PART III Enmity against the Attributes of God in general
the brats of a distempered or wanton imagination—upon the text as the genuine meaning of the Word of God.
5. In judging future events as though we had been of God's privy council Men presume to determine what God will do, and how He ought to act, as if they had been present when He first undertook any great design in the world, and had been admitted into His secret counsels.
6. In censuring the state of others This is an intrusion into God's judicial authority. Who made me a judge? was our Saviour's plea. Who art thou that judgest another man's state, as though thou wert lord of thy brother's heart, and God had resigned His jurisdiction over it to thee—as though he were to stand or fall by thy censure, and not by the judgment of God alone?
PART III Enmity against the Attributes of God in general Enmity to the Holiness of God This hatred of God's holiness is a virtual depriving Him of His very being. For if He did not infinitely hate evil, He would not be infinitely good, and consequently would not be God. God can never endure sin
—no, not so much as to look upon it; and to cherish that which is so
contrary to His purity is a denial of His holiness. Habakkuk 1:13:
Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil; thou canst not look on iniquity.
1. In sinning under a pretence of religion Many resolve upon certain ways of wickedness, and then rake the Scripture to find, at least, excuses and evasions for it, if not a justification of their crimes. This was the devil's method with Christ, when he brought Scripture to persuade Him to self-murder.
Saul resolved not to obey God, but to preserve the spoil of the Amalekites, and then thought to qualify all with the offering of a few sacrifices, as though God's holiness would not hate sin when it wore a religious pretext.
Many who have wrung estates from the tears of widows and the heart-blood of orphans think to wipe off all their oppression by some charitable legacies at their death.
It is abominable to make charity—the transcript of God's goodness— a covert for sin, and religion, which is designed to bring us nearer to God, a patron to our tyranny.
Thus men will speak wickedly and talk deceitfully for God; that is, they will sin for God's glory, and make the honour of His service a stalking-horse to affront His holiness.
2. In charging sin upon God Every man by nature is more willing to find the inducement to sin in another than in himself. This is an act of hatred—to besmirch the reputation of others by imputing our crimes to them, and accusing them as the authors or occasions of our transgressions.
It is also an act of fear, which is the companion of hatred. If men can make God a sinner against His own law, they blemish His holiness, and think themselves secure from the punishment they dread. For we fear not a man who is faulty as well as ourselves.
When men have done all they can to blot out a sense of a Deity and find they cannot do it, they attempt to erase the reverence due to Him. And if they can lay their sins at God's door when He charges them upon themselves, they suppose they may escape the rigour of His justice, imagining that He cannot be righteous to punish them for crimes of which He Himself is guilty.
This is a foolish conceit; for if we can imagine an unholy God, we have no reason to think Him a righteous God.
That this runs deep in our nature may be seen in the first discourses God had with man after the fall. When God examined Adam concerning his transgression, he excused himself by laying the blame upon God (Gen. 3:12): The woman whom thou gavest me to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. As if he had said, "Hadst
Thou not given me the woman, I had not been tempted; and had I not been tempted, I had not sinned." His words seem to imply that God gave him the woman on purpose to draw him into sin.
Next is Cain. Some conceive that Cain also lays the fault upon God (Gen. 4:9): Am I my brother's keeper?—as if he had said, "Art not Thou the keeper and governor of the world? Why didst Thou not hinder me from killing my brother?"
Even David, a holy man, follows in these steps and charges a sin of his own contrivance upon the providence of God. When the news of Uriah's death was brought to him, he said, The sword devoureth one as well as another—fastening upon divine providence that which was his own wicked design (2 Sam. 11:25).
3. In hating the image of God's holiness in others The more holy any man is, and the more active in the strictest duties of religion, the more he becomes the object of scoffs. He is not only barked at by tippling drunkards on the ale-bench, but even derided by formal and grave judges upon the seat of justice.
David, though a king—whose example might have prevailed to bring others to at least a pretended love of holiness—was spoken against by those who sat in the gate, and became the song of the drunkards; and this at the very time when he wept and chastised his soul with fasting
(Ps. 69:10–12).
Hence nothing is so burdensome to a carnal heart as the presence of a sober, religious person, because of the image of God's holiness shining in him. This strikes powerfully upon the conscience and awakens checking and gripping reflections.
Holiness being the glory of God, His peculiar title, and derived from Him into the soul, he who mocks this holiness in a person derides
God Himself. He that hates the picture of a prince hates the prince also—and would much more do so if the prince were in his power. He that hates the stream hates the fountain; he that hates the beams hates the sun.
The holiness of the creature is but a beam from that infinite Sun, a stream from that eternal Fountain. If a mixed and imperfect holiness be more the object of thy scoffs than a great deal of sin, surely thou wouldest scoff far more fiercely at God Himself, should He appear in the unblemished and unspotted holiness of His nature, which infinitely shines in Him. For thy hatred would be greater, since thy contrariety is greater against perfect holiness than against holiness mixed with infirmity.
Where there is hatred of the purity and perfection of any creature, there is a deeper reflection upon God, who is the author of that purity.
4thly. In having debasing notions of the holy nature of God We invert the order of creation contrary to God's design. God made man according to His own image, and we make God according to ours. We fashion God like ourselves, and fasten our own humours upon Him, as the Lacedaemonians were wont to dress their gods after the fashion of their own cities. Psalm 50:21.
Though men are enemies to the holy majesty of God, yet they can please themselves well enough with Him as represented by that idea which their corrupt minds have framed of Him. We cannot comprehend God; if we could, we should be infinite, not finite. And because we cannot comprehend Him, we set up in our fancies strange images of Him, and so, as it were, ungod God in our hearts and affections.
1. This is a higher affront to God than we imagine Vulgi opinionis diis applicare profanum est. — Epicurus
De Deo male sentire quam Deum esse negare pejus duco.
It is worse to degrade the nature of God in our conceits, and to make Him a vicious God, than if in our thoughts we did quite discard any such being. It is not so gross a crime to deny His being, as to fancy
Him otherwise than He is. Such imaginations strip Him of His perfections, and make Him a god of clouts.
Plutarch says he should account himself less wronged by a man who should deny there ever was such a man as Plutarch, than by one who should affirm that there was such a man indeed, but that he was a choleric clown, a decrepit fellow, a debauched man, and an ignorant fool.
This was the general judgment even of the heathen: that superstition was far worse than atheism; for it was a less evil to have no opinion of God at all, than to entertain such an opinion of Him as is vile,
wicked, and derogatory to the pure and holy nature of the Divine Majesty.
2. Carnal imaginations of God, as well as corporeal images, are idolatry It may be questioned which idolatry is the greater: to worship an image of wood or stone, or to entertain monstrous imaginations of God. It provokes a man when we liken him to some inferior creature and call him a dog or a toad; yet it is not so great an affront to call a man a creature of a low rank, as it is to square and model the perfections of the great God according to our limited capacities.
We do worse than the heathen, of whom the Apostle speaks, who likened the glory of God to creatures of the lowest order in creation.
We liken God not merely to corruptible man, but to corrupt man— and worse still, to the very corruptions of men—and so worship a God dressed up according to our own foolish fancies. Romans 1:23:
And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.
If all the various conceptions and ideas which men have of God were uncovered and displayed, what a monstrous thing would God appear to be, according to the modes in which the imaginative faculty has framed Him!
5thly. In our unworthy and perfunctory addresses to God
When men come into the presence of God with lusts reeking in their hearts, and leap immediately from sin to duty, they deny His holiness. God is so holy that, were our services the most refined and as pure as those of the angels, yet we could not serve Him suitably to His holy nature. Therefore we deny this holiness when we come before Him without due preparation, as if God did not deserve the purest thoughts in our approaches to Him, or as if a blemished and polluted sacrifice were suitable to His nature.
When we do not excite those elevated frames of spirit which are due to His greatness and fulness, and think to put Him off with cheap and spotted services, we slight the holy majesty of God, and are guilty of a presumption greater than would be tolerated in our access to an earthly prince.
We worship Him not according to the excellent holiness of His nature, when foolish imaginations creep upon us in the very act of duty, rendering our services erroneous and misguided. When we bring worldly, carnal, and debauched thoughts into His presence— thoughts worse than the dogs or filthy slaves whose attendance would shame us in the presence of a great man. When, while speaking with our Creator, we are in our hearts conversing with our sordid sensualities, it is as if we were raking in a dunghill while speaking to a king.
Thus we defame His holiness while we pretend to honour it, and profane His name while we pray, Hallowed be thy name. It would argue more modesty, though less sincerity, to say to our lusts as
Abraham said to his servants, Tarry ye here, while I go yonder and worship.
6thly. In defacing the image of God in our own souls God, in the first formation of man, conformed him to His own image; which appears from this, that in regeneration this image is renewed.
Ephesians 4:24: And that ye put on the new man, which after God (κατὰ Θεόν) is created in righteousness and true holiness.
He did not take angels for His pattern in the first polishing of the soul, but Himself. In defacing this image, therefore, we cast dirt upon the holiness of God, which was the pattern according to which we were framed. We choose rather to be conformed to Satan, God's great enemy, and to have God's image wiped out of us and the devil's image impressed upon us.
Hence natural men, guilty of gross sins, are called devils. John 6:70, spoken of Judas; and Christ applies the same term to Peter, Matthew
16:23. If such a title may be given both to one of the worst of men and to one of the best of men, it will be no wrong to extend it, in this sense, to all men by nature.
Men wallow in sin, which is directly contrary to that illustrious image which God imprinted upon them, and perform those actions which are odious to God and His righteousness, and suitable only to their corruption.
They glory in that which is their shame, and account that their ornament which is the greatest blot upon their nature—such a blot
as, if it were upon God, would cause Him to cease to be God.
3dly. Enmity to the Wisdom of God Presumptuous sins are called a reproach of God. Numbers 15:30:
The soul that doeth ought presumptuously, the same reproacheth the Lord. All reproaches are either for natural, moral, or intellectual defects. All reproaches of God must therefore be either for wickedness or for weakness. If for wickedness, His holiness is denied; if for weakness, His wisdom is blemished.
1. In slighting the laws of God Since God hath no defect in His understanding, His will must be the best and wisest, and therefore His laws highly rational, as being the orders of the wisest Agent. As God's understanding apprehends all things in their true reason, so His will enjoins nothing but what is highly good, and what makes for the happiness of His creature, the true means of whose happiness He understands better than men or angels can do.
All laws, though they are enforced by sovereignty, yet are, or ought to be, in their composition, founded upon reason, and are indeed applications of the law of nature to this or that particular emergency.
The laws of God then, who is summa ratio, are purely founded upon the truest reason, though every one of them may not be so clear to us. Therefore, they who make alterations in His precepts, either dogmatically or practically, control His wisdom and charge Him with folly.
When men will observe one part of His law and not another, picking and choosing where they please, hence it is that sinners are called fools in Scripture. It is certainly inexcusable folly to contradict undeniable and infallible wisdom. If infinite prudence hath framed the law, why is not every part of it observed? If it were not made with the best wisdom, why is anything of it observed?
He that receives the promises of God and the testimony of Christ sets to his seal that God is true. It must thence undeniably follow, that he who refuseth obedience to His law sets to his seal that God is foolish.
Men live as though the commands of God were made in sport, and not by counsel. If God took counsel in the making of man, there is as much need of counsel in the right ordering of him.
If the defacing of His image by any sin is a defaming of His wisdom in creation, the breaking of His law is a disgracing of His wisdom in administration. Were they not rational, God would not enjoin them; and if they are rational, we are enemies to infinite wisdom by not complying with them.
2dly. In defacing the wise workmanship of God Every sin is a defacing of our own souls, which, as they are the prime creatures in the sensible world, had the clearest characters of God's wisdom in the fabric of them. But this image of God is ruined and broken by sin.
Though the spoiling of it be a scorn of His holiness, it is also an affront to His wisdom; because though His power was the cause of
the production of so fair a being, yet His wisdom was the guide of His power, as well as His holiness the exemplar by which He wrought it.
If a man had a curious clock or watch, which had cost him many years' pains and the strength of his skill to frame, for another, after he had seen and considered it, to cut, slash, and break it all, would argue a contempt of the workman's skill. God hath shown infinite art in the creation of man, but sin unbeautifies man and bereaves him of his excellency.
3dly. In censuring His ways What is our impatience at any passages of His providence, but a censuring of His dealing with us as unjust or unwise, as if we would presume to instruct Him better in the management of human affairs?
It is to take upon us to be God's judges, to cite Him to our tribunal to give an account of His administration. It is a reviling of Him because
He manages things according to His own will, and not according to ours.
It is a striving with God, and a summoning Him to the bar of our reason. Isaiah 45:9–10: Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker.
Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou? To quarrel with Him and examine Him about His works, why He made them thus and not thus, is a reproaching of God, a contending with Him, as if to instruct Him. Job 40:2: Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct him? He that reproveth God, let him answer it.
A reproof implies superiority in authority, knowledge, or goodness. It is a playing of Absalom's game: Oh that I were king in Israel, I would do this and that man justice! So that it is a virtual wishing, Oh that I were king of the world, the governor of all creatures; things should be disposed more wisely and more justly.
4thly. In prescribing rules and methods to God We presume to be God's tutors, and would sway Him according to the dictates of our wisdom, when we would have a mercy in this method which God designs to convey through another channel; when we would have Him take His measures from our humours. This was the ground of Jonah's contest with God. Jonah 3:10; 4:1: It displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.
When we make vows to flatter God into a compliance with our designs; when we pray imperiously for anything without due submission to His will, as if we were His counsellors and He were bound to follow our humours. Thus would the most blessed of virgins and mothers prescribe to Christ a rule for His miraculous action. Luke 2:48; John 2:3–4.
The Jews who nailed Him to the cross offered to believe on Him, if He would submit to their terms and gratify their curiosity by descending from the cross to which they had fixed Him. Are not most men Jews in this, prescribing terms to God, upon the grant whereof
He shall have their service of believing in Him? As if a child should appoint rules for his father, or a crazed patient for his physician.
Would it not be an injury to their prudence and skill?
This presumptuous humour is a hellish offence. Abraham asserts the way of God's appointment by Moses and the prophets to be the best means for bringing men to repentance and salvation; but the rich man prefers his own judgment, and would have one sent from the dead. Luke 16:27–30: Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; and he said, Nay, father Abraham.
Thus we often deal with God, as though we were His counsellors, and not His subjects.
[4] 4thly. Enmity to the Sufficiency of God The preferring of any sin before God is a denial of the fullness of content to be had in the enjoyment of God; as though God were inferior to a base lust, and that a vile pleasure had a better relish than the communications of God to the soul. For when God declares what pleasure and peace there is in His ways, what fullness of joy is in His presence, what is the refusal of it but the equivalent language of the sinner: No, I will believe no such thing; there is more happiness to be had in sin than in God. Thus he values a vapour, an empty bubble, more than infinite fullness. The scorn of God's sufficiency is the greater, by how much the pleasure preferred before Him is the more ignoble, brutish, and contemptible.
[1] 1st. In secret thoughts of meriting by any religious act As though God could be indebted to us, and obliged by us; as though our devotions could bring a blessedness to God more than He essentially hath. Indeed, our goodness extendeth not to Him (Psalm
16:2). Our services of God are rather services to ourselves, and bring happiness to us, not to God.
This secret opinion of merit, though disputed against the Papists, is yet natural to man. There is a secret self-pleasing when we have performed any duty, and upon that account expect some fair compensation from God, as though we had been profitable to Him.
God intimates this in Psalm 50:11–12: The wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fullness thereof. He implies that they wronged His infinite fullness by thinking that He stood in need of their sacrifices and services, and that He was beholden to them for their adoration of Him.
All merit implies a moral or natural insufficiency in the person of whom we merit, and our doing something for him which he could not, or at least not so well, do for himself. This is also implied in our murmuring at God's dealings with us in a course of cross providences, wherein men think they have deserved better at the hands of God by their service, than to be so cast aside and degraded by Him. In prosperity we are apt to entertain secret thoughts that our enjoyments are debts God owes us, rather than gifts freely bestowed upon us. Hence it is that men are more unwilling to part with their righteousness than with their sins, and are prone to challenge salvation as a due, rather than beg it as an act of grace.
[2] 2dly. In trying all ways of helping ourselves before we come to God As though we hoped to find in creatures that which is only to be found in an all-sufficient God.
When we rather seek an alms from the world than from God, as though there were some hidden excellency in the world which overtops the excellency of God; when we would rather drink of cisterns than of the fountain, as though the waters in the cistern were fresher and sweeter than those in the spring.
Hence it is that upon any emergency we set our own reason on work before we crave the assistance of God's power, and scarcely seek Him until we have modelled the whole contrivance in our own brains and resolved upon the methods of performance; as though there were not a fullness of reason in God to guide us in our resolves, as well as power to breathe success upon them (Proverbs 20:25).
Sometimes men seek out unlawful ways for their deliverance, as though there were more sufficiency of help in sin than in God.
Did we indeed believe and love the sufficiency of God, who is able to supply all our wants, we should not upon every strait be turned from Him to beg help at the door of creatures.
[3] 3dly. In our apostasies from God When, after fair pretences and devout applications, we grow cold and thrust Him from us, it implies that God hath not that fullness in Him which we expected. Backsliding testifies that there is not that
sweetness and satisfactoriness in God which we expected upon our first approach to Him.
All apostasy is a denial of God; for it denies either that He is a fountain of all good, or else that He is not true to His promises, but deceives us in our just expectations of good from Him. It either speaks Him evil or deceitful. It is a greater affront to deny Him after an experience of His sweetness and assistance, than to deny Him before any dealing with Him or trial of Him. Though all apostasy begins in neglect, it quickly ripens into hatred.
[4] 4thly. In joining something with God to make up our happiness Though men are willing to have the enjoyment of God, yet they are not content with Him alone, but would have something else to eke
Him out; as though God, who accounts the enjoyment of Himself the greatest blessedness, had not also in Himself a sufficient blessedness for His creatures, without the addition of anything else.
The young man in the Gospel went away sorrowful, because he could not enjoy God and the world both together (Matthew 19:21–22).
If we would light up candles in a clear day, when the sun shines in its full brightness, what do we imply but that the sun hath not light enough in itself to make it day? And when we labour for other things with as much strength and eagerness as we labour for the enjoyment of God, what is this but a denial that there is enough in Him without the concurrence of some other good?
[5] 5thly. Against the Omniscience of God Men hate God's omniscience, and would willingly have Him stripped of this eminency. For men naturally love not those that dive into their purposes and canvass their thoughts; neither can they love this attribute of God, whereby He enters into the secret closets of their hearts and takes an exact measure of every wicked and subtle contrivance.
The first speech that Adam spake in Paradise after his fall infringed God's omniscience (Gen. 3:10): I heard thy voice in the garden, and I hid myself—as if the trees could shelter him from that eye which sees the minutest part of the whole earth.
The next speech recorded of the second man, Cain, is to the same purpose. When God put the question to him, Where is thy brother?
(Gen. 4:9), he answered, I know not, thinking thereby to delude God's omniscience. He that practically denies God's omniscience denies His Godhead; for a man may as well deny that there is a sun, as deny that it shines and disperses its light and influence into every corner. See more of this in the discourse of God's omnipresence.
This appears, [1] 1. When we commit sin upon the ground of secrecy If God sees all hearts, surely then all places are open to His eye.
There is no private bench for a drunkard, nor secret stew for an adulterer, but is obvious to Him. Common modesty before men is
not practised before God. Men are ashamed to have their actions seen by man's eye, but not by God's.
Maxima debetur pueris reverentia. Filthy actions cannot endure the presence of a child's eye, much less of man's. Shall the presence of a child have more power over us than the presence of God, and men's observing more than God's censuring eye? Is not this a denial of Him, when the eye of God is of less force to restrain thee than the eye of man, as though men only could see and God were blind? All the sin thou committest before the eye of the holiest man in the world cannot make him hate thee so much as God hates thee; because his holiness is infinitely short of God's holiness, and consequently his hatred infinitely short of God's.
It is an aggravation of a man's sin to be committed in the presence of God. Gen. 10:9 speaks of a mighty hunter before the Lord. As it was said of Haman's offence, when he lay upon Esther's bed, that he would force the queen before the king's face. This seems to have been David's conceit in his sin, both by Nathan's charge (2 Sam.
12:9), Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord, to do evil in his sight?, and by his own confession (Ps. 51:4), This evil have I done in thy sight. Every penitent takes notice of the wrong he doth to God's all-seeing eye.
It is a high provocation for a servant to do ill when his master's eye is upon him, or a thief to cut a purse before the judge's face. God observes all wickedness—wickedness under lock and key. If He registers all thy members in His book, He will also register the sins of
those members: what use thou puttest them to, whether to His service or the devil's drudgery; whether thy eye roves about in wanton glances, thy tongue be let loose in profane language, thy ear open to ungodly discourse, or thy feet more swift to carry thee to an alehouse than to a sermon.
It was once the check a young man gave to a harlot, who had enticed him and carried him from one room to another for secrecy: Oh, saith he, can none see us here? Can we be hid from God's eye?
Yet sinners in their practice make their boast, as they in Job 22:14, Thick clouds are a covering to him, that he seeth not; and he walketh in the circuit of heaven—as though God's eye could not pierce the thick clouds; as though His cares were confined only to celestial things, and earth were too low an orb for His eyes to roll about. If we think a word spoken in the presence of a grave religious man may disgrace us, we are troubled in our minds; but we regard not an injury done to God. We are more cast down if a foolish action of ours comes to the knowledge of men, than to the knowledge of God.
[2] 2dly. When men give liberty to inward sins God doth often set forth Himself by that expression, that He tries the heart and searches the reins. The heart hath many valves and ventricles, but God searches all the valves, which cannot be espied and discerned but by a most curious eye. He sees all the contrivances of it.
The reins are most inward, surrounded with fat. The most secret thoughts cannot be hid from God's piercing eye; for all is open before Him, like dissected sacrifices when the bowels are ripped up and all the inwards discovered.
God is more within the soul of a creature than any one hidden thought can be, and knows it before the heart that mints it hath a full discovery of it. What do the actings of sin in our fancies import, but as though God's eye could not pierce into the remoteness and darkness of our minds?
Manasseh is blamed for setting up strange altars in the house of God; much more may we be blamed for setting up strange imaginations in the heart, which should belong to God. This is to deny God's judicial prerogative; this attribute speaks Him fit to be a Judge, and yet men possess their hearts with this conceit, that He is defective in this attribute, and so make Him uncapable of judging the world.
Hypocrisy is a plain denial of this omniscience: when men have a religious lip and a black soul; an outside swept and garnished, and a legion of devils garrisoned within. This derogates from God, as though His eye were as easily deceived as men's, and as though an outward appearance limited God's observation. Are we not more slight in the performance of private devotions before God, than we are in our attendances in public before the sight of men?
[3] 3dly. When men give way to diversions in a duty This is a denial of God's omniscience. Love is the cause of fixedness.
The angels have a pure affection to God, and therefore they have an uninterrupted attention in His presence.
If thou thinkest God doth not mind thee, why dost thou pray at all? If thou thinkest He doth mind thee, why dost thou not pray more fervently and fixedly, and hear more attentively? This attention consists in the frame of the soul; for bodily exercise is required for our sakes, not for God's. Gesture and speech are to quicken our affections.
Christ hath given us a short pattern of prayer, and can our hearts be steady upon God in the repetition of it? Duties are visits we pay to God; would it not be an affront, if when we were to visit a prince, we should send a noisome rotten carcass in our stead? Do we not deal so with God, when we come without our hearts, as though God were ignorant and could be put off with anything—the worst in our flocks as well as the best?
It wrongs the majesty of God's presence that when He speaks to us, we will not give Him so much respect as to regard Him; and when we speak to Him, we do not regard ourselves. What a vain thing is it to be speaking to a scullion when the king is present! Every careless diversion to a vain object is a denial of God's presence in the place.
It is a wrong to God's excellency, that when we come to Him for what we count sweet and desirable, we presently turn our backs, as though
our address were an act of imprudence and folly—as much as to say, There is no sweetness in Him, no beauty that we should desire Him.
[6] 6thly. Enmity to the Mercy of God God is not wronged more in any attribute by devils and men than in His mercy. Man would deprive God of the honor of His own bowels, and of the objects of mercy, when God's mercy to others comes in competition with his self-love and credit. Jonah's pride would null the goodness of God. With what unreasonable passion doth he fly in the face of God for reprieving the humbled Ninevites! He would rather have had his own credit preserved in their destruction, according to his prediction, than God's tenderness magnified in their preservation.
Some fancy a God made up altogether of mercy—a childish mercy— as if His mercy had nothing else to do but to wrong all His other perfections; to make Him belie His truth, extinguish His justice, discard His wisdom, and enslave His power. This appears,
[1] 1. In the severe and jealous thoughts men have of God Men are apt to charge God with tyranny, whereby they strip Him of the riches of His glorious mercy. The devil's design at first was to belie God to man, that he might have hard and contracted thoughts of God, and think Him strait-handed toward His creature. Therefore he is called a liar from the beginning, in urging man to misbelieve his
Creator as an unjust, hard, and cruel master, who envied him comforts necessary for him. These frightful thoughts of the Deity
have haunted man ever since. If man in creation was so ready to entertain jealousies of God, man in corruption, with the load of guilt upon him, is much more prone.
The heathen, by the devil's instigation—as the Indians—have their notions that mercy flows not naturally from God, but must be wrested by a multitude of services; that He will do nothing without the bribe of a sacrifice, which they offer lest He should hurt them. As if God only created men to make sport with their misery; as if He had no other design in creation than to load His creatures with chains, and govern that world by tyranny which He made by an efflux of powerful goodness.
The worship of many men is founded upon this conceit, whereby they are frightened into some actions of adoration, not sweetly drawn. This representation of God debases the soul, and fills it with that tyrannical passion of fear which is always accompanied with hatred; for we hate what we fear. Thus the devil accuseth God to troubled consciences, persuading them that His bowels are strait, that He hath no mercy for them, that so he may drive them to despair. This he attained in Cain.
Cain cries in despair, My punishment is greater than I can bear— that is, my sin is greater than can be pardoned (Gen. 4:13).
When any soul is like to be snatched out of Satan's hands, he makes it interpret those acts wherein God means favor to be acts of enmity.
So that the main work God hath to do after conviction is to persuade the soul to have good thoughts of Him. Hence doth arise that
unwillingness in the soul to come to God. How can we approach Him of whom we have such narrow thoughts, and whom we judge according to our own revengeful humors? How can we do otherwise but hate Him, when we represent Him as one easily angry, hardly appeased, of a cruel nature—a Minos, a Rhadamanthus, or a Phalaris
—rather than an infinite mirror of sweetness and love? If we do not think Him so, why do we stand off from Him?
Hence arise our wrong constructions of providence, and sinister interpretations of God's acts, when we attribute to God such ends as have no other foundation but our own foolish fancy.
Thus Manoah interprets the angel's coming—which was an act of God's kindness to him—to be an ill-meant providence (Judg. 13:22).
Now as it is the quality of love to think no evil, so it is the property of hatred to think all evil. And as when a man hates sin, he cannot endure any varnish of excuse to be put upon it, and cannot speak or think too badly of it; so when a man hates God, he cannot endure to have a good gloss put upon His actions.
[2] 2dly. Slighting His mercy, and robbing Him of the end of it The wilful breaking of a prince's laws, upon the observance whereof great rewards are promised, is not only a despising of his sovereignty, but a slighting of his goodness in the rewards proffered to the observers. Rebels that stand it out against proclamations of
pardon do what in them lies to deprive the prince of any objects on whom to show his clemency.
So obstinate sinners against mercy would, as far as they are able, deprive God of any subjects on whom to magnify His mercy— especially when they do not only stand it out against such gracious proffers of God, but draw in others to take up arms against Him.
Every sin, in this respect, is a stealing of the glory of this attribute from God, in denying Him that tribute of obedience which is due to Him for it.
Often this enmity riseth higher. Whereas men should fear Him because He is ready to forgive (Ps. 130:4), they rather slight Him, and presume to sin because He hath mercy to pardon. And so they make that which should cherish their obedience to be a spur to their rebellion, and encourage future offences by that goodness which should excite a fear and holy awe of Him in their souls.
Because God is gracious, men will be more vicious. Hence they are said to despise His goodness (Rom. 2:4). That patience which should teach them repentance inflames their hatred; and in this humor they turn grace itself into wantonness.
[7] 7thly. Enmity to the Justice of God When men wish there were no God, they wish this at least: that God were unclothed of those perfections which are averse and dreadful to their guilty consciences. Scarce a man but hath flattering fancies that God is not so terrible as He is represented.
This appears, [1] 1. In not fearing it, but running under the lash of it Sin is an act of rebellion, and rebels either fear not justice, or else hope to overcome the power of their superior. Would men dare to spit in the face of Heaven, did they really believe there were a God who was just and righteous, and would not let any sin go unpunished?
The prophet speaks of some who had wearied God with their sins, and made Him serve with their iniquities (Isa. 43:24), as if God were bound to endure their evil carriage against Him with patience, and never to unsheath the sword of His justice.
How often are men upon this account said to have rocky hearts and iron sinews, that will neither be broken nor bent? Are not the Belshazzars of the world merry, though the handwriting be upon the wall against them?
Thus men commit sin with greediness, and are past feeling (Eph.
4:19), daring the justice of God, without any sense of vengeance due to sin, and say, Tomorrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant. Nay, I dare aver that if a man who had been scorched in hell should again enjoy his wonted pleasures, and have all the while a fresh remembrance of his late torments, yet were not his will changed by a powerful grace, he would stand it out as stiffly against God as ever, notwithstanding those terrible marks of wrath, and be without a holy fear of that justice which he had felt.
[2] 2dly. Sinning under the strokes of justice Men will not turn to God that smites them, though they have hypocritical howlings upon their beds under God's stroke (Hos.
7:13–14; Isa. 9:13). They will roar under the stroke, but not submit to the Striker. It is the witch of Endor, or the god of Ekron, that shall have their addresses, and not the God of heaven.
[3] 3dly. In hoping easily to evade it There are sometimes secret thoughts that a man is able to maintain himself against all the force God can use, which the apostle implies (1
Cor. 10:22): Are we stronger than He? Do we think to try it out at arm's length with God?
Sin implies a mastering of God's all-powerful justice. Sometimes men argue for impunity from their present security; and because
God keeps silence, they think He will not publish a condemning sentence (Ps. 50:21). Because God forbears, they think He hath forgotten to punish (Ps. 10:11).
Sometimes they fancy God like themselves, mutable with every wind, as soon appeased as angry; either unable to resist the force of their prayers, or easily enticed by good words and praises, as though He were to be flattered out of His just anger and His holy and righteous nature (Ps. 78:36). As if He needed our trifles and rattles, as children do, to appease them; or might be wrought upon, like the poor
Indians, to give the gold of heaven for a few beads.
They fancy Him a God of wax, whom they can bend at their pleasure; either so weak that He cannot, or of so soft a disposition that He will not be revenged of sin, and that a few sighs will blow away a storm of wrath. Hence men invent ways of pleasing God after they have offended Him, and think to expiate the sin of their soul by offering their substance, or presenting some melancholy devotions, or inflicting some self-chastisements—as if God were to be bribed by the
blood of a lamb or goat, or by superstitious and formal services, to change His provoked justice into an easy clemency.
[8] 8thly. Enmity to the Truth of God Most men live upon trust for their knowledge, and know far more by relation and upon the credit of others than by certain demonstration, as that there are such places as China, Peru, or Mexico. And why are men so backward in believing God speaking in His Word? It is clear hereby that men have not so great an enmity against one another as they have against God.
This appears, [1] 1. In not believing His threatenings Men believe neither the certainty of the matter, nor the sudden execution of them. Our faith is more operative upon reports from men than upon revelations from God. Men will believe stories of danger so as to avoid the places wherein they may be liable to it; yet though God tells them what the issue of sin will be, how certainly it will destroy them, they walk on in their own way.
Men look upon hell as a painted fire, upon threatenings as scarecrows without a sting, and are not so much affected with them as at the reading of a tragedy. Would men be so stupid as not to stir out of the fire, if they really believed God were true? They are apt to fear those who threaten inferior punishments, and not to fear God who threatens everlasting woe. They think to find mercy in the way of sin, though God assures them to the contrary.
How soon did the Israelites lose the sense of the thunder which terrified them when the law was given? Like sponges that thunder will pass through. Such are secure persons, through whom the thunder of God's threatenings will pass without doing any hurt. A contrite heart trembles at the Word, because it acknowledges it to be true; whereas a proud heart is like an unmoved rock, not daunted at God's threatenings, as imagining them false.
If a man at first believe them, yet if God delay the execution, he thinks they were spoken in jest, and takes delays for denials (Luke
12:45): My master delays his coming. This temper is called a belying of God (Jer. 5:12): It is not He; this evil shall not come upon us.
[2] 2dly. In not believing His promises Man is more prone to believe God's promises than His threatenings, because men are naturally credulous of that which makes for their interest. Therefore God made the Jews say Amen to the curses (Deut.
27:26), not to the blessings (Deut. 28), because they were ready to slight threatenings and snatch at promises.
Yet even His words of grace are not truly credited. Hence men are not allured by His gracious proffers, which would work upon them if they really believed that God intended as He spake. All the unbelief in the world gives God the lie—the greatest indignity among the sons of men (1 John 5:10): He that believes not God hath made Him a liar.
We believe the promises of a man, who is a liar, as the Psalmist speaks, and hath deceived us; and rely upon a vain creature that fails, rather than upon the true and living God. Like foolish Indians, we part with the gold of God's promises for glass and ribbons—brittle and gaudy things. Present things affect us more than future. It was the present world that Demas loved more than a future crown (2
Tim. 4:10).
Sensible trifles are esteemed more valuable than invisible and eternal excellencies. Men look upon heaven as a poet's Elysium, a dream and fancy, and the promise of Christ's coming as the greatest falsehood (2
Pet. 3:4): Where is the promise of His coming? It is an undervaluing of God's veracity to be led by sense—a brutish principle—rather than by God, who is truth itself. Our following the dictates of natural reason against revelation is not so derogatory as making sense our guide.
[9] 9thly. Enmity to His Providence By denying His truth, we deny His providence. For as the crediting of one another's truth keeps up commerce in the world, so the veracity of God on His part, and the sincerity of man, keep up an intercourse between God and the world. Some have thought God a sleepy God, as though He never cared how the world moved, so He might rest
(Zeph. 1:12). Some thought it below God's majesty to mind sublunary things, as though it were more unworthy for God to govern them than it was to create them.
This appears,
[1] 1. In ascribing His works to second causes When we look upon second causes as the authors of the benefits we enjoy, and attribute to them what is due to God; when we ascribe events to blind chance, or to the dexterity of our own wit, and thither return our thank-offerings (Hab. 1:16), They sacrifice unto their net, and burn incense unto their drag—deifying the creature, the instrument, without any, or at best only a formal, regard to the chief
Actor.
In chastisements we look not upon sin as the meritorious cause, nor upon God as the efficient cause. Thus Balaam spurred on his ass, and never considered the angel that stood in the way. Many regard the instruments, and never consider God, who doth all the evil in the city; and thus rob God both of the honor of His mercies, and of the obedience required by Him under His chastisements.
[2] 2dly. In the offense we take at, and the resistance we make to, His providences when they cross our will
Sometimes men will charge the providence of God in times of affliction, as though He were unjust toward them, and inflicted punishments when they deserved rewards. Therefore the Spirit of God gives it as the commendation of Job, that in all this—that is, in those many afflictions—he did not charge God foolishly (Job 1:22), a praise scarce to be given to any man in the world.
We are apt to murmur, as if God were bound to take care of us alone, and act wholly for our good, neglecting the whole world besides; or
as though it were fitter for Him to govern according to our foolish wills than according to His own wise and righteous will. Sometimes men will openly oppose the designs of His providence.
The Gadarenes were so startled at the loss of their swine, that with joint consent they desired Christ to depart from their coasts, having no mind to entertain either His person or His doctrine, when they should rather have been moved by His miraculous power and His preaching to inquire into the gospel He proclaimed. When the carnal interest of men's grandeur is struck at, they quarrel with the powerful ways of God (Acts 5:16–17). The high priests and Sadducees were filled with indignation at the apostles' miracles, which had reason enough to convince them, had they not had too much malice to withstand them.
Instead of submitting to the rod, we rage against God when He corrects us; and like chaff, fly in the face of Him that fans us. Not like children submitting to a father, but like rebels denying His superiority over us.
[3] 3dly. In our misinterpretations of providence Shimei misinterpreted the providence of God when David fled from Jerusalem upon his son Absalom's rebellion. Oh, saith he, now God will revenge the house of Saul (2 Sam. 16:7–8).
We put interpretations upon God's acts according to our own fancies, humors, and wishes. Therefore the Spirit of God takes particular notice that Shimei was of the house of Saul, and so, according to his
own humor, accounted this a punishment for David's removing the house of Saul from the government. This is a high usurpation of God's prerogative, who is the best interpreter of His own acts, as well as of His laws.
[10] 10thly. Enmity to His Content and Pleasure 1. In His nature Such an enmity there is in sin, that it strives to make a confusion in God Himself, a war in His very nature. For sin put God to His infinite wisdom to satisfy all the perfections of His nature. If He spared the sinner, how could He be just? If He destroyed him, how could He be merciful? What wit of men or angels could contrive a way to compose those attributes, and make truth and righteousness, mercy and justice, to kiss each other, and still those jars which sin endeavored to raise between them?
If justice should have its full due, what would become of the creature? If mercy should only act its part, what would become of the righteousness of God's nature? If the creature should be damned by the severity of justice, mercy might sit weeping for want of objects, unless new ones were created. If mercy should have its contentment in the impunity of the sinner, righteousness and truth might bewail the lack of due satisfaction. The heart of mercy would be broken if sin were punished; and the cry of justice would be perpetual unless the sinner fell under his own demerits. That surely is the greatest enemy who endeavors to set division in a man's own family and nature.
[2] 2dly. In His works Men endeavor to disappoint God of His glory, the end of His creation, and the tenderest jewel He reserves for His own use, and will not impart to another. God created all things for Himself; and man, by turning them to another use, evidences that he would not let
God have the pleasure of His own works, nor the rent due to Him for them.
Sin made Him repent that ever He put His hand to the framing of that world which, after creation, He had pronounced good; and made
God grieved at His own creatures, which with so much wisdom He made, and in which He had so much delight. God requires no more of man for all His benefits than service; and yet they deny Him this, and endeavor to make Him weary of His life, as if we studied how we might most vex and disquiet Him (Ezek. 16:43): Thou hast fretted
Me in all these things.
God created the world to have service from His rational creatures; and yet their services, as well as their sins, are a trouble to Him, and weary Him, so that He is ready to shake the world in pieces (Isa.
1:14): Your appointed feasts My soul hateth; I am weary to bear them; they are a trouble unto Me. So that He can have no ease but in acts of vengeance (v. 24): Ah, I will ease Me of Mine adversaries, and avenge Me of Mine enemies.
God created the world not out of any need He had of it, but to communicate His own goodness, and made man as a choice vessel to receive it. But man shrinks his soul, so that goodness cannot enter
upon him, and thus endeavors to frustrate God of this end. Can there be a greater contempt than to deny God the satisfaction of His own works?
Conclusion Now, to sum up all that hath been said: suppose—if it were possible— that there were another god to judge, or an indifferent person to judge between God and the men of this world, who had a copy of all the laws and promises, and records of all God's dealings. Would he not judge by the practices of men that God were some cruel Pharaoh, who, notwithstanding all His fair words and promises, minded nothing but the destruction of His creatures? And that man had some high provocations from God to act thus against the laws of goodness and the proposals of eminent rewards?
That God had no excellency to make Him desirable, but were the most despicable, contemptible, unworthy being in the whole world.
All the actions and practices of men testify thus much: that He is a weak, impure, cruel, false, empty, shallow, inconsiderable being, one that hath no authority over them; a pattern not fit to be imitated, one that hath been injurious to them, and the like.
An indifferent person, having no knowledge of God, viewing His laws, would have a high opinion of Him; but again, considering the practices of His creatures, could not but think that some great provocation had been offered by God to men; that He was full of dissimulation; for he could not otherwise conceive why there should be so general a defection from Him.