3. The object, with its number, 'Many inventions.' There is some difference in the translations. Ludovicus de Dieu, because the word for ' many ' signifieth also ' great ' and ' mighty,' rendereth it, Ipsi cmtem qucesiverunt cogitationes magnatum ; meaning by the ' mighty ' the angels who were not contented with their own station, but forsook it, Jude 6. Certain it is the devil's first temptation was, Gen. iii. 5, ' Ye shall be as gods ; ' that is, advance into a more honourable and noble condition than now you are in. These thoughts being suggested by Satan, they ambitiously entertained them. The vulgar readeth it, Se infinitis miscuit qucestionibus. Adam at first out of curiosity would know good and evil, and ever since we have been sick of questions, questioning this and questioning that, and have no clear light to guide us. The Septuagint render it, i^ijTrjaav \oyia-/jiov<; ttoXXou?, they sought out many ratiocinations. We grope in a maze of uncertainties, and so entangle ourselves the more. Our heavenly wisdom is lost by our sin and rebellion, and instead thereof we have gotten a false carnal wisdom, which is 'enmity to God,' Rom. viii. 7, and only inclineth us to a false happiness, James iii. 15, to the pleasures, honours, and profits of the present world; and so are given up to an injudicious mind, and are left in the hands of our own counsel, which is the heaviest plague that can light ui)on a reasonable creature : Ps. Ixxxi. 11, 12, 'But my people would not hearken to my voice, and Israel would none of me ; so I gave them up unto their own hearts' lusts, and they walked in their own counsels.' For our own wisdom is an ill guide and counsellor, and will never guide us aright in the way to true happiness, but lead us into bogs and pits, and iijto many foolish and hurtful lusts.
But keeping more closely to our own translation, let me a little open this expression, ' They sought out many inventions.'
First, Observe that man is left to invent, and (since he left the straight line of God's directions) to shift for an happiness for himself Surely it was better for us when we needed only to accept or submit ; we never sped well since we would be our own carvers, and would follow those new ways to blessedness which Satan and our own hearts suggest to us ; as a runagate child or servant, that is not content with the father's or master's finding, is driven to a thousand shifts. All our inventions may be disproved by a double reason —
1. They are insufficient to make us happy. We were made for God,
SERMON UPON ECCLESIASTES VIL 29. 51
and cannot be happy again till we return to God. Being fallen from God, in whose favour alone true happiness is to be found, we invent false ways wherein we seek to attain happiness ; but after all our vain pursuits, we can nowhere find rest for our souls. We have but a little vainglory for that eternal glory which we have lost, a little brutish pleasure for that fulness of joy which we might have in God's presence, perishing vanities for the true riches ; so that we do but go about : Jer. xxxi. 22, ' How long wilt thou go about, 0 backsliding daughter ? ' We do but weary ourselves as long as we keep off from God ; you meet with a broken cistern instead of the fountain : Jer. ii. 13, ' My people have committed two evils ; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water,' You may drink many a puddle dry, and yet never quench your thirst ; labour your hearts out, and yet not meet with that which satisfieth : Isa. Iv. 2, ' Wherefore do ye spend your money for that which is not bread ? and your labour for that which satisfieth not ? Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.' True rest and peace will only be found in God reconciled to us in Christ.
2. They plunge us in farther misery. It is true both as to opinions in religion and as to practice.
[1.] As to opinions in religion. If men apprehend some misery, how vain are their inventions about the remedy ! All their devices show how desperate the disease is. The philosophers, when they had found out a god, yet were ' vain in their imaginations,' Kom. i. 21 ; when they sat abrood on a religion, they hatched nothing but what was ridiculous : 'And professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.' The Egyptians, who vaunted themselves to be the fathers of all sciences, worshipped onions and leeks, and their gods grew in their gardens; they were planted and cultivated by their labourers before they were worshipped by their princes. The Komans, who excelled all nations for their morality and civility, made gods of all things, for war and peace, fears and passions, agues and fevers. And still the religion of heathens, Turks, and pagans are so far from being the remedy, that they are a part of the disease, and remove man further off from God. All men's inventions to pacify God's wrath do further provoke him : Micah vi. 6, 7, ' Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God ? Shall I come before him with burnt- offerings, with calves of a year old ? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil ? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ? ' Go to, false christians ! it was never well with the world since men were guided by inventions rather than institutions ; while they hope by their own penances and exterior mortifications to appease God, he is the more alienated from them.