Thomas Manton · 29 of 67

Verse 6. · Part 2

1. That God hath proper places where the creatures shall perform their duty and enjoy their happiness. As the angels had heaven, which was ἴδιον οἰκητήριον, their proper place, so Adam had paradise, and the saints the church. It is misery enough to be thrown out of that place where God manifesteth himself; he that was cast out of the church was ‘given up to Satan,’ 1 Cor. v. 5. In the church Christ ruleth; in the world, Satan: it is good to keep to the shepherd’s tents, Cant. i. 8. The angels left their ‘first estate’ at the same time that they lost ‘their own habitation.’ It is dangerous to leave our own place, to be cast out of the congregations of the faithful, where God dwelleth and is glorified: ‘He inhabiteth the praises of Israel,’ Ps. xxii. 3; that is, in the church, where he hath praise and we have benefit: the church is ‘the gate of heaven,’ Gen. xxviii. 17; where God is, there heaven is. Cain himself could bewail his misery in being turned out from the church; he had the whole earth before him, but, saith he, ‘I shall be hid from thy face,’ Gen. iv. 14; that is, I am turned out from the place of thy worship, and where thy name is called upon. It is sad to be banished from the Lord’s gracious presence.

2. Sin depriveth us of God’s presence; this is the wall of separation between us and God: Isa. lix. 2, ‘Your sins have separated,’ &c. It not only provoketh God to stand at a distance from us, but worketh a strangeness in us, and maketh us shy of his presence; it cast the angels out of heaven, Adam out of Paradise, Cain out of the church. Well, then, when you are tempted to folly, bethink with yourselves: God could not endure the sight of angels when once they were defiled with sin; if I should yield to this temptation, I should never endure God, nor he me; this will either cause the Spirit to leave me, or me to leave the throne of grace; guilty souls cannot sustain the presence of God, and God doth not own the presence of guilty sinners. Peter said, Luke v. 8, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man;’ and God saith, ‘Depart from me into everlasting torments,’ Mat. xxv.

3. Observe again, Jude maketh it their act, and Peter God’s act. Jude saith, ‘they left their own habitation,’ and Peter, ‘God cast them down:’ and punishments are voluntarily contracted, founded upon some act of ours. God may pass by a creature out of his mere will, but he damneth not till we provoke him. First there is a voluntary aversion from God, and then God turneth away from us: Hosea xiii. 9, ‘O Israel! thou hast destroyed thyself.’ Our ruin is caused by the free motion of our own wills. God punisheth not willingly, and as delighting in our destruction: we sin, and so freely depart from our own happiness; we leave and then he casteth down.

4. God casteth Satan out of heaven. Do you imitate your heavenly Father; cast Satan out of your hearts. Who would entertain him whom heaven hath spewed out? It is said, Rev. xii. 8, ‘That Satan and his angels found no more place in heaven.’ Oh! then, give him not place to dwell in your hearts, Eph. iv. 17; do not entertain wrathful or lustful motions. God decreed that the evil angels should be cast out of heaven, and Christ died that they might be cast out of our hearts: John xii. 31, ‘Now shall the prince of this world be cast out.’ Oh! let him not erect a new heaven and empire in your souls! His great aim is, now he cannot get into heaven, to dwell in the hearts of men.

5. Angels, creatures of the highest excellency, are not spared when they sin: 2 Peter ii. 4, ‘God spared not the angels,’ &c. Wonder at the patience of the great God to us sinners. If a king be angry with his offending nobles, should not the scullions tremble? How come we to be of this side of hell? Go home and adore that grace that hath kept you out of the chains of darkness: Lam. iii. 22, ‘It is of the Lord’s mercy that we are not consumed,’ not swallowed up quick, not cast down to hell. If the angels in the very infancy of their creation were so soon punished for the first offence, Lord, what didst thou see in us, that, after so many offences, we should be yet alive? It is mercy, pardoning mercy, that giveth us our beings; we fail not because compassions fail not.

6. Angels were forced to leave their habitation; when they changed their nature, they changed their estate. Let all sinners tremble. Consider the instance, and you will see that no dignity and worth of the creature is of any avail, nothing can keep off the strokes of vengeance but the blood of Jesus Christ. They were angels, glorious creatures, their sin but one, and probably that in thought; yet how dreadful is their punishment! Cast out of heaven, kept in chains of darkness for a severer vengeance! Oh! then, how should we tremble that have ‘drunk in iniquity like water!’ Surely God is the same, he doth no less hate pride, obstinacy, and contempt of his grace now, than he did in times past: ‘God is but one,’ Gal. iii. 20; he acteth according to the same tenor of justice now as heretofore, &c.

7. From the word οἰκητήριον, ‘their own place,’ observe the true dwelling-place and rest is heaven; it was the habitation of the angels, and the rest of the saints. Oh! long for your home, let your hearts and your hopes be there; enter upon your eternal inheritance by degrees. The angels left their habitations, do you be always travel ling thither; let your hearts be in heaven, Col. iii. 1, your conversations be in heaven ere your persons, Phil. iii. 20. There are good angels still, blessed companions: Heb. xii. 22, 23, ‘An innumerable company of angels and spirits of just men perfected.’ A heathen could see out of a glimpse of the soul’s immortality, O praeclarum illum diem, cum ad illud animarum concilium coetumque proficiscar. There you shall see the vacant rooms of the apostate angels occupied by the saints. Say, Woe is me, that my pilgrimage is prolonged, Ps. cxx. 5.

8. They were cast from heaven into this world. Do but look upon the world in a right notion. Satan, that was not fit for heaven, is cast out into the earth, as a meet place for misery and torment: he is called ‘The ruler of the darkness of this world,’ Eph. vi. 12, and ‘The god of this world,’ 2 Cor. iv. 4. It is punishment enough to the apostate angels to be cast out into the world: the world is the devil’s workhouse and prison; one calleth it Satan’s diocese. Who would be in love with a place of bondage and punishment?

9. The devil and his angels are in the world; let us be the more cautious; he ‘compasseth the earth to and fro,’ no place can secure you from his temptation; he is everywhere ravening for the prey with an indefatigable and unwearied diligence, 1 Peter v. 8. Let us look about us: ‘Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea, for the devil is come down to you,’ Rev. xii. 12. Wherever you are, Satan is near you; the world is full of devils. When you are in the shop, the devil is there to fill your hearts with lying and deceit, as he did the heart of Ananias, Acts v.; when you are in your closets, and when you have shut the door upon you, you do not shut out Satan, he can taint a secret duty; when you are in the house of God, ministering before the Lord, Satan is ‘at your right hand ready to resist you,’ Zech. iii. 1. He is ready either to pervert your aims, or to divert your thoughts. We had need keep the heart in a humble, watchful, praying frame. God hath cast out the angels out of heaven, and now they are here upon earth, tempting the sons of men to folly and inconvenience. Be watchful, the world is the devil’s chessboard; you can hardly move back or forth, but he is ready to attack you by some temptation.

10. When grace is abused, our dejection is usually according to the degree of our exaltation; the angels from heaven are cast down to hell, the highest in the rank of creatures are now made lowest; corruptions of the best things are most noisome: ‘Thou Capernaum, which art exalted to heaven, art now brought down to hell,’ Mat. xi. 23. It was one of the chief cities of Galilee, and where our Saviour usually conversed. It is a kind of heaven to enjoy Christ in the ordinances, but now to slight this mercy will bring such confusions and miseries as are a kind of hell to you; slighting of grace, of all sins weigheth heaviest in God’s balance.

11. Spiritual judgments are most severe, and to be given up to obstinacy in sin is the sorest of judgment: it is diabolical to continue in sin; the angels left their habitation, and what followed? they lost their holiness.

12. Loss of happiness is a great judgment, it is hell enough to want God. The first part of the sentence, ‘depart from me,’ Mat. xxv. 41, is most dreadful; loss of heaven is the first part of the angels’ punishment. We in effect say now, ‘Depart from us,’ Job. xxi. 14, but God will then say, ‘Depart from me;’ ye shall see my face no more, &c.

Thus we have dispatched the first part of the angels’ punishment, their loss; we now come to the other part, their poena sensûs, their punishment of sense or pain, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness; where there is an allusion to the state of malefactors or condemned men, who are kept in prison till execution. Now the evils of a prison are two:—(1.) The darkness of the place; (2.) The hard usage of the evil-doer; suitably to which the apostle used a double notion:—(1.) They are reserved in everlasting chains; (2.) Under darkness.

I begin with the first part, in everlasting chains; whence two notes:—(1.) That the angels are kept in chains; (2.) That those chains are everlasting.

1. They are kept in chains. But what chains can hold angels? can spirits be bound with irons? I answer—They are spiritual chains, suitable to the spiritual nature of angels; such as these:—

[1.] Guilt of conscience, which bindeth them over to judgment; the consciences of wicked angels know that they are adjudged to dam nation for their sin. This is a sure chain, for it fasteneth the judgment so as you cannot shake it off; it is bound and tied upon us by the hand of God’s justice. The condition of a guilty sinner is frequently compared to a prisoner, Isa. xlii. 7; Isa. xlix. 9; Isa lxi. 1; and sin to a prison wherein we are shut up, Rom. xi. 32; Gal. iii. 22; and guilt to chains or bonds laid upon us by God the judge, Prov. v. 22; Lam. i. 14.

[2.] Their obstinacy in sinning. They are fallen so as they cannot rise again, they are called ‘wickednesses,’ Eph. vi. 12, as sinning with much malice and obstinacy; as if you should say wickedness itself. The devil’s sin is as ‘the sin against the Holy Ghost;’ a malicious, obstinate, spiteful opposition against the kingdom of Christ, such a hatred against God and Christ that they will not repent and be saved; their despair begetteth despite, and being hopeless of relief, are without purpose of repentance. They do, foolish creatures, add sin to sin, and harden themselves in an evil way, which is as a chain to hold them in God’s prison, till their final damnation; see 2 Thes. ii. 11, 12, where error and wilful persisting in disobedience is made to be God’s prison, wherein reprobate creatures are held till their punishment be consummate.

[3.] Utter despair of deliverance; they are held under their torment by their own thoughts, as a distressed conscience is said to be bound up, Isa. lxi. 1; to them there remaineth nothing but ‘a certain fearful looking for judgment and fiery indignation,’ Heb. x. 27; release they cannot look for, more judgment they do expect: Mat. viii. 29, ‘Art thou come to torment us before our time?’ Their prison door is locked with God’s own key, and as long as God sitteth upon the throne they cannot wrest the key out of his hands.

[4.] God’s power and providence, by which the angelical strength is bridled and overmastered, so as they cannot do what they would. Thus Rev. xx. 2, Satan is said to be ‘bound up for a thousand years,’ that is, in the chains of God’s power, which are sometimes straiter and sometimes looser. The devil was fain to ask leave to enter into the herd of swine, Mat. viii.

[5.] The chains of God’s eternal decree. As there is a golden chain, the chain of salvation, which is carried on from link to link, till the purposes of eternal grace do end in the possession of eternal glory, so there is an iron chain of reprobation, which begins in God’s own voluntary preterition, and is carried on in the creature’s voluntary apostasy, and endeth in their just damnation; and when once we are shut up under these bars, ‘there is no opening,’ Job xii. 14.

2. These chains are eternal chains, because the wicked angels stand guilty for ever, without hope of recovery or redemption. Every natural man is in chains, but there is hope to many of the prisoners. Christ saith, ‘Go forth;’ but those chains upon the evil angels are for ever and ever: now ad custodiam, to keep them and hold them in their lost estate; hereafter ad poenam, they are continued upon them as a part of their final punishment, when much of the liberty which now they have shall be abridged.

From hence observe these practical inferences:—

1. That sins are as it were bonds and chains. A wicked man is in bondage here and hereafter; now in snares and then in chains, here ‘taken captive ‘by Satan in his snares, 2 Tim. ii. 26, and hereafter bound up with him in chains. Sin itself is a bondage, and hell a prison. Were there nothing in sin but the present slavery, it is enough to dissuade us; but alas! this is not all, there are not only snares but chains. In the fall of the angels, how many notions are there offered to us to discover the evil of sin! They ‘left their beginning,’ and ‘lost their habitation,’ and then ‘chains of darkness.’ He that hath a mind to be a beast or a devil let him be a sinner. If you mean to quench your reason, to eclipse the glory of your creation, to disturb the quiet of your spirits, and instead of calmness and serenity of conscience, to bring in horror and confusion; if you mean to enthral and captivate your souls to every base affection, and to be at the command of every corrupt desire, then go on freely, as you do, in sinning against God. But alas! the present thraldom is nothing to what is future; all the sins that you commit will be as so many chains, binding you over to an eternal and just damnation. The good angels are at liberty to serve God, when the evil angels are shut up in the prison of their own obstinacy and wickedness. Remember this when you are convinced of a sin which you cannot leave, and fear lest it prove a chain of everlasting darkness.

2. Those chains and bonds can never be broken by us. The angels cannot break them themselves, and Christ will not, for their day of grace is past. Every one’s chains would be eternal if Christ did not loose them, and ‘open the prison-door to poor captives,’ Isa. lxi. 1. This is our advantage above the angels, that a year of liberty is proclaimed to us, and ‘an opening of the prison to them that are bound.’ Christ himself was bound with our chains. The prophet saith, Isa. liii. 8, ‘He was taken from prison and from judgment.’ He was in prison that we might go free.’ If ‘the judge had given us up to the officer, and the officer had cast us into prison,’ how long would it have been ere we had ‘payed the utmost farthing’? Luke xii. 58. Others that reject the mercy offered in Christ can never wrest themselves out of the hands of justice, but do for ever remain under the power and wrath of the living God, Heb. x. 31.

3. The devil is in chains, a cruel spirit, but under bonds. His power is less than his will and malice; he is wrathful that we may not be secure; he is chained that we may not despair; he hath no power but what is given him from above; and when God putteth any of his servants into Satan’s hands he keepeth Satan in his own hands. If you be in Satan’s hands for your exercise, remember Satan is in God’s hands for your comfort and safety. He had not power over the herd of swine without leave: Mat. viii. 31, ‘Suffer me,’ &c.; so Luke xxii. 31, he could not sift Peter till he had a commission: ‘Satan hath desired,’ &c., Job i. 2; ii. 7. Satan could not so much as touch Job’s estate or skin till leave obtained. Nay, he could not deceive Ahab, a wicked man, till God said Go, I Kings xxii. 21, 22; he is but God’s executioner: ‘He sent his evil angels among them,’ Ps. lxxviii. 49. God gave commission for the plagues of Egypt, and then the evil angels had power to execute them. The godly need not fear Satan as a disobedient angel; he is cast into the chains of God’s justice and power; and as head of the kingdom of darkness, his power is more restrained by the death of Christ, John xii. 31.

4. Observe how weak the creatures are when God marcheth in judgment against them. Guilt of conscience is one of the fallen angels’ chains. If God will but arm our own thoughts against us, he needeth not bring forces from without, there is enough in that to sink us into hell. The law needeth not bring brimstone from heaven to burn sinners, nor open the mouth of the great deep to drown them, nor shatter the frame of nature about our heads. Alas! we cannot bear up under the burden of our own consciences, or the weight of our own grief; when he layeth his finger upon the conscience, who can bear it? The angels excel in strength, and yet the impressions of honour laid upon them are too hard for them to grapple withal: Prov. xviii. 14, ‘A wounded spirit who can bear?’ as if he had said, I challenge all the world to bring me a man that is able to deal with his own conscience, when God armeth it against him.

5. That spiritual judgments of all others are most secure. To have sin punished with obstinacy and hardness in sinning this, is nothing but to have the devil’s chains laid upon us, a sad intimation that we are given up to chains of darkness. Frogs and lice and hailstones were but soft judgments to Pharaoh’s hard heart; unless God should send us quick into hell, there cannot heavier judgment befall us; nay, certainly it were better to be given up to hell torments, if there could be any expectation of deliverance, than to be given up to a spirit of sinning, for there is no end of that. Say then, Lord, whatever judgment thou bringest upon me, bring not thy heavy judgment of a hard heart; it is better by far that you should live miserably than sin freely without remorse. Bat what sins bring on this spiritual judgment? I answer—(1.) An unthankful abuse of God’s gifts; the devils had a glorious and excellent nature, but they were not thankful. Observe it when you will, you will find it true that no man was ever punished with hardness of heart, but some former merciful dispensation was abused. The heathens were not thankful for the light of nature, and therefore God ‘gave them up to vile affections.’ Rom. i. 22, 24; others ‘received not the love of the truth,’ and therefore ‘God gave them up to believe a lie, that they might be damned,’ 2 Thes. ii. 11, 12. The very ‘sin against the Holy Ghost’ is so called because it is a despiting grace received, or a devilish opposing of the grace and supernatural work of the Spirit, by which the mind is convinced of the truth. (2.) Sinning against the light; that was Satan’s sin, who was full of light, and sinned in the very face of God; and it is his sin still, malice having only put out the light of prudence, but not of his understanding, so that he knowingly sinneth; so wicked men ‘imprison the truth in unrighteousness.’ Rom. i. 18, and then God giveth them up to the sway of their own lusts and passions. There is more of malice in sins against light; you laugh at Christ before his face, outdare heaven and conscience: Esther vii. 8, ‘Will he force the queen before my face?’ &c. (3.) Sinning with the light; when malice sets wit a-work (as it doth in the devils) against God and the church; it is satanical to be wise to do evil, to make no other use of our parts than to plot wickedness, pervert the truth, and undermine religion: Jer. iv. 22, ‘They are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge.’ When you make religion yield to policy, or bend policy to ruin religion, then ‘your wisdom hath undone you,’ Isa. xlvii. 10. (4.) Malice against God and goodness; this is Satan’s direct sin. When men will not only be wicked themselves, but adversaries and malicious opposers of all that is good, this is not only to be sinners but Satans: Acts xiii. 10, ‘O thou child of the devil, and enemy of all goodness.’ Cain, that hated his brother because his works were righteous, was the devil’s patriarch. (5.) A sottish obstinacy and wilfulness, when will and humour is lifted up against conviction, Jer. ii. 25, xliv. 18; they will not, because they will not. Foolish wilfulness meeteth with penal hardness; he that will wink shall not see the sun, shine it never so brightly; such men do but lay Satan’s chains on their own will and understanding, (6.) A senseless security, notwithstanding the growth and increase of sin, when men lose all feeling and restraint, and grow more wicked but less tender, Eph. iv. 19; and so men sin freely, foully, wax worse and worse, and add new links to the chains of darkness.

6. There is little reason that we should adore him whom God holdeth in chains of darkness, that we should exalt him whom the Lord hath cast down, and make a god of him who hath made himself a devil. All sins do, as it were, set the crown upon Satan’s head; these especially—(1.) False worship: Satan is the head of idolaters; if the sacrifice was offered in an unbecoming manner, God saith it was a sacrifice offered unto devils, Lev. xvii. 7. In all false worships the devil is served either directly or obliquely, either by consequence or in the intention of the worshippers; thence those expressions, ‘table of devils,’ 1 Cor. x. 21; ‘They sacrificed to devils and not to God,’ Deut. xxxii. 17. You gratify Satan if you be not right in worship; those among Christians that worshipped towards an idol of gold and silver are said to ‘worship devils,’ Rev. ix. 20. Satan is, saith Synesius, εἰδωλοχαρὴς, a lover of images, and a patron of false worship. (2.) Worldly conversation: he is called ‘the god of this world,’ 2 Cor. iv. 4. Sensual, covetous, proud men are Satan’s votaries, at his beck and pleasure; and will you be one of the number? When Christ came to ‘dissolve Satan’s works,’ 1 John iii. 8, will you uphold them? (3.) Base fear of wicked men: you do but fear the devil in them: Rev. ii. 10, ‘Fear not; behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison.’ He that will deny the truth for fear of men, preferreth the devil before God. (4.) Being of the faction of the wicked: there is a corrupt party in the world, over whom Satan usurpeth empire and domination: ‘Rulers of the darkness of this world,’ Eph. vi. 12; Col. i. 13. Cry not up a confederacy with these; take heed how your soul entereth into that secret. I confess it is ingeniousness, a matter of Christian skill and art, to find out the snare that we may escape it. Generally they are the antichristian dark part of the world, such as are led with a blind zeal and rage to oppose the interest of righteousness, such as oppose the gospel with rage and lies: John viii. 44, ‘Ye are of your father the devil, and his lusts will ye do.’ Many that deny Satan yet may be of his faction and party.

We are now come to the second part of the punishment of pain, taken from the other inconvenience of a prison, ὑπὸ ζόφον, under darkness, in allusion to malefactors who are cast into dungeons, where, be sides the load of irons, the very darkness of the place concurreth to their misery. Light is pleasant, as giving us the sight of what is grateful in the world, of which when we are deprived, the mind, like a mill, falleth and worketh upon itself. Peter saith ‘in chains of darkness,’ as implying that God did bind them fast with their darkness and horror as with a chain; but our apostle here seemeth to make them two distinct parts of their torment, as certainly it is a more full description of it. Well, then, the proposition will be, that the apostate angels are kept under darkness.

Obs. Darkness in scripture represented three things:—First, ignorance; secondly, sin; thirdly, misery; as light, the contrary quality, implieth knowledge, holiness, and happiness. Because light discovereth all things, it is put for knowledge; because of all bodily qualities it is most pure and unmixed, therefore it is put for holiness; because it is wonderfully pleasing and delightful to sense, therefore it is put for glory. So contrariwise darkness, which is nothing else but the absence and privation of light, signifieth ignorance, John iii. 19; sin, 1 Peter ii. 9; misery, Ps. cvii. 10. Now all these three make way for one another; ignorance for sin, and sin for misery; the understanding being the great wheel of the soul, if it be not right nothing can be right, Mat. vi. 22. Ignorance maketh us stumble upon sin, and by sin we fall into the pit of everlasting darkness.

If you ask what kind of darkness is intended here? I answer—Though all may be implied, yet chiefly the darkness of misery is here intended, they being cast down from the light and glory of the highest heavens into dark and obscure habitations, where they want the sight of God and the light of his countenance. As when the sun is gone there is nothing but darkness in the world, so being banished out of the presence of God, they are fitly said to be held under darkness; for as the sun is to the corporeal world, so is God to the world of spirits, Ps. iv, 6. Now their sun is eclipsed, and by the interposition of the dark cloud of their sin and obstinacy, they cannot have the least comfortable glimpse and fruition of God; to which also may be added the horrible apprehension of their loss, and that terror and discomfort that lieth upon them, for they have only so much light left as serveth to increase their torment. I confess it is disputed by divines whether the devils can grieve for the loss of the light of God’s countenance, or the want of the beatifical vision; and the ground of doubting is, be cause there is in the devils an extreme averseness, enmity, and hatred of God and his glory; but certainly, as they are rational creatures, they cannot but be sensible of their loss, as also the damned spirits are, and so great a loss of happiness (for that is the consideration under which they are sensible of it) must needs breed horror and torment. They do not mourn for the absence of God as the saints do, out of a principle of holiness, and because God is lovely in himself, but as profitable to them; and this sense, as it is accompanied with despair, so with blasphemy and hatred of God. Surely every part of the sentence that is pronounced upon wicked men is fitted to beget terror in them; and therefore ‘depart from me’ is apprehended as a misery, as well as ‘go into everlasting torments.’ Add further to their darkness that despair that is upon them, and fearful looking for of the fiery indignation of the Lord, which desperate sorrow is expressed by ‘utter darkness and gnashing of teeth,’ Mat. xxii. 13.