Said he not unto me, She [is] my sister? and she, even she herself said, He [is] my brother: in the integrity of my heart and innocency of my hands have I done this.
Ver. 5. Said he not unto me, She is my sister? &c.] Here Abraham and Sarah, though both famous, he for his faith, Rom 4:19 and she for not being afraid with any amazement, 1Pe 3:6 yet here they show some trepidation. Sense, saith one, a fights sore against faith, when it is upon its own dunghill, I mean in a sensible danger. Nature's retraction of itself from a visible fear, may cause the pulse of a Christian that beats truly and strongly in the main point (the state of the soul) to intermit and falter at such a time. b
In the integrity of my heart.] Great is the boldness of a clear conscience, be it but in some one particular, as here in Abimelech; a man that was magis extra vitia quam cum virtutibus (as Tacitus c saith of Galba) rather not evil than good; one whose nature was not changed, but chained up only. Civil men are but wolves chained up, tame devils, swine in a fair meadow; and yet these are the world's honest men, and as high a price set upon them, as was once upon a cab of dove's dung in the famine of Samaria. But these Abimelechs, these Catos, these civil judges, they want sincerity in the first table, and integrity in the second; for they stand not upon the inward corruptions, nor lesser breaches of the law. Abimelech, for all his confidence here, was to blame for his wandering, rash lust. And Cato, that mirror of morality, was a griping usurer, prostituted his wife, and slew himself. And yet Paterculus d will tell you, that he was, Homo virtuti simillimus, et per omnia virtute Diis quam hominibus propior ,& c.
a Mr Vines's Fast Sermon:
b Elias fulminator ad Iezabalis minas trepidat .
c Tac., lib. i. cap. 12.
d Hist., lib. ii.