I say, it stirs up to ill, and it keeps us in ill. Carnal wisdom saith. You may do this, you may continue thus long. It deceives us with vain hopes of long life.
I might enlarge the point. You see then what reason God's children have, not to be ruled by fleshly carnal wisdom.
By the way, let me give this caution, that oftentimes that is accounted carnal wisdom that is not. The weaker sort, they are to blame ofttimes to lay imputations upon those that God hath given greater gifts to ; and they account that carnal wisdom that is not so, but is spiritual prudence. I must needs add that caution by the way. As for a man to keep his mind, and not to speak against evil in all places. ' The prudent man shall keep silent,' saith the prophet, Prov. xii. 23. The times and the place may be such, that the prudent man may keep silence. It is best to do so.
And likewise to be cautelous to prevent danger so far as it may be with- out breach of a good conscience. St Paul, you know, when he was called before the Sadducees and the Pharisees, he escaped by a shift.* It was not a sinfi;l shift. He said he was a Pharisee, and so he set them together, and they falling into contention, St Paul in the mean time escaped. Acts xxiii. 7. Many things might be done, if we would take heed of carnal wisdom, and that with a great deal of wisdom and approbation too.
Jeroboam might have settled his kingdom, and yet he need not have set up the two calves in that cursed policy. It was foretold that he should have those tribes, but he would be wiser than God, and he would devise a way of his own, 2 Chron. xiii. 8, et alibi,
David might have escaped from Achish the king of Gath. He need not have made himself a fool. Ahithophel might have provided well for himself under David his old master. He need not have proved a rebel. * See Note g, vol. II., p. 194.— G. t That is, ' expedient.'— G.
2 CORINTHIANS CHAP. I, VER. 12. 2G9
There is nothing that carnal wisdom doth, but heavenly wisdom will do it better if men could light on it ; and God would give them better success in their carriage. But there is a way for heavenly prudence, I say, and that must not be accounted carnal wisdom.
It is for want of this that people are too credulous. Gedaliah, he trusted too much, he was too credulous to trust. Considering that men are subject to infirmities, and subject to falseness, it is good to be doubtful, to be sus- picious sometimes ; and it is no carnal wisdom neither. The very loadstone of a lie is credulitj\ What emboldens people to deal falsely with men ? They know them to be credulous and weak. They will believe anything.
But for the most part the error is on the contrary, over-much jealousy^ Your carnal politicians are over-jealous. Jealousy is good, suspicion is good, considering that we live in a false world ; but not to be over-jealous. We see Herod, he thought. Oh ! Christ is born ; and out of jealousy he kills a number of poor infants, and his own among the rest. Alas ! * Christ came not to take away his kingdom, but to give a heavenly kingdom. So the Jews they were very jealous that if Christ were not condemned, the Romans would come and take away their kingdom, John xi. 48 ; but that which wicked men fear, out of such jealousy, shall come upon them. And so the subtlest and most devilish men in late times, that grounded the persecution of the poor Protestants, upon jealousy, absurd jealousy; for they, by the rules of their religion, walk in sincerity. It ties them from plotting. And yet out of fear and jealousyj they exercised a world of cruelty against them.
And if any man shall but consider and read Stephen Gardiner's letters (a man of a devilish jealousy), to see out of his wit he projected what hurt w^ould come by sufl'ering the gospel to remain, it will seem strange (ss). Alas, poor man ! the commonwealths beyond the seas and our own nation never prospered better than by entertaining the gospel. Yet this devilish- witted man, whose wit was set and sharpened by the devil, was in fear and jealousy of the gospel. And God usually punisheth it this way, that those subtle heads that are jealous of those that mean them no harm, but all the good that may he, usually, they are over-credulous in another kind. They tnist those that deceive their trast, they trust those that the weakest, the very dregs of the people, will not trust, they trust those that are notoriously false. God strikes their brains and besots them, that they trust men that all the world know to be undermiuers ; notwithstanding where they should trust, and cast themselves into the bosom of their true-hearted fiiends, there they are all full of fear and jealousy. But this caution by the way.
You see the thing proved, that godly men when they give their names to God, they ought to be ruled by God, and not by carnal policy or fleshly wisdom. You see the reasons of it.