and to which all his worldly interest not only giveth place but is made to serve He will think no price no pains or suffering too dear so that the Souls of men be saved this is the riches and preferment which he desireth He hath nothing too good or too dear for Christ or for the meanest of his Servants when Christ requireth it He is willing to spend and be spont for their sakes It is them and not theirs that he desireth He feareth the unbelief and hard heartedness of his hearers and lest they should reject their own Salvation more than all the slanders or persecutions of the Enemies In a word his heart his study his life and business is to do all the good he can And they that under such a Ministry remain impenitent and hardened in sin are the most hopeless miserable people in the world V. And it greatly conduceth to publick good to keep up true order and Christian discipline in the particular Churches Tho Popish Church-Tyrants have turned the Church Keyes into a Military Reigning or revenging Sword yet Christ did not in vain commit them into his Ministers hands Religion seldome prospereth well where the Church is no inclosure but a Common where all sorts undistinguished meet Where as the people know not who shall be made their Pastors but must trust their Souls to the care of any that a Patron chooseth so the Pastor knoweth not who are his Communicating flock till he sees them come to the Lords Table no nor when he seeth them When it goeth for a sufficient excuse to the Pastors if the rabble of wicked men Communicate or pass for his Church-members tho they Communicate not if he can but say I knew them not to be wicked and how should he when he knew them not at all And that none accused them when they are meet strangers to each other In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision availeth any thing but a New Creature and Faith that worketh by love And if Christ made his Servants no better than the world who would believe that he is the Saviour of the World There will be some Tares in Christs field till his judgement cast them out for ever But if it be not a Society professing Holiness and disowning Unholiness and making a difference between the clean and the unclean him that sweareth and him that feareth an Oath him that serveth God and him that serveth him not Christ will disown them as workers of iniquity tho they had eat and drunk with him and done Miracles in his name Mat. 7. Much more if it be a Society where Godliness is despised and the most Godly excommunicated if they differ but in a formality or ceremony from Diotrephes and the wicked rabble tolerated and cherished in reviling serious godliness on pretence of opposing such Dissenters Christ will not own that Pastor nor Society which owneth not Conscience and serious Piety If the Pastors set up their Wills and Traditions before the Laws and Will of Christ and call out who is on our side instead of who is on Christs side and fall out with the Sheep and worry and scatter them and cherish the Goates and tolerate the Wolves woe to those Shepheards when Christ shall judge them I wonder not if such incline to infidelity tho they live by the name and image of Christianity and if they be loath to believe that there will such a day of judgement be which they have so much cause to fear But the prudent loving guidance of faithful Pastors is so necessary to the Church that without it there will be envy and strife confusion and every evil work and a headless multitude tho otherwise well meaning pious people will be all wise and all Teachers till they have no wise Teachers left and will crumble all into dissolution or into shameful Sects St. Paul told us of two games that Satan hath to play Acts 20. One by grievous Wolves that shall devour the Flock tho in Sheeps cloathing yet known by their bloudy jawes The other by Men from among your selves who shall speak perverse things to draw Disciples after them VI. If you would promote the good of all or many promote the Love and Concord of all that deserve to be called Christians To which end you must 1. Know who those are and 2. Skilfully and faithfully endeavour it 1. Far be it from any Christian to think that Christ hath not so much as told us what Christianity is and who they be that we must take for Christians when he hath commanded them all so earnestly to love each other Is not Baptism our Christening Every one that hath entred into that Covenant with Christ and understandingly and seriously professeth to stand to it and is not proved by inconsistent words or deeds to nullifie that profession is to be taken for a Christian and used in love and Communion as such Consider of these words and consider whether all Churches have walked by this Rule and whether swerving from it have not been the cause of corruption and confusion He is a Christian fit for our Communion who is baptized in infancy and owneth it solemnly at age And so is he that was not baptized ' til he himself beleived He is a Christian that beleiveth Christ to be true God and true Man in one Person and trusteth him as our only Redeemer by his Merits and Passion and our Mediator in the Heavens and obeyeth him as our Soveragin Lord for pardon for his Spirit and for Salvation And as a Christian this man is to be loved and used tho he have not so much skill in Metaphysicks as to know whether it be a proper speech to call Mary the Mother of God or that one of the Trinity was crucified or to know in what sense Christs Natures might be called One or Two and in what sense he might be said to have One Will or Two Wills One Operation or Two And know not whether the tria Capitula were to be condemned yea tho he could not define or clearly tell what Hypostasis persona yea or substantia signifieth in God nor tell whether God of Gods be a proper Speech This Man is a Christian tho he know not whether Patriarchal and Metropolitical and Diocesane Church formes be according to the Will of Christ or against it and whether symbolical signs in the Worship of God may lawfully be devised and imposed by Men and whether some doubtful words in Oaths and Subscriptions of Mens imposing being unnecessary be lawful and how far he may by them incur the guilt of perjury or deliberate lying And tho he think that a Minister may preach and pray in fit words of his own tho he read not a Sermon or prayer written for him by others who think that no words but theirs should be offered to God or Man 2. If Christs description of a Christian be forsaken and meer Christianity seem not a sufficient qualification for our Love and
Concord men will never know where to rest nor ever agree in any ones determination but Christs All men that can get power will be making their own Wills the Rule and Law and others will not think of them as they do and the variety of fallible mutable Church Laws and terms of Concord will be the Engine of perpetual discord as Ulpian told honest Alexander Severus the Laws would be which he thought to have made for sober Concord in fashions of Apparel Those that are united to Christ by faith and have his sanctifying Spirit and are justified by him and shall dwell with him in Heaven are certainly Christians and such as Christ hath commanded us to love as our selves And seeing that it is his Livery by which his Disciples must be known by loving one another and the false Prophets must be known by the fruits of their hurtfulness as Wolves Thornes and Thistles I must profess tho Order and Government have been so amiable to me as to tempt me to favourable thoughts of some Roman power in the Church I am utterly unreconcilable to it when I see that the very complexion of that Hierarchy is malice and bloodiness against Men most seriously and humbly pious that dare not obey them in their sinful usurpations and that their cause is maintained by belying hateing and Murdering true Christians And on the other side too many make Laws of Love and Communion to themselves and confine Christs Church with their little various and perhaps erroneous Sects And all others they Love with pity but only those of their Cabin and singular opinions they love with complacency and communion those that condemn such as Christ justifieth and say that Christians are not his are near of kin to one another tho one sort shew it by Persecution and the other but by Excommunication or Schismatical separation We are all one in Christ Jesus Gal. 4. 28. And therefore I advise all Christians to hate the causes and ways of hatred and Love all the causes and means of Love Frown on them that so extol their singular sentiments as to backbite others and speak evil of what they understand not Especially such as the Pamphleters of this Age whose design is weekly and daily to fight against Christian Love and to stir up all men to the utmost of their power to think odiously of one another and plainly to stir up a thirst after blood Never did Satan Write by the hand of man if he do it not by such as these The Lord of Love and Mercy rebuke them And take heed of them that can find enough in the best that are against their way to prove them dishonest if not intolerable and can see the Mote of a Ceremony or Nonconformity to a Ceremony in their Brothers Eye and not the Beam of Malice or Cruelty in their own Take heed of those that are either for confounding Toleration of all or for dissipating cruelty on pretence of Unity That Land or Church shall never truly prosper where these three sorts are not well distinguished 1. The Approved that are to be encouraged 2. The Tolerable that are to be patiently and lovingly endured 3. The Intolerable that are to be restrained They may as well confound Men and Beasts Wise Men and Mad Men Adult and Infants as confound these three sorts in reference to Religion I add this Note to prevent Objections that tho meekness and gentleness promote peace yet to speak sharply and hatefully of hatred un peaceableness and cruelty and all that tends to destroy Love is an act of Love and not of an uncharitable unpeaceable man VII If you love the common good of England do your best to keep up sound and serious Religion in the publick Parish Churches and be not guilty of any thing that shall bring the chief interest of Religion into private Assemblies of men only tolerated if you can avoid it Indeed in a time of Plagues Epidemical infection tolerated Churches may be the best preservatives of Religion as it was in the first 300 years and in the Arrians Reign and under Popery But where sound and serious Religion is owned by the Magistrate tolerated Churches are but as Hospitals for the sick and must not be the receptacle of all the healthful And doubtless if the Papists can but get the Protestant interest once into prohibited or tolerated Conventicles as they will call them they have more than half overcome it and will not doubt to use it next as they do in France and by one turn more to cast it out The countenance of Authority will go far with the Vulgar against all the scruples that men of Conscience stick at and they will mostly go to the allowed Churches whoever is there Let us therefore lose no possession that we can justly get nor be guilty of disgracing the honest Conformists but do all we can to keep up their Reputation for the good of Souls They see not matters of difference through the same Glass that we do They think us unwarrantably scrupulous We think the matter of their Sin to be very great But we know that before God the degree of guilt is much according to the degree of mens negligence or unwillingness to know the Truth or to obey it And prejudice education and converse maketh great difference on mens apprehensions Charity must not reconcile us to sin but there is no end of uncharitable censuring each other It hath made me admire to hear some mens words against Comprehension as they call it that they would not have Rulers revoke that which they judge to be heynous sin in their impositions unless they will revoke all that they think unlawful lest it should strengthen the Parish Churches and weaken the tolerated or suffering part I will not here open the sin of this policy as it deserves But I wish them to Read a small book called The whole Duty of Nations said to be Mr. Thomas Beverleys VIII If you love the common good take heed lest any injuries tempt you into sedition or unlawful Wars No man that never tried them can easily believe what an Enemy Wars and Tumults are to Religion and to common honesty and sobriety Men are there so serious about their Lives and Bodily safety that they have no room or time for serious Worshipping of God The Lords day is by necessity made a common day And all mens Goods are almost common to the will of Soldiers Either Power seems to authorize them or necessity to allow them to use the Goods of others as their own as if they were uncapable of doing wrong It is their honour that can kill most and how little place there is for Love it is easie to conceive I doubt not but it is lawful to fight for our King or Country in a good Cause As Nature giveth all private men a right of private self-defence and no more so the same Law of Nature which is Gods Law giveth all Nations a Right
Satan Teacheth them and as selfish Pride and Worldly interest incline them what wonder if such Love have murdered 30000 or 40000 at once in France and 200000 in Ireland and have filled the Christian World with Religious Blood Read but the doleful Histories of Church Contentions for 1300 years the Stories of their Wars and mutual Persecutions the Streams of Blood that have been shed in East and West the inquisitions and bloody Laws still kept up and all this as Good Works and done in Love and you would think that the Sacred Roman Hierarchy did Believe that Christ hath put down the Legal Sacrificing of Beasts that he might instead of it have the blood of men and that he who requireth his Disciples to lay down their lives for him would have a Priesthood kept up to Sacrifice their lives to him that will not wilfully break his Laws And all this is but as Christ foretold us that his Servants should be kill'd as a piece of Service to God No wonder if such men offer God a ludicrous mimical sort of Service and Worship him in vain by heartless lip-labour according to the Traditions of men when they dare Sacrifice Saints to the Lord of Saints and quiet their Consciences by calling them such as they are themselves But to the honour of Goodness and the shame of Sin to shew that they sin against the Light of Nature it self they put the Name of Evil upon Good before they dare openly oppose and persecute it and they put the Names of Good upon Evil before they dare defend and justifie it But alas it is not only the Ungodly that do mischief thinking verily that it is good How many doth the Church suffer by while they prosecute their mistakes who yet do much good in promoting the common truth which Christians are agreed in 2. He that will do Good to all or many must have an unfeigned Love to them Hatred is mischievous and neglect is unprofitable Love is the natural Fountain of Beneficence Love earnestly longeth to do good and delighteth in doing it It maketh many to be as One and to be as ready to help others as each Member of the Body is to help the rest Love maketh anothers wants sufferings and sorrows to be our own And who is not willing to help himself Love is a principle ready active ingenious and constant It studieth to do good and would still do more It is Patient with the infirmities of others which men void of love do aggravate into odiousness and make them their excuse for all their neglects and their pretence for all their Cruelties Could you make all the slanderers backbiters revilers despisers persecuters to love their Neighbours as themselves you may easily Judge what would be the effect and whether they would revile or prosecute or imprison or ruine themselves or study how to make themselves odious or suborne perjured witnesses against themselves 3. Yea he that will do good to many must Love many better than himself and preferre the Common-good much before his own and seek his own in the Common-welfare He that loveth good as good will best Love the best And an honest old Roman would have called him an unworthy beast that preferred his Estate or life before the Common welfare To be ready to do suffer or die for their Country was a vertue which all extolled A narrow-Spirited selfish man will serve others no further than it serveth himself or at least will stand with his own safety or prosperity He will turn as the Weathercock and be for them that are for his worldly interest I confess that God oft useth such for common good But it is by raising such storms as would sink them with the Ship and leaving them no great hope to escape by being false Or by Permiting such Villanies as threaten their own interest A Covetous Father may be against gaming and prodigality in his Children The men of this World are wise in their generation Many that have Abby Lands will be against Popery And even Atheists and Licentious men may be loth to be slaves to Politick Priests and to come under Confession and perhaps the Inquisition And those that have not sinned themselves into madness or gross delusions will be loth to set up a Forieign Jurisdiction and become the Subjects of an unknown Priest if they can help it God often useth vice against vice and if no worldly selfish men were the Countries or the Churches helpers it must suffer or trust to Miracles But yet there is no trust to be put in these men further than their own interest must stand or fall with the Common good If God and Heaven and Conscience be not more powerful with a man than worldly interest trust him not against the stream and tide or when he thinks he can make a better bargain for himself He that will sell Heaven and Christ for the world will sell you for it and sell his Country for it and sell Religion truth and honesty for it And if he scape here the end of Achitophel and Judas he will venture on all that 's out of sight Christ was the grand Benefactor to the world and the most excellent teacher of Love and self-denyal and contempt of the world to all that will follow him in doing good to many 4. He that will do much good must be good himself Make the tree good if you would have good fruit Operari sequitur esse A bad man is an Enemy to the greatest good that he should do Malignity abhorreth serious piety and will such promote it If Elias be a man of Miracles he shall hear Hast thou found me O my Enemy And Michaiah shall hear I hate him for he Prophesieth not good of me but evil Feed him with the Bread and Water of Affliction And a bad Man if by accident he be engaged for a good cause is still suspected by those that know him They cannot trust him as being a slave to lust and to strong Temptations and a secret Enemy to the true interest of his Country Alas the best are hardly to be trusted far as being lyable to miscarry by infirmity how little then is to be hoped for from the wicked 5. He that will do much good in the world must be furnished with considerable abilities Especially prudence and skill in knowing when and to whom and how to do it Without this he will do more harm than good Even good men when they have done much good by some one miscarriage tempted by the remnants of selfishness and Pride and by unskilful rashness have undone all the good they did and done as much hurt as wicked enemies There goeth so much to publick good and so many snares are to be avoided that rash self-conceited half-witted men do seldom do much unless under the conduct of wiser men 6. He that will be a publick blessing to the world must have a very large prospect and see the state of all the world
and foresee what is like to come He must not live as if his neighbourhood were all the Land or his Country or his Party were all the Church or all the World He must know what relation all our actions have to other Nations and to all the Church of Christ on earth The want of this Universal prospect involveth many in censorious and dividing Sects who would abhor that way if they knew the case of all the Church and world And we must not look only to a present exigent or advantage but foresee how our Actions will look hereafter and what changes may put them under other judgments and what the fruits may be to posterity Many things cause death which give the Patient present ease 7. He that will do good to many must have Christian fortitude and not be discouraged with difficulties and opposition He must serve God for the good of men with absolute resolution and not with the hypocrites reserves He must be armed with patience against not only the malice of enemies but the ingratitude of friends The follies and quarrels and mutinies and divisions and often the abuses of those that he would do good to must not overcome him He must imitate God and do good to the Evil and bless those that curse him and pray for them that despightfully use him He must not promise himself more success than God hath promised him nor yet despair and turn back discouraged But Conscience must carry him on to the end through all whatever shall befal him 8. Therefore he must look for his reward from God and not expect too much from Man Men are insufficient mutable and uncertain Their interests and many accidents may change them The multitude are of many minds and tempers and if you please some you shall displease others And it is hard to please even one person long Some great ones will not be pleased unless you will prefer their Wills before the Will of God your Countries good and your own Salvation The poor are so many and so indigent that no man can answer their desires If you give twenty pound to twenty of the poor forty or an hundred that expected the like will murmure at you and be displeased What Man ever did so much good in the world as not to be accused by some as if he were a Covetous or a hurtful man Therefore he that will do much good must firmly believe the life to come and must do that he doth as the work of God in obedience to him and look for his reward in Heaven and not as the Hypocrite in the praise of men much less as the worldling in the hope of temporal advantage He must not wonder if he be rewarded as Socrates was at Athens and as Christ and his Apostles were in the world Themistocles likened himself to a great Fruit Tree which Men run for shelter under in a storm and when the storm is over they throw stones and cudgels at it to beat down the fruit Reckon not on a reward from men but from God By what is said you may perceive what are the great impediments of doing good to many which must be overcome I. One and the worst is Malignity which is an Enmity to Spiritual good For who will promote that which he is against II. Another is unbelief of Gods Commands and Promises when men take not themselves to be his Subject and Stewards nor can take his promise for good security for their reward III. Another is the forementioned sin of Selfishness which makes a mans self to be his chiefest love and care and more to him than Christs interest or the Church or Kingdom IV. Another is a false conceit that a man is so obliged to provide for his Children and Kindred that all that he can get how rich soever he be must be left to make them rich except some inconsiderable pittance V. Another is the great neglect of Parents to prepare their Children to be profitable to the Commonwealth but only to live in prosperity to themselves 1. Children should be taught as much as may be to become persons of understanding and such wisdom as may make them useful 2. And especially to be truly Religious For then they will be devoted to do good in love and obedience to God 3. They should be taught what it is to be members of Societies and what duty they owe to Church and State and how great a part of their duty lyeth in careing for the Common good and how sinful and damnable it is to live only to themselves and how much this selfishness is the sum of all iniquity 4. Those Callings should be chosen for them which they are fittest for and in which they may do most publick good VI. And a timerous Cowardly disposition is a great hinderance to publick good For such will be still for the self-saving way and afraid of the dangers that attend the greatest duties If they are called to Liberality they will fear lest they should want themselves In all costly or hazardous duty there will still be a Lyon in their way They cannot trust God and no wonder then if they are not to be trusted themselves VII Lastly Sloth and Idleness are constant Enemies to well doing There are two sorts especially guilty of this one and the better is some Religious people who think that their business is only with God and their own hearts and that if they could spend all their time in Meditation Prayer and such like exercises it would be the best kind of life on Earth Among the Papists multitudes by this conceit turn Fryars and Nun's Among us such spend all their time in hearing Sermons and in Reading and Meditating and Prayer and such like exercises of Religion towards God if they are but rich enough to live without bodily labour And the Example of Mary and Martha they think will make this good I know that this is no common error The wicked are of a far different mind And I know no man can do too much to save his Soul But we may do one sort of our work too much to the neglect of other parts We have Souls in flesh and both parts have their proper necessity and work Mary did somewhat else than hear tho she wisely preferred it in its season And no one is made for himself alone You feel that Religious exercises do you good But what good is it that you do to others I confess a Monks Prayers for others is a good work But God will have Praying and endeavouring go together both for your selves and others Bare Praying God to relieve the Poor and to teach your Children and instruct the ignorant will not excuse you from relieving teaching or instructing them Yea and your own good will best come in by your fullest obedience to God Do what he bids you and he will take care of your Salvation Your own way may seem best but will not prove best It will but