4. Ungodliness is the root of all irregular courses. Abraham was afraid of himself in Gerar. Why ? ' The fear of God is not in this place,' Gen. xx. 11. Godliness is the great bulwark of laws and all honest discipline ; subjects are not afraid of princes, nor princes of subjects, where the fear of God prevaileth : there can be no true honesty without piety. The first part of the law provideth for respects to God, as being the proper foundation of the second, which containeth respects to our neighbour. Often it cometh to pass by God's just judgment that spiritual wickedness is punished with civil ; see Hosea iv. 12, 13 ; and where men are not tender of God's interests they do also encroach upon civil rights and freedoms.
Means and directions are these : — (1.) Purge the heart from prin- ciples of ungodliness. There are many gross maxims ingrafted in man's heart ; as that it is folly to be precise ; that it was better when there was less knowledge ; that it is in vain to serve God ; that thoughts are free ; if we carry it fair before men we need trouble our- selves no further ; when men do their best, petty sins are not to be stood upon ; that religion is but a notion and fancy, the gospel a golden dream, &c. That such principles are within us appeareth by the sottishness of our practices and course of living ; for actions are the best image of our thoughts, and these are purged away by waiting upon the word, which ' disco vereth' them, Heb. iv. 12, and layeth in good principles, Ps. cxix. 9, by which means they are destroyed. (2.) Suppress all ungodly thoughts as soon as they do arise, as that ' there is no God,' Ps. xiv. 1. Shame may lay a restraint upon the tongue, but the heart is ever casting up such a thought as this is : so that God is not so harsh but we may take a little liberty in sin- ning, see Ps. 1. 21 ; or that he taketh no notice of what we speak or do ; he ' cannot see through the dark clouds,' Job xxii. 12, 13. When any such thoughts rush into your mind, check them and actually rebuke them, lest they settle into a rooted atheism. (3.) Mortify vile affections : the judgment is tainted by the contagion of lusts, as a foul stdmach sendeth up fumes and gross vapours into the head ; and so
144 AN EXPOSITION, WITH NOTES, [VeR. 4,
the principles of godliness do quickly suffer an eclipse : ' The pure in heart see most of God,' Mat. v. 8. In fenny countries tiie air is seldom clear ; so in hearts that lie under the power of brutish lusts, there are seldom clear and distinct thoughts of God. (4.) Keep close to God's institutions ; these keep up his presence and memorial in the world, and so are the best preservative of godliness ; false worships are full of ceremonies which darken the nature of God. Images beget a gross opinion of God : no wonder if people grow blockish that worsliip God in a senseless stock or stone. Varro in Austin observed, that those that first invented images did but increase error, and take away all fear of religion. God knoweth what is best for himself, and how by his own institutions to keep up the repute of his nature and essence : when man presumeth to be wiser than God, and leaveth the certainty of God's institutions for additions and innova- tions of our own, that please us better, because they have \6yov ao(f)ia';, ' A show of wisdom,' Col. ii. 22, 23, all religion goeth to wrack. (5.) Let us often ' exercise ourselves unto godliness,' 1 Tim. iv. 7. Delight to give to God the honour due to him, love, delight, fear ; to worship him often, to do all things as aiming at his glory.
Fourthly, The next clause in the description of these seducers is that, turning the grace of our God into ivantonness. Where you may take notice — (1.) Of their filthiness and brutish course of life, implied in the viox^ivantonness, inthe original acreX7eia, a wordproper to luxury and the impurities of lust ; it is derived from alpha, an augmentative particle, and Selga, the name of a town in Pisidia, saith Suidas, whose inhabitants were infamous for sodomy, and weakening nature by such prodigious filthiness as is not fit to be named among saints ; and the persons here noted the school of Simon. The Nicolaitans, the Gnostics, and other impure heretics of that age were for promiscuous commixtures, and the free use of their fellow creatures (as some carnal wretches in our own age have learned to speak), without any respect to conjugal rela- tion, and those restraints which God and nature and all civil nations have laid upon the lusts of man, as if men should use no more dis- tinction and confinement than the beasts ; yea, gave up themselves to all manner of unnatural lust, as in the process of this epistle we shall more fully discover. (2.) The occasion and encouragement of this wantonness, which doubleth the iniquity of it, is the grace of God, by which is meant the gospel, which is called ' the grace of God,' as Titus ii. 11, ' The grace of God hath appeared unto us, teaching? us,' &c. ; and in the gosjiel chiefly they abused the doctrine of Christian liberty and free justification by Christ ; this is primarily intended. You may, by analogy, enlarge the expression to comprise all those other doctrines which libertines are apt to abuse ; yea, those gracious providences which wicked men do convert into fuel and nourishment for their sins. (3.) The manner how so excellent a thing as the grace of God was made pliable to so vile a purpose, for a man would wonder that things at so great and infinite a distance as the grace of God and filthy lusts should ever be brought to cast an aspect upon one another. That is showed in the word turning, in the original fx^erartdevre^;, ivresting, transferring from its proper use. They oticred violence to the doctrine of grace, that it might be conscious to such a monstrous birth