and sacred Majesty they use to treat and converse with there They find the same Holy consternation upon themselves that Iacob did at his Consecrated Bethel which he called the Gate of Heaven And if such places are so then surely a daily expectation at the Gate is the readiest way to gain admittance into the House It has been the advice of some Spiritual Persons that such as were able should set apart some certain place in their dwellings for their private Devotions only which if they constantly performed there and nothing else their very entrance into it would tell them what they were to doe in it and quickly make their Chamber-thoughts their Table-thoughts and their jolly worldly but much more their sinfull thoughts and purposes fly out of their hearts For is there any man whose heart has not shook off all sense of what is Sacred who finds himself no otherwise affected when he enters into a Church than when he enters into his Parlour or his Chamber if he does for ought I know he is fitter to be there always than in a Church The mind of man even in Spirituals Acts with a Corporeal Dependance and so is help'd or hinder'd in its Operations according to the different Quality of External Objects that incurr into the Senses And perhaps sometimes the sight of the Altar and those Decent preparations for the work of Devotion may compose and recover the wandring mind much more effectually than a Sermon or a rational Discourse For these things in a manner preach to the Eye when the Ear is dull and will not hear and the Eye dictates to the Imagination and that at last moves the Affections And if these little impulses set the great Wheels of Devotion on work the largeness and height of that shall not at all be prejudiced by the smalness of its occasion If the fire burns bright and vigorously it is no matter by what means it was at first kindled there is the same force and the same refreshing vertue in it kindled by a spark from a flint as if it were kindled by a Beam from the Sun I am far from thinking that these External things are either parts of our Devotion or by any strength in themselves direct causes of it but the grace of God is pleased to move us by ways sutable to our Nature and so Sanctify these sensible inferiour helps to greater and higher purposes And since God has placed the Soul in a Body where it receives all things by the Ministry of the outward Senses he would have us secure these Cinque-ports as I may so call them against the Invasion of vain thoughts by suggesting to them such Objects as may prepossess them with the contrary For God knows how hard a lesson Devotion is if the senses prompt one thing when the heart is to utter another And therefore let no man presume to think that he may present God with as acceptable a Prayer in his shop and much less in an Alehouse or a Tavern as he may in a Church or in his Closet unless he can rationally promise himself which is impossible that he shall find the same Devout motions and impresses upon his Spirit there that he may here What says David in Psalm 77.13 Thy way O God is in the Sanctuary It is no doubt but that Holy Person continued a strict and most Pious communion with God during his wandrings upon the Mountains and in the Wilderness but still he found in himself that he had not those kindly warm meltings upon his heart those raptures and ravishing transports of Affection that he used to have in the fix'd and Solemn place of God's Worship See the two first verses of the 63 Psalm Entituled a Psalm of David when he was in the Wilderness of Iudah How Emphatically and Divinely does every word proclaim the truth that I have been speaking of O God says he thou art my God early will I seek Thee My Soul thirsteth for thee my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty Land where no water is to see thy Power and thy Glory so as I have seen thee in the Sanctuary Much different was his wish from that of our Non-conforming Zealots now-a-days which expresses it self in another kind of Dialect as When shall I enjoy God as I used to do at a Conventicle When shall I meet with those blessed breathings those Heavenly Hummings and Hawings that I used to hear at a private meeting and at the end of a Table In all our worshippings of God we return him but what he first gives us and therefore he preferrs the service offered him in the Sanctuary because there he usually vouchsafes more helps to the Piously disposed person for the discharge of it As we value the same kind of Fruit growing under one Climate more than under another because under one it has a directer and a warmer influence from the Sun than under the other which gives it both a better Savour and a greater worth And perhaps I should not want a further Argument for the confirmation of the truth discours'd of if I should appeal to the experience of many in this Nation who having been long bred to the Decent way of Divine Service in the Cathedrals of the Church of England were afterwards driven into foreign Countries where though they brought with them the same Sincerity to Church yet perhaps they could not find the same enlargements and flowings out of spirit which they were wont to find here Especially in some Countries where their very Religion smelt of the Shop and their Ruder and Courser methods of Divine Service seemed only adapted to the Genius of Trade and the Designs of Parsimony though one would think that Parsimony in God's Worship were the worst husbandry in the World for fear God should proportion his Blessings to such Devotions 2. The other Reason why God preferrs a Worship paid him in places solemnly Dedicated and set apart for that purpose is because in such places it is a more direct service and testification of our Homage to him For surely If I should have something to ask of a great Person it were a greater respect to wait upon him with my Petition at his own House than to desire him to come and receive it at mine Set Places and Set Hours for Divine Worship as much as the Laws of Necessity and Charity permit us to observe them are but parts of that due Reverence that we owe it for he that is strict in observing these declares to the World that he accounts his attendance upon God his greatest and most important Business and surely it is infinitely more reasonable that we should wait upon God than God upon us We shall still find that when God was pleased to vouchsafe his people a meeting he himself would prescribe the Place When he commanded Abraham to Sacrifice his Only and Beloved Isaac the place of the Offering was not left undetermined and to the Offerer's Discretion
TWELVE SERMONS Preached upon Several Occasions By ROBERT SOUTH D. D. Six of them never before Printed LONDON Printed by I. H. for Thomas Bennet at the Half Moon in St. Paul's Church-yard 1692. To the Right Honourable EDWARD Earl of CLARENDON Lord High Chancellor of England and Chancellor of the University of Oxon and one of His Majesties most Honourable Privy Council My Lord THough to prefix so great a Name to so mean a Piece seems like enlarging the Entrance of an House that affords no Reception yet since there is nothing can warrant the Publication of it but what can also command it the Work must think of no other Patronage than the same that adorns and protects its Author Some indeed vouch great Names because they think they deserve but I because I need such and had I not more occasion than many others to see and converse with your Lordship's Candor and Proneness to pardon there is none had greater cause to dread your Iudgment and thereby in some part I venture to commend my own For all know who know your Lordship that in a Nobler respect than either that of Government or Patronage you represent and head the best of Universities and have travelled over too many Nations and Authors to encourage any one that understands himself to appear an Author in your Hands who seldom read any Books to inform your self but only to countenance and credit them But my Lord what is here published pretends no Instruction but only Homage while it teaches many of the World it only describes your Lordship who have made the ways of Labour and Vertue of doing and doing Good your Business and your Recreation your Meat and your Drink and I may add also your Sleep My Lord the Subject here treated of is of that Nature that it would seem but a Chimera and a bold Paradox did it not in the very Front carry an Instance to exemplifie it and so by the Dedication convince the World that the Discourse it self was not impracticable For such ever was and is and will be the Temper of the generality of mankind that while I send men for Pleasure to Religion I cannot but expect that they will look upon me as only having a mind to be pleasant with them my self nor are Men to be Worded into new Tempers or Constitutions and he that thinks that any one can persuade but He that made the World will find that he does not well understand it My Lord I have obeyed your Command for such must I account your Desire and thereby Design not so much the Publication of my Sermon as of my Obedience for next to the Supreme Pleasure described in the ensuing Discourse I enjoy none greater than in having any opportunity to declare my self Your Lordship 's very humble Servant and obliged Chaplain ROBERT SOUTH The Contents of the Sermons SERMON I. PRoverbs III. 17 Her ways are ways of Pleasantness Page 1 SERMON II. Gen. I. 27 So God created man in his own Image in the Image of God created he him p. 53 SERMON III. Matth. X. 33 But whosoever shall deny me before men him will I deny before my Father which is in Heaven p. 101 SERMON IV. I Kings XIII 33 34. After this thing Jeroboam returned not from his evil way but made again of the lowest of the people Priests of the High places whosoever would he consecrated him and he became one of the Priests of the High places And this thing became sin unto the house of Jeroboam even to cut it off and to destroy it from off the face of the Earth p. 155 SERMON V. Titus II. ult These things speak and exhort and rebuke with all Authority Let no man despise thee p. 223 SERMON VI. John VII 17 If any man will do his Will he shall know of the Doctrine whether it be of God or whether I speak of my self p. 269 SERMON VII Psalm LXXXVII 2 God hath loved the Gates of Sion more than all the Dwellings of Iacob p. 323 SERMON VIII Prov. XVI 33 The lot is cast into the lap but the whole disposing of it is of the Lord. p. 373 SERMON IX 1 Cor. III. 19 For the Wisdom of this World is Foolishness with God p. 425 SERMON X. 2 Cor. VIII 12 For if there be first a willing Mind it is accepted according to that a Man hath and not according to that he hath not p. 477 SERMON XI Judges VIII 34 35. And the Children of Israel remembred not the Lord their God who had delivered them out of the hands of all their Enemies on every side Neither shewed they kindness to the House of Ierubbaal namely Gideon according to all the goodness which he had shewed unto Israel p. 535 SERMON XII Prov. XII 22 Lying Lips are abomination to the Lord. p. 587 A SERMON Preached at COURT c. PROV 3.17 Her Ways are Ways of Pleasantness THE Text relating to something going before must carry our Eye back to the 13th verse where we shall find that the thing of which these words are affirmed is Wisdome A Name by which the Spirit of God was here pleased to express to us Religion and thereby to tell the world what before it was not aware of and perhaps will not yet believe that those two great things that so engross the desires and designs of both the Nobler and Ignobler sort of mankind are to be found in Religion namely Wisdom and Pleasure and that the former is the direct way to the latter as Religion is to both That Pleasure is Man's chiefest good because indeed it is the perception of Good that is properly pleasure is an assertion most certainly true though under the common acceptance of it not only false but odious for according to this pleasure and sensuality pass for terms equivalent and therefore he that takes it in this sence alters the Subject of the discourse Sensuality is indeed a part or rather one kind of pleasure such an one as it is For Pleasure in general is the consequent apprehension of a sutable Object sutably applied to a rightly disposed faculty and so must be conversant both about the faculties of the Body and of the Soul respectively as being the result of the fruitions belonging to both Now amongst those many Arguments used to press upon men the exercise of Religion I know none that are like to be so succesful as those that answer and remove the prejudices that generally possess and barr up the Hearts of men against it amongst which there is none so prevalent in Truth though so little owned in Pretence as that it is an Enemy to mens pleasures that it bereaves them of all the sweets of Converse dooms them to an absurd and perpetual Melancholy designing to make the world nothing else but a great Monastery With which notion of Religion Nature and Reason seems to have great cause to be dissatisfied For since God never Created any faculty either in Soul or Body
Ground not that they love the Dirt but that they expect a Crop and for the latter the Politician well approves of the Indian's Religion in worshipping the Devil that he may do him no hurt how much soever he hates him and is hated by him But if a Poor Old Decayed Friend or Relation whose Purse whose House and Heart had been formerly free and open to such an one shall at length upon change of Fortune come to him with Hunger and Rags pleading his past Services and his present Wants and so crave some Relief of one for the Merit and Memory of the other the Politician who imitates the Serpent's Wisdom must turn his deaf Ear too to all the insignificant Charms of Gratitude and Honour in behalf of such a Bankrupt undone Friend who having been already used and now squeezed dry is fit only to be cast aside He must abhorr Gratitude as a worse kind of Witchcraft which only serves to conjure up the pale meagre Ghosts of dead forgotten Kindnesses to haunt and trouble him still respecting what is past whereas such Wise men as himself in such cases account all that is past to be also gone and know that there can be no gain in Refunding nor any profit in paying Debts The sole measure of all his Courtesies is what return they will make him and what Revenue they will bring him in His Expectations govern his Charity And we must not vouch any man for an exact Master in the Rules of our Modern Policy but such an one as hath brought himself so far to hate and despise the absurdity of being kind upon free cost as to use a known Expression not so much as to tell a Friend what it is a Clock for nothing And thus I have finished the first General Head proposed from the Text and shewn some of those Rules Principles and Maxims that this Wisdom of the World acts by I say Some of them for I neither pretend nor desire to know them all I come now to the other General Head which is to shew the Folly and Absurdity of these Principles in Relation to God In order to which we must observe that Foolishness being properly a man's Deviation from Right Reason in point of Practice must needs consist in one of these two things 1. In his pitching upon such an End as is unsutable to his Condition or 2. In his pitching upon Means unsutable to the Compassing of his End There is Folly enough in either of these and my business shall be to shew That such as act by the forementioned Rules of Worldly Wisdom are eminently Foolish upon both accounts 1. And first for that first sort of Foolishness imputable to them namely That a man by following such Principles pitches upon that for his End which no ways sutes his Condition Certain it is and indeed self-evident That the Wisdom of this World looks no further than this World All its Designs and Efficacy terminate on this side Heaven nor does Policy so much as pretend to any more than to be the great Art of raising a man to the Plenties Glories and Grandeurs of the World And if it arrives so far as to make a man Rich Potent and Honourable it has its End and has done its utmost But now that a man cannot rationally make these things his End will appear from these two Considerations 1. That they reach not the measure of his Duration or Being the Perpetuity of which surviving this mortal State and shooting forth into the endless Eternities of another World must needs render a man infinitely miserable and forlorn if he has no other Comforts but what he must leave behind him in this For nothing can make a man happy but that which shall last as long as he lasts And all these Enjoyments are much too short for an immortal Soul to stretch it self upon which shall persist in being not only when Profit Pleasure and Honour but when time it self shall cease and be no more No man can transport his large Retinue his Sumptuous Fare and his Rich Furniture into another World Nothing of all these things can continue with him then but the memory of them And surely the bare remembrance that a man was formerly Rich or Great cannot make him at all happier there where an Infinite Happiness or an Infinite Misery shall equally swallow up the sense of these poor Felicities It may indeed contribute to his Misery heighten the anguish and sharpen the Sting of Conscience and so add fury to the everlasting flames when he shall reflect upon the abuse of all that Wealth and Greatness that the good providence of God had put as a price into his hand for worthier purposes than to Damn his Nobler and better part only to please and gratify his worse But the Politician has an answer ready for all these melancholy considerations That he for his part believes none of these things As that there is either an Heaven or an Hell or an immortal Soul No he is too great a friend to Real knowledge to take such troublesom Assertions as these upon Trust. Which if it be his Belief as no doubt it is let him for me continue in it still and stay for its Confutation in another world which if he can destroy by disbelieving his Infidelity will do him better service than as yet he has any cause to presume that it can But 2 ly Admitting that either these enjoyments were eternal or the Soul mortal and so that one way or other they were commensurate to its duration yet still they cannot be an end sutable to a rational nature for as much as they fill not the measure of its desires The foundation of all Man's unhappiness here on Earth is the great disproportion between his enjoyments and his appetites which appears evidently in this That let a man have never so much he is still desiring something or other more Alexander we know was much troubled at the scantiness of Nature it self that there were no more Worlds for him to disturb And in this respect every man living has a Soul as great as Alexander and put under the same circumstances would own the very same dissatisfactions Now this is most certain that in Spiritual Natures so much as there is of desire so much there is also of capacity to receive I do not say there is always a capacity to receive the very thing they desire for that may be impossible But for the degree of happiness that they propose to themselves from that thing this I say they are capable of And as God is said to have made man after his own Image so upon this quality he seems peculiarly to have stampt the resemblance of his Infinity For Man seems as boundless in his desires as God is in his Being and therefore nothing but God himself can satisfy him But the great Inequality of all things else to the appetites of a rational Soul appears yet further from this That in all
of the thing as the Credit of him that gives it Observe an excellent passage to this purpose in Eccl. 9.14 15. We have an account of a little City with few men in it besieged by a great and potent King and in the 15. v. we read that there was found in it a poor Wise man and he by his wisdom delivered the City A worthy service indeed and certainly we may expect that some honourable Recompence should follow it a Deliverer of his Country and that in such distress could not but be advanced but we find a contrary event in the next words of the same verse Yet none remembred that same poor man why what should be the reason Was he not a man of parts and Wisdom and is not Wisdom honourable Yes but he was poor But was he not also successfull as well as wise true but still he was poor And once grant this and you cannot keep off that unavoidable sequel in the next verse The poor man's wisdom is despised and his words are not heard We may believe it upon Solomon's word who was Rich as well as Wise and therefore knew the force of both and probably had it not been for his Riches the Queen of Sheba would never have come so far only to have heard his Wisdom Observe her behaviour when she came Though upon the hearing of Solomon's Wisdom and the resolution of her hard Questions she expressed a just admiration yet when Solomon afterward shew'd her his Palace his Treasures and the Temple which he had built 1 Kings 10.5 it is said there was no more spirit in her What was the cause of this certainly the magnificence the pomp and splendour of such a Structure it struck her into an Ecstasie beyond his wise Answers She estemed this as much above his Wisdom as Astonishment is beyond bare Admiration She admired his Wisdom but she adored his Magnificence So apt is the mind even of wise persons to be surprized with the superficies or circumstance of things and value or undervalue Spirituals according to the manner of their External Appearance When Circumstances fail the substance seldom long survives cloaths are no part of the Body yet take away cloaths and the Body will die Livy observes of Romulus that being to give Laws to his new Romans he found no better way to procure an esteem and reverence to them than by first procuring it to himself by splendour of Habit and Retinue and other signs of Royalty And the wise Numa his Successor took the same course to enforce his Religious Laws namely by giving the same Pomp to the Priest who was to dispense them Sacerdotem creavit insignique eum veste curuli Regiâ sellâ adornavit That is he adorned him with a rich Robe and a royal chair of State And in our Judicatures take away the Trumpet the Scarlet the Attendance and the Lordship which would be to make Justice Naked as well as Blind and the Law would lose much of its Terror and consequently of its Authority Let the Minister be abject and low his interest inconsiderable the Word will suffer for his sake The Message will still find reception according to the Dignity of the Messenger Imagine an Ambassadour presenting himself in a poor freize Jerkin and tattered cloaths certainly he would have but small Audience his Embassy would speed rather according to the weakness of him that brought than the Majesty of him that sent it It will fare alike with the Ambassadors of Christ the People will give them Audience according to their Presence A notable example of which we have in the Behaviour of some to Paul himself 1 Cor. c. 10. v. 10. Hence in the Jewish Church it was cautiously provided in the Law that none that was blind or lame or had any remarkable defect in his body was capable of the Priestly Office because these things naturally make a person contemned and this presently reflects upon the Function This therefore is the first way by which the low despised condition of the Ministers tends to the destruction of the Ministery and Religion namely because it subjects their Persons to scorn and consequently their Calling and it is not imaginable that men will be brought to Obey what they cannot Esteem 2. The Second way by which it tends to the ruine of the Ministery is because it discourages men of fit Parts and Abilities from undertaking it And certain it is that as the calling dignifies the man so the man much more advances his calling As a Garment though it warms the Body has a return with an advantage being much more warmed by it And how often a good cause may miscarry without a wise manager and the Faith for want of a Defender is or at least may be known 'T is not the Truth of an Assertion but the skill of the Disputant that keeps off a baffle not the Justness of a Cause but the Valour of the Souldiers that must win the Field When a Learned Paul was converted and undertook the Ministery it stopp'd the mouths of those that said None but poor weak Fisher-men Preached Christianity and so his Learning silenced the scandal as well as strengthned the Church Religion placed in a soul of exquisite knowledge and abilities as in a Castle finds not only habitation but defence And what a learned Foreign Divine said of the English Preaching may be said of all Plus est in Artifice quà m in Arte. So much of moment is there in the Professors of any thing to depress or raise the Profession What is it that kept the Church of Rome strong athletick and flourishing for so many Centuries but the happy succession of the choicest wits engaged to her service by sutable preferments And what strength do we think would that give to the True Religion that is able thus to establish a False Religion in a great measure stands or falls according to the abilities of those that assert it And if as some observe mens desires are usually as large as their Abilities what course have we took to allure the former that we might engage the latter to our assistance But we have took all Ways to affright and discourage Scholars from looking towards this sacred calling For will men lay out their Wit and Iudgment upon that employment for the undertaking of which both will be questioned would men not long since have spent toylsome days and watchfull nights in the laborious quest of knowledge preparative to this work at length to come and dance attendance for approbation upon a Iuncto of petty Tyrants acted by Party and Prejudice who denyed Fitness from Learning and Grace from Morality will a man exhaust his livelihood upon Books and his Health the best part of his life upon Study to be at length thrust into a poor Village where he shall have his due precariously and entreat for his own and when he has it live poorly and contemptibly upon it while the same or less
Christianity But the Jewish was yet in possession and therefore that this might so enter as not to intrude it was to bring its Warrant from the same hand of Omnipotence And for this cause Christ that he might not make either a suspected or precarious address to mens understandings out-does Moses before he displaces him shews an Ascendent Spirit above him raises the Dead and cures more Plagues than he brought upon AEgypt casts out Devils and heals the Deaf speaking such Words as even gave ears to hear them cures the Blind and the Lame and makes the very Dumb to speak for the Truth of his Doctrine But what was the result of all this Why some look upon him as an Impostor and a Conjurer as an Agent for Beelzebub and therefore reject his Gospel hold fast their Law and will not let Moses give place to the Magician Now the Cause that Christ's Doctrine was rejected must of necessity be one of these two 1. An insufficiency in the Arguments brought by Christ to inforce it Or 2. An indisposition in the Persons to whom this Doctrine was addressed to receive it And for this Christ who had not onely an infinite Power to work miracles but also an equal Wisdom both to know the just force and measure of every argument or motive to persuade or cause Assent and withall to look through and through all the Dark Corners of the Soul of man all the Windings and Turnings and various Workings of his Faculties and to discern how and by what means they are to be wrought upon and what prevails upon them and what does not He I say states the whole matter upon this Issue That the Arguments by which his Doctrine addressed it self to the minds of men were proper adequate and sufficient to compass their respective ends in persuading or convincing the Persons to whom they were proposed and moreover that there was no such defect in the Natural light of man's understanding or Knowing faculty but that considered in it self it would be apt enough to close with and yield its assent to the Evidence of those Arguments duly offered to and laid before it And yet that after all this the Event proved otherwise and that notwithstanding both the Weight and fitness of the Arguments to persuade and the light of man's Intellect to meet this persuasive evidence with a sutable assent no Assent followed nor were men thereby actually persuaded he Charges it wholly upon the Corruption the Perverseness and Vitiosity of man's will as the onely Cause that rendred all the Arguments his Doctrine came cloathed with unsuccessfull And consequently he affirms here in the Text That men must love the Truth before they throughly believe it and that the Gospel has then onely a free admission into the Assent of the Understanding when it brings a Passport from a rightly disposed will as being the great faculty of Dominion that commands all that shuts out and lets in what Objects it pleases and in a Word keeps the Keys of the whole Soul This is the Design and purport of the Words which I shall draw forth and handle in the Prosecution of these four following Heads 1. I shall shew What the Doctrine of Christ was that the World so much stuck at and was so averse from Believing 2. I shall shew That mens unbelief of it was from no Defect or Insufficiency in the Arguments brought by Christ to inforce it 3. I shall shew What was the True and proper cause into which this unbelief was resolved 4. And lastly I shall shew That a Pious and well disposed mind attended with a readiness to obey the Known will of God is the surest and best means to enlighten the Understanding to a belief of Christianity Of these in their order and First for the Doctrine of Christ. We must take it in the Known and Common Division of it into matters of Belief and matters of Practice The matters of Belief related chiefly to his Person and Offices As that he was the Messias that should come into the World The Eternal Son of God begotten of him before all Worlds That in time he was made man and born of a pure Virgin That he should die and satisfie for the Sins of the World and that he should rise again from the Dead and ascend into Heaven and there sitting at the right hand of God hold the Government of the whole World till the great and last day in which he should judge both the Quick and the Dead raised to life again with the very same Bodies and then deliver up all Rule and Government into the hands of his Father These were the great Articles and Credenda of Christianity that so much startled the World and seemed to be such as not only brought in a New Religion amongst men but also required a New Reason to embrace it The other part of his Doctrine lay in matters of Practice Which we find contained in his several Sermons but Principally in that glorious full and admirable discourse upon the Mount recorded in the 5 6 and 7. Chapters of St. Matthew All which particulars if we would reduce to one general Comprehensive Head they are all wrapt up in the Doctrine of Self-denial prescribing to the World the most inward purity of Heart and a Constant Conflict with all our sensual Appetites and worldly Interests even to the quitting of all that is dear to us and the Sacrificing of Life it self rather than knowingly to omit the least Duty or commit the least Sin And this was that which grated harder upon and raised greater tumults and boilings in the Hearts of men than the strangeness and seeming unreasonableness of all the former Articles that took up Chiefly in Speculation and Belief And that this was so will appear from a Consideration of the state and condition the World was in as to religion when Christ promulged his Doctrine Nothing further than the outward Action was then lookt after and when that failed there was an Expiation ready in the Opus operatum of a Sacrifice So that all their Vertue and Religion lay in their Folds and their Stalls and what was wanting in the Innocence the Blood of Lambs was to supply The Scribes and Pharisees who were the great Doctors of the Jewish Church expounded the Law no further They accounted no man a murtherer but he that struck a Knife into his Brother's heart No man an Adulterer but He that actually defiled his neighbour's Bed They thought it no injustice nor irreligion to prosecute the Severest Retaliation or Revenge so that at the same time their outward man might be a Saint and their inward man a Devil No care at all was had to curb the Unruliness of Anger or the Exorbitance of Desire Amongst all their Sacrifices they never sacrificed so much as one Lust. Bulls and Goats bled apace but neither the Violence of the one nor the Wantonness of the other ever dyed a Victim at any of their Altars
was a means to bring him up in The AEgyptian Court then the School of all Arts and Policy and so to fit him for that great and arduous Imployment that God designed him to For see upon what little Hinges that great Affair turned For had either the Child been cast out or Pharaoh's Daughter come down to the River but an hour sooner or later or had that little Vessel not been cast by the Parents or carryed by the Water into that very place where it was in all likelyhood the Child must have undergone the common Lot of the other Hebrew Children and been either starved or drowned or however not advanced to such a peculiar height and happiness of Condition That Octavius Caesar should shift his Tent which he had never used to doe before just that very night that it hapned to be took by the Enemy was a mere Casualty yet such an one as preserved a Person who lived to establish a total Alteration of Government in the Imperial City of the World But we need not go far for a Prince preserved by as Strange a Series of little Contingencies as ever were managed by the Art of Providence to so great a purpose There was but an hair's breadth between him and certain Destruction for the space of many days For had the Rebel Forces gone one way rather than another or come but a little sooner to his hiding place or but mistrusted something which they passed over all which things might very easily have happened we had not seen this face of things at this day but Rebellion had been still Enthroned Perjury and Cruelty had Reigned Majesty had been proscribed Religion extinguish'd and both Church and State throughly Reformed and Ruined with Confusions Massacres and a Total Desolation On the contrary when Providence designs Judgment or Destruction to a Prince no body knows by what little unusual unregarded means the fatal blow shall reach him If Ahab be designed for Death though a Souldier in the Enemies Army draws a Bow at a venture yet the sure unerring directions of Providence shall carry it in a direct course to his heart and there lodge the Revenge of Heaven An old Woman shall cast down a Stone from a Wall and God shall send it to the Head of Abimelech and so Sacrifice a King in the very head of his Army How many warnings had Iulius Caesar of the fatal Ides of March whereupon sometimes he resolved not to go to the Senate and sometimes again he would go and when at length he did go in his very passage thither one put into his hand a Note of the whole Conspiracy against him together with all the Names of the Conspirators desiring him to read it forthwith and to remember the Giver of it as long as he lived But continual Salutes and Addresses entertaining him all the way kept him from saving so great a Life but with one glance of his Eye upon the Paper till he came to the fatal place where he was stabb'd and dyed with the very Means of preventing Death in his hand Henry the Second of France by a Splinter unhappily thrust into his Eye at a solemn Justing was dispatch'd and sent out of the world by a sad but very Accidental Death In a word God has many ways to reap down the Grandees of the Earth an Arrow a Bullet a Tile or Stone from an House is enough to do it And besides all these ways sometimes when he intends to bereave the world of a Prince or an Illustrious Person he may cast him upon a bold self-opinion'd Physician worse than his Distemper who shall Dose and Bleed and Kill him secundum artem and make a shift to cure him into his Grave In the last place we will consider this Directing influence of God with reference to private Persons and that as touching things of nearest concernment to them As 1. Their Lives 2. Their Health 3. Their Reputation 4. Their Friendships And 5. And lastly their Employments or Preferments And first for mens Lives Though these are things for which Nature knows no Price or Ransom yet I appeal to universal Experience whether they have not in many men hung oftentimes upon a very slender Thread and the distance between them and Death been very nice and the escape wonderfull There have been some who upon a slight and perhaps groundless occasion have gone out of a Ship or House and the Ship has sunk and the House has fell immediately after their departure He that in a great Wind suspecting the strength of his House betook himself to his Orchard and walking there was knockt on the Head by a Tree falling through the fury of a suddain gust wanted but the advance of one or two steps to have put him out of the way of that mortal Blow He that being subject to an Apoplex used still to carry his remedy about him but upon a time shifting his Cloaths and not taking that with him chanced upon that very day to be surprized with a Fit and to die in it certainly owed his Death to a mere Accident to a little inadvertency and failure of Memory But not to recount too many particulars May not every Souldier that comes alive out of the Battle pass for a living Monument of a benign Chance and an happy Providence For was he not in the nearest Neighbourhood to Death And might not the Bullet that perhaps rased his Cheek have as easily gone into his Head And the Sword that glanced upon his Arm with a little diversion have found the way to his Heart But the workings of Providence are marvellous and the methods secret and untraceable by which it disposes of the Lives of Men. In like manner for Mens Health it is no less wonderfull to consider to what strange Casualties many Sick Persons often-times owe their Recovery Perhaps an unusual Draught or Morsel or some Accidental violence of Motion has removed that Malady that for many years has baffled the Skill of all Physicians So that in effect he is the best Physician that has the best luck he prescribes but it is chance that Cures That Person that being provoked by excessive Pain thrust his Dagger into his Body and thereby instead of reaching his Vitals opened an Imposthume the unknown cause of all his pain and so Stabbed himself into perfect Health and Ease surely had great reason to acknowledge Chance for his Chirurgeon and Providence for the Guider of his Hand And then also for mens Reputation and that either in point of Wisdom or of Wit There is hardly any thing which for the most part falls under a greater Chance If a man succeeds in any attempt though undertook with never so much folly and rashness his success shall vouch him a Politician and good Luck shall pass for deep contrivance For give any one Fortune and he shall be thought a wise man in spite of his Heart nay and of his Head too On the contrary be a design never
for all this these Bents and Propensities and Inclinations will not do the Business the bare bending of the Bow will not hit the Mark without shooting the Arrow and Men are not called to Will but to Work out their Salvation But what then Is it not as Certain from the Text that God sometimes accepts the Will as it is from those forementioned Scriptures that God commands the Deed Yes no doubt Since it is impossible for the Holy Ghost to contradict that in one place of Scripture which he had affirmed in another In all the foregoing places Doing is expresly commanded and no Happiness allowed to any thing short of it and yet here God is said to accept of the Will and can both these stand together without manifest contradiction That which enjoyns the Deed is certainly God's Law and it is also as certain that the Scripture that allows of the Will is neither the Abrogation nor Derogation nor Dispensation nor Relaxation of that Law In order to the clearing of which I shall lay down these Two Assertions 1. That every Law of God commands the Obedience of the Whole Man 2. That the Will is never accepted by God but as it is the Obedience of the Whole Man So that the Allowance or Acceptance of the Will mentioned in the Text takes off Nothing from the Obligation of those Laws in which the Deed is so plainly and positively enjoyned but is only an Interpretation or Declaration of the true Sence of those Laws shewing the Equity of them Which is as really Essential to Every Law and gives it its obliging Force as much as the Justice of it and indeed is not another or a distinct thing from the Justice of it any more than a Particular Case is from an Universal Rule But you will say How can the Obedience of the Will ever be proved to be the Obedience of the Whole Man For answer to which we are first to consider Every Man as a Moral and consequently as a Rational Agent and then to consider what is the Office and Influence of the Will in Every Moral Action Now the Morality of an Action is founded in the Freedom of that Principle by virtue of which it is in the Agent 's Power having all things ready and requisite to the performance of an Action either to perform or not to perform it And as the Will is endued with this Freedom so is it also endued with a Power to Command all the other Faculties both of Soul and Body to Execute what it has so Will'd or Decreed and that without Resistance So that upon the last Dictate of the Will for the Doing of such or such a thing all the other Faculties proceed immediately to act according to their respective Offices By which it is manifest that in point of Action the Will is Virtually the Whole Man as containing in it all that which by virtue of his other Faculties he is able to do Just as the Spring of a Watch is virtually the whole Motion of the Watch forasmuch as it imparts a Motion to all the Wheels of it Thus as to the Soul If the Will bids the Understanding Think Study and Consider it will accordingly apply it self to Thought Study and Consideration If it bids the Affections Love Rejoyce or be Angry an Act of Love Joy or Anger will follow And then for the Body if the Will bids the Leg go it goes if it bids the Hand do this it does it So that a Man is a Moral Agent only as he is endued with and acts by a Free and Commanding Principle of Will And therefore when God says My Son give me thy Heart which there signifies the Will it is as much as if he had commanded the Service of the Whole Man for whatsoever the Will commands the Whole Man must do the Empire or Dominion of the Will over all the Faculties of Soul and Body as to most of the Operations of each of them being absolutely Over-ruling and Despotical From whence it follows That when the Will has exerted an Act of Command upon any Faculty of the Soul or Member of the Body it has by so doing done all that the Whole Man as a Moral Agent can do for the Actual Exercise or Employment of such a Faculty or Member And if so then what is not done in such a case is certainly not in a man's Power to doe and consequently is no part of the Obedience required of him No man being commanded or obliged to obey beyond his Power And therefore the Obedience of the Will to God's Commands is the Obedience of the whole Man forasmuch as it includes and inferrs it which was the Assertion that we undertook to prove But you will say If the Prerogative of the Will be such that where it commands the Hand to give an Alms the Leg to Kneel or to go to Church or the Tongue to utter a Prayer all these things will infallibly be done Suppose we now a man be bound hand and foot by some outward violence or be laid up with the Gout or disabled for any of these Functions by a Palsy can the Will by its Command make a man in such a condition utter a Prayer or Kneel or go to Church No 't is manifest it cannot but then you are to know also that neither is Vocal Prayer or Bodily Kneeling or going to Church in such a case any part of the Obedience required of such a person But that Act of his Will hitherto spoken of that would have put his Body upon all these Actions had there been no impediment is that man's whole Obedience and for that very Cause that it is so and for no other it stands here accepted by God From all which Discourse this must naturally and directly be inferr'd as a certain Truth and the chief foundation of all that can be said upon this Subject namely That whosoever Wills the Doing of a thing if the Doing of it be in his power he will certainly Doe it and whosoever does not doe that Thing which he has in his power to doe does not really and properly Will it For though the Act of the Will Commanding and the Act of any other faculty of Soul or Body executing that which is so Commanded be Physically and in the Precise Nature of things distinct and several yet Morally as they proceed in Subordination from one Entire Free Moral Agent both in Divinity and Morality they pass but for one and the same Action Now that from the foregoing Particulars we may come to understand how far this Rule of God's accepting the Will for the Deed holds good in the Sence of the Apostle we must consider in it these Three things 1. The Original Ground and Reason of it 2. The just Measure and Bounds of it And 3. The Abuse or Misapplication of it And first for the Original Ground and Reason of this Rule it is founded upon that Great Self-evident and Eternal Truth that
begot it This gave it being whatsoever other Vice might give it Birth 3 dly As we have seen how much Lying and Falshood disturbs so in the next Place we shall see also how it tends utterly to dissolve Society There is no doubt but all the Safety Happiness and Convenience that Men enjoy in this Life is from the Combination of particular Persons into Societies or Corporations The Cause of which is Compact and the Band that knits together and supports all Compacts is Truth and Faithfulness So that the Soul and Spirit that animates and keeps up Society is mutual Trust and the Foundation of Trust is Truth either known or at least supposed in the Persons so trusted But now where Fraud and Falshood like a Plague or Canker comes once to invade Society the Band which held together the Parts compounding it presently breaks and Men are thereby put to a Loss where to league and to fasten their Dependances and so are forced to scatter and shift every one for himself Upon which Account every notoriously false Person ought to be look'd upon and detested as a Publick Enemy and to be pursued as a Wolf or a mad Dog and a Disturber of the Common Peace and Welfare of Mankind There being no particular Person whatsoever but has his private Interest concerned and endangered in the Mischief that such a Wretch does to the Publick For look into great Families and you shall find some one false paultry Tale-bearer who by carrying Stories from One to Another shall inflame the Minds and discompose the Quiet of the whole Family And from Families pass to Towns or Cities and Two or Three Pragmatical Intriguing Medling Fellows Men of Business some call them by the Venom of their false Tongues shall set the whole Neighbourhood together by the Ears Where Men practise Falshood and shew Tricks with one another there will be perpetual Suspicions evil Surmisings Doubts and Jealousies which by sowring the Minds of Men are the Bane and Pest of Society For still Society is built upon Trust and Trust upon the Confidence that Men have of one anothers Integrity And this is so evident that without Trusting there could not only be no Happiness but indeed no living in this World For in those very things that Minister to the daily Necessities of common Life how can any one be assured that the very meat and drink that he is to take into his Body and the Cloaths he is to put on are not Poyson'd and made unwholsome for him before ever they are brought to him Nay in some places with Horror be it spoke how can a Man be secure in taking the very Sacrament it Self For there have been those who have found something in this Spiritual Food that has proved very fatal to their Bodies and more than prepared them for another World I say how can any One warrant himself in the use of these things against such Suspicions but in the Trust he has in the common Honesty and Truth of men in general which ought and uses to keep them from such Villainies Nevertheless know this certainly before hand he cannot forasmuch as such things have been done and consequently may be done again And therefore as for any Infallible assurance to the contrary he can have none but in the great Concerns of Life and Health every Man must be forced to proceed upon Trust there being no knowing the Intention of the Cook or Baker any more than of the Priest himself And yet if a Man should forbear his Food or Raiment or most of his Business in the World till he had Science and Certainty of the Safeness of what he was going about he must starve and die Disputing for there is neither Eating nor Drinking nor Living by Demonstration Now this shews the high Malignity of Fraud and Falshood that in the direct and natural Course of it tends to the Destruction of common Life by destroying that Trust and mutual Confidence that Men should have in one another by which the common Entercourse of the World must be carried on and without which Men must first Distrust and then Divide Separate and stand upon their Guard with their Hand against every One and every ones Hand against them The Felicity of Societies and Bodies Politick consists in this That all Relations in them do regularly Discharge their respective Duties and Offices Such as are the Relation between Prince and Subject Master and Servant a Man and his Friend Husband and Wife Parent and Child Buyer and Seller and the like But now where Fraud and Falshood take place there is not one of all these that is not perverted and that does not from an help of Society directly become an hinderance For first it turns all above us into Tyranny and Barbarity and all of the same Region and Level with us into Discord and Confusion It is This alone that poysons that Sovereign and Divine Thing called Friendship so that when a Man thinks that he leans upon a Breast as loving and true to him as his own he finds that he relies upon a broken Reed that not onely basely fails but also cruelly pierces the Hand that rests upon it It is from this that when a Man thinks he has a Servant or Dependant an Instrument of his Affairs and a Defence of his Person he finds a Traytour and a Iudas an Enemy that eats his Bread and lies under his Roof and perhaps readier to doe him a Mischief and a shrewd Turn than an open and professed Adversary And lastly from this Deceit and Falshood it is that when a Man thinks himself matched to One who by the Laws of God and Nature should be a Comfort to him in all Conditions a Consort of his Cares and a Companion in all his Concerns instead thereof he finds in his Bosom a Beast a Serpent and a Devil In a word He that has to doe with a Lyar knows not where he is nor what he does nor with whom he deals He walks upon Bogs and Whirlpools wheresoever he treads he sinks and converses with a Bottomless Pit where it is impossible for him to fix or to be at any Certainty In fine He catches at an Apple of Sodom which though it may entertain his Eye with a florid jolly white and red yet upon the Touch it shall fill his Hand only with stench and foulness Fair in Look and rotten at Heart as the gayest and most taking Things and Persons in the World generally are Fourthly and Lastly Deceit and Falshood doe of all other ill Qualities most peculiarly indispose the Hearts of Men to the Impressions of Religion For these are Sins perfectly spiritual and so prepossess the proper Seat and Place of Religion which is the Soul or Spirit And when that is once filled and taken up with a Lye there will hardly be Admission or Room for Truth Christianity is known in Scripture by no Name so significantly as by the Simplicity of the Gospel And if
but withal prepared for it a sutable object and that in order to its gratification can we think that Religion was designed only for a Contradiction to Nature and with the greatest and most irrational Tyranny in the World to tantalize and tie men up from enjoyment in the midst of all the opportunities of enjoyment to place men with the furious affections of hunger and thirst in the very bosome of Plenty and then to tell them that the envy of Providence has sealed up every thing that is sutable under the Character of unlawful For certainly first to frame appetites fit to receive pleasure and then to interdict them with a Touch not tast not can be nothing else than only to give them occasion to devour and prey upon themselves and so to keep men under the perpetual Torment of an unsatisfied Desire a thing hugely contrary to the natural felicity of the Creature and consequently to the wisdom and goodness of the great Creator He therefore that would persuade men to Religion both with Art and efficacy must found the persuasion of it upon this that it interferes not with any rational pleasure that it bids no body quit the enjoyment of any one thing that his Reason can prove to him ought to be enjoyed 'T is confessed when through the cross circumstances of a man's temper or condition the Enjoyment of a pleasure would certainly expose him to a greater inconvenience then Religion bids him quit it that is it bids him prefer the endurance of a lesser evil before a greater and Nature it self does no less Religion therefore entrenches upon none of our Priviledges invades none of our Pleasures it may indeed sometimes command us to change but never totally to abjure them But it is easily foreseen that this Discourse will in the very beginning of it be encountred by an Argument from Experience and therefore not more obvious than strong namely that it cannot but be the greatest trouble in the world for a man thus as it were even to shake off himself and to defie his Nature by a perpetual thwarting of his innate Appetites and Desires which yet is absolutely necessary to a severe and impartial prosecution of a course of Piety nay and we have this asserted also by the Verdict of Christ himself who still makes the Disciplines of self-denial and the Cross those terrible blows to Flesh and Blood the indispensable requisits to the Being of his Disciples All which being so would not he that should be so hardy as to attempt to persuade men to Piety from the pleasures of it be liable to that invective taunt from all Mankind that the Israelites gave to Moses Wilt thou put out the Eyes of this People Wilt thou persuade us out of our first Notions Wilt thou demonstrate that there is any delight in a Cross any Comfort in violent abridgements and which is the greatest Paradox of all that the highest Pleasure is to abstain from it For answer to which it must be confest that all Arguments whatsoever against Experience are fallacious and therefore in order to the Clearing of the Assertion lay'd down I shall premise these two Considerations 1. That Pleasure is in the Nature of it a Relative thing and so imports a peculiar Relation and Correspondence to the state and condition of the Person to whom it is a Pleasure For as those who Discourse of Atoms affirm that there are Atoms of all forms some round some triangular some square and the like all which are continually in motion and never settle till they fall into a fit circumscription or place of the same figure So there are the like great diversities of Minds and Objects whence it is that this Object striking upon a mind thus or thus disposed flies off and rebounds without making any impression but the same luckily hapning upon another of a Disposition as it were framed for it is presently catcht at and greedily clasped into the nearest Unions and Embraces 2. The other thing to be considered is this That the Estate of all men by Nature is more or less different from that estate into which the same persons do or may pass by the exercise of that which the Philosophers called Virtue and into which men are much more effectually and sublimely translated by that which we call Grace that is by the supernatural overpowring operation of God's Spirit The difference of which two estates consists in this that in the former the sensitive appetites rule and domineer in the latter the Supream faculty of the Soul called Reason sways the Scepter and acts the whole man above the irregular demands of Appetite and Affection That the distinction between these two is not a meer figment framed only to serve an Hypothesis in Divinity and that there is no man but is really under one before he is under the other I shall prove by shewing a Reason why it is so or rather indeed why it cannot but be so And it is this Because every man in the beginning of his life for several years is capable only of exercising his sensitive faculties and desires the use of Reason not shewing it self till about the Seventh Year of his Age and then at length but as it were dawning in very imperfect Essays and Discoveries Now it being most undeniably evident that every Faculty and Power grows stronger and stronger by exercise is it any wonder at all when a man for the space of his first six years and those the years of ductility and impression has been wholly ruled by the propensions of sense at that age very eager and impetuous that then after all his Reason beginning to exert and put forth it self finds the man prepossess'd and under another power so that it has much adoe by many little steps and gradual conquests to recover its prerogative from the usurpations of appetite and so to subject the whole man to its Dictates the difficulty of which is not conquered by some men all their Days And this is one true ground of the Difference between a state of Nature and a state of Grace which some are pleased to scoff at in Divinity who think that they confute all that they laugh at not knowing that it may be solidly evinced by meer Reason and Philosophy These two considerations being premised namely That Pleasure implies a proportion and agreement to the respective States and Conditions of men and that the state of men by Nature is vastly different from the estate into which Grace or Vertue transplants them all that Objection levelled against the foregoing Assertion is very easily resolvable For there is no doubt but a man while he resigns himself up to the Brutish guidance of sense and appetite has no relish at all for the Spiritual refined delights of a Soul clarified by Grace and Vertue The pleasures of an Angel can never be the pleasures of a Hog But this is the thing that we contend for that a man having once advanced