SERMON XXVI.

JOHN ix. 2, 3.

And his disciples asked him, saying; Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?

Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

THE evangelist here presents us with a signal miracle, done by Christ upon a blind man. To advance which in the esteem of believers, and to confirm it against the cavils of atheists, he remarkably sets down that he was blind from his birth: so setting forth the greatness of the cure, from the circumstance of the malady.

A blindness accidentally contracted, as by over much watching, excessive rheums, or a film growing over the eyes, or the like, may sometimes find a remedy from art; but to cure such a blindness as is born with a man, (as one well observes, and as properly expresses it,) non artis, sed potestatis est; it is not a work of skill, but an effect of power; not so much the removing of blindness, as the creating of sight. Which did not, as some may atheistically imagine, shew Christ’s knowledge in physic, but prove the divinity of his call.

For as it is in the 32d verse, Since the world begun was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind. And, I think, that may be pronounced naturally impossible to be done, of the doing of which, from the very first beginning of nature, there has been no instance.

Now the circumstance of this blindness, thus expressed in the words of the first verse, was the occasion of these words that follow in the two next: in which we have,

1. A question of Christ’s disciples.

2. The answer, or rejoinder of Christ.

The disciples’ question is contained in these words, Did this man sin, or his parents, that he was born blind? The scope and intent of which interrogatory is not agreed upon by all; but the design of the proposal of it may be twofold.

(1.) That they simply and positively proposed it as their opinion, really judging all maladies of the body to come from the antecedent demerit of sin: according to which supposition, looking upon all men’s sufferings as the effects of their personal sins; and seeing here, in this man, the evil inflicted before the sin could be committed; they were much gravelled in resolving how this man’s blindness could relate to sin as the meritorious cause. Hereupon they asked, whether God inflicted it for his own sin, or for the sin of his parents? which words may be understood two ways.

First, Of sin considered by God as past, and actually committed: and so if we understand it of the parents sin, we know that God sometimes avenges the sin of the parent upon the child; as we find in David, and his child, who died for his murder and adultery.

But if we understand it of sin already committed in his own person, so it savours of the opinion of Pythagoras, then common amongst the Jews, as also at this day, that there is a metempsychosis, or trans migration of souls from one body to another successively; and accordingly as the soul had behaved itself in one body, after the death of it, it was disposed of into another, suitably to its former behaviour: that is, if it had done virtuously, into a body fair and healthful; if viciously, into a body maimed and deformed, as here. So that the soul of this man, for some fault done in that body in which it was before, might be condemned to such a blind habitation as it enjoyed at present.

Secondly, It may be understood of his sin, not as past and committed, but as future and foreknown by God: so that the sense of their question would be, Whether God inflicted this blindness upon him for some offence of his parents, or for some sin of his own, which, while he was yet unborn, God foresaw he would afterwards commit; and for the merit of which foreseen sin he inflicted this severe judgment upon him, as to send him blind into the world, even from his nativity? If they proposed this question as their opinion, it might indifferently be grounded upon either of these acceptations.

(2.) Some think that they did not propose this as their opinion, but only for argument sake; and that, occasioned by a former passage recorded in John v. where Christ, having healed a man, bid him go and sin no more, lent a worse evil befell him. Where upon they collected, that it was Christ’s judgment, that every such evil or distemper befell men meritoriously for their sin; but not being able to reconcile this instance with the reason of that opinion, they argued the case with Christ in this dilemma: If every evil befalls men for their sin, then how could this man be blind? for if it were for sin, it must be either for his own sin, or for the sin of his parents: but not for his own sin, because it befell him before his birth, and consequently before he could commit sin; nor yet for his parents’ sin, because God had said that the child should not suffer for his father’s sin, but the soul that sinned should die. Therefore certainly sin is not always the cause why men are sick, afflicted, or unfortunate; but there must be some other cause to which these evils ought to be ascribed, as appears from the example of this man.

Now this sense is also probable, were it not for this, that the argument is founded upon the impossibility of God’s punishing the children for the parents; the contrary of which is positively asserted in scripture, as in Exod. xx. 5; where God says, that he would visit the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation. Besides that this way of arguing seems but little agreeable to the modesty and distance becoming disciples, thus to dispute with their master upon the catch; as also too artificial for their abilities, it being well known that they were never bred to the niceties of logic, either in making syllogisms or dilemmas.

The next thing to be considered is Christ’s rejoinder, in these words, Neither did this man sin, nor his parents: which words must needs be elliptical; and therefore the foregoing sentence is to be repeated with it, Neither did this man nor his parents sin, that he was born blind. Otherwise the words, barely considered, would contradict those scriptures that affirm all men to be sinners. But howsoever words may appear, it is certain that the sense of one scripture cannot contradict the sense of another: besides, the words, neither did he sin, nor his parents, can not be understood simply, that he did not sin, but that sin was not the cause of his blindness. Otherwise the answer does not reach the scope of the question, which inquires, not barely whether he sinned, but whether his sin procured him this malady; which Christ, in this answer, appositely denies.

But you will say, Is not the fall of Adam, and our original sin emerging from thence, the cause of all the miseries and diseases that are incident to man kind?

I answer, It is indeed the remote and general cause, or rather the causa sine qua non; for were it not for Adam’s fall, and for original sin, there would be no such maladies or distempers. But the question here is not of the remote and general cause, but of the proper, particular, and immediate cause of this blindness. And this cannot be original sin; for so, wheresoever it was, it would have this effect; and consequently all men would be born blind, inasmuch as all have original sin; which is absurd, and contrary to experience.

Christ, therefore, having removed the false cause, subjoins the true, that the works of God should be wade manifest in him. Some lay an emphasis upon the plural word, that it is not said, work, but works: for first, in his blindness, God had manifested a work of absolute power; and then, in his restitution, a work of mercy. Some also from hence draw an argument for Christ’s divinity, that his work is called the work of God. But I shall not insist upon these, as neither being very firm in themselves, nor relating to my purpose.

But it may be of some concernment to state the import of the particle that, in the Greek ἵνα; whether it denotes the cause, or only the event and consequence of the thing, as in the 39th verse of this chapter, I came into the world, that seeing they might not see. Where we cannot say, that the hardening of any was the cause or end why Christ came into the world; but an event or consequence, that, through the pravity of their hearts, happened upon his coining. So the manifesting the works of God might not be the cause why this man was born blind, but a thing that occasionally fell out upon his being so.

But still, the common reason of discourse does compel us to measure the sense of the answer by the nature of the question. Now the disciples’ question was about the cause of this man’s blindness, and therefore Christ’s answer must be so too; and not, when they asked him about the cause, to answer them about the consequent of it. This would have been to make them ask Christ one thing, and Christ to resolve them in another: which if he had, though what he said might have been a truth, yet it could not have been an answer. I conclude, therefore, that Christ means, that the manifesting of God’s power in this miraculous cure, was the final cause moving God to inflict this blindness upon him from his birth.

And thus there is a way cleared through the exposition of the words, which briefly exhibit to us the erroneous curiosity of the disciples in their pragmatical inquiry into the reason of God’s judgments, and the state of another man’s soul. And on the other hand, they shew both the divine knowledge and excellent strain of charity that shined in Christ’s reply; in which, by a reprehensive shortness, he both clears the man’s innocence, and vindicates God’s proceedings, and so states them both upon a right foundation.

I shall now draw forth and prosecute the design of the words in these three propositions.

I. That men are prone to charge God’s judgments upon false causes.

II. That not always the sin or merit of the person afflicted, but sometimes the will of God, who afflicts, is the sole and sufficient reason of the affliction.

III. Though God’s will and power be a sufficient reason of any evil inflicted upon man, yet he never inflicts it, but for the great end of advancing his own glory; and that usually in the way of their good.

In the prosecution of these it will appear, how each of them is deduced from the text.

I. For the first of these, though it be an universal, drawn from a particular instance of the disciples, yet the reason and principles inducing them thus to judge being common to all, I think the case, though particular, may not illogically yield an universal deduction. Besides, it amounts to an argument drawn a fortiore, that if the disciples, who were continually under the nurture and instruction of Christ himself, were yet apt to lash out into such extravagant censures, then certainly other men will be so much more, who have not the advantage of so near an access to his person, nor of such familiar acquaintance with his precepts.

In the handling of this proposition, I shall shew,

1. The false causes to which men are apt to refer God’s judgments.

SERMON XXVII.

PSALM cxxx. 4.

But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.

AFTER man had once sinned, and so was for ever disabled to stand before God upon terms of the law, which spoke nothing but irrecoverable death to him who transgressed in the least iota, and so carried more thunder in its curse, than it did in its promulgation; had God continued this inexorable sentence, and held man irreversibly under the doom which he incurred; since there is in every thing by nature an indelible principle of self-preservation, and consequently a love to all things that advance its being and comply with its happiness, and an hatred to whatsoever would destroy it: such a remorseless behaviour in God, meeting with such a principle in man, would of necessity have wrought in him these two things.

1. Horror of despair.

2. Height of malice.

1. For the first of these, it would have reduced him to horror of despair. When a man sees an omnipotence against him, and knows that an unchangeable God has sworn his destruction, nature must needs despond, all the doors of hope, all the avenues of comfort, being stopped; so that his misery admits no possibility of the least relief, no, not so much as of a reprieve.

SERMON XXVIII.

PREACHED AT ST. MARY S, OXFORD, SEPT. 12, 1658.

A FEW DAYS AFTER CROMWELL’S DEATH, WHO DIED ON THE THIRD INSTANT BEFORE.

DEUTER. xxix. 4.

Yet the Lord has not given you an heart to perceive, nor eyes to see, nor ears to hear, unto this day.

TO complete the sense of the words, we must have recourse to the two precedent verses; which being compared with the text, present us with a description of such a brutish and irrational temper, such an invincible hardness, as is not to be found in any people mentioned throughout the whole book of God, or any history whatsoever. Israel, the peculiar in heritance of God, the darlings of heaven; yet by their strange deportment under God’s dealings, may leave this report of themselves, that they were the greatest enjoyers and the greatest abusers of mercy that ever lived. The whole story of the transactions between God and them is a continued miracle. On God’s side there is strange unheard of power and goodness, on theirs a prodigious unheard of stupidity. Here we have miracles of strength and wisdom, there we have miracles of disobedience. None ever possessed mercy so much to the reproach of mercy as they did. Miracles are the rarities and the reserves of Heaven, kept to bear testimony to the power of God, and to convince men, when a contemplation of his works in the ordinary course of nature will not serve turn. Yet God was pleased to make these common with his people, that he might engage their hearts to him beyond all plea of unbelief. He delivered them by miracles, in Exod. xiv. 29. He led and guided them by miracles, Exod. xiii. 21. He fed them by miracles, Exod. xvi. 13, 17. He clothed them by miracles, Deut. xxix. 5. And, what was the greatest and the crowning miracle of all, he did not consume them in the midst of their frequent rebellions. Yet they had hardness and unbelief enough to encounter all these dealings: they still remained the same, a perverse, obstinate people, whose neck (as the Spirit’s expression is) was an iron sinew, and their brow brass. In short, the bare report and fame of those miracles made many proselytes and converts, the very sight whereof could not convert them. It will not be amiss, to take a short survey of their strange, unreasonable unbelief in some particular passages of it. When God had delivered them out of Egypt by an outstretched arm, by such wonders as never were before, nor ever since; and while the memory of these was yet fresh upon their mind, even then, upon the pursuit of Pharaoh, they distrust and murmur, Exod. xiv. 11. Hence David puts such a repeated emphasis upon this, in Psalm cvi. 7, They provoked him at the Red sea, even at the Red sea. As if the same power that could deliver them from an enemy, when he actually possessed them, could not rescue them from him when he only pursued them. After this deliverance they murmur for meat: Can God furnish a table in the wilderness? Psalm lxxviii. 19. Can God? They question not only his will, but his power, of which they had an immediate experience. Well, God gives them meat, even the bread of angels, and then they murmur for flesh: Psalm lxxviii. 20, Can he provide flesh also for his people? Still they doubt of his power; they live upon it one day, and they question it the next. An interchange of mercies on God’s part, and murmurings on theirs, was the continual custom and manner of their whole life. But the most horrid, and almost incredible passage of their unbelief, was when, after all the. wonders, both in Egypt and out of Egypt, when Moses had but only turned his back; as if in Moses they had lost their God, as if he had been the only Deity they acknowledged; and all their worship and religion had been directed to his person: in his absence they address themselves to Aaron, with this impious, absurd argument; Moses is gone, therefore make us gods, Exod. xxxii. 1. I am confident, if an intelligent infidel should read this history, the miracles here mentioned would not seem so improbable to him, as their carriage and behaviour upon these miracles. From the consideration of this, Moses might here very well proem the repetition of the covenant with this upbraiding reprehension; The Lord hath not given yon an heart to perceive, nor eyes to see, nor ears to hear. Which words are only an increpation of them, not any reflection upon God, as shall appear afterwards.

As for the explication of the words, I suppose I need not tell you, that they cannot be understood strictly according to the letter: for if God had given them no bodily eyes to see, nor ears to hear, they had not had sin: but because they saw bodily, and were blind spiritually, herein the sin of their obstinacy did consist.

We have here several phrases, but they all concentre in the same signification. A heart to perceive, eyes to see, and ears to hear. It is a pleonasm, a figure usual in scripture, by a multiplicity of expressions, to signify some one notable thing: so that from this congeries of similary words, we may collect the exceeding stupidity and total ignorance of the Jews, in apprehending the divine dispensations.

Or, secondly, we may refer these several expressions to those several means which God suited to every apprehensive faculty of their soul. He proposed an excellent law to their understanding or their heart: he declared himself in prodigious miracles visible to the eye. He spoke to them in a wonderful manner from mount Sinai in thunders, and a voice audible to the ear. He did (as I may so speak) lay siege to every faculty, if through any one of them he might force his convictions into the soul. He proposed that which might win the eyes and inform the ear, and that which might strike the understanding through both; but nothing could find entrance, where the doors both of sense and reason were shut through gross unbelief.

And thus we see the words have no difficulty in them. They will afford us these observations.

1 Observ. That the heart may remain unaffected and unconvinced in the midst of convincing means.

That this is so, scripture and experience leave it beyond dispute. But the reason why it is so, is this: because the clearness and perspicuity of the object does not at all supply or repair the defects of the faculty. The goodness and excellency of the things proposed to be understood and embraced do not give any ability to an hard heart to apprehend or embrace them; as the most visible, conspicuous thing contributes no power to a weak, indisposed eye to discern it.

Now I term these means convincing,

(1.) Because they do actually convince some, although they miscarry in others.

(2.) Because they have a fitness or aptitude to convince all.

2 Obsevr. issuing from the words is this:

That such a frame of spirit, such a perceiving heart, as enables the soul to apprehend and improve the means of grace, is totally and entirely the free gift of God: Yet the Lord hath not given you an heart to perceive. It is a product of that mercy which has no argument but itself.

I say, it is a free gift; and that,

1. In respect of the motive, which is the mere compassion of God: there is nothing in man that could engage God to bestow grace upon him. We are by nature wholly in a state of sin and enmity against God; and how these qualifications should merit grace at his hands, I know not, unless, by an unheard of, strange antiperistasis, the most hateful object should excite an act of the greatest love.

2. It is free, in respect of the persons upon whom it is conferred. When God comes first to work upon us, we are presented to him in the lump, all equally odious, equally desirable. And that God gives grace to one, and denies it to another, it is not from any precedent difference in them; for it is only the gift and grace of God which makes them to differ. But as God’s decree in choosing Jacob and rejecting Esau is most free, and without relation to any good or evil done by them; so the execution of that decree in conferring grace upon one, and withholding it from the other, is equally free and irrespective.

3 Observ. arising from the words, which I intend more fully to prosecute, is this:

That God’s denial of such a disposition of soul, such a perceiving heart, does certainly infer the unsuccessfulness of all the means of grace.

I say, it does infer it, not cause it, as I shall demonstrate by and by.

In the handling of this, I shall shew,

I. What is meant by God’s giving to the soul a perceiving heart.

II. Whence it is, that without this gift the soul cannot make any saving improvement of the means of grace.

III. I shall shew, that although, upon God’s denial of a perceiving heart, the soul does inevitably remain unprofitable under the means of grace, so as not to hear nor perceive, yet this hardness or unprofitableness cannot at all be ascribed to God as the author of it.

IV. I shall shew, how God can rationally reprehend a soul for not embracing the means of grace, when he denies it a heart, by which alone it can be enabled so to do. The necessity of clearing this I take from the strain of the words, which run in the nature of a reprehension; and this always supposes a fault as the ground and foundation of it. But if God denies a hearing ear and a perceiving heart, it may seem not to be the soul’s fault, if it does not hear nor perceive.

SERMON XXIX.

PREACHED AT WORCESTER-HOUSE,

MAY 29.

JOHN xv. 26.

But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me.

THESE words contain in them two general parts.

I. The promise of sending the Spirit.

II. The end of his being sent; which was to testify of Christ.

In the words containing the former of these, we have a full description of the Spirit; and that,

1. In respect of his person.

2. Of his office or employment.

The account of his person we have in this, that he is said to proceed from the Father. And his employment, in these two things:

(1.) That he is the Comforter.

(2.) That he is the Spirit of truth.

Of all these in their order.

1. And first concerning his procession from the Father. There has been a long and a great controversy between the Latin and the Greek church concerning this: whether the Holy Ghost proceeds equally from the Father and from the Son; which the Latins, and all the other western churches, hold: or whether he proceeds from the Father only by the Son, which alone the Greeks admit; and for this cause stand utterly unchurched by the church of Rome, as erring in a prime and fundamental point of faith.

But here I cannot but think, that in articles relating to such things, of which the reason of man can frame no explicit apprehension, it is a daring, uncharitable, and perhaps a very irrational thing, to condemn any one for expressing the same thing in different terms. And that the Greek church does no more, seems probable from hence.

1st, That they deny not the Spirit to be consubstantial with the Father and the Son.

2dly, That they acknowledge that he is as properly the Spirit of the Son as of the Father. And if, when we say, that the Spirit proceeds from the Son, we intend no more but that he is the Spirit of the Son, which they grant and profess; what is it more than a difference in the expression, where they seem to be very near a perfect coincidence as to the thing?

I am sure some of the most reputed authors in the Latin church avouch so much. Peter Lombard, in the first of the Sentences, 11th distinction, declares his mind thus: Sane sciendum est, quod licet in praesenti articulo a nobis Graeci verbo discordent, tamen sensu non differunt. And Scotus upon the same place of Lombard speaks to the same purpose: Antiquorum Graecorum a Latinis discrepantia in voce potius est, et modo explicandi emanationem Spiritus Sancti quam in ipsa re. The like is to be found in Aquinas, Bonaventure, and others, concerning this difference between the Greek and Latin church, in expressing this article.

SERMON XXX.

PROVERBS xviii. 14.

—But a wounded spirit who can bear?

THE corruption of man’s nature is, by sad experience, found to be so great, that few are kept from sin, but merely by the check of their fears, representing to them the endless, insupportable torments of another world, as the certain consequent and terrible reward of it. Which fears, if men arrive to such a pitch of atheism as to be able to shake off, (a perfection nowadays attained to by many, and aspired to by more,) there seems to be nothing left further to work upon such persons, in the way of fear, nor consequently to control, and put a stop to the full career and fury of their lusts.

Upon which account it will (I conceive) be no ill service to religion, to let such profligate wretches know, that their infidelity cannot set them so far out of the reach of vengeance, but that, while they endeavour to cast off all dread of future damnation, God can antedate the torments they disbelieve, and convince them of the possibility of such miseries hereafter, by an actual foretaste of the same here; that he can kindle one hell within them, before they enter into another; and by what he can make them feel, teach them the certainty of what they refuse to fear.

It is indeed none of the least of God’s titles and prerogatives, that he is the God of the spirits of all flesh; and that, as he first made the soul, so he retains an immediate, irresistible power over it, so as to be able to turn the inclinations, and to dispose of the comfort and the sorrows of it, as he pleases; and all this independently upon any of those objects, which by the ordinary course of nature it converses with. The usual materials, of which the soul makes up its comforts and satisfactions here on earth, are the felicities of this world; and the ordinary cause of its sorrows are the adverse and cross accidents of the same: nevertheless, God can infuse comfort into the soul, in spite of the sharpest earthly calamities, and on the other hand, smite it with the severest anguish and bitterness, in the midst of the highest affluence and prosperity.

The text presents us here with a short but full comparison between the grief that afflicts the out ward man, and that which preys upon the inward; together with the transcendent greatness of the latter above the former, as shall be made out presently in the grand instance of both these sorts of sufferings, even our blessed Saviour himself. For let this outside, or shell of nature, the body, be under never so much pain and agony, yet a well-settled and resolved mind will be able to buoy it up, and keep it from sinking: the spirits will bear, and by bearing will at length master all these infirmities. But when the spirit itself is wounded, and struck through, the grief presently becomes victorious, and intolerable. The soul in this case being like a bird wounded in the wing, the proper instrument and natural engine of its support, this immediately puts an end to its flight, and makes all striving vain; for fall it must to the ground.

In the words there are two things to be explained.

I. What is meant by spirit.

II. What is imported by its being wounded.

1st. For the first of these, we are to observe, that both scripture and philosophy hold forth to us in the soul of man an upper and a lower part; not indeed in respect of its substance, for that is indivisible, but in respect of its faculties. And as this lower, or inferior part, consists of those sensitive faculties and appetites, whose operations being wholly tied to the organs of the body, do accordingly converse only with bodily and gross objects; so there is an higher and more noble portion of the soul, purely intellectual; and in operation, as well as in substance, perfectly spiritual. Which is called by philosophers τὸ ἡγεμονικὸν, that is, the leading, ruling, and directing part of the soul; and by the scripture, the spirit of the mind; that is, the most exalted, refined, and quintessential part of it, in Ephes. iv. 23, Be ye renewed in the spirit of your mind. For that the soul is a spirit, that is to say, a substance void of matter and dimensions, I suppose none will deny, but those who (with your oracle, Hobbes, in the head of them) admit of no substance, but body; and having fully subdued faith to senses, and so (like Thomas) resolving to believe no further than your eyes and hands can reach, will perhaps in religion, as well as natural objects, make the tube, the still, and the telescope, the sole measure of their creed. In defiance of which atheistical notions, I affirm, that there is a certain noble and refined part of the soul expressed to us in the text by spirit, and here said to be wounded. Which is the

Second thing to be explained by us; and, I suppose, is so far and fully explained by us already, from the very nature of the subject to which it is here ascribed, that every one presently apprehends it to be an expression purely figurative; and that the soul being wounded, signifies nothing else, but its being deeply and intimately possessed with a lively sense of God’s wrath for sin, dividing, entering, and forcing its way into the most vital parts of it, as a sword or rapier does into the body. I say possessed with a sense of God’s wrath for sin; forasmuch as there is no grief, but meritoriously presupposes sin as the cause of it: not that I deny, but God by his absolute prerogative, without any violation of his other attribute, could and might grieve and afflict an innocent person, if he so pleased; but that by the stated rule of his transactings with men, he has resolved the contrary, and never afflicts or torments any rational creature that is not a sinner, either by actual commission, or at least by imputation.

Now this brief explication of the words being premised, the sense of them lies full and clear in this one proposition; viz.

That the trouble and anguish of a soul labouring under a sense of God’s displeasure for sin, is inexpressibly greater than any other grief or trouble whatsoever.

The prosecution of which I shall manage under these following particulars.

SERMON XXXI.

PSALM xcv. 11.

Unto whom I sware in my wrath, that they should not enter into my rest.

IN these words we have an account of the severest proceeding of an angry God against sinners. What Calvin says of reprobation, that it was decretum horribile, a dreadful, amazing decree, the like may be here said of this sentence pronounced against Israel. For certainly, if such decrees are so terrible in the constitution of them, they cannot but appear much more terrible in the promulgation.

We have, in the precedent verses, a narrative of the Israelites provoking sins, like a black cloud gathering over their heads, and here we have it breaking out into this dreadful thunder; a thunder much more dreadful than all those that sounded in their ears at the promulging of the law from mount Sinai: for if the terror of the Almighty was so great in giving the law, no wonder if it was much greater in pronouncing the curse.

The words in themselves seem very plain and easy; and by this expression, I sware in my wrath, is meant God’s peremptory declaring his resolution to destroy those murmuring and rebellious Jews. The word swearing is very significant, and seems to import these two things.

SERMON XXXII.

PSALM xiv. 1.

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.

THAT any one should degenerate to that degree of unreasonable baseness, as to deny that being and power by which he breathes, is not easy to imagine, did not some force us to believe so much of them upon their own word; such as, history tells us, were Diagoras Melius, Theodorus Cyrenaeus, and the like: and we have no cause to have so much better an opinion of the modern age, as to doubt that it has those who are ready enough to let fly and vent the same impiety. Though, let them affirm it never so much in words, there are not wanting arguments to persuade us, that their mouth belies their heart; and that they have an inward, invincible sense of what they outwardly renounce, holding them under the iron bands of a conviction not to be stifled or outbraved, or hectored out of their conscience; as shall be discoursed of afterwards.

In the words we have these two particulars:

I. An assertion made; There is no God.

II. The person by whom it is made; the fool.

As for the assertion, we may consider in it two things: first, the thing asserted; second, the manner of its assertion.

As for the thing asserted, that there is no God, it may be understood,

SERMON XXXIII.

PSALM cvi. 7.

Our fathers understood not thy wonders in Egypt; they remembered not the multitude of thy mercies; out provoked him at the sea, even at the Red sea.

PROVIDENCE, in all its parts and methods of acting, seems to carry on this great design, not to leave itself without witness in the world. And for this cause it gives greater or less manifestations of its superintendency over affairs here below, those especially relating to the church, according to the proportion of the church’s exigencies and occasions. Which when they are so great and arduous, that they seem even to call out for help from Heaven, and to exceed all possibility of redress but by the interposal of a miracle, why then miracles come in season, and shall be shewn, as being the rarities and reserves of Heaven, designed to recover upon men’s hearts a belief of that Providence that the constant, uninterrupted course of natural causes is apt to obscure and to render the less observable.

But in no passage since the creation did Omnipotence ever so eminently make bare its arms and shew itself, as it did in those stupendous proceedings in Egypt, following miracle with miracle, till at length, even in spite of power, and malice, and obstinacy itself, it brought out the armies of Israel free and victorious from amidst the iron-grinding jaws of a long, a cruel, and unsupportable bondage and subjection.

And that the world may see that the hand of divine power is not yet shortened, nor the bowels of divine goodness straitened, but that God is as able and ready to save his church as ever; succeeding ages have not been wholly without some declarations of it, in several transcendent and miraculous instances of help and deliverance; when once the straitness and vast difficulty of affairs has baffled and laughed at all assistances of created power, and so made the omnipotent author of the deliverance visible and conspicuous.

And amongst these supernatural instances of temporal mercy, vouchsafed to mankind in these latter ages of the world, there is none certainly superior, if any parallel, to that glorious masterpiece of Providence, to the commemoration of which we are called by this day’s solemnity. For if ever the miracles of Egypt were reacted, it has been upon the scene of England; which stands, as it were, a copy and a lasting transcript both of the bondage and the deliverance. Both church and state were under the yoke and lash of remorseless tyrants and taskmasters. Tyrants resolved to have bound the bonds of their captivity for ever, and never to have let them go: nor was there any hope or likelihood of it, till God himself undertook the business, and plagued the nation, by shaking the threatening sword of a civil war over it, that had so lately turned all into blood; by blasting it with the hail and stones of several insulting governments, then as changeable as the weather; also pestering the land with the frogs of this sect, and the lice of that, and the locusts of another: likewise confounding our English Egyptians with the thick darkness of faction and ignorance; and lastly, snatching away that firstborn of tyranny, perjury, and rebellion, and blowing him out of the world, as he did the locusts out of Egypt; till at length breaches and divisions amongst themselves, like the dividing of the Red sea and the parting of the mighty waters, both swallowed up them, and became as a wall of brass on both hands to our king and his loyal, exiled subjects, to convey them safe into a possession of those rights, which, both by the gift of God and the laws of men, were so undoubtedly their own.

Thus we have seen some resemblance between the transactions of Providence with Israel and with ourselves. We have seen how like we are to them for their miraculous deliverances; and, which is the worst, though perhaps the nearest part of the resemblance, it will appear also presently, how like we are to them for their miraculous ingratitude.

In the text we have these three things observable.

I. The unworthy and ungrateful deportment of the Israelites towards God upon a most signal mercy and deliverance: they provoked him.

II. The aggravation of this unworthy deportment from the nature and circumstance of the deliverance: they provoked him at the sea, even at the Red sea.

III. and lastly, The cause of this misbehaviour and unworthy deportment, which was their not under standing the designs of mercy in the several instances of it: they understood not thy wonders in Egypt.

I. And first for the first of these, the Israelites’ ungrateful and unworthy deportment towards God: they provoked him.

To provoke, is an expression setting forth a peculiar and more than ordinary degree of misbehaviour; and seems to import an insolent, daring resolution to offend. A resolution not contented with one single stroke of disobedience, but such a one as multiplies and repeats the action, till the offence greatens and rises into an affront; and as it relates to God, so I conceive it strikes at him in a threefold respect.

1st, Of his power. 2dly, Of his goodness. 3dly, Of his patience.

1st, And first it rises up against the power and prerogative of God. It is, as it were, an assault upon God sitting upon his throne, a snatching at his sceptre, and a defiance of his very royalty and supremacy. He that provokes God, does in a manner dare him to strike, and to revenge the injury and invasion upon his honour. He considers not the weight of God’s almighty arm, and the edge of his sword, the swiftness and poison of his arrows, but puffs at all, and looks the terrors of sin-revenging justice in the face. The Israelites could not sin against God, after those miracles in Egypt, without a signal provocation of that power that they had so late and so convincing an experience of: a power, that could have crushed an Israelite as easily as an Egyptian; and given as terrible an instance of its consuming force upon false friends, as upon professed enemies; in the sight of God perhaps the less sort of offenders of the two.

And can the sins of any nation in the world more affront God, in the grand attribute of his power, than the sins of ours; which has given such flaming, illustrious experiments of itself, as have dazzled our eyes and astonished our hearts! For have we not seen a flourishing state and a glorious church broke in pieces, and as it were extinguished in a moment? and a prince, as great as good, torn out of his throne, stripped of his power, and at length disastrously cut oft by the hand of violence? And dare we now sin against that power that has thus shewn us how easily it can confound and overturn all the glories of worldly grandeur? and which, after all this, has, by a miraculous exertion of itself, called up a buried church and state from the grave, and given them a stupendous resurrection from the confusion and rubbish of a long and woful desolation: and this by bringing back the banished son of a murdered father, even over the heads of his enemies armed and potent, and rather amazed than conquered into their former allegiance. A work so big with miracle and wonder, so apparently above, nay even against the common methods of human acting, that were there no other argument to prove a Providence, this one passage alone were sufficient; and that such an one as carries in it the force and brightness of a demonstration.

2dly, Provoking God imports an abuse of his goodness. God, as he is clothed with power, is the proper object of our fear; but as he displays his goodness, of our love. By one he would command, by the other he would win and (as it were) court our obedience. And an affront to his goodness, his tenderness, and his mercy, as much exceeds an affront of his power, as a wound at the heart transcends a blow on the hand. For when God shall shew miracles of mercy, step out of the common road of providence, commanding the host of heaven, the globe of the earth, and the whole system of nature out of its course, to serve a design of goodness upon a people, as he did upon the Israelites; was not a provocation, after such obliging passages, infinitely base and insufferable, and a degree of ingratitude, higher than the heavens it struck at, and deeper than the sea that they passed through?

3dly, Provoking God imports an affront upon his longsuffering and his patience. The movings of nature, in the breasts of all mankind, tell us how keenly, how regretfully, every man resents the abuse of his love; how hardly any prince, but one, can put up an offence against his acts of mercy; and how much more affrontive it is to despise mercy ruling by the golden sceptre of pardon, than by the iron rod of a penal law. But now patience is a further and an higher advance of mercy; it is mercy drawn out at length; mercy wrestling with baseness, and striving, if possible, even to weary and outdo ingratitude: and therefore a sin against this is the highest pitch, the utmost improvement, and, as I may so speak, the ne plus ultra of provocation. For when patience shall come to be tired, and even out of breath with pardoning, let all the invention of mankind find something further, either upon which an offender may cast his hope, or against which he can commit a sin. But it was God’s patience that the ungrateful Israelites sinned against; for they even plied and pursued him with sin upon sin, one offence following and thronging upon the neck of another, the last account still rising highest, and swelling bigger, till the treasuries of grace and pardon were so far drained and exhausted, that they provoked God to swear, and what is more, to swear in his wrath, and with a full purpose of revenge, that they should never enter into his rest.

And thus I have given you the threefold dimension of the provocation that the Israelites passed upon God; and it is to be feared, that our sins have been cast into the same mould, they do so exactly resemble them in all their proportions; for we are as deep in arrears to Heaven, and have as large a sum of abused goodness and patience to account for, as ever they had; and so much greater is our account than theirs could be, that we had the advantage of their example to have forewarned us.

II. I proceed now to the second thing proposed from the text; which is, the aggravation of the Israelites unworthy deportment towards their almighty deliverer, set forth in these words: they provoked him at the sea. even at the Red sea.

The extraordinary emphasis of which expression, in the repeated use of the same words, shews what a particular and severe observation God passed upon their behaviour. The baseness and ingratitude of which he casts in their teeth, by confronting it with the eminent obligation laid upon them, by the glorious deliverance he vouchsafed them; a deliverance heightened and ennobled with these four qualifications.

1st, Its greatness. 2dly, Its unexpectedness, 3dly, Its seasonableness. 4thly, Its undeservedness.

Of each of which in their order.

1st, And first for the greatness of the deliverance. Very great surely it must needs have been, comparing the contemptible weakness of the persons delivered, with the strength and terror of the enemy from whom they were delivered. What were a company of poor oppressed bricklayers, inured to servitude as to an inheritance, for four hundred years successively, and consequently whose very soul and spirit was even lost in clay and rubbish, and made poor, and low, and grovelling by the disciplines of a long captivity. How were these able to have looked Pharaoh and his armies in the face, who had so long trembled under the frown and lash of the meanest of his taskmasters! What could their trowels have done against the Egyptian swords; their aprons against the others’ armour and artillery! They could be confident of nothing, but of sinking under the inequality of the encounter.

And could there be a greater deliverance than thus to fetch a lamb out of the jaws of the lion, to wrest weakness out of the hands of power, and the captive from the clutches of the strong! This was the case of the Israelites.

And surely we shall find that it was our own too. For could there be a greater disproportion than there was between us and our oppressing enemies? Were they not, even in the very day of our deliverance, as strong, as mighty, and well armed as ever? Were their hands at all weakened, that they could not strike, or their swords blunted, that they could not wound? Naturally speaking, I am sure they were not: but whether their hearts were for the present changed by an immediate impression from heaven, or their hands overruled by the art and conduct of that great restorer of his country; certain it is, they were like men in amaze, and not able to act the habitual villainy of their principles and dispositions. So that we saw our king returning to his own triumphantly, at the head of that army by which he had been driven and kept out; an army with their swords in their hands, and, for the most part, with their old principles in their hearts. And had not this deliverance all the marks of greatness and prodigy, that (he it spoke with reverence) almightiness itself could stamp upon it? Search the annals of story, run over all the records of antiquity, and give it a parallel, if you can. It could he none but the Almighty’s doing, and therefore ought to be marvellous in our eyes. It carried its author in its front, and every circumstance of the transaction was noted with the traces and signatures of a divine power and contrivance. It was too great for the measures of any finite, created agents.

2dly, A second property of the deliverance vouchsafed to the Israelites at the Red sea, was its unexpectedness. Their wits failed them to contrive an escape, as well as their power to make good a resistance. The enemy was behind, and the sea before them; that is, death both faced them and pursued them too: and could they expect, that either the hardened heart of a Pharaoh should relent, and bid them return, or the devouring element forget its cruelty, and turn their sanctuary to protect them?

It is true, indeed, that if any people in the world might have expected such miraculous countermands upon nature, they were the Israelites, to whom custom and frequency had made miracles so familiar, as even to offer them to their expectation. Yet we know they were far from inferring their future preservation from their former deliverance, and that the God of their fathers would act as miraculously in one, as he had done in the other; and thereupon we read these worthy expostulations of their infidelity, striking directly indeed at Moses, but tacitly reflecting upon God himself: Exod. xiv. 11, 12, Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us out of Egypt? Did we not say to thee in Egypt, Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? for it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness. Death was their belief, death their fear, nothing but death their expectation. But now how welcome, how sweet, and even transporting must such a deliverance needs be, as steps in between a great mischief and a great fear; as disappoints and confutes the terror of a man’s expectations, and (as I may so say) baffles him according to his heart’s desire? For the expectation and hope of a good fulfilled, is not so pleasing as the expectation and fear of a great evil defeated. It does not affect the mind with so sensible, so quick, and so exalting a delight. The reason of which is, because enjoyment in this state of mortality does not so much gratify, as misery does afflict us; and consequently nature more desires to be delivered from one, than to be possessed of the other. If ever there is a picture of silver, to set forth an apple of gold, it is when the mercy of the deliverance is set forth and enhanced by the precedent fears and despairs of him that is delivered: for can any delight be greater, than for a man to set his foot upon the neck of that enemy, by whom but three minutes before he expected certainly to die? To behold that sea opening itself as a bosom to embrace, which he could not expect to be any other than a grave to swallow and consume? With these circumstances of endearment did God deliver the Israelites.

SERMON XXXIV.

MATTHEW xvii. 21.

Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.

IT was a general received command, and an acknowledged rule of practice in all ages and places of the Christian world, that we are to hear the church; except only of late, since we began to be wiser than the world, and holy above the scripture; from which this text has been, as it were, discanonized, and its authority struck out of date. But no wonder if the church then had no jurisdiction, when it had scarce so much as a being; and that men did not use to hear it, when it grew almost impossible for them to see it; and if the disciples of those days regarded not much the casting out of evil spirits, who were chiefly busied about rejecting God’s ministers.

But heretofore, when men were led by the written word, and not by the ignis fatuus of a bold fancy, styling itself divine revelation, the church was always recognised as Christ’s court here upon earth, fully empowered and commissioned from him to decide all emergent controversies, to interpret doubtful commands, and to make wholesome sanctions and institutions, as particular occasions and the circumstances of affairs should require; that so it might appear, that the assistance of the Spirit promised to the church was not a vain thing or a mere verb.

Now it seemed good to the primitive church, acted by the immediate guidance of the Holy Ghost, to set apart the time of our blessed Saviour’s fasting and temptation in the wilderness, to be solemnized with the anniversary exercise of abstinence, and other holy austerities, for the subduing the flesh, quickening the spirit; that so we might conform to Christ, and worship the author of our religion with the devotions of imitation.

Thanks be to God, our church is lately come out of the wilderness; yet let it not cease to imitate what our Saviour did when he was there. I confess the blessed Jesus is a pattern above the imitation of mortality; fitter to terrify than to excite our endeavours; a copy to be admired, not to be transcribed.

His whole life was a continued miracle; in every instance of behaviour his divinity beamed through his humanity, and every action was a cast of his omnipotence; and miracles, I acknowledge, were never intended for precepts; nor is any man bound to be omnipotent, divine, or an angel, nor to do such things as are only the effects of such perfections.

Yet even this strange, high, inimitable fasting of Christ may be stripped of the miracle, and, by due, qualified proportions, found a moral duty: for though to fast forty days were miraculous, and so not at all concerning us, yet the ends of Christ’s fasting, which were to enjoy a more immediate converse with God, the better to fortify himself against the temptation of the Devil, and to fit himself for the execution of a great work laid upon him by the Father; these are all common to us, according to the due abatement of degrees; and therefore, where there is some proportion in the duty, there ought to be the same in the use of the means.

SERMON XXXV.

REVELATION ii. 16.

Repent; or I will come unto thee quickly, and fight against them with the sword of my mouth.

REFLECTING upon these many and strange methods by which sin prevails upon man’s will, collected from an ordinary experience and survey of the practices of the world, compared with the infallible verdict of the scriptures; and amongst the rest, of that signal place in Deut. xxix. 19, which presents to us one blessing himself, and saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imaginations of my heart, to add drunkenness to thirst: I have, upon such reflections, not without some amazement, considered what should be the ground upon which rational, discerning men can satisfy and speak peace to their consciences in the very career of those sins, the commission of which, even by the confession of those that commit them, leads to assured perdition.

As for that peace that springs from a refined, well-contrived hypocrisy, that is wholly of another nature; for where there is some restraint of sin coloured over with some superficial varnish of duty, considering the weakness of man’s understanding, and the treachery of his will, it is no wonder that such a peace is easily attainable; nay, that it is very hardly avoidable. But here, where sin is let loose to its full, uncontrolled course, so that men lie and wallow in a free and palpable perpetration of it, even arising to the height of this expression, to add drunkenness to thirst; that is, as some expound it, the outward commission of sin to the inward desire; or as others, a perpetual, continued glut and surfeit in sin. As the abused satisfaction of thirst causes drunkenness, and drunkenness again provokes thirst, men never more liberally call for their cups, than when they have too liberally taken them already.

I say, that any one should find peace in such a course, this seems prodigious, and, did not scripture and experience overrule the disputes of reason, almost incredible. But since there is no human action or course without some cause, it will be expedient to inquire what may be the cause of this. And one would think, that the cause that any man can be jocund and fully satisfied in the eager pursuit of known sins, must of necessity be one of these three.

1st, That he is ignorant of the curse that attends his sin; and so no wonder, if blindness produces boldness: for he that is blind may not only accidentally fall, but soberly go into the ditch. But this cannot be here the cause; for he that thus blesses himself, is said in the former part of the verse to do so, after he had heard the words of this curse. A curse plain enough and large enough, filling all the foregoing chapter, one of the longest in the Bible. So that if terror set home with evidence, or evidence edged with terror, could convince, ignorance was here unpleadable. The broad light of the word beat full in his face, the discovery was clear, and the conviction unavoidable; and therefore ignorance could not be the cause.

SERMON XXXVI.

REVELATION ii. 16.

Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and fight against them with the sword of my mouth.

AS before I enforced the duty of immediate repentance, and disputed against the deferring of it, by arguments drawn from the unreasonableness of such a course; so now I shall further proceed against it, from a consideration of the strong, peculiarly provoking nature of this sin above all others; though indeed, in propriety of speech, impenitence cannot be called a sin, but rather a collection and combination of sins, or a sinful state and condition.

But certain it is, that there is nothing that kindles the divine wrath to such a flame, as the delayed exercise of the great duty of repentance. We find not such fierce expressions of vengeance against any sinner, as the Spirit of God, in Deut. xxix. 20, 21, discharges against him that obstinately delayed his repentance. It is said, “that God will not spare him: that the anger of the Lord, nay, his jealousy, which is the very sting and poison of his anger, shall smoke against that man; that all the curses of the law shall lie upon him; that God shall blot out his name from under heaven; and lastly, that he shall even separate him to evil, according to all the curses of the covenant.”

SERMON XXXVII.

ROMANS i. 3, 4.

Περὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ, τοῦ γενομένου ἐκ σπέρματος Δαυὶδ, κατὰ σάρκα, Τοῦ ὁρισθέντος υἱοῦ Θεοῦ ἐν δυνάμει, κατὰ πνεῦμα ἁγιωσύνης, ἐξ ἀναστάσεως νεκρῶν, Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν.

Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh;

And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.

IN these words we have an adequate and entire description of the person of Christ. For in the third verse his human nature, and in the fourth his divine, is fully and exactly represented to us.

I delight not, I must confess, to insist much upon philological or philosophical discourses in dispensing the word; but where the construction of the text lies so, that we cannot otherwise reach the full sense of it, but by making our way through doubts and ambiguities, we must have recourse to such expedients.

The present exercise, therefore, shall consist of these two parts.

I. An explication of the words.

II. An accommodation of them to the present occasion.

I. For the first of these we must know, that the scheme of the Greek carries a very different face from our translation, which difference renders the sense of the words very disputable.

The explication of which I shall comprise in the resolution of these four inquiries.

1st, Whether the translation rightly renders it, that Christ was declared to be the Son of God, since the original admits of a different signification.

2dly, What is imported by this term, with power.

3dly, What is intended by the following words, according to the spirit of holiness.

4thly and lastly, How those words, by the resurrection from the dead, are to be understood.

In all which, as the resolution will manifest the reason of the doubt, I shall be as brief as I can; for if I should give myself scope to pursue each particular through all the difficulties that might attend it, it would fill a much larger discourse than the measure of the present exercise will allow. After which explication I shall shew, that the resurrection of Christ is the greatest and the principal argument to prove the divinity of his person.

1st, And first for the first of these: that which we render declared, is in the Greek ὁρισθέντος, which may signify decreed, or determined; and accordingly the vulgar Latin reads it praedestinatus, and some other destinatus est. But with what propriety, or indeed with what tolerable sense, Christ could be said to be decreed to be the Son of God, which he was from eternity; and especially to be decreed to be so by the resurrection from the dead, a thing that had happened very lately, is hard to understand, and much harder to make out. That which is the proper object of decree or destination is something future; but that which was eternal cannot be imagined in any period of time to be future.

Those indeed who deny the eternal godhead of Christ, and date his deity entirely, and his sonship principally, from his resurrection, are great friends to this exposition of the word; and well may they be so, for it serves their turn to very great purposes: for if Christ was constituted eminently the Son of God at and by his resurrection, it might very properly be said of him, that he was decreed so to be antecedently to his resurrection; but how this can consist with the supposition of his eternal godhead, I must profess, I cannot apprehend.

Aquinas indeed retains this interpretation of the word by praedestinatus est; but it was the gross ignorance of the Greek tongue and all critical learning in those days, that betrayed so great a judgment to the inconvenience of holding that, of which to give a rational account he took so much pains, and to so little purpose.

Erasmus therefore observes, (whose authority in this sort of learning is inferior to none,) that there is another proper signification of the word ὁρίζω besides to decree, or determine, and that is, to declare, shew forth, or manifest; hence in grammar the indicative mood is called ὁριστικὸς; and in logic the definition of a thing, which is the declaration of its nature, is called ὅρος or ὁρίσμος; all which confirm this interpretation.

And for the agreeableness of it to this place, be sides the utter disagreeableness of any other signification; that is proved from hence, as that it carries a most fit and emphatical opposition to the words of the former verse, where the apostle expresses Christ’s human nature by γενομένου, he was made of the seed of David, which word imports the constitution of something that did not exist before: but hero, in this verse, expressing his divine nature, since he had from eternity been the Son of God, it is not said of him that he was made, but only declared or manifested to be so.

Besides, the apostle here speaks of things past and already done; which being so, with what propriety could he insist upon a thing only as decreed and purposed, after it had actually come to pass? especially since it was this only which here made for his purpose. His design was to prove Christ the Son of God by an argument taken from a thing known and notable, which was his resurrection; and would any rational disputer omit this, that he was actually risen, and argue only from this, that it was decreed that he should rise from the dead? According to the natural way of speaking, men never use to say that such a thing is decreed or purposed, after once that decree or purpose has passed into execution. And so much for explication of the first term.

2dly, The second inquiry is, what is imported by this term with power; the Greek is ἐν δυνάμει, in power, so that by some it is rendered in virtute; but it being not unusual for the particle ἐν to be put for σὺν, it is most properly rendered in our translation with power; which, though some understand of the power of Christ, as it exerted itself in the miracles which he did; yet here it signifies rather the glorious power of his divine nature, by which he over came death, and properly opposed to the weakness of his human nature, by which he suffered it. Correspondent to which is that place in 2 Cor. xiii. 4, He was crucified by weakness, but he liveth by the power of God: that is, the weakness of his humanity made him capable of the death of the cross; but the power of his divinity triumphed over that death, and raised him to an eternal life.

3dly, The third thing to be inquired into is, what is the intent of the following words, according to the spirit of holiness. The expression is an Hebraism, and signifies as much as the Holy Spirit; but what is the meaning of that here, is the doubt to be resolved.

Some understand it only as a further explication of the precedent word ἐν δυνάμει, taking both that and this for the miraculous works done by the Spirit of God to confirm the gospel: for still we shall find that the miracles of Christ and his apostles were ascribed to the Spirit of God; which exposition cannot stand, for these reasons:

1st, Because it ought then to have been joined with the precedent words by conjunction, καὶ ἐν δυνάμει, καὶ κατὰ πνεῦμα.

2dly, Because in right construction it should have been πνεύματι, or διὰ πνεύματος, by the Spirit, noting the efficient cause; not according to the Spirit, as it is here; for κατὰ πνεῦμα can never be brought to have an equivalent signification to διὰ πνεύματος.

In the next place, therefore, if we observe the connection between this and the former verse, we shall find that there is a certain antithesis between them; and that as κατὰ σάρκα signifies the human nature of Christ, so κατὰ πνεῦμα may most appositely signify the divine; for it is not unusual in scripture for the divine nature to be rendered by the word spirit; John iv. 24, God is a spirit; and 1 Tim. iii. 16, it is said, in respect of Christ, that God was manifested in the flesh, but justified in the Spirit; that is, he was proved to have a divine nature, as well as an human. And now here, because the apostle had expressed the humanity of Christ, not by κατ᾽ ἀνθρωπίνην φύσιν, or κατ᾽ ἄνθρωπον, but κατὰ σάρκα, namely, the better to set forth the frailty and gross substance of the human nature; by way of opposition, he renders his divinity by κατὰ πνεῦμα, a word properly corresponding to κατὰ σάρκα, and withal importing the vigorous and refined substance of this nature. And whereas he annexes this qualification of holiness, and calls it the spirit of holiness, it is because he considers not the divine nature of Christ absolutely in itself, but according to the relation it had to, and the great effect that it exercised upon his other nature. For it was his divinity which sanctified, consecrated, and hypostatically deified his humanity; and in that respect it is here treated of by the apostle.

4thly, I come now to the explication of that fourth and last expression, by the resurrection from the dead, which is exceeding different from the original, according to the first and literal appearance of the sentence. For the words Jesus Christ our Lord, which in the translation are placed in the beginning of the third verse, in the Greek are the last words of the fourth; which has occasioned great diversity in the construction. The words in the original are these, ἐξ ἀναστάσεως νεκρῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν. So that what we render by the resurrection from the dead, is word for word to be rendered by the resurrection of the dead of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Whereupon some interpret it not of Christ’s personal resurrection; which, they say, ought to have been ἐκ νεκρῶν, not simply νεκρῶν; but either of the resurrection of those, who in Matthew are said to have rose from their graves at the time of Christ’s crucifixion, or of the general resurrection of all the saints; who are therefore called the dead of Jesus Christ, to discriminate them from the wicked and the reprobates, who, though they shall rise again, yet bear not this relation to Christ.

Accordingly they take the word ἀνάστασις actively for the action of Christ, by his power raising them from the dead: forasmuch as otherwise their being raised from the dead would not have had so immediate a force to prove Christ to be the Son of God.

But that the words are not so to be rendered, nor consequently to be understood of the resurrection of any but of Christ himself, is clear upon the strength of this reason: that (as I have partly observed already) the apostle’s design here is to demonstrate to the Romans the divinity of Christ, by some signal passage already done, and so familiarly known by them. But the general resurrection was as yet future, and the resurrection of those few, it is probable, was not so famed a thing, as to have been commonly known amongst them: especially since there is mention of it only in St. Matthew, but in none else, either of the apostles or evangelists; who, being so diligent in representing all those arguments that seemed to prove the divinity of Christ, had they apprehended this to have been so clear and immediate an argument for the proof of it, certainly would not have thus passed it over in silence.

I conclude therefore, that it is to be understood of the personal resurrection of Christ from the dead. So that the only thing that remains for us is, to solve and make out the construction: for which, though several ways may be assigned, yet the most rational is to refer the words ησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν, by apposition to the precedent words in the former verse, περὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ; not making it to be governed of νεκρῶν; so that, in the Latin translation, Jesus Christ is not to be rendered by the genitive, but by the ablative case; it being repeated after the intervening words by an hyperbaton; a figure usual in the writings of this apostle; whose expression must be acknowledged to be none of the easiest or the clearest.

Neither is it material that the particle ἐκ is not prefixed to νεκρῶν, to make it from the dead; since it is usual amongst the Greeks to omit prepositions, such as ἐν, ἐξ, and ἀπὸ; as also amongst the Latins, with whom surrexit terrâ is all one with surrexit a terrâ. But above all this, the preposition here may be so much the better omitted, since the very word ἀνάστασις carries in it the force of this preposition; forasmuch as it denotes a motion or recess from a certain place or state.

And thus I have given an explication of the words, the first thing proposed for the management of this subject; which explication has been, I confess, something large; but I hope, to those who under stand these matters, is not altogether unuseful.

II. I come now to the second general head, which is, the accommodation of the words to the present occasion; and that shall be in shewing, that Christ’s resurrection is the greatest and the principal argument to prove him the Son of God. Now both the foundation and sum of the gospel lies within the compass of this proposition, that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God: from which one aphorism spring all the other branches of Christianity. For that, which properly discriminates the Christian religion from the natural, or Judaical, is the holding of Christ’s deity, and his satisfaction naturally consequent upon it: to both which together are reducible all the parts of the gospel, as appendages to, or conclusions naturally flowing from them.

But it is not here to be denied, that Christ is capable of being called the Son of God in several respects; as that, according to his human nature, he had no natural father, but was produced in the womb of his mother by the immediate power of God; as also for his resemblance to God, upon the accounts of his transcendent holiness: it being proper to call him the Son of God who does the works of God; (as Christ called the Jews the sons of the Devil, for doing the works of the Devil, John iii. 44, Ye are of your father the Devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do:) all great likeness, in the scripture dialect, founding the denomination of sonship. Christ might be also called the Son of God, from his having the government of all things put into his hands upon his ascension. All this must be granted: yet here we are to consider only the principal and grand cause of his being called so; which is from the eternal generation and emanation of his person from the person of the Father; that is, we are to consider him to be the Son of God upon such an account, as may also infer and prove him to be God himself.

Now this supereminent way of sonship being the foundation of his deity, as that is the foundation of our religion, ought in reason to be evinced by some great and evidently conclusive argument; and such an one we affirm to have been his resurrection.

But you will here naturally reply, How can this be a proper proof of that? How can his resurrection, which supposes him. to have been dead, prove him to be such an one as existed from all eternity, and so could not die? Is the grave a medium to demonstrate a person incorruptible? or death, to enforce that he is immortal? I answer, that this argumentation is so far very right; and that the resurrection considered only in a bare relation to the person rising from the dead, proves him only to be a wonderful man; but is so far from proving him the eternal Son of God, that it rather proves the contrary. But then, if we consider it with relation to the doctrine of that person affirming himself to be thus the Son of God, and as the seal set to the truth of that doctrine by an omnipotent hand and an unfailing veracity; why, thus it is an infallible argument to prove the real being of all those things that were asserted by that person. Christ’s resurrection therefore proved him to be the eternal Son of God consequentially; that is, as it was an irrefragable confirmation of the truth of that doctrine which had declared him to be so.

It is much disputed, whether Christ’s resurrection is to be referred to his own power raising himself from the dead, or only to the power of the Father. Those who deny his eternal divinity allow only this latter, stiffly opposing the former. To give countenance to this their opposition, they seem to make challenge to any one to produce but one place of scripture where Christ is said to have raised himself from the dead, and they will yield the cause. To which I answer; though this is no where affirmed in these very terms, representing it in praeterito, as done; yet if Christ spoke the same thing in words importing the future, the result is undoubtedly the same. And for this I desire to know what they will answer to that place, John ii. 19, where Christ, speaking of his body, says, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up? Does not Christ personally appropriate the action to himself and to his own power? Wherefore that exception is a vapour and a cavil, unbecoming a rational opponent.

But I add, that as to the proof of the divinity of Christ’s person, it is not material whether his resurrection be stated upon his own power, or the power of his Father; for both equally prove the same thing, though in a different manner.

If Christ raised himself, it directly proves that he was God, and so had a divine nature, besides his human; for if he raised that, being dead, it must needs follow, that he did it by virtue of a power inherent in another nature, which was some divine spirit.

But, on the other hand, if the Father raised him, yet still it proves him to have been God; forasmuch as he always avouched himself to be so; and the Father would not have exerted an infinite power to have confirmed a lie, or verified the words of an impostor.

Having thus shewn how Christ’s resurrection could be a proper argument to prove his divinity and eternal sonship, I come now in the next place to shew, that it is the greatest and the principal of all others.

And for this we may observe, that the arguments for the proof of the truth of Christ’s doctrine, of which the sum is, that he himself is the Son of God, are generally reducible to these three:

1st, The nature of the things taught by him.

2dly, The fulfilling of prophecies in his person.

3dly, The miracles and wonderful works which he did in the time of his life.

Now to prove that his resurrection was an argument surpassing all these, I shall premise this one consideration; that whatsoever is brought as an argument to prove a thing demonstratively, ought to be in itself not only true, but evident and clear. Forasmuch as to prove a thing is properly to make it evident; but nothing can make another thing evident which is not so itself; nay, more evident than the thing to be proved by it. This being premised, let us take a brief examination of each.

1st, And first for the nature of the things which he taught. If you take a view of those which relate to practice; as, that we are to take no thought for the morrow, to take up our cross daily, and to renounce all the enjoyments of those things which were made only to be enjoyed; not to resist evil, nor to defend ourselves, but being smote upon one cheek to turn the other; and when the oppressor has robbed me of my coat, to gratify him with my cloke also; which is in effect to relinquish the grand rights of nature, and the eternal principle of self-preservation, writ in the hearts of all men with the pen of an adamant: furthermore, that for every petty anger we are responsible to the degree of murder; and that for every idle word we are liable to eternal damnation; that is, to a perpetuity of torments, not only unsupportable, but unconceivable; with several other such articles of the same nature.

SERMON XXXVIII.

ECCLESIASTES i. 18.

In much wisdom there is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

IT is a saying usual, and of great reason, that we are to believe the skilful in their own art and profession. And therefore, if we would understand the nature, properties, and effects of knowledge, none can be so fit to inform us, as he who, by the very verdict of omniscience itself, was of all men in the world the most knowing.

Nothing indeed is more common than for every man almost to pass an universal censure upon all persons and things; but none can despise a thing rationally, but he who knows it thoroughly. Otherwise, though a man should pass a right judgment upon a thing, yet he does it only by accident; and not by reason, but luck: and therefore, though the thing spoke be truth and wisdom, yet the speaker of it utters it like a fool. None but a scholar can be a competent judge of knowledge; and therefore all the encomiums and endless praises of it that now fly about the world, must come, and be tried, and stand or fall, according to the verdict of this rule.

First therefore we shall find those that are loudest in their commendations, and highest in their admirations of learning, are for the most part such as were never bred to it themselves: hence it is, that such, of all others, are the most desirous to breed their sons scholars; so that if we take a list of the most renowned philosophers in former ages, and the most eminent divines in the latter, we shall find that they were, for the most part, of mechanic, mean, and plebeian parentage.

Upon this score also there came to be so many free-schools and endowed places for learning; because those are most apt to send their children to study, who, being poor and low, are not able to maintain them in it; and therefore need the expense and benevolence of others, to bring their imprudent designs to maturity. Let this therefore be fixed upon, as one great reason that the praise of knowledge is so great in the world, viz. that much the major part of the world is ignorant. And ignorant men are indeed very fit to praise and admire, but very unfit to judge.

I am not insensible that many will here presently be apt to stop me with those elogies that the most learned bestow upon knowledge, still adorning it with such panegyrics, such high words and expressions, as if rhetoric was invented for nothing else but to describe and set off her praise.—But in answer to this, though I might note, that to be learned and to be wise are things very different; yet I shall produce another reason of these commendations, which in all probability is this; that learned men would not seem and be judged fools, for spending their time upon so empty a thing; and therefore, as those that have been deceived into a ridiculous sight, do yet commend it, that they may not be thought to have been deceived, but may bring others into the same cheat with themselves:

SERMON XXXIX.

PSALM lxvi. 18.

If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.

THIS Psalm is David’s grateful commemoration of all God’s mercies, together with a retribution of praise, the only recompence and return that the poor sons of men are able to make for divine favours. And David, as standing in a double relation, first of a king and public parent, under which he did not only govern, but represent his people; and, secondly, of a saint of God, under which notion it was his business to regard the peculiar interest of his own soul; so accordingly he does proportion his praises to these two several conditions: first, as he was a public person and a king, he gives thanks to God for public mercies; for he whose duty it was to love his people as himself, it was also his duty to esteem all mercies shewn to his people, at a second hand, shewn to himself. And this he does from the first to the thirteenth verse; where he praises God in respect of the glory of his majesty and the greatness of his power, which he had often employed in the miraculous deliverance of his people, from the first verse to the eighth. And then for his mercy and faithfulness, not only in ridding them out of adversity, but, by seasonable afflictions, securing them from the greater danger of prosperity: and this he does from the eighth verse to the thirteenth. And, secondly, as one of God’s saints, so he takes a more especial thankful notice of the personal favours that God had conferred upon him: and this he does from the thirteenth verse to the end of the Psalm. Wherein, for the manner of the duty, we may observe, that it is praise. As prayer is an asking or craving, so praise is a giving and returning; therefore not only a spiritual, but a kingly work; and consequently most beseeming David, who was in his days not only the most religious of men, but the best of kings. And it was that which gave him no less a preeminence above other saints, than his crown gave him prerogative over his people, that he was a man of praises, of all others the most frequent and earnest in this duty: which, in this sense, excels prayer; inasmuch as gratitude is more laudable than a craving desire. It was David’s best, his greatest and most lasting praise, that he made it his business to praise God. Secondly, for the matter of this praise; it was not things carnal, as the establishing his crown, and the enlarging his dominions, but it was spiritual; as in the sixteenth verse, I will declare what he has done for my soul.

Now in this acknowledgment of his we may observe, that the greatest argument of his praise was the sense of God’s gracious hearing his prayer, as appears from the two last verses, where in the verse immediately foregoing, containing the words of my text, he insinuates the reason of the success of his prayers, by shewing what would have hindered that success. He says, If he had regarded iniquity in his heart, God would not have heard him; therefore he implies, that his integrity, in not regarding it, was the reason that God did hear him. And thus I have given you the resolution and model of the whole Psalm, and therein the occasion of these words that I have read unto you, together with the connection they have with the foregoing and following verses.

The words may be considered two ways: 1st, As they have a peculiar reference to David and his particular condition; and so they are a vehement asseveration of his integrity. We read the words thus; If I regard iniquity in my heart, God will not hear me. But the Septuagint has it, μὴ εἰσακουσάτω μου Θεός; that is, let not God hear me. And so they are David’s avouchment of his uprightness, by an imprecation, or calling for a curse upon himself, namely, God’s not hearing his prayers, in case he was not really so upright, as in words he did protest himself to be. Thus Job also testifies his integrity in Job xxxi. 7, 8, If my steps have turned out of the way, and mine heart walked after mine eyes, and any blot have cleaved to my hands; then let me sow, and let another eat. All this is an earnest protestation of Job’s steadfast walking before God. And thus the words hold forth a testimony of David’s uprightness; and, compared with the following verses, are not only a testimony, but a clear proof of it; and that in a perfect hypothetical syllogism. If I regard iniquity in my heart, God will not hear me: then it follows in the next verse, But verily, God hath heard me: and adding the conclusion, therefore I do not regard iniquity in my heart. It amounts to a full argumentation, proving the sincerity of David’s heart. Here we may note, as David does evince his integrity from the success of his prayers, as a sign and consequent of that integrity; so the hypocrite, or sinner, may invert the argument, and collect the future unsuccessfulness of all his prayers from his want of integrity; and that not only as a sign, but as the proper cause of that unsuccessfulness; in this manner, If I regard iniquity in my heart, God will not hear me: now the hypocrite must assume, But I regard iniquity in my heart: therefore he must also conclude, God will not hear me; he will have no respect unto my prayers. And thus much concerning the first consideration of the words.

2dly, The words may he considered absolutely in themselves, and so applicable to all men. In this sense they are a positive direction laid down in negative terms, and prescribing the way of our sincere worship of God. For interpreters do generally agree, that although David in these words intends to attest his own integrity, yet he does also no less intend to give men a rule for the regulation of their holy worship. For, by telling us that God does not respect the prayers of those that regard iniquity in their hearts, he does intimate, that the acceptation of all our holy services before God is grounded upon the inward, hearty sincerity of our souls; and therefore it ought to be our duty, both in point of reverence to God, and wisdom for our own interest, never to engage in any holy performance, without this sincerity, but especially in prayer, wherein men have the nearest address to God; and consequently, upon their sincerity, may here chiefly expect a blessing; and, upon the want of it, fear a judgment. I shall consider the words in this latter general sense; and so deduce from them an observation, not much distinct from the words themselves: for only by resolving them, as they lie in supposition, into a positive assertion, they afford us this doctrine:

Whosoever regards iniquity in his heart, the Lord will not hear him.

Or yet more plainly;

A man’s regarding or loving any sin in his heart, will certainly hinder his prayers from having any acceptance with God.

In the prosecution of this doctrine, I shall shew,

I. What it is for a man to regard or love sin in his heart.

II. What it is to have our prayers accepted with God.

III. How regarding or loving sin in the heart, hinders a man’s prayers from being thus accepted.

IV. Application.

I. Concerning the first: a man may be said several ways to love or regard sin in his heart.

1st, There is a constant and habitual love of sin in the unregeneracy and corrupt estate of the soul. For a man, as considered in his pure, or rather his impure naturals, has not only a strong, but an universal love to sin. Sin was born, and lay in the same womb with every man; therefore he must needs love it as his brother. Now, as union is generally stated the effect of love, therefore, since the union between sin and our nature is so close, we may thence also collect, that the love is very great. In this sense sin and the corruption thereof is styled the flesh; not only by a metonymy of the subject for the adjunct, because sin has its place and residence in the flesh; but also for the tender love and affection that we bear to it: for, as the apostle says, in Ephes. v. 29, No man hateth his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it; and withal, because we continually carry it about us. A man may as well go abroad, and leave his body and his flesh behind him, as an unregenerate man go any whither not attended by his sin. It is called sometimes the body of sin, and that deservedly, because it is so nearly united to the soul. The scripture has several expressions, shewing the cursed habitual love that a natural man bears to his sin. Sometimes it is called his right eye, Matth. xviii. 9, than which nothing is more dear, God himself sometimes expresses the greatness of his love to his children in the same terms: he regards them as the apple of his eye. To have one’s eye continually upon any thing, argues a great love of it; but to account it as the eye itself, shews a love more than ordinary. Elsewhere, sin is called our right hand, Mark ix. 43, the member of use and execution; and therefore most carefully tendered by man, whose nature it is to be in continual action. How dear it is, the common expression demonstrates; we say of an extra ordinary and beloved friend, he is our right hand. It is also placed and lodged in the heart, Jerem. xvii. 9 which in every sinner, as it is the original of natural life, so it is the principle and fountain of spiritual death. Sin, it is the primum vivens, and the ultimum moriens; life the heart itself, which harbours it in every finally impenitent sinner: so exceedingly beloved, that many unregenerate men vouchsafe even to live and die with their sins; which is the highest pitch of love imaginable. Again, in Job xv. 16, the wicked is said to drink iniquity like water. No appetite so strong as that of thirst. Hence, as it is the peculiar distinguishing property of the godly to thirst after righteousness, Matt. v. 6, so it is of the wicked to thirst after iniquity; who quenches his present desire of sin with the actual commission of it; as a man does his thirst, that is, both with vehemence and delight. It is proper only to the drunkard to make his drink his sin; but it is the nature of every carnal man (if you will admit of the expression) to account his sin as desirable as his drink. But that we may yet further see how a natural man loves, tenders, and regards his sin; there is nothing dear and lovely to us, but the Spirit of God expresses sin by that. What more to be prized than our eyes or hands? What can or ought to be more dear to us than our heart? more desired than our food, or more amiable than life? Yet sin, we see, engrosses all the affections that ought to be distributed amongst all these. This love is yet more evident from the service a carnal man does for his sin, who bears rule over him, from his own voluntary subjection. It is the nature of love, where it is excessive, to enslave a man to the commands of the party whom he loves: as Jacob did for Rachel, so a wicked man for his sin; he will serve many years for it, and they shall seem but a few days, because of the love he bears to it. What God and nature has bestowed on man, that, man has made a full and total resignation of to sin, to be commanded, used, and employed by it: the understanding is busied to contrive iniquity; the senses to purvey and bring in provender for it, in the representation of sinful objects; the will to command and govern in the name of sin; the outward powers and members to execute those commands: so that the whole frame and structure of man is principled, and, as it were, even animated by sin: for first, it has general rule and possession of all the faculties; and, secondly, of all the actions that flow from those faculties. And then, for the perpetuity and constant course of those actions, Gen. vi. 5, they are sinful continually, and without any intermission. In short, he that regards iniquity in his heart, in this habitual way, he so regards it as he neither does or can regard any thing else. For the force and activity of man’s mind is a limited force; and as it is with our attention, so it is also with our love, it cannot be vehement and intense at the same time upon two different objects. Now, from what has been said, it follows, that in this manner a regenerate person cannot love or regard sin; and all unregenerate do.

2dly, There is a regarding of sin in the heart, that consists in an unmortified habit or course of sin: this is much different from the former, because even a child of God may thus regard sin, from the relics of corrupt nature, fired and stirred up by Satan’s temptations; for the model of a regenerate state is, like that of the body, mixed and compounded of contrary principles, grace and corruption, as that is of contrary elements. And as the elements, in the composure of the body, have their qualities allayed and retracted; so these habits of grace and corruption, as they are in a regenerate soul, are not in their utmost degree and extremity. For if grace were in its full height and latitude, there could be no corruption; which is a bliss rather to be wished for, than ever enjoyed in this life. And, on the other hand, if corruption were in its full extent or degree, there could be no grace, and so no regeneration. For it is the nature of contraries, that one arising to its highest pitch, does, by consequence, expel and devour the other. Wherefore grace and corruption are joined and contempered in a believing soul, from which conjunction arises a possibility of the entertainment of sinful habits and dispositions, even in the regenerate, though not such as are found in the unregenerate: in the one, they defile indeed and pollute; in the other, they prevail and domineer: in the one, they separate from the sense of God’s love; in the other, they take away all interest in it. Now, that there may be such sinful dispositions or habits in believers may be evinced,

1st, From example. When David had committed that gross sin of murder and adultery, if we compute the time from his sin to his repentance, which was dated from Nathan’s coming to him, we shall find that he continued in it for the space of a year. Now we must know, every intense and vehement action leaves a suitable disposition behind it upon the faculty, which, if seconded by actions of the same kind, or not weakened and destroyed by actions of a contrary nature, it daily gathers strength, and gets root and fixation in the mind, till it at length becomes a sinful habit, very difficultly to be removed. So that David, after the commission of so great a sin, must needs have had a further inclination to it left upon his spirit, which, by reason also of the compliance it found with his natural corruption, daily grew more and more fixed; for, although he did not reiterate it by other external actions, yet by his internal desires and approbations he did increase and confirm it; for it cannot be imagined but that he entertained those approbations of it as long as he deferred his repentance. Hereupon he found the work of repentance so hard, and his sin so hardly moveable, when he set about the penitent removal of it; so that he cries, Psalm xxxviii. 5, My wounds stink and are corrupt by reason of my foolishness. A wound immediately cured, soon after it was given, cannot stink or grow noisome. It is clear then, that David was not only guilty of sin, but also of continuance in sin; who, notwithstanding he was a son of God, and truly regenerate, yet had his heart overrun with a sinful habit and disposition.

2dly, It may be proved from scripture-reason, which is grounded upon those exhortations that are there made even to believers for the mortification of sin; as peculiarly, that, Rom. viii. 13, the apostle exhorts even those to mortify the deeds of the flesh, who were truly ingrafted into Christ; for they were such as, he said, in the first verse, were justified; such, to whom there was no condemnation: also he bids them mortify sin by the Spirit; but the Spirit is to be found in none but the regenerate. Now to mortify sin, is not properly to forbear one or many sinful actions, but it is the weakening or destroying a course or habit of sin. Comparing therefore the nature of the duty with the qualification of the persons to whom it was enjoined, the apostle must seem to insinuate a possibility that even believers may be entangled and overtook in a sinful course.

This therefore is the second kind of regarding sin in the heart; and the soul may thus love or regard sin two ways:

1st, Directly, and by a positive pursuance of it; as the following of one action by another; the backing of one sinful deed by a greater; when sin reigns by a cursed kind of succession; when one wicked action expires, another presently succeeds.

2dly, Indirectly, and by not attempting a vigorous mortification of it. In the former sense, we cherish sin by giving it food; in this second, by not taking that which it has away. Not to resist sin, and that by an indefatigable watching, striving, and praying against it, is to love it. He that does not attempt the utter ruin and death of it, does not hate it: for hatred, no less than love, is an active, restless quality, and cannot quiet itself, but in the destruction of the thing it hates. Can there be hatred, where there is agreement? Can we banish sin from our hearts, and yet hold it in our bosoms? He that is not against his sin, in a lively resistance, is for it in his affections. He that does not oppose the tempter, invites him. He that hinders not the occasion of his sin, tacitly wishes the event. Qui non prohibet cum debet, imperat. What mortification of sin is, in the nature, causes, and means of it, is not my present business to discourse; but let it suffice to note thus much, that it is a steady, thorough course of repentance and severe humiliation: and he that does not, by a continual rigid exercise of these duties, by hacking at the root of sin, bears a secret longing to the fruit.

And thus much of this second kind of love to sin; which consists in the cherishing an unmortified lust.

3dly, There is yet another kind of regarding sin in the heart, and that is, by an actual intention of the mind upon sin; If I regard iniquity: the Latin renders it, Si aspexissem iniquitatem; If I did behold, if I cast a gracious aspect upon sin. True it is, that the most sincere, if they look upon their heart, must also look upon sin; but then they view it another way: the wicked look upon it with an eye of complacency and delight; the sincere, with an eye of hatred and detestation. The same sin, in a wicked and a godly eye, has a contrary hue; as the same colour, through different glasses, is conveyed under a different representation. Now, to look upon, signifies to be intent upon; the actions of the eye, by an easy metaphor, signifying the intention of the mind. Interpreters, in their expositions upon this place, unanimously run this way; Si aspexissem iniquitatem; that is, si prava intentione illum deprecatus fuissem, says one; Aspicere iniquitatem est peccato intentum esse et addictum, says another; or, as Mollerus has it, Cum proposito perseverandi in delicto contra conscientiam; to regard iniquity in our heart, is to address ourselves to God in prayer, with a purpose or intention of persevering in some sin, condemned and disallowed by our own conscience. And it is added, in the heart, to shew how little the outward duty avails, without inward uprightness. We may have clean hands, and yet a foul heart; that is, be free from the external commission of sin, yet defiled with the desires of it. We may regard it in our minds and intentions, while we declare against it in our professions; wherefore these ought chiefly to be rectified. Having thus shewn that there are three several ways of loving or regarding sin, I conceive the words are to be understood principally in this last sense, though not exclusively to the former; for it implies and takes them in, a fortiore. For if the actual intention of sin will hinder our prayers from being accepted, then much more a sinful disposition, or wicked course, as long as cherished and continued in: and if a sinful disposition disannul our prayers, then much more a state of unregeneracy. We may look upon these three under this difference. The purpose or intention of sin differs from a sinful disposition in respect of the duration and continuance of it. It is confessed, a sinful intention may be improved into a sinful course; but, considered as such, it implies no more than a bare intention; and, if cast off by an immediate repentance, it will be no more. Next, a sinful disposition differs from a state of unregeneracy, inasmuch as the precise nature of it neither implies prevalence, nor a graceless condition of the party in whom it is, both of which are absolutely implied in the other.

I have now done with the first general head, viz. to shew what it is to regard iniquity in the heart. I proceed to the

Second, which is to shew, what it is to have our prayers accepted with God: and this is to prevail with God for the obtaining the good thing we desire, by virtue of an interest in Jesus Christ, and in the covenant of grace: this is clear, from that general received truth, that the acceptance of our prayers is founded upon the acceptation of our persons: and this, we know, is from an interest in Christ: here upon Christ teaches his disciples the way of making their prayers successful, John xvi. 24, Whatsoever ye ask the Father in my name, he will give it you; that is, what you ask, upon the score of that title and interest that you have in my merits. If it here be excepted, that although he indeed prescribes asking in his name, as a means of having our prayers granted, yet he does not exclude other means. I answer; that by commanding us so frequently to ask in his name, he does imply, that there is no other way of asking aright, so as to speed in the things we request; for if there was some other way, this exhortation were of little or no force. Hence, in Rev. viii. 3, we read of incense that was mingled and offered with the prayers of the saints; by which incense is meant the sweet savour of the meritorious sufferings of Christ, which alone was able to give virtue and value to those prayers which of themselves had none. And thus, by shewing what it is to have our prayers accepted, by the same is also manifest, who they are who have their prayers thus accepted; namely, those alone who have a portion in him; who cannot only ask of his Father, but also demand an answer for them; who can take what comes from our polluted lips, and perfume it with the incense of his own merits. I shall further assert and prove this truth, by removing some objections, which will naturally arise from what has been already said.

Objection. If the acceptance of our prayers bears upon the foundation of our interest in Christ, whence then is it that God hears the prayers of the wicked, who. are void of all such interest? as particularly appeal’s in Ahab, a sinner of the first magnitude, no where mentioned in scripture but with some distinguishing mark of impiety; yet, upon the intervention of his prayer and humiliation, God repeals a judgment denounced against him, and, from his own days, translates it to his son. I answer; that God, indeed, often seconds the prayers of the wicked with a blessing; but he does not give the blessing with any respect to their prayers, as the procuring cause of that blessing. But it may be replied; that neither are the prayers of the righteous any way a meritorious and procuring cause of any good thing from God; since the most exact of our endeavours are tainted with imperfection; so that, after all, we have cause to sit down as unprofitable servants. I answer; that the prayers of the righteous are not the procuring cause of any blessing, by virtue of any inherent merit in them; but by virtue of the free covenant and promise of God, who has engaged, upon the fervent and unfeigned prayers of the faithful, to grant their requests. But if it be further urged, that God says, Because Ahab humbled himself, I will not bring the evil threatened in his days, 1 Kings xxi. 29, therefore it seems that Ahab’s prayer had a causal influence as to the procurement of that merciful reprieve: to this I answer, that such expressions as signify causality are often applied to those things that are only occasions of such events. And so it is here: Ahab’s humiliation was no ways a procuring cause of that mercy; neither by any meritorious virtue residing in it, for the prayers of the wicked merit nothing but a denial; nor yet by any virtue that it has from any covenant made by God, who is so far from making any promise of hearing the prayers of the wicked, that he has expressly promised that he will not hear them. It was therefore only an occasion of this mercy; that is, the mercy so depended upon it, as if that humiliation had not been, he had never enjoyed the mercy; however, it was no cause of the mercy, neither deserving nor procuring. As for instance: if a rich man engage to relieve some beggars, upon their coming to his door and asking; although this their beggarly address has no value in it to merit a reward, yet, by virtue of the rich man’s promise and engagement, they may challenge it: now if he give the like alms to other beggars, to whom he had made no such promises, only upon their importunity; this their importunity does here neither deserve, nor can challenge an alms; yet it may be said properly to occasion it, inasmuch as, if it had not been for this, they had gone without it. And thus, I think, it is clear, that God may bestow upon the wicked the matter they pray for, and yet not hear their prayers; that he may grant them, and yet never accept them. And let me add another thing, that discriminates the prayers of the wicked from those of the faithful; that although God often gives them the thing they desired, yet he never gives it with an intent of mercy. Thus he gave the Israelites quails, but withal sent leanness into their bones. He so gives the thing, as he still withholds the blessing. When we are importuned by any one for something against our will, we at length cast it to him with anger: so I may say, God, being wearied with the restless, importunate cravings of a sinner, does not so much give, as rather angrily throw an outward blessing at him, whose very prayer is a sin; for what is it but a kind of extortion towards God himself? What we usually say amongst ourselves in ceremony, that is here verified in respect of God; that in all his bounty, not so much the substance of the gift, as the mind of the giver, is to be valued and regarded: yea, as God may, and often does deny some of the prayers of the righteous, out of love and mercy; so, out of anger and judgment, he grants the prayers of the wicked; whose very petitions are oftentimes their severest indictment; and their most devout requests may be interpreted into an imprecation.

It may be objected, if those that are in a state of sin regard iniquity in their heart, how then is it possible to get out of that estate? for how can they do it but by addressing themselves to God? and how can they address themselves unto God but by prayer? and we have already shewn, that the condition they are in renders their prayers ineffectual.

To this I answer; that in their first serious resolution and purpose to turn to God, they pass from the state of sinners into the state of the penitent, and are such in God’s account; and so, consequently, there is a change of their condition. For although it cannot be said, that they have repented, yet they are then repenting; though, like the prodigal, they are not come home to their heavenly Father, yet they are upon their journey. We must know repentance has several acceptions: it may be either taken for the change and alteration of the corrupt qualities of our nature, and so it is the same with sanctification, and follows faith, as the effect does its cause; and in this sense a wicked man, in his present estate, is not immediately capable of repentance. Secondly, repentance may be taken for a sincere alteration of a man’s sinful purposes and intentions; and so it precedes faith; and a wicked man ought and may repent; it is a duty immediately incumbent upon him in order to his salvation. Although, when I say a wicked man may repent, and thereupon his prayers be acceptable to God; we must distinguish between the instant immediately going before his repentance, in respect of which only he is to le termed wicked; and the instant of his repentance, in respect of which he is be come another man. In the same sense, therefore, that the wicked may be said to repent, they may be said to have their prayers and services accepted; that is, the wicked antecedently so taken, (and, as they speak, in sensu diviso,) to wit, before the instant of their repentance, not concomitantly, and in sensu composito; the wicked as such, and while he is such, can neither repent nor pray, nor have any audience or acceptance at the throne of grace.

And thus much concerning the second general head, viz. to shew what it is to have our prayers accepted with God. I proceed now to the

Third thing, to shew whence it is that a man’s regarding or loving sin in his heart hinders his prayers from acceptance with God.

1st, The first reason is, because in this case he cannot pray by the Spirit. All prayers that are acceptable with God are the breathings of his own Spirit within us. Rom. viii. 26, We know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with sighs and groans that cannot be uttered. As without the intercession of Christ we cannot have our prayers accepted, so without the intercession of the Spirit we cannot pray. No prayers can find the way to heaven, but such as first come from thence. Every sincere prayer, it is a beam of the sun of righteousness darted into our hearts, and from thence reflecting back again. But now, as long as sin and the love of it has dominion in the soul, the Spirit of God is silent; for as prevailing corruption and the Spirit cannot cohabit together, so neither can they work together. The motions of sin and of the Spirit often struggle in the same heart, as Pharez and Zarah did in the same womb, in Gen. xxxviii. 29; the motions of the Spirit put forth their hand, but those of sin prevailing, they drew it back again, and sin comes out first. Wherefore, if any one bears a love and liking to sin, let him never expect to have his prayer accepted, till sin and the Spirit concur in the same petition.

2dly, The second reason is, because as long as a man regards iniquity in his heart, he cannot pray in faith; that is, he cannot build a rational confidence upon any promise that God will accept him. Now faith always respects the promise, and promise of acceptance is made only to the upright: so long, therefore, as men cherish a love of sin in their heart, they either understand not the promises, and so they pray without understanding; or they understand them, and yet misapply them to themselves, and so they pray in presumption: in either case they have little cause to hope for acceptance. This reason naturally issues from the former; for whosoever prays not in the Spirit prays not in faith; and every prayer made in faith is also indited by the Spirit; only with this distinction, that in every such prayer the Spirit is the principal agent, and faith the instrumental. Here we may observe, that faith may be either taken for the habit and seed of faith, or for the act and exercise of that habit. Now the unregenerate man has not so much as the habit or principle of faith, and so upon no hand can have his prayers accepted; and he that is truly regenerate, and endued with this principle, yet while he is entangled with the love of sin, cannot act nor exercise that principle, and so neither can his prayers be acceptable. Faith causes the soul fiducially and strongly to rely and cast itself upon God in prayer: love to sin causes the soul to depart and fly off from God. Faith clears up the evidence of our title to the promises; love to sin (although we have a title to the promises by conversion) yet it slurs and takes away the evidence; and when this is gone, we cannot pray with any life and vigour. But to manifest further the nature of a wicked man’s prayer not acted by faith, see Rom. xiv. 1 23, Whatsoever is not of faith is sin. No wonder, therefore, if that which is a sin, and so consequently deserves a curse, cannot prevail for the obtaining a blessing.

Objection. But it may be objected, if, during the time of our regard and love to integrity, our prayers (as not proceeding from faith) are sins, then it is our duty not to pray, since it is the duty of all men to forbear sin.

I answer; that this consequence is very unreasonable, inasmuch as omission of prayer is of its own nature a sin, and that a greater. And for that maxim, that it is the duty of all to forbear sin, it is to be understood of those actions, that in their own kind and nature are sins, not of those that are such by accident, and the defect of some circumstance; in which case the defect is to be amended, and not the action to be omitted. Now prayer of itself and in its nature is good, and becomes sinful only from some adherent corruption which derives a tincture and defilement upon it; wherefore it ought to be our business to endeavour the removal of this corruption, which weakens, pollutes, and defiles our prayers, and not to cease from prayer itself. And thus much for the second reason.

3dly, The third reason is, because while we regard iniquity in our hearts we cannot pray with fervency; which, next to sincerity, is the great qualification of prayer, to which God has annexed a promise of acceptance, Matth. xi. 12, The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent alone take it by force. Matth. vii. 7, Those only that seek are like to find and those that knock, to have admittance; all which expressions denote vehemence and importunity. Now the cause of vehemence in our prosecution of any good, is our love of it; for proportionable to the affection we bear to any thing is the earnestness of our desires, and the diligence of our pursuit after it. So long therefore as the love of sin possesses our hearts, our love to spiritual things is dull, heavy, inactive, and our prayers for them must needs be answerable. O the wretched fallacy that the soul will here put upon itself! At the same time, it will love its sin, and pray against it; at the same time, it will entreat for grace, with a desire not to prevail: as a father confesses of himself, that before his conversion he would pray for chastity, with a secret reserve in his wishes, that God would not grant his prayer. Such are the mysterious, intricate treacheries, by which the love of sin will make a soul deceive and circumvent itself. How languidly and faintly will it pray for spiritual mercies, conscience in the mean while giving the lie to every such petition! The soul, in this case, cannot pray against sin in earnest; it fights against it, but neither with hope nor intent to conquer; as lovers, usually, in a game one against another, with a desire to lose. So then, while we regard iniquity, how is it possible for us to regard spiritual things, the only lawful object of our prayers? and if we regard them not, how can we he urgent with God for the giving of them? and where there is no fervency on our part, no wonder if there is no answer on God’s.

And thus much concerning the reasons, why love to sin hinders the acceptance of our prayers: they would both admit and deserve a larger handling; but I pass to the application: which shall be only an use of exhortation to all, that in their prayers they would endeavour to come with hearts free from hypocrisy and the love of sin; and, from what has been said, make that conclusion that Paul did in 2 Tim. ii. 19, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ (especially in prayer) depart from iniquity. The prayer will still savour of that which lies in the heart; as the putrefaction of the inward parts give a noisomeness to the breath. God, that would not let David, because he had made great wars, and shed much blood, build him a temple, if thou earnest blood and revenge in thy heart, will not let thee worship in his temple. It was an excellent speech that Homer puts into the mouth of Hector, in the sixth Iliad; and, spoken by a Christian to the true God, from a principle of faith, might savour of good divinity. When he comes from the fight, and being entreated by his mother to sacrifice to the gods; “No,” says he;

SERMON XL.

1 JOHN iii. 20.

God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.

GOD, the creator of all things, an object fitter for our adoration, than our curious, but yet weak inquiries, is infinite in his being, and so consequently not to be comprehended by our finite understandings: yet, since he is pleased to command us to worship him, which we cannot rationally do, unless in some measure we know him; he is therefore also pleased to aid our weak conceptions, by several expressions of himself, which we call attributes; as, that he is just, wise, merciful, and the like: all which, according to the common notions that men have of justice, wisdom, and mercy, are not strictly and properly to be found in God; so that, indeed, these words, as by us applied to him, rather testify our reverential desires of honouring him, than at all express his nature. For our words expressing only those ideas and images of things in the mind, all which were conveyed thither through the senses, it is impossible they should properly express the nature of God, which was never comprehended by the short reach of our senses; and therefore they could not report any representation of him to the mind, which might afterwards be expressed in words. And thus, by natural ratiocination, I gather, that these words, just, righteous, and merciful, do not indeed exactly signify the nature and being of God. It is the prerogative of his essence not only to surpass the ken of sense, but also to nonplus the most accurate and sagacious discourses of reason. He laughs at the bold and laborious attempts of our understandings, in comprehending him: and, by his excessive brightness, wards off the eyes of the beholder, and (as we may say, by a seeming contradiction, but a real truth) is like the sun, too visible to be seen. And shall we then, poor mortals, think ourselves able to express what we are not so much as able to conceive? And, if our thoughts take in a larger compass and latitude than our expressions, (for who is it that cannot think more than he speaks?) then, certainly, if we cannot reach his essence by our most elevated thoughts, much less can we do it by our words. But the same is further demonstrable from the difference of righteousness, mercy, and power, properly so called, from any thing that is in God. For these are all qualities inherent in the soul of man, by virtue whereof he is enabled to act. For the soul being unable of itself, and by its bare substance, to advance into action, there are requisite therefore these certain qualities, by the instrumental mediation of which, it may exert its several operations. So that the soul, without its respective faculties and qualities to act by, is like an artificer without his tools: but now it is far otherwise with Almighty God in his workings, whose actions immediately stream from his essence, without the auxiliary intervention of any being distinct from himself. Where upon it must be granted, that these things, justice, mercy, &c. exist not of themselves, but as they are shouldered and propped up by the subject in which they are; and therefore are imperfect beings, and so not properly to be found in God, whose very nature it is to be perfect. And furthermore, as they are always distinct from the essence in which they are, we thence also collect that they are not in God, who is an indivisible, absolute, and uncompounded being, in whom there is nothing to be found but what is really himself. But it may be said, if these things are so, that righteousness, justice, and mercy are not really and properly in God; whence is it that the scripture so often attributes these things to him? I answer, in this, as in many other things, it speaks according to the manner of men. In the same sense it attributes hands, eyes, and cars to God, not really, but metaphorically; that by the things we sec, we may, in some measure, apprehend him that is in visible. In short, therefore, righteousness, justice, and mercy, are attributed, not according to the reality of the things themselves, but by the analogy of their effects. The meaning is this: God is called merciful, because some of his actions bear a proportion to those that men exercise from a principle of mercy; and powerful, because some of his actions have a similitude to those that men exercise from a principle of power: and so of the rest. Some say the like of his decrees; who affirm, that God can no more properly be said to decree a thing, than to foreknow it, to whom all things are present. Now, according to the sense of these men, God is said to decree, because some of his actions have a likeness to such actions, as men produce under a decree or resolution. But I forbear, since I am afraid that I have gone too far in these notions already. But being, in my subsequent discourse, to insist upon one of the attributes of God, I thought it convenient to premise something of them in general.

We find mention of them all in scripture, and peculiarly the words which I have at present read to you, clearly hold forth his omniscience, or infinite knowledge. The words are plain, and need no explication; therefore I shall forthwith draw this doctrine from them, not much different from the words themselves, viz.

That God is an all-knowing God.

This may seem a principle, and therefore not to be doubted, and consequently needless to be proved. But he that has looked into controversy, and especially those two which are now the most considerable, the Arminian and Socinian, will find that their grand fallacy, their πρῶτον ψεῦδος, is founded upon their erroneous stinting of God’s knowledge: but the first of these especially, who affirm, that God’s knowledge, in respect of contingent futures, is only conditional, that is, God does not absolutely fore know that such things will come to pass; but upon supposal that such and such causes meet with such and such circumstances, then he knows such things will follow. But now, if God does not absolutely and certainly know every contingent future, it follows, that he does not absolutely will and decree it; for whatsoever he wills, he also knows; and if God does not will the future existence of it, whence comes it to exist? Certainly not from God, but from itself; for if God hereafter vouchsafes a productive influence to the actual producing of a thing contingent, which we now suppose future, (which God must do, or cease to be the first cause of all things;) I say, if God vouchsafes his power to give it existence, it follows, that he wills the production and existence of it at that time; for God wills a thing before he does it: and it also follows, that if he wills it at that time, he always willed and decreed it before: for to affirm that God wills the existence of a thing contingent, then in the producing of it, which before, while it was yet future, he did not will or decree; this is to make a new act of willing, which is an immanent act, and therefore not distinct from God, to begin in time; that is, to make something that is the same with God, to be in God now, which was not in him before: which is hugely absurd, if not blasphemous. Thus we see the denial of God’s absolute, certain foreknowledge of all things, makes the existence of many of them entirely independent upon God, and totally from themselves; which is indeed to make him an idle epicurean God, and to deify them. And herein lies the abomination of asserting God’s knowledge in respect of any thing conditional. As for the next opinion, Socinus endeavouring to assert the freedom of man’s will in the highest, and observing that God’s absolute, certain foreknowledge did lay an antecedent necessity upon all men’s actions as to their event, he makes short and thorough work, and utterly denies his prescience. Animadvertendnm est infallibilem istam Dei praenotionem, quam pro re concessa adversarii sumunt, a nobis non admitti, Socin. Praelect. cap. viii. And that he might not seem to blaspheme without some reason, he says, as God, though he is omnipotent, cannot yet do those things that imply a contradiction; so, though he is omniscient, he cannot know things, the knowledge of which implies the same absurdity; which, he says, will follow in asserting that God has a certain infallible knowledge of those things, which in themselves are uncertain and contingent. And thus we see, that although God’s omniscience be indeed a principle, and therefore ought to be granted; yet since it is thus controverted and denied, it is no less needful to be proved. In the prosecution of this, I shall

I. Prove the proposition, and that both by scripture and reason.

II. I shall shew the excellency of this knowledge of God, beyond the knowledge of men or angels.

III. From the consideration of that excellency, I shall deduce something by way of inference and application.

I. And first for the proof of it, and that from scripture. In John xxi. 17, Peter says to Christ, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee. Divines do here generally acknowledge, that in these words Peter makes a confession of the deity of Christ, which could not be inferred, unless there was a necessary connection between the divine nature and the power of knowing all things; for in this consists the strength of Peter’s argument, proving Christ to be God; in this he ascribes a property to him that agrees only to God: as Christ elsewhere proves himself to be really a man, by assuming those properties to himself which are inseparably inherent in man’s nature. Another scripture proving the same truth is that of Heb. iv. 13, All things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do; that is, (by a metaphor,) to his understanding, which, by reason of the quickness and spirituality of this sense, is often expressed by an eye, and knowing by seeing: so that the words import thus much, that God most clearly discerns and knows all things and actions, as the eye manifestly beholds those objects that are fully presented to its view. There are many other places in scripture that richly hold forth God’s omniscience, but in a point so evident, these two may suffice.

Our second proof is from reason; and here our first argument shall be drawn from his works of creation and providence. It is impossible that he that made all things should not also know all things. Who is it that cannot readily acknowledge and read his own hand? What artificer is there that does not presently know and distinguish his own work? In all rational agents, before every action there is presupposed a knowledge of the thing that is to be produced by that action. So that if we grant (as I suppose none denies) that God is the maker of all things, that every creature dropped into the world through his hands, we cannot be so absurd as to deny him a distinct knowledge of those things, which with his own finger he made and fashioned. Next, his providence sufficiently declares his omniscience: if he manages, rules, and governs all things, yea sin itself, sometimes by permitting, sometimes by limiting or preventing, other times by punishing it, it clearly follows, that he has full cognizance of those things, since all these acts presuppose knowledge.

Now, from the consideration of this attribute, since it is our duty to be like our heavenly Father, let us endeavour also to resemble him in knowledge. As it is the perfection of God to know all things, so it is the excellency of man to know any thing aright. Ignorance, it is the dishonour of our nature; and he that continues in it, what does he but erect a certain kingdom of darkness in his soul? But of all knowledge, that is the most excellent, upon which depends our eternal interest; I mean, our knowledge of God in Christ: in comparison of which, God gives a very slight character of all things be sides. What more desirable in the eyes of the world than riches? What more excellent than strength, more to be admired than wisdom? Yet what says God of all these, Jer. ix. 23, 24, Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord, that exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth. So that this is a knowledge that does not only surpass strength and riches, before which the very heathens could prefer their poor knowledge of nature; but it is such a knowledge, in comparison of which the very wisdom of men is folly. Consider also, that this is the sure way to everlasting life; so sure, that in scripture it is called everlasting life itself, in John xvii. 3, And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. Observe likewise, as this knowledge is called eternal life, so, on the contrary, the Spirit of God calls ignorance eternal death; John iii. 19, And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light. Now if there can be any greater argument to a rational soul, to pursue after this knowledge, than the obtaining eternal life, let that soul neglect it; and, on the other hand, if there can be any stronger motive to woe a man out of his ignorance, than avoiding damnation, let him hug his ignorance as a desirable thing: let him embrace a cloud, and refresh himself under the shadow of death. But consider this, you that are ignorant of God, ignorant in the midst of teaching ordinances. O how dreadful is it, to enjoy precious means of knowledge, and only to be proficient in ignorance! As long as thou art destitute of this spiritual light and knowledge, thou art to the Devil as Samson to the Philistines without his eyes, thou must go whither he will lead thee, grind in his mill, and undergo all the slavish drudgery of sin, that a malicious Devil, that hates thy soul, can put thee to. But, on the other side, knowledge, as it makes thee in a true sense a man, so this saving knowledge of God makes thee more than a man, that is, a Christian. And remember, as the preposterous desire of knowledge was the first cause of man’s unhappy fall, so the pursuit of this spiritual knowledge must le the first occasion of his recovery.

Thus far the arguments by which we prove God’s omniscience: pass we now to the second thing, which is to shew the excellency of God’s knowledge, above the knowledge either of men or angels.

And this appears, 1st, From the properties of this knowledge. 2dly, From the object.

1st, Concerning its properties. The first property holding forth the excellency of this knowledge, is the exceeding evidence, and consequently the certainty of it; for though a thing may be certain, and yet not evident, yet whatsoever is evident, that also is certain. Evidence brings a property emanent from the essence and being of knowledge; it follows, that that which includes the nature of knowledge in an infinite manner, must be also attended by a most infinitely clear evidence. He that causes that innate evidence in every object, by which it moves and strikes the faculty, shall not he see? He that gives light to the eye, by which that evidence is discerned, shall not he discern? The great intellectus agens, that by shining upon our understandings causes us to understand, shall not he himself understand much more clearly? John i. 9, it is said of Christ, in respect of his deity, that he is the true Light, that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. It is elsewhere said of God, that he is the Father of lights. Indeed, the knowledge of man, upon the greatest improvements, retains a great mixture of ignorance; and all his labour, all the travail of his soul in the pursuit of science, is not able thoroughly to work out that darkness of mind which he brought with him into the world: but now God is not only light, but such a light as with him there is no darkness at all. And thus it is clear, that the best of human knowledge is not able to contest with the divine. But yet may not the angels, those sons of light and knowledge, those near resemblances of their Creator, may not they at least vie with the divine knowledge? Why, no. For even the angels stoop down and pry into the mysteries of God, and particularly that of the incarnation, as it is in 1 Pet. i. 12. Therefore they do not fully and evidentially know them, for these are the postures, not of those that know already, but of those that endeavour to know. But now God must needs know this great mystery, for he contrived it. In Job iv. 18, he is said to charge his angels with folly. Certainly then he must have a transcendently perfect wisdom, tar excelling theirs. From hence, therefore, we see, that the knowledge of God, even as to its clearness and pregnant evidence, is unconceivably beyond the knowledge of men or angels.

2dly, Another property of this knowledge, shewing the excellence of it, is this, that it is a knowledge independent upon the existence of the object or thing known. Man indeed receives nothing into his understanding but through his senses; and sense has nothing but what it fetches from the object. Take away sounds, and there will he no hearing; deprive us of light, and there will be no seeing. But now God beholds all things in himself; and that both eminently, as he sees his own perfection, which eminently includes all the perfection that is scattered among the creatures, as the light of all the stars is contained eminently in the sun; and he beholds them also formally, distinctly, and according to the model of their own proper beings, without looking upon the existence of the things themselves, and that two ways.

1st, By reflecting upon his power, and what he can do; he has a perfect knowledge of all possibilities, and of things that may be produced.

2dly, By reflecting upon his power and his will; he knows whatsoever shall be actually produced. For upon the concurrence of God’s will with his power there is nothing else requisite, but the thing does immediately result. This is the constitutive knowledge which gives being to the thing known; in which sense it may be truly said, that God does not therefore know things because they are or may be, but they therefore are or may be because he knows them. So that this our maxim, Non entis nulla est scientia, is true only of finite knowledge. For God’s knowledge is antecedent to the object, quite different from ours, which is borrowed from it, and so subsequent to it. As the knowledge that a builder has of an house depends not upon the actual being of it; but he knows it, partly by reflecting on his skill, in which he sees a perfect idea of it before ever it is made; and partly on his power, by which he is able to make it: but now others knowledge depends upon the actual being of the house, as flowing from those representations they have of it after it is built. And such is our knowledge in respect of God’s.

2dly, The excellency of God’s knowledge appears in respect of his objects; which are all things knowable.

But they may be reduced to three things especially, which God alone perfectly knows, and are not to be known by men or angels.

1st, The nature of God himself. Nothing but an infinite knowledge can comprehend an infinite being. We may as well endeavour to take up the ocean in the hollow of our hands, or to clasp the heavens in our arms, as to understand or fathom the immense perfections of the divine nature.

2dly, The second sort of things only known to God are things future, and these are only within his reach. As for us, setting aside what we know by history, which is not so properly knowledge as belief, we know only what is present; for although we know some things that are passed also, yet we first know them as they were present; and the reason is, because we know things by our coexistence with them. Now God, by reason of the infinite compass of his being, running through all the distinctions of time, by an intimate coexistence with them, and consequently with all things that do exist in those several and successive parcels of time, he takes a full survey of things, both past, present, and to come; which, though it be an undenied principle both in Christian and natural theology, and consequently to be rather granted as a self-evident truth, than disputed as a problem, yet he, who shall look into the writings of the Pelagians, Jesuits, or their Dutch brood, the remonstrants, will find that their grand fallacy, their πρῶτον ψεῦδος, is founded upon their erroneous stating of the divine knowledge; by which they affirm, that God’s knowledge, in respect of future contingents, is wholly conditional. For as by one simple act of his being he does coexist with all successive durations, so by one act of his understanding he does also know them. To help our apprehensions in this thing, we may take this similitude: a man walking in a path sees not that part of the way that is behind him, neither that which is any great distance before him, but successively comes to see it, as by degrees he arrives to and coexists with it: but now he, that is upon an high mountain or tower, by one single cast of his eye takes a view of the whole path, and at once sees the man, and what is behind him, and what so remote before him. Just so man, who exists in some part of time, neither properly knows those things that were before he was, nor those things that are future, but as he gains a successive coexistence with them. But God, being (as I may say) exalted upon his own essence, does from thence, as from an high and lofty place, by one single act of his understanding, take a survey of us that are in the world, and those things that are past and behind us, together with those that are before us, and yet to come.

Now, things future are of two sorts.

1st, Such as depend upon necessary causes, that is, those that constantly, and in the same manner, produce their effects: such are the sun and moon, in respect of the eclipses; and the heavens, in respect of many things here below. So that their effects, though future, may be yet known in the causes. For we can foretell an eclipse many years before: and while it is yet winter, we know that within such a period of days it will be summer. Now, in respect even of these future things, the knowledge of God, and of the creature, is very different: God, indeed, certainly knows when they will come to pass. Men and angels indeed have also a certain knowledge of them: but it is not absolute, but only suppositional; that is, upon supposal that such and such things continue in their being, and that God withal affords them his ordinary concurrence, such and such effects will certainly follow. But the causes themselves may perish; and God, that created nature, may, by the same power and sovereignty, interrupt it in its course; as he did the sun in the time of Joshua, Josh. x. 13, and the operation of that fire upon the three children. Now, in this case, neither men nor angels can certainly know or determine of such futures.

2dly, The second sort of things future are things in their nature occasional and contingent; such as come by chance, and such as depend upon the free will of man, which is various in its working, and consequently, that which is produced by it, must needs be uncertain in the event. Now it is the prerogative of God alone to have a steady foreknowledge of such things; no created being can dive into them: that man cannot, as reason would sufficiently prove, so scripture also does no less clearly demonstrate. Isaiah xlvii. 11, God speaks to Babylon; Evil shall come upon thee, and thou shalt not know from whence it ariseth: and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, which thon shalt not know: hereupon, in the two next verses, he defies them to find thorn out with all their sorceries and enchantments; in the twelfth verse, Let now the astrologers and prognosticators stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee. If any man could foresee future events, then certainly it would be those who made it their business and their profession; those who had not only their own understanding, but all the light of heaven to direct them. A man may as easily draw the perfect picture of a man yet unborn, as have in his mind the idea of a contingent future.

Who knows what a day may bring forth? God has put obscurity between us and the nearest futures: there is night between us and the very next day. To the proofs drawn from scripture, we may add the over plus of our own experience. And that angels are also to seek in the certain knowledge of these things, is no less true. Had those fallen angels, before their sin, foreseen what would have followed it, we cannot but in reason imagine, that the foresight of their fall would have kept them from their sin. Hereupon the Devil, in the heathen oracles, when he was consulted about future events, gave always doubtful, ambiguous answers; so that, howsoever the thing fell out, he had still a salvo, or evasion, in the ambiguity of the expression. It is confessed, that sometimes his predictions have been answered by the event of the thing; but then this was rather from the happiness of his conjecture, than the certainty of his knowledge. And, as one says, “Angels have the advantage of us in respect of their experience, which is far greater in them than in us, both because they have been of longer duration and continuance in the world, and also because of the piercing quickness of their understandings, in comparing one thing with another; and from thence making conjectures at other things.” Now experience is a reiterated or repeated knowledge of things past; from whence arises an ability of judging or guessing at things future. And thus far angels can go, and no further. As for that argument, by which some would prove that angels know things future, because distance of time and distance of place are equally accidental differences; and we know distance of place does not impede the knowledge of angels; therefore they may know things, notwithstanding the difference of time, that they are future: I say, this argument proves nothing, because the case is not the same, in respect of difference of place and of time. Distance of place always supposes the existence of the things that so differ: futurity, which is a difference of time, puts a nonexistence of the thing; for that which is future, is not yet in being. And since all created knowledge follows the existence of the thing known, there can be no knowledge of that which does not exist, but of that which either exists, or is supposed and looked upon as existing. But now, God knows contingent futures, yea, and that certainly and infallibly; and the reason is, because the most contingent being, when and while it actually exists, is, in its being, necessary: Omne quod est, quando est necessario est. But all things are present to God; they are looked upon by him as under an actual existence; from whence we may collect, that he has a certain and necessary knowledge of them.

3dly, The third sort of things, known only to God, are the thoughts of men: it belongs to the sovereignty of God’s omniscience alone to judge and know these: Psalm cxxxix. 12, Thou understandest my thoughts afar off. This is attributed to God by way of eminence; and every such thing is not only proper, but also peculiar to him; so as to be communicated to nothing else: for that cannot be ascribed to God by way of distinction, which is also common to the creature. Angels indeed do exactly know our constitutions, and so can read the general inclination of our thoughts in them, but not the particular determination of them, quoad hic et nunc, in respect of particular objects and circumstances; and also, when the thoughts move and stir the passions, and the passions work some change on the body: for, as natural philosophy teaches, every passion (which is a motion of the sensitive appetite) fit cum aliqua mutatione corporis non naturali. I say, in this respect, the an gels may know the thoughts, as they betray themselves in some outward, corporeal sign; but by any immediate inspection of the thoughts themselves, so they are not able to discern them. It is a privilege that God has given to our nature, to be able to conceal our thoughts; next to that by which we are able to communicate them: Jerem. xvii. 9, The heart is deceitful above all things; who can know it? None can read the thoughts, none can behold the intentions and desires, but that God, who vouchsafes an influence to the production of every thought, and every desire: 1 Cor. ii. 11, Who knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of a man that is within him? It is well known, that these interrogations imply strong denials. Who can know the things of man? that is, none can know them: they are not subject to the inspection of any being, but God. For notwithstanding this universal negation, we must of necessity except him, because the scripture elsewhere makes a peculiar exception of God, even there, where it affirms that the heart cannot be known, Jerem. xvii. 10, I, the Lord, search the heart, I try the reins. From hence therefore appears the transcendent excellency of God’s knowledge beyond all created, that it is able to pierce into men’s thoughts.

I proceed to make some application; and to see what uses may be deduced from the consideration of God’s omniscience: it may serve as an argument to press several duties upon us.

1st, It must be a strong motive to bring us to a free confession of all our sins to God. God’s omniscience, or infinite knowledge, should indeed make us ashamed to commit sin; but it should embolden us to confess it. We can commit and tell our secrets to a friend that does not know them; how much more should we do it to him that knows them already! God’s knowledge outruns our confessions, and anticipates what we have to say. As our Saviour speaks concerning prayer, Your heavenly Father knows what you have need of, before you ask, Matt. vi. 8, so I may say of confession, your heavenly Father knows what secret sins you have committed, before you confess. But still he commands this duty of us; and that not to know our sins, but to see our ingenuity. Adam, when he hid himself, to the impiety of his sin added the absurdity of a concealment. Our declaring of our sins to God, who knows them without being beholden to our relation; it is like opening a window to receive the light, which would shine in through it howsoever. Every man has fenestratum pectus, a casement in his bosom, through which God looks in upon him every day. When a master sees his servant commit a fault in secret, and thereupon urges him to a confession, he does it not so much to know the fault, as to try the man. Now there is no duty by which we give God the glory of his omniscience so much as by a free confession of our secret iniquities. Joshua vii. 19 Joshua says to Achan, My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession unto him. Here we see, had he not confessed his theft, he had been guilty of a greater, to wit, the robbing God of his glory. Thus the widow of Tekoah, by confessing her design and project to David, gave him the glory of his wisdom and knowledge. Hereupon having confessed it, she says, in 2 Sam. xiv. 20, My lord the king is wise, according to the wisdom of an angel of God, to know all things that are done in the earth. God seems to compound with us, and, in lieu of satisfaction, only to require our confession; Jerem. iii. 12, 13, I am merciful, saith the Lord, and will not keep anger for ever: only acknowledge thy iniquity, that thou hast transgressed against the Lord thy God. Nay, God commands us to confess our sins, not so much that he may know them, as that we may know them ourselves. For while sin sits close in the heart, we cannot see it till we cast it forth by confession; as a man cannot see the corruption that is in his stomach, till he spits it out. But howsoever, the impossibility of concealing our sins from God’s omniscience, is the great reason why we should confess them; for as we cannot rescue them from his justice, so neither can we hide them from his knowledge. God’s omniscience, together with his justice, represents him to a secret sinner like a flaming fire; which by its heat consumes, and by its light discovers. Wherefore, to confess our sins, since we are not able to conceal them, what is it, but in a spiritual sense to make a virtue of necessity?

2dly, The consideration of God’s omniscience may enforce us to an humble submission to all God’s commands and directions, and that both in respect of belief and of practice.

1st, And first, concerning things to be believed. There is such a depth in these, and such a seeming contradiction to reason, that our natural understandings are apt to quarrel, and find absurdities in them, and to dispute against that which we cannot comprehend. Hence, in Eph. iii. 1 9, the apostle prays, that we may know the love of Christ, that passeth knowledge. Here we should captivate the vain reasonings of our blind understandings, and answer the defect of our knowledge, by the infiniteness of God’s; who knows a reason of whatsoever he commands, and of whatsoever we ought to believe. When we hear the mystery of the Trinity, that three subsistencies are contracted into one essence, and one essence enlarged into three subsistences; when we hear of two natures conjoined in the same person, the creator and the creature, united in Jesus Christ; our reason is nonplused and amazed, and cannot satisfy itself from any of its own principles. When we hear of the resurrection, that, after our bodies are destroyed, and by continual transmutation brought to be clean another thing, then for the same numerical bodies to be restored, and all the scattered parts to be renewed, and return to their proper places; so that with Job we should be enabled to see our Redeemer with these very eyes, and no other, Job xix. 26, 27. when we hear of the mysterious, hidden works of the Spirit in our regeneration, and the begetting of new principles within us, so as to change and alter our nature; that he, which by his constitution is in temperate and furious, should be made temperate and meek; that he, which by his education is profane and worldly, should, by the secret, forcible operation of the Spirit, become holy and spiritually-minded: I say, this startles and confounds us; and we are apt to say with Nicodemus, How can these things be? We cannot, from any topic of reason or philosophy, give a rational account of them. But here we should know, that although these things are not intelligible by men, yet they are to the all-knowing God. And although our reason cannot discern or comprehend these things, yet God is greater than our reason, and knoweth all things.

2dly, The consideration of God’s infinite knowledge ought to make us comply with God’s commands in things concerning our practice, and that even in those duties, that to our natural judgments may seem unreasonable. He that renounces the dictates of his own carnal wisdom, and prosecutes the ways prescribed to him by God, has set to his seal, that God is wise, and infinitely more knowing than himself. For all our disobedience, our relinquishing the ways of God, and adhering to our own, may be resolved into this; that men think they know a nearer way to happiness than God has prescribed them; which, how derogatory it is to the all-knowing wisdom of God, let our own reason be judge. Why do we follow the advice of our physicians and lawyers, but from the opinion we have of their knowledge and experience? Absalom, by not doing according to Ahithophel’s counsel, did in that clearly undervalue his wisdom; and the discredit of that made Ahithophel hang himself. Now the most wise and omniscient God, that knows the utmost of sin, that knows what it is for a sinner to be saved, and to escape the stroke of his justice, does, in order thereto, command us to deny ourselves, to take up our cross, to renounce our dearest pleasures, our nearest relations, as they stand in competition with Christ; yea, to prefer the most unpleasant duty before the most pleasing sin. Here flesh and blood is at a stand; and as it cannot endure the strictness and rigour, so neither can it see the reason of these commands. But what Elijah said to Israel in the case of Baal, that I may here apply, Why halt we between two opinions? If God, who has commanded and enjoined these duties, be the all-knowing God, why do we not then, without any further delay, perform them? If he be not, why do we then give him divine worship? Wherefore I shall conclude with this most certain truth: there is no such way of giving God the glory of his infinite knowledge, as by an obediential practice of those duties and commands which seem most to thwart and contradict our own.

3dly and lastly, Since it is an express command of our Saviour himself, that we should be perfect, as our heavenly Father is perfect; why should we not, according to our weak model, endeavour to copy out this divine perfection upon our soul, as well as any of the rest? And why, as well as we are commanded to be like him in his goodness, bounty, and mercy, we should not endeavour to resemble him in knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, according to our weak capacity? For this is not to say, as Lucifer, I will ascend, and be like the Most High; nor to follow what he suggested to our first parents, Ye shall be like gods: for had they affected to be like God in knowledge, as they ought to have done, they would have certainly discerned the cheat of the serpent, and the trials which the Devil was then putting upon them. No; it is no arrogance for us to endeavour to be like God, in passing a right and true judgment upon all things that concern us; in judging of holiness, as God judges; in judging of sin, as God judges of every thing relating to our temporal or eternal happiness or misery. God, says the apostle, is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. We do not disparage nor rival the great fountain of light, the sun, by endeavouring to have as much of his light in our houses as we can. We have our rule and measure to proceed by, in our imitation of our heavenly Father, in this respect, as well as in any other: for as it is the perfection of God to know all things, so it is the excellency of man to know any thing aright.

To God, therefore, be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.

SERMON XLI.

JONAH iii. 8, 9.

But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: you, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.

Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?

THE business of the day is not unknown to you: we are called by public authority to the work of humiliation; and the cause and occasion of this work you are acquainted with, to wit, the deplorable eruption of a sad distemper in sundry parts of the nation; and the cause of this we are to know is sin. There is no calamity, but, if we track it to its original, we shall find it issue from sin. They are the distempers of the soul that cause the distempers of the body; therefore, if we would recover our bodily health, we must begin the cure at the soul. Fasting and humiliation is a sovereign remedy to evacuate all spiritual distempers; and what is true in physic of the body, tertia pars morborum sanatnr jejunio, that the third part of diseases is cured by fasting, is much more true in divinity in respect of the soul; that not only some, but all its diseases are removed, or at least weakened and diminished, by a spiritual fasting.

In this chapter we have the example of a fast celebrated by heathens, but worthy of the imitation of the best Christians; and if we do not fast and humble ourselves, now a judgment is actually lying upon us from God, certainly the men of Nineveh will rise up in judgment against this generation, and condemn it; for they fasted and humbled themselves upon the very approach of a judgment.

Here are several things considerable.

1st, Jonah’s denunciation of a judgment of God impendent upon them.

2dly, Their humiliation upon the hearing of this judgment; in which fast or humiliation there is considerable,

I. The manner of it; which consists in two things:

1st, The external humiliation of the body.

2dly, An internal, spiritual separation from sin.

II. The universal extent of it, Let man and beast, &c. and withal the particular application of it, ver. 8, let them turn every one from, &c.

III. The ground or motive of this humiliation; which was hope of mercy, and a pardon upon the exercise of this duty.

The words will afford several observations.

1st, The consideration of a judgment approaching unto, or actually lying upon a people, is a sufficient argument for fasting and humiliation, ver. 4, 5.

2dly, That an afflicting of the body is a good preparative to the humiliation of the soul. ver. 6, 7.

3dly, That the nature of a fast more especially consists in a real, sincere separation from sin. ver. 8.

4thly, That national sins do deserve national humiliation, ver. 5.

5thly, The best and most effectual way to remove a national judgment, is for every particular man to inquire into and to amend his own personal, particular sins. ver. 8.

6thly, Upon a serious humiliation for, and forsaking of our sins, there is sufficient argument in Cod’s mercy to hope for a removal of the severest judgment, ver. 8.

I chiefly intend the discussing the five observations; but I shall speak something to them all.

1st Obs. Concerning the first: That the consideration of a judgment, &c. Extraordinary cases call for extraordinary services. Every judgment overspreading a nation is an extraordinary judgment; and fasting bears some proportion to it, as being an extraordinary duty. When God shall shake his sword over a nation, and the inhabitants take no notice of it; when he shall begin to take hold of judgment, and the people not take hold of his mercy in prayer and repentance; these are sad symptoms of a decaying, if not perishing state. When the son sees his father about to whip him, and has already laid hold of the rod, will he not fall down upon his knees, and ask him pardon? Now we ought to humble ourselves under a judgment upon several accounts.

1st, Because in every judgment God calls for humiliation; they are the alarums of the Almighty, by which he terrifies and awakens sleepy souls. We read of the voice of God’s rod, Micah vi. 9, and the rod of God in every judgment speaks this; either that we should begin or renew our repentance. For a people to hear the dreadful voice of a displeased God in a judgment, and yet not to be wrought upon to proceed to a speedy humiliation; it is like Samuel’s hearing the Lord speaking to him when he was a child, in the midst of his sleep; the voice comes, and awakes him, he hears it, yet takes little notice of it, but presently returns to sleep again. If we can so pass over the voice of God in a judgment, as presently to return to our former sleep and security, it is an act of high contempt and disobedience.

The proudest of the heathens, and the greatest contemners of a Deity, yet would be amazed, and endeavour to hide themselves when they heard it thunder. Could the voice of the cloud make them shrink and tremble, and shall not the voice of a national judgment make us mourn and repent? God calls for mourning and lamentation, his voice is plain and loud, and woe be to us if we do not hear it.

2dly, We ought to humble ourselves under every judgment, because it deserves our humiliation: though this be an unpleasing duty to the flesh, yet it is abundantly countervailed by the greatness of the trouble it does remove. Not only Christianity, but nature bids us mourn under an affliction. To what do we reserve our sorrows, if we do not spend them upon this occasion? Lament. iii. 48, Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water, for the destruction of the daughter of my people. The prophet found no such time for weeping as the time of public calamity. Then did Hezekiah mourn and humble himself, when there was a devouring army of the Assyrians approaching. If the securing of your health, your lives, your temporal, your spiritual estates, does not merit the deepest of our humiliations, our strongest wrestlings with God in fasting and prayer, then keep these duties for something that may better deserve them.

SERMON XLII.

MATTHEW v. 3.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

IT is doubtless a great paradox in the general judgment and opinion of the world, that any poverty, of what sort soever, should be desirable: forasmuch as every one desires to enjoy the good things of the world, and thereby to enjoy himself; to the attainment of which, riches are the most acknowledged means. And if these are the prime instrument of enjoyment, poverty surely must be the main opposite to it. But the gospel, we confess, is a system of paradoxes and absurdities to the maxims of the world; the grand rule which the generality of mankind both live and judge by, being to follow the full bent of their sensuality. And therefore our Saviour begins this his notable and great sermon in the mount, with seven or eight such propositions, as directly oppose and bid defiance to the opinions and practices of the carnal world: and these he ushers in with the commendation of that so much abhorred thing called poverty. And that also such a poverty, as rests not only in the surface of the body, clothing that with rags, or (which is worse) with nothing; but such an one as enters into the very soul, and strips the spirit, leaving that naked, destitute, and forlorn.

SERMON XLIII.

JOB viii. 13.

The hypocrite’s hope shall perish.

THERE is nothing in the world, though never so excellent, but it has its counterfeit; religion and grace itself are not exempted: so that in these matters, as well as in others, we often suffer a fallacy in our choice, by embracing resemblances instead of things. Sincerity and hypocrisy are the two great things about which the whole stress and business of the gospel is laid out; namely, to persuade and enforce the one, and to discover and detect the other. And here we have hypocrisy presented in its greatest and most flourishing enjoyment, which is hope; and in its greatest misery, which is utter frustration.

There are only two things that can require any explication, and the words will be very clear: first, what is meant by the hypocrite; and secondly, what by the hypocrite’s hope.

As for the first, all hypocrites in the world may be comprehended under these two sorts.

(1.) The first is the gross dissembler, who knowingly, and against his conscience, pursues some sinful course, endeavouring only to conceal it from the eyes of men: such an one was Gehazi, who concealed his sharking, covetous acts from his master Elisha, 2 Kings v. 25. Such an one also was Judas, while he plotted the betraying of his Lord; he could eat and converse with him, and yet carry on a design against him at the same time; he could bring the guest and the traitor to the same table. Such an one was the lewd woman, in Prov. xxx. 20, who took secresy for innocence; and, putting a fair face upon a foul fact, wiped her mouth, and said, she had done no wickedness. Such were also the scribes and pharisees, whom our Saviour upbraids so severely, Matth. xxiii. 27; for as they had the outward varnish, so they had also the inward rottenness of a noisome sepulchre. In short, this sort of hypocrites, the utmost of whose religion is to conceal, not to renounce their sins, comes within the number of those that are even stigmatized by the heathen, qui famam, non conscientiam verentur; such as prefer credit before conscience, an outward, lying, pompous appearance, before an inward, sincere reality.

(2.) The other sort is the formal, refined hypocrite, who deceives his own heart. he is many degrees above the other; for his conscience and his convictions will not let him take up in a course of professed dissimulation. And therefore he makes some advances into the practice of holiness; but not being sound at the heart, not being thoroughly divided from his sin, he takes that for grace which is not sincerity, and therefore much less grace; and being thus deceived, he misses of the power of godliness, and embraces only the form. Such an hypocrite we have described in Matth. vii. 26, 27; he raised a very fair building, but he laid the foundation of it in the sand. Now both these hypocrites agree in this, that they are deceivers; for deceit is the formal, constituent reason of hypocrisy: only the difference lies here, that one deceives the world, the other deceives himself; one resolvedly goes towards hell, the other sets forth for heaven, but misses of his way; one is a mere shadow, the other is a rotten substance.

I conceive the hypocrite here spoken of in the text is to be taken in the latter sense; for the gross, palpable dissembler neither does nor can rise so high, as to entertain any seeming, rational hope of a future felicity. For he who knows his present estate to be totally bad, and knowingly persists in it, can not with any colour of reason hope that his future condition should be good. And thus much for the first thing to be explained. As for the

Second, By the hypocrite’s hope is here meant those persuasions that a man has of the goodness and safety of his spiritual condition, whereby he strongly persuades himself that he is now in a state of grace, and consequently shall hereafter attain to a state of glory.

Yet, since it is not to be imagined that this hope is in the same proportion in all hypocrites, we may justly distinguish in it these two degrees.

1. A probable opinion. Now opinion, we know, is but the lowest degree of assent; nay, it is rather thought, than assent; it is the understanding, as it were, halting between doubt and belief; rather catching at, than embracing its object. So that if opinion at best be so weak, what is that that is commenced upon a false ground? that hangs upon the thin, rotten thread of a bare peradventure: for the voice of the hypocrite is generally but the same with that of the king of Nineveh, peradventure the Lord will be gracious.

2. The second degree is a peremptory persuasion. This is its highest pitch and perfection; and it seems seldom to be entertained, but where hypocrisy is in conjunction with gross ignorance or judicial searedness. It is hope raised into confidence, and confidence, as it were, screwed up to a kind of plerophory; when a man is so confident of his future happiness, that nothing seems wanting but an actual possession.

These things premised briefly by way of explication, the words naturally cast themselves into these two propositions.

First, that an hypocrite may proceed so far, as to obtain an hope and expectation of a future blessedness.

Secondly, that all the hypocrite’s fairest expectations and hopes of such an happiness, will in the end vanish into miserable disappointment.

For the prosecution of the first of these, I shall do these three things.

I. I shall prove that the hypocrites have such hopes.

II. I shall shew how and by what ways these hopes are first produced in the hypocrite’s mind. And,

III. I shall shew how they are cherished and preserved there.

I. And first for the first of these; to wit, that the hypocrites have and do obtain such hopes, may be evinced by these two arguments.

(1.) The first of which shall be taken from the nature and constitution of man’s mind, which is vehement and restless in its pursuit after some suitable good. Now the happiness of man is not from within, from himself, but from without. And all the good he takes in from thence is conveyed, and, as it were, drained through the apprehensions of his mind: and the mind, or reason, not only apprehending its present state, but also caring for the future, it is accordingly put to seek out for a good that may bear proportion to both these conditions, that is, both a present and a future; and a present good it takes in and enjoys by actual possession, and a future only by its hope. Now it is natural for every man, both in his desires and designs, to build chiefly upon the future; and that, I suppose, for this reason, because he looks upon the future only as his life. For so much of our life as is past is gone, and to be reckoned with that which is not; and the present we know is a narrow, indivisible point, enjoyed and spent in an instant; so that all our treasure and reserve is wrapt up in the future.

And that men’s desires chiefly run out after things future is clear, because the most ardent and natural of all desires, which is that of knowledge, chiefly catches at and pries into futurities. Man naturally looks forward: the eye of the soul is like that of the body, though it passes through things immediately before it, yet it always terminates in something distant. When a man is dejected upon the sight and consideration of what he is at present, he is naturally apt to relieve himself with the hope and expectation of what he shall or may be hereafter; and it is not to be questioned, but that all the world live more by hope than by fruition. Whence it is, that a person condemned, or mortally wounded, will say that he is a dead man; because he dates his death, not from the expiration of his life, but of his hopes. And this is so evident, that though in things of a most different nature, yet the truth is still the same. For as in temporals no man looks upon himself as rich or happy in the present possession of lands, unless they are secured, and made over to him for ever; so in spirituals, a man that is acted but by his bare reason, finds no relish or satisfaction in any thing at present, but as it is seasoned and set oil with an expectation of a future blessedness.

Every man naturally carries on some particular design, upon the event of which he builds his satisfaction; and the spring that moves these designs is hope. Hopes of the future are the causes of present action: for that the hypocrite performs some duties, wades through some afflictions, and that he makes some imperfect essays of obedience, it is all from the strength and activity of his hope: this first excites and quickens him to the work, and then animates and upholds him in it. Otherwise, the natural weakness of his mind would quickly cause him to quit the field, and put an end to such uncomfortable labours; for when the sight and expectation of good fails, it is natural for endeavour to cease. Hope is that which antedates and prepossesses a future good; that sets it in the view of the will, which alone puts all the faculties in motion. From hence therefore it follows, that the hypocrite has his hope, for he has his course, and his way, according to which he acts; and without hope there can be no action.

(2.) The other argument, proving that hypocrites have their hopes, shall be taken from that peace and comfort that even hypocrites enjoy; which are the certain effects, and therefore the infallible signs of some hope abiding in the mind. We may take a view of the profound peace and security enjoyed by hypocrites in several instances: and first, we have the old world, though polluted with a general corruption, yet enjoying a general peace before the flood, so that, in Matt. xxiv. 38, 39, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, and knew not till the flood came, and took them all away. Strange was the security of conscience that had seized upon these sinners; it was so great, that though death and destruction were even at the door, yet they ruffled it in the highest actions of jollity that human life was capable of. And in the 25th of Matthew we have the foolish virgins at so firm a peace with their own conscience, that they could even sleep securely; shutting both heart and eyes against all thought of danger. And in Amos vi. 3, 4, we have some putting far away from them the evil day, lying upon beds of ivory, and stretching themselves upon their couches: free from all thought or care; unless possibly how to make their visits, or to contrive some revel, or to prepare and dress themselves for some ball or lewd meeting. Also in Zech. i. 11, we have the angel of God giving an account of the state and posture of an unsanctified world. Behold, says he, the whole earth sitteth still, and at rest. To all which scriptures we may add, by way of overplus, the verdict of our daily experience and observation. For who so much at ease and quiet, who so jocund and free from anxious distracting cares, as those that are visibly strangers to the sincerity of religion, apparently unacquainted with the ways of God? From which temper and state of mind, we may undeniably collect and argue, that they have their hopes. For where there is comfort, there must be hope: since it is built upon this foundation, it grows out of this stock, as it is in Job viii. 11, Can the rush grow up without mire? or can the flag grow with out water? The hypocrite’s hope is indeed both a water that will fail, and a mire that will defile him; yet it is this alone, that for a while gives growth and greenness to his comforts. If the heart of man were not pitched upon some bottom, it would of necessity be continually sinking. Now hope is the great and only bottom of an hypocrite’s tranquillity. It is this alone that feeds all his contents, that gives continual supplies to all his satisfactions. And if hope did not (as it were by main force) stand and guard the heart, a deluge of despairing thoughts would immediately and irresistibly break in upon it. For if sinners were assured of wrath, and had certain presumptions of future vengeance, despair and rage would waste the world, and men would sin with an high hand, that they might not only merit, but, as it were, even revenge their future sufferings.

Whence it is, that though God’s decree concerning the final estate of every impenitent sinner be certain, yet it is also secret, to prevent despair. And because God may intend even those that stand sentenced by it the transitory reprieve of a little worldly comfort, he keeps them in ignorance of it; and so long, they keep themselves in hope. How ever, every reprobate is in this respect before God, like a condemned person with a veil drawn before his eyes. For if a man did really apprehend his case utterly hopeless, he could not master the apprehensions of common humanity so far, as to admit of the least comfort. For did we ever see a condemned person (if in his wits) dancing and ranting the day before his execution? Certainly that man must needs be far overgrown with stupid ignorance or epicurism, who could eat and drink heartily to-day, when he knew that to-morrow he should die. Assuredly if it were not for hope, the heart of the merriest and most secure hypocrite in the world would break.

Other reasons of the point might be assigned; but I think these two sufficiently prove, that hypocrisy and hope may dwell together, that danger and confidence of safety are consistent, and that a man’s persuasions both may be and often are much better than his condition. I come now to the

Second general thing proposed, which is to shew by what ways and means the hypocrite comes first to attain this hope.

I shall instance in four.

(1.) The first is by misapprehending God. The first foundation of this hope is laid in ignorance: for as hereafter it must end, so here it begins, in darkness. Caution, experience, and accurate meditation are apt to check hope; because they lay open the difficulties of the thing we hope for. But the persons here spoken of fetch their hope not from their judgment, but their fancy. The sum of the hypocrites creed and hope may be delivered in that of Tacitus, fingunt creduntque; they first feign things, then believe them. And their grand, leading mistake, which draws after it all the rest, is about God.

It is indeed our unhappiness in this state of weakness and mortality, that the most advanced in knowledge and improved in piety have yet but very lame and imperfect conceptions of the great God. And the reason of it is manifest; because we are forced to understand that which is infinite, after a finite manner. For philosophy teaches, that intelllgere est pati, et pati est recipere. And one thing receives another, not according to the full latitude of the object, but according to the scanty model of its own capacity. If we let down a vessel into the sea, we shall bring up, not what the sea can afford, but what the vessel can hold: and just so it is in our understanding of God. Besides, it is the proper quality of the intellect in apprehending, naturally to assimilate the thing apprehended to itself. And these are the true grounds of the natural, unavoidable imperfection of our apprehensions of God.

However, God is pleased to bear with our apprehensions of him, though imperfect, so long as they are not impious and absurd; and to accept of them, though below him, so long as they are not contrary to him. But the hypocrite frames to himself such notions of a god, as have no foundation either in his nature or his word. He does (as it were) create to himself a deity, and sets up a god according to the model of his own senseless imaginations. I know nothing that does so lively characterize and express those gross, carnal, groveling conceptions that hypocrites entertain of God, as that signal place in Psalm l. 21, Thou thoughtest, says God, that I was altogether such an one as thyself. That is, he took the measure of God’s thoughts of sin by his own; he rated God’s esteem of duty by his own indifference. Every man, through the native pride of his heart and the deceitfulness of sin, is naturally very prone rather to bring down God to his thoughts, than to raise up his thoughts to God.

Now the soul in its course and practice of religion, having immediate intercourse with God, according to those thoughts it takes in concerning him, it is suitably affected either with fear or hope, comfort or distraction: and when it has once got this cursed, fallacious way of misrepresenting God to the conscience, there is nothing in him from whence it will not draw an argument of hope. It will suck poison out of every attribute, strain every perfection to make it subservient to the interest of its hypocrisy.

And first for that sin-devouring attribute of God’s justice, which one would think should rout the hypocrite out of all his satisfactions; yet even this at tribute, (which carries in it nothing but fire and brimstone, speaks nothing but lightning and claps of thunder to the secure sinners,) as it is qualified, and allayed by the shifts and evasions of a treacherous heart, shall not at all disturb his quiet, or entrench upon his hope. The hypocrite indeed does and must acknowledge that God hates sin, and that his jealousy burns against the sinner; that his law is violated, and his justice provoked: but then he has this evasion, that justice is God’s strange work, that he does not afflict willingly, nor take any delight in the exercise of that severe attribute; and that if at any time he does think fit to exercise it, it is only upon gross, scandalous sinners, such as wallow in the enormities and pollutions of the world; such whose damnation is visibly writ upon their present lives, as swearers, atheists, whoremongers, and such like modish fashionable sinners. But as for those who are civilized in their manners, and stand guilty of no such clamorous sins, who carry a fair profession, and keep the church constantly, though perhaps it is chiefly to see and to be seen; to such the hypocrite concludes that there is no condemnation.

But now, if after all these debates and reasonings conscience is still unsatisfied, and God’s justice appears terrible, and his power grim and dreadful, yet then the thoughts of mercy shall come in, and clear off all. So that if conscience and sins unrepented of begin to cry out, mercy shall cry louder: if vengeance seems ready to strike, mercy shall divert the stroke. Whatsoever objections the hypocrite can make against himself from God’s justice, he will answer from the topic of his mercy.

But then here the fallacy lies: the hypocrite considers God’s justice appeased and his mercy enlarged; but he does not consider the qualifications of those persons to whom these attributes bear such a gracious aspect. It is confessed, God’s justice is satisfied and his anger is disarmed; but it is so, to those only whose sins are remitted, and whose persons justified; and whose burden is entirely transferred, and cast upon the person of Christ their great surety, whose satisfaction wards off the sin-revenging justice of God, only from the penitent and truly pious. But what is this to the hypocrite, who was never translated and implanted into Christ by a true and lively faith?

And then for that other attribute of mercy: it is indeed infinite and boundless in its outgoings; it covers all sins, keeps off the law, and evacuates the curse. But it does these great things only for such as are true believers and regenerate; and to be so is an harder matter than the world generally takes it for. But this the hypocrite does not consider, and therefore he retains his confidence; he catches at the mercy, but overlooks the condition; and so no wonder, if he has hope, where he has no interest. And thus much for the first way, by which the hypocrite raises his false hope, namely, by his misapprehensions of God, and particularly in respect of those two great attributes, his justice and his mercy.

(2.) The second way by which he raises the same false hope is by his misunderstanding of sin. Sin, one way or other, is the true cause of all the trouble, anguish, and despair, that is incident to the mind of man. Every tear springs from this fountain. Every thought of terror and distrust issues from sin, as from its first occasion and original. But now these troubles and despairs about the main issues of a man’s future happiness being very irksome, and contrary to the heart’s content, a man is willing to gratify his heart so far, as to endeavour their removal, by winking at sin that is their cause. Hence it is, that men hold fast their confidence of life, though they walk in the ways of death: for they studiously cast a mist before their own eyes, that they may go on securely, and not be forced to see that, which, being seen, would certainly constrain them to lay down their hopes. Sin rightly apprehended would quickly confound all their comforts, dash their peace and security, and lay their fairest confidence in the dust.

Wherefore the hypocrite, to establish his heart in hope, labours with all his might, and casts about, to relieve his conscience with such easy conceptions of sin, as may not at all grate or fall foul upon his comforts. He cannot persuade himself, that that can be so heinous and dreadful, that is committed with so much facility. Many are apt to look upon actual, as some do upon original sin, not as the error, but as the condition of their nature. Love to sin naturally covers all its deformities.

And first for the nature of sin in general, as stript of all its circumstances and particularities. The hypocrite does not look upon it in its native filth, as contrary to the infinite purity of God’s nature and his law, as leaving an everlasting, indelible stain upon the conscience; no, nor yet in its dangerous effects, as dooming the sinner to all the curses that an infinite wrath can inflict: but because punishment is only threatened while pleasure is presented, the colour of the serpent covers his poison, the danger is overlooked, and the proffer accepted, and so the pardon of sin is counted as easy as the commission.

And from this undervaluing of the nature of sin in general, he quickly passes into a cursed extenuation of particulars. Some indeed hold and maintain a distinction of sins into mortal and venial; calling those mortal, that for their greatness and enormity deserve death; and those venial, that for their smallness naturally deserve pardon: which distinction as some assert in doctrine, so all hypocrites own in practice, and it is the inward language of all their hearts. For though perhaps they may strain at camels, yet they can easily swallow gnats; though blasphemies, thefts, and murders may be shunned, yet sinful, impure thoughts, words, and desires are passed over by the hypocrite, not only without remorse, but without notice, as things below his sorrow, and not deserving repentance, much less condemnation. Gross external acts of sin, he knows, are visible, and therefore no ways for his advantage; so that no wonder if the hypocrite avoids these: but this is not his penitence, but his prudence; not because he hates the nature of sin, but because he fears the circumstance.

And thus I have shewn the two first ways by which the hypocrite gains his hope, namely, by misapprehending God, and misunderstanding sin. And when he has wrong apprehensions of that which deserves punishment, and of him who is alone able to inflict it, I suppose it will be no hard matter to conclude, that he may easily shuffle himself into hopes of an escape.

(3.) The third way by which the hypocrite first attains this false and spurious hope, is by mistakes about the spiritual rigour and strictness of the gospel. God at first gave man a righteous law, and entered with him into a covenant of works. According to the tenor of which covenant, the law required exact obedience, universal holiness, and perfection; and this in the greatest rigour, not admitting any grains of allowance for the least defect or deviation. But man having sinned, and thereby broke this covenant, the law became weak through sin; that is, weak and unable to justify, and powerful only to condemn: so that now all legal dispensations are dispensations of terror; and to tell sinners of the law, is only in another word to tell them of the curse. Hereupon God was pleased to introduce a new covenant, and instead of works to establish our salvation upon a law of faith, as it is in Rom. iii. 27. So that no breach of the law whatsoever should be able to condemn him that believes.

Now the hypocrite seeing this, and reflecting upon the former unsupportable severity of the law, he naturally dashes upon the other extreme, and thinks that if the law were all justice, then certainly the gospel must be all mercy, without justice. Thus making it so the law of liberty, as not of duty; and getting a full liberty, or rather licentiousness of conscience, together with a plentiful stock of faith, without good works, he looks upon himself as perfect and evangelical: and henceforward in the business of justification, but to think any more of an holy life, he calls it (as the phrase of some is) a returning to Egypt. And therefore as for duty, obedience, and such other legal things, they must belong only to moral men, who are not acquainted with this sublime mystery of the gospel.

Hereupon, having made so fair a progress, he proceeds further, and proposes to himself the gospel, as it is held forth in the most lax and favourable expressions, in some scriptures, which he first misunderstands, and then draws to his own purpose.

As for instance, that in 2 Corinth. viii. 12, where God is said to accept the will for the deed. From whence, though he lives in a continual omission of known duties, and a frequent commission of known sins; yet he will comfort himself in this, that his heart is good, that he means well, that his will is upright; and God accepts of this as well as the strictest obedience. But to rectify so perverse a mistake, such an one must know that God never accepts the will for the deed, where he puts it into a man’s power to do as well as to will: but this holds only where a man is disabled from the performance of his duty, in which case the inward sincerity of the will supplies the want of the outward action. As for instance, it is a man’s duty both to frequent the public worship of God, and to worship him in private with the humblest postures of body, as kneeling and the like; but if God casts him upon his bed of sickness, and the man is not able to stir an hand or a foot, there is no doubt but God accepts of his desire to do these outward acts of reverence as much as if he actually did them. And if a man would receive the blessed sacrament, but is in a place where he cannot have it administered to him, it is as little to be questioned but that God accepts the devout pantings and breathings of his soul after that heavenly ordinance, as much as if he were really a partaker of it in the outward elements. But what is this to the hypocrite’s case, who pretends will in contradiction to practice, when both are in his power? thus deluding himself and abusing the grace of God, and withal not considering, that such kind of expressions as this, that God accepts the will for the deed, and the like, are not proposed to us as the standing rules of our obedience in our ordinary Christian course, but as special arguments of comfort in cases of extraordinary distress; not as our spiritual diet to feed and to sustain, but as cordials to recover us.

Again, when the hypocrite reads in Rom. x. 9 that whosoever shall confess with his mouth, and believe with his heart, that God hath raised Christ from the dead, shall be saved; he finds that it is no hard matter to own such a belief and profession, to carry the name and wear the colours of Christ, and so long he concludes that this scripture warrants his salvation. And again, 1 John ii. 1, If any one sin, we have an advocate with the Father. Hence with much confidence he can cast all his sins upon Christ’s intercession; and though he continues to sin, yet as long as Christ continues to intercede, he doubts not but the interest of his soul stands sure. Now these scriptures, with many others, being improved by a subtle, crafty, self-deceiving head, and a wicked, unsanctified heart, lay the foundation of all the hypocrite’s hope. But if he would undeceive himself, and consider that obedience is still necessary, and that Christ came not to destroy, but to establish the law, as the rule of that obedience; that he came not to give any new law, (as Socinus and his school would have it,) but to vindicate and clear the old in its just purity and extent; I say, the thought of this would make him begin to question the soundness of his hope, and try the foundation before he finished the superstructure.

Christ’s yoke is indeed easy, but it is still a yoke; and his burden is light, but it is still a burden, and will be so as long as we carry flesh and blood, and a body of sin about us. That one gospel-precept of self-denial seriously considered, how difficult it is to our corrupt nature, how contrary to our most native inclinations, would make the hypocrite confess, that notwithstanding all these gracious concessions and abatements of legal rigour, that shine forth upon mankind in the gospel, he must yet be forced to purchase heaven and happiness at a far higher rate than he did imagine.

(4.) The fourth and last way that I shall mention, by which the hypocrite attains his false hope, is by his mistakes about repentance, faith, and conversion. And it is not to be questioned, but that mistakes about these have been the deplorable cause of the ruin of many thousands: for, as Quintilian says of eloquence, Multi ad eloquentiam pervenire potuissent, nisi se jam pervenisse putassent; so many, in all probability, might have attained to repentance, but that they thought they had repented already: many might have believed and been converted, had they not preferred speed before certainty, and too erroneously and hastily presumed upon these works, before they were ever thoroughly wrought upon them.

The carnal hypocrite is apt to think every fit of sorrow for sin, every grumbling of natural conscience, to be repentance; and therefore here he rests, thinking his sorrow to have atoned his sin, and his tears to have washed away his impurities: not considering the great and vast difference that is between μεταμελέσθαι and μετανοεῖν; between a bare regret and anguish for sin, causing the soul to wish only that it had not been committed, and between such a sorrow as is attended with a total change and renovation of the heart. The first may proceed from the principles of nature awakened, and so is common to those that finally perish, and prove castaways; the latter is a product of the special working of God’s Spirit infusing grace into the soul, and therefore peculiar only to believers. Now, if the hypocrite would warily observe, whether the sorrow he so much trusts in did ever yet cleanse his heart, so as to turn the full bent and propensity of it to the commands of God, he would find little cause for hope, and see that his very repentance was to be repented of; and that all his penitential showers were like the rain upon the streets, that does not cleanse, but foul the ways.

Also for conversion: if the hypocrite can strain his heart so high as to relinquish some sins, to make some confession, and to engage in some brittle, uncertain promises of future amendment, he imagines now that the great work has passed upon him, and that he is taken from the portion of sinners to the privilege of saints. But if he would impartially read his own case in the examples of others, and see Judas confessing his sin, and that with much bitterness, and yet for all that a son of perdition; if he would view Herod doing many things upon John’s preaching, and yet continuing an unconverted, bloody Herod still; if he would consider Agrippa in the very borders of conversion, and almost become a Christian, and yet for all that never converted, nor made a Christian; he would find just cause to change his hopes into fears; and instead of being confident of this work, with much humility and trembling to seek after it.

And then, lastly, for that grand, deciding work of faith: because the hypocrite, by a blind, irrational boldness, is confident that Christ will save him, and redeem him from God’s wrath; therefore he thinks that he believes, and that he relies and depends upon Christ. But if he would examine his faith by these interrogatories; as, 1st, Whether or no he has over come the world? for every believer does so; 1 John v. 4. He triumphs over Satan, he conquers his corruptions, and repels temptations. And 2dly, Whether he can say, not only that he does not sin, but that he cannot sin? Not that he cannot commit, but that he cannot approve or delight in sin; and that he never sins with such a full consent of will, but that it is still with some secret reluctancy and remorse of the renewed principle: every true believer is able to say so, as is evident from 1 John iii. 9, Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. It is as impossible for the spiritual man to relish sin, as it is for the natural man to feed upon stones or dirt. Now, I say, if the hypocrite would bring his faith to the test of these questions, and let his conscience truly and fairly return an answer, he would find that there is as great a difference between a well-grounded gospel-hope and his hope, as there is between believing and presuming.

This therefore is the fourth way, by which the hypocrite procures his hope. He reads, that those who repent, believe, and are converted, shall be saved; and hereupon he remembers, that he has been sometimes troubled about sin, and this he calls repentance. Also he finds himself full of confidence, that Christ will undertake for his salvation, and this he persuades himself is faith. And lastly, he finds that there is some outward change made in his life; some duties performed that were before neglected, and some sins avoided that were before committed; and this he styles conversion. And herein is the whole stock upon which the hypocrite trades, to secure himself some hope of eternal happiness.

And now, to make some use and improvement of what has hitherto been delivered: if in this grand business of salvation the hypocrite may and does entertain an hope, then let none, from the confidence of their hopes, conclude that they are not hypocrites; but consider at least, if not suspect the safety of their condition. It is indeed the custom of some to put the superstructure in the room of the foundation, and first of all to urge assurance: but such persons measure their safety by their confidence, and so may very fitly have that speech of Solomon applied to them in a spiritual sense, in Prov. xiv. 16, The fool rageth, and is confident: for certainly where the venture is of eternity, the greatest caution is the best security. The apostle indeed says, in Rom. xiv. 23, that he that doubteth is damned: but this is quite upon another occasion; and I am afraid that it will one day be found, that many have been and shall be damned, because they never doubted. For since there are so many ways for a man to delude himself about his spiritual estate, since hypocrisy is so connatural to us, and the heart not only easy, but willing, and not only willing, but also industrious to cheat itself into such a vain hope; can there be any thing more seasonable and rational, than to caution such as think they stand, to beware lest they fall, and still to fear that that hope is scarce sure enough, that can never be too sure?

And thus to persuade doubting is not to persuade scepticism in religious matters; for scepticism is properly a doubting of the truth of universals, and of the articles of religion; but the doubting here spoken of is concerning the safety of a man’s own particular condition: nay, this doubting presupposes a certain assent to the former; for if a man were not persuaded of the general truth of religion, he would never doubt, or be solicitous about his own personal concern in it. This doubting therefore is so far from weakening, that it does indeed establish our hope: for as it is said of knowledge, Firmissimam esse scientiam quae oritur ex dubitatione; so the same may be said of our hopes of future happiness, that those are the most sure and rational, that were first ushered in with doubting and distrust. I say distrust, not of God, but of ourselves; for this kind of doubting causes trial, and trial produces knowledge, and knowledge brings assurance, and assurance so obtained maketh not ashamed.

He that shall observe what the scripture says of the deep, unconceivable treachery of man’s heart, will have sufficient warrant from thence to bid the most holy in appearance suspect his condition. Let none say that he was converted so many years since, and that therefore, though he knows himself under the present power of some sin, yet his hopes of heaven stand sure and good, in the strength of that his former conversion: but let him consider rather, how easy it is for a man to think that he is converted, when he is yet in the very gall of bitterness, and the bonds of iniquity; and to take that for assurance, that is only self-flattery; and to think that he has a lively faith and a lasting hope, which yet, being spurious and unsound, will one day miserably deceive him; and, having raised him up to heaven, leave him in the lowest regions of hell: much like the flattering disappointment of the hungry man’s dream in Isaiah xxix. 8, The hungry man dreameth, and behold he eateth; but he awaketh, and his soul is empty. This know for certain, that the only way for a man to make his hopes sure and lasting is to be sincere; and the next way to attain sincerity, is first thoroughly to know and understand his hypocrisy.

And thus much concerning the second thing proposed, which was to shew by what means the hypocrite takes his first rise, and how he gets and obtains this hope. The third and last will be to shew, how he maintains and preserves it.

SERMON XLIV.

JOB viii. 13.

The hypocrite’s hope shall perish.

I FORMERLY made an entrance upon these words, in which, after some brief explication of the terms, I shewed that they naturally cast themselves into these two propositions.

I. That even an hypocrite may proceed so far, as to entertain hopes and expectations of a future happiness.

II. That the hypocrite’s fairest and most promising expectation of a future blessedness would in the end vanish into miserable disappointment.

For the first of these, I cast the prosecution of it under these three heads.

1. To prove that an hypocrite may and does entertain such hopes.

2. To shew by what ways and means he comes first to obtain them.

3. And lastly, to shew how he continues and preserves them.

For the first, That an hypocrite may and does entertain such hopes: I proved it by two reasons, the first of which was taken from the nature of man’s mind, which was vehement and restless in its pursuit after a suitable good, and accordingly was put to seek out for a good that might bear proportion to both its conditions; that is, both a present and a future: and a present good it takes in by actual possession, and a future only by its hopes.

2. The second reason was taken from that peace and tranquillity of mind that even hypocrites enjoy; which are the certain effects, and therefore the infallible signs of some hope abiding in the mind.

As for the next thing, which was to shew by what ways and means the hypocrite comes first to obtain this hope:

I mentioned four.

1st, By his misunderstanding of God, especially in his two great attributes, his justice and his mercy. 2dly, His misapprehending of sin. 3dly, By his ignorance of the spiritual rigour and strictness of the gospel. And 4thly, By his mistakes about the nature of repentance, faith, and conversion.

These things I then insisted upon at large, and so far I have gone; and I shall not prevent myself in what remains by any further repetitions; but shall now proceed to the third and last thing proposed for the prosecution of the first proposition, which was to shew by what ways and means the hypocrite preserves and continues this false hope. And here we must observe, that those methods by which he first gets It have in them also a natural fitness to continue, cherish, and foment it: the same thing being usually the producing and the preserving cause; as the parent that begot the child will also foster and maintain it.

But I shall instance in three ways more especially, by which the hypocrite keeps up and continues those hopes, which upon the former false grounds he took up.

1. The first is, by keeping up a course of external obedience, and abstaining from gross, scandalous sins. Now the hypocrite’s confidence having no reality or ground in being, but only an imaginary foundation in his own apprehensions, it concerns him by all means to keep fair with conscience; forasmuch as that has the keeping of, and the power over all his contents. And it is withal of a lively, active nature, apt to discern sin, and apt to pursue and vex the soul for it; it will be flying in a man’s face, if not pacified, or at least deluded, by some seeming pursuit of religion. It is to the soul as the disease called the wolf to the body; if it be not continually fed, it will gnaw and prey upon the body itself, devour and consume the flesh. So if conscience be not gratified by some outward services, it will recoil upon the soul, and with much rage and bitterness torment and feed upon that.

Wherefore the hypocrite, that his conscience may not pass the condemning sentence upon him, will be often bribing it with some specious outward performances: and that he may pacify it, his chief work and business must be to possess it with this persuasion, that he is in a state of grace: which being that, which the scripture in other words calls spiritual life, it does by consequence imply in it two things; first, the principle and fountain of this life, which is faith: and this the hypocrite thinks himself endued with, from his fore mentioned mistakes about conversion. The second is the acting and exercise of this principle, which is called gospel obedience; and of this the hypocrite must endeavour to assure himself by his behaviour, in the continued tract and course of his life. Hereupon he is careful to conform himself to the exact letter of the law, and not to pursue those practices that carry in them an open, barefaced opposition to it. And so long as he does this, his conscience is silent, and his hope continues.

The young man in the gospel was a pregnant instance of this, who, reflecting upon his strict and unblameable conversation according to the several precepts of the law, vaunted himself in that confident reply to Christ in Matth. xix. 20, All these things have I kept from my youth. See St. Paul also before his conversion: questionless his hopes of heaven were as full and fair, as large and promising, as his heart could desire, and the foundation of them all (as we may collect from his own writings) was only his external conformity to the words of the law. Philipp. iii. 6, Touching the righteousness (says he) that is in the law, I was blameless. That is, according to the doctrine of the pharisees, of which sect he was, he placed a legal righteousness in abstaining from those external commissions of sin, that were prohibited in the letter of the law, and in the performance of those outward acts of duty that were there enjoined: whereupon, leading his conversation in an accurate observance of the outward letter, he pronounces himself blameless; and therefore, doubtless, while he thought himself thus blameless, he had all those hopes of happiness that it is natural for a person, that thinks himself blameless, to entertain. And that he gathered this opinion of himself and of his condition only from his fulfilling the outward letter, without insisting upon the inward, spiritual, stricter part of it, is clear and manifest from Rom. vii. 7, I had not known sin (says he) but by the taw: for I had not known Inst, unless the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. In which words he considers the law not barely according to the letter, but according to the spiritual scope and intention of it: and though the law taken in the former sense did acquit and absolve, yet in this latter sense it did condemn him. And the reason is, because the law considered in the letter did only regulate external actions: but, thus considered, it was a searcher into, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart; and consequently did arraign the very desires of sin, the first risings and movings of concupiscence.

Now that this external obedience to the law, and refraining from gross, notorious sins, is a singular preservative of the hypocrite’s hope, and a strong maintainer of his confidence, as it has been sufficiently proved by these scripture-instances; so the same is yet further manifest from that strange method that God has sometimes used for the conversion of formal hypocrites. He has let them fall into some gross, open, scandalous sin, the cry of which has exceedingly troubled and disquieted them, and beat them out of all those refuges of hope, which the former civility of their conversation had afforded them. Whereupon, being utterly bereaved of their confidence, God has took this occasion to let into their hearts a full sense of all their sins, even so far as to discover and rip open to them their sinful nature, their original corruption, and thereby to convert and cause them to repair to Christ, and by a lively faith cast all their hopes upon his satisfaction. And no doubt but it was upon this account that our Saviour said, that the publicans and harlots, persons of scandalous lives and prostitute reputations, yet went to heaven sooner than those glorious but rotten counterfeits, the scribes and pharisees. This therefore is the first way by which the hypocrite continues and preserves his false hope, viz. by the civility and outwardly blameless carriage of his conversation.

2. The second way by which the hypocrite keeps up his hopes, and maintains the good opinion he has conceived of his spiritual estate, is by comparing himself with others, who are openly vitious, and apparently worse than himself. There is no way more effectual for a man to argue himself into a delusion. It is an easy matter to enhance our apprehensions of the value of any thing, while there is a worse in our view, Clipt money may be accounted good, if compared to counterfeit. The hypocrite thinks himself religious, not from any goodness of his own, but from the badness of others. he raises a structure of reputed holiness upon the deplorable ruins of other men’s, and so entertains both hope and comfort not upon judgment, but comparison.

But as in other things comparisons are justly accounted odious, so here they are dangerous and pernicious. For it is this that makes him overrate his condition, and set that price upon it that God will never come up to. This makes him overvalue his own estate, and despise others; while he should pity and lament theirs, and amend his own.

This was the chief ground of the pharisee’s hope and confidence, that he was not as other men; an adulterer, covetous, swearer, or the like. When he sees the enormous intemperance of the drunkard, and compares it with his own strictness, he blesses himself with all the promises and assurances of heaven, because he sees the other directly posting to hell. When he sees the open profaneness of some, then he reflects upon his own religious duties and fastings, and so by a fallacious comparison concludes himself happy, because he sees another very miserable. He does not measure the holiness of his actions by their conformity to the law of God, but by their unconformity to the actions of others. In short, the hypocrite could never with any colour of confidence think himself holy, if others were not exceeding wicked.

But he that is apt to overvalue himself upon such deceiving grounds, and to owe his perfection not to any worth of his own, but to a foil, should consider, that sin admits of a large latitude of degrees, the least of which will ruin and condemn as surely, though not as deeply, as the greatest; and withal, that there are as many degrees of sinners as of sins. There are many paths in the broad way, some of which are more cleanly, some more foul; yet they all tend to the same end: and those shall in the issue as certainly arrive at hell, that tread the cleanlier paths of a refined hypocrisy, as those that trash through the mire and dirt of the grossest abominations. And therefore let not the hypocrite think himself in a good condition, because others are in a worse; let him not compare his life to theirs, but let him rather bring and compare it to the law and to the testimony, and there he shall read the vanity of his hopes, the deplorable defects of his most exact righteousness, and find that it is infinitely more below the perfect purity required in God’s commands, than it is above the foulest practices of the most scandalous, shameless transgressors.

3. The third way by which the hypocrite keeps up and maintains his hopes, is by forbearing to make a strict and impartial trial of his estate. That which first raised his hope, I shew, was ignorance; and that which continues and foments ignorance is want of self-trial. He that would thoroughly under stand himself must first thoroughly try himself. For it is this that dives into the retired depths of a deceitful heart, that does (as it were) sift and winnow the soul, and singles out the precious from the vile, that before lay in a confused heap, and placing them under a distinct view of the judgment, gives it a full and a clear prospect into them.

No wonder if the hypocrite discerns not his condition, when he never turns his eyes inwards by a thorough faithful examination. For as in a trade a man may go on and traffic, thinking himself to be rich, when indeed he is poor and near breaking, only because he does not examine his stock, nor take a survey of his accounts, so is it in the hypocrite’s profession of religion; he proceeds in it, and thinks himself in a thriving condition, while in the mean time he withers and decays, and is near to cursing: and all this befalls him because he considers not whether he has a sufficient stock of grace to carry him through his Christian profession. A man must descend into himself, and retreat into his own bosom by a severe inquiry, or live and die a stranger to his spiritual estate, and at as great a distance from his own heart as that is from a sure peace. We know how apt every man is to think his case good, and such as will abide the law, till the weakness of it be made manifest in the trial. The rich man (says Solomon) is wise in his own conceit; but he that has understanding searches him out. And so may it be said of the hypocrite, that he conceits himself holy and happy, and in a state of grace and favour with God, till such time as an awakened conscience searches him out, and discovers to him the vanity of his groundless imaginations.

The foulest soul may think itself fair and beautiful, till it comes to view its deformity in the glass of God’s word. No man can discover the depth and danger of his spiritual wounds but by searching them. But it is not to be wondered, that an hypocrite is so fearful to engage in this work; for he has a shrewd suspicion that it will overthrow and put an end to all his comforts: and every man is naturally averse from seeking after that, which he is unwilling to find. He that would fain seem holy, will hardly be brought to set about that duty, that will certainly convince him of his unholiness. But how irksome and unpleasing soever this work is, the hypocrite must know that it comes authorized both with God’s counsel and command; and I shall here add only this argument to enforce this duty upon him, that if his hopes and confidence will not abide the examination of his own conscience, he must not expect that they should ever endure the trial of God’s tribunal.

And thus much for the third way or means by which the hypocrite continues and preserves his false hope; which was the last thing proposed for the prosecution of the first proposition: I proceed now to the

Second, viz. That the hypocrite’s fairest and most promising expectation of a future happiness will in the end vanish into miserable disappointment.

For the prosecution of which, I shall,

SERMON XLV.

PSALM xxxix. 9.

I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because thou didst it.

IF we would give one general account of all the duties that are incumbent upon a Christian, we shall find them reducible to these three, faith, obedience, and patience; and the vital principle that animates and runs through them all is submission. Faith being a submission of our understanding to what God commands us to believe: obedience being a submission of our will to what God commands us to do: and lastly, patience being a submission of the whole man to what God commands us to suffer. Concerning which excellent virtue, glorious things are every where spoken, not only by the penmen of holy writ, but also by the sons of reason and philosophy: and great elogies of it might be drawn, both from their writings and examples. But, as we need not, so we shall not seek for any beyond the compass of the church. And here we have this virtue represented to the full, in that great hero in the ways of God, king David; a person signalized with that eminent character, of being the man after God’s own heart, and therefore certainly a most fit example to make an impression upon ours.

It is impossible that a discourse of patience should ever be unseasonable: for to such as are in adversity, it will be a cordial to support them; and to such as are in prosperity, it will le an amulet to preserve them. For since no mortal man can be so happy, as to hold his happiness by a lease for life, every Christian, even in the height of his enjoyments, ought in habit, and disposition of mind, at least, to be a sufferer; that is, to have cast his resolutions into such a well ordered, confirmed posture, as no calamity, how sudden or great soever, shall be able to surprise or shock him, either in point of courage or submission. It is one of the arts of patience still to be beforehand with an affliction, and to expect that at all times which a man may endure at any and since the healthiest of men may be sick, it is but prudence, while they are well, to have a remedy about them.

In the text we have these two general parts.

1. David’s submissive deportment under a sharp affliction; I was dumb, I opened not my mouth.

2. The ground and reason of such his deportment, which was the procedure of that affliction from God; I opened not my mouth, because thou didst it.

And thus, the words being a full lecture of patience, recommending it to us by a great pattern, and consequently being designed to argue us into an absolute submission to the divine will, in our most pressing and severe distresses, we shall endeavour the prosecution of them in these two following things.

I. In declaring the nature and measures of this submission. And,

II. In shewing the reasons and arguments for it, as the suffering person stands related to God. And,

SERMON XLVI.

PSALM xxxix. 9.

I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because thou didst it.

I FORMERLY made an entrance into these words, and observed in them these two parts.

1. David’s submissive deportment under a sharp affliction: I was dumb, I opened not my mouth.

2. The ground and reason of such his deportment, which was the procedure of that affliction from God: I opened not my mouth, because thou didst it.

And so I shewed the words were a full lecture of patience, recommending to us a great virtue by a great example, and consequently designed to argue us into an absolute, entire submission to the divine will, in our most pressing and severe distress. The prosecution of them I cast under these two general heads.

I. To give some account of the nature and measures of this submission.

II. To shew the reasons and arguments for it, as the suffering person stands related to God.

The first of these I have already despatched, and proceed now to the second; which is to shew, what reasons and arguments may be produced for the submission here spoken of, as the suffering person stands related to God. And for this, I think, we may lead our way with this general assertion; that there is no thought, which a man can possibly conceive either of God or of himself aright, but will afford a strong argument to enforce this submission upon us. He that duly considers both what God is, and what he himself is, can need no other demonstration of the infinite folly and absurdity of op posing or contending with him. But yet to give light and life to this general proposition by particular instances, there are six things in God that offer themselves to our consideration; which are so many invincible arguments to quiet and compose all those unruly motions, that are apt to disturb the spirit of a man, when God by any severe passage of his providence calls him to a state of suffering: and this is certain, that every call from God to suffer, is a command also to submit.

(1.) The first is God’s irresistible power. And there are some who place God’s very right of sovereignty in the boundlessness of his power; affirming, that the great reason why God may do any thing, is because he can do any thing. But far be it from any sober person to discourse of the divine nature and actings upon the stock of such a principle. But yet to illustrate and make out the absurdity of any thing that looks like a non-submission or repugnancy to the afflicting hand of God, were it possible for us to imagine or suppose that God had no right to treat his creature in so severe a manner, yet the surpassing greatness of his power has rendered it impossible for the creature to receive any benefit by demurring to his right. Such a plea being like a poor conquered captive’s impleading a victorious sword, absolutely senseless and ridiculous; it being certainly absurd to resist, where it is impossible to conquer or escape. A good cause itself against an overpowering force, is an impotent, insignificant thing; impotent as to self-support, in significant as to success. For power is the great disposer of the issues and events of things; and wheresoever there is any effect, it is certain that some power or other is the cause. And therefore all acts of hostility or opposition upon a mischief done or offered suppose, in the person who makes the opposition, an opinion at least of power in himself able to repel or revenge that mischief; and all complaint supposes a likelihood of engaging the strength and power of such as hear it, in the help and vindication of him who makes it; and is indeed used only as a means or instrument to supply the defect of a man’s own personal power, by the conjunction of other men’s. But now, where neither of these considerations can take place, both resistance and complaint are utterly irrational: as in the case of the divine power’s dealing with man, it must needs be. For what is all the world to him that made the world? 1 Cor. x. 22, Do we provoke God to jealousy? are we stronger than he? All the nations, all the armies of the whole earth are to him but as the drop of the bucket, or the small dust of the balance: and can we possibly think or speak of things under a greater disparity? And if so, will reason allow that there should be any contention where there can le no proportion? He has done whatsoever pleased him both in heaven and earth, Psal. cxxxv. 6. As soon as his will gives the word, his power executes. No god can deliver as he can, says Nebuchadnezzar, Dan. iii. 29; nor can any one destroy as he can, says our Saviour, Matth. x. 28. He gives away kingdoms and empires, disposes of crowns and sceptres, with the breath of his mouth. And after all this, can a pitiful piece of animated dirt be fit to quarrel and expostulate with a power infinitely greater than his very thoughts, and therefore certainly in no degree to be matched by his strengths? But to what purpose is it thus to argue or dispute the matter? to light a candle to the sun? or with much ado to prove a finite no ways equal to an infinite? For that in effect is the thing now before us; while we are disputing, whether a man may contest with, or ought to submit to his Maker; and whether he should be permitted to talk high and loud, who can do nothing; and to be still upon the offending part, who is wholly unable to defend himself. A man so behaving himself is nothing else but weakness and nakedness, setting itself in battle-array against omnipotence; an handful of dust and ashes, sending a challenge to all the host of heaven. For what else are words and talk against thunderbolts? and the weak, empty noise of a querulous rage, against him who can speak worlds, who could word heaven and earth out of nothing, and can when he pleases word them into nothing again?

What can we utter or express greater of the vast distance between God and man, than by a kind of tautology to say, that God is God, and man is man! For it is certain that the first can have no predicate but himself; since he that is pure act, and perfect simplicity, can be said to be nothing, but by an identical repetition; in which both predicate and subject are no more than one and the same thing set forth in two several words: an evident demonstration, that words cannot keep pace with things, when we discourse of God. In short, since matters stand thus between God and us, let us consider what hands we are in, and what an irresistible gripe has hold of us; and let that teach us, even for our own sakes, to be quiet under it. There is indeed one, and but one way of encountering an infinite power; and that is, by an extraordinary and (if it were possible) an infinite patience.

(2.) The next thing to be considered in God, as another argument for our submission to him, is his absolute, unquestionable dominion and sovereignty over all things. And this, according to the true and exact notion of things, differs formally from his power, though sometimes they are unskilfully confounded. For the difference between them is as great, as between δύναμις and ἐξουσία, between strength and authority; between a bare ability to act, and a right to act; which may be often one without the other: for there may be force and power without authority, and a rightful authority without any force or power; both of which we have known by woful experience.

But to the subject before us. This dominion of God is founded upon the best, the greatest, and most undeniable title; which is that of creation and providence. It being infinitely reasonable, that the first cause should upon that account be the supreme governor; and that whatsoever has been made and preserved by God, should le also commanded by him.

And besides, as God is the first cause, so he is also the last end of all things; they terminate in him, as well as they issued from him; they were produced by his power, and designed for his pleasure: Rev. iv. 11, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honour, and power; for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created. God might have chose whether he would have made the world or no; for he had no need of it, to complete or add to his happiness, which was infinitely perfect within the compass of his own glorious being. Yet he was pleased by a most free and unconstrained motion of his own will, to communicate and diffuse some little shadows of those perfections upon the creatures, and more especially upon those nearer resemblances of himself, men and angels.

Upon which account it is certain, that God has the entire disposal both of our persons and concerns; which, giving him a full propriety in all that we are or have, it is also as certain that he can do us no wrong. God’s pleasure is his sufficient war rant, and therefore ought to be our undoubted law: for being vouched by the supremacy of heaven, there can be no appeal from it, no address to any higher tribunal; for as it is in Job ix. 12, Who may say unto God, What doest thou? It is not for the clay to expostulate with the potter, though, instead of making it a vessel of honour, he treads it under foot, from whence he took it.

Men indeed may contest their rights one against another; even an inferior against his superior: because there is none so absolutely superior to, or lord over another, but holds that superiority or preeminence by a limited right, and by concession from him, who is equally a lord and master to them both; and consequently will treat them as fellow-creatures and fellow-servants, and with an impartial hand exact an account of the behaviour of him who rules, as well as of him who obeys. But it is not so with God, who being absolutely first and supreme, must needs upon the same score also be absolutely unaccountable: for none can stand obliged to render an account of his actions to his inferiors; such as we all are to God, and that by vast and immeasurable disproportions.

(3.) Together with God’s irresistible power and his absolute dominion, let the afflicted person consider also his infinite and unfailing wisdom: that wisdom by which he first made the world, and by which he does and always will govern it: that wisdom by which all the strange events and odd contingencies which sometimes occur, are cast into a regular method and an exact order; though the short reach of sense and natural reason is not always able to fathom the contrivance, or to discern the rare and curious disposal of them.

But how much soever we are in the dark as to this, still we are sure, that a being essentially wise cannot do any thing but wisely. Our ignorance of the particular reason of God’s actings cannot infer or make them in the least unreasonable. It is not accounted discretion to quarrel or find fault with the actions of a wise man; and much less can it be so to question the proceedings of an infinitely wise God; who is wise without any mixture of folly or imperfection, a privilege granted to no created nature: for he has charged his very angels with folly, Job iv. 18. And be they ever so wise, it is certain that they are not wisdom itself.

It is arrogance in us to pretend so much as to understand the counsel of God, in his managing the great affairs of the world, and much more to blame or carp at them. Providence is more honoured by our admiration, than our inquiries: for these latter are for the most part the effects of pride, but always of curiosity; whereas the former always produces, or at least accompanies humility. We cannot pierce into the designs which God may have in every passage, every accident that befalls us; we cannot look through the long and intricate train of causes and effects, and see by what strange, mysterious ways the smallest things are oftentimes directed by a sure hand to an accomplishment of the greatest ends. Providence is nothing else but infinite power managed by infinite wisdom, and the divine knowledge displaying itself in practice.

The consideration of which alone, one would think, should be abundantly enough to compose all our murmurings and repinings under any calamity that can possibly happen to us; and to reduce us to an acquiescence in our present condition, be it what it will. For while we fret and repine at God’s will, do we not say in effect, that it is better for us to have our own? that is, in other words, that we are wiser than God, and could contrive and project things much more to our own advantage, if we had the disposal of them? Do we not as good as complain, that we are not took in as sharers with God in the government of the world? that our advice is not taken, and our consent had, in all the great changes which he is pleased to bring over us? These indeed are things that no man utters in words; but whosoever refuses to submit himself to the hand of God, speaks them aloud by his behaviour; which by all the intelligent part of the world is looked upon as a surer indication of man’s mind, than any verbal declaration of it whatsoever. God, perhaps, is pleased to visit us with some heavy affliction; and shall we now, out of a due reverence of his all-governing wisdom, patiently endure it? or out of a blind presumption of our own endeavour by some sinister way or other to rid ourselves from it? Passengers in a ship always submit to their pilot’s discretion, but especially in a storm; and shall we, whose passage lies through a greater and more dangerous deep, pay a less deference to that great pilot, who not only understands, but also commands the seas?

It is sometimes so far from being a privilege for a man to be governed by his own will without the conduct of a wiser, that it is indeed his misery, and his great unhappiness, and a direct throwing himself into the very mouth of danger: forasmuch as no human wit or wisdom can always distinguish between what will help, and what will hurt us. If children might have their own wills, and be their own choosers, they would certainly choose poison before a cordial, if that were but sweet, and this bitter. And so it is with men themselves in reference to the dealings of God’s providence; every dispensation of it may prove our physic or our bane, according as it is ordered and applied. God can make our most pleasing and promising enjoyments become a plague and a destruction to us, and turn our very table into a snare: and, on the other hand, he can make us gather grapes of thorns, and figs of thistles, and reap comfort from the sharpest affliction. God’s wisdom still warrants all his actions to be for the best.