The blessedness of the righteous discoursed from Psal. 17, 15 /The blessednesse of the righteous discoursed from Psal. 17, 15 /

1. There is a sense wherein to be like God is altogether impossible, ¹and the very desire of it the most horrid wickedness. The prophet in the name of God charges the proud Prince of Tyre with this, as an inexpiable arrogance, that he did set his heart as the heart of God, and upon this score challenges and enters the lists with him: Come you, that would fain be taken for a God, Isle make a sorry God of thee ere I have done,² because thou hast set thy heart as the heart of God, I'll set those upon thee, that shall draw their swords against the beauty ³of thy wisdom, and that shall defile thy brightness; And what? Wilt thou yet say in the hand of ⁴him that slayeth thee I am a God? Thou shalt ⁵be a man and no God in the hand of him that slayeth thee,—I have spoken it saith the Lord God. ⁶He will endure no such imitation of him, as to be rivalled in the point of his Godhead. This is the matter of his jealousy.⁷ They have moved me to jealousy with not-God. (so 'tis shortly and more smartly spoken in the Original Text) And see how he displays his threats and terrors hereupon in the following verses. This was the design and inducement of the first transgression to be as Gods. And indeed all sin may be reduced hither, what else is sin ⟨p. 52⟩(in the most comprehensive notion) but an undue imitation of God? an exalting of the Creatures Will into a supremacy; and opposing it as such to the divine. To sin, is to take upon us, as if we were supreme, and that there were no Lord over us, 'Tis to assume to our selves a Deity, as if we were under no law or rule, as he is not under any, but what he is to himself, herein, to be like God, is the very core, and malignity of sin.