Evil Thoughts

There is much speculative enjoying of sinful pleasures, much acting-over of sinful acts; the mind of man is full of it, as will appear in many particulars. (1) Whatever comforts men may have at present in their possession, whatever excellencies or endowments they may have, they love to be alone to study and think of them. When they are separated from the present use of them, they will still be recounting and casting them up in imagination, surveying their happiness in them, applauding their own hearts in their conditions. Just as rich men love money, love to be always looking at it, counting it over, so men love to be always summing up their comforts and privileges, those that are lacked by others especially: as how rich they are, how great, how they excel others in parts and gifts, etc. O how much of that precious sand of our thoughts runs out this way! So the man in the Gospel keeps an audit in his heart, “Soul,” he said, you have “much goods laid up for many years” (Luk 12:19). So Haman took an inventory of his honors and goods, talking of all “the glory of his riches…and all the things wherein the king had promoted him” (Est 5:11). So Nebuchadnezzar, as it may seem, was alone walking and talking to himself like a fool, saying, “Is not this great Babylon…that I have built by the might of my power, for the honor of my majesty?” (Dan 4:30). And it is not only upon their comforts, but they also do this in regard to their excellencies, as their learning, their wisdom, etc. Men love to stand looking upon these in the mirror of their own speculation, as fair faces love to look often and long into glass mirrors. This all comes from the self-flattery in men, they desire to keep their happiness still fresh and continued in their eye. But these thoughts—when they do not raise up in the heart thankfulness to God, when they are not used for that end—are the bellows of pride. They are vain and abominable thoughts in the eyes of God, as would appear from God’s dealing with those mentioned before. For to the man in the Gospel, He says, “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee,” etc. (Luk 12:20). And to Nebuchadnezzar, while “the word was in the king’s mouth,” giving him no further warning, God struck him with madness and beastliness (Dan 4:31). As for Haman, you know that he was like a wall that swells before it breaks and falls into ruin and decay. (2) This speculative enjoying of pleasures, this acting of sins in our imaginations, appears in regard to things to come also. For men view them afar off, their hopes going forth to meet them in their thoughts. They take much contentment from entertaining their desires with such vain promisings and expectations beforehand. Those in Isaiah wound up their hearts to a higher pin of jollity in the midst of their cups, for their hearts thought and promised them that “To morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant” (Isa 56:12)! So those in James 4:13 say to themselves, “We will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain.” The promise of this, the thoughts of it beforehand, feeds them and keeps up comfort in their hearts. When men rise up in the morning, they begin to think ahead with much pleasure about the carnal pleasures which they have the promise of for that day or week (as that they shall go to such a company, that they shall be merry, that they shall enjoy the satisfaction of such and such lusts, that they shall hear good news, etc.). Godly men live by faith in God’s promises: “By these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit,” said Hezekiah, even what God has “spoken” (Isa 38:15-18). [In the same way,] carnal men live much upon the promises of their own hearts and thoughts beforehand. For it is to this head of vain thoughts that these promisings are to be reduced, “their inward thought is that their houses shall continue for ever” (Psa 48:11), and this thought pleases them. Is there any pleasure which a man makes much account of but he acts it over first in private, in his own thoughts? And in this way men foolishly take their own words and promises, and so fool themselves in the end (Jer 17:11). They take up beforehand in their thoughts, upon trust, the pleasures that they are expecting to enjoy. Even as spendthrifts spend their rents, as heirs spend their inheritances before they actually get them, so when they indeed come to enjoy the pleasures they expected, either they prove to be but “dreamers,” or they find their “souls empty,” or they find the enjoyment so much under their expectation, so stale, that there still proves to be more in the imagination than in the thing. This comes from the vastness and greediness of men’s desires, which is the cause of it. So it is written, he “enlargeth his desire as hell, and is as death, and cannot be satisfied, but gathereth unto himself all nations, and heapeth unto him all people” (Hab 2:5)—he swallows them up in his thoughts. So it is with an ambitious scholar, who swallows up all the preferments that are in his view. (3) This speculative wickedness is also exercised toward things that are past. It recalls and revives in our thoughts the pleasure of sinful actions that happened in the past. The mind runs over the passages and circumstances of those sins which were long ago committed, taking new and fresh delight in thinking of them. Men raise their dead actions, long since buried, in the same likeness they were transacted in—and they parley with them as the witch and Saul did with Satan in Samuel’s likeness (1Sa 28). And when they should draw cross lines over them, when they should blot out these things through faith in Christ’s blood, they would rather copy and write them over again in their thoughts, and with the same contentment. So an unclean person can study over every circumstance which passed in his unclean act, seeing in his thoughts the person with whom they were committed. And likewise the vainglorious scholar repeats in his thoughts an eminent performance of his, all those passages which he thinks were most elegant. And men chew the cud upon any words of commendation which others have uttered about them. Just as a good heart recalls and repeats good things that have been heard and read, remembering what liveliness of the spirit resulted, with what affections they were warmed when they heard them (or, as when Hezekiah recalled with comfort the actions of a well-passed life, “Lord, I have walked before thee…with a perfect heart,” Isa 38:3), so, on the contrary, do wicked men usually recall and revive the most pleasing sinful happenings in their lives, trying to suck new sweetness out of them. Nothing would argue more hardness or wickedness of heart, nothing provokes God more, than this recalling and reviving of sinful acts with as much or more pleasure than in the original happening. For, (A) It argues much wickedness of heart to do this. And if this is ordinary with a heart to do this, it is not compatible with grace. For in Romans 6:21, the Apostle shows that a good heart does not usually repeat or desire the fruit of past sinful actions, “What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed?” The saints can reap and distil out of those flowers nothing but shame and sorrow. When Ephraim remembers his sin, he “was ashamed” and repented (Jer 31:19). Can you, then, in your thoughts, reap a new crop, a new harvest of pleasure from them, again and again? (B) It argues much hardness of heart. Nothing can be more opposite to the truth and practice of repentance, for the foundation of repentance is to call to mind the acts and thoughts of sin with shame and sorrow, and to recall it with more grief than ever there was pleasure in the committing of it. It is the property of repentance to hate the very “appearance” of sin (1Th 5:22), to inflame the heart with zeal and revenge against it. Therefore it provokes God exceedingly when our hearts become soaked with a new guilt from the remembrance with pleasure of old acts of sin, for it provokes God to remember it also, with a new detestation of it, and so He sends down new plagues. But if we recall the sins of the past with grief, this is to “remember [it] no more” (Jer 34:30; Heb 10:17). To delight in past sins is to rake in those wounds which we have already given Christ. To view the sins of others with pleasure is made more than to commit them (Rom 1:32). How much more to view and revive our own with a fresh delight! Know this, that whatever delight you may take here in repeating your old sins to yourself, yet in hell nothing will gall you more than the remembrance of them. Every circumstance in every sin will then be as a dagger at your heart. This was the task and study given to the rich man in hell, to remember the “good things” he had received” (Luk 16:25), and his sins committed in the abuse of them. And if godly men here are made to “possess the sins of their youth” with horror (as Job, Job 13:26), and to “have them ever before” them (as David, Psa 51:3), then how will wicked men in hell escape from the frightening memory of them? In Psalm 50:21, the Lord sets this forth to us in part, “These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.” (4) The fourth way in which the speculative vanity appears is in the acting of sins upon mere imaginary suppositions. Men pretend to themselves, contriving a supposition to themselves in their own thoughts both of what they want to be and of what they want to do. Men create fool’s paradises to themselves, and then they walk up and down in them. They say to themselves, “If I had money enough, what pleasures I would have! If I had such and such an appointment, then how well I would carry myself!” To allude to Scripture, Absalom said, “Oh that I were judge in the land,” I would do this and that, etc. (2Sa 15:4). Men do this with a great deal of pleasure, almost as much as those that really enjoy them. This may well be the meaning of Psalm 50:18, which pictures a hypocrite who outwardly abstains from gross sins, but God says, “When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers.” That is, in his heart and in his imagination, supposing himself to be with them, he desired to be doing what they were doing. Take the case of one who is naturally ambitious, his nature, parts, and education have made him but no more than a bramble, never to rule over the trees (Jdg 9), he is one who is fixed in a lower sphere, incapable of rising higher or being greater, even as the earth can never become a star. Yet this ambitious man will take the part of a great man in his own heart, pretending and supposing himself to be so. He will build and sit upon a throne, and he will think within himself what he would do if he were a king or a great man. Or, take the case of a man who is unclean, one now grown old, a dry tree, one who cannot act his lust as he once did. Yet this unclean old man will supply what is lacking in his strength and opportunity; he will make his own heart his procurer—brothel, whore and all. In the case of the man who is a lover of pleasures, but lacks the means to buy them, yet his inclinations will please themselves with the thoughts of what mixture and combination of delights he would have. He will even set down his bill of fare, what he would have if he could have what he wanted. So it is also with the man who is vengeful, yet who lacks a sting; this man will please himself with thoughts and wishes of revenge—he will always be making invectives and railing dialogues against the one he hates. And the man in love will in his imagination court his absent partner in love, he will by his imagination make her present with him, and he will frame the words which he will speak to her. In a word, whatever the inclinations and dispositions of a man (let the impossibilities and improbabilities be never so great against what he desires), in his fancy and thoughts he will make all things to be what he wants them to be. Men will always be drawing maps of their desires, calculating their own inclinations, cutting out a condition of life which suits their hearts, and they please themselves with such things. And there is no surer way to know a man’s natural inclination than by this. (A) This is foolishness: the imitating of children. For is it not childish to make clay pies and puppets (what else are such fancies as these?) and to be acting the parts of ladies and mistresses, as children often do? Yet such childishness is in the heart of man. (B) This is a vanity also, because a man is setting his heart on something that does not exist. The things are worthless in themselves; “Wilt thou set thine eyes on that which is not?” (Pro 23:5). They are of no value even if a man has them. But to please himself with mere supposition is much worse indeed. (C) The greatest condemnation of such vain thoughts, however, is that men desire in their thoughts and hearts to put themselves into another condition than God has ordained for them.