1. If we consider wicked men as they are in themselves, they are all strongly bent to apostasy; every day they grow worse and worse. As godly men are graduates in God's school, growing from strength to strength, and from one degree of grace unto another, till they become perfect men in Christ, every sermon makes them better, and every ordinance improves them. So wicked men are graduates also, and take degrees in the devil's school; they stand not at a stay, but they grow from evil to Worse. As he that is righteous will go on and be more righteous, so he that is filthy will go on in his filthiness (Revelation 22:11). It is the proper character of wicked men that they fall away more and more (Isaiah 1:5; Proverbs 1:22).
2. But secondly, let us consider them specifically and divisively for such evil men as are deceivers and impostors, and these we see experimentally grow worse and worse. They have no foundation to rest on; they know no stay when once they have passed the bounds of the word, no more than a violent stream doth when it hath broke over those bounds and bonds which before kept it in. Error knows no end; when once men forsake the way of truth they wander in infinitum. As it is in logic, grant one absurdity and I will infer a thousand, and as sin begets sin, blood toucheth blood, and one murder begets another (Hosea 4:2). So error is very fertile and prolific; it speedily brings forth a great increase. One error is a bridge to another; ill weeds spring apace and spread far, when good herbs grow thin and low. A little of this leaven will quickly sour the whole lump (Matthew 16:6). When once men begin to tumble down the hill of error they seldom rest till they come to the bottom.
(T. Hall, B. D.)
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