Offices and Affairs against the plain Precept of studying to be quiet and to do our own business 1 Thess. 4.11 But the endeavours which we are to use and the means whereby we must try to secure to our selves an unpersecuted freedom in religious Ordinances and Professions must be such as are within the sphere of private men We must be upright and exemplary in the practice of it our selves and press a like exemplariness in the practice of it upon others By our humble modest quiet peaceable and submissive carriage we must convince such as are in Power that it deserves protection and by our affectionate fervent and importunate prayers to Gods we must endeavour to have it put into their hearts to protect and preserve it We must plead its Cause and represent that truth and goodness which may recommend it and try to wipe off the aspersions and rectifie the mistakes of such as plead against it or think hardly of it These and such like means are the laudable service in this Case and the proper business of private Christians And whilst their care is contained within this compass and they act thus within their own sphere it is excellent and praise-worthy they seek to preserve Religion and their seeking to do it in this way is it self very pious and religious 2. In shewing their care to preserve the free and unpersecuted profession of Religion they must exercise such only of those actions within their own sphere as are lawful and innocent but by no means endeavour to maintain it by such as are sinful and disobedient They must not defend it by lyes and forgeries by wrath and bitterness by fierceness and revenge by slandering and reviling of their Opposers They must so defend Religion as not to disobey it because that is not defending but betraying it A free profession is no further desirable than it tends to an upright practice So that to disobey for it is to lose all that wherefore we endeavour after it Truth must never be bought with the loss of innocence nor must we ever commit any one sinful action to promote a freedom of orthodox and true professions 3. In evidencing their care in preserving the free and unpersecuted profession of Religion they must be zealous in the first place for the practice and preservation of religious Laws and next to that for religious Ordinances and Opinions S t Paul directs us to the great Object of all religious zeal when he tells us that Christ came into the world to purchase to himself a peculiar people zealous of good WORKS Tit. 2.14 Nothing in the world is so warrantable a matter of a mans zeal as Gods Laws and mens obedience For the Laws of Christ's Gospel are that part which he esteems most he has made them the measure of life or death the Rule of our eternal absolution or condemnation And as he accounts of them so should we too Our zeal for them must be more warm and our care more watchful than for any other thing because God himself is most especially concerned for them and all men are most highly concerned in them they being that whereby all men must live or dye eternally This I will says S t Paul to Titus that thou affirm constantly That they which have believed in God may be CAREFVL to maintain GOOD WORKS these things are good and profitable unto men Tit. 3.8 So that the practice of religious Laws must be the great point wherein we are to be zealous and careful in the first place Next to which we must take care of those opinions which have a great influence upon and are the great productive instruments of all obedient practice such as are all opinions which are either motives or inducements helps or encouragements to obedience In which sort of opinions our Religion abounds there being as I said no idle Article in the Christian Creed but such Doctrins and Declarations concerning God and Christ and our selves and the other world as are either absolutely necessary or very helpful to a holy life All which according to their several proportions in promoting piety and obedience to Gods Laws we are to be zealously concerned for in the next place as we are for that pious obedience which is wrought by them in the first But when we have shown our good affection to substantial piety and Religion by a just zeal for obedience and plainly practical opinions then may it be very fit for us to shew our zeal for other true Doctrines and Professions likewise For it is a great honour to God and an ornament to Religion that we have it pure and sincere free from all things that are liable to just exception and from all mixture of errour and falshood And it is also a great happiness to men to have orthodox apprehensions in Religion and to embrace nothing for Gospel truths but what God has thereby declared to them But it is a further happiness still and such whereof men are the most sensible to be free from the imperious imposition and tyranny of errour so as neither to be forced upon the impossible belief of that which in our own minds we see is false and therefore cannot believe nor upon the feigned and hypocritical profession of believing a thing when really we do not believe it one of which two is mens unhappiness when their professed Religion falls under persecution Now both these are severe and rigorous impositions For the first is utterly impossible to any so long as it continues a free and impartial head as the latter is to any whilst it remains an honest and obedient heart So that all men have very great reason so far as they can by all innocent and honest ways to be zealous against them and to use all the lawful care and caution that possibly they can to avoid so powerful a motive as a sharp persecution is to tempt them to a thing so unreasonable as is the first and so wicked and sinful as is the latter So long then as men will moderate their zeal for the unpersecuted use of religious Ordinances and profession of religious Opinions with this discretion let them be zealous and concerned for it in God's Name For it is their Duty so to be and God will reward and all good men commend them for it If they take care that their zeal transport them not beyond their own sphere that it carry them not against their Duty and that it be concerned in the first place for Laws and practical opinions they may allow it after that to spend it self upon other Points which have more of speculative truth but less of practice This zeal now is excellent 't is truly pious 't is religious But if they have a zeal without obedience if for preventing of persecution in the profession of true opinions they run upon sinful means and undutiful transgressions their zeal is ungodly and all their pretended care of Religion is plainly irreligious For
regard them Neither can it be collected beforehand from any fixt rule or reason seeing it observes none And what neither our greatest wisdom can foretel nor our exactest care prevent it is wholly to no purpose to make a matter of our study and enquiry But as for the Everlasting happiness or misery of our Souls and Bodies in the other Life and at the Resurrection they are not left at random nor fall out by accident but are dispensed by a wise hand and according to a fixt and established rule For it is God who distributes them and this distribution is in Judgment and the procedure in that is by Laws and those laws are unalterably fixt for us and most plainly declared and published to us in the Gospel So that now it is no impossible no nor extream difficult thing for us to understand which shall be our own state in the next world For the laws are well known proclaimed daily to every ear by a whole order of men set apart for that purpose their sence and meaning is obvious to any common understanding and the Judgment according to them at that day will be true and faithful God will Absolve all those whom his Gospel acquits but Condemn every man whom it accuses There will be no perverting of Justice through fear or favour no Sentence passed through partiality or ill will but a Tryal every way unbyassed and uncorrupt where Every one shall receive according to the things done in the body 2 Cor. 5.10 And Judgment shall pass upon all men according to their works Rom. 2.6 And thus as the belief of the two former Articles the immortal state either of Bliss or Misery for our Souls and the Resurrection of our Bodies will inflame us with restless desires so if we seriously believe it will this third Article of the great and general Judgment possess us with sure hopes of being satisfyed in this great enquiry which of the two States will fall to our own share And as this belief of the last Judgment will be the most effectual means to encourage so will it be withal the surest to guide our Enquiries after it It chalks us out a method for our search and directs us to the readiest course for satisfaction For if the happiness and misery of the next world is to be dispensed to every man for a reward or punishment according to the direction of those Laws which promise or threaten them then have we nothing more to do in this enquiry but to examine well what those laws are what obedience they require what allowances and mitigations they will bear and what lot and condition they assign us For in that day we shall be look'd upon to be what they declare us and be doom'd to that state which they pronounce for us What they speak to us all now that the Judge of all the world will pronounce upon us all then their sentence shall be his and what they denounce he will execute He will judge us by no other measure but his own Laws those very Laws which he has taken so much care to proclaim to us and continually to press upon us which he has put into every one of our hands and made to be sounding daily in our ears the laws and sanctions of the Gospel Our blessed Saviour Christ the Judge himself has told us this long ago The word that I have spoken the same shall judge men at the last day Joh. 12.48 And his great Apostle Paul has again confirmed it Rom. 2. God shall judge the world at that day according to my Gospel vers 16. If we perform what those Laws peremptorily require they now already declare us blessed and such at the last day will Christ pronounce us But if by sinning against them we fall short of it they denounce nothing but everlasting woes and miseries and those he will execute For he tells us plainly that when he shall come to judgment in the Glory of his Father with his holy Angels he will reward every man according to his works Mat. 16.27 To them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and immortality he will give eternal life Rom. 2.7 But to them who obey not the Truth but obey unrighteousness indignation and wrath tribulation and anguish and that upon every man whether he be Jew or Gentile vers 8 9. For all this shall be acted in the greatest integrity without preferring one before an other It is only the difference in mens works which shall difference their conditions but they who have been equal in their sins shall be equal also in their sufferings For at the appearance of Jesus Christ God as S t Peter tells us without any respect of persons judges according to every mans work 1 Pet. 1.7.17 The way then whereby to satisfie our selves in this great matter is this To look well into the Gospel there to learn what we should be and into our own hearts and lives there to see what indeed we are and thence to conclude what in the next world whether in a state of Life or Death we shall be And to shew this to every man and to let him see now beforehand how he stands prepared for the next world and whether if he should be called away presently to the Bar of that Judgment he would be everlastingly acquitted or condemned in it is my present business and design It is to let us see our Eternal Condition before we enter on it and to make it evident to every man who is both capable and willing to be instructed what shall be his endless doom of Life or Death before the Judge pronounce it And since the Rule of that Court whereby we must all be tryed and which must measure out to us either Life or Death is as we have seen none other than the Gospel of our Judge and Saviour Jesus Christ that I may manage this enquiry with the greater light and clearness I will proceed in this method First I will enquire What is that condition of our happiness or misery which the Gospel indispensably exacts Secondly What are its mitigations and allowances those defects which it pardons and bears with And when at any time we fall short of this condition and thereby forfeit all right and title to that happiness and pardon which is promised to us upon it Then Thirdly What are those remedies and means of recovery which it points us out for restoring our selves again unto a state of Grace and Favour and whereupon we shall be reconciled And having by this means discovered what in the great and general judgment shall really and truly determine our last estate what shall be connived at in it and when once 't is lost what shall restore to it I shall in the Fourth and last place Remove those groundless doubts and scruples which perplex the minds of good and safe but yet erring and misguided people concerniâ—â— it And having in this manner cleared up all thâ—se
suffer under it he cannot be my disciple Luk. 14.27 This God peremptorily and indispensably exacts of us and there is all the reason in the world why he should For he will infinitely recompence in the next world either the want or loss of all those things which for his sake we are content to be without in this Heaven and eternal life will be an abundant and incomparably surpassing compensation all the wants and sufferings of this present time being as S t Paul sayes utterly unworthy to be compared with that Glory which shall then be revealed in us Rom. 8.18 Let no man therefore disobey Gods Laws for the love of the world for the supplying of his wants and the satisfaction of his appetites and yet for all that perswade himself that God will own him and connive at his disobedience For in doing so he plainly renounces God and sets the World above him he makes his Duty truckle to his Interest he slights obedience and submits to a temptation He does the work of sin for the interest which tempts to it and that will certainly bring upon him that death which God has established for the wages of it Thirdly A third pretence whereby men justifie to their own souls the indulged transgression of several Laws whilst they obey in others is because those transgressions wherein they allow themselves are only such as are sins of temper and complexion age or way of life Sometimes mens place and way of life is a continual temptation to some particular sin and if they may but have leave to indulge that they will abandon every other The Courtier takes himself obliged by the fashion of his place to lies and dissimulation ostentation and vanity to sinfull compliances and faithless engagements to promise all but to perform nothing The Merchant in pursute of his gain serves the end of his trade by fraud and dishonesty He accounts it a piece of his Art to over-reach to defraud customes to vend false wares and set exacting prices The Lawyer thinks it a part of his profession to encourage strife and foment difference the malice and revenge the wrath and bitterness the slanders and evil-speakings the strife and contentions which are other mens sins are his livelihood These sins being ever before them are alwayes a snare to them for they are continually importuned by them and it must be a toilsome pains and an uninterrupted watchfulness which can preserve them from being either won or wearied into the commission of them And since obedience in these instances is a thing which they can so very hardly spare they hope that God in mercy will not exact it but will graciously accept them upon their service in other particulars although here they continue to disobey him Other sins men are invited and importunately tempted to by their age and condition their particular temper and complexion Lust and rashness are the vices of youth as craft and covetousness are of the gray hairs Some sins are rooted in mens very natures for some are naturally inclined to be passionate and hasty some to be peevish and others to be malicious and revengefull The temper of their bodies hurries on some to lust and intemperance some to turbulency and fierceness and others to slavish fears and sinfull compliances Nay a sharp and long affliction will sometimes embitter even a good nature and make it habitually sowr and fretfull peevish and morose So that mens very natural temper their age and condition prove many times an uninterrupted sollicitation to some sin or other and they alwayes fall by being alwayes under the power of their temptation Now when men find that some sins have got thus near to them and have taken such deep root in their way of life nay in their very natures since they will not be at the pains to reform and amend they expect that God should be so gracious as to dispense with them As for all the instances of this kind he must abate them seeing they will not perform them his pardoning goodness must supply all the defects of their sloth For God and they must still be agreed and therefore because they cannot well abandon some of their darling lusts and bosom sins for his sake the compliance must fall on his side and he must desert and cancel all those severe and grating Laws to serve and pleasure them They will obey him most willingly in all other things only in these they beg that he would excuse them they will do any thing else for his sake which doth not contradict their beloved sin and never displease him but when they cannot otherwise fulfill and pleasure it Thus for instance the Covetous man will obey in keeping back from drunkenness and whoredom from ambition and profuseness and all other sins which are expensive But as for those other duties of suffering loss our selves rather than defrauding and over-reaching others of a contented mind and contempt of the world of alms and beneficence and all the chargeable expressions of an active love and an operative charity here he stands upon his points and chooses to dispute rather than to perform to article rather than to obey The peevish and angry man will readily keep the commands of Justice and Temperance he will neither spoil his neighbours Goods nor wrong his Bed nor pamper and defile his own body he will do any thing which either ministers to his reigning lust or which doth not contradict and make against it But then as for the commands of meekness and patience of long-suffering and forgiveness of speaking well and doing good to enemies of passing over provocations and peaceableness and all other instances of pardoning and forgetting injuries in these God must excuse him for his dear lust opposes them and he can not he will not serve him in the practice of them Some who are of a tractable and submissive of a soft and governable temper will observe readily all those duties which their constitution has made easie and which their natural genius enclines them to They will be constant performers of all the cheap because agreeable duties of submission to Governours and obedience to publick Constitutions of uniformity in worship of honour and observance of the Laws and establishments and of all things belonging to the Churches Vnity and outward peace But as for the severities of an inward and hearty Religion in mortification and self-denial in paring off all sinfull lusts and exorbitant desires in patience and taking up the Cross and in all other hard instances of duty and a holy life here they withdraw their service because they must contradict their natures and go against their ease and set themselves not to obey these Laws but to evacuate or evade them Whereas others who are of a temper more severe but withall of a querulous and restless a busie and ungovernable spirit will keep off from atheism and prophaneness from idolatry and witchcraft and other heinous impieties from drunkenness and
things relating to our last doom and shewâ—â—â—oth what in the Judgment shall be indispensably required to our salvation what Defects do not overthrow but consist with it what Remedies when 't is wounded or lost can heal and restore us to it and what and of how great consideration those things really are which being wrong understood do often create causless fears and jealousies in good peoples minds about it Having I say clearly accounted for all these I suppose I may think I have said enough to shew men their Future State and fairly take leave of this Argument BOOK I. Of the indispensable condition of happiness in the general CHAP. I. Of Obedience the general condition of happiness The CONTENTS Obedience the indispensable condition of happiness The Laws of the Gospel are given as a Rule to it The Promises are all upon condition of it and intended to encourage it All the threatnings are now denounced and will be executed upon the disobedient Of those other things whereto Pardon is promised as well as to obedience Of Metonymy's Of the Principles of Humane Actions Of Principles of Obedience All those speeches metonymical where obedience is not express'd and yet pardon is promised THat Condition which the Gospel indispensably requires of us and which is to mete out to us our last doom of Bliss or Misery is in the General our Obedience When we are brought to that Bar and stand to be judged according to those Laws which are proclaim'd to us in the Gospel it is only our having kept them and Repented of all such transgressions of them as we have wilfully been guilty of which can capacitate us to be rewarded by them For 't is just with them as it is with all other Laws they never promise any thing but to obedience but threaten and punish all that disobey Whosoever breaks and despises them is guilty they do not comfort but accuse not acquit but condemn him For there is no Law that is wisely ordered but is sufficiently guarded against affront and back'd with such punishments as will make it every mans interest to fulfil and keep it The evil threatned must always by far exceed the pleasure that is reaped by disobedience so that no man may have any temptation sufficient to bear him out in Sin or ever hope to be a gainer by his transgression This is the tenour of all wise laws whose enactors have both wit and power sufficient to defend them They have dreadful Punishments annexed to them which take place upon disobedience they encourage and reward the obedient but severely punish all that dare presume to disobey And this is most eminently seen in all the Laws of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He gave them for the compleatest Rules to mens Lives and has annexed to them most glorious Promises to encourage our obedience but has made them breath out nothing but woes and intolerable punishments to all that disobey He has given them for Rules of Life and annexed Rewards as encouragements to obedience He never intended his Laws for an entertainment of our eyes but for a Rule for our Actions not for a matter of talk and discourse but of practice not to be complemented by words of honour and lofty expressions but to be own'd in our lives and served by obedience He is our King and issues out his Laws as the instruments of his Government he is our Lord and they are Rulers for his Service They must be guides of our Lives and Actions it is not enough to know and talk of them but as ever we hope to live by them we must do and keep them For in the end they will be available to no mans happiness but his who has conscientiously performed them In Christ Jesus or the Christian Religion says S t Paul nothing avails but keeping of the Commandments of God 1 Cor. 7.19 Blessed are they saith S t John who do the Commandments for they only have right to the Tree of Life Rev. 22.14 It is not an idle wish or ineffectual endeavour but a thorough practice and performance of Christs Laws which can continue us in his Love and approve us Righteous in his Judgment If ye keep my Commandments says he ye shall abide in my Love Joh. 15.10 Let no man deceive you for it is he only that doth Righteousness who in Gods account is Righteous 1 Joh. 3.7 They only are pronounced Righteous and Sons of God in the Gospels estimation who walk after the spirit Rom. 8.4 who are led by the spirit vers 14. who bring forth the Fruits of the Spirit all words expressing Action and Practice Gal. 5 16-22 No man therefore will be acquitted and rewarded at that Bar barely for knowing and discoursing for wishing or desiring but only for working and obeying Such only the Gospel reckons for true servants now his servants ye are not whom you confess in words but whom in actions you obey Rom. 6.16 And such only he will honour and reward then For it is not every one who fawns upon me in his words whilest he reproaches me in his actions who says unto me Lord Lord that shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven but he only who doth the will of my Father which is in Heaven Which will he had just then proclaim'd to them in that Volume of Christian Laws which was published in the Sermon upon the Mount whereof this is in part the conclusion Matt. 7.21 He tells us that when the Son of Man shall come to judgment he will reward every man according to his works Matt. 16.27 and he repeats it again in his declaration to S t John Behold I come quickly and my reward is with me to give every man according as his work shall be Rev. 22.12 And so it was in that Prophetick sight of the Last Judgment which this same Apostle had vouchsafed him Rev. 20. For there as we are told when the Sea gave up the Dead which were in it and Death and Hell delivered up the Dead which were in them and they all both small and great stood before the Throne and him that sate thereon they were judged every man according to his WORKS vers 11 12 13. His Laws then Christ has given us not for talk and discourse but for action and practice and his Promises he has annexed to them not as rewards of idleness but only of active service and obedience Wherein if men fail Gods Rewards belong not to them they can make no claim or colourable pretence to them because they cannot show that which is to be rewarded by him Nay further if men disobey they are not only excluded from all glorious hopes but are moreover put into a desperate state of fears and dreadful expectations For God has back'd his Laws with threatnings as well as promises and as they propose most noble rewards to all that are obedient so likewise do they breath out most intolerable punishments to all that disobey
to disobey in it our obedience in other things is all that we have to shew besides and therefore it must be our excuse for it And this being an errour of such eternal moment and a Rock whereupon all the souls which miscarry under any appearances of piety are split I will be particular in recounting and evacuating those colours and pretences wherewith men deceive their own souls and think that they justifie and defend it Now as for those false grounds and pretensions whereby men seek to shelter themselves under the practice of such bosome-sins as they overlook because they have no mind to leave them hoping to be secured whilst they continue in them because of their obedience in other parts of Duty which is a partial obedience Those pretensions I say which are most pleadable in this matter are these that follow viz. because their indulgence of themselves in those instances wherein they disobey is either upon one or more of these accounts 1. For the preservation of their Religion and of themselves in times of danger and persecution 2. For the supply of their necessities by sinful arts compliances and services in times of want and indigence 3. For the satisfaction of their Flesh in sins of temper and complexion age or way of life 1. The first pretence whereby men justifie to their own thoughts the indulged transgression of several Laws whilst they obey in others is because those transgressions wherein they allow themselves are necessary for the preservation of their Religion and of themselves in those times of danger and persecution wherein Gods Providence has placed them Religion is in danger and like to be undermined by the close and subtle arts or overborn by the more open and powerful violence of strong and witty Enemies And this is Gods Cause and Christ our Lord and Saviours interest so that whatever is done here we think is in service of our Maker If we fight it is his battles if we spitefully persecute and devour it is his enemies if we rob and spoil it is to weaken his adversaries if we lye and dissemble it is to defeat the designs of such as he will call Rebels if we transgress in all the instances and use all the lawless liberties of war it is because we are engaged in his quarrel The Cause which we contend for and have to manage is sacred and that we believe will justifie all means and hallow any services whatsoever So that our heat and fierceness wrath and bitterness envy and malice revenge and cruelty endless strife and ungovernable variance spoils and robberies seditions and murthers wars and tumults in a word all the transports of passion and peevishness anger and ill nature rigour and revenge are all sacred under this Cover and pass for holy zeal and pious vehemence and religious concern for God whenas in reality they are a most impious throwing off and bursting through all the Tyes of Religion and Bonds of Duty towards men All these enormous effects and horrible instances of an indulged disobedience are at this Day the consequents of this pretension For some on one hand who call us Hereticks and enemies to Christ and holy Church think no means sinful whereby they can weaken and divide seduce surprize or any way destroy us For they esteem it lawful to dissemble under all shapes to gain a Proselyte or to disaffect a Party to our Communion and Government They act a part and play the Hypocrite in all Disguises and under cover of all Trades the better to insinuate themselves among all sorts of men they will affirm falshood even of their own Church when it serves their turn and deny any Doctrines Precepts or Parts of it when they are a scandal to the persons whom they would practise upon and make against them They make no conscience of lyes and perjuries in conversation when thereby they can promote the Churches interest For they have found out ways to deceive without lying and to lye without sin and to forswear without perjury and to perjure themselves without danger by their pious frauds and religious arts of equivocations mental reservations dispensations pardons and indulgences They can be treacherous and faithless without breach of faith if it were made to Hereticks they assassinate and murther Magistrates embitter and embroil Subjects against their Governours and against one another they conspire the death of Kings the confusion and fall of Kingdoms the ruine of all that dare oppose them yea even of all that differ from them And all this they do for Christ's sake in a zealous concern for God and Religion and for the utter extirpation of all heresie and schism It is this pretence which bears them out through all and makes them believe that they are serving God whilst after this extravagant rate they are overturning his whole Gospel And others again even of our own selves who justly abhor these damnable instances of disobedience upon the pretence of preserving or propagating Religion in some furious and fiery spirited sort of Papists for God forbid that we should think them all to be of this temper do yet run into the same extravagance which upon so great reason they condemn in them For if we look into our zeal for the common Religion of Protestants we shall find that we transgress many and those most material and weighty Laws of it whilst we express our affection and concern to defend and preserve it For doth not this pretence of preserving our Religion carry us beyond all the bounds of peaceableness and good subjection Our great fears about its defence make us daily to distrust our Governours to think and speak irreverently and reproachfully of their persons to undervalue all their counsels to misconstrue all their actions and proceedings and with much undutifull credulity and unchristian rashness to believe and spread abroad concerning them most odious suspicions and invidious reports they make us pragmatical and busie-bodies to go out of our own sphere and to usurp upon the Magistrates in projecting means and expediencies prejudging Criminals and irreverent censuring reproaching yea and oft-times slandering of our Governours if they either in Court or Council at the Board or on the Bench determine contrary to our anticipations They make us to disturb the quiet and to unsettle the peace of our fellow-subjects in filling their minds with endless jealousies about their Princes care and their own safety and in possessing them with discontents and undutifull suspicions words and actions to the great weakning of Government and disturbance of the publick peace Yea I add further these same fears for our endangered Religion transport us into the transgression of sundry weighty Laws which oblige us towards our very enemies who have contrived to destroy us For they have made us most partially backward to believe any thing that is good and forward to catch at every thing that is spoken ill against them They have made many of us fierce and implacable malicious
And to go no further for an evidence of this we will take those accounts of the obedience of Christians in the first times which the Apostles themselves give us You sayes the Apostle to the Colossians that were sometimes in your Gentile State alienated from God and enemies in your minds by means of your wicked works yet now since you become Christians hath he reconciled in his death to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable according to the terms of the Gospel in his sight Col. 1.21 22. And to the same purpose he speaks of the Ephesians yet more fully You saith he hath God quickned by the preaching of the Gospel who before you heard of that were dead in trespasses and sins wherein in times past of Gentilism ye walked as well as others according to the wicked course of this world according to the instigation of the Prince of the powers in the air who is the spirit that both aforetime and even now worketh in the children of disobedience Among whom also we all as I say had our conversation in times past living just as they did in the lusts of our flesh fulfilling and performing the desires of our flesh and were thereby the children of wrath as well as others But God even when we were thus dead in sins hath upon our embracing of Christs Religion quickned us together with Christ by that same spirit whereby he raised up him Ephes. 2.1 2 3 4 5. But the character which he gives of the Corinthians is more particular and compleat still No unrighteous saith he of one sort or other shall enter into the kingdom of heaven For neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor effeminate nor abusers of themselves with mankind nor thieves nor covetous nor revilers nor drunkards nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God And such indeed as these were some of you once viz. in your Gentilism but since you were Christned I bear you record that you are washed from those impurities that you are sanctified from those wickednesses and that you are justified from the condemning force of all these Commandments in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the help of the enlivening and converting spirit of our God 1 Cor. 6.9 10 11. These places are very full and particular for the power of Christianity and the perfect and entire obedience of Christians in those dayes And yet there is one testimony more of this Apostle which I must not omit because it is so very comprehensive and that is the account which he gives us of the Reformation which the Gospel wrought among the Romans For before it was preached among them they were strangely debauched and unaccountably wicked as we may be fully informed were there no other register of their vices from that prodigious Catalogue of their sins which S t Paul himself has given us Rom. 1. For they worshipped and served the Creature more than the Creator Their very women were so unnatural in their lusts as to change their natural use into that which is against nature And the men leaving the natural use of the women burned in their lusts towards one another men with men working that which is unseemly They were filled with all unrighteousness fornication wickedness covetousness maliciousness being full of envy murder debate deceit malignity whisperers back-biters haters of God despitefull proud boasters inventers of evil things disobedient to parents without understanding covenant-breakers without natural affection implacable unmercifull Thus had they degenerated from all sense of common honesty and honour and fallen into the vilest sink of vices But when once Christianity took place among them it quickly turned them from a most impious and monstrously unclean into a most religious and holy people For so S t Paul himself bears witness to them You were sayes he in your time of Heathenism the servants nay the rankest slaves of sin but God be thanked that ye have now since you became Christians obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was by us Apostles delivered to you For being made free from that strange inventory of sins ye became the servants of righteousness Rom. 6.17 18. And what S t Paul tells us of these particular Churches under his care S t Peter will also inform us was true of all the Churches in Pontus and Asia with whom he was concerned and to whom he directed his first Epistle The time past of our life may suffice us saith he to have wrought the will of the Gentiles when we walked with them in lasciviousness lusts excess of wine revellings banquettings and abominable idolatries Yea indeed this doth suffice us For since we became Christians we have left off to accompany them in these vices for which they are estranged to us and revile us For they think it strange that we run not with them to the same excess of riot as we used formerly speaking evil of us for abstaining from them 1 Pet. 4.3 4. Thus honest was the service and thus entire was the obedience of Christians in the Apostles dayes And when they had finished their course and were called out of the world Christs Gospel had still the same effects and his subjects continued to pay him the same service As for the Religion and Laws of Christ sayes Lactantius what excellent effects they have upon the minds and lives of men is plain from every dayes experience For give me a man that is fierce hasty and ungovernable and with this Law I will make him as tractable and gentle as a lamb Give me one who is covetous greedy and tenacious this Religion shall quickly make him liberal and generous It will make the cowardly and timorous to become bold and venturous the lustful and intemperate to turn chast and sober the cruel and revengeful to grow merciful and placable In one word it works a perfect change and alteration making the wicked and injurious to become forthwith most innocent and holy men For all manner of sin is renounced at their entrance all filthy habits are washt off at the Font and never again resumed They are so wholly altered in their life and temper by embracing of our Faith that you will scarce know them to be the same men Thus were the Christians in those Days the holiest sort of men and the most noble patterns of Vertue and Goodness being distinguishable from other men as Tertullian says in nothing so much as this That they had left off all their former vices For they lived what they taught and performed what others only could discourse of their common Motto being this Although we have not the skill to talk yet we have the Grace to live as well as any Nay their very enemies themselves who would be sure to spare no pains nor skill in fastening some immoralities upon them were yet forced at last to confess that they had no fault but one and that was that they were called