who had such Thoughts of it that which we call Self-murther was properly a good an honest and a vertuous Action And persons of the highest and most acknowledged Probity and Vertue amongst them such as Marcus Cato and Pomponius Atticus actually did it and stand celebrated both by their Orators and Historians for so doing And I could also instance in other Actions of a souler and more unnatural Hue which yet from the Approbation and Credit they have found in some Countries and Places have passed for good Morality in those places But out of respect to Common Humanity as well as Divinity I shall pass them over And thus much for the first Assertion or Opinion Secondly The second Opinion or Position is That Good and Evil Honest and Dishonest are Originally founded in the Laws and Constitutions of the Soveraign Civil Power enjoyning some Things or Actions and prohibiting others So that when any thing is found conducing to the Welfare of the Publick and thereupon comes to be enacted by Governours into a Law it is forthwith thereby rendred Morally Good and Honest and on the contrary Evil and Dishonest when upon its Contrariety to the publick Welfare it stands prohibited and condemned by the same publick Authority This was the Opinion heretofore of Epicurus as it is represented by Gassendus who understood his Notions too well to misrepresent them And lately of one amongst our selves a less Philosopher though the greater Heathen of the two the Infamous Author of the Leviathan And the like lewd scandalous and immoral Doctrine or worse if possible may be found in some Writers of another kind of Note and Character whom one would have thought not only Religion but Shame of the World might have taught better things Such as for instance Bellarmine himself who in his 4th Book and 5th Chapter De Pontifice Romano has this monstrous Passage That if the Pope should through Error or Mistake command Vices and prohibit Vertues the Church would be bound in Conscience to believe Vice to be Good and Vertue Evil. I shall give you the whole Passage in his own Words to a Tittle Fides Catholica docet omnem virtutem esse Bonam omne vitium esse Malum Si autem erraret Papa praecipiendo vitia vel prohibendo virtutes teneretur Ecclesia credere vitia esse Bona virtutes Malas nisi vellet contra Conscientiam peccare Good God! that any thing that wears the Name of a Christian or but of a Man should venture to own such a villainous impudent and blasphemous Assertion in the face of the World as this What must Murther Adultery Theft Fraud Extortion perjury Drunkenness Rebellion and the like pass for good and commendable Actions and fit to be practised And Mercy Chastity Iustice Truth Temperance Loyalty and Sincere Dealing be accounted things utterly evil immoral and not to be followed by Men in case the Pope who is generally a weak and almost always a wicked Man should by his mistake and infallible ignorance command the former and forbid the latter Did Christ himself ever assume such a Power as to alter the Morality of Actions and to transform Vice into Vertue and Vertue into Vice by his bare Word Certainly never did a grosser Paradox or a wickeder Sentence drop from the Mouth or Pen of any mortal Man since Reason or Religion had any Being in the World And I must confess I have often with great Amazement wondred how it could possibly come from a Person of so great a Reputation both for Learning and Vertue too as the World allows Bellarmine to have been But when Men give themselves over to the Defence of wicked Interests and false Propositions it is just with God to smite the greatest Abilities with the greatest Infatuations But as for these Two Positions or Assertions That the Moral Good or Evil the Honesty or Dishonesty of humane Actions should depend either upon the Opinions or upon the Laws of Men They are certainly false in themselves because they are infinitely absurd in their Consequences Some of which are such as these As First If the Moral Goodness or Evil of men's Actions were Originally founded in and so proceeded wholly from the Opinions or Laws of Men then it would follow that they must change and vary according to the Change and difference of the Opinions and Laws of Men And consequently that the same Action under exactly the same Circumstances may be morally Good one day and morally Evil another and morally Good in one place and morally Evil in another For as much as the same Soveraign Authority may enact or make a Law commanding such or such an Action to day and a quite contrary Law forbidding the same Action to morrow and the very same Action under the same Circumstances may be commanded by Law in one Country and prohibited by Law in another Which being so the Consequence is manifest and the Absurdity of the Consequent intolerable Secondly If the Moral Goodness or Evil of men's Actions depended Originally upon humane Laws then those Laws themselves could neither be morally Good nor Evil The Consequence is evident Because those Laws are not commanded or prohibited by any antecedent humane Laws And consequently if the Moral Goodness or Evil of any Act were to be derived only from a precedent humane Law Laws themselves not supposing a dependance upon other precedent humane Laws could have no Moral Goodness or Evil in them Which to assert of any humane Act such as all humane Laws essentially are and must be is certainly a very gross Absurdity Thirdly If the Moral Goodness or Evil of men's Actions were sufficiently derived from humane Laws or Constitutions then upon supposal that a Divine Law should as it often does command what is prohibited by humane Laws and prohibit what is commanded by them it would follow that either such Commands and Prohibitions of the Divine Law doe not at all affect the Actions of Men in point of their Morality so as to render them either Good or Evil or that the same Action at the same time may in respect of the Divine Law Commanding it be Morally Good and in respect of an humane Law forbidding it be Morally Evil. Than which consequence nothing can be more clear nor withall more absurd And many more of the like nature I could easily draw forth and lay before you Every false Principle or Proposition being sure to be attended with a numerous train of Absurdities But as to the Subject-matter now in hand so far is the Morality of humane Actions as to the Goodness or Evil of them from being founded in any humane Law that in very many and those the principal Instances of humane Action it is not Originally founded in or derived from so much as any Positive Divine Law There being a Ius naturale certainly antecedent to all Ius positivum either Humane or Divine and that such as results from the very Nature and Being of Things as they stand in
such a certain Habitude or Relation to one Another To which Relation whatsoever is done agreeably is Morally and Essentially Good and whatsoever is done otherwise is at the same rate Morally Evil. And this I shall exemplifie in those Two grand comprehensive Moral Duties which Man is for ever obliged to His Duty towards God and his Duty towards his Neighbour And first for his Duty towards God which is To love and obey him with all his Heart and all his Soul It is certain that for a rational intelligent Creature to conform himself to the Will of God in all things carries in it a moral Rectitude or Goodness and to disobey or oppose his Will in any thing imports a moral Obliquity before God ever deals forth any particular Law or Command to such a Creature There being a general Obligation upon Man to obey all God's Laws whensoever they shall be declared before any particular Instance of Law comes actually to be declared But now whence is this Why from that Essential sutableness which Obedience has to the Relation which is between a Rational Creature and his Creator Nothing in Nature being more irrational and irregular and consequently more immoral than for an Intelligent Being to oppose or disobey that Soveraign Supreme Will which gave him that Being and has withall the sole and absolute disposal of him in all his concerns So that there needs no positive Law or Sanction of God to stamp an Obliquity upon such a disobedience Since it cleaves to it Essentially and by way of Natural result from it upon the account of that utter unsutableness which Disobedience has to the Relation which Man naturally and necessarily stands in towards his Maker And then in the next place for his Duty to his Neighbour The whole of which is comprized in that great Rule of doing as a Man would be done by We may truly affirm that the Morality of this Rule does not Originally derive it self from those words of our Saviour Matth. 7. 12. What soever ye would that Men should doe unto you doe ye even so unto them No nor yet from Moses or the Prophets but it is as old as Adam and bears date with humane Nature it self as springing from that Primitive Relation of Equality which all men as fellow Creatures and fellow Subjects to the same supreme Lord bear to one another in respect of that common Right which every man has equally to his Life and to the proper Comforts of Life and consequently to all things naturally necessary to the support of both Now whatsoever one man has a Right to keep or possess no other man can have a Right to take from him So that no man has a Right to expect that from or to do that to another which that other has not an equal Right to expect from and to doe to him Which Parity of Right as to all things purely Natural being undoubtedly the Result of Nature it self can any thing be inferred from thence more conformable to Reason and consequently of a greater moral Rectitude then that such an Equality of Right should also cause an Equality of Behaviour between Man and Man as to all those mutual Offices and Intercourses in which Life and the Happiness of Life are concerned Nothing certainly can shine out and shew it self by the meer Light of Reason as an higher and more unquestionable piece of Morality than this nor as a more confessed Deviation from Morality than the contrary Practice From all which discourse I think we may without presumption conclude that the Rationes Boni Mali the Nature of Good and Evil as to the principal Instances of both spring from that Essential Habitude or Relation which the Nature of one thing bears to another by vertue of that Order which they stand placed in here in the World by the very Law and Condition of their Creation and for that reason doe and must precede all positive Laws Sanctions or Institutions whatsoever Good and Evil are in Morality as the East and West are in the Frame of the World founded in and divided by that fixt and unalterable Situation which they have respectively in the whole Body of the Universe Or as the Right Hand is discriminated from the Left by a natural necessary and neverto-be-confounded Distinction And thus I have done with the First Thing proposed and given you such an account of the Nature of Good and Evil as the measure of the present Exercise and Occasion would allow Pass we now to the 2 d Which is to shew That the way by which Good and Evil generally operate upon the Mind of Man is by those Words or Names by which they are notified and conveyed to the Mind Words are the Signs and Symbols of Things and as in Accompts Ciphers and Figures pass for real Summs so in the course of humane Affairs Words and Names pass for Things themselves For Things or Objects cannot enter into the Mind as they subsist in themselves and by their own natural bulk pass into the Apprehension but they are taken in by their Idea's their Notions or Resemblances which imprinting themselves after a spiritual immaterial manner in the Imagination and from thence under a further Refinement passing into the Intellect are by that expressed by certain Words or Names found out and invented by the Mind for the Communication of its Conceptions or Thoughts to others So that as Conceptions are the Images or Resemblances of Things to the Mind within it self In like manner are Words or Names the Marks Tokens or Resemblances of those Conceptions to the Minds of them whom we converse with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being the known Maxim laid down by the Philosopher as the first and most fundamental Rule of all discourse This therefore is certain That in humane Life or Conversation Words stand for Things the common business of the World not being capable of being managed otherwise For by these Men come to know one another's Minds By these they Covenant and Confederate By these they Buy and Sell they Deal and Traffick In short Words are the great Instruments both of Practice and Design which for the most part move wholly in the strength of them For as much as it is the Nature of Man both to Will and to doe according to the perswasion he has of the Good and Evil of those Things that come before him and to take up his Perswasions according to the Representations made to him of those Qualities by their respective Names or Appellations This is the true and natural Account of this matter and it is all that I shall remark upon this second Head I proceed now to the 3 d. Which is to shew the mischief which directly naturally and unavoidably follows from the Misapplication and Confusion of those Names And in order to this I shall premise these Two Considerations 1. That the generality of Mankind is wholly and absolutely governed by Words and Names Without nay for the
who per fas nefas gets as much as He can But for all this let Atheists and Sensualists satisfie themselves as they are able The former of which will find that as long as Reason keeps Her ground Religion neither can nor will lose Hers. And for the Sensual Epicure he also will find That there is a certain living spark within him which all the Drink he can pour in will never be able to quench or put out nor will his rotten abused Body have it in it's power to convey any putrefying consuming rotting Quality to the Soul No there is no Drinking or Swearing or Ranting or Fluxing a Soul out of its Immortality But that must and will survive and abide in spight of Death and the Grave and live for ever to convince such wretches to their eternal Woe That the so much repeated ornament and flourish of their former speeches God damn 'em was commonly the truest word they spoke though least believed by them while they spoke it 2dly The other thing deducible from the foregoing particulars shall be to inform us of the way of attaining to that excellent Privilege so justly valued by those who have it and so much talked of by those who have it not which is Assurance Assurance is properly that perswasion or Confidence which a man takes up of the pardon of his sins and his interest in God's favour upon such Grounds and Terms as the Scripture lays down But now since the Scripture promises eternal Happiness and Pardon of sin upon the sole condition of Faith and sincere Obedience it is evident that he onely can plead a Title to such a Pardon whose conscience impartially tells him that he has performed the required Condition And this is the only rational Assurance which a man can with any safety rely or rest himself upon He who in this Case would believe surely must first walk surely and to do so is to walk uprightly And what that is we have sufficiently marked out to us in those plain and legible lines of Duty requiring us to Demean our selves to God humbly and devoutly to our Governours obediently and to our Neighbours justly and to our selves soberly and temperately All other Pretences being infinitely vain in themselves and fatal in their Consequences It was indeed the way of many in the late times to bolster up their Crazy doating Consciences with I know not what odd Confidences founded upon inward whispers of the Spirit stories of something which they called conversion and marks of Predestination All of them as they understood them mere delusions Trifles and Fig leaves and such as would be sure to fall off and leave them naked before that fiery Tribunal which knows no other way of Iudging men but according to their works Obedience and Upright Walking are such Substantial Vital parts of Religion as if they be wanting can never be made up or commuted for by any formalities of Phantastick looks or language And the great Question when we come hereafter to be judged will not be How demurely have you looked or How boldly have you believed With what length have you prayed and With what loudness and vehemence have you preached But How holily have you lived and How uprightly have you walked For this and this only with the Merits of Christ's Righteousness will come into Account before that great Iudge who will pass Sentence upon every man according to what he has done here in the Flesh whether it be good or whether it be evil and there is no respect of Persons with Him To whom therefore be rendred and ascribed as is most due all Praise Might Majesty and Dominion both now and for evermore Amen A SERMON PREACHED Before the University AT Christ-Church Oxon. 1664. JOHN XV. 15. Henceforth I call you not Servants for the Servant knows not what his Lord doth But I have called you Friends for all things that I have heard of my father have I made known unto you WE have here an Account of Christ's friendship to his Disciples that is we have the best of things represented in the greatest of Examples In other men we see the Excellency but in Christ the Divinity of Friendship By our Baptism and Church-Communion we are made one Body with Christ but by This we become one soul. Love is the greatest of Humane Affections and Friendship is the Noblest and most Refined Improvement of Love a quality of the largest Compass And it is here admirable to observe the ascending gradation of the Love which Christ bore to his Disciples The strange and superlative greatness of which will appear from those several degrees of kindness that it has manifested to man in the several Periods of His Condition As 1 st If we consider him antecedently to his Creation while he yet lay in the barren Womb of Nothing and only in the Number of Possibilities and consequently could have nothing to recommend him to Christ's affection nor shew any thing lovely but what he should afterwards receive from the stamp of a preventing Love Yet even then did the Love of Christ begin to work and to commence in the first Emanations and purposes of goodness towards Man designing to provide matter for it self to work upon to create its own object and like the Sun in the production of some Animals first to give a being and then to shine upon it 2dly Let us take the Love of Christ as directing it self to Man actually Created and brought into the World and so all those glorious Endowments of Humane Nature in its Original State and Innocence were so many Demonstrations of the munificent goodness of Him by whom God first made as well as afterwards redeemed the world There was a Consult of the whole Trinity for the making of Man that so He might shine as a Master-piece not only of the Art but also of the kindness of his Creator with a noble and a clear understanding a rightly disposed Will and a Train of Affections regular and obsequious and perfectly conformable to the Dictates of that high and divine Principle Right Reason So that upon the whole matter he stept forth not only the work of God's hands but also the Copy of his perfections a kind of Image or representation of the Deity in small Infinity contracted into flesh and blood and as I may so speak the Preludium and first Essay towards the Incarnation of the Divine Nature But 3dly and Lastly Let us look upon man not only as created and brought into the World with all these great Advantages superadded to his Being but also as depraved and faln from them as an Out-law and a Rebel and one that could plead a Title to nothing but to the highest Severities of a Sin-revenging Justice Yet even in this estate also the Boundless Love of Christ began to have warm thoughts and actings towards so wretched a Creature at this time not onely not Amiable but highly Odious While indeed man was yet uncreated and
well of all But Friendship that always goes a Pitch higher gives a Man a peculiar Right and Claim to the good Opinion of his Friend And if we justly look upon a Proneness to find faults as a very ill and a mean thing we are to remember that a Proneness to believe them is next to it We have seen here the Demeanour of Friendship between Man and Man but how is it think we now between Christ and the Soul that depends upon him Is he any ways short in these Offices of Tenderness and Mitigation no assuredly but by infinite Degrees Superiour For where our Heart does but Relent his Melts where our Eye pities his Bowels yearn How many Frowardnesses of ours does he smother how many Indignities does he pass by and how many Affronts does he put up at our hands because his Love is invincible and his Friendship unchangeable He rates every Action every sinful Infirmity with the Allowances of Mercy and never weighs the Sin but together with it He weighs the force of the Inducement how much of it is to be attributed to Choice how much to the Violence of the Temptation to the Stratagem of the Occasion and the yielding Frailties of weak Nature Should we try Men at that rate that we try Christ we should quickly find that the largest Stock of Humane friendship would be too little for us to spend long upon But his Compassion follows us with an infinite Supply He is God in his Friendship as well as in his Nature and therefore we sinfull Creatures are not took upon Advantages nor consumed in our Provocations See this exemplified in his Behaviour to his Disciples while he was yet upon Earth How ready was he to excuse and cover their Infirmities At the last and bitterest Scene of his Life when he was so full of Agony and Horrour upon the Approach of a dismal Death and so had most need of the Refreshments of Society and the friendly Assistances of his Disciples and when also he desired no more of them but only for a while to sit up and pray with Him Yet they like Persons wholly untouched with his Agonies and unmoved with his Passionate Entreaties forget both his and their own Cares and securely sleep away all Concern for him or themselves either Now what a fierce and sarcastick Reprehension may we imagine this would have drawn from the Friendships of the World that act but to an Humane Pitch and yet what a gentle one did it receive from Christ In Matt. 26. 40 No more than What could you not watch with me for one hour And when from this Admonition they took only occasion to redouble their Fault and to sleep again so that upon a second and third Admonition they had nothing to plead for their unseasonable Drowsiness yet then Christ who was the only Person concerned to have resented and aggravated this their Unkindness finds an Extenuation for it when they themselves could not The Spirit indeed is willing says he but the Flesh is weak As if he had said I know your Hearts and am satisfied of your Affection and therefore accept your Will and compassionate your Weakness So benign so gracious is the Friendship of Christ so answerable to our Wants so sutable to our Frailties Happy that Man who has a Friend to point out to him the Perfection of Duty and yet to pardon him in the Lapses of his Infirmity 3. The third Privilege of Friendship is a Sympathy in Ioy and Grief When a Man shall have diffused his Life his self and his whole Concernments so far that he can weep his Sorrows with anothers Eyes when he has another Heart besides his own both to share and to support his Griefs and when if his Joys overflow he can treasure up the Overplus and Redundancy of them in another Breast so that he can as it were shake off the Solitude of a single Nature by dwelling in two Bodies at once and living by anothers Breath this surely is the Height the very Spirit and Perfection of all humane Felicities It is a true and happy Observation of that great Philosopher the Lord Verulam that this is the Benefit of Communication of our Minds to others That Sorrows by being Communicated grow less and Ioys greater And indeed Sorrow like a Stream loses it self in many Channels and Joy like a Ray of the Sun reflects with a greater Ardour and Quickness when it rebounds upon a Man from the Breast of his Friend Now Friendship is the only Scene upon which the Glorious Truth of this great Proposition can be fully acted and drawn forth Which indeed is a Summary Description of the Sweets of Friendship and the whole Life of a Friend in the several Parts and Instances of it is only a more diffuse Comment upon and a plainer Explication of this Divine Aphorism Friendship never restrains a Pleasure to a single Fruition But such is the Royal Nature of this Quality that it still expresses it self in the Style of Kings as We do this or That and This is our happiness and such or such a thing belongs to us when the immediate Possession of it is vested only in one Nothing certainly in Nature can so peculiarly gratifie the Noble Dispositions of Humanity as for one man to see another so much himself as to sigh his Griefs and groan his Pains to sing his Joys and as it were to do and feel every thing by Sympathy and secret inexpressible Communications Thus it is upon an humane Account Let us now see how Christ sustains and makes good this generous Quality of a Friend And this we shall find fully set forth to us in Heb. 4. 15. Where he is said to be a mercifull High Priest touched with the feeling of our Infirmities and that in all our Afflictions he is afflicted Isa. 63. 9. And no doubt with the same Bowels and Meltings of Affection with which any tender Mother hears and bemoans the Groanings of her sick Child does Christ hear and sympathize with the spiritual Agonies of a Soul under Desertion or the Pressures of some stinging Affliction It is enough that he understands the Exact Measures of our Strengths and Weaknesses that he knows our Frame as it is in Psalm 03. 14. And that he does not only know but Emphatically that he remembers also that we are but Dust Observe that signal Passage of his loving Commiseration As soon as he had risen from the Dead and met Mary Magdalen in Mark 16. 7. he sends this Message of his Resurrection by her Go Tell my Disciples and Peter that I am risen What was not Peter one of his Disciples Why then is he mentioned particularly and by himself as if he were exempted out of their Number Why we know into what a plunge he had newly cast himself by denying his Master upon occasion of which he was now strugling with all the Perplexities and Horrours of Mind imaginable least Christ might in like manner deny and
under some Laws of Men where you must be forced to buy your Counsel and oftentimes pay dear for bad advice No He is a light to those that sit in darkness And no man fees the Sun no man purchases the Light nor errs if he walks by it The only price that Christ sets upon his Counsel is that we follow it and that we do that which is best for us to doe He is not only Light for us to see by but also Light for us to see with He is understanding to the ignorant and Eyes to the Blind And whosoever has both a faithfull and a discreet friend to guide him in the dark slippery and dangerous passages of his Life may carry his Eyes in another mans head and yet see never the worse In 1 Cor. 1. 30. the Apostle tells us that Christ is made to us not only Sanctification and Redemtion but Wisdom too We are his Members and it is but Natural that all the Members of the Body should be guided by the wisdom of the Head And therefore let every Believer comfort himself in this high Privilege That in the great things that concern his eternal Peace he is not left to stand or fall by the uncertain directions of his own judgment No sad were his condition if he should be so when he is to encounter an Enemy made up of Wiles and Stratagems an old serpent and a long experienced Deceiver and successfull at the Trade for some thousands of years The Inequality of the match between such an one and the subtillest of us would quickly appear by a fatal Circumvention There must be a wisdom from above to over-reach and master this Hellish wisdom from beneath And this every sanctifyed Person is sure of in his great Friend in whom all the treasures of wisdom dwell Treasures that flow out and are imparted freely both in direction and assistance to all that belong to him He never leaves any of His perplex'd amazed or bewildred where the welfare of their Souls requires a better judgment than their own either to guide them in their Duty or to disentangle them from a Temptation Whosoever has Christ for his Friend shall be sure of Counsel and whosoever is his own Friend will be sure to obey it 6. The last and crowning Privilege or rather property of Friendship is Constancy He onely is a Friend whose Friendship lives as long as himself and who ceases to Love and to Breath at the same instant Not that I yet state Constancy in such an absurd senceless and irrational Continuance in Friendship as no Injuries or Provocations whatsoever can break off For there are some Injuries that extinguish the very Relation between Friends In which case a man ceases to be a Friend not from any Inconstancy in his Friendship but from Defect of an Object for his Friendship to exert it self upon It is one thing for a Father to cease to be a Father by casting off his Son and another for him to cease to be so by the Death of his Son In this the Relation is at an end for want of a Correlate So in Friendship there are some passages of that high and hostile Nature that they really and properly constitute and denominate the Person guilty of them an Enemy and if so how can the other Person possibly continue a friend since Friendship essentially requires that it be between Two at least and there can be no Friendship where there are not Two friends No body is bound to look upon his Back-biter or his Underminer his Betrayer or his Oppressor as his friend Nor indeed is it possible that he should doe so unless he could alter the Constitution and Order of Things and establish a new Nature and a new Morality in the World For to remain unsensible of such Provocations is not Constancy but Apathy And therefore they discharge the Person so treated from the proper Obligations of a Friend though Christianity I confess binds him to the Duties of a Neighbour But to give you the true Nature and Measures of Constancy It is such a stability and firmness of Friendship as overlooks and passes by all those lesser failures of Kindness and Respect that partly through Passion partly through Indiscretion and such other frailties incident to Humane Nature a man may be sometimes guilty of and yet still retain the same habitual Good-will and prevailing Propensity of Mind to his friend that he had before And whose Friendship soever is of that strength and duration as to stand its ground against and remain unshaken by such assaults which yet are strong enough to shake down and annihilate the Friendship of little puny Minds such an one I say has reached all the true measures of Constancy His Friendship is of a noble Make and a lasting Consistency it resembles Marble and deserves to be wrote upon it But how few Tempers in the World are of that magnanimous Frame as to reach the heights of so great a Vertue Many offer at the Effects of Friendship but they doe not last they are promising in the Beginning but they fail and jade and tire in the Prosecution For most people in the World are acted by Levity and Humour by strange and irrational Changes And how often may we meet with those who are one while courteous civil and obliging at least to their proportion but within a small time after are so supercilious sharp troublesome fierce and exceptious that they are not only short of the true Character of Friendship but become the very Sores and Burthens of Society Such low such worthless Dispositions how easily are they discovered how justly are they despised But now that we may pass from one Contrary to another Christ who is the same yesterday to day and for ever in his Being is so also in his Affection He is not of the Number or Nature of those pitifull mean pretenders to Friendship who perhaps will love and smile upon you one day and not so much as know you the next Many of which sort there are in the World who are not so much courted outwardly but that inwardly they are detested much more Friendship is a kind of Covenant and most Covenants run upon mutual Terms and Conditions And therefore so long as we are Exact in fulfilling the Condition on our parts I mean Exact according to the measures of Sincerity though not of Perfection we may be sure that Christ will not fail in the least Iota to fulfill every thing on his The favour of Relations Patrons and Princes is uncertain ticklish and variable and the Friendship which they take up upon the Accounts of Judgment and Merit they most times lay down out of Humour But the Friendship of Christ has none of these weaknesses no such hollowness or unsoundness in it For neither Principalities nor Powers things present nor things to come no nor all the rage and malice of Hell shall be able to pluck the meanest of Christ's friends out
of his Bosom For whom he loves he loves to the End Now from the Particulars hitherto discoursed of we may inferr and learn these two things 1. The Excellency and Value of Friendship Christ the Son of the most High God the second Person in the glorious Trinity took upon him our Nature that he might give a great Instance and Example of this Vertue and condescended to be a Man only that he might be a Friend Our Creator our Lord and King he was before but he would needs come down from all this and in a sort become our Equal that he might partake of that Noble Quality that is properly between Equals Christ took not upon him Flesh and Blood that he might conquer and rule Nations lead Armies or possess Palaces but that he might have the Relenting the Tenderness and the Compassions of Humane Nature which render it properly capable of Friendship and in a word that he might have our Heart and we have His. God himself sets Friendship above all Considerations of Kindred or Consanguinity as the greatest Ground and Argument of mutual Endearment in Deut. 15. 6. If thy Brother the Son of thy Mother or thy Son or thy Daughter or the Wife of thy Bosom or thy Friend which is as thine own Soul entice thee to go and serve other Gods thou shalt not consent unto him The Emphasis of the Expression is very remarkable it being a Gradation or Ascent by several degrees of Dearness to that which is the Highest of all Neither Wife nor Brother Son nor Daughter though the nearest in Cognation are allowed to stand in Competion with a friend who if he fully answers the Duties of that great Relation is indeed better and more valuable than all of them put together and may serve instead of them so that he who has a firm a worthy and sincere friend may want all the rest without missing them That which lies in a man's Bosom should be dear to him but that which lies within his Heart ought to be much dearer 2. In the next place we learn from hence the high Advantage of being truly Pious and Religious When we have said and done all it is only the true Christian and the Religious Person who is or can be sure of a friend sure of obtaining sure of keeping him But as for the friendship of the World when a man shall have done all that he can to make one his friend imployed the utmost of his Wit and Labour beaten his Brains and emptied his Purse to create an Endearment between him and the Person whose friendship he desires he may in the end upon all these Endeavours and Attempts be forced to write Vanity and Frustration For by them all he may at last be no more able to get into the other's Heart than he is to thrust his hand into a Pillar of Brass The man's Affection amidst all these Kindnesses done him remaining wholly unconcerned and impregnable just like a Rock which being plied continually by the Waves still throws them back again into the Bosom of the Sea that sent them but is not at all moved by any of them People at first while they are young and raw and soft natured are apt to think it an easie thing to gain Love and reckon their own friendship a sure price of another man's But when Experience shall have once opened their Eyes and shewn them the hardness of most Hearts the hollowness of others and the Baseness and Ingratitude of almost all they will then find that a friend is the gift of God and that He only who made Hearts can unite them For it is He who creates those Sympathies and sutablenesses of Nature that are the foundation of all true friendship and then by his Providence brings Persons so affected together It is an Expression frequent in Scripture but infinitely more insignificant than at first it is usually observed to be Namely That God gave such or such a person grace or favour in another's Eyes As for instance in Genes 39. 21. it is said of Ioseph That the Lord was with him and gave him favour in the sight of the Keeper of the Prison Still it is an invisible Hand from Heaven that ties this Knot and mingles Hearts and Souls by strange secret and unaccountable Conjunctions That Heart shall surrender it self and its friendship to one man at first view which another has in vain been laying Siege to for many years by all the repeated Acts of Kindness imaginable Nay so far is Friendship from being of any humane Production that unless Nature be pre-disposed to it by its own Propensity or Inclination no Arts of Obligation shall be able to abate the secret Hatreds and Hostilities of some Persons towards others No friendly Offices no Addresses no Benefits whatsoever shall ever alter or allay that Diabolical Rancour that frets and ferments in some hellish Breasts but that upon all occasions it will foam out at its foul mouth in Slander and Invective and sometimes bite too in a shrewd Turn or a secret Blow This is true and undeniable upon frequent Experience and happy those who can learn it at the Cost of other men's But now on the contrary he who will give up his Name to Christ in Faith unfeigned and a sincere Obedience to all his Righteous Laws shall be sure to find Love for Love and Friendship for Friendship The Success is certain and infallible and none ever yet miscarried in the Attempt For Christ freely offers his Friendship to all and sets no other rate upon so vast a purchase but only that we would suffer him to be our Friend Thou perhaps spendest thy precious time in waiting upon such a great One and thy Estate in presenting him and probably after all hast no other reward but sometimes to be smiled upon and always to be smiled at and when thy greatest and most pressing Occasions shall call for succour and relief then to be deserted and cast off and not known Now I say turn the stream of thy Endeavours another way and bestow but half that hearty sedulous attendance upon thy Saviour in the Duties of Prayer and Mortification and be at half that Expence in Charitable Works by relieving Christ in his poor Members and in a word study as much to please him who died for thee and thou dost to court and humour thy great Patron who cares not for thee and thou shalt make him thy friend for ever A friend who shall own thee in thy lowest Condition speak Comfort to thee in all thy Sorrows Counsel thee in all thy Doubts answer all thy Wants and in a word never leave thee nor forsake thee But when all the hopes that thou hast raised upon the promises or supposed kindnesses of the fastidious and fallacious great Ones of the World shall fail and upbraid thee to thy face he shall then take thee into his Bosom embrace cherish and support thee and as the Psalmist expresses it He shall
Circumference doe at length meet and unite in the smallest of things a Point and it is but a very little piece of Wood with which a true Artist will measure all the Timber in the World The Truth is there could be no such thing as Art or Science could not the Mind of Man gather the General Natures of Things out of the numberless heap of Particulars and then bind them up into such short Aphorisms or Propositions that so they may be made portable to the Memory and thereby become ready and at hand for the Judgment to apply and make use of as there shall be occasion In fine Brevity and Succinctness of Speech is that which in Philosophy or Speculation we call Maxim and First Principle in the Counsels and Resolves of Practical Wisdom and the deep Mysteries of Religion Oracle and lastly in matters of Wit and the finenesses of Imagination Epigram All of them severally and in their kinds the greatest and the noblest things that the Mind of Man can shew the force and dexterity of its Faculties in And now if this be the highest Excellency and perfection of Speech in all other things can we assign any true solid Reason why it should not be so likewise in Prayer Nay is there not rather the clearest Reason imaginable why it should be much more so Since most of the fore-mentioned things are but Addresses to an Humane Understanding which may need as many Words as may fill a Volume to make it understand the Truth of one Line Whereas Prayer is an Address to that Eternal Mind which as we have shewn before such as rationally Invocate pretend not to Inform. Nevertheless since the Nature of Man is such that while we are yet in the Body our Reverence and Worship of God must of Necessity proceed in some Analogy to the Reverence that we shew to the Grandees of this World we will here see what the judgment of all Wise men is concerning fewness of Words when we appear as Suppliants before our Earthly Superiors and we shall find that they generally allow it to import these three Things 1. Modesty 2. Discretion And 3 ly Height of Respect to the Person addressed to And first for Modesty Modesty is a kind of shame or bashfulness proceeding from the sense a Man has of his own defects compared with the Perfections of Him whom he comes before And that which is Modesty towards Men is Worship and Devotion towards God It is a Vertue that makes a Man unwilling to be seen and fearfull to be heard and yet for that very Cause never fails to make him both seen with Favour and heard with Attention It loves not many words nor indeed needs them For Modesty addressing to any one of a generous Worth and Honour is sure to have that man's Honour for its Advocate and his Generosity for its Intercessor And how then is it possible for such a Vertue to run out into Words Loquacity storms the Ear but Modesty takes the Heart that is Troublesome this Gentle but Irresistible Much Speaking is always the Effect of Confidence and Confidence still pre-supposes and springs from the Perswasion that a Man has of his own Worth both of them certainly very unfit Qualifications for a Petitioner 2 ly The second Thing that naturally shews it self in Paucity of Words is Discretion and particularly that prime and eminent part of it that consists in a Care of offending Which Solomon assures us That in much Speaking it is hardly possible for us to avoid in Prov. 10. 19. In the multitude of Words says He there wanteth not sin It requiring no ordinary Skill for a Man to make his Tongue run by Rule and at the same time to give it both its Lesson and its Liberty too For seldom or never is there much spoke but something or other had better been not spoke there being nothing that the Mind of Man is so apt to kindle and take distast at as at Words And therefore whensoever any one comes to preferr a Suit to another no doubt the fewer of them the better since where so very little is said it is sure to be either Candidly accepted or which is next Easily excused But at the same time to Petition and to Provoke too is certainly very preposterous 3 ly The third Thing that Brevity of Speech commends it self by in all Petitionary Addresses is a peculiar respect to the Person addressed to For whosoever Petitions his Superior in such a manner does by his very so doing confess him better able to understand than he himself can be to express his own Case He owns him as a Patron of a preventing Judgment and Goodness and upon that account able not only to Answer but also to Anticipate his Requests For according to the most Natural Interpretation of Things this is to ascribe to him a Sagacity so quick and piercing that it were Presumption to inform and a Benignit so great that it were needless to importune him And can there be a greater and more winning Deference to a Superior than to treat him under such a Character Or can any thing be imagin'd so naturally fit and efficacious both to enforce the Petition and to endear the Petitioner A short Petition to a Great Man is not only a Suit to him for his Favour but also a Panegyrick upon his Parts And thus I have given you the Three Commendatory Qualifications of Brevity of Speech in our Applications to the Great Ones of the World Concerning which as I shewed before That it was Impossible for us to form our Addresses even to God himself but with some Proportion and Resemblance to those that we make to our fellow Mortals in a Condition much above us so it is certain That whatsoever the general Judgment and Consent of Mankind allows to be Expressive and Declarative of our Honour to those must only with due allowance of the Difference of the Object as really and properly declare and signify that Honour and Adoration that is due from us to the Great God And consequently what we have said for Brevity of Speech with Respect to the former ought equally to conclude for it with Relation to him too But to argue more immediately and directly to the Point before us I shall now produce five Arguments enforcing Brevity and cashiering all Prolixity of Speech with peculiar Reference to our Addresses to God 1. And the first Argument shall be taken from this Consideration That there is no Reason alledgable for the Use of Length or Prolixity of Speech that is at all Applicable to Prayer For whosoever uses Multiplicity of Words or Length of Discourse must of necessity doe it for one of these three Purposes Either to inform or perswade or lastly to weary and overcome the person whom he directs his Discourse to But the very first foundation of what I had to say upon this Subject was laid by me in demonstrating That Prayer could not possibly prevail with God any
of these three ways For as much as being Omniscient he could not be Informed and being void of Passion or Affections he could not be perswaded and lastly being Omnipotent and infinitely Great he could not by any Importunity be wearied or overcome And if so what use then can there be of Rhetorick Harangue or Multitude of Words in Prayer For if they should be designed for Information must it not be infinitely sottish and unreasonable to go about to inform him who can be ignorant of Nothing Or to perswade him whose unchangeable Nature makes it Impossible for him to be moved or wrought upon Or lastly by long and much speaking to think to weary him out whose Infinite Power all the strength of Men and Angels and the whole World put together is not able to encounter or stand before So that the truth is by Loquacity and Prolixity of Prayer a Man does really and indeed whether he thinks so or no rob God of the Honour of those three great Attributes and neither treats Him as a person Omniscient or Unchangeable or Omnipotent For on the other side all the usefulness of long Speech in Humane Converse is founded only upon the Defects and Imperfections of Humane Nature For he whose Knowledge is at best but limited and whose Intellect both in apprehending and judging proceeds by a small diminutive Light cannot but receive an additional Light by the Conceptions of another Man clearly and plainly expressed and by such Expression conveyed to his Apprehension And He again whose Nature subjects him to Want and Weakness and consequently to Hopes and Fears cannot but be moved this way or that way according as Objects sutable to those Passions shall be dextrously represented and set before his Imagination by the Arts of Speaking which is that that we call Perswasion And lastly He whose Soul and Body receives their Activity from and perform all their Functions by the Mediation of the Spirits which ebb and flow consume and are renewed again cannot but find himself very uneasy upon any tedious verbose Application made to him and that sometimes to such a degree that through meer Fatigue and even against Judgment and Interest both a man shall surrender himself as a conquer'd person to the over-bearing Vehemence of such Sollicitations For when they ply him so fast and pour in upon him so thick they cannot but wear and wast the Spirits as unequal to so pertinacious a Charge and this is properly to weary a man But now all Weariness we know pre-supposes Weakness and consequently every long importune wearisome Petition is truly and properly a force upon him that is pursued with it it is a following Blow after Blow upon the Mind and Affections and may for the time pass for a real though short Persecution This is the State and Condition of Humane Nature and Prolixity or Importunity of Speech is still the great Engine to attack it by either in its blind or weak side And I think I may venture to affirm That it is seldom that any man is prevailed upon by Words but upon a True and Philosophical estimate of the whole matter he is either deceived or wearied before he is so and parts with the thing desired of him upon the very same terms that either a Child parts with a Jewel for an Apple or a Man parts with his Sword when it is forceably wrested or took from him And that he who obtains what he has been Rhetorically or Importunately begging for goes away really a Conquerer and Triumphantly carrying off the Spoils of his Neighbour's Understanding or his Will baffling the former or wearying the latter into a grant of his restless Petitions And now if this be the Case when any one comes with a tedious long-winded Harangue to God may not God properly answer him with those words in Psal. 50. 21. Surely thou thinkest I am altogether such an one as thy self And perhaps upon a due and rational Examination of all the Follies and Indecencies that Men are apt to be guilty of in Prayer they will be all found resolvable into this one Thing as the true and sole Cause of them namely That Men when they pray take God to be such an one as themselves and so treat him accordingly The malignity and mischief of which gross mistake may reach farther than possibly at first they can well be aware of For if it be Idolatry to pray to God the Father represented under the shape of a Man can it be at all better to pray to him as represented under the weakness of a Man Nay if the misrepresentation of the Object makes the Idolatry certainly by how much the worse and more scandalous the Misrepresentation is by so much the grosser and more intolerable must be the Idolatry To confirm which we may add this Consideration That Christ himself even now in his glorified Estate in Heaven wears the Body and consequently the Shape of a Man though he is far from any of his Infirmities or Imperfections And therefore no doubt to represent God to our selves under these latter must needs be more Absurd and Irreligious than to represent him under the former But to one Particular of the preceding Discourse some may reply and object That if God's Omniscience by rendring it impossible for him to be Informed be a sufficient Reason against Prolixity or length of Prayer it will follow That it is equally a Reason against the using any Words at all in Prayer since the proper use of Words is to inform the person whom we speak to and consequently where Information is impossible Words must needs be useless and superfluous To which I answer First by Concession That if the sole use of Words or Speech were to inform the Person whom we speak to the Consequence would be firm and good and equally conclude against the use of any Words at all in Prayer But therefore in the second place I deny Information to be the sole and adequate use of Words or Speech or indeed any use of them at all when either the person spoken to needs not to be informed and withall is known not to need it as sometimes it falls out with Men or when he is uncapable of being informed as it is always with God But the proper use of Words whensoever we speak to God in Prayer is thereby to pay Him Honour and Obedience God having by an express Precept enjoyned us the use of Words in Prayer Commanding us in Psal. 50. 15. and many other Scriptures to call upon him and in Luk. 11. 21. When we pray to say Our Father c. But no where has he Commanded us to doe this with Prolixity or Multiplicity of Words And though it must be confessed that we may sometimes answer this Command of calling upon God and saying Our Father c. by mental or inward Prayer yet since these Words in their first and most proper signification import a vocal Address there is no doubt but the
again the second time with the like Brevity and the like Words O my Father if this Cup may not pass from me except I drink it thy Will be done And lastly the third time also he used the same short form again and yet in all this he was as we may say without a Metaphor even praying for Life so far as the great business he was then about to wit the Redemption of the World would suffer him to pray for it All which Prayers of our Saviour and others of like Brevity are properly such as we call Ejaculations an elegant Similitude from a Dart or Arrow shot or thrown out and such an one we know of a Yard long will fly farther and strike deeper than one of Twenty And then in the last place for the Success of such brief Prayers I shall give you but three Instances of this but they shall be of Persons praying under the Pressure of as great Miseries as humane Nature could well be afflicted with And the first shall be of the Leper Matth. 8. 2. or as St. Luke describes him a Man full of Leprosie who came to our Saviour and Worshipped him and as St. Luke again has it more particularly fell on his face before him which is the lowest and most devout of all Postures of Worship saying Lord if thou wilt thou canst make me clean This was all his Prayer And the Answer to it was That he was immediately cleansed The next Instance shall be of the poor blind Man in Luke 18. 28. following our Saviour with this earnest Prayer Iesus thou Son of David have Mercy upon me His whole Prayer was no more For it is said in the next verse that he went on repeating it again and again Iesus thou Son of David have Mercy upon me And the Answer he received was That his Eyes were opened and his Sight restored The third and last Instance shall be of the Publican in the same Chapter of St. Luke praying under a lively sense of as great a Leprosie and Blindness of Soul as the other two could have of Body in the 13th Verse He smote upon his Breast saying God be mercifull to me a sinner He spoke no more though 't is said in the 10th Verse that he went solemnly and purposely up to the Temple to pray The issue and success of which Prayer was That he went home justified before one of those whom all the Iewish Church revered as absolutely the highest and most heroick Examples of Piety and most beloved Favourites of Heaven in the whole World And now if the force and vertue of these short Prayers could rise so high as to cleanse a Leper to give sight to the Blind and to justify a Publican and if the Worth of a Prayer may at all be measured by the Success of it I suppose no Prayers whatsoever can do more and I never yet heard or read of any long Prayer that did so much Which brings on the other part of this our fifth and last Argument which was to be drawn from the Examples of such as have been noted in Scripture for Prolixity or Length of Prayer And of this there are only two mentioned The Heathens and the Pharisees The first the grand Instance of Idolatry the other of Hypocrisy But Christ forbids us the Imitation of both When ye pray says our Saviour in the 6th of Matthew be ye not like the Heathens But in what Why in this That they think they shall be heard for their much speaking in the 7th Verse It is not the Multitude that prevails in Armies and much less in Words And then for the Pharisees whom our Saviour represents as the very vilest of Men and the greatest of Cheats We have them amusing the World with pretences of a more refin'd Devotion while their Heart was all that time in their Neighbour's Coffers For does not our Saviour expressly tell us in Luke 20. and the two last Verses That the great Tools the Hooks or Engines by which they compass'd their worst their wickedest and most rapacious Designs were Long Prayers Prayers made only for a shew or colour and that to the basest and most degenerous sort of Villainy even the robbing the Spittle and devouring the Houses of poor helpless forlorn Widows Their Devotion serv'd all along but as an Instrument to their Avarice as a Factor or Under-Agent to their Extortion A Practice which duly seen into and stript of its Hypocritical Blinds could not but look very odiously and ill-favouredly and therefore in come their long Robes and their long Prayers together and cover all And the truth is neither the Length of one nor of the other is ever found so usefull as when there is something more than ordinary that would not be seen This was the gainfull Godliness of the Pharisees and I believe upon good Observation you will hardly find any like the Pharisees for their long Prayers who are not also extremely like them for something else And thus having given you five Arguments for Brevity and against Prolixity of Prayer let us now make this our other great Rule whereby to judge of the Prayers of our Church and the Prayers of those who Dissent and Divide from it And First For that excellent Body of Prayers contained in our Liturgy and both compiled and enjoyned by Publick Authority Have we not here a great Instance of Brevity and Fulness together cast into several short significant Collects each containing a distinct entire and well-managed Petition The whole Sett of them being like a string of Pearls exceeding rich in Conjunction and therefore of no small price or value even single and by themselves Nothing could have been composed with greater Judgment Every Prayer being so short that it is impossible it should weary and withall so pertinent that it is impossible it should cloy the Devotion And indeed so admirably fitted are they all to the common Concerns of a Christian Society that when the Rubrick enjoyns but the use of some of them our Worship is not imperfect and when we use them all there is none of them superfluous And the Reason assigned by some learned Men for the Preference of many short Prayers before a continued long one is unanswerable Namely That by the former there is a more frequently repeated mention made of the Name and some great Attribute of God as the encouraging Ground of our praying to Him and withall of the Merits and Mediation of Christ as the only thing that can promise us success in what we pray for Every distinct Petition beginning with the former and ending with the latter By thus annexing of which to each particular thing that we ask for we doe manifestly confess and declare That we cannot expect to obtain any one thing at the hands of God but with a particular renewed respect to the Merits of a Mediator and withall re-mind the Congregation of the same by making it their part to renew a distinct Amen to every
them into a fatal Schism A Schism that unrepented of and continued in will as infallibly ruin their Souls as Theft Whoredom Murther or any other of the most crying damning Sins whatsoever But leaving this to the Justice of the Government to which it belongs to protect us in our Spiritual as well as in our Temporal Concerns I shall only say this That nothing can be more for the Honour of our Liturgy than to find it despised only by those who have made themselves remarkable to the World for despising the Lord's Prayer as much In the mean time for our selves of the Church of England who without pretending to any New Lights think it equally a Duty and Commendation to be Wise and to be Devout only to Sobriety and who judge it no dishonour to God himself to be Worshipped according to Law and Rule If the Directions of Solomon the Precept and Example of our Saviour and lastly the Piety and Experience of those Excellent Men and Martyrs who first composed and afterwards owned our Liturgy with their dearest Blood may be look'd upon as safe and sufficient Guides to us in our publick Worship of God then upon the joint Authority of all these we may pronounce our Liturgy the greatest Treasure of Rational Devotion in the Christian World And I know no Prayer necessary that is not in the Liturgy but one which is this That God would vouchsafe to continue the Liturgy it self in Use Honour and Veneration in this Church for ever And I doubt not but all wise sober and good Christians will with equal Judgment and Affection give it their Amen Now to God the Father God the Son and God the Holy Ghost Three Persons and One God be rendred and ascribed as is most due all Praise Might Majesty and Dominion both now and for evermore Amen The First SERMON PREACHED Upon Romans I. 32. ROM I. 32. Who knowing the judgment of God that they which commit such things are worthy of Death not onely doe the same but have pleasure in them that doe them FRom the beginning of the 18th Verse to the end of the 31st the Verse immediately going before the Text we have a Catalogue of the blackest Sins that humane Nature in its highest Depravation is capable of committing and this so perfect that there seems to be no Sin imaginable but what may be reduced to and comprized under some of the Sins here specified In a word we have an Abridgment of the Lives and Practices of the whole Heathen World that is of all the Baseness and Villainy that both the Corruption of Nature and the Instigation of the Devil could for so many Ages by all the Arts and Opportunities all the Motives and Incentives of Sinning bring the Sons of Men to And yet as full and comprehensive as this Catalogue of Sin seems to be it is but of Sin under a Limitation An Universality of Sin under a Certain Kind that is of all Sins of direct and personal Commission And you will say is not this a sufficient Comprehension of All For is not a Man's Person the Compass of his Actions Or can he Operate further than he does Exist Why yes in some sense he may He may not only commit such and such Sins himself but also take pleasure in others that do commit them Which Expression implies these two things First That thus to take pleasure in other men's Sins is a distinct Sin from all the former And secondly that it is much greater than the former For as much as these terms not only doe the same but also take pleasure c. import Aggravation as well as Distinction and are properly an Advance à minore ad majus a progress to a further degree And this indeed is the farthest that humane Pravity can reach the highest point of Villainy that the debauched Powers of Man's Mind can ascend unto For surely that Sin that exceeds Idolatry monstrous unnatural Lusts Covetousness Maliciousness Envy Murther Deceit Back-biting Hatred of God Spightfulness Pride Disobedience to Parents Covenant-breaking Want of Natural Affection Implacableness Unmercifulness and the like I say that Sin that is a Pitch beyond all these must needs be such an one as must non-plus the Devil himself to proceed further It is the very Extremity the Fulness and the concluding Period of Sin the last Line and finishing Stroke of the Devil's Image drawn upon the Soul of Man Now the sense of the Words may be fully and naturally cast into this one Proposition which shall be the Subject of the following Discourse Viz. That the guilt arising from a Man's delighting or taking pleasure in other Men's Sins or which is all one in other Men for their Sins is greater than he can possibly contract by a Commission of the same Sins in his own Person For the handling of which I cannot but think it superfluous to offer at any Explication of what it is to take pleasure in other Men's Sins it being impossible for any Man to be so far unacquainted with the Motions and Operations of his own Mind as not to know how it is affected and disposed when any thing pleases or delights him And therefore I shall state the prosecution of the Proposition upon these Three following Things I. I shall shew what it is that brings a Man to such a disposition of Mind as to take pleasure in other men's Sins II. I shall shew the Reasons Why a Man 's being disposed to doe so comes to be attended with such an extraordinary Guilt And III. and Lastly I shall declare what kind of Persons are to be reckoned under this Character Of each of which in their Order And first for the I. Of these What it is that brings a man c. In order to which I shall premise these Four Considerations 1. That every Man naturally has a distinguishing Sense of Turpe Honestum of what is honest and what is dishonest of what it fit and what is not fit to be done There are those Practical Principles and Rules of Action treasured up in that part of Man's Mind called by the Schools 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that like the Candle of the Lord set up by God himself in the Heart of every Man discovers to him both what he is to doe and what to avoid They are a Light lighting every Man that cometh into the World And in respect of which principally it is that God is said not to have left himself without witness in the World there being something fixed in the Nature of Man that will be sure to testifie and declare for him 2. The second Thing to be considered is That there is consequently upon this distinguishing Principle an inward satisfaction or dissatisfaction arising in the Heart of every Man after he has done a good or an evil Action An Action agreeable to or deviating from this great Rule And this no doubt proceeds not only from the real Unsutableness that every thing sinfull or
that excellent and great Saying Prov. 14. 14. A good Man shall be satisfied from himself He needs look no further But if he desires to see the same Vertue propagated and diffused to those about him it is for their sakes not his own It is his Charity that wishes and not his Necessity that requires it For Solitude and Singularity can neither daunt nor disgrace him unless we could suppose it a disgrace for a man to be singularly good But a vicious Person like the basest sort of Beasts never enjoys himself but in the Herd Company he thinks lessens the shame of Vice by sharing it and abates the Torrent of a common Odium by deriving it into many Channels And therefore if he cannot wholly avoid the Eye of the Observer he hopes to distract it at least by a multiplicity of the Object These I confess are poor Shifts and miserable Shelters for a Sick and a Self-upbraiding Conscience to fly to and yet they are some of the best that the Debauchee has to chear up his Spirits with in this World For if after all he must needs be seen and took notice of with all his Filth and Noisomeness about him he promises himself however that it will be some allay to his Reproach to be but one of many to march in a Troop and by a preposterous kind of Ambition to be seen in bad Company 5. The fifth and last Cause that I shall mention inducing Men to take pleasure in the Sins of others is a certain peculiar unaccountable Malignity that is in some Natures and Dispositions I know no other Name or Word to express it by But the thing it self is frequently seen in the Temporal Concerns of this World For are there not some who find an inward secret Rejoycing in themselves when they see or hear of the loss or calamity of their Neighbour though no imaginable Interest or Advantage of their own is or can be served thereby But it seems there is a base Wolvish Principle within that is fed and gratified with another's Misery and no other Account or Reason in the World can be given of its being so but that it is the Nature of the Beast to delight in such things And as this occurrs frequently in Temporals so there is no doubt but that with some few persons it acts the same way also in Spirituals I say with some few persons for thanks be to God the common known Corruption of humane Nature upon the bare stock of its Original Depravation does not usually proceed so far Such an one for instance was that Wretch who made a poor Captive renounce his Religion in order to the saving of his Life and when he had so done presently run him through glorying that he had thereby destroyed his Enemy both Body and Soul But more remarkably such was that Monster of Diabolical Baseness here in England who some years since in the Reign of King Charles the First suffered Death for Crimes scarce ever heard of before having frequently boasted that as several Men had their several Pleasures and Recreations so his peculiar Pleasure and Recreation was to destroy Souls and accordingly to put men upon such Practices as he knew would assuredly doe it But above all the late Saying of some of the Dissenting Brotherhood ought to be proclaimed and celebrated to their Eternal Honour who while there was another New Oath preparing which they both supposed and hoped most of the Clergy would not take in a most insulting manner gave out thereupon That they were resolved either to have our Livings or to Damn our Souls An Expression so fraught with all the Spight and Poyson which the Devil himself could infuse into Words that it ought to remain as a Monument of the Humanity Charity and Christianity of this sort of men for ever Now such a Temper or Principle as these and the like Passages doe import I call a peculiar Malignity of Nature since it is evident that neither the inveterate Love of Vice nor yet the long Practice of it and that even against the Reluctancies and Light of Conscience can of it self have this devilish effect upon the Mind but as it falls in with such a villainous preter-natural Disposition as I have mentioned For to instance in the Particular Case of Parents and Children let a Father be never so Vitious yet generally speaking he would not have his Child so Nay it is certain that some who have been as corrupt in their Morals as Vice could make them have yet been infinitely solicitous to have their Children soberly vertuously and piously brought up So that although they have begot Sons after their own likeness yet they are not willing to breed them so too Which by the way is the most pregnant demonstration in the World of that Self-condemning Sentence that is perpetually sounding in every great Sinner's Breast and of that inward grating dislike of the very thing he practises that he should abhorr to see the same in any one whose Good he nearly tenders and whose Person he wishes well to But if now on the other side we should chance to find a Father corrupting his Son or a Mother debauching her Daughter as God knows such Monsters have been seen within the four Seas we must not charge this barely upon an high Predominance of Vice in these persons but much more upon a peculiar Anomaly and Baseness of Nature If the Name of Nature may be allowed to that which seems to be an utter cashiering of it a Deviation from and a Contradiction to the common Principles of Humanity For this is such a Disposition as strips the Father of the Man as makes him Sacrifice his Children to Molech and as much out-do the cruelty of a Cannibal or a Saturn as it is more barbarous and unhumane to damn a Child than to devour him We sometimes read and hear of Monstrous Births but we may often see a greater Monstrosity in Educations thus when a Father has begot a Man he trains him up into a Beast Making even his own House a Stews a Bordell and a School of Lewdness to instill the Rudiments of Vice into the unwary flexible years of his poor Children poisoning their tender minds with the irresistible authentick Venom of his base Example so that all the Instruction they find within their Father's Walls shall be only to be disciplined to an earlier Practice of Sin to be catechised into all the Mysteries of Iniquity and at length confirmed in a mature grown up incorrigible state of Debauchery And this some Parents call a teaching their Children to know the World and to study Men Thus leading them as it were by the hand through all the Forms and Classes all the Varieties and Modes of Villainy till at length they make them ten times more the Children of the Devil than of themselves Now I say if the unparallell'd Wickedness of the Age should at any time cast us upon such blemishes of Mankind as these
who while they thus treat their Children should abuse and usurp the Name of Parents by assuming it to themselves let us not call them by the low diminutive Term or Title of Sinfull Wicked or Ungodly Men but let us look upon them as so many prodigious Exceptions from our Common Nature as so many portentous Animals like the strange unnatural Productions of Africa and fit to be publickly shewn were they not unfit to be seen For certainly where a Child finds his own Parents his Perverters he cannot be so properly said to be Born as to be Damned into the World and better were it for him by far to have been unborn and unbegot than to come to ask blessing of those whose Conversation breaths nothing but Contagion and a Curse So impossible and so much a Paradox is it for any Parent to impart to his Child his Blessing and his Vice too And thus I have dispatched the first general thing proposed for the handling of the Words and shewn in five several Particulars What it is that brings a man to such a disposition of Mind as to take pleasure in other men's Sins I proceed now to the II d. Which is To shew the Reasons why a man 's being disposed to doe so comes to be attended with such an extraordinary Guilt And the First shall be taken from this That naturally there is no Motive to induce or tempt a man to this way of Sinning And this is a most certain Truth That the lesser the Temptation is the greater is the Sin For in every Sin by how much the more free the Will is in its Choice by so much is the Act the more Sinfull And where there is nothing to importune urge or provoke it to any Act there is so much an higher and perfecter degree of Freedom about that Act. For albeit the Will is not capable of being compelled to any of its Actings yet it is capable of being made to Act with more or less Difficulty according to the different Impressions it receives from Motives or Objects If the Object be extremely pleasing and apt to gratifie it there though the Will has still a power of Refusing it yet it is not without some Difficulty Upon which account it is that Men are so strongly carried out to and so hardly took off from the Practice of Vice namely because the sensual pleasure arising from it is still importuning and drawing them to it But now from whence springs this pleasure Is it not from the gratification of some Desire founded in Nature An irregular gratification it is indeed very often yet still the foundation of it is and must be something Natural So that the Summ of all is this That the Naturalness of a Desire is the Cause that the Satisfaction of it is Pleasure and Pleasure importunes the Will and that which importunes the Will puts a Difficulty in the Will 's refusing or forbearing it Thus Drunkenness is an irregular satisfaction of the Appetite of Thirst Uncleanness an unlawfull Gratification of the Appetite of Procreation and Covetousness a boundless unreasonable pursuit of the Principle of Self-preservation So that all these are founded in some Natural desire and are therefore pleasurable and upon that account tempt solicite and entice the Will In a word there is hardly any one Vice or Sin of direct and personal Commission but what is the Irregularity and Abuse of one of those two grand Natural Principles namely Either that which inclines a Man to preserve himself or that which inclines him to please himself But now what Principle Faculty or Desire by which Nature projects either its own pleasure or preservation is or can be gratified by another man's personal pursuit of his own Vice It is evident that all the pleasure that naturally can be received from a vicious Action can immediately and personally affect none but him who does it for it is an Application of the pleasing Object only to his own Sense and no man feels by another man's Senses And therefore the delight that a man takes from another's Sin can be nothing else but a phantastical preter-natural Complacency arising from that which he has really no sense or feeling of It is properly a love of Vice as such a delighting in Sin for its own sake and is a direct Imitation or rather an Exemplification of the Malice of the Devil who delights in seeing those Sins committed which the very Condition of his Nature renders him uncapable of committing himself For the Devil can neither Drink nor Whore nor play the Epicure though he enjoys the Pleasures of all these at a second hand and by malicious Approbation If a man plays the Thief says Solomon and steals to satisfie his Hunger Prov. 6. 30. Though it cannot wholly excuse the Fact yet it sometimes extenuates the Guilt And we know there are some corrupt Affections in the Soul of Man that urge and push him on to their satisfaction with such an impetuous fury that when we see a man over-born and run down by them considering the frailty of humane Nature we cannot but pity the Person while we abhorr the Crime It being like one ready to drink Poison rather than to die with Thirst. But when a man shall with a sober sedate diabolical Rancour look upon and enjoy himself in the sight of his Neighbour's Sin and Shame and secretly hug himself upon the Ruins of his Brother's Vertue and the Dishonours of his Reason can he plead the Instigation of any Appetite in Nature enclining him to this And that would otherwise render him uneasie to himself should he not thus triumph in another's folly and confusion No certainly this cannot be so much as pretended For he may as well carry his Eyes in another man's Head and run Races with another man's Feet as directly and naturally tast the Pleasures that spring from the Gratification of another man's Appetites Nor can that Person whosoever he is who accounts it his Recreation and Diversion to see one man wallowing in his filthy Revels and another made infamous and noisome by his Sensuality be so impudent as to alledge for a reason of his so doing That either all the enormous Draughts of the one doe or can leave the least Relish upon the Tip of his Tongue or that all the Fornications and Whoredoms of the other doe or can quench or cool the boilings of his own Lust. No this is impossible And if so what can we then assign for the Cause of this monstrous Disposition Why all that can be said in this case is that Nature proceeds by quite another method having given Men such and such Appetites and allotted to each of them their respective Pleasures the Appetite and the Pleasure still co-habiting in the same Subject But the Devil and long Custom of Sinning have superinduced upon the Soul new unnatural and absurd Desires Desires that have no real Object Desires that relish things not at all desirable but like the sickness
their Kind or Degree than indeed they are Of which Number is that Doctrine that asserts all Sins committed by Believers or Persons in a state of Grace to be but Infirmities That there are such things as Sins of Infirmity in Contra-distinction to those of a Presumption is a Truth not to be questioned but in Hypothesi to state exactly which are Sins of Infirmity and which are not is not so easie a work This is certain that there is a vast difference between them indeed as vast as between Inadvertency and Deliberation between Surprize and Set-purpose And that Persons truly regenerate have sinn'd this latter way and consequently may sin so again is as evident as the Story already referr'd to by us of David's Murther and Adultery Sins acted not only with deliberation but with artifice study and deep contrivance And can Sins that carry such dismal Marks and black Symptoms upon them pass for Infirmities For Sins of daily Incursion and such as humane Frailty and the very Condition of our Nature in this World is so unavoidably liable to for so are Sins of Infirmity that a Righteous Man may fall into them seven times in a day and yet according to the mercifull Tenor of the Covenant of Grace stand accepted before God as a Righteous Man still No certainly if such are Infirmities it will be hard to assign what are Presumptions And what a Sin-encouraging Doctrine that is that avouches them for such is sufficiently manifest from hence That although every Sin of Infirmity in its own Nature and according to the strict Rigour of the Law merits Eternal Death yet it is certain from the Gospel that no man shall actually suffer Eternal Death barely for Sins of Infirmity Which being so perswade but a man that a Regenerate person may Cheat and Lye Steal Murther and Rebel by way of Infirmity and at the same time you perswade him also that he may doe all this without any danger of Damnation And then since these are oftentimes such desirable Privileges to Flesh and Bloud and since withall every Man by Nature is so very prone to think the best of himself and of his own Condition it is odds but he will find a shrewd Temptation to believe himself Regenerate rather than forbear a pleasurable or a profitable Sin by thinking that he shall go to Hell for committing it Now this being such a direct Manuduction to all kind of Sin by abusing the Conscience with under-valuing Perswasions concerning the Malignity and Guilt even of the foulest it is evident that such as teach and promote the belief of such Doctrines are to be lookt upon as the Devil's Prophets and Apostles and there is no doubt but the guilt of every Sin that either from Pulpit or from Press they influence Men to the Commission of does as certainly rest upon them and will one day be as severely exacted of them as if they had actually and personally committed it themselves And thus I have instanced in two notable Doctrines that may justly be lookt upon as the General In-letts or Two great Gates through which all Vice and Villainy rush in upon the Manners of Men professing Religion But the Particulars into which these Generals diffuse themselves you may look for and find in those well-furnished Magazines and Store-houses of all Immorality and Baseness the Books and Writings of some Modern Casuists who like the Devil's Amanuenses and Secretaries to the Prince of Darkness have published to the World such Notions and Intrigues of Sin out of his Cabinet as neither the Wit or Wickedness of Man upon the bare natural Stock either of Invention or Corruption could ever have found out The Writings both of the Old and New Testament make it very difficult for a Man to be saved but the Writings of these Men make it more difficult if not impossible for any one to be Damned For where there is no Sin there can be no Damnation And as these Men have obscured and confounded the Natures and Properties of things by their false Principles and wretched Sophistry though an Act be never so sinfull they will be sure to strip it of its Guilt and to make the very Law and Rule of Action so pliable and bending that it shall be impossible to be broke So that he who goes to Hell must pass through a narrower Gate than that which the Gospel says leads to Heaven For that we are told is only strait but this is absolutely shut and so shut that Sin cannot pass it and therefore it is much if a Sinner should So insufferably have these Impostors poysoned the Fountains of Morality perverted and embased the very Standard and distinguishing Rule of Good and Evil. So that all their Books and Writings are but Debauchery upon Record and Impiety registred and consigned over to Posterity In every Volumn there is a Nursery and Plantation of Vice where it is sure to thrive and from thence to be transplanted into men's Practice For here it is manured with Art and Argument sheltred with Fallacy and Distinction and thereby enabled both to annoy others and to defend it self And to shew how far the Malignity of this way of Sinning reaches He who has vented a pernicious Doctrine or published an ill Book must know that his Guilt and his Life determine not together No such an one as the Apostle says being dead yet speaketh He sins in his very Grave corrupts others while he is rotting himself and has a growing Account in the other World after he has paid Nature's last Debt in this And in a word quits this Life like a Man carried off by the Plague who though he dyes himself yet does Execution upon others by a surviving Infection 2. Such also are to be reckoned to take pleasure in other men's Sins as endeavour by all means to allure Men to Sin And that either by formal Persuasion Importunity or Desire as we find the Harlot described enticing the Young man in Prov. 7. from ver 13. to 22. Or else by administring Objects and Occasions fit to enflame and draw forth a man's corrupt Affections such as are the Drinking of a cholerick or revengefull Person into a fit of Rage and Violence against the Person of his Neighbour thus heating one man's Blood in order to the shedding of another's Such also as the provoking of a lustfull incontinent Person by filthy Discourse wanton Books and Pictures and that which equals and exceeds them all the Incentives of the Stage till a man's Vice and Folly works over all Bounds and grows at length too mad and out-ragious to be either governed or concealed Now with great variety of such kind of Tâ—â—ders for Hell as these has the Natiâ—â— of late years abounded Wretches who live upon the Shark and other men's Sins the common Poysoners of Youth equally desperate in their Fortunes and their Manners and getting their very Bread by the Damnation of Souls So that if any inexperienced young Novice happens
other Men's Understandings Nature having manifestly contrived things so that the Vulgar and the Many are fit only to be led or driven but by no means fit to guide or direct themselves To which their want of judging or discerning Abilities we may add also their Want of Leisure and Opportunity to apply their Minds to such a serious and attent Consideration as may let them into a full Discovery of the true Goodness and Evil of Things which are Qualities which seldom display themselves to the first View For in most things Good and Evil lie shuffled and thrust up together in a confused Heap and it is Study and Intention of Thought which must draw them forth and range them under their distinct Heads But there can be no Study without Time and the Mind must abide and dwell upon Things or be always a Stranger to the Inside of them Through desire says Solomon a Man having separated himself seeketh and intermedleth with all Wisdom Prov. 18. 12. There must be Leisure and a Retirement Solitude and a Sequestration of a Man's self from the Noise and Toil of the World For Truth scorns to be seen by Eyes too much fixt upon inferiour Objects It lies too deep to be fetcht up with the Plough and too close to be beaten out with the Hammer It dwells not in Shops or Work houses nor till the late Age was it ever known that any one served Seven Years to a Smith or a Taylor that he might at the End thereof proceed Master of any other Arts but such as those Trades taught him and much less that he should commence Doctor or Divine from the Shop-board or the Anvil or from whistling to a Team come to preach to a Congregation These were the peculiar extraordinary Privileges of the late blessed Times of Light and Inspiration Otherwise Nature will still hold on its old Course never doing any thing which is considerable without the Assistance of its two great Helps Art and Industry But above all the Knowledge of what is Good and what is Evil what ought and what ought not to be done in the several Offices and Relations of Life is a thing too large to be compassed and too hard to be mastered without Brains and Study Parts and Contemplation which Providence never thought fit to make much the greatest Part of Mankind Possessors of And consequently those who are not so must for the Knowledge of most things depend upon those who are and receive their Information concerning Good and Evil from such Verbal or Nominal Representations of Each as shall be imparted to them by those whose Ability and Integrity they have Cause to rely upon for a faithfull Account of these Matters And thus from these two great Considerations premised 1 st That the Generality of the World are wholly governed verned by Words and Names And 2 dly That the Chief Instance in which they are so is in such Words and Names as import the Good or Evil of things Which both the Difficulty of Things themselves and the very Condition of humane Nature constrains much the greatest Part of Mankind to take wholly upon Trust I say from these two Considerations must needs be inferr'd What a fatal devilish and destructive Effect the Misapplication and Confusion of those great Governing Names of Good and Evil must inevitably have upon the Societies of Men. The comprehensive Mischief of which will appear from this that it takes in both those ways by which the greatest Evils and Calamities which are incident to Man do directly break in upon him The First of which is by his being deceived and the Second by his being misrepresented And First for the First of these I do not in the least doubt but if a true and just Computation could be made of all the Miseries and Misfortunes that befall Men in this World Two Thirds of them at least would be found resolveable into their being deceived by false Appearances of Good First deluding their Apprehensions and then by Natural Consequence perverting their Actions from which are the great Issues of Life and Death since according to the Eternal Sanction of God and Nature such as a Man's Actions are for Good or Evil such ought also his Condition to be for Happiness or Misery Now all Deception in the Course of Life is indeed nothing else but a Lye reduced to Practice and Falshood passing from Words into Things For is a Man impoverished and undone by the Purchase of an Estate why it is because he bought an Imposture pay'd down his Money for a Lye and by the help of the best and ablest Counsel forsooth that could be had took a Bad Title for a Good Is a Man unfortunate in Marriage still it is because he was deceived and put his Neck into the Snare before he put it into the Yoke and so took that for Vertue and Affection which was nothing but Vice in a Disguise and a Devilish Humour under a Demure Look Is he again unhappy and calamitous in his Friendships Why in this also it is because he built upon the Air and trod upon a Quick-sand and took that for Kindness and Sincerity which was onely Malice and Design seeking an Opportunity to ruine him effectually and to overturn him in all his Interests by the Sure but fatal Handle of his own good Nature and Credulity And lastly is a Man betrayed lost and blown by such Agents and Instruments as he imploys in his greatest and nearest Concerns Why still the Cause of it is from this that he misplaced his Confidence took Hypocrisie for Fidelity and so relied upon the Services of a Pack of Villains who designed nothing but their own Game and to stake him while they played for themselves But not to mention any more Particulars there is no Estate Office or Condition of Life whatsoever but groans and labours under the Killing Truth of what we have asserted For it is this which supplants not onely private Persons but Kingdoms and Governments by keeping them ignorant of their own Strengths and Weaknesses and it is evident that Governments may be equally destroyed by an Ignorance of either For the Weak by thinking themselves strong are induced to venture and proclaim War against that which ruins them And the Strong by conceiting themselves weak are thereby rendred as unactive and consequently as useless as if they really were so In Luke 14. 31. When a King with Ten Thousand is to meet a King coming against him with Twenty Thousand our Saviour advises him before he ventures the Issue of a Battel to sit down and consider But now a false glozing Parasite would give him quite another Kind of Counsel and bid him onely reckon his Ten Thousand Fourty call his Fool-hardiness Valour and then he may go on boldly because blindly and by mistaking himself for a Lyon come to perish like an Ass. In short it is this great Plague of the World Deception which takes wrong Measures and makes false
which is out of the Compass of any Man's Power is to that Man Impossible He therefore who exerts all the Powers and Faculties of his Soul and plies all Means and Opportunities in the Search of Truth which God has vouchsafed him may rest upon the Judgment of his Conscience so informed as a Warrantable Guide of those Actions which he must account to God for And if by following such a Guide he falls into the Ditch the Ditch shall never drown him or if it should the Man perishes not by his Sin but by his Misfortune In a word he who endeavours to know the utmost of his Duty that he can and practises the utmost that he knows has the Equity and Goodness of the great God to stand as a mighty Wall or Rampart between him and Damnation for any Errours or Infirmities which the Frailty of his Condition has invincibly and therefore inculpably exposed him to And if a Conscience thus qualified and informed be not the Measure by which a Man may take a true Estimate of his Absolution before the Tribunal of God all the Understanding of humane Nature cannot find out any Ground for the Sinner to pitch the Sole of his Foot upon or rest his Conscience with any Assurance but is left in the Plunge of Infinite Doubts and Uncertainties Suspicions and Misgivings both as to the Measures of his present Duty and the final Issues of his future Reward Let this Conclusion therefore stand as the firm Result of the foregoing Discourse and the Foundation of what is to follow That such a Conscience as has not been wanting to it self in endeavouring to get the utmost and clearest Information about the Will of God that its Power Advantages and Opportunities could afford it is that great Internal Iudge whose Absolution is a Rational and sure Ground of Confidence towards God And so I pass to the second Thing proposed Which is to shew How and by what Means we may get our Heart or Conscience thus informed and afterwards preserve and keep it so In order to which amongst many Things that might be alleaged as highly usefull and conducing to this great Work I shall insist upon these Four As 1. Let a Man carefully attend to the Voice of his Reason and all the Dictates of Natural Morality so as by no means to doe any thing contrary to them For though Reason is not to be relied upon as a Guide universally sufficient to direct us what to doe yet it is generally to be relied upon and obeyed where it tells us what we are not to doe It is indeed but a weak and diminutive Light compared to Revelation but it ought to be no disparagement to a Star that it is not a Sun Nevertheless as weak and as small as it is it is a Light always at hand and though enclosed as it were in a dark Lanthorn may yet be of singular use to prevent many a foul Step and to keep us from many a dangerous Fall And every Man brings such a Degree of this Light into the World with him that though it cannot bring him to Heaven yet if he be true to it it will carry him a great way indeed so far that if he follows it faithfully I doubt not but he shall meet with another Light which shall carry him quite through How far it may be improved is evident from that high and refined Morality which shined forth both in the Lives and Writings of some of the Ancient Heathens who yet had no other Light but this both to live and to write by For how great a Man in vertue was Cato of whom the Historian gives this glorious Character Esse quà m videri bonus malebat And of what an impregnable Integrity was Fabricius of whom it was said that a Man might as well attempt to turn the Sun out of his Course as to bring Fabricius to doe a base or a dishonest Action And then for their Writings what admirable Things occur in the Remains of Pythagoras and the Books of Plato and of several other Philosophers short I confess of the Rules of Christianity but generally above the Lives of Christians Which being so ought not the Light of Reason to be look'd upon by us as a Rich and a Noble Talent and such an one as we must account to God for For it is certainly from him It is a Ray of Divinity darted into the Soul It is the Candle of the Lord as Solomon calls it and God never lights us up a Candle either to put out or to sleep by If it be made conscious to a Work of Darkness it will not fail to discover and reprove it and therefore the checks of it are to be revered as the Echo of a Voice from Heaven for whatsoever Conscience binds here on Earth will be certainly bound there too and it were a great Vanity to hope or imagine that either Law or Gospel will absolve what Natural Conscience condemns No Man ever yet offended his own Conscience but first or last it was revenged upon him for it So that it will concern a Man to treat this great Principle awfully and warily by still observing what it commands but especially what it forbids And if he would have it always a faithfull and sincere Monitor to him let him be sure never to turn a deaf Ear to it for not to hear it is the Way to silence it Let him strictly observe the first Stirrings and Intimations the first hints and Whispers of Good and Evil that pass in his Heart and this will keep Conscience so quick and vigilant and ready to give a Man true Alarms upon the least Approach of his spiritual Enemy that he shall be hardly capable of a great Surprize On the contrary if a Man accustoms himself to Slight or pass over these first Motions to Good or Shrinkings of his Conscience from Evil which Originally are as Natural to the Heart of Man as the Appetites of Hunger and Thirst are to the Stomach Conscience will by Degrees grow dull and unconcerned and from not spying out Motes come at length to over-look Beams from Carelesness it shall fall into a Slumber and from a Slumber it shall settle into a deep and long Sleep till at last perhaps it sleeps it self into a Lethargy and that such an one that nothing but Hell and Judgment shall be able to awaken it For long disuse of any thing made for Action will in time take away the very use of it As I have read of one who having for a Disguise kept one of his Eyes a long time covered when he took off the Covering found his Eye indeed where it was but his Sight was gone He who would keep his Conscience awake must be carefull to keep it stirring 2. Let a Man be very tender and regardfull of every pious Motion and Suggestion made by the Spirit of God to his Heart I do not hereby go about to establish Enthusiasm or such phantastick Pretences
the Throne of Grace and his Boldness is not greater than his Welcome God recognizes the voice of his own Spirit interceding within him and his Prayers are not only followed but even prevented with an Answer 2ly A Second Instance in which this Confidence towards God does so remarkably shew it self is at the Time of some notable Tryal or sharp Affliction When a Man's Friends shall desert him his Relations disown him and all Dependencies fail him and in a word the whole World frown upon him certainly it will then be of some moment to have a Friend in the Court of Conscience which shall as it were buoy up his sinking Spirits and speak greater Things for him than all these together can Declaim against him For it is most certain that no Height of Honour nor affluence of Fortune can keep a Man from being Miserable nor indeed Contemptible when an enraged Conscience shall fly at him and take him by the Throat so it is also as certain that no Temporal Adversities can cut off those inward secret invincible Supplies of Comfort which Conscience shall pour in upon distressed Innocence in spight and in defiance of all Worldly Calamities Naturalists observe that when the Frost seizes upon Wine they are onely the slighter and more waterish parts of it that are subject to be congealed but still there is a mighty Spirit which can retreat into it self and there within its own Compass lie secure from the freezing impression of the Element round about it And just so it is with the Spirit of a Man while a good Conscience makes it firm and impenetrable An outward Affliction can no more benumb or quell it than a blast of Wind can freeze up the Bloud in a Man's Veins or a little Showr of Rain soak into his Heart and there quench the Principle of Life it self Take the two greatest Instances of Misery which I think are incident to Humane Nature to wit Poverty and Shame and I dare oppose Conscience to them both And first for Poverty Suppose a Man stripped of all driven out of House and Home and perhaps out of his Countrey too which having within our memory happened to so many may too easily God knows be supposed again yet if his Conscience shall tell him that it was not for any failure in his own Duty but from the success of anothers Villainy that all this befell him why then his Banishment becomes his Preferment his Rags his Trophies his Nakedness his Ornament and so long as his Innocence is his Repast he feasts and banquets upon Bread and Water He has disarmed his Afflictions unstung his Miseries and though he has not the proper Happiness of the World yet he has the greatest that is to be enjoyed in it And for this we might appeal to the Experience of those great and good Men who in the late Times of Rebellion and Confusion were forced into foreign Countries for their unshaken Firmness and Fidelity to the oppressed Cause of Majesty and Religion whether their Conscience did not like a Fidus Achates still bear them company stick close to them and suggest Comfort even when the Causes of Comfort were invisible and in a word verify that great saying of the Apostle in their Mouths We have nothing and yet we possess all Things For it is not barely a Man's Abridgement in his External Accommodations which makes him miserable but when his Conscience shall hit him in the Teeth and tell him that it was his Sin and his Folly which brought him under these Abridgements That his present scanty Meals are but the natural Effects of his former over full ones That it was his Taylor and his Cook his fine Fashions and his French Ragou's which sequestred him and in a word that he came by his Poverty as sinfully as some usually do by their Riches and consequently that Providence treats him with all these Severities not by way of Trial but by way of Punishment and Revenge The Mind surely of it self can feel none of the Burnings of a Fever but if my Fever be occasioned by a Surfeit and that Surfeit caused by my Sin it is that which adds Fuel to the fiery Disease and Rage to the Distemper 2 ly Let us consider also the Case of Calumny and Disgrace Doubtless the Sting of every reproachfull Speech is the Truth of it and to be conscious is that which gives an Edge and Keenness to the Invective Otherwise when Conscience shall plead not guilty to the Charge a Man entertains it not as an Endictment but as a Libel He hears all such Calumnies with a generous Unconcernment and receiving them at one Ear gives them a free and easie Passage through the other They fall upon him like Rain or Hail upon an oiled Garment they may make a Noise indeed but can find no Entrance The very Whispers of an acquitting Conscience will drown the Voice of the loudest Slander What a long Charge of Hypocrisie and many other base Things did Iob's Friends draw up against him But he regarded it no more than the Dunghill which he sate upon while his Conscience enabled him to appeal even to God Himself and in Spight of Calumny to assert and hold fast his Integrity And did not Ioseph lie under as black an Infamy as the Charge of the highest Ingratitude and the lewdest Villainy could fasten upon him Yet his Conscience raised him so much above it that he scorned so much as to clear himself or to recriminate the Strumpet by a true Narrative of the Matter For we read nothing of that in the whole Story Such Confidence such Greatness of Spirit does a clear Conscience give a Man always making him more solicitous to preserve his Innocence than concerned to prove it And so we come now to the 3 d. and last Instance in which above all others this Confidence towards God does most eminently shew and exert it self and that is at the Time of Death Which surely gives the grand Opportunity of trying both the Strength and Worth of every Principle When a Man shall be just about to quit the Stage of this World to put off his Mortality and to deliver up his last Accounts to God at which sad Time his Memory shall serve him for little else but to terrify him with a frightfull Review of his past Life and his former Extravagances stripped of all their Pleasure but retaining their Guilt What is it then that can promise him a fair Passage into the other World or a comfortable Appearance before his dreadfull Judge when he is there Not all the Friends and Interests all the Riches and Honours under Heaven can speak so much as a Word for him or one Word of Comfort to him in that Condition they may possibly reproach but they cannot relieve him No at this disconsolate Time when the busie Tempter shall be more than usually apt to vex and trouble him and the Pains of a dying Body to hinder and discompose him