: steady care to check every faulty inclination in its earliest rise. For it is chiefly indulging them at first, that makes them so hard to conquer afterwards. And yet we shall always find the bad consequences of yielding, to outweigh vastly the trouble of resisting and that to bring our desires, when they are the strongest, down to our condition, is a much easier work than to raise our condition up to our desires, which will only grow the more ungovernable, the more they are pampered. Further whatever share we possess of worldly plenty, let us bestow it on ourselves with decent moderation, and impart of it to others with prudent liberality: for thus knowing how to abound, we shall know the better how to suffer need*, if Providence calls us to it. And lastly, instead of setting our affections on any things on earth ↑, which would be a fatal neglect of the great end, that we are made for, let us exalt our views to that blessed place, where godliness with contentment will be unspeakable gain: and they who have restrained the inferior principles of their nature by the rules of religion, shall have the highest faculties of their souls abundantly satisfied with the fatness of God's house, and be made to drink of the river of his pleasures §. Thus then you see, both the meaning, and the importance, of this last commandment: which is indeed the guard and security of all the preceding ones. For our actions will never be right habitually, till our desires are so. Or if they could: our Maker demands the whole man, as he surely well may; nor, till that is devoted to him, are we meet for the inheritance of the saints in light || . Phil. iv. 12. + Col. iii. 2. ‡ 1 Tim. vi. 6. And now, both the first and the second table of the ten commandments having been explained to you, it only remains, that we beg of God sufficient grace to keep them; earnestly intreating him in the words of his church: Lord, have mercy upon us, and write all these thy laws in our hearts, we beseech thee. 2 Cor. xii. 9. LECTURE XXIX. Of Man's Inability, God's Grace, and Prayer to Him for it. I HAVE now proceeded, in the course of these Lectures, to the end of the commandments; and explained the nature of that repentance, faith and obedience, which were promised for us in our baptism, and which we are bound to exercise, in proportion as we come to understand the obligations incumbent on us. You cannot but see by this time, that the duties, which God enjoins us, are not only very important, but very extensive. And therefore a consideration will almost unavoidably present itself to your minds in the next place, what abilities we have to perform them. Now this question our Catechism decides, without asking it, by a declaration, extremely discouraging in appearance; that we are not able, of ourselves, to walk in the commandments of God, and to serve him. Indeed, had we ever so great abilities, we must have them, not of ourselves, but of our Maker: from whom all the powers of all creatures are derived. But something further than this, is plainly meant here that there are no powers, belonging to human nature in its present state, sufficient for so great a purpose. The law of God is spiritual: but we are carnal, sold under sin*. And that such is our condition, will appear by reflecting, first, what it was at our birth; secondly, what we have made it since. 1. As to the first: we all give proofs, greater or less, of an inbred disorder and wrongness in our understandings, will and affections. Possibly one proof, that some may give of it, may be a backwardness to own it. But they little consider, how severe a sen tence they would pass, by denying it, on themselves, and all mankind. Even with our natural bad inclinations for some excuse, we are blameable enough for the ill things that we do. But how much more should we be so, if we did them all, without the solicitation of any inward depravity to plead afterwards in our favour? In point of interest therefore, as well as truth, we are concerned to admit an original proneness to evil in our frame: while yet reason plainly teaches, at the same time, that whatever God created was originally, in its kind, perfect and good. To reconcile these two things would have been a great difficulty, had not revelation pointed out the way, by informing us that man was indeed made upright, but that the very first of human race lost their innocence and their happiness together; and tainting, by wilful transgression, their own nature, tainted, by consequence, that of their whole posterity. Thus by one man, sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. We find in fact, however difficult it may be to account for it in speculation, that the dispositions of parents, both in body and mind, very commonly descend, in some degree, to 12.. Rom. vii. 14. t Eccl. vii. 29. Rom. v. I their children. And therefore it is entirely credible, that so great a change in the minds of our first parents from absolute rightness of temper to presumptuous wickedness; accompanied with an equal change of body, from an immortal condition to a mortal one, produced perhaps, in part, by the physical effects of the forbidden fruit; that these things, say, should derive their fatal influences to every succeeding generation. For though God will never impute any thing to us, as our personal fault, which is not our own doing: yet he may very justly withhold from us those privileges, which he granted to our first parents only on condition of their faultless obedience, and leave us subject to those inconveniences, which followed of course from their disobedience: as, in multitudes of other cases, we see children in far worse circumstances by the faults of their distant forefathers, than they otherwise would have been. And most evidently it is no more a hardship upon us, to become such as we are by means of Adam's transgression, than to suffer what we often do for the transgressions of our other ancestors; or to have been created such as we are, without any one's transgression which last, all who disbelieve original sin, must affirm to be our case. But unhappy for us as the failure of the first man was, we should be happy in comparison, if this were all that we had to lament. Great as the native disorder of our frame is; yet either the fall of Adam left in it, or God restored to it, some degree of disposition to obedience, and of strength against sin: so that though in us, that is in our flesh, dwelleth no good thing*, yet after the inward man (the mind) we delight in the law of God; and there are occasions, + Rom, vii. 22, 23, Rom. vii. 18. |