TITLE. This admirable ode is simply headed,
"To the Chief Musician, by David." The dedication
to the Chief Musician stands at the head of fifty-three of the
Psalms, and clearly indicates that such psalms were intended,
not merely for the private use of believers, but to be sung in
the great assemblies by the appointed choir at whose head was
the overseer, or superintendent, called in our version,
"the Chief Musician," and by Ainsworth, "the
Master of the Music." Several of these psalms have little
or no praise in them, and were not addressed directly to the
Most High, and yet were to be sung in public worship; which is a
clear indication that the theory of Augustine lately revived by
certain hymn-book makers, that nothing but praise should be
sung, is far more plausible than scriptural. Not only did the
ancient Church chant hallowed doctrine and offer prayer amid her
spiritual songs, but even the wailing notes of complaint were
put into her mouth by the sweet singer of Israel who was
inspired of God. Some persons grasp at any nicety which has a
gloss of apparent correctness upon it, and are pleased with
being more fancifully precise than others; nevertheless it will
ever be the way of plain men, not only to magnify the Lord in
sacred canticles, but also, according to Paul's precept, to
teach and admonish one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual
songs, singing with grace in their hearts unto the Lord.
As
no distinguishing title is given to this Psalm, we would suggest
as an assistance to the memory, the heading—CONCERNING
PRACTICAL ATHEISM. The many conjectures as to the occasion
upon which it was written are so completely without foundation,
that it would be a waste of time to mention them at length. The
apostle Paul, in Romans 3, has shown incidentally that the drift
of the inspired writer is to show that both Jews and Gentiles
are all under sin; there was, therefore, no reason for fixing
upon any particular historical occasion, when all of history
reeks with terrible evidence of human corruption. With
instructive alterations, David has given us in Psalm 53 a second
edition of this humiliating psalm, being moved of the Holy Ghost
thus doubly to declare a truth which is ever distasteful to
carnal minds.
DIVISION. The world's foolish creed (verse
1); its practical influence in corrupting morals, 1, 2, 3. The
persecuting tendencies of sinners, 4; their alarms, 5; their
ridicule of the godly, 6; and a prayer for the manifestation of
the Lord to his people's joy.
EXPOSITION Verse 1. "The fool."
The Atheist is the fool pre-eminently, and a fool
universally. He would not deny God if he were not a fool by
nature, and having denied God it is no marvel that he becomes a
fool in practice. Sin is always folly, and as it is the height
of sin to attack the very existence of the Most High, so it is
also the greatest imaginable folly. To say there is no God is to
belie the plainest evidence, which is obstinacy; to oppose the
common consent of mankind, which is stupidity; to stifle
consciousness, which is madness. If the sinner could by his
atheism destroy the God whom he hates there were some sense,
although much wickedness, in his infidelity; but as denying the
existence of fire does not prevent its burning a man who is in
it, so doubting the existence of God will not stop the Judge of
all the earth from destroying the rebel who breaks his laws;
nay, this atheism is a crime which much provokes heaven, and
will bring down terrible vengeance on the fool who indulges it.
The proverb says, "A fool's tongue cuts his own
throat," and in this instance it kills both soul and body
for ever: would to God the mischief stopped even there, but
alas! one fool makes hundreds, and a noisy blasphemer spreads
his horrible doctrines as lepers spread the plague. Ainsworth,
in his "Annotations," tells us that the word here used
is Nabal, which has the signification of fading, dying,
or falling away, as a withered leaf or flower; it is a title
given to the foolish man as having lost the juice and sap of
wisdom, reason, honesty, and godliness. Trapp hits the mark when
he calls him "that sapless fellow, that carcase of a man,
that walking sepulchre of himself, in whom all religion and
right reason is withered and wasted, dried up and decayed. Some
translate it the apostate, and others the wretch.
With what earnestness should we shun the appearance of doubt as
to the presence, activity, power and love of God, for all such
mistrust is of the nature of folly, and who among us would wish
to be ranked with the fool in the text? Yet let us never forget
that all unregenerate men are more or less such fools.
The
fool "hath said in his heart." May a man with
his mouth profess to believe, and yet in heart say the reverse?
Had he hardly become audacious enough to utter his folly with
his tongue? Did the Lord look upon his thoughts as being in the
nature of words to Him though not to man? Is this where man
first becomes an unbeliever?—in his heart, not in his head?
And when he talks atheistically, is it a foolish heart speaking,
and endeavouring to clamour down the voice of conscience? We
think so. If the affections were set upon truth and
righteousness, the understanding would have no difficulty in
settling the question of a present personal Deity, but as the
heart dislikes the good and the right, it is no wonder that it
desires to be rid of that Elohim, who is the great moral
Governor, the Patron of rectitude and the Punisher of iniquity.
While men's hearts remain what they are, we must not be
surprised at the prevalence of scepticism; a corrupt tree will
bring forth corrupt fruit. "Every man," says Dickson,
"so long as he lieth unrenewed and unreconciled to God is
nothing in effect but a madman." What wonder then if he
raves? Such fools as those we are now dealing with are common to
all time, and all countries; they grow without watering, and are
found all the world over. The spread of mere intellectual
enlightenment will not diminish their number, for since it is an
affair of the heart, this folly and great learning will often
dwell together. To answer sceptical cavillings will be labour
lost until grace enters to make the mind willing to believe;
fools can raise more objections in an hour than wise men can
answer in seven years, indeed it is their mirth to set stools
for wise men to stumble over. Let the preacher aim at the heart,
and preach the all-conquering love of Jesus, and he will by
God's grace win more doubters to the faith of the gospel than
any hundred of the best reasoners who only direct their
arguments to the head.
"The
fool hath said in his heart, There is no God," or "no
God." So monstrous is the assertion, that the man
hardly dared to put it as a positive statement, but went very
near to doing so. Calvin seems to regard this saying, "no
God," as hardly amounting to a syllogism, scarcely reaching
to a positive, dogmatical declaration; but Dr. Alexander clearly
shows that it does. It is not merely the wish of the sinner's
corrupt nature, and the hope of his rebellious heart, but he
manages after a fashion to bring himself to assert it, and at
certain seasons he thinks that he believes it. It is a solemn
reflection that some who worship God with their lips may in
their hearts be saying, "no God." It is worthy of
observation that he does not say there is no Jehovah, but there
is no Elohim; Deity in the abstract is not so much the object of
attack, as the covenant, personal, ruling and governing presence
of God in the world. God as ruler, lawgiver, worker, Saviour, is
the butt at which the arrows of human wrath are shot. How
impotent the malice! How mad the rage which raves and foams
against Him in whom we live and move and have our being! How
horrible the insanity which leads a man who owes his all to God
to cry out, "No God"! How terrible the
depravity which makes the whole race adopt this as their hearts
desire, "no God!"
"They
are corrupt." This refers to all men, and we have the
warrant of the Holy Ghost for so saying; see the third chapter
of the epistle to the Romans. Where there is enmity to God,
there is deep, inward depravity of mind. The words are rendered
by eminent critics in an active sense, "they have done
corruptly:" this may serve to remind us that sin is not
only in our nature passively as the source of evil, but we
ourselves actively fan the flame and corrupt ourselves, making
that blacker still which was black as darkness itself already.
We rivet our own chains by habit and continuance.
"They
have done abominable works." When men begin with
renouncing the Most High God, who shall tell where they will
end? When the Master's eyes are put out, what will not the
servants do? Observe the state of the world before the flood, as
pourtrayed in Genesis 6:12, and remember that human nature is
unchanged. He who would see a terrible photograph of the world
without God must read that most painful of all inspired
Scriptures, the first chapter of the epistle to the Romans.
Learned Hindoos have confessed that the description is literally
correct in Hindostan at the present moment; and were it not for
the restraining grace of God, it would be so in England. Alas!
it is even here but too correct a picture of things which are
done of men in secret. Things loathsome to God and man are sweet
to some palates.
"There
is none that doeth good." Sins of omission must abound
where transgressions are rife. Those who do the things which
they ought not to have done, are sure to leave undone those
things which they ought to have done. What a picture of our race
is this! Save only where grace reigns, there is none that doeth
good; humanity, fallen and debased, is a desert without an
oasis, a night without a star, a dunghill without a jewel, a
hell without a bottom.
Verse 2. "The Lord looked down from heaven upon the
children of men." As from a watchtower, or other
elevated place of observation, the Lord is represented as gazing
intently upon men. He will not punish blindly, nor like a tyrant
command an indiscriminate massacre because a rumour of rebellion
has come up to his ears. What condescending interest and
impartial justice are here imaged! The case of Sodom, visited
before it was overthrown, illustrates the careful manner in
which Divine Justice beholds the sin before it avenges it, and
searches out the righteous that they perish not with the guilty.
Behold then the eyes of Omniscience ransacking the globe, and
prying among every people and nation, "to see if there
were any that did understand and seek God." He who is
looking down knows the good, is quick to discern it, would be
delighted to find it; but as he views all the unregenerate
children of men his search is fruitless, for of all the race of
Adam, no unrenewed soul is other than an enemy to God and
goodness. The objects of the Lord's search are not wealthy men,
great men, or learned men; these, with all they can offer,
cannot meet the demands of the great Governor: at the same time,
he is not looking for superlative eminence in virtue, he seeks
for any that understand themselves, their state, their
duty, their destiny, their happiness; he looks for any that seek
God, who, if there be a God, are willing and anxious to find
him out. Surely this is not too great a matter to expect; for if
men have not yet known God, if they have any right
understanding, they will seek him. Alas! even this low degree of
good is not to be found even by him who sees all things: but men
love the hideous negation of "No God," and with their
backs to their Creator, who is the sun of their life, they
journey into the dreary region of unbelief and alienation, which
is a land of darkness as darkness itself, and of the shadow of
death without any order and where the light is as darkness.
Verse 3. "They are all gone aside." Without
exception, all men have apostatized from the Lord their Maker,
from his laws, and from all the eternal principles of right.
Like stubborn heifers they have sturdily refused to receive the
yoke, like errant sheep they have found a gap and left the right
field. The original speaks of the race as a whole, as a
totality; and humanity as a whole has become depraved in heart
and defiled in life. "They have altogether become
filthy;" as a whole they are spoiled and soured like
corrupt leaven, or, as some put it, they have become putrid and
even stinking. The only reason why we do not more clearly see
this foulness is because we are accustomed to it, just as those
who work daily among offensive odours at last cease to smell
them. The miller does not observe the noise of his own mill, and
we are slow to discover our own ruin and depravity. But are
there no special cases, are all men sinful? "Yes,"
says the Psalmist, in a manner not to be mistaken, "they
are." He has put it positively, he repeats it negatively, "There
is none that doeth good, no, not one." The Hebrew
phrase is an utter denial concerning any mere man that he of
himself doeth good. What can be more sweeping? This is the
verdict of the all-seeing Jehovah, who cannot exaggerate or
mistake. As if no hope of finding a solitary specimen of a good
man among the unrenewed human family might be harboured for an
instant. The Holy Spirit is not content with saying all
and altogether, but adds the crushing threefold negative, "none,
no, not one." What say the opponents to the doctrine of
natural depravity to this? Rather what do we feel
concerning it? Do we not confess that we by nature are corrupt,
and do we not bless the sovereign grace which has renewed us in
the spirit of our minds, that sin may no more have dominion over
us, but that grace may rule and reign?
Verse 4. Hatred of God and corruptness of life are the motive
forces which produce persecution. Men who having no saving
knowledge of divine things, enslave themselves to become workers
of iniquity, have no heart to cry to the Lord for deliverance,
but seek to amuse themselves with devouring the poor and
despised people of God. It is hard bondage to be a "worker
of iniquity;" a worker at the galleys, or in the mines
of Siberia, is not more truly degraded and wretched; the toil is
hard and the reward dreadful: those who have no knowledge choose
such slavery, but those who are taught of God cry to be rescued
from it. The same ignorance which keeps men bondsmen to evil,
makes them hate the freeborn sons of God; hence they seek to eat
them up "as they eat bread,"—daily,
ravenously, as though it were an ordinary, usual, every-day
matter to oppress the saints of God. As pikes in a pond, eat up
little fish, as eagles prey on smaller birds, as wolves rend the
sheep of the pasture, so sinners naturally and as a matter of
course, persecute, malign, and mock the followers of the Lord
Jesus. While thus preying, they forswear all praying, and in
this act consistently, for how could they hope to be heard while
their hands are full of blood?
Verse 5. Oppressors have it not all their own way, they have
their fits of trembling and their appointed seasons of
overthrow. There—where they denied God and hectored
against his people; there—where they thought of peace
and safety, they were made to quail. "There were
they"—these very loud-mouthed, iron-handed,
proud-hearted Nimrods and Herods, those heady, high-minded
sinners—"there were they in great fear." A
panic terror seized them: "they feared a fear," as the
Hebrew puts it; an undefinable, horrible, mysterious dread crept
over them. The most hardened of men have their periods when
conscience casts them into a cold sweat of alarm. As cowards are
cruel, so all cruel men are at heart cowards. The ghost of past
sin is a terrible spectre to haunt any man, and though
unbelievers may boast as loudly as they will, a sound is in
their ears which makes them ill at ease.
"For
God is in the generation of the righteous." This makes
the company of godly men so irksome to the wicked because they
perceive that God is with them. Shut their eyes as they may,
they cannot but perceive the image of God in the character of
his truly gracious people, nor can they fail to see that he
works for their deliverance. Like Haman, they instinctively feel
a trembling when they see God's Mordecais. Even though the saint
may be in a mean position, mourning at the gate where the
persecutor rejoices in state, the sinner feels the influence of
the believer's true nobility and quails before it, for God is
there. Let scoffers beware, for they persecute the Lord Jesus
when they molest his people; the union is very close between God
and his people, it amounts to a mysterious indwelling, for God
is in the generation of the righteous.
Verse 6. Notwithstanding their real cowardice, the wicked put
on the lion's skin and lord it over the Lord's poor ones. Though
fools themselves, they mock at the truly wise as if the folly
were on their side; but this is what might be expected, for how
should brutish minds appreciate excellence, and how can those
who have owl's eyes admire the sun? The special point and butt
of their jest seems to be the confidence of the godly in their
Lord. What can your God do for you now? Who is that God who can
deliver out of our hand? Where is the reward of all your praying
and beseeching? Taunting questions of this sort they thrust into
the faces of weak but gracious souls, and tempt them to feel
ashamed of their refuge. Let us not be laughed out of our
confidence by them, let us scorn their scorning and defy their
jeers; we shall need to wait but a little, and then the Lord our
refuge will avenge his own elect, and ease himself of his
adversaries, who once made so light of him and of his people.
Verse 6. Natural enough is this closing prayer, for what
would so effectually convince atheists, overthrow persecutors,
stay sin, and secure the godly, as the manifest appearance of
Israel's great Salvation? The coming of Messiah was the desire
of the godly in all ages, and though he has already come with a
sin-offering to purge away iniquity, we look for him to come a
second time, to come without a sin-offering unto salvation. O
that these weary years would have an end! Why tarries he so
long? He knows that sin abounds and that his people are
down-trodden; why comes he not to the rescue? His glorious
advent will restore his ancient people from literal captivity,
and his SPIRITUAL seed from spiritual sorrow. Wrestling Jacob
and prevailing Israel shall alike rejoice before him when he is
revealed as their salvation. O that he were come! What happy,
holy, halcyon, heavenly days should we then see! But let us not
count him slack, for behold he comes, he comes quickly! Blessed
are all they that wait for him.
EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS
Whole Psalm. There is a peculiar mark put upon this
Psalm, in that it is twice in the Book of psalms. The fourteenth
Psalm and the fifty-third Psalm are the same, with the
alteration of one or two expressions at most. And there is
another mark put upon it, that the apostle transcribes a great
part of it. Romans 3:10-12.
It
contains a description of a most deplorable state of things in
the world—ay, in Israel; a most deplorable state, by reason of
the general corruption that was befallen all sorts of men, in
their principles, and in their practices, and in their opinions.
First,
it was a time when there was a mighty prevalent principle
of atheism got into the world, got among the great men of the
world. Saith he, "That is their principle, they say in
their hearts, 'There is no God.'" It is true, they did not
absolutely profess it; but it was the principle whereby all
their actings were regulated, and which they conformed unto. "The
fool," saith he, "hath said in his heart, There
is no God." Not this or that particular man, but the
fool—that is, those foolish men; for in the next word he tells
you, "They are corrupt;" and verse 3, "They
are all gone aside." "The fool" is taken
indefinitely for the great company and society of foolish men,
to intimate that whatsoever they were divided about else, they
were all agreed in this. "They are all a company of
atheists," saith he, "practical atheists."
Secondly,
their affections were suitable to this principle, as all
men's affections and actions are suitable to their principles.
What are you to expect from men whose principle is, that there
is no God? Why, saith he, for their affections, "They are
corrupt;" which he expresseth again (verse 3), "They
are all gone aside, they are altogether become filthy."
"All gone aside." The word in the original is,
"They are all grown sour;" as drink, that hath been
formerly of some use, but when grown vapid— lost all its
spirits and life—it is an insipid thing, good for nothing.
And, saith he, "They are altogether become filthy"—
"become stinking," as the margin hath it. They have
corrupt affections, that have left them no life, no savour; but
stinking, corrupt lusts prevail in them universally. They say,
"There is no God;" and they are filled with stinking,
corrupt lusts.
Thirdly,
if this be their principle and these their affections, let us
look after their actions, to see if they be any better.
But consider their actions. They be of two sorts; 1. How they
act in the world, 2. How they act toward the people of God.
1.
How do they act in the world? Why, consider that, as to their
duties which they omit, and as to the wickednesses which they
perform. What good do they do? Nay, saith he, "None of
them doeth good." Yea, some of them. "No, not
one." Saith he, verses 1, 3, "There is none that
doeth good, no, not one." If there was any one among them
that did attend to what was really good, and useful in the
world, there was some hope. "No," saith he,
"their principle is atheism, their affections are corrupt;
and for good, there is not one of them doeth any good—they
omit all duties."
What
do they do for evil? Why, saith he, "They have done
abominable works"—"works," saith he,
"not to be named, not to be spoken of—works which God
abhors, which all good men abhor." "Abominable
works," saith he, "such as the very light of nature
would abhor;" and give me leave to use the expression of
the psalmist—"stinking, filthy works." So he doth
describe the state and condition of things under the reign of
Saul, when he wrote this Psalm.
2.
"If thus it be with them, and if thus it be with their own
ways, yet they let the people of God alone; they will not add
that to the rest of their sins." Nay, it is quite
otherwise, saith he, "They eat up my people as they eat
bread." "Those workers of iniquity have no
knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not
upon the Lord." What is the reason why he brings it in in
that manner? Why could he not say, "They have no knowledge
that do such abominable things;" but brings it in thus,
"They have no knowledge who eat up my people as they eat
bread?" "It is strange, that after all my dealings
with them and declaration of my will, they should be so brutish
as not to know this would be their ruin. Don't they know this
will devour them, destroy them, and be called over again in a
particular manner? In the midst of all the sins, and greatest
and highest provocations that are in the world, God lays a
special weight upon the eating of his people. They may feed upon
their own lusts what they will; but, "Have they no
knowledge, that they eat up my people as they eat bread?"
There
are very many things that might be observed from all this; but I
aim to give but a few hints from the Psalms.
Well,
what is the state of things now? You see what it was with them.
How was it with the providence of God in reference unto them?
Which is strange, and a man would scarce believe it in such a
course as this is, he tells you (verse 5), notwithstanding all
this, they were in great fear. "There were they in great
fear," saith he. May be so, for they saw some evil
coming upon them. No, there was nothing but the hand of God in
it; for in Psalm 53:5, where these words are repeated, it is,
"There were they in great fear, where no fear
was"—no visible cause of fear yet they were in great
fear.
God
by his providence seldom gives an absolute, universal security
unto men in their height of sin, and oppression, and sensuality,
and lusts; but he will secretly put them in fear where no fear
is: and though there be nothing seen that should cause them to
have any fear, they shall act like men at their wits' end with
fear.
But
whence should this fear arise? Saith he, it ariseth from hence, "For
God is in the generation of the righteous." Plainly
they see their work doth not go on; their meat doth not digest
with them; their bread doth not go well down. "They were
eating and devouring my people, and when they came to devour
them, they found God was among them (they could not digest their
bread); and this put them in fear; quite surprised them."
They came, and thought to have found them a sweet morsel: when
engaged, God was there filling their mouth and teeth with
gravel; and he began to break out the jawbone of the terrible
ones when they came to feed upon them. Saith he, "God was
there." (Verse 5.)
The
Holy Ghost gives an account of the state of things that was
between those two sorts of people he had described—between the
fool and the people of God—them that were devouring, and them
that had been utterly devoured, had not God been among them.
Both were in fear—they that were to be devoured, and those
that did devour. And they took several ways for their relief;
and he showeth what those ways were, and what judgment they made
upon the ways of one another. Saith he, "Ye have shamed
the counsel of the poor, because the Lord is his refuge."
There
are the persons spoken of—they are "the poor;" and
that is those who are described in the verses foregoing, the
people that were ready to be eaten up and devoured.
And
there is the hope and refuge that these poor had in such a time
as this, when all things were in fear; and that was "the
LORD." The poor maketh the Lord his refuge.
And
you may observe here, that as he did describe all the wicked as
one man, "the fool," so he describes all his own
people as one man, "the poor"—that is, the poor man:
"Because the LORD is his refuge." He keeps it in the
singular number. Whatsoever the people of God may differ in,
they are all as one man in this business.
And
there is the way whereby these poor make God their refuge. They
do it by "counsel," saith he. It is not a thing they
do by chance, but they look upon it as their wisdom. They do it
upon consideration, upon advice. It is a thing of great wisdom.
Well,
what thoughts have the others concerning this acting of theirs?
The poor make God their refuge; and they do it by counsel. What
judgment, now, doth the world make of this counsel of theirs?
Why, they "shame it;" that is, they cast shame upon
it, contemn it as a very foolish thing, to make the Lord their
refuge. "Truly, if they could make this or that great man
their refuge, it were something; but to make the Lord their
refuge, this is the foolishest thing in the world," say
they. To shame men's counsel, to despise their counsel as
foolish, is as great contempt as they can lay upon them.
Here
you see the state of things as they are represented in this
Psalm, and spread before the Lord: which being laid down, the
psalmist showeth what our duty is upon such a state of
things—what is the duty of the people of God, things thus
being stated. Saith he, "Their way is to go to
prayer:" verse 7, "O that the salvation of Israel
were come out of Zion! when the Lord bringeth back the captivity
of his people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be
glad." If things are thus stated, then cry, then pray,
"O that the salvation of Israel were come out of
Zion," etc. There shall a revenue of praise come to God out
of Zion, to the rejoicing of his people. John Owen.
Verse 1. "The fool." That sapless
fellow, that carcase of a man, that walking sepulchre of
himself, in whom all religion and right reason is withered and
wasted, dried up and decayed. That apostate in whom natural
principles are extinct, and from whom God is departed, as when
the prince is departed, hangings are taken down. That mere
animal that hath no more than a reasonable soul, and for little
other purpose than as salt, to keep his body from putrefying.
That wicked man hereafter described, that studieth atheism. John
Trapp.
Verse 1. "The fool," etc. The world
we live in is a world of fools. The far greater part of mankind
act a part entirely irrational. So great is their infatuation,
that they prefer time to eternity, momentary enjoyments to those
that shall never have an end, and listen to the testimony of
Satan in preference to that of God. Of all folly, that is the
greatest, which relates to eternal objects, because it is the
most fatal, and when persisted in through life, entirely
remediless. A mistake in the management of temporal concerns may
be afterwards rectified. At any rate, it is comparatively of
little importance. But an error in spiritual and eternal
matters, as it is in itself of the greatest moment, if carried
through life, can never be remedied; because after death there
is no redemption. The greatest folly that any creature is
capable of, is that of denying or entertaining unjust
apprehensions of the being and perfections of the great Creator.
Therefore in a way of eminence, the appellation of fool
is given by the Spirit of God, to him who is chargeable with
this guilt. "The fool hath said in his heart, There is
no God." John Jamieson, M.A., 1789.
Verse 1. "The fool," a term in
Scripture signifying a wicked man, used also by the heathen
philosophers to signify a vicious person, (Heb.) as coming from
(Heb.) signifies the extinction of life in men, animals, and
plants; so the word (Heb.) is taken Isaiah 40:7, (Heb.)
"the flower fadeth" (Isaiah 28:1), a plant that hath
lost all that juice that made it lovely and useful. So, a fool
is one that hath lost his wisdom and right notion of God and
divine things, which were communicated to man by creation; one
dead in sin, yet one not so much void of rational faculties, as
of grace in those faculties; not one that wants a reason, but
abuses his reason. Stephen Charnock.
Verse 1. "The fool hath said," etc.
This folly is bound up in every heart. It is bound, but it is
not tongue-tied; it speaks blasphemous things against God, it
says there is "no God." There is a
difference indeed in the language: gross sins speak this louder,
there are crying sins; but though less sins speak it not so
loud, they whisper it. But the Lord can hear the language of the
heart, the whisperings of its motions, as plainly as we hear one
another in our ordinary discourse. Oh, how heinous is the least
sin, which is so injurious to the very being of the great God! David
Clarkson.
Verse 1. "The fool hath said in his heart,
There is no God." If you will turn over some few
leaves, as far as the fifty-third Psalm, you shall not only find
my text, but this whole Psalm, without any alteration, save only
in the fifth verse, and that not at all in the sense neither.
What shall we say? Took the Holy Spirit of God such especial
particular notice of the sayings and deeds of a fool,
that one expression of them would not serve the turn? Or, does
that babbling and madness of a fool so much concern us, as that
we need to have them urged upon us once and again, and a third
time in the third of the Romans? Surely not any one of us
present here, is this fool! Nay, if one of us could but tell
where to find such a fool as this, that would offer to say,
though in his heart, "There is no God," he
should not rest in quiet, he should soon perceive we were not of
his faction. We that are able to tell David an article or two of
faith more than ever he was acquainted with! Nay, more; can we
with any imaginable ground of reason be supposed liable to any
suspicion of atheism, that are able to read to David a lecture
out of his own Psalms, and explain the meaning of his own
prophecies much clearer than himself which held the pen to the
Holy Spirit of God? Though we cannot deny but that in other
things there may be found some spice of folly and imperfection
in us, but it cannot be imagined that we, who are almost cloyed
with heavenly manna of God's word, that can instruct our
teachers, and are able to maintain opinions and tenets, the
scruples whereof not both the universities in this land, nor the
whole clergy are able to resolve, that it should be possible for
us ever to come to that perfection and excellency of folly and
madness, as to entertain thought that there is no God:
nay, we are not so uncharitable as to charge a Turk or an
infidel with such a horrible imputation as this.
Beloved
Christians, be not wise in your own conceits: if you will
seriously examine the third of Romans (which I mentioned
before), you shall find that Paul, out of this Psalm, and the
like words of Isaiah, doth conclude the whole posterity of Adam
(Christ only excepted), under sin and the curse of God; which
inference of his were weak and inconcluding, unless every man of
his own nature were such a one as the prophet here describes;
and the same apostle in another place expresses, "Even
altogether without God in the world," i.e., not
maintaining it as an opinion which they would undertake by force
of argument to confirm. That there is no God: for we read not of
above three or four among the heathens, that were of any
fashion, which went this far; but such as though in their
discourse and serious thoughts they do not question a deity, but
would abhor any man that would not liberally allow unto God all
his glorious attributes, yet in their hearts and affections they
deny him; they live as if there was no God, having no respect at
all to him in all their projects, and therefore, indeed and in
God's esteem, become formally, and in strict propriety of
speech, very atheists. William Chillingworth, 1602-1643.
Verse 1. "The fool hath said in his heart,
There is no God." Why do men resist God's authority,
against which they cannot dispute? and disobey his commands,
unto which they cannot devise to frame an exception? What but
the spirit of enmity, can make them regret "so easy a
yoke," reject so "light a burden," shun and fly
off from so peaceful and pleasant paths? yea, and take ways that
so manifestly "take hold of hell, and lead down to the
chambers of death," rather choosing to perish than obey? Is
not this the very height of enmity? What further proof would we
seek of a disaffected and implacable heart? Yet to all this we
may cast in that fearful addition, their saying in their heart, "No
God;" as much as to say, "O that there were
none!" This is enmity not only to the highest pitch of wickedness,
to wish their common parent extinct, the author of their being,
but even unto madness itself. For in the forgetful heat
of this transport, it is not thought on that they wish the most
absolute impossibility; and that, if it were possible, they
wish, with his, the extinction of their own and of all being;
and that the sense of their hearts, put into words, would amount
to no less than a direful and most horrid execration and curse
upon God and the whole creation of God at once! As if, by the
blasphemy of their poisonous breath, they would wither all
nature, blast the whole universe of being, and make it fade,
languish, and drop into nothing. This is to set their mouth
against heaven and earth, themselves, and all things at once, as
if they thought their feeble breath should overpower the
omnipotent Word, shake and shiver the adamantine pillars of
heaven and earth, and the Almighty fiat be defeated by
their nay, striking at the root of all! So fitly is it
said, "The fool hath in his heart" muttered
thus. Nor are there few such fools; but this is plainly given us
as the common character of apostate man, the whole revolted
race, of whom it is said in very general terms, "They are
all gone back, there is none that doeth good." This is
their sense, one and all, that is, comparatively; and the true
state of the case being laid before them, it is more their
temper and sense to say, "No God," than to repent,
"and turn to him." What mad enmity is this! Nor can we
devise into what else to resolve it. John Howe.
Verse 1. "The fool hath said in his heart,
there is no God." He that shall deny there is a God,
sins with a very high hand against the light of nature; for
every creature, yea, the least gnat and fly, and the meanest
worm that crawls upon the ground will confute and confound that
man that disputes whether there be a God or no. The name of God
is written in such full, fair, and shining characters upon the
whole creation, that all men may run and read that there is a
God. The notion of a deity is so strongly and deeply impressed
upon the tables of all men's hearts, that to deny a God is to
quench the very principles of common nature; yea, it is formally
deicidium, a killing of God, as much a sin the creature
lies. There are none of these atheists in hell, for the devils
believe and tremble. James 2:19. The Greek word priddoudi, that
is here used, signifies properly the roaring of the sea; it
implies such an extreme fear, as causeth not only trembling, but
also a roaring and screeching out. Mark 6:49; Acts 16:29. The
devils believe and acknowledge four articles of our faith.
Matthew 8:29. (1.) They acknowledge God; (2.) Christ; (3.) The
day of judgment; (4.) That they shall be tormented then; so that
he doth not believe that there is a God, is more vile than a
devil. To deny there is a God, is a sort of atheism that is not
to be found in hell.
"On earth are atheists many,
In hell there is not any."
Augustine, speaking of atheists, saith, "That albeit
there be some who think, or would persuade themselves, that
there is no God, yet the most vile and desperate wretch that
ever lived would not say, there was no God." Seneca hath a
remarkable speech, Mentiuntur qui dicunt se non sentire Deum
esse: nam etsi tibi affirmant interdi— noctu tamen dubitant.
They lie, saith he, who say they perceive not there is a God;
for although they affirm it to thee in the daytime, yet by night
they doubt of it. Further, saith the same author, I have heard
of some that deny that there was a God; yet never knew the man,
but when he was sick he would seek unto God for help; therefore
they do but lie that say there is no God; they sin against the
light of their own consciences; they who most studiously go
about to deny God, yet cannot do it but some check of conscience
will fly in their faces. Tully would say that there was never
any nation under heaven so barbarous as to deny that there was a
God. T. Brooks.
Verse 1. "The fool hath said in his heart,
There is no God." Popery has not won to itself so great
wits as atheism; it is the superfluity of wit that makes
atheists. These will not be beaten down with impertinent
arguments; disordered hail-shot of Scriptures will never scare
them; they must be convinced and beaten by their own weapons.
"Hast thou appealed to Caesar? To Caesar thou shalt
go." Have they appealed to reason? Let us bring reason to
them, that we may bring them to reason. We need not fear the
want of weapons in that armoury, but our own ignorance and want
of skill to use them. There is enough even in philosophy to
convince atheism, and make them confess, "We are foiled
with our own weapons;" for with all their wit atheists are
fools. Thomas Adams.
Verse 1. As there is no wound more mortal than that
which plucketh forth man's heart or soul; so, likewise, is there
no person or pestilence of greater force suddenly in men to kill
all faith, hope, and charity, with the fear of God, and
consequently to cast them headlong into the pit of hell, than to
deny the principle and foundation of all religion—namely, that
there is a God. Robert Cawdray's "Treasury or Storehouse
of Similes," 1609.
Verse 1. "The fool hath said in his heart,
There is no God." Who in the world is a verier fool, a
more ignorant, wretched person, than he that is an atheist? A
man may better believe there is no such man as himself, and that
he is not in being, than that there is no God; for himself can
cease to be, and once was not, and shall be changed from what he
is, and in very many periods of his life knows not that he is;
and so it is every night with him when he sleeps; but none of
these can happen to God; and if he knows it not, he is a fool.
Can anything in this world be more foolish than to think that
all this rare fabric of heaven and earth can come by chance,
when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster? To see
rare effects, and no cause; an excellent government and no
prince; a motion without an immovable; a circle without a centre;
a time without eternity; a second without a first; a thing that
begins not from itself, and therefore, not to perceive there is
something from whence it does begin, which must be without
beginning; these things are so against philosophy and natural
reason, that he must needs be a beast in his understanding that
does not assent to them; this is the atheist: "The fool
hath said in his heart, There is no God." That is his
character; the thing framed, says that nothing framed it; the
tongue never made itself to speak, and yet talks against him
that did; saying, that which is made, is, and that which made
it, is not. But this folly is as infinite as hell, as much
without light or bound, as the chaos or the primitive nothing. Jeremy
Taylor, 1613-1667.
Verse 1. "The fool hath said in his heart,
There is no God." A wise man, that lives up to the
principles of reason and virtue, if one considers him in his
solitude as taking in the system of the universe, observing the
mutual dependence and harmony by which the whole frame of it
hangs together, beating down his passions, or swelling his
thoughts with magnificent ideas of providence, makes a nobler
figure in the eye of an intelligent being, than the greatest
conqueror amidst the pomp and solemnities of a triumph. On the
contrary, there is not a more ridiculous animal than an atheist
in his retirement. His mind is incapable of rapture or
elevation: he can only consider himself as an insignificant
figure in a landscape, and wandering up and down in a field or a
meadow, under the same terms as the meanest animals about him,
and as subject to as total a mortality as they, with this
aggravation, that he is the only one amongst them who lies under
the apprehension of it. In distresses he must be of all
creatures the most helpless and forlorn; he feels the whole
pressure of a present calamity, without being relieved by the
memory of anything that is past, or the prospect of anything
that is to come. Annihilation is the greatest blessing that he
proposes to himself, and a halter or a pistol the only refuge he
can fly to. But if you would behold one of these gloomy
miscreants in his poorest figure, you must consider him under
the terrors or at the approach of death. About thirty years ago,
I was a shipboard with one of these vermin, when there arose a
brisk gale, which could frighten nobody but himself. Upon the
rolling of the ship he fell upon his knees, and confessed to the
chaplain, that he had been a vile atheist, and had denied a
Supreme Being ever since he came to his estate. The good man was
astonished, and a report immediately ran through the ship, that
there was an atheist upon the upper deck. Several of the common
seamen, who had never heard the word before, thought it had been
some strange fish; but they were more surprised when they saw it
was a man, and heard out of his own mouth, "That he never
believed till that day that there was a God." As he lay in
the agonies of confession, one of the honest tars whispered to
the boatswain, "That it would be a good deed to heave him
overboard." But we were now within sight of a port, when of
a sudden the wind fell, and the penitent relapsed, begging all
of us that were present, as we were gentlemen, not to say
anything of what had passed. He had not been ashore above two
days, when one of the company began to rally him upon his
devotion on shipboard, which the other denied in so high terms,
that it produced the lie on both sides, and ended in a duel. The
atheist was run through the body, and after some loss of blood,
became as good a Christian as he was at sea, till he found that
his wound was not mortal. He is at present one of the
free-thinkers of the age, and now writing a pamphlet against
several received opinions concerning the existence of fairies. Joseph
Addison (1671 - 1719), in "The Tattler."
Verse 1:—
"'There is no God,' the fool in secret said:
There is no God that rules or earth or sky.'
Tear off the band that binds the wretch's head,
That God may burst upon his faithless eye!
Is there no God?—The stars in myriads spread,
If he look up, the blasphemy deny;
While his own features, in the mirror read,
Reflect the image of Divinity.
Is there no God?—The streams that silver flows,
The air he breathes, the ground he treads, the trees,
The flowers, the grass, the sands, each wind that blows,
All speak of God; throughout, onne voice agres,
And, eloquent, his dread existence shows:
Blind to thyself, ah, see him, fool, in these!"
Giovanni Cotta.
Verse 1:—
"The owlet, Atheism,
Sailing on obscene wings across the noon,
Drops his blue-fringed lids, and shuts them close,
And, hooting at the glorious sun in heaven,
Cries out, 'Where is it'"
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834.
Verse 1. "They are corrupt, they have done
abominable works." Sin pleaseth the flesh. Omne
simile nutrit simile. Corruption inherent is nourished by
the accession of corrupt actions. Judas's covetousness is
sweetened with unjust gain. Joab is heartened and hardened with
blood. 1 Kings 2:5. Theft is fitted to and fatted in the
thievish heart with obvious booties. Pride is fed with the
officious compliments of observant grooms. Extortion battens in
the usurer's affections by the trolling in of his moneys.
Sacrilege thrives in the church-robber by the pleasing
distinctions of those sycophant priests, and helped with their
not laborious profit. Nature is led, is fed with sense. And when
the citadel of the heart is once won, the turret of the
understanding will not long hold out. As the suffumigations of
the oppressed stomach surge up and cause the headache, or as the
thick spumy mists, which vapour up from the dark and foggy
earth, do often suffocate the brighter air, and to us more than
eclipse the sun, the black and corrupt affections, which ascend
out of the nether part of the soul, do no less darken and choke
the understanding. Neither can the fire of grace be kept alive
at God's altar (man's heart), when the clouds of lust shall rain
down such showers of impiety on it. Perit omne judicium, cum
res transit ad affectum. Farewell the perspicuity of
judgment, when the matter is put to the partiality of affection.
Thomas Adams.
Verse 1. " They are corrupt, they have done
abominable things: there is none that doeth good."
"Men," says Bernard, "because they are corrupt
in their minds, become abominable in their doings: corrupt
before God, abominable before men. There are three sorts
of men of which none doeth good. There are those who neither
understand nor seek God, and they are the dead: there are others
who understand him, but seek him not, and they are the wicked.
There are others that seek him but understand him not, and they
are the fools." "O God," cries a writer of the
middle ages, "how many are here at this day who, under the
name of Christianity, worship idols, and are abominable both to
thee and to men! For every man worships that which he most
loves. The proud man bows down before the idol of worldly power;
the covetous man before the idol of money; the adulterer before
the idol of beauty; and so of the rest." And of such, saith
the apostle, "They profess that they know God, but in works
deny him, being abominable and disobedient, and unto
every good work reprobate." Titus 1:16. "There is
none that doeth good." Notice how Paul avails himself
of this testimony of the psalmist, among those which he heaps
together in the third chapter of the epistle to the Romans,
where he is proving concerning "both Jews and Gentiles,
that they are all under sin." Romans 3:9. John Mason
Neale, in loc.
Verse 1. The argument of my text is the atheist's
divinity, the brief of his belief couched all in one article,
and that negative too, clean contrary to the fashion of all
creeds, "There is no God." The article but one;
but so many absurdities tied to the train of it, and itself so
irreligious, so prodigiously profane, that he dares not speak it
out, but saith it softly to himself, in secret, "in his
heart." So the text yields these three points; Who is
he? A "fool." What he saith, "no
God." How he speaks it, "in his heart."
A fool, his bolt, and his draught. I will speak of them
severally. . . . . . . . There is a child in years, and there is
a child in manners, aetate et moribus, saith Aristotle.
So there is a fool; for fools and children both are called
nhpioi. There is a fool in wit, and there is a fool in life; stultus
in scientia, et stultus in conscientia, a witless and a
graceless fool. The latter is worthy of the title as the first;
both void of reason; not of the faculty but of the use. Yea, the
latter fool is indeed the more kindly of the twain; for the sot
would use his reason if he could; the sinner will not though he
may. It is not the natural, but the moral fool that David means,
the wicked and ungracious person, for so is the sense of the
original term. . . . . . . It is time we leave the person, and
come unto the act. What hath this fool done? Surely nothing; he
hath only said. What hath he said? Nay, nothing
either; he hath only thought: for to say in heart,
is but to think. There are two sorts of saying in the
Scripture, one meant indeed so properly, the other but in hope;
one by word of mouth, the other by thought of heart. You see the
psalmist means here the second sort. The bolt the fool here
shoots is atheism: he makes no noise at the loss of it, as
bowmen use; he draws and delivers closely, and stilly, out of
sight, and without sound: he saith "God is not,"
but "in heart." The heart hath a mouth; intus
est os cordis, saith Augustine. God, saith Cyprian, is cordis
auditor, he hears the heart; then belike it hath some
speech. When God said to Moses, quare clamas? why criest
thou? we find no words he uttered: silens auditor, saith
Gregory, he is heard through saying nothing. There is a silent
speech (Psalm 4:4), "Commune with your own heart,"
saith David, "and be still." Speech is not the heart's
action, no more than meditation is the mouth's. But sometimes
the heart and mouth exchange offices; lingua mea meditabitur,
saith David. Psalm 35:28. There is lingua meditans, a
musing tongue; here is cor loquens, a speaking heart. And
to say the truth, the philosopher saith well, it is the heart
doth all things, mens videt, mens audit, mens loquitur.
It is the heart that speaks, the tongue is but the instrument to
give the sound. It is but the heart's echo to repeat the words
after it. Except when the tongue doth run before the wit, the
heart doth dictate to the mouth; it suggests what it shall say.
The heart is the soul's herald: look what she will have
proclaimed, the heart reads it, and the mouth cries it. The
tongue saith nought but what the heart saith first. Nay, in very
deed, the truest and kindest speech is the heart's. The tongue
and lips are Jesuits, they lease, and lie, and use
equivocations: flattery, or fear, or other by-respect, other wry
respect adulterate their words. But the heart speaks as it
means, worth twenty mouths, if it could speak audibly. Richard
Clerke, D.D.,—1634 (one of the translators of our English
Bible).
Verses 1, 4. The Scripture gives this as a cause of
the notorious courses of wicked men, that "God is not in
all their thoughts." Psalm 10:4. They forget there is a God
of vengeance and a day of reckoning. "The fool"
would needs enforce upon his heart, that "there is no
God," and what follows: "Corrupt they are,
there is none doth good: they eat up my people as bread,"
etc. They make no more bones of devouring men and their estates,
than they make conscience of eating a piece of bread. What a
wretched condition hath sin brought man unto, that the great God
who "filleth heaven and earth" (Jeremiah 23:24) should
yet have no place in the heart which he hath especially made for
himself! The sun is not so clear as this truth, that God is, for
all things in the world are because God is. If he were not,
nothing could be. It is from him that wicked men have that
strength they have to commit sin, therefore sin proceeds from
atheism, especially these plotting sins; for if God were more
thought on, he would take off the soul from sinful contrivings,
and fix it upon himself. Richard Sibbes.
Verse 2. To see if there were any that did
understand. . . . . seek God." None seek him aright,
and as he ought to be sought, nor can do while they live in sin:
for men in seeking God fail in many things: as, First, men seek
him not for himself. Secondly, they seek him not alone, but
other things with him. Thirdly, they seek other things before
him, as worldlings do. Fourthly, they seek him coldly or
carelessly. Fifthly, they seek him inconstantly; example of
Judas and Demas. Sixthly, they seek him not in his word, as
heretics do. Seventhly, they seek him not in all his word, as
hypocrites do. Lastly, they seek him not seasonably and timely,
as profane, impenitent sinners do; have no care to depend upon
God's word, but follow their own lusts and fashions of this
world. Thomas Wilson, 1653.
Verses 2, 3. What was the issue of God's so looking
upon men? "They are all gone aside," that is,
from him and his ways; "They are altogether become
filthy;" their practices are such as make then stink; "There
is none that doeth good, no, not one;" of so many
millions of men that are upon the earth, there is not one doeth
good. There were men of excellent parts then in the world, men
of soul, but not one of them did know God, or seek after God:
Paul therefore hath laid it down for a universal maxim, that the
animal, natural, or intellectual man, receives not the things of
the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, and so are
rejected by him. William Greenhill.
Verse 3. The ungodly are "vile" persons
(Nahum 1:14). "I will make thy grave; for thou art
vile." Sin makes men base, it blots their name, it taints
their blood: "They are altogether become filthy;"
in the Hebrew it is, they are become stinking. Call wicked men
ever so bad, you cannot call them out of their name; they are
"swine" (Matthew 7:6); "vipers" (Matthew
3:7); "devils" (John 6:70). The wicked are the dross
and refuse (Psalms 119:119); and heaven is too pure to have any
dross mingle with it. Thomas Watson.
Verse 3. "Altogether become filthy."
Thus the Roman satirist describes his own age:
"Nothing is left, nothing, for future times
To add to the full catalogue of crimes;
The baffled sons must feel the same desires,
And act the same mad follies as their sires,
Vice has attained its zenith."
Juvenal, Sat. 1.
Verse 3. "There is none that doeth good, no,
not one." Origen maketh a question, how it could be
said that there was none, neither among the Jews nor Gentiles,
that did any good; seeing there were many among them which did
clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and did other good things: he
hereunto maketh this answer:—That like as one that layeth a
foundation, and buildeth upon it a wall or two, yet cannot be
said to have built a house till he have finished it; so although
these might do some good things, yet they attained not unto
perfect goodness, which was only to be found in Christ. But this
is not the apostle's meaning only to exclude men from the
perfection of justice; for even the faithful and believers were
short of that perfection which is required; he therefore showeth
what men are by nature, all under sin and in the same state of
damnation, without grace and faith in Christ: if any perform any
good work, either it is of grace, and so not of themselves, or
if they did it by the light of nature, they did it not as they
ought, and so it was far from a good work indeed. Andrew
Willet (1562-1621), on Romans 3:10.
Verse 4. "Have the workers of iniquity no
knowledge?" Men's ignorance is the reason why they fear
not what they should fear. Why is it that the ungodly fear not
sin? Oh, it's because they know it not. "Have the
workers of iniquity no knowledge?" Sure enough they
have none, for "they eat up my people as they eat
bread;" such morsels would scald their mouths, they
would not dare to be such persecutors and destroyers of the
people of God; they would be afraid to touch them if they did
but know what they did. Richard Alleine.
Verse 4. "Who eat up my people as they eat
bread." That is, quotidiŠ, daily, saith Austin;
as duly as they eat bread; or, with the same eagerness and
voracity. These man-eaters, these Laobomoi, cruel
cannibals, make no more conscience to undo a poor man, than to
eat a good meal when they are hungry. Like pickerels in a pond,
or sharks in the sea, they devour the poorer, as those do the
lesser fishes; and that many times with a plausible, invisible
consumption; as the usurer, who like the ostrich, can digest any
metal; but especially money. John Trapp.
Verse 4. "Who eat up my people as the eat
bread." Oh, how few consult and believe the Scriptures
setting forth the enmity of wicked men against God's people! The
Scripture tells us "they eat up God's people as
bread," which implies a strange inclination in them to
devour the saints, and that they take as great delight therein
as a hungry man in eating, and that it is natural to them to
molest them. The Scripture compares them, for their hateful
qualities, to the lions, and bears, to foxes for subtlety, to
wild bulls, to greedy swine, to scorpions, to briers and thorns
(grievous and vexing things). The Scripture represents them as
industrious and unwearied in their bloody enterprises, they
cannot sleep without doing mischief. Herodias had rather have
the blood of a saint than half a kingdom. Haman would pay a
great fine to the king that the scattered Jews (who keep not the
king's laws) may be cut off. Wicked men will run the hazard of
damning their own souls, rather than not fling a dagger at the
apple of God's eye. Though they know what one
word—aha!!—cost, yet they will break through all natural,
civil, and moral obligations, to ruin God's people. The Holy
Ghost calls them "implacable" men, fierce and
headstrong; they are like the hot oven for fury, like the sea
for boundless rage; yet, "who hath believed" this
Scripture "report?" Did we believe what enemies all
wicked men are unto all saints, we should not lean to our own
prudence and discretion to secure us from any danger by these
men; we would get an ark to secure us from the deluge of their
wrath; if at any time we be cast among them and delivered, we
would bless God with the three children that the hot fiery oven
did not consume us; we would not wonder when we hear of any of
their barbarous cruelty, but rather wonder at God's restraining
them every day; we would be suspicious of receiving hurt when
cast among light and frothy companions; we would shun their
company as we do lions and scorpions; we would never commit any
trust or secret into their hands; we would not be light-hearted
whilst in their society; we would not rely on their promises any
more than we would on the promise of the devil, their father; we
would long for heaven, to be delivered from "the tents of
Kedar;" we would not count any of the saints secured from
danger, though related to any great wicked man; we would not
twist ourselves with them by matching ourselves or children to
these sons and daughters of Belial; neither would we make choice
of devils to be our servants. Lewis Stuckley.
Verse 4. This is an evil world. It hates the people of
God. "Because ye are not of the world, therefore the world
hateth you." John 15:19. Haman's hatred was against the
whole seed of the Jews. When you can find a serpent without a
sting, or a leopard without spots, then may you expect to find a
wicked world without hatred to the saints. Piety is the target
which is aimed at. "They are mine adversaries because I
follow the thing that good is." Psalm 38:20. The world
pretends to hate the godly for something else, but the ground of
their quarrel is holiness. The world's hatred is implacable:
anger may be reconciled, hatred cannot. You may as soon
reconcile heaven and hell as the two seeds. If the world hated
Christ, no wonder that it hates us. "The world hated me
before it hated you." John 15:18. Why should any hate
Christ? This blessed Dove had no gall, this rose of Sharon did
send forth a most sweet perfume; but this shows the world's
baseness, it is a Christ- hating and a saint-eating
world. Thomas Watson.
Verse 5. "There were they in great fear."
That we may not mistake the meaning of the point, we must
understand that this faintheartedness and cowardliness doth not
always come upon presumptuous sinners when they behold imminent
dangers, for though none of them have true courage and
fortitude, yet many of them have a kind of desperate stoutness
and resolution when they do, as it were, see death present
before their faces; which proceedeth from a kind of deadness,
that is upon their hearts, and a brawniness that hath overgrown
their consciences to their greater condemnation. But when it
pleaseth the Lord to waken them out of the dead slumber, and to
set the worm of conscience awork within them, then this doctrine
holdeth true without any exception, that the boldest sinners
prove at length the basest cowards: and they that have been most
audacious in adventuring upon the most mischievous evils, do
become of all others most timorous when God's revenging hand
seizeth upon them for the same. John Dod, 1547-1645.
Verse 5. "God is in the generation of the
righteous;" that is, he favours that generation or sort
of men; God is in all generations, but such he delights in most:
the wicked have cause enough to fear those in whom God delights.
Joseph Caryl.
Verse 5. The King of Glory cannot come into the heart
(as he is said to come into the hearts of his people as such;
Psalm 24:9,10), but some glory of himself will appear; and as
God doth accompany the word with majesty because it is his word,
so he doth accompany his own children, and their ways, with
majesty, yea, even in their greatest debasements. As when
Stephen was brought before the council, as a prisoner at the bar
for his life, then God manifested his presence to him, for it is
said, "His face shone as the face of an angel of God"
(Acts 6:15); in a proportionable manner it is ordinarily true
what Solomon says of all righteous men, "A man's wisdom
makes his face to shine." Ecclesiastes 8:1. Thus Peter also
speaks (1 Peter 4:14): "If you be reproached for the name
of Christ, happy are you, for the Spirit," not only of God,
or of grace, but "of glory, resteth upon you." And so
in the martyrs; their innocency, and carriage, and godly
behaviour, what majesty had it with it! What an amiableness in
the sight of the people, which daunted, dashed, and confounded
their most wretched oppressors; so that although the wicked
persecutors "did eat up God's people as bread"
(verse 4), yet it is added that they were in great fear upon
this very account, that "God is in the generation of the
just." God stands, as it were, astonished at their
dealings: "Have the workers of iniquity no
knowledge," (so in the words afore) "that they
eat up my people as bread," and make no more ado of it
that a man doth that heartily eats of his meat? They seem to do
thus, they would carry it and bear it out; but for all that they
are in great fear whilst they do thus, and God strikes their
hearts with terror when they most insult. Why? For, "God
is in the generation of, or dwelleth in the just," and
God gives often some glimmerings, hints, and warnings to the
wicked (such as Pilate had concerning Christ), that his people
are righteous. And this you may see in Philippians 1:28:
"And in nothing terrified by your adversaries, which is to
them an evident token of perdition, but to you of salvation, and
that of God." In that latter passage, I observe that an
assurance of salvation, and a spirit of terror, and that of God,
is given either. In the Old Testament it is recorded of David (1
Samuel 18:12), that although Saul hated him (verse 9), and
sought to destroy him (verse 10,11), "yet Saul was afraid
of David, because the Lord was with him, and was departed from
Saul;" which is the reason in hand. God manifested his
presence in David, and struck Saul's conscience with his godly
and wise carriage, and that made him afraid. Thomas Goodwin.
Verse 6. "Ye have shamed the counsel of the
poor, because the Lord is his refuge." In the
fifty-third Psalm it is, "Thou hast put them to shame,
because God hath despised them." Of course, the allusion is
totally different in each; in this Psalm it is the indignant
remonstrance of the Psalmist with "the workers of
iniquity" for undervaluing and putting God's poor to shame;
the other affirms the final shame and confusion of the ungodly,
and the contempt in which the Lord holds them. In either case it
sweetly illustrates God's care of his poor, not merely the poor
in spirit, but literally the poor and low ones, the oppressed
and the injured. It is this character of God which is so
conspicuously delineated in his word. We may look through all
the Shasters and Vedas of the Hindoo, the Koran of the Mahometan,
the legislation of the Greek, and the code of the Roman, aye,
and the Talmud of the Jew, the bitterest of all; and not in one
single line or page shall we find a vestige or trace of that
tenderness, compassion, or sympathy for the wrongs, and
oppressions, and trials, and sorrows of God's poor, which the
Christian's Bible evidences in almost every page. Barton
Bouchier.
Verse 6. "Ye have shamed." Every fool
that saith in his heart there is no God, hath out of the same
quiver a bolt to shoot at goodness. Barren Michal hath too many
sons, who, like their mother, jeer at holy David. John Trapp.
Verse 6. "Ye have shamed," saith he, "the
counsel of the poor." There is nothing that wicked men
do so despise as the making God a refuge—nothing which they
scorn in their hearts like it. "They shame it," saith
he, "It is a thing to be cast out of all consideration. The
wise man trusts in his wisdom, the strong man in his strength,
the rich man in his riches; but this trusting in God is the
foolishest thing in the world." The reasons of it are—1.
They know not God; and it is a foolish thing to trust one knows
not whom. 2. They are enemies to God, and God is their enemy;
and they account it a foolish thing to trust their enemy. 3.
They know not the way of God's assistance and help. And—4.
They seek for such help, such assistance, such supplies, as God
will not give; to be delivered, to serve their lusts; to be
preserved, to execute their rage, filthiness, and folly. They
have no other design or end of these things; and God will give
none of them. And it is a foolish thing in any man to trust God
to be preserved in sin. It is true, their folly is their wisdom,
considering their state and condition. It is a folly to trust in
God to live in sin, and despise the counsel of the poor. John
Owen.
Verse 6. "Ye have made a mock of the counsel
of the poor:" and why? "because the Lord is his
trust." This is the very true cause, whatsoever other
pretenses there be. Whence observe this doctrine; that true
godliness is that which breeds the quarrel between God's
children and the wicked. Ungodly men may say what they list, as,
namely, that they hate and dislike them for that they are proud
and saucy in meddling with their betters; for that they are so
scornful and disdainful towards their neighbours; for that they
are malcontent, and turbulent, and I know not what; but the true
reason is yielded by the Lord in this place, to wit, because
they make him their stay and their confidence, and will not
depend upon lying vanities as the men of the world do. John
Dod.
Verse 6. "The Lord is his refuge." Be
persuaded actually to hide yourselves with Jesus Christ. To have
a hiding-place and not to use it, is as bad as to want one; fly
to Christ; run into the holes of this Rock. Ralph Robinson,
1656.
Verse 7. "O that salvation," etc.
Like as when we be in quiet, we do pray either nothing at all,
or very coldly unto God; so in adversity and trouble, our spirit
is stirred up and enkindled to prayer, whereof we do find
examples everywhere in the Psalms of David; so that affliction
is as it were the sauce of prayer, as hunger is unto meat. Truly
their prayer is usually unsavoury who are without afflictions,
and many of them do not pray truly, but do rather counterfeit a
prayer, or pray for custom. Wolfgang Musculus, 1497-1563.
Verse 7. "Out of Zion." Zion, the
church is no Saviour, neither dare we trust in her ministers or
ordinances, and yet salvation comes to men through her. The
hungry multitudes are fed by the hands of the disciples, who
delight to act as the servitors of the gospel feast. Zion
becomes the site of the fountain of healing waters which shall
flow east and west till all nations drink thereat. What a reason
for maintaining in the utmost purity and energy all the works of
the church of the living God! C. H. S.
Verse 7. "When the Lord turneth the captivity
of his people: then shall Jacob rejoice, and Israel shall be
glad." Notice that by Israel we are to understand those
other sheep which the Lord has that are not of this fold, but
which he must also bring, that they may hear his voice. For it
is Israel, not Judah; Sion, not Jerusalem. "When the
Lord turneth the captivity of his people."
"Then," as it is in the parallel passage, "were
we like unto them that dream." A glorious dream indeed,
in which, fancy what we may, the half of the beauty, the half of
the splendour, will not be reached by our imagination. "The
captivity" of our souls to the law of concupiscence, of
our bodies to the law of death; the captivity of our senses to
fear; the captivity, the conclusion of which is so beautifully
expressed by one of our greatest poets: namely, Giles
Fletcher (1588-1623), in his "Christ's Triumph over
Death."
"No sorrow now hangs clouding on their brow;
No bloodless malady impales their face;
No age drops on their hairs his silver snow;
No nakedness their bodies doth embase;
No poverty themselves and theirs disgrace;
No fear of death the joy of life devours;
No unchaste sleep their precious time deflower;
No loss, no grief, no change, wait on their winged hours."
John Mason Neale, in loc.
HINTS TO THE VILLAGE PREACHERVerse 1 (first
clause). The folly of atheism.
Verse 1. Atheism of the heart. Jamieson's Sermons
on the Heart.
Verse 1 (whole verse). Describe:
I.
The creed of the fool.
II.
The fool who holds the creed: or thus, Atheism.
I.
Its source: "the heart."
II.
Its creed: "no God."
III.
Its fruits: "corrupt," etc.
Verse 1.
I.
The great source of sin—alienation from God.
II.
Its place of dominion—the heart.
III.
Its effect upon the intellect— makes man a fool.
IV.
Its manifestations in the life—acts of commission and
omission.
Verse 1 (last clause). The lantern of Diogenes.
Hold it up upon all classes, and denounce their sins.
Verse 2.
I.
Condescending search.
II.
Favoured subjects.
III.
Generous intentions.
Verse 2. What God looks for, and what we should look
for. Men usually are quick to see things congruous to their own
character.
Verses 2, 3. God's search for a naturally good man;
the result; lessons to be learned therefrom.
Verse 3. Total depravity of the race.
Verse 4. "Have all the workers of iniquity no
knowledge?" If men rightly knew God, his law, the evil
of sin, the torment of hell, and other great truths, would they
sin as they do? Or if they know these and yet continue in their
iniquities, how guilty and foolish they are! Answer the question
both positively and negatively, and it supplies material for a
searching discourse.
Verse 4 (first clause). The crying sin of
transgressing against light and knowledge.
Verse 4 (last clause). Absence of prayer, a
sure mark of a graceless state.
Verse 5. The foolish fears of those who have no fear
of God.
Verse 5. The Lord's nearness to the righteous, its
consequences to the persecutor, and its encouragement to saints.
Verse 6. The wisdom of making the Lord our refuge. John
Owen.
Verse 6. Describe,
I.
The poor man here intended.
II.
His counsel.
III.
His reproach.
IV.
His refuge.
Verse 6. Trust in God, a theme for mockery to fools
only. Show its wisdom.
Verse 7. Longings for the advent.
Verse 7. "Out of Zion." The church,
the channel of blessings to men.
Verse 7. Discourse to promote revival.
I.
Frequent condition of the church, "captivity."
II.
Means of revival—the Lord's coming in grace.
III.
Consequences, "rejoice," "be glad."
Verse 7. Captivity of soul. What it is. How provided
for. How accomplished. With what results.