continue to separate between him and his God whatever God CAN do yet certainly he WILL not save him The Lords hand saith the Prophet Isaiah to the afflicted Jews is not shortened that it cannot save nor his ear heavy that it cannot hear but your iniquities have separated between you and your God and your sins have hid his face from you that he will not hear For your hand 's are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity your lips have spoken lies your tongue hath muttered perverseness none calls for Justice nor any pleads for Truth and since your disobedience is so heinous your hopes must needs be false you TRVST in vanity Isai. 59.1 2 3 4. Christ himself never dyed to reconcile God to mens sins and to procure hopes of pardon for the finally impenitent and unperswadably disobedient So that no man may ever think himself delivered to act wickedness or wilfully transgress Gods Laws and still dare to trust in him But if any are so bold and frontless Christ will rebuke them at the last Day as God doth the presumptuous Jews by the Prophet Jeremiah Behold says he you trust in lying words which cannot profit you Will you steal murther and commit adultery and swear falsly and notwithstanding all that come and stand before me in this house which is called by my Name as Men that owne my service and dare trust in my love and say as in effect you do by such usage we are delivered to do all these abominations Dare you by thus presuming upon my favour in the midst of all your transgressions make me become a Patron and Protector of your villainies And is this house which is called by my Name become a Den or Receptacle and Sanctuary of Robbers in your eyes Behold I even I have seen it saith the Lord and that surely not to encourage and reward but most severely to punish it for I will utterly cast you out of my sight Jer. 7.8 9 10 11 15. God will by no means endure to have his own most holy Nature become a support to sin nor his Religion to be made a refuge for disobedience nor his Mercy and Goodness a Sanctuary to wicked and unholy men So that no man must dare to hope and trust in him but he only who honestly observes his Laws and uprightly obeys him That fear of God then and trust in his mercy which the Gospel encourages and Christ our Judge will at the last Day accept of is not a fear and trust without obedience but such only as implies it We must serve him in fear and obey him through hope as ever we expect he should acquit and pardon us For no fears or hopes will avail us unto bliss but those that amend our lives and effect in us an honest service and obedience CHAP. VII Of Pardon promised to the love of God and of our Neighbour The CONTENTS Of Pardon promised to the love of God and of our Neighbour Of the fitness of an universal love to produce an universal obedience That pardon is promised to it for this Reason The Conclusion EIghthly That condition which the Gospel indispensably requires of us to our pardon and happiness is sometimes called Love For of this S t Paul says plainly that it is the fulfilling of the Law Rom. 13.10 It is the great condition of Life the standing Terms of mercy and happiness We have the same Apostles word for it of our love of God Those things which neither eye hath seen nor ear heard neither have entred into the heart of man to conceive are prepared for them who LOVE God 1 Cor. 2.9 And again Chap. 8. If any man love God the same is known or accepted of him vers 3. And S t John says as much of the love of our Neighbour Beloved let us LOVE one another for LOVE is of God and every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God 1 John 4.7 And again God is Love and manifested his Love in giving Christ to dye for us And if we love one another God dwells in us For hereby by this mark and evidence we know that we dwell in him and he in us because he hath given us of this loving temper and Spirit of his ver 8 9 12 13. And to the same purpose he speaks fully in the third Chapter of that first Epistle We know says he that we have passed from death unto life because we LOVE the BRETHREN ver 14. Now our hearty love both of God and men is a most natural and easie Principle of an intire service and obedience For the most genuine and proper effect of Love is to seek the satisfaction and delight of the persons beloved It is careful in nothing to behave it self unseemly but to keep back from every thing that may offend and forward in all such services as may any ways pleasure and content them If they rejoyce it congratulates if they mourn it grieves with them If they are in distress it affords succour if in want supply in doubts it ministers counsel in business dispatch It is always full and teeming with good offices and transforms it self into all shapes whereby it may procure their satisfaction and render their condition comfortable and easie to them So that it exerts it self in pity to the miserable in protection to the oppressed in relief to the indigent in counsel to the ignorant in encouragement to the good in kind reproof to the evil in thanks for kindnesses in patience and forbearance upon sufferings in forgiveness of wrong and injuries In one word it is an universal Source and Spring of all works of Justice Charity Humility and Peace Now the Body of our Religion is made up of these Duties For what doth the Lord thy God require of thee O man saith the Prophet Micah but to do justly to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God Mic. 6.8 Those things which God has adopted into his Service and made the matter of our duty towards one another are nothing else but these natural effects of love and kindness and expressions of good nature towards all men All the Precepts of Religion only forbid our doing evil and require our doing good to all the World And since as the Apostle argues love seeketh all things that are good and worketh no evil to our Neighbour therefore Love must needs be the fulfilling of those Laws which concern them This Commandment for instance as he illustrates it Thou shalt not commit Adultery thou shalt not kill thou shalt not steal thou shalt not bear false witness thou shalt not covet all these and if there be any other Commandment relating to our Brethren it is briefly comprehended in this Saying Thou shalt LOVE they Neighbour as thy self For LOVE worketh none of all these ills to our Neighbour therefore LOVE is the fulfilling of the Law Rom. 13.9 10. Thus doth our Love of our Neighbour fulfil all those particular Laws which contain our Duty
are likewise unchosen and so unavoidable are not eternally punishable by the Gospel but consistent with a state of Grace and Salvation will further appear if we consider First The Nature of God Secondly The nature and plain declarations of the Gospel 1. I say their consistency with a state of Grace or Gods favour will plainly appear if we consider the Nature of God God is the most Gracious Loving and good natured Being in the whole world For all the love and kindness that appears among us men proceeds from him and makes us to resemble him and to be like unto him Nay he is not only Loving but even Love it self For God sayes S t John is Love and he who dwells in love dwells in God and God in him 1 Joh. 4.16 And if we will take that character which he gives of himself it is wholly made up of the various instances of Mercy and Goodness The Lord sayes he to Moses the Lord God mercifull and gracious long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth keeping mercy for thousands forgiving iniquity transgression and sin Exod. 34.6 7. All his delight is in exercising Love and showing kindness For he swears to us as he lives that he has no delight at all in the death of a sinner but had rather that every wicked man should turn from his wickedness and live Ezech. 33.11 He is by no means forward to espie faults or malicious to misconstrue actions or prone to admit of provocation or implacably angry when he is once provoked or cruelly vindictive when once he is angred The Lord saith the Psalmist is mercifull and gracious slow to anger and plenteous in mercy He will not alwayes chide when he has just reason for it nor keepeth he his anger for ever Psal. 103.8 9. He is not at all of the humour of severe masters who are prone to take offence but like a most tender father he is all benignity and goodness For if any thing be pitiable he pities it if any thing is done amiss he is slow to wrath and easie to forgive it Like as a father pitieth his own children even so the Lord pitieth them that fear him Psal. 103.13 Nay take this Love and Pity of a Parent where it is at the highest pitch of all viz. in mothers towards their most helpless and so most pitiable infants and yet this tenderness of God doth infinitely exceed it Can a woman forget her sucking child that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb Yea they may forget sayes God by his Prophet Isaiah but I will not forget thee Isa. 49.15 Thus Loving Pitiful and Benign a Nature do the Scriptures represent God to be And what they declare of him all the world have experienced and found by him For every impenitent sinner is a lasting monument of his long-suffering and forbearance and every prosperous event and deliverance in the world is an effect of his boundless love and kindness He is infinitely good beyond all desert nay in spite of all provocation For he is loving even unto the unthankfull and the evil making his sun to shine and his rain to fall and all the other mâ—râ—ies of life to descend upon the unjust as well as upon the just upon them who contemn as well as on them who obey him as our Saviour observed Mat. 5.45 Luk. 6.35 And this he is to such an astonishing degree as to bestow upon them not only the blessings of his substance of his protection and of his kind providence but also what is a wonder to conceive for their sakes to part with his own well-beloved and so much the more beloved because his only begotten Son For God as saith the Apostle hath recommended his love to us in that whil'st we were sinners and enemies Christ his Son came from him and died for us Rom. 5.8 Thus wondrously pitiful obliging and good natured then is God according to that account which both the Scripture and the Experience of the whole world give of him And now let any man think with himself how so surpassing kind and infinitely gracious a nature as this is like to be affected with the ignorant or inconsiderate slips and errours of his Servants Will he be utterly offended with them so as quite to cast them off and for ever to condemn them No certainly but in great mercy he will pity and bear with them For these slips where we do not consider or where we err and do not understand our duty are such instances of disobedience as imply nothing of contempt or of a rebellious heart nor have any thing of our will in them They are clearly involuntary so that whatsoever the action may appear to be the will it self is innocent For the disobedience cannot be chosen since it is not understood which indeed in the notion and interpretation of Gods Law makes it not to be that sin and disobedience which is threatned but something else for that sin as S t John tells us is a rejecting or a renouncing of the Law whereas in these slips where we do not see it 't is plain that we cannot renounce it And since they have nothing in them of a disobedient will or of a rebellous heart can any man think that so gracious and pitifull a nature should be so highly provoked with them as for ever to condemn his own honest servants and otherwise obedient children upon the account of them Whosoever thou art who art inclined to think thus let me advise thee to consider a little what Love is and whether it can possibly be guilty of such hard usage If thou hast any competent degrees of that Love and Pity in thine own heart which are so infinite in God bethink thy self whether thou could'st do it for that is the way and thence take thy measures in judging whether or no God can Doth any gracious master use that severity towards the oversights and indiscretions of his honest servant or to rise yet higher can any tender Parent show that rigour upon every errour and inconsideration of his heartily obedient child Is not every good man prone to pass by such offences as are committed unwillingly against him and the more he has of goodness is he not still more forward to pardon and bear with them There is no Nature upon Earth that is kind and pitifull but will make allowances for those things which proceed from want of understanding and will pass over those miscarriages which imply nothing of ill will or ill intention Every good man will overlook and connive at them when they are committed by a perfect stranger but then most of all when they are incurr'd by his own intimate and dear acquaintance or relations by his own servant or his own child This I say every good and loving man doth and the more he has of love and goodness the proner still he is to do it For it is a natural and inseparable effect of charity so
towards them and in like manner our Love of God fulfils all those other Precepts which comprehend our Duty towards him For all that he requires of us towards himself is neither more nor less than to honour and worship him to do nothing in all our behaviour that savours of disrespect towards him nor by any thought word or action to disgrace or contemn him But now nothing renders any person so secure from contempt as our love and affection for him Affront and reproach are a great part of enmity and despite and so can never proceed from us towards those whom we love and value But this is always certain that if we are kindly affected towards any person we shall not fail to express a due honour of him and bear him a just respect and veneration So that if we do indeed love God he is secure from all affront and disobedience being a most consummate reproach since our Love will not permit us to dishonour it can never suffer us to disobey him Thus mighty and powerful easie and natural a Principle of an universal obedience both towards God and men is an universal Love it doth the work without difficulty and carries us on to obey with ease in as much as all the particular Precepts and Instances of obedience are but so many genuine effects and proper expressions of it The effects of our love are the parts of our obedience the products of our Duty and Religion as well as of our passion So that it is a most natural Spring of our obedient service because it prompts us to the very same things to which God has bound and obliged us by his Precepts But besides this way of an universal love's influencing an universal obedience through this coincidence of the effects of Love and the instances of Duty our Love of God who is our King and Governour were a sure principle of our obedience to him were his Precepts instanced not in the same things which are the effects of a general Love which is the true Case but in things different from them For although our love would not prompt us to perform them by its natural tendency towards them and for their own sakes yet it would through submission and duty and for his sake who enjoyn'd them It would make us deny our selves to pleasure him and produce other effects than our own temper enclines us to to do him service For as Love is for doing hurt to none so least of all to Governours it will give to every one their own but to them most especially Now Duty and Service is that which we owe to our Rulers and the proper way of Love's exerting it self in that is by obedience If we love we shall be industrious to please and the only way of pleasing them is by doing what they command us For there is no such offence to a Governour as the transgression of his Laws no injury like that of opposing his Will and despising his Authority To do this is to renounce all subjection and to cast off his Yoke and so is not to express love but to declare enmity not affectionately to owne but in open malice to defie him But if any man would contribute to his delight there is no way for that but by a performance of his pleasure it is nothing but our obedience that can add to his contentment or evidence our Love For disobedience to our Governours is clearly the most profest hatred as the observance of our Duty is the most allowed instance of friendship and good will So that Love is a Spring and Principle of our Obedience not only because the Commandment and it run parallel and the instances of Gods Laws are the same with the effects of a general Love but also because our love of God would make us obey him even in such instances of Duty as differ from them For all that aversion which we have to the thing commanded would be outweighed by our desire to please him who commands it and although we should neglect it upon its own yet for his sake we should certainly fulfil and perform it And because our Love of God and men is so natural a Spring and so sweet and easie a Principle to produce in us a perfect and intire obedience to all those Laws which concern either or to any other therefore has God promised so nobly to reward it He never intends to crown an idle and unworking love but such only as is active and industrious For when he says that he who loves God and men is known of God and accepted by him and born of him and that God dwells in him and has prepared Heaven for him he speaks metonymically and means all the while a love with these religious effects a love that is productive of an entire service and obedience And to this Point the Scriptures speak fully For as for our love of God himself and of our Saviour Christ that is plainly of no account in his judgment but when it makes us keep his Commands and become industriously obedient If ye LOVE me saith Christ keep my Commandments for he that hath my Commandments and KEEPETH them he it is that loveth me and he only who so loveth me in obeying me shall be beloved of my Father and I will love him John 14.15 21. Whoso keepeth Gods Word saith S t John in him verily is the love of God made perfect and hereby it is by this perfection of Love in Obedience that we know we are in him 1 John 2.5 But if we have only a pretended verbal love or an inward passion for God and shew no Signs or Effects of it in our obedient works and actions we shall be as far from being accepted by him as we are from any true and real service of him He will look upon all our Professions only as vain speech and down-right flattery but will not esteem it as having any thing of sober truth and reality For whosoever hath this Worlds goods and seeth his Brother hath need and obeys not Gods Command of shewing mercy and the Case is the same in other Instances but shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him how dwells the love of God in him 1 John 3.17 And then as for our love of our Brethren it doth not at all avail us unto Mercy and Life unless it make us perform all those things which are required of us by the Laws of Justice Charity and Beneficence towards them My little Children saith S t John let us not love only in word and in tongue but in deed also and in truth For it is hereby by this operative love that we know we are of the truth and shall assure our hearts in full confidence of his mercy before him 1 John 3.18 19. Our love to them is to be manifested as Christs was to us viz. in good effects and a real service yea when occasion requires it and their eternal weal may be very much promoted
of the elect of God holy and beloved humbleness of mind Col. 3.12 It is this poverty and lowliness of Spirit which must prepare us for eternal happiness Blessed are the poor in Spirit Matth. 5.3 For as our Saviour says 't is by learning of him who is meek and lowly that we shall find both here and hereafter rest to our souls Matth. 11.29 And for all the rest their Sanction is expressed in these ensuing places Labour not for the meat that perisheth but for that which endureth to everlasting life John 6.27 This is a necessary evidence of our being risen with Christ now at present If ye be risen with Christ seek those things which are above where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God Set your affections on things above and not on things on the earth Col. 3.1 2 and a necessary condition to our being blessed with him for ever hereafter the blessedness which our Saviour pronounces being to those which hunger and thirst after righteousness Matth. 5.6 Add to temperance patience for he that lacketh these is blind and shall not be looked on as a new man seeing he has forgot that he was purged from his old sins 2 Pet. 1.6 9. The fruit of the Spirit saith S t Paul is temperance or continence and it is against this among others that there is no Law to condemn it Gal. 5.23 And to the Hebrews he says that they have need of patience to inherit the promises of life and happiness Heb. 10.36 and therefore they must not cast away but hold fast their confidence or couragious and open owning even of a suffering Religion which hath great recompence of reward ver 35. It bring to them only who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and immortality that God will give eternal life Rom. 2.7 Dearly Beloved I beseech you as Strangers and Pilgrims abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul to vanquish and destroy it 1 Pet. 2.11 This abstinence is one chief thing which we were called to at our Call to Christianity God hath not called us to uncleanness saith S t Paul but unto holiness or purity and cleanness For this is the will of God which you are first to perform before you expect his reward your purity or sanctification and particularly in one instance wherein you are so generally defective that you abstain from fornication and every one of you possess his Vessel or Body in purity or sanctification and honour And this Commandment you know we gave you by the Lord Jesus's order so that whosoever among you despiseth it despiseth not man but God 1 Thess. 4.2 3 4 7 8. For the wisdom which cometh from above and which must carry us thither is in the first place pure or chast James 3.17 Love not the world nor the things of the world for if any man love the world the love of the Father is not in him 1 John 2.15 For the esteem and friendship of the world is in very deed downright enmity with God Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God James 4.4 Godliness if it be joined with contentment is great gain saith S t Paul 1 Tim. 6.6 And our being content with such things as we have is reckoned a part of that Grace whereby we must serve God acceptably and be secured from his wrath who where he is angred is a consuming fire Heb. 12.28 to the fifth Verse of the thirteenth Chapter Christ said unto them all If any man will come after me and be accounted one of my Disciples let him deny himself and take up his Cross and follow me Luke 9.23 If ye through the Spirit do mortifie the deeds of the Body saith S t Paul you shall live Rom. 8.13 Yea its affections and desires as well as its sinful actions are to be deaded and brought under For they that are Christ's whom he will own for his at the last Day and reward accordingly have crucified the Flesh with the affections and lusts or desires thereof Gal. 5.24 They who would not be accounted in Gods judgment as Children of the night and of darkness S t Paul says plainly must watch and be sober 1 Thess. 5.5 6. For watching is necessary unto bliss Blessed is that Servant whom his Lord when he cometh shall find watching Luke 12.37 And give diligence to make your calling and election sure saith S t Peter for this is one of those things which if you do you shall never fall either from your duty or your reward 2 Pet. 1.10 Thus are all the particular Laws recited in the first Class sobriety expresly bound upon us by all our hopes of Heaven and our obedience to them plainly necessary to our life and pardon when we come to be judged according to them And the Sanction is the same for all the Particulars of the second Class our piety towards God as will appear by the following Scriptures Them that honour me saith God I will honour or make honourable but they who despise me shall on the other hand be as lightly set by 1 Sam. 2.30 And if any man be a worshipper of God him said the man who had received his sight most truly he heareth John 9.31 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved but he that believeth not shall be damned Mark 16.16 For this is the will of him that sent me saith our Saviour that whosoever believeth on me may have everlasting life John 6.40 And what we hear of Faith is also said of Knowledge For this is life eternal saith Christ to know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent John 17.3 The good things which neither eye hath seen nor ear hath heard i. e. the joys of Heaven are laid up for those who love God 1 Cor. 2.9 And if any man love God the same is known or accepted by him 1 Cor. 8.3 It is he who believes Christs promises or hopes on him that shall never be ashamed Rom. 10.11 And we trust in God saith S t Paul who is the Saviour of all men especially of those that believe or trust in him 1 Tim. 4.10 And a cheerful dependence upon Gods Providence for our food and maintenance c. and not being sollicitous about them is one of the Particulars of Christ's Law Matth. 6.25 the sanction whereof is expressed in the fifth Chapter in these words He who breaks the least oâ— these Commandments shall be least in the Kingdom oâ— Heaven i. e. according to the Hebrew manner of speaking he shall be none at all ver 19. Pray without ceasing 1 Thess. 5.17 It is this that must bring all blessings down upon us For the promise is Ask and you shall have Matth. 7.7 But no Petition being put up no Grant can in reason
of the Earth but bare understanding of them doth not make him partake with them or subject to be punished for them But to make these meer apprehensions and imaginations either of good or evil an instance of obedience or disobedience they must be causes and principles of an obedient or disobedient choice or practice For our inward thoughts and imaginations are Springs and Principles both of our inward choice and also of our outward operations And the service which God requires of them is the service of the principle He demands the obedience of our minds as a means and in order to a further obedience of our hearts and actions He expects that we should think so long and so often upon the absoluteness of his authority the kindness of his Nature the reasonableness of his Commands the glory of his rewards and the terrour of his punishments till in our hearts we chuse those things which he has commanded and perform them in our works and practice For our thoughts of him and of his Laws are not in themselves Obedience but only a Spring and Principle of it and a good step and degree towards it Our knowledge shall be judged an acceptable service as it carries us on to performance but no otherwise For hereby alone says S t John we know that we know him with such knowledge as shall be accepted by him if we keep his Commandments 1 John 2.3 And on the other side our bare imaginations and apprehensions of some forbidden sin are then only disobedient when they carry us on to chuse or practise those things that are sinful We must go on from thought to choice or practice before the vices thought of become our own and our apprehensions of sin become themselves sinful For the thoughts of sin have the sinfulness of means and causes they are sinful so far as they help on either our consent or performance So our Saviour has determined in one instance viz. that of lustful looks and apprehensions Matth. 5. He that looks upon a woman so long as to lust after her or to consent in his heart to the enjoyment of her he hath committed Adultery with her already in his heart ver 28. As for our thoughts and imaginations then we see what obedience in them is required to our acceptance and when they are disobedient and will destroy us For our counsels and contrivances of evil are always sinful and so are all such simple thoughts and apprehensions as have particular Laws imposed upon them And as for our imaginations and apprehensions of things commanded or forbidden by any other Laws they are imperfect things and not fully grown up to the perfect Stature either of obedience or of disobedience So that they are neither punished nor rewarded in themselves but so far only as they are causes and principles of an obedient or disobedient choice or actions And then as for our affections their measures are the very same with those already mentioned of our bare imaginations and simple apprehensions For their service and obedience is that of the principle and their Sentence shall be according to those effects either in our wills or practice which flow from it If we love and desire obedience so far as to chuse and act it this degree of affection will gain us God's love and favour and secure his rewards but less than it no other shall He that keeps my Commandments saith Christ he it is that loveth me and they only who so love me in obeying me shall be beloved again of my Father and I will love them John 14.15 21. But if our love and desire of evil things carry us on to chuse or act any instance of disobedience for the sake of that which is loved and desired then are our affections sinful and such as will destroy us The desire of evil is not so truly the state of mortal sin as of dangerous temptation it is not deadly in it self but kills by carrying us on to a sinful and deadly choice and actions For when once it has got to that degree it is obnoxious to a dreadful Sentence Whereof the Psalmist gives us one instance in the love of violence Him that loveth violence the soul of the Lord hateth Psal. 11.5 And S t John says the same of the love of lying and the Case is alike in every other sin Without in outer darkness are murtherers and whatsoever loveth or maketh a lye Rev. 22.15 And thus we see what measure of obedience is required in these two faculties and what kinds and degrees of thoughts and affections are to be used or restrained to make theirs an acceptable Service For we must abstain from all evil counsels and contrivances from all simple apprehensions which are particularly forbidden and put in use all such as are particularly enjoined and as for all other our bare thoughts and imaginations and all our affections and desires we must fix them upon our Duty so long till they make us perform it and never suffer them to issue out upon evil so far till they carry us on either to chuse or practise it But besides these two faculties viz. our minds and affections there is yet another whose service is necessary to render ours an acceptable obedience and that is Thirdly Our hearts or wills also It is an absurd Dream for any man to think of serving God without his will because without that none of his actions can be called his own For that only is imputed to us which is chosen by us and which it was in the power of our own wills either to promote or hinder no man deserving praise or being liable to answer for what he could not help But of all persons God most of all regards our hearts in all our performances He perfectly discerns them and he estimates our services according to them So that it is not possible for any of us to obey him unwillingly in regard the choice of our will and heart it self is that which renders any action a saving and acceptable obedience For out of the heart as Solomon saith proceed the issues of life Prov. 4.23 The choice then as well as the practice of our Duty is plainly necessary to render it available to our salvation But on the other side if we chuse sin although we miss of opportunity to act it the bare choice without the practice is sufficient to our condemnation For even by that when we proceed no further our heart has gone astray from God and we are polluted by the sin which we resolve upon in our own choice since out of the heart as our Saviour tells us proceeds the pollution of the man Matth. 15.19 20. We may commit all sort of transgressions and incurr the punishment of them merely by consenting to them inwardly in our hearts without ever compleating them in our outward operation For our Lord himself has thus determined it in one instance and the Case is the same in all
THE MEASURES OF Christian Obedience OR A DISCOURSE SHEWING What Obedience is indispensably necessary to a Regenerate State and what Defects are consistent with it FOR The Promotion of Piety and the Peace of Troubled Consciences By JOHN KETTLEWELL Fellow of Lincoln-College in Oxford LONDON Printed by J. Macock for Robert Kettlewell at the Hand and Scepter over against S t Dunstan's Church in Fleetstreet MDCLXXXI TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE AND RIGHT REVEREND FATHER in GOD HENRY LORD BISHOP of LONDON And One of His Majesties Most Honourable Privy-Council c. MY LORD HAving published this Treatise to promote as much as in me lies an intire Practice of our Blessed Saviours Precepts and a comfortable expectation of his Rewards amongst us I have presumed to address it to Your Lordship hoping it will find Acceptance in Your Pious Judgment for the sake of those things which are contained in it and because Your Lordship is a most eminent Example as a Christian and a most discreetly zealous and diligent Promoter as a Bishop of the Subject of it In this Work my Great Design has been to press men to a conscientious regard of their whole Duty and to show them how much contentment and cheerfulness of Spirit they have reason to enjoy in the careful observance of it And these are ends so excellent as may well excuse the imperfections of any honest Endeavours which shall be put forth in order to them For what greater service can be done to our Blessed Lord than to exalt his Authority in the hearts and lives of all his Followers What greater honour can be brought to Religion than to promote a pious practice and thereupon a constant joy and cheerfulness in the minds of all its Professors And what more faithful kindness can be shown to the Souls of Men than cleerly to lay before them and most earnestly to press upon them such things as will give them peace and comfortable expectations of God's love and favour in this World and secure their eternal happiness in that which is to come And since I have directed all the Parts and every thing that I have said in the following Discourse to these ends I am willing to hope that notwithstanding all its defects I have therein done no unacceptable service to my Saviour and to all good men who will be much readier to encourage any honest tendences to this purpose than to reprove and throw them by for the sake of those weaknesses and that want of skill which shall be found in them In this hope my Lord I make bold to Present it to Your Lordship whose great and most exemplary Virtue will not I believe be averse from Patronizing that which tends even in a low degree to further and promote it I pray God preserve Your Lordship and continue You what You now are an Illustrious Pattern of all Private and Political Virtues to this Your Native Country That Religion may still be adorned and this distressed Church supported by that exemplariness of an upright Conversation that great Prudence and unwearied Diligence and undaunted Courage and most wise and steady Zeal which Your Lordship has always shown in Your High Station for the things of God committed to Your Care and which have rendred You greatly serviceable to Your Saviour and a most valuable Blessing to this poor Church and Nation This my Lord is the most hearty Prayer of Your Lordships in all humble and dutiful Observance JOHN KETTLEWELL THE PREFACE READER THE design of this ensuing Treatise is to increase the piety and promote the peace of all sincerely honest Consciences by stating plainly and fully what are the terms indispensably required of all Christian men to their eternal pardon and salvation In this I have endeavoured to be as clear and particular as possibly I could For I write upon a Subject wherein all men are infinitely concerned and therefore I have studied to write so as all might understand me I have carried on my Discourse all along with a particular eye to the benefit of the plain and unlearned Reader and suited things as far as their nature would bear and my skill would reach to ordinary and vulgar apprehensions And that they might have nothing to hinder or offend them in their progress I have been industriously careful through the Body of the whole Book to insert nothing of the learned languages but wheresoever any thing of that seemed fit to be added for the sake of others I have preserved the Text unmixt and cast it into the Margine In the whole Work my study has been to speak things useful and necessary to be known that the weight and worth of the matter might purchase a favourable censure for all the defects of Art which shall be found in the composure By what I have here offered upon this Subject I doubt not but it will appear that although our Religion is most strictly pure and nobly vertuous yet is it by no means melancholy or apt in its own nature to engender tormenting fears and endless scruples For the Terms of pardon and salvation are no intricate or uncertain but a fixt and easie thing They are neither over-hard for our active powers nor dark and inevident to our understandings so that by the assistance of God's Grace we may perform them and be very well assured of it when we do God exacts an honest but not an unerring obedience he bears with our weaknesses though not with our wilful failings and this is ground enough whereupon to secure peace and yet in no wise to supplant piety since although our Religion is so exactly holy as utterly to dash all wicked mens presuming hopes yet is it so indulgent still as to tempt no man who is honestly obedient to despair In pursuit of this Argument what piety is indispensably required and what failings shall be indulged that men may know when to hope and when to fear and neither foster a peace without piety nor phansie such a rigour in piety as leaves no room for peace I have proceeded as particularly and perspicuously as possibly I could being unwilling in a matter of this importance to leave my Reader either in doubt by an account which is too general and ambiguous or in darkness by such as is obscure And to give a prospect of the whole business I have laid things down in this order in five Books In the first Book I have shewn what the condition of happiness is in general viz. our obedience to the Laws of the Gospel it being that whereby at the last Day we must all be judged to live eternally And because some are tempted to think obedience needless when they read of pardon and hapiness promised to other things as Faith Repentance c. I have shewn particularly of those Speeches that they are metonymical and that life and mercy are not promised to them as they are separate from obedience but only as they effect and imply it But obedience being a
implicite Of intention in general and of these two in particular Where an actual intention is necessary and where an habitual is sufficient to our Obedience Of the second Notion of sincerity as it notes purity of our service in opposition to mixture and corrupt alloy This Point stated viz. What intention of our good together with Gods service is consistent with an acceptable and sincere Obedience and what destroys it Integrity of our Obedience a sure mark whereby to judge whether it be sincere or no. 211 CHAP. II. Of the second qualification of al acceptable obedience viz. integrity The Contents Of the second qualification of an acceptable Obedience viz. integrity The Notion of integrity or uprightness A three fold integrity Of the integrity of our powers and faculties Or of the Obedience with our minds affections wills and bodily powers How God is to be obeyed with the first faculty our minds or understandings God is to be obeyed with the second faculty our affections This Question stated How God and his Laws which are spiritual things are proportionate Objects for our love and affections which are bodily faculties Of the difference betwixt our love of God and of the World that this is more warm and sensible that more lasting and powerful An account of what measures of Obedience in our minds and affections is necessary to the acceptance of our service That contrivances and consultations for evil things and such mere apprehensions as are particularly forbidden are deadly and damning but that all other bare apprehensions and that all our affections after good or evil things will be rewarded or punished not merely for themselves but only as they are Causes and Principles of good or evil choice and practice God to be obeyed with the third faculty our wills He cannot be served without them Men are guilty of sin if they chuse it and consent to it though they cannot act it All this service of our inward faculties is in order to our outward works and operations 240 CHAP. III. Of Obedience with the fourth faculty viz. our executive or bodily powers and outward operations The Contents God is to be obeyed with the fourth faculty viz. our executive or bodily powers and outward operations The great difficulty of Obedience in this instance Four false grounds whereupon men shift off the necessity of this service with their works and actions First A hope to be saved for a true belief or orthodox opinions Mens confidence in this represented The folly of it Orthodox Faith and Professions no further available than they produce obedient works and actions Secondly A hope of salvation upon an Obedience of idle desires and ineffective wishes An opinion of some Casuists That a desire of Grace is Grace refuted This stated and a distinct explication of what is promised to the desire of Obedience and what to Obedience it self The pretence for this acceptance of idle desires from Gal. 5.17 considered An account when the will and desire is taken for the deed and performance That Text 2 Cor. 8.11 12. plainly vindicated Thirdly A hope of being saved notwithstanding they do sin because they are insnared into it through the strength of temptations The folly of this Our own lusts make temptations strong The Grace of the Gospel is sufficient to overcome them Fourthly A hope of being excused because they transgress with an unwilling mind These mens state represented Vnwillingness in sin a mitigation but no sufficient excuse Some strugling in most actions both of good and bad men The strife of the Flesh and Spirit Two sorts of men feel nothing of it viz. the Saints in Heaven after the Resurrection and some profligate Sinners here now on Earth All good men and the generality of evil are subject to it in this life Mens peremptory will and last choice determines their condition 259 CHAP. IV. A further pursuit of this last ground of shifting off the obedience of our actions in an Exposition of the 7 th Chapter to the Romans The Contents A further pursâ—it of this last ground of false confidence The Plea for it from Rom. 7. represented This refuted A Mâ—tâ—schematism usual with Saint Paul in an odiou Topiâ—k The Apostle shown not to speâ—k of hâ—mself in that Chapter because of several things there spoken which are not truly applicable to him This evidenced in sundry instances Nor to have spoken in the person of any regenerate man which is proved by the same reason and manifested in sundry Particulars But to have personated a strugling but as yet unregenerated Jew who had no further assistance against his lusts but the weak and ineffective Law of Moses This shown from the order and design of that Chapter This whole matter represented in a Paraphrase upon the seventh Chapter with part of the sixth and the eighth Two Reasons of the inability of Moses's Law to make men wholly obedient and the perfection as to them of the Law of Christ viz. First The promise of eternal life Secondly The promise of the Spirit Both these were wanting in the Law and are most clearly supplied in the Gospel The Jews had the assistance of the Spirit not by virtue of any Article in their Law but by the gracious Covenant of the Gospel which has been confirmed with the world ever since Adam The Law mentioned in Scripture as a weak and mean instrument upon the account of these defects This weakness of the Law set off particularly in this seventh to the Romans No hopes to any man who acts sin from this Chapter but plain declarations of the necessity of a wâ—rking obedience shown in several expressions of it to that purpose A proof of the necessity of this fourth part of integrity the obedience of our exâ—cutive powers in our workâ— and actions and the insignificancy of all the rest when it is wanting 283 CHAP. V. Of the sâ—cond sort of integrity an integrity of times and seasons The Contents Of the second sort of integrity viz. that of times and seasons Of the unconstancy of many mens obedience Perseverance necessary unto bliss The desperate case of Apostates both as to the difficulty of their recovery from sin and the greatness of their punishment 325 CHAP. VI. Of the third fort of integrity viz. that of the object or of obedience to all the particular Laws and parts of Duty The Contents Of the partiality of mens Obedience from their love of some particular sins Three pretences whereby they justifie the allowed practice of some sins whilst they are obedient in some other instances The first pretence is the preservation of their Religion and themselves in times of persecution A particular account of mens disobedience under this pretence The vanity of it shown from the following considerations Religion needs not to be rescued from persecution The freedom of outward means of Religion is restrained by it but the substance of Religion it self is not It is extended in some parts and ennobled in all by
things relating to our last doom and shewâ—â—â—oth what in the Judgment shall be indispensably required to our salvation what Defects do not overthrow but consist with it what Remedies when 't is wounded or lost can heal and restore us to it and what and of how great consideration those things really are which being wrong understood do often create causless fears and jealousies in good peoples minds about it Having I say clearly accounted for all these I suppose I may think I have said enough to shew men their Future State and fairly take leave of this Argument BOOK I. Of the indispensable condition of happiness in the general CHAP. I. Of Obedience the general condition of happiness The CONTENTS Obedience the indispensable condition of happiness The Laws of the Gospel are given as a Rule to it The Promises are all upon condition of it and intended to encourage it All the threatnings are now denounced and will be executed upon the disobedient Of those other things whereto Pardon is promised as well as to obedience Of Metonymy's Of the Principles of Humane Actions Of Principles of Obedience All those speeches metonymical where obedience is not express'd and yet pardon is promised THat Condition which the Gospel indispensably requires of us and which is to mete out to us our last doom of Bliss or Misery is in the General our Obedience When we are brought to that Bar and stand to be judged according to those Laws which are proclaim'd to us in the Gospel it is only our having kept them and Repented of all such transgressions of them as we have wilfully been guilty of which can capacitate us to be rewarded by them For 't is just with them as it is with all other Laws they never promise any thing but to obedience but threaten and punish all that disobey Whosoever breaks and despises them is guilty they do not comfort but accuse not acquit but condemn him For there is no Law that is wisely ordered but is sufficiently guarded against affront and back'd with such punishments as will make it every mans interest to fulfil and keep it The evil threatned must always by far exceed the pleasure that is reaped by disobedience so that no man may have any temptation sufficient to bear him out in Sin or ever hope to be a gainer by his transgression This is the tenour of all wise laws whose enactors have both wit and power sufficient to defend them They have dreadful Punishments annexed to them which take place upon disobedience they encourage and reward the obedient but severely punish all that dare presume to disobey And this is most eminently seen in all the Laws of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He gave them for the compleatest Rules to mens Lives and has annexed to them most glorious Promises to encourage our obedience but has made them breath out nothing but woes and intolerable punishments to all that disobey He has given them for Rules of Life and annexed Rewards as encouragements to obedience He never intended his Laws for an entertainment of our eyes but for a Rule for our Actions not for a matter of talk and discourse but of practice not to be complemented by words of honour and lofty expressions but to be own'd in our lives and served by obedience He is our King and issues out his Laws as the instruments of his Government he is our Lord and they are Rulers for his Service They must be guides of our Lives and Actions it is not enough to know and talk of them but as ever we hope to live by them we must do and keep them For in the end they will be available to no mans happiness but his who has conscientiously performed them In Christ Jesus or the Christian Religion says S t Paul nothing avails but keeping of the Commandments of God 1 Cor. 7.19 Blessed are they saith S t John who do the Commandments for they only have right to the Tree of Life Rev. 22.14 It is not an idle wish or ineffectual endeavour but a thorough practice and performance of Christs Laws which can continue us in his Love and approve us Righteous in his Judgment If ye keep my Commandments says he ye shall abide in my Love Joh. 15.10 Let no man deceive you for it is he only that doth Righteousness who in Gods account is Righteous 1 Joh. 3.7 They only are pronounced Righteous and Sons of God in the Gospels estimation who walk after the spirit Rom. 8.4 who are led by the spirit vers 14. who bring forth the Fruits of the Spirit all words expressing Action and Practice Gal. 5 16-22 No man therefore will be acquitted and rewarded at that Bar barely for knowing and discoursing for wishing or desiring but only for working and obeying Such only the Gospel reckons for true servants now his servants ye are not whom you confess in words but whom in actions you obey Rom. 6.16 And such only he will honour and reward then For it is not every one who fawns upon me in his words whilest he reproaches me in his actions who says unto me Lord Lord that shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven but he only who doth the will of my Father which is in Heaven Which will he had just then proclaim'd to them in that Volume of Christian Laws which was published in the Sermon upon the Mount whereof this is in part the conclusion Matt. 7.21 He tells us that when the Son of Man shall come to judgment he will reward every man according to his works Matt. 16.27 and he repeats it again in his declaration to S t John Behold I come quickly and my reward is with me to give every man according as his work shall be Rev. 22.12 And so it was in that Prophetick sight of the Last Judgment which this same Apostle had vouchsafed him Rev. 20. For there as we are told when the Sea gave up the Dead which were in it and Death and Hell delivered up the Dead which were in them and they all both small and great stood before the Throne and him that sate thereon they were judged every man according to his WORKS vers 11 12 13. His Laws then Christ has given us not for talk and discourse but for action and practice and his Promises he has annexed to them not as rewards of idleness but only of active service and obedience Wherein if men fail Gods Rewards belong not to them they can make no claim or colourable pretence to them because they cannot show that which is to be rewarded by him Nay further if men disobey they are not only excluded from all glorious hopes but are moreover put into a desperate state of fears and dreadful expectations For God has back'd his Laws with threatnings as well as promises and as they propose most noble rewards to all that are obedient so likewise do they breath out most intolerable punishments to all that disobey
and their Faith confirmed by it in giving up our selves to Martyrdome and laying down our own lives for their advantage Hereby says this same Apostle perceive we the love of God because he laid down his life for us And if we would be reputed to have that love which as we are told at the fourteenth Verse wafts us over from Death unto Life we ought upon a fit occasion not to flinch from the most costly service but even to lay down our very lives for the Brethren 1 John 3.16 It is only this obedient and operative love of men which will be owned by Christ our Judg and confer a just claim to Life and Pardon at the last Day Our Love will not be rewarded as a thing that is absolute in it self but only as an Instrument in as much as it makes us as S t Paul says to fulfil the whole Law which makes any thing an instance of Duty towards them Rom. 13.8 But if we only profess love to them in kind words and tender expressions but shew none in our works and actions this idle useless love will be of no account to us nor benefit us more than it profits them For if a Brother or a Sister says S t James be naked and destitute of daily food and one of you gives them only some good words and says unto them Depart in peace be ye warm'd with Cloths and filled with Food but notwithstanding all this affectionate language ye give them not in the mean while those things which are needful for the Body what doth it profit Nothing at all surely nor will it ever advantage your selves as an instance of that mercy which rejoyceth against judgment Verse 13. more than it profits them James 2.15 16. So that when Christ comes to Judgment at the last Day we see plainly that no love either of God or men will avail us but only that which has kept the Commandments we shall never be acquitted at that Bar upon a pretence of love without obedience for all that can possibly stand us in any stead there is a loving service a love which has made us careful and diligent to obey And thus at last we have fully seen that as for all those other things besides obedience whereunto the Gospel promises pardon and happiness they are by no means available to our bliss when they are separate from obedience but then only when they effect and imply it They all aim at it and end in it and are of no account in Gods Judgment further than they produce it It is not either our knowing Christ or our believing Christ or our being in Christ or our trusting in Christ or our loving Christ or our fears of God or our confessions of sins or our pouring out many prayers or any thing else that will save us whilst we disobey No at the last Day we shall certainly be damned notwithstanding them if the obedience of our works is wanting It is only a working service that will please our Judge and which can possibly secure us if we are able in that Court to produce that it will clear us but without it nothing else will Christs Gospel whereby all of us must stand or fall at that Day has fully declared this already and Christ himself will then confirm it So that 't is in vain to cast about for other marks and to seek after other Evidences for our title to bliss and happiness nothing less than our Repentance and Obedience will avail us unto life and through the merits of Christ and the Grace of his Gospel it shall And now at last we see clearly what that Condition is which the Gospel indispensably requires of us and which is to mete out to us our last doom of bliss or misery that in the general it is nothing else neither more nor less than our obedience BOOK II. Of the Laws of the Gospel which are the Rule of this Obedience in particular CHAP. I. Of the particular Laws comprehended under the Duty of Sobriety The CONTENTS A Division of our Duty into three general Vertues Piety Sobriety Righteousness Of the nature of Sobriety The particular Laws commanding and prohibiting under this first Member A larger explication of the nature of Mortification BUT in regard our working and obeying is that whereupon all our hopes and happiness our security and comfort hangs it is very necessary that after all which has been hitherto discoursed of it in the general we go on still further and enquire of it more particularly For if it be our Obedience or Disobedience that must dispense Life or Death to us and eternally save or destroy us at the last Day then whosoever would know before-hand what shall be his final Sentence must enquire what is his present state and what have been his past actions whether in them he have obeyed or no. And the way to understand that is first to know what those Laws are whereto his obedience is due and in what manner and degrees he is to obey them and when once he has informed himself in these he may quickly learn from the Testimony of his own heart and Conscience whether he has performed that Obedience which is indispensably required to his happiness or has fallen short of it And to give the best assistance that I can in so weighty a Case I will here proceed to enquire further in this Obedience and shew concerning it these two things I. What those Laws are which under the Sanctions of Life or Death the Gospel binds us to obey And II. What degrees and manner of obedience is indispensably required to them I. Then I will enquire what those Laws are whereby at the last Day we must all be judged and which under the Sanction of Life or Death the Gospel binds us to obey And that I may render this enquiry as useful as I can I will set down as I go along the meaning and explication of those several Vertues and Vices which are either required or forbidden in the particular Laws that so we may more truly and readily understand whether the Vertues have been performed or the Vices incurred and whether thereby the Laws have been broken or kept by us As for the Laws and Commands of God they are all reduced by S t Paul to three Heads For either they require something from us towards God himself and so are contained in works of piety or towards our Neighbours all which are comprehended in works of righteousness or towards our own selves as all those Precepts do which are taken up in works of sobriety In these three general Vertues is comprized the Sum of our Christian Duty even all that is required by the Gospel as the Condition of Salvation For the Gospel saith he or that Grace of God which brings us the welcome offers of Salvation hath appeared now to all men teaching us as ever we expect that salvation which it tenders to us that denying ungodliness and
of both is Whoredome or bare Fornication and this when the Parties are too nearly allied is called Incest 2. By forcing of one and then 't is Rape or ravishing Which Vice S t Paul expresses by that word which we translate Extortioners 1 Cor. 5.11 and Chap. 6.10 Fourthly To contempt of the world and contentment with our present condition is opposed covetousness which is an immoderate love of the world or an unsatisfiedness with what we have and an insatiable desire of more and grudging or repining Fifthly To taking up the Cross is opposed our being scandalized or turn'd out of the way of Duty and Obedience by reason of it or a politick and selfish deserting of our Duty to avoid it Sixthly To diligence and watchfulness in doing of our Duty is opposed a heedlesness of it and remiss application to it which is carelesness and idleness Seventhly To patience in suffering for it is opposed an immoderate dread of pain and dishonest avoidance of it which is softness and fearfulness Eighthly To mortification and self-denial is opposed self-love and self-pleasing which as it is an industrious care to please and gratifie our bodily senses is called sensuality and as it is a ready and constant serving and obeying the lusts and desires of the Flesh especially when they carry us against the Commands of God is called carnality These are those Vices and breaches of Duty towards our selves which Gods Laws have prohibited under the pains of Death and Hell as the other were such Vertues as under the same penalty he exacts of us So that in the general Law of Sobriety we see are contain'd all these following whether commanding or forbidding Laws The commanding Law of humility of heavenly-mindedness of temperance of sobriety of charity of continence of contempt of the World and contentment of courage and taking up the Cross of diligence and watchfulness of patience of mortification and self-denial And opposite to these the forbidding Law against pride against arrogance or ostentation against vain-glory against ambition against haughtiness against insolence against imperiousness against dogmaticalness against envious back-biting against emulation against worldliness against intemperance against gluttony against voluptuousness against drunkenness against revelling against incontinence against lasciviousness or wantonness against filthiness against obscene Jestings against impurity or uncleanness against Sodomy against effeminateness against adultery against fornication against whoredom against incest against rape against covetousness against grudging and repining against refusing or being scandaled at the Cross against idleness and carelesness against fearfulness and softness against self-love against carnality against sensuality CHAP. II. Of LOVE the Epitome of Duty towards God and Men and of the particular Laws comprehended under Piety towards God The CONTENTS Of the Duties of Piety and Righteousness both comprehended in one general Duty LOVE It the Epitome of our Duty The great happiness of a good nature The kind temper of the Christian Religion Of the effects of LOVE The great Duty to God is Honour The outward expression whereof is worship The great offence is dishonour Of the several Duties and transgressions contained under both FOR the two remaining Members in S t Paul's Division viz. Godliness or Piety and Righteousness which require something from us to God or to our Neighbour they may yet be reduced into a narrower compass and are both comprized in that one word LOVE For all that ever God requires of us either to himself or towards other men is only heartily and effectually to LOVE them And this abridgment of our whole Duty in respect of these two remaining parts of it towards God and man into that one compendious Law of LOVE is no more than what our Saviour Christ and his Apostle Paul have already made to our hands For hear how they speak of it Jesus saith unto the Lawyer Thou shalt LOVE the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy mind This is the first and great Commandment and the second is like unto it Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self On these two which in the thing commanded LOVE are but one hang all the Law of the ten Commandments viz. which meddle not with our Duty towards our selves but only towards God and our Neighbour and the Prophets Matth. 22.37 38 39 40. And S t Paul speaks home to the same purpose By love says he serve one another for all the LAW is fulfilled in one word even this Thou shalt LOVE thy Neighbour as thy self Gal. 5.13 14. And speaking again of the Laws concerning our Neighbour he tells us that LOVE worketh no ill to his Neighbour and therefore Love is the fulfilling of the Law Rom. 13.10 Thus rare and heavenly a Religion is that of our Saviour Christ a Religion that is not content to have only great and eminent measures of goodness in it but is perfectly made up of LOVE and good Nature All that it requires from us is only to be kind-hearted and full of good Offices both towards God and men Every man of a loving good nature is enclined by his temper to do all that is demanded by Gods Law so that he has nothing remaining to turn his temper into obedience but to direct his intention and to exert all the effects of love for the sake of Gods Command which he is otherwise strongly excited to by the natural propensions of his own mind His passion and his God require the same service and that which is only a natural fruit of the first may become if he so design it a piece of Religion and Obedience to the latter For the particular effects of Love are the particulars of our Duty Love is the great and general Law as ill-will and enmity are the prime transgression and the instances of Love are the instances of our obedience as all the particular effects of ill-will are those very instances wherein we disobey So that by running over all the special effects of love or ill-will we may quickly find what are the Particulars of Duty and Transgression Now the prime and most immediate Effects of Love are 1. To do no evil to the persons beloved nor to take away from them any thing which is theirs and which they have a right to And this founds all the Duties of Justice But 2. To do all good offices and show kindness to them which founds all the Duties of Charity And these two take in our whole Duty both in Piety towards God and also in Righteousness towards men 1. The proper and genuine effect of love to God is to do no evil but in great readiness to do all the good and service which we can for him in which two are implied all the branches of piety which is the great and general Duty towards him To be kind and serviceable to God is nothing more than to honour him For his Nature is so perfect and self-sufficient that it cannot receive and ours so impotent
Acts 10.28 And upon the account of this freedom which he then took the Christian Jews who were of the Circumcision contended with him when he came up to Jerusalem reproving him for this That he went in to men uncircumcised and did eat with them Acts 11.2 3. The Woman of Samaria wondred that Jesus being a Jew should vouchsafe to ask so much as a Cup of cold water from her who was a Samaritan this being the stiffness of the Jewish Principle To have no dealings with the Samaritans John 4.9 Nay to that height of unkindness had they arrived as to deny even the most common Offices of humanity and Charity to show the way or give directions for a journey to any Gentile man Which several of the learned Heathens have smartly reproved and most justly complained of All which they did upon a supposition that the Neighbour to whom love and kindness was required by their Law was only a Fellow-Jew a Brother-Israelite and a man of their own Nation Which narrow and contracted sense they thought they had good reason to fix upon it from an expression in their own Law Lev. 19. where in the repetition of this great and general Duty of Love to our Neighbour the Word Neighbour is set in conjunction with and explained by one of the Children of their own People For thus 't is said Thou shalt not avenge nor bear any grudge against the Children of thy People but thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self verse 18. Thus limited and confined was the Jewish Love God had chosen them out of all the Nations of the World for a peculiar people and had hedged them in from the rest of mankind by peculiar Laws and a peculiar Government And upon this they concluded that whatsover God required of them he did it as their political King and as the particular Head of the Jewish Nation and that he intended those Laws which he gave them as Rules for their behaviour towards their own Brethren and Fellow-Subjects not towards Strangers of Foreign Nations But as for our Lord and Sovereign Jesus Christ he is a Governour and has enacted all his Laws not for the guidance of any one Nation or People but of all the world He told his Disciples when he sent them out to preach the Gospel That all power was given to him both in Heaven and in Earth and thereupon commissioned them to go out and proclaim his Laws not to the Jews alone but to all Nations Matth. 28.18 19. And by this universality of his Empire he has taken away the partition-wall which was between Jews and Gentiles having made them both one Ephes. 2.14 So that now there can be no further colour or pretence for a limited and restrained affection all the World by this means being now again made one People Fellow-subjects and Brethren and Neighbours unto one another Whatever the Jews conceived of their Laws therefore 't is plain that all the Laws of Christ which command all manner of Justice Charity and Peaceableness and forbid all expressions of uncharitableness injury and unpeaceableness towards our Neighbours make these things due to all mankind It is not either distance of Country nor contrariety of interest no nor what is most of all presumed to exempt us from the obligation of these Duties diversity of opinion or perswasion in matters of Religion which takes away from any man his right to all that kindness and advantage from us which all these forementioned Laws give him But of whatsoever Country Calling or Religion he be he is the Neighbour here meant to whom all these instances of Love which are the particular Laws of Duty must be performed And this our Saviour has determined once for all in his Answer to the Lawyer Luke 10. For when he put the Question to him Who is my Neighbour to whom the Law commands all these things to be done ver 29. Jesus answers him by a Parable that it is every man in the World whom he may at any time have to do with although he be never so much a Stranger nay of a party and opinion in Religion never so contrary unto his For what Religion was ever more odious unto any one than the Samaritan was to the Jews So great a detestation had they of it that when they would give a Name of the vilest ignominy and greatest hatred to Christ himself they told him he was a Samaritan and joined with it such a farther Character as they thought would best suit with it his being possessed with a Devil Say we not well answer'd they that thou art a Samaritan and hast a Devil John 8.48 But yet for all this height of enmity between the Jews and Samaritans he tells the Jewish Lawyer who demanded of him who was his Neighbour that a Jewish man fell among Thieves who wounded him and left him half dead and that a Samaritan coming by had compassion on him and bound up his wounds and took care of him Hereby insinuating That any man though so contrary to him in Religion as these two were to one another is the Neighbour whom the Law intends and therefore in full answer to his Question he bids him Go and do so likewise Luke 10.30 to 38. CHAP. IV. Of our Duties to men in particular Relations The CONTENTS Of our Duties to other men in particular Relations The Duties enjoined and the sins prohibited towards Kings and Princes Bishops and other Ministers The particular duties and sins in the relation of Husband and Wife Parents and Children Brethren and Sisters Masters and Servants Of the two Sacraments and Repentance A recital of all particular Duties enjoined and sins prohibited to Christians Of the harmlesness of a defective enumeration the Duties of the Gospel being suggested not only outwardly in Books but inwardly by mens own Passions and Consciences BUT besides all these Laws contained in the general Command of Love to our Neighbour which require something of us to be performed or forborn towards all mankind there are yet some more particular instances of it which make some things due from us not as we are left at random towards all men indifferently but as we stand more peculiarly related towards some whether that relation be 1. Publick and Political of Prince and Subjects Ministers and People 2. More Private and Domestick as is that between 1. Husband and Wife 2. Parents and Children 3. Brethren and Sisters 4. Master and Servants For in all these special Relations Love to our Neighbour exerts it self in special effects which are all such peculiar Laws as bind us not towards all men indifferently but only towards them whom we stand so related to To begin with the first 1. The first relation from whence result several effects of Love and instances of Duty towards some particular men distinct from what we owe to the rest of all mankind is that which is between us and our Publick or Political Governours and Rulers And because we are
willingness of their own minds which will make them do it whether he be with them or absent from them which in the same place is called obeying with good will and from the heart Ephes. 6.6 7. 3. In those things which he imposes and inflicts whether they be just or even injust if light and tolerable a quiet and uncontending submission which is patience and subjection 4. And in those things wherein they cannot advantage him themselves commending him to Almighty God by prayer for him So that the effects of Love or commanding Laws in this relation are on the Masters side the Law of maintenance of religious instruction of a just and equal Government of them of kindness and equity in commanding of forbearance and moderation in threatning of punctual payment of the wages of the Hireling of praying for them On the Servants the Law of honour of reverence of observance of concealing and excusing their Masters defects of vindicating their injured reputation of fidelity of obedience of diligence of willing and hearty service of patient submission and subjection of praying for them And opposite to these are all the effects of hatred which will be instanced in these Particulars 1. From the Masters towards their Servants it will produce 1. A carelesness of what becomes of their Servants whether as to 1. Their Bodies in not duly maintaining or providing for them 2. Their Souls in not catechising or instructing of them 2. A Government of them which is cruel and rigorous and this being a dealing otherwise with them than we are willing to be dealt with our selves is unequal Government Which is expressed 1. In the injustice and severity of our Commands when we enjoin what God forbids which is unlawful or what tends not to benefit our selves but only to vex and trouble them which is unprofitable or what is either above their strength or exceeding hard for it which is unproportionable And this is unjustness and wantonness and rigour in commanding which if it be acted in a contemptuous haughtiness and peremptory way is imperiousness 2. In the injustice and hardship of our threatnings and punishments when we use them without occasion or more than needs when there is occasion for them which is immoderate threatning or punishing And this as it vents it self in bitter words and vehemence of vilifying expressions a fault that is incident to proud hasty Folk and lordly Masters is railing at them 3. In the dishonesty and dilatoriness of our Rewards when we either pay not at all that which was covenanted for their service or cut it short or delay it long when their necessity calls for it instantly which is defrauding or keeping back the wages of the Hireling 3. And besides all the kindness which we deny them our selves neglecting to seek for any thing for them at Gods hands by not praying for them or cursing and imprecating them which is praying against them 2. From the Servants towards their Masters where the effects of hatred are 1. A disesteem and contemptuous opinion of their Masters as persons of no worth or preheminence above themselves which is dishonour And this when it is evidenced in a careless and disrespectful behaviour towards them which argues them to stand in no fear or awe of them is irreverence 2. An industrious neglect of such things as they know are pleasing and acceptable to him and venturing upon others that will disgust and offend him which is non-observance two particular expressions whereof are 1. As to his or his families defects at home a publishing and aggravation of them 2. As to his reputation abroad a suffering it to lye under imputations that are undeserved which is not vindicating him 3. An endamagement of their Masters Goods Concerns and Authority by shewing 1. In what their Master intrusts them falseness or non-performance which is unfaithfulness And if it be instanced in making away such Goods or Mony as were committed to them 1. To their own luxury and pleasure by such ways as our Saviour sets down of eating drinking and keeping ill company Matth. 24.49 it is wastfulness of their Masters Goods 2. To their own private profit and secret enrichment it is purloining 2. In what their Masters command a careless omission of it or acting against it which is disobedience Whether this be expressed 1. In questioning and disputing the fitness and convenience of what they enjoin instead of doing and performing it which S t Paul calls answering again or speaking against and contradicting it Tit. 2.9 2. In a slow and lazy application of themselves to it when they do set about it which is slothfulness 3. In a laborious dispatch of what they are commanded only whilst their Masters eye is over them but slackning all again when he is gone from them doing all things out of dread but nothing out of choice and good will which is eye-service 3. In what their Master imposes or inflicts a not enduring or resting under it which is contumacy or resistance 4. And in such things as God is to bestow on them a not seeking to him by prayer on their behalf but praying against them So that the effects of ill will and hatred or Laws forbidding in this relation are on the Masters side the Law against not providing maintenance for his Servant against not catechizing or instructing him against unequal Government against unjustness wantonness and rigour in commanding against imperiousness against immoderate threatning against railing against defrauding or keeping back the wages of the Hireling against not praying for him and imprecation or praying against him and on the Servants side the Law against dishonour of his Master against irreverence against non-observance against publishing or aggravating his Masters faults against not vindicating his injured reputation against unfaithfulness against wasting his Goods against purloining against disobedience against answering again against slothfulness against eye-service against contumacy or resistance against not praying for them and imprecation or praying against them And thus we have seen what are the particular effects of love and hatred both towards all men in general and also towards all in those several relations wherein we stand concerned with one another in the World And in them are contained all the particular Commands and Prohibitions which make up this third Branch of Duty viz. righteousness or our Duty towards our Neighbour All that God requires of us towards other men is only to have a hearty kindness for them and in this manner to express it And all that he forbids is only our hatred of them with all the forementioned effects of it So that in the above-named instances and effects of Love in Justice Charity Peace with those others in the relations now recited is comprized the whole of this last Member of S t Paul's Division righteousness Thus at last we have seen what are all the particular instances of those three general Laws sobriety piety and righteousness wherein if we add two or
expresser promises yet were many things still for the hardness of their hearts indulged to them for which without repentance we shall smart most severely if we are guilty of them A man might be innocent in the charge made against him by the Law of Moses although he should return ill for ill or retaliate injuries and curse and pray against his enemies And this their most righteous persons and greatest Prophets even David himself who was the man after Gods own heart have done frequently They had no express Law threatning death to bare sensuality and worldliness but the very constitution of their Law which consisted mainly if not wholly in temporal promises seemed much to encourage it They were in no danger of being damned by Moses for not bearing with the infirmities and weaknesses of their wives since their Law it self allowed them to put them away when they did not please them yea and even whilst they continued with them to marry and take others to them For all which with others that might be mentioned although we Christians are liable to damnation yet they were not For they will be judged at the last Day according to their obedience to their own Laws not to ours As many as have sinned in the Law of Moses says the Apostle shall be judged by that Law Rom. 2.12 But as for us Christians we must walk by a more perfect Rule and live up to a nobler pitch than ordinarily either Jew or Gentile did or at the last day we shall be eternally condemned For take even those Sects among the Jews which in the judgment of S t Paul are the strictest of any in their Religion viz. the Scribes and Pharisees and yet as our Saviour himself has peremptorily and plainly affirmed our obedience must of necessity surpass theirs Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees you shall in no case enter into the Kingdom of Heaven Matth. 5.20 In the accounts of our Religion we are guilty and punishable when no other Law would take hold of us For by the Gospel of Christ as we have seen we shall be damned not only for Adultery Fornication and Whoredom but also for uncleanness for lasciviousness nay for filthy jests and obscene discourses We are liable to dye non only for drunkenness and revellings for gluttony and surfeiting but also for carnality sensuality and voluptuousness There is enough against us to condemn us although we do not kill our enemy if we hate him or rail at him nay if we refuse to do good to him to speak well of him or to pray for him We are strictly charged not only that we should not lye and slander but moreover that we should not so much as revile or reproach or mock or upbraid or censure or speak evil We are severely threatned not only if we offer violence to our Neighbour but if we are surly towards him if we are hasty and fierce with him if we are stately uncondescensive or uncourteous to him So far must we be from fighting and blows from seditions and tumults that under the highest penalties we must abstain from clamour and brawling from debate and variance from unquietness yea from pragmaticalness or busying our selves in others mens matters We must keep back from dishonour irreverence and speaking evil of Dignities whilst we submit to them as well as from disobedience and resistance of our lawful Prince in open rebellion To extort depress or circumvent our Brother in any matter is an Article of our Condemnation as well as direct theft and downright robbery To refuse the Cross to scandalize a weak Brother to envy our Neighbours praise and to be vain-glorious arrogant and forward upon all occasions to boast and set off our own are all mortal sins in the accounts of our Law and such as subject the impenitent Actors of them to eternal destruction These and all the other instances set down in the foregoing Catalogues which are too many to mention here let us plainly see the height of that holiness and the perfection of that love which we are to live or dye by Our Law is the most perfect Rule that ever the World heard of and as ever we hope for mercy and bliss ours is to be the most perfect obedience For as all these Laws which under the pains of Death we are bound to obey are most Heavenly and Divine so is that a most perfect obedience which is indispensably required to them Which will more fully appear by clearing up what I am to show in the next Book viz. What degrees and manner of obedience is indispensably required to them BOOK III. What degrees and manner of Obedience is required to all the Laws forementioned CHAP. I. Of Sincerity The CONTENTS The first qualification of an acceptable Obedience that it be sincere Two things implied in sincerity truth or undissembledness and purity or unmixedness of our service Of the first Notion of sincerity as opposite to hypocrisie or doing what God commands out of a real intention and design to serve him Of a two-fold intention actual and express or habitual and implicite Of intention in general and of these two in particular Where an actual intention is necessary and where an habitual is sufficient to our obedience Of the second Notion of sincerity as it notes purity of our service in opposition to mixture and corrupt alloy This Point stated viz. What intention of our good together with Gods service is consistent with an acceptable and sincere Obedience and what destroys it Integrity of our Obedience a sure mark whereby to judge whether it be sincere or no. THE Qualifications which must render our obedience acceptable to Almighty God and make it avail us unto life and pardon at the last Day are comprehended in these two 1. Sincerity 2. Integrity 1. To render our obedience to the forementioned Laws of God acceptable and available to our salvation at the last Day it is necessary that it be sincere Sincerity is a true and undissembled service of God opposite to hypocrisie or a false and feigned pretence of obeying him when in reality we only serve our own selves For we must take notice that God has been so gracious to us in chusing out the instances of our Duty and of his Commands as to adopt for the most part those particular sorts of actions into the matter of our obedience which by the natural Order and Constitution of things make for our own present pleasure reputation or interest And every one of these from the first and fundamental principle of our Natures self-love are sufficient inducement to us to practise them although God had never laid his Commands upon them So that although we have no kindness at all for God nor would do any thing for his sake yet shall we observe many things which he enjoins us not for his pleasure but our own Thus for instance may we be chast and sober
and proposed it to us because the necessity of our faith to our obedience shews plainly that it cannot be denied us and because the best men that ever were have not been able to obey without it and yet their obedience has been most graciously accepted First Some respect to our own good and intention to advantage our selves by our obedience is of that nature that it cannot be forbidden us It cannot fall under a Law or be a matter of a Commandment because it can never be performed As for any one particular advantage and self-interest indeed we may deny our selves in it and therefore any Law may very well require it For we have many particular self-interests to serve and they clash and interfere among themselves and so long as we are in pursuit of any one by virtue of it we are able to restrain and deny our selves in any other And thus all men daily deny their Ease for their Interests and their Gain for their Liberty and their Liberty for their Lives And all good men daily over-rule that Love which they have for their Bodies by that higher and stronger love which they have for their Souls and deny themselves in any Temporal Interests to secure their Eternal And because all men have this power of denying their own self-Self-love in small instances to serve it in greater and of parting with any goods and advantages of this world to purchase to themselves incomparably better in the next God has enacted the denial of our selves in all such particular Interests as hinder our Obedience into a Religious Duty and made it universally obliging to all the world But as for the casting off this love of our selves and respect to our own advantage not only as to some particular interests whilst our eye is upon others but as to all self-interests whatsoever this in the matter of Duty and Obedience no man can perform and therefore no Law can command it For in that Constitution of Nature which God has given us self-love is the first and over-ruling Principle It has a share almost in all our actions and influences all our faculties so that in all that variety of operations which flow from us there are very few wherein we have no eye at our own advantage In some actions 't is true we are influenced chiefly and almost wholly by our love of others which is a noble and a generous Principle For there are several good Offices which we daily do to others in doing whereof we no way prejudice our selves and these our love of others makes us perform and our own self-love doth not withstand it which is seen in all the Offices of humanity and common courtesie And other things again there are wherein we advantage them though it be considerably to our own trouble and our own hindrance and here although our own self-love oppose it self yet our love of them prevails and over-rules it as is daily shown in the Offices of Christian Charity and particular friendship In these Cases our love of others and of our selves are separate our kindness for them shews it self in such things wherein our own self-love is either not concerned at all or wherein it is opposed and over-powered so that here we are not influenced and governed by it And if this were the Case in all our obedient actions there might be more pretence for performing them purely out of love to God without mixing therewith any love of our own selves But in them quite contrary our love of God and of our selves are neither repugnant nor so much as separate but most closely conjoined For God hath made the same things the matter both of our Duty and of our interest so that in serving him we do in the highest measure serve our own selves too And in this Case where our own self-love is so much concerned and has not the love of God to oppose and over-rule it but to jump in and conspire with it it is not possible but that we shall be influenced and acted by it For it naturally issues out upon our own good and here it has an object in the highest advancement and there is nothing to hinder or restrain it So that whatsoever we may do through a bare abstracted love of others without any regard to our own selves in those Cases where our own self-love and it are separate or repugnant yet in the matter of obedience where they are so close conjoined and Gods service is so infinitely our own interest 't is plain that we cannot be wholly free from it For since in obeying we do that which we know is most highly advantageous to us we are not able perfectly to abstract our thoughts but we shall intend whether we will or no to be advantaged by it And since no man can wholly abstain from intending his own advantage in Gods service no Law can require it It is no fit matter of a prohibition nor capable of being retrenched by a Commandment being it is at no mans choice whether or no he shall observe it So that God must work a Change in his own Creation and form us into something different from what we are before he can in reason demand it of us 2. Some respect to our own advantage in performing what God commands is lawful and allowable in us because Gods Laws themselves do authorize and propose it to us God has not required us to serve him for nothing but has offered us an abundant recompence for all our labour and added such allurements to his Laws as infinitely surpass all the difficulties of our Duty He has proposed every thing to us that may any way work upon our self-love and care for our own advantage whether it be the promises of good to intice or the threats of evil to affright us into obedience For thus saith our Law Verily verily I double the Asseveration that you may give the greater credit to it I say unto you He that keepeth my Sayings or Commands shall never see death John 8.51 To my Sheep that follow me and hear or obey my voice I will give eternal life John 10.27 28. Blessed are they that do his Commandments for they shall have right to the Tree of Life and enter in through the Gate into the City Rev. 22.14 But on the other side The wrath of God cometh upon the Children of disobedience Col. 3.6 For at the Day of Judgment when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from Heaven with the Guards and Attendance of his mighty Angels then will he in flaming fire take vengeance on them that obey not the Gospel who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord 2 Thess. 1.7 8 9. Thus have we in Christs Laws to omit other things a promise made to us of Heaven and endless joys to induce us to obedience and a threatning of Hell and eternal miserie denounced to us to make us afraid to disobey And these make our obedience to
prophanation also of what is holy or an abuse of what is sacred and together with the service of the sin joyns an immediate and direct affront of God too At other times I say men design some temporal ends for themselves as much or more than they design Gods service And this also renders their performances unsincere and qualifies their own temporal self-interests instead of being subservient to obedience to oppose and undermine it Their temporal advantages they intend sometimes as much as they do Gods service They make them equal and co-ordinate and are moved by the one as much as by the other Their love for the world is as great as their love for God and they are induced to perform what he commands them as much for its sake as they are for his Now this is an indignity which God will by no means endure For it is plainly an intolerable degradation of him and a bringing him down to nothing more than an equal amiableness with those earthly pleasures and temporal interests which we joyn in co-ordination with him It is a setting up the world for his rival and making the Creature equall in our estimation to him who is the Creator and Lord of all But the peremptory words of his Law are Thou shalt have no other Gods before me or in my presence Exod. 20.3 He will be served and respected above all and to bring other things into competition with him he looks upon to be the same thing as to renounce him For he is jealous of the preheminence of his service above all other things as a husband is of his wives love to him above all other men I the Lord saith he am a jealous God Exod. 20.5 And since this intending of our temporal advantages equally to Gods service is looked upon to be so great an affront and degradation of him the making them superior to him and being won more for their sakes than for his must do so much rather For this is a setting up other things above him and is like making and serving of another God Upon which account as some expound it Covetousness which is a loving and serving of Riches more than God is called Idolatry Col. 3.5 And when any Temporal Interest of our own has got as great power over us or greater than God himself has as it makes for the performance of his Command at one time so will it at another be as ready to make against it For although our Duty and our Interest do ordinarily strike in together yet always they do not but are sometimes divided And then this hank which our own advantage has got over us will not determine us for God but contest with him It will make us neglect his Service that we may serve our selves and carry us on to transgress his Commands whensoever we may thereby promote our own worldly interests So that the intending to serve our sins together with our intending to serve God or the intention of our own temporal interests in a degree either equal or superior to our intention of obedience to him by both which ways all worldly advantages are qualified to oppose him this mixture of intention I say makes our performance of his Commands to be no acceptable obedience but an unsincere service and a damning sin As for that unmixedness of intention therefore which is implied in sincerity and which is necessary to the acceptance of our obedience of all the forementioned Laws it excludes not all intention of our own advantage together with Gods service No to have respect to the spiritual and eternal advantages which in Gods Laws themselves are expresly promised to our obedience is always lawful and to have an eye upon those temporal advantages which will accrue to us by obeying is lawful so far as we intend them not in a degree either equal to Gods service or superior to it by both which ways they are empowered to undermine it But then only our mixing a design of our own self-interest together with our design of serving God makes our service unsincere and our damning sin when together with our design of serving God we join a design of serving sin or when we design some temporal ends of our own as much or more than we design obedience unto him And therefore it is a vain fear wherewith many good people are wont to perplex their souls when they doubt of the sincerity of their obedience because it was performed with an eye at their own advantage through their fears of Hell or their hopes of Heaven For whatsoever some out of a mistaken zeal for God's honour may have said to the contrary this is not only innocent but as I have shewn plainly necessary If they scruple at this they must scruple eternally For it is not their choice but their very Nature to act thus and they cannot help it This I say is their very Nature and they must leave off to be men before they can get quit of it Men may speak loftily and talk of obeying purely for God's sake without seeking any thing at all for themselves But this is mere talk and empty rant that can never come beyond words or appear in action For they must be made something else than what they are before they can practise it If any man doubts then whether God will accept his obedience because in obeying he had an eye at his own self interest he doubts whether God will accept him because he obeys as a man Noah and Abraham and Moses nay Christ himself might have doubted at this rate for in their obedience they all intended their own good as well as God's Glory and had respect unto the recompence of reward If this be a sufficient ground of scruple every Christian man must of necessity scruple without end For all our obedience is an obedience of Faith and our faith or belief of Heaven and Hell makes us chuse to obey in making us first to intend by such obedience to obtain the one and escape the other So that either our own nature and Christ's Gospel must be changed into something different from what they are or we must acknowledge that such honest intention of our own good as I have mentioned is lawful for us in God's service since it is made so necessary and unavoidable for us in the one and so much encouraged by the other And thus at last we see what is the first requisite to an acceptable obedience viz. sincerity And that it implies both the reality of our intention in Gods service or our performing it truly for Gods sake as we pretend to do and also the uncorruptness of it or our performing it for his sake more than for any thing else whatsoever and without regard to any other advantages of our own than such as are allowed by him and are subordinate under him But in regard the degrees of our intention and design are not so obvious and easily dâ—scâ—verable in themselves but
are better known to us in their fruits and effects than in their own natures foâ—â—he greater ease in judging whether we do intend Godâ—s Service most of all or no I shall before I conclude this Point lay down a plain and certain mark whence any man of common apprehension may easily discern whethâ—◠〈◊〉 doth indeed design God's service most and whâ—â—â—er his heart and obedience be sincere or no. And the Rule which I shall lay down whereby certainly to try and examine that is this If our obedience be intire it cannot but be sincere likewise For he that obeys God in all times and iâ— all instances cannot but serve him with both these ingredients of sincerity viz. Truth and Preheminence He must needs intend God's service really and above all who intends it so as to serve him constantly and universally And the reason is this Because although our temporal interest and present advantage be for the most part united with Gods service yet always it is not but sometimes in all instances of obedience and at most times in some it is separated and divided from it So that as long as we are true to our own Principle of acting which we may safely conclude we always are if we either design not God's service at all through hypocrisie or design it not above all through a corrupt mixture of intention at those times when these instances happen we shall not be acted by the Command but through the love of our own interest which we intend really and design more we shall certainly act against it For our actions go where our wills lead them and our wills always follow that which is the prevailing motive to them and has most power with them And therefore if we still chuse God's service in all its parts and in all times whether it make for our present advantage or against it we may be assured that we intend his service truly and also that we intend it most since we serve him when no bye-interests of our own can be served and disserve all other interests for his sake He must needs be our highest aim because where we may please him though no secular advantages concur we chuse any thing and where he would be offended though all other advantages invite we chuse nothing So that in the matter of obedience our integrity is the great and last measure of our acceptance And if upon examination we find that our obedience is intire we need not doubt but that it is sincere also And this is that very mark from which according to that version of the Psalms which is used in our Liturgy the Psalmist himself concludes concerning the obedience of the Israelites For he collects it to have been a dissembled and unsincere because it was not a whole and intire service They did but flatter him with their mouth saith he and dissembled with him in their tongue for their heart was not whole or intire with him Psal. 78.36 37. To clear up this enquiry then What qualifications of our obedience to all the forementioned Laws of God must render it acceptable to him and available to our salvation at the last day I shall proceed to discourse of the second condition of all acceptable obedience viz. integrity of which in the next Chapter CHAP. II. Of the second qualification of all acceptable obedience viz. integrity The CONTENTS Of the second qualification of an acceptable obedience viz. integrity The Notion of integrity or uprightness A three-fold integrity Of the integrity of our powers and faculties Or of the obedience with our minds affections wills and bodily powers How God is to be obeyed with the first faculty our minds or understandings God is to be obeyed with the second faculty our affections This Question stated How God and his Laws which are spiritual things are proportionate objects for our love and affections which are bodily faculties Of the difference betwixt our love of God and of the World that this is more warm and sensible that more lasting and powerful An account of what measures of obedience in our minds and affections is necessary to the acceptance of our service That contrivances and consultations for evil things and such mere apprehensions as are particularly forbidden are deadly and damning but that all other bare apprehensions and that all our affections after good or evil things will be rewarded or punished not merely for themselves but only as they are Causes and Principles of good or evil choice and practice God to be obeyed with the third faculty our wills He cannot be served without them Men are guilty of sin if they chuse it and consent to it though they cannot act it All this service of our inward faculties is in order to our outward works and operations INtegrity of obedience is such a perfection and compleatness of it as excludes all maimedness and defects Which is well intimated by S t James when he explains intire by wanting nothing Let patience have her perfect work that ye may be perfect and intire which you will be by wanting nothing Jam. 1.4 And this in another word is ordinarily expressed in Scripture by uprightness For in the most common Metaphor of the holy Books our course of life is called our way our actions steps and our doing walking And to carry on the Metaphor our course of obedience is called our right or straight path our course of sin and transgressions a crooked path our committing sin stumbling and falling and our doing our duty walking uprightly So that for a man to be upright in God's ways is not to stumble or fall by sin and disobedience i. e. to be perfect and intire or wanting nothing in our obedient performances Now this integrity or uprightness which is necessary to our obedience that it may stand us in stead at the last Day is three-fold 1. An integrity of our powers or faculties which I call an integrity of the Subject 2. An integrity of seasons and opportunities which is an integrity of Time 3. An integrity of the particular Laws of Duty and instances of obedience which is an integrity of the Object And all these are necessary to render our performance of God's Laws an acceptable service For if ever we expect that he should reward our obedience at the last Day we must take care beforehand that it be the obedience of our whole man in all times to the whole Law of God To begin with it 1. That our obedience of the forementioned Laws may avail us to life and pardon at the last Day we must take care to obey with all our powers and faculties which is an integrity of the Subject And for this the very Letter of the Law is express For when the Lawyer asks What shall I do to inherit eternal life Christ sends him to what is written in the Law and repeats that to him for an Answer Thou shalt love and serve as it is Deut. 11.13 the Lord thy God
this otherwise most offensive an acceptable service Is any thing that we can offer to him so pleasing as our obedience Is he more delighted when we follow our own counsel than when we follow his when we do our own than when we do his pleasure For all those Laws of the Gospel and instances of obedience which under this pretension we transgress are wayes of Gods own appointment they are a service of his own choosing a Religion that is most agreeable to his mind and fitted in all things according to his liking a rule that he has thought most absolute to direct our actions and most fit for us to walk by If then we would expâ—â—ss our concern for God our venerable esteem of his wiâ—dom our acquiescence in his choice our submission to his ordering our acknowledgement of his authority and our chearfull compliance with his pleasure let us do it by a religious observance of these Rules which are of his own prescribing Let us honour him in his own way by doing our duty and practising such things as he has made expressions of honour by making them instances of obedience For disobedience can serve no interest of God nothing that we can do being so effectual a reproach to all his Attributes as to disobey him Nor is the use of evil and unlawfull means in any wise a fitter expression of our care for Religion For what is there in Religion that can be honoured and advanced by disobedience Is there any thing in it so sacred as the Divine Laws and dare any man call that his care of them when he lays wast and plainly rejects them It is gross impudence for any man to pretend Piety in the breach of Duty and to cry up Religion whilst he is acting irreligiously he prides himself in the empty name when it is clear to all that he has lost the thing for as for Piety it self and true Religion by transgressing and trampling upon the Divine Laws he doth not further and defend but impiously and irreligiously destroys it It is not Religion then whatever men may vainly pretend that makes them run into the breach of Laws and contempt of Duty lest they should suffer in the profession of it For God and Religion owe them no thanks for such a course because he is not honoured nor it strengthned and preserved but ruined and destroyed by it But the true and real cause of such disobedience whereof God and Religion are only the colour and false pretence is plainly a great want of Religion and of the love of God and too great a love of the world and of mens own selves Men are hurried away by an unmortified love of pleasures honours and temporal interests and they have not Religion enough to restrain and over-rule them For these it is and not Religion which sufferings and persecuting times take from them and an ungovernable desire to preserve these which makes them so violent as that at such times no Laws of Religion can hold them When men set at nought and disparage Governours disobey Laws disturb the Publick Peace injure their Fellow-subjects and commit several other sinfull acts and irreligious violations of the Laws of Christ that they may keep off Persecution for the profession of the Christian Faith they shew plainly that they will follow Christ only in a thriving but not in a suffering Religion They will serve him no longer than he sets them uppermost and above their Brethren For rather than suffer any loss and fall into any dangers for their adherence to him they will leave him and his Laws to fend for themselves and flatly disobey him But when they do so it is shameless hypocrisie to pretend that all their transgressions and disobedience is still upon the Principle and from the Power of Religion since it is not Religion but a resolution to be uppermost not duty but ambition covetousness sensuality revenge or a nest of some other unmortified and reigning vices of like nature which makes them under pretence of a conscientious care for religious profession to destroy all religious practice This one would think is plain and evident to any man who can have the patience to consider it that True Religion can never be the cause of sin or make men irreligious and disobedient That must not for shame be called mens Religion but their Lust which makes them wicked and carries them on to transgress Gods Laws that are the chief and sovereign part of his Religion which who so keeps is a religious as whosoever breaks them is an ungodly and irreligious man This indeed is clear Doctrine and obvious to any common if it be withall a free and considerate understanding And it were scarce possible that any men should think otherwise had they not either by accicident hast or ill design taken up an odd notion of Religion altogether different from that which the Scriptures give and which all considerately religious men have of it For by Religion they mean only their adherence to the Doctrines and Opinions but not to the Laws and Precepts of the Gospel And when they talk of defending and maintaining of Religion they intend not a defence of Laws but of Notions not a maintenance of the practice of Christian Precepts but only of the profession of Christian Doctrines They are of the Religion which Christ reveals but not of that which he commands they will know and believe what he pleases but do what they please themselves They are only for a Religion of Orthodox Tenets but not of Vpright Practice and if thereby they can preserve men safe in thinking and professing well they fancy that God will not be offended with their use of any means though never so wicked and disobedient But this is a most gross mistake and a most dangerous Notion of Religion which is quite another thing than what this conceit doth represent it to be For First The prime part and matter of Religion is the practick part viz. the Laws and Precepts the Promises and Threatnings of the Gospel And agreeably thereto the prime business of all Religious men is an obedient practice and performance of them or a virtuous discharge of duty and a holy life This is that Religion whereby all of us must stand or fall and that great condition which as I have shewn we must for ever live or dye by When Christ comes to judgement sayes Saint Paul he will render to every man according to his deeds Rom. 2.6 And in that prospect of the last judgment which S t John tells us God vouchsafed him men were judged every one according to their works Rev. 20.13 This Religion of Obedience and a good Life is that which the Gospel is full of wherein every Chapter nay almost every verse of it instructs us and some way or other directs exhorts encourages and excites to And therefore as ever we would pass for Religious men in the Scripture Notion we must be carefull to live in
suffer under it he cannot be my disciple Luk. 14.27 This God peremptorily and indispensably exacts of us and there is all the reason in the world why he should For he will infinitely recompence in the next world either the want or loss of all those things which for his sake we are content to be without in this Heaven and eternal life will be an abundant and incomparably surpassing compensation all the wants and sufferings of this present time being as S t Paul sayes utterly unworthy to be compared with that Glory which shall then be revealed in us Rom. 8.18 Let no man therefore disobey Gods Laws for the love of the world for the supplying of his wants and the satisfaction of his appetites and yet for all that perswade himself that God will own him and connive at his disobedience For in doing so he plainly renounces God and sets the World above him he makes his Duty truckle to his Interest he slights obedience and submits to a temptation He does the work of sin for the interest which tempts to it and that will certainly bring upon him that death which God has established for the wages of it Thirdly A third pretence whereby men justifie to their own souls the indulged transgression of several Laws whilst they obey in others is because those transgressions wherein they allow themselves are only such as are sins of temper and complexion age or way of life Sometimes mens place and way of life is a continual temptation to some particular sin and if they may but have leave to indulge that they will abandon every other The Courtier takes himself obliged by the fashion of his place to lies and dissimulation ostentation and vanity to sinfull compliances and faithless engagements to promise all but to perform nothing The Merchant in pursute of his gain serves the end of his trade by fraud and dishonesty He accounts it a piece of his Art to over-reach to defraud customes to vend false wares and set exacting prices The Lawyer thinks it a part of his profession to encourage strife and foment difference the malice and revenge the wrath and bitterness the slanders and evil-speakings the strife and contentions which are other mens sins are his livelihood These sins being ever before them are alwayes a snare to them for they are continually importuned by them and it must be a toilsome pains and an uninterrupted watchfulness which can preserve them from being either won or wearied into the commission of them And since obedience in these instances is a thing which they can so very hardly spare they hope that God in mercy will not exact it but will graciously accept them upon their service in other particulars although here they continue to disobey him Other sins men are invited and importunately tempted to by their age and condition their particular temper and complexion Lust and rashness are the vices of youth as craft and covetousness are of the gray hairs Some sins are rooted in mens very natures for some are naturally inclined to be passionate and hasty some to be peevish and others to be malicious and revengefull The temper of their bodies hurries on some to lust and intemperance some to turbulency and fierceness and others to slavish fears and sinfull compliances Nay a sharp and long affliction will sometimes embitter even a good nature and make it habitually sowr and fretfull peevish and morose So that mens very natural temper their age and condition prove many times an uninterrupted sollicitation to some sin or other and they alwayes fall by being alwayes under the power of their temptation Now when men find that some sins have got thus near to them and have taken such deep root in their way of life nay in their very natures since they will not be at the pains to reform and amend they expect that God should be so gracious as to dispense with them As for all the instances of this kind he must abate them seeing they will not perform them his pardoning goodness must supply all the defects of their sloth For God and they must still be agreed and therefore because they cannot well abandon some of their darling lusts and bosom sins for his sake the compliance must fall on his side and he must desert and cancel all those severe and grating Laws to serve and pleasure them They will obey him most willingly in all other things only in these they beg that he would excuse them they will do any thing else for his sake which doth not contradict their beloved sin and never displease him but when they cannot otherwise fulfill and pleasure it Thus for instance the Covetous man will obey in keeping back from drunkenness and whoredom from ambition and profuseness and all other sins which are expensive But as for those other duties of suffering loss our selves rather than defrauding and over-reaching others of a contented mind and contempt of the world of alms and beneficence and all the chargeable expressions of an active love and an operative charity here he stands upon his points and chooses to dispute rather than to perform to article rather than to obey The peevish and angry man will readily keep the commands of Justice and Temperance he will neither spoil his neighbours Goods nor wrong his Bed nor pamper and defile his own body he will do any thing which either ministers to his reigning lust or which doth not contradict and make against it But then as for the commands of meekness and patience of long-suffering and forgiveness of speaking well and doing good to enemies of passing over provocations and peaceableness and all other instances of pardoning and forgetting injuries in these God must excuse him for his dear lust opposes them and he can not he will not serve him in the practice of them Some who are of a tractable and submissive of a soft and governable temper will observe readily all those duties which their constitution has made easie and which their natural genius enclines them to They will be constant performers of all the cheap because agreeable duties of submission to Governours and obedience to publick Constitutions of uniformity in worship of honour and observance of the Laws and establishments and of all things belonging to the Churches Vnity and outward peace But as for the severities of an inward and hearty Religion in mortification and self-denial in paring off all sinfull lusts and exorbitant desires in patience and taking up the Cross and in all other hard instances of duty and a holy life here they withdraw their service because they must contradict their natures and go against their ease and set themselves not to obey these Laws but to evacuate or evade them Whereas others who are of a temper more severe but withall of a querulous and restless a busie and ungovernable spirit will keep off from atheism and prophaneness from idolatry and witchcraft and other heinous impieties from drunkenness and
For we shall always live subject to them more or less and although we may labour and strive against them yet shall we never be able as long as we are in this world to get entirely free from them We have no power and choice to avoid what we cannot see and consider of and all these sins come in upon the account of our unwill'd ignorance or inconsideration and since we cannot see and consider of them we cannot particularly prevent them which is effectually to repent of them A particular Repentance and Reformation then is not the Gospel-remedy for our involuntary sins It cannot be the cure assigned for them because it is impossible to them their pardon must not depend upon it because then they were wholly impardonable and desperate since in them no man on earth can use it But that remedy which Christ has appointed for them and that repentance whereupon he will graciously pardon and forgive them is in the general an hearty repentance and reformation of all wilful sins and an entire obedience in all such actions as are voluntary and chosen If we serve God faithfully and truly in all our other actions where we do see our duty and can chuse to practise it he will connive at these slips which after an honest care and industry are involuntary and unchosen For any kind master would do so to his honest servant and more especially every tender father would to his obedient child And God who is Love it self being the first Fountain and the compleatest Pattern of all kindness in the world will never be out-done in any love that is excellent and praise-worthy by his own creatures But if their kindness would bear with such infirmities and oversights of an honest mind his will dispense with them much rather The faithful servants therefore and obedient children of God who repent particularly of all their other sins that are known and wilful and effectually amend them shall be sure to find this favour at the hands of their heavenly Lord and Father for all these failings which are involuntary and unchosen Their obedience in other things shall plead their excuse and make their unwill'd slips in these to be uncondemning But to be yet more particular these involuntary transgressions of men that are obedient in all their voluntary actions shall certainly be pardoned through the means of these particular duties 1. Their Prayers 2. Their Charity and forgiveness towards the offences of others 1. Their involuntary failings of ignorance and inconsideration shall be forgiven them upon their prayers if they beg Gods pardon for them he is as ready to grant as they are to desire it And this we are sure of because that no earthly Parent who is wise and good would refuse to bestow it in such Cases at the request of his Children whereas they have nothing near that pity and tenderness for their Children which God has for his And this is an Argument which Christ himself has taught us to rely upon in this matter If you says he being evil will yet for all that at their request give good gifts to your Children how much more shall your heavenly Father who has not the least taint of your illness give the best of gifts even the Holy Spirit to them that ask him Luke 11.13 And indeed that we may never want this remedy Christ has put a Prayer for this purpose daily into our mouths that since our involuntary sins are of daily incursion we may as daily beg pardon for them For he has made it a part of our daily prayers to ask pardon among others for our daily trespasses this being one of those Petitions which he has taught us to put up as often as we do that for our daily bread that he would forgive us our trespasses Matth. 6.11 12. And this S t Austin observes of it for those small sins saith he which no man can avoid was this Petition in the Lord Prayer inserted Nay long before him S t Clement teaches the same Doctrine of our prayers being a most sure expiation for all our involuntary sins For in his first Epistle to the Corinthians relating that truly Christian state wherein their great Apostle Paul had very lately left them among several other parts of their Character he gives this for one Being filled with holy desires and a vertuous will with a good and commendable forwardness of mind and with a pious assurance of being heard you lifted up your hands to Almighty God beseeching him to be merciful and propitious to you if in any thing you had sinned INVOLVNTARILY Having first as says the good Father a vertuous heart and a holily disposed will so that in nothing their heart was disobedient by sinning wilfully they were forward to ask God forgiveness for all those sins which they had committed involuntarily And this forwardness says he was good and commendable and their confidence of obtaining pardon upon their prayer was pious it was a godly and a pious confidence This is a plain and full testimony and withal it is authentick and such as we may rely upon as much in a manner as if an Apostle himself had told us so For this Clement as we may observe was one who was sent out by the Apostles themselves to preach Christ's will and intrusted by them to declare unto the World what are the terms of remission of sins and the condition of pardon so that what we hear from his mouth we may look upon as Gospel S t Paul himself makes honourable mention of him calling him his Fellow-Labourer Help Clement my Fellow-Labourer whose name is in the Book of Life Phil. 4.3 And the thing it self which he testifies is not so much a matter of saith and 〈◊〉 wherein an honest man may sometimes erre and be mistaken as an historical relation of a matter of fact For he is recounting what a brave and gallant Church they were in that state wherein the great Apostle left them and as one of the Particulars of that relation this comes in That as for their involuntary sins they begged Gods pardon and that too with a pious assurance of obtaining it So that as for this practice of a confident hope of pardon for their involuntary sins upon their prayers it was not only such as S t Clement the Companion and Fellow-Labourer of S t Paul approved but such moreover as the Apostle Paul himself who had planted Christianity amongst them had left with them This therefore is one great remedy for our involuntary slips They shall he forgiven us upon our prayers for pardon and forgiveness And so shall they 2. Upon our Charity and forgiveness of the offences of others As God himself delights in mercy so doth he require that we should and to oblige us to it the more he has made our kind dealing towards our Brethren the Condition of his kindness towards us Above all things says S t Peter have fervent Charity
tryal whether or no we will renounce him It is the great proof and argument how dearly we love him and how closely and faithfully our wills adhere to him It shews how obedience is uppermost in our hearts and that we will rather deny our dearest lusts and importunate desires than venture for their sakes to offend him So that to be tempted is no instance of damning disobedience but a plain proof how much we will lose and suffer rather than we will disobey It is a tryal of us how we prefer God and our Duty before other things even those that are most dear to us of all things in the world besides We do not sin damnably then in being tempted so long as we consent not to it but manfully resist and overcome the temptation And this is evident from hence because those very men who have lived most free from sin have not for all that lived free from temptation Even Adam himself before he knew what sin was and during his state of Innocence was liable to be tempted For the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil whereof God had forbidden him to eat was alluring to his eyes and an incentive to his lust as well as any other Tree of the Garden And because it was so the Woman was won to eat of it through the strength of such desire after it notwithstanding God had commanded her to abstain from it The woman saw that the Tree was good for food and pleasant to the eye and she took of the fruit thereof and did eat and by the same inducement she drew in her Husband and gave it unto him and he did eat also Gen. 3.6 And the second Adam who was most entirely innocent and guilty of no sort of sin was yet liable to temptation like as we are being in all points tempted like as we are yet without sin Heb. 4.15 Nay says the Apostle it was necessary that he should be so that by what he felt in himself he might the better know how to shew mercy and have compassion upon us In all things says he it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren that he might be a merciful as well as a faithful High Priest for in that he himself hath suffer'd being tempted he is able to succour them that are tempted Heb. 2.17 18. As for our being tempted then or invited to any sin by our bare lusts and inclinations after it in it self and before it has got any further it is no deadly sin or damnable transgression It is the scene of good endeavour the tryal of obedience a test of our great love and preference of God and his Law before all the world besides yea even before our own dearest lusts and our own selves It is nothing more than befel Adam before he had sinned or than befel Christ who never knew sin and therefore in it self bare lust and desire or being tempted and invited to sin cannot be damnably sinful As for our Lusts or Temptations 't is true they differ in degrees according as our desires of that evil which we are tempted to are indulged and have advanced more or less For sometimes a lust may stir but as soon as ever it is observed it is again extinguished The pleasure of the sin whether by being seen or fansied raises in us a sudden thought or desire after it but the lust is expelled as soon as it is discovered it is not suffered to remain and dwell in us but is presently thrown out with indignation For we turn away our fancy from the evil thing and will not endure to think upon it or to continue craving and lusting after it And this is a power over our own desires and a way of breaking the strength of temptation which is incident only to grown men and to perfect Christians and that not in all instances of temptation but only in such as are not extraordinary in themselves and which have been often vanquished and triumphed over It is in such cases where use has made the conquest easie and long custom of ceasing and turning away from the inveigling desire has taken off all the difficulty so that now we are able to silence and subdue the lust as soon as we discern it And as for these feeble desires and impotent temptations there is no question but that a good Christian may be under them and yet be in no danger of being condemned for them But then at other times our lusts live longer and advance higher they grow up to good degrees till they are able to contend and strive against our mind and conscience so that even when at last they are denied and our wills chuse to do what God commands in spite of them yet is it after much struggling and opposition The flesh lusteth against the spirit as well as the spirit lusteth against the flesh and although at last the fleshly lusts are overpower'd and cannot prevail with our wills to chuse on their side yet do they strive hard and contend for it And here a lust is not presently subdued as soon as it is discerned but it strives and struggles it can make head against the Law in the mind although it cannot overcome it it has some interest in the will although it have not an interest sufficient for the will hearkens to it for some time and considers of what it offers notwithstanding at last it reject its suit and through the sollicitations of a more powerful Favourite resolves against it And this power our lusts have in us whilst we are young Converts and of a more imperfect goodness nay in some very great temptations indeed such as are the fear of death and bodily torments especially they will struggle thus in those who are the most perfect Christians of all But now when our lusts are in this dâ—gree so as to stay upon our Souls for some time and to strive against our spirits for the consent of our wills before they are â—inally denied it yet if they go no further than bare lust and our wills do not after all their struggling consent to them or chuse the evil thing which is craved by them they are still uncondemning and incident to an Heir of Salvation And this as I take it is clear from what S t Paul himself says of the truly regenerate or of those who in his words walk in the spirit For in them he says plainly that the flesh lusteth against the spirit albeit it is not able to prevail over it so that even in doing what the spirit commands them they do against the contrary will and lusting of the flesh which gainsays it The flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh so that even in fulfilling the will of the spirit you contradict another will of your lusts and cannot do or do not the things that you would Gal. 5.16 17. Nay even Christ himself who knew no sin nor ever committed any thing which