tasteless or disagreeable. The wise men of Athens were no worse than other wise men of this world; the same carnal mind which possessed them, whether it be in the Jew or the Greek, in the ancient or the modern, will always be productive of the like stupidity. Ignorance of God, and disaffection to the things of heaven, so manifest in all men while they are in a state of nature, are strong proofs of our original corruption; to which the Apostle adds that strange propensity to error in opinion, which led mankind into the abominable errors of idolatry. These seem to have been chiefly alluded to, in the words which follow in the order of his description of human nature— they are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable, there is none that doeth good, no not one. The sense of this hath partly been considered before; for though the words may signify indefinitely any departure from the way of truth and holiness, yet we hear not of any species of apostasy which became general, except that of idolatry: concerning which, much hath occurred to us already. Yet I have some further observations to make upon it. If we look back for the beginning of this crime of going out of the way, we shall find that it happened in Paradise; where God by immediate revelation taught a right way to Adam, and called it the way of the tree of life; a way which would have guided him to the perfection of his nature in the enjoyment of God, the source of life and felicity. But from this way he turned aside, when he applied to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for wisdom and exaltation independent of his Creator. His posterity have been engaged in a search equally fruitless and dangerous, as often as they have consulted their own will and fol lowed their own way; seeking death in the error of their life*; not by design, for death cannot be an object of choice, but by necessary consequence, through blindness and disaffection. For the prophet hath informed us, that the way of man is not in himself: when he hath lost that way into which he was directed by the Author of his being, his own sagacity never can bring him back to it again; but the farther he proceeds, the greater is his deviation. The wise man tells us, there is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death †. How miserable is this, that the way which leads to death should seem to be a right one! But such is the fact: every way which leads from the true God and the true religion must terminate in death, notwithstanding all the fine things that may be said in commendation of it. The experiment has been made on various occasions, and always with the same success. The serpent recommended a way, as better than that which God had revealed; but it proved to be a way of death, and all the children of Adam are witnesses of the issue. When the generation of men before the flood departed from God, or, as the Scripture itself expresses it, when all flesh corrupted his way upon the earth, death and destruction soon ensued; every thing that was in the earth died; except those few who escaped by virtue of the divine covenant of mercy. When God brought a people out of Egypt for his service, they turned aside out of the way which he commanded them ||, and some met death immediately from the sword, others more remotely, at the end of their wanderings in the wilderness. Having turned aside from the right way of faith and obedience, they were pu *Wisd. i. 12. + Prov. xiv. 12. Exod. xxxii. 8. nished by being made to wander out of the way; and even to die in this state of deviation, without the enjoyment of the promised land; which happened to them in a figure, as an example to others, who through an evil heart of unbelief should depart from the living God*. When men have begun to think, independently on God's will, and to follow the suggestions of their own hearts, they have never failed to turn aside from the way of life into the ways of death. Therefore it occurs next in the Apostle's description, that they are together become unprofitable: for, to use his own language, what fruit can there be in those things, the end of which is death? They who depart from God are unprofitable to themselves, and to him who created them. They can reap no possible benefit from their own destruction; and if the most perfect of the servants of God are to look upon themselves as unprofitable on the score of merit, after all their endeavours, the ungodly, who have apostatized of malice, must be of that other species of unprofitable servants, who are to be cast into outer darkness. The word unprofitable, if more strictly rendered according to the original in the 14th Psalm, is putrid, filthy, or stinking: the meaning of which is this, that man by the present sinfulness of his nature is become offensive to God, as a dead carcase, or a body full of sores: in allusion to which, the Psalmist saith in another place, my wounds stink, (meaning the wounds of sin) and are corrupt through my foolishness: but when this quality of sin is purged away, and a subsequent purification takes place by virtue of an accepted sacrifice or burnt offering, then the Lord is said to smell a sweet savour; as at the offering of a sacrifice by Noah, after the world had perished in its corruption. We have now considered the depravity of human nature, as it shews itself in the thoughts or counsels of men, with respect to God and his religion. It is asserted moreover, that there is none that doeth good, no not one: and this is proved by a particular introduction of their words and their works. First of their words-their throat is an open sepulchre. If the inward man is dead by nature, as the Scripture teaches us, then the outer may be considered as the structure of a sepulchre, whose inside is filled with dead mens' bones, and all uncleanness. When we remove the covering of a sepulchre, there comes forth from it an offensive odour of death: and if we would know what is in the heart of man, he must discover it to us by his words; which are of such a sort as to betray and publish the corruption of his mind. When he When he opens his mouth, he opens a grave, and the disagreeable savour of his unsound speech shews that there is a dead corpse at the bottom. But it seems as if there were something farther to be understood; their throat is not only a sepulchre, but an open sepulchre. Men of impure thoughts have not the modesty to keep their mouths shut, but they glory in their shame. When their minds are given up to folly, they cannot be satisfied till they have made it public. The more unsound their discourse is in its quality, you have so much the more of it in quantity: and if we observe the world throughout, few people have more to say than common swearers, slanderers, blasphemers, and reprobates. For the iniquity of their words, men are also compared to serpents-with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips. When interest and worldly affection dictate to the tongues of men, they are double and deceitful, and are aptly represented by the forked or double tongue of the serpent; for if it serves their purpose, they make no scruple of telling two different stories about the same thing. But the words of the slanderer are worse than those of the common liar; they wound and infect at the same time, like the venomous asp, whose bite is incurable. Many a fair character of an innocent person hath been ruined, and the comfort of his life irrecoverably destroyed, by the bite of calumny and detraction; so that the bite of an asp would have been preferred as the less hurtful of the two; yet how common is the practice; and what an insipid life would many talkative people lead, if their conversation were to be purged of slander! It is observed by St. James, that the tongue is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison*: but certainly that poison was no part of man's original constitution, when he was pure and upright, as he came from the hands of his Creator: it was derived from that father of lies, who infused into our first parents a poison, which hath run in the blood of their posterity ever since. So soon after they are born they shew the effects of it; for the first use they generally make of their speech is to lie; and if they are permitted, either through wilful folly or neglect, to follow their natural disposition, deceit will be their practice to the end of their lives. So strong is the propensity to lying, that all children have need to be warned and instructed against this evil. Many are cured by the vigilance, severity, good example, and frequent admoni * James iii. 8 |