Caligo tenebra

fectio tenebrarum. Arab.

darkness," Matt. viii. 12; xxv. 30, i. e. Fum. Bez. Per- such as is outmost and farthest removed from the region of light; for this phrase "blackness of darkness" intends as much as most black, thick darkness; it being a kind of Hebraical phrase, like unto that Matt. xxvi. 64, "the right hand of power," that is, a most powerful right hand. So a body of death, Rom. vii. 24, is put for a mortal body; and holiness of truth, Eph. iv. 24, for true holiness.

This thick, black, gross darkness is not to be understood properly for that negation or privation of light by reason of the absence of the sun, &c.; but metaphorically, for great calamities and miseries. And in Scripture there is a threefold misery set forth by darkness.

[1.] External misery: "When I looked for good, then evil came unto me: and when I waited for light, there came darkness," Job xxx. 26. So Isa. v. 30, "If one look unto the land, behold darkness and sorrow." So Isa. viii. 22, "They shall look unto the earth; and behold trouble and darkness." "Get thee into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldeans," &c., Isa. xlvii. 5; Amos v. 20.

[2] Internal, comprehending, 1. Darkness and blindness of mind, the want of the saving knowledge of God and his ways: "To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death," &c., Luke i. 79. "The light shineth in darkness," &c., John i. 5. "Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord," &c., Eph. v. 8; 1 Pet. ii. 9; 1 Thess. v. 4; John iii. 19. 2. Spiritual desertion, or the withdrawing of the light of God's countenance; and thus Heman complains that God had laid him in darkness, Psal. lxxxviii. 6. And, "Who is there among you that walketh in darkness, and hath no light?" Isa. 1. 10.

[3.] Eternal darkness; the miserable condition of the damned in hell, by reason of their separation from God, called "utter darkness," Matt. xxii. 13; viii. 12, because farthest distanced from the light of God's pleased countenance; and this estate of misery is fitly compared to darkness, both in respect of the cause and the effect of darkness. 1. The (though only deficient) cause of darkness is the withdrawing of the light; so the separation from the favourable presence of God is the greatest misery of the damned, Matt. vii. 23; xxv. 46: the hell of hell, is to be without God's loving and gracious presence in hell. 2. The effect of darkness is horror, and affrightment, and trouble. There is no joy but in God's presence, in that there is fulness of joy, Psal. xvi.; but without Eternis tenebris it only weeping and wailing, blackness damnari decet qui, sese trans- of darkness, thick darkness, puræ tenefigurantes in angelos lucis, veram bræ, not the least glimpse and crevice of Lucem non præ light and mixture of joy. And most fitly is this punishment of blackness of darkness threatened against these seducers, who transformed themselves præcipitaverunt. into angels of light, and yet held not forth the light of the truth, but loved darkness more than light, and led others into the darkness of sin and error; and how just was it that they should suffer by thick, true, perfect darkness, who deluded the world with seeming and appearing light!

carunt, sed sunsmet magis tenebras et caligines dilexerunt, et in meras errorum tenebras alios

Lorin, in loc. Recte in tenebras tormentorum mittentur ætersiam Dei, sub nomine lucis,

nas, qui in eccle

tenebras induce

bant errorum. Beda.

(2.) The certainty and unavoidableness of this punishment. Jude saith this "blackness of darkness" is "reserved" for them, Thonra. The word properly imports the solicitous keeping and reserving a thing, lest it be lost or taken away by others; a keeping with watch and ward, most accurately and vigilantly, as a prisoner is kept. Hence in Acts iv.

in loc.

Lorin.

Κληρονομία τετηρημένη. 1 Pet. i. 4.

3; v. 18, Thoηo is used to signify a prison. In this place, therefore, there is implied God's present forbearance to punish these seducers with the blackness of darkness, it being reserved and kept for them, not actually as yet inflicted upon them; but principally is intended the certainty and unavoidableness of this punishment, and the impossibility of the pertinacious sinner's escaping it. Nor is it any wonder that this state should be thus certainly Denotat firmum reserved for them; the firm and irre- et ratum Divinæ versible decree, saith Lorinus, of God justitiæ decretum de supplicio to punish them for ever, or that ordain- æterno, ing them of old to condemnation, mentioned ver. 4, is here denoted; so that as in God's decree heaven" is an inheritance reserved" for the faithful, this misery is reserved for the wicked. Needs must this punishment be reserved for incorrigible sinners, if we consider the truth, justice, power, omniscience of God. His truth, it being impossible for him to lie, and who is as truc in his threatenings against the obstinate, as in his promises to the returning sinner. His justice, whereby he will not suffer sin always to go unpunished, and "will render to every one according to his deeds," Rom. ii. 6. His power, so great that none can deliver the wicked out of his hand; yea, so great, as that they can neither be able to keep out nor break out of prison. His omniscience, whereby none can escape or hide himself from his eye. In short, this blackness of darkness must certainly be reserved, if we consider the foolish diligence even of sinners themselves, daily hoarding up their own damnation, and " treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath," Rom. ii. 5; like some precious treasure, which they keep so carefully, as if they were afraid that any should bereave them of it.

66

(3.) The duration and continuance of this their misery; the apostle saith it was “ for ever." Misery indeed, and yet equity. Eternity it is that shall make their fire hot, their chains heavy, their darkness black and thick. How long does a dark night seem in this world! but how dark will a not merely long, but eternal, night seem in the next world! How hideous is that woe whereby the wicked shall ever strive to part with that which they shall never lose, and crave that which they shall never procure! If it be so great a misery for a starving prisoner to be kept without bread but for a day or two in a prison, and to see through his grate passengers laden with that plenty of provisions which he must not so much as touch, oh what a woe will it be for the damned ever to see the faithful feasting themselves in the fruition of God's presence, and to know that they shall eternally starve, and yet not die, in the want of the least drop, the smallest crumb of that full banquet of happiness, which the saints ever enjoy in God's presence!

Obs. 1. The world, without the word, lies in a condition of darkness. Ministers of the word are the stars, the light of the world; take them away, and every place is full of darkness. The people to whom Christ preached sat before in darkness, in the region and shadow of death, Matt. iv. 16. The Ephesians sometimes were darkness. Before the gospel is savingly delivered, we are under the power of darkness; and darkness is that term from which we are called when we are brought out of our natural estate. And in three respects is the world without the gospel in darkness.

(1.) In respect of ignorance. 1. It knows not God. The Gentiles are said to be such as knew not God. The word only discovers him savingly, because it only makes known God in Christ. The wisest of the heathens, till this light came, could not know him: "The world by wisdom knew not God;" they

Obs. 5. Great is God's forbearance towards sinners. Blackness of darkness is reserved for them, not presently inflicted upon them. Frequently does the Scripture proclaim God's long-suffering, and hist being slow to anger. The apostle mentions his "forbearance and long-suffering," Rom. ii. 4. "He endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction," Rom. ix. 22. He gave the old world a hundred and twenty years' space of repentance. He endured the manners of the Israelites "forty years in the wilderness," Acts xiii. 18. Four hundred years he spared the Canaanites, Gen. xv. 16. And sundry ways may this greatness of God's longsuffering be amplified. (1.) He forbears punishing sinners, though he see their sin, and is most sensible thereof: he sees all the circumstances of sin, the most secret and retired wickednesses in the heart, all are naked, ransacked, anatomized before him. Men forbear to punish men because they know not the secret machinations of mischief which are against them; but God, though he beholds all, yet he spares long. (2.) He does not only behold sin where it is, but loathes it wherever he beholds it; though he sees it every where with an eye of observation, yet no where with an eye of approbation. Sin is opposite to his very nature. Man may love sin, and yet be still a man; but if God should love sin, he should cease to be God; he is under sin as a cart pressed with sheaves, Amos ii. 13. All the hatred that man bears to all the things in the world which are either hateful or hurtful to him, is not comparable to God's detestation of the least sin. (3.) He is able to punish sin wherever he either looks upon it or loathes it. As the most secret sinner is within the reach of his eye, so the strongest sinner is within the reach of his arm; he is as able to throw a sinner into hell as to tell him of hell; he in all his forbearances loses not his power, but exercises his patience; he can, but will not punish. (4.) He does not only forbear punishment, but seeks to prevent it. He waits that he may be gracious. He is not willing that any should perish. He strikes more gently for a while, that he may not strike eternally; and he stays and warns so long, that he may not strike at all. (5.) He not only suffers sinners long, but all the while he puts forth mercy towards them, upholds their beings, feeds, heals, helps them. Sinners all the while they live spend upon the stock of mercy: God is at much loss and great charges in continuing those mercies which they wanton away unprofitably. (6.) He forbears to punish, without expecting any benefit to himself by it. If his long-suffering bring us to repentance, the good redounds to us; it is then, as the apostle speaks, salvation. He loses nothing if we are lost; he has no addition to his own happiness if we are happy. (7.) He is patient and long-suffering to sinners, who is much, nay, infinitely our superior, and more excellent than we are. Here a King, the King of kings, waits for beggars; our Lord and Master stands without at the door and knocks: O infinite condescension! How widely does God's carriage towards man differ from man's towards man! We, poor worms, have short thoughts: man will presently, upon every affront or neglect, be ready to call fire from heaven. It is well for poor sinning man he has to do with a long-suffering God; his fellow creature could not, would not be so patient. God truly shows himself a God, as well by sparing as by punishing: "I am God, and not man; and therefore," saith he, "the seed of Jacob are not destroyed." We further may gather that it is no sign that men are innocent because they are not punished. It follows not, because they are great, that therefore they are good; this follows only, God is good. Nor does God's forbearance prove a

sinner pardoned, it only speaks him for a time, though the Lord knows for how short a time, reprieved. Justice is not dead, but sleepeth. God is sometimes said to hold his peace, never to be dumb; though he be long-suffering, yet he is not ever-suffering. God's patience shows not that God will always spare us, but that we should now repent. It is not a pillow for the presumptuous, but a cordial for the penitent. God will require interest hereafter for all his forbearance. Judgment delayed will be increased, unless prevented. Justice comes surely, though slowly, to the impenitent: the blackness of darkness is reserved for them who are unprofitable under light. If patience make thee not blush, power shall make thee bleed. O thou, though forborne sinner, labour for faith in threatenings; take heed of self-love, and shunning the thoughts of that severity, the feeling whereof thou canst not shun. Study the end of God's forbearance, and the vanity of all earthly refuges and reliefs against punishment reserved for an incorrigible sinner.

Obs. 6. Things earthly should teach us things heavenly. It is our duty to make a spiritual improvement of earthly objects. The apostle makes use of clouds, trees, stars, waves, to spiritual purposes. The world is a great school to teach us the knowledge of God. Though we have a superior doctrine, yet we must not neglect this. The prophets, apostles, and Christ, often used this kind of instruction by similitudes taken from the creatures; every one of which is a ladder made of many steps to raise up to God; a pair of spectacles, whereby we may read God the more clearly and plainly. Our meditation should be like a limbec, into which flowers being put, sweet water drops from it; and out of every earthly object put into our meditations, some heavenly considerations should be drawn and drop. All the creatures in general we should improve to the learning of God's nature, and our duty.

(1.) Of his nature. The invisible things of God are discovered by the creatures, Rom. i. 20. His power, in making them of nothing, and upholding them, as he made them, with his word. His eternity, for he that made them must needs be before them. His wisdom is manifest in the beauty, variety, and distinction, order and subordination of one to another, the exquisite cunning in the frame of the smallest creature. Indeed Augustine saith he more doubted whether he had a soul in his body, (the effects whereof were evident,) than whether there were a God in the world. His bounty and goodness, in the endowments bestowed upon every one in its kind, his large provision for them all.

Soliloq. 1. 31.

(2.) We should likewise improve all the creatures in general to the learning of our own duty. As, 1. To depend upon him for all necessaries, as they do for provisions, "their eyes waiting upon him," Psal. civ. 29: we must knock at his door, and go to his fountain, cast our care upon him. "In him we live, and move, and have our being," Acts xvii. 28. "Of him, through him, and to him, are all things," Rom. xi. 36: he is the great Householder of the world. Jezreel cries to the corn, wine, and oil, these cry and call to the earth, this calls to the heavens, but these call to God, upon whom they all depend; and shall not we do so? 2. All creatures teach us to love him and serve him, they being love-tokens, God loving us better than them; and all being instruments of punishment if we fail in our duty. They all serve the Lord by a perpetual law. The winds and the seas obey him; "fire, snow, hail," &c., Psal. cxlviii. 8. All the creatures, even frogs, grasshoppers, lice, are his soldiers. He is Commander-in-chief; they are all at his beck. In obedience to him they will run

from themselves, and cease to be themselves; the sun will stand still, go back, the sea will be a solid wall, the fire will not burn, iron will swim, 2 Kings vi. 6. And they serve us all so constantly day and night; they serve us with their sweetest and choicest gifts; the sun with influence of heat and light, trees with delightful fruit, and beasts with fleece and life, to their own wasting and destruction. Oh how should we serve him even to the loss of the best things we have; and how should the constant standing of the creatures in that station wherein God at the first set them, make us ashamed of our apostacy from God, and rebellion against God! 3. All the creatures in general teach us earnestly to expect a better condition than that which we now enjoy. "The earnest expectation of the creature" (saith Paul) "waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God," Rom. viii. 19. If there be something in the creatures (groaning and travailing in pain until now, tired out by man's sin, and made subject to vanity) like an earnest expectation of and waiting for this manifestation, should not man, who is the sinner, and has made the creature subject to vanity, who has also reason, and who shall partake of more happiness by that manifestation, much more desire and look for it? Shall man, of all creatures, rest in and be contented with a state of vanity? The very unreasonable, yea, insensible creatures, will teach us to soar to a more heavenly pitch of spirit.

And as all the creatures in general may (thus) be improved spiritually, so may every particular creature severally, whether in heaven or on the earth. For heavenly creatures, the psalmist tells us, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handywork," Psal. xix. 1. "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man ?" &c., Psal. viii. 3. The pure and excellent matter of the heavens speaks the greater purity and excellency of the Workman. How pure also our hearts should be, which are his lesser heaven; and how pure they should be who expect to live in those heavens, into which no impure thing must enter! How hateful also sin is to God, who for man's sin will one day set this beautiful house on fire! The height of the heavens shows the infinite height, and honour, and majesty of him whose standing house is above all the visible heavens, whose palace, seat, and pavilion is in heaven above. The circular, round figure of the heavens teacheth us the infiniteness and perfection of the Maker. The firmness and stability of the heavens declares God's truth and unchangeableness, whose word is their pillar; the safety likewise of that place to lay up our treasures in: their swift motion and revolution in twenty-four hours instructs us of the readiness and swiftness which we should express in duty. The light of heaven, of so unknown a nature, shows us the incomprehensible nature of God. The diffusiveness and comfortableness of light speaks what comfort is in the light of his face, which, as light, though imparted to thousands, yet is not impaired or made less for the good of others. The purity of light contracting no filthiness, though looking into it, teaches us his holiness, who though he sees sin every where, yet loves it no where, and is ever in an irreconcilable opposition against all the works of dark

light from the sun, her changes, spots, inferiority, governing of the night, disappearing at the rising of the sun, speaks the dependency of the church upon Christ, her many changes and various conditions in this life, her defects and deformities, subordination to Christ, as also the uncertainty and variableness of every worldly condition, the smallness and lowness of all earthly enjoyments, their spottedness with many cares, fears, wants, their usefulness only while we are in the night of this world, their disappearing and vanishing when the Sun of righteousness shall come in glory. The stars, in respect of the constancy, continuance of their courses in their orbs, communicativeness of light, differing one from another, their glittering and influences, declare the stability of God's promises to his church, which can never be broken, Jer. xxxi. 35, 36; our duty to continue in our own sphere, to afford our help and light to them who stand in need; the different degrees likewise of grace and glory hereafter, the clearest shining of grace in the night of affliction. Of the clouds we have spoken before. The air also, by its invisibleness, ubiquity, preservation of our life, should remind us that God is, though he is not seen; that he is every where, within me, without me, included in, excluded from no place; the Preserver also of our lives, in whom we live, move, and have our being. The winds, by their thinness, piercing, powerful motions, freedom, inconstancy, teach us, as God's invisibility, his irresistible power in his works of nature and grace, the free motion of the Spirit, and the secret working thereof in the heart, John iii. 7, 8; so the vanity and levity of man, and all human things, the inability of any creature to withstand God, the misery of those who are not built upon Christ as their rock and foundation, the unsettledness of the erroneous, tossed with every wind of doctrine. Of the earth likewise, with the creatures there, as well as the heavens, should we make a spiritual improvement. "Speak to the earth," saith Job," and it shall teach thee," chap. xii. 8. "How excellent," saith David, "is thy name in all the earth!" The earth, by its hanging on nothing, its stability, plenty, lowness, the labouring about it, and its receiving of seed, instructs us of the infinite power and strength of God, the ability of his word to sustain the burdens of the soul, the riches of his throne, whose footstool is so decked; God's goodness to sinful man, in spreading and furnishing for him such a table; his care for his people, in so clothing the grass of the field, and providing for the very beasts; the unsuitableness of pride to man, the earth being his mother, whence he came and whither he goes; it teaches us also wisdom, to get our hearts above these drossy, earthly objects, and to have our conversation in heaven; the pains also which we ought to take to dig deep for wisdom, which is more precious than gold, and to receive the seed of the word in a prepared soil, a good and honest heart. The trees upon the earth, in respect of their variety of sorts, growth, shelter, fruitfulness, decay, teach us that difference which is among men: some are wild, trees of the wood, and of the field, without the church; others are planted in the garden and orchard of the church: some have neither the fruits of holiness nor the leaves of profession; others have leaves who are without fruit; others, trees of righteousness, have both some are as the taller cedars, some as the lower shrubs, some are rich and noble, some poor and contemptible in the world; but when both are turned to ashes, then both alike: the ashes of a beggar are as good as those of a king. Some men fall by old age, and want of natural moisture, others are before their time cut down in their green years with the axe of death. There is no spiritual growth or continu