is our Sanctity The Glory of which is indeed preferible to all the secular Splendor and Power upon Earth And had I time to describe it not only from the Charge and Charter of the Apostles but from the Mystical Resemblances thereof in the Institutes of Consecration Portions Offices and Authorities of the Sons of Aaron and Levi it would appear that our Order is no mean part of the Divine Care in which he hath cloathed us with so much Holinoss and Glory to stand before the Lord our God and to be instead of God unto the People and Mediators for the People in things pertaining unto God. The White Robe of our Solemnities represents an Angelical Purity even here since the Angel that attended our Lord's Resurrection appeared in Raiment as white as Snow and an Angelical Glory hereafter when he that overcometh shall be cloathed in white raiment In which emblematick Colour St. Hierom tells us That the Bishops Priests and Deacons and all the Ecclesiastical Orders were of old adorned a Colour recommended by Plato as representative of Men peaceable and illuminated agreeably whereunto St. Clemens Alexandrinus observes of the white Vestments used by the Clergy in his time That they recommended the habit of their mind Which I here urge with so much remark not that we should think our selves the more sacred for the habit which in it self indeed is senseless and indifferent but to stop the mouths of those that declaim against the solemn use of the white Robe in our Religious Rituals which was so early received in the most Primitive Ages as a symbol of our present Holiness and our future Glory And not only to reprove them but to advertise our selves of that great internal purity of Soul which not only the weight but the very Pontificalia the solemn Ornaments of our Calling recommend to our tenderest care and culture For instead of gazing on our Phylacteries or Plumes of outside Honour it is more necessary to dread the danger of our Calling and to tremble at the Precipice from on high He that reads the Apology that Nazianzen made for flying from the Episcopal Seat at Nazianzum will be moved long to experience his own Graces before he enters upon an holy Charge closely resenting that pressing Question Who is sufficient for these things And when he is initiated into the Services of the Sanctuary will cloath himself with fear and humility and subdue his Body lest after he hath preached to others himself become a castaway The Sons of Aaron that were the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Judges of the Blemishes both of the People and their Oblations were themselves to be without blemish Spea kunto Aaron saying Whosoever he be of thy Seed in their Generations that hath any blemish let him not approach to offer the Bread of his God. For it is but natural that we first act the Levite and the Priest upon our selves before we administer these Liturgies or Operations unto others That which our Saviour saith of his Kingdom The Kingdom of God is within you is also true of the Priesthood Now the Levite was to cleanse and keep holy the Temple and Utensils of the Sanctuary and the Priest therein and therewith was to make the Oblations to the Most High. The Stoicks have rightly set it That every wise Man is a Priest in whom sobriety like the Levite cleanses the Temple Vessels and Affections of our Body and Devotion is the Priesthood that hallows and dedicates us and all our Actions to the Living God. If then we are Priests and Levites only by an Hierarchical and External Character and not inwardly so by Purity and Grace what are we but whited Walls and Sepulchres whose surface is indeed gay but the inside nothing but rubbish and rottenness and the Bones of dead Men whom we have murthered and devoured by our Sins and which will appear in Judgment against us at the General Resurrection of the Body Since then we are descended into the Field to fight before the Armies of God against Principalities and Powers and Spiritual Wickednesses in high Places Let us follow after righteousness godliness faith love patience meekness fight the good fight of faith and thus lay hold on that eternal life whereunto we are called And now my Reverend Brethren it is time to scatter some Religious Offers to the Laick part of this Assembly And you Good People remember carefully that you are in the Station of Disciples and are as much bound to learn as we to teach and in order thereunto to be humble diligent and tractable without which no Scholar thrives under the best Tutors Obedience therefore to our Religious Methods and Directions is your indispensable duty as well in order to your own improvement as our consolation Thus the Author to the Hebrews teaches you Obey them that have the rule over you and submit your selves for they watch for your Souls as they that must give account that they may do it with joy and not with grief for this is unprofitable for you For the neglect of this plunges you into all manner of Sins Schisms Heresies and Impieties The general mistake of common People is to despise the Doctrine that leadeth unto Practice and their ears itch after strange and empty Novelties that they may seem to know much But a good old Father Saint and Martyr giveth you his Sense That it is better to be plain Men and to know but little and by charity to come near unto God than by fancying to know much to blaspheme against him to know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified than by subtlety of questions and much babling to fall into impiety Think not that we envy you the glory of an excellent Wisdom I can freely say with Moses Would to God all the Lord's People were Prophets and I embrace knowledg heartily in every one whom it puffeth not up into vanity and insolence To this the Wisdom of God calleth to this the serene Spirit of God continually invites the wandring and inobservant Sons of Men. But if you then will be wise indeed learn that Wisdom that is substantially such that leadeth unto life and teacheth you the things that belong unto your peace The importunate Appetite of an unseasonable Knowledg of Good and Evil had at first such an issue as should for ever affright us from the like wanton and precipitous Adventures The Corinthians coveted the extraordinary Gifts of the Spirit and St. Paul in some measure corrects and in some degree allows the Appetite but yet he teacheth them a more excellent way What then is that Follow after Charity For Charity never faileth though all other Graces cease Charity suffereth long and is kind Charity envieth not vaunteth not it self is not puffed up doth not behave it self unseemly seeketh not her own is not easily provoked thinketh no evil rejoyceth not in iniquity but rejoyceth in the truth Beareth all things believeth all things hopeth
false Prophecies as Revelations of the Paraclete They were sometimes circumcised with the Jews sometimes they sacrificed with the Heathens consecrated the soulest Pollutions into Mysteries and betrayed true Christians up to all manner of Persecutions This and a much more dreadful account we have of Heresies from the Fathers and Ecclesiastical Histories From whom let us ascend to the Apostles and see what they say of them St. Jude calls the Hereticks of his time ungodly men that turn'd the grace of God into wantonness denying the only God and our Lord Jesus Christ filthy dreamers defilers of the flesh despisers of Dominion blasphemers of Dignities clouds without water carried about of winds withering fruitless trees raging waves of the Sea foaming out their own shame mockers separatists sensual and without the spirit Saint Peter foretells of the same Hereticks That their false Teachers should bring in damnable Heresies and deny the Lord God that bought them men of unclean lusts despisers of Government presumptuous selfwilled blasphemers of Dignities having eyes full of adultery constant in sin beguiling unstable Souls having covetous hearts cursed children forsaking the right way and following the way of Balaam wells without water clouds carried about with a tempest speaking great swelling words of vanity and thereby alluring those who were clean escaped from them that live in error St. Paul saith of those that made Divisions at Rome That they served not the Lord Jesus Christ but their own belly and with good words and fair speeches deceived the hearts of the simple Of the Cretan Hereticks he instructs Titus That they were fond of Jewish fables being turned from the truth and being disorderly bablers and deceivers He foretells Timothy That the time would come in which they would not endure sound doctrine but according to their own lusts would heap to themselves Teachers having itching ears turning away from the truth and enclining unto fables That they should be lovers of themselves covetous boasters proud blasphemers disobedient to parents unthankful unholy without natural affection truce breakers false accusers incontinent fierce despisers of good men Traytors heady high-minded lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof creeping into houses and leading away captive silly women laden with sins led away with divers lusts ever learning but never able to come to the knowledg of the truth Which if we take one collective view of the whole aggregate of Hereticks we shall find all these abominations universally diffused among them if we consider them distributively it is not to be understood as if every Heretick were actually guilty of all these open Villanies but that in every Heretick there are more or less of these Impieties being the proper productions or improvements of their several Heresies according to the several tempers and inclinations of Men upon which they operate since Men encline to different Heresies according to their previous dispositions unto evil in which they are confirmed by those pleasing errors which they admire and entertain Now if such be the Complexion Genius and Original of all Heresies if their Extraction be so apparently from and their tendency leads unto Hell how falls the Church under a Necessity of them Why should St. Paul say there must be Heresies Shall we make them the issues of an Eternal Fate or of the Anti God of the Manichees Or shall we father them on an Horrible Decree of God for an irrespective and inexorable Reprobation Or shall we dream with Lactantius That God originally put the Devil upon the amazing employment of scattering Snares and Temptations among the Sons of Men St. James cautions us against all the least approaches to this jealousie of the Lord our God Let no man say when he is tempted that he is tempted of God for God cannot be tempted with evil neither tempteth he any man. Whereupon we must search out for such a necessity of Heresies as is imputable not to the operative Determination of God but the Evils of Men Since there must be Heresies they must be ours not God's They must derive from an unclean and puddled not from a Divine Fountain or Original For Let God be true and every man a lyar Except therefore only violent Force All Necessity is either Natural or Moral Natural consisting in the proper tendencies of operative Causes to their suitable Effects Moral in the reasonable proposals of Wisdom or Equity And both these kinds of Necessity are either Primary Simple and Absolute or Secondary only and Consequential with respect to antecedent Causes voluntary or unnecessitated Thus in Naturals That I am is to me of absolute necessity but that under the folly of too much Wine I talk and act idly is from no primary and absolute Necessity irresistible from the beginning but consequential only on my Intemperance That I can see is from a natural Necessity absolute and primary but that I actually must see is consequential to the opening of mine Eyes Thus likewise in Morals That a Man love the Lord his God with all his heart and with all his soul is primarily simply and eternally necessary but the moral Necessity of my Repentance is consequential only on my Sin. That I do exact Justice to every Son of Man is of necessity absolutely moral but the moral Necessity of repairing Injuries is secondary and introduced by my former Wrongs Upon which preliminary distinction of the kinds and forms of Necessity we are now to examine First what Natural and Secondly what Moral Necessities there are for the admission of Heresies in the Christian Religion First then The Truth and Sanctity of God require us to resolve that there is no natural necessity of Heresies primitive and absolute by the operation of him that made not Death nor hath any delight in the destruction of the Living For from the beginning the original state of Man needed no kind of evil to corrupt it But all the natural necessity of them is secondary suppositive and consequential to precedent Sins and those actual too and most times habitual For though other Immoralities begin to break out in the very first essays of our tender Understandings yet the inculcations of Heresie have no such early influence on our Fancies but require antecedently a longer sense and experience of Good and Evil To which when a Man is arrived he cannot be precipitated into the guilt of Heresie without want either of Piety or Care. For though a Soul aspiring with all care to a great devotion may in the infancy of that piety be ignorant of many excellent Doctrines yet by this care he will espouse no Principle absolutely as fundamental either in heart or prosession which neither the Voice of Nature nor the Rules of Faith have clearly revealed to his Understanding nor oppose those Points that either by the Light of Nature or of God's holy Word have ever been received by the Universal Church
as Fundamentals And he that doth otherwise lets himself loose by his own fault and if thereby he necessarily falls into Heresie it is a fatal mischief consequential to his inconsiderate negligence What man is he then that feareth the Lord him shall he teach in the way that he shall choose This then sufficiently proves the Negative that no Heresies can be incurred without foregoing faults but we are here further to enquire what positive influence there is in Sins to determine the Sinner to a consequential Heresie For though it is plain that every Heretick is a Sinner yet not that every no nor the foulest Sinners are always Hereticks So that upon the supposition of Evil it yet appears not that there is a natural necessity thence consequent that there must be Heresies To the elucidation whereof it is to be observed That though every Sinner is not a professed Heretick yet in every Apostate Conscience there are Seeds of Heresie that suggest thereunto false and imposturous Consolations Thus the Voluptuous heretically thinks his Pleasures innocent and the boons of Nature The Covetous in like manner thinks his Disease prudence frugality and piety to his Off-spring The Proud and Ambitious fancies his Airs to be magnanimous The Severe conceits his Cruelty to be Justice The Hypocrite believes that God is contented with the outside or searcheth not the heart The Violent thinks there is no Providence or Judgment to come And the most Orthodox Sinners have too easie thoughts of the Divine Lenity as if it could or would connive at mens Iniquities Thus Error is fatally interwoven with our Vices and the Oyl that feeds the Lamp of God enkindled in our Souls is precipitated by the violence of our Lusts and being thus extinguished leaves us in night and folly and the shadow of death in which we must needs plainly follow every Ignis fatuus every twinkling Fancy or Delusion that occurs in all our aims and appetites of Good and Evil. So that when so much matter for Heresie is preparatively collected in a vicious Soul it is naturally necessary and consequent that it break out into an actual flame when our Vices are grown up into Obstinacy and Ostentation and are solicited to Ambition by incidental and suitable Motives and Temptations For we must observe That the natural necessity of actual and avowed Heresies results not purely from a meer internal Vice but also from the apposite concurrence of external Allurements upon which if the vicious Soul be absolutely intent and a profession of Heresie be the only way in prospect to attain them there 't is naturally necessary that the uncorrected Appetite fall into Heresie Thus Thebutes at Jerusalem Novatian at Rome and Arius at Alexandria as Epiphanius reports him and many others elsewhere through the eager desire of an Episcopal Character denied them by the Church fell into revengeful Passions also and thence into Heresie by a natural consequence Thus Liberius Bishop of Rome after he had witnessed a good Confession and for that went into Exile yet impatience of the pressure and an appetite to the Glory of the Roman Chair being too predominant hurried him into Arianism and a subscription to the Arimin Confession Now here was no primary Necessity that these Men should be ambitious and from thence heretical but being under the impotency of Ambition against which they had not duly watched and a profession of Heresie being a ready way to attain it they were naturally driven by the blasts thereof into Acts heretical by a secondary and consequential Necessity For when Men are once subdued to their Lusts they are passively hurried away to all the precipices of Evil to which the stings of Passion or Appetite shall at ranndom drive them And as this gives a clear account of that natural Necessity by which the Vices of particular Men dispose them to Heresie so if we take a prospect of the general diffusion and prevalency of Vice in the Affections of Men in order to their secular Interests or Pleasures by the love of which the Powers of Darkness support their tyranny over the Souls of Men to destroy all which Christianity was instituted from above the general reasons of things will conclude it necessary that the Faith in Christ Jesus must ever find many prejudiced Adversaries animated by Satanical Artifices and Sollicitations to oppose and deseat it to compass which no way is so effectual as to debauch its Purity by perverse interpretations and to render its Truth dubious by litigious divisions And Man being extremely prone to these ever since the dispersion of Babel it is natural to presage that through so great enmity as Christianity must needs meet with by natural consequence Heresies and Divisions must be framed against it According to which Phaenomenon upon the general prospect and tendency of things and the various fermentation of Passions upon the introduction and process of Christianity our Saviour foretold that of necessity consequential to the Prejudices and Lusts of Men there must be Offences and that the event tho not the intent of his coming rebus sic stantibus would certainly determine in inevitable variances between the nearest Relations and blow up an unquenchable flame in the very bowels and vitals of both Kingdoms and Families But beside this natural Necessity of Heresies consequential to the sinful state of Man I told you that the words of the Apostle seem to import a moral Necessity for the propagation of them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. There ought to be there is need there should be Heresies A Proposition of a strange complexion at the first glance and at which the weak and prejudicate may be easily offended For there have been Opinionists that have thought it unbecoming the Divinity to permit a meer possibility of moral Evil in the World which it had been congruous to the Supreme Wisdom and Goodness to have made a System of immaculate and unchangeable Holiness to the Lord not considering that such a model would preclude the Sovereign Regalia of God's Government and put his Creatures out of a condition of Religious Obedience in that whatsoever Acts and Operations of the Creatures are not voluntary but the passive productions of an Almighty Influence are not reducible to the formal Reason and Schesis of a Legislative Empire and Government But our question here is of a greater difficulty For though a possibility of Evil be fundamentally supposed in the institution of Laws yet what moral Necessity is there of it in any healthy or just State of Government especially in the State of Religion Is it not enough under so pure a Theocracy to admit a possibility of Offences as the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Need nots and vain Excrescencies of Man's Life but must they be annumerated to the Necessaries and adapted among the mighty Importances of God's Providence in the Conduct of Religion This is that that puzzles this drives us to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉