fail of the Prize he runs for by mistaking the Way he should run in St. Paul as plainly as words can express a Thing tells us That Eternal Life is the Gift of God and Consequently to be expected by us only as such nay He asserts it to be a Gift in the very same verse in which He affirms Death to be as due to a Sinner as Wages are to a Worke man Romans 6.23 Than which Words nothing certainly can be more full and Conclusive That Salvation proceeds wholly upon Free-gift though Damnation upon strict Desert Nevertheless such is the Extreme folly or rather Sottishness of Manâ— Corrupt Nature That this does by 〈◊〉 means Satisfy Him For though indeed he would fain be Happy yet fain would He also Thank none for it but Himself And though He finds that not only His Duty but His Necessity brings him every day upon His knees to Almighty God for the very Bread he eats yet when he comes to deal with Him about Spirituals things of infinitely greater Value he appears and acts not as a Suppliant but as a Merchant not as One who comes to be Relieved but to Traffick For something he would receive of God and something he would Give Him and nothing will content this Insolent yet Impotent Creature unless he may seem to Buy the very Thing he Begs Such being the Pride and Baseness of some Spirits that where they Receive a Benefit too big for them to requite they will even Deny the Kindness and disown the Obligation Now this great self-delusion so prevalent upon most minds is the Thing here encountered in the Text. The words of which by an usual way of speech under an Interrogation couching a Positive Assertion are a Declaration of the Impossibility of man's being Profitable to God or which is all one of his meriting of God according to the true proper and strict sence of Merit Noâ— does this Interrogative way of Expression import only a bare Negation of the Thing as in it self Impossible but also a manifest Undeniable Evidence of the said Impossibility As if it had been said That nothing can be more plainly Impossible than for a man to be Profitable to God for God to receive any Advantage by man's Righteousness or to gain any Thing by his making his Ways perfect and Consequently That nothing can be more absurd and contrary to all Sense and Reason â—â—an for a man to entertain and cherish so irrational a Conceit or to affirm so gross a Paradox And that no other Thing is here meant by a man's being profitable to God but his meritiâ—â— of God will appear from a true State and Account of the Nature of Merit Which we may not improperly define A Right to receive some good upon the score of some good done together with an Equiâ—olence or Parity of Worth between the Good to be Received and the Good Done So that although according to the Common Divisâ—â—n of Iustice into Commutative and Distributive that which is called Commutative be imployed only about the strict Value of Things according to an Arithmetical Proportion as the Schools speak which admits of no Degrees and the other species of Iustice call'd Distributive as consisting in the Distribution of Rewards and Punishments admits of some Latitude and degrees in the Dispensation of it yet in Truth even this Distribution it self must so far follow the Rules of Commutation That the Good to be dispensed by way of Reward ought in Iustice to be Equivalent to the Work or Action which it is design'd as a Compensation of So as by no means to sink below it or fall short of the full Value of it From all which upon a just Estimate of the matter it follows That in true Philosophy Merit is nothing else but an Instance or Exemplification of that Noted saying or Maxim That one Benefaction or good Turn requires another and imports neither more nor less than a mans claim or Title to Receive as much Good from another as he had done for him Thus much therefore being premised as an Explication of the Drift or Design of the Words the Words themselves being too plain and Easy to need any further exposition we shall observe and draw from them these Four Particulars First Something supposed or implyed in them viz. That Men are naturally very Prone to entertain an Opinion or Perswasion That they are able to merit of God or be Profitable to Him Secondly Something expressed namely That such an Opinion or Perswasion is utterly false and absurd and that it iâ— impossible for man to merit of God or to be Profitable to Him Thirdly Something Inferred from both the former to wit That the forementioned Opinion or Perswasion is the very source or foundation of Two of the greatest Corruptions that have infested the Christian Church and Religion And Fourthly and Lastly Something objected against the Particulars discoursed of which I shall endeavour â—o answer and remove and so Conclude this Discourse Of Each of which in their order And First For the first of them The Thing supposed or Implyed in the Words namely That Men are naturally very Prone to entertain an Opinion or Perswasion That they are able to merit of God or be Profitable to Him The Truth of which will appear from these two Considerations First That it is Natural for them to place too High a Value both upon themselves and their own Performances And that this is so is evident from that Vniversal Experience which proves it no less Natural to them to bear a more than ordinary Love to themselves and all Love we know is founded in and results from a Proportionable Esteem of the Object Loved So that look in what Degree any Man loves himself in the same Degree it will follow that he must Esteem himself too Upon which account it is that every Man will be sure to set his own Price upon what he is and what he does whether the World will come up to it or no as it seldom does That speech of St. Peter to our Saviour is very remarkable in Mat. xix 27 Master says he we have forsook all and followed Thee what shall we have therefore In which words he seems to be upon Equal Terms with his Lord and to expect no more of him as he thought but strictly a Pennyworth for his Penny and all this from a Conceit that he had done an Aâ— so exceedingly Meritorious that it must even Non-plus his Master's Bouâ—â—y to quit scores with him by a just Requital Nay so far had the same proud Ferment got into the Minds of all the Disciples that neither could their own low condition nor the constant Sâ—rmons of that Great Example of Self-denial and Humility whom they daily conversed with nor lastly the Correctives of a Peculiar Grace totally clear and cure them of it And therefore no Wonder if a Principle so deeply rooted in Nature works with the whole Power of Nature and considering also â—he
its great Clog and Impediment As the skilfulest Artist in the World would make but sorry work of it should he be forced to make use of Tools no way fit for his Purpose But whether the fault be in the Spiritual or Corporeal part of our Nature or rather in Both certain it is that no two Things in the World do more rise and grow upon the Fall of Each other than the Flesh and the Spirit They being like a kind of Balance in the hand of Nature so that as one mounts up the other still sinks down and the high Estate of the Body seldom or never fails to be the Low declining Estate of the Soul Which great contrariety and discord between them the Apostle describes as well as words can do Galat. 5.7 The Flesh says He lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit lusteth against the Flesh and these two are contrary like two mighty Princes whose Territories join they are always encroaching and Warring upon one Another And as it most commonly falls out that the Worse Cause has the Best success so when the Flesh and the Spirit come to a Battle it is seldom but the Flesh comes off Victorious And therefore the same great Apostle who so constantly exercised Himself to keep a Conscience void of Offence did as constantly and severely exercise Himself to keep under his Body and bring it into subjection 1 Cor. 9.27 And the same in all Ages has been the Judgment and Practice of all such as have had any Experience in the ways of God and the true methods of Religion For all Bodily Pleasure dulls and weakens the Operations of the Mind even upon a Natural Account and much more upon a Spiritual Now the Pleasures which Chiefly Affect or rather Bewitch the Body and by so doing become the very Pest and Poyson of the Nobler and Intellectual Part of Man are those false and fallacious Pleasures of Lust and Intemperance Of Each of which severally and First For Lust. Nothing does or can darken the mind or Conscience of Man more Nay it has a peculiar Efficacy this way and for that cause may justly be ranked amongst the very Powers of Darkness It being that which as Naturalists observe strikes at the proper seat of the Understanding the Brain Something of that Blackness of Darkness mentioned in the 13 th of St. Iude seeming to be of the very Nature as well as Punishment of this Vice Nor does only the Reason of the thing it self but also the Examples of such as have been possessed with it demonstrate as much For had not Sampson think we an Intolerable Darkness and Confusion upon his understanding while He ran Roving after every strumpet in that Brutish manner that He did Was it not the Eye of his Conscience which his Dalilah first put out and so of a Judge of Israel rendred Himself really a Judgment upon them And when the two Angels as we read in 19. Gen. struck those Monsters the Men of Sodom with Blindness had not their own detestable Lust first stricken them with a greater Or could Herod have ever Thought Himself obliged by the Religion of an Oath to have Murdered the Baptist had not his Lust and His Herodias Imprisoned and Murdered his Conscience first For surely the Common Light of Nature could not but Teach Him that no Oath or Vow whatsoever could warrant the greatest Prince upon Earth to take away the Life of an Innocent Person But it seems his besotted Conscience having broken through the seventh Commandment the sixth stood too near it to be safe long and therefore his two great Casuists the Devil and his Herodias the worse Devil of the Two having allowed Him to lie and wallow in Adultery so long easily perswaded Him that the same Salvo might be found out for Murder also So that it was His Lust obstinately continued in which thus darken'd and deluded his Conscience and the same will no doubt darken and delude and in the End extinguish the Conscience of any Man Breathing who shall surrender Himself up to it The Light within him shall grow every day less and less and at length totally and finally go out and that in a stink too So hard or rather utterly unfeasible is it for Men to be Zealous Votaries of the Blind God without losing their Eyes in his Service and it is well if their Noses do not follow From all which it appears what a Paradox it is in Morals for any one under the Dominion of his lust to think to have a Right Judgment in Things relating to the state of his Soul And the same in the Second Place holds equally in that other Branch of sensuality Intemperance whereupon we find them both Joined together by the Prophet Hosea 4.11 Whoredom says He and Wine take away the Heart that is according to the Language of Holy Writ a Mans Iudging and Discerning abilities And therefore whosoever would preserve these Faculties especially as to their discernment of Spiritual objects quick and vigorous must be sure to keep the upper Region of His Soul clear and serene which the Fumes of Meat and Drink lâ—xuriously taken in will never suffer it to be We know the method which this high and exact Pattern of Spiritual Prudence St. Paul took to keep the great sentinel of His Soul his Conscience always vigilant and circumspect It was by a Constant and severe Temperance heighten'd with frequent Watchings and Fastings as He Himself tells us 2 Cor. 11.27 In watchings often in Fastings often c. This was the Discipline which kept his senses exercised to a sure and exquisite discrimination of Good and Evil and made the Lamp within Him shine always with a Bright and a Triumphant flame But Gluttony and all excess either in eating or drinking strangely clouds and dulls the Intellectual Powers and then it is not to be expected that the Conscience should bear up when the Vnderstanding is drunk down An Epicure's Practice Naturally disposes a Man to an Epicure's Principles that is to an equal looseness and dissolution in Both And He who makes his Belly His Business will quickly come to have a Conscience of as large a swallow as his Throat of which there wants not several scandalous and deplorable Instances Loads of meat and drink are fit for none but a Beast of Burden to bear and He is much the greater Beast of the two who carries his Burden in his Belly than He who carries it upon his Back On the contrary Nothing is so great a Friend to the mind of Man as Abstinence It strenghens the memory clears the Apprehension and sharpens the Iudgment and in a word gives Reason its full scope of Acting and when Reason has That it is always a diligent and faithful Hand-Maid to Conscience And therefore where Men look no further than meer Nature as many do not let no Man expect to keep his Gluttony and his Parts His Drunkenness and his Wit his Revellings and his Iudgment
a Supplication for him into a Satyr against him by representing him in our Prayers under the Character of one void of all Grace and Goodness and consequently a much fitter object for God's Vengeance than his Mercy And yet there was a Time in which this way of Praying was in no small Vogue with a certain sort of Men who would allow neither the gift nor spirit of Prayer to any but themselves For if at any time they prayed for those whom they accounted their Enemies and that only because they had done so much to make them so it could not be properly called an interceding with God for them but a downright enditing and arraigning them before God as a pack of graceless Wretches and Villains and avowed Enemies to the Power and Purity of the Gospel This and the like I say was the devout Language of their Prayers sometimes by Intimation and sometimes by direct Expression And thus under the Colour and Cover of some Plausible Artificial words it was but for them to call those whom they maligned Antichrist and themselves the Kingdom of Christ and then they might very laudably pray for the pulling down of the one and the setting up of the other and thereby no doubt answer all the measures of a Sanctified Self-denying Petition But as those days are at an end so it were to be wished that such kind of Praying were so too especially since Our Church I am sure has so much Charity as to teach all of her Communion to pray for those who are not only Enemies to our Persons but also to our very Prayers And thus I have endeavoured to shew what it is to Love our Enemies though I will not say that I have recounted all the Instances in which this Duty may exert it self For Love is Infinite and the methods of its acting Various and Innumerable But I suppose that I have marked out those Generals which all Particulars may be fairly Reduced to And now before I proceed to the Motives and Arguments to enforce the Duty I shall to prevent some Abuses of this Doctrine shew what is not Inconsistent with this Loving our Enemies And that is to defend and secure our selves against them I am to love my Enemy but not so as to hate my self if my Love to Him be a Copy I am sure the Love to my self ought to be the Original Charity is indeed to diffuse it self abroad but yet it may Lawfully begin at Home For the Precept surely is not unnatural and irrational nor can it state the Duty of Christians in opposition to the Privileges of Men and command us tamely to surrender up our Lives and Estates as often as the hands of Violence would wrest them from us We may Love our Enemies but we are not therefore to be fond of their Enmity And though I am commanded when my Enemy Thirsts to give him Drink yet it is not when he thirsts for my Blood It is my Duty to give him an Almes but not to let him take my Estate Princes and Governours may very well secure themselves with Laws and Arms against implacable Enemies for all this Precept they are not bound to Leave the State Defenceless against the Projects Plots and Insurrections of those who are pleased to think themselves persecuted if they are not permitted to Reign We may with a very fair comportment with this Precept Love our Enemies Persons while we hate their Principles and counterplot their designs I come now to the third and last thing viz. to assign Motives and Arguments to enforce this Love to our Enemy and they shall be taken 1. From the Condition of our Enemies Person 2. From the Excellency of the Duty 3. From the great Examples that recommend it and For the first of these if we Consider our Enemy we shall find that he sustains several Capacities which may give him a just Claim to our Charitable affection 1. As first he is joined with us in the Society and Community of the same Nature He is a Man And so far bears the Image and Superscription of our Heavenly Father He may cease to be our Friend but He cannot cease to be our Brother For we all descended from the same Loins and though Esau hates Iacob and Iacob supplants Esau yet they once lay in the same Womb and therefore the saying of Moses may be extended to all Men at Variance Why do ye wrong one to another for ye are Brethren If my Enemy were a Snake or a Viper I could do no more than hate and trample upon Him but shall I hate the seed of the Woman as much as I do that of the Serpent We hold that God Loves the most Sinful of his Creatures so far as they are his Creatures and the very Devils could not Sin themselves out of an excellent Nature though out of an Happy Condition Even War which is the Rage of Mankind and observes no Laws but its own yet it offers quarter to an Enemy I suppose because Enmity does not obliterate Humanity nor wholly Cancel the Sympathies of Nature For every Man does or I am sure he may see something of himself in his Enemy and a transcript of those perfections for which he Values himself And therefore those Unhumane Butcheries which some Men have acted upon others stand upon Record not only as the Crimes of Persons but also as the reproach of our very Nature and excusable upon no other Colour or Account whatsoever but that the Persons who acted such Cruelties upon other Men first ceased to be Men themselves and and were indeed to be reckoned as so many Anomalies and Exceptions from Mankind Persons of another Make or Mold from the rest of the Sons of Adam and deriving their original not from the Dust but rather from the stones of the Earth 2. An Enemy notwithstanding his Enmity may be yet the proper object of our Love because it sometimes so falls out that he is of the same Religion with us and the very business and design of Religion is to Unite and to put as it were a Spiritual Cognation and Kindred between Souls I am sure this is the great purpose of the Christian Religion which never joins Men to Christ but by first joining them amongst themselves and making them Members one of another as well as knitting them all to the same Head By how much the more intolerable were our late Zealots in their pretences to a more refined strain of Purity and Converse with God while in the mean time their Hearts could serve them to plunder worry and undo their poor Brethren only for their loyal adherence to their Sovereign Sequestring and Casting whole Families out of their Houses and Livings to starve abroad in the wide World against all the Laws of God and Man and who to this day breath the same Rage towards all Dissenters from them should they once more get the Reforming Sword into their Hands What these Men's Religion may teach
Nothing and that in the Business of Religion and the great concern of Souls all that is short of Obedience and a Good Life is Nothing but Trick and Evasion Froth and Folly and consequently that if they build upon such deceitful Grounds and with such slight materials they must and can expect no other than after all their cost and pains to have their House fall upon their Heads and so perish in the Ruin And with this Terrible Application in these two last Verses which I have pitched upon for my Text he concludes his Divine Sermon and Discourse from the Mount The words of the Text being too plain and easy to need any Nice or large Explication I shall manage the discussion of them in these four Particulars First In shewing the Reasons upon which I conclude Practice or Obedience in the great Business of a Man's Eternal Happiness to be the best and surest Foundation for him to build upon Secondly In shewing the False Foundations upon which many build and accordingly in Time of Tryal Miscarry Thirdly In shewing the Causes why such Miscarry and fall away in time of Tryal or Temptation Fourthly and Lastly In shewing wherein the Fatal greatness of their Fall consists And First for the first of These viz. to shew the Reasons why Practice or Obedience is the best and surest Foundation still supposing it bottomed upon the merits of Christ for a Man to build his designs for Heaven and the hopes of his Salvation upon I shall mention Three First Because according to the ordinary way and Oeconomy of God's working upon the Hearts of Men nothing but Practice can change our Corrupt Nature and Practice continued and persevered in by the Grace of God Will. We all acknowledge that is all who are not wise above the Articles of our Church that there is an Universal stain and depravation upon Mans Nature that does incapacitate him for the Fruition and Infinitely pure Converse of God The Removal of which cannot be effected but by introducing the contrary habit of Holiness which shall by degrees expell and purge out the other And the only way to produce an habit is by the frequent repetition of Congenial Actions Every Pious Action leaves a certain Tincture or disposition upon the Soul which being seconded by Actions of the same Nature whether by the superaddition of new Degrees or a more radicate fixation of the same grows at length into an Habit or Quality of the Force and Energy of a second Nature I confess the Habit of Holiness finding no Principles of Production in a Nature wholly corrupt must needs be produced by Supernatural Infusion and consequently proceed not from Acquisition but Gift It must be brought into the Soul it cannot grow or spring out of of it But then we must remember that most excellent and true Rule of the Schools that Habitus infusi obtinentur per modum acquisitorum It is indeed a supernatural effect but as I may so speak wrought in a Natural way The Spirit of God imitating the Course of Nature even then when it works something above it A person in the State of Nature or Unregeneracy cannot by the sole strength of his most improved Performances acquire an Habit of True Grace or Holiness But as in the Rain it is not the bare Water that fructifies but a secret Spirit or Nitre descending with it and joined to it that has this Vertue and produces this effect So in the Duties of a meer Natural Man there is sometimes an hidden Divine Influence that keeps pace with those Actions and together with each performance imprints a holy disposition upon the Soul which after a long Series of the like Actions influenced by the same Divine Principle comes at length to be of that force and firmness as to outgrow and work out the Contrary Qualities of inherent Corruption We have an illustration of this though not a Parallel Instance in Natural Actions which by frequency imprint an habit or permanent facility of Acting upon the Agent Godliness is in some sense an Art or Mystery and we all know that it is Practice chiefly that makes the Artist Secondly A second Reason for our Assertion is Because Action is the highest Perfection and Drawing forth of the utmost Power Vigor and Activity of Mans Nature God is pleased to Vouchsafe the best that He can give only to the Best that we can do And Action isâ— undoubtedly our best because the most Difficult for in such cases Worth and Difficulty are inseparable Companions The properest and most raised Conception that we have of God is that He is a Pure Act a Perpetual Incessant Motion And next to Him in the Rank of Beings are the Angels as approaching nearest to Him in this Perfection being all Flame â—nd Agility ministring Spirits always busy and upon the Wing for the Execution of His Great Commands about the Government of the World And indeed Doing is nothing else but the Noblest Improvement of Being It is not as some nice Speculators make it an airy diminutive entity or Accident distinct from the Substance of the Soul but to define it more sutably to it self and to the Soul too Action is properly the Soul in its best Posture Thirdly A Third Reason is because the main End Drift and Design of Religion is the Active part of it Profession is only the Badge of a Christian Belief the beginning but Practice is the Nature and Custom the Perfection For it is this which translates Christianity from a bare Notion into a Real Business from useless Speculations into Substantial Duties and from an Idea in the Brain into an Existence in the Life An Upright Conversation is the bringing of the General Theorems of Religion into the particular Instances of solid Experience and if it were not for this Religion would exist no where but in the Bible The Grand deciding Question at the last day will be not What have you said or What have you believed but What have you done more than others But that the very Life of Religion consists in Practice will appear yet further from those subordinate Ends to which it is designed in this World and which are as Realâ—y though not as Principally the purpose of it as the Utmost attainment of the Beatifick Vision and the very last Period of our Salvation And these are Two First The Honouring of God before the World God will not have His Worship like His Nature Invisible Next to Authority it self is the Pomp and Manifestation of it And to be acknowledged is something more than to be Obeyed For what is Sovereignty unknown or Majesty unobserved What Glory were it for the Sun to direct the Affairs if he did not also attract the Eyes of the World It is his open and Universal Light more than his Occult Influence that we love and admire him for Religion if confined to the Heart is not so much entertain'd as imprisoned That indeed is to be its Fountain
but not its Channel The Water arises in one Place but it streams in another and Fountains would not be so much valued if they did not produce Rivers One great End of Religion is to proclaim and publish God's Sovereignty and there is no such way to Cause Men to Glorify our Heavenly Father as by Causing our Light to shine before them Which I am sure it cannot do but as it beams through our good Works When a Man leads a Pious and Good Life every hour he Lives is virtually an Act of Worship But if inward Grace is not exerted and drawn forth into outward Practice Men have no Inspection into our Hearts to discern it there And let this be fixed upon as a standing Principle That it is not possible for us to Honour God before men but only by those Acts of Worship that are observeable by men It is our Faith indeed that recognizes Him for our God but it is our Obedience only that declares Him to be our Lord. Secondly The other End of Religion in this World is the good and mutual advantage of Mankind in the Way of Society And herein did the admirable Wisdom and Goodness of God appear that He was pleased to calculate and contrive such an Instrument to govern as might also benefit the World God planted Religion amongst Men as a Tree of Life which though it was to spring upwards directly to Himself yet it was to spread its Branches to the Benefit of all below There is hardly any Necessity or Convenience of Mankind but what is in a large measure serv'd and provided for by this great blessing as well as Business of the World Religion And he who is a Christian is not only a better Man but also a better Neighbour a better Subject and a truer Friend than he that is not so For was ever any thing more for the good of Mankind than to forgive Injuries to love and caress our mortal adversaries and instead of our Enemy to hate only our Revenge Of such a double yet benign Aspect is Christianity both to God and Man like Incense while it ascends to Heaven it perfumes all about it at the same time both Instrumental to God's Worship and the worshippers Refreshment As it holds up one hand in Supplication so it reaches forth the other in Benefaction But now if it be one great End of Religion thus to contribute to the support and Benefit of Society surely it must needs consist in the Active Piety of our Lives not in Empty Thoughts and Fruitless perswasions For what can one Man be the better for what Another Thinks or Believes When a Poor Man begs an Alms of me can I believe my Bread into his Mouth or my Money into his Hand Believing without Doing is a very Cheap and Easy but withal a very Worthless way of being Religious And thus having given the Reasons why the Active part of Religion is the only sure Bottom for us to build upon I now proceed to the second Thing Proposed namely to shew Those false and Sandy Foundations which many venture to build upon and are aâ—â—ordingly deceived by Which though they are exceedingly Various and according to the multiplicity of Mens tempers businesses and occasions almost Infinite and like the Sand mentioned in my Text not only infirm but Numberless also yet according to the best of my poor Judgment and Observation I shall reduce them to these three heads The First of which is a Naked Unoperative Faith ask but some upon what Grounds they look to be saved and they will answer because they firmly believe that through the Merits of Christ their Sins are forgiven them But since it is hard for a Man in his right wits to be confident of a Thing which he does not at all know such as are more Cautious will tell you further That to desire to Believe is to Believe and to desire to Repent is to Repent But as this is absurd and impossible since no Act can be its own Object without being not it self for as much as the Act and the Object are distinct things and consequently a desire to believe can no more be Belief than a desire to be saved can be Salvation so it is further intolerable upon this Account that it quite dispirits Religion by placing it in Languid Abortive Velleities and so cuts the Nerves of all Endeavour by rating Glory at a bare Desire and Eternity at a Wish But because the Poyson of this Opinion does so easily enter and so strangely intoxicate I shall presume to give an Antidote against it in this one observation namely That all along the Scripture Where Justification is ascribed to Faith alone There the word Faith is still used by a Metonymy of the Antecedent for the Consequent and does not signify abstractedly a meer Perswasion but the Obedience of an Holy Life performed in the strength and vertue of such a Perswasion Not that this Justifies meritoriously by any inherent Worth or Value in it self but instrumentally as a Condition appointed by God upon the performance of which He freely imputes to us Christ's Righteousness which is the sole proper and formal Cause of our Justification So that That Instrumentality which some in the Business of Justification attribute to one single Act of Credence is by this ascribed to the whole aggregate Series of Gospel Obedience as being that which gives us a Title to a perfect Righteousness without us by which alone we stand justified before God And this seems with full accord both to Scripture and Reason to state the Business of Justification by an equal poize both against the Arrogant Assertions of Self-Iusticiaries on the one hand and the wild Opinions of the Antinomians on the other But whether the Obedience of a Pious Life performed out of a Belief or Perswasion of the Truth of the Gospel ought to pass for that Faith which Justifies or only for the Effect or Consequent of it yet certainly it is such an Effect as issues by a kind of con-natural constant Efficiency and Result from it So that how much soever they are distinguishable by their Respective Actions from one another they are absolutely Inseparable by a mutual and a necessary Connexion it belonging no less to the Faith which Justifies to be Operative than to Justify Indeed upon an Essential Account more For as much as it is Operative by its Nature but Justifies only by Institution Secondly The second false Ground which some build upon is a fond Reliance upon the goodness of their Heart and the Honesty of their Intention A profitable and therefore a very prevailing fallacy And such an one as the Devil seldom uses but with success It being one of his old and long experimented Fetches by the Pretences of a Good Heart to supplant the Necessity of a Good Life But to alledge the Honesty of the Mind against the Charge of an Evil Course is a Protestation against the Fact which does not Excuse but
Enhance its Guilt As it would look like a very strange and odd Commendation of a Tree to Apologize for the Sourness of its Fruit by pleading that all its goodness lay in the Root But in the discourses of Reason such is the weakness and shortness of its Reach that it seldom suggests Arguments à Priore for any Thing but by a low and humble Gradation creeps from the Effects up to the Cause because these first strike and Alarm the Senses and therefore St. James speaks as good Philosophy as Divinity when He says Iam. 2.18 Shew me thy Faith by thy Works Every Action being the most lively Pourtraicture and impartial Expression of its Efficient Principle as the Complexion is the best Comment upon the Constitution For in natural Productions â—here is no Hypocrisy Only we must observe here that Good and Evil Actions bear a very different Relation to their Respective Principles As it is between Truth and Falshood in Argumentation So it is between Good and Evil in matters of Practice For though from an Artificial contrivance of false Principles or Premises may emerge a True Conclusion yet from True Premises cannot ensue a False So though an Evil Heart may frame it self to the doing of an Action in its kind or Nature Good yet a Renewed Sanctified Principle cannot of its self design Actions really Vitious The reason of which is Because the former in such a Case acts upon a Principle of Dissimulation and no Man by dissembling affects to appear worse than he is but better But all this while I speak not of a single Action but of a Conversation or Course of Acting For a Pious Man may do an Evil action upon Temptation or Surprize but not by the Tenour of his standing Principles and Resolutions But when a Mans Sin is his Business and the formed Purpose of his Life and his Piety shrinks only into Meaning and Intention When he tells me His heart is right with God while his hand is in my Pocket he upbraids my Reason and outfaces the Common Principle of natural discourse with an Impudence equal to the Absurdity This therefore I affirm That he who places his Christianity only in his Heart and his Religion in his Meaning has fairly secured himself against a discovery in case he should have none but yet for all that shall at the last find his Portion with those who indeed have none And the Truth is those who are thus intentionally Pious do in a very ill and untoward sence verify that Philosophical Maxim That what they so much pretend to be Chief and First in their Intention is always Last if at all in the Execution Thirdly The third and last false ground that I shall mention upon which some Men build to their Confusion is Party and Singularity If an implicite Faith be as some say the Property of a Roman Catholick then I am sure Popery may be found where the name of Papist is adhorred For what account can some give of their Religion or of that Assurance of their Salvation which they so much boast of but that they have wholly resigned themselves up to the Guidance and Dictates of those who have the Front and Boldness to usurp the Title of the Godly To be of such a Party of such a Name nay of such a sneaking look is to some the very Spirit and Characteristick mark of Christianity See what St. Paul himself built upon before His Conversion to Christ Acts 26.5 I was says He after the strictest Sect of our Religion a Pharisee So that it was the Reputation of the Sect upon which St. Paul then embarked His Salvation Now the Nature of this Fraternity or Sect we may Learn from the Origination of their Name Pharisee it being derived from Parasch separavit discrevit whence in Greek they were called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 separati So that the Words amount to this That St. Paul before He was a Christian was a Rigid Separatist But Singularity is not Sincerity tho' too often and mischievously mistaken for it And as an House built upon the Sand is likely to be ruined by Storms so an House built out of the Road is exposed to the Invasion of Robbers and wants both the Convenience and Assistance of Society Christ is not therefore called the Corner stone in the Spiritual building as if He intended that His Church should consist only of Corners or be driven into them There is a By-path as well as a Broad-way to Destruction And it both argues the Nature and portends the Doom of Chaff upon Agitation to separate and Divide from the Wheat But to such as Venture their Eternal Interest upon such a Bottom I shall only suggest these two Words First That admitting but not granting that the Party which they adhere to may be truly Pious yet the Piety of the Party cannot sanctify its Proselytes A Church may be properly called Holy when yet that Holiness does not diffuse it self to each particular Member the Reason of which is Because the whole may receive Denomination from a Quality inherent only in some of its Parts Company may occasion but it cannot transfuse Holyness No Mans Righteousness but Christs alone can be imputed to another To rate a Man by the Nature of his Companions is a Rule frequent indeed but not Infallible Iudas was as much a Wretch amongst the Apostles as amongst the Priests And therefore it is but a poor Argument for a Man to derive his Saintship from the Vertues of the Society he belongs to and to conclude himself no Weed only because he grows amongst the Corn. Secondly Such an adhesion to a Party carries in it a strong suspicion and Tang of the rankest of all ill Qualities Spiritual Pride There are Two Things natural almost to all Men. First A desire of Preheminence in any Perfection but especially Religious Secondly A Spirit of Opposition or Contradiction to such as are not of their own Mind or Way Now both these are eminently gratifyed by a Man's listing himself of a Party in Religion And I doubt not but some are more really proud of the affected sordidness of a pretended Mortification than others are of the greatest affluence and splendor of Life And that many who call the Execution of Law and Justice Persecution do yet suffer it with an Higher and more pleasing Relish of Pride than others can inflict it For it is not true Zeal rising from an Hearty concernment for Religion but an ill restless cross humour which is imped with Smart and quickned with Opposition The Godly Party is little better than a Contradiction in the Adjunct for he who is truly Godly is humble and peaceable and will neither make nor be of a Party according to the Common sence of that word Let such Pretenders therefore suspect the Sandiness and Hollowness of their Foundation and know that such Imitators of Corah Dathan and Abiram build upon the same Ground upon which they stood and into which
we can fetch in no Information or Relief to our Understandings from our Senses no Picture or Draught of these Things from the Reports of the Eye but we are left Entirely to the uncertainties of Fancy to the Flights and Ventures of a bold Imagination And here to illustrate the Case a little let us imagine a Man who was born blind able upon bare Hear-say to conceive in his Mind all the Varieties and Curiosities of Colour to draw an exact Scheme of Constantinople or a Map of France to describe the Towns point out the Rivers and distinguish the Situations of these and the like Great and Extraordinary Places And when such an One is able to do all this and not before then perhaps may we also apprehend what a Spirit an Angel or an Immaterial Being is The difficulty of understanding which sufficiently appears from this One consideration That in all the Descriptions which we make of God Angels and Spirits we still describe them by such Things as we see and when we have done we profess that they are Invisible But then to do this Argument right again on the other side As it would be extreamly sottish and irrational for a blind man to conclude and affirm positively That there neither are nor can be any such Things as Colours Pictures or Landskips because he finds that he cannot form to Himself any true Notion Idea or Mental Perception of them So would it be equally or rather superlatively more Unreasonable for us to deny the Great Articles of our Christianity because we cannot frame in our Minds any Clear Explicit and Exact Representation of them And yet this is the true state of the whole matter and of the Ratiocination of some Men about it how Absurd and Inconsequent soever we see it is Let this therefore be another and a second Cause why the Christian Religion which treats of and is conversant about such Things must of Necessity be Mysterious Thirdly A third Property of Matters belonging to Christianity and which also renders them mysterious is their Strangeness and Vnreducibleness to the common Methods and observations of Nature I for my part cannot look upon any Thing whatsoever others can as a more Fundamental Article of the Christian Religion than Christ's satisfaction for Sin by which alone the lost Sons of Adam are reconciled to their offended God and so put into new Capacities of Salvation and yet perhaps there is nothing more surprizing strange and out of the road of Common Reason than this if compared with the general course and way of Mens Acting For that He who was the offended Person should project and provide a satisfaction to Himself in the behalf of Him who had offended Him and with so much Zeal concern Himself to sollicite a Reconciliation with those whom He had no need of being Reconciled unto but might with equal Justice and Honour have destroyed them was a Thing quite beside the Common course of the World and much more was it so That a Father should deliver up an Innocent and Infinitely beloved Son to be sacrificed for the redemption of His justly hated and abhorred Enemies and on the other hand that a Son who loved His Father as much as He could be loved by Him should lay down His Life for the Declared Rebels and Enemies of Him whom He so transcendently loved and of Himself too This I say was such a transaction as we can find nothing like or Analogous to in all the dealings of Men and cannot but be owned as wholly beside if not also directly contrary to all humane methods And so true is this that several Things expressly affirmed of God in Scripture relating to the Prime Articles of our Faith are denied or eluded by the 〈◊〉 and Socinians because they Cross and Contradict the Notions taken up by them from what they have observed in Created Beings and particularly in Men which yet is a gross fallacy and inconsequence concluding ab imparibus tamquà m paribus and more than sufficiently confuted and blown off by that one passage of the Prophet concerning Almighty God that His Thoughts are not as our Thoughts nor His Ways as our Ways Isa. 55.8 to which we may add that neither is His Nature as our Nature nor his Divine Persons as our Persons And if so where is the Socinian Logick in arguing from one to the Other And yet 't is manifest that they hardly make use of any other way of arguing concerning the main points in controversy between them and the Church but this But there are also two other Principal Articles of the Christian Religion which do as much transcend the common Notice and observation of Mankind as the former One of which is the Conversion and Change of a Man's Sinful Nature commonly called the Work of Regenâ—â—â—â—â—â—on or the New-birth concerning which Men are apt to Wonder and deservedly too by what strange Power and Efficacy it should come to pass That ever any One should be brought to conquer and shake off those Inveterate Appetites and Desires which are both so Violent in their Actings and so early in their Original as being born with him and to have other New ones and those absolutely contrary to the former planted in their room So that when our Saviour in Iohn 3. discoursed of these things to Nicodemus a great Rabbi amongst the Jews and told him that he must be born again he was presently amazed and non-plus'd at it as at a great Paradox and Impossibility and forth with began to Question How can these Things be In which indeed he said no more than what the hearts of most Men living are apt to say concerning most of the Articles of our Christian Religion But above all the Article of the Resurrection seems to lye marvellously cross to 〈◊〉 â—ommon Experience of Mankind For who ever was yet seen by them after a Total Consumption into Dust and Ashes to rise again and to resume the same Numerical body This is a Thing which amongst all the rare Occurrences of the World all the Wonders and Anomalies of Nature was never yet met with in any One single instance and consequently Men must needs be apt to startle and to be full of Thought and Scruple upon the proposal of so strange a Thing to their Understandings And if any one should think that he can make this out by bare reason as possibly some Opiniators may let him by all means in the next place try the strength of his doughty Reason about Transubstantiation or turn Knight Errant in Divinity encounter Giants and Windmills and adventure to explain things impossible to be explained This therefore is a Third Cause of the Unavoidable Mysteriousness of the chief Articles of the Christian Religion namely That most of them fall neither within the common course of Men's Actings nor the compass of their Observaâ—â—oâ— And thus much for the First Ground of the Gospel's being delivered to the World in a Mystery namely the Nature
be Impossible This I say is a meer Fallacy and a Wretched Inconsequence and yet nothing occurs more commonly and that as a Principle taken for granted in the late Writings of some Heterodox Pert Unwary Men and particularly it is the main hinge upon which all the Socinian Arguments against the Mysteries of our Religion turn and depend but withal so extreamly remote is it from all Truth that there is not the least shew or shadow of Reason assignable for it but upon this one Supposition namely That the Reason or Mind of Man is capable of Comprehending or throughly Vnderstanding whatsoever it is possible for an Infinite Divine Power to do This I say must be supposed for no other Foundation can support the Truth of this Proposition to wit That whatsoever is humanly not Intelligible is and ought to be reckoned upon the same account also Impossible But then every one must needs see and explode the horrible falseness of the forementioned Supposition upon which alone this Assertion is built and consequently this Assertion it self must needs be altogether as false For who can comprehend or throughly understand how the Soul is united to and how it acts by and upon the Body Who can comprehend or give a full account how Sensation is performed Or who can lay open to us the whole Mechanism of Motion in all the Springs and Wheels of it Nay who can resolve and clear off all the Difficulties about the Composition of a continued Quantity as whether it is Compounded of Parts Divisible or Indivisible Both of which are attended with insuperable Objections And yet all these things are not only Possible but also Actually Existent in Nature From all which therefore and from a thousand more such Instances which might easily be produced I conclude That for any one to deny or reject the Mysteries of our Religion as Impossible because of the Incomprehensibleness of them is upon all true Principles both of Divinity and Philosophy utterly Inconsequent and Irrational Thirdly In the Third and last place we learn also from what has been discoursed the great Vanity and Extravagant Presumption of such as pretend to clear up all Mysteries and determine all Controversies in Religion The Attempts of which sort of Men I can liken to nothing so properly as to those Pretences to Infallible Cures which we daily see posted up in every corner of the Streets and I think it is great pity but that both these sort of Pretences were Posted up together For I know no Universal Infallible Remedy which certainly Cures or rather carries off all Diseases and puts an end to all Disputes but Death Which yet for all that is a Remedy not much in Request Quacks and Mountebanks are doubtless a very dangerous sort of Men in Physick but much more so in Divinity They are both of them always very large in Pretence and Promise but short in Performance and generally Fatal in their Practice For there are several Depths and Difficulties as I noted before both in Philosophy and Divinity which Men of Parts and solid Learning after all their Study find they cannot come to the bottom of but are forced to give them over as Things Unresolveable and will by no means be brought to Pronounce dogmatically on either side of the Question Amongst which said Difficulties perhaps there is hardly a greater and more undecideable Problem in Natural Theology and which has not only Exercised but even Crucifyed the greatest Wits of all Ages than the Reconciling of the Immutable Certainty of God's fore-knowledge with the Freedom and Contingency of all Humane Acts both Good and Evil so fore-known by Him Both parts of which Problem are certainly true but how to explain and make out the Accord between them without overthrowing one of them has hitherto exceeded the force of Man's Reason And therefore Socinus very roundly or rather indeed very profanely denies any such Prescience of future Contingents to be in God at all But as profane as he was in thus cutting asunder this knot others have been as ridiculous in pretending to untie it For do not some in their Discourses about the Diâ—â—ne Attributes and Decrees promise the World such a clear account such an open explicite Scheme of these great Things as should make them plain and evident even to the meanest Capacities And the Truth is if to any Capacities at all it must be to the meanest for to those of an higher pitch and a larger compass these Things neither are nor will nor ever can be made evident And if such Persons could but obtain of Heaven a continuance of Life till they made good what they so confidently undertake they would be in a sure way to out-live not only Methusalah but even the World it self But then in come some other Vndertakers and promise us the same or greater Wonders in Christian Theology offering by some new whimsical explications of their own to make the deepest Mysteries of our Christian Faith as plain easy and intelligible forsooth as that two and two make four that is in other words they will represent and render them such Mysteries as shall have nothing at all Mystical in them And now is not this think we a most profound invention and much like the discovery of some New-found-land some O Brazile in Divinity with so much absurd confidence do some Discourse or rather Romance upon the most Mysterious Points of the Christian Faith that any Man of Sense and Sobriety would be apt to think such Persons not only beside their Subject but beside themselves too And the like censure we may justly pass upon all other such idle Pretenders the true Character of which sort of Men is That he who thinks and says he can understand all Mysteries and resolve all Controversies undeniably shews that he really understands none In the mean time we may here observe the true way by which these Great and Adorable Mysteries of our Religion come first to be Ridiculed and Blasphemed and at length totally laid aside by some and that is by their being first innovated upon and new modelled by the bold senseless and absurd Explications of others For first of all such Innovators break down those sacred Mounds which Antiquity had placed about these Articles and then Hereticks and Blasphemers rush in upon them trample them under foot and quite throw them out of our Creed This course we have seen taken amongst us and the Church God bless it and those who are over it has been hitherto profoundly silent at it but how long God whose Honour is most concerned will be so too none can tell For if some Novellists may put what sense they please upon the Writings of Moses and others do the like with the Articles of the Christian Church also and the greatest encouragement attend both I cannot see unless some extraordinary Providence prevent it but that both these Religions are in a direct way to be run down amongst us and that in a
of the Jews contrary to the express injunctions and tenour of it For though it must be confessed that the Gospel makes mention of the Brothers and Sisters of Iesus yet it is known to be most usual in the Jewish Language to call any collateral Kindred as Cousins and Cousin-germans by that Name And Antiquity reports the Virgin Mary to have had two Sisters the Children of which might very well be called the Brethren of Jesus So that from hence there can be no necessity of granting that Jesus had any Brother or Sister either by his Mother Mary or his reputed and legal Father Joseph And thus I have endeavour'd to make out our Blessed Saviour's descent from the Line of David But as for that Opinion which asserts him to have been of the Tribe of Levi because his Mother Mary was Cousin to Elizabeth who was of that Tribe it is very Weak and Groundless For no Man asserts Iesus to have been so of the House of David as to exclude all Relation to other Tribes and Families with which by mutual Marriages he might well contract a Kindred it being prohibited to none but Heiresses to Marry out of their own Family And as for another Opinion which in order to the makeing of Christ a Priest affirms Nathan the Son of David from whom Christ descended to have been a Priest as Solomon was a King and so to have founded a Sacerdotal line as Solomon did a Royal this being a conceit both so Groundless in it self and withal so expresly contradicted by the Scripture which in Heb. 7. 13. so positively affirms that no Man of the Tribe of Judah ever gave attendance at the Altar I say upon this account it deserves no further Thought and much less Confutation Now to summ up all that has been delivered it briefly amounts to thus much That the Royal Line of David by Solomon being extinct in Ieconiah the Crown and Kingdom passed into the immediately Younger Line of Nathan another Son of David in Salathiel and Zorobabel which Zorobabel having two Sons Abiud and Rhesa the Royal dignity descended of right upon the Line of Abiud of which Joseph was the last who Marrying the Virgin Mary which sprung from the Line of Rhesa the younger Son of Zorobabel and withall having no issue Himself his Right passes into the Line of Mary being the next of kin and by that means upon Iesus her Son Whereupon He was both naturally the Son of David and also Legally the King of the Jews which latter is accounted to us by St. Matthew as the former is by St. Luke who delivers down the Pedigree of Mary the Mother of Iesus and Daughter of Eli though Ioseph her Husband only stands there named according to the known way of the Jews Computing their Genealogies And this to me seems a most clear full and manifest deduction of our Saviour's Pedigree from David which yet I shall further confirm with this one Consideration That whatsoever Cavils the modern Jews and others make now a-days against the Genealogies recorded by the Evangelists yet the Jews their Contemporaries who were most nice and exactly skillful in things of this Nature and with all most malitiously bent against Christ and Christianity never offered to quarrel against or invalidate the Accounts they have given us of this particular which had they been faulty the Jews would most certainly have done this giving them so vast an advantage against us And this consideration alone were we now not able particularly to clear these matters is of that weigâ—â— and substance that so far as terms of Moral certainty can demonstrate a thing it ought with every sober and judicious person to have even the force of a Demonstration But the discussion which has already passed upon this subject will afford us ground firm enough for the most Rational and Impartial belief to stand upon However if any one knows some other way of clearing this great Article of our Faith which may better accord all difficulties and lie open to fewer and lesser exceptions he will do a worthy service to the Christian Religion to produce it and none shall be more thankful to him for it than my self Having thus finish'd the second part of my Text which speaks Christ the off-spring of David according to His Humane Nature as the First declared Him the Root of David in respect of His Divine I shall descend now to that Third and Last part of the Text which represents Him to us under the glorious Denomination of the Bright and Morning Star Three things there are Considerable in a Star First The Nature of its Substance Secondly The Manner of its Appearance Thirdly The Quality of its Operation In every one of which respects Christ bears a lively Resemblance to it First And First for the Nature of its Substance It is commonly defined in Philosophy the Purest and most refined paâ—t of its Orb by which it is distinguished from all those Meteors and shining Nothings that ascend no further than the Air how high soever the mistake and ignorance of Vulgar Eyes may place them as also from the other parts of the Celestial Sphere or Orb in which it is In like manner was not Christ the Purest and the Noblest part of the World which was the Sphere and Orb wherein during His Humiliation He was pleased to move He was the very Flower the Extract and Quintessence of Mankind Uniting all the perfections of it in His Person without any alloy or mixture of imperfection Upon which account David by the Spirit of Prophecy calls Him fairer than the Sons of Men as being anointed with the oyl of gladness above His fellows that is the graces of the Spirit descended not upon Him in those minute portions and stinted measures that they do upon other Mortals Their drop was nothing to His Ocean And to shew yet further of how pure a Make He was we know Him to have been wholly untoucht with any thing of that Original Stain which has Universally sunk into the Nature of all Men besides He was a Second Adam without any of the guilt contracted by the First He was born a Man without any Humane Imperfections A Rose without thorns He was nothing but Purity it self Vertue cloathed in a Body and Innocence Incarnate So blameless and free from all shaddow of guilt that the very Jews His bitter Enemies gave Him this Testimony that He had done all things well Mark 7.37 And even Pilate His unjust Judge though he took from Him His Life yet left Him His Innocence declaring openly That he found in Him no fault at all John 18.38 There are spots they say not in the Moon only but also in the face of the Sun it self But this Star was of a greater and more unblemisht Lustre for not the least Spot was ever discover'd in it though malice and envy it self were the Perspectives through which most of the World beheld it And as it is the Privilege of the
they still sunk and came to Nothing It must be confessed indeed that there rose up such Counterfeits after Christ as well as before Him yet still I think their defeat ought to be ascribed to His Coming because as a Light scatters the Darkness on all sides of it So there was such a Demonstration and Evidence given of Jesus's being the True Messias by his Coming in the Flesh that it cast its discovering Influence both backwards and forwards and equally baffled and confuted the Pretences of those who went before and of those who Rose up after Him So Potent and Victorious is Truth especially when it comes upon such an Errand from Heaven as to save the World Amongst those several false Messias's it is remarkable that one called himself Barchocab or the Son of a Star but by his fall he quickly shew'd himself of a Nature far differing from this Glorious Morning Star mentioned in the Text Which even then was fixed in Heaven while it shone upon the Earth It was not the Transitory light of a Comet which shines and glares for a while and then presently vanishes into Nothing but a Light Durable and Immortal and such an One as shall outlive the Sun and shine and burn when Heaven and Earth and the whole World shall be reduced to Cinders Having thus shewn how Christ resembled a Star in respect of His external visible shinings to the World by which He drove away much of the Heathenish Idolatry all the Jewish Ceremonies together with the Pretences of all counterfeit Messias's as the light dispels and chaces away the Darkness Come we now in the Second place to see how He resembles a Star also in respect of its Internal secret Operation and Influence upon all Sublunary Inferior beings And indeed this is the Noblest and the greatest part of the Resemblance Stars are thought to Operate powerfully even then when they do not appear and are felt by their Effects when they are not seen by their Light In like manner Christ often strikes the Soul and darts a secret beam into the heart without alarming either the Eye or Ear of the Person wrought upon And this is called both properly and elegantly by St. Peter in 2 Ep. â— 19 The Day-star's arising in our Hearts that is by the secret silent workings of His Spirit He illuminates the Judgment bends the Will and the Affections and at last changes the whole Man and this is that powerful but still Voice by which He speaks Eternal Peace to the Souls of His Elect in the Admirable but Mysterious Work of their Conversion So that our great Concern and enquiry should be whether those Heavenly Beams have reached us inwardly and pierced into our Minds as well as shone in our Faces and whether the Influence of this Star upon us has been such as to govern and draw us after it as it did the Wisemen and thereby both make and prove us Wise unto Salvation For Light is Operative as well as Beautiful and by working upon the Spirits affects the Heart as well as pleases the Eye Above all things therefore let us be strict and impartial in this search where the Thing Searched for is of such Consequence For since there are False Lights Light it self should be tryed And if we would know infallibly whether it be the Light from Above by which we are led and live and whether this Morning-Star has had its full efficacy upon or rather within us Let us see whether or no It has scattered the Clouds and darkness of our Spiritual Ignorance and the noysom foggs of our Lusts and vile Affections Do we live as the Sons of Light Do we walk as in the Day without stumbling into the mire of our old Sins These are the only sure Evidences that Christ is not only a Star in Himself but such an One also to us For when the Day-spring from on high visits us truely and effectually it first takes us out of these Shaddows of Death and then guides our Feet into the Ways of Peace To Which God of His Mercy Vouchsafe to bring us all To Whom be Rendred and Ascribed as is most due All Honour c. Jesus of Nazareth PROVED The True and Onely promised Messiah IN A SERMON Preached At S t Mary's Oxon. Before the University ON Christmas-Day 1665. JOHN I. 11 He came to His Own and His Own received Him not I cannot think it directly requisite to the prosecution of these Words nor will the Time allotted for it permit to assert and vindicate the foregoing verses from the perverse Interpretations of that false Pretender to reason and real Subverter all Religion Socinus Who in the Exposition of this Chapter together with some part of the 8 th both of them taken from the Posthumous Papers of his Uncle Lelius laid the foundation of that great Babel of Blasphemies with which he afterwards so amuzed and pestered the Christian World and under Colour of Reforming and Refining forsooth the best of Religions has imployed the utmost of his skill and art to bring Men indeed to believe none And therefore no small cause of Grief must it needs be to all pious minds that such horrid Opinions should find so ready a Reception and so fatal a Welcome in so many parts of the World as they have done considering both what they tend to and whom they come from For they tend only to give us such a Christ and Saviour as neither the Prophets nor Evangelists know nor speak any thing of And as for their Original if we would trace them up to that through some of the chief Branches of their Infamous Pedigree we must carry them a little backward from hence First to the forementioned Faustus Socinus and his Uncle Lelius and from them to Gentilis and then to Servetus and so through a long Interval to Mahomet and his Sect and from them to Photinus and from him to Arius and from Arius to Paulus Samosatenus and from him to Ebion and Cerinthus and from them to Simon Magus and so in a direct Line to the Devil himself Under whose Conduct in the several Ages of the Church these Wretches successively have been some of the most Notorious opposers of the Divinity of our Saviour and would undoubtedly have overthrown the belief of it in the World could they by all their Arts of wresting corrupting and false interpreting the Holy Text have brought the Scriptures to speak for them which they could never yet do And amongst all the Scriptures No One has stood so directly and immoveably in their way as this first Chapter of St. Iohn's Gospel A Chapter carrying in it so bright and full an Assertion of the Eternal Godhead of the Son that a Man must put common sense and reason extreamly upon the Rack before he can give any tolerable Exposition of it to the contrary So that an Eminent Dutch Critick who could find in his heart as much as in him lay to interpret away that
Princes by disposing their hearts to such Vertuous and Pious Courses as he has promised a blessing to and by restraining them from those ways to which he has denounced a Curse And this is the greatest deliverance of all as having a prospect upon the felicity of both Worlds and laying a foundation for all other Deliverances For it is this that qualifies and renders a Man a Subject Capable of and fit for a Deliverance King Abimelech was about to do an Action that would certainly have drawn Death and Confusion after it Thou art but a Dead Man says God to Him in Gen. 20.3 But preventing Grace snatched Him from the Brink of Destruction and delivered him from Death by restraining Him from the Sin I with-held thee says God in the 6 th from Sining against me See the force of Princely Piety in the Person of Hezekiah God tells him that he should die and bids him prepare for it But Piety is stronger than Death and reverses the fatal Edict The Assyrians Invade his Kingdom and take his fenced Cities but how does he withstand them Why he puts on Sackcloath for his Armour and it was neither the Valour nor the Number of his Troops but the Prayer of Hezekiah and the Irresistible force of a King fighting upon his knees that routed Sennacherib Vertue Entitles a Prince to all the Mercies of Heaven all the Favours all the Endearments of Providence It has a present and a future Influence one upon his Person the other upon his Posterity So that in 1 Kings 11. when God declared his purpose to Remove the Kingdom from the House of Solomon for all his Idolatries and Abominations Yet in the 34. v. he says howbeit I will make him King all the days of his Life for my Servant David's sake because He kept my Commandments and my Statutes And in the 32. v. He declares that his Son after Him should have one Tribe for his Servant David's sake Nay the Piety of a King diffuses a Blessing and a Protection upon the whole Kingdom For how often upon the Provocations of Iudah did the Memory of David's Piety as it were disarm the Divine Vengeance and interpose between them and the destroying Sentence So that in the second Book of Kings it is said three several times upon three several Remarkable Occasions that God would not destroy Judah and Jerusalem for his Servant David's sake And who knows but the Piety the Vertues and the Christian sufferings of the late Martyred King may be one great preservative of the present Peace of this wretched and ungrateful Nation so that when God lately sent his Destroying Angel with his drawn Sword over Poland Germany Holland and other Countries He has looked upon the Blood of that Royal Martyr shed for the Rights and Liberties of his Kingdoms and bid the Destroying Angel pass over England and draw no more Blood there where the Memory of that Sacred Blood had made such an Atonement and expiation and cryed aloud for Mercy upon all even those that shed it not excepted Certain it is that the Vertues of a Prince are a blessing to more than to Himself and His Family They are a publick Seminary of Blessings they are the Palladiums and and the strong holds nay the Common stock and the Inheritance of the Kingdom and in a word an Exchequer that can never be shut up And thus much for the second General thing proposed which was to shew the several ways and means by which God does after such an extraordinary manner save and deliver Sovereign Princes All which for Memories sake it may not be amiss to rehearse and summ up in short As namely he delivers them 1. By endowing them with a more than Ordinary Sagacity and Quickness of Understanding above other Men. 2. By giving them a singular Courage and Presence of Mind in Cases of Difficulty and Danger 3. By disposing of Events and Accidents in a strange Concurrence for their advantage and preservation 4. By Wonderfully Inclining the Hearts and Wills of Men to a benign affection towards them 5. By rescuing them from unseen and unknown mischiefs prepared against them 6. By Imprinting a Certain Awe and Dread of their Persons and Authority upon the minds of the People 7. Seventhly and lastly By disposing their hearts to such Vertuous and Pious Courses as God has Promised a Blessing to and by restraining them from those ways to which He has denounced a Curse And these are the several ways by which Providence gives salvation unto Kings I proceed now to the 3. General thing proposed which is to shew the Reasons why Providence is so much concerned in the Salvation and deliverance of Kings Which that we may the better do we must know that there are two things by which God supports the Societies of Mankind which He will certainly maintain and preserve as long as He suffers the World to last and Men to live in it and these are Government and Religion which being so I suppose we need alledge no other Reason for Gods peculiar Care over the Persons and lives of Sovereign Princes if we demonstrate 1. That they are the greatest Instruments in the hand of Providence to support Government and Civil Society in the World And 2. That they have the most Powerful Influence upon the concerns of Religion and the Preservation of the Church of all other Persons whatsoever And first for the first of these That Kings are the greatest Instruments in the hand of Providence to support Government and Civil Society in the World The Proof of which I conceive will be fully made out by these two things 1. By shewing that Monarchy or Kingly Government is the most excellent and best Adapted to the Ends of Government and the Benefit of Society And 2. That the greatness or strength of a Monarchy depends chiefly upon the Personal Qualifications of the Prince or Monarch 1. And first let us shew that Monarchy or Kingly Government is the most Excellent and best adapted to the Ends of Government and the benefit of Society This is too large and Noble a subject to be fully managed in such a discourse At present let it suffice to say That Monarchy in the kind of Government is the First and Consequently the most Perfect of all other sorts It is an Image of the Divine Supremacy Man's Imitation of Providence a Copy of God's Government of the Universe in a lesser draught For the World has but one Sovereign Ruler as well as but one Maker and every Prince is both his Lieutenant and his Resemblance too The Excellency of any Government consists in the Natural firmness of its Constitution freeing it from the Principles of dissolution And the Dissolution of Government as of most other Things proceeds chiefly from the Internal Fightings and Conflicts of Contrary parts But now Unity excludes Contrariety and that which is but One cannot disagree or jarr with it self It is multitude only that admits of the Contests
that a Soveraign could suffer from his Subjects Scorning all Revenge as more below him than the very Persons whom he might have been revenged upon he gloried in nothing so much as in giving Mercy the upper hand of Majesty it self making Amnesty his Symbol or Motto and Forgiveness the peculiar signalizing Character of his Reign herein Resembling the Almighty Himself as far as mortality can who seems to claim a greater Glory for Sparing and Redeeming Man than for Creating Him So that in a word as our Saviour has made Love to our Enemies one of the Chiefest badges of our Religion so our King has almost made it the very mark of our Allegiance Thus even to a Prodigy Merciful has he shewn Himself Merciful by Inclination and merciful by Extraction merciful in his Example and merciful in hiâ— Laws and thereby expressing the utmost dutifulness of a Son as well as the highest Magnanimity and Clemency of a Prince while He is still making that good upon the Throne which the Royal Martyr his Father had enjoined upon the Scaffold where He dyed pardoning and praying for those whose malice he was then falling a Victim to And this with a Charity so unparallell'd and a devotion so â—ervent that the Voice of his Prayers 't is to be hoped drowned the very Cry of his Blood But I Love not to dwell upon such Tragedies save only to illustrate the height of one Contrary by the height of another and therefore as an humble follower of the Princely Pattern here set before us I shall draw a Veil of silence over all especially since it surpasses the Power of Words sufficiently to set forth either the greatness of the Crimes forgiven or of the mercy that forgave them But to draw to a close We have here had the highest and the hardest Duty perhaps belonging to a Christian both recommended to our Judgment by Argument and to our Practice by Example and what remains but that we submit our Iudgment to the one and govern our Practice by the other And for that Purpose that we beg of God an Assistance equal to the Difficulty of the Duty enjoyned for certainly it is not an ordinary measure of Grace that can conquer the opposition that Flesh and Blood and corrupt Reason it self after all its convictions will be sure to make to it The greatest miseries that befall us in this World are from Enemies and so long as Men naturally desire to be happy it will be naturally as hard to them to Love those who they know are the grand Obstacles to their being so The Light of Nature will convince a Man of many Duties which it will never enable him to perform And if we should look no further than bare Nature this seems to be one cut out rather for our Admiration than our Practice It being not more difficult where Grace does not Interpose to cut off a Right Hand than to reach it heartily to the Relief of an inveterate Implacable Adversary And yet God expects this from us and that so peremptorily that he has made the Pardon of our Enemies the Indispensable Condition of our own And therefore that Wretch whosoever he was who being pressed hard upon his Death-Bed to Pardon a notable Enemy which he had answered That if He died indeed he Pardoned Him but if He lived He would be Revenged on Him That Wretch I say and every other such Image of the Devil no doubt went out of the World so that he had better never have come into it In fine after we have said the utmost upon this Subject that we can I believe we shall find this the Result of all That He is an happy Man who has no Enemies and he a much happier who has never so many and can Pardon them God preserve us from the one or enable us to do the other To whom be rendred and ascribed as is most due all Praise Might Majesty and Dominion both now and for evermore Amen False Foundations removed AND True ones laid for such Wise Builders as design to build for Eternity IN A SERMON Preached at St. Mary's Oxon before the University Decem. 10. 1661. MATT. VII 26 27. And every one that heareth these sayings of Mine and doth them not shall be likened unto a foolish Man which built his House upon the Sand. And the Rain descended and the Floods came and the Winds blew and beat upon that House and it fell and great was the fall of it IT seems to have been all along the Prime Art and method of the great Enemy of Souls not being able to root the Sense of Religion out of Mens hearts yet by his Sophistries and Delusions to defeat the Design of it upon their Lives and either by empty Notions or false perswasions to take them off from the main business of Religion which is Duty and Obedience by bribing the Conscience to rest satisfyed with something less A project extremely sutable to the corrupt Nature of Man whose chief or rather sole quarrel to Religion is the severity of its Precepts and the Difficulty of their Practice So that although it is as Natural for him to desire to be happy as to breath yet he had rather lose and miss of happiness than seek it in the way of Holiness Upon which Account nothing speaks so full and home to the very inmost Desires of his Soul as those Doctrines and Opinions which would perswade him that it may and shall be well with him hereafter without any Necessity of his living well here Which great Mystery of Iniquity being carefully managed by the utmost skill of the Tempter and greedily embraced by a Man 's own Treacherous affections lies at the bottom of all false Religions and eats out the very Heart and Vitals of the True For in the strength of this some hope to be saved by Believing well some by Meaning well some by Paying well and some by shedding a few insipid Tears and uttering a few hard words against those Sins which they have no other Controversy with but that they were so unkind as to leave the Sinner before he was willing to leave them For all this Men can well enough submit to as not forceing them to abandon any one of their Beloved Lusts. And therefore they will not think themselves hardly dealt with though you require Faith of them if you will but dispense with Good Works They will abound and even overflow with good Intentions if you will allow them in quite contrary Actions And you shall not want for Sacrifice if that may Compound for Obedience nor Lastly will they grudge to find Money if some body else will find Merit But to Live well and to Do well are Things of too hard a Digestion Accordingly our Saviour who well knew all these false hopes and Fallacious Reasonings of the Heart of Man which is never so subtle as when it would deceive it self tells his hearers that all these little trifling Inventions will avail them
design but this certainly and effectually does as being not only the Wisdom but Secondly The Power of God too the first Infallible the other Irresistible In a word the Wisdom here spoken of is a Messenger which always goes as far as sent an Instrument which never fails or lurches the Great Agent who imploys it either in Reaching the End He directs it to or in Finishing the Work He intends it for So that in short there could not be an higher and a nobler Elogy to express the Gospel by than by representing it to us as the Wisdom of God For as Wisdom in general is the Noblest and most Sublime Perfection of an Intellectual Nature and particularly in God Himself is the Leading Ruling Attribute prescribing to all the rest so a Commendation drawn from thence must needs be the most glorious that can possibly pass upon any Action or Design proceeding from such an One. And the Apostle seems here most peculiarly to have directed this Encomium of the Gopel as a Defiance to the Philosophers of his Time the Flustring Vain glorious Greeks who pretended so much to magnify and even Adore the Wisdom they professed and with great modesty no doubt confin'd wholly to themselves A Wisdom I think little to be envyed them being such as none who had it could be the better nor consequently the wiser for And thus much for the first Thing contained in the Words and proposed from them namely That the Gospel is the Wisdom of God I proceed now to the Second which we shall chiefly insist upon and that is concerning the Mysteriousness of it as That it is the Wisdom of God in a Mystery For the prosecution of which we shall enquire into and endeavour to give some Account of the Reasons so far as we may presume to judge of them why God should deliver to Mankind a Religion so full of Mysteries as the Christian Religion certainly is and was ever accounted to be Now the Reasons of this in general I conceive may be stated upon these two Grounds First The Nature and Quality of the Things treated of in the Christian Religion And Secondly The Ends to which all Religion both as to the General and Particular Nature of it is designed with relation to the Influence which it ought to have upon the minds of Men. And first of all For the Nature of the Things themselves which are the Subject matter of the Christian Religion there are in them these three Qualifications or Properties which do and must of Necessity render them Mysterious Obscure and of difficult Apprehension As First Their surpassing Greatness and Inequality to the mind of Man The Christian Religion as to a great part of it is but a kind of Comment upon the Divine Nature an Instrument to convey right Conceptions of God into the Soul of Man so far as it is capable of receiving them But now God we know is an Infinite Being without any Bounds or Limitations of His Essence Wonderful in His Actings Inconceivable in His Purposes and Inexpressible in His Attributes which yet as Great as they are if severally taken give us but an Incomplete Representation of Him He is another World in Himself too high for our Speculations and too great for our Descriptions For how can such Vast and Mighty things be crowded into a little finite Understanding Heaven I confess enters into us as we must into That by a very narrow Passage But how shall the King of Glory whom the Heavens themselves cannot contain enter in by these Doors by a Weak Imagination a slender Notion and a contracted Intellect How shall these poor short faculties measure the Lengths of His Eternity the Breadth and Expansions of His Immensity the Heights of His Prescience and the Depths of His Decrees and last of all that Unutterable Incomprehensible Mystery of Two Natures United into one Person and again of one and the same Nature diffused into a Triple Personality All which being some of the Prime Fundamental matters treated of in our Religion how can it be otherwise than a Systeme of Mysteries and a knot of dark inexplicable Propositions Since it exhibits to us such Things as the very Condition of our Nature renders us Uncapable of clearly understanding The Socinians indeed who would obtrude upon the World and of late more daringly than ever a New Christianity of their own Inventing will admit of nothing Mysterious in this Religion or such as the Natural Reason of Man cannot have a clear and Comprehensive perception of and this not only in defiance of the express Words of Scripture so frequently and fully affirming the contrary but also of the constant universal sense of all Antiquity Unanimously confessing an Incomprehensibility in many of the Articles of the Christian Faith So that these bold Persons stand alone by themselves upon a new bottom and an Upstart Principle not much above an Hundred years old spitting upon all Antiquity before them and as some have well observed of them who have wrote against them are the only Sect of Men in the World who ever pretended to set up or own a Religion without either a Mystery or a Sacrifice belonging to it For as we have shewn that they deny the first so they equally explode the latter by denying Christ to be properly a Priest or His Death to have been a Propitiatory Oblation for the Sins of the World And now are not these blessed New Lights think we fit to be encouraged courted and have Panegyricks made upon their Wonderful Abilities forsooth Whilst they on the other side are imploying the utmost of those abilities such as they are in Blaspheming our Saviour and Overturning our Religion But this is their hour and the Power of Darkness For it is a Truth too too manifest to be denied That there have been more Innovations upon and Blasphemies against the Chief Articles of our Faith published in this Kingdom and that after a more Audacious and Scandalous manner within these several years last past than have been known here for some Centuries of years before even those times of Confusion both in Church and State betwixt Forty One and Sixty not excepted And what this may produce and end in God only at present knows and I wish the whole Nation may not at length feel Secondly A second Qualification of the Chief Things treated of in our Religion and which must needs render them Mysterious is their Spirituality and Abstraction from all Sensible and Corporeal Matter Of which sort of Things it is impossible for the Understanding of Man to form to it self an exact Idea or Representation So that when we hear or read that God is a Spirit and that Angels and the Souls of Men are Spirits our Apprehensions are utterly at a loss how to frame any Notion or Resemblance of them but are put to float and wander in an endless Maze of Guesses and Conjectures and know not certainly what to fix upon For in this Case
and a free uncontrolled Passage into all things Intelligible We shall then surmount these Beggarly Rudiments and mean helps of Knowledge which now by many little steps gradually raise us to some short Speculation of the Nature of Things Our knowledge shall be then Intuitive and above Discourse not proceeding by a long Circuit of Antecedents and Consequents as now in this Vale of Imperfection it is forced to do but it shall then fully inform the whole Mind and take in the whole Object by one single and substantial Act. For as in that Condition we shall Enjoy the Happiness so we shall also imitate the Perfection of Angels Who out-shine the rest of the Creation in nothing more than in a transcendent ability of Knowing and Iudging which is the very Glory and crowning Excellency of a created Nature Faith it self shall be then accounted too mean a thing to accompany us in that Estate for being only conversant about Things not seen it can have no Admittance into that Place the peculiar Privilege of which shall be to convey to us the Knowledge of those Things by Sight which before we took wholly upon Trust. And thus I have given you some account First of the Mysteriousness of the Gospel and then of the Reasons of it and that both from the Nature of the Things themselves which are treated of in it as also from those Great Ends and Purposes which God in His Infinite Wisdom has designed it to From all which discourse several very weighty Inferences might be drawn but I shall collect and draw from thence only these Three As First The High Reasonableness of Men's relying upon the judgment of the whole Church in General and of their Respective Teachers and Spiritual Guides in Particular rather than upon their own Private judgments in such Important and Mysterious Points of Religion as we have been hitherto discoursing of I say upon the judgment of those who have made it their Constant Business as well as their Avowed Profession to acquaint themselves with these Mysteries so far as Humane Reason can attain to them and that in order to the Instruction and Information of Others Certain it is that there is no other Profession in the World besides this of Divinity wherein Men do not own something of a Mystery and accordingly reckon it both highly Rational and absolutely Necessary in many cases to resign and submit their own Judgments to the Judgments of such as Profess a skill in any Art or Science whatsoever For whose Judgment ought in all Reason to be followed about any Thing His who has made it his whole Work and Calling to Understand that Thing or His who has bestowed his whole Time Parts and Labour upon something else which is wholly Foreign to it and has no Cognation at all with it But there is not only Reason to perswade but also Authority to oblige Men in the Present Case For see in what Notable Words the Prophet asserts this Privilege to the Priesthood under the Mosaick Oeconomy Mal. 2.7 The Priests lips says he should preserve Knowledge and the People should seek the Law at his mouth adding this as a reason of the same For says he He is the Messenger of the Lord of Hosts For which words no doubt this Prophet would have passed for a Man of Heat now a days for in Good earnest they run very high and look very severely upon our so much applauded or rather doated upon Liberty of Conscience and are so far from casting the least Eye of favour upon it that they are a more direct and mortal Stab to it than all the Pleas Arguments and Apologies I could ever yet read or hear of have been a Defence of it Nor does the same Privilege sink one jot lower under the Christian Constitution For as we have already shewn that the Gospel is full of Mysteries so 1 Cor. 4.1 the Ministers of the Gospel are declared the Stewards of these Mysteries and whatsoever any one dispenses as a Steward he dispenses with the Authority and in the Strength of an Office and Commission and I believe it will be hard to Prove that a Minister of the Gospel can be obliged to dispence or declare any Thing to the People which the People are not upon his Declaration of it equally bound to Believe and Assent to An Implicite Faith indeed in our Spiritual Guides such as the Church of Rome holds I own to be a great Absurdity but a Due Deference and Submission to the Judgment of the said Guides in the discharge of their Ministry I affirm to be as great a Duty And I state the measures of this Submission in a Belief of and an Obedience to All that a Man's Spiritual Guide shall in that Capacity declare and enjoyn provided that a Man does not certainly know or at least upon very great and just grounds doubt any thing to the contrary which Two conditions I allow ought always to be supposed in this Case and then if no objection from either of these shall interpose I affirm that every Man stands obliged by the Duty he owes to his Spiritual Pastor to believe and obey whatsoever his said Pastor shall by vertue of his Pastoral Office deliver to him In a word if Men would but seriously and impartially consider these Three Things First That the Gospel or Christian Religion is for the most Part of it made up of Mysteries Secondly That God has appointed a certain Order of Men to declare and dispense these Mysteries And Thirdly and Lastly That it was His Wisdom thus to order Both these Certainly Men would both treat the Gospel it self more like a Mystery and the Ministers of the Gospel more like the Dispensers of so high and Sacred a Mystery than the Guise and Fashion of our Present Blessed Times disposes them to do that is in other Words Men would be less confident of their own Understandings and more apt to pay a Reverence and Submission to the Understandings of those who are both more Conversant in these matters than they can pretend to be and whom the same Wisdom of God has thought fit to appoint over them as their Guides For the contrary Practice can proceed from nothing but an High Self-Opinion and a Man's being Wise in his own conceit which is a sure way to be so in no Bodies else In fine every one is apt to think himself able to be his own Divine his own Priest and his own Teacher and he should do well to be his own Physician and his own Lawyer too And then as upon such a Course he finds himself speed in the Matters of this World let him upon the same reckon of his success in the other Secondly We learn also from the foregoing Particulars the gross Unreasonableness and the manifest Sophistry of Men's making whatsoever they find by themselves not Intelligible that is to say by Humane Reason not Comprehensible the measure whereby they would Conclude the same also to
very short time too Let every Sober Humble and Discreet Christian therefore be advised to dread all tampering with the Mysteries of our Faith either by any new and unwarrantable explications of them or descants upon them The Great Apostle of the Gentiles who I am sure had as clear a knowledge of the whole Mystery of the Gospel as any in his time and a greater plenty of Revelations than any one could pretend to since him treated these matters with much another kind of Reverence crying out with Horrour and Amazement O the Depth and Vnsearchableness of the things of God In Rom. 11.33 And again Who is sufficient for these Things In 2 Cor. 2.16 This was his Judgment these were his Thoughts of these Dreadful and Mysterious Depths and the same no doubt will be the thoughts and judgment of all others concerning them who have any thing of Depth themselves For as the same Apostle again has it in that most noted place in the 1 Tim. 3.16 Without Controversy great is the Mystery of Godliness God manifested in the Flesh justifyed in the Spirit seen of Angels believed on in the World and received up into Glory To which God Infinitely Wise Holy and Great be rendred and ascribed as is most Due all Praise Might Majesty and Dominion both now and for evermore Amen THE Lineal Descent OF Jesus of Nazareth From David by his Blessed Mother the Virgin Mary Proved in a DISCOURSE On Revel xxii 16 Revel xxii 16 latter part I am the Root and the Off-spring of David and the Bright and Morning Star THE Words here pitched upon by me are the Words of Christ now glorified in Heaven and seem as it were by the Union of a double Festival to represent to us both the Nativity and Epiphamy while they lead us to the Birth of Christ by the direction of a Star though with this difference I confess that both the Means directing and the Term directed to do in this place coincide and Christ the Person speaking as well as spoken of is here the only Star to direct us to Himself The Nativity of Christ is certainly a Compendium of the whole Gospel in that it thus both begins and ends it reaching from the first Chapter of St. Matthew to this last of the Revelation which latter though it be confessedly a Book of Mysteries and a System of occult Divinity yet surely it can contain nothing more Mysterious and Stupendious than the Mystery here wrapt up in the Text where we have Christ declaring himself both the Root and the Off-spring of David For that any one should be both Father and Son to the same Person produce himself be Cause and Effect too and so the Copy give Being to its Original seems at first sight so very strange and unaccountable that were it not to be adored as a Mystery it would be exploded as a Contradiction But since the Gospel has lifted us above our Reason and taught us one of the great Arcana of Heaven by assuring us that Divinity and Humanity may cohabit in one subsistence that two Natures may concur in the same Person and Heaven and Earth mingle without Confusion we being thus taught and perswaded shall here endeavour to exhibit the whole Oeconomy of Christ's Glorious Person and to shew what a Miracle He was as well as what Miracles He did by considering him under these three several Respects First As the Root Secondly As the Off-spring of David And Thirdly As He is here termed The Bright and Morning Star And First for the first of these Christ was the Root of David but How Certainly in respect of something in him which had a Being before David But his humanity had not so being of a much later date and therefore as a meer Man he could not be the Root of David whereupon it follows that he must have been so in respect of some other Nature But what that Nature was will be the Question The Arians who denied his Divinity but granted his Pre-existence to his Humanity which the Socinians absolutely deny held him to be the first Born of the Creation the first and most Glorious Creature which God made A Spiritual Substance produced by him long before the Foundation of the World and afterwards in the fulness of time sent into a Body and so made Incarnate This is what they hold whereby it appears how much they differ from the School of Socinus though some with great impertinence confound them Arius taught that Christ had a Spiritual Subsistence before the World began Socinus held that he was a meer Man and had no subsistence or being at all till such time as he was conceived by the Holy Ghost in the Womb of the Virgin Mary I shall not much concern my self about these two Opinions as they stand in Opposition to one another but only remark this of them That Socinus asserts a thing considered barely in it self more agreeable to Reason which can much better conceive of Christ as a Man naturally consisting of Soul and Body than as such an Heterogeneous Composition of a Body and I know not what strange Spiritual Substance Existing before the Creation as the Arians represent him But then on the other side the Opinion of Arius is of the two much more difficult to be confuted by Scripture For as to Socinus the chief Arguments brought from thence against him are not such as are taken from the Name or Actions of God attributed to Christ which he thinks he easily answers by asserting that God is a Name not of Nature but of Power and Dominion and that Christ is called God because of the Power and Government of all things put into his Hands as earthly Kings also in their proportion have in Scripture the same Title upon the same account But the Arguments which bear hardest upon Socinus are such as are taken from those Scriptures which beyond all possibility of Rational Contradiction declare the Pre-existence and Precedent Being of Christ to his Conception such as Ioh. 8. 58. Before Abraham was I am And in Ioh. 17.5 Glorify me O Father with the Glory which I had with thee before the World was which all the Socinians in the World could never yet give any clear proper and natural exposition of but unnaturally and illogically pervert and distort them in defyance of Sence and Reason and all the received ways of Interpretation But now as for Arius the Allegation of these and the like Scriptures prejudice not his Hypothesis at all who grants Christ to have been a Glorious Spiritual Substance of an Existence not only before Abraham but also before Adam and the Angels themselves and the whole Host of the Creation But what Was Christ then the Root of David only in respect of this Spiritual Pre-existing Created Substance first found out and set up by Arius No certainly for the Scripture and the best Comment upon the Scripture a general Council and that also the first and most Famous
even the Council of Nice have condemned this And all those Scriptures which make Christ either One with or equal to the Father clearly confute and overthrow so absurd as well as blasphemous an Assertion Let this therefore be fixed upon that Christ was the Root or Original of David as he was of all Mankind besides Namely in respect of His Divinity of that Infinite Eternal Power which displayed it self in the Works of the Creation For by him all things were made as the Evangelist tells us Iohn 1.3 But how ready natural Reason will be to rise up against this Assertion I am not Ignorant and how that Iesus of Nazareth a Man like our selves should be accounted by Nature God the Creator of the World Omniscient Omnipotent and Eternal is look'd upon by many as a Proposition not only false but foolish and fitter to be laugh'd than disputed out of the World this also is no surprize to us But then on the other side That this is a thing not to be founded upon or to take its rise from the bare discourses of Reason he must be very much a Stranger to Reason Himself who shall venture to deny for if it may be proved by Reason as I doubt not but it may that the Scripture is the Word of God addressed to Men and consequently ought to be understood and interpreted according to the familiar natural way of construction proper to humane Writings then I affirm that to deny Christ to be naturally God is irrational when His being so is so frequently asserted throughout the whole Scripture and that in as clear terms as it is possible for one Man to express his Mind by to another if it were his purpose to declare this very Thing to Him And therefore I have often wondred at the preposterous Tenets of Socinus and that not so much for his denying the natural Deity of our Saviour as that he should do it after he had wrote a Book for the Authority of the Scripture For upon the same reasons that He and his Sect deny the Deity of Christ I should rather deny the Scripture to be of Divine Authority They say for Christ to be God is a thing absurd and impossible from which I should argue that that Writing or Doctrine which affirms a thing absurd and impossible cannot be true and much less the Word of God And that the Gospel affirms so much of Christ we may appeal to the judgment of any impartial Heathen who understands the Language in which it is Written But he who first denies the Deity of Christ as absurd and impossible and thereupon rejects the Divine Authority of the Scripture for affirming it may be presumed upon the supposal of the former to do the latter very Rationally So that he who would take the most proper and direct way to Convince such an one of his Heresy if there be any convincing of one who first takes up his Opinion and then seeks for Reasons for it must not I conceive endeavour in the first place to Convince him out of Scripture That Iesus Christ is God but turn the whole force and stress of his Disputation to the proof of this That the Scripture is the Word of God to Mankind and upon that account ought to be interpreted as the Writings of Men use and ought to be and if so he who will make sense of them must grant the Divinity of Christ to be clearly asserted in them and irrefragably inferred from them In short if the Adversaries of Christ's Divinity can prove Christ not to be God they must by consequence prove that the Scriptures Naturally and Grammatically interpreted are not the Word of God But on the contrary the Church being assured that the Scriptures so interpreted are the Word of God is consequently assured also that Christ is and must be God Nevertheless if according to the unreasonable demands of the Men of this Sect this and all other Mysteries of our Religion should be put to answer for themselves at the Bar of Humane Reason I would fain know wherein consists the Paradox of asserting Christ to be God For no Man saies that his Humane Nature is his Divine or that he is God as he is Man But we assert that he who is God is also Man by having two Natures united into one and the same Subsistence And if the Soul which is an Immaterial Substance is united to the Body which is a Material though the case is not altogether the same yet it is so very near that we may well ask what Repugnancy there is but that the Divine Nature may as well be united to the Humane I believe if we reduce things to our way of Conception we shall find it altogether as hard to conceive the Conjunction of the two former as of the two latter and this notwithstanding that other Difference also of finite and infinite between them for why a finite and an Infinite Being may not be United to one Another by an Intimate and inseparable Relation and an Assumption of the finite into the Personal subsistence of the Infinite I believe it will be hard for any one to give a Solid and Demonstrative Reason For Scoffs and Railery the Usual Arguments brought against it I am sure are not so But I forget my self for the Persons here disputed against believe not the Soul to be either immaterial or naturally immortal but are much the same with the Sadduces and upon that account fitter to be crush'd by the civil Magistrate as destructive to Government and Society than to be confuted as meerly Hereticks in Religion I conclude therefore against the Scoffs of the Heathens the Disputations of the Jews the Impiety of Arius and the Bold Blasphemous Assertions of Socinus that the Man Christ Jesus Born at Bethlem of the Virgin Mary is God God by Nature the Maker of all Things the Fountain of Being the Ancient of Days the First and the Last of whose Being there was no Beginning and of whose Kingdom there shall be no end And in this one Proposition the very Life and Heart of Christianity does consist For as That there is a God is the grand Foundation of Religion in general So that Iesus Christ is God is the Foundation of the Christian Religion and I believe it will one day be found that he who will not acknowledge Christ for his Creator shall never have him for his Redeemer Having thus shewn how Christ was the Root and Original of David pass we now to the next thing proposed which is to shew Secondly That He was His Off-spring too and so having asserted his Divinity to clear also his Humanity That the Christian Religion be True is the Eternal Concernment of all those who believe it and look to be saved by it And that it be so depends upon Jesus Christ's being the true promised Messias the grand and chief thing asserted by him in his Gospel and lastly Christ's being the true Messias depends upon
Noble and Pregnant place of Scripture John 8.58 Before Abraham was I am from being any Proof at all of Christ's Eternal Pre-existence to His Incarnation and so to give up one of the main Forts of the Christian Religion to the Socinians has yet been forced by the over-powering Evidence of this Chapter notwithstanding all his shifts too manifestly shewing what he would be at to express himself upon this Subject more agreeably to the sence of the Catholick Church than in many other places he had done And well indeed might he even for shame it self do so much when it is certain that he might have done a great deal more For such a Commanding Majesty is there in every Period almost of this Chapter that it has forced even Heathens and Atheists Persons who valued themselves not a little upon their Philosophy to submit to the Controlling truth of the Propositions here delivered and instead of contradicting or disputing to fall down and worship For the things here uttered were Mysteries kept hid from Ages and such as God had for Four Thousand Years together by all the Wise Arts and Methods of His Providence been preparing the World for before it could be fit or ripe to receive them and therefore a most Worthy subject they must needs have been for this beloved Apostle to impart to Mankind who having so long lain in the Bosom of Truth it Self received all things from that Great Original by more Intimate and Immediate Communications than any of the rest of the Apostles were honoured with In a Word He was of the Cabinet and therefore no wonder if He spake Oracles In the Text we have these two parts First Christ's Coming into the World in those Words He came to His Own Secondly Christ's entertainment being Come in those other Words His Own received Him not In the former of which there being an Account given us of one of the greatest and most Stupendious Actions that the World was ever yet Witness of there cannot I suppose be a Truer measure taken of the Nature of it than by a distinct Consideration of the several Circumstances belonging to it which are these First The Person Who came Secondly The Condition from which He came Thirdly The Persons to whom He came And Fourthly And Lastly the Time of His coming Of all which in their Order And 1. First for the Person who came It was the Second Person in the Glorious Trinity the Ever Blessed and Eternal Son of God Concerning Whom it is a miracle and a Kind of Paradox to our Reason Considering the Condition of his Person how He could be said to come at all for since all coming is motion or progression from a place in which we were to a place in which we were not before and since Infinity implies an actual comprehension of and a presence to all places it is hard to conceive how He Who was God could be said to come any whither Whose Infinity had made all Progression to or acquisition of a New place impossible But Christ who delighted to mingle every Mercy with miracle and wonder took a finite Nature into the Society and Union of His Person whereupon what was impossible to a Divine Nature was rendered very possible to a Divine Person which could rightfully and properly entitle it self to all the respective Actions and Properties of either Nature comprehended within its Personality So that being made Man He could do all things that Man could do except only Sin Every thing that was purely humane and had nothing of any Sinful deficiency or turpitude cleaving to it fell within the Verge and compass of His Actions But now was there ever any Wonder comparable to this to behold Divinity thus cloathed in Flesh the Creator of all things humbled not only to the Company but also to the Cognation of His Creatures It is as if we should imagine the whole World not only Represented upon but also contained in one of our little artificial globes or the body of the Sun invelop'd in a Cloud as big as a Man's hand all which would be lookt upon as astonishing Impossibilities and yet as short of the other as the greatest finite is of an infinite between which the Disparity is immeasurable For that God should thus in a manner Transform Himself and subdue and Master all His Glories to a possibility of humane apprehension and converse the best reason would have thought it such a thing as God could not do had it not seen it actually done It is as it were to cancel the Essential distances of things to remove the bounds of Nature to bring Heaven and Earth and what is more both ends of the Contradiction together And thereupon some who think it an Imputation upon their Reason to believe any thing but what they can demonstrate which is no thanks to them at all have invented several strange Hypotheses and Salvo's to clear up these things to their apprehensions As that the Divine Nature was never personally united to the humane but only passed through it in a kind of imaginary Phantastick way that is to speak plainly in some way or other which neither Scripture Sense nor Reason know any thing of And others have by one bold stroke cut off all such Relation of it to the Divine Nature and in much another sence than that of the Psalmist made Christ altogether such an one as themselves that is a meer Man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for Socinus would needs be as good a Man as his Saviour But this Opinion whatsoever ground it may have got in this latter Age of the Church yet no sooner was it vented and defended by Photinus Bishop of Sirmium but it was immediately crush'd and universally rejected by the Church So that although several other Heresies had their course and were but at length extinguished and not without some difficulty yet this like an indigested Meteor appeared and disappeared almost at the same time However Socinus beginning where Photinus had long before left off lick'd up his deserted forlorn opinion and lighting upon worse times has found much better success But is it true that Christ came into the World Then sure I am apt to think that this is a solid inference that He had an Existence and a Being before He came hither since every motion or passage from one place or condition to another supposes the thing or person so moving to have actually existed under both Terms to wit as well under that from which as that to which he passes But if Christ had nothing but an humane Nature which never existed till it was in the World how could that possibly be said to come into the World The fruit that grows upon a tree and so had the first moment of its existence there cannot with any Propriety or truth of speech be said to have come to that tree since that must suppose it to have been somewhere else before I am far from building so great and so
a suffering Religion and there are two sorts of suffering to which it will certainly expose every genuine Professor of it 1. The First is from himself 2. The Second from the World 1. And First it will engage him in a suffering from himself even that Grand suffering of Self-denial and Mortification the sharpest and most indispensable of all others in which every Christian is not only to be the Sufferer but himself also the Executioner He who is Christ's says the Apostle has crucified the Flesh with the Affections and Lusts. A severe Discipline certainly in which a Man is to act his fiercest anger upon his Dearest Friends For could Nature ever yet suggest to any one the hatred of his own Flesh the Crucifixion of his Desires and the stabbing of his most beloved affections Nature indeed cannot will not prompt it but Christianity which rises many strains above Nature both must and will The best Sacrifice to a Crucified Saviour is a Crucified Lust a bleeding Heart and a dying Corruption We cannot bring nor indeed does Christ expect a recompence for what he has suffered for us yet that which he will accept as if it were a recompence is for us to deal cruelly with that body of Sin which has caused the acting of all those Cruelties upon him Let the Ambitious Man lay his Pride in the dust the Covetous Man deposite his Treasures in the Banks of Charity and Liberality and let the Voluptuous Epicure renonuce his Cups and his Whores and this will be a present to Heaven better than an whole Hecatomb nor could the Fruit of his Body fall so grateful a Sacrifice upon God's Altars as the Sin of his Soul But it is like the Jolly World about us will but scoff at the Paradox of such Practices and explode them as Madness and Melancholy Yet let those Sons of pleasure know that such as scorn to be thus Melancholy in this World will have but little cause to be Merry in the next 2. The other kind of suffering in which Christianity will engage a Man is from the World Such is the Genius and Nature of the Christian Religion that it must unavoidably bring him who owns it in the power of it under Temporal troubles and afflictions In the World says Christ ye shall have tribulation And he spoke it not so much by a Spirit of Prophecy as Philosophy and by an actual sight of it in its pregnant Causes For the contrariety of the Principles and Maxims of Christianity to those of the World cannot but engage Men in such practices as shall also thwart the Customs and Modes which govern the Actions of the World But where there is contrariety there will be fighting and where there is fighting the weaker I am sure must suffer and generally the Christian is so in all Worldly encounters whose chief Defensatives lie not in that Armour that is Sword-proof or Bullet-proof and who wears no Breast-plate upon but within his Breast that is his Innocence his Conscience and his Confidence in a Reconciled God Suffering is a thing which all Men abhor and that because they are ashamed of it and their being so is grounded upon this Opinion that To suffer in the very Nature of it seems to impeach the suffering Person either in the Reputation of his Power or of his Innocence that is he suffers either because he is weak and cannot hinder it or because he is faulty and so deserves it But with every Christian Christ is an abundant answer to both these Objections For when we see Omnipotence hanging upon the Cross and God himself scourged and spit upon and when we see him who could have commanded fire from Heaven and Legions of Angels to his rescue yet surrendering himself quietly to the will of his Murderers surely no mortal Man who is but dirt and worms-meat at the best can pretend himself too great and too high to suffer And again when we behold Vertue Innocence and Purity more than Angelical crucified between Thieves and Malefactors shall any Man whose Birth and Actions revile and speak him a Sinner to his face thing himself too good to come under the Cross and to take his share in the common Lot of Christianity 'T is not the suffering it self but the Cause of it that is dishonourable And even in the worst and most shameful of sufferings though the Hangman does the Execution yet it is the Crime alone which does the Disgrace Christ commands us nothing but he enforces it with Arguments from his Person as well as from his Word and it is well if we can make a due use of them For God knows how soon he may call us from our easy Speculations and Theories of Suffering to the Practical Experience of it How soon he may draw us forth for Persecution and the Fiery tryal Only this we may be sure of that if these things be brought upon us for His honour it will be for Ours too to endure them And be our distresses never so great our calamities never so strange and unusual yet we have both our Saviour's Example to direct and his Promise to support us who has left it upon record in his Everlasting Gospel That if we suffer with Him we shall also Reign with Him To Whom therefore be Rendered and Ascribed as is most due all Praise Mighty Majesty and Dominion both now and for evermore Amen A SERMON Upon the Resurrection Preached On Easter-Day 1667. ACTS II. 24 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Whom God hath raised up having loosed the Pains of Death because it was not possible that He should be holden of it IT is of Infinite Concern to Mankind both as to their Wellfare in this World and the next to preserve in their Minds a full Belief of a Future Estate of Happiness or Misery into which according to the Quality of their Actions here they must for ever be disposed of hereafter The Experience of all Ages having found the Insufficiency of bare humane Restraints to Controul the Audacious Sinfulness of some Tempers and Dispositions without holding them under the Awe of this Perswasion From which though some by much and long Sinning and Preverse Ratiocinations caused thereby have in a great Measure disintangled their Consciences yet these are but few and inconsiderable compared with the rest of the World in whose Minds Education and better Principles grafted upon the very Instincts of Nature have fixed this Perswasion too deep to be ever totally rooted out And it is from the Victorious Influence of this that the Common Peace of the World has been maintained against those bold Invasions which the Corruption of Man's Nature would otherwise continually make upon it But now as highly necessary as it is for Men to believe such a Future Estate yet it must be acknowledged that with the Generality of the World this Belief has stood hitherto upon very false or at the best very weak Foundations and consequently that it is of no small Import
Death where is thy Sting So that when we come to resign back these frail Bodies these Vessels of Mortality to the Dust from whence they were taken we may yet say of our Souls as Christ did of the Damosel whom he raised up That she was not dead but only Slept for in like manner we shall as certainly rise out of the Grave and Triumph over the dishonours of its Rottenness and Putrefaction as we rise in the Morning out of our Beds with Bodies refreshed and advanced into Higher and Nobler Perfections For the Head being once risen we may be sure the Members cannot stay long behind And Christ is already risen and gone before to prepare Mansions for all those who belong to him under that High Relation That where He is They to their Eternal Comfort may be also rejoycing and singing Praises and Hallelujahs to him who sitteth upon the Throne and to the Lamb for Ever and Ever To Whom Be Rendered and Ascribed as is most due all Glory Might Majesty and Dominion to Eternal Ages Amen THE Christian Pentecost OR THE Solemn Effusion of the Holy Ghost IN THE Several Miraculous Gifts Conferred by Him upon the Apostles and first Christians Set forth in a SERMON Preached At Westminster-Abbey 1692. 1 COR. XII 4 Now there are diversities of Gifts but the same Spirit OUR Blessed Saviour having Newly Changed his Crown of Thorns for a Crown of Glory and ascending up on high took Possession of his Royal Estate and Soveraignty according to the Custom of Princes is here treating with this Lower World now at so great a distance from him by his Ambassador And for the greater Splendour of the Embassy and Authority of the Message by an Ambassador no ways Inferiour to Himself even the Holy Ghost the Third Person in the Blessed Trinity in Glory Equal in Majesty Co-eternal and therefore most peculiarly fit not only as a Deputy but as a kind of Alter Idem to supply his Place and Presence here upon Earth and indeed had he not been Equal to him in the Godhead he could no more have supplyed his Place than he could have filled it which we know in the Accounts of the World are Things extreamly different as by sad and scandalous Experience is too often found Now the summ of this his Glorious Negotiation was to Confirm and ratifie Christ's Doctrine to seal the New Charter of the Worlds Blessedness given by Christ Himself and drawn up by his Apostles and Certainly it was not a greater Work first to Publish than it was afterwards to Confirm it For Christianity being a Religion made up of Truth and Miracle could not Receive its Growth from any Power less than that which first gave it its Birth And being withal a Doctrine Contrary to Corrupt Nature and to those Things which Men most Eagerly Loved to wit their Worldly Interests and their Carnal Lusts it must needs have quickly decayed and withered and dyed away if not Watered by the same Hand of Omnipotence by which it was first planted Nothing could keep it up but such a standing mighty Power as should be able upon all occasions to Countermand and Controul Nature such an one as should at the same time both Instruct and Astonish and baffle the Disputes of Reason by the Obvious overpowering Convictions of Sense And this was the Design of the Spirit 's Mission That the same Holy Ghost who had given Christ his Conception might now give Christianity its Confirmation And this he did by that wonderful and various Effusion of his Miraculous Gifts upon the first Messengers and Propagators of this Divine Religion For as our Saviour himself said John 4.48 Vnless you see signs and wonders you will not believe So that Sight was to introduce Belief and accordingly the first Conquest and Conviction was made upon the Eye and from thence passed victorious to the Heart This therefore was their Rhetorick this their method of Perswasion Their Words were Works Divinity and Physick went together They Cured the Body and thereby Convinced the Soul They Conveyed and enforced all their Exhortations not by the Arts of Eloquence but by the Gift of Tongues These were the Speakers and Miracle the Interpreter Now in Treating of these Words I shall Consider these Three Things First What those Gifts were which were conferred by the Spirit both upon the Apostles and first Professors of Christianity Secondly What is Imported and to be understood by their Diversity and Thirdly And Lastly What are the Consequences of their Emanation from one and the same Spirit First And first for the first of them These Gifts are called in the Original 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say Acts of Grace or favour and signifie here certain Qualities and Perfections which the Spirit of God freely bestowed upon Men for the better Enabling them to Preach the Gospel and to settle the Christian Religion in the World and accordingly we will Consider them under that known Dichotomy or Division by which they stand divided into Ordinary and Extraordinary And first for the Ordinary Gifts of the Spirit these he conveys to us by the mediation of our own Endeavours And as He who both makes the Watch and Winds up the Wheels of it may not Improperly be said to be the Author of its motion so God who first Created and since sustains the Powers and Faculties of the Soul may justly be called the Cause of all those Perfections and Improvements which the said faculties shall attain unto by their Respective Operations For that which gives the form gives also the Consequents of that form and the Principle with all its appendant Actions is to be referred to the same Donor But God forbid that I should determine God's Title to our Actions barely in his giving us the Power and Faculty of Acting Durandus indeed an Eminent Schoolman held so and so must Pelagius and his followers hold too if they will be True to and abide by their own Principles But undoubtedly God does not only give the Power but also vouchsafes an Active Influence and Concurrence to the production of every particular Action so far as it has either a Natural or a Moral goodness in it And therefore in all acquired Gifts or Habits such as are those of Philosophy Oratory or Divinity we are properly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Co-workers with God And God ordinarily gives them to none but to such as Labour hard for them They are so his Gifts that they are also our own Acquisitions His assistance and our own study are the joint and adequate Cause of these Perfections And to imagine the Contrary is all one as if a Man should think to be a Scholar barely by his Master's Teaching without his own Learning In all these Cases God is ready to do his Part but not to do both His own and ours too Secondly The other sort of the Spirit 's Gifts are Extraordinary Which are so absolutely and entirely from God that the Soul
Heaven would grow Cheap and Common and which is very preposterous to Conceive they would be Miracles without a Wonder The Papists indeed who having swallowed and digested the Belief of so many Monstrous Contradictions would do but very unwisely and disagreeably to themselves if for ever after they should stick at any advantageous Absurdity these I say hold that the Gift of Miracles still continues ordinary in their Church and that the Christian Religion has still the same need of such Miraculous Confirmations as it had at first Where if by the Christian they mean their own Popish Religion I am so fully of their mind that I think there is need not only of Daily but even of hourly or rather continual Miracles to Confirm it if it were but in that one single Article of Transubstantiation But then we know whose Badge and Character the Scripture makes it to Come in Lying Wonders and we know also that Lying Wonders are true Impostures and theirs are of that Nature that the fallacy is so gross and the Cheat so Transparent in them that as it hardens the Iews and Mahumetans with a desperate Invincible Prejudice against Christianity as a Thing as false as those Miracles which they see it recommended by so I am Confident that it Causes many Christians also to nauseate their own Religion and to fall into secret Atheism being Apt to Think as even these Impostors also pretend that the very Miracles of the Apostles might be of the same Nature with those which they see daily Acted by these Spiritual Juglers so that hereby the grand Proof of Christianity falls to the ground and has no force or hold upon Men's minds at all Whereas our Saviour Himself laid the main Stress and Credit of his Gospel and of his Mission from God upon his Miracles The Works that I do says He bear Witness of me John 10.25 And Believe me for my very Works sake John 14.11 And had I not done amongst them the Works which no other Man did they had not had Sin John 15.24 So that we see here that the Credit of all turned upon his Miracles his mighty and Supernatural Works But as we know it often falls out that when a Man has once got the Character of a Lyer even Truth it self is suspected if not absolutely disbelieved when it comes from the Mouth of such an one So these Miracle-Mongers â—aving alarm'd the World round about tâ—em to a discernment of their Tricks wâ—en they came afterwards to Preach Christianity especially to Infidels and to preâ—â— it upon Men's belief in the strength of those Miraculous Works which were truely and really done by Christ yet since they pretend the same of their own Works too which all People see through and know to be Lyes and Impostures all that they Preach of Christ is presently looked upon as false and fictitious and leaves the minds of Men locked up under a fixed obstinate and impregnable Infidelity Such a fatal blow has the Legerdemain of those Wretches given to the Christian Religion and such jealousies have they raised in some Men's Thoughts against it by their false Miracles and Fabulous Stories of the Romantick feats of their Pretended Saints In all which there is nothing indeed strange or Miraculous but the Impudence and Impiety of such as report and make them and the folly of such as can believe them 2. Pass we now to the second Thing proposed which is to shew what is meant by this Diversity of Gifts mentioned in the Text. It Imports I conceive these Two Things 1. Something by way of Affirmation which is Variety 2. Something by way of Negation which is Contrariety 1. And first for the first of them It imports Variety of which Excellent Qualification it is hard to say whether it makes more for Vse or Ornament It is the very Beauty of Providence and the Delight of the World It is that which keeps alive Desire which would otherwise flag and tire and be quickly weary of any one single Object It both supplies our Affections and Entertains our Admiration Equally serving the Innocent Pleasures and the Important Occasions of Life And now all these Advantages God would have this desireable Quality derive even upon his Church too In which great Body there are and must be several Members having their several Vses Offices and Stations as in the 28 th v. of this Chapter where my Text is the Apostle tells us that God has placed in the Church first Apostles secondarily Prophets thirdly Preachers after that Miracles then Gifts of healing helps Governments Diversities of Tongues The particular Function and Employment of so many parts subserving the Joint Interest and Design of the whole As the motion of a Clock is a Complicated motion of so many Wheels fitly put together and Life it self but the Result of so many several Operations all issuing from and Contributing to the support of the same Body The great help and furtherance of Action is order and the Parent of order is Distinction No sence faculty or Member must Encroach upon or interfere with the Duty and Office of another For as the same Apostle discourses in the two next verses Are all Apostles Are all Prophets Are all Teachers Are all Workers of Miracles Have all the Gift of Healing Do all Speak with Tongues Do all Interpret No but as in the Natural Body the Eye does not Speak nor the Tongue see so neither in the Spiritual is every one who has the Gift of Prophecy endued also with the Gift and Spirit of Government every one who may speak well and pertinently enough upon a Text is not therefore presently fit to rule a Diocess nor is a Nimble Tongue always attended with a strong and a steady Head If all were Preachers who should Govern or rather indeed who could be governed If the Body of the Church were all Ear Men would be only hearers of the Word and where would then be the Doers For such I am sure we are most to seek for in our days in which sad experience shews that Hearing of Sermons has with most swallowed up and devoured the Practice of them and manifestly serves instead of it rendring many Zealots amongst us as really guilty of the Superstition of resting in the bare Opus Operatum of this Duty as the Papists are or can be Charged to be in any of their Religious Performances whatsoever The Apostle justly reproaches such with Itching Ears 2 Tim. 4.3 And I cannot see but that the Itch in the Ear is as bad a distemper as in any other part of the Body and perhaps a Worse But to proceed God has use of all the several Tempers and Constitutions of Men to serve the Occasions and Exigences of his Church by Amongst which some are of a Sanguine Chearful and Debonair Disposition having their Imaginations for the most part filled and taken up with Pleasing Ideas and Images of Things seldom or never Troubling their Thoughts either by
Fair. And then for the Gift of Healing let a bleeding Church and State shew how notably they were gifted that way They played the Chirurgeons indeed with a Witness but we never yet heard that they Acted the Physitian all their Practice upon the Body Politick was with Powder and Ball Sword and Pistol No saving of Life with those Men but by Purging away the Estate And likewise for the Gift of discerning of Spirits They had their Tryers that is a Court appointed for the Tryal of Ministers but most properly called Cromwell's Inquisition In which they would pretend to know Men's hearts and inward Bent of their Spirits as their word was by their very looks But the Truth is as the Chief Pretence of those Tryers was to enquire into Men's Gifts so if they found them but well Gifted in the Hand they never looked any further for a full and Free hand was with them an Abundant demonstration of a Gracious Heart a word in great request in those times And moreover for the Gift of diverse Tongues it is certain that they scarce spake the same Thing for two days together Though otherwise it must be Confessed that they were none of the greatest Linguists their own Mother Tongue serving all their Occasions without ever so much as looking into the Fathers who always spoke the Language of the Beast to such as could not understand them Latin was with them a Mortal Crime and Greek instead of being owned for the Language of the Holy Ghost as in the New Testament it is was looked upon like the Sin against it so that in a Word they had all the Confusions of Babel amongst them without the Diversity of Tongues And then Lastly For the Gift of Interpreting they thought themselves no ordinary Men at Expounding a Chapter if the Turning of a few Rational significant Words and Sentences into a loose tedious Impertinent Harangue could be called an Exposition But above all for their Interpreting Gift you must take them upon Ezekiel Daniel and the Revelation and from thence as it were out of a Dark Prophetick Cloud Thundring against the Old Cavaleirs and the Church of England and as I may but too appositely express it breaking them upon the wheels in Ezekiel Casting them to the Beasts in Daniel and pouring upon them all the Vials in the Revelation After which let any one deny it who durst that the Black Decree was Absolutely passed upon those Malignants and that they were all of them to a Man Sons of Reprobation And thus I think I have Reckoned up most of the Extraordinary Gifts of the Spirit and Compared them with those of our late Gifted Brethren Amongst all which Divine Gifts I must declare that I cannot find the Gift of Canting and whining and making Faces that is of Speaking Bad sence with worse looks which yet those Men used to call the Language of Canaan Nor can I find the Gift of uttering every suddain crude undigested thought coming over their minds and of being Impudently bold and Familiar with Almighty God in Prayer I cannot find the Gift of exploding the Mysteries and peculiar Credenda of the Gospel in order to the turning Christianity into bare Morality I cannot find the Gift of accounting Tenderness of Conscience against Law as a Thing Sacred but Tenderness of Conscience according to Law as a Crime to be prosecuted almost to Death In a word I cannot find the Gifts of Rebelling Plundering Sequestring Robbing Churches and Murdering Kings and all this purely for the sake of Conscience and Religion These Things I say whether it be through the Weakness of my discerning Faculties or whatsoever else may be the Cause I cannot for my Life find amongst the Primitive Gifts of the Spirit And therefore wheresoever I do find them let Men talk never so much of Inward Motions and Extraordinary Calls of the Spirit of the Kingdom of Iesus Christ and of the Publick good of Moderation and of an Healing Spirit and the like yet long and sad Experience having taught us the true meaning of all these fine and fallacious Terms I must needs say both of them and the Spirit from which they proceed in those words of St. Iames 3.18 That they descend not from above but are Earthly Sensual and Devilish These are the Names which God knows and calls them by though Schismaticks and Hypocrites may call them Reformation But Fourthly In the fourth and last place This Emanation of Gifts from the Spirit assures us that Knowledge and Learning are by no means opposite to Grace since we see Gifts as well as Graces conferred by the same Spirit But amongst those of the late Reforming Age whom we have been speaking of all Learning was utterly cryed down So that with them the best Preachers were such as could not read and the ablest Divines such as could not write In all their Preachments they so highly pretended to the Spirit that they could hardly so much as spell the Letter To be blind was with them the Proper Qualification of a Spiritual Guide and to be Book-Learned as they called it and to be Irreligious were almost Terms Convertible None were thought fit for the Ministry but Tradesmen and Mechanicks because none else were allowed to have the Spirit Those only were accounted like St. Paul who could work with their hands and in a litteral sence drive the Nail home and be able to make a Pulpit before they preached in it But the Spirit in the Primitive Church took quite another Method being still as Careful to furnish the Head as to sanctifie the Heart and as He wrought Miracles to found and establish a Church by these extraordinary Gifts so it would have been a greater Miracle to have done it without them God as He is the giver of Grace so He is the Father of Lights He neither Admits Darkness in Himself nor approves it in others And therefore those who place all Religion in the Heats of a furious Zeal without the due Illuminations of Knowledge Know not of what Spirit they are indeed of such a Spirit as begins in Darkness Leads to it and Ends in it But certainly we shall one day find that a Religion so much Resembling Hell neither was nor could be the Readiest way to Heaven But on the Contrary That the Spirit always Guides and instructs before He saves and that as He brings to Happiness only by the ways of Holiness so He never leads to true Holiness but by the Paths of Knowledge To which Holy Spirit together with the Father and the Son Three Persons and one God be rendred and ascribed as is most due all Praise Might Majesty and Dominion both now and for evermore Amen THE Peculiar Care AND Concern of Providence FOR THE Protection and Defense of Kings Set forth in a SERMON Preached At Westminster-Abbey Nov. 5. 1675. Psalm CXLIV 10 former part It is He that giveth Salvation unto Kings THE greatest and most magnificent Title by which God