1. Of pride, the first capital lust; its rise.--2. Its
definition and distinction.--3. That an inordinate desire of
knowledge in Adam, introduced man's misery.--4. He thereby lost
his integrity.--5. Knowledge puffs up.--6. The evil effects of
false, and the benefit of true knowledge.--7. Cain's example
a proof in the case.--8. The Jews' pride in pretending to be
wiser than Moses, God's servant, in setting their post by God's
post.--9. The effect of which was the persecution of the true
prophets.--10. The divine knowledge of Christ brought peace on
earth.--11. Of the blind guides, the priests, and the mischief
they have done.--12. The fall of Christians, and the pride they
have taken in it, hath exceeded the Jews; under the profession
of their new-moulded Christianity, they have murdered the
witness of the Lord Jesus.--13. The angels sang peace on earth
at the birth of the Lord of meekness and humility: but the pride
of the Pharisees withstood and calumniated him.--14. As Adam and
the Jews lost themselves by their ambition, so the Christians
losing the fear of God, grew creed and worship-makers, with this
injunction, Conform or burn.--15. The evil effects of this in
Christendom, so called.--16. The way of recovery out of such
miserable defection.
I. Having thus discharged my conscience against that part of
unlawful self, that fain would be a Christian, a believer, a
saint, whilst a plain stranger to the cross of Christ, and the
holy exercises of it; and in that briefly discovered what is true
worship, and the use and business of the holy cross therein, to
render its performance pleasing to Almighty God; I shall now, the
same Lord assisting me, more largely prosecute that other part of
unlawful self, which fills the study, care, and conversation of
the world, presented to us in these three capital lusts, that is
to say, pride, avarice, and luxury; from whence all other mischiefs
daily flow, as streams from their proper fountains: the mortifying
of which makes up the other; and indeed a very great part of the
work of the true cross; and though last in place, yet first in
experience and duty: which done, it introduces in the room of those
evil habits, the blessed effects of that so much needed reformation,
to wit, mortification, humility, temperance, love, patience, and
heavenly-mindedness, with all other graces of the Spirit, becoming
followers of the perfect Jesus, that most heavenly man.
The care and love of all mankind are either directed to God or
themselves. Those that love God above all, are ever humbling self
to his commands, and only love self in subserviency to him that is
Lord of all. But those who are declined from that love to God, are
lovers of themselves more than God: for supreme love must centre in
one of these two. To that inordinate self-love, the apostle rightly
joins proud and high-minded. (2 Tim. iii. 2, 4.) For no sooner had
the angels declined their love, duty and reverence to God, than they
inordinately loved and valued themselves; which made them exceed
their station, and aspire above the order of their creation. This
was their pride, and this sad defection their dismal fall; who are
reserved in chains of darkness unto the judgment of the great day of
God.
II. Pride, that pernicious evil, which begins this chapter, did
also begin the misery of mankind: a most mischievous quality;
and so commonly known by its motions and sad effects, that every
unmortified breast carries its definition in it. However, I will
say, in short, that pride is an excess of self-love, joined with an
undervaluing of others, and a desire of dominion over them: the most
troublesome thing in the world. There are four things by which it
hath made itself best known to mankind, the consequences of which
have brought a misery equal to its evil. The first is, an inordinate
pursuit of knowledge; the second, an ambitious craving and seeking
after power; the third, an extreme desire of personal respect
and deference: the last excess is that of worldly furniture and
ornaments. To the just and true witness of the eternal God, placed
in the souls of all people, I appeal as to the truth of these things.
III. To the first, it is plain, that an inordinate desire of
knowledge introduced man's misery, and brought an universal lapse
from the glory of his primitive state. Adam would needs be wiser
than God had made him. It did not serve his turn to know his
Creator, and give him that holy homage his being and innocency
naturally engaged and excited him too; nor to have an understanding
above all the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, and
the fishes of the sea, joined with a power to rule over all the
visible creation of God; but he must be as wise as God too. This
unwarrantable search, and as foolish as unjust ambition, made him
unworthy of the blessings he received from God. This drives him out
of paradise; and instead of being lord of the whole world, Adam
becomes the wretchedest vagabond of the earth.
IV. The lamentable consequence of this great defection, has been an
exchange of innocency for guilt, and a paradise for a wilderness.
But, which is yet worse, in this state Adam and Eve had got another
god than the only true and living God: and he that enticed them
to all this mischief, furnished them with a vain knowledge, and
pernicious wisdom: the skill of lies and equivocations, shifts,
evasions, and excuses. They had lost their plainness and sincerity,
and from an upright heart, the image in which God had made man,
he became a crooked, twining, twisting serpent; the image of that
unrighteous spirit, to whose temptations he yielded up, with his
obedience, his paradisaical happiness.
V. So that fallen Adam's knowledge of God stood no more in a daily
experience of the love and work of God in his soul, but in a notion
of what he once did know and experience: which being not the true
and living wisdom that is from above, but a mere picture, it
cannot preserve man in purity; but puffs up, makes people proud,
high-minded, and impatient of contradiction. This was the state of
the apostate Jews before Christ came; and has been the condition of
apostate Christians ever since he came: their religion standing,
some bodily performances excepted, either in what they once knew of
the work of God in themselves, and which they have revolted from; or
in an historical belief, and an imaginary conception and paraphrase
upon the experiences and prophecies of such holy men and women of
God, as in all ages have deserved the style and character of his
true children.
VI. As such a knowledge of God cannot be true, so by experience we
find, that it ever brings forth the quite contrary fruits to the
true wisdom. For as this "is first pure, then peaceable, gentle,
and easy to be entreated;" (James, iii. 17;) so the knowledge of
degenerated and unmortified men is first impure: for it came by the
commission of evil, and is held in an evil and impure conscience
in them that disobey God's laws, and that daily do those things
which they ought not to do; and for which they stand condemned
before God's judgment-seat in the souls of men: the light of whose
presence searches the most hidden things of darkness, the most
secret thoughts, and concealed inclinations of ungodly men. This
is the science, falsely so called: and as it is impure, so it is
unpeaceable, cross, and hard to be entreated; froward, perverse, and
persecuting; jealous that any should be better than they, and hating
and abusing those that are.
VII. It was this pride made Cain a murderer: (Gen. iv. 8:) it is
a spiteful quality; full of envy and revenge. What! was not his
religion and worship as good as his brother's? He had all the
exterior parts of worship; he offered as well as Abel; and the
offering of itself might be as good: but it seems the heart that
offered it was not. So long ago did God regard the interior worship
of the soul. Well, what was the consequence of this difference?
Cain's pride stomached it: he could not bear to be outdone by his
brother. He grew wrathful, and resolved to vindicate his offering
by revenging the refusal of it upon his brother's life: and without
any regard to natural affection, or the low and early condition of
mankind, he barbarously dyed his hands in his brother's blood.
VIII. The religion of the apostatized Jews did no better; for,
having lost the inward life, power, and spirit of the law, they
were puffed up with that knowledge they had: and their pretences to
Abraham, Moses, and the promises of God, in that frame, served only
to blow them up into an insufferable pride, arrogancy, and cruelty.
For they could not bear true vision when it came to visit them; and
entertained the messengers of their peace as if they had been wolves
and tigers.
IX. Yea, it is remarkable, the false prophets, the great engineers
against the true ones, were ever sure to persecute them as false;
and, by their interest with earthly princes, or the poor seduced
multitude, made them the instruments of their malice. Thus it was,
that one holy prophet was sawn asunder, another stoned to death,
&c. So proud and obstinate is false knowledge, and the aspirers
after it; which made holy Stephen cry out, "Ye stiff-necked and
uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost:
as did your fathers, so do ye." (Acts, vii. 51.)
X. The true knowledge came with the joy of angels, singing, "Peace
on earth, and good-will towards men;" (Luke, ii. 14;) the false
knowledge entertained the message with calumnies: Christ must needs
be an impostor; and that must prove him so, _to wit_, his power
of working miracles; which was that which proved the contrary.
They frequently sought to kill him: which at last they wickedly
accomplished. But what was the chief motive to it? Why, he cried out
against their hypocrisy, the broad phylacteries, the honour they
sought of men. To be short, they give the reason themselves in these
words: If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: that
is, he will take away our credit with the people; they will adhere
to him, and desert us; and so we shall lose our power and reputation
with the multitude.
XI. And the truth is, he came to level their honour, to overthrow
their Rabbiship, and by his grace to bring the people to that inward
knowledge of God, which they, by transgression, were departed from;
that so they might see the deceitfulness of their blind guides, who
by their vain traditions had made void the righteousness of the
law: and who were so far from being the true doctors and lively
expounders of it, that in reality they were the children of the
devil, who was a proud liar and cruel murderer from the beginning.
XII. Their pride in false knowledge having made them incapable of
receiving the simplicity of the gospel, Christ thanks his Father,
that he had hid the mysteries of it from the wise and prudent, and
revealed them to babes. (Matt. xi. 25.) It was this false wisdom
swelled the minds of the Athenians to that degree, that they
despised the preaching of the apostle Paul as a vain and foolish
thing. But that apostle who, of all the rest, had an education in
the learning of those times, bitterly reflects on that wisdom, so
much valued by Jews and Greeks; "Where," says he, "is the wise?
Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not
God made foolish the wisdom of this world?" (1 Cor. i. 20.) And
he gives a good reason for it, "That no flesh should glory in his
presence." (Verse 29.) Which is to say, God will stain the pride
of man in false knowledge, that he should have nothing on this
occasion to be proud of: it should be owing only to the revelation
of the Spirit of God. The apostle goes further, and affirms, "That
the world by wisdom knew not God:" (verse 21:) that is, it was so
far from a help, that as men use it, it was a hindrance to the true
knowledge of God. And in his first epistle to his beloved Timothy,
he concludes thus: "O Timothy! keep that which is committed to thy
trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of
science, falsely so called." (Tim. vi. 20.) This was the sense of
apostolical times, when the divine grace gave the true knowledge of
God, and was the guide of Christians.
XIII. Well, but what has been the success of those ages that
followed the apostolical? Any whit better than that of the Jewish
times? Not one jot. They have exceeded them; as with their pretences
to greater knowledge, so in their degeneracy from the true Christian
life: for though they had a more excellent pattern than the Jews,
to whom God spoke by Moses his servant, he speaking to them by his
beloved Son, the express image of his substance, the perfection
of all meekness and humility; and though they seemed addicted to
nothing more than an adoration of his name, and a veneration for
the memory of his blessed disciples and apostles, yet so great was
their defection from the inward power and life of Christianity
in the soul, that their respect was little more than formal and
ceremonious. For notwithstanding they, like the Jews, were mighty
zealous in garnishing their sepulchres, and curious in carving their
images; not only keeping with pretence what might be the relics of
their persons, but recommending a thousand things as relics, which
are purely fabulous, and very often ridiculous, and to be sure
altogether unchristian; yet as to the great and weighty things of
the Christian law, viz. love, meekness, and self-denial, they were
degenerated. They grew high-minded, proud, boasters, without natural
affection, curious, and controversial, ever perplexing the church
with doubtful questions; filling the people with disputations,
strife, and wrangling, drawing them into parties, till at last
they fell into blood: as if they had been the worse for being once
Christians.
O the miserable state of these pretended Christians! that instead of
Christ's and his apostles' doctrine, of loving enemies, and blessing
them that curse them, they should teach the people, under the notion
of Christian zeal, most inhumanly to butcher one another; and
instead of suffering their own blood to be shed for the testimony
of Jesus, they should shed the blood of the witnesses of Jesus for
heretics. Thus that subtle serpent, or crafty evil spirit, that
tempted Adam out of innocency, and the Jews from the law of God,
has beguiled the Christians, by lying vanities, to depart from the
Christian law of holiness, and so they are become slaves to him; for
he rules in the hearts of the children of disobedience.
XIV. And it is observable, that as pride, which is ever followed by
superstition and obstinacy, put Adam upon seeking a higher station
than God placed him in; and as the Jews, out of the same pride, to
outdo their pattern, given them of God by Moses upon the mount,
taught for doctrines their own traditions, insomuch that those that
refused conformity to them, ran the hazard of Crucify, crucify:
so the nominal Christians, from the same sin of pride, with great
superstition and arrogance, have introduced, instead of a spiritual
worship and discipline, that which is evidently ceremonious and
worldly; with such innovations and traditions of men as are the
fruit of the wisdom that is from below; witness their numerous and
perplexed councils and creeds, with Conform or burn, at the end of
them.
XV. And as this unwarrantable pride set them first at work, to
pervert the spirituality of the Christian worship, making it rather
to resemble the shadowy religion of the Jews, and the gaudy worship
of the Egyptians, than the great plainness and simplicity of the
Christian institution, which is neither to resemble that of the
mountain, nor the other of Jerusalem; so has the same pride and
arrogancy spurred them on, by all imaginable cruelties to maintain
this great Diana of theirs. No meek supplications, nor humble
remonstrances, of those that kept close to primitive purity in
worship and doctrine, could prevail with these nominal Christians
to dispense with the imposition of their unapostolical traditions;
but as the ministers and bishops of these degenerate Christians
left their painful visitation and care over Christ's flock, and
grew ambitious, covetous, and luxurious, resembling rather worldly
potentates, than the humble-spirited and mortified followers of the
blessed Jesus; so almost every history tells us, with what pride and
cruelty, blood and butchery, and that with unusual and exquisite
tortures, they have persecuted the holy members of Christ out of
the world; and that upon such anathemas, as far as they could,
they have disappointed them of the blessing of heaven too. These,
true Christians call martyrs; but the clergy, like the persecuting
Jews, have styled them blasphemers and heretics; in which they
have fulfilled the prophecy of our Lord Jesus Christ, who did
not say, that they should think they do the gods good service to
kill the Christians, his dear followers, which might refer to the
persecutions of the idolatrous Gentiles; (John, xvi. 2;) but that
they should think they do God good service to kill them: which
shows, that they should be such as professedly owned the true God,
as the apostate Christians have all along pretended to do. So that
they must be those wolves, that the apostle foretold, should arise
out of themselves, and worry the flock of Christ, (Acts, xx. 29,)
after the great falling away should commence, that was foretold by
him, and made necessary, in order to the proving of the faithful,
and the revelation of the great mystery of iniquity.
I shall conclude this head with this assertion, that it is too
undeniable a truth, where the clergy have been most in power and
authority, and have had the greatest influence upon princes and
states, there have been most confusions, wrangles, bloodshed,
sequestrations, imprisonments, and exiles: to the justifying of
which I call the testimony of the records of all times. How it is in
our age I leave to the experience of the living; yet there is one
demonstration that can hardly fail us; the people are not converted,
but debauched, to a degree that time will not allow us an example.
The worship of Christendom is visible, ceremonious, and gaudy; the
clergy, ambitious of worldly preferments, under the pretence of
spiritual promotion; making the earthly revenues of churchmen much
the reason of their function; being almost ever sure to leave the
present smaller livings, to solicit and obtain benefices of larger
title and income. So that with their pride and avarice, which good
old Peter foresaw would be their snares, they have drawn after them
ignorance, misery, and irreligion upon Christendom.
XVI. The way of recovery from this miserable defection is to come
to a saving knowledge of religion; that is, an experience of the
divine work of God in the soul: to obtain which be diligent to obey
the grace that appears in thy soul, O man! that brings salvation;
(Tit. ii. 2, 11, 12, 14;) it turns thee out of the broad way into
the narrow way; from thy lusts to thy duty; from sin to holiness;
from Satan to God. Thou must see and abhor self: thou must watch,
and thou must pray, and thou must fast; thou must not look at thy
tempter, but at thy preserver; avoid ill company, retire to thy
solitudes, and be a chaste pilgrim in this evil world: and thus thou
wilt arrive at the knowledge of God and Christ, that brings eternal
life to the soul: a well-grounded assurance from what a man feels
and knows within himself: such shall not be moved with evil tidings.