taken away but strongly confirm'd the necessity of obedience to God's Laws whether written or natural which was as we have before observ'd the general intent of Religion and agreeable to those notions the World commonly had of it Since for the better carrying on this end Mysteries are so very advantageous to religion as to make Men have reverend apprehensions of it upon account of its incomparable Excellencies in its causes and effects and upon account of the weakness and shallowness of their own understandings since all these particulars are true it 's likewise absolutely necessary that the Christian the onely true Holy pure Religion should be built upon such a foundation as might appear to all Men upon the strictest inquiry beyond all doubt or controversie Mysterious inexplicable incomprehensible Nor could it be an impertinent labour to clear this truth because it totally ruines all the pretences of the Socinians that after the Revelation once made of the great fundamentals of our Faith there could remain nothing of so obscure a nature but that we by the pure strength of our own reason might be able to comprehend it In short that though it be true that Scripture as sufficient for that purpose is and ought to be the sole rule of Faith yet reason ought to be the rule of Scripture Reason as it now stands loaded with all the miserable consequences of sin reason so blind as without the extraordinary light of holy Scriptures to be wholly unable to lead a Man to Eternal life it obviates their assertions that the true ancient Catholick Interpretation of this and other Texts of Scripture that speak of the eternal Divine nature of the Son of God or of that glorious Trinity subsisting in the Father Son and Holy Ghost is false and unreasonable meerly because it introduces an unintelligible incarnation and unity of the Divine and Humane nature in Christ a Mysterious co-essentiality of God the Father God the Son and God the Holy Ghost c. notwithstanding all those glorious revelations God has made of himself in Scripture For if it be certainly true that Religion in it's general notion cannot subsist unless built upon a mystick foundation and that therefore Christian Religion in particular cannot subsist without it then it will follow that the continuing Mystick nature of the great Articles of our Faith can create no prejudice in any person whatsoever against our Religion on their account since especially it will remain impossible to draw any genuine consequences from those mysteries but what will be so far from impeaching that they will strongly confirm and re-inforce all those duties relating to God or man which are laid upon us by the natural or written Law and it will follow farther that the Socinians themselves by their endeavours to level all the Articles of our Faith the great saving principles of the Gospel to impair'd reason or by endeavouring to leave Christiany naked of all Mysteries do what in them lies to disannul all the Religion of Christians to take away all the use and advantage of the Gospel leaving the world so involv'd in Atheism or in meer Deism at this time very little to be preferr'd before the other Having done now with the positive assertion our next work is with all exactness and humility to consider the illustration of this Proposition in the severals laid down by the Apostle which altogether afford us the whole sum and substance of the Gospel for all that glad tydings sent from Heaven to Earth for the comfort of mankind consists in this That for their sakes to procure their Salvation God was manifest in the flesh justified in the spirit seen of Angels preach'd unto the Gentiles believ'd on in the world receiv'd up into glory all which particulars tho' the full prosecution of the first be all our present task are incomprehensible mysteries yet as well worth our enquiring into as the Apostles writing them who without doubt would never have laid the weight of piety or godliness or true Religion upon those grounds had they not been worth our looking into or their truth worth our vindicating from all the attacks of prejudiced opinionative or haeretical men It 's true a late author tells us Naked Gospel p 34. c. 1. l. 20. That to dispute concerning a Mystery and at the same time to confess it a mystery is a contradiction as great as any in the greatest mystery the expression is worth our remark for the boldness and absurdity it contains It 's bold not to say impious to insinuate so broadly in a discourse where Christianity's concern'd that all great Mysteries are made up of or at least contain contradictions what have we then nothing at all Mysterious in Scripture what 's that love between the blessed Jesus and his Spouse the Church so admirably character'd in the book of Canticles can our Author find nothing Mysterious in all those adumbrations of ineffable love or can he easily give us a Catalogue of the Contradictions there the real Contradictions I mean for things that are of no mysterious nature at all on any other account may seem to contain somewhat contradictory but seeming contradictions are not real Can he fathom every thing relating to Daniel's weeks Men of a great deal of learning industry and sobriety have taken a great deal of pains to explain the mystery of them and have scarce yet given the world satisfaction were not the Vision mysterious it would be more easily clear'd but because it is not must it therefore be contradictious to it self or to make a yet closer instance the nature of a God can He or any Socinian make it comprehensible to humane understandings or else will the very notion of a God imply a contradiction He must be a very new fangled Son of the Church of England who will assert that but why must it imply a contradiction to dispute or discourse about or to enquire into a confest mystery That God was manifest in the flesh is true we believe that every circumstance relating to his Incarnation as laid down in Scripture is true according to the genuine and common interpretation of such words whereby these circumstances are express'd we believe too That as they are true we may dispute about them and clear them from all that Sophistry whereby some subtle men would fain baffle us out of them is no uncouth or irrational opinion yet after all we take the whole account of this Incarnation as laid down in Scripture to be a very great mystery But where lyes the Contradiction either in believing it a mystery or in defending it as such This truth that God was manifest in the flesh is as before intimated that upon the literal truth of which the whole Salvation of mankind depends How he should have been so is to all mankind mysterious and incomprehensible yet may we without any contradiction explain defend prove and draw inferences from it Hear what a Bishop of our own a genuine
every place and made an unthinking Generation prostrate themselves to him for good and assistance when the World contain'd no other Enemie to their good but himself it may seem strange that the World should have been seiz'd with so gross a Stupidity as to be lyable to the fatal Mistake but when ignorance prevails it 's no wonder that a Spirit of such active subtlety should extend his Conquests very far where the Soul is once made like a fair Table without any impression it 's easie for the first that attempts it to draw the Pourtraict of the Devil upon it now the Engines by which the Devil held the Soul in slavery were these False Interests Interest is what goes a great way in managing the affairs of this World where it 's conceiv'd to lie it often excites in vigorous and apprehensive Souls a strange industry and eagerness to carry on whatsoever seems subservient to it nay he 's justly looked upon as his own Enemy who does not observe his own Interests and prosecute them to extremity this the Devil knowing very well set false Interests before the Eyes of much the greater part of Mankind some few sagacious Souls were sensible of his Subtleties and stood upon their guard kept their Eyes so open that his Lethaean bough was unable to close them but the rest were lulled by the fatal musick of bewitching Syrens into such Dreams as nothing but eternal ruines could awake them from thus the Devil perswaded Men That Liberty was their interest not that sacred liberty from sin and guilt which Divine Religion offers to the Soul but a wild extravagance the product of wretched inconsideracy which carries men out into all excess of wickedness a Liberty which has no bounds but what time and mortality sets before it and yet which is so far from being a true Liberty that it 's the most miserable and to the Soul when it has leisure but to think a little the most intolerable slavery in the World But however Liberty is the word and it carries charms along with it and too too few reflect upon it so far as to distinguish between what 's Real and Fictitious It is the Interest of Mankind to seek for Pleasure i. e. to seek to live always with Him in whose presence is fulness of joy and at whose right hand there are pleasures for evermore but here Hell plays again with Ambiguities and gives not Men leisure to distinguish or judge of Pleasures false or true transient or perpetual But Pleasure and Liberty are such Interests as no Wise Man can cease to prosecute therefore Men must take a world of pains to glut themselves with sensual Pleasures where Sorrows and Torments have their shares and they must have Liberty to be damn'd in spite of all the whineing Lectures of men pretending to true Religion and to teach Men saving Wisdom there are some petty Moral Virtues which Hell it self would recommend lest a general hurry into Vice should give so horrid a Prospect of things as should startle the most insensate Brute and make him desire at least to live in Peace with the World for his own security but it is Interest still for any Man to do wrong to his Neighbours when he finds himself strong enough to justifie his pretensions by Force And whether he succeeds or no the Devil gains his ends which is the destruction of Mankind which he always promotes so far as he may safely do it without rendring his Advices suspicious to his own Vassals so that according to the Divinity of Hell it is Man's Interest to be extremely Ambitious extremely Debauch'd extremely Wicked in all these things corrupt Nature loves to go on without check or restraint But if it be not safe for the same Person to take his swing in every respect any One of them is enough to damn him eternally and he may indulge himself in what he pleases But whereas the Soul sometimes reflects upon futurity there are Elysian fields provided for the Fancy to exercise it self upon where it may be Rewards are promised to some Popular Virtues but neither the Sensualist nor the irregularly Ambitious nor the Pitiful Effeminate Souls shall be excluded from them It was always the suggestion of Hell that the Messengers of Heaven had no other design but to yoke men under unreasonable severities to debar them of all the delights of life to engage them in morose and sullen courses and all with a prospect only of a Chimaerical happiness such as had no being but in the talk of those who invented it now these things must needs sound very harshly to Flesh and Blood and arm Men against that Religion which should pretend to invade such rights and priviledges This argument Hell made use of principally against the Jewish Religion of old and endeavoured on all occasions to expose it to the rest of Mankind When the worth and import of Jewish Ceremonies was almost at an end then to the Jews the suggestion was That their Holy Religion that Law given to them in so extraordinary a manner by the hand of God himself was like to be trodden under foot that God's Temple the Glory of their Nation was like to be destroy'd and it must certainly be their Interests who had just hopes of Salvation by their Law to defend it against all encroachments and alterations whatsoever Against Christianity it was easie to perswade the Gentiles That all those Gods whom they had so long adored and by whose kind influences they had so long been happy were now like to be set at nought that they would be tempted to a perswasion which the Wise and Inquisitive Heads the subtle Philosophers of those Ages who yet were the Wisest Men and the greatest Examples would never admit of that therefore if they embraced it they must certainly incur the odium of all the World and prepare themselves to suffer whatsoever the joint furies of the Universe could inflict upon them and it was certainly their Interest to write after the Copy of the Philosophick Tribe to assert the Honour of their antient Deities and to live in a good correspondence with all mankind These suggestions were fair and plausible and golden Interest every way glittering in mens faces these introduced Violent and unreasonable Prejudices against all those means which should be made use of by Heaven to assert Men into a true and substantial liberty from that Hellish slavery they had been inured to Now if the case be never so plain that Men are really in a place of torment and that they feel it severely if their Looks and Cryes and Complaints make others take notice of and pity their Condition and yet One that goes to perswade them of the uneasiness of their lives and offers to disengage them from those pains they feel and proves beyond contradiction that his Power is sufficient to effect what he pretends to cannot be heard nor his Offers attended to or accepted it must necessarily be
pleasing It was such an industrious reading and a real desire to understand tho' at that time he confest his ignorance that prepar'd the Aethiopian Eunuch for the instructions of Philip sent unto him on that particular errand And tho' God do not presently send an Evangelist to convert every one that seeks after what 's good yet he has a thousand ways as efficacious to draw men to a sence of true Religion and what matter is it to us what way God makes use of provided he do but work the same glorious effect in us at last God takes delight in those that honour him as those who seek him certainly do Sincerity and humility are required indeed as preparatives in the case yet no more than what 's requisite in those who study books of humane learning For he that does not seriously desire to profit by study never will profit and he that 's too opinionative of his own sence can never make any advantageous use of what he meets with in the discourses of other men and there 's no reason we should expect to improve in those things which concern the weightiest matters in the world viz. our eternal future happiness or misery upon lower terms than in those really of a frivolous and inconsiderable nature But to encourage men to a right application of their reasoning faculty we conclude That the farther a man advances in the study and practice of true Religion the more clear and comprehensive his Reason grows and comes so much the nearer to its primitive acuteness and consequently is able to dive so much the farther into divine Mysteries And this indeed is what true Religion aims at We have lost our Innocence by that loss we have impair'd our Reason that we may assure to our selves that happiness our first Creation had sitted us to God has found out for us those ways that we endeavouring to retrieve our Innocence may retrieve our Reason in a good measure too And having howsoever the infinite merits of a Saviour on our side at last may attain to the first intended happiness Reason is certainly a talent bestowed upon us not to lay it up in a napkin but to use and to make the best of it Had such a Book as Scripture been deliver'd to Adam before his fall I make no question but it would have been in every point intelligible to him as things stand now we may and ought to exercise our reason about it but not so as to limit Scripture by our reason but to limit our reason by Scripture It 's true Scripture may by meer reason be prov'd to be the Word of God but that operation is very slow and requires a very unusual application therefore God in the infancy both of the Jewish and Christian Church made use of Miracles to work more strongly and swiftly upon the Soul not that he design'd to supersede our reason but to quicken it and to set it so much the more industriously on work and withall by a reducing it to an acknowledgment of its own defects to make it submit the more entirely to him whose power was able so far to outreach its utmost capacity Miracles were the common objects of Mens senses and indeed appeals to them and when the Jews had known a Man from his Child-hood that was born blind and when they saw him about forty years of age blest with sight they had no reason to distrust the truth of that of which they every moment saw the effects where there was lodged a power sufficient â—o produce so extraordinary an effâ—ct and the kindness and usefulness of the miâ—â—â— wrought would vindicate it from 〈…〉 of any malignant spirit it 〈…〉 conclude that in the same person was centred a veracity agreeable to that power and consequently it was reasonable to believe what ever was delivered by so great and so benign a Power But after all as reason could not possibly give an account of the manner of working so sensible a miracle but by resolving all into omnipotence nor was it necessary it should so neither was it necessary reason should comprehend every thing that was spoken by God and yet it lies under a necessity of believing every thing true that 's so spoken and that again upon a rational principle viz. that He who speaks being God can neither deceive nor be deceived But as those who engage themselves in the study of any particular Science understand but little at first of its reason but by assiduity and diligence come to see throughly into it so it is in matters of religion he that 's but a Babe can bear no stronger nourishment than milk he that 's stronger can digest substantial meats i. e. the beginner in those studies must pretend to nothing farther than what 's very plain and easie but when by continual meditation be has made those plain things familiar to him there will some consequences offer themselves not so plain but every whit as true as the first principles and that reason which at first was ready to stumble at the most obvious notions will afterwards digest those at a greater distance and be as strongly convinced of them as of the former but in the chain of consequences somewhat will occur at last beyond the reach of the largest unbeatified Soul Thus that Man is naturally miserable is a truth undeniable by reason of our every days experience natures light has confirm'd the World in the truth yet Man is very apt to stumble and perplex himself at the occasion and ground of his being so doubts arise in the case from some weak reflections upon God's justice and goodness yet it s universally believ'd and the reading of Scripture farther confirms the truth that Man miserable as he is making use of such and such means may be happy is a truth reveal'd and without revelation imperceptible yet now it s once reveal'd reason can properly argue that the same things or qualifications which would have secur'd happiness to Man at first must do so now and the attainment of Innocence was that original mean Innocence the indispensible qualification But reason proves again that that primitive Innocence is really unattainable now and it will proceed thus far further that either there must be some way discover'd to make up that unhappy defect or else Man must sink in his natural misery and all the care he can take to prevent it will do him no service here divine revelation goes along with him too and what reason as now affected could never have dream't of we have a revelation relating to the making up of this defect and that by the Incarnation and Passion of the Son of God but there Faith rests upon Revelation alone and gets no assistance at all from reason but only from that distant principle that the revealer cannot deceive nor be deceived reason can come no nearer nor can it judge of the revelation by any other principle yet the Man who believes not this how little
deep ever to be made up It 's true when God himself was mention'd as the undertaker of so great a work even despairing man might entertain some dawning hopes but when they saw a poor Carpenter's Son one who had not so much as where to lay his head assume yet the glorious title of the world's Redeemer and Saviour their hopes slagg'd their almost grasped joys seem'd just vanishing into empty air When the Holy Ghost God too infinitely good and powerful and wise interpos'd and attended that humble Man with so much vigour and constancy that He by a thousand glorious actions and by a close and perpetual correspondence with Heaven visible even to vulgar eyes prov'd the entire Union that was between himself and his Father and that Sacred Spirit and justified himself in the thoughts of very aliens themselves who could not but acknowledge of a truth that for all his mean appearance and his scandalous Passion on the Cross He was the Son of God But could men have doubted still the happy Angels those purer and more discerning Spirits saw him too they saw him and knew him and ador'd him they saw their mighty Lord tho' veil'd in all the rags of poor mortality And tho' sin might have made a former breach between those blessed Spirits and polluted man yet now where their Lord loved they lov'd too and always look'd and always waited on him while he wrought the worlds redemption while he was so justified and so attended on divers gave up themselves absolutely to his service whom he lov'd and taught and protected and endued with miraculous knowledge eloquence and courage and sent them on that blessed errand to preach to the Gentiles the glad tydings of Salvation in his name They boldly undertook the work and tho' they had ignorance and prejudice and malice and cunning to contend with meer men contemn'd before but then inspired broke through all opposition and the forsaken Gentiles heard the gladsome sounds of peace and tho' there were too many enemies to their own good yet those laborious messengers of Heaven preached with that power and efficacy that men began every where to call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ Nay the more men of perverse minds cross'd the designs of that Gospel preach'd in the name of the Son of God the more those who believed in him were multiplied As for himself when he had finished that stupendous work and by his own Death had conquered Hell and Death He broke those fatal chains and rose again no more lyable to humane rage His Almighty Father who had viewed all the prodigious efforts of his Love to mankind with an ineffable complacency reach'd out his holy arm to receive that very humane Nature in which his beloved Son had done and suffered so much from him the chearful clouds were sent for a Chariot and he went upwards flying upon the wings of the wind while jâ—cund Angels those ministerial flames waited on his triumphs and taught his wondring followers what they were afterwards to expect from their Redeemer These are those mighty mysteries on which our most holy faith is built their truth however unintelligible to us is our security and the sincerity of our faith will necessarily show it self in an holy conversation and godliness The Verse I have explain'd then imports That without Controversie the Mystery of Godliness is great or in more words That the Basis or foundation of that Religion introduced into the World by the Doctrine of Christ's Gospel is indisputably and agreeably to the nature of Religion to Humane reason extremely profound and unintelligible To prove this we shall enquire Into the Vniversal agreement of all persons of what Religion soever That Mysteries are essential to Religion Whether our Saviour intended the entire abolition of all other Religions for the settlement of his own or rather to unite what was good in every distinct Religion into one and to sublime or perfect that so as it might tend most to God's glory and Man's happiness and whether that could be effected Men standing in their present corrupt state without the retaining of old or instituting of new Mysteries in his Religion What considerable advantages can accrue to Religion from those Mysteries it 's founded upon Then we must enquire into that Vniversal agreement of all persons whatsoever that Mysteries or some principles or circumstances of a more secret and abstruse nature are essential to all Religion But here to prevent all mistakes it must be remember'd That so much as concerns the practical part of Religion as contain'd in the Word of God is so clear and evident that the words of St. Paul are justly apply'd to them If they be hid they are hid to those that are lost whose eyes the God of this World hath blinded that the light of the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ should not shine upon them 2 Cor. 4.3 4. The words whereby all things necessary to be done toward the attainment of eternal life are exprest are such and so plain that the simplest Christian may understand them And that person who goes about to involve the practical duty of a Christian whether in respect of his communication with God or man in obscure and mysterious terms crosses the end of the Gospel which is to instruct the weakest understanding in an easie and intelligible way how to live godly righteously and soberly in this present evil world yet it must be acknowledged that even in relation to practice there are some apparent difficulties and notwithstanding all that plainness apparent in God's word a Man has a very hard task sometimes to distinguish between what 's lawful and what 's unlawful such cases are commonly known by the name of Cases of Conscience or such matters wherein so many arguments seemingly strong and plausible appear on both sides to the understanding that it knows not which way to act and all that hesitancy or doubtfulness arises onely from a fear of offending God These generally respecting Christian practice create a great deal of trouble frequently to very good Men for others are seldom troubled with such religious fears and these are sometimes by various and unusual circumstances rendred so very intricate that the wisest and most discerning Men are often at a loss to clear and resolve them to the Querent's satisfaction Here the Jews were order'd to have recourse to their Priests whose lips were suppos'd to preserve knowledge and the Priests when there was any thing of a more inextricable nature had the Vrim and Thummim to appeal to The Heathens had some emergent doubts as to matter of publick management of themselves which sometimes perplex'd them too and they had their imaginary wise Men the Priests attending their desecrated altars who would assume as if they had the art of resolving doubts those who profess Christianity have still a severer task in these matters as having no Oracle immediately to consult and having doubts more numerous and
as the thirsty Hart pants after the water brooks therefore they are willing to undergo every thing that a malignant World can lay upon them as being certainly assured that whatsoever the joys of Heaven are all the afflictions or sufferings they can meet with in this World are not worthy to be compared with them Impressions looking toward these things are so natural to the Soul of Man that all the artifices of wickedness are not able to efface them and yet the consequences of these impressions are so great and mysterious that all the wit of Man cannot possibly comprehend them yet faith goes through with all and is not cannot be mistaken in its confidence at last If Faith it self the continual security of the Soul be so dark and undefinable what must we judge of the objects of it they being generally so vast that Faith it self soaring as it is can go but a very little way in its Idea's of them that the objects of Faith are real and true is evident from what has been said that their Nature is incomprehensible and their Reasons inscrutable to created Beings is as true but not at all to be wonder'd at since there are a thousand common effects of Nature the truth of which we are beyond contradiction convinced of but why they should happen so or so the cunningest Philosophers are no more able to resolve than despised Ideots or Naturals Agreeably to what I am urging I instanc'd before in the being of God a truth which Men cannot balk tho' they take never so much pains to that purpose that this God this supreme Governour or Manager of all things must some way or other communicate himself to his Creatures for that otherwise they could neither pretend to a well being or a being is as clear by rational discourse but how God should communicate of himself to these creatures where there is so vast a disproportion in their Natures is a riddle which we have not yet found any Apollo subtle enough to resolve and yet that God does communicate himself to his creatures is as plain and undeniable Those who engage themselves into enquiries about these things do but lose themselves in inextricable Labyrinths and indeed according to the genuine rules of right reason do but take pains to no purpose it was that general sense which mankind all along has had of these things that has made them endeavour to frame some short Idea's of the Deity to themselves and so tho' they could conceive nothing adaequate to his Nature yet they have run high as words can carry them when they stile God a being infinitely just powerful good merciful wise c. These general notions of theirs in some measure influenc'd the lives of many but much more all the external and visible parts of their religious Devotions And when they have shewed their utmost skill in contriving Schemes of divine Worship those men have done best and most sutably to the nature of Religion who have contrived the outward parts of it so as they might a little shadow out the necessary apprehensions of the divine Nature and yet so too that the Devotoes who made the nicest observations of things might be sensible that those external religious shews referred to a great deal of a darker and more inintelligible nature and which no Symbols whatsoever could possibly illustrate or represent and those Divine Oracles which were spoken of in all parts of the World as they rendred Religion more August and Venerable to the eye of the World so the nature of those Oracles convinced the World yet more strongly of the defectiveness of humane understanding the certain knowledge of futurity where men imagine themselves free agents being Essential to the Deity but one of the most puzling things humane Reason can possibly fix upon This the Romans and their predecessors the Latines represented by a Janus with two faces the Hetrurians by a Janus with four which might as some tell us refer to the four parts of the year but more genuinely it represented the Deity looking every way so that nothing past present or to come could possibly avoid its knowledge and the Prophets of old had that character as communicated to them from the inspiring Deity that they knew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Didymus in Hom. Iliad 1. v. 70. it being as Didymus tells us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the part of a compleat Prophet to understand exactly the three differences of times Men are apt to be presuming enough on the depth of their own understanding but we find Heresies since the propagation of Christianity have taught men much more confidence than ever Nature did and therefore as we find Philosophers of old the more rational the more modest but that those who set up for senceless Paradoxes made it their business to hector every body into their own notions and to make up their want of argument by face and metal as we may see in Lucretius his Epicurean Poem So Schismaticks and Hereticks in the Christian Church the farther they fly from the genuine practice of ancient Christians and the Doctrine of the Gospel the more positive and daring they are in their assertions the more close Communion they pretend to hold with God and to be the very privadoes of Heaven as the profligate Gnosticks of old pretended to know every thing when indeed they knew nothing and some wretched Ignorants of late years when they have been led Captives by the Devil at his will have yet talked of being godded with God and Christed with Christ And our followers of Socinus who run violently against the stream of Reason bear themselves for the greatest rationalists in the world Whereas Nature tho' corrupted taught Men modestly to own their own ignorance to confess their inability to comprehend all those mysteries attendant on the Deity to look upon shadows and representations of things at a distance as the best way of imprinting reverence upon Mens minds and therefore to satisfie themselves with such shadows and figures lest by pretending to more they should fall into absurdities and by that means render themselves and Religion contemptible and ridiculous God took a particular care of the Jewish Nation and instituted all those Rites and Ceremonies which they made use of in their worship all which Rites and Ceremonies were either so many remembrancers of things past as the great goodness and mercy of God shewn to the people of Israel and his justice or vengeance on their enemies or otherwise they were so many types and shadows of things to come and particularly of that Messias or Saviour of the world to be born into it in fulness of time Now the manner of Gods avenging himself on his own and his peoples enemies was uncouth and prodigious but the birth of a Saviour one who by his interest with Heaven should visit and redeem his people to procure Salvation for the whole world was altogether a mystery a means of procuring the
worlds happiness which all the Witts in it could never have pitched upon There was not among the Jews the least garment belonging to those who officiated in holy services which had not something mysterious in it I own these Mysteries were not like those wherein our Faith is so deeply concern'd but they were Mysteries still tho' of a lower fourm and such Mysteries as the generality of the Jewish people were very far from diving into yet Reason would have gone a considerable way in teaching the Jews what God insinuated to them by such prescriptions All the circumstantials of Jewish worship were render'd the more considerable by those never-failing Oracles issued out from between the Cherubims and by Prophets raised up among them by God himself frequently till such time as they lost the glory of their Nation by Captivity and Slavery to prevailing strangers Those Revelations which such Prophets had extending particularly to future events of things were such as really entangled the Jews strangely and they who among Mysteries reveal'd had unhappily pitched upon a wrong interpretation of things were uncapable at last of applying events to Prophecies and so ruin'd It 's true the Priests themselves at first understood the meaning of things well enough but time corrupted them and introduced ignorance among them as well as among the vulgar but whatsoever the Priests understood at first or how much soever of the true meaning of things they understood at last they were yet not to cast pearles before swine nor holy things to dogs they were not to prostiture Mystical matters to every common enquirer tho' at the same time ready to teach Gods statutes and judgments to every one that humbly sought for information but as to the manner of God's delivering their Law to Moses in Horeb and his writing the Ten Commandments with the finger of God on the stone-Tables his guarding and directing them by a Cloud all day and by a pillar of Fire all night his Glory shining at particular times and on particular occasions in the Tabernacle of the Congregation his delivering his Will from the Mercy-Seat and being said to dwell peculiarly between the Cherubims his oracular resolution 〈◊〉 difficulties by Vrim and Thummim c. These were matters of so profound and inextricable a Nature that neither Priests nor people were ever able to give any considerable account of them If among the divine Institutions of the Jews there were so many matters of a mystical Nature it 's not to be wondred that Their Worship who had no assistance by divine Revelation should be more than ordinarily encumbred with them the Notions which the Gentile world had of a Deity tho' positive and uncontroulable enough were according to the means they had for acquiring divine Knowledge much more obscure than those of the Jews if yet they would have a shew of any Religion they were under a necessity of suiting it with some circumstantial rites which when they had try'd their utmost skill had a meaning but that meaning was very obscure We may believe that many of their Priests endeavour'd to make as deep impressions as they could of Religion upon the minds of those men they were concerned with but the greatest satisfaction they had in their own inventions was but this that the notorious obscurity of their publick Rites was very exactly representative of that God whom they acknowledged a Being infinite and incomprehensible and those things which were mysterious even in the sence of their first Inventors were much more so when they fell into the hands of their Successors who being blind Leaders of the blind all sence of true natural Divinity was quickly lost both among Priests and People thus we have reason to think the Hieroglyphical Theology of the Aegyptians was in a great measure rais'd from those hints they had taken of Man's duty to the World's Creator from their converse with the Jewish Patriarchs that the first contrivers of it were capable of making it considerably useful and instructive to the World and from thence those seeds of Moral Virtues which bore some fruit in ancient Heathens had their originals but when sloth and negligence took place among their degenerate posterity and the cruelty of Cambyses King of Persia destroy'd all the Priests of that Nation without distinction the whole body of their Divinity was lost some of its characters may be still remaining among old pillars or obelisks and other ruines of their ancient magnificence but as unintelligible to us as the Chinese writing is to a common labourer or the squaring of a Circle to one that never heard of Mathematicks All Men from the world's beginning acknowledged God's Vniversal Sovereignty by offering Sacrifices That Men offer'd Sacrifices and of living creatures too very early is apparent by the History of Cain and Abel Gen 3.1 2 3 4. where we are told that in process of time i.e. as soon as they were in a capacity of doing so Cain who was a tiller of the ground brought of the fruit of the ground an offering to the Lord and Abel who was a keeper of sheep brought of the firstlings of his flock and the fat thereof But that these were the first Sacrifices offer'd we have no reason to conclude since Adam had the same sence of things and the same motives to offer Sacrifices which They had and doubtless set them an example of so doing Eusebius of Caesarea tho' observed to be singular in the case gives much the best and most rational account of this Sacrifice I take says he the ground of this action not to have been meer chance or a device meerly humane but to have risen from a divine thought for whereas good Men who were illuminated with the divine spirit and lived in a near familiarity with God plainly saw there was a necessity of some extraordinary means for the expiation of damning sin they concluded it necessary to offer to God the giver of the Life and Soul something by way of a ransome or redemption price to procure their own Salvation and since they had nothing which they could offer to God better or more valuable than their Souls instead of them they Sacrificed beasts De Demonstr Evang l. 1. c. 10. so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 offering the Souls of others in lieu of their own and this was certainly the best Sacrifice and most significant of their apprehensions Where that reason given by Eusebius and made use of by Justin Martyr and the author of the Answer to the Orthodox printed among Justin's works and by St. Chrysostome and other ancient Christians and by Rabbi Moses ben Maimon and his followers among the Jews why Cain and Abel should pitch on offering Sacrifices and Abel particularly of living creatures viz. their wisdom and near converse with heaven suits yet more exactly with Adam himself who had converst with God in a state of perfection as well as imperfection And tho' we know the ruines of reason to
have been very great in Adam by his fall yet they were not so great in him as in the rest of his posterity and Adam having a right apprehension of that promise concerning the seed of the woman without which right apprehension he could have derived very little comfort from it to fix in his own mind and in the mind of his posterity the true meaning of that promise he offer'd as soon as without prejudice to the multiplication of Creatures he could such Sacrifices as might shadow out the promised redemption and make so early a faith in the promised seed that Lamb who was slain from the beginning of the world appear and really be rational nor was there any need of divine institution or command in the case where original reason yet retain'd so much strength and vigour And whereas some learned Men have written whole discourses to prove that Men were allowed to eat flesh before the flood Vid Maii Hist animal sacror l. 1. c. 2. p. 32 c. I am so far from being convinced by what I have met with to that purpose building my contrary opinion on that vast difference between God's commission given to Adam Gen. 1.29 30. and that given afterwards to Noah Gen. 9.2,3,4 that I conclude one of the violences the Gigantick race were afterwards guilty of was their transgressing their first limits in that matter and that Adam seeing living Creatures fixt in an higher state as being exempted from that servility to which Plants and Fruits and the Herb of the field was subjected and yet observing a certain Dominion over those nobler Creatures invested in himself he concluded he could no way more rationally exercise his government nor express his expectations of a Saviour than by killing of those Creatures not for his own luxury but to offer them in Sacrifice to that God whom he had before so ingratefully offended Thus Gods power and Mans necessity were acknowledged both in one and the same Sacrifice I conclude farther in relation to the first custome of offering beasts in Sacrifice that what Reason taught Adam to do God set his Seal to and approved it by sending fire from Heaven to consume it which was an unquestionable evidence of God's acceptance an encouragement to Adam to proceed in that course and to his posterity to imitate him And this I am the more confirm'd in because I find both Jewish and Christian Writers generally concluding that the visible difference which God put between the Sacrifice of Cain and Abel was that he consumed Abel's with fire from heaven but not Cain's by which means Cain was able to judge of his brothers acceptance and his own rejection and he might be the more certain in his judgment because he had often seen his Father's offerings so consumed before That Adam was a Priest in his own family as every Father is and that Cain and Abel were so in theirs and the rest of the ancient Patriarchs is unquestionable but when upon the World's encrease Men began to unite into larger Societies private and family devotions or religious observances were not look'd upon as sufficient to shew mens deference to the supreme Lord of all things God was to be reconciled and rendred propitious to publick Societies as well as to private members of such Societies which considerations in process of time were the occasion that particular bodies or numbers of Men were set apart to attend more peculiarly on the services of Religion which bodies of Men took care to settle the methods of those services wherein according to the clearness of their understandings those methods were more or less obscure or incoherent God taking a peculiar care of the seed of Abraham taught them not to leave off sacrificing but to order their Sacrifices in so holy a manner as might best agree to that end for which they were appointed i. e. to foresignifie that great mystery of the worlds redemption by the sacrifice of the death of Christ But the Devil Tyrannizing over the greater part of the world beside and under the same religious pretexts of atoning an angry God and acknowledging his sovereignty soon converted all that worship and those Sacrifices intended to the true God to himself So that great enemy of Souls got to himself the name of God he was adored as the author of all good and revered as the executor of vengeance upon all wicked Men He made use of diverse artifices to maintain his usurpation among the rest he made special use of ignorance as the mother of Devotion a principle which the Church of Rome has made great use of of later years to the same purpose his Priests urged by interest were excellent Agents in his curst designs and by his direction loaded every part of Idolatry with such a Mass of Mystick rites and Ceremonies necessarily so lest their lewdness and scandalous nature should have made them generally odious that it was impossible for the greatest part of Mankind to see through the clouds and dust they had rais'd about themselves with these Mysteries all the whole rabble of Deities were continually accoutred all which false Gods were but one Devil who assum'd so many names to himself partly that he might the better suit himself to the various humours of Men partly that he might entrench as much as possible upon that honour due to Almighty God by assuming all the Divine Attributes to himself and partly that if he happen'd to lose that Honour he had usurpt under one name he might at least preserve it under another Hence arose the strange rites of Isis Osiris so much celebrated among the Aegyptians the Eleusinian so famous over all Greece among the Athenians wherein so strange an obscurity was affected that the very Rules and Orders for their publick performance were unknown to common worshipers and not under pain of death to be divulged to any unless initiated for five years together in them which course of initiation once past there seems to have been no great fear the initiated should make them publick the world at worst not having been bad enough to have approv'd such abominations But the Religion of Sacrifices went farther and those who were sensible how just God's anger was against the World for Sin concluded the most precious Offerings must needs be the most acceptable to God for their expiation therefore they came to pitch upon Humane Sacrifices thinking a rational Soul the most proper 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or ransome for a rational Soul Hence grew those Enthusiastick extravagancies of the Priests of Baal who when they found their God deaf to all their invocations and insensible of their Sacrifices and themselves derided for their folly by Elijah 1 Kings 18.26 27 28. They cried aloud and cut themselves after their manner with Knives and Lancers till the blood gush'd out upon them And that was pretty fair for their own personal zeal but this was not enough therefore in a pressing extremity we
were so cross to his own wishes lest Men should have been rouz'd from their dead sleep by such irrational and damnable insinuations and so have seen with horrour and amazement what Gods they worshipped Yet neither could the more sagacious part of Mankind be satisfied with these things they saw the distance between God and Man was too great to be made up by any typical or representing Sacrifices and that a compleat purity was far beyond the reach of meer humane nature therefore the Gentiles who had some sense of that weight which opprest them groan'd and long'd earnestly to be freed from the slavery of corruptions by some means sufficiently powerful to that end and so to be brought in to the glorious liberty of the Sons of God hence rose those frequent discourses of the Gods assuming Humane shapes coming down to earth and conversing with Men which though we find most frequently mention'd in Poetical Writings yet unquestionably had its foundation from those accounts in the Writings of Moses concerning the apparitions of Angels as particularly to Abraham and Lot and Jacob hence grew that prevailing rumour about the times of Augustus Caesar that an universal King should be born in Judaea to whom all other Monarchs should be forc'd to bow and who by wonderful means should make up the breach between God and man this too had a farther confirmation from the translation of the old Testament into the Greek Language and from some fragments of the true Sibylline Oracles not unknown to Tully or Virgil and from Balaam's predictions as plain as any Jewish Prophecy whatsoever which he being of another Nation would certainly acquaint his own Country-men with from whom it quickly might be spread over the whole World From some or all these Originals arose the Expectation of those Eastern Sages who no sooner saw that prodigious Star shining at Noon-day but they concluded that glorious Light which was to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of God's people Israel was then risen but though Men did generally apprehend the necessity of those things and lived in continual expectation of them yet how such things should be how such prodigious but excellent effects should ever be produced was a Mystery hid from all ages a dark obscure unfathomable abyss of Divine goodness and wisdom never offer'd to be explain'd to any because incomprehensible by all As it was the unhappiness of the Gentiles to be encombred with a great deal of Ignorance so it must follow that their Mysteries where clearest had but a very indirect aspect to their acknowledgments and expectations But the Jewish solemnities and predictions had a more exact and direct aim at the coming of the promis'd Messias their Prophets were more numerous their prophecies better attested and more commonly known and enquired into their Rites and Ceremonies all of Divine appointment and consequently not one of them insignificant or superfluous till they were vacated by the appearance of the Messias himself in and by whom they were unridled and accomplished Yet their Religion was Mysterious still to the most understanding Persons among them their prophecies tho' so much inquired into yet like a Book seal'd to them and they as unable to conceive how the Son of God should take upon him humane nature how he should put an end to all Typical Sacrifices though of never so Divine an Institution by offering himself one perfect and all-sufficient sacrifice oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole World which so should really effect that mighty reconciliation which all other did but imperfectly hint at they were as unable to conceive of these things as a People who had long sate in darkness could have been as by their prejudices against him and their absurd fancies about him appear'd when no other Messias could serve their turn but some powerful temporal Prince rais'd up by the hand of God as Moses Joshua or the Judges of old had been to free them from the slavery they then lay under and once more to restore the Kingdom to Israel The result then of all is this that the World has known no Religion or Religious worship but what has had some circumstances and fundamentals too not obvious or easie to be understood either by the unthinking vulgar or by the more curious and inquisitive understandings it 's enough for my design if the World concur in that one principle That something may be necessary to be believ'd which yet no meer humane reason can comprehend Nay I may proceed farther and say That some points of faith are so very sublime that even revelation it self cannot make them intelligible to Men as Moses when he had seen the back parts of God the shadow or reflex of his glory was as far off comprehending his full glory as before and the Apostles when in their transfigured Master they saw a glorified body yet were unable to express what they saw but by very weak resemblances and S. Paul when ecstasied in the third heavens could no more compleatly comprehend the felicities or glorious visions of that place than he could before Since then natural reason led the Gentiles to believe mystick truths and God led his own people of Israel to the like from both together we may conclude That Religion it self cannot subsist without them and that those things which are called mysteries in Religion are not therefore to be rejected because they are mysteries indeed i. e. because every little pretender to sence cannot comprehend them And so we come to the second enquiry propounded in the beginning of this discourse and that is Whether our Saviour intended the entire abolition of all other Religions for the Settlement of his own or rather to unite what was good in every distinct religion into one and to sublime or perfect that so as it might tend most to God's glory and Mans happiness and whether that could be effected Men standing in their present corrupt state without the retaining of old or declaring of new Mysteries in his Religion where for our better satisfaction we must again examine these things What Sentiments Men generally had of the ends of Religion before our Saviours appearance in the world How far they had depraved or perverted those ends The reason of these enquiries will appear afterwards We enquire then what Sentiments Men generally had of the substance and ends of Religion before our Saviours appearance in the world And here if we would give Religion as it 's true a definition we may take it thus Religion is the worship of God in such a manner as is most agreeable to those revelations he has made of himself to the World this the Jews confirm The Author of the book Kosri or a Dialogue between the King of Cosar and Rabbi Isaac Sangar concerning Religion infers from a precedent discourse Libri Cosri pars 3. p. 234. That Men can have no access to God i. e. they cannot be admitted as true worshippers but
l. 10. p. 360. when making gaudy offerings to them No let but the hand free from guilt be lifted up to the Altars of the Gods not the most rich or costly hecatombs shall sooner reconcile the angry Deities than those I shall add no more to shew that sense the Pagans had of the ends of religion but onely make a short reflection upon God's justice in dealing with Mankind as set down by St. Paul He tells us God will render to every man according to his deeds Rom. 2.6 c. to them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality eternal life but to them that are contentious and do not obey the truth but obey unrighteousness indignation and wrath tribulation and anguish to every soul of man that doth evil to the Jew first and also to the Gentile Now that the Jews and Gentiles who stood upon no equal ground yet should suffer equally in case of disobedience seems to some very harsh but if again it be considered that that God who gave the Jewish Nation such great advantages required of them proportionably great returns whilst the Gentiles who had been partakers of less light were onely required to walk in that light they had to come up as near to a perfection in faith and virtue as that would admit of This consider'd the Gentiles were every whit as guilty in neglecting their duties which were lighter and fewer as the Jews in neglecting theirs which were more numerous and difficult since the disobedience to the Divine commands is as notorious in one case as in the other and this reflection reaches farther and teaches those who are more weak and ignorant not to presume too much upon God's mercy because they know so little since it 's as reasonable they should perform that little they know as that we who know more should do our duties and their negligence and proportionable unfruitfulness in good and ours proceed from one and the same damnably offensive principle for as the Apostle urges it v. 12. as many as have sinn'd without Law shall perish without Law and as many as have sinn'd in the Law shall be judg'd by the Law This every Man must acknowledge to be the greatest equity in the World the faith and works of the Jews and so of Christians shall be canvas'd and examin'd by those rules of faith and practice extraordinarily imparted to them the Gentiles had no such Law but the light of Nature was their guide therefore their works shall be tried by that and by no other light now a defect in obedience to the innate light of nature is as much a contempt of God and so as criminal as a defect in obedience to the written Law of God and consequently as justly punish'd now how far this natural light extends as these passages I have quoted from Heathen Writers considerably evidence so the Apostle tells us That the Gentiles which have not the Law i. e. the same Law that was given to the Jews v. 14. do by nature the things contain'd in the Law they not having the Law are a Law unto themselves This proves that truth that God's written Law is not a disannulling but a confirming and enlarging upon the Law of Nature in the manner of a Commentary upon an intricate Text to illustrate and explain it well then The Gentiles shew this natural Law written in their hearts by the witness of their consciences and their thoughts in the mean time accusing or excusing one another v. 15. for having as I shew'd before clear apprehensions of the Being of a God and having made very considerable discoveries of his nature so far as legible in the works of the Creation they cannot upon a serious debate with themselves and weighing their own actions by their own notions and rules but have an infallible certainty of the rectitude or pravity of their actions and this is as much as a Jew or Christian can do by his publick Laws and an exact scanning of them Now if my Conscience can certainly inform me of things essentially and eternally so whether they be good or bad the same Conscience will give me as infallible a certainty that God is and must be just when he rewards me according to my actions whether they be good or evil he calls me to account for what I do know not for what I do not know and punishes me for transgressions within the reach of my understanding to have avoided and not for those that were unintelligible without a positive revelation and this even corrupted Reason will own is agreeable to the strictest rules of equity and justice We are to enquire since we have seen what Jews and Gentiles before our Saviour's birth into the World understood concerning the nature and ends of Religion which every one for himself supposed to be true since none can be thought mad enough to trouble himself about that religion he certainly knew to be false We are to enquire how far both Jews and Gentiles had deprav'd and perverted those ends and what care they took to manage themselves according to that knowledge they really had when our Saviour appear'd in the flesh And here again we may begin with the Jews among whom if we find an extraordinary degeneracy we can the less wonder at it among the Gentiles If then we examine the state of things among them we have it thus It was once among them Do this and live i. e. Live here on Earth in a strict obedience to those things commanded you in the Law and you shall be rewarded with an happy future life Now when the terrors and glories of Mount Sinai were fresh in memory and Parents according as they were order'd took care to inculcate God's power justice and goodness particularly exerted toward the People of Israel into their Children and gave agreeable examples in themselves obedience was the common study and peace here and a glorious expectation hereafter the common consequence But when a new generation arose who had not seen God's wonderful dealings with his people and the too prevailing examples of neighbouring Idolaters taught the Israelites a wicked ingratitude the Law of God was slighted and as it is among us at this day the Man who could defie Heaven with the greatest audacity was the most set by And though frequent judgments over-took their Impieties there was no thorough purgation made among them but they went on to add sin to sin so that among the Scribes and Pharisees the great Zealots of the Law at the time of Christ's coming in the flesh things were at that pass that the blessed Jesus had reason when he told his Auditors that Except their righteousness should exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees Matth. 5.20 they should in no wise enter into the Kingdom of Heaven If therefore the very best among the Jews as they were generally esteem'd were utterly uncapable of eternal happiness what may
wise and good man And if Greece which seems to be the world's glory for the learning and valour and the yet greater reputation of it's inhabitants could afford no better store of men who liv'd virtuously how meanly must we conclude the rest of the world was stock'd with them therefore Lucian that impious but witty scoffer at Christianity could not forbear lashing the Philosophers themselves who knew so much and exposing them to the world's contempt so in his Icaro-Menippus Menippus tells his friend a story of his being in heaven where among other considerables a Council of the Gods was call'd by Jupiter their supreme to discourse with them concerning the Philosophers and Jupiter tells the rest that the Philosopers were a race of Men lazie quarrelsome vain-glorious cholerick gluttonous silly proud abusive and in a word according to Homer 's phrase 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an unprofitable burden to the Earth some of these call themselves Stoicks some Academicks some Epicureans some Peripateticks and by several other more ridiculous names these assuming to themselves the venerable character of Virtue they walk about with a supercilious and disdainful look a long reverend beard a starch'd habit but under all the most detestable manners in the World yet these wretches forsooth despise all the World beside themselves they talk lewdly and sillily of the Gods and getting a company of unexperienced youths about 'em they make a mighty noise of virtue and always commend sobriety and modesty among their followers and rail against wealth and pleasure but when they get once by themselves they gorge themselves without measure they indulge themselves in all manner of lust and are base enough to rake a kennel for a leaden farthing and what 's worse in them than all the rest when they themselves do nothing towards the good of mankind either privately or publickly when they are neither fit for the Wars abroad nor for consultations in private they are always accusing others and with bitter expressions and studied abuses Luciani ◠2. p. 208. c. they reproach and rail upon their neighbours and he 's the greatest man among them who is most noisy impudent and has the foulest tongue Had St. Paul and Lucian liv'd together though one were so holy the other so much an Atheist a Man would have thought they had agreed together in their accounts of the degeneracy of those who were accounted the wisest part of the World to these I may add Philostratus who giving us an account of a discourse between Apollonius Thyanaeus and Phraotes an Indian Prince he introduces the Prince reflecting upon Apollonius and his Companions thus I hear says he there are many among you who make Philosophy their trade to get by and putting it on like a Garment which they can as easily throw aside they bear themselves high upon an habit that belongs not to them and most certainly as common thieves who look upon themselves as sure of hanging whensoever they are catcht Philostrati vita Apollon l. 1. c. 12. are for a short life and a merry so these Philosophical rogues among you indulge their lusts and their guts and are the tenderest and most effeminate Creatures in the World and this I take to proceed from the defect of your Laws He that counterfeits the publick Coine dyes for it and so does he that cheats an Orphan or any thing of the like nature among you but as I am told there 's no Law among you that punishes Quacks in Philosophy who onely abuse and corrupt it nor is there any Magistrate appointed to take cognizance of them Thus far he By which we learn that as to the Divine Law where there is no Law there can be no transgression so in respect of worldly matters where there 's no Law there 's nothing but transgression and by the concurrence of all these so very plain testimonies we find that the ends of true Devotion in that part of the World which was without the pale of the Jewish Church was not onely perverted about the time of our Lord's appearance on Earth but it was worn out of memory and God so represented by Men that there seem'd to be no better way of approaching his nature than by an irresistible ingenuity in all manner of bruitish violence and extravagant wickedness Thus have we at large consider'd the ancient Maximes of Religion and seen wherein the World in general believ'd it to subsist and we have seen how far both Jews and Gentiles had declined from their own principles by the whole it will appear that the fulness of time was come in every respect that humane wickedness was grown to that height and consequently that great God whose eyes are purer than to behold sin so infinitely provoked that had not the blessed Jesus the Son of God interpos'd as great and universal a deluge of vengeance must have overspread the World as that of Water heretofore but withal it will appear as plain that notwithstanding all these abuses and depravations of Religion the foundation of it still stood good the Laws of God were as really believ'd to be holy just and reasonable and obedience to them as necessary among the Jews and Virtue and solid Honesty was as much commended tho' perfectly starv'd among the Gentiles as ever before it was the practice of what they so commended that so miserably fail'd among Men so that there was indeed no kind of necessity to extirpate the whole of all former Religions for the setling that of Christ but onely of a reformation of abuses and clearing the old foundation from all that rubbish from all those bryers and thorns that had overgrown it and there was need of reinforcing those duties appertaining to Religious converse whether with God or Men upon all sorts of persons with new and more forcible arguments than former Ages had offer'd that Men might re-entertain their first Love and do their first works so bringing forth fruits agreeable to repentance Therefore our Saviour professes of himself with respect to the whole Mosaic Law that he came not to destroy but to fulfil it i.e. to shew its whole design and intention to perform every part in his own Person Mat. 3.15 upon which reason he offer'd himself to John's Baptism though in its own nature but a deduction from or an appendix to the Law and when John made a modest refusal Jesus said to him Suffer it to be so now for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness He came to fulfil it farther in suffering upon the Cross by which Sacrifice of his it being the end of the Law all Jewish Sacrifices were vacated the substance being once come the shadow could have no longer place in the World and consequently all those Ceremonies conducing to their Sacrifices had an end too So he fulfill'd whatsoever the Mosaic Law had prefigured to the Jewish people He came to teach Men the very comprehensive nature of the Law to show his
own Disciples and Followers how much more was required at their hands than what the strictest Zealots among the Jews thought themselves obliged to to convince them that it not onely reach'd the outward Man and so might be slighted by evasive subtilties but it was to engage all the inward affections of the Soul and so must necessarily exclude all collusion and Hypocrisy this method our Lord follow'd in that admirable Sermon upon the Mount wherein He cancell'd no part of that Law given to the Jews of old but commented upon it And so the Apostle St. Paul acted with relation to the Gentiles and therefore when he was at Athens though his Spirit was stirr'd up in him mov'd equally with grief and anger to see that populous City so wholly given to Idolatry yet He fell not immediately to the reproaching of their Religion nor to the taking it away both root and branch but he took an happy occasion from that Inscription upon one of their Altars 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To the unknown God to assure them that he preach'd no other God to them but him whom they ignorantly worship'd He being that God who made the World and all things therein Acts 17.23 24. and therefore could not be confin'd to Temples made with hands Thus from the beginning of the World Religion as to its Essence has been immutable what was fixt in Man by nature so long as Nature is must be the same too God planted in man his own fear and whatsoever tended to the promotion of that and an earnest desire of self-preservation with respect to this and to a future life whatsoever byasses men now to a wretched slavish fear onely of Divine displeasure and makes them therefore rather avoid evil than do good And whatsoever engages men in unlawful ways of securing themselves from any apparent danger all that arises from those corruptions nature at present is embarrassed with these things are to be mended but God is still to be fear'd and Men shall still get a good name by doing real good unto themselves Obedience was the great first end of every Law and a Law was given our first Parent to put him upon a tryal of original prudence which could never put him upon any thing but what was excellent when prudence seem'd drowsie sin crept upon him and ruin'd him and his prosperity but because Man sinned God did not therefore change the nature of his commands but he explain'd and improv'd them by adding particulars coincident with them he supply'd the defects of reason impair'd and reveal'd those things at which it might have stumbled beyond recovery Noah and his Sons had not a new Law but the same again illustrated farther and more clear'd up by additional revelation to supply the greater decays of humane abilities Nor did God change his mind when he chose the Seed of Abraham from the rest of Mankind or give Israel any new Laws essential to Religion for Circumcision and the Paschal Feast were not of the essence of it at all since Man might have kept all the moral Law without ever participating in either The rest of the ceremonial and political injunctions were necessary to the Jews necessitate praecepti as they were commanded by a God infinitely powerful and wise and who could enjoyn them nothing that was unfit or unjust but the moral Law which was the Law of nature and obliged all Mankind as well as the Nation of the Jews was necessary necessitate Medii as an absolute and indispensible means of salvation or as containing such duties and forbidding such sins as without an exact care in each of which it was impossible for any man living to be saved and whereas the circumstantial Laws of the Jews were such as had no intimate connexion with or dependance upon one another all the parts of the Moral and perpetually obliging Law are of so close an alliance and in their execution so inseparable one from another that as S. James says James 2.10 Whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point he is guilty of all for the whole sum of the Law being comprehended in those few words Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind and thy neighbour as thy self If therefore any man bow to an Idol or worship more Gods than one or profane the name of the true God or be guilty of perjury or refuse to devote one day in seven to the worship and service of God by any of these sins he proves he does not love the true God so entirely as he ought And again He that dishonours or rebels against his parents natural spiritual or civil or that commits murder with his hand or in his heart or that submits to the enticements of lust or that defrauds and purloins from another or that by falshood endeavours to prejudice the life or estate or reputation of others or who indulges himself in covetousness or gives way to the first motions of the heart that encline to envy Whosoever sins in any one of these particulars tho' at the sametime he be a rigid observer of all the rest cannot be said to love his neighbour as himself since he would not be willing either that by himself or by any other any injury of what kind soever should be done to him and how much more essential to the body of Religion the Jews thought these perpetual Laws than their own Ceremonial Institutions is plain from their practice since they as much as possible hinder'd all meer Heathens from co-habiting with them and yet admitted those whom they called Proselytes of the gate upon their renouncing a plurality of Gods and submitting to the seven precepts of the sons of Noah to the priviledge of performing their Devotions in the exterior Court of the Temple and kindly suppos'd them too capable of a portion in the world to come As God made no alteration in the natural Law by what he gave Israel by the hand of Moses so neither did he innovate any thing when he sent his only begotten Son into the world for it's Salvation the Law of Christ was the Law of Moses which was the Law of Noah which was the Law of Adam which was the Law of pure original Nature which was the Law of God as Moses was the Law-giver of the Jews so was the blessed Jesus the Law-giver of the Christians but if we look on them both as meer Men their legislative power was not original but as Stephen tells the Jews Acts 7.53 Numb 21.18 the Law was given them by the disposition of Angels Moses yet is called a Law-giver in the Song of the Israelites but it 's in the same sence as a Judge on the Bench who has no power to make any thing a Law of his own contrivance or by his own Authority God himself on whose services myriads of glorious Angels always attend
at a full and plain satisfaction in these matters And here we are to call to mind our second Position relating to Humane Reason which teaches us that by the Fall humane reason is exceedingly impair'd and very much incapacitated for those great ends for which it was first bestow'd on Man and it 's plain that though our Saviour has appear'd though he has brought us the glad tydings of life and salvation in and by himself tho' he has taken the kindest care imaginable for the propagation of this Gospel we are still by birth the same naturally miserable and misunderstanding Creatures that we were before and therefore we are in some sence actually regenerate or born again in Baptism being in it born members of the Christian Church and so having a right to all Christian priviledges and it being a Symbol or sign of our new birth or resurrection from dead works to serve the living God yet after our Baptism our intellectuals are still the same poor weak and miserably foolish and hence it comes that Catechetical instructions in the principles of Christian Religion and frequent Sermons or exhortations to true piety and sincere goodness or dehortations from Sin and explications of hard and difficult expressions or doctrines in Scripture and vindications of divine truths from the assaults of Hereticks Schismaticks or Infidels and the refutation of those errors endeavour'd by such to be impress'd on the minds of Men all these things are absolutely necessary for advancing our knowledge in Divine Matters for keeping us from the paths of error and for teaching and shewing us how to live godly righteously and soberly in this present evil world And the more improvements we make according to these means of grace which we enjoy the more powerful assistances and encouragements we meet with from Heaven in our work as was before observ'd in our fourth Position concerning humane reason Yet after all we remain but on the positive side of those great truths laid down in Scripture we believe them firmly and stedfastly because we have an irrefragable and infallible testimony of their truth the veil that was upon the hearts of men is indeed taken away the types shadows and ancient Prophecies relating to the Messias are all made good in his appearance upon earth the way to life is made clear and according to right reason very easie and agreeable to those who endeavour to walk in it and Man so endeavouring is reconciled to God by the blood of his dear Son Jesus Christ and there is a nearer and more close Communion between God and man than heretofore all these things and the infinite love of God in them are now so plainly decipher'd that he who runs may read them But for the rational part of these things or what means an Almighty God could make use of to effect things so stupendous how that dismal distance between a pure Divinity and corrupt Mortality should be made up how God himself should stoop to man when man notwithstanding all his inordinate ambition could never rise to God how that strict communication between God and Man should be maintain'd c. All these things are such mysteries that its impossible for even Angelical Intellectuals to comprehend them fully since common reason will give us this maxim that Nothing but an infinite being can perfectly understand all the operations of an infinite being Therefore we have the Communion between God and Man still shadowed out to us in the Symbols of Bread and Wine consecrated into a clear representation of the body and blood of our Saviour to us in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper Nor can we believe whatsoever Grotius In tract An. semper sit communicand per Symbola a man of more learning than orthodoxy would perswade us to that we while we have the means and opportunities of communicating with one another and holding a close communion with God by participating of those Symbols which our Lord himself instituted to that very end and purpose can possibly communicate as well without them or that we may make at any time the Bread and Wine a Nehustan a sign of no account or value at all because perhaps it may have been abused to ill purposes by a factious or an Idolatrous Crew but not to insist upon that Tho' it be with S. Chrysostome and many other Antients 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a dreadful and tremendous Mystery and will be always so accounted by the most understanding and humble Christians there 's not an article of our Faith not one of the principal heads of the Apostles Creed which we so often repeat but it s a body of Mysteries Mysteries after all the pains of the most learned and pious men unintelligible otherwise than as to their positive truth by all mankind and more particularly those clauses concerning our blessed Saviour are so true so essential to our eternal salvation and yet so far above our reach that while we meditate on them seriously our Souls have nothing but miracles of power wisdom mercy and love in view but being known for such they all hold their miraculous nature still and can never be fully decipher'd either by Men or Angels and that we should yet be obliged stedfastly to believe these things though we cannot comprehend them will appear no way unreasonable if we consider these things belonging to the 3d. Inquiry which is What considerable advantages can accrue to Religion from those Mysteries it 's founded upon we consider in pursuit of this Query That by a due reflection upon the nature of such Mysteries as are really necessary and consequently of very great weight and importance men are brought to a due acknowledgment of the deficiency of their own reason they learn how weak and shallow all the utmost flights of wit and reason are when they come once to stand in competition with the results of infinite wisdom and unlimited understanding Men of the most presuming abilities find it very hard to unriddle ancient parables and to give a clear and evident explication of aenigmatical writings and figurative sentences and expressions the youthful Philistines Men without doubt of very brisk parts in their own esteem as we may conclude by their ready acceptance of Sampson's proposition faltred pitifully when they set their wits on work to expound his riddle and the Pharisaical Allumbradoes those men of light who like the modern Chineses concluded almost all the World blind except themselves when our Saviour put that Dilemma to them concerning John's Baptism viz. Whether it were from Heaven or of Men it confounded them so as all their mighty wisdom could never dis-intangle them if these things were difficult the fundamental Mysteries of Religion are much more so Men have attempted several ways to solve the appearances of Nature and some have made such ingenious researches after them and have laid down Hypotheses so very rational for the solution of difficulties in them that they have got themselves the applauding
vogue of the World and their Dictates have been valued by learned Men as the great standards of Philosophic reason Nay the acquists of some in these matters have puft them up with that ridiculous vanity and pride that they have dared to trample upon all Religion nay upon the Deity it self imagining themselves able to demonstrate how the World and all the parts of it might be constituted regulated and continued without any concurrence of a Divine and unbounded Providence but when these same mighty pretenders to wit and sense have come to look into the shallow Mystick rites of ancient Heathens they have but fool'd and disgraced themselves but when such fall upon the foundations of Christianity they prove like that Stone our Saviour speaks of which whosoever shall fall on shall be broken Matth. 21.44 but on whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder they onely show themselves egregious fools and endeavour to ridicule every thing which they find themselves unable to understand Thus Lucian or some of his Contemporaries in his Philopatris a Dialogue of that name makes it his business to scoff at several things reveal'd in Scripture and at several of the Mysteries of Christianity though neither he nor his followers not Celsus nor Porphyry nor Libanius nor Julian himself nor any other of that witty scoffing tribe were ever able to confute the Writings of the Prophets or the Apostles or to baffle their Christian Antagonists by any serious argument In the forenam'd Dialogue Critias offering to swear to Triepho or to give him an oath for his security from any danger having named several of their Heathen Gods Triepho derides them all with reason enough Critias at last breaks out thus By whom then shall I swear that I may be believ'd The other answers Thou shalt swear by that God who rules above Philopatris Oper. Luciani T. 2. p. 770. the great the immortal the Heavenly God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Son of the Father the Spirit proceeding from the Father one of three and three of one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Reckon of these as of Jupiter esteem these God after this the same Buffoon proceeds to scoff at that great Apostle of the Gentiles St. Paul calling him that bald high-nos'd Galilaean who mounted upon the air into the third Heaven and there learnt wonderful matters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He regenerated or renewed us by water and gently guided us into the foot-steps of the blessed and redeem'd us out of the regions of the wicked and again he burlesques the original of all things where he tells his Companion that there was light incorruptible invisible incomprehensible which put an end to darkness and disorder 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 onely with speaking one word as that slow-tongu'd Man meaning Moses has written and more to the same purpose and of the same scurrilous stamp and this is the wit of Atheistical heads who think it 's enough to expose a Doctrine they understand not or cannot edifie by as some would express it meerly to name it and no more where as the true Sons of Religion though they are far enough from pretending to fathom the great objects of faith cannot yet but derive ineffable consolations from the positive truth of those Mysteries contain'd in Holy Writ but this overweening of their own extraordinary wit made many persons of excellent natural abilities of well exercised reason and inimitable diligence in the first ages of the Gospel stumble so foully at the Doctrine of a crucified Saviour for as a just punishment for that foolish pride and self conceit God destroy'd the wisdom of the wise 1 Cor. 1.19 and brought to nothing the understanding of the prudent so the Stoic and Epicuraean Philosophers were mightily puzled with those new Gods as they were pleas'd to call them Acts 17.18 viz. Jesus and the resurrection as if because they could not understand what the meaning of a resurrection was therefore the Apostles who preach'd it up must needs either make a God or a Goddess of it Thus the same doctrine of the resurrection and that of Christ's being the Son of God and several other mystick truths were cast in the teeth of suffering Christians as if they could be no better than mad men who would undergo so many hardships for assertions so very unintelligible as that they could deserve nothing less than derision and it was often urged as an evidence of a bad cause that it had so many strange and incomprehensible postulates attending on it The same is the plea of the Atheistical what if I should add of the Heretical wits of our age who labour hard to expose whatsoever they meet with beyond the reach of their debauch'd understandings and would therefore have all sound Religion banish'd out of the Commonwealth because forsooth they cannot comprehend How God should become Man should be born of a pure Virgin should converse with men should dye for their sins rise again for their justification and ascend up into glory with that humane body he had assumed unto himself from whence before the Worlds dissolution he should certainly come to be the Supreme determining Judge of all both Men and actions upon which Faith the whole Christian Oeconomy is built and without the certain truth of all which Christianity would be the most absurd and unreasonable religion in the World Thus Hereticks thus Atheists discourse as if it were indeed impossible there should exist a God of greater wisdom and power than themselves or however that he must dispose of all things just agreeably to their Capacities on pain of being dethroned for a default when yet every day they see men like themselves born into the World but can give no possible account of the reason of their acquiring such and such particular shapes or features in the World they see a man born naked into the World but cannot tell us why they are not all cover'd with hair or scaly armour like Beasts or with scales and fins as Fishes or with feathers as Birds they see and know they have naturally but two feet but cannot tell why they should not be born without any as Worms or Fishes or why they should not have four as the greater number of Beasts or why not greater numbers as most insects they see Man a Creature of a noble and Majestick frame endued with a discursive faculty ready to descant upon every visible object yet cannot tell why nature should have given man but two eyes wherewith to survey so vast and unaccountable a variety when at the same time she has studded the head of a contemptible Fly with several thousands they find themselves able to call to mind a mighty number of particulars seen heard read talkt of but cannot inform themselves certainly where the numerous Idaeas of sensible things past should be lodged when at the same time the mind is crouded with a World of present objects and roving too after the
most uncertain future contingencies and yet after all these notorious instances of their wretched Ignorances God must lay his whole Divine power and wisdom at their feet or else he must be no God for them We may say with a little alteration of David's words Man overvaluing his own wisdom hath no understanding but is like the beasts that perish if he could comprehend God he 'd despise him since he cannot he 'l deny him an humour uncouth and unnatural even to corrupted reason but the truly wise man when he sees himself thus puzled with every little effect of common nature is so far from thinking it strange that the great Sovereign of all things should say or do any thing above his understanding that he rather would wonder did he not acknowledge both omnipotence and omniscience in God how so excellent a Being should possibly stoop so low as to make any thing concerning himself intelligible to a corrupted transgressing Creature the more he looks upward to God the ordainer of all things the readier He is to break out into that expression of the Psalmist When I consider the Heavens the work of thy fingers Psal 8.3 the Moon and the Stars which thou hast ordained Lord what is man that thou shouldst consider him or the Son of Man that thou visitest him The more he meditates on God's infinite perfections the more humbly sensible he grows of his own wants and easily can see at how sad a loss wretched Man would have been for obtaining that Divine favour which he had forfeited by Sin had not somewhat Almighty interpos'd nor can he be but extremely humbled in his own thoughts when he sees how unsearchable God's wisdom is and his ways past finding out since He out of such strange confusions as Sin had brought into the World could produce order and by the most improbable and unsuspected means could once more lay open to Men the way to eternal happiness that way which Sin had shut up before the more a contemplative Man learns to admire his God in this case the more he learns to undervalue himself and never to depend upon his own dreams and imaginations By those Mysteries attending Religion in general men are in the better capacity to make a judgment of Religions of all ages and to fix themselves upon that alone which is proper to conduct us through a troublesome world to everlasting happiness The nature of any religious profession may be distinguish'd by such characteristicks for since God as he manifests himself to mankind is unquestionably a very benign and merciful Being that Religion which has the closest correspondence with such manifestations of himself must certainly be the most pleasing to God and consequently the best Mystick Rites and Ceremonies have been various and tho' the Devil had his design in the invention of several yet Men too who us'd them had as before I prov'd in all of them some particular respects to futurity and that happiness expected by means of a Mediator between God and Man but as God was never pleas'd by unclean offerings so much less could he be pleas'd with humane blood offer'd upon Altars devoted to him however such Sacrifices might be thought to prefigure best the shedding of Christ's blood that blood without which there could be no remission and therefore we find that tho' God tryed Abraham's faith and obedience by that severe command that he should offer up his only Son a burnt offering to him and tho' he permitted the good old Patriarch to go on a great way toward putting the command in execution yet when he was ready to give the fatal stroke he stop'd his hand and accepted the readiness to offer it better than he would have accepted the sacrifice it self when actually made therefore whatsoever mystery savour'd any thing of cruelty was enough if there were nothing more to desecrate that perswasion which admitted of such things Again whereas those who pretend to any considerable notions of a God will acknowledge him to be infinitely holy and pure and consequently to love the same holiness and purity in his Creatures Wheresoever any mystick rites have at any time trespassed upon such purity we may be assured God has nothing to do with such worship a brand in this case the Pagan zeal endeavoured to fix upon the Christians as well knowing how odious such a charge would render them Thus Caecilius in Minutius Foelix having before charged the Christians with murdering and devouring infants he adds Minutii Foelicis Oct. p. 90. Edit Hackian On a certain day the Christians men women and children of every age and sex meet together at a feast after much junketing when their incestuous lust grows hot a dog tyed on purpose to the candlestick pulls it down extinguishes the light and then in the dark they promiscuously pollute one another with fornications adulteries incests and what not But Pliny as much a heathen as himself vindicates the abused Christians from that horrid calumny in his Epistle to Trajan where he informs that Emperor That he had found by certain intelligence that the Christians on a set day were wont to meet before it was light and alternately to sing an Hymn to Christ as if he were God Séque sacramento non in scelus aliquod obstringere sed nè furta nè latrocinia nè adulteria committerent nè fidem fallerent c. i. e. And they did by solemn oath engage themselves not to any wickedness but that they should not steal nor murder nor commit adultery nor perjure themselves c. Now how those who entered into such solemn mutual engagements not to commit such sins should yet be so notoriously guilty of the worst of crimes and how such very guilty persons and such horrid abominations Plinii Epistol l. 10 Ep. 97. should have escaped Pliny's cognizance who had made it his particular business to enquire into the behaviour of Christians it s very hard to imagine But howsoever falsly these things were charged upon Christians they were true enough among the Heathens where the Eleusinian rites among the Graecians those of the Bona Dea among the Romans with their Bacchanalia c. were nothing but so many subtle contrivances to render all manner of lewdness and villany authentick and valuable on which account the Apostle exhorts his Ephesians Ephes 5.11 12. to have no fellowship with such unfruitful works of darkness but rather to reprove them for that its a shame to speak of those things which are done of them in secret Farther yet whereas God has now really by his Son accomplished that great work of the worlds redemption those mystick Rites and Ceremonies which fore-signified that to be done are now vacated and those who would have mysteries of that nature still continued do as much as in them lies to drive the world into an aversion from him who alone is able to save to the uttermost all those who come to God by him
For those rites continued will move the world to belive that the Messias is not yet come that the Faith so long profest in him as if he were come is vain that He who once pretended to that name only impos'd upon the world and was no better than a cheat and that therefore the Jewish Religion is and ought to be still in its full force Now this will appear very absurd and unreasonable to any one who has seriously weighed all those arguments brought to prove that Jesus Christ was the Son of the living God and therefore could be no Impostor and therefore must be that Messias he declar'd himself to be which being true it will follow that our Saviours coming must of necessity put an end to so much of the Jewish Law as was not co-incident with that of Nature and consequently not perpetually obliging That many of the Jews themselves ever look'd upon their Law as of a mutable nature in it self is proved sufficiently by Raymundus Martini in his Pugio fidei against the Jews and that it could never be more properly actually chang'd than by the Messias appears in him who proves from Jewish writers themselves that the Messias the King shall be greater than Moses nay greater than the ministring Angels and therefore the fittest for such a work and as he shews their own gloss in the Midrasch Koheleth upon that of Solomon Eccles 11.8 Pugionis fidei p. 3. dist 3. c. 20 tells us That every Law of all people whatsoever every Law that a man can learn in this world is all but vanity in comparison of the Law of the Messias Things of a less perfect and lasting nature must then vanish when that appears which is more perfect and eternal Whatsoever therefore crosses that end for which God sent his Son into the world and retains mysteries now altogether insignificant as being fully accomplished that cannot be pleasing to God and consequently the present Religion of the Jews cannot be the true Religion There are indeed some mysterious truths in which all Religions agree viz. The existence of a God his spirituality invisibility incomprehensibility c. they all agree That his Providence governs all things in the world however trifling and inconsiderable they may appear in the eyes of the world that He hears sees knows understands every thing tho' they know not how according to the objection of Atheists to reconcile such things to his want of eyes ears soul or any other parts which are all inconsistent with a spiritual being All agree together in granting the present state of Man very wretched and deplorable in looking upon him yet as capable of happiness provided a sutable mean for its procurement could be found out and in expectation of some proper help for that purpose These things being agreeable to the general sence of mankind and being the original reasons of mens putting themselves into a religious course must still be approved by every one and every one of these that Religion setled in the world by our Saviour and his Apostles does advance yet more plainly and confirm more strongly to the world And whatsoever mysterious truths it farther propounds they are all so far intelligible by every one as may serve sufficiently to confirm those first principles whatsoever is farther to be seen in them is what moves mankind to lay aside all brutish malicious and unmanly humour as the meditation upon that extraordinary love of God to mankind of God the Father in sending his only Son into the world to dy for it of God the Son in leaving the bosom of his blessed Father and in our nature and for our sake suffering that bitter and scandalous death upon the Cross of God the Holy Ghost in pursuing us continually with his influences and assistances and so working in us to will and to do according to God's good pleasure this meditation naturally runs into that Apostolical conclusion Joh. 4.11 if God thus loved us then ought we also to love one another If we contemplate our own monstrous demerits our aversion to every thing that is good our inclination to every thing that is evil and so offensive to God our ingratitude for mercies receiv'd our unfruitfulness under the means of grace and Salvation presented to us our natural enmity to God and goodness And if withal we seriously consider that all those forementioned favours are conferr'd on us in a state of obstinate enmity the inference is easie as our Lord has laid it down Matth. 5.44 That we should love our enemies bless them that curse us do good to them that hate us and pray for them that despitefully use us and persecute us If again we think on that wonderful mercy of God whereby for the merits of the blessed Jesus he 's pleased to forgive us our sins those natural bars between us and heaven the consequence we must of course draw from thence is that of the Apostle That we should be kind Eph. 4.32 tender hearted forgiving one another even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven us Thus we see what excellent influence these very truths the nature and reasons of which are above the reach of our groveling minds may have upon us If we proceed and reflect upon the purity and holiness of that God with whom we have to do that he 's a Being who cannot endure sin who punishes it for its odious nature even in his dearest children all those mysteries reveal'd to us in the Gospel are so far by any fair consequence from perverting our minds that they give us all the motives imaginable 1 Pet. 1.15 that as he who has called us is holy so should we be holy in all manner of conversation A man may be a good heathen and yet a filthy Sodomite a through-pac'd Jew and yet be blind hard-hearted carnal but a man cannot be a true Christian but he 'l endeavour to avoid all appearance of evil Jude 2â— and to keep himself unspotted from the world he 'l live in a continual abhorrence of whatsoever may prejudice his soul or pollute his body and knowing that he is not his own James â—â— but that he 's bought with a price he 'l follow that advice he 'l endeavour to glorifie God in his body and in his spirit which are gods 1 Cor. 6. â—â— and to go no farther than what I had instanced in before a man that meditates on that account the Apostles and Evangelists have given us of the appearance of the Son of God in the flesh and on the ends and designs of such his appearance he 'l never spend his time idly about types and shadows when he is invited to embrace the substance he 'l study to conform himself to the Doctrine of the Gospel to be so far as belongs to a meer man a perfect imitator of all those excellent virtues so apparent in our Saviour during his converse with the world he 'l carefully avoid all
sin which was incapable of pardon from an offended God but upon the terms of the passion of his dearly beloved Son and will be throughly satisfied of the danger of such transgression by a rational assurance That if men sin wilfully after they have receiv'd the knowledge of the truth Hebr. 10.26 27. there remains now no more sacrifices for sins but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries If then true Religion consist in worshipping God according to those revelations he has made of himself to the world and we cannot propound any reason to our selves why God should have made any such revelation of himself to us but only that when we have a rule we might have an example too then whatsoever religion that is whose most obscure and incomprehensible mysteries highly promote that excellent work of following our exemplar or growing up into an assimilation to God himself by endeavouring to be holy as our heavenly father is holy and perfect as he is perfect That Religion must certainly carry us by the surest ways to eternal happiness but such a Religion is that instituted by our Saviour in the Gospel therefore that 's a Religion above all others for the sake of such mysteries so profound but withal so very profitable and instructive to be embraced by all wise and considering Men. A due reflection upon those mysteries any Religion is founded upon with a just apprehension of the deficiency of our own reason in tracing them is a very proper means to create in mens minds a due and exact reverence for it Thus that very notion that we have of God's infinity of his dwelling in impenetrable darkness or in inaccessible light of the unsearchableness of his ways the incomprehensibility of his wisdom c. All these things make awful impressions upon mens souls and make them to fear before God and to reverence him and this God him self intended when by his Prophet he assured the Jews My thoughts are not your thoughts Isai 55.8 9. neither are your ways my ways saith the Lord for as the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts This prodigious distance between the nature of God and Man was enough to overawe man on whose side there was so very great a disadvantage God's prohibition so often repeated to the Jews that they should not represent him to themselves by any figure or image whatsoever with the reason as frequently inculcated that they never had seen any thing which could look like any representation of him was to prevent that contempt which too much familiarity with superiors naturally produces for representing a God by any thing of a gross or material nature is apt to create as gross an Idaea of the Divinity it self in the mind of a Man and those once entertained produce a sawciness and familiarity not at all agreeable to that immense distance there is between a divine and a mortal Being Thus it 's observable that the Gentiles generally were upon several occasions extravagantly free with those Gods they worshipp'd Hence the Tyrians when Alexander the great besieged them chain'd the Image of Apollo to that of Hercules lest the God should leave them because one of their Citizens had had a melancholick dream forsooth that he designed to serve them such a slippery trick in their necessity So the Athenians clip'd off the wings of the Image of the goddess Victory lest she should fly away from them So Dionysius the elder of Sicily took off a golden mantle from the statue of Jupiter and put him on a woolen blanket with that scoffing reason that the blanket was fitter for all weathers being lighter in Summer and warmer in Winter So he took off the golden beard of Aesculapius with that Witticisme That it became not him to have so long a beard when his father Apollo had none It 's true these affronts were proper enough for those Idols to whom they were offer'd but they were very unbecoming those who offered them since they profest to believe that they were really gods so that they were not those Images or Statues which were abus'd but it was the true Divinity it self which they imagined resident in or about those Images And of this Inconvenience from material Images even of material Saints the Romanists are sometimes sensible witness that action of a Spanish Peasant who making his offering to the Image of the blessed Virgin and imagining she look'd not so kindly on him for it as he expected He very briskly told her she need not be so proud for He remembred she was but a sorry piece of timber the other day it was yet the more effectually to prevent such inconveniences that God appointed a part of the Tabernacle first and of the Temple at Jerusalem afterwards under the Sacred name of the Holy of Holies to be wholly inaccessible to any but the High Priest who bore an extraordinary Character among the Jews nor might He enter into it above once a Year and that with a great deal of respect and ceremony This made God to strike the men of Bethshemesh with so terrible a judgment for daring to pry into what God intended to keep secret 1 Sam. â— 19 and to strike Vzzah dead upon the place for presuming to do what was above his station and touch the Ark though it seem'd an action proceeding from a good zeal or a fear that the Ark the peculiar Symbol of God's presence among his People should have fallen to the ground 2 Sam. 6.9 but we may see what a terror that signal vengeance struck upon David himself and all his Company v. 10. and it 's observ'd of Pompey the Great that after He had been so bold as to look into the Holy of Holies upon his taking Jerusalem that though He saw nothing there nor offer'd any violence to any thing about the Temple but expressed a great deal of reverence towards the place and those that attended on it yet that God's judgments pursued him from that time that He prosper'd in little or nothing that He undertook all things from thence verging hastily to his final ruine So jealous is God of his honour so terrible to those who will be strugling to know what he would have kept secret from the World That great reverence which a due distance between God and the things belonging to him and Man creates is so well known in the World that wise Men have thought it convenient that there should be somewhat of a Mysterious Majesty in those who are God's representatives on earth which has taught the great Eastern Monarchs that prudent piece of state to shew themselves as seldom as possible to the People by which means the Vulgar not being capable of any diminutive thoughts of those whose weaknesses they are unacquainted with almost reverence their Kings as Gods and conclude no submissions can be
so to believe also in Him But now if without believing in Christ eternal life and happiness cannot be obtain'd and that be saving Faith which is fix'd on Him and if we be reasonably commanded to believe in him and yet true saving Faith cannot be fix'd in any but in God alone then it will follow that Christ must be God the true the Supreme God and it will follow too that it 's indispensibly necessary that all Men should know he is God that they may know in whom it is that they believe that he is the proper object of Divine Faith and able to answer all the expectations of Faith For otherwise as a proposition may in it self be true and yet I may be a lyer when I swear it is true because I know nothing of its being so So though Christ may be in himself the true God yet I am an Idolater for worshipping him as the true while I know not that he is indeed the true God And St. Paul acquits not the Athenians of Idolatry in consecrating an Altar to the unknown God tho' that God unknown to them was the same God whom he preach'd unto them Nor will that of the Apostle St. John be easily avoided where having before told us We know that the Son of God is come 1 John 5.20 and hath given us an understanding to know him that is true and we are in him that is true even in Jesus Christ he subjoyns This is the true God and Eternal Life These words if we interpret them as they lie and they seem to have no figure or Hyperbole or foreign relation in them may pass for a very plain Text to prove that it concerns no less than our Eternal Salvation to know that Jesus Christ is the true God and this Interpretation gives the clearer reason and stronger Emphasis to his following rule v. 21. Little Children keep your selves from Idols If then our Lord's design was to procure Man's everlasting Salvation a right and certain knowledge of that on which Eternal Life depends cannot be impertinent to our Lord's design And if to worship God according to his declared Will be the purpose of every one that embraces Christianity exclusively of all other Religions he that thinks it necessary in his worship to distinguish between these respects due to a meer Creature and those Honours belonging to the Creator cannot miss his purpose or lose his labour and He who by solid proofs drawn from clear and pertinent places of Scripture makes his Faith in this particular rational cannot easily incur any extraordinary danger though without so doing he may incur a fatal hazard and thus we come to a direct discourse on that Particular where these things will be more fully considered Having concluded the first words of this Verse Without Controversie great is the Mystery of Godliness to signifie to us the concurrence of the Christian Faith with the Worlds general vogue in relation to Religion and that Mysteries great and obscure are very necessary to the perpetuation of that Faith and rend'ring it venerable among conceited and presuming disputants it cannot be unuseful to discourse on the first instance the Apostle makes use of to illustrate the Mystery of Godliness or of the Christian Faith viz. God's manifesting himself in the flesh or appearing and showing himself to humane eyes cloth'd in humane nature for though God manifests himself a thousand several ways in his works of Creation and Providence where his Truth Justice Mercy Power Wisdom c. are notoriously evident to diligent observers yet all these manifestations of himself are at a distance and such as though they give us a very fair Idea of divine Goodness as in himself yet conduce little to Humane happiness while Men reflect upon themselves as miserably degenerate from that original excellency they were created in and as such who have extremely abus'd all those evidences of God's power and influence upon the World which have been given for restraining them within due bounds and making them submissive to a superiour Law such reflections teach Men to look upon themselves as in a ruinous state fit subjects for eternal displeasure and of themselves wholly incapable of satisfying divine justice or retrieving forfeited happiness and upon God onely as a severe Judge and powerful revenger of whom they could onely conclude that he would vindicate his own honour upon those that injured it and punish those to extremity who had not duly improved those overtures of himself which he had made in his visible works What Man in such a case might wish for is easie enough to conjecture He that 's falling down a precipice would bless the Hand that would save him from death and he that 's going immediately to execution would be overjoy'd to hear of a pardon so would almost despairing wretched sinful Man do wish for some proportionable power to interpose between himself and vengeance But such a power onely could be in God and yet so great a benefit could be procur'd for Man onely by such an adequate satisfaction to God's anger as could be given by a Man Here Humane conceptions were entirely at a loss the universal imperfection of their nature they plainly understood and so the impossibility of meer humane satisfaction they easily found it was no created being it was no mere man though strengthened by Divine assistance nay it was none of those pure and happy Spirits who attend on celestial Ministrations that could stem that prodigious tide of immense wrath therefore God himself must interpose but how Infinity should be confin'd how He who grasp'd the Universe in his hand should stoop from Heaven for the sake of those who had affronted his goodness before how He should condescend to assume Humanity the necessary Medium of peace were Mysteries too great for Man to fathom and Hopes too large for guilty souls to please themselves with but what was so very obscure to Man was plain and easie to the Almighty and when the time of his redeem'd was come when he look'd and there was none to help Isay 63.4 5. and wondred that there was none to uphold then his own arm brought salvation to the World It was then in that absolute fulness of time when sins and miseries and anger were at the height and all things seem'd inevitably running to eternal destruction that God sent forth his Son made of a Woman made under the Law to redeem them that were under the Law from those burdens and that death to which they were enslav'd to stop the fatal final sentence then ready to be past God himself was so made manifest in the flesh In relation to which great action we shall assert That Jesus Christ the Messias appearing in our Humane nature or cloth'd with flesh and blood was really the Son of God That the same blessed Jesus was God equal with his Father or really and truly God as well as real Man That it was necessary that
Original of that call'd the Dead Sea from the Conflagration of Sodom and Gomorrha Admah and Zeboim by fire from Heaven of the Ascent of the Jews out of Aegypt and the Calamities suffer'd by the Aegyptians upon their account of the Original of the Jewish Government Sacred and Civil c. These accounts of Antiquity and many more of the same nature look'd infinitely more probably than the dreams and forgeries of their eldest Authors for whose sake they look'd upon all their own stories relating to the first Ages of the World as onely obscure and fabulous These Pleas as I said before might serve to bring any into as good an opinion of that Book which we call Scripture as of any other meer humane writing But that 's not enough Scripture may to Infidels themselves be prov'd to be far superior in the original nature and use of it than any thing else the World pretends to the certainty of which lays open a fair way for the conversion of Infidels to Christianity and indeed is such a medium as without it or unquestionable miracles which Miracles too must tend wholly to the confirmation of the authority of Scripture it 's wholly vain to pretend to their conversion What I mention'd at first that the excellency of Scripture might be prov'd or its authority have a due influence upon such as acknowledge onely the being of a God was spoken with relation to Atheists who deny any such Being at all for tho' we have not met yet with any Nation so barbarous but it has had some notion of a God as where-ever there is any pretence to divination or predictions of future contingencies there must be such yet since some will pretend to Courage enough utterly to deny the existence of a God and make it their business to make proselytes to the same non-sense I confess no Arguments of that nature I aim at can have any effects on them those who deny a God will scarce acknowledge any particular Writing to be the Word of God but to those who do acknowledge a God these things will be obvious enough and past dispute That if there be a God i. e. One great supreme Being who presides with an absolute and illimited power over the World and all transactions in it This God must necessarily have all those Attributes due to himself which are requisite for the exercising such a power for he that believes not this has no true notion of a God without which yet no Man can pretend to any true or solid religion for as the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews tells us He that comes to God must believe that he is Heb. 11.6 and that he is a rewarder of those that seek him so the Stoick Philosopher joyns with the Apostle when he makes the greatest part of true Religion to consist in having 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 true opinions of the Gods so as to know that they are and that they manage all things well and justly that all ought to obey them and acquiesce in those things which are done by them Epict. Ench. c. 38. and to act in agreement with them as being govern'd by an All-wise Mind now according to these Models none can have a true or exact apprehension of a God but he who represents God to himself as capable of performing all those things for which he thinks it necessary to believe He is And from hence it was that Epicharmus tells us Cudw Intel Syst p. 263 -4 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nothing escapes the eye of the Divinity this you ought to take notice of He 's the Overseer of us all and there 's nothing that he cannot do which shews he understood the God of all things to be omnipotent omniscient and omnipresent three of those great attributes Christians give to God and that it was necessarily to be understood by all others who pretended to the same knowledge of a God Hence God or he whom Pagans own'd to be the supreme God known to them by the name of Jupiter is call'd by them the great Architect or Maker of the World the Prince and chief Ruler of the Vniverse the first or chief God the first Mind the great God the greatest of the Gods the highest the superior to all Gods the most transcendent God the God of gods the Principle of Principles the first Cause He that generated the Universe He that rules over the whole World the Supreme Governor and Lord of all things the God without beginning self-originated and self-subsisting He that is far beyond the reach of Humane Minds and understandings that Eternal Being which can never change and never perish The beginning the end and the middle of all things He who is one God onely and all Gods in one now the result of all these titles is That the Supreme Being which governs the World is infinitely perfect which if drawn down into Christian words and principles amounts to this That God is infinitely powerful just true merciful glorious loving and good to all his Creatures and all these things are so essentially constitutive of the Deity that without the concurrence of them all there could be none for what is perfect must be so in all instances for any one exception ruines the whole assertion and makes that Being what ever he may pretend to really imperfect Amongst these several Attributes which render God adorable to the World that Love or Goodness of his whereby he regulates and provides for all his Creatures is one and as he originally desires so he promotes their real happiness and of this Goodness the Heathens had notions as well as our selves though not perhaps so clear or convictive as those God has blest us with in Scripture thus Platonists perswade us that God himself was turn'd into Love when he made the World that order in which he had set and that providence by which he govern'd all things showing the most prodigious effects of Love or goodness So the Greek Comedian gives us an odd Idea of the World 's Original Aristoph in Nubibus That in the beginning Confusion and Night and Hell and Darkness had an existence there was then no Earth nor Air nor Sky In the first place black-winged Night laid a prolifick Egg in the inscrutable bosome of profound Darkness from which in succeeding Hours was produced desirable Love glittering in the Air with golden Wings and like the breeding Winds coupling with prepared Chaos or dark confusion in the infernal regions p. 121. expos'd our kind first of all to light nor had the Gods themselves any being till Love it self had mingled all things Which Poetical expressions being duly explain'd or reduced to plain sense and the Gods in the last passages meaning onely Angels Moses his history of the Creation Gen. 1. and St. John's discourse John 1. concerning the Creation of all things by Christ with his assertion oft repeated That God is Love are not very different from
their eyes What mortal Creature could have seen or discover'd him if he had come down to earth in his own original Nature or such as he is in his Divinity Therefore he took upon him the form of a Man that he might be seen and look'd upon that he might speak and teach and perform all those things for which he was sent into the World And whereas He dyed as a Man p. 37. it 's true his Humane Body was fastned upon the Cross but his Divine Nature was incapable of suffering his Body only suffer'd and that for the Salvation of those very Wretches by whose cruelty he suffer'd The same Author reflecting upon the curiosity of the Heathens because they would not believe what they did not understand asks them a great many questions about the Originals or natural causes of several things in the World which puzled them in those and confound us their posterity in these days He wonders then that they should deride Christians because they cannot explain all the Mysteries of their Religion and own their inabilities in the case when They were so much to seek in those ordinary cases Our concerns are mysteries indeed Et ideo Christus licet nobis invitis Deus Deus inquam Christus hoc enim saepe dicendum est ut infidelium dissiliat dirumpatur auditus c. Therefore Christ who is God in spite of all your opposition that Christ I say who is God for that must be repeated often to scourge the ears of Infidels speaking by God's command in the form of a Man Adv. gent. l. 2. p. 85. knowing the blindness of humane understandings and the weakness of our apprehensions forbad us to be curious or inquisitive into matters so far removed only ordering us to direct our thoughts and souls to him who is the original of all these things What advice Arnobius gives his Pagans in pursuance of this discourse would be very proper for our Socinians among whom a modest opinion of their own Natural strength and an humble supposition of God's superior Wisdom would cure that Incredulity they are at present guilty of Arnobius soon after lays down this Truth That none can save Souls but an Almighty God nor is there any who can give them long life or perpetuity but only He who is himself immortal and perpetual and uncircumscribed by any boundaries of time Yet this work of saving souls he ascribes to the Son of God Adv. Gen. l. 2. p. 87. therefore according to his sentiments the Son of God is that immortal all powerful and unbounded God To all these evidences I shall only add one of Lactantius the Scholar of the forecited Arnobius who endeavouring to reconcile the worship which the Christians paid to the Father and the Son to those adorations which they acknowledg'd only to belong to one God writes thus Instit l. 4. c. 29. p. 445. Ed. Hack. Where we say the Father is God and the Son is God we do not say they are different Gods nor do we separate them one from another for neither can the Father be divided from the Son nor the Son from the Father for the Father in a relative sence cannot be named without the Son nor the Son be begotten without the Father Since then the Father makes the Son relatively and the Son the Father they have both one Mind one Spirit one substance only the Father is as an exuberant Spring the Son as a stream flowing from it the Father is as the Sun in the firmament the Son as the rays beaming from that Sun who because he is dear and faithful to his Father can no more be separated from him than the stream from the Spring or beams from the body of the Sun for the water of the fountain is in the stream and the light of the Sun in those rays which issue from it And this is plain and pertinent enough And thus have I gone thro' the Writings of those first Fathers who are of the greatest Name and Reputation for their learning and piety in the Churches of God I have examin'd on this account only such Men as lived before the Arrian controversie was on foot so that they cannot be suspected of partiality in the case and either we must believe these Men knew very well what was the General Belief of Christians in those earliest ages or they did not if they did not understand what the Catholick Faith really was we are all strangely in the dark and the Socinians are no more capable of giving an account of the Faith of the primo-primitive Church in contradiction to what we now assert than we are in agreeance to it nay there lye all the presumptions in the World against them in the point for all the Writers extant afterwards with an almost Vniversal consent are directly against them So that unless the true Christian Faith were entirely lost about the time of the great Nicene Council the Socinians must of necessity acknowledge that the Christian Church generally believ'd that Christ was true and real God Nor can they secure themselves even among the several Heretical Clans of those ages for though they own Artemon and Paulus Samosatenus and Photinus and Arrius and Aëtius c. for great and very Orthodox Men and the sole Pillars of truth in those times yet neither did Artemon agree with Paulus nor Paulus with Photinus nor Photinus with Arrius or he with Aëtius and the same Writers call our Socinians sometimes by the name of Samosatenians sometimes of Photinians sometimes of Arrians and Semi-Arrians yet really they agree exactly with none of them as might easily be prov'd by comparing their opinions together Now if Artemon and Paulus and Photinus and the rest were such very great Men in all respects and such careful preservers of the true Apostolical Faith in those things wherein they agree with the Socinian sentiments why should not we believe they used as exact a care and were as certainly in the right in those particulars wherein they differ'd from them for doubtless such Good Men would not admit of any Errors in any points of weighty and important concern Those Men certainly must presume very much upon their own infallibility who tho' they are at odds among themselves will admit of none to be in the right but such who and where they agree with them in the most singular and paradoxical opinions But if on the other side we admit that these Fathers I have quoted on this occasion had real opportunities of knowing the General Sentiments of the Christian Church in their days and that they really did know them the result of that acknowledgment will be this either they were honest and faithful deliverers of the same Catholick Faith down to us or they were not if they were not honest and faithful in delivering down the true Faith in their Writings then holy and zealous Martyrs and devout Confessors must have proved themselves a pack of impudent
Saints or pious Men may have a Surplusage of Merits such as may not only serve themselves and their own Necessities but accommodate others who were defective in themselves but it 's yet a greater Madness to believe that the Son of God had no Merits and was able to purchase no Pardon for our sins by his Sufferings or that by dying for our Sins he was unable to satisfie his Father's Displeasure against Sinners the Mischief and Falshood of such Opinions I have proved at large in the former parts of this Discourse yet God in his Wisdom and for the Tryal of those who can adhere stedfastly to the Truth as it is in Christ Jesus is pleased to permit these Errors to be divulged and defended and propagated with a mischievous Diligence by Men of mighty Names and Interests who presuming upon the present Indulgence assume boldly to vent and spread those Poisons they were forc'd to conceal within their own Breasts before Time was when by the just Judgment of God upon the Laodicean Temper of the generality of Christians Arianism got strength and clouded all the native Glories of the Church of God it was then when as St. Hierome says the World stood in amaze to see it self grown Arian at once God grant the Plague of Socinianism be not permitted to infect the Church of England with as fatal a Success that those Damnable Heresies wherein the Lord who bought us is denied gain not among us too many Proselytes and Patrons too they have indeed their oyly Words their plausible Arguments their extraordinary pretences to Morality and extremity of Confidence yet could they never hope to prevail did they not observe the extream Debauchery and Loosness of the Age they consider the Principles of solid Religion as generally slighted the lazy Humours of Men as little careful to enquire into the Nature of Doctrines propounded but ready either to sink into down-right Atheism or to take up with the first Scheme of Religion that may come to hand Men aim more at eminence in what they abusively call Wit than at serious Piety and therefore subtil watchful Hereticks pretend only to reduce Religion to the Rules of Reason i. e. of their own Reason who have started so many Impieties though the Reason of all Mankind beside themselves appear in contradiction to them as if a company of Opinators who neither value their own nor others Souls were to fix their particular Sentiments as the only Standards of Sense and Truth when indeed they have only the Fucus of Sophistry to make a shew of easily observ'd by those who stand upon their watch and are willing to be certainly convinced of the Truth of things before they entertain them There are others besides Papists who are only Wolves in Sheeps clothing and by how much the more venerable Name they assume to themselves by so much the more dangerous they are Every Man is ready to stand upon his guard if he fears being attacqu'd by a Roman Priest or by a pragmatick Jesuit but who would suspect that any of those who pretend to Tenderness of Conscience and a superfineness in Religious matters should blaspheme God the Son or God the Holy Ghost who would imagine that those who dare call themselves Sons of the Church of England nay Attendants at her Altars Hers who particularly declares against these very Heresies in those Articles they are oblig'd to subscribe and to defend should so affront their Sacred Mother and go about to seduce her Children from her sound and wholesome Doctrines But if Apostolick times could be pester'd with such False Teachers we may expect worse Measure upon whom the Ends of the World are come but above all what can be more astonishing than that those who pretend so great Good Will to our Sion should charge the Practice of our Church in praying equally to God the Father Son and Holy Ghost and proposing the Creeds of Constantinople and that call'd by the Name of St. Athanasius as guilty of Popery and those things as Reliques of that Idolatrous Religion Popery is a hated name and those who would have any thing hated need to fix nothing more odious upon it but if it be Popery to believe that our Saviour is the Son of God that he is God that by his Sufferings he has satisfied for our Sins and now sits at the right-hand of his Father making Intercession for our Sins God grant we may live and die in that Faith since our Case is such take heed how you hear or what you read let none deceive you with vain Words you have heard and read the Truth and if now or hereafter We or an Angel from Heaven preach any other Gospel unto you than what we have preached in this particular Let him be accursed and again Let him be accursed Amen FINIS A TABLE OF THE Principal Heads IN THIS DISCOURSE THE Design of the present Discourse Page 1 Socinian Endeavours to change the Text answered Page 4 A Mystery what Page 12 Doctrines may be Mysterious tho' revealed Page 13 Humane Reason enquired into as used in Religious Matters 1. It s original Excellence Page 19 2. It 's very much impair'd by Man's Fall Page 21 3. It 's yet sufficient to convince us of a general Necessity of Religion Page 25 4. Well employ'd it meets with Divine Assistance Page 32 5. By Exercise it grows more knowing and comprehensive Page 38 6. Yet it 's not compleat till the Future Life 's attain'd Page 44 Deductions from thence 1. God's Goodness to be admired because it continues us a discursive Faculty useful towards Salvation Page 47 2. We should use our Reason in Matters of Religion with all Humility and Sobriety Page 55 The Necessity of Enquiring into our Lord's Divinity no breach upon that Humility or Sobriety Page 63 The Text further explained and The Mystery of Godliness prov'd not applicable to the Gospel or God's revealed Will. Page 66 Not applicable to God the Father Page 68 The true Meaning of the Text with the subsequent Instances laid down and applied to our Saviour Page 73 And Paraphrased Page 79 I. The First Position then laid down That the Foundation of Christianity is indisputably Great and Mysterious and that prov'd necessary 1. By the World's universal Agreement that Mysteries both fundamental as to Faith and externally essential as to Rites are necessary in Religion Page 83 Rites among the Jews mystical by God's Appointment Page 94 Those of the Gentiles the same naturally Page 96 The first Design and Mystery of Sacrifices Page 98 The Devil imitating God and why Page 107 Sacrifices yet not believed sufficient to appease Heaven by any Intrinsic but only by a Relative Virtue Page 108 Our Saviour intended not the Abolition of every thing Mysterious in Religion Page 113 Mens Sentiments about the true Ends of Religion before our Lord's Incarnation enquir'd into Page 114 Those of the Jews Ibid. Those of the Gentiles Page 119 The Ends of Religion
perceive Well did this proceed from the difficulty and obscurity of what was preach'd No though he taught them in parables things not obvious to every one their unhappiness proceeded from another reason This Peoples heart is waxed gross and their ears are dull of hearing and their eyes they have closed lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and should understand with their hearts and should be converted and I should heal them Therefore he tried to open their eyes with miracles it being then but the dawn of the Gospel and men were not so easily wrought upon by clear reason and by earnest perswasion They were not the repeated tenders of mercy nor threats of eternal damnation that could convince them of the necessity of obedience to and belief of that Word which was Divine and Saving had not Miracles been exhibited such whose events they could give no account of to themselves or others in them therefore they could be content with that want of plainness which they knew not how to satisfie themselves with before The force and convincing power of Miracles lay indeed wholly in the inexplicability of their reason So long as Jannes and Jambres could work wonders in appearance parallel with those of Moses they believ'd him no Messenger sent from God but a cunning Jugler like themselves and how they wrought such surprizing wonders they knew well enough but when Moses had once out-reach'd the utmost of their skill they who thought themselves before unconquerable in jugling sleights and Magick skill presently acknowledged that the finger of God was there and began to tremble at what they had derided before so when he that spoke as never man spoke could by no other arguments convince the stubborn Jews that he was their long expected Messias He bids them believe him for his very works sake nay and indulges them so far as to allow John 15.24 that if he had not done among them the works which never man did they had had no sin And the Pharisees were very sensible what advantages accrued to the Apostle's doctrine by the miracles they did as appears by that question among them upon St. Peter's healing the impotent Man What shall we do to these men for that indeed a notable miracle hath been done by them is manifest to all them that dwell at Jerusalem Acts 4.16 and we cannot deny it But we find not our Saviour upon every miracle he did presently giving the Jews an account how or by what power he did them but he left them to make their conclusions from what they saw And the Apostles upon their Examination before the Jewish Council onely answer If we this day be examin'd of the good deed done to the Impotent man by what means he is made whole be it known unto you all and to the whole people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth whom ye crucified Acts 4.9 10. whom God rais'd from the dead even by him doth this man stand before you whole by which account they left them but in a maze of mystery and wonder more inextricable than before But if the unwonted cures of distempers the ejection of Devils the restauration of dead bodies to life could over-aw the most obstinate stubbornness how much more must the mysterious subjects of our faith the appearance of the Son of God in our nature his suffering death for our redemption his resurrection and ascension up into glory truths of a more sublime and incomprehensible nature and confirm'd too by those very astonishing miracles work men to a profound veneration of that Religion grounded upon them I 'le add that had it been possible for God so far to have laid aside his own immense glory that men might have seen it fully and with open face that they might have plainly read how all those wonders of love and mercy had been wrought it would have been altogether unfit since the pride of man would have been apt to trample upon and despise the known cause of the most unexpected productions It 's necessary then that the fundamentals of Christ's Religion should carry with them somewhat of that awful Majesty inherent in its founder nor is this wisdom of God in a Mystery to be laid open to scoffing Atheists or Men onely impertinently curious after novelties Pearles are not to be cast before Swine nor Holy things to Dogs The Christians in the primitive Church were very strict in this respect insomuch that the Gentiles objected it against them that they kept the very God they worship'd unknown to the rest of the World So Caecilius in Minutius Foelix very passionately What silly and absurd opinions says he do these Christians take up when they would perswade us that God whom they worship a something whom they can neither see themselves nor show to any body else does strictly examine the actions manners words nay the very inmost thoughts of Men And Maximus Madaurensis in a more submissive style speaks thus to the great St. Augustine Show me now at length O thou wisest of Men what God it is ye Christians claim as yours and whom ye own as present with you in your most private recesses as for us we expose our Gods to publick view and adore them and with offerings of Incense endeavour to reconcile them to us in the hearing of all the world The ancient Christians would neither discourse of the Mysteries of their Faith nor of their Sacramental Symbols before Ethnics who would then as the conceited Socinians do now deride every thing they could not understand So Lactantius speaking of the Resurrection a Doctrine which Christians ever own'd as a fundamental and which Heathens thought the most absurd and irrational principle in the World subjoyns at last This is that Doctrine of the Prophets which we Christians maintain this is our wisdom which Idolatrous pretenders to Philosophy contemn as vain and silly because we make it no subject of our publick disputations but God has commanded us that we should peaceably and silently lay up his secret in our hearts and consciences not pertinaciously wrangling with profane persons who violently oppose God and his religion not with a design to sift out the truth but to expose it to a publick scorn Nor ought the Mystery to be discover'd by us especially who denominate our selves from that faith Nay even those who were Converts to Christianity were but gradually enter'd into these things the Catechumeni and Energumeni being shut out of the Church so soon as the Sermon was done and not permitted to be so much as Spectators of the Sacramental Mysteries From what has been hitherto discours'd we may justly conclude That since Religion can have no part or interest ordinarily in the hearts of Men unless it be usher'd in by causes Mysterious supernatural or in their full extent incomprehensible Since our blessed Saviour by introducing his Gospel into the World has not