05 - Chapter 05
CHAPTER V.
Two Cases of Conscience resolved BUT here are two cases to be put.
Case 1. Whether a regenerate person may not serve God with weariness;
Answer. Yes; but 1. This delight in God is not wholly extinct. This lassitude and weariness in a child of God may arise, From the in-being of corruption, Romans 7:24. It is not from the grace that is in him, but the sin; as Peter’s sinking on the water was not from his faith but his fear; yet I say still a regenerate person’s will is for God, Romans 7:15. Paul found sometimes an indisposition to good, Romans 7:23. yet at the same time he professeth a complacency in God, Romans 7:22. ’I delight in the law of God, in the inner man;’ one may delight in music, or any recreation, yet through weariness of body be for the present dulled, and indisposed; a christian may love God’s law, though sometimes the clog of the flesh weighing him down, he finds his former vigour and agility remitted.
Answer 2. I answer, That this faintness and weariness in a regenerate person is not habitual; it is not his constant temper; when the water ebbs a while it is low water, but there is soon a spring-tide again; it is sometimes low water in a christian’s soul, he finds an indisposition and irksomeness to that which is good, but within a while there is a spring-tide of affection, and the soul is carried full sail in holy duties; it is with a christian as with a man that is distempered; when he is sick he doth not take that delight in his food as formerly; nay, sometimes the very sight of it offends, but when he is well he falls to his meat again with delight and appetite; so, when the soul is distempered through sadness and melancholy, it finds not that delight in word and prayer as formerly; but when it returns to its healthful temper again, now it hath the same delectability and cheerfulness in God’s service as before.
Answer 3. I answer, That this weariness in a regenerate person is involuntary; he is troubled at it; he doth not hug his disease, but mourns under it. He is weary of his weariness. When he finds a heaviness in duty, he goes heavily under that heaviness; he prays, weeps, wrestles, useth all means to regain that alacrity in God’s service as he was wont to have. David, when his chariot wheels were pulled off, and he did drive on heavily in religion, how oft doth he pray for quickening grace? Psalms 119:1-176. When the saints have found their hearts fainting, their affections flagging, and a strange kind of lethargy seizing on them, they are never at rest till they have recovered themselves, and are arrived at that freedom and delight in God as they were once sensible of.
Case 2. The second case is, Whether an hypocrite may not serve God with delight? I answer, he may; Herod heard John Baptist gladly, Matthew 6:20. and those that fasted for strife and debate, ’did delight to know God’s way,’ Isaiah 58:2. An hypocrite may, out of some flashy hopes of heaven, shew a delight in goodness; but yet it is not such a delight as is found in the regenerate, for his delight is carnal. A man may be carnal while he is doing spiritual things: It is not the holiness and strictness in religion that the hypocrite delights in, but something else; he delights in prayer, but it is rather the shewing of gifts he looks at, than the exercise of grace. He delights in hearing, but it is not the spirituality of the word he delights in; not the savour of knowledge, but the lustre. When he goes to the word preached, it is that he may rather feast his fancy than better his heart; as if a man should go to an apothecary’s shop for a pill, only to see the gilding of it, not for the operative virtue. The hypocrite goes to the word to see what gilding is in a sermon, and what may delight the intellect. Hypocrites come to the word as one comes into a garden to pluck some fine flower to smell to, not as a child comes to the breast for nutriment. This is rather curiosity than piety. Such were those, Ezekiel 33:32. Thou ’art to them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument.’ The prophet being eloquent, and having a pleasing delivery, they were much taken with it, and it was as sweet to them as a fit of music, but it was not the spirituality of the matter they so well liked, as the tuneableness of the voice. It was a sharp, yet seasonable reproof of Chrysostom to his auditory, ’This is that, saith he, which is like to undo your souls, you hear your ministers as so many minstrels, to please the ear, not to pierce the conscience.’ You see an hypocrite’s delight in religion is carnal; it is not the being nourished up in the words of faith, which he minds, but the eloquence of speech, the rareness of notion, the quickness of fancy, the smoothness of style: he strives only to pluck from the tree of knowledge. Alas, poor man, thou mayest have the star-light of knowledge, and yet it may be night in thy soul.