himself and not from us his Blessings argue indeed the Bounty of the Benefactor but infer not the Merit of the obliged since the Spirit 's Irradiations into our Souls like the Sun 's shining upon Shrubs and Hemlock is due to the diffusiveness of his Goodness not the attractiveness of ours Moral Virtues may perhaps be resembled to Great Mens Cloaths which supply those that see them with some conjectures of the Quality of those that wear them But inspired Graces such as Repentance is are like their Liveries whose Gawdiness evinces not the Footman's Deserts but his Lord's Splendidness and in mens esteem entitles the Lacquey to nothing but a good Master Those better Qualities Blood may convey or Industry acquire like Honours conferr'd by Princes suppose the Party deserving but Heavenly Donatives are like Alms which ever presume need and where they are more liberally bestow'd stronglier conclude the greatness of the Party's Wants than Merits Upon such Considerations possibly as these the great Apostle after a recital of his first unworthiness scruples not to write of himself in such bold erms as these By the grace of God I am what I am and his grace which was bestowed on me was not in vain but I laboured more abundantly than they all meaning the College of the Holy Apostles yet not I but the grace of God which was with me I might produce many resembling Passages of Scripture had I not handled this Subject elsewhere But truly since you are commanded in the Gospel to let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father which is in heaven you ought to consider whether or no your expressing a serious dislike of others present and your own former practice in point of Swearing do not either proclaim your Repentance or infer you a Hypocrite And if your Reason as questionless it will lead you to embrace the affirmative believe you are then further to be put in mind that not only the Confession of our Virtues is justifiable when it is necessary to your Justification but tho in all other cases our actions should commend us not we our selves Praise being a Debt which he that pays himself acquits all others of even the mention of our own Praises is allowable when they are produc'd not to extol but barely to vindicate us and finds a sufficient defence in its being necessary unto ours The owning of Repentance has so much of Penance in it that there is not any Grace more indispos'd to a perversion into Vanity for still Repentance like the Pardon it endeavours to procure does presuppose a Fault having this particular unhappiness above other Virtues that men cannot arrive at it but through Vice And therefore in the return to the disinterestedness of action Virtue who can scarce more reward our love to her than by imparting unto us a higher degree of it commonly recompenceth so unselfish a Duty by making it a powerful engagement to perseverance against Relapses and any affront or loss sustain'd upon that score turns to a Blessing by producing in us towards Religion the usual property of Sufferers for a Cause more Zeal and Passion for the Party men have been Sufferers for But admit you could not own Repentance without being fancied vain must the fear of others sins continue those that are immediately yours Will you rather let others sin by imitation of your bad actions than in their misconstruction of your good ones And will you quench the Spirit and refrain from being virtuous lest men should think you know your self to be so Especially since our Ignorance in good Performances tho it criminate the act degrades the Agent from the Title of Virtuous Virtue being a habitude elective and election pre-requiring knowledge Which reason I might fortify by asking to what end Preachers should light us so many Candles and give us so many Touchstones to discover and examine Graces with if our being conscious to our own Repentance were a fault that deserved it Undoubtedly that were and that were strange to make it our Duty to seek what it were our Sin to find This last Reflection I must recruit by adding That since our improvement of and thankfulness for Grace will be expected proportionable to our stock of it as the Parable of the Talents and our Saviour's declaring that where much is given there also much will be required evinces we cannot without the knowledge of our Receits know what our Returns must be of Gratitude and Duty to be answerable to them The utmost that Modesty does exact of you is the declining of those Praises your actions do deserve not the refraining actions that deserve Praise for fear of being suspected to affect it But truly Bashfulness tho in Maids thought a Virtue in Virtue is a fault for sure it is one of the worst Complements you can put upon the Spirit to lock him up in a dungeon for shame to own his Visits The union betwixt Virtues is too strict and their assistances so reciprocal that That may be concluded to be no Virtue that forbids the exercise of any and does not rather facilitate than obstruct it Certainly 't is better be accused of Vanity than guilty of Relapses and if some Reputation must be lost 't is fitter that you should be dishonoured by other mens faults than God by yours for he is good enough to recompence his servants not only for being good but for their not being thought so for his sake and to make one day their Dishonour not only the Foil but the Purchase of their Glory I have spent the more Ink to carry away this Obstruction because I have observed it to be a Block at which the best natur'd Novices in Piety are the most prone to stumble the Devil our subtle Antagonist more Serpent far than that he tempted our First Parents in when he insinuated himself into our credulous Mother's easy Faith in which sly winding Creature he elected not a fitter Instrument than Emblem in the Scruple we have laboured to remove leaving his own to assume the borrowed habit of an Angel of Light in that Disguise to make Virtue clash with Grace and pervert Modesty into an Obstacle of Reformation Thus when Man was once fallen from Paradise even Cherubims intercepted his return unto the Tree of Life The Last Excuse Lastly replies the Swearer All this I confess to be very true but what would you have me to do Long time and custom have so habituated me to this Vice that I find the Impossibility of my subduing it as great as my willingness to leave it Answ Well I am very glad we have brought you to this pass 'T is then confessedly a sin and a great one The question therefore is Whether it be fitter for God to make it no sin or you not to make it yours and for him to be reconcil'd to the evil of its nature or for you to desist from its practice
Children who sure offer up Oaths as the First-Fruits to the Devil swear that can scarcely speak and see them perfect in their Father's Language before they are old enough to speak their Mother-Tongue But tho in the heinous Properties of this Vice I might find cause enough to justify more fierceness than I have exprest against it yet should I be extremely loth with many much better stor'd with Zeal than Charity to doom all those to Hell that through frailty or temptation sometimes let slip an Oath For so severe a Sentence may perhaps concern too many whose addictedness to other not to greater sins than ours makes often all the difference of our Guilts And who in spite of all their slips and stumbles by the way may by Repentance arrive safely at the Heavenly Canaan And therefore I shall conclude what has been said of Swearing with this sense of it That 't is a Sin too Heinous to excuse Neglect and too Venial if I may so speak justly to beget Despair A DISSUASIVE FROM CURSING For Mr. W. D. to Sir G. L. A DISSUASIVE FROM CURSING For Mr. W. D. to Sir G. L. SIR I Have too much Passion for your Person to have any Complaisance for your Faults and still have lov'd you at so high a rate that I had rather hazard the Loss of your Affection than decline any Proofs of the Reality of mine 'T is not that I am not as unwilling to employ Censure as I am confident you will be troubled to have necessitated it from me but all consider'd I have too much Friendship to have Courtship enough to let slip so fair an opportunity as your forc'd Conversation with Cleander to shew you in him the Deformity of a Vice from which I wish you were as free as from all other Crimes Certainly if Curses were as much the Badges of a Gentleman as he thinks them men would not guess him to be of a lower Order than that of Emperors And if the Devil were to fetch all those he bids him Take his Water-Dog would not have half so busy an Employment Hell would have cause to praise his Liberality and were not Satan still the Father of Lies he could not but acknowledge That none of the Seven Deadly Sins nor perhaps all together sent thither half so many If I thought Cleander would take it for a Dissuasion that I proved Cursing to be a Sin I could be as ready to bring Prohibitions of it out of Scripture as he is to transgress them The Prophet David imitated by the Apostle Paul makes it the Character of the wicked That his mouth is full of cursing And in another place That they curse inwardly And suitably to his own Doctrine when Shimei equalling his Curses to the Number of his steps rail'd at him with as many Imprecations as he deserved Blessings he did not to speak St. Peter's Language render evil for evil or railing for railing but only answers Let him curse it may be the Lord will look upon mine affliction and that the Lord will requite me good for his cursing this day Our Saviour commands us to bless even those that curse us nay bless them that persecute you Bless says St. Paul and curse not And to shew you that it was not only his Precept but his Practice being reviled says he we bless being persecuted we suffer it being defam'd we intreat Imagine then you hear the Apostle saying as in one place he does Be ye followers of me as I also am of Christ who says another Apostle when he was reviled reviled not again when he suffered he threatned not but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously And in effect when upon the Samaritan Clowns refusal to receive Christ the two Fiery-spirited Disciples desired leave to call down Fire from Heaven to consume those by the Fury of that active Element who refus'd Entertainment to him that created it our Saviour answers but with a Rebuke and telling them That they knew not what manner of spirit they were of If then in spite of Provocations we are enjoin'd to return Prayers for Maledictions sure we that are forbidden to retribute Curses are much more prohibited to lavish them And if we will take the pains to shrive and to look back into their Pedigree we may discern in them a Hereditary Guiltiness and shall find them sinful if I may so speak by Traduction they being but the Emanations and Sallies of a Temper extremely unconsonant to Christianity of which our Saviour makes Love the distinguishing Signature And St. Paul tells us That the end of the commandment is charity Of which in another place he gives this Character That Charity suffereth long and is kind doth not behave it self unseemly beareth all things is not easily provok'd with many other properties of the same nature Insomuch that St. John scruples not to affirm that if a man say I love God and hateth his brother he is a lyar as concorporating things inconsistent and uniting things distanter than the two Poles of Heaven And therefore when St. James speaking of the Tongue with a certain kind of wonder in these terms Therewith bless we God even the father and therewith curse we men that are made after the similitude of God Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing he adds My brethren these things ought not so to be And surely too the Gospel teaches us that these Assassinates and Murders of the Heart for being Bloodless are not therefore Guiltless But granting the sin to be as venial as indeed 't is heinous and that by using Curses men did not merit them yet certainly the Multitude of Cleander's Faults would give them that Danger that is pretended to be wanting to their Nature and he that considers that those little drops of Rain which single seem but so many Liquid Atoms do often united by their Confluence swell into Torrents nay sometimes into Deluges will easily believe that Curses cannot but be extremely criminal in that Cleander that curses as if he were an Inhabitant of Mount Ebal and who is so resolved not to keep the Devil's Counsel by concealing any impious suggestions that were but his Prayers as frequent as his Curses he would seem to obey literally that qualified Injunction of the Apostle of praying without ceasing I might add that in most of these Imprecations God's Sacred Name being clearly taken in vain renders these Ebalites guilty of the breach as well of the Second Commandment of the First as of the great Commandment of the Second Table unless they will justify themselves from that Crime by the owning of a worse I mean demonstrate That they dâ—d not employ God's Name to no purpose by confessing they employ'd it to a bad one And now this last Consideration leads me to that of the Unreasonableness of Cursing For it is not a fit thing that upon every little Accident that
Cleander's vex'd at the Creatures of God must instantly change Masters and devolve to the Devil Were it not very just that God should be the Executioner of all the rash Decrees his pettish Passion makes and his Creator's Power should have no other Employment but to run on Errands at the Moody Gentleman's beck often repugnant to his Justice and ever to his Mercy Nay how often has Cleander in his Passion wish'd things whose Accomplishment himself confesses would have made him miserable And is it then either the part of a Good Man to make Wishes that are unlawful or for a Wise Man to frame Desires of which he need repent the Grant One Imprecation amongst the rest Cleander's very ready in which with as little Caution as he commonly observes I would not have pronounc'd for as many Kingdoms as he has us'd it times and that 's The Devil take me For should God as we are sure he may and know not but that he will give the Devil leave to take him at his word in what a case were he And what Curb shall we henceforward think strong enough to bridle his Corruption when what to the wickedest is the greatest Terror he makes his wish There was some years since in Geneva an Italian both by Extraction and Humour who riding a handsome Mare in a solitary Angle was by the Devil seduc'd to stallion her himself The Fact once done the Horror of a Crime that made him more a Beast than that on which he acted it transported him so far as to make him give himself to the Devil if ever after he relaps'd But some while after forgetting both his Conscience and the condition of his Vow he was fatally tempted to repeat his former Beastliness in the self-same place which he had scarce compleated before the Devil appearing to him visibly remembers him of his forgotten Promise and claims the Forfeiture The trembling Wretch to avoid the being hurried away instantly from the Hell he felt to that he fear'd compounds with the Devil to resign him his Soul at the expiration of a limited Reprieve But before that time came to be effluxt it pleased God to visit both himself and the place of his Residence with the Plague which rowzing his sear'd and lethargick Conscience forc'd him to expressions of his Anguish unusual enough to make his Companions inquisitive into the Cause which having fully and circumstantially confest he was after his Recovery upon that Evidence accus'd of having carnally abus'd a Beast and having made a Compact with the Devil which latter though upon a Repentance suitable to his Sin God's Mercy did disannul yet the Justice of the Magistrate did for the former Crime condemn him to a Death he richly had deserved and penitently endured This Story I thought not impertinent to instance in to teach us how dangerous and unsafe it is to present that to the Devil for which Christ shed his Blood and with more wariness than Cleander can pretend to to offer that to one that is greedy to snatch and therefore surely willing to accept that which the whole business of Religion is to defend and rescue from his Attempts The Story it self may teach us that though we are never to despair of God's Mercy we are as seldom to provoke his Justice I have given it you in the very Words of our Friend Mr. Boyle who had it upon the place from an excellent Divine of that Republick to whom the Delinquent himself confest it as to him that was assign'd to comfort and assist him at his Death And the Instances are not unfrequent in the most credited Authors of those whose Imprecations God has punish'd by granting them But I had almost forgot to mention one opportunity to which the Devil is indebted for a vast number of Cleander's Curses and that 's his Gaming for the least Frown of Chance upon him then gives Fire to whole Volleys of Curses against Fortune if at least they deserve not a more heinous Title than barely that of Curses who in severer mens Opinions are guilty of an at least Implicite Blaspheming since Solomon does discreetly affirm That all these cross and happy Lucks at Play are not rashly or designlesly shuffled by a blind Hazard but are dispensed by an All-ruling Providence I determine not here Whether these Words of the Wise Man according to the receiv'd Opinion of Divines may be extended to an absolute Sentence of Condemnation against all Games of Hazard but this I know that not to insist on that Injunction of God to the Jews Be circumspect and make no mention of the names of other gods neither let it be heard out of thy mouth it is very unfit that under the Sunshine of Christianity we should build or repair the ruin'd Altars of depos'd Chance and acknowledge a blind Deity that under the abused name of Fortune Fools anciently were pleas'd to create a Goddess and sinners now dissemble to mistake for some such thing that they may unreproved controul and censure those Heavenly Dispensations their proud and peevish natures are displeased with I know that many unforeseen Accidents which the Ignorant Vulgar do impute to Fortune are by God in the Scriptures ascribed to Providence And therefore you must give me leave both to take notice of and disapprove that ungrateful expression of our Language wherein to justify our Unthankfulness for the Benefits we have received we use to call God's Blessing to a man in his outward Possessions his Fortune as if our Estates were Gifts blindly cast on us by the rash Profuseness of that fond Deity and not the Emanations of God's Bounty and Presents of his Providence Old Jacob's Gratitude speaketh another strain and will not mention his Wealth though never so justly the Wages of his prosper'd Industry without acknowledging it for the Gift of God But since this much-abused Name of Fortune has presented it self in my way I dare not take leave of it till I have express'd a desire that men would be more wary how they defame her lest through the sides of Fortune they affront Providence If Fortune under the common Notion had fee'd me to be her Advocate I should alledge That Gamesters of all others have the least Justice to complain of her Disfavours since the Success of the one absolutely depending upon the Losses of the other they themselves reduce Fortune to a Necessity of disobliging some of them by rendring it impossible for her to content them all And I would add That what we fondly call her Inconstancy when she sometimes forsakes those she once smil'd on is much more properly to be ascribed to the Justice of her Goodness and the Extensiveness of her Affection to men since seeing she is not able to make them all compleatly happy at once at least she endeavours to make them fortunate by turns and for some Intervals of time Nor is it her Fickleness that in pursuance of this impartial Love she seems to