Neither is Noah alone in this matter.  Lot also, being delivered from that fire from heaven which burnt up Sodom and Gomorrah, falls soon after into lewdness.  Gideon also, after he was delivered out of the hands of his enemies, took that very gold which God had given him as the spoil of them that hated him, and made himself idols therewith.

What shall I say of David, and of Solomon also, who, after he had been twenty years at work for the service of the true God, both in building and preparing for his worship, and in writing proverbs by divine inspiration, did after this make temples for idols, yea, almost for the gods of all countries?  Yea, he did it when he was old, when he should have been preparing for his grave and for eternity.

All these were sins against mercies, yea, and doubtless against covenants and the most solemn resolutions to the contrary.  For who can imagine but that when Noah was tossed with the flood, and Lot within the scent and smell of the fire and brimstone that burned down Sodom with his sons and daughters, and Gideon, when so fiercely engaged with so great an enemy, and delivered by so strange a hand, should in the most solemn manner both promise and vow to God?  But behold, now they in truth are delivered and saved, they recompense all with sin:  “Lord, what is man? how abominable and filthy is man, who drinketh in iniquity like water!”

Let these things teach us “to cease from man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for wherein is he to be accounted of?” Indeed, it is a vain thing to build our faith upon the most godly man in the world, because he is subject to err; yea, better men than he have been so.  If Noah and Lot and Gideon and David and Solomon—­who wanted not matter from arguments, and that of the strongest kind, as arguments that are drawn from mercy and goodness be, to engage to holiness and the fear of God—­yet, after all, did so foully fall as we see, let us admire grace that any stand; let the strongest fear, lest he fearfully fall; and let no man but Jesus Christ himself be the absolute platform and pattern of faith and holiness:  as the prophet saith, “Let us cease from man.”

The backslider.

None knows the things that haunt the backslider’s mind; his new sins are all turned talking devil’s, threatening devils, roaring devils, within him.  Besides, he doubts of the truth of his first conversion, consequently he has it lying upon him as a strong suspicion, that there was nothing of truth in all his first experience; and this also adds lead to his heels, and makes him come, as to sense and feeling, more heavily and with the greater difficulty, to God by Christ.  As the faithfulness of other men kills him, he cannot see an honest, humble, holy, faithful servant of God, but he is pierced and wounded at the heart.  “Aye,” says he within himself, “that man fears God; that man hath faithfully followed God; that man, like the elect angels, has kept his place; but I am fallen