Therefore they say unto God
While in health and life, amidst all their outward prosperity,
and because of it; for worldly riches have this tendency, to make
men proud and insolent, and not only to behave ill to their
fellow creatures, and to slight and despise them; but even to
forsake God, and lightly esteem their Creator and benefactor;
yea, even to kick against him, and oppose him, to set their
mouths against him, and speak very contemptuously and
blasphemously of him, as in the following words; which though not
expressly uttered and pronounced, which yet may have been by
some, however are conceived in the mind, and inwardly spoken; and
by their lives and conversations outwardly declared and
abundantly proclaimed:
depart from us;
not as to his general presence, which cannot be, and without
which they would not be able to subsist; God is everywhere, and
near to everyone, and all live, and move, and have their being,
in him; nor as to his spiritual presence, which wicked men know
nothing of, and are unconcerned about; but they do not choose to
have him so near them as that their minds should be conversant
about him; they do not care to have him in their thoughts, they
are desirous if possible of banishing him out of their minds;
they would live without thinking of God, or thinking that there
is a God in the world, for such a thought makes them uneasy; they
do not love to have their consciences awakened by him, so as to
check and accuse for what they do; they had rather have them
cauterized or seared, as with a red hot iron, and be past
feeling, that they may go on in their sinful courses without
control: this is the just character of a worldling, who is afraid
he shall be a loser by God and religion, should he attend
thereunto; and therefore, as the Gergesenes for a like reason
desired Christ to depart out of their coasts, so such desire God
to depart from them, ( Matthew
8:28-34 ) ; and of the epicure, whose God is his belly, and
that only; and most righteously will it be said to such at the
last day, "depart from me"; this will be a just retaliation:
for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways;
the ways which God prescribes, directs, and enjoins men to walk
in, even the ways of his commandments; these are unknown to men,
until shown and taught them; but wicked men do not desire to be
instructed in them; they have no pleasure and delight neither in
them, nor in the knowledge of them; they fancy there is no
pleasure to be had in them, and they think they have got into a
much more pleasant way, which they have chosen, and their souls
delight in; though destruction and misery are in it, and it leads
into it: they wilfully affect ignorance of the ways of God; they
do not care to come to the light, lest their deeds should be
reproved, their consciences be made uneasy, and they not able to
go on so peaceably and quietly in their own ways.