Thomas Manton · 21 of 67

Verse 4. · Part 3

3. When we do not observe his providence. The blind world sets up an idol called chance, and doth not acknowledge God at the other end of causes, as swaying all things by his wisdom and power. (1.) In afflictions. They think they come by chance and ill-luck, 1 Sam. vi. 9, and Isa. xxvi. 11; as if instruments and second causes did all, and the Lord were an idle spectator and looker-on, and had no hand in all that befalleth us. Job better, ‘The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh.’ He doth not look only to the Chaldean, the Sabean, the thief, but the Lord. In all afflictions we should look beyond the creature, and not complain of ill fortune and chance, or stars, or constellations, or anything on this side God. (2.) In mercies. It is ungodliness when we do not see God in all our mercies. Wicked men receive blessings, and never look up. They live upon God every moment. They have ‘life and breath and motion,’ and hourly maintenance from him, and yet ‘God is not in all their thoughts.’ As swine raven upon the acorns, and never look up to the oak from whence they fall, so they look no higher than the next hand; but God’s children may be compared to chickens, that sip and look upwards. The Lord complaineth of Israel, Hosea ii. 8, ‘She did not know that I gave her corn and wine and oil, and silver and gold.’ There cannot be a greater sign of an ungodly spirit than this unthankful profaneness. This is that which God expecteth from reasonable creatures, by way of homage, that we should own him as author of all the good which we enjoy. Other creatures live upon God, but they are not capable of knowing the first cause as we are. Idolatry and atheism had never crept into the world if men had considered who it was that gave them ‘fruitful seasons and showers of rain, and filled their hearts with food and gladness,’ Acts xiv. 16, 17. And surely nothing feedeth piety, and maintaineth a constant awe of God, so much as thinking of God every time we eat and drink and enjoy any new mercy from him. But alas! usually we forget God when he remembereth us most. He is never so much dishonoured as in eating and drinking, and in the plentiful enjoyment of outward comforts.

4. Another part of ungodliness is when we do not acknowledge his dominion over all events, sanctifying the things we use and under take by asking his leave and blessing. It is robbery, to use goods without the owner’s leave, so to use any creature, food, or physic without ‘sanctifying it by the word and prayer,’ 1 Tim. iv. 3-5; that is, knowing our liberty and right from the word of promise, and asking God’s leave and blessing in prayer; or to go about any business or journey, or fixing our abode without inquiring at the oracle; all this is ungodliness. It is our duty still to consult with God: ‘Ye ought to say, If the Lord will,’ &c., James iv. 15. It is a piece of religious manners. We forget to bid ourselves good speed when we do not acknowledge the dominion of God in all these cases: Prov. iii. 6, ‘In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.’ God’s children dare not resolve upon any course till they have first consulted with God.

Secondly, God will be acknowledged as the chiefest good, and so we are guilty of ungodliness:—

1. If we do not often think of him. If we did not want hearts, we cannot want objects to put us in mind of God. οὐ μακρὰν, ‘he is not far from every one of us,’ Acts xvii. 27. But though God be not far from us, yet we are far from God. He that is everywhere is seldom found in our hearts. We are not so near to ourselves as God is near to us. Who can keep his breath in his body for a minute if God were not there? He is within us and round about us in the effects of his power and goodness, but we are at too great a distance from him in our mind and affections. How many trifles occupy our minds! But the Lord can seldom find any room there: ‘God is not in all their thoughts,’ Ps. x. 4. Yea, when thoughts of God rush into our minds, they are like unwelcome guests—we wish to be rid of them. Wicked men abhor their own thoughts of God, because the more they think of God the more they tremble, as the devils do. Therefore the apostle saith, ‘They like not to retain God in their knowledge.’ Rom. i. This is far from the temper of God’s children. David saith, Ps. civ. 34, ‘My meditation of him shall be sweet.’ It is the spiritual feast and entertainment of a gracious soul to think of God. None deserveth our thoughts more than he, and we cannot put them to better use. He thought of us before the world was, and still ‘great is the multitude of his thoughts to us-ward.’ Therefore it is vile ingratitude not to think of him again. When we hate a person we cannot endure to look upon him, and the hatred of the mind is showed by the aversation and turning away of the thoughts.

2. If we do not delight in communion with him, we do not honour him as the chiefest good. Friends love to be often in one another’s company, and certainly ‘it is good to draw nigh to God,’ to preserve an acquaintance between him and us. He hath appointed his ordinances, the word and prayer, which are as it were a dialogue and interchangeable discourse between God and the creature. In the word he speaketh to us, and in prayer we speak unto him. He conveyeth his mind in the word, and we ask his grace in prayer. In prayer we make the request, and in the word we have God’s answer. Well, then, when men neglect public or private prayer, or opportunities of hearing, they are guilty of ungodliness. So far they break off communion with God, especially if they neglect prayer, which is a duty to be done at all times—a sweet diversion which the soul enjoyeth with God in private, a duty which answereth to the daily sacrifice. Therefore the neglect of prayer is made to be a branch of atheism, Ps. xiv. 3, 4. When men are loath to come into God’s presence, out of a love to ease and carnal pleasures, and care not if God and they grow strange, or seldom hear from one another, it is a great evil. Our comfort and peace dependeth much upon frequent access to God. So when family worship, when that is neglected, God is not honoured as the chiefest good: the heathens are described to be ‘the families that call not on God’s name,’ Jer. x. 25. In many places from one end of the week to the other there is no prayer and worship in the family, and so the house, which should be a church, is made a stye. Not a swine about their houses but is attended morning and evening, and yet they can find no time for the solemn invocation of the name of God. What. are they better than heathens?

3. If we do not fear to offend him. God will be served with every affection. Love is of use in the spiritual life, and so is fear: 2 Cor. vii. 1, ‘Perfecting holiness in the fear of God,’ Love sweeteneth duties, and fear maketh us watchful against sin: love is the doing grace, Gal. v. 6, and fear is the conserving grace, Jer. xxxii. 40. We have cause to walk in God’s ways, because we are always under his eye. Love is necessary, that we may keep God always in our hearts; and fear, that we may keep him always in our eye: both of them are of great use; but fear we now speak of, which is the true internal root of all obedience and worship, Eccles. xii. 13. When there is such a settled disposition of heart as that we dare not grieve him nor affront him to his face—as Ahasuerus said, ‘Will he force the queen before my face?’—God is much honoured. But now when we are secure and careless, and forget God, and can sin freely in thought and foully in act without remorse, it is ungodliness. Fear is a grace of continual use: we cannot be always praising God, worshipping God, and employed in acts of special communion with him, yet we must be always fearing God: ‘Be thou in the fear of God all the day long,’ Prov. xxiii. 17; and elsewhere, ‘Blessed is he that feareth always,’ Prov. xxviii. 14. A man hath done with his devotion in the morning, but he hath not done with God; we should think of him, and remember that his eye is upon us, all the day long: we must rise in the fear of God, walk in the fear of God, trade, eat, drink in the fear of God, Jude 12. Some graces are as the lungs, never out of use and exercise. More especially must fear be active when temptations and corruptions arise; we must argue as Joseph, Gen. xxxix. 9.

4. If we do not care to please him. An ungodly man thinketh of nothing less than pleasing God; he neither careth to know his ways, nor to walk in them; they are ‘willingly ignorant,’ 2 Peter iii, 5. They do not search, that they may not practise, and so err not in mind, but heart: ‘We desire not the knowledge of thy ways,’ Job xxi. 14. They have not a mind to know that which they have not a mind to do, as those that would sleep shut the curtains to keep out the light. A godly man is always approving what is the will of God, Rom. xii. 2, and Eph. v. 10-17; he practiseth what he knoweth, and is still searching that he may know more, as willing always to be more useful for God. What have I to do more?

Thirdly, God will be acknowledged as the supreme truth and authority, and then, if we are not moved with promises, threats, counsels, as with the the words of the great God, if we do not yield him reverence in his worship, and subject our hearts and lives to his laws, it is ungodliness.

1. We must receive the counsels of his word with all regard and reverence, for that is to receive it ‘as the word of God,’ 1 Thes. ii. 13. Heathens received the oracles of their gods, and were much moved; we can drowsily hear of the great things of salvation, of heaven, and the death of Christ, and the covenant of grace, &c., and are not moved, no more moved than with a fable or dream. If a man should make another an offer of a thousand pounds for a trifle, and he should not accept it. you would not say it was because he prized the trifle more—that is improbable, but because he did not believe the offer; so when God offereth heaven upon such terms as he doth, we do not honour him as the eternal truth, but count him a liar, 1 John v. 10, or else we would not neglect the offer.

2. We must yield him reverence in his worship. God is said, Ps. lxviii. 35, to be ‘terrible in the holy places:’ he is not only terrible in the high places of the field, where he executeth his dreadful judgments, or in the depths of the sea, where the wonders of the Lord are seen, but terrible in the holy places, where his ordinances are dispensed, because there his holiness, which is the astonishing attribute, is most seen and remembered. We do not come to him as the supreme Majesty when we do not come with awful apprehensions: God is dreadful there where he is most comfortable: Deut. xxviii. 58, ‘That thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, the Lord thy God.’ To have God for our God is the ground of all our comfort and hope, and yet it is a glorious and fearful name. In Mal. i. 14, the Lord urgeth two arguments why we should worship him with reverence; one is, ‘I am a great king, saith the Lord of hosts;’ the other is, ‘My name is dreadful among the heathen;’ implying in the first, that care less and rude addresses to him are a kind of a lessening his majesty; they do not come to him as a great king, and do as much as in them lieth go about to persuade the world that he is not the God that he is taken to be, so great, so terrible, and glorious. The next argument is taken from his respect among the heathens, that know him by common providence; they that have but a glimpse of his glory, that know least of his glory, yet know enough to fear him and reverence him. Therefore take heed of serving him in a loose and perfunctory manner; you dishonour God exceedingly else, even then when you come to give honour to him.

3. There must be a willing subjection of our hearts and lives to his laws. It must be a subjection of the heart; God’s authority is never more undermined than by a mere ‘form of godliness,’ 2 Tim. iii. 5. It is the greatest ungodliness that can be, for you rob the Lord of his dominion over the conscience. Hypocrisy is a practical blasphemy: ‘I know the blasphemy of them,’ &c., Rev. ii. 9. The life also must be subject to God, by a conformity to his laws. Men hate God as a lawgiver, they love him as a giver of blessings. It is the disposition of all that they would live at large, and have no God to call them to an account. Thoughts that strike at the being of God, and doctrines of liberty, are welcome to a carnal heart; it is pleasing to think if there were no God, to hear that there is no law; no suggestions are more catching. The life must be conformed to God’s laws, for he will be honoured in our conversations, as well as have his throne set up in our consciences. It is the glory of a commander to be obeyed: ‘I say to one, Go, and he goeth, and to another, Come, and he cometh.’ God looketh for glory from you in this kind; he will have all the world know that his servants are at his beck, that he ‘hath called you to his foot,’ Isa. xli. 2, ‘the righteous from the east, he called him to his foot;’ that is, to go to and fro at his command: if he say Go, they go; if he saith Come, they come; these are the ‘people framed for his praise.’ He can bid them do nothing but they are ready to do it with the loss of all.

Fourthly, God will be honoured as the utmost end; and so if in all acts, natural, moral, spiritual, we do not aim at his glory, we are guilty of ungodliness. In acts natural, and matters of the least consequence, we must have a supernatural aim: 1 Cor. x. 31, ‘Whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God.’ If I take a meal, I must have an aim at God’s glory in it; in civil acts, and duties of mutual commerce, all must be done as in and to the Lord, Eph. v. 22; vi. 1, 5-7. We are to walk in our relations so as God may have honour. In spiritual acts of prayer, praise, and worship, yea, the whole ordination of the spiritual life must be unto God: ‘I live unto God,’ Gal. ii. 20. All the motions and tendencies of the soul look that way. This is the difference between holiness and godliness; holiness more properly implieth a conformity to the law, and godliness an aim of the soul to exalt God; and so they are propounded as distinct, 2 Peter iii. 11, ‘What manner of persons ought we to be in all holiness and godliness of conversation?’ Well, then, look to your aims; and in eating and drinking you set up Moloch, it is a meat-offering and drink-offering to appetite, if you do not aim at God’s glory. So in traffic; if you merely regard wealth, you are a consecrated priest to mammon. In these ordinary actions of eating, drinking, trading, you may be guilty of idolatry before you are aware, and may set up the belly, Phil. iii. 19, or mammon, Mat. vi. 24, in God’s stead; nay, in your very desires of grace your ultimate aim must not be self. We are ‘accepted in the beloved, to the praise of his glorious grace,’ Eph. i. 6. And in actions most sacred it is dangerous to look a-squint; it is to put dung in God’s own cup, when we make worship a stale to our own ends. In short, the Lord hath given many things to the creature, that only which he hath reserved to himself is his glory; therefore he taketh it ill to be robbed of that.

Thus I have showed you the several kinds of ungodliness. Some are more refined, some more gross, but all naught. The worst sort is, when we do contemptuously slight his providence, and disobey his laws, hardening ourselves ‘yet more and more,’ as Ahaz did, though the Lord had exercised him with sharp afflictions, and living in open irreligion and despite of God, casting off yoke after yoke, till at length we have outgrown the heart of a man, fearing neither God nor men.

Use. Well, then, if we would not be counted ungodly, let us take heed of all these sins.

1. How else will ye look God in the face at the day of judgment? ‘The ungodly shall not stand in judgment,’ Ps. i. 5; that is, so as to be able to plead their cause, and lift up the head, though they shall rise again and receive their sentence; therefore ill rendered by the Vulgar, non resurgunt; yet they shall have no boldness, but hang their guilty heads for shame in that day; the day of judgment is appointed on purpose to ‘take vengeance of ungodly persons,’ see Jude 15. It is the day wherein God, that is now withdrawn within the curtain of the heavens, cometh forth to manifest himself to the terror of all ungodly ones.

2. There were great judgments inflicted upon them in this world. The flood swept away ‘the world of the ungodly,’ 2 Peter ii. 5, and 1 Peter iv. 18, ‘Where shall the sinner and the ungodly appear?’ The Lord’s jealousy for his honour is very great, and therefore none shall smart so sorely as the ungodly person. It is said, Isa, lix. 17, ‘He putteth on jealousy as a cloak;’ the cloak is man’s upper garment, which is most visible; there is nothing so visible in God’s providence as his jealousy for his honour; there is no sin robs God of his honour so much as ungodliness; so it is said, Exod. xxxiv. 14, that ‘jealousy is his name.’ The name of a thing is the note of distinction by which it is known and differenced from all other things either of the same or another kind; so God’s jealousy against those that rob him of his honour differenceth him from all the gods of the world. The gods of the heathens were good-fellow gods, and could endure rivals and co-partners; but this the Lord doth severely punish; none have fallen under the weight of his vengeance so much as they that deny their respects to him, and ‘go on whoring after another God.’

3. It is the great aim of the gospel to prevent ungodliness, by discovering more of God than was known before, and by finding out a way how the notions of God might be kept inviolable, and how we might come to the enjoyment of God, and yet God suffer no loss of honour; therefore the gospel is called ‘the mystery of godliness,’ 1 Tim. iii. 16, and a ‘doctrine according to godliness,’ 1 Tim. vi. 3. Men might be ungodly at a cheaper rate than now they can in these days of the gospel: now we have more means to know God, and more obligations to respect God, more clear and certain notions of his excellency and glory.

4. Ungodliness is the root of all irregular courses. Abraham was afraid of himself in Gerar. Why? ‘The fear of God is not in this place,’ Gen. xx. 11. Godliness is the great bulwark of laws and all honest discipline; subjects are not afraid of princes, nor princes of subjects, where the fear of God prevaileth: there can be no true honesty without piety. The first part of the law provideth for respects to God, as being the proper foundation of the second, which containeth respects to our neighbour. Often it cometh to pass by God’s just judgment that spiritual wickedness is punished with civil; see Hosea iv. 12, 13; and where men are not tender of God’s interests they do also encroach upon civil rights and freedoms.

Means and directions are these:—(1.) Purge the heart from principles of ungodliness. There are many gross maxims ingrafted in man’s heart; as that it is folly to be precise; that it was better when there was less knowledge; that it is in vain to serve God; that thoughts are free; if we carry it fair before men we need trouble ourselves no further; when men do their best, petty sins are not to be stood upon; that religion is but a notion and fancy, the gospel a golden dream, &c. That such principles are within us appeareth by the sottishness of our practices and course of living; for actions are the best image of our thoughts, and these are purged away by waiting upon the word, which ‘discovereth’ them, Heb. iv. 12, and layeth in good principles, Ps. cxix. 9, by which means they are destroyed. (2.) Suppress all ungodly thoughts as soon as they do arise, as that ‘there is no God,’ Ps. xiv. 1. Shame may lay a restraint upon the tongue, but the heart is ever casting up such a thought as this is: so that God is not so harsh but we may take a little liberty in sinning, see Ps. 1. 21; or that he taketh no notice of what we speak or do; he ‘cannot see through the dark clouds,’ Job xxii. 12, 13. When any such thoughts rush into your mind, check them and actually rebuke them, lest they settle into a rooted atheism. (3.) Mortify vile affections: the judgment is tainted by the contagion of lusts, as a foul stomach sendeth up fumes and gross vapours into the head; and so the principles of godliness do quickly suffer an eclipse: ‘The pure in heart see most of God,’ Mat. v. 8. In fenny countries the air is seldom clear; so in hearts that lie under the power of brutish lusts, there are seldom clear and distinct thoughts of God. (4.) Keep close to God’s institutions; these keep up his presence and memorial in the world, and so are the best preservative of godliness; false worships are full of ceremonies which darken the nature of God. Images beget a gross opinion of God: no wonder if people grow blockish that worship God in a senseless stock or stone. Varro in Austin observed, that those that first invented images did but increase error, and take away all fear of religion. God knoweth what is best for himself, and how by his own institutions to keep up the repute of his nature and essence: when man presumeth to be wiser than God, and leaveth the certainty of God’s institutions for additions and innovations of Our own, that please us better, because they have λόγον σοφίας, ‘A show of wisdom,’ Col. ii. 22, 23, all religion goeth to wrack. (5.) Let us often ‘exercise ourselves unto godliness,’ 1 Tim. iv. 7. Delight to give to God the honour due to him, love, delight, fear; to worship him often, to do all things as aiming at his glory.

Fourthly, The next clause in the description of these seducers is that, turning the grace of our God into wantonness. Where you may take notice—(1.) Of their filthiness and brutish course of life, implied in the word wantonness, in the original ἀσέλγεια, a word proper to luxury and the impurities of lust; it is derived from alpha, an augmentative particle, and Selga, the name of a town in Pisidia, saith Suidas, whose inhabitants were infamous for sodomy, and weakening nature by such prodigious filthiness as is not fit to be named among saints; and the persons here noted the school of Simon. The Nicolaitans, the Gnostics, and other impure heretics of that age were for promiscuous commixtures, and the free use of their fellow creatures (as some carnal wretches in our own age have learned to speak), without any respect to conjugal relation, and those restraints which God and nature and all civil nations have laid upon the lusts of man, as if men should use no more distinction and confinement than the beasts; yea, gave up themselves to all manner of unnatural lust, as in the process of this epistle we shall more fully discover. (2.) The occasion and encouragement of this wantonness, which doubleth the iniquity of it, is the grace of God, by which is meant the gospel, which is called ‘the grace of God,’ as Titus ii. 11, ‘The grace of God hath appeared unto us, teaching us,’ &c.; and in the gospel chiefly they abused the doctrine of Christian liberty and free justification by Christ; this is primarily intended. You may, by analogy, enlarge the expression to comprise all those other doctrines which libertines are apt to abuse; yea, those gracious providences which wicked men do convert into fuel and nourishment for their sins. (3.) The manner how so excellent a thing as the grace of God was made pliable to so vile a purpose, for a man would wonder that things at so great and infinite a distance as the grace of God and filthy lusts should ever be brought to cast an aspect upon one another. That is showed in the word turning, in the original μετατιθέντες, wresting, transferring from its proper use. They offered violence to the doctrine of grace, that it might be conscious to such a monstrous birth and production as filthy lusts and carnal pleasures. (4.) You have a hint of the reason why the apostle writeth against them with such a zealous indignation in that word our; as if he said, That grace, whose sweetness we have tasted, whose power we have felt; of that God who hath been so kind to us in Christ, whose glory we are bound to promote. Shall we see our God, and that grace upon which all our hopes stand, to be abused to such an unclean use?

From the words thus opened I observe:—

Obs. 1. That the gospel and grace of God in itself is not pliable to carnal purposes, yieldeth no carnal conclusions. They turn it, saith the apostle; there is no such thing gotten out of the gospel without wresting, and till the art of a deceiver hath passed upon it. I shall prove the point by three arguments.

1. From the constitution of the gospel. It yieldeth no leave to sin, but liberty to serve God: this is the great design of it. Christ came not to reconcile God and our sins together, but God and our persons; to reconcile our persons and destroy our sins; not to free us from the law, but sin; to free us from the service of the devil, 1 John iii. 8, not from the service of God; in short, he came not to make the law less strict, or sin less odious, or us less holy; for perfection of the law was never so clearly known as since the coming of Christ, see Mat. v., and sin was never so odious as since the abundance of grace. They under the law sinned at a cheaper rate than we can, because they did not sin against so much love and kindness, see Heb. ii. 2, 3; neither could Christ come to make us less holy, or to dispense with our care of holiness, for then he should come to deface the image of God, and make us more unlike God, which would not be a privilege but a burden to the new creature. Freedom from wrath and hell is a privilege, but freedom from duty and obedience is no privilege. In the gospel there is pardon for failings, but not to encourage us in our failings, but our duties. We were never so much obliged to duty as since the gospel, because now we have more help and more advantages, stronger motives and greater encouragements. If we look backward, we are bound in point of gratitude to serve the Lord, being redeemed hereunto by the blood of Jesus; if we look forward, we are encouraged by the hopes of eternal life. The law could not persuade by such arguments as the gospel doth; there is more of the rule known, more of the Spirit poured out to give us help to observe it. So that from this short abridgment of larger discourses, it appeareth that the great design of the gospel is to make us more like God, and to free us from the slavery of the devil, that we may be better servants and subjects to God.