necessary would not rigorously tie up others to their measures but would allow every man to abound in his own sense so long as the Churches Peace is not thereby injured we should not have so manny bitter Quarrels and Heart-burnings among us But alass whilst every one will frame a Systeme of Divinity of his own head and every puny Notion of that Systeme must be Christen'd by the name of an Article of Faith and every man that doth not believe just as he doth must straight be a Heretick for doing so How can it be expected but we must wrangle eternally It were heartily to be wished that Christians would consider that the Articles of Faith those things that God hath made necessary by every one to be believed in order to his Salvation are but very few and they are all of them so plainly and clearly set down in the Scripture that it is impossible for any sincere honest-minded man to miss of the true sense of them And they have further this Badg to distinguish them from all other Truths that they have an immediate influence upon mens Lives a direct Tendency to make men Better whereas most of those things that make the matter of our Controversies and about which we make such a noise and clamour and for which we so bitterly censure and anathematize one another are quite of another nature They are neither so clearly revealed or propounded in the Scripture but that even good men through the great difference of their Parts Learning and Education may after their best endeavours vary in their sentiments about them Nor do they at all concern a Christian Life but are matters of pure notion and speculation So that it cannot with any reason be pretended that they are points upon which Mens Salvation doth depend It cannot be thought that God will be offended with any man for his Ignorance or Mistakes concerning them And if not if a man may be a Good Christian and go to Heaven whether he holds the right or the wrong side in these matters for Gods sake why should we be angry with any one for having other opinions about them than we have Why should we not rather permit men to use their Understandings as well as they can and where they fail of the Truth to bear with them as God himself without question will then by stickling for every impertinent unnecessary Truth destroy that Peace and Love and Amity that ought to be among Christians The second thing I would recommend is a great simplicity and purity of Intention in the pursuit of Truth and at no hand to let passion or interest or any self-end be ingredient into our Religion The practice of this would not more conduce to the discovery of Truth than it would to the promoting of Peace For it is easie to observe that it is not always a pure concernment for the Truth in the points in Controversie that makes us so zealous so fierce and so obstinate in our Disputes for or against them but something of which that is onely the Mask and Pretence some By-ends that must be served some Secular Interest that we have espoused which must be carried on We have either engaged our selves to some Party and so its Interests right or wrong must be promoted or we have taken up an opinion inconsiderately at the first and appeared in the favour of it and afterward our own credit doth oblige us to defend it or we have received some slight or disappointment from the Men of one way and so in pure pet and revenge we pass over to their Adversaries Or it is for our gain and advantage that the Differences among us be still kept afoot or we desire to get our selves a name by some great Atchievments in the Noble Science of Controversies or we are possessed with a spirit of Contradiction or we delight in Novelties or we love to be singular These are the things that too often both give birth to our Controversies and also nourish and foment them If we would but cast these Beams out of our eyes we should both see more clearly and certainly live more peaceably But whilest we pursue base and sordid ends under the pretence of maintaining Truth we shall always be in error and always in contention Let us therefore quit our selves of all our prepossessions let us mortify all our Pride and Vain-glory our Passion and Emulation our Covetousness and Revenge and bring nothing in the world to our Debates about Religion but onely the pure love of Truth and then our Controversies will not be so long and they will be more calmly and peaceably managed and they will redound to the greater good of all Parties And this I dare say further to encourage you to labour after this temper of mind That he that comes thus qualified to the study of Religion though he may not have the luck always to light on the Truth yet with all his errors be they what they will he is more acceptable to God than the Man that hath Truth on his side yet takes it up or maintains it to serve a turn He that believes a Falsehood after he hath used his sincere endeavours to find the Truth is not half so much a Heritick as he that professeth a Truth out of Evil Principles and prostituteth it to unworthy ends The third Rule is Never to quarrel about Words and Phrases but so long as other men mean much what the same that we do let us be content though they have not the luck to express themselves so well I do not know how it comes to pass whether through too much heat and eagerness of disputing that we do not mind one anothers Sense or whether through too much love to our own manner of Thinking or Speaking that we will not endure any thing but what is conveyed to us in our own Methods But really it often happens that most bitter Quarrels do commence not so much from the different Sense of the contending Parties concerning the things they contend about as from their different Terms expressing the same Sense and the different Grounds they proceed upon or Arguments they make use of for the proof of it For my part I verily believe that this is the Case of several of those Disputes in which we Protestants do often engage at this day I do not think in many points our Differences are near so wide as they are sometimes represented but that they might easily be made up with a little allowance to mens Words and Phrases and the different Methods of deducing their Notions It would be perhaps no hard matter to make this appear in those Controversies that are so much agitated among us concerning Faith and Justification and the necessity of good works to Salvation and Imputed Righteousness and the difference between Virtue and Grace with some others if this were a fit place for it The difference that is among us as to these Points is possibly not much
live under is neither so Lax as to defeat its own ends nor so Severe as to exercise Tyranny over our Consciences The Terms of our Communion are more large and moderate and easie to be submitted to by men of different Perswasions than any other Church-Society that I know of doth allow at this day And this is so acknowledged that there is scarce any of the several disagreeing Parties among us but next to their own Church would prefer Ours before all Others The Doctrins that make up our publick Confession are expressed in such a latitude that they have been and are generally assented to by most of the Dissenters from us And that wherein We differ from others is not our adding to the Faith new and questionable Doctrins but our rejecting or not imposing their Innovations Our Publick Service hath not a Prayer in it but what any Christian in the World may lawfully say Amen to Our Ceremonies are but few and those very decent and unquestionably of Primitive Antiquity The Penalties which the Laws inflict upon those that separate from our Communion are so easie and so moderate that methinks Sober men should be ashamed to call them Persecutions and should rather sit down contentedly under them than by endeavouring or desiring any Alteration endanger the bringing the Church and possibly themselves into far greater inconveniencies than those they now suffer In a word so excellent is the temper of our present Settlement that there is no Church in the World with which men of differing Perswasions may more safely communicate and under which even Dissenters if they be peaceble may live more happily than the Church of England But now how do we demean our selves under this happy Constitution of affairs What Fruits of the Gospel of Peace do we yield suitable to these great external Advantages One might rationally expect to see Religion in quite another Face among us than it hath in other parts of the World and that enjoying such excellent means of Peace and Unity as we do and especially having sufficiently experienced the Miseries of Discord there should no such thing as Faction or Division be heard of among us but that we should All like Brethren Christianly joyn together with our Common Mother and in smaller matters bear with one anothers Weaknesses and Ignorances and Mistakes as doubtless God himself will and as the Church which is principally concern'd in many cases doth But alass the event doth too notoriously discover the contrary to all this and that to the shame of our selves and the reproach of our Church and the scandal of Religion and the rejoycing of our Enemies and the grief of all good men Never were our Differences higher our Oppositions one of another more violent our Schisms and Separations more numerous and more obstinate than they are at this day We dispute eternally we quarrel without grounds and without measure we stickle for every Trifle and are as much concerned for the propagating a silly Notion which might very well be let alone without our being a jot the worse Christians as if the Fundamentals of our Religion lay at stake We revile we reproach we bespatter one another and though we be extremely scrupulous in smaller matters yet we make no scruple of sacrificing charity and the Churches peace to every humour and every passion And whilest we are zealous in the matter of an Opinion or a small Ceremony we often lose all sense of Religion and Good manners and even Humanity it self What the Consequences of these unreasonable and unchristian Feuds may be we know not I pray God they do not end either in a very great Corruption or a total Subversion of Christianity among us It was these sins if it be lawful to guess at the reason of Gods Judgments from outward Appearances that brought desolation upon those once flourishing Churches of Afric and Asia and who knows if they be obstinately persisted in but they may be an occasion of Gods removing his Candlestick from us also And now is it not needful that every Christian should use his utmost endeavour to still that Spirit of Contention that is gone forth among us Is it not needful that every Son of Peace should bring some water to the quenching of our Flames Let me therefore this day take up St. Pauls exhortation to you let me beseech you let me conjure you if there be any Consolation in Christ if any Comfort of Love if any Fellowship of the Spirit if any Bowels and Mercies that now at length laying aside all bitterness and evil speaking all variance and emulation all needless Disputes and Contentions you would unanimously joyn together in following after the things that make for peace And that my Exhortation may be the more effectual to the purposes I intend it for I shall pursue it First by way of Direction Secondly by way of Motive First I shall reduce the Duty here enjoyned of Following the things that make for peace to its particular Rules and Instances that you may know what is to be done by you in order to the performance of it Secondly I shall set before you the very great Engagements and Obligations that lie upon us to follow after the things that make for peace that you may be perswaded the more vigorously to set about it And both these things I shall manage as near as I can with respect to the present state and posture of Affairs among us and withal shall alwayes remember that my business is not to prescribe Laws or Rules to my Superiors for their Carriage in these matters but only to represent the Duty that Christians of a private capacity do owe to the Publick and to one another As for the First thing which is to direct and instruct you in the performance of this duty of following the things that make for peace you may be pleased to take notice That this Duty hath a twofold Object according to the two different Relations and Capacities in which we are to be considered to wit the Church our Mother and Particular Christians our Brethren In the first Relation we are considered as Subjects in the second as Fellow-Christians With respect to the former the Peace we are to pursue implies Obedience and Preservation of Communion in opposition to Schism and Separation With respect to the latter it implies mutual Love and Charity in opposition to Quarrels and Contentions My business therefore upon this first head is to shew what are the Particulars of our Duty what are the means that conduce to Peace in both these respects And first of all I begin with what is due from us to the Church in order to Peace as Peace stands in contradistinction to Schism And this Point I shall beg leave to discuss very freely and very particularly because I fear we have generally many false Notions about it and yet it is a matter of such consequence that I doubt not but the right understanding of it would go a
greater than this that some men in these matters speak more clearly and fully others more imperfectly and obscurely Some men convey their sense in plain and proper words others delight in Metaphors and do perhaps too far extend the Figurative expressions of Scripture Some reason more closely and upon more certain Principles others possibly may proceed upon weaker grounds and misapplyed Texts of Scripture and discourse more loosely But both Parties especially the more moderate of both seem to drive at much what the same thing though by different ways as appears from this that being interrogated concerning the Consequences of their several Opinions they generally agree in admitting or rejecting the same But fourthly another thing that would make for peace is this Never to charge upon men the Consequences of their Opinions when they expresly disown them This is another thing that doth hugely tend to widen our Differences and to exasperate mens spirits one against another when having examined some Opinion of a Man or Party of Men and finding very great absurdities and evil consequences necessarily to flow from it we presently throw all those into the dish of them that hold the Opinion as if they could not own the one but they must necessarily own the other whereas indeed the men we thus charge may be so innocent in this matter that they do not in the least dream of such Consequences or if they did they would be so far from owning them that they would abhor the Opinion for their sakes To give you an instance or two in this matter It is a Doctrin maintained by some That Gods Will is the Rule of Justice or that every thing is therefore just or good because God wills it Those that are concerned to oppose this Doctrin do contend that if this Doctrin be true it will necessarily follow that no man can have any certainty of the Truth of any one Proposition that God hath revealed in Scripture Granting now that this can by just consequence be made out yet I dare say those that hold the foresaid Doctrin would be very angry and had good reason so to be if they were told that they did not no nor could not upon their Principles certainly believe the Scripture Some Men think that they can with demonstrative evidence make out that the Doctrin of Gods irrespective Decrees doth in its Consequences overthrow the whole Gospel that it doth destroy the nature of Rewards and Punishments cuts the very Sinews of mens Endeavours after virtue makes all Laws Promises Exhortations perfectly idle and insignificant things and renders God the most unlovely Being in the world Now supposing all this to be true yet it would be a most unjust and uncharitable thing to affirm of any that believe that Doctrin many of whom are certainly pious and good men that they do maintain any such impious and blasphemous Opinions as those that are now mentioned The sum of all is that a man may believe a Proposition and not believe all that follows from it not but that all the deductions from a Proposition are equally true and equally credible with the Proposition from whence they are deduced But a man may not so clearly see through the Proposition as to discern that such Consequences are really deducible from it So that we are at no hand to charge them upon him unless he do explicitly own them If this Rule was observed our Differences would not make so great a noise nor would the Errors and Heterodoxies maintained among us appear so monstrous and extravagant and we should spare a great many hard words and odious appellations which we now too prodigally bestow upon those that differ from us The fifth Rule is to abstract mens Persons from their Opinions and in examining or opposing these never to make any reflections upon those This is a thing so highly reasonable that methinks no pretender to ingenuity should ever need to be called upon to observe it For it seems very absurd and ridiculous in any Argument to meddle with that that nothing concerns the Question But what do Personal Reflections concern the Cause of Religion what ever it may be to the Reputation of an Opinion I am sure it is nothing to the Truth of it that such or such a man holds it And truly if men would leave this impertinence we might hope for a better issue of our Religious Debates but whilest men will forsake the Merits of the Cause and unmanly fall to railing and disparaging Mens Persons and scraping together all the ill that can be said of them they blow the Coals of Contention they so imbitter and envenom the Dispute that it rankles into incurable distasts and heart-burnings Christians would do well to consider that these mean arts of exposing Mens Persons to discredit their Opinions are very much unworthy the Dignity of their Profession and most of all misbecoming the Sacredness and Venerableness of the Truth they contend for And besides no Cause stands in need of them but such an one as is extremely baffled and desperate and even then they are the worst Arguments in the world to support it For quick-sighted men will easily see through the Dust we endeavour to raise and those that are duller will be apt to suspect from our being so angry and so waspish that we have but a bad matter to manage We should consider that Mens Persons are Sacred things that what ever power we have to judg of their Opinions we have no authority to judg or censure Them That to bring Them upon the Stage and there throw dirt on them is highly rude and uncivil and an affront to Human Society and the most contrary thing in the world to Christian Charity which is so far from enduring Reproaches and Evil speaking that it obliges us to cover as much we can all the Faults and even the very Indiscretions of others The sixth and last thing I shall recommend to you as an Expedient of Peace is a vigorous pursuit of Holiness Do but seriously set your selves to be good Do but get your Hearts deeply affected with Religion as well as your Heads and then there is no fear but you will be all the Sons of Peace We may talk what we will but really it is our not Practising our Religion that makes us so Contentious and Disputatious about it It is our Emptiness of the Divine Life that makes us so full of Speculation and Controversie was but That once firmly rooted in us these Weeds and Excrescencies of Religion would presently dry up and wither we should loath any longer to seed upon such Husks after we once came to have a Relish of that Bread Ah how little satisfaction can all our pretty Notions and fine-spun Controversies yield to a Soul that truly hungers and thirsts after Righteousness How pitifully flatly and insipidly will they taste in comparison of the Divine Entertainments of the Spiritual Life Were we but seriously taken up with the Substantials of our Religion we should not have leisure for the Talking Disputing Divinity we should have greater matters to take up our Thoughts and more Profitable Arguments to furnish out our Discourses So long as we could busy our selves in working out our Salvation and furthering the Salvation of others we should think it but a mean Employment to spend our time in spinning fine Nets for the catching of Flies Besides this Divine Life if it once took place in us would strangely dilate and enlarge our hearts in Charity towards our Brethren it would make us open our arms wide to the whole Creation it would perfectly work out of us all that Peevishness and Sowrness and Penuriousness of spirit which we do too often contract by being addicted to a Sect and would make us Sweet and Benign and Obliging and ready to receive and embrace all Conditions of men In a word it would quite swallow up all Distinctions of Parties and what ever did but bear upon it the Image of God and the Superscription of the Holy Jesus would need no other Commendatories to our Affection but would upon that alone account be infinitely dear and pretious to us Let us all therefore earnestly contend after this Divine Principle of Holiness let us bring down Religion from our Heads to our Hearts from Speculation to Practice Let us make it our business heartily to love God and do his will and then we may hope to see Peace in our days This this is that that will restore to the World the Golden Age of Primitive Christianity when the Love and Unity of the Disciples of Jesus was so conspicuous and remarkable that it became into a Proverb See how the Christians love one another This this is that that will bring in the Accomplishment of all those glorious Promises of Peace and Tranquillity that Christ hath made to his Church Then shall the Wolf dwell with the Lamb and the Leopard lie down with the Kid Then shall not Ephraim envy Judah nor Judah vex Ephraim but we shall turn our Swords into Plough-shares and our Spears into Pruning-hooks and there will be no more consuming or devouring in all Gods Holy Mountain I should now proceed to the second General Point in my proposed Method of handling this Text viz. To set before you the very great Engagements and Obligations we have upon us to follow after the Things that make for Peace and that 1. From the Nature and Contrivance of our Religion 2. From the great weight the Scripture lays upon this Duty 3. From the great Unreasonableness of our Religious Differences 4. From the very evil Consequences that attend them as 1. In that they are great Hinderances of a good Life 2. They are very pernicious to the Civil Peace of the State 3. They are highly Opprobrious to Christianity in general And 4. and lastly Very dangerous to the Protestant Religion as giving too many advantages and too much encouragement to the Factors of the Papacy But I have I fear already exceeded the Limits of a Sermon and therefore shall add no more God open our eyes that we may in this our day understand the Things that belong to Peace before they be hid from our eyes FINIS V. 4. seq Ver. 13 14 15. Ver. 17. Ver. 18. Mr. Hales Eph. 5. 25. Acts 20. 28. Eph. 5. 23. 1 Cor. 12. 13. Eph. 5. 26. Rom. 16. 17.
Hooker Mayor Jovis xxvii die Augusti 1674. Annoque Regni Regis CAROLI Secundi Angliae c. xxvi ORDERED by this Court That Mr. Sharpe be desired to Print his Sermon Preached on Sunday last before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of this City at the Guild-Hall Chappel WAGSTAFFE Imprimatur Sept. 11. 74. Guliel Wigan Rev. in Ch. Pat. ac D o. D o. Humf. Episc. Lond. in Sac. Dom. The Things that make for Peace DELIVERED IN A SERMON Preached before the Right Honourable THE Lord Mayor AND THE Court of ALDERMEN AT GUILD-HALL CHAPPEL Upon the 23. of August 1674. By JOHN SHARPE Chaplain to the Right Honourable Heneage Lord Finch Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England LONDON Printed by Andrew Clark for Walter Kettilby at the Bishops Head in St. Pauls Church Yard 1674. To the Right Honourable S r William Hooker LORD MAYOR of LONDON And to the COURT of ALDERMEN Right Honourable THe following Discourse was never designed to go further than your own Chappel otherwise it had not been left so Imperfect but since you have thought fit to Order it should be more Publick it would ill become me who do in it so earnestly Press Obedience to Superiors to dispute your Commands Such therefore as it is I humbly Present it to you heartily wishing it may in some degree Minister to the Promoting Peace and Unity and Brotherly Love among us which is the onely thing therein aimed at by RIGHT HONORABLE Your most Humble and Obedient Servant JOHN SHARPE ROM xiv 19. Let us therefore follow after the things that make for Peace THE Apostles design in this Chapter is to perswade the Roman Christians to live Peaceably one with another notwithstanding all their different Perswasions in matters of Religion He doth not so much set himself to Resolve their Controversies to Determine which Side held the Truest Opinions as to Silence their Disputes to allay those Bitternesses and Animosities with which the several Parties prosecuted each other to oblige them to embrace one another in Christian Charity and though there could not be an Unity of Judgment among them which certainly is a thing can never be expected mens apprehensions concerning things being necessarily almost as various as are their Tempers and Complexions yet nevertheless they should so order the matter that there might at least be an Unity of Affection and an amicable communication one with another He represents to them that they had nothing to do to Judg or Censure their Brethren for they were Gods Servants and to Him only they stood or fell that though they were mistaken in their Notions as to the Points in Controversie yet nevertheless if what was done upon those mistaken Principles was done out of a pure heart and as in obedience to the Commands of God it would be accepted of him He is so far from countenancing their Religious Quarrels that he adviseth even those that held the true side of the Question to submit for Peace sake and rather to recede from their right to forbear doing that which they might lawfully do than by undue use of their Liberty to cast a Stumbling-block before the weak uninstructed Dissenters and be a means of their forsaking Christianity And the more to enforce this discourse he assures them that however they might pretend Religion for their present differences yet in truth That was of all other things the least interessed in them They were much mistaken in the nature of it if they took it to consist in such small inconsiderable external things as they made the matter of their Dissensions Christianity was not much concerned whether they ate such kind of Meats or whether they did not eat them whether they kept Sabbaths and New-moons holy to the Lord or whether they esteemed every day alike That was a more inward and a more noble thing It was the hearty practice of Righteousness and Peace and Rejoycing to do good These were the things that made a man a Christian and in These things saith the Apostle he that serveth Christ is indeed acceptable to God and approved of men And then at last from these several Particulars he draws this general Inference by way of Exhortation Let us therefore follow after the things that make for peace I have given you a brief account of the Apostles discourse in this Chapter and I could heartily wish that I had no occasion to deal any further upon this Subject Happy were it for Christians if things were in that posture among them that they were no further concerned in these Discourses of Scripture than only to be instructed in the sense of them But alas whoever understands any thing of the state of Christianity now for these many Ages in the World will easily see that no one Point of our Religion has been in all times more necessary to be daily preached to be earnestly pressed to be loudly sounded in the ears of Christians than this of Peace and Love and mutual sufferance under their different apprehensions of Religion It has fared as one hath observed with Christianity in this matter as it did with the Jewish Dispensation of old The great and principal Commandment which God gave the Jews and which as they themselves teach was the Foundation of all their Law was to worship the God of Israel and Him only to serve yet such was the sottishness and perverseness of that People that This was the Commandment that of all others they could never be obliged to keep but they were continually runing a whoring after the Gods of the Nations notwithstanding all the various ways and methods that God made use of to reclaim them from that sin What the Worship of one God was to the Jews that Peace and Love and Unity is to the Christians even the grand distinguishing Law and Character of their Profession and yet with sorrow and to our unspeakable confusion it may be spoken There is no Religion that ever was known in the World hath given Birth to so many Heresies hath been intituled to so many needless Disputes and Quarrels hath been crumbled into so many Sects and Parties hath been prosecuted by all the several Pretenders to it with so much heat and fury and implacable animosity hath been made the occasion of so much Tumult War and Bloudshed as this excellent this innocent and gall-less Religion of ours To go no further than our selves and the posture we stand in at this day if ever any Society of Christians could be obliged to live in Brotherly Love and Communion with one another we certainly are the Men. For besides the engagements of our Religion common to us with other Christians we have all the external advantages which a wise and well temper'd Settlement of Church-affairs a mild and just Government and excellent Laws can give to the promoting thereof Religion is established among us in as great Purity as ever perhaps it was since the Apostles times The Government we