good when it is conformable to that Rule which is the measure of its goodness namely God's Will revealed unto us in his Word which if it condemn an Action no Intention how good soever can warrant it 2. That it be duly Circumstantiated That is that all necessary circumstances be found in it For bonum ex integra causa malum ex quolibet defectu A thing may be evil upon one circumstance but it cannot be good but upon All and every partial defect in the Object End Manner or other such-like circumstances is sufficient to render the whole action bad but to make it good there must be an universal concurrence of all requisite conditions in every of these respects These principles being taken for granted as I think no good Christian will question the truth of them the Conclusion is clear and evident That no Intention how good soever in it self can make any Action good where either the Matter thereof is bad that is Repugnant to the revealed Will of God or it fails of those necessary circumstances that must concur to its goodness And the main Reason hereof is Because no good purpose can alter the nature of Good and Evil It can neither alter the nature nor change the degree of Sin so as to make it less in one Man than in another because the nature of Good and Evil depends not on Man but on the Will of God And the differences between Good and Evil and the several degrees of both doe spring from such Conditions as are intrinsecal to the things themselves which no outward Respects much less men's Opinions can vary nor sanctifie the use of them What is evil in some circumstances may be good in other but if the thing be wholly bad in it self it can never be made good till there come a cause as great to change the Nature as to make it Nor is sin de numero eligibilium It can neither be chosen for its own sake nor in reference to any farther end E malis minimum may hold true in Evils of pain but in Evils of fault or sin E malis nullum is the Rule For as there is neither form nor beauty in sin that we should desire it so neither any good use we can put it to For that Actio peccati non est Ordinabilis ad bonum finem is the common Resolution of the Schools 'T is true indeed that God can and many times doth order the very sins of Men to a good end but that is beyond our skill nor must we commit any though accidentally and in the event it may possibly turn to his glory We are not to tell a lye although through it the truth of God may more abound to his glory as St. Paul speaks Rom. 3. 7. And the reason is because God Himself whose Will ought to be our Rule hath expresly forbid us so to doe Will ye speak wickedly for God or talk deceitfully for Him says Job ch 13. 7. Will He borrow Patronage to his Cause from falsehood Or will he be glorified by those Sins which he forbids and abhorrs I find indeed a sort of people in Esay 66. 5. who when they hated their Brethren and cast them out for God's name sake either out of their company as not fit to be convers'd with by their lesser Excommunication or out of their Synagogue as deserving to be cut off from the Congregation of the Faithfull by their greater one could wipe off all their crime by saying The Lord be glorified But what says God Himself of them They have desired their own ways and their Soul delighteth in their Abominations They did evil before mine eye and chose that in which I delighted not ver 3 4. That is they did their own Will not mine and pretended to advance my Glory in such a way as themselves fancied but I never allow'd of God will as soon part with his Glory as have it thus promoted With Him it is much the same thing to be made the End as the Author of Sin and whether we doe good to a bad end as the Pharisees did or evil to a good one with these in the Text we are equally guilty in the sight of God who will be sure to punish us even for our good but unwarrantable Intentions As He did King Saul for reserving the best of the flocks of Ameleck which he had devoted to utter destruction though it were for a Sacrifice And King Uzzah for putting forth his hand to support the tottering Ark out of a very good intention as he thought because that was no part of his but of the Levites office Does St. Paul justifie himself for having persecuted the Church of God though with a very good intention So far was he from that that he calls himself the chiefest of sinners for the Commissions of that time wherein he says he served God with a pure conscience and did what he thought in his heart he was obliged to doe His good conscience could not then in his account sanctifie his actings nor make his bloudy hands undefiled 'T was blasphemy and persecution for all 't was Conscience I was before says he a blasphemer and a persecuter and injurious v. 13. So that a conscientious or which is here the same thing a well-meaning Man may for all that be the chiefest of sinners nor will it avail any one to shroud his soul actions under handsome intentions What more abominable than Idolatry or what more acceptable service to God than to destroy it And yet those Christians who in a preposterous Zeal and as they thought a good Intention brake down Heathen Images and deservedly suffered for it were never thought fit to be received by the Church into its Martyrology The persons here had as good a pretence as could be it was to doe God service What better Intention And yet they excommunicated and killed Christ's Disciples What Action could be worse Are they thankt for their pains Nay are they not therefore charged by our Lord with gross Ignorance with not knowing the Father nor Himself This may suffice to shew the Impiety of this opinion That a present Evil may be done in prospect of a future Good Give me leave now in a word to shew you also the Mischief of it the bad Influence it has on practice It is impossible for me to tell you what destruction it hath brought and daily brings upon the Earth How many Churches it hath devoured how many Countries depopulated how it hath filled the World with bloud and rapine and must of necessity still confound it by begetting and for ever perpetuating religious feuds and quarrels among Christians For while each Party thinks he has God on his side and that he has as good a right to his Opinion as he that opposeth it hath to his which is a strong persuasion that he is in the right till he be convinc'd that he is in the wrong There can be no end of
design and management thereof did at his Examination confess That his principal motive to this villanous attempt was an Excommunication thundred out at first by Pius Quintus against Queen Elizabeth and kept still on foot by Sixtus Quintus which sticking on King James oblig'd him in conscience to attempt the murthering of his Sovereign in obedience to that Bull. And how did he excuse that Fact Was it not by his pious intention to promote God's glory and the good of the Catholick Church A fit cover for such a foul fact but commonly made use of by such as himself was in justification of the like wicked practices St. Paul we see hath expresly doom'd all those that doe so to no less than eternal Damnation But those men and he are not agreed in this point For should his doctrine be good what would then become of all their Piae Fraudes Feigned Legends and Miracles Indices Expurgatorii Equivocations and mental Reservations Allowance of common Stews for the preventing unnatural Lusts that is of one Sin to hinder another For which and the like the Catholick defence is the Catholick cause and men's pious Intentions which in case they should prove never so faulty yet a little rectifying of them will rectifie all that is amiss in them A piece of spiritual Chymistry this of late Invention which can extract the finest gold out of the basest metal to guild over all the Villanies which the heart of man can devise or his hand execute I know not whether any can really think that by such vile artifices they can doe God any service But I am apt to believe that they rather think to doe themselves one and that 't is the same humane policy not to give it a worse name and not Religion that acts such men which did these persons in the Text. But if any men do in good earnest think they doe God any service thereby It is such a one as our Lord Himself here flatly tells them neither his Father nor He will ever thank them for But since it will be in vain for me to tell them so who will not take Christ's own word for it I shall turn my discourse to you who now hear me and for the preventing any such dangerous errour in you leave some few Rules of caution and direction with you and so conclude 1. And the first shall be concerning your Zeal That you be as carefull and industrious to employ it in a good as some do theirs in a bad cause but with this proviso That your Zeal be a right and well-temper'd one A right one it will be if it be alway in a good thing And well-temper'd if it be according to knowledge Rom. 10. 2. St. Paul's rules both If your Zeal be not in a good thing it will doe the same mischief that fire does out of its proper place the hearth And if it have not light to see its way by it will prove very dangerous company in the dark and lead you into bogs and precipices There is nothing so pernicious to man as a blind frantick zeal which instead of eating them up who are possess'd with it eates up God's people as if they were bread Nor is there any thing so injurious to God it being common for people in their indiscreet and furious zeal for God to run farthest from Him and either to break the two Tables of his Law with Moses or at least to dash them one against the other And can we think they should ever doe God service who know not what they doe themselves May not he say to such Zealots what King Achish did of David 1 Sam. 21. 15. Have I need of mad men And does not too much ignorant zeal much more than too much learning make men so Surely there is no madness to the religious one which like the Devil in the possessed man in the Gospel casts them sometimes into the fire and sometimes into the water that is into contrary excesses and extravagances scattering mischief where-ever it goes turning the World into a Chaos and the Church into an Acheldama while Melancholy is made the seat of Religion by some and Frenzy by others what can follow thence but confusion And therefore we ought to have a special care that our Zeal be guided by knowledge and discretion lest we over-shoot our selves with these men here and when we put Christ's servants out of our Synagogues and kill them too into the bargain we become so foolish as with them also to think we shall thereby doe God service 2. Our next caution must be that we be well assured of the soundness of the Principles we act by What a dangerous thing it is to be herein mistaken our Saviour tells us Matt. 6. 23. If the light that is in thee be darkness how great is that darkness that is If thy mind and conscience be defiled if thy Judgment be corrupt how great and dangerous will those mistakes prove that mislead thee For the farther thou shalt go on in thy wrong way the more shalt thou be out of the right one And when thou art once out it will be impossible for thee to get into it again so long as those false Guides which are as so many Satans standing at thy right-hand still prompting and tempting thee to evil shall remain in thee He that commits a sin by principles hath nothing to retrieve him from his errour while he retains such principles and as long as he is under the power and guidance of ill ones they will not only dangerously expose but highly encourage him to evil by turning the greatest crimes into merit and making him hope to gain Heaven by such practices as directly lead him to Hell The Physicians maxime That an error in the first concoction is never to be mended holds as true in Religion as in Nature And therefore it highly concerns us that our first choice here be right lest we set out amiss and offend God most even there where we think most to please Him 3. The last Use I shall draw from my Text is an Use of Direction or Tryal how to judge of the Truth and Goodness of a Religion and that is by the Mildness and Harmlesness thereof This is the proper Chraracter of true Christian Religion It has all of the Dove and nothing of the Vulture in it That which breathes nothing but Curses and Slaughters to be sure is not of God the Father nor of His Son I think there is no true Member of our Church that understands his Religion well and the nature of it but would be willing to submit it to this Test But I can scarce believe that they who talk so much of the Cruelty of ours would be content to put the Truth of their Religion upon this issue We need but compare Q. Mary and Queen Elizabeth's Reigns to see which of the two Religions they were of was the mildest No fire and faggot to be
Vertue to its conservation and that not only by a divine benediction but by a natural efficiency Let us then cast up our several mischiefs and see how many of them are owing to our vertues whether Temperance did ever drown our parts or Chastity make us roar under the Chirurgeon's hand whether the sleeps of sober men be not sweet and their appetites constant whether the symmetry of Passions in the meek their freedome from the rage of them with that admirable harmony and sweetness of content do not by making them chearfull render them healthy too Whereas the contrary of these do manifestly impair our bodies waste our estates and ruine our reputations For what are the fruits of Intemperance but Collicks Surfeits Aches and the like Who hath woe and sorrow redness of eyes contention and wounds but the Drunkard What vast expence doth the Glutton put himself to not to allay his hunger but to provoke it How dearly doth he buy new wants when a small cost would relieve nature how much is he at to oppress it And how does he many times pay more than one Farm for a Fever And yet when all this is done the best that can be expected is that the feast must be fasted of Whereas it often proves worse than so that a horrid potion must purge off the too full goblet and it shall cost as much to remove the Surfeit as to procure it and yet after all this charge and trouble the Man can scarce hope to be so well as he was before it such enemies are Vices to our health and they are no less to our reason For whereas Vertues improve our understandings by subduing our lusts and moderating our passions These fully and darken our minds and by clogging our spirits render them unapt for higher and nobler acts of reason Even the most refined ones such as envy hatred pride and malice tincture the mind with false colours and so fill it with prejudice and undue apprehensions of things Let experience here give in its verdict and if it be so that Vertue preserves Nature and Vice destroys it they cannot possibly be the same things such different effects arguing a manifest contrariety in their causes And were it not so were not the opposition here very natural I know not how natural Men without any help of divine Revelation should by the mere Light of their reason be able so clearly to discern and so exactly to make it out as some of them have done A task well performed by Tully in his Offices Et de finibus bonorum malorum wherein the several bounds of moral good and evil are so precisely set out as they have been by some ancient Philosophers especially Aristotle that Reason and Scripture do herein little differ Non aliud natura aliud sapientia dicit Nature and Revelation speak the same things and we may well say with Tertullian Tam facilè pronuncias quà m Christiano necesse est Reason here utters baptized truth and each man's Soul is Christian And therefore the same Father in his Book De Testimonio Animae draws such a plain Confession of these Truths from a Heathen Soul that he wonders how a thing not Christian should have so much Christianity as to rejoyce at good actions and to grow sullen after bad to promise itself a reward for Vertue and fear a judgment to come for Vice Rather than be an Atheist to commit Idolatry and rather than God should not be worshipped to offer Sacrifices to the Devil and then concludes That 't is all one here to go by Reason or Revelation Nec multum referre an à Deo formata sit Animae conscientia an à literis Dei that the difference is little between the Book of the Law and the Conscience of a Man Some Principles of Law breathed into us with our Soul being so manifest that they are seen by their own light and stand upon their own bottom Nature approves them and condemns the contrary and this we learn from St. Paul himself For as Rom. 1. 26. he brands some vile Practices of the Gentile Romans as so many Violences and Contumelies to Nature and Ephes. 5. 12. mentions other things done by them in secret which 't was a shame to name that is such as were in the very Nature and Constitution of them shamefull So Phil. 4. 8. He speaks of other things that were true and honest just praise-worthy and of good report and to shew the difference of such things to be natural he appeals in a certain case to the Judgment of Nature 1 Cor. 11. 14. Doth not even nature it self teach you not general custome as Grotius there the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 refuseth that interpretation and the learned Salmasius clearly confutes it And our Lord himself doth the same too Luke 12. 57. Why even of your selves judge ye not what is right As if he should have said you need go no further than your selves to learn your Duty your own Reason is able to tell you what is right and what not But there are whom nothing can satisfie and though God and Nature the general Sense and Reason of Mankind and Scripture to boot do make a plain difference between Good and Evil yet either will own none in the Nature of the things themselves or else are so partial as to give Evil the precedency to Good if we may measure their Judgments by their Lives and Conversations Those I may term speculative and these practical Epicureans 1. Of the first sort are they who resolve all Morality into the Wills and Pleasures of Legislators that will allow nothing to be good or bad but what civil Magistrates in order to politick Ends shall declare to be so making all under them with the first matter equally susceptible of whatsoever Forms they shall please to introduce As if Vertue and Vice like Coin were to have a publick stamp upon them to make them currant or that Morality like changeable Taffety were to vary according to the different Reflection of that Light men cast upon it An opinion which if it should prevail would leave no moral Honesty much less Religion in the World For should Governors be as bad as they who broach this Doctrine are and would have them to be what a strange Rule should Mankind have to go by And if publick Interest were to be the Measure and Standard of Good and Evil when that should alter as nothing is more variable what is now a Vertue might perhaps in a short time become a Vice and so Rewards and Punishments have their Vicissitudes also and at last interfere 'T is certain that some Laws have been enacted that were so many direct Violations of the Law of Nature and contrary to the general Sense of Mankind and that such might still be made 't is not impossible while there remain in men the same unreasonable Lusts and Passions whereof such Laws were the results and yet these if