be a form of Godliness but 't is nothing to the life and power And where we see not this effect of Religion let the professor of it be never so high and glorious in his profession we may yet conclude that either his Religion is not good or that he only pretends and really hath it not This I take to be a consideration of great moment and great certainty viz. That Christian Religion aims at the bettering and perfecting of our natures For the things it commands relate either to worship or virtue The instances of external worship are prayer and praise both which are high acts of gratitude and justice and they fit us for divine blessings and keep us under a sense of God and prepare us for union with him which is the highest perfection of which the creature is capable Thus the outward acts of worship tend to our happiness and the inward do infinitely the same These are Faith and Love and Fear Faith in God supports and relieves us in all afflictions and distresses The love of him is a pleasure and solace to us in all losses and disappointments since he is an object most filling and satisfying and one that cannot be lost except we wilfully thrust him from us Fear of God hath no torment 'T is no slavish dread of his greatness and Power but a reverence of his perfections and a lothness to offend him and this disposeth us also for the communications of his grace and love Psal 85. 9. And this it doth by congruity and its own nature which is to be said likewise of the others So that they would make those happy that practise them whether they had been positively enjoyn'd or not And though no express rewards had been annext unto them There are other two acts of worship which Christianity requires which are instituted and positive and respect Christ our Lord They are the Sacraments Baptism and the Lords Supper both which are holy Rites of high signification and seals of an excellent Covenant between God and us assuring us of pardon of sins and all divine favours upon the conditions of our Faith and repentance and more firmly obliging us to holy obedience and dependance The only way in which we can be happy Whence we see briefly that all the parts of worship which Christianity binds upon us tend to our perfection and Felicity And all the vertues that it commands do the same both those that respect us in a personal capacity and those others that relate to us as members of Societies Thus humility recommended Mat. 5. 3. Meekness blest ver 5. purity ver 8. are vertues that accomplish our particular persons and make us happy in our selves For of Pride cometh Contention Prov. 13. 10. And a great part of our troubles arise from stomach and self-will which humility cures Meekness also takes away the occasion of the numerous mischiefs we run into through the rage and disorder of our passions and 't is in it self a great beauty and ornament since it ariseth from the due order and government of our faculties Purity which comprehends temperance of all sorts frees us from the tormenting importunity of those desires that drag us out of our selves and expose us to sin and folly and temptation and make us exceeding miserable besides which it is a perfection that renders us like unto God and the blest Spirits of the highest rank And Christian vertues do not only accomplish and make us happy in our particular persons but they do the same in our publique capacities They dispose us to a quiet obedience to our governours without murmuring and complaining and thereby the publique peace is secured and all good things else in that But there are other vertues that Christianity enjoyns which have a more direct tendency to the happiness of others as Justice Mat. 7. 12. Charity 1 Cor. 13. Loyalty Rom. 13. and all other publique vertues may I think be comprehended under these Where there is no Justice every man preys upon another and no mans property is safe Where Charity is wanting Jealousies hatreds envying back-bitings and cruelties abound which render the world deplorably unhappy Where there is not Loyalty and conscionable submission to Governours the publick is upon every occasion of commotion involv'd in infinite miseries and disasters So that all the precepts of our Religion are in their own nature proper instruments to make us happy and they had been methods of Felicity to be chosen by all reasonable creatures though they had never been required by so great and so sacred an Authority These things I have said because I could not choose but take this occasion to recommend the excellency and reasonableness of our Religion And I have done it but only in brief hints because it ariseth but upon a Corollary from my main subject and from this I infer further III. That Christianity is the height and perfection of morality They both tend to the real bettering and accomplishment of humane nature But the rules and measures of moral Philosophy were weak and imperfect till Christ Jesus came He confirmed and enforced all those precepts of vertue that were written upon our hearts and cleared them from many corruptions that were grown upon them through ignorance and vice the glosses of the Jews and false conceits of the Gentiles and he inforced them anew by his Authority and the knowledge he gave of divine aids and greater rewards and punishments than were understood before yea he enlarged them in some instances such as loving enemies and forgiving injuries Thus Christ Jesus taught morality viz. the way of living like men And the 5th Chapter of Matthew is an excellent Lecture of this kind So that to disparage morality is to disgrace Christianity it self and to vilifie one of the ends of Christs coming into the world For all Religion and all duties respect either God our neighbour or our selves and the duties that relate to these two last are acknowledg'd moral vertues The Apostle St. James counted these Moralities of visiting the Widow and Fatherless to be the pure Religion and undefiled Jam. 1. 17. and the Prophet Micah intimates that those moral vertues of Justice and mercy were some of the main things that God required of us Micah 6. 8. Our Saviour saith that the whole Law is summ'd up in these two to love God with all our souls and our neighbour as our selves Matth. 22. 13. which latter contains the duties of morality And that which the grace of God in the Gospel teacheth according to St. Paul is to live soberly righteously and godly in this present world Tit. 2. 11. There is no godliness without morality All the fruits of the Spirit reckon'd up Gal. 5. 22. are moral vertues And when we are commanded to grow in grace 2 Pet. 3. 18. vertue is partly understood For one branch of what is call'd Grace in us is moral vertue produced by divine aids Christian principles and incouragements though 't is
true the world is extended to those duties that relate immediately to God also By which we see how ignorantly and dangerously those people talk that disparage morality as a dull lame thing of no account or reckoning Upon this the Religion of the second Table is by too many neglected and the whole mystery of the new Godliness is lay'd in frequent hearing and devout seraphick talk luscious fancies new lights incomes manifestations in-dwellings sealings and such like Thus Antinomianism and all kinds of Fanaticism have made their way by the disparagement of morality and men have learnt to believe themselves the chosen pretious people while their hearts have been full of malice and bitterness and their hands of violence while they despised dominions and spake evil of dignities rebell'd against the Government destroyed publique peace and endeavoured to bring all into misery and confusions 'T is this diabolical project of dividing morality from Religion that hath given rise and occasion to all these villanies And while the Practisers of such things have assumed the name of the only Godly Godliness it self hath been brought into disgrace by them and Atheism incouraged to shew it self in open defiance to Religion Yea through the indiscretions and inconsiderateness of some preachers the fantastry and vain babble of others and the general disposition of the people to admire what makes a great shew and pretends to more than ordinary spirituality things are in many places come to that pass that those who teach Christian vertue and Religion in plainness and simplicity without senseless phrases and fantastick affectations shall be reckon'd for dry moralists and such as understand nothing of the life and power of Godliness Yea those people have been so long used to gibberish and canting that they cannot understand plain sense and vertue is become such a stranger to their ears that when they hear it spoken of in a Pulpit they count the preacher a broacher of new divinity and one that would teach the way to heaven by Philosophy And he escapes well if they do not say That he is an Atheist or that he would reconcile us to Gentilism and Heathen Worship The danger and vanity of which ignorant humour the contempt of morality is apparent in the whole scope of my Discourse and therefore I add no more concerning it here but proceed to another Inference which is IV. That Grace and the new nature make their way by degrees on the Soul for the difficulties will not be removed nor the corrupt nature subdued all at once Habits that grow by repeated acts time and continuance will not be expelled in a moment No man can become greatly evil or good on a sudden The Path of the just shines more and more to a perfect day Prov. 4. 18. We do not jump from darkness into full light We are not fully sanctified and converted in an instant The day begins in an insensible dawn and the Kingdom of heaven is like a grain of Mustard seed Mat. 13. 31. It doth not start up presently to the stature of a tree The Divine birth begins like the Natural in an imperfect embryo There are some seeds of Knowledge and Goodness that God hath sown in our natures these are excited by the Divine Grace and Spirit to convictions which proceed to purposes these to resolutions and thence we pass to abstinence from all gross sins and the performance of outward Duties and so at last by degrees to vigorous attempts for the destruction of evil habits and inclinations When Grace is arrived to this eminent growth 't is very visible as the Plant is when 't is above the ground But the beginnings of Conversion are not ordinarily perceived So that to catechize men about the punctual time and circumstances of their Conversion is an idle device and a great temptation to vanity and lying Who can tell the exact moment when the night ends and the dawn enters 'T is true indeed the passage from the excesses of Wickedness which begins in some extraordinary horrors and convictions is sometimes very notable but 't is not so in all or most The time of St. Paul's conversion was eminent but that change was from great contrarieties and miraculous and therefore 't is not to be drawn into instance Both the beginnings and minute progressions of Grace are usually undiscerned We cannot see the Grass just putting out of the earth or actually growing but yet we find that it doth both And Grace is better known in its fruits than in its rise By their Fruits ye shall know them saith our Saviour Mat. 12. 33. and the same way we may know our selves V. We see that there is an Animal as well as a Divine Religion A Religion that is but the effect and modification of complexion natural fear and self-love How far these will go we have seen and how short it will prove in the end The not noting this hath been the sad occasion of deceiving many Some observing great heats of zeal and devotion in the modern Pharisees take these to be the Saints and good people believing all the glorious things which they assume to themselves When others that know them to be envious and malitious unjust and covetous proud and ungovernable and cannot therefore look on them as such choice holy people are apt to affirm all to be hypocrisie and feigning In which sentences both are mistaken for want of knowing that there is a meer Animal Religion that will produce very specious and glorious effects So that though the Pharisee Prays vehemently and Fasts severely and talks much of the love of God and delights greatly in hearing and pious Discourse and will suffer all things for what he calls his Conscience yet he is not to be concluded a Saint from hence because the meer Animal Religion may put it self forth in all these expressions And though this Professor be a bad man proud and covetous malicious and censorious Sacrilegious and Rebellious yet we cannot thence be assured that he is an Hypocrite in one sense viz. such an one as feigns all that he pretends But we may believe that he is really so affected with Hearing and Praying and devout Company as he makes shew and yet for all this not alter our opinion of his being an evil man since the Animal Religion will go as far as the things in which he glories There is nothing whereby the common people are drawn more easily into the ways of Sects and Separations than by the observation of the zeal and devotion of those of the factions These they take to be Religion and the great matters of Godliness and those the religious and only godly people And so first they conceive a great opinion of them and then follow them whithersoever they lead For the generality of men are tempted into Schism and Parties not so much by the arguments of dissenters as by the opinion of their Godliness which opinion is grounded upon things which may arise from
HIS was that they may be perswaded to conform theirs unto it and though mens understandings are convinced already that Charity is their Duty yet there is but too much need to represent some of the vast heap of injunctions that make it so to incline their Wills I shall therefore briefly lay together a few of the chief instances of this kind that you may have the distincter sense of the reasons of your Duty and from them the most powerful motives to enforce it In order to this let us consider in short the Injunctions of Christ and the teachings of his Apostles Our Saviour urgeth it as his New Commandment John 13. 34. and inculcates it again under the obliging form of his Command John 15. 12. He makes it a distinguishing note of his Disciples John 13. 35. and enjoyns them to love their Enemies Mat. 5. 24. He mentions it as the great qualification of those on his Right hand that shall be received into his Kingdom Mat. 25. 34 35. and the want of it as the reason of the dreadful Curse pronounced upon those miserable ones on the Left at the solemn Judgement ver 41 42. St. Paul calls Love the fulfilling of the Law Rom. 13. 8 9 10. and sets it in the first place among the fruits of the Spirit Gal. 5. 22. yea reckons it five times over under other Names in the Catalogue viz. those of Peace Long-suffering Gentleness Goodness Meekness ver 22 23. He advanceth it above all Gifts and Graces 1 Cor. 13. above the Tongues of Men and Angels ver 1. and above Prophecie and Mysteries and Knowledge and Faith ver 2. And the beloved Disciple St. John who lay in the Bosom of his Dear Lord and seems to partake most of his Spirit is transported in the commendation of this Grace He tells us that God is love 1 John 4. 7. and repeats it again ver 16. He makes it an Argument of our being born of God and Knowing Him ver 7. and the want of this an evidence of not Knowing God ver 8. He counts it the mark of Discipleship aâ—d the contrary a sign of one that abideth in Death 1 John 3. 14. He calls him a Murtherer that hates another ver 15. and a Lyar if he pretends to Love God and loveth not his Brother 1 John 4. 20. In fine he out-speaks the greatest heights of Praise when he saith God is Love and he that loveth dwelleth in God and God in him 1 John 4. 16. I might represent further that we are commanded to Love without dissimulation Rom. 12. 9. to be kindly affectioned one towards another ver 10. to put on the Breast-plate of Faith and Love 1 Thess 5. 8. to be pitiful and courteous 1 Pet. 3. 8. to provoke one another to love and to good works Heb. 10. 24. to serve one another Gal. 5. 13. to love as Brethren 1 Pet. 3. 8. We are minded of Christ's New Commandment 1 Joh. 3. 23. and of the Message which was from the beginning That we should love one another ver 11. and are urged by the consideration of Gods loving us 1 John 4. 1. Thus the Apostles exhort and teach and they Pray that our Love may abound Phil. 1. 9. and 1 Thess 3. 12. and give solemn Thanks for it when they have found it 2 Thess 1. 3. And now considering the expresness of all these places I cannot see but that any Duty of Religion may be more easily evaded than this and those who can fansie themselves Christians and yet continue in the contrary Spirit and Practice may conceit themselves religious though they live in the constant commission of the greatest sins And if such can quiet their Consciences and shuffle from all these plain Recommendations and Injunctions they have found a way to escape all the Laws of God and may when they please become Christians without Christianity For the evidence I have suggested to prove the necessity of this Duty doth not consist in half Sentences and doubtful Phrases in fancied Analogies and far-fetcht Interpretations but in plain Commands and frequent Inculcations in earnest Intreaties and pressing Importunities in repeated Advices and passionate Commendations And those whom all these will not move are Incapable of being perswaded against their humour or their interest to any Duty of Religion So that though I see never so much eagerness for an Opinion or Heat for an indifferent Circumstance without the conscience of Christian Love I shall never call that forwardness for those little things Zeal or Religion Yea though those warm men should sacrifice their Lives to their beloved Trifles I should not think them Martyrs but fear rather that they went from one Fire to another and a Worse And in this I have the great Apostle to warrant me who saith Though I give my body to be burned and have not Charity it profiteth me nothing 1 Cor. 13. 3. Thus of the First Head the Necessity of the duty I Come to the II. the Extent Our Love ought 1. To be extended to all Mankind The more general it is the more Christian and the more like unto the Love of God who causeth his Sun to shine and his Rain to fall upon the Good and upon the Evil. And though our Arms be very short and the ordinary influence of our kindness and good will can reach but to a very few yet we may pray for all men and desire the good of all the world and in these we may be charitable without bounds But these are not all Love obligeth us to relieve the Needy and help the Distressed to visit the Sick and succour the Fatherless and Widows to strengthen the Weak and to confirm the Staggering and Doubting to encourage the Vertuous and to reprove the Faulty and in short to be ready in all the offices of Kindness that may promote the good of any man Spiritual or Temporal according to the utmost of our power and capacity The good man is Merciful to his Beast and the Christian ought to be Charitable to his Brother and his Neighbour and every man is our Brother and every one that Needs us is our Neighbour And so our Love ought to extend to all men universally without limitation though with this distinction II. That the more especial Objects of our Love ought to be those that agree with us in a common Faith Gal. 6. 10. that is All Christians as Christians and because such Whatever makes our Brother a Member of the Church Catholick that gives him a title to our nearer affections which ought to be as large as that Our Love must not be confin'd by names and petty agreements and the interests of Parties to the corners of a Sect but ought to reach as far as Christianity it self in the largest notion of it To love those that are of our Way Humour and Opinion is not Charity but Self-love 't is not for Christ's sake but our own To Love like Christians is to Love his Image
the Light is made to attend the darkness Contrary to the methods observ'd by Nature where the causes are ever more worthy than their effects from their first beginning downward Now as he is pleas'd to transcend and deviate from the tracts and capacities of natural Agents thereby to assert his Prerogative and render his omnipotency more conspicuous to the world So is he no less delighted to use the same recesses in displaying his Grace evermore ushering in his mercies with the Black Rod thereby inhansing and endearing our subsequent refreshments And though the goodness of those celestial inhabitants and the happiness of their condition need neither foyl nor artifice to render that or their acknowledgements of the Divine favour greater Yet however if we consider these things as a reward and incouragement of our obedience the proceeding thus is but regular and necessary that we should do our work before we receive our wages and finish our undertaking before we demand satisfaction Earnest and Security Heaven has vouchsaf'd us but to deposite the whole in hand this were not to encourage but bribe our Obedience This were to destroy Morality and turn Vertue into Nature Nor yet is the Divine goodness less communicable in this life but we are not so capable of receiving it For look as in Nature neither the single excellency of the Object or the Agent alone is sufficient to produce any notable effect but both are requir'd So likewise in Religion all the effects of the divine grace and bounty though that be free and infinite are limited and determin'd by our capacities and reception So that while our Appetites those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as they are call'd in Scripture that are to be the receptacles of all this Glory are either replenish'd with the vain and sinful objects of this Life or are straitned and contracted by the weakness and imperfection of this dull and lumpish matter they must be rid of the one and devested of the other and then we should be instantly happy You have seen the happiness of the Christian man there are indeed encouragements of another nature namely earthly blessings and temporal rewards our whole present interest unless it happen to interfere at any time with the other Religion has descended to the securing of these too and that not only by moral designation but by a proper and natural efficiency so that we cannot better prosecute our present interest than by the methods of Religion And by this gracious and happy complication of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 together they are made to become helpful and assisting to each other serving reciprocally as a means or motive either to other But this encouragement is neither proper nor adequate to Christianity since it may be as well pursu'd by natural as by divine rules better perhaps by diabolical arts than either nothing experimentally so inriching men as sordidness oppression and other violences and frauds The Devil in all likelihood giving the fairest prospect and most likely possession of the Kingdoms and glory of this world But they are things I have shewn you of a nature infinitely more sublime that Christianity propounds to its observers The rewards of our Religion exceeding as well the capacities of our Nature as all those other things To the attainment whereof as all vicious practices are extremely contrary so have all the others Philosophick transactions been miserably vain Some weak and glimmering light the Heathen had of these things which it is not certain whether they collected from some fragments of tradition or extracted from the principles of natural reason but which way ever it came it was so weak and imperfect as serv'd to shadow not help to discover but eclipse the transcendent excellency of that State till as the Great Apostle of the Gentiles saith Life and Immortality were brought to light by the Gospel And indeed without this all other proposals were unsuitable to its professors and disproportionate to the difficulty and severities of Religion Cicero saith None ought to be deem'd a vertuous or a just man that will be allur'd or affrighted from his duty by any advantage or disadvantage whatever But who trow ye would abide both these upon no other consideration than barely to have acted according to the sentiments of right Reason or in hope to acquire an insignificant fame of Vertue of which they could have no knowledge or remembrance after death And for this cause I judge the Stoicks more absurd in their morals than the Epicureans considering the principles that is upon which they built For 't is the premise and not the inference of theirs that 's so urg'd by the Apostle Let us eat and drink 1 Cor. 15. 32. But now the Christian Religion propounds such overtures to our Obedience and Patience as may justly and reasonably encourage us thereunto IV. For a Conclusion let us take in the Importance of that Phrase of dying in the Lord which relates primarily to Martyrdome but must also be extended to as many as live and dye in the faith of the Holy Jesus The result of all is this That we would so consider this happiness as every of our great interest that we forfeit not our propriety therein by a vicious and sinful life There 's nothing else can render it hazardous or doubtful but that which indeed in the very nature of the thing renders it impossible Let us not repeat Esau's folly sell our birth-right for a trifle and for the sake of some pitiful lust proscribe our selves out of our celestial inheritance Neither let us contemn our happiness for being feasible Were wilful poverty and certain Martyrdome part of our duty and inseparable appendages of our Religion there is tentation enough in the proposals to make us conflict with the greatest difficulties and overcome them When Christianity was thus attended and had nothing else to recommend it self to the world besides the reasonableness of its injunctions with what holy violence did those blessed Saints storm Heaven and with a strange eagerness pursue Martyrdome But now as if the fervour of our Devotion were only kindled and maintain'd by Antiperistasis Now I say the Impediments are remov'd and Religion is become a part of our Civil obedience and made necessary to our secular interests and guarded with a great many other temporal Phylacteries men are yet more hardly wrought upon to be Religious the consideration of a single lust shall be able to weigh down all And if any would seem to have a greater zeal for it than ordinary as if they were in love with the troubles of Religion and not the thing they suffer their heat to spend it self in little piques and contentions and about things of none or ill moment in maintaining of parties and opposing their Superiours and not in Devotion Obedience Charity Humility and the like as they ought In short Christians let the thoughts of this blessedness excite our affections Heaven-ward and quicken our endeavours Let it animate us against all difficulties and buoy us up above all adversities Let it cheer us in our duty quiet us in affliction and comfort us in death That so living unto Christ we may at last dye in him and in the end be for ever blessed And now to accommodate all to our present case It has pleas'd God to take away this extraordinary man for such considering all things we must needs allow him and because 't was some we what early I think of Dr. Hammond's notion of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Text the sooner the better the better for him no doubt I had once thought to have given you his Character but I am not asham'd to tell you I found me not able to do it worthy of him And calling to mind a saying of one of the Roman Historians I soon desisted from any further attempt of it who when he was reckoning up some of the great men of that age Virgil and Ovid Livie and Salust and going to commend them stops and concludes thus But of men of Eminency as their admiration is great so is their censure full of difficulty As to those Relations that are more nearly interessed in this solemnity I would beseech them to remember that all Indecency and excess of Grief for our deceased friends must needs reflect upon the memory of the dead or the discretion of the survivers God enable them to bear it And supply this loss to them by his Grace and Providence Let me say and to the Church of England by increasing the number of such men of no worse Learning Integrity and Courage that are able and dare defend her against the encroachments of Popery and Fanaticisme Now to God only wise be Glory through Jesus Christ for ever Amen FINIS 1 Ep. c. 2. v. 9. 2 Ep. ch 12. v. 4. Joh. 17. 3. Phil. 1. 23. 1 Tim. 1. 10.
from whom we are so called And that consists not in demure Looks and affected Phrases in melting Tones and mimick Gestures in Heats and Vehemence in Rapture and Ecstasie in systems of Opinion and scrupulosity about Nothing But in Faith and Patience Innocence and Integrity in Love to God and Charity to all the World in a modest sweetness and humble Deportment in a peaceable Spirit and readiness to obey God and Those He hath set over Us Where-ever These are there is the Image of our Lord and There ought to be our Love though the persons thus affected are Ignorant of many things and err in many though they differ from us in some Opinions we count Orthodox and walk not in the particular ways or Circumstances which We esteem Best And thus briefly of the Extent of the Duty we ought to Love ALL MEN but especially ALL Christians I descend to the Third general viz. III. The Excellency of Christian Love which I represent in the following particulars I. IT is the Image of God and of all the graces renders us most like our Maker For God is love and the Lover of men and his tender Mercies are over all his Works And the most sutable apprehension we can form of his Being is to look on him as an Omnipotent Omniscient Immutable Goodness And is it not a glorious Excellency that makes Men like the fountain of all perfection Our unhappy first Parents lost Paradise by aspiring to be like God in Knowledge and if we endeavour to be like him in Love we shall be in the way of gaining a better Paradise than they lost II. LOVE is the Spirit of Angels Glorified Souls and the best of Men. There is nothing by which the Angelical nature is so much distinguish'd from the Diabolical as Love and Goodness for the Devils have Spiritual and Immortal natures and great degrees of Power and Knowledge and those perhaps not much inferiour to what is to be found in some of the better Spirits so that the great difference is not in the excess of natural perfections which the Angels of Light have above those of Darkness but in this that the former abound in Love Sweetness and Benignity and the latter in Malice Cruelty and Revenge these are the very Image of Satan and Spirit of Hell Whereas all the Celestial Inhabitants live in the joyful exercise of uninterrupted Love and endearments Nor is that Love confined to the blessed and glorified Company but it sheds it self abroad upon the nether world and they are Ministring Spirits for our good Heb. 1. 14. They so far Love us that they can stoop from Heaven to serve us There is Joy there at the Conversion of a Sinner and no doubt there is Love to converted Saints and care and pity for all the rest of Men. For the spirits of the just made perfect are freed from their froward humours and pettish natures their mistaken Zeal and fondness of Opinions which straitned their Affections while they were on Earth and now they are inlarged by the vast improvements of their Knowledge and accomplishment of their Vertue by a fuller sense of Divine Love and of their Duty by the genius of their company and the imployment of the happy Place So that in Heaven all are truly Catholick in their Affections And the better any man is the more he is so upon Earth The good man makes not himself his center nor are his thoughts wholly engrost about his own concernments but he is carefully solicitous for the general benefit and never so much pleased as when he is made an instrument of Divine Goodness to promote the interests of his Christian brethren 'T was an high strain of Love in Moses exprest towards the Transgressing Israelites when he was content to be blotted out of Gods Book rather than that their Sin should not be blotted out Exod. 32. 32. And St. Paul was no less Zealously affectionate towards the Jews when he said he could wish himself accursed from Christ viz. separated from Christian communion as a most vile and abject person for their sakes Rom. 9. 3. These were spirits whom Religion and Divine Love had enlarged and the more any man advanceth in Christianity the nearer he approacheth to this generous heroick temper III. LOVE is an eminent branch of the Divine Life and Nature Love is of God and every one that Loveth is born of God saith the Apostle 1 John 4. 7 8. The Divine Nature in us is the Image of God Pourtray'd and lively drawn upon the regenerated Soul and I noted before that Love is the vital Image of our Maker 't is His spirit infused into us and growing in us and upon that account to be preferred before all Gifts and natural Perfections as St. Paul hath done it in the mentioned 1 Cor. 13. And the common Gifts of the Spirit differ from this special Grace as the Painters Picture doth from his Son His Counterfeit may indeed in a superficial appearance to the Eye resemble him more than his Child but yet it is but an empty shadow destitute and incapable of his Life and Nature So there are a sort of Gifts that have a spiritual appearance and may to those that see things at distance or have not their senses exercised seem more like the divine nature than this modest vertue But those that come near them and are better able to discern perceive that in themselves they are without the Divine Life and Motion and are meer Lifeless Pictures And here I dare say that the happiest faculty to Preach Plausibly and Pray with Fluency and Eloquence to Discourse Devoutly and readily to Interpret Scripture if it be not joyned with a benign and charitable spirit is no participation of the God-like life and nature nor indeed any more Divine than those common gifts and natural parts which those that think highly of themselves upon these accounts despise For very Evil men have been eminent in these accomplishments and Wicked Spirits are without question endowed with them and they are of themselves arguments of nothing but a faculty of Imitation a devotional Complexion and warm Imagination Whereas on the other hand Charity and Christian Love are good Evidence of a Renewed state and nature Our Saviour made it a Character Joh. 13. and the Apostle concludes from it 1 John 3. 14. By this we know that we are passed from death to life because we love the Brethren And if this be a Mark and St. John be not mistaken I doubt that some who are very gracious by many Signs of their own will want one of Christs to prove their comfortable presumption IV. LOVE is the bond and tye of Christian Communion How can two walk together except they are agreed The Church is a Body consisting of many Members which unless they Unite and send their mutual supplies one to another the whole is distempered and in the ready way to Death and Dissolution Now Charity is that vital Cement whereby they
are United and the Soul by which the common body lives that whereby the League between the members is preserved and health with it When this decays sad symptoms and mortal evils follow We see in Nature the great Fabrick of the World is maintained by the mutual Friendship and conspiracy of its parts which should they universally fall out and break the bond of Amity that is between them should they act their Antipathies upon each other yea should they but cease to serve one another for the general good the whole frame would be dissolved and all things shuffled into their old Chaos and Abyss And the greatest evils that have or can happen to the Church have been the effects of the Decay of Charity and those intestine Divisions that have grown up in it From these she hath always suffered more than from external persecutions The flames within have consumed her when those from without have only sindg'd her garments V. LOVE is the most Catholick grace and upon that account the most excellent since that which promotes the good of the whole is better than any private perfection for which reason things in nature will quit their particular interests when the common good so requireth as heavy bodies will ascend and light bodies descend to prevent a chasm and breach in Nature Now of all the divine vertues there is none of so large an influence as Love 't is a grace designed for the good of the community as the principle of self-Love is for the preservation of particular beings This stirs up our endeavours for the good of others and especially for the general good The Church receives no wound but Love feels the smart of it nor is any member of it afflicted but Love is grieved This is the very Spirit of our dear Lord who was touched with a feeling of our Infirmities And to these I add this last VI. LOVE commends Christianity to those without and cleanseth the Profession of it from many Spots it hath contracted within The generality of men are not able to judge of Religions themselves but usually reckon of them as they do of their Professors Whatever is excellent or else unworthy in a Votary of Religion redounds to the credit or disparagement of the Religion he hath adopted So that were the charity and goodness of Christianity transcribed into the lives of Christians it would ravish the eyes of all Beholders and out-shine all other Professions Men would more easily be perswaded to believe that Religion to be from God whose Professors they saw to be so God-like Love and goodness prevail where nothing else will these win and captivate the Soul And such conquests are better and more noble than either those of Arts or Arms which only bring the body under 'T is but small credit to any Religion to cut its way by the Sword or gain upon the world by Power or Policy That which opens it self a passage by its native loveliness and beauty is the most Illustrious and makes the surest and most generous Conquests And were Christendom but Christian in this regard and the Professors of the true Religion truly Religious that is abounding in that charity and goodness which Christianity enjoyns our Religion would spread its wings through the World and all contrary Professions would lie in the dust before it Whereas the Divisions and fatal feuds of Paganized degenerated Christendom are now the great partition-Wall between Us and the Heathen-World yea they are more particularly the great scandal of the Reformation and make us the scorn of Those of Rome And O that They that speak and pray much against the Beast would not prove instrumental to uphold his Throne We expect and hope for glorious times when the Man of Sin is faln and doubtless there shall be such But then the glory of those times consists not in external rule or dominion of the Church but in the Universal Restauration of it to its primitive Simplicity and Purity Then will the Church be Glorious indeed when all Christians shall unite upon the Foundation of an Holy Life and the joynt Profession of the few plain Fundamentals of Faith When they shall make real Goodness the Object of their affections towards each other and all Differences in Opinions and dispensable Practices the Objects of their mutual Forbearance When such times as these shall come then doth the Reign of Christ begin And this is the true and wish't Millennium Now we cannot expect those glorious days which are to Commence upon the Fall of Anti-christ till we see all Christians sincerely set upon Destroying what is Anti-christian in themselves Anti-christ will not be overthrown by our declaiming against Him and spitting the fire of Rage at the Infallible Chair It will be to better purpose for us to examine what of Anti-christianism remains in our selves And while Rancour and Bitterness Rage and Animosities upon the Account of Difference in smaller Opinions are in our Borders Anti-christ hath a Throne among us and there is nothing could be so Effectual a Blow at the Root of Anti-christianism as the exercise of Charity and Catholick Goodness And when we see these take place then may we Triumphantly sing forth BABYLON IS FALN I Come now Fourthly to the Means of attaining this excellent and Catholick Temper And I propose them by way of DIRECTION CONSIDERATION and CAUTION The DIRECTIONS are these I. Acknowledge worth in any man Whatever is good is from God and He is to be lov'd and owned in all things as well in the Paint upon the Butter-flies wing as in the glorious uniform lustre of the Sun as well in the composure of the little Ant as in the vast Bodies of the Whale or Elephant In the least Herb under our feet as well as in the Stupendous Fabrick of the Heavens over us And moral Perfections are to be acknowledg'd as well as these natural ones We are to love Vertue in an Heathen and whatever is Well or Worthy in those whose Apprehensions are most distant from our own And we must take care that we make not our Relish the Measure of Worth and Goodness Say not this is excellent because 't is agreeable to your particular Palates and that on the other hand is Vile and Loathsom because 't is distastful to your Gust and Genius There are various kinds and degrees of Excellency which differently affect the diversity of Tempers and Constitutions And at the best we are Imperfectly good and therefore cannot be the Measure of it Let us then be so Ingenuous as to own the vertue and the goodness that is in all parties and Opinions Let us commend and love it This will be a means to sweeten our Spirits and to remove the Animosities we are apt to conceive against the Persons of Dissenters and 't will ingage them on the other hand to a greater kindness for us and so Lessen our Distance and Disagreements There is a kind of Spirit among some which is so
consequence from it And thus also are our differences heightned and rendred almost incurable If then we have any kindness for Charity and Christian Love let us take care of such dis-ingenuous practices A true Catholick should not take any Name to himself but that of a Christian nor Reproach any other with any Style of Infamy He should not and cannot in Modesty or Justice charge his brother with any Opinion which he will not own though he never so clearly see that it may be concluded from what he believes and teacheth If men would learn to be thus Fair and Candid to each other our Differences would be reduced to a narrower Circle and there might be some hopes that Peace and Love would revive and flourish in our Borders IF any now should ask me Whether this Doctrine of Universal Love do not tend to Universal Toleration I should answer that thus far it doth viz. that all private persons should Tolerate each other and bear with their brothers Infirmities That every man should allow another that Liberty which he desires himself in things wherein the Laws of God and the Land have left him Free and permit him his own Opinion without Censure or Displeasure Such a Toleration I think Christianity requires in Private men But as to the Publick I do by no means think it Modest for Us to determine what the Government should do And in This case 't is as unfit as in Any whatsoever since this matter depends upon the Consideration of so many Things that 't is very Difficult to state the Bounds of Just Permission and Restraint Leaving That therefore to Their Prudence whom Providence hath called to determine in It I shall only say that so much Toleration as may consist with the Interests of Religion and Publick Safety may be Granted But such a Liberty as is prejudicial to any of These should not be expected For Christianity and all other Considerations oblige the Government to provide for the Common Good And were the Duty of Catholick Charity duly practised and Private Christians once perswaded to Tolerate one another it might then be safer for the Government to give a Larger publick Toleration than possibly now is fit In the mean while without troubling our selves with fansies about the Duty of our Governours Let us mind our Own especially this great one of Charity and Christian Love And if we mind this and practise sutably God will be Glorified and Religion Advanced the Church will be Edified and our Souls Comforted Government will be Established and the Peace of the world Promoted And the Peace of God which passeth all Understanding will keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus To whom with God the Father and God the Holy Ghost be ascribed all Glory and Worship henceforth and for ever SERMON III. Christian Loyalty Preach'd on the KING'S MARTYRDOME The Second Edition SERMON III. A FAST SERMON ON THE King's Martyrdom ROM XIII 2. And they that resist shall receive to themselves Damnation AS there are some Ages and Times that are more infested than others with unhappy influences from the Heavens and noxious reeks from the Earth which by poysoning the Air Roots and Herbs convey that pestilential venome into mens bodies that even wearies Death and gluts the Grave with its slaughters and was matter of our late miseries In like manner there are Times when poysonous Doctrines from the Pulpit and malign humours in the Populace infect the Publick Air and spread a fatal Contagion into mens Principles and Manners which flies like Infection and destroys like the Plague And if ever Times were under cross and unlucky Aspects if ever there were a publick Spirit of Phrensie and mischief in the World in any days since the first certainly this Lot is fallen upon ours wherein mens Principles and Practices contend which shall out-do the other in the degree of Evil And 't is hard to say which are worse Mens actions or opinions We are fallen into Times wherein among some 't is a piece of Gallantry to defie God and a kind of Wit to be an Atheist among others 't is Religion to be Humorous and Phantastick and Conscience to be Turbulent and Ungovernable Nor have mens Practices come short of the malignity of their Belief but if possible have out-done it Atheism hath not rested in the judgement but proceeded to all enormities and debauches And we had not been called to the sad solemnity of this Day if Rebellion had stopt in Opinion But alas the venome of the Asp hath swoln into deadly Tumors and those seditious Principles have shot their poysonous arrows into the vitals of the publick Body We yet feel the smart of those wounds and the Generations to come will wear the scars and the marks of our misery and our guilt What is past we may lament but cannot help What we may do and what we ought is to inform our selves better of the Duty we owe to God and those he hath appointed over us and to endeavour the suppressing those principles and affections which breathed the Plagues that destroyed the Nation and would again burn us up in hotter Flames than those And if that fatal Fire which so lately prey'd upon our Peace and our Properties our Religion and our Government our Persons and our Friends hath not yet convinced us of the evils and danger of Resistance yet there is another and a greater one as certain and more fatal threatned by the Apostle They that resist shall receive to themselves damnation Which words were spoken in the days of NERO who besides that he was an Heathen was a Persecutor and a Tyrant and the most infamous instance in Nature and yet this Monster is not excepted as to the Tribute of Obedience Whereas had this been said in the days of such a Prince as our CHARLES the First it might have been supposed that the vertue of the person claimed the reverence and subjection and not the character of the Prince And that 't was damnable to resist because he was Good not because he was Supream because he was a Nursing Father of the Church not because the Ruling Father of his Countrey 'T was an happy coincidence therefore to secure the Authority of the Magistrate which answers the greatest pretensions of Rebellion If Religion be pretended an Heathen must not be resisted If Tyranny 't is damnation to oppose a Nero. They that resist shall receive 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the wrath and judgement of God which implies the guilt and expresseth the danger Now to resist lawful Authority is so sinful and so dangerous principally upon this three-fold account RESISTANCE 1. Affronts the Authority of God 2. 'T is contrary to the Spirit of Religion And 3. Destructive to the Interest of Societies The two former express the Guilt and the latter both the Sin and the Punishment Of each in order 1. RESISTANCE is an affront to the authority of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Lord sets up Kings saith
appearances if they are no more lie on the other side is Bedlam madness I have thus represented to the desperate Scoffer whose Lusts have made him seriously believe that Religion is contemptible that the practice of Scoffing at it be it what it will is very absurd and dangerous But there is yet another sort of Scoffers to be treated with who are not yet come so far as to believe that Religion is a Fable and yet Scoff at the profession of it out of modishness and an humour of imitation They do not in their hearts deny Religion but yet they deride Those that practise according to it they are not content to laugh at the fopperies that many times call themselves by that sacred name but fleer also and spend the silly thing they think to be Wit upon those actions that are undoubtedly religious Such never enter into the consideration of the matter and therefore I shall endeavour to awaken them that they may know what they do by the things that follow 1. They Scoff at the Religious for acting according to Reason that is because they are men and not bruits Because they act like intelligent creatures and not like the Horse and Mule that have no understanding They deride them for passing right judgements and making a right choice for preferring God before the creature the soul before the body and eternity before time For choosing light before darkness beauty before deformity and life and happiness before the extreams of death and misery God hath given to all his creatures a principle to direct their actions Reason to Men and Sense and Appetite to Beasts so that to deride men for governing themselves by their reasons and not by inferiour principles is as absurd as if a man should laugh at the Ox for grazing freely in the field and not standing still to grow like a tree or at the bird because it flies in the air and doth not creep like the worm on the ground He that doth so is an Ideot and a Natural and the Scoffer acts at the same rate of folly 2. He derides men for living by the most Catholick rule of nature viz. that of Self-love and self-preservation He flouts them for seeking health and happiness riches honours and pleasures the truest and the best For endeavouring to obtain the favour of God the peace of Conscience and security of future and eternal well being For striving to avoid the snares of Satan the wrath of God and pains of Hell He laughs at them because they will not thrust their heads into the Fire and leap the precipice into the gulph of woe Because they will not be their own executioners and beat out their own brains 3. He Scoffs at the Religious because they act for the great ends of their Being God made all things for an end and man for a noble one the injoyment of himself for ever Now the exercises of Religion are the way to this end and to deride men for this is to laugh at them for acting and designing pertinently and nobly The Scoffer jeers the religious because he lives for greater ends than the Beasts and indeavours to be happier than his horses and his swine Because he will not be content only to eat and drink and revel and die 4. The Scoffer laughs at the Religious for aiming at the perfection of his nature God made man perfect but we have corrupted our selves Eccl. 7. 29. and debased our noble beings We have destroyed our Makers Image and deform'd our natures Now the design of Religion is to repair our ruines and to recover us to the integrity and perfection of our first selves to restore Light to the mind and vertue to the will and order to the affections to heal cleanse and beautifie the soul So that to Scoff at men for living by this is as if one should deride the sick for taking physick and the blind for using a guide As if a man should be scorn'd for washing after he had faln into a mire or for seeking cure for a foul Leprosie that had over-spread him 5. The scoffer derides the Religious for acting according to his own principles He saith there is a God and jeers those that worship Him he believes that God is infinitely amiable wise great and good and yet laughs at men for loving his beauty and believing his wisdom and trusting in his power and goodness He saith that Christ is the Saviour and derides those that are willing to be saved by Him that the Holy Ghost is the sanctifier and laughs at that holiness He teacheth and produceth He will tell you he believes there is an Heaven of eternal happiness and scorns those that seek it that there is an Hell of endless woe and torment and makes sport of all endeavours to avoid it 6. He derides men because they are true to their engagements and professions Because when they have promised to forsake the Devil and all his works they are not willing in practice to forsake God and all his Because when they say Thy will be done they don't resolve to do all they can to cross it Because after they have pray'd an hundred times Incline our hearts to keep thy Laws they do not set themselves every day to break them At such extravagant rates as these doth he act that retains the belief of Religion and scoffs at the practice of it And O that they were wise and would consider this who so far forget God and the Reasonable natures he hath given them I shall now II. conclude with some Directions and Rules of caution for security against this grievous folly And 1. Let us be in earnest in Religion endeavouring to understand what we profess to believe what we understand and to practise what we believe And then we shall feel such a sense of Religion on our souls as will beget the highest reverence to it and effectually secure us from any such impiety For 't is ignorance infidelity and an evil life that are the great causes of mens contempt of Religion 2. Let us take care that we place not Religion in uncertain opinions and vain trifles Mens superstitious fondness of such hath expos'd Christianity to much scorn and derision while its enemies will not or can not distinguish between Religion it self and those fopperies that pretend unto it This hath been a main ground of most of the contempt that is upon it at this day There is nothing in substantial naked Religion that can afford the least just occasion for laughter or malicious sport it being in it self the most reasonable venerable thing in the world Let us take care then that we mingle not any thing that is ridiculous with it 3. When we deride the vanities of errour and superstition let us be cautious lest we give incouragement or ground to others by it to Scoff at Religion it self and consider that the Lusts of men are ready to catch at any occasion to abuse and vilifie their
Education is as handsome and ingenuous and I know not why the parts of the Clergy should not be equal to those of other ways of breeding So that we might pass well enough in the world and for ought I know might meet tolerable reception in it were it not that God hath honour'd us with the dignity of being his immediate Servants and hath employ'd us in the affairs of Souls But for this I can see no cause why we should not be as capable of the qualities that procure respect as others that have a competent measure of it And therefore upon the whole matter I must say that we are so far from having honour for our office and our work sake that we are lessened by them and if a Minister meet respective entertainment in the world the kindness is extorted by some personal advantages he owns and not given him for his character and Function no he 's taken down and is so much less in consideration of it So that God himself is affronted and Religion vilified by the excessive unreasonable contempt that is put upon the dispensers of his Truths and Laws And 't is pity that our concernment in this matter will not permit us without incurring more reproach roundly to reprove this indignity to our Lord and theirs who hath sent us in the most important errand to them But alas all we can do without the loud imputation of Preaching up our selves is to bear our Reproach in silence and to mourn in secret for that horrid Atheism and Scorn of all Religion or of the best which is the occasion of it and certainly where there is contempt of the Priesthood above board there is disvalue of Religion under it disrespect to one doth suppose and will soon produce irreverence to the other Upon the whole we see how great reason we have to be cautious that we contribute not to the contempt that is on Religion and our selves and justifie this impious barbarous Age in it And there is no better advice can be given to secure us from it than that of St. Paul to Timothy 1 Tim. 4. 16. Take heed unto thy self and to the doctrine It concerns us first to take heed of our selves to our Lives and Conversations We have many observers whose malice makes them critical and curious They lay in wait for our haltings and are glad at heart when they have caught an opportunity to revile us we are encompast on all hands by those envious pryers by the debauch'd on the one side and the Schismatical on the other The roaring Lyon is before us and the wily Serpent in the next ambush one would fain have an occasion from our miscarriages to tear and violate the honour of all Religion and the other to spit its venome against that which we profess It behoves us therefore to beware and to walk circumspectly not as fools but as wise because the daies are so evil In order hereunto I humbly recommend these Cautions in paticular that we take care not to be found guilty of 1. Pharisaism 2. Immorality or 3. Negligence in our calling 1. Pharisaick righteousness and Phantastick heights of zeal beget great respects and venerations among the vulgar but contempt among those of better-understanding and there is nothing whereby Religion hath been more expos'd in the present Age than this Plain unaffected righteousness and sincerity is accountable in all times and hath still reputation among the most knowing but the flanting shews of the Pharisee are despised assoon as they are understood Our Righteousness then must exceed his not in pomp and appearance but in reality and sincere practice There is no one that understands the nature of Religion the constitution of our Church and the temper of the Age but knows it to be the present interest both of Church and Religion that Pharisaism which is the general humour that runs through all the Proud Sects should be discountenanc'd and detected and therefore we should take heed that we do not encourage the spreading vanity by any conformity unto it Indeed there is no other way lesenow to make us popular and to Crown us with the applauses of the people and those who affect that sort of glory and reputation are under great temptation to square their discourse and lives according to those vain models but those Ministers deserve to be despis'd that are possest by that low spirited ambition and do not prefer the pleasing God and Conscience and the few wise men before the pacifying the humours and receiving the caresses and applauses of ignorant and giddy Phantasticks and there are no sort of men worse enemies to this Church than these who while they pretend to be of it promote this spirit and humour that destroyes it 2. We ought on this as on all accounts else to shun all Immoralities of practice Vice makes any one contemptible among good men and us despicable among all The worst have an abhorrence of Debauchery or any degree of Prophaneness in the Clergy The best things degenerated are worst 'T is true live we how we will the malicious world will find accusations against us but we must take care we do not justifie their reproaches Though as things are in the present Age we are disabled from doing much to promote Religion by our Doctrine yet we may disserve it much by our lives The best that we can say doth but little good but the least evil that we do is cause of great hurt and mischief Men are hardned by it in their Contempt of Religion and we are made incapable of doing it or them any considerable service Or if we do nothing that is morally evil yet such is the world now that advantage will be taken of the least appearance every thing shall be urg'd against us that the wit of malice can make criminal And therefore it exceedingly concerns us to heed the Rule of the Apostle Avoid all appearances of evil 1 Thes 5. 22. we should take care not to come within the shadow of it We live in an Age in which 't is not enough for a Clergy-man to be innocent there is much wisdom and prudence necessary to keep that from having a stain upon it And though we be as harmless as Doves yet we shall not be thought to be so except we are as wise as Serpents Men were never more careless of their own conversations and never more exact observers and censurers of ours so that nothing will secure us in this Age from the tongues set on fire of Hell our only course is to be as much as we can out of their way And as far as our profession will give leave to draw our selves up into privacy and retirement For the Sea is too rough for us to be abroad upon it The summ is 'T is not possible for us to avoid contempt but we may avoid being accessary unto it if we take care that our Religion be not Pharisaical nor our practice immoral in reality or
appearance Not that it is sufficient for a Minister of the Gospel to be thus negatively righteous no besides other considerations we have a great charge upon us which will require a very active piety And therefore 3. We must take heed also that we are not negligent in the great business of our noble Calling That business is so worthy and so necessary that it requires the chief of our thoughts the flower of our time and the vigour of our endeavours to bestow less upon it is to neglect it and every neglect of that deserves a degree of contempt upon our selves Give thy self wholly to these things was the instruction of the Apostle 1 Tim. 4. 15. and our whole is little enough for who is sufficient for these things 2 Cor. 2. 16. and when we have done all we are unprofitable Servants Luke 17. 10. 'T is little we can do God knows to make the world wiser or better it is too wise in conceit to be taught and too bad in practice to be amended by us However we must labour and ply the Oar though the tyde be never so strong against us 'T is part of the patience of the Gospel to work even there where our labour for the present is in vain It will not be so always 1 Cor. 15. no it shall be rewarded by plentiful Glory hereafter though it were not incouraged by any visible success here Those rewards we publish and expect and for us to do the work of the Lord negligently is to put a slight upon them and upon Religion our selves and to invite contempt from others And there is none certainly that more justly deserves the extreamest degrees of it than he that loiters in the Lords Vineyard and is negligent in the Ministry of Souls I have exprest these cautions in a negative way but hope it will be understood that the positive duties are included When I say we are not to be Pharisaical in our Religion I intend also that we are to be very plain sober and sincere in it When I caution against immoral lives I imply that ours ought to be very virtuous and religious When I give the rule against negligence I have taken care to be understood to mean likewise that the greatest sedulity and diligence is our duty To have run out into full Comments upon these would have taken up more than my whole time I descend to the Second Head in the Apostle's Rule 2. We ought to take heed to our Doctrine if we would not deserve contempt We live in a ticklish Age for this also an Age of itching ears and curious palats men were never so eritical upon their teaching though 't is likewise sadly true that they were never so little careful to practise according to it In the variety and oppositions of opinions phancies humours and capacities an Angel from Heaven could not please all and as things are those that are not pleased with the Doctrine will contemn the Preacher So that avoid contempt we cannot but we shall not deserve it if our Doctrine be guided by our end and that is the Glory of God in the Salvation of those that hear us The business of Preaching is to instruct men in what they are to believe and do in order to their serving God and being happy This is the great Rule this the measure And the Discourses that are not directed by it may be witty Orations and learned entertainments but they are not good Sermons For every thing is to be judg'd by its fitness for its end If our Doctrines and publique instructions are squar'd by that we shall approve our selves unto God and Conscience though vain and phantastick men despise us and so we are to speak not as pleasing men but God 1 Thes 2. 4. There is nothing by which some Preachers have more exposed Religion and themselves than by propounding other ends and such mean ones as the gaining the reputation of being Witty Eloquent or Learned for when they miss their aim as they do always with the wise they fall under extream contempt with them The affectations of words and Metaphors and Cadencies andâ— ends of Greek and Latin are now the scorn oâ— the judicious and as much despis'd and almost as generally as they deserve They are banifh'd from conversation and are not endured in common matters for shame then let us not retain them in our Pulpits and defile sacred Subjects with them Let us leave those sorts of fooling when none but the ignorant can be deceiv'd by them into a good opinion of us and by their use we shall deceive our selves into the derision and Contempt of all that have either wit or judgement and which is infinitely worse into the displeasure and wrath of God 1. Our business in Preaching is the greatest and most important and therefore we should be very grave and serious in it to be slight flashy or affected in so solemn an affair is to shew our selves vain and contemptible triflers 2. We are to instruct all sorts the most ignorant as well as the more knowing in the matters of Faith and practice and therefore should design and endeavour to be as plain as we can both in our Doctrines and Expressions avoiding hard words and senseless phrases and speaking in the proper natural easie way which is most profitable for the ignorant and most acceptable with the wise 3. And for the accommodation of the memories as well as the understandings of the generality of hearers our Discourses should be in clear facile and distinct methods not involv'd in confusions nor spun out into nice divisions or numerous particulars 4. And because the main work is to perswade and direct an holy life our Sermons should mostly be practical and affectionate Not but that we may labour to explain establish and defend the great principles of Faith and practice especially in an Age in which such Shipwrack is made of both but then we must take care that those we teach are such indeed and that we vent not speculative notions and opinions as fundamentals of Religion We are not to be concern'd for any Doctrines in our Pulpits but for the great and certain Articles of Faith and Life As for our opinions this is not the place for them For it is not our business to make people in all points Orthodox and Knowing but to endeavour that they may be sincere and good which is wisdom to salvation These I take to be proper measures for Preaching and if he that directs himself by them be despised for his Doctrine he will have this comfort that the contempt he suffers is none of his fault I have done with what I intended for my Brethren of the Clergy namely for the younger sort for I presume not to instruct the elder and graver men I Am II. to apply the advice of this general Use to the people who yet profess themselves of our Church You see the contempt that is upon it and I beseech you
Doctrines both Christ and his Apostles continually appealed Here is the firm reasonable Foundation of the Christian certainty The truths we believed are confirmed by Miracles than which there can be no greater evidence But now the Roman Church destroys this ground of certainty by a multitude of lying wonders which they impudently obtrude upon the belief of the people for proof and confirmation of their false and corrupt Religion the immediate consequence of which is a suspicion thereby brought upon the true Miracles and here is way made for Scepticism and uncertainty in the greatest and most Sacred Christian Doctrines And besides the Church of Rome having introduced among these many doubtful uncertain and many certainly false opinions and imposed them upon the faith of its votaries under the same obligations as it doth the most fundamental Articles what can be the consequence but that those who discover the errour or uncertainty of some of those pretended propositions of Faith should doubt all the rest And indeed since the main assurance is placed in the Infallibility of that Church for which there is so no reason and so much plain evidence to the contrary Since themselves cannot tell where that boasted Infallibility is whether in Pope or Council if we should allow them any such it follows that their Faith is precarious and hath no foundation at all In like manner the Sects among us resolve all their assurance either into a bare belief or the testimony of a private Spirit for their ground of crediting the Scriptures is but this Testimony and consequently whatever they receive from hence bottoms here The Papists believe the Scripture on the Testimony of the Church and these believe them on the Testimony of the Spirit that is in earnest the suggestions and resolutions of their own viz. they believe because they will believe and they find themselves inclin'd unto it And upon the same reason when the imagination and humour alters they may cease to believe or believe the contrary And there is not any thing in the world more various and uncertain than the suggestions and impulses of a private Spirit Besides the Sects also have vastly multiplied Articles of Faith and made all their private opinions sacred calling them Gospel truths precious truths saving truths and the like when they are but uncertainties at the best and usually false and sensless imaginations by which way also they expose the whole body of Christian Principles to suspicion and so weaken the Faith of some and destroy the Faith of others But the Church of England secures the certainty of our Faith by resolving it into the Scriptures the true seats of Infallibility and the belief of that into the Testimony of the Spirit in the true sense viz. that Testimony that God gave by his Spirit to Christ and his Apostles in those miraculous works he enabled them to perform They did not only bear witness of themselves that as our Saviour argues with the Jews Luk. 11. 48. would not have signified much The Father bore witness with them John 15. 8. and the works they performed by his power were the sure testimony Believe me for the works sake saith our Saviour Here is the ground of certainty And the Church of England entertains no Articles of Faith but those principles that have been so confirm'd that is none but what are evidently contain'd in the Holy Scriptures Whereas the Roman Church to mention no other have made the absurd Doctrine of Transubstantiation sacred though it is not only not contained in Scripture but contrary to the reason and even to the sound senses of mankind And if neither reason nor so much as our senses may be believ'd what assurance can we have of any thing A ground is here laid for everlasting Scepticism and uncertainty And the Sects have laid the same in their numerous silly tenents that are contrary to some of the most fundamental principles of Reason Nothing of which can with any shew be objected against this Church 6. The Faith delivered to the Saints was Catholick 'T was deliver'd to all the Saints entertain'd by all and was not only the opinion and belief of a prevailing Faction or of particular men in Corners The Commission given the Disciples was to go and teach all Nations and to preach the Gospel to every creature and accordingly it was widely diffused and all that profest the name of Christ were instructed in his Faith and Religion in all the articles and duties of it that were essential and necessary In these they joyn'd in holy love and communion till Sects came among them that introduced damnable Heresies contrary to the doctrine they had received These divided from the Unity of the pure Catholick Church and separated themselves from it gathering into select companies of their own under pretence of more Truth and Holiness After this manner the Church of Rome which had for some ages been eminent in the Catholick Church did at last corrupt and introduce divers unsound doctrines and usages unknown to the Ancient Catholicks and being great and powerful it assumed the name of the Catholick Church to it self and condemn'd all other Christians as Hereticks when it was it self but a grand Sect against whose depraved doctrines and ways there was a Church in all ages that did protest For the Greek Churches which are of as large extent as theirs never assented to them and divers other Christians in all times bore Testimony against those errours and depravations This Sect was large and numerous indeed but 't is not the number but the principles make the Catholick Principles conformable to those that were deliver'd to the Saints From these they have departed And the lesser Sects among us have done the same by the many vain additions that they have made to the Faith and their unjust Separation from that Church which retains the whole body of Catholick Doctrines and main Practices without the mixture of any thing Heretical or unlawful A Church that doth not damn all the world besides her own members as the Roman Church and divers of the Sects do but extends her Charity to all Christians though many of them are under great mistakes and so is truly Catholick both in her Principles and Affections I mean the Church of England as now established by Law which God preserve in its purity Amen FINIS A SERMON Preached at the FUNERAL OF M r. Jos Glanvil Late Rector of BATH and Chaplain in Ordinary to His Majesty Who dyed at his Rectory of Bath the fourth of November 1680. and was Buried there the Ninth of the same Month. By Jos Pleydell Arch-Deacon of Chichester LONDON Printed for Henry Mortlock at the Sign of the Phoenix in St. Pauls Church-yard and the White Hart in Westminster-Hall 1681. REVEL XIV Ver. 13. And I heard a voice from Heaven saying unto me Write Blessed are the dead which dye in the Lord from henceforth yea saith the Spirit that they may rest from their
would suffer a contradiction and become imperfect And that not only for the future but the present by introducing such passions as must needs debase and allay the highest delights So that by being thus secur'd in the possession of our happiness we receive thereby an unspeakable addition to it II. Proceed we next to shew you the Security and Evidence upon which this happiness is promis'd and asserted and whether it bear any proportion to our duty and the Rewards of it for so we are allow'd to call them though not upon the account of merit yet by reason of their necessary connexion with dependance upon and that kind such a one as 't is of proportion they bear to each other There is a two-fold evidence God Almighty has given us for the strengthning of our hope and confirming of our faith in the belief and expectation of the other World The first moral grounded upon the testimony of the Spirit the other I call natural and is grounded in the things themselves 1. The first evidence of our future bliss is the testimony of the Spirit express in the Text Yea saith the Spirit But then we must have a care of what kind of Testimony of the Spirit we understand it for understand it as 't is vulgarly taken for some act or operation wrought in and upon us besides the Enthusiasm of it fain would I be satisfy'd what validity can there be in such a testimony as it self needs something else to confirm it for so this testimony of the Spirit is to be tryed by its concordance and agreement to the word of God nor do I know any other way to distinguish it from a motion or suggestion of the Devil 's besides And though to err thus in this single instance may not be very pernicious for I am not mighty solicitous how it was wrought so there be a firm perswasion in us of this truth yet in other cases I know how dangerous it is nor is it safe in this for it leaves a passage open and unguarded to down-right Atheism By the testimony of the Spirit therefore I understand the word of God or the Scriptures as made known and prov'd to us to be deriv'd from this Divine Spirit which we may call the outward testimony thereof for though St. John knew this by the other way as most certainly all others did who received any Revelation yet never was any other than the person himself assur'd that way Nor do I make degrees of more or less certainty in the way or manner of the Spirit 's revealing a thing for the Apostles were as well assur'd of the infallibility of their doctrine before they wrought any miracles as we are by them but we were not nor could be so But this notwithstanding in respect of us we must admit of such degrees for no body I hope will be so blasphemous to equal such private dictates they have in their own breast to the divine authority of the Holy Scriptures So then I make this to be the moral evidence of future happiness God hath said it in his word And this I call a moral certainty not in opposition to divine and infallible as they are sometimes contradistinguish'd but only to natural for we can desire no greater evidence we cannot have a higher confirmation of any truth than the veracity of Heaven to attest it I do not know any proposition that carries greater self-evidence than this That God ought to be believ'd in what he says and therefore though we may question the truth of the Revelation 't is impossible to do so of any thing we acknowledge to be so revealed So that the stress of this point lyes upon that great and necessary praecognition in our Religion namely the Divine authority of the Holy Scriptures Upon which postulate if we proceed there is as great certainty of the truth of this proposition That good men shall enjoy eternal happiness after this life as if we should again hear that Daughter of voice and God himself should sensibly attest it 2. But there is another ground or evidence of our future happiness which I call natural because it depends upon that Intrinsick Relation and consent there is between goodness and it the difference between them being only in degree like the dawning of the Morning to the lustre of the Noon For what is it to be happy but to be united to God and what does unite us to God but Love and what is the love of God but Religion And if you remove but all inward imperfections and all outward impediments there remains no difference at all So that Virtue and Piety do not only dispose and prepare us for Heaven and Salvation but we thereby receive and experience the very beginnings and anticipations of it And though in respect of the mutability of our will and affections toward God and goodness in this world we cannot be infallibly assur'd of it as to our own particulars because every alteration in the one produceth a like answerable effect as to the other Yet in the general we may even from hence be very well assur'd hereof because there is nothing more requir'd to the compleating of our essential happiness than an advance and progression in the same vertuous tract And however it looks in a Divine if we will speak rationally to the thing we must allow the love and hatred of God to be the true natural causes of our salvation and damnation even of their very eternity it being naturally impossible to be other than happy while we love God and contrariwise if we hate him and this is the only instant cause of its continuation through all the durations of Eternity And to remove your astonishment see how in this lower world many stupendous and admirable works are daily produc'd which were mean and unnoted while they lay hid and contain'd in the seminal beginnings after the same wonderful manner by divers minute gradations does this divine Creature grow up from its first formation in our trembling and unstable desires to the stature and perfection of Everlasting Glory And yet there remains less doubt if we take in the Consideration of the Divine nature How else will you vindicate the Justice of God in all the odd and confused occurrences of this World Where 's your infinite goodness and bounty that suffers its servants always to be neglected what will become of an almighty and omniscient Justice if sinners are never call'd to an accompt Or one or t'other cannot be III. 'T is true indeed the compleating of this bliss which brings us to our next head is neither promis'd nor to be had in this life 'T is at Death these rewards become due and payable Dicique beatus Ante obitum nemo supremáque funera possit It has been the constant method of Divine providence to cause the most excellent things to follow and arise from the most uncouth and unlikely Thus in the Creation order springs from confusion and
our Natures almost universally rise against as many Bestialities and some horrid Cruelties and all men except Monsters in Humane form are disposed to some Vertues such as Love to Children and Kindness to Friends and Benefactors All this I must confess and say because Experience constrains me and I do not know why Systematick Notions should sway more than that But notwithstanding these last concessions 't is evident enough that our Natures are much vitiated and depraved and this makes our business in the way of Religion difficult For our work is to cleanse our Natures and to destroy those Evil Inclinations to crucifie the Old Man Rom. 6. 6. and to purge out the old Leven 1 Cor. 5. 7. This is Religion and the Way of Happiness which must needs be very difficult and uneasie For the vices of Inclination are very dear and grateful to us They are our Right Hands and our Right Eyes and esteemed as our Selves So that to cut off and pluck out these and to bid defiance to and wage War against our selves to destroy the first-born of our Natures and to lop off our own Limbs This cannot but be very Irksome and Displeasant Imployment and this is one chief business and a considerable thing that makes Religion difficult II. Another Difficulty ariseth from the Influence of the Senses We are Creatures of sense and sensible things do most powerfully move us we are born Children and live at first the life of Beasts That Age receives deep Impressions and those are made by the senses whose Interest grows strong and establisht in us before we come to the use of Reason and after we have arrived to the exercise of that sensible objects still possess our Affections and sway our Wills and fill our Imaginations and influence our Understandings so that we love and hate we desire and choose we fancy and we discourse according to those Impressions and hence it is that we are enamour'd of Trifles and fly from our Happiness and pursue Vexation and embrace Misery and imagine Perversely and reason Childishly for the influence of the Body and its Senses are the chief Fountains of Sin and Folly and Temptation Upon which accounts it was that the Platonical Philosophers declaim'd so earnestly against the Body and ascrib'd all Evils and Mischief to it calling vice 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 corporeae Pestes material Evils and bodily Plagues And the Apostle that understood it better calls Sin by the name of Flesh Gal. 5. 17. Works of the Flesh Gal. 5. 19. Law of the Members Rom. 7. 23. and cries out upon the Body of this Death Rom. 7. 24. And now this is our natural Condition a state subject to the prevalent influences of Sense and by this means to Sin and Temptation and 't is our Work in Religion to mortifie the Body Rom. 8. 13. and to cease from making provision for the flesh Rom. 13. 14. and from fulfilling the Lusts thereof Gal. 5. 14. To render our selves dead to the prevalent life of Sense and Sin Rom. 6. 8. and 11. 5. and to arise to a new Life Rom. 6. 4. The Life of Righteousness and Faith Hab. 2. 4. A Life that hath other Principles and other Pleasures other Objects and other Ends and such as neither Eye hath seen nor Ear heard nor any of the Senses perceived Yea this is a Life that is exercised in contradiction to the Judgements of sense It s Joy is Tribulation Jam. 1. 2. It s Glory Reproaches 2 Pet. 4. 14. It s Height is Lowness Luke 14. 11. It s Greatness in being Meanest Matth. 20. 27. And its Riches in having Nothing 2 Cor. 6. 10. To such a Life as this Religion is to raise us and it must needs be difficult to make us who are so much Brutes to be so much Angels us who seem to live by nothing else but sense to live by nothing less This with a witness is an hard and uneasie Work and another difficulty in Religion III. A Third proceeds from the natural Disorder and Rage of our Passions Our Corrupt Natures are like the troubled Sea Isa 57. 20. And our Passions are the Waves of that Ocean that tumble and swell and keep a mighty noise they dash against the Rocks and break one against another and our Peace and Happiness is shipwrackt by them Our Passions make us miserable We are sometime stifled by their Numbers and confounded by their Disorders and torn to pieces by their Violence mounted to the Clouds by Ambition and thrown down to the deep by Despair scorcht by the flames of Lust and overwhelmed by the Waters of unstable Desire Passions fight one against another and all against reason they prevail over the Mind and have usurpt the Government of our Actions and involve us in continual Guilt and Misery This is the natural State of Man and our work in the way of Religion is to restrain this Violence and to rectifie these Disorders and to reduce those Rebellious Powers under the Empire and Government of the Mind their Sovereign And so to regain the Divine Image which consists much in the order of our Faculties and the Subjection of the Brutish to the reasonable Powers This I say Religion aims at to raise us to the perfection of our Natures by mortifying those Members Col. 3. 5. our unruly Passions and Desires and crucifying the Flesh with its Affections and Lusts Gal. 5. 24. And thereby to make us humble in Prosperity quiet in Adversity meek under Provocations steady amidst Temptations modest in our Desires temperate in our Injoyments constant to our Resolutions and contented in all Conditions Here is our great Business and our Work is this And certainly 't is no easie thing to bring order out of a Chaos and to speak a Tempest into a Calm to resist a Torrent and to stop and turn the Tyde to subdue a Rebellious Rabble and to change them from Tyrannical Masters to Modest and Obedient Servants These no doubt are works of difficulty enough and these must be our Imployment in the way of Religion and on this score also the Gate is strait IV. Our Work in Religion is yet more difficult upon the account of Custom to which we are subject and by which we are swayed much This is vulgarly said to be another Nature and the Apostle calls it by that name 1 Cor. 11. 14. Doth not Nature it self teach you that if a Man have long Hair it is a shame unto him By the word Nature the best Interpreters say only Custom is meant since long Hair is not declared shameful by the Law and Light of Nature taken in its chief and properest sense For then it had never been permitted to the Nazarites But the contrary custom in the Nations that used it not made it seem shameful and indecent There are other places in Scripture and ancient Authors wherein Nature is put for Custom But I must not insist on this the thing I am about is that Custom is very
he have them deceive themselves by fond Dependences When one made this Profession to our Saviour Lord I will follow thee whither soever thou goest Christ tells him that he must expect from him no worldly Honours or Preferments no Power or sensual Pleasure no not so much as the ordinary Accommodations of Life The Foxes have Holes and the Birds of the Air have Nests but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his Head Luk. 9. 5 8. He would not have the man that likely might look for these upon the opinion of his being the Messias in the Jewish sense one that should at last whatever the meanness of his Condition was at present appear as a Mighty and Triumphant temporal Monarch I say our Saviour would not have the Man follow him for that which he had not to bestow upon him Since then that he who would not put us upon fruitless labours hath commanded us to strive to enter 't is evident that an entrance may be procured into the Gate by striving and that the Difficulties may be overcome The next thing in my Method is to shew How the manner is implyed in the Text and exprest in the Proposition viz. By striving and by this is meant a resolute use of those means that are the Instruments of Happiness They are three Faith Prayer and active Endeavour I. Faith is a chief Instrument for the overcoming the Difficulties of our way And Faith in the general is the belief of a Testimony Divine Faith the belief of a Divine Testimony and the chief things to be believed as encouragements and means for a Victory over the Difficulties in Religion are these That God is reconciled to us by his Son That he will assist our weak endeavours by the Aids of his Spirit That he will reward us if we strive as we ought with immortal Happiness in a World of endless Glory By our belief of God's being reconciled we are secured from those fears that might discourage our approaches and endeavours upon the account of his Purity and Justice By the Faith of his Assistance all the objections against our striving that arise from the greatness of the Difficulties and the disproportionate smallness of our Strength are answered And from our believing eternal rewards in another World we have a mighty motive to engage our utmost diligence to contest with all difficulties that would keep us from it What satisfaction is there saith the believer in the gratification of my corrupt Inclinations and Senses in comparison with that which ariseth from the favour of God and an Interest in his Son What difficulties in my Duty too great for Divine Aids What pains are we to undergo in the narrow and difficult way that the Glory which is at the end of it will not compensate What is it to deny a base Inclination that will undo me in obedience to him that made and redeemed me and to despise the little things of present sense for the hope of everlasting enjoyments Trifling pleasure for Hallelujahs What were it for me to set vigorously upon those Passions that degrade my noble Nature and make me a slave and a beast and will make me more vile and more miserable when the Spirit of the most High is at my right hand to assist me Why should my noble Faculties that were designed for glorious ends be led into infamous practices by base Usages and dishonourable Customs What is the example of a wicked sensual wretched World to that of the Holy Jesus and all the Army of Prophets Apostles and Martyrs What is there in the World that it should be loved more than God and what is the Flesh that it should have more of our time and care than the great interests of our Souls Such are the Considerations of a mind that Faith hath awakened and by them it is prepared for vigorous striving So that Faith is the Spring of all and necessary to the other two Instruments of our Happiness Besides which it is acceptable to God in it self and so disposeth us for his gracious helps by which we are enabled to overcome the Difficulties of our way While a man considers the Difficulties only and weighs them against his own strength let him suppose the Liberty of his Will to be what he pleaseth yet while 't is under such disadvantages that will signifie very little and he that sees no further sits down in discouragement But when the mind is fortified with the firm belief of Divine help he attempts then with a noble vigour which cannot miscarry if it do not cool and faint For he that endures to the end shall be saved Mat. 24. 13. Thus Faith sets the other Instruments of Happiness on work and therefore 't is deservedly reckoned as the first and 't is that which must always accompany the exercises of Religion and give them life and motion II. Prayer is another means we must use in order to our overcoming the Difficulties of the way Our own meer natural Strength is weakness and without supernatural helps those Difficulties are not to be surmounted Those Aids are necessary and God is ready to bestow them on us For He would have all men to be saved and to come to the Knowledge of the Truth 1 Tim. 2. 4. But for these things he will be sought unto And 't is very just and fit that we should address our selves to him by Prayer to acknowledge our own insufficiency and dependence on him for the mercies we expect and thereby to own Him for the giver of every good and perfect gift and to instruct our selves how his favours are to be received and used viz. with Reverence and Thanksgiving This 't is highly fit we should do and the doing it prepares us for his blessings and he fails not to bestow them on those that are prepared by Faith and Prayer For he giveth liberally and upbraids not And our Prayers are required not as if they could move his will which is always graciously inclined to our Happiness But as it 's that tribute which we owe our Maker and Benefactor and that without which 't is not so fit he should bestow his particular favours on us For it by no means becomes the Divine Majesty to vouchsafe the specialties of his Grace and Goodness to those that are not sensible they want them and are not humbled to a due apprehension of their weakness and dependence But for such as are so and express their humble desires in the Ardours of Holy Prayer God never denies them the assistances of his Spirit For if ye being evil saith our Saviour know how to give good gifts unto your Children how much more shall your Father which is in Heaven give good things to those that ask Him Mat. 7. 11. And These Divine Helps obtain'd by Faith and Prayer and join'd with our active constant endeavour will not fail to enable us to overcome the Difficulties and to procure us an entrance at the strait Gate
religious meditations and that even to rapturous excesses He may take these for sweet Communion with God and the joys of the Holy Ghost and the earnest of Glory and be lifted up on high by them and enabled to speak in wonderful ravishing strains and yet notwithstanding be an evil man and in the state of such as shall be shut out For this we may observe That those whose complexion inclines them to devotion are commonly much under the power of melancholy and they that are so are mostly very various in their tempers sometimes merry and pleasant to excess and then plung'd as deep into the other extream of sadness and dejection one while the sweet humours enliven the imagination and present it with all things that are pleasant and agreeable And then the black blood succeeds which begets clouds and darkness and fills the fancy with things frightful and uncomfortable And there are very few but feel such varieties in a degree in themselves Now while the sweet Blood and Humours prevail the person whose complexion inclines him to Religion and who hath arrived to the degrees newly discours'd of though a meer natural man is full of inward delight and satisfaction and fancies at this turn that he is much in the favour of God and a sure Heir of the Kingdom of Glory which must needs excite in him many luscious and pleasant thoughts and these further warm his imagination which by new and taking suggestions still raiseth the affections more and so the man is as it were transported beyond himself and speaks like one dropt from the Clouds His tongue flows with Light and Glories and Communion and Revelations and Incomes and then believes that the Holy Ghost is the Author of all this and that God is in him of a Truth in a special way of Manifestation and Vouchsafement But when melancholick vapours prevail again the Imagination is overcast and the Fancy possest by dismal and uncomfortable thoughts and the man whose head was but just before among the Clouds is now grovelling in the Dust He thinks all is lost and his condition miserable He is a cast-away and undone when in the mean while as to Divine favour he is just where he was before or rather in a better state since 't is better to be humbled with reason than to be lifted up without it Such effects as these do meer natural passions and imaginations produce when they are tinctured and heightned by religious melancholy To deny ones self and to overcome ones passions and to live in a course of a sober Vertue is much more Divine than all this 'T is true indeed and I am far from denying it that holy men feel those joys and communications of the Divine Spirit which are no fancies and the Scripture calls them great peace Psal 119. 165. and joy in believing Rom. 15. 13. and the peace of God that passeth all understanding Phil. 4. 7. But then these Divine Vouchsafements are not rapturous or ecstatical They are no sudden flashes that are gone in a moment leaving the Soul in the regions of sorrow and despair but sober lasting comforts that are the rewards and results of vertue the rejoycings of a good Conscience 2 Cor. 1. 12. and the manifestations of God to those rare souls who have overcome the evils of their natures and the difficulties of the way or are vigorously pressing on towards the mark Phil. 3. 14. But for such as have only the forms of Godliness I have mentioned while the evil inclinations and habits are indulged whatever they may pretend all the sweets they talk of are but the imagery of dreams and the pleasant delusions of their fancies THus I have shewn how far the meer animal Religion may go in imperfect striving And now I must expect to hear 1. That this is very severe uncomfortable Doctrine and if one that shall eventually be shut out may do all this what shall become of the generality of Religious men that never do so much And if all this be short what will be available who then shall be saved To which I Answer That we are not to make the measures of Religion and Happiness our selves but to take those that Christ Jesus hath made for us And he hath told us That except our Righteousness exceed the Righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees we shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of Heaven Mat. 5. 20. Now the Scribes and Pharisees did things in the way of Religion that were equal to all the particulars I have mentioned yea they went beyond many of our glorious Professors who yet think themselves in an high form of Godliness They believed their Religion firmly and Prayed frequently and servently and Fasted severely They were exact and exceeding strict in the observation of their Sabbaths and hated scandalous and gross sins and were very punctual in all the duties of outward Worship and in many things supererogated and went beyond what was commanded Such zealous people were They and They separated from the conversations and customs of other Jews upon the account of their supposed greater Holiness and Purity These were heights to which the Pharisees arrived and a good Christian must exceed all this And he that lives in a sober course of Piety and Vertue of self Government and humble submission to God of obedience to his Superiors and charity to his Neighbours He doth really exceed it and shall enter when the other shall be shut out So that when our Saviour saith that the Pharisaick Righteousness must be exceeded the meaning is not That a greater degree of every thing the Pharisees did is necessary but we must do that which in the nature and kind of it is better and more acceptable to God viz. That whereas they placed their Religion in strict Fastings and nice observations of Festivals in loud and earnest Prayers and zeal to get Proselytes we should place ours in sincere subjection of our wills to the will of God in imitation of the life of Christ and obedience of his Laws in amending the faults of our natures and lives in subduing our Passions and casting out the habits of evil These are much beyond the Religion of the Fanatick Pharisee not in shew and pomp but in real worth and divine esteem So that upon the whole we have no reason to be discouraged because They that do so much are cast out since though we find not those heats and specious things in our selves which we observe in them yet if we are more meek and modest and patient and charitable and humble and just our case is better and we have the Power of Godliness when theirs is but the Form And we whom They accounted Aliens and Enemies shall enter while they the presumed friends and domesticks shall be shut out But 2. I expect it should be again objected against this severity of Discourse That our Saviour saith Mat. 11. 20. That his yoke is easie and his burden is light which
He that is extreme in his Principles must needs be narrow in his Affections whereas he that stands on the middle path may extend the arms of his Charity to those on both sides It is indeed very natural to most to run into extremes and when men are faln Out with a Practice or Opinion they think they can never remove to too great a distance from it being frighted by the steep before them they run so far back till they fall into a precipice behind them Every Truth is near an Errour for it lies between two Falshoods and he that goes far from One is apt to slip into the other and while he flies from a Bear a Lyon meets him So that the best way to avoid the Danger is to steer the middle Course in which we may be sure there is Charity and Peace and very probably Truth in their Company Thus of my Directions FOr CONSIDERATIONS I 'le propose such as shew the Unreasonableness of our Enmities and Disagreements upon the account of different Opinions which will prove that our Affections ought to meet though our Judgements cannot My first is this I. Love is part of Religion but Opinions for the sake of which we lose Charity are not so The First I have proved already and for the other we may consider That Religion consists not in knowing many things but in practising the few plain things we know THE NECESSARY PRINCIPLES OF FAITH LYE IN A LITTLE ROOM This is Life Eternal to know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent Saith he that best knew what was Eternal Life and what necessary unto it Joh. 17. 3. And the Apostle St. Paul draws up all into the same two Principles He that cometh unto God must know that he is and that he is a Rewarder of them that diligently seek him Heb. 11. 6. St. Peter was pronounced blessed upon the single Profession that Jesus was Christ the Son of the Living God Mat. 16. 16. and the Eunuch was baptized upon the same Act. 8. 37. St. Paul reckons these as the only Necessaries to Salvation Rom. 10. 9. If thou confess with thy Mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in thy heart that God hath raised him from the Dead thou shalt be save And St. John to the same purpose Whosever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God This Faith indeed must suppose the general Principles of natural Religion and produce the Real Fruits of Righteousness to make it effectual to its end and these supposed the Apostles speak as if it contain'd all that is essentially necessary to be believed and known in order to our Happiness Thus the Fundamentals of belief are few and plain For certainly the Divine Goodness would not lay our Eternal Interests in Difficulties and multitudes things hard to be understood and retained The difficult work of Religion is not in the Understanding but in the Affections and Will So that the Principles in which Religion consists are the clearly revealed Articles in which we are agreed For the others about which we differ and dispute though some of them may be consequences of those and good helps to the practice of Religion yet I should be loth to make them a necessary and essential part of it For he that saith they are concludes all men under a state of Ruine and Damnation who either do not know or are not able to receive them An uncharitableness that is as bad as Heresie if it be not one it self The sum is Religion lies in few Principles I mean as to the Essence of it and that principally consists in Practice So the Prophet reckons Mic. 6. 8. He hath shewed thee O man what is good and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do Justice and love Mercy and to walk humbly with thy God And St. James gives an Account of Religion like it Jam. 1. 17. True Religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this to Visit the Widow and Fatherless in their Afflictions and to keep himself unspotted from the World Religion is an Holy Life and Charity is a main branch of that But Opinions are no vital part nor do they appertain to the substance of it And shall we lose a Limb for an Excrescence or an Ornament An Essential of Religion for that which is but accessary and extrinsick Charity for an Opinion I think 't is not reasonable and I hope you think so likewise But I offer to your Consideration II. Charity is certainly our Duty but many of the Opinions about which we fall out are uncertainly true viz. as to us The main and Fundamental Points of Faith are indeed as firm as the Centre but the Opinions of men are as fluctuating as the Waves of the Ocean The Root and body of a Tree is fast and unshaken while the Leaves are made the sport of every Wind And Colours sometimes vary with every position of the Object and the Eye though the Light of the Sun be an uniform Splendour The Foundation of God standeth sure but men often build upon it what is very Tottering and uncertain The great Truths of Religion are easily discernable but the smaller and remoter ones require more sagacity and acuteness to descry them and the best sight may be deceived about such obscure and distant Objects And methinks 't is very strange that men should be so excessively confident of the Truth and Certainty of their Opinions since they cannot but know the Weakness of Humane understanding in general and cannot but often have found the Fallibility of their own The Apostle tells us that we know but in part 1 Cor. 13. 9. and makes Confidence an Argument of Ignorance 1 Cor. 8. 2. If any man think that he knoweth any thing he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know And Solomon reckons it as an argument of Folly The Fool rageth and is confident and there is nothing that discovers it more For let us consider The Scripture hath not been so clear and express in defining lesser Points and the words in which they are thought to be Lodged are many times figurative and obscure and of various meaning spoken only by the by or agreeably to forms of speech or customs that we do not know or by way of condescension to common Apprehension And therefore we see that Interpretations are infinite and there is no sort of men less agreed than Commentators All Opinions plead Scripture and many pretend to reason and most to Antiquity The Learned and the Prudent Churches and Councils Confessors and Fathers the former and the latter Ages the Vertuous and the Devout the Credulous and the Inquisitive they have all differ'd in the lesser matters of Belief And every man differs from almost every other in some thing and every man differs often from himself in many things Age hath altered our Judgements or we are children still Our Affections change our Thoughts and our Imaginations shift the Scene
the Purity and Spirituality of Worship it never left canting on the Subject till mens Tongues and Minds were fired against every matter of decency and order as formal and Antichristian And so far had it prevailed as to drive those of warm affections and weak heads from all external Reverence to God and Holy things And the well meaning people being frighted with the terrible noise of Popery Superstition and Antichristianism words they had learnt to hate though not to understand boggled and flew off from every thing their furious Guides had marked with these abhorred Characters though it were never so innocent and becoming And thus a rude and slovenly Religion had made its way into the World and such a sordid carelessness in matters of divine Worship that should a Stranger have come into the Assemblies that were acted by this Spirit he would not have imagined what they had been doing and that they were about Holy Offices would perhaps have been one of the last things in his Conjecture Thus bold and sawcy talk had crept into mens Prayers under pretence of Holy Familiarity with God nauseous impertinent Gibberish under the notion of Praying by the Spirit and all kind of irreverences in external demeanour under the shelter of a pretended spiritual Worship Men had subtilized Religion till they had destroyed it made it first invisible and then Nothing AND now it being thus multiplied corrupted and debaucht being made the Game of the Tongue and the Frolick of Imagination phantastick in its principles sordid in its practices separated from the foundation of a vertuous life and made to serve the ends of Pride and Avarice what was like to follow according to the nature and order of things but Atheism and contempt of all Religion And when one says here 's Religion and another says there 's Religion a third will scornfully ask where 's Religion and what 's Religion When the Heathen Deities were so multiplied that every thing was made a God Protagoras Diagoras and others first began to question and next to affirm that there was NONE Religions have been multiplied in our days as much as Gods in theirs and we have seen much of the same fatal event and issue They made their Gods contemptible and vile by deifying things that were so and we had no less detracted from the credit of Religion by bringing it down to things of the lowest and vilest rank and nature Our Idolized Opinions were no better than their Garlick and Onyons The diseases of the Mind Phrensie and Enthusiasm which our days have worshipped were no better than those of the Body which they adored And they never raised Altars to worse Vices than REBELLION FRAUD and VIOLENCE which our Age hath hallowed and made sacred So that notwithstanding all the glorious pretensions of those Times Religion was among many taken off all its Foundations and the World prepared for Atheism The Follies and Divisions of one Age make way for Atheism in the next Thus also briefly of the Condition of our RELIGION AND thus I have shewn how much RESISTANCE of the Authority that is over us is against our DUTY and our INTEREST The former God hath plainly told us and the latter we have sadly felt It remains that we humble our selves under the sense of the publick guilt as well as complain of the consequent miseries That we may not draw down new judgements by repeating old provocations and adding our particular sins to the common score And I think we shall do well to consider what we who abhor Rebellion have contributed to the fatal evils that followed it We can perhaps be well enough content that the visible actors of those mischiefs should be lasht and exposed and it may be are well pleased and tickled with our reprehensions in which we think our selves not concerned But if we will be just if we will have this Fast to signifie we must turn our reproofs upon our selves also and with grief and shame acknowledge that our sins and Debauches our contempt of God and scorn of Religion have helpt towards the plucking down that sad judgement upon the Nation which we lament this Day And it must be confest that there were those that fought against the KING who yet spent their blood in his service and many by their vices endeavoured to engage Heaven against that Cause which themselves strove in another way to less purpose to promote And therefore we ought not to think that this Fast is appointed to inveigh against the faults of others and to make them and their actions odious but to humble our selves under the apprehension of our own and to teach us to shew our love to the King and readiness to obey him by subjecting our selves first unto God whose Vice-gerent HE is And we may be assured that they that are not Loyal to the UNIVERSAL LORD of all the World can scarce possibly be so to their particular SOVEREIGN And 't will need a great deal of Charity to help us to believe that those who make no scruple to blaspheme the Name of God and to break the plainest most earnest and most express of his Laws will be withheld by considerations of Duty or Conscience from rebelling against their King or affronting His when there is any powerful interest to oblige them to it If therefore we would give any evidence of a serious humiliation at present or any security of a future loyalty let us do so by confessing our particular sins and forsaking them and then there will be hope that the Authority of God may oblige us quietly and peaceably to submit to his MINISTER and in doing so we shall be blest with his influence and deserve his protection And thus demeaning our selves like Professors of the Gospel of Peace and Subjects of the Prince of Peace the Peace He left with his Disciples will be with us here and everlasting Peace will encircle our heads with rays of glory in the Kingdom of Peace And so the Peace of God which passeth all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus To whom with God the Father and God the Holy Ghost be ascribed all Glory Honour and adoration henceforth and for ever Amen and Amen SERMON IV. THE SIN and DANGER OF SCOFFING AT RELIGION The Second Edition SERMON IV. AGAINST SCOFFING AT RELIGION 2 PET. III. 3. There shall come in the last days Scoffers walking after their own Lusts IT is a question that hath much exercised the wits of the Curious whether there be any decay in nature or whether all things are not still as they were from the beginning in all their kinds and in all the degrees of their vigour and perfection I shall not undertake to determine ought in this Theory Be the matter how it will as to the natural world we have cause to believe that there are degeneracies in the moral This our Saviour supposeth in the Question Luke 18. 8. When the Son of man cometh shall he find
faith on earth Implying that in the last Times there shall be remarkable fallings from the Faith and a general Reign of unbelief which cannot be without great defection in manners also And St. Paul 2 Tim. 3. 1. tells us That the last days should be perillous that men should be Lovers of their own selves Covetous Boasters Proud Blasphemers and our Apostle in the Text Scoffers walking after their own lusts Now we are not to think that the holy Writers suppos'd that these evils were not in other days as well as in the last No the same catalogue of Vices runs through all Ages which more or less are infected with them But the meaning I conceive is That in the latter they should be more notorious and more numerous acted in higher degrees of impudence and with more circumstances of guilt There is no doubt but there were always scoffers but never such nor so many as in the last days The last of the world simply and not only those of the Jewish State scoffers walking after their own lusts viz. as absolute slaves to their Appetites and Passions For the word Lusts takes in all unruly desires and inclinations In treating of the words I shall shew 1. What sort of Scoffers we may suppose here meant 2. What is the evil and malignity of the humour 3. What are the consequences and effects of it And thence 4. Pass to improvement for practice FOr the First Who are the scoffers meant I take direction in it from the character annext Scoffers walking after their own lusts Now the lusts of men would be boundless and are impatient of any check or stop They hate all restraints that are laid upon them and the greatest restraints of appetite are from Religion Religion hinders men most from walking after their own lusts and these are most resolv'd on that so that we may suppose the scoffers in the Text who walk after their own lusts to be scoffers at Religion which would hinder and disturb them most in that course And that they were such appears from the following verse in which they argue scoffingly against the Christian belief and expectations Saying Where is the promise of his coming for since the Fathers fell a-sleep all things continue as they were from the beginning vers 4. Now generally the less impudent sort of sinners endeavour to reconcile Religion to their Lusts by walking in some of the forms of godliness so did the Pharisees among the Jews and divers Hereticks among the ancient Christians and their modern successors do the same still But there are an other sort who are more bold and impatient they will not give themselves the trouble of reconciling Religion to their Lusts but take the shorter course of opposing it in favour of them This some do by ingaging their parts and knowledge gravely and seriously to reason it out of the world but these are the few Reason is a severe thing and doth as little comport with mens Lusts as Religion And the same Lusts that make them willing to reason against Religion make them incapable of it For debauchery is almost as great an enemy to mens intellectuals as to their morals And therefore others and the most go an easier way and fight against Religion by scoffing and buffoonry This is the game the Devil seems to be playing in the present Age. He hath tryed the power and rage of the mighty and the wit and knowledge of the learned but these have not succeeded for the destruction of Religion And therefore now he is making an experiment by an other sort of enemies and sets the Apes and Drollers upon it And certainly there was never any other Age in which sacred and serious things have been so rudely and impudently assaulted by the prophane abuses of Jesters and Buffoons who have been the contempt of all wise Times but are the darlings and wits of these O the Invention the rare invention of this happy Age How easie hath it made the way to this glorious reputation 'T is but laughing gracefully at the Fopps the grave the learned the religious Fopps and a man cannot fail of being a Wit in spight of ignorance and impertinence Away with the pedantry and dull formalities of former days we are Wits upon terms more generous and more easie Our Age hath more spirit and flame our conversation yes our vertuous conversation hath refined and improved us We see the folly and ignorance of our fore-fathers and laugh at the Tales with which crafty Priests abused their easiness and credulity Spiritual substance Immortal souls Authority of Scripture Fictions Ideas Phantomes Iargon Here is demonstration against the spiritual Trade and spiritual men The rest of the work is for Songs and Plays for the wit and humour of agreeable conversation Thus far we are come and the infection spreads so that there is scarce a little vain Thing that hath a mind to be modish but sets up for a derider of God and of Religion and makes a scoff of the most serious thoughts and profession of the wisest men of all Ages Heaven and Hell are become words of sport and Devils and Angels Fairyes and Chimaera's 'T is Foppish to speak of Religion but in Railery or to mention such a thing as Scripture except it be to burlesque and deride it 'T is dreadful to consider and a man may tremble to describe this monstrous humour of many in our Age which I believe hath out-done all former in the heights of this amazing sort of wickedness and sadly proves that in the last days shall come Scoffers and such as have not been from the beginning For though former Ages no doubt have had deriders of Religion yet in those times they hid their heads and did it covertly behind the curtain in their privacies and among their Confidents But in these they face the Sun and impudently vent their folly in all companies and places as if it were a matter of renown and glory and they expected to be counted Hero's for it Thus we see what sort of Scoffers they are that are to come in the last days impudent deriders of Religion because they are resolved on walking after their own Lusts I come II. To shew the malignity and aggravations of this humour 1. 'T is an open defiance of God and a direct opposition of his Glory His glory namely the derivative consists in those praises and acknowledgements that are due to his perfections and those are paid in the exercises of Religion so that to buffoon this is to shoot the arrows of our scorn directly at the Throne of God Indeed all sins are oppositions of him and of his Glory but in most they are so in the consequence of the sin not in the intention of the sinner The Drunkard the Oppressor and the unclean person design only their own satisfactions not any immediate affront to their Maker But the Scoffer with prodigious impudence doth that He derides the love and obedience fear and
succeed and prevail generally upon any whole people it would make them more barbarous than any Nation in the world ever yet was For be Religion what it will Government hath Strength Security and Reverence from it Take this off and the fears of it and no Laws can be put in execution and without this Government is a meer name and nothing For there can be no assurance of the truth of fact where there is no restraint from Religion upon Lying and false witness and suppose but this that there is no reckoning or account hereafter every man may say and testifie what is for the advantage of his Lusts for no humane Laws can reach him and then Laws will be useless or hurtful and all Government will quickly be at an end For though as things are under the acknowledgements of Religion there is much lying false-witness and injustice in the world yet let all the Restraints of Conscience and Religion be removed and things will be incomparably worse No mans Life or property will be safe mankind would worry and prey upon one another and we should ere long fall a-sunder into a condition of dissolution and wildness So that the Scoffers at Religion are declared enemies of humane Nature and strive to turn us out into the state of Savages and Cannibals 3. The humour is exceedingly rude and uncivil 'T is ill manners to flout and deride what is esteemed by our Betters especially if that esteem be in the highest degree of veneration Now Religion hath publick acknowledgements of greatest respects from all Ages and all Nations from the Princes and the people from the Mighty and the Learned from the best and the most from the deepest Inquirers and acutest Discerners So that to Scoff at Religion as if it were ridiculous and contemptible is rudely to affront all these and to publish them for a pack of fools and madmen 'T is to make Fopps of all our Forefathers and Idiots of the Founders of our Laws and Government 'T is to defie every man we meet except the Atheist and the Scoffer and to proclaim all mankind besides to be a set of simpletons and superstitious Sneaks Let such men quit all pretences to civility and breeding they are ruder than Toryes and wild Americans and were they treated according to their deserts from mankind they would meet every where with Chains and Strappadoes 4. To Scoff Religion is ridiculously proud and immodest And the scorner supposeth that he sees more with one twinkle of his eye than the wisest most learned and most considering part of mankind have seen in all their most serious and laborious observations Certainly if Religion be a deceit it is not so thin and transparent a one as to be presently looked through by every whiffler and swilling Buffoon If it is an Imposture 't is such a one as hath impos'd upon the wisdom of all Ages upon all the old World and upon the greatest part of the present And be it what it will it hath made it self very plausible by the helps of reason and Arts of Learning and it would be very Strange if after all it should be detected and made so naked by every one that can laugh and break a Jest It would be wonderful if the Mystery hid from Ages the Grand cheat of Religion should at last be found out by Raileurs and Songsters That it should so long have been conceal'd from the wise and prudent in all their disquisitions and reasonings and be reveal'd at last to Debauchees and Jesters amid the wild inspirations of Wine and Ale Suppose the worst and let Religion be as false and as ridiculous as can be imagin'd the Scoffers that deride it are impudent to pretend that They have found it out They find the folly and falshood of Religion Let them find new Fashions or new Oaths things suitable to their genius and capacities But for shame let not them talk of discoveries about Religion Or if they must be medling here let them first learn their Catechisms and know what Religion is And when they understand what they Scoff at let them Scoff on if they can 5. To deride Religion is a dangerous and unsafe practice For the Scoffer is not sure that he is wiser than all mankind that hath reverence for it He hath no demonstration to prove Religion false and ridiculous Nor is he absolutely certain that there is no Immortality or future judgement So that suppose it should prove true at last that there will be a general day of account and men shall be summon'd by Christ Jesus to be judg'd according to his Gospel for a state of eternal happiness or woe what is the case of the Scoffer then yea what will it be at that day will his mirth hold when the Judge shall appear or will his Wit recreate and support him when he shall be call'd to the Bar will he have any heart to droll when the Sentence is past or will he applaud himself in having made Hell his sport when he feels it will he shew himself good company among the Devils and his Angels or make pastime of Heaven and Religion amid the flames of Brimstone I say 't is possible at least that what we have heard of a day of Judgement and a future state of Heaven and Hell Angels and Devils may be real And if it be the Scoffer is undone to Eternity undone So that he is extreamly a fool to venture so great a stake as the life and happiness of his Soul for evermore upon a confidence that may deceive him yea he doth it upon a presumption that hath not as much as any good probabilities to incourage it For if Religion be not certain yet most of the appearances lie that way and no wise man would hazard his soul against such shews of truth especially when the gain for which he runs the risque must needs be very little and the loss will be infinite and irreparable If Religion proves false the Scoffer gains the satisfaction of a little merriment and sport and it may be of being taken for a Wit among his companions But if it be true he loseth the vision and enjoyment of God and the eternal happiness and perfection of his soul he falls under the vengeance of the most High and into the power of Devils under the stings of Conscience and into the pains of Hell Now what man in his wits would run the venture of such fatal losses and miseries for such trivial Nothings of advantage He were mad that would stake his Estate and Life to get a pin or a feather in a case wherein he could have no assurance and he were more so that would do it when there was odds against him If there were ten thousand probabilities on the part of Infidelity without certainty no wise man would lay all his Interests upon it when no more could be got by it than the pleasure of a little laughing But to do it when so many
Prerogatives and dignity of humane nature Man is but a Beast of prey and his use of and dominion over the other creatures is but a proud usurpation over his equals So that this opinion degrades our natures and affronts the whole race of mankind together And 2. In the direct tendency of it it destroyes humane Societies For those cannot subsist without Laws nor Laws without some conscience of good and evil nor would this signifie to any great purpose without the belief of another world Take away this and every thing will be good that is profitable and honest that conduceth to a mans designs That would be mine that I could get by force and I had no right to any thing longer than I had strength to defend it and thus the world would be ipso facto in a state of war and fall into endless confusions and disorders So that the whole Earth would quickly be an Hell intolerable every man would be a Devil to another yea and every man to himself 3. It suppresseth mens private happiness and felicity and even the Rioters of the world have stings and torments from it If a man live in Sensuality and fulness of pleasure what a cutting thought is it to consider that in a little time he must bid adieu to this and to all felicity for ever And if his life be in trouble and discomfort how terrible is it to reflect that he must go from being miserable to be nothing How can those think of parting with their possessions and enjoyments that have nothing else to expect or how can they bear up under the burdens and vexations of this state that cannot relieve themselves by the hopes of a better With what sad pangs of sorrow should we lay our Friends into the Grave if we had cause to be assured that they were lost eternally and how could we reflect upon our own mortality if we were to look for no farther Being The pleasures of the present Life are gone in a moment and leave nothing but dregs and bitterness behind them and if there be no further delights besides these mean and fading satisfactions 't is not worth the while to live but we had better to have been nothing for ever The summ is The Sadducee vilifies Mankind destroyes the peace of Societies and the happiness of every private person and so professeth himself the common enemy of men and a Renegado to humane nature IT will not be needful for me to say much in Applying this Discourse Almost every Sermon we hear is an Application of it for here is the matter and ground of our hopes and hence are taken the great enforcements of our duty I presume there are few or none in this place but who are ready to profess their belief of a Future Life and as I premised I have not insisted on the proof to perswade You of this Article but to shew that the confidence is groundless which affirms There is no reason for the great Doctrines of Religion and to contribute somewhat towards the settlement of the weak against such temptations Now if we believe this great Truth as we say Let us do it to purpose and not content our selves with a cold and customary assent but endeavour to raise our Faith to such an height that it may have an effectual influence upon our lives The general belief that education hath infused is but a dead image in the soul that produceth nothing Let us endeavour by fervent Prayer and frequent Meditation to invigorate and excite ours to that degree that it may be a living representation of eternal things that our Faith may be the certainty and presence of the invisible world The substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen Heb. 11. That we may have such an apprehension of it as if the prospect were open and our eyes beheld it that we may fix our thoughts there and fill up our souls with the consideration of that world Such a Faith as this ought to be our aim and if we did so believe the other world what excellent what heroical what happy persons should we be in this Such a Faith would secure us from the flatteries and temptations of this sensual life and excite us to more earnest longings and more vigorous endeavours after the happiness of a better It would inable us to despise this vain world in comparison and to bear all the crosses of it with magnanimity and steadiness of mind It would quiet our solicitudes and answer the objections against providence and the present unequal distribution of good and evil It would make the most difficult services of Religion easie and pleasant to us and fill our lives with sweet hope and delights infinitely more agreeable than the most relishing sensual joys It would afford us satisfaction amid our disappointments and rest amid our anxieties and cares It would raise our designs and thoughts to things generous and noble and make us live like the Inhabitants of an Heavenly Countrey Such blessed effects as these follow this Faith here and unmeasurably unspeakably greater in the other world the vision of God and full enjoyment of His love the perfection of our natures and the compleatment of our happiness in the arms of our Redeemer and amidst the triumphant Songs of Angels and Saints in the exercise of holy love admiration and praise Things too great to be exprest or to be imagin'd For eye hath not seen nor ear heard nor hath it entred into the heart of man to conceive what God hath reserved for those that love him To Him be all Glory and humble Adoration henceforth and for ever SERMON VII THE Serious Consideration OF THE Future Iudgement The Second Edition SERMON VII ACTS XVII 31. Because he hath appointed a day in which he will judge the World in Righteousness by the man whom he hath ordained ALthough it might be well expected that the Laws of God should abundantly prevail by vertue of His Authority and their own native reason and goodness Yet such is the stupidity and perverseness of men that these alone have not usually any considerable effect upon us And therefore God who earnestly desires our Reformation and our happiness hath superadded the greatest Sanctions to enforce His Laws glorious rewards on the one hand and most terrible Penalties on the other and these to be distributed in a most solemn manner represented in such circumstances as are most apt to work upon our Hopes and Fears For He hath appointed a day Which words are part of St. Paul's Speech to the Athenians upon the occasion of their superstitions and Idolatries These in the time of Gentile ignorance God winked at vers 30. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He took no notice of those sins in comparison He was not so much offended and displeased but consider'd the general ignorance and temptations and made abatements for them As our Saviour said with reference to the Jews Joh. 15. 22. If I had not come
that Spirit to which they are most opposite Thus when warm and brisk Sanguine presents a chearful Scene and fills the imagination with pleasant dreams these are taken for divine illapses for the joys and incomes of the Holy Ghost When heated Melancholly hath kindled the busie and active fancy the Enthusiast then talks of Illuminations New Lights Revelations and many wonderful fine things which are ascribed to the same Spirit But when Flegm predominates and quencheth the Fantastick Fire rendering the mad man more dull lumpish and unactive then the Spirit is withdrawn and the man under spiritual darkness and desertion And when again choler is boiled up into rage and fury against every thing that is not of the Fantastick cut and measure this also is presumed to be an holy fervour kindled by that Spirit whose real fruits are Gentleness and Love Thus then doth the Devil devise to disgrace the Spirit of God and its influence by those numerous vile and vain pretensions which he thinks a likely means to extirpate the belief of the agency of the Spirit and to render it ridiculous But again 4. Satan deviseth against Gods own glory by designing against his worship Which he doth by endeavouring to destroy its reverence under pretence of Spirituality God requires to be glorified in body and in soul which are his and Satan sets the worship of one against the other that he may destroy both Thus when under the Law Religion required the Pomp and Solemnity of external Rites and Usages the subtle designer drives it on in that method so far that at last the Spirit of Religion was lost in the ceremony and the life and substance in the circumstance But when Christianity came into the world to abolish that ceremonial oeconomy in order to the establishing a more spiritual frame of Worship then doth Satan turn with the Tyde and puts on the semblance of a Zealot for Spirituality which he prosecutes so far till at last in the Gnosticks and other aiery Hereticks he had run Religion out into meer empty Fantastick Notionality In like manner where in these latter ages the world hath been disabused and hath detected the vanity of the formal outside Religion of Rome There doth the designer fall in with the Current sets up for a Reformer and mightily contends for the Spirituality of Worship He gets into the Pulpit and there with hot and sweating zeal he crys up the purity the purity of Religion and never leaves canting on the subject till he hath fired mens tongues against every matter of decency and order as formal and Antichristian And when he is shut out of those high places he creeps into corners and inflames the Spirits of the zealous and the ignorant against all harmless circumstances of Reverence and Decorum And so far hath he prevailed in this device as to drive those of warm affections and weak heads from all due external Reverence to God and things Sacred For these well-meaning people being frighted by the terrible noise of Popery Antichristianism Superstition things they have learnt to hate but not to understand boggle and fly off from every thing their furious Guides have marked with this abhorred Character And thus a rude and slovenly kind of Religion hath made its way into the world and such a sordid carlesness in matters of divine worship that should a stranger come into the assemblies that are acted by this Spirit He could not by their carriage imagine what they were a doing and that they were about holy Offices would perhaps be one of the last things he could conjecture Thus bold and sawcy talk hath crept into mens prayers under the pretence of holy familiarity with God nauseous impertinent bawling under the cover of praying by the Spirit and all kind of irreverences in external demeanour under the shelter of a pretended Spiritual worship And thus the design of Satan is successfully carried on in the world which is to subtilize Religion till he hath destroyed it To make it invisible that he may make it nothing And this is another way whereby be betrays those who are Ignorant of his Devices And thus I have dispatcht the first General viz. Satans Devices against Gods glory From which I descend to the second viz. Satans devices against the Peace of the Church which while it stands in its main and united body is like a mighty mountain unconcern'd in the tumults in the air while the blustering winds and tempests assault but cannot prejudice or disorder it And therefore the Designer endeavours to divide what he cannot deal with in its knit and combined strength He strives to crumble it into Sects and Atoms that this mountain may become an heap of Sands which he may blow up and down and scatter with his winds and so at last become a plain before him For which Design he hath two main instruments and Devices viz. 1. Pharisaical Pride under the cover of Religious strictness And 2. Intemperate Heat under the notion of Holy and Divine Zeal These are the chief Engines for the dividing purposes 1. Then he hatches and fosters a Spirit of Pride and Sectarian Insolence a sure and fatal Divider under the specious pretence of Religious strictness For where he perceives he cannot succeed in his designs of debauching the world and propagating open prophaneness and Impiety He shifts his shape puts on the cloathing of light and wraps himself in a Cloak spun of strict and severe pretensions and in this habit puts himself among the proud and conceited Professors These he and their own vanity gild and adorn with all the glorious names and priviledges of the Gospel and when they have incircled their heads with their own Fantastick Rays and are swoln in their imaginations with a tympany of ridiculous greatness They then proudly contemn all but their darling selves under the notion of the formal the moral and the wicked and scornfully pity the poor and carnal world that is all that are not arrived to their conceited pitch and elevation and now having thus dignified themselves and debased others they herd together draw the Church into their little corners and proudly withdraw from the Communion of others who have less conceit though more Christianity They bid us stand off lest we pollute them with our unhallowed approaches and having made us as the Heathen and Publican they cry Come out from among them The true Church Soundness of Judgement Purity of Doctrine and of worship if we will believe them is confined to their Gange just as it was to the corners of Africa of old when their friends the Gnosticks were there Thus they swell and swagger in their fantastick imaginations till some other Sect as well conceited as themselves endeavour to take their Plumes from them and to appropriate these glorious Prerogatives unto their own party and then they bustle and contend Here 's the Church crys one nay but 't is here crys another till a third gives the lye to them
both and then the scuffle grows warm of Pride against Hypocrisie and the self-conceit of one Sect against the Pride of another and all against sobriety and truth and thus is the Church divided the interest of Religion weakned and the world prepared for Atheism But 2. Another instrument and Device Satan useth to imbroil the Church is Fantastick heat under the name and notion of divine zeal Fire is a subtile and powerful Divider and no fire like that which is supposed to come from the Altar though it be but a passionate flame kindled in a fiery temper that is only tinctured with Religion For every thing that is hot and vehement about Religious matters wears the name and Livery of Zeal and Zeal when 't is directed by good Principles to the ends of sobriety and vertue is a noble and generous temper but when 't is actuated by ignorance and evil principles and hurried on by blind impulses to the ends of rage and animosity 't is a dangerous and killing evil And like a fire-brand in a Magazine of powder which destroys without distinction and blows up every thing that resists the fury of its motion This then being fair in its pretence and mischievous in its effects Satan useth in his designs of dividing He kindleth some little Religious warmths in eager and violent Constitutions and blows the Coals till natural passion be concerned and fired So that at last what was at first only a spark of Religion becomes a mighty flame of Rage Then breaks he out upon the Church with this holy Fire destroys that Charity which is the bond of peace and fills all with smoak and vapour darkness and confusion He Christens this Jehu-like fury a Zeal for God and declaims against every thing that is sober and temperate as luke-warmness and indifference He gets into the Populace who have many grains of Rage for one of Judgement and hurries the poor mistaken Bigot together with the proud Pharisaical Dissenter and the silly conceited Schismatick into the same unavoidable ruine to eternal ages From which c. SERMON XI THE ANTIQUITY OF OUR FAITH Stated and Cleared SERMON XI JUDE I. 3. Beloved when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common Salvation it was needful for me to write unto you and exhort you that you should earnestly contend for the Faith which was once delivered to the Saints OUr Saviour tells us in the Parable that where the Husbandman had sown the good Seed there the enemy scatter'd Tares where God by his Spirit and Messengers hath planted Sacred and Divine truths there Satan sets Errours Heresies and Doctrines not according to Godliness These were early in the Christian Church even in the original Purity and Simplicity of it There were then Deceivers Lying Spirits Seducers who separated themselves from the Communion of the Church crept into houses led captive silly men and silly women privily brought in damnable Heresies even to the denying the Lord that bought them turned many from the faith to follow fables dreams and sensless imaginations Such there were then and St. Paul tells us that there must be Heresies 1 Cor. 11. 19. The lusts and various corruptions of men in conjunction with the permissions of God make them unavoidable Some of the first we read of in the Christian Church were the Judaizing Christians who taught the necessity of retaining the Mosaical law the denyers of the Resurrection and the vile Gnosticks who under pretence of more knowledge and higher priviledges abused Christian Liberty to all licentiousness and vileness of living making shipwrack both of Faith and Conscience Against these St. Peter St. James St. John particularly write in their Epistles and this of our Apostle St. Jude is all directed against that Heresie In opposition to which writing of the Common Salvation he saith it was needful to write unto them the true Catholicks and exhort them that they should earnestly contend for the Faith which was once deliver'd to the Saints This was needful in his days and 't is certainly as necessary in ours in which all the old Heresies are revived with the addition of new on which account the subject is too seasonable and I chose it at this time as a Preface to the discourses I intend on all the main Principles of the Christian Religion as I have already treated in order on all the Principal heads of the Natural In the words read two main propositions are implyed 1. That there was a Faith anciently deliver'd to the Saints 2. That all Christians are bound to contend and earnestly for that Faith which was deliver'd to those Saints I begin with the First There was a Faith deliver'd to the Saints Now aimidst the great diversity and contrariety of opinions that at present are in the Christian Church each entitling it self to the Faith that was originally deliver'd to the Saints it may seem a matter of difficulty to determine which is the right the true Faith which difficulty doth not arise so much from the nature of the thing as it doth from mens corrupt interests and affections disputing about it And therefore abstracting from these I shall endeavour to set before you the chief Characters of the true Faith by which you may judge what that is and where it is to be found And 1. The Faith we treat of is an Ancient Primitive Faith Quod verum id prius Truth was from the beginning Divers of the Doctrines with which our Saviour hath enlightned every one that cometh into the world were before his personal appearance in it Before Abraham was I am saith He and Abraham saw his day the discovery of his great truths and ways He was the Author and Finisher of our Faith In him it begun and it was consummate in his personal teaching and instructions of his immediate Disciples and Apostles who by the Spirit deliver'd to us what they had received from him Natural Truths are more and more discover'd by time For many go to and fro and Science shall be encreased But those divine verities are most perfect in their fountain and original They contract impurities in their streams and remote derivations and the way to discover the corruptions is to stand upon the old ways and see how it was in the beginning By this Character of the Faith that of the Roman Church is condemn'd For all the Doctrines and usages of that Church that are denyed and opposed by ours are in comparison Novelties and Innovations and whatever Antiquity they pretend to they were not primitive Their Image-Worship Invocation of Saints Half-Communion and Prayer in an unknown tongue are directly palpably contrary to the Holy Scriptures Their pretended Infallibility and Universality their Indulgences Purgatory and Transubstantiation with divers others of their Doctrines and usages are by plain consequence condemn'd by those Sacred Writings which are the repository of the ancient Faith and Practice and both the one and the other were unknown to the first and
purest times those of the first three hundred nay six hundred years which assertions I have in this place particularly and largely made good and divers of our Learned Divines have in their writings fully proved it Nor is there any one thing which we condemn in the Roman belief or practice but what hath arose by the corruption of times long since the beginning and indeed in the the Church of Rome there is an eternal fountain of Innovations in the authority they assume of declaring that is in good earnest in making new Articles of Faith So that their people can never know when they have all new things may still be obtruded as necessary and essential without end On the other side the Character of Antiquity condemns the Sects also Among them there are some old Heresies received but their principles and practices as opposite to those of our Church of England were not in the first best times Presbytery Independency Anabaptism Quakerism may have been here and there of old in the brains of some particular conceited men but never were in any general practice any where the eldest not two hundred years ago and some have arose in our own time Their ways they pretend to be contain'd in the holy Scriptures and if so we would presently acknowledge them to be Primitive But they are in the Scriptures only as those are interpreted by their private Spirits that is not there but in the fancies of the Innovators and these being their guide in interpreting Lo here also is a fountain of perpetual novellizing And as long as the imaginations of men can frame novelties we shall never be at the end of new Sects We have seen the rise of some in our late times of confusions and if ever we should be so unhappy as to see such again which God forbid in all likelihood from the same Source other new yet unheard of Sects and Heresies would arise to the further dividing of the Chncurh ad scandal of Religion There is nothing so pregnant with Novelties as imagination and the Sectarian private Spirit is no better nor worse than Fancy I deny not but these all sorts of them do retain some of the Primitive Doctrines as the Roman Church also doth but their opinions and ways that are opposite to the Church of England are not such This our Church without fondness or overweening I may say doth profess and teach the Ancient Apostolical Primitive Christianity and hath admitted no new things that are contrary to it It was reformed according to the Scriptures the Scriptures as they are interpreted by the first General Councils and Fathers those next the Apostles who we ought to believe understood best what were their doctrines and ways This Church in its constitutions is therefore truly ancient so in every main every considerable thing and truly Protestant protesting both against Roman and Sectarian Innovations 2. Another Character of the Faith delivered to the ancient Saints is that it was pure 'T was delivered to the Saints and it made them such The wisdom that is from above is first pure It teacheth and produceth Purity Holiness and real Goodness in Heart and Life The business of it is to conform us unto God and to make us like him And the Lord our God is holy And by this Character also is Popery condemn'd For this teacheth some direct impieties and immoralities and by the consequence of some other of its Doctrines the necessity of Reformation of life is quite taken away the Reins are laid on mens necks and Gods Laws are made void by their traditions Of the first sort are their Idolatries and Invocation of Saints and Angels which God both in the Old Testament and the New hath so earnestly declared against as the highest dishonour to his Majesty and affront to his Glory and which he stigmatizeth as the greatest impurities and frequently calls Fornication and Whoredome they are spiritually so Likewise their doctrines and practices of deposing and murdering of Princes and absolving the people from their Allegiance their dispensing with Perjuries Rebellions and other sorts of wickedness are highest immoralities and most Antichristian that is most contrary to the Spirit Genius and designs of the holy Jesus which were to redeem unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works Besides which direct and point blank oppositions to the Christian principles and Rules they strike at the root and main design of Christianity by those their doctrines that render repentance and change of life unnecessary For according to them the favour of God and eternal Salvation may be had upon easier terms Crossings Pilgrimages Ave Maries Whippings Fastings with Confession and Absolution will do the business There is no need of cutting off right hands of plucking out of right eyes and mortifying the body in our Saviours spiritual sence that is of subduing and rescinding all inordinate appetites and affections which are the great difficulties of Religion the bodily exercises will suffice we may be safe and Sainted without obedience to those hard sayings Or if the other things should be omitted 't is but going to Purgatory at last and if you have money to leave for Masses and Dirge's you are secure of being pray'd out thence So that here the greatest design of the Gospel which is real inward holiness and purity is destroyed And without holiness 't is here made possible to see God And this is the worst thing that any thing that pretends to Religion can be guilty of On the other hand the Sects whatever purity and spirituality they pretend do many most of them teach doctrines and walk in ways that are contrary to the purity of heart and life that becomes a Christian The Gnosticks who were some of the first Fanaticks in the Christian Church pretended that they were the spiritual the pure people and that all things to them were pure on which account they gave themselves up to all Immorality and filthiness Sensual saith the Apostle having not the Spirit They denyed there was any moral good and evils in the nature of things and estimate of God And this Heresie is received among some of our Sects God they think and say sees no sin in them his elect people He loves not for the sake of holiness and vertue but freely that is for no reason but meer unaccountable will and if so 't is in vain to amend our lives to live soberly righteously and godly in order to our acceptance with him Though we are the quite contrary in all manner of evil conversation we may yet be his beloved his chosen This hath the malignity of the worst of Popery or Heathenism And such a Principle is among some of the Sects I accuse not all others that do not affirm so much as this do in a manner make good works unnecessary Faith their airy Faith that prescinds from moral goodness is all All is believing receiving trusting relying which are great duties parts of Faith but this as
ways they must not be parted with or silenc't no all Laws and Constitutions of Government must be thwarted overthrown rather Love and Peace and all must be sacrificed to the Idols which being so what quietness can there be from hence what peace or temper among such principles These perpetually annoy and disturb the Church and to know what they do in the State let us consider Germany Scotland and 't is to be hoped though we have frail memories on this side we shall not forget how peaceable the Sectaries have been in England or not observe how quiet they are at this day Remember I hope we shall for Caution I urge no other remembrance I wish they themselves did not remember them so well as we find they do by many of the same actions and discourses That Kings hold from the people are only Trustees for them and may be resisted and deposed when they fail in that trust are Politicks that do not much tend to civil peace and we know whose Principles those were and we have no great reason to think they have quitted them I can give but brief hints of things that would afford matter enough to fill Volumes as both Popish and Sectarian disloyalty Rebellions and disturbances would do But into these mens secrets let not our Souls come The Church that we some of us at least profess our selves to be members of teacheth no unpeaceable doctrines is guilty of no such practices It imposeth no Articles on our belief as necessary to our Salvation but the Ancient Creeds no terms of Communion but such reasonable orders and decencies as are free from all appearance of Idolatry and Superstition or any thing else that is unlawful as will appear to any rational man that shall take the pains to consider and will judge impartially nothing that is more burthensome or grievous than the Rites and usages of the Primitive Christian Church were which assertions I have in this place lately proved and divers of our Divines in their books have fully done it to the shame of Fanatical Gainsayers As to the concerns of civil peace our Church with Christ and his Apostles teacheth active chearful conscientious obedience to the King and subordinate Rulers in all lawful things and quiet submission to the penalties of not obeying when the things required are unlawful plainly certainly so And that we are not in this nor in any case to resist Suitable to this have been the practices of the people of this peaceable Church Among whom there hath not yet been found a Rebel We never heard of a Church of England-man in the late wars against the King nor of a Sectary for him But 4. The Faith deliver'd to the Saints was a reasonable Faith the understanding of man is the Candle of the Lord Prov. 20. 27. The light of Reason is his light with this The true light hath enlightned every one that cometh into the world Joh. 1. 9. and one light is not contrary to another there is difference in degree but no opposition of Nature Faith and Reason accord Yea Faith is an act of Reason 't is the highest reason to believe in God and the belief of our reason is an act of Faith viz. Faith in the truth and goodness of God that would not give us faculties to delude and deceive us when we rightly exercise and employ them By Faith Reason is further enlightned and by the use of Reason Faith is applyed Religion and Reason sweetly agree and nothing can be Religious that is unreasonable Religion is a reasonable service And by this Character Popery is disproved also For that imposeth on the practice and minds of men things that are extreamly unreasonable and absurd as Articles of Religion Such are the worship of invisible beings by Images of Wood or Stone and especially the Doctrine of Transubstantiation which is full of Contradictions as that the same body can be in a thousand places at once that at the same time it may be bigger and less than it self that it may move towards and from it self That it may be divided not into parts but wholes These and numerous other absurdities and contradictions to the reason of mankind are contain'd in the sensless mystery of Popish Transubstantiation To defend which the Doctors of that Church are put upon this miserable shift of denying all reason in Religion even the greatest and most fundamental Article of it That the same thing can be and not be which some of them say is the only method to confute Hereticks And while Reason and our Faculties are acknowledg'd we cannot entertain their non-sence nor be answer'd in our just oppositions of their gross absurdities On the other side the Character of a reasonable Faith condemns the Sects the greatest part of whose Divinity is made up of sensless absurd notions set forth in unintelligible Fantastical Phrases and these they account the heights of spirituality and mystery upon which they value and boast themselves as the only knowing the only spiritual people When there is nothing in all their pretended heights and spiritualities but vain imagination and dreaming and in v. 8. of this Epistle they are described by this Character 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Dreamers And as the light of Sense and Reason dispels the vain Images of Dreams so these admitted would cure Fanatical impostures and delusions For which cause there is nothing they so vehemently declaim against as Reason under the notion of carnal and as an enemy to the Spirit and the things of it There is indeed a carnal Reason that is enmity to truth and goodness but that is not the reason of our minds but the reason of our appetite passion and corrupt interest which is not reason truly so called no more than an Ape is a man But for want of thus distinguishing the things that so differ Enthusiasts rail violently against all Reason as the grand adversary of the truths and mysteries of the Gospel Their Tenents that she calls so will not bear that light But the Church of England teacheth no opinions no mysteries that need such a desperate course to defend them Its Articles of Faith are all contain'd in the Ancient Christian Creeds which are no way opposite to Reason in any Article yea Reason either proves or defends them all So that we never give out at this weapon but are ready to use it upon all occasions against Atheists and Infidels of all sorts The Church of England owns no Religion but what is reasonable 5. The Faith deliver'd to the Saints was certain it was deliver'd to them by those that had it from the holy Spirit of God in the way of immediate inspiration Those holy men spake as they were inspired And that they were really so was no fond imagination or bold presumption but a truth assured by those mighty miracles they were enabled to perform Those are Gods Seal and the grand confirmation of a commission from him and to this proof of their
labours and their works do follow them THe more attentively we consider the Christian Religion in any of its parts we find greater grounds for the confirmation both of its Author and excellency so infinitely does it surpass all those writings of that nature which the great Sages of the World have with so much superciliousness on their part and admiration from their respective followers I may add too all things considered not without meriting due praise from us delivered to their Scholars And this will appear evident and undeniable if we but parallel them in any of the chief heads for instance in the principles upon which our Religion does proceed the precepts it contains and the rewards it appoints which division will comprize the summ of what we profess In all which the great Masters of Heathen wisdom do plainly discover either a great deal of Ignorance or malice in prevaricating that light they had reflected upon them from Jewish tradition so that it may be well doubted whether their Symbolick Divinity were not design'd rather to concel their own Ignorance in what they pretended to than to secure the rites and mysteries thereof from the vulgar's profanation For example 1. Take first the Principles those truths that are the Basis and foundation of our Religion such as are the Being and Nature of God the Creation of the World the Fall of man and his Redemption by a Messias the Immortality of the Soul and the Resurrection 't is plain the whole Philosophick world had none or but a very imperfect knowledge of almost all of them However some of their lavish Charity have endeavour'd to squeeze as much from their writings Nay that they were not without some knowledge of our greatest Mysteries viz. of a Messias under their Daimono-Latria and even of the Trinity in Plato's Triad and the Resurrection of the body under the Indians Palin-genesis But no body that has any veneration either for the Scriptures or but for Truth in general but must see and acknowledge that all this is but tortur'd from them Nor may we deny this further that whatever Notions of this kind they had were but traditional in respect of their Origine and conjectural in reference to their ambiguity and uncertainty 2. The like is to be said of their Rules and Precepts of virtuous living For we may not detract thus much from them that they have recommended many excellent Institutes to their Sects You shall collect among them many very admirable sayings such as these To know our selves to abstain from vice to bear afflictions to do justly and speak truly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 do as we would be done by and many more Indeed for that kind of Divinity which was deducible from the Rules of common prudence and observation and depended not chiefly or solely upon Divine Revelation they have done extraordinary well And if they had not furnish'd us with so many famous examples of Vertue too it would not reflect so much upon the Professors of Christianity which in the spirituality of its precepts has as far exceeded all that they have writ as some of their Lives have most of ours though that be not to be imputed to our Religion unless it were justly chargeable upon the vitiosity or defect of its Principles or Rules Thus miserably however do we compensate the Divine culture and as if Nature abhorring so great a disparity betwixt mankind would thus ballance the Heathen with the Christian World by opposing their Imperfect Knowledge but severer Vertue to our diviner Laws but greater licentiousness in Practice Many of them having by as great proportions exceeded us in their endeavours after goodness as we do them in the knowledge and other means of it 3. Last of all which brings it to our present subject Christianity propounds nothing but upon the fairest and surest encouragement imaginable For the happiness of our Religion is both transcendently superiour to their discoveries and accompts of it and then also we are sufficiently and unquestionably assur'd hereof i.e. 't is not recommended to us upon plausible perswasions and inconclusive arguments but in the genuine sence of St. Paul's expressions 1 Corinth 2. 4. in demonstration of the Spirit and Power So that we see there is a kind of peculiar excellency in the Holy Scriptures above all the Systems of the greatest Moralists the foundation of our Obedience being laid upon clearer and better principles the practice of our obedience being carried higher by the spirituality of its commands and the rewards of our obedience being incomparably greater than what we can conceive much less could they promise or bestow 'T is the last of these that is contain'd in the Text and for which I am to be further accomptable to ye in the prosecution of the words I have read And I heard a voice from Heaven saying unto me Write Blessed c. Wherein we have these following particulars principally to be observed 1. The happiness of good men describ'd by its general nature they are blessed and by its integral parts they rest from their labours and their works do follow them 2. The Security and Evidence upon which this happiness is promis'd and asserted yea saith the Spirit 3. The time of its perfection and accomplishment partly in this life but not fully nor completely till death saying Blessed are the dead that dye in the Lord. 4. And lastly the Influence which the consideration of these premisses ought to have upon us both in Life and Death in reference to Obedience and Patience And I. To begin with the description of that happiness those rewards which are propounded to us for the encouragement of our Obedience and Patience Which are so great that I am utterly ignorant by what measures to describe them to ye The nature of that Celestial bliss as far transcending all our present felicities by which we should judge of it as it does the very capacity of our meriting it Sir Francis Bacon has observ'd We can have but a very imperfect accompt of those things which receed any whit near those extreams of Nothing and Infinity because either by their parvity or immensity they elude or confound our knowledge And especially the latter which choak the understanding and is like the beholding of the Sun whose light and lustre by which we discern other objects marrs and dimms our sight Such is the transcendent excellency of our future bliss at once the delight and amazement of our Intellectuals In the description whereof our highest expressions are so far from being hyperbolical that they amount but to a Litotes so that after our utmost endeavours we must content our selves with St. Pauls account of it in his First and Second Epistles to the Corinthians his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unutterable for that I take to be the meaning and not as we render it unlawful of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and also unconceiveable So inevitably should we diminish
place seems to cross all that hath been said about the Difficulties of Religion And 't is true it hath such an appearance but 't is no more For the words look as cross to the expressions of the same Divine Author concerning the straitness of the Gate and narrowness of the Way as to any thing I have delivered from those infallible sayings Therefore to remove the semblance of contrariety which the objected Text seems to have to those others and to my Discourse we may observe That when our Saviour saith that his yoke is easie the word we read is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifieth very good excellent gracious and the meaning I suppose is That his Precepts had a native beauty and goodness in them That they are congruous and sutable to our reasonable Natures and apt instruments to make us happy In which sense this expression hath no antipathy to the Text or to any thing I have said And whereas 't is added My Burden is light I think by this we are to understand That his Commands are not of that burdensome nature that the Ceremonies of the Jewish Laws were Those were very cumbersome and had nothing in their nature to make them pleasant and agreeable whereas his Religion had no expensive troublesome Rites appendant to it nor did it require any thing but our observation of those Laws which eternal Reason obligeth us to and which of our selves we should choose to live under were we freed from the intanglements of the World and interests of Flesh So that neither doth this Objection signifie any thing against the scope of my Discourse ANd now I come to Apply what I have said and the things I have to add will be comprehended under these two Generals 1. Inferences and 2. plain Advice in order to practice I begin with the Inferences and Corollaries that arise from the whole Discourse And 1. We may collect What is the state of Nature and What the state of Grace We have seen that 't is the great business of Religion to overcome evil Inclinations and the prevailing influence of sense and passion and evil customs and example and worldly affections And therefore the state of Nature consists in the power and prevalency of These This is that the Scripture calls the Old man Eph. 4. 22. The Image of the earthy 1 Cor. 15. Flesh Gal. 5. 17. Death Rom. 7. 24. Darkness Joh. 3. 19. and old leven 1 Cor. 5. 7. On the contrary The state of Grace is a state of sincere striving against them which if it keeps on ends in Victory And this is call'd Conversion Acts 3. 19. and Renovation while 't is in its first motions And the Divine Nature 2 Pet. 1. 4. the Image of the Heavenly 1 Cor. 15. 20. The Spirit Gal. 5. 16. Light Ephes 5. 8. and Life 1 Joh. 3. 14. when 't is arriv'd to more compleatness and perfection For our fuller understanding this we may consider That Grace is taken 1. for Divine favour 2. for Christian Vertue As it signifies Divine favour so it is used 1. For those helps and aids God affords us viz. the Gospel Joh. 1. 17. and the influences of his Spirit 1 Cor. 12. 9. In this sense we are deliver'd from the state of Nature by Baptism viz. We are intitled to divine helps which is a kind of regeneration for we are born in a condition of impotence and weakness and destitution of spiritual assistances This is the world of meer nature But then in Baptism we are brought into the world of the Spirit that is are put under its influences and are assured of its aids and so are morally born again Not that this Regeneration alone will save us without our endeavours it imports only an external relation and right to priviledges and by these we may be powerfully assisted in our striving if we use them But then 2. Grace as it signifies divine favour implies his special love and kindness such as he vouchsafes to holy and vertuous men so that we may observe that there may be a distinction between a state of Grace and a state of salvation A state of Grace in the former sense is a condition assisted by the influences of Gods Spirit and all baptized persons are in that But if they use not those helps they are not in Gods special favour and so not in a state of Salvation But when those assistances are duly imployed and join'd with our sincere endeavour then the person so using them is in a state of Salvation also and in God's special love and favour Thus of the state of Grace in the first sense as taken for divine favour 2. The word is also used for Christian Vertue 2 Pet. 3. 18. and Vertue is call'd Grace because 't is wrought in us by the assistance of Gods Spirit and the light of the Gospel which are divine favours and to be in a state of grace in this sense is to be a virtuous man which supposeth divine aids and intitles to divine love These things I have taken an occasion thus briefly to state because there is oft-times much confusion in means discourses about Grace and Nature from which much trouble and many controversies have arisen And by what I have said also in these brief hints the doctrine of our Church in the office of Baptism may be understood clearly and will appear to be very sound and true notwithstanding the petty exceptions of confident Dissenters II. I may infer That the great Design of Religion and the Gospel is to perfect humane nature The perfection of our natures consists in the subjection and subordination of the affections and passions to the Mind as it is enlightned and directed by the divine Laws and those of Reason This is the state of integrity in which we were first made and we lost it by the rebellion of our senses and inferiour powers which have usurpt the government of us ever since Here is the imperfection and corruption of our natures Now Religion designs to remove and cure these and to restore us to our first and happy state It s business is not to reform our looks and our language or to model our actions and gestures into a devout appearance not only to restrain the practice of open prophaneness and villany nor to comfort us with the assurance of Gods loving us we know not why But to cure our ill natures to govern our passions to moderate our desires to throw out pride and envy and all uncharitable surmisals with the other spiritual sorts of wickedness and thereby to make us like unto God in whom there is no shadow of sin or imperfection and so to render us fit objects of his delight and love So that whatever doth not tend to the making us some way or other really better better in our selves and better in all Relations as fathers and children and husbands and wives and subjects and governours and neighbours and friends is not Religion It may
our hopes Were not all miscarriages of Government well mended when Government was thrown up by the roots and was not the disease well cured when the Body was destroyed Were we not well freed from evil Counsellors when we made Kings of the worst we had And was not Tyranny well extirpated when we were under an Army of Tyrants But the glorious things are to come and we must be cast into New Models And when the Birds of Prey have divided the Spoil and satisfied the cravings of their appetites and ambition the Nation shall be made happy with New-nothings and golden Mountains with Chimaera's of Common-wealths and fine names for Slavery In the mean while Loyalty must be scourged with the Scorpions that are due to Rebellion And those that feared the damnation of the Apostle shall be sure to incur the damnation of the Reformers and they that would not hazard their Souls must compound for their Estates But when the JUNCTO had run to the length of their Line that is as far as their MASTER would permit them when they were as odious as they deserved and his designs as ripe as he could wish then up steps the single TYRANT kicks them out of their Seats and BEELZEBUB dispossesseth the LEGION He engrosseth the prey to himself and assumes the sole priviledge of compleating our miseries He made himself after the Image of a King and invested his Sword with the authority of Law He ruled us with the Rod of Iron we deserved and made us feel a difference between the silken Reins of a lawful Authority and the heavy yoke of an insolent Usurpation And when Providence had freed us from this Plague and called him to account for his Villanies we fell back into our old disorders we reeled to and fro and staggered like a Drunken man and were at our wits end We knew not this week who would be our Lords the next nor did our Lords themselves know to day by what Laws they would Rule to morrow Confusion was in their Councils as well as Tyranny in their Actions and there was but one thing they seemed to be agreed upon which was to inslave the Nation And if we would not believe that this was Liberty we must be knockt on the head with our chains if the Sheep would not take the Wolves for their Guardians 't was fault enough and good reason why they should be devoured And were not things come at length to a good pass when men in Buff durst proclaim themselves the only Legal Authority of the Nation when our Armed Masters murdered men in the Streets and threatned the ancient Metropolis of the Nation with Gunpowder and Granadoes Fire and Sword must be our portion if we would not be in love with infamous Usurpers and a worse Powder-plot than Faux's was acting in the face of the Sun The strength the riches the beauty yea the almost All of the Nation was designed a Sacrifice to the rage and revenge of our Oppressors and Plunder and Massacres were almost the least evils we feared Thus were we tost up and down from one wave to another and made the sport of the proud and insulting billows till Almighty Goodness setled us again upon our old basis and by a Miracle of Providence restored us our PRINCE and our Government which our sins had deprived us of to re-establish us upon the sure Foundations of Righteousness and Peace These are some sprinklings of that deluge of Woe that we brought upon our selves by resistance which I have briefly described to this purpose that the remembrance of these miseries may beget a sense of our sins and the truth of the particular Proposition I have been discoursing under this Head viz. That Resistance is fatal to Government And though Government may be fixt again upon its Foundations and Laws turned into their ancient Channel after the violence they have suffered yet they lose much of their reverence and strength by such dissettlements And the People that have rebelled once and successfully will be ready to do so often As water that hath been boyled will boyl again the sooner And thus we see how ruinous resistance is to Government and how destructive to that first great Interest of Societies as it is also 2. TO RELIGION which is the other That Rebellion is contrary to the Spirit of Religion we have seen and consequently that 't is destructive of its Being will not need much proof since contraries destroy one another Rebellion lays the Reins on mens necks and takes off the restraints of their appetites it opens the flood-gates of Impiety and le ts loose the brats of extravagant Imagination It destroys the reverence of all things sacred and drives Vertue to Corners It gathers mens lusts into a common storm and fills all things with Chaos and confusion Religion cannot be heard in the noise of a battel but is trampled under-foot in the hurry and tumult Faith and love humility and meekness purity and patience are overcast and silenced by Atheism and Cruelty pride and barbarism lust and revenge Thus Rebellion by breaking up the foundations of the Earth le ts in an Hell upon us and brings a kind of present damnation upon the World And that this is another fatal mischief of Resistance we have felt also by an experience that will keep it in our memories And what execution it hath done upon Religion must be considered next But this is a tender thing and I am willing to keep my self within bounds that are charitable and sober and therefore must premise to what I have to say about it that I charge not the whole Body of the People of the late Times with the guilt of all the Follies and corruptions I describe Nor do I believe or say that the whole Mass of their Religion was so monstrously vitiated and depraved I profess Universal Charity and have perhaps more for the worst of them than they generally will own for any that are not of their own party or opinion And therefore at present I shall say no more than what the sober and intelligent among themselves will acknowledge to be justly chargeable upon some or other of the Sects bred by our late Disorders and this will be enough for my purpose which is only to prove by near and deplorable instances that resistance brings mischiefs upon Religion and not to expose to hatred or contempt the persons of any that are serious in the way of their profession though I judge it never so obnoxious and mistaken And having said this out of a tender charity that none may be wronged by misinterpretation nor any offended that are not concerned I come with freedom to describe some of the injuries our unhappy resistance hath done Religion not withstanding that both Arms and Tongues so highly pretended its defence And indeed men fought for Religion till they had destroyed it and disputed about it till they had lost it Midtiplicity of Opinion had quite confounded the
simplicity of Life and Faith and 't was most peoples business to chatter like Pyes rather than to live like Christians or like Men. If Religion had been computed by mens talk and dispute about it those later days of the declining World had been its best and this in its growth and ways of highest improvement when all things else were verging to their Set and Period But alas the Tongue was the most if not the only religious Member And many of the Pretenders like the Aegyptian Temples were fair without but Beasts and Serpents and Crocodiles within Or like the Bird of Paradise they had Wings to flye in the Clouds of Imagination but no Feet to walk on the Ground of a vertuous practice Yea some had found the way to swim to Heaven in the Current of their appetites and to reconcile Covetousness Rapine Cruelty and Spiritual Pride with the glorious names of the Elect the People of God the Church of Christ and the good Party Religion with Rebellion and Sacriledge with Saintship Men had learnt to be godly without goodness and Christians without Christianity They were lovers of God and yet haters of their Brother haters of open Prophaneness but not of spiritual wickedness Very godly though cruel and unjust True penitents though they returned to their sins as soon as they had complain'd and wept Their hearts were good though their actions were dishonest and they had the root of the matter in them though that root were a dry stump and had no branches They were regenerated but not reformed converted but not a jot the better Devout Worshippers but bad Neighbours Lovers of God but no haters of Covetousness Had power in Heaven but none over themselves They were Gods Servants though they obeyed their appetites and his children though no better than those that are of their Father the Devil Thus had men got the knack to be religious without religion and were in the way to be saved without salvation These were gross disorders whereby Religion was taken from its foundation of Vertue and Holy living and placed in emotions raptures and swelling words of vanity And when these had kindled the imagination and raised the fansie to the Clouds to flutter there in mystical non-sense and when that was mounted on the Wings of the Wind and got into the Revelations to loosen the seals pour out the vials and phantastically to interpret the fates of Kingdoms when it flew into the Tongue in an extravagant ramble and abused the Name and Word of God mingling it with canting unintelligible babble I say when the diseased and disturbed phansie thus variously displayed it self many made themselves believe that they were acted by the Spirit and that those wild agitations of sick Imaginations were divine motions And when this fire was descended from the fansie to the affections and these being exceedingly moved by those vain and proud conceits caused tremblings and foamings convulsions and ecstasies in the body all which are but natural diseases if not worse and just like those odd ecstatical motions of the Devils Priests when they came foaming from his Altars these I say the wild phantasticks had learnt to ascribe to the blessed and adorable Spirit And when their phansies being full of turgid notions and their bodies in an ecstasie they dream'd of strange sights voices and wonderful discoveries which were nothing but the unquiet agitations of their own disordered brains These also were taken for divine Revelations and the effects of the Spirit of God shewing it self miraculously in them Briefly and in sum Every humour and phantastick unaccountable motion was by some represented as the work of that Spirit to which they are most opposite Thus when warm and brisk sanguine presented a cheerful Scene and filled the imagination with pleasant Dreams these were divine Illapses the Joys and Incomes of the Holy Ghost When heated Melancholy had kindled the busie and active phansie the Enthusiast talks of Illuminations New Lights Revelations and many wonderful fine things which were ascribed to the same Spirit and when Phlegm prevailed and had quencht the phantastick Fire rendring the Mad man more dull and unactive then the Spirit was withdrawn and the man under spiritual darkness and desertion And when again Choler was boyled up into rage and fury against every thing that was not of the Fanatique genius this also was presumed to be an Holy Fervour kindled by that Spirit whose real Fruits are gentleness and love And now after that which I have said on this occasion it may perhaps be necessary to add that I hope none here will be so uncharitable or so unjust as to think that I go about to disparage the Spirit of God and its influence which as I ought I adore and reverence and because I do so I think it fit to represent and shame the blasphemous abuses of it which would expose the most Divine things to scorn and make them ridiculous And that the Holy Spirit hath been thus traduced and injured and is still by great numbers among us 't would be shameful not to acknowledge And I add that my zeal and reverence for the realities make me thus justly sharp against the Counterfeits Nor do I think that folly and phantastry is to be spared because they wear the stollen Livery of things venerable and sacred Therefore to go on such a Religion had the corruption of it bred among us A Religion conceived in the Imagination and begot by Pride and Self-Love which gilded the Professors of it with all the glorious names and priviledges of the Gospel And when they had encircled their Heads with their own phantastick rays and swoln their Imaginations into a Tympany of ridiculous greatness they scornfully contemned all but their Darling-selves under the notion of the Formal the Moral and the Wicked and proudly pitied the poor and carnal World that is all that were not of their conceited pitch and elevation And having thus dignified themselves and debased others they herded together drew the Church into their little Corners and withdrew from the communion of others who had less conceit though more Christianity They bid us stand off lest we should have polluted them by our unhallowed approaches and having made us as the Heathen and the Publican they cried Come out from among them The true Church soundness of Judgement purity of Doctrine and of Worship if men would believe them was confined to their clans just as they wee to the Corners of Africa of old when their Friends the Donatists were there Thus did the Votaries of each Sect swell in their Imaginations till some other sort as well conceited as themselves endeavoured to take their Plumes from them and to appropriate those glorious prerogatives to their own party And this went for the power of Godliness and the spirituality of Religion under pretence of which all reverence to things sacred was destroyed For when this Spirit had got into the Pulpit and set up the Cry of