1. By seldom attendance upon the word. We do not redeem time to hear the word ; when brought home to our doors, we seldom step out to hear it. They use to say, a surfeit of bread is most dangerous ; surely a surfeit of the bread of life is so ; when men are full, and begin to despise the word as if not worth the hearing. God usually sends a famine to correct that surfeit of the word: Amos viii. 11, 12, ' I will send a famine of hearing the word of the Lord, and they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it.' Usually that is the way that God taketh for a glutted people, that scorn and neglect the word, when they might gather it in like manna from heaven every day ; that they may ride many miles before they
190 SERMONS UPON PSALM CXIX. [SeR. XXI.
hear a savoury sermon ; and then those that were not for the word, or desirous to be rid of it, may long for a little comfort and reviving by it, and cannot enjoy it.
2. Men bewray this satiety and fulness of the word by fond affec- tation of luscious strains ; wholesome doctrines will not down with them, unless it be cooked and sauced to their wanton appetites. O Christians ! the spiritual appetite desires to Xojckov aSoXov yd\a, ' the sincere milk of the word,' 1 Peter ii. 2 — unmixed milk ; give them plain, simple milk, without human mixtures and compositions. The relish of the word is spoiled by the garish strains of a frothy eloquence. A plain solid truth is more suitable to a gracious heart. A man that hath a natural instinct to the word delights in the simplicity of it. An infant hath a distinguishing palate, and knows the mother's milk, and pukes and casts when it sucks another. So certainly, if we had true spiritual life, we would be delighted in the word for the word's sake, the more plain it is, provided it be sound. I am not for a loose, careless delivering of God's message ; but it is the sound, plain, and wholesome ministry which suits with a gracious appetite. It argues a distempered heart when we must have quails and dainties, and loathe manna. Consider ; in heaven, where we have the most simple apprehension of things, we have the highest affection to them ; no need of rhetoric in heaven. And certainly the more heavenly we are, the more perfect in grace, the more wisdom shall we see in plain scriptural truth, infinitely exceeding all the wisdom of the heathen. Many think the word of God too plain for their mouths to preach it ; others too stale for their ears to hear it ; and they must have the fancies of men : Jer. viii. 9, ' They have rejected my word ; and what wisdom is in them ? ' It is strange to see how many will dis- guise religion to please the lusts of men. They mock Christ, as the soldiers did, that put a centurion's coat upon him for a robe, and then, ' Hail, King of the Jews.' So they wrap up Christ in the foolish garments of their own fancy, and so expose him to mockage rather than reverence.
3. This satiety bewrays itself by our affections to novel opinions, and erroneous conceits : 2 Tim. iv. 3, ' The time will come that they will not endure sound doctrine, having itching ears, and shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.' Observe it when you will, that soul is nigh to spiritual blasting that begins to have a loathing of a plain truth ; and men must have new things and conceits in religion, and so grow weary of opinions, as they do of fashions ; and then by God's just judgment they run from one fancy to another, till they quite run themselves out of breath, and have shaken off' all religion and good conscience. Therefore take heed of being given up to this vertiginous spirit, to be turned and ' tossed up and down with every wind of doctrine,' Eph. iv. 14. Tlepi^e- p6/j.evoi, the apostle's word, signifies to be carried round in a circle ; he alludes to a mariner's compass,^ that is carried by every wind ; this wind takes them, and then another ; such light chaff are men
1 Manton could scarcely suppose that the mariner's compass was known to the apostle Neither would the description be at all applicable to it. I suspect he refers to some other instrument, of the nature of a weathercock, under that name. — Ed.
VeR. 20.] SERMONS UPON PSALM CXIX. 191
when they begin to loathe the plain truths of God. But it is an argument of a gracious heart when we can receive old truth with new affections, and look for the power of God and new quickenings.
4. This levity and instability of spirit is because they look for all the virtue of religion from their notions and their opinions, and not from Christ ; then they think this change of opinion shall make them better ; their hearts shall be changed. They try experiments so long, till the Lord hath given them up to a spirit of infatuation, and then all comes to nothing, but they as a brand are fit for the burning.