escape better at the last Judgment than Capernaum and Capernaum I doubt will escape much better than the Infidels and Atheists and profane despisers of Religion in our days because they laboured under old and inveterate Prejudices which could not easily be removed but required time and patience and the exercise of free and impartial Reason to wear them off But now when the Gospel has prevailed in the World for so many Ages when Men are educated in the Christian Religion and have all the Prejudices of their first and early Instructions on the right side when it is so difficult a thing to cast off their reverence for God and to silence and stupify their clamorous Consciences for Men to use so much Art and Industry to turn Atheists or Infidels or profane Scoffers at Religion will admit of no excuse but is the highest Affront to God and will receive the sorest Punishment and a Sentence as amazing and astonishing as the Sin is Thus I have represented the evil and heinous Nature of this Sin and if these Men do believe that there is a God as they profess to do would they give themselves time seriously to consider these things I cannot imagine but it must have some good effect upon them For can any Man who believes a God if he ever consider such Matters endure the least thought of putting such a scorn and contempt upon God as the neglect of Religious Worship does naturally signify He knows what a sharp resentment he himself has of a slight or neglect how ill he takes it if Men industriously avoid his Company if they do but talk and seem to mind something else when he is telling a Story if his Friends neglect to visit him and turn their heads another way when they pass by his Door and he knows how sensible Superiors especially are of such neglects from their Inferiors For a Prince to be slighted by his Subjects or a Father by his Children or a Master by his Servants is thought so unsufferable a rudeness as cannot be too severely punished And therefore considering that infinite distance which is between God and Creatures he may easily conclude how ill God takes the neglect of his Worship which is the greatest slight that can be put upon him and argues very mean and contemptible Thoughts of him if such Men did think of him at all And when he considers also how many Obligations he lies under to worship God he cannot but blush to be guilty of so great injustice not to praise and magnify him who deserves to be praised and to be had in reverence by all those who are about him He thinks it great injustice to detract from the Praises of worthy and deserving Men or to conceal them what is it then not to ascribe to God the Glory and Perfection of his Nature and Works which are proclaimed by all the World Not to adore and worship our Maker who made us for this end that we might see and speak of his Glory Did God give me Eyes may such a Man say to see the Glory of this World and an Understanding to search out the first Cause to whom the Praise of all is due that when I have found him I should take no notice of him neither confess his Power nor admire his Wisdom nor praise his Goodness Did he give me a Tongue to talk of every Trifle and never to be silent but where it ought to be most vocal in the Praises of my Maker How ill should I take it could I make any Being that could understand or speak should it refuse to acknowledg from whence it was and to whom it owes its Being Consider my Soul how thou shouldest resent the neglect of a Son of a Client of a redeemed Captive or of any one whom thou hast obliged and by thy Bounty raised from a low to a splendid Fortune who owes his Being his Fortune his Liberty and all the Comforts and Blessings of Life to thee And is it nothing then to neglect the Worship of that God who is the Universal Parent Lord and Benefactor of the World who has redeemed thee with the Blood of his Son and designed a more glorious Happiness for thee if thy unjust and ungrateful neglects of him do not render thee uncapable of his Favour But how unpardonable is it for a Man to be false to his Oaths and Covenants Such Persons are not thought fit for Humane Conversation who break the most Sacred Ties and therefore can never be trusted but yet no Man ever broke his Word much less an Oath or Covenant but when he expected to make some advantage of it And shall I break the Covenant of my God a Covenant to which I owe all my hopes of Happiness all the Good I now enjoy and all that I expect If I forfeit my Interest in this Covenant I must be miserable and perish like a Fool and since I cannot forfeit my Interest without breaking my Covenant I must perish like an Apostate a Runnagate a Traitor or like one who deserves to suffer the worst things but deserves no Pity and is it so grievous a thing to worship God that I should chuse rather to be unjust to be ungrateful to be perfidious to God to forfeit his Love and Favour and to incur his hottest Displeasure than acknowledg that I owe all to him that I have and that I expect all from him SECT III. Concerning the Danger of Irreligion both with respect to this World and the next and the folly of it with a serious Exhortation to these Men to take care of their Souls SEcondly I shall now consider the Danger of Irreligion in neglecting or contemning the Worship of God For those who will not be wrought on by a sense of Justice or Gratitude may yet be governed by the more brutish Principle of Fear Now the Danger of this respects both this World and the next 1. The Danger of Irreligion with respect to this World Now whoever believes there is a God who governs all Humane Affairs in whom we live move and have our Being who disposes of our several Fortunes and Conditions of Life must needs apprehend himself in great danger of being miserable here while he neglects to adore and reverence the soveraign and unaccountable Lord of the World We find throughout the Scripture that the Promise even of Temporal Blessings and Deliverance is made only to those who beg it of God by their servent and importunate Prayers This is the course all good Men in all Ages have taken and found the blessed success of it Call upon me in the day of trouble I will deliver thee and thou shalt glorify me For thou Lord art good and ready to forgive and plenteous in Mercy unto all them that call upon thee Give ear O Lord unto my Prayer and attend unto the Voice of my Supplications In the day of my trouble I will call upon thee for thou wilt answer me He shall
parts of the work of our redemption without using those visible signs I would fain know to what purpose they were instituted by our Saviour if Christian worship be compleat and perfect without it it is and ever was as needless an addition as most Christians now think it to be which I think derogates very much from the wisdom of our Saviour in its Institution We ought not to look upon the Supper of our Lord only as a particular act of worship but as an external and sensible rite of worship which is fitted to all parts of Christian worship and by the institution of our Saviour necessary to give vertue and efficacy to them as the oblation of Sacrifices under the Law did to those Prayers which were offered with them Now suppose that any men should have argued thus under the Law that if men prayed devoutly to God though they offered no Sacrifice they should be accepted by him I doubt this would have been called despising Moses's law and such men must have died without mercy though they had prayed never so devoutly and yet the Apostle tells us that we ought to have greater regard to the Laws and Institutions of Christ than the Jews had to the Law of Moses The great danger then of neglecting the Lords Supper is that such a neglect may render all our Worship unacceptable to God a right to Christ's Sacrifice upon the Cross is by the Institution of our Saviour conveyed in the Sacrament of the Lords Supper and therefore though we pray in Christ's Name if we neglect his Institution whereby the vertue of his Sacrifice is conveyed to our prayers we must pray without any interest in his Sacrifice and we may easily guess of what worth such prayers are just as much as our own good works without an Expiatory Sacrifice to recommend them to God The serious consideration of this thoroughly convinces me how highly useful not to say necessary it is to restore the Apostolical and Primitive practice to celebrate the Lords Supper as often as we meet for publick Worship if we would have our Worship true Christian Worship according to our Saviours own institution as understood and practised by the Apostles themselves 3. Another obligation to a frequent receiving the Lords Supper is that this is the principal act of Communion with Christ. There is nothing more frequently talked of than our Union to Christ and our Communion with him which is the great mysterie of our Religion and the great foundation of our hope Now Union to and Communion with Christ may either be considered as a constant state and relation and so it signifies being members of the body of Christ by being incorporated into his Church by a visible profession of our faith in him ratified and confirmed by Baptism and by the communication of his Grace and Spirit which dwells in the sincere Disciples of Christ as the bond of a spiritual Union and an abiding principle of sanctification and holiness or it may be considered as an Act and so it is most properly applyed to the Lords Supper which is the most visible external symbol of our Communion with Christ and instituted as a Sacrament of Union for the conveyance of all divine and spiritual blessings to us And for the explication of this I shall observe two things In this holy Feast 1. That it is our eating at the Table of our Lord and 2. That it is our feeding on the body of Christ. 1. In the Lords Supper we eat at the Table of our Lord for this is a Feast of Christ's own appointment instituted by him on purpose to commemorate his death and sacrifice upon the Cross and so answers to the institution of God under the Law to feast upon Sacrifices which was constantly observed in Peace-offerings of which part was burnt upon Gods Altar part belonged to the Priest and part was eaten by the Sacrificers or those Persons who offered the Sacrifice of Peace-offerings who are therefore said to partake of the Altar behold Israel after the Flesh are not they which eat of the Sacrifices partakers of the Altar To partake of the Altar signifies to partake with God whose Altar it is that is to have part with him for part of the Sacrifice was burnt upon the Altar or given to the Priests and that was Gods part or share and the other part was eaten by themselves Thus it was among the Heathens also who used to feast on the Sacrifices which they offered to their Gods and sometimes invited their Christian neighbours to these Feasts who not sufficiently understanding the nature of such Religious Feasts many times went as to common friendly entertainments and therefore are corrected by the Apostle for it as utterly inconsistent with their Christian profession for to eat of a Feast upon a Sacrifice is to have communion with that Being whatever he is to whom the Sacrifice is offered Now the Gentiles sacrificed to Devils and therefore to eat of such Sacrifices is to partake with Devils to be in confederacy and communion with them But I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to Devils and not to God and I would not that ye should have fellowship with Devils 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that you should be Communicants with them Ye cannot drink the Cup of the Lord and the Cup of Devils ye cannot be partakers of the Lords Table and the Table of Devils that is it is as irreconcileable to eat at the Table of Christ and of the Gentile Sacrifice as it is impossible to unite Christ and false Heathen Gods From whence we learn that to eat of the Lords Table that is of the Christian Feast of the Lords Supper is to partake with Christ or to have Communion with him as to eat of the Sacrifices under the Law was to partake of the Altar or to eat of Pagan Sacrifices was to partake with Devils Now in general there were two things signified by these Religious Feasts 1. A Covenant relation that such persons who feasted at Gods Table were in Covenant with him for all solemn Covenants even between men in the Eastern Countrey were made and ratified by Sacrifice thus it was in the Covenant between Iacob and Laban and Iacob said unto his brethren gather stones and they took stones and made an heap and they did eat there upon the heap And what this eating was we may conclude from the nature of the action which was confirming a Covenant and therefore this eating is eating a Sacrifice as we are more expresly told then Iacob offered Sacrifice upon the Mount and called his Brethren to eat bread and they did eat bread and tarried all night upon the Mount And thus it is especially between God and men thus we know the Mosaical Covenant was confirmed by the blood of the Sacrifice as the first Testament is said to be dedicated by blood and the book and all the people the Tabernacle
is capable of this Work whence again we may conclude that God made Man for his peculiar Service and Glory unless we can imagine that God would make a World and place no Creature in it whose proper Business it should be to know and worship his Wise Maker and Bountiful Lord. Man is the Priest of Nature who offers up the Praises and Thanksgivings of the whole Creation to God Thus you see that Religious Worship is a natural Debt which we owe to God and that God does expect and exact the Paiment of it from us We may certainly conclude from hence that he expects we should live according to the most perfect Constitution of our Natures This is the natural Rule of our Actions to serve the Ends for which we were made for God did not make such and such Natures for nothing either to be unimployed or imployed to other or to less and meaner purposes than they were designed for And besides this we have frequent and express Commands to worship God in that Revelation he hath made to us of his Will The Scripture is so full of Precepts Exhortations and Reproofs about this Matter that I need not spend time to prove so acknowledged a Truth But from the whole of what I have now discoursed we may safely conclude the great Evil of Irreligion as being the highest injustice to our Maker and Soveraign Lord. Thirdly The great Evil of Irreligion of denying or neglecting the Worship of God appears in this That it is the most sordid Ingratitude Now Ingratitude is Injustice too but it is Injustice to a Benefactor that is it consists in violating all those Obligations which Goodness and Kindness has laid upon us as Injustice properly so called consists in breaking the Rules of Natural or Civil Right For Mankind generally accounts the Obligation to return a kindness as strong and necessary as to pay a Debt and nothing is more infamous among Men than an ungrateful Person for as Goodness is a greater Perfection than strict Justice so Ingratitude must needs be a more hateful Vice than bare Injustice because it is opposite to the greatest Good As Goodness is the greatest Glory and Perfection of Humane Nature so Ingratitude must needs be the greatest Infamy and Reproach because it is at the greatest distance from Goodness Now among Men Injustice and Ingratitude may be separated Men may be unjust but not ungrateful and they may be ungrateful and not unjust according to the strict Notion of Injustice for Men may wrong and injure those who never did them any kindness and that is Injustice without Ingratitude and they may neglect to make decent Acknowledgments and Returns of Kindness without injuring their Friends in any of their Natural or Civil Rights and that is Ingratitude without Injustice But now it is impossible to be unjust to God without being ungrateful too because he is not only our Natural Lord but our great Benefactor and those very things which give him a natural Right to our Worship and Obedience do not only lay on us the Obligations of Justice but of Gratitude to worship him He made us and this gives him a natural Right to our Worship because he is our Natural Lord we are intirely his and owe our selves and all we have and all we can do to him and this makes it very unjust to deny or neglect his Worship But then we must consider that if we love our Selves and our Being and those Advantages of Happiness which Being makes us capable of then much more we are obliged in gratitude to praise and adore that God who gave us our Being for though possibly some will not allow it proper to say that God was good to us before we had a Being yet he was very good in making us and therefore it is high ingratitude as well as injustice in Creatures not to praise and glorify their Maker Thus that Divine and Heaven-born Mind and those noble and excellent Faculties of Soul which God hath bestowed on us as they may make us capable of knowing and worshipping God so make Religious Worship a natural piece of Justice and if we value the excellency of our Natures and think it any advantage to be made so noble an Order of Beings Gratitude as well as Justice obliges us to employ all the Faculties of our Souls for that high and noble End for which they were made that is to know and love and admire and worship God the greatest and the best Being and the most perfect Object of our Minds It is Ingratitude as well as Injustice to our Maker to debase our Natures to make them stoop to low mean and vile Things to inherit the Curse of the Serpent to crawl upon their Bellies and lick up the Dust of the Earth when they were made to aspire towards Heaven to unite themselves to God the Fountain of Life and Being and to live in the Love and Contemplation of him The like may be said with reference to that good Providence of God which maintains and upholds us in Being and provides all Necessaries for us and defends us from all unseen Mischiefs both Justice and Gratitude require us to praise and adore so great and constant a Benefactor These are all Expressions both of the Natural Justice and Bounty of our Wise Maker and therefore lay a mixed Obligation on us of Justice and Gratitude God was under no Antecedent Obligation but his own Will and Goodness to make a World but if he did resolve to make one he was under the Obligations of his own Wisdom and Justice and Goodness to make every Creature perfect in its kind and fitted to attain the end of its Nature and to make some Creatures for great and noble Ends and consequently to bestow very noble and excellent Natures on them and therefore there being a mixture of Justice and Goodness in God's making and governing the World no wonder that it lays a mixt Obligation on us too of Justice and Gratitude But there is another manifestation of God's Goodness in the Redemption of the World by our Lord Jesus Christ which is a Work of such pure and unmixt Grace and Goodness that it is all Goodness and nothing but Goodness Innocent Creatures may challenge a natural Right in the Care and Protection and Bounty of their Maker but a Traitor a Rebel against the Majesty of Heaven an Apostate Wretch who has abused the Bounty and Goodness of his Creator can challenge no right to those common Blessings which God bestows upon his Creatures so that he should cause the Sun to shine and the Rain to fall on them and therefore since Sin entred into the World even those External and Temporal good Things which Sinners enjoy are wholly owing to the Goodness and Mercy of God and accordingly our Obligations to Gratitude and Thankfulness are so much the stronger and our Ingratitude in neglecting the Worship of God the more heinous and provoking But much less can such
Sinners reasonably expect from God and much less challenge it as a right that he should redeem them from that state of Misery into which they had brought themselves by such an amazing stupendious and incomprehensible expression of his Love as the Incarnation and Death and Sufferings of his own Eternal only begotten and well-beloved Son Here is such a height and depth and length and breadth of the Love of God as passeth all Understanding this is Grace free Grace the Riches of Grace the abundant Riches of Grace And therefore this brings us under such Obligations of Love and Gratitude as infinitely excel all the Obligations of Natural Justice Now we are not our own but are bought with a price and therefore must glorify God both with our Bodies and Spirits which are God's We are now redeemed not with corruptible Things as Silver and Gold but with the precious Blood of Christ as a Lamb without blemish and without spot who gave himself for us to redeem us from all Iniquity and to purify to himself a peculiar People zealous of good Works As the whole Oeconomy of Man's Salvation by Christ is the effect of meer Grace and Love so Gratitude is the only true Principle of Gospel-Obedience to serve God out of a prevailing sense of his Goodness to feel that constraining Love and Power of Christ's Love engaging us to live to him who died for us For those Men greatly mistake the Nature and Obligations of Gratitude who think that Gratitude leaves them at liberty to do or not to do it as they please whereas the Obligations of Gratitude especially in our present Case are infinitely more strong and forcible than those of Justice and the punishment of Ingratitude proportionably great For how shall we escape if we neglect so great Salvation if we refuse to hear him who spake from Heaven to us if we have troden under-foot the Son of God and counted the Blood of the Covenant wherewith we were sanctified an unholy Thing and have done despite unto the Spirit of Grace Since then we are now under such powerful Obligations as the Love and Grace of God declared to us in the Gospel of his Son to love serve and worship him we should consider how unkind and ungrateful it is especially in those who call themselves Christians to slight or neglect the Worship of their God and Saviour certainly such Men cannot expect to be saved by Christ after all he has done and suffered for them when they will not thank him for it when they will not go to God in his Name As nothing is more infamous among Men so nothing does more provoke God than such rude Affronts of his Goodness to sin against the Grace of the Gospel and those surprising Discoveries and Manifestations of the Divine Goodness argue so brutish so diabolical a temper of mind such a perfect contrariety and contradiction to the Nature of God that such Men must naturally sink into the lowest Hell for those who have no sense of the Gospel-Grace who cannot be conquered nor affected with all the Charms of so powerful a Love are as incurable as Apostate Spirits Fourthly Another Aggravation of the Guilt of this Sin is That those who are baptized and professed Christians and I suppose I write to none else are under the Obligation of their Baptismal Vow to worship God and therefore to neglect his Worship is Perjury and breach of Covenant it is an Apostacy from Christianity though they still retain the Name of Christians And dost thou know what this is thou profane Wretch who thinkest it lost time to serve God who canst not spare so much time from worldly Cares or from thy Sports and Pleasure as to attend the Worship of God in the Assemblies of Christians Wast thou ever Baptized and dost thou know what the signification of Baptism is That thou art taken into Covenant with God and hast obliged thy self to serve and worship him that thou art incorporated into the Christian Church and therefore obliged to live in the Communion of the Church that is to frequent Christian Assemblies and to join in all the Parts and Offices of Religious Worship and art not thou afraid to deal falsely and treacherously with thy God For Vengeance is mine saith God I will repay it It is a dreadful thing to fall into the Hands of the Living God To have our Portion with Hypocrites and Unbelievers signifies in the New Testament the greatest miseries of the next World Now as Unbelievers signifies such Infidels as obstinately refuse to believe the Gospel when it is fairly proposed to them So Hypocrites does not only signify as some Men mistake the word those who counterfeit Religion who make a fine external shew and appearance of Piety and Devotion when they are rotten at the Heart but it signifies those also who live contrary to their Profession who are suppose nominal and titular Christians who have been baptized in the Name of Christ and own his Religion as the Religion of their Country but live lewd and profligate lives make no Conscience of worshipping God nor ever think of saving their Souls These are the Men who are proposed as the Patterns and Examples of the severity of God's Judgments to deter any Man from imitating their wickedness lest they be punished with Hypocrites and Unbelievers Those who are baptized into the Christian Church into the Faith and Worship of Christ do not only forfeit all the Blessings of the Covenant by renouncing or contradicting their Baptismal Vow in an habitual course of a wicked and licentious Life but become obnoxious to all the Threatnings of the Gospel in their utmost severity which is a much worse state than the poor Heathens are in who never heard of Christ for they shall not be judged by the Gospel which was never preached to them and therefore shall not be condemned by the Gospel neither as St. Paul tells us That as many as have sinned without Law shall also perish without Law and as many as sinned in the Law shall be judged by the Law And by the same Reason we may add As many as have sinned in the Gospel shall be judged by the Gospel Now to perish without the Law signifies a much easier punishment than to be judged by the Law and to be judged by the Gospel signifies a great deal more than that for as God hath increased his Grace to Man-kind so he has always annexed severer Punishments to the abuse of it Thus our Saviour tells us It shall be easier for Sodom and Gomorah in the day of Iudgment than for Capernaum Sodom and Gomorah were as vile infamous Places as were in the World and God destroyed them by very memorable Judgments by raining Fire and Brimstone on them from Heaven but yet they never enjoyed those means of Grace which Capernaum did where our Saviour himself preached in Person and confirmed the Truth of his Doctrine by many mighty Works and therefore they should