Christianity But the Jewish was yet in possession and therefore that this might so enter as not to intrude it was to bring its Warrant from the same hand of Omnipotence And for this cause Christ that he might not make either a suspected or precarious address to mens understandings out-does Moses before he displaces him shews an Ascendent Spirit above him raises the Dead and cures more Plagues than he brought upon AEgypt casts out Devils and heals the Deaf speaking such Words as even gave ears to hear them cures the Blind and the Lame and makes the very Dumb to speak for the Truth of his Doctrine But what was the result of all this Why some look upon him as an Impostor and a Conjurer as an Agent for Beelzebub and therefore reject his Gospel hold fast their Law and will not let Moses give place to the Magician Now the Cause that Christ's Doctrine was rejected must of necessity be one of these two 1. An insufficiency in the Arguments brought by Christ to inforce it Or 2. An indisposition in the Persons to whom this Doctrine was addressed to receive it And for this Christ who had not onely an infinite Power to work miracles but also an equal Wisdom both to know the just force and measure of every argument or motive to persuade or cause Assent and withall to look through and through all the Dark Corners of the Soul of man all the Windings and Turnings and various Workings of his Faculties and to discern how and by what means they are to be wrought upon and what prevails upon them and what does not He I say states the whole matter upon this Issue That the Arguments by which his Doctrine addressed it self to the minds of men were proper adequate and sufficient to compass their respective ends in persuading or convincing the Persons to whom they were proposed and moreover that there was no such defect in the Natural light of man's understanding or Knowing faculty but that considered in it self it would be apt enough to close with and yield its assent to the Evidence of those Arguments duly offered to and laid before it And yet that after all this the Event proved otherwise and that notwithstanding both the Weight and fitness of the Arguments to persuade and the light of man's Intellect to meet this persuasive evidence with a sutable assent no Assent followed nor were men thereby actually persuaded he Charges it wholly upon the Corruption the Perverseness and Vitiosity of man's will as the onely Cause that rendred all the Arguments his Doctrine came cloathed with unsuccessfull And consequently he affirms here in the Text That men must love the Truth before they throughly believe it and that the Gospel has then onely a free admission into the Assent of the Understanding when it brings a Passport from a rightly disposed will as being the great faculty of Dominion that commands all that shuts out and lets in what Objects it pleases and in a Word keeps the Keys of the whole Soul This is the Design and purport of the Words which I shall draw forth and handle in the Prosecution of these four following Heads 1. I shall shew What the Doctrine of Christ was that the World so much stuck at and was so averse from Believing 2. I shall shew That mens unbelief of it was from no Defect or Insufficiency in the Arguments brought by Christ to inforce it 3. I shall shew What was the True and proper cause into which this unbelief was resolved 4. And lastly I shall shew That a Pious and well disposed mind attended with a readiness to obey the Known will of God is the surest and best means to enlighten the Understanding to a belief of Christianity Of these in their order and First for the Doctrine of Christ. We must take it in the Known and Common Division of it into matters of Belief and matters of Practice The matters of Belief related chiefly to his Person and Offices As that he was the Messias that should come into the World The Eternal Son of God begotten of him before all Worlds That in time he was made man and born of a pure Virgin That he should die and satisfie for the Sins of the World and that he should rise again from the Dead and ascend into Heaven and there sitting at the right hand of God hold the Government of the whole World till the great and last day in which he should judge both the Quick and the Dead raised to life again with the very same Bodies and then deliver up all Rule and Government into the hands of his Father These were the great Articles and Credenda of Christianity that so much startled the World and seemed to be such as not only brought in a New Religion amongst men but also required a New Reason to embrace it The other part of his Doctrine lay in matters of Practice Which we find contained in his several Sermons but Principally in that glorious full and admirable discourse upon the Mount recorded in the 5 6 and 7. Chapters of St. Matthew All which particulars if we would reduce to one general Comprehensive Head they are all wrapt up in the Doctrine of Self-denial prescribing to the World the most inward purity of Heart and a Constant Conflict with all our sensual Appetites and worldly Interests even to the quitting of all that is dear to us and the Sacrificing of Life it self rather than knowingly to omit the least Duty or commit the least Sin And this was that which grated harder upon and raised greater tumults and boilings in the Hearts of men than the strangeness and seeming unreasonableness of all the former Articles that took up Chiefly in Speculation and Belief And that this was so will appear from a Consideration of the state and condition the World was in as to religion when Christ promulged his Doctrine Nothing further than the outward Action was then lookt after and when that failed there was an Expiation ready in the Opus operatum of a Sacrifice So that all their Vertue and Religion lay in their Folds and their Stalls and what was wanting in the Innocence the Blood of Lambs was to supply The Scribes and Pharisees who were the great Doctors of the Jewish Church expounded the Law no further They accounted no man a murtherer but he that struck a Knife into his Brother's heart No man an Adulterer but He that actually defiled his neighbour's Bed They thought it no injustice nor irreligion to prosecute the Severest Retaliation or Revenge so that at the same time their outward man might be a Saint and their inward man a Devil No care at all was had to curb the Unruliness of Anger or the Exorbitance of Desire Amongst all their Sacrifices they never sacrificed so much as one Lust. Bulls and Goats bled apace but neither the Violence of the one nor the Wantonness of the other ever dyed a Victim at any of their Altars
it so 2. The reason of the assertion why and whence it is so 1. For the truth of it It is abundantly evinced from all Records both of Divine and Prophane History in which he that runs may read the ruine of the State in the destruction of the Church and that not only portended by it as its Sign but also inferred from it as its Cause 2. For the Reason of the point it may be drawn 1. From the Judicial proceeding of God the great King of Kings and supreme Ruler of the Universe who for his commands is indeed carefull but for his Worship Jealous And therefore in States notoriously irreligious by a secret and irresistible power countermands their deepest projects splits their Counsels and smites their most refined Policies with frustration and a curse being resolved that the Kingdoms of the world shall fall down before him either in his Adoration or their own confusion 2. The reason of the doctrine may be drawn from the necessary dependence of the very Principles of government upon Religion And this I shall pursue more fully The great business of government is to procure obedience and keep off disobedience the great springs upon which those two move are Rewards and Punishments answering the two ruling affections of man's mind Hope and Fear For since there is a natural opposition between the Judgment and the Appetite the former respecting what is honest the latter what is pleasing which two qualifications seldom concurr in the same thing and withall man's design in every Action is delight therefore to render things honest also practicable they must be first represented desirable which cannot be but by Proposing honesty cloathed with pleasure and since it presents no pleasure to the sense it must be fetcht from the apprehension of a future Reward For questionless duty moves not so much upon command as promise Now therefore that which proposes the greatest and most sutable rewards to obedience and the greatest terrors and punishments to disobedience doubtless is the most likely to enforce one and prevent the other But it is Religion that does this which to happiness and misery joyns Eternity And these supposing the Immortality of the soul which Philosophy indeed conjectures but only Religion proves or which is as good perswades I say these two things eternal happiness and eternal misery meeting with a perswasion that the Soul is immortal are without controversie of all others the first the most desirable and the latter the most horrible to humane apprehension Were it not for these Civil government were not able to stand before the prevailing swing of corrupt nature which would know no Honesty but Advantage no duty but in Pleasure nor any Law but its own Will Were not these frequently thundred into the understandings of men the Magistrate might enact order and proclaim Proclamations might be hung upon Walls and Posts and there they might hang seen and despised more like Malefactors than Laws But when Religion binds them upon the Conscience Conscience will either perswade or terrifie men into their practice For put the case a man knew and that upon sure grounds that he might do an advantageous murder or Robbery and not be discovered what humane laws could hinder him which he knows cannot inflict any penalty where they can make no discovery But Religion assures him that no sin though concealed from humane eyes can either escape God's sight in this world or his vengeance in the other Put the case also that men looked upon Death without fear in which sence it is nothing or at most very little ceasing while it is endured and pobably without Pain for it seizes upon the Vitals and benumbs the senses and where there is no sense there can be no pain I say if while a man is acting his will towards sin he should also thus act his reason to despise death where would be the terror of the magistrate who can neither threaten or inflict any more Hence an old Malefactor in his Execution at the Gallows made no other confession but this That he had very jocundly passed over his life in such courses and he that would not for fifty years pleasure endure half an hours pain deserved to die a worse death than himself questionless this man was not ignorant before that there were such things as Laws Assizes and Gallows but had he considered and believed the Terrors of another world he might probably have found a fairer passage out of this If there was not a Minister in every Parish you would quickly find cause to encrease the number of Constables And if the Churches were not imployed to be places to hear God's law there would be need of them to be prisons for the breakers of the laws of men Hence 't is observable that the Tribe of Levi had not one place or portion together like the rest of the Tribes but because it was their office to dispence Religion they were diffused over all the Tribes that they might be continually preaching to the rest their duty to God which is the most effectual way to dispose them to Obedience to man for he that truly fears God cannot despise the Magistrate Yea so near is the connexion between the Civil state and Religious that heretofore if you look upon well regulated civilized heathen Nations you will find the Government and the Priesthood united in the same person Anius Rex idem hominum Phaebique Sacerdos Virg. 3. AEn If under the true worship of God Melchisedech king of Salem and Priest of the most high God Heb. 7.1 And afterwards Moses whom as we acknowledge a pious so Atheists themselves will confess to have been a Wise Prince he when he took the Kingly government upon himself by his own choice seconded by Divine institution vested the Priesthood in his brother Aaron both whose concernments were so coupled that if Nature had not yet their Religious nay their civil Interests would have made them brothers And it was once the design of the Emperour of Germany Maximilian the first to have joyned the Popedom and the Empire together and to have got himself chosen Pope and by that means derived the Papacy to his succeeding Emperors Had he effected it doubtless there would not have been such scuffles between them and the Bishop of Rome the civil interest of the State would not have been undermined by an Adverse Interest mannaged by the specious and potent pretences of Religion And to see even amongst us how these two are united how the former is upheld by the latter The Magistrate sometimes cannot do his own office dexterously but by acting the Minister hence it is that Judges of Assizes find it necessary in their Charges to use pathetical discourses of Conscience and if it were not for the sway of this they would often lose the best Evidence in the world against Malefactors which is Confession for no man would confess and be Hanged here but to avoid being Damned hereafter Thus
bare to a College as bare after a long Persecution and before you had laid so much as one Stone in the Repairs of your own Fortunes By which incomparably high and generous undertaking you have shewn the World how fit a Person you were to build upon Wolsey's foundation A Prelate whose great designs you Imitate and whose mind you Equal Briefly That Christ-Church stands so high above ground and that the Church of Westminster lies not flat upon it is your Lordship's Commendation And therefore your Lordship is not behind-hand with the Church paying it as much Credit and Support as you receive from it for you owe your Promotion to your Merit and I am sure your Merit to your Self All men Court you not so much because a great Person as a Publick good For as a Friend there is none so hearty so Nobly warm and active to make good all the Offices of that endearing Relation As a Patron none more able to oblige and reward your Dependants and which is the Crowning Ornament of Power none more willing And lastly as a Diocesan you are like even to out-do your self in all other Capacities and in a word to exemplifie and realize every Word of the following Discourse which is here most humbly and gratefully presented to your Lordship By Your Lordship's most obliged Servant Robert South From St. James's Dec. 3. 1666. TITUS II. ult These things Speak and Exhort and Rebuke with all Authority Let no man Despise thee IT may possibly be expected that the very taking of my Text out of this Epistle to Titus may engage me in a Discourse about the Nature Original and Divine Right of Episcopacy and if it should it were no more than what some of the greatest and the learned'st persons in the world when men served Truth instead of Design had done before For I must profess that I cannot look upon Titus as so far un-Bishop'd yet but that he still exhibits to us all the essentials of that Jurisdiction which to this day is claimed for Episcopal We are told in the fifth Verse of the first Chapter That he was left in Crete to set things in order and to ordain Elders in every City which Text one would think were sufficiently clear and full and too big with Evidence to be perverted but when we have seen Rebellion commented out of the thirteenth of the Romans and since there are few things but admit of gloss and probability and consequently may be expounded as well as disputed on both sides it is no such wonder that some would bear the world in hand that the Apostle's design and meaning is for Presbytery though his words are all the time for Episcopacy No wonder I say to us at least who have conversed with too many strange unparallell'd Actions Occurrences and Events now to wonder at any thing Wonder is from Surprize and Surprize ceases upon Experience I am not so much a Friend to the stale Starched Formality of Preambles as to detain so great an Audience with any previous discourse extrinsick to the Subject matter and design of the Text and therefore I shall fall directly upon the Words which run in the form of an Exhortation though in appearance a very strange one for the matter of an Exhortation should be something naturally in the Power of him to whom the Exhortation is directed For no man exhorts another to be strong beautifull witty or the like these are the felicities of some Conditions the object of more Wishes but the effects of no man's Choice Nor seems there any greater reason for the Apostle's exhorting Titus That no man should despise him for how could another man's Action be his Duty Was it in his power that men should not be wicked and injurious and if such persons would despise him could any thing pass an obligation upon him not to be despised No this cannot be the meaning and therefore it is clear that the Exhortation lies not against the Action it self which is onely in the Despiser's power but against the just occasion of it which is in the will and power of him that is Despised it was not in Titus's power that men should not despise him but it was in his power to bereave them of all just cause of doing so it was not in his power not to be Derided but 't was in his power not to be Ridiculous In all this Epistle it is evident that St. Paul looks upon Titus as advanced to the dignity of a prime Ruler of the Church and entrusted with a large Diocess containing many particular Cities under the immediate Government of their respective Elders and those deriving Authority from his Ordination as was specified in the fifth Verse of the first Chapter And now looking upon Titus under this Qualification he addresses a long Advice and Instruction to him for the discharge of so important a Function all along the first and second Chapters but sums up all in the last Verse which is the subject of the ensuing Discourse and contains in it these Two things 1. An account of the Duties of his Place or Office 2. Of the means to facilitate and make effectual their Execution The Duties of his place were two 1. To Teach 2. To Rule Both comprized in these words These things speak and exhort and rebuke with all Authority And then the means the onely means to make him Successfull Bright and Victorious in the performance of these great works was to be above Contempt to shine like the Baptist with a clear and a triumphant Light In a word it is every Bishop's duty to Teach and to Govern and his way to doe it is not to be despised We will discourse of each respectively in their Order 1. And first for the first branch of the great work incumbent upon a Church Ruler which is to Teach A work that none is too great or too high for it is a work of Charity and Charity is the work of Heaven which is always laying it self out upon the Needy and the Impotent nay and it is a work of the highest and the noblest Charity for he that teacheth another gives an Alms to his Soul he cloathes the nakedness of his Understanding and relieves the wants of his impoverished Reason he indeed that governs well leads the Blind but he that teaches gives him Eyes and it is a glorious thing to have been the Repairer of a decayed Intellect and a Sub-worker to Grace in freeing it from some of the inconveniencies of Original Sin It is a Benefaction that gives a man a kind of Prerogative for even in the common Dialect of the world every Teacher is called a Master it is the property of Instruction to descend and upon that very account it supposes him that instructs the Superiour or at least makes him so To say a man is advanced too high to condescend to teach the Ignorant is as much as to say That the Sun is in too high a place to shine
Adversity As he who presumes steps into the Throne of God so that he that despairs limits an Infinite Power to a Finite Apprehension and measures Providence by his own little contracted Model But the Contrivances of Heaven are as much above our Politicks as beyond our Arithmetick Of those many Millions of Casualties which we are not aware of there is hardly One but God can make an Instrument of our Deliverance And most Men who are at length delivered from any great Distress indeed find that they are so by Ways that they never thought of Ways above or beside their Imagination And therefore let no Man who owns the Belief of a Providence grow desperate or forlorn under any Calamity or Strait whatsoever but compose the Anguish of his Thoughts and rest his amazed Spirits upon this one Consideration That he knows not which way the Lot may fall or what may happen to him he comprehends not those strange unaccountable Methods by which Providence may dispose of him In a Word To summ up all the foregoing Discourse Since the Interest of Governments and Nations of Princes and private Persons and that both as to Life and Health Reputation and Honour Friendships and Enmities Employments and Preferments Notwithstanding all the Contrivance and Power that Human Nature can exert about them remain so wholly Contingent as to us surely all the Reason of Mankind cannot suggest any solid ground of Satisfaction but in making that God our Friend who is the sole and absolute Disposer of all these things And in carrying a Conscience so clear towards him as may encourage us with Confidence to cast our selves upon him And in all Casualities still to promise our selves the best Events from his Providence to whom Nothing is casual Who constantly wills the truest Happiness to those that trust in him and works all things according to the Counsel of that Blessed Will To whom be rendred and ascribed as is most due all Praise Might Majesty and Dominion both now and for evermore Amen A SERMON Preached at WESTMINSTER-ABBEY April 30. 1676. 1 COR. III. 19 For the Wisdom of this World is Foolishness with God THE Wisdom of the World so called by an Hebraism frequent in the Writings of this Apostle for Worldly Wisdom is taken in Scripture in a double Sence 1. For that sort of Wisdom that consists in Speculation called both by St. Paul and the Professours of it Philosophy the great Idol of the Learned part of the Heathen World and which divided it into so many Sects and Denominations as Stoicks Peripateticks Epicureans and the like it was professed and owned by them for the grand Rule of Life and certain Guide to Man's chief Happiness But for its utter insufficiency to make good so high an Undertaking we find it termed by the same Apostle Coloss. 28. Vain Philosophy and 1 Tim. 6.20 Science falsly so called and a full Account of its Uselesness we have in this 1 Cor. 1.21 where the Apostle speaking of it says that the World by Wisdom knew not God Such a worthy kind of Wisdom is it Only making Men accurately and laboriously ignorant of what they were most concerned to know 2. The Wisdom of this World is sometimes taken in Scripture for such a Wisdom as lies in Practice and goes commonly by the Name of Policy and consists in a certain Dexterity or Art of managing Business for a Man 's secular Advantage And so being indeed that ruling Engine that governs the World it both claims and finds as great a Preheminence above all other Kinds of Knowledge as Government is above Contemplation or the leading of an Army above the making of Syllogisms or managing the little Issues of a Dispute And so much is the very Name and Reputation of it affected and valued by most Men that they can much rather brook their being reputed Knaves than for their Honesty be accounted Fools as they easily may Knave in the mean time passing for a Name of Credit where it is only another Word for Politician Now this is the Wisdom here intended in the Text namely that practical Cunning that shews it self in political Matters and has in it really the Mystery of a Trade or Craft So that in this latter part of Vers. 19. God is said to take the Wise in their own Craftiness In short it is a Kind of Trick or Slight got not by Study but Converse learn'd not from Books but Men And those also for the most part the very worst of Men of all Sorts Ways and Professions So that if it be in Truth such a precious Jewel as the World takes it for yet as precious as it is we see that they are forced to rake it out of Dunghills and accordingly the Apostle gives it a value sutable to its Extract branding it with the most degrading and ignominious Imputation of Foolishness Which Character running so cross to the general Sense and Vogue of Mankind concerning it who are still admiring and even adoring it as the Mistriss and Queen Regent of all other Arts whatsoever Our Business in the following Discourse shall be to enquire into the Reason of the Apostle's passing so severe a Remark upon it And here indeed since we must allow it for an Art and since every Art is properly an Habitual Knowledge of certain Rules and Maxims by which a Man is governed and directed in his Actions the Prosecution of the Words will most naturally lye in these two Things 1. To shew what are those Rules or Principles of Action upon which the Policy or Wisdom here condemned by the Apostle does proceed 2. To shew and demonstrate the Folly and Absurdity of them in Relation to God in whose Account they receive a very different Estimate from what they have in the Worlds And first for the first of these I shall set down four several Rules or Principles which that Policy or Wisdom which carries so great a Vogue and Value in the World governs its Actions by 1. The first is That a Man must maintain a constant continued Course of Dissimulation in the whole Tenor of his Behaviour Where yet we must observe that Dissimulation admits of a two-fold Acception 1. It may be taken for a bare Concealment of ones mind In which Sence we commonly say that it is Prudence to dissemble Injuries that is not always to declare our Resentments of them and this must be allowed not only lawfull but in most of the Affairs of Humane Life absolutely Necessary For certainly it can be no Man's Duty to write his Heart upon his Forehead and to give all the inquisitive and malicious World round about him a Survey of those Thoughts which it is the Prerogative of God only to know and his own great Interest to conceal Nature gives every one a Right to defend himself and Silence surely is a very innocent Defence 2. Dissimulation is taken for a Man 's positive professing himself to be what indeed he is not and what he
is irrefragably proved by this one Argument That a man may Act vertuously against his Inclination but not against his Will He may be inclined to one thing and yet will another and therefore Inclination and Will are not the same For a man may be Naturally inclined to Pride Lust Anger and strongly inclined so too forasmuch as these Inclinations are founded in a Peculiar Crasis and Constitution of the Blood and Spirits and yet by a steady frequent Repetition of the Contrary Acts of Humility Chastity and Meekness carried thereto by his Will a Principle not to be Controlled by the Blood or Spirits he may at length plant in his Soul all those Contrary Habits of Vertue And therefore it is certain that while Inclination bends the Soul One way a Well-disposed and Resolved Will may effectually draw it Another A sufficient Demonstration doubtless that they are Two very Different things for where there may be a Contrariety there is certainly a Diversity A good Inclination is but the first Rude draught of Vertue but the finishing Strokes are from the Will Which if well-disposed will by Degrees perfect if ill-dispos'd will by the Super-induction of ill Habits quickly deface it God never accepts a good Inclination instead of a good Action where that Action may be done Nay so much the Contrary that if a good Inclination be not Seconded by a good Action the Want of that Action is thereby made so much the more Criminal and Inexcusable A man may be naturally well and vertuously inclined and yet never do One good or vertuous Action all his life A Bowl may lie still for all its Byass but it is impossible for a man to Will Vertue and Vertuous Actions Heartily but he must in the same Degree offer at the Practice of them Forasmuch as the Dictates of the Will are as we have shewn Despotical and Command the Whole man It being a Contradiction in Morality for the Will to go One way and the Man Another And thus as to the First Abuse or Mis-application of the great Rule mentioned in the Text about God's Accepting the Will I have shewn Three notable Mistakes which men are apt to entertain concerning the Will and proved that neither a Bare Approbation of nor a Mere Wishing or Unactive Complacency in nor lastly a Natural Inclination to Things Vertuous and Good can pass before God for a man's Willing of such things and consequently if men upon this account will needs take up and acquiesce in an airy ungrounded Persuasion that they Will those things which really they do not Will they fall thereby into a gross and fatal Delusion A Delusion that must and will shut the Door of Salvation against them They catch at Heaven but embrace a Cloud they mock God who will not be mocked and deceive their own Souls which God knows may too easily be both Deceived and Destroyed too Come we now in the next place to Consider the other way by which Men are prone to abuse and pervert this important Rule of God's accounting the Will for the Deed and that is by reckoning many things Impossible which in truth are not Impossible And this I shall make appear by shewing some of the Principal Instances of Duty for the Performance of which men commonly plead want of Power and thereupon persuade themselves that God and the Law rest satisfied with their Will Now these Instances are Four 1. In Duties of very Great and Hard Labour Labour is confessedly a great Part of the Curse and therefore no wonder if men fly from it Which they do with so great an Aversion that few men know their own strength for want of trying it and upon that account think themselves really unable to do many things which Experience would convince them they have more Ability to Effect than they have Will to Attempt It is Idleness that Creates Impossibilities and where men care not to Doe a Thing they shelter themselves under a persuasion that it cannot be done The shortest and the surest way to prove a Work possible is strenuously to set a-about it and no wonder if that proves it possible that for the most part makes it so Dig says the Unjust Steward I cannot but why Did either his Legs or his Arms fail him No but Day-labour was but an hard and a dry kind of Livelihood to a man that could get an Estate with two or three Strokes of his Pen and find so great a Treasure as he did without Digging for it But such excuses will not pass Muster with God who will allow no man's Humour or Idleness to be the measure of Possible or Impossible And to manifest the wretched Hypocrisie of such pretences those very things which upon the bare obligation of Duty are declined by men as Impossible presently become not only Possible but readily Practicable too in a Case of Extreme Necessity As no doubt that fore-mention'd Instance of Fraud and Laziness the Unjust Steward who pleaded that he could neither Dig nor Beg would quickly have been brought both to Dig and to Beg too rather than starve And if so what reason could such an one produce before God why he could not submit to the same Hardships rather than Cheat and Lye the former being but Destructive of the Body this latter of the Soul And certainly the Highest and Dearest Concerns of a Temporal Life are infinitely less Valuable than those of an Eternal and consequently ought without any Demurr at all to be Sacrificed to them whensoever they come in Competition with them He who can Digest any Labour rather than Die must refuse no Labour rather than Sin 2 dly The Second Instance shall be in Duties of great and apparent Danger Danger as the world goes generally absolves from duty This being a case in which most men according to a very ill Sence will needs be a Law to themselves And where it is not safe for them to be Religious their Religion shall be to be safe But Christianity teaches us a very different Lesson For if fear of suffering could take off the necessity of Obeying the Doctrine of the Cross would certainly be a very Idle and a Senceless thing and Christ would never have prayed Father if it be possible let this cup pass from me had the bitterness of the draught made it impossible to be Drunk of If Death and Danger are things that really cannot be endured no Man could ever be obliged to suffer for his Conscience or to die for his Religion it being altogether as absurd to imagine a man obliged to Suffer as to Doe Impossibilities But those Primitive Hero's of the Christian Church could not so easily blow off the Doctrine of Passive Obedience as to make the fear of being Passive a discharge from being Obedient No they found Martyrdom not only possible but in many cases a Duty also a Duty dressed up indeed with all that was terrible and afflictive to Human Nature yet not at all the less
such want So say I too and the more shame is it for the whole Nation that they should be so But still what will you give Why then answers the Man of Mouth-Charity again and tells you That you could come in a worse Time That money is now-a-days very scarce with him and that therefore he can give nothing but he will be sure to pray for the poor Gentleman Ah thou Hypocrite when thy Brother has lost all that ever he had and lies languishing and even gasping under the utmost extremities of poverty and distress dost thou think thus to lick him whole again only with thy Tongue just like that old formal Hocus who denyed a Beggar a farthing and put him off with his Blessing Why what are the Prayers of a Covetous Wretch worth what will thy Blessing go for what will it buy Is this the Charity that the Apostle here in the Text presses upon the Corinthians This the case in which God accepts the Willingness of the Mind instead of the Liberality of the Purse No assuredly But the Measures that God marks out to thy Charity are these Thy Superfluities must give place to thy Neighbour's great Convenience Thy Convenience must veil to thy Neighbour's Necessity And lastly Thy very Necessities must yield to thy Neighbour's Extremity This is the Gradual Process that must be thy Rule and he that pretends a Disability to Give short of this prevaricates with his Duty and evacuates the Precept God sometimes calls upon thee to relieve the Needs of thy poor Brother sometimes the Necessities of thy Country and sometimes the urgent Wants of thy Prince Now before thou flyest to the old stale usual pretence That thou canst do none of all these things consider with thy self That there is a God who is not to be flamm'd off with Lyes who knows exactly what thou canst do and what thou canst not and consider in the next place that it is not the best Husbandry in the world to be Damn'd to save Charges 4 thly The fourth and last Duty that I shall mention in which men use to plead want of Power to Doe the thing they have a Will to is The conquering of a long inveterate ill Habit or Custom And the truth is there is nothing that leaves a man less power to good than this does Nevertheless that which weakens the hand does not therefore cut it off Some Power to good no doubt a man has left him for all this And therefore God will not take the Drunkard's Excuse That he has so long accustom'd himself to Intemperate Drinking that now he cannot leave it off nor admit of the Passionate man's Apology That he has so long given his Unruly Passions their Head that he cannot now Govern or Controul them For these things are not so Since no man is guilty of an Act of Intemperance of any sort but he might have forborn it not without some trouble I confess from the strugglings of the contrary Habit but still the thing was Possible to be done and he might after all have forborn it And as he forbore one Act so he might have forborn another and after that another and so on till he had by degrees weakned and at length mortified and extinguished the Habit it self That these things indeed are not quickly or easily to be effected is manifest and nothing will be more readily granted and therefore the Scripture it self owns so much by expressing and representing these mortifying courses by Acts of the greatest toil and labour such as are Warfare and taking up the Cross And by Acts of the most terrible Violence and Contrariety to Nature such as are Cutting off the Right Hand and Plucking out the Right Eye things infinitely greivous and afflictive yet still for all that feasible in themselves or else to be sure the Eternal Wisdom of God would never have advised and much less have commanded them For what God has commanded must be done and what must be done assuredly may be done and therefore all Pleas of Impotence or Inability in such Cases are utterly false and impertinent and will infallibly be thrown back in the Face of such as make them But you will say Does not the Scripture it self acknowledge it as a thing impossible for a man brought under a custom of sin to forbear sinning in Ier. 13.23 Can the AEthiopian change his Skin or the Leopard his Spots then may ye also doe good that are accustomed to doe evil Now if this can be no more done than the former is it not a Demonstration that it cannot be done at all To this I answer That the Words mentioned are Tropical or Figurative and import an Hyperbole which is a way of expressing things beyond what really and naturally they are in themselves and consequently the design of this Scripture in saying that this cannot be done is no more than to shew That it is very hardly and very rarely done but not in strict truth utterly impossible to be done In vain therefore do men take Sanctuary in such misunderstood expressions as these and from a false perswasion that they cannot Reform their Lives break off their ill Customs and root out their old vicious Habits never so much as attempt endeavour or go about it For admit that such an Habit seated in the Soul be as our Saviour calls it a Strong Man armed got into Possession yet still he may be dispossessed and thrown out by a Stronger Luke 11.21 22. Or be it as St. Paul calls it A Law in our Members Rom. 7.23 yet certainly Ill Laws may be Broken and Disobeyed as well as Good But if Men will suffer themselves to be enslaved and carried away by their Lusts without Resistance and wear the Devil's Yoke quietly rather than be at the trouble of throwing it off and thereupon sometimes feel their Consciences galled and greived by wearing it they must not from these secret Stings and Remorses felt by them in the Prosecution of their sins presently conclude That therefore their Will is good and well-disposed and consequently such as God will accept though their Lives remain all the while unchanged and as much under the dominion of sin as ever These Reasonings I know lie deep in the minds of most Men and relieve and support their hearts in spight and in the midst of their sins but they are all but Sophistry and Delusion and false Propositions contrived by the Devil to hold Men fast in their sins by final impenitence For though possibly the grace of God may in some cases be irresistible yet it would be an infinite reproach to his Providence to affirm That Sin either is or can be so And thus I have given you four Principal Instances in which Men use to plead the Will instead of the Deed upon a pretended Impotence or Disability for the Deed. Namely In Duties of great labour In Duties of much danger In Duties of Cost and Expence And lastly In Duties requiring a Resistance
and an Extirpation of inveterate sinfull Habits In the neglect of all which Men relieve their Consciences by this one great fallacy running through them all That they mistake Difficulties for Impossibilities A Pernicious mistake certainly and the more pernicious for that Men are seldom convinced of it 'till their conviction can do them no good There cannot be a weightier or more important case of Conscience for Men to be resolved in than to know certainly how far God accepts the Will for the Deed and how far he does not And withal to be informed truly when Men do really Will a Thing and when they have really no Power to Doe what they have Willed For surely it cannot but be matter of very dreadfull and Terrifying consideration to any one Sober and in his Wits to think seriously with himself what horror and confusion must needs surprize that Man at the last and great day of Account who had lead his whole Life and governed all his Actions by one Rule when God intends to judge him by another To which God the great Searcher and Iudge of Hearts and Rewarder of Men according to their Deeds be rendred and ascribed as is most due all Praise Might Majesty and Dominion both now and for evermore Amen A SERMON Preached at CHRIST-CHURCH Oxon. Before the University Octob. 17. 1675. JUDGES VIII 34 35. And the Children of Israel remembred not the Lord their God who had delivered them out of the hands of all their Enemies on every side Neither shewed they kindness to the House of Ierubbaal namely Gideon according to all the goodness which he had shewed unto Israel THese words being a Result or Judgment given upon matter of fact naturally direct us to the foregoing Story to inform us of their occasion The subject of which Story was that Heroick and Victorious Judge of Israel Gideon Who by the greatness of his Atchievements had merited the offer of a Crown and Kingdom and by the greatness of his mind refused it The whole Narrative is contained and set before us in the 6. 7.8 and 9. Chapters of this Book Where we read that when the Children of Israel according to their usual method of sinning after Mercies and Deliverances and thereupon returning to a fresh Enslavement to their Enemies had now passed Seven years in cruel Subjection to the Midianites a potent and insulting Enemy and who oppressed them to that degree that they had scarce Bread to fill their Mouths or Houses to cover their Heads For in the 2 d. v. of the 6. ch we find them Houseing themselves under ground in Dens and Caves and in v. 3 4. no sooner had they sown their Corn but we have the Enemy coming up in Armies and destroying it In this sad and calamitous condition I say in which one would have thought that a deliverance from such an oppressour would have even revived them and the deliverer eternally obliged them God raised up the Spirit of this great Person and ennobled his courage and conduct with the Intire overthrow of this mighty and numerous or rather innumerable Host of the Midianites and that in such a manner and with such strange and unparallell'd Circumstances that in the whole Action the Mercy and the Miracle seem'd to strive for the Preheminence And so quick a Sense did the Israelites immediately after it seem to entertain of the Merits of Gideon and the obligation he had laid upon them that they all as one Man tender him the Regal and Hereditary Government of that People in the 22. v. of this 8 th ch Then said the Men of Israel to Gideon Rule thou over us both thou and thy Son and thy Son's Son also for thou hast delivered us from the hand of Midian To which he answer'd as Magnanimously and by that answer redoubled the obligation in the next verse I will not rule over you neither shall my Son rule over you but the Lord shall rule over you Thus far then we see the Workings of a just Gratitude in the Israelites and goodness on the one side nobly answered with greatness on the other And now after so vast an Obligation owned by so free an acknowledgment could any thing be expected but a continual interchange of Kindnesses at least on their part who had been so infinitely Obliged and so gloriously Delivered Yet in the 9th Chapter we find these very Men turning the Sword of Gideon into his own Bowels cutting off the very Race and Posterity of their Deliverer by the slaughter of threescore and ten of his Sons and setting up the Son of his Concubine the Blot of his Family and the Monument of his Shame to Reign over them and all this without the least provocation or offence given them either by Gideon himself or by any of his House After which horrid fact I suppose we can no longer wonder at this unlookt for account given of the Israelites in the Text That they remembred not the Lord their God who had delivered them out of the hands of all their Enemies on every side Neither shewed they kindness to the House of Gideon according to all the goodness which he had shewed unto Israel The truth is they were all along a cross odd untoward sort of People and such as God seems to have chosen and as the Prophets sometimes phrase it to have espoused to himself upon the very same account that Socrates espoused Xantippe only for her extreme ill conditions above all that he could possibly find or pick out of that Sex and so the fittest Argument both to exercise and declare his admirable Patience to the world The words of the Text are a charge given in against the Israelites a charge of that foul and odious sin of Ingratitude and that both towards God and towards Man Towards God in the 34 th v. and towards Man in the 35 th Such being ever the growing contagion of this ill quality that if it begins at God it naturally descends to Men and if it first exerts it self upon Men it infallibly ascends to God If we consider it as directed against God it is a Breach of Religion if as to Men it is an offence against Morality The passage from one to the other is very easy Breach of of Duty towards our Neighbour still involving in it a Breach of Duty towards God too and no Man's Religion ever survives his Morals My purpose is from this remarkable Subject and occasion to treat of Ingratitude and that chiefly in this latter sence and from the case of the Israelites towards Gideon to traverse the Nature Principles and Properties of this detestable Vice and so drawing before your Eyes the several Lineaments and Parts of it from the ugly aspect of the Picture to leave it to your own hearts to judge of the original For the Effecting of which I shall do these following Things I. I shall shew what gratitude is and upon what the obligation to it is grounded II. I shall give