Jeremiah 6:15 Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? no, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush… He who has thus sinned himself past feeling, may be justly supposed to have sinned himself past grace. 1. Extraordinary guilt. "Committed abomination." 2. Deportment under guilt. "Not at all ashamed," etc. 3. God's high resentment of their monstrous shamelessness. "Were they ashamed?" 4. The consequent judgment. "Therefore shall they fall," etc. I. WHAT SHAME IS AND WHAT INFLUENCE IT HAS UPON THE GOVERNMENT OF MEN'S MANNERS. 1. Shame is a grief of mind springing from the apprehension of some disgrace brought upon a man. And disgrace consists properly in men's knowledge or opinion of some defect, natural or moral, belonging to them. So that when a man is sensible that anything defective or amiss, either in his person, manners, or the circumstances of his condition, is known, or taken notice of, by others; from this sense or apprehension of his, there naturally results upon his mind a certain grief or displeasure, which grief properly constitutes the passion of shame. 2. From this, that shame is grounded upon the dread man naturally has of the ill opinion of others, and that chiefly with reference to the turpitude or immorality of his actions, it is manifest that it is that great and powerful instrument in the soul of man whereby Providence both preserves society and supports government, forasmuch as it is the most effectual restraint upon him from the doing of such things as more immediately tend to disturb the one and destroy the other. 3. He whom shame has done its work upon, is, ipso facto, stripped of all the common comforts of life. The light is to him the shadow of death; he has no heart nor appetite for business; his very food is nauseous to him. In which wretched condition having passed some years, first the vigour of his intellectuals begins to flag and dwindle away, and then his health follows; the hectic of the soul produces one in the body, the man from an inward falls into an outward consumption, and death at length gives the finishing stroke, and closes all with a sad catastrophe. II. BY WHAT WAYS MEN COME TO CAST OFF SHAME AND GROW IMPUDENT IN SIN. 1. By the commission of great sins. For these waste the conscience, and destroy at once. They are, as it were, a course of wickedness abridged into one act, and a custom of sinning by equivalence. They steel the forehead, and harden the heart, and break those bars asunder which modesty had originally fenced and enclosed it with. 2. Custom in sinning never fails in the issue to take away the sense and shame of sin, were a person never so virtuous before. First, he begins to shake off the natural horror and dread which he had of breaking any of God's commands, and so not to fear sin; next, finding his sinful appetites gratified by such breaches of the Divine law, he comes to like his sin and be pleased with what he has done; and then, from ordinary complacencies, heightened and improved by custom, he comes passionately to delight in such ways. Finally, having resolved to continue and persist in them, he frames himself to a resolute contempt of what is thought or said of him. 3. The examples of great persons take away the shame of anything which they are observed to practise, though never so foul and shameful in itself. Nothing is more contagious than an iii action set off with a great example; for it is natural for men to imitate those above them, and to endeavour to resemble, at least, that which they cannot be. 4. The observation of the general and common practice of anything takes away the shame of that practice. A vice a la mode will look virtue itself out of countenance, and it is well if it does not look it out of heart too. Men love not to be found singular, especially where the singularity lies in the rugged and severe paths of Virtue. 5. To have been once greatly and irrecoverably ashamed renders men shameless. For shame is never of any force but where there is some stock of credit to be preserved. When a man finds that to be lost, he is like an undone gamester, who plays on safety, knowing he can lose no more. III. THE SEVERAL DEGREES OF SHAMELESSNESS IN SIN. 1. A showing of the greatest respect, and making the most obsequious applications and addresses to lewd and infamous persons; and that without any pretence of duty requiring it, which yet alone can justify and excuse men in it. 2. To extenuate or excuse a sin is bad enough, but to defend it is intolerable. Such are properly the devil's advocates. 3. Glorying in sin. Higher than this the corruption of man's nature cannot possibly go. This is publicly to set up a standard on behalf of vice, to wear its colours, and avowedly to assert and espouse the cause of it, in defiance of all that is sacred or civil, moral or religious. IV. WHY IT BRINGS DOWN JUDGMENT AND DESTRUCTION UPON THE SINNER. 1. Because shamelessness in sin always presupposes those actions and courses which God rarely suffers to go unpunished. 2. Because of the destructive influence which it has upon the government of the world. It is manifest that the integrity of men's manners cannot be secured, where there is not preserved upon men's minds a true estimate of vice and virtue, that is, where vice is not looked upon as shameful and opprobrious, and virtue valued as worthy and honourable. But now, where vice walks with a daring front, and no shame attends the practice or the practisers of it, there is an utter confusion of the first dividing and distinguishing properties of men's actions; morality falls to the ground, and government must quickly follow. And whenever it comes to fare thus with any civil State, virtue and common honesty seem to make their appeal to the supreme Governor of all things, to take the matter into His own hands, and to correct those clamorous enormities which are grown too big and strong for law or shame, or any human coercion. V. WHAT THOSE JUDGMENTS ARE. 1. A sudden and disastrous death; and, indeed, suddenness in this can hardly be without disaster. 2. War and desolation. 3. Captivity. (R. South, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore they shall fall among them that fall: at the time that I visit them they shall be cast down, saith the LORD. |
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