-- CHAPTER IV: That it was the multitude of sins was in his eye that made him to say, I find not
account there, which was of sins properly belonging to himself, further than as in that secondary respect (which I mentioned) which riseth merely from its so immediate following after the former, that wickedness in both sexes had been accidental occasions of sinnings and temptation to himself. But I shall expound those latter speeches apart by themselves by and by.
CHAPTER IV:
That it was the multitude of sins was in his eye that made him to say, I find not If any will yet make query (if perhaps after all this there be any need), what it was in his own sinfulness that Solomon found to be thus infinite; for which query, because there may seem this ground, that there are two infinites in sin, one of greatness for guilt, the other of number and multitude, and so which of these should be intended might be yet a question; but chiefly because the resolution gives further opportunity to confirm the very point or main of this my intended subject, I therefore shall give further answer thereunto.
I easily grant the first of these two to be included; for his sad bewailment in ver. 26, argues it, 'I find more bitter than death,' speaking of that one way of sinning by women. Yet still it was in a more eminent manner the number and the multitude of sins in his whole life, which he hath in his eye, in this 27th verse, that caused him to utter the infiniteness thereof by this unexpressing expression,
'I find not.'
I. That his eye was upon the number, that phrase in the middle of the words, 'counting one by one,' argues; for it most properly imports an having sought an account by numbering. And though the word counting is not in the original, yet our translators understood that to be evidently implied as the sense of that phrase, one by one, and so
they choose to render it, 'counting one by one,' and if that word counting should be left out, yet the phrase itself, one one, or one and one, or, as some, one unto one, as in numbering by addition, or one and the other (all which are several readings which the original doth bear), still all comes to one as to our purpose; for each of them properly concern numbering.* And further, one and one, or one and t' other, are in ordinary phrase of speech put to express, 1st, universality, or the all of things, as we use to say, one and all; and,
2dly, withal import a particular distinct view of things, and not in the gross only. In like sense we also use to say, one and t' other, or, neither one nor t' other, so noting forth particularity. And thus the mind of that passage, 'counting one by one,' proves to be this, that Solomon going about to find out the account of all and the whole of his sinfulness, had unto that end considered his sins distinctly and particularly, one and one, and not contented himself with a confused knowledge and sense of them, such as the generality of men have of their sinfulness, who use in a slight and common reckless manner to speak of it,' 'We are all sinners,' and so pass it over, and think such a conviction sufficient; but it was not so in Solomon. This, then, is the first evidence, that it refers unto an account by numbering; or, which is equivalent in sense thereto, unto a weighing and considering all and each distinctly and particularly. Now, if it were such an account by numbering, then it follows, that it was the superabounding multitude or number which did put the stand or set to his apprehensions, or which made him to say, 'I find it not,' as that which was infinite in that respect.
But, further, and more particularly, it appears, if we either consult the words immediately afore, or if we consider what follows in the sum and conclusion of all in ver. 29.
II. The world afore. For although, as was observed, the heinousness and the dangerousness of those ways of sinning to his soul are the eminent things set out in ver. 26, yet there also a multitude and a variety of sinnings are intimated and connotated. And he begins even from thence to shew he had found many and manifold evils to be the
concomitants and consequents thereof. This, those similitudes of nets and snares, and bonds, which he so cries out of, evidently import, and they signify not only that they were many, but manifold, variously wrought and interwoven contrivements and artificial webs of many threads, and engines of many links; for such works of art and variety are nets, and snares, and chains. And he intends thereby to set forth his own seducements and entanglements, for multitude and variety, and what they had been to him. And thus, though he cries out of the bitterness or greatness of his sin in them, yet particularly in and by those expressions he further points to the multitude of temptations he fell into.
And to illustrate this, I may pertinently reassume that scripture I did before but mention, and thereby anew set forth the mind of Solomon as to this, both these scriptures being in scope and expressions exceeding parallel each to other. It is, 1 Tim. 6:9, 'They that will be rich, fall into temptation and a snare, and into many and hurtful lusts, which drown men in perdition.' Thus speaks the apostle of the love of riches. And further in the following verse, in respect unto those many lusts, he styles it, 'a root of all evil.' There are many things in this the apostle's speech, that are parallel to Solomon's case, and unto his expressions here about it. The very phrases and allusions there are like and near of kin to these here, if we will but look round about the words; as whilst he entitleth his sin, 'folly and madness,' ver. 25, the apostle doth the same, 'foolish lusts.' Solomon compareth his temptations unto snares, in which beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, are caught; the apostle in express words useth the same metaphor. Again, as Solomon compares them to nets for fowls or fishes, so the apostle's phrase is, 'drowned in perdition,' even as fishes and fowls when caught are destroyed in boiling hot water, or such scalding liquor, so these in perdition. But that which I principally called in the help of this place for, was to shew that in Scripture-phrase a snare or temptation, when applied thus unto a bosom-sin, in such a case as this of Solomon's, implieth a many and manifold, yea, an innumerable company of sins, which it leads into, and which accompany it. For unto that purpose it is the apostle there
useth the phrase, whilst he declares the danger of such a sin to be a falling into 'temptation and a snare,' which he then further amplifies and explains by this, and 'into many foolish lusts;' yea, and for the same respect terms it also, a' root of all evil.' Now, let us but first understand Solomon, when speaking of his bosom-sin in respect of the consequences thereof, to intend, by snares, a many hurtful follies, which he had run into by reason and occasion thereof, and this according to the intent of the same Spirit, who wrote both the one and the other, in the Old and New Testament, and knows his own language; and then it may be evident, that in like manner he here intended that this bosom-sin of his had been a root of many evils to him.
And, then, if there were such a multitude of sins that sprung out of the womb of this one sin, which he had the apprehension of, in writing ver. 26, it is then obvious enough, that in these next verses, in which he sets down the account of his whole life, together with these, that he intends to express an infinitely far greater number, which caused him with astonishment to cry out, 'Behold, this I have found,
I find not;' and so, that this, of the multitude, is that very thing which he drives along in all.
III. In the words after. If all this might not persuade that this was indeed his drift, you have Solomon himself, ere he takes off his pen, interpreting himself, in using the very same plain word, which the apostle interpreted his meaning also by; for in the centre and conclusion of the whole discourse (and which sums up the whole) he terms all these and other sins, the 'many inventions,' namely, which he himself for his share, and all mankind each of them for theirs, had sought out to sin against God withal, and brings it in, in the conclusion, as that which had been one main thing this his account of folly throughout his discourse had run upon, and which he had in contemplation all along.
I should here enforce this third and last evidence (for so in order it is), which may be extracted from that word many, as it stands in ver.
29, as that which is strongly pertinent to prove the numberless multitude of sins to have been in Solomon's eye, in these verses now expounded, and all along. But there lies a brief remainder of ver. 28, in my way first to be explained.
One man among a thousand have I found, but a woman among all those have I not found. Because these words lie as a seeming interruption between that which I mainly am in prosecution of, namely, that third evidence from the many, ver. 29, I shall at present give but a brief account of them; yet some, to the end I may hold an equipage about this parcel of this scripture, with what I have done in the former, which I have expounded, and so I shall this.
The account hereof shall be: (1.) Of the occasion of their insertion; (2.) Their coherence with the former; (3.) To what purpose they come in; and (4.) also the sense of them. All which will remove any stumbles that might arise from them, to divert from the sense of the foregoing words hitherto given.
First, Let it be heedfully remembered, that they are utterly a new maxim, and no part of the sentence foregoing, or of the account there spoken of. This their having a new have I found given them, shews that, in common, having been used by Solomon as a mark or post of distinction given to four several complete periods (whereof this is one), to sever them each from other, in this paragraph. See the first resolve in answer to the first query above.
Secondly, His insertion of it besides had a pertinent occasion and rise from the foregoing. For in his having, as a penitent, taken a view of the sins of his whole life past, he found, and could not but find, his own sins to have been complicate and interwoven with the sins of multitudes of others, both men and women, he having (being a king) had more occasion of access to, and so of converse with varieties of both sexes, more than any other man. And they generally having been occasions of temptations to him, and of his so much sinning, which he now with grief remembers, he therefore in remembering
his own remembereth theirs, and so aptly subjoins his observations about their wickedness also, after he had despatched and spoken that of the account of his own, in the foregoing words.
Thirdly, His annexing it was to this end and farther scope, to render his discourse and account about folly and wickedness the more complete. For (1.), by the annexing of this he should as then have comprehensively spoken to the corruption of either sex, and so of all mankind, and given in a judgment thereof as well as of his own. And (2.) thereby further make a fair and advantageous introduction into that general and final maxim wherein he centres, ver. 29, which was to comprehend the demonstration of his own and all mankind's, sinfulness: 'God made man upright, but they,' &c., and therefore full meet it was to insert this before.
Fourthly, For the sense and meaning of the axiom itself, that will be cleared by putting, and then answering, a query; the ground for which is this;— That if his scope be asserted to be to set out the wickedness and madness in all the sons of Adam, this maxim seems to except some few of men from that general corruption: 'One man of a thousand have I found.'
The answer whereunto will rise from the genuine sense of the words, which we shall arrive at, by considering them either,
1st, Simply; or, 2dly, As they are a comparative between men and women.
1st, If we consider them simply, or how men and women are simply represented by him, without comparison one with another; and then their scope is that, 1. As towards God, they are both and all universally corrupt; he supposes that here, for the next words do expressly affirm it: 'God
made man' (all men) 'upright' (in Adam), 'but they' (all of them) 'have sought out,' &c. And his father David had aforehand instructed him in two psalms, 14:3, 53:3, that unto God's eye, who is said to 'look down from heaven upon the children of men;' 'every one of them is gone back; they are altogether become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one.' So as in relation unto God, they are all
'fallen short of the glory of God,' as that apostle's interpretation of these sayings is, Rom. 3:23. It is not therefore his drift here to exempt any one man, no, not his one of a thousand, from his share in that common corruption and apostasy. But,
2. His speech is to be understood as relating to the working of corruption in them, in the way of human converse, and intercourse of their relations, one to and with another, and so far as they are any way outward occasions or temptations to others of sinnings through mutual converse. And the reason is, for by what himself had had in converse with either sex, and by experience had found, as his word is, of either sex, to have been of damage to him; on that occasion it is, and so with a great eye and respect thereunto, he utters this.
3. He pronounceth the generality of men to be every whit as bad as women: never barrel (or basket rather, as Jeremiah's allusion is, chap. 24) better, &c. For whilst he says but one man of a thousand, that is, of a great number, he concludes the generality of men under the same condemnation he doth the universality of women,—all alike. Thus simply.
2dly, As for his comparative considering them (in that so small difference of but one he had found), it is thus to be understood.
First, Negatively, in two respects.
1. Not in respect of grace, as if more men were godly, and comparatively fewer or none of women; for,
(1.) It holds not true either in the Old Testament or the New; and that equal privilege, neither male nor female in Christ, &c.,
preferring neither before the other, as to that respect, cuts off all supposition of such a meaning here.
(2.) Solomon, professing to utter this from experience,' I find,' &c.; his judgment or verdict had been founded upon a partial and not competent evidence, if that should have been his meaning; for as to women, his knowledge and converse had been most with heathenish idolatrous women, 1 Kings 11. And as to men, it was mostly with his own countrymen the Jews (and 'salvation was of the Jews' then, as Christ says, John 4). And therefore such a general sentence of such a difference between the sexes, as to point of grace, upon his experience of persons so unequally compared, as to that respect attested, had been notoriously incompetent, and liable to exception.
(3.) This did no way pertain to his scope or design at first proposed, ver. 25, which was to search into folly, madness, &c., which is therefore the measure of that which follows, and according to the line thereof, this saying must be understood. It had therefore been a going out of his line to have pronounced what difference grace doth put; this was no part of his cognisance. His general drift, then, must relate to the workings of corruption and madness, which may be observed to be in men and women comparatively in either state, whether of grace or not; comparatis comparandis, that is, comparing whether godly men with godly women, or ungodly with ungodly.
2. As to persons. Nor is this sense (as not that speech neither in the former, ver. 26) about women to be limited unto the 'whorish women' only, for the Old Testament gives not heathenish wives that language, but of 'strange wives,' &c. And again, in that sense to have said, he had not found one among a thousand of such, had been all one as to have said, I find not one good or virtuous woman among so many whores. But it is women in the general, as denoting that sex in distinction from men. This as to the negative.
Secondly, Positively, and so the difference intended respects,
1. The outward breakings forth and workings of corruption in a visible manner, unto what such a man as Solomon or others may find
(that is his word), that is observe in them.
2. How that, in respect of visible breakings forth in human converse, &c., you may perhaps find a man, who by reason of a strength of wisdom, and deeper stamps of moral virtues accompanying it (which the masculine temper renders men more capable of), are in respect to a running out into a visible madness of folly, or an excess of folly
(which is Solomon's measure, ver. 25), as disingenuities to reason, weaknesses of passions, humours (all which the female temper is universally, yea, and men generally, more prone and exposed unto).
In respect, I say, unto these excesses, there may be found some of men, who is a* sober moderate sinner, and their corrupt nature so poised and attempered as they may be conversed withal more safely by their relations and associates, without affrication, or catching and conveying the itch of any great distemper; as also in relation to human societies and public † good. Such paragons of virtue were some among the heathen, as Fabritius, Socrates, &c., and some such
Solomon had found among the Jews in his time, as Ethan, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, of whose excelling wisdom mention is made, 1 Kings 4:31.
3. Nor that rigidly neither, that none, none among women such; for himself sets out a virtuous woman in all respects, Prov. 31, but yet more rarely than among men, ver. 10. 'A virtuous woman who can find?' Parum pro nullo reputatur.
The ground of this difference I will not insist on, which even philosophers have been much upon, inasmuch as virtue among the Romans had its name derived (à viro et à viribus) from what excels in* men: et mulier quasi mollior. Women, their name from softness and weakness, their temper being as soft wax, not capable of a permanent virtue and stayedness, or as thin and slighter paper, wherein ink doth diffluere, run into stains, blots, passions, humours, whereas other is compact. Nor are the Scriptures altogether silent in