rather pressed to it than enter ourselves volunteers. What we call
service to God is done naturally much against our wills; it is not a
delightful food, but a bitter potion; we are rather haled, than run
to it. There is a contradiction of sin within us against our service,
as there was a contradiction of sinners without our Saviour against
his doing the will of God. Our hearts are unwieldy to any spiritual
service of God; we are fain to use a violence with them sometimes:
Hezekiah, it is said, “walked before the Lord, with a perfect heart”
(2 Kings xx. 9); he walked, he made himself to walk: man naturally
cares not for a walk with God; if he hath any communion with him, it
is with such a dulness and heaviness of spirit as if he wished himself
out of his company. Man’s nature, being contrary to holiness, hath an
aversion to any act of homage to God, because holiness must at least
be pretended. In every duty wherein we have a communion with God,
holiness is requisite: now as men are against {a113} the truth of
holiness, because it is unsuitable to them, so they are not friends
to those duties which require it, and for some space divert them from
the thoughts of their beloved lusts. The word of the Lord is a yoke,
prayer a drudgery, obedience a strange element. We are like fish, that
“drink up iniquity like water,”[185] and come not to the bank without
the force of an angle; no more willing to do service for God, than
a fish is of itself to do service for man. It is a constrained act to
satisfy conscience, and such are servile, not son‑like performances,
and spring from bondage more than affection; if conscience, like a
task‑master, did not scourge them to duty, they would never perform
it. Let us appeal to ourselves, whether we are not more unwilling to
secret, closet, hearty duty to God, than to join with others in some
external service; as if those inward services were a going to the rack,
and rather our penance than privilege. How much service hath God in
the world from the same principle that vagrants perform their task in
Bridewell! How glad are many of evasions to back them in the neglect
of the commands of God, of corrupt reasonings from the flesh to waylay
an act of obedience, and a multitude of excuses to blunt the edge of
the precept! The very service of God shall be a pretence to deprive
him of the obedience due to him. Saul will not be ruled by God’s will
in the destroying the cattle of the Amalekites, but by his own; and
will impose upon the will and wisdom of God, judging God mistaken in
his command, and that the cattle God thought fittest to be meat to
the fowls, were fitter to be sacrifices on the altar.[186] If we do
perform any part of his will, is it not for our own ends, to have
some deliverance from trouble? (Isa. xxvi. 16): “In trouble have
they visited thee; they poured out a prayer when thy chastening was
upon them.” In affliction, he shall find them kneeling in homage and
devotion; in prosperity, he shall feel them kicking with contempt;
they can pour out a prayer in distress, and scarce drop one when they
are delivered.
(2.) There is a slightness in our service of God. We are loth to come
into his presence; and when we do come, we are loth to continue with
him. We pay not an homage to him heartily, as to our Lord and Governor;
we regard him not as our Master, whose work we ought to do, and whose
honor we ought to aim at. 1. In regard of the matter of service. When
the torn, the lame, and the sick is offered to God;[187] so thin and
lean a sacrifice, that you may have thrown it to the ground with a
puff; so some understand the meaning of “you have snuffed at it.”
Men have naturally such slight thoughts of the majesty and law of God,
that they think any service is good enough for him, and conformable
to his law. The dullest and deadest time we think fittest to pay God
a service in; when sleep is ready to close our eyes, and we are unfit
to serve ourselves, we think it a fit time to open our hearts to God.
How few morning sacrifices hath God from many persons and families!
Men leap out of their beds to their carnal pleasures or worldly
employments, without any thought of their Creator and Preserver, or
any reflection upon his will as the rule of our daily obedience. And
as many reserve the dregs of their lives, their old age, to offer up
their souls to {a114} God, so they reserve the dregs of the day, their
sleeping time, for the offering up their service to him. How many
grudge to spend their best time in the serving the will of God, and
reserve for him the sickly and rheumatic part of their lives; the
remainder of that which the devil and their own lusts have fed upon!
Would not any prince or governor judge a present half eaten up by
wild beasts, or that which died in a ditch, a contempt of his royalty?
A corrupt thing is too base and vile for so great a King as God is,
whose name is dreadful.[188] When by age men are weary of their own
bodies, they would present them to God; yet grudgingly, as if a tired
body were too good for him, snuffing at the command for service. God
calls for our best, and we give him the worst. 2. In respect of frame.
We think any frame will serve God’s turn, which speaks our slight
of God as a Ruler. Man naturally performs duty with an unholy heart,
whereby it becomes an abomination to God (Prov. xxviii. 9): “He that
turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayers shall be
an abomination to God.” The services which he commands, he hates for
their evil frames or corrupt ends (Amos v. 21): “I hate, I despise
your feast‑days, I will not smell in your solemn assemblies.” God
requires gracious services, and we give him corrupt ones. We do not
rouse up our hearts, as David called upon his lute and harp to awake
(Psalm lvii. 8). Our hearts are not given to him; we put him off with
bodily exercise. The heart is but ice to what it doth not affect.
[1.] There is not that natural vigor in the observance of God, which
we have in worldly business. When we see a liveliness in men in other
things, change the scene into a motion towards God, how suddenly doth
their vigor shrink and their hearts freeze into sluggishness! Many
times we serve God as languishingly as if we were afraid he should
accept us, and pray as coldly as if we were unwilling he should
hear us, and take away that lust by which we are governed, and which
conscience forces us to pray against; as if we were afraid God should
set up his own throne and government in our hearts. How fleeting are
we in divine meditation, how sleepy in spiritual exercises! but in
other exercises active. The soul doth not awaken itself, and excite
those animal and vital spirits, which it will in bodily recreations
and sports; much less the powers of the soul: whereby it is evident
we prefer the latter before any service to God. Since there is a
fulness of animal spirits, why might they not be excited in holy
duties as well as in other operations, but that there is a reluctancy
in the soul to exercise its supremacy in this case, and perform
anything becoming a creature in subjection to God as a Ruler?
[2.] It is evident also in the distractions we have in his service.
How loth are we to serve God fixedly one hour, nay a part of an hour,
notwithstanding all the thoughts of his majesty, and the eternity
of glory set before our eye! What man is there, since the fall of
Adam, that served God one hour without many wanderings and unsuitable
thoughts unfit for that service? How ready are our hearts to start
out and unite themselves with any worldly objects that please us!
[3.] Weariness in it evidenceth it. To be weary of our dulness
signifies a desire, {a115} to be weary of service signifies a
discontent, to be ruled by God. How tired are we in the performance
of spiritual duties, when in the vain triflings of time we have a
perpetual motion! How will many willingly revel whole nights, when
their hearts will flag at the threshold of a religious service! like
Dagon,[189] lose both our heads to think, and hands to act, when the
ark of God is present. Some in the Prophet wished the new moon and
the Sabbath over, that they might sell their corn, and be busied again
in their worldly affairs.[190] A slight and weariness of the Sabbath,
was a slight of the Lord of the Sabbath, and of that freedom from the
yoke and rule of sin, which was signified by it. The design of the
sacrifices in the new moon was to signify a rest from the tyranny of
sin, and a consecration to the spiritual service of God. Servants that
are quickly weary of their work, are weary of the authority of their
master that enjoins it. If our hearts had a value for God, it would
be with us as with the needle to the loadstone; there would be upon
his beck a speedy motion to him, and a fixed union with him. When the
judgments and affections of the saints shall be fully refined in glory,
they shall be willing to behold the face of God, and be under his
government to eternity, without any weariness: as the holy angels have
owned God as their sovereign near these six thousand years, without
being weary of running on his errands. But, alas, while the flesh
clogs us, there will be some relics of unwillingness to hear his
injunctions, and weariness in performing them; though men may excuse
those things by extrinsic causes, yet God’s unerring judgment calls it
a weariness of himself (Isaiah xliii. 22): “Thou hast not called upon
me, O Jacob, but thou hast been weary of me, O Israel.” Of this he
taxeth his own people, when he tells them he would have the beasts
of the field, the dragons and the owls――the Gentiles, that the Jews
counted no better than such――to honor him and acknowledge him their
rule in a way of duty (ver. 20, 21).
6. This contempt is seen in a deserting the rule of God, when our
expectations are not answered upon our service. When services are
performed from carnal principles, they are soon cast off when carnal
ends meet not with desired satisfaction. But when we own ourselves
God’s servants and God our Master, “our eyes will wait upon him till
he have mercy on us.”[191] It is one part of the duty we owe to God
as our Master in heaven to continue in prayer (Col. iv. 1, 2); and
by the same reason in all other service, and to watch in the same
with thanksgiving: to watch for occasions of praise, to watch with
cheerfulness for further manifestations of his will, strength to
perform it, success in the performance, that we may from all draw
matter of praise. As we are in a posture of obedience to his precepts,
so we should be in a posture of waiting for the blessing of it. But
naturally we reject the duty we owe to God, if he do not speed the
blessing we expect from him. How many do secretly mutter the same as
they in Job xxi. 15: “What is the Almighty that we should serve him,
and what profit shall we have if we pray to him?” They serve not God
out of conscience to his commands, but for some carnal profit; and if
God make them to wait for it, they will not {a116} stay his leisure,
but cease soliciting him any longer. Two things are expressed;――that
God was not worthy of any homage from them,――“What is the Almighty
that we should serve him?” and that the service of him would not bring
them in a good revenue or an advantage of that kind they expected.
Interest drives many men on to some kind of service, and when they do
not find an advance of that, they will acknowledge God no more; but
like some beggars, if you give them not upon their asking, and calling
you good master, from blessing they will turn to cursing. How often
do men do that secretly, practically, if not plainly, which Job’s wife
advised him to, curse God, and cast off that disguise of integrity
they had assumed! (Job ii. 9): “Dost thou still retain thy integrity?
curse God. ” What a stir, and pulling, and crying is here! Cast off
all thoughts of religious service, and be at daggers drawing with
that God, who for all thy service of him has made thee so wretched
a spectacle to men, and a banquet for worms. The like temper is
deciphered in the Jews (Mal. iii. 14), “It is in vain to serve God,
and what profit is it that we have kept his ordinances, that we have
walked mournfully before the Lord?” What profit is it that we have
regarded his statutes, and carried ourselves in a way of subjection
to God, as our Sovereign, when we inherit nothing but sorrow, and the
idolatrous neighbors swim in all kind of pleasures? as if it were the
most miserable thing to acknowledge God? If men have not the benefits
they expect, they think God unrighteous in himself, and injurious to
them, in not conferring the favor they imagine they have merited; and
if they have not that recompense, they will deny God that subjection
they owe to him as creatures. Grace moves to God upon a sense of duty;
corrupt nature upon a sense of interest. Sincerity is encouraged by
gracious returns, but is not melted away by God’s delay or refusal.
Corrupt nature would have God at its back, and steers a course of duty
by hope of some carnal profit, not by a sense of the sovereignty of
God.
7. This contempt is seen in breaking promises with God. “One while
the conscience of a man makes vows of new obedience, and perhaps
binds himself with many an oath; but they prove like Jonah’s gourd,
withering the next day after their birth. This was Pharaoh’s temper:
under a storm he would submit to God, and let Israel go; but when
the storm is ended, he will not be under God’s control, and Israel’s
slavery shall be increased. The fear of Divine wrath makes many
a sinner turn his back upon his sin, and the love of his ruling
lust makes him turn his back upon his true Lord. This is from the
prevalency of sin, that disputes with God for the sovereignty.”[192]
When God hath sent a sharp disease, as a messenger to bind men to
their beds, and make an interruption of their sinful pleasures, their
mouths are full of promises of a new life, in hope to escape the just
vengeance of God: the sense of hell, which strikes strongly upon them,
makes them full of such pretended resolutions when they howl upon
their beds. But if God be pleased in his patience to give them a
respite, to take off the chains wherewith he seemed to be binding
them for destruction, and recruit their strength, {a117} they are
more earnest in their sins than they were in their promises of a
reformation, as if they had got the mastery of God, and had outwitted
him. How often doth God charge them of not returning to him after a
succession of judgments![193] So hard it is, not only to allure, but
to scourge men, to an acknowledgment of God as their Ruler!
Consider then, are we not naturally inclined to disobey the known
will of God? Can we say, Lord, for thy sake we refrain the thing to
which our hearts incline? Do we not allow ourselves to be licentious,
earthly, vain, proud, revengeful, though we know it will offend him?
Have we not been peevishly cross to his declared will? run counter to
him and those laws which express most of the glory of his holiness?
Is not this to disown him as our rule? Did we never wish there were
no law to bind us, no precept to check our idols? What is this, but
to wish that God would depose himself from being our governor, and
leave us to our own conduct? or else to wish that he were as unholy
as ourselves, as careless of his own laws as we are; that is, that
he were no more a God than we, a God as sinful and unrighteous as
ourselves? He whose heart riseth against the law of God to unlaw it,
riseth against the Author of that law to undeify him. He that casts
contempt upon the dearest thing God hath in the world, that which is
the image of his holiness, the delight of his soul; that which he hath
given a special charge to maintain, and that because it is holy, just,
and good, would not stick to rejoice at the destruction of God himself.
If God’s holiness and righteousness in the beam be despised, much more
will an immense goodness and holiness in the fountain be rejected:
he that wisheth a beam far from his eyes, because it offends and
scorcheth him, can be no friend to the sun, from whence that beam
doth issue. How unworthy a creature is man, since he only, a rational
creature, is the sole being that withdraws itself from the rule of
God in this earth! And how miserable a creature is he also, since,
departing from the order of God’s goodness, he falls into the order
of his justice; and while he refuseth God to be the rule of his life,
he cannot avoid him being the Judge of his punishment! It is this is
the original of all sin, and the fountain of all our misery. This is
the first thing man disowns, the rule which God sets him.
Secondly, Man naturally owns any other rule rather than that of God’s
prescribing. The law of God orders one thing, the heart of man desires
another. There is not the basest thing in the world, but man would
sooner submit to be guided by it, rather than by the holiness of God;
and when anything that God commands crosses our own wills, we value
it no more than we would the advice of a poor despicable beggar. How
many are “lovers of pleasure, more than lovers of God!”[194] To make
something which contributes to the perfection of nature, as learning,
wisdom, moral virtues, our rule, would be more tolerable; but to pay
that homage to a swinish pleasure, which is the right of God, is an
inexcusable contempt of him. The greatest excellency in the world
is infinitely below God; much more a bestial delight, which is both
disgraceful and below the nature of {a118} man. If we made the vilest
creature on earth our idol, it is more excusable than to be the slave
of a brutish pleasure. The viler the thing is that doth possess the
throne in our heart, the greater contempt it is of him who can only
claim a right to it, and is worthy of it. Sin is the first object
of man’s election, as soon as the faculty whereby he chooses comes
to exercise its power; and it is so dear to man, that it is, in the
estimate of our Saviour, counted as the right hand, and the right eye,
dear, precious, and useful members.
1. The rule of Satan is owned before the rule of God. The natural
man would rather be under the guidance of Satan than the yoke of his
Creator. Adam chose him to be his governor in Paradise. No sooner had
Satan spoke of God in a way of derision (Gen. iii. 1, 5), “Yea, hath
God said,” but man follows his counsel and approves of the scoff; and
the greatest part of his posterity have not been wiser by his fall,
but would rather ramble in the devil’s wilderness, than to stay in
God’s fold. It is by the sin of man that the devil is become the god
of the world, as if men were the electors of him to the government;
sin is an election of him for a lord, and a putting the soul under his
government. Those that live according to the course of the world, and
are loth to displease it, are under the government of the prince of
it. The greatest part of the works done in the world is to enlarge
the kingdom of Satan. For how many ages were the laws whereby the
greatest part of the world was governed in the affairs of religion,
the fruits of his usurpation and policy? When temples were erected
to him, priests consecrated to his service; the rites used in most
of the worship of the world were either of his own coining, or the
misapplying the rites God had ordained to himself, under the notion
of a God: whence the apostle calls all idolatrous feasts the table
of devils, the cup of devils, sacrifice to devils, fellowship with
devils;[195] devils being the real object of the pagan worship, though
not formally intended by the worshipper; though in some parts of the
Indies, the direct and peculiar worship is to the devil, that he might
not hurt them. And though the intention of others was to offer to God,
and not the devil, yet since the action was contrary to the will of
God, he regards it as a sacrifice to devils. It was not the intention
of Jeroboam to establish priests to the devil, when he consecrated
them to the service of his calves, for Jehu afterwards calls them “the
servants of the Lord” (2 Kings x. 23), “See if there be here none of
the servants of the Lord,” to distinguish them from the servants of
Baal; signifying that the true God was worshipped under those images,
and not Baal, nor any of the gods of the heathens; yet the Scripture
couples the calves and devils together, and ascribes the worship given
to one to be given to the other: “He ordained him priests for the high
places, and for the devils, and for the calves which he had made;”[196]
so that they were sacrifices to devils, notwithstanding the intention
of Jeroboam and his subjects that had set them up and worshipped them,
because they were contrary to the mind of God, and agreeable to the
doctrine and mind of Satan, though the object of their worship in
their own intention were not the devil, but some deified man or some
canonized saint. {a119} The intention makes not a good action; if so,
when men kill the best servants of God with a design to do God service,
as our Saviour foretells,[197] the action would not be murder; yet
who can call it otherwise, since God is wronged in the persons of his
servants? Since most of the worship of the world, which men’s corrupt
natures incline them to, is false and different from the revealed will
of God, it is a practical acknowledgment of the devil, as the governor,
by acknowledging and practising those doctrines, which have not the
stamp of divine revelation upon them, but were minted by Satan to
depress the honor of God in the world. It doth concern men, then,
to take good heed, that in their acts of worship they have a divine
rule; otherwise it is an owning the devil as the rule: for there is no
medium; whatsoever is not from God, is from Satan. But to bring this
closer to us, and consider that which is more common among us: men
that are in a natural condition, and wedded to their lusts, are under
the paternal government of Satan (John viii. 44): “Ye are of your
father, the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do.” If we
divide sin into spiritual and carnal, which division comprehends all,
the devil’s authority is owned in both; in spiritual, we conform to
his example, because those he commits; in carnal, we obey his will,
because those he directs: he acts the one, and sets us a copy; he
tempts to the other, and gives us a kind of a precept. Thus man by
nature being a willing servant of sin, is more desirous to be bound
in the devil’s iron chain, than in God’s silken cords. What greater
atheism can there be, than to use God as if he were inferior to the
devil? to take the part of his greatest enemy, who drew all others
into the faction against him? to pleasure Satan by offending God, and
gratify our adversary with the injury of our Creator? For a subject
to take arms against his prince with the deadliest enemy both himself
and prince hath in the whole world, adds a greater blackness to the
rebellion.
2. The more visible rule preferred before God in the world, is man.
The opinion of the world is more our rule than the precept of God;
and many men’s abstinence from sin is not from a sense of the Divine
will, no, nor from a principle of reason, but from an affection to
some man on whom they depend, or fear of punishment from a superior;
the same principle with that in a ravenous beast, who abstains from
what he desires, for fear only of a stick or club. Men will walk with
the herds, go in fashion with the most, speak and act as the most
do. While we conform to the world, we cannot perform a reasonable
service to God, nor prove, nor approve practically what the good and
acceptable will of God is; the apostle puts them in opposition to one
another.[198] This appears,
1. In complying more with the dictates of men, than the will of God.
Men draw encouragement from God’s forbearance to sin more freely
against him; but the fear of punishment for breaking the will of man
lays a restraint upon them. The fear of man is a more powerful curb,
to restrain men in their duty, than the fear of God; so we may please
a friend, a master, a governor, we are regardless whether we please
God or no; men‑pleasers are more than God‑pleasers; {a120} man is
more advanced as a rule, than God, when we submit to human orders, and
stagger and dispute against divine. Would not a prince think himself
slighted in his authority, if any of his servants should decline his
commands, by the order of one of his subjects? And will not God make
the same account of us, when we deny or delay our obedience, for fear
of one of his creatures? In the fear of man, we as little acknowledge
God for our sovereign, as we do for our comforter (Isa. li. 12, 13):
“I, even I, am he that comforteth you; who art thou, that thou
shouldst be afraid of a man that shall die,” &c. “and forgettest
the Lord thy maker?” &c. We put a slight upon God, as if he were not
able to bear us out in our duty to him, and incapable to balance the
strength of an arm of flesh.