and the explicite unshaken belief of all that is revealed to him by God be the strict duty of every Christian and the disbelieving of any such affirmation of Gods is sin and damnable yet the foundation being that which supports the superstructure to which it relates immediately and without the intervention of any thing else 't is certain that eternal blisse is not immediatly superstructed on the most orthodox beliefs but as our Saviour saith if ye know these things happy are ye if ye doe them the doing must be first superstructed on the knowing or believing before any happinesse or blisse or heaven can be built on it and without all question the agenda the things that are to be done works of piety and justice c. are as necessarily required to found our blisse to bring us to heaven as the belief of any the most pretious Articles can be supposed to be and therefore it may be justly feared that the title of Fundamentals being ordinarily bestowed on and confined to the doctrines of faith hath occasioned that great scandal or block of offence in the Church of God at which so many myriads of solifidians have stumbled and fallen irreversibly by conceiving heaven a reward of true opinions of which vicious practises though never so habitually and indulgently continued in to the last would never be able to deprive them which as it hath been the disjoyning of that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 most excellent yoke of faith and good works and hath betrayed many knowing men to most unskilful and ridiculous presumptions and securities in sin so can it not well be provided against without the discovering and renouncing of this false and substituting a truer state of this question § 9. Secondly If this were the notion of Fundamentals there could be no certain way of judging what are such the excuse of invincible ignorance being in the farre greatest number of men ready to be confronted against the necessity of their believing all the severals of any such supposeable Catalogue And for that suppletorie of an implicite belief which is by the Romanist conceived to be of use and sufficient for those who are not capable of an explicite whatsoever degree of truth can be conceived to be in that it must be founded in the contradictorie to the present pretension for were it once granted that the belief of such articles were fundamental to heaven it were not imaginable that they which have not heard should ever arrive thither When that which by S. Paul's authority is become a known maxime was before demonstrable in it self and is so supposed by his argument Rom. 10.14 that faith cometh by hearing and that they cannot believe what they have not heard Many other inconveniences there are consequent to this stating of this question and particularly that of which our experience hath given us evident demonstration that by those which thus state it there hath never yet been assigned any definite number or Catalogue of Fundamentals in this sense but I shall no farther enlarge on them § 10. The other notion of Fundamentals is that whereon I shall more confidently pitch as that which will remove in stead of multiplying difficulties and accord all which either the Scriptures or the Antients have asserted on this subject thereby understanding that which was deemed necessary to be laid by the Apostles and other such Master-builders as a foundation to the peopling or replenishing or bringing in proselytes to the Church and so to the superstructing Christian obedience among men In which respect it is that as the Church of Corinth and so any other society that hath received the faith of Christ is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God's plantation 1 Cor. 3.9 so it is also called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God's building a structure erected by his artificers § 11. That this hath been esteemed the due and proper acception of this word I shall testifie by this one evidence which I acknowledge to have given me the first hint of this notion the words of the great Champion of the Catholick Faith set down in the Councel of Nice S. Athanasius in Epist ad Epictetum where speaking of the Confession of Faith established by the Canons of that Councel against the Arian and other Hereticks he hath these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The faith confessed by the Bishops in that Synod according to the divine Scriptures is of it self sufficient for the averting of all impiety and the establishment of all piety in Christ These words of that eminent Father of the Church might be of some farther use toward the due understanding of the articles of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds but at the present the advantage of them will be but general that the way of measuring and defining the necessity of any articles of faith the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 necessaries to be known as Justine Martyr speaks placing under that head the Creation of the world the framing of man the immortality of the soul and judgment to come 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 9. is by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or sufficiencie of them to enable the teacher to perswade good life to supplant those vices which Christ came to banish out of the world and to radicate those virtues which he came on purpose to implant among men which is directly that notion or Character of Fundamentals which we have now given thereby signifying those articles of the Faith on which all the parts of Christian piety and obedience and none of impiety or disobedience may be regularly superstructed or in consequence to which being once revealed and believed all rational or considering men when Christian life is proposed to them must discern themselves obliged to entertain it to forsake in every branch their unchristian courses of sin and to betake themselves to an uniform obedience to the commands of Christ From whence I suppose it is that the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 building or edifying is used every where in the New Testament for improving or advancing in Christian practise and the duties of good life as laying the foundation is preaching the faith of Christ among them 1 Cor. 3.11 On which saith Theophylact 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. After we shall have received the Foundation of Faith i. e. the Faith of Christ as the Foundation we build upon it every one good actions of all sorts and degrees as he there specifies making the Christian actions of life to be the superstructure to which this Foundation referres and in relation to which it is called a Foundation So Theophylact on Heb. 6.1 makes the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their being instructed in the Faith of Christ to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to deal only in the beginning the elements the first and most imperfect rudiments 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such as novices beginners they that are but now upon their entrance are wont to be conversant in whereas the
this manner and with detestation branded and banished out of the Church Not that it was hereby defined to be a damnable sin to fail in the understanding or believing the full matter of any of those explications before they were propounded and when it might more reasonably be deemed not to be any fault of the will to which this were imputable CHAP. XI Of the Superstructure and the particular branches thereof § 1. HAving thus briefly taken a view of the Foundation and therein also of the Superstructure generally considered together with the proprietie that one of these hath toward the other the doctrines of belief to the renewing of mens lives I am now by course to proceed to a more particular view of this Superstructure and the several branches of it § 2. Where first it must be remembred that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or filling up which Christ designed contrary to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dissolving or abrogating of the Law and the Prophets is farre from evacuating or annulling the obligation of any one substantial precept introduced by the Law of Nature or Moses but coming as an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or suppletorie to all former laws as a new and more perfect correct edition of the old Codex as one general Law for the reforming and hightening of all Laws is wholly designed as may be most ordinable to this end § 3. First in filling up vacuities turning out shadows and ceremonies by explicite prescription of the substantial duties which those shadows did obscurely represent 2. In binding some parts of the yoke closer then they were before thought to be bound upon men extending the precepts farther then they were thought to extend 3. In raising them to more elevated degrees of perfection sinking them deeper then the outward actions to the purity of the very heart and 4. by promises of the most amiable divine and terrors of the dismall unsupportable nature confirming and binding them all upon us and not allowing us liberty or impunity in any indulgent transgression of any branch of this Law thus reformed and improved by him § 4. And this being the result of Christ's designe 1. the production of a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an entire new creature a new modelling of the whole soul for the whole space of the future life and 2. the purpose being to people the whole world i. e. a community of men whose understandings are not generally deep and so must be wrought on by means proportionable to them with a colonie of such divine new creatures and 3. the nature of man as a rational and voluntary agent requiring that all this be done by way of perswasion not of violence to preserve their liberty which alone could render them capable either of reward or punishment and 4. the difficulty being so great and the improbability of attempting this successfully It was but reason that a large and a solid foundation should be laid upon which this so important and weighty a fabrick might probably be erected § 5. But though an uniform universal obedience to the commands of Christ which contains every specialty under it and is not reconcilable with our partiality the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 accepting as it were of the person of any sin or virtue the preferring any one duty to the prejudice of any other be that which alone can own the title of the Christian superstructure without which completely erected no enumeration of particular duties will be sufficient Yet some specialties there are which have a greater propriety to this title then some others and to which our Christian institution gives us more peculiar obligations And it will not be amisse to mention some of these § 6. First Piety the Love and Fear and Obedience and Faith and Worship of the one true God in opposition 1. to Idolatry 2. to Formality 3. to Hypocrisie on one side and then I. to Sacrilege 2. to Profaneness or Impiety on the other side § 7. First Piety or the worship of the true God the Creator of the world the God of Israel as that is opposed to the Idol-worship whether of devils and souls of men in the rites of whose religion many of the vilest sins of carnality and luxury were practised and to the adoration of livelesse breathlesse pictures and images so it is the reforming of the vices and sottishness that had long overspread the infatuated Gentile world and so a prime branch of that designe of Christ's coming and of his sending his Disciples to all nations to awake them out of this dead sleep and Lethargie of soul and by the knowledge of the true God to bring them to the imitation of and dependence on him § 8. Secondly as Piety is opposed to slight negligent external formal performances so is it the necessary Christian virtue proportioned adequately to the omniscience and spirituality of that infinite deity the belief whereof is laid as a prime part of the Foundation And though that inward warmth if it be any whit intense will necessarily extend it self to the outward man as motion that begins in the centre naturally diffuses it self and affects uniformly and shakes every part to the circumference and consequently oblige the body to attend the soul in all reverences of addresse to that awfull Majestie who hath full title to the obediences of either and this in this conjunction is farre from meriting any unkinde censure or jealousie the very bodily exercise being affirmed by S. Paul to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 profitable for a little and the fasts and austerities that were to attend the departure of the Bridegroom being of this nature directly and so the Publican's smiting on his brest being added to his prayer for mercy on which Christ bestowed that Eulogie Yet if as insectile animals for want of blood run all out into legs so the want or chilness of devotion and not the intension of it be that which casts the body into the solemn demure postures if is Julian reproacheth Christianity the striking of the breast and shaking of the head the formal outward humiliations be all the zeal and piety of the Christian this is no farther then Ahab's soft pace no part of that reformation that Christ came to work none of that worship in the spirit which is the tribute required in the daies of the Messias and that which the Spirituality of God to whom the addresses are made and of the promises which are rewards proportioned to our spirits most strictly exact from us § 9. Thirdly as Piety is opposed to Hypocrisie and unsincerity and all falsness or foulness of intensions especially to that personated devotion under which any kinde of impiety oppression rapine sedition c. is wont to be disguised and put off more speciously so is it a special part of this superstructure and as the defining or opining Godliness to be gain 1 Tim. 6.5 hath the brand and reproach of an heresie quite
be made to appear if it were here seasonable hath yet providently foreseen the dangerous downfall that from this her doctrine the affirming no more nor no more particularly then she doth is to be expected to curious as well as carnal men i. e. to those that enter into farther speculations herein which is the itch of curiosity and content not themselves with the simplicity of that doctrine within which this Church hath contained her self And to prevent particularly all advantage that might be taken from hence to the Doctrine of the irrespective decrees to which is inseparably joyned the confining all the Promises to the Elect The Article concludes with an earnest expression of care and warning to the contrary that we must receive God's promises in such wise as they are generally set forth to us in the holy scripture as in our doing we are to follow that will of God which we have expresly declared to us in the word of God which one passage excludes and barres out that whole doctrine § 3. As for the particularity of the dangers and hindrances of good life that are directly consequent to this doctrine they are presently discerned For if that salvation which Christ came to purchase for a few and in like manner that dereliction or reprobation that irreversibly involves the farre greater multitude be not distributed according to the qualifications or performances of men whether works or love or hope or repentance or the want of any or all of these but only by the absolute irrespective will of God what rational argument can be produced in any time of temptation to any sin which is the special season for such arguments to be offered to any which may be of force to perswade a reasonable man or Christian professor to renounce that present pleasure that comes in competition with duty § 4. Either the promises of Christ or the terrors of the Lord or the authority of the commander must be the Topick whence that argument is drawn and all force of any of these is utterly taken off by this doctrine § 5. Promises can be of no force unlesse they be believed to be conditional promises and unlesse that duty which is proposed to be inforced by those promises be acknowledged to be part of that condition upon performance of which those promises do and upon neglect of which those promises shall not belong to any And the promises being but a transscript of the will and decree of God a revelation made by Christ of that mysterie or secret wrapt up before in God's eternal Counsels concerning us such as the decrees are supposed such must the promises be concluded to be If the decrees be believed to be absolute the promises must be absolute too and consequently not conditional which was the one qualification necessarily required to render them of any force to work on any to restrain or invite any that were drawn or sollicited another way § 6. For why should a man perform an ungrateful duty undertake a difficulty hazard a danger or diminution deny himself any pleasurable enjoyment upon a bare intuition of promises which by being such are represented with some disadvantage lie under a considerable prejudice and are acknowledged and experimented to be of lesse energie or force to allure or perswade then present possessions when he is all the while convinced that all the promises that he can possibly have any part in belong to him absolutely and irrespectively and shall no more be secured to him upon the performance then upon the neglect and omission of that duty § 7. In like manner the Terrors menaces of scripture are of as little force For if they fall upon mens persons and not upon their sins omissions or commissions if they are but the recitations and descriptions of God's decreed wrath and those decrees and that wrath have no respect to the actual sins of men but are terminated either in the innocent creature or the childe of lapsed Adam i. e. either respect not sin at all or else none but Original sin which is no part of the present deliberation whether it shall be committed and I guilty of it or no then why should terrors restrain me from any sin when there is any tender of present advantage to invite me to it § 8. All my fear and trembling will regularly be terminated in the decree on which all my miserie depends and not in the sinne which means me no ill and consequently the aversion and dislike will naturally be fastned on that severe law that hath bound me in fatal chains of darkness before ever I saw light and if it proceed any farther may be likely to ascend blasphemously unto and against that Judge that hath taken pleasure to enact that law and so that doctrine may very probably take off from our love of God but 't is not imaginable which way this should produce in me any aversion or hatred against sin which by this doctrine is cleared from being my enemy from involving me into any mischief designing the least treachery against me § 9. And lastly for the authority of God's Commands which forbid sin and command obedience it can be no greater with any man toward the undertaking of good life then that man believes the weight to be which God layes on the performance of them And if God heed that no more then they that espouse the doctrine of irrespective decrees must consequently be supposed to believe him to doe if in his decreeing his eternal rewards of blisse or woe he respect not our obedience or disobedience but distribute both by a rule quite distant from that which is founded in his commands or revealed will it will never be thought any neer concernment or interest of ours to regulate our actions according to those commands which have certainly much of strictnesse in them much of contrariety to flesh and blood but nothing of influence either on our weal or woe as long as this doctrine is deemed to have any truth in it § 10. And so still the virtue and force of every of these three which are the common standing inducements and engagements to obedience is shrewdly allayed if not wholly lost by this means § 11. And 't is not the motive of gratitude which is said to be the only score on which the Elect perform their obedience that can make any considerable difference in this matter that can be sufficient to perswade him to abstain from any tempting sin whom neither promises nor terrors nor precepts had been able to work upon § 12. 1. Because Gratitude being but a return of love in him that hath a quick sense of God's loving him first cannot have any propriety to the producing of that effect in any till he hath arrived to that sense nor can it continue to doe it when that sense is lost And consequently a great number of the supposed elect shall be uncapable of it both they which
Christ that pardon of sin and sufficience of strength and grace which were purchased by his death and typified and consigned to us by the sacramental elements so 't is again the ridding us of all our discouraging fears and the animating and obliging of us to make use of that grace which will carry us if we doe not wilfully betray our succours victoriously through all difficulties § 20. 4thly As it is a federal rite betwixt God and us as eating and drinking both among the Jewes and heathens was wont to be so 't is on our part the solemn undertaking of the condition required of us to make us capable of the benefit of God's new Evangelical covenant and that is syncere performance of all duties prescribed the Christian by Christ And he that doth no longer expect good from God then he performs that condition is ipso facto devested of all those fallacious flattering hopes which pretended to make purifying unnecessary and must now either live purely and piously or else disclaim ever seeing of God § 21. Lastly As this supper of the Lord is a token and engagement of charity among the disciples of Christ so it is the supplanting of all the most Diabolical sins the filthiness of the spirit the hatred variance emulation strife revenge faction schism that have been the tearing and rending of the Church of God oft-times upon pretense of the greatest piety but were by Christ of all other things most passionately disclaimed and cast out of his Temple And if by the admonitions which this Embleme is ready to afford us we can think our selves obliged to return to that charity and peaceable-mindedness which Christ so frequently and vehemently recommends to us we have his own promise that the whole body shall be full of light Mat. 6. that all other Christian virtues will by way of concomitance or annexation accompany or attend them in our hearts § 22. And the several happy influences of all and each of these considerations especially when they are superadded to the three former grand instruments and frequently every month at least and every great Festivity called in to reinforce our watch to remand us to our scrutinie the examination and search of out hearts and purging out all impurity that hath been contracted in those intervals and to renew our vows of temper and vigilance may very reasonably be allowed to have some considerable virtue and efficacy in them to advance that work for which Christ came out from the bosome of his Father to superstruct the practise of all virtue where the Faith of Christ is once planted § 23. After these four which are thus subordinate and preparative the one to the other the later still bringing with it an addition of weight to the former Two more there are which are several from and yet being of continual use are interweaved and mixt with every of these and having their distinct energie proper to themselves when they are in conjunction with the former or added to them they must needs accumulate and superadde a considerable weight unto them § 24. The first is the use of Liturgie the second the word of exhortation among the Jewes and in the Apostles times and proportionable to that the sermons or homilies of the Church § 25. The Liturgie as it contains the whole daily office consisting of Confession prayers Psalms hymnes reading of the scripture of both Testaments Creeds supplications intercessions thanksgivings injunctions of Gestures and of Ceremonies and of Holy-daies is both the exercise of many parts of Piety and the conservatory of the Foundation on which all Piety together is regularly built and a means of hightning devotion and infusing zeal into it And the diligent worthy continual in stead of the negligent formal rarer use of it and the unanimous accord of whole societies and multitudes herein would certainly be very efficacious advancers of all Christian virtue of piety of charity of purity over the world of the two former directly and of the later by way of diversion the frequent performance of such offices obstructing and sealing up the fountains of impurity and intercepting that leisure which is necessary to the entertaining the beginnings of it § 26. So for Preaching or exhorting the people by way of Homilie it appears to have been received from the Jewish by the Christian Church and by the phrase by which it is expressed in the Acts a word of exhortation to the people it appears to have been generally imployed in reprehension of vices and exhortation to virtuous living And if we survey the Homilies of the Antient Church such are those of S. Chrysostome most eminently we shall discern that as upon Festival daies the subject of the Homilie was constantly the business of the Day the clearing the mysterie the incarnation of Christ c. and the recommending the actions or sufferings of the Saint and raising mens hearts to acknowledge the goodness of God in setting up such exemplary patterns and guides before us So upon other daies after some short literal explication of some place of scripture the custome was not to raise doctrinal points according to every preachers judgment or phansie but presently to fall off to exhortation to temperance continence patience and the like Christian virtues which either the propriety of the Text or the wants and sins of the auditory or the times suggested to them And this so farre from being a fault in their method of preaching that it was an eminent exemplary piece of Christian prudence observable and imitable in them as a means of keeping false or unnecessary definitions out of the Church which tend to the increase of disputes and contentions and whilst they they doe so are not to the edification and benefit but to the destruction and mischief of the hearers § 27. Of this usage of the Church it is most visible if it be but by the ill uses which are made of it many times in stirring up seditions rebellions murthers hatreds animosities calumnies revilings of superiors c. in disseminating of heresies infusing of prejudices c. what advantage may be had toward the advancement of all parts of Christian life by a due performance of it 'T is very much in the power of a popular Orator to represent vices in so formidable yet just appearances and to set out each virtue in so amiable a form and to apply this so particularly to those that are concerned to be thus wrought on that the Covetous person shall flie from and scatter most liberally his beloved Idol wealth the rageful person shall finde a calm the lustful a coldness insensibly infused upon his breast and the auditor's phansie and sensitive affections being called in to joyn with his reason and the Spirit of God it will by the blessing of that Spirit be in the power of meditation to radicate these seeds to fix this transient gleam of light and warmth to confirm inclinations and resolutions