of Honesty or Justice but all the Virtues or Virtue in the general in its utmost Compass and Latitude For so in the sacred Dialect it is very usual to express the whole Duty of Man by Righteousness So Prov. 14.34 Righteousness exalteh a Nation but Sin is a reproach to any People where the Opposition plainly implies that by Righteousness we are to understand all that is contrary to Sin that is all that is contained within the Compass of our Duty So also Heb. 1.9 thou hast loved Righteousness and hated Iniquity where Righteousness being opposed to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Transgression of the Law in general must according to the Rule of Opposition be understood in the same Latitude to signify all Obedience to the Law in general And indeed all our Duty being a natural and eternal Due either to God our Neighbour or our selves the whole may very well be expressed by Righteousness the Performance of every one of them being an Act of strict Justice the Payment of a due Debt either to our selves or others The Meaning therefore of the Words is this God who himself is infinitely pure and holy and good is a constant hearty Lover of Purity and Goodness in others wheresoever he sees or finds it In the Management of which Argument I shall do these two Things 1. Shew you upon what Principles and Reasons God is a Lover of Virtue and Goodness 2. What Indications he hath given to the World that he is so 1. I shall shew you upon what Principles and Reasons God is a Lover of Virtue and Goodness and they are principally these Four 1. He loves Righteousness or Goodness as it is an essential Perfection of his own Nature 2. He loves it as it is the main Principle and Foundation of his own Happiness 3. He loves it as it is that which exalts all other Creatures into his own Likeness and Resemblance 4. He loves it as it is the Spring or Cause from whence the highest Happiness of his most beloved Creatures is derived 1 st God loves Righteousness or Goodness as it is an essential Perfection of his own Nature For supposing God to be a reasonable Being as all acknowledge him to be who acknowledge him at all he must be in all Respects most perfectly reasonable otherwise he would be deficient of that natural Perfection which the very Notion and Idea of God implies and if he be perfectly reasonable he must be supposed to govern himself his Choices Motions and Actions by the truest best and purest Reason And herein consists the perfect Holiness and Righteousness which the Essence and Notion of God implies in a perfect Conformity of all his Choices and Actions to the eternal and infallible Reason of his own Mind in chusing to do every thing which right Reason requires and refusing to do any thing which it forbids And this is so essential to God that to exclude it out of the Notion of him is in Effect to deny his Being or which is worse to fancy him an Almighty blind Polyphemus that hath an Arm of infinite Force but no Eye in his Head to guid or direct it When therefore we submit all our Choices and Actions to the Conduct and Government of right Reason we stear our Course by Gods Compass and live and move by the self-same Rule whereby he governs himself and all his Motions And when we do what God would have us we are sure to do what right Reason requires because we are sure he would have us do nothing but what is agreeable with the infallible Reason of his own Mind When therefore we submit our Wills to God's our Wills and his are governed by the self-same Reason even by the most perfect Reason of his All-comprehending Mind which never can deceive or be deceived And when our Wills Affections and Inclinations are once reduced under the Government of God's Reason we are of the same Temper with God because we are formed and tempered by the same Reason we are affected and inclined as he his and are made Partakers of his divine Nature we are pure as he is pure and holy as he is holy and do communicate with him in all that Righteousness and Goodness which is the essential Glory and Perfection of his own Nature So that Holiness and Righteousness in us being only a Ray and Representation of God it is no more Wonder that he loves it than that he loves himself it being nothing but himself derived his own Perfection copyed out and transcribed into our Temper and Natures Were the Sun a living Being we cannot imagine but as he would be infinitely pleased with his own inherent Brightness so he would be greatly delighted to behold that vast Sphere of Light which he diffuses round about him to see his own out-stretch'd Rays shining through this Spacious World and glorifying with their quick Reflections all those dark and opaque Bodies that are continually moving round about him How then can we imagine that the living God who is infinitely glorious in Holiness himself and loves himself infinitely for being so can without vast Delight and Satisfaction behold his own Beauty Light and Purity shining on the Face of his Creatures that he should not be enamoured with the Reflexions of that which is the Brightness of his own Being and take infinite Complacency when he looks down from his Throne and beholds his Creatures gilded with his Rays and glorifyed with his own Glory For if God love himself he must love what is suitable to himself and consequently since himself is Righteous he must love Righteousness or quarrel with the Perfection of his own Nature And this Reason of his Love of Righteousness is implied in the very Words The righteous Lord loveth righteousness 2 ly He loves Righteousness and true Goodness as it is the main Principle and Foundation of his own Happiness For if he were not just and holy and good he would be a miserable Being notwithstanding all his Power and Knowledge for though by these he might defend himself from all foreign Hurt or Injury yet could he not secure his own Content by them or enjoy himself with any Peace or Pleasure For perfect Holiness as I have shewed you consists in an exact Conformity of Actions to the eternal Rules of Reason but God having a full and perfect Comprehension of the eternal Reasons of Things could never be satisfied with himself if he should act Unreasonably because his Reason would condemn his Practice and his own Knowledge would libel and upbraid him For whenever he reflected on himself his own All-seeing Eye would detect him and by unmasking the Deformity of his Actions would render him an inglorious Spectacle to himself How then could he enjoy himself whilst in the Glass of his own Omniscience he beheld himself so odiously Represented What Content could he take in his own Choices and Actions whilst his own infallible Reason disapproved them and their Unreasonablness exposed them
Righteousness that rectifies all their Disorders and reduces them to their native and most genuine Temper No reasonable Nature is well and in Health so long as it acts unreasonably and unrighteously it 's Pulse beats disorderly while it beats either faster or slower than Right Reason prescribes while it acts either on this side or beyond the Medium in the Defect or Excess of Virtue and whilst 't is thus sick and distempered 't is impossible it should be happy But now by acting righteously it revives and grows well again it throws off those unreasonable and consequently unnatural Inclinations that clogg'd and obstructed all its regular Motions and by Degrees recovers to the native Temper and Complection of a rational Nature and when once it hath perfectly discharged it self of all those unreasonable and unrighteous Humours that disordered it it will then live in perfect Health and Ease and all its languishing Faculties be restored to their natural Vigour and Activity And then secondly as Righteousness recovers us from all the Distempers of our Nature so it imploys and exercises our Faculties about such Objects as are most grateful and suitable to them For Truth and true Goodness are the only Objects that can gratify a reasonable Nature acting reasonably and about these doth Righteousness naturally dispose our Faculties to imploy and exercise themselves it disposes our Vnderstandings to contemplate upon and our Wills to embrace and chuse that God who is the Fountain of all Truth and Goodness For every Thing loves its own like and what it loves it is inclined to think on So that when we are righteous as God is we shall naturally love him because he is like us and then our Love to him will still incline our Thoughts to the Contemplation of his Beauty and Glories and so the more righteous we grow the more we shall love him and the more we love him the more our Understandings will be enclined to meditate upon him and so more and more till we arrive at that City of Vision where we shall see him Face to Face and be eternally ravished with the Love and Contemplation of him Thus Righteousness you see is the Spring and Cause of our Happiness and being so he must needs love it who above all things desires and sollicits our Welfare For he being perfectly happy from himself cannot need our Misery to augment his Happiness and therefore cannot desire it but on the contrary he must desire our Happiness out of that infinite Complacency and Delight which he takes in his own it being impossible that he whose Delight and Love is always founded on the same Motives should delight in contrary Objects in different Subjects in Happiness in himself and Misery in his Creatures And if he desire our Happiness as most certainly he doth how can he forbear to love and take Complacency in that which contributes so much to it Thus you see upon what Reasons and Principles it is that God is so firm a Lover of Righteousness 2. I now proceed in the Second Place to shew you what Indications he hath given the World of his steady Affection and Good-will to Righteousness Now these though they are many and almost infinite may be reduced to Two general Heads 1 st The natural Indications 2 dly The Supernatural ones Of both which I shall endeavour to give you some brief Account 1. God hath given us Sundry natural Indications of his Love of Righteousness all which I shall reduce to these Four Heads 1. He hath imprinted a Law upon our Natures which approves of righteous Actions and condemns their contraries 2. He hath endued our Minds with a grateful Sense of righteous Actions and a natural Horror of their contraries 3. He hath coupled good Effects to all righteous Actions and bad ones to their contraries 4. He hath implanted in us natural Abodings of the future Reward of righteous Actions and the future Punishment of their contraries 1 st One Indication of God's Love of Righteousness is his imprinting a Law upon our Natures which approves all righteous Actions and disapproves their contraries and this Law is that natural Reason which is either connate with our Understanding or doth immediately result from the righteous Use and Exercise of it For such is the Frame of our Understandings that whensoever we impartially reason about Things we are forced to distinguish between Good and Evil and without offering infinite Violence to our Faculties we can never persuade our selves that to blaspheme God or to reverence him to lie or speak Truth to honour our Parents or to scorn or despitefully use them are indifferent Things for as soon as we open the Eye of our Reason we immediately discern such an essential Difference between them as forces us to condemn the One and approve the Other And hence we see that as for the great Strokes of Unrighteousness they have as much the universal Judgment of our Reason against them as any false Conclusion in the Mathematicks whereas the Goodness of their contrary Virtues is as universally Acknowledged by us as the Truth of any first Principle of Philosophy God therefore having created us with such a Faculty as doth so necessarily pass such a contrary Judgment upon righteous and unrighteous Actions we must either say that he hath made us judge falsely or else acknowledge this Judgment to be his as well as the Faculty that made it and if it be then 't is a sufficient Indication of his Love of Righteousness that he hath so framed our Faculties that without apparent Violence they cannot but approve of it For whatsoever our Faculties do naturally Speak they are made to speak from the Author of Nature they only speak what he hath Dictated to them and so what they say he says who hath put his Word into their Mouths and hath made them speak it Our Faculties therefore being God's Oracles whatsoever they freely and naturally pronounce is as much his Words as any outward Revelation Since therefore they so unanimously pronounce their Approbation of Righteousness it is as plain a Signification of God's Love and Approbation of it as if he himself should immediately pronounce it by a Voice from Heaven 2 ly Another Indication of God's Love of Righteousness is his enduing our Minds with a grateful Sense of righteous Actions and a natural Horror of their Contraries We find that antecedently to all our Reasoning and Discourse there is something in our Natures to which Virtue is a grateful Thing and its Contraries very nauseous and loathsome for thus before we are capable of Reasoning our selves into any Pleasure or Displeasure our Nature is rejoyced at a kind or a just Action either in our selves or others before we can speak or are capable of being allured by Hope or awed by Correction We are sensibly pleased when we see we have pleasured those that have obliged us and as sensibly grieved when we are conscious of having Grieved and Offended them We love to
see those fare well whom we have seen deserve well and when any unjust Violence is offered them our Nature shrinks at and abhors it We pity and compassionate the Miserable when we know not why and are ready to offer at their Relief when we can give no Reason for it which is a plain Evidence that these Things proceed not merely either from our Education or deliberate Choices but from some natural Instinct antecedent to both and that in the very Frame of our Nature there is implanted by the Author of it a Sympathy with Virtue and an Antipathy to Vice And hence it is that in the Beginnings of Sin our Nature is so shy of an evil Action and doth so startle and boggle at it that it approaches it with such a modest Coyness and goes blushing to it like a Virgin to an Adulterers Bed that it passes into Sin with such Regret and Reluctancy and looks back upon it with such Shame and Confusion which in our tender Years when we are not as yet arrived to the Exercise of our Understandings cannot be supposed to proceed from Reason or Conscience but from some secret Instinct of Nature which by these and such like Indications declares it self violated and offended And this plainly shews the mighty Respect that God hath to Righteousness that he hath woven into our Beings such a grateful Sense of it and such a Horror of its Contraries For this natural Sense was doubtless intended by God to be the first Guide of humane Nature that so when as yet 't is not capable of following Reason and Conscience it might be led on to Righteousness by its own necessary Instincts that these might dispose us to our Duty and keep us out of all wicked Prejudices till we come under the Conduct of our Reason that so this may then lead us forward with more Ease and Facility in the Paths of Righteousness What a plain Indication therefore is this of God's Love of Righteousness that he hath taken so much Care to incline our Natures to it that he hath not only given us reasonable Faculties that do naturally direct us to Righteousness but hath also taken so much Care to lead us to it by Instinct till we are grown up to the Exercise of those Faculties and are capable of being guided by them 3 ly Another Indication of God's Love of Righteousness is his coupling good Effects to righteous Actions and bad ones to their Contraries For if we consult the Consequents of humane Actions we shall generally find that all moral Good resolves into natural in the Health and the Pleasure the Credit and Tranquility of those that practise it For so the first Great Mover in that Course and Series of Things which he hath established in the World hath ordered and disposed it that every Action which is morally Good should ordinarily tend to and determine in some natural Benefit and Advantage that the good Government of every Passion should tend to the Tranquility of our Minds and the due Regulation of every Appetite center in the Health and Pleasure of our Bodies that Abstinence and Humility Honesty and Charity should have happy Effects chained to them that they should contribute to our Good both private and publick and that their contrary Vices should be always pregnant with some mischievous Inconvenience that they should either untune the Organs of our Reason or impair the Vigour and Activity of our Tempers or imbroil the Peace and Tranquility of our Minds or invade the Common-weal of Societies which includes the Interest of each particular Member Such contrary Effects as these are as necessary to vertuous and vicious Actions in that Course of Things which God hath established as Light is to the Sun or Heat to the Fire by which he hath plainly demonstrated how contrarily he is affected to those contrary Causes For by those natural Goods and Evils which are appendent to humane Actions he hath plainly distinguished them into moral Goods and Evils and those good and bad Effects which he hath annexed to them are most sensible Marks of his Love of the one and his Hatred of the other For to be sure he would never have made Righteousness the Cause of so much good to us if he had not loved it nor Wickedness the Spring of so many Mischiefs and Inconveniences if he had not hated and abhorred it The Effects of Righteousness are ordinarily a Reward and the Consequents of Sin a Punishment to it self and this by God's own Order and Disposal and pray by what Significations can a Law-giver more effectually declare his Love and Hatred of Actions than by rewarding and punishing them 4 thly And lastly Another Indication of God's Love of Righteousness is the natural Presages and Abodings which he hath implanted in our Natures of the future Reward of righteous Actions and the future Punishment of their Contraries That there are such Abodings as these in humane Nature is apparent by this that antecedently to all divine Revelation Men of all Ages Nations and Religions have felt and experienced them yea and that it hath been experienced not only among the politer and more learned Nations who may be supposed to be persuaded of a future State by the probable Arguments of Philosophy but also among the most barbarous and uncultivated who cannot be supposed to have believed it upon Principles of Reason For though some of them have been so rude as to disband Society and live like Beasts without Laws and Government yet have they not been able to extinguish these their natural Hopes and Fears of future Rewards and Puishments which is an unanswerable Evidence how deeply the Sense of another World is imprinted upon humane Nature And as we have such a natural Sense of a future State as we cannot easily stifle so our Minds do naturally abode that we shall fare well or ill in it according as we behave our selves righteously or unrighteously in this Life When we do well and reflect upon it it leaves a delicious Farwel on our Minds our Conscience smiles and promises glorious Things that we shall reap from it most happy and blessed Fruits in the other World And as the Sense of doing well doth naturally suggest to us the most ravishing Hopes and blisful Expectations so the sense of doing ill fills our Minds with sad and dire Presages our Conscience abodes us a black and woful Eternity wherein we shall dearly pay for our sinful Delights and Gratifications And though for the present we can divert and stifle this troublesome sense of our Natures yet Naturam expellas is true in this also though we thrust off Nature with a Fork yet 't will return again upon us and a Fit of Sickness a sudden Calamity or a serious Thought will soon awake and revive in it these black Prognosticks of our future Torment And hence we generally find that bad Men are most afraid of Eternity when they are nearest to it their Fear like
Truth as there have in attesting Lies and Falshoods Why should so many have been struck dumb or dead in the Act of Perjury and not one that we ever heard of suffer the like Calamity in witnessing the Truth In a word why should so many bad Men have suffered such Calamities as were plain Retaliations in Kind of their cruel and unjust Actions as Adonibezeck for instance did in the cutting off his Thumbs and great Toes whilst so few if any for doing Justice upon others have by any such casual and irregular Providence been exposed to the Evils they inflicted Since therefore in every Age of the World there have happened such Goods to righteous Men as have the plainest Characters of divine Rewards upon them and such Evils to the Wicked as do evidently bespeak themselves intended for divine Punishments God hath hereby sufficiently declared his Love of the one and his Hatred of the other For by their Rewards and Punishments all Lawgivers do declare their Love and Hatred of the Facts they are annexed to and therefore to be sure if the Supreme Law giver had not loved Righteousness and hated the contrary he would never have so eminently rewarded the one and punished the other as he hath apparently done 2 dly Another Supernatural Indication of God's Love of Righteousness is his making so many Revelations to the World for the promoting of Righteousness and discountenancing of Sin That God hath made sundry Revelations to the World is evident in Fact because there are sundry Revelations which have been sufficiently demonstrated by those miraculous Effects of the divine Power which have accompanied the Ministration of them such are those contained in the five Books of Moses and the Prophets which have been almost amply confirmed both by the Miracles which were wrought by the inspired Authors of them and by the exact Accomplishments of the several Predictions contained in them and such is also that last and best Revelation contained in the New Testament which both by the Types and Predictions contained in the Law and the Prophets and by the infinite Miracles wrought by Jesus and his Followers who were the immediate Ministers of it together with its own inherent Goodness is so effectually demonstrated divine that no Man who weighs the Proof of it can suspect it unless he be infinitely prejudiced against it Now if you consult these several divine Revelations you will plainly perceive that the main Drift and Design of them is to promote Righteousness and suppress whatsoever is contrary to it that the several Revelations made to Abraham and his Children were all but one repeated Covenant of Righteousness that the Law of Moses consisted partly of ceremonious Rights which were either intended for divine Hieroglyphicks to instruct the dull and stupid Jews in the Principles of inward Purity and Goodness or else for Types and sacred Figures of the holy Mysteries of the Gospel partly of Precepts of moral Righteousness together with some few prudential ones that were suitable to the Genius and Polity of that People and partly of such Promises and Threats as were most apt to oblige them to the Practice of those righteous Precepts As for the Prophets the Substance of their Revelations was either Reprehensions of Sin together with severe Denunciations against it or Invitations to Righteousness together with gracious Promises of Rewards to follow it or Predictions of the Messias and that everlasting Righteousness which should be introduced by him And then as for the Gospel all the Duties of it consist either in Instances or Means of Righteousness and all the Doctrines of it are nothing else but powerful Arguments and Motives to persuade us to the Practice of those Duties Thus Righteousness you see is the main Center to which all true Revelation tends the Mark at which the righteous Lord hath continually levelled and directed it What a plain Demonstration therefore is this of the unfeigned Love and Respect he bears it that he did not think it sufficient to imprint a Law of Righteousness upon our Natures and stamp upon our Beings so many Indications of his Love to it but seeing us swerve and deviate from it hath from time to time by so many loud and reiterated Voices from Heaven invited and called us back again so that if he be cordial and sincere in what he says as it would be absurd and impious to suspect the contrary we cannot doubt but he heartily loves that which by so many immediate Revelations he hath so earnestly importuned us to embrace 3 dly Another supernatural Indication of God's Love of Righteousness is his sending his own Son into the World to transact such mighty Things for the Encouragement of it and persuading Men to it For to advance Righteousness was the main Design of all those mighty Things which the Son of God did and suffered in this World the Design of all that holy and innocent Life which he led was to propose to our Imitation a perfect Example of Righteousness that so treading our Way before us we might have not only the Line of his Precepts but also the Print of his Foot-steps to direct us and that by beholding so fair a Draught of Righteousness drawn so exquisitely to the Life and in every Part so exactly answering to the sweetest and most amiable Ideas of it we might be both invited and instructed to copy and imitate it in our Actions For what he saith of that illustrious Act of Charity and Humility his washing his Disciples Feet is truly applicable to the whole Course of his Actions For I have given you an Example that you should do as I have done unto you Joh. xiii 15 And as his Life was an Example of Righteousness so his Death was a most urgent Motive to it for hereby he made Expiation for our Sins and obtained an Act of Pardon and Indemnity for every Rebel that would lay down his Arms and return to his Duty and Allegiance and by obtaining this he hath given us infinite Encouragement to return since if we do so we have most ample Assurance that we shall be received into Grace and Favour And though I cannot deny but if God had pleased he might have granted such an Act of Pardon to us without the Consideration of Christ's Death and Sacrifice yet I am sure if he had it could never have been such an effectual Motive as it was to oblige us to Righteousness for the future For should he have granted us Pardon merely upon our Repentance without any other Motive or Consideration he would have discovered so much seeming Easiness and Indulgence in such a Procedure as would have very much imboldened such disingenuous Creatures as we to presume upon his Lenity and turn his Grace into Wantonness And if to prevent our presuming upon his Lenity it was necessary that he should have some other Motive to pardon us besides that of our Repentance then it was no less necessary that this other Motive
disgraces the most righteous Religion and introduces the most gross Unrighteousness Again Thirdly 'T is a common Principle of Christianity that true Repentance is indispensably necessary to the Salvation of Sinners upon which they have superstructed their Sacrament of Pennance which joyned with Absolution is of such Sovereign Virtue as to Transubstantiate a Sorrow proceeding from the Fear of Hell into true and saving Repentance By which Doctrin they have most directly superseded all the Obligations of Righteousness For what need I put my self to the Trouble of a holy and righteous Life when for allarming my self before I go to Confession into some frightful Apprehensions of Hell I can be dubbed a true Penitent and receive the Remission of my Sins For now my old Score being all wiped off I may Sin on merrily on a new Account and when I make my next Reckoning 't is but being afraid of Hell again and I am sure to receive a new Acquittance in full of all Demands and Dues And when I have spent all my Life in this Round and Circle of Unrighteousnss 't is but sending for a Priest at my last Breath confessing my Sins and dreading the Punishment of them and with a few magical Words he shall immediately conjure me to Heaven or at least out of Danger of Hell Once more it is a common Principle of Christianity that the Wages of Sin is eternal Death upon which they have introduced their Doctrins of Purgatory and Indulgencies which like Simeon and Levi Brethren in Iniquity do both conspire to render Righteousness a needless Thing For by the Sacrament of Pennance the eternal Punishment of Hell is changed into the temporary one of Purgatory and by Indulgencies especially plenary ones the temporary Punishment of Purgatory is wholly remitted and extinguished so that the first lessens the Punishment of Sin and the last annihilates it And by this Means are Sinners mightily imboldened to go on being assured that upon the Sacrament of Pennance they shall commute Hell for Purgatory and that upon plenary Indulgence they shall exchange Purgatory for Heaven Many other Instances of this Nature might be given but it would be endless to enumerate all those unrighteous Principles with which their Casuistical Divinity abounds the Frauds and Falsifications the Treasons and Murders the Slanders and Perjuries which their Guides of Conscience do not only tolerate but commend For I will maintain that there is scarce any Villany in Nature so notorious which by the Principles of some or other of their allowed Casuists may not be wholly vindicated or at least extenuated into venial Crimes So that considering the whole Frame and Structure of the Popish Religion I do most seriously believe it to be one of the most effectual Engins to undermine and tear up the Foundations of Righteousness that ever the Devil forged or made use of and were it not for those common Principles of Christianity that are intermingled with it and do allay and sometimes I hope overpower the Venom of it I am verily persuaded that the Religion of Heathens would sooner make Men righteous than that of Papists For I do affirm that there is not one Principle of pure Popery that is either a Rule of Righteousness or a Motive to it but contrariwise that the most of its Principles seem to have been purposely calculated to affront Men's Reason and debauch their Manners and if so then we may easily guess whether this be a true Religion or no which in all its Parts is so repugnant to that which God most dearly loves 2 dly Hence I infer upon what Terms a Man may safely conclude that he is beloved of God for if he hath that amiable Quality within him which is the eternal Reason of God's Love he may be sure he is beloved of him If our Souls be adorned with that Righteousness which the righteous Lord loves we may safely conclude that we are his Favourites and shall never cease to be so whilst we continue so adorned For 't is as impossible for God not to love righteous Souls as not to be righteous himself for whilst he continues so his own Nature must needs incline him to love all those in whom he finds his own most amiable Image and Resemblance Let us not therefore persuade our selves that we are beloved of God either upon any inward Whispers and Suggestions or upon any particular Marks and Signs of Grace for both these may abuse and deceive us and flatter our Minds into false and groundless Assurances We may think 't is the Spirit of God that whispers to us when all of a suddain we feel our selves surprized with joyous and comfortable Thoughts and yet this may be nothing else but a Frisk of melancholy Vapors heated and fermented by a feverish Humour For those suddain Joys and Dejections which are so often interpreted the Incomes and Withdrawings of the Spirit of God do commonly proceed from no higher Cause than the Shiverings and Burnings of an Ague and I am very sure that Histerical Fits are very often mistaken for spiritual Experiences and that when Men have most confidently believed themselves overshadowed by the Holy Ghost their Fancies have been only hagged and ridden with the Enthusiastick Vapours of their own Spleen And sometimes I make no doubt but this suddain Flush of joyous Thoughts proceeds from a worse Cause even from the Suggestion of the Devil who though he hath no immediate Access to the Minds of Men can yet doubtless act upon our Spirits and Humours and by their Means figure our Fancies into spritely Ideas and tickle our Hearts into a Rapture And this Power of his we may reasonably suppose he is ready enough to exert upon any mischievous Occasion when he finds Men willing to be deceived and to rely upon ungrounded Confidences Let us not therefore build our Hopes of the divine Favour upon any such uncertain Foundations but impartially examin our selves whether we are really righteous for unless we are so it is not more certain that God is righteous than that these our pretended spiritual Incomes and Inundations of Joy and Comfort are either the Freaks of our own Temper or else the Injections of the Devil For how can you imagin that the God of all Righteousness and Truth can without infinite Violence to his own Nature either love or pretend Love to an unrighteous Soul But then you will say by what Signs and Tokens shall we know whether we are righteous or no To which I answer that there is nothing can be a true Sign and Token of Righteousness which is distinct from Righteousness it self For Righteousness is its own Sign and if any Man judges himself righteous by any Mark which is not an Act or Instance of Righteousness he deceives and abuses his own Soul But then we must have a Care that we do not argue from any one particular Mark or Instance of Righteousness to our being righteous in general For you may as well argue that
Psal. lxxxiv 11 Who would not then be tempted to Righteousness upon the Prospect of being a Favourite of God and of the infinite Glory and Advantage which redounds from thence 4 thly And lastly From hence I infer how inexcusable we are if we persist in Sin after the many Discoveries which God hath made to us of his Love of Righteousness Had we any Reason to suppose that God is indifferently affected towards Righteousness and Sin it would be a fair Excuse for unrighteous Persons for what great Matter would it be which of the two Contraries we chose if both were indifferent to God who best understands the Worth and Value of Things But now when God hath discovered such a zealous Concern for Righteousness and such an Abhorrence of its contrary by so many clear Indications both natural and supernatural there is no Ground or Colour for any such Excuse For now no Man can be excusably ignorant which way God's Heart is inclined and we must wilfully shut our Eyes if we do not discern which of the two Contraries he would have us pursue and therefore if notwithstanding this we still persist in unrighteousness we do in Effect declare that we regard not God and that we will do what we list let him will what he pleases that in the Conduct of our Actions we will have the sole Disposal of our selves and are resolved that God shall have nothing to do with us and that we will not concern our selves in any of our Choices or Actions whether he be pleased or displeased with them this is the plain Sense of our Perseverance in Unrighteousness under all those clear Discoveries which God hath made of his Aversion to it Now how incusable is this for a Creature to behave it self so insolently towards the Author and Owner of its Being to make him stand for a Cypher in his own Creation and to take no more Notice of him than if he were the most impertinent and insignificant Being in the World For now it 's plain that our unrighteous Doings proceed from our rude Contempt and Regardlesness of his heavenly Will we know well enough what he would have us do but either we do not think him worth the minding or if we do we are resolv'd to behave our selves as if we did not 'T is true he hath not made as full a Discovery of his Will to some as he hath to others but yet it is plain he hath so sufficiently discovered it to all that none can pretend to the Excuse of Ignorance For as for the Heathens though they have no revealed Discoveries of it without them yet they have a Bible within them the large and legible Bible of Nature which lies continually open before them and proposes to their View in fair and distinct Characters the Notion of God the Distinctions of Good and Evil and the eternal Laws of Righteousness and therefore if notwithstanding this they will be so regardless of its great and blessed Author as either not to attend to or not comply with these natural Discoveries of his Will what Excuse can they make why they should not perish in their own Obstinacy For as the Apostle tells us though they have not the Law i. e. the revealed Law yet they did or at least might have done by nature the things contained in the Law and therefore as many of them as have sinned without this revealed Law shall also perish without it that is by the Sentence of the Law of Nature Rom. 2.12 14. And then as for the Jews besides those natural Indications of God's Love of Righteousness which they had in common with the Heathen they had sundry supernatural ones they had sundry great and notorious Examples of God's rewarding righteous and punishing wicked Men and the outward Revelation of the Law of Moses the moral Part of which was a new Edition of the Law of Nature and did contain within the Rine and Letter of it the most sublime and spiritual Precepts of Righteousness and the Ceremonial Part of which was though an obscure yet intelligible Representation of all those spiritual Motives to Righteousness which Christianity contains So that would they but have attended either to the spiritual Sense of their Law or to the Sermons of their Prophets which very much cleared and explained it they could not have been ignorant either of any Part of their Duty or of any considerable Motive that was needful to press and ingage them to it If therefore notwithstanding this they were so regardless of God as to take no Notice of those many sensible Distinctions which his Providence had made between righteous and unrighteous Men in blessing the one and punishing the other of which he gave them so many signal Examples if they had so little Reverence for his Authority as neither to mind his Law within nor his Law without them or if they minding the later were so extreamly heedless as to rest in a mere Conformity to the Letter of it without ever attending to its spiritual Sense and Meaning upon what reasonable Pretence can their Stupidity be excused But then lastly as for us Christians we have not only all those natural Indications of God's Love of Righteousness which the Heathens had and all those supernatural ones which the Jews had but we have all these later with much greater Advantage than the Jews for they are all set before us in a clearer Light and presented much more naked to our View For as they are proposed to us they are neither wrapt up in mystical Senses nor clouded over with typical Representations but laid before us in the most plain and easie Propositions The literal Sense of our Precepts of Righteousness and of all our Promises and Threats is the mystical Sense of theirs and all those Christian Motives to Righteousness which were delivered to them in dark Riddles and obscure and typical Adumbrations are brought forth to us from behind the Curtain and proposed in plain and popular Articles of Faith So that if we still continue in Unrighteousness we are of all Men in the World the most inexcusable The Heathens may plead against the Jews that their Law of Nature was not so clear in its Precepts nor yet so cogent in its Motives as the Law of Moses was The Jews may plead against us Christians that their Law of Moses was neither so express in its Precepts nor yet so intelligible in its best and most powerful Motives but as for us Christians we have nothing at all to plead but by our own Obstinacy against the clearest Discoveries both of our Dury and the Motives which oblige us to it are condemned to everlasting Silence So that when at the last Tribunal it shall appear that we have persisted in Unrighteousness we must expect the Reproaches of all the reasonable World to be exploded and hissed at not only by the universal Choir of Saints and Angels but by Jews and Gentiles and by the Devils themselves who will all conspire with our own Consciences to second that dreadful Sentence which shall then pass upon us with the general Acclamation of just and righteous art thou O Lord in all thy Ways Wherefore as we would not perish for ever without Pity or Excuse let us be persuaded to abandon all Vnrighteousness and worldly Lusts and to live soberly and righteously and godly in this present World and then we may assure our selves that the righteous Lord who loves Righteousness will love us also for the sake of it and express his Love to us in blessing and preserving us here and crowning us with Glory and Happiness hereafter And this we beseech thee to grant O thou immutable Lover of Righteousness even for Jesus Christ his sake To whom with thy self and thy eternal Spirit be ascribed by us and all the World all Honour and Glory and Power from this time forth and for evermore Amen FINIS Abstin l. 4
express it self in endeavouring to resemble him For every Man esteems what he loves to be lovely and we naturally wish that that were in our selves which we esteem to be lovely in another that so being like him we may appear as lovely in his Eyes as he doth in ours And so if we love God we must necessarily esteem him exceeding lovely and amiable and that which we esteem and love as lovely in him we cannot but wish for and desire in our selves out of a natural Affectation of Loveliness And that he may have the same Reason to love us as we have to love him we must needs desire to resemble him in all those amiable Things that do endear him to us But now those Beauties in God being all of them only moral which are the immediate Objects of our Love to him are capable of being transcribed by Imitation and made ours by copying and writing after them in our Actions so that if we heartily desire to partake of them our Desire will necessarily engage us to imitate them for how can we be said heartily to desire that Good which we may have but will take no Care to acquire I confess did we love him for his Eternity or his Power or his Immensity we might wish to be like him but all in vain because in these Perfections we are not capable of imitating him But the Beauties for which we love him are his Goodness and Wisdom and Righteousness and Mercy and the like all which being imitable by us we may if we please derive into our selves and transcribe into our own Natures So that if we love God we must necessarily desire to resemble him in those Things for which we love him and those things being all of an imitable nature our Desire of resembling him will oblige and excite us to a careful and constant Imitation of him But now to obey God and to imitate him in those Moral Perfections for which we love him are one and the same thing Thus when I obey God in being universally just and righteous towards himself and all his Creation I imitate him in that essential Justice and Equity of his Nature which is the eternal Rule of all his Actions When I obey him in doing good to all that are within the Reach of my Charity I imitate him in the overflowing Bounty and unlimited Goodness of his Nature In a word when I obey him in forgiving those that injure me I imitate him in his boundless Mercy and Readiness to forgive Offenders And in fine all our Obedience is comprehended in being pure as he is pure and holy as he is holy in being good as he is good just as he is just merciful as he is merciful For though the Acts and Expressions of these Moral Perfections in us are in many Instances different from what they are in God by reason of that Difference of Natures Relations and Circumstances that there is between him and us yet the Perfections in general are of the same kind in him and us though the particular Expressions of them are various by reason of those accidental Differences For though he doth not do all those particular Actions which he requires of us and consequently we in doing those Actions cannot be said to imitate the same Actions in God yet we imitate God in the general in doing those Actions which he himself would have done had he had our Natures and been in our Relations and Circumstances Thus God doth not pray because he hath none superior to him nor humble himself because he is infinitely great and perfect nor practise Chastity and Temperance because he is a pure Spirit and hath no Commerce with bodily Affections and consequently we in doing of these Actions cannot be said to imitate the same Actions in God because he doth not the same But he constantly doth whatsoever is reasonable for him to do as God and as Governour of the World and never varies in the least Punctilio from the eternal Rules of Equity and Goodness by which he gives a glorious Example unto all his Reasonable Creatures to excite both Angels and Men to do what is fit and reasonable for them in their several States and Relations And what is reasonable for us Men to do he hath declared to us in his Laws so that by obeying his Laws we imitate God in the general by doing what is reasonable for us though what is reasonable for God and us whose Natures and Relations are so different be not the same in all particular Instances So that in general you see to obey and imitate God is but the same Thing in other Words Wherefore since the Love of God doth necessarily include a Desire of resembling him and that Desire necessarily produces a constant and vigorous Imitation of him and that Imitation is all one with obeying him it hence necessarily follows that if our Love of him be sincere it must finally resolve into Obedience For how can I love God and not think him lovely How can I think him lovely and not desire to be like him How can I desire to be like him and not take Care to imitate him And how else can I imitate him but by obeying him 2. If we love God our Love will conform our Wills Designs and Intentions to the Will Designs and Intentions of God For Love always unites the Will of the Lover to the Will of the Beloved and if it be mutual it twists them together into one Will and confounds all their Discords into a perfect Harmony because Love doth necessarily conclude in it Benevolence which consists in an unfeigned Will that all may go well with him whom we love that he may enjoy every Good that he wills and accomplish every Desire Design and Intention so far as it is good and reasonable for him So that supposing that the Beloved be but his own Friend that he wills and designs and pursues nothing but what is really good and grateful to him the Lover as such ought necessarily to conspire with him in the same Will and Designs and Pursuits If therefore we heartily love God we cannot but will what he wills and design and intend what he intends and designs every Motion of that first great Mover will be an effectual Law to govern all our Motions and our Wills and Desires and Designs and Intentions like the lesser Wheels of an Automaton will presently run at the first Impulse of that great Master-Wheel without the least Rub or Hesitation and in despite of all the Contentions of a rebellious Flesh and all the Counter-strivings of a perverse ungovernable Heart our Love will so captivate our Wills to God's that between him and us there will be but one Will and End and Interest And our Wills being thus subjected to him by the invincible Necessity of Love all our inferior Powers like smaller Garrisons when the Master-Fort is taken will presently surrender of their own accord For no Man can be a
and easie in themselves II. That Christ by what he hath done hath rendred them much more facile than they are in themselves I. That the Commands of God are facile and easie in themselves And this will evidently appear if we consider 1. That whatsoever they enjoyn hath some natural Good appendent to it 2. That every Thing which they enjoyn is highly agreeable to our reasonable Natures 3. That They are all perfective of our Natures and conducive to our Happiness 4. That in themselves they are plain and simple and direct and have no Intricacies or Labyrinths in them 5. That they are all so inseparably connected to one another that they mutually promote and help forwards each other 1. That whatsoever they enjoyn hath some natural Good inseparably appendent to it to sweeten and endear it The great and wise First-Mover hath so ordered Things in the Course of Motion which he hath established that such and such Actions should be ordinarily attended with such and such Effects and Consequents and this is one great Way by which he hath signified to the World his Dislike or Approbation of humane Actions by the Effects and Consequents which he hath chained and annexed to them If in the Course of Things which he hath established such an Action be ordinarily attended with a good Effect he thereby signifies his Approbation of it and declares that it is his Will and Pleasure that we should do and persevere in doing it But if the Consequents which in the Course of Nature are ordinarily linked to such an Action are evil and hurtful he thereby declares his Dislike and Abhorrence of it and that it is his Will and Pleasure that we should carefully and constantly avoid it For the great Author of our Beings hath so framed our Natures and placed us in such Circumstances and Relations that there is nothing vicious but is also injurious to us nothing virtuous but is advantagious and in this the Good and Evil of all humane Virtues and Vices do consist and 't is purely for this Reason why he forbids the one and commands the other because he is our Friend and would not have us neglect any Thing that tends to our Good nor do any Thing that is hurtful and injurious to us and because he knows that while we are thus framed and do continue in these Circumstances and Relations it is impossible but Virtue should be an Advantage and Vice a Mischief to our Natures And indeed the great Sanction of the Law of Nature is nothing else but that natural Good and Evil which is ordinarily consequent to the Actions which it commands and forbids For when God had no otherwise revealed himself to the World than only by the established Course and Nature of Things that was the only Bible whereby Mankind could be instructed in his Will and Pleasure and there being no Threats or Promises antecedently annexed unto bad and good Actions his Will and Pleasure concerning our doing or avoiding them was only visible in those good or bad Effects and Consequences which in the Course of Nature he had made necessary to them And indeed the Moral Good and Evil of all Actions is finally to be resolved into the natural Good and Evil that is appendent to them for therefore our Actions are morally good because they are naturally beneficial to us and therefore are they morally evil because they are naturally prejudicial and hurtful and those that are neither of these are indifferent Actions and stand in the middle between Good and Evil. And indeed this Distinction of Actions by their Effects and Consequents is in most Particulars so plain and sensible that all the World hath taken Notice of it For whereas all good Actions have an apparent Tendency either to the Publick Good wherein our own Private is involved or to our own animal and sensitive Good our Quiet and Health and Reputation and Prosperity or to the Perfection of our rational Natures and the sovereign Pleasure and Happiness of our Minds all bad Actions tend directly contrary either to the Damage and Ruine of the Publick-Weal or to the Hurt and Prejudice of our animal and sensitive Felicity to the diseasing of our Bodies the staining our Names or the impoverishing our Estates or to the defacing and blemishing the Beauty of our rational Natures and the Interruption and Disturbance of all the Pleasures and Felicities of our Minds And this Distinction of good and evil Actions is so immutably fixed in the Nature of Things that it can never be obliterated until God wholly alters the Course of his Creation and impresses quite contrary Laws of Motion on it For so long as we continue what we are in the same Nature and Circumstances and Relations to God and one another Righteousness and Godliness Humility and universal Love must necessarily be good for us and their Contraries bad and destructive to our Happiness Now this wise and excellent Constitution of Things doth very much tend to the facilitating of Virtue and Goodness to us For when Things are so constituted that it is become our Interest as well as our Duty to pursue Virtue and eschew Vice when that which distinguishes our Duty from our Sin is the good that it doth us and the apparent Tendency it hath to our Happiness this if we love our selves must needs very much endear and recommend it to us For now we serve our selves in serving our Maker the substance of all whose Injunctions is no more than this that we should pursue our own Happiness by doing all those Things which are necessary thereunto I confess had he made those Actions which are our Sins to be our Duty we had then some Reason to complain for then we should have been bound in pure Obedience to God to damnify our selves and like the wretched Priests of Baal to cut and slash our own Bodies and Souls meerly to humour and gratify the Divinity whom we adore then in obeying him we must have acted our own Tragedy and made our selves miserable in pure Loyalty to our Maker For there is such an inseparable Bane clings to all vicious Actions as necessarily renders them destructive and venomous and we may as soon clip off the Sun-beams with a Pair of Scissers as separate Vice from its mischievous Consequences But now when the Sum of all that God requires of us is to be good to our selves and Friends to our own Happiness to do what is beneficial and avoid what is hurtful to us when every Command of his is an Instance of his Love to us and exacts nothing of us but what we would have done of our own Accord had we but known what is good for us as well as he and loved our selves as well as he loves us In a word when at the End of every good Action there stands some natural Good beckning and inviting us to it and at the End of every bad One some natural Evil to warn and affright us from coming
to when we know so little of the future State to which all its Transactions do chiefly relate Wherefore let us forbear a while till we come into the other World and understand the whole Design and Contrivance and then we shall see that all will be right and well yea and infinitely better than ever we could imagin But for us to censure now when we know so little of our future State which is the main and ultimate Scope of Providence is just as if a Man should pass his Judgment on a Picture when he sees nothing of it but some few rude Lines and very imperfect Strokes Let us have but the Patience to suspend our Judgment a while till God hath finished the whole Draught and given it all its natural Colours and Proportions and then I am sure we shall see Cause enough forever to admire his Skill and adore his Wisdom and Goodness And thus you see by apparent Instances how good God is in his Providence towards us and how unreasonable it is for us to censure his Goodness notwithstanding all those seeming Evils that happen in the World And now what remains but that with all Humility and Chearfulness we resign up our selves into the Hands of our most merciful Father concluding as most certainly we may that whatsoever he doth with us or howsoever he disposes of us it will be all for our good in the later End if it be not through our own Default For where can we be safer than in the Hands of an Omnipotent and Omniscient Goodness a Goodness that knows what is best for us and wills what it knows to be so and doth whatsoever it wills Surely in such Hands our Condition is a thousand times better and safer than if we had full Power to effect our own Wishes and all the Events that concern us were in our own Disposal And if God should shake us off from all Dependence on him and resign up the whole Conduct of our Affairs into our own Hands if he should say to us since you mislike of my Conduct I will no more intermedle with you or any thing that concerns you take your selves into your own Disposal and manage all your Concernments as you please If I say he should do thus with us we should be left in a most forlorn and deplorable Condition and unless we were wholly abandoned of our own Reason as well as Gods Providence we should on our bended Knees resign up all into his Hands again and beseech him for his Pity and his Mercy sake to do any Thing with us that will consist with his Goodness to scourge and chasten us for our Frowardness as much and as long as his own fatherly Bowels will endure it rather then give us up to our own Conduct or leave our Affairs in the Disposal of our own blind and precipitant Wills For so long as God is so powerfully and so wisely good as he is it is the Interest of every Creature in Heaven and Earth to be at his Disposal and to take up that self-resigning Prayer of our Saviour Father not our Wills but thy Will be done For since God wills our good as much or more than our selves it must doubtless be our Interest that his Will should take place whensoever it stands in Competition with ours because he doth not only wish well to us as much as we do to our selves but he knows what is best for us a great deal better than we Wherefore let us learn in all Conditions to repose our Minds in the good Providence of God and to satisfy our selves in its Managment and Disposal of us for whatsoever Condition it may bring us into whilst we are wandring through this Vale of Tears this is most certainly and eternally true that God is good and doth good JOHN III. 16 God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting Life THE Three first Topicks from whence I undertook to prove the Goodness of God I have already handled on another Text and shewed 1 st from his Nature 2 ly from his Creation and 3 dly from his Providence That he is infinitely good I proceed now to the 4 th and last viz. from Principles of Revelation the main of which is comprehended in the Text God so loved the World c. It is indeed a most glorious Instance of the Goodness of God that when he had imprinted his Laws upon our Nature in such legible Characters and given them such apparent Sanctions in the Nature of Things having made such a sensible Distinction between Moral Good and Evil by those natural good and evil Consequents which he hath inseparably intailed on them And when Mankind by their wilful Wickedness and Inadvertency had almost obliterated the Law of their Nature and extinguished their natural Sense of Good and Evil and immersed themselves in the most barbarous Impieties and Immoralities Notwithstanding all this that he had done for us and we against our selves he should still be so kind and compassionate as to put forth a new Edition of his Laws and reveal his Will anew to us in such an extraordinary manner that when he had implanted a Light in our Natures that was sufficient to have directed us into the several Paths of our Duty and we by our own Neglect and Abuse of it had almost extinguished this Candle of the Lord in us and consequently involved our selves in Midnight Darkness and Ignorance he should then be so compassionate as to hang out a Light from Heaven to us to rectify our Wanderings and guid our Feet in the Paths we should walk in was such a glorious Expression of his Goodness as for ever deserves our most thankful Acknowledgments But then that he should not only reveal to us what he had before imprinted on our Nature and we had most unworthily rased out and obliterated but also discover so much more to us than ever we did or could have known by the Light of our Nature that he should not only repeat his former Kindness to us which we had so shamefully abused but make such stupendous Additions to it as he hath done in the Revelation of his Gospel that manger all those Impieties and Provocations by which for so many Ages we had excited his Patience he should not only so love us as to restore to us the Light which we had almost extinguished but to give his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish c. is such an amazing Instance of Goodness as can hardly be reflected on without an Extasy of Admiration In which Words you have God's revealed Love and Goodness to the World measured by a two-fold Standard 1. By the Greatness of the Gift which he hath bestowed upon the World God so loved the World that he gave his only begotten Son 2. The blessed End for which he did bestow him that whosoever believeth in him