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formed, animated by the malignity and venom of the mortal end and principle, which is habitual, reigning self-love: but those of the wicked are sins informed by this inordinate self-love as an habitual, reigning sin; and therefore being animated by its malignity are mortal: yet say not that this makes God partial, and not to hate the same sin in one as he doth in another. For two things must be taken in, 1. Where the heart is sanctified, such sins are strangers: perhaps one godly man of ten or twenty may be guilty of one of them, as Noah was of drunkenness, once in all his life (since his conversion); for it will not stand with grace to live in them; for such as a man's love, and inclination, and nature is, such will be the drift of his life. And would not you have God make a difference between those that sin once, and those that live in it? 2. Besides, will not any honest man make a great difference of the same acts according as they come from different hearts? You will not take a passionate word from a father, husband or wife, so ill as the same word from a malicious enemy. If an unthrifty son should spend you twenty shillings wastefully, you will not prosecute him as you would do a thief or an enemy that takes it from you violently. Wilful murder and casual manslaughter have not the same punishment by the law of the land. If you will make such a difference yourselves of the same words or deeds as they come from different meanings and affections, quarrel not with God for doing that which you confess is just and necessary to be done.

The faculty where this disposition is principally seated, is the will; which in man is the heart of morality, whether good or evil. And the principal act is an inordinate adhesion of man to himself, and complacency in himself: and this is the inordinate self-love that must be first mortified.

2. The next faculty that self hath corrupted, is the understanding; and here we first meet with the sin of selfesteem, which is the second part of selfishness to be morti- fied. It is not more natural for man to be sinful, vile and miserable, than to think himself virtuous, worthy and honourable. All men naturally overvalue themselves, and would have all others also overvalue them. This is the sin of pride. But of this I must speak by itself.

CHAPTER XIV.

Self-conceitedness must be Denied.

3. THE next part of selfishness to be mortified, is in the same faculty, and it is called self-conceitedness. And it consisteth of two parts: the first is a disposition to selfish opinions or conceits that are properly our own. And the second is to think better of those conceits than they do de

serve.

1. Naturally men are prone to spin themselves a web of opinions out of their own brain, and to have a religion that may be called their own; and it is their own in two respects; 1. Because it is of their own devising, and not of God's revealing or appointing. 2. Because it suiteth with their own carnal ends and interests. Men are far readier to make themselves a faith, than to receive that which God hath formed to their hands. And they are far readier to receive a doctrine that tends to their carnal commodity, or honour, or delights, than one that tends to self-denial, and to abase themselves, and exalt the Lord.

2. And when they have hatched or received such opinions which are peculiarly their own, they are apt to like them the better, because they are their own, and to value them because of the interest of self. O sirs, that you did but know the commonness and danger of self-conceitedness in the world! Even with many that seem humble, and verily think that it is the Spirit of God that beareth the greatest sway in their understandings, yet self doth there erect his throne! O how secretly and subtilely will self insinuate, and make you believe that it is a pure self-denying light which guideth you, and that what you hold, is merely by the cogent evidence of truth, or the illumination of the Spirit, when it is but a viper that self hath hatched and doateth on, because it is her own. Because the Papists have gone too far in teaching men to depend on the church and on their teachers, therefore self-conceitedness takes advantage of their error, to draw men into the contrary extreme, and make every infant Christian to think himself wiser than his most experienced brethren and teachers, and every raw, unstudied Christian to think himself wiser than those that have

been searching into the word of truth by study and prayer almost all their days, and therefore to cry down that learning, wisdom and study, which they are unacquainted with; that seeing they have it not themselves, they may at least be thought as wise men without it, as those that have it, and so may provide for the reputation and interest of self. O what sad work hath this great sin of self-conceitedness made in the world! In too many places men make it their religion to strive who shall be greatest for wisdom and abilities in the eyes of men! and it is the very work of their prayers, and conference, and teaching to exercise self-conceitedness, and to make it appear that they are somebody in knowledge; hence is it that they are so apt to fall upon novelties which either few receive, or none before themselves devised, that being singular, self may be the more observed, and they may have something which may be called their own. Hence also it is that they are so little suspicious of their own opinions, never bending their studies impartially to try whether they are of God or not, but rather to maintain them, and to find out all that can be said for them, and against the contraryminded. Hence is it that men have such light and contemptuous thoughts of the judgment of those that excel them in knowledge, and that the voice of Corah, and those other conspirators (Numb. xvi. 3.), is grown so common in the mouths of ignorant proud professors. Ye take too much upon you (say they to their guides and teachers) seeing all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them: wherefore then lift ye up yourselves above the congregation of the Lord?" It is the holiness of the congregation, and all its members, and the presence of God himself among them, that is pleaded against the superiority of Moses and Aaron, as if with so holy a people, that had God himself to be their Teacher and Guide, there were no need of men, to be lift up above the congregation of the Lord; but it was self that was intended, whatever was pretended. From this self-conceitedness also it is that the weightiest common truths that self hath no special interest in, are so little valued, and relished, and insisted on; and that a less and more uncertain point which self hath espoused, shall be more relished, insisted on, and contended for ; hence also is most of the common confidence of men in their own opinions; that when the point is

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doubtful, if not certainly false, in the eyes of wiser men than themselves, yet the fool rageth and is confident," Prov. xiv. 16. He can carry on a conceit of his own with as brazen a face, and proud contempt of other men's arguments, as if he were maintaining that the sun is light, and other men pleaded to prove it dark, when, alas, it is self-interest that is the life, the strength, the goodness of the cause. Hence also it is that men are so quarrelsome with the words and ways of others, that they can scarce hear or read a word, but these pugnacious animals are ready to draw upon it, as if they had catched an advantage for the honouring of their valour, and were loath to lose such a prize and opportunity for a victory and triumph: hence it is that hissing at the savings and doings of others, is the first, and most common, and most sensible part of their commentaries; and that they can make heresies and monsters not only of tolerable errors, but of truths themselves if they have but the inexpiable guilt of crossing the wisdom of these self-conceited men. Hence it is that opinions of their Own are more industriously cultivated and studiously cherished, by a double if not a tenfold proportion of zeal and diligence, than common truths that all the godly in the world have as much interest in as they, though the common truths be incomparably the greater. And hence it is that men are so tenacious of that which is their own, when they more easily let go that which is God's; and must have all come to them, and every man deny his own judgment, except themselves; and that it must be the glory of others to yield to them, and their glory to yield to none, but to have all men come over and submit to them. All these are the fruits and discoveries of self as it reigns in men's understandings, who possibly may think that it is Christ and the Spirit that is there exalted.

Yet mistake me not; I do not say or think that a man should forsake a certain truth for fear of being accounted self-conceited, nor that he must presently captivate his own understanding to a more learned man, or the stronger, or more numerous side, for fear of being self-conceited. Much less must I deny that grace of God that hath made me savingly wise by his illumination, that was formerly foolish, disobedient, and deceived in the days of my ignorance. The world must give us leave to triumph over our own former

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folly with Paul (Tit. iii. 3-7); and say with the same Pauĺ, that we were no better than mad when we were enemies to the Gospel (Acts xxvi. 11.), and with the man in John ix. 25, "One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see." It is no self- conceitedness for a man that is brought from the blind distracted state of sin, into the light of the sanctified, to know that he is wiser than he was before; and that he was formerly besides himself, but now is come to his understanding again. Nor is it any self-conceitedness for the meanest Christian to know that a wicked man is more foolish than he; or for a minister or any man that God hath caused to excel in knowledge, to hold fast the truth he knows, and to see and modestly oppose the errors of another, and to know that in that he is wiser than they. God doth not require that we shall turn to every man's opinion, and reel up and down from sect to sect, and be of the opinion of every party that we come among, and all for fear of thinking ourselves wiser than they. David knew he had more understanding than his teachers (Psal. cxix. 98, 99.); and true believers fear not to say," We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness;" 1 John v. 19. iii. 19. ii. 3. And Paul would not forbear the reproving of Peter, for fear of being thought to be self-conceited; Gal. ii. Some men are so desperately self-conceited that they take every man to be self-conceited that is not of their conceits.

But when self is men's instructor, and chooseth their text, and furnisheth them with matter, and nothing is savoury but what is either suited to the common interest of self, or which it hath not a special interest in; when men are absolutely wise in their own eyes, and comparatively wiser than those that know much more than they; when self-interest serves instead of evidence to the receiving, retaining, or contending for a point; when men think they know that which indeed they do not know, and observe the little which they do know, more than an hundredfold more that they are ignorant of; doubtless here is self-conceitedness with a witness; and they that will not see it in a lower degree, methinks should see it in such a case as this. He that will not believe that a man is drunk when he reels and stammereth, may know it when he lieth spewing in the streets.

Well, sirs, I beseech you see that self in the understanding be mortified and pulled down. It is the throne of God,

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