The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning. Hugh Binning
may build your faith in the questioned truths of this age, that so you may be able to answer those that ask a reason of the faith that is in you. Alas! simple souls, you believe every thing, and yet really believe nothing, because you believe not the word, as the word of the living God, but take it from men upon their authority! Therefore when a temptation cometh, from any gainsayings of the truth—you cannot stand against it, because your faith hath no foundation but the sayings of men, or acts of assemblies. And therefore, as men whom you trust with holding out light unto you, hold out darkness instead of light, you embrace that darkness also. [pg 027] But, I beseech you, be builded upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, not upon them, but upon that whereon they were builded, the infallible truths of God. You have the Scriptures, search them; since you have reasonable souls, search them. Other men's faith will not save; you cannot see to walk to heaven by other men's light, more than you can see by their eyes. You have eyes of your own, souls of your own, subordinate to none but the God of spirits, and the Lord of consciences, Jesus Christ, and therefore examine all that is spoken to you from the word, according to the word, and receive no more upon trust from men but as you find it upon trial to be the truth of God.
Lecture VI.
What The Scriptures Principally Teach: The Ruin And Recovery Of Man. Faith And Love Towards Christ.
2 Tim. i. 13.—“Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.”
Here is the sum of religion. Here you have a compend of the doctrine of the Scriptures. All divine truths may be reduced to these two heads—faith and love; what we ought to believe, and what we ought to do. This is all the Scriptures teach, and this is all we have to learn. What have we to know, but what God hath revealed of himself to us? And what have we to do, but what he commands us? In a word, what have we to learn in this world, but to believe in Christ, and love him, and so live to him? This is the duty of man, and this is the dignity of man, and the way to eternal life. Therefore the Scriptures, that are given to be “a lamp to our feet, and a guide to our paths,” contain a perfect and exact rule—credendorum et faciendorum—of faith and manners—of doctrine and practice. We have in the scriptures many truths revealed to us of God, and of the works of his hands—many precious truths, but that which most of all concerns us, is to know God and ourselves. This is the special excellency of the reasonable creature, that it is made capable to know its Creator, and to reflect upon its own being. Now, we have to know ourselves, what we are now, and what man once was, and accordingly to know of God, what he once revealed of himself, and what he doth now reveal. I say, the Scriptures hold out to our consideration a twofold estate of mankind, and according to these, a twofold revelation of the mystery of God. We look on man now, and we find him another thing than he was once, but we do not find God one thing at one time, and another thing at another time, for there is no “shadow of change” in him, and “he is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.” Therefore we ask not, what he was, and what he is now; but how he manifests himself differently, according to the different estates of man. As we find in the Scriptures, man once righteous and blessed, Eccles. vii. 29, and God making him such according to his own image, “in righteousness and true holiness,” Col. iii. 10, Eph. iv. 24; we find him in communion and friendship with God, set next to the divine majesty, and above the works of his hand, and all things “under his feet.” How holy was he “and how happy.” And happy he could not choose but be, since he was holy, being conformed and like unto God in his will and affection—choosing that same delight, that same pleasure with God, in his understanding—knowing God and his will, and likewise, his own happiness. In such a conformity he could not but have much communion with him, that had such conformity to him—union being the foundation of communion—and great peace and solid tranquillity in him.
Now, in this state of mankind God expresses his goodness and wisdom and power, his holiness and righteousness. These are the attributes that shine most brightly. In the very morning of the creation, God revealed himself to man as a holy and just [pg 028] God, whose eyes could behold no iniquity; and therefore he made him upright, and made a covenant of life and peace with him, to give him immortal and eternal life—to continue him in his happy estate, if so be he continued in well doing, Rom. x. 5, “do this and live.” In which covenant, indeed, there were some outbreaking of the glorious grace and free condescendency of God, for it was no less free grace and undeserved favour to promise life to his obedience, than now to promise life to our faith. So that if the Lord had continued that covenant with us, we ought to have called it grace, and would have been saved by grace as well as now, though it be true, that there is some more occasion given to man's nature to boast and glory in that way, yet not at all “before God,” Rom. iv. 2.
But we have scarcely found man in such an estate, till we have found him sinful and miserable and fallen from his excellency. That son sinned in the dawning of the creation, but before ye can well know what it is, it is eclipsed and darkened with sin and misery as if the Lord had only set up such a creature in the firmament of glory, to let him know how blessed he could make him, and wherein his blessedness consists, and then presently to throw him down from his excellency. When you find him mounting up to the heavens, and spreading himself thus in holiness and happiness, like a bay-tree, behold again, and you find him not, though you seek him, you shall not find him, his place doth not know him. He is like one that comes out with a great majesty upon a stage, and personates some monarch, or emperor, in the world, and then ere you can well gather your thoughts, to know what he is, he is turned off the stage, and appears in some base and despicable appearance. So quickly is man stript of all those glorious ornaments of holiness, and puts on the vile rags of sin and wretchedness, and is cast from the throne of eminency above the creatures, and from fellowship with God, to be a slave and servant to the dust of his feet, and to have communion with the devil and his angels. And now, ye have man holden out in Scripture as the only wretched piece of the creation, as the very plague of the world the whole creation groaning under him, (Rom. viii.) and in pain to be delivered of such a burden, of such an execration and curse and astonishment. You find the testimony of the word condemns him altogether, concludes him under sin, and then under a curse, and makes all flesh guilty in God's sight. The word speaks otherwise of us than we think of ourselves! “Their imagination is only evil continually,” Gen. vi. 5. O then, what must our affections be, that are certainly more corrupt! What then must our way be! All flesh hath corrupted their way, and done abominable works, and “none doeth good,” Psal. xiv. 1, 2, 3. But many flee in unto their good hearts as their last refuge, when they are beaten from these outworks of their actions and ways. But the Scripture shall storm that also. “The heart is deceitful above all things,” who can know it? it is “desperately wicked,” Jer. xvii. 9. In a word, man is become the most lamentable spectacle in the world, a compend of all wickedness and misery enclosed within the walls of inability and impossibility to help himself, shut up within a prison of despair, a linking, loathsome, and irksome dungeon. It is like the miry pit that Jeremiah was cast into, that there was no out-coming, and no pleasant abode in it.
Now, man's state being thus—nay, having made himself thus, and “sought out” to himself such sad “inventions,” Eccl. vii. 29—and having “destroyed” himself, Hos. xiii. 9, What think ye? Should any pity him? If he had fallen into such a pit of misery ignorantly and unwittingly, he had been an object of compassion, but having cast himself headlong into it, who should have pity on him? Or, who should “go aside to ask” how he did, or bemoan him? Jer. xv. 5. But behold the Lord pities man as a father doth his children, Psal. ciii. “His compassions fail not,” he comes by such a loathsome and contemptible object, and casts his skirts over it, and saith, “Live!” (Ezek. xvi.) and maketh it a time of love. I say, no flesh could have expected any more of God than to make man happy and holy, and to promise him life in well-doing, but to repair that happiness after it was wilfully lost, and to give life to evil-doers and sinners—O how far was it from Adam's expectation when he fled from God! Here then