26. The Ninth Dividing Practice: Because Men Cannot Join in All Things with Others, They Will Join in Nothing
Chapter Twenty-Six The Ninth Dividing Practice:
Because Men Cannot Join in All Things with Others, They Will Join in Nothing S ome people have such divisive dispositions that if they are offended by someone in any one thing, whether in hearing or otherwise, they will leave in a huff, resolving never to listen to them again. You think you have the liberty, in any rebellious mood, to cast off the means of good that God offers to you, refusing to partake of such people's gifts and graces as you please. Perhaps your pride is suddenly inflated, or your spirit has fallen into such a sullen mood that you will not even go or send to them to see if, upon a serious and quiet examination of things, you might find satisfaction in what currently offends you. No, people's spirits are carried away with rash, headstrong resolutions.
I believe there has never been such a kind of spirit prevailing among those who profess godliness since Christian religion was introduced to the world.
Never have so many withdrawn from hearing even those by whom they acknowledge God has spoken to their hearts, and that before they have gone to them to share what troubles them, to see if they might find some
satisfaction. Certainly, if you have no need of the Word, the Word has no need of you. You may easily express your discontents to one another; you may easily say you are resolved never to hear such a person again, but you cannot so easily answer this to Jesus Christ. When your weaknesses and prevailing distempers trouble your conscience, this will greatly aggravate their evil. You neglected in a whimsical way and self-willed resolution those means that might have done your soul good—means that many hundreds, if not thousands, of souls bless God for all their lives, even now blessing God in heaven for.
In the past, you would have been glad of what you now slight and reject; this is not due to more light or strength that you have now which you did not have then, but from more vanity, pride, and wantonness.
Others deny hearing not from such a troubled spirit but out of tenderness because they think the minister is not a true minister of Christ due to not having a true call, being ordained by the prelates, etc. I confess that although I have never doubted the lawfulness of the call of many ministers of parish congregations in England—though they had something added that was sinful—it did not nullify the call they had by the Church, that communion of Saints among whom they exercised their ministry. Yet I do not think it is the shortest way to convince those who refuse to hear by proving the lawfulness of the call of those ministers whom they refuse to hear. Instead, it is better to show them that even if their call is not right to the ministry, they do not have sufficient grounds for withdrawing from hearing them. For they hold it is lawful for a man to preach the Word as a gifted man, and they do not deny that these men from whom they withdraw are gifted and faithful and preach excellent truths.
But they will say if they did this as gifted men, it would be another matter; but they preach by virtue of their call. The answer is that if they are motivated by that principle and make a mistake therein, this is their personal sin, not the sin of those who join with them in a good thing which they do upon an ill ground. When I join with a man in an action, I am to look at the action and the principle I go upon, but let him with whom I join look at the principle he goes upon.
Your hearing a man does not justify his call to the office of ministry. If a man does something he may do by virtue of two relations or either of them
—he may think he stands in one of those relations which he does not—yet he does the action by virtue of it in his own thoughts; in this he sins. But there is another relation wherein he stands that is enough to warrant the action he does as lawful. Now though he does not intend acting by this relation, the action may be sin to him but not at all sin to those who join with him in it. If he goes upon a false ground when he may go upon a true one, let him look to it. I will join with him in that action as warranted for him to do by virtue of his second relation, which he may not acknowledge himself.
Take an instance in some other thing, and perhaps the case will be clearer.
Giving alms is a work that a man may do either by virtue of church office as a deacon or as a Christian whom God has blessed in his estate or entrusted with the distribution of what others entrust him with. Now suppose a man is in the place of a deacon; he thinks himself to be in that office by a right call into it and gives out the alms of his church by virtue of his call. But I am persuaded his call to that office is not right; he is not a true deacon. Yet if I am in need, knowing that both he and those who have given him money to dispose may and ought to distribute to those in need by virtue of another
relation—as men or Christians enabled by God—surely then I may receive alms from him lawfully even though his principle by which he gives them to me is sin to him. I may communicate with him in this thing even though he acts by virtue of an office he had no true call unto; why may I not as well communicate with a man in his gifts even though he acts thus sinfully himself?
This consideration will answer all those objections against hearing men who are said not to be baptized; grant they are not, and so you think they cannot be ministers; yet they are men gifted by God and thereby enabled to dispense many truths of God to your soul.
**The Tenth Dividing Practice: Fastening Upon Those Who Are in Any Error All Those False Things and Dangerous Consequences That by Strength of Reason and Subtlety May Be Drawn from That Error**
This embitters the spirits of men against one another. It is true that if you grant one false thing, a thousand may follow, but I must not judge a man who holds that one false opinion as if he possesses the malignity of those thousand evil things in his spirit. I find that our Divines, who have been of peaceable spirits, have condemned very much this fastening of dangerous consequences of men's opinions upon those who hold the opinions, yet whose hearts are as much against such consequences as possibly may be deduced from them. In giving rules for peace, they advise taking heed of this, as it makes brethren who differ in their opinions unlikely ever to become one.
Davenant says, "It is abhorrent to charity and right reason that anyone, because of consequences from what he holds, neither understood nor granted by him, should be thought to deny or reject a fundamental article which he firmly believes, expressly asserts, and if he were called to it,
would seal the truth of it with his blood." Truer and more gentle is the judgment of that great and peace-making Divine, Bucer, who says, "It is our part not to look at what may follow from an opinion, but at what follows in the consciences of those who hold it."
The Eleventh Dividing Practice: To Commend and Countenance What We Care Not For in Opposition to What We Dislike
When those who profess godliness make much of wicked men, commend them, join with them, embrace them; yes, be well pleased with the bitterness, boisterousness, and boldness of their daring spirits because there may be use made of them against those men and ways they differ from, this is an evil that brings guilt upon themselves and makes the division between them and their brethren very great. If your hearts are right and your cause is good, you need not make use of anything evil to comfort your hearts or maintain your cause. The Lord will not be beholden to the evil or the bitterness of men's spirits for the furtherance of His cause; and why should you? God will not take the wicked by the hand, neither should you.
Are not your spirits strengthened against your adversaries when you see them calling in Papists and all manner of the refuse of wicked and treacherous men? Can you think that these are the most likely to maintain the Protestant religion and the liberty of the subject? Why do you seek to strengthen yourselves by stirring up vile men to join with you, such as heretofore your hearts were opposed to? How is it that you can close so lovingly now? You can smile upon one another and shake hands together.
How is it that you rejoice in the hearts of evil men; they encourage you, and you encourage them? Those unsavory bitter expressions that come from them you can smile at and be well pleased with because they are against those who differ from you. Blow up that spark of integrity that heretofore
has been in you; lay your hands upon your hearts, think to yourselves: is it the Spirit of Jesus Christ that acts us in such a way wherein we are? Surely, this is not the way of peace but of division and confusion.
The Last Dividing Practice: The Practice of Revenge When any provoke you, you say you will be even with him; there is a way whereby you may be not even with him but above him: forgive him.
Practicing revenge is the way to continue divisions to the end of the world; such offend me, therefore I will offend them; and therefore they offend me again, me again, and I them, and so it may run infinitely; they deny me a kindness, therefore I will deny them, and therefore they will deny me; so these unkindnesses run on endlessly; divisions will have a line of succession. Where will it stop if this is the way of men?
Paulus Fagius in his notes upon Leviticus 19:18 says, "If Reuben should say to Simeon, 'Lend me thy axe,' and he should answer, 'I will not'; the next day Simeon has need of an axe, and he comes to Reuben and says, 'I pray lend me your axe,' and Reuben answers, 'No, you would not lend me yours yesterday'; the Jews accounted this to be revenge." There is much more malignity in our revengeful practices one upon another than this.
Basil inveighing against requiting evil for evil in his tenth sermon speaks thus to a revengeful heart: "Do not make your adversary your master; do not imitate him whom you hate; be not his looking-glass to present his form and fashion in yourself."
Revenge God challenges to Himself as His own; presume not to encroach upon God's property, to get up into God's seat and do His work; thou hast enough to do on thine own. It is very observable how God stands upon His challenge of revenge as His own; as that which He by no means will suffer others to meddle with: in those scriptures where this is mentioned, the
challenge is doubled, yea, sometimes trebled. As Psalm 94:1: "O Lord God to whom vengeance belongeth, O God to whom vengeance belongeth." So Nahum 1:2: "The Lord revengeth, the Lord revengeth, the Lord will take vengeance on His adversaries." Hebrews 10:30: "Vengeance belongeth to me; I will recompense," saith the Lord; and again, "The Lord will judge His people." You must not think revenge to be so light a matter.
How unbecoming are revengeful practices to Christian profession! Many of the heathens were above such things. Plutarch reports of Phocion that when he had done notable service for the Athenians yet was put to death by them; but being asked a little before his death whether he had anything to say to his son; "Yes," says he, "that I have. I require of thee my son that thou never wishest ill to the Athenians for this they do to me."
How far are most of us from this? We can hardly pass by an ill look without revenge; but if we conceive ourselves wronged in words or actions, then revenge rises high; such things must not be borne.
A gentleman of very good credit, who lived at court for many years, told me that he once heard a prominent man in this kingdom say he never forgave anyone in his life. I am inclined to believe it because I have been told by other gentlemen that the same man would, when walking alone, speak to himself, clap his hand upon his chest, and swear by the name of God that he would be avenged. He would be avenged; and that the woman who lay in his bosom was known to sit alone and sing to herself, "Revenge,
Revenge, O how sweet is revenge!"
If such individuals gain power and are so dominated by their spouses that they must allow things to be managed according to the will of their vengeful wives, what peace or security can there be?
Sir Walter Raleigh, in his "History of the World," tells of the sad case of the Lacedaemonians when Nabis, having power in his hands and a wife named Apega, a woman full of cruelty and revenge, delighted in her. He caused her image to be made, vividly representing her and dressed in costly garments. However, it was actually a device to torment men. He used it thus: when he could not have his way with men through his own persuasion, he took them by the hand, telling them that perhaps his wife
Apega, who sat nearby in a chair, could persuade more effectively. So he led them to the image that rose up and opened its arms as if for an embrace.
Those arms were full of sharp iron nails, similar to those hidden in the chest beneath her clothes, and with these, she gripped the men to death. Nabis stood by and laughed at the cruel death of these miserable men.
May the Lord deliver us from vengeful spirits.