of a good conversation in Christ i. e. in Christs Religion 1 Pet. 3.16 And to name no more instances in a case so evident we read not only of men but likewise of bonds in Christ i. e. of mens being bound for the Religion and Faith of Christ. My bonds in Christ says S t Paul are manifest in all the Palace and in all other places Phil. 1.13 But besides this sence of the words our being in Christ for our being of the Christian Religion there is another very near it which it is pertinent to our present business to observe and that is our being in the Christian Church Thus S t Paul says that we being many members are yet one body or Corporation in Christ or in the Society and Church of Christians wherein we are every one members one of another Rom. 12.5 And Gods gathering together all particular Christians scatter'd over the world into one Catholick Church or Society is called his gathering together in one all things in Christ Eph. 1.10 Thus our admission into Christs Church by baptism is called our being engraffed or implanted into him We have been planted together says the Apostle in the likeness of his death or in Baptismal immersion which is a representation of burial after death Rom. 6.5 As for our Being in Christ then which sets us beyond the reach of danger and condemnation it is the same as our being of the Christian Religion and members of the Christian Church And this Communion and membership of Christs Church and profession of his Religion is a most ready and effectual means to make men practise and obey it For to be in the Church of Christ is to live under the preaching of his word the solemn return of Holy Prayers the Administration of Blessed Sacraments the counsel and direction of wise Guides the Authority of good examples the correction and discipline of Church Governours and all the other outward means of Grace and Obedience And then the profession and owning of his Religion if it be true and undissembled implies our Faith and belief of it which is the great and only expedient that Christ could think of for the reformation of a wicked world and which as we have already seen is a most effectual means and sure principle of good life and practice And because our being in Christ i. e. our profession of Christs Religion and Communion and Society with Christs Church is so powerful a principle of our obedient service therefore has God promised to it that Life and Pardon which is the inseparable reward of Obedience it self He doth not in any wise intend that every man who bears the Name of Christ and is of his retinue that will make a bare profession of his service in calling of him Lord Lord without any real works and performance shall have right to these Rewards when he comes to Judgment Not every one that saith unto me Lord Lord shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven but he only who doth the will of my Father which is in Heaven Matt. 7.21 Nay in the next verse he goes higher Many will say unto me in that day Have we not done more than barely professed thy Name have we not done thee high and honourable service viz. prophesied in thy Name and in thy Name cast out Devils and in thy Name done many wondrous works And then will I profess unto them I never knew you depart from me you are no such Christians as I own for whatsoever your names and professions be ye are of their number that in their lives work iniquity vers 22 23. When God assures us by S t Paul therefore that there is no Condemnation to them that are in Christ or in Christs Church and Religion he means to them that are so in them as thereby to become obedient He speaks metonymically and implies our works and actions as well as that Communion and profession which signifies them and ought to produce them And in this the Scriptures are express He that KEEPS his Commandments dwells in Christ and Christ in him says S t John 1 Ep. 3.24 It is nothing less than our fulfilling of his Laws who is head of that body whereunto we joyn our selves as members and our being indeed what we pretend and obeying the rules of that Religion which we profess that will at the last day be interpreted for our being in him in such sort as qualifies us to be saved by him Whoso KEEPETH his word says the same Apostle in him is the love of God made perfect and hereby by this perfection of love in Obedience we know that we are in him So that whosoever he be that saith he abideth in him he ought himself also so to walk even as he walked 1 Joh. 2.5 6. The necessity of connexion between these two viz. being a member of Christs Church and a good Man between professing of Christs Religion and obeying it was so evident and so well known and allowed of in the first times of Christianity that both were understood when either was mentioned To put on Christ in the Apostles days was the same as to make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof Rom. 13.14 And to learn Christ was but another phrase for to put off concerning their former CONVERSATION the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful Lusts and to put on the new man which after the similitude of God is created in righteousness and true holiness Eph. 4.20 22 24. A Christian and a keeper of Gods Laws were then only two words for the same thing For they thought nothing could be a greater contradiction than for a man to profess himself a servant of Christ and yet to pay him no Obedience to own the Name of a Christian and yet to lead the life of a Heathen The time past of our lives says S t Peter or that time before we became Christians must suffice us wherein to have wrought the will of the Gentiles 1 Pet. 4.3 But when once we have listed our selves in Christs service and are called upon by his Name we must renounce all our former ways and depart from all iniquity 2 Tim. 2.19 So that in the language of those first times and in the meaning of the Scriptures mens being in Christ is by no means separate from obedience but implies it To talk of an interest in him without fulfilling of his Laws is but vain Cant and unprofitable speech It is to talk without Book and to use a Scripture phrase but against the Scriptures meaning For at the last day when Christ comes to expound his own Gospel we shall hear him pronounce what it has already in plain words declared to us that no man is savingly in Christ who is out with his Laws but that he only is so in him as to be secure from all Condemnation who has kept his Commandments and faithfully obey'd him CHAP. III. Of Pardon promised to Repentance The CONTENTS
God had spoken to them than by his Testimony and upon his Authority therefore are they said in believing and embracing that Divine Law which was delivered to them by Moses to believe not the Lord alone but also his Servant Moses Exod. 14.31 Joh. 5.46 to be Baptized into Moses 1 Cor. 10.2 to be Moses's Disciples Joh. 9.28 to trust or place their hope in Moses Joh. 5.45 to obey or hearken unto Moses Luk. 16.31 But the most clear and full Revelation that God ever made of his will to men was by the message and mediation of his own Son Jesus Christ. For God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past to the Jews by Moses and to the Fathers by the Prophets hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son Heb. 1.1 And the belief of his Gospel or taking for certain Truths upon his Authority all those things which he has declared to us in Gods Name is call'd the Christian as the other was the Mosaick Faith For he being the great Author and deriver of this last and greatest Revelation of God down to us and our belief of it being upon his immediate Authority he being as S t Paul says the Authour and finisher of our Faith Heb. 12.2 Our belief of it is called not only Faith towards God Heb. 6.1 but also Faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ Acts 20.21 And because the knowledge of our whole Religion got into our minds this way upon our submission to Christs Authority and our Faith or belief of his Testimony therefore is our Religion it self most commonly in the Scriptures called our Faith The Preaching of it is called Preaching the Faith Gal. 1.23 the hearing of it hearing of Faith Gal. 3.2 the profession of it a profession of Faith Heb. 10.23 the contending for it a striving for the Faith Phil. 1.27 the erring in it an erring from the Faith 1 Tim. 6.10 the falling from it a making shipwrack of the Faith 1 Tim. 1.19 obedience to it the obedience of Faith Rom. 1.5 and the Righteousness required in it and effected by it the Righteousness of Faith Rom. 4.11.13 So that in like manner as the Mosaick Faith was a belief of the Divinity of the Mosaick Law and Religion upon the Authority of Moses the Christian Faith is a belief of the Divine institution of our Christian Religion upon the Authority of Christ. It is a taking upon his word all those things for truths of God which he has declared to us in Gods Name A belief begot in us by vertue of his Testimony that all his Doctrines are Gods Truths that all his Laws are Gods Precepts that all his promises are Gods Promises and that all his threats are Gods threatnings in sum that that whole Religion and Gospel which Christ has delivered to us in Gods Name is the very Religion and Word of God The belief of all this upon the Authority of Christ makes our Faith Christian and the good effects of it upon our hearts and lives make it justifying and saving For when by vertue of this Faith we truly Repent and sincerely obey which is the great condition as we have seen whereupon at the last day we must all be pardoned and justified Eternally it is a justifying as when by vertue of it we are saved and delivered from the dominion and service of our Sins which as the Angel hath assured us are those principal evils that Christ came to save us from it is a saving Faith This is the nature of our Christian knowledge and our Christian Faith And as for it now it is the very fundamental cause and natural spring of all our Christian service and obedience For it is because we believe Jesus to be the Lord because we know those Laws which he has given us and give credit to him when he tells us of the insupportable punishments which he will one day inflict for sin and of the glorious rewards which he will confer upon obedience It is by means of our knowledge and belief of all these in our minds I say that we serve and obey him in our outward actions It is our knowledge and belief that lets us see the reasonableness of his Precepts the power of his Assistances the glory of his Rewards and the terror of his Punishments and in all respects convinces us of the beauty and profit of Obedience And this sight and conviction in our minds cannot well miss of gaining our hearts and resolutions For the belief of his endless judgments will raise our fears the belief of his infinite rewards will quicken our hopes the belief of his inexpressible kindness will kindle our love and by all these our souls will be led Captive into eager desires and firm resolutions and be fully purposed to keep Gods Laws that so they may avoid that terrible Death which he threatens and attain those matchless joys which he promises to our Obedience And when once by means of this faith and knowledge Gods Laws have gain'd both our wills and passions which are the inward springs and causes of them they cannot fail of being obeyed in our works and actions which are produced by them But we shall quickly go on to perform what we resolve and to do what we desire and so in very deed fulfill and obey them Upon which account of our Christian Faith having so mighty an influence upon our Christian and obedient practice our obedience it self as being the effect of it and produced by it is call'd the obedience of Faith Rom. 16.26 The Righteousness which it exacts of us and cooperates to work in us the Righteousness of Faith Gal 5.5 Our Christian warfar or striving against Sin is called the good sight of Faith 1 Tim 6.12 And because in this contest our great succors which protect us and keep us from fainting and at last make us victorious are some points or promises of our Religious belief therefore it is stiled a shield and a breast-plate of Faith 1 Thess. 5.8 and S t John affirms plainly that this is the victory over the world even our Faith 1 Joh. 5.4 And for this reason it is because our Faith and knowledge are so powerful a cause and principle of our Obedience that God speaks so great things of them and has made such valuable promises to them He never intends to reward the Faith and knowledge of our minds further than they effect the obedience of our actions It is only when they are carryed on to this effect when they become an obedient knowledge and a working Faith that they confer a right to the promised reward and are available to our Salvation For when in the places mentioned or in any other God promises that he who knows Christ or believes in Christ shall live he speaks metonymically and means Faith and knowledge with this effect of a working service and obedience As for knowledge 't is plain that God accepts it no otherwise
THE MEASURES OF Christian Obedience OR A DISCOURSE SHEWING What Obedience is indispensably necessary to a Regenerate State and what Defects are consistent with it FOR The Promotion of Piety and the Peace of Troubled Consciences By JOHN KETTLEWELL Fellow of Lincoln-College in Oxford LONDON Printed by J. Macock for Robert Kettlewell at the Hand and Scepter over against S t Dunstan's Church in Fleetstreet MDCLXXXI TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE AND RIGHT REVEREND FATHER in GOD HENRY LORD BISHOP of LONDON And One of His Majesties Most Honourable Privy-Council c. MY LORD HAving published this Treatise to promote as much as in me lies an intire Practice of our Blessed Saviours Precepts and a comfortable expectation of his Rewards amongst us I have presumed to address it to Your Lordship hoping it will find Acceptance in Your Pious Judgment for the sake of those things which are contained in it and because Your Lordship is a most eminent Example as a Christian and a most discreetly zealous and diligent Promoter as a Bishop of the Subject of it In this Work my Great Design has been to press men to a conscientious regard of their whole Duty and to show them how much contentment and cheerfulness of Spirit they have reason to enjoy in the careful observance of it And these are ends so excellent as may well excuse the imperfections of any honest Endeavours which shall be put forth in order to them For what greater service can be done to our Blessed Lord than to exalt his Authority in the hearts and lives of all his Followers What greater honour can be brought to Religion than to promote a pious practice and thereupon a constant joy and cheerfulness in the minds of all its Professors And what more faithful kindness can be shown to the Souls of Men than cleerly to lay before them and most earnestly to press upon them such things as will give them peace and comfortable expectations of God's love and favour in this World and secure their eternal happiness in that which is to come And since I have directed all the Parts and every thing that I have said in the following Discourse to these ends I am willing to hope that notwithstanding all its defects I have therein done no unacceptable service to my Saviour and to all good men who will be much readier to encourage any honest tendences to this purpose than to reprove and throw them by for the sake of those weaknesses and that want of skill which shall be found in them In this hope my Lord I make bold to Present it to Your Lordship whose great and most exemplary Virtue will not I believe be averse from Patronizing that which tends even in a low degree to further and promote it I pray God preserve Your Lordship and continue You what You now are an Illustrious Pattern of all Private and Political Virtues to this Your Native Country That Religion may still be adorned and this distressed Church supported by that exemplariness of an upright Conversation that great Prudence and unwearied Diligence and undaunted Courage and most wise and steady Zeal which Your Lordship has always shown in Your High Station for the things of God committed to Your Care and which have rendred You greatly serviceable to Your Saviour and a most valuable Blessing to this poor Church and Nation This my Lord is the most hearty Prayer of Your Lordships in all humble and dutiful Observance JOHN KETTLEWELL THE PREFACE READER THE design of this ensuing Treatise is to increase the piety and promote the peace of all sincerely honest Consciences by stating plainly and fully what are the terms indispensably required of all Christian men to their eternal pardon and salvation In this I have endeavoured to be as clear and particular as possibly I could For I write upon a Subject wherein all men are infinitely concerned and therefore I have studied to write so as all might understand me I have carried on my Discourse all along with a particular eye to the benefit of the plain and unlearned Reader and suited things as far as their nature would bear and my skill would reach to ordinary and vulgar apprehensions And that they might have nothing to hinder or offend them in their progress I have been industriously careful through the Body of the whole Book to insert nothing of the learned languages but wheresoever any thing of that seemed fit to be added for the sake of others I have preserved the Text unmixt and cast it into the Margine In the whole Work my study has been to speak things useful and necessary to be known that the weight and worth of the matter might purchase a favourable censure for all the defects of Art which shall be found in the composure By what I have here offered upon this Subject I doubt not but it will appear that although our Religion is most strictly pure and nobly vertuous yet is it by no means melancholy or apt in its own nature to engender tormenting fears and endless scruples For the Terms of pardon and salvation are no intricate or uncertain but a fixt and easie thing They are neither over-hard for our active powers nor dark and inevident to our understandings so that by the assistance of God's Grace we may perform them and be very well assured of it when we do God exacts an honest but not an unerring obedience he bears with our weaknesses though not with our wilful failings and this is ground enough whereupon to secure peace and yet in no wise to supplant piety since although our Religion is so exactly holy as utterly to dash all wicked mens presuming hopes yet is it so indulgent still as to tempt no man who is honestly obedient to despair In pursuit of this Argument what piety is indispensably required and what failings shall be indulged that men may know when to hope and when to fear and neither foster a peace without piety nor phansie such a rigour in piety as leaves no room for peace I have proceeded as particularly and perspicuously as possibly I could being unwilling in a matter of this importance to leave my Reader either in doubt by an account which is too general and ambiguous or in darkness by such as is obscure And to give a prospect of the whole business I have laid things down in this order in five Books In the first Book I have shewn what the condition of happiness is in general viz. our obedience to the Laws of the Gospel it being that whereby at the last Day we must all be judged to live eternally And because some are tempted to think obedience needless when they read of pardon and hapiness promised to other things as Faith Repentance c. I have shewn particularly of those Speeches that they are metonymical and that life and mercy are not promised to them as they are separate from obedience but only as they effect and imply it But obedience being a
either we soften our sin by excuses or justifie it by arguments or overlook it by ignorance heedless inconsideration and forgetfulness Either we will act it rashly through the power of a strong lust and not consider it at all or else think of it only to lessen or defend it And when by the opposition of our Lusts to the perfecting and performing of our Duty our spiritual strengths are thus weakned and our lusts advanced when our passions rise and our minds plead against it then is the strife and there 's the toil and difficulty of obedience And because in this obedience of our works and actions there is so much difficulty therefore are most people so desirous to shift it off and so forward to take up with any thing which will save them the labour of it They perswade themselves that God will admit of easier terms and build their hopes upon cheaper services in particular upon these Four First A true belief or orthodox opinions Secondly An obedience of idle desires and ineffective wishes And if for all these they continue still to do what God forbids and to work disobedience then their hope is to be saved notwithstanding it because Thirdly Their falling is through the power of a great and overpowering temptation which they see and resist but cannot prevail over So that Fourthly Their transgression is with reluctance and unwillingness their service of Sin is an unwilling and a slavish service 1. The first false ground whereby men elude all the necessity of serving God with their strength or executive powers in outward works and operations is their confidence of being saved for a true belief or a right knowledge in religious matters and orthodox opinions They turn all Religion into a matter of study and speculation as if it required only a good head and a discerning judgment They make it a matter of skill but not of practice an exercise of wit and parts but not a rule of action For the faith which they expect should save them with some men goes no further than the mind and consists barely in right notions and apprehensions They take it to be nothing more but an understanding what Christ has said a being able to reason upon it and to argue for it and in their own minds approving and consenting to it And that not to all that Christ has revealed neither For the Precepts or Commands it overlooks and doth not meddle with the threatnings it either considers not at all or if it do it takes them not to be due to that whereunto God has fixed them viz. disobedience of practice but only to ignorance and unbelief But all that which their faith eyes and which their minds solely or at least principally approve of is the historical passages of Christs life and death the doctrinal points which he has told us concerning God or himself and the comfortable promises of the Gospel They believe what Christ is what he has done and suffered for us and what he has promised to us they think right in all the Religious Controversies that are on foot in the world joyning themselves with the Orthodox men and siding as they presume with the true Opinion they profess Christs Religion and are Members of his Church and adhere to the right party of Christians and to the purest Congregation and that they conclude is enough to bring them to Heaven But if any think as God be praised many do that God requires more than the bare service of our minds and right apprehensions yet even a great part of them fancy that all which he requires besides is only the obedience of their tongues and discourses If they believe with the mind and confess with the mouth although they are rebellious and reprobate in their practice they are satisfied of their Godly estate and presume that God is so too Their Religion is made up of lip-service for they think to content God by heavenly talk and pious conference by larding all their discourses with the Name of God and shreds of Scripture all their conversation is holy phrase and sanctified form of speaking and this they hope will attone for all the lewdness and disobedience of their lives and actions And if they proceed yet further to a Faith that reacheth beyond the mind and the tongue and think it necessary that it sink down from the head into the heart yet there they will allow God to expect no great matters They hope he will be well pleased although it summon not up all our Affections for his service if it produce in us these two easie passions which are raised without much adoe and may well be spared viz. a strong confidence and a warm zeal If to make it saving it must imply a joynt concurrence of our Affections it shall be only of these two It shall add hope to knowledge and be a belief that God will save sinners with a special hope and fancifull confidence that he will in particular save them It shall add Zeal to Orthodoxy a warm heart to a sound head and be no more but a maintaining of and stickling for right opinions and against erroneous and false ones with heat and fierceness Thus do men delude themselves into great confidences and vain expectations from a faith that is without fruit from an orthodox but empty knowledge which is void of all obedient practice But a knowledge and belief which is not more comprehensive in its nature nor has other effects than these they will find to their cost in the event of things is miserably delusive and vain It will serve to no other end but the heightning of their crimes and the encreasing of their condemnation For do but consider If we will believe and understand Christs Doctrines and his Promises but overlook or deny his Laws and Precepts what is this but instead of honour and service to affront and renounce him By picking and choosing at this rate we cast off his power of molding for us a Religion and fixing the terms of his own mercy and make to our selves a condition of our own salvation We follow him so far only as we please our selves but no further The compass of our belief it self is not bounded by his authority or measured according to his mind but our own For we understand and assent not to every thing that he has said but only to what we our selves like We refuse to take every thing upon his word and credit him in what he speaks no longer than it agrees with us If we believe him it is only where we matter not whether what he sayes be true or no but we either give no heed to him or flatly disbelieve him where we have any temptation His veracity and truth it self has no power over our very minds beyond what our own lusts and beloved sins will suffer it but the Devil and the World must be served in the first place by our Opinions and God must be forced to
this otherwise most offensive an acceptable service Is any thing that we can offer to him so pleasing as our obedience Is he more delighted when we follow our own counsel than when we follow his when we do our own than when we do his pleasure For all those Laws of the Gospel and instances of obedience which under this pretension we transgress are wayes of Gods own appointment they are a service of his own choosing a Religion that is most agreeable to his mind and fitted in all things according to his liking a rule that he has thought most absolute to direct our actions and most fit for us to walk by If then we would expâ—â—ss our concern for God our venerable esteem of his wiâ—dom our acquiescence in his choice our submission to his ordering our acknowledgement of his authority and our chearfull compliance with his pleasure let us do it by a religious observance of these Rules which are of his own prescribing Let us honour him in his own way by doing our duty and practising such things as he has made expressions of honour by making them instances of obedience For disobedience can serve no interest of God nothing that we can do being so effectual a reproach to all his Attributes as to disobey him Nor is the use of evil and unlawfull means in any wise a fitter expression of our care for Religion For what is there in Religion that can be honoured and advanced by disobedience Is there any thing in it so sacred as the Divine Laws and dare any man call that his care of them when he lays wast and plainly rejects them It is gross impudence for any man to pretend Piety in the breach of Duty and to cry up Religion whilst he is acting irreligiously he prides himself in the empty name when it is clear to all that he has lost the thing for as for Piety it self and true Religion by transgressing and trampling upon the Divine Laws he doth not further and defend but impiously and irreligiously destroys it It is not Religion then whatever men may vainly pretend that makes them run into the breach of Laws and contempt of Duty lest they should suffer in the profession of it For God and Religion owe them no thanks for such a course because he is not honoured nor it strengthned and preserved but ruined and destroyed by it But the true and real cause of such disobedience whereof God and Religion are only the colour and false pretence is plainly a great want of Religion and of the love of God and too great a love of the world and of mens own selves Men are hurried away by an unmortified love of pleasures honours and temporal interests and they have not Religion enough to restrain and over-rule them For these it is and not Religion which sufferings and persecuting times take from them and an ungovernable desire to preserve these which makes them so violent as that at such times no Laws of Religion can hold them When men set at nought and disparage Governours disobey Laws disturb the Publick Peace injure their Fellow-subjects and commit several other sinfull acts and irreligious violations of the Laws of Christ that they may keep off Persecution for the profession of the Christian Faith they shew plainly that they will follow Christ only in a thriving but not in a suffering Religion They will serve him no longer than he sets them uppermost and above their Brethren For rather than suffer any loss and fall into any dangers for their adherence to him they will leave him and his Laws to fend for themselves and flatly disobey him But when they do so it is shameless hypocrisie to pretend that all their transgressions and disobedience is still upon the Principle and from the Power of Religion since it is not Religion but a resolution to be uppermost not duty but ambition covetousness sensuality revenge or a nest of some other unmortified and reigning vices of like nature which makes them under pretence of a conscientious care for religious profession to destroy all religious practice This one would think is plain and evident to any man who can have the patience to consider it that True Religion can never be the cause of sin or make men irreligious and disobedient That must not for shame be called mens Religion but their Lust which makes them wicked and carries them on to transgress Gods Laws that are the chief and sovereign part of his Religion which who so keeps is a religious as whosoever breaks them is an ungodly and irreligious man This indeed is clear Doctrine and obvious to any common if it be withall a free and considerate understanding And it were scarce possible that any men should think otherwise had they not either by accicident hast or ill design taken up an odd notion of Religion altogether different from that which the Scriptures give and which all considerately religious men have of it For by Religion they mean only their adherence to the Doctrines and Opinions but not to the Laws and Precepts of the Gospel And when they talk of defending and maintaining of Religion they intend not a defence of Laws but of Notions not a maintenance of the practice of Christian Precepts but only of the profession of Christian Doctrines They are of the Religion which Christ reveals but not of that which he commands they will know and believe what he pleases but do what they please themselves They are only for a Religion of Orthodox Tenets but not of Vpright Practice and if thereby they can preserve men safe in thinking and professing well they fancy that God will not be offended with their use of any means though never so wicked and disobedient But this is a most gross mistake and a most dangerous Notion of Religion which is quite another thing than what this conceit doth represent it to be For First The prime part and matter of Religion is the practick part viz. the Laws and Precepts the Promises and Threatnings of the Gospel And agreeably thereto the prime business of all Religious men is an obedient practice and performance of them or a virtuous discharge of duty and a holy life This is that Religion whereby all of us must stand or fall and that great condition which as I have shewn we must for ever live or dye by When Christ comes to judgement sayes Saint Paul he will render to every man according to his deeds Rom. 2.6 And in that prospect of the last judgment which S t John tells us God vouchsafed him men were judged every one according to their works Rev. 20.13 This Religion of Obedience and a good Life is that which the Gospel is full of wherein every Chapter nay almost every verse of it instructs us and some way or other directs exhorts encourages and excites to And therefore as ever we would pass for Religious men in the Scripture Notion we must be carefull to live in
all Piety towards God by complying readily with all his Laws depending upon his Providence and resigning our selves up to his pleasure in all purity and soberness being free from all lust and intemperance all sinfull pleasures and covetous practices in all justice and charitableness doing right and keeping peace and shewing mercy towards all men This sayes S t James will pass for pure and undefiled Religion before God and the Father at the last day if in such instances as these we have expressed not our Opinions but our Obedience by visiting the fatherless and widows in their affliction and by keeping our selves unspotted from all filthiness and disobedience of the world But if any man pretends to be religious who is destitute of this obedience that mans religion is vain Jam. 1.26 27. Secondly Another great part and object of Religion is the Doctrines of the Gospel And agreeably another act or instance of Religious Service is Faith or Orthodox Belief And this is intended by God himself as a means to produce the former Faith being the great instrument in working out our obedience For this is that victory sayes S t John which makes us conquerors and overcometh the world even our Faith 1 Joh. 5.4 An obedient practice is all that a righteous faith aims at it is its end and perfection that which consummates and compleats it It being as S t James assures us by works which faith co-operates and concurs to that faith is made perfect Jam. 2.22 And this all the points of our Christian Faith are most admirably fitted to effect in us For in that epitome and compendious account of them whereinto they were contracted by the Apostles and which is usually called the Apostles Creed there is not any one purely speculative Article or point of idle notion and meer belief But every one is influential upon our practice and helps on our obedience as any man of competent skill and abilities may discern by running over the particulars These two then viz. Knowledge and Practice or Faith and Obedience take in the compass and integrate the nature of our Religion Obedience is the chief thing and first in Gods design and Faith or Knowledge is the great means which God has prescribed us whereby to compass and effect it So that Religion in that sense wherein the Scriptures use and God at the last day will reward it is the same as obedience to the Gospel proceeding from a belief of it or in Saint Paul's phrase an Obedient Faith or a Faith which worketh by Love Gal. 5.6 And now let any man who considers this bethink himself and tell me whether the transgression of Gods Laws can ever be called Religion in the Scripture-sense or whether it be possible for men to evidence themselves to be Religious by their disobedience For the making us obedient to Gods Laws is the great design and ruling part of all true and acceptable Religion and the belief and profession of Gods Truth is an exercise and instance of it that avails us only so far as it concurs to and effects this Religion of Obedience So that Religion is not preserved but lost by breach of Duty it is never strengthned by disobedient and sinfull means but is alwayes wasted and destroyed by them Let no man therefore ever dare to make Religion a cover for unlawfull Lusts or dream of protecting it from sufferings and persecutions this way For God will by no means endure such gross mockery and hypocritical pretensions as for men to feign piety in the breach of Duty but if they wickedly transgress his Laws and continue impenitently to disobey him let their Forms and Professions of Religion be what they will he will take severe and endless vengeance on them for their impious and irreligious disobedience If they are scandalized at the Cross that is if they fall off from religious and obedient walking into irreligious transgressions to prevent those crosses that in persecuting times are annexed to a religious practice and profession they are scandalized or offended in him The Cross is to them a stumbling-block and a rock of offence it makes them trip and turn out of their duty because they will disown their Lord and break all his Laws rather than undergo it And this is a most provoking sin and subjects men to a most dreadful punishment For as God will abundantly recompence any losses which befall us through the exercise of an obedient Religion and a pious conscience so will he also inflict such torments as infinitely surpass all those light and present advantages which we may at any time promise our selves from our politick disobedience For whosoever by sinfull means will seek in perillous and persecuting times such as those were to save his life in this world he shall certainly lose it for ever in the next world but whosoever shall lay down his life for Christs sake in taking up that cross which is laid upon a Christian profession and a Christian practice that same man shall save and encrease it eternally Luk. 9.23 24. So that no dangers in obedience can ever render it secure for any man to disobey But that which God indispensably exacts of us in perillous cases is this Fear not them which kill the body but after that is done have nothing more to fright you with being utterly unable to kill or so much as touch the soul but fear him who exacts obedience of you even at such times as your bodies are like to perish for it for he after he hath killed the body which is all that they can do is able eternally to destroy both body and soul in hell Mat. 10.28 No dangers then can make obedience cease to be our Duty nor any sufferings make it cease to be our Interest So that neither Religion nor Prudence will ever allow of sinfull means but every Religious yea every wise man must take up the Cross and patiently bear any sufferings that come upon him for Religion rather than use any breach of duty or unlawfull wayes either to prevent or remove it And this the Saints of God and Religious men alwayes did For no dangers or hazards no pains or sufferings in obedience could ever draw them to seek for shelter by disobeying David was tryed with hazards and persecutions of all sorts but neither sense of present nor fears of future evils could ever chase him from his duty or make him seek relief from iniquity and sin He could not be forced upon it by the most apparent dangers even of the most affecting loss the loss of life it self The wicked saith he have laid a snare for me yet I erred not from thy Precepts My soul is continually in my hand ready to be snatched out of it yet do I not forget thy Law Psal. 119.109 110. He was not grieved or frighted into it either by the pressure of his pains or by the number of his persecutors They had almost consumed me upon earth but