Selected quad for the lemma: tradition_n
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A61711
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Sermons and discourses upon several occasions by G. Stradling ... ; together with an account of the author.
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Stradling, George, 1621-1688.; Harrington, James, 1664-1693.
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1692
(1692)
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Wing S5783; ESTC R39104
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236,831
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593
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others who were willing to doe so Taking away that key of knowledge which might unlock the gate thereof and hood-winking the people that they might not find their way thither being very jealous lest Christ should shew it them or the Multitudes run after any but themselves every Proselyte of Christ's being an Apostate from them And accordingly they dealt with him thrusting some out of their Synagogues scourging others contriving the death of a third and finally of Christ himself who as He was a Rock of Offence to them so by falling on them at last ground them to powder To conclude this point for 't were endless to follow a Pharisee through all his windings and turnings They were as great Boutefeus in their time as Jesuits are in ours sowing Sedition and Rebellion where-ever they went especially against the Romans whom they most suspected and feared as those who would take away their place and nation which at last they did being enraged by the frequent insurrection of the Jews whom the Pharisaical Zealots continually stirr'd up as you may reade at large in Josephus Thus have I shown you the Pharisee the grand Original as I may so style him of all succeeding False Prophets pluckt off his vizard and his sheeps-cloathing in this brief account I have now given you of his Doctrines and their Tendencies together with his practical Commentary on his corrupt Text. 'T were to be wisht that that Hypocrisie which was the very soul and form of a Pharisee had not by an unhappy kind of Transmigration pass'd into others This spreading Leprosie like the Jews themselves is the Catholick plague of all other Sects too and particularly of those many ones among us so that that leaven or bread of faces grown stale in Jewry is now become the ordinary Entertainment at an English Table The Wolf which by the care of our prudent Ancestors has been long since banished hath of late days to our great annoyance cross'd the Seas and walkt uncontroll'd in the staple dress of the Land our sheeps-cloathing The difference between that of the ancient and of our modern ones being only this That theirs was of a courser and ours is of a finer-spun thread Were they dress'd up in all manner of gaudy appearances we out-shine them Their Fringes were neither so long nor their Phylacteries so broad Our Pharisees out-doe them in Eyes lifted up to Heaven in sowred Looks whining Tones seraphical Expressions and starcht Behaviour Our Principles are of a higher strain too If they justled out God's Law with their Traditions we quite extinguish the Gospel with our New Lights Did they corrupt That with their Cabalistical Glosses we wrest This to our own and others Damnation by our false and carnal Interpretations making it speak to Interest and Ambition If they plac'd Religion in the Hand we place it in the Ear in those many Sermons we hear but never practice gadding after those corrupt Teachers we heap up to our selves While Pharisees boast of their legal Righteousness we quite cast off that and Evangelical too being above the Ordinances of God some among us making perfection to consist in sinning and not being troubled at it others by a contrary but as bad an error being so far from owning an Inherent Righteousness that they make it wholly Imputative crying up Faith even to the decrying of all good works and making Christ's Cross a Ladder to get up to Heaven by though they never climb one Round of it Were ancient Pharisees so over-strict in keeping the Sabbath some among us are as strict even to the exclusion of Charity and Mercy Wherein did their Stoical fatality differ from our absolute Decree Or their Temporal conquering Messiah from that which our Millenaries have shap'd to themselves I dare say in these and many the like instances our Christian Pharisees doe as far surpass the Jewish ones in their corrupt Doctrines as in all the pernicious Consequences of those Doctrines either in Hypocrisie or Ambition Covetousness or Cruelty Hatred and malitious Uncharitableness to all Dissenters blind Zeal and indefatigable Industry in gaining Proselytes or lastly in all those factious schismatical and rebellious Practices which the most Pharisaical Zealots among the Jews were ever guilty of and that upon the very same account of a more peculiar relation to God I cannot stand to make out the Parallel but must leave it to your own thoughts being in pursuit of other Wolves wrapt up in as fair a sheeps-cloathing as any of those I have mention'd and who come to us with all deceivableness of unrighteousness Give me leave to uncase them too and that I shall endeavour to doe by displaying their Doctrines and Practices the natural fruits whereby we are to know Them also As to their Doctrines I shall instance first in their Traditions which they not only equal to the written Word of God in the modest language of the Council of Trent requiring them to be received with the same affection of godliness and reverence that is due to the books of the Old and New Testament but impudently preferr them as most of their eminent Doctors doe for this reason because the Scriptures say they have no Being unless they be established by Traditions whereas Traditions without Scripture are firm and stable in themselves Thereby charging the Holy Writ with obscurity and imperfection which the Pharisees never had the face to doe whose corrupt Glosses and Interpretations were Orthodox in respect of those which these Men give us and which doe indeed much more make void all the Commandments of God than ever theirs did For we do not find that the Jewish Pharisees were wrong as to the first and second Commandments whereas the Doctrines of the Romish ones are injurious to both 2. Not only to the first by dispensing with God's Laws and coyning new ones which they obtrude on the Consciences of Men as equally binding but to the second much more having quite raz'd it out of their Decalogue and divided their Worship between the Creator and his Creatures not the highest only as Saints and Angels but the very lowest and most contemptible of them even Stocks and Stones for such are their Images which rather than they will forego they will part with one of God's Commandments 3. What are their many impertinent repetitions but so many takings of God's Holy Name in vain Or their Maxime of not keeping Faith with Hereticks but a Doctrine of flat Perjury 4. The Sabbath which was sacred even to Superstition with a Pharisee has far less respect with them than a Saint's Holy-day though of their own Canonization 5. When God commands us to be obedient to our civil or natural Parents they can not only dispense with our Allegiance to but give us withall remission of Sins as a reward for our Treason to the former and by their Pharisaical Corban defeat the latter of that Obedience which is due to them from their Children forcing
And how much happier St. John too in carrying his Saviour in his own bosom than in leaning on his The far greater happiness of the two but common to every one of us The more excellent way being our spiritual relation without which Christ will be ashamed to call us his Disciples Brethren or Mothers Bring then but a good Ear but especially a good Heart Let thy Saviour in by that and get him form'd in this most sanctify'd Womb of thy Soul i. e. conceive him by thy Faith in the hearing of his holy Word and bring him forth by thy Obedience in the practice of its divine Precepts and then shalt thou be a much happier Mother of thy Lord than if he had been a part of thine own bowels Thou hast his own Word for it Yea rather Blessed are they that hear the Word of God and keep it The proper way or means whereby every Christian is to be happy and more happy than the Mother of God meerly according to the flesh and my next part Blessed are they 1. That hear And no doubt a Blessing belongs to that in the first place 'T is a fundamental and original Duty the Nurse of all other Duties we owe to God Hearing and Receiving the Word being the inlet to Faith and Piety 1. To Faith for that comes by hearing Rom. 10. 17. the sense of divine as of humane Discipline 2. To Piety so our Saviour Job 17. 17. Sanctifie them by they word thy word is truth For as the first Insinuations of Sin were conveyed by the Ear so are the first Inspirations of Grace let in by the same door with this God began his Law Deut. 4. 1. and with this Christ his Gospel too Mat. 17. 5. This is my beloved Son hear ye him And his voice alone we must hear not the voice of strangers Joh. 10. 4 5. The proper object to which our great Shepherd here limits our Hearing being the Word of God not the uncertain Traditions or pretended Revelations of Fanatical Men vainly pufft up by their fleshly mind I shall not press the necessity of a Duty so frequently and clearly requir'd by the Scriptures nor indeed need I Men being generally so fully persuaded of it and 't were to be wisht they were as swift to practice as they are to hear All their devotion now is plac'd in hearing as if like Athenians their whole time were to be spent in nothing else but either to tell or hear some new thing All their serving God is an Ear-service as their profession little else but an Eye-service We see many flock to Sermons and Lectures just as they use to do to Plays and Shows only to feed their Eyes and Ears Man's whole Body is become one great Ear and that such an itching one as is never to be satisfy'd with hearing no more than their Eye with seeing Such a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there is in this part such a canine appetite and craving for spiritual food without any digestion Omnia te adversum spectantia a continual taking in there is without bringing forth any thing This is certainly a common and 't is an evil disease under the Sun which Satan labours all he can to nurse up nor is it a small delusion of his to shrink us all into an Ear for when he cannot draw us wholly from the service of God he makes us single out one part from all the rest to magnifie that and cry it up alone with neglect and even with some disgrace to all besides it Wherein how successfull his policy has been in these our days appears by this That the Church is generally so throng'd at Sermons and so empty at God's service It must needs appear strange to our reason why hearing of the Word should so much get the start of and eat out all the rest of the more substantial parts of God's service whereas it is its self although the first yet but one part of it and subservient to practice and consequently as inferior to it as the means is to the end And that the Primitive Church had this opinion of it its practice evidently declares which was to finish the Sermon before they began the Service and by promiscuously admitting all sorts of people Heathens and Infidels Jews Schismaticks and Hereticks Catechumeni and Poenitentes to the former but totally excluding such persons from their Assemblies when the Liturgy began as that part of divine Worship which none but holy and sanctified Men were in a due capacity in their esteem to partake of I urge not this to decry Preaching or Hearing but only to prefer doing to it as the more important Duty of the two and to which the Blessing is chiefly appropriated Joh. 13. 17. as it is Jam. 1. 25. and imply'd in the Text which styles them Blessed that hear the Word of God but much more them who keep it But then what is it you will say to keep it Is it to be a little moved with it To rejoyce in it for a little season or to tremble at it Why this is no more than what an Agrippa a Herod or a Felix might doe A few sudden qualms of Conscience and pangs of a superficial sorrow for sin some faint desires vanishing like flashes of Lightning as soon as they appear some insignificant resolutions of amendment and newness of life may be found in a Balaam nay in the most profligate wretches Or lastly is it to applaud the Preacher and his fine-spun Discourse and to be ravisht with his Eloquence Some indeed there were in the Prophet Ezekiel's time of that humour that reckoned of Sermons no otherwise than of Songs the Musick of a Song and the Rhetorick of a Sermon all was one with them they could give a Prophet the hearing commend his sweet air and delicate strains and that was all Their devotion expir'd with the harmony They hear thy words says God there speaking of them but they will not doe them And of such Auditors there are store enough at all times who will afford the Preacher nothing but their Ears and no sooner is the Sand run out of his Glass but his Words are out of their Memories Let us not mistake our selves that word that must save the Soul must be an engrafted word not a superficial seed floating on the surface of the Heart but taking deep root there and springing up in the visible actions of a good life 'T is not the Conception but the Birth of the new Man that makes us Christians and better were it for us that this divine Issue should never come to the birth than we want strength to bring it forth and that Christ should never be form'd in us than we prove abortive But if by hearing we receive the immortal Seed of his Word if by a firm purpose of doing we conceive by a longing desire quicken and by an earnest endeavour travel with it then indeed God's Word yea God himself