it is his will, but the injunctions of men. As the word of God may be
received, yet not as his word, so the will of God may be performed,
yet not as his will; it is materially done, but not formally obeyed.
An action, and obedience in that action, are two things; as when man
commands the ceasing from all works of the ordinary calling on the
Sabbath, it is the same that God enjoins: the cessation, or attendance
of his servants on the hearing of the word, are conformable in the
matter of it to the will of God; but it is only conformable in the
obediential part of the acts to the will of man, when it is done only
with respect to a human precept. As God hath a right to enact his
laws without consulting his creature in the way of his government, so
man is bound to obey those laws, without consulting whether they be
agreeable to men’s laws or no. If we act the will of God because the
will of our superiors concurs with it, we obey not God in that, but
man, a human will being the rule of our obedience, and not the divine;
this is to vilify God, and make him inferior to man in our esteem, and
a valuing the rule of man above that of our Creator. Since God is the
highest perfection and infinitely good, whatsoever rule he gives the
creature must be good, else it cannot proceed from God. A base thing
cannot be the product of an infinite excellency, and an unreasonable
thing cannot be the product of an infinite wisdom and goodness;
therefore, as the respecting God’s will before the will of man is
excellent and worthy of a creature, and is an acknowledging the
excellency, goodness, and wisdom of God, so the eying the will of man
before and above the will of God, is on the contrary, a denial of all
those in a lump, and a preferring the wisdom, goodness, and power of
man in his law, above all those perfections of God in his. Whatsoever
men do that looks like moral virtue or abstinence from vices, not
out of obedience to the rule God hath set, but because of custom,
necessity, example, or imitation, they may, in the doing of it, be
rather said to be apes than Christians.
3. In obeying the will of man when it is contrary to the will of
God; as the Israelites willingly “walked after the commandment,”[199]
not of God, but of Jeroboam in the case of the calves, and “made
the king’s heart glad with their lies.”[200] They cheered him with
their ready obedience to his command for idolatry (which was a lie
in itself, and a lie in them) against the commandment of God, and the
{a121} warnings of the prophets, rather than cheer the heart of God
with their obedience to his worship instituted by him; nay, and when
God offered them to cure them their wound, their iniquity breaks
out afresh; they would neither have him as a lord to rule them, nor
a physician to cure them (Hosea vii. 1): “When I would have healed
Israel, then the iniquity of Ephraim was discovered.” The whole
Persian nation shrunk at once from a duty due by the light of nature
to the Deity, upon a decree that “neither God or man should be
petitioned to for thirty days, but only their king;”[201] one only,
Daniel, excepted against it, who preferred his homage to God, above
obedience to his prince. An adulterous generation is many times made
the rule of men’s professions, as is implied in those words of our
Saviour (Mark viii. 38): “Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and my
words in this adulterous and sinful generation:” own him among his
disciples, and be ashamed of him among his enemies. Thus men are
said to deny God (Tit. i. 16), when they “attend to Jewish fables
and the precepts of men rather than the word of God;” when the
decrees or canons of fallible men are valued at a higher rate, and
preferred before the writings of the Holy Ghost by his apostles. As
man naturally disowns the rule God sets him, and owns any other rule
than that of God’s prescribing, so,
Thirdly, He doth this in order to the setting himself up as his own
rule; as though our own wills, and not God’s, were the true square and
measure of goodness. We make an idol of our own wills, and as much as
self is exalted, God is deposed; the more we esteem our own wills, the
more we endeavor to annihilate the will of God; account nothing of him,
the more we account of ourselves, and endeavor to render ourselves his
superiors, by exalting our own wills. No prince but would look upon
his authority as invaded, his royalty derided, if a subject should
resolve to be a law to himself, in opposition to his known will; true
piety is to hate ourselves, deny ourselves, and cleave solely to the
service of God. To make ourselves our own rule, and the object of
our chiefest love, is atheism. If self‑denial be the greatest part
of godliness, the great letter in the alphabet of religion; self‑love
is the great letter in the alphabet of practical atheism. Self is the
great antichrist and anti‑God in the world, that sets up itself above
all that is called God; self‑love is the captain of that black band
(2 Tim. iii. 2): it sits in the temple of God, and would be adored as
God. Self‑love begins; but denying the power of godliness, which is
the same with denying the ruling power of God, ends the list. It is so
far from bending to the righteous will of the Creator, that it would
have the eternal will of God stoop to the humor and unrighteous will
of a creature; and this is the ground of the contention between the
flesh and spirit in the heart of a renewed man; flesh wars for the
godhead of self, and spirit fights for the godhead of God; the one
would settle the throne of the Creator, and the other maintain a
law of covetousness, ambition, envy, lust, in the stead of God. The
evidence of this will appear in these propositions:
1. This is natural to man as he is corrupted. What was the venom
{a122} of the sin of Adam, is naturally derived with his nature to
all his posterity. It was not the eating a forbidden apple, or the
pleasing his palate that Adam aimed at, or was the chief object of
his desire, but to live independently on his Creator, and be a God
to himself (Gen. iii. 5): “You shall be as gods.” That which was the
matter of the devil’s temptation, was the incentive of man’s rebellion;
a likeness to God he aspired to in the judgment of God himself, an
infallible interpreter of man’s thoughts; “Behold, man is become
as one of us, to know good and evil,” in regard of self‑sufficiency
and being a rule to himself. The Jews understand the ambition of man
to reach no further than an equality with the angelical nature; but
Jehovah here understands it in another sense; God had ordered man by
this prohibition not to eat of the fruit of the “tree of knowledge
of good and evil;” not to attempt the knowledge of good and evil of
himself, but to wait upon the dictates of God; not to trust to his own
counsels, but to depend wholly upon him for direction and guidance.
Certainly he that would not hold off his hand from so small a thing
as an apple, when he had his choice of the fruit of the garden, would
not have denied himself anything his appetite had desired, when that
principle had prevailed upon him; he would not have stuck at a greater
matter to pleasure himself with the displeasing of God, when for so
small a thing he would incur the anger of his Creator. Thus would he
deify his own understanding against the wisdom of God, and his own
appetite against the will of God. This desire of equality with God,
a learned man[202] thinks the apostle intimates (Phil. ii. 6): “Who
being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God;”
the Son’s being in the form of God, and thinking it no robbery to be
equal with God, implies that the robbery of sacrilege committed by our
first parents, for which the Son of God humbled himself to the death
of the cross, was an attempt to be equal with God, and depend no more
upon God’s directions, but his own conduct; which could be no less
than an invasion of the throne of God, and endeavor to put himself
into a posture to be his mate. Other sins, adultery, theft, &c. could
not be committed by him at that time, but he immediately puts forth
his hand to usurp the power of his Maker; this treason is the old Adam
in every man. The first Adam contradicted the will of God to set up
himself; the second Adam humbled himself, and did nothing but by the
command and will of his Father. This principle wherein the venom of
the old Adam lies, must be crucified to make way for the throne of the
humble and obedient principle of the new Adam, or quickening Spirit;
indeed sin in its own nature is nothing else but “a willing according
to self, and contrary to the will of God;” lusts are therefore called
the wills of the flesh and of the mind.[203] As the precepts of God
are God’s will, so the violation of these precepts is man’s will; and
thus man usurps a godhead to himself, by giving that honor to his own
will which belongs to God, appropriating the right of rule to himself,
and denying it to his Creator. That servant that acts according to
his own will, with a neglect of his master’s, refuseth the duty of
a servant, and invades the right of his master. {a123} This self‑love
and desire of independency on God has been the root of all sin in the
world. The great controversy between God and man hath been, whether he
or they shall be God; whether his reason or theirs, his will or theirs,
shall be the guiding principle. As grace is the union of the will
of God and the will of the creature, so sin is the opposition of the
will of self to the will of God; “Leaning to our own understanding,”
is opposed as a natural evil to “trusting in the Lord,”[204] a
supernatural grace. Men commonly love what is their own, their
own inventions, their own fancies; therefore the ways of a wicked
man are called the “ways of his own heart.”[205] and the ways of a
superstitious man his own devices (Jer. xviii. 11): “We will walk
after our own devices;” we will be a law to ourselves; and what the
Psalmist saith of the tongue, Our tongues are our own, who shall
control us? is as truly the language of men’s hearts, Our wills are
our own, who shall check us?
2. This is evident in the dissatisfaction of men with their own
consciences when they contradict the desires of self. Conscience is
nothing but an actuated or reflex knowledge of a superior power and
an equitable law; a law impressed, and a power above it impressing
it. Conscience is not the lawgiver, but the remembrancer to mind
us of that law of nature imprinted upon our souls, and actuate the
considerations of the duty and penalty, to apply the rule to our
acts, and pass judgment upon matter of fact: it is to give the charge,
urge the rule, enjoin the practice of those notions of right, as part
of our duty and obedience. But man is as much displeased with the
directions of conscience, as he is out of love with the accusations
and condemning sentence of this officer of God: we cannot naturally
endure any quick and lively practical thoughts of God and his will,
and distaste our own consciences for putting us in mind of it: they
therefore “like not to retain God in their knowledge,”[206] that is,
God in their own consciences; they would blow it out, as it is the
candle of the Lord in them to direct them, and their acknowledgments
of God, to secure themselves against the practice of its principles:
they would stop all the avenues to any beam of light, and would not
suffer a sparkle of divine knowledge to flutter in their minds, in
order to set up another directing rule suited to the fleshly appetite:
and when they cannot stop the light of it from glaring in their faces,
they rebel against it, and cannot endure to abide in its paths.[207]
He speaks not of those which had the written word, or special
revelations; but only a natural light or traditional, handed from Adam:
hence are all the endeavors to still it when it begins to speak, by
some carnal pleasures, as Saul’s evil spirit with a fit of music; or
bribe it with some fits of a glavering devotion, when it holds the
law of God in its commanding authority before the mind: they would
wipe out all the impressions of it when it presses the advancement
of God above self, and entertain it with no better compliment than
Ahab did Elijah, “Hast thou found me, O my enemy?” If we are like
to God in anything of our natural fabric, it is in the superior and
more spiritual part of our souls. The resistance of that which is
most like to God, and instead of God in us, is a disowning of the
Sovereign represented by {a124} that officer. He that would be without
conscience, would be without God, whose vicegerent it is, and make
the sensitive part, which conscience opposes, his lawgiver. Thus a
man, out of respect to sinful self, quarrels with his natural self,
and cannot comport himself in a friendly behavior to his internal
implanted principles: he hates to come under the rebukes of them, as
much as Adam hated to come into the presence of God, after he turned
traitor against him: the bad entertainment God’s deputy hath in us,
reflects upon that God whose cause it pleads: it is upon no other
account that men loathe the upright language of their own reasons in
those matters, and wish the eternal silence of their own consciences,
but as they maintain the rights of God, and would hinder the idol of
self from usurping his godhead and prerogative. Though this power be
part of a man’s self, rooted in his nature, as essential to him and
inseparable from him as the best part of his being; yet he quarrels
with it, as it is God’s deputy, and stickling for the honor of God in
his soul, and quarrelling with that sinful self he would cherish above
God. We are not displeased with this faculty barely as it exerciseth a
self‑reflection; but as it is God’s vicegerent, and bears the mark of
his authority in it. In some cases this self‑reflecting act meets with
good entertainment, when it acts not in contradiction to self, but
suitable to natural affections. As suppose a man hath in his passion
struck his child, and caused thereby some great mischief to him, the
reflection of conscience will not be unwelcome to him; will work some
tenderness in him, because it takes the part of self and of natural
affection; but in the more spiritual concerns of God it will be rated
as a busy‑body.
3. Many, if not most actions, materially good in the world, are done
more because they are agreeable to self, than as they are honorable
to God. As the word of God may be heard not as his word,[208] but as
there may be pleasing notions in it, or discourses against an opinion
or party we disaffect; so the will of God may be performed, not as his
will, but as it may gratify some selfish consideration, when we will
please God so far as it may not displease ourselves, and serve him as
our Master, so far as his command may be a servant to our humor; when
we consider not who it is that commands, but how short it comes of
displeasing that sin which rules in our heart, pick and choose what is
least burdensome to the flesh, and distasteful to our lusts. He that
doth the will of God, not out of conscience of that will, but because
it is agreeable to himself, casts down the will of God, and sets his
own will in the place of it; takes the crown from the head of God,
and places it upon the head of self. If things are done, not because
they are commanded by God, but desirable to us, it is a disobedient
obedience; a conformity to God’s will in regard of the matter, a
conformity to our own will in regard of the motive; either as the
things done are agreeable to natural and moral self, or sinful self.
(1). As they are agreeable to natural or moral self. When men will
practise some points of religion, and walk in the track of some divine
precepts; not because they are divine, but because they are {a125}
agreeable to their humor or constitution of nature; from the sway
of a natural bravery, the bias of a secular interest, not from an
ingenuous sense of God’s authority, or a voluntary submission to his
will; as when a man will avoid excess in drinking, not because it is
dishonorable to God, but as it is a blemish to his own reputation,
or an impair of the health of his body: doth this deserve the name
of an observance of the divine injunction, or rather an obedience
to ourselves? Or when a man will be liberal in the distribution of
his charity, not with an eye to God’s precept, but in compliance
with his own natural compassion, or to pleasure the generosity of
his nature: the one is obedience to a man’s own preservation; the
other an obedience to the interest or impulse of a moral virtue. It
is not respect to the rule of God, but the authority of self, and, at
the best, is but the performance of the material part of the divine
rule, without any concurrence of a spiritual motive or a spiritual
manner. That only is a maintaining the rights of God, when we pay
an observance to his rule, without examining the agreeableness of
it to our secular interest, or consulting with the humor of flesh and
blood; when we will not decline his service, though we find it cross,
and hath no affinity with the pleasure of our own nature: such an
obedience as Abraham manifested in his readiness to sacrifice his
son; such an obedience as our Saviour demands in cutting off the right
hand. When we observe anything of divine order upon the account of its
suitableness to our natural sentiments, we shall readily divide from
him, when the interest of nature turns its point against the interest
of God’s honor; we shall fall off from him according to the change
we find in our own humors. And can that be valued as a setting up the
rule of God, which must be deposed upon the mutable interest of an
inconstant mind? Esau had no regard to God in delaying the execution
of his resolution to shorten his brother’s days, though he was awed by
the reverence of his father to delay it; he considered, perhaps, how
justly he might lie under the imputation of hastening crazy Isaac’s
death, by depriving him of a beloved son. But had the old man’s head
been laid, neither the contrary command of God, nor the nearness of a
fraternal relation, could have bound his hands from the act, no more
than they did his heart from the resolution (Gen. xxvii. 41): “Esau
hated Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him;
and Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are
at hand, then will I slay my brother.” So many children, that expect
at the death of their parents great inheritances of portions, may be
observant of them, not in regard of the rule fixed by God, but to
their own hopes, which they would not frustrate by a disobligement.
Whence is it that many men abstain from gross sins, but in love to
their reputation? Wickedness may be acted privately, which a man’s
own credit puts a bar to the open commission of. The preserving his
own esteem may divert him from entering into a brothel house, to which
he hath set his mind before, against a known precept of his Creator.
As Pharaoh parted with the Israelites, so do some men with their
blemishing sins; not out of a sense of God’s rule, but the smart
of present judgments, or fear of a future wrath. Our security then,
{a126} and reputation, is set up in the place of God. This also may be,
and is in renewed men, who have the law written in their hearts, that
is, an habitual disposition to an agreement with the law of God; when
what is done is with a respect to this habitual inclination, without
eying the divine precept, which is appointed to be their rule. This
also is to set up a creature, as renewed self is, instead of the
Creator, and that law of his in his word, which ought to be the rule
of our actions. Thus it is when men choose a moral life, not so much
out of respect to the law of nature, as it is the law of God, but
as it is a law become one with their souls and constitutions. There
is more of self in this than consideration of God; for if it were
the latter, the revealed law of God would, upon the same reason, be
received as well as his natural law. From this principle of self,
morality comes by some to be advanced above evangelical dictates.
(2.) As they are agreeable to sinful self. Not that the commands of
God are suited to bolster up the corruptions of men, no more than
the law can be said to excite or revive sin:[209] but it is like a
scandal taken, not given; an occasion taken by the tumultuousness of
our depraved nature. The Pharisees were devout in long prayers, not
from a sense of duty, or a care of God’s honor; but to satisfy their
ambition, and rake together fuel for their covetousness,[210] that
they might have the greater esteem and richer offerings, to free by
their prayers the souls of deceased persons from purgatory; an opinion
that some think the Jewish synagogue had then entertained,[211]
since some of their doctors have defended such a notion. Men may
observe some precepts of God to have a better conveniency to break
others. Jehu was ordered to cut off the house of Ahab. The service
he undertook was in itself acceptable, but corrupt nature misacted
that which holiness and righteousness commanded. God appointed it to
magnify his justice, and check the idolatry that had been supported
by that family; Jehu acted it to satisfy his revenge and ambition:
he did it to fulfil his lust, not the will of God who enjoined him:
Jehu applauds it as zeal; and God abhors it as murder, and therefore
would avenge the blood of Jezreel on the house of Jehu (Hos. i. 4).
Such kind of services are not paid to God for his own sake, but to
ourselves for our lusts’ sake.
4. This is evident in neglecting to take God’s direction upon emergent
occasions. This follows the text, “None did seek God.” When we consult
not with him, but trust more to our own will and counsel, we make
ourselves our own governors and lords independent upon him; as though
we could be our own counsellors, and manage our concerns without
his leave and assistance; as though our works were in our own hands,
and not in the “hands of God;”[212] that we can by our own strength
and sagacity direct them to a successful end without him. If we must
“acquaint ourselves with God” before we decree a thing,[213] then
to decree a thing without acquainting God with it, is to prefer our
purblind wisdom before the infinite wisdom of God: to resolve without
consulting God, is to depose {a127} God and deify self, our own wit
and strength. We would rather, like Lot, follow our own humor and stay
in Sodom, than observe the angel’s order to go out of it.