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{Sermons on John 1:47
The Doctrine Confirmed
The Principles and Doctrines of Godliness Are Not Fantasy
Sin
Sin Is the Root of All Misery}
The miseries of this life—all of the diseases, pains, torments, tumults, commotions, quarrelings, contentions, murders, rapine, oppression, wars, famine, poverty, pestilence, and all sorts of calamities under which this world groans—“Have you not brought this on yourself” (Jeremiah 2:17 NKJV)—that is, by your iniquities?150 What a world would this have been had it not been for sin? It would have been a paradise; all the earth would have been as the garden of the Lord. How great a peace would there have been, had it not been for this hate-maker? How much joy there would have been, had it not been for this tormentor. How great beauty and order there would have been if it had not been for sin, which is the deformity and confusion of all things. What a world this has become due to sin. How full of violence. What lions, tigers, and wolves have the people inhabiting the world become to one another. What thorns and briars sinners are, scratching and tearing one another. What lying, slandering, defaming, defrauding, quarreling, and fighting has broken out. This earth has almost even become a hell. What is the cause of all this? The apostle tells us: “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?” (James 4:1 ESV). Sinners lay the blame for it all on righteousness and holiness, the knowledge of God and conscience, and on those people who exercise themselves in keeping a good conscience, walking holily, and working righteousness. These are the troublers, disturbers, and the firebrands who set all in a combustion.151 But, they only slightly think about what it is that they say. To impute the troubles of the earth to righteousness, holiness, and so on; to affirm, as many do, that it would have been a better world if it had not been for so much preaching, praying, evangelism, making such fuss about conscience, and the like—it is actually saying that it would have been a better world if God had not been at fault here. We supposedly may thank God and His law and Christ and His Gospel for all our troubles. But let such blasphemers know that it is they themselves and their wicked hearts and their atheism, ignorance, idolatries, adulteries, pride, covetousness, lewdness, and licentiousness to which they owe all their troubles and miseries. “Jerusalem sinned grievously; therefore she became filthy; all who honored her despise her, for they have seen her nakedness; she herself groans and turns her face away. Her uncleanness was in her skirts; she took no thought of her future; therefore her fall is terrible” (Lamentations 1:8–9 ESV). Can a rush grow without mire? (Job 8:11).
Now from all this it obviously follows that, first, no sin can properly be called little. Second, the saints mourn for sin, pray, watch, and fear. They not only shun sin, but occasions of sin, temptations to sin, and the very appearance of sin. These are not fanatical, but reasonable services of the saints.
Notwithstanding all of this evil that is in sin, carnal people deem it as nothing, saying that it is common to all people, and we are all sinners. So why should we trouble ourselves about that which we cannot help? They wonder at the poor saints that they are so faithful, watchful, tender, and so troubled when they fall into sin. They count the saints’ fear as their folly and their mourning as madness—as if sin were a mere scarecrow, imaginary goblin, or nothing but their own melancholy fantasies about which they thus trouble themselves. What is it that you are afraid of? Why cannot you be as free as others and take your liberty as well as others? What hurt is there in a little mirth and in a little freedom to live as other people do? Oh sinners, if Samuel’s cloak were taken off this devil’s back,152 the veil were taken from your eyes, and you did only see sin as it is, you would cease your wondering.
Is sin nothing? Is enmity against God, His government, and His being nothing? Are the fruits of sin nothing? Is poverty nothing? Are sword, famine, and pestilence nothing? Are all the bodily diseases that come upon you and the torment of them such light matters? Are gout, the stone,153 strangury,154 and the pains of childbirth nothing? Are death, Hell, and the vengeance of eternal fire such light matters? Is the fruit so bitter and deadly and yet you think there is little hurt in the root? You may as well count these torments that sin has brought upon the world to be imaginary or slight matters, as have such thoughts of sin.
Whoever treats sin as nothing slights Christ. Whoever fears not, feels not, flees not from, or mourns not for sin as the most dreadful of evils does not regard God or his own soul. Whoever uses his wit to dispute sin into a trifle has little understanding and less religion. Whoever arrogantly imagines that a cold “God forgive me” will cure him of his inward depravity or that a slight “I cry for mercy, God” will make amends for his actual wickedness—if he does not prove himself a fanatic in the end, then let the most circumspect Christians pass for fanatics now.
Sinners, if you will not yet be convinced, if the Scriptures do not convince you, and if your eyes and ears do not teach you to understand sin better, take heed lest, as Gideon taught the men of Succoth with briars and thorns (Judges 8:16), God teach you hereafter with fire and brimstone. He will fetch His proof from your bones and bowels. When your pangs come upon you, God will cause His revenging worm to bring back the memory of your slighted sins to you and say, “Now sinner, you wretch, what do you think of your lust now? What do you think of your pride, carnal jollity, and covetousness now? Where are your slight thoughts of all this now? Where is your vain confidence now that you would die in all of your sins and still escape and come out well enough; that all of the threatenings and woes denounced against you would come to nothing? Now sinner, learn, and be learning this lesson forever, that you have been a fool in the midst of all your high conceits and boastings of your wisdom.”
150There are multiple senses in which this is true, and it is helpful to make some distinctions here. First, we do often suffer for our own sins, both in this life and the next. Even the believer, by sin, can lessen his or her heavenly reward (1 Corinthians 3:14–15), though saved by Christ’s merits alone. Second, we often suffer from the sins of others. Third, when Adam sinned, God cursed the ground and much more besides (Genesis 3:14–19), which curse is the cause of much toil and suffering. Fourth, just as we all participate in the curse resulting from Adam’s sin, so we also all inherited Adam’s rebellious sin nature; thus, the everyday troubles of life from the curse are punishment for our own sin, and far less than we deserve.
151At first glance, Alleine seems to be making an absurd accusation or else to be referring to some oddity unique to his own time and place. But this manner of thinking is no different from the modern canard that religion causes wars, and thus all religion is bad. An internet search of “religion wars cause” returns massive results. Karl Marx and his modern “progressive” followers continue to brand religion as harmful and a means of oppression. Militaristic religions such as Islam make war against Christians. Also, in many cases Christian bodies politic have had to defend themselves from foreign powers against unjust aggression, tyranny, or attempts to impose unbiblical religious practice. Not understanding the things of the Spirit, many dismiss matters of doctrine and conscience as mere trivia of no realistic concern. From this, it is an easy step to slanderously and absurdly pin the blame for dissensions, controversy, strife, and (at least some) wars on those who stand for God’s truth instead of giving way (Proverbs 25:26).
152Most likely, this is a reference to 1 Samuel 28:14, in which the witch of En Dor initiated a séance to call up the prophet Samuel from the dead. The resultant apparition was of an old man in a cloak. While it is abundantly clear that God controlled and overruled the whole matter for His own purposes, the actual nature of the apparition of Samuel is not given in the text. Alleine is not alone in assuming it to be the devil or a demon; hence his literary allusion.
153the stone: likely a reference to gallstones, kidney stones, or other urinary tract stones, the last two of which are often extremely painful.
154strangury: slow, spasmodic, drop-by-drop, painful discharge of urine typically caused by urinary tract blockage, a medical term still in use.
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