inwardly rejoice and after a godly sort no doubt to see another guilty of it but they delight in the mischief and disaster which they know it will assuredly bring upon him whom they hate and wish ill to They rejoice not in it as in a delightfull Object but as in a Cause and Means of their Neighbour's Ruin So gratefull nay so delicious are even the horridest Villainies committed by others to the Pharisaical Piety of some who in the mean time can be wholly unconcerned for the Reproach brought thereby upon the Name of God and the Honour of Religion so long as by the same their Sanctified Spleen is gratified in their Brother's Infamy and Destruction This therefore we may reckon upon that scarce any Man passes to a liking of Sin in others but by first practising it himself and consequently may take it for a shrewd Indication and Sign whereby to judge of the Manners of those who have sinned with too much Art and Caution to suffer the Eye of the World to charge some Sins directly upon their Conversation For though such kind of Men have lived never so much upon the Reserve as to their Personal Behaviour yet if they be observed to have a particular delight in and fondness for Persons noted for any sort of Sin it is ten to one but there was a Communication in the Sin before there was so in Affection The Man has by this directed us to a Copy of Himself and though we cannot always come to a sight of the Original yet by a true Copy we may know all that is in it 2 ly A second Cause that brings a Man to take pleasure in other men's Sins is not only a Commission of those Sins in his own Person but also a Commission of them against the full Light and Conviction of his Conscience For this also is expressed in the Text where the Persons charged with this wretched Disposition of Mind are said to have been such as knew the iudgment of God that they who committed such things were worthy of Death They knew that there was a righteous and a searching Law directly forbidding such Practices and they knew that it carried with it the Divine Stamp that it was the Law of God they knew also that the Sanction of it was under the greatest and dreadfullest of all Penalties Death And this surely one would think was Knowledge enough to have opened both a man's Eyes and his Heart too his Eyes to see and his Heart to consider the intolerable mischief that the Commission of the Sin set before him must infallibly plunge him into Nevertheless the Persons here mentioned were resolved to venture and to commit the Sin even while Conscience stood protesting against it They were such as broke through all Mounds of Law such as laugh'd at the Sword of Vengeance which Divine Justice brandish'd in their faces For we must know that God has set a flaming Sword not only before Paradise but before Hell it self also to keep Men out of this as well as out of the other And Conscience is the Angel into whose hand this Sword is put But if now the Sinner shall not only wrestle with this Angel but throw him too and win so complete a Victory over his Conscience that all these Considerations shall be able to strike no Terror into his Mind lay no Restraint upon his Lusts no Controll upon his Appetites he is certainly too strong for the Means of Grace and his Heart lies open like a broad and high Road for all the Sin and Villainy in the World freely to pass through The Truth is if we impartially consider the Nature of these Sins against Conscience we shall find them such strange Paradoxes that a man must baulk all Common Principles and act contrary to the Natural way and motive of all Humane Actions in the Commission of them For that which naturally moves a man to doe any thing must be the Apprehension and Expectation of some good from the thing which he is about to doe And that which naturally keeps a man from doing of a thing must be the Apprehension and Fear of some mischief likely to ensue from that Thing or Action that he is ready to engage in But now for a man to doe a thing while his Conscience the best Light that he has to judge by assures him that he shall be infinitely unsupportably miserable if he does it this is certainly unnatural and one would imagine impossible And therefore so far as one may judge while a man acts against his Conscience he acts by a Principle of direct Infidelity and does not really believe that those things that God has thus threatned shall ever come to pass For though he may yield a general faint Assent to the Truth of those Propositions as they stand recorded in Scripture yet for a through Practical belief that those general Propositions shall be particularly made good upon his Person no doubt for the time that he is sinning against Conscience such a belief has no place in his Mind Which being so it is easie to conceive how ready and disposed this must needs leave the Soul to admit of any even the most horrid unnatural Proposals that the Devil himself can suggest For Conscience being once extinct and the Spirit of God withdrawn which never stays with a Man when Conscience has once left him the Soul like the first Matter to all Forms has an Universal Propensity to all Lewdness For every Violation of Conscience proportionably wears off something of its Native Tenderness which Tenderness being the Cause of that Anguish and Remorse that it feels upon the Commission of Sin it follows that when by degrees it comes to have worn off all this Tenderness the Sinner will find no Trouble of Mind upon his doing the very wickedest and worst of Actions and consequently that this is the most direct and effectual Introduction to all sorts and degrees of Sin For which Reason it was that I alledged Sinning against Conscience for one of the Causes of this vile Temper and Habit of Mind which we are now discoursing of Not that it has any special productive Efficiency of this particular sort of Sinning more than of any other but that it is a general Cause of this as of all other great Vices and that it is impossible but a Man must have first passed this notable Stage and got his Conscience throughly debauched and hardned before he can arrive to the height of Sin which I account the delighting in other men's Sins to be 3 ly A third Cause of this Villainous disposition of Mind besides a man's personal Commission of such and such Sins and his Commission of them against Conscience must be also his Continuance in them For God forbid that every single Commission of a Sin though great for its Kind and withall acted against Conscience for its Aggravation should so far deprave the Soul and bring it to such a Reprobate Sense and Condition
much of Annual Refrigeriums Respites or Intervals of Punishment to the Damned as particularly on the Great Festivals of the Resurrection Ascension Pentecost and the like In which as these good Men are more to be commended for their Kindness and Compassion than to be followed in their Opinion which may be much better Argued by Wishes than Demonstrations so admitting that it were true yet what a pitifull slender Comfort would this amount to Much like the Iews abating the Punishment of Malefactors from forty stripes to forty save one A great Indulgence indeded even as great as the difference between Forty and Thirty-nine and yet much less considerable would that Indulgence be of a few Holy-days in the measures of Eternity of some Hours Ease compared with Infinite Ages of Torment Supposing therefore that few Sinners relieve themselves with such groundless trifling Considerations as these yet may they not however fasten a Rational Hope upon the Boundless Mercy of God that this may induce him to spare his poor Creature though by Sin become obnoxious to His Wrath To this I answer That the Divine Mercy is indeed large and far surpassing all Created measures yet nevertheless it has its proper time and after this Life it is the time of Justice and to hope for the Favours of Mercy then is to expect an Harvest in the Dead of Winter God has cast all his Works into a certain inviolable Order according to which there is a Time to Pardon and a Time to Punish and the Time of One is not the Time of the Other When Corn once felt the Sickle it has no more Benefit from the Sun-shine But 2 ly If the Conscience be too apprehensive as for the most part it is to venture the Final issue of Things upon a Fond perswasion that the Great Judge of the World will relent and not execute the Sentence pronounced by him As if he had threatned Men with Hell rather to fright them from Sin than with an Intent to punish them for it I say if the Conscience cannot find any Satisfaction or Support from such Reasonings as these yet may it not at least relieve it self with the Purposes of a future Repentance notwithstanding its present actual Violations of the Law I answer That this certainly is a Confidence of all others the most ungrounded and irrational For upon what Ground can a man promise Himself a Future Repentance who cannot promise Himself a Futurity Whose Life depends upon His Breath and is so restrained to the present that it cannot secure to it self the Reversion of the very next Minute Have not many died with the guilt of Impenitence and the designs of Repentance together If a man dies to day by the prevalence of some ill humours will it avail Him that he intended to have bled and purged to morrow But how dares sinfull Dust and Ashes invade the Prerogative of Providence and Carve out to Himself the Seasons and Issues of Life and Death which the Father keeps wholly within his own Power How does that man who thinks he sins securely under the shelter of some Remote purposes of Amendment know but that the Decree above may be already passed against Him and his Allowance of Mercy spent so that the Bow in the Clouds is now drawn and the Arrow levelled at his Head and not many Days like to pass but perhaps an Apoplex or an Impostome or some suddain Disaster may stop his Breath and reap him down as a Sinner ripe for Destruction I conclude therefore That upon Supposition of the Certain Truth of the Principles of Religion He who walks not uprightly has neither from the Presumption of God's Mercy Reversing the Decree of his Iustice nor from his own Purposes of a Future Repentance any sure ground to set his Foot upon but in this whole Course Acts as directly in Contradiction to Nature as he does in defiance of Grace In a word He is besotted and has lost his Reason and what then can there be for Religion to take hold of Him by Come we now to the 2 d. Supposition under which we shew That the Principles of Religion laid down by us might be Considered and that is as onely Probable Where we must observe That Probability does not properly make any Alteration either in the Truth or Falsity of Things but onely Imports a different Degree of their Clearness or Appearance to the Understanding So that that is to be accounted Probable which has more and better Arguments producible for it than can be brought against it and surely such a thing at least is Religion For certain it is that Religion is Universal I mean the first Rudiments and General Notions of Religion called Natural Religion and consisting in the acknowledgment of a Deity and of the common Principles of Morality and a future Estate of Souls after Death in which also we have all that some Reformers and Refiners amongst us would reduce Christianity it self to This Notion of Religion I say has diffused it self in some degree or other greater or less as far as human Nature extends So that there is no Nation in the World though plunged into never such gross and absurd Idolatry but has some awfull Sence of a Deity and a perswasion of a State of Retribution to Men after this Life But now if there are really no such Things but all is a meer Lye and a Fable contrived only to chain up the Liberty of Man's Nature from a freer Enjoyment of those things which otherwise it would have as full a right to Enjoy as to Breath I demand whence this perswasion could thus come to be Universal For was it ever known in any other Instance that the whole World was brought to Conspire in the belief of a Lye Nay and of such a Lye as should lay upon Men such unpleasing Abridgments tying them up from a full Gratification of those Lusts and Appetites which they so impatiently desire to satisfie and consequently by all means to remove those Impediments that might any way obstruct their satisfaction Since therefore it cannot be made out upon any Principle of Reason how all the Nations in the World otherwise so distant in Situation Manners Interests and Inclinations should by Design or Combination meet in one perswasion and withall that Men who so mortally hate to be deceived and imposed upon should yet suffer themselves to be deceived by such a perswasion as is false and not onely false but also cross and contrary to their strongest Desires so that if it were false they would set the utmost force of their Reason on work to discover that Falsity and thereby disenthrall themselves And further since there is nothing false but what may be proved to be so And yet Lastly since all the Power and Industry of Man's mind has not been hitherto able to prove a Falsity in the Principles of Religion it Irrefragably follows and that I suppose without gathering any more into the Conclusion than
unborn tho' he had no positive Perfection to present and set him off to Christ's view yet he was at least negatively clear And like unwritten paper though it has no Draughts to entertain yet neither has it any Blots to offend the Eye but is white and innocent and fair for an after-Inscription But man once fallen was nothing but a great Blur nothing but a total universal Pollution and not to be reformed by any thing under a New Creation Yet see here the Ascent and progress of Christ's Love For first if we consider man in such a loathsome and provoking condition was it not Love enough that he was spared and permitted to enjoy a Being since not to put a Traytor to Death is a singular mercy But then not only to continue his Being but to adorn it with Privilege and from the Number of Subjects to take him into the Retinue of Servants this was yet a greater Love For every one that may be fit to be tolerated in a Prince's Dominions is not therefore fit to be admitted into his Family nor is any Princes Court to be commensurate to his Kingdom But then farther to advance him from a Servant to a Friend from only living in his House to lying in his Bosom this is an Instance of Favour above the Rate of a created goodness an Act for none but the Son of God who came to do every thing in Miracle to love supernaturally and to pardon infinitely and even to lay down the Sovereign while he assumed the Saviour The Text speaks the winning Behaviour and gracious Condescension of Christ to his Disciples in owning them for his Friends who were more than sufficiently honoured by being his Servants For still these words of his must be understood not according to the bare Rigor of the Letter but according to the Arts and Allowances of Expression not as if the Relation of Friends had actually discharged them from that of Servants but that of the two Relations Christ was pleased to over-look the meaner and without any mention of that to entitle and denominate them solely from the more Honourable For the further illustration of which we must premise this as a certain and fundamental Truth That so far as Service imports Duty and Subjection all created Beings whether Men or Angels bear the necessary and essential Relation of Servants to God and consequently to Christ who is God Blessed for ever and this Relation is so necessary that God himself cannot dispense with it nor discharge a Rational Creature from it for although consequentially indeed he may do so by the Annihilation of such a Creature and the taking away his Being yet supposing the continuance of his Being God cannot effect that a Creature which has his Being from and his Dependance upon him should not stand obliged to do him the utmost service that his nature enables Him to do For to suppose the contrary would be irregular and opposite to the Law of Nature which consisting in a fixed unalterable Relation of one Nature to another is upon that account even by God himself Indispensable Forasmuch as having once made a Creature he cannot cause that that Creature should not owe a Natural Relation to his Maker both of Subjection and Dependance the very Essence of a Creature importing so much to which Relation if he behaves himself unsutably he goes contrary to his Nature and the Laws of it which God the Author of Nature cannot warrant without being contrary to Himself From all which it follows that even in our highest estate of Sanctity and Privilege we yet retain the unavoidable obligation of Christ's Servants though still with an Advantage as great as the Obligation where the service is perfect freedom so that with reference to such a Lord to serve and to be free are Terms not Consistent only but absolutely Equivalent Nevertheless since the Name of Servants has of old been reckoned to imply a certain meanness of Mind as well as lowness of Condition and the ill qualities of many who served have rendred the condition it self not very creditable especially in those Ages and places of the World in which the Condition of Servants was extreamly different from what it is now amongst us they being generally Slaves and such as were bought and sold for Money and consequently reckoned but amongst the other Goods and Chattels of their Lord or Master It was for this Reason that Christ thought fit to Wave the Appellation of Servant here as according to the common use of it amongst the Jews and at that time most Nations besides importing these three Qualifications which being directly contrary to the Spirit of Christianity were by no means to be allowed in any of Christ's Disciples 1. The First whereof is that here mentioned in the Text viz. An utter unacquaintance with his Master's Designs in these words The Servant knows not what his Lord doeth For seldom does any man of sense make his Servant his Counsellour for fear of making him his Governour too A Master for the most part keeps his choicest Goods lockt up from his Servant but much more his Mind A Servant is to know nothing but his Master's Commands and in these also not to know the reason of them Neither is he to stand aloof off from his Counsels onely but sometimes from his Presence also and so far as decency is duty it is sometimes his duty to avoid him But the Voice of Christ in his Gospel is Come to me all ye that are heavy laden The Condition of a Servant staves him off to a distance but the Gospel speaks nothing but Allurement Attractives and Invitation The Magisterial Law bids the Person under it Go and he must go But the Gospel says to every Believer Come and he cometh A Servant dwells remote from all Knowledge of his Lord's Purposes He lives as a kind of Foreigner under the same Roof a Domestick and yet a Stranger too 2dly The Name of Servant imports a slavish and degenerous Awe of Mind As it is in Rom. 8. 5. God has not given us the spirit of Bondage again to fear He who serves has still the low and ignoble restraints of Dread upon his Spirit which in Business and even in the midst of Action cramps and ties up his Activity He fears his Master's anger but designs not his favour Quicken me says David with thy free Spirit It is the freedom of the Spirit that gives worth and life to the performance But a Servant commonly is less free in Mind than in Condition his very Will seems to be in bonds and shackles and Desire it self under a kind of Durance and Captivity In all that a Servant does he is scarce a Voluntary Agent but when he serves himself All his Services otherwise not flowing naturally from Propensity and Inclination but being drawn and forced from him by Terror and Coaction In any work he is put to let the Master withdraw his Eye and he will quickly take
acting while those Principles of Activity flag No man begins and ends a long Journey with the same pace But now when Prayer has lost its due fervour and attention which indeed are the very Vitals of it it is but the Carkase of a Prayer and consequently must needs be loathsome and offensive to God Nay though the greatest part of it should be enlivened and carried on with an actual Attention yet if that Attention fails to enliven any one part of it the whole is but a joyning of the Living and the Dead together for which Conjunction the Dead is not at all the better but the Living very much the worse It is not length nor copiousness of Language that is Devotion any more than Bulk and Bigness is Valour or Flesh the measure of the Spirit A short Sentence may be oftentimes a large and a mighty Prayer Devotion so managed being like Water in a Well where you have fullness in a little compass which surely is much nobler than the same carried out into many petit creeping Rivulets with length and shallowness together Let him who prays bestow all that strength fervour and attention upon Shortness and Significance that would otherwise run out and lose it self in Length and Luxuriancy of Speech to no purpose Let not his Tongue out-strip his Heart nor presume to carry a Message to the Throne of Grace while that stays behind Let him not think to support so hard and weighty a Duty with a tired languishing and be-jaded Devotion To avoid which let a Man contract his Expression where he cannot enlarge his Affection still remembring that nothing can be more absurd in it self nor more unacceptable to God than for one engaged in the great Work of Prayer to hold on speaking after he has left off praying and to keep the lips at work when the spirit can do no more 4 ly The fourth Argument for shortness or conciseness of Speech in Prayer shall be drawn from this That it is the most natural and lively way of expressing the utmost Agonies and Out-cries of the Soul to God upon a quick pungent sense either of a pressing Necessity or an approaching Calamity which we know are generally the chief Occasions of Prayer and the most effectual Motives to bring Men upon their Knees in a vigorous Application of themselves to this great Duty A person ready to sink under his Wants has neither time nor heart to Rhetoricate or make Flourishes No Man begins a long Grace when he is ready to starve Such an one's Prayers are like the Relief he needs quick and suddain short and immediate He is like a Man in Torture upon the Rack whose Pains are too acute to let his Words be many and whose Desires of Deliverance too impatient to delay the things he begs for by the manner of his begging it It is a Common Saying If a Man does not know how to Pray let him go to Sea and that will teach him And we have a notable Instance of what kind of prayers Men are taught in that School even in the Disciples themselves when a Storm arose and the Sea raged and the Ship was ready to be cast away in the 8 th of Matthew In which Case we doe not find that they fell presently to harangue it about Seas and Winds and that dismal face of things that must needs appear all over the devouring Element at such a time All which and the like might no doubt have been very plentifull Topicks of Eloquence to a Man who should have lookt upon these things from the Shoar or discoursed of Wrecks and Tempests safe and warm in his Parlour But these poor Wretches who were now entring as they thought into the very Jaws of Death and struggling with the last Efforts of Nature upon the Sense of a departing Life and consequently could neither speak nor think any thing low or ordinary in such a Condition presently rallied up and discharged the whole Concern of their desponding Souls in that short Prayer of but three words though much fuller and more forcible than one of three thousand in the 25th Verse of the fore-mentioned Chapter Save us Lord or we perish Death makes short work when it comes and will teach him who would prevent it to make shorter For surely no Man who thinks himself just a perishing can be at leisure to be Eloquent or judge it either Sense or Devotion to begin a long Prayer when in all likelihood he shall conclude his Life before it 5 ly The fifth and last Argument that I shall produce for Brevity of Speech or Fewness of Words in Prayer shall be taken from the Examples which we find in Scripture of such as have been remarkable for Brevity and of such as have been noted for Prolixity of Speech in the discharge of this Duty 1. And first for Brevity To omit all those notable Examples which the Old Testament affords us of it and to confine our selves only to the New in which we are undoubtedly most concerned Was not this way of Praying not only Warranted but Sanctified and set above all that the Will of Man could possibly except against it by that infinitely exact Form of Prayer prescribed by the Greatest the Holiest and the Wisest Man that ever lived even Christ himself the Son of God and Saviour of the World Was it not an instance both of the truest Devotion and the fullest and most comprehensive Reason that ever proceeded from the Mouth of Man And yet withall the shortest and most succinct Model that ever grasped all the Needs and Occasions of Mankind both Spiritual and Temporal into so small a compass Doubtless had our Saviour thought fit to amplifie or be prolix He in whom were hid all the Treasures of Wisdom could not want Matter nor he who was himself the Word want Variety of the fittest to have expressed his Mind by But He chose rather to contract the whole Concern of both Worlds into a few Lines and to unite both Heaven and Earth in his Prayer as he had done before in his Person And indeed one was a kind of Copy or Representation of the other So then we see here Brevity in the Rule or Pattern let us see it next in the Practice and after that in the Success of Prayer And first we have the Practice as well as the Pattern of it in our Saviour himself and that in the most signal passage of his whole Life even his Preparation for his approaching Death In which dolorous Scene when his whole Soul was nothing but Sorrow that great moving Spring of Invention and Elocution and when Nature was put to its last and utmost stretch and so had no refuge or relief but in Prayer yet even then all this Horror Agony and Distress of Spirit delivers it self but in two very short Sentences in Matth. 26. 39. O my Father if it be possible let this Cup pass from me nevertheless not as I will but as thou wilt And
look for an absolute and exact Correspondence of all the Circumstantial or Subservient passages of the Metaphorical part of it with just so many of the same or the like Passages in the Thing intended by it but it is sufficient that there be a certain Analogy or Agreement between them as to the principal Scope and Design of both As for the Design of this Parable it is no doubt to set forth the free Offer of the Gospel with all its rich Privileges to the Iewish Church and Nation in the first place and upon their Refusal of it and God's Rejection of them for that Refusal to declare the Calling of the Gentiles in their Room by a free unlimited Tender of the Gospel to all Nations whatsoever adding withall a very dreadfull and severe Sentence upon those who being so freely invited and so generously admitted to such high and undeserved Privileges should nevertheless abuse and despise them by an unworthy wicked and ungratefull Deportment under them For Men must not think that the Gospel is all made up of Privilege and Promise but that there is something of Duty to be performed as well as of Privilege to be enjoyed No welcome to a Wedding-supper without a Wedding-garment and no coming by a Wedding-garment for nothing In all the Transactions between God and the Souls of Men something is expected on both sides there being a fix'd indissoluble and in the language of the Parable a kind of Marriage-Tye between Duty and Privilege which renders them inseparable Now though I question not but that this Parable of the Wedding-supper comprehends in it the whole Complex of all the Blessings and Privileges exhibited by the Gospel yet I conceive that there is one Principal Privilege amongst all the rest that it seems more peculiarly to aim at or at least may more appositely and emphatically be applied to than to any other whatsoever And that is the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist by which all the Benefits of the Gospel are in an higher fuller and more Divine manner conveyed to the Faithfull than by any other Duty or Privilege belonging to our Excellent Religion And for this I shall offer these Three following Reasons 1. Because the Foundation of all Parables is as we have shewn some Analogy or Similitude between the Tropical or Allusive part of the Parable and the Thing couched under it and intended by it But now of all the Benefits Privileges or Ordinances of the Gospel which of them is there that carries so natural a Resemblance to a Wedding-supper as that which every one of a very ordinary discerning Faculty may observe in the Sacrament of the Eucharist For surely neither the Preaching of the Word nor yet the Sacrament of Baptism bears any such Resemblance or Affinity to it But on the other side this Sacrament of the Eucharist so lively resembles and so happily falls in with it that it is indeed it self a Supper and is called a Supper and that by a genuine proper as well as a common and received Appellation 2. This Sacrament is not only with great Propriety of Speech called a Supper but moreover as it is the grand and prime means of the nearest and most intimate Union and Conjunction of the Soul with Christ it may with a peculiar Significancy be called also a Wedding-supper And as Christ frequently in Scripture owns himself related to the Church as an Husband to a Spouse So if these Nuptial Endearments by which Christ gives himself to the Soul and the Soul mutually gives it self to Christ pass between Christ and Believers in any Ordinance of the Gospel doubtless it is most eminently and effectually in this Which is another pregnant Instance of the Notable Resemblance between this Divine Sacrament and the Wedding-supper in the Parable and consequently a further Argument of the Elegant and Expressive Signification of one by the other 3 ly and Lastly The very Manner of Celebrating this Sacrament which is by the Breaking of Bread was the way and manner of transacting Marriages in some of the Eastern Countries Thus Q. Curtius reports That when Alexander the Great Married the Persian Roxana the Ceremony they used was no other but this Panem gladio divisum uter que libabat he divided a piece of Bread with his Sword of which each of them took a part and so thereby the Nuptial Rites were performed Besides that this Ceremony of Feasting belongs most properly both to Marriage and to the Eucharist as both of them have the Nature of a Covenant And all Covenants were in Old times solemnized and accompanied with Festival Eating and Drinking the Persons newly Confederate always thereupon Feasting together in token of their full and perfect Accord both as to Interest and Affection And now these three Considerations together so exactly suting the Parable of the Wedding-supper to this Spiritual Divine Banquet of the Gospel if it does not primarily and in its first design intend it yet certainly it may with greater advantage of Resemblance be applied to it than to any other Duty or Privilege belonging to Christianity Upon the Warrant of which so very particular and extraordinary a Cognation between them I shall at present treat of the Words wholly with reference to this Sacred and Divine Solemnity observing and gathering from them as they lie in Coherence with the foregoing and following Parts of the Parable these Two Propositions 1. That to a worthy Participation of the Holy Mysteries and great Privileges of the Gospel and particularly that of the Lord's-Supper there is indispensably required a sutable Preparation 2. That God is a strict Observer of and a severe Animadverter upon such as presume to partake of those Mysteries without such a Preparation And first for the first of these viz. That to a worthy Participation of the Holy Mysteries c. Now this Proposition imports in it Two things 1. That to a right discharge of this Duty a Preparation is necessary 2. That every Preparation is not sufficient And first for the First of these That a Preparation is Necessary And this I confess is a Subject which I am heartily sorry that any Preacher should find it needfull to speak so much as one word upon For would any Man in his Wits venture to die without Preparation And if not let me tell you that nothing less than that which will fit a Man for Death can fit him for the Sacrament The truth is there is nothing great or considerable in the World which ought to be done or ventured upon without Preparation But above all how dangerous sottish and irrational is it to engage in any Thing or Action extempore where the Concern is Eternity None but the Careless and the Confident and few are Confident but what are first Careless would rush rudely into to the Presence of a Great Man And shall we in our Applications to the Great God take that to be Religion which the Common Reason of Mankind will not allow to
things really Evil under the Notion and Character of Good And this this is the true Source and Original of this great Mischief The Will chuses follows and embraces things Evil and destructive but it is because the Understanding first tells it that they are good and wholesome and fit to be chosen by it One Man gives another a Cup of Poyson a thing as terrible as Death but at the same time he tells him that it is a Cordial and so he drinks it off and dies From the beginning of the World to this day there was never any great Villainy acted by Men but it was in the strength of some great Fallacy put upon their Minds by a false representation of Evil for Good or Good for Evil. In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die says God to Adam and so long as Adam believed this he did not eat But says the Devil In the Day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt be so far from surely dying that thou shalt be Immortal and from a Man grow into an Angel and upon this different account of the thing he presently took the Fruit and ate Mortality Misery and Destruction to himself and his whole Posterity And now can there be a Wo or Curse in all the Stores and Magazines of Vengeance equal to the Malignity of such a Practice of which one single Instance could involve all Mankind past present and to come in one universal and irreparable confusion God commanded and told Man what was Good but the Devil fur-named it Evil and thereby baffled the Command turned the World topsy-turvy and brought a new Chaos upon the whole Creation But that I may give you a more full Discussion of the sense and design of the Words I shall doe it under these following Particulars As First I shall give you some general Account of the Nature of Good and Evil and the Reason upon which they are founded Secondly I shall shew that the Way by which Good and Evil commonly operate upon the Mind of Man is by those respective Names or Appellations by which they are notified and conveyed to the Mind And Thirdly and Lastly I shall shew the Mischief directly naturally and unavoidably following from the Misapplication and Confusion of those Names And I hope by going over all these Particulars you may receive some tolerable satisfaction about this great Subject which we have now before us 1. And first for the Nature of Good and Evil what they are and upon what they are founded The Knowledge of this I look upon as the Foundation and Ground-work of all those Rules that either Moral Philosophy or Divinity can give for the Direction of the Lives and Practices of Men and consequently ought to be reckoned as a first Principle and that such an one that for ought I see the through Speculation of Good will be found much more difficult than the Practice But when we shall have once given some Account of the Nature of Good that of Evil will be known by Consequence as being only a Privation or Absence of Good in a Subject capable of it and proper for it Now Good in the general Nature and Notion of it over and above the bare Being of a Thing Connotes also a certain sutableness or agreeableness of it to some other thing According to which general Notion of Good applied to the particular Nature of Moral Goodness upon which only we now insist a Thing or Action is said to be Morally Good or Evil as it is agreeable or disagreeable to Right Reason or to a Rational Nature And as Right Reason is nothing else but the Understanding or Mind of Man discoursing and judging of Things truly and as they are in themselves and as all Truth is unchangeably the same that Proposition which is true at any time being so for ever so it must follow That the Moral Goodness or Evil of men's Actions which consist in their Conformity or Unconformity to Right Reason must be also Eternal Necessary and Unchangeable So that as that which is Right Reason at any Time or in any Case is always Right Reason with relation to the same Time and Case In like manner that which is Morally Good or Evil at any Time or in any Case since it takes its whole measure from Right Reason must be also Eternally and Unchangeably a Moral Good or Evil with relation to that Time and to that Case For Propositions concerning the Goodness as well as concerning the Truth of Things are necessary and perpetual But you will say May not the same Action as for instance the killing of a Man be sometimes Morally Good and sometimes Morally Evil To Wit Good when it is the Execution of Justice upon a Malefactor and Evil when it is the taking away the Life of an Innocent person To this I Answer That this indeed is true of Actions considered in their General Nature or Kind but not considered in their Particular Individual Instances For generally speaking to take away the Life of a Man is neither Morally Good nor Morally Evil but capable of being either as the Circumstances of Things shall determine it but every particular Act of Killing is of necessity accompanied with and determin'd by several Circumstances which actually and unavoidably constitute and denominate it either Good or Evil. And that which being performed under such and such Circumstances is Morally Good cannot possibly under the same Circumstances ever be Morally Evil. And so on the contrary From whence we inferr the Villainous falsehood of Two Assertions held and maintained by some persons and too much countenanced by some others in the World As First That Good and Evil Honest and Dishonest are not Qualities existing or inherent in Things themselves but only founded in the Opinions of Men concerning Things So that any Thing or Action that has gained the General Approbation of any People or Society of Men ought in respect of those Persons to be esteemed Morally Good or Honest and whatsoever falls under their general Disapprobation ought upon the same account to be reckoned Morally Evil or Dishonest which also they would seem to prove from the very signification of the word Honestus which originally and strictly signifies no more than Creditable and is but a Derivative from Honor which signifies Credit or Honour and according to the Opinion of some we know That is lodged only in the Esteem and Thoughts of those who pay it and not in the Thing or Person whom it is paid to Thus for example Thieving or Robbing was accounted amongst the Spartans a gallant worthy and a creditable Thing and consequently according to the Principle which we have mentioned Thievery amongst the Spartans was a practice Morally Good and Honest. Thus also both with the Grecians and the Romans it was held a magnanimous and highly laudable Act for a man under any great or insuperable misery or distress to put an end to his own Life and accordingly with those
may have given thee Riches and Honour Health and Power with a Curse and if so it will be found but a poor Comfort to have had never so great a share of God's Bounty without his Blessing But has he at any time kept thee from thy Sin stopt thee in the prosecution of thy Lust defeated the malicious Arts and Stratagems of thy mortal Enemy the Tempter And does not the sense of this move and affect thy Heart more than all the former Instances of Temporal Prosperity which are but as it were the promiscuous Scatterings of his Common Providence while these are the distinguishing Kindnesses of his special Grace A truly pious Mind has certainly another kind of relish and taste of these things and if it receives a Temporal Blessing with Gratitude it receives a Spiritual one with Ecstasie and Transport David an heroick Instance of such a Temper over-looks the rich and seasonable Present of Abigail though pressed with Hunger and Travel but her Advice which disarmed his Rage and calmed his Revenge draws forth those high and affectionate Gratulations from him Blessed be thy advice and blessed be thou who hast kept me this day from shedding Bloud and avenging my self with my own hand These were his joyfull and glorious Trophies not that he Triumphed over his Enemy but that he Insulted over his Revenge that he escaped from himself and was delivered from his own Fury And whosoever has any thing of David's Piety will be perpetually playing the Throne of Grace with such-like Acknowledgment As Blessed be that Providence which delivered me from such a lewd Company and such a vicious Acquaintance which was the Bane of such and such a person And Blessed be that God who cast rubs and stops and hindrances in my way when I was attempting the Commission of such or such a Sin who took me out of such a Course of Life such a Place or such an Imployment which was a continual Snare and Temptation to me And Blessed be such a Preacher and such a Friend whom God made use of to speak a Word in season to my wicked Heart and so turned me out of the Paths of Death and Destruction and saved me in spight of the World the Devil and my Self These are such things as a Man shall remember with Joy upon his Death-bed such as shall chear and warm his Heart even in that last and bitter Agony when many from the very bottom of their Souls shall wish that they had never been Rich or Great or Powerfull and reflect with Anguish and Remorse upon those splendid Occasions of Sin which served them for little but to heighten their Guilt and at best to inflame their Accounts at that great Tribunal which they are going to appear before 3. In the Third and Last place We learn from hence the great Reasonableness of not only a contented but also a thankfull Acquiescence in any Condition and under the crossest and severest passages of Providence which can possibly befall us Since there is none of all these but may be the Instruments of Preventing-Grace in the hands of a mercifull God to keep us from those Courses which would otherwise assuredly end in our confusion This is most certain that there is no Enjoyment which the Nature of Man is either desirous or capable of but may be to him a direct inducement to Sin and consequently is big with Mischief and carries Death in the Bowels of it But to make the Assertion more particular and thereby more convincing let us take an Account of it with reference to the three greatest and deservedly most valued Enjoyments of this Life 1. Health 2ly Reputation And 3ly Wealth First And first for Health Has God made a Breach upon that Perhaps he is building up thy Soul upon the Ruins of thy Body Has he bereaved thee of the use and vigour of thy Limbs Possibly he saw that otherwise they would have been the Instruments of thy Lusts and the active Ministers of thy Debaucheries Perhaps thy languishing upon thy Bed has kept thee from rotting in a Gaol or in a worse place God saw it necessary by such Mortifications to quench the Boilings of a furious overflowing Appetite and the boundless Rage of an insatiable Intemperance to make the Weakness of the Flesh the Physick and Restaurative of the Spirit And in a word rather to save thee diseased sickly and deformed than to let Strength Health and Beauty drive thee head-long as they have done many thousands into Eternal Destruction Secondly Has God in his Providence thought fit to drop a Blot upon thy Name and to Blast thy Reputation He saw perhaps that the Breath of popular Air was grown Infectious and would have derived a Contagion upon thy better part Pride and Vain-glory had mounted thee too high and therefore it was necessary for Mercy to take thee down to prevent a greater fall A good Name is indeed better than Life but a sound Mind is better than both Praise and Applause had swell'd thee to a proportion ready to burst it had vitiated all thy spiritual Appetites and brought thee to feed upon the Air and to surfeit upon the Wind and in a word to starve thy Soul only to pamper thy Imagination And now if God makes use of some poynant Disgrace to prick this enormous Bladder and to let out the poysonous Vapour is not the Mercy greater than the Severity of the Cure Cover them with shame says the Psalmist that they may seek thy Name Fame and Glory transports a Man out of himself and like a violent Wind though it may bear him up for a while yet it will be sure to let him fall at last It makes the Mind loose and garish scatters the Spirits and leaves a kind of Dissolution upon all the Faculties Whereas shame on the contrary as all Grief does naturally contracts and unites and thereby fortifies the Spirits fixes the Ramblings of Fancy and so reduces and gathers the Man into himself This is the soveraign Effect of a bitter Potion administred by a Wise and Mercifull Hand And what hurt can there be in all the Slanders Obloquies and Disgraces of this World if they are but the Arts and Methods of Providence to shame us into the Glories of the next But then Thirdly and Lastly Has God thought fit to cast thy Lot amongst the Poor of this World and that either by denying thee any share of the Plenties of this Life which is something grievous or by taking them away which is much more so Yet still all this may be but the Effect of Preventing Mercy For so much mischief as Riches have done and may doe to the Souls of Men so much Mercy may there be in taking them away For does not the Wisest of Men next our Saviour tell us of Riches kept to the hurt of the owners of them Eccles. 5. 13. And does not our Saviour himself speak of the intolerable Difficulty which they cause in men's passage to
and the Settlement of worldly Affairs to disturb and confound him and in a word all Things conspire to make his sick Bed grievous and uneasie Nothing can then stand up against all these Ruines and speak Life in the midst of Death but a clear Conscience And the Testimony of that shall make the Comforts of Heaven descend upon his weary Head like a refreshing Dew or Shower upon a parched Ground It shall give him some lively Earnests and secret Anticipations of his approaching Joy It shall bid his Soul go out of the Body undauntedly and lift up its Head with Confidence before Saints and Angels Surely the Comfort which it conveys at this Season is something bigger than the Capacities of Mortality mighty and unspeakable and not to be understood till it comes to be felt And now who would not quit all the Pleasures and Trash and Trifles which are apt to captivate the Heart of Man and pursue the greatest Rigors of Piety and Austerities of a good Life to purchase to himself such a Conscience as at the Hour of Death when all the Friendships of the World shall bid him adieu and the whole Creation turn its Back upon him shall dismiss his Soul and close his Eyes with that blessed Sentence Well done thou good and faithfull Servant enter thou into the Ioy of thy Lord For he whose Conscience enables him to look God in the Face with Confidence here shall be sure to see his Face also with Comfort hereafter Which God of his Mercy grant to us all To whom be rendred and ascribed as is most due all Praise Might Majesty and Dominion both now and for evermore Amen FINIS BOOKS newly printed for Tho. Bennet at the Half Moon in St. Paul's Church-Yard A Thenae Oxoniensis Or an exact History of all the Writers and Bishops who have had their Education in the University of Oxford from 1500 to the end of 1690. Representing the Birth Fortunes Preferments and Death of all those Authors and Prelates the great Accidents of their Lives with the Fate and Character of their Writings The Work being so Compleat that no Writer of Note of this Nation for near two hundred years past is omitted In Two Volumes in Fol. Twelve Sermons preached upon several Occasions by R. South D. D. Six of them never before printed Vol. First in Octavo Sermons and Discourses upon several Occasions by G. Stradling D. D. late Dean of Chichester Never before printed together with an Account of the Author Dr. Pocock's Commentary on the Prophets Ioel Micah Malachi c. in Fol. A Critical History of the Text and Versions of the New Testament wherein is firmly Established the Truth of those Acts on which the Foundation of Christian Religion is laid In Two Parts By Father Simon of the Oratory Together with a Refutation of such Passages as seem contrary to the Doctrine and Practice of the Church of England in Quarto Newly printed for Randall Taylor Animadversions upon Dr. Sherlock's Book entitled A Vindication of the Holy and Ever Blessed Trinity c. Together with a more Necessary Vindication of that Sacred and Prime Article of the Christian Faith from his New Notions and false Explications of it Humbly dedicated to His Admirers and to Himself the Chief of them by a Divine of the Church of England See the First Vol. p. 29 and 30. * Major Iohn Weyer see Ravillac Rediviv The Words of a great Self-opiniator and a bitter Reviler of the Clergy * A Preaching Colonel of the Parliament-Army and a Chief Actor in the Murder of K. Charles the First Notable before for having killed several after Quarter given them by others and using these Words in the doing it Cursed be he who does the work of the Lord negligently He was by Extraction a Butcher's Son and accordingly in his Practices all along more a Butcher than his Father