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
Wisdom of the Soul produced by his Light and Wisdom by which we know the difference between Good and Evil and our Reason is restored to its dominion over fleshly sense It is the Goodness of the Soul by which it is made suitable to the Eternal Good and fit to know him love him praise him serve him and enjoy him And therefore nothing lower than his Goodness can be its principal Cause 2. It subserveth the Interest of God in the World And recovereth the apostate Soul to himself It disposeth it to honour him love him and obey him It delivereth up the whole man to him as his own It casteth down all that rebelleth against him It casteth out all which was preferred before him It rejecteth all which standeth up against him and would seduce and tempt us from him And therefore it is certainly his work 3. Whose else should it be Would Satan or any evil cause produce so excellent an effect would the worst of beings do the best of works It is the best that is done in this lower world Would any enemy of God so much honour him and promote his interest and restore him his own would any enemy of mankind thus advance us and bring us up to a life of the highest honour and delights that we are capable of on earth and give us the hopes of life eternal And if any good Angel or other Cause should do it all reason will confess that they do it but as the Messengers or Instruments of God and as second causes and not as the first Cause for otherwise we should make them gods For my own part my Soul perceiveth that it is God himself that hath imprinted this his Image on me and hath hereby as it were written upon me his Name and Mark even HOLINESS TO THE LORD and I bear about me continually a Witness of Himself his Son and holy Spirit a Witness within me which is the Seal of God and the pledge of his love and the earnest of my heavenly inheritance And if our Sanctification be thus of GOD it is certainly his attestation to the truth of Christ and to his Gospel for 1. No man that knoweth the perfections of God will ever believe that he would bless a deceiver and a lie to be the means of the most holy and excellent work that ever was done in the world If Christ were a Deceiver his crime would be so execrable as would engage the Justice of God against him as he is the righteous Governour of the world And therefore he would not so highly honour him to be his chiefest instrument for the worlds Renovation He is not impotent to need such instruments he is not ignorant that he should so mistake in the choice of instruments he is not bad that he should love and use such Instruments and comply with their deceits These things are all so clear and sure that I cannot doubt of them 2. No man that knoweth the mercifulness of God and the Justice of his Government can believe that he would give up Mankind so remedilesly to seduction yea and be the principal causer of it himself For if besides Prophecie and a holy Doctrine and a multitude of famous Miracles a Deceiver might also be the great Renewer and Sanctifier of the world to bring man back to the obedience of God and to repair his Image on Mankind what possibility were there of our discovery of that deceit Or rather should we not say he were a blessed Deceiver that had deceived us from our sin and misery and brought back our straying souls to God 3. Nay when Christ fore-told men that he would send his Spirit to do all this work and would renew men for eternal life and thus be with us to the end of the world and when I see all this done I must needs believe that he that can send down a Sanctifying Spirit a Spirit of Life a Spirit of Power Light and Love to make his Doctrine in the mouths of his Ministers effectual to mens Regeneration and Sanctification is no less himself than God or certainly no less than his certain Administrator 4. What need I more to prove the Cause than the adequate effect When I find that Christ doth actually save me shall I question whether he be my Saviour When I find that he saveth thousands about me and offereth the same to others shall I doubt whether he be the Saviour of the world Sure he that healeth us all and that so wonderfully and so cheaply may well be called our Physician If he had promised only to save us I might have doubted whether he would perform it and consequently whether he be indeed the Saviour But when he performeth it on my self and performeth it on thousands round about me to doubt yet whether he be the Saviour when he actually saveth us is to be ignorant in despite of Reason and Experience I conclude therefore that the Spirit of Sanctification is the infallible Witness of the Verity of the Gospel and the Veracity of Jesus Christ 5. And I entreat all that read this further to observe the great use and advantage of this testimony above others in that it is continued from Generation to Generation and not as the gift and testimony of Miracles which continued plentifully but one Age and with diminution somewhat after this is Christ's witness to the end of the world in every Country and to every Soul yea and continually dwelling in them For if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his Rom. 8.9 He that is not able to examine the History which reporteth the Miracles to him may be able to find upon his Soul the Image of God imprinted by the Gospel and to know that the Gospel hath that Image in it self which it imprinteth upon others and that it cometh from God which leadeth men so directly unto God and that it is certainly his own means which he blesseth to so great and excellent ends 6. Note also that part of the work of the Spirit of God in succeeding the Doctrine of Jesus Christ doth consist in the effectual production of Faith it self for though the work be wrought by the Reasons of the Gospel and the Evidences of Truth yet is it also wrought by the Spirit of God concurring with that evidence and as the internal Efficient exciting the sluggish faculties to do their office and illustrating the understanding and fitting the will to entertain the truth for the difficulties are so great and the temptations to unbelief so subtil and violent and our own indisposedness through corruption the greatest impediment of all that the bare Word alone would not produce a belief of that lively vigorous nature as is necessary to its noble effects and ends without the internal co-operation of the Spirit So that Christ doth not only teach us the Christian Faith and Religion but doth give it us and work it in us by his Spirit And he that can do
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
All that the World can possibly afford you will not make Death the more welcom nor less terrible to you nor abate a jot of the pains of Hell It is as comfortable to die poor as rich and a life of pain and weakness and persecution will end as pleasantly as a life of Pomp and wealth and pleasures If it be no unreasonable motion of a Physician to tell you of blood-letting vomiting parging and strict dyet to save your lives nor any hard dealing in your Parents to set you many years to School to endure both the labour of learning and the Rod and after that to set you to a seven years Apprentice-ship and all this for things of a transitory nature since God deserveth not to be accused as too severe if he train you up for Heaven more strictly and in a more suffering way than the flesh desireth Either you believe that there is a future Life of Retribution or you do not If not the foregoing Evidences must first convince you before you will be fit to debate the case whether sufferings are for your hurt or benefit But if you do believe a life to come you must needs believe that its concernments weigh down all the matters of fleshly interest in this World as much as a mountain would weigh down a feather And then do but further bethink your selves impartially whether a life of Prosperity or of Adversity be the liker to tempt you into the Love of this World and to wean away your thoughts and desires from the heavenly felicity Judge but rightly first of your own interest and you will be fitter to judge of the Doctrine of Christ Obj. XXI Christ seemeth to calculate all his Precepts to the poorer sort of peoples state as if he had never hoped that Kings and Nobles would be Christians If men think as hardly of the Rich as he doth and take them to be so bad and their salvation so difficult how will they ever honour their Kings and Governours And if all men must suffer such as abuse and injure them and must turn the other cheek to him that striketh them and give him their Coat who taketh away their Cloak what use will there be for Magistrates and Judicatures Ans 1. Christ fitteth his Precepts to the benefit of all men But in so doing he must needs tell them of the danger of over-loving this World as being the most mortal sin which he came to cure And he must needs tell them what a dangerous temptation a flesh-pleasing prosperous state is to the most to entice them to this pernicious sin Had he silenced such necessary truths as these he could not have been their Saviour For how should he save them from sin if he conceal the evil and the danger of it If the corruption of mans Nature be so great that Riches and Honours and Pleasures are ordinarily made the occasions of mens perdition must Christ be Christ and never tell them of it And is he to be blamed for telling them the truth or they rather who create these difficulties and dangers to themselves Christ teacheth men to honour a Sacred Office such as Magistracy is without honouring Vice or betraying sinners by concealing their temptations And to holy faithfull Rulers he teacheth us to give a double honour They that will prove that most of the great and wealthy shall be saved must prove first that most of them are godly and mortified heavenly persons And the fit proof of that must be by shewing us the men that are so 2. The Laws of Christ require every Soul to be subject to the higher Powers and not resist and this not only for fear of their wrath but for Conscience sake and to pay honour and custom to all whom it is due to And what more can be desired for the support of Government 3. Yea nothing more tendeth to the comfort and quietness of Governours than the obedience of those Precepts of patience and peace which the Objection quarrelleth with If Subjects would love each other as themselves and forgive injuries and love their enemies what could be more joyfull to a faithfull Governour And to the Question What use would there be then of Judicatures I answer They would be usefull to good men for their protection against the injuries of the bad where we are but Defendants And also in Cases where it is not want of Love but of Knowledge which causeth the Controversie and when no fit arbitration can decide it And they will be usefull among contentious persons For all men are not true Believers The most will be ordinarily the worst As we will not be Fornicators Thieves Perjured c. lest you should say To what purpose is the Law against such offenders so we will not be revengefull and contentious lest you should say To what end are Judicatures The Law is to prevent offences by threatned penalties And that is the happyest Common-wealth where the Law doth most without the Judge and where Judicatures have least employment For there is none to be expected on Earth so happy where meer LOVE of Virtue and of one another will prevent the use both of Penal Laws and Judicatures 4. And it is but selfishness and contentiousness and private revenge which Christ forbiddeth and not the necessary defence or vindication of any Talent which God hath committed to our trust so it be with the preservation of brotherly Love and Peace 5. And that Christ foreknew what Princes and States would be converted to the Faith is manifest 1. In all his Prophets who have foretold it that Kings shall be our Nursing Fathers c. 2. In that Christ prophesied himself that when he was lifted up he would draw all men to him 3. By the Prophecies of John who saith that the Kingdoms of the World should become the Kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ Obj. XXII But it is the obscurity of all those Phophecies which is one of the difficulties of our Faith and that they are never like to be fulfilled Almost all your Expositors differ about the sense of Johns Revelations And the Calling of the Jews and bringing in all the Gentiles to their subjection seem to be plainly prophesyed of which are never like to come to passe Answ 1. Prophecies are seldom a Rule of Life but an Encouragement to hope and a Confirmation to Faith when they are fulfilled And therefore if the particularities be dark and understood by few so the general scope be understood it should be no matter of offence or wonder It is doctrine and precept and promises of salvation which are the daily food of Faith 2. If no man can hitherto truly say that any one Promise or Prophecie hath failed why should we think that hereafter they will fail what though the things seem improbable to us They are never the unliker to be accomplished by God The Conversion of the Gentiles of the Roman Empire and so many other Nations of the World
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
what he exerciseth by men though extraordinarily he sometime otherwise interpose And how easie and ordinary it is for subtil men to do much wickedness and never be discovered needs no proof The like we may say in some measure of those secret duties of heart and life which have neither reward nor notice in this life and if observed are usually turned into matter of reproach The Minor needeth no more proof when we have proved already that God is our Governour It is certain that the secret acts of heart and life are as much under his government as the open and therefore shall have equal retribution § 3. III. If there were no life of retribution after this the sins of the Great ones and Rulers of the world and all others that by strength could make their part good would be under no sufficient Justice But the sins even of the greatest and strongest are under sufficient justice Therefore there is a life of retribution after this The Major is clear by experience The sins of all the Sovereigns of the earth are rarely under sufficient justice in this life If there were no punishment hereafter what justice would be done upon a Tamerlane a Bajazet a Mahumed a Dionysius an Alexander a Caesar a Marius a Sylla a Sertorius and many hundred such for all the innocent bloud which they have shed for their pride and self-exalting What justice would be done on Kings and Emperours and States that have none above them for all their lusts and filthiness their intemperance and sensuality their oppression and cruelty I know that God doth sometimes punish them by Rebels or by other Princes or by sickness in this life but that is no ordinary course of justice and therefore not sufficient to its ends Ordinarily all things here come alike to all And what justice would be done upon any Rebels or Robbers that are but strong enough to bear it out Or upon any that raise unrighteous Wars and burn and murder and destroy Countries and Cities and are worse than plagues to all places where they come and worse than mad dogs and bears to others If they do but conquer instead of punishment for all this villany they go away here with wealth and glory The Minor is past question Therefore certainly there is another life where conquering rewarded prospering domineering sin shall have its proper punishment § 4. IV. If God rule not man by the hopes and fears of certain Good and Evil hereafter he ruleth him not according to his Nature But God doth rule man according to his Nature Ergo. The Minor needeth no proof The Major is proved by experience The nature of man is to be most moved with the hopes and fears of Good and Evil after death Otherwise death it self would comparatively seem nothing to us No other creature hath such hopes and fears If you ask how I can tell that I answer as I can tell that a Tree doth not hear and a Stone doth not feel or see because there is no appearance of such a sense whose nature is to make it self manifest by its evidences where it is Bruits shew a fear of death and love of life but of nothing further of which there is evidence enough to quiet a mind that seeketh after truth though not to silence a prating caviller This will be further improved under that which followeth § 5. V. If the world cannot be governed according to its nature and God's Laws without the hopes and fears of Good and Evil after death then the objects of such hopes and fears is certain truth But the Antecedent is true Therefore so is the Consequent That the nature of man requireth a Moral Government and not only a Physical motion is already proved Physical motion only determineth the agent to act and produceth the act it self quoad eventum Moral Government doth institute for the subject a debitum agendi habendi and judgeth him accordingly If there were no Government but Physical motion there were no debitum in the world neither officii praemii vel poenae vel jus possidendi vel injuria no right or wrong For Physical motion doth equally produce the act in perjury murder treason adultery as in good deeds and it never produceth an act which eventually never is Therefore there should be nothing a Duty but what cometh to pass if Physical motion were all the Government Government then there must be and what God requireth of all by nature I have shewed before Now that there is a moral impossibility of the performance of this in any sincerity so as to intimate any laudible Government of the world I shall further prove 1. If according to the present temper of man there be no motives which would ever prove sufficient to resist all the temptations of this life to keep us in true obedience and love to God unto the end without the hopes and fears of Good and Evil after death then cannot the world be governed according to God's Laws without such hopes and fears of futurity But the Antecedent is true Ergo so is the consequent If God had prescribed man a course of duty in his Laws as to obey and love him upon terms of fleshly suffering and had not given man such motives as might rationally prevail for the performance his Laws had been all in vain He that hath made Holiness our indispensible duty hath certainly left us motives and rational helps to perform it But so many and great are the temptations of this life and so strong is our sense and so great are the sufferings of the obedient that in this our imperfection we could never go through them without the motives which are fetch'd from another life 1. It would weaken the hands of the best as to their duty it would embolden them to sin it would give victory to all strong temptations Let every Reader but consult with his own soul and though it be granted that virtue should be chosen for its own sake how dear soever it may cost yet let him without lying say what he thinketh he should be and do in case of temptations if he knew that he had no life to live but this I am not sure but I will freely confess what I think most that now are honest would be and do First They would observe how little difference God maketh between the obedient and disobedient in his providence and how ordinarily his present judgements are not much to be feared And hence they would think that he maketh no great matter of it what they either are or do and so their very love of Virtue would be much debilitated Nay the sufferings of the virtuous would tempt them to think that it is no very desirable way and though still they would have something within them which would tell them that honesty and temperance and piety are good yet the natural love of themselves is so deeply planted in them and so
that the object of those hopes and fears are certain truths which are so necessary to the government of the world and this needeth no other proof but this If God can govern the world without a course of deceit and lying then the objects of these necessary hopes and fears are true But God can govern the world without a course of deceit and lying Ergo. The Major is evident because to govern by the hopes and fears of falshoods or things that are not when those hopes and fears are not only of God but made necessary to Government is to govern by deceit and lying or if it had not been by falshood uttered but falshood permitted the Minor is certain For if God cannot govern without such a course of deceit it is either for want of Power or of Wisdom or of Goodness that is Holiness and Benignity of Will But the Omnipotent wanteth not Power and the Omniscient wanteth not Wisdom to find out true and suitable means and he that is Optimus wanteth neither Holiness to love truth and hate falshood nor Benignity to love his Creature and therefore needeth no such means And he that believeth that God himself doth govern the world by a cheat even by the hopes and fears of fictions will sure think it best to imitate his God and to govern and trade and live accordingly This argument was à necessitate ad ordinem the next shall be only from God's actual government § 6. VI. If God do de facto govern the world by the hopes and fears of Good and Evil in another Life then the object of those hopes and fears is certain But God doth de facto so govern Ergo. The Major is proved as before for that which proved that God can govern without falshood proved also that he doth govern without it It belongeth only to the Impotent the Ignorant or the Bad to use such means Obj. May not a Parent or Physician honestly deceive a Child or Patient for his recovery to health why then may not God do so Answ 1. They do it through insufficiency to attain their end by a better means but the Omnipotent and Omniscient hath no such insufficiency 2. They may not lie or utter any untruth to do it though they may hide some truth by words which he is apt to mistake But if the world be governed by such hopes and fears of futurity it is hard to think whence they should fetch the object but from some divine revelation in nature 3. A whole course of Government of all the rational world by so sorry an instrument as deceit and falshood is more inconsistent with the nature and perfections of God than a particular act of deceit in a work of necessity and charity is with the nature of imperfect man The Minor is proved in the answer to the last objections and by the common experience of the world Obj. How little doth the hopes and fears of another world do with the most Do you not see that fleshly interest ruleth them and therefore they are what the Great ones would have them be who can help or hurt them Answ 1. I have proved how much worse it would be ◠that restraint which these hopes and fears make were taken off 2. That this restraint is general in all Nations almost of the earth though the prevalency of sin do much enfeeble it 3. That Rulers themselves are under some of these restraints in their Law-making and Judgement Though fleshly interest much prevail against it there are some remnants of secret hopes or fears in the consciences of sinners which keep up so much good as is yet left and keep men from those villanies in which they might hope to escape all sufferings from men § 7. VII If God himself kindle in the best of men desires to know him love him and enjoy him perfectly hereafter then such desires shall attain their end But God himself doth kindle such desires in the best of men Ergo And consequently there is such a Life to come Here 1. I must prove that the best men have such desires 2. That God kindleth them 3. That therefore he will satisfie them 1. And for the first the Consciences of all Good men are my witnesses whose desires to know God better to love him and please him more and to enjoy his Love is as the very pulse and breath of their souls For this they groan and pray and seek for this they labour wait and suffer If you could help them to more of the Knowledge and Love of God you would satisfie them more than to give them all the wealth and honours of the World Their Religious lives their labours prayers contemplations and sufferings prove all this and shew for what they long and live Obj. But this is caused by the power of a deluded fantasie which seeketh after that which is not to be had What if you fall in Love with the Sun Will it prove that you must be loved by it see it and enjoy it in the life to come Answ 1. To the similitude Either the Sun is a rational free Agent or not If it be it is either the chief Agent or a dependent Instrument If it were the first as it is not I should owe my self totally to it in the exercise of all the powers given me as is aforesaid And if it gave me such Desires I might suppose it was not in vain But if it give me nothing but as an Instrument or dependent Cause I owe it nothing but in subserviency to the first Cause But in such subserviency if God had commanded me to love and honour it as a Lover of Mankinde and a Rational Benefactor and had placed any of my duty or felicity in seeking perfection in that love and honour I should obey him and expect an answerable benefit But if it be no intelligent Agent or I cannot know that it is so then I can owe it no other respect but what is due to a natural Instrument of God 2. To the matter That these desires are not from a deluded fantasie but the work of God I prove 1. In that I have fully proved them already to be our Duty by the Law of Nature To love God with all the heart and might and consequently to desire to love him and please him and enjoy him in perfection that is in the utmost of our capacity is a proved duty 2. In that the Best men are the possessors of it And the more all other Virtues and Obedience do abound the more this aboundeth And the more any are vicious impious sensual worldly the less they have of these desires after God 3. They encrease in the use of holy means appointed by God and they decay by evil means All sin is against it and all obedience doth promote it 4. It is found most suitable to the tendency of our faculties as their only perfection The only true advancement of Reason
that no temporal punishment or reward can be too great for some crimes and for some atchievments Read but the Statute-books and this will be soon found And that the offences which are against the Infinite Majesty deserve incomparably sorer punishments than any against men as such is past all question As also that love and fidelity and duty to God is incomparably more laudable § 16. XVI If there were no life of retribution after this it would follow that man is more to be feared and obeyed than God and so hath the far greater and higher hand in the Moral Government of the world But the consequent is absurd and blasphemous Ergo so is the Antecedent The argument is clear and past all contradiction The reason of the Major or consequence is Because though God can destroy any wicked man at his pleasure yet all the world's experience sheweth us that ordinarily in this life he doth no such things If a strange judgment overtake some wicked man it is an unusual thing and next to a miracle And usually all things come alike to all the good and the bad die of the same disease the deceitful and the wicked prosper in the world as much as others if either suffer more usually it is the best Videtis quam prospera navigatio à Diis datur sacrilegis saith Dionysius Thunder-bolts strike so few that it is scarce rational much to fear them If one fall under some extraordinary judgement many hundred scape But on the other side Kings and States do ordinarily do execution on those that displease them and break their Laws The case of a Daniel is so rare that it would be no rule to direct a rational course by If the King should forbid me praying as he did Daniel or command me to worship his Image as he did the other three witnesses reason and self-preservation would require me to obey him for its ten to one but he would execute his wrath on me and its an hundred to one God would not deliver me here God suffered thirty or forty thousand to be murdered at once by the French Massacre under Charls 9. He suffered two hundred thousand to be murdered by the Irish Papists He suffered many to be burned in Queen Mary's days He suffered yet greater Havock to be made of the poor Waldenses and Alligenses He suffered most cruel inhumane torments and death upon thousands of innocent persons to change the new-planted Religion in Japan He therefore that careth for his life and peace will think it far safer to venture on the present executions of God than of his King or Enemy or any one that is strong enough to ruine him If I lived under the Turkish Empire and were commanded to deny Christ and to renounce my Baptism and to subscribe that my Baptismal Vow doth not oblige me or any way to lie or be perjur'd or sin against God self-preservation would bid me Venture on the sin for it is an hundred to one but God will spare thee and it is an hundred to one but that the Prince will punish and destroy thee if thou obey him not How few that knew there were no life to come would not rather venture to please a Tyrant or a Robber than God and more fear to displease them and would not by perjury or any commanded villany save himself from their fury and cruelty and would not study more to flatter and humour them than to obey their God And so Man should have the chief government of the world while Man's rewards and punishments were so much more notable than God's Man would be feared and obeyed before God that is Man would be taken for our God These things are clear undeniable truths If there were no life to come self-love and reason would make man more obedient to Man than God and so make Gods of flesh and bloud But whether this be the tendency of the Government of God let Reason judge § 17. XVII A very probable argument may be fetched from the number and quality of intellectual spirits He that looketh to the vast and numerous and glorious Orbs which are above him and thinks of the glorious receptacles of a more glorious sort of creatures and then considereth that we are intellectual agents made to love and honour God as well as they and considers further both the Benignity of God and the communion which those other Orbs have with us will think it probable that we are in progress towards perfection and that we that are so like them may be capable of their happiness § 18. XVIII If in this life God have little of the praise and glory of his works from those whom he created for it but contrarily be much dishonoured by them then there is another life in which he will be more honoured by them But the antecedent is true Ergo so is the consequent What a glorious fabrick hath God set man to contemplate and how little of it is here known so that Philosophy is found to be but a searching and wrangling about things which no man reacheth and yet an inquisitive desire we have And therefore sure there is a state in which these works of God shall be better known of us and God shall have the honour of them more than now His Laws also prescribe us excellent duties and his Servants are very excellent persons according to his own description But our infirmities our errors or divisions our miscarriages and scandals do so dishonour him and his ways that the glory of them is much obscured and blasphemers reproach him to his face and Godliness which the Law of Nature teacheth is derided as a foolish thing and as the meer effect of superstitious fear Now though all this doth no hurt to God yet he is capable of wrong who is uncapable of hurt And it is not to be believed that he will finally put up all this at his creatures hands and never vindicate his honour not never more shew the glory of his Grace his Image his Justice and Judgments than he now doth § 19. XIX The constant testimony of conscience in all men that have not mastered Reason by Sensuality and the common consent of all that are worthy to be called Men in all Ages and Countries upon earth doth shew that the life to come is a truth which is naturally revealed and most sure § 20. XX. The enemy of Souls doth against his will give man a four-fold reason to judge that there is a life of Reward and Punishment hereafter viz. 1. By Compacts with Witches 2. By Apparitions 3. By Satanical Possessions 4. By all kind of subtil importunate temptations which evidence themselves 1. Though some are very incredulous about Witches yet to a full enquiry the evidence is past question that multitudes of such there be Though many are wronged and some may be thought so foolish or melancholy as not to know what they say against themselves yet against such numerous
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
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
Via and manifold mercies helps and means do generally perswade the Consciences of men that there are certain Duties required of them and certain Means to be used by them in order to procure their recovery and salvation and to scape the misery deserved He that shall deny this will turn the Earth into a Hell he will teach men to forbear all means and duties which tend to their conversion pardon and salvation and to justifie themselves in it and desperately give over all Religion and begin the horrours and language of the damned § 9. The very command of God to use his appointed means for mens recovery doth imply that it shall not be in vain and doth not only shew a possibility but so great a hopefulness of the success to the obedient as may encourage them cheerfully to undertake it and carry it through No man that is wise and merciful will appoint his subject a course of means to be used for a thing impossible to be got or will say Labour thus all thy life for it but thou shalt be never the nearer it if thou do If such an Omniscient Physician do but bid me use such means for my cure and health I may take his command for half a promise if I obey § 10. Conscience doth bear witness against impenitent sinners that the cause of their sin and the hinderance of their recovery is in themselves and that God is not unwilling to forgive and save them if they were but meet for forgiveness and salvation Even now mens consciences take God's part against themselves and tell them that the Infinite Good that communicateth all the Goodness to the creature which it hath is not so likely to be the cause of so odious a thing as sin nor of mans destruction as he himself If I see a Sheep lie torn in the high-way I will sooner suspect the Wolf than a Lamb to be the cause if I see them both stand by and if I see a Child drown'd in scalding water I will sooner suspect that he fell in by folly and heedlesness himself than that his Mother wilfully cast him in Is not silly naughty man much liker to be the cause of sin and misery than the wise and gracious God Much more hereafter will the sinners conscience justifie God § 11. God hath planted in the common nature of mankind an inseparable inclination to Truth as Truth and to Good as Good and a Love to themselves and a desire to be happy and a lothness to be miserable together with some reverence and honour of God till they have extinguished the belief of his being and a hatred and horrour of the Devil while they believe he is All which are a fit Stock to plant Reforming-truths in and Principles fit to be improved for mens conversion and the excitation and improvement of them is much of that recovering work § 12. Frequent and deep consideration being a great means of mans recovery by improving the truth which he considereth and restoring Reason to the Throne it is a great advantage to man that he is naturally a Reasoning and Thoughtful creature his Intellect being propense to activity and knowledge § 13. And it is his great advantage that his frequent and great afflictions have a great tendency to awake his Reason to consideration and to bring it to the heart and make it effectual And consequently that God casteth us into such a Sea and wilderness of troubles that we should have these quickening Monitors still at hand § 14. And it is man's great advantage for his recovery that Vanity and Vexation are so legibly written on all things here below and that frustrated expectations and unsatisfied minds and the fore-knowledge of the end of all and bodily pains which find no ease with multitudes of bitter experiences do so abundantly help him to escape the snare the love of present things For all men that perish are condemned for loving the creature above the Creator and therefore such a world which appeareth so evidently to be vain and empty and deceitful and vexatious and which all men know will turn them off at last with as little comfort as if they had never seen a day of pleasure in it I say such a world one would think should give us an antidote against its own deceit and sufficiently wean us from its inordinate love At least this is a very great advantage § 15. It is also a common and great advantage for man's recovery that his life here is so short and his death so certain as that reason must needs tell him that the pleasures of sin are also short and that he should always live as parting with this world and ready to enter into another The nearness of things maketh them to work on the mind of man the more powerfully distant things though sure and great do hardly awaken the mind to their reception and due consideration If men lived 600 or 1000 years in the world it were no wonder if covetousness and carnality and security made them like Devils and worse than wild beasts to one another But when men cannot chuse but know that they must certainly and shortly see the end of all that ever this world will do for them and are never sure of another hour this is so great a help to sober consideration and conversion that it must be monstrous stupidity and brutishness that must overcome it § 16. It is also a great advantage for man's conversion that all the world revealeth God to him and every thing telleth him of the Power and Wisdom and Goodness and Love of God and of his constant Presence and so sheweth him an object which should as easily over-power all sensual objects which would seduce his soul as a mountain will weigh down a feather Though we see not God which would sure put an end to the controversie whether we should be sensual or holy yet while we have a glass as big as all the world which doth continually represent him to us one would think that no reasonable creature should so much over-look him as to be carried from him with the trifles of this world § 17. Men that have not only the foresaid obligations to Holiness Justice and Sobriety in their natures but also all these Hopes and Helps and Means of their recovery from sin to God and yet frustrate all and continue in ungodliness unrighteousness or intemperance impenitently to the end are utterly destitute of all just excuse why God should not punish them with endless misery which is the case of all that perish § 18. All men shall be judged by the Law which was given them of God to live by For it is the same Law which is Regula Officii Judicii God will not condemn men for not believing a truth which mediately or immediately was never revealed to them and which they had no means to know nor for not obeying a Law which was never promulgated to them
nor they could not come to be acquainted with Physical impossibilities are not the matter of crimes or of condemnation § 19. If any persons are brought by these means alone to repent unfeignedly of an ungodly uncharitable and intemperate life and to love God unfeignedly as their God above all and to live a holy obedient life God will not condemn such persons though they wanted supernatural Revelation of his will As I shewed before § 6. § 20. When sinners stand at many degrees distant from God and a holy life and mercy would draw them nearer him by degrees they that have help and mercy sufficient in suo genere to have drawn them nearer God and refused to obey it do forfeit the further helps of mercy and may justly perish and be forsaken by him though their help was not immediately sufficient to all the further degrees of duty which they were to do These things as clear in their proper light I stand not to prove because I would not be unnecessarily tedious to the Reader And so much of GODLINESS or Religion as revealed by Natural Light Obj. But all Heathens and Infidels find not all this in the Book of Nature which you say is there Answ I speak not of what men do see but what they may see if they will improve their Reason All this is undeniably legible in the Book of Nature but the infant the ideot the illiterate the scholar the smatterer the Doctor the considerate the inconsiderate the sensual the blinded and the willing diligent enquirer do not equally see and read that which is written in the same characters to all PART II. Of CHRISTIANITY and Supernatural Revelation CHAP. I. Of the great need of a clearer Light or fuller Revelation of the Will of God than all that hath been opened before WHILST I resolved upon a deep and faithful search into the grounds of all Religion and a review and trial of all that I had my self believed I thought meet first to pass by Persons and shut up my Books and with retired Reason to read the Book of Nature only and what I have there found I have justly told you in the former Part purposely omitting all that might be controverted by any considerable sober reason that I might neither stop my self nor my Reader in the way and that I might not deceive my self with plausible consequences of unsound or questionable antecedents nor discourage my Reader by the casting of some doubtful passages in his way which might tempt him to question all the rest For I know what a deal of handsome structure may fall through the falsness of some one of the supports which seemed to stand a great way out of sight And I have been wearied my self with subtil discourses of learned men who in a long series of Ergo's have thought that they have left all sure behind them when a few false suppositions were the life of all And I know that he who interposeth any doubtful things doth raise a diffidence in the Reader 's mind which maketh him suspect that the ground he standeth on is not firm and whether all that he readeth be not meer uncertain things Therefore leaving things controvertable for a fitter place and time I have thus far taken up so much as is plain and sure which I find of more importance and usefulness to my own information and confirmation than any of those controvertible points would be if I could never so certainly determine them And now having perused the Book of Nature I shall cast up the account and try what is yet wanting and look abroad into the opinions of others in the world and search whence that which is yet wanting may be most fully and safely and certainly supplied § 1. And first when I look throughout the world I find that though all the evidence aforesaid for the necessity of a holy virtuous life be unquestionable in naturâ rerum yet most of the world observe it not or discern but little of it nor much regard the light without or the secret witness of their consciences within Natural light or evidence is so unsuccessful in the world that it loudly telleth us something is yet wanting what ever it is We can discern what it is which is necessary to man's happiness but we can hardly discern whether de facto any considerable number at best do by the teaching of nature alone attain it When we enquire into the Writings of the best of the Philosophers we find so little evidence of real holiness that is of the foresaid Resignation Subjection and Love to God as God that it leaveth us much in doubt whether indeed they were holy themselves or not and whether they made the Knowledge Love Obedience and Praise of God the end and business of their lives However there is too great evidence that the world lieth in darkness and wickedness where there is no more than natural light § 2. I find therefore that the discovery of the will of God concerning our duty and our end called The Law of Nature is a matter of very great difficulty to them that have no supernatural light to help them Though all this is legible in Nature which I have thence transcribed yet if I had not had another Teacher I know not whether ever I should have found it there Nature is now a very hard book when I have learnt it by my Teachers help I can tell partly what is there but at the first perusal I could not understand it It requireth a great deal of time and study and help to understand that which when we do understand it is as plain to us as the high-way § 3. Thence it must needs follow that it will be but few that will attain to understand the necessary parts of the Law of Nature aright by that means alone and the multitude will be lest in darkness still The common people have not leisure for so deep and long a search into nature as a few Philosophers made nor are they disposed to it And though reason obligeth them in so necessary a case to break through all difficulties they have not so full use of their reason as to do it Obj. But as Christian Teachers do instruct the people in that which they cannot have leisure to search out themselves so why may not Philosophers who have leisure for the search in s truct the people quickly who have not leisure to find out the truth without instruction Answ Much might be done if all men did their best But 1. The difficulty is such that the learned themselves are lamentably imperfect and unsatisfi'd as I shall further shew 2. Though the vulgar cannot search out the truth without help yet is it necessary that by help they come to see with their own eyes and rest not in a humane belief alone especially when their Teachers are of so many minds that they know not which of them to believe To learn the truth
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
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
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
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
our confessions as well without it and when the tongue is made the natural instrument to express the mind and there are variety of other signs it is incredible that all the world should ever even so early hit upon this one strange way of expression without some special revelation or command of God 2. And it cannot be said with any credibility that God made any other revelation of his will to the world for Sacrificing beside what is made in Nature and in holy Scripture for who ever dreamt of such a thing or hath delivered us any such revelation and told us when and to whom and how it was made 3. And it is not credible that it was taken up erroneously by all the world as their vices or superstitions are for though it is past question that error hath caused the abuse of it through the world yet for the thing it self there is no probability of such an original For what can we imagin should induce men to it and make all Nations how various soever their Idols are to agree in this way of worshipping and propitiating them There is nothing of sensuality in it that by gratifying a lust of the flesh might have such an universal effect And it must be some universal Light or some universal Lust or Interest that must cause such an universal concord Nay on the contrary you shall find that Tradition and the custom of their Fore-fathers is the common argument pleaded for sacrificing through all the world even in the Ancients Historical reports of it 4. Therefore it remaineth very probable at least that they received it indeed by tradition from their fore-fathers and that could be from none originally but the universal progenitor of mankind who was capable of conveying it to all his posterity for no History mentioneth any later original nor could any later than Adam or Noah have made it so universal And no man can imagine why God should institute it if it were not to intimate the translating of our punishment into our Redeemer and to point us to the great Sacrifice which is truly propitiatory and is the great demonstration of his Justice who in Mercy doth forgive § 7. II. The second Witness of the Spirit which is inherent and constitutive to the Gospel of Christ is that image of God the unimitable character of Divinity which by the holy Spirit is put into the doctrin of Christ as the very life or soul of it together with the same on the pattern of his own life 1. On Christ himself the unimitable Image of God in his Perfection is a testimony of his veracity which I ascribe to the holy Spirit as the ultimate Operator in the Trinity even that holy Spirit by which he was conceived and which fell upon him at his Baptism and which Matth. 12. his enemies did blaspheme Many men have so lived that no notable sin of commission hath been found or observed in them by the world at a distance But the most vertuous except Christ was never without discernable infirmities and sins of omission No man ever convicted him of any sin either in word or deed His obedience to the Law of God was every way perfect He was the most excellent Representative of the Divine Perfections The Omnipotency of God appeared in his Miracles The Wisdom of God in his holy Doctrin and the Love of God in his matchless expressions of Love and in all the Holiness of his life He was so far from pride worldliness sensuality malice impatiency or any sin that the world had never such a pattern of self-denial humility contempt of all the wealth and honours of the world charity meekness patience c. as in him He obeyed his Father to the death He healed mens bodies and shewed his pity to their souls and opened the way of life even to his enemies He instructed the ignorant and preached repentance to the impenitent and suffered patiently the unthankful requitals of them that rendred him evil for good He endured patiently to be reviled scorned buffeted spit upon crowned with thorns nailed to a cross and put to death and this upon the false accusation and imputation of being an evil doer In a word He was perfect and sinless and manifested first all that obedience and holiness in his life which he put into his Laws and prescribed unto others And such Perfection is inseparable from Veracity Obj. How know we what faults he might have which come not to our knowledge Answ 1. You may see by his enemies accusations partly what he was free from when you see all that malice could invent to charge him with 2. If the Narrative of his Life in the Gospel have that evident proof which I shall anon produce there can remain no doubt of the perfect holiness and innocency of Christ in his Person and his Life Object We find him accused of many crimes as of being a gluttonous person and a Wine-bibber of blasphemy and impiety and treason Answ The very accusations are such as shew their falshood and his innocency He is called a gluttonous person and a Wine-bibber because he did eat and drink as other men in temperance and sobriety and did not tie himself to a wilderness life of austerity in total abstinence from common meats and wine as John Baptist did and as they thought he that professed extraordinary sanctity should have done They accused him of eating with publicans and sinners because he went to them as a Physician to heal their souls and lived a sociable charitable life and did not observe the Laws of proud Pharisaical separation They accused him of blasphemy and treason for saying the truth that he was the Son of God and the King of Israel And of impiety for talking of pulling down the Temple when he did but prophesie of his own death and resurrection And this was all that malice had to say Object He carried himself contemptuously to Magistrates He called Herod the King That Fox The Scribes and Pharisees he railed at and called them hypocrites painted sepulchres a generation of vipers c. When he was called to answer whether they should pay tribute to Cesar he doth but put off the resolution by ambiguity instead of an open exhorting them to obedience and saith Give to Caesar the things that are Caesars And when he was called to for tribute for him he payeth it but as a way to avoid offence having pleaded first his own immunity Answ 1. His speeches of Herod and the Scribes and Pharisees are not revilings but a free and just reprehension of their sin which being done by God's commission and in his Name and for his cause is no more to be called reviling than an arrest of a Felon or Traitor in the Kings name or an accusation put in against him for his crimes should be so called God will not forbear damning impenitent rebels though they call it cruelty nor will he forbear the reprehension and shaming of their
villanies though they call it railing nor will he flatter proud rebellious dust though they call flattery a necessary civility nor will he give leave to his Messengers to leave sin in honour and to let the proud do what their list and quietly damn themselves and others without plain reproof though it be called unreverent sawciness or sedition 2. And he that considereth how little Title Caesar had to the Kingdom of the Jews and that the sword alone is a better proof of force and strength than of Authority and is a Plea which an Usurper may have on his side will rather praise the submission and peaceableness of Christ than blame him as disloyal But for the doctrin of Obedience in general who hath ever taught it more plainly and pressingly than Christ and his Apostles 2. The Gospel or doctrin of Christ it self also hath the very Image and Superscription of God I will not say imprinted on it for that is too little but intrinsecally animating and constituting it which is apparent in the Matter and the Method and the Stile 1. The Matter and Design containeth the most wonderful expression of the Wisdom of God that ever was made to man on earth All is mysterious yet admirably fit consistent and congruous as is before declared That a world which is visibly and undeniably fallen into wickedness and misery should have a Redeemer Saviour and Mediator towards God! That he should be one that is near enough to God and unto us and hath the nature of both that he should be the second Adam the Root of the Redeemed and Regenerate that God should give all mercy from himself from his own bounty and fulness and not as unwilling be perswaded to it by another and therefore that the Redeemer be not any Angel or intermediate person but God himself that thus God come nearer unto man who is revolted from him to draw up man again to Him that he lose not the world and yet do not violate his governing Justice that he be so merciful as not to be unrighteous nor permit his Laws and Government to be despised and yet so just as to save the penitent renewed souls that he give man a new Law and conditions of salvation suitable to his lapsed guilty state and leave him not under a Law and conditions which were fitted to the innocent that he revealed himself to the apostate world in that way which only is fit for their recovery that is in his admirable love and goodness that so love might win our love and attract those hearts which under guilt and the terrors of condemning justice would never have been brought to love him that guilty souls have such evidence of God's reconciliation to encourage them to expect his pardon and to come to him with joy and boldness in their addresses having a Mediator to trust in and his Sacrifice Merits and acceptable Name to plead with God that Justice and Mercy are so admirably conjoyned in these effects that Satan and the world and death should be so conquered in a suffering way and man have so perfect a pattern to imitate for self-denial humility contempt of honour wealth and life and exact obedience and resignation to the will of God with perfect love to God and man that the world should be under such an universal Administrator and the Church be all united in such a Head and have one in their nature that hath risen from the dead to be in possession of the glory which they are going to and thence to send down his Spirit to sanctifie them and fit them for Heaven and afterward to be their Judge and to receive them unto blessedness and that sinners now be not condemned meerly for want of innocency but for rejecting the grace and mercy which would have saved them that we have all this taught us by a Messenger from Heaven and a perfect rule of life delivered to us by him and all this sealed by a Divine attestation that this doctrin is suited to the capacity of the weakest and yet so mysterious as to exercise the strongest wits and is delivered to us not by an imposing force but by the exhortations and perswasions of men like our selves commissioned to open the evidences of truth and necessity in the Gospel All this is no less than the Image and wonderful effect of the Wisdom of God And his Goodness and Love is as resplendent in it all for this is the effect of the whole design to set up a Glass in the work of our Redemption in which God's Love and Goodness should be as wonderfully represented to mankind as his Power was in the works of Creation Here sinful man is saved by a means which he never thought of or desired he is fetch'd up from the gates of hell redeemed from the Sentence of the righteous violated Law of God and the execution of his Justice The Eternal Word so condescendeth to man in the assumption of our nature as that the greatness of the love and mercy incomprehensible to man becomes the greatest difficulty to our belief He revealeth to us the things of the world above and bringeth life and immortality to light He dwelleth with men He converseth with the meanest He preacheth the glad tidings of Salvation to the world He refuseth not such familiarity with the poorest or the worst as is needful to their cure He spendeth his time in doing good and healing all manner of bodily diseases He refuseth the honours and riches of the world and the pleasures of the flesh to work out our salvation He beareth the ingratitude and abuse of sinners and endureth to be scorned buffeted spit upon tormented and crucified by those to whom he had done no greater wrong than to seek their salvation He maketh himself a Sacrifice for sin to shew the world what sin deserved and to save them from the deserved punishment God had at first decreed and declared that death should be the punishment of sin and Satan had maliciously drawn man to it by contradicting this threatning of God and making man believe that God would falsifie his word and that he did envy man the felicity of his advancement to be liker God in knowledge And now Christ will first justifie the truth and righteousness of God and will demonstrate himself by dying in our stead that death is indeed the wages of sin and will shew the world that God is so far from envying their felicity that he will purchase it at the dearest rate and deliver them freely from the misery which sin and Sathan had involved them in Thus Enemies are reconciled by the sufferings of him whom they offended even by his sufferings in the flesh whose Godhead could not suffer and by his death as Man who as God was most immortal As soon as he was risen he first appear'd to a Woman who had been a sinner and sent her as his first messenger with words of love and comfort to his
themselves as being wholly his own 3. It absolutely subjecteth the Soul to God and sitteth up his Authority as absolute over our thoughts and words and all our actions And maketh the Christians life a course of careful obedience to his Laws so far as they understand them 4. It taketh up a Christians mind with the thankful sense of his Redemption so that the pardon of his sins and his deliverance from hell and his hopes of everlasting glory do form his soul to a holy gratitude and make the expressions of it to be his work 5. It giveth man a sense of the love of God as his gracious Redeemer and so of the goodness and mercifulness of his Nature It causeth them to think of God as their greatest Benefactor and as one that loveth them and as LOVE it self and so it reconcileth their estranged alienated minds to him and maketh the love of God to be the very constitution and life of the Soul 6. It causeth men to believe that there is an everlasting Glory to be enjoyed by holy Souls where we shall see the glory of God and be filled with his love and exercised in perfect love and praise and be with Christ his Angels and Saints for evermore It causeth them to take this felicity for their portion and to set their hearts upon it and to make it the chief care and business of all their lives to seek it 1. It causeth them to live in the joyful hopes and foresight of this blessedness and to do all that they do as means thereunto and thus it sweetneth all their lives and maketh Religion their chief delight 8. It accordingly employeth their thoughts and tongues so that the praises of God and the mention of their everlasting blessedness and of the way thereto is their most delightful conference as it beseemeth travellers to the City of God and so their political converse is in heaven 9. And thus it abateth the fears of death as being but their passage to everlasting life And those that are confirmed Christians indeed do joyfully entertain it and long to see their glorified Lord and the blessed Majesty of their great Creator 10. It causeth men to love all sanctified persons with a special love of complacency and all mankind with a love of benevolence even to love our neighbours as our selves and to abhor that selfishness which would engage us against our neighbours good 11. It causeth men to love their enemies and to forgive and forbear and to avoid all unjust and unmerciful revenge It maketh men meek long-suffering and patient though not impassionate insensible or void of that anger which is the necessary opposer of sin and folly 12. It employeth men in doing all the good they can it maketh them long for the holiness and happiness of one another's souls and desirous to do good to those that are in need according to our power 13. This true Regeneration by the Spirit of Christ doth make those Superiours that hath it even Princes Magistrates Parents and Masters to Rule those under them in holiness love and justice with self-denial seeking more the pleasing of God and the happiness of their Subjects for soul and body than any carnal selfish interest of their own and therefore it must needs be the blessing of that happy Kingdom Society or Family which hath such a holy Governour O that they were not so few 14. It maketh subjects and children and servants submissive and conscionable in all the duties of their Relations and to honour their Superiours as the Officers of God and to obey them in all just subordination to him 15. It causeth men to love Justice and to do as they would be done by and to desire the welfare of the souls bodies estates and honour of their neighbours as their own 16. It causeth men to subdue their adpetites and lusts and fleshly desires and to set up the government of God and sanctified Reason over them and to take their flesh for that greatest enemy in our corrupted state which we must chiefly watch against and master as being a Rebel against God and Reason It alloweth a man so much sensitive pleasure as God forbiddeth not and as tendeth to the holiness of the soul and furthereth us in God's service and all the rest it rebuketh and resisteth 17. It causeth men to estimate all the wealth and honour and dignities of the world as they have respect to God and a better world and as they either help or hinder us in the pleasing of God and seeking immortality and as they are against God and our spiritual work and happiness it causeth us to account them but as meer vanity loss and dung 18. It keepeth men in a life of watchfulness against all those temptations which would draw them from this holy course and in a continual warfare against Satan and his Kingdom under conduct of Jesus Christ 19. It causeth men to prepare for sufferings in this world and to look for no great matters here to expect persecutions crosses losses wants defamations injuries and painful sicknesses and death and to spend their time in preparing all that furniture of mind which is necessary to their support and comfort in such a day of trial that they may be patient and joyful in tribulation and bodily distress as having a comfortable relation to God and Heaven which will incomparably weigh down all 20. It causeth men to acknowledge that all this grace and mercy is from the love of God alone and to depend on him for it by faith in Christ and to devote and refer all to himself again and make it our ultimate end to please him and thus to subserve him as the first Efficient the chief Dirigent and the ultimate final Cause of all of whom and through whom and to whom are all things to whom be Glory for ever Amen This is the true description of that Regenerate Sanctified state which the Spirit of Christ doth work on all whom he will save and that are Christians indeed and not in Name only And certainly this is the Image of God's Holiness and the just constitution and use of a reasonable Soul And therefore he that bringeth men to this is a Real Saviour of whom more anon II. And it is very considerable by what means and in what manner all this is done It is done by the preaching of the Gospel of Christ and that in plainness and simplicity The curiosity of artificial oratory doth usually but hinder the success as painting doth the light of windows It was a few plain men that came with spiritual power and not with the entising words of humane wisdom or curiosities of vain Philosophy who did more in this work than any of their successors have done since As in Naturals every thing is apt to communicate its own nature and not anothers heat causeth heat and cold causeth cold so wit by communication causeth wit and common learning causeth common
vain a bubble the honour of man and the glory of this world is will not be offended at the King of Saints because his Kingdom is not of this World And he that knoweth any thing of the difference between God and the Creature Heaven and Earth will not despise the Eternal Jehovah because he weareth not a silken Coat and dwelleth not in the guilded Palaces of a Prince If Earthly Glory had been the highest it had been the glory of Christ And if he had come to make us happy by the rich mans way Luk. 16. To be cloathed in Purple and Silk and faring sumptuously every day then would he have led us this way by his example But when it is the work of a Saviour to save us from the flesh and from this present evil World the Means must be suited to the end Obj. XII But it is a very hard thing to believe that person to be God Incarnate and the Saviour of the World who suffered on a Cross as a Blasphemer and a Traytor that usurped the Title of a King Answ The Cross of Christ hath ever been the stumbling-block of the proud and worldly sort of men But it is the confidence and consolation of true Believers For 1. It was not for his own sins but for ours that he suffered Even so was it prophesied of him Isa 53.4 Surely he hath born our griefs and carryed our sorrows yet did we esteem him stricken of God and afflicted But he was wounded for our transgressions he was bruised for our iniquities the chastisement of our peace was upon him and with his stripes we are healed All we like Sheep have gone astray we have every one turned to his own way and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all And it is impudent ingratitude to make those his sufferings the occasion of our unbelief which we were the causes of our selves and to be ashamed of that Cross which we laid upon him by our sins It is not worth the labour to answer the slanders of his accusers about his usurpation of a Kingdom when they believed it not themselves He was above a worldly Kingdom And it could be no blasphemy for him to say that he was the Son of God when he had so fully proved it by his works 2. His suffering as a reputed Malefactor on a Cross was a principal part of the merit of his Patience For many a man can bear the corporal pain who cannot so far deny his honour as to bear the imputation of a Crime For the innocent Son of God that was never convict of sin to suffer under the name of a Blasphemer and a Traytor was greater condescention than to have suffered under the name of an innocent person 3. And in all this it was needfull that the Saviour of Mankinde should not only be a Sacrifice and Ransom for our sinfull Souls but also should heal us of the over-love of Life and Honour by his Example Had not his self-denyal and patience extended to the loss of all things in this World both life it self and the reputation of his righteousness it had not been a perfect example of self-denyal and patience unto us And then it had been unmeet for so great a work as the cure of our Pride and love of Life Had Christ come to deliver the Jews from Captivity or to make his Followers great on Earth as Mahomet did he would have suited the Means to such an End But when he came to save men from pride and self-self-love and the esteem of this World and to bring them to Patience and full obedience to the will of God and to place all their happiness in another life true Reason telleth us that there was no example so fit for this end as Patient submission to the greatest sufferings The Cross of Christ then shall be our glory and not our stumbling-block or shame Let the Children of the Devil boast that they are able to do hurt and to trample upon others The Disciples of Christ will rather boast that they can patiently endure to be abused as knowing that their Pride and Love of the World is the enemy which they are most concern'd in conquering Obj. XIII It was but a few mean unlearned persons who believed in him at the first And it is not past a sixth part of the World that yet believeth in him And of these few do it judiciously and from their hearts but because their Kings or Parents or Countrey are of that Religion Answ 1. As to the Number I have answered it before It is no great number comparatively that are Kings or Lords or Learned men and truly judicious and wise will you therefore set light by any of these Things excellent are seldom common The Earth hath more Stones than Gold or Pearls All those believed in Christ who heard his word and saw his works and had wise considerate honest hearts to receive the sufficient evidence of truth The greater part are every where ignorant rash injudicious dishonest and carryed away with prejudice fancy custom error and carnal interest If all men have means in its own kind sufficient to bring them to believe to understand so much as God immediately requireth of them it is their fault who after this are ignorant and unbelieving and if it prove their misery let them thank themselves But yet Christ will not leave the success of his undertaking so far to the will of man as to be uncertain of his expected fruits He hath his chosen ones throughout the World and will bring them effectually to Faith and Holiness to Grace and Glory though all the Powers of Hell do rage against it In them is his delight and them he will conform to his Fathers will and restore them to his Image and fit them to love and serve him here and enjoy him for ever And though they are not the greater number they shall be the everlasting demonstration of his Wisdom Love and Holiness And when you see all the worlds of more blessed Inhabitants you will see that the Damned were the smaller number and the Blessed in all probability many millions to one If the Devil have the greater number in this World God will have the greater number in the rest 2. It was the wise design of Jesus Christ that few in comparison should be converted by his personal converse or teaching and thousands might be suddenly converted upon his Ascension and the coming down of the Holy Ghost Both because his Resurrection and Ascension were part of the Articles to be believed and were the chiefest of all his Miracles which did convert men And therefore he would Rise from the dead before the multitude should be called And because the Spirit as it was his extraordinary Witness and Advocate on Earth was to be given by him after he ascended into glory And he would have the World see that the Conversion of men to Faith and Sanctity was not the
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
to a soul when it is separated from the corporeal spirits Or if the soul out of the body were as liable as it is by diseases of the body while it is in it to the loss of memory yet all those arguments which prove the Life of Retribution hereafter do fully prove that God will provide it a way of exercise and prevent all those hinderances of memory which may make his Judgment and Retribution void Again therefore I say To argue ab ignotis against clear evidence in matters that our own everlasting joy or sorrow is concerned in so deeply is a folly that no tongue can express with its due aggravations OBJECTION XX. THe belief of the immortality of souls doth fill men with fears and draw them to superstition and trouble the peace of Kingdoms by unavoidable sects in the prosecution of those things which are of such transcendent weight when otherwise men might live in quietness to themselves and others and in promoting of the publick good Answ This is the maddest objection of all the rest but in our days there are men found that are no wiser than to make it I have answered it fully in divers popular Treatises as that called A Saint or a Bruit c. 1. The greatest and best things are liable to the worst abuses Thus you may argue against Reason that it doth but fill mens brains with knavish craft and enable them to do mischief and to trouble the world and to live themselves in cares and fears c. Upon many such reasons Cotta in Cic. de Nat. Deor. doth chide God for making man a rational creature and saith he had been happier without it And were it not for this wit and reason we should have none of these evils which you have here now mentioned Why then is not reason as well as Religion on that account to be rejected On the same reason Philosophy and Learning may be accused as it is with the Turks and Moscovites What abundance of sects and voluminous contentions and tired consuming studies have they caused witness all the volumes of Philosophers and School-men On the same account you may cry down Kings and Civil Government and Riches and all that is valued in the world for what wars and bloudshed hath there been in the world for Crowns and Kingdoms what hatred and contention for honour and wealth If you could make all men swine they would not stir for gold or pearls or if they were dogs they would not fight for Kingdoms and if they be blind and impious worldlings they will not be zealous about Religion unless to dis-spirit it and to reduce it to the service of their fleshly interest which is the hypocrites zeal No man will contend for that which he valueth not But 2. Consider that though dogs will not fight for Crowns they will fight for bones and some times need men of reason to stave them off And though swine fight not for gold they will fight for draff and burst their bellies if they be not governed And though unbelievers and Atheists trouble not the world to promote Religion they set Families Towns and Countries and Kingdoms together by the ears for their worldly pelf and fleshly interest Enquire whether the wars of the world be not most for carnal interest even where Religion hath been pretended and hearken in Westminster-hall and at the Assizes whether most of the contendings there are such as are caused by Religion or by the love of the world and of the flesh And where Religion seemeth to be a part of the cause it is the Atheists and ungodly that are commonly the chief contenders who think it not enough to hope for no life to come themselves but they cannot endure other men that do it because they seem wiser and better and happier than they and by their holiness gall their consciences and condemn them 3. The extremity of this objections impudency appeareth in this above all that it is most notorious that there is no effectual cure for all the villanies of the world but true Religion and shall the cure be made the cause of that disease 1. Read and judge in Nature and Scripture whether the whole matter of Religion be not perfectly contrary to the vices of the world Will it trouble Kingdoms or disquiet souls to love God above all and to honour and obey him and be thankful for his mercies and to trust his promises and to rejoice in hope of endless glory and to love our neighbours as our selves and to do no injustice or wrong to any to forbear wrath and malice lust adultery theft and lying and all the rest expressed in this treatise 2. Is it not for want of Religion that all the vices and contentions of the world are Would not men be better subjects and better servants and better neighbours if they had more Religion Would not they lie and deceive and steal and wrong others less Do you think he that believeth a life to come or he that believeth it not is liker to cut your purse or rob you by the high way or bear false witness against you or be perjured or take that which is not his own or any such unrighteous thing Is he liker to live as a good subject or servant who looketh for a reward in heaven for it or he that looketh to die as a beast doth Is he liker to do well and avoid evil who is moved by the effectual hopes and fears of another life or he that hath no such hopes and fears but thinketh that if he can escape the Gallows there is no further danger Had you rather your servant that is trusted with your estate did believe that there is a life to come or that there is none Nay why doth not your objection militate as strongly against the thief's believing that there will be an Assize For if the belief of an Assize did not trouble him he might quietly take that which he hath a mind to and do what he list but this fills his heart with fears and troubles 3. Compare those parts of the world Brasil and Soldania c. which believe not a life to come if any such there be with those that do and see which belief hath the better effects 4. What is there of any effectual power to restrain that man from any villany which he hath power to carry out or policy to cover who doth not believe a life to come 5. And if you believe it not what will you do with Reason or any of your faculties or your time How will you live in the world to any better purpose than if you had slept out all your life What talk you of the publick good when the denying of our final true felicity denyeth all that is truely Good both publick and private But so sottish and malignant an objection deserveth pity more than confutation Whatever Religious persons did ever offend these men with any reall Crimes I can assure
copiously proveth Numen coeleste rerum humanarum curam gerere nec universi tantummodo sed hominum etiam singulorum rerum quoque singularum rebus humanis praesto esse generique humano non ad bona vere sic dicta duntaxat sed ad vitae hujus commoda adminicula suppetitias ferre Deum itaque ante omnia colendum ad omnia invocandum per omnia cogitandum in omnilus agnoscendum comprobandum de omnibus laudandum celebrandum huic uni in omni negotio simpliciter obsequendum ab ipso quicquid obvenerit animo prompto ac lubenti excipiendum atque amplexandum nihil mellus nihil convenientius nihil conducibilius nihil opportunius aut tempestivius quà m id quicquid existat quodipse voluerit existimandum quâ—cunque ducere visum fuerit citra tergiversationem aut murmurationem sponte sequendum locum stationemque quemcunque is assignaverit strenuè tuendum enixè tenendum etiamsi mortem millies oppetere oporteret Haec de Numine Stoici erga numen affectu De homine officiis Hunc corditus diligere curare sustinere injuriaque omni ut quae impietatis etiam notam inurat abstinere beneficentia prosequi nec sibi soli genitum censere se aut vivere sed in commune bonum ac beneficium cunciis pro facultate viribusque semet exhibere re ipsa reique bene gestae conscientia nec hac etiam ipsa quadantenus reputata citra vestem aut mercedis spem commodive proprii intuitum contentum agere à beneficio uno praestito ad aliud transire nec unquam benefaciendo defatisci sed vitae telam tanquam vivendi fructus hic sit benefactis siâ—i invicem continenter annexis ita totum pertexere ut nusquam interveniat hiatus ullus vel minimus beneficii loco quod benefecerit habentem sibique profuisse existimantem si alii cuiquam usui esse poterit nec extra se proinde quicquam vel laudis humanae vel lucelli aut aucupantem aut expetentem Ad haec nihil mentis cultu antiquius nihil honesti studio petius aut pretiosius habere ab eo denique quod officii sui esse norit nulla vel vitae nedum alius rei cujuspiam cupidine abducendum nulla mortis cruciatusve illius ne dum damni aut detrimenti formidine abigendum se permittere Haec Stoicorum praecepta sunt When will the whole tribe of the Epicureans ever give the world such a Prince as Antonine who taught the world that a Prince should be a Philosopher and that self-government and a well-ordered mind and life is the first point in the government and well-ordering of the Common-wealth and that Monarchy may be so used as to consist as well with the peoples interest and liberty as the most accurate Venetian Democraty The only hurt that ever he was charged to do being this that he lived so well that he seemed somewhat to hinder the succeeding lustre of Christianity even in Constantine and Theodosius themselves And as for the Stoicks great doctrine of Virtues self-sufficiency to felicity which Plato and Aristotle also own against the Epicurean felicity of Pleasure it is undoubtedly a very great and sacred Theological verity But it implieth a higher truth which I have vindicated in this Treatise viz. That man hath an ultimate end above himself and that God for all that he is perfect and can receive no addition of felicity is both his own and our end though intendere finem is not spoken univocally of God and man and that his Goodness as essential in himself and as his own perfection is in the order of our conceptions much higher than his Benignity or Goodness as related to the good of man I have read some late self-esteeming Writers who love not to be named by way of opposition who have undertaken the defence of the Epicurean heresie that Pleasure is formally both man's felicity and his ultimate end but their reasonings for it are not half so handsome and adapted to deceive as the discourse of Torquatus in Cicero de finib is which indeed may seem very plausible till Cicero's excellent Answer is compared with it It is a fair pretence to say That a good man is pleased with nothing but that which is good and that true pleasure is to be found especially in virtue and that temperance and chastity should be more pleasant than excess and luxury and yet that the best men when they do any great and excellent work do therefore do it because it pleaseth them But the truth is that Bonum qua bonum est objectum voluntatis good and appetibile are the same it is first good because it pleaseth us but it pleaseth us because it is esteemed by us to be good And the greatest good should greathest please us because it is first the greatest good And as God in himself is infinitely better than any delight or felicity of ours so is he therefore to be more the object of our delight And as the good of the world or of Kingdoms or of thousands is better than the pleasure of one individual person so should it be better loved and more delighted in For if Good as Good be appetible and delectable then the greatest Good must have the greatest love and pleasure And nature it self telleth us that he that would not rather be annihilated than the world should be annihilated or would not lose his life and honour to save the life and honour and felicity of King and Kingdom is no good member of Civil Society but a person blinded by selfishness and sensuality Therefore man hath something above himself and his own pleasure to seek and to take pleasure in How far you can congruously say that you take pleasure in your pleasure and so make your own pleasure the object yea the only ultimate object of it self I shall not now stay to enquire But certain I am that though our love which is our complacency in the beloved object is our actus finalis yet is it not the objectum finale to it self but God himself the infinite Good is that final Object and the Publick Good is a more noble and excellent object than our own And though it be truly our felicity to love God yet we love him not chiefly because it is our felicity to love him but because he is chiefly Good and Lovely and then in the second instant we love our own love and delight even in our own delights Indeed the sensitive life as such can seek nothing higher than its own delight but the rational life is made to intend and prosecute that end which reason telleth us is best and to prefer that before our selves which is better than our selves And therefore the Epicurean opinion which maketh Pleasure our highest end doth shew that the Sect is sensual and bruitish and have brought their reason into servitude to their appetites and
It is not one part of the Sun that moveth and another which illuminateth and another which heateth But the whole Sun if it be wholly Fire or aethereal matter doth move the whole illuminateth and the whole doth heat And Motion Light and Heat are not Qualities inherent in it But Motion Illumination and Calefaction are Acts flowing immediately from its Essence as containing the faculties or powers of such acts He that could write a perfect method of Physicks and Morality would shew us Trinity in Unity through all its parts from first to last But as the Veins Arteries and Nerves the Vessels of the Natural Vital and Animal humours and spirits are easily discernable in their trunks and greater branches but not so when they are minute and multiplied into thousands so is it in this Method But I must desire the Reader to observe that though I here explain this Trinity of Active Principles in the Divine Essence which is so evident to Natural Reason it self as to be past all controversie Yet whether indeed the Trinity of Hypostases or Persons which is part of the Christian Faith be not somewhat distinct from this is a question which here I am not to meddle with till I come to the second part of the Treatise Nor is it my purpose to deny it but only to prepare for the better understanding of it Of which more shall there afterward be said § 32. And thus all Creatures and especially our selves declare that there is a first Being and Cause of them all who is a Substance Life a Spirit or Minde an Active Power Vnderstanding and Will perfect eternall independent and self-sufficient not compounded not passible not mutable corruptible or mortall Immense Omnipresent Incomprehensible only One Omnipotent Omniscient and most Good most Happy in Being Himself in Knowing himself and enjoying him most Holy transcending all the Creatures of a Perfect Will the Fountain of all Morall Good Love or Benigne having a Trinity of essential Transcendent Principles in unity of Essence which have made their adumbration or appearance on the World whereof though he be not the constitutive form or Soul He is to it much more the first Efficient Dirigent and ultimate final Cause of all That is THERE IS A GOD. CHAP. VI. Of GOD as RELATED to his Creatures especially to Man And I. as his OWNER PAssing by all that is doubtfull and controverted among men truly Rational and taking before me only that which is certain undenyable and clear and wherein my own Soul is past all doubt I shall proceed in the same method secundum ordinem cognoscendi non essendi The word GOD doth not only signifie all that I have been proving viz. The perfect nature of the first Cause but also his Relations to us his Creatures And therefore till I have opened and proved those Relations I have done but part of my work to prove that THERE IS A GOD. § 1. GOD having produced Man and all the World by his Power Vnderstanding and Will is by immediate resultancy Related to him as his CREATOR Though he made his Body of pre-existent Matter yet was that Matter made of nothing and therefore God is properly Mans CREATOR and not his Fabricator only And a CREATURE is a Relation which inferreth the Correlate a CREATOR as a Son doth a Father This therefore is Gods first grand Relation unto Man which hath no cause to produce it but his actual Creation which is its fundamentum § 2. This Grand prime Relation inferreth a Trinity of Grand Relations viz. That God is our OWNER our RVLER and our BENEFACTOR of which we are now to speak in order That these Three are justly distinguished from each other is past doubt to all that understand what is meant by the terms An Owner as such is not a Ruler or Benefactor a Ruler as such is not an Owner or a Benefactor A Benefactor as such is neither an Owner nor a Ruler And the enumeration is sufficient All humane affairs or actions of converse and society belong to Man in one of these three Relations or such as are subordinate to them and meer dependents on them or compounded of them They are in some respect the Genera and in some as it were the Elements of all other Relations And from the manner of men they are applyed to God with as much propriety of speech as any terms that man can use concerning him And he that could draw a true scheme or method of the Body of Morality or Theology for all is one with me would reduce all the dealings of God with Man which are subsequent to the fundamental Act of Creation to these three Relations and accordingly distinguish of them all Yet in the Mixt acts as most are such distinguishing only of the compounding Elements I mean the interest of these three Relations as making up the several acts § 3. A full Owner or Proprietor is called Dominus in the strictest sense and is one that hath a Jus possidendi disponendi utendi a right of having or possessing disposing and using without any copartner or superior Proprietor to restrain him The meaning is better known by the bare terms of denomination through common use than by definition We know what it meaneth when a man saith of any thing It is mine own There are defective half-proprieties of Co-partners and subordinate Proprietors which belong not to our present case The word Dominus Dominuim is sometime taken laxely as comprehending both Propriety and Rule and sometime improperly for Government or Command it self But among Lawyers it is most commonly taken properly and strictly for an OWNER as such But lest any be contentious about the use of the word I here put instead of it the word Owner and Proprietor as being more free from ambiguity § 4. GOD is jure Creationis Conservationis the most absolute Owner or Proprietor of Man and the whole Creation It is not possible that there should be a more full and certain title to propriety than Creation and total conservation is He that giveth the World all its Being and that of nothing and continueth that being and was beholden to no pre-existent matter nor to any co-ordinate concause nor dependent on any superiour cause in his causation but is himself the first independent efficient total cause of being and well-being and all the means thereto must needs be the absolute Owner of all without the least limitation or exception It is not the supereminency of Gods nature excelling all created beings that is the foundation of this his Propriety in the creature For Excellency is no title to Propriety And yet he that is unicus in capacitate possidendi that is so transcendently excellent as to have no Copartner in a claim might by Occupation be sole Proprietor in that kinde of Propriety secundum quid which Man is capable of Because there is no other whom he can be said to wrong But GOD hath a
ascent and make no stay in these lower acts otherwise it will be privatively sinfull § 11. Therefore God multiplyeth Mercies upon Man that he might facilitate this first act of Love by gratitude Not that these Mercies being good to our selves should lead us to love God ultimately for our selves But they should help us first to love him for our selves as the immediate passage to a higher act of Love with which we must love Him in and for Himself and our selves for Him § 12. Therefore God hath planted into our Natures the Principle of self-love that it might suit our Natures to the Mercies of God and make them sweet to us Not that we should arise to no higher an esteem of them but that this sweetness in them which respecteth our selves and is relished by self-love should lead us to the Fountain of perfect Goodness from which they flow Our very senses and appetites are given us to this end not that we should judge by no higher faculties but that the delights of the patible or sensible qualities in the Creatures by affecting the sense might presently represent to the higher faculties the sweetnesses of Infinite Goodness to the Soul and so we might by all ascend to God § 13. Those mercies therefore are the greatest which reveal most of God with the least impediments of our ascent unto him § 14. Therefore his Love most revealed and communicated and his perfect Goodness most manifested to the Soul is the Greatest Mercy and all corporal Mercies are to be estimated and desired but as they subserve and conduce to these and not as they are pleasing to our flesh or senses § 15. The Perfect Goodness of the Will of God though it contain Benignity and Mercy yet is not to be measured by the good which he doth to us our selves or to any Creature But its highest excellency consisteth in its Essential Perfection and the Perfect Love that God hath to himself and in the conformity of his Will to his most perfect Wisdom which knoweth what is to be willed ad extra and in his complacency in all that is good as such When self-love so far blindeth us as to make our Interest the Standard to judge of the goodness of God we do but shew that we are fallen from God unto our selves and that we are setting up our selves above him and debasing him below our selves As if we and our Happiness were that ultimate end and he and his Goodness were the Means and had no other Goodness but that of a means to us and our felicity If he made us he must needs have absolute Propriety in us and made us for himself To measure his Goodness by our own Interest is more unwise than to measure the Sea in our hand or the Sun and all the Orbs by our span And to measure it by the Interest of the Vniverse is to judge of that which is infinite by that which is finite betwixt which there is no proportion As God is infinitely Better than the World so he is infinitely more Amiable and therefore must Infinitely more Love himself than all the World and therefore so to do is Infinite excellency and Perfection in his Will But the out-going of his Will to the Creature by way of causative volition is free and conducted by that Wisdom which-knoweth what is fit and what degrees of Communication are most eligible to God God is Perfect without his Works He had wanted nothing if he had never made them He will not herein do all that he is simply Able to do but all that his Wisdom seeth fittest to be done He was as Good before he made the World as since And those that think he caused it eternally must confess him in order of Nature to be first perfect in Himself and to have more Goodness than all which he communicateth to the World He was as Good before this present generation of men on Earth had any being He is as good before he bringeth us to the Heavenly Glory as he will be after though before he did not so much good to us It is no diminution of his Goodness to say that he made millions of Toads and Flies and Spiders whom he could have made men if he had pleased or to say that he made millions of Men whom he could have made Angels nor that he made not every Clod or Stone a Starr or Sun nor that he suffereth men to be tormented by each others cruelty or by such diseases as the Stone and Strangury Convulsions Epilepsies c. nor that men at last must die and their bodies rot and turn to dust That these things are done is past dispute And that God is good is past dispute And therefore that all this is consistent with this Goodness is past dispute and consequently that his goodness is not to be measured by so low a thing as humane or any Creature Interest If you say that all this is hurtfull to the Individuals but not to the Vniverse to which it is better that there be a mixture of evil with good than that every part had a perfection in it self I answer 1. It seemeth then that the good which you measure Gods goodness by is not the Interest of any individual Creature at least that is in this lower World For you confess that the good which would make it Happy is given to it limitedly and with mixtures of permitted or inflicted evil and that God could have given them more of that goodness if he would God could have freed them from pain and misery yea and have given the ignorant more knowledge and honesty and grace So that it is not our interest that is the measure of his goodness And if so what is it that you call the Vniversal interest Surely the universality of Rational creatures hath no being but in the Individuals and if it be not the welfare of the Individuals which is the Measure then is it not any interest or welfare o the Vniverse which is of the same kind and for the insensible creatures they feel neither good nor hurt and therefore by your Measure should be none of the Universe whose interest is the Measure Therefore it must be somewhat above the sensible interest of any or all the Individuals which you call the Bonum Vniversitatis and that can be nothing else but that state and order of the Vniverse in which it is conform to the Idea of the Divine Intellect and to the Volition of the Divine Will and so is fittest for him to take complacency in as being the measure and reasons of his own volitions and operations which he fetcheth not aliunde or at least which are unknown to such as we No doubt but it is more for the happiness of the Individuals that every Dust and Stone and Fly and Beast and Man were an Angel but it is not so 2. And surely they that believe the evil of sin and that God could have
kept it out of the world and saved the Individuals from it will confess that man's interest is not the Measure of God's goodness especially considering what consequents also follow sin both here and hereafter 3. And as to this lower part of the Vniverse how many Nations of the Earth are drown'd in woful ignorance and ungodliness how few are the wise and good and peaceable When God could have sent them Learning and Teachers and Means of Reformation and have blessed all this Means to their deliverance So that the far greater part of this lower world hath not so much good as God could give them and the infirmities of the best do cause their dolorous complaints It is certain that God is infinitely good and that all his works also are good in their degree but withall it is certain that God in himself is the Simple Primitive Good and that created goodness principally consisteth in a conformity to his Will which is the standard and measure of it § 16. God as considered in the Infinite Perfections of his Nature and his Will is most Amiable and the object of our highest love § 17. But he is not known by us in those Perfections as seen in themselves immediately but as demonstrated and glorified expressively in his works in which he shineth to us in his goodness § 18. His works therefore are made for the apt revealing of himself as amiable to the intelligent part of his Creation They are the Book in which he hath appointed us to read and the Glass in which he hath appointed us with admiration to behold the Infinite power Wisdom and Goodness of the Creator and in which we may see that he is not only our Chief Benefactor but the Vltimate Object of our Love and so the End of all our Motions § 19. This third Relation of God to us as our Chief Good efficiently and finally is the highest and most perfective to us but is not separated from the former two but they are all marvelously conjunct and concur in the production of most of the subsequent effects of Gods providence As the Elements are conjuct but not confounded in mixed bodies and in themselves are easily to be distinguished where they are not divided and their effects sometimes also distinct but usually mix'd as are the causes so is it in the case of these three Great Relations though God's Propriety extend further than his Government because Inanimates and Bruites are capable of one and not of the other yet as to the Rational Creatures they are in reality of the same extent God is as to Right the Owner and the Ruler of all the world and also their real Benefactor and quoad debitum their ultimate end But as to consent on their parts none but the godly give up themselves to him in any one of these Relations In order of Nature God is first our Owner and then our Ruler and our chief Good or End His work in the first Relation is Arbitrary Disposal of us his work in the second is to Govern us and in the third Attraction and Felicitating But he so Disposeth of us as never to cross his rules of Government and so governeth us as never to cross his absolute Propriety and attracteth and felicitateth us in concent with his Premiant act of Government and all sweetly and wonderfully conspire the perfection of his works § 20. All these Relations are oft summed up in one name which principally importeth the last which is the persective Relation but truly includeth both the former and that is That GOD is Our FATHER As the Rational Soul doth ever include the Sensitive and Vegetative Faculties so doth God's Fatherly Relation to us include his Dominion and Government A Father is thus a kind of Image of God in this Relation For 1. he hath a certain Propriety in his children 2. He is by nature their rightful Governour 3. He is their Benefactor for they are beholden to him for their being and well-being Nature causeth him to love them and bindeth them again to love him And the Title OVR FATHER which art in Heaven includeth all these Divine Relations to us but specially expresseth the Love and Graciousness of God to us Obj. But I must go against the sense of most of the world if I take God to be infinitely or perfectly good for operari sequitur esse He that is perfectly good will perfectly do good But do we not see and feel what you said before The world is but as a wilderness and the life of man a misery We come into the world in weakness and in a case in which we cannot help our selves but are a pity and trouble to others we are their trouble that breed us and bring us up we are vexed with unsatisfied desires with troubling passions with tormenting pains and languishing weakness and enemies malice with poverty and care with losses and crosses and shame and grief with hard labour and studies with the injuries and spectacles of a Bedlam world and with fears of death and death at last Our enemies are our trouble our friends are our trouble our Rulers are our trouble and our inferiours children and servants are our trouble our possessions are our trouble and so are our wants And is all this the effect of perfect Goodness And the poor Bruits seem more miserable than we they labour and hunger and die at last to serve our will we beat them use them and abuse them at our pleasure And all the Inanimates have no sense of any good and which is worst of all the world is like a Dungeon of ignorance like an Hospital of mad-men for folly and distractedness like a band of Robbers for injury and violence like Tygers for cruelty like snarling Dogs for contention and in a word like Hell for wickedness What else sets the world together by the ears in wars and bloudshed in all generations what maketh peace-makers the most neglected men what maketh vertue and piety the mark of persecution and of common scorn how small a part of the world hath knowledge or piety And you tell us of a Hell for most at last Is all this the fruit of perfect Goodness These thoughts have seriously troubled some Answ He that will ever come to knowledge must begin at the first Fundamental Truths and in his enquiry proceed to lesser Superstructures and reduce uncertainties and difficulties to those points which are sure and plain and not cast away the plainest certain truths because they over-take some difficulties beyond them The true method of enquiry is that we first try whether there be a God that is perfectly Good or not If this be once proved beyond all controversie then all that followeth is certainly reconcilable to it for Truth and Truth is not contradictory Now that God is perfectly Good hath been fully proved before He that giveth to all the world both Heaven and Earth and all the Orbs all that Good whether Natural
Gracious or Glorious which they possess is certainly Himself better than all the world for he cannot give more Goodness than he hath this is not to be denied by any man of reason therefore it is proved that God is perfectly Good Besides his Perfections must needs be proportionable we know that he is Eternal as is unquestionably demonstrated we see by the wonderful frame of Nature that he is Omnipotent and Omniscient and then it must needs be that his Goodness must be commensurate with the rest Therefore to come back again upon every consequent which you understand not and to deny a fundamental principle which hath been undeniably demonstrated this is but to resolve that you will not know By this course you may deny any demonstrated truth in Mathematicks when you meet with difficulties among the superstructed consequents Let us therefore methodically proceed We have proved that God is the cause of all the Goodness in the world in Heaven and Earth and therefore must needs be Best himself And it is certain that all the sins and calamities which you mention are in the world and that the creature hath all those imperfections therefore it is certain that these two Verities are consistent what ever difficulty appeareth to you in the reconciling them Thus far there is no matter of doubt And next we are therefore certain that the Measure of God's Goodness is not to be taken from the Creatures interest And yet we know that his Goodness inclineth him to communicate goodness and felicity to his creatures for all the Good in the world is from him It remaineth therefore that he is good necessarily and perfectly and that he doth all well whatsoever he doth and that there is in the Creature a higher Goodness than its own felicity even the Image of God's Power Wisdom and Goodness in which his Holiness and Justice have their place And that this Goodness of the Universe which consisteth in the Glorious appearances of God in it and the suitableness of all to his Will and Wisdom includeth all things except sin which are contained in your objection and that punishment of sinners though it be malum physicum to them is a moral good and glorifieth God's Justice and Holiness and even the permission of sin it self is good though the sin be bad And yet that God will also glorifie that part of his Goodness which consisteth in Benignity for he hath an amor beneficentiae of which the creature only is the object but of his amor complacentiae he himself is the chief object and the creature but the secondary so far as it participateth of Goodness And Complacency is the essential act of Love Think but what a wonderful Fabrick he hath made of all the Orbs composed into One World and can you possibly have narrow thoughts of his Goodness He hath placed more Physical Goodness in the nature of one silly Bird or Fly or Worm than humane wit is able to find out much more in Plants in Beasts in Men in Sea and Land in the Sun and fixed Stars and Planets Our understandings are not acquainted with the thousandth thousandth thousandth part of the Physical goodness which he hath put into his creatures there may be more of the wonderful skill and power and goodness of God laid out on one of those Stars that seems smallest to our sight than millions of humane intellects if united were able to comprehend And who knoweth the number any more than the magnitude and excellency of those Stars What man can once look up towards the Firmament in a Star light night or once read a Treatise of Astronomy and then compare it with his Geography and compare those far more excellent Orbs with this narrower and darker world we live in and not be wrapt up into the astonishing admiration of the Power Wisdom and Goodness of the Creator When the anatomizing of the body of one man or beast might wrap up any considerate man into Galen's admiration and praises of the Maker and how many myriades of such bodies hath God created and how much more excellent are the forms or souls than any of those bodies And how little know we how incomparably more excellent the nature of Angels may be than ours and what glorious Beings may inhabit the more glorious Orbs and yet can you think meanly of the Creator's Goodness O but you say that all these lower Creatures have still the forementioned sorrows and imperfections I answer you 1. They were not made Gods but Creatures and therefore were not to be perfect 2. It is the corrupt and blinded sensual mind which crieth out for want of sensible pleasure and can see no goodness in any thing but this but true reason telleth any man that hath it that our sensible pleasure is a thing too low to be the highest excellency of the creature and to be the ultimate end of God and that the glory of the whole world even the inanimate parts as well as the animate shewing the glory of the Infinite Creator is the excellency of the world What if the Sun and Stars and Earth and Sea the Fire and Air have no feeling have they therefore no goodness but what is a Means to the sensible delights of lower things Hath a Worm more goodness than the Sun if it have more feeling These are the madnesses of sensual men May not an excellent Limner Watch-maker or other Artificer make a Picture a Watch or Musical Instrument meerly for his own delight and may he not delight in the excellency of it though you imagine him to have no need of it or of the delight And what is the excellency of such a Picture but to be the full demonstration of the Author's skill in the most full representation of the thing resembled Will you say that he hath done no good because he made not his Picture sensible and made not its pleasure his ultimate end Those things which in particulars we call Bad are Good as they are parts of the Universal frame as many darknings and shadowings in a Picture may conduce to make it beautiful The eye is a more excellent part of the body than a finger or a tooth and yet it maketh to the perfection of the whole that there be fingers and teeth as well as eyes So it doth to the perfection of the world that there be Men and Beasts and Plants as well as Angels and poor men as well as rich and sick man as well as sound and pain as well as pleasure Our narrow sight that looketh but on a spot or parcel of God's work at once doth judge according to the particular interest of that parcel and so we would have no variety in the world but every thing of that species which we think best But God seeth all his works at once uno intuitu and therefore seeth what is best in reference to the glory of the Universe and seeth what variety is beautiful and
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
therefore should resign himself as his own to his disposal and that he is absolutely his subject and therefore should most exactly and diligently obey him and I have shew'd particularly wherein also that Man is his Total Beneficiary and made to love him as his chief Good and End and therefore should totally devote himself to him in gratitude and love and desire him seek him and delight in him above all the world and live in his praises and continual service All this is fully proved to be Man's duty And now let us see on what terms he standeth in the world for the performance of it § 1. There is in the present disposition of Man a great averseness to such a life of Resignation Obedience and Love to God as is before described even when he cannot deny it to be his duty and to be the best most honourable and most felicitating life Too sad experience confirmeth this The bad are so averse that they will not be perswaded to it the godly have such a mixture of averseness as findeth them matter of continual conflict It is this aversness which serveth instead of arguments against it or which is a pondus to the very judgment and maketh it so hard to believe any arguments which go against so strong a contrary inclination § 2. We find that the senses of men are grown masterly and inordinate and are too eagerly set upon their objects and hold down the mind from rising higher and cause it to adhere to things terrene So that man's life now is like that of the bruits it is things of the same nature that he valueth and adhereth to and most men live to no higher ends but to enjoy their sensual pleasure while they may § 3. We find that Reason in most men is so debilitated that it cannot potently reduce it self into action nor see that practically which speculatively it confesseth nor clearly and powerfully observe those Perfections of God in his works nor those Duties of man which we are convinced to be true but by inconsiderateness and dull apprehensions is almost as no reason to them and falleth down before their sensuality § 4. Hereupon men grow strangers unto God and have no thoughts of him but dark and dull and ineffectual § 5. The world is full of allurements to the flesh and those Mercies which should raise the mind to God are made the food of this sensuality and the greatest means to keep it from him Sense is irrational and fastneth on its object and when Reason faileth in its office there we are left like Dogs gnawing upon a Carrion and in greediness fighting for it with each other when we have separated the creature from God in our minds and so deprived it of its life and beauty which fitted it for another use And when every place and state of life hath such baits as these which hourly are allureing a mind so weakly fortifi'd against them no wonder if they do prevail § 6. Education custom and ill example confirm these vicious habits with the most and much encrease them § 7. The best have some of this inordinate sensuality and weakness of Reason and are imperfect in virtue and are tempted by the world as well as others § 8. Therefore no man can live to God according to his certain duty who will not deny the desires of his flesh and bring it into subjection and live in vigilancy and daily conflict against its lusts Obj. But the appetite of meat and drink and sleep and ease and venery and sport and pleasure and gain and honour is natural to us and that which is natural is no vice nor to be denied or destroyed Answ It is natural to have the appetite but it is the disease of nature that this appetite is inordinate and no otherwise natural than the Leprosie is to those to whom it is propagated by their Parents But is it natural to you to have lust and appetite and is it not natural to you to have Reason to moderate and rule them If not it is natural to you to be Bruits and not natural to you to be men What is more natural to Man than to be Rational is it not his essential form And whether is Reason or Appetite think you naturally made to be the predominant faculty Should the Horse rule the Rider or the Rider the Horse The Soul and Body are much like the Rider and the Horse bethink you which should naturally rule § 9. The inordinacy of the fleshly appetite and phantasie maketh it a continual pain to the flesh to be restrained and denied As it is to a head-strong wilful Horse to be governed the more inordinate the appetite is the more it is pained by denial and restraint § 10. The far greatest part of the world do live an ungodly sensual life and the interest of the flesh is predominant in them Sad Experience puts this quite out of controversie § 11. Vsually the more Riches and Fullness of all Provisions for the flesh men possess the more sensual and vicious they are It is not alwayes so but that its usually so we need no proof but the knowledge of the World nor need we take it from Christ only as a point of Faith That its hard for a Rich man to enter into Heaven And Reason telleth us that when the love of the World above God is the mortal sin those are most in danger of it to whom the World appeareth most lovely And they that have most temptations are in the greatest danger to miscarry § 12. The Rich are commonly the Rulers of the World who have the liberties estates and lives of others much in their power I never yet knew or heard of that place where the poor long ruled § 13. Commonly the more averse men are to Godliness and the more prone to sensuality the less can they endure those that would perswade them to Godliness from their sensual Lives or that give them the Example of a holy self-denying life For as it seemeth intolerable to them to leave their sensuality and to betake themselves to a contrary life which they are so averse to so they take him as an enemy to them that would draw them to it and are furious against him as a hungry Dog against him that would take away his Carrion Experience puts this past all doubt of which more anon § 14. Hence it cometh to pass that in all parts of the World the fore-described life of Godlyness is the matter of the common hatred scorn and cruel persecution of the sensual and ungodly The more exactly any man shall set himself to obey God the more he crosseth the lusts and carnal Interest of the wicked and the more he commonly suffereth in the World So full of malice and prejudice is the World against such faithfull Subjects of God that they slander them and make them seem the most odious sort of men And so unreasonable are they and
and rectitude and felicity of the Will If it be not by God that the Love and Desires of God are kindled in us then no good is to be ascribed unto God For we have here no greater good Now that God will satisfie these desires is proved In that he maketh nothing in vain nor kindleth any such desires as shall deceive them and make all their lives a meer delusion Yea and do this by the very best of men None of this is consistent with the perfections of God § 8. VIII If there were no life of Retribution after this Obedience to God would be finally mens loss and ruine But Obedience to God shall not be finally mens loss and ruine Ergo there is another Life The Major is proved before However it would be best in point of Honesty it would be worst to thousands in point of personal Vtility Even to all those that forsaking all the sinfull pleasures of this World do conflict with their flesh and keep it under and suffer the loss of all outward comforts by the cruelty of Persecutors and it may be through melancholy or weak fears have little comfort from God instead of them and at last perhaps be tormented and put to death by cruelty Few will think this desirable for it self And that our Obedience to God shall not be mens final loss and ruine needeth no proof but this that he hath made our self-self-love a Principle inseparable from our nature and maketh use of it in the Government of the World and commandeth nothing but what is finally for our good and so conjoyneth the pleasing of him and our own felicity inseparably in our end His Regiment is paternal His Glory which he seeketh by us is the Glory of his Goodness communicated and accumulated on us This taken in with the Wisdom and Goodness of his Nature will tell any man that to be a loser finally by our Obedience to God is a thing that no man need to fear He doth not serve himself upon us to our hurt nor command us that which will undo us He neither wanteth Power Wisdom nor Goodness to make us gainers by our duty It is the desire of natural Justice in all ut bonis bene sit malis male If I finde but any duty commanded me by God my Conscience and my sense of the Divine perfections will not give me leave to think that I shall ever prove finally a loser by performing it though he had never made me any promise of reward so far the Law of Nature hath a kinde of Promise in it that if he do but say Do this I will not doubt but the doing of it is for my good And if he bid me but use any means to my own happiness I should blaspheme if I suspected it would tend to my loss and misery and was made my snare § 9. IX The highest Love and Obedience to God is never a work of imprudence or folly nor ever to be Repented of But such they would be to many if there were no life to come Ergo By imprudence and folly I mean that course which tendeth to our own undoing as aforesaid No man shall ever have cause to repent of his fidelity to God and say I did foolishly in ruining my self by it This argument being but a meer consectary of the former I pass over § 10. X. If no man living be certain that there is no future life of Retribution then it is certain that there is such a life But no man living is certain that there is no such life Ergo its certain that there is The Major is proved thus If all men be in Reason obliged to seek the happiness and escape the punishments of another life before all the treasures and pleasures of this World then it is certain that such a Life of happiness and punishments there is But if no man be certain that there is no such life the bare probability or possibility that there is such doth in reason oblige all men to seek it above all the World Ergo it is certain that such a life there is My argument is from our Obligation to seek it before all to the certain being of it 1. That no man is certain that there is no life to come I need not prove as long as no man ever proved such an opinion and the boldest Atheists or Infidels say no more than that they think there is no other life but all confess that they have no assurance of it 2. If so then that the possibility or probability obligeth us to regard it in our hopes fears and endeavours before all this World is evident from the incomparableness of them or great disparity of the things When most of the World think there is another life and there is so much for it as we here lay down and a few Atheists say only we do not believe it or it is not likely though it be not a thing that we are certain of now Reason commandeth every man that loveth himself to preferr it before all earthly things Because we are fully certain beyond all doubt that all earthly things are of short duration and will quickly leave us and when they are gone they are to us as if they had never been They are a shadow a dream a something which is next to nothing To say It will shortly have an end doth blot out the praise and embitter the pleasures of all below What the better are all generations past for all the wealth and fleshly pleasures which they ever received in the World There is no wise man but would preferre the least probability of attaining full felicity and escaping death and torments before the certainty of possessing a pin or a penny for an hour The disparity is much greater between things temporal and everlasting than any such similitude can reach All the Christians and all the Mahometans and most of the Heathens of the World do hold the Immortality of the Soul and the perpetuity of the Happiness or misery hereafter The Atheist is not sure of the contrary and he is sure that a few years or hours will put an end to all his temporal pleasures and equal those that lived here in pleasure and in pain And therefore that at the worst his loss or hazard of the pleasures of sin for the hopes of eternal pleasure is not a thing considerable If those that dissent from him prove in the right the sensualist is utterly undone for ever He must live in endless pain and misery and must lose an endless unspeakable joy and glory which he might have possest as well as others But if he himself prove in the right he gets nothing by it but the pleasing of inordinate concupiscence for a few years and will die with as much emptiness of content as if he had lived in continual pain Now this being the true case no sober reason can deny but that wisdom obligeth
dishonour God and destroy the souls of men as well as their bodies 4. And lastly the Temptations and suggestions of Satan yea and oft his external contrived snares are such as frequently give men a palpable discovery of his agency that there is indeed some evil Spirit that doth all this to the hurt of Souls Were there no such Tempter it were scarce credible that such horrid inhumane Villanies should ever be perpetrated by a rational Nature as Histories credibly report and as in this Age our eyes have seen That men should ever even against their own apparent interest be carryed on obstinately to the last in a wilfull course of such sins as seem to have little or nothing to invite men to them but a delight in doing hurt and mischief in the World Whence is it that some men feel such violent importunate suggestions to evil in their mindes that they have no rest from them but which way soever they goe they are haunted with them till they have committed it and then haunted as much to hang themselves in desperation Whence is it that all opportunities are so strangely fitted to a sinners turn to accommodate him in his desires and designs And that such wonderfull successive trains of impediments are set in the way of almost any man that intendeth any great good work in the World I have among men of my own acquaintance observed such admirable frustrations of many designed excellent works by such strange unexpected means and such variety of them and so powerfully carryed on as hath of it self convinced me that there is a most vehement invisible malice permitted by God to resist Mankinde and to militate against all Good in the World Let a man have any evil design and he may carry it on usually with less resistance Let him have any work of greatest Natural importance which tendeth to no great benefit to Mankinde and he may go on with it without any extraordinary impedition But let him have any great design for Common good in things that tend to destroying sin to heal divisions to revive Charity to increase Virtue to save mens Souls yea or to the publick common felicity and his impediments shall be so multifarious so far fetcht so subtile incessant and in despight of all his care and resolution usually so successfull that he shall seem to himself to be like a man that is held fast hand and foot while he seeth no one touch him or that seeth an hundred blocks brought and cast before him in his way while he seeth no one do it Yea and usually the greatest attempts to do good shall turn to the clean contrary even to destroy the good which was intended and drive it much further off How many Countreys Cities Churches Families who have set themselves upon some great Reformation have at first seen no difficulties almost in their way And when they have attempted it they have been like a man that is wrestling with a Spirit Though he see not what it is that holdeth him when he hath long swear and chafed and tired himself he is fain to give over yea leave behind him some odious scandal or terrible example to frighten all others from ever medling with the like again I have known that done which men call a Miracle a sudden deliverance in an hour from the most strange and terrible Disease while by Fasting and Prayer men were present begging the deliverance And presently the Devil hath drawn the persons in such a scandalous sin that God had none of the honour of the deliverance nor could any for shame make mention of it but it turned to the greater dishonour of piety and prayer though the wonder was past doubt I have known men wonderfully enlightened and delivered from courses of Error and Schisme and being men of extraordinary worth and parts have been very like to have proved the recovery of abundance more And they have been so unresistibly carryed into some particular Errors on the contrary extream that all the hopes of their doing good hath turned to the hardening of others in their Schism while they saw those Errors and judg'd accordingly of all the reasons of their change But especially to hinder the successes of godly Magistrates and Ministers in their reformings and their Writings for the winning of Souls it were endless to shew the strange unexpected difficulties which occurre and lamentably frustrate the most laudable attempts Nay I have known divers men that have had resolute designs but to build an Alms-house or a School-house or to settle some publick charitable work that when all things seemed ready and no difficulty appeared have been hindered in despight of the best of their endeavours all their dayes or many years Yea men that purposed but to put it in their Wills to do some considerable work of Charity have been so delayed hindered and disappointed that they were never able to effect their ends By all which it is very perceivable to an observing minde that there is a working invisible Enemy still seeking to destroy all Godliness and to hinder Mens salvation Perhaps you will say that if this be so you make the Devil to be stronger than God and to be the Governour of the World or to be more in hatred to goodness than God is in love with it I answer No but it appeareth that his Enmity to it is implacable and that he militateth against God and mans felicity and that sin hath so far brought this lower World under Gods displeasure that he hath in a great measure forsaken it and left it to the will of Satan Yet hath he his holy seed and Kingdom here and the purposes of his Grace shall never be frustrated nor the Gates of Hell prevail against his Church And if he may forsake Hell totally as to his felicitating presence he may also penally forsake Earth as to the greater number whilest for ought we know he may have thousands of Orbs of better Inhabitants which have not so forfeited his love nor are not so forsaken by him I have been the larger in proving a Life to come of Retribution to the good and bad because all Religion doth depend upon it and I have my self been more assaulted with Temptations to doubt of this than of Christianity it self though this have more of Natural Evidence And I have set down nothing that I am able rationally to confute my self though every Truth is liable to some snarling exceptions of half-witted and contentious men No man that confesseth a Life to come can question the necessity of a Holy Life But I have thought meet first to prove that a Holy Life is our unquestionable duty as the prius cognitum and thence to prove the certainty of the future state For indeed though God hath not hid from us the matter of our Reward and Punishment Hopes and Fears yet hath he made our Duty plainer in the main and proposed it first to our knowledge and
consideration The Eternity of the future state I have not here gone about to prove because I reserve it for a fitter place and need the help of more than natural light for such a task But that it shall be of so much weight and duration as shall suffice to the full execution of Justice and to set all streight that seemed crooked in Gods present Government this Nature it self doth fully testifie Three sorts of men will read what I have written 1. Some few and but very few of those whose Consciences are so bloody in the guilt of their debauchery that they take it for their interest to hope that there is no life but this 2. Those whose Faith and Holiness hath made the World to come to be their interest happiness hope desire and only joy 3. Those that only understand in generall that it is the highest interest of humane Nature that there be a full felicity hereafter and see it a most desireable thing though they know not whether it be to be expected or not The first sort I may fear are under such a Curse of God as that he may leave their Wills to master their Belief as their Lusts have mastered their Wills and lest they be forsaken of God to think that true which their wicked hearts desire were true and that the Haters of God and a holy Life should be left to dream that there is no God nor future Happy Life The second sort have both Light Experience and Desire and therefore will easily believe The third sort are they whose Necessities are great and yet conjunct with hope of some success Though bare interest should command no mans understanding because a thing may be desireable which is neither certain nor possible yet I must needs say that Reason and self-self-love should make any man that is not resolved in wickedness exceeding glad to hear of any hopes much more of certainty of a life of Angelical Happiness and Joy to be possess'd when this is ended And therefore the enquiry should be exceeding willingly and studiously endeavoured I shall conclude this point with a few serious Questions to those that deny a future Life of Retribution Qu. 1. Whether he that taketh a man to be but an ingenuous kinde of Beast can take it ill to be esteemed as a Beast May I not expect that he should live like a Beast who thinketh that he shall die like a Beast Is such a man fit to be trusted any further in humane converse than his present fleshly interest obligeth him May I not justly suppose that he liveth in the practice of fornication adultery lying perjury hypocrisie murder treachery theft deceit or any other villany as oft as his interest tells him he should do it What is a sufficient or likely motive to restrain that man or make him just who believes not any life after this It seemeth to me a wrong to him in his own Profession to call him an Honest man 2. If you think your selves but ingenuous Beasts why should you not be content to be used as Beasts A Beast is not capable of true Propriety Right or Wrong He that can master him doth him no wrong if he work him or fleece him or take away his life Why may not they that can master you use you like Pack-horses or Slaves and beat you and take away your lives 3. Would you be only your selves of this mind or would you have all others of it If your selves only why envy you the Truth as you suppose to others If all others what security shall Kings have of their lives or Subjects of their lives of liberties What trust can you put in Wife or Child or Servant or any man that you converse with Will you not quickly feel the effect of their opinions Had you not rather that the enemy who would murder you the thief who would rob you the lyar that would deceive you did believe a Judgement and life of Retribution than not 4. If there be no Life after this what business have you for your Reason and all your noble faculties and time that is worthy of a man or that is not like Childrens games or Poppet-playes What have you to do in the World that hath any weight in the tryal any content or comfort in the review or will give solid comfort to a dying man Were it not better lie down and sleep out our days than waste them all in dreaming waking O what a silly Worm were Man what should he find to do with his understanding Take off the poise of his ultimate End and all his Rational Motions must stand still and only the bruitish motion must go on and Reason must drudge in the Captivity of its service But these Questions and more such I put more home in my Book called A Saint or a Bruit If conscience tell you that you can put no trust in your friend your wife your servant or your neighbour if they believe that there is no life but this surely the same conscience may tell you that then the thing is true and that the God of infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness hath better means enough than deceits and lies to rule the world by Hear what the conscience of the Epicure saith in Cicero Academ Quaest l. 4. p. mihi 44. Quis enim potest cum existimet à Deo se curari non dies noctes divinum numen horrere c. it s true of the guilty But what greater joy to the upright godly faithful Soul CHAP. XV. Of the intrinsick Evil of Sin and of the perpetual Punishment due to the Sinner by the undoubted Law of Nature § 1. IT seemed good to the most wise Creator to give Man with Reason a Liberty of Will by which he is a kind of first cause of its own determination in comparative moral acts though he hold the power in full dependance upon God and perform each act as an act in genere by the influx of his Maker and do all under his perfect government And these great Principles in his Nature his Power his Reason and his free self-determining Will are the Image of God in which as Man he was created which advanced by the perfections of Fortitude Wisdom and Moral Goodness are also in Holiness the Image of God's Perfections When a man deliberateth whether he shall do this sin or not as lie or murder he cannot act in general without God but that he chooseth this act rather than another may be without any more of God than his giving and maintaining his free-choosing power and his universal influx before mentioned and his setting him among such objects as he acteth upon Neither do those objects nor any Physical efficient motion of God or any creature besides himself determine his will effectually to choose the evil and refuse the good It is not true that nothing undetermined can determine it self to act this is but to deny God's
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
in captivity yet how unlikely they are to prevail with others both Reason and Experience fully testifie § 12. And whereas God's special mercy and grace is necessary to so great a change and cure and this grace is forfeited by sin and every sin deserveth more punishment and this sin and punishment must be so far forgiven before God can give us that grace which we have forfeited Nature doth not satisfactorily teach me how God is so far reconciled to Man nor how the forgiveness of sin may be by us so far procured § 13. And where as I see at once in the world both the aâ—oâ—ing of sin which deserveth damnation and the abounding of mercy to these that are under such deserts I am not satisfi'd by the halt of Nature how God is so far reconciled and the ends of Government and Justice attained as to deal with the world so contrary to its deserts § 14. And while I am in this doubt of God's reconciliation I am ready still to fear list present forbearance and mercy â—rt aâ—iâ—val and will end at last in greater misery However I find it hard if not impossible to come to any certainty of 〈◊〉 pardon and salvation § 15. And while I am thus uncertain of pardon and the love of God it must needs make it an insuperable difficulty to me to love God above my self and all things for to love a God that I think will damn me or most probably may do it for ought I know is a thing that man can hardly do § 16. And therefore I cannot see how the guilty world can be sanctifi'd nor brought to forsake the sin and vanities which they love as long as God whom they must turn to by love doth seem so unlovely to them § 17. And every temptation from present pleasure commodity or honour will be like to prevail while the love of God and the happiness to come are so dark and doubtful to guilty misgiving ignorant Souls § 18. Nor can I see by Nature how a sinner can live comfortably in the world for want of clearer assurance of his future happiness For if he do but say as poor Seneca Cicero and others such Its most like that there is another life for us but we are not sure it will both abate their comfort in the fore-thoughts of it and tempt them to venture upon present pleasure for fear of losing all And if they were never so confident of the life to come and had no assurance of their own part in it as not knowing whether their sins be pardoned still their comfort in it would be small And the world can give them no more than is proportionable to so small and momentany a thing § 19. Nor do I see in Nature any full and suitable support against the pain and fears of sufferings and death while men doubt of that which should support them § 20. I must therefore conclude that the Light and Law of Nature which was suitable to uncorrupted reason and will and to an undepraved mind is too insufficient to the corrupted vitiated guilty world and that there is a necessity of some recovering medicinal Revelation Which forced the very Heathens to fly to Oracles Idols Sacrifices and Religious Propitiations of the gods there being scarce any Nation which had not some such thing though they used them not only uneffectually but to the increase of their sin and strengthning their presumption as too many poor ignorant Christians now do their Masses and other such formalities and superstitions But as Arnobius saith adv Gentes l. 7. Crescit enim multitudo peccantium cum redimendi peccati spes datur facile itur ad culpas ubi est venalis ignoscentium gratia He that hopeth to purchase forgiveness with mony or sacrifices or ways of cost will strive rather to be rich than to be innocent CHAP. II. Of the several Religions which are in the world HAving finished my enquiries into the state and book of Nature I found it my duty to enquire what other men thought in the world and what were the reasons of their several beliefs that if they knew more than I had discovered by what means soever I might become partaker of it § 1. And first I find that all the world except those called Heathens are conscious of the necessity of supernatural Revelation yea the Heathens themselves have some common apprehension of it § 2. Four sorts of Religions I find only considerable upon earth The meer Naturalists called commonly Heathens and Idolaters The Jews The Mahometans and the Christians The Heathens by their Oracles Augures and Aruspices confess the necessity of some supernatural light and the very Religion of all the rest consisteth in it I. § 3. As for the Heathens I find this much good among them That some of them have had a very great care of their Souls and many have used exceeding industry in seeking after knowledge especially in the mysteries of the works of God and some of them have bent their minds higher to know God and the invisible worlds That they commonly thought that there is a Life of Retribution after death and among the wisest of them the summe of that is to be found though confusedly which I have laid down in the first Part of this Book Especially in Seneca Cicero Plutarch Plato Plotinus Jamblicus Proclus Porphyry Julian the Apostate Antoninus Epectetus Arrian c. And for their Learning and Wisdom and Moral Virtues the Christian Bishops carried themselves respectfully to many of them as Basil to Libanius c. And in their days many of their Philosophers were honoured by the Christian Emperours or at least by the inferiour Magistrates and Christian people who judged that so great worth deserved honour and that the confession of so much Truth deserved answerable love especially Aedesius Julianus Cappadox Proaeresius Maximus Libanius Acacius Chrysanthus c. And the Christians ever since have made great use of their Writings in their Schools especially of Aristotle's and Plato's with their followers § 4. And I find that the Idolatry of the wisest of them was not so foolish as that of the Vulgar but they thought that the Vniverse was one animated world and that the Vniversal Soul was the only Absolute Sovereign God whom they described much like as Christians do and that the Sun and Stars and Earth and each particular Orb was an individual Animal part of the Vniversal world and besides the Vniversal had each one a subordinate particular Soul which they worshipped as a subordinate particular Deity as some Christians do the Angels And their Images they set up for such representations by which they thought these gods delighted to be remembred and instrumentally to exercise their virtues for the help of earthly mortals § 5. I find that except these Philosophers and very few more the generality of the Heathens were and are foolish Idolaters and ignorant sensual brutish men At this day through the
Exaltation whereupon the woman seeing the beauty of the Fruit and desiring Knowledge believed the Devil and did eat of that which God forbad The sin being so hainous for a new-made Rational Creature to believe that God was false and bad a lyar and envious which is indeed the nature of the Devil and to depart from his Love and Obedience for so small a matter God did in Justice presently sentence the Offenders to punishment yet would not so lose his new-made Creature nor cast off Mankind by the full execution of his deserved punishment but he resolved to commit the Recovery and Conduct of Mankind to a Redeemer who should better perform the work of salvation than the first Man Adam had done the work of adhaesion and obedience This Saviour is the Eternal Wisdom and Word of God who was in due time to assume the Nature of Man and in the mean time to stay the stroke of Justice and to be the invisible Law-giver and Guide of Souls communicating such measures of mercy light and spirit for their recovery as he saw fit Of whom more anon so that henceforward God did no longer Govern man as a spotless innocent Creature by the meer Law of entire-Nature but as a lapsed guilty depraved Creature who must be pardoned reconciled and renewed and have Laws and Means made suitable to his corrupted miserable state Hereupon God published the Promise of a Saviour to be sent in due time who should confound the Devil that had accused God of falshood and of envying the good of man and had by lying murdered mankind and should overcome all his deceits and power and rescue God's injur'd Honour and the Souls of sinners and bring them safe to the everlasting blessedness which they were made for Thus God as man's Redeemer and not only as his Creator governeth him He taught Adam first to worship him now by Sacrifice both in acknowledgment of the Creator and to teach him to believe in and expect the Redeemer who in his assumed humanity was to become a Sacrifice for sin This Worship by Sacrifice Adam taught his two sons Cain and Abel who were the early instances types and beginnings of the two sorts of persons which thence-forward would be in the world viz. The holy Seed of Christ and the wicked Seed of Satan Cain the elder as corruption now is before Regeneration offering the fruits of his land only to his Creator and Abel the younger sacrificing the firstlings of his flock of sheep to his Redeemer with a purified mind God rejected the offering of Cain and accepted the sacrifice of Abel Whereupon Cain in imitation of the Devil envied his Brother and in envy slew him to foretell the world what the corrupted nature of man would prove and how malignant it would be against the sanctified and what the holy Seed that are accepted of God must look for in this world for the hope of an everlasting blessedness with God After this God's patience waited on mankind not executing the threatned death upon their bodies till they had lived seven or eight or nine hundred years a piece which mercy was abused to their greater sin the length of their lives occasioning their excessive sensuality worldliness and contempt of God and life eternal so that the number of the holy Seed was at last so small and the wickedness of mankind so great that God resolved to drown the world Only righteous Noah and his family eight persons he saved in an Ark which he directed him to make for the preservation of himself and the species of Aereal and Terrestrial Animals After which Floud the earth was peopled in time from Noah to whom God gave Precepts of Piety and Justice which by tradition came down to his posterity through the world But still the greater part did corrupt their ways and followed Satan and the holy Seed was the smaller part of whom Abraham being exemplary in holiness and righteousness with his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob God did in special approbation of their righteousness renew his gracious covenant with them and enlarge it with the addition of many temporal blessings and special priviledges to their posterity after them promising that they should possess the Land of Canaan and be to him a peculiar people above all the people of the earth The children of Jacob being afterward by a famine removed into Egypt there multiplied to a great people The King of Egypt therefore oppressed them and used them as slaves to make his brick by cruel impositions Till at last God raised them up Moses for a deliverer to whom God committed his message to the King and to whom he gave power to work miracles for their deliverance and whom he made their Captain to lead them out of Egypt towards the promised Land Ten times did Moses with Aaron his Brother go to Pharaoh the King in vain though each time they wrought publick miracles to convince him till at last when God had in a night destroyed all the first-born in the land of Egypt Pharaoh did unwillingly let the Seed of Jacob or Israel go But repenting quickly he pursued after them with his Host and overtook them just at the Red-sea where God wrought a miracle opening the Sea which the Israelites past through on dry ground but the King with his Host who were hardned to pursue them were all drowned by the return of the waters when the Israelites were over Then Moses led them on in the Wilderness towards the promised Land but the great difficulties of the Wilderness tempted them to murmuring against him that had brought them thither and to unbelief against God as if he could not have provided for them This provoked God to kill many thousands of them by Plagues and Serpents and to delay them forty years in that Wilderness before he gave them the Land of Promise so that only two which came out of Egypt Caleb and Joshua did live to enter it But to confute their unbelief God wrought many miracles for them in this Wilderness He caused the Rocks to give them water He fed them with Manna from above Their shooes and cloaths did not wear in forty years In this Wilderness Moses received from God a Law by which they were to be governed In mount Sinai in flames of fire with terrible thunder God appeared so far to Moses as to speak to him and instruct him in all that he would have him do He gave him the chief part of his Law in two Tables of Stone containing Ten Commandments engraven thereon by God himself or by Angelical ministration The rest he instructed him in by word of voice Moses was made their Captain and Aaron their High Priest and all the Forms of God's Worship setled with abundance of Laws for Sacrifices and Ceremonies to typifie the Sacrifice and Reign of Christ When Moses and Aaron were dead in the Wilderness God chose Joshua Moses his Servant
we do nothing against our Neighbours Life or Bodily welfare but carefully preserve it as our own 7. That no man defile his Neighbours wife nor commit Fornication but preserve our own and others Chastity in thought word and deed 8. That we wrong not another in his Estate by stealing fraud or any other means but preserve our Neighbours Estate as our own 9. That we pervert not Justice by false witness or otherwise nor wrong our neighbour in his Name by slanders backbiting or reproach That we lie not but speak the truth in love and preserve our neighbours right and honour as our own 10. That we be not selfish setting up our selves and our own against our Neighbour and his good desiring to draw from him unto our selves But that we love our Neighbour as our selves desiring his welfare as our own doing to others as regularly we would have them do to us forbearing and forgiving one another loving even our enemies and doing good to all according to our power both for their Bodies and their Souls This is the Substance of the CHRISTIAN RELIGION § 15. II. The summ or Abstract of the Christian Religion is contained in three short Forms The first called The Creed containing the matter of the Christian Belief The second called The Lords Prayer containing the matter of Christian Desires and hope The third called The Law or Decalogue containing the summ of Morall Duties which are as followeth The BELIEF 1. I believe in God the Father Almighty Maker of Heaven and Earth 2. And in Iesus Christ his only Son our Lord who was conceived by the Holy Ghost born of the Virgin Mary suffered under Pontius Pilate was crucified dead and buried descended to Hell the third day he rose again from the dead he ascended into Heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty from thence he shall come again to judge the quick and the dead 3. I believe in the Holy Ghost the Holy Catholick Church the Communion of Saints the Forgiveness of sins the Resurrection of the body and the Life Everlasting The LORDS PRAYER Our FATHER which art in Heaven hallowed be thy Name Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil For thine is the Kingdom the Power and the Glory for ever Amen The Ten COMMANDEMENTS God spake all these words saying I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out of the Land of Egypt out of the house of bondage 1. Thou shalt have no other Gods before me 2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven Image or any likeness of any thing in Heaven above or that is in the Earth beneath or that is in the water under the Earth Thou shalt not vow down thy self to them nor serve them For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God visiting the iniquities of the Fathers upon the Children to the third and fourth generation of them that hate me and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my Commandements 3. Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his Name in vain 4. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy six dayes shalt thou labour and do all thy work but the Seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God in it thou shalt not do any work thou nor thy Son nor thy Daughter thy Man-servant nor thy Maid-servant nor thy Cattel nor the Stranger that is within thy gates For in six dayes the Lord made Heaven and Earth the Sea and all that in them is and rested the Seventh day wherefore the Lord blessed the Seventh day and hallowed it 5. Honour thy Father and thy Mother that thy dayes may be long upon the Land which the Lord thy God giveth thee 6. Thou shalt not kill 7. Thou shalt not commit Adultery 8. Thou shalt not Steal 9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy Neighbour 10. Thou shalt not covet thy Neighbours House thou shalt not covet thy Neighbours Wife nor his Man-servant nor his Maid-servant nor his Oxe nor his Ass nor any thing that is thy Neighbours § 16. The ten Commandements are summed up by Christ into these two Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and might and Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self § 17. These Commandements being first delivered to the Jews are continued by Christ as the summ of the Law of Nature only instead of Deliverance of the Jews from Egypt he hath made our Redemption from sin and Satan which was thereby typified to be the fundamental motive And he hath removed the memorial of the Creation-Rest from the seventh day-Sabbath to be kept on the Lords day which is the first with the Commemoration of his Resurrection and our Redemption in the solemn Worship of his holy Assemblies § 18. III. The briefest Summary of the Christian Religion containing the Essentials only is in the Sacramental Covenant of Grace Wherein the Penitent Believer renouncing the Flesh the World and the Devil doth solemnly give up himself to God the Father Son and Holy Spirit as his only God his Father his Saviour and his Sanctifier engaging himself hereby to a Holy life of Resignation Obedience and Love and receiving the pardon of all his sins and title to the further helps of grace to the favour of God and everlasting life This Covenant is first entered by the Sacrament of Baptisme and after renewed in our communion with the Church in the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ So that the Christian Religion is but Faith in God our Creator Redeemer and Sanctifyer producing the hope of Life Everlasting and possessing us with the love of God and Man And all this expressed in the genuine fruits of Patience Obedience and Praise to God and works of Charity and Justice unto Man § 19. That all this Religion might be the better understood received and practised by us the Word of God came down into Flesh and gave us a perfect Example of it in his most perfect Life in perfect holiness and innocency conquering all temptations contemning the honours riches and pleasures of the World in perfect patience and meekness and condescension and in the perfect Love of God and Man When perfect Doctrine is seconded by Perfect Exemplariness of Life there can be no greater Light set before us to lead us out of our state of darkness into the everlasting Light And had it not been a pattern of holy Power Wisdom and Goodness of Self-denyall Obedience and Love of Patience and of Truth and Prudence and of contempt of all inferiour things even of Life it self for the Love of God and for Life eternal it
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
agreeableness to his opinions ways or interest self-self-love self-conceit self-esteem self-will and self-seeking is the soul and business of the world And therefore no wonder that it is a divided and contentious world when it hath as many ends as men and every man is for himself and draweth his own way No wonder that there is such variety of apprehensions that no two men are in all things of a mind and that the world is like a company of drunken men together by the ears or of blind men fighting with they know not whom and for they know not what And that ignorant sects and contentious wranglers and furious fighters are the bulkie parts of it And that striving who shall Rule or be Greatest or have his will is the worlds employment It is a dreaming and distracted world that spend their days and cares for nothing and are as serious in following a feather and in the pursuit of that which they confess is vanity and dying in their hands as if indeed they knew it to be true felicity they are like children busie in hunting butterflies or like boys at foot-ball as eager in the pursuit and in over-turning one another as if it were for their lives or for some great desirable prize or liker to a heap of Ants that gad about as busily and make as much ado for sticks and dust as if they were about some magnificent work Thus doth the vain deceived world lay out their thoughts and time upon impertinencies and talk and walk like so many Noctambulo's in their sleep they study and care and weep and laugh and labour and fight as men in a dream and will hardly be perswaded but it is reality which they pursue till death come and awake them Like a Stage-play or a Poppet-play where all things seem to be what they are not and all parties seem to do what they do not and then depart and are all disroab'd and unmask'd such is the life of the most of this world who spend their days in a serious jeasting and in a busie doing nothing It is a malignant world that hath an inbred radicated enmity to all that virtue and goodness which they want they are so captivated to their fleshly pleasures and worldly interests that the first sight approach or motion of reason holiness mortification and self-denial is met by them with heart-rising indignation and opposition in which their fury beareth down all argument and neither giveth them leave considerately to use their own reason or hearken to anothers there are few that are truly wise and good and heavenly that escape their hatred and beastly rage And when Countries have thought to remedy this plague by changing their forms of Government experience hath told them that the vice and root of their calamity lieth in the blindness and wickedness of corrupted nature which no form of Government will cure and that the Doves that are governed by Hawkes and Kites must be their prey whether it be one or many that hath the Sovereignty Yea it is an unthankful world that in the exercise of this malignant cruelty will begin with those that deserve best at their hands He that would instruct them and stop them in their sin and save their souls doth ordinarily make himself a prey and they are not content to take away their lives but they will among their credulous rabble take away the reputation of their honesty and no wisdom or learning was ever so great no innocency so unspotted no honesty justice or charity so untainted no holiness so venerable that could ever priviledge the owners from their rage or make the possessors to escape their malice Even Jesus Christ that never committed sin and that came into the world with the most matchless love and to do them the greatest good was yet prosecuted furiously to a shameful death and not only so but in his humiliation his judgement was taken away and he was condemned as an evil doer who was the greatest enemy to sin that ever was born into the World He was accused of Blasphemy for calling himself the Son of God of Impiety for talking of destroying the Temple and of Treason for saying he was a King And his Apostles that went about the World to save mens Souls and proclaim to them the joyfull tydings of salvation had little better entertainment wherever they came bonds and afflictions did abide them And if they had not been taught to rejoyce in tribulations they could have expected little joy on earth And it was not only Christians that were thus used but honesty in the Heathens was usually met with opposition and reproach as Seneca himself doth oft complain Yea how few have there been that have been famous for any excellency of wit or learning or any addition to the Worlds understanding but their reward hath been reproach imprisonment or death Did Socrates die in his bed Or was he not murdered by the rage of wicked Hypocrites Plato durst not speak his minde for fear of his Masters reward Aristippus left Athens ne bis peccarent in Philosophiam not only Solon but most benefactors to any Common-wealth have suffered for their beneficence Demosthenes Cato Cicero Seneca could none of them save their lives from fury by their great learning or honesty Yea among nominal Christians he that told them of an Antipodes was excommunicated by the Papal Authority for an Heretick And a Savonarola Arnoldus de Villa Nova Paulus Scaliger c. could not be wiser than their Neighbours but to their cost No nor Arias Montanus himself Campanella was fain in prison to compile his New Philosophy and with the pleasure of his inventions to bear the torments which were their sowre sauce Even Galilaeus that discovered so many new Orbs and taught this World the way of clearer acquaintance with its neighbours could not escape the Reverend Justice of the Papalists but must lie in a Prison as if O sapientia had been written on his doors as the old Woman cryed out to Thales when he fell into a ditch while he was by his instrument taking the height of a Starr And Sir Walter Rawleigh could not save his head by his Learned History of the World but must be one part of its History himself nor yet by his great observation how Antipater is taken for a bloody Tyrant for killing Demosthenes and how Arts and Learning have power to disgrace any man that doth evil to the famous Masters of them Peter Ramus that had done so much in Phylosophy for the Learned World was requited by a butcherly barbarous murder being one of the 30000 or 40000 that were so used in the French Massacre And many a holy person perished in the 200000 murdered by the Irish It were endless to instance the ungratefull cruelties of the World and what entertainment it hath given to wise and godly men even those whom it superstitiously adoreth when it hath murdered them And in all
like have more noble and blessed Inhabitants Look to them if you would see his Love in its most glorious demonstration Justice also must be demonstrated if men will sin And if Hell be quite forsaken and Earth which is next it be partly forsaken of the favour of God for all that God may gloriously demonstrate his Love to a thousand thousand-fold more subjects of the nobler Regions than he doth demonstrate his Justice on in Hell or Earth But these two things I gather for the confirmation of my Faith 1. That the sin and misery of the World is such that it groaneth for a Saviour And when I hear of a Physician sent from Heaven I easily believe it when I see the wofull World mortally diseased and gasping in its deep distress The condition of the World is visibly so suitable to the whole Office of Christ and to the Doctrine of the Gospel that I am driven to think that if God have mercy for it some Physician and extraordinary help shall be afforded it And when I see none else but Jesus Christ whom Reason will allow me to believe is that Physician it somewhat prepareth my minde to look towards him with hope 2. And also the Evil of this present World is very suitable to the Doctrine of Christ when he telleth us that he came not to settle us here in a state of Prosperity nor to make the World our Rest or Portion but to save us from it as our enemy and calamity our danger and our Wilderness and trouble and to bring up our hearts first and then our selves to a better World which he calleth us to seek and to make sure of Whereas I finde that most other Religions though they say something of a Life hereafter yet lead men to look for most or much of their felicity here as consisting in the fruition of this World which experience tells me is so miserable § 3. Moreover I finde that the Law of entire Nature was no more suitable to Nature in its integrity than the Law of Grace revealed by Christ is suitable to us in our lapsed state so that it may be called the Law of Nature-lapsed and restorable Naturae lapsae restaurandae Nature entire and Nature depraved must have the same pattern and rule of perfection ultimately to be conformed to because lapsed man must seek to return to his integrity But lapsed or corrupted man doth moreover need another Law which shall first tend to his restoration from that lost and miserable state And it was no more necessary to man in innocency to have a suitable Law for his preservation and confirmation than it is to man in sin and guilt to have a Law of Grace for his pardon and recovery and a course of means prescribed him for the healing of his Soul and for the escaping of the stroke of Justice The following particulars further open this § 4. It seemeth very congruous to Reason that as Monarchy is the perfectest sort of Government which it is probable is even among the Angels so Mankinde should have one universal Head or Monarch over them Kingdoms have their several Monarchs but there is surely an Universal Monarch over them all we know that God is the primary Soveraign but it is very probable to Nature that there is a subordinate Soveraign or general Administrator under him It is not only the Scriptures that speak a Prince of the Devils and of Principalities and Powers and Thrones and Dominions among the happy Spirits and that talk of the Angels that are Princes of several Kingdoms Dan. 10. but even the Philosophers and most Idolaters have from this apprehension been drawn to the worship of such as an inferiour kinde of Deity And if man must have a subordinate universal King it is meet that it be one that is also Man As Angels and Devils have Principals of their own sort and nature and not of others § 5. It seemeth congruous to Reason that this Head be one that is fitted to be our Captain Generall himself to lead us by Conduct Precept and Example in our warfare against those Devils who also are said to have their Prince and General As Devils fight against us under a Prince of their own nature so is it congruous that we fight against them under a Prince of our own nature who hath himself first conquered him and will go on before us in the fight § 6. It is congruous to Reason that lapsed Man under the guilt of sin and desert of punishment who is unable to deliver himself and unworthy of immediate access to God should have a Mediator for his restoration and reconciliation with God If any be found fit for so high an Office § 7. And it is congruous to Reason that this Mediator be one in whom God doth condescend to Man and one in whom man may be encouraged to ascend to God as to one that will forgive and save him And one that hath made himself known to man and also hath free access to God § 8. It is congruous to Reason that lapsed guilty darkened sinners that know so little of God and of his Will and of their own Concernments and of the other World should have a Teacher sent from Heaven of greater Authority and Credit than an Angel to acquaint us with God and his will and the Life that we are going to more certainly and fully than would be done by Nature only That this is very desireable no man can doubt How gladly would men receive a Letter or Book that dropt from Heaven Or an Angel that were sent thence to tell them what is there and what they must for ever trust to Yea if it were but one of their old acquaintance from the dead But all this would leave them in uncertainty still and they would be doubtfull of the credit and truth of any such a Messenger And therefore to have one of fuller Authority that shall confirm his Word by unquestionable attestations would very much satisfie men I have proved that Nature it self revealeth to us a Life of Retribution after this and that Immortality of Souls may be proved without Scripture But yet there is still a darkness and unacquaintedness and consequently a doubting and questioning the certainty of it upon a carnal minde And it would greatly satisfie such if besides meer Reason they had some proof which is more agreeable to a minde in flesh and might either speak with some credible Messenger who hath been in Heaven and fully knoweth all these matters or at least might be certainly informed of his Reports And indeed to men that are fallen into such a dark depravedness of Reason and such Strangers to God and Heaven as mankind is it is become needful that they have more than natural light to shew them the nature the excellency and certainty of the happiness to come or else they are never like so to love and seek it and prefer it before all
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
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
or let fall some confutations of them in their Epistles to the Churches but there are no such things at all § 28. 10. Seeing it is so heinous a crime to divulge lies in multitudes of matters of fact to deceive the world into a blasphemy it is scarce possible that the consciences of so many persons of so much piety as their writings prove should never be touched with remorse for so great a villany either in life or at the hour of death and force some one of them to detect all the fraud if they had been guilty of it There is a natural conscience in the worst of men much more in the best which will at some time do its office and will constrain men to confess especially their heinous crimes and especially at the time of death when they see that their lies will serve their worldly interest no more and especially if they be men that indeed believe another life Now consider if the Apostles and Disciples had been deceivers how heinous a crime they had committed 1. To affirm a man to be God incarnate and to be the Saviour of the world on whom all men must trust their souls c. if he had been but a deceiver 2. To make such abundance of lies in open matters of fact 3. To frame hereupon a new Law to the world 4. To overthrow the Law of Moses which was there in force 5. To abuse the intellects of so many thousand persons with such untruths and to call the world to such a needless work as the Christian Religion would be if all this were false to put the world upon such tasks as forsaking all for Christ 6. To draw so many to lose their lives in martyrdom to attest a lie 7. To lose their own time and spend all their lives and labour upon so bad a work All these set together would prove them far worst than any thieves or murderers or traitors if they knew it to be a lie which they preached and attested There are now no men known on earth even in this age of villanies guilty of such a heinous crime as this And let any man that readeth the Apostles writings or considereth of their lives and deaths consider whether it be not next to an impossibility that so many and such persons should go on in such a way upon no greater motives of benefit than they expected nay through such labours reproach and sufferings and not one of them to the death be constrained by conscience to detect the fraud and undeceive the world § 29. 11. Lastly it is not possible that so many thousands of such persons as they presently converted should ever have been perswaded to believe their reports of these matters of fact in a time and place where it was so easie to disprove them if they had been false For 1. The understanding is not free as the will is but only participative in quantum à voluntate imperatur and a man cannot believe what he will nor deny belief to cogent evidence though against his will The Intellects acts as in themselves are necessitated and per modum naturae 2. And all these new converts had understandings which were naturally inclined to truth as truth and averse to falshood and they had all self-self-love and they all embraced now a doctrine which would expose them to suffering and calamity in the world And therefore both nature and interest obliged them to be at the labour of enquiring whether these things were so or not before they ran themselves into so great misery And the three thousand which Peter converted at his first Sermon must also take the shame of being murderers of their Saviour and for this they were pricked at the heart And Paul must be branded for a confessed persecutor and guilty of the bloud of Stephen And would so many men run themselves into all this for nothing to save the labour of an easie enquiry after some matters of publick fact How easily might they go and be satisfied whether Christ fed so many thousand twice miraculously and whether he healed such as he was said to heal who were then living and whether he raised Lazarus and others from death who were then living and whether the earth trembled and the vail of the Temple rent and the Sun was darkned at his death And whether the witnesses of his Resurrection were sufficient And if none of this had been true it would have turned them all from the belief of the Apostles to deride them Object Is not the unbelief of the most a greater reason against the Gospel than the belief of the smaller number is for it Answ No 1. Because it is a negative which they were for and many witnesses to a negative is not so good as a few to an affirmative 2. Most of them were kept from the very hearing of the Apostles which should inform them and excite them 3. Most men every where follow their Rulers and look to their worldly interest and never much mind or discuss such matters as tend to their salvation especially by the way of suffering and disgrace 4. We believe not that the unbelieving party did deny Christ's miracles but fathered them upon the devil therefore even their testimony is for Christ only they hired the Souldiers to say that Christ was stoln out of the Sepulchre while they slept of which they never brought any proof nor could possibly do it if asleep § 29. III. I have proved Christ's Miracles to be 1. Credible by the highest humane faith 2. Certain by natural evidence there being a natural impossibility that the testimonies should be false 3. I am next to prove that they are certain by supernatural evidence which is the same with natural evidence as in the effect but is called supernatural from the way of causing it § 30. The same works of the SPIRIT inherent concomitant and subsequent were the infallible proof of the truth of the Disciples testimony of Christ his Person Miracles and Doctrine § 31. I. They were persons of holy lives and holiness is the lively impress or constitution of their doctrine now visible in their writings What was before said of the Doctrine of Christ himself is true of theirs And as the Kings Coyn is known by his Image and Superscription or rather as an unimitable author is known by his Writings for matter method and style even so is Gods Spirit known in them and in their doctrine § 32. II. Their miraculous gifts and works were so evident and so many and uncontrolled as amount to an infallible proof that Gods are his Witness in the World and sheweth the most infallible proof of his assertions § 33. 1. Their gifts and miracles were many in kinde as their sudden illumination when the Spirit fell upon them and knowing that which they were ignorant of before Their prophesying and speaking in languages never before learn'd by them and interpreting such prophesies and languages their dispossessing
the rest would quickly detect it and be upon his head § 88. 9. Yea the many Sects and Contentions among Christians and the many Hereticks that were at enmity with them would certainly have detected any combination to corrupt the Scriptures § 89. 10. Some few Hereticks in the beginning did attempt to bring in the Gospel of Nicodemus and some other forged Writings and to have corrupted some parts of Scripture and the Churches presently cryed them down § 90. 11. Most Hereticks have pleaded these same Scriptures and denyed them not to be genuine Yea Julian Celsus Porphyry and other Heathens did not deny it but took it as a certain truth § 91. 12. The ancient Writers of the Church Clemens Ignatius Justin Irenaeus Tertullian Cyprian Arnobius Athenagoras Lactantius Eusebius Nazianzene Nyssen Basil Chrysostom Epiphanius Hierom Augustine c. do all cite these Scriptures as we now have them in all things material § 92. 13. The Christian Emperours have inserted the mention of some passages in their Laws in the same words as they are in our Bibles § 93. 14. Several Councils have not only cited several passages out of them but pleaded them still as the Word of God and enumerated the particular Books which constitute the whole Systeme All this set together will tell any man of reason consideration and impartiality that we have much fuller certainty that these Scriptures are the same which the first Churches received from the Apostles than they can have that Virgil's Ovid's Cicero's or Plutarch's works are theirs or that the Statutes of this Land are currant Yea were it not lest I be too tedious I might distinctly shew you the forementioned threefold certainty of all this 1. A moral certainty of the strongest humane Faith 2. A natural certainty grounded upon Physical impossibilities of the contrary 3. And somewhat of a Divine supernatural attestation by the continued blessing of God on the Scriptures for the sanctifying of souls in every age And this bringeth me up to the last part of this Chapter I have all this while been shewing how the three first parts of the Spirits witness to Christ are made known to us viz. Prophecy the Holyness of the Doctrine and Miracles I come now in a word to the fourth § 94. IV. How may we certainly know the fourth part of the SPIRITS witness to Christ viz. The success of his doctrine in the Regeneration of his Disciples and the actual saving them from their sins Answ I shall answer this 1. As to the times past and 2. As to the present age § 95. 1. What men have been in times past we have but these three wayes to know 1. By the History of those ages 2. By their remaining works 3. By their successors in whom their belief and qualities are continued And 1. that there have been holy persons in all ages yea that all true Christians were such we have as good testimony as History can afford whether you will judge of them by their profession life or sufferings 2. Their remaining works are very great testimonies what a spirit of Holiness Charity and Justice doth breath in the writings of those holy men which are come to our hands Clemens Romanus Ignatius Cyprian Ephrem Syrus Macarius Augustine Gregory Nazianzene Gr. Nyssen Basil Ambrose Chrysostom Salvian Cassianus Bernard c. 3. Those that succeed them at this day in the serious profession of Christianity are a living history of the virtues of their ancestors § 96. 2. Of the sanctity of the Christians of this present age there is a double knowledge to be had 1. By them that are Regenerate themselves 2. By them that are not Between these wayes of knowledge the difference must be great § 97. 1. As he that hath learning or love to his Parents or loyalty to his King or faithfulness to his friend may know that he hath it so may he that is renewed by the Spirit of God and hath a predominant love to God a heavenly minde and conversation a hatred of sin a delight in holiness a love to all men even his enemies a contempt of the World a mastery over his fleshly appetite sense and lusts a holy Government of his passions thoughts and tongue with a longing desire to be perfect in all this and a supporting hope to see Gods glory and enjoy him in the delights of Love and Praise for evermore § 98. This evidence of the Spirit of Sanctification in our selves is not the reason or motive of our first faith but of our confirmation and fuller assurance in believing afterwards For a man must in some sort believe in Christ before he can know that he is sanctifyed by him The rest of the motives are sufficient to begin the work of Faith and are the means which God ordinarily useth to that end § 99. It is Christs appointed Method that by learning of Him and using his appointed means Men be brought up to such a degree of Holyness as to be able to discern this witness in themselves and thence to grow up to full assurance of Faith and Hope Therefore if any one that hath heard the Gospel do want this inward assuring testimony it is because they have been false to the truth and means before revealed to them He that will but enquire into the Gospel and receive it and obey it so far as he hath reason to do it and not be false to his own Reason and Interest shall receive that renewing sanctifying Spirit which will be an abiding witness in himself But if he will reject known truth and refuse known duty and neglect the most reasonable means that are proposed to him he must blame himself if he continue in unbelief and want that evidence which others have Suppose that in a common Plague one Physician should be famed to be the only and infallible Curer of all that take his remedies and suppose many defame him and say He is but a Deceiver and others tell you He hath cured us and many thousands and we can easily convince you that his Remedies have nothing in them that is hurtfull and therefore you may safely try them especially having no other help He that will so far believe in him and trust him now as to try his Remedies may live but he that will not must blame none but himself if he die of his disease He that tryeth shall know by his own cure and experience that his Physician is no Deceiver And he that will not and yet complaineth that he wanteth that experimental knowledge doth but talk like a peevish self-destroyer § 100. 2. He that yet hath not the evidence of the Spirit of Regeneration in himself may yet be convinced that it is in others and thereby may know that Christ is indeed the Saviour of the World and no deceiver Even as in the aforesaid instance he that never tryed the Physician himself yet if he see thousands cured by him may know by that that
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
I prove you foolish in your Infidelity And if you will conjecture then that there may as many of those other Regions be damned 1. You shew your selves much more harsh in your censures than the Christians are whose harshness you are now reproving Yea you conjecture this without all ground or probability And will you say then For ought I know it may be so Ergo Christianity is incredible Can a groundless conjecture allow any rational man such a Conclusion Obj. But you say your selves that many of the Angels fell and are now Devils Answ But we say not how many we never said that it is the whole number of the Glorious Inhabitants of all the superiour World who are called Angels as Messengers or Officers about man we know not how small a part of them comparatively it may be And of them we know not how few fell Augustine conjectured that it was the tenth part but we have no ground for any such conjecture Obj. But it is incredible that the World should perish for one mans sin whom they never knew nor could prevent Ans 1. To them that know what Generation is and what the Son is to the Father it is not incredible at all that the unholy Parents do not beget holy Children nor convey to them that which they have not themselves nor yet that God should hate the unholy Nor that the Parents choice should signifie much for their Childrens state who have no wills of their own fit for actual choice nor that restored imperfect holiness should not be conveyed to Children by natural propagation which came to the Parents by Regeneration nor that the Children of Traytors should be disinherited for their Fathers faults nor that the Children of Drunkards and Gluttons should be naturally diseased 2. No man in the World doth perish for Adams sin alone without his own Though we judge the case of Infants to allow you no exception yet to carry the controversie to them into the dark and to argue à minus notis is not the property of such as seek impartially for truth Christ hath procured a new Covenant upon which all those that hear the Gospel shall again be tryed for life or death And those that hear it not have divers means which have a tendency to their recovery and are under undenyable Obligations to use those means in order to their recovery which if they do not faithfully they perish for their own sin Should it not make Christianity the more easily credible when certain experience assureth us how prone even Infants are to sin and how universally the World is drown'd in wickedness and then to finde so admirable and suitable a Remedy revealed Obj. But Punishment is to warn others from sinning But after this life there will be none to warn therefore there will be no punishment because the end of punishing ceaseth Answ 1. It is a false position that punishment is only or chiefly to be a warning to others It is chiefly for the ultimate end of Government which secundum quid among men is the bonum publicum but simpliciter in Gods Government it is the Glorifying or demonstration of the Holiness and Justice of God the universal Governour to the pleasure of his holy will 2. It is the Penalty as Threatned in the Law and not the penalty as executed which is the first necessary means to deterre others from offending And then the execution is secondarily necessary because the Law must be fulfilled It is not the actual hanging of a murderer which is the first necessary instrument or means to restrain murderers But it is the Penalty in the Law which saith that Murderers shall be hanged And the commination of the Law would be no restraint if it were not that it relateth to a just execution So that it was necessary to the restraint of sinners in this world that God should threaten Hell in his Law And therefore it is necessary that he execute that Law or else it would be delusory and contemptible 3. How know we who shall survive this present World to whom God may make mans Hell a warning Are not the Devils now set out in Scripture for a warning to Man And how know we what other Creatures God hath to whom these punished sinners may be a warning Or whether the New Earth wherein Righteousness must dwell according to Gods Promise 2 Pet. 3.12 13. shall not have use of this warning to keep them in their righteousness As long as all these things are probable and the contrary utterly uncertain how foolish a thing is it to go from the light of a plain Revelation and Scripture and argue from our dark uncertainties and improbabilities against that light And all because self-love and guilt doth make sinners unwilling to believe the truth So much for the Objection against Hell Obj. VIII But it is incredible that all those shall be damned that live honestly and soberly and do no body harm if they do not also live a holy and heavenly life and forsake all for another World Answ It is but selfishness and blindness which maketh men call him an honest man and speak lightly of his wickedness who preferreth the dung and trifles of this World before his Maker and Everlasting glory What if a pack of Murderers Thieves and Rebels do live together in love and do one another no harm shall that excuse their murders or rebellions and give them the name of honest men What is the Creature to the Creator what greater wickedness can man commit than to deny despise and disobey his Maker and to preferre the most contemptible vanity before him and to choose the transitory pleasure of sinning before the endless fruition of his God what is wronging a Neighbour in comparison of this wrong shall a sinner refuse his everlasting happiness when it is offered him and then think to have it when he can possess the pleasure of sin no longer and all because he did no man wrong Doth he think to refuse Heaven and yet to have it If he refuse the Love of God and perfection of Holiness he refuseth Heaven It is so far from being incredible that the unholy should be damned and the Holy only saved that the contrary is impossible I would not believe an Angel from Heaven if he should tell me that one unholy Soul in sensu composito while such shall be saved and have the heavenly felicity because it is a meer contradiction For to be blessed in Heaven is to be happy in the perfect Love of God And to love God without Holiness signifieth to love him without loving him Are these the Objections of unbelief Obj. IX The Resurrection of these Numerical Bodies when they are devoured and turned into the substance of other bodies is a thing incredible Answ 1. If it be neither against the Power the Wisdom or the Will of God it is not incredible at all But it is not against any of
these Who can say that God is unable to raise the dead who seeth so much greater things performed by him in the daily motion of the Sun or Earth and in the support and course of the whole frame of Nature He that can every Spring give a kinde of Resurrection to Plants and Flowers and Fruits of the Earth can easily raise our bodies from the dust And no man can prove that the Wisdom of God or yet his Will are against our Resurrection but that both are for it may be proved by his Promises Shall that which is beyond the power of Man be therefore objected as a difficulty to God 2. Yea it is congruous to the Wisdom and Governing Justice of God that the same Body which was partaker with the Soul in sin and duty should be partaker with it in suffering or felicity 3. The Lord Jesus Christ did purposely die and rise again in his humane body to put the Resurrection out of doubt by undenyable ocular demonstration and by the certainty of belief 4. There is some Natural Reason for the Resurrection in the Souls inclination to its Body As it is unwilling to lay it down it will be willing to reassume it when God shall say The time is come As we may conclude at night when they are going to bed that the people of City and Countrey will rise the next morning and put on their Cloaths and not go naked about the streets because there is in them a Natural inclination to rising and to cloaths and a natural aversness to lie still or to go uncloathed so may we conclude from the souls natural inclination to its body that it will reassume it as soon as God consenteth 5. And all our Objections which reason from supposed contradictions vanish because none of us all have so much skill in Physicks as to know what it is which individuateth this Numerical Body and so what it is which is to be restored But we all confess that it is not the present mass of flesh and humours which being in a continual flux is not the same this year which it was the last and may vanish long before we die Obj. X. If Christ be indeed the Saviour of the World why came he not into the World till it was 4000 years old And why was he before revealed to so few and to them so darkly Did God care for none on earth but a few Jews or did he not care for the Worlds recovery till the later age when it drew towards its end Answ It is hard for the Governour of the World by ordinary means to satisfie all self-conceited persons of the wisdom and equity of his dealings But 1. it belongeth not to us but to our free Benefactor to determine of the measure and season of his benefits May he not do with his own as he list And shall we deny or question a proved truth because the reason of the circumstances is unrevealed to us If our Physician come to cure us of a mortal disease would we reject him because he came not sooner and because he cured not all others that were sick as well as us 2. The Eternal Wisdom and Word of God the second Person in the Trinity was the Saviour of the World before he was incarnate He did not only by his Vndertaking make his future performances valid as to the merit and satisfaction necessary to our deliverance but he instructed Mankinde in order to their recovery and Ruled them upon terms of grace and so did the work of a Redeemer or Mediator even as Prophet Priest and King before his Incarnation He enacted the Covenant of Grace that whoever repenteth and believeth shall be saved and so gave men a conditional pardon of their sins 3. And though Repentance and the Love of God was necessary to all that would be saved even as a constitutive cause of their salvation yet that Faith in the Mediator which is but the means to the Love of God and to sanctification was not alwayes nor in all places in the same particular Articles necessary as it is now where the Gospel is preached Before Christs coming a more general belief might serve the turn for mens salvation without believing that This Jesus is the Christ that he was conceived by the Holy Ghost born of the Virgin Mary suffered under Pontius Pilate was crucified dead and buryed and descended to Hades and rose again the third day and ascended into Heaven c. And as more is necessary to be believed since Christs incarnation and resurrection than before so more was before necessary to the Jewes who had the Oracles of God and had more revealed to them than to other Nations who had less revealed And now more is necessary where the Gospel cometh than where it doth not 4. So that the Gentiles had a Saviour before Christs Incarnation and not only the Jewes They were reprieved from Legal Justice and not dealt with by God upon the proper terms of the Covenant of Works or meer Nature They had all of them much of that mercy which they had forfeited which came to them by the Grace of the Redeemer They had time and helps to turn to God and a course of means appointed them to use in order to their recovery and salvation According to the use of which they shall be judged They were not with the Devils left remediless and shut out of all hope under final desperation No one ever perished in any Age or Nation of the World who by believing in a mercifull pardoning holy God was recovered to love God above all And if they did not this they were all without a just excuse 5. The course of Grace as that of Nature doth wisely proceed from low degrees to higher and bringeth not things to perfection at the first The Sun was not made the first day of the Creation nor was Man made till all things were prepared for him The Churches Infancy was to go before its Maturity We have some light of the Sun before it rise much more before it come to the height As Christ now teacheth his Church more plainly when he is himself gone into Glory even by his Pastors whom he fitteth for that work and by his Spirit so did he though more obscurely yet sufficiently teach it before he came in the flesh by Prophets and Priests His work of Salvation consisteth in bringing men to live in Love and Obedience And his way of Teaching them his saving doctrine is by his Ministers without and by his Spirit within And thus he did before his coming in flesh and thus he doth since we that are born since his coming see not his Person any more than they who were born before But we have his Word Ministers and Spirit and so had they His reconciling sacrifice was effectual morally in esse cognito volito before the performance of it And the means of reconciling our mindes to God
were sufficient in their kind before though more full and excellent since his coming If you would not be deluded into Infidelity by this objection which indeed is one of the greatest difficulties of Faith you must not further one error by another 1. Think not that God is hired or perswaded by Christ as against his will to forgive mens sins and save their souls or to do them any good Understand that no good cometh to man or any Creature but totally from Gods will and Love who is the Original and Eternal Goodness All the question is but of the modus conferendi the way of his Conveyance And then it will not seem incredible that he should give out his mercy by degrees and with some diversity 2. Think not that Christianity doth teach men that all those who were not of the Jewish Nation or Church then or that are not now of the Christian Church were so cast off and forsaken by God as the Devils are to be left as utterly hopeless or remediless nor that they were upon no other terms for salvation than man in innocency was under which was Obey perfectly and live or if thou sin thou shalt die For this had been to leave them as hopeless as the Devils when once they had sinned 3. And think not that Christ can shew no mercy nor do any thing towards the salvation of a sinner before he is known himself to the sinner especially before he is known as an incarnate Mediator or one that is to be incarnate He struck down Paul and spake to him from Heaven before Paul knew him He sent Philip to the Eunuch before he knew him and Peter to Cornelius and sendeth the Gospel to Heathen Nations before they know him If the Apostles themselves even after that they had lived long with Christ and heard his preaching and seen his Miracles yea and preached and wrought Miracles themselves did not yet understand that he must suffer and die and rise again and send down the Spirit c. you may conjecture by this what the common Faith of those before Christs coming was who were saved 4. Think not therefore that Christ hath no way or degree of effectual Teaching but by the express doctrine of his Incarnation Death and Resurrection which is now THE GOSPEL 5. And think not that all the mercies which Pagan Nations have from God are no acts of Grace nor have any tendency to their conversion and salvation Doubtless it is the same Redeemer even the eternal Wisdom and Word of God who before his Incarnation gave greater mercy to the Jews and lesser to the Gentiles He doth by these mercies oblige or lead men to Repentance and Gratitude and reveal God as mercifull and ready to forgive all capable sinners As even under the Law Exod 34. he revealed himself fullyer to Moses The Lord the Lord God mercifull and gracious long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth keeping mercy for thousands forgiving iniquity transgression and sin c. though he will by no means no not by Christ clear the guilty that is either say to the wicked thou art just or pardon any uncapable subject Doubtless mercy bindeth Heathens to know God as mercifull and to love him and to improve that mercy to their attainment of more and to seek after further knowledge and to be better than they are and they are set under a certain course of Means and appointed Duty in order to their recovery and salvation Else it might be said that they have nothing to do for their own recovery and consequently sin not by omitting it By all this you may perceive that Christ did much by Mercies and Teaching before his Incarnation and since for all the World which hath a tendency to their conversion recovery and salvation Obj. XI The conception of a Virgin without man is improbable and must all depend upon the credit of her own word And the meanness of his Parentage breeding and condition doth more increase the difficulty Answ 1. It was meet that the birth of Christ should begin in a Miracle when his life was to be spent and finished in Miracles 2. It is no more than was promised before by the Prophet Isa 7.14 A Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son c. And why should the fulfilling of a Prophesie by miracle be incredible 3. It is neither above nor against the Power Wisdom or Love of God and therefore it should not seem incredible There is no contradiction or impossibility in it nor any thing contrary to Sense or Reason Reason saith indeed that it is above the power of man and above the common course of Nature but not that it is above the Power of the God of Nature Is it any harder for God to cause a Virgin to conceive by the Holy Ghost than to make the first of Humane kinde or any other kinde of nothing 4. It was meet that he who was to be a Sacrifice for sin and a Teacher and pattern of perfect righteousness and a Mediator between God and Man should not be an ordinary Childe of Adam nor be himself defiled with Original or actual sin and therefore that he should be in a peculiar sense the Son of God 5. And this doth not depend only on the Credit of the Virgin-mothers word but on the multitude of Miracles whereby God himself confirmed the truth of it And as for the Meanness of his Person and Condition 1. It was a needfull part of the humiliation which he was for our sins to undergo that he should take upon him the form of a Servant and make himself of no reputation Phil. 2.7 8 9. 2. It was a suitable testimony against the pride carnality and worldly-mindedness of deluded men who over-value the honour and pleasure and riches of the World And a suitable means to teach men to judge of things aright and value every thing truely as it is The contrary whereof is the cause of all the sin and misery of the World He that was to cure men of the Love of the World and all its riches dignities and pleasure he that was to save them from this by the Office of a Saviour could not have taken a more effectual way than to teach them by his own example and to go before them in the setled contempt of all these vanities and preferring the true and durable felicity 3. Look inwardly to his God-head and spiritual perfections Look upward to his present state of Glory who hath now all power given into his hands and is made Head over all things to the Church Eph. 1.22 Look forward to the day of his glorious appearing when he shall come with all his Celestial Retinue to judge the World And then you will see the Dignity and excellency of Christ If you preferre not spiritual and heavenly dignities your selves you are uncapable of them and cannot be saved But if you do you may see the excellencies of Christ He that knoweth how
advantage of honour to his mercy and in the fullest demonstration of that love and goodness which may win our love And where will you find this done but in Jesus Christ alone 2. You must distinguish between Anger and Justice when God is said to be angry it meaneth no more but that he is displeased with sin and sinners and executeth his governing-justice on them 3. You must distinguish between sufferings in themselves considered and as in their signification and effects God loved not any mans pain and suffering and death as in it self considered and as evil to us no not of a sacrificed beast but he loveth the demonstration of his truth and justice and holiness and the vindication of his Laws from the contempt of sinners and the other good ends attained by this means and so as a means adapted to such ends he loveth the punishment of sin Object XV. It is a suspicious sign that he seeketh but to set up his name and get disciples that he maketh it so necessary to salvation to believe in him and not only to repent and turn to God Answ He maketh not believing in him necessary sub ratione finis as our holiness and love to God is but only sub ratione medii as a means to make us holy and work us up to the love of God He proclaimeth himself to be the Way the Truth and the Life by whom it is that we must come to the Father and that he will save to the uttermost all that come to God by him Heb. 7.25 Joh. 14.6 So that he commandeth Faith but as the bellows of Love to kindle in us the heavenly flames And I pray you how should he do this otherwise Can we learn of him if we take him for a deceiver Will we follow his example if we believe him not to be our pattern Will we obey him if we believe not that he is our Lord Will we be comforted by his gracious promises and covenant and come to God with ever the more boldness and hope of mercy if we believe not in his Sacrifice and Merits Shall we be comforted at death in hope that he will justifie us and receive our souls if we believe not that he liveth and will judge the world and is the Lord of life and glory Will you learn of Plato or Aristotle if you believe not that they are fit to be your Teachers Or will you take Physick of any Physician whom you trust not but take him for a deceiver Or will you go in the Vessel with a Pilot or serve in the Army under a Captain whom you cannot trust To believe in Christ which is made so necessary to our justification and salvation is not a dead opinion nor the joyning with a party that cryeth up his name But it is to become Christians indeed that is to take him unfeignedly for our Saviour and give up our selves to him by resolved consent or covenant to be saved by him from sin and punishment and reconciled to God and brought to perfect holiness and glory This is true justifying and saving faith And it is our own necessities that have made this faith so necessary as a means to our own salvation And shall we make it necessary for our selves and then quarrel with him for making it necessary in his Covenant Object XVI If Christ were the Son of God and his Apostles inspired by the holy Ghost and the Scriptures were God's Word they would excel all other men and writings in all true rational worth and excellency whereas Aristotle excelleth them in Logick and Philosophy and Cicero and Demosthenes in Oratory and Seneca in ingenious expressions of morality c. Answ You may as well argue that Aristotle was no wiser than a Minstrel because he could not fiddle so well nor than a Painter because he could not limn so well or than a harlot because he could not dress himself so neatly Means are to be estimated according to their fitness for their ends Christ himself excelled all mankind in all true perfections and yet it became him not to exercise all mens arts to shew that he excelleth them He came not into the world to teach men Architecture Navigation Medicine Astronomy Grammar Musick Logick Rhetorick c. and therefore shewed not his skill in these The world had sufficient helps and means for these in Nature It was to save men from sin and hell and bring them to pardon holiness and heaven that Christ was incarnate and that the Apostles were inspired and the Scriptures written and to be fitted to these ends is the excellency to be expected in them and in this they excell all persons and writings in the world As God doth not syllogize or know by our imperfect way of ratiocination but yet knoweth all things better than syllogizers do so Christ hath a more high and excellent kind of Logick and Oratory and a more apt and spiritual and powerful style than Aristotle Demosthenes Cicero or Seneca He shewed not that skill in methodical healing which Hippocrates and Galen shewed But he shewed more and better skill when he could heal with a word and raise the dead and had the power of life and death so did he bring more convincing evidence than Aristotle and perswaded more powerfully than Demosthenes or Cicero And though this kind of formal learning was below him and below the inspired messengers of his Gospel yet his inferiour servants an Aquinas a Scotus an Ockam a Scaliger a Ramus a Gassendus do match or excel the old Philosophers and abundance of Christians equalize or excel a Demosthenes or Cicero in the truest Oratory 2. His mercy had a general design for the salvation of all sorts and ranks of men and therefore was not to confine it self to a few trifling pedantick Logicians and Orators or those that had learned to speak in their new-made words and phrases but he must speak in the common Dialect of all those whom he would instruct and save As the Statutes of the land or the Books of Physick which are most excellent are written in a style which is fitted to the subject matter and to the Readers and not in Syllogisms or terms of Logick so was it more necessary that it should be with the doctrine of salvation The poor and unlearned were the greatest number of those that were to be converted and saved by the Gospel and still to use the holy Scriptures 3. There is greater exactness of true Logical method in some parts of the Scripture as e. g. in the Covenant of Faith the Lord's Prayer and the Decalogue than any is to be found in Aristotle or Cicero though men that understand them not do not observe it The particular Books of Scripture were written at several times and on several occasions and not as one methodical system though the Spirit that indited it hath made it indeed a methodical system agreeably to its design but if you saw the doctrines
of all this Bible uno intuitu in a perfect scheme as it is truly intended by the Spirit of God if you saw all begin the Divine Unity and branch out it self into the Trinity and thence into the Trinity of Relations and Correlations and thence into the multiplied branches of Mercy and Precepts and all these accepted and improved in Duty and Gratitude by man and returned up in Love to the blessed Trinity and Unity again and all this in perfect order proportion and harmony you would see the most admirable perfect method that ever was set before you in the world The resemblance of it is in the circular motion of the humours and spirits in mans body which are delivered on from vessel to vessel and perfected in all their motions I know there are many systems and schemes attempted which shew not this but that is because the wisdom of this method is so exceeding great that it is yet but imperfectly understood for my own part I may say as those that have made some progress in Anatomy beyond their Ancestors that they have no thought that they have yet discovered all but rejoyce in what they have discovered which shewed them the hopes and possibility of more So I am far from a perfect comprehension of this wonderful method of Divinity but I have seen that which truly assureth me that it excelleth all the art of Philosophers and Orators and that it is really a most beautiful frame and harmonious consort and that more is within my prospect than I am yet come to 4. Moreover it is Christ who gave all men all the gifts they have to Logicians Orators Astronomers Grammarians Physicians and Musicians c. what ever gifts are suited to mens just ends and callings he bestoweth on them and to his Apostles he gave those gifts which were most suitable to their work I do not undervalue the gifts of Nature or Art in any I make it not with Aristotle an argument for the contempt of Musick Jovem neque canere neque cytharam pulsare but I may say that as God hath greater excellencies in himself so hath he greater gifts to give and such gifts as were fittest for the confirmation of the truth of the Gospel and first planting of the Churches he gave to the Apostles and such as were fit for the edifying of the Church he giveth to his Ministers ever since And such as were fit for the improvement of Nature in lower things he gave the Philosophers and Artists of the world Object XVII The Scripture hath many contradictions in it in points of History Chronology and other things Therefore it is not the word of God Answ Nothing but ignorance maketh men think so understand once the true meaning and allow for the errors of Printers Transcribers and Translators and there will no such thing be found Young Students in all Sciences think their books are full of contradictions which they can easily reconcile when they come to understand them Books that have been so oft translated into so many Languages and the Originals and Translations so oft transcribed may easily fall into some disagreement between the Original and Translations and the various Copies may have divers inconsiderable verbal differences But all the world must needs confess that in all these Books there is no contradiction in any point of Doctrine much less in such as our salvation resteth on There are two opinions among Christians about the Books of the holy Scripture the one is That the Scriptures are so entirely and perfectly the product of the Spirit 's Inspiration that there is no word in them which is not infallibly true The other is That the Spirit was promised and given to the Apostles to enable them to preach to the world the true Doctrine of the Gospel and to teach men to observe what ever Christ commanded and truly to deliver the History of his Life and Sufferings and Resurrection which they have done accordingly But not to make them perfect and indefectible in every word which they should speak or write no not about Sacred things but only in that which they delivered to the Church as necessary to salvation and as the Rule of Faith and Life but every Chronological and Historical narrative is not the Rule of Faith or Life I think that the first opinion is right and that no one errour or contradiction in any matter can be proved in the Scriptures yet all are agreed in this that it is so of Divine Inspiration as yet in the manner and method and style to partake of the various abilities of the Writers and consequently of their humane imperfections And that it is a meer mistake which Infidels deceive themselves by to think that the Writings cannot be of Divine Inspiration unless the Book in order and style and all other excellencies be as perfect as God himself could make it Though we should grant that it is less Logical than Aristotle and less Oratorical and Grammatical and exact in words than Demosthenes or Cicero it would be no disparagement to the certain truth of all that is in it It doth not follow that David must be the ablest man for strength nor that he must use the weapons which in themselves are most excellent if he be called of God to overcome Goliah but rather that it may be known that he is called of God he shall do it with less excellence of strength and weapons than other men and so there may be some real weakness not culpable in the Writings of the several Prophets and Apostles in point of style and method which shall shew the more that they are sent of God to do great things by little humane excellency of speech and yet that humane excellency be never the more to be disliked no more than a sword because David used but a sling and stone If Amos have one degree of parts and Jeremiah another and Isaiah another c. God doth not equal them all by Inspiration but only cause every man to speak his saving truth in their own language and dialect and style As the body of Adam was made of the common earth though God breathed into him a rational soul and so is the body of every Saint even such as may partake of the infirmities of parents so Scripture hath its style and language and methods so from God as we have our bodies even so that there may be in them the effects of humane imperfection and it is not so extraordinarily of God as the truth of the Doctrine is All is so from God as to be suitable to its proper ends but the body of Scripture is not so extraordinarily from him as the soul of it is as if it were the most excellent and exact in every kind of ornament and perfection The Truth and Goodness is the soul of the Scripture together with the power manifested in it and in these it doth indeed excel So that variety of gifts in the Prophets and
may let it go and boast of your better choice as you find cause How much did the light of nature teach the Stoicks the Cynicks and many other Sects which differeth not much in austerity from Christ's precepts of mortification and self-denial Socrates could say Opes ac nobilitates non solum nihil in se habere honestatis verum omne malum ex eis aboriri Laert. l. 2. in Socr. p. 99. Dicebat unicum esse bonum scientiam malumque unicum inscitiam Id. ib. Et referenti quod illum Athenienses mori dâ—crevissent natura illos inquit Ib. Et multa prius de immortalitate animorum ac praeclara disserens cicutam bibit p. 105. Magna animi sublimitate carpentes se objurgantes contemnebat p. 96. When he was publickly derided Omnia ferebat aequo animo And when one kickt him and the people marvelled at his patience he said What if an Ass had kickt me should I have sued him at Law p. 93. When he saw in Fairs and Shops what abundance of things are set to sale he rejoycingly said Quam multis ipse non egeo cum libere quo vellet abire carcere liceret noluit plorantes severe increpavit pulcherrimosque sermones illos vinctus prosecutus est If so many Philosophers thought it a shameful note of cowardise for a man to live and not to kill himself when he was falling into shame or misery much greater reason hath a true believer to be willing to die in a lawful way for the sake of Christ and the hope of glory and to be less fearful of death than a Brutus a Cato a Seneca or a Socrates though not to inflict it on themselves Soundly believe the promises of Christ and then you will never much stick at suffering To lose a feather and win a Crown is a bargain that very few would grudge at And profanely with Esau to sell the birth-right for a morsel to part with heaven for the paltry pleasures of flesh and fancy were below the reason of a man if sin had not unmann'd him Matth. 16.25 26. Whosoever will save his life shall lose it and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul Virulent Eunapius giveth us the witness of natural reason for a holy mortified life whilst he maketh it the glory of the Philosophers whom he celebrateth Of Antoninus the son of Aedesius he saith Totum se dedidit atque applicuit Diis loci gentilibus sacris mysticis arcanis citoque in Deorum immortalium contubernium receptus est neglectâ prorsus corporis curâ ejusque voluptatibus remisso nuntio sapientiae studio profano vulgo incognitum amplexus Cuncti mortales hujusce viri temperantiam constantiam inflecti nesciam mentem demirati suere Eunap in Aedes What a Saint doth he make Jamblichus to be of whom it was feigned that in his Prayers he would be lifted up above ten cubits from the earth and his garments changed into a golden colour till he had done Eun. in Jambl. p. 572. Even while he raileth at the Alexandrian Monks ut homines quidem specie sed vitam turpem porcorum more exigentes c. p. 598. contrary to the evidence of abundant History he beareth witness against a vitious life And if holiness and mortification or temperance be so laudable even in the judgment of the bitterest Heathens why should it be thought intollerable strictness as it is more clearly and sweetly proposed in the Christian verity And if he say of Jamblicus Ob justitiae cultum facilem ad deorum aures accessum habuit we may boldly say that the righteous God loveth righteousness and that the prayers of the upright are his delight and that their sufferings shall not always be forgotten nor their faithful labours prove in vain CHAP. XII The reasonable Conditions required of them who will overcome the difficulties of Believing and will not undo themselves by wilful Infidelity I Have answered the objections against Christianity but have not removed the chiefest impediments for recipitur ad modum recipientis the grand impediments are within even the incapacity or indisposition or frowardness of the persons that should believe It is not every head and heart that is fit for heavenly truth and work I will next therefore tell you what conditions Reason it self will require of them that would not be deceived that so you may not lay that blame on Christ if you be infidels which belongeth only to your selves Cond 1. Come not in your studies of these sacred Mysteries with an enmity against the doctrine which you must study or at least suspend your enmity so far as is necessary to an impartial search and examination For ill will cannot easily believe well Malice and partiality will blind the strongest wits and hide the force of the plainest evidence Con. 2. Drown not the love of truth in a vitious fleshly heart and life and forfeit not the light of supernatural revelation by wilful sinning against natural light and debauching your consciences by abusing the knowledge which already you have Sensuality and wilful debauchery is the common temptation to Infidelity when men have once so heinously abused God as that they must needs believe that if there be a God he must be a terrour to them and if there be a judgment and a life of retribution it is like to go ill with them a little thing will perswade such men that there is no God nor life to come indeed When they once hope it is so and take it for their interest and a desirable thing they will easily believe that it is so indeed And God is just and beginneth the executions of his justice in this world and the forsaking of a soul that hateth the light and wilfully resisteth and abuseth knowledge is one of his most dreadful judgments That man who will be a drunkard a glutton a whore-monger a proud ambitious worldling in despight of the common light of nature can hardly expect that God should give him the light of grace Despighting truth and enslaving reason and turning a man into a beast is not the way to heavenly illumination Cond 3. Be not ignorant of the common natural Truths which are recited in the first part of this book for supernatural revelation presupposeth natural and grace which maketh us Saints supposeth that reason hath constituted us men and all true Knowledge is methodically attained It is a great wrong to the Christian cause that too many preachers of it have missed the true method and still begun at supernatural revelations and built even natural certainties thereupon and have either not known or concealed much of the fore-written natural verities And it is an exceeding great cause of the multiplying of Infidels that most men are dull or idle drones and unacquainted with the common natural truths which
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
of my life in converse with such truly sanctified persons and in preaching this Gospel through the great mercy of God with such success upon no small numbers so that I am certain by full experience of the reality of that holy change which cannot be done but with the co-operation of God I have seen that this change is another matter than fancy opinion or factious conjunction with a Sect Even the setting up God in the soul as God as our Owner Ruler and Chief Good and the devoting of the soul to him in Resignation Obedience and thankful Love the seeking of an everlasting felicity in his glorious sight and love in heaven the contempt of this world as it pleaseth the flesh and the holy use of it as the way to our felicity and pleasing God the subduing and denying all carnal desires which would rebel against God and reason and restoring Reason to the government of the lower faculties the denying of that inordinate selfishness which setteth up our interest against our neighbours and the respecting and loving our neighbours as our selves and doing to others as we would be done by and doing good to all men as far as we have power the holy governing of our inferiours and obeying our superiours in order to these ends living soberly righteously and godly in this world and in the patient bearing of all afflictions and diligent serving God in our several places to redeem our time and prepare for death and wait with longing for the everlasting glory the hope of which is caused in us by faith in Christ our Ransome Reconciler Example Teacher Governour and Judge This is the true nature of the Religion expressed in the Gospel and impressed on the souls of sanctified men By this effect I know that Christ is the Saviour of the world and no deceiver as I know a man to be a true Physician and no deceiver when I see him ordinarily and throughly perform the cures which he undertaketh He saveth us actually from the power of our sins and bringeth up our hearts to God and therefore we may boldly say He is our Saviour This witness through his mercy I have in my self and is alway with me and in those whom I converse with round about me I have also upon just enquiry found that the witnesses of Christ's Resurrection and Miracles have delivered us their testimony with a three-fold evidence 1. The evidence of just credibility to a humane belief 2. The evidence of natural certainty in the natural impossibilities of deceit 3. The evidence of supernatural divine attestation in 1. The Image of God on their hearts and doctrine 2. Their miracles and 3. Their sanctifying success And I have found that the witnesses of the Miracles of the Apostles themselves have also given us the same three degrees of proof of the Verity of their testimony though Miracles continue not now as then And I have look'd round about me in the world as diligently and impartially as I could to see whether Christ and the way which he hath prescribed us have any competitor which may make it difficult to resolve which to prefer and follow And as I have found that none but GOD alone hath absolute Dominion and Sovereignty over us and is our chief Benefactor nor fit to be our felicity and ultimate end so I have found that there is no one so fit to be taken for our Mediator and the Way to God as Jesus Christ none else that hath a natural aptitude none else among men that is perfect without sin that hath conquered Satan the world and death that is a Messenger from Heaven so infallible and sure whose Doctrine and Life is suited to our case none else that is become a Sacrifice for our sins and hath risen from the dead and ascended into Glory and doth govern and preserve us and will judge the world and hath power to give the holy Ghost both for Gifts and Graces nor that actually giveth it to the sanctifying of all his sincere followers none else that hath such a Church and Kingdom contemning the world and contemned by the world and so truly fitted to the pleasing of God and the future fruition of him in Glory I see that Judaism is but the porch of Christianity and if Christ had not confirmed the verity of the Old Testament to me I should have found the difficulty of believing it much greater And as for Mahometanism besides the common truths which it retaineth of the Unity of the Godhead the Verity of Christ and the Life to come c. there is nothing else which at all inviteth my understanding And as for Heathenism the case that it hath brought the miserable world into is much to be pitied and deplored Much precious truth is revealed to us by Nature but experience telleth us of the need of more and Christianity hath all which Nature teacheth with a great deal more So that Christianity hath no considerable competitor And as for worldly wealth and honour superiority and command of others the favour applause and praise of great ones or of the multitude voluptuousness and fleshly delights c. ease long life or any accommodations of the flesh yea learning it self as it is but the pleasing of the fancy in the knowledge of unnecessary things all these I have perused and found them to be deceit and trouble a glimpse of heaven a taste of the love of God in Christ yea a fervent desire after God yea a penitent tear is better than them all and yieldeth a delight which leaveth a better taste behind it and which my Reason more approveth in the review and the vanity of all inferiour pleasures appeareth to me in the common effects they distract and corrupt the minds of those that have the greatest measure of them and make them the calamity of their times the furious afflicters of the upright and the pity of all sober standers-by who see them turn the world into a Bedlam and how all their honour wealth and sport will leave them at a dying hour and with what dejected minds unwelcome death will be entertain'd by them and with what sad reviews they will look back upon all their lives and in what sordid dust and darkness they must leave the rotting flesh when their souls are gone to receive their doom before the Judge of all the world All these are things which were past all doubt with me since I had any solid use of reason and things which are still before my eyes Wherefore my God I look to Thee I come to Thee to Thee alone No man no worldly creature Made me none of them did Redeem me none of them did Renew my soul none of them will justifie me at thy Bar nor forgive my sin nor save me from thy penal Justice none of them will be a full or a perpetual felicity or portion for my soul I am not a stranger to their promises and performances I have trusted them too
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
operosa multo quidem faciliora Certè ita temere de mundo effutiunt ut mihi quidem nunquam hunc admirabilem coeli ornatum qui locus est proximus suspexisse videantur Where he brings in this passage as from Aristotle that if we should imagine men to have lived in some Dungeon or Cavern in the Earth and never to have seen the Sun or Light or World as we do and if there should be a doubt or dispute among them whether there be a God and if you should presently bring up these men into our places where they might look above them and about them to the Sun and Stars and Heaven and Earth they would quickly by such a sight be convinced that there is a God But as he truly addeth Assiduitate quotidiana consuetudine oculorum assuescunt animi neque admirantur neque requirunt rationes earum rerum quas semper vident perinde quasi novitas nos magis quam magnitude rerum debeat adexquirendas causas excitare But I suppose it will be granted me that the first mover doth more than meerly move the effects of Wisdom and Goodness being so legible on all the World but you 'l say that to do it wisely and to attain good ends by it c. is but the modus of action with the effect and therefore matter and motion rightly ordered may be nevertheless sufficient to all effects To which I answer that the Creatures motion requireth not only that the Creator move them but that he place and order them and move them rightly and that he remove and overcome impediments c. Therefore there is necessary in the first mover both Wisdom and Love as well as Power And neither his Power Wisdom or Love are Locomotion in himself And this much being proved that in every motion there is Divine Power Wisdom and Love which is more than matter and motion it self I proceed next to enquire 5. Do you think there is any thing existent in the World besides matter and motion or not As to meer site and figure and other such order or modes of matter I know you will not deny them to have now a being as well as motion But is there no different tendency to motion in the parts of matter Is there not in many Creatures a Power an Inclination or aptitude to motion besides motion it self Is there not a reason à priore to be given why one Creature is more agile and active than another and why they act in their various wayes Why is fire more active than earth and a Swallow than a Snail If you say that the different ratio motus is in some extrinsecal agent only which moveth them you will hardly shew any possibility of that when the same Sun by the same virtue or motion as you will say is it that moveth all And if it were so you must go up to the first Cause to ask for the different motions of those movers when our enquiry now is de natura moventium motorum Creatorum If you say that it is the Ratio recipiendi in the different magnitudes or positions of the parts of matter which is the cause of different motions I would know 1. Whether this difference of magnitude and figure and site being now antecedently necessary to different motions was not so heretofore as well as now If you say No you feign without proof a state of things and order of Causes contrary to that which all mens sense perceiveth to be now existent And who is the wiser Philosopher he that judgeth the course and nature of things to be and have been what he now findeth it till the contrary be proved or he that findeth it one thing and feigneth it sometime to have been another without any proof That which is now antecedently necessary to diversity of motion it 's like was so heretofore 2. And then how could one simple equal act of God setting the first matter into motion cause such an inequality in motions to this day if it be true that you hold that only that which is moved or in motion it self can move and that motion is all that is necessary to the diversity 3. Either the first matter was made solid in larger parcels or all conjunct or in Atomes If it was made first in Atomes then Motion caused not Division If it was made conjunct and solid then motion caused not conjunction and solidity And if the first division or conjunction site and figure of matter was all antecedent to motion and without it we have no reason to think that it is the sole Cause of all things now But surely quantity figure and site are not all that now is antecedent to motion Doth not a man feel in himself a certain Power to sudden and voluntary motion He that sate still can suddenly rise and go And if you say that he performeth that sudden motion by some antecedent motion I answer that I grant that but the question is whether by that alone or whether a Power distinct from motion it self be not as evidently the Cause For otherwise the antecedent motion would proceed but according to its own proportion It would not in a minute make so sudden and great an alteration I can restrain also that motion which some antecedent motion e.g. passion urgeth me to Surely this Power of doing or not doing is somewhat different from doing it self A power of not-moving is not motion And what is the Pondus which Gassendus doth adde to magnitude and figure as a third pre-requisite in Atomes I perceive he knoweth not what to make of it himself But in conclusion it must be no natural Gravity by which the parts are inclined to the whole in themselves but the meer effect of pulsion or traction or both At the first he was for both conjunct pulsion of the Air and traction of the Atomes from the Earth But of this he repented as seeing impulsionem aeris nullam esse and was for the traction of Atoms alone Than which his Friends conceit of the pulsive motion of the Sun in its Diastole or whatever other motion is the cause doth seem less absurd But that man that would have me believe that if a Rock were in the air or if Pauls Steeple should fall the descent would be only by the traction of the hamuli of invisible Atomes or by the pulsion of Air and Sun conjunct must come neerer first and tell me how the hamuli of atomes can fasten upon a marble rock and how they come to have so much strength as to move that rock which no man can move in its proper place if there be no such thing as strength or power besides actual motion and why it is that those drawing atomes do move so powerfully Earthwards when at the same time it is supposed that as many or more atomes are moving upwards by the Suns attraction and more are moved circularly with the Earth why do not these stop or
them that the Cure had been to have made them more Religious and not less And that the true Belief of a Life to come is the end the motive the poise of all wise and regular actions and of Love and Peace of right Government and obedience and of justice mercy and all that is lovely in the world An OBJECTION about the Worlds Eternity HAving said thus much about the point which I thought most considerable I shall answer an Objection about the Worlds Eternity because I perceive that it sticks with some Obj. We finde it the harder to believe the Scripture and the Christian Doctrine because it asserteth a thing which Aristotle hath evinced to be so improbable as is the Creation of the World within less than 6000 years When no natural reason can be brought to prove that the World is not eternall Answ 1. It is you that are the affirmers and therefore on whom the natural proof is incumbent Prove if you can that the World is eternal Were it not tedious I should by examining your reasons shew that they have no convincing force at all 2. There is so much written of it that I am loth to trouble the Reader with more I now only again referre the Reader to Raymundus Lullius desiring him not to reject his arguments if some of them seem not cogent seeing if any one of all his multitude prove such it is enough 3. I now only desire that the Controversie between the Christian and the Infidel may be but rightly stated And to that end do not charge Christianity with any School-mans or other confident persons private opinions nor suppose Christ or Scripture to determine any thing which they do not determine 1. Christianity and Scripture do not at all determine whether the whole Universe was created at the same time when this our Heaven and Earth was But only that the Systeme or World which we belong to the Sun and Moon and Starrs and Earth were then created Nay a great part of the ancient Doctors and of the most learned late Expositors on Gen. 1. do expound the Heavens which God is said to create as being only the visible Heavens and not including the Angels at all And others say that by In the beginning is meant ab initio rerum and that the Heavens there meant being the Angelical Habitations and the Earth as without form were both ab initio rerum before the six dayes Creation which began with the making of Light out of the pre-existent Heavens or Chaos I think not this opinion true but this liberty Christian Doctors have taken of differing from one another in this difficult point But they utterly differ about the time of the creation of Angels on Gen. 1. and on Job 1. and consequently whether there were not a World existent when this World was created 2. Or if any that seeth more than I can prove the contrary yet it is certainly a thing undetermined by Scripture and in the Christian Faith whether there were any Worlds that had begun and ended before this was made That God is the maker of Heaven and Earth and of all things visible and invisible is most certain But whether this Heaven and Earth which now is was the first which he hath made is a thing that our Religion doth not at all meddle with They that with Origen affirm that there were antecedent worlds are justly blamed on one side not for speaking things false but things uncertain and unrevealed and for corrupting Christianity by a mixture of things alien and doubtfull And those who affirm that there were no antecedent worlds are as much culpable on the other side if not more on the same account and upon further reasons On the one side we know that God needeth nothing to his own felicity but is perfectly sufficient for himself and that he createth not the World ex necessitate naturae as an agent which acteth ad ultimum posse And on the other side we know that though he hath a Goodness of self-perfection unspeakably more excellent than his Benignity as Related to man not that one Property in God is to be said more excellent than another in it self but that quoad Relationem there is an infinite difference between his Goodness in Himself and his Goodness only as Related to his Creatures and measured by their interest yet we confess that his Fecundity and Benignity is included in his own Goodness and that he delighteth to do Good and is communicative and that he doth Good ex necessitate voluntaria ex naturae perfectione without coaction it being most necessary that he do that which his Infinite wisdom saith is best which made Th. White de Mundo say that God did necessarily make the World and necessarily make it in time and not ab aeterno and yet all this most voluntarily because he doth necessarily do that which is best in the judgement of his Wisdom And we deny not that if a man will presume to give liberty to his Reason to search into unrevealed things that it will seem to him very improbable that he who is Actus purus of Infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness and who now taketh pleasure in all his works and his delights are with the Sons of men should from all Eternity produce no Creature till less than 6000 years ago when a thousand years with him are but as a day and that he should resolve to have Creatures to all Eternity who as to future duration shall be so like to Himself when from all Eternity he had no Creature till as it were five or six dayes agoe Christians are apt to have such thoughts as these as well as you when they look but to rational probabilities But they hold that all these matters whether there were antecedent worlds and how many and of what sort and of what duration whether this was the first are matters unrevealed which they ought not to trouble the world or themselves with prying into or contending about And they finde that they are unfruitfull speculations which do but overwhelme the minde of him that searcheth after them when God hath provided for us in the Christian Faith more plain and sure and solid and wholsom food to live upon 3. And if it be unrevealed in Scripture whether before this there was any other World we must confess it unrevealed whether there were any emanant or created Entity which God did produce from all Eternity considered quoad durationem only For the Scripture saith no more of one than of the other And if there were one moment dividing Eternity only imaginarily in which there had been nothing but God we must equally confess an Eternity in which there was nothing but God because Eternity hath no beginning 4. But Christianity assureth us of these two things 1. That certainly there is no Being besides God but what was created produced or totally caused by Him And that if any Creature were eternal as to
to be their Captain who led them into Canaan and miraculously conquered all the inhabitants and setled Israel in possession of the Land There they long remained under the government of a Chieftain called a Judge successively chosen by God himself Till at last they mutinied against that form of Government and desired a King like other Nations Whereupon God gave them a bad King in displeasure but next him he chose David a King of great and exemplary holiness in whom God delighted and made his Kingdom hereditary To David he gave a Son of extraordinary wisdom who by God's appointment built the famous Temple at Jerusalem yet did this Solomon by the temptation of his Wives to gratifie them set up Idolatry also in the land which so provoked God that he resolved to rend ten Tribes of the twelve out of his sons hand which accordingly was done and they revolted and chose a King of their own and only the Tribes of Juda and Benjamin adhered to the posterity of Solomon The wise Sentences of Solomon and the Psalms of David are here inserted in the Bible The Reigns of the Kings of Juda and Israel are afterwards described the wickedness and idolatry of most of their successive Kings and people till God being so much provoked by them gave them up into Captivity Here is also inserted many Books of the Prophesies of those Prophets which God sent from time to time to call them from their sins and warn them of his fore-told judgments And lastly here is contained some of the History of their state in Captivity and the return of the Jews by the favour of Cyrus where in a tributary state they remain'd in expectation of the promised Messiah or Christ Thus far is the History of the Old Testament The Jews being too sensible of their Captivities and Tributes and too desirous of Temporal Greatness and Dominion expected that the Messiah should restore their Kingdom to its ancient splendour and should subdue the Gentile Nations to them And to this sense they expounded all those passages in their Prophets which were spoken and meant of the spiritual Kingdom of Christ as the Saviour of Souls which prejudiced them against the Messiah when he came so that though they looked and longed for his coming yet when he came they knew him not to be the Christ but hated him and persecuted him as the Prophets had fore-told The fulness of time being come in which God would send the Promised Redeemer the Eternal Wisdom and Word of God the Second in the Trinity assumed a Humane Soul and Body and was conceived in the womb of a Virgin by the holy Spirit of God without man's concurrence His Birth was celebrated by Prophesies and Apparitions and applause of Angels and other Wonders A Star appearing over the place led some Astronomers out of the East to worship him in the Cradle Which Herod the King being informed of and that they called him the King of the Jews he caused all the Infants in that country to be killed that he might not scape But by the warning of an Angel Jesus was carried into Egypt where he remained till the death of Herod At twelve years old he disputed with the Doctors in the Temple In this time rose a Prophet called John who told them that the Kingdom of the Messiah was at hand and called the people to Repentance that they might be prepared for him and baptized all that professed Repentance into the present expectation of the Saviour About the thirtieth year of his age Jesus resolved to enter upon the solemn performance of his undertaken work And first He went to John to be baptized by him the Captains being to wear the same Colours with the Souldiers When John had baptized him he declared him to be the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world and when he was baptized and prayed the Heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily shape like a Dove upon him and a voice came from Heaven which said Thou art my beloved Son in thee I am well pleased The first thing that Jesus did after his Baptism was when he had fasted forty days and nights to expose himself to the utmost of Satan's temptations who thereupon did divers ways assault him But Jesus perfectly overcame the Tempter who had overcome the first Man Adam Thenceforth he preached the glad tidings of Salvation and called men to repentance and choosing Twelve to be more constantly with him than the rest and to be witnesses of his works and doctrin he revealed the mysteries of the Kingdom of God He went up and down with them teaching the people and working miracles to confirm his doctrin He told them that he was sent from God to reveal his will to lost mankind for their recovery and to bring them to a fuller knowledge of the unseen world and the way thereto and to be a Mediator and Reconciler between God and Man and to lay down his life as a Sacrifice for sin and that he would rise again from the dead the third day and in the mean time to fulfill all righteousness and give man an example of a perfect life Which accordingly he did He never sinned in thought word or deed He chose a poor inferiour condition of life to teach men by his example to contemn the wealth and honours of this world in comparison of the favour of God and the hopes of immortality He suffered patiently all indignities from men He went up and down as the living Image of Divine Power Wisdom and Goodness doing Miracles to manifest his Power and opening the doctrin of God to manifest his Wisdom and healing mens bodies and seeking the salvation of their souls to manifest his Goodness and his Love Without any means by his bare command he immediately cured Fevers Palsies and all diseases cast out Devils and raised the dead to life again and so open uncontroled and numerous were his Miracles as that all men might see that the Omnipotent God did thereby bear witness to his Word Yet did not the greatest part of the Jews believe in him for all these Miracles because he came not in worldly pomp to restore their Kingdom and subdue the world but they blasphemed his very Miracles and said He did them by the power of the Devil And fearing lest his fame should bring envy and danger upon them from the Romans who ruled over them they were his most malicious persecutors themselves The doctrin which he preached was not the unnecessary curiosities of Philosophy nor the subservient Arts and Sciences which natural light revealeth and which natural men can sufficiently teach But it was to teach men to know God and to know themselves their sin and danger and how to be reconciled to God and pardoned and sanctified and saved How to live in holiness to God and in love and righteousness to men and in special amity and unity