The Evils of Divisions: The Good They Hinder
What heart that hath any tenderness in it bleeds not in the sense of these sore and dreadful heart divisions there are among us? The evil there is in them is beyond what tongue or pen can express. Take a view of it under these two heads. 1st. The good they hinder. 2d. The sin they cause.
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FIRST. THE QUIET, COMFORT, AND SWEET-NESS OF OUR SPIRITS, ARE HINDERED BY DIVISIONS.
They put the spirit out of tune: men who have heretofore had sweet spirits full of ingenuity, since they have interested themselves in these divisions, have lost their sweetness, their ingenuity is gone. When the bee stings, she leaves her sting behind her, and never gathers honey more. Men by stinging one another, do not lose their stings, but they lose their honey; they are never like to have that sweetness in their hearts that heretofore they had. “Shall I lose my sweetness,” says the fig-tree, “and go to be promoted over the trees?” Why dost thou not reason thus with thy spirit? Shall I lose my sweetness in contending to get my will, to be above others? God forbid! There was a time that both myself and others found much sweetness in the temper of our spirit. There was nothing but peaceableness, quiet, calmness, contentedness, in it: and how comfortable was such a temper of spirit! Methought, wThen my spirit was in that sweet frame, all things were sweet to me; but since I have been interested in quarrels and contentions it hath been far otherwise. Prov. xv, 4. Perverseness in the tongue causes a breach in the spirit. Contentions cause much perverseness in men’s tongues, and this causes a breach in their spirits. Your contending costs you dear. Though it were in nothing else, yet the loss of this sweetness of spirit makes it very costly to you. All the wrong that you should have put up if you had not contended, had not been so great an evil to you as this one thing is. There is nothing more contrary to ingenuity than quarrelsomeness. It is reported of Melancthon, that when he was to die he had this speech, and Stringelius at his death had the same: “I desire to depart this life for two causes; first, that I may enjoy the desired sight of the Son of God, and the church in heaven. Secondly? that I may be delivered from the fierce and implacable hatred of divines.” There was much disputing, contending, quarrelling, in those times, which was so tedious to the spirits of those good men, as it made them the more willing to die, that they might be where their souls should be at rest. That saint of God, old Mr. Dodd, never loved to meddle with controversies; he gave this reason, he found his heart the worse when he did. Men seldom come away from hot disputes, or any other contentions, but their spirits are altered for the worse. They find it so, and others find it in them. If a man has been abroad, and met with company with whom he hath been contending, his wife, children, servants, find that he comes not home with the same spirit that he went out with.
SECONDLY. THEY HINDER THE FREEDOM OF A MAN’S SPIRIT, WHICH A WISE MAN SETS A HIGH PRICE UPON.
The strength of many men’s spirits is spent in contentions. They have no command of them in anything else. When a man is once engaged in a contest, he knows not how to get off. Contention is a great snare to a man: he wishes he had never meddled with it; he is weary of it: but knows not how to come off fairly. We read of Moses (Deut. xxxiv, 7) that he was a hundred and twenty years old when he died; his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. Some give this to be one reason of such a wonderful preservation of his health and strength, the meekness of his spirit. God witnesses of him, (Num. xii, 3,) that he was the meekest man upon the face of the earth.
THIRDLY. THEY HINDER THE SWEETNESS OF
CHRISTIAN CONVERSE AND COMMUNION.
You know your communion with the saints was wont to be far more sweet than now it is. Ye were wont to have your hearts spring at the sight of one another: Ipse aspectus boni viri delectat, says Seneca. The very sight of a good man delights. The sight of a godly man was wont to delight us otherwise than now it does. You look one upon another now sourly, with lowering countenance, and withdraw from one another. Your comforts were wont to be double, treble, sevenfold, a hundred fold, according to that society of saints you conversed withal. One godly man accounted it the joy of his heart that he had anything that he could communicate to another godly man, and the other had the like joy that he had anything to communicate to him. Thus comforts were multiplied. But now your comforts are single. O the sweetness, the suitableness, there were wont to be in the spirits of Christians! Shall I say suitableness? It was blessed oneness of heart. They did as it were exchange souls one with another every day. Their souls did close clasp one with, and cleave one to, another! O how did they love to open their heart one to another! What delight was there in pouring forth their spirits into one another j What cheerfulness was there wont to be in their meeting! They eat their bread together with singleness of heart and joy, praising the Lord. There were no such cheerful meetings in the world, as the meetings of the saints were wont to be. They parted one from another with their souls bound up one in another: their hearts warmed, enlarged, resolved, strengthened, in God’s ways. But now they cannot meet together but they fall a jarring, contending one with another, and part with spirits estranged from, soured, and imbittered one against another; their hearts weakened, and more unsettled in the things of God than before. Heretofore when they were absent one from another, yet the remembrance one of another was joyful. But these days seem to be gone. Where is there that opening of secrets one to another as formerly? Every one is afraid of another. What sweet visits were there wont to be! What bearing one another’s burdens! What heart-encouraging letters! It was with the saints as in Tertullian’s time, Christians called one another brethren, and were ready to die for one another. But now these are opposed to one another’s spirits: they bring evil upon one another.
FOURTHLY. THEY HINDER OUR TIME.
Abundance of time is spent about our divisions, which we are not able to give account to God for. When men are engaged in contentions, they will follow them night and day: whatever business be neglected to be sure that must not. Yea, the choice of our time, that was wont to be spent in meditation, reading, prayer, is now spent in contending and wrangling. Those retired times that we were wont to converse with God in, are now spent in the workings of our own thoughts about divisions; and when we come abroad, then a great part of our time is given up in going, first to this body, and then to the other, to help forward and foment matter of division. Of ail the time of a man’s life, that time that is spent in lawing and quarrelling is the worst; and happy it were for many, that it might not be reckoned among the days, weeks, or months, of their lives.
FIFTHLY. THEY HINDER OUR PRAYERS.
“If two or three agree together touching anything they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father,” says Christ. Matt, xviii, 19. 1 Tim. ii, 8: “I will that men pray, lifting up their hands, without wrath.” When Daniel was in a strait, he goes to his companions, and desires them to lift up prayers to God for him. Dan. ii, 17. There was a sweet agreement between them; hence their stock and trade in prayer one with another. 1 Pet. iii, 7. The apostle giving rules for a peaceable, loving life, between man and wife. The woman must be meek, and the man live with his wife as a man of knowledge; and they must walk together as the heirs of life. Why so? “That your prayers may not be hindered.” Private contentions in families are great hinderances of family prayers: so our public divisions and contentions are the great hinderance of the prayers of Christians in a more public way. How were they wont to pour forth their hearts in prayer together! but now it is otherwise. Men do not now walk together as the heirs of life; therefore their prayers are hindered. God accepts not of our gift, if we offer it when our hearts are at a distance from our brethren. When breaches continue, and we are not reconciled, you know Christ requires us to leave our gift at the altar, till reconciliation be made. It is the Spirit of God in the saints that is the spirit of prayer: now God’s Spirit is a dove-like, meek, quiet, and peaceable spirit.
SIXTHLY. THEY HINDER THE USE OF OUR
GIFTS.
When vessels are soured with vinegar, they spoil liquor that is poured into them; they make it good for nothing. Many men have excellent gifts, but they are in such sour, vinegar spirits, that they are of little or no use in church and commonwealth.
1. In these times of division, many men exercise their gifts and parts in little or nothing else but in matters of division. Do you think that God hath given you such parts for no other end but this?
2. They have no hearts to impart to their brethren their gifts, in counselling, admonishing, strengthening, and comforting; no, their hearts are estranged from them, they care not to have anything to do with them. But do you think you are so far your own men, that you may keep in or employ your talents as you please? Are you not the stewards of Christ? Are they not given to you for the edification of your brethren, as well as for good to yourselves? Can this satisfy your consciences? Such a one differs from you; he hath angered you; therefore though you have opportunity of being useful to him, yet you refuse it, as if it were at your liberty to lay out your abilities for good, or not: certainly this is not according to the mind of Christ. 1 Cor. xii, 7: “The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal.”
3. If you do make use of your gifts for the good of others, yet dissensions between you will hinder the profit of them. You are not like to do any good by them. Except they be carried on by the oil of love, they will not soak into men’s hearts. When did you ever know a wrangling, contentious minister, (though his gifts were never so excellent,) do good among his people? And what comfort can a man have of his life, if he be laid aside by God as a useless man?
4. These divisions cause men to make the gifts of others useless to themselves, whereas God puts opportunity into men’s hands to get much good by those excellent gifts their brethren have; yet if there be any difference between them, either they will not acknowledge the gifts of God in them, or otherwise they have no mind to receive from them that good they might have, because their hearts are not with them.
SEVENTHLY. THEY HINDER OUR GRACES.
How little of God and Christ, how little spiritualness in professors of religion, since these rents and divisions have been among us, in comparison of what in former times hath appeared! “As the members of the body,” says Augustine, “are not quickened, except they be joined, so even the members of Christ do not receive of the quickening virtue of Christ, except they be joined.” Here is the reason of the deadness, coldness, emptiness, barrenness, vanity of your spirits, you are not joined. O where are the heavenly Christians that were wont to be — those humble, those holy, gracious souls, who lived by faith, who were able to deny themselves; their whole lives were nothing but a continual exercise of self-denial; who were not only patient, but joyful, under afflictions? Where are those watchful Christians who walked close with God; who enjoyed such spiritual communion with him, as made their faces shine in their holy, heavenly conversations? Where are those tender, broken-hearted Christians, that were wont to be, who lived upon the word, to whom the word was more sweet than honey and the honey-comb? Now there is another kind of professors of religion, as if godliness in these days were not of the same kind with that which was formerly. If our forefathers who were the most holy, and gracious, should rise again, they would not own those for professors of religion who now make a great noise, and keep a great stir about religion, as if they had got up higher than their forefathers had, and yet are loose, vain, frothy, false in their way. Certainly, those holy, gracious saints, whom these new professors slight, were they alive would abominate them, as the great disgrace of, and dishonour to, Jesus Christ and his saints. Our divisions hinder the breaking forth of the lustre, the shine of religion in the beauty and glory of it. The fire of our contentions raises such a smoke, that it all besmothers us; it takes away our comeliness: it makes us look black. No amiableness appears in the ways of religion to convince men of the excellency of them. Scratched faces, rent and torn garments, we account a shame to us. Distracted, divided spirits, rending and tearing one another, and from one another in our divided ways. O how uncomely doth it render us, and that profession of religion that we take upon us! The Turks were wont to wonder much at our Englishmen for pinking and cutting their clothes, counting them little better than madmen for making holes in whole cloth, which time of itself would tear too soon: the cuts, rents, slashes, that are in our spirits in our divisions, are much more uncomely, and may justly render us foolish and mad in the eyes of all that behold us. Our divisions hinder our strength. If you untwist a cable, how weak is it in the severalparts of it! A threefold cord is not easily broken; but a single one is. Divide a strong current into several rivulets, and how shallow and weak will the course of the water be! They hinder our doing good in public: that which concerns many, must be done by many; but how can two, much less many, walk together, if they be not agreed? That which one does the other seeks to undo. Now, although God can turn whatever is contrary to his work to the furtherance of it, yet man cannot do so. When God would hinder the work of building Babel, he conies down and confounds their tongues, so they could not join together in it. Thus when the devil would hinder the work of Jerusalem, he knows no way more likely than by dividing the hearts of those who are employed, if he possibly can, that thereby he might bring confusion.
They hinder our own ends. None are more crossed in their ends and designs than contentious people. We have not the mutual benefit of one another’s estates, houses, the many ways of accommodation and help for one another, as heretofore we were wont to have. Now every man shifts for himself; scarce any man who knew what the heartiness of friendship meant, enjoys those outward accommodations as he was wont. They hinder the blessing of God. The Psalmist commending the love of brethren, concludes: “There the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.” Psalm, cxxxiii. There! that is, where the love of brethren is, there is a blessing, a blessing commanded by God; it comes with power, and this no less than life, and this life for evermore. “God dwells in Salem,” says Luther, “not in Babylon: where there is peace, not where there is confusion.”
Thus you see how great evil there is in our divisions, in respect to what good we lose by them. Now then consider, whether it be possible that any gain we can get by them can recompense this loss. Can anything got by them quit the cost? But if it could be supposed our loss may be recompensed, yet I am sure nothing can countervail the evil there is in them, in respect of the sinfulness of them. That is the next head.