Robert South · 17 of 26

Sermon LXI. Genesis vi. 3. · Part 2

2. The second kind of light may be called a notional scripture light; that is, a bare knowledge of or assent to scripture truths. This light is begot in the mind of all professors by the mere hearing or reading the word: it is the bare perception of evangelical truths placed in the intellect, resting in the brain, treasured up there by a naked apprehension and speculation. So that the resisting this, being almost the same with our resistance of the Spirit speaking in the word, only with this difference, that in the former we resist the word as considered in the letter, in this we resist it as it lies transcribed in the conceptions of the understanding: I say, since this almost coincides with the former, which I have discussed already, I shall proceed no further in it, only leave this to your consideration, that if the poor heathens fell under the wrath and curse of God, only for resisting the Spirit in the dim light of nature; then how will it be possible for us to escape, if we resist it now shining openly (like the sun in his might) in the clear discovery of the law and gospel? As the light which we resist is greater or less, so is the proportion of our sin either diminished or advanced. Therefore if we disobey the Spirit, what can follow, but that as our light, so our sin also, must be far greater than theirs, and our punishment answerable? For assuredly, the just God, who takes the exact and true dimensions of sin, will heat the furnace of his wrath seven times hotter for gospel reprobates, than for ignorant heathens.

3. The third kind of light may be called a special convincing light, which is an higher degree of the enlightening work of the Spirit, and not common to all professors, yet such a one as may be resisted, yea and totally extinguished. This is the highest attainment of the soul on this side saving grace; it is like the clear shining of the moon and stars, which is the greatest light that is consistent with a state of darkness. Yea it is such a light as does not only make a discovery of the things of God, but also engenders in the soul a certain relish and taste of them. It is a light, not only of knowledge, but of joy; and this it was that enlightened the stony ground in Matt. xiii. 20, which did not only hear and apprehend the word, but also with joy received it: yet we see in the next verse, that it was not able to withstand tribulations and persecutions, but when the storms arose, and the wind beat upon it, it quickly went out; like a torch before a tempest, after a very short and weak contest, it was soon extinguished. However, we must know, that this light is the ultimus conatus, the last and greatest endeavour of the Spirit upon a reprobate soul, which once finally resisted for ever departs, and leaves the soul under an everlasting night, without any after returns of day. To be thus enlightened, is called in scripture to taste of the heavenly gift, to be partaker of the Holy Ghost, and of the powers of the world to come, as it is expressed in Heb. vi. 4, 5: and of the desperate, deplorable condition of those that miscarry under these illuminations, we have an account in the next verse; If they fall away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance. The wicked, says God, shall fall, and never rise.

He that shall hear what report the gospel makes of the nature of sin, and be so far affected with a lively sense and feeling of it, as to resolve against it, to hate it, even to a relinquishment of it, and continue for a long time so to do, yet notwithstanding at length disentangle himself from those thoughts and apprehensions of sin, so far as to relapse into the fearful commission and love of it, that man’s case is grievous, and his wound not easily curable. For God intends these, illuminations as singular special means, both to allure the soul to duty by the discovery of the love of Christ, and to awe it from sin by the terrors of hell. Now when a man desires to sleep securely in the free enjoyment of his sin, and shall therefore seek to put out this light, we have no ground to conclude that the Spirit will ever restore it. He that frowardly and foolishly puts out his candle, is not sure to blow it in again. As for those common shinings of it that beam forth in the notion of the word, they indeed may be renewed every sermon, they are such beams as we read of, occidere et redire possunt. But when this special light is extinct, when this sets in darkness, the soul that is thus benighted is left to sleep a perpetual sleep of sin and death.

And thus much concerning the first inward work of the Spirit, to wit, illumination of the understanding; we come now to the second, which is the conviction of the will, which conviction may be described in general,

A work of the Spirit of God upon the will and affections, producing in them some imperfect liking of the ways of God, and dislike to the ways of sin.

There is a clear and open passage between the understanding and the will. Light in the one naturally begets heat in the other, and the conviction of the affections is never greater than the illumination of the judgment. So that when the work of the Spirit miscarries about the understanding, it never throughly succeeds in the will; for it strikes the will and the affections through the understanding; and if it cannot pierce this, it is not to be imagined how the blow can reach the other.

Now the convincing works of the Spirit upon the will may be reduced to these three.

1. A begetting in it some good desires, wishes, and inclinations.

2. An enabling it to perform some imperfect obedience.

3. An enabling it to leave some sins.

In all these works the Spirit may be resisted and opposed.

1. And first, it may be resisted in the good desires and inclinations that it suggests to the will. That these good desires issue from the Spirit, I suppose none will deny, who acknowledges that of ourselves we are not so much as able to think a good thought. He that affirms holy duties may proceed from an unholy, corrupt heart, may as well expect grapes from thorns, and figs from thistles. As there are some desires so exceeding black and hellish, that it easily appears they came into the mind from their father the Devil; so on the contrary there are some so pure and holy, that they may be quickly discerned to be the offspring of the Spirit, as bearing his image and likeness. Good inclinations, they are the firstborn of holiness in the soul, the very first endeavours and throes of the new birth. And as they are the first, so in reason they may be thought to be most imperfect, and consequently most easy to be rejected: a good desire stepping forth amongst raging and unmortified lusts, it is like righteous but weak Lot, endeavouring to appease the tumult of the Sodomites. O! how easily is it forced to retire! how quickly is it repulsed! It is like a drop of water falling into a furnace, that presently exhales, and does not at all allay the fury of its heat. How often has the Spirit whispered to us, This is the way, walk in it, and our perverse hearts have hurried us another way! How often has many a soul thoughts of relinquishing its sin, and returning to God, and yet by the allurement of new pleasures has been inveigled and recalled back! How often do some think of repairing to Christ, and yet are held fast by the fetters of prevailing lust! And all this befalls men, because they improve not these blessed inclinations. O! were we but true to our own souls, to cherish these tender, new-born, infant desires, and to carry them to Christ by prayer, certainly he would take them in his arms and bless them, and send them away strengthened. Every sincere desire to pray might be improved to a blessed communion with God; every secret dislike of impurity might be wrought up to sanctity of life and conversation. O despise not therefore the day of small things; shut not your ears against the secret admonitions of the Spirit; they are none other than God himself speaking to thee (as to Elijah) in a still voice. You may one day come to know, when with bitterness of soul you shall reflect upon and recollect all these dealings of the Spirit: Such a time I had an inclination to confess my idleness, my intemperance before God, and amend it; but I hearkened to the dissuasions of my corrupt heart, and so neglected it. Such a time I had strong motions and intentions to restore my ill-gotten goods; but my covetousness restrained me. I say, then you will know and confess, (as Jacob did of Bethel,) Of a truth God was in all these workings, and I knew it not.

2. The Spirit may be opposed, as it enables the soul to perform some imperfect obedience to God’s commands. A man, by the convincing energy of the Spirit in the word, may be led, or rather drawn to many duties. Thus Herod, in Mark vi. 20, upon the soul-searching ministry of John, is said to have done many things. The Israelites also, in Psalm lxxviii. 34, were driven by God’s judgments to proceed very far in his worship; When he slew them, (it is said,) they sought him: and they returned and inquired early after God. So that here we have both duty and earnestness in duty; but we see in the following verse they quickly got loose from those convictions; They flattered him with their mouth, and lied unto him with their lips: that is, their ensuing practices foully falsified all those fair promises of obedience which they made under their convictions. Such men’s hearts may be often heated by the lively and warm impressions of the Spirit; yet by their innate corruptions, as it were, their proper form, like water heated, they are quickly recovered to their native coldness. In Job xxvii. 10, Job says, Will the hypocrite always call upon God? Implying, I conceive, that from the motions of God’s Spirit he may engage very fairly in that duty, though he fall short of continuance. See the convincing works of God’s Spirit upon Ephraim, in Hosea vi. 4; they wrought in him some superficial beginnings of goodness; but, as it is there expressed, it was like a morning cloud, when temptations arose it posted away, and like the early dew, presently drunk up by the scorching heat of raging lusts. Now this resistance of the Spirit is much more heinous than the former, inasmuch as the practice of holiness is greater than a bare desire and inclination to it. To injure or offend him that does but wish and desire our good, argues little ingenuity; but to grieve and oppose him that actually endeavours it, shews a plain want of humanity. For him, who has maintained some communion with the Spirit, and has took sweet counsel with him, so that they have often walked to the house of God in company; I say, for such an one to lift up his heel in acts of defiance and resistance of the Spirit, this is very grievous. When a man has proceeded very far in the mortification of his pride, his drunkenness, his lust, for him to return again to the same excess of riot, this is a more than ordinary provocation. When he is upon a fair advance to Zoar, to the city of life and deliverance, for such an one to look back upon Sodom, and cast an eye of desire upon his forsaken filth; it is just with God to make such an one a wonder and a sad example of his abused mercy. But this is the upshot of all, this is the very dividing point where the Spirit of God and the souls of men break and part for ever; they find a cursed pleasure in sin, and none in a course of duty: and so, maugre all the entreaties and wooing convictions of the Spirit, they relinquish duty, and return to sin.

3. The Spirit may be opposed in that convincing work, whereby it enables the will to forsake some sins. This work bears some affinity with the former, but it is not altogether the same. I confess, to yield perfect obedience to all God’s commands does include in it a forsaking of all sin, and is consequentially, yea and really, the same with it. But imperfectly to execute some good duties, and imperfectly to leave some sins, which is here intended, are two distinct things. Now that the Spirit is able to work up a soul even to this also, and that the soul is likewise able to frustrate this work, these following scriptures will demonstrate. 2 Peter ii. 20, we have some that by the convincing help of the Spirit had escaped the pollutions of the world, they had washed their hands of all those enormities that raged and reigned in the lives of grosser sinners. Yet in the same verse we have these also again entangled and overcome by their lusts; and thereupon compared to the most filthy creatures, which being washed, with much greediness return to their beloved mire and defilements. In Gal. iii. 3, we find some who had begun in the Spirit, yet in danger to have ended in the flesh; so treacherous is sin in its departure, and so violent in its returns. Certainly in these cases it seems to retire and draw back, only to come on afterwards with a greater assault. For the appetite of sin being only restrained, not taken away, it returns after a while with more violent fury upon its object: and like a thirsty man, the longer it has forebore to drink of the pleasures of sin, it takes so much deeper a draught of them at length. Thus sin is only pent up in the soul by main force of the Spirit; but when it finds the least vent, it lashes out to the purpose: some cannot neglect duties as they used to do, because the terrors of God are upon their souls; some dare not venture upon their former lewd courses, because the Spirit meets them with the drawn sword of God’s vengeance, casting the very flashes of hell in their faces, if they step a foot into those ways. So that here the sinner is indeed held in bonds, but his sinful nature is still unchanged; like the devils themselves, who though they are kept in chains, yet they are still devils in chains. The soul has lost the present exercise of sin, yet still retains the faculty: but at length the Spirit having for a long time kept the soul from its lust, as God did Balaam from his covetousness, and still hearing it crying and craving after its beloved corruption; even as God let Balaam go upon the like importunity, so the Spirit slacks his hold, and lets the soul loose to its sin. And then it sins at an high rate indeed; better were it for a man never to have given the Spirit any room, any place in his heart, than at length thus to turn it out. We may truly say of this holy guest, turpius ejicitur, quam non admittitur; yea safer had it been for such a soul to have still wallowed in his sin, than being once rescued from it, again to apostatize to it. For this is to sin from choice, and that from choice grounded upon experience; for having tried both ways, to wit, those of the Spirit and those of sin, by such returns to it he does aloud proclaim his judgment to the world that sin is better.

And thus much concerning the second general head, to shew how many ways the Spirit may be resisted: I proceed to the third, to shew the reasons why upon such resistance the Spirit finally withdraws.

1. The first reason is drawn from God’s decree. This is that which bounds all things, and fixes the freest operations of second causes: the event of things in themselves merely contingent, by this degree is stampt certain and infallible. It turns a casualty into a certainty; a contingency into a necessity. And as the actions of the creature are limited and determined by this decree, so the most free actions of God himself come also within the restraining compass of the same. God purposes before he acts, and his purpose it is the measure of his operations: and what God wills, he wills immutably. His wisdom and infinite knowledge foresees and debates all inconveniences antecedently to every act of volition; and so there can be no new emergent inconvenience that may unframe his resolutions and cause a change. Accordingly the workings and strivings of God’s Spirit are measured out and bounded by this decree; by virtue of which its departure is firmly and irreversibly intended, and some resistance of it is thereby put beyond pardon. Some think the like of the great sin against the Holy Ghost, that is not unpardonable from its own nature, but from God’s special decree; not because it is of so great malignity as to surpass the extent of God’s mercies, nor yet because it is inconsistent with the means of obtaining pardon; but that God by an act of sovereignty singled out this sin, and for the glory of his justice, and the terror of those that should abuse his grace, passed a decree for ever to exclude it from all possibility of remission. But thus much by way of digression. Now this decree has not any active influence or efficiency, so as actually to produce or put in being the thing decreed. I say the decree itself does not effect the thing, but it engages God’s veracity and immutable truth to see it certainly effected. There is nothing therefore but, if we pursue it to its first original, must of necessity terminate in this decree, as deriving from hence the first rise and reason of its being. I say the reason, though not the cause. In Ephesians i. 11, God is said to work all things according to the counsel of his own will. He resembles an excellent artificer, who in all his works of art has forelaid in his mind a perfect model of his intended fabric, before ever he sets the first hand to it. It is finished in the contrivance, before it is so much as begun in the production. God says, Shall I decree, and shall it not come to pass? So by inversion we may say, Shall any thing come to pass, and shall not he decree? Would we know why the Spirit of God departed from Judas, even to the loss and perdition of his soul? We have an account in John xvii. 12; it was, that the scriptures might be fulfilled; that is, that the will or decree of God delivered in scripture concerning Judas might be accomplished.

Now what terrors should this strike into all resisters of the Spirit, all prodigals of the means of grace! Whosoever spends upon mercy, spends upon a set allowance. God has allotted and decreed to every man his portion in the Spirit’s workings, which, by reason of the enforcing power of that decree, he will never extend nor contract, diminish nor augment. And since it is not known to us in what point of our life God has set this fatal bound, as it is a sovereign remedy to prevent despair, that none might unadvisedly conclude against himself, that he had finally resisted the Spirit: so on the other hand it ought to be a strong argument to cut short the outrageous progress of a presuming sinner, since he knows not but the very next sin he is closing with, may separate between him and the Spirit of God for ever. For shall God limit the natural days of our life, beyond which we cannot pass, as it is in Job xiv. 5, and shall the days of the Spirit’s striving with us be undetermined? Certainly what he says of those may be said of the Spirit’s workings, they are all numbered. And that they are so will appear one day, when those exact bills of our accounts, relating all our opposings even of the smallest motions of the Spirit, shall be preferred and read against us. Can we then (as it is expressed in the prophet,) disannul God’s covenant with day and night? Can we disappoint or change the ordinances of heaven and earth? Then may we stretch the fixed time of the Spirit’s dealing with our hearts beyond God’s decree. Then may we, when our day of grace is expiring, cause the sun of mercy to go ten degrees backward. Alas! poor inconsiderable, impotent men! We must lay our mouths in the dust, and give way to the irresistible decree of God for ever. Can all the men in the world, by the united force of their power and policy, hinder the sun from setting but for the space of one hour? nay, but of one moment? And can we weak sinful worms prolong our precious day of grace at our pleasure? True it is, the mercy of God is infinite, and his goodness past finding out; but he that has set bars and doors to the sea has also set bounds to this ocean of his mercy, and said, Thus far shall you come in your strivings with such a soul, and no further.

2. The second reason why the Spirit departs upon resistance, is because it is most agreeable to the great intent and design of the gospel. And this is twofold, suitable to which the Spirit does accordingly appropriate a twofold operation.

1. The first great gospel design is the converting and saving the elect; and this is accomplished by an effectual converting power, which in its addresses to the soul is invincible. It does not persuade but overpower; and therefore never fails or miscarries, but effectually converts, sanctifies, and reduces the soul. The infallible success of the work depends upon the irresistible force of the agent: by a happy, alluring, yet efficacious violence it draws; Jeremiah xxxi. 3, With lovingkindness have I drawn thee. Wheresoever this power draws, the soul certainly follows: I rather say certainly than necessarily, because necessity may seem to intrench upon the free spontaneity of the will, although it is clear that there is a kind of necessity which is compatible with its freedom. The drawing work of the Spirit it has the strength, but not the violence of coaction, Luke xiv. 23, Compel them to come in. There is a compulsion indeed, but not such an one as is against the will; but such an one as makes it willing. And this alone is sufficient to enervate the objections of those free-willers, that exclaim of coaction and compulsion in an irresistible converting work. Thus therefore the Spirit effects God’s great and primary gospel design, in calling home his sheep, his chosen ones, the objects of his eternal love: and this is done by an effectual, never-failing power in their vocation; by which they are fully instated in their present possession of grace, and sufficiently secured in their hopes of glory for the future.

2. The second end and design of the gospel is to render reprobates inexcusable; and this is no less effectually done by the common enlightening, convincing works of the Spirit, which are sufficient to take off all pleas, to silence them in their own defence, and to enhance their guilt beyond excuse. It is confessed, the converting, renewing work of the Spirit was never vouchsafed to any reprobate; they were never admitted to share in the children’s bread. Yet God’s denial of recovering grace cannot warrant them in a state of sin. All indeed through Adam were generally immersed into an equal plunge of misery, all were forlorn and broke, and as to the stock of their first righteousness totally bankrupt, and the law still remains a rigid exactor of obedience. The elect and reprobate both fell from their righteousness, but God was pleased to renew the store of the former, leaving the latter destitute: but may not God even from these require perfect obedience, though they have lost the power to perform it? A creditor does not lose his right to his money, because the debtor is unable to pay. Suppose a creditor have two debtors, and both turn bankrupt; now if he of his own free cost and favour supplies one wherewithal to discharge the debt, may he not therefore demand it of the other without the like supply? Certainly mercy to one does not weaken or take off the procedure of the law against the other; neither our merits nor our misery can lay any obligation upon God’s grace. He that shall dare to cavil and expostulate with his Maker at such a rate of impiety and impudence, as the corrupt heart of man is apt to do; “Is it my fault that I remain unconverted under all my convictions? Had God vouchsafed to me converting grace as he did to others, I had been converted as well as they?” God will answer the expostulations of such men, as he did those, Matt. xx. 13, 15, Friend, I do thee no wrong. Is it not lawful to do with my own free grace as I please? Is thine eye evil and malicious, because I am good? Out of my mercy I bestowed converting grace upon such an unworthy sinner; out of my sovereignty I denied it to another, yet still without any impeachment to my justice. His justice is not at all injured when he confers grace upon one, nor his mercy lessened when he withholds it from another. However a man may for a while please himself in such objections against his Creator, and seem to himself to unreason the equity of God’s proceedings; yet there will be a time when the sinner shall stand clearly convinced of the righteousness of God’s dealings in his final departure from him; so as not to be able to plead or reply any thing against him in a rational way to all eternity: and this of all other will be the most stinging consideration, the most irksome and tormenting thought: for if we observe the vilest, the most profligate malefactor, when he stands openly convict, and that by the most pregnant evidence, he is apt to relieve his mind with such poor, perishing, forlorn persuasions, as, that he suffers unjustly, that he has hard measure, and that he smarts in the severe censures of men beyond the merit of his fact; then, I say, the slender comfort even of these apprehensions will fail the sinner. For he shall evidently find and know himself utterly forsaken and rejected by the Spirit, and withal see it most just and righteous that he should be so forsaken. This is that that will most bitterly gnaw and rack the proud heart of a reprobate, when he shall be forced to acknowledge that the Spirit’s departure is not only his punishment, but his desert: he shall then confess, that the Spirit was as real in his workings, as he was peremptory in his resistance: that he was as pathetical and tender in the offers of grace, as he was obstinate in their refusal: that the Spirit with much eagerness would have often stepped between him and the commission of his beloved sin, and that he with as much vehemence rushed into it: that the Spirit had used many forcible arguments to conclude him into duty, and that he still flew off; and when he could not answer them, absolutely denied them. All these things, in the dismal remembrance of them, will be like so many vultures devouring and preying upon a self-condemned soul.

But it may be here replied, What needs any continuance of the Spirit’s workings to render a man inexcusable, since the very strivings of the Spirit in natural conscience is sufficient to effect this?

I answer; that it is most true, that even nature itself is able to cut off all excuse from the mind of an awakened sinner: as is clear from Rom. i. 20, where Paul, speaking of the heathen, which were only acted by this principle, says, that they were without excuse. And again, in Rom. ii. 15, we read of their natural consciences excusing and accusing each other, according as their deeds were good or evil. From whence it clearly follows, that the motions of God’s Spirit are continued and vouchsafed to the impenitent under the gospel, not barely to render them inexcusable, but to render them in a greater measure inexcusable, and to charge their impenitence with greater aggravations: for God intending to the reprobates different degrees of punishments, it is requisite that in order to it, he should present their sins under different aggravations.

And thus we see God’s two great gospel designs; the first of them to convert the elect, which is effected by the extraordinary power of the Spirit; the second to bereave the reprobate of excuse, which is accomplished by the ordinary strivings of it, in those convictions which in their issue prove ineffectual: so that now the Spirit having finished the end for which those workings were continued, what in reason can follow, but the end being acquired, those workings should cease? In human actions designed for the attainment of any end, when it is actually attained, the continuation of that action is irrational and absurd. And what is unsavoury and unbeseeming in the actions of men, shall we ascribe to those of the Spirit? A man may with as much reason set his reapers to work when he has finished his harvest, or set his labourers to prune and lop his trees, which by his own appointment they have already cut down, as the Spirit continue his strivings after he has fully accomplished God’s end upon any sinner. He is sent only as God’s agent or ambassador to do his message, and for a while to negotiate his business with the hearts of the impenitent, not to take up his fixed dwelling or habitation with them. Therefore it is most rational, that having done his message, and finished his embassy, he should depart.