YeE. 73.] SERMONS UPON PSALM CXIX. 273
3. Man, that was created by God, was created to serve him : ' He formed us from the womb to be his servants,' as well as the first man, Isa. xlix. 5. Adam indeed was appointed for this use; all other creatures were made to serve God, but man especially by the design of liis creation : other things ultimately and terminatively, but man im- mediately and nextly. God made all things for himself, Prov. xvi. 4; and Eom. xi. 36, ' For of him and through him are all things; to whom be glory for ever, amen.' Man is the mouth of the creation. Surely it is but reason that God should have the use of all that he gave us ; that the author of life and being should have some glory by them ; that he should dwell in the house he hath set up : he that made it hath most right to use it ; that we should ' glorify him with our bodies and souls, which are his,' 1 Cor. vi. 20. Man is designed, engaged by greater mercies, furnished with great abilities, as at first endowed with God's image ; he hath faculties and capacities to know and glorify his creator. There are natural instincts given to other things, or inclina- tions to those things which are convenient to their own nature ; but none of them are in a capacity to know what they are, and have, and where they are : they cannot frame a notion of him who gave them a being. Man is the mouth of the creation to speak for them : Ps. cxlv. 10, ' All thy works praise thee, 0 Lord, and thy saints bless thee.' He was made to love, and serve, and glorify God. The divine image inclined him to obedience at first.
4. We are not now what God made us at first, but are strangely disabled to serve him and please him : Eccles. vii. 29, ' God made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions : ' there is man's original and his degeneration ; what he was once made, and how far now unmade and departed from his primitive estate ; his perfection by creation, and defection by sin : first made in a state of righteous- ness ^\-ithout sin, and now in a state of sin and misery without grace ; was created with a holy disposition to enable and incline him to love, please, and obey God, but now hath found out many inventions, put to his shifts. Man was not contented to be at God"s finding, but would take his own course, and hath miserably shifted ever since to patch up a sorry happiness. So Eom. iii. 23, ' All have sinned, and are ■come short of the glory of God.' By glory of God is not meant his glorious reward, but his glorious image. Image is called glory, 1 Cor. jxi. 7, ' It is said of the man, that ' he is the image and glory of God, as the woman is the glory of the man.' So compare 2 Cor. iii. 18, ' We beholding the glory of the Lord in a glass,' &c. So here, we are ' come short of the glory of God,' that is, his glorious image. Hence it is that all our faculties are perverted, the mind is become blind and vain, the will stubborn and perverse, conscience stupid, the affections pre-occupied and entangled, and we find a manifest disproportion in all our faculties to things carnal and spiritual, sinful and holy. In the understanding there is a sharpness of apprehension in carnal things, but dull, slow, and blind in spiritual and heavenly tilings. Thoughts are spent freely and unweariedly about the one, but there is a tediousness and barrenness about the other ; a will backward to what is good, but a strange bent and urging to what is evil. In that which is good we need a spur, in evil a bridle. These things persevere with
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us ; but how fickle and changeable in any holy resolution ! — the memory slippery in what is good, but firm and strong in what is evil ; the affections quick, easily stirred, like tinder, catch fire at every spark ; but as to that which is good, they are like fire in green wood, hardly kept in with much blowing. Again, our delight is soon moved by things pleasing to sense ; a carnal gust and savour is very natural to us, and rife with us, Kom. viii. 5, but averse from the chiefest good, and everything that leadeth to it. Surely, then, we have need to go to God and complain of corruption, sometimes under the notion of a blind and dark mind, begging the illumination of the Spirit ; some- times under the notion of a dead, hard heart, or an unpersuadable will, begging his inclining as well as enlightening grace. Surely they are strangely hardened that do not see a need of a spiritual understanding. Nay, God's children, after grace received, though sanctified betimes, yet halt of the old maim, dull in spirituals, alive and active in carnal matters. Carnal and worldly men act more uniformly and suitably to their principles than the children of God to theirs : Luke xvi. 8, ' The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light ; ' that is, more dexterous in the course of affairs. Grace for the present worketh but a partial cure : we have the advantage in matter of motive, we have better and higher things to mind ; but they have the advantage in matter of principle ; their principles are un- broken, but the principles of the best are mixed. We cannot do what we would in heavenly things ; there is the back-bias of corruption that turns us away ; and therefore they need to be instant with God to heal their souls ; sometimes a blind mind, and sometimes a dis- tempered heart.