TWO DISCOURSES For the furtherance of CHRISTIAN PIETY AND DEVOTION The former asserting the Necessity and Reasonableness of a Positive Worship and particularly of the Christian The later considering the common Hinderances of Devotion and the Divine Worship with their Respective Remedies By the Author of the Method of Private Devotion LONDON Printed by J. M. for John Martyn at the Bell in St. Paul's Church-Yard 1671. IMPRIMATUR Ex Aedib Lamb. Dec. 5. 1670. Tho. Tomkyns Reverendissimo in Christo Patri ac Domino Domino Gilberto divinâ Providentiâ Archiepisc Cant. à Sacris domesticis TO THE READER An Account of the Occasion Design and Nature of the Work THE true and sole occasion of the two following discourses was the desire of a Reverend and Exemplarily Pious person to me upon the third Edition of the Method of private Devotion that I would insert some thing thereinto briefly and by the by to caution many otherwise devout of frequenting Plays and spending their time in such Vanities which too often prove not only Impediments to Devotion but as the generality of them are ordered the bane of good minds This when I had a little thought upon I did not at the first see a place to my mind for such insertion Then I conceived not the stage to be the only nor perhaps most common Impediment of Devotion And farther I judged that should I only have briefly touched the subject intimated two Editions of that Book being then but lately bought off those which were by them furnished would scarcely buy Books of the third for the addition of a few lines and possibly others but slightly remark so brief suggestions Besides lastly I soon saw that to enumerate and remove the common hinderances of devotion would take up more room and pains then was consistent with such an insertion I resolved therefore on a distinct treatise And remembring that I had met with some pieces by men of highly pretended reason and learning which allowing a natural Religion comprised in a few principles that run through all Religions boldly assert all the doctrines and offices particular to each to be only of humane and Politick institution and consequently no Christian Positive Worship of divine Authority nor any point by Christianity a Duty which is not and was not such by the law of nature And withal reflecting on the usual discourses of the Hectorly Rationalists of our Age who greedily lick up and as rashly vent those others spittle I thought this plausible suggestion of the sufficiency of a general fairness or imaginary virtue to be the most malignant and pestilent prepossession against all Devotion and Divine Worship as being a plain subversion of its several offices and therefore resolved first and by it self to accost it as requiring more of discourse and then those other more vulgar Impediments each in their Order Thus came one intended tract to be broke into two pieces Now as to what I have done in my attempts on both my Reader is to be advertised that he expect not first higher notions or style than such which it is fit to address to popular or middle capacities The Philosopher has told us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And I handle these subjects for the benefit of men of moderate attainments Men of truly high learning are above being imposed upon by such opinions as I engage Nor secondly stricter demonstrations than is possible to be given of such subjects The substance of Christian Religion is made up of articles Historical Doctrinal or Moral and the Evidences of each different according to the nature of each Of the Historical points as the Birth Life Crucifixion and Resurrection of our Saviour c. we have not nor pretend to have greater Evidences than Tradition or Testimony both Divine and humane and that not only consigned in writing but attested by many visible events and Monuments Of the doctrinal Articles such as the Creation the life everlasting and different estates therein we have first the same evidences as in the former case and we have besides for some of them the demonstrative or most highly probable Ratiocinations of our own minds and others of them which are not thus demonstrable are evident consequents of those that are Thus From the course of nature and generation we are enforced to conclude a first cause or a Creator of all From the first and experienced actings and properties of our Souls we cannot but conclude their immateriality and thence their incorruptibility or immortality From the Creation nature and constitution of things follows the infinite goodness of the Creator his justice and providence And from Providence Justice and the immortality of humane Souls considering the different lives and manners of men and how here they carry all away is consequent a difference of estates in that future immortal life that is an Heaven and Hell I might run the Chain to a far greater length But lastly as to the moral points of Christianity We have for them first the common evidence of both the former Tradition and Testimony that they were instituted by God We have besides an intrinsical evidence for them founded in the nature of the Duties and their congruency to the principles of our own reason whence ariseth that approbation which natural Conscience cannot but give unto them We are not able but to commend and approve Temperance Chastity Meekness Mercifullness Justice and Piety though possibly by reason of carnal custom or interest we have no great stomach to practise them And hence if we do not conclude that the laws which enact these are the laws of our Creatour as methinks we should yet we must acknowledge them fit to be enacted by him and worthy of him and then this together with the testimony which they otherwise receive will enforce their reception Now as to those Christian Duties which are of a positive nature their singular conduciveness to virtue will speak them most meet and proper for observation so that if the Holy Creator would enact any outward worship it is fit these should be it as so highly tending to the natural and eternal part of morality and then the testimony of Scripture and inviolable tradition of the Church that is almost the World superadded thereto will make up a Plea beyond all rational contradiction for our embracing also this part of Christianity By all which it may soon be perceived what Necessity of the Divine positive worship I assert in the parts of the former following discourse In the first Chapter having supposed the being of God and providence and the justice of both which are granted even by the worst who acknowledge any Religion I assert a sufficient Revelation of the Divine Will and therefore a determining of the offices of Divine Worship to be if not a necessary yet most highly probable consequent from thence In the second admitting that so highly applauded principle and if rightly stated truly worthy Heroical and Evangelical that Virtue is the great
Souls with the beauty of holiness and replenish our Consciences with serenity and glorious joy We shall be able to see Heaven though not with St. Stephen opened yet with St. Paul prepared for us and bless God not so much for making it as making the way thither piety and virtue We shall so transform our lives as well as our selves that to live will be but to Conquer and we only seem to pass as it were from one Heaven to another The End THE REASONABLENESS AND NECESSITY OF A POSITIVE WORSHIP And particularly of the Christian Worship 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hierocl LONDON Printed for John Martyn at the Bell in St. Paul's Church-Yard M DC LXXI A DISCOVRSE OF THE Necessity and reasonableness of a Positive Worship and particularly of the Christian Worship The Introduction propounding the general heads of the discourse REmembring that all conclusions beget so much the fainter perswasion by how much in their deduction we have proceeded to a greater distance from first and necessary principles I shall endeavour in the cause undertaken to keep as near to indubitable or allowed foundations as I can And if I shall make it evident upon the admitting the justice of providence that we are enforced to believe some such revelations as Christians pretend to must have been and by them the institution of a positive worship and further upon view of the supposed positive worship if it appear in all its parts to be such as that the supreme God proceeded not arbitrarily and by a meer Sovereign power or humour in its institution but therefore appointed this or that rather than another Office because aptest to secure the good of man that is to plant and radicate virtue in him between which and humane happiness there is according to the order of nature which himself before such institution had framed a necessary connexion I conceive I have done enough to perswade any rational person that he ought in all reason to pay such positive worship which by such institution and its own natural conducency to his happiness he perceives to oblige him that is I have evidenced the necessity and reasonableness of a positive worship and of such an one as we pretend to And more particularly as to the Christian doctrine and worship if it shall appear that the very frame of its History lies so that we cannot with any tolerable sobriety disbelieve either the History or the doctrine which it implicates the very tradition it self carrying in it self so convictive evidence of its truth I may then conclude that we have the greatest reason to receive and practice particularly every such particular office of worship as that Christian doctrine prescribes and none other And though I shall not adventure to call these demonstrations yet I hope by such time as I shall have done they will be found for the most part to come as little short of such as the nature of my subject will admit Briefly and distinctly I suppose it will be allowed that positive worship is to be paid if there be any such by the supreme God instituted and commanded Now I pretend that first the institution of some positive worship follows admitting the justice of Providence That Secondly in that positive worship supposed by Christians obligatory there is such conducency to virtue on all hands acknowledged the principal necessary as renders that worship most fit to oblige us and every way most just and reasonable That Lastly besides this the Divine institution of this particular Worship de facto is irrefragably evident from the certainty and undeniableness of the History of Christianity and of the Scriptures Chap. I. § 1. A fuller proposal of the first point viz. That some positive worship there must be and three propositions to evince it § 2. The first proposition proved § 3. An objection answered § 4. A second answered § 5. An illustration of the insufficiency of reason to bring men generally to virtue out of History § 6. A third objection answered § 7. The second proposition proved § 8. The third proposition proved § 9. Objections in common against revelation and divine records answered IT is not unusual for stubborn dogmatists when forced from some beloved principles by their detected absurdity to seem liberally to grant what they are no longer able to deny and notwithstanding all their concessions in common appearance to the prejudice of their cause to pretend their cause no whit enfeebled and their perswasions as unshaken as ever Thus to omit the tracing this practice in men of other interests than those we have to deal with many pretended Masters of reason who a long time would fain have perswaded themselves and the World that the Being of a God or provident Creatour and Governour of all things the Difference of good and evil the Immortality of the Soul and different Estates in that immortal life were but the frauds of Priests or stratagems of some deeper Politicians seeing now that they can no longer maintain their doctrines against that convictive evidence which enforceth their contraries are content at last to admit a Creed consisting of these Articles named and generously allow what against their wills they see demonstrated But in the mean time they stifly contend that the only worship of this God and sole condition of such immortal happiness is virtue Nor do men need Prayers or Sacraments or Priests or what they would be content to have named appendant Cheats And then as to the name of virtue that they will be sure so to explain as to leave a Latitude for their own vices So that in fine though some of the outworks of this Troy be yielded upon constraint yet the body of the City is kept strongly the Helena still held in fast embraces they may be as pretended by the Warranty of Reason as profane and scornful of Religion at least of the Christian Worship and so in the end of all virtues purely Christian such as mortification Self-denial c. as ever they were Against these we say that if they will be reasonable and impartial and admit the same evidences in this case as they do in others of like nature besides that Natural Worship of God which consists in virtue and purely natural acknowledgments of him both they and all men must confess Offices of Divine Worship by Positive right such as in Christianity are Prayer and the Ministration of the Word and Sacraments Which thing we trust to make out by these following propositions 1. That it is but Reasonable to believe that God hath revealed his will to man touching such things which he requires of him in Order to his happiness 2. That it is but Reasonable to believe such revelation should determine the Offices of Divine Worship 3. That holy Scripture or that revelation which acquaints us what God requires of us in order to our happiness pretends to prescribe to us by what acts God will be worshiped and it is but reasonable to
content to injoy it only so far as is reasonable and just that is first if we would keep our good hours intire to these serious purposes and spend those on society which are unfittest for other imployments such are possibly some hours after meals after wearyness with business c. And we should be the readier to do this if secondly we would resolve the contrary practice to be what truly it is loss of time and besides that even of pleasure too For society would be the sweeter if rarer And besides doing business being industrious and paying Duty to God is far a greater pleasure to one who is used to it and so is a competent judge than is society it self to any one Sect. 7 Before we pass this head of converse we must admonish and conjure all those who would preserve that little integrity of life or devoutness of mind which they have or would not plainly grow worse than already they are that they observe this as a most constant and indispensable caution that in no Company which they keep they tolerate corrupt and lewd discourse but either reprove and break it off or if they cannot modestly be gone It being an observation of so much truth that out of a Comedy St. Paul transcrib'd it into Scripture for an infallible Axiom evil communications corrupt good manners And most certain it is there have been very few persons ever of any sobriety debaucht but the first degrees of debauchery were by this means conveyed first they polluted their mouths then their hearts and hands Sect. 8 As a second City pleasure though amongst us for the most part proper but to one of our Cities I must reckon the entertainments of the Stage Plays Masks and the like which not seldom are doubly impediments to Devotion first by the time they engross and after too often by the indispositions they induce notoriously disordering if not depraving and sometimes debauching worthy and liberal minds Sect. 9 The meer mention of the Stage likely perhaps to startle some laies a kind of necessity upon me to say something in resolution of the case whether it be at all lawful at least expedient for a devout and serious person to divert himself with any such entertainments For satisfaction of which we have no better ground to lay than the consideration of the nature of the thing whose lawfullness is questioned Now a Play say the Masters of that profession is a just and lively image of humane Nature representing its passions and humours and the changes of fortune to which it is subject for the delight and instruction of mankind which description did the Writers of Plays attend to in all their Poems so that no work might come upon the stage to which this description would not agree I believe the stage would have few Enemies but Fools especially if by delight and instruction they mean as I believe they would be thought to do such of both as is harmless But notwithstanding this plausible account they would seem to give us it is sure very many of their Poems little answer it representing scarce humane Nature but the bestial at least such passions and humours which are the reproaches of it and ought not to have been represented but concealed because taught whiles expressed And it is generally true the vitiousest person is still made the most facetious only mirth is made with vice and it so exhibited as for the general would make men rather pity than abhor it I affix not this censure to all plaies though I fear many or most of our late Comedies deserve it The matter then thus standing that our Dramatick masters write not what they ought and pretend but what the most ingenious vices resent and that it is a great venture if I come to the Stage whether I behold and hear not things unfit to be represented I do not see how the case propounded can be with safety otherwise resolved than as follows First Were I well assured that a cleanly and ingenious Poem were to be presented and had I leisure for such a diversion I do not know a more worthy pleasure The pretty plunges of the plot the Morals and prudentials all along intersperst the refinedness of the language the lustre which lively action adds to them all is singular not only delight but profit But then even here is caution to be observ'd First touching the time spent that the return home be seasonable and recreation justle not out our duty or more necessary business as it doth with those whom after the Play generally the Tavern or the Park takes up till satiety of pleasures renders them unfit for any thing but sleep This I confess is not a guilt of the Stage but yet too often a consequent or appendant of its entertainments And secondly That this be not every days practice and instead of diversion commence a part of business And lastly That respect be had of our places condition age and like circumstances and gravity not forfeited which because the vulgar are not the justest Judges may happen especially at publick representations to persons who otherwise might have lawfully been spectators This is the substance of what I can think allowable as to this matter Now on the otherside First To be present at the lewd and gross farruminations of debaucheries and all irreligiousness of the times such as they say the most taking Comedies of late are is unworthy of a Christian Spirit and many ways sinful First Against my self whom I cannot tell how far by this means I debauch It is most certain as so lately admonisht evil communications corrupt good manners And in such works I am sure of some of the vilest that could be pickt up in Town Secondly Against others whom by my example I embolden and encourage to the same wronging of themselves Thirdly Against the Authours and Actors whose damnable composures and action I after a sort authorize and therein nestle them up Secondly To venture my self upon what chanceth to be presented is generally to expose my self to all the guilt above touched and therefore not at all tollerable And by the by I cannot but say it is to be wished by all and endeavoured by those whose places capacitate them for so excellent a service that Stages soberly may be retrenched and confin'd within the bounds of modesty and reverence to holy things otherwise they will propagate vice faster then half the Pulpits in Town can Virtue Sect. 10 What then is lawful what sinful in this case we have endeavoured plainly to state and we hope is sufficiently seen As to the remedy of this evil it is plain and in our own power It is but staying at home or otherwise employing or diverting our selves We may either exchange this pleasure with another more innocent or with business more necessary And to perswade us hereunto first the consideration of the triple guilt in allowing our selves so hazardous pleasures and of the mischief thence accruing unto
third that men become happy by the determination and allotment of God that must be either respective or irrespective If irrespective then our second consequent stands and God is unjust in damning or allotting misery that is the highest punishment without respect to sin If it be respective to the persons lives manners or tempers then somewhat is required of men in order to their happiness viz. that they be virtuous or some such thing upon respect unto which God will adjudge such persons unto happiness which is the thing we contend for It remaineth then that God requireth something of man in order to his happiness Sect. 4 But if it be said that God indeed doth require something of men in order to bliss but yet that only such which generally mens reason will suggest to them without revelation as to that I say that it agreeth not with the principles before in common supposed and I may add also not with what hath been evinced in the answer to the former objection First it agreeth not with the principles before in common supposed for it is agreed if not proved that he requires of man to be virtuous now that a man in a pure natural estate and unacquainted with any Divine Oracles should attain an exact or sufficient knowledge of all necessary virtues is unreasonable to affirm and contrary to the experience of mankind There are two things as to virtue necessary to be known to bring a man to the practice of it First the nature and particular kinds of it and secondly the obligation which lies upon men to pursue it And who is ignorant of either of these two either can or will never be virtuous Now though we who stand upon the top of the hill have even by reason a prospect of both these that is having consulted Divine Oracles and humane Monuments touching these matters see the connexion and dependance of virtue and happiness and again the reasonableness as well as the nature of particular virtues yet that those who grope after truth in the black and foggy bottoms of barbarity or Heathenism have sufficiency of light by innate reason without the raies of Revelation to see all this is I say extravagant to affirm and contrary to what we see by plain matter of fact to have happened For consult the attainments of such as we speak of What dismal shapes would virtue wear a face as grim as a Gorgon and which would make us over-run it if it did not astonish us too much were we only to receive it by the Pour-traicture of some of our old Druids or other like forreign Masters of the barbarous philosophick Morals An Aristides it may be in an Athens a civilized place and a City long devoted to all literature and enquiries reasoned himself into strict justice but this too with much more rigour and Cynicism than he needed And a Socrates it may be himself into more universal virtue But had these even with such advantages the knowledge of all necessary or if they had can it be said they saw the indispensable obligation which lay upon them to the practice of all they knew How then did Socrates when he had arrived at the sense of the intolerableness of Idolatry and the Heathenish Worship and more sober notions of the deity yet in a manner to his last frequent their publick Altars and Temples To take him in the words of his most Zealous Patriot 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Xenophon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He sacrificed to their Gods both at home and at their common City Altars He used too the very Heathenish Divination How then also doth our deservedly admired Stoick give it as a Precept It is indeed the principal matter Epictetus of all Religion to have true conceptions of the Gods 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Notwithstanding all men ought to offer drink-Offerings and Sacrifices and first-fruits according to their Country usage Evident it is these the best of the natural Morallists either knew not that Worshiping of Idols and Devils when they knew the true God was an intolerable evil or that they dissembled it and taught contrary It must needs be granted by all not to speak yet of a positive Worship that some acknowledgment or natural Worship of the true God is a necessary part of virtue These men though having some knowledge of the nature and being of the true God not that we read of worship him on the contrary worship false Gods and teach that men should do so Which certainly they never would have done had they either sufficiently known that to be virtue or the indispensableness of their own obligations to it And yet alas what are these to the Mass of Mankind Two or three to Millions of Legions Had these extraordinary persons reasons raised by all their advantages and in all probability from traditions which if pursued to their Fountain head most likely derived from revelations and Scripture been a sufficient guide to virtue as to them yet could we not but conclude revelation necessary to the rest of mankind that is to all the World except three or four But we find it reasonable to conclude even these men ignorant of some necessary Virtues that is of what was of such concernment to them as that their happiness did depend thereupon Nor can we Christians conclude these men saved by Gods common way but by a more than ordinary act of grace Almighty mercy dispensing with their ignorance possibly their infelicity more than fault and pardoning those vices in them which were its natural consequents Sect. 5 This point of the insufficiency of meer natural light to lead men generally to virtue and so its insufficiency also to bring them to happiness will be more clearly illustrated by the history of mankind in those ages wherein they had little or none other guidance which although it be no where extant save in Scripture yet being that we here produce it as an illustratory and corroborative rather then a principal proof no adversary can justly tax us of prevaricating for our touching upon it Between the Creation a point supposed to be agreed on and the Floud if any such there were that is for the space of about 1657. years it is not pretended there were extant any such things as divine Oracles for the guide of humane life And if it be said the tradition of the Creation and of God and of the dictates of right reason could not but be much fresher in the World than without supernatural means they were likely to be in after Ages because two or three mens lives might reach from the beginning beyond the end of the supposed old World so that several persons alive at or little before the floud might be able to report what they immediately learnt of Adam their Father or Grand Father whom undoubtedly some of them might personally have known this is only an advantage to our cause For if natural reason with the help of so lively