Setting up the World.

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would establish in opposition to God, is called a man's own; a righteousness of his own framing, that hath its rise only from himself, Rom. 10. 3. Going about to establish their own righteousness.

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1. Sin and self are all one; what is called a living in sin in one place, Rom. 6. 2, is a living to self in another; That they which live, should not live to themselves, 2 Cor. 5. 15. What a man serves, and directs all his projects, and the whole labour of his life to, that is his god and lord, and that is self. All inferior things act for some superior as their immediate end; this order hath nature constituted; the lesser animals are designed for the greater; the irrational for man, and man for something higher and nobler than himself; for all beings naturally should, in their several stations, tend to the service of the first being. Now to make ourselves the end, and all other things to act for ourselves, is to make ourselves the supreme being, to deny any superior as the centre, to which our actions should be directed, and usurp God's place, who alone being the Supreme Being, can be his own end; for if there were any thing higher and better than God, his own purity and goodness would cause him to act for that as more noble and worthy.

I appeal to you, whether you have not sometimes secret wishes, that you were in the place of God; for where there is a slavish fear of him, there must needs be such wishes, according to the degrees of fear; and so you have wished God undeified, that you might be advanced to the Godhead.

This some think to be the sin of the devils, affecting an independency on God by a proud reflection upon their own created excellency, and at least a delightful wish, if not an endeavour, to make themselves the ultimate end of all their actions.

3. We are enemies to God's sovereignty in setting up the world. When we place this in our heart, God's proper seat and chair, we deprive God of his propriety, and do him the greatest wrong, in giving the pos

session of his right to another. The apostle gives covetousness no better title than that of idolatry, Col. 3.5. And the Psalmist puts the atheist's cap upon the oppressor's head; Who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the Lord, Psal. 14. 4. What we make the chief object of our desires, is to us in the place of God. The poor Indians made a very natural and rational consequence, that gold was the Spaniards' god, because they hunted so greedily after it. This is an intolerable dethroning of God, to make that which is God's footstool to climb up into his throne; to bow down to an atom, a little dust and mud of the world, a drop out of the ocean; to set that in thy heart, which God hath made even below thyself, and put under thy feet; and to make that which thou tramplest upon, to tread down the right God hath to thy heart. Alas! who serves God with that care and with that Spirit that he serves the world with ?

4. We are enemies to God's sovereignty in setting up sensual pleasures. Love is a commanding affection, and gives the object a power over us; what we chiefly love, we readily obey. Now men are said to be φιλήδονοι μᾶλλον η φιλοθεοι 2 Tim. 3. 4; a glutton's belly is said to be his god, because his projects and affections are devoted to the satisfaction of that; and he lays in not for the service of God, but a magazine for lust. If you preferred some honourable thing which might perfect your natures, as learning, wisdom, moral virtues; though this were an indignity to be censured by the Judge of all the world, yet it would be more tolerable; but to consecrate your heart and time to a sordid voluptuousness, and feed it with the cream of your strength, this is an inexcusable contempt, to pay a quick and lively service to an effeminate delight, which is only due to the supreme

Lord.

Does not that man dethrone God, and hate him, that will be under the command of a swinish pleasure;

Setting up Satan.

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and make that the supreme end of his life and actions, rather than to be under the righteous government of God? The greatest excellency in the world is infinitely below our Creator; how much more must a bestial delight be below him which is so exceedingly disgraceful to, and below the nature of man? If we should love all the creatures in heaven and earth above God, it were more excusable than to degrade him in our affections beneath a brutish pleasure. Why doth any man court an ignoble sensuality with the displeasure of God, hell, and damnation at the end of it, if he did not value it above God, as well as above his own soul? The more sordid any thing is that we set up in the place of God, the greater is the despite done to him, Ezek. 8. 5. When the prophet saw the image of jealousy at the gate, God tells him there were greater abominations than that, which are described, ver. 10, Creeping things, and abominable beasts, viz. the Egyptian idols. The viler the thing is which possesses our heart, the greater slight is put upon God, and the greater the abomination.

5. We are enemies to God's sovereignty in setting up Satan. Every sin is an election of the devil to be our lord if sin had a voice, it would give its suffrage for such a lord as would favour its interest. As the Spirit dwells in a godly man to guide him, so doth the devil in a natural man, to direct him to evil, Eph. 2. 2, 3; so that every sin is an effect of the devil's government: therefore sins are called his lusts, which natural men (who being the devil's children; are under his paternal government) fulfil and do with a resolute obedience, His lusts you will do, John 8. 44. If we divide sins into spiritual and carnal, which division comprehends all sin, we shall find that in both; we own the devil's authority either in obeying his commands, or in conforming to his example. Some are said to be his lusts subjective, as he commits them; others dispositive, as he directs them. In spiritual he is an actor, in carnal a tempter. In

carnal, men obey his commands; in spiritual, they model themselves according to his pattern: in the one they are his servants, to do his work; in the other his children, to partake of his nature. In the one we acknowledge him as our master; in the other we own him as our copy. In both we derogate from God's sovereignty over us, whom we are bound to imitate, as well as to obey. Every sin, in its own nature, is a communion or society with Belial, a fighting for the devil against God; it is the end of act, though it be not the intention of the agent. Every sin is the devil's work, and therefore the choice of it is a preferring his service before God's. The sin of Saul, though in a small matter, and not in any natural, but positive command, is equalled to the sin of witchcraft, which, you know, is a covenanting with the devil to yield obedience to him, 1 Sam. 15. 23.

What a monstrous baseness is this, to advance an impure spirit in the place of infinite purity; to embrace the great ringleader of rebellion, above the contriver of our reconciliation; the only enemy God hath in the world, who drew all the rest into the faction against him, before him who is ready to pardon us upon our revolt from his adversary? To affect that destroyer above our preserver and benefactor? To esteem him as the exactest pattern, and the greatest lord, as though he had created us, provided for us, and in mercy watched over us all our days. What a prodigious enmity is this, to offend God, to pleasure the devil, and injure our Creator, to gratify our adversary! Have we nothing to prefer before him, but the deadliest enemy that both God and our souls have in the world? Must we side with our tormentor against our preserver? Shall he which will fire us for ever, be valued above him who would wipe all tears from our eyes? Oh let us blush, if any spark of ingenuity be left; and let our hatred of God change its object, and boil up against ourselves for our abominable ingratitude.

Usurping God's Prerogative.

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3. In usurping God's prerogative, and exacting those observances which belong to God. We destroy his sovereignty in deifying and rewarding men for things done in opposition to the law of God, in putting glorious titles upon the vilest acts, naming ambition, generosity; murder, valour, &c. 1. In challenging titles and acts of worship due only to God. What act of worship is there due to God, but man hath one time or other challenged it as pertaining to him? Darius for thirty days must have all petitions put up to him, as though he could supply the wants of all creatures, Dan. 6. 7, 8, 9. Alexander would be worshipped as God; after him Antiochus, whom God calls a vile person. The pope makes up the number in the preface the canonists put to his decrees: Edictum domini deique nostri. In men's equalling themselves to God. The first man would know as God, Babel builders would dwell as God. Rabbins tell us, that Eve was told by the devil, that if she eat the forbidden fruit, she should make a world as God. The Pope will sit in the temple of God, and pardon sins as God; exalts himself above all that is called God, shewing himself that he is God.

2. Usurping God's prerogative, in lording over the consciences and reasons of others. Whence else. springs the restless desire in some men, to model all consciences according to their own wills, which belongs to a greater power than man is capable of? Ferdinand's speech was eminent, who when by the persuasion of others, with much reluctancy on his part he had passed an edict against the protestants, &c. said, "I expected such a thing, when I would take upon me the prerogative of God to be Lord over men's consciences." We usurp God's prerogative, when we are angry that others are not of our minds and judgments; when they will not be blind servants to our opinion, in endeavouring to have our own fancies, yea and passions, though never so boisterous and ridiculous, to be a measure to others. When

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