shrewdly hurt by being cut off from that Body which they choose not to be of and so being punished into a Quiet enjoyment of their beloved Separation Some will by no means allow the Church any further power then onely to Exhort and to Advise and this but with a Proviso too that it extends not to such as think themselves too Wise and too Great to be Advised according to the Hypothesis of which persons the Authority of the Church and the obliging force of all Church Sanctions can bespeak men onely thus These and these things it is your Duty to do and if you will not do them you may as well let them alone A strict and efficacious Constitution indeed which invests the Church with no power at all but where men will be so Civil as to obey it and so at the same Time pay it a Duty and do it a Courtesie too But when in the Judgement of some men the Spiritual Function as Such must render a Churchman though otherwise never so Discreet and qualified yet meerly because he is a Church-man unfit to be intrusted by his Prince with a share of that Power and Jurisdiction which in many Circumstances his Prince has judged but too necessary to secure the Affairs and Dignity of the Church and which every thriving Grasier can think himself but ill dealt with if within his own Countrey he is not mounted to It is a sign that such discontented Persons intend not that Religion shall advise them upon any other Terms then that they may Ride and Govern their Religion But surely all our Kings and our Parliaments understood well enough what they did when they thought fit to prop and fortifie the Spiritual Order with some Power that was Temporal and such is the present state of the World in the judgment of any observing Eye that if the Bishop has no other defensives but Excommunication no other power but that of the Keys he may for any notable effect that he is like to do upon the factious and contumacious surrender up his Pastoral Staff shut up the Church and put those Keys under the Door And thus I have endeavored to show the Three things included in the general Nature of Government but to prescribe the manner of it in Particular is neither in my Power nor Inclination onely I suppose the Common Theory and Speculation of things is free and open to any one whom God has sent into the world with an ability to contemplate and by continuing him in the World gives him also opportunity In all that has been said I do not in the least pretend to Advise or Chalk out Rules to my Superiors for some men cannot be Fools with so good acceptance as others But whosoever is call'd to speak upon a certain occasion may I conceive without offence take any Text sutable to that occasion and having taken it may or at least ought to speak sutably to that Text. I proceed now to the second thing proposed from the Words which is the Means assigned for the Discharge of the Duties mentioned and exhibited under this one short Prescription Let no man despise thee In the handling of which I shall shew 1. The ill effects and destructive Influence that Contempt has upon Government 2. The groundless Causes upon which Church-Rulers are frequently despised 3. And lastly the just Causes that would render them or indeed any other Rulers worthy to be despised All which being clearly made out and impartially laid before our eyes it will be easie and obvious for every one by avoiding the Evil so markt out to answer and come up to the Apostles Exhortation And first we will discourse of Contempt and the maligne hostile Influence it has upon Government As for the thing it self every mans Experience will inform him that there is no Action in the Behaviour of one man towards another of which humane Nature is more Impatient than of Contempt It being a thing made up of these two Ingredients an undervaluing of a Man upon a belief of his utter Uselesnesse and Inability and a Spightful endeavour to engage the rest of the World in the same Belief and slight Esteem of him So that the immediate Design of Contempt is the shame of the Person contemned and Shame is a Banishment of him from the good Opinion of the World which every man most earnestly Desires both upon a Principle of Nature and of Interest For it is Natural to all men to affect a good Name he that despises a man Libels him in his Thoughts Reviles and Traduces him in his Judgement And there is also Interest in the Case For a Desire to be well thought of directly Resolves it self into that owned and mighty Principle of self-Preservation For as much as Thoughts are the first wheels and motives of Action and there is no long passage from one to the other He that Thinks a man to the ground will quickly endeavour to Lay him there for while he Despises him he Arraigns and Condemns him in his Heart and all the after Bitterness and Cruelties of his Practices are but the Executioners of the Sentence passed before upon him by his Judgement Contempt like the Planet Saturn has first an ill Aspect and then a destroying Influence By all which I suppose it is sufficiently proved how Noxious it must needs be to every Governour for can a man respect the Person whom he Despises and can there be Obedience where there is not so much as Respect will the Knee bend while the Heart Insults and the Actions Submit while the Aprehensions Rebel And therefore the most experienced Disturbers and Underminers of Government have always laid their first Train in Contempt endeavouring to blow it up in the Judgement and Esteem of the Subject And was not this method observed in the late most flourishing and succesful Rebellion for how studiously did they lay about them both from the Pulpit and the Press to cast a slurr upon the Kings Person and to bring his governing Abilities under a Disrepute and then after they had sufficiently Blasted him in his Personal Capacity they found it easie Work to dash and overthrow him in his Political Reputation is Power and consequently to Despise is to Weaken For where there is Contempt there can be no Awe and where there is no Awe there will be no Subjection and if there is no Subjection it is impossible without the help of the â—ormer Distinction of a Politick Capacity to imagine how a Prince can be a Governour He that makes his Prince despised and undervalued blows a Trumpet against him in mens Breasts beats him out of his Subjects hearts and fights him out of their Affections and after this he may easily strip him of his other Garrisons having already dispossest him of his strongest by dismantling him of his Honour and seising his Reputation Nor is what has been said of Princes less true of all other Governours form Highest to Lowest from him
that Heads an Army to him that is but Master of a Family or of one single Servant the formal Reason of a thing equally extending it self to every particular of the same kind It is a Proposition of Eternal Verity that None can Govern while he is Despised We may as well imagine that there may be a King without Majesty a Supreme without Soveraignty It is a Paradox and a Direct contradiction in Practise for where Contempt takes place the very Causes and Capacities of Government cease Men are so farr form being Governed by a despised Person that they will not so much as be taught by Him Truth it self shall lose its Credit if Delivered by a Person that has none As on the Contrary be but a Person in Vogue and Credit with the Multitude he shall be able to commend and set off whatsoever he says to authorize any Nonsence and to make Popular rambling incoherent Stuff seasoned with Twang and Tautology pass for high Rhetorick and moving Preaching such indeed as a Zealous Tradesman would even Live and Dye under And now I suppose it is no ill Topick of Argumentation to shew the Prevalence of Contempt by the contrary Influences of Respect which thus as it were Dubbs every little pettit Admired person Lord and Commander of all his Admirers And certain it is that the Ecclesiastical as well as the Civil Governour has cause to pursue the same Methods of Securing and Confirming himself the grounds and means of Government being founded upon the same bottom of Nature in both though the Circumstances and Relative Considerations of the Persons may differ And I have nothing to say more upon this Head but that if Church-men are called upon to Discharge the parts of Governours they may with the highest Reason expect those Supports and Helps that are indispensably Requisite thereunto and that those men are but Trapann'd who are called to Govern being invested with Authority but bereaved of Power which according to a true and plain Estimate of things is nothing else but to mock and betray them into a Splendid and Magisterial way of being Ridiculous And thus much for the ill Effects and destructive Influence that Contempt has upon Government I pass now to the 2d. Thing which is to shew the Groundless Causes upon which Church-Rulers are frequently Despised Concerning which I shall premise this That nothing can be a reasonable Ground of Despising a man but some Fault or other chargeable upon him and nothing can be a Fault that is not Naturally in a mans power to prevent Otherwise it is a mans Unhappiness his Mischance or Calamity but not his Fault Nothing can justly be Despised that cannot justly be Blamed and it is a most certain Rule in Reason and moral Philosophy That where there is no Choice there can be no Blame This premised we may take notice of two usual grounds of the Contempt men cast upon the Clergy and yet for which no man ought to think himself at all the more worthy to be Contemned 1. The first is their very Profession it self Concerning which it is a sad but an experimented Truth that the Names derived from it in the refined Language of the present Age are made but the Appellatives of Scorn This is not charged Universally upon all but experience will Affirm or rather proclaim it of much the greater part of the World and men must perswade us that we have lost our Hearing and our common Sence before we can believe the Contrary But surely the Bottom and Foundation of this Behaviour towards Persons set apart for the Service of God that this very Relation should entitle them to such a peculiar Scorn can be nothing else but Atheisme the growing rampant Sin of the Times For call a man Oppressor griping Covetous or over-reaching person and the Word indeed being ill befriended by Custom perhaps sounds not well but generally in the apprehension of the Hearer it signifies no more then that such an one is a Wise and a Thriving or in the common Phrase a Notable man which will certainly procure him a Respect And say of another that he is an Epicure a Loose or a Vicious man and it leaves in men no other Opinion of him then that he is a Merry a Pleasant and a Gentile Person and that he that taxes him is but a Pedant an Vnexperienced and a Morose fellow one that does not know men nor understand what it is to Eat and Drink well But call a man Priest or Parson and you set him in some mens Esteem ten degrees below his own Servant But let us not be Discouraged or Displeased either with our Selves or our Profession upon this account Let the Vertuoso's Mock Insult and Despise on yet after all they shall never be able to Droll away the Nature of things to trample a Pearl into a Pebble nor to make Sacred things Contemptible any more then themselves by such speeches Honourable 2. Another groundless Cause of some mens despising the Governours of our Church is their loss of that former Grandeur and Priviledge that they enjoyed But it is no real Disgrace to the Church meerly to lose her Priviledges but to forfeit them by her Fault or Misdemeanor of which she is not Conscious Whatsoever she injoyed in this kind she readily acknowledges to have streamed from the Royal Munificence and the favours of the Civil Power shining upon the Spiritual which Favours the same Power may retract and gather back into it self when it pleases And we Envy not the Greatness and Lustre of the Romish Clergy neither their Scarlet Gowns nor their Scarlet Sins If our Church cannot be Great which is better she can be Humble and content to be Reformed into as low a Condition as men for their own private Advantage would have her who wisely tell her that it is best and safest for her to be without any Power or Temporal advantage like the good Physician who out of tenderness to his Patient lest he should hurt himself by Drinking was so kind as to rob him of his silver Cup. The Church of England Glories in nothing more then that she is the truest Friend to Kings and to Kingly Government of any other Church in the World that they were the same Hands and Principles that took the Crown from the Kings Head and the Mitre from the Bishops It is indeed the Happiness of some Professions and Callings that they can equally square themselves to and thrive under all Revolutions of Government but the Clergy of England neither know nor affect that Happiness and are willing to be Despised for not doing so And so farr is our Church from encroaching upon the Civil Power as some who are Back-friends to both would maliciously Insinuate that were it stript of the very Remainder of its Priviledges and made as like the Primitive Church for its Bareness as it is already for its Purity it could Cheerfully and what is more Loyally want all such Priviledges and
Authority from his Ordination as was specified in the fifth Verse of the first Chapter And now looking upon Titus under this Qualification he addresses a long Advice and Instruction to him for the discharge of so important a Function all along the first and second Chapter but summs up all in this last Verse which is the subject of the ensuing Discourse and contains in it these two things 1. An account of the Duties of his Place or Office 2. Of the means to facilitate and make effectual their Execution The Duties of his place were two 1. To Teach 2. To Rule Both comprized in these words These things speak and exhort and rebuke with all Authority And then the means the onely means to make him Successful Bright and Victorious in the performance of these great works was to be above Contempt to shine like the Baptist with a clear and a triumphant Light In a word it is every Bishops duty to Teach and to Govern and his way to do it is not to be despised We will discourse of each respectively in their Order 1. And first for the first branch of the great work incumbent upon a Church Ruler which is to Teach A work that none is too great or too high for it is a work of Charity and Charity is the work of Heaven which is always laying it self out upon the Needy and the Impotent nay and it is a work of the highest and the noblest Charity for he that teacheth another gives an Almes to his soul he cloathes the nakedness of his Understanding and relieves the wants of his impoverished Reason he indeed that governs well leads the Blind but he that teaches him gives him Eyes and it is a glorious thing to have been the Recoverer and Repairer of a decayed Intellect and a Sub-worker to Grace in freeing it from some of the inconveniencies of Original sin It is a Benefaction that gives a man a kind of Prerogative for even in the common Dialect of the world every Teacher is called a Master it is the property of Instruction to descend and upon that very account it supposes him that instructs the Superiour or at least makes him so To say a man is advanced too high to condescend to teach the Ignorant is as much as to say that the Sun is in too high a place to shine upon what is below him The Sun is said to rule the day and the Moon to rule the night but do they not Rule them onely by enlighting them Doctrine is that that must prepare men for Discipline and men never go on so cheerfully as when they see where they goe Nor is the dullness of the Scholar to extinguish but rather to enflame the charity of the Teacher for since it is not in men as in vessels that the smallest capacity is the soonest filled where the labour is doubled the value of the work is enhaunced for it is a sowing where a man never expects to reap any thing but the Comfort and Conscience of having done vertuously And yet we know moreover that God sometimes converts even the dull and the slow turning very Stones into Sons of Abraham where besides that the difficulty of the Conquest advances the Trophee of the Conquerer it often falls out that the backward Learner makes amends another way recompencing Sure for Suddain and expiating his want of Docility with a deeper and a more rooted Sincerity Which alone were argument sufficient to inforce the Apostles injunction of being instant in season and out of season even upon the highest and most exalted Ruler in the Church He that sits in Moses chair sits there to Instruct as well as to Rule and a Generals office engages him to Lead as well as to Command his Army In the first of Ecclesiastes Solomon represents himself both as Preacher and King of Israel and every soul that a Bishop gains is a new accession to the extent of his Power he preaches his Jurisdiction wider and enlarges his spiritual Diocess as he enlarges mens apprehensions The Preaching part indeed of a Romish Bishop is easie enough whose Grand business is onely to teach men to be Ignorant to instruct them how to know Nothing or which is all one to know upon Trust to believe implicitly and in a word to see with other mens eyes till they come to be lost in their own souls But our Religion is a Religion that dares to be understood that offers it self to the search of the Inquisitive to the inspection of the severest and the most awakened Reason for being secure of her substantial Truth and Purity she knows that for her to be seen and look into is to be embraced and admired as there needs no greater argument for men to love the light then to see it It needs no Legends no Service in an unknown tongue no inquisition against Scripture no purging out of the heart and sence of Authors no altering or bribing the voice of Antiquity to speak for it it needs none of all these laborious Artifices of ignorance none of all these cloaks and coverings The Romish faith indeed must be covered or it cannot be kept warm and their Clergy deal with their Religion as with a great Crime if it is Discovered they are undone But there is no Bishop of the Church of England but accounts it his Interest as well as his Duty to comply with this Precept of the Apostle Paul to Titus These things teach and exhort Now this Teaching may be effected two ways 1. Immediately by himself 2. Mediately by others And first immediately by himself Where God gives a Talent the Episcopal Robe can be no Napkin to hide it in Change of Condition changes not the abilities of Nature but makes them more illustrious in their exercise and the Episcopal dignity added to a good Preaching faculty is like the erecting of a stately Fountain upon a Spring which still for all that remains as much a Spring as it was before and flows as plentifully onely it flows with the circumstance of greater State and Magnificence Height of place is intended onely to stamp the endowments of a private condition with Lustre and Authority And thanks be to God neither the Churches profess'd enemies nor her pretended friends have any cause to asperse her in this respect as having over her such Bishops as are able to silence the Factious no less by their Preaching then by their Authority But then on the other hand let me add also that this is not so absolutely necessary as to be of the vitall Constitution of this Function He may teach his Diocess who ceases to be able to preach to it for he may do it by appointing Teachers and by a vigilant exacting from them the care and the instruction of their respective Flocks He is the Spiritual father of his Diocess and a Father may see his Children taught though he himself does not turn Schoolmaster It is not the gift of every Person nor