No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
Ver. 24. No man can serve two masters, &c.] The mammonist's mind must needs be full of darkness, because utterly destitute of the Father of lights, the sun of the soul: for ye cannot serve two masters, God and mammon. By mammon is meant earthly treasure, worldly wealth, outward abundance, especially when, gotten by evil arts, it cometh to be the gain of ungodliness, the wages of wickedness, riches of unrighteousness, filthy lucre. a When Joseph was cast into the pit by his bloody brethren, "What gain," saith Judah, "will it be if we kill him?" Genesis 37:26. 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 enmity with the Lord," James 4:4. Enmity, I say, in a sense both active and passive, for it makes a man both to hate God and to be hated by God: so there is no love lost on either side. "If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him," that is flat. But the deeper any one is drowned in the world, the more desperately he is divorced from God, who requireth to be served truly, that there be no halting; and totally, that there be no halving. Camden reports of Redwald, the first king of the East Saxons that was baptized, that he had in the same church one altar for Christian religion and another for sacrifice to devils. b And Callenucius telleth us of a nobleman of Naples, that was wont profanely to say that he had two souls in his body, one for God and another for whomsoever would have it. The Ebionites, saith Eusebius, would keep the sabbath with the Jews and the Lord's day with the Christians, as if they were of both religions, when, in truth, they were of neither. So Ezekiel's hearers sat devoutly before the Lord at his public ordinances, and with their mouth showed much love, but their heart, meanwhile, was on their half-penny, it went after their covetousness, Ezekiel 33:31. So the Pharisees heard Christ's sermon against the service of mammon, and derided him, Luke 16:13; and while their lips seemed to pray, they were but chewing of that murdering-morsel, those widows' 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 wilderness, who set up a golden calf, and then caused it to be proclaimed, "To-morrow is a feast to Jehovah," Exodus 32:5. And such is the dealing of every covetous Christian. St Paul calleth him an idolater, St 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 than sacrifice;" and, "know ye not," saith the apostle, "that his servants ye are to whom ye obey?" &c., Romans 6:16. Inwardly he loves it, delights in it, trusts on it, secures himself by it from whatsoever calamities. 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, Ezekiel 22:13, and hath a special quarrel against those that bless the covetous, whom the Lord abhorreth, Psalms 10:3. As for his servants, he strictly chargeth them to have their conversation without covetousness, Hebrews 13:5, yea, their communication, Ephesians 5:3, yea, their cogitation, 2 Peter 2:14; branding them for cursed children that have so much as their thoughts exercised that way. He will not have his hasten to be rich, or labour after superfluities, no, nor anxiously after necessaries. For worldliness (I say not covetousness), when men oppress themselves with multiplicity of business, or suffer their thoughts and affections to be continually almost taken up with minding these things on earth, is a main hindrance from heaven; it fills the heart with cares, and so unfits and deads it to divine duties, c The thoughts as wings should carry us in worship even to the mansions of God, which being laden with thick clay, they so glue us to the earth that the loadstone of the word and ordinances cannot draw us one jot from it. The soul is also hereby made like a mill, where one cannot hear another, the noise is such as takes away all intercourse (οπου ουδεις ουδεν ουδενος ακουει). If conscience call to them to take heed of going out of God's way, they are at as little leisure to listen as he that runs in a race; who many times runs with so much violence, that he cannot hear what is said unto him, be it never so good counsel. And having thus set their hearts and anchored their hopes upon earthly things, if ever they lose them, as it often falleth out, they are filled almost with unmedicinable sorrows, so as they will praise the dead above the living, and wish they had never been born, Ecclesiastes 4:1,3. Lo, this is the guise and guerdon of those inhabitants of the earth, those viri divitiarum, as the Psalmist styles them, those miserable muck-worms that prefer mammon before Messiah, gold before God, money before mercy, earth before heaven; as childish a weakness as that of Honorius the emperor, that preferred a hen before the city of Rome. Mammon, saith one, is a monster, whose head is as subtle as the serpent, whose mouth is wide as hell, eyes sharp as a lizard, scent quick as the vulture, hands fast as harpies, belly insatiable as a wolf, feet swift to shed blood, as a lioness robbed of her whelps. d Ahab will have Naboth's vineyard, or he will have his blood. Judas was both covetous and a murderer, and therefore a murderer because covetous. He is called also a thief; and why a thief but because a mammonist? Covetousness draws a man from all the commandments, Psalms 119:36. And there want not those that have drawn the covetous person through all the commandments, and proved him an atheist, a papist, a perjurer, a profaner of God's sabbath, an iron bowelled wretch, a murderer, an adulterer, a thief, a false witness, or whatsoever else 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 grip them both in a fist, as be habitually covetous and truly religious. These two are as inconcurrent as two parallel lines, and as incompatible as light and darkness. They who bowed down on their knees to drink of the waters were accounted unfit soldiers for Gideon; so are those for Christ, that stoop to the base love of the things of this life (Βιωτακα); they discredit both his work and his wages; which Abraham would not, that ancient and valiant soldier and servant of the most high God. For when Melchisedeck from God had made him heir of all things, and brought him bread and wine, that is, an earnest, a 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, Genesis 14:18,19; Genesis 14:23; Genesis 15:1; his shield against any such enemies as Chedorlaomer and his complices had been unto him, and his exceeding great reward, for all his labour of love in that or any other service, though he received not of any man, from a thread to a shoelatchet.
a Magna est cognatio divitiis et vitiis.
b Unam Deo dicatam, alteram unicuique qui illam vellet.
c τον πολλα τεχνωμενον παντα ευ τεχνασθαι αδυνατον .
d Quorum charismata, numismata, scripturae, sculpturae, quibusque ο αργυρος το αιμα εστι και ψυχη, ut vulgo dici solet.