John Flavel · 32 of 34

Sermon 7. Matth. 16:26 · Part 6

3. Dare any of you give the thoughts of your hearts as certain conclusions under your hands, and stand by them to the last, and venture all upon them.

Wretched Atheist! Bethink yourself, pause a while, examine your own breast; whatever your vile atheistic thoughts sometimes are, is there not at other times a fear of the contrary? A jealousy that all these things which you deride and sport the wicked fancy with, may, and will prove true at last? When you read or hear that text, John 3:18. "He that believeth not is condemned already;" his mittimus is already made for hell: does not your conscience give you a secret gird, like a stitch in your side? Dare you venture all upon this issue, that if those things you find in the word be true, you will stand to the hazard of them? If that be a truth, Mark xvi 16, "He that believeth not shall be damned," you will be content to be damned? Or if, Rom. viii. 13 be a truth, That "they who live after the flesh shall die," you will run the hazard, and bear the penalty of eternal death? If Heb. xii. 14 prove true, That "without holiness no man shall see God," you will be content to be banished from his presence for evermore? Speak your hearts in this matter, and tell us, do not you live between atheistic surmises, that all these are but cunning artifices, and fears, that at last they will prove the greatest verities.

4. Has not God given you all the satisfaction you can reasonably desire of the undoubted truth and certainty of his word? What would you have which you have not already? Would you have a voice from heaven? The scriptures you read or hear are a more sure word than such a voice would be, 1 Pet. i. 19. Or would you have a messenger from hell? He that believes not the witten word, neither would believe "if one should rise from the dead," Luke xvi. 81. View the innate characters of the scripture, is it not altogether pure and holy, full of Divine wisdom and awful majesty, and in every respect such as evidences its author to be the wise, holy, and just God, who searches the hearts and reins? Look upon the seals and confirmations of it: has not God confirmed it by divers miracles from heaven, a seal which neither men nor devils could counterfeit? And do not you see the blessing and power of God accompanying it in the conversion and wonderful change of men’s hearts and lives, which can be done by no other hand than God’s? Say not, the miracles, which confirm the gospel, are but uncertain traditions, and except you yourselves see then done, you cannot believe them. There are a thousand things which you do believe, though you never saw them; and what you require for your satisfaction, every man may require the same for his; and so Christ must live again in all parts of this world, and repeat his miracles over and over in all ages to satisfy the unreasonable incredulity of those that question their truth, after the fullest confirmation and seal has been given, that is capable to be given, or the heart of man can desire should be given; and if all this should be done, you might be as far from believing as now you are; for many of those that saw and heard the things wrought by Christ contradicted and blasphemed, and so might you.

5. Satan, who undermines your assent to these things, is forced to give his own: he that tempts you to look on them as fables, himself knows and is convinced that they are realities; "The devils also believe and tremble," James ii. 19. They know and feel the truth of these things, though it be their great design and interest to shake your assent to them. They know Christ is the Son of God, and that there will be a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness, and that there are torments prepared for themselves, and all whom they seduce from God, Matth. viii. 29. If you ungod God, you must unman yourselves: yea, not only make yourselves less than men, but worse than devils.

6. In a word, let your own heart, O Atheist, be judge, whether these be real doubts still sticking in your minds, after you have done all that becomes men to do for satisfaction in such important cases. Or whether they be not such principles as you willingly foment and nourish in your hearts as a protection to your sensual lusts, whose pleasures you would fain leave without interruptions and overawings by the fears of a judgement to come, and a righteous retribution from a just and terrible God! Examine your hearts in that point, and you will soon find the cheat to be in that I here point you to: you have not studied the word impartially, nor brought your doubts and scruples with an humble, unbiased, teachable spirit to those that are wise and able to resolve them, much less prayed for the Spirit of illumination; but willingly entertained whatever atheistic wits invent, or the devil suggests, as a defence against the checks of conscience and fears of hell in the way of sin. You are loath those things should be true which the scriptures speak, and are glad of any colourable argument or pretence to still your own consciences. Is not this the case? The Lord stop your desperate course, your paths lead to hell.

The ninth way of losing the precious soul opened

IX. Precious souls are daily plunged into the gulf of perdition by profaneness and debauchery. How many every where lie wallowing in the puddle? glorying in their shame, and running into all excess of riot? The hypocrite steals to hell in a private, close way of concealed sin; but the profane gallop along the public road at noon day; "They declare their sin as Sodom, and hide it not;" Isa iii. 9. "The show of their countenance testifieth against them." The hypocrite has devotion in his countenance, and heaven in his mouth; you know not by his words and countenance whither he is going; but the profane hide it not, they are past shame, and above blushing at the most horrid impieties. Look, as God has some servants more eminent, forward, and courageous in the ways of godliness than others, men that will not hide their principles, or be ashamed of the ways of godliness in the face of danger; so the devil has some servants as eminent for wickedness who scorn to sneak to hell by concealment of their wickedness, but avow and own it, without fear or shame, in the open sight of heaven and earth. Wherever they come, they defile the air they breathe in with horrid blasphemies and obscene discourses not to be named, and leave a strong scent of hell behind them.

This age has brought forth multitudes of these monsters, the reproach and shame of the nation that bred them. I have little hope to stop any of them in their career and full speed to hell. They have lost the sense of sin, the restraints of shame and fear; and then what is left to check them in their course? I cannot hope that such a discourse as this shall ever come into their hands, except it be to sacrifice it to the flames; yet not knowing the ways of providence, which are unsearchable, and what use God may make upon one occasion or another of these following considerations, I will adventure to drop a few words upon these forlorn sinners, as far as they seem to be gone beyond recovery; beseeching the Lord to make way for these things to their hands and hearts, and make them the instruments of pulling some of them as brands out of the burning.

The ninth way to hell, by profaneness, stopped

1. And first, let it be laid to heart, that though the case and state of many thousand souls be doubtful and uncertain, so that neither themselves nor any other know what they are, or to whom they belong! yet your condition, O profane sinner, is without controversy, miserable and forlorn; all men know whose you are, and whither you are going. The apostle appeals, in this case, to the bar of every man’s reason and conscience, as a thing allowed and yielded by all, Eph. v 5. "For this ye know, (says he) that no whoremonger, or unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God." This is a clear case, there is no controversy about it. Many there be in a doubtful case, but no doubt of these, they are fast and sure in the power of Satan: and as sure as God is a God of truth, they that die in this condition shall never see his face. And to the same purpose again, 1 Cor. vi. 9. "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God." Know ye not? says he, q. d. "Sure you cannot be so ignorant and blind to think that there is any room in heaven for such wretches as these. If the righteous be scarcely saved, where shal1 the sinner and ungodly appear? If all strictness, holiness, self-denial, diligence, be all little enough to win heaven, what hope can there be of those that not only cast off all duties of religion, but also cast themselves into all the opposite ways and courses which directly lead to damnation;" He that refused his food endangers his life; but he that drinks poison, certainly and speedily destroys it.

2. As far as you are gone in a course of profaneness, you are not yet gone beyond the reach of mercy and all hopes of salvation, if now at last, after all your debaucheries and profaneness, the Lord touch your hearts with the sense of your sinful and miserable state, and turn your feet to his testimonies. When the apostle, in 1 Cor. vi. 9,10, had told us the doom of such men, upon the supposition of their perseverance in that course, yet presently adds, as a motive to their repentance, an example of mercy upon such wretches as these. "And such were some of you, but ye are washed," ver. 11. The golden sceptre of free grace has been held forth to many, as profane and notorious sinners as you, to blaspheming Saul, to a Mary Magdalene, to a Manasseh. It is not the greatness of the sin, but the impenitence and infidelity of the sinner that ruins him. Well, then, there is a certainty of damnation if you go on, and yet a possibility of forgiveness and mercy before you; a mercy in valuable.

3. Nay, this is not all; but in some respect there is more probability and hope of your return and repentance, than there is of many others who have led a more sober, smooth, and civil life than you have done. Your profaneness has more dishonoured God, but the morality and civility of some men secure them faster in the snare of the devil. They have many things in themselves to build up their presumptuous hopes upon, but you have nothing. It is hard for conviction to reach that man’s conscience that has righteousness of his own to trust in; but methinks it should have an easier access to yours, whose notorious courses lay your consciences naked and bare before the word to be wounded by it. Christ’s ministry had little success among the Pharisees, who were righteous in their own eyes, but it wrought effectually upon publicans’ and sinners. Hence Christ told them, Matth. xxi. 31. that "publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of God before them." Publicans were esteemed the worst of men, and harlots the worst of women; yet the one, and the other, as vile as they were, stood fairer for conviction, and consequently for salvation, than those that thought they needed no repentance. All this is matter of hope, and runs into a powerful motive and loud call to repentance. "He that has an ear to hear, let him hear."

The tenth way leading to destruction marked

X. Deep and fixed prejudices against godliness, and the sincere professors thereof, precipitate thousands of souls into their own ruin and damnation.

It was not without a weighty reason, that Christ denounced that woe upon the world, Matth. xviii. 7. "Woe unto the world, because of offences." The poor world will lie ruined by scandals and prejudices; they will take such offences at the ways of godliness, that they will never have good thoughts of them any more. "This sect is everywhere spoken against," Acts xxviii. 22. and so Christians are condemned, δια την φημην, because of the common reproach, as Justin Martyr complained. All the scandals which fall out in the church, see so many swords and daggers put into the hands of the wicked world to murder their own souls withal. Some have sucked in such opinions of the ways of godliness as make them irreconcilable enemies to them, and fierce opposers of them. And from hence are most of the persecutions that befall the people of God. When you see showers of slanders and reproaches going before, expect storms of persecutions coming after. Slanders beget prejudices, and these prepare for persecutions. O how keen and fierce are the minds of many against the upright and innocent servants of God, whom they have first represented to themselves in such an odious dress and character, as the devil has drawn them in, upon their fancies and imaginations! So the primitive Christians were represented to the heathens as monsters, and their conventions in the night, occasioned by the fury of persecutors, were reported to be for lascivious and barbarous ends, to deflower virgins, and murder innocent children: And by this artifice the Heathens were secured against conversion to Christ. This has been the policy of hell front the beginning, and it has prospered so much in the world, that Satan has no reason to change his band. But how may this plot of hell be defeated, and the ruin of souls prevented?

The tenth way of destroying souls shut up by two counsels

1. It will be impossible to prevent the ruin of a great part of the world by prejudices against the ways of godliness, except those who profess them, walk more holily and conformably to the rule and pattern of Christ, whose name is called upon by them. I shall therefore first address my discourse to the professors of religion, beseeching them, in the bowels of Christ, to take pity upon the multitude of souls which are daily ruined and destroyed by their scandals and miscarriages. Did you live according to the rules you profess, "your well-doing would put to silence the ignorance of foolish men," 1 Pet. ii. 15. and consequently the ruin of many might be prevented. I remember Bernard, speaking of the lewd and loose life of the priests of his time, sighs out this just and bitter complaint to God about it; Misera eorum conversatio plebis tuae miserabilis subversio est: O Low! said he, their miserable conversation is the miserable subversion of your people. O! of how many, who glory in the title of the sons of the church, may Christ say as Jacob did of his two lewd sons, Simon and Levi, "You have troubled me, to make me to stink among the inhabitants of the land," Gen. 34:30.

And how many professors, who pretend to more than ordinary reformation and holiness, do shed soul-blood by their scandalous conversations. Salvian brings in the wicked of his age upbraiding the looseness of Christians, in this manner; "Behold, those men who boast themselves redeemed from the tyranny of Satan, and profess themselves dead to the world, yet are conquered by the lusts of it." And Cyprian, long before his day, brings in the heathens thus insulting over looser Christians: "Where is that catholic law which they believe? Where are the examples of piety and chastity, which they should learn? They read the gospel, yet are immodest; they hear the apostles, yet are drunk." O professors! where are your bowels to the poor souls of sinners? If your neighbour’s ox or ass fall into the pit, you are bound to deliver him, if you can; and will you not do as much for a precious soul, as you would do for a beast? Nay, you dig pits, by your scandalous lives, to destroy them. If you sin, there are instruments enough to spread it, and multitudes of souls ready prepared to take the infection. Say not, if they do, the fault is theirs; for though they are principals in the murder of their own souls, by taking the scandal, yet you are accessories in giving it: He is a mad man that will kill himself with a sword, end he no better that will put it into his hand.

O, therefore, if you have any regard to the precious souls of men, live up to the rules of your profession! O, be blameless and harmless, the sons of God without rebuke, in the midst of a perverse and froward generation! Let the heavenliness of your conversation stop those mouths that accuse you as men of a worldly spirit; let them see, by your moderation in seeking it, your patience in losing it, your readiness in distributing it, that it is a groundless calumny under which your names suffer. Let them see, by your apparel, company, and discourses, you are not such proud, lofty spirits, as you are represented to be. Convince them, by your flexibleness to all things that are lawful and expedient, by manifesting, as much as in you lies, that it is the pure bond and tie of conscience, which keeps you from compliance in all other things, and by your meekness in suffering, for such non-compliance, that you are not such turbulent, factious incendiaries, as the wicked world slanderously reports you to be. Convince the world by your exact righteousness in all your civil dealings, and by the lip of truth in all your promises and engagements, that you have the fear of God in your hearts, as well as the livery of Christianity upon your backs. In a word, so live, that none may have just ground to believe the impudent slanders the devil raises in the world against you. Let your light so shine before men, that you may glorify your Father which is in heaven. Without your care and circumspection, the shedding of a world of precious soul-blood can never be prevented.

2. Let me advise and beseech all men to be so just to others, and merciful to their own souls, as not to cast them away for ever, by receiving prejudices against godliness, from the miscarriages of some, who make more than a common profession of it. To prevent this fatal effect of scandal and prejudice at religion, I desire a few particulars may be impartially weighed.

First, Very many of those scandals, bandied up and down the world against the professors of godliness, are devised and forged in hell, as so many traps and snares to catch and destroy men’s souls, to beget an irreconcilable aversion and enmity in men to the ways of God. "They devise deceitful matters (says the Psalmist) against them that are quiet in the land," Psal. xxxv. 20. So Jer. xviii. 18. "Come, say they, let us devise devices against Jeremiah, and smite him with the tongue". And there is as little equity in the credulous receiver, as there is honesty in the wicked forger of these slanders: with one arrow of censure you wound no less than three, viz. the honour of God, your innocent brother, and your own souls: As to the two former wounds, they will in due time be healed; God will vindicate his own name fully, and the reputation of his innocent servants shall be cleared, and repaired abundantly; but, in the mean time, your souls may perish by the wounds prejudices have given, so that you may never be reconciled to godliness and its professors while you live, but turn scoffers and persecutors of them.

Secondly, Examine whether the matters that are changed upon them as their crimes, be not their duties. Sometimes it falls out to be so; and if so, you fight more immediately and directly against God, than men. This was David’s case, Psal. lxix. 10. "When I wept, and chastened my soul, that was to my reproach;" my piety was turned to reproach. They called his tears crocodiles tears, and his fastings, hypocritical shadows of devotion and humility. Thus the very matter of his duty was turned into scorn and reproach. And so it was with the primitive Christians, their very owning of themselves to be Christians was crime enough to condemn them.

Thirdly, If professors of religion do in some things act unbecoming their holy profession, yet every slip and failing in their lives, is no sufficient warrant for you to censure their persons as hypocrites; much less to fall upon religion itself, and condemn it for the faults of them that profess it. There is many an upright heart overtaken by temptation. You see their miscarriages, but you see not their humiliations and self-condemnations before God for them. "Foul, and fearful (says a grave divine) was the scandal of David; and what was the issue? Presently the enemies of God and godliness began to lift their heads, and fall upon David‘s religion, 2 Sam. xxii. They blasphemed the name of God. O! this is he that was so grand a zealot, that the zeal of God’s house did eat him up. This is the man, that, out of his transcendent zeal, danced before the ark; this is he that prayed thrice a day, at morning, noon, and night: This is he that was so precise and strict in his family, that a wicked person should not dwell in his house. This your great, precise zealot, has defiled the wife, and murdered the husband. Now you see what his religion is, now you see what comes of this profession of so much holiness and godliness."

O that men would seriously consider their evil in such censures as these! what is all this to religion? Does religion any way countenance, or patronise such practices? Nay, does it not impartially and severely condemn them? It is the glory of the Christian religion, that it is pure and undefiled, James i. 27. These practices flow from no principle of religion, nor are chargeable upon it, for it teaches men the very contrary, Tit. ii. 11,12. If I see a Papist sin boldly, or an Arminian slight grace, I justly condemn their principles, in, and with their practices, because Popery sets pardons to sale, and Arminianism exalts nature into the place of grace: But does the doctrine of the gospel lead to any immoralities? Charge it, if you can.

Fourthly, And as senseless a thing it is to condemn all, for the miscarriages and faults of some; which, yet, is the common practice of the world. Are all that profess godliness loose and careless? No; many are an ornament to their holy profession, and the glory of Christianity, and why must the innocent be condemned for the guilty? What is your reason and ground for that? Why might not the enemies of Christianity have condemned the eleven apostles upon the fall of Judas? Had they not as good a warrant for it, as you have for this?

To conclude, You little know what a snare of the devil is laid for your souls, in all those prejudices and offences, you take at the ways and professors of godliness; and what a woe you bring upon your own souls by them. You speak evil of persons and things you know not, and prejudice is like still to keep you in ignorance of them. "Woe to the world (says Christ) because of offences; and "blessed is he that is not offended at me."

The eleventh way of ruining the precious soul opened

XI. The eleventh way, wherein abundance of precious souls perish in the christianised and professing world, is the way of formal hypocrisy in religion, and zeal about the externals of worship. Such a generation of men have, in all ages, mingled themselves with the sincere worshippers of God; and the inducement to it is obvious; the form of godliness is an honour, but the power of it a burden. By the former, earthly interests are accommodated; by the latter, they are frequently exposed and hazarded.

We find in the Jewish church, abundance of such chaff intermixed with the wheat, which the doctrine of Christ discovered, and purged out of the floor, Mat. iii. 9, 12. Such were the Pharisees, who were exceeding zealous for traditions, and the external rites and ceremonies of the law, but inwardly full of all filthiness, Mat. 15:7, 8, 9. Men that honoured the dead, and persecuted the living saints; that reverenced the material temple, and destroyed the living temples; that strained at gnats of ceremonies, and swallowed down the grossest immoralities.

And well had it been, if this generation had ended with the state and time of the church; but we find a prophecy of the increase of these men in the latter days, 2 Tim. iii. 5, which is everywhere sadly verified. Religion runs into stalk, and blade, into leaves, and suckers, which should be concocted into pith and fruit: yea, it is of sad consideration, that amongst many high pretenders to reformation, their zeal, which should nourish the vitals of religion, and maintain their daily work of mortification and communion with God, spends itself in some by-opinion, while practical godliness visibly languishes in their conversations. How many are there that hate doctrinal errors, who yet perish by practical ones? Who hate a false doctrine, but, in the mean time, perish by a false heart? It is very difficult to reclaim this sort of men from the error of their way; and thereby save their souls from hell. However, let the means be used, and the success left with God.

The eleventh way to hell, by formality, barred up

1. No sin entangles the souls of men faster, or damns them with more certainty and aggravation, than the sin of formal hypocrisy; it holds the soul fastest on earth, and sinks it deepest into hell. There was no sort of men upon whom the doctrine of Christ and the apostles, had so little success and effect, as the Scribes nod Pharisees; they derided him, when publicans and sinners trembled, and believed, Luke 16:14, 15. The form of godliness wards off all convictions; their zeal for the externals of religion secures them against the fears of damnation, while in the mean time, their hypocrisy plunges them deeper into hell than others that never made such shows of sanctity and devotion: "He shall appoint them his portion with hypocrites;" Mat. 14:51, that is, he shall he punished in hell, as hypocrites are punished, viz., with the greatest, and sorest punishment. Hypocrisy is a double iniquity, and will be punished with double destruction: their ungrounded hopes of heaven serve but to pully up their wretched souls to a greater height of vain confidence, which gives them the more dreadful jerk in their lamentable, and eternal disappointment.

2. Blind, superstitious zeal, which spends itself only about the externals of religion, usually prepares, and engages men in a more violent persecution of those that are really godly, and conscientious. The Lord opened a great door of opportunity at Antioch to Paul; the whole city came together to attend the discoveries of Christ in the first publication of the gospel, and the poor Gentiles began to taste the sweetness of the gospel; but the devil, perceiving his kingdom begin to totter, immediately stirred up his instruments to persecute the apostles, and drive them out of the country: and who more fit for that work, than the devout, and honourable women? Acts xiii. 15. These stirred up their husbands, and all they had influence upon, under a fair pretence of zeal for the law, to obstruct the progress of the gospel. No bird (says one) like the living bird, to draw others into the net. Men of greatest names, and pretensions to religion, if graceless, are the most dangerous instruments the devil can employ to the ruin and extirpation of true godliness. Such a zealot was Paul, in his unregenerate state.

3. Nothing is more common, than to find men hot and zealous against false worship, while their hearts are as cold as a stone in the vitals, and essentials of true religion. Many can dispute warmly against adoration of images, praying to angels and saints departed, who all the while are like those dead images which others worship. Jehu was a zealot against idolatry; and yet the vital power of true godliness was a stranger to his soul, 2 Kings x. 15, 16. The Pharisees spared no pains to make a proselyte, and yet all the while were the children of the devil themselves, Mat. xxiii. 15.

This was a sad case, yet what more common? The Lord open the eyes of these men, and convince them, in season, that their zeal runs in the wrong channel, and spends itself upon things which shall never profit them. O if they were but as much concerned to promote the love of God, and life of godliness in themselves and others, as they are about some external accidents and appendages of religion, what blessings would they be to the world, and what evidence would they have of their own sincerity?