man, “the fool,” so he describes all his own people as one man, “the
poor”—that is, the poor man: “Because the LORD is his refuge.” He keeps
it in the singular number. Whatsoever the people of God may differ in,
they are all as one man in this business.
And there is the way whereby these poor make God their refuge. They do
it by “counsel,” saith he. It is not a thing they do by chance, but they
look upon it as their wisdom. They do it upon consideration, upon
advice. It is a thing of great wisdom.
Well, what thoughts have the others concerning this acting of theirs?
The poor make God their refuge; and they do it by counsel. What
judgment, now, doth the world make of this counsel of theirs? Why, they
“shame it;” that is, they cast shame upon it, contemn it as a very
foolish thing, to make the Lord their refuge. “Truly, if they could make
this or that great man their refuge, it were something; but to make the
Lord their refuge, this is the foolishest thing in the world,” say they.
To shame men’s counsel, to despise their counsel as foolish, is as great
contempt as they can lay upon them.
Here you see the state of things as they are represented in this Psalm,
and spread before the Lord; which being laid down, the Psalmist showeth
what our duty is upon such a state of things—what is the duty of the
people of God, things being thus stated. Saith he, “Their way is to go
to prayer:” verse 7, “_O that the salvation of Israel were come out of
Zion! when the Lord bringeth back the captivity of his people, Jacob
shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad._” If things are thus stated,
then cry, then pray, “O that the salvation of Israel were come out of
Zion,” etc. There shall a revenue of praise come to God out of Zion, to
the rejoicing of his people.—_John Owen._
_Verse 1.—“The fool.”_ That sapless fellow, that carcase of a man, that
walking sepulchre of himself, in whom all religion and right reason is
withered and wasted, dried up and decayed. That apostate in whom natural
principles are extinct, and from whom God is departed, as when the
prince is departed, hangings are taken down. That mere animal that hath
no more than a reasonable soul, and for little other purpose than as
salt, to keep his body from putrefying. That wicked man hereafter
described, that studieth atheism.—_John Trapp._
_Verse 1.—“The fool,”_ etc. The world we live in is a world of fools.
The far greater part of mankind act a part entirely irrational. So great
is their infatuation, that they prefer time to eternity, momentary
enjoyments to those that shall never have an end, and listen to the
testimony of Satan in preference to that of God. Of all folly, that is
the greatest, which relates to eternal objects, because it is the most
fatal and when persisted in through life, entirely remediless. A mistake
in the management of temporal concerns may be afterwards rectified. At
any rate, it is comparatively of little importance. But an error in
spiritual and eternal matters, as it is in itself of the greatest
moment, if carried through life, can never be remedied; because after
death there is no redemption. The greatest folly that any creature is
capable of, is that of denying or entertaining unjust apprehensions of
the being and perfections of the great Creator. Therefore, in a way of
eminence, the appellation of _fool_ is given by the Spirit of God, to
him who is chargeable with this guilt. “_The fool hath said in his
heart, There is no God._”—_John Jamieson, M.A., 1789._
_Verse 1_.—“_The fool_,” a term in Scripture signifying a wicked man,
used also by the heathen philosophers to signify a vicious person, נָבָל
as coming from נָבֵל signifies the extinction of life in men, animals,
and plants; so the word נָבֵל is taken, Isaiah xl. 7, נָבֵל צִיץ “the
flower fadeth” (Isaiah xxviii. 1), a plant that hath lost all that juice
that made it lovely and useful. So a fool is one that hath lost his
wisdom and right notion of God and divine things, which were
communicated to man by creation; one dead in sin, yet one not so much
void of rational faculties, as of grace in those faculties; not one that
wants reason, but abuses his reason.—_Stephen Charnock._
_Verse 1.—“The fool hath said,”_ etc. This folly is bound up in every
heart. It is bound, but it is not tongue-tied; it speaks blasphemous
things against God, _it says_ there is “_no God_.” There is a difference
indeed in the language: gross sins speak this louder, there are crying
sins; but though less sins speak it not so loud they whisper it. But the
Lord can hear the language of the heart, the whisperings of its motions,
as plainly as we hear one another in our ordinary discourse. Oh, how
heinous is the least sin, which is so injurious to the very being of the
great God!—_David Clarkson._
_Verse 1.—“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.”_ If you
will turn over some few leaves as far as the fifty-third Psalm, you
shall not only find my text, but this whole Psalm, without any
alteration, save only in the fifth verse, and that not at all in the
sense neither. What shall we say? Took the Holy Spirit of God such
especial particular notice of the sayings and deeds of a _fool_, that
one expression of them would not serve the turn? Or, does the babbling
and madness of a fool so much concern us, as that we need to have them
urged upon us once and again, and a third time in the third of the
Romans? Surely not any one of us present here, is this fool! Nay, if any
one of us could but tell where to find such a fool as this, that would
offer to say, though in his heart, “_There is no God_,” he should not
rest in quiet, he should soon perceive we were not of his faction. We
that are able to tell David an article or two of faith more than ever he
was acquainted with! Nay, more; can we with any imaginable ground of
reason be supposed liable to any suspicion of atheism, that are able to
read to David a lecture out of his own Psalms, and explain the meaning
of his own prophecies much clearer than himself which held the pen to
the Holy Spirit of God? Though we cannot deny but that in other things
there may be found some spice of folly and imperfection in us, but it
cannot be imagined that we, who are almost cloyed with the heavenly
manna of God’s word, that can instruct our teachers, and are able to
maintain opinions and tenets, the scruples whereof not both the
universities in this land, nor the whole clergy are able to resolve,
that it should be possible for us ever to come to that perfection and
excellency of folly and madness, as to entertain thought that _there is
no God_: nay, we are not so uncharitable as to charge a Turk or an
infidel with such a horrible imputation as this.
Beloved Christians, be not wise in your own conceits: if you will
seriously examine the third of Romans (which I mentioned before), you
shall find that Paul, out of this Psalm, and the like words of Isaiah,
doth conclude the whole posterity of Adam (Christ only excepted), under
sin and the curse of God; which inference of his were weak and
inconcluding, unless every man of his own nature were such a one as the
prophet here describes; and the same apostle in another place expresses,
“_Even altogether without God in the world_,” _i.e._, not maintaining it
as an opinion which they would undertake by force of argument to
confirm, That there is no God: for we read not of above three or four
among the heathens that were of any fashion, which went thus far; but
such as though in their discourse and serious thoughts they do not
question a deity, but would abhor any man that would not liberally allow
unto God all his glorious attributes, yet in their hearts and affections
they deny him; they live as if there was no God, having no respect at
all to him in all their projects and therefore, indeed and in God’s
esteem, become formally, and in strict propriety of speech very
atheists.—_William Chillingworth, 1602-1643._
_Verse 1.—“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.”_ Why do
men resist God’s authority, against which they cannot dispute? and
disobey his commands, unto which they cannot devise to frame an
exception? What but the spirit of enmity, can make them regret “so easy
a yoke,” reject so “light a burden,” shun and fly off from so peaceful
and pleasant paths? yea, and take ways that so manifestly “take hold of
hell, and lead down to the chambers of death,” rather choosing to perish
than obey? Is not this the very height of enmity? What further proof
would we seek of a disaffected and implacable heart? Yet to all this we
may cast in that fearful addition, their saying in their heart, “_No
God_;” as much as to say, “O that there were none!” This is enmity not
only to the highest pitch of _wickedness_, to wish their common parent
extinct, the author of their being, but even unto _madness_ itself. For
in the forgetful heat of this transport, it is not thought on that they
wish the most absolute impossibility; and that, if it were possible,
they wish, with his, the extinction of their own and of all being; and
that the sense of their hearts, put into words, would amount to no less
than a direful and most horrid execration and curse upon God and the
whole creation of God at once! As if, by the blasphemy of their
poisonous breath, they would wither all nature, blast the whole universe
of being, and make it fade, languish, and droop into nothing. This is to
set their mouth against heaven and earth, themselves, and all things at
once, as if they thought their feeble breath should overpower the
omnipotent Word, shake and shiver the adamantine pillars of heaven and
earth, and the Almighty _fiat_ be defeated by their _nay_, striking at
the root of all! So fitly is it said “The _fool_ hath in his heart”
muttered thus. Nor are there few such fools; but this is plainly given
us as the common character of apostate man, the whole revolted race, of
whom it is said in very general terms, “They are all gone back, there is
none that doeth good.” This is their sense, one and all, that is,
comparatively; and the true state of the case being laid before them, it
is more their temper and sense to say, “No God,” than to repent, “and
turn to him.” What mad enmity is this! Nor can we devise into what else
to resolve it.—_John Howe._
_Verse 1.—“The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.”_ He that
shall deny there is a God, sins with a very high hand against the light
of nature; for every creature, yea, the least gnat and fly, and the
meanest worm that crawls upon the ground will confute and confound that
man that disputes whether there be a God or no. The name of God is
written in such full, fair and shining characters upon the whole
creation, that all men may run and read that there is a God. The notion
of a deity is so strongly and deeply impressed upon the tables of all
men’s hearts, that to deny a God is to quench the very principles of
common nature; yea, it is formally _deicidium_, a killing of God, as
much as in the creature lies. There are none of these atheists in hell,
for the devils believe and tremble. James ii. 19. The Greek word
φρίσσουσι, that is here used, signifies properly the roaring of the sea;
it implies such an extreme fear, as causeth not only trembling, but also
a roaring and screeching out. Mark vi. 49; Acts xvi. 29. The devils
believe and acknowledge four articles of our faith. Matt. viii. 29. (1.)
They acknowledge God; (2.) Christ; (3) The day of judgment; (4.) That
they shall be tormented then; so that he that doth not believe that
there is a God, is more vile than a devil. To deny there is a God, is a
sort of atheism that is not to be found in hell.
“On earth are atheists many.
In hell there is not any.”
Augustine, speaking of atheists saith, “That albeit there be some who
think, or would persuade themselves, that there is no God, yet the most
vile and desperate wretch that ever lived would not say, there was no
God.” Seneca hath a remarkable speech, _Mentiuntur qui dicunt se non
sentire Deum esse: nam etsi tibi affirmant interdiù noctu tamen
dubitant._ They lie, saith he, who say they perceive not there is a God;
for although they affirm it to thee in the daytime, yet by night they
doubt of it. Further, saith the same author, I have heard of some that
deny that there was a God; yet never knew the man, but when he was sick
he would seek unto God for help; therefore they do but lie that say
there is no God; they sin against the light of their own consciences;
they who most studiously go about to deny God, yet cannot do it but some
check of conscience will fly in their faces. Tully would say that there
was never any nation under heaven so barbarous as to deny that there was
a God.—_T. Brooks._
_Verse 1.—“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.”_ Popery
has not won to itself so great wits as atheism; it is the superfluity of
wit that makes atheists. These will not be beaten down with impertinent
arguments; disordered hail-shot of Scriptures will never scare them;
they must be convinced and beaten by their own weapons. “Hast thou
appealed to Cæsar? To Cæsar thou shalt go.” Have they appealed to
reason? Let us bring reason to them, that we may bring them to reason.
We need not fear the want of weapons in that armoury, but our own
ignorance and want of skill to use them. There is enough even in
philosophy to convince atheism, and make them confess, “We are foiled
with our own weapons;” for with all their wit atheists are
fools.—_Thomas Adams._
_Verse 1._—As there is no wound more mortal than that which plucketh
forth man’s heart or soul; so, likewise, is there no person or
pestilence of greater force suddenly in men to kill all faith, hope, and
charity, with the fear of God, and consequently to cast them headlong
into the pit of hell, than to deny the principle and foundation of all
religion—namely, that there is a God.—_Robert Cawdray’s “Treasury or
Storehouse of Similes,” 1609._
_Verse 1.—“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.”_—Who in
the world is a verier fool, a more ignorant, wretched person, than he
that is an atheist? A man may better believe there is no such man as
himself, and that he is not in being, than that there is no God; for
himself can cease to be, and once was not, and shall be changed from
what he is, and in very many periods of his life knows not that he is;
and so it is every night with him when he sleeps; but none of these can
happen to God; and if he knows it not, he is a fool. Can anything in
this world be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of
heaven and earth can come by chance, when all the skill of art is not
able to make an oyster? To see rare effects, and no cause; an excellent
government and no prince; a motion without an immovable; a circle
without a centre; a time without eternity; a second without a first; a
thing that begins not from itself, and therefore, not to perceive there
is something from whence it does not begin, which must be without
beginning; these things are so against philosophy and natural reason,
that he must needs be a beast in his understanding that does not assent
to them; this is the atheist: “_The fool hath said in his heart, There
is no God._” That is his character; the thing framed, says that nothing
framed it; the tongue never made itself to speak, and yet talks against
him that did; saying, that which is made, is, and that which made it, is
not. But this folly is as infinite as hell, as much without light or
bound, as the chaos of the primitive nothing.—_Jeremy Taylor,
1613-1667._
_Verse 1.—“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.”_ A wise
man, that lives up to the principles of reason and virtue, if one
considers him in his solitude as taking in the system of the universe,
observing the mutual dependence and harmony by which the whole frame of
it hangs together, beating down his passions, or swelling his thoughts
with magnificent ideas of providence, makes a nobler figure in the eye
of an intelligent being, than the greatest conqueror amidst the pomps
and solemnities of a triumph. On the contrary, there is not a more
ridiculous animal than an atheist in his retirement. His mind is
incapable of rapture or elevation: he can only consider himself as an
insignificant figure in a landscape, and wandering up and down in a
field or a meadow, under the same terms as the meanest animals about
him, and as subject to as total a mortality as they, with this
aggravation, that he is the only one amongst them who lies under the
apprehension of it. In distresses he must be of all creatures the most
helpless and forlorn; he feels the whole pressure of a present calamity,
without being relieved by the memory of anything that is past, or the
prospect of anything that is to come. Annihilation is the greatest
blessing that he proposes to himself, and a halter or a pistol the only
refuge he can fly to. But if you would behold one of these gloomy
miscreants in his poorest figure, you must consider them under the
terrors or at the approach of death. About thirty years ago, I was a
shipboard with one of these vermin, when there arose a brisk gale, which
could frighten nobody but himself. Upon the rolling of the ship he fell
upon his knees, and confessed to the chaplain, that he had been a vile
atheist and had denied a Supreme Being ever since he came to his estate.
The good man was astonished, and a report immediately ran through the
ship, that there was an atheist upon the upper deck. Several of the
common seamen, who had never heard the word before, thought it had been
some strange fish; but they were more surprised when they saw it was a
man, and heard out of his own mouth, “That he never believed till that
day that there was a God.” As he lay in the agonies of confession, one
of the honest tars whispered to the boatswain, “That it would be a good
deed to heave him overboard.” But we were now within sight of port, when
of a sudden the wind fell, and the penitent relapsed, begging all of us
that were present, as we were gentlemen, not to say anything of what had
passed. He had not been ashore above two days, when one of the company
began to rally him upon his devotion on shipboard, which the other
denied in so high terms, that it produced the lie on both sides, and
ended in a duel. The atheist was run through the body, and after some
loss of blood, became as good a Christian as he was at sea, till he
found that his wound was not mortal. He is at present one of the
free-thinkers of the age, and now writing a pamphlet against several
received opinions concerning the existence of fairies.—_Joseph Addison
(1671-1719), in “The Tattler.”_
_Verse 1._—
“‘There is no God,’ the fool in secret said:
‘There is no God that rules or earth or sky.’
Tear off the band that binds the wretch’s head,
That God may burst upon his faithless eye!
Is there no God?—The stars in myriads spread,
If he look up, the blasphemy deny;
While his own features, in the mirror read,
Reflect the image of Divinity.
Is there no God?—The stream that silver flows,
The air he breathes, the ground he treads, the trees,
The flowers, the grass, the sands, each wind that blows,
All speak of God; throughout, one voice agrees,
And, eloquent, his dread existence shows:
Blind to thyself, ah, see him, fool, in these!”
_Giovanni Cotta._
_Verse 1._—
“The owlet, _Atheism_,
Sailing on obscene wings across the noon,
Drops his blue-fringed lids, and shuts them close,
And, hooting at the glorious sun in heaven,
Cries out, ‘Where is it?’”
_Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834._
_Verse 1.—“They are corrupt, they have done abominable works.”_ Sin
pleaseth the flesh. _Omne simile nutrit simile._ Corruption inherent is
nourished by the accession of corrupt actions. Judas’s covetousness is
sweetened with unjust gain. Joab is heartened and hardened with blood. 1
Kings ii. 5. Theft is fitted to and fatted in the thievish heart with
obvious booties. Pride is fed with the officious compliments of
observant grooms. Extortion battens in the usurer’s affections by the
trolling in of his moneys. Sacrilege thrives in the church-robber by the
pleasing distinctions of those sycophant priests, and helped with their
not laborious profit. Nature is led, is fed with sense. And when the
citadel of the heart is once won, the turret of the understanding will
not long hold out. As the suffumigations of the oppressed stomach surge
up and cause the headache, or as the thick spumy mists, which vapour up
from the dark and foggy earth, do often suffocate the brighter air, and
to us more than eclipse the sun, the black and corrupt affections, which
ascend out of the nether part of the soul, do no less darken and choke
the understanding. Neither can the fire of grace be kept alive at God’s
altar (man’s heart), when the clouds of lust shall rain down such
showers of impiety on it. _Perit omne judicium, cum res transit ad
affectum._ Farewell the perspicuity of judgment, when the matter is put
to the partiality of affection.—_Thomas Adams._
_Verse 1.—“They are corrupt, they have done abominable things: there is
none that doeth good.”_ “Men,” says Bernard, “because they are _corrupt_
in their minds, become _abominable_ in their doings: _corrupt_ before
God, _abominable_ before men. There are three sorts of men of which none
doeth good. There are those who neither understand nor seek God, and
they are the dead: there are others who understand him, but seek him
not, and they are the wicked. There are others that seek him but
understand him not, and they are the fools.” “O God,” cries a writer of
the middle ages, “how many are here at this day who, under the name of
Christianity, worship idols, and are abominable both to thee and to men!
For every man worships that which he most loves. The proud man bows down
before the idol of worldly power; the covetous man before the idol of
money; the adulterer before the idol of beauty; and so of the rest.” And
of such, saith the apostle, “They profess that they know God, but in
works deny him, being _abominable_ and disobedient, and unto every good
work reprobate.” Titus i. 16. “_There is none that doeth good._” Notice
how Paul avails himself of this testimony of the epistle to the Romans,
where he is proving concerning “both Jews and Gentiles, that they are
all under sin.” Rom. iii. 9.—_John Mason Neale, in loc._