PART VI Enmity to the Saints
PART VI Enmity to the saints When the devil found God above his reach, he set himself against the creatures that were designed more peculiarly for His service. Just after we read of enmity to God in Adam, we read of enmity to the godly in Cain.
The Italians, when they say un Christiano, commonly mean a blockhead; and our common speech, a silly Abraham, imports no better. It will be so to the world's end. Despisers of those that are good are ranked with those that are enemies to God (2 Tim. 3:3). It ariseth from a hatred of holiness itself.
And it is enmity to God; for he that would not suffer Him to have a holy servant, would not suffer Him to have a holy throne, a holy scepter, a holy crown, a holy kingdom. If men hate the children of light, they do by consequence hate the Father of lights.
Mr. Cotton was convinced of his enmity against God by his enmity to the servants of God.
There are several causes of this enmity.
[1] Dissimilitude between God and a natural man As likeness in nature and inclinations is a cause of love, so dissimilitude and unsuitableness is a cause of hatred. Distance of manners breeds alienation of affection. This dissimilitude depends
also upon the opposition between the law and the nature of a sinner, Rom. 7:14: The law is spiritual, but I am carnal. Hence proceeds all that acting against it; for the Apostle saith, vv. 15–16, I consent unto the law that it is good; but my flesh, which hath a repugnancy to it, will not comply with it. The spiritual law and the carnal heart do quarrel with one another.
This dissimilitude between God and a natural man is the greatest, [1] First, in respect of nature.
God is infinitely holy; man corrupt and filthy. Darkness and light, heaven and hell, are directly contrary; so are Christ and Belial. Let engagements be what they will, so long as men are of different spirits, they cannot agree. As in regenerate men this dissimilitude works an abhorrency of themselves, as in Job, so in natural men it engenders a disaffection to God.
[2] Secondly, in respect of ends.
There are in God and men different ends. Man's end is to please himself, and satisfy the desires of the flesh; God's end is to vindicate
His law, and show Himself the righteous Governor of the world, which cannot be attained without a direct contrariety to the corrupt end of man.
The remedy then will be to get a renewed nature, the image of God new-formed in the soul.
[2] Guilt Men fly from God out of shame. They consider the debts they owe God to be great; and naturally debtors fly from their creditors, for fear they should exact or demand anything of them. Adam's guilt was rather attended with a flight from God, than with an approach to Him. Those Israelites who desired that God should speak to them no more, but by Moses, were afraid of His presence too, when Moses' face shone with a heavenly splendor.
Terror is essential to guilt, and hatred to a perpetual terror. Their guilt made them fly from that Moses whom they knew to be their friend, when God had set a signal mark upon him. When men cannot discharge their judgments of the belief of a strict account, and dreadful hell, and perpetual immortality, their hearts are pierced with their sins like so many darts. As they have a thousand sins, so they have a thousand stings, all pointed with God's wrath, and returned back with their own hatred; though it is but the just fruit of their own doings. The frequency of iniquity contracts the more implacable contrariety to God, and makes them as incapable of any union with God, as of repose in themselves.
The remedy then is to labor for justification by the blood of Christ, which alone is able to remove that guilt which engenders our hatred.
[3] Thirdly. God's crossing the desires and interests of the flesh Natural qualities increase with the resistance of their contraries; so doth sin. The duties God doth principally love do most of all cross our corruptions, and those are the duties we hate most. The Sodomites show most disaffection to Lot, when he opposeth them in the prosecution of their lusts with the angels, Gen. 19:9: We will deal worse with thee than with them. Had God (as Micaiah to Ahab) spoken good to natural men in their own esteem, and held them up in their lusts, His truth would not be so much imprisoned in unrighteousness, but highly adored with men's choicest affections.
But His commanding things according to His own holy nature brings into act that habitual hatred which was before in the heart.
All hatred doth arise from an opinion of destructiveness in the object hated. Why do we loathe a thing, but because we imagine it inconsistent with our happiness and wishes? And a sinner, being possessed that his darling sin is inconsistent with the holiness of God's law, hates God for being of a nature so contrary to that which he loves. The disappointment our corrupt principles find by any truth of God exasperates the heart.
The Jews, expecting an earthly grandeur by the Messiah, and that they should be made lords paramount of the world, were the more desperate enemies to Christ when they found His design to be short of their expectations, and that His humility favored not their pride,
and His meekness was not like to raise Him from the footstool of the Roman Empire to the throne of the world.
The remedy then is to have a high esteem of the holiness and wisdom of the law of God, and of the advantages He aims at for our good in the enjoining of it; to account it better than thousands of gold and silver, and to look upon His commands as not grievous, 1 John 5:3.
[4] Fourthly. Love of sin The greater the love of sin, the more must be our hatred of God; because the more we love that which hath an essential enmity against God, the more we signify that it is our chief good and happiness. Consequently, we must hate that which is most contrary to it, and would hinder our enjoyment of it; and therefore our hatred of God's holiness grows up equally with our fondness of sin.
When by frequent acts the habitual nature is strengthened, all the power of doing contrary is swallowed up in that habit. Hence it is said, the carnal mind is enmity against God; that is, the sensual mind, when sensuality hath got the mastery of the mind, and planted sensual habits, there is enmity to God, and it cannot be subject to the law of God, because that habit wholly acts the mind.
Men's reasons side with the precepts of God, and conclude them to be the way to felicity; but the law of the mind is too weak for the powerful and pleasing charms of the flesh, whereby they are drawn into an imaginary paradise, but a real captivity. The hating of all the dictates of God our Savior is put upon this score. Light must be
odious when darkness is lovely; God must needs be hated when His enemy is most caressed. As the love of God in the godly is the cause that they hate sin, so the love of sin in the wicked is the cause that they hate God.
Every sin being an aversion from God in its own nature, and a conversion to the creature, according to the multiplying of the acts of sin, this aversion from God and conversion to the creature must needs be increased; and by how much the more love we have to the creature, so much the more love is taken from God.
The remedy then is to endeavor for as great a hatred of sin as thou hast of God; to look upon sin as the greatest evil in itself, and the greatest disadvantage to thy happiness.
[5] Fifthly. Injury we do to God It is proper to men odisse quos laeserint—to hate those whom they have injured. Whereas the person injured might rather hate, yet the person injuring hath often the greatest disaffection. Joseph's mistress first wronged him, and then hated him. Saul first injured
David, and then persecuted him, as if David had been the malefactor and Saul the innocent. The Italians have a proverb to this purpose,
Chi fa ingiuria ne perdona mai.
The reason is, because they think the injured person must needs hate them; and love is not an affection due to an enemy. We have also suspicious thoughts of the person we have provoked to be our enemy. We wrong God, and then we hate Him; measuring His
affections by human passions, and thinking that because we have wronged Him, He must needs lay aside all the goodness and patience of His own nature, and watch the first opportunity of revenge.
Every sin, and every act of it, being enmity to God, the more the habit of any sin is increased by frequent acts, the more also is the habitual enmity in the heart increased. For as every sin hath an immediate tendency to the supply of some lust, so it hath a remote and principal tendency to the increase of that enmity.
Cain first affronts God in His omniscience and providence, and then departs from His presence; turns his back upon Him, and becomes the head of the profane part of the world, Gen. 4:16—the presence of the Lord, that is, from all the ordinances of God, and communion with Him in worship.
The remedy then is to endeavor a conformity to God's holy will; to think with thyself every morning, What shall I do this day to please
God? What duty doth He require of me? The more thou dost obey His will, the more thou wilt love His holiness.
[6] Sixthly. Slavish fear of God Men are apt to fear a just recompense for an injury done to another, that he will do him one ill turn for another; and fear is the mother of hatred. God being man's superior, and wronged by him, there follows necessarily a slavish fear of Him and of His power; and such a fear makes wrathful and embittered thoughts of God, while he considers
God armed with an unconquerable and irresistible power to punish him.
It is as natural for a man to hate that which he conceives to be against him, as for any animal to hate that whose acts it fears tend to a dissolution of its being. The devils tremble, James 2:19—
〈ἐφρίσσουσι〉; they have a great horror, and their enmity is as great as their fear, nay heightened by their fear, because they have no hope of pardon. They do their utmost to oppose God, and have companions in misery.
It is impossible that a man should love God while He is apprehended as an irreconcilable adversary. The stronger the impressions of fear, the quicker the inclinations to hatred. But when the evil feared begins to strike, it makes the hatred shoot out in volleys of curses and blasphemies, which is evident in the damned.
God, considered as a Judge, is the object not of comforting, but of terrifying faith. No man can naturally love that Judge whom he thinks will condemn him. A fear of God as an inexorable Judge, whom we have highly wronged, will nourish an enmity against Him.
The remedy then is to be much in communion with God. Strangeness is the mother of fear. We dread men sometimes because we know not their disposition. The beasts themselves delight in the company of man when they are familiarized to him; they learn his disposition, and taste his kindness to them, which, when they were unacquainted with, they would flee from his presence with the greatest speed.
Study the reconciling love of God in the Gospel. Consider much the loveliness and amiableness of His nature, and His ardent desire that thou wouldest be His friend rather than His enemy. One cause of our hating God is our ignorance of Him; for if we did but know how good
He is, how merciful to man, and to us, if we would but leave our sin, we could not possibly hate Him.
[7] Seventhly. Pride Self-denial is absolutely against the pride of reason; and this is the first lesson God teacheth us. It is the first letter in the alphabet of the Gospel of peace, and therefore we are against Him. Men lift up the pride of reason against the truth of God, and the pride of heart against the will of God. Hence it appears that self is the great incendiary of the soul against God.
The enmity of Tyre against God is charged upon this account, Ezek.
28:2: Thy heart is lifted up in the midst of the sea; thou hast set thy heart as the heart of God. She would rather have her wisdom admired by God, than God's wisdom admired by her.
The sharpest enmities in the world are founded upon this vice. This makes the greatest combustions in commonwealths. Men fear to be overtopped by one another. All other vices desire companions. A drunkard loves his good-fellows; he cares not to swill alone. An unclean person must have his mate. Swearers hate those that come not up to their own pitch; but a proud man would have none keep an equal pace with him. He cannot endure a companion, but would have all others under his feet.
Pride is naturally against God; and therefore sin is often called a lifting up of the heart against God, and a hardening of the heart against Him.
The remedy then is to endeavor after humility. Study the humility of God, who is more humble to us than we can be to Him. Reflect more upon thy vileness than thy worth.
[8] Eighthly. Love of the world The greater the dearness of sensual pleasures, the further our divorce from God. The love of the world is inconsistent with the love of God,
1 John 2:15: If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. It puts us under an impossibility, while that love remains, to entertain the Spirit of truth, John 14:17: The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive.
Whosoever will be a friend of the world is an enemy to God. The friendship of the world is enmity with God, James 4:4: Ye adulterers, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Know ye not—it is an unquestionable truth, your own consciences cannot be strangers to it.
Indulgence to carnal interests and pleasures mounts up to a fierceness against God, Deut. 32:15: Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked.
The wisdom of the flesh is first earthly, then sensual, then devilish.
When once the mind is possessed by an earthly and sensual temper, it will not be long before it grows up to devilishness; and that can be no friend of God. What begins in earthliness—earthly principles and