A DEFENCE OF Revealed Religion IN Six SERMONS Upon ROM I. 16. Wherein it is clearly and plainly shown That no Man can possibly have any real Ground or Reason to be ashamed of Christianity By HENRY HALLYWELL Master of Arts and Vicar of Cowfold in Sussex LONDON Printed for Walter Kettilby at the Bishop's-Head in St. Paul's Church-Yard 1694. Imprimatur Decemb. 23. 1693. Ra. Barker To the Most Reverend Father in GOD JOHN Lord Archbishop of YORK AND Metropolitan of England May it please Your Grace TO permit these Sermons to go under the Protection of Your Great Name Books often receive a more favourable Acceptance upon the Account of the Worth and Merit of the Person they are addressed to But that is not my Design which if it were I could never have made a more agreeable choice of a Patron than Your Grace whose known Integrity and Learning and whose Noble and Generous Sentiments of Religion which you have studiously endeavoured to instill into others are enough to inspire the most sluggish Genius to attempt something that is not Common I am obliged in Justice and Gratitude to present Your Grace with something and this being the best I have if it may not merit Praise and Approbation yet at least I hope it may appear to Your Grace to be not altogether Contemptible And if some uncertain and wavering Sceptick shall by the reading of these Discourses reap any Benefit and Satisfaction I shall think my self to have obtained the chiefest end I aimed at For as I am sensible I cannot do all that Good that I would in that narrow Sphere of Action wherein I move so I had rather venture the various Censures of Men in the publishing my own Thoughts than not be aiding and assisting according to the utmost of my Ability to form in the Minds of others the truest Conceptions of that Religion by which the Christian World expects Immortal Blessedness I most humbly beg Your Grace's Pardon both for the boldness of my Address and for the Imperfections Your Grace will find in what I offer which I hope I shall the more easily obtain upon the score of the long Acquaintance I have had the Honour to have with Your Grace Now that GOD would long prosper Your Grace in Health and Happiness for the good of his Church is the earnest Prayer of MY LORD Your Grace's most Humble and Devoted Servant Henry Hallywell A DEFENCE OF Revealed Religion SERMON I. ROM I. 16. For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ For it is the Power of God unto Salvation to every one that believeth to the Jew first and also to the Greek WE Live in an Age wherein Vice and Sin does infinitely abound and as if the Depravity of our Nature were not a sufficient Evil and too great a cause of Mens Sorrow and Shame they add to it and encrease it by despising scorning and trampling under Foot the great means of redressing all their Evils and doing themselves good The Atheist strives to undermine Religion by exposing it to the World as a ridiculous piece of Folly And this indeed is very agreeable and consentaneous to his own Principles for if there be no God there can be no Religion And as for the Prophane and Debauched Person though he be not arrived to so high a pitch of Wickedness as to say There is no God yet he wishes there were none and endeavours to discountenance Religion as a flat and dull thing unfit for a lively and brisk Spirit And he would have all the World to believe that Religion is only adapted to slavish Minds who are ignorant of the Liberty of their own Natures and do not know what a rare thing it is for a Man to enjoy all manner of sensual Pleasures to the full Some such Persons as these the Apostle had met withal who scorned the Preaching of the Cross of Christ as a weak and contemptible piece of Folly And they seem to upbraid him as if he had undertook to instruct the World in a thing that he was not able to make good For there seems to be implied an Objection made by some Persons something after this manner as if some one had said to the Apostle You have introduced a new Religion into the World and you seek to perswade Men to embrace it in By-corners and remote Parts of the Empire There you Preach it to a Company of poor silly and illiterate People and lead them away because they are easily deceived and know nothing But if this which you call the Gospel be a thing of such mighty concernment to the World and if it be a Doctrine so highly Rational as you pretend why do you not come and Preach it at Rome it self the Eye and Glory of the World where all sorts of wise Men on Earth are gathered together who are able to detect and discover the Vanity of that Religion you would fain disseminate and spread abroad This seems to have been objected to the Apostle to which he answers Ver. 15. So as much as in me is I am ready to Preach the Gospel to you that are at Rome also For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ As if he had said That Gospel or Religion which I declare is of such high Consequence to Mankind and of such an admirable Frame and Divine Contrivance that I am not ashamed of it wheresoever I come but am ready to Preach it at Rome it self and do tell you that it is not like an empty Piece of Jangling and vain Philosophy but the Power of God to the Salvation of the World and the most effectual Instrument to wind off the Souls of Men from their Slavery to Sin and Satan that ever was yet made known and therefore both Jew and Gentile are obliged to believe and embrace it From whence we may make this Observation That the Gospel of our Lord Jesus which we call the Christian Religion and is contained in the Books of the New-Testament is of such a Nature that no Man need to be ashamed of the Profession of it For the Apostle tells us That it is the Power of God unto Salvation to every one that believes And elsewhere he declares the Gospel to be both the Power and the Wisdom of God 1 Cor. 1.24 We Preach Christ Crucified that is the Gospel of Christ Crucified the Power of God it being so effectual to disengage Men from the Kingdom of Satan and the Wisdom of GOD in the fitness and suitableness of it for the obtaining that great End and Purpose Now surely he that looks upon Religion with a reasonable Eye as he ought to do can never think he has any cause to be ashamed of a thing that hath so much of God's Power and Wisdom conspicuous in it And for those that can so confidently deride and scoff at it they would do well to consider how far they are from good Manners and from that common Civility that even Nature it self
teaches all Men that is to speak Reverently of what God does and to have honourable Thoughts of his Works But for the further Confirmation of this point and for the building of us up more firmly in our most Holy Faith I shall consider what are the main causes of Shame and upon what grounds we may justly be ashamed of any Doctrine delivered to us and then shew that in none of these Respects we have any reason to be ashamed of the Christian Religion 1. A first cause of shame is If that which is delivered to us be not true If a Man should confidently entertain an Opinion that were false and which there were no Grounds of Credibility for and should expose his Life and Fortunes to hazard and danger for it he would have great reason to be ashamed of his Levity and Rashness and all Men besides himself would conclude him guilty of an unpardonable Folly 2. We may justly be ashamed if the thing propounded to us be not Rational that is agreeable to those common Notions of Reason and Understanding which God has planted in our Souls 3. We have sufficient cause of Shame and Confusion if the Doctrine offered to us for our Faith and Belief be not Intelligible i. e. easie to be understood by all those to whom it is propounded For if Christianity were made up of a company of intricate and dark Riddles only to amuse the World and to puzzle our Understandings I do not see but that a Wise and Sober Person might have grounds enough to be ashamed of it 4. If it be not useful to the World but contain only some poor and trivial things that are of no benefit to Men. If Religion had indeed been thus the Apostles themselves might have been ashamed to have made such a stir in the World And all Christians that followed them would have been extremely out of Countenance when they had seen so little good and benefit of all that which was yet delivered as GOD's Will and wherein he had shewed such a wonderful piece of Art and Wisdom But now when we look upon Religion and find that it is most truly and certainly the Will of God delivered to the World That it came from Heaven and was attested by all the Evidences and Arguments that such a thing is capable of That God had an immediate hand in it and that all its Authority was undoubtedly derived from him Again when we shall find that there is nothing in Christianity but what is highly rational and agreeable to our Intellectual Faculties and for which we may be able to make the most reasonable Apology and Defence And further when Christianity is so plain and easie to be understood in all those things which are indispensably necessary to every Man's Salvation so that the most ordinary Capacity may apprehend what is GOD's Will and meaning in it and what he would have him to do And lastly When we shall see that Religion is a thing of no mean and low Concernment but a matter of the greatest Benefit and Advantage that ever was communicated to Mankind When its great End and Design shall be discovered only to make Men everlastingly happy in another Life When these things put together shall appear with irresistable Evidence and Clearness surely that Man must be bereaved of his Wits and Understanding that can be ashamed of a Doctrine that has all these Qualifications In the first place then to make it manifest that the Christian Faith is a Doctrine worthy of all Acceptation and of which there may be made the best Defence in the World I shall shew by a few Arguments the Truth of it viz. That God sent his Son Jesus to communicate this as his Mind and Will and that he would have all the World to live in the Faith and Obedience of it They that would have more full and ample satisfaction upon this Subject may consult that excellent Treatise of Grotius of the Truth of Christian Religion translated into English by Dr. Patrick now the Reverend Bishop of Ely Now to this Purpose let us consider That as to the matter of Fact concerning the Life and Actions of our blessed Saviour his Death and Resurrection and his Ascension into Heaven which is the Ground and Foundation upon which Christian Religion is built it is not at all probable either 1. That the Apostles should be deceived Or 2. That they should deceive others 1. It is not likely the Apostles should be deceived because they received not the Relations which they delivered by here-say but were constant Attendants of our Lord and Saviour and saw him work his Miracles when he cured Diseases raised the Dead and cast out Devils And therefore when the Apostles chose another into the room of Judas there is this reason given for it Acts 1.21.22 Wherefore of these Men which have Companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out amongst us beginning from the Baptism of John unto that same day that he was taken up from us must one be Ordained to be a Witness with us of his Resurrection Here was one who together with the rest of the Apostles was to assert upon his own Knowledge the Actions of Jesus his Resurrection from the Dead and his Ascension into Heaven And therefore St. Luke Chap. 1.2 tells us That the things which he wrote were such as were delivered by them who were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Eye-witnesses of them And doubtless there can be no better Testimony in the World concerning the Truth of a matter of Fact than from an Eye-witness of it according to that common saying Pluris est unus ocularis testis quam auriti decem one ocular Demonstration is worth ten Hear-says And this was the Answer that Peter and John gave to the great Council of the Jews Acts 4.20 We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard But that we may not run over the whole History of things in the Gospel I shall content my self with that one which is the Confirmation of all the rest of the Miracles of Jesus that is his Resurrection from the dead For as St. Paul speaks 1 Cor. 15.14 if Christ be not risen then our Preaching is vain and the Faith of Christians is likewise vain The Preaching of the Apostles would have been vain because they Exhorted Men to the Practice of the Commands and Precepts of the Gospel in hopes of a glorious Immortality and that their Labour and Pains should be rewarded by the Resurrection of their Bodies to eternal Life Whereas if Christ be not risen there is then no Reward for Believers and the great Noise and Talk of the Joys and Felicities of Pious Souls after this Life are nothing but the Dreams of Melancholick Persons to amuse the rest of Mankind And the Faith of Christians if Christ be yet in the Grave and under the Power of Death will be as empty and vain because it is built upon
was the Reason the Gauls gave for their Sacrificing of Men Pro vitâ hominum nisi vita hominis reddatur non posse Deorum Immortalium Numen placari arbitrabantur i. e. They thought the Anger of God could not otherwise be averted unless the Life of some Man were offered as a Piacular Sacrifice for the safety of the rest Now our Lord by his Death extricated Men from this insulting Pride and Cruelty of the Devil in his barbarous Usage and infinite Contempt of humane Race and the sheding of his Blood became a real Propitiatory Sacrifice to appease the Anger of GOD and to obtain Terms of Reconciliation and Peace with him for all his lapsed Brethren 4. It is highly reasonable that this Preacher of Righteousness the Person who should undertake to bring back the strayed Souls of Men to their Obedience to God should have all Power committed into his hands both in Heaven and Earth For since he humbled himself so far as to take upon him the form of a Servant and vilifi'd his own Life in comparison of that great benefit that would accrue to the World by his laying it down and submitted to the ignominious and accursed Death of the Cross Divine Justice was concerned to Reward these Exinanitions with a proportionable Glory And that he might be instated in a capacity to Reward his faithful Friends and Adherents and Punish his refractary and stubborn Enemies it became necessary that he should have the Government of Heaven and Earth put into his hands For this is a great Security to us That our Lord is able to make good whatever he has promised to his Servants and a powerful Encouragement to us to persevere and go on to the end in Vertue though we pass through many Troubles and Afflictions And being thus made God's Vicegerent we cannot doubt but he will order all Affairs of the World for the good of his Church and at last remarkably Triumph over all the Powers of Darkness You see now the reasonableness and becommingness of the Frame of Religion and how suitable and agreeable it is to our Capacities and Necessities All which when St. Paul had considered he breaks out into a kind of Admiration Rom. 11.33 O the depth of the Riches both of the Wisdom and Knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his Judgments and his ways past finding out GOD being an infinite Wisdom has various ways and methods of Governing and Ordering his Creatures far above our shallow Comprehensions But the way of recovering Men is that which he has made choice of and discovered to us by Jesus Christ in which there are such easie compliances with those inveterate Prejudices the World laboured under and such apt Condescentions to Humane Nature as when the whole Frame and Contexture is laid open to an entire view we cannot wonder that the Angels desire to look into it Which plainly shews that Religion is no confused Jumble or Nonsence but a Contrivance wherein appears the greatest Art and highest Wisdom in the World And if all sober Persons admire the infinite Wisdom of God in the Works of Nature as the creation of the Sun Moon and Stars they have much more reason to stand amazed at this great Work of the New Creation or recovery of Mens Souls to their first and Original Happiness And if we can give a satisfactory Account of the Order and Management of the several Phaenomena of Providence in the natural World so in like manner there is a very reasonable Defence to be made for the Contrivance and Conduct of Affairs in the Moral A DEFENCE OF Revealed Religion SERMON III. ROM I. 16. For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ THat there is no unreasonableness in the Frame and Composition of Christianity but that it is infinitely agreeable and suitable to our Case and Necessities we have clearly demonstrated It remains now that we show with the same Plainness that there is nothing disagreeing with sound Reason in the Doctrines contained in it that so we may see that upon neither of these two Accounts we have any cause to be ashamed of the Gospel of Christ The Doctrines of Christianity consist either 1. Of such things as are to be believed as Articles of Faith Or 2. Of such things as are commanded as Duties and Matters of our Practice Or 3. Of Promises of great Rewards to them that shall be Obedient and severe Punishments and Threatnings to the Stubborn and Rebellious who refuse to walk according to those Rules laid down in the Gospel As to the Articles of Faith we shall briefly run over some of the chief of them that it may appear how consonant they are to the light of our own Reasons and Understandings That our blessed Saviour should be born in an unusual and extraordinary manner of a pure and immaculate Virgin that there should be an Apparition of Angels at his Birth that the Wise Men of the East should have notice and come to see him are all things so highly becoming that we should wonder if the same or something like them had not been done For our Lord being to be the greatest Person that ever appeared in the World and being designed to be the fairest Copy of a Holy and Pure Life and to correct all the carnal Exorbitances and Corporeal Impurities in which Mankind wallowed as if their only Felicity had consisted in the highest and rankest Exercise of their Animal Powers it was very agreeable that his Birth should be different from the common manner And that he should have no other Father but God was a way very suitable to gain a greater Authority to those Holy Precepts that he should deliver to the World this being the universal Sence of Mankind that there is the greatest Reverence due to what any Person nearly related to God communicates And that the Angels should usher in his wonderful Nativity with a solemn Anthem is no more than what served to enhance and set forth the Eminency Value and Dignity of his Person who was to be the great Prince of Angels as well as Men and in that Christ was designed to be the Hope of all the ends of the Earth and the Person in whom the Gentiles should trust though the Magi or Wise-Men intended no such thing yet it may well seem a Prefiguration of that chearful Submission the Gentile World should yield to him as their Prince and Redeemer so soon as he should come to be manifested to them And that Christ should appear in the World like one of us Cloathed with Flesh and Blood is more suitable to our State and Condition than if God should speak by an Angel or a Voice from Heaven For since many Troubles Afflictions and Tribulations attend us in our way to Immortality it cannot but be a greater encouragement to us to bear them with Patience when we see our most Holy and Innocent Lord suffer a World of Reproaches and Indignities and much hard usage
faster upon the Consciences of Men the Apostle makes use of the Example of Christ in the next words For even Christ pleased not himself i. e. Christ had no respects for himself no ends of his own to consult but as if he had wholly forgotten himself he devoted himself perfectly to the promoting of his Father's Glory The whole number of Christians that believe in Jesus are one Body Now as the Members of the Body have the same care one of another so ought every Man to be very tender of the Good of his Fellow-Christian If a Man be a true and unfeigned Christian he will not walk solitary and alone in his way to Heaven but will strive to draw as many to accompany him as he can in so pleasant and gainful a Journey He will always be instructing those that are ignorant comforting the weak-hearted and strengthning those that are wavering and unsettled And where these things are wanting and every one lives as a Stranger to another it cannot be expected that the Gospel should draw off Men from Sin so successfully and with so much Triumph as it would if Men would lay aside their little Self-ends and be of more universal and publick Spirits and employ their Wit and Diligence in doing good to one another The summ and conclusion of the whole matter is this Since Christian Religion was intended not merely for Wise-Men and such as were of great Reach and Understanding but for the poorest and weakest Person it is in all things necessary to Salvation made plain and easie And that GOD might gratifie our innocent search after Knowledge he has hid many precious Treasures of Wisdom in the Scriptures as a Reward of our Piety and Diligence And therefore where any thing is delivered so obscurely that with our best diligence we cannot attain to the true sence and meaning of it it is a sure sign that whatever sence GOD intended yet he did not make that absolutely necessary to the Salvation of all Men. For if he had he would have laid it down in plain and not in intricate and ambiguous Terms In the mean time we must all consider that it is our Duty to pray unto GOD as the Apostle St. Paul for his Disciples the Colossians Chap. 1.9 10. and to desire that we may be filled with the knowledge of his Will in all Wisdom and spiritual Understanding That we may walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing being fruitful in every good Work and increasing in the knowledge of God And let us remember that as GOD has distributed the measures of his Gifts and Graces to every one accordingly shall their account be at the last day He that cannot read the Bible and has fewer opportunities of knowledge his account shall not be so great as his that can Read and has leisure and time to inform himself And he that has skill and knowledge to understand the Scriptures shall yet be more severely treated if he do not make use of this both for his own and his Neighbour's Good A DEFENCE OF Revealed Religion SERMON V. ROM I. 16. For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ HAving dispatched the three first Causes of Shame we come now to remove and take away the fourth and last and to shew the great Usefulness of Christian Religion to the World The usefulness therefore of any thing consists in the serviceableness of it for that end to which it was designed Now this very Apostle assures us 1 Tim. 4.8 that Godliness is profitable to all things having the Promise of the Life that now is and that which is to come that is to say Christianity is serviceable useful and conducing to promote the Happiness of Mankind both in respect of this present Life and that which is to come First then we shall consider the Usefulness of Christ's Religion in order to the Felicity of the next World and shew how excellently well suited it is to the attaining of that Which the Apostle seems to intimate in the Words of the Text when he calls it the Power of God unto Salvation to every one that believes Had Christian Religion designed the instructing of Men in the knowledge of Nature giving them a true System of the Heavens and declaring the Natures and Properties of all Things in this our Earthly Globe it would indeed have filled the Mind of Man with abundance of Pleasure and Delight but had mightily fallen short of that universal Usefulness that now it hath The great End therefore which GOD intended by the Gospel was the Advancement of true Godliness the pulling down and destroying the Kingdom of Sin and Satan and the erecting and setting up the Kingdom of Light and Grace in the Hearts and Minds of Men. And that this was the purpose of GOD cannot be unknown to any who considers the great Excellency and Perfection of the Commands of Christianity and what a high measure of Purity and Sanctity they aim at namely the entire Purification of the Soul from all manner of Terrestrial Defilements and Pollutions and the raising up in it a Divine and Heavenly Nature which being that State wherein we were at first created and into which we are recovered by the gentle Influences and Illapses of the Divine Spirit upon us there is begotten in our Souls a daily Tendency upwards and a restless endeavour to free themselves from that Preternatural Load that hangs about them and this effort of theirs receiving fresh Strength and Supplies from above never ceases till it have wrought them to such a high Pitch as through the Benignity and Power of him who is the beginning of the Creation of God they may be translated into the Peaceful Mansions of everlasting Glory We shall consider then the exquisite suitableness and serviceableness of the Gospel for the extirpation of all Sin and Vice and putting Men in possession of a Holy and Divine Nature which surely is the most advantageous Happiness the Soul of Man is capable of And if Religion be furnished with such Powers and Assistances as will against all Opposition whatever attain this great End then its usefulness to the World will be evidently discovered and no Man will have any reason to be ashamed of it Now that this End may be attained 1. GOD is pleased to promise us the Assistance of his holy and blessed Spirit For we being so sunk into this Earthly State that we are wholly carried away with its Affections and Lusts could never by our own single effort and solitary endeavours bring our selves back to the Participation of that Holy and Divine Life we fell from Therefore GOD out of his infinite Love and Compassion and upon the Intercession of our Lord and Saviour has vouchsafed us the aid of his blessed Spirit to regenerate our Natures and to form in us such a strong and active Principle of Holiness as should steadily carry our Wills to a perfect compliance and obedience to his Holy Will That we