this That nothing can be a reasonable Ground of Despising a man but some Fault or other chargeable upon him and nothing can be a Fault that is not Naturally in a man's power to prevent otherwise it is a man's Unhappiness his Mischance or Calamity but not his Fault Nothing can justly be Despised that cannot justly be Blamed and it is a most certain Rule in Reason and moral Philosophy That where there is no Choice there can be no Blame This premised we may take notice of two usual grounds of the Contempt men cast upon the Clergy and yet for which no man ought to think himself at all the more worthy to be Contemned 1. The first is their very Profession it self Concerning which it is a sad but an experimented Truth that the Names derived from it in the refined Language of the present Age are made but the Appellatives of Scorn This is not charged Universally upon all but experience will affirm or rather proclaim it of much the greater part of the World and men must perswade us that we have lost our Hearing and our common Sence before we can believe the Contrary But surely the Bottom and Foundation of this Behaviour towards Persons set apart for the Service of God that this very Relation should entitle them to such a peculiar Scorn can be nothing else but Atheism the growing rampant Sin of the Times For call a man Oppressor Griping Covetous or Over-reaching person and the Word indeed being ill befriended by Custom perhaps sounds not well but generally in the apprehension of the Hearer it signifies no more than that such an one is a Wise and a Thriving or in the common Phrase a Notable man which will certainly procure him a Respect And say of another that he is an Epicure a Loose or a Vicious man and it leaves in men no other Opinion of him than that he is a Merry Pleasant and a Gentile Person and that he that taxes him is but a Pedant an unexperienced and a Morose fellow one that does not know men nor understand what it is to Eat and Drink well But call a man Priest or Parson and you set him in some mens Esteem ten degrees below his own Servant But let us not be Discouraged or Displeased either with our Selves or our Profession upon this account Let the Vertuoso's Mock Insult and Despise on yet after all they shall never be able to Droll away the Nature of things to trample a Pearl into a Pebble nor to make Sacred things Contemptible any more than themselves by such speeches Honourable 2. Another groundless Cause of some mens despising the Governours of our Church is their loss of that former Grandeur and Privilege that they enjoyed But it is no real Disgrace to the Church merely to lose her privileges but to forfeit them by her Fault or Misdemeanor of which she is not conscious Whatsoever she injoyed in this kind she readily acknowledges to have streamed from the Royal Munificence and the favours of the Civil power shining upon the Spiritual which Favours the same power may retract and gather back into it self when it pleases And we envy not the Greatness and Lustre of the Romish Clergy neither their Scarlet Gowns nor their Scarlet Sins If our Church cannot be Great which is better she can be Humble and content to be Reformed into as low a Condition as men for their own private Advantage would have her who wisely tell her that it is best and safest for her to be without any power or Temporal advantage like the good Physician who out of tenderness to his Patient lest he should hurt himself by Drinking was so kind as to rob him of his silver Cup. The Church of England Glories in nothing more than that she is the truest Friend to Kings and to Kingly Government of any other Church in the World that they were the same Hands and Principles that took the Crown from the King's Head and the Mitre from the Bishop's It is indeed the Happiness of some Professions and Callings that they can equally square themselves to and thrive under all Revolutions of Government but the Clergy of England neither know nor affect that Happiness and are willing to be Despised for not doing so And so far is our Church from encroaching upon the Civil power as some who are Backfriends to both would maliciously insinuate that were it stript of the very Remainder of its Privileges and made as like the primitive Church for its Bareness as it is already for its purity it could Cheerfully and what is more Loyally want all such Privileges and in the want of them pray heartily that the Civil power may flourish as much and stand as secure from the Assaults of Fanatick Antimonarchical principles grown to such a dreadful height during the Churches late Confusions as it stood while the Church enjoyed those privileges And thus much for the two groundless Causes upon which Church Rulers are frequently Despised I descend now to the 3. And last thing which is to show those just Causes that would render them or indeed any other Rulers worthy to be Despised Many might be Assigned but I shall pitch only upon Four in Discoursing of which rather the Time than the Subject will force me to be very Brief 1. And the first is Ignorance We know how great an Absurdity our Saviour accounted it for the Blind to lead the Blind and to put him that cannot so much as See to discharge the Office of a Watch. Nothing more exposes to Contempt than Ignorance When Sampson's eyes were out of a publick Magistrate he was made a publick Sport And when Eli was blind we know how well he Govern'd his Sons and how well they Govern'd the Church under him But now the Blindness of the Understanding is Greater and more Scandalous especially in such a seeing Age as Ours in which the very Knowledge of former times passes but for Ignorance in a better Dress an Age that flies at all Learning and enquires into every thing but especially into Faults and Defects Ignorance indeed so far as it may be Resolved into Natural inability is as to men at least Inculpable and consequently not the Object of Scorn but Pity but in a Governour it cannot be without the Conjunction of the highest Impudence For who bid such an one aspire to Teach and to Govern A blind man sitting in the Chimney corner is pardonable enough but sitting at the Helm he is Intolerable If men will be Ignorant and Illiterate let them be so in Private and to themselves and not set their Defects in an high place to make them Visible and Conspicuous If Owls will not be hooted at let them keep close within the Tree and not perch upon the upper Boughs 2. A Second thing that makes a Governour justly despised is Viciousness and ill Morals Vertue is that which must tip the preacher's Tongue and the Ruler's Scepter with Authority And therefore with
a Duty for being so And such an height of Christianity possess'd those Noble Souls that every Martyr could keep one Eye steadily fixed upon his Duty and look Death and Danger out of countenance with the other Nor did they flinch from Duty for fear of Martyrdom when one of the most quickning motives to Duty was their Desire of it But to prove the possibility of a Thing there is no argument to that which looks backwards for what has bin done or suffered may certainly be done or suffered again And to prove that Men may be Martyrs there needs no other demonstration than to shew that many have been so Besides that the grace of God has not so far abandoned the Christian World but that those high Primitive instances of Passive fortitude in the case of duty and danger Rivalling one another have been exemplifyed and as it were revived by several glorious Copies of them in the succeeding Ages of the Church And thanks be to God we need not look very far backward for some of them even amongst our selves For when a violent victorious Faction and Rebellion had over-run all and made Loyalty to the King and Conformity to the Church crimes unpardonable and of a guilt not to be expiated but at the price of Life or Estate when Men were put to Swear away all interest in the next World to secure a very poor one in this for they had then Oaths to Murder Souls as well as Sword and Pistol for the Body nay when the Persecution ran so high that that Execrable Monster Cromwell made and published that Barbarous Heathenish or rather unhuman Edict against the poor suffering Episcopal Clergy That they should neither Preach nor Pray in publick nor Baptize nor Marry nor Bury nor teach School no nor so much as live in any Gentleman's House who in mere Charity and Compassion might be inclin'd to take them in from perishing in the streets that is in other words that they must starve and dye ex officio and being turned out of their Churches take possession only of the Church-yard as so many Victims to the remorsless rage of a foul ill-bred Tyrant professing Piety without so much as common Humanity I say when Rage and Persecution Cruelty and Cromwellism were at that Diabolical pitch tyrannizing over every thing that lookt like Loyalty Conscience and Conformity so that he who took not their engagement could not take any thing else though it were given him being thereby debarred from the very common Benefit of the Law in sueing for or recovering of his Right in any of their Courts of Justice all of them still following the motion of the High one yet even then and under that black and dismal state of Things there were many thousands who never bowed the Knee to Baal-Cromwell Baal-Covenant or Baal-Engagement but with a steady fix'd unshaken Resolution and in a glorious imitation of those Heroick Christians in the 10 and 11th Chapters of the Ep. to the Heb. Endured a great fight of afflictions were made a gazing Stock by reproaches took joyfully the spoiling of their Gods had trial of cruel Mockings moreover of bonds and imprisonments sometimes were tempted sometimes were slain with the Sword wandred about in Hunger and Nakedness being destitute afflicted tormented All which sufferings surely ought to Entitle them to that concluding character in the next words Of whom the world was not worthy And I wish I could say of England that it were worthy of those Men now For I look upon the old Church of England Royallists which I take to be only another name for a Man who preferrs his Conscience before his interest to be the best Christians and the most meritorious Subjects in the world as having passed all those terrible Tests and Trials which conquering domineering Malice could put them to and carried their Credit and their Conscience clear and triumphant through and above them all constantly firm and immoveable by all that they felt either from their professed Enemies or their false Friends And what these Men did and suffer'd others might have done and suffered too But they good Men had another and more artificial sort of Conscience and a way to interpret off a command where they found it dangerous or unprofitable to do it God knows my heart says one I love the King cordially and I wish well to the Church says another but you see the state of Things is altered and we cannot do what we would doe Our Will is good and the King Gracious and we hope he will accept of this and dispense with the rest A Goodly Present doubtless as they meant it and such as they might freely give and yet part with Nothing and the King on the other hand receive and gain just as much But now had the whole Nation mocked God and their King at this Shuffling Hypocritical rate what an Odious Infamous People must that Rebellion have represented the English to all Posterity Where had been the Honour of the Reform'd Religion that could not afford a Man Christian enough to suffer for his God and his Prince But the old Royallists did both and thereby demonstrated to the world That no danger could make Duty impossible And upon my Conscience if we may assign any other Reason or motive of the late mercies of God to these poor Kingdoms besides his own proneness to shew Mercy it was for the sake of the old suffering Cavaliers and for the sake of none else whatsoever that God delivered us from the two late accursed Conspiracies For they were the Brats and Offspring of two contrary factions both of them equally mortal and inveterate Enemies of our Church which they have been and still are perpetually pecking and striking at with the same malice though with different methods In a word The old tryed-Church of England-Royallists were the Men who in the darkest and foulest day of persecution that ever befell England never pleaded the Will in excuse of the Deed but proved the Integrity and Loyalty of their Wills both by their Deeds and their Sufferings too But on the contrary when Duty and Danger stand confronting one another and when the Law of God says Obey and assist your King and the faction says Do if you dare For Men in such a case to think to divide themselves and to pretend that their Will obeys that Law while all besides their Will obeys and serves the Faction what is this but a gross fulsome juggling with their Duty and a kind of Trimming it between God and the Devil These things I thought fit to remark to you not out of any intemperate Humour of reflecting upon the late times of confusion as the guilt or spight of some may suggest but because I am satisfied in my Heart and Conscience that it is vastly the concern of his Majesty and of the peace of his Government both in Church and State that the youth of the Nation of which such Auditories as this chiefly
TWELVE SERMONS Preached upon Several Occasions By ROBERT SOUTH D. D. Six of them never before Printed LONDON Printed by I. H. for Thomas Bennet at the Half Moon in St. Paul's Church-yard 1692. To the Right Honourable EDWARD Earl of CLARENDON Lord High Chancellor of England and Chancellor of the University of Oxon and one of His Majesties most Honourable Privy Council My Lord THough to prefix so great a Name to so mean a Piece seems like enlarging the Entrance of an House that affords no Reception yet since there is nothing can warrant the Publication of it but what can also command it the Work must think of no other Patronage than the same that adorns and protects its Author Some indeed vouch great Names because they think they deserve but I because I need such and had I not more occasion than many others to see and converse with your Lordship's Candor and Proneness to pardon there is none had greater cause to dread your Iudgment and thereby in some part I venture to commend my own For all know who know your Lordship that in a Nobler respect than either that of Government or Patronage you represent and head the best of Universities and have travelled over too many Nations and Authors to encourage any one that understands himself to appear an Author in your Hands who seldom read any Books to inform your self but only to countenance and credit them But my Lord what is here published pretends no Instruction but only Homage while it teaches many of the World it only describes your Lordship who have made the ways of Labour and Vertue of doing and doing Good your Business and your Recreation your Meat and your Drink and I may add also your Sleep My Lord the Subject here treated of is of that Nature that it would seem but a Chimera and a bold Paradox did it not in the very Front carry an Instance to exemplifie it and so by the Dedication convince the World that the Discourse it self was not impracticable For such ever was and is and will be the Temper of the generality of mankind that while I send men for Pleasure to Religion I cannot but expect that they will look upon me as only having a mind to be pleasant with them my self nor are Men to be Worded into new Tempers or Constitutions and he that thinks that any one can persuade but He that made the World will find that he does not well understand it My Lord I have obeyed your Command for such must I account your Desire and thereby Design not so much the Publication of my Sermon as of my Obedience for next to the Supreme Pleasure described in the ensuing Discourse I enjoy none greater than in having any opportunity to declare my self Your Lordship 's very humble Servant and obliged Chaplain ROBERT SOUTH The Contents of the Sermons SERMON I. PRoverbs III. 17 Her ways are ways of Pleasantness Page 1 SERMON II. Gen. I. 27 So God created man in his own Image in the Image of God created he him p. 53 SERMON III. Matth. X. 33 But whosoever shall deny me before men him will I deny before my Father which is in Heaven p. 101 SERMON IV. I Kings XIII 33 34. After this thing Jeroboam returned not from his evil way but made again of the lowest of the people Priests of the High places whosoever would he consecrated him and he became one of the Priests of the High places And this thing became sin unto the house of Jeroboam even to cut it off and to destroy it from off the face of the Earth p. 155 SERMON V. Titus II. ult These things speak and exhort and rebuke with all Authority Let no man despise thee p. 223 SERMON VI. John VII 17 If any man will do his Will he shall know of the Doctrine whether it be of God or whether I speak of my self p. 269 SERMON VII Psalm LXXXVII 2 God hath loved the Gates of Sion more than all the Dwellings of Iacob p. 323 SERMON VIII Prov. XVI 33 The lot is cast into the lap but the whole disposing of it is of the Lord. p. 373 SERMON IX 1 Cor. III. 19 For the Wisdom of this World is Foolishness with God p. 425 SERMON X. 2 Cor. VIII 12 For if there be first a willing Mind it is accepted according to that a Man hath and not according to that he hath not p. 477 SERMON XI Judges VIII 34 35. And the Children of Israel remembred not the Lord their God who had delivered them out of the hands of all their Enemies on every side Neither shewed they kindness to the House of Ierubbaal namely Gideon according to all the goodness which he had shewed unto Israel p. 535 SERMON XII Prov. XII 22 Lying Lips are abomination to the Lord. p. 587 A SERMON Preached at COURT c. PROV 3.17 Her Ways are Ways of Pleasantness THE Text relating to something going before must carry our Eye back to the 13th verse where we shall find that the thing of which these words are affirmed is Wisdome A Name by which the Spirit of God was here pleased to express to us Religion and thereby to tell the world what before it was not aware of and perhaps will not yet believe that those two great things that so engross the desires and designs of both the Nobler and Ignobler sort of mankind are to be found in Religion namely Wisdom and Pleasure and that the former is the direct way to the latter as Religion is to both That Pleasure is Man's chiefest good because indeed it is the perception of Good that is properly pleasure is an assertion most certainly true though under the common acceptance of it not only false but odious for according to this pleasure and sensuality pass for terms equivalent and therefore he that takes it in this sence alters the Subject of the discourse Sensuality is indeed a part or rather one kind of pleasure such an one as it is For Pleasure in general is the consequent apprehension of a sutable Object sutably applied to a rightly disposed faculty and so must be conversant both about the faculties of the Body and of the Soul respectively as being the result of the fruitions belonging to both Now amongst those many Arguments used to press upon men the exercise of Religion I know none that are like to be so succesful as those that answer and remove the prejudices that generally possess and barr up the Hearts of men against it amongst which there is none so prevalent in Truth though so little owned in Pretence as that it is an Enemy to mens pleasures that it bereaves them of all the sweets of Converse dooms them to an absurd and perpetual Melancholy designing to make the world nothing else but a great Monastery With which notion of Religion Nature and Reason seems to have great cause to be dissatisfied For since God never Created any faculty either in Soul or Body
Ground not that they love the Dirt but that they expect a Crop and for the latter the Politician well approves of the Indian's Religion in worshipping the Devil that he may do him no hurt how much soever he hates him and is hated by him But if a Poor Old Decayed Friend or Relation whose Purse whose House and Heart had been formerly free and open to such an one shall at length upon change of Fortune come to him with Hunger and Rags pleading his past Services and his present Wants and so crave some Relief of one for the Merit and Memory of the other the Politician who imitates the Serpent's Wisdom must turn his deaf Ear too to all the insignificant Charms of Gratitude and Honour in behalf of such a Bankrupt undone Friend who having been already used and now squeezed dry is fit only to be cast aside He must abhorr Gratitude as a worse kind of Witchcraft which only serves to conjure up the pale meagre Ghosts of dead forgotten Kindnesses to haunt and trouble him still respecting what is past whereas such Wise men as himself in such cases account all that is past to be also gone and know that there can be no gain in Refunding nor any profit in paying Debts The sole measure of all his Courtesies is what return they will make him and what Revenue they will bring him in His Expectations govern his Charity And we must not vouch any man for an exact Master in the Rules of our Modern Policy but such an one as hath brought himself so far to hate and despise the absurdity of being kind upon free cost as to use a known Expression not so much as to tell a Friend what it is a Clock for nothing And thus I have finished the first General Head proposed from the Text and shewn some of those Rules Principles and Maxims that this Wisdom of the World acts by I say Some of them for I neither pretend nor desire to know them all I come now to the other General Head which is to shew the Folly and Absurdity of these Principles in Relation to God In order to which we must observe that Foolishness being properly a man's Deviation from Right Reason in point of Practice must needs consist in one of these two things 1. In his pitching upon such an End as is unsutable to his Condition or 2. In his pitching upon Means unsutable to the Compassing of his End There is Folly enough in either of these and my business shall be to shew That such as act by the forementioned Rules of Worldly Wisdom are eminently Foolish upon both accounts 1. And first for that first sort of Foolishness imputable to them namely That a man by following such Principles pitches upon that for his End which no ways sutes his Condition Certain it is and indeed self-evident That the Wisdom of this World looks no further than this World All its Designs and Efficacy terminate on this side Heaven nor does Policy so much as pretend to any more than to be the great Art of raising a man to the Plenties Glories and Grandeurs of the World And if it arrives so far as to make a man Rich Potent and Honourable it has its End and has done its utmost But now that a man cannot rationally make these things his End will appear from these two Considerations 1. That they reach not the measure of his Duration or Being the Perpetuity of which surviving this mortal State and shooting forth into the endless Eternities of another World must needs render a man infinitely miserable and forlorn if he has no other Comforts but what he must leave behind him in this For nothing can make a man happy but that which shall last as long as he lasts And all these Enjoyments are much too short for an immortal Soul to stretch it self upon which shall persist in being not only when Profit Pleasure and Honour but when time it self shall cease and be no more No man can transport his large Retinue his Sumptuous Fare and his Rich Furniture into another World Nothing of all these things can continue with him then but the memory of them And surely the bare remembrance that a man was formerly Rich or Great cannot make him at all happier there where an Infinite Happiness or an Infinite Misery shall equally swallow up the sense of these poor Felicities It may indeed contribute to his Misery heighten the anguish and sharpen the Sting of Conscience and so add fury to the everlasting flames when he shall reflect upon the abuse of all that Wealth and Greatness that the good providence of God had put as a price into his hand for worthier purposes than to Damn his Nobler and better part only to please and gratify his worse But the Politician has an answer ready for all these melancholy considerations That he for his part believes none of these things As that there is either an Heaven or an Hell or an immortal Soul No he is too great a friend to Real knowledge to take such troublesom Assertions as these upon Trust. Which if it be his Belief as no doubt it is let him for me continue in it still and stay for its Confutation in another world which if he can destroy by disbelieving his Infidelity will do him better service than as yet he has any cause to presume that it can But 2 ly Admitting that either these enjoyments were eternal or the Soul mortal and so that one way or other they were commensurate to its duration yet still they cannot be an end sutable to a rational nature for as much as they fill not the measure of its desires The foundation of all Man's unhappiness here on Earth is the great disproportion between his enjoyments and his appetites which appears evidently in this That let a man have never so much he is still desiring something or other more Alexander we know was much troubled at the scantiness of Nature it self that there were no more Worlds for him to disturb And in this respect every man living has a Soul as great as Alexander and put under the same circumstances would own the very same dissatisfactions Now this is most certain that in Spiritual Natures so much as there is of desire so much there is also of capacity to receive I do not say there is always a capacity to receive the very thing they desire for that may be impossible But for the degree of happiness that they propose to themselves from that thing this I say they are capable of And as God is said to have made man after his own Image so upon this quality he seems peculiarly to have stampt the resemblance of his Infinity For Man seems as boundless in his desires as God is in his Being and therefore nothing but God himself can satisfy him But the great Inequality of all things else to the appetites of a rational Soul appears yet further from this That in all
these worldly things that a man pursues with the greatest eagerness and intention of mind imaginable he finds not half the pleasure in the actual possession of them that he proposed to himself in the expectation Which shews that there is a great Cheat or Lye which over spreads the World while all things here below beguile mens expectations and their expectations cheat their experience Let this therefore be the first thing in which the Foolishness of this worldly wisdom is manifest Namely that by it a man proposes to himself an end wholly unsutable to his condition as bearing no proportion to the measure of his duration or the Vastness of his desires The other thing in which Foolishness is seen is a man's pitching upon means unsutable to that which he has made his end And here we will for the present suppose the things of the world to have neither that shortness nor emptiness in them that we have indeed proved them to have But that they are so adaequate to all the concerns of an intelligent Nature that they may be rationally fixt upon by men as the Ultimate end of all their Designs yet the folly of this Wisdom appears in this that it suggests those means for the acquisition of these enjoyments that are no ways fit to compass or acquire them and that upon a double account 1. That they are in themselves unable and Insufficient for And 2. That they are frequently opposite to a successfull attainment of them 1. And first for their Insufficiency Let Politicians contrive as accurately project as deeply and pursue what they have thus contrived and projected as diligently as it is possible for Human Wit and industry to do Yet still the success of all depends upon the favour of an over-ruling hand For God expresly claims it as a special part of his Prerogative to have the intire disposal of Riches Honours and whatsoever else is apt to command the desires of mankind here below Deuteronomy 8.18 It is the Lord thy God that giveth thee power to get wealth And in 1 Sam. 2.30 God peremptorily declares himself the Sole Fountain of Honour telling us that Those that Honour him shall be Honoured and that those that despise him shall be lightly esteemed And then for Dignities and Preferments we have the word of one that could dispose of these things as much as Kings could do Prov. 29.26 where he tells us that many seek the Rulers favour That is apply themselves both to his Interest and Humour with all the arts of Flattery and Obsequiousness the surest and the readiest ways one would think to advance a man and yet after all it follows in the next words that every man's judgment cometh of the Lord. And that whatsoever may be expected here 't is resolved only in the Court of Heaven whether the man shall proceed Favourite in the Courts of Princes and after all his Artificial attendance come to sit at the Right hand or be made a Footstool So that upon full Tryal of all the courses that Policy could either devise or practise the most experienced Masters of it have been often forced to sit down with that complaint of the Disciples We have toiled all night and have caught nothing For do we not sometimes see that Traytors can be out of favour and Knaves be beggars and lose their Estates and be stript of their offices as well as honester Men And why all this Surely not always for want of craft to spy out where their game lay nor yet for want of irreligion to give them all the scope of ways lawfull and unlawfull to prosecute their intentions But because the providence of God strikes not in with them but dashes and even dispirits all their Endeavours and makes their designs heartless and ineffectual So that it is not their feeing this man their belying another nor their sneaking to a third that shall be able to do their business when the designs of Heaven will be served by their disappointment And this is the true cause why so many politick conceptions so elaborately formed and wrought and grown at length ripe for delivery doe yet in the issue miscarry and prove abortive for being come to the Birth the all-disposing providence of God denies them strength to bring forth And thus the Authors of them having missed of their mighty aims are fain to retreat with frustration and a baffle and having played the Knaves unsuccessfully to have the ill luck to pass for Fools too The means suggested by Policy and worldly Wisdom for the attainment of these Earthly enjoyments are unfit for that purpose not only upon the account of their insufficiency for but also of their frequent opposition and contrariety to the accomplishment of such ends Nothing being more usual than for these unchristian fishers of men to be fatally caught in their own Nets For does not the Text expresly say that God taketh the Wise in their own Craftiness And has not our own experience sufficiently Commented upon the Text when we have seen some by the very same ways by which they had designed to rise uncontroulably and to clear off all obstructions before their ambition to have directly procured their utter downfall and to have broke their necks from that very Ladder by which they had thought to have climb'd as high as their Father Lucifer and there from the top of all their greatness to have look'd down with scorn upon all below them Such Persons are the proper and lawfull objects of Derision for as much as God himself laughs at them Haman wanted nothing to compleat his greatness but a Gallows upon which to hang Mordecai But it matter'd not for whom he provided the Gallows when providence designed the Rope for him With what contempt does the Apostle here in the 20 th verse of this 3 d. ch of the 1 Ep. to the Corin. repeat those words of the Psalmist concerning all the fine Artifices of worldly Wisdom The Lord says he knoweth the thoughts of the Wise that they are vain All their contrivances are but thin slight despicable things and for the most part destructive of themselves Nothing being more equal in Justice and indeed more Natural in the direct consequence and connexion of Effects and Causes than for men wickedly Wise to outwit themselves and for such as Wrestle with Providence to trip up their own heels It is clear therefore that the charge of this second sort of Foolishness is made good upon worldly Wisdom for that having made men pitch upon an end unfit for their condition it also makes them pitch upon means unfit to attain that end And that both by reason of their Inability for and frequent contrariety to the bringing about such designs This I say has been made good in the General but since particulars convince with greater life and evidence we will resume the forementioned Principles of the Politician and shew severally in each of them how little efficacy they have to
such want So say I too and the more shame is it for the whole Nation that they should be so But still what will you give Why then answers the Man of Mouth-Charity again and tells you That you could come in a worse Time That money is now-a-days very scarce with him and that therefore he can give nothing but he will be sure to pray for the poor Gentleman Ah thou Hypocrite when thy Brother has lost all that ever he had and lies languishing and even gasping under the utmost extremities of poverty and distress dost thou think thus to lick him whole again only with thy Tongue just like that old formal Hocus who denyed a Beggar a farthing and put him off with his Blessing Why what are the Prayers of a Covetous Wretch worth what will thy Blessing go for what will it buy Is this the Charity that the Apostle here in the Text presses upon the Corinthians This the case in which God accepts the Willingness of the Mind instead of the Liberality of the Purse No assuredly But the Measures that God marks out to thy Charity are these Thy Superfluities must give place to thy Neighbour's great Convenience Thy Convenience must veil to thy Neighbour's Necessity And lastly Thy very Necessities must yield to thy Neighbour's Extremity This is the Gradual Process that must be thy Rule and he that pretends a Disability to Give short of this prevaricates with his Duty and evacuates the Precept God sometimes calls upon thee to relieve the Needs of thy poor Brother sometimes the Necessities of thy Country and sometimes the urgent Wants of thy Prince Now before thou flyest to the old stale usual pretence That thou canst do none of all these things consider with thy self That there is a God who is not to be flamm'd off with Lyes who knows exactly what thou canst do and what thou canst not and consider in the next place that it is not the best Husbandry in the world to be Damn'd to save Charges 4 thly The fourth and last Duty that I shall mention in which men use to plead want of Power to Doe the thing they have a Will to is The conquering of a long inveterate ill Habit or Custom And the truth is there is nothing that leaves a man less power to good than this does Nevertheless that which weakens the hand does not therefore cut it off Some Power to good no doubt a man has left him for all this And therefore God will not take the Drunkard's Excuse That he has so long accustom'd himself to Intemperate Drinking that now he cannot leave it off nor admit of the Passionate man's Apology That he has so long given his Unruly Passions their Head that he cannot now Govern or Controul them For these things are not so Since no man is guilty of an Act of Intemperance of any sort but he might have forborn it not without some trouble I confess from the strugglings of the contrary Habit but still the thing was Possible to be done and he might after all have forborn it And as he forbore one Act so he might have forborn another and after that another and so on till he had by degrees weakned and at length mortified and extinguished the Habit it self That these things indeed are not quickly or easily to be effected is manifest and nothing will be more readily granted and therefore the Scripture it self owns so much by expressing and representing these mortifying courses by Acts of the greatest toil and labour such as are Warfare and taking up the Cross And by Acts of the most terrible Violence and Contrariety to Nature such as are Cutting off the Right Hand and Plucking out the Right Eye things infinitely greivous and afflictive yet still for all that feasible in themselves or else to be sure the Eternal Wisdom of God would never have advised and much less have commanded them For what God has commanded must be done and what must be done assuredly may be done and therefore all Pleas of Impotence or Inability in such Cases are utterly false and impertinent and will infallibly be thrown back in the Face of such as make them But you will say Does not the Scripture it self acknowledge it as a thing impossible for a man brought under a custom of sin to forbear sinning in Ier. 13.23 Can the AEthiopian change his Skin or the Leopard his Spots then may ye also doe good that are accustomed to doe evil Now if this can be no more done than the former is it not a Demonstration that it cannot be done at all To this I answer That the Words mentioned are Tropical or Figurative and import an Hyperbole which is a way of expressing things beyond what really and naturally they are in themselves and consequently the design of this Scripture in saying that this cannot be done is no more than to shew That it is very hardly and very rarely done but not in strict truth utterly impossible to be done In vain therefore do men take Sanctuary in such misunderstood expressions as these and from a false perswasion that they cannot Reform their Lives break off their ill Customs and root out their old vicious Habits never so much as attempt endeavour or go about it For admit that such an Habit seated in the Soul be as our Saviour calls it a Strong Man armed got into Possession yet still he may be dispossessed and thrown out by a Stronger Luke 11.21 22. Or be it as St. Paul calls it A Law in our Members Rom. 7.23 yet certainly Ill Laws may be Broken and Disobeyed as well as Good But if Men will suffer themselves to be enslaved and carried away by their Lusts without Resistance and wear the Devil's Yoke quietly rather than be at the trouble of throwing it off and thereupon sometimes feel their Consciences galled and greived by wearing it they must not from these secret Stings and Remorses felt by them in the Prosecution of their sins presently conclude That therefore their Will is good and well-disposed and consequently such as God will accept though their Lives remain all the while unchanged and as much under the dominion of sin as ever These Reasonings I know lie deep in the minds of most Men and relieve and support their hearts in spight and in the midst of their sins but they are all but Sophistry and Delusion and false Propositions contrived by the Devil to hold Men fast in their sins by final impenitence For though possibly the grace of God may in some cases be irresistible yet it would be an infinite reproach to his Providence to affirm That Sin either is or can be so And thus I have given you four Principal Instances in which Men use to plead the Will instead of the Deed upon a pretended Impotence or Disability for the Deed. Namely In Duties of great labour In Duties of much danger In Duties of Cost and Expence And lastly In Duties requiring a Resistance
and an Extirpation of inveterate sinfull Habits In the neglect of all which Men relieve their Consciences by this one great fallacy running through them all That they mistake Difficulties for Impossibilities A Pernicious mistake certainly and the more pernicious for that Men are seldom convinced of it 'till their conviction can do them no good There cannot be a weightier or more important case of Conscience for Men to be resolved in than to know certainly how far God accepts the Will for the Deed and how far he does not And withal to be informed truly when Men do really Will a Thing and when they have really no Power to Doe what they have Willed For surely it cannot but be matter of very dreadfull and Terrifying consideration to any one Sober and in his Wits to think seriously with himself what horror and confusion must needs surprize that Man at the last and great day of Account who had lead his whole Life and governed all his Actions by one Rule when God intends to judge him by another To which God the great Searcher and Iudge of Hearts and Rewarder of Men according to their Deeds be rendred and ascribed as is most due all Praise Might Majesty and Dominion both now and for evermore Amen A SERMON Preached at CHRIST-CHURCH Oxon. Before the University Octob. 17. 1675. JUDGES VIII 34 35. And the Children of Israel remembred not the Lord their God who had delivered them out of the hands of all their Enemies on every side Neither shewed they kindness to the House of Ierubbaal namely Gideon according to all the goodness which he had shewed unto Israel THese words being a Result or Judgment given upon matter of fact naturally direct us to the foregoing Story to inform us of their occasion The subject of which Story was that Heroick and Victorious Judge of Israel Gideon Who by the greatness of his Atchievements had merited the offer of a Crown and Kingdom and by the greatness of his mind refused it The whole Narrative is contained and set before us in the 6. 7.8 and 9. Chapters of this Book Where we read that when the Children of Israel according to their usual method of sinning after Mercies and Deliverances and thereupon returning to a fresh Enslavement to their Enemies had now passed Seven years in cruel Subjection to the Midianites a potent and insulting Enemy and who oppressed them to that degree that they had scarce Bread to fill their Mouths or Houses to cover their Heads For in the 2 d. v. of the 6. ch we find them Houseing themselves under ground in Dens and Caves and in v. 3 4. no sooner had they sown their Corn but we have the Enemy coming up in Armies and destroying it In this sad and calamitous condition I say in which one would have thought that a deliverance from such an oppressour would have even revived them and the deliverer eternally obliged them God raised up the Spirit of this great Person and ennobled his courage and conduct with the Intire overthrow of this mighty and numerous or rather innumerable Host of the Midianites and that in such a manner and with such strange and unparallell'd Circumstances that in the whole Action the Mercy and the Miracle seem'd to strive for the Preheminence And so quick a Sense did the Israelites immediately after it seem to entertain of the Merits of Gideon and the obligation he had laid upon them that they all as one Man tender him the Regal and Hereditary Government of that People in the 22. v. of this 8 th ch Then said the Men of Israel to Gideon Rule thou over us both thou and thy Son and thy Son's Son also for thou hast delivered us from the hand of Midian To which he answer'd as Magnanimously and by that answer redoubled the obligation in the next verse I will not rule over you neither shall my Son rule over you but the Lord shall rule over you Thus far then we see the Workings of a just Gratitude in the Israelites and goodness on the one side nobly answered with greatness on the other And now after so vast an Obligation owned by so free an acknowledgment could any thing be expected but a continual interchange of Kindnesses at least on their part who had been so infinitely Obliged and so gloriously Delivered Yet in the 9th Chapter we find these very Men turning the Sword of Gideon into his own Bowels cutting off the very Race and Posterity of their Deliverer by the slaughter of threescore and ten of his Sons and setting up the Son of his Concubine the Blot of his Family and the Monument of his Shame to Reign over them and all this without the least provocation or offence given them either by Gideon himself or by any of his House After which horrid fact I suppose we can no longer wonder at this unlookt for account given of the Israelites in the Text That they remembred not the Lord their God who had delivered them out of the hands of all their Enemies on every side Neither shewed they kindness to the House of Gideon according to all the goodness which he had shewed unto Israel The truth is they were all along a cross odd untoward sort of People and such as God seems to have chosen and as the Prophets sometimes phrase it to have espoused to himself upon the very same account that Socrates espoused Xantippe only for her extreme ill conditions above all that he could possibly find or pick out of that Sex and so the fittest Argument both to exercise and declare his admirable Patience to the world The words of the Text are a charge given in against the Israelites a charge of that foul and odious sin of Ingratitude and that both towards God and towards Man Towards God in the 34 th v. and towards Man in the 35 th Such being ever the growing contagion of this ill quality that if it begins at God it naturally descends to Men and if it first exerts it self upon Men it infallibly ascends to God If we consider it as directed against God it is a Breach of Religion if as to Men it is an offence against Morality The passage from one to the other is very easy Breach of of Duty towards our Neighbour still involving in it a Breach of Duty towards God too and no Man's Religion ever survives his Morals My purpose is from this remarkable Subject and occasion to treat of Ingratitude and that chiefly in this latter sence and from the case of the Israelites towards Gideon to traverse the Nature Principles and Properties of this detestable Vice and so drawing before your Eyes the several Lineaments and Parts of it from the ugly aspect of the Picture to leave it to your own hearts to judge of the original For the Effecting of which I shall do these following Things I. I shall shew what gratitude is and upon what the obligation to it is grounded II. I shall give
of all Fetters of Pity and Compassion For all Relenting and Tenderness of heart makes a Man but a puny in this sin it spoils the Growth and cramps the last and Crowning exploits of this Vice Ingratitude indeed put the Ponyard into Brutus's hand but it was want of compassion which thrust it into Caesar's Heart When some fond easy Fathers think fit to strip themselves before they lie down to their long sleep and to settle their whole Estates upon their Sons has it not been too frequently seen that the Father has been requited with Want and Beggary Scorn and Contempt But now could bare Ingratitude think we have ever have made any one so Unnatural and Diabolical had not Cruelty and Want of Pity came in as a Second to its Assistance and clear'd the Villain 's Breast of all Remainders of Humanity Is it not this which has made so many Miserable Parents even curse their own Bowels for bringing forth Children that seem to have none Did not this make Agrippina Nero's Mother cry out to the Assassinate sent by her Son to Murder her to direct his Sword to her Belly as being the only Criminal for having brought forth such a Monster of Ingratitude into the world And to give you yet an higher instance of the Conjunction of these two Vices since nothing could transcend the Ingratitude and Cruelty of Nero but the Ingratitude and Cruelty of an Imperious Woman When Tullia Daughter of Servius Tullius 6 th King of Rome having marryed Tarquinius Superbus and put him first upon Killing her Father and then invading his Throne came through the Street where the Body of her Father lay newly Murdred and wallowing in his Blood She commanded her Trembling Coach-man to drive her Chariot and Horses over the Body of her King and Father triumphantly in the face of all Rome looking upon her with Astonishment and Detestation Such was the Tenderness Gratitude Filial Affection and good Nature of this weaker Vessel And then for Instances out of Sacred Story to go no further than this of Gideon Did not Ingratitude first make the Israelites forget the Kindness of the Father and then Cruelty make them imbrue their hands in the Blood of his Sons could Pharaoh's Butler so quickly have forgot Ioseph had not want of Gratitude to him as his Friend met with an equal want of compassion to him as his Fellow-Prisoner a poor innocent forlorn Stranger languishing in Durance upon the false accusations of a lying insolent whorish Woman I might even weary you with Examples of the like Nature both sacred and civil all of them representing Ingratitude as it were sitting in its Throne with Pride at its Right hand and Cruelty at its Left worthy Supporters of such a Stately Quality such a Reigning Impiety And it has been sometimes observed that persons signally and eminently obliged yet missing of the utmost of their greedy designs in Swallowing both Gifts and Giver too instead of Thanks for received Kindnesses have betook themselves to barbarous Threatnings for defeat of their insatiable Expectations Upon the whole matter we may firmly conclude That Ingratitude and Compassion never cohabit in the same Breast Which remark I do here so much insist upon to shew the Superlative malignity of this Vice and the baseness of the Mind in which it dwells for we may with great Confidence and equal Truth affirm That since there was such a thing as Mankind in the world there never was any heart truly great and generous that was not also tender and compassionate It is this noble Quality that makes all Men to be of one Kind for every Man would be as it were a distinct species to himself were there no sympathy amongst Individuals And thus I have done with the Fourth Thing proposed and shewn the Two Vices that inseparably attend Ingratitude and now if Falsehood also should chance to strike in as the Third and make up the Triumvirate of its attendants so that Ingratitude Pride Cruelty and Falsehood should all meet together and joyn forces in the same Person as not only very often but for the most part they doe in this case if the Devils themselves should take Bodies and come and live amongst us they could not be greater Plagues and Greivances to Society than such persons From what has been said let no man ever think to meet Ingratitude single and alone It is one of those Grapes of Gall mentioned by Moses Deuteron 32. v. 32. and therefore expect always to find it One of a Cluster I proceed now to the Fifth and Last thing proposed which is to draw some usefull Consequences by way of Application from the Premises As 1. Never enter into a League of Friendship with an ungratefull Person That is plant not thy Friendship upon a Dunghill It is too noble a Plant for so base a Soil Friendship consists properly in mutual offices and a generous strife in Alternate Acts of Kindness But he who does a Kindness to an ungratefull Person sets his Seal to a Flint and sows his Seed upon the Sand Upon the former he makes no Impression and from the latter he finds no Production The only Voice of Ingratitude is Give give but when the Gift is once received then like the Swine at his Trough it is silent and insatiable In a word the Ungratefull person is a Monster which is all Throat and Belly a kind of thorough-fare or common-shore for the good things of the world to pass into and of whom in respect of all Kindnesses conferr'd on him may be verified that Observation of the Lion's Den before which appeared the foot-steps of many that had gone in thither but no prints of any that ever came out thence The Ungratefull person is the only thing in Nature for which no body living is the better He lives to himself and subsists by the Good Nature of others of which he himself has not the least grain He is a mere encroachment upon Society and consequently ought to be thrust out of the World as a Pest and a Prodigy and a Creature of the Devil 's making and not of God's 2 dly As a man tolerably discreet ought by no means to attempt the making of such an one his Friend so neither is he in the next place to presume to think that he shall be able so much as to alter or meliorate the Humour of an Ungratefull person by any Acts of Kindness though never so frequent never so obliging Philosophy will teach the Learned and Experience may teach all that it is a thing hardly feasible For Love such an one and he shall despise you Commend him and as occasion serves he shall revile you Give to him and he shall but laugh at your easiness Save his life but when you have done look to your own The greatest Favours to such an one are but like the Motion of a Ship upon the Waves they leave no trace no sign behind them they neither soften nor win upon