what that was he expresseth more particularly c. 26. v. 6 7 And now I stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made of God unto our Fathers unto which promise our twelve Tribes instantly serving God day and night hope to come By the promise made of God unto the Fathers he means some promise made by God to Abraham Isaac and Jacob for so S. Luke more than once in his History of the Acts explains this phrase of the God of their Fathers Acts 3.13 The God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob the God of our Fathers and c. 7. v. 32. I am the God thy Fathers the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now what was the great and famous Promise which God made to Abraham Isaac and Jacob was it not this of being their God So that it was this very Promise upon which S. Paul tells us the Jews grounded their hope of a future state because they understood it necessarily to signifie some blessing and happiness beyond this life And now having I hope sufficiently clear'd this matter I shall make some improvement of this Doctrine of a future state and that to these three purposes 1. To raise our minds above this world and the enjoyments of this present life Were but men thorougly convinced of this plain and certain Truth that there is a vast difference between Time and Eternity between a few years and everlasting Ages would we but represent to our selves what thoughts and apprehensions dying persons have of this world how vain and empty a thing it appears to them how like a pageant and a shadow it looks as it passeth away from them methinks none of those things could be a sufficient temptation to any man to forget God and his Soul but notwithstanding all the delights and pleasures of sense we should be strangely intent upon the concernments of another world and almost wholly taken up with the thoughts of that vast Eternity which we are ready to launch into For what is there in this world this waste and howling wilderness this rude and barbarous Country which we are but to pass through which should detain our affections here and take off our thoughts from our everlasting habitation from that better and that heavenly Country where we hope to live and be happy for ever If we settle our affections upon the enjoyments of this present Life so as to be extremely pleas'd and transported with them and to say in our hearts It is good for us to be here if we be excessively griev'd or discontented for the want or loss of them and if we look upon our present state in this world any otherwise than as a preparation and passage to a better life it is a sign that our faith and hope of the happiness of another life is but very weak and faint and that we do not heartily and in good earnest believe what we pretend to do concerning these things For did we stedfastly believe and were thoroughly perswaded of what our Religion so plainly declares to us concerning the unspeakable and endless happiness of good men in another world our affections would sit more loose to this world and our hopes would raise our hearts as much above these present and sensible things as the heavens are high above the earth we should value nothing here below but as it serves for our present support and passage or may be made a means to secure and increase our future felicity 2. The consideration of another Life should quicken our preparation for that blessed state which remains for us in the other world This Life is a state of probation and trial This world is God's school where immortal spirits clothed with flesh are trained and bred up for eternity And then certainly it is not an indifferent thing and a matter of slight concernment to us how we live and demean our selves in this world whether we indulge our selves in ungodliness and worldly lusts or live soberly and righteously and godly in this present world No it is a matter of infinite moment as much as our souls and all eternity are worth Let us not deceive our selves for as we sow so shall we reap If we sow to the flesh we shall of the flesh reap corruption but if we sow to the spirit we shall of the spirit reap everlasting life Light is sown for the righteous and gladness for the upright in heart The righteous hath hopes in his death Mark the perfect man and behold the upright for the end of that man is peace But the ungodly are not so whoever hath lived a wicked and vicious life feels strange throws and pangs in his conscience when he comes to be cast upon a sick bed The wicked is like the troubled sea saith the Prophet when it cannot rest full of trouble and confusion especially in a dying hour It is death to such a man to look back upon his life and a hell to him to think of eternity When his guilty and trembling Soul is ready to leave his Body and just stepping into the other world what horrour and amazement do then seise upon him what a rage does such a man feel in his breast when he seriously considers that he hath been so great a fool as for the false and imperfect pleasure of a few days to make himself miserable for ever 3. Let the consideration of that unspeakable Reward which God hath promised to good men at the Resurrection encourage us to obedience and a holy life We serve a great Prince who is able to promote us to honour a most gracious Master who will not let the least service we do for him pass unrewarded This is the Inference which the Apostle makes from this large discourse of the Doctrine of the Resurrrection 1 Cor. 15.58 Wherefore my beloved brethren be ye stedfast and unmovable always abounding in the work of the Lord forasmuch as ye know that your labour shall not be in vain in the Lord. Nothing will make death more welcome to us than a constant course of service and obedience to God Sleep saith Solomon is sweet to the labouring man so after a great diligence and industry in working out our own salvation and as it is said of David serving our generation according to the will of God how pleasant will it be to fall asleep And as an useful and well-spent life will make our death to be sweet so our resurrection to be glorious Whatever acts of Piety we do to God or of charity to men whatever we lay out upon the poor and afflicted and necessitous will all be considered by God in the day of recompences and most plentifully rewarded to us And surely no consideration ought to be more prevalent to perswade us to alms-deeds and charity to the poor than that of a resurrection to another life Besides the promises of this life which are made to works of charity and there is not any
Graces and Virtues which concern our duty towards one another That it is the sum and abridgement the accomplishment and fulfilling of the whole Law That without this whatever we pretend to in Christianity we are nothing and our Religion is vain That this is the greatest of all Graces and Virtues greater than Faith and Hope and of perpetual use and duration Charity never fails And therefore they exhort us above all things to endeavour after it as the Crown of all other Virtues Above all things have fervent charity among your selves saith St. Peter And St. Paul having enumerated most other Christian Virtues exhorts us above all to strive after this And above all these things put on charity which is the bond of perfection This St. John makes one of the most certain signs of our love to God and the want of it an undeniable argument of the contrary If a man say I love God and hateth his brother he is a lyar for he who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen how can he love God whom he hath not seen This he declares to be one of the best evidences that we are in a state of Grace and Salvation Hereby we know that we are passed from death to life because we love the brethren So that well might our blessed Saviour chuse this for the badge of his Disciples and make it the great Precept of the best and most perfect Institution Other things might have served better for pomp and ostentation and have more gratified the Curiosity or Enthusiasm or Superstition of mankind but there is no quality in the World which upon a sober and impartial consideration is of a more solid and intrinsick value And in the first Ages of Christianity the Christians were very eminent for this Vertue and particularly noted for it Nobis notam inurit apud quosdam it is a mark and brand set upan us by some saith Tertullian and he tells us that it was proverbially said among the Heathen Behold how these Christians love one another Lucian that great scoffer at all Religion acknowledgeth in behalf of Christians that this was the great Principle which their Master had instill'd into them And Julian the bitterest Enemy that Christianity ever had could not forbear to propound to the Heathen for an example the charity of the Galileans for so by way of reproach he calls the Christians who says he gave up themselves to humanity and kindness which he acknowledgeth to have been very much to the advantage and reputation of our Religion And in the same Letter to Arsacius the Heathen High Priest of Galatia he gives this memorable Testimony of the Christians that their Charity was not limited and confin'd onely to themselves but extended even to their Enemies which could not be said either of the Jews or Heathens His words are these It is a shame that when the Jews suffer none of theirs to beg and the impious Galileans relieve not onely their own but those also of our Religion that we onely should be defective in so necessary a Duty By all which it is evident that Love and Charity is not onely the great Precept of our Saviour but was in those first and best Times the general practice of his Disciples and acknowledged by the Heathens as a very peculiar and remarkable quality in them The application I shall make of this Discourse shall be threefold 1. With relation to the Church of Rome 2. With regard to our selves who profess the Protestant Reform'd Religion 3. With a more particular respect to the occasion of this Meeting First With relation to the Church of Rome Which we cannot chuse but think of whenever we speak of Charity and loving one another especially having had so late a discovery of their affection to us and so considerable a testimony of the kindness and charity which they design'd towards us such as may justly make the ears of all that hear it to tingle and render Popery execrable and infamous a frightful and a hateful thing to the end of the World It is now but too visible how grosly this great Commandment of our Saviour is contradicted not onely by the Practices of those in that Communion from the Pope down to the meanest Fryar but by the very Doctrines and Principles by the Genius and Spirit of that Religion which is wholly calculated for cruelty and persecution Where now is that mark of a Disciple so much insisted upon by our Lord and Master to be found in that Church And yet what is the Christian Church but the Society and Community of Christs Disciples Surely in all reason that which our Lord made the distinctive Mark and Character of his Disciples should be the principal mark of a true Church Bellarmine reckons up no less than fifteen marks of the rrue Church all which the Church of Rome arrogates to her self alone But he wisely forgot that which is worth all the rest and which our Saviour insists upon as the chief of all other A sincere Love and Charity to all Christians This he knew would by no means agree to his own Church But for all that it is very reasonable that Churches as well as particular Christians should be judged by their Charity The Church of Rome would engross all Faith to her self Faith in its utmost perfection to the degree and pitch of Infallibility And they allow no body in the world besides themselves no though they believe all the Articles of the Apostles Creed to have one grain of true Faith because they do not believe upon the Authority of their Church which they pretend to be the onely foundation of true Faith This is a most arrogant and vain pretence but admit it were true yet in the Judgement of St. Paul Though they had all Faith if they have not Charity they are nothing The greatest wonder of all is this that they who hate and persecute Christians most do all this while the most confidently of all others pretend to be the Disciples of Christ and will allow none to be so but themselves That Church which excommunicates all other Christian Churches in the world and if she could would extirpate them out of the world will yet needs assume to her self to be the only Christian Church As if our Saviour had said Hereby shall all men know that ye are my Disciples if ye hate and excommunicate and kill one another What shall he done unto thee thou false tongue thou empty and impudent pretence of Christianity Secondly With relation to our seves who profess the Protestant Reformed Religion How is this great Precept of our Saviour not onely shamefully neglected but plainly violated by us And that not only by private hatred and ill-will quarrels and contentions in our civil conversation and entercourse with one another but by most unchristian divisions and animosities in that common relation wherein we stand to one another as Brethren as Christians as Protestants Have we not all one
makes them to be bitterness in the end All the ways of sin are so beset with thorns and difficulties on every side there are so many unanswerable objections against Vice from the unreasonableness and ugliness of it from the remorse that attends it from the endless misery that follows it that none but the rash and inconsiderate can obtain leave of themselves to commit it It is the Daughter of inadvertency and blindness and folly and the Mother of guilt and repentance and woe There is no pleasure that will hold out and abide with us to the last but that of Innocency and well-doing All sin is folly and as Seneca truly says omnis stultitia laborat fastidio sui all folly soon grows sick and weary of it self The pleasure of it is slight and superficial but the trouble and remorse of it pierceth our very hearts And then as to the other part of the Objection That Religion restrains us of our liberty The contrary is most evidently true that sin and vice are the greatest slavery For he is truly a slave who is not at liberty to follow his own judgment and to do those things which he is inwardly convinced it is best for him to do but is subject to the unreasonable commands and the tyrannical power and violence of his lusts and passions So that he is not master of himself but other Lords have got dominion over him and he is perfectly at their beck and command One vice or passion bids him go and he goes another come and he comes and a third do this and he doth it The man is at perpetual variance with his own mind and continually committing the things which he condemns in himself And it is all one whether a man be subject to the will and humour of another person or to his own lusts and passions Only this of the two is the worse because the Tyrant is at home and always ready at hand to domineer over him he is got within him and so much the harder to be vanquished and overcome But the service of God and obedience to his Laws is perfect liberty Because the Law of God requires nothing of us but what is recommended to us by our own reason and from the benefit and advantage of doing it nothing but what is much more for our own interest to do it than it can be for God's to command it And if in some things God exact obedience of us more indispensibly and under severer penalties it is because those things are in their Nature more necessary to our felicity And how could God possibly have dealt more graciously and kindly with us than to oblige us most strictly to that which is most evidently for our good and to make such Laws for us as if we live in obedience to them will infallibly make us happy So that taking all things into consideration the interest of our bodies and our souls of the present and the future of this world and the other Religion is the most reasonable and wise the most comfortable and compendious course that any man can take in order to his own happiness The consideration whereof ought to be a mighty endearment of our duty to us and a most prevalent argument with us to yield a ready and chearfull obedience to the Laws of God which are in truth so many acts of grace and favour to mankind the real privileges of our nature and the proper means and causes of our happiness And do restrain us from nothing but from doing mischief to our selves from playing the fools and making our selves miserable And therefore instead of opposing Religion upon pretence of the unreasonable restraints of it we ought to thank God heartily that he hath laid so strict an obligation upon us to regard and pursue our true interest and hath been pleased to take that care of us as to set bounds to our loose and wild appetites by our duty and in giving us rules to live by hath no ways complyed with our inconsiderate and foolish inclinations to our real harm and prejudice But hath made those things necessary for us to do which in all respects are best for us and which if we were perfectly left to our own liberty ought in all reason to be our free and first choice And hath made the folly and inconvenience of sin so grosly palpable that every man may see it before-hand that will but consider and at the beginning of a bad course look to the end of it and they that will not consider shall be forced from wofull experience at last to acknowledge it when they find the dismal effects and mischievous consequences of their vices still meeting them at one turn or other And now by all that hath been said upon this Argument I hope we are satisfied that Religion is no such intolerable yoke and that upon a due and full consideration of things it cannot seem evil unto any of us to serve the Lord nay on the contrary that it is absolutely necessary both to our present peace and our future felicity And that a religious and vertuous life is not only upon all accounts the most prudent but after we are entred upon it and accustomed to it the most pleasant course that any man can take and however inconsiderate men may complain of the restraints of Religion that it is not one jot more our duty than it is our privilege and our happiness And I cannot think that upon sober consideration any man could see reason to thank God to be released from any of his Laws or to have had the contrary to them enjoyned Let us suppose that the Laws of God had been just the Reverse of what they now are that he had commanded us under severe penalties to deal falsly and fraudulently with our neighbour to demean our selves ungratefully to our best friends and benefactors to be drunk every day and to pursue sensual pleasures to the endangering of our health and life How should we have complained of the unreasonableness of these Laws and have murmured at the slavery of such intolerable impositions And yet now that God hath commanded us the contrary things every way agreeable to our reason and interest we are not pleased neither What will content us As our Saviour expostulates in a like case whereunto shall I liken this generation It is like unto Children playing in the Market-place and calling unto their Companions we have piped unto you and ye have not danced we have mourned and ye have not lamented This is perfectly childish to be pleased with nothing neither to like this nor the contrary We are not contented with the Laws of God as they are and yet the contrary to them we should have esteemed the greatest grievance in the World And if this be true that the Laws of God how contrary soever to our vicious inclinations are really calculated for our benefit and advantage it would almost be an affront to wise and considerate men
him or to let him die for his own interest So he that trusts the care of his soul with other men and at the same time by irrevocable Deed settles his understanding upon them lays too great a temptation before them to seduce and damn him for their own ends And now to reflect a little upon our selves What cause have we to bless God who are so happily rescued from that more than Egyptian darkness and bondage wherein this Nation was detained for several Ages who are delivered out of the hands of those cruel task-masters who required brick without straw that men should be religious without competent understanding and work out their own salvation while they denyed them the means of all others the most necessary to it who are so uncharitable as to allow us no salvation out of their Church and yet so unreasonable as to deny us the very best means of salvation when we are in it Our Fore-fathers thought it a mighty privilege to have the Word of God restored to them and the publick prayers and service of God celebrated in a known Tongue Let us use this inestimable privilege with great modesty and humility not to the nourishing of pride and self-conceit of division and faction but as the Apostle exhorts Let the word of God dwell richly in you in all wisedom and let the peace of God rule in your hearts unto which ye are called in one body and be ye thankfull It concerns us mightily with which admonition I shall conclude both for the honour and support of our Religion to be at better union among our selves and not to divide about lesser things and so to demean our selves as to take from our Adversaries all those pretences whereby they would justifie themselves or at least extenuate the guilt of that heavy charge which falls every whit as justly upon them as ever it did upon the Scribes and Pharisees of taking away the key of knowledge and shutting the kingdom of heaven against men neither going in themselves nor suffering those that are entring to go in FINIS Books Printed for Brabazon Aylmer THE Works of the Learned Dr. Isaac Barrow late Master of Trinity College in Cambridge Published by the Reverend Dr. Tillotson Dean of Canterbury in Four Volumes in Folio The First containing Thirty two Sermons preached upon several Occasions an Exposition of the Lord's Prayer and the Decalogue a Learned Treatise of the Pope's Supremacy a Discourse concerning the Vnity of the Church also some Account of the Life of the Authour with Alphabetical Tables The Second Volume containing Sermons and Expositions upon all the Apostles Creed with an Alphabetical Table and to which may be also added the Life of the Authour The Third Volume containing Forty six choice Sermons upon several Subjects with an Alphabetical Table which are the last that will be printed in English of this Learned Authour The Fourth Volume containing his Opuscula viz. Determinationes Conc. Ad Clerum Orationes Poematia c. Sermons and Discourses upon several Occasions in Three Volumes in 8o. By Dr. Tilloâ—son Dean of Canterbury The Rule of Faith or an Answer to the Treatise of M. J.S. entituled Sure-sooting c. THE Doctrines and Practices of the Church of Rome truly Represented in answer to a Book intituled A Papist Misrepresented and Represented c. An Answer to a Discourse intituled Papists Protesting against Protestant Popery being a Vindication of Papists not Misrepresented by Protestants and containing a particular Examination of Monsieur de Meaux late Bishop of Condom his Exposition of the Doctrine of the Church of Rome in the Articles of Invocation of Saints and the Worship of Images occasioned by that Discourse An Answer to the Amicable Accommodation of the Difference between the Representer and the Answerer 4o. A View of the whole Controversie between the Representer and the Answerer with an Answer to the Representers last Reply in which are laid open some of the Methods by which Protestants are Misrepresented by Papists 4o. The Doctrine of the Trinity and Transubstantiation compared as to Scripture Reason and Tradition in a new Dialogue between a Protestant and a Papist in Two Parts Wherein an Answer is given to the late Proofs of the Antiquity of Transubstantiation c. And the Doctrine of the Trinity shewed to be agreeable to Scripture and Reason and Transubstantiation repugnant to both 4o. An Answer to the 8th Chapter of the Representers Second Part in the first Dialogue between him and his Lay-Friend Of the Authority of Councils and the Rule of Faith By a Person of Quality with an Answer to the eight Theses laid down for the Trial of the English Reformation in a Book that came lately from Oxford A Sermon Preached at the Funeral of the Reverend Benj. Calamy D. D. and late Minister of St. Lawrence Jewry London Jan. 7th 1686. By William Sherlock D.D. Master of the Temple and Chaplain in ordinary to His Majesty The Necessity Dignity and Duty of Gospel Ministers discoursed of before the University of Cambridge A New and easie method to learn to Sing by Book whereby one who hath a good Voice and Ear may without other help learn to sing true by Notes Design'd chiefly for and applied to the promoting of Psalmody and furnished with variety of Psalm Tunes in Parts with Directions for that kind of Singing The Parsons Counsellor with the Law of Tithes or Tithing In two Books The first sheweth the Order every Parson Vicar c. ought to observe in obtaining a Spiritual Preferment and what Duties are incumbent upon him after the taking the same and many other things necessary for every Clergy-Man to know and observe The second shews in what manner all sorts of Tithes Offerings Mortuaries and other Church Duties are to be paid as well in London as elsewhere c. A Letter to a Friend reflecting on some Passages in a Letter to the D. of P. in Answer to the Arguing Part of his First Letter to Mr. G. THE END