out of a principle of slavish fear. Many men perform those duties
that the law enjoins, with the same sentiments that slaves perform
their drudgery; and are constrained in their duties by no other
considerations but those of the whip and the cudgel. Since, therefore,
they do it with reluctancy, and secretly murmur while they seem to
obey, they would be willing that both the command were recalled, and
the master that commands them were in another world. The spirit of
adoption makes men act towards God as a father, a spirit of bondage
only eyes him as a judge. Those that look upon their superiors as
tyrannical, will not be much concerned in their welfare; and would be
more glad to have their nails pared, than be under perpetual fear of
them. Many men regard not the Infinite Goodness in the service of him,
but consider him as cruel, tyrannical, injurious to their liberty.
Adam’s posterity are not free from the sentiments of their common
father, till they are regenerate. You know what conceit was the hammer
whereby the hellish Jael struck the nail into our first parents, which
conveyed death, together with the same imagination to all their
posterity (Gen. iii. 5): “God knows that in the day you eat thereof,
your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and
evil.” Alas, poor souls! God knew what he did when he forbade you that
fruit; he was jealous you should be too happy; it was cruelty in him
to deprive you of a food so pleasant and delicious. The apprehension
of the severity of God’s commands riseth up no less in desires that
there were no God over us, than Adam’s apprehension of envy in God
for the restraint of one tree, moved him to attempt to be equal with
God: fear is as powerful to produce the one in his posterity, as
pride was to produce the other in the common root. When we apprehend
a thing hurtful to us, we desire so much evil to it, as may render it
incapable of doing us the hurt we fear. As we wish the preservation
of what we love or hope for, so we are naturally apt to wish the
not being of that whence we fear some hurt or trouble. We must not
understand this as if any man did formally wish the destruction of
God, as God. God in himself is an infinite mirror of goodness and
ravishing loveliness; he is infinitely good, and so universally good,
and nothing but good; and is therefore so agreeable to a creature,
as a creature, that it is impossible that the creature, while it
bears itself to God as a creature, should be guilty of this, but
thirst after him and cherish every motion to him. As no man wishes the
destruction of any creature, as a creature, but as it may conduce to
something which he counts may be beneficial to himself; so no man doth,
nor perhaps can wish the cessation of the being of God, as God; for
then he must wish his own being to cease also; but as he considers
him clothed with some perfections, which he apprehends as injurious
to him, as his holiness in forbidding sin, his justice in punishing
sin; and God being judged in those perfections, contrary {a99} to what
the revolted creature thinks convenient and good for himself, he may
wish God stripped of those perfections, that thereby he may be free
from all fear of trouble and grief from him in his fallen state. In
wishing God deprived of those, he wishes God deprived of his being;
because God cannot retain his deity without a love of righteousness,
and hatred of iniquity; and he could not testify his love to the
one, or his loathing of the other, without encouraging goodness, and
witnessing his anger against iniquity. Let us now appeal to ourselves,
and examine our own consciences. Did we never please ourselves
sometimes in the thoughts, how happy we should be, how free in our
vain pleasures, if there were no God? Have we not desired to be our
own lords, without control, subject to no law but our own, and be
guided by no will but that of the flesh? Did we never rage against
God under his afflicting hand? Did we never wish God stripped of his
holy will to command, and his righteous will to punish? &c.
Thus much for the general. For the proof of this, many considerations
will bring in evidence; most may be reduced to these two generals: Man
would set himself up, first, as his own rule; secondly, as his own end
and happiness.
I. Man would set himself up as his own rule instead of God. This will
be evidenced in this method.
1. Man naturally disowns the rule God sets him. 2. He owns any other
rule rather than that of God’s prescribing. 3. These he doth in order
to the setting himself up as his own rule. 4. He makes himself not
only his own rule, but he would make himself the rule of God, and give
laws to his Creator.
First, Man naturally disowns the rule God sets him. It is all one to
deny his royalty, and to deny his being. When we disown his authority,
we disown his Godhead. It is the right of God to be the sovereign of
his creatures, and it must be a very loose and trivial assent that
such men have to God’s superiority over them, (and consequently to
the excellency of his being, upon which that authority is founded)
who are scarce at ease in themselves, but when they are invading his
rights, breaking his bands, casting away his cords, and contradicting
his will. Every man naturally is a son of Belial, would be without a
yoke, and leap over God’s enclosures; and in breaking out against his
sovereignty, we disown his being, as God, for to be God and sovereign
are inseparable; he could not be God, if he were not supreme; nor
could he be a Creator without being a Lawgiver. To be God and yet
inferior to another, is a contradiction. To make rational creatures
without prescribing them a law, is to make them without holiness,
wisdom and goodness.
1. There is in man naturally an unwillingness to have any
acquaintance with the rule God sets him (Psalm xiv. 2): “None that
did understand and seek God.” The refusing instruction and casting
his Word behind the back is a part of atheism.[156] We are heavy in
hearing the instructions either of law or gospel,[157] and slow in
the apprehension of what we hear. The people that God had hedged in
from the wilderness of the world for his own garden, were foolish
{a100} and did not know God; were sottish and had no understanding of
him.[158] The law of God is accounted a strange thing;[159] a thing
of a different climate, and a far country from the heart of man;
wherewith the mind of man had no natural acquaintance, and had no
desire to have any; or they regarded it as a sordid thing: what God
accounts great and valuable, they account mean and despicable. Men
may show a civility to a stranger, but scarce contract an intimacy:
there can be no amicable agreement between the holy will of God and
the heart of a depraved creature: one is holy, the other unholy; one
is universally good, the other stark naught. The purity of the Divine
rule renders it nauseous to the impurity of a carnal heart. Water and
fire may as well friendly kiss each other and live together without
quarrelling and hissing, as the holy will of God and the unregenerate
heart of a fallen creature.
The nauseating a holy rule is an evidence of atheism in the heart, as
the nauseating wholesome food is of putrefied phlegm in the stomach.
It is found more or less in every Christian, in the remainders,
though not in a full empire. As there is a law in his mind whereby he
delights in the law of God, so there is a law in his members whereby
he wars against the law of God (Rom. vii. 22, 23, 25). How predominant
is this loathing of the law of God, when corrupt nature is in its full
strength, without any principle to control it! There is in the mind of
such a one a darkness, whereby it is ignorant of it, and in the will
a depravedness, whereby it is repugnant to it. If man were naturally
willing and able to have an intimate acquaintance with, and delight
in the law of God, it had not been such a signal favor for God to
promise to “write the law in the heart.” A man may sooner engrave
the chronicle of a whole nation, or all the records of God in the
Scripture upon the hardest marble with his bare finger, than write one
syllable of the law of God in a spiritual manner upon his heart. For,
(1.) Men are negligent in using the means for the knowledge of God’s
will. All natural men are fools, who know not how to use the price
God puts into their hands;[160] they put not a due estimate upon
opportunities and means of grace, and account that law folly which is
the birth of an infinite and holy wisdom. The knowledge of God which
they may glean from creatures, and is more pleasant to the natural
gust of men, is not improved to the glory of God, if we will believe
the indictment the apostle brings against the Gentiles.[161] And most
of those that have dived into the depths of nature, have been more
studious of the qualities of the creatures, than of the excellency of
the nature, or the discovery of the mind of God in them; who regard
only the rising and motions of the star, but follow not with the wise
men, its conduct to the King of the Jews. How often do we see men
filled with an eager thirst for all other kind of knowledge, that
cannot acquiesce in a twilight discovery, but are inquisitive into
the causes and reasons of effects, yet are contented with a weak and
languishing knowledge of God and his law, and are easily tired with
the proposals of them! He now that nauseates the means whereby he
may come to know and obey God, has no intention to make the {a101}
law of God his rule. There is no man that intends seriously an end,
but he intends means in order to that end: as when a man intends the
preservation or recovery of his health, he will intend means in order
to those ends, otherwise he cannot be said to intend his health; so
he that is not diligent in using means to know the mind of God, has
no sound intention to make the will and law of God his rule. Is not
the inquiry after the will of God made a work by the bye, and fain
to lacquey after other concerns of an inferior nature, if it hath
any place at all in the soul? which is a despising the being of God.
The notion of the sovereignty of God bears the same date with the
notion of his Godhead; and by the same way that he reveals himself, he
reveals his authority over us: whether it be by creatures without, or
conscience within. All authority over rational creatures consists in
commanding and directing: the duty of rational creatures in compliance
with that authority consists in obeying. Where there is therefore a
careless neglect of those means which convey the knowledge of God’s
will and our duty, there is an utter disowning of God as our Sovereign
and our rule.
(2.) When any part of the mind and will of God breaks in upon men,
they endeavor to shake it off: as a man would a sergeant that comes
to arrest him, “they like not to retain God in their knowledge”
(Rom. i. 28). “A natural man receives not the things of the Spirit
of God;” that is, into his affection; he pusheth them back as men do
troublesome and importunate beggars: they have no kindness to bestow
upon it: they thrust with both shoulders against the truth of God,
when it presseth in upon them; and dash as much contempt upon it as
the Pharisees did upon the doctrine our Saviour directed against their
covetousness. As men naturally delight to be without God in the world,
so they delight to be without any offspring of God in their thoughts.
Since the spiritual palate of man is depraved, divine truth is
unsavory and ungrateful to us, till our taste and relish is restored
by grace: hence men damp and quench the motions of the Spirit to
obedience and compliance with the dictates of God; strip them of their
life and vigor, and kill them in the womb. How unable are our memories
to retain the substance of spiritual truth; but like sand in a glass,
put in at one part and runs out at the other! Have not many a secret
wish, that the Scripture had never mentioned some truths, or that they
were blotted out of the Bible, because they face their consciences,
and discourage those boiling lusts they would with eagerness and
delight pursue? Methinks that interruption John gives our Saviour
when he was upon the reproof of their pride, looks little better than
a design to divert him from a discourse so much against the grain,
by telling him a story of their prohibiting one to cast out devils,
because he followed not them.[162] How glad are men when they can
raise a battery against a command of God, and raise some smart
objection whereby they may shelter themselves from the strictness
of it!
(3.) When men cannot shake off the notices of the will and mind of God,
they have no pleasure in the consideration of them; which could not
possibly be, if there were a real and fixed design to own {a102} the
mind and law of God as our rule. Subjects or servants that love to
obey their prince and master, will delight to read and execute their
orders. The devils understand the law of God in their minds, but they
loathe the impressions of it upon their wills: those miserable spirits
are bound in chains of darkness, evil habits in their wills, that they
have not a thought of obeying that law they know. It was an unclean
beast under the law that did not chew the cud: it is a corrupt heart
that doth not chew truth by meditation. A natural man is said not to
know God, or the things of God; he may know them nationally, but he
knows them not affectionately. A sensual soul can have no delight
in a spiritual law. To be sensual and not to have the Spirit are
inseparable (Jude 19). Natural men may indeed meditate upon the law
and truth of God, but without delight in it; if they take any pleasure
in it, it is only as it is knowledge, not as it is a rule; for we
delight in nothing that we desire, but upon the same account that
we desire it. Natural men desire to know God and some part of his
will and law, not out of a sense of their practical excellency, but
a natural thirst after knowledge: and if they have a delight, it is
in the act of knowing, not in the object known, not in the duties
that stream from that knowledge; they design the furnishing their
understandings, not the quickening their affections,――like idle
boys that strike fire, not to warm themselves by the heat, but sport
themselves with the sparks; whereas a gracious soul accounts not only
his meditation, or the operations of his soul about God and his will
to be sweet, but he hath a joy in the object of that meditation.[163]
Many have the knowledge of God, who have no delight in him or his will.
Owls have eyes to perceive that there is a sun, but by reason of the
weakness of their sight have no pleasure to look upon a beam of it:
so neither can a man by nature love, or delight in the will of God,
because of his natural corruption. That law that riseth up in men
for conviction and instruction, they keep down under the power of
corruption; making their souls not the sanctuary, but prison of truth
(Rom. i. 18). They will keep it down in their hearts, if they cannot
keep it out of their heads, and will not endeavor to know and taste
the spirit of it.
(4.) There is, further, a rising and swelling of the heart against
the will of God. 1st. Internal. God’s law cast against a hard
heart, is like a ball thrown against a stone wall, by reason of the
resistance rebounding the further from it; the meeting of a divine
truth and the heart of man, is like the meeting of two tides, the
weaker swells and foams. We have a natural antipathy against a divine
rule, and therefore when it is clapped close to our consciences,
there is a snuffing at it, high reasonings against it, corruption
breaks out more strongly: as water poured on lime sets it on fire
by an _antiperistasis_, and the more water is cast upon it, the more
furiously it burns; or as the sunbeams shining upon a dunghill make
the steams the thicker, and the stench the noisomer, neither being
the positive cause of the smoke in the lime, or the stench in the
dunghill, but by accident the causes of the eruption: (Rom. vii. 8),
“But sin taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner
of concupiscence, for {a103} without the law sin was dead.” Sin was
in a languishing posture, as if it were dead, like a lazy garrison
in a city, till, upon an alarm from the adversary, it takes arms, and
revives its courage; all the sin in the heart gathers together its
force to maintain its standing, like the vapors of the night, which
unite themselves more closely to resist the beams of the rising
sun. Deep conviction often provokes fierce opposition; sometimes
disputes against a divine rule end in blasphemies: (Acts xiii. 45),
“contradicting and blaspheming” are coupled together. Men naturally
desire things that are forbidden, and reject things commanded, from
the corruption of nature, which affects an unbounded liberty, and
is impatient of returning under that yoke it hath shaken off, and
therefore rageth against the bars of the law, as the waves roar
against the restraint of a bank. When the understanding is dark, and
the mind ignorant, sin lies as dead; “A man scarce knows he hath such
motions of concupiscence in him, he finds not the least breath of wind,
but a full calm in his soul; but when he is awakened by the law, then
the viciousness of nature being sensible of an invasion of its empire,
arms itself against the divine law, and the more the command is urged,
the more vigorously it bends its strength, and more insolently lifts
up itself against it;”[164] he perceives more and more atheistical
lusts than before; “all manner of concupiscence,” more leprous and
contagious than before. When there are any motions to turn to God, a
reluctancy is presently perceived; atheistical thoughts bluster in the
mind like the wind, they know not whence they come, nor whither they
go; so unapt is the heart to any acknowledgment of God as his ruler,
and any re‑union with him. Hence men are said to resist the Holy Ghost
(Acts vii. 51), to fall against it, as the word signifies, as a stone,
or any ponderous body falls against that which lies in its way: they
would dash to pieces, or grind to powder that very motion which is
made for their instruction, and the Spirit too which makes it, and
that not from a fit of passion, but an habitual repugnance; “Ye always
resist,” &c. 2d. External. It is a fruit of atheism in the fourth
verse of this psalm, “Who eat up my people as they eat bread.” How
do the revelations of the mind of God meet with opposition! and the
carnal world like dogs bark against the shining of the moon; so much
men hate the light, that they spurn at the lanthorns that bear it;
and because they cannot endure the treasure, often fling the earthen
vessels against the ground wherein it is held. If the entrance of
truth render the market worse for Diana’s shrines, the whole city will
be in an uproar.[165] When Socrates upon natural principles confuted
the heathen idolatry, and asserted the unity of God, the whole cry of
Athens, a learned university, is against him; and because he opposed
the public received religion, though with an undoubted truth, he must
end his life by violence. How hath every corner of the world steamed
with the blood of those that would maintain the authority of God in
the world! The devil’s children will follow the steps of their father,
and endeavor to bruise the heel of divine truth, that would endeavor
to break the head of corrupt lust.
{a104} (5.) Men often seem desirous to be acquainted with the will of
God, not out of any respect to his will, and to make it their rule,
but upon some other consideration. Truth is scarce received as truth.
There is more of hypocrisy than sincerity in the pale of the church,
and attendance on the mind of God. The outward dowry of a religious
profession, makes it often more desirable than the beauty. Judas was a
follower of Christ for the bag, not out of any affection to the divine
revelation. Men sometime pretend a desire to be acquainted with the
will of God, to satisfy their own passions, rather than to conform to
God’s will; the religion of such is not the judgment of the man, but
the passion of the brute. Many entertain a doctrine for the person’s
sake, rather than a person for the doctrine’s sake, and believe a
thing because it comes from a man they esteem, as if his lips were
more canonical than Scripture. The Apostle implies in the commendation
he gives the Thessalonians,[166] that some receive the word for human
interest, not as it is in truth the word and will of God to command
and govern their consciences by its sovereign authority; or else they
have the “truth of God” (as St. James speaks of the faith of Christ)
“with respect of persons;”[167] and receive it not for the sake of
the fountain, but of the channel; so that many times the same truth
delivered by another, is disregarded, which, when dropping from the
fancy and mouth of a man’s own idol, is cried up as an oracle. This
is to make not God, but man the rule; for though we entertain that
which materially is the truth of God, yet not formally as his truth,
but as conveyed by one we affect; and that we receive a truth and
not an error, we owe the obligation to the honesty of the instrument,
and not to the strength and clearness of our own judgment. Wrong
considerations may give admittance to an unclean, as well as a clean
beast into the ark of the soul. That which is contrary to the mind of
God, may be entertained, as well as that which is agreeable. It is all
one to such that have no respect to God, what they have, as it is all
one to a sponge to suck up the foulest water or the sweetest wine,
when either is applied to it.
(6.) Many that entertain the notions of the will and mind of God,
admit them with unsettled and wavering affections. There is a great
levity in the heart of man. The Jews that one day applaud our Saviour
with hosannahs as their king, vote his crucifixion the next, and use
him as a murderer. We begin in the Spirit, and end in the flesh. Our
hearts, like lute‑strings, are changed with every change of weather,
with every appearance of a temptation; scarce one motion of God in a
thousand prevails with us for a settled abode. It is a hard task to
make a signature of those truths upon our affections, which will with
ease pass current with our understandings; our affections will as soon
lose them, as our understandings embrace them. The heart of man is
“unstable as water.”[168] Some were willing to rejoice in John’s
light, which reflected a lustre on their minds; but not in his heat,
which would have conveyed a warmth to their hearts; and the light was
pleasing to them but for a season,[169] while their corruptions lay
as if they were dead, not when they were awakened. {a105} Truth may
be admitted one day, and the next day rejected; as Austin saith of
a wicked man, he loves the truth shining, but he hates the truth
reproving. This is not to make God, but our own humor, our rule and
measure.