4. I need but one consideration more to make the demonstration full, and what is that ? It is that the usual effects of hatred are blood and mischief ; thence come the factions, and quarrels, and persecutions, and contentions in the world. Once entertain hatred, and there is nothing so bad, and mischievous, and cruel, which you may not be drawn to think, and say, and do against your brethren. To think : jealousy is
VeR. 15.] SERMONS UPON 1 JOHN III. 129
the fruit of b.itred, everything is suspected wliere the party is not loved, yea, odious crimes are supposed and imagined of them, and they think they do God good service if they kill them, John xvi. 2. They do only destroy you as so many vermin, which are the trouble of the countr}'. So for saying : Luke vi. 22, ' Blessed are ye when men shall hate you, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for ray name's sake.' Do, by persecution : John v. 19, 20, ' Because I have chosen you out of the world, the world shall hate you, and persecute you, as they persecuted me.' And treachery : Mat. xxiv. 10^ ' And many shall be offended in me, and betray one another, and hate one another.' These are the mischievous effects of hatred. Well, then, may it be accounted murder, and he that hateth is a manslayer or murderer.
Use 1. Is information —
1. It showeth us the reason why divines refer all sins and virtues to the commandments, wherein the grossest sin of the kind is forbidden in the name of all the rest. You think we strain when we make anger to be murder or the like ; but we have countenance from scrip- ture, and we have the example of our Lord Jesus. I will only instance in a pertinent case : Mat. v. 20, 21, ' Ye have heard it hath been said of them of old. Thou shalt not kill ; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment ; but I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judg- ment ; and whosoever shall say to his brother, Baca, shall be in danger of the council ; but whosoever shall say. Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.' A place somewhat difficult, but I shall make no long busi- ness to explain it. Christ doth not enlarge the commandment of God given by Moses, but interpret it, and vindicate from the glosses of the pharisees ; for they were their masters in the schools who lived before Christ. They thought the law was not broken but by actual man- slaughter or murder ; for Christ doth not reason against the letter of the law, ' Thou shalt not kill,' but against their gloss, ' Whosoever shall kill.' And the following words express three degrees of sin and three degrees of punishment, alluding to their ways of punishing. The three degrees of sin are rash anger, anger vented by contumelious speeches : ' Kaca,' a vain man ; ' Thou fool,' a wicked man. Their jmnishments were either of the three-and-twenty men who judged of manslaughters, or of the Sanhedrim, who judged of more heinous crimes; or of burning alive, which was their highest punishment ; and in the expression he alludeth to the valley of Hinnom, where children were scorched to death. Now the wrathful man is subject to punish- ment in another world, as the manslayer is here by the judgment, which is beheading with the sword. Anger breaking out into opprobrious speeches by the Sanhedrim, where ordinary punishment was by stoning ; ' Thou fool,' more violent railings and revilings, with burning as^ of the children in the valley Hinnom. So that all these things, which tend to murder, are murder in the sight of God, and must expect his punishment. A great caution to us, in these contentious times, to take heed how we involve ourselves in the wrath of God.
2. That it is good to refer sin to the most odious of its kind, and to interpret the law of God in its most comprehensive sense. Carnal
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men are but slight interpreters of God's law ; tliat the ell may be no longer than the cloth, they make a short exposition of the law, that they may cherish a large opinion of their own righteousness ; but in the word of God we are directed otlierwise. Covetousness is idolatry, as it diverts our trust in God, Col. iii. 5. Sensuality is set- ting up another god, as it diverteth our love from him : Phil, iii. 19, * Whose god is their bell}'.' Neglect of communion with God is atheism, Ps. x. 3 ; and worldliness is adultery, James iv. 4 ; and here hatred of the brethren is murder. And there is a double profit by it — it serveth for an evangelical use and a moral use.
[1.] It serveth for an evangelical use, to quicken us to seek after justification by way of faith and repentance ; for though we have not been guilty of gross immoralities, we are not murderers, adulterers, yet we cannot trust in our own righteousness. We are in danger of the judgment or the council for rash anger, hatred, malice, revenge, seek- ing or wishing mischief to others. There is no relief to be looked for in God's strict justice from the smallness of our sins ; our hope standeth only in the fulness of Christ's ransom, and the largeness of his grace in the new covenant, which alloweth room for repentance. Thus the severe exaction of the law doth drive us to Christ.