PART II Enmity against God as a Sovereign
proportioned to his corruption. For what is the great quarrel between God and man but this—whose will and whose authority shall stand?
While we exclude Him from being the Lord of our hearts, we would exclude Him from being the Lord of the world; for that unjust principle which deprives Him of the one would deprive Him of the other. To the latter God has no greater right, nor any juster title, than
He has to our hearts, over which we will not let Him reign.
Sin is therefore called rebellion, which is a denial of subjection to Him as our Lord. It is an act of disloyalty, a breach of allegiance. As the Jews say of every judgment upon them, that there is some of the dust of the golden calf—that is, something of the punishment of their first idolatry—so we may say that in every sin there is a taint of that first prodigious ambition of our first parents, which cost them and their posterity so dear: namely, that we would be as gods, we would be God's equals, if not superiors.
PART II Enmity against God as a Sovereign The enmity against this sovereignty appears in three things:
1. In the breach of God's laws.
2. In setting up other sovereigns.
3. In usurping God's prerogative.
1. In the breach of God's laws That servant who does not perform his master's command virtually denies his authority.
If obedience be a sign of love, disobedience is an argument of hatred.
John 14:15: If you love me, keep my commandments. If obedience to God ennobles us with the glorious title of God's friends (John 15:14), then disobedience to God must needs expose us to the unworthy character of His enemies.
Indeed, the breach of God's laws is not only a discarding of His sovereignty, but a casting of dirt upon His other attributes.
For if His command be holy, just, and good—if it be the image of God's holiness, the transcript of His righteousness, and the efflux of His goodness—then in the breach of it all those attributes are despised. The law is slighted as it is a medal of God's holiness, as it is equitable in itself, and as it is, in its goodness, designed for our convenience and advantage.
Therefore, by the breach of one point of the law, we virtually contract the guilt of contempt of the whole statute-book of God (James 2:10–
11): Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. This is because the will and authority of the Lawgiver, which gives the sanction to it, is opposed; because the authority of the Lawgiver, which is not prevalent with us to restrain us from the breach of one point, would be of as little force to restrain us from the breach of all the rest when occasion is offered; and
because the breach of any one law declares a want of that love which is the sum and spirit of the whole law.
This enmity to God's law will appear in these ten things.
1. Unwillingness to know the law of God, to inquire into it, or to think of it Men affect an ignorance of God's command. They are loath to inform themselves; they hate the light which would both discover their spots and direct their course.
Hence those expressions, refusing to hearken, and stopping the ears that we should not hear. None understands; there is none that seeks after God—an unwillingness to seek the knowledge of Him. Yes, though it be the most advantageous and refreshing thing to the soul, yet they would not hear (Isa. 28:12).
When God presses in upon them by inward motions or outward declarations of His will, they secretly desire God not to trouble them with His laws, though their hearts bear witness to the righteousness of them (Isa. 30:10–11): Which say to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things; cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us. That is, Let not the Holy One of Israel trouble us with any of His laws, but leave us to our sinful labour. Herein God placed their rebellion (v. 9): Rebellious children, that will not hear the law of the LORD. They would have smooth things prophesied to them; they would partake of His mercy, but would not imitate His holiness.
And when any motion of the Spirit thrusts itself in to enlighten them, they exalt themselves against the knowledge of God (2 Cor. 10:5), and resist the Holy Ghost, keeping their hearts barred that He may not have admittance. The word 〈ἀντιπίπτω 〉 (Acts 7:51) is emphatical—to fall against, as a stone or any ponderous body falls violently against that which lies in its way. They would dash in pieces, or grind to powder, that very motion which is made for their instruction—yes, and the Spirit too who makes it; and that not in a fit of passion, but from an habitual enmity. Whereas a faithful subject or servant, who loves his prince or master, would fain know what his will is, and what laws are ordered, that he may observe them.
But when men have a superficial knowledge of God's laws by education, or attendance upon a godly and able ministry, yet they are loath to retain it, negligent in improving it. They easily let it slip from them; their minds have no delight to employ themselves in meditating on it, or to know the spirit of it—which the Psalmist fixes as the character of a godly man (Ps. 1:2).
Men are generally more fond of the knowledge of anything than of God's will. Do not most men who are intent upon knowledge spend more time, and engage more serious and affectionate thoughts, in the study of some science or trade than in the knowledge of God's will? With what readiness and dexterity will a man discourse about philosophy, mathematics, history, and the like; yet any discourse of God begun in company strikes him dead. He is quite at a loss in the knowledge of Him and His will—which was the great end of his coming into the world, and the great concern of his soul.
But if a man does desire to know the law of God, it is often more out of curiosity and a natural itch to know than from any design to come under the power of it. Therefore many men who can dispute for the principles of religion are ashamed of the practice, and ashamed to discourse much of the practical part of it—which is a contradictory thing. For can the profession be honourable if the practice be vile? If the principles be true and good, and worthy to be known, why are they not practised? If the practice be disgraceful, why are the principles which lead to such practices professed and studied?
Whence can this affected ignorance of God's laws, this careless inquiry into His will, arise, but from an enmity against it—for fear they should be disturbed by it in the pursuit of their carnal pleasures? Therefore they account the word of the LORD a reproach to them and their ways, and a trouble to have their consciences set at work by the law that galls them (Jer. 6:10).
2. Unwillingness to be determined by any law of God When men cannot escape the convincing knowledge of the law, but it breaks in upon them as the morning light, they set up their carnal resolutions against it (Jer. 44:16): As for the word which thou hast spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we will not hearken unto thee. They harden their hearts with a stoutness against God (Mal.
3:13), refuse to walk in His law (Ps. 78:10). Though it be a strength to them, yet they will not (Isa. 30:15). They would rather guide
themselves to destruction than be under God's conduct to happiness; they would rather be their own rulers than God's subjects.
Men naturally affect an unbounded liberty. They would not have the bridle of a command to check them, nor be hedged in by any law.
They think it too slavish a thing to be guided by the will of another.
They are well compared to the wild ass that loves to snuff up the wind at her pleasure in the wilderness (Jer. 2:24). They will take their own course rather than come under the guidance of God.
Since the law checks the inward operations of the soul, and would keep men from inward as well as outward compliances with sin, they therefore account it a heavy yoke to be so strictly regulated as not to have their secret retirements and dalliances with sin in their thoughts.
Let not God speak to us, said the Jews (Exod. 20:19–20), lest we die.
One might think it was the terror of the thunderclaps with which the law was proclaimed that made them so unwilling to hear God speak.
But the Apostle tells us it was the hatred of the law itself (Heb.
12:20): For they could not endure that which was commanded. The particle for shows this to be the reason why they desired the word should not be spoken to them anymore.
Had they been only afraid of the terrible lightnings, without any aversion to God Himself, they would not so suddenly afterward have preferred a golden calf—the similitude of an Egyptian idol—put the name of God upon it, and ascribed to it their deliverance from Egypt, which had been wrought not by a senseless calf, but by an almighty
and outstretched arm. Therefore, in the charge God brought against them (Lev. 26:43), He accuses them not only of despising His judgments, but of a rooted abhorrence of them even in their souls:
Because their soul abhorred my statutes. There is not a law but the heart of man naturally has a secret and rooted detestation of it.
Hence man is said to make void the law of God (Ps. 119:126): They have made void thy law—that is, made it of no obligation to them, as if it were an almanac out of date. Christ calls this making the law of none effect (Matt. 15:6), 〈ἠκυρώσατε 〉—you have annulled it, unlording the law, putting it out of commission, throwing off all its power and dominion.
This law God values more than the whole world; yes, the least tittle of it is so dear to Him that it shall stand when heaven and earth shall fall. And to vindicate the honour of it, He would have His Son die to make satisfaction for the breach of it. So that if a man could destroy the whole world, it would not be so bad as sin, which is an unlording of that which is an act of God's royalty and a copy of His holiness.
Whereas the making of the world was but an act of His wisdom and executive power. God would not be so angry at the contempt of His power as at this, because here His holiness—an attribute in which He especially delights—is struck at.
3. Violence offered to those laws which God most strictly enjoins, and in the performance of which He most delights If a man be willing to be determined by some law of God, it is not because it is His law, but because it does not run counter to some beloved lust. But when God enjoins anything against the cherished interest of the flesh, he flies out in rage against God, and the interest of his corrupt affection excites him to a loathing of that which is truly good.
The strictness of the law—which natural men account their band and shackle—is the ground of their quarrel with God, the reason of their rage and their counsel against God and His Christ: "Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us" (Ps. 2:3).
All this was (vv. 1–2) because of the strictness of His law. Though Grotius understands it of the law of Moses and all its rights, it is certainly meant of the evangelical law of Christ, the psalm being a prophecy of Him.
If a man be willing to comply with any law of God, it is insofar as it prohibits some outward carnal sins. But the more spiritual the law, the more averse the heart. The more spiritual the law is, the more indwelling sin exercises its power and endeavours to increase our slavery: "The law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin" (Rom.
7:14). The Apostle intimates that our carnality, our slavery to sin, and the enmity of our hearts to God are best discerned by comparing man with the spirituality of the law.
The Jews were much for sacrifices, and very diligent in them—these were but the skirts of the law, and not the things God principally required at their hands. But for holiness, mercy, pity, and other duties most valued by God, they were mere strangers. Men will grant
God the lip and the ear, but deny Him that which He most calls for— namely, the heart.
The more earnestly conscience urges the law at any time, the more furiously the flesh acts against it: "Sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence" (Rom.
7:8). Like boisterous waves, which roar most against that bank or rock which forbids their progress; or like wind, which, pent within a narrow compass, grows more violent.
Had not God commanded some things so strictly, they would not have been broken so frequently. God's righteous laws, intended to check our corruptions, become occasions to enrage them; as vapour in a cloud ends in a tearing clap of thunder when it meets with opposition.
We shall find our hearts most averse to the observation of those laws which are eternal and essential to righteousness—those which God could not but command, as He is a righteous Governor—in the observance of which we come nearest to Him and express His image most illustriously. Such are the laws requiring inward and spiritual worship, the loving of God with all our heart and soul. God cannot, in regard of His holiness and righteousness, command the contrary to these.
These are the laws our hearts swell most against; these our corruptions snarl at most. Whereas laws that are only morally positive, or merely positive—having no intrinsic righteousness in them, but depending purely on the will of the Lawgiver and therefore capable of change—such as the ceremonial parts of worship and the ceremonial law among the Jews, we can comply with more easily than with those laws which have essential righteousness in them and most clearly express the righteousness of God's nature.
4. Man hates his own conscience when it puts him in mind of the law of God Man cannot naturally endure a quick and lively practical thought of God and His law, and therefore becomes an enemy to his own conscience for putting him in mind of God. This is evidenced by our stifling of conscience when it dictates any practical conclusions from the law, and would stamp suitable impressions upon the soul.
As it is an evidence of enmity in one man against another when he cannot bear his company nor endure to hear him speak, so it is an evidence of enmity to God when a man cannot endure to listen to that which is in himself, and more intimate with him than any friend he has, for the wholesome and necessary advice it gives him as God's viceroy within him.
This is not an enmity to conscience itself, nor to its act of selfreflection simply considered, but to the matter of it, as it is God's vicegerent and representative, bearing the marks of His authority, and pressing the holy law of God upon the mind and heart.
For in other cases this self-reflecting act of conscience is welcome and cherished, where it does not act in a way of sovereignty derived from God, but in a manner suited to natural affections. Suppose a man, in a passion, has struck his child and caused some great harm; his conscience reflecting upon him afterward will be welcome, and will work tenderness in him. Yet the same conscience, when it deals with the more spiritual concerns of God, is loathed as a busybody.
By such frequent opposition to conscience, this enmity so far prevails that the sovereignty of conscience seems quite cashiered. It ceases to have any efficacy to spur the soul to good or to withdraw it from evil; and being overpowered by sinful habits, its commands grow weak. It sits labouring like a magistrate who cannot stem the tide of ill manners in a commonwealth, enjoining as if it had no mind to be obeyed.
It is upon this account that men oftentimes cannot endure to hear gracious discourses of God, because they excite unwelcome reflections in their own consciences, which, instead of reforming them, do but further distemper them; as the sweetest perfumes affect a weak head with aches.
Since men thus hate their own consciences for putting them in mind of God's laws, it is clear that they hate God Himself, because conscience is God's officer within them. Since they would destroy the memorials and impressions of God in conscience; since they would destroy God's commissioner for doing His work; they would destroy
God Himself.
The Apostle therefore calls disobedience to the light of nature contention (Rom. 2:8): To them that are contentious, and obey not the truth—〈ἐξ ἐριθείας〉, those who act out of contention. This must be a contention against conscience, the light of nature, and consequently against God. For in that chapter the Apostle speaks of disobedience to the light of nature: they obey not the truth out of contention against it, and against God, who has published that truth and imprinted it upon their souls as a guide to them. God has put conscience into man as His deputy, to exercise command over him and to maintain His prerogative as Lawgiver within him.
As the disowning of the principles of Christian doctrine after a taste and profession is a crucifying of Christ (Heb. 6:6), seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame—that is, acting in spirit upon His doctrine what the Jews acted upon His body, accounting Him an impostor and disowning the excellency of His person and offices, implicitly asserting that there is nothing in Him worthy of their desire; and as this crucifying,
〈ἀνασταυροῦντας〉, may be understood in themselves as well as to themselves, the quenching of Christ's common workings being in effect the killing of His person—so, by the rule of proportion, every sin against conscience and blotting out of common principles is not only a contention against God, but an interpretative destroying of Him, and a putting God to shame, who is the engraver of those principles and of the law of nature in man.
5. Man sets up another law within himself, in opposition to the law of God A sinner looks upon God as too severe a taskmaster, and His laws as too hard a yoke, as though God were cruel and injurious to the liberty of His creature, and envied man his well-being and lawful pleasure
(Gen. 3:5): God knows that in the day you eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened.
This was the old charge the devil brought against God to Eve, and the same impressions he still makes upon the minds of the children of disobedience, in whom he works, filling them with unjust reflections upon God.
This conceit being wrought into man, he will be a law to himself, and frame a rule subservient to his own ends (Rom. 7:23): I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind. This is called the law of sin, and is set up in a warlike and authoritative opposition against the law of God in the mind, 〈ἀντιστρατευόμενον 〉. This law of sin is nothing else than the setting up of our own corrupt appetite and will against God. As corrupt reason is opposed to the gospel, so corrupt will is opposed to the law.
Sin, having set up this law, makes it the measure and rule of righteousness, and measures even the righteousness of God's law by this self-framed standard—yes, measures the holiness and righteousness of God Himself by it. This is horrible: to make God's law no holier than our own, and to square God's holiness and
righteousness according to our corrupt conceptions; as if God's holiness were to be tried by our measures and judged by our corruption (Ps. 50:21): Thou thoughtest I was altogether such a one as thyself. Men do this when they plead for sins as small, venial, and below God's notice, because they themselves think them so; therefore
God, they suppose, must think so too.
Man, with a giant-like pride, would climb into the throne of the Almighty, and establish a contradiction to the will of God by making his own will, and not God's, the square and rule of his actions.
This principle began and took date in Paradise, when Adam would not depend upon the will of God revealed to him, but upon himself and his own will, thereby making himself as God.
This is the hereditary disease of all his posterity: to affect independence, and to leave God's directions in order to be their own guides.
This has ever been the great controversy between God and man: whether He or they shall be God; whether His reason and truths, or their reason; His will, or theirs, shall prevail. It is the same dispute that stood between Pharaoh and God—whether the great Jehovah or a petty king of Egypt should be God.
And what says the Psalmist? They say of their tongues, Our tongues are our own; who shall control us? But more truly this is the language of men's hearts: Our wills are our own; who shall check us?
This is what God condemns in the Jews (Isa. 65:2): A rebellious people, which walk in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts. They would set up their own thoughts above His precepts, as though their vain imaginations were a more just and holy rule than the infinitely perfect will of God. So also in Jer. 18:12: We will walk after our own devices. We will be a law to ourselves; let God take His way, and we will take ours.
It is not, perhaps, so heinous an idolatry to set up a graven image—a senseless and sinless stock or stone—as it is for a man to set up his own sinful and corrupt affections, and devote himself to compliance with them in opposition to the righteous will of God.
6. In being at greater pains and charge to break God's law than is necessary to keep it How will men rack their heads, study mischief upon their beds, wear out their time and strength in contrivances to satisfy some base lust, which leaves behind it no other recompense but a momentary pleasure, attended at length with inconceivable horror; and yet cast off that yoke which is easy, and that burden which is light, in the keeping whereof there is great reward.
Micah 6:7–8: Wherewith shall I come before the LORD? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? They in the prophet would be at the expense of thousands of rams and ten thousands of rivers of oil, offer violence to the principles of nature, and give the firstborn of
their bodies for the sin of their souls, rather than do justice, love mercy, or walk humbly with God—things far easier in practice than the offerings they desired.
Thus men would rather be sin's drudges than God's freemen, and neglect that service wherein is perfect freedom for that wherein there is intolerable slavery. They will raise a combustion in their consciences, violate the reason of their minds, impair the health of their bodies in contradicting the laws of God, and prefer sensual satisfaction with toil here and eternal ruin hereafter, before the honour of God, the dignity of their nature, or that happiness, peace, and health which might be preserved at a far cheaper expense than they are at to destroy them.
7. In doing that which is just and righteous upon any other consideration than obedience to God's will Men will indent with God, and obey Him so far as it may comport with their own ends. Unless God will, as it were, degrade Himself to submit to the conditions of their interest, they will pay Him no duty of obedience, nor render Him a grain of service.
What is hypocrisy—a sin so odious to God—but the performance of duties materially good upon any other consideration than that of God's sovereignty?
1. Out of respect to some human consideration Men will practise some points of religion and walk in the track of certain laws of God, not out of conscience to the command, but from the agreeableness of it to their humour, constitution, or nature; out of the sway of natural generosity, the dictates of carnal reason, or the bias of secular interest—not from a holy affection to God, an ingenuous sense of His authority, or voluntary submission to His will.
Thus a man may avoid drunkenness, not because God forbids it, but because it is attended with bodily indispositions. Or he may give alms, not with respect to God's injunction, but from natural compassion, or to display his generosity. This is obedience to selfpreservation or to moral virtue, not obedience to God.
Though this may look like virtue, yet when it is done from custom and example, without a due regard to our Sovereign, we may in the doing of it be rather accounted apes than Christians—or indeed men.
It is obedience in the act, but disobedience in the motive; for it is not respect to God, but to ourselves. At best it is but the performance of the material part, without the spiritual manner, which God chiefly regards.
Moreover, if we observe any law upon the account of its suitableness to our natural sentiments or carnal designs, we shall as readily disobey it when it crosses the purposes of our minds or the desires of the flesh; for such obedience is mutable, according to the changes of our own humours.
How can that be entitled affection to God which is as variable as the interest of an inconstant mind?
Genesis 27:41 records Esau's hatred of Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him: Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then will I slay my brother
Jacob. So many children who expect great inheritances at their parents' death may be very observant toward them, not because they respect God's commands, but because they would not frustrate their hopes by giving offence. Esau had no regard to God in resolving upon his brother's death, though reverence for his father restrained him from speedy execution.
He perhaps considered how justly he might lie under the imputation of hastening aged Isaac's death by depriving him of a beloved son.
But had the old man been laid in the grave, neither the contrary command of God nor the nearness of fraternal relation would have dissuaded him from the act any more than they did from the resolution.
Hence many men abstain from gross sins only out of love to their reputation. They commit in secret that wickedness which, if seen or observed by others, would overspread their faces with shame and confusion. A man may have his mind in a brothel-house, notwithstanding God's prohibition, yet restrain his body for fear of disgrace. He may commit murder in his heart while the fear of punishment ties up his hands.
Has not our own credit, then, more power over us than God? Do we not sooner observe the opinion of the world, which frightens us, than the authority of God, which commands us?
Is it not monstrous to be swayed by everything but the right motive— to let everything be a chain to bind us to doing good or avoiding evil, rather than God's law in His word or the natural law of reason implanted in us? Or to be moved rather by the examples of men or the customs of places than to act in conformity to the righteous nature of God? How great an evidence is this of our enmity to God, or at least of a great want of affection!
2. Out of affection to some base lust or cursed end The Pharisees were devout in long prayers, not that God might be honoured, but that they themselves might be esteemed by men.
Ambition may be the spring and soul of devotion.
Jehu was commanded to cut off the house of Ahab. The service he undertook was in itself acceptable, yet corrupt nature acted that which holiness and righteousness commanded. God appointed it to magnify His justice; Jehu performed it to satisfy his revenge or ambition. He did it to fulfil the will of his lust, not the will of his true
Lord. Jehu applauds it as zeal; God abhors it as murder (Hos. 1:4).
Thus we may show our hatred to God and provoke Him even by doing that which He particularly enjoins.
This is compliance with the design of some carnal lust rather than submission to the authority of the Lawgiver. It is service not to God
for His own sake, but to ourselves for sin's sake. It is, in effect, casting down the will of God from commanding, and setting up our own in its place.
Nothing is more positively commanded in both the law of nature and the gospel than prayer and the worship of God. Yet men may observe some laws the better to break others. The Pharisees were great observers here: they prayed, and to outward appearance devoutly, with a zeal measured by length; but to what end? Not that God might be honoured, but that they themselves might be esteemed—and, worse yet, that they might devour widows' houses; that men, deceived by this show of devotion, might make them executors of their wills, guardians of their children, and trustees for widows, so that they might secure a fat morsel for themselves.
3. Out of slavish fear In doing anything from this principle, men act rather as enemies than friends. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment (1 John 4:18). If fear is inconsistent with love, it must be the property of hatred. If perfect love casts out fear, then perfect fear casts out love and nourishes enmity.
If fear has torment, the effects of it cannot be pleasure; and duties flowing from it carry a spice of that hatred which is the inseparable companion of this passion. Such duties are performed rather to appease fear than to please the Creator. Just as Pharaoh parted with the Israelites, so some men part with certain sins—not out of love to
God's law, but for fear of further wrath, or because of the smart of present judgments.
How then can we discharge ourselves from the charge of enmity to God, when we are more readily excited to do good or abstain from evil by motives of lesser authority—the presence of a child, the opinion of the world, the preservation of reputation, or fear of punishment—than by God's command itself? So actions materially honest may be the fruit of passion rather than reason, and what we call obedience may be the product of the bestial part in us rather than of the man.
8. In being more observant of the laws of men than of the law of God The fear of man is a more powerful curb to restrain men in their duty than the fear of God. Men are restrained from breaking human laws for fear of the present penalties annexed to them, but they encourage themselves in the breach of divine laws by God's forbearance. By this they attribute a greater right of dominion to man than they will acknowledge to be in God. They willingly walk after the commandment of man, even in cases of idolatry; but like snails creep after the commandment of God, if they move at all.
Thus they made the king glad with their lies; they cheered his heart with their ready obedience to his command for idolatry, against the counsel of God and the warnings of the prophets. And, contrary to the speech of Christ, they fear him who can kill the body more than
God, who can destroy both body and soul. They are more frightened by the frowns of men than by the power of God.
This is natural in all ages. It was Jerome's complaint: Timent leges humanas, at non divinas; quasi majora sint Imperatorum scuta quam Christi; leges timemus, Evangelia contemnimus—"They fear human laws, but not divine; as though the shields of emperors were greater than Christ's. We fear laws, we despise the Gospel."
Without question, man is obliged to obey his Creator without first consulting whether His commands agree with the institutions of men. For if we obey God only because human laws enjoin the same things, we obey not God but man, human law being the chief motive of our obedience. This is to vilify God's sovereignty and to lay it under the hatches of human authority. Thus we slight the duty which, in point of right, He may demand of us, and repay so liberal a Benefactor with ungrateful returns.
Those men whose laws we principally regard were never the principal authors of our being; and the instrumental preservation we have by them is not without the providential influence of that Lord whose authority we subject to theirs. Why should we readily submit to human laws and stagger at divine? Why should we depose God from His right of governing the world, and value men's laws above our Maker's? Why should we make God's authority of less concern to us than that of a justice of the peace or a petty constable, as though they were God's superiors, and obedience more justly due to them than to Him?
What contempt of God is this! It is to say to God, I would break the Sabbath, swear, revile, and revel, were it not for the curb of national laws, despite all Thy precepts to the contrary.
9. In man's unwillingness to have God's laws observed by any Man would not have God possess a loyal subject in the world.
What else is the reason for the persecution of those who would be the strictest observers of God's injunctions, as though they were the most execrable persons under heaven? Why does the seed of the serpent hate the seed of the woman with as much vehemence as the holy angels abhor the most prodigious villainies?
It is common for profane men to look upon those who desire to walk before God unto all well-pleasing as strange and abominable monsters. 1 Peter 4:4: Wherein they think it strange that you run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you.
"Speaking evil of you"— 〈βλασφημοῦντες 〉, railing, slandering, loading the whole profession with opprobrious epithets—because they will not be as diffusive in sensuality as themselves; because they
"run not" with them—〈συντρέχοντες〉—thus judging, at the bar of profaneness, those actions which are pleasing to God.
It is not for any wrong done to them that they hate such persons, but because they will not injure God nor transgress His laws as themselves do. What a clear discovery this is of man's natural unwillingness to allow God even the least grain of obedience in the
world, when they are angry that any should bear reverence to His laws, and that others will not run into the same course and be in arms against God as well as they!
Hence it is that the holiest persons have been the most persecuted.
Among the Jews, Isaiah was sawn asunder, Jeremiah stoned, Zechariah slain at the altar, Elijah driven into exile. Among Christians, all the apostles but John were put to death. The holiest men have been the greatest sufferers. Among the heathen, Socrates was condemned to drink poison.
The reason is this: they have had more honourable thoughts of God, and would maintain the interest of God in the world.
10. In the pleasure we take in seeing God's laws broken by others Sin is the greatest evil that can befall God; and there is nothing wherein man more fondly caresses and gratifies himself than in seeing a creature bemired in it. Indeed, sin is the very essence of much of the mirth in the world. Job knew this so well that he rose early every morning to make an atonement for his sons, whom he knew could not be without many errata in their jollities.
This is the indictment the Apostle brings among the rest against the Gentiles (Rom. 1:32): Not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. Do not men often make that the object of their laughter which is the object of God's infinite hatred? Are not other men's sins the subject of our sport and mirth, which should rather be
the subject of our pity and sorrow—pity for the sinner, and sorrow for the sin?
What is this but an evidence of a rooted hatred of God in our nature, when we please ourselves with any dishonour done to Him by others?
For it is reckoned among the noble attributes of love (1 Cor. 13:6) that it rejoiceth not in iniquity, neither in its own nor in other men's.
To rejoice in it, then, must be an accursed quality belonging to hatred. Yet how many are there in the world who cannot see God dishonoured without some sort of satisfaction? They are displeased with His glory, and pleased with His dishonour.
Secondly, we are enemies to God's sovereignty in setting up other sovereigns in His stead
If we dethroned God to set up an angel, or some virtuous man, it would be a lighter affront; but to place the basest and filthiest things in His throne is intolerable.
What we love better than God, what we sacrifice all our industry to, what we set our hearts most upon, and what we grieve most for when we miss our end—these we prefer before God.
1. Idols Though such gross and palpable idolatry be not now commonly practised among us, yet it was natural to mankind. All nations were overrun with it (Josh. 24:2). The father of the faithful himself was an
idolater before he was a believer. His posterity, the Jews, who had heard God Himself speak to them from Mount Sinai, no sooner departed from the foot of the mountain than they adored a golden calf in His stead. This sin ran in the blood of their posterity, for God charges them with it throughout the Old Testament, and it was not rooted out until the seventy years' captivity in Babylon.
That the naturalness of idolatry to mankind may further appear, consider what incentives the Jews had against it. They had the greatest manifestations of God, particular marks of His favour, His judgments and statutes—which the Psalmist sets forth emphatically
(Ps. 147:19–20), that He had not dealt so with any nation. They had visible signs of His presence: the pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day. They were under His special and indulgent care. He altered the course of nature and wrought miracles for their deliverance, rained manna from heaven to spread their table, and carried them in His bosom. Yet these wretches were casting down God to make room for a calf—made, as one may say, from gold smeared with their earwax and daubed with excrement.
This idolatry is as absolute a degrading and vilifying of God as hell itself could invent. It is a real calling of Him by the names of filthy, loathsome, senseless creatures, set up as images of Him—as if God were no better than stone, carved brass, or wood, of no greater excellency than an image or puppet. This is a denial of God. Job speaks to this effect when he says that if he had kissed his hand or made obeisance to idols, then I should have denied the God that is above (Job 31:28).
It is called a loathing of God, who is the husband of believers—a loathing of all His authority over them.
To give adoration to an image which belongs to God is to make it equal with Him, if not above Him; for by such veneration they declare that God is, in their apprehension, no better than the stock they worship.
The heathen world is at this day drenched in this idolatry, and much of the Christian world is tainted with the remains of this pagan sin— as in the Papists, who adore as their Saviour a little wafer which mice may have bitten and flies defiled with their excrement.
2. We are enemies to God's sovereignty in setting up self Man imagined at first that by eating the forbidden fruit he should know good and evil, that is, become independent of God and grounded upon himself and his own will.
This self within us is properly the old Adam, the true offspring of the first corrupted man. This is the great antichrist, the great anti-god within us, which sits in the heart—the temple of God—and would be adored as God, would be supreme and the highest end. This is the great usurper in the world, for it invades the right of God. It is the most direct compliance with, and likeness to, the devil, whose actions centre wholly in malicious self-will. In this respect the devil may be called the god of this world, because he acts as though the world existed only to serve his ends.
Self is the centre of many men's religious actions. While God seems to be the object, self is the end (Zech. 7:5): Did you fast unto me?
As the motive of hypocrisy, this makes it more idolatrous and therefore more odious to God. Other sins subject the creature to self; but this subjects the soul—and even God Himself—to corrupt self.
Self-love leads the van (2 Tim. 3:2): Men shall be lovers of their own selves. To this black catalogue the Apostle adds a form of godliness with a denial of its power; and to deny the power of godliness is to deny the sovereignty of God.
The righteousness a man would establish in opposition to God is called his own—a righteousness of his own framing, rising only from himself (Rom. 10:3): Going about to establish their own righteousness.
Sin and self are in effect the same. What is called living in sin in one place (Rom. 6:2) is called living to self in another (2 Cor. 5:15): That they which live should not live unto themselves. What a man serves, and to which he directs all his projects and the whole labour of his life, that is his god and lord—and that is self.
All inferior things act for some superior end; this order nature has established. The lesser creatures serve the greater, the irrational serve man, and man is designed for something higher and nobler than himself. All beings should, in their several stations, tend toward the service of the first Being. To make ourselves the end, and all things to serve us, is to make ourselves the supreme being, to deny any superior centre to which our actions should be directed, and to
usurp God's place—He alone being the supreme Being, who can be His own end. For if there were anything higher or better than God,
His own purity and goodness would move Him to act for that as more noble and worthy.
I appeal to you whether you have not sometimes entertained secret wishes that you were in God's place. Where there is a slavish fear of Him, such wishes must arise in proportion to that fear; and thus men wish God undeified, that they themselves might be advanced to the godhead.
Some conceive this to have been the sin of the devils: affecting independence from God by a proud reflection upon their own created excellency, and at least a delightful wish, if not an endeavour, to make themselves the ultimate end of all their actions.
3. We are enemies to God's sovereignty in setting up the world When we place the world in our heart, God's proper seat and chair, we deprive God of His propriety and do Him the greatest wrong, by giving the possession of His right to another. The Apostle gives covetousness no better title than that of idolatry (Col. 3:5). The Psalmist sets the atheist's cap upon the oppressor's head (Ps. 14:4):
Who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the LORD. What we make the chief object of our desires is to us in the place of God.
The poor Indians made a very natural and rational inference—that gold was the Spaniards' god—because they hunted so greedily after it. This is an intolerable dethroning of God: to make that which is
God's footstool climb up into His throne; to bow down to an atom, a little dust and mud of the world, a drop from the ocean; to set that in the heart which God has made even below ourselves and placed under our feet; and to make that which we trample upon tread down the right God has to our hearts. Alas, who serves God with that care and spirit with which he serves the world?
4. We are enemies to God's sovereignty in setting up sensual pleasures Love is a commanding affection and gives the object a power over us; what we chiefly love, we readily obey. Hence men are called
〈φιλήδονοι〉—lovers of pleasure. A glutton's belly is said to be his god, because his projects and affections are devoted to its satisfaction; he lays in not for the service of God, but a magazine for lust.
If one preferred some honourable thing which might perfect our nature—learning, wisdom, moral virtues—though this would still be an indignity to be censured by the Judge of all the world, yet it were more tolerable. But to consecrate heart and time to sordid voluptuousness, and feed it with the cream of our strength—this is an inexcusable contempt: to pay a quick and lively service to an effeminate delight which is due only to the supreme Lord.
Does not that man dethrone God and hate Him who submits himself to the command of swinish pleasure, and makes it the supreme end of his life and actions, rather than the righteous government of God?
The greatest excellency in the world is infinitely below our Creator; how much more a bestial delight, so exceedingly disgraceful to and beneath the nature of man? If we loved all the creatures in heaven and earth above God, it were more excusable than to degrade Him beneath brutish pleasure. Why does any man court ignoble sensuality, with the displeasure of God and hell and damnation at the end of it, unless he values it above God, and even above his own soul?
The more sordid the thing is that we set up in God's place, the greater is the despite done to Him. In Ezekiel 8:5, when the prophet saw the image of jealousy at the gate, God tells him there were greater abominations than that, described in verse 10—creeping things and abominable beasts, that is, the Egyptian idols. The viler the thing which possesses our heart, the greater affront is offered to God, and the greater the abomination.
5. We are enemies to God's sovereignty in setting up the devil Every sin is an election of the devil to be our lord. If sin had a voice, it would give its suffrage for such a lord as would favour its interest.
As the Spirit dwells in a godly man to guide him, so the devil dwells in a natural man to direct him to evil; so that every sin is an effect of the devil's government. Therefore sins are called his lusts, which
natural men—being the devil's children and under his paternal government—fulfil with resolute obedience (John 8:44): His lusts you will do.
If we divide sins into spiritual and carnal, a division that comprehends all sin, we shall find that in both we own the devil's authority—either by obeying his commands or by conforming to his example. Some sins are called his lusts subjectively, as he commits them; others dispositively, as he directs them. In spiritual sins he is an actor; in carnal sins a tempter. In the one we obey his commands; in the other we model ourselves by his pattern. In the former we acknowledge him as our master; in the latter we own him as our copy. In both we derogate from God's sovereignty over us, whom we are bound to imitate as well as obey.
Every sin, in its own nature, is a communion with Belial—a fighting for the devil against God. This is the end of the act, though it be not the intention of the agent. Every sin is the devil's work, and therefore the choice of it is a preferring of his service before God's. Thus the sin of Saul, though in a small matter and in a positive command, is equalled with the sin of witchcraft—which is a covenanting with the devil to yield obedience to him (1 Sam. 15:23).
What monstrous baseness is this: to advance an impure spirit in the place of infinite purity; to embrace the great ringleader of rebellion above the contriver of our reconciliation; the only enemy God has in the world, who drew all the rest into faction against Him—before Him who is ready to pardon us upon our revolt from His adversary!
To affect the destroyer above our preserver and benefactor; to esteem him as the exactest pattern and greatest lord, as though he had created us, provided for us, and watched over us in mercy all our days!
What prodigious enmity is this: to offend God to pleasure the devil, to injure our Creator to gratify our adversary! Have we nothing to prefer before God but the deadliest enemy both God and our souls have in the world? Must we side with our tormentor against our preserver? Shall he who would burn us forever be valued above Him who would wipe away all tears from our eyes? Oh, let us blush, if any spark of ingenuity be left; and let our hatred of God change its object, and rise against ourselves for our abominable ingratitude.
6. In usurping God's prerogative, and exacting observances that belong to God We destroy God's sovereignty by deifying and rewarding men for things done in opposition to His law; by putting glorious titles upon the vilest acts—naming ambition generosity, murder valour, and the like.
1. In challenging titles and acts of worship due only to God What act of worship is due to God which man has not, at one time or another, challenged as belonging to himself?
For thirty days, Darius required that all petitions be made to him, as though he could supply the wants of all creatures (Dan. 6:7–9).
Alexander would be worshipped as God; after him Antiochus—whom
God calls a vile person. The Pope completes the number in the preface the canonists affix to his decrees: Edictum Domini Deique nostri—"The edict of our Lord and God."
Men equal themselves with God. The first man would know as God.
The builders of Babel would dwell as God. The rabbis report that Eve was told by the devil that if she ate the forbidden fruit, she would make a world as God. The Pope will sit in the temple of God and pardon sins as God; he exalts himself above all that is called God, showing himself that he is God.
2. In usurping God's prerogative by lording over the consciences and reasons of others Whence springs the restless desire in some men to model all consciences according to their own wills—a thing belonging to a greater power than man is capable of?
Ferdinand's saying was notable. When, by the persuasion of others and with much reluctance, he passed an edict against the Protestants, he said:
I expected as much, when I took upon me the prerogative of God, to be lord over men's consciences.
We usurp God's prerogative when we are angry that others are not of our minds and judgments; when they will not be blind servants to our opinions; when we endeavour to make our own fancies—and even our passions, however boisterous or ridiculous—the rule for others. When we are pertinacious in doubtful opinions and assume
infallibility of judgment, as though our sentiments were as firm as divine decrees—what is this but exalting ourselves above all that is called God, erecting an unlimited power over other men's reasons and judgments, as though they were as infallible as God, and branding all who differ from us as blind and erroneous?
3. Usurping God's prerogative in prescribing rules of worship which ought only to be appointed by God This appears in putting out, or leaving in, what men think fit to be the rule of worship; in prescribing by human laws what they judge good and right in things divine. All the reason under heaven could never have informed us what God is in Himself, or what worship He expects from us, without supernatural revelation. Therefore, when
God has once fixed it, for men to make alterations in it, or additions to it, is an intolerable invasion of His right. At the very least, it is an equalling of our own fallible inventions with His infallible oracles, imperiously obtruding upon people human devices with as much authority as if they had been signed and sealed in heaven, and unquestionably warranted by God Himself.
The prescribing of the manner of worship is a part of God's sovereignty. Therefore, in the two last chapters of Exodus, where the erection of the tabernacle is described, the words As the LORD commanded are repeated seventeen times. And to prescribe anything which God has not commanded (though He has not expressly forbidden it) is such an invasion of His prerogative that He has
punished it with remarkable judgment. When Nadab and Abihu offered strange fire—that is, fire other than that which was upon the altar—wherewith to kindle their incense, though God had given no command to the contrary, yet because He had not commanded the offering with strange fire, He cut them off by a terrible judgment.
It is also to be observed that none are more irreconcilable enemies to the true power and spirit of godliness than the usurpers of this prerogative of God; the Lord, in just judgment, leaving them to the dotages of their own minds and to the enmity of their hearts against Him, they being successors of the Pharisees in their judicial blindness as well as in their usurpations of God's authority.
4. In subjecting the truths of God to the trial of reason This is done by trying God's oracles at the tribunal of our shallow reason. It is a part of God's sovereignty to be the interpreter as well as the maker of His own laws, as it is a right inherent in legislative power among men. Therefore, it is an invasion of His right to fasten a sense upon His declared will which does not naturally flow from the words. To impose an interpretation according to our pleasure upon divine, as well as human, laws—contrary to their true intent—is a virtual usurpation of this power; for if laws may be interpreted according to our humours, the power of the law would lie more in the interpreter than in the legislator.
This offence is yet more grievous when men try the Word not by sober reason but by their fancies and humours, and put allegories—