8. The end is either ultimate or subordinate. The ultimate end is that which terminateth the action, and wherein our thoughts rest ; the subordinate end is that which we aim at, but yet look further ; as
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here the ultimate end is God's glory, the suhordinate end was their profit. So, take that other place, 1 Cor. x. 31, ' Whether ye eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do all to the glory of God.' In eating and drinking, the subordinate end is health, strength, and cheerfulness ; the ultimate and supreme end, God's glory. It is a failing in our subordinate end, if we mind only carnal pleasure, and not service : Eccles. X. 7, ' Blessed art thou, 0 land, when thy princes eat in due season, for strength and not for drunkenness.' When our meals are a meat-offering or a drink-offering to lust and appetite, it is a perversion of God's bounty. They were ordained to be a refection after business, and to repair that strength which hath been weakened in the work of our callings. But now the ultimate end is God's glory ; it is not strength for our lusts, strength for our worldly ends, but for the Lord's honour ; we must please appetite no farther than the pleasing of it fits us for the service to God. In many cases, nextly we may aim at some other thing beneath God, but ultimately and terminatively, all must be directed to God : as the apostle here considered them, their spiritual profit as his next aim, but, lastly and finally the glory of God.
Secondly. The reasons of the general point.
1. The interest God hath in us obligeth us to live to his glory : Eom. xiv. 8, ' For whether we live, we live unto the Lord : or whether we die, we die unto the Lord : for whether we live, or die, we are the Lord's.' The apostle's reasoning is built upon this supposition, that those who are the Lord's, should live as for the Lord : but the case is so with us, we are his, and therefore must live to him. How are we the Lord's ?
[1.] By creation : Prov. xvi. 4, ' God made all things for himself.' In the creation of the world, God could have no higher end than himself, than his own glory; for the end is more noble than the means ; therefore when he made the world, made beasts, made man, made angels, he did all for himself. God is independent, and self- sufficient of himself and for himself. Self-seeking in the creature is absurd and unbeseeming, because we depend upon another for life, and breath, and all things. Therefore to seek our own glory, contentment, and satisfaction apart from God, it is to arrogate a self-being to ourselves apart from him ; we were made by God, and were not made for ourselves.
[2.] By preservation : Rom. xi. 36, ' For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things.' As our being is from him, so our moving and doing is through him, through his providential influence and supportation ; therefore all must be for him and to him. The motion of all creatures is circular ; they end where they began, as the rivers return to the place from whence they came. All that issueth from God in a way of creation, and is sustained and preserved by God in a way of providence, must be to him in the tendency and final end of their motions. As we must deduce all things from God as their first cause, and continual conserving cause, so we must reduce all things to God as their last end.
[3.] By redemption. That is pleaded, 1 Cor. vi. 19, 20, ' Ye are not your own, ye are bought with a price ; therefore glorify God with
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your bodies, and your souls, which are God's.' You are twice bound, as creatures and as redeemed ; and a double obligation will infer a double condemnation, if we answer it not. The bought belong to the buyer ; so we to Christ.
[4.] By dedication. We are dedicated and set apart for the Lord's use: Rom. vi. 13, 'Yield yourselves to God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.' So Rom. xii. 1, ' I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.' Now to live to ourselves, and speak for ourselves, is practically to retract our own vows, and the dedication which we have made of ourselves to his use and service.
2. We are above all creatures fitted for his glory ; as men, and as new creatures.
[1.] As men. Man above all other creatures should glorify God. Partly, because by the design of his creation he is placed nearer God as the end than other creatures are. Man is both proxime et ultime, nextly and lastly, for God ; and so return immediately to the fountain of our being. There is nothing intervening between God and us, towards which our use and service should be directed. Other creatures, though they were made ultimately and terminatively for God, yet immediately for man ; lastly for God, nextly for us ; so that man standeth in the middle between God and all other creatures, to receive the benefit of them, that God may have the glory. Oh, then, how much is man, as man, obliged to glorify God. for whom this inferior world was made! All things are subjected to our dominion, or created for our use ; not only fowls, and fishes, and beasts of the field, to be enjoyed by him, but sun, moon, stars, rain, weather, and all the seasons of the year : Ps. viii. 3-6, ' When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and stars which thou hast ordained ; what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man, that thou visitest him ? Thou hast made him little lower than the angels ; thou crownest him with glory, and honour ; thou hast made him to have dominion over the work of thine hands ; thou hast put all things under his feet.' When we look up and behold those glorious creatures, the out- work and visible parts of heaven, which display their radiant beauties to our wonder and astonishment ; and withal consider how much they serve for our comfort and use, and with them the sovereign power wherewith thou didst invest man over all sublunary and inferior creatures, beasts, fowls, fishes, plants, we cannot sufficiently admire that this vile clod of earth, man, should be so much in the eye of God, to take care of him above the whole creation. The sun doth not shine, nor winds blow, nor rain fliU at our pleasure, but it is for our use. Heaven is for us, the airy heaven to give us breath and motion, the starry heaven to give us heat, light, and influence, the third heaven, or the heaven of heavens, to be our dwelling-place ; so that man is strangely stupid and oblivious, if he should forget the God by whose bounty he enjoys all these things. And partly, because man is more fitted, as being furnished with higher capacities ; ' he teacheth us more than the beasts of the field.' We