Be not righteous overmuch - Charles Bridges

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Solparvus

Puritan Board Senior
From Charles Bridges' commentary on Ecclesiastes 7:16:

Be not righteous overmuch; neither make thyself over wise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself?

"To whom then, and to what, does the admonition apply? We have seen that it does not warn against true righteousness. But it is a wholesome caution against the 'vain affection of it.' Every right principle has its counterfeit. We have monkery and celibacy as the shadow of Christian perfection--penances and self-imposed austerities in lieu of the true mortification of the flesh--the same for the reality--the skeleton for the living man. Here 'the name of the mean is given to the extreme.' That which in sobriety is righteousness often carries its name beyond the true boundary. It includes--what the heavenly Martyn dreaded in himself--'talking much, and appearing to be somebody in religion.' Details may be easily multiplied. Religion is made to consist mainly in externals. Self-conceited professors insist upon their own Shibboleth, without regard in the different judgments of their brethren. Christian duties are pressed beyond their due proportion, interfering with immediate obligations, and making sins, where God has not made them. Scrupulosity in matters indifferent takes the place of the free obedience of the Gospel. In the exercise also of Christian graces there may be danger of extremes. Boldness may verge to rashness, benevolence into indiscriminate waste, candour into weakness. In all these and many other details the Scriptural line seems to be passed, and the warning is justly applied--Be not righteous overmuch.

"Even 'in well-doing there may be over-doing,' and this over-doing may inadvertently progress towards undoing. Indeed much of this is not religion, but superstition, which 'is not the excess of godliness' (as Abp. Whately remarks) 'but the misdirection of it--the exhausting of it in the vanity of man's devising.' It is important that our religion should be reasonable, consistent, uniform--not a matter of opinion, but of the heart. Great indeed is our need, and constant should bed our prayer--"O let me have understanding in the way of godliness" (Ps. ci. 2.)."

"But we are warned against another extreme, Neither make thyself over-much wise--a wholesome practical rule! Avoid all affectation or high pretension to superior wisdom. Guard against that opinionative confidence, which seems to lay down the law, and critically finds fault with every judgment differing from our own.The Apostle gives this warning with peculiar emphasis and solemnity--"This I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, according as God has dealt to every man the measure of faith." The more humble thou art, the more wary and circumspect thou wilt be: and the more wary the more safe."

"A question is put to give energy to the warning--Why shouldest thou destroy thyself? Men may be martyrs to trifles magnified unduly. They may bring needless trouble upon themselves, by making conscience of doubtful or subordinate matters. And thus, unless the exercise of wisdom is tempered with humility and reverence, it may be the "pride that goeth before destruction" (Prov. xvi. 18). To be wise up to that which is written, is diligence--a boundless obligation. To be "wise above that which is written," is presumption, as if affecting to be acquainted with the whole of Divine truth. To intrude into God's province of "secret things"--is over-wisdom--passing the boundary line--"vainly puffed up by the fleshly mind." (Deut. xxix. 29, Col. ii. 18) It may be provoking the judgment of our own destruction."
 
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