Proverbs 19:27 Cease, my son, to hear the instruction that causes to err from the words of knowledge. By the "words of knowledge" understand the principles and dictates of virtue and religion. The wise man's advice amounts to this — That we should be careful to guard against the arts and insinuations of such as set up for teachers of infidelity and irreligion. I. THE SEVERAL TEMPTATIONS WHICH MEN LIE UNDER TO LISTEN TO SUCH INSTRUCTORS. It is one step toward security to see the dangers we are exposed to. Since the fears and apprehensions of guilt are such strong motives to infidelity, the innocence of the heart is absolutely necessary to preserve the freedom of the mind. In the most unhappy circumstances of sin and guilt, religion opens to us a much safer and more certain retreat than infidelity can possibly afford. Vice is not the only root from which infidelity springs. Reason itself is betrayed by the vanity of our hearts, and sinks under the pride and affectation of knowledge. All kinds of laudable ambition grow to be vicious and despicable when, instead of pursuing the real good which is their true object, they seek only to make a show of an appearance of it. Thus it is that ambition for virtue produces hypocrisy; ambition for courage, boastings and unreasonable resentments; ambition for learning and knowledge, pedantry and paradoxes. Another sort of temptation is a kind of false shame, which often, in young people especially, prevails over the fear of God and the sense of religion. When religion suffers under the hard names of ignorance and superstition, they grow ashamed of their profession, and by degrees harden into denying God. II. THE DANGER THAT LIES IN LISTENING TO THESE INSTRUCTORS. Here only speak to such as have not yet made shipwreck of reason and conscience. It is an unpardonable folly and inexcusable perverseness for men to forsake religion out of vanity and ostentation; as if irreligion were a mark of honour and a noble distinction from the rest of mankind. We must answer for the vanity of our reasoning as well as for the vanity of our actions. If the punishments of another life be, what we have too much reason to fear they will be, what words can then express the folly of sin? Consider, therefore, with yourselves, that when you judge of religion, something more depends upon your choice than the credit of your judgment or the opinion of the world. Religion is so serious a thing as to deserve your coolest thoughts, and it is not fit to be determined in your hours of gaiety and leisure, or in the accidental conversation of public places. Trust yourself with yourself; retreat from the influence of dissolute companions, and take the advice of the psalmist, "Commune with your own heart." (T. Sherlock, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Cease, my son, to hear the instruction that causeth to err from the words of knowledge.WEB: If you stop listening to instruction, my son, you will stray from the words of knowledge. |
    |