If selfish interest led them not to this and if they were more tender of the Interest of Christ than of their own and of mens souls than of their flesh it would not be thus But the same argument that tempts the sensual to Hell doth tempt such Magistrates to set up Liberty for drawing men to Hell The wicked sell their souls to spare their flesh and let go Heaven to enjoy the Liberty of sinning and run into Hell to scape the trouble of an holy life And such Magistrates sell the peoples souls to spare the flesh of the deceivers and in tenderness and mercy to their bodies they dare not restrain men from seeking their damnation Is faith and holiness propagated by perswasion and not by force Surely then Infidelity Popery and Ungodliness are propagated by perswasion too Again I tell you self-love doth make such Rulers wiser than to grant Commission or Liberty to all that will to tice their souldiers to mutinies or rebellion their wives to Adultery their children to prodigality or their servants to thievery But the love of Christ and mens salvation is not so strong as to satisfie them whether men should be hindred from raising mutinies in his Church and from destroying souls Forsooth they tell us that Christ is sufficient to look to his own cause Very true and they shall one day know it But must he not therefore teach or rule by men Is not Adultery Murder Theft Rebellion against the Cause of Christ and his Laws as well as Popery and Infidelity And must they therefore be let alone by man Christ is sufficient to Teach the world as well as to Govern But doth it follow that men must be no Teachers under him Nothing but selfishness could cause this blindness And because I know that this stream proceeds from the Roman spring and it is their great design to perswade the world that it belongs not to Magistrates to meddle with Religion but only to cherish them that the Pope approveth of and to punish those whom the Pope condemns and that Christ must Govern and judge of matters of Religion himself that is by his pretended Roman Vicechrist I shall only now say this that if Rome were acquainted with self-denial and if the selfish carnal interest of Riches and Rule and worldly greatness had not blinded them they could never have believed themselves that Christ did appoint the Pope of Rome to be his Universal Vicar and that Princes and Magistrates in their own Dominions have not more Power to judge who is to be tolerated or punished by the sword than the Pope of Rome when no Priest or Prelate upon earth as such hath any thing to do with such a judgement no not in the places where they live All that they have to do herein is to judge who is the Heretick or offendor in order to his censure and excommunication But it's Magistrates only that must judge who is the Heretick or effendor in order to corporal punishment or restraint And this I undertake to make good against all the Papists in the world much more that the Roman Tyrant hath no such Power at the Antipodes and in all the Christian Nations on earth Remember in all this that I speak not against a Toleration of Godly tolerable men Episcopal Presbyterian Independent Anabaptist c. that will walk in Charity Peace and Concord ☞ we shall never be well till these are closed But do we not know that Papists have Italy and Spain and Germany and France at hand to help them And that if we grant them such a liberty as shall strengthen them and make way for their power we give away our own liberty and are preparing faggots for our martyrdom and giving away the Gospel that by wonders of mercy hath been till now preserved and I hope shall be preserved in despite of Rome and Hell Nor yet do I plead for any cruelty against a Papist but for a necessary Defence of the interest of Christ and the souls of men and the hopes of our posterity True Humanity abhorreth cruelty Did Magistrates well know their dependence upon God and that they are his officers and must make him their end they would not take their flocks to be their masters though they may take them for their charge nor would they set up a carnal interest of the multitude against the pleasing of God and mens salvation nor would they think so highly of mens conceits and wills as to judge it a matter of so much moment to allow them in Religion to say or do what they list If allowing a mans self in the practice of Known sin is inconsistent with a state of grace and a sign of a miserable slave of Satan I leave it to you to consider what it will prove to allow others even Countries and Nations in Known sin And if Rulers know not that setting up an Universal Vice-christ and worshipping bread though they think there is no bread with Divine worshp and serving God in an unknown tongue with other points of Popery are sin and that opposing and reproaching the holy Scriptures Ordinances and Ministry are sin wo to such Rulers and wo to the Nations that are Ruled by such O what a blessing is a holy self-denying Magistracy to a Nation If one could have told you twenty years ago that you and such as you should be Rulers in this Land how confidently would you have promised an universal encouragement to godliness and a vigorous promoting the cause of Christ and a zealous suppressing of all that is against it Little would you or I have thought that after Professors of godliness were in power so many years should have been spent in destroying Charity and Unity and cherishing almost all that will stand up for the Devil and plead his cause against the Doctrine and Discipline and Worship and Churches and Officers of Jesus Christ And that in their dayes it should have been put to the Question whether the Ministry it self should be taken down And that men in power should write for Liberty for all that will call it self Religion even Popery not excepted nor I think Infidelity or Mahumetism it self and that those that write so should be men in Power My heart would have risen against him as an odious calumniator that should have presumed to tell me that such men as have attempted this would ever have come to such a pass and I should have encountred them with Hazaels question Are they dogs that they should do so vile a thing and exercise such cruelty on souls and seek to bring back the people of God to the Romish vomit and set up the greatest tyranny on earth and all under pretence of a Religious Liberty But alas it is not Magistrates only that are so wanting in self-denial Ministers also are guilty of this crime Or else we should not have been so forward to divisions and so backward to the cure nor would men of this profession for
opinions out of their own brain to have a Religion that may be called their own And it 's their Own in two respects 1. Because it is of their own devising and not of Gods revealing or appointing 2. Because it suiteth with their own carnal ends and interests Men are far readier to make themselves a faith than to receive that which God hath formed to their hands And they are far readier to receive a Doctrine that tends to their carnal commodity or honour or delights than one that tends to self-denial and to abase themselves and exalt the Lord. 2. And when they have hatched or received such opinions which are peculiarly their Own they are apt to like them the better because they are their own and to value them because of the Interest of self O Sirs that you did but know the commonness and danger of self-conceitedness in the world Even with many that seem humble and verily think that it is the spirit of God that beareth the greatest sway in their understandings yet self doth there erect its throne O how secretly subtilly will self insinuate and make you believe that it 's a pure self-denying light which guideth you an dt hat what you hold is meerly by the cogent evidence of truth or the illumination of the Spirit when it is but a Viper that self hath hatched and doateth on because it is her own Because the Papists have gone too far in teaching men to depend on the Church and on their Teachers therefore self-conceitedness takes advantage of their error to draw men into the contrary extream and make every Infant-Christian to think himself wiser than his most experienced Brethren and Teachers and every raw unstudied Christian to think himself wiser than those that have been searching into the word of truth by study and prayer almost all their days and therefore to cry down that learning wisdom and study which they are unacquainted with that seeing they have it not themselves they may at least be thought as wise men without it as those that have it and so may provide for the reputation and interest of self O what sad work hath this great sin of self-conceitedness made in the world In too many places men make it their Religion to strive who shall be greatest for wisdom and abilities in the eyes of men and it is the very work of their Prayers and conference and teaching to exercise self-conceitedness and to make it appear that they are some body in knowledge Hence is it that they are so apt to fall upon novelties which either few receive or none before themselves devised that being singular self may be the more observed and they may have something which may be called their Own Hence also it is that they are so little suspicious of their own opinions never bending their studies impartially to try whether they are of God or not but rather to maintain them and to find out all that can be said for them and against the contrary minded Hence is it that men have such light and contemptuous thoughts of the judgment of those that excel them in knowledge and that the voice of Corah and those other Conspirators Numb 16. 3. is grown so common in the mouths of ignorant proud professors Ye take too much upon you say they to their Guides and Teachers seeing all the Congregation are holy every one of them and the Lord is among them wherefore then lift ye up your selves above the Congregation of the Lord It is the Holiness of the Congregation and all its members and the presence of God himself among them that is pleaded against the Superiority of Moses Aaron as if with so Holy a people that had God himself to be their Teacher and Guide there were no need of men to be lift up above the Congregation of the Lord. But it was self that was intended what ever was pretended From this self-conceitedness also it is that the weightiest common truths that self hath no special interest in are so little valued and relished and insisted on and that a less and more uncertain point which self hath espoused shall be more relished insisted on and contended for Hence also is most of the common confidence of men in their own Opinions that when the point is doubtful if not certainly false in the eyes of wiser men than themselves yet the fool rageth and is confident Prov. 14. 16. He can carry on a conceit of his Own with as brazen a face and proud contempt of other mens arguments as if he were maintaining that the Sun is light and other men pleaded to prove it dark when alas it is self-interest that is the life the strength the goodness of the cause Hence also it is that men are so quarrelsom with the words and ways of others that they can scarce hear or read a word but these pugnacious animals are ready to draw upon it as if they had catch'd an advantage for the honouring of their valour and were loth to lose such a prize and opportunity for a victory and triumph Hence it is that hiâ—â—ing at the sayings and doings of others is the first and most common and most sensible part of their Commentaries And that they can make heresies and monsters not only of tolerable errors but of truths themselves if they have but the inexpiable guilt of crossing the wisdom of these self-conceited men Hence it is that opinions of their own are more industriously cultivated and studiously cherished by a double if not a tenfold proportion of Zeal and diligence than common truths that all the godly in the world have as much interest in as they though the common truths be incomparably the greater And hence it is that men are so tenacious of that which is their Own when they easilier let go that which is Gods and must have all come to them and every man deny his own judgment except themselves and that it must be the glory of others to yield to them and their glory to yield to none but to have all men come over and submit to them All these are the fruits and discoveries of self as it reigns in mens understandings who possibly may think that it 's Christ and the Spirit that 's there exalted Yet mistake me not I do not say or think that a man should forsake a certain truth for fear of being accounted self-conceited nor that he must presently captivate his own understanding to a learneder man or the stronger or more numerous side for fear of being self-conceited Much less must I deny that grace of God that hath made me savingly wise by his illumination that was formerly foolish disobedient and deceived in the days of my ignorance The world must give us leave to triumph over our own former folly with Paul Tit. 3. 3 4 5. and say with the same Paul that we were no better than mad when we were enemies to the Gospel Act. 26. 11. and with
holiness more abound If so be not too hasty to censure their Zeal But usually all these dividing ways are the diseases of the Church which cause its languishing decay and dissolution 7. Lastly This selfish zeal is commonly censorious and uncharitable and diminisheth Christian Love and sets those a reproaching and despising each other that should have lived in the Union and Communion of Saints Where you find these properties of your zeal and desire for the promoting of your Opinions or parties in Religion you have great reason to make it presently your business to find out that insinuating self which maketh your Religion Carnal and to deny and mortifie it CHAP. XXXIV Carnal Liberty to be denied What. 17. ANother selfish interest to be denied is Carnal Liberty A thing that selfishness hath strangely brought of late into so much credit that abundance among us think they are doing some special service to God their Country the Church and their own souls when they are but deeply engaged for the Devil by a self-seeking spirit in a Carnal Course For the discovery of this dangerous common disease I must first tell you that there is a threefold Liberty which must carefully be differenced 1. There is an Holy Blessed Liberty which no man must deny 2. There is a wicked Liberty which no man should desire 3. And between these two there is a Common Natural and Civil Liberty which is good in its place as other worldly matters are but must be denied when it stands in competition with higher and better things and as all other worldly matters is Holy when it is Holily esteemed and used that is for God but sinful when it is sinfully esteemed and used and that is for Carnal self I. The first of these is not to be denied but all other Liberty to be denied for it This Holy Liberty consisteth in these following Particulars 1. To be freed from the Power of sin which is the disability the deformity the death of the soul 2. From the Guilt of sin and the wrath of God and the Curse of the Law 3. To be restored to God by Christ in Union Reconciliation and Sanctification and our enthralled spirits set free to know and love and serve him and delight in him Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is Libert y 2 Cor. 3. 17. God is the souls freedom who is its Lord and life and end and all 4. To be delivered from Satan as a Deceiver and enemy and executioner of the wrath of God 5. To be freed from that Law or Covenant of Works which requireth that which to us is become impossible 6. To be freed from the burdensome task of useless Ceremonies imposed on the Church in the times of infancy and darkness 7. To be freed from the accusations of a guilty conscience those self-tormentings which in the wicked are the fore-tastes of hell 8. To be freed from such temporal judgments here as might hinder our salvation or our service of God 9. To be free from the condemning sentence at the last day and the everlasting Torments which the wicked must endure 10. And to be delivered into the blessed sight of God and the perfect fruition and pleasing of him in Perfect Love and Joy and Praise to all eternity This is the Liberty which you must not deny which I therefore name that by the way you may see that it is not for nothing that the other sorts of Liberty are to be denied II. The second sort of Liberty is that which is wicked directly evil which all men should deny And this is a freedom from Righteousness as the Apostle calls it Rom. 6. 20. To be free from a voluntary subjection to God and free from his severe and holy Laws and free from the thoughts of holiness and of the life to come and free from those sighs and groans for sin and that godly sorrow which the sanctified undergo and to be free from all those spiritual motions and changing works upon their hearts which the Spirit doth work on all the Saints to be free from holy speeches and holy prayer and other duties and from that strict and holy manner of living which God commandeth to be at liberty to sin against God and to please the flesh and follow their own imaginations and wills let God say what he will to the contrary to be free to eat and drink what we love and have a mind of and to be merry and wanton and lustful and worldly and take our course without being curbed by so precise a Law as God hath given us to be free from an heavenly conversation and those preparations for death and that Communion with God which the Saints partake of This is the wicked Liberty of the world which the worst of carnal men desire And the next beyond this is a Liberty to lie in the fire of hell and a freedom from salvation and from the everlasting Joy and Praises of the Saints If freedom from Grace and Holiness deserve the name of Freedom then you may next call Damnation a Freedom And it is part also of this sinful miserable Liberty to be free from the Government and Officers and good Laws which rule the Church and Commonwealth And such wretches there are in the world that seriously judge it a desirable Liberty to be free from these They think that their Country is Free when every man may do what he list and they have no King or other Governors or none that will look after them and punish their miscarriages And they think the Church is free when they have no Pastors or when Pastors have least power over them and they may do what they list And indeed if they were rid of Magistrates and Ministers they were free As a School is free that hath shut out the Master or have rejected him and teach and rule one another And as a Ship is free when the Master and Pilot are thrown over-board and as an Army is free when they have cast off or lost their commanders or to speak more fitly as an Hospital is free when they are delivered from their Physician and as the madmen in Bedlam are free when they have killed or escaped from their Keepers As Infidels keep their Freedom by refusing Christ in himself so carnal Dividers and Hereticks keep their Freedom by refusing his Officers and Christ in those Officers For he that heareth them heareth him and he that despiseth them despiseth him and he that despiseth despiseth not man but God Luke 10. 16. 1 Thes 4. 8. And another part of this ungodly Liberty is to be free from the exercise at least of this power of Magistrates and Ministers so far as not to be restrained from sin though they be not free from the state of subjects To swear and be drunk and live as most Ale-sellers on the damning sins of others and make a trade of selling men their damnation and to have no Magistrate punish them no
Heresies and Church-divisions as any Sensualist hath in his way And hence it is that a zeal for selfish opinions is easily got and easily maintained when zeal for the saving truths of God is hardly kindled and hardly kept alive Yea multitudes in the world do make the very truth to be the matter of their carnal interest in it while they some way get a seeming peculiar interest and promote it but as an opinion of their own or of their party and use it for selfish carnal ends And hence it is that many that are called Orthodox can easily get and keep a burning zeal for their Orthodox opinions when Practical Christians do find it a very hard matter to be zealous for the same truths in a Practical way Many ungodly men will be hot in Disputing for the truth and crying down all that are against it and perhaps so far exceed their bounds that the godly dare not follow them And the reason is clear Whether it be Truth or Error that a man holds if he hold it but as a conceit of his Own or as the opinion of his party or to be noted in the world as one that hath found out more truth than others or any way make it but the matter of his selfish interest nature and corruption will furnish him with a zeal for it It 's easie to go where sin and Satan drives and to be zelous where zeal hath so small resistance and to swim down the stream of corrupted nature But it is not so easie to be zealous in the practical saving entertainment of the truth and exercising that faith and love to God and holy obedience which truth is sent to work in us A schismatical or Opinionative use of truth it self is but an using it for self against the God of truth and it is no more wonder to see men zealous in this than to see men forward and hot in any evil We cannot tell how to quench or restrain this selfish carnal kind of zeal But when men should use the truth for God and their salvation against Satan and sin and self then it 's hard to make them zealous They are like green wood or wet fuel on the fire that will not burn without much blowing and soon goeth out when it seemed to be kindled if once you leave it to it self Paul spoke not non-sense when he said For ye are yet Carnal for whereas there is among you envying and strife and divisions are ye not carnal and walk as men For while one saith I am of Paul and another I am of Apollo are ye not Carnal 1 Cor. 3. 3 4 5. How secretly soever it may lurk there is doubtless much of self and flesh in Heresies and unjust Divisions I know that most of them little perceive it James and John in their zeal which would have called for fire from heaven did not know what spirit they were of But God would not have spoke it if it were not true Rom. 16. 17. Now I beseech you brethren mark them which cause Divisions and offences contrary to the Doctrine which ye have learned and avoid them For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ but their own belly and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple Though they little believe that that there is any such wickedness in them as this yet the Spirit of God that is the searcher of hearts is acquainted with it and assureth us that both at the bottom and the End Church-dividing courses have a carnal selfish nature It is some secret interest of self though scarce discerned that kindleth the zeal and carrieth on the work It is not God that is served by the divisions of his Church Many Sects now among us do put a face of Truth and Zeal upon their cause But self is the more dangerously powerful with them by how much the less suspected or observed The Papists under the pretence of the Churches Union are the great dividers of the Christian world unchurching the far greatest part of the Church and separating from all that be not Subjects of the Pope of Rome And do you think it is self and flesh that is the Principle and Life and End of this their Schism were it not for the upholding of this usurped power and worldly immunities and greatness of the Clergy it is morally impossible that so many men of reason and learning could concur in such a schism and in so many gross conceits as go along with it It is not the Pope that they are principally united in For the far greatest part of them it it too evident that it is selfish and fleshly interest that is their Center to which the Pope is but a means Hence it is that many of their Jesuits and Fryars are carried abroad the world with such a fire of zeal to promote their cause that they will compass sea and land for it and day and night are busie at the work to plot and contrive and insinuate and deceive and think no cost or pains too great For a selfish sinful zeal and diligence hath so many friends and so little hindrance that it 's easily maintained but so is not the healing peaceable practical and holy zeal of true believers Well! Consider what I say to you from the Word of the Lord There is a selfish dividing Zeal in Religion which must be denied as well as whoredom or drunkenness If you ask me how it 's known Briefly now I shallonly tell you this much of it 1. That it is usually for either an Error or a particular Truth against the interest and advantage of the body of unquestionable Christian verities They can let Religion suffer by it so their opinion do but thrive 2. It is usually for an Opinion by reason of some special endearment or interest of their own in it 3. They cry up that opinion with a zeal and diligence much exceeding that which they bestow upon other opinions of equal weight and lay a greater stress upon it than any shew of reason will allow them 4. They usually are zealous for a party and division against the Unity of the Catholick Church 5. Their Zeal is most commonly turned against the faithful Pastors of the Church For it 's hard to keep in with schism and with faithful Pastors too And if the Ministers will not own their sin and error they will disown the Ministers The Anabaptists and other Sects of late would never have been so much against Christ's Ministers if the Ministers had not been against their way 6. Their course doth in the conclusion bring down Religion and hinder the thriving of the Gospel and of Godliness Mark what is the issue of most of those ways that these men are so hot for Doth it go better or worse with the Church and cause of Christ in general where they are than it did before Is Religion in more strength and beauty and life and honour or doth real