1. David's privilege, and I will walk at liberty.
2. The ground of it, for I seek thy precepts. The points are two : —
Boot. 1. To walk in the way of God's precepts is to walk at liberty.
VeR. 45.] SERMONS UPON PSALM CXIX. 479
Doct. 2. The more we take care to do so, the more we find this liberty. I seek, that noteth an earnest diligence. Both these points will he made good by these three considerations : —
1. The way of God's precepts is in itself liberty.
2. There is a liberty given to walk in that way.
3. Upon walking in that way we find it liberty.
First, The way of God's precepts is liberty. Therefore his law is called a * law of liberty,' James i. 25. No such freedom as in God's service ; and, on the contrary, no such bondage as to be held with the cords of our own sin : 2 Peter ii. 19, ' While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption.' A liberty to do all we please is the greatest bondage. There are three pairs of notions in which men are extremely mistaken — in misery and happi- ness, wisdom and folly, liberty and bondage. Men think none miser- able but the afflicted, and none happy but the prosperous, because they judge by the present ease and commodity of the flesh ; therefore Christ in his Sermon on the Mount maketh it his drift to undeceive the world, to show that the mourners and the persecuted, the pure and the meek, they are the happy men, ]Mat. v. So in the notions of wisdom and folly the world are mistaken. Man, that is an intelligent creature, affects the reputation of wisdom, and would rather be accounted wicked than weak. But how do they mistake ? He is the wise man in their account that can carry on his worldly business with success. They judge of wisdom and folly, not by the concernments of the other world, but by present interests. Therefore the whole drift of the scripture is to make us ' wise to salvation,' 2 Tim. iii. 15, to call us off from secu- lar wisdom, and to teach us to become fools that we may be wise. So they are out in the notions of liberty and bondage. All men desire liberty, especially from tyranny and base servitude ; and so far they do well in the general : but then they think that is only liberty to do what they please ; and so the more they think to be, and labour to be, free in a carnal way, the more slaves they are. The service of God, and strict walking with him, they count a very prison and thraldom ; and therefore cry out of bonds and yokes and cords : Ps. ii. 3, ' Let us break their bonds asunder, and cast away their cords from us ; ' and are im- patient of any restraint. Whereas, on the other side, to do what we list without check or control, and to speak what we list, and think what we list, this they think the only freedom : ' Our tongues are our own : who is Lord over us ? ' Whereas, indeed, he liveth the freest life that lieth under the bonds of duty, that maketh conscience of praying and praising God, and conversing and walking with him in a course of holiness ; and the true liberty is in walking in God's statutes. So that true bondage and liberty is little or nothing at all known and discerned in the world. To make this evident unto you, I shall prove —
1. That carnal liberty is but thraldom. «
2. That the true liberty is in the ways of God.
1. That carnal liberty is but thraldom. To understand this, I must lay down one proposition that conduceth to cure the great mistake about liberty and bondage : That liberty is not potesias vivendi ut veils — a power to live as we list ; no, it is to live as we ought — potestas
480 SERMONS UPON PSALM CXIX. [SeR, LI.
volendi quod lex divina jubet. The life and spirit of liberty lietli in. that, a power to do what we ought, not a power to do what we will. Ever since we drank in that poison, ' Ye shall he as gods,' Gen. iii. 5, man affecteth a dominion over himself, and would be lord of his own actions, sui juris, at his own dispose, do what he pleaseth. Indeed, if we had a perfectly holy understanding to guide us, the danger would not be so great ; but now it is the greatest misery that can befall a man to be at his own dispose, to do lawlessly what he will : and therefore God's fearful and dreadful judgment, after all other courses tried, is to give up men to the sway of their own hearts, to do what they please : Ps. Ixxxi. 12, ' So I gave them up to their own hearts' lust, and they walked in their own counsels ; ' to be left to our brutish afifections. But to prove it.
[1.] That infringeth a man's liberty that hindereth and disableth him from prosecuting his great end, which is to be truly happy. Now thus doth the carnal life, and therefore this is true and perfect bondage. Though men live in their bonds with as much delight as fishes in their own element, yet that doth not alter the case ; they are slaves for all that : ' They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh,' Rom. viii. 5. They seem to live at large, but indeed they are in a spiritual prison ; they cannot use the means that should make them happy. They employ their whole time in the remote subservient helps to a happy life, in pleasures, and honours, and profits ; as dissolute and carnal factors and servants, who, finding contentment at the first inn they come at, spend most of their time and money there, which should be spent at the fairs and mart for which they are bound. Plea- sure, and delight, and contentment of mind and body, is a remote subservient help ; so competency of wealth, and some place wherein we may glorify God : these things are not to be desired for themselves, nor in any great measure, but subordinately, in order to our great end. Now, when they entice and detain our affections, and we cannot look after our great end, they break our liberty ; for the less power we have to do that which we should desire to do, the more slaves are w^e.