Use 3. Is to press you to look into the state of your hearts, and see what you have by long experience observed, what is your sin, your way of Avickedness, Avhat assaults you most frequently, most fiercely ; observe the frequency of temptations, and the strength of them, the law in the members, and a thorn in the flesh ; so, as it is conceived, he calleth the violent stirrings of lusts. Now bend all your strength against these ; as the king of Aram said, 1 Kings xxii. 31, ' Fight not against small nor great, save only Avith the king of Israel.' So bend the strength of the soul against this way of wickedness.
I come noAv to the last point of tlie first part of the text, and that is drawn from that possessiA'e particle whereby every man's by-path is ex- pressed : Every man to his loay.
JDoct. 3. That this is the sin of men in their natural condition, that they turn to their OAvn A\'ay.
Tiie phrase implieth these two things — First, A defect or want of divine guidance ; Secondly, A rejection of the Avays of God when made known to us, AVe do not like them so Avell as some other, Avhicli Ave fancy to be better to us, because more suitable to our carnal desires ; and therefore it is often charged upon the people of Israel, especially by Jeremiah, that they would not regard the ways of God, Init the Avay of their OAvn imaginations. See Jer. vii. 24. God had told them that all that he required of them Avas this, ' Obey my A'oice, and Avalk in the way that I have commanded you; but they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but Avalked in the counsel and in the ima- gination of their evil heart, and Avent backward and not forward.' So that you see it argueth a refusal of God's Avays when discovered to iliem, as not being for their turns. So Jer. ix. 13, 14, ' Because they have forsaken my law Avhich I have set before them, and have not
I«A. LIII. G.] THE FIFTY-THIRD CHAPTER OF ISAIAH. 309
obeyed my voice, neither walked therein, hut have walked after the imagination of tlieir heart and after Baalim.' Tliey think their own path better, safer, or more comfortable, and therefore would not meddle with God's. So Jer. xi. 8, ' Yet they obeyed not, nor inclined their ear, but walked every one in the imagination of their evil heart.' This refusal is the more sottishly perverse ; as in Jer. xliv. 17, ' But will oertainly do whatsoever thing goeth out of our mouth.' So that here is a scorning to have their ways prescribed, out of a presumption that they can better provide for themselves. The drunkard, the adulterer, thinks God's way is either insipid or injurious. Our first parents thought their conceit was better, and that God in envy had denied it to them ; and therefore they did not weigh God's restraint and pro- hibition, Gen. iii. 17 ; she would eat, the devil had fastened her fancy to it, and she went on with the temptation.
1. There is a defect or want of divine guidance. God leaveth men to their own sway, and taketh away all check and restraint from them; ^nd then whatever a man doth is purely from himself. So it is said, Ps. Ixxxi. 12, ' I gave them up to their own hearts' lust, and they walked in their own counsels.' When all divine guidance or direction is taken away, you will be left to the impure dictates of a corrupt mind, or at best to some poor remains of civility. As it is said, Gen. xx. 6, ' 1 also withheld thee from sinning against me, therefore suffered thee not to touch her.' Some restraints and chains God casteth upon men, that they are not able to do the evil which naturally they would. Though they do not go God's way, they cannot go their own. But when God pleaseth he letteth men alone, and then they do what is right in their own eyes; as you shall see, Acts xiv. 16, ' Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways;' that is, to live according to their own pleasure, prescribing no restraint to them by discovering himself in a law ; or, to those that have the outward written word, by using no inward motions of his Spirit. So that this is the first thing, the privative part, a defect of divine guidance, either by such outward prescriptions as may revive natural light, or such inward motions as may restore it.
2. That which is positive or more formally imported is a following of the dictates of our own corrupt minds, and fulfilling the desires of our own corrupt wills. For I conceive this turning to our own way is expressed by the apostle upon the same occasion, Eph. ii. 3; for he saith there, that natural men ' have their conversations in the lusts of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind.' There is a natural inclination to obey his corrupt mind, and to satisfy his corrupt will. It is but a pleasing of themselves. It is the way they have de- vised, and the way they have desired. But to speak of these things a little severally : —