RIGHTEOUS over-much! may one say; Is there any danger of that? Is it even possible? Can we be too good? If we give any credit to the express word of GOD, we cannot be too good, we cannot be righteous over-much. The injunction given by GOD to _Abraham_ is very strong: “Walk before me, and be thou perfect.” The same he again lays upon all _Israel_, in the eighteenth of _Deuteronomy_: “Thou shalt be perfect, and without blemish, with the LORD thy GOD.” And lest any should think to excuse themselves from this obligation, by saying, it ceased when the old law was abolished, our blessed Saviour ratified and explained it: “Be ye, therefore, perfect, even as your Father who is in heaven is perfect.” So that until our perfection surpasses that of our heavenly Father, we can never be too good nor righteous over-much; and as it is impossible we should ever surpass, or even come up to him in the perfection of goodness and righteousness, it follows in course that we never can be good or righteous in excess. Nevertheless Doctor _Trapp_ has found out that we may be righteous over-much, and has taken no small pains, with much agitation of spirit, to prove that it is a _great folly and weakness_, nay, a _great sin_. “O LORD! rebuke thou his spirit, and grant that this false doctrine may not be published to his confusion in the day of judgment!”
But if what this hasty, this deluded man advances had been true, could there be any occasion, however, of warning against it in these times, “when the danger (as he himself to his confusion owns) is on the contrary extreme; when all manner of vice and wickedness abounds to a degree almost unheard of?” I answer for the present, that “there must be heresies amongst you, that they who are approved may be made manifest.”
However, this earthly-minded minister of a new gospel, has taken a text which seems to favour his naughty purpose, of weaning the well-disposed little ones of CHRIST from that perfect purity of heart and spirit, which is necessary to all such as mean to live to our LORD JESUS. O LORD, what shall become of thy flock, when their shepherds betray them into the hands of the ravenous wolf! when a minister of thy word perverts it to overthrow thy kingdom, and to destroy scripture with scripture!
_Solomon_, in the person of a desponding, ignorant, indolent liver, says to the man of righteousness: “Be not righteous over-much, neither make thyself over-wise: Why shouldest thou destroy thyself?” But must my angry, over-sighted brother _Trapp_, therefore, personate a character so unbecoming his function, merely to overthrow the express injunction of the LORD to us; which obliges us never to give over pursuing and thirsting after the perfect righteousness of CHRIST, until we rest in him? Father, forgive him, for he knows not what he says!
What advantage might not satan gain over the elect, if the false construction, put upon this text by that unseeing teacher, should prevail! Yet though he blushes not to assist satan to bruise our heel, I shall endeavour to bruise the heads of both, by shewing,
I. _First_, The genuine sense of the text in question.
II. The character of the persons, who are to be supposed speaking here; And
III. The character of the persons spoken to.
From whence will naturally result these consequences.
_First_, That the Doctor was grosly (LORD grant he was not maliciously) mistaken in his explanatory sermon on this text, as well as in the ♦application of it.
♦ “applicaion” replaced with “application”
_Secondly_, That he is a teacher and approver of worldly maxims.
_Thirdly_, That he is of course an enemy to perfect righteousness in men, through CHRIST JESUS, and, therefore, no friend to CHRIST: And, therefore, that no one ought to be deluded by the false doctrine he advances, to beguile the innocent, and deceive, if possible, even the elect.