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
ungodly unto strong delusions that they should believe a lie to the end they might all be damned who believed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness But since this is not the design but the event only of these Divine Methods upon the finally Incorrigible and there are many gracious ends to the good of all Men in God's permission of actual Heresies in which consists this moral Necessity of them mentioned by the Apostle We are now smoothly brought to the third Consideration What is the Moral Necessity for their being in the World. That therefore is Morally necessary which either the Rules of Duty or Dictates of Wisdom recommend and this either strictly so that the omission will be either a fault or a damage or else more freely in such a latitude that though the omission be not injurious yet the observation will be expedient in which latter degree and sense Moral Necessity is no more than Rational Convenience and amounts not to the force of a rigorous Obligation And both these kinds of Moral Necessity may be either absolute in the nature and reason of the things themselves or relative to antecedent Causes of which they are consequential or to final Issues to which they are ministerial by a Moral influence and motion on the Mind Which being thus premised it is natural to resolve that the Moral Necessity of actual Heresies descends not from any Laws of Duty but from the Reasons of Wisdom which upon an antecedent Supposition of wicked Men and secret Hereticks in the Church proposes the detection of them in a manifestation of their Principles extremely beneficial and convenient First To the Hereticks themselves in order to their conversion Secondly To the Wavering in order to their probation and settlement And thirdly To the Approved and Faithful in order to their glory First then The permission of actual Heresies is intended by God to the good of Hereticks many ways For first While Men kept their Heresies close within their secret Cells the Catholick Doctors not discerning the Hearts make no direct applications to them to reform and cleanse them So that detection is necessary in order to their better instruction And secondly During the secrecy of Heresies within the Breasts of Men they fondly imagine that upon a discovery they will take mightily in the World and charm great multitudes of Men into rapture and admiration and that no Man will be able to gainsay them But so it always happens that tho Fools and Wretches may be imposed upon yet the Wise and best part of Mankind will despise and abominate what the Hereticks thought would ravish them And thus collecting all their force of Truth and Wisdom will baffle and confound them and hiss them off the Stage and expose them to the publick Sense of Men as the Pests of Religion and Agents of the wicked One. Which Issues so defeating the false Hopes and Expectations of the Heretick together with the convictions of Truth to be found in the Labours of those that refute him the general contempt and abomination past upon him the reverberations of his Conscience deserted by the Spirit of God and scourged by the Spirits of Darkness whom he served are proper and forcible motives to Humiliation and Repentance which nought but an habitual and obdurate Stupor can resist And yet if these prove ineffectual the Lenity of God uses other means to tire them out of their own Follies For when men have once forsaken the way of Truth they travel into perplexing and endless mazes from one Error to another either successive and consequential or else casual and collateral For as Theodoret observes The ways of Falsehood are cross and intricate so that in those that are bewildred in them is fulfilled that of the Psalmist They went astray in the Wilderness out of the way and found no City to dwell in Hungry and thirsty their Soul fainted in them And being in such a desert state they will if at all or ever be apt to relent And to cry unto the Lord in their trouble to deliver them out of their distress to lead them forth by the right way that they may go and dwell in the City that is refreshed with the streams and fountains of living waters Secondly The diffusion of open Heresies contributes to the probation and settlement of wavering indifferent and ungrounded Souls For in times of Ignorance or Carnal security many Men attend not to the force or design of Religious Institutions but sleep on supinely in the implicit Faith of the fashionable Religion In which case and state of drowsiness no moral or external Good is so apt to excite men to a severe enquiry and study of True Religion as the outrage of Heresies which startle Men out of their heavy Lethargy yea even out of their Graves by a quick and forcible Resurrection crying as it were aloud with the voice of a Trumpet and that a Trumpet of War too in the ears of every such dull and doating Christian Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead and Christ shall give thee light To this end God sometime permitted false Prophets to arise and to tempt his People to Idolatry that he might try and confirm them Thus Moses If there arise among you a Prophet or a Dreamer of dreams and giveth thee a sign or a wonder And the sign or wonder come to pass whereof he spake unto thee saying Let us go serve other Gods c. Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that Prophet or that Dreamer of dreams for the Lord your God proveth you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul viz. Permitting such Temptations to arise not to be of equal force with the Miracles of Moses and Prophets but only strange enough to startle the Careless and the Improvident and to try them by the Prodigy and to provoke them to compare it with the Testimonial Fortifications of Moses and the Prophets and thus finally to instruct and confirm them in the Laws and Ordinances of the God of Israel Thus at the entrance of Christianity our Lord foretold That many false Prophets and false Christs should arise and shew great signs and wonders and deceive many Behold saith he I have told you before That we might not believe every Spirit but try the Spirits whether they are of God when many-false Prophets are gone out into the World. Thirdly the Divine Permission of Heresies is useful to the manifest justification of the Faithful and the Faith. For while the truth of our Faith meets with no opposition Men are generally content with the simplicity of its Tradition in Creeds and summary Abstracts of Christian Doctrine and with the plain sense of the obvious and easie Scriptures But when it 's attacked by Heresies and false Principles pretendedly deduced from Divine Authority this puts the Zeal of the Faithful into a mighty fervour to trace