Thomas Manton · 22 of 67

Verse 4. · Part 4

2. There are frequent and constant dissuasives from this perverting our liberty in Christ to the service of any fleshly design. The Spirit of God foresaw how corrupt nature in us would tempt us to abuse our privileges to an evil purpose; yea, many had already attempted it in the apostles’ days, as the sect of the Nicolaitans, the school of Simon, and, after them, the Gnostics and Basilicans, who, under colour of evangelical liberty, gave up themselves to lawless and brutish practices (as before was hinted); therefore, by way of prevention, dissuasives are very frequent everywhere; as Rom. vi. 1, ‘What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid.’ As if he had said, You will not want such corrupt teachers, nay, your hearts will be marvellous apt to frame such kind of consequences and conclusions; but reject them with indignation. So Gal. v. 13, ‘You are called to liberty; only use not your liberty as an occasion to the flesh.’ Christ hath done his part, purchased glorious privileges for you; only take you heed that you do not abuse them; your base hearts are apt enough. So 1 Peter ii. 16, ‘As free, but not using your liberty as a cloak of maliciousness.’ Freedom by Christ will be an unfit cover and pretence for so vile a practice.

3. Because in the gospel itself there are quite contrary inferences and conclusions from those which flesh and blood would draw from the gospel. As to instance, in anything wherein the gospel hath been abused, to three ends hath it been abused—to looseness, laziness, licentiousness. Now, you shall see the word carrieth things in a quite contrary way to what carnal men do. To looseness: men have been the more loose and careless, because grace hath abounded in the discoveries of the gospel; but the apostle disdaineth it, as a most abhor rent and strange conclusion from gospel principles: Rom. vi. 1, ‘Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid.’ Μὴ γένοιτο, do not cherish such a vile and unworthy thought; the gospel teacheth quite contrary; see Titus ii. 11, 12; not wantonness, but weanedness, 4 to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts.’ So see Rom. vi. 16, and 2 Cor. vii. 1. A bee gathereth honey thence from whence a spider sucketh poison. Again, to laziness: men are apt to lie down upon the bed of ease, and say Christ must do all, and so exclude all use of means and the endeavour of the creature. This is a foul abuse; for the scripture inferreth thence the care and work of the creature, be cause God doth all, Phil. ii. 12, 13, ‘Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God worketh in you both to will and to do.’ We must the more humbly wait upon God in the use of ordinances, because all dependeth upon his assistance. Again, to licen tiousness: men have interpreted freedom by Christ in such a perverse sense as to cast off obedience to civil powers, either to masters in the family, or to magistrates in the commonwealth; whereas the word calleth for these duties upon this very ground, because we are made free by Christ, that is, more ready and apt to discharge the duty we owe to God and man: in this sense it is said, 1 Cor. vii. 22, that ‘a servant is the Lord’s freeman;’ and 1 Peter ii. 16, ‘Obey governors as free, but as servants of the Lord.’ Christianity giveth us a greater aptness, layeth on us a greater engagement, the bond of conscience; so that there is, as Salvian speaketh, in maxima libertate minima licentia, a great deal of liberty by Christ, and yet the strongest engagement to service that may be.

Let us now apply the point.

Use 1. It serveth to inform us, in the first place, that carnal men are ill skilled in consequences; from the very gospel would they draw a liberty to sin, than which from such premises no conclusion can be more strange; it is well worth the observing to note the different arguings in scripture from the same principles, as see some instances; compare 1 Cor. vii. 29 with 1 Cor. xv. 32: the principle in both places is, ‘The time is short.’ Now, the apostle in the former place draweth from it conclusions of strictness, temperance, and mortification: ‘Let us use the world as if we used it not,’ &c. But in the latter the dissolute epicure argueth quite otherwise, ‘Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die;’ a quite different conclusion from the same principle. So here, grace aboundeth; let us be much in duty, saith the spiritual man; let sin abound, saith the carnal. Again, compare 2 Sam. vii. 2 with Hag. i. 2: ‘I dwell within a house of cedar,’ saith David, ‘but the ark of God dwelleth within curtains.’ Surely I should have had more care of the ark of God, now God hath built me such a stately palace. But they in Haggai, we ‘dwell in ceiled houses,’ therefore ‘the time to build the Lord’s house is not come;’ so they might live in pomp and ease, they little cared how matters went with God’s house. Once more, 1 Sam.’ iii. 18, ‘It is the Lord; let him do what seemeth him good:’ he argueth from thence to meekness and a submissive patience. But now compare 2 Kings vi. 33, ‘This evil is from the Lord; why should I wait upon him any longer?’ From the same principle he argueth himself into a murmuring and fit of impatience. Thus carnal men are always out in their reasonings: ‘A parable in a fool’s mouth,’ saith Solomon, ‘is like a thorn in the hand of a drunkard,’ Prov. xxvi. 9. When the spirits are disturbed by excess of drink, men have not an even touch, and so when they would use a thorn, or any sharp thing, they wound and gore themselves; so do wicked men, being besotted with lusts, argue falsely from the grace and the holy principles of the word to their own destruction.

Use 2. Again, it serveth for caution; when you meet with such base inferences from evangelical principles, do not blame the gospel, or the ministry and dispensation of the gospel.

1. Not the gospel, as if it were not clear enough, or faithful enough, or wary enough. Such thoughts are wont to haunt us when we see gross errors creeping under a shelter and pretence of scripture: foolish men would give laws to heaven; we think God should speak more plainly, as if the Lord should make a sun for them to see that shut their eyes: vain man will stumble in God’s plainest ways; should things be never so clearly carried, a perverse apprehension would make them obscure. Parables (which are the liveliest and most sensible representations of things) hardened the Pharisees, Mark iv. 11, 12. If men ruin themselves by their own false logic, we should not therefore accuse God. They that have a mind to fall shall not want a stone of stumbling; they that will only be feasted with comforts, no wonder if they contract a spiritual sickness, and undo their souls by a misunderstood and misapplied gospel.

2. Do not blame the ministry and dispensation of the gospel, because some abuse free grace, others cannot endure to hear it preached; but children must not be kept from their bread because dogs catch at it. Because some are ‘drunk with wine,’ and others eat to excess, shall the hungry man want his food? Shall hungry consciences lose their portion for others’ abuse? No, no; if carnal men serve their lusts of these truths, we cannot help it; we are not in the place of God: we can only deliver the doctrine; we cannot give them gracious hearts to improve it. The Papists will not let the people have the scriptures upon this reason, for fear of abuses; and Gardiner would not have this gap of free grace opened to the people, &c: The devil hath ever maligned a gospel dispensation. Let not us withhold the truth for fear of inconvenience. Let us look to our commission, ‘preach the gospel to every creature;’ if men abuse it, we are clear, ‘their destruction is just,’ as the apostle speaketh to this very case: Rom. iii. 8, ‘Some slanderously report that we say, Let us do evil that good may come thereof, whose damnation is just.’ Some gave out that Paul taught that they might sin freely, that God might have the more glory in pardoning;’ their damnation is just’; if they went away with such a vile conceit, saith he, they learned it not from me. Musculus complaineth in one of his books that no place was so profane and irreligious as those where the gospel had been preached; and Contzen, a Jesuit, citing this passage, crieth out; See the fruit of Protestantism and their gospel preaching. Many are of his spirit; do even hate the publication of the doctrine of grace, as if these were the cause of men’s miscarriage. If men abuse the truth, we cannot help it; however, visible mistakes must be prevented, lest men go away with a scorpion instead of fish, and a stone instead of bread.

Obs. 2. The next point, that though grace itself be not pliable to such conclusions, yet wicked men are very apt to abuse it to the countenancing and cherishing of their sins and lusts. You see here the abuse of the doctrine of the gospel was very ancient; this spirit of error wrought betimes; the former days were no better than these, Eccles. vii. 10. In the apostles’ days, vile hearts did abuse good doctrine; men were the same then which they are now, when such kind of errors have a second spring and revolution. Indeed, of all errors these seem to be very natural; we greedily drink in the poison of carnal liberty. But let me give you the reasons why ungodly men take liberty and occasion from the grace of God to serve their sinful lusts and pleasures.

1. Because carnal hearts do assimilate all that they meet with, and turn it into the nourishment of their carnal lusts: as the salt sea turneth the fresh rivers and the sweet showers of heaven into salt waters, so do carnal men pervert the holy principles of the gospel; or as sweet liquors are soon soured in an unclean vessel, so do truths lose their use and efficacy when laid up in a carnal heart, and are quite turned to another purpose.

2. Because they would fain sin securely, et cum privilegio, with a free dispensation from God, and therefore seek by all means to entitle God to the sin, and the sin to God. They would find a great deal of ease from gripes of conscience if they could make God the author, or at least the countenancer, of their evil practices; and therefore when they can rub their guilt upon the gospel, and pretend a liberty by Christ, the design is accomplished. Augustine often taketh notice that the heathens took the most liberty to sin, because their gods were represented as approvers and countenancers of such kind of actions. If men could once make God an approver of sin, and giving leave to satisfy our desires, the design of carnal nature were at an end, and they would be freed of that awe of a divine power which is only left in nature as the check and restraint of sin; and therefore because God hath revealed so much of his indulgence to the fallen creature in the gospel, they strive to draw all the passages of it that way, as if God had given leave to sin freely.

3. Because man is obedient naturally no longer than when under impressions of awe and fear; ‘the cords of a man,’ Hosea xi. 4, work little with us; like beasts, we only put forward when we feel the goad. Violent means do more than gentle persuasions and the sweet strains of grace. Usually where we are dealt with in that kind, we ‘wax wanton and kick with the heels,’ Deut. xxxii. 15, as an ass-colt, being suckled and full, kicks her dam in the forehead.

4. Because we all naturally desire liberty, carnal liberty, to be left to our own sway and bent, and therefore we catch at anything that tendeth that way. We would be as gods, lords of our own actions, and so are very apt to dream of an exemption from all kind of law but our own lusts: the seducer’s bait was a ‘promise of liberty,’ 2 Peter ii. 19. We would all be above check and control, and have scope and room for our lusts: Ps. xii. 4, ‘Our lips are our own, who is lord over us?’ We would fain bring it to that, to be at our own dispose, to be answerable to none that should call us to an account. The tumult of the nations against Christ was about bonds and yokes, Ps. ii. 3. The pale or the yoke is grievous to us, see Job xi. 12; Jer. xxxi. 18. Now being so resolved to be free, we are willing to hear of liberty, and apt to abuse whatever sounds to that purpose.

But now let us see how many ways the grace of God may be turned into wantonness; a right knowledge of the evil may be a means to prevent it.

There is a grace dispensed in the way of God’s providence, which may be called the grace of God, and is very liable to abuse: a word of that before I come to the main thing here intended. Thus we find the patience of God often abused; when the Lord keepeth silence in heaven, and doth not presently thunder down vengeance on the heads of sinners, Ps. xxxvi. 2; Zeph. i. 12, we wallow in ease and fleshly delights, and dream of a perpetual happiness, and think we shall do as well as the precisest of them all: Eccles. viii. 11, ‘Because vengeance is not executed speedily, therefore the heart is set in them to do evil.’ Thus doth man’s venomous nature suck poison out of so sweet an attribute as God’s patience. And as God’s patience is abused, so is also his goodness and bounty. When we are full and enjoy plenty we grow wanton, and either despise our mercies, Mal. i. 2, ‘Wherein hast thou loved us?’ or, which is worse, despise God himself, turn back upon the mercy-seat, grow very negligent, cold, and careless in the worship of God; nay, many times the mind is efferated, and grown brutish and insolent both towards God and man: Hosea xiii. 6, ‘According to their pasture so were they filled; they were filled and their heart was exalted, they have forgotten me.’ Men have large pastures and strong lusts, and then God is forgotten; there is not that care of God, that sense of duty, that meekness of spirit; this is growing wanton with God’s goodness. Once more, there is another grace of providence which is apt to be abused, and that is the vouchsafement of ordinances, or the means of grace, in great plenty; a mercy prized when it first cometh among a people, but within a little while they grow wanton: 1 Sam. iii. 1, ‘The word of God was precious in those days, for there was no open vision.’ Whilst visions are scarce they are highly prized, but when they are open and public, men begin to grow giddy, cannot be contented with the simplicity of God’s ordinances, but must be fed with ungrounded subtleties and quintessential extracts; when spiritual appetite groweth wanton it is an ill sign, when plain truths will not down, and all things must be carried in an airy, subtle, and notional way; God will have a scourge for such a wanton people.

But let us come closer to the matter in hand. This text speaketh of doctrinal discoveries of grace, of the abuse of the gospel, and the principles thereof. Now it were a hard task to give you an account of all the paralogisms and corrupt inferences which men draw from the gospel; there is no doctrine but, one way or another, a carnal heart is apt to abuse it. The most usual abuses are these:—

1. The doctrine of election is abused; men say they may live as they list; if God hath elected them they shall be saved, and so allow themselves in their careless neglect of the means of salvation. Be not deceived; God, that decreeth the end, decreeth the means: ‘God hath predestinated us to be conformed to the image of his Son.’ Rom. viii. 29; in grace here as well as in glory hereafter.

2. The doctrine of the attributes of God’s mercy and long-suffering. Men will say they are sinners, and so are others; but God is merciful, and so poor, ignorant drunkards, adulterers, and swearers, as they are, they die with this principle in their mouths, God is merciful. But ‘be not deceived; neither fornicators nor adulterers, &c., shall enter into the kingdom of God,’ 1 Cor. vi. 9; so Eph. v. 6, ‘Let no man deceive you with vain words, for because of these things cometh the wrath of God.’ Both these places show there were divers which had such deceitful thoughts, as if living and dying drunkards, adulterers, &c., they should go to heaven. Others abuse the long-suffering of God to their delaying and putting off their repentance, as if, after a long vicious life, provided they could be devote at the last gasp, they should at length be saved, and of a sudden from swine become saints. As many delayed their baptism heretofore, because they would have longer time to sin in, and to walk after their own lusts, and when they were warned of their licentious course, their answer was, Tunc demum a peccatis desistam cum baptizatus ero—when I am baptized I will live otherwise. Thou fool! besides the uncertainty of thy having time or grace to repent, this is a manifest abuse of God’s patience, and will turn to thy greater ruin, Rom. ii. 4, 5.

3. The doctrine of gospel grace is abused many ways. Sometimes to exclude the fear and reverence of God, as if fear were an antiquated grace, suiting only with a legal dispensation: whereas the children of God think the more grace the more fear: Ps. cxxx. 4, ‘There is mercy with thee, therefore thou shouldst be feared;’ and Hosea iii. 5, ‘They shall fear the Lord and his goodness.’ The goodness of God doth not make them presumptuous, but is the greater matter of reverence and holy trembling: fear is so far from being abolished in the gospel that it continueth in heaven, it being an essential and necessary respect from the creature to the creator. Again, it is abused to deny all humiliation and sorrow for sins, yea, all confession of sins, as if to be humbled for sins were legal; whereas repentance and all the acts of it is a mere gospel duty; the law knew no such thing, and the truest and most genuine sorrow ariseth from a sense of pardon: Zech. xii. 10, ‘They shall look upon him whom they have pierced, and mourn;’ so Luke vii. 47, that Christian Niobe loved much and wept much, and all be cause much was forgiven. John speaketh to believers, to them that walked in the light, to confess their sins, 1 John i. 9; we cannot have pardon in God’s way till this be done: ‘If we confess,’ &c. It is a condition not for which, but without which, pardon is not obtained; it doth not show the cause, but the order of graces working. Again, sometimes it is abused to the neglecting of circumspection and heed in us. We are preserved in Christ, say they, and therefore we may be careless, and though we cast ourselves upon snares, temptations, and occasions to sin, be confident that God will keep us. The devil sets upon Christ with such a temptation: Mat. iv. 6, ‘Cast thyself down, and he shall give his angels charge over thee,’ Libertines scoff at the niceness and scrupulousness of former professors, that were willing to keep at such a distance from a temptation, as if their strict and exact walking were a fruit of their darkness and legal spiritedness; whereas the apostle maketh it a main property of ‘children of light’ thus to do, Eph. v. 15. So God’s doing all in the covenant of grace is abused to exclude all care of duty, and to keep men in a lazy oscitancy, and gaping for grace without all care or endeavour on our part; whereas God loveth to be met with in his own way, and cometh in with supplies of grace according to our diligence in the use of means; see Mark iv. 34; and as it is abused, to shut out all endeavours after grace, so all actings and operations under grace; as if we were mere logs rather than rational agents, and God so did all that the act of our own faculties were quite abolished or suspended; whereas though the grace be from God, yet the act is ours, for otherwise the faintness and defectiveness of the operation would be chargeable upon him, and the Lord doth so draw us that we have a motion of our own: ‘Draw me and we will run after thee,’ Cant. i. 4. It is he that ‘treads down Satan,’ but ‘under our feet.’ Rom. xvi. 20. The doctrine of Christian liberty, which is one part of the gospel, is abused to exclude the moral law, as a rule of duties to God and man; whereas the apostle saith, I am not ἄνομος, but ἔννομος, ‘not without the law to God, but under the law to Christ,’ 1 Cor. ix. 21. Sometimes it is abused to a living to the height of the creature (as some carnal wretches phrase it), or an immoderate use of carnal comforts; whereas to restrain us in this kind, the scripture forbiddeth licentiousness in the use of the creatures under such terms as do imply the lawful use. See Luke xvii. 27, and Isa. xxii. 13. The things mentioned there are necessary for the supportation of life; but the immoderate use is intended, because they did nothing else but mind these things. He that will do all that he may, will soon do more than he should. The doctrine of spiritual worship, and abolishing the shadows of the law, which is another part of the gospel, is abused to the neglect and contempt of ordinances and acts of solemn worship, as if all were but forms, not suiting with that spirituality unto which they think they are called in these days of the gospel; and so constant prayer is laid aside as a form, whereas God calleth for daily worship in this kind, Mat. vi. 11, and making conscience of hearing the word: a form too low for them that pretend to live immediately upon the Spirit; whereas the scripture joineth word and Spirit together, as inseparable in the dispensation, Isa. lix. 21; and the apostle in one verse saith, ‘Despise not prophesying,’ 1 Thes. v. 19; and presently, ver. 20, ‘Quench not the Spirit,’ implying whosoever doth the one will certainly do the other. So the use of the seals, baptism and the supper, as forms fit for novices; but they are of a more elevated strain, and above these lower helps, enjoying so much in the inward and hidden man; whereas Christ hath enjoined these ordinances for the use of all sorts of Christians till he come again to judge the world. See Mat. xxviii. 20, and 1 Cor. xi. 26. So instructing children a form, though we have express command for it in scripture, Eph. vi. 4. It were easy to rake in this puddle, but this taste may suffice.

Use 1. The use of all is to make us more cautious and wary, that we may not be guilty of this great sin.

1. It is the error of the wicked, 2 Peter iii. 16. It is a black mark to grow the more wanton for mercies, secure for patience, sensual, vain, negligent, careless, because of the free tenders of grace in the gospel; there cannot be a more evident mark of a man in a carnal condition. It is sad when our ‘table is made a snare;’ but it is worse when the very gospel is made a snare, for the better things are, the worse is the abuse, and more dangerous. Look, as it is a mark of the love of God to have ‘all things work together for good to us.’ Rom. viii. 28, so it is an argument of the hatred of God when all things prove a snare, and the very gospel itself, the blessed gospel of the glorious God, is cursed to us. Oh! how sad is their condition.

2. It is a sin against mercy, and those of all others are most dangerous. When you abuse grace, you make grace your enemy; and it is ill for creatures when grace is their enemy, and there is nothing left for them but justice and wrath; justice will take up the quarrel of abused mercy, and, as grace is despised, so wrath taketh place: ‘They treasure up wrath,’ &c., Rom. ii. 4, 5.

3. It is foul ingratitude to turn our mercies into a provocation, to make a calf of our ear-rings, and to serve our lusts of God’s providence; as he said of Adam, that what he received, μέλος, a rib, he returned. .’3eXo?, a dart, alluding to his fall by Eve. So to fight against God with his own weapons, what vile ingratitude is that! See Jer. v. 7; Ezek. vii. 20. To make plenty the fuel of our lusts, what is it but to ‘make God serve with our sins,’ Isa. xliii. 24, and to grow worse for the gospel, black and tawny because the sun of righteousness hath looked upon us? It is as it were to give it out to the world as if he did serve with our sins by his own consent, and we had a license from heaven to do what we do.

4. It is a great grief to the Spirit of God when you abuse grace. You do as it were put your miscarriages upon him, when you call licentious walking Christian liberty, and neglect of duty gospel freedom, and godly sorrow legalism, and strict walking superstitious niceness; you do as it were father your bastards upon the Spirit, and entitle the monstrous conceptions and births of your own carnal hearts to his incubation and overshadowing; you think God warranteth you in all this, and that is a high wrong to him which he will avenge in due time; see Ps. 1. 21, 22. I remember the prophet saith, Jer. iv. 10, ‘O Lord! thou hast greatly deceived this people,’ because the false prophets had done it in his name; false doctrines make God to be the deceiver, and these ill consequences drawn from the gospel are in effect charged upon the Spirit, who is the author of it.

Well, then, learn the truth as it is in Jesus, Eph. iv. 21.

[1.] First, make him your teacher; flesh and blood will stumble in God’s plainest ways. We cannot learn any gospel truth of ourselves, but we are apt to pervert it to an ill use.

[2.] Take the whole doctrine together; for it is the truth as it is in Jesus, otherwise it is the truth as it is in the mouth of a false teacher. Half-truth hath filled the world with looseness; when men divide between Christ’s comforts and Christ’s graces, his priesthood and his regality, his benefits and his laws, these partial apprehensions spoil all.

[3.] As to your manner of learning, let it be saving, and such as tends to practice. It is not enough to make Christ our teacher by using his word, and looking for the direction of his Spirit, and to make the whole counsel of God our lesson; but also we must learn to a saving purpose, to put off the old man, to put on the new, and not to store the brain with knowledge so much as the heart with grace; for to this end is the gospel given to us, not for science so much as practice, to make us better rather than wiser and more knowing.

Use 2. Another use is examination, to put us upon trial whether we do not, yea or no, ‘turn the grace of God into wantonness.’ A man may be right in doctrine, and yet the constitution of his spirit may be naught. Again, there may be a fond dotage on the name of Christ, and yet no real respect to him; therefore it behoves us to search how the gospel works with us.

[1.] Are you not the better for the knowledge of it? If you are not the better you are the worse. If you know Christ, and come short of the hour of his grace, you know him in vain; you make Christ and the gospel a useless thing. Compare 2 Cor. vi. 1 with Col. i. 6: there is a ‘receiving the grace of God in vain,’ and a ‘knowing the grace of God in truth.’ We receive it in vain when we are nothing the better for it; and we receive it in truth when we feel the sweetness and power of it upon our hearts and consciences. Those that know the grace in truth are the more vigilant, more humble, more holy. They are more diligent, for the grace of God hath a mighty constraint to urge us to duty, 2 Cor. v. 14, 15: more humble, nothing so melting as grace, Zech. xii. 10; unkindness after so much grace as we have received in Christ is the great reason and cause of godly sorrow: more holy, nothing kindles such a rage and indignation against sin as grace doth: Ezra ix. 14, ‘Should we again after such a deliverance,’ &c.; nothing persuadeth by such powerful arguments to the practice of holiness as grace doth; see Titus ii. 11-14. Therefore what are you the better? If it worketh not thus, it is sad.