Commentary on the Gospels and Acts, Commentary 1 · Chapter 6 · Verse 24
Verse 24. No man can serve two Masters, &c.]
The Mammonists minde must needs be full of darknesse, because utterly destituted of the Father of lights, the Sun of the soul: for ye cannot serve… est cognatio … & …. two Masters, God and Mammon. By Mammon is meant earthly treasure, worldly wealth, outward abundance, especially when gotten by evil arts, it commeth to be the gain of ungodlinesse,Gen. 37. …. the wages of wickednesse, riches of unrighteousnesse, filthy …. When Joseph was cast into the pit by his bloudy brethren, What gain (saith Judah) will it be if we kill him? The Chaldee there hath it, What Mammon shall it be? What can we make of it? What profit shall we reap or receive thereby? Now these two, God and Mammon, as they are incompatible Masters, so the variance between them is irreconcileable. Amity with the world is … with the Lord, Jam. 4. 4. Emnity, I say, in a sense both active and passive, for it makes a man both to hate God, and to be … by God: so there's no love lost on either side. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him; that's flat. But the … any one is drowned in the world, … more desperately he is divorced from God, who requireth to be served truly, that there be no halting, and totally, that there be … halving. Cambden reports of Redwald the first King of the East. Saxons that was …, that he had in the same Church, one Altar for Christian religion, and another for sacrifice to devils, And…. …. …. … … Deo …, …, qui … vellet. Callenucius, telleth us of a Noble-man of Naples, that was … profanely to say, that he had two souls in his body, one for God, and another for whomsoever would have it. The Ebionites, … Eusebius, would keep the Sabbath with the Jews, and the Lordsday with the Christians, as if they were of both religions, … …. …. lib. 5. hist. ….in truth, they were of neither: So Ezekiels hearers sate devoutly before the Lord at his publike Ordinances, and with their … Euseb. lib. 3. cap. ….shewed much love, but their heart, meanwhile, was on their halfpenny, it went after their covetousnesse. So the Pharisees heardEzek. … 31. Christs Sermon against the service of Mammon, and derided him:Luk. 16. 13. and while their lips seemed to pray, they were but chewing of that murthering-morsell, those widdows houses that their throats (as an open sepulchre) swallowed down soon after. Thus filled they up the measure of their fathers, those ancient Idolaters in the wildernesse, who set up a golden calfe, … then caused it to be proclaimed, To morrow is a feast to Jehovah. And such is the dealing ofExod. 32. 5. every covetous Christian. S. Paul calleth him an idolater, S. James an adulterer, for he goeth a whoring after his gods of gold and silver: And although he bow not the knee to his mammon, yet with his heart he serveth it: Now obedience is better then sacrifice: Rom. 6. 16.and Know ye not, saith the Apostle, that his servants ye are to whom ye obey &c? Inwardly he loves it, delights in it, trusts on it, secures himself by it from whatsoever calamites: Outwardly, he spends all his time upon this Idol, in gathering, keeping, increasing, or honouring of it. Hence the jealous God hateth him, and smites his hands at him, Ezek. 22. 13. and hath a speciall quarrell against … that blesse the covetous, whom the Lord abhorreth. As for…. 10. 3. his servants, he strictly chargeth them to … their conversation without covetousnesse, Heb. 13. 5. yea their communication, Ephes. 5. 3. yea their cogitation, 2 Pet. 2. 14. branding them for … children, that have so much as their thoughts exercised that way. He will not have his hasten to be rich, or labour after superfluities, … nor anxiously, after necessaries. For worldlinesse (… not …) when men oppresse themselves with multiplying offoreign. …, or suffer their thoughts and affections to be …, … taken up, with minding these things on earth, as a main hinderance from heaven: It fills the heart with cares, and so unfits … deads it to divine duties. The thoughts as wings, should carry … in worship even to the mansions of God, which being laden … thick …, they so glue us to the earth, that the … of … word and ordinances cannot draw us one jot from it. Theforeign. … is also hereby made like a mill, where one cannot hear …, … noise is such as takes away all intercourse. If conscience call … them to take heed of going out of Gods way, they are at as little … to listen, as he that runs in a race; who many times … with so much violence, that he cannot hear what is said unto him, … it never so good counsel. And having thus set their hearts, and … their hopes upon earthly things, if ever they … them, as it … falleth out, they are filled almost with unmedicinable sorrows, … as they will praise the dead above the living, and wish they had … been born, Eccles. 4. 1, 2, 3. Lo this is the guise and guerdom of those Inhabitants of the earth, those viri divitiarum, as the … stiles them, those miserable muck-worms, that prefer Mammon before Messias, gold before God, money before mercy, earth before heaven: as childish a weaknesse as that of Honorius …the Emperour, that preferred a Hen before the City of Rome. …, saith one, is a monster, whose head is as subtill as the serpent, whose mouth is wide as hell, eyes sharp as a Lizard, scent quick as the Vulture, hands fast as Harpyes, belly insatiable as a Wolfe, feet swift to …, as a Lionesse robbed of her whelps. Ahab will have Naboths vineyard, or he will have his bloud. Judas was both covetous and a murderer, and therefore a murderer, because covetous. He is … also a thief, and why a thief, but … a Mammonist. … draws a man fromSee … …. all the Commandments, Psal. 116. 36. And there want not those, that have drawn the covetous person thorow all the Commandments, and proved him an Arheist, a Papist, a perjurer, a … of Gods Sabbath, an iron boweld wretch, a murtherer, an adulterer, a thief, a false witnesse, or whatsoever … the devil will. And can this man ever serve God acceptably? can he possibly please two so contrary masters? No: he may sooner reconcile fire and water, look with the one eye upward, and with the other eye downward, bring heaven and earth together, and gripe them both in a fist … be habitually covetous and truly religious. These two are as inconcurrent as two … lines, and as incompatible as light and darknesse. They who bowed down on their knees to drink of the waters, were accounted unfit souldiers for Gideon: so are … foreignfor Christ, that stoop to the base love of the things of this life: … discredit it both his work and his wages: … Abraham would not, that ancient and valiant souldier and servant of the most … God. For when Melchisedech from God had made him heir of all things, and brought him bread and wine, that is, an earnest, … little for the whole, &c. he refused the riches that the King of Sodom offered him, because God was his shield, and his exceeding great reward: His shield against any such enemies as … omer and his complices had been unto him, and his exceeding great reward, for all his labour of love in that or any other service,Gen 14. 18, 19, 23. with chap. 15. 1. though he received not of any man, from a thread to a ….