Thomas Manton · 44 of 67

Verse 16. · Part 2

(2.) ‘There is nothing new under the sun,’ Eccles. i. 7. We say, ‘Is there any sorrow like unto my sorrow?’ things never were as they are now. Certainly you do not rightly inquire after this matter; the world is the world still; men have ever had the same principles, the same corruptions, the same temptations; there were Donatists then as well as Separatists now, Pelagians then as well as Arminians now, Arians then as well as Socinians now; all new lights are but old darkness revived, neither new, nor lights. It is easy to parallel what is most odious; there is a circular motion of opinions and fashions, as the sun returneth every year to the same points of his compass.

(3.) All cometh to pass by God’s providence; he is the great master of the scenes that present the world with a new stage both of acts and actors: 1 Sam. ii. 7, 8, ‘The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich; he bringeth low, and he lifteth up; he raiseth up the poor from the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among the princes, and make them inherit the crown of glory; for the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and he hath set the world upon them.’ The government of the world is in God’s hands, and he casteth down some, and raiseth up others from beggary to sovereignty, from the dunghill to glory. You see there his course is contrary to levelling; he will have some upon the throne of glory. And you see, again, that God hath a hand in all the mutations and changes that fall out in the world, and that these mutations are frequent. The world is tossed to and fro like a ball from hand to hand, that God’s sovereignty and dominion over events may the better appear, and that power may not want a bridle, nor the low condition a comfort. Again, that all the kings of the earth do hold their estates of God. Say, then, If God hath set up these persons, let me see what God will do with them.

(4.) The good of times is not to be measured by the carnal quiet of them. Physic provoketh ill humours; better they should be stirred than lie still and foment a disease. God usually cometh with a fan and a sword: we should not murmur against the sword, because of the benefit of the fan.

(5.) If every one did amend himself, the times would soon amend. Mend thyself and as many as are under thy charge, and mourn for others, and thou hast no cause to complain: Josh. xxiv. 15, ‘I and my house will serve the Lord.’ If every one did sweep before his own door, the common filth would be sooner carried away. Usually complainers do least, as the crafty lapwing will go up and down fluttering and crying to draw the fowler from her own nest. We have some secret nest of our own, and we are loath it should be rifled and exposed to public view.

(6.) The worse the times are the more exercise for grace. We have more opportunities of showing love to God than formerly, and zeal for his interests, and industry in finding out the right way. Man is never contented; sometimes we question God’s love if we meet with no opposition, and yet we complain when the ways of God are opposed.

(7.) There is an antiperistasis in grace as well as nature. You should be better in bad times, as fountain water is hottest in winter, and fire scaldeth most in frosty weather, or stars shine brightest in the darkest night; see Phil. ii. 15. When the air is infectious we are the more careful of our diet.

(8.) Complaining will not excuse duty; it argueth little faith—is not Christ king? doth not he reign?—little obedience and care of reformation; a gracious heart is most apt to return upon itself. If the times be bad, what have I done to make them better? If not, thou art one that hast made them worse.

(9.) He that is not good in bad times will be naught in better, Isa. xxvi. 10, ‘In the land of uprightness will he deal unjustly.’ A sick man thinketh to have ease in another bed, in another room; carry him thither, his pain continueth. If a carnal man had lived in the prophets’ times or the apostles’ times, he would be the same as now; see Mat. xxiii. 29, 30. A briar is a briar wherever it groweth; change of times will not do the work without a change of heart. Adam sinned in paradise, the apostate angels in heaven; Lot was unchaste in the mountains, where were none but his own family; in a howling wilderness where they had no outward enticements, the Israelites were given to fleshly lusts.

Secondly, The next part of use is to rebuke murmuring in our own private case. By way of consideration take these helps:—

1. A little is enough; too much is a snare: Luke xii. 15, ‘Man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of what he possesseth.’ The wants of nature are very few, till lust make it ravenous; a garment too long will soon prove a dirty rag; the greater gates open to the greater temptations and cares; it is a hard lesson, to ‘learn to abound,’ Phil, iv. 12. We say such a one would do well to be a, lord or a lady; it is a harder thing than you think it to be. A little sufficeth to keep us till we come to heaven; if we have clothes for warmth, though not for pomp, it is enough. What need a Christian care how, finely dust and ashes be wrapped up, or of what stuff his excrements be made of?

2. God hath a hand in all things,. Ps. xxxix. 9, Isa. xxxviii. 15. God is the party with whom we have to do in sickness or any other trouble; every wheel moveth according to the motion of the first; when we see the hand of God, it is a piece of religious manners to keep silence.

3. God seeth what is fittest for us. If a man should be left to carve out his own portion, he would be his own greatest enemy. None hath more love than God, more wisdom and justice than God; therefore count the present estate best, because it is of his choosing. Should the shepherd choose the pastures, or the sheep? We are all for the delicacies of pleasure and prosperity;. children think green fruit the best diet because it suiteth with their appetite. What a strange creature would man be if he were what he would be himself! Well, then, let us leave it to God to choose our portion, and to appoint us what part we shall act in the world. Usually we set up a court in our own affections, and enact laws, prescribe to providence, we would have this and we would have that; and when our expectations are not answered we fall a-murmuring. It is very hard to repeal the decrees of our own will; therefore it is good to resign ourselves to the disposal of providence, as David doth, 2 Sam. xv. 26, 27; and to keep our desires low till God’s will be declared. It is easier to add than to subtract, and to ascend with providence, when ‘the master of the feast biddeth us to sit higher,’ than to be compelled to descend and lie in the dust.

4. If it be bad, it might have been worse, in regard of God’s absolute power and our desert. Your sufferings are not so great as your sins: Ezra ix. 13, ‘Thou hast punished us less than we have deserved.’ God is too just to do us wrong. If he will exchange hell for Babylon, there is much of mercy in it, nothing of injustice. If you do not deserve this usage from the hands of men, you have deserved this, and much more, from God: it is deserved of God, and therefore to be borne patiently; it is not deserved of men, therefore to be borne cheerfully. Whose cross would we bear, Christ’s or the thieves’ cross? When we suffer deservedly and as malefactors, we bear the thieves’ cross.

5. The Lord disposeth all for the benefit of his own people, so that if it be not good for the present, it will turn to good, Rom. viii. 28. If God should not thus exercise us, we would have more cause to complain. He is too gentle a physician that lets his patient die for want of putting him to the trouble of physic. Consult with God’s aim. rather than your present feeling; let him cut and burn here that he may save hereafter—Domine, hic ure, hic seca, &c.

6. Murmuring is so bad in none as in God’s children. It doth not become their privileges, their vows, their hope. God in covenant is theirs, and he hath all things that hath him that made all things: all things are comprised in God. If our lumber be changed into silver, our silver into gold, our gold into one rare pearl, that is all the other virtually. If God hath given us himself, his Christ, his Spirit, will not all this content us? It doth not become our vows, and the promises which thou madest to God when thy terrors were upon thee; then thou didst say, O Lord, let me have Jesus Christ, and I will be content, though I should beg my bread, and be reduced to rags, and extremity of want. When thy heart was stung with sin, thus desirous wert thou to reckon upon Christ as thy all-sufficient portion. How grew the ‘consolations of God to be small’ with thee? Job xv. 11. Now God trieth whether thou wilt stand to thy word, and thou fallest a-murmuring: it may be just with God to dip his arrows in venom and vengeance, and shoot them into thy soul again. Once more, it is below your hopes; you should have a spirit as high as heaven, and will you storm at every petty loss? as he said, ‘Art thou the king’s son-in-law, and art so lean from day to day?’ are you heirs of glory, and stand so much upon trifles? It should -not be.

Having given you some general considerations against murmuring, I now come to particular cases.

1. Dost thou lie under deep pressing wants? Divers have been put to great straits that have done God more glory. Musculus, a great divine, yet forced to serve a weaver for his subsistence; Paul made tents that he might not be burdensome, and so prejudice men against the gospel; the more destitute, the more sensible of the care of providence. God beareth the purse for us; when we have but from hand to mouth, we are still supplied: the more immediately you live upon God, the more you begin the life of heaven, where God is all in all. Deep poverty is the sauce of the present life. Austin saw a beggar frisking after his belly was filled; he could find no such delight after the use of the creatures, being daily and abundantly supplied. The spectacle much wrought upon him.

2. Hast thou sustained great losses? If God hath lent us blessings, and taken them again, shall we grudge them to the right owner? He took part that gave all.

3. Dost thou endure great pains? There is a gradation in miseries; those that light upon the estate do not sit so close as those that light upon the body, and those that light upon the body are not so terrible as those that light upon the soul: ‘A wounded spirit, who can bear?’ Bodily pains is the case we now speak to: you are full of pains, but Christ on the cross suffered more; but he was God-man. The martyrs suffered more, Heb. xi. 35: they were tortured, ἐτυμπανίσθησαν—they were stretched out like a drum; but those were rare instances, and had a singular assistance. Paul’s was an ordinary case; his ‘thorn in the flesh,’ 2 Cor. xii., was some great bodily pain; but Paul was a choice spirit: heathens have borne it stoutly. Epicurus was full of solace in a fit of the colic, ob memoriam inventorum, by calling to mind his inventions in philosophy; and Tully speaketh of Possidonius the philosopher, that whilst he was under a great fit of the stone, could discourse freely that nothing was good but virtue, nothing evil but vice; and when his pain twinged him, would say, Nihil agis, dolor! quamvis sis molestus, nunquam confitebor te esse malum—pain, thou dost nothing alter my opinion; though thou art troublesome, yet thou art not evil. But these were men that obsti nately maintained an insensibleness. Little children have endured great pains, and wilt thou startle at that which poor little children have suffered? Besides all this, it is God’s design to try you. There is a great deal of valour to be showed in the sick-bed: either the end of it will be life or death: if death, it is the last brunt, bear it patiently: ‘Those enemies which ye now see, ye shall see them no more,’ Exod. xiv. 13; heaven will make amends for all: if life, you will be ashamed, when well, that you had no more patience whilst sick. Passive valour is the glory of a Christian; active valour, that is fomented with plenty of blood and spirits, is a poor thing to it. Great soldiers, that will venture upon the mouth of a cannon, yet tremble at a disease and lingering death; when they are sick they are under God’s arrest, &c.

Thus I have given you remedies against murmuring by way of consideration: now by way of practice.

1. Divert the stream another way. As to the disposition of heart, take this rule: Be still examining thyself rather than judging God, Ps. iv. 4. If God seemeth to neglect me, have not I neglected him? &c. As to the outward expression of murmuring, turn the streams again; express thy sorrows often in a way of prayer, thy rejoicings in a way of praise. Prayer cureth murmuring, for that is a duty wherein we profess subjection and dependence: and besides, utterance giveth ease to the soul: an oven stopped is the more hot within; complain more to God, and we shall not complain of God. Praise cureth murmuring, Job i. 23; as long as we can give thanks, we will not be querulous: but when we are disdainful of blessings, and we say, What! no more? Mal. i. 2, the distemper is getting ground upon the soul.

2. Affect rather to be good than great. None murmur because of the smallness of grace; that is not their complaint; but because of the lowness of their condition in the world. A man that looketh after the increase of grace, he can bless God for his outward decays, 2 Cor. iv. 16, and look upon murmurings as worse than pains or losses; those are afflictions, these are sins. So much for the first crime charged.

The next part of their character is walking after their own lusts. This is fitly subjoined to the former, for lusts make men fro ward and hard to be pleased, and the persons here described were exact libertines, making their lusts their rule and their law; yea, the most brutish of all lusts, ‘the lusts of the flesh; and therefore in Peter it is, 2 Peter ii. 10, ‘That walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness.’ How portentious they were for impurities in this kind we told you before. Their walking after their lusts implieth their giving up themselves to such a course, contrary to all fear of God, care of laws, or restraint of nature.

The point is, that it is an argument of ungodliness when men walk after their own lusts. The apostle, applying the prophecy of Enoch against ungodly men, bringeth this as a part of the charge, that they ‘walk after their own lusts.’ I shall inquire:—

1. What lusts are?

2. What it is to walk after their own lusts?

3. Prove it to be a note of ungodliness.

First, What lusts are? This I have answered elsewhere; see my commentary on James i. 14. For the present, let it suffice to note, that lust is either original or actual.

1. It signifieth our original proneness to all that is evil, James i. 14.

2. Actual lust, so it signifieth any evil motion of the heart that swerveth from the law of God, more especially our inordinate desires and inclinations to pleasures, honours, or profit. Sometimes they are called ‘fleshly lusts,’ 1 Peter ii. 11, as carrying us out to the satisfaction of our bodily and brutish appetites; sometimes ‘worldly lusts,’ Titus ii. 12, because they are stirred by worldly objects. Lusts are the fever of the soul, unnatural heats, transgressing the laws of reason and bounds of religion.

Secondly, What doth this walking imply? It is elsewhere expressed by ‘serving divers lusts and pleasures,’ Titus iii. 3, and by ‘fulfilling the desires of the flesh and the mind,’ Eph. ii. 3. It noteth:—

1. A willing subjection to lust as a law or as a master, The one is implied in ‘walking after our lusts,’ the other in ‘serving our lusts,’ when men do as they please, and let their sensual heart give law to the whole man. A child of God may be overcome by his lusts, but he doth not walk after them, or serve them; he may be foiled, but he doth not give over the combat, and is still resisting, striving, praying, calling in the help of the Spirit; his soul suffereth a rape by lust, there is not a plenary consent on his part.

2. Customary practice and observance. Walking is a progressive motion, and so implieth men’s course and the tenor of their lives. A child of God his walking is in the Spirit, Gal. v. 16, and doth not fulfil the lusts of the flesh; but it is a wicked man’s work and employment.

3. A fond indulgence; they are so far from thwarting lusts, that they provide, contrive for them: Rom. xiii. 14, ‘Make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.’ They nourish their hearts, fondle lust, and make a wanton of it; they do not crucify it, and set up a course of mortification against it.

Thirdly, This is a note of unregeneracy, or a state of ungodliness. The apostle describeth the natural state by this ‘serving,’ Titus iii. 3; and this ‘fulfilling,’ Eph. ii. 3; and when the Holy Ghost doth deride the pride and folly of young men in giving themselves up to a course of lust and vanity, he saith, ‘Go, walk in the way of thine own heart,’ Eccles. xi. 9; and the negative or privative work of regeneration is called a ‘putting off the old man with his deceitful lusts,’ Eph. iv. 22, and it standeth with good reason:—

1. Because they that walk after their lusts seek to cherish that which Christ came to destroy, and so go about to defeat the Redeemer, and to hinder him from obtaining his purpose in their hearts. Christ came ‘to destroy the works of the devil,’ 1 John iii. 8, ἵνα λύσῃ, to untie and loosen those cords of vanity wherewith Satan hath bound us. The works of the devil are lusts, which are of his inspiring and cherishing: John viii.44, ‘Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.’ Now when Christ cometh to loose these cords, carnal men tie them the faster, and therefore certainly are to be reckoned to the devil, and not unto God. Every degree of service done to Satan is an act of treason and disloyalty to Christ; therefore, when men make it their work to fulfil their lust, they renounce all allegiance to Christ.

2. They that walk after their lusts have not taken the rule of the new creature upon them. The new man hath another master and another rule; the renewed soul is not governed by lust, but by the law of God, Gal. vi. 16. If we have not changed our rule, it is a sign we have not changed our master.

3. They that walk after their lusts never felt the power of grace, for ‘the grace of God teacheth us to deny all ungodliness and worldly lusts,’ Titus ii. 11, 12. How doth it teach us? I answer—(1.) Partly by diversion, by acquainting us with better things in Christ: Rom. xiii. 14, ‘Put ye on the Lord Jesus, and make not provision for the lusts of the flesh.’ Love cannot lie idle in the soul, the mind of man must have some oblectation and delight; either love runneth out in lust or in respects to God, either to heavenly or worldly things. When we only savour the things of the flesh, it is a sign we never tasted how sweet God is in Christ. (2.) Partly by way of help and supply; it planteth opposite principles, and makes use of an opposite power; it plants opposite principles, a new nature that hath new desires and delights, 2 Peter i. 4, and maketh use of an opposite power, which is the Spirit of God, Rom. viii. 13. (3.) Partly by way of argument. Grace out-pleadeth lust; it urgeth the unsuitableness of it to our condition. See Rom. xiii. 13; 1 Peter iv. 3, i. 14; Rom. vi. 2. To our vows; baptism implieth a renunciation of sins, 1 Peter iii. 21. It is an answer to God’s demands: Credis?—Credo. Abrenuncias?—Abrenuncio. Spondes?—Spondeo. Therefore he that liveth under the full power of lust hath forgotten his baptismal vows, 2 Peter i. 8, ‘for gotten that he was purged from his old sins.’ It pleadeth also the unsuitableness of it to our hopes, 1 Peter ii. 11. We are passing on to another country, where we shall enjoy a pure and sinless estate.

Let us now apply the point:—

Use 1. It dissuadeth us from walking after our own lusts. You that are Christians should deny them, and not gratify them, otherwise you renounce your allegiance to God. Lust sets up another lord, and maketh us stand in defiance of the God that made us; his laws call for one thing, and your lusts crave another. God saith, ‘Put off the old man with his deceitful lusts,’ and you say, We will keep them. Can they be good subjects that live in defiance of their sovereign’s laws? If a prince should send a message to a city not to harbour such and such traitors, but to search them out, and bring them to condign punishment; if they never look after them, yea, are angry with those that discover them, it argueth they do inhaunt with traitors, and are enemies to their prince. We are often warned in God’s name to look to our sinful lusts, to put them away; and we go home and never regard it, nay, are angry with those that grate upon the conscience: Herod would not have his Herodias touched. We take it heinously when the word beareth hard upon our hearts; what do we but show ourselves traitors to the crown of heaven?

2. Otherwise you renounce your interest in Christ: Gal. v. 24, ‘They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts thereof He doth not say they are Christ’s that take up this opinion and naked belief that he was crucified, or died for sinners, but they are Christ’s that feel that he was crucified, that, by the virtue of his cross, do crucify their own lusts and sinful affections. What! a Christian, and yet worldly! a Christian, and yet sensual! a Christian, and yet proud! You that are given to pleasures, do you believe in Christ that was a man of sorrow? You that are carried after the pomp and vanity of the world, do you believe in Christ, whose ‘kingdom was not of this world’? You that are proud and lofty, do you profess an interest in Christ, who said, ‘Learn of me, for I am humble and lowly’? It is in vain for you to talk of his dying for sinners, and boasting of his cross, when you never felt the virtue of it, Gal. vi. 14. What experience have you that his cross was the cross of the Son of God, when your hearts linger as inordinately after carnal things as ever? Have you got anything by it? Do you feel any weakening of lusts? any decay of sin? Are you ‘planted into the efficacy of his death’? Rom. vi. 5. If not, how can you glory in the cross of Christ?

3. Otherwise you are not acquainted with the Spirit; his work is to mortify lusts, Rom. viii. 13, and ‘they that are after the flesh do savour of the things of the flesh; and they that are after the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.’ Rom. viii. 5. After whom do ye walk? After your own lusts, or after the Spirit of God?

4. God doth not only require you in point of sovereignty to put away your lusts, but also pleadeth with you upon terms of grace: Titus ii. 11, 12, ‘The grace of God that bringeth salvation, teacheth you to deny worldly lusts.’ Grace hath denied us nothing, it hath given us Christ, and all things with him; and shall we stick at our lusts, that are not worth the keeping? Nature is much addicted to these lusts, but surely God loves Christ much more than we love the world; his love is infinite and unlimited, like his essence, yet God gave up the Son of his love. Grace counteth nothing too dear for us, not the blood of Christ, the joys of heaven; and shall we count anything too dear to part with for grace’s sake? God forbid! A ‘right eye,’ and a ‘right hand,’ Mat. v. 29, cannot be so dear to us as Christ was to God. What a cost hath grace been at to redeem us and save us! and shall grace be at all this cost for nothing? If God had commanded us a greater thing, ought we not to have done it? If to ‘give the body to be burned,’ to offer ‘the first-born for the sin of the soul’? Considering his absolute right over the creature, he might have required thy life, and thy children’s life, but he only requireth thy lusts, things not worth the keeping, the bane of the soul, a bad inmate, which, if we know its pestilent influence, we needed no more arguments to turn out of doors. Thy lusts God requireth; things we are bound to part with, to preserve the integrity and perfection of our natures, if God had never dealt with us in a way of grace. But how shall grace plead in vain when it presseth to deny lusts? It will be the shame and horror of the damned to all eternity that they have stood with God for a trifle, that they would not part with dung for gold, with a little brutish contentment for the consolations of the Spirit, especially when grace, which hath so deeply pre-engaged us, pleadeth for it.

5. Consider what lust is; it is the disease of the soul. Natural desire is like the calor vitalis—the vital heat; but lust is like a feverish heat, that oppresseth nature. We should get rid of it as we would of a disease; the satisfaction of it is sweet to carnal nature, so is drink to a man in a fever. Who would desire a fever to relish his drink? Better be without the disease than enjoy the pleasure of the satisfaction; better mortify lust than satisfy it; in the issue it will be sweeter. I am sure the pains of mortification will not be so bitter as the horrors of everlasting darkness. Lust let alone beginneth our hell; it is a burning heat that at length breaketh out into everlasting flames. Again, lust is the disorder of nature: as it is monstrous in the body if the head be there where the feet should be, and the feet there where the head should be; such a deordination is there in the soul when the affections carry it; and when reason should be in dominion, we suffer lust to take the throne. Man rightly constituted, his actions are governed in this manner: the understanding and conscience prescribe to the will; the will, according to right reason and conscience, moveth the affections; the affections, according to the command and counsel of the will, move the bodily spirits and members of the body; but by corruption there is a manifest inversion and change; pleasures affect the senses, the senses corrupt the fantasy, the fantasy moveth the bodily spirits, they the affections, and by their violence and inclination the will is enslaved, and the mind blinded, and so man is carried headlong to his own destruction. Now, shall we cherish these lusts and brutish appetites? The Lord forbid!

6. It is lusts that hinder the peace of the world, our own peace. How quietly and happily would men live if they were more mortified! Men desire more than they have, and so are made poor, not by want so much as desire. He that expects little is soon satisfied. It is our own passions that raise a storm in the soul. A man that is vile and little in his own eyes, when others contemn and slight him, they do but ratify his private opinion of himself; and who can be angry with others because they are of the same judgment with ourselves? Take away the lust and the trouble ceaseth. What need Haman be troubled that Mordecai did not bow the knee, but that he looked for it? Nay, lusts trouble our peace of conscience. Lusts let alone end in gross sins, and gross sins in desperation. Love of pleasures, if uncontrolled, will end in drunkenness, or adultery; and envy, in murder and violence. Sins unchecked grow licentious and unruly. Judas allowed his covetousness, and it brought him to betray his Master, and that brought him to the halter. Gehazi was first blasted with covetousness, and then with leprosy, and so became a burden to himself; Ananias and Sapphira, taken off by a sudden judgment. The devil loveth by lust to bring us to sin, and by sin to shame, and by shame to horror and despair; so that, if we walk after our lusts, it proveth a sad walk in the issue. Again, it disturbeth our peace with others. These libertines were yokeless, and could not endure restraints, because wedded to their own lusts. It is not opinions divide the world so much as lusts and interests.