Use for reproof of several sorts of persons 4/4

           

Well, sirs, of what sort soever you are, whether atheistical mockers at holiness, or such as mock at true holiness in the disguise of a false one, take heed what you do; it is as much as your life is worth.  ‘Be not deceived, God will not be mocked,’ nor suffer his grace to be mocked in his saints.  You know how dearly that scoff did cost them, though but children, that spake it to the prophet, ‘Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head,’ II Kings 2:23, where, they did not only revile him with that nickname of bald-head, but made a mock and jeer of Elijah’s rapture into heaven.  As if they had said, ‘You would make us be­lieve your master has gone up to heaven, why do you not go up after him, that we may be rid of both your companies at once?’  And we need not wonder that these children should rise to such a height of wicked­ness so soon, if you observe the place where they lived —at Bethel—which was most infamous for idolatry, and one of the two cities where Jeroboam did set up his calves, I Kings 12:28, so that this seems but the natural language which they learned, no doubt, from their idolatrous parents.  God met with Michal also, for despising her husband, merely upon a religious ac­count, because he showed a holy zeal for God, which her proud spirit, as many others since have done, thought it too mean and base to do.  Well, what is her punishment? ‘Therefore Michal, the daughter of Saul, had no child unto the day of her death.’  The service of God was too low for a king in her thoughts, therefore shall none come out of her womb to sit on the throne or wear a crown.

           It is great wickedness to mock at the calamity of another.  ‘He that mocketh the poor reproacheth his Maker,’ Prov. 17:5.  Yea, to laugh at and triumph over a saint’s sin is a heavy sin.  So did some sons of Be­lial, when David fell into that sad temptation of adul­tery and murder!  And they are upon that account indicted for blaspheming God.  What then is it to mock one for his holiness?  Sin carries some cause of shame, and gives naughty hearts an occasion to re­proach him they see besmeared with that, which is so inglorious and unbecoming, especially a saint.  But holiness, this is honourable, and stamps dignity on the person that hath it.  It is not only the nobility of the creature, but the honour of the most high God himself.  So runs his title of honour, ‘Who is like thee, glorious in holiness?’ Ex. 15:11, so that none can mock that, but, upon the same account, he must mock God infinitely more, because there is infinitely more of that holiness which he jeers at in the crea­ture, to be found in God, than all the creatures, men and angels in both worlds, have among them.  If you would contrive a way how to cast the greatest dis­honour upon God possible, you could not hit upon the like to this.  The Romans, when they would put contempt upon any, and degrade them of their nobil­ity, commanded that those, their statues and por­traitures, which were set up in the city or temples to their memory, should all be broken down.  Every saint is a lively image of God, and the more holy, the more like God; when thou therefore puttest scorn on them, and that for their holiness, now thou touchest God’s honour nearly indeed.  Will nothing less con­tent thee but thou must deface that image of his, which he hath erected, with so much cost, in his saints, on purpose that they might be a praise to him in the earth?  Was it such horrible wickedness in those heathens to ‘cast fire into the sanctuary,’ and to ‘break down the carved work thereof,....with axes and hammers,’ Ps. 74:6, 7, of which the church makes her moan, ‘O God, how long shall the adversary re­proach? shall the enemy blaspheme thy name for ever?’ ver. 10.  What then is thy devilish malice, whose rage is spent, not on wood and stones, but on the carved work of his Spirit—the grace and holiness of his living temples?