductively, by recounting the several ends and in tents to which, with any colour of reason, it may be designed; and then, by shewing how utterly unfit it is to reach or effect any of them.
1 . The first reason that would induce a man, upon
provocation, to do a violent action by way of return,
should be, to remove the cause of that provocation.
But the cause that usually provokes men to revile
are words and speeches; that is, such things as are
irrevocable. Such an one vilified me; but can I,
by railing, make that which was spoke, not to
Nay, if we look further, and state the cause of our anger, not upon the slander itself, but upon the malicious temper that was the cause of it; this is so far from being removed, that it is heightened, blown up, and inflamed by such a return.
Possibly that malignity that first threw the slander, not being exasperated by the rebound of an other, would have vanished and expired in silence, perhaps in the ingenuities of repentance; and it is not impossible but that, to make amends, it might, by a kind of antiperistasis, have turned into friend ship: for injuries dissembled not unusually are exchanged for courtesies.
But the injury being once owned by a retribution, and advanced by defiance, like an opposed torrent it tumultuates, grows higher and higher, begins to fix, and so, by an improvement of the humour, that which at first was but a sudden motion, rises into a violent rage, and from thence passes into a settled revenge.
2. Another end, inducing a man to return reviling for reviling, may be, by this means to confute the calumny, and to discredit the truth of it. But this course is so far from having such an effect, that it is the only thing that gives it colour and credibility: all people being prone to judge, that an high resentment of a calumny proceeds from concernment, and that from guilt, which makes the sore place tender and untractable. Convitia, si irascaris, agnita videntur, says Tacitus.
The way of refelling calumnies is very different; they are weakened with contempt, confuted with innocence. If the calumniator bespatters and belies me, I will endeavour to convince him by my life and manners, but not by being like himself. It was a noble conclusion that Gains Marius made against all the descants of men’s tongues whatsoever; no speech, he said, could hurt him: quippe vera, necesse est bene praedicet; fulsam vita moresque mei superant.
He that returns reviling for reviling does not confute the railer, but outdo him: and thus to second him, is to authorize and countenance the action: for either it is good, and then why do I revenge it? or it is unworthy and vile, and then why do I imitate it? That certainly is fit first to be done, that is fit after to be followed.
If it is a base thing to revile, do not I, by reviling again, repeat that baseness, and credit an ill copy by transcribing it? Or do I think to disgrace an ugly face by drawing its picture? Surely that will be but a poor expedient, since the picture is still worse than the original. And therefore, if it looks ill in my enemy, it cannot but be much more uncomely in my self, who had an argument to avoid and hate the ill, by first seeing the ugliness of it represented in an other.
And why should I degrade myself so much below my enemy, as to judge that fit and handsome in my self, which I first judged so indecent in him? and while I hate him, eagerly practise that thing for which I esteem him hateful?
3. But thirdly, a third end for which a man may
pretend to give himself this liberty is, because in so
doing he thinks he takes a full and proper revenge
Natural instinct has suggested to every creature to endeavour its own defence by the use of that part or faculty in which it has a peculiar strength and force. But surely a man’s strength does not lie in his treasures of ill words, in a voluble dexterity of throwing out scurrilous, abusive terms: no, he has a head to contrive, and valour to execute a nobler and more effectual revenge. But loudness and scurrility are the reproach, not the defence of men.
Nay, were I to argue against this intemperance of reviling, even to the revengeful person, I need no other arguments than what are deducible from the very topic of his own sin.
He that gives ill language does not prejudice his enemy, but forewarn him: he gives him fair admonition to double his guards, to increase his circumspection, and consequently to frustrate all assaults of his adversary. The cur that barks gives me opportunity to provide myself that he shall never bite me.
Revenge must not be heard, but felt, and never
discovered, but in the execution; and therefore he
Upon which ground, let it rather lie still, and wait its season; the longer it sleeps, the more strength it will gather against the time that it comes to rise and exert itself. But he that lets it fly out in angry words, and spreads his heart upon his lips, he is a trifler in this action; he betrays his design, and loses the opportunities of a well-ripened, satisfactory revenge; and so contracts only the guilt, but reaches not the supposed gallantry of the sin.
4. In the fourth and last place, peradventure a man thinks, by thus repaying slander for slander, to manifest a generous greatness of spirit in shewing himself impatient of an affront. But in this very thought there is a gross, though usual mistake; for the scene of greatness and generosity lies as much in patience as in action. Contempt naturally implies a man’s esteeming of himself greater than the person whom he contemns: he therefore that slights, that contemns an affront, is properly superior to it; and he conquers an injury, who conquers his resentments of it. Socrates being kicked by an ass, did not think it a revenge proper for Socrates to kick the ass again.
Contempt is a noble and an innocent revenge,
and silence the fullest expression of it. Except only
storms and tempests, the great things of the world
are seldom loud. Tumult and noise usually rise from
the conflict of contrary things in a narrow passage;
and just so does the loudness of wrath and reviling
What a noise and a buzz does the pitiful little gnat make, and how sharply does it sting, while the eagle passes the air in silence, and never descends but to a noble and an equal prey! He therefore that thinks he shews any nobleness or height of mind by a scurrilous reply to a scurrilous provocation, measures himself by a false standard, and acts not the spirit of a man, but the spleen of a wasp.
And thus, I think, I have unravelled all the pleas
that reason can make for a defensive reviling; and I
am sure there is no sanctuary for it in religion. We
read of none in scripture that used it in any manner,
but are transmitted to us with a brand of a lasting
infamy. Shimei, Rabshakeh, and one of the crucified
thieves, are remarked to us for their railing. And
the apostle Paul would have us shun the converse of
such an one, as the fatal blasts of a pest, or a walking contagion;
Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.
THIS description of God’s anger, set forth by such a pathetical exclamation, seems to come from a person that spoke not only his thoughts, but his experience; even from Moses, who had felt the sad effects of his own anger, and therefore might well be sensible of the weight of God s. When God shewed himself as a legislator, it was with all the pomps of terror, and the circumstances of dread; but here we have him in the grimmer dress of a revenging judge. Then the mountain smoked, but now it flames. And Moses seems so possessed with an awful reflection upon the amazing terrors of the divine anger, that he can scarce look up; but with fear and distance, as it were, avoids the sight, and seems to have recourse to his veil, and to hide his face, not from being seen by men, but from seeing God.
Before we proceed upon the words, it will concern us to see how anger can be ascribed to God: for an infinite and divine nature cannot be degraded to those affections and weaknesses that attend ours. Anger is a passion, but God is impassible. Anger is always with some change in the person that has it, but God is unchangeable.
Crellius, in his treatise of God’s attributes, asserts
Certainly, therefore, anger, and the like affections, can by no means be ascribed to the infinitely perfect God in the proper and usual acceptation of the words, but only by an anthropopathy; attributing that to God, which bears some analogy and proportion to what we find in men. Thus God is said to be angry, when he does some things that bear a similitude to those effects that anger produces in men.
It is therefore in God, not as a perfection inherent in his nature, but only as an effect of his will. In deed it is not in him at all, but is only an extrinsical denomination from a work wrought without him; from the miseries and calamities which he inflicts upon a guilty creature.
I cannot see any thing else of difficulty in the words. The prosecution of them I shall manage in these following particulars.
I. I shall lay down some preparatory considerations concerning God’s anger.
II. I shall shew those instances in which it does exercise and exert itself.
III. I shall consider those properties and qualifications,
IV. I shall make some use and improvement of the whole.
I. For the first of these, I shall lay down these two preparatory, cautional observations.
1 . That every harsh and severe dispensation is not an effect of God’s anger. The same effect, as to the matter of it, may proceed from very different causes. Love is sometimes put upon the rigour of those courses, which at the first aspect seem to carry in them the inscriptions of enmity and hostility.
God may sweep away a man’s estate, snatch away a friend, stain his reputation; and yet the design of all this not be revenge, but remedy; not destruction, but discipline.
He sees perhaps something evil in us to be cured, and something worse to be prevented; some luxuriancies to be abated, and some malignant humours to be evacuated; all which cannot be effected, but by sharp and displeasing applications. And in all the hard passages of Providence, when God strips a man of all his externals, God’s intent may be, not to make him miserable, but to make him humble; not to ruin, but to reduce him.
If you look only upon the outside of an affliction, you cannot distinguish from what principle it may proceed; Gehazi’s leprosy and Lazarus’s sores may seem to be inflicted by the same displeasure; and yet one was a curse for hypocrisy, and the other a trial of humility.
David’s and Saul’s afflictions were dispensed with
a very different hand: Saul could not pursue him so
Consider the saints in
Persons who are truly holy, and tender how they
offend God, are yet very apt to look upon God’s dealings on the wrong side, and to make hard conclusions concerning their own state and condition. David is much an example of this, who, through the
transports, sometimes of diffidence, sometimes of impatience, is high in his expostulations with God.
Now all this, perhaps, was commenced upon the sense of some outward affliction, not considering (as he does elsewhere) that when God deals with his chosen ones, with the sheep of his pasture, his rod is still attended with his staff; and as with one he strikes, so with the other he supports.
And as persons holy are, upon the sharp passages
of Providence, very prone to conclude God’s anger
against themselves; so. on the other side, men of a
Nothing can befall any man, besides themselves, but presently it is a judgment; and they have cried out judgments! judgments! so long, that they are even become judgments themselves: indeed the greatest and sorest that a nation can groan under.
Wherefore, let us rest assured of this, that the roughest of God’s proceedings do not always issue from an angry intention: it is very possible, because very usual, that they may proceed from the clean contrary. The same clouds which God made use of heretofore to drown the earth, he employs now to refresh it. He may use the same means to correct and to better some, that he does to plague and to punish others. The same hand and hatchet that cuts some trees for the fire, may cut others into growth, verdure, and fertility. This is the first thing to be observed.
2. We must observe, that there is a great difference between God’s anger and his hatred; as great as there is between the transient, expiring heat of a spark, and the lasting, continual fires which supply a furnace. The nature of hatred is to pursue its object to death, to a total extinction of its very being. And as it is said of God’s love, so, I think, it may be also said of his hatred, that whom he hates, he hates to the end.
I do not desire to wade into the depths of God’s
But surely we are exceeding ignorant of the actuality, simplicity, and immutability of the divine nature, if we think that God can alter his counsels, or revoke his purposes.
But we shall not meddle with God’s hatred as it is bound up in his purpose, but as it lies open and visible in the execution: and so, it is the pursuance of a standing enmity against a sinner, a gradual accomplishing of his final destruction, a disposal of all passages, all contingencies and circumstances of his life, to the ruin of his soul, and the fatal issues of damnation.
But God’s anger is not of so malign and destructive an influence; the choicest of his saints have shared in some of the severest instances of it. God was angry with Moses, angry with David, angry with Hezekiah, and with his peculiar people; but we do not read that he hated them. The effects of his anger differ as much from the effects of his hatred, as the smart of a present pain from the corrosions of an abiding poison. It must indeed be confessed, that the heats of it are fierce and dreadful: but it is such a fire, as though it burns, yet it does not consume the bush; it may affright, but it will not destroy a Moses. Nevertheless, though it does not bring God’s elect under the power, it may bring them into the shadow of death, into the suburbs of hell; and give them a glimpse of those horrors, a taste of those vials of wrath, that are poured out in full measure only upon the sons of perdition.
And thus much for the first general head.
II. I shall now, in the second place, shew what are those instances in which this unsupportable anger of God does exercise and exert itself.
I shall mention three.
1. First, it inflicts immediate blows and rebukes upon the conscience. There are several passages in which God converses with the soul immediately by himself; and these are always the most quick and efficacious, whether in respect of comfort or of terror.
That which comes immediately from God, has most of God in it. As the sun, when he darts his beams in a direct, perpendicular line, does it most forcibly, because most immediately.
Now there are often terrors upon the mind, which flow thus immediately from God, and therefore are not weakened or refracted by passing through the instrumental conveyance of a second cause: for that which passes through a thing, is ever contracted according to the narrowness of its passage. God’s wrath, inflicted by the creature, is like poison administered in water, where it finds an allay in the very conveyance.
But the terrors here spoken of, not being inflicted by the intermediate help of any thing, but being darted forthwith from God himself, are by this in comparably more strong and piercing.
When God wounds a man by the loss of an estate,
of his health, of a relation, the smart is but commensurate to the thing which is lost, poor and finite.
But when he himself employs his whole omnipotence,
and is both the archer, and himself the arrow, there
God strikes in that manner that he swears; never so effectually, as when only by himself. A man striking with a twig does not reach so dreadful a blow, as when he does it with his fist; and so makes himself not only the striker, but the weapon also.
These immediate blows of God upon the soul,
seem to be those things that in
2. God’s anger exerts itself by embittering of afflictions. Every affliction is of itself a grievance, and a breach made upon our happiness; but there is some times a secret energy, that so edges and quickens its afflictive operation, that a blow levelled at the body, shall enter into the very soul. As a bare arrow tears and rends the flesh before it; but if dipped in poison, as by its edge it pierces, so by its adherent venom it festers.
We do not know what strength the weakest creature has to do mischief, when the divine wrath shall join with it; and how easily a small calamity will sink the soul, when this shall hang weights upon it.
What is the reason that David is sometimes so
courageous, that though he walks through the shadow of death, yet he will fear no evil? as in
Men may undergo many plagues from God, and yet by the enchantment of pleasures, the magic of worldly diversions, they may, like Pharaoh, harden their hearts, and escape the present sting of them. But when God shall arm a plague with sensible, lively mixtures of his wrath, believe it, this will not be enchanted away; but the sinner, like those magicians, (whether he will or no,) must be forced to confess, that it is the finger of God, and consequently must bend and lie down under it.
God may cast a man into prison, nail him to the bed of sickness, yet still he may continue master of his comforts; because the sun may shine, while the shower falls. The soul may see the light of God’s countenance, while it feels the weight of his hand.
But for God to do all these things in anger, and to mark the prints of his displeasure and his indignation upon every blow; this alters the whole dispensation, and turns it from a general passage of Providence into a particular design of revenge.
It is like a deep water, scalding hot, which as it
drowns, so at the same time it redoubles its fatal influence, and also burns to death. An unwholesome
air will of itself make a man sick and indisposed;
but when it is infected, and its native malignity
And such a difference is there between afflictions in themselves, and afflictions as they are fired, poisoned, and enlivened with God’s wrath. And thus much for the second way by which God’s anger puts forth itself; it embitters afflictions.
3. It shews and exerts itself by cursing of enjoyments. We may, like Solomon, have all that wit can invent, or heart desire, and yet at last, with the same Solomon, sum up all our accounts in vanity and vexation of spirit.
There is a pestilence that walks in darkness, a secret, invisible blow, that smites the first-born of all our comforts, and straight we find them dead, and cold, and sapless; not answering the quickness of desire, or the grasp of expectation. God can send a worm to bite the gourd, while it flourishes over our heads; and while he gives riches, deny an heart to enjoy them.
For whence is it else, that there are some who flourish with honours, flow with riches, swim with the greatest affluence of plenty, and all other the materials of delight; and yet they are as discontented, as dissatisfied, as the poorest of men?
Care rises up and lies down with them, sits upon their pillow, waits at their elbow, runs by their coaches; and the grim spirits of fear and jealousy haunt their stately houses and habitations.
I say, whence is this, but from a secret displeasure of God, which takes out the vitals, the heart, and the spirit of the enjoyment, and leaves them only the caput mortuum of the possession?
We may be apt to envy such or such an one’s greatness, his estate, his happiness; but greatness is not always happiness. It is not impossible, but that he who has this, may rate it with another esteem, and perhaps feel that in it which we cannot see. The garment may present fair and handsome, and neat to the eye which beholds it; but still it may wring the body that wears it.
It was a notable speech of Haman,
Christ determines the case fully and philosophically in those words,
If God frowns and is angry, presently the whole scene of affairs is changed, all is overcast; power is a trouble, honour a vanity, riches a burden; and gold loses its brightness, and retains only its heaviness.
Is it any pleasure to a son to have his father reach
him meat, if he does it with a frowning countenance,
Alas! it is not the body and the mass of those things which we call plenty, that can speak comfort, when the wrath of God shall blast and dispirit them with a curse. We may build our nest soft and convenient, but that can easily place a thorn in the midst of it, that shall check us in our repose.
And this is the third way, by which God’s anger shews itself; it spoils and curses our enjoyments.
III. Come we now to the next general head proposed; namely, to shew those properties and qualifications, which declare and set forth the extraordinary greatness of God’s anger.
I shall instance in these four.
1. The greatness of it appears in this, that it is fully commensurate to the very utmost of our fears, which is noted even in the words of the text; according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.
Now we must observe, that all the passions of the mind enlarge and greaten their objects, and stretch things from the just standard of truth to the compass of imagination. Hence love, fear, and hope, always speak in hyperboles, and return the object greater than they received it; being as it were the womb of the soul, where things are no sooner entertained, but they grow, and are always brought forth bigger than they were conceived.
From this it is, that experience judges short of the judgment of expectation; because expectation swells and widens according to the credulity of passion and desire: but every thing comes stript to its native truth and poorness, in the severe, impartial verdict of fruition.
And of all the passions, fear in this increasing faculty exceeds. Fear does not only tremble at shadows, but makes them; that is, it gives you some thing larger than the substance. Compare a danger feared and endured, and see how much the copy spreads beyond the original. Fear still supererogates and overdoes; and when it is to transcribe the truth of things, it gives a comment, instead of a translation.
What malefactor is condemned, who is not first executed by his fears? who does not both anticipate and enlarge those miseries, which truth and feeling would quickly contract to their own proper smallness? So that the execution endured, is not so much a punishment for his fault, as a release from his fears.
With how many blows does this kill, whereas death gives but one! Let a man have but a friend at sea, or in the wars, and how many storms and ship wrecks, wounds and battles, does this solicitous passion represent! Evils crueller than war, and larger than the sea; which, though of all other things the most remorseless, yet often spare those, upon whom fear has long since passed the sentence of death.
Let it run through the whole creation, it still adds,
and would go a pitch beyond God and nature; not
contracting the world into a map, but the world it
self at largest is rather a map and an abridgment
of our fears. And when at length it comes to God,
But now the wrath of God is the only thing which fear itself cannot enlarge; and eternity, which it can not multiply. This alone equals this passion, and bids defiance to all additions.
And here let any man call up his invention, and summon his fancy, the only creating faculty that is given to the creature, and which finds matter as well as form, and like a little deity creates things out of nothing: I say, let him give scope to his imagination, to rove over all terrors, and to represent to itself, not only things existent, but possible, and new ideas of things, and then unite them all into one apprehension of fear; yet here he shall find, that even imagination is still within the bounds of truth: the subject is so large, so inexhaustible, that there is reality enough in it to warrant the highest reaches of imagination.
Herein therefore does the divine wrath display its dreadfulness transcendently above all created terrors, that it verifies our fears, and realizes the utmost boundless suggestions of a fearful mind.
2. The greatness of God’s anger appears in this,
that it not only equals, but infinitely exceeds and
transcends our fears. The misery of the wicked,
and the happiness of the saints, run in an equal parallel; so that by one you may best measure the
proportions of the other. And for the former of
these, we have a lively description of it in
Now, what can be more unsatiable than the eye, greedier than the ear, wider and more comprehensive than thought? Yet, alas! both sight and intellect, sense and reason, are tired and swallowed up in the vast abyss of that wrath, which spreads itself into all the spaces of infinity. Endure it we may one day, (if mercy prevent not,) but never comprehend it; as the sun is known, not by our seeing his full bulk, which is here impossible, but by being scorched with his heat.
And herein sense goes a reach beyond under standing, which cannot discourse itself into a clear notion or theory of the divine wrath. For as God spoke to Job about his framing of the world, the like discourse we may address to any curious inquisitor about his wrath.
Where wert thou when God first sealed his decrees of election and reprobation? when he prepared the chambers of death, and the treasures of his wrath? when he laid the foundations of the infernal pit, and spread darkness over it, and covered it with the secret of horror for ever?
If we can answer these inquiries, and bring the matter we speak of under certain descriptions, then we may confess that our fear may reach the full compass of its object.
Our fear cannot be larger than our fancy; but even curiosity, and fancy itself, fails in the researches of an infinite. A thing not to be encountered, but by our faith; and of which, amazement, ecstasy, and astonishment are the best expressions.
3. The greatness of divine wrath appears in this, that though we may attempt it in our thoughts, yet we cannot bring it within the comprehension of our knowledge.
And the reason is, because things, which are the proper objects of feeling, are never perfectly known, but by being felt. We may speak indeed high words of wrath and vengeance, but pain is not felt in a discourse. We may as well taste a sound, and see a voice, as gather an intellectual idea of misery; which is conveyed, not by apprehension, but smart; not by notion, but experience.
Survey the expressions of scripture, and see it there clothed and set forth in fire and brimstone, in the worm that never dies, in utter darkness, in weeping and wailing, and gnashing of teeth. But what are all these but shadows! mere similitudes, and not things! condescensions, rather than instructions to our understanding! poor figurative essays, where, contrary to the nature of rhetoric, the figure is still beneath the truth.
Fire no more represents God’s wrath, than the picture of fire itself represents its heat: and for the proof of this, let the notional believer be an unanswerable argument, who reads, sees, and hears all these expressions, and yet is not at all moved by them; which sufficiently shews, that there is no hell in the description of hell.
But now, there is no man, who has actually passed under a full trial of God’s wrath; none alive, who
ever encountered the utmost of God’s anger: and if
any man should hereafter try it, he would perish in
the trial, so that he could not report his experience.
This is a furnace that consumes while it tries; as no
4. And lastly, we may take a measure of the
greatness of God’s anger, by comparing it with the
anger of men. How dreadful is the wrath of a king!
It is said in
Are we not sometimes astonished to read of whole fields strewed with carcasses, streets running down with blood, desolations of whole cities and countries; not so much as one stone being left to cover the ruins of another? And yet, all these are but the works of a pitiful, enraged, angry, mortal creature, whose breath is in his nostrils, and whose rage can not outlast it.
And if these are so terrible, what can be said of
the terrors of an almighty wrath, of an infinite indignation? the voice of which, as the Psalmist tells us,
Take and single out the most considerable man,
endue him with as much power as mortality can
And thus having despatched the third general head proposed, come we now, in the
Fourth and last place, to make some improvement of the point; which may be various: as,
1. It may serve to discover to us the intolerable misery of such as labour under a lively sense of God’s wrath for sin. Certainly they struggle with the quickest pains, and the most restless, vexatious troubles, that the nature of man is capable of lying under. Few do heartily commiserate the condition of such persons, because few have an experimental sense of God’s wrath bringing the guilt of sin home, and binding it close to their consciences. Few know what it is to feel what they only hear and read; and to have the very flames of hell flashing in their guilty faces. Yet some there are in the world, whom God is pleased to deal with in this manner; such as he follows with all his storms, such as even weep away their eyes, and grow old in misery, and from their youth up suffer his terrors with a troubled mind. So that the whole course of their life is a certain wrestling with God, and a kind of grappling with the wrath of the Almighty, by which they are often foiled, and cast, and flung into the very depths of horror and desperation.
And thus God sometimes thinks fit to discipline
even such as he loves, such as he designs for heaven
and a glorious eternity, leading them through the
2. This may serve also to discover to us the ineffable vastness of Christ’s love to mankind in his sufferings for them. The whole burden of the divine
wrath, which we have been hitherto discoursing of,
he freely took upon his own shoulders; he intercepted the blow; he took the dreadful cup of God’s fury
out of our hands, and drank off the very dregs of it:
and so great was the strength, so venomous was the
mixture of it, that he sweat blood, cried out, and
was amazed. All that we have been speaking of, and
much more than we can speak, fell upon him like a
pouring, thundering storm from heaven. A storm,
from which there could be no flight nor shelter; so
that it crushed and quite beat down his humanity,
till the very extremity of pain and anguish dissolved
the union between his innocent soul and body, bringing him into the blackest regions of death and darkness for a season. All the direful stings of God’s anger fastened upon him, all the poisoned darts of his
vengeance struck into his soul; so that they even
terrified him who was God, and, as it were, shook
and staggered omnipotence itself. And all this befell
3. The foregoing discourse speaks terror to such
as can be quiet, and at peace within themselves, after
the commission of great sins. Nothing, upon a rational ground, can be so fearful, as such a stupid
want of fear. For upon what solid principles of reason can such persons be secure? Do they think that
their sins do not deserve the divine wrath? or that
they can either endure or escape what they have so
deserved? Do they conclude, that there is perfect
peace between God and them, because the terrible
effects of his fury do not actually roar against them?
Are they therefore finally discharged, because they
are not presently called to an account? No certainly,
these are frail and fond considerations, for any rational person to build his peace upon: for every sin
stands registered in the black book of heaven, and
that with all its circumstances and particularities;
and consequently has the same sting, and guilt, and
destructive quality, as if it were actually tearing and
lashing the sinner with the greatest horror and anguish of mind imaginable. And no man knows how
soon God may awaken and let loose the tormenting
power of sin upon his conscience; how soon he may
But now God has, by a perpetual decree, awarded
the sad sentence of tribulation and anguish upon
every soul of man that doeth evil;
4. In the fourth and last place, the most natural sequel and improvement of all that has been said of God’s anger, is a warning against that cursed thing which provokes it. We see how dreadfully it burns; let us beware of the sin by which it is kindled.
Sin is the thing that exasperates goodness, that makes love angry, and puts mercy itself into a rage. God’s anger never seizes upon any but a sinner. Christ himself could not feel it, till he was a sinner by imputation. It seizes upon the soul, as distempers use to do upon the body; which never fasten an infection, but where they meet with an in ward corruption.
In a word, I have shewn how devouring and consuming the divine wrath is, and how sin is the only thing that it preys upon. And^ therefore all the advice that, I think, can be given, is, that men would begin here, and not expect to extinguish the flame, till they withdraw the fuel. Let them but do this, and God will not fail to do the other.
To whom be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.
Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
CHRIST, who came into the world to engage in a
spiritual war against the ways of the world, is here,
like a provident commander, despatching a regiment,
a little regiment of twelve apostles, for this evangelical expedition. And in the
1. In respect of the place where they were to administer it; and that was within the precincts and
bounds of Judea, in the
2. In respect of the doctrine they were to preach;
and this was a preparatory to the gospel, afterwards
to be preached by Christ himself,
Now, in order to their more vigorous execution of this commission, he does accordingly instruct and admonish them concerning those things which might lie as impediments and obstacles in their way.
His instructions are reducible to these two.
(1.) A caution against the luxury of the world, in
the
(2.) An encouragement against the cruelty of the
world, from the
Thus he summed up his divine instructions, as Epictetus did his moral, in a compendious but comprehensive Ἀπέχου καὶ ἀνέχου, Abstain and endure; the one for the pleasures, the other for the troubles of the world.
(1.) He cautions them against the superfluities of
the world; Provide neither gold, nor silver., nor
brass, nor scrip for your journey,
(2.) He encourages them against the cruelty of
the world. In the former, he forbids them to be
luxurious; in this latter, to be fearful. Either of
these are absolutely opposite to a military posture:
and he fortifies them by an impartial acquainting
them what they should endure. And this is a considerable piece of armour: for the mind of man is
able to endure many an evil upon expectation, that
it cannot upon surprise. Where, from Christ’s method in sending his disciples to preach the gospel,
we may gain this observation by the way, viz. that
when a man enters upon the ministry, it is a matter
of signal consequence to be forewarned of, and so in
some measure to be forearmed against, all the discouragements that he is like to meet with in the
faithful administration of his duty. Behold, says
Christ, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of
wolves. In the
But now Christ, to make his admonitions the more particular, and so the more effectual, descends to those particular things which he knew they chiefly feared. And these are three.
1. Bodily torments.
2. Disgrace.
3. Death.
Christ lays in an antidote against the fear of each of these.
1. For bodily torments; he tells them, they should
be brought before kings and governors, and be
scourged for the profession of the truth, in the
2. For disgrace; he tells them, they would fare
but ill as to their reputations, but yet no worse than
himself: they might be called factious, seditious; but
when the master is called devil, the servant may well
endure the name of rascal. Suetonius, among those
few good things that he said Nero did in his reign,
reckons his persecution of the Christians in these
terms; Affecti suppliciis Christiani, genus hominum
superstitionis novae et maleficae. Christ forearms
them against these contumelies, by telling them, that
he partook of the same slanders: and we know, society in affliction does alleviate it. However, the society of a master enduring the same with his servant,
although it should afford no cause of comfort, yet it
takes off all cause of complaint. (2.) He comforts
them with the consideration of the day of judgment,
3. The third thing, which is the φοβερῶν φοβερώτατον, the terrible of terribles, is death; and this he cautions them against in the words of the text; and that upon the score of these three reasons.
(1.) Because it is but the death of the body, and therefore not the death of the man.
(2.) Because hell is more to be feared, and the greater fear swallows up the less.
(3.) Because they live under the special care of
God’s overseeing providence; and therefore cannot
be taken away without his special appointment and
permission. The argument runs strongly a minore
ad majus in the
I shall resume some of these reasons in the handling of the doctrine that I shall raise; but before I deduce any doctrine from the words, I shall endeavour to clear off an objection: and it is this.
Obj. Christ commands his disciples here not to
fear those that can kill the body. But how is this
consistent with some other of his commands? as for
instance, in the
Ans. 1. The words, Fear not them that can kill the body, maybe understood comparatively; that is, Do not fear them that kill the body, so much as you fear him that is able to destroy the soul. And so this way of speaking carries in it an Hebraism; for the Hebrews usually express a comparison between two things in respect of some third, not by attributing of it in a greater degree to one, and in a less degree to the other, but by absolutely affirming it of one, and denying it of the other. As God says, he will have mercy, and not sacrifice; that is, he will rather have mercy than sacrifice. And this may be one way of interpreting the words.
2. We may distinguish of a twofold fear.
(1.) A fear of solicitous anxiety; such as makes us let go our confidence in God’s providence, causing our thoughts so to dwell upon the dreadfulness of the thing feared, as to despair of a deliverance. And with such a kind of fear Christ absolutely forbids them to fear those that kill the body; it being very derogatory to God, as if his mercy did not afford as great arguments for our hope, as the cruelty of man for our fears.
(2.) The second sort of fear is a fear of prudential
caution, whereby a man, from the due estimate of an
approaching evil, endeavours his own security. And
this kind of fear is not only lawful, but also laudable. For to what purpose should God have naturally implanted in the heart of man a passion of fear,
if it might not be exercised and affected with suitable
objects; that is, things to be feared? Now under
These things thus premised, the words of the text are full and pregnant with many great concerning truths. As,
1. That it is within the power of man to divest us of all our temporal enjoyments; for so much, according to the phrase of scripture, is comprehended in this word body. Christ bids them not fear those that kill the body; wherefore it is implied, that it is in their power to do so much: men may take away all our temporals. And this should much allay our affections to these things: for why should we set our mind upon that which is not? Happiness cannot be placed in these; inasmuch as one of the great properties of happiness, even according to Aristotle, is, that it should be in our power, οἰκεῖον ἀγαθόν: but these things are not. And why should we then open our arms, to embrace that which we cannot clasp? From the enjoyment of the least morsel of bread, even to life itself, we stand at the mercy of those who oftentimes have no mercy; Tuae vitae dominus est, quisquis est contemptor suae, says Seneca: “He that is so desperate as to contemn his own life, has “made himself master of yours.”
2. The second proposition deducible from the
words is this, That the soul of man is immortal,
Fear not them that can kill the body, but cannot
kill the soul: this is beyond the reach of all created
power. Now this is a foundation-truth, upon the
removal of which, religion falls to the ground. Religion is that which awes the
mind to the doing of good and the abstaining from evil, from hope of reward,
3. The third observation that arises from the words is this; that God has an absolute and plenary power to destroy the whole man; Fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. This should silence the proud regrets and murmurings of our hearts, at the absoluteness of God’s decrees and purposes: for why may not his decree be as absolute as his power? If he can do what he will, why may not he decree what he will? But all these reasonings proceed from that innate self-love that we bear to the interest of our own natures. We would fain have that unjust for God to do, that is grievous for us to suffer.
4. The fourth observation, which takes in the sense of all the rest, and which I shall insist upon, is this; that the thought of damnation ought to have greater weight upon us to engage our fears, than the most exquisite miseries that the power or malice of man is able to inflict.
The prosecution of this will lie in these two things.
I. To shew what is in these miseries, which men are able to inflict, that may lessen our fears of them.
II. To shew what is that surpassing misery in damnation, that ought (as I may so speak) to engross our fears.
I. Concerning the first, there are seven considerations
(1.) As, first, that they are temporal, and concern only this life; and there is nothing that can render a being of an eternal duration miserable, but such a misery as is eternal: and nothing ought rationally to be feared, but such a thing as is inconsistent with the happiness of our nature. Now these three things, this triumvirate of misery, that we apprehend to bereave us of our happiness, are either,
1. Loss of reputation. But, alas! what is that, but a malignant blast of a virulent mouth upon our names? And that which is but a blast, will pass away like a blast. Let envy and malice vomit out all the scandals and reproaches that they can invent, or the Devil suggest; let them pursue us with incessant scoffs all our days; yet our dust shall be at quiet, and our soul at rest.
2. Let it be loss of an estate; though a man has neither bread to feed, nor raiment to clothe him, yet still all these wants are only commensurate to his life; and when his life is but for a moment, his miseries cannot be long. He must go naked, and stript of all, out of the world; and if he is stript of his estate at present, he is only in a posture of leaving the world beforehand.
3. Let it be loss of life; yet this is quickly past.
Aristotle observes, that generation and corruption
are changes that are done in a moment: generatio
et corruptio fit in instanti. And should the fear of
that be continual, the endurance of which is but for
an instant? The time of living is short, but the
time of death is much shorter. When the misery
(2.) They are not to be feared, because they do
not take away any thing from a man’s proper perfections: for is any thing of the solid worth of his
(3.) The evils that men inflict are not to be feared, because in all these they are limited by God’s over ruling hand. The Lord reigns, though the earth be never so unquiet.
In those very actions that oppose God and his
glory, God has a commanding hand. The Devil
himself could not go the least beyond God’s prescriptions, in his vexing Job. The Devil, not only in
his punishments, but in his actions, is held in chains.
All the miseries we so fear, are entirely in God’s disposal. He holds the stars in his hand, as well in
respect of their malignant as their propitious influences. All the great ones of the world are only
God’s swordbearers; and because they bear the
sword, we cannot hence conclude, that they have
the power and use of the sword. How should this
allay our fears and compose our jealousies, since our
greatest enemies can do no more than what our
best friend permits! A child is no more afraid when
he sees a sword, than when he sees a staff in his
father’s hand. Be it a mercy, or be it a judgment,
why should we trouble ourselves? It is in God’s management. This was an abundant satisfaction to
David, that his times were in God’s hands,
(4.) The good that may be extracted out of such
miseries as are inflicted by men, is often greater
than the evil that is endured in them; therefore
they are not to be feared, but rather prudently to be
managed. The evil that is in them can only affect
the body; but the good of them may really benefit
the soul. We know vipers afford materials for the
best medicines, as well as the strongest poison; and
therefore as they are avoided by the fearful passenger, so they are sought for by the skilful physician.
There is a spiritual Christianity, by which a soul may extract such an elixir
out of worldly crosses, bring such a sight out of darkness, that they may prove
greater comforts than ever they were troubles. I could instance in every
particular calamity;
(5.) The fear of these evils seldom prevents them
before they come, and never lessens them when they
are come; therefore it is irrational. You must remember, according to the premised distinctions, that
I speak of a solicitous, anxious fear; such an one
as is, for the most part, attended with a distrust of
Providence. Fear is a passion designed by nature
for the avoidance of evil; and where it does not
enable us to avoid it, but rather augments it, there
it is absurd. Continual fear of a calamity before it
comes, will exhaust our strength and spirits so far,
as to disenable us to grapple with it, when it is
come. And this is all we gain by such fear; the
burden of an affliction is still the same, and our
ability to endure it is made less. As our Saviour
said, Can any of us, by taking thought, add one
cubit to his stature? So I may say. Can any one, by
(6.) These evils are not to be feared, because the
all-knowing God, who knows the utmost of them
better than men or angels, has pronounced them not
(7.) The greatest of these evils have been endured,
and that without fear or astonishment; and therefore they ought not to be feared. This is a maxim
of a sure and never-failing verity: Ab actu ad potentiam valet consequentia: That which has actually been endured, may be endured. Experience is
for the most part a convincing, but it is always a
confirming argument. Examples ought to animate
us. Many will venture upon some dangers which
before they avoided, after once they have seen some
body wade through them. Leaders in an army are
not only for the direction, but also for the encouragement of those that follow. Let us take a survey
of some examples: and, first, we shall find some
And thus much for the first thing, to shew what are those considerations that ought to lessen our fears of these worldly evils: I proceed now to the
Second thing, to shew what is implied in the destruction of the body and soul in hell, which makes it so formidable.
To demonstrate this, I could here enlarge upon
several considerations, which, because vulgar, I shall
not insist upon. As first, in opposition to the momentary duration of earthly torments, I could op
pose the eternity of damnation; which is set forth
in scripture by the grimmest representations that
can be, by the worm that never dies,
But to pass by these considerations, there is one,
I think, that gives weight and a sting to all the rest,
and chiefly renders the destruction of the body and
soul terrible; and it is this, because the destroying
of the body and soul in hell is the utmost that the
almighty God can do to a sinner. This is apparent
from the opposition that is between the former and
the latter part of the verse; for the killing of the
body, which is there mentioned as the utmost that
man can do, is opposed to the destroying of the
body and soul, which from thence is intimated to be
the utmost that God can do. Now when an omnipotence shall do its worst; when God shall rally
up all the strength that an almighty power is able
to inflict, who shall be able to stand under those
strokes? Where there is no limitation of the power
of him that punishes, there can be no end of the
punishment. It is not an earthly judge, a king, a
tyrant, but it is a God that we are to contest withal;
they are not courts nor armies, but an infinite
power that will attack us. All the ingredients that
make a thing terrible are wrapt up in this one consideration: for first, here is an irresistible force, and
But when I say that the destroying of the body and soul in hell is the utmost that God can do, it may be objected, that a total annihilation of its being would be a greater punishment, and a work that carries in it a greater evidence of God’s power; for it argues a Deity more, to reduce an immortal soul to nothing, than of happy to make it miserable.
To this I answer, that although annihilation argues a greater power, or (to speak more properly) is a greater argument of power, than to render a thing miserable, yet it is not so great a punishment: for punishment is properly the inflicting of the evil of pain, for the evil of sin. But now after annihilation, there remains no being; and where there is no being, there can be no pain; and where there is no pain, there can be no punishment. It is clear therefore, that although the reduction of a being to a nonentity be the certain result of an infinite power; yet the reducing of it to an eternal misery is much the greater penalty. God will (as I may so speak) with one hand hold the soul in life and being, that he may smite it with the other; and that he may exercise his justice in punishing the sinner, he will exert his power in preserving him.
But it may be here further objected, that even in
In answer to this, I confess that this argument
seems metaphysically to conclude. But as to the
matter in hand, I shall first oppose our Saviour’s words, which ought to have greater weight with us
than all the arguments in the world; who in
(2.) But, in the second place, this maxim, upon which the argument is grounded, to wit, that the degree of diminution is better than the degree of privation; better to be miserable, than not to be at all; does not always hold true, but admits of many exceptions, (as a learned author of our own observes.) And one exception is, when the degree of diminution is more sensitive than the degree of privation. So that this answer falls in with the former; because to be miserable infers a greater pain and grief than simply not to be: therefore it is also the greater punishment, because the nature of punishments consists in the endurement of pain.
And thus I have finished the doctrinal part, wherein I have endeavoured to shew, what it is that may render the greatest miseries that men can bring upon us contemptible, and what it is that represents the destruction of the body and soul so dreadful. I shall now proceed to the
Application.
Though the words themselves are an exhortation,
and so their own use, yet, to bring you fuller home,
I shall repeat the exhortation in one word of serious
advice, that when any one is discouraged from duty,
or tempted to sin, by any man, or any thing that is
in the power of man, (as who is not some time or
other?) he would on this side conscientiously ponder
man’s inability, and on the other, God’s infinite power
to destroy. Shall the frowns of a poor, weak man
like ourselves terrify us from duty, more than the
anger of the almighty God command us to it?
Shall the fear of racks or gibbets more forcibly drive
us into the commission of sin, than the thoughts of
1 . For instances of the first sort: it was a full
persuasion of the power of God to destroy beyond
the power of the greatest men, that kept Shadrach,
Meshech, and Abed-nego from idolatry; that made
them own the cause of God in spite of a furnace, in
2. We shall see how the entertaining of a greater
fear of men than of God was the cause of many notorious sins. It was this that caused Saul to neglect
the command of God in destroying Amalek, to the
ruin of his person and the loss of his kingdom. For
in his confession he resolves his sin into the fear of
man, as the cause of it,
2. I proceed to a second use; where, from the qualification of those persons to whom this exhortation
was addressed, who were Christ’s disciples, eleven of
which were saints of God, secure as to their eternal
[state,] such as were so kept by Christ, as that they
could not be lost,
3. This speaks reproof to that slavish sort of sinners who are men-pleasers. Flattery of men always
carries with it a distrust or a neglect of God. If to
fear men be prohibited by God, then a servile pleasing
of them must be equally hateful to him; forasmuch
as this arises from fear. It is the most degenerous
and pusillanimous temper of mind that can be. It
is ignoble, as thou art a man, and irreligious, as thou
art a Christian. Canst thou prostitute an immortal
soul to the feeding of the ambition or revenge of a
sinful man like thyself, by a servile admiration of his
person, and a false accusation of others? How will
it upbraid thee with thy former flatteries and thy
fears, to see the person now so adored by thee one
day as naked and obnoxious before God’s tribunal as
thyself, and perhaps answering for many of those injuries that he did to thee! It is to debase thyself,
and to betray the privilege and dignity of thy soul,
to flatter or fear any man. There is a spiritual grandeur that God would have every soul maintain; and
it is below a man to adore or cringe to any thing but
his Maker. To this intent, it is the design of the
Spirit, throughout the whole scripture, to stain the
glory of men with the most undervaluing expressions. Cease from man: for wherein is he to be
accounted of?
And remember this exhortation, which, with a little change of the words, makes for the purpose: Please not them who are only able to advance the body, but cannot in the least benefit the soul; but rather make it thy care and business to please him who is able with eternal bliss to advance both body and soul in heaven.
To whom, therefore, be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.
For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but ht took on him the seed of Abraham.
IF we reflect upon the state of the world before
the coming of Christ, we shall find, that a long and
a dark night of ignorance had overspread almost the
whole universe for about the space of four thousand
years before God was pleased to permit this great
Sun of righteousness to arise upon it. The improvements of their reason were but mean, but their
religion scandalous: the most advanced results of
both amounting to no more but this; that they did,
or at least might, by the force of natural reason,
know that there was a God; and knowing him to be
God, they could not but know him also to be infinitely wise, powerful, just, holy, and the like. Upon
the knowledge of this, (as it is easy to glance from
one contrary to the other,) they could not but consequentially know themselves to be impure, unjust,
and unholy. And being so, whether, upon the stock
of nature or tradition, they could proceed to collect
further, that this holy God would be concerned to
punish them for not being so too; and in case he
should, whether yet he would not accept of some
other thing as vicarious, to bear the blow of divine
justice due to themselves; I say, whether they gathered
This was then the sum of their religion, for them to sin, and the poor beast to die; for the man to do like a beast, and the beast to suffer for the man. Nay, it improved even to homicide; and to offer up the fruit of the body for the sin of the soul was a sublime satisfaction. To expiate impiety by inhumanity; to kill the innocent (as it were) to get his innocence; to let others blood for our distempers; this was all the religion of a world acted by the dictates of ignorance and the overruling fallacy of a brutish, inveterate custom.
It was now time for God to commiserate the ab surd and soul-ruining devotions of a besotted world, and for Christ to step forth and declare, that such sacrifice and burnt-offerings God would not, and therefore that a body was to be prepared for himself.
Hereupon, to rescue the deluded sons of men from their sins, and, what was much more sinful, from their religion; as the reserve of Providence, as the inheritance of the last ages; as it were to credit the concluding scene and last going off of the world, in the fulness of time, Christ was born, and sent by his Father, to be the great mediator and instructor of mankind; both to discourage and to expiate sin, and to teach the world the worship of their Maker.
And all this he was to effect by the strongest methods and most miraculous condescensions to our
likeness, by being God manifested, or rather hidden,
As for the words that I have here pitched upon,
it must be confessed that the translation represents
them very different from what they are in the original, which runs thus;
Οὐ γὰρ δήπου ἐπιλαμβάνεται τοὺς ἀγγέλος. Where we find that what we render by the preter tense,
he took, the original has by the present,
he takes: and what we render the nature of angels,
the original has only
τοὺς ἀγγέλος, angelos. Neither
is it clear, that to take on him, or to assume, is the
genuine signification of
ἐπιλαμβάνεται. This text in
deed is generally used by divines, ancient and modern, to prove Christ’s incarnation, or assuming the
human nature, notwithstanding that this word
ἐπιλαμβάνεται
(as Camero
well observes) is nowhere else in scripture taken in this sense. St. Paul uses
it in
Before we proceed any further therefore, it will, I
think, be of moment to settle the right interpretation
Those who will not allow Christ to have had any existence antecedent to his conception, nor a divine nature, which did afterwards assume the human, are earnest for this interpretation, utterly excluding and rejecting the other. I have already granted, that the words thus rendered contain in them a truth; but then we must remember, that every true proposition drawn out of a text is not therefore the true interpretation of it. The fathers generally take ἐπιλαμβάνεται in the sense in which it is here translated; namely, he assumed, or took on him the seed of Abraham. And besides the influence that antiquity and general consent ought deservedly to have upon us in expounding scripture, I conceive, that there are not wanting also solid arguments to evince, that this is the proper sense of the word, as it is here used, and not the other.
For the proving of which, I shall premise this one
note, (which indeed is clear of itself from the very illative particle therefore,) that this and the following
verse are so joined together, as to make up one argument; of which argument this verse is the antecedent,
Upon this consideration, I thus argue:
1. If in this verse is not signified Christ’s taking on him our nature, how comes it to pass, that, in the next verse, which has an illative dependence upon this, the seed of Abraham are called his brethren? for his being their deliverer only would not make them his brethren; but his taking of our nature properly does. According to which, the argument proceeds fully thus; That since Christ was pleased, by assuming our nature, to be our brother, it became him to be like his brethren in all the circumstances of that nature.
2. In the following verse, which is argumentatively inferred from this, the thing designed to be proved is Christ’s priesthood; but his being barely a deliverer is not a proper, specific medium to infer that; whereas his assuming of our nature is: forasmuch as a priest is to have a cognation or conjunction of nature with those for whom he is to offer sacrifices. For none but a man can be a priest to offer for men.
3. In the
Having thus given an exposition of the words, I shall cast the prosecution of them into these particulars.
I. To shew what is naturally inferred from Christ’s taking on him the seed of Abraham.
II. To shew why Christ took on him this, rather than the nature of angels.
I. For the first of these, there are four things that follow, and are inferred upon it.
I. As, first, the divine nature of Christ is unavoidably consequent from hence. There are those who assert Christ to be a mere creature, and not at all to have existed before his conception in the womb of the Blessed Virgin: to cut asunder which blasphemous assertion, I need use no other argument than this; If Christ took upon him the seed of Abraham, or the human nature, then he had a being antecedent to the taking upon him this nature. The consequence is proved thus: Every action proceeds from some being or nature that does exist; but to assume the human nature is an action, and that not the action of the nature assumed; therefore it must be the action of some nature that did exist before. That this act of assumption could not be the action of the human nature is evident; because in transient actions the same thing cannot be the agent and the object, in reference to the same action. And therefore since the act of assuming did terminate in the human nature, as the thing assumed, it could not issue from the same human nature as the agent assuming.
This argumentation is clear and undeniable, that
And truly, those who confess Christ the Saviour of the world, but allow him not this, make him a Saviour without a power to save. This is a work to be carried on against enemies and oppositions insuperable by any thing under a deity. Nothing can conquer and break asunder the bars of sin and death but the arms of omnipotence: the Devil could not be his captive, had he not been his creature.
No conquest to be had over the strong man, but by a stronger; and nothing stronger than the angelic nature, but the divine. The strength of sin is the law; and no strength can master the law, but that strength which made it. He must command the gates of heaven who lets sinners into it; otherwise the seed of Abraham may be like the stars indeed for number, but not for place.
2. Upon the same ground is inferred the reality of
Christ’s human nature. This certainly is so evident,
that one would think it uncapable of being denied:
but, between the contrariety of error and the clashings of heretics, Christ shall be allowed to be
neither God nor man. Incredibly strange and ridiculous,
and even monstrous, are the several opinions of heretics concerning this matter. The Marcionites and
the Valentinians affirmed that Christ had no real,
but an imaginary, aerial, celestial body; and that he
appeared only under the external form and shape of
a man, but was never really united to man’s nature.
But this fancy is irrefragably refuted by this, that
The same Valentinians also, together with the Apollinarians, affirmed that Christ received not his body from the Blessed Virgin, but brought it with him from heaven. But how then could he have been said to have took upon him the seed of Abraham, since he could not do it any otherwise, but by descending from Abraham, according to the flesh; nor could he pretend to any such descent from him, but as he was the natural son of Mary?
Others, as the Arians and the Eunomians, admit ting that Christ took on him a real human body, yet denied that he took on him an human soul; asserting that his divine nature supplied the functions of that. But upon this supposition, with what shew of reason can it be affirmed that he took upon him our nature, since the human nature is adequately compounded and made up of body and soul, as its two essential, constituent parts: so that a body is no more a man’s nature, without the concomitance of a rational soul, than a carcass is a man; or that two units can make up a perfect number of four.
Others, as the heretics of Armenia, affirmed that
the body Christ had from his mother Mary was absolutely impassible; uncapable of suffering, or being
injured by any external impression. Which, as it is
He took not only the privileges, the excellencies, and perfections of the human nature upon him, though these had been degradations enough to him, who was the express image of his Father’s brightness; but he clothed himself with all its weaknesses and infirmities, bowed down his glories to the limited meanness of our faculties, to the poorness and affliction of our appetites: he hungered and thirsted, and was weary; lay open to all the stings of grief, and the invasions of pain. So that whatsoever the boldness or ignorance of heresy may affirm of him, by all the instances of a sad experience he found himself to be really a man.
3. The third thing deducible from the same ground, is the truth of his office and the divinity of his mission. For by thus being of the seed of Abraham, he gave one grand evidence that he was the promised Messiah: forasmuch as from the loins of Abraham was to issue this universal blessing, the desire of the nations, and the centre of all the promises and prophecies, uniting all the remote and scattered predictions in himself.
Now, as the thing that fulfils the prophecy proves
the truth of it, so the prophecy mutually confirms
For is it imaginable, that all those various prophecies, commenced in such different periods of time, could meet so exactly in Christ by mere accident? and be drawn down through so many generations to a concurrence in his person, only by a lucky hit? Can chance, be so uniform, and casualty so certain? This is against the notions of reason, the course of nature, and the voice of experience; and consequently, to any considering mind, incredible, be cause in itself morally impossible.
4. The fourth and last inference that we shall gather from
hence, shall be to discover to us Christ’s voluntary choice and design, to
assume a condition here upon earth, low and contemptible. One would have
thought, that if he had resolved to be a man, and to choose an alliance to dust
and ashes; yet that he would at least have been framed out of the best clay, and
cast into the noblest mould: but, that he might humble himself to the nethermost
state of contempt, he chose to descend from the seed of
For, first, to rate them by the reports made of
them by the penmen of holy writ, who, being Jews
themselves, cannot be supposed to have been partial
in transmitting the infamy of their countrymen to
posterity; yet, how ugly do they appear, even in
their own story! their whole narrative containing
nothing but a continued vicissitude of their idolatry,
impurity, and rebellion. Who would have thought
that men, with the remembrance of such prodigious
miracles, and immediate discoveries of the divine
power and favour to them in Egypt, new and fresh
in their minds, could, as soon as ever Moses had
turned his back, deify a golden calf, and debase their
reason to such a low and ridiculous instance of idolatry? How were they always murmuring after mercies, and doubting after experience! No sooner had
God done one miracle before them, but they doubted
whether he could do another. How unworthily did
they treat Moses and Aaron, and most of their deliverers! particularly Gideon; after his death deserting threescore of his lawful issue, and giving the
kingdom to his base son! How causelessly did they
relinquish David, and revolt to Absalom! and then,
how ridiculously and meanly did they cringe to him,
to resume the kingdom! It were infinite to pursue
all their baseness. There was scarce a prophet or
messenger of God sent to them, but they murdered
him: and at length, to consummate and heighten
their villainy to the utmost, they imbrued their
And, to add the judgment of men to matters of
fact, (of which those that have been mentioned are
but very few,) there is no nation in the world, al
most, but hates and contemns them. As early as
the time of Jacob, we read, that they were an abomination to the Egyptians,
Now certainly this may be rationally collected, that it could
not be, that all nations, in all ages, should thus conspire in a detestation of
them; but that there was some peculiar vileness essentially fixed in the genius
of this people, contrary to those natural and generous principles of morality
and converse,
I conclude, therefore, that it is one great instance of Christ’s humiliation, that he derived his nativity from this race: so that the prophet Isaiah might justly say, that he should spring up as a plant out of a dry ground. As one that had drained all the worth and goodness of that nation into himself; which made those who lived both before and after him to have so little of it. He appeared amongst them, like a single star in a dark night; or, indeed, as a sun: and that not so much shining upon, as rather shining out of a dunghill.
II. I come now to the other general thing proposed for the handling of the words; namely, to shew why Christ took upon him the nature of man, and not of angels.
In things that are the immediate results of the divine will, it is a bold venture to search into the causes of them; and when we speak either of God or of the king, to assign an antecedent reason of their actions, and to be peremptory in alleging why they should do this or this.
The divine will is absolute; it is its own reason: it is both the producer and the ground of all its acts. It moves not by the external impulse or inclination of objects, but determines itself by an absolute autocracy.
And therefore as to the present inquiry, why
Christ rather assumed the nature of men than that
The reasons, therefore, why Christ took upon him the nature and the mediatorship of men, and not of angels, may be these two.
1. The transcendent greatness and malignity of the sin of the angels above that of men. What that particular sin was, for which the angels were thrown down from their station, is hard, and perhaps impossible, to be determined; yet men inquire after it as freely, as if it might: and some pitch it upon pride; though, in their confident asserting of that which is no where delivered, they seem to discover no small pride and arrogance themselves. But whatsoever that sin was, (which to determine is not here material,) certain it is, that it did much exceed the guilt and provoking qualities of the sin of man; and that in these two respects:
(1.) As being committed against a much greater
light, which is to be the proper guide and ruler of
the will in all its choices. The light of man’s understanding, while innocent, was clear indeed, but
small and diminutive, subject to the clouds of fallacy
and inadvertency. But the angelical intellect was
strong and intuitive, above the reach of those mists
(2.) The sin of the angels commenced upon a greater liberty of will and freedom of choice. There was no devil to tempt them to become devils; no seducer, of a stronger reason, to impose upon theirs. They moved entirely upon the motives of an intrinsic malice. But man was circumvented with fallacy, and tempted with importunity: and so great a share of the guilt may be devolved upon the temptation, that it is very possible, that if he had not been tempted, he had not fell. I confess, there is that inseparable prerogative of absoluteness in the will of every man, that it defies coaction, and cannot be forced by any external impression: for, indeed, if it might, so far it could not be said to sin, no action being sin that is not voluntary.
But then, the vehemence of persuasion, the restlessness of importunity, are great invasions upon this
freedom and indifference of the will: and though
they cannot wound or impair the faculty itself, yet
they much hinder and perplex the actual use and
exercise of it; and consequently, though they are
not sufficient to acquit the sinner in an ill choice,
yet they afford many grains of allowance, make
2. The next, and perhaps the grand cause, that induced Christ to take upon him the nature and mediation of men, and not of angels, might be this; that, without such a Redeemer, the whole race and species of mankind had perished, as being all involved in the sin of their representative: whereas though many of the angels sinned, yet as many, if not more, persisted in their innocence; so that the whole kind was not cashiered by an universal ruin, nor made unserviceable to their Creator, in the nobler instances of active obedience.
Which mankind was, and had so continued, as in that estate; having no other motives to act them, but an horrid despair, and expectation of future torment: the material issue of which could have been nothing but a confirmed malice against God, exerting itself in the lives of men, to the overflowing of the world with an uncontrolled torrent of the highest villainies and enormities.
But now, was it not a proportionable object for
the designs of divine mercy to rescue so great and
noble a part of the creation from a total perdition?
Was it not pity, that so fair a writing should be all
dashed, and for ever defaced by one blot? that sin
should be able to do so much mischief, and, as it
This had been more destructive than a deluge; it had been an universal ruin, without the mitigation of any exception. But this is not the genius and way of God’s working, who designs particular mercies in the midst of general judgments. Still he has a reserve of favour; and the flood that drowns the world bears up the ark.
Christ saw us ruined in the loins of our first parents; and it moved his compassion to behold our death, earlier than our nativity. Even amongst men, if a woman with child be condemned, there is yet mercy for the unborn infant; and it extends so far as to reprieve the guilty parent. No wonder then, if the divine mercy was not inferior in the methods of salvation, and if the mercies of a judge did not exceed the compassions of a saviour.
And now, what can the result and upshot of this whole transaction be, but to quicken, or rather transport us in our returns of gratitude; to advance gratitude into admiration, and admiration into astonishment? Why should the Son of God disrobe himself of his eternal excellencies, to come and wrap himself in dust and ashes, to converse with carcasses, with weakness and mortality, with vile creatures and viler sinners? and all this to rescue and pluck some wretched, smarting firebrands out of the eternal flame, where otherwise they must have lain consuming, but not consumed, for ever.
With what face or heart can any one, having this
thought fresh upon him, resolve to sin? Has Christ
passed over the fallen angels without any commiseration;
Still let us remember, that Christ so redeems us from wrath, that he will first redeem us from our vain conversation: and that, by this stupendous in carnation of the divine nature, he made himself the Son of man, that, by the change of our nature, we might become the sons of God.
Genesis
1:16 2:17 3:15 4:10 20:2 20:6 39:9 43:32 45:5 47:9
Exodus
Numbers
Deuteronomy
1 Samuel
15:24 15:29 21:13 23:12 25:10-11 25:17
2 Samuel
2 Kings
1 Chronicles
2 Chronicles
Nehemiah
Esther
Job
3:25 6:8 6:9 24:16 24:17 28:24 29:16 39:16
Psalms
2:12 3:16 4:21 19:13 19:13 19:13 22:5 22:7 23:4 29 30:7 31:15 36:4 38:2 38:3 39:9 39:13 39:15 49:8 50:1-23 55:12-13 64:5 68:17 68:18 68:18 69:2 74:1 77:9 78:18 90:8 90:9 90:11 139:2 139:3 139:4 145:9
Proverbs
15:3 19:12 26:12 29:5 29:5 29:5
Ecclesiastes
Isaiah
1:5 2:22 7 7:2 7:4 7:7 10:5 22:14 27:10-11 27:11 28:20 36:1-37:38 38:18-19 41:14 43:1 43:2 55:7 64:6
Jeremiah
4:4 4:14 13:23 15:10 15:20 23:24 51:9
Ezekiel
1:18 6 14:3 14:4 16:5 16:6 16:30 22:18 33:31
Daniel
Hosea
Micah
Nahum
Habakkuk
Zechariah
Matthew
2:13 5:19 5:22 5:25-26 5:28 5:28 5:29-30 5:29-30 6:28 6:30 10:1 10:2-4 10:5-6 10:6 10:7 10:9-10 10:9-10 10:16 10:16 10:17 10:17 10:22 10:23 10:26 10:28 10:29 10:33 12:40 13 13:20 13:58 15:16 15:19 18:10 19:14 19:22 23:3 23:5 25 25:30 26 26:24 28:17
Mark
Luke
9:41 12:2 12:15 12:20 12:48 13:24 22:3 23:34 24:25 24:31 24:38-39
John
2:1-17 2:25 3:13 5:36 7:39 9:4 12:42-43 13:27 14:11 15:1 15:2 15:4 16:33 17:3 17:9 17:12 20 20:19 20:22 20:23
Acts
1:6 2:2 2:3 5:3 5:3 5:29 7 8:22 12 12:22 17:11 17:28
Romans
1 Corinthians
2 Corinthians
Galatians
Ephesians
Philippians
Colossians
1 Thessalonians
2 Thessalonians
1 Timothy
Titus
Hebrews
2:14 2:16 3:12 3:15 4:12 4:13 4:15 6:4 11:1 11:13 11:26 11:27 11:37 12:3 12:4
James
1:2 1:14 2:19 3:6 4:4 4:14 4:14
1 Peter
Revelation
i ii iii iv v vi vii viii ix x xi xii xiii xiv xv xvi xvii xviii xix xx xxi xxii xxiii xxiv xxv xxvi xxvii xxviii xxix xxx xxxi xxxii xxxiii xxxiv xxxv xxxvi 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378 379 380 381 382 383 384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 396 397 398 399 400 401 402 403 404 405 406 407 408 409 410 411 412 413 414 415 416 417 418 419 420 421 422 423 424 425 426 427 428 429 430 431 432 433 434 435 436 437 438 439 440 441 442 443 444 445 446 447 448 449 450 451 452 453 454 455 456 457 458 459 460 461 462 463 464 465 466 467 468 469 470 471 472 473 474 475 476 477 478 479 480 481 482 483 484 485 486 487 488 489 490 491 492 493 494 495 496 497 498 499 500 501 502 503 504 505 506 507 508 509