-- CHAPTER VI: The chief remark out of this verse
these complex together, concur one way or other directly or accidentally, and are the causes how and whence it comes to pass, that he affects to live at an height of pleasure and gallantry; whenas yet having lost wherewithal to do it, suitably to what he had before, he is thereupon put to his shifts, and lives by his wits, his arts, and inventions, and so proves a mere shark, seeks out and useth a thousand tricks to maintain his riot and voluptuousness, at as high a rate as whatever he can rap or rend here and there, will any way possibly enable him to, so to keep up a livelihood (God-wot a poor one). Thus it is, in what Solomon here says of debauched man, fallen from his first unrighteousness.
And thus much may serve for an exposition of this verse, in some correspondency to what hath been done that way upon the foregoing verses.
CHAPTER VI:
The chief remark out of this verse The chief remark out of this verse, as to the confirmation of our subject is, That the multitude of sinnings is the ultimate centre of Solomon's discourse, and the main conclusion which the demonstration in special falls upon; and that, as rehearsed, out of the foregoing verses; and wherein that demonstration lies
It may be remembered how in the 4th chapter I reserved a third evidence, that the multitude of sinnings had been in Solomon's view and drift in vers. 26, 27, as that which might be fetched out of this verse, and the word many, &c., as it stands in the verse. And having now finished the exposition, I proceed to the prosecution of this evidence, which I shall do by parts.
I. It is the ultimate centre and conclusion; for he coucheth and brings it in with an emphasis at the very last in the final close of all, as
aimed at to be demonstrated. And this to do was no other than what is usual in the course of ordinary speech, in the like case. After a large narration of a matter first made, when we come to the demonstration, then to tuck up the main thing of all had been spoken of and intended in a special manner to be demonstrated, in some one comprehensive and expressive word, and to indigitate it at the very last with the demonstration itself; thereby to hold that thing up, in a special manner, unto the hearer's eye and observation. Just thus, I take it, and as unto such a purpose, doth Solomon insert this word, the many inventions, as that quod erat demonstrandum.
II. In a special manner to be demonstrated. That the whole verse intendeth a demonstration of man's universal corruption, in the general (which had been before discoursed of), I have shewn; and that this demonstration doth eminently, and in a special manner, fall upon this special thing, the multitude of sinnings, is also as evident.
For, 1. What is the pith and substance of this verse, other than this assertion: That man is departed from that rectitude or uprightness he was at first made in, and thereby left at a loss, and so hath betaken himself to other inventions, whereby to seek out for happiness elsewhere, and in other ways? This is well nigh the very words of Solomon here. And then that from hence it is that the multitude of actual sins do spring; and whence it comes to pass that men seek so many inventions, to an infinity, cannot be denied. And that therefore this was intended as the demonstration of it, for the reality of the thing itself speaks it. If all intellectual natures would set their understandings a-work, they could not find out a more suitable and proper demonstration of this thing than this, and what else this
Verse yields and affords. It may very well therefore and rationally be supposed, that this was intended by Solomon as the demonstration of this matter in a special manner. I shall choose to present this demonstration as applied to this very thing in the words of another* commenting on the words, rather than in my own (who yet in other pieces of his interpretation is far enough off from what I have
driven); his words are these: Because man hath departed (saith he) from that one God, hence it is that he is after so many and various creatures; and finding rest and satiety in none of them, he is continually thinking or imagining, and lusteth after another thing, and then another, everywhere seeking rest but finding none; and therefore is tossed with a thousand thoughts and desires.
That which I chiefly observe as agreeing with my sense and Solomon's scope, as eminent in this passage of his, is, that he fetcheth the rise of all from the singleness or oneness of that wherein man's uprightness at first consisted, viz. in uno Deo, in God, who alone is but one, that one universal good, one all-sufficient object and fountain of happiness to man, and his will and glory the sole measure of man's uprightness; and so it came to pass, all ran but in one current as then; but that man departing, ab uno Deo, from this one only object of happiness, and that only way of righteousness; hinc, hence it is (saith he) that now we are diffused, do wilder and scatter into the many, which is the main of the reason here indigitated by Solomon, though not the whole.
III. As rehearsed and repeated, viz. as that which had been contained in the foregoing verses. For, 1. That his design in this 29th verse was to give a demonstration of what he had before spoken of man's corruption, is manifest by what hath been opened in the foregoing chapter. And that also the same demonstration falls pat, and plum, and perpendicularly upon this, why the many, hath been now shewn. And therefore this may well be supposed to have had its part, yea and an answerable special portion and share in the matter and drift of those verses foregone, and so repeated as well as the other. Yea, it was shewn, that this last clause,
'But they found out many inventions,' was the breviary or repeated sum of what was before largely dilated upon. It is to the former as that point in a burning glass which contracts and draws to centre what had been more largely diffused. Now then that this word many, or both words, many inventions, having both and each the special
emphasis and indigitation in this breviary or repetition of the whole, each must needs be found and allowed to have had answerably a place and room, though it be in fewer and other words, in his foregone discourse. And in what passage or passages thereof shall that of the many be so plainly found, as there, where our interpretation, vers. 26–28, have pointed and fixed it?
2. Neither, I believe, will there be a better account given why he should so electively, and to choose, single forth this adjective many to attribute that unto these inventions (thus at the close), rather than any other sad epithets and adjuncts, which might have presented themselves, if so be this had not been, above all other, the only most proper as to this very scope. For otherwise he might as well have concluded with saying, These cursed, hateful, crooked inventions,
&c. (It is well known that our sinnings have names enough, and bad enough they might deservedly have been called by.) And even that latter of crooked inventions had been exceeding proper, as in an opposite respect to that uprightness he said we were made in; yea, and why should he not have said foolish inventions, having before termed them folly, ver. 25, or mad inventions, having there styled them madness? or why not wicked, having called them wickedness? or bitter and grievous, having to his cost found some of them more bitter than death? ver. 26. No, not one of these, or any other such appellations, do come into this his conclusion, or winding up of all; but of all other the many must come in. And why? But because it was that which above all other he had had in his aim in his discourse before, and for which reason he would now, above all other, draw his reader's eye and observation upon it, as mainly intended by him therein; yea, and as set up and indigitated at the last, as the thing aimed at to be demonstrated; which otherwise might certainly have been spared, and at the best was otherwise comparatively wholly foreign and extravasal to his scope, and remoter than any of the former mentioned.
And, 3, for any to say that this, the many, was utterly a new thing, which he had been silent in before, and no ways touched upon, nor