mortification of it. In every action we should make the inquiry,
What is the rule I observe? Is it God’s will or my own? Whether do my
intentions tend to set up God or self? As much as we destroy this, we
abate the power of sin: these two things are the head of the serpent
in us, which we must be bruising by the power of the cross. Sin is
nothing else but a turning from God, and centering in self, and most
in the inferior part of self: if we bend our force against those two,
self‑will and self‑ends, we shall intercept atheism at the spring head,
take away that which doth constitute and animate all sin: the sparks
must vanish if the fire be quenched which affords them fuel. They
are but two short things to ask in every undertaking: Is God my rule
in regard of his will? Is God my end in regard of his glory? All sin
lies in the neglect of these, all grace lies in the practice of them.
Without some degree of the mortification of these; we cannot make
profitable and comfortable approaches to God. When we come with idols
in our hearts, we shall be answered according to the multitude and
the baseness of them too.[309] What expectation of a good look from
him can we have, when we come before him with undeifying thoughts of
him, a petition in our mouths, and a sword in our hearts, to stab his
honor? To this purpose,
1. Be often in the views of the excellencies of God. When we have
no intercourse with God by delightful meditations, we begin to be
estranged from him, and prepare ourselves to live without God in the
world. Strangeness is the mother and nurse of disaffection: we slight
men sometimes because we know them not. The very beasts delight in the
company of men; when being tamed and familiar, they become acquainted
with their disposition. A daily converse with God would discover so
much of loveliness in his nature, so much of sweetness in his ways,
that our injurious thoughts of God would wear off, and we should count
it our honor to contemn ourselves and magnify him. By this means a
slavish fear, which is both a dishonor to God and a torment to the
soul,[310] and the root of atheism, will be cast out, and an ingenuous
fear of him wrought in the heart. Exercised thoughts on him would
issue out in affections to him, which {a173} would engage our hearts
to make him both our rule and our end. This course would stifle any
temptations to gross atheism, wherewith good souls are sometimes
haunted, by confirming us more in the belief of a God, and discourage
any attempts to a deliberate practical atheism. We are not like to
espouse any principle which is confuted by the delightful converse we
daily have with him. The more we thus enter into the presence chamber
of God, the more we cling about him with our affections, the more
vigorous and lively will the true notion of God grow up in us, and be
able to prevent anything which may dishonor him and debase our souls.
Let us therefore consider him as the only happiness; set up the true
God in our understandings; possess our hearts with a deep sense of his
desirable excellency above all other things. This is the main thing
we are to do in order to our great business: all the directions in the
world, with the neglect of this, will be insignificant ciphers. The
neglect of this is common, and is the basis of all the mischiefs which
happen to the souls of men.
2. Prize and study the Scripture. We can have no delight in meditation
on him, unless we know him; and we cannot know him but by the means of
his own revelation; when the revelation is despised, the revealer will
be of little esteem. Men do not throw off God from being their rule,
till they throw off Scripture from being their guide; and God must
needs be cast off from being an end, when the Scripture is rejected
from being a rule. Those that do not care to know his will, that love
to be ignorant of his nature, can never be affected to his honor. Let
therefore the subtleties of reason veil to the doctrine of faith, and
the humor of the will to the command of the word.
3. Take heed of sensual pleasures, and be very watchful and cautious
in the use of those comforts God allows us. Job was afraid, when his
“sons feasted, that they should curse God in their hearts.”[311] It
was not without cause that the apostle Peter joined sobriety with
watchfulness and prayer (1 Pet. iv. 7): “The end of all things is at
hand; be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer.”――A moderate use
of worldly comforts.――Prayer is the great acknowledgment of God, and
too much sensuality is a hindrance of this, and a step to atheism.
Belshazzar’s lifting himself up against the Lord, and not glorifying
of God, is charged upon his sensuality (Dan. v. 23). Nothing is more
apt to quench the notions of God, and root out the conscience of him,
than an addictedness to sensual pleasures. Therefore take heed of that
snare.
4. Take heed of sins against knowledge. The more sins against
knowledge are committed, the more careless we are, and the more
careless we shall be of God and his honor; we shall more fear his
judicial power; and the more we fear that, the more we shall disaffect
that God in whose hand vengeance is, and to whom it doth belong.
Atheism in conversation proceeds to atheism in affection, and that
will endeavor to sink into atheism in opinion and judgment.
_The sum of the whole._――And now consider in the whole what has been
spoken.
{a174} 1. Man would set himself up as his own rule. He disowns the
rule of God, is unwilling to have any acquaintance with the rule God
sets him, negligent in using the means for the knowledge of his will,
and endeavors to shake it off when any notices of it break in upon
him; when he cannot expel it, he hath no pleasure in the consideration
of it, and the heart swells against it. When the notions of the will
of God are entertained, it is on some other consideration, or with
wavering and unsettled affections. Many times men design to improve
some lust by his truth. This unwillingness respects truth as it is
most spiritual and holy; as it most relates and leads to God; as it
is most contrary to self. He is guilty of contempt of the will of God,
which is seen in every presumptuous breach of his law; in the natural
aversions to the declaration of his will and mind, which way soever he
turns; in slighting that part of his will which is most for his honor;
in the awkwardness of the heart when it is to pay God a service.
A constraint in the first engagement, slightness in the service, in
regard of the matter, in regard of the frame, without a natural vigor.
Many distractions, much weariness, in deserting the rule of God,
when our expectations are not answered upon our service, in breaking
promises with God. Man naturally owns any other rule rather than that
of God’s prescribing: the rule of Satan; the will of man; in complying
more with the dictates of men than the will of God; in observing
that which is materially so, not because it is his will, but the
injunctions of men; in obeying the will of man when it is contrary
to the will of God. This man doth in order to the setting up himself.
This is natural to man as he is corrupted. Men are dissatisfied with
their own consciences when they contradict the desires of self. Most
actions in the world are done, more because they are agreeable to self,
than as they are honorable to God; as they are agreeable to natural
and moral self, or sinful self. It is evident in neglects of taking
God’s directions upon emergent occasions; in counting the actions
of others to be good or bad, as they suit with, or spurn against our
fancies and humors. Man would make himself the rule of God, and give
laws to his Creator, in striving against his law; disapproving of his
methods of government in the world; in impatience in our particular
concerns; envying the gifts and prosperity of others; corrupt matter
or ends of prayer or praise; bold interpretations of the judgments
of God in the world; mixing rules in the worship of God with those
which have been ordained by him; suiting interpretations of Scripture
with our own minds and humors; falling off from God after some fair
compliances, when his will grates upon us, and crosseth ours.
2. Man would be his own end. This is natural and universal. This is
seen in frequent self‑applauses and inward overweening reflections; in
ascribing the glory of what we do or have to ourselves; in desire of
self‑pleasing doctrines; in being highly concerned in injuries done
to ourselves, and little or not at all concerned for injuries done to
God; in trusting in ourselves; in workings for carnal self against the
light of our own consciences: this is a usurping God’s prerogative,
vilifying God, destroying God. Man would make anything his end or
happiness rather than God. This appears in the {a175} fewer thoughts
we have of him than of anything else; in the greedy pursuit of the
world; in the strong addictedness to sensual pleasures; in paying
a service, upon any success in the world, to instruments more than
to God: this is a debasing God in setting up a creature, but more
in setting up a base lust; it is a denying of God. Man would make
himself the end of all creatures. In pride; using the creatures
contrary to the end God hath appointed: this is to dishonor God, and
it is diabolical. Man would make himself the end of God; in loving
God, because of some self‑pleasing benefits distributed by him; in
abstinence from some sins, because they are against the interest
of some other beloved corruption; in performing duties merely for
a selfish interest, which is evident in unwieldiness in religious
duties, where self is not concerned; in calling upon God only in
a time of necessity; in begging his assistance to our own projects
after we have by our own craft, laid the plot; in impatience upon
a refusal of our desires; in selfish aims we have in our duties: this
is a vilifying God, a dethroning him; in unworthy imaginations of
God, universal in man by nature. Hence spring idolatry, superstition,
presumption, the common disease of the world. This is a vilifying God;
worse than idolatry, worse than absolute atheism. Natural desires to
be distant from him; no desires for the remembrance of him; no desires
of converse with him; no desires of a thorough return to him; no
desire of any close imitation of him.
{a176} DISCOURSE III.
ON GOD’S BEING A SPIRIT.
JOHN iv. 24――God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must
worship him in spirit and in truth.
THE words are part of the dialogue between our Saviour and the
Samaritan woman.[312] Christ, intending to return from Judea to
Galilee, passed through the country of Samaria, a place inhabited not
by Jews, but a mixed company of several nations, and some remainders
of the posterity of Israel, who escaped the captivity, and were
returned from Assyria; and being weary with his journey, arrived
about the sixth hour or noon (according to the Jews’ reckoning the
time of the day), at a well that Jacob had digged, which was of great
account among the inhabitants for the antiquity of it, as well as the
usefulness of it, in supplying their necessities: he being thirsty,
and having none to furnish him wherewith to draw water, at last comes
a woman from the city, whom he desires to give him some water to
drink. The woman, perceiving him by his language or habit to be a Jew,
wonders at the question, since the hatred the Jews bore the Samaritans
was so great, that they would not vouchsafe to have any commerce with
them, not only in religious, but civil affairs, and common offices
belonging to mankind. Hence our Saviour takes occasion to publish to
her the doctrine of the gospel; and excuseth her rude answer by her
ignorance of him; and tells her, that if she had asked him a greater
matter, even that which concerned her eternal salvation, he would
readily have granted it, notwithstanding the rooted hatred between
the Jews and Samaritans; and bestowed a water of a greater virtue,
the “water of life.”[313] The woman is no less astonished at his reply
than she was at his first demand. It was strange to hear a man speak
of giving living water to one of whom he had begged the water of that
spring, and had no vessel to draw any to quench his own thirst. She
therefore demands whence he could have this water that he speaks
of,[314] since she conceived him not greater than Jacob, who had
digged that well and drank of it. Our Saviour, desirous to make a
progress in that work he had begun, extols the water he spake of,
above this of the well, from its particular virtue fully to refresh
those that drank of it, and be as a cooling and comforting fountain
within them, of more efficacy than that without.[315] The woman,
conceiving a good opinion of our Saviour, {a177} desires to partake
of this water, to save her pains in coming daily to the well, not
apprehending the spirituality of Christ’s discourse to her:[316]
Christ finding her to take some pleasure in his discourse, partly
to bring her to a sense of her sin, before he did communicate the
excellency of his grace, bids her return back to the city and bring
her husband with her to him. [317] She freely acknowledges that she
had no husband; whether having some check of conscience at present for
the unclean life she led, or loth to lose so much time in the gaining
this water so much desired by her:[318] our Saviour takes an occasion
from this to lay open her sin before her, and to make her sensible of
her own wicked life and the prophetic excellency of himself; and tells
her she had had five husbands, to whom she had been false, and by whom
she was divorced, and the person she now dwelt with was not her lawful
husband, and in living with him she violated the rights of marriage,
and increased guilt upon her conscience.[319] The woman being affected
with this discourse, and knowing him to be a stranger that could not
be certified of those things but in an extraordinary way, begins to
have a high esteem of him as a prophet.[320] And upon this opinion
she esteems him able to decide a question, which had been canvassed
between them and the Jews, about the place of worship.[321] Their
fathers worshipping in that mountain, and the Jews affirming Jerusalem
to be a place of worship, she pleads the antiquity of the worship in
this place, Abraham having built an altar there (Gen. xii. 7), and
Jacob, upon his return from Syria. And, surely, had the place been
capable of an exception, such persons as they, and so well acquainted
with the will of God, would not have pitched upon that place to
celebrate their worship. Antiquity hath, too, too often bewitched the
minds of men, and drawn them from the revealed will of God. Men are
more willing to imitate the outward actions of their famous ancestors,
than conform themselves to the revealed will of their Creator. The
Samaritans would imitate the patriarchs in the place of worship, but
not in the faith of the worshippers. Christ answers her, that this
question would quickly be resolved by a new state of the church, which
was near at hand; and neither Jerusalem, which had now the precedency,
nor that mountain, should be of any more value in that concern, than
any other place in the world:[322] but yet, to make her sensible of
her sin and that of her countrymen, tells her, that their worship
in that mountain was not according to the will of God, he having
long after the altars built in this place, fixed Jerusalem as the
place of sacrifices; besides, they had not the knowledge of that
God which ought to be worshipped by them, but the Jews had the “true
object of worship,” and the “true manner of worship, according to
the declaration God had made of himself to them.”[323] But all that
service shall vanish, the veil of the temple shall be rent in twain,
and that carnal worship give place to one more spiritual; shadows
shall fly before substance, and truth advance itself above figures;
and the worship of God shall be with the strength of the Spirit: such
a worship, and such worshippers doth the Father seek;[324] for “God is
a {a178} Spirit: and those that worship him must worship him in spirit
and in truth.” The design of our Saviour is to declare, that God is
not taken with external worship invented by men, no, nor commanded by
himself; and that upon this reason, because he is a spiritual essence,
infinitely above gross and corporeal matter, and is not taken with
that pomp which is a pleasure to our earthly imaginations.
Πνεῦμα ὁ Θεός. Some translate it just as the words lie: “Spirit is
God.”[325] But it is not unusual, both in the Old and New Testament
languages, to put the predicate before the subject, as Psalm v. 9,
“Their throat is an open sepulchre;” in the Hebrew, “A sepulchre open
their throat;” so Psalm cxi. 3, “His work is honorable and glorious;”
Heb. “Honor and glory is his work;” and there wants not one example
in the same evangelist (John i. 1), “And the Word was God;” Greek,
“And God was the Word:” in all, the predicate, or what is ascribed,
is put before the subject to which it is ascribed. One tells us, and
he, a head of a party that hath made a disturbance in the church of
God,[326] that this place is not aptly brought to prove God to be a
Spirit; and the reason of Christ runs not thus,――God is of a spiritual
essence, and therefore must be worshipped with a spiritual worship;
for the essence of God is not the foundation of his worship, but his
will; for then we were not to worship him with a corporeal worship,
because he is not a body; but with an invisible and eternal worship,
because he is invisible and eternal. But the nature of God is the
foundation of worship; the will of God is the rule of worship; the
matter and manner is to be performed according to the will of God.
But is the nature of the object of worship to be excluded? No; as the
object is, so ought our devotion to be, spiritual as he is spiritual.
God, in his commands for worship, respected the discovery of his
own nature; in the law, he respected the discovery of his mercy and
justice, and therefore commanded a worship by sacrifices; a spiritual
worship without those institutions would not have declared those
attributes which was God’s end to display to the world in Christ;
and though the nature of God is to be respected in worship, yet the
obligations of the creature are to be considered. God is a Spirit,
therefore must have a spiritual worship; the creature hath a body as
well as a soul, and both from God; and therefore ought to worship God
with the one as well as the other, since one as well as the other is
freely bestowed upon him. The spirituality of God was the foundation
of the change from the Judaical carnal worship to a more spiritual
and evangelical.
_God is a Spirit_; that is, he hath nothing corporeal, no mixture of
matter, not a visible substance, a bodily form.[327] He is a Spirit,
not a bare spiritual substance, but an understanding, willing Spirit,
holy, wise, good, and just. Before, Christ spake of the Father,[328]
the first person in the Trinity; now he speaks of God essentially: the
word Father is personal, the word God essential; so that our Saviour
would render a reason, not from any one person in the blessed Trinity,
but from the Divine nature, why we should worship in spirit, and
therefore makes use of the word God, the being a Spirit being common
{a179} to the other persons with the Father. This is the reason of
the proposition (ver. 23), “_Of a spiritual worship_.” Every nature
delights in that which is like it, and distastes that which is most
different from it. If God were corporeal, he might be pleased with the
victims of beasts, and the beautiful magnificence of temples, and the
noise of music; but being a Spirit, he cannot be gratified with carnal
things; he demands something better and greater than all those,――that
soul which he made, that soul which he hath endowed, a spirit of a
frame suitable to his nature. He indeed appointed sacrifices, and a
temple, as shadows of those things which were to be most acceptable
to him in the Messiah, but they were imposed only “till the time of
reformation.”[329]
_Must worship him_; not they may, or it would be more agreeable to
God to have such a manner of worship; but they _must_. It is not
exclusive of bodily worship; for this were to exclude all public
worship in societies, which cannot be performed without reverential
postures of the body.[330] The gestures of the body are helps to
worship, and declarations of spiritual acts. We can scarcely worship
God with our spirits without some tincture upon the outward man; but
he excludes all acts merely corporeal, all resting upon an external
service and devotion, which was the crime of the Pharisees, and the
general persuasion of the Jews as well as heathens, who used the
outward ceremonies, not as signs of better things, but as if they did
of themselves please God, and render the worshippers accepted with
him, without any suitable frame of the inward man.[331] It is as if
he had said, Now you must separate yourselves from all carnal modes
to which the service of God is now tied, and render a worship chiefly
consisting in the affectionate motions of the heart, and accommodated
more exactly to the condition of the object, who is a Spirit.
_In spirit and truth._[332] The evangelical service now required has
the advantage of the former; that was a shadow and figure, this the
body and truth.[333] Spirit, say some, is here opposed to the legal
ceremonies; truth, to hypocritical services; or, rather truth is
opposed to shadows,[334] and an opinion of worth in the outward action;
it is principally opposed to external rites, because our Saviour saith
(ver. 23): “The hour comes, and now is,” &c. Had it been opposed to
hypocrisy, Christ had said no new thing; for God always required truth
in the inward parts, and all true worshippers had served him with a
sincere conscience and single heart. The old patriarchs did worship
God in spirit and _truth_, as taken for sincerity; such a worship
was always, and is perpetually due to God, because he always was, and
eternally will be, a Spirit.[335] And it is said, “The Father seeks
such to worship him,” not, shall seek; he always sought it; it always
was performed to him by one or other in the world: and the prophets
had always rebuked them for resting upon their outward solemnities
(Isa. lviii. 7, and Micah vi. 8): but a worship without legal rites
was proper to an evangelical state and the times of the gospel, God
having then exhibited Christ, and brought into the world the substance
of those {a180} shadows, and the end of those institutions; there was
no more need to continue them when the true reason of them was ceased.
All laws do naturally expire when the true reason upon which they were
first framed is changed. Or by spirit may be meant, such a worship as
is kindled in the heart by the breath of the Holy Ghost. Since we are
dead in sin, a spiritual light and flame in the heart, suitable to the
nature of the object of our worship, cannot be raised in us without
the operation of a supernatural grace; and though the fathers could
not worship God without the Spirit, yet in the gospel‑times, there
being a fuller effusion of the Spirit, the evangelical state is called,
“the administration of the Spirit,” and “the newness of the Spirit,”
in opposition to the legal economy, entitled the “oldness of the
letter.”[336] The evangelical state is more suited to the nature
of God than any other; such a worship God must have, whereby he is
acknowledged to be the true sanctifier and quickener of the soul. The
nearer God doth approach to us, and the more full his manifestations
are, the more spiritual is the worship we return to God. The gospel
pares off the rugged parts of the law, and heaven shall remove what is
material in the gospel, and change the ordinances of worship into that
of a spiritual praise.
In the words there is: 1. A proposition,――“God is a Spirit;” the
foundation of all religion. 2. An inference,――“They that worship
him,” &c.
As God, a worship belongs to him; as a Spirit, a spiritual worship
is due to him: in the inference we have, 1. The manner of worship,
“in spirit and truth;” 2. The necessity of such a worship, “must.”
The proposition declares the nature of God; the inference, the duty
of man. The observations lie plain.
_Obs._ 1. God is a pure spiritual being: “he is a Spirit.” 2. The
worship due from the creature to God must be agreeable to the nature
of God, and purely spiritual. 3. The evangelical state is suited to
the nature of God.