our selves in all such matters as fall within the Sphere of our Cognizance Which if our Reason be debarred of it standeth for a lonely Cypher in our Natures and is altogether useless and insignificant And if in any thing our Reason hath a Right to judge for us then much more in matters of Religion in which our highest and most important Interest is concerned So that to deny it the Right of judging for us here is to render it useless in our greatest Importance and to disable our best Faculty from being serviceable to our best Interest 'T is true there are sundry Controversies about religious Matters which every Man's Reason cannot judge of the Arguments pro and con depending either upon Criticisms of Language or Metaphysical Niceties or ancient Histories which are all beyond the Comprehension of persons of mean and vulgar Understandings who are therefore obliged in all such matters as these to submit to the Determination of their lawful Guides and Governours But as for the great and necessary matters of Religion they are plain and obvious to the meanest Understanding and consequently herein every man ought to exercise his natural Right of judging for himself and not swallow his Religion blindfold without trying it by the Test of his Reason And certainly they who remove the Cognizance of Religion out of the Court of Reason take away that which doth most properly and naturally fall under its Determination For Religion is the Chief End of Man's Creation as he is a reasonable Being and thereby capable of Religion and to be sure where the End is natural the Means must be so too And therefore as Horses that were made for Burthen have a natural Ability to bear and as Birds that were made to fly have a faculty and Wings for that purpose so rational Souls that were made for Religion must needs be supposed to have some Power naturally placed in them for the Exercise and Iudgment and Choice of it And what else can that be but their Reason So that to deny Men the Liberty to judge for themselves in that which is their natural End and highest Interest is as great a piece of Violence and Injustice as can be offered to humane Nature And of this very matter the Church of Rome is highly guilty for it commandeth Assent without Evidence and imperiously requireth Men to believe her Doctrines without examination to rely implicitly upon her Authority and swallow down her Faith by the lump without ever inquiring whether it be Physick or Poyson For the leading Principle of the Romish Religion is this that the Churches Authority is the Reason of our Faith and that Men are bound to believe what she believeth without any further proof or evidence by which tyrannical Proceedure She useth her wretched Children as the Philistins did Sampson first putteth out their Eyes and recreateth herself with their Blindness and Ignorance For unless they wink hard and believe at a venture whatsoever she proposeth they are sure to feel the Edges both of her spiritual and temporal Swords and though they are never so modest peaceable and humble in their dissents to incur her Anathemas which have always the sting of Fire and Faggot in the tayl of them Now what is this but to force the Opinions of Men and drive their Reason from its Throne of Judicature For he that punisheth a man barely for his Opinion doth in so doing endeavour to rob him of his natural Right of judging for himself which is the greatest Tyranny in the World it being an exercise of Dominion over the minds of men which are subject only to the Empire of God 'T is true if in judging for themselves Men take up Opinions that are vicious or destructive to Government their wicked Practice is justly punishable according to the proportion of its Malignity for otherwise Men's right of judging for themselves will soon be made a Sanctuary for all the Villanies in the World And though no Man ought to be punished barely for his Opinion yet he may be justly punished for practising his Opinion though his practice be indifferent in its own Nature For indifferent Things which God hath neither commanded nor forbidden are the proper matter of all humane Laws and therefore if upon a false Opinion that what the Law enjoyns is not indifferent but sinful I practise contrary to the Law I am justly punishable because my Mistake altereth not the nature of the thing If it be indifferent it is a proper object of humane Laws whether I think it so or no and as such may justly be imposed and the Imposition being just in it self our not complying with it is justly punishable Once more though no Man ought to be punished for his Opinion yet he may be justly punishable for making a publick Profession of it for there is no doubt but Men may be restrained by Laws from propagating their little Opinions into Factions and dividing themselves upon every different persuasion into opposite Parties Otherwise it will be impossible considering the Passions of Men to maintain any Unity or Concord in civil or sacred Societies And therefore where such Restriction is Men ought to be satisfied with this that they freely enjoy their liberty of Opining and are not deprived of their natural Right to judge for themselves and so they ought either to keep their little Opinions to themselves or at least not to vex and disturb the Publick by a fierce Endeavour to propagate them to others And this due Deference to Men's natural Right of judging for themselves hath been always punctually observed in the Church of England for it neither damneth nor censureth persecuteth nor destroyeth Men upon the score of difference in Opinion provided their Opinion doth not lead them to wicked or seditious practices but hopeth well of all that live well and receiveth all into its Communion that desire it provided they believe but the Apostles Creed and the Doctrine of the four first General Councils 'T is true it forbideth Men so to profess their Dissents to the Articles of its Doctrine and Discipline as to seduce her Children from her Communion and list them into Factions against her and this every Church must necessarily do that valueth its own Peace and Preservation but it pretendeth not to invade the Liberty of their Thoughts or to lay rigid Restraints on their Opinions and so long as they dissent from us modestly and peaceably they may enjoy their own Opinions and our Communion too And as for those Forein Communities of Christians that differ from us we pass no severe Sentences against them but do believe and hope and earnestly pray that the God of all mercies will pity their Errors and connive at their Defects and finally unite them to us for ever in the blissful Communion of the Church Triumphant Nor doth our Religion obtrude it self upon the minds of Men by the bare Warrant of an imperious Authority but fairly appealeth to our Understandings and
sudden be so kind to them as to give them Shelter and Sanctuary within his own meritorious Wounds and to make his Blood the Price of a general Indulgence to all Impiety and Wickedness that so we might sin securely and enjoy a safe Retreat from his Authority under the covert of his Sacrifice But be not deceived the holy Iesus will never make himself an unholy Saviour for your sake and your being called by the Name of Christ is so far from giving you a Priviledge to sin that it lays you under a stricter Restraint and if you violate it it will expose you to a severer Punishment than if you had been Heathens and Infidels For this is the great Proposal of our Religion that Iesus Christ died to purchase Pardon and eternal Life for all that do repent and amend but if we still go on in our Sin we are at a greater distance from Pardon and eternal Life than if we never had had a Saviour to undertake for us FINIS Books Printed for Walter Kettilby THE Christian Life Part I. from its beginning to its Consummation in Glory together with the several Means and Instruments of Christianity conducing thereunto with directions for Private Devotion and Forms of Prayer fitted to the several States of Christians Octavo The Christian Life Part II. Wherein the Fundamental Principles of Christian Duty are Assigned Explained and Proved Vol. 1. The Christian Life Part II. Wherein the Fundamental Principle of Christian Duty the Doctrine of our Saviour's Mediation is Explained and Proved Volume 2. All three by Iohn Scott D. D. Late Rector of St. Giles's in the Fields Of Trust in God or a Discourse concerning the Duty of casting our Care upon God in all our difficulties together with an Exhortation to patient suffering for Righteousness in a Sermon on 1 Pet. iii. 14 15. By Nathanael Spinks M. A. A Presbyter of the Church of England A Discourse concerning Lent in two Parts The first an Historical Account of its Observation The second an Essay concerning its Original this subdivided into two Repartitions whereof the first is Preparatory and shews that most of our Christian Ordinances are derived from the second Conjectures that Lent is of the same Original By George Hooper D. D. Dean of Canterbury Mysteries in Religion Vindicated or the Filiation Deity and Satisfaction of our Saviour asserted against Socinians and others with Occasional Reflections on several late Pamphlets By Luke Milbourn a Presbyter of the Church of England An Enquiry into New Opinions chiefly propagated by the Prebyterians of Scotland together also with some Animadversions on a late Book Entituled a Defence of the Vindication of the Kirk in a Letter to a Friend at Edenburgh By Alexander Monro D. D. The Principles of the Cyprianic Age with regard to Episcopal Power and Jurisdiction asserted and recommended from the Genuine Writings of St. Cyprian himself and his Contemporaries by which it is made Evident that the Vindicator of the Kirk of Scotland is obliged by his own Concessions to acknowledge that he and his Associates are Schismaticks In a Letter to a Friend By I. S. Bishop Overal's Convocation Book 4º The Faith and Practice of a Church of England Man 12º Mr. Hallywel's Defence of Revealed Religion in Six Sermons 8º Dr. Gregory's Doctrine of the Trinity not Explained but Asserted 8º Dr. Templer's Treatise relating to the Worship of God divided into Six Sections 1. The Nature of Worship 2. The Peculiar Object of Worship 3. The True Worshippers 4. Assistance Requisite to Worship 5. The Place of Worship 6. The Solemn Time of Worship FINIS * Christian Life Vol. I.
Then let us seriously consider with our selves what it is that we are about to do what Vices we must divorce and what Vertues we must espouse and let us throughly inform our selves before-hand of all the foul Ways and steep Ascents and dangerous Precipices that are in the Road of our Duty and then as you go along in your Meditations ask your own Hearts whether there be any Passage that they startle at or whether notwithstanding all they are seriously willing you should go on Remonstrate to your own Souls that in such a place your Lust will be tempting you with the Genial Pleasures of an adulterous Bed and desire them to deal plainly with you whether they can be deaf to those bewitching Invitations tell them that before you have gone many Paces farther the Wants of poorer Men than your selves will be soliciting your Charity and desire to know of them whether they are willing you should do good and trust God for a Repayment represent to them how highly you may be provoked at the next step by the injurious Carriage of some insolent Adversary and know of them whether they are willing to contain their savage Passions within the bars of Reason and Sobriety and so go on in your own Thoughts through all the Paths of your Duty and never cease putting these and such like Questions distinctly to your own Souls till they give an express Consent to every Duty that presses for a Resolution And it will very much conduce to the settling of a fixed Iudgment in you if you do not conclude too soon but weigh all these things over again if you would ask your selves the next Morning whether you still continue of the same Mind and whether your former Consent was not the effect of a present Heat or whether now after the cool of the Night you do still allow of it for in all probability if you resolve in hast you will repent at leisure And this I doubt not is the Bane of most of our good Resolutions that generally they are the Effects of some transitory Passion and not of a sober Iudgment and serious Deliberation for when Men resolve well in Heats of Passion they resolve to do they know not what themselves but swallow their Religion by the Lump without considering the Particulars of it and so they do by their Duty as Men do with bitter Pills which they can swallow whole but when they come to chew those prove so distastful that presently they spit them out again When therefore you have calmly considered with your selves all the Arguments against your Sins and all the Difficulties of forsaking them and you have reason'd your Wills into an express Consent to part with them for ever then betake your selves to your bended Knees and in the most solemn manner devote your selves unto God O Lord I acknowledg I have been a great Offender against thee and that my past life has been nothing else but a continued Rebellion but now I see my folly and am ashamed to think what a notorious Offender I have been wherefore here I solemnly promise in thy dreadful presence and in the presence of all thy holy Angels that wherever I have done amiss I will do so no more be witness O thou Righteous Iudg of the World that here I shake hands with all my darling Lusts and bid them adieu for ever wherefore be gone ye Soul-destroying Vipers that have twined so long about me away ye wretched Idols whom I have too long adored for in the name of God I am fully resolved never to entertain you more And now having reduced our selves to a good Resolution of Mind our greatest Difficulty is over for so long as we keep our Resolution we are invincible and all the Powers of Hell will not be able to prevail against us For our Wills are not to be forced by any Power whatsoever and there is no Temptation in the World can make us return to our Sin so long as we are heartily resolved against it so that all we have now to do is to keep the ground we have gotten and not to suffer our Spiritual Enemies to batter down those good Resolutions we have raised against them which if we can but maintain will infallibly secure us against all their Power and Malice IV. ANOTHER Instrument of Mortification is a wise and prudent Discipline When by Consideration we have brought our selves to a thorough Resolution of Amendment then to confirm and secure our Resolution there are sundry wise and prudent Methods to be used as First a frequent Repetition and Renewal of it For at first our vicious Inclinations will muster up all their Strength against our Resolution and a perpetual Contest there will be between them till either the one or the other is subdued but our good Resolution being yet but raw and infirm will ever and anon be apt to flinch and retreat so that unless we often renew and reinforce it it will not long be able to withstand the Assaults and Importunities of our vicious Inclinations Wherefore if we mean to be successful in this Work of Mortification it will be necessary for some time at least till the Strength of our bad Inclinations is broken that we should every Morning before we go abroad into the World renew our Vows and Resolutions of Obedience and reinforce them with a serious Consideration of those great Arguments whereupon they were first founded that we should go out of our Chambers armed as Men that wait for their Enemies and not trust our own Souls among the Temptations of the World till we have first chained up our Inclinations with new Vows of Fidelity Let us therefore every day as soon as we open our Eyes thus resolve with our selves I am now going into a world of Temptations where I shall be solicited both from within and without to falsifie my Vows which I have made to my God and to betray my own Soul into everlasting Perdition wherefore I do here in the dreadful presence of God and of my Saviour and of all the heavenly Host renew and ratifie again the good Resolutions I have made without any reservation or exception and whatsoever Invitations I may have to the contrary I will never revoke this promise which I now make or any part of it so help me O my God And if for a while we would but use our selves to this Method I doubt not but we should quickly find our good Resolutions so strengthened and confirmed that the Gates of Hell would not be able to prevail against them but if when we have made a Resolution against our sins we do not take care to confirm and renew it we shall find the Strength of it will by degrees so decay and abate that at last it will be foil'd and baffled by every Temptation that encounters it This therefore is one Part of that wise and prudent Discipline we are to exercise over our selves when we are throughly resolved
concluded that doubtless he was employed upon some great Design of Love to communicate from the Almighty Father some mighty Blessing to the World and accordingly we find that though the holy Angels did not comprehend the particular Intention and Mystery of Christ's Incarnation yet they concluded in the general that it was intended for some great Good to the World as is apparent by the Anthem they sung at his Nativity Glory be to God on high on Earth peace good will towards Men. Now the greatest Expression of God's good Will towards Men is to rescue them from all Iniquity and restore them to the Purity and Perfection of their Natures for without this all the Blessings of Heaven and Earth are not sufficient to make us happy While our Nature is debauch'd and overgrown with unreasonable Lusts and Passions we must be miserable notwithstanding all that an Omnipotent Goodness can do for us for Misery is so essential to Sin that we may as well be Men without being reasonable as sinful Men without being miserable Since therefore the End of Christ's coming into the World was to dispense God's greatest Blessings to Mankind and since the greatest Blessing that we can receive from God is to be redeemed by his Grace from our Iniquities and to be made Partakers of the Divine Nature we may reasonably conclude that this was his main Design in the World and the great End of that everlasting Gospel which he revealed to it And hence the name Iesus was given him by the Direction of an Angel because he should save his people from their Sins Matth. i. 21. and indeed I cannot imagine any Design whatsoever excepting this that could be worthy the Son of God's coming down into the World to live such a miserable Life and die such a shameful Death Had it been only to save us from a Plague or War or Famine it had been an Undertaking fit for the lowest Angel in the heavenly Hierarchy but to save us from our sins was an Enterprize so great and good as none in Heaven or Earth but the Son of God himself was thought worthy to be employed in This therefore was the Mark of all his Aims while he was upon Earth the Center in which all his Actions and Sufferings met to save us from our Sins and to inspire us with a divine Life and God-like Nature that thereby we might be disposed for the Enjoyment of Heaven and made to be meet Partakers of the Inheritance of the Saints in Light 'T is true he died to procure our Pardon too but it was with respect to a farther End namely that we might not grow desperate with the Sense of our Guilts but that by the Promise of Pardon which he hath purchased for us we might be encouraged to repent and amend But should he have procured a Pardon for our Sin whether we had repented of it or no he would have only skinned over a Wound which if it be not perfectly cured will rankle of its own accord into an incurable Gangrene Christ therefore by the offering of himself is said to purge our consciences from dead works that we might serve the living God Heb. ix 14. and the great Apostle makes the ultimate Intention of his giving himself for us to be this that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purifie to himself a peculiar people zealous of good works Tit. ii 14. And until his Death hath had this Effect upon us it is not all the Merit of his Blood and Vertue of his Sacrifice that can release us from the direful Punishments of the other Life For unless he by his Death had so altered the Nature of Sin as that it might be in us without being a Plague to us it must necessarily if we carry it with us into the other World prove a perpetual Hell and Torment to us So that it is apparent that the great and ultimate Design of Christ was not to hide our filthy sores but to heal and cure them and for this End it was that he revealed to us the grace of God from Heaven to teach us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts and to live soberly and righteously and godly in this present world Tit. ii 12. Let us not therefore cheat our own Souls by thinking that the Gospel requires nothing of us but only to be holy by Proxy righteous by being cloathed in the Garments of another's Righteousness as if its Design was not so much to cure as cover our filthy Sores not to make us whole but to make us accounted so For can any Man imagin that Christ would ever have undertaken such a mighty Design and made so great a noise of doing something which when it is all summed up is nothing but a Notion and doth not at last amount unto a Reality As if the great Design of his coming down from Heaven to live and die for us was only to make a Cloak for our sins wherein we might appear righteous before God without being so But do not deceive your selves it is not all the Innocence and Obedience of Christ's Life nor all the Virtue and Merit of his Death that can render you pure and holy in God's eyes unless you really are so and you may as well be Well with another's Health or wise with another's Wisdom as righteous before God with the Righteousness of Christ while you abide in your Sins For God sees you as you are and the most glorious Disguise you can appear in before him will never be able to delude his all-seeing Eye so as to make him account you righteous when you are not and if it were possible for you to impose upon God yet unless you could also impose upon the Nature of Things and by fancying them to be otherwise than they are make them to be what they are not it will be to no purpose For if you could be cloathed in Christ's Righteousness while you continue wicked it would signifie no more to your Happiness than it would to be cloathed in a most splendid Garment while you were pining with Famine or tortured with the Gout or Strangury Wherefore as we love our own Souls and would not betray our selves into an irrecoverable Ruin let us firmly conclude with our selves that the great Design of our Religion is internal Holiness and Righteousness and that without this all that Christ hath done and suffered for us will be so far from contributing to our Happiness that it will prove an eternal Aggravation to our Misery and that all that precious Blood which he shed in our behalf will be so far from obtaining Pardon and eternal Happiness for us that it will arise in Iudgment against us and like the innocent blood of Abel instead of interceeding for us will cry down Vengance from Heaven upon us For how can we imagine that the pure and holy Iesus who hated our Sins more than all the Pangs and Horrors of a woful Death should all of a