descent below them that are below us. It hath cast us below the inhabitants of the earth, beasts, and below the earth itself, even to hell; for we make this life, which is the place of repentance, the place of obstinacy and obduration; and obduration is hell. Yea, it hath cast us below the devil himself; our state is, in this, worse than theirs; they sinned before God had given them any express law; and before God had made any examples, or taken any revenge upon any sinners; but we sin after a manifest law, and after they, and many others have been made our examples. They were never restored, we have been restored often; they proceed in their obstinacy, when God casts them from him, we proceed even when God calls us to him; they against God which turns from them, and is glorified in their destruction, we against him that comes to us, and emptied and humbled himself to the shame, to the scorn, to the pain, to the death of the cross for us. These be the lamentable descents of sin; but the particular descent to which this text doth purposely bend itself, is, that as God said at beginning, in contempt, and in derision, Ecce Adam, quasi unus ex nobis, Behold, man is become as one of us"; so now, (as St. Bernard makes the note) the horse and mule may say, Quasi unus ex nobis, Behold, man is become as one of us; and, Nolite fieri, says God in our text, Be not as the horse or the mule. According to the several natures of these two beasts, the fathers, and other expositors have made several interpretations; at least, several allusions. They consider the horse and the mule, to admit any rider, any burden, without discretion or difference, without debatement or consideration; they never ask whether their rider be noble or base, nor whether their load be gold for the treasure, or roots for the market. And those expositors find the same indifference in an habitual sinner, to any kind of sin : whether he sin for pleasure, or sin for profit, or sin but for company, still he sins. They consider the mule to be engendered of two kinds, two species, and yet to beget, to produce neither, but to be always barren; and they find us to be composed of a double, a heavenly, and earthly nature, and thereby bound to duties of both kinds, towards God, and towards men, but to be defective 11 Gen. iii. 22. and barren in both. They consider in the mule, that one of his parents being more ignoble than the other, he is likest the worst, he hath more of the ass than of the horse in him; and they find in us, that all our actions, and thoughts, taste more of the ignobler part of earth than of heaven. St. Hierome thinks fierceness and rashness to be presented in the horse, and sloth in the mule. And St. Augustine carries these two qualities far; he thinks that in this fierceness of the horse, the Gentiles are represented, which ran far from the knowledge of Christianity; and by the laziness of the mule, the Jews, who came nothing so fast, as they were invited by their former helps, to the embracing thereof. They have gone far in these allusions, and applications; and they might have gone as far further as it had pleased them; they have sca-room enough, that will compare a beast, and a sinner together; and they shall find many times, in the way, the beast the better man. Here we may contract it best, if we understand pride by the horse, and lust by the mule; for, though both these, pride and lust, might have been represented in the horse, which is, (as the philosopher notes) Animal, post hominem salacissimum1a, The most intemperate and lustful of all creatures, but man, (still man, for this infamous prerogative, must be excepted) and though the Scriptures present that sin, lust, by the horse, (They rose in the morning like fed horses, and every man neighed after his neighbour's wife13) (and therefore St. Hierome delights himself with that curious note", that when a man brings his wife to that trial and conviction of jealousy, the offering that the man brings is barley", horse-provender in those parts, says St. Hierome) though both sins, pride and lust, might be taxed in the horse, yet pride is proper to him, and lust to the mule, both because the mule is carne virgo, but mente impudicus 16, which is one high degree of lust, to have a lustful desire in an impotent body, and then, he is engendered by unnatural mixture, which is another high degree of the same sin. And these two vices we take to be presented here, as the two principal enemies, the two chief corrupters of mankind; pride to be the principal spiritual sin, and 12 Gregory. 19 Jer. v. 8. 15 Numb. v. 12. 14 In Hos. iii. 16 Hierome lust, the principal that works upon the body. To avoid both, consider we both in both these beasts. It is not much controverted in the schools, but that the first sin of the angels was pride. But because (as we said before) the danger of man is more in sinking down, than in climbing up, in dejecting, than in raising himself, we must therefore remember, that it is not pride, to desire to be better. Angeli quæsiverunt id, ad quod pervenissent si stetissent". The angels' sin was pride; but their pride consisted not in aspiring to the best degrees that their nature was capable of: but in this, that they would come to that state, by other means than were ordained for it. It could not possibly fall within so pure, and clear understandings, as the angels were, to think that they could be God; that God could be multiplied; that they who knew themselves to be but new made, could think, not only that they were not made, but that they made all things else; to think that they were God, is impossible, this could not fall into them, though they would be similes Altissimo, like the Most High. But this was their pride, and in this they would be like the Most High, that whereas God subsisted in his essence of himself, for those degrees of perfection, which appertained to them, they would have them of themselves; they would stand in their perfection, without any turning towards God, without any further assistance from him; by themselves, and not by means ordained for them. This is the pride that is forbidden man; not that he think well of himself, In genere suo, That he value aright the dignity of his nature, in the creation thereof according to the image of God, and the infinite improvement that that nature received, in being assumed by the Son of God; this is not pride, but not to acknowledge that all this dignity in nature, and all that it conduces to, that is, grace here, and glory hereafter, is not only infused by God at first, but sustained by God still, and that nothing in the beginning, or way, or end, is of ourselves, this is pride. Man may, and must think that God hath given him the Subjicite, and Dominamini, A majestical character even in his person, to subdue and govern all the creatures in the world; that he hath given him a nature, already above all other creatures, 17 Augustine. and a nature capable of a better than his own is yet; (for, By his precious promises we are made partakers of the Divine nature1) we are made Semen Dei, The seed of God, born of God"; Genus Dei, The offspring of God"; Idem Spiritus cum Domino, The same spirit with the Lord"; he the same flesh with us, and we the same spirit with him. In God's servants, to have said to Nebuchadnezzar, Our God is able to deliver us, and he will deliver us; but, if he do not, yet we will not serve thy gods": in the martyrs of the primitive church, to have contemned torments, and tormentors with personal scorns and affronts: in all calamities and adversities of this life, to rely upon that assurance, I have a better substance in me than any man can hurt, I have a better inheritance prepared for me, than any man can take from me, I am called to triumph, and I go to receive a crown of immortality, these high contemplations of kingdoms, and triumphs, and crowns, are not pride: to know a better state, and desire it, is not pride; for pride is only in taking wrong ways to it. So that, to think we can come to this by our own strength, without God's inward working a belief, or to think that we can believe out of Plato, where we may find a God, but without a Christ, or come to be good men out of Plutarch or Seneca, without a church and sacraments, to pursue the truth itself by any other way than he hath laid open to us, this is pride, and the pride of the angels. Now there is also a pride, which is the horses' pride, conversant upon earthly things; to desire riches, and honour, and preferment in this world, is not pride; for they have all good uses in God's service; but to desire these by corrupt means, or to ill ends, to get them by supplantation of others, or for oppression of others, this is pride, and a bestial pride. And this proud man is elegantly expressed in the horse; The horse rejoiceth in his strength, he goes forth to meet the armed man, he mocks at fear, he turns upon the sword, and he swallows the ground. The river is mine, says Pharaoh, and I have made it for myself": they take all, and they mistake all; that which is but lent them for use, 18 2 Pet. i. 4. 19 1 John iii. 9. 1 Dan. iii. 17. 20 Acts xvii. 28. 23 Job xxxix. 19. . they think theirs; (The river is mine) that which God gave them, they think of their own getting; (I made it) and that which God placed upon them, as his stewards for the good of others, they appropriate to themselves; (I have made it for myself). But when time is, God mounteth on high, and he mocks the horse and the rider 25. In that day, I will smite every horse with astonishment, and his rider with madness". The horse believeth not that it is the sound of the trumpet "7; when the trumpet sounds to us in our last bell, (for the last bell that carries us out of this world, and the trumpet that calls us to the next, is all one voice to us, for we hear nothing between) the worldly man shall not believe that it is the sound of the trumpet, he shall not know it, not take knowledge of it, but pass away insensible of his own condition. 27 So then is pride well represented in the horse; and so is the other, lust, licentiousness in the mule. For, besides that reason of assimilation, that it desires, and cannot, and that reason, that it presents unnatural and promiscuous lust, for this reason is that vice well represented in that beast, because it is so apt to bear any burdens. For, certainly, no man is so inclinable to submit himself to any burden of labour, of danger, of cost, of dishonour, of law, of sickness, as the licentious man is; he refuses none, to come to his ends. Neither is there any tree so loaded with boughs, any one sin that hath so many branches, so many species as this. Shedding of blood we can limit in murder, and manslaughter, and a few more; and other sins in as few names. In. this sin of lust, the sex, the quality, the distance, the manner, and a great many other circumstances, create new names to the sin, and make it a sin of another kind. And as the sin is a mule, to bear all these loads, so the sinner in this kind is so too, and (as we find an example in the nephew of a pope) delights to take as many loads of this sin upon him, as he could; to vary, and to multiply the kinds of this sin in one act, he would not satisfy his lust by a fornication, or adultery, or incest, (these were vulgar) but upon his own sex; and that not upon an ordinary person, but in their account, upon a prince; and he, a spiritual 25 Job xxxix. 21. 26 Zech. xii. 4 27 Job xxxix. 27. |
