device of entertaining the people with Images which they call the Books of the Ignorant and are the means of keeping them in ignorance instead of the holy Scriptures which are able to make men wise to salvation For all which the holy and reverend Name of the Church and its infallibility is used for a colour By which they mean only the Roman Church which being but a particular Church not the universal is become Judg in her own Cause and maintains she does well nay cannot erre because she says she cannot do otherwise There is no man who will take the liberty to consider that can think this the way of salvation No it is the manifest method of perishing without remedy for any thing that the people of that Church can know For they being taught simply to believe in the Church of Rome and to depend wholly upon its authority without any other enquiry can never be satisfied whether this Church wherein they believe teaches the true and pure Doctrine of Christ Jesus the Lord and Spouse of the Church For they are deprived of all means to find this out being forbidden to look into the holy Scriptures where Christ hath delivered his mind unto us All the Faith therefore of the poor people of the Roman Church is no other than a humane Faith being grounded wholly on the authority of men and of all humane Testimony they rely upon the most uncertain viz. that which they give of themselves For they believe their Church to be good merely because She says so that is make her judge in her own case which is like to produce the most partial Judgment of all other But it is time to leave the consideration of their faults in this thing and as the duty of this Day requires to reflect seriously and impartially upon our own Which we shall the better do when I have a little opened the second general part of my Text wherein we shall see how happy we of this Church might have been if we had held fast that which we have received II. For that follows you see in the Charge given to the Church of Sardis Remember what thou hast received and heard and HOLD FAST or keep to it observe it and take care to do accordingly For that 's the end of calling things to mind that we may not depart from them if they be of consequence to our happiness Such was the Doctrine at first delivered by Christ and his Apostles and to apply it wholly to our selves such is that which we have received being the very same as you have heard with that at first delivered Which we ought therefore to keep most sacredly and to stick to it stedfastly never in the least warping from it nor turning aside either to the right hand or to the left from the principles and rules of a Religion which is so well grounded that it stands upon the undoubted word of God our Saviour For as I have shewn you the Religion which we have received and heard is no other than what the holy Scriptures which all acknowledg to be the word of Truth teach us to believe and practise And is a Religion so sincere that it teaches the people to read the holy Scriptures because it is not afraid they should therein read its condemnation And for that end propounds the Scriptures to them in their own Language because it is not in the least ashamed of any thing it bids them believe nor unwilling to be laid to that rule of righteousness and examined by it A Religion also which in reading the holy Scriptures bids the people content themselves with that which they find there clearly and evidently delivered for that it assures them is sufficient for their salvation leaving things obscure for the exercise of the learned and things not drawn from thence but from uncertain Traditions or private Inspiration to superstitious and fantastical Persons A Religion which doth not make Faith consist in ignorance but in knowledge and yet to keep this knowledge within the bounds of sobriety directs and enjoyns all private persons to take heed to the publick Ministry of the Church and all publick Ministers to study the Scriptures diligently and to teach nothing to be religiously held and believed as one of our ancient Canons is * 1571. Tit. Concionatores but what is agreeable to the Doctrine of the Old and New Testament and which the Catholick-Fathers and the ancient Bishops have collected out of that very Doctrine It is a Religion also which doth not teach us to rely upon Faith alone but presses the necessity of good works far more than the Roman Church doth whatsoever they falsely pretend only it teaches that God rewards all the good we do out of his own free mercy without any desert And therefore instead of framing and fashioning Wood and Stone into the Images of men and setting them up for the people to worship it exhorts men by all means possible to study to frame themselves after the Image of God in righteousness and true holiness and to conform themselves to those excellent patterns of Vertue which the Saints have left us for imitation Instead also of worshipping the Sacrament it teaches us to worship the Lord Jesus Christ in the holy and reverend use of the Sacrament not using it to make Jesus Christ but to honour Him not to make His Body descend from Heaven to us but to lift up our hearts to Him in Heaven not to turn the Bread and Wine into the natural Body and Blood of Christ but into the spiritual nourishment of our Souls For it doth not think that Christ and the Devil both entred into Judas together or that our Saviour did eat Himself or hath ordered matters so that He may be carried away by a Mouse and eaten by his greatest enemies It teaches none of these or any such like absurd and incredible things nor doth it intrench upon any man's civil Rights But though it bid men reverence and obey their spiritual Pastors yet doth not place any of them above Kings nor exempt them from their jurisdiction much less ascribe a power to them of deposing them from their Thrones giving away their Kingdoms and exposing them to be murthered which the proud Bishop of Rome challenges but humbly and meekly declares as St Paul doth That every Soul even the greatest Apostle as St. Chrysostome interprets him must be subject to the higher Powers What shall I say more It is a Religion which acknowledges no other supreme Head of the Church but Jesus Christ no other rule of Faith but his Word no propitiatory Sacrifice but his Death no Purgatory but his Blood nor any merits but his obedience to God in all things A Religion therefore which hath little of outward pomp and show but much of inward substance life and power which ordaineth few Ceremonies but ministers abundant instructions and consolations which attributeth little to distinction of meats but prescribes fasting and
the work of Reformation out of any desire of novelty but merely to discharge our duty to God in avoiding all things contrary to his Word and doing all according to it Which made our Reformers for the preservation as much as was possible of peace and unity which the holy Scriptures so much commend and enjoyn to take great care not to depart any further from any practice of the Church than it had departed from Christ the Founder of it and from the holy Scriptures whereby it ought to have governed it self Thus I have in as few words as I could told you what it is that we have received From whence we may learn both how happy we should have been had we always stuck to it and never deviated from it so happy that we should neither have had the Divisions that are among us nor any thing else which we come this day to bewail And also how foully the Roman Church hath prevaricated and departed from the simplicity of the Christian Religion First By adding many other Articles of Faith to those which were at first received and Secondly By forbidding the people to look into the holy Scriptures which contain the foundation and rule of Christian belief Let me touch a little upon these two leaving the consideration of our own condition till afterward First I say It is apparent they have highly offended God and abused his people by making a new Creed and that contrary to a known Decree of the third General Council that at Ephesus which they pretend to reverence For It ordained that it should not be lawful for any person to bring forth write or compose any other Faith than that which was defined by the holy Fathers gathered together in the Holy Ghost at the City of Nice and that whosoever should dare to compose or offer another Faith or propound it to such as were desirous to be converted to the knowledge of the Truth either from among the Gentiles or the Jews or from any Hereticks they should if they were Bishops or Clergy-men be deposed from their Office if Lay-men be anathematiz'd And yet they of Rome have not feared to violate this Decree by making a new Faith not in words merely but in sense about the adoration of Images of Saints of the Eucharist and concerning the Authority of the Pope the Doctrine of Purgatory and the rest of the Articles of the new Creed presumptuously made by the Council of Trent Some of which are of such dangerous practice that learned men among themselves Gerson Espencaeus and others have confessed it among the vulgar to be no less than Idololatrical and others doubt not to adde that it is no better among the learned And others again are so far from being Articles of Faith that for ought we can find in the Scriptures or true Antiquity they are not so much as probable opinions For instance the Authority of the Pope and the Monarchy as now they fear not to call it which he pretends to over the whole Church is founded merely in pride and ambition and as it was acquired so it hath been supported and enlarged and is still maintained by rebellion treason murthering of Princes wars dispensing with perjuries and incestuous marriages spoils and robberies of Churches and Kingdoms worldly craft and policy force and falshood forgery lying dissimulation and gross hypocrisie as may easily be made good in every particular to the satisfaction of all those who have not their eyes blinded by the God of this World Who by such villainies hath mightily disgraced Christianity which for many Ages was wholly unacquainted with any such Faith And there are also common opinions that pass among them uncontradicted as strongly believed as any Article of Faith which notwithstanding their seeming zeal for good works utterly overthrow any necessity of them For it is the avowed Doctrine of the greatest Teachers in that Church That though a man live and dye without the practice of any Christian Vertue and with the habit of many damnable sins unmortified yet if he have sorrow for sin and joyn Confession with it and receive absolution in the last moment of his life he shall certainly be saved And accordingly we see that if the lewdest persons among us will but be reconciled to the Roman Church on their death-bed they abuse them with the hope of salvation telling them there is no salvation in our Church though they were never so good but in theirs there is though they are never so bad Which is a clear demonstration That all their discourse about good Works is a mere show and that Faith alone among them is thought sufficient to do the business and that it is their Priests not Ours who teach men to rely upon a naked Faith and presume to be saved by it The cause of all which is their neglect of the rule of Faith the holy Scriptures which are so much against them that they dare not trust the people with them Secondly That 's the second thing I noted as a manifest declaration of the corruption of the Roman Church that they will by no means consent the people should look into those Books which contain the Doctrine at first received but upon the severest penalties forbid without a special Licence obtained their perusal of them as if these were the most suspected or dangerous of all other Books or as if it were reason the people should believe the Church without knowing what the Church ought to believe There is not a more evident token of their guilt than this For that it is done on purpose to keep the people in ignorance not to preserve them within the bounds of sobriety which may be done by other means is apparent from hence that even those select portions of Scripture which they have chosen to be read in the Church publickly they will not let the people hear in a language which they understand For which no reason can be alledged but that now mentioned they are loth the people should be acquainted with any thing that may enlighten their eyes to see the errours of that Church For Latine Prayers indeed wherein they speak to God they have this excuse That God understands all languages but for Latine Chapters of the Bible wherein God speaks to men there is nothing to be said the end of speaking to others being that we may be understood Why then should God be as a Barbarian to his people speaking to them in an unknown tongue And why should those things which in other cases would be held ridiculous and contrary to common sense be esteemed good and convenient in Religion Without all doubt such things as these are the sport of the Devil who hereby hath exposed Christianity to scorn and both kept the people from being instructed by God their Saviour and delivered them up to be most grosly abused by evil men For this mischief is not single but hath bred and brought forth another they having set up the
whereby they were disposed to receive any Religion which the great men of this World should be pleased to set up by their Authority Which sad Complaint with much more that there follows I wish we had no cause to renew in this Church and had not lost our first love to our Saviour and to his holy Word Which being disgraced by the means forementioned better people have been infected with such a negligence that few read the holy Scriptures as they were wont heretofore to do but live as if they believed the Papists say true That the reading of the Scriptures is the cause of all the mischiefs that are befallen us Nay the publick reading of them in the Church is not so reverently regarded as formerly it was and as it ought to be For there are those that never mind what is read but look upon that as a vacant time to gaze about them or to whisper and discourse what they please one with another In times past good people were wont to bring their Bibles along with them hither but that now is worn out of use or so little practised that it looks as if they were as much ashamed of it as to appear in an old fashion which is held ridiculous Let such things therefore be amended I beseech you if you mean to save your Religion from being destroyed by our Romish Adversaries whom we have highly gratified by these things and invited to plot our ruine Let all men among us become serious Believers and shew that they are by reverencing and reading the holy Scriptures by frequenting the holy Assemblies and there duly attending to them by growing truly more knowing in the ground and foundation of our Religion and taking such care to be acquainted with the Scriptures that this may not be our condemnation that they lay open before us and were put into our hands in a language we could understand and yet we despised them or would not mind them II. The mischief of which is apparent For if we proceed to examine our selves upon the second Head we shall find a most lamentable account either of our ignorance or negligence or wilful disobedience For who doth not see that the Fruits of Faith are so much wanting that we are in danger to perish merely because there is so little integrity so little common honesty remaining among us but so much falseness lewdness filthiness and sottish debauchery as have made men so beyond measure dull and stupid that it hath given our Adversaries hope they were disposed to receive any Religion Nay they who are better enclined have been too careless in the Divine Service too frozen in their Devotion and not solicitous enough in the mortifying their unruly affections and passions in bridling their tongues and adding to their Faith all those Graces about which St. Peter requires us to give all diligence 2 Pet. i. 5 c. And yet the Grace of the Gospel teaches us so plainly how to walk and to please God that it is a wonder every Body does not look upon a holy life as the most necessary part of Christianity For nothing is there so earnestly pressed as this which is most lacking among us who live as it follows there in St. Peter ver 9. like blind men or which is all one that cannot see afar off nothing at a distance but merely that which is held before their eyes having forgotten that they were purged from their old sins do not reflect that is upon what was done at their Baptism but as if they were not able to look so far back wallow in their filthiness which then they solemnly renounced But this is too large a Subject for a particular Discourse and therefore I must leave it to your own private examination and search whether you have not relied too much contrary to what you have received and heard and professed upon a naked Faith and the merits of our Saviour without that care which He requires to make your Faith work by love to God and to your Neighbours And here there are as many sins to be repented of as there are Christian Duties to be practised if we have been negligent in any of them And if we will not amend but still continue to be barren and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ with what reason do we expect that He should be pleased with an idle Faith which doth us no good and not rather look for that doom which was pronounced upon the empty Fig-Tree Cut it down why cumbreth it the ground III. For the preventing of which dreadful Sentence I must call you to repentance for one most dangerous sin contrary to our Faith and Christian Profession which I fear too many will find themselves guilty of if they will but be at the pains to examine the state of their souls upon the third Head viz. The demeanour of the people towards their spiritual Pastors and Guides in the way to salvation Towards whom there are a great many pious persons it must be thankfully acknowledged who still preserve in their hearts and behaviour that due regard which Religion and reason require But it must on the other hand be bewailed that there are vast numbers among all sorts of men who do not only sleight them but have shaken off the yoke of obedience to them Which is the thing above all others that hath made the Papists so audacious and will certainly if it be not amended bring in Popery at last among us Be not offended I beseech you if in a time when plain dealing is so necessary and in a matter of such great consequence as I apprehend it I be so bold as to tell you that there are those who oppose themselves so senselesly as well as arrogantly to all spiritual Authority that this Doctrine of obedience to it they call Popery Which is a foul reproach to the Reformation an Apostasie from its Principles and a casting off the direction of the holy Scriptures which require such obedience as we preach For we do not bid men follow any Guides but such as take God for their Guide that is guide themselves and the people by the Word of God If we did go about to hide that from the peoples eyes and hinder them from reading it it would be an evident sign that we knew our selves to be reproved by the Scriptures and that instead of submitting to that Rule we would make our own authority to be the supreme Rule which is the crime of the Roman Church But there is no colour for any such charge to be laid against us who exhort who press the people to be diligent in reading the holy Scriptures only we desire them as the Scriptures themselves do that they would take along with them the assistance and direction of those whom Christ hath appointed to guide their judgment Without which direction men may easily see if they please to read them what a high crime it is to despise and
much more to revile and rail at their Authority And yet some have proceeded thus far in their opposition to them nay deny they have any Authority at all The woful effects of which we see as in other things so in the Divisions that are among us which have opened a Gap for Popery and we all fear will bring it in But we will not see as we ought to do that all those Divisions have sprung from this other Cause and still are maintained and widened by the general contempt of those whose Guidance ought to be religiously observed which if we will not regard as God commands us we shall inevitably run our selves out of our Religion For our Divisions which this Day we come to lament we all confess will do the business if they be not cured And of all the ways of Cure which are now thought of we seem resolved to wave the principal if not the only way of Gods own prescribing The method of which I shall faithfully and plainly lay before you that thereby you may judge what is like to become of us if it be neglected We all grant I believe that the right means to avoid or to remedy Contentions and Divisions in the Church are as clearly set down in the holy Scriptures as any Rule of life whatsoever For otherwise they would be extreamly defective in that thing which is most necessary for the preservation of the Religion which they teach 1. Now if you search the holy Scriptures with never so little diligence you cannot but observe there is a Duty frequently inculcated of reverence and obedience to Christs Ministers which if the people will not pay according to the evident meaning of such places as I shall mention anon it is impossible that the Society of the Church should be kept in unity but must necessarily break in pieces and be dissolved 2. We must add indeed That the Ministers of Christ ought also to take special care to be such wise and faithful Stewards in Christs houshold that the people may be inclined with the greater forwardness to obey their directions For which end their Duty is no less plainly and amply set down in the holy Scriptures and such extraordinary caution is given by Saint Paul about the admission of persons into holy Orders that were his directions sincerely followed and did the people as He enjoins adhere unto them in hearty love and esteem of them for their works sake there would be a marvellous encrease of Christian knowledg and goodness without that strife and contention which now blasts them both 3. But if Princes do not make such good choice as they ought of spiritual Governours or if those spiritual Governours by their negligence ordain worse inferiour Ministers yet the Authority of ordering or reforming things doth not by devolution come to the people nor will this justifie their disobedience to them But their Christian Duty is as manifest in this Case as in any other which lyes in these two things First They ought to fall the more earnestly to their Prayers both for their King and for all in authority under him especially their spiritual Pastors The Scripture enjoyns both and the gross neglect of both is one cause things are no better among us What other meaning is there of those words of the Apostle 1 Tim. ii 1 2. I will that supplications c. be made for all men for Kings and for all in Authority that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty And why doth the same Apostle frequently desire the Church would be helping by Prayers for him who needed them less than we do but to teach all Christians how earnestly they should recommend those to Gods guidance who are to guide them Read 2 Cor. i. 11. vi Ephes 19. and other places And if they find that their prayers are ineffectual there being no amendment in those that should take care of them their Duty Secondly is to examine seriously and lay to heart the cause why they cannot prevail and a little consideration will teach them that in all likelihood it proceeds from their own sins who deserve no better Governours and Pastors For as the Prophet speaks in the next Chapter to the second Lesson for Evening Prayer lix Isai 1 2. The Lord's hand is not shortened that He cannot save neither his ear heavy that He cannot hear but your iniquities have separated between you and your God and your sins have hid his face from you that He will not hear And for what sins do you think it is more probable that God is angry with us in this Nation and will not hear the prayers of this people than their disesteem of Christs Ministers even of the best of them their contempt of their Office their proneness to disobedience nay their scurrility and scoffing at all spiritual Authority and such like sins expresly forbidden in Gods holy Word With which this Church alas abounds a great deal more than with supplications and prayers to God for them All are more forward to find fault if not to rail and revile than to beseech God of his infinite mercy to give them Pastors after his own heart or to examine their own Consciences how they have provoked God by their unprofitableness at least under the best means of Grace that He hath bestowed upon them 4. But let us suppose further That the Governours and Pastors of the Church are not only negligent but exceed the bounds of their Authority as it seems to the people by enjoyning things which they take to be unlawful yet this will not warrant their contempt of their Authority and their casting off all obedience to them But two things are to be considered Whether they be certain the Commands of their Governours are unlawful or they only fear they are In the first Case indeed they ought not to be obeyed in such things but by the peoples care to obey in all others which they judge to be lawful they ought to demonstrate that it is only respect to God which makes them not comply in things which seem to them to be apparently unlawful And so unity in most things being preserved they will be the easier brought to see their errours on one side or other But in the other case when they are not certain the things commanded are unlawful which is the common cause of all our Divisions but only suspect them to be so it seems to be reason that the people should not disobey a certain Command of God which requires them to submit to their Governours when they are not certain there is a cause for their refusal The most that can be allowed them is humbly to desire those Laws may be altered or if the Rulers of the Church who are the proper Judges of such matters cannot think it safe to make such alterations as are desired then barely to suspend their obedience in what they fear is unlawful till they can be better