suit with, or spurn against our fancies and humors. Virtue is a crime,
and vice a virtue, as it is contrary or concurrent with our humors.
Little reason have many men to blame the actions of others, but
because they are not agreeable to what they affect and desire; we
would have all men take directions from us, and move according to our
beck, hence that common speech in the world, Such an one is an honest
friend. Why? because he is of their humor, and lackeys according to
their wills. Thus we make self the measure and square of good and evil
in the rest of mankind, and judge of it by our own fancies, and not
by the will of God, the proper rule of judgment. Well then, let us
consider: Is not this very common? are we not naturally more willing
to displease God than displease ourselves, when it comes to a point
that we must do one or other? Is not our own counsel of more value
with us, than conformity to the will of the Creator? Do not our
judgments often run counter to the judgment of God? Have his laws
a greater respect from us, than our own humors? Do we scruple the
staining his honor when it comes in competition with our own? Are
not the lives of most men a pleasing themselves, without a repentance
that ever they displeased God? Is not this to undeify God, to deify
ourselves, and disown the propriety he hath in us by the right of
creation and beneficence? We order our own ways by our own humors, as
though we were the authors of our own being, and had given ourselves
life and understanding. This is to destroy the order that God hath
placed between our wills and his own, and a lifting up of the foot
above the head; it is the deformity of the creature. The honor of
every rational creature consists in the service of the First Cause
of his being; as the welfare of every creature consists in the orders
and proportionable motion of its members, according to the law of
its creation. He that moves and acts according to a law of his own,
offers a manifest wrong to God, the highest wisdom and chiefest good;
disturbs the order of the world; nulls the design of the righteousness
and holiness of God. The law of God is the rule of that order he
would have observed in the world; he that makes another law his rule,
thrusts out the order of the Creator, and establishes the disorder of
the creature. But this will yet be more evident, in the fourth thing.
Fourthly, Man would make himself the rule of God, and give laws to
his Creator. We are willing God should be our benefactor, but not our
ruler; we are content to admire his excellency and pay him a worship,
provided he will walk by our rule. “This commits a riot upon his
nature, To think him to be what we ourselve ‘would have him, and wish
him to be’ (Psalm l. 21), we would amplify his mercy and contract his
justice; we would have his power enlarged to supply our wants, and
straitened when it goes about to revenge our crimes; we would have
him wise to defeat our enemies, but not to disappoint our unworthy
projects; we would have him all eye to regard our indigence, and
blind not to discern our guilt; we would have him {a128} true to his
promises, regardless of his precepts, and false to his threatenings;
we would new mint the nature of God according to our models, and shape
a God according to our own fancies, as he made us at first according
to his own image;” instead of obeying him, we would have him obey
us; instead of owning and admiring his perfections, we would have him
strip himself of his infinite excellency, and clothe himself with a
nature agreeable to our own. This is not only to set up self as the
law of God, but to make our own imaginations the model of the nature
of God.[214] Corrupted man takes a pleasure to accuse or suspect the
actions of God: we would not have him act conveniently to his nature;
but act what doth gratify us, and abstain from what distastes us. Man
is never well but when he is impeaching one or other perfection of
God’s nature, and undermining his glory, as if all his attributes must
stand indicted at the bar of our purblind reason: this weed shoots up
in the exercise of grace. Peter intended the refusal of our Saviour’s
washing his feet, as an act of humility, but Christ understands it to
be a prescribing a law to himself, a correcting his love (John xiii.
8, 9). This is evidenced,
1. In the strivings against his law. How many men imply by their
lives, that they would have God deposed from his government, and some
unrighteous being step into his throne; as if God had or should change
his laws of holiness into laws of licentiousness: as if he should
abrogate his old eternal precepts, and enact contrary ones in their
stead? What is the language of such practices, but that they would be
God’s lawgivers and not his subjects? that he should deal with them
according to their own wills, and not according to his righteousness?
that they could make a more holy, wise, and righteous law than the
law of God? that their imaginations, and not God’s righteousness,
should be the rule of his doing good to them? (Jer. ix. 31): “They
have forsaken my law, and walked after the imaginations of their own
heart.” When an act is known to be a sin, and the law that forbids it
acknowledged to be the law of God, and after this we persist in that
which is contrary to it, we tax his wisdom as if he did not understand
what was convenient for us; “we would teach God knowledge;”[215] it is
an implicit wish that God had laid aside the holiness of his nature,
and framed a law to pleasure our lusts. When God calls for weeping
and mourning, and girding with sackcloth upon approaching judgments,
then the corrupt heart is for joy and gladness, eating of flesh and
drinking of wine, because to‑morrow they should die;[216] as if God
had mistaken himself when he ordered them so much sorrow, when their
lives were so near an end; and had lost his understanding when he
ordered such a precept: disobedience is therefore called contention
(Rom. ii. 8): “Contentious, and obey not the truth:” contention
against God, whose truth it is that they disobey; a dispute with him,
which hath more of wisdom in itself, and conveniency for them, his
truth of their imaginations. The more the love, goodness, and holiness
of God appears in any command, the more are we naturally averse from
it, and cast an imputation on him, as if he were foolish, unjust,
cruel, {a129} and that we could have advised and directed him better.
The goodness of God is eminent to us in appointing a day for his own
worship, wherein we might converse with him, and he with us, and our
souls be refreshed with spiritual communications from him; and we
rather use it for the ease of our bodies, than the advancement of
our souls, as if God were mistaken and injured his creature, when he
urged the spiritual part of duty. Every disobedience to the law is
an implicit giving law to him, and a charge against him that he might
have provided better for his creature.
2. In disapproving the methods of God’s government of the world.
If the counsels of Heaven roll not about according to their schemes,
instead of adoring the unsearchable depths of his judgments, they call
him to the bar, and accuse him, because they are not fitted to their
narrow vessels, as if a nut‑shell could contain an ocean. As corrupt
reason esteems the highest truths foolishness, so it counts the most
righteous ways unequal. Thus we commence a suit against God, as though
he had not acted righteously and wisely, but must give an account
of his proceedings at our tribunal. This is to make ourselves God’s
superiors, and presume to instruct him better in the government of the
world; as though God hindered himself and the world, in not making us
of his privy council, and not ordering his affairs according to the
contrivances of our dim understandings. Is not this manifest in our
immoderate complaints of God’s dealings with his church, as though
there were a coldness in God’s affections to his church, and a glowing
heat towards it only in us? Hence are those importunate desires for
things which are not established by any promise, as though we would
overrule and over persuade God to comply with our humor. We have an
ambition to be God’s tutors and direct him in his counsels: “Who hath
been his counsellor?” saith the apostle.[217] Who ought not to be his
counsellor? saith corrupt nature. Men will find fault with God in what
he suffers to be done according to their own minds, when they feel
the bitter fruit of it. When Cain had killed his brother, and his
conscience racked him, how saucily and discontentedly doth he answer
God! (Gen. iv. 9), “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Since thou dost own
thyself the rector of the world, thou shouldst have preserved his
person from my fury; since thou dost accept his sacrifice before my
offering, preservation was due as well as acceptance. If this temper
be found on earth, no wonder it is lodged in hell. That deplorable
person under the sensible stroke of God’s sovereign justice, would
oppose his nay to God’s will (Luke xvi. 30): “And he said, Nay, father
Abraham, but if one went to them from the dead they will repent.”
He would presume to prescribe more effectual means than Moses and
the prophets, to inform men of the danger they incurred by their
sensuality. David was displeased, it is said (2 Sam. vi. 8), when the
Lord had made a breach upon Uzzah, not with Uzzah, who was the object
of his pity, but with God, who was the inflicter of that punishment.
When any of our friends have been struck with a rod, against our
sentiments and wishes, have not our hearts been apt to swell in
complaints against God, as though he disregarded the goodness {a130}
of such a person, did not see with our eyes, and measure him by our
esteem of him? as if he should have asked our counsel, before he had
resolved, and managed himself according to our will, rather than his
own. If he be patient to the wicked, we are apt to tax his holiness,
and accuse him as an enemy to his own law. If he inflict severity upon
the righteous, we are ready to suspect his goodness, and charge him to
be an enemy to his affectionate creature. If he spare the Nimrods of
the world, we are ready to ask, “Where is the God of judgment?”[218]
If he afflict the pillars of the earth, we are ready to question,
where is the God of mercy? It is impossible, since the depraved nature
of man, and the various interests and passions in the world, that
infinite power and wisdom can act righteously for the good of the
universe, but he will shake some corrupt interest or other upon the
earth; so various are the inclinations of men, and such a weather‑cock
judgment hath every man in himself, that the divine method he applauds
this day, upon a change of his interest, he will cavil at the next.
It is impossible for the just orders of God to please the same person
many weeks, scarce many minutes together. God must cease to be God,
or to be holy, if he should manage the concerns of the world according
to the fancies of men. How unreasonable is it thus to impose laws upon
God! Must God revoke his own orders? govern according to the dictates
of his creature? Must God, who hath only power and wisdom to sway the
sceptre, become the obedient subject of every man’s humor, and manage
everything to serve the design of a simple creature? This is not to
be God, but to set the creature in his throne: though this be not
formally done, yet that it is interpretatively and practically done,
is every hour’s experience.
3. In impatience in our particular concerns. It is ordinary with man
to charge God in his complaints in the time of affliction. Therefore
it is the commendation the Holy Ghost gives to Job (ch. i. 22), that
in all this, that is, in those many waves that rolled over him, he did
not charge God foolishly, he never spake nor thought anything unworthy
of the majesty and righteousness of God; yet afterwards we find
him warping; he nicknames the affliction to be God’s oppression of
him, and no act of his goodness (x. 3): “Is it good for thee, that
thou shouldst oppress?” He seems to charge God with injustice, for
punishing him when he was not wicked, for which he appeals to God:
“Thou knowest that I am not wicked” (ver. 7), and that God acted
not like a Creator (ver. 8). If our projects are disappointed, what
fretfulness against God’s management are our hearts racked with!
How do uncomely passions bubble upon us, interpretatively at least
wishing that the arms of his power had been bound, and the eye of his
omniscience been hoodwinked, that we might have been left to our own
liberty and designs? and this oftentimes when we have more reason to
bless him than repine at him. The Israelites murmured more against
God in the wilderness, with manna in their mouths, than they did at
Pharaoh in the brick‑kilns, with their garlic and onions between their
teeth. Though we repine at instruments in our afflictions, yet God
counts it a reflection upon himself. The Israelites speaking against
Moses, was, in God’s interpretation, {a131} a rebellion against
himself:[219] and rebellion is always a desire of imposing laws
and conditions upon those against whom the rebellion is raised. The
sottish dealings of the vine‑dressers in Franconia with the statue of
St. Urban, the protector of the vines, upon his own day, is an emblem
of our dealing with God: if it be a clear day and portend a prosperous
vintage, they honor the statue and drink healths to it; if it be
a rainy day, and presage a scantiness, they daub it with dirt in
indignation. We cast out our mire and dirt against God when he acts
cross to our wishes, and flatter him when the wind of his providence
joins itself to the tide of our interest. Men set a high price upon
themselves, and are angry God values them not at the same rate, as if
their judgment concerning themselves were more piercing than his. This
is to disannul God’s judgment, and condemn him and count ourselves
righteous, a ’tis Job xl. 8. This is the epidemical disease of human
nature; they think they deserve caresses instead of rods, and upon
crosses are more ready to tear out the heart of God, than reflect
humbly upon their own hearts. When we accuse God, we applaud ourselves,
and make ourselves his superiors, intimating that we have acted more
righteously to him than he to us, which is the highest manner of
imposing laws upon him; as that emperor accused the justice of God
for snatching him out of the world too soon.[220] What a high piece
of practical atheism is this, to desire that infinite wisdom should
be guided by our folly, and asperse the righteousness of God rather
than blemish our own! Instead of silently submitting to his will
and adoring his wisdom, we declaim against him, as an unwise and
unjust governor: we would invert his order, make him the steward and
ourselves the proprietors of what we are and have: we deny ourselves
to be sinners, and our mercies to be forfeited.
4. It is evidenced in envying the gifts and prosperities of others.
Envy hath a deep tincture of practical atheism, and is a cause of
atheism.[221] We are unwilling to leave God to be the proprietor and
do what he will with his own, and as a Creator to do what he pleases
with his creatures. We assume a liberty to direct God what portions,
when and how, he should bestow upon his creatures. We would not let
him choose his own favorites, and pitch upon his own instruments for
his glory; as if God should have asked counsel of us how he should
dispose of his benefits. We are unwilling to leave to his wisdom the
management of his own judgments to the wicked, and the dispensation
of his own love to ourselves. This temper is natural: it is as ancient
as the first age of the world. Adam envied God a felicity by himself,
and would not spare a tree that he had reserved as a mark of his
sovereignty. The passion that God had given Cain to employ against
his sin, he turns against his Creator. He was wroth with God and with
Abel;[222] but envy was at the root, because his brother’s sacrifice
was accepted and his refused. How could he envy his accepted person,
without reflecting upon the {a132} Acceptor of his offering? Good men
have not been free from it. Job questions the goodness of God, that he
should shine upon the counsel of the wicked (Job x. 3). Jonah had too
much of self, in fearing to be counted a false prophet, when he came
with absolute denunciations of wrath;[223] and when he could not bring
a volley of destroying judgments upon the Ninevites, he would shoot
his fury against his Master, envying those poor people the benefit,
and God the honor of his mercy; and this after he had been sent into
the whale’s belly to learn humiliation, which, though he exercised
there, yet those two great branches of self‑pride and envy were
not lopped off from him in the belly of hell; and God was fain to
take pains with him, and by a gourd scarce makes him ashamed of his
peevishness. Envy is not like to cease till all atheism be cashiered,
and that is in heaven. This sin is an imitation of the devil, whose
first sin upon earth was envy, as his first sin in heaven was pride.
It is a wishing that to ourselves, which the devil asserted as his
right, to give the kingdoms of the world to whom he pleased:[224]
it is an anger with God, because he hath not given us a patent for
government. It utters the same language in disparagement of God, as
Absalom did in reflection on his father: If I were king in Israel,
justice should be better managed; if I were Lord of the world,
there should be more wisdom to discern the merits of men, and more
righteousness in distributing to them their several portions. Thus
we impose laws upon God, and would have the righteousness of his
will submit to the corruptions of ours, and have him lower himself to
gratify our minds, rather than fulfil his own. We charge the Author
of those gifts with injustice, that he hath not dealt equally; or with
ignorance, that he hath mistook his mark. In the same breath that we
censure him by our peevishness, we would guide him by our wills. This
is an unreasonable part of atheism. If all were in the same state and
condition, the order of the world would be impaired. Is God bound to
have a care of thee, and neglect all the world besides? “Shall the
earth be forsaken for thee?”[225] Joseph had reason to be displeased
with his brothers, if they had muttered because he gave Benjamin a
double portion, and the rest a single. It was unfit that they, who had
deserved no gift at all, should prescribe him rules how to dispense
his own doles; much more unworthy it is to deal so with God; yet this
is too rife.
5. It is evidenced in corrupt matter or ends of prayer and praise.
When we are importunate for those things that we know not whether the
righteousness, holiness, and wisdom of God can grant, because he hath
not discovered his will in any promise to bestow them, we would then
impose such conditions on God, which he never obliged himself to grant;
when we pray for things not so much to glorify God, which ought to be
the end of prayer, as to gratify ourselves. We acknowledge, indeed,
by the act of petitioning, that there is a God; but we would have him
ungod himself to be at our beck, and debase himself to serve our turns.
When we desire those things which are repugnant to those attributes
whereby he doth manage the government of the world; when, by some
superficial services, we think we have {a133} gained indulgence to
sins, which seems to be the thought of the strumpet, in her paying her
vows, to wallow more freely in the mire of her sensual pleasures――“I
have peace‑offerings with me; this day I have paid my vows, I have
made my peace with God, and have entertainment for thee;”[226] or when
men desire God to bless them in the commission of some sin, as when
Balak and Balaam offered sacrifices, that they might prosper in the
cursing of the Israelites (Numb. xxv. 1, &c.) So for a man to pray to
God to save him, while he neglects the means of salvation appointed
by God, or to renew him when he slights the word, the only instrument
to that purpose; this is to impose laws upon God, contrary to the
declared will and wisdom of God, and to desire him to slight his own
institutions. When we come into the presence of God with lusts reeking
in our hearts, and leap from sin to duty, we would impose the law
of our corruption on the holiness of God. While we pray “the will of
God may be done,” self‑love wishes its own will may be performed, as
though God should serve our humors, when we will not obey his precepts.
And when we make vows under any affliction, what is it often but a
secret contrivance to bend and flatter him to our conditions? We will
serve him if he will restore us; we think thereby to compound the
business with him, and bring him down to our terms.
6. It is evidenced in positive and bold interpretations of the
judgments of God in the world. To interpret the judgments of God to
the disadvantage of the sufferer, unless it be an unusual judgment,
and have a remarkable hand of God in it, and the sin be rendered
plainly legible in the affliction, is a presumption of this nature.
When men will judge the Galileans, whose blood Pilate mingled with
the sacrifices, greater sinners than others, and themselves righteous,
because no drops of it were dashed upon them; or when Shimei, being
of the house of Saul, shall judge according to his own interest, and
desires David’s flight upon Absalom’s rebellion to be a punishment
for invading the rights of Saul’s family, and depriving him of the
succession in the kingdom,[227] as if he had been of God’s privy
council, when he decreed such acts of justice in the world. Thus we
would fasten our own wills as a law or motive upon God, and interpret
his acts according to the motions of self. Is it not too ordinary,
when God sends an affliction upon those that bear ill‑will to us, to
judge it to be a righting of our cause, to be a fruit of God’s concern
for us in revenging our wrongs, as if we “had heard the secrets of
God,” or, as Eliphaz saith, “had turned over the records of heaven?”
(Job xv. 8.) This is a judgment according to self‑love, not a divine
rule; and imposeth laws upon heaven, implying a secret wish that God
would take care only of them, make our concerns his own, not in ways
of kindness and justice, but according to our fancies; and this is
common in the profane world, in those curses they so readily spit out
upon any affront, as if God were bound to draw his arrows and shoot
them into the heart of all their offenders at their beck and pleasure.
7. It is evidenced, in mixing rules for the worship of God with those
which have been ordered by him. Since men are most prone {a134} to
live by sense, it is no wonder that a sensible worship, which affects
their outward sense with some kind of amazement, is dear to them, and
spiritual worship most loathsome. Pompous rites have been the great
engine wherewith the devil hath deceived the souls of men, and wrought
them to a nauseating the simplicity of divine worship, as unworthy the
majesty and excellency of God.[228] Thus the Jews would not understand
the glory of the second temple in the presence of the Messiah, because
it had not the pompous grandeur of that of Solomon’s erecting. Hence
in all ages men have been forward to disfigure God’s models, and dress
up a brat of their own; as though God had been defective in providing
for his own honor in his institutions, without the assistance of his
creature. This hath always been in the world; the old world had their
imaginations, and the new world hath continued them. The Israelites in
the midst of miracles, and under the memory of a famous deliverance,
would erect a calf. The Pharisees, that sate in Moses’ chair, would
coin new traditions, and enjoin them to be as current as the law of
God.[229] Papists will be blending the christian appointments with
pagan ceremonies, to please the carnal fancies of the common people.
“Altars have been multiplied” under the knowledge of the law of
God.[230] Interest is made the balance of the conveniency of God’s
injunctions. Jeroboam fitted a worship to politic ends, and posted up
calves to prevent his subjects revolting from his sceptre, which might
be occasioned by their resort to Jerusalem, and converse with the body
of the people from whom they were separated.[231] Men will be putting
in their own dictates with God’s laws, and are unwilling he should be
the sole Governor of the world without their counsel; they will not
suffer him to be Lord of that which is purely and solely his concern.
How often hath the practice of the primitive church, the custom
wherein we are bred, the sentiments of our ancestors, been owned as
a more authentic rule in matters of worship, than the mind of God
delivered in his Word! It is natural by creation to worship God; and
it is as natural by corruption for man to worship him in a human way,
and not in a divine; is not this to impose laws upon God, to esteem
ourselves wiser than he? to think him negligent of his own service,
and that our feeble brains can find out ways to accommodate his honor,
better than himself hath done? Thus do men for the most part equal
their own imaginations to God’s oracles: as Solomon built a high place
to Moloch and Chemoch, upon the Mount of Olives, to face on the east
part Jerusalem and the temple;[232] this is not only to impose laws
on God, but also to make self the standard of them.