1. In general it implies this, that we are brutish in our sin and defection from God, led by sense, fancy, and appetite ; and therefore our condition could not be expressed but by a comparison fetched from the beasts. Silly sheep are carried away by their fancy and appetite from the flock : Ps. xlix. 12, ' Man being in honour, abideth not ; he is like the beasts that perish;' that is, he abode not in the honour of his creation. Some would render it ' for a night.' Adam ' abode not for a night.' What we translate man, is Adam : the excellency and dig- nity wherein God had set us ; he became like a beast. How is man like a beast ? We are governed by our senses and lower appetites. The senses are grown masterly and inordinate, so eagerly set upon their objects, that they will not be reclaimed, and man's life just like that of the brutes ; it is things of the same nature we value and adhere unto, terrene and earthly things, the comforts of the animal life ; and as we have the same objects, so the same ends, to enjoy our sensual pleasures, and satisfy our fleshly minds as long as we may; now what is this but to suffer the beast to ride the man ; to put reason and conscience in vassallage, and subjection to sense and appetite ?
2. This similitude is used to show our pronencss to err. There is no creature more prone to wander and lose its way without a shepherd then the sheep. Sheep are creatures subject to straying if they be not kept in the pasture ; so all men are obnoxious to erring and straying : Jer. xiv. 10, ' They love to wander.' It is a delight to us to be pleasing our flesh and gratifying our carnal senses. So Ps. xcv. 10, ' It is a people that do err in their hearts.' We do not only err in our minds, but err in our hearts. To err in our mind is to err out of
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ignorance, but to err in our heart is to err out of sensual obstinacy ; so are we carried away with the desires of the flesh, think ourselves never better than when we run away from God. Ah ! the best of us is soon out of the way. If God takes off his guidance, and leaves us to ourselves, we are apt to transgress the bounds wherewith God hath hedged up our way, and make it our business still to be running away from the chief good, into the bushes and thickets of carnal error, wherein we are entangled.
3. Our inability to return, and set ourselves into the right way again ; for we stray like sheep, not like swine and dogs. Swine and dogs, though they wander, they will find the way home again ; but a sheep is irrecoverably lost without the shepherd's diligence and care : Jer. 1. 6, ' My people have been lost ; they have gone from mountain to mountain, they have forgotten their resting-place.' So should we run, and keep running away from, and forget our resting-place. I remember Austin in his meditations hath this passage, Domine errare potui, redire non potui — Lord, I could go astray by myself, but I can- not return of myself. The sheep easily straggle, but it is the shepherd must bring home the lost sheep upon his own shoulders, Luke xv. 5. And to this we may apply that of the prophet, Hosea xiii. 9, ' O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thy help.' We could destroy and ruin ourselves, but we cannot recover and save ourselves. The shiftless infant can defile himself, but it is the nurse must cleanse it, and we ourselves can fall from God, but to recover us to God, that is the shepherd's care.
4. It shows our readiness to follow evil example. A sheep is animal sequax, a creature that runs after the drove, they run out of the gap one after another, and one straggler draws away the whole flock. When the apostle speaks of the sinful state of mankind, Eph. ii. 2, 3, he reckons up example as one : ' Walking according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.' In that place there is the devil, the world, and the flesh. There is the prince of the power of the air, and there is the course of this world (that I quote it for now), there is Satan, corrupt example, and evil inclination, all which are depravers of mankind, and all concur to our ruin and destruction. We easily swim with the stream and the torrent of common example, do as others do, and so mutually propagate and receive taint from one another. Imitation is not the whole cause of sin, but propagation and inclination of nature, yet imitation and example doth much to the perverting of the world, and increasing wickedness and fleshly-mindedness makes us addicted to worldly vanities, and so we run with the fowl into the snare, walking accord- ing to the course of this world, Eph. ii. 2 ; Isa. vi. 6, 'lama man of polluted lips, and I dwell among a people of polluted lips.' We have sin within, but it is mightily increased by example without ; by dwelling among those that are polluted, we are more defiled ; we catch sickness one of another, we do not get health one from another; as in the law, by touching an unclean thing a man was made unclean, but not on the contrary. We, being polluted ourselves, are more defiled by others, by conversing with them. We live among them that are