distributed by him. There is in men a kind of natural love to God,
but it is but a secondary one, because God gives them the good things
of this world, spreads their table, fills their cup, stuffs their
coffers, and doth them some good turns by unexpected providences; this
is not an affection to God for the unbounded excellency of his own
nature, but for his beneficence, as he opens his hand for them; an
affection to themselves, and those creatures, their gold, their honor,
which their hearts are most fixed upon, without a strong spiritual
inclination that God should be glorified by them in the use of those
mercies. It is rather a disowning of God, than any love to him,
because it postpones God to those things they love him for; this would
appear to be no love, if God should cease to be their benefactor, and
deal with them as a judge; if he should change his outward smiles into
afflicting frowns, and not only shut his hand, but strip them of what
he sent them. The motive of their love being expired, the affection
raised by it must cease for want of fuel to feed it; so that God
is beholden to sordid creatures of no value (but as they are his
creatures) for most of the love the sons of men pretend to him. The
devil spake truth of most men, though not of Job, when he said (Job i.
9): “They love not God for naught;” but while he makes a hedge about
them and their families, whilst he blesseth the works of their hands,
and increaseth their honor in the land. It is like Peter’s sharp
reproof of his Master, when he spake of the ill‑usage, even to death,
he was to meet with at Jerusalem: “This shall not be unto thee.” It
was as much out of love to himself, as zeal for his Master’s interest,
knowing his Master could not be in such a storm without some drops
lighting upon himself. All the apostasies of men in the world are
witnesses to this; they fawn whilst they may have a prosperous
profession, but will not bear one chip of the cross for the interest
of God; they would partake of his blessings, {a150} but not endure the
prick of a lance for him, as those, that admired the miracles of our
Saviour, and shrunk at his sufferings. A time of trial discovers these
mercenary souls to be more lovers of themselves than their Maker. This
is a pretended love of friendship to God, but a real love to a lust,
only to gain by God. A good man’s temper is contrary: “Quench hell,
burn heaven,” said a holy man, “I will love and fear my God.”
2. It is evident, in abstinence from some sins, not because they
offend God, but because they are against the interest of some other
beloved corruption, or a bar to something men hunt after in the world.
When temperance is cherished not to honor God, but preserve a crazy
carcase; prodigality forsaken, out of a humor of avarice; uncleanness
forsaken, not out of a hatred of lust, but love to their money;
declining a denial of the interest and truth of God, not out of
affection to them, but an ambitious zeal for their own reputation.
There is a kind of conversion from sin, when God is not made the term
of it (Jer. iv. 1): “If thou wilt return, O Israel, return unto me,
saith the Lord.”[268] When we forbear sin as dogs do the meat they
love: they forbear not out of a hatred of the carrion, but fear of
the cudgel; these are as wicked in their abstaining from sin, as
others are in their furious committing it. Nothing of the honor of
God and the end of his appointments is indeed in all this, but the
conveniences self gathers from them. Again, many of the motives the
generality of the world uses to their friends and relations to draw
them from vices, are drawn from self, and used to prop up natural or
sinful self in them. Come, reform yourself, take other courses, you
will smut your reputation and be despicable; you will destroy your
estate, and commence a beggar; your family will be undone, and you may
rot in a prison: not laying close to them the duty they owe to God,
the dishonor which accrues to him by their unworthy courses, and the
ingratitude to the God of their mercies; not that the other motives
are to be laid aside and slighted. Mint and cummin may be tithed,
but the weightier concerns are not to be omitted; but this shows that
self is the bias, not only of men in their own course, but in their
dealings with others; what should be subordinate to the honor of God,
and the duty we owe to him, is made superior.
3. It is evident, in performing duties merely for a selfish interest:
making ourselves the end of religious actions, paying a homage to that,
while we pretend to render it to God (Zech. vii. 5): “Did you at all
fast unto me, even unto me?” Things ordained by God may fall in with
carnal ends affected by ourselves; and then religion is not kept up by
any interest of God in the conscience, but the interest of self in the
heart: we then sanctify not the name of God in the duty, but gratify
ourselves: God may be the object, self is the end; and a heavenly
object is made subservient to a carnal design. Hypocrisy passes a
compliment on God, and is called flattery (Psalm lxxviii. 36): “They
did flatter him with their lips,” &c. They gave him a parcel of good
words for their own preservation. Flattery, in the old notion among
the heathens, is a vice more peculiar to serve our own turn and purvey
for the belly: they knew they could not {a151} subsist without God,
and therefore gave him a parcel of good words, that he might spare
them, and make provision for them. Israel is an empty vine,[269] a
vine, say some, with large branches and few clusters, but brings forth
fruit to himself: while they professed love to God with their lips,
it was that God should promote their covetous designs, and preserve
their wealth and grandeur;[270] in which respect a hypocrite may be
well termed a religious atheist, an atheist masked with religion. The
chief arguments which prevail with many men to perform some duties
and appear religious, are the same that Hamor and Shechem used to the
people of their city to submit to circumcision, viz. the engrossing
of more wealth (Gen. xxxiv. 21, 22): “If every male among us be
circumcised, as they are circumcised, shall not their cattle and
their substance, and every beast of theirs, be ours?” This is seen,
(1.) In unwieldiness to religious duties where self is not concerned.
With what lively thoughts will many approach to God, when a revenue
may be brought in to support their own ends! But when the concerns of
God only are in it, the duty is not the delight, but the clog; such
feeble devotions, that warm not the soul, unless there be something
of self to give strength and heat to them. Jonah was sick of his work,
and run from God, because he thought he should get no honor by his
message: God’s mercy would discredit his prophecy.[271] Thoughts of
disadvantage cut the very sinews of service. You may as well persuade
a merchant to venture all his estate upon the inconstant waves without
hopes of gain, as prevail with a natural man to be serious in duty,
without expectation of some warm advantage. “What profit should we
have if we pray to him?” is the natural question (Job xxi. 15). “What
profit shall I have if I be cleansed from my sin?” (Job xxxv. 3).
I shall have more good by my sin than by my service. It is for God
that I dance before the ark, saith David, therefore I will be more
vile (2 Sam. vi. 22). It is for self that I pray, saith a natural
man, therefore I will be more warm and quick. Ordinances of God are
observed only as a point of interest, and prayer is often most fervent,
when it is least godly, and most selfish; carnal ends and affections
will pour out lively expressions. If there be no delight in the means
that lead to God, there is no delight in God himself; because love
is _appetitus unionis_, a desire of union; and where the object is
desirable, the means that brings us to it would be delightful too.
(2.) In calling upon God only in a time of necessity. How officious
will men be in affliction, to that God whom they neglect in their
prosperity! “When he slew them, then they sought him, and they
returned and inquired after God, and they remembered that God was
their rock” (Psalm lxxviii. 34). They remembered him under the scourge,
and forgot him under his smiles: they visit the throne of grace,
knock loud at heaven’s gates, and give God no rest for their early
and importunate devotions when under distress: but when their desires
are answered, and the rod removed, they stand aloof from him, and rest
upon their own bottom, as Jer. ii. 31: “We are lords; we will come
no more unto thee.” When we have need {a152} of him, he shall find
us clients at his gate; and when we have served our turn, he hears no
more of us: like Noah’s dove sent out of the ark, that returned to him
when she found no rest on the earth, but came not back when she found
a footing elsewhere. How often do men apply themselves to God, when
they have some business for him to do for them! And then too, they are
loth to put it solely into his hand to manage it for his own honor;
but they presume to be his directors, that he may manage it for their
glory. Self spurs men on to the throne of grace; they desire to be
furnished with some mercy they want, or to have the clouds of some
judgments which they fear blown over: this is not affection to God,
but to ourselves: as the Romans worshipped a quartan ague as a goddess,
and Timorem and Pallorem, fear and paleness, as gods; not out of any
affection they had to the disease or the passion, but for fear to
receive any hurt by them. Again, when we have gained the mercy we need,
how little do we warm our souls with the consideration of that God
that gave it, or lay out the mercy in his service! We are importunate
to have him our friend in our necessities, and are ungratefully
careless of him, and his injuries he suffers by us or others. When
he hath discharged us from the rock where we stuck, we leave him, as
having no more need of him, and able to do well enough without him;
as if we were petty gods ourselves, and only wanted a lift from him
at first. This is not to glorify God as God, but as our servant; not
an honoring of God, but a self‑seeking: he would hardly beg at God’s
door, if he could pleasure himself without him.
(3.) In begging his assistance to our own projects. When we lay the
plot of our own affairs, and then come to God, not for counsel but
blessing, self only shall give us counsel how to act; but because we
believe there is a God that governs the world, we will desire him to
contribute success. God is not consulted with till the counsel of
self be fixed; then God must be the executor of our will. Self must be
the principal, and God the instrument to hatch what we have contrived.
It is worse when we beg of God to favor some sinful aim; the Psalmist
implies this (Psalm lxvi. 18): “If I regard iniquity in my heart,
the Lord will not hear me.” Iniquity regarded as the aim in prayer,
renders the prayer successless, and the suppliant an atheist, in
debasing God to back his lust by his holy providence. The disciples
had determined revenge; and because they could not act it without
their Master, they would have him be their second in their vindictive
passion (Luke ix. 55): “Call for fire from heaven.” We scarce seek
God till we have modelled the whole contrivance in our own brains,
and resolved upon the methods of performance; as though there were
not a fulness of wisdom in God to guide us in our resolves, as well
as power to breathe success upon them.
(4.) In impatience upon the refusal of our desires. How often do men’s
spirits rise against God, when he steps not in with the assistance
they want! If the glory of God swayed more with them than their
private interest, they would let God be judge of his own glory, and
rather magnify his wisdom than complain of his want of goodness.
Selfish hearts will charge God with neglect of them, if he be {a153}
not as quick in their supplies as they are in their desires; like
those in Isa. lviii. 3, “Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou
seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our souls, and thou takest
no knowledge?” When we aim at God’s glory in our importunities, we
shall fall down in humble submissions when he denies us; whereas self
riseth up in bold expostulations, as if God were our servant, and
had neglected the service he owed us, not to come at our call. We
over‑value the satisfactions of self above the honor of God. Besides,
if what we desire be a sin, our impatience at a refusal is more
intolerable: it is an anger, that God will not lay aside his holiness
to serve our corruption.
(5.) In the actual aims men have in their duties. In prayer for
temporal things, when we desire health for our own ease, wealth
for our own sensuality, strength for our revenge, children for the
increase of our family, gifts for our applause; as Simon Magus did
the Holy Ghost: or, when some of those ends are aimed at, this is
to desire God not to serve himself of us, but to be a servant to our
worldly interest, our vain glory, the greatening of our names, &c. In
spiritual mercies begged for; when pardon of sin is desired only for
our own security from eternal vengeance; sanctification desired only
to make us fit for everlasting blessedness; peace of conscience, only
that we may lead our lives more comfortably in the world; when we have
not actual intentions for the glory of God, or when our thoughts of
God’s honor are overtopped by the aims of self‑advantage: not but
that as God hath pressed us to those things by motives drawn from the
blessedness derived to ourselves by them, so we may desire them with
a respect to ourselves; but this respect must be contained within the
due banks, in subordination to the glory of God, not above it, nor in
an equal balance with it.[272] That which is nourishing or medicinal
in the first or second degree, is in the fourth or fifth degree mere
destructive poison. Let us consider it seriously; though a duty be
heavenly, doth not some base end smut us in it? [1.] How is it with
our confessions of sin? Are they not more to procure our pardon, than
to shame ourselves before God, or to be freed from the chains that
hinder us from bringing him the glory for which we were created; or
more to partake of his benefits, than to honor him in acknowledging
the rights of his justice? Do we not bewail sin as it hath ruined us,
not as it opposed the holiness of God? Do we not shuffle with God,
and confess one sin, while we reserve another; as if we would allure
God by declaring our dislike of one, to give us liberty to commit
wantonness with another; not to abhor ourselves, but to daub with
God. [2.] Is it any better in our private and family worship? Are not
such assemblies frequented by some, where some upon whom they have
a dependence may eye them, and have a better opinion of them, and
affection to them? If God were the sole end of our hearts, would
they not be as glowing under the sole eye of God, as our tongues or
carriages are seemingly serious under the eye of man? Are not family
duties performed by some that their voices may be heard, and their
reputation supported among godly neighbors? [3.] Is not the charity
of many men tainted with this {a154} end――self,[273] as the Pharisees
were, while they set the miserable object before them, but not the
Lord; bestowing alms not so much upon the necessities of the people,
as the friendship we owe them for some particular respects; or casting
our bread upon those waters which stream down in the sight of the
world, that our doles may be visible to them, and commended by them;
or when we think to oblige God to pardon our transgressions, as if
we merited it and heaven too at his hands, by bestowing a few pence
upon indigent persons? And [4.] Is it not the same with the reproofs
of men? Is not heat and anger carried out with full sail when our
worldly interest is prejudiced and becalmed in the concerns of God?
Do not many masters reprove their servants with more vehemency for the
neglect of their trade and business, than the neglect of divine duties;
and that upon religious arguments, pretending the honor of God that
they may mind their own interest? But when they are negligent in what
they owe to God, no noise is made, they pass without rebuke; is not
this to make God and religion a stale to their own ends? It is a part
of atheism not to regard the injuries done to God, as Tiberius,[274]
“Let God’s wrongs be looked to or cared for by himself.” [5.] Is
it not thus in our seeming zeal for religion? as Demetrius and the
craftsmen at Ephesus cried up aloud the greatness of Diana of the
Ephesians, not out of any true zeal they had for her, but their gain,
which was increased by the confluence of her worshippers, and the sale
of her own shrines (Acts xix. 24, 28).
4. In making use of the name of God to countenance our sin. When we
set up an opinion that is a friend to our lusts, and then dig deep
into the Scripture to find crutches to support it, and authorize our
practices; when men will thank God for what they have got by unlawful
means, fathering the fruit of their cheating craft, and the simplicity
of their chapmen upon God; crediting their cozenage by his name, as
men do brass money, with a thin plate of silver, and the stamp and
image of the prince. The Jews urge the law of God for the crucifying
his Son (John xix. 7): “We have a law, and by that law he is to die,”
and would make him a party in their private revenge. Thus often when
we have faltered in some actions, we wipe our mouths, as if we sought
God more than our own interest, prostituting the sacred name and
honor of God, either to hatch or defend some unworthy lust against
his word.[275] Is not all this a high degree of atheism?
1. It is a vilifying God, an abuse of the highest good. Other
sins subject the creature and outward things to them, but acting
in religious services for self, subjects not only the highest
concernments of men’s souls, but the Creator himself to the creature,
nay, to make God contribute to that which is the pleasure of the
devil, a greater slight than to cast the gifts of a prince to a herd
of nasty swine. It were more excusable to serve ourselves of God upon
the higher accounts, such that materially conduce to his glory; but
it is an intolerable wrong to make him and his ordinances caterers for
our own bellies, as they did:[276] they sacrificed the נדבות of which
the offerer {a155} might eat, not out of any reference to God, but
love to their gluttony; not to please him, but feast themselves. The
belly was truly made the god, when God was served only in order to
the belly; as though the blessed God had his being, and his ordinances
were enjoined to pleasure their foolish and wanton appetites; as
though the work of God were only to patronize unrighteous ends, and be
as bad as themselves, and become a pander to their corrupt affections.
2. Because it is a vilifying of God, it is an undeifying or dethroning
God. It is an acting as if we were the lords, and God our vassal; a
setting up those secular ends in the place of God, who ought to be our
ultimate end in every action; to whom a glory is as due, as his mercy
to us is utterly unmerited by us. He that thinks to cheat and put the
fool upon God by his pretences, doth not heartily believe there is
such a being. He could not have the notion of a God, without that
of omniscience and justice; an eye to see the cheat, and an arm to
punish it. The notion of the one would direct him in the manner of
his services, and the sense of the other would scare him from the
cherishing his unworthy ends. He that serves God with a sole respect
to himself, is prepared for any idolatry; his religion shall warp with
the times and his interest; he shall deny the true God for an idol,
when his worldly interest shall advise him to it, and pay the same
reverence to the basest image, which he pretends now to pay to God; as
the Israelites were as real for idolatry under their basest princes,
as they were pretenders to the true religion under those that were
pious. Before I come to the use of this, give me leave to evince this
practical atheism by two other considerations.
1. Unworthy imaginations of God. “The fool hath said in his heart,
There is no God:” that is, he is not such a God as you report him
to be; this is meant by their being “corrupt,” in the second verse,
corrupt being taken for playing the idolaters (Exod. xxxii. 7). We
cannot comprehend God; if we could, we should cease to be finite; and
because we cannot comprehend him, we erect strange images of him in
our fancies and affections. And since guilt came upon us, because we
cannot root out the notions of God, we would debase the majesty and
nature of God, that we may have some ease in our consciences, and
lie down with some comfort in the sparks of our own kindling. This
is universal in men by nature. “God is not in all his thoughts;”[277]
not in any of his thoughts, according the excellency of his nature
and greatness of his majesty. As the heathen did not glorify God as
God, so neither do they conceive of God as God; they are all infected
with some one or other ill opinion of him, thinking him not so holy,
powerful, just, good, as he is, and as the natural force of the human
understanding might arrive to. We join a new notion of God in our vain
fancies, and represent him not as he is, but as we would have him to
be, fit for our own use, and suited to our own pleasure. We set that
active power of imagination on work, and there comes out a god (a calf)
whom we own for a notion of God. Adam cast him into so narrow a mould,
as to think that himself, who had newly sprouted up by his almighty
power, was fit to be his corrival in knowledge, and had vain hopes to
grasp as {a156} much as infiniteness; if he, in his first declining,
begun to have such a conceit, it is no doubt but we have as bad under
a mass of corruption. When holy Agur speaks of God, he cries out
that he had not “the understanding of a man, nor the knowledge of
the holy;”[278] he did not think rationally of God, as man might by
his strength at his first creation. There are as many carved images
of God as there are minds of men, and as monstrous shapes as those
corruptions into which they would transform him. Hence sprang,
1. Idolatry. Vain imaginations first set afloat and kept up this in
the world. Vain imaginations of the God “whose glory they changed
into the image of corruptible man.”[279] They had set up vain images
of him in their fancy, before they set up idolatrous representations
of him in their temples; the likening him to those idols of wood and
stone, and various metals, were the fruit of an idea erected in their
own minds. This is a mighty debasing the Divine nature, and rendering
him no better than that base and stupid matter they make the visible
object of their adoration; equalling him with those base creatures
they think worthy to be the representations of him. Yet how far did
this crime spread itself in all corners of the world, not only among
the more barbarous and ignorant, but the more polished and civilized
nations! Judea only, where God had placed the ark of his presence,
being free from it, in some intervals of time only after some sweeping
judgment. And though they vomited up their idols under some sharp
scourge, they licked them up again after the heavens were cleared over
their heads: the whole book of Judges makes mention of it. And though
an evangelical light hath chased that idolatry away from a great part
of the world, yet the principle remaining coins more spiritual idols
in the heart, which are brought before God in acts of worship.
2. Hence all superstition received its rise and growth. When we mint
a god according to our own complexion, like to us in mutable and
various passions, soon angry and soon appeased, it is no wonder that
we invent ways of pleasing him after we have offended him, and think
to expiate the sin of our souls by some melancholy devotions and
self‑chastisements. Superstition is nothing else but an unscriptural
and unrevealed dread of God.[280] When they imagined him a rigorous
and severe master, they cast about for ways to mitigate him whom they
thought so hard to be pleased: a very mean thought of him, as if a
slight and pompous devotion could as easily bribe and flatter him out
of his rigors, as a few good words or baubling rattles could please
and quiet little children; and whatsoever pleased us, could please
a God infinitely above us. Such narrow conceits had the Philistines,
when they thought to still the anger of the God of Israel, whom they
thought they possessed in the ark, with the present of a few golden
mice.[281] All the superstition this day living in the world is built
upon this foundation: so natural it is to man to pull God down to
his own imaginations, rather than raise his imaginations up to God.
Hence doth arise also the diffidence of his mercy, though they repent;
measuring God by the contracted models of their own spirits; as though
his nature were as difficult to pardon {a157} their offences against
him, as they are to remit wrongs done to themselves.