From hence you may see, not only what blasphemy and impiety
it is to lay the blame of men’s destruction upon God, but also, how unfit these
wicked wretches are to bring in such a charge against their Maker. They cry out
upon God, and say, he gives them not grace, and his threatnings are severe, and
God forbid that all should be damned that be not converted and sanctified: and they
think it a hard measure that a short sin should have an endless suffering; and if
they be damned they say they cannot help it; when in the mean time they are busy
about their own destruction, even cutting the throat of their own souls, and will
not be persuaded to hold their hands. They think God were cruel if he should damn
them; and yet they are so cruel to themselves, that they will run
into the fire of hell; when God hath told them it is a little before them, and neither
intreaties, nor threatnings, nor any thing that can be said, will stop them. We
see them almost undone; their careless, worldly, fleshly lives do tell us, that
they are in the power of the devil; we know, if they die before they are converted,
all the world cannot save them; and, knowing the uncertainty of their lives, we
are afraid every day lest they drop into the fire. And, therefore, we intreat them
to pity their own souls, and not to undo themselves when mercy is at hand, and they
will not hear us. We intreat them to cast away their sin, and come to Christ without
delay, and to have some mercy on themselves, but they will have none. And yet they
think that God must be cruel if he condemn them. O wilful miserable sinners! It
is not God that is cruel to you; it is you that are cruel to yourselves. You are
told that you must turn or burn, and yet you turn not. You are told, that if you
will needs keep your sins, you shall keep the curse of God with them, and yet you
will keep them. You are told that there is no way to happiness but by holiness;
and yet you will not be holy. What would you have God say more to you? What would
you have him do with his mercy? He offereth it to you, and you will not have it.
You are in the ditch of sin and misery, and he would give you his hand to help you
out, and you refuse his help: he would cleanse you of your sins, and you had rather
keep them. You love your lust, and love your gluttony, and sports, and drunkenness,
and will not let them go. Would you have him bring you to heaven whether you will
or not? Or would you have him bring you and your sins to heaven together? Why that
is an impossibility: you may as well expect he should turn the sun into darkness. What! an unsanctified fleshly heart to be in heaven! it cannot be. “There entereth
nothing that is unclean,”
Rev. xxi. 17. “For what communion
hath light with darkness, or Christ with Belial?”
2 Cor. vi. 14, 15. “All the day long hath he stretched out his
hands to a disobedient and gainsaying people,”
Rom.
x. 25. What will you do now? Will you cry to God for mercy? Why God calleth
upon you to have mercy upon yourselves, and you will not. Ministers see the poisoned
cup in the drunkard’s hand, and tell him, there is poison in it, and desire him
to have mercy on his soul, and forbear; and he will not hear us: drink it he must
and will; he loves it; and therefore, though hell come next, he saith he cannot
help it. What should one say to such men as these? We tell the ungodly careless
worldling, it is not such a life that will serve the turn, or ever bring you to
heaven. If a bear were at your back, you would mend your pace, and, when the curse
of God is at your back, and Satan and hell are at your back, will you not stir,
but ask, What needs all this ado? Is an immortal soul of no more worth? Oh! have
mercy upon yourselves! But they will have no mercy on themselves, nor once regard
us. We tell them the end will be bitter. Who can dwell with the everlasting fire?
And yet they will have no mercy on themselves. And yet will these poor wretches
say, that God is more merciful than to condemn them, when it is themselves that
cruelly and unmercifully run upon condemnation; and if we should go to them, and entreat them, we cannot stop them. If we should fall on our knees to them, we cannot
stop them; but to hell they will go, and yet will not believe that they are going
thither. If we beg of them for the sake of God that made them, and preserveth them;
for the sake of Christ, that died for them; for the sake of their
own poor souls, to pity themselves, and go no farther in the way to hell, but come
to Christ while his arms are open, and enter into the state of life while the door
stands open, and now take mercy while mercy may be had; they will not be persuaded.
If we should die for it, we cannot so much as get them so much as now and then to
consider with themselves of the matter, and turn. And yet they can say, “I hope
God will be merciful.” Did you never consider what he saith,
Isaiah xxvii. 11. “It is a people of no understanding, therefore
he that made them will not have mercy on them; and he that formed them will shew
them no favour” If another man will not clothe you when you are naked, and feed
you when you are hungry, you will say he is unmerciful. If he should cast you into
prison, or beat and torment you, you would say he is unmerciful. And yet you will
do a thousand times more against yourselves, even cast away both soul and body for
ever, and never complain of your own unmercifulness! Yea, and God, that waited upon
you all the while with his mercy, must be taken to be unmerciful, if he punish you
after all this. Unless the Holy God of heaven will give these wretches leave to
trample upon his Son’s blood, and with the Jews, as it were, again to spit in his
face, and do despite to the spirit of grace, and make a jest of sin, and a
mock at holiness, and set more light by saving mercy than by the filth of their
fleshly pleasures; and unless, after all this, He will save them by the mercy which
they cast away, and would none of, God himself must be called unmerciful by them.—But
he will be justified when he judgeth, and he will not stand or fall at the bar of
a sinful worm. ...When so ugly a monster as sin
is within us, and so heavy a thing as punishment is on us, and so dreadful a thing
as hell is before us, one would think it would be an easy question, who is in the
fault, whether God or man be the principal or culpable cause? Some men are such
favourable judges of themselves, that they are proner to accuse the infinite perfection
and goodness itself than their own hearts, and imitate their first parents, that
said, “The serpent tempted me, and the woman that thou gavest me gave unto me, and
I did eat;”—secretly implying that God was the cause. So say they, “the understanding
that thou gavest me was unable to discern; the will that thou gavest me was unable
to make a better choice; the objects which thou didst set before me did entice me;
the temptation which thou didst permit to assault me prevailed against me.” And
some are so loathe to think that God can make a self-determinate creature, that
they dare not deny him that which they take to be his prerogative to be the determiner
of the will in every sin, as the first efficient immediate physical cause.—And many
would be content to acquit God from so much causing of evil, if they could but reconcile
it with his being the chief cause of good: as if truths would be no longer truths
if we are unable to see them in their perfect order and coherence; because our raveled
wits cannot see them right together, nor assign each truth its proper
place, we presume to conclude that some must be cast away. This is the fruit of
proud self-conceitedness; when men receive not God’s truth as a child his lesson,
in a holy submission to the omniscience of our teacher but as censurers that are
too wise to learn.
- Richard Baxter (A Call to the Unconverted, Sermon 4)
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