Post by Admin on Feb 20, 2024 10:39:24 GMT -5
THE WORLD OF MADMEN
The heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in
their heart while they live: and after that they go to the dead.—
ECCLES. 9:3.
THE subject of the discourse is man; and the speech of him hath
three points in the text:—I. His comma; II. His colon; III. His period.
I. 'Men's hearts are full of evil;' there is the comma. II. 'Madness is in
their hearts while they live;' there is the colon. III. Whereat not
staying, 'after that they go down to the dead;' and there is their
period. The first begins, the second continues, the third concludes,
their sentence.
Here is man's setting forth, his peregrination, and his journey's end.
I. At first putting out, 'his heart is full of evil.' II. 'Madness is in his
heart' all his peregrination, 'whiles they live.' III. His journey's end is
the grave, 'he goes to the dead.'
I. Man is born from the womb, as an arrow shot from the bow. II. His
flight through this air is wild, and full of madness, of indirect
courses. III. The centre, where he lights, is the grave.
I. His comma begins so harshly, that it promiseth no good
consequence in the colon. II. The colon is so mad and inordinate,
that there is small hope of the period. III. When both the premises
are so faulty, the conclusion can never be handsome. Wickedness in
the first proposition, madness in the second, the ergo is fearful; the
conclusion of all is death.
So then, I. The beginning of man's race is full of evil, as if he
stumbled at the threshold. II. The further he goes, the worse;
madness is joined tenant in his heart with life. III. At last, in his
frantic flight, not looking to his feet, he drops into the pit, goes down
to the dead.
I. To begin at the uppermost stair of this gradual descent; the
COMMA of this tripartite sentence gives man's heart for a vessel.
Wherein observe—
1. The owners of this vessel; men, and derivatively, the sons of men.
2. The vessel itself is earthen, a pot of God's making, and man's
marring; the heart.
3. The liquor it holds is evil; a defective, privative, abortive thing, not
instituted, but destituted, by the absence of original goodness.
4. The measure of this vessel's pollution with evil liquor. It is not said
sprinkled, not seasoned, with a moderate and sparing quantity; it
hath not an aspersion, nor imbution, but impletion; it is filled to the
brim, 'full of evil.' Thus, at first putting forth, we have man in his best
member corrupted.
1. The owners or possessors—sons of men. Adam was called the son
of God, Luke 3:38, 'Enos was the son of Seth, Seth the son of Adam,
Adam the son of God:' but all his posterity the sons of men; we
receiving from him both flesh and the corruption of flesh, yea, and of
soul too; though the substance thereof be inspired of God, not
traduced from man: for the purest soul becomes stained and corrupt
when it once toucheth the body.
The sons of men. This is a derivative and diminutive speech; whereby
man's conceit of himself is lessened, and himself lessened to
humility. Man, as God's creation left him, was a goodly creature, an
abridgement of heaven and earth, an epitome of God and the world:
resembling God, who is a spirit, in his soul; and the world, which is a
body, in the composition of his. —God the greatest of invisible natures, the world
the greatest of visible creatures; both brought into the little compass of man.
Now man is grown less; and as his body in size, his soul in vigour, so
himself in all virtue is abated: so that 'the son of man' is a phrase of
diminution, a bar in the arms of his ancient glory, a mark of his
derogate and degenerate worth.
Two instructions may the sons of men learn in being called so:—(1.)
Their spiritual corruption; (2.) Their natural corruptibleness.
(1.) That corruption and original pravity which we have derived from
our parents. Ps. 51:5, 'Behold,' saith David, 'I was shapen in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me.' The original word is, 'warm
me;' as if the first heat derived to him were not without
contamination. I was born a sinner, saith a saint.
It is said, Gen. 5:3, that 'Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after
his image, and called his name Seth.' This image and likeness cannot
be understood of the soul: for this Adam begat not. Nor properly and
merely of the body's shape; so was Cain as like to Adam as Seth, of
whom it is spoken. Nor did that image consist in the piety and purity
of Seth: Adam could not propagate that to his son which he had not
in himself; virtues are not given by birth, nor doth grace follow
generation, but regeneration. Neither is Seth said to be 'begotten in
the image of Adam' because mankind was continued and preserved
in him. But it intends that corruption which descended to Adam's
posterity by natural propagation. The Pelagian error was,—that the guilt of the first sin was derived to
other men, not by propagation, but by imitation; but then could not
Adam be said to beget a son in his own image, neither could death
have seized on infants, who had not then sinned. But all have sinned:
Rom. 5:12, 'As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by
sin: so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.'
This title, then, 'the sons of men,' puts us in mind of our original
contamination, whereby we stand guilty before God, and liable to
present and eternal judgments. Dura tremenda refers. You will say
with the disciples, John 6:60, 'This is a hard saying; who can hear
it?'—bear it; nay, be ready to conclude with a sadder inference, as the
same disciples, after a particular instance, Matt. 19:25, 'Who then
can be saved?'
I answer, We derive from the first Adam sin and death; but from the
second Adam, grace and life. As we are the sons of men, our state is
wretched; as made the sons of God, blessed. It is a peremptory
speech, 1 Cor. 15:50, 'Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of
God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.' It is a reviving
comfort in the 6th chapter of the same epistle, ver. 11, 'Such we were;
but we are washed, but we are sanctified, but we are justified, in the
name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.' The conclusion
or inference hereon is most happy: Rom. 8:1, 'Now therefore there is
no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not
after the flesh, but after the Spirit.' We may live in the flesh, but 'if
after the flesh, we shall die,' ver. 13,—si voluntati et voluptati carnis
satisfacere conemur, if our endeavours be wholly armed and aimed
to content the flesh; but if we be 'led by the Spirit,' cum dilectione,
cum delectatione, with love, with delight, we are of the sons of men
made the sons of God, ver. 14.
It is our happiness, not to be born, but to be new-born, John 3:3. The
first birth kills, the second gives life. It is not the seed of man in the
womb of our mother, but the seed of grace, 1 Pet. 1:23, in the womb
of the church, that makes us blessed. Generation lost us; it must be
regeneration that recovers us. 'As the tree falls, so it lies;' and lightly
it falls to that side which is most laden with fruits and branches. If we
abound most with the fruits of obedience, we shall fall to the right
hand, life; if with wicked actions, affections, to the left side, death.
It is not, then, worth the ascription of glory to, what we derive
naturally from man. David accepts it as a great dignity to be son-inlaw to a king.
To descend from potentates, and to fetch our pedigree
from princes, is held mirabile , a dignity not to
be slighted or forgotten; but to be a monarch—
'Whose fame and empire no less bound controls,
Than the remotest sea, and both the poles'—
oh, this is ,—the supremest honour of this
world! Yet 'princes are but men,' saith the Psalmist. Ps. 146:3, 'Put
not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no
help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth.' They may be
high by their calling, 'princes;' yet they are but low by their nature,
'sons of men.' And merely to be the son of man is to be corrupt and
polluted. They are sinful, 'the sons of men;' weak, 'there is no help in
them;' corruptible, 'their breath goeth forth;' dying, 'they return to their earth.'
It is registered as an evident praise of Moses's faith, Heb. 11:24, that,
'for the rebuke of Christ, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's
daughter.' There is no ambition good in the sons of men, but to be
adopted the sons of God: under which degree there is no happiness;
above which, no cause of aspiring.
(2.) Our corruptibleness is here also demonstrated. A mortal father
cannot beget an immortal son. If they that brought us into the world
have gone out of the world themselves, we may infallibly conclude
our own following. He that may say, I have a man to my father, a
woman to my mother, in his life, may in death, with Job, chap. 17:14,
'say to corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my
mother, and my sister.'
It hath been excepted against the justice of God, that the sin of one
man is devolved to his posterity; and that for 'the fathers' eating sour
grapes, the children's teeth are set on edge,' Ezek. 18:2, according to
the Jewish proverb, Jer. 31:29. As if we might say to every son of
man, as Horace sung to his friend: Delicta majorum immeritus lues,
—Thou being innocent, dost suffer for thy nocent superiors. This a
philosopher objected against the gods; strangely conferring it, as if
for the father's disease physic should be ministered to the son.
I answer, Adam is considered as the root of mankind; that corrupt
mass, whence can be deduced no pure thing. Can we be born
Morians without their black skins? Is it possible to have an Amorite
to our father, and a Hittite to our mother, without participation of
their corrupted natures? If a man slip a scion from a hawthorn, he
will not look to gather from it grapes. There is not, then, a son of man
in the cluster of mankind, but
—is liable to that common and equal law of death.
—'Proud man forgets earth was his native womb,
Whence he was born; and dead, the earth's his tomb.'
saith the philosopher,*—
Thou shalt die, O son of man, not because thou art sick, but because
the son of man. ,—Who happened to
come into the world, must upon necessity go out of the world.
It is no new thing to die, since life itself is nothing else but a journey
to death.,—He that hath climbed to his highest, is descending to his lowest. All the
sons of men die not one death, for time and manner; for the matter
and end, one death is infallible to all the sons of men. The corn is
sometimes bitten in the spring, often trod down in the blade, never
fails to be cut up in the ear, when ripe. †—Who laments that a man
is dead, laments that he was a man.
When Anaxagoras heard that his son was dead, he answered without
astonishment, ,—I know that I begat a
mortal man. It was a good speech that fell from that shame of philosophy,
—I am not eternity, but a man: a little part of the whole, as an
hour is of the day: like an hour I came, and I must depart like an
hour.
—
'Death's cold impartial hands are used to strike
Princes and peasants, and make both alike.'
Some fruit is plucked violently from the tree, some drops with
ripeness; all must fall, because the sons of men.
This should teach us to arm ourselves with patience and expectation,
to encounter death. —Often we ought to prepare for death, we will not: at last,
we die indeed, and we would not. Adam knew all the beasts, and
called them by their names; but his own name he forgot—Adam, of
earth. What bad memories have we, that forget our own names and
selves, that we are the sons of men, corruptible, mortal!
Thou knowest not in what place death looketh for thee; therefore do
thou look for him in every place. Matt. 24:42, 'Watch therefore; for
you know not what hour your Lord doth come.'—Thus for the owners.
2. The vessel itself is the heart. The heart is man's principal vessel.
We desire to have all the implements in our house good; but the
vessel of chiefest honour, principally good. &c., saith St Augustine,
—How mad is that man that would
have all his vessels good but his own heart! We would have a strong
nerve, a clear vein, a moderate pulse, a good arm, a good face, a good
stomach, only we care not how evil the heart is, the principal of all
the rest.
For howsoever the head be called the tower of the mind, the throne
of reason, the house of wisdom, the treasure of memory, the capitol
of judgment, the shop of affections, yet is the heart the receptacle of
life. And which, they say, is a virtue uniting the soul and the body,
if it be in the liver natural, in the
head animal, yet is in the heart vital. It is the member that hath first
life in man, and it is the last that dies in man, and to all the other
members gives vivification.
As man is microcosmus, an abridgment of the world, he hath heaven
resembling his soul; earth his heart, placed in the midst as a centre;
the liver is like the sea, whence flow the lively springs of blood; the
brain, like the sun, gives the light of understanding; and the senses
are set round about, like the stars. The heart in man is like the root in
a tree: the organ or lung-pipe, that comes of the left cell of the heart,
is like the stock of the tree, which divides itself into two parts, and
thence spreads abroad, as it were, sprays and boughs into all the
body, even to the arteries of the head.
The Egyptians have a conceit that man's growing or declining follows
his heart. The heart of man, say they, increaseth still till he come to
fifty years old, every year two drams in weight, and then decreaseth
every year as much, till he come to a hundred; and then for want of
heart he can live no longer. By which consequence, none could live
above a hundred years. But this observation hath often proved false.
But it is a vessel, a living vessel, a vessel of life.
It is a vessel properly, because hollow: hollow to keep heat, and for
the more facile closing and opening. It is a spiritual vessel, made to
contain the holy dews of grace, which make glad the city of God, Ps.
46:4. It is ever full, either with that precious juice, or with the
pernicious liquor of sin. As our Saviour saith, Matt. 15:19, 'Out of the
heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts,
false witness, blasphemies.' 'Know ye not,' saith the Apostle, 1 Cor.
3:16, 'that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God
dwelleth in you?' If our corpus be templum Domini, sure our cor is
sanctum sanctorum. It was the answer of the oracle, to him that
would be instructed what was the best sacrifice:—
'Da medium lunæ, solem simul, et canis iram;'—
'Give the half-moon, the whole sun, and the dog's anger;'
which three characters make COR, the heart. The good heart is a
receptacle for the whole Trinity; and therefore it hath three angles, as
if the three Persons of that one Deity would inhabit there. The Father
made it, the Son bought it, the Holy Ghost sanctifies it; therefore
they all three claim a right in the heart. It hath three cells for the
three Persons, and is but one heart for one God. The world cannot
satisfy it: a globe cannot fill a triangle. Only God can sufficiently
content the heart.
God is, saith a father, *—not regarding
the rind of the lips, but the root of the heart. Hence Satan directs his
malicious strength against the heart. The fox doth gripe the neck, the
mastiff flies at the throat, and the ferret nips the liver, but the devil
aims at the heart, inficere, interficere. The heart he desires, becauses
he knows God desires it; and his ambition still inclines, intends his
purposes and plots, to rob God of his delight. The heart is the chief
tower of life to the body, and the spiritual citadel to the whole man:
always besieged by a domestical enemy, the flesh; by a civil, the
world; by a professed, the devil. Every perpetrated sin doth some
hurt to the walls; but if the heart be taken, the whole corporation is lost.
How should Christ enter thy house, and 'sup with thee,' Rev. 3:20,
when the chamber is taken up wherein he would rest, the heart? All
the faculties of man follow the heart, as servants the mistress, wheels
the poise, or links the first end of the chain. When the sun riseth, all
rise; beasts from their dens, birds from their nests, men from their
beds. So the heart leads, directs, moves the parts of the body and
powers of the soul; that the mouth speaketh, hand worketh, eye
looketh, ear listeneth, foot walketh, all producing good or evil 'from
the good or evil treasure of the heart,' Luke 6:45. Therefore the
penitent publican beat his heart, as if he would call up that, to call up
the rest.
It is conspicuous, then, that the heart is the best vessel whereof any
son of man can boast himself possessor; and yet (proh dolor!) even
this is corrupted. To declare this pollution, the next circumstance
doth justly challenge; only one caveat to our hearts, of our hearts, ere
we leave them. Since the heart is the most precious vessel man hath
in all his corporal household, let him have good regard to it.
—'Keep thy heart with all diligence,' saith
Solomon. God hath done much for the heart, naturally, spiritually.
For the former; he hath placed it in the midst of the body, as a
general in the midst of his army: bulwarked it about with breast, ribs,
back. Lest it should be too cold, the liver lies not far off, to give it
kindly heat; lest too hot, the lungs lie by it, to blow cool wind upon it.
It is the chief, and therefore should wisely temper all other members:
by the spleen we are made to laugh, by the gall to be angry, by the
brain we feel, by the liver we love, but by the heart we be wise.
Spiritually, he hath done more for the heart, giving the blood of his
Son to cleanse it, soften it, sanctify it, when it was full both of
hardness and turpitude. By his omnipotent grace he unroosted the
devil from it, who had made it a stable of uncleanness; and now
requires it, being created ew, for his own chamber, for his own bed.
The purified heart is God's sacrary, his sanctuary, his house, his
heaven. As St Augustine glosseth the first words of the Paternoster,
'Our Father which art in heaven'—that is, in a heart of a heavenly
disposition., that the King of heaven will
vouchsafe to dwell in an earthly tabernacle!
The heart, then, being so accepted a vessel, keep it at home; having
but one so precious or moveable, part not with it upon
any terms. There are four busy requirers of the heart, besides he that
justly owneth it—beggars, buyers, borrowers, thieves.
(1.) He that begs thy heart is the Pope; and this he doth not by word
of mouth, but by letters of commendations,—condemnations rather,
—his Seminary factors. He begs thy heart, and offers thee nothing for
it, but crucifixes, images, &c.,—mere images or shadows of reward,—
or his blessing at Rome; which, because it is so far distant, as if it lost
all the virtue by the way, doth as much good as a candle in a sunshine.
(2.) He that would buy this vessel of us is the devil; as one that
distrusts to have it for nothing: and therefore, set what price thou
wilt upon it, he will either pay it or promise it. Satan would fain have
his jewel-house full of these vessels, and thinks them richer
ornaments than the Babylonian ambassadors thought the treasures
of Hezekiah, 2 Kings 20:13. Haman shall have grace with the king,
Absalom honour, Jezebel revenge, Amnon his lusts satisfied, Judas
money, Demas the world, if they will sell him their hearts. If any
man, like Ahab, sell his heart to such a purchaser, let him know that
qui emit, interimit,—he doth buy it to butcher it.
(3.) The flesh is the borrower, and he would have this vessel to use,
with promise of restoring. Let him have it a while, and thou shalt
have it again; but as from an ill neighbour, so broken, lacerated,
deformed, defaced, that though it went forth rich, like the prodigal, it
returns home tattered and torn, and worn, no more like a heart than
Michal's image on the pillow was like David. This suitor borrows it of
the citizen, till usury hath made him an alderman; of the courtier, till
ambition hath made him noble; of the officer, till bribery hath made
him master; of the gallant, till riot hath made him a beggar; of the
luxurious, till lust hath filled him with diseases; of the country churl,
till covetise hath swelled his barns; of the epicure, till he be fatted for
death; and then sends home the heart, like a jade, tired with
unreasonable travel. This is that wicked borrower in the psalm,
'which payeth not again.' Thou wouldest not lend thy beast, nor the
worst vessel in thy house, to such a neighbour; and wilt thou trust
him with thy heart? Either not lend it, or look not for it again.
(4.) The world is the thief, which, like Absalom, 'steals away the
heart,' 2 Sam. 15:6. This cunningly insinuates into thy breast,
beguiling the watch or guard, which are thy senses, and corrupting
the servants, which are thy affections. The world hath two properties
of a thief:—First, It comes in the night time, when the lights of
reason and understanding are darkened, and security hath gotten the
heart into a slumber. This dead sleep, if it doth not find, it brings.
'The world's a potion; who thereof drinks deep,
Shall yield his soul to a lethargic sleep.'
Secondly, It makes no noise in coming, lest the family of our revived
thoughts wake, and our sober knowledge discern his approach. This
thief takes us, as it took Demas, napping; terrifies us not with noise
of tumultuous troubles, and alarum of persecutions, but pleasingly
gives us the music of gain, and laps us warm in the couch of lusts.
This is the most perilous oppugner of our hearts; neither beggar,
buyer, nor borrower could do much without this thief. It is some
respect to the world that makes men either give, or sell, or lend the
vessel of their heart. Astus pollentior armis,—Fraud is more
dangerous than force. Let us beware this thief.
First, turn the beggar from thy door; he is too saucy in asking thy
best moveable, whereas beggars should not choose their alms. That
Pope was yet a little more reasonable, that shewed himself content
with a king of Spain's remuneration: The present you sent me was
such as became a king to give, and St Peter to receive. the Pope is rich enough.
Then reject the buyer; set him no price of thy heart, for he will take it
of any reckoning. He is near driven that sells his heart. I have heard
of a Jew that would, for security of his lent money, have only assured
to him a pound of his Christian debtor's living flesh; a strange forfeit
for default of paying a little money. But the devil, in all his covenants,
indents for the heart. In other bargains, caveat emptor, saith the
proverb,—let the buyer take heed; in this, let the seller look to it.
Make no mart nor market with Satan.
'The heart is ill sold, whatever the price be.'
Thirdly, for the borrower: lend not thy heart in hope of interest, lest
thou lose the principal. Lend him not any implement in thy house,
any affection in thy heart; but to spare the best vessel to such an
abuser is no other than mad charity.
Lastly, ware the thief; and let his subtlety excite thy more provident
prevention. Many a man keeps his goods safe enough from beggars,
buyers, borrowers, yet is met withal by thieves.
Therefore lock up this vessel with the key of faith, bar it with
resolution against sin, guard it with super visiting diligence, and
repose it in the bosom of thy Saviour. There it is safe from all
obsidious or insidious oppugnations, from the reach of fraud or
violence. Let it not stray from this home, lest, like Dinah, it be
deflowered. If we keep this vessel ourselves, we endanger the loss.
Jacob bought Esau's birthright, and Satan stole Adam's paradise,
whiles the tenure was in their own hands. An apple beguiled the one,
a mess of pottage the other. Trust not thy heart in thine own custody;
but lay it up in heaven with thy treasure. Commit it to Him that is the
Maker and Preserver of men, who will lap it up with peace, and lay it
in a bed of joy, where no adversary power can invade it, nor thief
break through to steal it.
3. The liquor this vessel holds is evil. Evil is double, either of sin or of
punishment; the deserving and retribution; the one of man's own
affecting, the other of God's just inflicting. The former is simpliciter
malum, simply evil of its own nature; the latter but secundum quid,
in respect of the sufferer, being good in regard of God's glory, as an
act of his justice. For the evils of our sufferings, as not intended here,
I pretermit. Only, when they come, we learn hence how to entertain
them: in our knowledge, as our due rewards; in our patience, as men,
as saints; that tribulation may as well produce patience, Rom. 5:3, as
sin hath procured tribulation. *—He that feels not his miseries sensibly is
not a man; and he that bears them not courageously is not a Christian.
The juice in the heart of the sons of men is evil; all have corrupted
their ways. Solomon speaks not here in individuo, this or that son of
man, but generally, with an universal extent, the sons of men. And
leaving the plural with the possessors, by a significant solecism, he
names the vessel in the singular,—the heart, not hearts,—as if all
mankind had, one heart in the unity of
sin; the matter of the vessel being of one polluted lump, that every
man that hath a heart, hath naturally an evil heart. Adam had no
sooner by his one sin slain his posterity, but he begot a son that slew
his brother. Adam was planted by God a good vine, but his apostasy
made all his children sour grapes. Our nature was sown good;
behold, we are come up evil. Through whose default ariseth this
badness?
God created this vessel good; man poisoned it in the seasoning. And
being thus distained in the tender newness, testa diu,
—it smells of the old infection, till a new juice be put into it, or rather
itself made new. As David prays, Ps. 51:10, 'Create in me, O Lord, a
clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me.' God made us good,
we have marred ourselves, and, behold, we call on him to make us
good again. Yea, even the vessel thus recreated is not without a tang
of the former corruption. Paul confesseth in himself a 'body of death,'
Rom. 7, as well as David a native 'uncleanness,' Ps. 51. The best grain
sends forth that chaff, whereof, before the sowing, it was purged by
the fan. Our contracted evil had been the less intolerable if we had
not been made so perfectly good. He that made heaven and earth, air
and fire, sun and moon, all elements, all creatures, good, surely
would not make him evil for whom these good things were made.
How comes he thus bad? In the words of our royal preacher, Eccles. 7:29, 'Lo, this only I have
found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out
many inventions.' Man was created happy, but he found out tricks to
make himself miserable. And his misery had been less if he had
never been so blessed; the better we were, we are the worse. Like the
posterity of some profuse or tainted progenitor, we may tell of the
lands, lordships, honours, titles that were once ours, and then sigh
out the song, —We have been blessed.
If the heart were thus good by creation, or is thus good by
redemption, how can it be the continent of such evil liquor, when, by
the word of his mouth that never erred, 'a good tree cannot bring
forth bad fruits?' Matt. 7:18. I answer, that saying must be construed
in sensu composito: a good tree, continuing good, cannot produce
evil fruits. The heart born of God, in quanto renatum est, non peccat,
—'doth not commit sin,' 1 John 3:9, so far as it is born of God. Yet
even in this vessel, whiles it walks on earth, are some drops of the
first poison. And so—
The same fountain sends forth sweet water and bitter; though not at
the same place, as St James propounds it, chap. 3:11.
But Solomon speaks here of the heart, as it is generate or degenerate,
not as regenerate; what it is by nature, not by grace; as it is from the
first Adam, not from the second. It is thus a vessel of evil. Sin was
brewed in it, and hath brewed it into sin. It is strangely, I know not
how truly, reported of a vessel that changeth some kind of liquor put
into it into itself, as fire transforms the fuel into fire. But here the
content doth change the continent, as some mineral veins do the
earth that holds them. This evil juice turns the whole heart into evil,
as water poured upon snow turns it to water. 'The wickedness of man
was so great in the earth,' that it made 'every imagination of the
thoughts of his heart only evil continually,' Gen. 6:5.
Here, if we consider the dignity of the vessel, and the filthiness of the
evil it holds, or is rather holden of, (for non tam tenet, quam
tenetur,) the comparison is sufficient to astonish us.
Oh, ingrate, inconsiderate man! to whom God hath given so good a
vessel, and he fills it with so evil sap. 'In a great house there be
vessels of honour, and vessels of dishonour,' 2 Tim. 2:20; some for
better, some for baser uses. The heart is a vessel of honour, scaled,
consecrated for a receptacle, for a habitacle of the graces of God. 1
Cor. 6:15, 'Shall we take the member of Christ, and make it an
harlot's?' the vessel of God, and make it Satan's? Did God infuse into
us so noble a part, and shall we infuse into it such ignoble stuff? Was
fraud, falsehood, malice, mischief, adultery, idolatry, variance,
variableness ordained for the heart, or the heart for them? When the
seat of holiness is become the seat of hollowness; the house of
innocence, the house of impudence; the place of love, the place of
lust; the vessel of piety, the vessel of uncleanness; the throne of God,
the court of Satan, the heart is become rather a jelly than a heart:
wherein there is a tumultuous, promiscuous, turbulent throng,
heaped and amassed together, like a wine-drawer's stomach, full of
Dutch, French, Spanish, Greek, and many country wines; envy, lust,
treason, ambition, avarice, fraud, hypocrisy obsessing it, and by long
tenure pleading prescription: that custom, being a second nature, the
heart hath lost the name of heart, and is become the nature of that it
holds, a lump of evil.
It is detestable ingratitude in a subject, on whom his sovereign hath
conferred a golden cup, to employ it to base uses; to make that a
wash-pot which should receive the best wine he drinketh. Behold, the
King of heaven and earth hath given thee a rich vessel, thy heart,
wherein, though it be a piece of flesh or clay of itself, he hath placed
the chief faculties of thy spirit and his. How adverse to thankfulness
and his intent is thy practice, when thou shalt pour into this cup lees,
dregs, muddy pollutions, tetrical poisons, the waters of hell, wines
which the infernal spirits drink to men; taking the heart from him
that created it, from him that bought it, from him that keeps it, and
bequeathing it, in the death of thy soul, to him that infects, afflicts,
tempts, and torments it; making him thy executor which shall be thy
executioner, that hath no more right to it than Herod had to the bed
of his sister! What injury, what indignity, is offered to God, when
Satan is gratified with his goods, when his best moveable on earth is
taken from him and given to his enemy!
The heart is flos solis, and should open and shut with the 'Sun of
righteousness,' Mal. 4:2. To him, as the landlord duplice jure, it
should stand open, not suffering him to knock for entrance till 'his
locks be wet with the dew of heaven,' Cant. 5:1. Alas! how comes it
about that he which is the owner can have no admission? that we
open not the doors of our hearts that the King of glory might enter,
who will then one day open the doors of heaven that a man of earth
may enter? Did God erect it as a lodging for his own majesty, leaving
no window in it for the eye of man so much as to look into it, as if he
would keep it under lock and key to himself, as a sacred chalice,
whereout he would drink the wine of faith, fear, grace, and
obedience, wine which himself had sent before for his own supper,
Rev. 3:20; and must he be turned forth by his own steward, and have
his chamber let out for an ordinary, where sins and lusts may
securely revel? Will not he that made it one day 'break it with a rod of
iron, and dash it in pieces like a potter's vessel?' Ps. 2:9.
Shall the great Belshazzar, Dan. 5:2, that tyrant of hell, sit drinking
his wines of abomination and wickedness in the sacred bowls of the
temple, the vessels of God, the hearts of men, without ruin to those
that delightfully suffer him? Was it a thing detestable in the eyes of
God to profane the vessels of the sanctuary; and will he brook with
impunity the hearts of men to be abused to his dishonour? Sure, his
justice will punish it, if our injustice do it. The very vessels under the
law, that had but touched an unclean thing, must be rinsed or
broken. What shall become of the vessels under the gospel, ordained
to hold the faith of Christ, if they be—more than touched—polluted
with uncleanness? They must either be rinsed with repentance, or
broken with vengeance.
I am willingly led to prolixity in this point. Yet in vain the preacher
amplifies, except the hearer applies. Shall none of us, in this
visitation of hearts, ask his own heart how it doth? Perhaps security
will counterfeit the voice of the heart, as Jacob did Esau's hands, to
supplant it of this blessing; saying, I am well; and stop the mouth of
diligent scrutiny with a presentment of Omnia bene. Take heed, the
heart of man is deceitful above measure. Audebit dissimulare, qui
audet malefacere,—He will not stick to dissemble, that dares to do
evil. Thou needest not rip up thy breast to see what blood thy heart
holds, though thou hast been unkind enough to it in thine iniquities;
behold, the beams of the sun on earth witness his shining in heaven;
and the fruits of the tree declare the goodness or badness. Non ex
foliis, non ex floribus, sed ex fructibus dignoscitur arbor.
What is lust in thy heart, thou adulterer? Malice in thine, thou
envious? Usury in thine, thou covetous? Hypocrisy in yours, ye sons
of Gibeon? Pride in yours, ye daughters of Jezebel? Falsehood in
yours, ye brothers of Joab? And treachery in yours, ye friends of
Judas? Is this wine fit for the Lord's bowl, or dregs for the devil to
carouse of? Perhaps the sons of Belial will be filthy; 'let them be filthy
still,' Rev. 22:11. Who can help them that will not be saved? Let them
perish.
Let me turn to you that seem Christians,—for you are in the temple
of Christ, and, I hope, come hither to worship him,—with confidence
of better success. What should uncleanness do in the holy city, evil in
a heart sanctified to grace, sealed to glory? The vessel of every heart
is by nature tempered of the same mould; nor is there any (let the
proud not triumph)
But though nature knew none, grace hath made difference of hearts;
and the sanctified heart is of a purer metal than the polluted. A little
living stone in God's building is worth a whole quarry in the world.
One poor man's honest heart is better than many rich evil ones.
These are dead, that is alive; and 'a living dog is better than a dead
lion.' Solomon's heart was better than Absalom's, Jude's than
Judas's, Simon Peter's than Simon Magus's: all of one matter, clay
from the earth; but in regard of qualities and God's acceptance, the
richest mine and coarsest mould have not such difference. There is
with nature grace, with flesh faith, with humanity Christianity in
these hearts.
How ill becomes it such a heart to have hypocrisy, injustice, fraud,
covetousness seen in it! Let these bitter waters remain in heathen
cisterns. To the master of malediction, and his ungodly imps, we
leave those vices; our hearts are not vessels for such liquor. If we
should entertain them, we give a kind of warrant to others' imitation.
Whiles polygamy was restrained within Lamech's doors, it did but
moderate harm, Gen. 4:19; but when it once insinuated into Isaac's
family, it got strength, and prevailed with great prejudice, Gen.
26:34, 35. The habits of vices, whiles they dwell in the hearts of
Belial's children, are merely sins; but when they have room given
them in the hearts of the sons of God, they are sins and examples;
not simply evil deeds, but warrants to evil deeds; especially with such
despisers and despiters of goodness, who, though they love, embrace,
and resolve to practise evil, yet are glad they may do it by patronage,
and go to hell by example.
But how can this evil juice in our hearts be perceived? What beams of
the sun ever pierced into that abstruse and secret pavilion? The
anatomising of the heart remains for the work of that last and great
day, Eccles. 12:14, Rom. 2:16. As no eye can look into it, so let no
reason judge it. But our Saviour answers, 'Out of the heart proceed
actual sins;' the water may be close in the fountain, but will be
discerned issuing out. The heart cannot so contain the unruly
affections, but like headstrong rebels they will burst out into actions;
and works are infallible notes of the heart. I say not that works
determine a man to damnation or bliss,—the decree of God orders
that,—but works distinguish of a good or bad man. The saints have
sinned, but the greatest part of their converted life hath been holy.
Indeed, we are all subject to passions, because men; but let us order
our passions well, because Christian men. And as the skilful
apothecary makes wholesome potions of noisome poisons, by a wise
melling and allaying them; so let us meet with the intended hurt of
our corruptions, and turn it to our good. It is not a sufficient
commendation of a prince to govern peaceable and loyal subjects,
but to subdue or subvert rebels. It is the praise of a Christian to order
refractory and wild affections, more than to manage yielding and
pliable ones. As therefore it is a provident policy in princes, when
they have some in too likely suspicion for some plotted faction, to
keep them down and to hold them bare, that though they retain the
same minds, they shall not have the same means to execute their
mischiefs; so the rebellious spirit's impotency gives most security to
his sovereign, whiles he sees afar off what he would do, but knows
(near at hand, that is, certainly) he cannot. So let thy heart keep a
strait and awful hand over thy passions and affections, ut, si
moveant, non removeant,—that if they move thee, they may not
remove thee from thy rest. A man then sleeps surely, securely, when
he knows, not that he will not, but that his enemy cannot hurt him.
Violent is the force and fury of passions, overbearing a man to those
courses which in his sober and collected sense he would abhor. They
have this power, to make him a fool that otherwise is not; and him
that is a fool to appear so. If in strength thou canst not keep out
passion, yet in wisdom temper it; that if, notwithstanding the former,
it comes to whisper in thine ears thine own weakness, yet it may be
hindered by the latter from divulging it to thy shame.
Thou seest how excellent and principal a work it is to manage the
heart, which indeed manageth all the rest, and is powerful to the
carrying away with itself the attendance of all the senses; who be as
ready at call, and as speedy to execution, as any servant the
centurion had, waiting only for a Come, Go, Do, from their leader,
the heart. The ear will not hear where the heart minds not, nor the
hand relieve where the heart pities not, nor the tongue praise where
the heart loves not. All look, listen, attend, stay upon the heart, as a
captain, to give the onset. The philosopher saith, It is not the eye that
seeth, but the heart; so it is not the ears that hear, but the heart.
Indeed, it sometimes falleth out, that a man hears not a great sound
or noise, though it be nigh him. The reason is, his heart is fixed, and
busily taken up in some object, serious in his imagination, though
perhaps in itself vain; and the ears, like faithful servants, attending
their master, the heart, lose the act of that auditive organ by some
suspension, till the heart hath done with them and given them leave.
Curious and rare sights, able to ravish some with admiration, affect
not others, whiles they stand as open to their view; because their eyes
are following the heart, and doing service about another matter.
Hence our feet stumble in a plain path, because our eyes, which
should be their guides, are sent some other way on the heart's
errand. Be then all clean, if thou canst; but if that happiness be
denied on earth, yet let thy heart be clean; there is then the more
hope of the rest.
4. The measure of this vessel's infection—full. It hath not aspersion,
nor imbution, but impletion. It is not a moderate contamination,
which, admitted into comparison with other turpitudes, might be
exceeded; but a transcendent, egregious, superlative matter, to which
there can be no accession. The vessel is full, and more than full what
can be? One vessel may hold more than another, but when all are
filled, the least is as full as the greatest. Now Solomon, that was no
flatterer, because a king himself, without awe of any mortal superior,
because servant to the King of kings, and put in trust with the
registering of his oracles, tells man plainly that his heart, not some
less principal part, is evil, not good, or inclining to goodness; nay,
full of evil, to the utmost dram it contains.
This describes man in a degree further than nature left him, if I may
so speak; for we were born evil, but have made ourselves full of evil.
There is time required to this perfecting of sin, and making up the
reprobate's damnation. Judgment stays for the Amorites, 'till their
wickedness becomes full,' Gen. 15:16; and the Jews are forborne till
they have 'fulfilled the measure of their fathers,' Matt. 23:32. Sin
loved, delighted, accustomed, habituated, voluntarily, violently
perpetrated, brings this impletion. Indeed, man quickly fills this
vessel of his own accord; let him alone, and he needs no help to bring
himself to hell. Whiles God's preventing grace doth not forestall, nor
his calling grace convert, man runs on to destruction, as the fool
laughing to the stocks. He sees evil, he likes it, he dares it, he does it,
he lives in it; and his heart, like a hydropic stomach, is not quiet till it
be full.
Whiles the heart, like a cistern, stands perpetually open, and the
devil, like a tankard-bearer, never rests fetching water from the
conduit of hell to fill it, and there is no vent of repentance to empty
it, how can it choose but be full of evil? The heart is but a little thing;
one would therefore think it might soon be full; but the heart holds
much, therefore is not soon filled. It is a little morsel, not able to give
a kite her breakfast; yet it contains as much in desires as the world
doth in her integral parts. Neither, if the whole world were given to
the Pellæan monarch, would he yet say, My heart is full, my mind is
satisfied.
There must then concur some co-working accidents to this repletion.
Satan suggests; concupiscence hearkens, flatters the heart with some
persuasion of profit, pleasure, content; the heart assents, and sends
forth the eye, hand, foot, as instruments of practice; lastly, sin comes,
and that not alone—one is entertained, many press in. Mala sunt
contigua et continua inter se. Then the more men act, the more they
affect; and the exit of one sin is another's hint of entrance, that the
stage of his heart is never empty till the tragedy of his soul be done.
This fulness argues a great height of impiety. Paul amply delivered
the wickedness of Elymas, Acts 13:10, 'O full of all subtlety and all
mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness,'
&c.; a wretched impletion. So is the reprobate estate of the heathen
described, Rom. 1, to be 'filled with all unrighteousness, fornication,
covetousness,' &c. The same apostle, in the same epistle, speaking of
the wicked in the words of the psalm, saith, 'Their mouth is full of
cursing and bitterness,' Rom. 3:14. Here the heart is 'full of evil.' The
commander being so filled with iniquity, every member as a soldier,
in his place, fills itself with the desired corruption. 'The eye is full of
adultery and lust,' saith the Apostle, 2 Pet. 2:14; the 'hand full of
blood,' saith the prophet, Isa. 1:15; the foot full of averseness; the
tongue full of curses, oaths, dissimulations. Every vessel will be full
as well as the heart; full to the brim, nay, running over, as the vessels
at the marriage in Cana, though with a contrary liquor. And when all
are replenished, the heart is ready to call, as the widow in 2 Kings
4:6, 'Bring me yet another vessel,' that it may be filled.
This is the precipitation of sin, if God doth not prevent, as Satan doth
provoke it; it rests not till it be full. Sinful man is evermore carrying a
stick to his pile, a talent to his burden, more foul water to his cistern,
more torments to be laid up in his hell: he ceaseth not, without a
supernatural interruption, and gracious revocation, till his measure
be full.
Thus I have run through these four circumstances of the comma, or
first point of man: observing—1. From the owners, their corruptible
fragility; 2. From the vessel, the heart's excellency; 3. From the liquor
contained in it, the pollution of our nature; 4. And lastly, from the
plenitude, the strength and height of sin. The sum is, 1. the heart, 2.
of man, 3. is full, 4. of evil.
The heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in
their heart while they live: and after that they go to the dead.—
ECCLES. 9:3.
THE subject of the discourse is man; and the speech of him hath
three points in the text:—I. His comma; II. His colon; III. His period.
I. 'Men's hearts are full of evil;' there is the comma. II. 'Madness is in
their hearts while they live;' there is the colon. III. Whereat not
staying, 'after that they go down to the dead;' and there is their
period. The first begins, the second continues, the third concludes,
their sentence.
Here is man's setting forth, his peregrination, and his journey's end.
I. At first putting out, 'his heart is full of evil.' II. 'Madness is in his
heart' all his peregrination, 'whiles they live.' III. His journey's end is
the grave, 'he goes to the dead.'
I. Man is born from the womb, as an arrow shot from the bow. II. His
flight through this air is wild, and full of madness, of indirect
courses. III. The centre, where he lights, is the grave.
I. His comma begins so harshly, that it promiseth no good
consequence in the colon. II. The colon is so mad and inordinate,
that there is small hope of the period. III. When both the premises
are so faulty, the conclusion can never be handsome. Wickedness in
the first proposition, madness in the second, the ergo is fearful; the
conclusion of all is death.
So then, I. The beginning of man's race is full of evil, as if he
stumbled at the threshold. II. The further he goes, the worse;
madness is joined tenant in his heart with life. III. At last, in his
frantic flight, not looking to his feet, he drops into the pit, goes down
to the dead.
I. To begin at the uppermost stair of this gradual descent; the
COMMA of this tripartite sentence gives man's heart for a vessel.
Wherein observe—
1. The owners of this vessel; men, and derivatively, the sons of men.
2. The vessel itself is earthen, a pot of God's making, and man's
marring; the heart.
3. The liquor it holds is evil; a defective, privative, abortive thing, not
instituted, but destituted, by the absence of original goodness.
4. The measure of this vessel's pollution with evil liquor. It is not said
sprinkled, not seasoned, with a moderate and sparing quantity; it
hath not an aspersion, nor imbution, but impletion; it is filled to the
brim, 'full of evil.' Thus, at first putting forth, we have man in his best
member corrupted.
1. The owners or possessors—sons of men. Adam was called the son
of God, Luke 3:38, 'Enos was the son of Seth, Seth the son of Adam,
Adam the son of God:' but all his posterity the sons of men; we
receiving from him both flesh and the corruption of flesh, yea, and of
soul too; though the substance thereof be inspired of God, not
traduced from man: for the purest soul becomes stained and corrupt
when it once toucheth the body.
The sons of men. This is a derivative and diminutive speech; whereby
man's conceit of himself is lessened, and himself lessened to
humility. Man, as God's creation left him, was a goodly creature, an
abridgement of heaven and earth, an epitome of God and the world:
resembling God, who is a spirit, in his soul; and the world, which is a
body, in the composition of his. —God the greatest of invisible natures, the world
the greatest of visible creatures; both brought into the little compass of man.
Now man is grown less; and as his body in size, his soul in vigour, so
himself in all virtue is abated: so that 'the son of man' is a phrase of
diminution, a bar in the arms of his ancient glory, a mark of his
derogate and degenerate worth.
Two instructions may the sons of men learn in being called so:—(1.)
Their spiritual corruption; (2.) Their natural corruptibleness.
(1.) That corruption and original pravity which we have derived from
our parents. Ps. 51:5, 'Behold,' saith David, 'I was shapen in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me.' The original word is, 'warm
me;' as if the first heat derived to him were not without
contamination. I was born a sinner, saith a saint.
It is said, Gen. 5:3, that 'Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after
his image, and called his name Seth.' This image and likeness cannot
be understood of the soul: for this Adam begat not. Nor properly and
merely of the body's shape; so was Cain as like to Adam as Seth, of
whom it is spoken. Nor did that image consist in the piety and purity
of Seth: Adam could not propagate that to his son which he had not
in himself; virtues are not given by birth, nor doth grace follow
generation, but regeneration. Neither is Seth said to be 'begotten in
the image of Adam' because mankind was continued and preserved
in him. But it intends that corruption which descended to Adam's
posterity by natural propagation. The Pelagian error was,—that the guilt of the first sin was derived to
other men, not by propagation, but by imitation; but then could not
Adam be said to beget a son in his own image, neither could death
have seized on infants, who had not then sinned. But all have sinned:
Rom. 5:12, 'As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by
sin: so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.'
This title, then, 'the sons of men,' puts us in mind of our original
contamination, whereby we stand guilty before God, and liable to
present and eternal judgments. Dura tremenda refers. You will say
with the disciples, John 6:60, 'This is a hard saying; who can hear
it?'—bear it; nay, be ready to conclude with a sadder inference, as the
same disciples, after a particular instance, Matt. 19:25, 'Who then
can be saved?'
I answer, We derive from the first Adam sin and death; but from the
second Adam, grace and life. As we are the sons of men, our state is
wretched; as made the sons of God, blessed. It is a peremptory
speech, 1 Cor. 15:50, 'Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of
God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.' It is a reviving
comfort in the 6th chapter of the same epistle, ver. 11, 'Such we were;
but we are washed, but we are sanctified, but we are justified, in the
name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.' The conclusion
or inference hereon is most happy: Rom. 8:1, 'Now therefore there is
no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not
after the flesh, but after the Spirit.' We may live in the flesh, but 'if
after the flesh, we shall die,' ver. 13,—si voluntati et voluptati carnis
satisfacere conemur, if our endeavours be wholly armed and aimed
to content the flesh; but if we be 'led by the Spirit,' cum dilectione,
cum delectatione, with love, with delight, we are of the sons of men
made the sons of God, ver. 14.
It is our happiness, not to be born, but to be new-born, John 3:3. The
first birth kills, the second gives life. It is not the seed of man in the
womb of our mother, but the seed of grace, 1 Pet. 1:23, in the womb
of the church, that makes us blessed. Generation lost us; it must be
regeneration that recovers us. 'As the tree falls, so it lies;' and lightly
it falls to that side which is most laden with fruits and branches. If we
abound most with the fruits of obedience, we shall fall to the right
hand, life; if with wicked actions, affections, to the left side, death.
It is not, then, worth the ascription of glory to, what we derive
naturally from man. David accepts it as a great dignity to be son-inlaw to a king.
To descend from potentates, and to fetch our pedigree
from princes, is held mirabile , a dignity not to
be slighted or forgotten; but to be a monarch—
'Whose fame and empire no less bound controls,
Than the remotest sea, and both the poles'—
oh, this is ,—the supremest honour of this
world! Yet 'princes are but men,' saith the Psalmist. Ps. 146:3, 'Put
not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no
help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth.' They may be
high by their calling, 'princes;' yet they are but low by their nature,
'sons of men.' And merely to be the son of man is to be corrupt and
polluted. They are sinful, 'the sons of men;' weak, 'there is no help in
them;' corruptible, 'their breath goeth forth;' dying, 'they return to their earth.'
It is registered as an evident praise of Moses's faith, Heb. 11:24, that,
'for the rebuke of Christ, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's
daughter.' There is no ambition good in the sons of men, but to be
adopted the sons of God: under which degree there is no happiness;
above which, no cause of aspiring.
(2.) Our corruptibleness is here also demonstrated. A mortal father
cannot beget an immortal son. If they that brought us into the world
have gone out of the world themselves, we may infallibly conclude
our own following. He that may say, I have a man to my father, a
woman to my mother, in his life, may in death, with Job, chap. 17:14,
'say to corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my
mother, and my sister.'
It hath been excepted against the justice of God, that the sin of one
man is devolved to his posterity; and that for 'the fathers' eating sour
grapes, the children's teeth are set on edge,' Ezek. 18:2, according to
the Jewish proverb, Jer. 31:29. As if we might say to every son of
man, as Horace sung to his friend: Delicta majorum immeritus lues,
—Thou being innocent, dost suffer for thy nocent superiors. This a
philosopher objected against the gods; strangely conferring it, as if
for the father's disease physic should be ministered to the son.
I answer, Adam is considered as the root of mankind; that corrupt
mass, whence can be deduced no pure thing. Can we be born
Morians without their black skins? Is it possible to have an Amorite
to our father, and a Hittite to our mother, without participation of
their corrupted natures? If a man slip a scion from a hawthorn, he
will not look to gather from it grapes. There is not, then, a son of man
in the cluster of mankind, but
—is liable to that common and equal law of death.
—'Proud man forgets earth was his native womb,
Whence he was born; and dead, the earth's his tomb.'
saith the philosopher,*—
Thou shalt die, O son of man, not because thou art sick, but because
the son of man. ,—Who happened to
come into the world, must upon necessity go out of the world.
It is no new thing to die, since life itself is nothing else but a journey
to death.,—He that hath climbed to his highest, is descending to his lowest. All the
sons of men die not one death, for time and manner; for the matter
and end, one death is infallible to all the sons of men. The corn is
sometimes bitten in the spring, often trod down in the blade, never
fails to be cut up in the ear, when ripe. †—Who laments that a man
is dead, laments that he was a man.
When Anaxagoras heard that his son was dead, he answered without
astonishment, ,—I know that I begat a
mortal man. It was a good speech that fell from that shame of philosophy,
—I am not eternity, but a man: a little part of the whole, as an
hour is of the day: like an hour I came, and I must depart like an
hour.
—
'Death's cold impartial hands are used to strike
Princes and peasants, and make both alike.'
Some fruit is plucked violently from the tree, some drops with
ripeness; all must fall, because the sons of men.
This should teach us to arm ourselves with patience and expectation,
to encounter death. —Often we ought to prepare for death, we will not: at last,
we die indeed, and we would not. Adam knew all the beasts, and
called them by their names; but his own name he forgot—Adam, of
earth. What bad memories have we, that forget our own names and
selves, that we are the sons of men, corruptible, mortal!
Thou knowest not in what place death looketh for thee; therefore do
thou look for him in every place. Matt. 24:42, 'Watch therefore; for
you know not what hour your Lord doth come.'—Thus for the owners.
2. The vessel itself is the heart. The heart is man's principal vessel.
We desire to have all the implements in our house good; but the
vessel of chiefest honour, principally good. &c., saith St Augustine,
—How mad is that man that would
have all his vessels good but his own heart! We would have a strong
nerve, a clear vein, a moderate pulse, a good arm, a good face, a good
stomach, only we care not how evil the heart is, the principal of all
the rest.
For howsoever the head be called the tower of the mind, the throne
of reason, the house of wisdom, the treasure of memory, the capitol
of judgment, the shop of affections, yet is the heart the receptacle of
life. And which, they say, is a virtue uniting the soul and the body,
if it be in the liver natural, in the
head animal, yet is in the heart vital. It is the member that hath first
life in man, and it is the last that dies in man, and to all the other
members gives vivification.
As man is microcosmus, an abridgment of the world, he hath heaven
resembling his soul; earth his heart, placed in the midst as a centre;
the liver is like the sea, whence flow the lively springs of blood; the
brain, like the sun, gives the light of understanding; and the senses
are set round about, like the stars. The heart in man is like the root in
a tree: the organ or lung-pipe, that comes of the left cell of the heart,
is like the stock of the tree, which divides itself into two parts, and
thence spreads abroad, as it were, sprays and boughs into all the
body, even to the arteries of the head.
The Egyptians have a conceit that man's growing or declining follows
his heart. The heart of man, say they, increaseth still till he come to
fifty years old, every year two drams in weight, and then decreaseth
every year as much, till he come to a hundred; and then for want of
heart he can live no longer. By which consequence, none could live
above a hundred years. But this observation hath often proved false.
But it is a vessel, a living vessel, a vessel of life.
It is a vessel properly, because hollow: hollow to keep heat, and for
the more facile closing and opening. It is a spiritual vessel, made to
contain the holy dews of grace, which make glad the city of God, Ps.
46:4. It is ever full, either with that precious juice, or with the
pernicious liquor of sin. As our Saviour saith, Matt. 15:19, 'Out of the
heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts,
false witness, blasphemies.' 'Know ye not,' saith the Apostle, 1 Cor.
3:16, 'that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God
dwelleth in you?' If our corpus be templum Domini, sure our cor is
sanctum sanctorum. It was the answer of the oracle, to him that
would be instructed what was the best sacrifice:—
'Da medium lunæ, solem simul, et canis iram;'—
'Give the half-moon, the whole sun, and the dog's anger;'
which three characters make COR, the heart. The good heart is a
receptacle for the whole Trinity; and therefore it hath three angles, as
if the three Persons of that one Deity would inhabit there. The Father
made it, the Son bought it, the Holy Ghost sanctifies it; therefore
they all three claim a right in the heart. It hath three cells for the
three Persons, and is but one heart for one God. The world cannot
satisfy it: a globe cannot fill a triangle. Only God can sufficiently
content the heart.
God is, saith a father, *—not regarding
the rind of the lips, but the root of the heart. Hence Satan directs his
malicious strength against the heart. The fox doth gripe the neck, the
mastiff flies at the throat, and the ferret nips the liver, but the devil
aims at the heart, inficere, interficere. The heart he desires, becauses
he knows God desires it; and his ambition still inclines, intends his
purposes and plots, to rob God of his delight. The heart is the chief
tower of life to the body, and the spiritual citadel to the whole man:
always besieged by a domestical enemy, the flesh; by a civil, the
world; by a professed, the devil. Every perpetrated sin doth some
hurt to the walls; but if the heart be taken, the whole corporation is lost.
How should Christ enter thy house, and 'sup with thee,' Rev. 3:20,
when the chamber is taken up wherein he would rest, the heart? All
the faculties of man follow the heart, as servants the mistress, wheels
the poise, or links the first end of the chain. When the sun riseth, all
rise; beasts from their dens, birds from their nests, men from their
beds. So the heart leads, directs, moves the parts of the body and
powers of the soul; that the mouth speaketh, hand worketh, eye
looketh, ear listeneth, foot walketh, all producing good or evil 'from
the good or evil treasure of the heart,' Luke 6:45. Therefore the
penitent publican beat his heart, as if he would call up that, to call up
the rest.
It is conspicuous, then, that the heart is the best vessel whereof any
son of man can boast himself possessor; and yet (proh dolor!) even
this is corrupted. To declare this pollution, the next circumstance
doth justly challenge; only one caveat to our hearts, of our hearts, ere
we leave them. Since the heart is the most precious vessel man hath
in all his corporal household, let him have good regard to it.
—'Keep thy heart with all diligence,' saith
Solomon. God hath done much for the heart, naturally, spiritually.
For the former; he hath placed it in the midst of the body, as a
general in the midst of his army: bulwarked it about with breast, ribs,
back. Lest it should be too cold, the liver lies not far off, to give it
kindly heat; lest too hot, the lungs lie by it, to blow cool wind upon it.
It is the chief, and therefore should wisely temper all other members:
by the spleen we are made to laugh, by the gall to be angry, by the
brain we feel, by the liver we love, but by the heart we be wise.
Spiritually, he hath done more for the heart, giving the blood of his
Son to cleanse it, soften it, sanctify it, when it was full both of
hardness and turpitude. By his omnipotent grace he unroosted the
devil from it, who had made it a stable of uncleanness; and now
requires it, being created ew, for his own chamber, for his own bed.
The purified heart is God's sacrary, his sanctuary, his house, his
heaven. As St Augustine glosseth the first words of the Paternoster,
'Our Father which art in heaven'—that is, in a heart of a heavenly
disposition., that the King of heaven will
vouchsafe to dwell in an earthly tabernacle!
The heart, then, being so accepted a vessel, keep it at home; having
but one so precious or moveable, part not with it upon
any terms. There are four busy requirers of the heart, besides he that
justly owneth it—beggars, buyers, borrowers, thieves.
(1.) He that begs thy heart is the Pope; and this he doth not by word
of mouth, but by letters of commendations,—condemnations rather,
—his Seminary factors. He begs thy heart, and offers thee nothing for
it, but crucifixes, images, &c.,—mere images or shadows of reward,—
or his blessing at Rome; which, because it is so far distant, as if it lost
all the virtue by the way, doth as much good as a candle in a sunshine.
(2.) He that would buy this vessel of us is the devil; as one that
distrusts to have it for nothing: and therefore, set what price thou
wilt upon it, he will either pay it or promise it. Satan would fain have
his jewel-house full of these vessels, and thinks them richer
ornaments than the Babylonian ambassadors thought the treasures
of Hezekiah, 2 Kings 20:13. Haman shall have grace with the king,
Absalom honour, Jezebel revenge, Amnon his lusts satisfied, Judas
money, Demas the world, if they will sell him their hearts. If any
man, like Ahab, sell his heart to such a purchaser, let him know that
qui emit, interimit,—he doth buy it to butcher it.
(3.) The flesh is the borrower, and he would have this vessel to use,
with promise of restoring. Let him have it a while, and thou shalt
have it again; but as from an ill neighbour, so broken, lacerated,
deformed, defaced, that though it went forth rich, like the prodigal, it
returns home tattered and torn, and worn, no more like a heart than
Michal's image on the pillow was like David. This suitor borrows it of
the citizen, till usury hath made him an alderman; of the courtier, till
ambition hath made him noble; of the officer, till bribery hath made
him master; of the gallant, till riot hath made him a beggar; of the
luxurious, till lust hath filled him with diseases; of the country churl,
till covetise hath swelled his barns; of the epicure, till he be fatted for
death; and then sends home the heart, like a jade, tired with
unreasonable travel. This is that wicked borrower in the psalm,
'which payeth not again.' Thou wouldest not lend thy beast, nor the
worst vessel in thy house, to such a neighbour; and wilt thou trust
him with thy heart? Either not lend it, or look not for it again.
(4.) The world is the thief, which, like Absalom, 'steals away the
heart,' 2 Sam. 15:6. This cunningly insinuates into thy breast,
beguiling the watch or guard, which are thy senses, and corrupting
the servants, which are thy affections. The world hath two properties
of a thief:—First, It comes in the night time, when the lights of
reason and understanding are darkened, and security hath gotten the
heart into a slumber. This dead sleep, if it doth not find, it brings.
'The world's a potion; who thereof drinks deep,
Shall yield his soul to a lethargic sleep.'
Secondly, It makes no noise in coming, lest the family of our revived
thoughts wake, and our sober knowledge discern his approach. This
thief takes us, as it took Demas, napping; terrifies us not with noise
of tumultuous troubles, and alarum of persecutions, but pleasingly
gives us the music of gain, and laps us warm in the couch of lusts.
This is the most perilous oppugner of our hearts; neither beggar,
buyer, nor borrower could do much without this thief. It is some
respect to the world that makes men either give, or sell, or lend the
vessel of their heart. Astus pollentior armis,—Fraud is more
dangerous than force. Let us beware this thief.
First, turn the beggar from thy door; he is too saucy in asking thy
best moveable, whereas beggars should not choose their alms. That
Pope was yet a little more reasonable, that shewed himself content
with a king of Spain's remuneration: The present you sent me was
such as became a king to give, and St Peter to receive. the Pope is rich enough.
Then reject the buyer; set him no price of thy heart, for he will take it
of any reckoning. He is near driven that sells his heart. I have heard
of a Jew that would, for security of his lent money, have only assured
to him a pound of his Christian debtor's living flesh; a strange forfeit
for default of paying a little money. But the devil, in all his covenants,
indents for the heart. In other bargains, caveat emptor, saith the
proverb,—let the buyer take heed; in this, let the seller look to it.
Make no mart nor market with Satan.
'The heart is ill sold, whatever the price be.'
Thirdly, for the borrower: lend not thy heart in hope of interest, lest
thou lose the principal. Lend him not any implement in thy house,
any affection in thy heart; but to spare the best vessel to such an
abuser is no other than mad charity.
Lastly, ware the thief; and let his subtlety excite thy more provident
prevention. Many a man keeps his goods safe enough from beggars,
buyers, borrowers, yet is met withal by thieves.
Therefore lock up this vessel with the key of faith, bar it with
resolution against sin, guard it with super visiting diligence, and
repose it in the bosom of thy Saviour. There it is safe from all
obsidious or insidious oppugnations, from the reach of fraud or
violence. Let it not stray from this home, lest, like Dinah, it be
deflowered. If we keep this vessel ourselves, we endanger the loss.
Jacob bought Esau's birthright, and Satan stole Adam's paradise,
whiles the tenure was in their own hands. An apple beguiled the one,
a mess of pottage the other. Trust not thy heart in thine own custody;
but lay it up in heaven with thy treasure. Commit it to Him that is the
Maker and Preserver of men, who will lap it up with peace, and lay it
in a bed of joy, where no adversary power can invade it, nor thief
break through to steal it.
3. The liquor this vessel holds is evil. Evil is double, either of sin or of
punishment; the deserving and retribution; the one of man's own
affecting, the other of God's just inflicting. The former is simpliciter
malum, simply evil of its own nature; the latter but secundum quid,
in respect of the sufferer, being good in regard of God's glory, as an
act of his justice. For the evils of our sufferings, as not intended here,
I pretermit. Only, when they come, we learn hence how to entertain
them: in our knowledge, as our due rewards; in our patience, as men,
as saints; that tribulation may as well produce patience, Rom. 5:3, as
sin hath procured tribulation. *—He that feels not his miseries sensibly is
not a man; and he that bears them not courageously is not a Christian.
The juice in the heart of the sons of men is evil; all have corrupted
their ways. Solomon speaks not here in individuo, this or that son of
man, but generally, with an universal extent, the sons of men. And
leaving the plural with the possessors, by a significant solecism, he
names the vessel in the singular,—the heart, not hearts,—as if all
mankind had, one heart in the unity of
sin; the matter of the vessel being of one polluted lump, that every
man that hath a heart, hath naturally an evil heart. Adam had no
sooner by his one sin slain his posterity, but he begot a son that slew
his brother. Adam was planted by God a good vine, but his apostasy
made all his children sour grapes. Our nature was sown good;
behold, we are come up evil. Through whose default ariseth this
badness?
God created this vessel good; man poisoned it in the seasoning. And
being thus distained in the tender newness, testa diu,
—it smells of the old infection, till a new juice be put into it, or rather
itself made new. As David prays, Ps. 51:10, 'Create in me, O Lord, a
clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me.' God made us good,
we have marred ourselves, and, behold, we call on him to make us
good again. Yea, even the vessel thus recreated is not without a tang
of the former corruption. Paul confesseth in himself a 'body of death,'
Rom. 7, as well as David a native 'uncleanness,' Ps. 51. The best grain
sends forth that chaff, whereof, before the sowing, it was purged by
the fan. Our contracted evil had been the less intolerable if we had
not been made so perfectly good. He that made heaven and earth, air
and fire, sun and moon, all elements, all creatures, good, surely
would not make him evil for whom these good things were made.
How comes he thus bad? In the words of our royal preacher, Eccles. 7:29, 'Lo, this only I have
found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out
many inventions.' Man was created happy, but he found out tricks to
make himself miserable. And his misery had been less if he had
never been so blessed; the better we were, we are the worse. Like the
posterity of some profuse or tainted progenitor, we may tell of the
lands, lordships, honours, titles that were once ours, and then sigh
out the song, —We have been blessed.
If the heart were thus good by creation, or is thus good by
redemption, how can it be the continent of such evil liquor, when, by
the word of his mouth that never erred, 'a good tree cannot bring
forth bad fruits?' Matt. 7:18. I answer, that saying must be construed
in sensu composito: a good tree, continuing good, cannot produce
evil fruits. The heart born of God, in quanto renatum est, non peccat,
—'doth not commit sin,' 1 John 3:9, so far as it is born of God. Yet
even in this vessel, whiles it walks on earth, are some drops of the
first poison. And so—
The same fountain sends forth sweet water and bitter; though not at
the same place, as St James propounds it, chap. 3:11.
But Solomon speaks here of the heart, as it is generate or degenerate,
not as regenerate; what it is by nature, not by grace; as it is from the
first Adam, not from the second. It is thus a vessel of evil. Sin was
brewed in it, and hath brewed it into sin. It is strangely, I know not
how truly, reported of a vessel that changeth some kind of liquor put
into it into itself, as fire transforms the fuel into fire. But here the
content doth change the continent, as some mineral veins do the
earth that holds them. This evil juice turns the whole heart into evil,
as water poured upon snow turns it to water. 'The wickedness of man
was so great in the earth,' that it made 'every imagination of the
thoughts of his heart only evil continually,' Gen. 6:5.
Here, if we consider the dignity of the vessel, and the filthiness of the
evil it holds, or is rather holden of, (for non tam tenet, quam
tenetur,) the comparison is sufficient to astonish us.
Oh, ingrate, inconsiderate man! to whom God hath given so good a
vessel, and he fills it with so evil sap. 'In a great house there be
vessels of honour, and vessels of dishonour,' 2 Tim. 2:20; some for
better, some for baser uses. The heart is a vessel of honour, scaled,
consecrated for a receptacle, for a habitacle of the graces of God. 1
Cor. 6:15, 'Shall we take the member of Christ, and make it an
harlot's?' the vessel of God, and make it Satan's? Did God infuse into
us so noble a part, and shall we infuse into it such ignoble stuff? Was
fraud, falsehood, malice, mischief, adultery, idolatry, variance,
variableness ordained for the heart, or the heart for them? When the
seat of holiness is become the seat of hollowness; the house of
innocence, the house of impudence; the place of love, the place of
lust; the vessel of piety, the vessel of uncleanness; the throne of God,
the court of Satan, the heart is become rather a jelly than a heart:
wherein there is a tumultuous, promiscuous, turbulent throng,
heaped and amassed together, like a wine-drawer's stomach, full of
Dutch, French, Spanish, Greek, and many country wines; envy, lust,
treason, ambition, avarice, fraud, hypocrisy obsessing it, and by long
tenure pleading prescription: that custom, being a second nature, the
heart hath lost the name of heart, and is become the nature of that it
holds, a lump of evil.
It is detestable ingratitude in a subject, on whom his sovereign hath
conferred a golden cup, to employ it to base uses; to make that a
wash-pot which should receive the best wine he drinketh. Behold, the
King of heaven and earth hath given thee a rich vessel, thy heart,
wherein, though it be a piece of flesh or clay of itself, he hath placed
the chief faculties of thy spirit and his. How adverse to thankfulness
and his intent is thy practice, when thou shalt pour into this cup lees,
dregs, muddy pollutions, tetrical poisons, the waters of hell, wines
which the infernal spirits drink to men; taking the heart from him
that created it, from him that bought it, from him that keeps it, and
bequeathing it, in the death of thy soul, to him that infects, afflicts,
tempts, and torments it; making him thy executor which shall be thy
executioner, that hath no more right to it than Herod had to the bed
of his sister! What injury, what indignity, is offered to God, when
Satan is gratified with his goods, when his best moveable on earth is
taken from him and given to his enemy!
The heart is flos solis, and should open and shut with the 'Sun of
righteousness,' Mal. 4:2. To him, as the landlord duplice jure, it
should stand open, not suffering him to knock for entrance till 'his
locks be wet with the dew of heaven,' Cant. 5:1. Alas! how comes it
about that he which is the owner can have no admission? that we
open not the doors of our hearts that the King of glory might enter,
who will then one day open the doors of heaven that a man of earth
may enter? Did God erect it as a lodging for his own majesty, leaving
no window in it for the eye of man so much as to look into it, as if he
would keep it under lock and key to himself, as a sacred chalice,
whereout he would drink the wine of faith, fear, grace, and
obedience, wine which himself had sent before for his own supper,
Rev. 3:20; and must he be turned forth by his own steward, and have
his chamber let out for an ordinary, where sins and lusts may
securely revel? Will not he that made it one day 'break it with a rod of
iron, and dash it in pieces like a potter's vessel?' Ps. 2:9.
Shall the great Belshazzar, Dan. 5:2, that tyrant of hell, sit drinking
his wines of abomination and wickedness in the sacred bowls of the
temple, the vessels of God, the hearts of men, without ruin to those
that delightfully suffer him? Was it a thing detestable in the eyes of
God to profane the vessels of the sanctuary; and will he brook with
impunity the hearts of men to be abused to his dishonour? Sure, his
justice will punish it, if our injustice do it. The very vessels under the
law, that had but touched an unclean thing, must be rinsed or
broken. What shall become of the vessels under the gospel, ordained
to hold the faith of Christ, if they be—more than touched—polluted
with uncleanness? They must either be rinsed with repentance, or
broken with vengeance.
I am willingly led to prolixity in this point. Yet in vain the preacher
amplifies, except the hearer applies. Shall none of us, in this
visitation of hearts, ask his own heart how it doth? Perhaps security
will counterfeit the voice of the heart, as Jacob did Esau's hands, to
supplant it of this blessing; saying, I am well; and stop the mouth of
diligent scrutiny with a presentment of Omnia bene. Take heed, the
heart of man is deceitful above measure. Audebit dissimulare, qui
audet malefacere,—He will not stick to dissemble, that dares to do
evil. Thou needest not rip up thy breast to see what blood thy heart
holds, though thou hast been unkind enough to it in thine iniquities;
behold, the beams of the sun on earth witness his shining in heaven;
and the fruits of the tree declare the goodness or badness. Non ex
foliis, non ex floribus, sed ex fructibus dignoscitur arbor.
What is lust in thy heart, thou adulterer? Malice in thine, thou
envious? Usury in thine, thou covetous? Hypocrisy in yours, ye sons
of Gibeon? Pride in yours, ye daughters of Jezebel? Falsehood in
yours, ye brothers of Joab? And treachery in yours, ye friends of
Judas? Is this wine fit for the Lord's bowl, or dregs for the devil to
carouse of? Perhaps the sons of Belial will be filthy; 'let them be filthy
still,' Rev. 22:11. Who can help them that will not be saved? Let them
perish.
Let me turn to you that seem Christians,—for you are in the temple
of Christ, and, I hope, come hither to worship him,—with confidence
of better success. What should uncleanness do in the holy city, evil in
a heart sanctified to grace, sealed to glory? The vessel of every heart
is by nature tempered of the same mould; nor is there any (let the
proud not triumph)
But though nature knew none, grace hath made difference of hearts;
and the sanctified heart is of a purer metal than the polluted. A little
living stone in God's building is worth a whole quarry in the world.
One poor man's honest heart is better than many rich evil ones.
These are dead, that is alive; and 'a living dog is better than a dead
lion.' Solomon's heart was better than Absalom's, Jude's than
Judas's, Simon Peter's than Simon Magus's: all of one matter, clay
from the earth; but in regard of qualities and God's acceptance, the
richest mine and coarsest mould have not such difference. There is
with nature grace, with flesh faith, with humanity Christianity in
these hearts.
How ill becomes it such a heart to have hypocrisy, injustice, fraud,
covetousness seen in it! Let these bitter waters remain in heathen
cisterns. To the master of malediction, and his ungodly imps, we
leave those vices; our hearts are not vessels for such liquor. If we
should entertain them, we give a kind of warrant to others' imitation.
Whiles polygamy was restrained within Lamech's doors, it did but
moderate harm, Gen. 4:19; but when it once insinuated into Isaac's
family, it got strength, and prevailed with great prejudice, Gen.
26:34, 35. The habits of vices, whiles they dwell in the hearts of
Belial's children, are merely sins; but when they have room given
them in the hearts of the sons of God, they are sins and examples;
not simply evil deeds, but warrants to evil deeds; especially with such
despisers and despiters of goodness, who, though they love, embrace,
and resolve to practise evil, yet are glad they may do it by patronage,
and go to hell by example.
But how can this evil juice in our hearts be perceived? What beams of
the sun ever pierced into that abstruse and secret pavilion? The
anatomising of the heart remains for the work of that last and great
day, Eccles. 12:14, Rom. 2:16. As no eye can look into it, so let no
reason judge it. But our Saviour answers, 'Out of the heart proceed
actual sins;' the water may be close in the fountain, but will be
discerned issuing out. The heart cannot so contain the unruly
affections, but like headstrong rebels they will burst out into actions;
and works are infallible notes of the heart. I say not that works
determine a man to damnation or bliss,—the decree of God orders
that,—but works distinguish of a good or bad man. The saints have
sinned, but the greatest part of their converted life hath been holy.
Indeed, we are all subject to passions, because men; but let us order
our passions well, because Christian men. And as the skilful
apothecary makes wholesome potions of noisome poisons, by a wise
melling and allaying them; so let us meet with the intended hurt of
our corruptions, and turn it to our good. It is not a sufficient
commendation of a prince to govern peaceable and loyal subjects,
but to subdue or subvert rebels. It is the praise of a Christian to order
refractory and wild affections, more than to manage yielding and
pliable ones. As therefore it is a provident policy in princes, when
they have some in too likely suspicion for some plotted faction, to
keep them down and to hold them bare, that though they retain the
same minds, they shall not have the same means to execute their
mischiefs; so the rebellious spirit's impotency gives most security to
his sovereign, whiles he sees afar off what he would do, but knows
(near at hand, that is, certainly) he cannot. So let thy heart keep a
strait and awful hand over thy passions and affections, ut, si
moveant, non removeant,—that if they move thee, they may not
remove thee from thy rest. A man then sleeps surely, securely, when
he knows, not that he will not, but that his enemy cannot hurt him.
Violent is the force and fury of passions, overbearing a man to those
courses which in his sober and collected sense he would abhor. They
have this power, to make him a fool that otherwise is not; and him
that is a fool to appear so. If in strength thou canst not keep out
passion, yet in wisdom temper it; that if, notwithstanding the former,
it comes to whisper in thine ears thine own weakness, yet it may be
hindered by the latter from divulging it to thy shame.
Thou seest how excellent and principal a work it is to manage the
heart, which indeed manageth all the rest, and is powerful to the
carrying away with itself the attendance of all the senses; who be as
ready at call, and as speedy to execution, as any servant the
centurion had, waiting only for a Come, Go, Do, from their leader,
the heart. The ear will not hear where the heart minds not, nor the
hand relieve where the heart pities not, nor the tongue praise where
the heart loves not. All look, listen, attend, stay upon the heart, as a
captain, to give the onset. The philosopher saith, It is not the eye that
seeth, but the heart; so it is not the ears that hear, but the heart.
Indeed, it sometimes falleth out, that a man hears not a great sound
or noise, though it be nigh him. The reason is, his heart is fixed, and
busily taken up in some object, serious in his imagination, though
perhaps in itself vain; and the ears, like faithful servants, attending
their master, the heart, lose the act of that auditive organ by some
suspension, till the heart hath done with them and given them leave.
Curious and rare sights, able to ravish some with admiration, affect
not others, whiles they stand as open to their view; because their eyes
are following the heart, and doing service about another matter.
Hence our feet stumble in a plain path, because our eyes, which
should be their guides, are sent some other way on the heart's
errand. Be then all clean, if thou canst; but if that happiness be
denied on earth, yet let thy heart be clean; there is then the more
hope of the rest.
4. The measure of this vessel's infection—full. It hath not aspersion,
nor imbution, but impletion. It is not a moderate contamination,
which, admitted into comparison with other turpitudes, might be
exceeded; but a transcendent, egregious, superlative matter, to which
there can be no accession. The vessel is full, and more than full what
can be? One vessel may hold more than another, but when all are
filled, the least is as full as the greatest. Now Solomon, that was no
flatterer, because a king himself, without awe of any mortal superior,
because servant to the King of kings, and put in trust with the
registering of his oracles, tells man plainly that his heart, not some
less principal part, is evil, not good, or inclining to goodness; nay,
full of evil, to the utmost dram it contains.
This describes man in a degree further than nature left him, if I may
so speak; for we were born evil, but have made ourselves full of evil.
There is time required to this perfecting of sin, and making up the
reprobate's damnation. Judgment stays for the Amorites, 'till their
wickedness becomes full,' Gen. 15:16; and the Jews are forborne till
they have 'fulfilled the measure of their fathers,' Matt. 23:32. Sin
loved, delighted, accustomed, habituated, voluntarily, violently
perpetrated, brings this impletion. Indeed, man quickly fills this
vessel of his own accord; let him alone, and he needs no help to bring
himself to hell. Whiles God's preventing grace doth not forestall, nor
his calling grace convert, man runs on to destruction, as the fool
laughing to the stocks. He sees evil, he likes it, he dares it, he does it,
he lives in it; and his heart, like a hydropic stomach, is not quiet till it
be full.
Whiles the heart, like a cistern, stands perpetually open, and the
devil, like a tankard-bearer, never rests fetching water from the
conduit of hell to fill it, and there is no vent of repentance to empty
it, how can it choose but be full of evil? The heart is but a little thing;
one would therefore think it might soon be full; but the heart holds
much, therefore is not soon filled. It is a little morsel, not able to give
a kite her breakfast; yet it contains as much in desires as the world
doth in her integral parts. Neither, if the whole world were given to
the Pellæan monarch, would he yet say, My heart is full, my mind is
satisfied.
There must then concur some co-working accidents to this repletion.
Satan suggests; concupiscence hearkens, flatters the heart with some
persuasion of profit, pleasure, content; the heart assents, and sends
forth the eye, hand, foot, as instruments of practice; lastly, sin comes,
and that not alone—one is entertained, many press in. Mala sunt
contigua et continua inter se. Then the more men act, the more they
affect; and the exit of one sin is another's hint of entrance, that the
stage of his heart is never empty till the tragedy of his soul be done.
This fulness argues a great height of impiety. Paul amply delivered
the wickedness of Elymas, Acts 13:10, 'O full of all subtlety and all
mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness,'
&c.; a wretched impletion. So is the reprobate estate of the heathen
described, Rom. 1, to be 'filled with all unrighteousness, fornication,
covetousness,' &c. The same apostle, in the same epistle, speaking of
the wicked in the words of the psalm, saith, 'Their mouth is full of
cursing and bitterness,' Rom. 3:14. Here the heart is 'full of evil.' The
commander being so filled with iniquity, every member as a soldier,
in his place, fills itself with the desired corruption. 'The eye is full of
adultery and lust,' saith the Apostle, 2 Pet. 2:14; the 'hand full of
blood,' saith the prophet, Isa. 1:15; the foot full of averseness; the
tongue full of curses, oaths, dissimulations. Every vessel will be full
as well as the heart; full to the brim, nay, running over, as the vessels
at the marriage in Cana, though with a contrary liquor. And when all
are replenished, the heart is ready to call, as the widow in 2 Kings
4:6, 'Bring me yet another vessel,' that it may be filled.
This is the precipitation of sin, if God doth not prevent, as Satan doth
provoke it; it rests not till it be full. Sinful man is evermore carrying a
stick to his pile, a talent to his burden, more foul water to his cistern,
more torments to be laid up in his hell: he ceaseth not, without a
supernatural interruption, and gracious revocation, till his measure
be full.
Thus I have run through these four circumstances of the comma, or
first point of man: observing—1. From the owners, their corruptible
fragility; 2. From the vessel, the heart's excellency; 3. From the liquor
contained in it, the pollution of our nature; 4. And lastly, from the
plenitude, the strength and height of sin. The sum is, 1. the heart, 2.
of man, 3. is full, 4. of evil.