length end in Death and Confusion There being as the Wise man tells us a Way that may seem Right in a Man 's own Eyes when nevertheless the End of that Way is Death Now as amongst these Principles or Rules of Action the pretences of the Spirit and of tenderness of Conscience and the like have been the late grand Artifices by which Crafty and designing Hypocrites have so much abused the world so I shall now instance in another of no less Note by which the generality of Men are as apt to abuse themselves And that is a certain Rule or sentence got almost into every Man's mouth That God accepts the Will for the Deed. A principle as usually apply'd of less malice I confess but considering the easiness and withall the Fatality of the delusion of more mischief than the other And this I shall endeavour to search into and lay open in the following discourse The words hold forth a general Rule or Proposition delivered upon a Particular Occasion Which was the Apostle's exhorting the Corinthians to an Holy and Generous Emulation of the Charity of the Macedonians in contributing freely to the Relief of the poor Saints at Ierusalem Upon this great Encouragement that in all such Works of Charity it is the Will that gives worth to the Oblation and as to God's Acceptance sets the poorest Giver upon the same Level with the Richest Nor is this all but so perfectly does the Value of all Charitable Acts take its Measure and Proportion from the Will and from the Fulness of the Heart rather than that of the Hand that a lesser Supply may be oftentimes a greater Charity and the Widow's Mite in the Balance of the Sanctuary out-weigh the Shekels and perhaps the Talents of the most Opulent and Wealthy The All and utmost of the One being certainly a Nobler Alms than the Superfluities of the Other And all this upon the Account of the great Rule here set down in the Text. That in all transactions between God and Man wheresoever there is a full Resolution drift and purpose of Will to please God there what a man can do shall by virtue thereof be accepted and what he cannot do shall not be required From whence these Two Propositions in Sence and Design much the same do naturally result 1. The first of them expressed in the Words To wit That God accepts the Will where there is no Power to perform 2. The other of them Implyed Namely That where there is a Power to Perform God does not accept the Will Of all the Spiritual tricks and legerdemain by which men are apt to shift off their Duty and to impose upon their own Souls there is none so common and of so fatal an import as these Two The Plea of a good intention And the Plea of a good Will One or both of them being used by Men almost at every turn to elude the Precept to put God off with something instead of Obedience and so in effect to out-wit him whom they are called to Obey They are certainly two of the most Effectual Instruments and Engines in the Devil's hands to wind and turn the Souls of Men by to whatsoever he pleases For first the Plea of a Good Intentention will serve to Sanctifie and Authorize the very Worst of Actions The proof of which is but too full and manifest from that Lewd and Scandalous Doctrine of the Jesuits concerning the Direction of the Intention and likewise from the whole Mannage of the late accursed Rebellion In which it was this insolent and impudent Pretence that emboldened the Worst of Men to wade through the blood of the Best of Kings and the Loyallest of Subjects namely That in all that risk of Villainy their Hearts forsooth were right towards God and that all their Plunder and Rapine was for nothing else but to place Christ on his Throne and to establish amongst us the Power of Godliness and the Purity of the Gospel by a further Reformation as the Cant goes of a Church which had but too much felt the Meaning of that Word before But such persons consider not that though an Ill Intention is certainly sufficient to spoil and corrupt an Act in it self Materially Good yet no Good Intention whatsoever can rectifie or infuse a Moral Goodness into an Act otherwise Evil. To come to Church is no doubt an Act in it self Materially Good yet he who does it with an Ill Intention comes to God's House upon the Devil's Errand and the whole Act is thereby rendred absolutely Evil and Detestable before God But on the other side if it were possible for a Man to Intend well while he Does ill yet no such Intention though never so good can make that Man Steal Lye or Murther with a good Conscience or convert a Wicked Action into a Good For these things are against the Nature of Morality in which nothing is or can be really good without an Universal concurrence of all the Principles and Ingredients requisite to a Moral Action though the failure of any one of them will imprint a Malignity upon that Act which in spight of all the other requisite Ingredients shall stamp it absolutely Evil and corrupt it past the Cure of a Good Intention And thus as I have shewn that the Plea of a Good Intention is used by Men to Warrant and Patronize the most Villainous and Wicked Actions so in the next place the Plea of a Good Will will be found equally efficacious to supersede and take off the Necessity of all Holy and Good Actions For still as I have observed the great Art of the Devil and the principal deceit of the Heart is to put a Trick upon the Command and to keep fair with God himself while men fall foul upon his Laws For both Law and Gospel call aloud for Active Obedience and such a Piety as takes not up either with faint Notions or idle insignificant Inclinations but such an One as shews it self in the Solid Instances of Practice and Performance For Do this and live saith the Law Luk. 10.28 And if ye Know these things Happy are ye if ye Do them says the Gospel Joh. 13.17 And not every one that saith Lord Lord shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven but he that Doth the Will of my Father which is in Heaven Matth. 7.21 And Let no man deceive you He that doth Righteousness is Righteous 1 Joh. 3.7 With innumerable more such places All of them terrible and severe Injunctions of Practice and equally severe Obligations to it But then in comes the benign Latitude of the Doctrine of Good-Will and cuts asunder all these hard pinching Cords and tells you That if this be but piously and well inclined if the Bent of the Spirit as some call it be towards God and Goodness God accepts of this above nay instead of all External Works those being but the Shell or Husk this the Kernel the Quintessence and the very Soul of Duty But
was wrong'd trod upon stript of all Father I will that there be now a distinction made between such as have owned and confessed me with the loss of the world and those that have denyed persecuted and insulted over me It will be in vain then to come and creep for mercy and say Lord when did we insult over thee when did we see thee in our Courts and despised or oppressed thee Christ's reply will be then quick and sharp Verily in as much as you did it to one of these little poor despised ones ye did it unto Me. 2. Use is of information to shew us the danger as well as the baseness of a dastardly Spirit in asserting the interest and truth of Christ. Since Christ has made a Christian course a Warfare of all men living a Coward is the most unfit to make a Christian whose infamy is not so great but it is sometimes less than his peril A Coward does not alwaies scape with disgrace but sometimes also he loses his life wherefore let all such know as can enlarge their consciences like Hell and call any sinfull compliance submission and style a Cowardly silence in Christ's cause discretion and prudence I say let them know that Christ will one day scorn them and spit them with their policy and prudence into Hell and then let them consult how politick they were for a temporal Emolument to throw away Eternity The things which generally cause men to deny Christ are either the Enjoyments or the miseries of this life but alas at the day of Judgment all these will expire and as One well Observes what are we the better for pleasure or the worse for sorrow when it is past But then Sin and Guilt will be still fresh and Heaven and Hell will be then yet to begin If ever it was seasonable to preach Courage in the despised abused cause of Christ it is now when his truths are Reformed into nothing when the hands and hearts of his faithfull Ministers are weakned and even broke and his worship extirpated in a mockery that his honour may be advanced Well to establish our hearts in duty let us before-hand propose to our selves the worst that can happen Should God in his judgment suffer England to be transformed into a Munster Should the faithfull be every where Massacred Should the places of learning be demolished and our Colledges reduced not only as One in his Zeal would have it to Three but to none Yet assuredly Hell is worse than all this and is the portion of such as deny Christ wherefore let our discouragements be what they will loss of Places loss of Estates loss of Life and Relations yet still this sentence stands ratified in the Decrees of Heaven Cursed be that man that for any of these shall desert the truth and deny his Lord. ECCLESIASTICAL POLICY THE BEST POLICY OR RELIGION The best Reason of State In a Sermon preached before the Honourable Society of LINCOLNS-INN 1 KING 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 JEroboam from the name of a person become the character of impiety is reported to Posterity eminent or rather Infamous for two things Usurpation of Government and Innovation of Religion 'T is confessed the former is expresly said to have been from God but since God may order and dispose what he does not approve and use the wickedness of men while he forbids it the design of the first cause does not excuse the malignity of the second And therefore the advancement and Sceptre of Ieroboam was in that sence only the work of God in which it is said Amos 3.6 That there is no evil in the City which the Lord has not done But from his attempts upon the Civil Power he proceeds to innovate God's Worship and from the subjection of mens Bodies and Estates to enslave their Consciences as knowing that true Religion is no friend to an unjust Title Such was afterwards the way of Mahomet to the Tyrant to joyn the Impostor and what he had got by the Sword to confirm by the Alcoran raising his Empire upon two Pillars Conquest and Inspiration Ieroboam being thus advanced and thinking Policy the best Piety though indeed in nothing ever more befooled the nature of sin being not only to defile but to infatuate In the 11. chap. and the 27. v. he thus argues If this people go up to do Sacrifice in the house of the Lord at Ierusalem then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their Lord even unto Rehoboam King of Iudah and they shall kill me and go again unto Rehoboam King of Iudah As if he should have said The true Worship of God and the converse of those that use it dispose men to a considerate lawfull Subjection And therefore I must take another course my Practice must not be better than my Title what was won by Force must be continued by Delusion Thus sin is usually seconded with sin and a man seldom commits one sin to please but he commits another to defend himself As 't is frequent for the Adulterer to commit murder to conceal the shame of his Adultery But let us see Ieroboam's politick procedure in the next ver Whereupon the King took counsel and made two Calves of Gold and said unto them It is too much for you to go up to Ierusalem behold thy Gods O Israel As if he had made such an Edict I Ieroboam by the advice of my council considering the great distance of the Temple and the great charges that poor people are put to in going thither as also the intolerable burden of paying the first-fruits and tythes to the Priest have considered of a way that may be more easie and less burthensome to the people as also more comfortable to the Priests themselves and therefore strictly enjoyn that none henceforth presume to repair to the Temple at Jerusalem especially since God is not tyed to any place or form of Worship as also because the Devotion of men is apt to be clogged by such Ceremonies therefore both for the ease of the people as well as for the advancement of Religion we require and command that all henceforth forbear going up to Jerusalem Questionless these and such other Reasons the Impostor used to insinuate his devout Idolatry And thus the Calves were set up to which Oxen must be sacrificed the God and the Sacrifice out of the same Herd And because Israel was not to return to Egypt Egypt was brought back to them that is the Egyptian way of Worship the Apis or Serapis which was nothing but the Image of a Calf or Oxe as is clear from
a Duty for being so And such an height of Christianity possess'd those Noble Souls that every Martyr could keep one Eye steadily fixed upon his Duty and look Death and Danger out of countenance with the other Nor did they flinch from Duty for fear of Martyrdom when one of the most quickning motives to Duty was their Desire of it But to prove the possibility of a Thing there is no argument to that which looks backwards for what has bin done or suffered may certainly be done or suffered again And to prove that Men may be Martyrs there needs no other demonstration than to shew that many have been so Besides that the grace of God has not so far abandoned the Christian World but that those high Primitive instances of Passive fortitude in the case of duty and danger Rivalling one another have been exemplifyed and as it were revived by several glorious Copies of them in the succeeding Ages of the Church And thanks be to God we need not look very far backward for some of them even amongst our selves For when a violent victorious Faction and Rebellion had over-run all and made Loyalty to the King and Conformity to the Church crimes unpardonable and of a guilt not to be expiated but at the price of Life or Estate when Men were put to Swear away all interest in the next World to secure a very poor one in this for they had then Oaths to Murder Souls as well as Sword and Pistol for the Body nay when the Persecution ran so high that that Execrable Monster Cromwell made and published that Barbarous Heathenish or rather unhuman Edict against the poor suffering Episcopal Clergy That they should neither Preach nor Pray in publick nor Baptize nor Marry nor Bury nor teach School no nor so much as live in any Gentleman's House who in mere Charity and Compassion might be inclin'd to take them in from perishing in the streets that is in other words that they must starve and dye ex officio and being turned out of their Churches take possession only of the Church-yard as so many Victims to the remorsless rage of a foul ill-bred Tyrant professing Piety without so much as common Humanity I say when Rage and Persecution Cruelty and Cromwellism were at that Diabolical pitch tyrannizing over every thing that lookt like Loyalty Conscience and Conformity so that he who took not their engagement could not take any thing else though it were given him being thereby debarred from the very common Benefit of the Law in sueing for or recovering of his Right in any of their Courts of Justice all of them still following the motion of the High one yet even then and under that black and dismal state of Things there were many thousands who never bowed the Knee to Baal-Cromwell Baal-Covenant or Baal-Engagement but with a steady fix'd unshaken Resolution and in a glorious imitation of those Heroick Christians in the 10 and 11th Chapters of the Ep. to the Heb. Endured a great fight of afflictions were made a gazing Stock by reproaches took joyfully the spoiling of their Gods had trial of cruel Mockings moreover of bonds and imprisonments sometimes were tempted sometimes were slain with the Sword wandred about in Hunger and Nakedness being destitute afflicted tormented All which sufferings surely ought to Entitle them to that concluding character in the next words Of whom the world was not worthy And I wish I could say of England that it were worthy of those Men now For I look upon the old Church of England Royallists which I take to be only another name for a Man who preferrs his Conscience before his interest to be the best Christians and the most meritorious Subjects in the world as having passed all those terrible Tests and Trials which conquering domineering Malice could put them to and carried their Credit and their Conscience clear and triumphant through and above them all constantly firm and immoveable by all that they felt either from their professed Enemies or their false Friends And what these Men did and suffer'd others might have done and suffered too But they good Men had another and more artificial sort of Conscience and a way to interpret off a command where they found it dangerous or unprofitable to do it God knows my heart says one I love the King cordially and I wish well to the Church says another but you see the state of Things is altered and we cannot do what we would doe Our Will is good and the King Gracious and we hope he will accept of this and dispense with the rest A Goodly Present doubtless as they meant it and such as they might freely give and yet part with Nothing and the King on the other hand receive and gain just as much But now had the whole Nation mocked God and their King at this Shuffling Hypocritical rate what an Odious Infamous People must that Rebellion have represented the English to all Posterity Where had been the Honour of the Reform'd Religion that could not afford a Man Christian enough to suffer for his God and his Prince But the old Royallists did both and thereby demonstrated to the world That no danger could make Duty impossible And upon my Conscience if we may assign any other Reason or motive of the late mercies of God to these poor Kingdoms besides his own proneness to shew Mercy it was for the sake of the old suffering Cavaliers and for the sake of none else whatsoever that God delivered us from the two late accursed Conspiracies For they were the Brats and Offspring of two contrary factions both of them equally mortal and inveterate Enemies of our Church which they have been and still are perpetually pecking and striking at with the same malice though with different methods In a word The old tryed-Church of England-Royallists were the Men who in the darkest and foulest day of persecution that ever befell England never pleaded the Will in excuse of the Deed but proved the Integrity and Loyalty of their Wills both by their Deeds and their Sufferings too But on the contrary when Duty and Danger stand confronting one another and when the Law of God says Obey and assist your King and the faction says Do if you dare For Men in such a case to think to divide themselves and to pretend that their Will obeys that Law while all besides their Will obeys and serves the Faction what is this but a gross fulsome juggling with their Duty and a kind of Trimming it between God and the Devil These things I thought fit to remark to you not out of any intemperate Humour of reflecting upon the late times of confusion as the guilt or spight of some may suggest but because I am satisfied in my Heart and Conscience that it is vastly the concern of his Majesty and of the peace of his Government both in Church and State that the youth of the Nation of which such Auditories as this chiefly