357

SERMON CII.

PREACHED AT LINCOLN'S INN.

PSALM XXXviii. 4.

For mine iniquities are gone over my head, as a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me.

And a reason, why (There is no rest in

DAVID having in the former verses of this Psalm assigned a reason, why he was bound to pray, because he was in misery, (0 Lord rebuke me not in thine anger, for thine arrows stick fast in me) and a reason why he should be in misery, because God was angry, (Thy hand presseth me sore, v. 2. And, There is no soundness in my flesh, because of thine anger, v. 3). God should be angry, because he had sinned, my bones, because of my sin, in the same verse). He proceeds to a reason, why this prayer of his must be vehement, why these miseries of his are so violent, and why God's anger is permanent, and he finds all this to be, because in his sins, all these venomous qualities, vehemence, violence, and continuance, were complicated, and enwrapped; for, he had sinned vehemently, in the rage of lust, and violently, in the effusion of blood, and permanently, in a long, and senseless security. They are all contracted in this text, into two kinds, which will be our two parts, in handling these words; first, the Supergressæ super, Mine iniquities are gone over my head, there is the multiplicity, the number, the succession, and so the continuation of his sin: and then, the Gravata super, My sins are as a heavy burden, too heavy for me, there is the greatness, the weight, the insupportableness of his sin. St. Augustine calls these two distinctions, or considerations of sin, igorantiam, et difficultatem; first, that David was ignorant, that he saw not the tide, as it swelled up upon him, abyssus abyssum, depth called upon depth; and, all thy waters, and all thy billows are gone over me, (says he, in another place1) he perceived them not coming till they were over him, he discerned not his particular sins, then when he committed them, till they came

1 Psalm XLii. 7.

to the supergressa super, to that height, that he was overflowed, surrounded, his iniquities were gone over his head, and in that St. Augustine notes ignorantiam, his unobservance, his inconsideration of his own case; and then he notes difficultatem, the hardness of recovering, because he that is under water, hath no air to see by, no air to hear by, he hath nothing to reach to, he touches not ground, to push him up, he feels no bough to pull him up, and therein that father notes difficultatem, the hardness of recovering. Now Moses expresses these two miseries together, in the destruction of the Egyptians, in his song, after Israel's deliverance, and the Egyptians' submersion, The depths have covered them', (there is the supergressæ super, their iniquities, in that punishment of their iniquities, were gone over their heads) and then, they sank into the bottom as a stone (says Moses) there is the gravate super, they depressed them, suppressed them, oppressed them, they were under them, and there they must lie.

The Egyptians had, David had, we have too many sins, to swim above water, and too great sins to get above water again, when we are sunk; the number of sins then, and the greatness of sin, will be our two parts; the dangers are equal, to multiply many lesser sins, or to commit a few, more heinous: except the danger be greater, (as indeed it may justly seem to be) in the multiplication, and custom, and habit of lesser sins; but how great is the danger, then, how desperate is our state, when our sins are great in themselves, and multiplied too?

In his many sins, we shall touch thus many circumstances: first, they were peccata, sins, iniquities; and then peccata sua, his sins, his iniquities, which intimates actual sins; for though God inflict miseries for original sin (death, and that, that induces it, sickness, and the like) yet those are miseries common to all, because the sin is so too; but these, are his punishments, personal calamities, and the sins are his own sins; and then, (which is a third circumstance) they are sins in the plural, God is not thus angry for one sin; and again, they are such sins, as have been long in going, and are now got over, supergressæ sunt, they are gone, gone over; and then lastly, for that first part, supergresso caput, they are gone over my head, in which exaltation, is inti

Exod. xv. 5.

mated all this; first, sicut tectum, sicut fornix, they are over his head, as a roof, as a ceiling, as an arch, they have made a wall of separation, betwixt God and us, so they are above our head; and then sicut clamor, they are ascended as a noise, they are got up to heaven, and cry to God for vengeance, so they are above our head; and again sicut aquæ, they are risen and swollen as waters, they compass us, they smother us, they blind us, they stupify us, so they are above our head; but lastly and principally, sicut dominus, they are got above us, as a tyrant, and an usurper, for so they are above our head too: and in these we shall determine our first part. When from thence we come to our second part, in which, (as in this we shall have done their number) we shall consider their greatness, we find them first heavy, sin is no light matter; and then, they are too heavy, a little weight would but ballast us, this sinks us; too heavy for me, even for a man equal to David; and where is he? when is that man? for, says our text, they are as heavy, as a heavy burden; and the nature, and inconvenience of a burden is, first to crooken, and bend us downward from our natural posture, which is erect, for this incurvation implies a declination in the inordinate love of the creature, incurcat. And then the nature of a burden is, to tire us; our very sin becomes fulsome, and wearisome to us, fatigat; and it hath this inconvenience too, ut retardet, it slackens our pace, in our right course, though we be not tired, yet we cannot go so fast, as we should in any way towards godliness; and lastly, this is the inconvenience of a burden too, ut præcipitet, it makes us still apt and ready to stumble, and to fall under it: it crookens us, it deprives us of our rectitude; it tires us, extinguishes our alacrity; it slackens us, enfeebles and intepidates our zeal; it occasions our stumbling, opens and submits us, to every emergent temptation. And these be the dangers, and the mischievous inconveniences, notified to us, in those two elegancies of the Holy Ghost, the supergresso, the multiplicity of sins, They are gone over my head, and the gravate, they are a heavy burden, too heavy for me.

First then, all these things are literally spoken of David; by application, of us; and by figure, of Christ. Historically, David; morally, we; typically, Christ is the subject of this text. In David's person, we shall insist no longer upon them, but only to

look upon the two general parts, the multiplicity of his sin, and the weight and greatness thereof: and that only in the matter of Uriah, as the Holy Ghost3, (without reproaching the adultery or the murder, after David's repentance) 'vouchsafes to mollify his manifold, and his heinous sin. First, he did wrong to a loyal and a faithful servant; and who can hope to be well served, that does so? He corrupted that woman, who for aught appearing to the contrary, had otherwise preserved her honour, and her conscience entire; it is a sin, to run with a thief when thou seest him, or to have thy portion with them that are adulterers already; to accompany them in their sin, who have an inclination to that sin before, is a sin; but to solicit them, who have no such inclination, nor, but for thy solicitation, would have had, is much more inexcusable. In David's sin, there was thus much more, he defrauded some, to whom his love was due, in dividing himself with a strange woman. To steal from another man, though it be to give to the poor, and to such poor, as would otherwise starve, if that had not been stolen, is injustice, is a sin. To divide that heart, which is entirely given to a wife, in marriage, with another woman, is a sin, though she, to whom it is so given, pretend, or might truly suffer much torment and anguish if it were not done. David's sin flew up to a higher sphere; he drew the enemy to blaspheme the name of God, in the victory over Israel, where Uriah was slain : God hates nothing more in great persons, than that prevarication, to pretend to assist his cause, and promove his religion, and yet underhand give the enemies of that religion way to grow greater. His sins, indeed, were too many to be numbered; too great too, to be weighed in comparison with others. Uriah was innocent towards him, and faithful in his employment, and, at that time, in an actual, and in a dangerous service, for his person, for the state, for the church. Him David betrays in his letter to Joab; him David makes the instrument of his own death, by carrying those letters, the warrants of his own execution; and he makes Joab, a man of honour, his instrument for a murder to cover an adultery. Thus many sins, and these heavy degrees of sin, were in this one; and how many, and how weighty, were in that, of numbering of his people,

31 Kings xv. 5.

4

Psalm L. 18.

51 Chron. xxi. 1.

we know not. We know, that Satan provoked him to do it; and we know, that Joab, who seconded and accomplished his desire in the murder of Uriah, did yet dissuade, and dis-counsel this numbering of the people, and not out of reason of state, but as an express sin. Put all together, and less than all, we are sure David belied not himself, His iniquities were gone over his head, and as a heavy burden, they were too heavy for him; though this will be a good rule, for the most part, in all David's confessions and lamentations, that though that be always literally true of himself, for the sin, or for the punishment, which he says, personally David did suffer, that which he complains of in the Psalms, in a great measure, yet David speaks prophetically, as well as personally, and to us, who exceed him in his sins, the exaltation of those miseries, which we find so often in this book, are especially intended; that which David relates to have been his own case, he foresees will be ours too, in a higher degree. And that is our second, and our principal object of all those circumstances, in the multiplicity, and in the heinousness of sin; and therefore, to that second part, these considerations in ourselves, we make thus much haste.

First then, they were peccata, sins, iniquities. And we must not think to ease ourselves in that subtilty of the School, peccatum nihil; that sin is nothing, because sin had had no creation, sin hath no reality, sin is but a deflection from, but a privation of the rectitude required in our actions; that is true; it is true, that is said by Catarinus, Let wives be subject to their husbands in omnibus', in every thing; omnium appellatione, in Scripturis, nunquam venit malum, wheresoever the Scripture says all things, it never means any ill thing, quia malum, ut malum, defectio est, nihil est, because, says he, ill things, are no things, ill, considered as ill, is nothing; for, whatsoever is any thing, was made by God, and ill, sin, is no creature of his making. This is true; but that will not ease my soul, no more than it will ease my body, that sickness is nothing, and death is nothing: for death hath no reality, no creation, death is but a privation, and damnation, as it is the everlasting loss of the sight and presence of God, is but a priva

Eph. v. 24.