In what Respects God is hated.

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simple notion of a creature contrary to us, but in regard of some appropriated nature of this or that creature of a different or contrary stamp to our own; so neither can we hate God as God, because in the general and abstracted notion of God, there is nothing contrary to man, no nor to corrupted man, but he is an infinite mirror of goodness, and ravishing loveliness.

Again, we hate not God as Creator and preserver. Hatred always supposes some injury either real or imaginary, or at least the fear of some. And our

hatred doth evaporate, when we find him to be good, whom we hated under a conceit of being bad, or when our supposed injuries are recompenced by comforting benefits. What servant can disdain his master for feeding him, or what child hate his father for begetting and maintaining him? This is contrary to the common sparks of ingenuity, which are in the natures of men, and against their natural interest. Reason will acquaint men with a first cause; and that their beings are produced and preserved by a power superior to their own. Who can loathe this infinite sum for the constant refreshment they receive by his beams and influences, any more than a man can hate the created sun, for the kindly warmth darted upon him? In this respect natural men from a common ingenuity, have some starts of love to God, though this is not a love of a right impression; because it respects not the excellency of God's nature, but the agreeableness of his benefits to us, and so is rather a self-love, as terminated principally in our own welfare, sustained and increased by the influence of his providence: Sometimes this love to God, which a wicked man thinks himself endued with, is rather an enmity, when he loves God with an only respect to his own corrupt ends. As when he professes an affection to God for his preservation, that he may the longer continue in the society of his darling lusts. Or when he loves God for the wealth he gives him; because

he hath thereby the more materials for his luxury and voluptuousness; this is such an affection to God, which may be termed an enmity, since it is subordinate to the love of his brutish lusts. It is a love of him for those mercies which he turns into fuel to support his natural contrariety against God.

SECONDLY. Positively.

Man can

I. We hate God as a sovereign. not endure a superior; he would be uncontroulable. Pharaoh's principle, that would acknowledge none above him, but proclaimed war against heaven, this dwells naturally in every one; Our lips are our own, who is Lord over us? Psal. 12. 4. Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go, Exod. 5. 2. How contemptibly doth he speak of God, which is the dialect of every man's heart? Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice, and let my dearest carnal pleasures go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let them depart from me. A desire of being like to God, or equal to him in wisdom, was the first sin of man after the creation; as to be equal to God in authority and power was the first sin of devils, a renouncing of God's dominion. God by a positive law enjoined man not to eat of the forbidden fruit; a thing in itself indifferent, but commanded for the trial of his obedience, to see whether he would own a subjection to God's absolute will, and abstain from things desirable in themselves, because of the mere pleasure of the Creator. But by his transgression he disowned God's right of commanding, and his own duty of obeying.

The devil knows by his own temper, what bait man was most like to catch at, since the noblest creature among the animals aim most at superiority and victory, Nebuchadnezzar, who was for this aspiring humour to be accounted and worshipped as a sovereign god, was as deservedly as disgracefully turned a grazing among the beasts. the beasts. And the great charge at the last

Hatred of God as a Sovereign.

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day against the sons of men, will be, that they would not have God, or Christ of his appointment, to reign over them. We hate God as a law-giver. As he is peccati prohibitor, Luke 19. 27. It is impossible that man should do otherwise, as considered in the nature wherein he stands, because it is as natural to us to abhor those things which are unsuitable and troublesome, as to please ourselves in things agreeable to our minds and humours. But since man is so deeply in love with sin, accounting it the most estimable good, he cannot but hate the law which checks it, both the external precept, and the counterpart of it in his own conscience, because the strictness of the commands molest and shackle him in his agreeable course, and the severity of its threatenings stare him in the face with curses. As the sea foams most, and casts up most mire, when the impetuousness of it is restrained by some rock, or bounded by the shore.

It is not the law that provokes us to sin directly, but accidentally, because of our corruption, contrary to the image of God's purity in the precept. For we look upon God as cruel, and injurious to our liberty and well-being, and commanding those things which in our apprehensions do thwart and contradict our pleasures. This conceit was the hammer whereby the hellish Jael struck the nail into our first parents, which hath conveyed death and damnation together with the same imagination, to all their posterity, God doth know that in the day you eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. Alas poor soul; God knows what he did, when he forbad you that fruit, he was jealous you should be too happy, and it was a cruelty in him to deprive you of a food so pleasant and delicious, Gen. 3. 5. It was for this end the law was given with thunderings and lightnings from Mount Sinai, to enforce an awe upon men; God well knowing, how apt we are to break the hedges, and fly from restraints.

The sum is, man would be as a lamb in a large place, like a heifer sliding from the yoke, Hos. 4. 16; Mal. 1. 13. He snuffs at the command of his "Lord, and would be subject to no law but his own, and be guided by no will but that of the flesh. Have you not many times wished, that there were no law, or that it were not so strict as to check your darling lusts? What is this but an enmity to the authority of that law you account so burdensome?

2. We hate God as a judge. As autor legis, and ultor legis. As peccati prohibitor, and pœnæ executor. Fear is often the cause of hatred. * All men have a fear of God, not of offending him, but of being punished by him. Corruption kindles this enmity, but fear like a bellows inflames it. When men know they deserve punishment, they must needs fear, and consequently disaffect both the author and the inflicter of it. Guilt makes malefactors tremble at the report of a judge's coming. All the perfections of God, though never so amiable, cannot produce any true spiritual love in a natural man, though he be never so specious in the eye of the world, or good natured to his fellow-creatures, while he lies under the apprehensions of wrath, and is in his own sense concluded under an eternal doom. If you should tell a prisoner that his judge is a brave comely genteel man, of excellent accomplishments, and unspotted innocency, would this commend the person of the judge to the prisoner? No, because he considers him not in his intellectual or moral endowments, but in his political function, as a judge that will try, and condemn, and take away his life.

This hatred of God is stronger or weaker according as the fear is. And therefore in hell it is in its meridian and maturity, and most proper to the damned spirits. But not so evident in this world, unless a man be brought into such a despairing condition as

• Ουδείς yap o poßrerai piλte. Arist. Rhetr. lib. 3. cap. 4.

Hating the very Being of God.

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Spira was, who professed he hated God upon this account; because the acts of God as a judge are remote, and evils at a distance do not so much affect us because we flatter ourselves with hopes of escape. It' is the certainty and approach of judgment that inspires fear. Evils hurt us not by a single apprehension of their nature; for the contemplation may be delightful, as a picture of a storm at sea, or a battle at land; but they affect us as they have relation to us; that which was the devil's language to Christ, What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? art thou come to torment us before the time? Mat. 8. 29. This is the dialect of our hearts; Depart from us, we desire not the knowledge of thy ways, Job, 21. 14, of holiness nor thy ways of justice.

Well then, did none of you ever rage against God under his afflicting hand? Were you never like wild beasts, ready to tear in pieces those that would take and tame you? Did you never wish, that God were so careless, as to enact no law to hurt you; and so unrighteous, as to have no justice to punish you Did you never wish him stripped of his preceptive will, and his revenging arm? Have you not wished sometimes, that the law might be as dead a letter in respect of curses, as it is in respect of conveying strength for the performance of it? that it might be a silent law, like Eli to his sons, never to correct you?

3. When this fear rises high, or men are under a sense of punishment, they hate the very being of God. This rises so high, that it aims at the very essence of God, as in Spira's case, who wished that he could destroy him. Since all men are actuated by a principle of self-preservation, and that this principle is universally natural and predominant, it will move them to take away the life of any person, rather than lose their own life by them. When men look upon God as a judge and punisher of their crimes, if they could by any means, yea by the undeifying of God himself, rescue themselves from those fears, there is