What shall I say of David, and of Solomon also, who, after he had been twenty years at work for the service of the true God, both in building and preparing for his worship, and in writing proverbs by divine inspiration, did after this make temples for idols, yea, almost for the gods of all countries? Yea, he did it when he was old, when he should have been preparing for his grave and for eternity.
All these were sins against mercies, yea, and doubtless against covenants and the most solemn resolutions to the contrary. For who can imagine but that when Noah was tossed with the flood, and Lot within the scent and smell of the fire and brimstone that burned down Sodom with his sons and daughters, and Gideon, when so fiercely engaged with so great an enemy, and delivered by so strange a hand, should in the most solemn manner both promise and vow to God? But behold, now they in truth are delivered and saved, they recompense all with sin: "Lord, what is man? how abominable and filthy is man, who drinketh in iniquity like water!"
Let these things teach us "to cease from man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for wherein is he to be accounted of?" Indeed, it is a vain thing to build our faith upon the most godly man in the world, because he is subject to err; yea, better men than he have been so. If Noah and Lot and Gideon and David and Solomon—who wanted not matter from arguments, and that of the strongest kind, as arguments that are drawn from mercy and goodness be, to engage to holiness and the fear of God—yet, after all, did so foully fall as we see, let us admire grace that any stand; let the strongest fear, lest he fearfully fall; and let no man but Jesus Christ himself be the absolute platform and pattern of faith and holiness: as the prophet saith, "Let us cease from man."
THE BACKSLIDER.
None knows the things that haunt the backslider's mind; his new sins are all turned talking devil's, threatening devils, roaring devils, within him. Besides, he doubts of the truth of his first conversion, consequently he has it lying upon him as a strong suspicion, that there was nothing of truth in all his first experience; and this also adds lead to his heels, and makes him come, as to sense and feeling, more heavily and with the greater difficulty, to God by Christ. As the faithfulness of other men kills him, he cannot see an honest, humble, holy, faithful servant of God, but he is pierced and wounded at the heart. "Aye," says he within himself, "that man fears God; that man hath faithfully followed God; that man, like the elect angels, has kept his place; but I am fallen from my station like a devil. That man honoreth God, edifieth the saints, convinceth the world and condemneth them, and is become 'heir of the righteousness which is by faith.' But I have dishonored God, stumbled and grieved saints, made the world blaspheme, and, for aught I know, been the cause of the damnation of many. "These are the things, I say, together with many more of the same kind, that come to him; yea, they will come with him, yea, and will stare him in the face, will tell him of his baseness and laugh him to scorn, all the way that he is coming to God by Christ-I know what I say-and this makes his coming to God by Christ hard and difficult to him. Shame covereth his face all the way he comes. He doth not know what to do; the God that he is returning to is the God that he has slighted, the God before whom he has preferred the vilest lusts; and he knows God knows it, and has before Him all his ways.
The man that has been a backslider, and is returning to God, can tell strange stories, and yet such as are very true. No man was in the whale's belly, and came out again alive, but backsliding and returning Jonah; consequently no man could tell how he was there, what he felt there, what he saw there, and what workings of heart he had when he was there, so well as he.
The returning again of the backslider gives a second testimony to the truth of man's state being by nature miserable, of the vanity of this world, of the severity of the law, certainty of death, and terribleness of judgment to come. His first coming to God by Christ told them so, but his second coming tells them so with a double confirmation of the truth. "It is so," saith his first coming; "OH, IT is SO!" saith his second.
The backsliding of a Christian comes through the overmuch persuading of Satan and lust, that the man was mistaken, and that there was no such horror in the things from which he fled, nor so much good in the things to which he hasted. "Turn again, fool," says the devil, "turn again to thy former course. I wonder what frenzy it was that drove thee to thy heels, and that made thee leave so much good behind thee, as other men find in the lusts of the flesh and the good of the world. As for the law, and death, and an imagination of the day of judgment, they are but mere scarecrows, set up by polite heads to keep the ignorant in subjection." "Well," says the backslider, "I will go back again and see;" so, fool as he is, he goes back, and has all things ready to entertain him: his conscience sleeps, the world smiles, flesh is sweet, carnal company compliments him, and all that can be got is presented to this backslider to accommodate him. But behold, he doth again begin to see his own nakedness, and he perceives that the law is whetting his axe: as for the world, he perceives it is a bubble; he also smells the smell of brimstone, for God hath scattered it upon his tabernacle and it begins to burn within him. "Oh," saith he, "I am deluded; Oh, I am ensnared. My first sight of things was true. I see it so again." Now he begins to be for flying again to his first refuge: "O God," saith he, "I am undone; I have turned from thy truth to lies; I believed them such at first, and find them such at last: have mercy upon me, O God."
This, I say, is a testimony, a second testimony by the same man.
"And him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out." I shall here speak a word or two to him that is coming, after backsliding, to Jesus Christ for life.