his Gospel among us For sin being so apparently the greatest of evils it can be no other than the highest and most significant expression of hatred to us to encourage us to the commission of it It is so far from being part of our Christian Liberty to be delivered from our obligation to all or any of the Laws of Righteousness that such a deliverance would be the most Diabolical yoke of Bondage If any man can be so silly as to object that of the Apostle Rom. 6. 14. Ye are not under the Law but under Grace Let him give himself an answer by reading the whole verse and then make ill use of that passage if he can tell how The words foregoing it in the same verse are these Sin shall not have dominion over you and these words are a proof of that assertion For ye are not under the Law but under Grace That is as if he should say It is the most inexcuseable thing for you to continue under the dominion and power of sin because ye are not under the weak and inefficacious Paedagogy of the Law of Moses but a Dispensation of Grace wherein there is not only Forgiveness assured to truly Repenting sinners but strength afforded to enable to the subduing and mortification of all sin Our Saviour hath told us expresly that he came not to destroy the Law that is the Moral Law but to fulfil it And that Heaven and Earth shall soouer pass away than that one jot or little thereof shall sail And it is absolutely impossible that our obligation thereunto should cease while we continue Men. All the duties therein contained being most necessary and natural results from the Relation we stand in to God and to one another and from the Original make and constitution of humane souls But it is too great an honour to the Doctrine of Libertinism to bestow two words upon its confutation it being so prodigiously monstrous that it would be almost a breach of Charity to judge that Professour of Christianity not to have suffered the loss of his wits that hath entertained it or hath the least favour for it supposing he hath but the least smattering in the Christian Religion It is a most amazing thing that such a thought should have any admission into the mind of such a one while he is compos mentis and not utterly deprived of his Intellectuals Our Saviour's Gospel being wholly levelled at the mark of killing all sorts of sin in us and rendering us exactly obedient to the Divine Moral and also all innocent humane Laws Let me speak to such as so shamefully abuse our incomparable Religion as to take liberty from thence to be in any kind immoral in the words of S. Paul Rom. 2. 4 5. Despisest thou the Riches of God's goodness and forbearance and long-suffering not knowing that his goodness leadeth thee or designeth the leading of thee to Repentance But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up to thy self wrath against the day of wrath and Revelation of the Righteous Iudgment of God c. CHAP. XIX The Fourth Inference That a right understanding of the Design of Christianity will give satisfaction concerning the true Notion 1. Of Iustifying Faith 2. Of the Imputation of Christ's Righteousness FOurthly From what hath been said of the Design of Christianity may be clearly inferred the True notion of Iustifying Faith and of the Imputation of Christ's Righteousness First Of Iustifying Faith We thence learn That it is such a belief of the Truth of the Gospel as includes a sincere resolution of Obedience unto all its Precepts or which is the same thing includes true Holiness in the nature of it And moreover that it justifieth as it doth so For surely the Faith which intitles a sinner to so high a privelege as that of justification must needs be such as complieth with all the purposes of Christ's coming into the world and especially with his grand purpose and it is no less necessary that it should justifie as it doth this That is as it receives Christ for a Lord as well as for a Saviour But I need not now distinguish between these two there being but a notional difference between them in this matter For Christ as was shewn as he is a Saviour designeth our Holiness his Salvation being chiefly that from the worst of evils sin and principally consisting in deliverance from the power of it I scarcely more admired at any thing in my whole life than that any worthy men especially should be so difficultly perswaded to embrace this account of Iustifying Faith and should perplex and make intricate so very plain a Doctrine If this be not to seek knots in a Bulrush I know not what is I wish there were nothing throughout the Bible less easily intelligible than this is and I should then dare to pronounce it one of the plainest of all books that ever pen wrote For seeing the great end of the Gospel is to make men good what pretence can there be for thinking that Faith is the Condition or I 'le use the word Instrument as improper and obscure as it is of Iustification as it complieth with only the precept of relying on Christ's Merits for the obtaining of it especially when it is no less manifest than the Sun at Noon-day that obedience to the other precepts must go before obedience to this and that a man may not rely on the merits of Christ for the forgiveness of his sins and he is most presumptuous in so doing and puts an affront upon his Saviour too till he be sincerely willing to be reformed from them And besides such a Relyance is ordinarily to be found among unregenerate and even the very worst of men And therefore how can it be otherwise than that that act of faith must needs have a hand in justifying and the special hand too which distinguisheth it from that which is to be found in such persons And I adde what good ground can men have for this fancy when as our Saviour hath merited the pardon of sin for this end that it might be an effectual motive to return from it And can any thing in the world be more indisputably clear than if the only direct scope that Christianity drives at be the subduing of sin in us and our freedom from its guilt or obligation to punishment be the consequent of this as I think hath been demonstrated with abundant evidence that faith invests us with a title to this deliverance no otherwise than as dying to sin and so consequently living to God are the products and fruit of it And seeing that one End and the Ultimate End too of Christ's coming was to turn us from our iniquities if the nature of Faith considered as Iustifying must needs be made wholly to consist in Recumbence and Reliance on him he shall be my Apollo that can give me a sufficient reason why it ought only to consist in Reliance on the Merits of
that all that have the conduct of Souls committed to them should do the like S. Paul exhorted Timothy first to take heed to himself and then to the Doctrine and the former advice was of no whit less necessity and importance than was the latter For as woful experience assureth us a Minister of a careless and loose life let his parts and ability in preaching be never so great nay though he should behave himself never so faithfully in the Pulpit and be zealous against the very vices he himself is guilty of which would be very strange if he should must needs do more hurt incomparably than he can do good And though as some of them will tell them it is the Peoples duty to do as they say and not as they do yet is there nothing more impossible than to teach them effectually that Lesson Mankind as we had before occasion to shew is mightily addicted to imitation and Examples especially those of Governors and Teachers have a greater force upon people ordinarily than have Instructions but chiefly bad Examples in regard of their natural proneness to vice than good Instructions Had not the Apostles expressed as great a care of what they did as of what they said how they lived as how they preached Christianity would without doubt have been so far from prevailing and getting ground as it hath done that it could not have long survived its Blessed Author if it had not bid adiue to the world with him Most men do what we can will judge of our Sermons by our Conversations and if they see these bad they will not think those good nor the Doctrines contained in them practicable seeing they have no better effect upon those that preach them And besides no man will be thought to be serious and in good earnest in pressing those duties upon others which he makes no conscience of performing himself Nay every man's judgement in Divine things may warrantably be suspected that is of a wicked and vicious Life And those that are conscious to themselves that they are not able to pass a judgement upon Doctrines may not be blamed if they question their Minister's Orthodoxy while they observe in him any kind of Immorality and see that he lives to the satisfaction of any one Lust. For the promise of knowing the Truth is made onely to such as continue in Christ's words that is that are obedient to his Precepts And I adde that such a one 's talks of Heaven and Hell are like to prevail very little upon his Auditors or to be at all heeded by the greatest part of them while they consider that the Preacher hath a soul to save as well as they And therefore the love that they bear to their lusts with the Devil's help will easily perswade them that either these things are but mere sictions or else that the one may be obtained and the other escaped upon far easier terms than he talks of But as for those few in whom the sense of true Vertue and Piety have made so deep an impression as that they have never the slighter opinion of the necessity thereof in regard of their Minister's wicked Example the prejudice that they cannot but conceive against him renders his discourses insipid and unaffecting to them and so they ordinarily take all opportunities to turn their backs upon him and at length quite forsake him And then if they are not as understanding as well meaning people are too easily drawn away from all other Churches when they have left their own and become a prey to some demure and fairly pretending Sectary And I am very certain from my own observation that no one thing hath so conduced to the prejudice of our Church of England and done the separating parties so much service as the scandalous lives of some that exercise the Ministerial Function in her The late Excellent Bishop of Down and Connar hath this memorable passage in a Sermon he preached to the University at Dublin If ye become burning shining Lights if ye do not detain the Truth in unrighteousness if ye walk in light and live in the Spirit your Doctrine will be true and that truth will prevail But if you live wickedly scandalously every little Schismalick will put you to shame draw Disciples after him and abuse your flocks and feed them with Coloâ—…ynths and Hemlock and place Heresie in the chair appointed for your Religion But to hasten to the dispatch of this unpleasant Topick wicked ministers are of all other ill-livers the most scandalous for they lay the greatest stumbling block of any whatsoever before mens souls and what our Saviour said of the Scribes and Pharisees may in an especial manner be applyed to them viz. that they will neither enter into heaven themselves nor yet suffer them that are entering to go in so far are they from saving themselves and those that hear them But I would to God such would well lay to heart those sad words of our Saviour Luke 17. 1 2. It is impossible but that offences will come but woe unto him through whom they come it were better for him that a Milstone were hanged about his neck and he cast into the Sea c. And those words are not more effectual to scare them than are these following of a Heathen viz. Tully concerning vicious Philosophers to shame them into a better life saith he in his Tusculan Questions the second book Quotusquisque Philosophorunâ—… invenitur qui sit ita moratus c. What one of many Philosophers is there who so behaves himself and is of such a mind and life as Reason requireth which accounteth his Doctrine not a boast of Science but a law of life which obeyeth himself and is governed by his own precepts We may see some so light and vain that it would have been better for them to be wholly ignorant and never to have learn d any thing others so covetous of money thirsty of praise and honour and many such slaves to their lusts ut cum eorum vitâ mirabiliter pugnet oratio That their lives do marvellously contradict their Doctrine Quod quidem mihi videtur esse turpissimum c. Which to me seems the most filthy and abominable of all things For as he which professing himself a Grammarian speaks barbarously and who being desirous to be accounted a Musician sings scurvily is so much the more shame-worthy for his being defective in that the knowledge and skill of which he arrogates to himself so a Philosopher in ratione vitae peccans miscarrying in his manners is in this respect the baser and more wretched Creature that in the office of which he will needs be a Master he doth amiss artemque vitae professus delinquit in vitâ and prosessing the art of well-living or of teaching others to live well is faulty and miscarrieth in his own life Could this excellent Heathen thus inveigh against wicked Philosophers what Satyre can be tart and
special Love And that those things which Sensual Persons are most desirous of are eminently to be found in that blessing SEcondly This is the Greatest Blessing because it is accompanied with all other that are most desireable and which do best deserve to be so called Where sin is sincerely forsaken it will certainly be Pardoned The nature of God is such as that he is ready to be reconciled to a true Convert They are our iniquities alone that make or can make a separation betwixt us and our God and our sins onely that hide his face from us But the cause being removed the effect ceaseth When the Divine grace that is offered to sinners becometh effectual to the turning any one from his evil ways God's favour doth naturally return to him even as naturally as doth the Sun's light into those places where that which before intercepted between it and them is taken away He is of so infinitely benign and Gracious a Nature that no man can continue an object of his displeasure one moment longer than while he is uncapable of his favour and nothing I say but sin and wickedness as he hath often enough assured us can make men so Nay a Holy Soul is ever the Object also of his Dearest and most special love He is not onely friends with but also takes pleasure in those that fear him Psalm 147. 11. He is said to make his residence within such persons so great is the delight that he taketh in them Isaiah 66. 1 2. Thus saith the Lord the Heaven is my Throne and the Earth my Footstool where is the house that ye build unto me and where is the place of my Rest For all those things have mine hand made and all those things have been saith the Lord But to this man will I look even to him that is poor and of a contrite Spirit and trembleth at my word John 14. 23. Iesus said unto him If any man love me he will keep my words and my Father will love him and we will come unto him and make our abode with him And it is said particularly of him that dwelleth in love which is the fulfilling of the Law that he dwelleth in God and God in him And I might shew that the Heathens themselves had this very notion It was a saying used by the Pythagoraeans that God hath not in the whole earth a more familiar place of Residence than a pure Soul And Apollo is brought in thus speaking 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To dwell in Heaven doth not more please me then Within the Souls of Pious Mortal men And Hierocles which reciteth that verse doth himself assert that God hateth no man but as for the good man he Embraceth him with an extraordinary and surpassing affection The Righteous Lord loving righteousness his countenance cannot but behold the upright Wheresoever he finds any impressions of True Goodness as he cannot but highly approve of them so is it not possible but that they should attract his singular love to those which are the subjects of them According to that measure and proportion that any one participates of his Goodness he must needs have a share in his Grace and kindness A holy person is a man after God's own heart as his Servant David was said to be He is a man that carrieth his image and bears a Resemblance to him and upon that account he cannot fail to be very dearly beloved by him Now I need not go about to prove that there is no blessing whatsoever but is implyed in an interest in the Divine Love and especially in such a love as that which we have shewed Good men are made the objects of It might be here shewn also that those things which sensual and carnal persons are most desirous of viz. Riches Honours and Pleasures are eminently to be found in the Blessing we are now discoursing of and indeed those which best deserve to be so called and are in the properest sense so no where else Nothing inricheth a Man like the Graces of God's Holy Spirit What S. Peter said of meekness is true of all the vertues they are in the sight of God and he judgeth of things as they are of great price They are called Gold tryed in the fire Rev. 3. 18. The true and our own Riches Luk. 16. 12. Which is as much as to say that these only are ours and all but these are false and Counterfeit These inrich our Souls which alone as was said deserve to be called our-selves and will abide by us when all other have bid adieu to us These do as much excel in true value and worth all those things which the world calls Riches as do our Immortal Spirits transcend our frail and corruptible Carkasses It was one of the Maximes of the Stoicks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the wise whereby they meant the truly virtuous man is the onely Rich man And Tully hath this saying upon it A mans Chest cannot properly be called Rich but his Mind onely And though thy Coffer be full so long as I see thee Empty I shall not think thee a Rich man And saith Hierocles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All things that are without a mans soul are but little and insignificant trifles And the Righteous saith Solomon is more excellent than his Neighbour or he is of greater worth than any other person that is not righteous Prov. 12. 26. Nothing again makes men so honourable as doth Vertue and True Goodness or at all truly so Seeing He and He alone that is indued with it lives up to his highest Principle like a Creature possessed of a Mind and Reason nay this man is moreover as was said like to God himself and imitates his Glorious perfections And therefore well might Wisdom say as she doth Prov. 8. 18. Riches and Honour are with me To overcome our unruly lusts and keep in subjection all impetuous desires and inordinate Appetites makes us more deservedly Glorious than was Alexander or Iulius Caesar For he that thus doth hath subdued those that mastered those mighty Conquerours And such a one hath praise of God of the holy Angels and of all men that are not fools and whose judgments he hath cause to value He that is slow to anger is better than the Mighty and he that ruleth his Spirit than he that taketh a City Proverbs 16. 32. And no Pleasures are comparable to those that immediately result from vertue holiness for that man's Conscience is a very Heaven to him that busieth himself in the exercise thereof While we do thus we act most agreably to the right frame and constitution of our Souls and consequently most naturally and all the actions of Nature are confessedly very sweet and pleasant This also very many of the Heathens had a great sense of even those of them which much doubted of another life wherein Vertue is rewarded commended very highly the Practice of it for this reason that
it is sibi praemium a reward to it self Simplicius in his Comment upon Epictetus hath this observable saying that The observation of the Rules of Vertue in that Book prescribed will make men so happy and blessed even in this life that they shall not need 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. to be promised any Reward after death though that also will be sure to follow These things I say might be insisted on in this place but they are such large and spacious fields of discourse that should we make any considerable entrance into them we shall find it no easie matter to get out of them I therefore proceed CHAP. XI The Third Argument viz. That whatsoever other Blessings a man may be supposed to have that is utterly destitute of Holiness they cannot stand him in so much stead as only to make him not miserable And all Evil and Corrupt affections shewed to be greatly tormenting in their own nature and innumerable sad mischiefs to be the necessary Consequents of yielding obedience to them THirdly whatsoever other Blessings a man may be supposed to have that is utterly destitute of this of Holiness they cannot stand him in so much stead as but to make him not miserable We may by the first Particular and what was said upon it be sufficiently convinced of the truth of this But I rather add That sinful Lusts are extremely troublesome disquieting and painful The Wicked saith the Prophet Isaiah is like the troubled Sea which cannot rest whose waters cast up mire and dirt The Labyrinths that Sin involves men in are innumerable its ways are so full of intricate turnings and windings that they sadly perplex those poor Creatures that walk in them and it is impossible but that they should do so The greatest outward inconveniences and disastrous misfortunes are very frequently as might be largly shewn occasioned by them but vexations of mind and troublesome thoughts are the constant and never failing effects of them Tully in the forementioned Book saith thus to the vitious man Thy lusts torment thee all sorts of cares oppress thee and both day and night torture thee And Hierocles saith that It is necessary that the worst life should be most miserable and the best most pleasant and delightful Covetousness and Ambition put mens minds upon the rack to contrive ways of inriching and advancing themselves And when they have attained to so large a proportion of earthly profits or so high a degree of honour as they at first designed they are so far from being at ease and rest as they vainly promised to themselves they should that their cravings encrease as do their fortunes and in the middest of their Abundance they continue in the same streights that at first afflicted them Nay so impetuous is the fury of those lusts that they drive them into still greater and cause in their Souls that are possessed by them a more pungent and a quicker sense of want than they felt when their condition was most mean and their estate at the lowest Nor is this mischief any other than a most natural and unavoidable consequent of forsaking God who is as the Scriptures call him the Rest and as Plato the center of Souls and of seeking satisfaction in such things as are infinitely too little for their vast capacities which the forementioned are and all worldly enjoyments What a multitude of Tormenting cares is Independency on God and Distrust of his Providence perpetually attended with How impossible is it to give a comprehensive and just Catalogue of the many mischiefs and miseries that are the necessary products and genuine off-spring of Intemperance and Lasciviousness Solomon enumerates some of the evils that are the fruits of the former of these Prov. 23. 29 but to give a perfect account of them would be an endless work And as for the latter besides the loathsome and painful disease that is ordinarily the consequent of satisfying the cravings of that filthy vice the unclean person is continually in a restless Condition and as it were in a constant fit of a burning feaver and the evil accidents that are occasioned by it are so many that they are not neither to be reckoned up The Epicuraeans though they placed mans chief happiness in corporeal Pleasures did strictly notwithstanding forbid Adultery for this reason because as they said in stead of performing its promise of pleasure it robs men of it He that is proud and highly conceited of himself is disordered and discomposed by the least sleighting word or neglect of Respect and I had almost said by the smallest commendation of his Neighbour too And it lyeth in the power of any sorry Creature when he list to afflict him The Inward sad effects of Envy and Malice are sufficiently observable in the dismal countenances of those that are under the power of them and these hateful and devilish lusts do eat into and prey upon the very hearts of those in whose breasts they lodge and are like Fire in their bosomes uncessantly torturing them Not to say any thing of the many Outward and â—…st direful mischiefs that are caused by a 〈◊〉 satisfaction of them In short there is not any one inordinate affection but is so disturbing and disquieting a thing in its own nature that it cannot but make those who are in subjection to it though they should have never so many good things to set against it exceeding miserable in this as well as in the other world So that had our Saviour come into the world onely upon such a design as the carnal Jews expected their Messia would viz. that of making us partakers of a meer Temporal happiness he must in order to the succeeding of it chiefly have concerned himself to make us holy If it were possible as it hath been shewn it is not that a wicked man should have God's Pardon this would not make him cease to be Miserable all it could signifie would be no more than an Exemption from being immediately by him punish'd But though the Divine Majesty should not in the least afflict him his very Lusts would be of themselves no light punishment but such as under which he could never enjoy himself in this life but wil be found to be intolerable in the life to come Seeing there will then be nothing to be met with that can at all suite with his sensual inclinations or that will have any aptness in it to please and gratifie them whereas now all places abound with such things as are fit for that purpose as are able I say to gratifie though not to satisfie such appetites So that this man's condition in the future state must needs be very exactly like to his that is even parcht and dried up with excessive thirst but can by no means obtain wherewithal to quench it no nor yet so much as a little to slake it and mitigate the pain of it as he in this state very frequently makes a shift to