we destroy that God that made us, because we destroy his intention
and his honor. God cannot outlive his will and his glory: because he
cannot have any other rule but his own will, or any other end but his
own honor. The setting up self as our end puts a nullity upon the true
Deity; by paying to ourselves that respect and honor which is due to
God, we make the true God as no God. Whosoever makes himself a king of
his prince’s rights and territories, manifests an intent to throw him
out of his government. To choose ourselves as our end is to undeify
God, since to be the last end of a rational creature is a right
inseparable from the nature of the Deity; and therefore not to set God,
but self always before us, is to acknowledge no being but ourselves to
be God.
Secondly. The second thing, Man would make anything his end and
happiness rather than God. An end is so necessary in all our actions,
that he deserves not the name of a rational creature that proposeth
not one to himself. This is the distinction between rational creatures
and others; they act with a formal intention, whereas other creatures
are directed to their end by a natural instinct, and moved by nature
to what the others should be moved by reason: when a man, therefore,
acts for that end which was not intended him by the law of his
creation, nor is suited to the noble faculties of his soul, he acts
contrary to God, overturns his order, and merits no better a title
than that of an atheist. A man may be said two ways to make a thing
his last end and chief good.
1. Formally. When he actually judges this or that thing to be his
chiefest good, and orders all things to it. So man doth not formally
judge sin to be good, or any object which is the incentive of sin
to be his last end: this cannot be while he hath the exercise of his
rational faculties.
2. Virtually and implicitly. When he loves anything against the {a143}
command of God, and prefers in the stream of his actions the enjoyment
of that, before the fruition of God, and lays out more strength and
expends more time in the gaining that, than answering the true end
of his creation: when he acts so as if something below God could make
him happy without God, or that God could not make him happy without
the addition of something else. Thus the glutton makes a god of his
dainties; the ambitious man of his honor; the incontinent man of his
lust; and the covetous man of his wealth; and consequently esteems
them as his chiefest good, and the most noble end, to which he directs
his thoughts: thus he vilifies and lessens the true God, which can
make him happy, in a multitude of false gods, that can only render
him miserable. He that loves pleasure more than God, says in his heart
there is no God but his pleasure. He that loves his belly more than
God, says in his heart there is no God but his belly: their happiness
is not accounted to lie in that God that made the world, but in the
pleasure or profit they make their god. In this, though a created
object be the immediate and subordinate term to which we turn, yet
principally and ultimately, the affection to it terminates in self.
Nothing is naturally entertained by us, but as it affects our sense
or mingles with some promise of advantage to us. This is seen,
1. In the fewer thoughts we have of God than of anything else. Did
we apprehend God to be our chiefest good and highest end, should we
grudge him the pains of a few days’ thoughts upon him? Men in their
travels are frequently thinking upon their intended stage: but our
thoughts run upon new acquisitions to increase our wealth, rear up our
families, revenge our injuries, and support our reputation: trifles
possess us; but “God is not in all our thoughts;”[254] seldom the
sole object of them. We have durable thoughts of transitory things,
and flitting thoughts of a durable and eternal good. The covenant of
grace engageth the whole heart to God, and bars anything else from
engrossing it: but what strangers are God and the souls of most men!
Though we have the knowledge of him by creation, yet he is for the
most part an unknown God in the relations wherein he stands to us,
because a God undelighted in: hence it is, as one observes, that
because we observe not the ways of God’s wisdom, conceive not of him
in his vast perfections, nor are stricken with an admiration of his
goodness, that we have fewer good sacred poems, than of any other
kind.[255] The wits of men hang the wing when they come to exercise
their reasons and fancies about God. Parts and strength are given us,
as well as corn and wine to the Israelites, for the service of God;
but those are consecrated to some cursed Baal.[256] Like Venus in the
Poet, we forsake heaven to follow some Adonis.
2. In the greedy pursuit of the world.[257] When we pursue worldly
wealth or worldly reputation with more vehemency than the riches of
grace, or the favor of God;――when we have a foolish imagination, that
our happiness consists in them, we prefer earth before heaven, broken
cisterns which can hold no water, before an ever‑springing fountain
of glory and bliss; and, as though there were a defect in {a144} God,
cannot be content with him as our portion, without an addition of
something inferior to him;――when we make it our hopes, and say to the
wedge, “Thou art my confidence;” and rejoice more because it is great,
and because “our hand hath gotten much,” than in the privilege of
communion with God and the promise of an everlasting fruition of
him;[258] this is so gross, that Job joins it with the idolatry of
the sun and moon, which he purgeth himself of (xxxi. 26). And the
apostle, when he mentions covetousness or covetous men, passes it not
over without the title of idolatry to the vice, and idolater to the
person;[259] in that it is a preferring clay and dirt as an end more
desirable than the original of all goodness, in regard of affection
and dependence.
3. In a strong addictedness to sensual pleasures (Phil. iii. 19).
Who make their “belly their god;” subjecting the truths of God to
the maintenance of their luxury. In debasing the higher faculties to
project for the satisfaction of the sensitive appetite as their chief
happiness, whereby many render themselves no better than a rout of
sublimated brutes among men, and gross atheists to God. When men’s
thoughts run also upon inventing new methods to satisfy their bestial
appetite, forsaking the pleasures which are to be had in God, which
are the delights of angels, for the satisfaction of brutes. This is an
open and unquestionable refusal of God for our end, when our rest is
in them, as if they were the chief good, and not God.
4. In paying a service, upon any success in the world, to instruments
more than to God, their sovereign Author. When “they sacrifice to
their net, and burn incense to their drag.”[260] Not that the Assyrian
did offer a sacrifice to his arms, but ascribed to them what was due
only to God, and appropriated the victory to his forces and arms. The
prophet alludes to those that worshipped their warlike instruments,
whereby they had attained great victories; and those artificers who
worshipped the tools by which they had purchased great wealth, in
the stead of God; preferring them as the causes of their happiness,
before God who governs the world. And are not our affections, upon
the receiving of good things, more closely fixed to the instruments
of conveyance, than to the chief Benefactor, from whose coffers they
are taken? Do we not more delight in them, and hug them with a greater
endearedness, as if all our happiness depended on them, and God were
no more than a bare spectator? Just as if when a man were warmed by
a beam, he should adore that and not admire the sun that darts it out
upon him.
5. In paying a respect to man more than God. When in a public
attendance on his service, we will not laugh, or be garish, because
men see us; but our hearts shall be in a ridiculous posture, playing
with feathers and trifling fancies, though God see us; as though
our happiness consisted in the pleasing of men, and our misery in
a respect to God. There is no fool that saith in his heart, There is
no God, but he sets up something in his heart as a god. This is,
1. A debasing of God, (1.) In setting up a creature. It speaks God
less amiable than the creature, short of those perfections which
some silly, sordid thing, which hath engrossed their affections,
is possessed {a145} with; as if the cause of all being could be
transcended by his creature, and a vile lust could equal, yea,
surmount the loveliness of God. It is to say to God, as the rich
to the poor (James ii. 3), “Stand thou there, or sit here under my
footstool;” it is to sink him below the mire of the world, to order
him to come down from his glorious throne, and take his place below
a contemptible creature, which, in regard of its infinite distance, is
not to be compared with him. It strips God of the love that is due to
him by the right of his nature and the greatness of his dignity; and
of the trust that is due to him, as the First Cause and the chiefest
good, as though he were too feeble and mean to be our blessedness.
This is intolerable, to make that which is God’s footstool, the earth,
to climb up into his throne; to set that in our heart which God hath
made even below ourselves and put under our feet; to make that which
we trample upon to dispose of the right God hath to our hearts.[261]
It is worse than if a queen should fall in love with the little image
of the prince in the palace, and slight the beauty of his person; and
as if people should adore the footsteps of a king in the dirt, and
turn their backs upon his presence. (2.) It doth more debase him to
set up a sin, a lust, a carnal affection as our chief end. To steal
away the honor due to God, and appropriate it to that which is no work
of his hands, to that which is loathsome in his sight, hath disturbed
his rest, and wrung out his just breath to kindle a hell for its
eternal lodging, a God‑dishonoring and a soul‑murdering lust, is worse
than to prefer Barabbas before Christ. The baser the thing, the worse
is the injury to him with whom we would associate it. If it were some
generous principle, a thing useful to the world, that we place in an
equality with, or a superiority above him, though it were a vile usage,
yet it were not altogether so criminal; but to gratify some unworthy
appetite with the displeasure of the Creator, something below the
rational nature of man, much more infinitely below the excellent
majesty of God, is a more unworthy usage of him. To advance one of
the most virtuous nobles in a kingdom as a mark of our service and
subjection, is not so dishonorable to a despised prince as to take
a scabby beggar or a rotten carcase to place in his throne. Creeping
things, abominable beasts, the Egyptian idols, cats and crocodiles,
were greater abominations, and a greater despite done to God, than
the image of jealousy at the gate of the altar.[262] And let not any
excuse themselves, that it is but one lust or one creature which is
preferred as the end: is not he an idolater that worships the sun or
moon, one idol, as well as he that worships the whole host of heaven?
The inordinacy of the heart to one lust may imply a stronger contempt
of him, than if a legion of lusts did possess the heart. It argues a
greater disesteem, when he shall be slighted for a single vanity. The
depth of Esau’s profaneness in contemning his birth‑right, and God in
it, is aggravated by his selling it for one morsel of meat,[263] and
that none of the daintiest, none of the costliest――a mess of pottage;
implying, had he parted with it at a greater rate, it had been more
tolerable, and his profaneness more excusable. And it is reckoned
as a high aggravation of the corruption of the Israelite judges (Amos
ii. 6), {a146} that they sold the poor for a pair of shoes; that is,
that they would betray the cause of the poor for a bribe of no greater
value than might purchase them a pair of shoes. To place any one thing
as our chief end, though never so light, doth not excuse. He that
will not stick to break with God for a trifle, a small pleasure, will
leap the hedge upon a greater temptation. Nay, and if wealth, riches,
friends, and the best thing in the world, our own lives, be preferred
before God, as our chief happiness and end but one moment, it is an
infinite wrong, because the infinite goodness and excellency of God
is denied; as though the creature or lust we love, or our own life,
which we prefer in that short moment before him, had a goodness in
itself, superior to, and more desirable than the blessedness in God.
And though it should be but one minute, and a man in all the period
of his days, both before and after that failure, should actually and
intentionally prefer God before all other things; yet he doth him an
infinite wrong, because God in every moment is infinitely good, and
absolutely desirable, and can never cease to be good, and cannot have
the least shadow or change in him and his perfections.
2. It is a denying of God (Job xxxi. 26‒28): “If I beheld the sun
when it shined, or the moon walking in its brightness, and my heart
hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand; this also
were iniquity to be punished by the judge, for I should have denied
the Lord above.” This denial of God is not only the act of an open
idolater, but the consequent of a secret confidence, and immoderate
joy in worldly goods. This denial of God is to be referred to ver. 24,
25. When a man saith to gold, “Thou art my confidence,” and rejoices
because his wealth is great; he denies that God which is superior to
all those, and the proper object of trust. Both idolatries are coupled
here together; that which hath wealth and that which hath those
glorious creatures in heaven for its object. And though some may think
it a light sin, yet the crime being of deeper guilt, a denial of God,
deserves a severer punishment, and falls under the sentence of the
just Judge of all the earth, under that notion which Job intimates in
those words, “This also were an iniquity to be punished by the Judge.”
The kissing the hand to the sun, moon, or any idol, was an external
sign of religious worship among those and other nations. This is far
less than an inward hearty confidence, and an affectionate trust. If
the motion of the hand be, much more the affection of the heart to an
excrementitious creature, or a brutish pleasure, is a denial of God,
and a kind of an abjuring of him, since the supreme affection of the
soul is undoubtedly and solely the right of the Sovereign Creator,
and not to be given in common to others, as the outward gesture may
in a way of civil respect. Nothing that is an honor peculiar to God
can be given to a creature, without a plain exclusion of God to be
God; it being a disowning the rectitude and excellency of his nature.
If God should command a creature such a love, and such a confidence
in anything inferior to him, he would deny himself his own glory, he
would deny himself to be the most excellent being. Can the Romanists
be free from this, when they call the cross _spem unicam_, and
{a147} say to the Virgin, _In te Domina speravi_, as Bonaventure?
&c. Good reason, therefore, have worldlings and sensualists, persons
of immoderate fondness to anything in the world, to reflect upon
themselves; since though they own the being of God, they are guilty
of so great disrespect to him, that cannot be excused from the title
of an unworthy atheism; and those that are renewed by the spirit
of God, may here see ground of a daily humiliation for the frequent
and too common excursions of their souls in creature confidences and
affections, whereby they fall under the charge of an act of practical
atheism, though they may be free from a habit of it.
Thirdly, Man would make himself the end of all creatures. Man would
sit in the seat of God, and set his heart as the heart of God, as the
Lord saith of Tyrus (Ezek. xxviii. 2). What is the consequence of this,
but to be esteemed the chief good and end of other creatures? a thing
that the heart of God cannot but be set upon, it being an inseparable
right of the Deity, who must deny himself if he deny this affection
of the heart. Since it is the nature of man, derived from his root,
to desire to be equal with God, it follows that he desires no creature
should be equal with him, but subservient to his ends and his glory.
He that would make himself God, would have the honor proper to God.
He that thinks himself worthy of his own supreme affection, thinks
himself worthy to be the object of the supreme affection of others.
Whosoever counts himself the chiefest good and last end, would have
the same place in the thoughts of others. Nothing is more natural
to man than a desire to have his own judgment the rule and measure
of the judgments and opinions of the rest of mankind. He that sets
himself in the place of the prince, doth, by that act, challenge all
the prerogatives and dues belonging to the prince; and apprehending
himself fit to be a king, apprehends himself also worthy of the homage
and fealty of the subjects. He that loves himself chiefly, and all
other things and persons for himself, would make himself the end of
all creatures. It hath not been once or twice only in the world that
some vain princes have assumed to themselves the title of gods, and
caused divine adorations to be given to them, and altars to smoke with
sacrifices for their honor. What hath been practised by one, is by
nature seminally in all; we would have all pay an obedience to us,
and give to us the esteem that is due to God. This is evident,
1. In pride. When we entertain a high opinion of ourselves, and act
for our own reputes, we dispossess God from our own hearts; and while
we would have our fame to be in every man’s mouth, and be admired in
the hearts of men, we would chase God out of the hearts of others, and
deny his glory a residence anywhere else, that our glory should reside
more in their minds than the glory of God; that their thoughts should
be filled with our achievements, more than the works and excellency
of God, with our image, and not with the divine. Pride would paramount
God in the affections of others, and justle God out of their souls;
and by the same reason that man doth thus in the place where he lives,
he would do so in the whole world, and press the whole creation from
the service of their true Lord, to his own service. Every proud man
would be counted by {a148} others as he counts himself, the highest,
chiefest piece of goodness, and be adored by others, as much as
he adores and admires himself. No proud man, in his self‑love, and
self‑admiration, thinks himself in an error; and if he be worthy of
his own admiration, he thinks himself worthy of the highest esteem
of others, that they should value him above themselves, and value
themselves only for him. What did Nebuchadnezzar intend by setting up
a golden image, and commanding all his subjects to worship it, upon
the highest penalty he could inflict, but that all should aim only at
the pleasing his humor?
2. In using the creatures contrary to the end God has appointed. God
created the world and all things in it, as steps whereby men might
ascend to a prospect of him, and the acknowledgment of his glory; and
we would use them to dishonor God, and gratify ourselves: he appointed
them to supply our necessities, and support our rational delights,
and we use them to cherish our sinful lusts. We wring groans from
the creature in diverting them from their true scope to one of our
own fixing, when we use them not in his service, but purely for our
own, and turn those things he created for himself, to be instruments
of rebellion against him to serve our turns, and hereby endeavor to
defeat the ends of God in them, to establish our own ends by them:
this is a high dishonor to God, a sacrilegious undermining of his
glory,[264] to reduce what God hath made to serve our own glory
and our own pleasure; it perverts the whole order of the world, and
directs it to another end than what God hath constituted, to another
intention contrary to the intention of God; and thus man makes himself
a God by his own authority. As all things were made by God, so they
are for God; but while we aspire to the end of the creation, we deny
and envy God the honor of being Creator; we cannot make ourselves the
chief end of the creatures against God’s order, but we imply thereby
that we were their first principle; for if we lived under a sense of
the Creator of them while we enjoy them for our use, we should return
the glory to the right owner. This is diabolical; though the devil,
for his first affecting an authority in heaven, has been hurled down
from the state of an angel of light into that of darkness, vileness,
and misery, to be the most accursed creature living, yet he still
aspires to mate God, contrary to the knowledge of the impossibility of
success in it. Neither the terrors he feels, nor the future torments
he doth expect, do a jot abate his ambition to be competitor with his
Creator; how often hath he, since his first sin, arrogated to himself
the honor of a God from the blind world, and attempted to make the Son
of God, by a particular worship, count him as the “chiefest good and
benefactor of the world!”[265] Since all men by nature are the devil’s
children, the serpent’s seed, they have something of this venom in
their natures, as well as others of his qualities. We see that there
may be, and is a prodigious atheism, lurking under the belief of a
God; the devil knows there is a God, but acts like an atheist; and so
do his children.
Fourthly, Man would make himself the end of God. This necessarily
follows upon the former; whosoever makes himself his own law and his
own end in the place of God, would make God the subject {a149} in
making himself the sovereign; he that steps into the throne of a
prince, sets the prince at his footstool; and while he assumes the
prince’s prerogative, demands a subjection from him. The order of the
creation has been inverted by the entrance of sin.[266] God implanted
an affection in man with a double aspect, the one to pitch upon
God, the other to respect ourselves; but with this proviso, that
our affection to God should be infinite, in regard of the object,
and centre in him as the chiefest happiness and highest end. Our
affections to ourselves should be finite, and refer ultimately to God
as the original of our being; but sin hath turned man’s affections
wholly to himself, whereas he should love God first, and himself in
order to God; he now loves himself first, and God in order to himself;
love to God is lost, and love to self hath usurped the throne. As God
by “creation put all things under the feet of man,”[267] reserving
the heart for himself, man by corruption hath dispossessed God of his
heart, and put him under his own feet. We often intend ourselves when
we pretend the honor of God, and make God and religion a stale to some
designs we have in hand; our Creator a tool for our own ends. This is
evident,