A SERMON Preached before The Artillery Company OF LONDON September 15. 1680. At St. Mary Le Bow and at their Request Published By JOHN SCOTT Rector of St. Peter Poor London LONDON Printed for John Baker and to be sold by him at the three Pigeons in S. Pauls Church-yard and by Walter Kettilby at the Bishops Head 1680. To the Honourable Sir Joseph Sheldon Knight and Alderman President of the Artillery Company Sir William Prichard Knight and Alderman Vice-President Sir Matthew Andrews Treasurer As also to STEWARDS The Right Honourable Marq ss of Worcester Earl of Shrewsbury Earl of Mulgrave Earl of Berkley The Right Worshipful and Worshipful S r. Jonathan Raymond S r. Simon Lewis S r. Benjamin Newland Cap t. Benjamin Harvey And to the whole Court of Assistants Field-Officers Captains and Gentlemen professing and exercising Arms in that Renowned and Honourable Society Right Honourable c. THE design of this Discourse is to wipe off one of the lewdest Calumnies that was ever cast upon our holy Religion viz. That it is apt to render men Cowards and to unsit them for great and hazardous undertakings How successfully I have effected it you have obliged me by this Publication to leave to the judgment of the world which I assure you I do so much reverence that had not your Commands and the many Examples of Obedience before me obliged me to it I should never have presumed to concern it in the cause especially now when it is so continually Harassed with an Epidemical Itch and Licence of scribling and through the numerous Appeals that are every day made to it is forced to keep Term without any Vacation But since you will needs have it published I must crave leave to tell you that you are finely drawn in for by your approbation you have made it your own and are become accountable for all the faults of it So that now you are not only obliged in honour as you are Souldiers to shelter it as it is a helpless thing that flees to you for Protection but also in your own defence as you are Wise men to vindicate it as it is a retainer to your good opinion this you get by obliging men to appear before the world under your Patronage But I would advise our carping Censurers to have a care what they do it is a daring act to affront the Iudgment of an Artillery Company and however he that doth it may succeed he will be sure to come off with this scarr upon his reputation that he hath a great deal of Courage indeed but very little Wit And now that I have fenced it about as well as I can with your Authority I humbly submit to your perusal and remain Right Honourable c. Your most obliged and most obedient Servant Iohn Scott A SERMON Preached before The Artillery Company PROVERBS xxviii 1. The wicked flee when no man pursues but the righteous are bold as a Lion THe two great Ingredients that go into the composition of an accomplished Souldier are Courage and good Conduct As for the latter of these it is the peculiar subject of your Profession and falls not under the cognizance of our spiritual Tacticks nor was it ever well for the world when the Pulpits which were designed for Oracles of the Gospel of Peace rung with Battels and Alarms and that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that soft and still Trumpet of Meekness and Charity and Obedience which should sound from hence was out-noised and drowned with the thunder of Drums and the roaring of Canons Sure I am in our Commission we have no Instructions to put on any Armour but the whole Armour of God to list any Volunteers but for Heaven or proclaim any War but between men and their Lusts from which all other wars and fightings do proceed And being of so distant a Profession we may very well be excused if we understand not the language of your Discipline if we cannot talk in Rank and File and Flank and Rear our Discourses with Military Allusions in which it is as easie for us to be absurd and ridiculous as for a fresh-water Souldier that being to make a Speech to a company of Sailers will needs interlard his Harangue with terms of Navigation Wherefore in reverence to your skill and judgment in your own Profession I shall chuse to leave Hercules his Club in his own hands who knows much better than I how to wield and manage it it being in my opinion not altogether so decent for a Divine to read Lectures of War before Hannibal But as for that other Ingredient of a good Souldier viz. Courage and Resolution it being a Christian vertue and as such necessary not only though more especially for you but for all others who intend to continue faithful Souldiers under the common Captain of our Salvation it is upon this account a very proper argument both for the Speaker and the Hearers and as sutable to the Place as it is to the Occasion and therefore in compliance with both I have chosen this Text in which you have Cowardize and Courage resolved into their first principles The wicked flee when no man pursues but the righteous is bold as a Lion In these words you have all mankind distinguished by their proper Characters into two sorts The first is the Wicked under which name all bad men of whatsoever denomination are comprehended whether they be irreligious in their belief profane in their manners or hypocritical in their designs and intentions and the Character here by which they are all distinguished is that they flee when no man pursues i. e. they are of such base and timorous spirits that they are ready to run away from the least shadow of danger though it hath nothing of substance or reality in it and being haunted with an ill-boding mind flee before the spectres of their own fancies Which words are not to be so understood as if every wicked man were actually a Coward for that contradicts experience and we know there is a sort of valour which naturally springs out of the very crasis and temper of mens bodies which is nothing else but a certain impetus or brisk fermentation of the bloud and spirits and this is common to bad men with good accordingly as they happen into a warm and vigorous constitution The meaning therefore is that they are cowards in their causes that their wickedness naturally tends to effeminate them and will certainly do it if it be not strongly counter-influenced by the vigour of their bodily temper The second sort into which mankind is here distinguished is the Righteous by which phrase the Scripture is wont to express all good men in general and that for very good reason because all instances of goodness whatsoever are in strictness acts of righteousness either to God or to our selves or to our neighbours so that justice or righteousness is the common point whence all the lines of our duty are drawn and wherein they
all concenter Now of this sort of men the proper Character is that they are as bold as a Lion which words do not import every good man to be actually a Cordelion to be as bold and stout-hearted as that couragious Animal is before whom all the beasts of the Forest do tremble for as some bad men are valiant by nature so are some good timorous and faint-hearted and it is a very hard thing to cure by discipline that which is the natural defect of constitution This expression therefore must be understood in the same mitigated sense as the former the righteous are bold i. e. their righteousness tends to make them so it hath such an animating vertue in it as will if it be not over-powered by an invincible timorousness of temper convert a Poultroon into a Hero and imbolden the meanest spirited to confront the grimmest danger and charge it with an undaunted resolution For thus the Scripture usually speaks of men as if they actually were what they have great cause and reason to be thus in Isa. lvii 20. The wicked are like the troubled Sea when it cannot rest whose waters cast up mire and dirt i. e. they are continually agitated with their own restless thoughts just like the Sea with its reciprocal Tides Not that this is always actually their condition but that they have always just reason to be so So Prov. xvi 3. Righteous lips are the delight of Kings and they love him that speaketh right which is not to be so understood as if in fact it were always so for experience too often evinces the contrary but the meaning is that Kings above all men have reason to delight in men of truth and honesty and fidelity And so in the Text The wicked flee when no man pursues that is a wicked man hath great reason to be timorous for he hath all the moral causes of baseness and cowardize within his breast But the Righteous is bold as a Lion i. e. he hath reason to be so his mind being inspired with the most pregnant principles of a brave and undaunted resolution The words being thus explained the sense of them resolves into this Proposition That wickedness naturally tends to dishearten and cowardize men but righteousness and goodness to encourage and imbolden them The truth of which I might easily demonstrate by an induction of particulars were it proper to draw a List of those ancient Heroes whose names are renowned in the Memoires of Fame the greatest part of whom were as illustrious for their Piety and Goodness as for their Valour and great Atchievements and who as the Historian observes of the ancient Romans conquered much more by the Charms of their Vertues than by the terrour of their Swords But I am not at leisure to tell Stories and therefore for the confirmation of the Argument in hand I shall endeavour as briefly as I can to represent to you what those things are which do naturally contribute to the making men couragious and to shew you that they are all to be found in Righteousness and their contraries in Wickedness which if I can make good I doubt not will abundantly convince you that the best way to be good Souldiers is to be good men and that though you may furnish your selves with Art and Conduct in the field yet you can never acquire true courage and bravery till you have been trained and exercised under the Banner of Jesus Now to make men truly valiant and couragious these six things are necessary First That they be free and within their own command Secondly That they be well hardened to endure difficulties and inconveniences Thirdly That they be well satisfied in the nature of their actions and undertakings Fourthly That they have a hopeful prospect of being well seconded Fifthly That they have a probable security of good success Sixthly That they be born up with the expectation of a glorious reward all which causes of courage are to be found in righteousness and their direct contraries in a sinful and wicked course of life I. One cause that very much contributes to the making men couragious is their being free and within their own command for slavery naturally depresses the mind and by accustoming men to a severe and rigorous treatment habituates them to fear and pusillanimity It is no new observation that Slaves are generally Cowards of the truth of which we have many woful instances in the world for how many Nations are there who were heretofore renowned for their courage and puissance when they enjoyed their liberties and properties under gentle and benign Governments that are now utterly unmanned and dispirited by oppression and slavery But now a righteous man can never be enslaved because he hath gotten the victory of himself and is his own Master he hath trained up his passions to a severe obedience to his reason and so has all his motions under his own command and it being in his power at least in a good measure not to love any thing but what he hath good reason to love not to desire any thing but what he hath fair hope to enjoy not to delight in any thing but what is in his power to possess and keep it being I say in his power to be affected as he pleases and to regulate his own motions according as he thinks fit and reasonable he may chuse whether he will be a Coward or no and should the grimmest danger stare him in the face yet supposing him to have such a command of himself as not to desire what he cannot have not to dread what he cannot prevent not to grieve and vex at what he cannot avoid he may throw down the Gauntlet to it and defie it to do its worst Now one great office of righteousness is to do right to a mans self to rescue him from the tyranny of his Passions and reduce him under the command of his reason and the more successful it is in this great undertaking the more valiant and magnanimous it must necessarily render us for the more a mans Passions are subdued to his Reason the more presence of mind he will have in all dangers and difficulties and the more able his Reason will be to counsel and advise him and to fortifie his heart with brave considerations So that when a man hath made any considerable progress in the conquest of himself he will be so much in his own power that no danger will be able to divide him from himself or scare him from the Post of his reason and while Death is whizzing about his ears and Bloud and Slaughter Terrour and Confusion are round about him his mind will be invironed with invincible thoughts and guarded with such puissant considerations that no outward force will be able to approach it And thus freedom you see from the slavery of passion which is an effect of righteousness is an effectual cause of courage and magnanimity But in wickedness a great part of this slavery
Canons whilst they are spitting fire and roaring out destruction these are such rude and scurvy things as will never be endured by a soft and delicate Epicure III. Another cause that mightily contributes to the making men couragious is their being well-satisfied with themselves and with the nature of their actions and undertakings for our Understanding being our leading Faculty the Eye that is to direct the Feet of our practice and to guide and mannage all our voluntary motions it is impossible that whilst that doth either disapprove or doubt of our actions we should ever be able to act with steadiness and assurance for while a man acts with a misgiving mind and that which should be the guide of his Actions is dissatisfied with his way he walks like a benighted Traveller in a dangerous Road and is fain to feel out his steps and tread gingerly and cautiously lest he should stumble into a Bog or a Precipice and so being accustomed to act with fear and anxiety his courage dissolves and his heart grows creeping and timorous But now the righteous man acts with the full consent and approbation of his mind and has no by-ways from the Road of Reason and Conscience but keeping strait forward as he doth in the plain tracts of eternal goodness he treads firmly and boldly being secure of the ground he goes upon and is neither ashamed nor afraid of his own actions which being such as his best and purest Reason approves have the chearful Euges and applauses of his Conscience continually echoing and resounding after them and this animates his courage and invigorates his heart with a generous confidence and assurance in the sense of this he can smile upon misfortune bid defiance to danger and bear up his head in the lowest condition For as long as his own mind doth neither threaten nor accuse him he can retire into himself when he is driven out of all other retreats and there live merry and secure in despite of the world and while he can house himself in the sense of his own vertue and innocence he hath an impregnable shelter against all storms from without well therefore might the Apostle call it The breast-plate of righteousness Eph. vi 14. it being that which secures us against all outward violence and renders our minds invulnerable by the smartest blows of misfortune But so long as a man lives wickedly he can never be satisfied with himself because in the whole course of his actions he contradicts his own Reason and offers violence to those eternal Laws of righteousness and goodness which are inseparably interwoven with his Faculties so that whenever he comes to appear before himself and answer for his Actions at his own Tribunal his own mind explodes and condemns him and like a false Renegado as he is from the natural Principles of his Reason he is fain to run the Gantelope through the terrors and reproaches of his own Conscience which he hath no other way to escape but by running out of himself and taking Sanctuary in the crowd of his Lusts or secular affairs and diversions for as Tertullian observes Omne malum aut timore aut pudore natura perfudit Nature hath poured fear or shame upon the face of all wickedness both which do naturally intimidate our minds and for different reasons incline us to run away Shame that we may not be seen and Fear that we may not be taken When therefore men have always these two Furies at their heels haunting and pursuing them throughout the whole course of their Actions what wretched Cowards must they be when any outward danger or calamity approaches them When all is smooth and prosperous without they may shelter themselves there from the persecutions of their Conscience and when all is calm and serene within they may shelter themselves there from the persecutions of the world But when both are bestormed whither can they flee When Danger and Destruction are drawn up in battel-array against us from without and we are alarm'd at the same time with the shame and terrour of a guilty Conscience from within so that we are charged all at once Front and Rear and can neither go on nor retreat without cutting our way through horrour and confusion This is enough to disarm the stoutest Resolution and sink the courage of a Lion into a panick dread and desperation IV. Another cause which very much contributes to the making men couragious is their having a hopeful prospect of being well seconded for when a man apprehends that he is left all alone in the midst of danger or that he must encounter it with unequal Forces that he is not back'd with sufficient Auxiliaries or that the advantage of Strength and Power lies on the other side it must needs be a mighty allay to his courage Now the greatest Power that we can either dread or depend on is Gods and therefore according as we apprehend him to be engaged either for or against us our courage must necessarily rise or sink For the apprehensions of God and his Providence are so natural to us and do cleave so close to our minds that though with our Jovial Airs we may sometimes lull them asleep yet the least alarm of danger usually rouses and awakes them and puts our mind upon the enquiry whether he be for or against us and according to the answer we receive from that bosome Oracle our good or bad Conscience we are naturally confident or afraid Now Righteousness being the Crown and Glory of Gods own Nature and that for which he infinitely loves and esteems himself can never fail wheresoever it resides to engage him of its side When therefore we are so fully assured that the righteous Lord loves Righteousness upon the testimony of our Conscience that we are sincerely righteous we cannot but conclude him to be our Ally and Confederate and consequently that our Interest is his and his Power ours and when I have his all-seeing Eye to direct and his all-powerful Arm to assist and second me when I have all the Attributes of his infinite Nature pitching their Tents like Guardian Angels about me and my head is covered in the day of Battel with the impenetrable Helmet of his Providence with what an undaunted resolution must such a persuasion inspire me We have a late and woful instance among our selves of the courage with which a false Persuasion that God was with them did animate and inspire men when they were wont to say Grace to their bloudy Banquets and rise from their knees with an Enthusiastick assurance and so run on to the Battel flusht with powerful incomes and manifestations of Victory When the flaming Zealots fell on with Psalms in their mouths and chased the huffing Hectors and notwithstanding the disadvantage of the bad Poetry and the worse Cause the Psalms proved too hard for the Oaths and Blasphemies When therefore upon firm and rational Principles upon turning their eyes from God to themselves upon
consists for in this state men are intirely governed by Passion and Appetite as for their Reason that sits by as an idle Spectator of the brutish Scene of their actions and intermeddles no farther in it than to censure and condemn it having no other office allowed it but to cater for their Appetites and enable them to play the Brutes with greater luxury and rellish and being under the command of such Masters as these we are out of our own power and cannot dispose of our selves as we please for either our Passions and Appetites must be governed by our Reason or by the goods and evils that are without us and if these govern us we are not our own men but do live in subjection to a Foreign Power and we must be what the things without us will have us and not what our own mind and reason Our mind must turn about according as the wind blows and like water we must take our form from the Vessels we are poured into and when the passions and appetites that over-rule us are thus over-ruled by the chances and contingencies without us how is it possible we should be truly couragious For now when any danger looks us in the face we can have no present relief from our reason having all along disused our selves to consult and advise with it and so every alarm of danger from without will presently raise a tumult within and put the whole soul into an uproar in which the mind is left naked of all relief and utterly abandoned of those wise and brave thoughts which should guard and defend it And a mans thoughts and considerations being thus defeated and put to the rout he must either sink under his danger or charge headlong upon it fool-hardily or desperately for now he hath no other courage to support him but either that of a Mastiff that fights because his bloud is in a brisk fermentation or that of a Rat that flees in his enemies face because he is desperate of escaping II. Another cause that mightily contributes to the making men couragious is their being well hardened to endure difficulties and inconveniences for how distant soever a state of softness and delicacy is from that of slavery yet it concenters with it in the effect and by a different quality produces the same base and unmanly temper For as Slavery cows the spirit by rigorous and servile usage and suppresses and stifles all its generous emotions so softness and delicacy doth so melt and dissolve it that it hath not the firmness to resist any violent impressions but is ready to shrink at the least touch of evil or appearance of danger having been accustomed to nothing but pleasure and wrapt up in ease and voluptuousness and hence we see that though the valour and courage of Nations be very much owing to the temper of the Climes in which they are situated yet by the exercise of temperance and severe vertue the Inhabitants of the most effeminate Climes have sometimes improved themselves into the most Heroick and Magnanimous of all Nations as the Romans and Persians for instance As on the contrary those who by the temperament of their native Air and Country are naturally the most hardy and couragious have many times by their dissolute manners been broken and dispirited into the most wretched coward as the English for instance who though they have been ever remarked for a People of a daring and undaunted genius have yet sometimes been so melted by their own luxuries as that they became preys to every dog that hunted them But now Righteousness including in it those severe vertues of Industry and Patience Temperance and Mortification of our appetites doth effectually contribute to the confirming and hardening the tempers of men and the taking off that softness and delicacy of spirit which renders them so tender and impressive so that by exercising our selves in these manly vertues by inuring our selves to an active life and to bear evils and injuries with a brave indifferency by reducing our Appetites to the measures of Nature and moderately Disciplining them with fasting and abstinence we shall by degrees be so steeled against hardships and difficulties that that which makes effeminate minds to flinch and startle will scarce be able to make any impression upon us For as the light of the Sun and the freshness of the Air which are apt to offend those that are tender and sickly are not only tolerable but delightful to men of hail and vigorous Constitutions So many of those little hardships which do so trouble and incommode the tender and delicate are so far from disturbing the patient and temperate that they only refresh and divert them And it is such a mind only that is fit for a Souldier that will enable him to undergo the glorious toyls and fatigues of War to endure a hard March in the day and to sleep upon a harder Pillow at night to follow Victory through Heat and Cold Thirst and Famine Sweat and Bloud and seize and pluck it from the Arms of hazards and difficulties wherewith it is compassed and surrounded These are things that require a firm a hardy mind that hath been trained up in severity and is grown strong and hail and vigorous in the exercise of a manly vertue But now Wickedness softens and dissolves the temper by letting loose the desires and appetites of our flesh to Sensuality and Voluptuousness to Rioting and Drunkenness to Chambering and Wantonness to Pride and Vanity to Gluttony and Idleness and all manner of effeminate delicacy and dissoluteness which are such Vices as will emasculate the bravest mind and by degrees spoil the strain of the most valourous Nations and were I to prescribe for the cowardizing of a Nation it should be the Boul of Intemperance the Bed of Sloth and a Dalilahs Lap which are Charms sufficient to effeminate a Hero and metamorphose a Lion into a timorous Hare For when men have been trained up in excess and voluptuousness and their minds are contempered and naturalized to it the least hardship or difficulty will be terrible to them so that if ever they should be forced out of the Lap of Pleasure into the Lists of War ill Quarters and a hard March will kill them without a Battel and the least sense of pain or appearance of danger will presently strike their spirits and air and turn all their bloud into a trembling jelly If the business of Souldiers were only to wear a Scarf or a Feather or to swelter an hour or two in Buff if they were to fight in a Field of Down and to spill no other bloud but that of the Grape there is no doubt but the School of Epicurus would make an incomparable Nursery for the Camp But to march under a load of Armour all day and then to freez to the ground at night to sleep with Drums in their ears and be waked with Alarms to run on upon Spears and charge at the Mouths of