PART I: Man's Enmity to God
I cannot but say that this discourse is an excellent portraiture of the Old Man; a graphical description of the devil's image impressed upon, and deforming, the most beautiful part of this lower creation.
It shows how much man is debased and degraded by sin, and become a slave to his lusts, who was made at first to be the lord of his fellowcreatures; and so how rueful a legacy our first father has left us, and to what misery he has entailed us, by communicating so cursed a nature to us.
That the blessing of God may be upon these labors of his (long since) deceased, but faithful servant; and that they may, by the power of his grace, be made effectual for obtaining the ends designed by the author, is the desire and prayer of him who is, Good Reader,
Thy soul's well-wisher, and servant for Jesus' sake, Edw. Veel September 20, 1699.
PART I Man's Enmity to God Rom. 8:7
Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
In the fourth verse the Apostle renews the description of those persons to whom he had proclaimed a jubilee in the first verse: There is now no condemnation, &c. Sanctified persons only have an interest in Christ; and those that have an interest in Christ are not subject to a sentence of death. They are described by their course and conversation: They walk not after the flesh—that is, not after the dictates, wills, desires, and importunities of the flesh—but according to the motions, dictates, and direction of the Holy Ghost in the Gospel.
The note by which we may know whether we walk after the Spirit is laid down in verse 5: They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.
The word 〈φρόνημα〉 (phronēma) signifies, 1. Affectum, affection. Rom. 12:16, 〈τὸ αὐτὸ φρονοῦντες〉.
2. Sensum, sense or relish. The understanding is the palate of the soul, the taster to the will; it considers what things are good, and under that notion offers them to the will. Spiritual things are as dry chips to a carnal heart, even as carnal things are contemptible to a spiritual mind.
3. Cogitationem, thought. So for the most part it is taken, and notes the 〈φρόνημα 〉, being meant of the higher acts of the soul.
Frequent thoughts discover rooted affections.
The operations of the mind are the indices, the 〈σημεῖα 〉, of a regenerate or unregenerate estate. If they are about carnal things, they evidence the bent of the heart to be turned that way, and that worldly objects are dearest to them. If about spiritual things, they manifest spiritual objects to be the most grateful to the soul.
Carnal thoughts are signs of a languishing and feeble frame; but spiritual thoughts discover a well-tempered and well-complexioned soul.
As this is laid down by the Apostle, it has, as some pictures have, a double aspect.
It is both a character and a duty. For in verse 6 the Apostle enforces it by the consideration of the danger of the one and the happiness of the other: To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
Death and Life 1. Effective, by way of efficiency, as they deaden and enliven the soul. Carnal principles are spiritual diseases; spiritual thoughts are healing restoratives.
2. Consecutive, by way of consequence. Revenge and justice attend the one, as grace and mercy accompany the other.
The proof of this is in verse 7: It is death, because it is enmity to, and aversion from, God, who is the fountain of life.
It is the description of a natural estate, and of what relation a man, considered in his corrupt nature, bears to God.
〈φρόνημα σαρκὸς 〉 (phronēma sarkos): the most refined and elevated thoughts which have no other groundwork than nature; the highest flights of an unregenerate soul by the feathers of the greatest reason. The wisdom and virtues of the heathen were enmity; therefore it is translated by some Sapientia carnis, the wisdom of the flesh.
〈σάρξ〉 (sarx): unregenerate man. Flesh is usually taken in Scripture for the unregenerate part of the soul. John 3:6, That which is born of the flesh is flesh.
〈ἔχθρα〉 (echthra): not enemy, but enmity.
1. Not anger. That is not so bad; it may arise from some distaste.
Every disgust does not snap friendship in pieces.
2. Not aversion. That may be quickly removed.
3. But enmity. How directly opposite is man to God! God is said to be love, and man enmity, both in the abstract. As in Ezekiel
44:6, Thou shalt say to the rebellion, 〈ֶמ ִרי〉 (meri), rebellion instead of rebellious. Enmity in nature: the nature of God and that of a corrupt man can never be reconciled.
In the verse observe, 1. A proposition: The carnal mind, &c.
2. The proof.
I. The Proposition 1. The state: enmity.
2. The object of this enmity: God.
3. The subject or seat of it: the mind.
4. The qualification: carnal.
II. The Proof It is not subject, &c. Wherein observe, 1. Wilfulness. It is not subject. The holiness of the law, like the light of the sun, dazzles its eyes so that it cannot endure it. If we are not God's subjects, we must be His enemies; for he that is not with Christ is against Him.
2. Weakness. Neither indeed can be. It cannot, quia non vult, because it will not, saith Haymo. It is an enemy to the law, and therefore will not be subject to its determinations.
First, it cannot be perfectly subject. It may be subject to the material part and outward bark, but not to the spiritual and true intendment of the law.
Secondly, it cannot, quà talis, as such. Sin cannot be reconciled to God, neither can a sinner, as a sinner. It must be some superior power that must conquer an enemy that has possession of a strong fort.
Doctrine I. A state of nature is a state of enmity against God.
Doctrine II. Man is naturally an enemy to the sovereignty and dominion of God; not subject to the law of God.
By law I do not here mean the moral law only, but the whole will and rule of God, which is chiefly discovered in His law.
Doctrine I A state of nature is a state of enmity against God.
For the handling of this doctrine, consider:
1. The explication.
2. The confirmation.
3. The application.
I. What is meant by a natural man, or a state of nature?
1. What is not meant by a state of nature By a state of nature is not meant human nature simply considered, or man as a creature consisting of body and soul. For then Jesus Christ, who truly and really assumed human nature, would have been an enemy to God as well as we.
Therefore, those who understand those Scriptures which speak of the flesh hindering us to mean the natural or fleshly body, are much mistaken. For if the flesh, as created and not as corrupted, did impose a necessity upon us of sinning, it would necessarily follow
that God first placed in us a natural enmity, and so would be the author of all our sin.
It would also follow that Christ could not be free from this black character, if it be granted (as it must be) that He had a nature of the same kind and mould as ours.
God did not, in creation, implant in us a principle of contrariety to Himself; neither could a God of infinite goodness dash any such blot upon man's nature. He framed man in exact harmony with His own will, and printed him a fair copy, without any errata, according to His own image, which is nothing but holiness and love.
But our defection from God has put us into this state, which is maintained by our inherent and tumultuous lusts. In our creation there was a union with God; in our corruption there is a separation from Him, whence arises an opposition to Him. So that it is not created, but corrupted nature which is here meant.
2. Every profane man is a natural man, and consequently an enemy Every profane man is a natural man, and therefore an enemy to God.
Wicked works are demonstrative denials of God. "In works they deny Him" (Titus 1:16). Sensual, and having not the Spirit, are put together (Jude 19). That man who is actuated by sensuality is not acted by the Holy Spirit, but by a diabolical spirit.
Luxurious persons, who make their belly their god, are termed enemies of the cross of Christ (Phil. 3:18). And if enemies of the cross
of Christ, then enemies to God, who was engaged in the greatest design that ever was upon the stage of heaven and earth at the time of Christ's being upon the cross.
And if enemies to the cross of Christ, then enemies to all those attributes of wisdom, power, holiness, truth, justice, and mercy, which God glorified in the death of Christ, and that in the most illustrious manner.
3. Every unrenewed man, though never so richly endowed with morals, is a natural man Every unrenewed man, though never so richly endowed with moral accomplishments, is still a natural man.
What is called 〈φρόνημα σαρκὸς〉 (phronēma sarkos) in the text is called in 1 Corinthians 2:14 〈ψυχικὸς ἄνθρωπος 〉 (psychikos anthrōpos), a man who has nothing excellent beyond a rational soul.
As 〈ψυχικός 〉 is opposed to 〈πνευματικός 〉, it signifies a soul jointured with the richest dowry of nature only. And as it is opposed to 〈σαρκικός〉, a fleshly man, it notes a freedom from gross outward pollutions and defilements.
A 〈ψυχικός〉 man is one led by the rational dictates of his mind; a 〈σαρκικός〉 man is one led by his sensitive affections. Yet both are unregenerate, and therefore both are in a state of nature, and so in a state of enmity against God.
Though the one be better than the other, and more agreeable to the order of nature, yet both, being corrupted and defiled, are contrary to
God.
Suppose a man endowed with the highest measures of reason, wisdom, understanding, and learning, as wise as Solomon; and suppose him as rich in morals as in intellectuals. Yet, if he be not renewed in the spirit of his mind (Rom. 12:2), that is, in the more spiritual and rational part of his soul, though there be never so fair a frontispiece, colour, and pretence of friendship, such a man is still an enemy. For by all that strength of nature he cannot have a knowledge of spiritual things, nor a true faith in God; and without the knowledge of Him he cannot be subject to Him; and without faith it is impossible to do anything to please Him.
The civillest heathens, who disdained those ugly and carnal sins of drunkenness, lust, and the like, were yet possessed by more spiritual legions of pride and vainglory. Though you have not outwardly the filthiness of the flesh, yet you may abound with a greater filthiness of the spirit.
External acts of pollution are more abhorred by reason, because they are more brutish; they degrade the nature of a man and disgrace his person. But in heart-sins, though there be not so much of discredit, there is more of enmity.
II. What kind of enmity this is 1. It is enmity of nature, not of actions only I understand it of nature, not of actions only.
Every action of a natural man is an enemy's action, but not every action is an action of enmity. A toad does not envenom every spire of grass it crawls upon, nor poison everything it touches; yet its nature is poisonous.
Certainly every man's nature is worse than his actions. As waters are purest at the fountain, and poison most pernicious in the mass, so enmity lies chiefly in the heart.
And as waters relish of the mineral vein through which they run, so the actions of a wicked man are tinctured with the enmity from which they spring; but the mass and strength of this evil is lodged in his nature.
There is in all our natures such a devilish contrariety to God, that if God should leave a man to the current of his own heart, it would overflow in all kinds of wickedness. For the best mere nature has fundamentally and radically as much of this enmity as the worst; the disposition is the same, though the effects may be restrained in some more than in others.
No man is any more born with a love to God than he is born with the knowledge of the highest sciences. There is indeed an active power in man toward the attainment of the latter by the assistance of good education; but man has only a passive power with respect to the former, as being a subject passively capable of the grace of God.
The inherency of this enmity in our nature the Psalmist expresses when he tells us (Ps. 58:3–4): The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray as soon as they are born. They go sinfully
before they go naturally. Their poison is like the poison of a serpent —which you know is radically the same in all of the same species.
2. It is a state of enmity.
Godly men may do an enemy's action, but they are not in a state of enmity. They may be cheated into sin, but they do not dwell in it; they may fall into it, as a man into a ditch, but they do not lie in it.
There may be some jarrings between God and a regenerate man. God may be displeased with him, and he disgusted with God, and jealous of Him, as in the case of Jonah, a type of Christ; but there is not a stated war.
But a natural man is in a state of universal contrariety.
1. At all times It is rooted in the nature of a man. It is called a root of bitterness planted in a man's disposition; therefore bitterness is a quality essential to it, and inseparable from it. For while it remains a root, it will remain bitter.
You can never suppose a thing to exist and be without its nature, and the modes and qualities due to such a being; no more than you can suppose a man to live and be without a soul.
So you cannot suppose a corrupted creature to be one moment of time without this enmity, any more than a serpent can be imagined to retain its nature without the venom inherent in it, though there is not at all times a visible discovery of it.
2. In every sinful act Though the interests of particular sins may be contrary to one another, yet they all conspire in a joint league against God.
Scelera dissident. Sins snarl at one another. Covetousness and prodigality, covetousness and intemperance, cannot agree; but they are all in an amicable combination against the interest of God.
In betraying Christ, Judas was acted by covetousness, the high priest by envy, Pilate by popularity; yet all shook hands together in the murdering of Christ. Those various iniquities were blended together to make up one lump of enmity. Though in every sin there is not an express hatred of God, yet there is odium Dei participative, some participation of hatred toward Him.
As all virtuous actions partake of the nature of love to the chief good, our beloved object, so all vicious actions, which are at a distance from the chief end, are marshalled by, and tinctured with, that inward enmity which lurks in the soul.
3. Objectively universal, against all the attributes of God For sin, being an opposition to the law of God, is consequently a contrariety to His will and His understanding, and therefore to all those attributes which flow from His will, such as goodness, righteousness, and truth; and from His understanding, such as wisdom and knowledge.
Though every law proceeds from the will of the lawgiver, and does formally consist in actu voluntatis, yet it presupposes actum intellectus. That is, though it consists in the will of the lawgiver, it presupposes the wisdom of the lawgiver to be its fountain. As the understanding of God precedes the act of His will, so every sin, being against the will of God, is also against the infinite reason and wisdom of God, which is the foundation of all His laws.
4. This enmity is habitually seated in the mind This enmity against God is habitually seated in the mind.
Corruption extends its empire as far as regeneration; but it is seated in the mind, and in the most spiritual part of it: "Be renewed in the spirit of your mind" (Rom. 12:2). It does not content itself with the outworks of the affections, but triumphs in the chief fort of the soul, and there displays its banners.
The great contest between God and the devil is in the understanding and the will. The standards are first erected there. As in conversion the mind is first enlightened by God, and the will first inclined, so in seduction they are first possessed by Satan.
Hence a natural man is described as one who fulfils the desires of the mind as well as of the flesh (Eph. 2:3). In that part wherein God placed the most splendid lineaments of His image does the devil diffuse his poison. And wisdom, the chief flower in the rational part of man, is infected with this plague; for that wisdom is devilish too
(James 3:15).
The mind thus infected is like eminent persons who spread the contagion of their vices to all their attendants.
If it be thus in the noblest and governing part of the soul, it must be so also in the other faculties, which are directed by it and observe its dictates.
The other faculties, like common soldiers in a war, fight for prey and booty; but the mind, the sovereign, being filled with principles of a more direct contrariety to God, fights for superiority, and orders all the motions of the lower rout.
More particularly, there is:
1. Odium aversionis, as opposed to desire Thus man hates God because he turns from Him.
Man naturally gives his vote for God's absence, and is so far from loving the practice that his stomach abhors the knowledge of God's ways. "They say unto God, Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways" (Job 21:14). No creature would dare to say this to God's face; yet it is the language of our natures, though not of our tongues. We desire not the knowledge of thy ways.
The laws and ways of God, which He commands us to walk in, are too holy, righteous, and spiritual for our corrupted nature.
By sin we stand indebted to God, and therefore have an aversion from Him, as debtors hate the sight of their creditors and are loath to meet them. Adam fled from God when he had run upon God's score.
Sin is a disease, and therefore contrary to that physic which would abate the violence of the humour.
God's presence and purity are too dazzling a sight for sinful men; therefore they cannot look upon God, but are like sore eyes that are distempered with the sun.
2. Odium prosecutionis This implies a detestation opposite to love and affection. And so there is not only an aversion from God, but an opposition to Him.
Both those parts of hatred are described in Colossians 1:21: "And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your minds by wicked works." Here is, 1. Alienation, which is aversion.
2. Enmity, which is opposition; and both seated in the mind.
Though some expound alienation according to the outward, and enmity according to the inward estate, yet the Apostle declares hatred to be complete in these two, alienation and enmity, which are both in mind and works: the mind as the seat, the works as the issues of it. Thus men are enemies in disposition and action, in principle and execution.
This odium prosecutionis is,
1. Natural, which we call antipathy And there are steps of this among many creatures. Many men have an abhorrency of certain kinds of meats, and can never endure either the taste or the sight; and if unawares they eat any of that disagreeing sort, it breeds a distemper in the body.
Some men have had antipathy at the sight of certain creatures.
Germanicus, according to Plutarch's relation, could not endure the crowing of a cock; another could not bear the smell or touch of a rose.
Antipathies have been observed between some creatures even after they are dead. The guts of a lamb and a wolf upon the same instrument can never be tuned; the blood of dragons and eagles can never mix together; some plants will not grow by one another.
There is not such an absolute hatred between God and man, though there is between God and sin. For there may be a reconciliation between God and a sinner, but not between God and sin; for antipathies are irreconcilable.
The enmity between God and a sinner is not founded in nature, but in corrupt nature; and this nature may be removed by satisfaction and regeneration.
A fundamental reconciliation was the great intendment of God in the death of Christ; for God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto
Himself, as by an ambassador. And an actual reconciliation is made between God and a particular soul at the first instant of faith. Yet
though this reconciliation be made between God and man, it is not between God and the corrupt nature of man. For it would be against God's nature to be reconciled to that, though man be His creature.
Since His nature is infinitely good, He cannot but love goodness as a resemblance of Himself, and consequently cannot but abhor unrighteousness as that which is most distant from His nature.
Therefore He will never express any dearness or intimacy to man's corrupted nature, but to man justified and regenerate.
But the enmity which is between God and sin is founded in the nature of God and the nature of sin. Sin, being the summum malum, the greatest evil, is naturally most opposite to God, who is the summum bonum, the greatest good.
So that God can never be reconciled to sin, nor sin to God. For on the one side God must part with His holiness, or on the other sin must part with its malice and impurity; and so God must cease to be God, or sin must cease to be sin.
As God is unchangeably good both in nature and decree, so sin is unchangeably evil. As God can never cease to be good, so sin can never cease to be sin; because the naturally imprinted law of God can never cease to be His law, being grounded upon eternal principles of righteousness.
God's nature is against sin. For if His hatred of sin were a mere voluntary act, He might then either love it or detest it as He pleased.
But is God unrighteous to love unrighteousness? No; it is a voluntary yet natural act.
The hatred sin has to God has no mixture of love. The hatred a man has to God may have some mixture of natural love, because of the kindness he knows he receives from God.
2. Acquired hatred, grounded upon diversity of interests Various interests must have contrary means for the attainment of their ends.
The interest of a sinner, qua talis, as such, consists in gratifying the importunities of his lusts and in finding out occasions of pleasure.
The interest of God lies in vindicating the righteousness of His commands and maintaining the truth of His threatenings.
This is either, 1. Direct When a man burns with a desire of revenge against another for some real or supposed affront, endeavouring to do him all the ill offices in his power.
This none but the despairing and malicious devils are guilty of, who know themselves to be under an inevitable sentence.
In this sense some place the sin against the Holy Ghost, and make it to be a direct and malicious hatred of God. But it will be a question whether a creature, under a possibility and probability of salvation, and presuming upon mercy, can maliciously take up arms against God as God. For as I believe there is no settled opinionative atheism
in the world, nor any man in any age that did deliberately think there was no God, so I believe there is no settled malice against God.
Yet there may be a malicious contempt of Christ, such as Julian's was, who in scorn termed Him the Galilaean.
John 15:24: They have hated me, and my Father also. Me directly; my Father interpretatively or virtually, through many sins. As when
He says, He that hath seen me hath seen the Father also—me plainly and evidently in my person and works; my Father virtually, as I am
His extraordinary ambassador in the world to represent Him, and because they have seen the power of my Father acting in and by me in the miracles I have wrought. So that they hated the Father as they had seen Him; that is, not directly, but in His agent, our Saviour.
Their hatred of God was according to their sight of God.
2. Implicit and interpretative Idem velle et nolle est proprium amicorum. It is proper to friends to will and nill the same things. Lovers are said to have but one soul, and therefore but one will.
Men do not love the things that God loves, and therefore may be said to hate Him. A man may be said to hate God, as men are said to wrong their own souls, to love death, and to despise their own souls
(Prov. 8:36): He that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul; all they that hate me love death. Proverbs 15:32: He that refuseth instruction despiseth his own soul. That is, consequentially, because
they do those things which injure themselves and bring death upon them.
As a thief may in this sense be said to hate his own life, because he does those things which are the occasion and meritorious cause of his destruction; for no man formally loves death as death, nor despises his own soul, but by doing those things the effects whereof are such that he may be said to contemn himself.
So men, acting those things which justle with God's law and stand diametrically opposite to His will, are said to hate God.
In this respect sin is called a contempt of God, not formal and express, but implicit and interpretative; because by sin the law of God is contemned, and consequently the authority, will, and wisdom of the Lawgiver (1 Sam. 2:30): They that despise me shall be lightly esteemed.
The nature of hatred being thus explained, let us see what kind of enmity against God this is.
1. Negatively 1. We hate not God as God It is not the primary intention of a creature to set itself against the nature of God; and indeed it is impossible. For God, absolutely considered, has all the attractives of love, since the noblest perfections of the creatures are in a more excellent manner united in Him as the original.
As a man cannot will sin as sin, because it is purely evil and therefore cannot be the object of desire—since the will is carried out to things under the notion of good—so we cannot hate God as God, because of the amiableness of His nature; and what we conceive good cannot be the object of contempt.
No man can hate truth as truth, or good as good; because the one is the proper object of the understanding, the other of the will. Yet he may hate them both under an apprehension that they are evil or inconvenient to him.
God in Himself, as He is known by open vision, cannot be a motive to enmity—no, not to the devils themselves—but only as they apprehend His nature to be destructive to their well-being.
We never yet met with any so monstrously base as to hate a creature as a creature, or man as man; not a toad or a serpent as a creature, but as it is venomous.
And though Timon was surnamed 〈μισάνθρωπος〉 (misanthrōpos), because he was possessed with a melancholy kind of hatred, yet he professed that he hated bad men because of their vices, and good men because they did not concur with him in so intense and exact a hatred of the enormities of the world.
And as it is impossible that we should hate a creature under the mere notion of a creature, because there is nothing in that simple notion contrary to us—but only in regard of some particular nature of this or that creature of a different or contrary stamp to our own—so neither can we hate God as God. For in the general and abstracted notion of
God there is nothing contrary to man, no, not to corrupted man; but He is an infinite mirror of goodness and ravishing loveliness.
2. We hate not God as Creator and Preserver Hatred always supposes some injury, either real or imaginary, or at least the fear of some. And our hatred evaporates when we find him to be good whom we hated under a conceit of being bad, or when our supposed injuries are recompensed by comforting benefits.
What servant can disdain his master for feeding him? Or what child hate his father for begetting and maintaining him? This is contrary to the common sparks of ingenuity that are in the natures of men, and against their natural interest.
Reason will acquaint men with a First Cause, and that their beings are produced and preserved by a power superior to their own. Who can loathe this infinite Sun for the constant refreshment received by His beams and influences, any more than a man can hate the created sun for the kindly warmth darted upon him?
In this respect natural men, from a common ingenuity, have some starts of love toward God; though this is not a love of a right impression, because it respects not the excellency of God's nature, but the agreeableness of His benefits to us. And so it is rather selflove, terminated principally in our own welfare, sustained and increased by the influence of His providence.
Sometimes this love to God, which a wicked man thinks himself endued with, is rather enmity; when he loves God only with respect
to his own corrupt ends. As when he professes an affection to God for his preservation, that he may the longer continue in the society of his darling lusts; or when he loves God for the wealth He gives him, because he has thereby the more materials for his luxury and voluptuousness.
This is such an affection toward God as may rightly be termed enmity, since it is subordinate to the love of brutish lusts. It is a love of Him for those mercies which he turns into fuel to support his natural contrariety against God.
2. Positively 1. We hate God as a Sovereign Man cannot endure a superior; he would be uncontrollable.
Pharaoh's principle, which would acknowledge none above him, but proclaimed war against heaven, dwells naturally in everyone: "Our lips are our own; who is lord over us?" (Ps. 12:4). "Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice, to let Israel go? I know not the LORD, neither will I let Israel go" (Exod. 5:2). How contemptibly does he speak of God! And this is the dialect of every man's heart:
Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice, and let my dearest carnal pleasures go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let them depart from me.
A desire of being like God, or equal to Him in wisdom, was the first sin of man after the creation; as to be equal to God in authority and power was the first sin of devils—a renouncing of God's dominion.
God, by a positive law, enjoined man not to eat of the forbidden fruit, a thing in itself indifferent, but commanded for the trial of his obedience, to see whether he would own a subjection to God's absolute will, and abstain from things desirable in themselves because of the mere pleasure of the Creator. But by his transgression he disowned God's right of commanding, and his own duty of obeying.
The devil knew by his own temper what bait man was most likely to catch at, since the noblest creatures among animals aim most at superiority and victory.
Nebuchadnezzar, who through this aspiring humour would be accounted and worshipped as a sovereign god, was as deservedly as disgracefully turned to graze among the beasts.
And the great charge at the last day against the sons of men will be this: that they would not have God, nor Christ of His appointment, to reign over them.
We hate God as a Lawgiver, as peccati prohibitor (Luke 19:27). It is impossible that man should do otherwise, considered in the nature wherein he stands; for it is as natural to us to abhor those things which are unsuitable and troublesome, as to please ourselves in things agreeable to our minds and humours. Since man is so deeply in love with sin, accounting it the most estimable good, he cannot but hate the law which checks it—both the external precept, and the counterpart of it in his own conscience—because the strictness of its commands molests and shackles him in his agreeable course, and the
severity of its threatenings stares him in the face with curses. As the sea foams most, and casts up most filth, when its impetuousness is restrained by some rock, or bounded by the shore.
It is not the law that provokes us to sin directly, but accidentally, because of our corruption, which is contrary to the image of God's purity in the precept.
For we look upon God as cruel and injurious to our liberty and wellbeing, and as commanding those things which, in our apprehensions, thwart and contradict our pleasures.
This conceit was the hammer whereby the hellish Jael struck the nail into our first parents, which has conveyed death and damnation, together with the same imagination, to all their posterity (Gen. 3:5):
"God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Alas, poor soul! God knows what He did when He forbade you that fruit.
He was jealous lest you should be too happy, and it was a cruelty in Him to deprive you of food so pleasant and delicious.
It was for this end that the law was given with thunderings and lightnings from Mount Sinai, to enforce an awe upon men—God well knowing how apt we are to break the hedges and fly from restraints.
The sum is this: man would be as a lamb in a large place, like a heifer sliding from the yoke. He snuffs at the commands of his Lord, and would be subject to no law but his own, and guided by no will but that of the flesh. Have you not many times wished that there were no law, or that it were not so strict as to check your darling lusts? What
is this but enmity to the authority of that law which you account so burdensome?
2. We hate God as a Judge As auctor legis and ultor legis; as peccati prohibitor and poenae executor.
Fear is often the cause of hatred. All men have a fear of God—not of offending Him, but of being punished by Him.
Corruption kindles this enmity, but fear, like a bellows, enflames it.
When men know they deserve punishment, they must needs fear, and consequently disaffect both the author and the inflicter of it.
Guilt makes malefactors tremble at the report of a judge's coming.
All the perfections of God, though never so amiable, cannot produce any true spiritual love in a natural man—though he be never so specious in the eye of the world, or good-natured to his fellowcreatures—while he lies under the apprehensions of wrath, and is in his own sense concluded under an eternal doom.
If you should tell a prisoner that his judge is a brave, comely, genteel man, of excellent accomplishments and unspotted innocency, would this commend the person of the judge to the prisoner? No; because he considers him not in his intellectual or moral endowments, but in his political function, as a judge who will try, condemn, and take away his life.
This hatred of God is stronger or weaker according as the fear is.
Therefore in hell it is in its meridian and maturity, and most proper to the damned spirits. It is not so evident in this world, unless a man be brought into such a despairing condition as Spira was, who professed that he hated God upon this account. The reason is because the acts of God as a judge are remote, and evils at a distance do not so much affect us, since we flatter ourselves with hopes of escape. It is the certainty and approach of judgment that inspires fear.
Evils hurt us not by a single apprehension of their nature; for the contemplation may be delightful, as a picture of a storm at sea, or a battle on land. But they affect us as they have relation to us.
That which was the devil's language to Christ (Matt. 8:29), "What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? art thou come to torment us before the time?"—this is the dialect of our hearts:
"Depart from us; we desire not the knowledge of thy ways" (Job 21:14), neither thy ways of holiness nor thy ways of justice.
Well then, did none of you ever rage against God under His afflicting hand? Were you never like wild beasts, ready to tear in pieces those who would take and tame you?
Did you never wish that God were so careless as to enact no law to hurt you, and so unrighteous as to have no justice to punish you? Did you never wish Him stripped of His preceptive will and His revenging arm? Have you not sometimes wished that the law might be as dead a letter with respect to curses as it is with respect to
conveying strength for the performance of it—that it might be a silent law, like Eli to his sons, never correcting you?
3. When this fear rises high, or when men are under a sense of punishment, they hate the very being of God This fear rises so high that it aims at the very essence of God, as in Spira's case, who wished that he could destroy Him.
Since all men are acted by a principle of self-preservation, and since this principle is universally natural and predominant, it will move them to take away the life of any person rather than lose their own life by them.
When men look upon God as a judge and punisher of their crimes, if they could by any means—yes, even by the undeifying of God
Himself—rescue themselves from those fears, there is self-love enough, and enmity enough against God in them, to quicken them to it.
There is no doubt but that the damned, if they could, would pull God out of His throne to have ease from those dreadful torments they undergo. And whatever fearful apprehensions we have of God in this world are but the lower degrees of that hatred which the damned have in the highest.
But that I may not send you so far as hell for a proof, I will assert that the wishing—yes, the endeavouring—of the destruction of God is fundamentally and seminally in every one of our natures.
I appeal to yourselves. Did none of you ever please yourselves at times with thoughts of how happy you should be, how free in your lustful pleasures, if there were no God?
Have you not at one time or another wished there were no law above to restrain you, no conscience within to check you, no judge hereafter to sentence you? And can God be hated worse than when the destruction of His inseparable perfections—His holiness and righteousness—is thought so desirable? This is a wishing of the destruction of His being.
Hatred, as defined by some, is appetitus amovendi rem aliquam—a desire to remove a thing. As love is a desire of union, so hatred must be a desire of separation. And Aristotle tells us that hatred is an affection of a higher strain than anger, because it desires the 〈τὸ μὴ εἶναι〉, the very non-being of the hated object.
As the hatred of sin aims at the destruction of sin, and men's hatred of saints would cause their expulsion out of the world, so the hatred of God is a desire to despoil Him of His being. And men do not do this—not for want of an innate disposition—but for want of strength.
For men hate God more than the best saint hates sin. All hatred includes a virtual murder: "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer" (1 John 3:15). If he who hates his brother is, in the court of exact judgment, a murderer of his brother, then he who hates God is a murderer of God.
The more self-love we have, the more we shall hate that which we judge destructive to us; for the more we wish well to ourselves, the
more we wish ill to that which we imagine contrary to our well-being.
And since we hate those acts of God which flow from the righteousness of His nature, we consequently rise to a hatred of God's being; because He could not be God unless He loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and He could not testify His love to the one, or His loathing of the other, except by encouraging goodness and witnessing His anger against iniquity.
Man would have God at the greatest distance from him; and there is no greater distance from being than not being. Hence that language,
"Depart from us" (Job 21:14). And Psalm 14:1, "The fool hath said in his heart, No God"—that is, I wish there were no God. And this wish is founded upon sin; for the reason rendered is that they are corrupt, and have done abominable works.
Hence sin is by some called Deicidium, a slaying of God; because every sin, being enmity against God, does virtually include in its nature the destruction of God.
And since every man naturally is a child of the devil, and is acted by a diabolical spirit (Eph. 2:2), "the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience," he must necessarily have that nature which his father has, and an infusion of all that venom with which the spirit that acts him is possessed—though the full discovery of it may be restrained by various circumstances.
This assertion seems also to be intimated in the death of Christ. For when we see that, for satisfaction of the dishonour done to God,
Christ must die for sin, it intimates that if it were possible, God
should die by sin. If sin can be expiated by no less than the blood of God, it seems to imply that in its own nature it aims at no less than the life of God. For all God's punishments are founded in lege talionis and are perfectly equitable.
For confirmation that a state of nature is a state of enmity The very design of Christ's coming into the world being an errand of peace, and the management of this design—both while He was conversant in the world and since His ascension—being to reconcile
God and man, and to promote by His Spirit an acceptance of this reconciliation, plainly discovers the state man was in, wherein man injured God and was punished by Him. For what need was there of piecing up a friendship, if there had not been an antecedent enmity?
There was a moral enmity against God on our part, which necessarily drew a legal enmity on God's part against us.
The Apostle expressly declares it in Romans 5:10: "If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God." If when we were enemies—all of us. Not the best saint on earth, nor the most illustrious glorified saint in heaven, but once had this black character of being God's enemy.
There is not a son of Adam but inherited this filthy puddle and had this hostile disposition boiling up against God.
Every man naturally is like the lake of Sodom, over which no holy motion can hover, but it falls down dead, being choked by those
steams that exhale from the corruption of the heart.
Romans 1:30 calls men "haters of God." The word 〈θεοστυγεῖς 〉 (theostygeis) signifies to hate a thing as hell. It is derived from 〈Στύξ〉 (Styx), one of the poetical rivers of hell, and denotes a more intense and rooted hatred than that expressed in the Septuagint,
The most desperate enemy God now has in hell among mankind had not a blacker soul at his nativity than every one of us had at ours.
Titus 1:16. The Apostle tells us of some who denied God, though they professed they knew Him. They knew Him notionally, and denied
Him practically—yes, every attribute of His, and His very being.
Denied God!
There are the characters of a Deity engraved upon every man by nature, so deeply in men's consciences that it is impossible for all the malice of the devil to raze them out. But if we judge men's hearts by the counterpart of them in their lives, and consider men's practices, which are the best indices of their principles, we shall quickly find, by tracing the streams, how corrupt the fountain is.
This enmity is against the sovereignty of God.
Men will not have God reign over them. They will not have God for their Governor, nor His law for their rule.
Our created arms cannot reach heaven to pull God from His throne; but there is a radical disposition in man to do it, had he ability