fear of God is the greatest and truest Wisdom in the World he is the Wisest man who is the most Vertuous and Religious and he is the greatest Fool who lives Vitiously and Irreligiously and without the fear of God the fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom or the first and chief Wisdom and the Foundation of all other a good understanding have all they that do his Commands i. e. they are the truly wise Men who live Vertuously and Religiously and they Fools who live Vitiously and Wickedly Behold the fear of the Lord that is Wisdom and to depart from evil is Vnderstanding There is no greater blemish contempt or imputation upon any Man than that he is a Fool and that he acts as such in whatever he does for it supposes the utmost decay and depravation of his Nature the loss of his Reason and that he wants that which makes us to be Men and is the proper perfection of our Being which is Wisdom and Understanding It will therefore greatly recommend and be for the honour of Religion if that appears to be the greatest and only Wisdom and it will justly reproach and expose Vice and Wickedness if that be made out to be nothing else but folly in the highest degree which I shall therefore endeavour at this time 1. First then Religion proposes and attains and secures the greatest End the chief Good and utmost Happiness that we can desire or are capable of and this is the truest part of Wisdom whereas Vice has but low and mean Ends such as are below the excellency of our Nature and are so far from promoting our Happiness that they defeat and destroy it all beings indeed aim at their own Happiness and have a blind and general design to compass and attain it self-preservation is a principle lies at the root of our Beings and we cannot chuse open and bare-fac'd misery but Vice and Wickedness takes down the poyson that is a little Guilded over and swallows the fatal hook that is baited with an appearing pleasure or profit and Men are led away in the dark and deluded with a shadow till they are brought into the deepest misery Vice proposes either bodily and sensual pleasure or worldly gain or some such present End and Design to be its greatest Happiness but alas it often loses those and Vertue and Religion picks up what the other drops and le ts go and secures those by ends a thousand times better than Vice does whilst it looks yet further and still aims at greater ends and a more true and compleat Happiness than any of those can yield to it for what is the most gustfull and luscious sensuality of body to an unquiet and uneasie and disturbed Mind Is not that worm of Conscience that gnaws it within and is bred from the filth and putrefaction of its own sins a greater torment than all the pleasures of sense can make amends for And what could a Man hope for if by his wickedness he could gain the whole world which yet many have even lost by it if thereby he loses his Soul the peace and quiet of it here and its Eternal felicity hereafter All the ends we can aim at and all the objects we can wish and desire are very little and inconsiderable without Religion and such are all the things and enjoyments of this World but Religion has great and noble aims and designs to make our Minds as well as our Bodies pleased and easie and to give a pleasure and satisfaction infinitely above the highest bodily delights which the Brutes are capable of as well as we to perfect and improve and fit our Souls for the greatest pleasure and happiness here and for that which is endless and unspeakable hereafter and to see this more particularly let 's consider 2. Secondly that all Ends and Designs but those of Religion are consined only to this World whereas those of Religion reach beyond this to a never ending Eternity how little and short and narrow are all the poor designs we can have here when in the compass of a few years they all cease and perish and come to an end when but a small time hence they shall be as useless and insignificant as if we had never been or ne'er had any of them Death which we all expect and which will certainly come in a little time whether we expect it of no puts a speedy end and conclusion to all other projects and designs but those of Virtue and Religion it covers all worldly Pomp and Grandeur with a cloud of night and darkness and draws a sable mantle over all it's glistering and shining vanity its honours lie here buried in the dust it's riches take leave of it at the Grave and all its bodily pleasures are exchanged for stench and noy fomness and its greatest strength and beauty is turned into weakness and gastliness This mortifying consideration should one would think make this World and every thing in it be very contemptible and all ends and designs but those of Virtue and Religion which teach beyond this World to be very poor and little and inconfiderable for like a Dream they are all quickly past and gone and when we awake into another World into a better and more substantial life all these images and shadows and fancies of happiness will then vanish and disappear and we shall be no more affected with them than with a last nights dream or the past visions of slumber and imagination but then Religion and Vertue will stand us in stead then they and a good Conscience will stick by us and attend and bear us Company into the other World and there we shall meet with those Ends and Designs which Religion has proposed to us and our greatest hopes and wishes shall be turned into greater fruition and enjoyment then a long Eternity shall reward and recompense our short Labours here and we shall never lose or be depriv'd of that great End and compleat Happiness which Religion recommended and directed us to Vice with all its delights is but for a very little time and the pleasures of sin are enjoy'd but for a Season Heb. 11.25 Men not only lose those and be for ever depriv'd of the End it aimed at but shall receive its sad and miserable portion laid up for it and be eternally tormented with unexpressible misery And what extream Folly will it then be found to have pursued no other End nor aimed at no other Happiness but that of this World which is so soon gone and at an end and for the sake of that to have exposed it self to a misery that shall never have end to have preferr'd a present moment before an endless Eternity and to gain some poor and little Ends here which yet are often lost rather than attain'd by Mens Vices to lose Heaven and everlasting Happiness 3. Religion and Virtue secure the Comfort and Happiness of this life as well as of another much better than Vice
Father and the Son as receiving that Infinite and Eternal Essence from them both this is the explication of that adorable Mystery as 't is deliver'd by that excellent Prelate forementioned in his Authentick Book upon the Apostles Creed By this time his spirits and his breath fail'd him and he could proceed no further and now having entertain'd me as long as he could he gave me to understand That I must not expect much more from him about one thing or other but that he would look to be entertain'd by me the little time I should have him with me And immediately calling the Family to Prayers so soon as they were ended he went to Bed and was willing I should leave him for that night In the morning which was Thursday he desir'd me to accompany him in his Chariot to London to consult Dr. M not that he expected any relief from his prescriptions for he concluded himself too far gone to be recovered but because he thought it not fit to omit any thing that could be done for the sake of his Family chiefly whose interest it was that he should have liv'd a little longer with them I returned with him to his Lodgings but he found himself so far spent that he hastned to Bed and desired me to come up to his Chamber and in the Church form to commend his Soul to God Not being willing to sink his Spirits too much and presuming that his apprehensions of present Death were the effect of the disorder his Journey had thrown him into I made use of some other Collects proper at that time and purposely omitted the commendatory Prayer upon which he called to me and entreated me to use no other than that and if I pleas'd the Lord's Prayer with it For said he I am just going So soon as I had done Well said he I now thank thee and take my leave of thee I have nothing more to say to thee nor needst thou say any thing to me thou hast nothing further to do but to bid me good night And immediately turning himself on one side lay still and spoke no more all that night On Friday morning he told me he wondered to find himself alive however we perswaded him to bleed according to the Dr.'s order the night before he told us it was to no purpose and had an opinion he should die whilst he was bleeding but he added that he gave up his body to our management and we might do with it as we pleased by this time his Friend Dr. T came in to whom he talk'd sensibly of his case and told him he was so well skill'd in his Profession that he knew very well he could not live out another night The Dr. was no sooner gone but he called me to him and attempted a Discourse which he was not able to go thro' with what he aim'd at was something to this purpose What a poor Creature is Man if he had hopes only in this Life he must go naked and alone and without any Friend to accompany him to the dark Grave All that thou wilt see of me presently will be a stiff and senseless carkass I have already lost all my thought I can scarce tell what I say to thee I did not just now know where I was now I do I am in my Bed-chamber I have no power to command a thought thou shalt in a few moments see that they are all perish'd and gone This he repeated several times with some concern and in half an hour they went quite away and returned no more for all that afternoon he lay still only at ten at night he put forth one hand to me and lifted up the other and his eyes to Heaven to signifie to me that he had yet some knowledge tho' his speech was gone and that he was praying for himself and a little after midnight he breath'd his last I have seen many Persons die but none like him in all my life I heard not the least unbecoming word from him in all his illness which was to me the more strange because I knew the natural heat and eagerness of his temper he shew'd not the least sign of uneasiness or dissatisfaction in his circumstances nothing of fondness for this World or any desire to stay longer in it no manner of fear of death or doubts about his future good state but throughout his sickness and to the last minutes that his understanding continued a perfect contempt of all Earthly things vigorous hopes of a Blessed Immortality and an entire and absolute resignation of himself to the Will of God The truth is his behaviour was enough to make a Man in love with death and to long for a dissolution and at that time it made such an impression upon my spirits that while it lasted I thought I could with great ease have dy'd with him Having been longer than I intended in my account of the Author I shall leave the following discourses to speak for themselves There is evidently a spirit of true Piety that breaths in them and one general aim propos'd to promote a wise understanding and sincere practice of Religion They are publish'd as they were found in his ordinary Notes and not designed by him for the Press but if they may do any service to God and Religion and the Souls of Men Our Author himself would have ventur'd them Abroad into the World without being any ways concern'd for the defects and imperfections which may be spy'd out in 'em for in the prosecution of such noble ends he has declar'd himself sufficiently arm'd against all manner of censures whatsoever and publickly profess'd That it was more satisfaction to him to publish a few plain and usefull Discourses Pref. to Practical disc of Rep. than to have had the ability or met with the applause of writing the Wittiest or Learnedst Book in the World The First Sermon ROM IX 14. What shall we say then Is there unrighteousness with God God forbid THE Apostle in defence of Christianity and the Gentiles being received into it who were Strangers and Aliens rather than the Jews who were the Children of Abraham and God's peculiar People having to justifie this made use of an Instance of God's free disposing his Favours as he pleases and such as to the Jews was an unanswerable President because upon it all their Priviledges depended above the rest of the World the same Children not of Abraham only but of Israel to whose line the promised Seed was confined before they were either of them born or were in a capacity to do Good or Evil yet God declared that Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated v. 13. and notwithstanding the rights of Primogeniture yet transmitted this his Love and Hatred down even to their Posterities the Israelites and the Edomites upon this he seems to be startled with an Objection rising up from all this and looking him fully in the Face What shall we say then is their
and to all the Actions of this life we cannot think there is then an end of our being hardly any of mankind ever thought so our own thoughts tell us otherwise and Revelation assures us to the contrary and we have as much Evidence as we can have till we come thither as is consistent with Faith and comes not up to Sense We cannot then but be very sollicitous what shall become of our naked Souls when they are stript of these fleshly Bodies and what condition they shall be in in the other world We know in general how different the state is there there are Joys unspeakable on the one hand and Torments intolerable on the other and according as we believe the greatness and reality of both those so must we be concerned about this question How we shall be saved That is how we shall obtain the one and avoid the other We are very carefull here to make a short life that we know will quickly be at an end as Comfortable and Happy as we can We toil and drudge and contrive all we can to acquire the few good things that belong to it and to keep off those evils that are uneasie to us and yet when we have done all we can never hope to be perfectly Happy here and our utmost attainment can be only this that we be but less miserable we rise early and go to bed late and eat the bread of carefullness rather than suffer want and poverty and we are at infinite pains and trouble to gain an Estate that we must quickly leave and whilst we have it we are not more happy perhaps less content than we were before we are very carefull to keep up our crazy Bodies in good repair tho' we know they must quickly decay and fall into the dust A Disease alarms us and we are concerned at the warning of death and are willing to endure almost any thing to prevent it that its a Suffering a greater Martyrdom for this life than ever Christian did for another but how much greater reason have we to be concerned for our future state that life is never to have any end and so we shou'd be more carefull about it it 's to continue to Eternity and what it once is it 's to be ever the same if it be happy it 's so unalterably without danger of changing and if it be miserable it 's irreversibly so without any hopes of relief Oh wonderfull state how is this life a shadow a dream a vapour a bubble a vanishing Nothing in respect of the other it deserves not a thought nor is it worth a thousandth part of that care the other is how foolish are we then to labour so much for a moment of our being and not be more concerned for an endless duration of it But the greatness of the thing is as considerable as the continuance the things we are saved from are the greatest and terriblest evils we can possibly suffer the utmost torments of Mind and Body despair and horror and a dreadfull sense of Divine Anger and Vengeance and all the terrible apprehensions that guilt within and punishment without can bring upon a Soul that can have nothing else to fly to and that must suffer greater torment day and night without intermission than we can have now any conception of Fire and Brimstone and Chains of darkness and a never dying worm are but lesser representations of the unspeakable misery in the other World and who is it that dreads a nights pain under a tormenting despair that knows the torments of a troubled mind or has but tasted the gall and bitterness of a Melancholick humour who would not be infinitely concern'd how he may be sav'd from what we mean by Hell and Damnation and what would not the hopes of Heaven when they are joyned with those fears make us farther do when the one is to fright us from the greatest evil and the most perfect misery and the other at the same time holds out and invites us to the greatest Happiness to endless Pleasures and Joy unspeakable Who that does not either secretly dis-believe or never consider of this would not think it the greatest Question in the World what shall I do to be saved And who would not do all he can and use all means that are in his power to this purpose Who would refuse any pains or labour to accomplish this great End Who would stick at any difficulty that he was able to overcome and surmount to gain this point this greatest point of his own Eternal Salvation Had God required us to have toiled all our lives in the most wearisom drudgery and to have spent all our days in the hardest slavery had he made Religion the greatest burden and uneasiness in the World in order to the attaining of this yet what Wise man would not have thought it worth his while to have endured it and gone through it Had he commanded us to deny every Appetite to have offered violence to every inclination to have stifl'd every natural desires and renounced all the Gratifications and Enjoyments of the Animal life had he obliged us to quit all the comforts of this World and to have retir'd into a barren Wilderness or a Melancholick Cloister and there have worn out our lives in the severest Exercises of Fasting and Mortification or to have made them one continued station one constant course of Penance and Devotion all this would have been much more tolerable than to have endured the far greater Evils and Miseries of another World tho but for a little time and for much less than half so long as this life and therefore a thousand times more so than to suffer a miserable Eternity What shall we think then of God's requiring no such hard things at our hands nothing but what is far less than any of those nothing that is extreamly hard or mighty difficult or very burdensome and uneasie to us nothing but what is truly comfortable and delightfull if we rightly understood it and what tends to our present Good Ease and Comfort Interest and Advantage even in this life as well as another God puts no such hard conditions upon us as those I mention'd but we may be saved hereafter and yet enjoy at present all the comforts and good things of this World that a Wise Man would desire Religion debars us of none of them so far as they are Innocent and Lawfull that is so far as they are not Evil and Mischievous to us and plainly Destructive both of our own good and the good of the World There is no natural good forbidden to us nor any inclination to be denied any farther than it is foolish and unreasonable and exceeds the bounds of Wisdom and Virtue nor has God restrained us from any thing but what like the forbidden fruit is poysonous as well as pleasant and it 's not the pleasantness but the poyson is the true reason why it is forbidden so that our
perfections which are the bounds also which the Divine power can never violate is so plain that it rather seems to follow and be fairly inferred from them for what more agreeable to Gods goodness than as that he gave us our Souls at first and put those Souls into curious and well framed bodies which are the other part of Humane Nature which makes us to be Men and Beings of such a rank and order in the Creation so that he should continue the same entire nature to us as long as he is pleased to continue us in being It wou'd be a charge methinks upon the Wisdom of God that he should give Man so curious a body above any other Creatures and yet suffer that to continue and last a much shorter time than the bodies of many other not only Animals but Plants and Trees do if he did not design that this noble fabrick should be rebuilt and repaired again after death and that the Soul should have a longer term of aboad in it afterwards and in reversion than it enjoys in this present life It would seem strange if these two Friends should be so closely and intimately united here but for a few days if they were not to meet again and dwell together for ever and that God should make us of such a compound nature in this life and of a quite other nature in the next this would not be to keep that wise order and regular course of thing that he does in the whole System of the Creation As to the Divine Justice that seems to be more exactly answered by raising the same bodies without which we are hardly the same persons that every one may receive in his body according to that he has done whether it be good or bad as the Apostle speaks 2 Cor. 5.10 that not only the same Souls but the same Bodies which have either glorified God by Suffering or any other Vertue or have been the Instrument of any sin should be glorified or tormented in another World and that the whole of Humane Nature and not only a part of it which the Soul is should be made capable of the everlasting rewards and punishments that are proper to it The Resurrection then is every way consistent with the perfections of the Divine Nature and is no way contrary to any natural principle of truth nor implys any contradiction in it and therefore is a proper object of God's Almighty Power and by the help of that may be easily effected and accounted for 4. And without this power of God nothing else can be effected in nature we must take in this not only to give an account of the Resurrection but of every thing else we see done before us and of every effect and appearance in the visible World how we were made at first and how our bodies were formed is as perfectly unaccountable without taking in the Divine Power and Wisdom as how we shall rise again and so is every other Mystery of nature if we well consider it and follow and trace it thro' all second causes it will necessarily bring us to the first and we must resolve all at last into the Power and Wisdom of that How we move our bodies by the thought of our minds we know no more than how God shall raise them what directs the spirits into such Tracts and Muscles and by what pullies they draw up the heavy parts is so admirable a Mechanism that it requires the same Divine Wisdom as to raise the dead how we live how we think and how we speak is to a Philosopher as curious and as secret as how we shall rise every thing indeed is so in the Volume of Nature which has the plainest Characters of Divine Power and Wisdom every where writ upon it as being to teach every one that there is a God To look upward we see the Sun shines but can we tell what light is or how it streams from the Sun to our Eye how such a mass of sire should so long hold together without being quenched or lessened do we know how the Stars are sixt to their Orbs how those glistering gemms are set and fastned to the fluid firmament can we imagine what Pillars there are upon which the Earth is founded and what it is supports the heavy Globe and keeps it from sinking what it is that poizes and makes it swim in the liquid Aether and keeps it at so just and exact a distance from the heavenly Bodies so as to be neither frozen nor burnt up and can we be able to know what it is makes their motions so regular and harmonious so usefull and serviceable to the World what guides their mighty bodies in such even Tracts what draws the crooked Zodiac for the Sun or Earth to move in and keeps the violent and rapid matter from going on in an infinite streight line or some other way sallying and running out of order Can any man who justly considers these things give any account of them without a wise God and Almighty Intelligence not only a Sparrow cannot fall to the ground without our Heavenly Father as our Saviour speaks Matth. 10.29 but not a stone can sall thither nor a spark fly upwards however necessary and natural that be without such a frame and such laws of matter and motion as nothing but a wise Being can establish or cause to be observed Why matter is thus figured and disposed and why such effects come from it we cannot tell as why grass is green blood red and not the quite contrary as we cannot of our selves make one hair white or black as our Saviour saith so neither can we tell why it is so but every Phaenomenon must at last be resolved into the Will and Wisdom of the first cause and thither all true Philosophy must bring us and the same Divine Power is requir'd in every the most common effect of Nature as in the Resurrection But 5. Our not fully knowing the uses and designs our bodies shall serve for after they are rais'd should not make the Resurrection incredible to us What use some say will there be of the body in another World when the Soul alone is capable of the rewards of it I answer who can tell but the body may be of extraordinary use to us in another World perhaps it is a necessary part of Humane Nature and we are not our whole selves without it perhaps the Soul is never to be quite naked and wholly stript of all matter and bodily indowment and that it is cloathed with a thinner Vehicle when it puts off the thicker and grosser flesh perhaps no Beings in the World but God himself are to be pure spirits which was a very ancient opinion of some wise Men perhaps the Angels themselves have material vestures of a slaming fire and a resplendent brightness as they used always to appear and if the Human Souls are not to be uncloathed but cloathed upon with our house which is
most beauteous colour and most delicate tast Cannot he give the Soul a shining and a glorious body even out of this corruptible one as well as he made the Sun and Stars and all those luminous bodies out of the dark and gloomy Chaos Cannot he make our bodies to shine as the Stars of glory as well as the Stars themselves which tho' Heavenly bodies yet are of the same substance with Earthly matter Cannot he make our bodies which are now a clog and burden to the Soul to be but like so many fiery Chariots to carry us up to Heaven or like so many Wings to move us nimbly where-ever we please and fleet us thro' all the Heavenly Regions that are above Cannot he do this as well as he has given Wings to the flame and made that which arises out of smoak and foot to cast forth rays and lustre and mount upwards The glorified bodies of Men or Angels are generally in Scripture compared to flame and light their countenance is then like lightning and their raiment white as snow as the Angel is described Mat. 28.3 and as our Saviour when his body was transfigured his face did shine as the Sun and his raiment was white as the light Mat. 17.2 and so shall the bodies of good Men after the Resurrection be turned into such pure and glorious bodies that they shall raise splendour and beauty all about them which tho' it be a great transmutation yet by many the like instances I have given is neither impossible nor incredible to conceive The bodies indeed of wicked Men will be very much altered and lose their animal and mortal nature but they will be gross and heavy and sink their Souls into the regions of Hell and Darkness they will be like so many dismal and filthy Dungeons to keep the Soul in chains of everlasting Darkness or like so many poisoned shirts like that of Hercules that will scorch and inflame and torture them beyond expression and sticking close to them burn them with poisonous flames and fill them with the perpetual stench of sire and brimstone How the bodies of wicked men may be made the Instruments of torment to their Souls is easie to imagine from the exquisite pains they often give them here from whence we may conceive how they may be contrived to be the dreadfull racks of eternal death where the miserable wretches may be always suffering the pains of death without dying and on which they may be made to lie for ever raging and gnawing their Tongues for pain and blaspheming the God of Heaven because of their pains and their sores to wit of their bodies as they are described Revel 16.10 And here I could stop and offer one thought to those who are so fond and tender of their bodies here who are for indulging them in every Lust and every Pleasure and think Happiness lieth in the mere delights of the body what they will think of having these pretious parts these dear bodies thus eternally and exquisitely tormented for the sake of a few paulcry sins which are but for a moment but having defended and consirmed this article of our Christian Faith the Resurrection of our bodies I must name but one general use of it and that is Let us all of us so live as if we heartily believed it without making any the least doubt in our minds about it let no mists of Infidelity overcast this Faith of ours which as it is certain by Revelation so is far you see from being incredible by reason which was the point I was to consider and make out It is a great satisfaction to ease our thoughts from some difficulties about it and have the understanding as the eye see things clearly without a film over it But these articles of faith are not only for Contemplation and the Entertainment of our reason but like Principles and Theorems in other Sciences they are to be made use of in practice and to be drawn out and improved into use and action no truth in Religion no Article of Faith is worth making out or proving or satisfying our selves about if it be not some way or other usefull to the practice of Religion and be not influential to the making us good and vertuous in our lives but the Resurrection has such a direct and immediate tendency to do this as it carries in it the assurance of a future state both of Soul and Body that if we fully believe it and are undoubtedly perswaded of it it will do its own work and will necessarily promote Vertue and Religion and be effectual upon all our lives did not a secret Scepticism and Insidelity which is the Vice of our Age hinder and defeat the power of it Let the belief of it therefore be firm and unshaken upon our minds and let the efficacy of it be powerfull upon our Lives and Conversations there is nothing more incredible in the thing that our bodies should rise hereafter than that they were once formed and born there may be difficulties perhaps equal in the account of both but as no Man doubts the one so he that well considers will have no reason to dis-believe the other or to think it incredible that God should raise the dead Let it raise us to thoughts and to things above whither Christ is raised and where he sits with his glorious body at God's right hand Let us often ascend thither in our minds now whither we hope to ascend hereafter with our bodies as well as our Souls Let us consider that these Bodies of ours as well as our Souls were made for higher designs and better enjoyments then any here of this World and that they ought to be the subjects of Purity and Vertue now as they are to be of Happiness hereafter The Resurrection will raise our minds to a great many noble thoughts if we throughly consider it and really believe it and I hope we may be satisfied by what has been said The Twelfth Sermon HEB. III. 13. latter part Lest any of you be hardned through the deceitfulness of sin THE Author of this Epistle advises in this Chapter those Jewish Christians he wrote to to take care that they fell not into that sad state and temper of mind their forefathers were in in the time of Moses Not to harden their heart now as in the provocation in the day of temptation in the wilderness v. 8. when tho' they saw the mighty works of God forty years and had daily Miracles before their Eyes and were fed and maintained by them and lived under a constant dispensation of them yet still a spirit of Insidelity and Obstinacy was amongst them and their hearts were hardned and they would not hearken unto God nor obey his voice but were kept out of the good Land by reason of their monstrous and unreasonable belief so it was also in the times of our Saviour when notwithstanding all his many Miracles done before their Eyes they were yet
it will do even by the help of Religion it self to be too hard for Heaven upon its own Terms and Concessions but God is not to be thus mocked or over-reached No Repentance will do but what brings forth the fruits of obedience and a good life nor is a sin so easily repented of after it is committed especially upon such presumptuous terms as may justly provoke God to give it up to an harden'd and impenitent heart and to that wretched state which sin by being continued in will bring it to Which is the next thing I am to consider 2. How Men are hardened by their sins or how sin hardens their minds afterwards and brings them to the most wretched and depraved state and temper And this I shall show 1. In the gross or in general 2. More particularly how and to what degrees it hardens them 3. Make some remarks and observations from the whole 1. How Sin hardens in general When a Man has given way to it in any great and willfull instances and it has made a breach upon his purposes and resolutions which were too weak to hold out against it it will enter with all its force and gain ground daily upon him and quickly conquer and overcome him if he do not repulse it immediately and drive it out by Repentance tho' he may a little struggle and rally against it especially at the first beginning when natural Conscience will strive a while with his carnal Lusts and Inclinations yet if in this conflict the Sin prevails and is too hard for the Spirit and he continues to commit it it will at last wholly master him and bring him into such Bondage and Vassallage that he shall lose the moral liberty and freedom of his mind and be such a slave to it as to be led Captive by it at its will so that in the same sense he both will not and cannot get rid of it for he has then lost the power of his mind and is brought under the perfect dominion of his Lusts and Vices so that tho' he sees the plainest mischief of them and wishes he could leave them and would do so if a faint wish and a mere velleity were sufficient yet he still lives in them to the plainest ruin both of his Body and Soul to his undoing both in this World and another and tho' he sees and seels the pernicious consequences and effects of them yet neither a decayed Body nor a disordered Mind nor a shattered Estate nor Conscience nor Credit nor his own Reason which condemns and reproaches him for them can ever prevail upon him to forsake and abandon them They have taken such strong hold of him and he is so much under their power that he cannot for all these strong arguments and considerations resist the next temptation or opportunity that invites to them His Lusts and sensual Inclinations and disorderly Appetites are grown so strong and his Reason and Religion so weak and unable to resist them that like a mighty Torrent they carry all before them and indeed he himself has broke down all the banks that should withstand them and he is carried down by the violent stream of his Lusts till it dryes up of it self and age and infirmity abate and sink it and his sins as we commonly say leave him and even then when he is dead to sin in some sense yet the Ghosts of his departed Vices still haunt him and the Phantoms or fancies the Spirits if I may so call them of his Lewdness and Debauchery still hover over the Grave and the Carkass as it were of an old sinner and will not quite depart from him This hardning of a sinner is gradual and comes not all at once upon him but by the power of Custom and the strength of Vitious Habits he is brought by time and degrees to this hardned state and by an unaccountable quality in sin it self whereby the mind is as it were petrified by it and brought to that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the Platonists often speak of such a deadness and stupidness of its faculties and its moral powers as we cannot well express Every sin hardens the mind a little and weakens the first tender sense of good and evil that is natural to it and the longer it continues in it it sensibly hardens it the more tho' by secret and insensible means as even Stones grow out of the Earth that was at first soft and fluid but by time and a saline and other qualities they grow hard and rocky A Sinner at first had great tenderness of mind and could hardly be brought to commit a willfull Sin 'till by Custom and many repeated Acts he grew more harden'd and embolden'd So that what he committed at first with reluctancy he commits afterwards with greediness the first conception and formation of Sin in his mind was by a small seed or principle and by an unaccountable growth and increase a wicked thought became at first an Inclination or rather a natural Inclination produced a Thought a Thought increased the Inclination that begot a Delight a Delight a Consent a Consent an Act an Act by degrees a Habit and that becomes stronger and stronger by time As in the growth of our bodies Anatomists tell us a Gelly becomes a Nerve a Fibre a Tendon a Muscle or a Bone by strange and imperceptible ways The Body of Sin which the Scripture speaks of is formed by custom and grows still more and more and has no fixt stature set to it but is harder to be put off the older it is and gets strength every day and renews it by age The Sin which at first might have been easily withstood and overcome and like a young Weed readily pluck'd up afterwards takes such deep root in a Man's mind that 't is the hardest thing in the World to remove it and to get rid of a long and confirmed habit that has been a great while growing upon us This hardning of the Mind by Sin I take to proceed from Custom which has an unaccountable force and power upon us and does as it were bend the Will that way and put so strong a byass upon the Thoughts and Inclinations of the Mind that it can hardly with all its natural Liberty and God's ordinary Grace get off of it and when the Will is thus obstinately bent to any Lust or Wickedness it affects and draws in the Understanding and corrupts the Judgment and the mind at the same time it is thus hardned by its Vices is blinded also by them and so the two great powers and faculties of the Soul are corrupted by it both at once for hardning respects properly the Will and blinding the Understanding and they always go together and are promiscuously mention'd the one for the other in Scripture Mens Lusts and Vices as they harden them and bring as it were a Callus upon the mind by long use and make it to be past
Nations have always believed there is a God and 't is no very civil thing to call them all Fools or Cheats for doing so 't is so much the interest nay the necessity of mankind that there should be one that all Government all Security all Society and living happily in the World must be lost without it to laugh therefore at this as either a Politick Cheat or a Melancholy Delusion on which so much depends both as to the benefit of the publick and the happiness and comfort of all private Men is only to show the boldest folly and ill-will both together and without any reason in the World to take upon themselves to perswade mankind that they are deceived in the most usefull and necessary thing to 'em that can be 'T is certainly the highest impudence and rudeness to run down those things and expose them as ridiculous which have been the greatest objects of Honour and Reverence to all wise men and to treat Religion and things Sacred with jest and drollery about which all the World has been the most serious and in earnest and to mock and scoff at that which others bow down to and tremble at This is only a more mad and daring bravery in wickedness and one of the highest instances of a corrupted and hardned Mind I shall add but another which is an effect as it were of this and that is 5. An industrious design of being wicked and glorying in it to make it their business to spread and promote it and to take pleasure not only in committing Sin themselves but likewise in those that do it This is to love Wickedness for Wickedness sake and out of pure opposition to Vertue and a direct enmity to Religion When Men make it their Trade and a kind of Profess'd Science to be Debauch'd and set down rules to themselves and others of being so When they can boast of their Wickedness and glory in it and assume perhaps more to themselves than they have been guilty of and charge themselves with such Sins as they never committed thereby to Triumph as it were in their mighty deeds and great exploits and to endear themselves the more to their Lewd Companions when they endeavour to out-do one another and out-vye their fellow Sinners in Oaths Drinking and Debauchery and give greater proofs of their highest proficiency in Wickedness and Lewdness This is perfectly giving up themselves to the Devil's Service and to toil and drudge in it as his greatest Slaves and as his Disciples to devote themselves to him and become sworn votaries to Hell and Wickedness and declare themselves Champions and Defenders of his cause and interest against God and Religion 'T is strange that Human Nature should be depraved and corrupted to these degrees but we see too many Examples of it in the World and we see too what is the cause of it namely men's being so strangely hardned and blinded by their Sins and having their Reason and Understanding and all the Faculties of their Minds so horribly corrupted and depraved by them 3. From what has been said I shall make the following Remarks and Observations 1. I observe from hence That our proper and truest happiness lies in the Perfection and Improvement of of our Minds and therefore we ought to take the greatest care of them 2. That Vice is the greatest Corruption and Depravation of the Mind and therefore we should not suffer that to grow upon us 3. I shall enquire into the Scripture-notion of God's hardning Men and whether that be any thing more than our Sins hardning us 4. From hence we may conceive and understand the misery and wretched state of the Devils and damn'd Souls who are come to the highest degree of this hardning 1. I observe that our proper and truest happiness lies in the Perfection and Improvement of our Minds The happiness of any Being must be suited and adapted to its Capacity and Faculties for otherwise it has no root to grow upon and the more those Capacities are enlarged and extended and have agreeable objects to fill and entertain 'em the greater is the happiness of it The lowest Creatures that have sense have very small Capacities and their Enjoyments are very little the more we rise in the scale of Beings the Capacities are greater till we come to the All-perfect Being We have bedily Capacities the same with the Brutes which can partake of such bodily pleasures as they do but these are very little and narrow and confined to few things and a short time We have much higher Capacities even like God himself whereby we take in all the truth that can be known and all the good that can be enjoyed and hoard up these immortal Treasures in our Minds and in the fullest measure of those consists our proper happiness as we are Men and Rational and Immortal Beings 'T is in our Souls those noblest parts of us that our Happiness lies and will lie for ever Our bodies are poor dying decaying matter that can afford very little Enjoyments and for a very little while the capacities of the mind are great and large and comprehensive and can reach not only to all things that are made but even to the God that made them and partake of a proper happiness from all of them for the more it increases its knowledge and grows up to a more perfect Understanding and to a more free choice and entire willing of what is good and the more good it enjoys and the more its faculties are enlarged and filled up with their proper objects the more Happiness and Perfection Satisfaction and Enjoyment it must have and this will be its Eternal Heaven when we shall be as like God as we can be and equal to the Angels in the proper perfections of our rational nature advanced to the highest degrees and the most unspeakable Enjoyments and Satisfactions 2. Vice is the greatest Corruption and Depravation of the Mind and therefore is our greatest misery it sinks and impairs the Faculties decays and weakens the Mind as a Disease does the body and fills it generally like that with pain and uneasiness as being contrary to its natural frame and to its proper and regular Operations Vertue is the Vigor and Health the Soundness and right Constitution of the Soul the Spiritual life which Religion and God's Grace would advance it to but Vice and Wickedness are the Spiritual death of it both in the Language of the Scripture and of the best Philosophers of Old their manner and custom of setting a Coffin in the place of him that had left the Schools and Precepts of Vertue was speaking the same thing in emblem and figure with the Scripture expression of being dead in trespasses and sins The loss of the Soul is justly accounted so great an one as the gain of the whole World will not compensate What shall it profit a Man says our Saviour to gain the whole world and lose his own Soul Matth. 16.26
Happiness Riches and Honours and Pleasures which we so fondly admire and esteem and pursue after as the happiest things that are to be enjoyed and think those are not in earnest or only envious and ill-natur'd because they cannot attain them who speak otherwise of them Our Saviour proposes no Worldly advantages to his followers but rather the quite contrary and yet he Preaches happiness to them even at present and joyns the Beatitudes and the Christian Vertues together in his Sermon as inseparable Companions and tho' he left his Apostles in a World full of afflictions and seeming miseries yet he tells them he leaves his Peace with them John 14.27 Such a Peace as was proper for him to give and them to receive not as the World giveth but such an one as should have this effect upon them as that their hearts should not be troubled nor be afraid that no evils should disturb or take away this Peace of mind that in him they might have Peace tho' in the World they had tribulation John 16.33 and that they might always be of good cheer because he had overcome the World 'T is a great thing which he here offers to Mankind be they never so weary and oppress'd with cares and troubles labour under never so many seeming evils and afflictions here have never such great loads and oppressions upon their Minds and Spirits that make them uneasie to themselves and very miserable within that if they come to his Religion and take his Yoke upon them follow the Rules and precepts of his Doctrine and become of such a temper and spirit as he was that they shall certainly meet with ease and comfort relief and refreshment And ye shall sind rest to your Souls This Rest and Tranquility of Mind is the greatest Happiness in the World what Philosophy aimed and pursued after what we should endeavour to attain above every thing and what if we once perfectly reach nothing could ever make us the least miserable what alone is worth seeking after by all the Rules of Philosophy and Religion and without which nothing is worth aiming or seeking after and lastly what Christ and Christianity propose and can bring us to How and by what ways they do it or what is the best means to attain it shall be my chief business to shew as to what it is or wherein it consists that we know better by inward sensation or preception than by any description or Ideas of it we feel what ease is both in Mind and Body and we have a quick Sense of pain and uneasiness in both Indolency of Body and Tranquility of Mind are known by all to be great and desirable things The pleasures of our compounded nature and such as have a near Analogy and Resemblance with one another however we are forced to express and describe one by the other they are not meer Negatives such as suppose only no Sense of pain or evil which may belong to one that is asleep or stupified or to a Stock or a Stone but a positive Sense of what is agreeble to its Nature and the right use of its powers and faculties and an Enjoyment or Perception of a good or Pleasure suitable to them with an intire freedom at the same time from what is contrary and unagreeable painfull and troublesome and uneasie The very absence of what is painfull and uneasie brings a great pleasure because Nature then enjoys it self and has its own suitable perceptions without any disturbance What Diseases and Pains and Tortures are to the Body the same are disorders and troubles to the mind from tormenting passions and uneasie Thoughts from Fear and Guilt and Sorrow the apprehension of evil as present or coming upon it we want words to express what we know and conceive of this and Peace of mind is opposed to all things that weary and disease and disquiet and disturb it whatever they are whether the Evils and Troubles and Afflictions of this World or Passions and Disorders from within inordinate and irregular Desires and inward Commotions contrary to right Reason or the more dreadfull terrors and horrors of some greater evil than any in this World The mind it is certain has a quicker and more smart and cutting sense oâ— Pain by these than the Body from any Disease The Diseases and Maladies Disorders and Pains of the mind are greater and harder to be cured than those of the Body Wisdom and Philosophy Virtue and Religion are the proper Physick the true Cure and Remedy of them the only things that can bring the mind to that Good Sound and Healthfull State that it shall be well and rightly disposed in it due Frame and Crasis sitted to perform its proper Operations and enjoy its agreeable Pleasures the Pleasure and Enjoyment of its self and its own Wife and Vertuous and good Thoughts the pleasant Hopes and Expectations of Religion and all the superadded Enjoyments from thence that Revelation assures us of besides what are natural to it from the right Exercise of its own Powers such as Peace of Conscience upon Pardon of Sin inward Sense of God's Favour or his lifting up the light of his Countenance upon us Joy in the Holy Ghost and rejoycing in hope of the Glory that shall be revealed These are such Pleasures and Enjoyments of Mind as are beyond Nature but within Christianity which raise and exalt the Soul to something beyond that Tranquility and Calmness and Serenity of Mind which Philosophy so talkt of This improves it higher and raises a more noble structure of Happiness to our Souls but upon the same Foundation having the same Bottom to build upon the inward Ease and Peace and rest of the Mind which is the greatest thing we can desire or is worth our attaining To be very easy always within to have Peace and Quiet in our own Breasts to be disturbed with no uneasie Thoughts no tumultuous Passions no Fear Grief or Sorrow no carking Care or corroding Trouble to be rufled with no discomposure have no dark Clouds hanging over our Thoughts no Storms or Tempests raging within our Breasts this is Tranquility of Mind an inward Calm and Serenity of Thoughts contrary to that Temper of mind Which is like the troubled Sea which cannot rest to which the Scripture compares it Isa 57.20 neither apt to be much raised or too much depressed Nec attollens se unquam nec deprimens as Seneca speaks Sed semper aequali placido statu always even and in a placid state propitius sibi sua laetus aspiciens pleased with its self and its own thoughts and having nothing to sowre and disorder it self or infuse a poysonous bitterness into it This is that good state of Soul that rest which is a greater Happiness than all the World can afford which he that has will be Happy in whatever Circumstances or Condition he is and which we might certainly find by Religion and Christianity if we lived up to the Principles
cure this any more than any other Bodily Diseases and he that is afflicted with them must bear them as he would the Gout or Stone or any other Disease that is incident to us but since these affect the Mind more and the Mind also by its close Union and Re-action upon the Body does in great measure raise and excite or abate and allay those therefore it is a great part of Human Vertue and a proper Work of Religion to take as much care as can be of those natural Passions which are caused in 〈◊〉 those different Humours and Temperaments of Body for all Anger and First and the other Bodily Passions that are so troublesome both to our selves and others arise from them The Soul is the same in all Men not more inclined to any of those Passions by its Original make and nature than the contrary they all arise from our Body and our lower Nature and are the results of that and therefore they are in Brutes we often see as well as Men but the Soul by being Vitally united to the Body has a Preception and Sensation of them and such thoughts are necessarily caused in it by them Now neither the first motions of the Body nor first thoughts of the Soul upon them are sinful because they are both necessary but the Soul has a Power within it self either to consent or not consent to these Bodily Motions and Inclinations which we call Passions and this Principle of the Soul we call the Will I do not mean a power to consent to their first rising or not rising in us that is often necessary and unavoidable and so not within the power of the Soul but perfectly unvoluntary but then whether it shall continue such a thought that is excited upon such a Passion at least continue it so far as to approve and like it and consent to it and put it into Act if it can and actually execute it and let it produce any outward and lasting Effects this is in the power of the Soul and herein lies the great Exercise of its Virtues in governing and subduing the Passions and mortifying the carnal Lusts and Bodily Inclinations if it yields to those so as to commit any Unlawfull Actions or any sin in pursuance of them then it fulfills the Lusts of the Flesh and walks after the Flesh and is carnal and carnally minded in St. Paul's phrase Rom. 8.6 but if thro' the Spirit and by help of Religion it does mortify these deeds of the Body it shall live v. 13. If it suffer no sin to reign in its mortal Body nor give way to those Passions and Lusts so as to commit sin by them but with the greatest care and pains keep them within the bounds of Reason and Religion then it does Crucisie the Flesh with the Affections and Lusts Galat. 5.24 not that they must become quite dead and extinct so that we feel no motions of them no they may remain in the best and most regenerate Man as to some inward motions of Concupiscence but they are not sinfull unless they conceive i.e. are consented to in the heart and bring forth sin in the life James 1.15 Now Religion is so to Govern and keep under all these Passions and bodily inclinations that they run not into Sin but it cannot quite cut them up and extirpate them it is to improve and perfect Nature by Grace but not to destroy it These Passions therefore caused by those Bodily Humours and Tempers which we are naturally inclined to these which are one of the greatest causes of the troubles and disorders of the mind and which bring the greatest Uneasiness and Perturbation to it and rob it of that Evenness and Calmness and Tranquility which is the great Happiness of it these Religion cannot so wholly remove and take away as that we should be perfectly free from them and from all the motions and risings of them but it will and must so far subdue and conquer them as that they neither have Sinful and Unlawful Effects upon others nor so far disorder our selves as to spoil and destroy the Peace and Rest and Quiet of our minds I do not mean that they should never disturb us for so they will a little as often as we feel them but not to that degree as to take away the Peace and Tranquillity of our mind and to destroy the habit and temper of it if they do we can never be Happy with them How Religion cures them and to what degree it must overcome them I shall consider afterwards at present I shall only observe that Religion does not wholly destroy and root them up nor alter our bodily Temper and Constitution but a good Man still lies open to the first motions of Anger Peevishness Melancholy and the like and may never be quite otherwise any more than alter his Complexion or his Stature and make his Hair White or black but he may have Peace in his Mind and Rest in his Soul notwithstanding that in the rational Frame and Habit and Temper of it founded upon the Hopes and Principles of Religion these are troublesome and uneasie to him and will also affect his Mind as well as any other bodily Pain and Disease but yet his Rest and Tranquility may be consistent with both those for 't is a rational intellectual Sense and Perception in the Soul which depends upon Principles and Rules and not upon mere Temper and Mechanism of body for then ill Weather as well as an ill body would alter and destroy it I come now to show how we may attain it which is the most considerable thing of all and when we have if we shall better understand it than by any other account of it like Health we know what it is tho' we cannot so well describe it and like ease and pleasure we can best Judge of it by feeling it 'T is as Tully calls it sanitas animi the Health and Soundness and good Temper of the Soul and when the Soul wants it it is Sick and under a Disease in Pain and Disorder We all know how good and sweet a thing health and ease is both of Body and Mind so that there need not many words to commend them how to get it and preserve it and recover it when it is lost is the greatest Question Our Saviour here tells us we may find rest to our Souls and obtain this Peace and Tranquility of mind I shall consider what the means are and by what ways Religion does effect this in the following particulars 1. Religion teaches us that Happiness lies chiefly in our Mind that that is the proper seat of it and that it lies not in things without us but is a Treasure in our own Breasts something within ourselves which belongs to our Souls and consists in the Perfection Improvement and Enjoyment of them this is in other words called the Salvation of the Soul restoring it to its lost Happiness and freeing it from the
these and Discover new Springs to feed and maintain this and to raise it higher and tho' they run into the same Channel namely the Happiness of the Mind yet 't is with a fuller Current and a stronger Stream and they do more perfectly promote that Rest and Peace and Tranquility of Mind which tho' it be various in degrees yet is the greatest Happiness Perfection or Pleasure it is capable of in general either in this or the other World Whoever attains to this is the Happy Man whatever his outward Condition be for while he is easie within himself and has an inward Rest Peace and Tranquility in his own Soul all outward things signifie very little to him Our Saviour did not Promise his Disciples or Followers any good Circumstances or Happy outward Condition in this World but he promised them Peace in him and Peace in themselves and that if they followed his Example and learnt his Temper and lived up to his Religion they should find Rest and Ease to their Souls and be freed from those heavy Loads and Burdens that oppress our Minds and are the causes of Misery to us Religion and Christianity are the true cure for the Uneasiness and Indispositions and Diseases of the Mind and if we could live up to its wise Rules and bring our selves to that Frame and Temper of Mind it would beget in us we should be always Easy and always Happy as Happy as we could be in this World in spite of all the evils of it and Eternally and Compleatly Happy in the next The Third Sermon MAT. VII 13 14. Enter ye in at the strait Gate for wide is the Gate and broad is the way that leadeth to Destruction and many there be which go in thereat Because strait is the Ga'e and narrow is the way which leadeth unto Life and few there be that find it OUR Saviour did not think fit to give the World a set Code of Laws as Moses did the Jews or a Methodical System of Ethicks as other Writers have done since no more did the other wise Teachers of Virtue and Morality Pythagoras Socrates Epictetus Antoninus and other Heathens the Patriarchs of old who were Preachers of Righteousness Solomon or the Prophets afterwards but with greater simplicity and inartificial plainness they dropt their excellent Precepts and sage Directions without any formal Method and thus Christ taught us the best and most perfect Rules of Virtue in his occasional Discourses and Particularly in this his excellent Sermon upon the Mount which is such a Discourse that it carries an internal Evidence and a Heavenly Authority along with it enough to satisfie any Wise and Good Man that the Doctrine is true and that it comes from God tho' it had no Miracles nor other Evidence to prove it for the Soul if it be not vitiated Tastes and Relishes such Congenial truths that are agreeable and natural to it as the Palate does its food and Judges of their inward truth and goodness by an internal Sensation and Perception and an immediate Congruity to its Faculties When our Saviour comes towards the Conclusion of this his Sermon upon the Mount which was an Epitome of Christianity and the Sum of all those Virtuous Precepts which were to make his Followers the best Men in the World to make them exceed all the Righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees and out-doe all the Examples and all the Characters of Heathen Vertue he tells 'em there would be great Difficulty to rise to these Attainments that Religion and Vertue in such a pitch as he had set them and as was necessary to make a good Christian and to fit him for Heaven were not such slight and easie things but that they must use great Care and Pains and Labour in the Attaining and Performing of them that it was very easie to be vitious and wicked and therefore most Men were so but that to be Virtuous as a Christian ought to be in all those Instances and Degrees he had taught them was a more Hard and Difficult matter and that few would come up to it but yet this was a thing absolutely necessary to their Eternal Happiness and they must either take the Pains to do this to come up to these strict Terms or else they must Perish and be undone for ever by falling short of them Enter ye in at the strait Gate From which words I shall consider I. What are the Difficulties of Religion and Vertue or upon what account they are a strait Gate and a narrow Way and Vice a wide Gate and a broad Way II. Press the Duty and propose the Motives for our entering in at this strait Gate and narrow way notwithstanding that it is so 1. What are the Difficulties of Religion and Vertue c. 1. Then our Saviour's words might perhaps have some regard to the hard Circumstances Dangers and Persecutions that Christianity was exposed to at that time in those first ages of it and is liable to afterwards then indeed it was a strait Gate when they who enter'd into it were bound to leave all they had in this World all their Temporal Interests and Possessions for Christ's sake and the Gospel's and all that would live Godly in Christ Jesus must suffer Persecution 2 Tim. 3.12 then it was hard for a Rich Man who had great Possessions and was loath to part with them to follow Christ tho he had a great Desire and Inclination to do so as in the Instance of the young Man Mat. 19.21 so that our Saviour said thereupon it was easier for a Camel to go thro' the Eye of a Needle than for a Rich Man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven i. e. to become a Christian at that time Then the way to Heaven was strait and narrow when it was beset with so many Dangers fill'd with Crosses and Gibbets and a Man must venture his Life as well as Estate whenever he entered into it but this was but a particular and accidental case tho every good Christian ought to come to such a Perfection in Religion as to be prepared and disposed for this whenever God shall think fit to put this hard Tryal and Difficulty upon him But 2. Christianity is thus strait and narrow upon other accounts viz. The standing Terms and Conditions of it as it forbids every sin and every wilfull wickedness upon the Pain of Damnation This is very hard indeed to the generality of Men and makes it a very strait and narrow way when it leaves no room for any one darling Lust undue Liberty or beloved Sin to go along with us for according to the Gospel he that will not part with every willful sin however Pleasant or Profitable it be to him must part with Heaven for it tho' the Temptation to it be never so Great and the Charms of it never so powerfull yet if Religion do not conquer and overcome it we must for the short Pleasures of Sin be Miserable for ever
therefore those who have sowed plenteously shall reap plenteously and that nothing but actual Holiness and Obedience can fit us to see God and enter into Heaven and make us meet and qualify us for the inheritance of the Saints in light These are such plain and undeniable principles both from Reason and Scripture that no Doctrine which orposes them and is inconsistent with them can be true and therefore a late and dying Repentance that brings forth no fruits of Obedience cannot be sufficient for Salvation as not coming up to those conditions which are absolutely requir'd by the Gospel to make us capable of Heaven since none but good Men who either always were so or at least who become such after they were otherwise can go to Heaven and the more good and the more obedient and vertuous any Man hath been in his life the greater and higher rewards he shall have in another World for as one Star differeth from another Star in Glory so also shall it be at the Resurrection of the dead as the Apostle speaks where some shall shine in a higher Orb and with greater Lustre and have Crowns of greater weight and brightness who have either done or suffer'd more for Christ and God and Religion than others and therefore they who have been more constantly and more highly Vertuous all their lives shall be more highly rewarded by a Just and Righteous God in that Heavenly Kingdom where Christ tells us are many Mansions and where no doubt are several degrees of Happiness according to Mens several Actions and Vertues Tho' the Penitent and the Prodigal shall upon their return be received into their Father's house and be kindly embraced and entertain'd by him yet their Portion shall not be equal to the Son that was always Dutifull and always Obedient Son thou art always with me and all that I have is thine God grant that all good Men may so persevere in Holiness and Obedience and all Sinners may so timely Repent and be brought off from their Sins that we may all in due time be received into those Mansions of Joy where all Sin shall be done away and there shall be no more Repentance and all Virtue and Obedience Crowned with Glory and Immortality thro' Jesus Christ The Sixth Sermon ACTS XVI v. 30. latter part Sirs what must I do to be saved THis great question is ask'd by one in great trouble and concern when he was affrighted in the night by a sudden Earth-quake which shook the Foundations of the House or Prison where he was v. 27. and so he was awakened into a sense of present danger and this brought him to consider what was future and greater God does often rowse up Men's sleepy and senseless and Lethargic Minds by some present Terror Judgment or Affliction which brings them to consider the concerns of their Souls and an another World when nothing else will This shakes off their thoughtless security and alarms their stupid and unthinking Minds to look about them and see what a dangerous condition they are in and fear is a very proper principle for beginning Religion it 's one of the greatest passions that belong to our Nature and then there is a good ground for it and it only opens our Eyes to let us see a real danger that so we may avoid it and keep out of it It is very usefull and a great branch of that self-preservation which is a principle that lies at the root of our very beings had we no sense of an Evil coming upon us we should run into it blindfold and leap down the precipice we did not see which would be never the less hurtfull to us when fear indeed makes a danger where there is none or represents it greater than it is when it frights the mind with fancied Spectres and imaginary Mormo's or makes it afraid of its own shadow it 's then a weak a mean an unmanly Passion but when the danger is real and great and likely it 's stupid blindness not to see it and rash madness for that reason to run upon it The concerns of another World are both certain and important and he whose Mind has no reasonable fear or just dread and apprehension of them is like Damocles with a naked and pointed Sword hanging over his head by a single hair but he sits securely and does not see it The evils and dangers of a future state are very terrible and may be as far as we know very near us and they are never the less near nor never the less real for our not believing or not having a sense of them It 's very happy therefore if our fear awakens us to consider of them whilst we have means and opportunity to take care to prevent them that before we feel them we think of them and do not like Dives then lift up our Eyes when we are in the midst of Torments it 's then too late to have a sense of them when we cannot get out of them A wise man would therefore so consider them before-hand either out of a just fear or dread of them or from a wise care and concern for his own Happiness that whether any extraordinary providence startl'd his Mind or it were more freely left to its own thoughts yet it should frequently and seriously ask it self this question what shall I do to be saved To be saved is strictly to be delivered from a great danger we were likely to fall into to be snatch'd like a fire-brand out of the fire and like one that was sinking to be catch'd hold on and preserved but it also includes in it a positive Salvation as well as a negative and so comprehends that Happiness which is contrary to the misery we are secured from he who is saved from death gains life by that means and he who is saved from Hell gains Heaven and so both are meant and included in the word Salvation I shall consider at present the great importance of this question What shall I do to be saved and secondly the true answer and resolution to it First of the importance of it and it is certainly the greatest question to us in the World how we may be delivered from the dangers and evils of the next World and how we may escape as the Scripture speaks the Wrath to come and so secure to our selves that eternal Good and Happiness which we call Heaven We can none of us expect to live always here there must be a time and we know not how soon but we are sure it 's not very long when we must take leave of this World and all that is in it and it concerns us to think what shall become of us when that fatal minute shall come as it certainly will that shall make this body of ours a cold lump and put an end to all our present Enjoyments When darkness and the shadow of death shall let down the Curtain and put an end to all these lower Scenes
truth of who thought them if not meer Bugbears and Fables yet things a great way off and at a great distance that they should not much trouble themselves withall when now they find all these are true and are put in mind of 'em by such a way as this is and they so nearly concern them and are like in a little while to be their own Case Surely by all these they will be perswaded and brought to Repentance I believe there is no sinner but thinks he himself should be perswaded by these means and if God should use such an extraordinary way to convert him this he questions not but would do it tho' now he is of another mind and has no thoughts of leaving his sins yet that he thinks would certainly work upon him He I doubt may be as much mistaken of himself as Dives was of his Brethren of whom Abraham assures him that if they heard not Moses and the Prophets neither would they be perswaded tho' one rose from the dead And that I may give you some account of the likelihood of this and of the truth of what Abraham here says I shall offer you these five considerations 1. All the Arguments which a Messenger from the dead would bring along with him and which are indeed so strong that when one seriously considers them one would think it impossible to resist them these we have already and they have been offered to us with their full strength and advantage we have been made acquainted with the immortality of our Souls and a future state with the Joys of Heaven and the torments of Hell these can be no new discoveries to us that we never heard of before God in the Scripture had laid open the other World before us and shown us the two vast and different parts of it he had given a general notice of this to all Men by the light of Nature by that they could discern that there was another Country that lay off from this another state after this life wherein good men would be happy and wicked men miserable This was known to all the old unskillfull World before ever there was any Revelation any pixis nautica or any such Map or Chart as we have now of the other World they had not only a kind of guess or probable conjecture of it like Columbus of America but something more that made it a received Article of the Heathen Religion but this is made plainer to us by the Scriptures and Gospel Revelation by which Life and Immortality is brought more clearly to light so that all those Arguments are set before us and that with the same strength and advantage that they could have been by a Messenger from the dead He could bring us no more nor any new ones but only what we have already God has informed us of what belongs to another World so far as it is of any concern to us and so much as is sufficient to make us take care about it we cannot have better and fairer warning about those things and we can have no stronger or more powerful Arguments than we have already 2. We have so much reason to believe the truth of those things that they who will not be satisfied with that neither would they be perswaded tho' they had a particular Messenger to certifie 'em about them we have a Divine Revelation added to natural light and the universal suffrage of mankind we have had a number of Miracles and extraordinary Effects of Divine power to assure us of the truth of that Religion that delivers us the belief of those things We have had many Prophets sent from God and with sufficient Credentials to satissie us that they were so to Preach these things to us We have had one come from Heaven and after he was dead rise again and so become even a Messenger from the dead to us and testisi'd all these things to be true And if we will be such Scepticks as still to entertain doubts and disbelieve all these we should be the same I fear tho' we had one come from the dead to us we should be apt to think it but a Spectre a meer Image of Air or of Fancy a Melancholy Mormo or a waking Dream and be inclined to think that we were impos'd upon by our own active Imaginations and the many reports and stories we have heard of such things running in our minds he that can disbelieve all the undoubted Arguments for the truth of Scripture and reveal'd Religion may run so far into Scepticism as to dis-believe his senses and to think every thing that appears to him to be fantastick and imaginary 3. If he did believe it at that time and were never so much startled and affrighted at the surprizing apparition yet in a little time the sense of it might wear off and he be never the better for it it might put him into a sit of horror and consternation as the hand on the Wall did Belshazzer Dan. 5.6 so that his Countenance should change and the joints of his loins be loosed and his knees smite one against another but the sright might work upon his Body more than his Mind and when that is over they might both return to their former and natural temper Is it not usual for a great many who by a dangerous sit of lickness are brought so near the other World that they can almost see into it and have at that time as firm a belief and as strong a sense of it as if not only a Messenger from the dead came to them but they were there themselves yet these when they rise as it were from the dead and return from the borders of another World when they have recovered their health and are come into their old Company their former Circumstances and course of Life how do they lose the sense of what they had in their sickness tho' it were never so strong and become the same Men they were before Like persons in a shipwrack when the next Wave is likely to be their Sepulchre and they think themselves every moment sinking into the deep below then they are greatly concerned and make a great many Vows and Resolutions which at that time they question not to keep but when the storm and the fright is over they forget all their good Intentions and their Religious Temper goes off and they return to their former Temper of Mind It must be a calm and gentle a sedate and composed method that generally works upon a Man's mind and brings by degrees new Thoughts and Dispositions into it rather than a sudden and hasty fright that only startles and amazes it and 't is that is more agreeable to the nature of a free and reasonable Creature which is to be dealt withal by such a suitable and kindly procedure rather than that which has nothing in it but force and violence 4. As God does seldom humour Men by doing any thing that is Miraculous or
deportment so does the superstitious make shows and appearances of courtship to Heaven but he is out in all of them and does not what is proper what is really obliging and acceptable to it The Devil not being able to destroy the religious sense that is in our minds not being able to root out that which Nature has planted in every man's breast a sense of a God and a Divine Being above us he endeavours to spoil and corrupt that as much as he can and to sow such cockle and tares among the good and natural seed of religion as may quite choke it and make it unfruitfull as may alter its kind and make it produce such fruit as is not true and genuine but quite of another nature as looks like religion and like the Apples of Sodom seem more fair outwardly but is another thing within because he cannot hinder men from being Religious but there is something within themselves will make them so in spite of all his attempts and designs to the contrary therefore he will make 'em superstitious because he cannot stop the religious instinct and inclination of their minds he will determine and set it wrong because he cannot dry up that natural spring of Religion that rises up in every ones breast he will poyson and corrupt it and because Religion is so deeply and strongly rooted in human nature that it can never be wholly pluck'd up by him therefore he will graft upon it such false and superstitious principles as shall quite alter it's nature and tho' they are fed and nourish'd by a religious sense at the bottom yet this vine shall bring forth Thorns and this Fig-tree Thistles and from this sweet Fountain shall come forth Salt and bitter Waters by a superstitious mixture Religion shall be changed and perverted both in its nature and its effects This is the saddest mischief to true Religion that it should be thus made to destroy it self that its force and power should be turned upon its self and it should be consumed like some Animals by what grows out of it self 'T is thus the Devil most successfully countermines God and destroys Religion by turning it into superstition which how it is done and by what means effected I shall endeavour to show you in three prrticulars 1. By making Men vitious and wicked for tho' superstition may often grow up in weak and silly minds that may be innocent and far from being guilty of very great and notorious vices yet I believe the first and most general cause of superstition in the World is Vice and Wickedness the Devil has first drawn Men to that and then has led them into all manner of errors and falshoods he has first debauch'd their morals and then their understandings he has first wrought upon their Wills and Affections by abominable Lusts and Vices and then he has quickly corrupted their Judgments and led 'em into all manner of mistakes in Religion The superstition of the Heathen World arose I doubt not from that horrible corruption of manners that was among them they would never have set up such a Religion as they did made up of nothing almost but obscenity and filthiness cruelty and blood apishness and folly had not they been as the Apostle represents the Heathen World Rom. 1. Vain in their imaginations and fill'd with all manner of unrighteousness implacable and unmercifull in their own tempers and given up to the most beastly Lusts and unnatural Lewdnesses these Vices in themselves naturally lead them to such a false Religion and such superstitious abominations as they were guilty of But as their manners decay'd so did the true Religion and the right worship of God and as vice got ground so did superstition and they always grew up and encreased and like Hippocrates his Twins lived and died together What hidden cause thus linked them together and how they came to be such inseparable Companions may seem strange when superstition owns and acknowledges a God has a great sense of him upon the mind but if we consider that this sense of a God when it has not had such a due effect as it ought upon it so as to preserve it vertuous and Innocent but Lust and Wickedness and the Temptations of the Devil have overcome it this sense of its own Wickedness joyned with the sense of a God does very naturally and easily bring it to superstition If it had no sense of a God nor no belief of such a being at all if it could get rid of that which it never can then indeed there would be no ground of superstition and this way the Atheist would free himself from all superstitious fears or if it were not vicious and so not sensible of its own horrid guilt and wickedness and its obnoxiousness to this God above neither then would it be superstitious but when it is thus sensible of a great and just God which is the avenger of such crimes as it knows it has been highly guilty of this is the first thing that brings it to superstition because in the 2. Second place this causes a dreadfull fear and terrible apprehension of God upon it it s own guilt scares and affrights it and draws terrible Ideas and Images of God upon its mind so that it looks upon him only as a Malefactor does upon his severe Judge his Jailor or his Executioner it sees nothing but frowns in his face and anger in his eyes and Thunder and Lightning in his hand and fancies all the Instrumenes of Torture and Punishment ready to be applied to it And in such a case as this is what would it not do to pacifie and appease this Deity that it thus dreads what a dreadfull fright and passion must it be in when it can think of nothing that will do it how will it be trying every thing it can think of Come before his altars and bring thousands of rams and ten thousand rivers of oyl if it were rich enough and give its first born for its transgression and part with the fruit of its own body for the sin of its soul Micah 6.7 and shed its own blood for to make some expiation for its guilt Nothing is so mean and servile nothing so cruel and bloody so shamefull and scandalous but a Soul overwhelmed with a superstitious fear will be attempting and trying be it never so unagreeable to the Divine Nature and never so unfit and unsuitable to please him there is just ground of being afraid of God when we are sensible of our guilt and 't is not this is superstition but when this fear puts Men upon foolish and undue and abominable ways to appease him and gives us such a dreadfull Idea and Apprehension of him as quite excludes all the thoughts of his Goodness and Mercy and puts the mind only into an excessive fright and fit of horror then it is so I cannot think that ever mankind would have formed such a conception of God had not their
superstition the design of those is to supersede honest Vertue and inward Goodness and by some other ways to think to purchase the Divine Favour and the Happiness of Heaven 'T is very hard and difficult to men to be inwardly good and exactly vertuous to drive out every known sin and live in the practice of every duty which is the plain and the honest path-way to Heaven and therefore superstition would find out other by-roads and easier passages and would have Religion lie in more easie and outward performances and would relieve it self against that strait and narrow way which the Gospel directs us to and would have it suffice to be sent to Heaven by an Absolution or an Indulgence Thus by a Pass as it were by the Priest or Pope to the other World by making a short Confession and being a little contrite and absolved and anointed on the Death-Bed the work is quickly done and as well he thinks as if the Man had lived a Saint or died a Martyr or if he had been so Religious in his life time as to tell over his Beads every day and carry a Crucifix always about him and perform the Pennance of his Confessor and gone a few Pilgrimages to a few Saints then he has done such works as are very meritorious tho' his Saviour never Commanded one of them and he must be thought to be very Religious tho' 't is such a Religion as the Gospel is a perfect stranger to But Superstition is for placing Religion in some other things than the Gospel does in some inventions of its own in some little and easie and trifling performances in some of the externals and shadows of Religion in a strict observance of some lesser duties and a zealous concern for inconsiderable matters in being over forward for the little adjuncts and appendages of Religion but very negligent of that which is the true life and substance of it and in vainly believing to please God by some other things than by a righteous and good mind and the practice of universal Holiness Thus did the Jews think that often washing their Hands would make their Souls clean that to observe the lesser duties of the Law and the Rites and Traditions of their Elders was the way to render them extraordinary Holy and Religious though they foully neglected the weightier duties of Judgment Mercy and Truth Superstition will often overdo in some parts of Religion and therefore puts on the face of greater sanctity and is a kind of excess in Religion but 't is at the bottom a great defect a want of true and inward goodness and it would supply that defect by other shows and appearances and a mighty zeal in little things it would compound as it were with Heaven and commute its sorry and worthless performances for actions of true and substantial goodness It always lays too much value upon the little things of Religion and does but little esteem and not heartily love Morality and inward Goodness and therefore the truest principle to free us from all superstitious follies and mistakes in Religion is this That nothing will please God but being truly and inwardly good that nothing will commend us to his favour but a Vertuous Mind and a Holy Life and the sincere practice of all the moral substantial duties of Religion and that without those all other little things in Religion will be vain and idle and insignificant which is the truest principle in the World and the best preservative against Superstition The Eleventh Sermon ACTS XXVI 8. Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead THe Resurrection of the dead is an Article of our Faith of that weight and importance that as it confirms and strengthens all natural Religion for if Mens bodies rise most undoubtedly there is a future State so it is the very Basis and Foundation of Christianity without which our Faith in Christ is as the Apostle says vain and ungrounded It seems not so necessary indeed for the truth of Religion in general to believe the Resurrection of the flesh or body since the Soul without that may be capable of Happiness or Misery in another state and the belief of this alone may be sufficient to the designs of Vertue and Religion But Christianity lays a very great stress upon it makes the Resurrection of the body as necessary and fundamental an Article upon some accounts as the immortality of the soul and this because of the Resurrection of our Blessed Saviour which as 't is the great demonstration of the truth of our Religion so it is an Argument of the Resurrection of all other Humane Bodies for if he be risen again with the same Body with which he lived and with that is gone into the Heavens it 's fit we should follow him thither with our bodies too with our whole Humane Nature which he was pleased not only to assume upon Earth but to carry up to be an Inhabitant of the mansions above if he our head be raised we his Members must be raised with him he the first fruits from the dead has by his Resurrection Consecrated our Bodies to Life and Immortality It would be very strange if he should carry his Humane Body into Heaven were there no others of the same nature to follow him so that as the Apostle argues 1 Cor. 15.13 If there be no Resurrection of the dead then is Christ not risen It does therefore highly concern us to maintain and defend this main post and strongest hold of our Religion by which our Christianity must either stand or fall and that the more because Infidelity and Irreligion is most apt to be making its attempts and assaults upon it in this place the weakest as is supposed which belongs to it and to represent this article above all others as an impossible and incredible thing There were found not only among the Athenians some of the Sect of Epicurus probably who when they heard of the Resurrection mocked at it Acts 17.32 and Pliny I remember reckons it among one of the things that exceed the power of God revocare defunctos but even amongst the Jews there were some known to St. Paul who thought it a thing unreasonable and unfit to be believed to whom he directs himself in this his defence of Christianity the Sadduces were a numerous and prevailing Sect among them who say there is no Resurrection neither Angel nor Spirit Acts 23.8 There are too many of their mind in our days who cannot believe or conceive any spiritual or immaterial substances and who cannot think that a body after it has been dead and lain rotting so many hundred or thousand years and been dispersed into ten thousand atoms and scattered into as many different places and had a thousand other bodies made out of it that this should be brought together again and rise the same body it was before Against these modern Sadduces and Unbelievers these pretenders to Reason
Resurrection Why should it be thought a thing incredible with us and especially with any curious searcher of Nature that God should raise the dead 2. If we take in the almighty Power and Wisdom of God this will remove all the difficulty and incredibility that seems to be in the thing So that the very first principle of Religion will make all the difficulty of the Resurrection vanish the considering that there is an infinite Being who has power sufficient to do every thing that implies not a contradiction and is not in the nature of the thing utterly impossible or contrary to some standing and fundamental principle of truth and certainty nor does any way reflect upon his other perfections of Wisdom Justice and Goodness this will make the whole thing very easie to us for how easie will it be to him who put every part of matter into that regular order that constitutes the Heavens above and earth below and all Plants and Animals that are upon it he who founded the Earth by his power and stretched out the Heavens by his understanding as the Scripture speaks He who telleth the number of the Stars and calleth them all by their names as the Psalmist expresses it Ps 147.4 He who made and moved and knows and permeates every part of matter that is in the vast Creation and ranks and orders it in its due place how cannot he put and bring together all the scattered parts of our dead bodies He from whom our substance was not hid when we were made in secret and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the Earth Psam 139.15 whose Eyes did see our substance yet being unperfect and in whose Book were all our members written which in continuance were fashioned when as yet there was none of them v. 16. how cannot he also as easily know and rejoin all the parts and members of our corrupted bodies He by whom the very hairs of our heads are numbred how easie will it be for him to know the body of every man and every part and Member of that body he who gives life to every little Creature and to those innumerable Animals that are in the World who preserves so many thousand Essences by a continual influx derived from himself and has millions of Angels and other Souls who live and move and have their several beings in him In a word he who made and preserves all things by a word of his mouth and needs nothing but the mere willing of a thing to make it how great is this our Lord and of great power his understanding is insinite Psal 147.5 and he can do any thing that implyes not a contradiction nor is contrary to the reason and nature of things nor contrary to his own other perfections of Wisdom Justice and Goodness as I shall show briefly the Resurrection is not 1. Then there is no incapacity in the subject nor no contradiction in the nature of the thing to make the Resurrection incredible A dead body is no more uncapable of life than a body at rest is of motion or than a torch put out is of being kindled again and the soul may as well be united to it afterwards as is was at first It may be brought into it when raised from the Grave by the same Laws of the Universe or the same vital Congruity by which it came into it when it was first formed and every soul may as well be directed to its own body then as it was before the greatest difficulty in the subject is this That the parts of the body are so scattered and divided in several places and made the parts perhaps of other bodies that its hard to conceive how they should all come together and be united to their proper bodies but tho' they are scattered they are not lost every Atom be it never so small is still to be found in the vast mass of matter and whatever alterations it may have past thro' yet has its being and subsistence some where in the World and so may with Power and Wisdom be put together again like the many little pins and small pieces of a great Machine tho' they are all taken to pieces and misplaced yet they may all be set together again by a skilfull hand Every part of matter is pervaded and fill'd with a spirit that governs all its motions and knows the minutest particles of it and can range and order them as it pleaseth and there is nothing hid from the power thereof There is not the least appearance of a contradiction for a thing that was destroyed or dispersed to become the same it was before it seems nothing so hard as for a thing to be that was not before So that the Resurrection cannot be thought by any so incredible as the Creation and he that is but a Theist and owns natural Religion cannot with reason stick or boggle at this Article of Revelation and he that believes an Almighty Power could make all things out of nothing need not doubt his power to make a thing what it was before 2. Neither is the Resurrection contrary to any certain principle of truth which the God of truth has established in the nature and reason of things if it were it could be no object of Divine power for God's power must not destroy the truth of things there are certain principles of truth and knowledge which must be kept inviolable or else we run into boundless Scepticism and can never know any thing to be true or false and therefore we must not call in the Almighty power to destroy those as the Papists do in Transubstantiation which must be as certainly false as we can know any thing to be certainly true so that neither infallibility can uphold it nor infinite power effect it without destroying those certain principles by which we can know any thing to be true by destroying the nature and properties of a body by making the whole no greater than a part by taking away all evidence of sense about its proper objects and if we remove those we have no way left to know whether any thing be true or false But the Resurrection is no way liable to any such absurdities nor is it in the least contrary to any certain and natural principles of truth for then it would be not only incredible but absolutely false and impossible to be true no Article of Christian Faith is or can be so but as we say tho' it be above our reason yet is not against it The blessed Trinity in Unity tho' it be of another nature of an infinite and incomprehensible being which may communicate it self in such a manner as we know not yet however it be too big for our Conception is not contradictory to any thing we certainly know to be true and tho' it be an Idea by it self it destroys none of those Idea's we have of other things 3. That the Resurrection is no way inconsistent with any of the Divine
from Heaven 2 Cor. 5.2 What more fit than that the materials of this house should be taken out of its former body tho' greatly improved and advanced as I shall show immediately who can tell what proper pleasures God shall fit for our bodies and make them such noble Organs for the Soul as shall be mighty useful to it and who knows whether that can enjoy all that alone without the body as with it and that there is not some new faculty or satisfaction resulting from its animating and being united to a body the Scripture representing the happiness of the other state not to be compleat till the general Resurrection God alone can tell what faculties and powers are fit for his Creatures in any state and while we are in this we can know no more what is proper for us in the other than an Embryo not yet born can conceive what it shall need when it comes into the world were it not absolutely necessary yet it seems very agreeable to Justice to have both the body and soul that were partners in Sin or Vertue to be sharers in the rewards of it And if Christ the Captain of our Salvation is to be perfect Man as well as perfect God in Heaven and his glorious body is probably to be the visible Shechinah of Heaven it self the bodies of all good Christians ought to rise and attend him and be partakers with him of the same Glory that so human Nature even in its weakest and frailest part may eternally triumph over death and the grave and over him who had the power of both 5. And Lastly To take off the incredibility of the Resurrectionn let us consider how far the body that is raised is to be the same with that which is buried and corrupted We must not be too rigorous and exact in insisting upon the same body if we be we cannot be said to have the same body two days together Our bodies are always in flow and several parts of them are always going off by insensible Transpiration and others come in the place of them like a River we call it the same tho' its Water be always running and passing away and scarce any drop of it be exactly the same the next Tide or as we call that the same flame of a Candle all the while it is burning which yet is wasted every moment and supplied with other new parts of oyl so we have the same body in our old Age that we had in our Youth And this very body of ours that was some time animated by our Souls that this shall rise again the Scripture is too plain to have it denied as it is by the Socinians the very word Resurrection supposes it to be in some sense the same body and they which rise again are said to be the same that were asleep and lay in their graves so that if we had quite another new body given us at the day of Judgment this might be said to be new made or created but not to rise again But yet it is not necessary that every part of matter which made up this Body of ours at our Death and was buried in the same Grave should go to the making up of our raised bodies It is sufficient if this Earthly body of ours which we had in this World be the seed or seminal body as it were of the Resurrection body out of some part of which it is as truly raised as the new Corn or Fruit is out of the Corn or Kernell which was set or sowed so the Apostle gives us an account of the Resurrection 1 Cor. 15.36 37 38. in answer to that question How are the dead raised up or with what bodies do they come i. e. how are those whose parts have been so variously mixt with other bodies and turned into the substance perhaps of other men whose very bodies are again to be raised how shall every part of these men be raised up when perhaps several men might have parts of the same body and therefore in the Resurrection whose body shall it be since many had some of it to be their body and with what body shall every one come if it must be exactly the same and yet that is so very hard if not some time impossible To this the Apostle answers Thou Fool that which thou sowest is not quickned except it die and that which thou sowest thou sowest not that body which shall be but bare Grain it may chance of Wheat or some other Grain But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him and to every seed his own body God does give every Man his own body but not so exactly the same as not to be at all altered but as a building is the same which is repaired tho' with a great many other materials and as an ear of Corn is the same with its seed tho' it has taken in a good quantity of the moisture of the Earth and turned it into its own body Those who have curiously examined the Anatomy of Plants and Seeds tell us that in the little Gemm or Eye of the Seed is contained the whole draught and the perfect Stamina of the Plant with its bark and leaves and fruit and all the lines of it exactly drawn in little which are after to be fill'd up and extended by the heat of the Sun and moisture of the Earth And if so little a seed or kernel can contain all the parts of a large stalk or great tree who knows how much of our present bodies may be sufficient to raise the same bodies out of again and how small a part of this corruptible matter may be the Embryo as it were of our Heavenly bodies It is certain these our bodies shall be so much altered that that which is sown in corruption shall be raised in incorruption and that which is now a natural body shall be then a spiritual not that it shall be turned into a spirit and lose its corporeal nature but that it shall be refined and made pliable to the Soul and Spirit and to all its motions and stand in no need of those things that belong to the animal life And yet it may still be the same body for all those new modes and qualities as a Jewel is the same substance of the Earth which was once a common fluid and is now turned into an Orient Pearl and the most clear Crystal Glass is the same matter that was before Sand and Ashes The best Philosophy tells us there is no specifick difference in matter but it is the same in substance tho' its outward figure colour and other accidents be altered which are but several modifications of the same matter and I can conceive God as easily to change these our mortal corruptible bodies into immortal and incorruptible ones as he turns the substance that every Animal eats into blood and spirits and the moisture and filth of the Earth that nourishes every flower and fruit into the
in relation to our selves as well as to the World that is the prime and general cause of Mens being deceived into sin and the first part of its deceitfulness is by the immoderate and salse Opinion of those little Goods or present Enjoyments we may obtain by them Thus when our Fancies and vain Imaginations represent Riches and a great Estate as the greatest Good as the greatest Security Credit and Comfort and what will afford and bring in all other good things of this World this makes a Man make Riches his God and put his trust in 'em and Sacrifice every thing to Mammon and use any means to attain 'em because he thinks nothing so evil as to be without them and nothing else so good as having abundance of them So another fancies no happiness like that of being Great and above others of having the knee and the head and the outward marks and acknowledgments of superiority given him or to appear in State and Grandeur with a rich Train and splendid Equipage always attending him and he despises poor and contemptible Vertue in respect of all this and thinks as meanly of the greatest Wisdom without those as that does of him and therefore rather than part with those he will part with his Conscience and change his Religion rather than his place and will stick at nothing either to keep or gain his ambitious Ends and Designs Another who is a Voluptuary and thinks Pleasure the summum bonum the chiefest good he can taste or feel he hunts after it thro' all the Scents and Paths of Sensuality Luxury Lewdness and Debauchery and either Bacchus or Venus is the Deity he worships and the greatest Good and Enjoyment he fancies and imagines and has an Idea of is the Wine sparkling in the Glass or the Charms of Beauty or the other objects of sensual Pleasure and by heating his thoughts and inflaming his fancy his desires of those things grow impatient excessive and ungovernable Now if a man had used himself to consider seriously how little there is in all those things how very little in respect of the greater pleasures of a wise and easie Mind a good Conscience and the hopes of Religion and that all the true Pleasures of Life that are desirable to a Wise Man may be otherwise enjoyed within the bounds of Vertue and that the going beyond those is an unavoidable mischief to himself and to the World and that all those little sensual and temporary goods he is so fond of are at best but short and transitory empty and unsatisfying things but poor trisling satisfactions and mere gilded decaying Vanities that will all quickly perish and pass away so that our proper happiness cannot lie in them This would give us such true Opinions and right Apprehensions of all carnal and Worldly things in which the whole strength and temptations of sin are placed as would disarm and weaken it of all its power strip it of all its fine dress and false attire wash off all its paint spoil all its beauty and shining lustre whereby it imposes upon our vain fancies and weak imaginations and deceives us with a false Opinion of those small Goods Profits or Pleasures it can afford us 2. We do not at the same time compare with those the great evil that is in them and so do not judge rightly and impartially on both sides but determine hastily on one and so are deceived whereas to make a true Judgment and Estimate we should set the evil against the good and so weigh the matter and set the balance right between them but Alass Men are in too much haste to do this when they are so hotly and eagerly pursuing their Lusts when having the fancied good Pleasure and Enjoyment of their sins only in their Eye they never think or consider or take into their accounts the much greater and more numerous and more certain evils that belong to them and are inseparably annext to the commission of them if they did no Man would swallow the thin bait when he saw the satal hook under it None would eat the forbidden fruit tho' never so fair and pleasant to the Eye if he knew and certainly believed that Death was its bittter sauce and in the day he eat thereof he should die No Man would drink the sweetest draught or take down the most delicious morsel if he thought it would kill him Nature without any great deliberation refuses immediately and abhors what it apprehends to be evil as it is extreamly fond and desirous of what appears good and agreeable to it and the fear of the one is perhaps more strong and affecting than the love of the other as the sense of pain is greater and quicker than that of pleasure and therefore did it spy the Snake in the Grass the Serpent hid under the Bed of Roses and Violets it would not be invited by all their beauty and sweetness to lie down upon them and it would be quickly frighted and run from the tempter tho' he appear'd as an Angel of light if it saw his Cloven Foot Vice therefore always uses art to conceal its worst side hides its deformity and rottenness under a false paint and counterfeit colour and varnishes over its real evil with the fucus of some seeming good so the unwary sinner is drawn into its deadly embraces with its meritricious Looks and false Charms The venomous sting lies covered under the sweet hony and the sinner perceives not the Dagger of the Treacherous Assassin till he is stabb'd with it to the heart But a little Wisdom and Observation and looking about us would plainly discern the innumerable evils that sin carries in its bowels and is big and productive of which grow out of it as fruit from its proper root and are inseparably annexed to it as effects to their causes that can no more be divorced or rescinded from it than light clipt from the Sun and are unalterably setled upon it by the nature and constitution of things and the will and appointment of the first cause and Author of them How do many not only shipwrack their Consciences but their Fortunes too by their Vices in this world where we see abundance of those broken Vessels who have split themselves upon Laziness or Luxury Lewdness or Prodigality or some other wickedness by which they have ruined themselves here as well as hereafter How have others wasted their Bodies by the same courses as they have done their Estates And have sinn'd particularly against those as the Scripture speaks as well as against their Souls and been a kind of Martyrs in the service of the Devil and their own Lusts and endured more pains in their bodies to go to Hell than other Martyrs have done to go to Heaven How do they whose hopes and designs are only in this Life and who fear nothing so much as Death and think nothing so happy as to live long yet shorten their lives by their Vices and by
living as they call it too fast that is running on in the full Career of wickedness and galloping as hard as they can to Hell How do they I say Not live out half their days and they are sometimes so hasty to die that their bodies are often rotted before they come into their Graves and their sins in some measure prevent death How have others stigmatized their names with their Vices and brought a lasting reproach and real infamy upon themselves and families where yet nothing has been so dear to them as titular Reputation and the false Image and Idol of Honour How have they madly Sacrificed their Souls and their Lives to redeem that which yet they have basely thrown away by a scandalous Life which has made them base and contemptible to all wise Men Thus how plain is it that sin besides the vast and amazing miseries of another World brings most of the evils of this upon us A blot and reproach to our credit and good names sickness and diseases to our bodies and often beggery to our selves and families and above all spoils and corrupts the Mind takes away the Peace and Improvement of it fills it with inward discomposure and uneasiness and often so impairs a Mans reason and understanding as to leave the old and wretched sinner only the shape of a Man with the nature and qualities of a Beast Now all these a blinded sinner either sees not or considers not either quite forgets or does not at all mind in the hot pursuit of his Lusts and the hurry and tumult of his unruly Appetites he feels not the Wounds that are given him in his hot blood tho' when he grows cool a little he will be very sensible of them his thoughts are wholly taken up with the sancied good and pleasure and he looks to nothing but that nor considers the much greater evils and mischiefs of them so he pursues his Game and follows the Chase and sees not the pit or the precipice just before him 'till he is faln into it he leaps into certain danger without looking into it and without any fear or foresight runs upon Death and Destruction as the horse rushes into the battle as Scripture represents it Jer. 8.6 An inward heat and ardor spurs him on and he is wholly driven by other principles than those of his reasonable nature and the serious thoughts and considerations of things or observing the consequences of his own Actions And thus sin deceives him in the next place 3. By taking off his Mind from considering and examining things or reflecting upon his own Actions or using his own Thoughts it makes him live only by the suggestions of sense and the propensities of his animal nature and lower inclinations without the Exercise or Government of his thoughts or reason Like brute beasts that have no understanding as the Scripture compares sinners Ps 32.9 His Passions and Lusts and irregular Appetites grow masterless and unruly and get an intire Power and Dominion over him and his reason has no check or controul over them his Vices keep him always warm and heated and never suffer him to cool or grow sober they ply him close with what shall more intoxicate and besot him and keep him from ever coming to himself so his mind is always dozed and he lives under a perpetual kind of drunkenness and loss of his reason his thoughts are always drowned in Hurry Business or Company Drink Noise or Diversion or scattered and dispersed in mad freaks and pranks of extravagance and with a sort of practical incoherent nonsense or else amused with Phantastick Whimsies and Romantick Conceits and imaginary Representations of things as they are drawn by Plays and Poets contrary to all sober thinking and the right knowledge of the nature of things as God has constituted them in the World Thus it is with our either dull or witty unthinking Debauchees who live a rambling careless thoughtless Life without any true principles or any serious consideration or reflection and examining of things who care as little as can be to think at all and therefore avoid themselves as much as may be and never love to be alone for nothing is so troublesome and uneasie to them as themselves and their own thoughts and therefore they keep from them all they can and would be quite without them if they could And upon this account we find them often declaiming against reason and thinking and extolling the condition of Beasts above Men which is only another way of commending themselves for at the same time they are endeavouring to be as equal and like to them as may be 4. To show the deceitfulness of sin we cannot but observe that Vertue is much the likelier way to attain most of the present goods of this World which sin aims at but generally loses and destroys Thus Sobriety Chastity and Temperance pick up that bodily pleasure which is lost and dropt by Vice and Debauchery when they are so hastily running after it the ambitious and covetous miss often their aims whilst others unexpectedly meet with what they are in vain seeking and generally most of the good things of this World are by Nature and Providence settled upon Vertue and lost by Vice the one is a Tree of Life as the Wiseman speaks Prov. 3.18 and even literally Health to our Navel and Marrow to the Bones while the other is a Disease and trouble to the Flesh and rottenness to the bones The one is a Crown of honour that circles the head of the Wise and Vertuous while the other is a foul stain and blemish to a mans Credit and good Name the one is Peace and Joy and Gladness to the mind the other is a worm to the Conscience a tormentor to the Soul and an inward Hell in a Man 's own breast Wisdom has in her right hand length of days and in her left hand riches and honour her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace as the Wiseman long ago observed Prov. 3.17 whereas most of the temptations to sin are Vain and Phantastick Cheating and Delusive and have only appearances but no real good in them like Zeuxis's Grapes they are only painted artificially but have no real sweetness they deceive the eye and the fancy at a distance but there is nothing of true pleasure and delight to be tasted in them but often a real bitterness instead of it like the vines of Sodom and Gomorrah Deut. 32.32 their grapes are grapes of gall their clusters are bitter their wine is the poyson of dragons and the cruel venom of Asps Men always find themselves deceived and disappointed in their vain expectations of what their sins will afford 'em and therefore always come off with repentance shame and remorse and can never answer it to themselves afterwards nor find any good account in the reckoning when they come to cast it up and ask themselves seriously the Apostle's question What fruit had ye in