Existence and Attributes of God
The whole set of graces must be one way or other exercised. If any treble be wanting in a Lute, there will be a great defect in the Music. If any one Spiritual string be dull, the Spiritual harmony of worship will be spoiled. And therefore,
1. First, Faith must be acted in worship. A confidence in God. A natural worship cannot be performed without a natural confidence in the goodness of God. Whosoever comes to him, must regard him as a Rewarder and a faithful Creator. A Spiritual worship cannot be performed without an Evangelical confidence in him as a gracious Redeemer. To think him a Tyrant meditating revenge, damps the Soul; to regard him as a gracious King full of tender bowels, Spirits the affections to him. The mercy of God is the proper object of trust; Psal. 33.18. The eye of the Lord is upon them that fear him, upon them that hope in his mercy. The worship of God in the Old Testament is most described by fear: In the new Testamen by faith. Fear, or the worship of God and hope in his mercy are linked together; when they go hand in hand, the accepting eye of God is upon us: When we do not trust, we do not worship. Those of Judah had the Temple worship among them, especially in Josiah 's time, Zeph. 3.2. the time of that Prophecy; yet it was accounted no worship, because no trust in the Worshippers. Interest in God, cannot be improved without an exercise of Faith. The Gospel worship is prophesied of, to be a confidence in God, as in a Husband more than in a Lord, Hos. 2.16. Thou shalt call me Ishi, and shalt call me no more Baali: Thou shalt call me, that is, thou shalt worship me, Worship being often comprehended under Invocation. More confidence is to be exercised in a Husband or Father, than in a Lord or Master.
If a Man have not Faith, he is without Christ; and though a Man be in Christ by the habit of Faith, • e performs a duty out of Christ without an act of Faith: Without the habit of Faith, our persons are out of Christ; and without the exercise of Faith, the duties are out of Christ. As the want of Faith in a person is the death of the Soul; so the want of Faith in a Service, is the death of the Offering. Though a man were at the cost of an Ox; yet to kill it without bringing it to the door of the Tabernacle, was not a Sacrifice, but a Murder. The Tabernacle was a Type of Christ; and a look to him is necessary in every spiritual Sacrifice. As there must be Faith to make any act, an act of obedience; so there must be Faith to make any act of worship, spiritual. That service is not spiritual, that is not vital; and it cannot be vital, without the exercise of a vital Principle: All spiritual life is hid in Christ, and drawn from him by Faith . Faith as it hath relation to Christ, makes every act of worship, a living act, and consequently a spiritual act. Habitual unbelief, cuts us off from the Body of Christ, Rom. 11.20. Because of unbelief they were broken off; and a want of actuated belief, breaks us off from a present communion with Christ in Spirit. As unbelief in us hinders Christ from doing any mighty work, so unbelief in us hinders us from doing any mighty spiritual duty.
So that the exercise of Faith, and a confidence in God, is necessary to every duty.
2. Love must be acted to render a worship spiritual. Though God commanded love in the Old-Testament; yet the manner of giving the Law, bespoke more of Fear than Love. The dispensation of the Law, was with Fire, Thunder, &c. proper to raise horror, and benum the Spirit; which effect it had upon the Israelites, when they desired that God would speak no more to them. Grace is the Genius of the Gospel, proper to excite the affection of Love. The Law was given by the disposition of Angels, with signs to amaze; the Gospel was ushered in with the songs of Angels, composed of peace and good-will, calculated to ravish the Soul. Instead of the terrible voice of the Law, do this and live: The comfortable voice of the Gospel is Grace, Grace: Upon this account, the principle of the Old testament was Fear; and the Worship often expressed by the Fear of God. The principle of the New-testament is Love. The Mount Sinai gendereth to Bondage ; Mount Zion, from whence the Gospel or Evangelical Law goes forth, gendereth to Liberty; and therefore the Spirit of Bondage unto Fear, as the Property of the Law is opposed to the State of Adoption; the principle of Love, as the property of the Gospel : And therefore the worship of God under the Gospel, or New-testament, is oftener expressed by Love than Fear; as proceeding from higher principles, and acting nobler passions. In this State, we are to serve him without fear; without a Bondage-fear; not without a fear of unworthy treating him; with a fear of his goodness as it is prophesied of : Goodness is not the object of terror, but reverence. God in the Law, had more the garb of a Judge; in the Gospel, of a Father. The name of a Father is sweeter, and bespeaks more of affection. As their services were with a feeling of the thunders of the Law in their Consciences; so is our worship to be with a sense of Gospel-grace in our Spirits: Spiritual worship is that therefore, which is exercised with a spiritual and heavenly affection, proper to the Gospel. The heart should be enlarged, according to the liberty the Gospel gives of drawing near to God as a Father: As he gives us the nobler relation of Children, we are to act the nobler qualities of Children. Love should act according to its nature, which is desire of Union; desire of a moral union by Affections, as well as a mystical union by Faith; as flame aspires to reach flame, and become one with it. In every act of worship, we should endeavor to be united to God, and become one Spirit with him: This Grace doth spiritualize Worship: In that one word Love, God hath wrapped up all the devotion he requires of us: 'It is the total sum of the first Table, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God. 'It is to be acted in everything we do: But in Worship, our hearts should more solemnly rise up and acknowledge him amiable and lovely, since the Law is stripped of its cursing power, and made sweet in the blood of the Redeemer. Love is a thing acceptable of itself; but nothing acceptable without it. The gifts of one man to another are spiritualized by it. We would not value a Present, without the affection of the Donor: Every man would lay claim to the love of others, though he would not to their Possessions. Love is God's right in every service, and the noblest thing we can bestow upon him in our adorations of him. God's gifts to us are not so estimable, without his love; not our services valuable by him, without the exercise of a choice affection. Hezekiah regarded not his deliverance, without the love of the Deliverer; In love to my Soul thou hast delivered me : So doth God say, in love to my honor thou hast worshipped me.
So that Love must be acted, to render our worship spiritual.
3. A spiritual sensibleness of our own weakness, is necessary to make our worship spiritual. Affections to God cannot be without relentings in ourselves. When the eye is spiritually fixed upon a spiritual God, the heart will mourn, that the worship is no more spiritually suitable. The more we act love upon God, as amiable and gracious, the more we should exercise grief in ourselves, as we are vile and offending. Spiritual worship is a melting worship, as well as an elevating worship; It exalts God, and debaseth the Creature. The Publican was more spiritual in his humble address to God, when the Pharisee was wholly carnal with his swelling language. A spiritual love in worship will make us grieve, that we have given him so little, and could give him no more. 'It is a part of spiritual duty to bewail our carnality mixed with it; as we receive mercies spiritually, when we receive them with a sense of God's goodness and our own vileness, in the same manner we render a spiritual worship.
4. Spiritual desires for God render the service spiritual. When the Soul follows hard after him ; pursues after God as a God of infinite and communicative goodness, with sighs and groans unutterable. A spiritual Soul seems to be transformed into hunger, and thirst, and becomes nothing but desire. A carnal Worshipper is taken with the beauty and magnificence of the Temple; a spiritual Worshipper desires to see the glory of God in the Sanctuary ; He pants after God: As he came to worship, to find God, he boils up in desires for God, and is loath to go from it without God, the living God, Psal. 42.2. He would see the Urim and the Thummim; the unusual sparkling of the stones upon the High-priests Breast-plate. That deserves not the title of spiritual worship, when the Soul makes no longing inquiries; saw you him whom my Soul loves? A spiritual worship is, when our desires are chiefly for God in the worship: As David desires to dwell in the House of the Lord; but his desire is not terminated there, but to behold the beauty of the Lord , and taste the ravishing sweetness of his presence. No doubt but Elijah 's desires for the enjoyment of God, while he was mounting to Heaven, were as fiery as the Chariot wherein he was carried. Unutterable groans acted in worship, are the fruit of the Spirit, and certainly render it a spiritual service . Strong appetites are agreeable to God, and prepare us to eat the fruit of worship. A spiritual Paul presseth forward to know Christ, and the power of his Resurrection; and a spiritual Worshipper actually aspires in every duty to know God, and the power of his Grace. To desire worship as an end, is carnal; to desire it as a means, and act desires in it for communion with God in it, is spiritual, and the fruit of a spiritual life.
5. Thankfulness, and admiration are to be exercised in spiritual services. This is a worship of Spirits. Praise is the adoration of the blessed Angels , and of glorified Spirits, Rev. 4.11. Thou art worthy oh Lord, to receive Glory, and Honor, and Power: And, Rev. 5.13.14. they worship him, ascribing Blessing, Honor, Glory and Power to him that sits upon the Throne, and to the Lamb forever and ever. Other acts of worship are confined to this Life, and leave us as soon as we have set our foot in Heaven; There, no notes but this of Praise are warbled out: The Power, Wisdom, Love and Grace in the dispensation of the Gospel, seat themselves in the thoughts and tongues of blessed Souls. Can a worship on Earth be spiritual, that hath no mixture of an eternal heavenly duty with it? The worship of God in Innocence, had been chiefly an admiration of him in the works of Creation; and should not our Evangelical worship be an admiration of him in the works of Redemption, which is a restoration to a better State? After the petitioning for pardoning Grace , there is a rendering the Calves or Heifers of our lips, alluding to the Heifers used in Eucharistical Sacrifices. The Praise of God is the choicest Sacrifice and Worship, under a dispensation of redeeming Grace; This is the prime and eternal part of worship under the Gospel. The Psalmist, Psalm 149. and 150. speaking of the Gospel times, spurs on to this kind of worship; Sing to the Lord a new Song; Let the Children of Zion be joyful i • ••• ir King; Let the Saints be joyful in glory, and sing aloud upon their beds; Let the high praises of God be in their mouths: He begins and ends both Psalms with praise ye the Lord. That cannot be a spiritual and evangelical worship, that hath nothing of the praise of God in the heart. The consideration of God's adorable perfections discovered in the Gospel, will make us come to him with more seriousness; beg blessings of him with more confidence; fly to him with a winged Faith and Love, and more spiritually glorify him in our attendances upon him.
7. Spiritual Worship is performed with delight. The Evangelical worship is prophetically signified by keeping the Feast of Tabernacles; they shall go up from year to year, to worship the King the Lord of Hosts, and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles: Why that Feast, when there were other Feasts observed by the Jews? That was a Feast celebrated with the greatest joy; typical of the gladness which was to be under the exhibition of the Messiah, and a thankful comemmoration of the Redemption wrought by him. It was to be celebrated five days after the solemn day of Atonement, Levite. 23.34. compared with v. 27. wherein there was one of the solemnest types of the Sacrifice of the death of Christ. In this Feast they commemorated their exchange of Egypt for Canaan; the Manna wherewith they were fed; the Water out of the Rock wherewith they were refreshed: In remembrance of this, they poured water on the ground, pronouncing those words in Isaiah, they shall draw waters out of the Wells of Salvation, which our Savior refers to himself, John 7.37. inviting them to him, to drink, upon the last day, the great day of the Feast of Tabernacles, wherein this solemn Ceremony was observed. Since we are freed by the death of the Redeemer from the Curses of the Law, God requires of us a Joy in spiritual privileges. A sad frame in worship, gives the lie to all Gospel-liberty; to the Purchase of the Redeemers Death; the Triumphs of his Resurrection: 'It is a carriage, as if we were under the influences of the legal Fire and Lightning, and an entering a Protest against the Freedom of the Gospel. The Evangelical worship is a Spiritual worship; and Praise, Joy and Delight are prophesied of, as great ingredients in attendance on Gospel Ordinances, Isa. 12.3, 4, 5. What was occasion of terror in the worship of God under the Law, is the occasion of delight in the worship of God under the Gospel. The Justice and Holiness of God so terrible in the Law, becomes comfortable under the Gospel, since they have feasted themselves on the active and passive obedience of the Redeemer. The approach is to God as gracious, not to God as unpacified; as a Son to a Father, not as a Criminal to a Judge. Under the Law God was represented as a Judge, remembering their Sin in their Sacrifices, and representing the punishment they had merited; in the Gospel as a Father, accepting the Atonement, and publishing the Reconciliation wrought by the Redeemer. Delight in God, is a Gospel frame; therefore the more joyful, the more spiritual: The Sabbath is to be a delight; not only in regard of the Day, but in regard of the Duties of it ; in regard of the marvelous work he wrought on it; raising up our blessed Redeemer on that day, whereby a foundation was laid for the rendering our persons and services acceptable to God, Psal. 118.24. This is the day which the Lord hath made, we will be glad and rejoice in it. A lumpish frame becomes not a day and a duty, that hath so noble and spiritual a mark upon it.
The Angels in the first act of worship after the Creation, were highly joyful, Job. 38.7. They shouted for joy, &c.
The Saints have particularly acted this in their Worship. David would not content himself with an approach to the Altar, without going to God as his exceeding joy, Psal. 43.4. My triumphant joy: When he danced before the Ark, he seems to be transformed into delight and pleasure, 2 Sam. 6.14, 16. He had as much delight in Worship, as others had in their Harvest and Vintage. And those that took joyfully the spoiling of their Goods, would as joyfully attend upon the Communications of God. Where there is a fullness of the Spirit, there is a waking melody to God in the heart ; and where there is an acting of love, (as there is in all spiritual services) the proper fruit of it is joy in a near approach to the Object of the Souls affection. Love is appetitus unionis: The more love, the more delight in the approachings of God to the Soul, or the out-goings of the Soul to God. As the Object of Worship is amiable in a spiritual eye, so the ••• hs tending to a communion with this Object are delightful in the exercise: Where there is no delight in a duty, there is no delight in the object of the duty; The more of grace, the more of pleasure in the actings of it: As the more of nature there is in any natural Agent, the more of pleasure in the Act; So the more heavenly the Worship, the more spiritual. Delight is the frame and temper of Glory. A heart filled up to the brim with joy, is a heart filled up to the brim with the Spirit: Joy is the fruit of the Holy-Ghost.
1. Not the joy of God's dispensation flowing from God, but a gracious active joy streaming to God. There is a joy, when the Comforts of God are dropt into the Soul, as Oil upon the Wheel; which indeed makes the faculties move with more speed and activity in his service, like the Chariots of Aminadab: And a Soul may serve God in the strength of this taste, and its delight terminated in the sensible comfort. This is not the joy I mean, but such a joy that hath God for its Object, delighting in him as the term, in worship as the way to him: The first is God's dispensation, the other is our duty; The first is an act of God's favor to us, the second a sprout of habitual grace in us. The Comforts we have from God, may elevate our duties; but the grace we have within, doth spiritualize our duties.
2. Nor is every delight an argument of a spiritual service. All the the requisites to worship must be taken in. A man may invent a worship, and delight in it; as Micah in the adoration of his Idol, when he was glad he had got both an Ephod and a Levite . As a man may have a contentment in Sin, so he may have a contentment in Worship; not because it is a worship of God, but the worship of his own invention, agreeable to his own humor and design, as Isa. 58.2. 'tis said, they delighted in approaching to God, but it was for carnal ends. Novelty engenders Complacency; but it must be a worship wherein God will delight; and that must be a worship according to his own Rule and infinite Wisdom, and not our shallow fancies.
God requires a cheerfulness in his service, especially under the Gospel, where he sits upon a Throne of Grace; discovers himself in his amiableness, and acts the Covenant of Grace, and the sweet relation of a Father. The Priests of old were not to fully themselves with any sorrow, when they were in the exercise of their functions. God put a bar to the natural affections of Aaron and his Sons, when Nadab and Abihu had been cut off by a severe hand of God . Every true Christian in a higher order of Priest-hood, is a person dedicated to joy and peace, offering himself a lively Sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving: And there is no Christian duty, but is to be set off and seasoned with cheerfulness: He that loves a cheerful Giver in acts of Charity, requires no less a cheerful Spirit in acts of Worship: As this is an ingredient in worship, so it is the means to make your Spirits intent in worship. When the heart triumphs in the consideration of Divine excellency and goodness, it will be angry at anything that offers to jogg and disturb it.
8. Spiritual worship is to be performed, though with a delight in God; yet with a deep reverence of God. The Gospel in advancing the spirituality of worship, takes off the terror, but not the reverence of God; which is nothing else in its own nature, but a due and high esteem of the excellency of a thing according to the nature of it: And therefore the Gospel presenting us with more illustrious notices of the glorious nature of God, is so far from indulging any disesteem of him, that it requires of us a greater reverence suitable to the hight of its discovery, above what could be spell'd in the Book of Creation: The Gospel worship is therefore expressed by trembling, Hos. 11.10. They shall walk after the Lord; he shall roar like a Lion; when he shall roar, then the Children shall tremble from the West. When the Lion of the Tribe of Judah shall lift up his powerful voice in the Gospel, the Western Gentiles shall run trembling to walk after the Lord. God hath always attended his greatest manifestations with remarkable Characters of Majesty, to create a reverence in his Creature: He caused the wind to March before him; to cut the Mountain, when he manifested himself to Elijah, 1 Kings 19.11. A Wind and a Cloud of Fire, before that magnificent Vision to Ezekiel, Ezek. 1.4, 5. Thunders and Lightnings before the giving the Law, Exod. 19.18. And a mighty wind before the giving the Spirit, Acts 2. God requires of us an awe of him in the very act of performance. The Angels are pure, and cannot fear him as Sinners, but in reverence they cover their Faces when they stand before him : His power should make us reverence him, as we are Creatures; His Justice as we are Sinners; His goodness as we are restored Creatures. [God is clothed with unspeakable Majesty; the glory of his face shines brighter than the Lights of Heaven in their beauty. Before him the Angels tremble, and the Heavens melt; we ought not therefore to come before him with the Sacrifice of Fools, nor tender a duty to him, without falling low upon our faces, and bowing the knees of our hearts in token of reverence.] Not a slavish fear, like that of Devils; but a Godly fear, like that of Saints , joined with a sense of an immovable Kingdom becomth us: And this the Apostle calls a grace necessary to make our service acceptable: And therefore the grace necessary to make it spiritual, since nothing finds admission to God, but what is of a spiritual nature. The consideration of his glorious nature, should imprint an awful respect upon our Souls to him: His goodness should make his Majesty more adorable to us, as his Majesty makes his goodness more admirable in his condescensions to us. As God is a Spirit, our worship must be spiritual; and being he is the supreme Spirit, our worship must be reverential: We must observe the State he takes upon him in his Ordinances; He is in Heaven, we upon the Earth; we must not therefore be hasty to utter anything before God, Eccles. 5.7. Consider him a Spirit in the highest Heavens, and ourselves Spirits dwelling in a dreggy Earth. Loose and garish frames debase him to our own quality: Slight postures of Spirit, intimate him to be a slight and mean Being: Our being in Covenant with him, must not lower our awful apprehensions of him: As he is the Lord thy God, 'tis a gloririous and fearful Name, or wonderful : Though he lay by his Justice to Believers, he doth not lay by his Majesty: When we have a confidence in him, because he is the Lord our God; we must have awful thoughts of his Majesty, because his name is glorious. God is terrible from his Holy-places, in regard of the great things he doth for his Israel : We should behave ourselves with that inward honor and respect of him, as if he were present to our bodily eyes: The higher apprehensions we have of his Majesty, the greater awe will be upon our hearts in his presence, and the greater spirituality in our acts. We should manage our hearts so, as if we had a view of God in his heavenly glory.
9. Spiritual Worship is to be performed with humility in our Spirits. This is to follow upon the reverence of God. As we are to have high thoughts of God, that we may not debase him; we must have low thoughts of ourselves, not to vaunt before him. When we have right notions of the Divine Majesty; we shall be as Worms in our own thoughts, and creep as Worms into his presence: We can never consider him in his Glory, but we have a fit opportunity to reflect upon ourselves, and consider how basely we revolted from him, and how graciously we are restored by him. As the Gospel affords us greater discoveries of God's nature, and so enhaunceth our reverence of him; so it helps us to a fuller understanding of our own vileness and weakness, and therefore is proper to ingender Humility: The more spiritual and evangelical therefore any service is, the more humble it is. That is a spiritual service, that doth most manifest the glory of God; and this cannot be manifested by us, without manifesting our own emptiness and nothingness. The Heathens were sensible of the necessity of Humility by the Light of Nature ; after the Name of God signified by 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 inscribed on the Temple at Delphi, followed 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 whereby was insinuated, that when we have to do with God, who is the only Ens, we should behave ourselves with a sense of our own infirmity, and infinite distance from him. As a person, so a duty leavened with Pride, hath nothing of sincerity, and therefore nothing of spirituality in it, Hab. 2.4. His Soul which is lifted up, is not upright in him. The Elders that were crowned by God to be Kings and Priests, to offer spiritual Sacrifices; uncrown themselves in their worship of him, and cast down their Ornaments at his feet : The Greek word to worship 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 signifies to creep like a Dog upon his belly before his Master; to lie low. How deep should our sense be of the privilege of God's admitting us to his worship, and affording us such a mercy under our deserts of wrath? How mean should be our thoughts, both of our persons and performances? How patiently should we wait upon God for the success of worship? How did Abraham the Father of the Faithful, equal himself to the Earth, when he supplicated the God of Heaven, and devote himself to him under the title of very Dust and Ashes ? Isaiah did but behold an Evangelical Apparition of God and the Angels worshipping him, and presently reflects upon his own uncleanness . God's presence both requires and causes Humility. How lowly is David in his own opinion, after a magnificent duty performed by himself and his people? 1 Chron. 29.14. Who am I? And what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly? The more spiritual the Soul is in its carriage to God, the more humble it is; and the more gracious God is in his communications to the Soul, the lower it lies.
God commanded not the fiercer Creatures to be offered to him in Sacrifices, but Lambs and Kids, meek and lowly Creatures; none that had stings in their tails, or venom in their tongues . The meek Lamb was the daily Sacrifice: The Doves were to be offered by Pairs: God would not have Honey mixed with any Sacrifice, Levite. 2.11. That breeds Choler, and Choler Pride; but Oil, he commanded to be used; that supples and mollifies the parts. Swelling Pride, and boiling Passions render our services carnal; they cannot be spiritual, without an humble sweetness and an innocent sincerity: One grain of this transcends the most costly Sacrifices. A Contrite Heart puts a gloss upon Worship . The departure of men and Angels from God, began in Pride; Our approaches and return to him must begin in Humility: And therefore all those Graces which are bottomed on Humility, must be acted in worship, as Faith, and a sense of our own indigence. Our blessed Savior, the most spiritual Worshipper, prostrated himself in the Garden with the greatest lowliness, and offered himself upon the Cross a Sacrifice with the greatest humility. Melted Souls in worship, have the most spiritual conformity to the person of Christ in the state of humiliation, and his design in that state: As worship without it is not suitable to God, so neither is it advantageous for us. A time of worship, is a time of God's Communication. The Vessel must be melted to receive the Mould it is designed for: Softned wax is fittest to receive a stamp, and a spiritually melted Soul fittest to receive a spiritual impression. We cannot perform duty in an evangelical and spiritual strain, without the meltingness and meanness in ourselves which the Gospel requires.
10. Spiritual worship is to be performed with Holiness. God is a holy Spirit; a likeness to God must attend the worshipping of God as he is: Holiness is always in season; It becomes his house forever . We can never serve the living God, till we have Consciences purged from dead works, Heb. 9.14. Dead works in our Consciences, are unsuitable to God, an eternal living Spirit. The more mortified the heart, the more quickened the service. Nothing can please an infinite Purity, but that which is pure: Since God is in his Glory, in his Ordinances; we must not be in our Filthiness. The Holiness of his Spirit doth sparkle in his Ordinances; The holiness of our Spirits ought also to sparkle in our observance of them. The Holiness of God is most celebrated in the worship of Angels : Spiritual worship ought to be like Angelical: That cannot be with Souls totally impure. As there must be perfect holiness to make a worship perfectly spiritual; so there must be some degree of holiness to make it in any measure spiritual. God would have all the Utensils of the Sanctuary employed about his service to be holy: The Inwards of the Sacrifice were to be rinsed thrice . The Crop and Feathers of sacrificed Doves, was to be hung Eastward towards the entrance of the Temple, at a distance from the Holy of Holies where the presence of God was most eminent . When Aaron was to go into the Holy of Holies, he was to sanctify himself in an extraordinary manner . The Priests were to be bare footed in the Temple, in the exercise of their Office; shoes always were to be put off upon holy ground: Look to thy foot when thou goest to the House of God, saith the wise man, Eccles. 5.1. Strip the affections, the feet of the Soul, of all the dirt contracted; discard all earthly and base thoughts from the heart A Beast was not to touch the Mount Sinai, without losing his Life: Nor can we come near the Throne with brutish affections, without losing the life and fruit of the worship. An unholy Soul degrades himself from a Spirit to a Brute, and the worship from spiritual to brutish. If any unmortified sin be found in the Life, as it was in the comers to the Temple, It taints and pollutes the Worship . All worship is an acknowledgment of the excellency of God as he is holy: Hence it is called a sanctifying God's Name: How can any person sanctify God's Name, that hath not a holy resemblance to his Nature? If he be not holy as he is holy, he cannot worship him according to his excellency in Spirit and in Truth: No worship is spiritual wherein we have not a communion with God. But what intercourse can there be between a holy God, and an impure Creature; between Light and Darkness? We have no fellowship with him in any service, unless we walk in the Light, in service and out of service, as he is Light . The Heathen thought not their Sacrifices agreeable to God, without washing their hands, whereby they signified the preparation of their hearts, before they made the Oblation: Clean hands without a pure heart, signify nothing: The frame of our hearts must answer the purity of the outward Symbols. Psal. 26.6. I will wash my hands in Innocence, so will I compass thine Altar, oh Lord: He would observe the appointed Ceremonies, but not without cleansing his heart as well as his hands. Vain Man is apt to rest upon outward acts and rites of worship: But this must always be practiced: The words are in the present Tense, I wash, I compass. Purity in worship ought to be our continual Care. If we would perform a spiritual service, wherein we would have communion with God, it must be in Holiness: If we would walk with Christ, it must be in white ; alluding to the white Garments the Priests put on, when they went to perform their service: As without this we cannot see God in Heaven, so neither can we see the beauty of God in his own Ordinances.
11. Spiritual worship is performed with spiritual ends, with raised aims at the glory of God. No duty can be spiritual that hath a carnal aim: Where God is the sole Object, he ought to be the principal End: In all our actions he is to be our End, as he is the principle of our Being; much more in Religious Acts, as he is the Object of our worship. The worship of God in Scripture, is expressed by the seeking of him ; Him, not ourselves; all is to be referred to God. As we are not to live to ourselves, that being the sign of a carnal state; so we are not to worship for ourselves, Rom. 14.7, 8. As all actions are denominated good from their end, as well as their object; so upon the same account they are denominated spiritual. The end spiritualizeth our natural actions; much more our religious: Then are our faculties devoted to him when they center in him. If the intention be evil, there is nothing but darkness in the whole service, Luke 11.34. The first institution of the Sabbath, the solemn day for worship, was to contemplate the glory of God in his stupendous works of Creation, and render him a homage for them, Revel. 4.11. Thou art worthy oh Lord, to receive Honor, Glory and Power; for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created. No worship can be returned, without a glorifying of God; and we cannot actually glorify him, without direct aims at the promoting his honor. As we have immediately to do with God, so we are immediately to mind the praise of God. As we are not to content ourselves with habitual grace, but be rich in the exercise of it in worship; so we are not to acquiesce in habitual aims at the glory of God, without the actual outflowings of our hearts in those aims.
'It is natural for Man to worship God for self: Self-righteousness is the rooted aim of Man in his worship since his revolt from God, and being sensible it is not to be found in his natural actions, he speaks for it in his moral and religious. By the first Pride we flung God off from being our Sovereign, and from being our end; since, a Pharisaical Spirit struts it in nature, not only to do things to be seen of men, but to be admired by God, Isa. 58.3. Wherefore have we fasted and thou takest no knowledge? This is to have God worship them, instead of being worshipped by them. Cain 's carriage after his Sacrifice, testified some base end in his worship; he came not to God as a Subject to a Sovereign, but as if he had been the Sovereign, and God the Subject; and when his design is not answered, and his desire not gratified, he proves more a Rebel to God, and a Murderer of his Brother. Such base scents will rise up in our worship from the body of death which cleaves to us, and mix themselves with our services, as Weeds with the Fish in the Net. David therefore, after his People had offered willingly to the Temple, begs of God, that their hearts might be prepared to him ; that their hearts might stand right to God, without any squinting to self-ends.
Some present themselves to God, as poor men offer a present to a great person; not to honor him, but to gain for themselves a reward richer than their gift. What profit is it that we have kept his Ordinance, &c? Mal. 3.14. Some worship him, intending thereby to make him amends for the wrong they have done him; wipe off their scores, and satisfy their debts; as though a spiritual wrong could be recompensed with a bodily service, and an infinite Spirit be outwitted and appeased by a carnal flattery. Self is the Spirit of Carnality: To pretend a homage to God, and intend only the advantage of self, is rather to mock him, than worship him. When we believe that we ought to be satisfied, rather than God glorified; we set God below ourselves, imagine that he should submit his own honor to our advantage: We make ourselves more glorious than God, as though we were not made for him, but he hath a Being only for us; this is to have a very low esteem of the Majesty of God. Whatsoever any man aims at in worship above the glory of God, that he forms as an Idol to himself instead of God, and sets up a Golden-Image: God counts not this as a Worship. The Offerings made in the Wilderness for forty years together, God esteemed as not offered to him, Amos 5.25. Have you offered to me Sacrifices and Offerings in the Wilderness forty years, oh House of Israel? They did it not to God, but to themselves; for their own security, and the attainment of the possession of the promised Land. A spiritual Worshipper performs not worship for some hopes of carnal advantage; he uses ordinances as means to bring God and his Soul together; to be more fitted to honor God in the world, in his particular place: When he hath been inflamed and humble in any address or duty, he gives God the glory; his heart suits the doxology at the end of the Lord's-prayer, ascribes the Kingdom, Power and Glory to God alone; and if any viper of Pride starts out upon him, he endeavors presently to shake it off. That which was the first end of our framing, ought to be the chief end of our acting towards God: But when men have the same ends in worship as Brutes, the satisfaction of a sensitive part; the service is no more than brutish. The acting for a sensitive end, is unworthy of the Majesty of God to whom we address, and unbecoming a rational Creature. The acting for a sensitive end, is not a rational, much less can it be a spiritual service; though the Act may be good in itself, yet not good in the Agent, because he wants a due end: We are then spiritual, when we have the same end in our redeemed services, as God had in his redeeming love, viz. his own Glory.
12. Spiritual service is offered to God in the name of Christ. Those are only spiritual Sacrifices, that are offered up to God by Jesus Christ , that are the fruits of the Sanctification of the Spirit, and offered in the mediation of the Son: As the Altar sanctifies the gift, so doth Christ spiritualize our services for God's acceptation; as the Fire upon the Altar separated the airy and finer parts of the sacrifice from the terrene and earthly: This is the Golden Altar upon which the Prayers of the Saints are offered up before the Throne . As all that we have from God streams through his blood: so all that we give to God ascends by virtue of his merits. All the blessings God gave to the Israelites came out of Zion , that is, from the Gospel hid under the Law; all the duties we present to God are to be presented in Zion, in an evangelical manner: All our worship must be bottomed on Christ. God hath intended that we should honor the Son as we honor the Father: As we honor the Father by offering our service only to him, so we are to honor the Son by offering it only in his name: In him alone God is well pleased, because in him alone he finds our services spiritual and worthy of acceptation: We must therefore take fast hold of him with our Spirits, and the faster we hold him, the more spiritual is our worship. To do anything in the name of Christ, is not to believe the worship shall be accepted for itself, but to have our eye fixed upon Christ for the acceptance of it, and not to rest upon the work done as carnal people are apt to do. The Creatures present their acknowledgments to God by Man; and man can only present his by Christ. It was utterly unlawful after the building of the Temple, to sacrifice anywhere else: The Temple being a type of Christ, it is utterly unlawful for us to present our services in any other name than his.
This is the way to be spiritual. If we consider God out of Christ, we can have no other notions but those of horror and bondage. We behold him a Spirit, but environ'd with Justice and Wrath for Sinners: But the consideration of him in Christ, vails his Justice; draws forth his Mercy; represents him more a Father than a Judge. In Christ the aspect of Justice is changed, and by that the temper of the Creature; so that in and by this Mediator, we can have a spiritual boldness, and access to God with confidence ; whereby the Spirit is kept from benumbedness, and distraction; and our Souls quickened and refined. The thoughts kept upon Christ in a duty of worship, quickly elevates the Soul, and spiritualizeth the whole service. Sin makes our services black, and the blood of Christ makes both our persons and services white.
To conclude this Head.
God is a Spirit infinitely happy, therefore we must approach to him with cheerfulness; He is a Spirit of infinite Majesty, therefore we must come before him with reverence; He is a Spirit infinitely high, therefore we must offer up our Sacrifices with the deepest humility; He is a Spirit infinitely holy, therefore we must address with purity; He is a Spirit infinitely glorious, we must therefore acknowledge his excellency in all that we do, and in our measures contribute to his glory, by having the highest aims in his worship; He is a Spirit infinitely provoked by us, therefore we must offer up our worship in the name of a pacifying Mediator and Intercessor.
3. The third general, is why a spiritual worship is due to God, and to be offered to him. We must consider the Object of Worship, and the Subject of worship; the Worshipper and the Worshipped. God is a spiritual Being; Man is a reasonable Creature. The nature of God informs us, what is fit to be presented to him; our own nature informs us, what is fit to be presented by us.
Reason 1. The best we have is to be presented to God in worship. For
1. Since God is the most excellent Being, he is to be served by us with the most excellent thing we have, and with the choicest veneration. God is so incomprehensibly excellent, that we cannot render him what he deserves; We must render him what we are able to offer; the best of our affiections; the flower of our strength; the Cream and Top of our Spirits. By the same reason that we are bound to give to God the best worship, we must offer it to him in the best manner. We cannot give to God anything too good for so blessed a Being: God being a great King, slight services become not his Majesty : 'It is unbecoming the Majesty of God, and the reason of a Creature, to give him a trivial thing: 'It is unworthy to bestow the best of our strength on our Lust, and the worst and weakest in the service of God. An infinite Spirit, should have affections as near to infinite as we can: As he is a Spirit without bounds, so he should have a service without limits: When we have given him all, we cannot serve him according to the excellency of his nature ; and shall we give him less than all? His infinite excellency and our dependence on him as Creatures, demands the choicest adoration: Our Spirits being the noblest part of our nature, are as due to him, as the service of our bodies which are the vilest: To serve him with the worst only, is to diminish his honor.
2. Under the Law, God commanded the best to be offered him. He would have the Males, the best of the kind; the fat, the best of the Creature : He commanded them to offer him the Firstlings of the flock; not the Firstlings of the Womb, but the Firstlings of the Year: The Jewish Cattle having two breeding times, in the beginning of the Spring, and the beginning of September; The latter breed was the weaker which Jacob knew , when he laid the Rods before the Cattle when they were strong in the Spring, and withheld them when they were feeble in the Autumn. One reason (as the Jews say) why God accepted not the offering of Cain was, because he brought the meanest, not the best of the fruit; and therefore 'tis said, only that he brought of the fruit of the Ground, Gen. 4.3. not the first of the fruit, or the best of the fruit; as Abel who brought the Firstling of his Flock, and the Fat thereof, v. 4.
3. And this the Heathen practiced by the light of Nature. They for the most part offered Males, as being more worthy; and burnt the Male, not the Female Frank incense, as it is divided into those two kinds: They offered the best, when they offered their Children to Molock. Nothing more excellent than Man, and nothing dearer to Parents than their Children, which are parts of themselves. When the Israelites would have a Golden-Calf for a representation of God, they would dedicate their Jewels, and strip their Wives and Children of their richest Ornaments, to show their devotion. Shall men serve their dumb Idols with the best of their substance, and the strength of their Souls; and shall the living God have a duller service from us, than Idols had from them? God requires no such hard, but delightful worship from us, our spirits.
4. All Creatures serve Man, by the providential order of God, with the best they have. As we by God's appointment receive from Creatures the best they can give, ought we not with a free will render to God the best we can offer? The Beasts give us their best Fat; the Trees their best Fruit; the Sun its best Light; the Fountains their best Streams: Shall God order us the best from Creatures, and we put him off with the worst from ourselves?
5. God hath given us the choicest thing he had. A Redeemer that was the Power of God, and the Wisdom of God: The best he had in Heaven, his own Son, and in himself, a Sacrifice for us, that we might be enabled to present ourselves a Sacrifice to Him. And Christ offered himself for us, the best he had, and that with the strength of the Deity through the Eternal Spirit; and shall we grudge God the best part of ourselves? As God would have a worship from his Creature, so it must be with the best part of his Creature. If we have given ourselves to the Lord , we can worship with no less than ourselves. What is the Man without his Spirit? If we are to worship God with all that we have received from him, we must worship him with the best part we have received from him: 'It is but a small glory we can give him with the best, and shall we deprive him of his right by giving him the worst? As what we are, is from God; so what we are, ought to be for God. Creation is the foundation of worship, Psal. 100.2, 3. Serve the Lord with gladness: Know ye that the Lord he is God; 'tis he that hath made us: He hath ennobled us with spiritual affections; where is it fittest for us to employ them, but upon him? and at what time, but when we come solemnly to converse with him? Is it Justice to deny him the honor of his best gift to us? Our Souls are more his gift to us, than anything in the World: Other things are so given that they are often taken from us, but our Spirits are the most durable gift. Rational faculties cannot be removed without a dissolution of nature.
Well then ; As he is God, he is to be honored with all the propensions and ardor that the infiniteness and excellency of such a Being requires, and the incomparable obligations he hath laid upon us in this state deserve at our hands: In all our worship therefore, our minds ought to be filled with the highest admiration, love and reverence. Since our end was to glorify God, we answer not our end, and honor him not, unless we give him the choicest we have.
Reason 2. We cannot else act towards God according to the nature of rational Creatures. Spiritual worship is due to God, because of his nature; and due from us, because of our nature. As we are to adore God, so we are to adore him as men: The nature of a rational Creature makes this impression upon him: He cannot view his own nature without having this duty striking upon his mind. As he knows by inspection into himself, that there was a God that made him; so, that he is made to be in subjection to God; subjection to him in his Spirit as well as his Body, and ought morally to testify this natural dependence on him: His constitution informs him, that he hath a capacity to converse with God; that he cannot converse with him, but by those inward faculties: If it could be managed by his Body without his Spirit, Beasts might as well converse with God as Men. It can never be a reasonable service as it ought to be , unless the reasonable faculties be employed in the management of it: It must be a worship prodigiously lame, without the concurrence of the chiefest part of Man with it. As we are to act conformably to the nature of the object, so also to the nature of our own faculties. Our faculties in the very gift of them to us were destined to be exercised; about what? What? All other things but the Author of them: 'It is a conceit cannot enter into the heart of a rational Creature, that he should act as such a Creature in other things, and as a stone in things relating to the Donor of them; as a man, with his mind about him in the affairs of the world, as a Beast without reason in his acts towards God. If a man did not employ his reason in other things, he would be an unprofitable Creature in the world: If he do not employ his spiritual faculties in worship, he denies them the proper end and use for which they were given him; 'tis a practical denial that God hath given him a Soul, and that God hath any right to the exercise of it. If there were no worship appointed by God in the world, the natural inclination of man to some kind of Religion would be in vain; and if our inward faculties were not employed in the duties of Religion, they would be in vain: The true end of God in the endowment of us with them would be defeated by us, as much as lies in us, if we did not serve him with that which we have from him solely at his own cost. As no man can with reason conclude, that the Rest commanded on the Sabbath and the Sanctification of it, was only a rest of the body; that had been performed by the Beasts as well as Men; but some higher end was aimed at for the rational Creature: So no man can think that the Command for worship, terminated only in the presence of the Body; that God should give the Command to Man as a reasonable Creature, and expect no other service from him than that of a Brute.
God did not require a worship from man, for any want he had, or any essential honor that could accrue to him; but that men might testify their gratitude to him, and dependence on him. 'It is the most horrid ingratitude, not to have lively and deep sentiments of gratitude after such obligations, and not to make those due acknowledgments that are proper for a rational Creature. Religion is the highest and choicest act of a reasonable Creature: No Creature under Heaven is capable of it that wants reason. As it is a violation of reason not to worship God, so it is no less a violation of reason not to worship him with the Heart and Spirit: It is a high dishonor to God, and defeats him not only of the service due to him from Man, but that which is due to him from all the Creatures. Every Creature, as it is an effect of God's Power and Wisdom, doth passively worship God; that is, it doth afford matter of adoration to man that hath, reason to collect it and return it where it is due: Without the exercise of the Soul we can no more hand it to God, than without such an exercise we can gather it from the Creature: So that by this neglect, the Creatures are restrained from answering their chief end; they cannot pay any service to God without man; nor can man without the employment of his rational faculties, render a homage to God, anymore than beasts can. This engagement of our inward power stands firm and unviolable, let the modes of worship be what they will, or the changes of them by the Sovereign Authority of God never so frequent; this could not expire or be changed, as long as the nature of Man endured. As Man had not been capable of a Command for Worship, unless he had been endued with spiritual faculties; so he is not active in a true practice of Worship, unless they be employed by him in it. The constitution of Man makes this manner of worship perpetually obligatory; and the oblation can never cease, till man cease to be a Creature furnished with such faculties: In our worship therefore, if we would act like rational Creatures, we should extend all the powers of our Souls to the utmost pitch, and essay to have apprehensions of God, equal to the excellency of his Nature, which though we may attempt, we can never attain.
Reason 3. Without this engagement of our Spirits, no act is an act of worship. True worship being an acknowledgment of God and the perfections of his Nature, results only from the Soul, that being only capable of knowing God and those perfections, which are the object and motive of worship: The posture of the body, is but to testify the inward temper and affection of the mind: If therefore it testifies what it is not, 'tis a lie and no worship: The cringes a Beast may be taught to make to an Altar, may as well be called Worship; since a man thinks as little of that God he pretends to honor, as the beast doth of the Altar to which he bows. Worship is a reverent remembrance of God, and giving some honor to him with the intention of the Soul: It cannot justly have the name of Worship, that wants the essential part of it: 'It is an ascribing to God the glory of his Nature, an owning subjection and obedience to him as our sovereign Lord: This is as impossible to be performed without the Spirit, as that there can be life and motion in a body without a Soul: 'It is a drawing near to God, not in regard of his essential presence; so all things are near to God; but in an acknowledgement of his excellency, which is an act of the Spirit; without this, the worst of men in a place of worship, are as near to God as the best. The necessity of the conjunction of our Soul, ariseth from the nature of worship; which being the most serious thing we can be employed in, the highest converse with the highest object, requires the choicest temper of Spirit in the performance. That cannot be an act of worship, which is not an act of Piety and Virtue; but there is no act of virtue done by the members of the Body, without the concurrence of the Powers of the Soul. We may as well call the presence of a dead Carcass in a place of worship, an act of Religion, as the presence of a living body without an intent Spirit: The separation of the Soul from one is natural, the other moral; that renders the body lifeless, but this renders the act loathsome to God: As the being of the Soul gives life to the Body, so the operation of the Soul gives life to the actions: As he cannot be a man that wants the form of a man, a rational Soul; so that cannot be a worship that wants an essential part, the act of the Spirit: God will not vouchsafe any acts of man so noble a title, without the requisite qualifications, Hos. 5.6. They shall go with their Flocks and their Herds, to seek the Lord, &c. A multitude of Lambs and Bullocks for Sacrifice, to appease God's Anger: God would not give it the title of worship, though instituted by himself, when it wanted the qualities of such a service: The Spirit of Whoredom was in the midst of them, v. 4. In the judgment of our Savior, it is a vain worship, when the Traditions of Men are taught for the Doctrines of God ; and no less vain must it be, when the Bodies of Men are presented to supply the place of their Spirits. As an omission of duty is a contempt of God's Sovereign Authority, so the omission of the manner of it, is a contempt of it, and of his amiable excellency; and that which is a contempt and mockery, can lay no just claim to the title of Worship.
Reason 4. There is in worship, an approach of God to Man. It was instituted to this purpose, that God might give out his blessings to Man: And ought not our Spirits to be prepared and ready to receive his communications? We are in such acts, more peculiarly in his presence. In the Israelites hearing the Law, it is said God was to come among them : Then, men are said to stand before the Lord : God before whom I stand, that is, whom I worship: And therefore when Cain forsook the worship of God settled in his Fathers Family, he is said to go out from the presence of the Lord, Gen. 4.16. God is essentially present in the world; graciously present in his Church. The name of the Evangelical City is, Jehovah Shammah , the Lord is there. God is more graciously present in the Evangelical institutions, than in the Legal: He loves the Gates of Zion, more than all the dwellings of Jacob : His Evangelical Law and Worship which was to go forth from Zion, as the other did from Sinai, Mic. 4.2. God delights to approach to Men, and converse with them in the worship instituted in the Gospel, more than in all the dwellings of Jacob. If God be graciously present, ought not we to be spiritually present? A lifeless Carcass service, becomes not so high and delectable a presence as this: 'It is to thrust him from us, not invite him to us: 'It is to practice in the Ordinances, what the Prophet predicts concerning men's usage of our Savior, Isa. 53.2. There is no form, no comeliness, nor beauty that we should desire him. A slightness in worship, reflects upon the excellency of the object of worship. God and his worship are so linked together, that whosoever thinks the one not worth his inward care, esteems the other not worth his inward affection. How unworthy a slight is it of God, who proffers the opening his Treasure; the reimpressing his Image; conferring his blessings; admits us into his presence, when he hath no need for us, who hath millions of Angels to attend him in his Court, and celebrate his Praise? He that worships not God with his Spirit, regards not God's presence in his Ordinances, and slights the great end of God in them, and that perfection he may attain by them. We can only expect, what God hath promised to give, when we tender to him what he hath commanded us to present. If we put off God with a Shell, he will put us off with a Husk. How can we expect his heart, when we do not give him ours; or hope for the blessing needful for us, when we render not the glory due to him? It cannot be an advantageous worship, without spiritual graces; for those are uniting, and Union is the ground of all Communion.
Reason 5. To have a spiritual worship is God's end in the restoration of the Creature; both in Redemption by his Son, and Sanctification by his Spirit. A fitness for spiritual Offerings, was the end of the coming of Christ ; He should purge them, as Gold and Silver by Fire, a Spirit burning up their dross, melting them into a holy compliance with and submission to God: To what purpose? That they may offer to the Lord an Offering in Righteousness; a pure Offering from a purified Spirit: He came to bring us to God in such a Garb, as that we might be fit to converse with him: Can we be thus, without a fixedness of our Spirits on him?
The offering of spiritual Sacrifices, is the end of making any a spiritual Habitation, and a holy Priest-hood . We can no more be Worshippers of God, without a Worshippers nature, than a man can be a man without human nature. As man was at first created for the honor and worship of God; so the design of restoring that Image which was defaced by Sin, tends to the same end. We are not brought to God by Christ, nor are our services presented to him, if they be without our Spirits: Would any man that undertakes to bring another to a Prince, introduce him in a slovenly and sordid habit, such a garb that he knows hateful to him? Or bring the Clothes or Skin of a Man stuffed with straw, instead of the Person? To come with our Skins before God without our Spirits, is contrary to the design of God, in Redemption and Regeneration.
If a carnal worship would have pleased God, a carnal heart would have served his turn, without the expense of his Spirit in Sanctification: He bestows upon man a spiritual nature, that he may return to him a spiritual service: He enlightens the Understanding, that he may have a rational service; and new moulds the Will, that he may have a voluntary service. As it is the Milk of the Word wherewith he feeds us, so it is the service of the Word wherewith we must glorify him. So much as there is of confusedness in our understanding, so much of starting and levity in our Wills; so much of slipperiness and skipping in our affections; so much is abated of the due qualities of the worship of God; and so much we fall short of the end of Redemption and Sanctification.
Reason 6. A spiritual worship is to be offered to God, because no worship but that can be acceptable. We can never be secured of acceptance without it; He being a Spirit, nothing but the worship in Spirit can be suitable to him: What is unsuitable, cannot be acceptable: There must be something in us, to make our services capable of being presented by Christ for an actual acceptation. No service is acceptable to God by Jesus Christ, but as it is a spiritual Sacrifice, and offered by a spiritual heart, 1 Pet. 2.5. The Sacrifice is first spiritual, before it be acceptable to God by Christ: When it is an offering in righteousness, it is then, and only then pleasant to the Lord, Mal. 3.3, 4. No Prince would accept a gift that is unsuitable to his Majesty, and below the condition of the person that presents it: Would he be pleased with a bottle of water for drink, from one that hath his Cellar full of wine? How unacceptable must that be, that is unsuitable to the Divine Majesty? And what can be more unsuitable, than a withdrawing the operations of our Souls from him, in the oblation of our Bodies? We as little glorify God as God, when we give him only a corporeal worship; as the Heathen did, when they represented him in a corporeal shape ; one as well as the other denies his spiritual nature: This is worse, for had it been lawful to represent God to the eye, it could not have been done, but by a bodily figure suited to the sense; but since it is necessary to worship him, it cannot be by a corporeal attendance, without the operation of the Spirit. A spiritual frame is more pleasing to God, than the highest exterior adornments; than the greatest gifts, and the highest Prophetical illuminations. The glory of the second Temple exceeded the glory of the first : As God accounts the spiritual glory of Ordinances most beneficial for us, so our spiritual attendance upon Ordinances is most pleasing to him; He that offers the greatest services without it, offers but flesh, Hos. 8.13. They sacrifice Flesh for the Sacrifices of my Offerings, but the Lord accepts them not. Spiritual frames are the Soul of Religious services; all other carriages without them, are contemptible to this Spirit: We can never lay claim to that promise of God, none shall seek my face in vain: We affect a vain seeking of him, when we want a due temper of Spirit for him: And vain Spirits shall have vain returns: 'It is more contrary to the nature of God's Holiness to have communion with such, than it is contrary to the nature of Light to have communion with Darkness.
To make use of this.
Use 1. First it serves for information.
1. If spiritual worship be required by God; How sad is it for them that are so far from giving God a spiritual worship, that they render him no worship at all? I speak not of the neglect of public, but of private; when men present not a devotion to God from one years end to the other. The speech of our Savior, that we must worship God in Spirit and Truth, implies that a worship is due to him from everyone: That is the common impression upon the Consciences of all men in the world, if they have not by some constant course in gross sins, hardened their Souls, and stifled those natural sentiments. There was never a Nation in the world, without some kind of Religion; and no Religion was ever without some modes, to testify a devotion: The Heathens had their Sacrifices and Purifications; and the Jews by God's order had their rites, whereby they were to express their Allegiance to God.
Consider,
1. Worship is a duty incumbent upon all men. 'It is a homage Mankind owes to God, under the relation wherein he stands obliged to him: 'It is a prime and immutable justice to own our Allegiance to him. 'It is as unchangeable a truth that God is to be worshipped, as that God is: He is to be worshipped as God; as Creator; and therefore by all, since he is the Creator of all, the Lord of all, and all are his Creatures, and all are his Subjects. Worship is founded upon Creation, Psal. 100.2, 3. 'It is due to God for himself and his own essential excellency, and therefore due from all: 'It is due upon the account of man's nature: The human rational nature is the same in all. Whatsoever is due to God upon the account of man's nature, and the natural obligations he hath laid upon man, is due from all men, because they all enjoy the benefits which are proper to their nature.
Man in no state was exempted, nor can be exempted from it: In Paradise he had his Sabbath and Sacraments; Man therefore dissolves the obligation of a reasonable nature, by neglecting the worship of God.
Religion is in the first place to be minded. As soon as Noah came out of the Ark, he contrived not a Habitation for himself, but an Altar for the Lord, to acknowledge him the Author of his preservation from the Deluge : And wheresoever Abraham came, his first business was to erect an Altar, and pay his arrears of gratitude to God, before he ran upon the score for new mercies ; He left a testimony of worship where ever he came.
2. Wholly therefore to neglect it, is a high degree of Atheism. He that calls not upon God, saith in his heart there is no God; and seems to have the sentiments of natural Conscience, as to God, stifled in him : It must arise from a conceit that there is no God, or that we are equal to him, adoration not being due from persons of an equal state; or that God is unable, or unwilling to take notice of the adoring acts of his Creatures: What is any of these but an undeifying the supreme Majesty? When we lay aside all thoughts of paying any homage to him, we are in a fair way opinionatively to deny him, as much as we practically disown him. Where there is no knowledge of God, that is, no acknowledgment of God, a gap is opened to all licentiousness : And that by degrees brawns the Conscience, and razeth out the sense of God. Those forsake God that forget his holy Mountain ; They do not practically own him as the Creator of their Souls or bodies. 'It is the sin of Cain, who turning his back upon worship, is said to go out from the presence of the Lord . Not to worship him with our Spirits, is against his Law of Creation: Not to worship him at all, is against his act of Creation: Not to worship him in truth is Hypocrisy: Not to worship him at all is Atheism, whereby we render ourselves worse than the worms in the Earth, or a toad in a Ditch.
3. To perform a worship to a false God, or to the true God in a false manner, seems to be less a sin, than to live in perpetual neglects of it. Though it be directed to a false Object instead of God; yet it is under the notion of a God, and so is an acknowledgement of such a Being as God in the world; whereas the total neglect of any worship, is a practical denying of the existence of any supreme Majesty.
Whosoever constantly omits a public and private worship, transgresses against an universally received dictate; For all Nations have agreed in the common notion of worshipping God, though they have disagreed in the several modes and rites whereby they would testify that adoration. By a worship of God, though superstitious, a veneration and reverence of such a being is maintained in the world; whereas by a total neglect of worship, he is virtually disowned and discarded, if not from his existence, yet from his Providence and Government of the world: All the mercies we breath in are denied to flow from him. A foolish worship owns Religion, though it bespatters it. As if a stranger coming into a Country mistakes a Subject for the Prince, and pays that reverence to the Subject, which is due to the Prince, though he mistakes the object, yet he owns an Authority; or if he pays any respect to the true Prince of that Country after the mode of his own, though appearing ridiculous in the place where he is, he owns the Authority of the Prince; whereas the omission of all respect would be a contempt of Majesty: And therefore the Judgments of God have been more signal upon the Sacrilegious Contemners of worship among the Heathens, than upon those that were diligent and devout in their false worship; and they generally owned the blessings received, to the preservation of a sense, and worship of a deity among them. Though such a worship be not acceptable to God, and every man is bound to offer to God a devotion agreeable to his own mind; yet it is commendable, not as worship, but as it speaks an acknowledgment of such a Being as God in his power in Creation, and his beneficence in his Providence.
Well then, omissions of worship are to be avoided. Let no man execute that upon himself, which God will pronounce at last as the greatest misery, and bid God depart from him, who will at last be loath to hear God bid him depart from him. Though man hath natural sentiments that God is to be worshipped; yet having an hostility in his nature, he is apt to neglect, or give it him in a slight manner: He therefore sets a particular mark and notice of attention upon the fourth Command, Remember thou keep holy the Sabbath-day. Corrupt nature is apt to neglect the worship of God, and flagg in it: This Command therefore which concerns his worship, he fortifies with several reasons.
Nor let any neglect worship, because they cannot find their hearts spiritual in it. The further we are from God, the more carnal shall we be. No man can expect heat by a distance from the Sun beams, or other means of warmth. Though God commanded a circumcised heart in the Jewish services; yet he did not warrant a neglect of the outward testimonies of Religion he had then appointed: He expected according to his Command, that they should offer the Sacrifices, and practice the legal Purifications he had commanded; he would have them diligently observed, though he had declared that he imposed them only for a time. And our Savior ordered the practice of those positive rites as long as the law remained unrepealed, as in the Case of the Leper . 'It is an injustice to refuse the offering ourselves to God according to the manner he hath in his Wisdom prescribed and required.
If spiritual worship be required by God; then
2. It informs us, that diligence in outward worship is not to be rested in. Men may attend all their days on worship, with a juiceless heart and unquickned frame, and think to compensate the neglect of the manner, with abundance of the matter of service. Outward expressions are but the badges and liveries of service, not the service itself. As the strength of Sin lies in the inward frame of the heart, so the strength of worship in the inward complexion and temper of the Soul. What do a thousand services avail, without cutting the throat of our carnal affections? What are loud Prayers, but as sounding Brass and tinkling Cymbals, without Divine Charity? A Pharisaical diligence in outward forms without inward Spirit, had no better a title vouchsafed by our Savior, than that of hypocritical. God desires not Sacrifices, nor delights in burnt Offerings: Shadows are not to be offered instead of Substance. God required the heart of man for itself; but commanded outward Ceremonies, as subservient to inward worship, and goads and spurs unto it: They were never appointed as the substance of Religion, but auxiliaries to it. What value had the Offering of the human nature of Christ been of, if he had not had a divine nature to qualify him to be the Priest? And what is the oblation of our Bodies, without a Priestly act of the Spirit in the presentation of it? Could the Israelites have called themselves Worshippers of God according to his Order, if they had brought a thousand Lambs that had died in a Ditch, or been killed at home? They were to be brought living to the Altar; the blood shed at the foot of it: A thousand Sacrifices killed without, had not been so valuable as one brought alive to the place of Offering: One sound Sacrifice is better than a thousand rotten ones. As God took no pleasure in the blood of Beasts without its relation to the Antitype; So he takes no pleasure in the outward rites of worship, without Faith in the Redeemer. To offer a Body with a sapless Spirit, is a Sacrilege of the same nature with that of the Israelites when they offered dead Beasts. A man without spiritual worship is dead whiles he worships, though by his diligence in the externals of it he may like the Angel of the Church of Sardis, have a name to live . What security can we expect from a multitude of dead services? What weak shields are they against the holy eye and revenging wrath of God? What man, but one out of his wits, would solicit a dead man to be his Advocate or Champion?
Diligence in outward worship is not to be rested in.
Use 2. Shall be for Examination: Let us try ourselves concerning the manner of our worship. We are now in the end of the world, and the dregs of time; wherein the Apostle predicts, there may be much of a form, and little of the power of Godliness : And therefore it stands us in hand to search into ourselves, whether it be not thus with us? Whether there be as much reverence in our Spirits, as there may be devotion in our countenances and outward carriages.
1. How therefore are our hearts prepared to worship? Is our diligence greater, to put our hearts in an adoring posture, than our bodies in a decent garb? Or are we content to have a muddy Heart, so we may have a dressed Carcass? To have a Spirit a Cage of unclean Birds, while we wipe the filth from the outside of the Platter, is no better than a Pharisaical devotion, and deserves no better a name, than that of a whited Sepulcher.
Do we take opportunities to excite and quicken our Spirits to the performance, and cry aloud with David, awake, awake my glory? Are not our hearts asleep when Christ knocks; when we hear the voice of God, seek my face; Do we answer him with warm resolutions, thy face Lord we will seek ? Do we comply with spiritual motions, and strike whiles the Iron is hot? Is there not more of reluctancy, than readiness? Is there a quick rising of the Soul in reverence to the motion, as Eglon to Ehud; or a sullen hanging the head at the first approach of it? Or if our hearts seem to be engaged, and on fire; What are the motives that quicken that fire? Is it only the blast of a natural Conscience; fear of Hell; desires of Heaven as abstracted from God? Or is it an affection to God; an obedient will to please him; longings to enjoy him, as a holy and sanctifying God in his Ordinances, as well as a blessed and glorified God in Heaven?
What do we expect in our approaches from him? That which may make divine impressions upon us, and more exactly conform us to the divine nature? Or do we design nothing but an empty formality, a rolling eye, and a filling the Air with a few words, without any openings of heart to receive the incomes, which according to the nature of the duty might be conveyed to us? Can this be a spiritual worship? The Soul then closely waits upon him, when its expectation is only from him, Psal. 62.6. Are our hearts seasoned with a sense of sin; a sight of our spiritual wants; raised notions of God; glowing affections to Him; strong appetite after a spiritual fullness? Do we rouse up our sleepy Spirits, and make a Covenant with all that is within us to attend upon him? So much as we want of this, so much we come short of a spiritual worship: In Psal. 57.7. My heart is fixed, oh God, my heart is fixed. David would fix his heart, before he would engage in a praising act of worship: He appeals to God about it, and that with doubling the expression, as being certain of an inward preparedness: Can we make the same appeals in a fixation of Spirit?
2. How are our hearts fixed upon him, How do they cleave to him in the duty? Do we resign our Spirits to God, and make them an entire Holocaust, a whole burnt-offering in his worship? Or do we not willingly admit carnal thoughts to mix themselves with spiritual duties, and fasten our minds to the Creature, under pretences of directing them to the Creator? Do we not pass a mere complement on God, by some superficial act of devotion; while some covetous, envious, ambitious, voluptuous imagination may possess our minds? Do we not invert God's Order, and worship a Lust instead of God with our Spirits, that should not have the least service, either from our Souls or Bodies, but with a spiritual disdain be sacrificed to the just indignation of God? How often do we fight against his Will, while we cry hail Master; instead of crucifying our own thoughts, crucifying the Lord of our Lives; Our outward carriage plausible, and our inward stark naught? Do we not often regard iniquity more than God in our hearts, in a time of worship? Roul some filthy imagination as a sweet morsel under our tongues, and taste more sweetness in that, than in God? Do not our Spirits smell rank of Earth, while we offer to Heaven, and have we not hearts full of thick Clay, as their hands were full of blood ? When we sacrifice, do we not wrap up our Souls in communion with some sordid fancy, when we should entwine our Spirits about an amiable God? While we have some fear of him, may we not have a love to something else above him? This is to worship, or swear by the Lord, and by Malchom . How often doth an Apish-fancy render a service inwardly ridiculous, under a grave outward posture; skipping to the Shop, Ware-house, Compting-house in the space of a short Prayer? And we are before God as a Babel, a confusion of internal languages; and this in those parts of worship which are in the right use most agreeable to God; profitable for ourselves; ruinous to the Kingdom of Sin and Satan, and means to bring us into a closer communion with the Divine Majesty: Can this be a spiritual worship?
3. How do we act our graces in worship? Though the Instrument be strung, if the str • ngs be not wound up, what melody can be the issue? All readiness and alacrity discover a strength of nature, and a readiness in Spirituals, discovers a spirituality in the heart. As unaffecting thoughts of God are not spiritual thoughts; so unaffecting addresses to God, are not spiritual addresses. Well t • en, what awakenings, and elevations of Faith and Love have we? What strong outflowings of our Souls to him? What indignation against Sin? What admirations of redeeming Grace? How low have we brought our corruptions to the footstool of Christ, to be made his conquered Enemies? How straitly have we claspt ou • Faith about the Cross and Throne of Christ, to become his intimate Spouse? Do we in hearing hang upon the lips of Christ; in prayer take hold of God, and will not let him go; in confessions rent the Caul of our hearts, and indite our Souls before him with a deep humility? Do we act more by a soaring love than a drooping fear? So far as our Spitits are servile, so far they are legal and carnal; so much as they are free and spontaneous, so much they are evangelical and spiritual. As men under the Law are subject to the constraint of Bondage all their life-time, in all their worship: so under the Gospel they are under a constraint of love : How then are believing affections exercised, which are always accompanied with holy fear, a fear of his goodness that admits us into his presence, and a fear to offend him in our act of worship? So much as we have of forced or feeble affection, so much we have of carnality.
4. How do we find our hearts after worship? By an after carriage, we may judge of the spirituality of it.
1. How are we as to inward strength? When a worship is spiritually performed, grace is more strengthened, corruption more mortified: The Soul, like Sampson after his awakening, goes out with a renewed strength: As the inward man is renewed day by day, that is, every day; so it is renewed in every worship. Every shower makes the grass and fruit grow in good ground where the root is good, and the weeds where the ground is naught: The more prepared the heart is to obedience in other duties after worship, the more evidence there is that it hath been spiritual in the exercise of it. 'It is the end of God in every dispensation, as in that of John the Baptist, To make ready a People prepared for the Lord . When the heart is by worship prepared for fresh acts of obedience, and hath a more exact watchfulness against the encroachments of Sin. As carnal men after worship sprout up in spiritual wickedness; so do spiritual Worshippers in spiritual graces: Spiritual fruits, are a sign of a spiritual frame. When men are more prone to sin after duty, 'tis a sign there was but little communion with God in it, and a greater strength of sin, because such an act is contrary to the end of worship, which is the subduing of Sin. 'It is a sign the Physic hath wrought well, when the stomach hath a better appetite to its appointed food; and worship hath been well performed, when we have a stronger inclination to other acts well pleasing to God, and a more sensible distaste of those temptations we too much relisht before. 'It is a sign of a good Concoction, when there is a greater strength in the vitals of Religion, a more eager desire to know God. When Moses had been praying to God, and prevailed with him; he puts up a higher request, to behold his Glory . When the appetite stands strong to fuller discoveries of God, it is a sign there hath been a spiritual converse with him.
2. How is it especially as to humility? The Pharisees worship was without dispute, carnal; and we find them not more humble after all their devotions, but over-grown with more weeds of spiritual pride; they performed them as their righteousness. What men dare plead before God in his day, they plead before him in their hearts, in their day; but this men will do at the day of Judgment, we have prophesied in thy Name, &c. Mat. 7.21. They show what tincture their services left upon their Spirits: That which excludes them from any acceptation at the last day, excludes them from any estimation of being spiritual in this day. The carnal Worshippers charge God with Injustice in not rewarding them, and claim an acceptation as a compensation due to them, Isa. 58.3. Wherefore have we afflicted our Souls, and thou takest no knowledge? A spiritual Worshipper looks upon his duties with shame, as well as he doth upon his sins with confusion, and implores the mercy of God for the one as well as the other. In the 143 Psalm v. 2. the Prophet David after his supplications, begs of God not to enter into Judgment with him, and acknowledges any answer that God should give him, as a fruit of his faithfulness to his promise, and not the merit of his worship. In thy Faithfulness answer me, &c. Whatsoever springs from a gracious Principle, and is the breath of the Spirit, leaves a man more humble; whereas that which proceeds from a stock of nature, hath the true blood of nature running in the veins of it, viz. that pride which is naturally derived from Acam. The breathing of the Divine Spirit is in everything to conform us to our Redeemer; that being the main work of his Office, is his work in every particular Christian-act influenced by him. Now Jesus Christ in all his actions was an exact Pattern of Humility. After the institution and celebration of the Supper, a special act of worship in the Church; though he had a sense of all the Authority his Father had given him, yet he humbles himself to wash his Disciples feet : And after his sublime Prayer, John 17. He humbles himself to the death, and offers himself to his Murderers, because of his Fathers pleasure, John 18.1. When he had spoken those words, he w • nt over the Brook Kedron into the Garden. What is the end of God in appointing worship, is the end of a spiritual heart in offering it; not his own exaltation but God's glory: Glorifying the name of God, is the fruit of that Evangelical-worship the Gentiles were in time to give to God, Psal. 86.9. All Nations which thou hast made, shall come and worship before thee oh Lord, and shall glorify thy Name. Let us examine then what debasing ourselves there is in a sense of our own vileness, and distance from so glorious a Spirit. Self-denial is the heart of all Gospel-grace. Evangelical Spiritual-worship cannot be without the ingredient of the main Evangelical Principle.
3. What delight is there after it? What pleasure is there, and what is the Object of that pleasure? Is it Communion the we have had with God, or a Fluency in ourselves: Is it something which hath touched our hearts, or tickled our fancies? As the strength of sin is known by the delightful thoughts of it after the commission; so is the spirituality of duty, by the object of our delightful remembrance after the performance. It was a sign David was spiritual in the worship of God in the Tabernacle, when he enjoyed it, because he longed for the spiritual part of it, when he was exiled from it: His desires were not only for Liberty to revisit the Tabernacle, but to see the power and glory of God in the Sanctuary, as he had seen it before : His desires for it could not have been so ardent, if his reflection upon what had past, had not been delightful; nor could his Soul be poured out in him for the want of such opportunities, if the remembrance of the converse he had had with God, had not been accompanied with a delightful relish .
Let us examine what delight we find in our spirits after worship.
Use 3. Is of comfort. And 'tis very comfortable to consider, that the smallest worship with the Heart and Spirit, flowing from a principle of grace, is more acceptable than the most pompous veneration; yea, if the oblation were as precious as the whole Circuit of Heaven and Earth without it. That God that values a Cup of Cold water given to any as his Disciple, will value a sincere service above a costly Sacrifice. God hath his eye upon them that honor his nature; He would not seek such to worship him, if he did not intend to accept such a worship from them: When we therefore invoke him, and praise him, which are the prime parts of Religion; he will receive it as a sweet favor from us, and overlook infirmities mixed with the graces.
The great matter of discomfort, and that which makes us question the spirituality of worship, is the many starts of our Spirits, and rovings to other things.
For answer to which,
1. 'It is to be confessed, that these starts are natural to us. Who is free from them? We bear in our own bosoms a nest of turbulent thoughts, which like busy Gnatts will be buzzing about us, while we are in our most inward and spiritual converses. Many wild beasts lurk in a man's heart, as in a close and covert wood, and scarce discover themselves, but at our solemn worship.
No duty so holy, No worship so spiritual, that can wholly privilege us from them: They will jogg us in our most weighty employments, that, as God said to Cain, sin lies at the door, and enters in, and makes a riot in our Souls. As it is said of wicked men, they cannot sleep for multitude of thoughts ; so it may be of many a good man; he cannot worship for multitude of thoughts: There will be starts, and more in our Religious, than natural employments; 'tis natural to man: Some therefore think, the Bells tied to Aaron's Garments between the Pomegranates, were to warn the People, and recall their fugitive minds to the present service when they heard the sound of them, upon the least motion of the High priest. The Sacrifice of Abraham, the Father of the Faithful, was not exempt from the Fouls pecking at it. Zechariah himself was drowsy in the midst of his Visions, which being more amazing, might cause a heavenly intentness*, Zech. 4.1. The Angel that talked with me, came again and awaked me, as a man is awaked out of sleep. He had been roused up before, but he was ready to drop down again; his heart was gone, till the Angel jogged him. We may complain of such imaginations, as Jerem. doth of the Enemies of the Jews . Our Persecutors are swifter than Eagles; they light upon us with as much speed, as Eagles upon a Carcass; they pursue us upon the Mountain of Divine institutions, and they lay wait for us in the Wilderness, in our retired addresses to God.
And this will be so while,
1. There is natural corruption in us. There are in a Godly man two contrary principles, Flesh and Spirit, which endeavor to hinder one another's acts, and are always stirring upon the offensive or defensive part . There is a body of death continually exhaling its noisesome vapors; 'It is a body of death in our worship, as well as in our natures; it snaps our resolutions asunder ; it hinders us in the doing good, and contradicts our wills in the stirring up evil: This corruption being seated in all the faculties, and a constant Domestic in them, has the greater opportunity to trouble us, since it is by those faculties that we spiritually transact with God; and it stirs more in the time of religious exercises, though it be in part mortified: As a wounded Beast though tired, will rage and strive to its utmost, when the Enemy is about to fetch a blow at it. All duties of worship tend to the wounding of corruption; and it is no wonder to feel the striving of sin, to defend itself, and offend us when we have our Arms in our hands to mortify it, that the blow may be diverted which is directed against it.
The Apostles had aspiring thoughts; and being persuaded of an earthly Kingdom, expected a Grandeur in it: And though we find some appearance of it at other times; as when they were casting out Devils, and gave an account of it to their Master, he gives them a kind of a check , intimating that there was some kind of evil in their rejoicing upon that account: Yet this never swelled so high, as to break out into a quarrel who should be greatest, until they had the most solemn Ordinance, the Lord's Supper to quell it*. Our corruption is like Lime, which discovers not its fire by any smoke or heat, till you cast water, the Enemy of fire, upon it: Neither doth our natural corruption rage so much, as when we are using means to quench and destroy it.
2. While there is a Devil, and we in his Precinct, As he accuseth us to God, so he disturbs us in ourselves: He is a bold Spirit, and loves to intrude himself when we are conversing with God: We read, that when the Angels presented themselves before God, Satan comes among them . Motions from Satan will thrust themselves in with our most raised and Angelical frames; He loves to take off the edge of our Spirits from God; He acts but after the old rate; He from the first envied God an obedience from man, and envied man the felicity of communion with God; He is unwilling God should have the honor of worship, and that we should have the fruit of it; He hath himself lost it, and therefore is unwilling we should enjoy it; and being subtle, he knows how to make impressions upon us suitable to our inbred corruptions, and assault us in the weakest part: He knows all the avenues to get within us, (as he did in the temptation of Eve ) and being a Spirit, he wants not a power to dart them immediately upon our fancy; And being a Spirit, and therefore active and nimble, he can shoot those darts faster than our weakness can beat them off: He is diligent also, and watcheth for his Prey, and seeks to devour our services as well as our Souls, and snatch our best morsels from us: We know he mixed himself with our Savior's retirements in the Wilderness, and endeavored to Fly-blow his holy converse with his Father in the preparation to his mediatory work.
Satan is God's Ape, and imitates the Spirit in the Office of a Remembrancer: As the Spirit brings good thoughts and divine promises to mind, to quicken our worship; so the Devil brings evil things to mind, and endeavors to fasten them in our Souls to disturb us: And though all the foolish starts we have in worship are not purely his issue; yet being of kin to him, he claps his hands, and sets them on like so many Mastives to tear the service in pieces.
And both those distractions which arise from our own corruption, and from Satan, are most rise in worship, when we are under some pressing affliction. This seems to be David 's Case, Psal. 86. when in v. 11. He prays God to unite his heart to fear and worship his Name; he seems to be under some affliction, or fear of his Enemies; Oh free me from those distractions of Spirit, and those passions which arise in my Soul, upon considering the designs of my enemies against me, and press upon me in my addresses to thee, and attendances on thee. Job also in his affliction complains, Job. 17.11. That his purposes were broken off: He could not make an even thread of thoughts and resolutions; they were frequently snapped saunder, like rotten Yarn when one is winding it up.
Good Men and spiritual Worshippers have lain under this trouble: Though they are a sign of weakness of grace, or some obstructions in the acting of strong grace; yet they are not always evidences of a want of grace: What ariseth from our own corruption, is to be matter of humiliation and resistance; what ariseth from Satan, should edge our minds to a noble conquest of them. If the Apostle did comfort himself with his disapproving of what rose from the natural spring of sin within him, with his consent to the Law, and dissent from his Lust; and charges it not upon himself, but upon the sin that dwelt in him, with which he had broken off the former League, and was resolved never to enter into Amity with it: By the same reason we may comfort ourselves, if such thoughts are undelighted in, and alienate not our hearts from the worship of God by all their busy intrusions to interrupt us.
2. These distractions (not allowed) may be occasions by an holy improvement to make our hearts more spiritual after worship, though they disturb us in it: By answering those ends for which we may suppose God permits them to invade us. And that is,
1. When they are occasions to humble us.
(1.) For our carriage in the particular worship. There is nothing so dangerous as spiritual pride; It deprived Devils and Men of the presence of God, and will hinder us of the influence of God. If we had had raised and uninterrupted motions in worship, we should be apt to be lifted up; and the Devil stands ready to tempt us to self-confidence. You know how it was with Paul ; His buffetings were occasions to render him more spiritual than his raptures, because more humble. God suffers those wanderings, starts and distractions to prevent our spiritual pride, which is as a Worm at the root of spiritual worship, and mind us of the dusty frame of our Spirits, how easily they are blown away: As he sends sickness to put us in mind of the shortness of our breath, and the easiness to lose it. God would make us ashamed of ourselves in his presence; that we may own, that what is good in any duty, is merely from his Grace and Spirit, and not from ourselves. That with Paul we may cry out, by Grace we are what we are, and by Grace we do what we do: We may be hereby made sensible, that God can always find something in our exactest worship, as a ground of denying us the successful fruit of it. If we cannot stand upon our duties for Salvation, what can we bottom upon in ourselves? If therefore they are occasions to make us out of love with any righteousness of our own, to make us break our hearts for them, because we cannot keep them out; If we mourn for them as our sins, and count them our great afflictions; we have attained that brokeness which is a choice ingredient in a spiritual Sacrifice: Though we have been disturbed by them, yet we are not robbed of the success; we may behold an answer of our worship in our humiliation, in spite of all of them.
(2.) For the baseness of our Nature. These unsteady motions help us to discern that heap of vermin that breeds in our nature. Would any man think he had such an averseness to his Creator and Benefactor; such an unsuitableness to him; such an estrangedness from him, were it not for his inspection into his distracted frames? God suffers this to hang over us as a Rod of Correction, to discover and fetch out the folly of our hearts. Could we imagine our natures so highly contrary to that God who is so infinitely amiable, so desirable an Object; or that there should be so much folly and madness in the heart, as to draw back from God in those services, which God hath appointed as pipes through which to communicate his grace, to convey himself, his love and goodness to the Creature? If therefore we have a deep sense of, and strong reflections upon our base nature, and bewail that mass of averseness which lies there, and that fullness of irreverence towards the God of our mercies, the Object of our worship; 'tis a blessed improvement of our wanderings and diversions. Certainly if any Israelite had brought a lame and rotten Lamb to be sacrificed to God, and afterward had bewailed it, and laid open his heart to God in a sensible and humble confession of it; That Repentance had been a better Sacrifice, and more acceptable in the sight of God; than if he had brought a sound and a living Offering.
(2.) When they are occasions to make us prize duties of worship: When we argue, as rationally we may, that they are of singular use; since our corrupt hearts and a malicious Devil doth chiefly endeavor to hinder us from them: And that we find we have not those gadding thoughts when we are upon worldly business, or upon any sinful design which may dishonor God and wound our Souls: This is a sign Sin and Satan dislike worship; for he is too subtle a Spirit to oppose that which would further his Kingdom. As it is an argument the Scripture is the Word of God, because the wickedness of the world doth so much oppose it; so it is a ground to believe the profitableness and excellency of worship, because Satan and our own unruly hearts do so much interrupt us in it: If therefore we make this use of our cross steps in worship, to have a greater value for such duties, more affections to them and desires to be frequent in them: Our hearts are growing spiritual, under the weights that would depress them to carnality.
(3.) When we take a rise from hence, to have heavenly admirations of the graciousness of God. That he should pity and pardon so many slight addresses to him, and give any gracious returns to us. Though men have foolish rangings every day, and in every duty; yet free grace is so tender as not to punish them, Gen. 8.21. And the Lord smelt a sweet savor; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not curse the Ground for man's sake, for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth. 'It is observable, that this was just after a Sacrifice which Noah offered to God, v. 20. But probably not without infirmities common to human nature, which may be grounded upon the reason God gives; that though he had destroyed the Earth before, because of the evil of man's imaginations, Gen. 6.5. He still found evil imaginations; He doth not say in the heart of Cham, or others of Noah's Family; but in man's heart, including Noah also; who had both the Judgments of God upon the former world, and the mercy of God in his own preservation before his eyes; yet God sawevil imaginations rooted in the nature of Man; and though it were so, yet he would be merciful: If therefore we can, after finding our hearts so vagrant in worship, have real frames of thankfulness that God hath spared us; and be hightned in our admirations at God's giving us any fruit of such a distracted worship; we take advantage from them, to be raised into an Evangelical frame, which consists in the humble acknowledgments of the grace of God. When David takes a review of those tumultuous passions which had rufled his mind, and possessed him with unbelieving notions of God in the persons of his Prophets ; how high doth his Soul mount in astonishment and thankfulness to God for his mercy ? Notwithstanding his distrust, God did graciously perform his promise, and answer his desire; Then it is what shall I render to the Lord? His heart was more affected for it, because it had been so passionate in former distrusts. 'It is indeed a ground of wondering at the patience of the Spirit of God, that he should guide our hearts when they are so apt to start out; as it is the patience of a Master to guide the hand of his Scholar, while he mixes his writing with many blots. 'It is not one or two infirmities the Spirit helps us in, and helps over, but many . 'It is a sign of a spiritual heart, when he can take a rise to bless God for the renewing and blowing up his affections, in the midst of so many incursions from Satan to the contrary, and the readiness of the heart too much to comply with them.
(4.) When we take occasion from thence to prize the mediation of Christ. The more distractions jogg us, the more need we should see of going out to a Savior by Faith. One part of our Savior's Office is to stand between us and the infirmities of our worship: As he is an Advocate, he presents our services, and pleads for them and us ; for the sins of our duties, as well as for our other sins. Jesus Christ is an High-priest, appointed by God to take away the iniquities of our holy things, which was typified by Aaron's Plate upon his Mitre . Were there no imperfections, were there no creeping up of those Frogs into our minds, we should think our worship might merit acceptance with God upon its own account: But if we behold our own weakness, that not a tear, a groan, a sigh is so pure, but must have Christ to make it entertainable; that there is no worship without those blemishes; and upon this, throw all our services into the Arms of Christ for acceptance, and solicit him to put his merits in the front, to make our ciphers appear valuable; 'tis a spiritual act, the design of God in the Gospel being to advance the honor and mediation of his Son. That is a spiritual and evangelical act, which answers the evangelical design. The design of Satan and our own corruption is defeated, when those interruptions make us run swifter, and take faster hold on the High-priest who is to present our worship to God, and our own Souls receive comfort thereby. Christ had temptations offered to him by the Devil in his Wilderness retirement; that from an experimental knowledge, he might be able more compassionatly to succor us ; we have such assaults in our retired worship especially, that we may be able more highly to value him and his mediation.
3. Let us not therefore be discouraged by those interruptions and starts of our hearts.
(1.) If we find in ourselves a strong resistance of them. The Flesh will be lusting; that cannot be hindered; yet if we do not fulfil the lusts of it, rise up at its command and go about its work, we may be said to walk in the Spirit : We walk in the Spirit, if we fulfil not the lusts of the Flesh, though there be a lusting of the Flesh against the Spirit: So we worship in the Spirit, though there be carnal thoughts arising, if we do not fulfil them; though the stirring of them discovers some contrariety in us to God, yet the resistance manifests, that there is a principle of contrariety in us to them; that as there is something of Flesh that lusts against the Spirit, so there is something of Spirit in worship which lusts against the Flesh: We must take heed of omitting worship, because of such in-rodes; and lying down in the mire of a total neglect. If our Spirits are made more lively and vigorous against them; If those cold vapors which have risen from our hearts, make us like a Spring in the midst of the cold Earth, more warm: There is in this case more reason for us to bless God, than to be discouraged. God looks upon it as the disease, not the willfulness of our nature; as the weakness of the Flesh, not the willingness of the Spirit. If we would shut the door upon them, it seems they are unwelcome company: Men do not use to lock their doors upon those they love; If they break in and disturb us with their impertinencies, we need not be discomforted, unless we give them a share in our affections, and turn our back upon God to entertain them: If their presence makes us sad, their flight would make us joyful.
(2.) If we find ourselves excited to a stricter watch over our hearts against them. As Travelers will be careful when they come to places where they have been robbed before, that they be not so easily surprised again. We should not only lament when we have had such foolish imaginations in worship breaking in upon us, but also bless God that we have had no more, since we have hearts so fruitful of weeds. We should give God the glory when we find our hearts preserved from these intruders, and not boast of ourselves, but return him our praise for the watch and guard he kept over us to preserve us from such Thieves.
Let us not be discomforted; for as the greatness of our sins, upon our turning to God is no hindrance to our justification, because it doth not depend upon our conversion as the meritorious cause, but upon the infinite value of our Savior's satisfaction, which reaches the greatest sins as well as the least; so the multitude of our bewailed distractions in worship are not a hindrance to our acceptation, because of the uncontrollable power of Christ's intercession.
Use 3. Is for exhortation. Since Spiritual worship is due to God, and the Father seeks such to worship him, how much should we endeavor to satisfy the desire and order of God, and act conformable to the Law of our Creation and the love of Redemption? Our end must be the same in worship which was God's end in Creation and Redemption; to glorify his name, set forth his perfections, and be rendered fit as Creatures and Redeemed ones to partake of that grace which is the fruit of worship. An Evangelical dispensation requires a Spiritual homage; to neglect therefore either the matter or manner of Gospel duties, is to put a slight upon Gospel privileges. The manner of duty is ever of more value than the matter; the Scarlet die is more precious than the cloth tinctured with it. God respects more the diposition of the Sacrificer than the multitude of the Sacrifices . The Solemn feasts appointed by God, were but Dung, as managed by the Jews, M •• . 2.3. The heart is often welcome without the body, but the body never gra •• full without the heart; The inward acts of the Spirit require nothing from without to constitute them good in themselves; but the outward acts of devotion require inward acts to render them savory to God. As the goodness of outward acts consists not in the acts themselves, so the acceptableness of them results not from the acts themselves, but from the inward frame animating and quickening those acts, as blood and Spirits running through the veins of a duty to make it a living service in the sight of God. Imperfections in worship hinder not God's acceptation of it, if the heart Spirited by Grace be there to make it a sweet Savour. The stench of burning flesh and fat in the legal Sacrifices might render them noisome to the outward senses; but God smelt a sweet savor in them, as they respected Christ. When the heart and Spirit are offered up to God, it may be a savory duty, though attended with unsavory imperfections. But a thousand Sacrifices without a stamp of faith, a thousand Spiritual duties with an habitual carnality, are no better than stench with God.
The heart must be purged, as well as the Temple was by our Savior, of the Thieves that would rob God of his due worship. Antiquity had some Temples, wherein it was a crime to bring any gold; therefore those that came to worship laid their gold aside, before they went into the Temple. We should lay aside our worldly and trading thoughts before we address to worship, Isa. 26.9. With my Spirit within me will I seek thee early. Let not our minds be gadding abroad, and exiled from God and themselves. It will be thus when the desire of our Soul is to his name and the remembrance of him, ver. 8. When he hath given so great and admirable a gift, as that of his Son, in whom are all things necessary to Salvation, Righteousness, Peace, and pardon of sin, we should manage the remembrance of his name in worship with the closest unitedness of heart, and the most Spiritual affections. The motion of the Spirit is the first act in Religion, to this we are obliged in every act: The Devil requires the Spirit of his votaries; should God have a less dedication than the Devil?
Motives to back this exhortation.
1. Not to give God our Spirit is a great sin. It is a mockery of God, not worship; contempt, not adoration, whatever our outward fervency or protestations may be . Every alienation of our hearts from him is a real scorn put upon him: The acts of the Soul are real, and more the acts of the man than the acts of the body; because they are the acts of the choicest part of man, and of that which is the first spring of all bodily motions; 'tis the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 the Inrenal speech whereby we must speak with God: To give him therefore, only an external form of worship without the life of it, is a taking his name in vain: We mock him, when we mind not what we are speaking to him, or what he is speaking to us; when the motions of our hearts are contrary to the motions of our tongues; when we do anything before him slovenly, impudently or rashly. As in a Lutinisi, it is absurd to sing one Tune and play another; so it is a foul thing, to tell God one thing with our lips, and think another thing with our hearts; 'tis a sin like that the Apostle chargeth the Heathens with, Rom. 1.28. they like not to retain God in their knowledge; their stomachs are sick while they are upon any duty, and never leave working, till they have thrown up all the spiritual part of Worship, and rid themselves of the thoughts of God, which are as unwelcome and troublesome Guests to them: When men behave themselves in the sight of God, as if God were not God; they do not only defame him, but deny him, and violate the unchangeable perfections of the Divine Nature.
(1.) 'It is against the Majesty of God. When we have not awful thoughts of that great Majesty to whom we address; when our Souls cleave not to him, when we petition him in Prayer, or when he gives out his Orders to us in his Word. 'It is a contempt of the Majesty of a Prince, if whiles he is speaking to us, we listen not to him with reverence and attention, but turn our backs on him, to play with one of his Hounds, or talk with a Beggar; or while we speak to him, to rake in a Dunghill. Solomon adviseth us to keep our foot when we go to the House of God . Our affections should be steady, and not slip away again; why? v. 2. because God is in Heaven, &c. He is a God of Majesty; earthly dirty frames are unsuitable to the God of Heaven; low Spirits are unsuitable to the most High. We would not bring our mean Servants, or dirty Dogs into a Princes Presence Chamber; yet we bring not only our worldly, but our profane affections into God's presence: We give in this case, those services to God, which our Governor would think unworthy of him . The more excellent and glorious God is, the greater contempt of him it is to suffer such foolish affections to be Competitors with him for our hearts: 'It is a scorn put upon him to converse with a Creature while we are dealing with him; but a greater to converse in our thoughts and fancies with some sordid lust, which is most hateful to him: And the more aggravation it attracts, in that we are to apprehend him the most glorious Object sitting upon his Throne in time of worship, and ourselves standing as vile Creatures before him, supplicating for our lives, and the conveyances of grace and mercy to our Souls: As if a grand Mutineer, instead of humbly begging the pardon of his offended Prince, should present his Petition not only scribled and blotted, but besmeared with some loathsome excrement. 'It is unbecoming the Majesty both of God, and the worship itself, to present him with a Picture instead of Substance, and bring a world of nasty affections in our hearts, and ridiculous toys in our heads before him, and worship with indisposed and heedless Souls.
Malac. 1.14. He is a great King, therefore address to him with fear and reverence.
(2.) 'It is against the Life of God. Is a dead worship proportioned to a living God? The separation of heavenly affections from our Souls before God, makes them as much a Carcass in his sight, as the divorce of the Soul makes the Body a Carcass; When the affections are separated, worship is no longer worship, but a dead offering, a lifeless bulk; for the essence and spirit of worship is departed: Though the Soul be present with the Body in a way of information, yet it is not present in a way of affection, and this is the worst; for it is not the separation of the Soul from informing, that doth separate a man from God, but the removal of our affections from him. If a man pretend an application to God, and sleep and snore all the time; without question such a one did not worship: In a careless worship, the heart is morally dead while the eyes are open: The heart of the Spouse waked whiles her eyes slept, and our hearts on the contrary sleep while our eyes wake.
Our blessed Savior hath died to purge our Consciences from dead works and frames, that we may serve the living God ; to serve God as a God of Life David's Soul cried and fainted for God under this consideration : But to present our Bodies without our Spirits, is such a usage of God, that implies he is a dead Image, not worthy of any but a dead and heartless service: Like one of those Idols the Psalmist speaks of , that have eyes and see not, ears and hear not, no life in it: Though it be not an objective Idolatry, because the worship is directed to the true God; yet I may call it a subjective Idolatry, in regard of the frame, fit only to be presented to some senseless stock. We intimate God to be no better than an Idol, and to have no more knowledge of us and insight into us, than an Idol can have: If we did believe him to be the living God, we durst not come before him with services so unsuitable to him, and reproaches of him.
(3.) 'It is against the infiniteness of God. We should worship God with those boundless affections which bear upon them a Shadow or Image of his Infiniteness; such are the desires of the Soul which know no limits, but start out beyond whatsoever enjoyment the heart of man possesses. No creeping Creature was to be offered to God in Sacrifice; but such as had legs to run, or wings to fly: For us to come before God with a light creeping frame, is to worship him with the lowest finite affections; as though anything though never so mean or torn, might satisfy an infinite Being; as though a poor shallow Creature could give enough to God without giving him the heart, when indeed we cannot give him a worship proportionable to his infiniteness, did our hearts swell as large as Heaven in our desires for him in every act of our duties.
(4.) 'It is against the spirituality of God. God being a Spirit, calls for a worship in Spirit; to withhold this from him, implies him to be some gross corporeal matter: As a Spirit, he looks for the heart; a wrestling heart in Prayer; a trembling heart in the Word : To bring nothing but the Body when we come to a spiritual God to beg spiritual benefits, to wait for spiritual communications, which can only be dispensed to us in a spiritual manner, is unsuitable to the spiritual nature of God: A mere carnal service implicitly denies his spirituality, which requires of us higher engagements than mere corporeal ones.
Worship should be rational, not an imaginative service, wherein is required the activity of our noblest faculties; and our fancy ought to have no share in it, but in subserviency to the more spiritual part of our Soul.
(5.) 'It is against the supremacy of God. As God is one, and the only Sovereign; so our hearts should be one, cleaving wholly to him, and undivided from him: In pretending to deal with him, we acknowledge his Deity and Sovereignty; but in with holding our choicest faculties and affections from him, and the starting of our minds to vain Objects, we intimate their equality with God, and their right as well as his to our hearts and affections: 'It is as if a Princess should commit Adultery with some base Scullion, while she is before her Husband; which would be a plain denial of his sole right to her. It intimates that other things are superior to God; they are true Sovereigns that ingross our hearts. If a man were addressing himself to a Prince, and should in an instant turn his back upon him, upon a beck or nod from some inconsiderable person; is it not an evidence, that that person that invited him away, hath a greater sovereignty over him, than that Prince to whom he was applying himself? And do we not discard God's absolute dominion over us, when at the least beck of a corrupt inclination, we can dispose of our hearts to it, and alienate them from God? As they in Ezek. 33.32. left the service of God for the service of their covetousness; which evidenced that they owned the authority of sin more than the authority of God: This is not to serve God as our Lord and absolute Master, but to make God serve our turn, and submit his Sovereignty to the Supremacy of some unworthy affection. The Creature is preferred before the Creator, when the heart runs most upon it in time of religious worship, and our own carnal interest swallows up the affections that are due to God: 'It is an an Idol set up in the heart in his solemn presence, and attracts that devotion to itself, which we only owe to our Sovereign Lord; and the more base and contemptible that is to which the Spirit is devoted, the more contempt there is of God's dominion. Judas his kiss with a hail Master, was no act of worship, or an owning his Masters authority; but a designing the satisfaction of his Covetousness in the betraying of him.
(6.) 'It is against the Wisdom of God. God as a God of order, has put earthly things in subordination to heavenly; and we by this unworthy carriage invert this order, and put heavenly things in subordination to earthly; in placing mean and low things in our hearts, and bringing them so placed into God's presence, which his Wisdom at the Creation put under our feet. A service without spiritual affections, is a sacrifice of Fools, Eccles. 5.1. which have lost their Brains and Understandings: A foolish Spirit is very unsuitable to an infinitely wise God: Well may God say of such a one, as Achish of David who seemed mad; Why have you brought this Fellow to play the Mad-man in my presence? Shall this Fellow come into my House? 1 Sam. 21.15.
(7.) 'It is against the Omnisciency of God. To carry it fair without and impertinently within, is as though God had not an all-seeing eye that could pierce into the heart, and understand every motion of the inward faculties; As though God were easily cheated with an outward fawning service, like an Apothecaries box with a guilded title, that may be full of Cobwebs within: What is such a carriage, but a design to deceive God; when with Herod we pretend to worship Christ, and intend to murder all the motions of Christ in our Souls? A heedless Spirit, an estrangement of our Souls, a giving the Rains to them to run out from the presence of God to see every Reed shaken with the Wind, is to deny him to be the Searcher of hearts, and the Discerner of secret thoughts; as though he could not look through us to the darkness and remoteness of our minds, but were an ignorant God, who might be put off with the worst as well as the best in our Flock. If we did really believe there were a God of infinite Knowledge, who saw our frames, and whether we came dressed with Wedding-garments suitable to the duties we are about to perform; should we be so garish, and put him off with such trivial stuff, without any reverence of his Majesty?
(8.) 'It is against the Holiness of God. To alienate our Spirits, is to offend him while we pretend to worship him; Though we may be mighty officious in the external part, yet our base and carnal affections make all our worship but as a heap of Dung; and who would not look upon it as an affront, to lay Dung before a Prince's Throne? Pro. 21.27. The Sacrifice of the Wicked, is an abomination: How much more when he brings it with a wicked mind? A putrefied Carcass under the Law, had not been so great an affront to the Holiness of God, as a frothy unmelted heart, and a wanton fancy in a time of worship. God is so holy, that if we could offer the worship of Angels, and the quintessence of our Souls in his service, it would be beneath his infinite purity: How unworthy then are they of him, when they are presented not only without the sense of our uncleanness, but sullied with the fumes and exhalations of our corrupt affections, which are as so many Plague spots upon our duties, contrary to the unspotted purity of the Divine Nature? Is not this an unworthy conceit of God, and injurious to his infinite Holiness?
(9.) 'It is against the Love and Kindness of God. 'It is a condescension in God to admit a piece of Earth to offer up a duty to him, when he hath miriads of Angels to attend him in his Court and celebrate his Praise: To admit Man to be an Attendant on him and a Partner with Angels, is a high favor. 'It is not a single mercy, but a heap of mercies to be admitted into the presence of God, Psal. 5.7. I will come into thy house in the multitude of thy mercies. When the blessed God is so kind as to give us access to his Majesty, do we not undervalue his kindness when we deal uncivilly with him, and deny him the choicest part of ourselves? 'It is a contempt of his Sovereignty, as our Spirits are due to him by nature; a contempt of his Goodness, as our Spirits are due to him by gratitude: How abusive a carriage is it to make use of his mercy to encourage our impudence, that should excite our fear and reverence? How unworthy would it be for an indigent Debtor to bring to his indulgent Creditor, an empty Purse instead of Payment? When God holds out his Golden Scepter to encourage our approaches to him; stands ready to give us the pardon of sin and full felicity, the best things he hath; Is it a fit requital of his kindness, to give him a formal outside only, a shadow of Religion; to have the heart overswayed with other thoughts and affections; as if all his proffers were so contemptible, as to deserve only a slight at our hands? 'It is a contempt of the love and kindness of God.
(10.) 'It is against the Sufficiency and Fullness of God. When we give God our Bodies and the Creature our Spirits, it intimates a conceit, that there is more content to be had in the Creature than in God blessed forever; that the waters in the Cistern are sweeter than those in the Fountain: Is not this a practical giving God the Lye, and denying those promises wherein he hath declared the satisfaction he can give to the Spirit, as he is the God of the Spirits of all Flesh?
If we did imagine the excellency and loveliness of God were worthy to be the ultimate Object of our affections, the heart would attend more closely upon him, and be terminated in him; did we believe God to be all sufficient, full of grace and goodness, a tender Father, not willing to forsake his own; willing, as well as able to supply their wants; the heart would not so lamely attend upon him, and would not upon every impertinency be diverted from him. There is much of a wrong notion of God, and a predominancy of the world above him in the heart, when we can more savourly relish the thoughts of low inferior things than heavenly, and let our Spirits upon every trifling occasion be fugitives from him: 'It is a testimony that we make not God our chiefest good. If apprehensions of his excellency did possess our Souls, they would be fastened on him, glued to him; we should not listen to that rabble of foolish thoughts that steal our hearts so often from him. Were our breathings after God as strong as the pantings of the Hart after the water Brooks, we should be like that Creature; not diverted in our Course by every Puddle. Were God the predominant satisfactory Object in our eye, he would carry our whole Soul along with him.
When our Spirits readily retreat from God in worship upon every giddy motion, 'tis a kind of repentance that ever we did come near him, and implies, that there is a fuller satisfaction, and more attractive excellency in that which doth so easily divert us, than in that God to whose worship we did pretend to address ourselves: 'It is as if, when we were petitioning a Prince, we should immediately turn about, and make request to one of his Guard; as though so mean a person were more able to give us the boon we want, than the Sovereign is.
2. Consideration by way of motive. To have our Spirits off from God in worship, is a bad sign. It was not so in Innocence. The heart of Adam could cleave to God; the Law of God was engraven upon him; he could apply himself to the fulfilling of it without any twinkling; there was no folly and vanity in his mind, no independency in his thoughts, no duty was his burden; for there was in him a proneness to, and delight in all the duties of worship: 'It is the Fall hath distempered us; and the more unwieldiness there is in our Spirits, the more carnal our affections are in worship, the more evidence there is of the strength of that revolted state.
(1.) It argues much corruption in the heart. As by the eructations of the Stomach, we may judge of the windiness and foulness of it; so by the inordinate motions of our minds and hearts, we may judge of the weakness of its complexion. A strength of sin is evidenced by the eruptions and ebullitions of it in worship, when they are more sudden, numerous, and vigorous than the motions of grace. When the heart is apt like tinder to catch fire from Satan, 'tis a sign of much combustible matter suitable to his temptation. Were not corruption strong, the Soul could not turn so easily from God when it is in his presence, and hath an advantageous opportunity to create a fear and awe of God in it: Such base fruit could not sprout up so suddenly, were there not much sap and juice in the root of sin.
What communion with a living root can be evidenced without exercises of an inward life? That Spirit which is a Well of living waters in a gracious heart, will be especially springing up when it is before God.
(2.) It shows much affection to earthly things, and little to heavenly. There must needs be an inordinate affection to earthly things, when upon every slight solicitation we can part with God, and turn the back upon a service glorious for him, and advantageous for ourselves, to wed our hearts to some idle fancy that signifies nothing. How can we be said to entertain God in our affections, when we give him not the precedency in our understandings, but let every trifle justle the sense of God out of our minds? Were our hearts fully determined to spiritual things, such vanities could not seat themselves in our understandings, and divide our Spirits from God. Were our hearts balanced with a love to God, the world could never steal our hearts so much from his worship, but his worship would draw our hearts to it.
It shows a base neutrality in the greatest concernments; a halting between God and Baal; a contrariety between Affection and Conscience, when natural Conscience presses a man to duties of worship, and his other affections pull him back, draw him to carnal objects, and make him slight that whereby he may honor God. God argues the profaneness of the Jews hearts from the wickedness they brought into his house, and acted there, Jer. 23.11. Yea, in my house, that is, my worship, I found their wickedness, saith the Lord. Carnality in worship is a kind of an Idolatrous frame; when the heart is renewed, Idols are cast to the Moles and the Batts Isa. 2.20.
(3.) It shows much hypocrisy to have our Spirits off from God. The mouth speaks, and the carriage pretends what the heart doth not think; there is a dissent of the heart from the pretence of the body.
Instability is a sure sign of Hypocrisy. Double thoughts argue a double heart. The Wicked are compared to Chaff , for the uncertain and various motions of their minds, by the least wind of fancy. The least motion of a carnal Object diverts the Spirit from God, as the scent of Carrion doth the Raven from the flight it was set upon.
The People of God are called God's Spouse, and God calls himself their Husband; whereby is noted, the most intimate union of the Soul with God, and that there ought to be the highest love and affection to him, and faithfulness in his worship; but when the heart doth start from him in worship, it is a sign of the unsteadfastness of it with God, and a disrelish of any communion with him; It is as God complains of the Israelites, a going a whoring after our own imaginations.
As grace respects God as the object of worship, so it looks most upon God in approaching to him. Where there is a likeness and love, there is a desire of converse and intimacy; if there be no spiritual entwining about God in our worship, it is a sign there is no likeness to him, no true sense of him, no renewed image of God in us: Every living Image will move strongly to join itself with its original Copy, and be glad with Jacob, to sit steadily in those Chariots that shall convey him to his beloved Joseph.
Motion 3. Consider the danger of a carnal worship
(1.) We lose the comfort of worship. The Soul is a great Gainer when it offers a spiritual worship, and as great a loser when it is unfaithful with God. Treachery and perfidiousness hinder commerce among men; so doth Hypocrisy in its own nature, communion with God. God never promised anything to the Carcass but to the Spirit of worship. God hath no obligation upon him by any word of his, to reward us with himself, when we perform it not to himself: When we give an outside worship, we have only the outside of an ordinance: We can expect no kernel, when we give God only the shell: He that only licks the outside of the Glass, can never be refreshed with the rich Cordial enclosed within. A cold and lazy formality, will make God to withdraw the light of his countenance, and not shine with any delightful communications upon our Souls; but if we come before him with a liveliness of affections, and steadiness of heart; he will draw the veil, and cause his glory to display itself before us. An humble praying Christian, and a warm affectionate Christian in worship, will soon find a God who is delighted with such frames, and cannot long withhold himself from the Soul: When our hearts are enflamed with love to him in worship, 'tis a preparation to some act of love on his part whereby he intends further to gratify us. When John was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, that is in spiritual employment, and meditation and other duties, he had that great Revelation of what should happen to the Church in all ages ; His being in the Spirit, intimates his ordinary course on that day, and not any extraordinary act in him, though it was followed with an extraordinary discovery of God to him; When he was thus engaged, he heard a voice behind him.
God doth not require of us spirituality in worship to advantage himself, but that we might be prepared to be advantaged by him. If we have a clear and well disposed eye, 'tis not a benefit to the Sun, but fits us to receive benefits from his Beams. Worship is an act that perfects our own Souls; they are then most widened by spiritual frames, to receive the influence of divine blessings, as an eye most opened receives the fruit of the Suns light, better than the eye that is shut. The communications of God are more or less, according as our spiritual frames are more or less in our worship: God will not give his blessings to unsuitable hearts. What a nasty Vessel is a carnal heart for a spiritual communication? The chief end of every duty enjoined by God, is to have communion with him; and therefore it is called, a drawing near to God: 'It is impossible therefore, that the outward part of any duty can answer the end of God in his institution. 'It is not a bodily appearance or gesture whereby men can have communion with God, but by the impressions of the heart, and reflections of the heart upon God: Without this, all the rich streams of grace will run besides us, and the growth of the Soul be hindered and impaired. A diligent hand makes rich, saith the wise man; a diligent heart in spiritual worship, brings in rich incomes to the humble and spiritual Soul.
(2.) It renders the worship not only unacceptable, but abominable to God. It makes our Gold to become Dross; it soyls our duties, and bespotts our Souls. A carnal and unsteady frame shows an indifferency of Spirit at best; and luke warmness is as ungrateful to God, as heavy and nauseous meat is to the stomach, he spues them out of his mouth . As our gracious God doth overlook infirmities where intentions are good, and endeavors serious and strong; so he loathes the services where the frames are stark naught, Psal. 66.118. If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear my Prayer. Luke warm and indifferrent services stink in the Nostrils of God. The heart seems to loath God when it starts from him upon every occasion, when it is unwilling to employ itself about, and stick close to him: And can God be pleased with such a frame? The more of the Heart and Spirit is in any service, the more real goodness there is in it, and the more savoury it is to God; the less of the Heart and Spirit, the less of goodness, and the more nauseous to God, who loves Righteousness and Truth in the inward parts . And therefore infinite Goodness and Holiness cannot but hate worship presented to him with deceitful, carnal and flitting affections: They must be more nauseous to God, than a putrefied Carcass can be to Man: They are the prophanings of that which should be the habitation of the Spirit: They make the Spirit, the seat of duty, a filthy dung-hill; and are as loathsome to God, as Money-changers in the Temple were to our Savior.
We see the evil of carnal frames, and the necessity and benefit of spiritual frames: For further help in this last, let us practice thes • following directions.
Direction 1. Keep up spiritual frames out of worship. To avoid low affections, we must keep our hearts as much as we can in a settled elevation. If we admit unworthy dispositions at one time, we shall not easily be rid of them at another : As he that would not be bitten with Gnats in the Night, must keep his windows shut in the Day; when they are once entered 'tis not easy to expel them: In which respect, one adviseth, to be such out of worship as we would be in worship. If we mix spiritual affections with our worldly employments, worldly affections will not mingle themselves so easily with our heavenly engagements. If our hearts be spiritual in our outward calling, they will scarce be carnal in our religious service. If we walk in the Spirit, we shall not fulfil the lusts of the Flesh . A spiritual walk in the day, will hinder carnal lustings in worship. The Fire was to be kept alive upon the Altar when Sacrifices were not offered, from morning till night, from night till morning, as well as in the very time of Sacrifice. A spiritual life and vigor out of worship, would render it at its season sweet and easy, and preserve a spontaneity and preparedness to it, and make it both natural and pleasant to us.
Any thing that doth unhinge and discompose our Spirits, is inconsistent with religious services, which are to be performed with the greatest sedateness and gravity. All irregular passions disturb the serenity of the Spirit, and open the door for Satan . Saith the Apostle, Let not the Sun go down upon your wrath, neither give place to the Devil. Where wrath breaks the Lock, the Devil will quickly be over the Threshold; and though they be allayed, yet they leave the heart sometime after, like the Sea rolling and swelling after the storm is ceased.
Mixture with ill company leaves a tincture upon us in worship. Ephraim's allying himself with the Gentiles, bred an indifferency in Religion. Hos. 7.8. Ephraim hath mixed himself with the People. Ephraim is a Cake not turned: It will make our hearts, and consequently our services half Dough, as well as half back'd: These and the like make the holy Spirit withdraw himself, and then the Soul lies like a wind-bound Vessel and can make no way. When the Sun departs from us, it carries its Beams away with it; then doth Darkness spread itself over the Earth, and the Beasts of the Forests creep out When the Spirit withdraws a while from a good man, it carries away, (though not habitual, yet) much of the exciting and assisting grace; and then carnal dispositions perk up themselves from the bosom of natural corruption. To be spiritual in worship, we must bar the door at other times against that which is contrary to it: As he that would not be infected with a contagious disease, carries some Preservative about with him, and inures himself to good scents.
To this end, be much in secret ejaculations to God; these are the purest slights of the Soul, that have more of fervor and less of carnality; they preserve a liveliness in the Spirit, and make it more fit to perform solemn stated worship with greater freedom and activity: A constant use of this would make our whole lives, lives of worship. As frequent sinful acts strengthen habits of sin; so frequent religious acts strengthen habits of grace.
Direction 2. Excite and exercise particularly a love to God, and dependence on him.
Love is a commanding affection, a uniting graces; it draws all the faculties of the Soul to one Center. The Soul that loves God, when it hath to do with him, is bound to the beloved Object; It can mind nothing else during such impressions. When the affection is set to the worship of God, everything the Soul hath will be bestowed upon it: As David 's disposition was to the Temple, 1 Chron. 29.3. Carnal frames like the Fouls, will be lighting upon the Sacrifice; but not when it is enflam'd: Though the scent of the flesh invite them, yet the heat of the fire drives them to their distance. A flaming love will singe the Flies that endeavor to interrupt and disturb us. The happiness of Heaven consists in a full attraction of the Soul to God, by his glorious influence upon it; There will be such a diffusion of his goodness throughout the Souls of the Blessed, as will unite the affections perfectly to him: These affections which are scattered here, will be there gathered into one flame, moving to him and centring in him: Therefore the more of a heavenly frame possesses our affections here, the more settled and uniform will our hearts be in all their motions to God, and operations about him.
Excite a dependence on him, Pro. 16.3. Commit thy works to the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established. Let us go out in God's strength and not in our own; vain is the help of man in anything, and vain is the help of the heart: 'It is through God only we can do valiantly in spiritual concerns as well as temporal; the want of this makes but slight impressions upon the Spirit.
Direction 3. Nourish right conceptions of the Majesty of God in your minds. Let us consider, that we are drawing to God; the most amiable Object, the best of Beings, worthy of infinite honor, and highly meriting the highest affections we can give; a God that made the world by a word; that upholds the great frame of Heaven and Earth; a Majesty above the conceptions of Angels; who uses not his power to strike us to our deserved punishment, but his love and bounty to allure us; a God that gave all the Creatures to serve us, and can in a trice make them as much our Enemies as he hath now made them our Servants. Let us view him in his greatness, and in his goodness, that our hearts may have a true value of the worship of so great a Majesty, and count it the most worthy employment with all diligence to attend upon him. When we have a fear of God, it will make our worship serious; when we have a joy in God, it will make our worship durable. Our affections will be raised, when we represent God in the most reverential, endearing and obliging circumstances. We honor the Majesty of God, when we consider him with due reverence according to the greatness and perfection of his works; and in this reverence of his Majesty doth worship chiefly consist. Low thoughts of God will make low frames in us before him: If we thought God an infinite glorious Spirit, how would our hearts be lower than our knees in his presence? How humbly, how believingly pleading is the Psalmist, when he considers God to be without comparison in the Heavens; to whom none of the Sons of the Mighty can be likened; when there was none like to him in strength or faithfulness round about ? We should have also deep impressions of the Omniscience of God; and remember we have to deal with a God that searcheth the heart and trieth the reins; to whom the most secret temper is as visible, as the loudest words are Audible; that though man judges by outward expressions, God judges by inward affections. As the Law of God regulates the inward frames of the heart; so the eye of God pitches upon the inward intentions of the Soul. If God were visibly present with us, should we not approach to him with strong affections; summon our Spirits to attend upon him; behave ourselves modestly before him? Let us consider, he is as really present with us, as if he were visible to us; let us therefore preserve a strong sense of the presence of God. No man but one out of his wits, when he were in the presence of a Prince, and making a Speech to him; would break off at every Period, and run after the catching of Butter-flies. Remember in all worship you are before the Lord, to whom all things are open and naked.
Direction 4. Let us take heed of inordinate desires after the world. As the world steals away a man's heart from the Word, so it doth from all other worship; It chokes the Word ; it stifles all the spiritual breathings after God in every duty: The edge of the Soul is blunted by it, and made too dull for such sublime exercises. The Apostles rule in Prayer, when he joins sobriety with watching unto Prayer, is of concern in all worship, sobriety in the pursuit and use of all worldly things. A man drunk with worldly fumes cannot watch, cannot be heavenly, affectionate, spiritual in service. There is a magnetick force in the Earth, to hinder our flights to Heaven: Birds, when they take their first flights from the Earth, have more flutterings of their wings, than when they are mounted further in the Air, and got more without the Sphere of the Earths attractiveness; the motion of their wings is more steady, that you can scarce perceive them stir; they move like a Ship with a full Gale. The world is a clog upon the Soul, and a bar to spiritual frames: 'It is as hard to elevate the heart to God in the midst of a hurry of worldly affairs, as it is difficult to meditate when we are near a great noise of waters falling from a Precipice, or in the midst of a Volly of Muskets. Thick claiy affections bemire the heart, and make it unfit for such high flights it is to take in worship: Therefore get your hearts clear from worldly thoughts and desires, if you would be more spiritual in worship.
5. Let us be deeply sensible of our present wants, and the supplies we may meet with in worship. Cold affections to the things we would have, will grow cooler: Weakness of desire for the communications in worship, will freez our hearts at the time of worship, and make way for vain and foolish diversions. A Beggar that is ready to perish, and knows he is next door to ruin, will not slightly and dully began Alms; and will not be diverted from his importunity by every slight call, or the moving of an Atom in the Air. Is it Pardon we would have? Let us apprehend the blackness of sin with the aggravations of it as it respects God; Let us be deeply sensible of the want of pardon and worth of mercy, and get our affections into such a frame, as a condemned man would do: Let us consider, that as we are now at the Throne of God's grace, we shall shortly be at the Bar of God's Justice; and if the Soul should be forlorn there, how fixedly and earnestly would it plead for mercy? Let us endeavor to stir up the same affections now, which we have seen some dying men have, and which we suppose despairing Souls would have done at God's Tribunal. We must be sensible that the life or death of our Souls depends upon worship. Would we not be ashamed to be ridiculous in our carriage while we are eating; and shall we not be ashamed to be cold or garish before God, when the Salvation of our Souls as well as the Honor of God is concerned? If we did see the heaps of sins, the eternity of punishment due to them; If we did see an angry and offended Judge; If we did see the riches of mercy, the glorious outgoings of God in the Sanctuary, the blessed Doles he gives out to men when they spiritually attend upon him; both the one and the other would make us perform our duties humbly, sincerely, earnestly, and affectionately, and wait upon him with our whole Souls, to have misery averted and mercy bestowed. Let our sense of this be encourag • d by the consideration of our Savior presenting his merits: With what affection doth he present his merits, his blood shed upon the Cross now in Heaven? And shall our hearts be cold and frozen, flitting and unsteady, when his affectio • s are so much concerned? Christ doth not present any Mans case and duties without a sense of hi • wants, and shall we have none of our own?
Let me add this; let us affect our hearts with a sense of what supplies we ha •• met with in former worship: The delightful remembrance of what conver •• we have had with God in former worship, would spiritualize our hearts for the present worship. Had Peter had a view of Christ's glory in the Mount, fresh in his thoughts, he would not so easily have turned his back upon his Master: Nor would the Israelites have been at leisure for their Idolatry, had they preserved the sense of the Majesty of God discovered in his late Thunders from Mount Sinai.
6. If anything intrudes that may choke the Worship, cast it speedily out. We cannot hinder Satan and our own Corruption from presenting Coolers to us, but we may hinder the success of them: We cannot hinder the Gnats from buzzing about us when we are in our business, but we may prevent them from settling upon us. A man that is running on a considerable Errand, will shun all unnecessary discourse that may make him forget or loiter in his business. What though there may be something offered that is good in itself; yet if it hath a tendency to despoil God of his honor, and ourselves of the spiritual intentness in worship, send it away. Those that weed a Field of Corn, examine not the nature and particular virtues of the Weeds; but consider only how they choke the Corn, to which the native juice of the Soil is designed. Consider what you are about; and if anything interpose that may divert you, or cool your affections in your present worship, cast it out.
7. As to private worship, let us lay hold of the most melting opportunities and frames.
When we find our hearts in a more than ordinary spiritual frame, let us look upon it as a Call from God to attend him: Such impressions and motions are God's Voice, inviting us into communion with him in some particular act of worship, and promising us some success in it. When the Psalmist had a secret motion to seek God's face, and complied with it , the issue is the encouragement of his heart, which breaks out into an exhortation to others to be of good courage, and wait on the Lord, v. 13, 14. Wait on the Lord, be of good courage and he shall strengthen thy heart, wait I say on the Lord.
One blow will do more on the Iron when it is hot, than a hundred when it is cold: Melted Metals may be stamped with any impression; but once hardened, will with difficulty be brought into the figure we intend.
8. Let us examine ourselves at the end of every act of worship, and chide ourselves for any carnality we perceive in them. Let us take a review of them, and examine the reason; why art thou so low and carnal oh my Soul? As David did of his disquietedness, Psalm 42.5. Why art thou cast down oh my Soul, and why art thou disquieted within me? If any unworthy frames have surprised us in worship, let us seek them out after worship; call them to the bar; make an exact scrutiny into the causes of them, that we may prevent their incursions another time; let our pulses beat quick, by way of anger and indignation against them: This would be a repairing what hath been amiss; otherwise they may grow, and clogg an after worship more than they did a former. Daily examination is an Antidote against the temptations of the following day, and constant examination of ourselves after duty, is a Preservative against vain encroachments in following duties; and upon the finding them out, let us apply the blood of Christ by Faith for our Cure, and draw strength from the death of Christ for the conquest of them, and let us also be humbled for them. God lifts up the humble: When we are humbled for our carnal frames in one duty, we shall find ourselves by the Grace of God more elevated in the next.
A DISCOURSE UPON THE ETERNITY OF GOD.
Psalm 90.2.
Before the Mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the Earth and the World; even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.
THE Title of this Psalm is a Prayer; The Author Moses. Some think not only this, but the Ten following Psalms were composed by him. The Title wherewith he is dignified, is The Man of God, as also in Deut. 33.1. One inspired by him, to be his Interpreter, and deliver his Oracles; One particularly directed by him: One who as a Servant, did diligently employ himself in his Masters business, and acted for the Glory of God; He was the Minister of the Old Testament, and the Prophet of the New.
There are two parts of this Psalm.
1. A complaint of the frailty of Mans Life in general, verse 3, 4, 5, 6. And then a particular complaint of the condition of the Church, v. 8, 9, 10.
2. A Prayer, v. 12.
But before he speaks of the shortness of human life, he fortifies them by the consideration of the refuge they had, and should find in God, v. 1. Lord thou hast been our dwelling place in all Generations.
We have had no settled abode in the Earth, since the time of Abraham 's being called out from Ur of the Chaldees: We have had Canaan in a promise, we have it not yet in possession; We have been exposed to the Cruelties of an oppressing Enemy, and the incommodities of a desert Wilderness; we have wanted the fruits of the Earth, but not the dews of Heaven. Thou hast been our dwelling place in all Generations. Abraham was under thy Conduct; Isaac and Jacob under thy Care: Their Posterity were multiplied by thee, and that under their oppressions. Thou hast been our Shield against dangers, our security in the times of trouble: When we were pursued to the Red-sea, it was not a Creature delivered us; and when we feared the pinching of our Bowels in the Desert, it was no Creature rained Manna upon us. Thou hast been our dwelling place; Thou hast kept open house for us, sheltered us against storms, and preserved us from mischief, as a house doth an Inhabitant from wind and weather; and that not in one or two, but in all Generations: Some think an allusion is here made to the Ark, to which they were to have recourse in all emergencies. Our refuge and defense hath not been from created things; not from the Ark, but from the God of the Ark.
Observe,
1. God is a perpetual refuge and security to his People. His Providence is not confined to one Generation; 'tis not one Age only that tastes of his bounty and compassion: His eye never yet slept, nor hath he suffered the little Ship of his Church to be swallowed up, though it hath been tost upon the waves: He hath always been an Haven to preserve us, a House to secure us; He hath always had compassions to pity us, and power to protect us; He hath had a Face to shine, when the world hath had an angry Countenance to frown; He brought Enoch home by an extraordinary translation from a brutish world; and when he was resolved to reckon with men for their brutish lives, he lodged Noah, the Phoenix of the world, in an Ark, and kept him alive as a spark in the midst of many waters, whereby to rekindle a Church in the world: In all Generations he is a dwelling place, to secure his people here, or entertain them above.
His Providence is not wearied, nor his Care fainting: He never wanted Will to relieve us, For he hath been our refuge; Nor ever can want Power to support us; for he is a God from everlasting to everlasting. The Church never wanted a Pilot to steer her, and a Rock to shelter her, and dash in pieces the waves which threaten her.
2. How worthy is it to remember former benefits, when we come to beg for new? Never were the Records of God's mercies so exactly revised, as when his people have stood in need of new Editions of his Power. How necessary are our wants to stir us up to pay the rent of thankfulness in arrear? He renders himself doubly unworthy of the mercies he wants, that doth not gratefully acknowledge the mercies he hath received. God scarce promised any deliverance to the Israelites, and they in their distress scarce prayed for any deliverance, but that from Egypt was mentioned on both sides; by God to encourage them, and by them to acknowledge their confidence in him. The greater our dangers, the more we should call to mind God's former kindness. We are not only thankfully to acknowledge the mercies bestowed upon our persons, or in our age, but those of former times. Thou hast been our dwelling place in all Generations.
Moses was not living in the former Generations, yet he appropriates the former mercies to the present age. Mercies as well Generations proceed out of the loins of those that have gone before. All Man-kind are but one Adam; the whole Church but one Body.
In the second verse he backs his former consideration.
1. By the greatness of his Power in forming the world.
2. By the boundlesness of his duration; From everlasting to everlasting. As thou hast been our dwelling place, and expended upon us the strength of thy power, and riches of thy love; so we have no reason to doubt the continuance on thy part, if we be not wanting on our parts; For the vast Mountains, and fruitful Earth are the works of thy hands; and there is less power requisite for our relief, than there was for their Creation; and though so much strength hath been upon various occasions manifested, yet thy Arm is not weakened; for from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God .
Thou hast always been God, and no time can be assigned as the beginning of thy Being: The mountains are not of so long a standing as thyself; they are the effects of thy power, and therefore cannot be equal to thy duration; since they are effects, they suppose a precedency of their cause. If we would look back, we can reach no further than the beginning of the Creation, and account the years from the first foundation of the world; but after that we must lose ourselves in the Abyss of Eternity; we have no Cue to guide our thoughts; we can see no bounds in thy Eternity: But as for Man he traverseth the world a few days, and by thy order pronounced concerning all men, returns to the Dust, and moulders into the Grave.
By Mountains, some understand Angels, as being Creatures of a more elevated Nature: By Earth, they understand human Nature, the Earth being the habitation of Men. There is no need to divert in this place, from the Letter to such a sense. The description seems to be Poetical, and amounts to this; He neither began with the beginning of Time, nor will expire with the End of it: He did not begin when he made himself known to our Fathers; but his Being did precede the Creation of the World; before any created Being was formed, and any time settled.
Before the Mountains were brought forth, Or before they were begotten or born; The word being used in those senses in Scripture; before they stood up higher than the rest of the earthly Mass God had created. It seems that Mountains were not casually cast up by the force of the Deluge, softening the Ground, and driving several parcels of it together, to grow up into a massy body, as the Sea doth the Sand in several places; but they were at first formed by God.
The Eternity of God is here described.
1. In his Priority [Before the world.]
2. In the extension of his duration. [From everlasting to everlasting thou art God.] He was before the world, yet he neither began nor ends: He is not a Temporary, but an Eternal God: It takes in both parts of Eternity, what was before the Creation of the world, and what is after: Though the Eternity of God be one permanent state without succession, yet the Spirit of God suiting himself to the weakness of our conception, divides it into two parts, one past before the foundation of the world, another to come after the destruction of the world; as he did exist before all ages, and as he will exist after all ages.
Many Truths lie couched in the verse.
1. The World hath a beginning of being. It was not from Eternity, it was once nothing; had it been of a very long duration, some Records would have remained of some memorable actions done of a longer date than any extant.
2. The world owes its Being to the creating Power of God. [Thou hadst formed it] out of nothing into being, Thou, that is God; it could not spring into being of itself; it was nothing; it must have a Former.
3. God was in being before the world. The Cause must be before the Effect; that Word which gives Being must be before that which receives Being.
4. This Being was from Eternity. [From Everlasting]
5. This Being shall endure to Eternity. [To Everlasting]
6. There is but one God, one Eternal. [From everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.] None else but one hath the Property of Eternity; the God's of the Heathen cannot lay claim to it.
Doct. God is of an eternal duration. The Eternity of God is the foundation of the stability of the Covenant, the great comfort of a Christian. The design of God in Scripture is to set forth his dealing with men in the way of a Covenant. The Priority of God before all things begins the Bible: In the beginning God created. His Covenant can have no foundation, but in his duration before and after the world: And Moses here mentions his Eternity; not only with respect to the Essence of God, but to his faederal Providence: As he is the dwelling place of his People in all Generations. The duration of God forever, is more spoken of in Scripture than his Eternity à parte ante, though that is the foundation of all the comfort we can take from his Immortality: If he had a beginning, he might have an end; and so all our happiness, hope and being would expire with him; but the Scripture sometimes takes notice of his being without beginning, as well as without end. Thou art from everlasting. Blessed be God from everlasting to everlasting: I was set up from everlasting: If his Wisdom were from everlasting, himself was from everlasting: Whether we understand it of Christ the Son of God, or of the essential wisdom of God, 'tis all one to the present purpose. The Wisdom of God supposeth the Essence of God, as habits in Creatures suppose the being of some power or faculty as their Subject. The Wisdom of God supposeth Mind and Understanding, Essence and Substance.
The notion of Eternity is difficult, as Austin said of Time; If no man will ask me the question what time is; I know well enough what it is: But if any ask me what it is, I know not how to explain it: So may I say of Eternity; 'tis easy in the word pronounced, but hardly understood, and more hardly expressed; 'tis better expressed by negative than positive words.
Though we cannot comprehend Eternity, yet we may comprehend that there is an Eternity; as, though we cannot comprehend the Essence of God what he is, yet we may comprehend that he is; we may understand the notion of his Existence, though we cannot understand the infiniteness of his Nature; Yet we may better understand Eternity than Infiniteness; we can better conceive a time with the addition of numberless days and years, than imagine a Being without bounds; whence the Apostle joins his Eternity with his Power; His eternal Power and God-head; Because next to the Power of God apprehended in the Creature, we come necessarily by reasoning to acknowledge the Eternity of God. He that hath an incomprehensible Power, must needs have an Eternity of Nature: His Power is most sensible in the Creatures to the eye of Man, and his Eternity easily from thence deducible by the reason of Man.
Eternity is a perpetual duration, which hath neither beginning nor end: Time hath both. Those things we say are in time, that have beginning, grow up by degrees, have succession of parts: Eternity is contrary to Time, and is therefore a permanent and immutable state; a perfect possession of life without any variation: It comprehends in itself all years, all ages, all periods of ages; It never begins; it endures after every duration of time, and never ceaseth; it doth as much out-run time, as it went before the beginning of it: Time supposeth something before it, but there can be nothing before Eternity; it were not then Eternity. Time hath a continual succession; the former time passeth away, and another succeeds; the last year is not this year, nor this year the next. We must conceive of Eternity contrary to the notion of time; As the nature of time consists in the succession of parts, so the Nature of Eternity in an infinite immutable duration. Eternity and Time differ as the Sea and Rivers; the Sea never changes place, and is always one water; but the Rivers glide along, and are swallowed up in the Sea; so is time by eternity.
A thing is said to be eternal, or everlasting rather, in Scripture.
1. When it is of a long duration, though it will have an end; When it hath no measures of time determined to it; so Circumcision is said to be in the Flesh for an everlasting Covenant; not purely everlasting, but so long as that administration of the Covenant should endure.
And so when a Servant would not leave his Master, but would have his ear bored; 'tis said, he should be a Servant forever, i. e. till the Jubilee, which was every fiftieth year: So the Meat-offering they were to offer, is said to be Perpetual: Canaan is said to be given to Abraham for an everlasting possession: When as the Jews are expelled from Canaan, which is given a Prey to the barbarous Nations. Indeed Circumcision was not everlasting; yet the substance of the Covenant whereof this was a sign, viz. that God would be the God of Believers, endures forever; and that Circumcision of the heart which was signified by Circumcision of the flesh, shall remain forever in the Kingdom of Glory: It was not so much the lasting of the sign, as of the thing signified by it, and the Covenant sealed by it: The sign had its abolition, so that the Apostle is so peremptory in it, that he asserts, that if any went about to establish it, he excluded himself from a participiation of Christ. The Sacrifices were to be perpetual, in regard of the thing signified by them, viz. the death of Christ, which was to endure in the efficacy of it: And the Passover was to be forever, in regard of the Redemption signified by it, which was to be of everlasting remembrance. Canaan was to be an everlasting possession in regard of the glory of Heaven typified, to be forever confer'd upon the spiritual Seed of Abraham.
2. When a thing hath no end, though it hath a beginning. So Angels, and Souls are everlasting; though their being shall never cease, yet there was a time when their being began; they were nothing before they were something, though they shall never be nothing again, but shall live in endless happiness or misery.
But that properly is eternal, that hath neither beginning nor end; and thus Eternity is a Property of God. In this Doctrine I shall show
- 1. How God is eternal, or in what respects Eternity is his Property.
- 2. That he is eternal, and must needs be so.
- 3. That Eternity is only proper to God, and not common to him with any Creature.
- 4. The Use.
1. How God is eternal, or in what respects he is so. Eternity is a Negative Attribute, and is a denying of God any measures of time, as Immensity is a denying of him any bounds of place; As Immensity is the diffusion of his Essence, so Eternity is the duration of his Essence: And when we say God is eternal, we exclude from him all possibility of beginning and ending, all flux and change: As the Essence of God cannot be bounded by any place, so it is not to be limited by any time; as it is his Immensity to be everywhere, so it is his Eternity to be always. As created things are said to be somewhere in regard of place, and to be present, past or future, in regard of time; so the Creator in regard of place, is everywhere; in regard of time, is semper: His duration is as endless, as his Essence is boundless; He always was and always will be, and will no more have an End than he had a Begininng; and this is an excellency belonging to the Supreme Being: As his Essence comprehends all beings and exceeds them, and his Immensity surmounts all places; so his Eternity comprehends all times, all durations, and infinitely excels them.
1. God is without beginning.
In the beginning God created the World: God was then before the beginning of it; and what point can be set wherein God began, if he were before the beginning of created things? God was without beginning, though all other things had time and beginning from him. As Unity is before all Numbers, so is God before all his Creatures. Abraham called upon the name of the everlasting God; The eternal God: 'It is opposed to the Heathen God's, which were but of Yesterday, new coin'd, and so new; but the Eternal God, was before the world was made: In that sense it is to be understood, The Mystery which was kept secret since the world began, but now is made manifest; and by the Scriptures of the Prophets according to the Command of the everlasting God, made known to all Nations for the Obedience of Faith. The Gospel is not preached by the Command of a new and temporary God, but of that God that was before all Ages; though the manifestation of it be in time, yet the purpose and resolve of it was from Eternity.
If there were Decrees before the foundation of the World, there was a Decreer before the foundation of the World: Before the foundation of the world he loved Christ as a Mediator: A fore-ordination of him was before the foundation of the world; a Choice of men, and therefore a Chooser before the foundation of the world; a Grace given in Christ before the world began, and therefore a Donor of that Grace. From those places saith Crellius, it appears that God was before the foundation of the world, but they do not assert an absolute Eternity; But to be before all Creatures, is equivalent to his Being from Eternity. Time began with the foundation of the world, but God being before time, could have no beginning in time: Before the beginning of the Creation, and the beginning of Time, there could be nothing but Eternity; nothing but what was uncreated, that is nothing but what was without beginning. To be in time, is, to have a beginning; to be before all time, is never to have a beginning, but always to be: For as between the Creator and Creatures there is no Medium, so between Time and Eternity, there is no Medium. 'It is as easily deduced, that he that was before all Creatures is Eternal, as he that made all Creatures is God: If he had a beginning, he must have it from another, or from himself; if from another, that from whom he received his Being would be better than he, so more a God than he. He cannot be God, that is not Supreme; he cannot be Supreme that owes his Being to the Power of another: He would not be said only to have Immortality as he is, if he had it dependent upon another; nor could he have a beginning from himself; if he had given beginning to himself, then he was once nothing, there was a time when he was not; if he was not, how could he be the Cause of himself? 'It is impossible for any, to give a Beginning and Being to itself: If it acts, it must exist; and so exist, before it existed: A thing would exist as a Cause, before it existed as an Effect. He that is not, cannot be the Cause that he is; If therefore God doth exist, and hath not his Being from another, he must exist from Eternity: Therefore when we say God is of and from himself, we mean not that God gave Being to himself; but it is negatively to to be understood, that he hath no cause of Existence without himself.
Whatsoever Number of Millions of Millions of Years we can imagine before the Creation of the World, yet God was infinitely before those; he is therefore called the Ancient of Days, as being before all days and time, and eminently containing in himself all times and ages: Though indeed God cannot properly be called ancient, that will testify that he is decaying, and shortly will not be; no more than he can be called young, which would signify that he was not long before. All created things are new and fresh; but no Creature can find out any beginning of God: 'It is impossible there should be any beginning of him.
2. God is without end. He always was, always is, and always will be what he is; He remains always the same in Being; so far from any change, that no shadow of it can touch him: He will continue in being, as long as he hath already enjoyed it; and if we could add never so many Millions of years together, we are still as far from an end, as from a beginning; for the Lord shall endure forever: As it is impossible he should not be, being from all Eternity; so it is impossible that he should not be to all Eternity. The Scripture is most plentiful in testimonies of this Eternity of God, à parte post, or after the Creation of the world: He is said to live forever. The Earth shall perish, but God shall endure forever, and his years shall have no end. Plants and Animals grow up from small beginnings; arrive to their full growth and decline again, and have always remarkable alterations in their nature; But there is no declination in God by all the revolutions of time: Hence some think the incorruptibility of the Deity was signified by the Shittim, or Cedar wood, whereof the Ark was made, it being of an incorruptible nature .
That which had no beginning of duration can never have an end, or any interruptions in it. Since God never depended upon any, what should make him cease to be what eternally he hath been, or put a stop to the continuance of his perfections? He cannot will his own destruction, that is against universal nature in all things to cease from being, if they can preserve themselves. He cannot desert his own Being, because he cannot but love himself as the best and chiefest good. The reason that anything decays, is either its own native weakness, or a superior Power of something contrary to it: There is no weakness in the nature of God that can introduce any Corruption, because he is infinitely simple without any mixture; Nor can he be overpowered by anything else; a weaker cannot hurt him, and a stronger than he there cannot be; Nor can he be outwitted or circumvented, because of his infinite Wisdom: As he received his Being from none, so he cannot be deprived of it by any; As he doth necessarily exist, so he doth necessarily always exist: This indeed is the Property of God; nothing so proper to him, as always to be. Whatsoever perfections any Being hath, if it be not eternal, it is not divine. God only is immortal; he only is so by a necessity of nature: Angels, Souls and Bodies too, after the Resurrection shall be immortal; not by nature but grant; they are subject to return to nothing, if that word that raised them from nothing should speak them into nothing again: 'It is as easy with God to strip them of it, as to invest them with it; nay, it is impossible but that they should perish, if God should withdraw his Power from preserving them, which he exerted in creating them: But God is immoveably fixed in his own Being; that as none gave him his Life, so none can deprive him of his Life, or the least particle of it; not a jot of the happiness and life, which God infinitely possesses, can be lost: It will be as durable to everlasting, as it hath been possessed from everlasting.
3. There is no succession in God. God is without succession or change; 'It is a part of Eternity; From everlasting to everlasting he is God, i. e. the same. God doth not only always remain in Being, but he always remains the same in that Being, Thou art the same. The Being of Creatures is successive; the Being of God is permanent, and remains entire with all its perfections unchanged in an infinite duration: Indeed the first notion of Eternity is to be without beginning and end, which notes to us the duration of a Being in regard of its Existence; but to have no succession, nothing first or last, notes rather the perfection of a Being in regard of its Essence.
The Creatures are in a perpetual Flux; something is acquired, or something lost every day. A Man is the same in regard of Existence when he is a Man, as he was when he was a Child; but there is a new succession of quantities and qualities in him; every day he acquires something till he comes to his maturity; every day he loseth something till he comes to his Period. A Man is not the same at night that he was in the morning; something is expired, and something is added; every day there is a change in his age, a change in his substance, a change in his accidents: But God hath his whole Being in one and the same point, or moment of Eternity; He receives nothing as an Addition to what he was before; He looseth nothing of what he was before; He is always the same excellency and perfection in the same infiniteness as ever; His years do not fail, his years do not come and go as others do; there is not this day, tomorrow or yesterday with him: As nothing is past or future with him in regard of Knowledge, but all things are present; so nothing is past or future in regard of his Essence; He is not in his Essence this day what he was not before, or will be the next day and year what he is not now; All his perfections are most perfect in him every moment, before all ages, after all ages; As he hath his whole Essence undivided in every place, as well as in an immense space; so he hath all his Being in one moment of time, as well as in infinite intervalls of time. Some illustrate the difference between Eternity and Time, by the similitude of a Tree, or a Rock standing upon the side of a River, or Shoar of the Sea; the Tree stands always the same and unmoved, while the waters of the River glide along at the foot; The Flux is in the River, but the Tree acquires nothing but a diverse respect and relation of presence to the various parts of the River as they flow; The waters of the River press on, and push forward one another, and what the River had this minute, it hath not the same the next: So are all sublunary things in a continual Flux. And though the Angels have no substantial change, yet they have an accidental; for the actions of the Angels this day, are not the same individual actions which they performed yesterday: But in God there is no change, He always remains the same.
Of a Creature it may be said, he was, or he is, or he shall be; Of God it cannot be said, but only he is; He is what he always was, and he is what he always will be; whereas a Creature is what he was not, and will be what he is not now; As it may be said of the flame of a Candle, 'tis flame; but it is not the same individual flame as was before, nor is it the same that will be presently after; there is a continual dissolution of it into Air, and a continual supply for the generation of more; While it continues, it may be said there is a flame; yet not entirely one, but in a succession of parts: So, of a Man it may be said, he is in a succession of parts; but he is not the same that he was, and will not be the same that he is: But God is the same without any succession of parts and of time; of him it may be said, He is; He is no more now than he was, and he shall be no more hereafter than he is. God possesses a firm and absolute Being, always constant to himself; He sees all things sliding under him in a continual variation; He beholds the revolutions in the world without any change of his most glorious and immovable nature: All other things pass from one state to another; from their Original, to their Eclipse and destruction: But God possesses his Being in one indivisible point, having neither beginning, end nor middle,
1. There is no succession in the Knowledge of God. The variety of successions and changes in the world, make not succession or new Objects in the Divine Mind; for all things are present to him from Eternity in regard of his Knowledge, though they are not actually present in the world in regard of their Existence: He doth not know one thing now, and another anon; He sees all things at once; known unto God are all things from the beginning of the world: But in their true order of succession, as they lie in the eternal Council of God, to be brought forth in time. Though there be a succession and order of things as they are wrought, yet there is no succession in God in regard of his knowledge of them. God knows the things that shall be wrought, and the order of them in their being brought upon the Stage of the World; yet both the things and the order he knows by one act. Though all things be present with God, yet they are present in him in the order of their appearance in the world, and not so present with him as if they should be wrought at once. The Death of Christ was to precede his Resurrection in order of time; there is a succession in this; both at once are known by God, yet the act of his knowledge is not exercised about Christ as dying, and rising at the same time; so that there is succession in things, when there is no succession in God's knowledge of them. Since God knows time, he knows all things as they are in time; He doth not know all things to be at once, though he knows at once what is, has been and will be. All things are past, present, and to come in regard of their Existence; but there is not past, present and to come in regard of God's Knowledge of them; because he sees and knows not by any other, but by himself; He is his own Light by which he sees, his own Glass wherein he sees; beholding himself, he beholds all things.
2. There is no succession in the Decrees of God. He doth not decree this now, which he decreed not before; for as his works were known from the beginning of the world, so his works were decreed from the beginning of the world; as they are known at once, so they are decreed at once; there is a succession in the execution of them, first grace, then glory; but the purpose of God for the bestowing of both, was in one and the same moment of Eternity. He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy. The choice of Christ, and the choice of some in him to be holy, and to be happy, were before the foundation of the world. 'It is by the eternal Counsel of God, all things appear in time; they appear in their order according to the Counsel and Will of God from Eternity. The Redemption of the world is after the Creation of the world; but the Decree whereby the world was created, and whereby it was redeemed, was from Eternity.
4. God is his own Eternity. He is not eternal by grant, and the disposal of any other, but by Nature and Essence. The Eternity of God, is nothing else but the Duration of God; and the Duration of God, is nothing else but his Existence enduring. If Eternity were anything distinct from God, and not of the Essence of God; then there would be something which was not God, necessary to perfect God. As Immortality is the great perfection of a rational Creature, so Eternity is the choice perfection of God, yea, the gloss and luster of all others. Every perfection would be imperfect, if it were not always a perfection.
God is essentially whatsoever he is; and there is nothing in God but his Essence: Duration or Continuance in being in Creatures, differs from their being; for they might exist but for one instant; in which case they may be said to have being, but not duration, because all duration includes prius, et posterius. All Creatures may cease from being, if it be the pleasure of God; they are not therefore durable by their Essence, and therefore are not their own duration, no more than they are their own Existence. And though some Creatures, as Angels, and Souls may be called everlasting, as a perpetual life is communicated to them by God; yet they can never be called their own Eternity; because such a Duration is not simply necessary, nor essential to them, but accidental, depending upon the pleasure of another; there is nothing in their nature that can hinder them from loosing it, if God, from whom they received it, should design to take it away: But as God is his own necessity of existing, so he is his own duration in existing: As he doth necessarily exist by himself, so he will always necessarily exist by himself.
5. Hence all the perfections of God are eternal. In regard of the Divine Eternity, all things in God are eternal, his Power, Mercy, Wisdom, Justice, Knowledge. God himself were not eternal, if any of his perfections which are essential to him were not eternal also; He had not else been a perfect God from all eternity, and so his whole self had not been eternal. If anything belonging to the nature of a thing be wanting, it cannot be said to be that thing which it ought to be. If anything requisite to the Nature of God had been wanting one moment, he could not have been said to be an eternal God.
The second Thing, God is Eternal. The Spirit of God in Scripture condescends to our Capacities in signifying the Eternity of God by days and years, which are terms belonging to time, whereby we measure it: But we must no more conceive that God is bounded, or measured by time, and hath succession of days because of those expressions, than we can conclude him. to have a Body, because Members are ascribed to him in Scripture, to help our conceptions of his glorious nature and operations.
Though years are ascribed to him; yet they are such as cannot be numbered, cannot be finished, since there is no proportion between the duration of God, and the years of Men. The number of his years cannot be searched out; for he makes small the drops of water; they pour down Rain according to the vapor thereof. The numbers of the drops of Rain which have fallen in all parts of the Earth since the Creation of the world, if substracted from the number of the years of God, would be found a small quantity, a mere nothing to the years of God. As all the Nations in the world compared with God, are but as the drop of a Bucket, worse than nothing, than vanity; So all the Ages of the world, if compared with God, amount not to so much as the One hundred thousandth part of a Minute: The Minutes from the Creation may be numbered, but the years of the duration of God being infinite, are without measure.
As one day is to the Life of Man, so are a Thousand years to the Life of God: The Holy-Ghost expresseth himself to the capacity of Man, to give us some Notion of an infinite Duration, by a resemblance suited to the capacity of Man. If a Thousand years be but as a day to the Life of God; then as a year is to the Life of Man, so are Three hundred sixty five thousand years to the Life of God: And as Seventy years are to the Life of Man, so are twenty five Millions four Hundred and fifty Thousand years to the Life of God: Yet still, since there is no proportion between Time and Eternity, we must dart our thoughts beyond all those; For years and days measure only the duration of created things, and of those only that are material and corporeal, subject to the motion of the Heavens, which makes days and years.
Sometimes this Eternity is expressed by parts, as looking backward and forward; by the differences of time, past, present and to come, which was, and is, and is to come. Though this might be spoken of anything in being, though but for an hour; it was the last minute, it is now, and it will be the next minute; yet the Holy-Ghost would declare something proper to God, as including all parts of time; He always was, is now, and always shall be; It might always be said of him he was, and it may always be said of him he will be: There is no time when he began, no time when he shall cease. It cannot be said of a Creature he always was, he always is what he was, and he always will be what he is: But God always is what he was, and always will be what he is; so that it is a very significant expression of the Eternity of God, as can be suited to our capacities.
1. His Eternity is evident, by the Name God gives himself. And God said unto Moses, I am that I am; thus shalt thou say to the Children of Israel, I am hath sent me unto you. This is the Name whereby he is distinguished from all Creatures; I am, is his proper Name; This description being in the Present Tense, shows that his Essence knows no past, nor future: If it were he was, it would intimate he were not now what he once was; If it were he will be, it would intimate he were not yet what he will be. But I am; I am the only Being, the root of all Beings, he is therefore at the greatest distance from not Being, and that is eternal. So that is signifies his Eternity, as well as his Perfection and Immutability: As I am speaks the want of no blessedness, so it speaks the want of no duration; and therefore the French where ever they find this word Jehovah in the Scripture, which we translate Lord, and Lord eternal, render it the Eternal. I am always, and immutably the same. The Eternity, of God is opposed to the Volubility of Time, which is extended into past, present and to come. Our time is but a small Drop, as a Sand to all the Atoms and small particles of which the world is made; but God is an unbounded Sea of Being; I am that I am, i. e. an infinite Life. I have not that now, which I had not formerly; I shall not afterwards have that which I have not now; I am that in every moment which I was, and will be in all moments of time; Nothing can be added to me, nothing can be detracted from me: There is nothing superior to him, which can detract from him; nothing desirable that can be added to him. Now if there were any beginning and end of God, any succession in him, he could not be I am; For in regard of what was past he would not be, in regard of what was to come he is not yet: And upon this account, a Heathen argues well, of all Creatures it may be said they were, or they will be, but of God it cannot be said anything else but Est, God is, because he fills an eternal duration: A Creature cannot be said to be, if it be not yet, nor if it be not now, but hath been.
God only can be called I am; all Creatures have more of not being than being; for every Creature was nothing from Eternity, before it was made something in time; and if it be corruptible in its whole nature, it will be nothing to Eternity after it hath been something in time; and if it be not corruptible in its nature, as the Angels; or in every part of its nature, as Man in regard of his Soul; yet it hath not properly a Being, because it is dependent upon the pleasure of God, to continue it, or deprive it of it; and while it is, it is mutable, and all mutability is a mixture of not being: If God therefore be properly I am, i. e. Being, it follows that he always was; for if he were not always, he must as was argued before, be produced by some other, or by himself; By another he could not, then he had not been God but a Creature; nor by himself; for then as producing, he must be before himself, as produced; he had been before he was: And he always will be, for being I am, having all being in himself, and the Fountain of all being to everything else, how can he ever have his Name changed to I am not?
2. God hath Life in himself, John 5.26. The Father hath Life in himself; He is the living God, therefore steadfast forever: He hath Life by his Essence, not by Participation; He is a Sun to give Light and Life to all Creatures, but receives not Light or Life from anything; and therefore he hath an unlimited Life, not a drop of life but a fountain, not a spark of a limited life but a life transcending all bounds: He hath life in himself: All Creatures have their life in him and from him. He that hath life in himself doth necessarily exist, and could never be made to exist; for then he had not life in himself, but in that which made him to exist, and gave him life; What doth necessarily exist therefore, exists from Eternity; what hath being of itself, could never be produced in time, could not want being one moment, because it hath being from its Essence without influence of any efficient cause. When God pronounced his Name, I am that I am, Angels and Men were in being; the world had been created above two thousand four hundred years; Moses to whom he then speaks, was in being; yet, God only is, because he only hath the fountain of being in himself, but all that they were, was a rivulet from him; He hath from nothing else, that he doth subsist; everything else hath its subsistence from him as their root, as the Beam from the Sun, as the Rivers and Fountains from the Sea. All life is seated in God, as in its proper Throne; in its most perfect Purity. God is Life; 'tis in him originally, radically, therefore eternally: He is a pure act, nothing but vigor and act; He hath by his nature that life, which others have by his grant; whence the Apostle saith, not only that he is immortal, but he hath immortality in a full possession; see-simple, not depending upon the Will of another, but containing all things within himself. He that hath life in himself, and is from himself, cannot but be: He always was, because he received his being from no other, and none can take away that being which was not given by another. If there were any space before he did exist, then there was something which made him to exist; Life would not then be in him, but in that which produced him into being; He could not then be God, but that other which gave him being, would be God. And to say, God sprung into being by chance, when we see nothing in the world that is brought forth by chance, but hath some cause of its existence, would be vain; for since God is a Being, Chance which is nothing, could not bring forth something; and by the same reason that he sprung up by chance, he might totally vanish by chance. What a strange notion of a God would this be, Such a God that had no life in himself, but from chance?
Since he hath life in himself, and that there was no cause of his existence; he can have no cause of his limitation, and can no more be determined to a time, than he can to a place. What hath life in itself, hath life without bounds, and can never desert it, nor be deprived of it: So that he lives necessarily, and it is absolutely impossible that he should not live; whereas all other things live, and move, and have their being in him ; and as they live by his Will, so they can return to nothing at his Word.
3. If God were not eternal, he were not immutable in his nature. 'It is contrary to the nature of immutability to be without eternity; for whatsoever begins, is changed in its passing from not being to being: It began to be what it was not, and if it ends, it ceaseth to be what it was; It cannot therefore be said to be God, If there were either beginning or ending, or succession in it, Mal. 3.6. I am the Lord, I change not, Job. 37.23. (Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out.) God argues here saith Calvin, from his unchangeable nature as Jehovah, to his immutability in his purpose: Had he not been eternal, there had been the greatest change from nothing to something: A change of Essence, is greater than a change of purpose. God is a Sun glittering always in the same glory; No growing up in Youth; no passing on to Age: If he were not without succession, standing in one point of Eternity, there would be a change from past to present, from present to future. The Eternity of God is a Shield against all kind of mutability. If anything sprang up in the Essence of God that was not there before, he could not be said to be either an eternal, or an unchanged Substance.
4. God could not be an infinitely perfect Being, if he were not eternal. A finite duration is inconsistent with infinite perfection. Whatsoever is contracted within the limits of time, cannot swallow up all perfections in itself. God hath an unsearchable perfection. Canst thou by searching find out God; canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? He cannot be found out, He is infinite, because he is incomprehensible: Incomprehensibility ariseth from an infinite perfection, which cannot be fathom'd by the short line of Man's Understanding: His Essence in regard of its diffusion, and in regard of its duration, is incomprehensible as well as his action: If God therefore had beginning, he could not be infinite; if not infinite, he did not possess the highest perfection, because a perfection might be conceived beyond it; If his Being could fail, he were not perfect: Can that deserve the name of the highest perfection, which is capable of corruption and dissolution? To be finite and limited, is the greatest imperfection, for it consists in a denial of being. He could not be the most blessed Being, if he were not always so, and should not forever remain to be so; and whatsoever perfections he had, would be soured by the thoughts, that in time they would cease; and so could not be pure perfections, because not permanent; But He is blessed from everlasting to everlasting. Had he a beginning, he could not have all perfection without limitation; he would have been limited by that which gave him beginning; that which gave him being would be God, and not himself, and so more perfect than he: But since God is the most sovereign perfection, than which nothing can be imagined perfecter by the most capacious understanding, He is certainly eternal; being infinite, nothing can be added to him, nothing detracted from him.
5. God could not be Omnipotent, Almighty, if he were not Eternal. The title of Almighty, agrees not with a nature that had a beginning; whatsoever hath a beginning was once nothing, and when it was nothing could act nothing. Where there is no being, there is no power; Neither doth the title of Almighty agree with a perishing nature: He can do nothing to purpose, that cannot preserve himself against the outward force and violence of Enemies, or against the inward causes of corruption and dissoluon. No account is to be made of Man, because his breath is in his Nostrils ; Could a better account be made of God, if he were of the like condition? He could not properly be almighty, that were not always mighty: If he be omnipotent, nothing can impair him; He that hath all power, can have no hurt: If he doth whatsoever he pleaseth, nothing can make him miserable, since misery consists in those things which happen against our will. The Almightiness and Eternity of God are linked together: I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and Ending saith the Lord, which was, and which is, and which is to come, the Almighty: Almighty because Eternal, and Eternal because Almighty.
6. God would not be the first Cause of all if he were not Eternal; But he is the first, and the last; the first cause of all things, the last end of all things : That which is the first cannot begin to be, it were not then the first; it cannot cease to be: Whatsoever is dissolved, is dissolved into that whereof it doth consist, which was before it, and then it was not the first. The world might not have been, it was once nothing; it must have some cause to call it out of nothing; Nothing hath no power to make itself something, there is a superior Cause, by whoso Will and Power it comes into Being, and so gives all the Creatures their distinct forms.
This Power cannot but be eternal; it must be before the world; the Founder must be before the Foundation; and his Existence must be from Eternity, or we must say nothing did exist from Eternity: And if there were no being from Eternity, there could not now be any being in time: What we see, and what we are, must arise from itself or some other; it cannot from itself: If anything made itself, it had a power to make itself; it then had an active power before it had a being; It was something in regard of Power, and was nothing in regard of Existence at the same time: Suppose it had a Power to produce itself, this power must be conferred upon it by another; and so the power of producing itself, was not from itself, but from another; But if the power of being was from itself, why did it not produce itself before? Why was it one moment out of being? If there be any existence of things, 'tis necessary that that which was the first Cause, should exist from Eternity. Whatsoever was the immediate Cause of the world, yet the first and chief Cause wherein we must rest, must have nothing before it; if it had anything before it, it were not the first; He therefore that is the first Cause must be without beginning, nothing must be before him; If he had a beginning from some other, he could not be the first Principle and Author of all things; If he be the first Cause of all things, he must give himself a beginning, or be from Eternity: He could not give himself a beginning; whatsoever begins in time was nothing before, and when it was nothing it could do nothing; it could not give itself anything, for then it gave what it had not, and did what it could not: If he made himself in time, why did he not make himself before? What hindered him? It was either because he could not, or because he would not; if he could not, he always wanted power, and always would, unless it were bestowed upon him, and then he could not be said to be from himself? If he would not make himself before, then he might have made himself when he would: How had he the power of willing and nilling without a Being? Nothing cannot will or nill; Nothing hath no faculties: So that it is necessary to grant some eternal Being, or run into inextricable Labyrinths and Mazes. If we deny some eternal being, we must deny all being; our own being, the being of everything about us; inconceivable absurdities will arise.
So then if God were the Cause of all things, He did exist before all things, and that from Eternity.
The third thing is, Eternity is only proper to God, and not communicable. 'It is as great a madness to ascribe Eternity to the Creature, as to deprive the Lord of the Creature of Eternity. 'It is so proper to God, that when the Apostle would prove the Deity of Christ, he proves it by his immutability and eternity, as well as his creating power: Thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail. The Argument had not strength, if Eternity belonged essentially to any but God; and therefore he is said only to have Immortality : All other things receive their being from him, and can be deprived of their being by him: All things depend on him, he of none: All other things are like Clothes, which would consume if God preserved them not. Immortality is appropriated to God, i. e. an independent Immortality. Angels and Souls have an Immortality, but by donation from God, not by their own Essence; dependent upon their Creator, not necessary in their own nature: God might have annihilated them after he had created them; so that their duration cannot properly be called an Eternity, it being extrinsical to them, and depending upon the will of their Creator, by whom they may be extinguished: It is not an absolute and necessary, but a precarious Immortality. Whatsoever is not God, is temporary: Whatsoever is eternal, is God.
'It is a contradiction to say a Creature can be eternal; as nothing eternal is created, so nothing created is eternal. What is distinct from the nature of God cannot be eternal, Eternity being the Essence of God. Every Creature in the notion of a Creature speaks a dependence on some Cause, and therefore cannot be eternal. As it is repugnant to the nature of God not to be eternal, so it is repugnant to the nature of a Creature to be eternal; for then a Creature would be equal to the Creator, and the Creator or the Cause would not be before the Creature or Effect.
It would be all one to admit many God's, as many Eternals; and all one to say God can be created, as to say a Creature can be uncreated, which is to be eternal.
1. Creation is a producing something from nothing. What was once nothing, cannot therefore be eternal; not being was eternal; therefore its being could not be eternal, for it should be then before it was, and would be something when it was nothing. 'It is the nature of a Creature to be nothing, before it was created; what was nothing before it was, cannot be equal with God in an Eternity of Duration.
2. There is no Creature but is mutable, therefore not eternal. As it had a change from nothing to something, so it may be changed from being to not being. If the Creature were not mutable it would be most perfect, and so would not be a Creature but God; for God only is most perfect: 'It is as much the Essence of a Creature to be mutable, as it is the Essence of God to be immutable: Mutability and Eternity are utterly inconsistent.
3. No Creature is infinite, therefore not eternal. To be infinite in Duration is all one, as to be infinite in Essence: 'It is as reasonable to conceive a Creature immense, filling all places at once, as eternal, extended to all ages; because neither can be without infiniteness, which is the Property of the Deity. A Creature may as well be without bounds of place, as limitations of time.
4. No effect of an intellectual free Agent, can be equal in duration to its Cause. The Productions of natural Agents are as ancient often as themselves; the Sun produceth a Beam as old in time as its self; But whoever heard of a piece of wise Workmanship as old as the wise Artificer? God produced a Creature, not necessarily and naturally, as the Sun doth a Beam, but freely, as an intelligent Agent. The Sun was not necessary; it might be or not be, according to the pleasure of God. A free act of the Will is necessary, to precede in order of time as the Cause of such effects as are purely voluntary. Those Causes that act as soon as they exist, act naturally, necessarily, not freely, and cannot cease from acting.
But suppose a Creature might have existed by the Will of God from Eternity; yet, as some think, it could not be said absolutely, and in its own nature to be eternal; because Eternity was not of the Essence of it. The Creature could not be its own Duration; for though it were from Eternity, it might not have been from Eternity, because its Existence depended upon the free Will of God, who might have chose, whether he would have created it or no.
God only is eternal, the first and the last, the beginning and the end; who, as he subsisted before any Creature had a being, so he will eternally subsist if all Creatures were reduced to nothing.
IV. Use.
1. Information.
1. If God be of an eternal duration, then Christ is God: Eternity is the Property of God, but it is ascribed to Christ; He is before all things, i. e. all created things: He is therefore no Creature; and if no Creature, eternal. All things were created by him, both in Heaven and in Earth, Angels as well as Men, whether they be Thrones or Dominions: If all things were his Creatures, then he is no Creature; if he were, all things were not created by him, or he must create himself.
He hath no difference of time; for he is the same yesterday, today, and forever; The same, with the Name of God, I am, which signifies his Eternity; He is no more today than he was yesterday, nor will be any other tomorrow than he is today; And therefore Melchizedek whose Descent, Birth and Death, Father and Mother, Beginning and End of days are not upon Record, was a Type of the Existence of Christ without difference of time. Having neither beginning of Days nor end of Life, but made like the Son of God. The suppression of his Birth and Death, was intended by the Holy-Ghost as a Type of the excellency of Christ's person in regard of his Eternity, and the duration of his Charge in regard of his Priest-hood. As there was an appearance of an Eternity in the suppression of the Race of Melchizedek, so there is a true Eternity in the Son of God. How could the Eternity of the Son of God be expressed by any resemblance so well, as by such a suppression of the Beginning and End of this great Person, different from the custom of the Spirit of God in the Old-Testament, who often records the Generations and Ends of holy Men; and why might not this, which was a kind of a shadow of Eternity, be a representation of the true Eternity of Christ, as well as the restoration of Isaac to his Father without death, is said to be a figure of the Resurrection of Christ after a real death? Melchizedek is only mentioned once (without any record of his extraction) in his appearance to Abraham after his victory, as if he came from Heaven only for that action, and instantly disappeared again, as if he had been an eternal person.
And Christ himself hints his own eternity, I came forth from the Father and am come into the world, again I leave the world and go to the Father. He goes to the Father as he came from the Father; He goes to the Father for everlasting, so he came from the Father from everlasting; there is the same duration in coming forth from the Father, as in returning to the Father. But more plainly; He speaks of a Glory that he had with the Father before the world was, when there was no Creature in being; this is an actual glory, and not only in Decree: For a decreed glory Believers had, and why may not everyone of them say the same words, Father glorify me with that glory which I had with thee before the world was, if it were only a glory in decree? Nay, it may be said of every man, he was before the world was, because he was so in decree. Christ speaks of something peculiar to him, a Glory in actual possession before the world was; glorify me, embrace, honor me as thy Son, whereas I have now been in the eyes of the world handled disgracefully as a Servant: If it were only in decree, why is not the like expression used of others in Scripture as well as of Christ? Why did he not use the same words for his Disciples that were then with him, who had a glory in decree? His Eternity is also mentioned in the Old-Testament: The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way before his works of old. If he were the work of God, he existed before himself, if he existed before all the works of God; 'tis so not properly meant of the essential wisdom of God, since the discourse runs in the name of a Person; and several passages there are which belong not so much to the essential wisdom of God, as v. 13. The evil way, and the froward mouth do I hate; which belongs rather to the holiness of God, than to the essential wisdom of God; besides it is distinguished from Jehovah, as possessed by him, and rejoicing before him. Yet plainer, Out of thee i. e. Bethlehem shall he come forth to be Ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 from the ways of Eternity. There are two goings forth of Christ described, one from Bethlehem in the days of his incarnation, and another from Eternity. The Holy-Ghost adds after his prediction of his incarnation, his going out from everlasting, that none should doubt of his Deity: If this going out from everlasting were only in the purpose of God, it might be said of David, and of every Creature: And in Isa. 9.6. He is particularly called the Everlasting, or Eternal Father; Not the Father in the Trinity, but a Father to us; yet eternal, the Father of Eternity. As he is the mighty God, so he is the everlasting Father: Can such a title be ascribed to any, whose being depends upon the Will of another, and may be dashed out at the pleasure of a Superior?
As the Eternity of God is the ground of all Religion, so the Eternity of Christ is the ground of the Christian Religion: Could our Sins be perfectly expiated, had he not an eternal Divinity to answer for the offenses committed against an eternal God? Temporary sufferings had been of little validity, without an infiniteness and eternity in his person to add weight to his passion.
2. If God be eternal, he knows all things as present. All things are present to him in his Eternity; for this is the notion of Eternity, to be without succession. If Eternity be one indivisible point, and is not diffused into preceding and succeeding parts, then that which is known in it or by it, is perceived without any succession; For knowledge is as the substance of the person knowing; if that hath various actions and distinct from itself, then it understands things in differences of time as time presents them to view: But, since God's Being depends not upon the revolutions of time, so neither doth his Knowledge; it exceeds all motions of years and days, comprehends infinite spaces of past and future. God considers all things in his Eternity in one simple knowledge, as if they were now acted before him: Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 à seculo; from eternity. God's Knowledge is coeternal with him: If he knows that in time which he did not know from eternity, he would not be eternally perfect, since knowledge is the perfection of an intelligent nature.
3. How bold and foolish is it for a mortal Creature, to censure the Counsels and Actions of an eternal God, or be too curious in his inquisitions? 'It is by the consideration of the unsearchable number of the years of God that Elihu checks too bold enquiries: Who hath enjoined him his way, or who can say, thou hast wrought iniquity? Behold, God is great and we know him not, neither can the number of his years be searched out. Eternity sets God above our Enquiries and Censures. Infants of a day old are not able to understand the acts of wise and gray Heads: Shall we, that are of so short a being and understanding as yesterday, presume to measure the motions of Eternity by our scanty Intellects? We that cannot foresee an unexpected accident which falls in to blast a well laid design, and run a Ship many Leagues back from the intended Harbor; We cannot understand the reason of things we see done in time, the motions of the Sea, the generation of Rain, the nature of Light, the Sympathies and Antipathies of the Creatures; and shall we dare to censure the actions of an eternal God so infinitely beyond our reach? The Counsels of a boundless Being are not to be scann'd by the Brain of a silly Worm, that hath breathed but a few minutes in the world: Since Eternity cannot be comprehended in time, 'tis not to be judged by a Creature of time, Let us remember to magnify his works which we behold, because he is eternal, which is the exhortation of Elihu, backed by this Doctrine of God's Eternity; and not accuse any work of him who is the Ancient of days, or presume to direct him, of whose Eternity we come infinitely short: When ever therefore any unworthy notion of the Counsels and Works of God is suggested to us by Satan, or our own corrupt hearts; let us look backward to God's eternal and our own short duration, and silence ourselves with the same Question wherewith God put a stop to the reasoning of Job; Where wast thou, when I laid the foundations of the Earth? and reprove ourselves for our curiosity; since we are of so short a standing, and were nothing when the eternal God laid the first Stone of the World.
4. What a folly and boldness is there in Sin, since an eternal God is offended thereby? All Sin is aggravated by God's Eternity: The blackness of the Heathen Idolatry was in changing the glory of the incorruptible God, erecting resemblances of him contrary to his immortal nature; as if the eternal God, whose life is as unlimited as Eternity, were like those Creatures whose beings are measured by the short Ell of Time, which are of a corruptible nature, and daily passing on to Corruption: They could not really deprive God of his Glory and Immortality, but they did in Estimation. There is in the nature of every sin a tendency to reduce God to a not Being. He that thinks unworthily of God, or acts unworthily towards him, doth (as much as in him lies) fully and destroy these two perfections of his, Immutability and Eternity: 'It is a carriage, as if he were as contemptible as a Creature that were but of yesterday, and shall not remain in being tomorrow. He that would put an end to God's glory by darkening it, would put an end to God's life by destroying it. He that should love a Beast with as great an affection as he loves a Man, contemns a rational nature; and he that loves a perishing thing with the same affection he should love an everlasting God, contemns his Eternity; He debaseth the duration of God below that of the World: The low valuation of God speaks him in his esteem, no better than withering Grass, or a Gourd, which lasts for a night; and the Creature which possesses his affection, to be a Good that lasts forever. How foolish then is every sin, that tends to destroy a Being that cannot destroy or desert himself; a Being, without whose Eternity the Sinner himself could not have had the capacity of a being to affront him? How base is that, which would not let the works of God remain in their established posture? How much more base in not enduring the fountain and glory of all Beings, that would not only put an end to the Beauty of the world, but the Eternity of God?
5. How dreadful is it to lie under the stroke of an eternal God? His Eternity is as great a terror to him that hates him, as it is a comfort to him that loves him; because he is the living God, an everlasting King, the Nations shall not be able to abide his indignation. Though God be least in their thoughts, and is made light of in the world; yet the thoughts of God's Eternity, when he comes to judge the world, shall make the Slighters of him tremble: That the Judge and Punisher lives forever, is the greatest grievance to a Soul in misery, and adds an inconceivable weight to it, above what the infiniteness of God's executive Power could do without that duration: His Eternity makes the punishment more dreadful than his Power; his Power makes it sharp, but his Eternity renders it perpetual; ever to endure, is the sting at the end of every lash.
And how sad is it, to think that God lays his Eternity to pawn for the punishment of obstinate Sinners, and engageth it by an Oath, that he will whet his glittering Sword, that his hand shall take hold of Judgment, that he will render Vengeance to his Enemies, and a Reward to them that hate him, a reward proportioned to the greatness of their offenses, and the glory of an eternal God? I lift up my hand to Heaven, and say, I live forever, i. e. as surely as I live forever, I will whet my glittering Sword. As none can convey good with a perpetuity, so none can convey evil with such a lastingness as God. 'It is a great loss to lose a Ship richly fraught in the bottom of the Sea, never to be cast upon the Shore; But how much greater is it, to lose eternally a Sovereign God, which we were capable of eternally enjoying, and undergo an evil as durable as that God we slighted, and were in a possibility of avoiding? The miseries of men after this Life are not eased, but sharpen'd by the Life and Eternity of God.
The Second Use is of Comfort. What foundation of comfort can we have in any of God's Attributes, were it not for his Infiniteness and Eternity; though he be merciful, good, wise, faithful,? What support could there be, if they were perfections belonging to a corruptible God? What hopes of a Resurrection to Happiness can we have, or of the duration of it; if that God that promised it were not immortal to continue it, as well as powerful to effect it? His Power were not Almighty, if his duration were not Eternal.
1. If God be eternal, his Covenant will be so. 'It is founded upon the Eternity of God; the Oath whereby he confirms it, is by his Life: Since there is none greater than himself, he swears by himself, or by his own Life, which he engageth together with his Eternity for the full performance; so that if he lives forever, the Covenant shall not be disannul'd, 'tis an immutable Counsel: The immutability of his Counsel follows the immutability of his Nature. Immutability and Eternity go hand in hand together. The promise of eternal Life is as ancient as God himself in regard of the purpose of the promise, or in regard of the promise made to Christ for us. Eternal life which God promised before the world began. As it hath an anteeternity, so it hath a post-eternity; Therefore the Gospel which is the new Covenant published, is termed the everlasting Gospel; which can no more be altered and perish, than God can change and vanish into nothing: He can as little morally deny his truth, as he can naturally desert his life. The Covenant is there represented in a Green Colour, to note its perpetual Verdure: The Rain-bow, the Emblem of the Covenant, about the Throne, was like to an Emrald, a Stone of a green color; whereas the natural Rain-bow hath many colors; this but one, to signify its Eternity.
2. If God be eternal, he being our God in Covenant, is an eternal Good and Possession. This God is our God forever and ever; He is a dwelling place in all Generations. We shall traverse the world a while, and then arrive at the blessings Jacob wished for Joseph;