2. The manner of proposal : / have set he/ore thee.
3. A duty infeiTod or attention excited : see.
1. The matter propounded, a double pair or conjugation: 'Life and G:ood. death and evil.' Life as tlie end, good as the means lead- ing to life; or else, life, that is, the enjoyment of God; and good, the felicity following it. The SeptnagJnt^ changeth the order, ri)v ^o)t)v Koi TOP Oavarov, ro ayaOov koX to kukov.
2. The manner of proposing : ' I have set before thee.' Septuagint, BcoBeKa irpo Trpoaoi-rrov aov ai]ixepov ; that is, in a lively manner laid forth and offered for choice. We have a saying, avriKeifjieva TrapdWrnXa fxciXiara (pdiveraL, that contraries put together do mutually illustrate each other. Here is good and evil, life and death, put together, that we may embrace the one and eschew the other. As the poets feign of Hercules when he was young, virtue and vice came to woo and make court to him ; virtue, like a sober chaste virgin, offering him labours with praise and renown ; vice, like a painted harlot, wooing him with the blandishments of pleasure. So, in' the 9th of Proverbs, wisdom and folly are represented both pleading to draw in the hearts of men to them : ver. 4, compared with the 16th, ' Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither : as for him that wanteth understanding, she saith, Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine that I have mingled ;' the one hath her pleasures and the other hath her plea- sures, only the pleasures of folly are ' stolen waters * and ' bread eaten in secret,' comforts we get by stealth, jollity, and mirth, when con- science is asleep. So here ]\Ioses layeth before them the fruit of obedience and disobedience — life and death.
3. The word exciting attention : i'Bov, * See;' I have done this in order to choice ; for so it is ver. 19, ' Choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.'
Doct. It is the duty of the faithful servants of the Lord in a lively manner to set before the people life and death as the fruit of good and evil.
Moses was God's minister to instruct this people, and what doth he propose and confirm in his doctrine, but life and death, good and evil ? audthis wasapart of hisfaithfulness. Witness that vehementobtestation used ver. 19. He calls heaven and earth to record that he had faith- fully discharged his duty herein. This was the course that God himself took with Adam in innocency. He set before him life and death, a blessing and a curse, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge, Gen. ii. 9, that he might live by the one and not perish by the other. God had respect to the mutability of hisnature, and therefore restrained him by the threatening of death as a curse not to eat of the one, as he enjoined lihn to eat of the other as a pledge of life and blessing. This same course did Chri-st take in his sermons, by telling them of the wide gate and the strait gate, the broad and narrow way, much company and little, the one tending to destruction, the other to life, ]\Iat. vii. 13, 14. So wisdom speaks by Solomon, Prov. viii. 35, 36, ' Whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the Lord ; ])ut he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul : all they that hale me love death.' So that you see this is an excellent way to gain men to the holy life.
Deut. XXX. 15.] THE seventeenth sermon. 35^
I. Let ns consider our work.
II. The reasons why we must do so.
I. Our work, the matter of it, and the manner in which we are to propound it to you.
1. The matter : we must set before the people : —
[1.1 Life and good.
[2.J Death and evil.
This I shall open in these propositions: —
First, That there is a distinction between good and evil, vice and virtue. He that doth not acknowledge it is unworthy the name, not only of a Christian, but of a man. Certainly he is unworthy the name of a Christian, for the whole word of God doth mete out the bounds between both these, and show what is forbidden and what is com- manded ; and therefore it is a defiance of Christianity to doubt of it. But he is also unworthy the name of a man. Nature apprehendeth that some things are worthy of praise, and others worthy of blame and reproof ; else why should wicked men be offended to be taken for such as they are, and desire as much as possibly they can to seem better, and to cover their dishonest actions with a plausible appear- ance ?
Secondly, The matching these two, death and evil, life and good. And here I shall speak — (1.) Of the suitableness of the connection between them ; (2.) The greatness of both ; (3.) The certainty of both these, life and death, as the fruit of good and evil.
1. The suitableness or correspondency there is between holiness and beatitude, sin and misery. It must needs be so, if we consider the wisdom, justice, holiness of God.