not sincerely receive these precepts if they let them not into the heart and answer them not with these affections And here is the great difference between the faith of an honest sanctified Plowman and of a carnal unsanctified Lord or Doctor the one openeth his heart to the doctrine which he receiveth and faithfully admitteth it to its proper work and so embraceth it practically and in love and therefore holdeth it fast as a radicated experienced truth when he cannot answer all cavils that are brought against it The other superficially receiveth it into the brain by meer speculation and treacherously shuts up his heart against it and never gave it real rooting and therefore in the time of trial loseth that unsound superficial belief which he hath God blesseth his word to the heart that honestly and practically receiveth it rather than to him that imprisoneth it in unrighteousness Cond 30. Lastly if yet any doubts remain bethink you which is the surest side which you may follow with least danger and where you are certain to undergo the smallest lâ—ss It is pity that any should hesitate in a matter of such evidence and weight and should think with any doubtfulness of Christianity as an uncertain thing But yet true Believers may have cause to say Lord help our unbelief and encrease our faith And all doubting will not prove the unsoundness of belief The true mark to know when Faith is true and saving notwithstanding all such doubtings is the measure of its prevalency with our hearts and lives That belief in Christ and the life to come is true and saving notwithstanding all doubtings which habitually possesseth us with the love of God above all and resolveth the will to prefer the pleasing of him and the hopes of heaven before all the treasures and pleasures of this world and causeth us in our endeavours to live accordingly And that faith is unsound which will not do this how well soever it may be defended by dispute Therefore at least for the resolving of your wills for choice and practice if you must doubt yet consider which is the safest side If Christ be the Saviour of the world he will bring Believers to Grace and Glory and you are sure there is nothing but transitory trifles which you can possibly lose by such a choice For certainly his precepts are holy and safe and no man can imagine rationally that they can endanger the soul But if you reject him by infidelity you are lost for ever for there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin but a fearful looking for of judgment and fire which shall devour his adversaries for ever There is no other Saviour for him who finally refuseth the only Saviour And if you doubted whether faith might not prove an error you could never see any cause to fear that it should prove a hinderance to your salvation for salvation it self is an unknown thing to most that do not believe in Christ and no man can well think that a man who is led by an age of such miracles so credibly reported to us to believe in one that leadeth up souls to the love of God and a holy and heavenly mind and life can ever perish for being so led to such a guide and then led by him in so good a way and to so good an end AND thus Reader I have faithfully told thee what reasonings my own soul hath had about its way to everlasting life and what enquiries it hath made into the truth of the Christian faith I have gone to my own Heart for those reasons which have satisfied my self and not to my Books from which I have been many years separated for such as satisfie other men and not my self I have told thee what I believe and why Yet other mens reasonings perhaps may give more light to others though these are they that have prevailed most with me Therefore I desire the Reader that would have more said to peruse especially these excellent Books Camero's Praelectiones de Verâ—o Dei with the Theses Salmurienses and Sedanenses on that subject Grotius de Veritate Religionis Christianae Marsilius Ficinus de Relig. Christ cum notis Lud. Crocii Lodovicus Vives de Verit. Fid. Christ Phil. Morney du Plessis de Verit. Fid. Christ John Goodwin of the Authority of the Scriptures Campanella's Savonarola's Triumphus Crucis both excellent Books excepting the errors of their times Raymundus de Sabundis his Theologia Naturalis Micrelli Ethnophronius an excellent Book Raymundus Lullius Articul Fid. Alexander Gill out of him on the Creed Mr. Stillingfleet's Origines Sacrae a late and very worthy labour Dr. Jackson on the Creed Mr. Vincent Hatecliffe's Aut Deus aut Nihil for the first part of Religion passing by Lessius Parsons and abundance more and Common Place-books which many of them treat very well on this subject And of the Ancients Augustine de Civitate Dei Eusebii Preparatio Demonstratio Evangelica are the fullest and almost all of them have somewhat to this use as Justin M. Athenagoras Tatianus Tertullian Clemens Alexand. Origen against Celsus c. Cyprian Lactantius Athanasius Basile Gr. Nazianzene Nyssen c. For my own part I humbly thank the Heavenly Majesty for the advantages which my education gave me for the timely reception of the Christian faith But temptations and difficulties have so often called me to clear my grounds and try the evidences of that Religion which I had first received upon the commendation of my Parents that I have long thought no Subject more worthy of my most serious faithful search and have wondred at the great number of Christians who could spend their lives in studying the superstructures and wrangling about many small uncertainties to the great disturbance of the Church's peace and found no more need to be confirmed in the faith In this enquiry I have most clearly to my full satisfaction discerned all those natural evidences for GODLINESS or HOLINESS which I have laid down in the first part of this Book And I have discerned the congruous superstruction and connection of the CHRISTIAN Religion thereunto I have found by unquestionable experience the sinful and depraved state of man and I have discerned the admirable suitableness of the remedy to the malady I have also discerned the attestation of God in the grand evidence the HOLY SPIRIT the ADVOCATE or Agent of Jesus Christ viz. 1. The antecedent evidence in the Spirit of Prophecie leading unto Christ 2. The inherent constituent evidence of the Gospel and of Christ the Image of God in the Power Wisdom and Goodness both of Christ and of his doctrine 3. The concomitant evidence of Miracles in the Life Resurrection and Prophecies of Christ and in the abundant Miracles of the Apostles and other his Disciples through the world 4. The subsequent evidence in the successes of the Gospel to the true sanctification of millions of souls by the powerful efficacy of Divine co-operation I have spent most
errour it is a way that reason teacheth all men in the trying of any questioned point to reduce it to those that are unquestionable and see whether or no they accord with those And to mark the unquestionable Ends of Religion and try how it suiteth its means thereunto And therefore men of all sober professions have their determinate principles and ends by which they try such particular opinions as Christians do by their analogy of faith And in this trial of Christianity I shall tell you what I find it § 1. I find in general that there is an admirable concord between Natural Verity and the Gospel of Christ and that Grace is medicinal to Nature and that where Natural light endeth Supernatural beginneth and that the superstructure which Christ hath built upon Nature is wonderfully adapted to its foundation This is made manifest in all the first part of this Treatise Reason which is our Nature is not destroyed but repaired illuminated elevated and improved by the Christian faith Free-will which is our Nature is made more excellently free by Christianity Self-love which is our Nature is not destroyed but improved by right conduct and help to our attainment of its ends The Natural part of Religion is so far from being abrogated by Christianity that the latter doth but subserve the former Christ is the way to God the Father The duty which we owe by Nature to our Creator we owe him still and Christ came to enable and teach us to perform it the love of God our Creator with all our hearts is still our duty and faith in Christ is but the means to the love of God and the bellows to kindle that holy fire The Redeemer came to recover us to our Creator He taketh not the Book of the Creatures or Nature out of our hands but teacheth us better to read and use it And so it is through all the rest § 2. I find also that the state of this present world is exceeding suitable to the Scripture-character of it that it is exceeding evil and a deluge of sin and misery doth declare its great necessity of a Saviour and sheweth it still to be a place unmeet to be the home and happiness of Saints Of all the parts of God's Creation this earth doth seem to be next to Hell certainly it is greatly defiled with sin and overwhelmed with manifold calamities and though God hath not totally forsaken it nor turned away his mercy as he hath done from Hell yet is he much estranged from it so that those who are not recovered by grace are next to devils And alas how numerous and considerable are they to denominate it an evil world Those that Christ calleth out of it he sanctifieth and maketh them unlike the world and his grace doth not give them a worldly felicity nor settle them in a Rest or Kingdom here but it saveth them from this world as from a place of snares and a company of cheaters robbers and murderers and from a tempestuous Sea whose waves seem ready still to drown us I. I find it is a world of Sin II. And of Temptation III. And of Calamity I. For Sin it is become as it were its nature it liveth with men from the birth to the grave It is an ignorant world that wandereth in darkness and yet a proud self-conceited world that will not be convinced of its ignorance and is never more furiously confident than when it is most deceived and most blind Even natural wisdom is so rare and folly hath the major vote and strength that wise men are wearied with resisting folly and ready in discouragements to leave the foolish world unto it self as an incurable Bedlam so fierce are fools against instruction and so hard is it to make them know that they are ignorant or to convince men of their mistakes and errours The Learner thinks his Teacher doteth and he that hath but wit enough to distinguish him from a bruit is as confident as if he were a Doctor The Learned themselves are for the most part but half-witted men who either take up with lazie studies or else have the disadvantage of uncapable temperatures and wits or of unhappy Teachers and false principles received by ill education which keep out truth so that they are but fitted to trouble the world with their contentions or deceive men by their errors and yet have they not the acquaintance with their ignorance which might make them learn of such as can instruct them but if there be among many but one that is wiser than the rest he is thought to be unfit to live among them if he will not deny his knowledge and own their errours and confess that modesty and order require that either the highest or the major vote are the masters of truth and all is false that is against their opinions It is an Atheistical ungodly world that knoweth not its Maker or forgetteth contemneth and wilfully disobeyeth him while in words it doth confess him and yet an hypocritical world that will speak honourably of God and of vertue and piety of justice and charity while they are neglecting and rejecting them and cannot endure the practice of that which their tongues commend almost all sorts will prefer the life to come in words when indeed they utterly neglect it and prefer the fleshly pleasures of this life They cry out of the vanity and vexation of the world and yet they set their hearts upon it and love it better than God and the world to come they will have some Religion to mock God and deceive themselves which shall go no deeper than the knee and tongue in forms or ceremonies or a dissembled affection and profession But to be devoted absolutely to God in self-resignation obedience and love how rare is it even in them who cannot deny but the Law of Nature it self doth primarily and undeniably oblige them to it Their Religion is but self-condemnation while their tongues condemn their hearts and lives It is a sensual bruitish world and seemeth to have hired out their reason to the service of their appetites and lusts gluttony and excess of drink and sports and plays and gaming with pride and wantonness and fornication and uncleanness and worldly pomp and the covetous gathering of provision for the flesh to satisfie these lusts is the business and pleasure of their lives and if you tell them of Reason or the Law of God to take them off you may almost as well think to reason a hungry Dog from his carrion or a lustful Boar to forbear his lust And it is a Selfish world where every man is as an idol to himself and affected to himself and his own interest as if he were all the world drawing all that he can from others to fill his own insatiable desires loving all men and honouring and esteeming and praising them according to the measure of their esteem of him or their
when they have here and in other such writings found our fundamentals proved let them hereafter excuse our superstructure and not think that every Sermon must be spent in proving our Christianity and Creed In the first part of this Book I give you no testimonies from the Christian writings or authorities because I suppose the Reader to be one that doth not believe them and my business is only to prove Natural Verities by their proper evidence But lest any should think that there is not so much legible in Nature because the wisest Heathens saw it not I have cited in the margin their attestations to most particulars to shew that indeed they did confess the same though less distinctly and clearly than they might have done as I have plainly proved But being many years separated from my Books I was forced to do this part less exactly than I would have done had I been near my own or any other Library Again I seriously profess that I am so confident of the just proofs and evidences of truth here given that I fear nothing as to frustrate the success but the Reader 's Incapacity through half-wittedness or wickedness or his Laziness in a cursory and negligent perusal of what is concisely but evidently proposed It 's true that Seneca saith Magna debet esse eloquentia quae in vitis placet I may adde Et Veritatis evidentia quae caecis malignis vel ignavis prodest And who feeleth not the truth of Hierom's words ad Paul Nunquam benefit quod fit praeoccupato animo Be true and faithful to your selves and to the Truth and you shall see its Glory and feel its Power and be directed by it to everlasting Blessedness This is his End who is Octob. 31. 1666. An earnest desirer of Mankind's Felicity RICHARD BAXTER TO THE HYPOCRITE READERS Who have the Name of Christians and the Hearts and Lives of andVnbelievers IT is the great Mercy of God to you that you were born of Christian Parents and in a Land where Christianity is the professed Religion and under Governours and Laws which countenance it But this which should have helped you to the intelligent and serious entertainment of Religion hath been abused by you to detain you from â—t You have contented your selves to have Religion in your Princes and your Parents Precepts in Libraries and Laws and to say over some of these by â—ote whilest you banished it from your Hearts and Lives if not also from your sober thoughts and understanding And having indeed no Religion of your own because the labour of understanding and obeying it seemed too dear a price to purchase it you â—ve thought it most serviceable to your quietness and your reputation to seem to be of the Religion of your Parents or your King be it what it will This is indeed the common course of the rude and irreligious Rabble in all Nations of the World O that I might be your effectual Monitor to awaken you to consider what you have been doing and yet if you are Men to suffer your Reason to look behinde you within you and before you and seriously think what it is to be in Heaven or Hell for ever and prudently to manage your own Concernments Can you think that that man hath any Religion who hath no God Or hath he indeed a God who preferreth his lust or wealth or honour or any thing in the World before him Or that is not devoted to his Obedience and his Love Is he a God that is not better than the Pleasures of the Flesh and World Or that is not greater than a mortal man or is not fully sufficient for you Did you know what you did when you owned your Baptismal Vow and Covenant which is when you usurp the name of Christians and joyn in visible communion in the Church Do you know what it is to believe that there is a God and a Life to come and to renounce the Flesh the World and the Devil and give up your selves to a Saviour and a Sanctifyer Or can you think while you are awake and sober that Perfidiousness will save you and be taken by God instead of Christianity will God accept you for a perjured Profession to be that and do that which never came into your hearts Is Hypocrisie a Virtue And will Lying bring a man to Heaven Christianity is such a Believing in Christ to bring us unto God and everlasting Glory as maketh the Love of God the very Nature of the Soul and thankefull obedience its Employment and a Heavenly Minde and Life to be its Constitution and its Trade and the Mercies of this Life to be but our Travelling-helps and Provisions for a better and the Interest of fleshly lust to be esteemed but as dross and dung Is this the Life which you live or which you hate I beseech you Sirs as you regard the reputation of your Reason tell us why you will professe a Religion which you abhorre or why will you abhorre a Religion which you professe why will you Glory in the part of a Parrot or an Ape to say over a few words or move your Bodies while you detest the humane part to know and love and live to God Do you live only to treasure up wrath against the day of wrath and the revelation of the righteous judgement of God who will render to every one according to his deeds Rom. 2.5 6. Do you professe your selves Christians only for self-condemnation to be Witnesses against your selves in Judgement that you wilfully lived unchristian lives What is there in the World that you are so averse to as to be seriously that which you professe your selves to be Who hate you more than those that are that in heart and life which you call your selves in customary words or that are serious in the Religion which you say your selves you hope to be saved by Read Matth. 23.29 30 31. why do you honour the dead Saints and abhorre the living and would make more Martyrs while you keep Festivals of Commemoration of those that others made Quae est illa Justitia sanctos colere sanctitatem contemnere Primus gradus Pietatis est Sanctitatem diligere Chrysost in Matth. 24. Christ hath not more bitter Enemies in the World than some of you who wear his Livery Turks and Heathens are more gentle to true Christians and have shed lesse of their blood than Hypocrite Christians have done The Zeal of the Pharisees consumed many whom the Clemency of the Romans would else have spared Be it known to all the Infidel World who detest Christianity because of your wickednesse that you are none of us Christ renounceth you Matth. 7.22 23. and we renounce you They may as well hate Philosophy because some vagrant Sots have called themselves Philosophers or have sailed with Aristotle or Plato in the same Ship They may as well hate Physick because many ignorant Women and Mountebanks have profess'd it They may as well reproach
is a sin against God what a thing will Man be and what a Hell will Earth be Deny the Law of Nature and you turn men loose to every villany and engage the World to destroy it self and set all as on fire about their ears For if God only move us Physically there is neither virtue nor vice good nor evil in a moral sense But what God moveth a man to that he will do and what he doth not move him to he will not do and so there being only motion and no motion action and no action there will be no Duty and no obligation and so no Moral good or evil § 5. II. If God should Rule us only by Physical motion and not by Laws he should not rule man as man according to his Nature But God doth rule man according to his Nature Therefore not only by Physical motion Otherwise Man should not differ from Inanimates and Bruits A stone is to be moved Physically and a Bruit by the necessitating objects of sense But Man hath Reason which they have not and he is a free Agent And therefore though God concurr to his Physical motion as such yet he must move him as Rational by such objects and such proposals and arguments and means as are suited to Reason By presenting things absent to his understanding to prevail against the sense of things present and by teaching him to preferre greater things before lesser and by shewing him the commodity and discommodity which should move him God would not have made him Rational if he would not have Governed him accordingly § 6. III. If the way of physical motion alone is not so excellent and suitable as the way of Moral Government by Laws also then God doth not only move man physically and leave it to Magistrates to Rule as Morally But the antecedent is true Therefore so is the Consequent God doth not omit the more excellent and choose a lower way of Government and leave the more excellent way to man And that the Minor is true appeareth thus The way which is most suitable to the object or subject of Government is the most excellent way But such is the Moral way by Laws The other Beasts are as capable subjects of as men and Trees as either Wisdom and Justice are eminently glorified in the Moral way And Omnipotency it self also appeareth in Gods making of so noble a Creature as is governable by Reason without Force § 7. IV. If God were not the Soveraign Ruler of the World there could be no Government of mens hearts But there is a government of hearts Therefore God is the Ruler of the World Man knoweth not the Hearts of those whom he governeth And therefore he can take no cognisance of heart-sins or duties unless as they appear in words or deeds And therefore he maketh no Law for the government of hearts But the Heart is the Man and a bad heart is the fountain of bad words or acts and is it self polluted before it endeavoureth the injury of others He that thinks all indifferent that is within him is himself so bad that it is the less wonder if being so indifferent yea so vitiated within he think nothing evil which he hath a minde to do He that thinketh that the heart is as good and innocent which hateth his God his King his Friend his Parents as that which loveth them and that it is no duty to have any good thought or affection but only for the outward actions sake nor any sin to be malicious covetous proud deceitfull lustfull impious and unjust in his cogitations contrivances and desires unless as they appear in the acts doth shew that he hath himself a heart which is too suitable to such a Doctrine But Nature hath taught all the World to judge of men by their Hearts as far as they can know them and not to take the Will which is the first seat of Moral Good or Evil to be capable of neither Good nor Evil. Therefore seeing Hearts must be under Government it must not be man but the heart-searching God that must be their Governour § 8. V. If God were not the Governour of the World all earthly Soveraigns would be themselves ungoverned But they are not ungoverned Therefore God is their Governour and so the Governour of the World The Kings and States that have Soveraign power through all the World are under no humane Government at all Though some of them are limited by Contracts with their people But none have so much need to have the benefit of Heart-government none have so strong Temptations as they And no mens actions are of so great importance to the welfare or misery of the World If the Monarchs of the Earth do take themselves to be left free by God to do what they list what work will be made among the people If they think it no duty to be just or mercifull or chaste or temperate what wonder if they be unjust and cruel and filthy and luxurious and use the People for their own ends and lusts and esteem them as men do their Dogs or Horses that are to be used for their own pleasure or commodity What is the present calamity of the World but that the Heathen and Infidel Rulers of the World are so ignorant and sensual and have cast off the fear of God and the sense of his Government in a great degree when yet most of them have some conviction that there is a God who Ruleth all and to whom they must be accountable What then would they be if they once believed that they are under no Government of God at all If they should oppress their Subjects and murder the innocent it would be no fault For where there is no Government and Law there is no transgression No one forbiddeth it to them and none commandeth them the contrary if God do not For the people are not the Rulers of their Rulers nor give them Laws And Neighbour Princes and States are but Neighbours Therefore if they should sacrifice peace and honesty liberties lives and Kingdoms to their lusts no man could say They do amiss or violate any sort of Law Obj. But the fear of Rebellions and the peoples vindicating their liberties would restrain them Answ Only so far as they feel themselves unable to do hurt As a man is restrained from killing Adders lest they sting him And the advantage of their place doth usually empower them to make desolations if they have a minde to it And great mindes will not easily bear a popular restraint And indeed the honester and better any people are the more undisposed are they to rebell And therefore Tyrants may with smallest danger and fear destroy them Obj. But their own interest lieth in the peoples welfare and therefore there is no danger of such miseries Ans Did Nero think so that wished Rome had but one neck that set the City on fire that he might sing over it Homers Poem of
not so uncertain and multiform a thing 4. And if Mans disposition or actual knowledge be Gods Law it may be also called Mans Law And so the Kings Law should be the Subjects perception of it It is therefore most evident that the true Law of Nature is another thing And is it not then a matter of admiration that so many sagacious accurate Schoolmen Philosophers Lawyers and Divines should for so long time go on in such false definitions of it The whole World belongeth to the Law of Nature so far as it signifieth to us the will of God about our duty and reward and punishment The World is as Gods Statute Book The foresaid natural aptitude maketh us fit to read and practise it The Law of Nature is as the external Light of the Sun and the said natural disposition is as the visive faculty to make use of it Yet much of the Law of Nature is within us too But it is there only in genere objectivo signi Man 's own Nature his Reason Free will and Executive power are the most notable signs of his duty to God To which all Mercies Judgements and other signifying means belong § 5. The way that God doth by Nature oblige us is by laying such fundamenta from which our duty shall naturally result as from the signification of his Will § 6. These fundamenta are some of them unalterable while we have a being and some of them alterable And therefore some Laws of Nature are alterable and some unalterable accordingly As for instance Man is made a Rational free Agent and God is unchangeably his Rightfull Governour of infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness Therefore the nature of God and Man in via thus compared are the fundamentum from whence constantly resulteth our indispensable duty to love him trust him fear him and obey him But if our being or reason or free-will which are our essential Capacities cease our obligations cease cessante fundamento God hath made Man a sociable Creature and while he is in society the Law of Nature obligeth him to many things which he hath no obligation to when the society is dissolved As when a Parent Childe Wife or Neighbour dieth all our duties to them cease Nature by the position of many circumstances hath made Incest ordinarily a thing producing manifold evils and a sin against God And yet Nature so placed the children of Adam in other circumstances that the said Nature made that their duty to marry one another which in others would have been an unnatural thing Nature forbiddeth Parents to murder their children But when God the absolute Lord of life would that way try Abrahams obedience when he was sure that he had a supernatural command even Nature obliged him to obey it Nature forbiddeth men to rob each other of their proper goods But when the Owner of all things had given the Israelites the Egyptians goods and changed the propriety the fundamentum of their former natural obligation ceased Changes in natura rerum which are the foundation of our obligation may make changes in the obligations which before were natural But so far as Nature that Nature which foundeth duty is the same the duty remaineth still the same The contrary would be a plain contradiction § 7. The Authoritas Imperantis is the formall object of all obedience and so all our duty is formally duty to God as our Supream or to Men as his Officers But as to the Material object our Natural duties are either I. Towards God II. To our selves III. To others § 8. I. The prime duties of the Law of Nature are towards God and are our full consent to the three Relations of which two are mentioned before To be Gods Rational Creatures and not obliged to take him heartily for our Absolute Owner and Ruler is a Contradiction in Nature § 9. Mans Nature being what it is and Related thus to God and Gods Nature and Relations being as afore described Man is naturally obliged to take God to be what he is in all his Attributes forementioned cap. 5. and to suit his will and affections to God accordingly that is to take him to be omnipotent omniscient and most good most faithfull and most just c. and to believe him seek him trust him love him fear him obey him meditate on him to honour him and preferre him before all the World and this with all our Heart and might and to take our chiefest pleasure in it All this so evidently resulteth from the Nature of God and Man compared that I cannot perceive that it needeth proof or illustration § 10. It is a contradiction to Nature that any of this duty proper to God may be given to any other and that any Creature or Idol of our Imagination should be esteemed loved trusted obeyed or honoured as God For that were falshood in us injury to God and abuse of the Creature § 11. Nature requireth that Man having the gift of speech from God should imploy his Tongue in the Praise and service of his Maker This plainly resulteth from our own Nature and the use of the Tongue compared with or related to Gods Nature and perfections with his propriety in us and all that 's ours and his Government of us § 12. Seeing Man liveth in totall dependance upon God and in continual receivings from him Nature obligeth him to use his heart and tongue in holy desires express'd and exercised in Prayer and in returning thanks to his great Benefactor of which more anon For though God know all our sins and wants already yet the Tongue is fitted to confess our sins and to express our desires And by confessing and expressing a twofold capacity for mercy accreweth to us That is 1. Our own Humiliation is excited and increased by the said Confessions and our Desires and Love and Hope excited and increased by our own Petitions the tongue having a power to reflect back on the heart and the exercise of all good affections being the means of their increase 2. And a person that is found in the actual exercise of Repentance and holy Desire and Love is morally and in point of Justice a much fitter recipient for pardon and acceptance and other blessings than another is And it being proved by Nature that Prayer Confession and Thanksgiving hath so much usefulness to our good and to our further duty Nature will tell us that the tongue and heart should be thus imployed And therefore Nature teacheth all men in the World that believe there is a God to confess their sins to him and call upon him in their distress and to give him thanks for their receivings § 13. Seeing Societies as such are totally dependent upon God and mens gifts are communicative and Solemnities are operative Nature teacheth us that God ought to be solemnly acknowledged worshipped and honoured both in Families and in more solemn appointed assemblies It greatly affecteth our own hearts to praise
yet is as obligatory and as much if not more than a Law which maketh it more than the Duty of a Subject to answer love and goodness with gratitude and love so that if per impossibile you suppose that we had no other obligation to God but this of love and goodness or abstract this from the rest I question whether it be not most eminently morall and whether the performance of it do not morally fit us for the highest benefits and felicity and the violation of it merit not morally the rejections of our great Benefactor and the withdrawing of all his favours to our undoing But this Controversie my Cause is not much concerned in as I have said because the same God is our Soveraign also § 2. The duty which we specially owe to God in this highest Relation is LOVE which as such is above obedience as such The difference of Understandings and Wills requireth Government and obedience that the understanding and will of the superiour may be a Rule to the subjects But LOVE is a Concord of Wills and so farr as LOVE hath caused a concord there is no use for Government by Laws and Penalties And therefore the Law is not made for a Righteous man as such that is so far as Love hath united his Soul to Virtue and separated it from sin he need not to be constrained or restrained by any Penal Laws no more than men need a Law to command them to eat and drink and preserve their lives and forbear self-destruction But so far as any man is unrighteous or ungodly that is hath a will to sin or cross or averse to Goodness so far he needeth a penal Law which therefore all need while they remain imperfect Nature hath made Love and Goodness like the Iron and the Load-stone The Vnderstanding doth not so ponderously incline to Truth as the Will doth naturally to Good For this being the perfect act of the Soul the whole inclination of Nature goeth after it Therefore Love is the highest duty or noblest act of the Soul of Man the end and perfection of all the rest § 3. The essential act of this LOVE is COMPLACENCIE or the Pleasedness of the minde in a suitable Good But it hath divers effects concomitants and accidents from whence it borroweth divers Names § 4. The LOVE of Benevolence as it worketh towards the felicity of another is the Love of God to man who needeth him but not of Man to God who is above our benefits and needeth nothing § 5. Our LOVE to God respecteth him either 1. as our Efficient 2. Dirigent 3. or final Good which hath accordingly concomitant duties § 6. I. Our LOVE to God as our Chief good efficiently containeth in it 1. A willing Receiving Love 2. A Thankfull Love 3. A Returning devoted serving Love which among men amounts to retribution § 7. 1. An absolute dependent Beneficiary ought with full dependance on his Totall Benefactor to Receive all his Benefits with Love and willingness An undervaluing of Benefits and demurring or rejecting them is a great abuse and injury to a Benefactor Thus doth the ungodly World against all the Grace and greatest mercies of God They know not the worth of them and therefore despise them and will not be intreated to accept them but take them for intollerable injuries or troubles as a sick Stomack doth its Physick and Food because they are against their fleshly Appetites An open heart to receive Gods mercies with high esteem beseemeth such Beneficiaries as we § 8. 2. Thankfulness is that Operation of Love which the light of Nature hath convinced all the World to be a duty and scarce a man is to be found so bruitish as to deny it And our Love to God should be more thankfull than to all the World because our Receivings from Him are much greater than from all § 9. 3. Though we cannot requite God true gratitude will devote the whole man to his Service Will and Honour and bring back his Mercies to him for his use so far as we are able § 10. II. Our LOVE to our DIRIGENT Benefactor is 1. A fiducial Love 2. A love well-pleased in his conduct 3. A following Love Though it belongeth to God chiefly as our sapiential Governour to be the Dirigent Cause of our Lives Yet he doth it also as our Benefactor by a commixture of the effects of his Relations § 11. 1. So infinite and sure a Friend is absolutely to be Tristed with a General Confidence in the Goodness of his Nature and a particular Confidence in the Promises or significations of his good-will Infinite Good cannot be willing to deceive or disappoint us And if we absolutely Trust him it will abundantly conduce to our holiness and peace § 12. 2. We must also love his Conduct his Precepts and his holy Examples and the very way it self in which he leadeth us All that is from him is good and must be loved both for it self and for him that it cometh from and for that which it leadeth to All his Instructions helps reproofs and all his conducting Means should be amiable to us § 13. 3. Love must make us cheerfully follow him in all the wayes which by Precept or Example he is pleased to lead us And so to follow him as to love the tokens of his presence and footsteps of his will and all the signs of his approbation And with an Heroick fortitude of Love to rejoyce in sufferings and venture upon dangers and conquer difficulties for his sake § 14. III. Our LOVE to GOD as our final Good is 1. A Desiring LOVE 2. A seeking LOVE and 3. A full complacential delighting Love which is the perfection of us and all the rest And accidentally it is sometimes a Mourning Love § 15. 1. Man being but in Via under the efficiency and conduct of Love to final Love and Goodness hath his End to intend and his means to use and therefore Love must needs work by Desire § 16. So far as a man is short of the thing desired Love will have some sense of want and so far as we are crossed in our seekings and frustrate in any of our hopes it will be sorrowfull § 17. 2. Man being appointed to a course and life of Means to his last end must needs be employed in those Means for the Love of that End And so the main work of this life is that of a Desiring seeking Love § 18. 3. The complacential delighting LOVE hath three degrees The first in Belief and Hope The second in foretaste and The third in full enflamed exercise § 19. 1. The well-grounded Hope of the foreseen Vision and fruition of the Infinite Good which is our End must needs possess the considerate minde with a delight which is somewhat answerable to that Hope § 20. 2. When the Soul doth not only Hope for its future end but also at present close with God subratione finis in the exercise
the less do forfeit his mercies by their inhumane and irrational ingratitude and abuse Which is the sin of all proud covetous voluptuous persons the ambitious fornicators gluttons drunkards and lovers of sports recreations idleness or any pleasure as it turneth them from God § 34. Above all other sin we should most take heed of the inordinate love of any creature for it self or for our carnal self alone because it is most contrary to our love to God which is our highest work and duty § 35. Those mercies of God are most to be valued desired and sought which shew us most of God himself or most help up our love to him § 36. We must love both our natural selves and neighbours the bad as well as the good with a love of benevolence desiring our own good and theirs But at the same time we must hate our selves and them so far as wicked with the hatred of Displicency and with the love of Complacency must only so far love our selves or others as the Image of Divine Goodness is in us or them I speak not of the meer natural passion of the parent to the child which is common to man and beast nor of the exercises of love in outward acts for those may be directed by God's commands to go more to one as a wicked child that hath less true amiableness in him But all holy love must be suited to the measures of the truest object § 37. The love of God should be with all our soul and with all our might not limited suppressed or neglected but be the most serious predominant action of our souls How easie a matter is it to prove Holiness to be naturally mans greatest duty when love to God which is the summ of it is so easily proved to be so All the reason in the world that is not corrupted but is reason indeed must confess without any tergiversation that it is the most great and unquestionable duty of man to love God above all yea with all our heart and soul and might And he that doth so shall never be numbred by him with the ungodly for those are inconsistent § 38. The exercises of love to God in complacency desire seeking c. should be the chief employment of our thoughts For the thoughts are the exercise of a commanded faculty which must be under the power of our will and the ultimate end and the exercises of love to it should daily govern them And what a man loveth most usually he will think of with his most practical powerful thoughts if not with the most frequent § 39. The love of God should employ our tongues in the proclaiming of his praise and benefits and expressing our own admiration and affection to kindle the like in the souls of others For the same God who is so amiable hath given us our speech with the rest of his benefits and given it us purposely to declare his praise Reason telleth us that we have no higher worthier or better employment for our tongues and that we should use them to the best The tongues of men are adorned with language for charitable and pious communication that they may be fit to affect the hearts of others and to kindle in them that sacred fire which is kindled in themselves Therefore that tongue which is silent to its Makers praise and declareth not the Goodness and Wisdom and power of the Lord and doth not divulge the notice of his benefits condemneth it self and the heart that should employ it as neglecting the greatest duty it was made for § 40. The lives of Gods Beneficiaries should be employed to his praise and pleasure and should be the streaming effects of inward love And all his mercies should be improved to his service from a thankful heart All this hath the fullest testimony of reason according to the rules of proportion and common right To whom should we live but to him from whom and by whom we live What but our ultimate end should be principally intended and sought through our whole lives A creature that hath all from God should in love and gratitude bring back all to him and thus we make it more our own § 41. This Life of Love should be the chiefest Delight and Pleasure of our Souls which all other pleasure should subserve and all be abhorred which contradicteth it Nothing is easilier confessed by all than the desirableness of Delight and Pleasure and the most excellent object which most be most beloved must be our chief delight for Love it self is a delighting act unless some stop do turn it aside into fears and sorrows Nothing can it self be so delectable as God the chiefest Good and no employment so delectable as loving him This therefore should be our work and our recreation our labour and our pleasure our food and feast Other delights are lawful and good so far as they further these delights of holy love by carrying up our hearts to the original and end of all our mercies and delights But nothing is so injurious to God and us as that which corrupteth our minds with sensuality and becometh our Pleasure instead of God § 42. The sense of the present imperfection of our Love should make us long to know God more and to love him and delight in him and praise him in perfection to the utmost extent of our capacities If it be so good to love God then must the highest degree of it be best and reason teacheth us when we feel how weak our Knowledge and Love is to long for more yea for perfection § 43. Thus hath Reason shewed us the end and highest felicity of man in his highest duty To Know God to Love him and Delight in him in the fullest Perfection and to be Loved by him and be fully pleasing to him as herein bearing his Image is the felicity and the ultimate end of man LOVE is mans final act excited by the fullest Knowledge and God so beheld and enjoyed in his Love to us is the final Object And here the Soul must seek its Rest Obj. But quae supra nos nihil ad nos God indeed is near to Angels but he hath made them our Benefactors and they have committed it to inferiour Causes there must be suitableness as well as excellency to win love we find no suitableness between our hearts and God And therefore we believe not that we were made for any such employment And we see that the far greatest part of mankind are as averse to this life of Holiness as our selves and therefore we cannot think but that it is quite above the nature of man and not the work and end which he was made for Answ 1. Whether God have made Angels or Rulers or Benefactors or what love or honour we owe them as his Instruments is nothing to our present business For if it be granted that he thus useth them it is most certain that he is nevertheless
himself our Benefactor nor nevertheless near us What nearness to us they have we are much uncertain but that he himself is our total Benefactor and always with us as near to us as we are to our selves is past all question and proved before 2. There neither is nor can be any object so suitable for our LOVE as God he hath all Goodness in him and all in the creature is derived from him and dependeth on him and he hath given us all that ever we our selves received and must give us all that ever we shall receive hereafter He is all-sufficient for the supply of all our wants and granting all our just desires and making us perfect all that he doth for us he doth in Love as an intellectual free Agent and he is still present with us upholding us and giving us the very Love which he demandeth and he created us for Himself to be his Own and gave us these faculties to know and love him And can any then be a more suitable object of our love 3. Do you not find that your understandings have a suitableness or inclination to Truth and Knowledge and would you not know the best and greatest things and know the cause of all the wonderful effects which you see and what is this but to know God And do you not find that your Wills have a suitableness to good as such in the general and to your own felicity And do you not know that it should not be unnatural to any man to love the best which is best and especially which is best for him and to love him best who is his greatest Benefactor and most worthy of his love in all respects And can you doubt whether God be most worthy of your love All this is plain and sure And will mens averseness to the love of God then disprove it It is natural for man to desire knowledge as that which perfecteth his understanding and yet Boys are averse to learn their Books because they are slothful and are diverted by the love of play What if your servants be averse and slothful to your service doth it follow that it is not their duty or that you hired them not for it What if your wife and children be averse to love you is it therefore none of their duty so to do Rebels are averse to obey their Governours and yet it is their duty to obey them If your child or any one that is most beholden to you should be averse to love and gratitude to you as thousands are to their Parents and Benefactors will it follow that Nature obliged them not to it 4. What can you think is suitable to your love if God be not is it lust or play or meat and drink and ease A Swine hath a nature as suitable to these as you Is it only to deal ingenuously and honourably in providing for the flesh and maintaining the fuel of these sensualities by Buildings Trading Manufactures Ornaments and Arts All this is but to have a reason to serve your sense and so the swinish part still shall be the chief for that which is the chief and ruling object with you doth shew which is the chief and regnant faculty If sensual objects be the chief than Sense is the chief faculty with you And if you had the greatest wit in the world and used it only to serve your guts and throats and lusts in a more effectual and ingenious way than any other men could do this were but to be an ingenuous beast or to have an Intellect bound in service to your bellies And can you think that things so little satisfying and so quickly perishing are more suitable objects for your love than God 5. What say you to all them that are otherwise minded and that take the Love of God for their work and happiness They find a suitableness in God to their highest esteem and love and are they not as fit Judges for the affirmative as you for the negative Obj. They do but force themselves to some acts of fancy Answ You see that they are such acts as are the more serious and prevalent in their lives and can make them lay by other pleasures and spend their days in seeking God and lay down their lives in the exercise and hopes of Love And that it is you that follow fancy and they that follow solid reason is evident in the reason of your several ways That world which you set above God is at last called Vanity by all that try it Reason will not finally justifie your choice but I have here shewed you undeniable reason for their choice and love and therefore it is they that know what they do and obey the Law of Nature which you obliterate and contradict Obj. But we see the Creature but God we see not and we find it not natural to us to love that which we do not see Answ Is not Reason a nobler faculty than sight if it be why should it not more rule you and dispose of you Shall no Subjects honour and obey their King but those that see him You can love your mony and land and friends when they are out of sight Obj. But these are things visible in their nature Answ They are so much the more vile and less amiable Your own Souls are invisible will you not therefore love them You never saw the life or form of any Plant or living Wight you see the beauty of your Roses and many other flowers but you see not the life and form within which causeth all that beauty and variety which yet must be more excellent than the effect Can you doubt whether all things which appear here to your sight have an invisible Cause and Maker or can you think him less amiable because he is invisible that is more excellent 6. In a word it is most evident that all this averseness of mens hearts to the Love of God is their sin and pravity and the unsuitableness of their nature is because they are vitiated with sensuality and deceived by sensible things a disease to be cured and not defended Their sin will not prove the contrary no duty 7. And yet while we are in flesh though God be not visible to us his works are and it is in them the frame of the world that he hath revealed and exposed Himself to our love It is in this visible Glass that we must see his Image and in that Image must love him and if we will love any Goodness we must love his for all is his and as his should be loved by us CHAP. XIII Experiments of the difficulty of all this Duty and what it will cost a man that will live this holy life HItherto I have proved that there is a GOD of Infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness the Creator and consequently the Owner the Ruler and the Father or Chief Good of Man and that Man as his creature is absolutely his own and
which he is Mans End and Happiness As if all the Goodness and Love of God were not enough to counterpoise the base and bruitish pleasures of sin and to drive the rational Soul to God It was his Efficient Goodness which I spake of before 26. And thus it declareth that we are so farr void of Love to God For Love is desirous to please 27. It is a setting up the sordid Creature for our End as if it were more attractive and amiable than God and fitter to content and delight the Soul 28. It is a contempt of all that glorious Happiness of the Life to come which God hath warranted the righteous to expect As if it were not all so good as the defiling transitory pleasures of sin and would not recompence us for all that we can do or suffer for God 29. It is the silencing and laying by our Reason by inconsiderateness or the perverting and abusing of it by Error in the greatest matters for which it was given us and so it is a voluntary drunkenness or madness in the things of God and our felicity 30. It is a setting up our senses and appetite above our Reason and making our selves in use as Beasts by setting up the lower beastial faculties to rule 31. It is the deformity monstrosity disorder sickness and abuse of a Noble Creature whom God made in our measure like himself and so a contemptuous defacing of his Image 32. It is a robbing God of that Glory of his Holiness which should shine forth in our hearts and lives and of that complacency which he would take in our Love Obedience Perfection and Felicity 33. It is the perverting and Moral destruction not only of our own faculties which were made for God but of all the World which is within our reach Turning all that against God and our happiness which was given us for them Yea it is worse than casting them all away while we use them contrary to their natures against their Owner and their end 34. It is thus a preach in the Moral order and harmony of the world and as much as in us lyeth the destroying of the world As the dislocation or rejection of some parts of a Clock or Watch is a disordering of the whole and as a wound to the hand or foot is a wrong to the body And it is a wound to every Society where it is committed and an injury to every individual who is tempted or afflicted by it 35. It is a contradicting of our own professions confessions understandings and promises to God 36. It is a preferring of an inch of hasty time before the durable life to come and things that we know are of short continuance before those of which we can see no end 37. It is the preferring of a corruptible flesh and its pleasure before the Soul which is more noble and durable 38. It is an unmercifulness and inhumane cruelty to our selves not only defiling soul and body but casting them on the displeasure and punishing-justice of their great and terrible Creator 39. It is the gratifying of the malicious Tempter the enemy of God and of our souls the doing his will and receiving his image instead of God's 40. And all this is done voluntarily without constraint by a rational free-agent in the open light and for a thing of nought Besides what Christians only can discern all this the light of Nature doth reveal to be in the malignity of sin § 8. Sin being certainly no better a thing than is here described it is most certain that it deserveth punishment § 9. And reason telleth us that God being the Governour of the world and perfect Government being his perfect work and glory in that relation it is not meet that in such a Divine and perfect Government so odious an evil be put up and such contempt of God and all that is good be past by without such execution of his Laws as is sufficient to demonstrate the justice of the Governour and to vindicate his Laws and authority from contempt nor that it be pardoned on any terms but such as shall sufficiently attain the ends of perfect Government The ends of Punishment are 1. to do Justice and fulfil the Law and truth of the Law-giver 2. To vindicate the honour of the Governour from contempt and treason 3. To prevent further evil from the same offendor 4. To be a terrour to others and to prevent the hurt that impunity would encourage them to 5. And if it be but meerly castigatory it may be for the good of the sinner himself but in purely vindictive punishment it is the Governour and Society that are the end 1. It is true that as the immediate sense of the Precept e.g. Thou shalt do no murder is not de eventu it shall not come to pass but de debito Thy duty is to forbear it So also the immediate sense of the Penal part is not de eventu e. g I thou murder thou shalt be put to death but de debito death shall be thy due thou shalt be Reus mortis So that if it do non evenire it is not presently a falshood But it s as true that when the Sovereign makes a Law he thereby declareth that this Law is a Rule of Righteousness that it is Norma officii judicii that the Subject must do according to it and expect to be done by according to it that it is the Instrument of Government Therefore these two things are declared by it 1. That ordinarily Judgment and execution shall pass according to it 2. That it shall never be extraordinarily dispensed with by Sovereignty but upon terms which as well declare the Justice of the Governour and discourage offendors from contempt and are as fit to preserve the common good and the honour of the Sovereign So that thus far a Law doth assert also the event which I put to prevent objections and to shew that truth and justice require the ordinary execution of just and necessary Laws 2. And should they be ordinarily dispensed with it would intimate that the Ruler did he knew not what in making them that he repented of them a unjust or over-saw himself in them or fore-saw not inconveniences or was not able to see them executed it would also make him seem a deceiver that affrighted Subjects with that which he never intended to do which Omnipotency Omniscience and perfect Goodness cannot do what ever impotent ignorant bad men may do 3. And the offendor must be disabled when penitency sheweth not the change of his heart that he do so no more and therefore death is ordinarily inflicted 4. And especially offences must be prevented and the honour of the Sovereign and safety of the people be preserved If Laws be not executed they and the Law-giver will be despised others will be let loose and invited to do evil and no man's right will have any security by the Law Therefore it
have mercy upon your selves and do not refuse and obstinately refuse the mercy of God and then call him unmercifull Have pity on your own Souls Be not so cruel against your selves as to run into endless misery for nothing and then think to lay the blame on God! God calleth now to you in your sin and wilfulness and intreateth you to have mercy on your selves and then he will have mercy on you in the day of your distress But if you will not hear him but will have none of his mercy now wonder not if in vain you cry to him for it then Obj. But I would not so use an Enemy of my own Answ 1. He doth not deserve it for you are not Gods 2. You are not Governours of the World and so his fault respecteth not any such Law and Judgement of yours by which the World must be governed 3. Nor have you the Wisdom and Justice of God to do that which is right to all Yet are you not bound your selves to take complacency in the evil of your Enemies but to use just means to bring him to a better minde and state § 37. The summ of all here proved is that all sin deserveth endless misery and naturally induceth to it and that all ungodly impenitent souls shall certainly undergoe it and that none can be saved from this misery but by turning to God and being saved from their sins CHAP. XVI Of the present sinfull and miserable state of this World § 1. THough all men may know all this before said to be their duty and sin to be so evil and to deserve such punishment yet none do live perfectly without sin according to the Law of Nature I have heard but of few that pretend to such perfection and those few have confuted their own pretenses and been the furthest from it of many others And therefore this I have no need to prove § 2. The greatest part of the World do bend their mindes and lives to the satisfying of their flesh and live in ungodliness intemperance and unrighteousness neglecting God and future happiness and that Holy life which is the way thereto This being a matter of publick or common fact doth need no other proof than acquaintance with the people of the World § 3. Yea there is an aversness and enmity in them to the life which God in Nature doth prescribe them and a strong inclination to a fleshly Life There needeth no other proof of this than the wonderfull difficulty which we find in perswading men to change their Lives to live to God and to forsake their sensuality and worldliness and the abundance of Reason and labour that is lost upon them when we cannot so much as make them willing § 4. It is evident in the effect that much of this cometh with us into the World 1. How else should it be so universal as it is How should it be found in all sorts of Constitutions and Complexions and in every Countrey and Age till now 2. How should it work so early in Children as commonly it doth 3. How cometh it to prevail against the best Education Helps and Means Certainly all of us feel from our childhood too much of the truth of this § 5. This natural pravity is quickly encreased by the advantage of sensuality which is active before Reason cometh to any power of resistance and so getteth stronger possession by Custom and groweth to a confirmed habit § 6. And if vicious Education by vicious Parents be added and bad company second that and the vulgar course or Rulers countenance concurr the corrupt inclination is quickly more radicated and next to a Nature § 7. Many so farr prevail against the light and law of Nature as to grow strange to God and to themselves to their end and their work Even to doubt whether there be a God or whether they have any other life to live and whether Holiness be good and necessary and sin be bad and deserve any punishment § 8. There is a great deal of sottish unteachableness on the minds and wills of men which hindereth their conviction and reformation § 9. There is a great deal of senseless stupidity and hard-heartedness on men which maketh them sleepily neglect the greatest things which they are convinced of § 10. There is in most a marvellous Inconsiderateness as if they had not their Reason awake to use so that they will not soberly and seriously think of the things which deeplyest concern them § 11. Most men are so taken up with the concernments of their Bodies that their Minds are pre-occupyed and made unfit for higher things All this is proved if we walk but in the World with open eyes § 12. The Love of the World and fleshly pleasure is so powerfull in the most that they love not the Holy Law of God which forbiddeth them that sensuality and commandeth them a holy and temperate life They are like Children that cry for what they love and will not be restrained by telling them that its unwholsom Reason signifieth nothing with them as long as Sense and Appetite gainsay it They are angry with all that crosseth their Appetites though it be to save their Lives The Sense is become the predominant power in them and Reason is dethroned and hath left its power Therefore Gods Law is unacceptable and hatefull to these bruitish people because it is quite against their inclination and that which the Flesh doth call their Interest and Good § 13. Therefore they love not those who press them to the Obedience of this Law which is so ungratefull to them and who condemn their sin by the holiness of their lives and that awaken their guilty Consciences by the serious mention of the Retributions of the life to come All this is bitter to the taste and the Reasonableness necessity and future benefits are things that they are much insensible of § 14. Therefore they love not God himself as he is Holy and Governeth them by a Holy Law which is so much against their inclinations as he forbiddeth them all their sinfull pleasure and threatneth damnation to them if they rebell Especially as his Justice will execute this Indeed their aversation from God in these respects is no less than a Hating Him as God § 15. These Vices working continually in mens hearts do fill them with deceiving thoughts and distracting passions and unquietness and engage them in self-troubling wayes and deprive them of the Comforts of the Love of God and of a Holy life and of the well-grounded hope of future blessedness Though they have such a present pleasure as prevaileth with them it bringeth speedy smart and trouble Just like the pleasure of scratching to a man that hath the Itch which is quickly recompensed with smart if he go deep Or like the pleasure of drinking cold water to a man in a Feaver or a Dropsie which increaseth the disease
Sin is their sickness and corrupteth their appetites and though it have its proper pleasure it depriveth them of the pleasures and benefits of health § 16. These vices also so deprave sometimes making every wicked man to be principally for HIMSELF and for his LVSTS that they are commonly distracted with envy malice contention persecutions the fruits of Pride and Covetousness and sensuality and these diseases are still troubling them till they work their ruine where they do prevail § 17. The same vices set Kingdoms and other Common-wealths together in bloody Warrs and cause men to study to destroy one another and glory in the success and fill the World with rapine and violence by Sea and Land and make it seem as necessary to their own preservation to kill one another as their enemies as to kill Toads and Serpents Wolves and Tygers and much more and with much more care and cost and industry is it done § 18. If any wise and charitable persons would heal these vices and reconcile these contentions and perswade persons and Nations to a holy sober peaceable course they are commonly hated and persecuted they seldom succeed nor can their counsel be heard through the multitude and fury of the vicious whose folly and violence beareth down all § 19. And God himself doth give the sinfull World a taste of his displeasure by painfull sicknesses consuming Plagues Famines Poverty and many the like Calamities which fall upon mankinde § 20. But his sorest Judgements are the forsaking of Mens souls and leaving them in all this folly and disorder this sin and misery to destroy themselves The principal Mercies and Punishments of this Life are found on the Souls of men themselves The greatest present Reward of Obedience is when God doth more illuminate the mind and send in more of his celestial beams and shed abroad his Love upon the heart and fill it with the Love of Goodness and delight it in himself and confirm the will against temptations And the greatest punishment is when God in displeasure for mens disobedience doth withdraw this grace and leave men to themselves that they that love not his grace should be without it and follow their foolish self-destroying lusts § 21. God cannot pardon an uncapable subject nor any but on terms consistent with the honour of his Justice Laws and Government Nor is there any that can deliver a sinner from his punishment upon any other terms whatsoever § 22. The conclusion is that the sin and misery of Mankinde in Generall is great and lamentable and their recovery a work of exceeding difficulty Obj. All this sheweth that mans Nature was not made for a Holy life nor for a World to come Else their aversness to it would not be so great and common Answ This is fully answered before It is proved that Nature and Reason do fully bear witness against his wickedness and declare his obligations to a better life and his capacity of higher things and that all this is his rebellion against Nature and Reason And it no more proveth your Conclusion than your Children or Servants aversness to obedience peace and labour proveth that these are not their duty or Subjects rebellion proveth that they are not obliged to be loyal Obj. But it is incredible that God should thus far forsake his own Creation Answ 1. There is no disputing against the light of the Sun and the experience of all the World It is a thing visible and undenyable that this case they are de facto in and therefore that thus farr they are forsaken It is no Wisdom to say that is not which all the World seeth to be so because we think it unmeet that it should be so 2. Is it incredible that God doth further than this forsake the wicked in the World of punishment If he may further forsake Hell he may thus far forsake Earth upon their great provocations We have no certainty of it but it is not at all unlikely that the innumerable fixed Starrs and Planets are inhabited Orbs who have dwellers answerable to their nature and preeminence And if God do totally forsake Hell as to his Mercy and next to Hell do much forsake a sinfull Earth that is likest and neerest unto Hell and do glorifie his more abundant Mercy upon the more holy and happy inhabitants of all or almost all the other Orbs what matter of discontent should this be to us 3. But God hath not left even this dark and wicked Earth it self without all remedy as shall be further shewed Read Cicero's third Book de Nat. Deor. and you will see in Cotta's speech that the notoriously depraved Reason of man and the prevalency and prosperity of wickedness was the great argument of the Atheists against God and Providence which they thought unanswerable because they looked no further than this life and did not foresee the time of full universal Justice And whereas Cotta saith that if there be a God he should have made most men good and prevented all the evil in the World and not only punish men when it is done I shall answer that among the objections in the Second Tome and I before shewed how little reason men have to expect that God should make every man as good as he could make him or make man indefectible or to argue from mans sin against Gods goodness The free Creator Lord and Benefactor may vary his creatures and benefits as he seeth meet and may be proved good though he make not man Angelical and though he permit his sin and punish him for sinning CHAP. XVII What Natural Light declareth of the Mercy of God to Sinners and of the Means and Hopes of Mans Recovery § 1. NOtwithstanding all this forementioned sin and guilt and misery of man and Justice of God Experience assureth all the Earth that Great Mercy is still continued to them and that they have to do with a Most Merciful God Mens Lives are continued even while they sin Patience endureth them Time is vouchsafed them Food and rayment and Friends and Habitations and health and ease and liberty is given them The Sun sendeth them its moving influence its Light and Heat The Earth supporteth them and affordeth them fruit and maintenance and pleasure The Clouds yield them rain the Air breath and the Sea it self is not unkind and incommodious to them Beasts Birds and Fishes and all inferiour Creatures serve them And yet much more mercy they receive from God § 2. It is therefore manifest that God dealeth not with the sinfull World according to the utmost rigor of Justice nor punisheth them as much as they deserve For all these Mercies they have forfeited and deserved to be deprived of them Obj. But it is no mercy which hardeneth them in sin and endeth in misery It is rather a punishment as to give cold water to a man in a Feaver Answ 1. If it hardened them of
its own nature and not meerly by their abuse and if it ended in misery by the designment of the Giver and the tendency of the gift then were it as you say no mercy but a Plague But it is Mercy which in its nature and by the Donors will hath a fitness and tendency to mens recovery and to prevent their misery and they are commanded and intreated accordingly to use it and are warned of the danger of abuse Obj. But God knoweth when he giveth it them that they will so abuse it Answ Gods fore-knowledge or Omniscience is his perfection and will you argue from thence against his Mercy His foreknowledge of mens sin and misery causeth them not What if he foreknew them not Were it any praise to him to be ignorant And yet the Mercy would be but the same If you will not be reconciled to Gods wayes till he cease to be Omniscient or till he prevent all the sin and misery which he foreknoweth you will perish in your enmity and he will easily justifie his mercy against such accusations Obj. But God could give men so much more grace as to prevent mens sin and misery if he would Answ True he is not unable And so he could make every clod a tree and every tree a beast and every beast a man and every man an Angel as I said before but must he therefore do it Here note that it is one thing to say of any Punishment This is so deserved that God may inflict it if he please without Injustice yea and thereby demonstrate his Justice and another thing to say This is so due that God must or will inflict it if he will be just unless a compensation be made to Justice It is of the first sort that I am now speaking For God may have variety of times and measures and kinds of Punishments which he may use at his own choice and yet not leave the sin unpunished finally But whether he properly dispense with any Law which is determinate as to the penalty I am not now to speak it being not pertinent to this place and subject § 3. Therefore God doth in some sort and measure pardon sin to the generality of mankinde while he remitteth some measure of the deserved punishment To remit or forgive the Punishment is so far to forgive the sin for forgiveness as to execution is but non punire proceeding from commiseration or mercy And it is certain by all the Mercy bestowed on them that God remitteth something of the punishment which in Law and Justice he might inflict Though this be not a total pardon it is not therefore none at all § 4. The Goodness of Gods Nature with this universal Experience of the World possesseth all mens minds with this apprehension of God that he is gracious mercifull long-suffering and ready to forgive a capable subject upon terms consistent with his truth and honour and the common good It s true that self-love and self-flattery doth cause men to think of the Mercy of God as indulgent to their lusts and suitable to their fleshly desires and therefore their conceits are none of the measure of his mercy But yet it may be perceived that this foresaid conception of God as Mercifull and ready to forgive a capable subject is warranted by the soberest Reason and is not bred by sin and error For the wise and better and less sinfull any is the more he is inclined to such thoughts of God as of a part of his Perfection § 5. This apprehension is increased in Mankinde by Gods obliging us to forgive one another For though it doth not follow that God must forgive all that which he bindeth us to forgive for the Reasons before expressed Yet we must believe that the Laws of God proceed from that Wisdom and Goodness which is his Perfection and that they bear the Image of them and that the obeying of them tendeth to form us more to his Image our selves and to make us Holy as he is Holy And therefore that this Command of God to Man to be mercifull and forgive doth intimate to us that mercy and forgiveness are agreeable and pleasing unto God § 6. God cannot cast away from his Love and from Felicity any soul which truly loveth Him above all and which so repenteth of his sin as to turn to God in Holiness of Heart and Life Here seemeth to arise before us a considerable difficulty That God can finde in his heart to damn one that truly loveth him and is sanctified is incredible Because 1. then Gods own Image should be in Hell and a Saint be damned 2. Because then the Creature should be readyer to love God than God to love him 3. Then a Soul in Hell should have holy desires Prayers Praises and other acts of Love 4. And a Soul capable of the glorifying mercy of God should miss of it This therefore is not to be believed For God cannot but take complacency in them that love him and bear his Image And those will be happy that God taketh complacency in And yet on the other side Do not the sins of them that love God deserve death and misery according to his Law And might he not inflict that on men which they deserve Doth not Justice require punishment on them that yet sin not away the Love of God nor a state of Holiness To this some answer that all those that consist with Love and Holiness are Venial sins which deserve only temporal chastisement and not perpetual misery I rather answer 1. That all sin considered in it self abstracted from the Cause which counterballanceth it and procureth pardoning mercy doth deserve perpetual misery and therefore so do the sins of the Best in themselves considered But that Grace which causeth their Sanctification and their Love to God doth conjunctly cause the pardon of their sins so that God will not deal with such as in rigour they deserve 2. And if the sin of any that Love God should provoke him to cast them into Hell it followeth not that one that loveth God in sensu composito should be damned For God hath an Order in his Punishments And first he would withdraw his Grace from such a one and leave him to himself and then he will no longer Love God and so it is not a Lover of God that would be damned § 7. The sinfull World is not so farr forsaken of God as to be shut up under desperation and utter impossibility of recovery and salvation For if that were so they were not in Via or under an obligation to use any means or accept of any mercy in order to their recovery nor could they rationally do it or be perswaded to it There is no means to be used where there is no end to be attained and no hope of success § 8. The light of Nature and the foresaid dealings of God with men continuing them under his Government in
in its proper evidence is very hard to them that have no more than the light of nature Obj. But what difficulty is there in these few precepts that all men may not easily learn them Thou shalt love God above all and repent of sin and set thy heart upon the Life to come and love thy neighbour as thy self c. Answ There is no difficulty in learning these words But 1. There is great difficulty in learning to understand the sense and certain truth of that which is contained in them To know what God is so far as is necessary to our obedience and love and to know what it is in him which is so amiable and to know that there is a Life to come and what it is and to know what is God's will and so what is duty and what is the sin which we must repent of these are more difficult Generals are soon named but it is a particular understanding which is necessary to practice 2. And it is hard to see that certainty and attractive Goodness in these things as may draw the mind to the practical embracements of them from the love of other things An obscure doubtful wavering apprehension is not strong enough to change the heart and life § 4. These difficulties in the meer natural way of Revelation will fill the learned world with controversies and those controversies will breed and feed contentions and eat out the heart of practical godliness and make all Religion seem an uncertain or unnecessary thing This is undoubtedly proved 1. In the reason of the thing 2. And in all the worlds experience so numerous were the controversies among Philosophers so various their Sects so common their contentions that the world despised them and all Religion for their sakes and look'd on most of them but as Mountebanks that set up for gain or to get Disciples or to shew their wit Practical piety died in their hands Obj. This is a consequent not to be avoided because no way hath so resolved difficulties as to put an end to controversies and sects Answ Certainly clearness is more desirable than obscurity and concord and unity than division Therefore it concerneth us to enquire how this mischief may be amended which is it that I am now about § 5. These difficulties also make it so long a work to learn God's will by the light of Nature only that the time of their youth and oft of their lives is slipt away before men can come to know why they lived It is true that it is their own fault that causeth all these inconveniencies but it s as true that their disease doth need a cure for which it concerneth them to seek out The life of man is held upon a constant uncertainty and no man is sure to live another year and therefore we have need of precepts so plain as may be easily and quickly learnt that we may be always ready if death shall call us to an account I confess that what I have transcribed from nature is very plain there to one that already understandeth it but whether the diseased blindness of the world do not need yet something plainer let experience determine § 6. That which would be sufficient for a sound understanding and will is not sufficient to a darkned diseased mind and heart such as experience telleth us is found throughout the world To true reason which is at liberty and not enthralled by sensuality and error the light of nature might have a sufficiency to lead men up to the love of God and a life of holiness But experience telleth us that the reason of the world is darkned and captivated by sensuality and that few men can well use their own faculties And such eyes need spectacles such criples need crutches yea such diseases call for a Physician Prove once that the world is not diseased and then we will confess that their natural food may serve the turn without any other diet or Physick § 7. When I have by natural Reason silenced all my doubts about the Life to come I yet find in my self an uncouth unsatisfactory kind of apprehension of my future state till I look to supernatural evidence which I perceive is from a double cause 1. Because a Soul in flesh would fain have such apprehension as participateth of sense 2. And we are so conscious of our ignorance that we are apt still to suspect our own understandings even when we have nothing to say against the conclusion What I have said in the first part of this Book doth so fully satisfie my Reason as that I have nothing to say against it which I cannot easily discern to be unsound and yet for all that when I think of another world by the help of this natural light alone I am rather amazed than satisfi'd and am ready to think All this seemeth true and I have nothing of weight to say against it but alas how poor and uncertain a thing is man's understanding how many are deceived in things that seem as undeniable to them How know I what one particular may be unseen by me which would change my judgment and better inform me in all the rest If I could but see the world which I believe or at least but speak with one who had been there or gave me sensible evidence of his veracity it would much confirm me Sense hath got so much mastery in the Soul that we have much ado to take any apprehension for sure and satisfactory which hath not some great correspondency with sense This is not well But it is a disease which sheweth the need of a Physician and of some other satisfying light § 8. While we are thus scopt in our way by tediousness difficulty and a subjective uncertainty about the end and duty of man the flesh is still active and sin encreaseth and gets advantage and present things are still in their deceiving power and so the Soul groweth worse and worse § 9. The Soul being thus vitiated and perverted by sin is so partial slothful negligent unwilling superficial deceitful and â—usâ—dâ—n in its studies that if the evidences of life everlasting besâ— and clear and satisfying to others it will over-look them or not perceive their certainty § 10. Though it be most evident by common experience that the nature of man is lamentably depraved and that sin doth over-spread the world yet how it entred and when or which of our progenitors was the first transgressor and cause no natural light doth fully or satisfactorily acquaint me § 11. And though Nature tell me that God cannot damn or hate a Soul that truly loveth him and is sanctified yet doth it not shew me a means that is likely considerably to prevail to sanctifie Souls and turn them from the love of present transitory things to the love of God and Life eternal Though there be in nature the discovery of sufficient Reasons and Motives to do it where Reason is not
world they are that sort of men that are likest unto Beasts except some few at Siam China the Indian Bannians the Japonians the Ethnick Persians and a few more The greatest deformity of Nature is among them the least of sound knowledge true policy civility and piety is among them Abominable wickedness doth no where so much abound So that if the doctrin and judgment of these may be judged of by the effect it is most insufficient to heal the diseased world and reduce man to holiness sobriety and honesty § 6. I find that these few among the Heathens who attain to more knowledge in the things which concern man's duty and happiness than the rest do commonly destroy all again by the mixture of some dotâ—ges and impious conceits The Literali in China exel in many things but besides abundance of ignorance in Philosophy they destroy all by denying the immortality of the Soul and affirming rewards and punishments to be only in this life or but a little longer At least none but the Souls of the good say some of them survive and though they confess One God they give him no solemn worship Their Sect called Sciequia or Sciacca is very clear for the Vnity of the Godhead the joys of Heaven and the torments of Hall with some umbrage of the Trinity c. But they blot all with the Pythagorean fopperies affirming these Souls which were in joy or misery after a certain space to be sent again into Bodies and so to continue through frequent changes to eternity to say nothing of the wickedness of their lives Their third Sect called Lauru is not worth the naming as being composed of fopperies and sorceries and impostures All the Japonian Sects also make the world to be eternal and Souls to be perpetuated through infinite transmigrations The Siamenses who seem the best of all and nearest to Christians have many fopperies and worship the Devil for fear as they do God for love The Indian Bramenes or Bannians also have the Pythagorean errors and place their piety in redeeming Bruits because they have Souls which sometimes were humane The Persians dispersed in India who confess God and Heaven and Hell yet think that these are but of a thousand years duration And it is above a thousand years since they believed that the world should continue but a thousand years and then Souls be released from Hell and a new world made § 7. Their great darkness and uncertainties appear by the innumerable sects and differences which are among them which are incomparably more numerous than all that are found in all parties in the world besides I need not tell you of the 288 Sects or Opinions de summo bono which Varro said was in his days The difference which you may find in Laertius Hesechius and others between the Cynicks Peripateticks Academicks Stoicks Scepticks Epicureans c. with all their sub-divisions are enow In Japan the twelve Sects have their subdivisions In China the three general Sects have so many subdivisions that Varenius saith of them Singuli fontes Iabentibus paulatim seculis à fraudum magistris in tot maeandros derivati sunt ut sub triplici nomine trecentae mihi sectae inter se discrepantes numerari posse videantur sed hae quotidianis incrementis augentur in pejus ruunt Petrus Texeica saith of the Indians In Regno Gazeratensivarii sunt ritus sectae incolarum quod mirum vix familiam invenias in qua omnes congruant alii comedunt carnem alii nequaquam alii comedunt quidem sed non mactant animalia alii nonnulla tantum animalia comedunt alii tantum pisces alii tantum lac herbas c. Johan a Twist saith of the Indian Bramenes Numerantur sectae praecipui nominis octoginta tres sed praeter has minus illustrium magna est multitudo ita ut singulae familiae peculiarem fere foveant religionem It were endless to speak of all the Sects in Africa and America to say nothing of the beastly part of them in Brasil the Cape of good hope that is Soldania and the Islands of Cannibals who know no God nor Government nor Civility some of them They are not only of as many minds as countries but of a multitude of sects in one and the same country § 8. I find not my self called or enabled to judge all these people as to their final state but only to say that if any of them have a holy heart and life in the true love of God they shall be saved but without this no form of Religion will save any man be it never so right § 9. But I find it to be my duty to love them for all the good which is in them and all that is true and good in their Religion I will embrace and because it is so defective to look further and try what I can learn from others There is so much lovely in a Cato Cicero Seneca Antonine Epictetus Plutarch c. in the Religions of Siam in the dispersed Persian Ethnicks in India in the Bramans or Bannians of India in the Bonzii of Japan and divers others in China and else-where that it obligeth us not only to love them benevolently but with much complacence And as I will learn from Nature it self what I can so also from these Students of Nature I will take up nothing meerly on their trust nor reject any doctrin meerly because it is theirs but all that is true and good in their Religions as far as I can discern it shall be part of mine and because I find them so dark and bad I will betake me for further information to those that trust to supernatural Revelation which are the Jews Mahumetans and the Christians of which I shall next consider a-part § 10. II. As to the Religion of the Jews I need not say much of it by it self the Positive part of their doctrine being confessed by the Christians and Mahumetans to be of Divine Revelation and the negative part their denying of Christ is to be tryed in the tryall of Christianity The Reasons which are brought for the Christian Religion if sound will prove the Old Testament which the Jews believe it being part of the Christians Sacred Book And the same reasons will confute the Jews rejection of Jesus Christ I take that therefore to be the fittest place to treat of this subject when I come to the proofs of the Christian Faith I oppose not what they have from God I must prove that to be of God which they deny § 11. III. In the Religion of the Mahumetans I finde much good viz. A Confession of one only God and most of the Natural parts of Religion a vehement opposition to all Idolatry A testimony to the Veracity of Moses and of Christ that Christ is the Word of God and a great Prophet and the Writings of the Apostles true All this therefore where Christianity is approved
among themselves who are his disciples How to mortifie sin and to contemn the wealth and honours of the world and to deny the flesh its hurtful desires and lusts and how to suffer any thing that we shall be called to for obedience to God and the hopes of Heaven To tell us what shall be after death how all men shall be judged and what shall become both of soul and body to everlasting But his great work was by the great demonstrations of the Goodness and Love of God to lost mankind in their free pardon and offered salvation to win up mens hearts to the love of God and to raise their hopes and desires up to that blessed life where they shall see his glory and love him and be beloved by him for ever At last when he had finished the work of his ministration in the flesh he told his Disciples of his approaching Suffering and Resurrection and instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Bloud in Bread and Wine which he commandeth them to use for the renewing of their covenant with him and remembrance of him and for the maintaining and signifying their communion with him and with each other After this his time being come the Jews apprehended him and though upon a word of his mouth to shew his power they fell all to the ground yet did they rise again and lay hands on him and brought him before Pilate the Roman Governour and vehemently urged him to crucifie him contrary to his own mind and conscience They accused him of blasphemy for saying he was the Son of God and of impiety for saying Destroy this Temple and in three days I will re-build it he meant his Body and of treason against Caesar for calling himself a King though he told them that his Kingdom was not worldly but spiritual Hereupon they condemned him and clothed him in purple like a King in scorn and set a Crown of thorns on his head and put a Reed for a Scepter into his hand and led him about to be a derision They cover'd his eyes and smote him and buffeted him and bid him tell who strake him At last they nailed him upon a Cross and put him to open shame and death betwixt two Malefactors of whom one of them reviled him and the other believed on him they gave him gall and vinegar to drink The Souldiers pierced his side with a Spear when he was dead All his Disciples forsook him and fled Peter having before denied thrice that ever he knew him when he was in danger When he was dead the earth trembled the rocks and the vail of the Temple rent and darkness was upon the earth though their was no natural Eclipse which made the Captain of the Souldiers say Verily this was the Son of God When he was taken down from the Cross and laid in a stone-Sepulchre they set a guard of Souldiers to watch the grave having a stone upon it which they sealed because he had fore-told them that he would rise again On the morning of the third day being the first day of the week an Angel terrified the Souldiers and rolled away the stone and sate upon it and when his Disciples came they found that Jesus was not there And the Angel told them that he was risen and would appear to them Accordingly he oft appeared to them sometimes as they walked by the way and once as they were fishing but usually when they were assembled together Thomas who was one of them being absent at his first appearance to the rest told them he would not believe it unless he saw the print of the nails and might put his finger into his wounded side The next first day of the week when they were assembled Jesus appeared to them the doors being shut and called Thomas and bad him put his fingers into his side and view the prints of the nails in his hands and feet and not be faithless but believing After this he oft appeared to them and once to above five hundred brethren at once He earnestly prest Peter to shew the love that he bare to himself by the feeding of his flock He instructed his Apostles in the matters of their employment He gave them Commission to go into all the world and preach the Gospel and gave them the tenour of the New Covenant of Grace and made them the Rulers of his Church requiring them by Baptism solemnly to enter all into his Covenant who consent to the terms of it and to assure them of pardon by his Blood and of salvation if they persevere He required them to teach his Disciples to observe all things which he had commanded them and promised them that he would be with them by his Spirit and grace and powerful defence to the end of the world And when he had been seen of them forty days speaking of the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God being assembled with them he commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem but wait till the holy Spirit came down upon them which he had promised them But they being tainted with some of the worldly expectations of the Jews and thinking that he who could rise from the dead would sure now make himself and his followers glorious in the world began to ask him whether he would at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel But he answered them It is not for you to know the times or seasons which the Father hath put in his own power But ye shall receive power after that the holy Ghost is come upon you and ye shall be witnesses to me both at Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth And when he had said this while they beheld he was taken up and a cloud received him out of their sight And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up two men stood by them in white apparel and said Why gaze ye up into Heaven This same Jesus which is taken up from you into Heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into Heaven Upon this they returned to Jerusalem and continued together till ten days after as they were all together both the Apostles and all the rest of the Disciples suddenly there came a sound from Heaven as of a rushing mighty wind and the likeness of fiery cloven tongues sate on them all and they were filled with the holy Ghost and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them utterance By this they were enabled both to preach to people of several languages and to work other miracles to confirm their doctrine so that from this time forward the holy Spirit which Christ sent down upon Believers was his great Witness and Agent in the world and procured the belief and entertainment of the Gospel wheresoever it came For by this extraordinary reception of the Spirit the Apostles themselves were much fullier instructed in the doctrine of salvation than
they were before notwithstanding their long converse with Christ in person it being his pleasure to illuminate them by supernatural infusion that it might appear to be no contrived design to deceive the world And they were enabled to preach the word with power and by this Spirit were infallibly guided in the performance of the work of their Commissions to settle Christ's Church in a holy order and to leave on record the doctrine which he had commanded them to teach Also they themselves did heal the sick and cast out devils and prophesie and by the laying on of their hands the same holy Spirit was ordinarily given to others that believed so that Christians had all one gift or other of that Spirit by which they convinced and converted a great part of the world in a short time and all that were sincere had the gift of sanctification and were regenerate by the Spirit as well as by Baptismal water and had the love of God shed abroad in their hearts by the holy Ghost which was given them A holy and heavenly mind and life with mortification contempt of the world self-denial patience and love to one another and to all men was the constant badge of all Christ's followers The first Sermon that Peter preached did convert three thousand of those sinful Jews that had crucified Christ And after that many thousands of them more were converted One of their bloody persecutors Saul a Pharisee that had been one of the murderers of the first Martyr Stephen and had haled many of them to prisons as he was going on this business was struck down by the high-way a light from Heaven shining round about him and a voice saying to him Saul Saul why persecutest thou me And he said Who art thou Lord And the Lord said I am Jesus whom thou persecutest it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks And he trembling and astonished said Lord what wilt thou have me to do And the Lord said Arise and go into the City and it shall be told thee what thou must do And the men that journeyed with him stood speechless hearing a voice but seeing no man And so Saul was led blind to Damascus where one Ananias had a vision commanding him to Baptize him and his eyes were opened This Convert called Paul did hence-forward preach the Gospel of Christ from Country to Country in Syria in Asia at Rome and a great part of the world in marvellous unwearied labours and sufferings abuses and imprisonments converting multitudes and planting Churches in many great Cities and Countries and working abundance of miracles where he went His History is laid down in part of the New Testament There are also many of his Epistles to Rome to Corinth Galatia Ephesus Philippi Coloss Thessalonica to Timothy to Titus and to Philemon and the Hebrews as is supposed There are also the Epistles of Peter James John and Jude with the Revelation of John containing many mysterious Prophesies An Eunuch who was of great power under the Queen of Ethiopia was converted by Philip and carried the Gospel into his Country The rest of the Apostles and other Disciples carried it abroad a great part of the world especially in the Roman Empire and though every where they met with opposition and persecution yet by the power of the holy Ghost appearing in their Holiness Languages and Miracles they prevailed and planted abundance of Churches of which the most populous were at Jerusalem Antioch Rome and Alexandria And though they were all dispersed abroad the world and out of the reach of mutual converse yet did they never disagree in their Doctrine in the smallest point but proceeded through sufferings in Unity and Holiness in the work of saving Souls till most of them were put to death for the sake of Christ having left the Churches under the Government of their several Pastors according to the will of Christ This is the abstract of the History of the holy Scriptures § 14. The summ of the Doctrine of Christianity is contained in these Articles following consisting of three general Heads I. Things to be known and believed II. Things to be willed and desired and hoped III. Things to be done I. 1. There is one only GOD in Essence in Three Essential Principles POWER UNDERSTANDING and WILL or OMNIPOTENCY OMNISCIENCE and GOODNESS in Three Subsistences or Persons the FATHER the SON and the HOLY SPIRIT who is a Mind or Spirit and therefore is most Simple Incorruptible Immortal Impassionate Invisible Intactible c. and is Indivisible Eternal Immense Necessary Independent Self-sufficient Immutable Absolute and Infinite in all Perfections The Principal Efficient Dirigent and Final Cause of all the world The CREATOR of all and therefore our Absolute OWNER or Supreme RULER and our Total BENEFACTOR and CHIEF GOOD and END 2. GOD made Man for himself not to supply any want of his own but for the pleasing of his own Will and Love in the Glory of his Perfections shining forth in his works In his own Image that is with Vital Power Understanding and Free-will Able Wise and Good with Dominion over the Inferiour Creatures as being in subordination to God their OWNER their GOVERNOUR and their BENEFACTOR and END And he bound him by the Law of his Nature to adhere to GOD his MAKER by Resignation Devotion and Submission to him as his OWNER by Believing Honouring and Obeying him as his RULER and by Loving him Trusting and Seeking him Delighting in him Thanksgiving to him and Praising him as his Grand BENEFACTOR chief Good and ultimate end to exercise Charity and Justice to each other and to Govern all his inferiour faculties by Reason according to his Makers will that he so might please him and be Happy in his Love And to try him he particularly forbad him to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil upon pain of death 3. Man being tempted by Satan to break this Law of God did believe the Tempter who promised him impunity and advancement in Knowledge and who accused God as false in his threatning and as envying Man this great advancement And so by wilfull sinning against him he fell from God and his uprightness and happiness under the displeasure of God the penalty of his Law and the power of Satan And hence we are all conceived in sin averse to good and prone to evil and condemnation is passed upon all and no meer Creature is able to deliver us 4. God so loved the World that he gave his only SON to be their REDEEMER who being the Eternal WISDOM and WORD of God and so truly GOD and one in Essence with the FATHER did assume our Nature and became Man being conceived by the HOLY SPIRIT in the Virgin Mary and born of her and called JESVS CHRIST who being Holy and without all sin did conquer the Tempter and the World fulfilling all righteousness He enacted and preached the Law or
Covenant of Grace confirming his Doctrine by abundant uncontrolled Miracles contemning the World he exposed himself to the malice and fury and contempt of sinners and gave up himself a Sacrifice for our sins and a Ransom for us in suffering death on a Cross to reconcile us to God He was buryed and went in Soul to the Souls departed And the third day he rose again having conquered death And after forty dayes having instructed and authorized his Apostles in their Office he ascended up into Heaven in their sight where he remaineth Glorified and is Lord of all the chief Priest and Prophet and King of his Church interceding for us teaching and governing us by his Spirit Ministers and Word 5. The New Law and Covenant which Christ hath procured made and sealed by his Blood his Sacraments and his Spirit is this That to all them who by true Repentance and Faith do forsake the Flesh the World and the Devil and give up themselves to God the Father Son and Holy Spirit their Creator Redeemer and Sanctifier he will give Himself in these Relations and take them as his reconciled Children pardoning their sins and giving them his grace and title to Everlasting Happiness and will glorifie all that thus persevere But will condemn the unbelievers impenitent and ungodly to everlasting punishment This Covenant he hath commanded his Ministers to proclaim and offer to all the World and to baptize all that consent thereunto to invest them Sacramentally in all these benefits and enter them into his holy Catholick Church 6. The Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son did first inspire and guide the Prophets Apostles and Evangelists that they might truly and fully reveal the Doctrine of Christ and deliver it in Scripture to the Church as the Rule of our Faith and Life and by abundance of evident uncontrolled Miracles and gifts to be the great witness of Christ and of the truth of his holy Word 7. Where the Gospel is made known the HOLY SPIRIT doth by it illuminate the minds of such as shall be saved and opening and softening their hearts doth draw them to believe in Christ and turneth them from the power of Satan unto God Whereupon they are joyned to Christ the Head and into the Holy Catholick Church which is his Body consisting of all true Believers and are freely justified and made the Sons of God and a sanctified peculiar people unto him and do Love him above all and serve him sincerely in holiness and righteousness loving and desiring the Communion of Saints overcoming the Flesh the World and the Devil and living in Hope of the coming of Christ and of Everlasting life 8. At death the Souls of the Justified go to Happiness with Christ and the Souls of the wicked to misery And at the end of this World the Lord Jesus Christ will come again and will raise the Bodies of all men from the dead and will judge all the World according to the good or evil which they have done And the righteous shall go into Everlasting Life where they shall see Gods Glory and being perfected in Holiness shall love and praise and please him perfectly and be loved by him for evermore and the Wicked shall go into Everlasting punishment with the Devil II. According to this Belief we do deliberately and seriously by unfeigned consent of Will take this One God the infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness the Father Son and Holy Spirit for our only God our reconciled Father our Saviour and our Sanctifyer and resolvedly give up our selves to him accordingly entering into his Church under the hands of his Ministers by the solemnization of this Covenant in the Sacrament of Baptism And in prosecution of this Covenant we proceed to stirre up our DESIRES by daily PRAYER to God in the Name of Christ by the help of the Holy Spirit in the order following 1. We desire the glorifying and hallowing of the Name of God that he may be known and loved and honoured by the World and may be well-pleased in us and we may delight in Him which is our ultimate end 2. That his Kingdom of Grace may be enlarged and his Kingdom of Glory as to the Perfected Church of the sanctified may come That Mankinde may more universally subject themselves to God their Creator and Redeemer and be saved by him 3. That this Earth which is grown too like to Hell may be made liker to the Holy ones in Heaven by a holy conformity to Gods Will and Obedience to all his Laws denying and mortifying their own fleshly desires wills and minds 4. That our Natures may have necessary support protection and provision in our daily service of God and passage through this World with which we ought to be content 5. That all our sins may be forgiven us through our Redeemer as we our selves are ready to pardon wrongs 6. That we may be kept from Temptations and delivered from sin and misery from Satan from wicked men and from our selves Concluding our Prayers with the joyfull Praises of God our Heavenly Father acknowledging his Kingdom Power and Glory for ever III. The Laws of Christian PRACTICE are these 1. That our Souls do firmly adhere to God our Creator Redeemer and Sanctifyer by Faith Love Confidence and Delight that we seek him by desire obedience and hope meditating on himself his word and works of Creation Redemption and Sanctification of Death Judgement Heaven and Hell exercising Repentance and mortifying sin especially atheism unbelief and unholiness hardness of heart disobedience and unthankfulness pride worldliness and flesh-pleasing Examining our hearts about our Graces our Duties and our sins Watchfully governing our thoughts affections passions senses appetites words and outward actions Resisting temptations and serving God with all our faculties and glorifying him in our Hearts our Speeches and our Lives 2. That we worship God according to his Holiness and his Word in Spirit and Truth and not with Fopperies and Imagery according to our own devices which may dishonour him and lead us to Idolatry 3. That we ever use his Name with special Reverence especially in appealing to him by an Oath abhorring prophaneness perjury and breach of Vows and Covenants to God 4. That we meet in Holy Assemblies for his more solemn Worship where the Pastors teach his Word to their Flocks and lead them in Prayer and Praise to God administer the Sacrament of Communion and are the Guides of the Church in Holy things whom the people must hear obey and honour especially the Lords Day must be thus spent in Holiness 5. That Parents educate their Children in the Knowledge and Fear of God and in obedience of his Laws and that Princes Masters and all Superiours govern in Holiness and Justice for the glory of God and the common good according to his Laws And that Children love honour and obey their Parents and all Subjects their Rulers in due subordination unto God 6. That
would not have been a full exemplification of his Doctrine nor a perfect Revelation of it to the World Example bringeth Doctrine neer our Senses and thereby maketh it more clear and powerfull § 20. It is the undertaken Office of Jesus Christ to send the Holy Spirit into Believers mindes and to write out the substance of this Law upon their hearts and give them such holy and heavenly inclinations that it may become as it were a Natural Law unto them and they obey it with love facility and delight though not in perfection till they arrive at the state of Perfection So much to shew WHAT the Christian Religion is CHAP. IV. Of the Nature and Properties of the Christian Religion HAving understood the matter and words of the Christian Religion before I proceeded any further I thought it meet to pass a judgment upon the nature temperament constitution and properties of it And therein I found that which must needs be a great preparative to belief § 1. And first I found that it is a most holy and spiritual Religion resolved into the most excellent Principles and Ends glorifying God and humbling man and teaching us the most divine and heavenly life in the love and patient service of our Creator 1. It is most Holy for it calleth us up entirely unto God and consisteth in our absolute dedication and devotedness to him 2. It is most Spiritual leading us from things carnal and terrene and being principally about the government of the Soul and placing all our felicity in things spiritual and not in fleshly pleasures with the Epicureans and Mahometans It teacheth us to worship God in a spiritual manner and not either irrationally toyishly or irreverently And it directeth our lives to a daily converse with God in holiness 3. The Principles of it are the three Essentialities of God in Unity viz. the Infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness and the three grand Relations of God to Man as founded in his three most famous works viz as our Creator our Redeemer and our Regenerater or Sanctifier and the three great Relations arising from Creation and also from Redemption viz. as he is our Owner our Ruler and our Benefactor or chiefest Good and End 4. The Ends of the Christian Religion I find are proximately the saving of man from Satan and the Justice of God the sanctifying them to God and purifying them from sin the pardon of their sins and the everlasting happiness of their Souls in the pleasing and fruition of God for ever In a word it is but the redeeming us from our carnal self the world and the devil to the love and service of our Creator 5. Nothing can be spoken more honourably of God in all his perfections in the language of poor mortals than what the Christian Religion speaketh of him 6. And no Religion so much humbleth man by opening the malignity both of his original and actual sin and declaring the displeasure of God against it 7. It teacheth us who once lived as without God in the world to live wholly unto God and to make nothing of all the world in comparison of him 8. And it teacheth us to live upon the hopes of heaven and fetch our motives and our comforts from it § 2. I find that the Christian Religion is the most pure and clean and utterly opposite to all that is evil There is no vertue which it commendeth not nor duty which it commandeth not nor vice which it condemneth not nor sin which it forbiddeth not The chief thing in it which occasioneth the rebellion and displeasure of the world against it is the purity and goodness of it which is contrary to their sensual nature and as Physick to their licentious lives would it indulge their vices and give them leave to sin they could endure it § 3. Particularly it most vehemently condemneth the grand vices of Pride Worldliness and Sensuality and all their polluting and pernicious fruits 1. No Religion doth so much to teach men Humility and make Pride appear an odious thing It openeth the malignity of it as it lifteth up the mind against God or Man it condemneth it as Satans image it giveth us a multitude of humbling precepts and motives and secondeth them all with the strangest example of condescension and lowliness in Christ that was ever presented to the view of man Whereas I find even in the famousest of the Roman Heathens that a great deal of pride was taken for a virtue and men were instructed and exhorted to be proud under pretence of maintaining and vindicating their honour and true Humility was taken for disgraceful baseness and men were driven from it by the scorn not only of the vulgar but of Philosophers themselves 2. And there is no Religion that is fitted so much to the destruction of Worldliness or of the love of Riches as Christianity is for it teacheth men most effectually the vanity of the world it appointeth them a holy life so hateful to worldly men as will occasion them to feel the vexation of the world it openeth to them the hopes of a life so much better as may teach them to take all the wealth and glory of this world for a shadow a feather or a dream It condemneth worldly love as the sin inconsistent with the love of God and the certain mark of a drossy unsanctified miserable soul It setteth before us such an example of Christ as must needs shame worldliness with all true believers 3. And for Sensuality it openeth the shame of its beastiality and maketh the carnal mind and life to be enmity to God and the contrary to that spiritual mind and life which is the property of all that shall be saved It strictly and vehemently condemneth all gluttony and excess of drink all ryotting and time-wasting needless sports all fornication and ribald talk and wanton carriage words or thoughts Whereas I find among Heathens and Mahometans that inordinate sensuality was much indulged excess of eating and drinking was made a matter of no great blame time-wasting Plays were as little accused as if men had no greater matter to do in the world than to pass away time in some sensual or fantastical delight either by fornication or many wives at once their lust was gratified and so their minds were debased polluted and called down and made unfit for spiritual contemplation and a holy life From whence no doubt it came to pass that they were so dark about things spiritual and divine and so overspread with errors about many plain and necessary things § 4. There is no Religion which so notably detecteth and disgraceth the sin of SELFISHNESS nor so effectually teacheth SELF-DENIAL as the Christian Religion doth It maketh man understand the nature of his corrupt depraved state that it is a falling from GOD to SELF and that his recovery lieth in returning from SELF to GOD. It sheweth him how selfishness is the principle of divisions enmity
wrath contentions envy malice covetousness injustice oppression wars uncharitableness and all the iniquity of the world And how self is the grand enemy of God and Man and of the Publick good and peace and contrary to the love of God and our neighbour and the Common-wealth It giveth us so many precepts for self-denial as no other Religion did ever mention and such an example against it in Jesus Christ as is the astonishment of Men and Angels And therefore all other Religions did in vain attempt the true purifying of heart and life or the pacifying of the divided minds of men while they let alone this sin of selfishness or lightly touch'd it which is the root and heart of all the rest § 5. No Religion doth so much reveal to us the Nature of God and his works for Man and Relations to him as the Christian Religion doth And doubtless that is the most excellent doctrine which maketh known God most to mans mind and that is the best Religion which bringeth man nearest to his Creator in love and purity Few of the Heathens knew God in his Unity and fewer in the Trinity of his Essential Primalities many question'd his particular Providence and Government they knew not man's relation or duty to him while they were distracted with the observance of a multitude of Gods they indeed had none Though God be incomprehensible to us all yet is there a great deal of the glory of his perfections revealed to us in the light of Christianity which we may seek in vain with any other sort of men § 6. No Religion doth so wonderfully open and magnifie and reconcile God's Justice and Mercy to Mankind as Christianity doth It sheweth how his Justice is founded in his Holiness and his governing Relation it justifieth it by opening the purity of his Nature the evil of sin and the use of punishment to the right government of the world and it magnifieth it by opening the dreadfulness and certainty of his penalties and the sufferings of our Redeemer when he made himself a Sacrifice for our sins By the revelation of justice sin and misery it revealeth the wonderful greatness of Gods mercy it openeth those operations and effects of it which Heathenism and Mahometanism are utter strangers to they speak diminutively both of Mercy and Justice and cannot tell how to make God merciful without making him vnjust nor to make him just without obscuring the glory of his mercy which is peculiarly set forth in the work of Redemption and the Covenant of Grace and promise of everlasting Blessedness § 7. The Christian Religion openeth many other parts of holy doctrine which are unknown to men that learned them not from thence Such as the doctrin of the Creation and the Fall and of original sin and of Justification Sanctification Adoption and the right worshipping of God of which mention is made before more distinctly § 8. No Religion can be more Charitable for it wholly consisteth in the love of God and one another and in the means to kindle and maintain this love The whole Law of Christ is fulfilled in love even in loving God for himself above all and our neighbours as our selves for the sake of God yea our enemies so far as there is any thing amiable in them The end of all the Commandments is love out of a pure heart and a good conscience and unfeigned faith And all Christians are obliged to love each other with a pure heart and fervently yea to shew that love which they profess to Christ himself by the loving of one another How frequently and earnestly is this great duty pressed by Christ and his Apostles how great a stress doth he lay upon it He maketh it the evidence of our love to God He promiseth salvation to it He forbiddeth selfishness that it may not hinder it He commandeth us to live in the constant expression of it and to provoke one another to love and to good works He hath made himself the most matchless and wonderful example of it He hath told us that according to mens charity he will judge them at the last day How dry and barren are all Religions and Writings that we have ever come to the knowledge of in the world in the point of love and the fruits of love in comparison of the Gospel of Jesus Christ § 9. I find that the Christian Religion is most for Vnity and Peace of any Religion in the world most vehemently commanding them and appointing the fittest means for the attaining of them 1. All Christians are commanded to be of one mind to think the same things and speak the same things and discord and division and contention is earnestly forbidden them and condemned and all occasions which may lead them thereunto 2. And they have one Head and Centre one God and Saviour who is their common Governour End and Interest in whom therefore they may all unite when most others in the world do shew a man no further end than self-preservation and so while self is each mans end and interest there are as many ends as men and how then is it possible that such should have any true unity and concord But to every true Christian the pleasing and glorifying of God and the promoting of his Kingdom for the salvation of the world is above all self-interest whatsoever and therefore in this they are all united And though they all seek their own felicity and salvation it is only in the seeking of this higher end which is finis amantis sed creaturae amantis creatorem the end of a lover which desireth unity and respecteth both the lover and the beloved but it is not the end of the love of equals but of the creature to the Creator who therefore preferreth his beloved before himself in his intentions So that it is only this holy centring in God that can ever make men all of a mind and agree the disagreeing world While Self is every mans end they will have such constant contrariety of interests that it will be impossible for them to agree but covetousness ambition and sensuality will keep them in factions contentions and wars continually Moreover it is Christianity that most urgeth and effectually giveth a hearty love to one another and teacheth them to love their neighbours as themselves and to do as they would have others to do by them and this is the true root and spring of concord And it is Christianity which most teacheth the forgiving of wrongs and loving of enemies and forbearing that revenge which Heathens were wont to account an honour And it is Christianity which teacheth men to contemn all the riches and honours of the world which is the bone that worldly dogs do fight for and the great occasion of their strife and it teacheth them to mortifie all those vices which feed mens divisions and contentions So that if any man live as a Christian he must needs be a man of unity
and peace If you say that the contrary appeareth in the practice of Christians I shall answer that with the rest of the objections by themselves I shall only say now That if this that I have laid down be certainly the doctrin of Christ then it is as certain that the contrary is contrary to Christianity and that so far such persons are no Christians It is hypocrites that take up the name of Christians for worldly advantage and are no Christians indeed who live thus contrary to the nature and precepts of Christianity which they profess § 10. The Christian Religion is most exactly just in its Rules and Precepts and vehemently condemneth all injustice fraud persecution and oppression What juster Rule can there be than to suit all our actions to the perfect Law of Primitive Justice and to do as we would be done by What more effectual principle of Justice can there be than Charity and Self-denial to love all men for God and to account our neighbours welfare as our own Bring all men but to love their neighbours as themselves and they will have little inclination to cruelty oppression fraud or any other injuries And when Heaven is made the reward of Justice and Mercy and Hell the reward of Injustice and Cruelty we have the greatest Motives that humane nature is capable of § 11. The Christian Religion is the most excellent Rule for order and government in the world and for the peace of Kingdoms and their stability in that it prescribeth the only method of true Government and condemneth both impiety and tyranny in the Governours and all sedition and rebellion in the subjects 1. It setteth Government on the only foundation the Authority which men receive from God and teacheth men to rule as the Officers of the Universal King in due subordination to him for his glory and according to his Laws and letteth them know that they have no power but from God and therefore none against him and that they must be judged by him themselves for all their Government and that all oppression tyranny and persecution will be to their own confusion in the end 2. It teacheth Subjects to honour their Superiours and to obey them in all things in which they disobey not God and to be patient under all oppressions and to avoid all murmurings tumults and rebellions and this for fear of God's condemnation And certainly these are the most powerful means for peace and for the happy order and government of Societies § 12. The Christian Religion greatly condemneth all fierceness and impatience and discontentedness and requireth a meek and patient frame of minde and therefore must needs conduce to the forementioned Vnity and Peace § 13. It is wholly for sincerity and uprightness of heart and greatly condemneth all hypocrisie It giveth Laws for the very disposition of the minde and for the government of the secretest thoughts affections and actions and condemeth every sin which the World observeth not or condemneth not § 14. I finde that the Christian Religion is not fitted to any Worldly designs but only to the sanctifying of mens hearts and lives and the saving of their Souls Christ did not contrive by dominion or riches to win the ungodly multitude to be his admirers but by holy Precepts and Discipline to make his Disciples good and happy Mahomet took the way of violence and fleshly baits and blinde obedience to bring in the multitude and to advance a Worldly Kingdom But Christ goeth the clean contrary way He calleth men to a life of Self-denyal and patient suffering in the World he calleth them to contemn the riches honours and pleasures of the World and to forsake all even life it self for him and telleth them that they can on no lower terms than these be Disciples He hath set up a Discipline in his Church to cast out all Drunkards Fornicators Covetous-persons Railers and other such scandalous sinners who are impenitent and will have none in his true mystical Church but such as are truly holy nor none in his visible Church but such as are professed to be so He turneth away all that come not up to his spiritual and holy terms and he casteth out all that notoriously violate them if they do not repent § 15. The Christian Religion containeth all things Necessary to mans happiness and taketh men off unprofitable speculations and doth not overwhelme the mindes of men with multitudes of needless things It is for the most things unnecessary as well as uncertain with which the Philosophers have troubled the World They have lost true wisdom in a Wilderness of fruitless controversies But Christianity is a Religion to make men holy and happy and therefore it containeth these necessary substantial Precepts which conduce hereunto And it taketh men off unnecessary things which else would take up their mindes and talk and time from things necessary And so it s suited to the generality of men and not only to a few that have nothing else to do but wander in a Wilderness of vain Speculations and it is fitted to Mans best and ultimate end and not to a phantastical delight § 16. It tendeth to exalt the minde of man to the most high and heavenly elevation that it is capable of in this life For it teacheth men as is aforesaid to live in the Spirit upon the things above in the continual Love of God and desires and endeavours for everlasting glory Than which mans minde hath nothing more high and honourable and excellent to be employed about § 17. It leadeth men to the joyfullest Life that humane Nature is capable of on Earth For it leadeth us to the assurance of the Love of God and of the pardon of all our sins and of endless glory when we die It assureth us that we shall live for ever in the sight of the glory of God with Jesus Christ and be like the Angels and be perfected in holiness and happiness and be employed in the Love and Praises of God for evermore It commandeth us to live in the foresight of these everlasting Pleasures and to keep the taste of them alwayes upon our mindes and in daily meditation on the Love of God to live in the daily Returns of Love and to make this our continual Feast and Pleasure And can the minde of man on Earth have higher and greater delights than these § 18. The Christian Religion forbiddeth men no Bodily pleasure but that which hindereth their greater pleasure and tendeth to their pain or sorrow nor doth it deny them any earthly thing which is truly for their good Indeed it taketh the bruitish appetite and flesh to be an unfit Judge of what is truly good and desireable for us And it forbiddeth much which the Flesh doth crave Because either it tendeth to the wrong of others or the breach of order in the World or to the corrupting of mans minde and diverting it from things sublime and
earthly things as is necessary to them that will attain it For few men will seek with their utmost labour or let go all other things to attain a happiness which they are not well perswaded of the reality of And though sound reason might well perswade them of it yet reason is now become so blind and unsound and partial and enslaved to the flesh that it is not fit for such an office according to our necessity without some heavenly Revelation § 9. And it is exceeding congruous to mans necessity who is faln under the power and fears of death as well as the doubts and estrangedness to the other world that he that will save and heal us do himself in our nature rise from the dead and ascend up into heaven to give us thereby a visible demonstration that indeed there is a Resurrection and a life to come for us to look for Though God was not obliged to do thus much for us yet Reason telleth us that if he will do it it is very suitable to our necessities For all the reasonings in the world do not satisfie in such things so much as ocular demonstration when we either see a man that is risen from the dead or have certain testimony of it it facilitateth the belief of our own resurrection and he that is gone into Heaven before us assureth us that a Heaven there is § 10. When God in mercy would forgive and save a sinful people it was very congruous to reason that there should be some fit means provided to demonstrate his holiness in his justice and to vindicate the honour of his Laws and Government and so to secure the ends of both For if God make a penal Law and execute it not but let man sin with impunity and do nothing which may deter him nor demonstrate his Justice as much as the sinners sufferings would do it would tell the world that he that gave them the Law and thereby told them that he would rule and judge them by it did but deceive them and meant not as he spake And it would bring both the Law and Governour into contempt and perswade men to sin without any fear and he that was question'd for the second crime would say I ventured because I suffered not for the first It was the devils first way of tempting men to sin to perswade mankind that God meant not as he spake in his threatning of their death but that they should not die though God had threatned it And if God himself should by his actions say the same it would tempt them more to sin than Sathan could as his credibility is greater Therefore he that is a Governour must be just as well as merciful and if God should have pardoned sinners without such a sacrifice or substitute means as might preserve the honour of his Law and Government and the future innocency of his Subjects as well as their punishment in the full sense of the Law would have done the consequents would have been such as I will leave to your own judgements § 11. And it was very congruous to reason that so odious a thing as sin should be publickly condemned and put to shame although the sinner be forgiven As it was done in the life and death of Christ For the purity of God is irreconcileable to sin though not to the sinner and therefore it was meet that the sin have all the publick shame though the sinner escape and that God be not like weak imperfect man who cannot do good without doing or encouraging evil § 12. It is congruous to our condition that seeing even the upright do renew their sins their consciences should have some remedy for the renewal of their peace and comfort that it sink them not into desperation which is most suitably provided for them in Jesus Christ For when we were pardoned once and again and oft and yet shall sin he that knoweth the desert of sin and purity of God will have need also to know of some stated certain course of remedy § 13. It was meet that the sinful world have not only a certain Teacher but also a perfect pattern before them of righteousness love self-denial meekness patience contempt of lower things c. which is given us by Jesus Christ alone And therefore the Gospel is written Historically with Doctrins intermixt that we might have both perfect Precepts and Pattern § 14. It was very congruous to a world universally lapsed that God should make with it a new Law and Covenant of Grace and that this Covenant should tender us the pardon of our sins and be a conditional act of oblivion And that sinners be not left to the meer Law of perfect Nature which was to preserve that innocency which they have already lost To say Thou shalt perfectly obey to a man that hath already disobeyed and is unfitted for perfect obedience is no sufficient direction for his pardon and recovery Perhaps you 'l say That God's gracious Nature is instead of a Law of Grace or Promise But though that be the spring of all our hopes yet that cannot justly quiet the sinner of it self alone because he is just as well as merciful and Justice hath its objects and pardon dependeth on the free-will of God which cannot be known to us without its proper signs The Devils may say that the Nature of God is good and gracious and so may any condemned malefactor say of a good and gracious Judge and King and yet that is but a slender reason to prove his impunity or pardon All will confess that absolute pardon of all men would be unbeseeming a wise and righteous Governour And if it must be conditional who but God can tell what must be the condition If you say That Nature telleth us That converting Repentance is the condition I answer 1 Nature telleth us That God cannot damn a holy loving Soul that hath his Image but yet it telleth us not That this is the only or whole condition 2. It is not such a Repentance as lieth but in a frightned wish that the sin had not been done but such a one as consisteth in the change of the mind and heart and life and containeth a hatred to the sin repented of and a love to God and Holiness and we have as much need of a Saviour to help us to this repentance as to help us to a pardon § 15. It is very congruous to our miserable state that the Condition of this Covenant of Grace should be on our part the acknowledgment of our Benefactor and the thankful acceptance of the benefit and a hearty consent for the future to follow his conduct and use his appointed means in order to our full recovery which is the condition of the Christian Covenant § 16. Seeing man's fall was from his God unto himself especially in point of love and his real recovery must be by bringing up his soul to the love of God again
And seeing a guilty condemned sinner can hardly love that God who in justice will damn and punish him nothing can be more congruous and effectual to man's recovery to God than that God should be represented to him as most amiable that is as one that is so willing to pardon and save him as to do it by the most astonishing expressions of love in such an Agent and Pledge and Glass of Love as Jesus Christ The whole design of Christ's Incarnation Life Death Resurrection Ascension and Intercession is but to be the most wonderful and glorious declaration of the goodness and love of God to sinners that as the great frame of the Universe demonstrateth his power so should the Redeemer be the demonstration of his love That we may see both the wise contrivances of his love and at how dear a rate he is content to save us that our lives may be employed in beholding and admiring the glory of his love in this incomprehensible representation That we may love him as men that are fetch'd up from the very gates of hell and from under the sentence of condemnation and made by grace the heirs of life § 17. Especially to have a quickning Head who will give the Spirit of grace to all his members to change their hearts and kindle this holy love within them is most congruous to accomplish mans recovery So dark are our minds and so bad our hearts so strong are our lusts and so many our temptations that bare teaching would not serve our turn without a Spirit of light and life and love to open our eyes and turn our hearts and make all outward means effectual § 18. The Commission of the Gospel-Ministry to preach this Gospel of pardon and salvation and to baptize Consenters and gather and guide the Church of Christ with Fatherly love is also very congruous to the state of the world with whom they have to do § 19. It is congruous to the state of our trembling Souls that are conscious of their former guilt and present unworthiness that in all their prayers and worship of God they should come to him in a Name that is more worthy and acceptable than their own and offer their services by a Hand or Intercessor so beloved of God Though an impious soul can never expect to be accepted with God upon the merits of another yet a penitent soul who is conscious of former wickedness and continued faults may hope for that mercy by grace through a Redeemer of which he could have less hopes without one § 20. It is congruous to their state who have Satan their accuser that they have a Patron a High priest and Justifier with God Not that God is in danger of being mistaken by false accusation or to do us any injustice but when our real guilt is before his face and the malice of Satan will seek thereupon to procure our damnation there must also be just reasons before him for our pardon which it is the office of a Saviour to plead or to present that is to be God's Instrument of our deliverance upon that account § 21. It is exceeding congruous to our condition of darkness and fear to have a Head and Saviour in the possession of Glory to whom we may commend our departing souls at the time of death and who will receive them to himself that we may not tremble at the thoughts of death and of eternity For though the infinite goodness of God be our chief encouragement yet seeing he is holy and just and we are sinners we have need of a mediate encouragement and of such condescending love as is come near unto us and hath taken up our nature already into heaven A Saviour that hath been on earth in flesh that hath died and rose and revived and is now in the possession of Blessedness is a great emboldner of our thoughts when we look towards another world which else we should think of with more doubting fearful and unwilling minds To have a friend gone before us who is so Powerful so Good and hath made us his Interest to think that he is Lord of the world that we are going to and hath undertaken to receive us to himself when we go hence is a great reviving to our amazed fearful departing souls § 22. And it is very congruous to the case of an afflicted persecuted people who are misrepresented and slandered in this world and suffer for the hopes of a better life to have a Saviour who is the judge of all the world to justifie them publickly before all and to cause their righteousness to shine as the light and to turn all their sufferings into endless joys § 23. And it seemeth exceeding congruous to reason seeing that the Divine Essence is an inaccessible Light that we should for ever have a Mediator of Fruition as well as of Acquisition by whom the Deity may shine in communicated Glory and Love to us for evermore and that God be for evermore eminently delighted and glorified in Him than in us as he excelleth us in dignity and all perfections even as in One Sun his Power and Glory is more demonstrated than in a world of Worms Whether all these things be true or not I am further to enquire but I find now that they are very congruous to our condition and to Reason and that if they be so no man can deny but that there is wonderful Wisdom and Love to man in the design and execution and that it is to man a very desirable thing that it should be so And therefore that we should be exceeding willing to find any sound proof that it is so indeed though not with a willingness which shall corrupt and pervert our judgments by self-flattery but such as will only excite them to the wise and sober examination of the case The EVIDENCES of the VERITY we shall next enquire after CHAP. VI. Of the WITNESS of JESVS CHRIST or the demonstrative Evidence of his Verity and Authority THough all that is said may be a reasonable preparative to faith it is more cogent evidence which is necessary to convince us that Jesus Christ is the Saviour of the world That a man appearing like one of us is the Eternal Word of God incarnate is a thing which no man is bound to believe without very sound evidence to prove it God hath made Reason essential to our Nature it is not our weakness but our natural excellency and his Image on our nature Therefore he never called us to renounce it and to lay it by for we have no way to know Principles but by an Intellectual discerning them in their proper Evidence and no way to know conclusions by but by a rational discerning their necessary connexion to those principles If God would have us know without reason he would not have made us reasonable creatures man hath no way of mental discerning or knowledge but by understanding things in their proper evidence to
learning and so it is holiness and love which are fittest to communicate and cause holiness and love which common qualifications are too low for though they may be helpful in their several places and degrees what contemned instruments hath God used in the world to do that for the regenerating of souls which the greatest Emperors by their Laws nor the subtilest Philosophers by their Precepts did not The Athenian Philosophers despised Paul and Gallio counted his doctrine but a supertitious talk about names and words but Satan himself despised not those whom he tempted men to despise but perceived they were like to be the ruine of his Kingdom and therefore every where stirred up the most vehement furious resistance of them It is evident therefore that there is an inward effectual operation of the holy Ghost which giveth success to these means which are naturally in themselves so weak And it is to be observed that this great change is very often wrought on a sudden in a prevalent though not a perfect degree One Sermon hath done that for a many thousand sinners which twenty years teaching of the greatest Philosophers never did One Sermon hath turned them from the sins which they had lived in all their days and hath turned them to a life which they were strangers to before or else abhorred One Sermon hath taken down the world which had their hearts and hath put it under their feet and hath turned their hearts to another world which sheweth that there is an internal Agent more powerful than the speaker And it is remarkable that in the main the change is wrought in one and the same method first humbling men for sin and misery and then leading them to Jesus Christ as the remedy and to God by him and so kindling the love of God in them by the bellows of faith and then leading them towards perfection in the exercises of that holy love III. And it will further lead us to the original of this Change to consider on whom it is thus wrought 1. For their place and time 2. Their quality in themselves 3. And as compared to each other 4. And as to their numbers 1. For time and place it is in all ages since Christ to say nothing of the former ages now and in all Nations and Countries which have received him and his Gospel that Souls have been thus regenerated to God If it had been only a fanatick rapture of brain-sick men it would have been like the effects of the Heresies of the Valentinians Basilidians Gnosticks Montanists c. or of the Swenckfeldians Weigelians Behmenists Quakers and other such Enthusiasts who make a stir for one Age in some one corner of the world and then go out with a perpetual stink In all Ages and Countries these effects of Christian Doctrine are the very same as they were in the first Age and the first Country where it was preached Just such effects as it hath in one Kingdom or Family it hath in all others who equally receive it and just such persons as Christians were in the first Ages at Jerusalem Rome Antioch Philippi c. such are they now in England according to their several degrees of grace though not in miracles and things extraordinary to the Church The children of no one father are so like as all God's sanctified children are throughout the world 2. As to their civil quality it is men of all degrees that are thus sanctified though fewest of the Princes and great ones of the world And as to their moral qualification it sometime falleth on men prepared by a considering sober temper and by natural plainness and honesty of heart and sometimes it befalleth such as are most prophane and drown'd in sin and never dreamt of such a change nay purposely set their minds against it These God doth often suddenly surprize by an over-powering light and suitable-constraining-overcoming attraction and maketh them new men 3. And as to their capacities compared there is plainly a distinguishing hand that disposeth of the work Sometimes a persecuting Saul is converted by a voice from Heaven when Pharisees that were less Persecutors are left in their unregeneracy Sometimes under the same Sermon one that was more prophane and less prepared is converted when another that was more sober and better disposed remaineth as he was before The husband and the wife the Parents and the Children Brothers and Sisters Companions and Friends are divided by this work and one converted and the other not Though none is deprived of this Mercy but upon the guilt of their forfeiture resistance or contempt yet is there plainly the effect of some special choice of the Holy Spirit in taking out some of these that abused and forfeited grace and changing them by an insuperable work 4. And as to the number it is many thousands that are thus renewed enow to shew the Love and Power of him that calleth them But yet the far smaller part of mankinde to shew his Dominion and distinguishing will who knoweth the reason of all his works of which more anon IV. Consider what Opposition this work of Grace doth overcome 1. Within us 2. Without us 1. Within men it findeth 1. A dungeon of Ignorance which it dispelleth by it's heavenly light 2. Abundance of error and prejudice which it unteacheth men 3. A stupid hardened heart which it softeneth and a senseless sleepiness of Soul which it overcometh by awakening quickening power 4. A love to sin which it turneth into hatred 5. An idolizing self-esteem and self-conceitedness and self-love and self-willedness which it turneth into self-loathing and self-denyall not making us loath our selves as Natural or as Renewed but as corrupt with sin and abusers of Mercy and such as by wilfull folly have wronged God and undone themselves So that Repentance maketh men fall out with themselves and become as loathsome in their own eyes 6. It findeth in us an over-valuing love of this present World and a foolish inordinate desire to its profits dignities and honours which it destroyeth and turneth into a rational contempt 7. It findeth in us a prevailing sensuality and an unreasonable appetite and lust and a Flesh that would bear down both Reason and the Authority of God And this it subdueth and mortifieth it 's inordinate desires and bringeth it under the Laws of God 8. It findeth all this radicated and confirmed by Custome And overcometh those sins which a sinner hath turned as into his Nature and hath lived in the love and practice of all his dayes All this and more opposition within us grace doth overcome in all the sanctified And there is not one of all these if well considered of but will appear to be of no small strength and difficulty to be truly conquered 2. And without us the holy Spirit overcometh 1. Worldly allurements 2. Worldly men 3. All other assaults of Satan 1. While the Soul is in flesh and worketh by the means of the outward
and blessedness of the Life to come that they say nothing of it that is ever likely to make any considerable number set their hearts on Heaven and to live a heavenly Life 9. They were so unacquainted with the nature and will of God that they taught and used such a manner of Worship as tended rather to delude and corrupt men than to sanctifie them 10. They medled so little with the inward sins and duties of the heart especially about the holy Love of God and their goodness was so much in outward acts and in meer respect to men that they were not like to sanctifie the Soul or make the Man good that his actions might be good but only to polish men for Civil Societies with the addition of a little Varnish of Superstition and Hypocrisie 11. Their very style is either suitable to dead speculation as a Lecture of Metaphysicks or sleight and dull and unlike to be effectual to convert and sanctifie mens Souls 12. Almost all is done in such a disputing sophistical way and clogg'd with so many obscurities uncertainties and self-contradictions and mixt in heaps of Physical and Logical Subtilties that they were unfit for the common peoples benefit and could tend but to the benefit of a few 13. Experience taught and still teacheth the World that Holy Souls and Lives that were sincerely set upon God and Heaven were strangers amongst the Disciples of the Philosophers and other Heathens Or if it be thought that there were some such among them certainly they were very few in comparison of true Christians and those few very dark and diseased and defective with us a Childe at ten years old will know more of God and shew more true piety than did any of their Philosophers with us poor women and labouring persons do live in that holiness and heavenliness of minde and conversation which the wisest of the Philosophers never did attain I spake of this before but here also thought meet to shew you the difference between the effect of Christs doctrine and the Philosophers 2. And that all this is justly to be imputed to Christ himself I shall now prove 1. He gave them a perfect pattern for his holy obedient heavenly Life in his own person and his conversation here on Earth 2. His Doctrine and Law requireth all this holiness which I described to you You finde the Prescript in his Word of which the holy Souls and Lives of men are but a transcript 3. All his Institutions and Ordinances are but means and helps to this 4. He hath made it the condition of mans Salvation to be thus holy in sincerity and to desire and seek after perfection in it He taketh no other for true Christians indeed nor will save any other at the last 5. All his comforting Promises of mercy and defence are made only to such 6. He hath made it the Office of his Ministers through the World to perswade and draw men to this Holiness And if you hear the Sermons and read the Books which any faithfull Minister of Christ doth preach or write you will soon see that this is the business of them all And you may soon perceive that these Ministers have another kinde of preaching and writing than the Philosophers had more clear more congruous more spiritual more powerfull and likely to win men to Holiness and Heavenliness When our Divines and their Philosophers are compared as to their promoting of true Holiness verily the latter seem to be but as Glow-worms and the former to be the Candles for the Family of God And yet I truly value the wisdom and virtue which I finde in a Plato a Seneca a Cicero an Antonine or any of them If you say our advantage is because coming after all we have the helps of all even of those Philosophers I answer mark in our Books and Sermons whether it be any thing but Christianity which we preach It is from Christ and Scripture that we fetch our Doctrine and not from the Philosophers we use their helps in Logick Physicks c. But that 's nothing to our Doctrine He that taught me to speak English did not teach me the Doctrine which I preach in English And he that teacheth me to use the Instruments of Logick doth not teach me the doctrine about which I use them And why did not those Philosophers by all their art attain to that skill in this Sacred work as the Ministers of Christ do when they had as much or more of the Arts than we I read indeed of many good Orations then used even in those of the Emperour Julian there is much good and in Antonine Arrian Epictetus Plutarch more And I read of much taking-Oratory of the Bonzii in Japan c. But compared to the endeavours of Christian Divines they are poor pedantick barren things and little sparks and the success of them is but answerable 7. Christ did before hand promise to send his Spirit into mens Souls to do all this work upon all his Chosen And as he promised just so he doth 8. And we finde by experience that it is the preaching of Christs doctrine by which the work is done It is by the reading of the sacred Scripture or hearing the Doctrine of it opened and applyed to us that Souls are thus changed as is before described And if it be by the medicines which he sendeth us himself by the hands of his own Servants that we are healed we need not doubt whether it be he that healed us His Doctrine doth it as the instrumental Cause for we finde it adapted thereunto and we finde nothing done upon us but by that Doctrine nor any remaining effect but what is the impression of it But his Spirit inwardly reneweth us as the Principal cause and worketh with and by the Word For we finde that the Word doth not work upon all nor upon all alike that are alike prepared But we easily perceive a voluntary distinguishing choice in the operation And we finde a power more than can be in the words alone in the effect upon our selves The heart is like the Wax and the Word like the Seal and the Spirit like the hand that strongly applyeth it We feel upon our hearts that though nothing is done without the Seal yet a greater force doth make the impression than the weight of the Seal alone could cause By this time it is evident that this work of Sanctification is the attestation of God by which he publickly owneth the Gospel and declareth to the World that Christ is the Saviour and his Word is true For 1. It is certain that this work of Renovation is the work of God For 1. It is his Image on the Soul It is the life of the Soul as flowing from his Holy Life wherein are contained the Trinity of Perfections It is the Power of the Soul by which it can overcome the Flesh the World and the Devil which without it none is able to do It is the
so doth prove the Divine approbation of his Doctrine without which he could not have the command of mens Souls 7. Note also that the Gospel proposeth to the Soul of man both Truth and Goodness and the Truth is in order to the Good and subservient to it That Christ is indeed the Saviour and his Word infallibly true is believed that we may be made partakers of his Salvation and of the Grace and Glory promised And when the Spirit by the Gospel hath regenerated and renewed any Soul he hath given him part of that grace in possession and hath procreated in him the habitual love of God and of holiness with a love to that Saviour and holy Word which brought him to it So that this Love is now become as a new Nature to the Soul and this being done the Soul cleaveth now as fast to Christ and the Gospel by Love as by Belief not that love becometh an irrational causless love nor continueth without the continuance of Belief or Belief without the Reasons and Evidence of Verity and Credibility But Love now by concurrence greatly assisteth Faith it self and is the faster hold of the two so that the Soul that is very weak in its Reasoning faculty and may oft lose the sight of these Evidences of truth which it did once perceive may still hold fast by this holy Love As the man that by reasoning hath been convinced that hony is sweet will easilier change his mind than he that hath tasted it so Love is the Souls taste which causeth its fastest adherence to God and to the Gospel If a caviller dispute with a loving child or parent or friend to alienate their hearts from one another and would perswade them that it is but dissembled love that is professed to them by their relations and friends Love will do more here to hinder the belief of such a slander than Reason alone can do and where Reason is not strong enough to answer all that the caviller can say yet Love may be strong enough to reject it And here I must observe how oft I have noted the great mercy of God to abundance of poor people whose reasoning faculty would have failed them in temptations to Atheism and Infidelity if they had not had a stronger hold than that and their Faith had not been radicated in the Will by Love I have known a great number of women who never read a Treatise that pleaded the Cause of the Christian Religion nor were able to answer a crafty Infidel that yet in the very decaying time of Nature at fourscore years of age and upward have lived in that sense of the Love of God and in such Love to him and to their Saviour as that they have longed to die and be with Christ and lived in all humility charity and piety such blameless exemplary heavenly Lives in the joyfull expectation of their Change as hath shewed the firmness of their Faith and the Love and Experience which was in them would have rejected a temptation to Atheism and Unbelief more effectually than the strongest Reason alone could ever do Yet none have cause to reproach such and say Their Wills lead their Vnderstandings and they customarily and obstinately believe they know not why for they have known sufficient reason to believe and their understandings have been illuminated to see the truth of true Religion and it was this knowledge of Faith which bred their Love and Experience but when that is done as Love is the more noble and perfect operation of the Soul having the most excellent object so it will act more powerfully and prevailingly and hath the strongest hold Nor are all they without Light and Reason for their belief who cannot form it into arguments and answer all that is said against it Obj. But may not all this which you call Regeneration and the Image of God be the meer power of fantasie and affectation and may not all these people force themselves like melancholy persons to conceit that they have that which indeed they have not Answ 1. They are not melancholly persons that I speak of but those that are as capable as any others to know their own minds and what is upon their own hearts 2. It is not one or two but millions 3. Nature hath given man so great acquaintance with himself by a power of perceiving his own operations that his own cogitations and desires are the first thing that naturally he can know and therefore if he cannot know them he can know nothing If I cannot know what I think and what I love and hate I can know nothing at all 4. That they are really minded and affected as they seem and have in them that love to God and Heaven and Holiness which they profess they shew to all the world by the effects 1. In that it ruleth the main course of their lives and disposeth of them in the world 2. In that these apprehensions and affections over-rule all their worldly fleshly interest and cause them to deny the pleasures of the flesh and the profits and honours of the world 3. In that they are constant in it to the death and have no other mind in their distress when as Seneca saith Nothing feigned is of long continuance for all forc'd things are bending back to their natural state 4. In that they will lay down their lives and forsake all the world for the hopes which faith in Christ begetteth in them And if the objectors mean that all this is true and yet it is but upon delusion or mistake that they raise these hopes and raise these affections I answer This is the thing that I am disproving 1. The love of God and a holy mind and life is not a dream of the Soul or a deliration I have proved from Natural reason in the first Book that it is the end and use and perfection of man's faculties that if God be God and man be man we are to love him above all and to obey him as our absolute Sovereign and to live as devoted to him and to delight in his love Man were more ignoble or miserable than a beast if this were not his work And is that a dream or a delusion which causeth a man to live as a man to the ends that he was made for and according to the nature and use of his reason and all his faculties 2. While the proofs of the excellency and necessity of a holy life are so fully before laid down from natural and supernatural revelation the Objector doth but refuse to see in the open light when he satisfieth himself with a bare assertion that all this is no sufficient ground for a holy life but that it is taken up upon mistake 3. All the world is convinced at one time or other that on the contrary it is the unholy fleshly worldly life which is the dream and dotage and is caused by the grossest error and deceit Object But how
shall I know that there is indeed such holiness in Christians as you mention and that it is not dissembled and counterfeit Answ I have told you in the fore-going answer 1. If you were truly Christians you might know it by possession in your selves as you know that you love your friend or a learned man knoweth that he hath learning 2. If you have it not your selves you may see that others do not dissemble when you see them as afore-said make it the drift of all their lives and prefer it before their worldly interest and their lives and hold on constantly in it to the death When you see a holy life what reason have you to question a holy heart especially among so great a number you may well know that if some be dissemblers all the rest are not so Obj. But I see no Christians that are really so holy I see nothing in the best of them above civility but only self-conceit and affectation and strictness in their several forms and modes of Worship Answ 1. If you are no better than such your self it is the greatest shame and plague of heart that you could have confessed and it must needs be because you have been false to the very light of Nature and of Grace 2. If you know no Christians that are truly holy it must needs be either because you are unacquainted with them or because your malice will not give you leave to see any good in these that you dislike And if you have acquainted your self with no Christians that were truly holy what could it be but malice or sensuality that turned you away from their acquaintance when there have been so many round about you If you have been intimate with them and known their secret and open conversation and yet have not seen any holiness in them it can be no better than wilful malice that hath blinded you And because a negative witness that knoweth not whether it be so or not is not to be regarded against an affirming witness who knoweth what he saith I will here leave my testimony as in the presence of God the searcher of hearts and the revenger of a lie yea even of lies pretended for his glory I have considered of the characters of a Christian in the twenty particulars before expressed in this Chapter § 10. and I have examined my soul concerning them all and as far as I am able to know my self I must profess in humble thankfulness to my Redeemer that there is none of them which I find not in me And seeing God hath given me his testimony within me to the truth of the Gospel of his Son I take it to be my duty in the profession of it to give my testimony of it to unbelievers And I must as solemnly profess that I have had acquaintance with hundreds if not thousands on whom I have seen such evidences of a holy heavenly mind which nothing but uncharitable and unrighteous censure could deny And I have had special intimate familiarity with very many in all whom I have discerned the Image of God in such innocency charity justice holiness contempt of the world mortification self-denial humility patience and heavenly mindedness in such a measure that I have seen no cause to question their sincerity but great cause to love and honour them as the Saints of God yea I bless the Lord that most of my converse in the world since the 22d year of my age hath been with such and much of it six years sooner Therefore for my own part I cannot be ignorant that Christ hath a sanctified people upon earth Object But how can one man know another's heart to be sincere Answ I pretend not to know by an infallible certainty the heart of any single individual person But 1. I have in such a course of effects as is mentioned before great reason to be very confident of it and no reason to deny it concerning very many A child cannot be infallibly certain that his father or mother loveth him because he knoweth not the heart But when he considereth of the ordinariness of natural affection and hath always found such usage as dearest love doth use to cause he hath much reason to be confident of it and none to deny it 2. There may be a certainty that all conjunctly do not counterfeit when you have no certainty of any single individual As I can be sure that all the mothers in the world do not counterfeit love to their children though I cannot be certain of it in any individual Object But it is not all Christians nor most that are thus holy Answ It is all that are Christians in deed and truth Christ is so far from owning any other that he will condemn them the more for abusing his Name to the covering of their sins All are not Christians who have the name of Christians in all professions the vulgar rabble of the ignorant and ungodly do use to joyn with the party that is uppermost and seem to be of the Religion which is most for their worldly ends be it right or wrong when indeed they are of none at all Hypocrites are no true Christians but the persons that Christ is most displeased with Judge but by his precepts and example and you will see who they are that are Christians indeed Object But what if the preaching or writings of a Minister do convert and sanctifie men it doth not follow that they are Saviours of the world Answ What ever they do they do it as the Ministers and Messengers of Christ by his Doctrine and not by any of their own by his Commission and in his Name and by his Power or Spirit Therefore it witnesseth to his truth and honour who is indeed the Saviour which they never affirmed of themselves Object What if Pythagoras Socrates Plato the Japonian Bonzii the Indian Bramenes c. do bring any souls to a holy state as its like they did it will not follow that they were all Saviours of the world Answ 1. They have but an imperfect Doctrine and consequently make on the minds of men but a lame defective change and that change but upon few and that but for a few Ages and then another Sect succeedeth them So that they have no such attestation and approbation of God as Christ hath in the renovation of so many thousands all abroad the world and that for so many ages together 2. They did not affirm themselves to be the Sons of God and the Saviours of the world if they had God would not have annexed such a testimony to their word as he doth to Christs 3. The mercy of God is over all his works He hath compassion upon all Nations and setteth up some candles where the Sun is not yet risen The Light and Law of Nature are his as well as the Light and Law of Supernatural Revelation and accordingly he hath his instruments for the communication of them to
he is not a deceiver and so may be perswaded to trust and try him himself § 101. The way to know that others are thus regenerated is 1. By believing them Fide humana 2. By discerning it in the effects And though it be too frequent to have presumptuous self-conceited persons to affirm that the Spirit of Christ hath renewed them when it is no such matter yet all humane testimony of matters so neer men even within them is not therefore incredible but wise men will discern a credible person from an incredible In the forementioned instance many may tell you that they are cured by the Physician when it is not so but will you therefore believe no one that telleth you that he is cured Many may boast of that learning which they have not and tell you that they have knowledge in Mathematicks or in several Arts But is no man therefore to be believed that saith the same But yet I perswade no man here to take up with the bare belief of another mans word where he seeth not enough in the effects to second it and to perswade a reasonable man that it is true But as he that heareth a man that was sick profess that he is cured may well believe him if he see him eat and drink and sleep and labour and laugh as the healthfull use to doe so he that heareth a sober man profess with humble thanks to God that he hath changed and renewed him by his Spirit may well believe him if he see him live like a renewed man § 102. Though you cannot be infallibly certain of the sincerity of any one individual person but your self because we know not the heart yet may you be certain that all do not dissemble Because there is a natural impossibility that interests and motives and sufficient causes should concurre to lead them to it As before I said we are not certain of any individual woman that she doth not dissemble Love to her Husband and Children but we may be certain that all the women in the World do not from many natural proofs which might be given § 103. All these effects of Renovation may be discerned in others 1. You may discern that they are much grieved for their former sins 2. That they are weary of the remnant of their corruption or infirmity 3. That they long and labour to be delivered and to have their cure perfected and live in the diligent use of means to that end 4. That they live in no sin but smaller humane frailties 5. That all the riches in the world would not hire them deliberately and wilfully to sin but they will rather choose to suffer what man can lay upon them 6. That they are vile in their own eyes because of their remaining imperfections 7. That they do no wrong or injustice to any or if they do wrong any they are ready to confess it and make them satisfaction 8. That they love all good men with a love of complacency and all bad men with a love of benevolence yea even their enemies and instead of revenge are ready to forgive and to do what good they can for them and all men And that they hate bad men in opposition to complacency but as they hate themselves for their sins 9. That they love all doctrines persons and practices which are holy temperate just and charitable 10. That their passions at least are so far governed that they do not carry them to swear curse or rail or slander or fight or to do evil 11. That their tongues are used to speak with reverence of holy and righteous things and not to filthy ribbald railing lying or other wicked speech 12. That they suffer not their lusts to carry them to fornication nor their appetites to drunkenness or notable excess 13. That nothing below God himself is the principle object of their devotion but to know him to love him to serve and please him and to delight in these is the greatest care and desire and endeavour of their souls 14. That their chiefest hopes are of heaven and everlasting happiness with God in the perfection of this sight and love 15. That the ruling motives are fetch'd from God and the life to come which most command their choice their comforts and their lives 16. That in comparison of this all worldly riches honours and dignities are sordid contemptible things in their esteem 17. That for the hope of this they are much supported with patience under all sufferings in the way 18. That they value and use the things of this world in their callings and labours in subserviency to God and Heaven as a means to its proper end 19. That they vse their relations in the same subserviency ruling chiefly for God if they be superiours and obeying chiefly for God if they be inferiours and that with fidelity submission and patience so far as they can know his will 20. That their care and daily business in the world is by diligent redeeming precious time in getting and doing what good they can to make ready for death and judgment to secure their everlasting happiness and to please their God § 104. All this may be discerned in others with so great probability of their sincerity that no charitable reason shall have cause to question it And I repeat my testimony that here is not a word which I have not faithfully copied out of my own heart and experience and that I have been acquainted with multitudes who I verily believe were much better than my self and had a greater measure of all this grace § 105. If any shall say that men superstitiously appoint themselves unnecessary tasks and forbid themselves many lawful things and then call this by the name of Holiness I answer That many indeed do so but it is no such that I am speaking of Let reason judge whether in this or any of the fore-going descriptions of Holiness there be any such thing at all contained § 106. He that will be able to discern this Spirit of God in others must necessarily observe these reasonable conditions 1. Choose not those that are notoriously No-christians to judge of Christianity by a drunkard fornicator voluptuous carnal worldly proud or selfish person calling himself a Christian is certainly but an hypocrite And shall Christianity be judged of by a lying hypocrite 2. As you must choose such to try by as are truly serious in their Religion so you must be intimate and familiar with them and not strangers that see them as afar off for they make no vain ostentation of their piety And how can they discern the divine motions of their souls that only see them in common conversation 3. You must not judge of them by the revilings of ignorant ungodly men 4. Nor by the reproach of selfish men that are moved only by some interest of their own 5. Nor by the words of faction Civil or Religious which judgeth of all men according to the
fruition is our state in patriâ our end and perfection and not fit for the state of trial and travellers in the way § 12. 2. If I had been to choose who this Messenger should be I could have preferred none before him who is the very Wisdom Truth and Word of God Had it been but an Angel I might have thought that his Indefectibility and Veracity is uncertain to mankind on earth but Wisdom and Truth it self can never lie § 13. 3. If I had been to choose in what way this Messenger should converse with man as an effectual and suitable Teacher of these Mysteries and how the work of Mediation between God and man should be performed I could have desired no fitter way than that he should assume our nature and in that nature familiarly instruct us and be our example and our High Priest toward God by his Merit Sacrifice and Intercession § 14. 4. Had I been to choose what way he should prove his Message to be of God I could not have chosen a more satisfying way than that of Prophecy Sanctity and open numerous and uncontrouled Miracles with his own Resurrection and Ascension and giving the holy Ghost to be his Advocate and Witness continually to the world § 15. 5. I could not have expected that these Miracles should be done in the sight of all the persons in the world in every place and age for then they would be but as common works but rather before such chosen Witnesses as were fit to communicate them to others § 16. 6. Nor could I have chosen a fitter way for such Witnesses to confirm their testimony by than by the same Spirit of holiness and power and by such a stream of Miracles as the Apostles wrought and such success in the actual renovation of their followers § 17. 7. Nor could I well have chosen a more meet and convincing way of History or Tradition to convey down all these things to us than that before described which hath been used by God § 18. 8. Nor could I have chosen any one standing Seal and Witness of Christ so fit for all persons learned and unlearned and to endure through all generations as is the actual saving of men by the real renovation of their hearts and lives by the holy Spirit reclaiming them from selfishness sensuality worldliness and other sin and bringing them up to the Image of God's holiness in love and heavenliness which is the continued work of Christ So that when God hath done all things so as my very reason is constrained to acknowledge best what should I desire more I confess I feel still that my nature would fain be satisfied by the way of sight and sense Could I see heaven and hell I think it would most effectually end all doubts But my Reason is satisfied that it is a thing unmeet and utterly unsuitable to a world that must be morally governed and conducted to their end § 19. XI The temptations of Satan by which he would hinder us from faith love and obedience are so palpable malicious and importunate that they do much to confirm me of the truth and goodness of that word and way which he so much resisteth I think that there are few men good or bad if they will observe both the inward suggestions with which they are oft solicited for matter manner and season and the outward impediments to every good work and invitations to evil which they meet with in their conversations but may be convinced that there are malicious spirits who are enemies to Christ and us and continually by temptations fight against him § 20. XII The Devils contracts with Witches opposing Christ and engaging them to renounce their Baptism and to forsake his ways is some confirmation of the Christian verity That Witches really there are as I said before he that will read Remigius and Bodin only may be satisfied as also the Malleus maleficorum Danaeus c. and the numerous instances in Suffolk and Essex about 21 years ago may further satisfie them And that the Devil draweth them to such renunciations of the Covenant and Ordinances of Christ the many Histories of it are full proof § 21. XIII Though many such reports are fabulous and delusory yet there have been certainly proved in all ages such Apparitions as either by opposition or defence have born some testimony to the Christian faith Of both these last see what I have written in my Treat of Infidelity and in the Saints Rest Part 2. And read Lavater de Spectris Zanchius tom 3. lib. 4 cap. 10. and cap. 20. Daelrio c. And what I said before especially the Narrative called The Devil of Mascon and Dr. Moor of Atheism § 22. XIV The speeches and actions of persons possessed by the Devil usually raging blasphemously against Christ doth somewhat confirm the Christian verity That there are and have been many such there hath been unquestionable evidence See my Saints Rest part 2. page 258 c. Zanchius tom 3. lib. 4. cap. 10. page 288. Forestus de Venenis observ 8. in Schol. Pet. Mart. Loc. Com. Clas 1. cap. 9. Fernel de abdit rerum causis lib. 2. cap. 16. Platerus observ pag. 20. de stupore Doemon c. Tertul. Apol. cap. 23. Cyprian Epis ad Demetrium Origen in Matth. 17. Augustin de Divinat Doemon c. § 23. XV. Lastly the testimony of the enemies of Christianity is some encouragement to faith What conjectures there be that Pythagoras had his knowledge from the Jews and Plato was not a stranger to Moses's writings hath been shewed by many How plain it is that the wiser and better any Heathens have been the nearer they have come in their doctrines to that of Jesus Christ I need not say much to convince the considerate that are men of reading How the Jews were convinced of the miracles of Christ and fled to the accusation of Christ as a Magician is already shewed The wisest and best of the Roman Emperours favoured them Dion Cassius in the life of Nerva Cocceius page 1. saith Caeterum Nerva omnes qui impietatis in Deos rei fuerant eos absolvi voluit exules in patriam reduxit These that were called Impietatis rei were the Jews and Christians who refused to sacrifice to Idols And he addeth Et ne servi de caetero dominos criminarentur edicto vetuit neve liceret aut impietatis aut Judaicae sectae quemquam dehinc insimulari It seemeth by this that when displeased servants would be revenged on their masters they used to accuse them of Christianity or Judaism Trajan did something against the Christians being provoked by the Jews who saith Dion Cassius in vita Trajani did make one Andrew their Captain and about Cyrene murdered of Greeks and Romans above two hundred thousand men But upon Pliny's information of the Christians innocency and unjust sufferings their persecutions were moderated Adrian also was exasperated by the Jews who
no way incredible that God should value man according to his natural worth and usefulness as an intellectual agent capable of Knowing and Loving and Praising him and Enjoying him His creating us such and his abundant mercies to us do abundantly prove the truth of this Nor is it incredible that he should be willing that his depraved creature should be restored to the use and ends of its nature nor is it incredible that God should choose the best and fittest means to effect all this Nothing more credible than all this 4. And it is not incredible at all that the Incarnation of the Eternal Word should be the fittest means for this reparation If we consider 1. What question we should have made of the word of an Angel or any meer creature that should have said he came from God to teach us seeing we could not be so certain that he was infallible and indefectible 2. And how short a creature would have fallen in the Priestly part of Mediation 3. And how insufficient he would have been for the Kingly Dignity and universal Government and Protection of the Church and Judgement of the world 4. And withall that God Himself being the Glorifier of Himself and the Donor of all felicity to us it is very congruous that he should most eminently Himself perform the most eminent of these works of mercy 5. And it much assisteth my belief of the Incarnation to consider that certainly the work that was to be done for man's recovery was the winning of his heart to the Love of God from himself and other creatures and there was no way imaginable so fit to inflame us with love to God as for him most wonderfully to manifest his love to us which is more done in the work of man's Redemption than any other way imaginable so that being the most suitable means to restore us to the love of God it is fittest to be the way of our recovery and so the more credible 6. And it much suppresseth temptation to unbelief in me to consider that the three grand works in which God's Essentialities declare themselves must needs be all such as beseemeth God that is most wonderful transcending man's comprehension And as his Omnipotency shewed it self with Wisdom and Love in the great work of Creation so was it meet that his Wisdom should shew it self most wonderfully in the great work of Redemption in order to the as wonderful declaration of his Love and Goodness in the great work of our Salvation our Regeneration and Glorification And therefore if this were not a wonderful work it were not fit to be parallel with the Creation in demonstrating God's Perfections to our minds Object III. But how incredible is it that humane nature should in a glorified Christ be set above the Angelical nature Answ There is no arguing in the dark from things unknown against what is fully brought to light What God hath done for man the Scripture hath revealed and also that Christ himself is far above the Angels But what Christ hath done for Angels or for any other world of creatures God thought not meet to make us acquainted with There have been Christians who have thought by plausible reasonings from many Texts of Scripture that Christ hath three Natures the Divine and a Super-angelical and a Humane and that the Eternal Word did first unite it self to the Super-angelical nature and in that created the world and in that appeared to Abraham and the other Fathers and then assumed the Humane nature last of all for Redemption And thus they would reconcile the Arrians and the Orthodox But the most Christians hold only two Natures in Christ but then they say that he that hath promised that we shall be equal with the Angels doth know that the nature of Man's Soul and of Angels differ so little that in advancing one he doth as it were advance both and certainly maketh no disorder in nature by exalting the inferiour in sensu composito above the Superiour and more excellent Let us not then deceive our selves by arguing from things unknown Object IV. There are things so incredible in the Scripture-Miracles that it is hard to believe them to be true Answ 1. No doubt but Miracles must be Wonders they were not else so sufficient to be a divine attestation if they were not things exceeding our power and reach But why should they be thought incredible Is it because they transcend the Power of God or his Wisdom or his Goodness Or because they are harder to him than the things which our eyes are daily witnesses of Is not the motion of the Sun and Orbs and especially of the Primum Mobile which the Peripateticks teach yea or that of the Earth and Globes which others teach as great a work as any miracle mentioned in the holy Scriptures Shall any man that ever considered the number magnitude glory and motions of the Fixed Stars object any difficulty to God Is it not as easie to raise one man from the dead as to give life to all the living 2. And are not Miracles according to our own necessities and desires Do not men call for signs and wonders and say If I saw one rise from the dead or saw a Miracle I would believe Or at least I cannot believe that Christ is the Son of God unless he work Miracles And shall that be a hinderance to your belief which is your last remedy against unbelief Will you not believe without miracles and yet will you not believe them because they are Miracles This is but meer perversness as much as to say we will neither believe with Miracles nor without 3. Impartially consider of the proof I have before given you of the certain truth of the matter of Fact that such miracles were really done and then you may see not only that they are to be believed but the doctrine to be the rather believed for their sakes Obj. V. It is hard to believe the Immortality of the Soul and the Life to come when we consider how much the soul dependeth in its operations on the body and how it seemeth but gradually to exceed the bruits Especially to believe the Eternity of it or its joyes when omne quod oritur interit And if Eternity à parte ante be proper to God why not Eternity à parte post Answ 1. The Immortality of the Soul and consequently its perpetual duration and a life of Retribution after this did not seem things incredible to most of the Heathens and Infidels in the World And I have proved it before by evidence of Nature to common Reason So that to make that incredible in Christianity which Philosophers and almost all the World hold and which hath cogent natural evidence is to put out the eye of Reason as well as of Faith 2. And that it hath much use of or dependance on the body in its present operations is no proof at all that when it is out of the body
another life and is made only to be happy in that knowledge love and fruition of God which the Gospel most effectually leads you to Cond 21. Mark well the prophesies of Christ himself both of the destruction of Jerusalem and the successes of his Apostles in the world c. and mark how exactly they are all fulfilled Cond 22. Let no pretence of humility tempt you to debase humane nature below its proper excellency lest thence you be tempted to think it uncapable of the everlasting sight and fruition of God The devils way of destroying is oftentimes by over-doing The proud devil will help you to be very humble and help you to deny the excellency of reason and natural free-will and all supernatural inclinations when he can make use of it to perswade you that man is but a subtil sort of bruit and hath a soul but gradually different from sensitives and so is not made for another life Cond 23. Yet come to Christ as humble learners and not as arrogant self-conceited censurers and think not that you are capable of understanding every thing as soon as you hear it Cond 24. Judge not of the main cause of Christianity or of particular texts or points by sudden hasty thoughts and glances as if it were a business to be cursorily done but allow it your most deliberate sober studies your most diligent labour and such time and patience as reason may tell you are necessary to a learner in so great a cause Cond 25. Call not so great a matter to the trial in a case of melancholy and natural incapacity but stay till you are fitter to perform the search It is one of the common cheats of Satan to perswade poor weak and melancholy persons that have but half the use of their understandings to go then to try the Christian Religion when they can scarce cast up an intricate account nor are fit to judge of any great and difficult thing And then he hath an advantage to confound them and fill them with blasphemous and unbelieving thoughts and if not to shake their habitual faith yet greatly to perplex them and disturb their peace The soundest wit and most composed is fittest for so great a task Cond 26. When upon sober trial you have discerned the evidences of the Christian verity record what you have found true and judge not the next time against those evidences till you have equal opportunity for a full consideration of them In this case the Tempter much abuseth many injudicious souls when by good advice and soberest meditation they have seen the evidence of truth in satisfying clearness he will after surprise them when their minds are darker or their thoughts more scattered or the former evidence is out of mind and push them on suddenly then to judge of the matters of immortality and of the Christian cause that what he cannot get by truth of argument he may get by the incapacity of the disputant As if a man that once saw a mountain some miles distant from him in a clear day should be tempted to believe that he was deceived because he seeth it not in a misty day or when he is in a valley or within the house Or as if a man that in many days hard study hath cast up an intricate large account and set it right under his hand should be called suddenly to give up the same account anew without looking on that which he before cast up when as if his first account be lost he must have equal time and helps and fitness before he can set it as right again Take it not therefore as any disparagement to the Christian truth if you cannot on a sudden give your selves so satisfactory an account of it as formerly in more clearness and by greater studies you have done Cond 27. Gratifie not Satan so much as to question well resolved points as oft as he will move you to it Though you must prove all things till as learning you come to understand them in their proper evidence time and order yet you must record and hold fast that which you have proved and not suffer the devil to put you to the answer of one and the same question over and over as often as he please this is to give him our time and to admit him to debate his cause with us by temptation as frequently as he will which you would not allow to a ruffian to the debauching of your wife or servants and you provoke God to give you up to errour when no resolution will serve your turn After just resolution the tempter is to be rejected and not disputed with as a troublesome fellow that would interrupt us in our work Cond 28. Where you find your own understandings insufficient have recourse for help to some truly wise judicious Divine Not to every weak Christian nor unskilful Minister who is not well grounded in his own Religion but to those that have throughly studied it themselves you may meet with many difficulties in Theology and in the Text which you think can never be well solved which are nothing to them that understand the thing No Novice in the study of Logick Astronomy Geometry or any Art or Science will think that every difficulty that he meeteth with doth prove that his Author was deceived unless he be able to resolve it of himself but he will ask his Tutor or some one versed in those matters to resolve it and then he will see that his ignorance was the cause of all his doubts Cond 29. Labour faithfully to receive all holy truths with a practical intent and to work them on your hearts according to their nature weight and use For the doctrine of Christianity is scientia affectiva practica a doctrine for Head Heart and Life And if that which is made for the Heart be not admitted to the Heart and rooted there it is half rejected while it seemeth received and is not in its proper place and soil If you are yet in doubt of any of the supernatural Verities admit those truths to your hearts which you are convinced of else you are false to them and to your selves and forfeit all further helps of grace Object This is but a trick of deceit to engage the affections when you want arguments to convince the judgment Perit omne judicium cum res transit in affectum Answ When the affection is inordinate and over-runs the judgment this saying hath some truth but it is most false as of ordinate affections which follow sound judgment For by suscitation of the faculties such affections greatly help the judgment and judgment is but the eye of the soul to guide the man and it is but the passage to the will where humane acts are more compleat If your wife be taught that conjugal love is due to her husband and your child that filial love and reverence is due to his father such affections will not blind their judgments but contrarily they do
far and followed them too long O that it had been less though I must thankfully acknowledge that Mercy did early shew me their deceit and turn my enquiring thoughts to thee to thee I resign my self for I am thine own to thee I subject all the powers of my soul and body for thou art my Rightful Sovereign Governour from thee I thankfully accept of all the benefits and comforts of my life in thee I expect my true felicity and content to know thee and love thee and delight in thee must be my blessedness or I must have none The little tastes of this sweetness which my thirsty soul hath had do tell me that there is no other real joy I feel that thou hast made my mind to know thee and I feel thou hast made my heart to love thee my tongue to praise thee and all that I am and have to serve thee And even in the panting languishing desires and motions of my soul I find that thou and only thou art its resting place and though Love do now but search and pray and cry and weep and is reaching upward but cannot reach the glorious light the blessed knowledge the perfect love for which it longeth yet by its eye its aim its motions its moans its groans I know its meaning where it would be and I know its end My displaced soul will never be well till it come near to thee till it know thee better till it love thee more It loves it self and justifyeth that self love when it can love thee it loaths it self and is weary of it self as a lifeless burden when it feels no pantings after thee Wert thou to be found in the most solitary desart it would seek thee or in the uttermost parts of the earth it would make after thee thy presence makes a croud a Church thy converse maketh a closet or solitary wood or field to be kin to the Angelical Chore. The creature were dead if thou wert not its life and ugly if thou wert not its beauty and insignificant if thou wert not its sense The soul is deformed which is without thine Image and lifeless which liveth not in love to thee if love be not its pulse and prayer and praise its constant breath the Mind is unlearned which readeth not thy Name on all the world and seeth not HOLINESS TO THE LORD engraven upon the face of every creature He doteth that doubteth of thy Being or Perfections and he dreameth who doth not live to thee O let me have no other portion no reason no love no life but what is devoted to thee employed on thee and for thee here and shall be perfected in thee the only perfect final object for evermore Upon the holy Altar erected by thy Son and by his hands and his Mediation I humbly devote and offer thee THIS HEART O that I could say with greater feeling This flaming loving longing Heart But the sacred fire which must kindle on my sacrifice must come from thee it will not else ascend unto thee let it consume this dross so the nobler part may know its home All that I can say to commend it to thine acceptance is that I hope it 's wash'd in precious bloud and that there is something in it that is thine own it still looketh towards thee and groaneth to thee and followeth after thee and will be content with gold and mirth and honour and such inferiour fooleries no more it lieth at thy doors and will be entertain'd or perish Though alass it loves thee not as it would I boldly say it longs to love thee it loves to love thee it seeks it craves no greater blessedness than perfect endless mutual love it is vowed to thee even to thee alone and will never take up with shadows more but is resolved to lie down in sorrow and despair if thou wilt not be its REST and JOY It hateth it self for loving thee no more accounting no want deformity shame or pain so great and grievous a calamity For thee the Glorious Blessed GOD it is that I come to Jesus Christ If he did not reconcile my guilty soul to thee and did not teach it the heavenly art and work of Love by the sweet communications of thy love he could be no Saviour for me Thou art my only ultimate end it is only a guide and way to thee that my anxious soul hath so much studied and none can teach me rightly to know thee and to love thee and to live to thee but thy self it must be a Teacher sent from thee that must conduct me to thee I have long looked round about me in the world to see if there were a more lucid Region from whence thy will and glory might be better seen than that in which my lot is fallen But no Traveller that I can speak with no Book which I have turn'd over no Creature which I can see doth tell me more than Jesus Christ I can find no way so suitable to my soul no medicine so fitted to my misery no bellows so fit to kindle love as faith in Christ the Glass and Messenger of thy love I see no doctrine so divine and heavenly as bearing the image and superscription of God nor any so fully confirmed and delivered by the attestation of thy own Omnipotency nor any which so purely pleads thy cause and calls the soul from self and vanity and condemns its sin and purifieth it and leadeth it directly unto thee and though my former ignorance disabled me to look back to the Ages past and to see the methods of thy providence and when I look into thy Word disabled me from seeing the beauteous methods of thy Truth thou hast given me a glimpse of clearer light which hath discovered the reasons and methods of grace which I then discerned not and in the midst of my most hideous temptations and perplexed thoughts thou kepst alive the root of faith and kepst alive the love to thee and unto Holiness which it had kindled Thou hast mercifully given me the witness in my self not an unreasonable perswasion in my mind but that renewed nature those holy and heavenly desires and delights which sure can come from none but thee And O how much more have I perceived in many of thy servants than in my self thou hast cast my lot among the souls whom Christ hath healed I have daily conversed with those whom he hath raised from the dead I have seen the power of thy Gospel upon sinners All the love that ever I perceived kindled towards thee and all the true obedience that ever I saw performed to thee hath been effected by the word of Jesus Christ how oft hath his Spirit helped me to pray and how often hast thou heard those prayers what pledges hast thou given to my staggering faith in the words which prayer hath procured both for my self and many others And if Confidence in Christ be yet deceit must I not say that thou hast deceived
me who I know canst neither be deceived or by any falshood or seduction deceive On thee therefore O my dear Redeemer do I cast and trust this sinful soul with Thee and with thy holy Spirit I renew my Covenant I know no other I have no other I can have no other Saviour but thy self To thee I deliver up this soul which thou hast redeemed not to be advanced to the wealth and honours and pleasures of this world but to be delivered from them and to be healed of sin and brought to God and to be saved from this present evil world which is the portion of the ungodly and unbelievers to be washed in thy Bloud and illuminated quickned and confirmed by thy SPIRIT and conducted in the ways of holiness and love and at last to be presented justified and spotless to the Father of spirits and possessed of the glory which thou hast promised O thou that hast prepared so dear a medicine for the clensing of polluted guilty souls leave not this unworthy soul in its guilt or in its pollution O thou that knowest the Father and his Will and art nearest to him and most beloved of him cause me in my degree to know the Father acquaint me with so much of his will as concerneth my duty or my just encouragement leave not my soul to groap in darkness seeing thou art the Sun and Lord of Light O heal my estranged thoughts of God! is he my light and life and all my hope and must I dwell with him for ever and yet shall I know him no better than thus shall I learn no more that have such a Teacher and shall I get no nearer him while I have a Saviour and a Head so near O give my faith a clearer prospect into that better world and let me not be so much unacquainted with the place in which I must abide for ever And as thou hast prepared a Heaven for holy souls prepare this too-unprepared soul for Heaven which hath not long to stay on earth And when at death I resign it into thy hands receive it as thine own and finish the work which thou hast begun in placing it among the blessed Spirits who are filled with the sight and love of God I trust thee living let me trust thee dying and never be ashamed of my trust And unto Thee the Eternal Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son the Communicative LOVE who condescendest to make Perfect the Elect of God do I deliver up this dark imperfect soul to be further renewed confirmed and perfected according to the holy Covenant Refuse not to bless it with thine indwelling and operations quicken it with thy life irradiate it by thy light sanctifie it by thy love actuate it purely powerfully and constantly by thy holy motions And though the way of this thy sacred influx be beyond the reach of humane apprehension yet let me know the reality and saving power of it by the happy effects Thou art more to fouls than souls to bodies than light to eyes O leave not my soul as a carrion destitute of thy life nor its eyes as useless destitute of thy light nor leave it as a senseless block without thy motion The remembrance of what I was without thee doth make me fear lest thou shouldest with-hold thy grace Alass I feel I daily feel that I am dead to all good and all that 's good is dead to me if thou be not the life of all Teachings and reproofs mercies and corrections yea the Gospel it self and all the liveliest Books and Sermons are dead to me because I am dead to them yea God is as no God to me and Heaven as no Heaven and Christ as no Christ and the clearest evidences of Scripture verity are as no proofs at all if thou represent them not with light and power to my soul Even as all the glory of the world is as nothing to me without the light by which it 's seen O thou that hast begun and given me those heavenly intimations and desires which flesh and bloud could never give me suffer not my folly to quench these sparks nor this bruitish flesh to prevail against thee nor the powers of hell to stifle and kill such a heavenly seed O pardon that folly and wilfulness which hath too often too obdurately and too unthankfully striven against thy grace and depart not from an unkind and sinful soul I remember with grief and shame how I wilfully bore down thy motions punish it not with desertion and give me not over to my self Art thou not in Covenant with me as my Sanctifier and Confirmer and Comforter I never undertook to do these things for my self but I consent that thou shouldest work them on me As thou art the Agent and Advocate of Jesus my Lord O plead his cause effectually in my soul against the suggestions of Satan and my unbelief and finish his healing saving work and let not the flesh or world prevail Be in me the resident witness of my Lord the Author of my Prayers the Spirit of Adoption the Seal of God and the earnest of mine inheritance Let not my nights be so long and my days so short nor sin eclipse those beams which have often illuminated my soul Without thee Books are senseless scrawls studies are dreams learning is a glow-worm and wit is but wantonness impertinency and folly Transcribe those sacred precepts on my heart which by thy dictates and inspirations are recorded in thy holy word I refuse not thy help for tears and groans but O shed abroad that love upon my heart which may keep it in a continual life of love And teach me the work which I must do in Heaven refresh my soul with the delights of holiness and the joys which arise from the believing hopes of the everlasting Joys Exercise my heart and tongue in the holy praises of my Lord. Strengthen me in sufferings and conquer the terrors of death and hell Make me the more heavenly by how much the faster I am hastening to heaven and let my last thoughts words and works on earth be likest to those which shall be my first in the state of glorious immortality where the Kingdom is delivered up to the Father and GOD will for ever be All and In all of whom and through whom and to whom are all things To whom be glory for ever Amen CHAP. XIII Consectaries 1. What Party of Christians should we joyn with or be of seeing they are divided into so many Sects I Shall briefly dispatch the Answer of this Question in these following Propositions § 1. GODLYNESS and CHRISTIANITY is our only Religion and if any party have any other we must renounce it § 2. The Church of Christ being his Body is but One and hath many Parts but should have no Parties but Vnity and Concord without Division § 3. Therefore no Christian must be of a Party or Sect as such that is as
unity and concord and harmony of the Church consisteth 1. In their Universal Adoption or One Relation to God as their reconciled Father in Christ 2. In the one Relation they have all to Christ their Head 3. In the unity of the Spirit which dwelleth and worketh in them all 4. In their One Relation to the Body or Church of Christ as its members 5. In the unity of that Faith which stateth them in these relations 6. In the unity of the Baptismal Covenant which initiateth them 7. In the unity of the Gospel in the Essentials which is the common rule of their faith and life and the ground of their hope and comfort 8. In the bond of mutual brotherly love 9. In the concord of a holy life 10. In the unity of the End which they all intend and shall at last attain the pleasing of God and the heavenly glory § 24. The Means of this Unity and Concord are 1. All as aforesaid which promote their holiness From holiness is the centring of all hearts in God and it destroyeth that dividing Selfishness which maketh men have as many ends as they are persons 2. The learning and ability of the Pastors to hold the flocks together by the force of truth and to stop the mouthes of cavilling dividers and seducers When no gain-sayers are able to stand before the evidence of that truth which they demonstrate 3. The holy lives of Pastors which keep up the love of truth and them in the peoples hearts 4. By the paternal government of the Pastors ruling them not by force but willingly and in fatherly love and a loving familiar converse with them 5. By the just execution of Discipline on the impenitent that the godly may see that wickedness is disowned 6 By the concord of the Pastors among themselves and the prudent use of Synods or Councils to that end 7. By the humble and submissive respect of the people to their Pastors 8 By keeping up the interest and authority of the most ancient and experienced of the flock over the young and unexperienced who are the common causes of division 9. By the Pastors avoiding all temptations to worldliness and pride that they tear not the Church by striving who shall be the greatest or have the preeminence 10. By godly Magistrates keeping their power in their own hand and using it to rebuke intollerable false Teachers and to encourage the peaceable and restrain the railing and violence of Pastors and parties against each other and by impartial keeping the Church's peace § 25. Hence the causes of Church-divisions are discernable 1. The encrease of ungodliness and sin which is as fire in the thatch and possesseth all men with dividing principles practices and ends 2. The disability of Pastors over-topt in parts by every Sectary 3. The ungodliness of the Pastors which looseneth the hearts of the people from them 4. The strangeness violence or hurtfulness of the Pastors 5. The encouragement and tolleration of all the most flagitious and impenitent in undisciplin'd Churches which frighteneth men out of the Church as from a ruinous house and tempteth them to an unwarrantable separation because the Pastors will not make a necessary and regular separation 6. The discord of the Bishops among themselves 7. The peoples ignorance of the Pastoral power and their own duty 8. An unruly fierce censorious spirit in many of the young and unexperienced of the flock 9. The Pastors striving who shall be the greatest and seeking great things in the world or popular applause and admiration 10. The Magistrates either permitting the endeavours of dividing Teachers in palpable cases or suffering self-seeking Pastors or people to disturb the Church § 26. But next to common ungodliness the great causes of the most ruinating Church-divisions are 1. Wars and dissentions among Princes and States and civil factions in Kingdoms whereby the Clergy are drawn or forced to engage themselves on one side or other and then the prevailing side stigmatizeth those as scandalous who were not for them and think themselves engaged by their interest to extirpate them 2. Mistaking the just terms of union and communion and setting up a false centre as that which all men must unite in Thus have the Roman party divided themselves from the Greeks and Protestants and made the greatest schism in the Church that ever was made in it 1. By setting up a false usurping constitutive Head the Roman Bishop and pretending that none are members of the Church who are not his subjects and so condemning the far greatest part of the Catholick Church 2 By imposing an Oath and divers gross corruptions in Doctrine Discipline and Worship upon all that will be in their communion and condemning those that receive them not and so departing from the Scripture-sufficiency These two usurpations are the grand dividers § 27. All Hereticks also who speak perverse things against Christianity to draw away Disciples after them or Schismaticks who unwarrantably separate from those Churches in which they ought to abide that they may gather new congregations after their own mind are the immediate adversaries of Church-union and concord § 28. So are the importune and virulent Disputations of contentious Wits about unnecessary things or matters of faction and self-interest § 29. Especially when the Magistrate lendeth his sword to one party of the contenders to suppress or be revenged on the rest and to dispute with arguments of steel § 30. The well-ordered Councils of Bishops or Pastors of several Churches assembled together have been justly esteemed a convenient means of maintaining the concord and peace of Christians and a fit remedy for the cure of heresies corruptions and divisions And when the cause requireth it those councils should consist of as many as can conveniently meet even from the most distant Churches which can send their Bishops without incurring greater hurt or discommodity than their presence will countervail in doing good And therefore the councils called General in the Dominions of the Christian Roman Emperours were commendable and very profitable to the Church when rightly used But whereas the Pope doth argue that he is the constitutive Head of the whole catholick Church throughout the world because his Predecessors did oft preside in those councils it is most evident to any one who will make a faithful search into the History of them that those councils were so far from representing all the Churches in the world that they were constituted only of the Churches or Subjects of the Roman Empire and those that having formerly been parts of the Empire continued that way of communion when they fell into the hands of conquerors their conquerors being commonly Pagans Infidels or Arrian Hereticks I except only now and then two or three or an inconsiderable number of neighbour Bishops There were none of the Representatives of the Churches in all the other parts of the world as I have proved in my Disputation with Mr. Johnson
dividing it self from the rest causing schisme or contention in the Body or making a rent unnecessarily in any particular Church which is a part § 4. But when Parties and Sects do trouble the Church we must still hold to our meer Christianity and desire to be called by no other name than Christians with the Epithets of sincerity And if men will put the name of a Party or Sect upon us for holding to Christianity only against all corrupting Sects we must hold on our way and bear their obloquy § 5. What CHRISTIANITY is may be known 1. Most summarily in the Baptismal Covenant in which we are by solemnization made Christians in which renouncing the Flesh the World and the Devil we give up our selves devotedly to God the Father Son and Holy Ghost as our Creator Redeemer and Sanctifyer 2. By the ancient summary Rules of Faith Hope and Charity the Creed the Lords Prayer and the Decalogue 3. Integrally in the sacred Scriptures which are the Records of the Doctrine of Christ and the Holy Spirit § 6. But there are many circumstances of Religious Worship which Scripture doth not particularly determine of but only give general Rules for the determination of them as what Chapter shall be read what Text preached on what Translation used what Meeter or Tune of Psalms what time what place what Seat or Pulpit or Cup or other Vtensils what Vesture gesture c. whether we shall use Notes for memory in preaching what method we shall preach in whether we shall pray in the same words often or in various with a book or without with many other In all which the People must have an obediential respect to the conduct of the lawfull Pastors of the Churches § 7. Differing opinions or practices about things indifferent no nor about the meer integrals of Religion which are not Essentials do not make men of different Religions or Churches universally considered § 8. Nothing will warrant us to separate from a Church as no Church but the want of something Essential to a Church § 9. The Essential or Constitutive parts of the Church Catholick or Vniversal are Christ the Head and all Christians as the Members § 10. All sincere and sanctified Christians are the members of the Church mystical invisible or regenerate And all Professors of sincere Christianity that is all Baptized persons not apostatised nor excommunicate are the members of the Church visible which is integrated of the particular Churches § 11. It is essential to particular political Churches that they be constituted of true Bishops or Pastors and of flocks of baptised or professed Christians Vnited in these Relations for holy communion in the worshipping of God and the promoting of the salvation of the several members § 12. It is essential to a true Bishop or Pastor of the Church to be in Office that is in Authority and Obligation appointed by Christ in subordination to him in the three parts of his Offices Prophetical Priestly and Kingly That is to teach the people to stand between them and God in Worship and to guide or or govern them by the Paternal exercise of the Keyes of his Church § 13. He that doth not nullifie or unchurch a Church may lawfully remove from one Church to another and make choice of the best and purest or that which is most suited to his own Edification if he be a Free-man § 14. But in case of such choice or personal removal the Interest of the whole Church or of Religion in common must be first taken into consideration by him that would rightly judge of the lawfulness of the fact § 15. If a Church which in all other respects is purest and best will impose any sin upon all that will have local communion with it though we must not separate from that Church as no Church yet must we not commit that sin but patiently suffer them to exclude us from their communion § 16. True Heresie that is an Error contradictory to an essential Article of the Christian Faith if it be seriously and really held so that the contrary truth is not held seriously and really doth nullifie the Christianity of him that holdeth it and the Church-state of that Congregation which so professeth it But so doth not that fundamental Error which is held but in words through ignorance thinking it may consist with the contrary truth while that truth is not denyed but held majore fide so that we have reason to believe that if they did discern the contradiction they would rather forsake the error than the truth But of this more elsewhere CHAP. XIV Consectary II. Of the true Interest of Christ and his Church and the Souls of Men Of the means to promote it and its Enemies and Impediments in the World SO great and common is the Enmity against Christianity in the World yea against the life and reality of it in all the Hypocrites of the Visible Church that the guilty will not bear the detection of their guilt And therefore the Reader must excuse me for passing over the one half of that which should be said upon this subject because they that need it cannot suffer it § 1. Every true Christian preferreth the Interest of Christ and of Religion before all worldly Interest of his own or any others For he that setteth himself or any thing above his God hath indeed no God For if he be not Maximus Sapientissimus Optimus Greatest Wisest and Best he is not God And if he be not really taken as such he is not taken for their God And he that hath no God hath no Religion And he that hath no Religion is no Christian And if he call himself a Christian he is an Hypocrite § 2. Though we must preferre the Interest of Christ and the Church above the Interest of our Souls yet must we never set them in competition or opposition but in a due conjunction though not in an equality I adde this to warn men of some common dangerous errors in this point some think that if they do but feel themselves more moved with another Ministers preaching or more edified with another way of Discipline they may presently withdraw themselves to that Minister or Discipline without regard to the Unity and good of the Church where they are or whatever publick evil follow it Whereas he that seemeth to deny even to his Soul some present edification for the publick good shall finde that even this will turn to his greater edification And some on the contrary extream have got a conceit that till they can finde that they can be content to be damned for Christ if God would so have it they are not sincere Which is a case that no Christian should put to his own heart being such as God never put to any man All the tryall that God putteth us to is but whether we can deny this transitory life and the vanities
of the World and the pleasures of the flesh for the Love of God and the Hopes of Glory And he that doth thus much shall undoubtedly be saved But to think that you must ask your hearts such a question as whether you can be content to be damned for Christ is but to abuse God and your selves Indeed both Reason and Religion command us to esteem God infinitely above our selves and the Churches welfare above our own because that which is best must be best esteemed and loved But yet though we must ever acknowledge this inequality Yet that we must never disjoyn them nor set them in a positive opposition or competition nor really do any thing which tendeth to our damnation upon any pretense of the Churches good is past all question He that hath made the love of our selves and felicity inseparable from man hath made us no duty inconsistent with this inclination that is with our humanity it self For God hath conjoyned these necessary ends and we must not separate them § 3. The Interest of the Church is but the Interest of the Souls that constitute the Church and to preferre it above our own is but to preferre many above one § 4. He that doth most for the publick good and the Souls of many doth thereby most effectually promote his own consolation and salvation § 5. The Interest of God is the Vltimate End of Religion Church and particular Souls § 6. Gods Interest is not any addition to his Perfection or Blessedness but the pleasing of his Will in the Glory of his Power Wisdom and Goodness shining forth in Jesus Christ and in his Church § 7. Therefore to promote Gods Interest is by promoting the Churches Interest § 8. The Interest of the Church consisteth I. Intensivè in its HOLYNESS II. Conjunctivè harmonicè in its Unity Concord and Order III. Extensivè in its increase and the multiplication of Believers § 9. I. The HOLYNESS of the Church consisteth 1. In its Resignation and submission to God its Owner 2. In its subjection and obedience to God its Ruler 3. In its Gratitude and Love to God its Benefactor and Ultimate End § 10. These acts consist 1. In a right estimation and Belief of the minde 2. In a right Volition Choice and Resolution of the Will 3. In the right ordering of the Life § 11. The Means of the Churches HOLYNESS are these 1. Holy Doctrine Because as all Holiness entereth by the understanding so Truth is the instrumental cause of all § 12. 2. The holy serious reverent skilfull and diligent preaching of this doctrine by due explication proof and application suitably to the various auditors § 13. 3. The holy lives and private converse of the Pastors of the Church § 14. 4. Holy Discipline faithfully administred encouraging all that are godly and comforting the penitent and humbling the proud and disgracing open sin and casting out the proved impenitent gross sinners that they infect not the rest embolden not the wicked and dishonour not the Church in the eyes of the unbelievers § 15. 5. The election and ordination of able and holy Pastors fit for this work § 16. 6. The conjunct endeavours of the wisest and most experienced members of the flock not usurping any Ecclesiastical office but by their wisdom and authority and example in their private capacities seconding the labours of the Pastors and not leaving all to be done by them alone § 17. 7. Especially the holy instructing and governing of families by catechizing inferiours and exhorting them to the due care of their souls and helping them to understand and remember the publick teaching of the Pastors and praying and praising God with them and reading the Scripture and holy books especially on the Lord's day and labouring to reform their lives § 18. 8. The blameless lives and holy conference converse and example of the members of the Church among themselves Holiness begetteth holiness and encreaseth it as fire kindleth fire § 19. 9. The unity concord and love of Christians to one another § 20. 10. And lastly holy Princes and Magistrates to encourage piety and to protect the Church and to be a terrour to evil doers These are the means of holiness § 21. The contraries of all these may easily be discerned to be the destroyers of holiness and pernicious to the Church 1. Vnholy doctrine 2. Ignorant unskilful negligent cold or envious preaching 3. The unholy lives of them that preach it 4. Discipline neglected or perverted to the encouraging of the ungodly and afflicting of the most holy and upright of the flocks 5. The election or ordination of insufficient negligent or ungodly Pastors 6. The negligence of the wisest of the flock or the restraint of them by the spirit of jealousie and envy from doing their private parts in assistance of the Pastors 7. The neglect of holy instructing and governing of families and the lewd example of the governours of them 8. The scandalous or barren lives of Christians 9. The divisions and discord of Christians among themselves 10. And bad Magistrates who give an ill example or afflict the godly or encourage vice or at least suppress it not § 22. To these may be added 1. The degenerating of Religious strictness from what God requireth into another thing by humane corruptions gradually introduced as is seen among too many Friars as well as in the Pharisees of old 2. A degenerating of holy Institutions of Christ into another thing by the like gradual corruptions as is seen in the Roman Sacrifice of the Mass 3. The degenerating of Church-Offices by the like corruptions as is seen in the Papacy and its manifold supporters 4. The diversion of the Pastors of the Church to secular employments 5. The diminishing the number of the Pastors of the Church as proportioned to the number of souls as if one school-master alone should have ten thousand scholars or ten thousand souldiers but one or two officers 6. The pretending of the soul and power of Religion to destroy the body or external part or making use of the body or external part to destroy the soul and power and setting things in opposition which are conjunct 7. The preferring either the imposition or opposition of things indifferent before things necessary 8. An apish imitation of Christ by Satan and his instruments by counterfeiting inspirations revelations visions prophesies miracles apparitions sanctity zeal and new institutions in the Church 9. An over-doing or being righteous over much by doing more than God would have us over-doing being one of the devils ways of undoing When Satan pretendeth to be a Saint he will be stricter than Christ as the Pharisees were in their company Sabbath-rest and ceremonies and he will be zealous with a fiery consuming zeal 10. Accidentally prosperity it self consumeth piety in the Church if it occasion the perdition of the world the Church is not out of danger of it § 23. II. The