another for his rudeness and debauchery Was any man's lust and intemperance ever reckoned among his Titles of honour who ever yet raised Trophies to his Vices or thought to perpetuate his Memory by the glory of them Where was it ever known that Sobriety and Temperance Justice or Charity were thought the marks of reproach and infamy Nay so far from this thought are the most profligated Wretches that they have a secret honour and value for those that are good and while they seem to marvel at and even hate all those who refuse in a vitious compliance to run on with themselves into the same excesses of riot they do at the same time inwardly admire and applaud them Shew me a Man so bad that would have another like himself whom he has a real kindness for What Father though never so vitious would be content his Son should imitate him that would rather have him a drunkard than a sober man or be gladder to meet him in a Stews than in a Church Some possibly to shew the goodness of their wit in being able to maintain a Paradox may extol Vice as others have done Gouts and Fevers but who without violence to his reason can seriously prefer it to Vertue There cannot then be a plainer Evidence nor a more convincing Argument of the natural difference between Vertue and Vice than this that the general sense of sober mankind which in the judgment of Tully is the very Law of Nature In genere consensio omnium gentium lex naturoe putanda est immediately approves the one as honourable and condemns the other as base and ignominious And thus from these two Passions of Fear and Shame the real difference between moral Good and Evil is demonstrable which being found in us not as Christians but as Men the opposition clearly appears natural But not to rely solely upon the judgment of Passions let Reason here give in its Evidence This Christ calls the eye of the understanding and the light that is in us Matt. 6. 23. Nazianzen 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a domestick impartial Judge of Good and Evil A natural Monitor which like Socrates's good Genius in Apuleius is every one's Overseer and Guide to advise and direct him The measures then of Good and Evil are to be taken from that proportion or disproportion they bear to this prime Canon which like a direct Line does at the same time shew what is streight and what is crooked by its application thereunto discovers as natural a comeliness in Vertue and deformity in Vice as the Eye does in any of those sensible objects that lye before it And as it is impossible for sense to be mistaken about its proper object supposing all necessary conditions to the right use and exercise of it so is it as impossible too for natural reason to be deceived in matters which are within its proper verge and cognizance One man's judgment may perhaps vary from another's in determining what kind of external beauty were best but 't is hard for any Man to persuade himself that deformity is beauty or that Thersites was a more gracefull person than Achilles as Homer describes them Herein while the Eye judges according to the exactness of colour and proportion which are the Elements of beauty it cannot be impos'd on And therefore the Philosopher said 't was the question of a blind man to ask what was beauty because 't is such a thing as every man must needs see and know that has his eyes about him The same may be said of Vertue and Vice whose beauty or deformity consists in that proportion or disproportion each of them bear to a man's natural Reason Which made Isocrates affirm That if it were possible for Vertue to take a humane shape 't would infallibly charm the beholder and we may as truly say on the other side that if a Man could behold Vice in its native ugliness it would as certainly affright him And therefore to make their Children abhorr Drunkenness some have thought it enough to represent it to them in their Slaves and Seneca to cure an angry Man only bids him look into his Glass And surely could not Reason as well tell a Man what were good and bad to him as Sense does Beasts what is so to them he should be worse provided than the meanest sensitive Creatures And 't were no less than a contradiction to say that God should give him such discerning and electing faculties as Reason and Will where there should be no difference at all between those things it were to judge of or chuse From whence we may rationally conclude that he has distinguished good from evil by those several marks he has put upon them and sets Reason as a competent Judge to decide all moral Controversies which by her first seeds of light manifestly discovers an honourable beauty in goodness and an inseparable blot in wickedness Nor is it a Paradox to affirm that there is as wide an opposition between some moral as between the most distant natural things For example between Truth and a Lye as between Light and Darkness or Being and not Being For truth results from the being of things which it represents and every lye is as it were the Image of not being And therefore the perfection of Man's understanding consisting in the knowledge of things which exist conformable to the nature of their being and consequently in truth and veracity there follows anatural rapport or relation between the truth of things themselves and our understandings which are perfected by it and cannot chuse but hate a Lye as soon as they discover it as a cheat put upon them and an abuse to Nature which has given Men language for no other use and purpose but to express the reality of their conceptions suitable to the things themselves at least as they are apprehended and they who abuse the credit of others do as much as in them lies destroy all commerce among men by weakning that fidelity which entertains and supports it which is the reason why Lyars are so hated and scorned by all mankind and that even they who know themselves to be so are so angry with all that call them by that name that many times they will not be satisfied without washing off that reproach with the bloud of the Reproachers I might here instance in other Vices as disobedience to natural and civil Parents injustice cruelty ingratitude and shew in what a direct opposition they stand to and are condemned by nature too but I proceed to the last argument or reason of the natural difference between moral good and evil which I shall fetch from the prime design of Nature viz. 4. Self-preservation It cannot be deny'd but that whatsoever opposes and contradicts that must needs be an enemy and whatsoever maintains it a friend to Nature Now 't is evident that whatsoever is morally is also naturally good and that as Vice tends to the ruine of humane nature so
up the Law of Nature each Pagan may confute an Infidel and each Sinner himself That there is a God to be worshipped is founded in that natural Dependence Rational Creatures have on their Creator and that Good and Evil are different things is the Voice and Dictate of Natural Reason too which he that contradicts unmans himself and is to be lookt on as a Monster in Nature Such there have been in all times and which is strange even in those of Divine Revelation for we find the Jews themselves upbraided here with this Impiety which was so much the grosser in them because besides the unwritten they had withall a written Law to instruct them better Both in effect the same the same Precepts in stone and in the heart The Mosaical Law being nothing else but a Digest of that of Nature where the only difference is in the Clearness of the Character For Moses did but display and enlarge the Phylacteries of Nature This was still the Text and all his Precepts but so many Commentaries on it He did but trim up that Candle of the Lord natural Reason which before burnt dim set off Vertue with a better Lustre and expose Vice in its proper shape and hue giving That all its natural Advantage to charm the Eye and painting out This in such lively Colours as might represent it in its utmost Deformity Yet such was the perverse blindness of some that they could see no difference here at all no distinction between an Angel of Light and a Fiend Good and Evil were to them both alike or rather not alike for they preferred Evil to Good did not only confound the Names and Nature of these things but in a cross manner misplace them putting Darkness for Light and Light for Darkness like those Antipodes to mankind who by their strange way of living turn Day into Night and Night into Day This is that abomination the Text takes notice of which drew this severe Imprecation from the Almighty uttered by the mouth of his Prophet Wo unto them that call Evil good c. Which words seem to point to the Jews but are indeed directly levelled at all those who remove the natural Land-marks and Boundaries of Moral Good and Evil and they present us with these three Observations 1. That there is a Real and Natural difference between Vertue and Vice called here Good and Evil. 2. That there always have been and still are such as labour to take away this Difference Men that call Good Evil and Evil Good 3. That to do so To endeavour to alter the Nature and Property of Moral Good and Evil is such a heinous provocation as will inevitably bring a Curse upon it Of these in their Order And 1. That there is a real and natural Difference between Vertue and Vice called here Good and Evil. It seems the Academician and Epicurean Sects were rife in the Prophet Esay's Days who being a loose sort of men and impatient of all natural and moral Restraints would fain perswade themselves and all others That nothing was in it self good or bad that there was no such distinction in Nature but only in the opinion of men who were pleased to make an inclosure where God and Nature had laid all in common Nec natura potest justo secernere iniquum was their fundamental Principle A Principle which because I find taken up and improved by some of the like depraved Judgment and it is the very Source and Fountain of much of that Corruption that is in the World deserves to be considered and the direct way to disprove it will be to make out a real and natural Difference between moral Good and Evil which I shall endeavour to do 1. From the Nature of a Divine Being 2. From our own Make and Constitution 3. From the natural Beauty of Good and Deformity of Evil whereof every Man's Reason is the proper Measure and Judge 4. From such contrary Effects as must of necessity argue a Contrariety in their Causes 1. The first proof of this Truth I shall fetch from God Himself in whose very Nature and Being the difference between Good and Evil is conspicuous For 't is evident that there is something simply Good and something simply Evil even to Divine Being something which God is by the Necessity of his Nature and something which by the same Necessity He cannot be For should I ask Epicurean Christians whether God can be other than what He now is or the Scripture represents Him They must needs resolve the question in the Negative unless they will deny Him to be God or which is the same thing grant him mutable Immutability being so essential to him that what he now is he ever was and what he ever was he ever shall be and cannot chuse but be so Now God from all Eternity was just mercifull good and true 'T is the Description he gives of Himself Exodus 34. 6. The Lord the Lord God merciful and gracious long suffering and abundant in Goodness and Truth And were not these his essential and unalterable Properties the Reverse of that Description might as well befit him which were the highest Blasphemy imaginable and the Manichees needed not to have invented two distinct Principles of Good and Evil when by the Epicurean Doctrine these so contrary things might well enough be reconciled to one and the same Divine Being whereas the Scripture tells us that some things are impossible for God to do As to lye and to be unjust And surely what He cannot Man ought not What is good or bad to Him must be so to us too and what is contrary to the divine can never be a part of humane Perfection If God cannot be other than good mercifull and just Man who was created after his Image must of necessity resemble his Creator and the Copy to be complete in all points answer its Original 2. As indeed it does For upon this account of a natural resemblance 't is that we are said to be Partakers of the divine Nature and God has so wrought and woven his Image into the very frame of our being that like Phidias his Picture in Minerva's Shield it can never be totally defaced without the ruine of that frame And herein also the differences of Good and Evil are apparent For our Passions Fear and Shame especially do manifestly betray them Omne malum aut timore aut pudore persudit natura Nature saith Tertullian hath dasht every Vice with Fear or Shame As for the first of these Fear The continual Frights the pale Countenances and broken Sleeps of wicked Men do plainly argue the inward dissatisfactions of natural Conscience when they doe amiss the guilt of the heart usually spreading it self over the face As on the other side Innocence is ever quiet and bold and they who act by the rules of right reason always calm and serene Of which so apparent contrary effects no better account can be given than
Vertue to its conservation and that not only by a divine benediction but by a natural efficiency Let us then cast up our several mischiefs and see how many of them are owing to our vertues whether Temperance did ever drown our parts or Chastity make us roar under the Chirurgeon's hand whether the sleeps of sober men be not sweet and their appetites constant whether the symmetry of Passions in the meek their freedome from the rage of them with that admirable harmony and sweetness of content do not by making them chearfull render them healthy too Whereas the contrary of these do manifestly impair our bodies waste our estates and ruine our reputations For what are the fruits of Intemperance but Collicks Surfeits Aches and the like Who hath woe and sorrow redness of eyes contention and wounds but the Drunkard What vast expence doth the Glutton put himself to not to allay his hunger but to provoke it How dearly doth he buy new wants when a small cost would relieve nature how much is he at to oppress it And how does he many times pay more than one Farm for a Fever And yet when all this is done the best that can be expected is that the feast must be fasted of Whereas it often proves worse than so that a horrid potion must purge off the too full goblet and it shall cost as much to remove the Surfeit as to procure it and yet after all this charge and trouble the Man can scarce hope to be so well as he was before it such enemies are Vices to our health and they are no less to our reason For whereas Vertues improve our understandings by subduing our lusts and moderating our passions These fully and darken our minds and by clogging our spirits render them unapt for higher and nobler acts of reason Even the most refined ones such as envy hatred pride and malice tincture the mind with false colours and so fill it with prejudice and undue apprehensions of things Let experience here give in its verdict and if it be so that Vertue preserves Nature and Vice destroys it they cannot possibly be the same things such different effects arguing a manifest contrariety in their causes And were it not so were not the opposition here very natural I know not how natural Men without any help of divine Revelation should by the mere Light of their reason be able so clearly to discern and so exactly to make it out as some of them have done A task well performed by Tully in his Offices Et de finibus bonorum malorum wherein the several bounds of moral good and evil are so precisely set out as they have been by some ancient Philosophers especially Aristotle that Reason and Scripture do herein little differ Non aliud natura aliud sapientia dicit Nature and Revelation speak the same things and we may well say with Tertullian Tam facilè pronuncias quà m Christiano necesse est Reason here utters baptized truth and each man's Soul is Christian And therefore the same Father in his Book De Testimonio Animae draws such a plain Confession of these Truths from a Heathen Soul that he wonders how a thing not Christian should have so much Christianity as to rejoyce at good actions and to grow sullen after bad to promise itself a reward for Vertue and fear a judgment to come for Vice Rather than be an Atheist to commit Idolatry and rather than God should not be worshipped to offer Sacrifices to the Devil and then concludes That 't is all one here to go by Reason or Revelation Nec multum referre an à Deo formata sit Animae conscientia an à literis Dei that the difference is little between the Book of the Law and the Conscience of a Man Some Principles of Law breathed into us with our Soul being so manifest that they are seen by their own light and stand upon their own bottom Nature approves them and condemns the contrary and this we learn from St. Paul himself For as Rom. 1. 26. he brands some vile Practices of the Gentile Romans as so many Violences and Contumelies to Nature and Ephes. 5. 12. mentions other things done by them in secret which 't was a shame to name that is such as were in the very Nature and Constitution of them shamefull So Phil. 4. 8. He speaks of other things that were true and honest just praise-worthy and of good report and to shew the difference of such things to be natural he appeals in a certain case to the Judgment of Nature 1 Cor. 11. 14. Doth not even nature it self teach you not general custome as Grotius there the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 refuseth that interpretation and the learned Salmasius clearly confutes it And our Lord himself doth the same too Luke 12. 57. Why even of your selves judge ye not what is right As if he should have said you need go no further than your selves to learn your Duty your own Reason is able to tell you what is right and what not But there are whom nothing can satisfie and though God and Nature the general Sense and Reason of Mankind and Scripture to boot do make a plain difference between Good and Evil yet either will own none in the Nature of the things themselves or else are so partial as to give Evil the precedency to Good if we may measure their Judgments by their Lives and Conversations Those I may term speculative and these practical Epicureans 1. Of the first sort are they who resolve all Morality into the Wills and Pleasures of Legislators that will allow nothing to be good or bad but what civil Magistrates in order to politick Ends shall declare to be so making all under them with the first matter equally susceptible of whatsoever Forms they shall please to introduce As if Vertue and Vice like Coin were to have a publick stamp upon them to make them currant or that Morality like changeable Taffety were to vary according to the different Reflection of that Light men cast upon it An opinion which if it should prevail would leave no moral Honesty much less Religion in the World For should Governors be as bad as they who broach this Doctrine are and would have them to be what a strange Rule should Mankind have to go by And if publick Interest were to be the Measure and Standard of Good and Evil when that should alter as nothing is more variable what is now a Vertue might perhaps in a short time become a Vice and so Rewards and Punishments have their Vicissitudes also and at last interfere 'T is certain that some Laws have been enacted that were so many direct Violations of the Law of Nature and contrary to the general Sense of Mankind and that such might still be made 't is not impossible while there remain in men the same unreasonable Lusts and Passions whereof such Laws were the results and yet these if
they have the publick Seal upon them shall be as good and binding as the best that ever were established in the opinion of these Promoters of a moral Indifferency whereas in the Judgment of all Learned men humane Laws are then void and null when they do in the least swerve from that of Nature And 't is a great Error to think that men's Laws do make things morally good or bad whereas they do but declare them to be so supposing them to be such in their own Natures and deriving all their Vertue from that very supposition They take it for granted that there are such things as Vertue and Vice and add Rewards and Punishments to invite or deterr us from what naturally we are prone or averse to but would not so readily embrace or decline without these External motives or restraints All they do here is to graft on Natures stocks to cherish and nurse up those Seeds of Vertue which are already in our very Being and Constitution For before there were any positive Laws of men there were Natural certain moral Principles of Good and Evil which Reason obliged all men to As To do as we would be done to to worship God obey and honour Parents The latter so congenial to us that Moses and other Legislators have thought it superfluous to order any Punishment for parricide imagining none could be so unnatural as to commit it Such natural Obligations are antecedent to any humane Constitutions and in the Judgment of Aristotle as fixt and determined as any physical Beings So that as there will be Colours though there were no Eye to view them there will be such a thing as Virtue and Vice though there were no Law either for or against it Nor can any pretence of publick Interest alter their Property Utilitas prope justi mater aequi though in some sense very commendable for all Laws should aim at the publick good without which they should be no better than Snares and Traps yet in that wherein some take it 't is in no wise tolerable Their meaning by it being in short this that there is no Interest but what is merely secular that Vertue and Vice are in themselves insignificant things to be taken up or laid down as they are subservient to politick Ends As if God and Nature were to stoop to Mammon or that the distance between Honestum and Utile were so irreconcileable that 't were impossible for them to meet together An Error as old as Tully's Days which he complains of and confutes which excellently serves the turns of loose men who cannot better defame and exterminate Morality than by persuading the World 't is an useless thing as indeed it is to them that desire not to be bound up by it and therefore decry it in all others especially them who are to make Laws and see them executed who if they should be vertuous must of necessity shame and punish all those who resolve to be vitious But could these men once persuade Legislators that just and unjust were things indifferent and alterable at their pleasure they would no doubt at last as easily persuade themselves too that obedience and disobedience to them were as arbitrary and indifferent What disorder and confusion this one Principle would introduce into the World that Vertue and Vice were founded only in humane Constitutions and politick Interest and not in the Nature of the things themselves is easie to judge by putting this one Supposition Suppose the reverse of all we now call Vertue were solemnly enacted and the Practice of Fraud Perjury and Falseness to a man's word and all manner of Vice and Wickedness were established by a Law I ask now if the cafe between Vertue and Vice were thus altered would that we call Vice in process of time gain the reputation of Vertue and that which we call Vertue grow odious and contemptible to humane Nature If it would not then there is something in the Nature of Good and Evil of Vertue and Vice which does not depend upon the pleasure of Authority nor is subject to any Arbitrary Constitution But that it would not be thus is most certain because no Government could subsist upon such Terms For the very enjoyning of Fraud and Rapine Perjury and breach of Trust doth apparently destroy the greatest End of Government which is to preserve men in their Rights against the Encroachments of Fraud and Violence And this End being destroyed humane Societies would immediately fly in pieces and men would necessarily fall into a state of War Which plainly shows that Vertue and Vice are not Arbitrary things but that there is a natural immutable and eternal Reason for that we call moral Good and against that we call moral Evil. God has established these things upon as firm and solid a Basis as he has done the Earth which none can remove And therefore what Tertullian Ironically said of the Roman Senate that would not allow Christ a Room among their Gods at the Instance and recommendation of Tiberius Nisi homini Deus placuerit Deus non erit is applicable to all those who make the Wills of Legislators the Measure of Good and Evil Vertue must not be Vertue nor Vice Vice without men's Consent and Approbation 2. But besides these there is another sort of men who not content to make Good and Evil indifferent are so wickedly partial as to prefer Evil to Good These are all practical Epicureans who set up Anti-tables in opposition to those of God and Nature live as if they aimed at being scandalous as well as vitious and loved the Guilt as well as the Pleasures of Sin that give all the reputation they can to Vice which is the natural Reward of Vertue decry all Goodness in themselves and others and stamp God's Image on Satan's Dross Such are all they who as St. Paul says glory in their shame Quorum novissima voluptus infamia est the Character which the Roman Historian gives of a prodigious Impiety that boast of their Infamy one of his Atheism another of the Trophies of his Drunkenness and a third of the Variety of his Uncleanness Pride compasseth them about like a Chain Psal. 73. 6. They deck themselves with it as with a Robe of Honour wear it as their Ornament and bring it forth into open view like Agrippa and Bernice in the Acts 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with much Pomp and State glorying as much in the Scars they receive in Satan's service as ever St. Paul did in the Marks of the Lord Jesus and have not so much as the Religion of Hypocrisie Sin is called the Work of Darkness because they who commit it usually hate the Light and therefore They that are drunk are drunk in the Night says the Apostle This was wont to be the Custom Vice durst not show its ugly Face by day But how many turn the Works of Darkness into Works of Light and produce them on the
Theater of the World not content with the Conscience of them unless as the Pharisees dealt their Alms and said their Prayers they may do them so as to be seen of men And hence it is that many belye themselves in Sin usurp Vice and steal the glorious Reputation of exceeding Sinfulness as if the Impiety were meritorious and the shame of doing ill the only thing to be ashamed of St. Augustine in his Confessions complains of himself that in his younger Days he did so that in compliance with some of this shameless humour he did often boast of imaginary Vices and attributed Sins to himself he never had committed being more afraid of displeasing his vile Companions than his God And doubtless many to avoid the Imputation of Temperance and the Scandal of a singular and affected Sobriety labour all they can to be thought more wicked than sometimes they are Nor is it enough for such to wear out all the Impressions of the Law written in their own Hearts and wholly to subdue their own Consciences unless they may shame and baffle all Goodness out of those of other men by setting off Vice with all Lustre and Advantage that possibly may recommend it to their esteem while on the other side they labour as much to put Vertue out of countenance and render it unfashionable and ridiculous by the antick Dress they give it cloathing it as the Jews did our Lord in a Fool 's Coat to move Laughter and Contempt the Business of every drolling Buffoon who thinks he cannot better disparage Vertue than by representing it as a melancholy and pedantick thing an Enemy to good Manners and civil Conversation a Contradiction to Nature and a restraint on that Liberty and those Appetites it gives us Now if this be not to cast off all discriminating Notions of Good and Evil if this be not to expose Nature Travesty and by a perverse kind of Heraldry to set Evil before Good 't is hard to say what it is Doubtless of all other men these best deserve the Prophet's Character here and fall directly within the Compass of his Curse The last thing to be considered The Law of Nature of which Morality is the most considerable part is so unchangeable that some how warrantably I know not do affirm 't is not in the Power of God himself to alter it 'T is hard to say that he that has Power to make a Law cannot alter it since in some Instances we find he has done so but they are indeed more rare than his miraculous Dispensings with the ordinary Course of Nature And as God is pleas'd sometimes to vary that to show himself Lord of Nature so has he sometimes changed this to let us know He is that one Lawgiver St. James speaks of who can prescribe to the Conscience To endeavour then to alter the property of moral Good and Evil is to entrench upon the Almighty's Prerogative and to call Evil Good to stamp our Impression on his Bullion is the worst sort of Coinage and no less than flat Rebellion against the Supreme Majesty of Heaven Job expresly calls it a rebelling against the light the Light of Nature ch 24. ver 13. A Sin in some measure against the Holy Ghost too all natural as well as revealed Light being from Him especially when it is done out of that reprobate or injudicious mind Heathens were given up to who held the truth in unrighteousness i. e. did by their wicked lives and conversations so imprison those common notices of God and Morality which naturally shined in their Understandings that they could no more appear or come forth than men that are shut up close Prisoners in a dark Dungeon This was the great Crime of the Heathen World and for this Cause God gave them up to vile Affections to be directed by such a crooked Rule as they had framed to themselves and be led by the Wisp of their false Imaginations over Boggs and Precipices into ruine 'T is usual with God as to make one Sin the punishment of another so to suit Punishments to Crimes Thus when Heathens abused natural Light he suffered them so far to be besotted as not only to worship Stocks and Stones but Vices and Sins Thus while some Jews abused revealed Light he threatens them with putting out their Light in obscure Darkness as he does Christians who go against the Light of the Gospel to remove their Candlestick and send them strong Delusions to believe a Lye take Darkness for Light and Light for Darkness And if the Light that is in Man be Darkness how great must that Darkness be Surely by so much the greater by how much their Light was so And therefore Christians who besides the Natural and Mosaical have the glorious Light of the Gospel to direct them as to the Measure of Good and Evil must needs be much more inexcusable if they shall err in their choice and in what they know naturally as brute Beasts in those very things corrupt themselves and so have nothing left to distinguish them from Heathens but a better Name and worse Practices For how many Heathens were there who if they should now appear on the Stage of the World would shame most Christians of it What Justice Temperance Frugality Conscience of Oaths and Promises Severity and Strictness of Life among them and what Injustice Intemperance Prodigality Falseness and Universal Depravation of Manners among these Certainly if our Righteousness exceed not theirs We shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of Heaven But if our Unrighteousness shall exceed theirs what Hell will be deep or dark enough for us Shall not Uncircumcision which is by Nature if it fulfill the Law judge thee who by the Letter and Circumcision dost transgress the Law said St. Paul to the Jews Let every Christian make particular Application to himself and see whether with the Advantage of a far clearer Revelation he does not come short of Jews nay whether he makes any Conscience of doing those things which the bare Light of natural Reason taught Heathens to abhor and yet while he damns them for their moral Vertues he can absolve himself though guilty of their foulest ones It were to be wisht that many Christians were but as good as some Heathens were that they would at least follow Nature the Dictates of natural Reason their Errours would be fewer and their Accompt less and were they faithful in this smaller Talent God would then entrust them with a greater The common Notices of Good and Evil are the natural Man's Book as Papists say Images are Lay-mens and he that well studies this Book and is learned in it may not despair of taking a higher Degree of perfection in the School of Christ Christianity being nothing else but Nature refined and exalted and all the Laws of Christ concerning moral Actions the very Law of Nature but in a clearer Character and more correct Impression Indeed the
to consider others as well as our selves and many times to abridge our selves of our own freedom to comply with their infirmities and part with our dearest liberty for their satisfaction It was this no doubt which made the Blessed Virgin to do so where the dispensing with her self for the observation of this Ceremony must needs have given the Jews no small occasion of scandal For when she brought her Son into the Temple they who were wholly strangers to the great Mystery of the Incarnation who neither knew Her to be the Mother nor Christ to be the Son of God but lookt upon them with an indifferent eye as persons within the verge and compass of the Mosaical Law and equally ty'd up to a strict observance of all its Ordinances must needs have taken great offence at the omission of any the least of them All such neglect would have been construed a breach of the divine Institution which no Man's innocence or dignity could in their judgment have warranted But as it is the property of true Charity not to seek her own so did this Blessed Mother of God chuse to depart from her private right rather than prejudice the common good or violate the peace of the Church and rather draw an inconvenience on her self than yield the least occasion of offence to God's People Thus did she abstain from all appearance of Evil not from that only which was really so but which had the face of and lookt like it avoiding as all crime so all suspition thereof and having an eye as well to her Reputation as her Innocence A Temper scarce to be met with in this vitious and offensive Age where Men are not content to be wicked if they may not withall be scandalous corrupt others as well as themselves by putting stumbling-blocks in the way of their weak and blind Brethren So far are they from yielding Obedience to those Laws they may have some colourable pretence to avoid that they make it their great care and study wilfully to break those they are necessarily obliged to All things are lawfull for such persons and all things expedient too Law and Honour Reason and Conscience they can as easily shake off as Sampson his withen Bands defie the Magistrate and the Church cry up Christian Liberty to the ruine of Christian Obedience without any regard either to other Men or themselves Let them learn another lesson from the Mother of God who would rather lose her own right than give others a seeming offence and let her Example teach us Obedience though to the prejudice of our just Liberty And let us not on the other side rashly censure them as Law-breakers who sometimes perhaps may omit a few little Punctilio's of the Law not out of any Contumacy or Spirit of Opposition but to gratifie the humour of a tender though erroneous Conscience 2. A second Example we have here of Obedience A Vertue few have who yet pretend much to all others but a Vertue without which all the rest signifie little and which is the best of Sacrifices Had the Blessed Virgin presented her Son to God and not her self too even That very Offering would have little availed her There she indeed offered up his Person Here her own Will which we can for the most part more hardly part with than with our dearest and most beloved Children But this Blessed Mother most willingly parts with both to God as freely resigns up her self to Him here as when she first received the happy news from the Angel that God had design'd her to be that Person of whom he should take flesh with an Ecce Ancilla Behold the Handmaid of the Lord She quarrels not with the Law but observes every Iota and Tittle of it The due time when the days of her Purification were accomplished the due place the Temple the due Oblation too a pair of Turtle Doves so officious was she in the Ceremony as to admit of no excuse in any the least circumstance of her Obedience and so defective are most of us even in the main Duties of Morality Surely that Soul is not fit for the Spiritual conception of Christ that is not conscionably scrupulous in observing all God's Laws 'T is not in our own power to make choice of some part where God requires an entire submission to the whole His Commands exact our strict Obedience even to to those things which seem to us of little importance Our Measures here are not to be taken from the Nature of the things themselves but from the Authority of that God which imposes them whose Will not our Reason is to determine us and there may be as great contempt of his Will in neglecting or refusing to obey it in lesser as in greater instances nay many times much greater where the things are of a more easie observation as the greatest Sin that ever Man committed was but the eating of an Apple The instance of the Blessed Virgin 's Obedience here was in that which many now-a-days would think very trivial 't was but in a ceremonial part the Mint and Cummin not the weightier matters of the Law yet since God required so punctual an observance of that and the Blessed Virgin so exactly paid it there will be little excuse left for Schismaticks who despise the decent Ceremonies of the Church out of Piety and Devotion thinking thereby to doe God good service and less for them who wilfully disobey the more substantial important Precepts of the Gospel If the Holy Virgin had such respect to the Law of Bondage and Severity then surely ought we to pay a far greater to the Law of Liberty and Grace and if she so religiously observ'd a Ceremony which to her was but indifferent with what care ought we to keep those Moral duties of the Gospel which require our Obedience not out of Love only but Necessity 3. A third Lesson we may learn here from the Example of the Mother of God and that is Humility which was as signal here as her Obedience and the cause of that Obedience For all Obedience proceeds from Humility which is as ready to take Laws from others as Pride can be to give them 'T was this which submitted Christ to the Rite of Presentation as it did the Blessed Virgin to that of her Purification though his Innocence might well have exempted him from appearing in the crowd of Sinners and her Purity from being rankt amongst the Unclean It was no small derogation to her Honour to submit to such a Rite whose very designment was to upbraid their guilt who observ'd it They who are truly humble are even ambitious of Contempt catch at all opportunities which may debase them and boast of that dishonour which turns to God's glory as David danc'd on before the Ark notwithstanding Michal's taunts And his Language there is that of every humble spirit I will yet be viler Thus would the Mother of God own her self legally unclean who morally was
shew them in But take them apart and each of them may perhaps misrepresent them For as a false Prophet does not always deliver false doctrine but may sometimes speak well though he doe ill as the Scribes and Pharisees when they kept to the Law of Moses were to be listned to though not to be imitated so neither does every true one always deliver true doctrine The best being fallible in their judgment may themselves be deceived and consequently deceive others who rely too much upon them On the other side we know that as many false Prophets may act their part so well that many times we may take them for true so they who are really true ones by reason of those failings which are incident to men may possibly sometimes be mistaken for false ones 'T is the constant aim then of men's doctrines and their setled habitual course of life which must give us a clear sight and judgment of them They who break God's commandments and teach men to doe so and that constantly can never be other than false Prophets since Faith and a good Conscience cannot possibly be parted And now having explain'd our Saviour's Rule give me leave to apply it in the first place to the Scribes and Pharisees and in the next to those who are their genuine Successors The last and main thing I purpose to insist on and wherein I must bespeak your farther patience and attention We find the Scribes and Pharisees yoakt all along in the New Testament and their principles and practices agreed well All the difference between them was but this That the former were more Textual and the later more Traditional Those were as I may term them the Schoolmen These the Casuists Each of them in high esteem among the People But the Pharisees were ever reputed the strictest and most exquisite Sect not only by the generality of the Jews but by St. Paul also who was himself both the Son and the Disciple of a Pharisee and seems to give it the advantage and precedency to all other Sects among the Jews as Josephus also does as well for Learning as Piety 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That for exactness in all points they exceeded all others whatsoever Now these men by the opinion all had of their great skill in the Law and their exemplary holiness had so bewitch'd the hearts of the Jews that there was no holy man amongst them which was not termed a Pharisee and they seem'd to have so ingross'd all piety to themselves that it became a familiar proverb and unquestionable truth among the People That if the many mansions of heaven could allow quarter but to two Tenants The one must be a Scribe and the other a Pharisee And as it cannot be deny'd but that in some things they expounded the Law not amiss since our Saviour grants it Matth. 23. 2 3. so on the other side 't is certain that they were very strict Observers of the Letter and to all appearance of the Duty of it For they prayed often fasted twice a week at least yea their very meals were abstinences and their outward mortifications might vye with those of Baal's Priests or the severest Flagellants No men were more exact in their Tithes if God would have a Sabbath kept they over-keep it if he commanded the wearing of Philacteries they will enlarge them These and many the like I might instance in which they observed even to Superstition so that as St. Paul speaks of himself when he was one of them touching the righteousness which is in the law they were so blameless that they were not liable to any humane exception And yet all this was but the sheeps-cloathing the Wolves are still behind and you may discover them by their Principles and Practices both soured with the leaven of Hypocrisie which leavened their whole lump and is so rank and strong that you may easily both taste and smell it I shall give a sey of each and that briefly And 1. Of their Principles and the drift of them Among which their Traditions shall lead the Van. God had forbidden to add or diminish ought from his Law Deut. 4. 2. And they did both embase the pure metal of his Word by the alchimy of their brass and leaden Commentaries or clip his Coin by unjustifiable Defalcations This was their Cabala or Talmud those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or fantastical suppliments of their Doctors whereby they would needs fill up those gaps which they found in the Mosaical Law and teach the Almighty a better way of worshipping Him than Himself could prescribe as if that rule He had given them had been too scant a measure for their overgrown devotion And hence our Saviour plainly tells them That they transgressed the commandments of God teaching for doctrins the commandments of men Mat. 15. 3 9. 2. A second Principle of these Rabbi's was That the due observation of the Law consisted in a bare external obedience thereunto the opus operatum and that the forbearance of an actual Commission was a full compliance with all the negative Precepts thereof So that in the Pharisees account to be a just or an innocent man was no higher a perfection than what Seneca condemns Ad legem bonum esse and that which a Heathen would not grant sufficient to make a man honest in the sight of men was enough in their reason to render him upright in the sight of God And that this was their conceipt of the Nature of obedience appears by those many false Glosses our Lord confutes ch 5. For instance God's Law inhibited Murther the Pharisees confin'd it to the hand and Christ extends it to the heart and tongue The act of Adultery with them was the only Crime whereas Christ makes the very eye and thought guilty In a word All obedience in their accompt was no more than what the Magistrate would be satisfied with it laid no restraint on the heart but only on the outward members consisting as they shap'd it in a bare Omission of such things as humane justice could take cognizance of or a forc'd compliance with the Letter of the Law whether the mind or conscience were concerned in it or no A principle which serv'd to render men cautious rather than truly good and to advance formality and hypocrisie 3. And as this was their conceipt of the Nature so did they entertain another as false concerning the Merit of their obedience For we find him in the Gospel giving in to God a swelling Catalogue of his own seeming vertues in an Eucharistical boasting Lord I thank thee Remission of sins was a thing a Pharisee stood not in need of who could not only fulfill the Law but exceed it Which legal Righteousness of theirs St. Paul hath taken great pains to beat down but could never beat the Pharisee off from it who was not content to stand upon equal terms unless he might have
yet nothing is so loose as they in effect Trace these Worshippers of Bel by the print of their feet in the ashes and you shall find whither they go and what their pretended Abstinences end in And yet should they in the austerity of their Will-worship go beyond us I am sure Baal s Priests went beyond them such things make them not better than us or make Baal's Priests far better than them while they leave that which God commands them to doe that for which He will never thank them To this I might add as a great Motive to dissoluteness their Catholick implicit Faith while they require Men to believe at a venture as the Church does and so save them the labour of searching A Doctrine easie to flesh and bloud and excellently fitted to the designs as their perpetual Vow of Continency does promote the Lusts of it exposing some to an inevitable Temptation by denying them those remedies which the Gospel freely allows every Man 3. Can any thing more advance the pride of Nature than their Pharisaical Doctrines of Merit and Supererogation which teach Men to purchase their own Glory without being beholding to God's Mercy and by fulfilling his Law to out-brave his Justice Nay that they can doe more than they need and may if they please help their neighbours too What an excellent lesson is this to make Nature run mad of self-conceit while it is assured that it can carve out its own destiny by an exorbitant freedom of Will that Men can dispose themselves to Conversion work out their own Salvation without Christ's help or if not themselves with the assistance of others who can furnish them with a supply out of their super-abundant stock of Merits Thus while they run away with such fond conceits they become careless and negligent of doing any good themselves while they are made to believe that others can doe it for them as if the lashes of Saints supposing them such could heal us as Christ's stripes doe that God's Justice would suffer its self to be paid with any other coyn than that which bears his Son's image and superscription or that his bloud could not be able to cleanse us without being mixt with the water of our own or other men's tears What can be more effectual I say than this to puff up Men with spiritual pride or more derogatory or injurious to the Saviour of the World And yet this is the Doctrine of the false Prophets of Rome who stick not some of them blasphemously to affirm That we are more beholding to the Mother's milk than to the Son's bloud And as their Doctrine of Merit and Supererogation promotes spiritual pride so does that of the Pope's Infallibility and Supremacy as much foment their spiritual and carnal too while by the former they allow no more possibility of Error in St. Peter's than the Pharisees did in Moses's Chair and consequently exclude all hope of any Reformation of the Pope's abuses which all Men must swallow and digest as the dictates of God's Spirit to whom he entitles them and from which there lying no Appeal he may Lord it as he pleases over God's heritage let his pretended Predecessor say what he will to the contrary 1 Pet. 5. 3. and over all the Princes of the Earth too by vertue of his Dabo tibi claves in spight also of the same Apostle 1 Pet. 2. 13 14. Doctrines which serve to swell him up with Pride as that of Transubstantiation fills all his Emissaries with it too which giving them a power to make their God must needs make them look upon themselves as some great ones and the people admire and stand in awe of them who can create their Creator and which is worse sell him too as some of them doe at a lower price than Judas did his Saviour though others can sometimes raise the Market when they see occasion And surely there is nothing more certain than that they doe so as by vertue of this so of their other fore-mention'd Doctrines of Purgatory whereof the Pope keeps the Key as well as of Heaven and has kindled a fire there on purpose to make his Pot seeth of Masses for the Dead who are to be released thence by their own or friends Money and Indulgences to the Living that when they come thither they may also find a quick dispatch being in their description of it as hot though not so close a quarter as Hell its self wherein Men desiring to continue as short a time as possibly they can would be glad at any rate to provide themselves a Pass-port to an easier place To which Doctrines I might add their forbidding of Marriage to many degrees of Men a subtle way too of driving on their Trade of Merchandize For the more Prohibitions the more Dispensations and the more Dispensations the more Money No Peny no Pater-noster with them Thus doe their Doctrines empty themselves still into the Churches Treasury and the Sins of the whole World must be taxed to increase St. Peter's Patrimony though himself could tell us he had neither Silver nor Gold and rather than the Pope's Coffers shall stand empty he will set a price upon Damnation its self and the very Stews shall become Tributary to his Holiness's Purse that so that very Purse may maintain his Grandeur to the lessening of that of all other Princes That these are the aims of such-like Doctrines is plainly discernible by any that have not lost their Senses And surely Purgatory yields him so considerable a Rent that as Bishop Jewell well said the Pope would be content to lose Heaven and Hell too to save that And nothing can render his Indulgences tolerable but this one Consideration That they gave the first occasion to the Reformation of this and all other his Abuses The time would fail me to discover the aims of other Popish principles How some of them doe preach downright Falshood and Injustice such as are the Jusuitical Maximes of No Faith to be kept with Hereticks of Equivocations and mental Reservations whereby they can make any thing signifie any thing of Probabilities and rectifying of Intentions mentioned at large in the Provincial Letters and which the Jesuites have made such excellent use of for deciding Cases of Conscience To which I might add Their uncharitable and non-sensical Principle of their Particular Churches being the Universal Catholick one as the Pharisees and Donatists of old and our over-strict Precisians of late dooming all to Hell who are not of their cut and garb as if none could be saved that were out of their Ark Besides those innumerable burthensome and superstitious Ordinances they load men's Consciences with A yoke as they make it heavier than that of Moses whose whole loins are not so thick as their little finger But I forbear and shall conclude this part with a brief account of their Doctrine of Obedience to Magistrates which how destructive 't is to all civil Government will appear by the
in the Council of Nice but killing and treading down each other in that of Ephesus What would he have said had he lived to behold those fatal Tragedies which have been acted since on the Theatre of the World upon the score of Men's different persuasions How have they put one another out of their Synaguoges cast them out of their Churches by Excommunications and by worrying them to death turned them out of the World too and so as much as in them lay destroyed peoples Souls as well as their Bodies I dare say that Jews and Heathens put together have not spilt so much Christian bloud as Christians themselves have done For proof whereof I might appeal to Massacres foreign and domestick Croysades Persecutions raised and carried on against Men with the utmost rage and violence merely for not being able to bring their Judgments to the same pitch and level with that of their Persecutors not to mention the bloudy design of this Day which had it taken effect would at once have blown up a Church and a State And all this with the same pretences of holy zeal and pious intentions that Jews and Heathens had and with as equal ignorance too For however they thought hereby to doe God service yet God Himself we see does not think so nor Christ neither who chargeth all such Zealots with utter ignorance both of the Nature of God the Father and of Himself also These things will they doe unto you says He because they have not known the Father nor Me. Which leads me to the second Head of my Discourse to wit Our Lord's Judgment of or rather Sentence of Condemnation past here upon all such persons and their practices They have not known the Father nor Me. I know not what good opinion some may have of Ignorance in matter of Devotion so as to make it the Mother thereof I am sure the Scripture all along makes it the source of all impiety of atheism oppression cruelty and of all that confusion that is in the World Have they no knowledge that they are all such workers of mischief eating up my people as it were bread Psal. 14. 8. It was this Ignorance that crucified Christ Had they known it they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory says St. Paul 1 Cor. 2. 8. And he thanks his ignorance for his persecuting and blaspheming 1 Tim. 1. 13. They are the dark places of the earth that are full of the habitations of cruelty Psal. 74. 20. And when men walk on still in darkness all the foundations of the earth are out of course Ps. 82. 5. That is There is nothing then but confusion in the world They proceed from evil to evil because they know not me saith the Lord Jerem. 9. 3. And here we see that Christ Himself chargeth all the cruelty that should be exercised on his Servants upon men's not knowing the Father nor Himself But wherein did this their Ignorance consist It consisted I say in these two Things 1. In that they thought that such violent courses as they took to bring men in to them as their putting them out of their Synagogues and their killing them could be an acceptable Service to God 2. That their pious Intentions Their thinking thereby to doe God service could be able to bear them out and justifie this their way of proceeding 1. I say first That they were grosly mistaken in thinking that those violent courses they took could possibly please God This was their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their First grand mistake For there was nothing in the Divine Law to shew God's approbation of any such thing Nor do we find that the ancient Jews who alone worshipping the true God and being his peculiar People might in that regard have had some colourable pretence to persecute all that were out of God's Covenant as enemies to Him did notwithstanding use any rigorous much less barbarous and cruel ways to compell men to come into their Church The Law indeed required the life of an Apostate to Idolatry whether 't were a single Person or a City Deut. 13. And therefore to prevent the Jews running into Idolatry to which they were so prone Death which was the only proper restraint in that case was put into the Law by God who was Himself then the Supreme Magistrate in that Theocracy against whom it was exact Rebellion and Treason to take another God and therefore was by Him punished with Death But this Law concerned those only who were within the Pale of the Jewish Church nor do we find that any who were without were forcibly compelled to come into it This was wholly left to their own choice and they were suffered to go on in their own way without being obliged to receive the Mosaical Law It was never God's method this to drag men to his Service nor otherwise to work on their understandings than by rational convictions He might have made use of his great Power to confound but he hath always pleaded with men by way of Argument a Way most suitable to the nature of reasonable Creatures and to his own abhorring all manner of cruelty and by his forbearance long-suffering and goodness seeking to lead men to repentance And therefore they who have any other apprehensions of a Divine Being measure Him by their own fierce and inhumane Temper thinking wickedly that he is such a one as themselves and be they who they will They know not the Father Nor do they know the Son neither I say Whosoever employ any violent ways or means to force men's consciences in matter of Religion do not know Christ. Let me not here be mistaken as if I were against all manner of legal compulsion I deny not Magistrates the power of constraining them to outward acts of Justice Honesty and Religion too who are destitute of the inward Vertues such acts falling within their Jurisdiction serving to preserve Civil Societies of whom Magistrates are properly Lords and who do obtain their ends if the outward acts be done There are two Swords among Christians the spiritual and the temporal and both these have their due office and place in the maintenance of Religion But we may not take up Mahomet's Sword or like unto it that is We must not propagate Religion by sanguinary Persecutions nor force consciences so long as men's opinions destroy not faith or morality that they keep them to themselves and do not spread them to the ruine of the established Religion and Government For when they doe so as some Peoples very Religion is treasonable the Treason not the Religion is then punished by the Magistrate But setting a-side this case I say That as all outward compulsion to oblige men to quit their present Persuasion without any rational conviction is directly contrary to the Will of God the Father as I have already shown you so to that of his Son Jesus Christ as will appear upon these three following accounts 1. Because it
crosseth the very end and design of his Coming into the world and is expresly contrary to his Doctrine and Example 2. Because it is a very improper way to advance Religion by And 3. Such as does not serve their purpose who make use of it which is To gain Proselytes to their Cause 1. I say It crosseth the very end c. For as God the Father was not in the whirlwind but in the still voice so his Son 's coming into the world is said to be like rain coming down into a fleece of wooll scarce to be heard He shall not strive nor cry neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets says the Prophet Esay speaking of Christ ch 42. v. 1. His behaviour was to be mild and gentle not boisterous and clamorous such a way becoming Him who was the Prince of Peace whose business it was to reconcile men to God and to themselves and who came not to destroy men's lives but to save them He tells us indeed in one place that He came not to send peace on earth but a sword Matt. 10. 34. or as it is in St. Luke ch 12. v. 51. divisions yea and such divisions as should set a man at variance against his father and the daughter against her mother v. 35. that is He foresaw what would be the event of his coming That the nearest Relations would hate and persecute one another to death upon the score of Religion That different pretences thereunto would separate those whom nature and bloud had most closely link'd together That none here would pardon less than they who were by nature obliged to love most And we see how sharp-edged this Sword has always proved even to the cutting asunder all natural and civil tyes and obligations so that a man's greatest foes are many times those of his own houshold Now this was no natural but an accidental effect of Christ's coming and of that Doctrine He brought with Him whose proper character it is to be pure and then peaceable Jam. 3. 17. mild and gentle not like the Law a killing letter much less like Draco's Laws writ in bloud but admirably fitted for the perfecting men's Natures and the sweetning of their Tempers and Spirits and calculated for the peace and order of the World which how inconsistent it is with those violent ways of Excommunications and Murthers some Men practice against such as differ from them never so little in opinion in matters of Religion I cannot see Nor indeed can I find any thing in the Gospel in the Doctrine or Practice either of Christ Himself or of his Apostles to authorize or countenance any such violent proceedings but enough to condemn them When an enemy had sown Tares in the field and some over-hasty people were presently for plucking them up our Lord we see forbids them and will have them both grow up together till the harvest when God should make the separation Matth. 13. 28 29 30. So when the Disciples would call down fire from Heaven to consume the Samaritans who were both Schismaticks and Hereticks He checks them for it telling them That they knew not what Spirit they were of Luk. 9. 54 55. That however the doing so might suit with the firey temper of Elias it did not at all with that of his Disciples It is not for Christianity to assume a power to inflict itself nor is it commissionated to plant it self with violence or to destroy all that refuse or oppose it If it be to be writ in bloud 't is in that of its own Confessors only as it was in that of its Author whose practice was as mild and gentle herein as his doctrine For when some of his Disciples being scandalized at the eating of his flesh went back and walked no longer with Him which was direct Apostasie does He use any menaces or force to reduce them No He leaves them to themselves and only cautions his Disciples to beware of their pernicious Example by gently expostulating with them Will ye also go away Joh. 6. 67. And when He afterward sent out those his Disciples to convert the World He sent them forth as Lambs among Wolves Luk. 10. 3. which does not found like a Commission to tear and worry them that would not come into the flock but rather to be torn and worried by them Their Commission was to preach the Cross not to inflict it And when any City would not receive their Doctrine all they were to doe in such a case was only to shake off the dust of their feet against it That is to suffer nothing of theirs to cleave unto them to have nothing more to doe with them but to leave them to their own ways and to God's judgment How well our Modern Apostles have copied out this Doctrine and these Examples I leave it to all the World to judge Surely those qualifications which St. Paul requires in the servants of the Lord not to strive but to be gentle unto all men and in meekness to instruct those that oppose themselves 2 Tim. 2. 24 25. are not to be found in them who now call themselves Converters who carry the Gospel in one hand and a Sword in the other That if Men will not receive That into their Heads They shall be sure to have This sheath'd in their Bowels 2. But this as it is a most unchristian so is it a very improper way to advance Religion by it being impossible to settle That by violence which cannot be forc'd and where 't is forc'd 't is not Religion The Understandings and Wills of Men are not to be bound with the same fetters their Bodies are The Apostle indeed says There is a way of bringing every thought into Captivity to the obedience of Christ but he tells us withall that the weapons by which that victory is obtained are not carnal 2 Cor. 10. 4. One may as well invade and think to get a conquest over thoughts and chain up a mind as force a Man to will against his own will Not whole Armies can besiege ones Reason nor Cannons batter his Will Religion is seated in those Faculties to which outward force can have no access The Sword hath no Propriety that way Silence it may but it can never convince and rather breed an aversion and abhorrence of that Religion whose first address is in bloud and rapine For 3ly It is certain that all compulsion here gains nothing to any Cause but the infamy of those rigours that are used to promote it Outward force may make a Man more a Hypocrite than he was before but never more a Convert It may tye up his Tongue or his Hand not change his Heart make him perhaps dissemble his Opinion but never constrain him to alter it And what is the advantage that is got by such Proselytes who shall still bear an Enemies heart towards those who force them outwardly to profess what inwardly they abhor and to be of their
besides that the use of Vertue should be very mean if it should no otherwise make us happy than beasts are who contenting themselves with what merely sufficeth nature are more vigorous and some of them longer liv'd than men It may be questionable whether a dry Platonical Idea of a Vertue perishing with our selves or a bare moral complacency in it might in the balance of reason weigh down those other more sensual delights which gratifie our lower faculties or a severe and morose Vertue have charms in it equal to all those various pleasures which sooth and flatter our appetites much more whether a calamitous one such as that of a Christian usually is a vertue still under a cloud and ever as it were on the rack persecuted hated and afflicted here and never to be considered hereafter Far be it from me to decry moral Vertue which even Heathens have granted to be a reward to it self but surely in the supposed case of annihilation very short of a full and complete one and to cry it up as some doe to the weakning of our belief and hope of the Immortality of the Soul however at first blush it may seem plausible is in effect no better than a subtle invention to ruine Vertue by it self since it cannot possibly subsist but by the belief and support of another life For setting this aside what would Vertue be but a bare Notion what but a gaudy rattle to still and please Children but of little force to persuade men to quit a present sensible delight for a bare Philosophical though never so taking Speculation Vertue may carry a big Title she may appear the fairest thing of the world and be the least usefull while men expect no other advantage of their good actions but the content of having done them 'T is what she brings charms us more than her self her beauty would have no attractive had she no dowry she would soon be laid aside as the most unprofitable thing of the Earth did she not give us assurance of some better reward hereafter than what she now bestows The joys vertuous actions afford do so far affect us as they are an earnest of greater and those satisfactions which spring from good deeds are so far to be prized as they promise and entitle us to higher ones If we are pleased in doing good here 't is that we may hereafter find it and if we sow in grace 't is because we hope one day to reap in glory Vertue without Immortality can never content us and our longings after that are strong arguments of it when we wish we prove it and that we may attain it 't is evident because we so passionately desire it O quà m vilis contempta res est homo nisi supra humana se erexerit says the Moralist That man is not so much as a man that is not a great deal more than so that raises not himself above himself that looks not beyond his threescore and ten years nor above the ground he treads on The vilest worm were happier than he if his hopes were laid up where his body shall be He has a Heaven in prospect and the expected joys of that quite swallow up his miseries on Earth Now indeed is the time of his sowing but not of his harvest His work is here but not his wages His good Master that employs shall one day fully pay him who gives him some of that pay in hand but bids him look for more and that blessed hope bears him up against all the discouragements of this life sweetens his afflictions here and makes him happy in his very unhappiness while he comfortably expects to be more happy than he can now fansie himself ever to be because he is fully persuaded that there is another far better and more glorious life in reversion which brings in the third and last Observation III. That there is another Life remaining the Expectation whereof makes a Christian of all other men most happy both here and hereafter This I am not now to prove to Christians because it is a truth to be supposed by them as it is in this Text by St. Paul Christ has sufficiently demonstrated it by his rising from the dead and the force of our Apostle's argument here would be quite lost if we should in the least doubt of it And to speak clearly This grand Article of the Christian Faith The Resurrection is a Truth to be taken for granted by all good Christians Infidels may deny it Atheists may wish it were not but all good Christians must confess and hope it They have little reason to question that which 't is their highest interest should be All their designs are laid in it and their hopes built upon it If they be content to suffer here 't is in hope to reign hereafter If with Christ they be willing to endure the cross and the shame of this life 't is for the joy that is set before them in the next A joy which throughly apprehended cheers them up in their greatest dumps enlightens their very dungeons turns their prisons into Palaces their Hell into a Heaven their torments into delights and their beds of hot burning coals into those of down It makes their afflictions infinitely more pleasant than the Epicures most exquisite pleasures can be A joy before which sorrow can no more stand than a mist before the Sun that presently chases away that evil Spirit of Melancholy which seizes the happy Worldling in the midst of all his jollities damps his spirits makes his chaplets of Roses wither on his head and is that stinking fly which spoils his most fragrant ointment as oft as he shall seriously consider that he must one day become a part of his own lands lye down for ever in the dust and his honour with him which yet is the best he can expect For such a one can no otherwise look upon Death than as a Serjeant to arrest him whereas to the good Christian 't is but a Messenger of joyfull tydings to tell him that his corruption must put on incorruption This is his hope and 't is founded in Christ's Resurrection who ever since he tasted death for us hath sweetned that bitter Cup so bitter before that time that St. Paul assures us That through fear of death men were all their life-time subject to bondage For it made their pleasures less delightfull their vertues more harsh and tedious and all their afflictions most insupportable Whereas now they are so far from being insupportable that they are most easie to us who know that being light and but for a moment they work for us a far more exceeding eternal weight of glory How sad and deplorable then must their condition be who are without this hope and without God in the world as the Apostle describes Heathens to be and yet how many Christians content themselves with no better whose thoughts are bounded with the same objects
the World and is as ancient as Religion it self 'T was so before and under the Law Abel Noah Job sacrificed then And under the Law the Jews were expresly commanded so to doe Exod. 8. 20. 10. 26. And as Nature did of old so does it still prompt Heathens to this way of worship thereby doing homage to the great Creator and acknowledging him Lord of all things and themselves absolutely depending on Him For Almighty God from whom we had all our subsistence hath in all Ages required one thing of us back again that we should repay something as an acknowledgment that he deserv'd all and hence probably came the Original of Sacrifices But the Jews were instructed in another super-added meaning of that custome besides viz. That God was not only to be adored as a Lord but to be appeased as a Judge his Empire by being so owned was to be dreaded too When we slew our Beasts we were to remember that our selves deserv'd that death we inflicted and punished only what we were to have endured That innocent Beasts were to be offered up for guilty Men and what was due to the Sacrificer was to be laid on the head of the Sacrifice Et viles animas pro meliore damus Poor man whose sin hath brought him to so great a distance from his Maker that the very Beasts must set him nearer Sin hath strangely transform'd us that we are not to approach Heaven unless a Brute make way Man is plac'd in a strange order of being when 't is a disputable case whether Beasts are below or above him On the one hand we command them on the other they attone for us Here we give Laws to them There we beg pardon by them We feast upon and we sacrifice by them They are our luxury and they expiate it by them we sin and we pray who make up so much of our crime and our devotion too make up a great part of our guilt and then remove it Here God hath certainly represented unto us the meanness of sin by the vileness of the price that is paid for it and Man is fallen into an order below that out of which he takes his Intercessor But however the Jews or other Nations might think that Sacrifices could remove the guilt certainly they did but upbraid it and rather signifie our death than remove it It is not possible that the bloud of Bulls and of Goats should take away sin There is need of better bloud to satisfie the God that is offended and there must be other Purgations for the Conscience that is defiled The Law was in its Ways and Institutions too weak for so high a purpose It could little more than adumbrate what the Gospel did perform St. Paul who understood the Nature of Judaism handles that argument in all his Epistles especially in this and that to the Hebrews and there useth those terms which express not how the Law of Christ doth oppose that of Moses but how it doth exceed it how it does accomplish what that did barely signifie and by their figures expresses our duties He does not take away Sacrifice for without Sacrifice no Religion but only change it For the Law being changed it is necessary that the Sacrifice should be so too That what was before Carnal should now be wholly Spiritual That now Men should be sacrificed instead of Beasts That Innocence and Meekness should be the Dove or the Lamb and Lust the Goat The Heart the only Altar Mortification the Knife and Charity the true Fire In a word Devotion now is the proper Sacrifice of a Christian and Himself the Temple the Priest and Sacrifice too Whereby we may clearly see how much more favourably God deals with us Christians than he did with the Jews among whom certain persons had right to sacrifice and at certain places and times whereas now those distinctions are quite taken away every Christian being a Priest of a nobler order than that of Aaron and not confin'd either to time or place 2ly In that God requires not now of us such an expensive Devotion as formerly he did of the Jews no herds of Bulls and Rams nor Rivers of oil no such costly Sacrifice as Solomon offered up at the Dedication of the Temple and such as would perhaps undo us We need not go to the herds to fetch an Offering were we now to sacrifice as did the Jews the loss of a Beast would perhaps restrain us more than the sense of God's anger or our own demerit But here he that cannot give a Lamb for his Transgression may give some of himself offer hunger for shew-bread and thirst for a drink-offering consecrate a meal instead of a beast and shed a sowr fasting sigh for incense And such an easie way no doubt we will well like of who as we can object that legal Sacrifices were an insufficient expiation can at the same time quarrel with them too for being an expensive one When we rejoice that we are to be atton'd by a nobler Sacrifice we are better pleased perhaps that it is also a cheaper one But are our Beasts spared from the Altar think we only to glut our Tables Hath the great God remitted them only for the sake of our other God our Bellies Is our devotion chang'd only to gratifie our lusts or shall we be content to offer up to God what costs us nothing God did indeed once say That He did not eat the flesh of Bulls or drink the bloud of Goats But there is a sense in which he does doe both viz. when a poor Man feeds upon them Then do we attone for Gluttony when we feed the Hungry Restitution expiates for Injustice and Charity for Rapine And thus St. Paul calls Alms An odour of a sweet smell A sacrifice acceptable well-pleasing to God Phil. 4. 18. Heb. 13. 16. And not only our Charity but our Prayers our Faith our Praises our Obedience our Repentance and Mortification are in Scripture language Sacrifices too and such as without them all others are but abominations to the Lord Prov. 15. 8. Dead Carkasses not living Sacrifices which is the first property here required to render them acceptable I beseech you Brethren that you present your bodies a living Sacrifice And that 't will be 1. If it be a dying one The Beasts heretofore we know dyed when they were sacrificed Mortification is the life of a Christian If ye through the spirit do mortifie the deeds of the body ye shall live says our Apostle Rom. 8. 13. 2. A living That is A quick and active Sacrifice The Soul of a Christian as well as of a Man is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a kind of perpetual motion And therefore those Blessed spirits whose activity in God's service Christ proposeth to our imitation are by the Psalmist styled a flaming fire active and restless for God's glory That Maxim in Tully De natura deorum Qui nihil agit
not any Excellency they had in their own Nature being not good but only in respect of what was worse It being better to sacrifice to God than to Devils nor otherwise than as Types of the Lamb slain from the Foundation of the World and did therefore vanish as soon as He was once offered upon the Cross Whereas true Religion remains still a Juge Sacrificium and is more lasting than the Heavens themselves which as it was long in the World before any Command came forth for Sacrifice So is it now most glorious when Jewish Altars are down 'T is not confin'd to time or place nor ever to be dispenc'd with as we find legal Sacrifices oft-times were And as 't is in the sight of God the best of all Sacrifices who requires Mercy and not bruitish Oblations so is it a most Reasonable Service being not founded in mera voluntate imponentis but in the Reason of the thing it self the Sacrifice not of a Brute Beast but of a man endued with Reason and withal most suitable to the Nature of God who as He is a Spirit will be worshipped in Spirit and in Truth and as He is a most wise God will not away with the Sacrifice of Fools Eccles. 5. 1. But will have the Evangelical as well as the Legal Sacrifices salted with salt our words and actions seasoned with discretion For we are fed with the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as well as with the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as well with the Rational as with the sincere milk of the Gospel so far is Christian Religion from divesting men of their reason that it strictly requires them to be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh them a reason of the hope that is in them 1 Pet. 3. 15. Being in it it self as 't is easie to demonstrate of all other the most Reasonale service and to present God with any other worship were but to offer strange Fire before him And now let me bespeak you in like manner as Naaman's Servants did their Master 2 Kings 5. 13. If the Lord had bid us do some great thing should we not do it Might he not require of us as of the Jews whole Herds of Cattle and Woods of Spices and Incense Nay which is more the Sacrifice of our Bodies in the most strict and severe Sense He might surely as being Lord of all but here we see He does not No other Bloud now to be shed but what St. Bernard calls sanguinem animi vulnerati that of a wounded troubled Spirit of a broken and contrite heart Slay thy lust and thou shalt offer him a Beast give him thy Reason or which is perhaps dearer to thee Thy Will and thou shalt sacrifice a Man to him He will accept thy Tears for drink-offerings and prefer thy very Fasts to meat-offerings Thou needest not appear before thy God empty while thou presentest thy self to him every part of thy Body and every faculty of thy Soul nay every thing thou possessest and which many times thou accountest more pretious than that very Soul of thine may be a Sacrifice and a far more acceptable one too than all the Beasts of the Forrest Give the Lord thy Heart and that will be the Fat of thy Sacrifice As thy Charity the true fire of it without which the Incense of thy Prayers and of thy Devotions will not smoak nor ever ascend up to Heaven nay without which Martyrdom it self will prove a vain and insignificant oblation and though thou shouldst give thy Body to be burnt yet thou shouldst be nothing In a word give thy God thy self and in such a manner as He requires thee to do it and thou canst give him no more and yet when all this is done no more than what he first gave thee Thus shalt thou make him Thine and be infinitely more thy self by being His. 'T is like laying up Treasure in the Temple which thereby becomes more sacred and more assured too But then in the last place let us remember that what we have once solemnly dedicated to God cannot without Sacriledge be alienated Our Bodies being once his they are no more then our own For to whom we yield our selves Servants to obey his Servants we are to whom we obey Rom. 6. 16. Our gifts here like God's must be without Repentance nor can we recall much less employ them to any other use either of the World or Satan as we cannot serve God and Mammon so neither ought we to give him the Lean and this the Fat of our Sacrifice If our God will not part stakes surely he will not content himself with the worser share Let us then give him all and that all will be our Heart and our Affections that when we appear before him our Souls may ascend up to him as the Angel did in the flame of the Altar and that Flame may still be kept alive upon it be a continual Sacrifice such as may never cease and we may do that constantly on Earth which shall be our Eternal Employment in Heaven still praise and adore our Creator Then shall he change these our Sacrifices into everlasting Temples for himself to dwell in what we now present him natural Bodies turn into spiritual and make these our vile ones like unto his glorious one Which God of his Infinite Mercy grant c. Amen Soli Deo Gloria in aeternum A SERMON ON ESAY V. 20. The former Part of the Verse Wo unto them that call Evil good and Good Evil. THE great Creator has never been wanting to Man in prescribing him such Laws as might be sufficient if obeyed to make him happy whether we consider him in the State of Primitive Integrity or out of it In the former God so left him in the hands of his own Councel as to make himself his own Rule Nature was to him instead of Revelation he had then the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil planted in him Conscience was his Oracle and Reason his Guide and to know his Duty was but to consult himself God did not only wind him up as a Watch to a regular Motion but did withal place in him a Sun-dial to set himself by if he should go false so that his very Essence and Rule was then so much the same that to transgress was not so much to break a Law as a Man Nor did he by his Fall wholly forfeit all his natural Advantages either to himself or his Posterity For though our first Parent brake the natural Tables as Moses afterwards did those of Stone yet from the scattered pieces thereof set together we may all of us though imperfectly spell out our Duty The worst of men are born with a certain Decalogue Their Souls are not mere Rasae Tabulae there is a Book of Conscience wherein the different Characters of Good and Evil are plainly legible and by the help of those practical Notions which make
Light of Nature is but dim and its Assistance weak and they who followed that did but grope in the Dark and were apt ever and anon to stumble And no Marvel For some Evil does so well imitate Good that 't is hard for a natural Eye to make out the just Bounds and Limits of each of them The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Rule that marks out Vertue from its neighbouring Vice being not so plain in every place as to chalk out exactly to this point thou may'st come and no farther and therefore we find the best Philosophers Ethicks so imperfect that some Heathen Vertues are little better than Christian men's Vices Besides the Universal ill practice of mankind by putting a false gloss on Evil did so disguise it that the mistake of that for Good was very easie But Christ having in his Gospel given us such exact Rules whereby to judge of them One would think it were impossible now for men to be deceived And yet we find nothing so common and the moralists Observation most true Pauci dignoscere possunt vera bona atque illis multum diversa For while some look upon these things through such false Glasses as do alter their shape and proportion or their Organ is vitiated by some such bad humour as discolours every Object presented to it while the strength of passion blinds some men's reason or the pleasures of sin corrupts it and wicked men do so cunningly suit their Principles to others bad Tempers that they are presently swallowed without chewing 'T is hard to know things that are excellent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Apostle's word is Phil. 1. 10. things that differ especially men being willing to believe all lawfull that gratifies their vitious humour and inclination And this was it which rendred the Heathen Divinity so plausible to the World and the vile Doctrines of Gnosticks to loose Christians that it brought in such Shoals of Proselytes to them Upon all which Accounts David's Prayer will be very seasonable for every one of us Psal. 119. 66. Teach me O Lord good Judgment and Knowledge In the Original 't is good tast to try and relish what is good or in the Language of the Apostle give me Senses Exercis'd to discern Good and Evil. And while we thus beg God's Light and Direction let us as Christ bids us make our Eye good and single by clearing it from all carnal prejudice and that Dust and Filth which Satan and the World cast into it still rubbing and polishing natural Truths that they may shine out brighter and continually blowing up these Sparks into a flame Thus if we be not wanting to our selves God will improve our natural into a divine Light He will show us what is good by lifting up the Light of his Countenance upon us and enable us not only to call every thing by it proper Name Good good and Evil evil but withal to chuse the one and refuse the other That so the Curse of the Text may be turned into a Blessing and the Seeds of moral Vertue well cultivated here may yield us the Fruit of a blessed Immortality hereafter Which God of his infinite Mercy grant c. Amen Soli Dei Gloria in aeternum FINIS THE CONTENTS SERMON I. SAint Luk. XI 27 28. And it came to pass as he spake these things a certain woman of the company lift up her voice and said unto him Blessed is the womb that bare thee and the paps which thou hast sucked But he said Tea rather blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it Pag. 1 SERMON II. Tit. II. 14. Who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purifie to himself a peculiar people zealous of good works p. 34 SERMON III. Tit. II. 14. Who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purifie to himself a peculiar people zealous of good works p. 61. SERMON IV. St. Luk. II. 22. And when the days of her purification according to the Law of Moses were accomplished they brought him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. p. 87 SERMON V. Joh. XIX 37. And again another Scripture saith They shall look on him whom they have pierced p. 124 SERMON VI. Acts II. 24. Whom God hath raised up having loosed the pains of death because it was not possible that he should be holden of it p. 159 SERMON VII Joh. XVI 7. Nevertheless I tell you the truth it is expedient for you that I go away for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you but if I depart I will send him unto you p. 197 SERMON VIII Heb. I. 14. Are they not all ministring spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation p. 242 SERMON IX Colos. I. 12. Giving thanks unto the Father which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the Saints in light p. 287 SERMON X. St. Matth. VII 16. Ye shall know them by their fruits p. 321 SERMON XI Joh. XVI 2 3. They shall put you out of the Synagogues yea the time cometh that whosoever killeth you will think that he doth God service And these things will they doe unto you because they have not known the Father nor Me. p. 399 SERMON XII 1 Cor. XV. 19. If in this life only we have hope in Christ we are of all men most miserable p. 458 SERMON XII Rom. XII 1. I beseech you therefore Brethren by the mercies of God that ye present your bodies a living Sacrifice SERMON XIII holy acceptable unto God which is your reasonable service p. 490 SERMON XIV Esay V. 20. Wo unto them that call evil good and good evil p. 529 BOOKS Printed for and Sold by Tho. Bennet at the Half-Moon in St. Paul's Church-yard AThenae Oxonienses or an Exact History of all the Writers and Bishops who have had their Education in the Ancient and Famous University of Oxford from 1500 to the End of the Year 1690 Representing the Birth Fortune Preferments and Death of all those Authors and Prelates the great Accidents of their Lives the Fate and Character of their Writings The Work being so compleat that no Writer of Note of this Nation for near Two hundred years past is omitted fol. 2 Vol. Sir William Davenant's Works fol. Comedies and Tragedies by Tho. Killigrew fol. Beaumont and Fletcher's Plays fol. Shakespear's Works fol. Voyages and Adventures of Ferdinand Pinto a Portugal who was five times Shipwrackt sixteen times Sold and thirteen times made a Slave in Aethiopia China c. Written by Himself fol. Dr. Pocock on Joel A Critical History of the Text and Versions of the New Testament wherein is firmly Establish'd the Truth of those Acts on which the Foundation of Christian Religion is laid By Father Simon of the Oratory Together with a Refutation of such Passages as seem contrary to the Doctrine and Practice of the Church of England