CHAPTER LXVIII – 6. It is the enemy of all societies, relations, and the common good
of those that he hath wronged, to make a public confession of his sins, if the greatness of them, or his duty to God, or the good of others, do require it; to make restitution of all that he hath gotten wrongfully; to bear a plain and sharp reproof; to part with his own for the relief of the poor; to lay out his estate to the best advantage of the cause and church of God, and the common good; to let go any unlawful vanity; any excess in meat, or drink, or sport, or sleep, or any vanity in apparel, or other work of pride: how easily can he bear rebukes, reproaches, and neglects, and undervaluing or ingratitude from others! But what ado shall we have with carnal, unsanctified wretches, to persuade them to all, or any of this? From them a preacher hath such a work to pull their beloved profitable sins (they seem profitable to them till the reckoning comes) as a man hath to pull the prey from the jaws of a hungry wolf, or meat from the mouth of a greedy dog; but when we require the self-denying to do the same thing, it is but as to bid a child obey his Father whom he loveth and honoureth. The doing of these duties, and forsaking these sins, is to an ungodly man as the parting with a right hand, or a right eye, or the skin from his back, or the flesh from his bones; as we see by the rarity, and the unsuccessfulness of the plainest reasons, and great authority of God himself, and the few works of piety, charity, or selfdenial that are done by such at any great cost. But to the selfdenying, it is but as the casting away a handful of earth, or casting off an upper garment, for the doing of their work.
CHAPTER LXVIII
Enemy of all Society, Relations, and common Good
6. MOREOVER, this selfishness is the enemy to all societies, and relations, and consequently to the common good. And it is not only indirectly and consequentially, but directly that it strikes at the very foundation of all. For the manifesting of this, consider in what respects this selfishness is at enmity with societies.
1. The end of societies is essential to them; and this end is the common good of the society; and therefore a republic hath its name from hence, because it is constituted and to be administered for the commonwealth, or the good of all. Now selfishness is contrary to this common good which is the end of all societies. Every selfish person is his own end; and cares not to hinder the common good, if he do but think it will promote his own. And how is that family, church, or commonwealth like to prosper, where most (alas, most indeed) have an end of their own, that is set up against the end and being of the society? For though the real good of particular persons is usually comprehended in the common good, yet that is but in subserviency to the public good, and is not observed usually by these persons; who principally look at themselves. And it commonly falls out that the public welfare cannot be obtained but by such self-denial of the members, which these men will not submit to; though they incur a greater hurt by their selfishness. Little do that think of the common good; it is their own matters that they regard and mind. So it go well with them, let the church and commonwealth do what it will; they can bear any one's trouble or losses save their own. They are every man as a church, as a commonwealth, as a world to themselves. If they be well, all is well with them; if they prosper, they think it is a good world, whatever others undergo. If they be poor, or sick, or under any other suffering, it is all one to them as if calamity had covered the earth; and if they see that they must die, they take it as if
it were the dissolution of the world, (unless as they leave either name or posterity behind them, in which a shadow of them may survive), and therefore they use to say, 'When I am gone, all the world is gone with me.'
2. Moreover, selfishness is contrary to that disposition and spirit that every member of a society should be possessed with. The public good will not be attained without a public spirit, to which a private spirit is contrary. Men must be disposed to the work that they must be employed in. The work of every member of a society, is such as Mordecai is approved for: "Seeking the wealth of his people, and speaking peace to all his seed;" Esth. 10:3. Every true member of the church must have such a spirit as Nehemiah, that in the midst of his own prosperity and honours is cast down in fasting, tears, and prayers, when he heareth of the affliction, reproach, and ruins of Jerusalem, and saith, "Why should not my countenance be sad, when the city the place of my fathers' sepulchres lieth waste?" Neh. 1:3.
2:3, 4. And as the captivated Jews; (Psal. 137) that lay by all their mirth and music, and sit down and weep at the remembrance of Zion. A private, selfish disposition is quite contrary to this; and is busy about his own matters, and principally looketh to his own ends and interests, whatever come of the church; and falls under the reproof that Baruch had from God: "Behold that which I have built will I break down, and that which I have planted I will pluck up, even this whole land; and seeketh thou great things for thyself? seek them not;" Jer. 45:4, 5. This private disposition makes men so foolish as to lose themselves, by seeking themselves; looking to their own goods or cabins when the ship is sinking in which they are; and to their own rooms, when the house is all on fire. But a public spirit saith, "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I
do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy;" Psal. 137:5, 6. His love is to the church as the spouse of Christ, and as to the body of which he is himself a member, and his prayers and endeavours are for its prosperity and peace. "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, they shall prosper that love thee: peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces: for my brethren and companions' sake, I will now say, peace be within thee: because of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek thy good;" Psal. 122:6–9. The body of Christ, is all animated by one spirit, that it might aim at one end; and it is so tempered by God, that there should be no schism in it, but that the "members should have the same care one for another, that if one member suffer, all the members should suffer with it; or if one member be honoured, all should rejoice with it;" 1 Cor. 12:13, 24–27. There is no serving public ends with a private selfish spirit.
3. Moreover, selfishness is an enemy to the laws of societies, whether it be the laws of God or man. For it would have them all bended to their private interest, and fitted to their selfish disposition. And therefore for the immutable laws of God, which they cannot change, they corrupt them by misinterpretations, expounding them according to the dictates of the flesh, and putting such a sense on all, as self can bear with. And what they cannot misinterpret, they murmur at and disobey. And for the laws of men, where selfish persons are the makers of them, you shall perceive by the warping of them, who they were made for. Hence it is that princes and parliaments have looked at the laws, and church, and ministers of Christ, with an eye of jealousy as if they had been some enemies that they stood in danger of, and all for fear lest the personal, selfish, fleshly interest of noblemen, and gentlemen, and others, should be
encroached upon by the laws and government of Christ. And hence it is that so many endeavours and hopes of a reformation have been so long frustrated, and even among wise and pious law-makers there hath been so much pains to keep ministers from doing their duty in governing the churches, and laying such restrictions on them, that pastors might be no pastors, that is, no guides and overseers of the church in the worship of God. And when good laws are made, they have as many enemies as selfish men. If the law were not hated, the execution of it would not be hated so much.
4. Also selfishness in an enemy to the very being of magistracy, and to all public officers, and their works; for the very end of the magistracy is the public benefit, as I said before of the end of the commonwealth; and therefore this selfishness is contrary to his end; and such men will not value a magistrate as a public officer, but only as one that is able to help them, or to hurt them; which is but to fear him as a potent enemy, and not to love or honour him as a ruler.
They look at magistrates as tyrants that are too strong for them; and as a cur will crouch to a mastiff dog, so they will crouch to them to save themselves; and this is their love, and honour, and obedience;
(even such as Hobbs hath taught them in his Leviathan.) But they do not reverence that beam of divinity which God hath communicated to them in their authority; nor love their governors as the fathers of the church and commonwealth, for the common good and the honour of God, which they are appointed to promote.
5. And this selfishness is the deadly enemy of all right administrations of justice, and the due exercise of authority in church or commonwealth. If a minister be selfish, he will be shifting off the troublesome part of his duty, and will overrule his
understanding to believe that it is no duty, because disbelieving is easier than obeying. He will be forward in those duties that are necessary to his maintenance and applause, and are imposed on him by the laws of men, but out of the pulpit it is little that he will do: as if it were the pulpit only that were God's vineyard where he is set to labour. Flesh and blood shall be consulted, and men shall be pleased, and all that the interest of self may be maintained.
And if the people be selfish, they will rebel against their most faithful guides, and kick against their doctrine and reproofs, and fly from discipline, which seems to their distempered minds to be against them. Let but one most notorious, lamentable instance suffice. The greater part of our parishioners in most places of the land are lamentably ignorant and careless in the matters of their salvation, and all that we can do is too little to bring them to understand the matters of absolute necessity: and yet almost all of them are so much wiser in their own conceits than the ablest of their teachers, that if we do not humour them, and be not ruled by them in our doctrine and administrations, about sacraments, prayers, burial, and the rest, yea, if we obey them not in gestures and forms, they turn their backs upon officers, and ordinances, and the church itself, and pour out their reproach upon their teachers, as if we were ignorant in comparison of them (even of them that know not so much as children of seven or eight years old should know). See here the wonderful bewitched power of a selfish disposition.
And in matters of the commonwealth, what is it more than this? nay, what is it besides this, that maketh princes become tyrants, and rulers keep under the ordinances and interest of Christ, or fearfully neglect them, and look after the church in the last place, when they
have no business of their own to call them off, and to begin to build God's house when they have first built their own? Not imitating
Nehemiah's labourers, that had the sword in one hand, and the trowel in the other, and builded in their arms. What else makes them give God but their leavings, who giveth them all? And what else could make them such enemies to truth, as to side with those parties, whatever they be, that side most with them, and promote their interest?
And, alas, what work doth selfishness made with inferior magistrates? It is this only that opens the hand to a reward, and the ear to the solicitations of their friends; and it is this that perverteth the judgment, and this that oppresseth the poor and innocent, and this that tieth the tongues and hands of justices, so that abundance of them do little more than possess the room, and stand like an armed statue or a sign-post, which hurteth none; alehouses do what they list for them, and drunkards and swearers are bold at their noses, and they are no terror to evil doers, nor revengers to execute wrath upon them, nor ministers that use their power for much good, but bear the sword almost in vain, contrary to the very nature of their office;
Rom. 13:1–4.
And it is selfishness in the people that causeth the trouble of faithful magistrates: every man would do what he lists. The worst offender abhors him that would punish him: and those that will commend justice, and cry down vice in the general, yet when they fall under justice themselves, they take all that they suffer to be injury, and will do all that they can against justice, and the officers of it, when it is to defend themselves, or theirs, from the execution of it: so rare a thing
is it to meet with a man that is a friend to laws and justice, when themselves must suffer by it.
6. Selfishness also makes men withdraw from all those necessary burdens and duties that are for the preservation of church or commonwealth. Such wretches had rather the Gospel were thrust out of doors than it should cost them much: and had rather have the unworthiest man that would be their teacher for a little, than allow the best that maintenance that the Gospel doth command, or give them what the law hath made their own. They would venture the ruin of church and state, and let all fall into the hands of the common enemies, rather than hazard their persons, or lay out their estates for the common preservation. So that if the hand of violence did not sometimes squeeze these spunges, and force these leeches to disgorge themselves, they would but impoverish the commonwealth by their riches, and weaken the body, like wens or imposthumes, by drawing to themselves.
7. And then the selfish are such causes of division, that if they did no other harm, they would break both church and state into pieces, if their humour were predominant, and not restrained or purged out.
And in this regard selfishness is the direct enemy of societies, and is always at work to dissolve them into independent individuals. A society is a political body which must have but one head, and one interest, and one end; but when selfishness prevaileth, there are as many heads, and ends, and interests as persons. If they be in a church, every one is the teacher and ruler; and every one must have his opinion countenanced, and his humour satisfied; every one must have his way and will: and how is this possible, when their minds are so various and contrary to one another; and their interests so
inconsistent, and there are as many rulers as persons? When every man is drawing to himself, and there is no centre in which they can unite, what work is there like to be in the church! What progress could be made in the building of Babel, when no man was ruled by another, but every man ran confusedly after his single imagination?
What an army will it be, and how are they like to speed in fight, where every soldier is instead of a captain and general to himself, and one runs this way, and another that way, and one will have one course taken, and another another course, and every one fighteth on his own head? Such work doth selfishness make in the church; it is this that hath broken it into so many parcels, and would crumble it all to dust if it should prevail.
And it is this also that causeth the divisions of the commonwealth; faction rising up against faction, and prince and people living in jealousies of each other, as having contradictory interests; which would not be, if the pleasing of God, and the common good were the principal end and interest of them all, and selfishness did not prevail.
And this is it that keepeth Christian princes in most ungodly wars, to the shedding of Christian blood, and the weakening of the common interest, and the strengthening of the common enemy, whom they should all join together to resist.
This also keepeth up so many parties on religious pretences to seek the undermining and ruin of each other, when they should all join together against the common profaneness of the world; and all their conjunct endeavours would be too little. Thus selfishness is the grand enemy that by divisions and subdivisions is still at work for the dissolution and ruin of church and state, and the confusion of the
world, and the disturbance and destruction of order and government.
8. Yea, selfishness makes men false and treacherous, so that they are not to be trusted, and are unmeet materials for any society. For whatever they promise, pretend, or seem, they are all for themselves, and will be no further true and faithful to the society, or any member of it, than suiteth with their own ends. Never trust a selfish person, if it be your own brother, further than you can accommodate and please him, and so oblige him to you upon his own account. It is the complication of interests, that makes husband and wife so much agree and love each other; because that which one hath, the other hath: but if their interests fall out to be any whit divided, it is two to one but selfishness will divide their affections. One would think that the bond of nature should be so strong to constrain a son to love his father, that nothing could dissolve it; and yet sad experience telleth us that even here, it is an unity of interest that doth more with many children than either nature or grace: and that when they have no more dependance upon their parents for their commodity, their affections and respects are gone; and if they shall gain much by their death, they can bear it without much sorrow, if not desire it. So potent is selfishness, that it makes not men unfaithful only to their friends, and treacherous to their governors, and false to all they have to do with, but also unnatural to their nearest relations.
And therefore (next to true piety, which leads up all to an unity in God, and therefore is the most perfect polity,) the chief point of human polity, for the preservation of commonwealths, and all societies, is, a complication of interest: when the constitution makes the governor and the governed as husband and wife, that have