Numbers 32:23 But if you will not do so, behold, you have sinned against the LORD: and be sure your sin will find you out. I. THAT MEN GENERALLY, IF NOT ALWAYS, PROCEED TO THE COMMISSION OF SIN, UPON A SECRET CONFIDENCE OF CONCEALMENT OR IMPUNITY. 1. That no man is induced to sin, considered in itself, as a thing absolutely or merely evil, but as it bears some resemblance or appearance of good in the apprehensions of him who commits it. 2. The other assertion to be laid down is, that God has annexed two great evils to every sin, in opposition to the pleasure and profit of it; to wit, shame and pain. He has, by an eternal and most righteous decree, made these two the inseparable effects and consequents of sin. They are the wages assigned it by the laws of Heaven; so that whosoever commits it, ought to account shame and punishment to belong to him as his rightful inheritance. II. THE GROUNDS AND REASONS UPON WHICH MEN TAKE UP SUCH A CONFIDENCE. And, no doubt, weak and shallow enough we shall find them all; and such as could never persuade any man to sin, did not his own love to sin persuade him much more forcibly than all such considerations; some of which are these that follow. As — 1. Men consider the success which they have actually had in the commission of many sins; and this proves an encouraging argument to them to commit the same for the future; as naturally suggesting this to their thoughts, that what they have done so often, without either discovery or punishment, may be so done by them again. 2. A second ground, upon which men are apt to persuade themselves that they shall escape the stroke of Divine justice for their sins, is their observation of the great and flourishing condition of some of the topping sinners of the world. 3. As we have shown holy mightily men are heartened on to their sins, by the successful examples of others as had as themselves or perhaps worse; so the next ground upon which such are wont to promise themselves security, both from the discovery and punishment of their sins, is the opinion which they have of their own singular art and cunning to conceal them from the knowledge, or, at least, of their power to rescue them from the jurisdiction of any earthly judge. 4. The fourth and last ground which I shall mention of men's promising themselves security from the punishment of their sins, is a strong presumption that they shall be able to repent, and make their peace with God when they please; and this, they fully reckon, will keep them safe, and effectually shut the door against their utmost fears, as being a reach beyond them all. III. To show THE VANITY OF THIS CONFIDENCE, by declaring those several ways by which, in the issue, it comes certainly to he defeated; and that both with reference to this world and the next. 1. For this world; there are various ways by which it comes to be disappointed here: as(1) The very confidence itself of secrecy is a direct and natural cause of the sinner's discovery. For confidence in such cases causes a frequent repetition of the same action; and if a man does a thing frequently, it is odds but some time or other he is discovered; for by this he subjects himself to so many more accidents; every one of which may possibly betray him. He who has escaped in many battles, has yet been killed in the issue; and by playing too often in the mouth of death has been snapped by it at last. Add to this, that confidence makes a man venturous, and venturousness casts him into the high road of danger and the very arms of destruction. For while a man ventures, he properly Shuts the eyes of his reason. And he who shuts his own eyes lies so much the more open to those of other men. (2) There is sometimes a strange, providential concurrence of unusual, unlikely accidents, for the discovery of great sins; a villainy committed perhaps but once in an age, comes sometimes to be found out also by such an accident as scarce happens above once in an age. (3) God sometimes makes one sin the means of discovering another; it often falling out with two vices, as with two thieves or rogues; of whom it is hard to say which is worse, and yet one of them may serve well enough to betray and find out the other. How many have by their drunkenness disclosed their thefts, their lusts, and murders, which might have been buried in perpetual silence, had not the sottish committers of them buried their reason in their cups? For the tongue is then got loose from its obedience to reason, and commanded at all adventures by the fumes of a distempered brain and ,a roving imagination; and so presently pours forth whatsoever they shall suggest to it, sometimes casting away life, fortune, reputation, and all in a breath. (4) God sometimes infatuates and strikes the sinner with frenzy, and such a distraction, as causes him to reveal all his hidden baseness, and to blab out such truths as will be sure to be revenged upon him who speaks them. In a word, God blasts and takes away his understanding, for having used it so much to the dishonour of Him who gave it; and delivers him over to a sort of madness, too black and criminal to be allowed any refuge in Bedlam. (5) God sometimes lets loose the sinner's conscience upon him, filling it with such horror for sin, as renders it utterly unable to bear the burden it labours under, without publishing, or rather proclaiming it to the world. (6) And lastly, God sometimes takes the work of vengeance upon Himself, and immediately, with His own arm, repays the sinner by some notable judgment from heaven; sometimes, perhaps, He strikes him dead suddenly; and sometimes He ,smites him with some loathsome disease (which will hardly be thought the gout, whatsoever it may be called); and sometimes, again, He strangely blasts him in his name, family, or estate, so that all about him stand amazed at the blow: but God and the sinner himself know well enough the reason and the meaning of it too. Justice, we know, used to be pictured blind, and therefore it finds out the sinner, not with its eyes, but with its hands; not by seeing, but by striking; and it is the honour of the great attribute of God's justice, which He thinks so much concerned, to give some pledge or specimen of itself upon bold sinners in this world; and so to assure them of a full payment hereafter, by paying them something in the way of earnest here. (R. South, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: But if ye will not do so, behold, ye have sinned against the LORD: and be sure your sin will find you out. |
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