a design to improve some lust by it; to turn the word of God to be a
pander to the breach of his law. This is so far from making God’s will
our rule, that we make our own vile affections the rule of his law.
How many forced interpretations of Scripture have been coined to give
content to the lusts of men, and the divine rule forced to bend, and
be squared to men’s loose and carnal apprehensions! It is a part of
the instability or falseness of the heart, to “wrest the Scriptures to
their own destruction;”[170] which they could not do, if they did not
first wring them to countenance some detestable error or filthy crime.
In Paradise the first interpretation made of the first law of God,
was point blank against the mind of the Lawgiver, and venomous to the
whole race of mankind. Paul himself feared that some might put his
doctrine of grace to so ill a use, as to be an altar and sanctuary to
shelter their presumption (Rom. vi. 1, 15): “Shall we then continue
in sin, that grace may abound?” Poisonous consequences are often
drawn from the sweetest truths; as when God’s patience is made a topic
whence to argue against his providence,[171] or an encouragement to
commit evil more greedily; as though because he had not presently a
revenging hand, he had not an all‑seeing eye: or when the doctrine
of justification by faith is made use of to depress a holy life; or
God’s readiness to receive returning sinners, an encouragement to
defer repentance till a death‑bed. A liar will hunt for shelter
in the reward God gave the midwives that lied to Pharaoh for the
preservation of the males of Israel, and Rahab’s saving the spies by
false intelligence. God knows how to distinguish between grace and
corruption, that may lie close together; or between something of moral
goodness and moral evil, which may be mixed; we find their fidelity
rewarded, which was a moral good; but not their lie approved, which
was a moral evil. Nor will Christ’s conversing with sinners, be a
plea for any to thrust themselves into evil company. Christ conversed
with sinners, as a physician with diseased persons, to cure them, not
approve them; others with profligate persons, to receive infection
from them, not to communicate holiness to them. Satan’s children have
studied their father’s art, who wanted not perverted Scripture to
second his temptations against our Saviour.[172] How often do carnal
hearts turn divine revelation to carnal ends, as the sea fresh water
into salt! As men subject the precepts of God to carnal interests,
so they subject the truths of God to carnal fancies. When men
will allegorize the word, and make a humorous and crazy fancy the
interpreter of divine oracles, and not the Spirit speaking in the
word; this is to enthrone our own imaginations as the rule of God’s
law, and depose his law from being the rule of our reason; this is to
rifle truth of its true mind and intent. ’Tis more to rob a man of his
reason, the essential constitutive part of man, than of his estate;
this is to refuse an intimate acquaintance with his will. We shall
{a106} never tell what is the matter of a precept, or the matter of
a promise, if we impose a sense upon it contrary to the plain meaning
of it; thereby we shall make the law of God to have a distinct sense
according to the variety of men’s imaginations, and so make every
man’s fancy a law to himself. Now that this unwillingness to have a
spiritual acquaintance with divine truth is a disowning God as our
rule, and a setting up self in his stead, is evident; because this
unwillingness respects truth.
1st. As it is most spiritual and holy. A fleshly mind is most
contrary to a spiritual law, and particularly as it is a searching
and discovering law, that would dethrone all other rules in the soul.
As men love to be without a holy God in the world, so they love to
be without a holy law, the transcript and image of God’s holiness in
their hearts; and without holy men, the lights kindled by the Father
of lights. As the holiness of God, so the holiness of the law most
offends a carnal heart (Isa. xxx. 11): “Cause the Holy One of Israel
to cease from before us, prophesy to us right things.” They could not
endure God as a holy one. Herein God places their rebellion, rejecting
him as their rule (ver. 9), “Rebellious children, that will not hear
the law of the Lord.” The more pure and precious any discovery of God
is, the more it is disrelished by the world: as spiritual sins are
sweetest to a carnal heart, so spiritual truths are most distasteful.
The more of the brightness of the sun any beam conveys, the more
offensive it is to a distempered eye.
2d. As it doth most relate to, or lead to God. The devil directs his
fiercest batteries against those doctrines in the word, and those
graces in the heart, which most exalt God, debase man, and bring men
to the lowest subjection to their Creator; such is the doctrine and
grace of justifying faith. That men hate not knowledge as knowledge,
but as it directs them to choose the fear of the Lord, was the
determination of the Holy Ghost long ago (Prov. i. 29): “For that they
hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord.” Whatsoever
respects God, clears up guilt, witnesses man’s revolt to him, rouseth
up conscience, and moves to a return to God, a man naturally runs from,
as Adam did from God, and seeks a shelter in some weak bushes of error,
rather than appear before it. Not that men are unwilling to inquire
into and contemplate some divine truths which lie furthest from the
heart, and concern not themselves immediately with the rectifying
the soul: they may view them with such a pleasure as some might take
in beholding the miracles of our Saviour, who could not endure his
searching doctrine. The light of speculation may be pleasant, but the
light of conviction is grievous; that which galls their consciences,
and would affect them with a sense of their duty to God. Is it not
easy to perceive, that when a man begins to be serious in the concerns
of the honor of God and the duty of his soul, he feels a reluctancy
within him, even against the pleas of conscience; which evidenceth
that some unworthy principle has got footing in the hearts of men,
which fights against the declarations of God without, and the
impressions of the law of God within, at the same time when a man’s
own conscience takes part with it, which is the substance of the
apostle’s discourse, Rom. vii. 15, 16, {a107} &c. Close discourses
of the honor of God, and our duty to him, are irksome when men are
upon a merry pin: they are like a damp in a mine, that takes away
their breath; they shuffle them out as soon as they can, and are
as unwilling to retain the speech of them in their mouths, as the
knowledge of them in their hearts. Gracious speeches, instead of
bettering many men, distemper them, as sometimes sweet perfumes affect
a weak head with aches.
3d. As it is most contrary to self. Men are unwilling to acquaint
themselves with any truth that leads to God, because it leads from
self. Every part of the will of God is more or less displeasing, as it
sounds harsh against some carnal interest men would set above God, or
as a mate with him. Man cannot desire any intimacy with that law which
he regards as a bird of prey, to pick out his right eye or gnaw off
his right hand, his lust dearer than himself. The reason we have such
hard thoughts of God’s will is, because we have such high thoughts
of ourselves. It is a hard matter to believe or will that which hath
no affinity with some principle in the understanding, and no interest
in our will and passions: our unwillingness to be acquainted with
the will of God ariseth from the disproportion between that and our
corrupt hearts; “We are alienated from the life of God in our minds”
(Eph. iv. 18, 19). As we live not like God, so we neither think or
will as God; there is an antipathy in the heart of man against that
doctrine which teaches us to deny ourselves and be under the rule of
another; but whatsoever favors the ambition, lusts, and profits of
men, is easy entertainable. Many are fond of those sciences which may
enrich their understandings, and grate not upon their sensual delights.
Many have an admirable dexterity in finding out philosophical reasons,
mathematical demonstrations, or raising observations upon the records
of history; and spend much time and many serious and affectionate
thoughts in the study of them. In those they have not immediately
to do with God, their beloved pleasures are not impaired; it is a
satisfaction to self without the exercise of any hostility against it.
But had those sciences been against self, as much as the law and will
of God, they had long since been rooted out of the world. Why did the
young man turn his back upon the law of Christ? because of his worldly
self. Why did the Pharisees mock at the doctrine of our Saviour, and
not at their own traditions? because of covetous self. Why did the
Jews slight the person of our Saviour and put him to death, after the
reading so many credentials of his being sent from heaven? because
of ambitious self, that the Romans might not come and take away their
kingdom. If the law of God were fitted to the humors of self, it would
be readily and cordially observed by all men: self is the measure of a
world of seeming religious actions; while God seems to be the object,
and his law the motive, self is the rule and end (Zech. vii. 5): “Did
you fast unto me,” &c.
2. As men discover their disowning the will of God as a rule by
unwillingness to be acquainted with it, so they discover it, by
the contempt of it after they cannot avoid the notions and some
impressions of it. The rule of God is burthensome to a sinner; he
flies from it as from a frightful bugbear, and unpleasant yoke: sin
against {a108} the knowledge of the law is therefore called a going
back from the commandment of God’s lips (Job xxiii. 12): “A casting
God’s word behind them,”[173] as a contemptible thing, fitter to be
trodden in the dirt than lodged in the heart; nay it is a casting it
off as an abominable thing, for so the word זנח signifies, Hos. viii. 3.
“Israel hath cast off the thing that is good;” an utter refusal of
God (Jer. xliv. 16): “As for the word which thou hast spoken to us
in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken.” In the slight of his
precepts his essential perfections are slighted. In disowning his
will as a rule, we disown all those attributes which flow from his
will, as goodness, righteousness, and truth. As an act of the divine
understanding is supposed to precede the act of the divine will, so we
slight the infinite reason of God. Every law, though it proceeds from
the will of the lawgiver, and doth formally consist in an act of the
will, yet it doth pre‑suppose an act of the understanding. If the
commandment be holy, just, and good, as it is (Rom. vii. 12); if it
be the image of God’s holiness, a transcript of his righteousness,
and the efflux of his goodness; then in every breach of it, dirt is
cast upon those attributes which shine in it; and a slight of all
the regards he hath to his own honor, and all the provisions he makes
for his creature. This atheism, or contempt of God, is more taken
notice of by God than the matter of the sin itself; as a respect
to God in a weak and imperfect obedience is more than the matter of
the obedience itself, because it is an acknowledgment of God; so a
contempt of God in an act of disobedience, is more than the matter
of the disobedience. The creature stands in such an act not only in a
posture of distance from God, but defiance of him; it was not the bare
act of murder and adultery which Nathan charged upon David, but the
atheistical principle which spirited those evil acts. The despising
the commandment of the Lord was the venom of them.[174] It is possible
to break a law without contempt; but when men pretend to believe there
is a God, and that this is the law of God, it shows a contempt of his
majesty:[175] men naturally account God’s laws too strict, his yoke
too heavy, and his limits too strait; and he that liveth in a contempt
of this law, curseth God in his life. How can they believe there is
a God, who despise him as a ruler? How can they believe him to be a
guide, that disdain to follow him? To think we firmly believe a God
without living conformable to his law, is an idle and vain imagination.
The true and sensible notion of a God cannot subsist with disorder and
an affected unrighteousness. This contempt is seen,
1. In any presumptuous breach of any part of his law. Such sins are
frequently called in Scripture, rebellions, which are a denial of
the allegiance we owe to him. By a wilful refusal of his right in one
part, we root up the foundation of that rule he doth justly challenge
over us; his right is as extensive to command us in one thing, as in
another; and if it be disowned in one thing, it is virtually disowned
in all, and the whole statute book of God is contemned (James ii. 10,
11): “Whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point,
is guilty of all.” A willing breaking one part, though there be a
willing observance of all the other points of it, is a breach {a109}
of the whole; because the authority of God, which gives sanction to
the whole, is slighted: the obedience to the rest is dissembled: for
the love, which is the root of all obedience, is wanting; for “love
is the fulfilling the whole law.”[176] The rest are obeyed because
they cross not carnal desire so much as the other, and so it is an
observance of himself, not of God. Besides, the authority of God,
which is not prevalent to restrain us from the breach of one point,
would be of as little force with us to restrain us from the breach
of all the rest, did the allurements of the flesh give us as strong a
diversion from the one as from the other; and though the command that
is transgressed be the least in the whole law, yet the authority which
enjoins it is the same with that which enacts the greatest: and it is
not so much the matter of the command, as the authority commanding
which lays the obligation.
2. In the natural averseness to the declarations of God’s will and
mind, which way soever they tend. Since man affected to be as God,
he desires to be boundless; he would not have fetters, though they
be golden ones, and conduce to his happiness. Though the law of God
be a strength to them, yet they will not (Isa. xxx. 15): “In returning
shall be your strength, and you would not.” They would not have a
bridle to restrain them from running into the pit, nor be hedged in by
the law, though for their security; as if they thought it too slavish
and low‑spirited a thing to be guided by the will of another. Hence
man is compared to a wild ass, that loves to “snuff up the wind in
the wilderness at her pleasure,” rather than come under the guidance
of God;[177] from whatsoever quarter of the heavens you pursue her
she will run to the other. The Israelites “could not endure what was
commanded,”[178] though in regard of the moral part, agreeable to what
they found written in their own nature, and to the observance whereof
they had the highest obligations of any people under heaven, since
God had, by many prodigies, delivered them from a cruel slavery, the
memory of which prefaced the Decalogue (Exod. xx. 2), “I am the Lord
thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the
house of bondage.” They could not think of the rule of their duty, but
they must reflect upon the grand incentive of it in their redemption
from Egyptian thraldom; yet this people were cross to God, which way
soever he moved. When they were in the brick kilns, they cried for
deliverance; when they had heavenly manna, they longed for their
onions and garlic. In Num. xiv. 3, they repent of their deliverance
from Egypt, and talk of returning again to seek the remedy of their
evils in the hands of their cruellest enemies, and would rather put
themselves into the irons, whence God had delivered them, than believe
one word of the promise of God for giving them a fruitful land; but
when Moses tells them God’s order, that they should turn back by the
way of the Red Sea,[179] and that God had confirmed it by an oath,
that they should not see the land of Canaan,[180] they then run cross
to this command of God, and, instead of marching towards the Red
Sea, which they had wished for before, they will go up to Canaan,
as in spite of God and his threatening: “We will go to the place
{a110} which the Lord hath promised” (ver. 40), which Moses calls
a transgressing the commandment of the Lord (ver. 41). They would
presume to go up, notwithstanding Moses’ prohibition, and are smitten
by the Amalekites. When God gives them a precept, with a promise to
go up to Canaan, they long for Egypt; when God commands them to return
to the Red Sea, which was nearer to the place they longed for, they
will shift sides, and go up to Canaan;[181] and when they found they
were to traverse the solitudes of the desert, they took pet against
God, and, instead of thanking him for the late victory against the
Canaanites, they reproach him for his conduct from Egypt, and the
manna wherewith he nourished them in the wilderness. They would not
go to Canaan, the way God had chosen, nor preserve themselves by
the means God had ordained. They would not be at God’s disposal, but
complain of the badness of the way, and the lightness of manna, empty
of any necessary juice to sustain their nature. They murmuringly
solicit the will and power of God to change all that order which he
had resolved in his counsel, and take another, conformable to their
vain foolish desires; and they signified thereby that they would
invade his conduct, and that he should act according to their fancy,
which the psalmist calls a “tempting of God, and limiting the Holy One
of Israel” (Psalm lxxviii. 41). To what point soever the declarations
of God stand, the will of man turns the quite contrary way. Is not
the carriage of this nation the best then in the world? a discovery
of the depth of our natural corruption, how cross man is to God?
And that charge God brings against them, may be brought against all
men by nature, that they despise his judgments, and have a rooted
abhorrency of his statutes in their soul (Lev. xxvi. 43). No sooner
had they recovered from one rebellion, but they revolted to another;
so difficult a thing it is for man’s nature to be rendered capable of
conforming to the will of God. The carriage of this people is but a
copy of the nature of mankind, and is “written for our admonition”
(1 Cor. x. 11). From this temper men are said to make “void the law of
God;”[182] to make it of no obligation, an antiquated and moth‑eaten
record. And the Pharisees, by setting up their traditions against the
will of God, are said to make his law of “none effect;” to strip it of
all its authority, as the word signifies, (Matt. xv. 6), ἠκυρώσατε.
3. We have the greatest slight of that will of God which is most for
his honor and his greatest pleasure. It is the nature of man, ever
since Adam, to do so (Hos. vi. 6, 7). God desired mercy and not a
sacrifice; the knowledge of himself more than burnt offering; but they,
like men as Adam, have transgressed the covenant, invade God’s rights,
and not let him be Lord of one tree. We are more curious observers of
the fringes of the law than of the greater concerns of it. The Jews
were diligent in sacrifices and offerings, which God did not urge upon
them as principals, but as types of other things; but negligent of
the faith which was to be established by him. Holiness, mercy, pity,
which concerned the honor of God, as governor of the world, and were
imitations of the holiness and goodness of God, they were strangers
to. This is God’s complaint {a111} (Isa. i. 11, 12, xvi. 17). We shall
find our hearts most averse to the observation of those laws which are
eternal, and essential to righteousness; such that he could not but
command, as he is a righteous Governor; in the observation of which we
come nearest to him, and express his image more clearly; as those laws
for an inward and spiritual worship, a supreme affection to him. God,
in regard of his righteousness and holiness of his nature, and the
excellency of his being, could not command the contrary to these. But
this part of his will our hearts most swell against, our corruption
doth most snarl at; whereas those laws which are only positive, and
have no intrinsic righteousness in them, but depend purely upon the
will of the Lawgiver, and may be changed at his pleasure (which the
other, that have an intrinsic righteousness in them, cannot), we
better comply with, than that part of his will that doth express more
the righteousness of his nature;[183] such as the ceremonial part of
worship, and the ceremonial law among the Jews. We are more willing
to observe order in some outward attendances and glavering devotions,
than discard secret affections to evil, crucify inward lusts and
delightful thoughts. A “hanging down the head like a bullrush” is not
difficult; but the “breaking the heart,” like a potter’s vessel, to
shreds and dust (a sacrifice God delights in, whereby the excellency
of God and the vileness of the creature is owned), goes against the
grain; to cut off an outward branch is not so hard as to hack at the
root. What God most loathes, as most contrary to his will, we most
love: no sin did God so severely hate, and no sin were the Jews more
inclined unto, than that of idolatry. The heathen had not changed
their God, as the Jews had changed their glory (Jer. ii. 11); and all
men are naturally tainted with this sin, which is so contrary to the
holy and excellent nature of God. By how much the more defect there is
of purity in our respects to God, by so much the more respect there is
to some idol within or without us, to humor, custom, and interest, &c.
Never did any law of God meet with so much opposition as Christianity,
which was the design of God from the first promise to the exhibiting
the Redeemer, and from thence to the end of the world. All people
drew swords at first against it. The Romans prepared yokes for their
neighbors, but provided temples for the idols those people worshipped;
but Christianity, the choicest design and most delightful part of the
will of God, never met with a kind entertainment at first in any place;
Rome, that entertained all others, persecuted this with fire and sword,
though sealed by greater testimonies from heaven than their own
records could report in favor of their idols.
4. In running the greatest hazards, and exposing ourselves to more
trouble to cross the will of God, than is necessary to the observance
of it. It is a vain charge men bring against the divine precepts, that
they are rigorous, severe, difficult; when, besides the contradiction
to our Saviour, who tells us his “yoke is easy,” and his “burthen
light,” they thwart their own calm reason and judgment. Is there not
more difficulty to be vicious, covetous, violent, cruel, than to be
virtuous, charitable, kind? Doth the will of God enjoin that that
is {a112} not conformable to right reason, and secretly delightful
in the exercise and issue? And on the contrary, what doth Satan and
the world engage us in, that is not full of molestation and hazard?
Is it a sweet and comely thing to combat continually against our
own consciences, and resist our own light, and commence a perpetual
quarrel against ourselves, as we ordinarily do when we sin? They in
the Prophet (Micah vi. 6‒8) would be at the expense of “thousands of
rams, and ten thousand rivers of oil,” if they could compass them; yea,
would strip themselves of their natural affection to their first‑born
to expiate the “sin of their soul,” rather than to “do justice, love
mercy, and walk humbly with God;” things more conducible to the honor
of God, the welfare of the world, the security of their souls, and
of a more easy practice than the offerings they wished for. Do not
men then disown God when they will walk in ways hedged with thorns,
wherein they meet with the arrows of conscience, at every turn, in
their sides; and slide down to an everlasting punishment, sink under
an intolerable slavery, to contradict the will of God? when they will
prefer a sensual satisfaction, with a combustion in their consciences,
violation of their reasons, gnawing cares and weary travels before the
honor of God, the dignity of their natures, the happiness of peace and
health, which might be preserved at a cheaper rate, than they are at
to destroy them?
5. In the unwillingness and awkwardness of the heart, when it is
to pay God a service. Men “do evil with both hands earnestly,”[184]
but do good with one hand faintly; no life in the heart, nor any
diligence in the hand. What slight and loose thoughts of God doth
this unwillingness imply? It is a wrong to his providence, as though
we were not under his government, and had no need of his assistance;
a wrong to his excellency, as though there were no amiableness in him
to make his service desirable; an injury to his goodness and power,
as if he were not able or willing to reward the creatures’ obedience,
or careless not to take notice of it; it is a sign we receive little
satisfaction in him, and that there is a great unsuitableness between
him and us.