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
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
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
cause of all these mischiefs and thereupon to redeem his Father's Sacrilege gave more and richer things to Temples than his Father had Stollen from them Though by the way it may seem to be a strange method of repairing an injury done to the true God by adorning the Temples of the false See the same sad effect of Sacrilege in the great Nebuchadnezzar He plunders the Temple of God and we find the fatal doom that afterwards befell him he lost his Kingdom and by a new unheard-of Judgment was driven from the Society and converse of Men to table with the Beasts and to graze with Oxen the impiety and inhumanity of his sin making him a fitter companion for them than for those to whom Religion is more Natural than Reason it self And since it was his unhappiness to transmit his sin together with his Kingdom to his Son while Belshazzar was quaffing in the sacred Vessels of the Temple which in his pride he sent for to abuse with his impious Sensuality he sees his fatal Sentence writ by the finger of God in the very midst of his profane mirth And he stays not long for the Execution of it that very Night losing his Kingdom and his Life too And that which makes the Story direct for our purpose is that all this comes upon him for his profaning those sacred Vessels God himself tells us so much by the mouth of his Prophet in Dan. 5.23 where this only sin is charged upon him and particularly made the cause of his sudden and utter ruine These were Violaters of the First Temple and those that prophaned and abused the Second sped no better And for this take for instance that first born of sin and Sacrilege Antiochus the story of whose profaning God's House you may read in the 1. book of Maccab. 1 ch and you may read also at large what success he found after it in the 6th ch where the Author tells us that he never prospered aftewards in any thing but all his designs were frustrated his Captains slain his Armies defeated and lastly himself falls sick and dies a miserable death And which is most considerable as to the present business when all these Evils befell him his own conscience tells him that it was even for this that he had most Sacrilegiously pillaged and invaded God's House 1 Maccab 6. vers 12 13. Now I remember says he the Evils I did at Ierusalem how I took the Vessels of Gold and Silver I perceive therefore that for this cause these Evils are come upon me and behold I perish for grief in a strange land The Sinner's Conscience is for the most part the best Expositor of the mind of God under any Judgment or Affliction Take another notable instance in Nicanor who purposed and threatned to burn the Temple 1 Maccab. 7.35 and a curse lights upon him presently after His great Army is utterly ruined he himself slain in it and his head and right hand cut off and hung up before Ierusalem Where two things are remarkable in the Text. 1. That he himself was first slain a thing that does not usually befall a General of an Army 2. That the Iews prayed against him to God and desired God to destroy Nicanor for the injury done to his Sanctuary only naming no sin else And God ratify'd their Prayers by the judgment they brought down upon the head of him whom they prayed against God stopt his blasphemous Mouth and cut off his sacrilegious Hand and made them teach the world what it was for the most potent sinner under Heaven to threaten the Almighty God especially in his own House for so was the Temple But now lest some should puff at these instances as being such as were under a different Oeconomy of Religion in which God was more tender of the shell and ceremonious part of his Worship and consequently not directly pertinent to ours therefore to shew that all prophanation and invasion of things Sacred is an offence against the eternal Law of nature and not against any positive Institution after a time to Expire we need not go many Nations off nor many Ages back to see the Vengeance of God upon some Families raised upon the Ruines of Churches and enriched with the spoils of Sacrilege gilded with the name of Reformation And for the most part so unhappy have been the purchasers of Church-lands that the world is not now to seek for an argument from a long experience to convince it that though in such purchases Men have usually the cheapest Penny-worths yet they have not always the best bargains For the Holy thing has stuck fast to their sides like a fatal shaft and the Stone has cryed out of the Consecrated Walls they have lived within for a Judgment upon the head of the Sacrilegious intruder and Heaven has heard the cry and made good the curse So that when the Heir of a blasted family has rose up and promised fair and perhaps flourished for some time upon the stock of excellent parts and great favour yet at length a Cross event has certainly met and stopt him in the Career of his fortunes so that he has ever after withered and declined and in the end come to nothing or to that which is worse So certainly does that which some call blind Superstition take aim when it shoots a Curse at the Sacrilegious person But I shall not engage in the odious task of recounting the families which this sin has blasted with a Curse Only I shall give one Eminent instance in some persons who had Sacrilegiously procured the Demolishing of some places consecrated to Holy Uses And for this to shew the world that Papists can commit Sacrilege as freely as they can object it to Protestants it shall be in that great Cardinal and Minister of State Woolsey who obtained leave of Pope Clement the 7th to Demolish 40 Religious houses which he did by the service of Five men to whose conduct he committed the effecting of that business every one of which came to a sad and fatal end For the Pope himself was ever after an unfortunate Prince Rome being twice taken and sacked in his reign himself taken Prisoner and at length dying a miserable Death Woolsey as is known incurr'd a Praemunire forfeited his Honour Estate and Life which he ended some say by Poyson but certainly in great Calamity And for the Five Men employed by him two of them quarrelled one of which was slain and the other hang'd for it the third drown'd himself in a Well the fourth though Rich came at length to beg his Bread and the fifth was miserably Stabbed to death at Dublin in Ireland This was the Tragical end of a Knot of Sacrilegious persons from highest to lowest The consideration of which and the like passages one would think should make men keep their Fingers off from the Churches Patrimony though not out of Love to the Church which few men have yet at least out of Love to
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
consist should be principled and possessed with a full fixed and through perswasion of the justness and goodness of the Blessed Old King's Cause and of the excellent Piety and Christianity of those Principles upon which the Loyal part of the Nation adhered to him and that against the most horrid and inexcusable Rebellion that was ever set on foot and acted upon the stage of the world Of all which whosoever is not perswaded is a Rebel in his heart and deserves not the protection which he enjoys And the rather do I think such Remarks as these necessary of late years because of the vile arts and restless endeavours used by some sly and venomous factors for the old Republican Cause to poyson and debauch Men from their Allegiance sometimes creeping into Houses and sometimes creeping into Studies but in both equally pimping for the Faction and stealing away as many Hearts from the Son as they had formerly employed Hands against the Father And this with such success that it cannot but be matter of very sad and Melancholy reflexion to all sober and Loyal minds to consider That several who had stood it out and persevered firm and unalterable Royallists in the late Storm have since I know not by what unhappy fate turned Trimmers in the Calm 3 ly The third instance in which Men use to plead the Will instead of the Deed shall be in Duties of Cost and Expence Let a business of expensive Charity be proposed and then as I shew'd before that in matters of Labour the Lazy Person could find no hands wherewith to Work so neither in this Case can the Religious Miser find any hands wherewith to give It is wonderfull to consider how a command or call to be Liberal either upon a Civil or Religious account all of a sudden impoverishes the Rich breaks the Merchant shuts up every private Man's Exchequer and makes those Men in a minute have nothing at all to give who at the very same instant want nothing to spend So that instead of releiving the poor such a command strangely encreases their number and transforms Rich Men into beggars presently For let the danger of their Prince and Country knock at their Purses and call upon them to contribute against a Publick enemy or calamity then immediately they have nothing and their Riches upon such occasions as Solomon expresses it never fail to make themselves Wings and to fly away Thus at the Siege of Constantinople then the wealthiest City in the world the Citizens had nothing to give their Emperour for the defence of the place though he begged a supply of them with tears but when by that means the Turks took and Sack'd it then those who before had nothing to give had more than enough to lose And in like manner those who would not support the necessities of the old Blessed King against his Villainous Enemies found that Plunder could take where Disloyalty would not give and Rapine open those Chests that Avarice had shut But to descend to matters of daily and common Occurrence What is more usual in conversation than for Men to express their unwillingness to do a thing by saying They cannot do it and for a Covetous Man being asked a little Money in Charity to answer That he has none Which as it is if true a sufficient answer to God and Man so if false it is intolerable Hypocrisy towards both But do men in good earnest think that God will be put off so or can they imagine that the Law of God will be baffled with a Lye cloathed in a Scoff For such pretences are no better as appears from that notable account given us by the Apostle of this windy insignificant Charity of the Will and of the worthlesness of it not enlivened by Deeds Iames 2. v. 15 16. If a Brother or a Sister be naked and destitute of daily food and one of you say unto them Depart in peace be you warmed and filled notwithstanding ye give them not those things that are needfull to the Body what doth it profit Profit does he say why it profits just as much as fair words command the Market as good wishes buy Food and Rayment and pass for current payment in the Shops Come to an old rich professing Vulpony and tell him That there is a Church to be built beautified or endowed in such a place and that he cannot lay out his Money more to God's Honour the publick good and the comfort of his own Conscience than to bestow it liberally upon such an occasion and in answer to this it is ten to one but you shall be told How much God is for the Inward Spiritual Worship of the Heart and That the Almighty neither dwells nor delights in Temples made with hands but hears and accepts the Prayers of his People in Dens and Caves Barns and Stables and in the homeliest and meanest Cottages as well as in the stateliest and most magnificent Churches Thus I say you are like to be answered In reply to which I would have all such sly sanctified Cheats who are so often harping upon this string know once for all That that God who accepts the Prayers of his People in Dens and Caves Barns and Stables when by his afflicting Providence he has driven them from the appointed places of his solemn Worship so that they cannot have the use of them will not for all this endure to be served or prayed to by them in such places nor accept of their Barn-Worship nor their Hogsty-Worship no nor yet of their Parlour or their Chamber-Worship where he has given them both Wealth Power to build him Churches For he that commands us to Worship him in the Spirit commands us also to Honour him with our Substance And never pretend that thou hast an heart to Pray while thou hast no heart to give since he that serves Mammon with his Estate cannot possibly serve God with his Heart For as in the Heathen Worship of God a Sacrifice without an Heart was accounted Ominous so in the Christian Worship of him an Heart without a Sacrifice is worthless and impertinent And thus much for mens pretences of the Will when they are called upon to Give upon a Religious account according to which a man may be well enough said as the common word is to be all Heart and yet the arrantest Miser in the World But come we now to this old rich pretender to Godliness in another case and tell him That there is such an one a man of a good Family good Education and who has lost all his Estate for the King now ready to rot in Prison for Debt come what will you give towards his release Why then answers the Will instead of the Deed as much the readier speaker of the two The truth is I always had a respect for such Men I love them with all my heart and it is a thousand pities that any that have served the King so faithfully should be in