say that it made punishment necessary but that it made the Person so transgressing worthy of it So that it might justly be inflicted on him and consequently ought rationally to be feared and expected by him And upon this Notion universally fixed in the Minds of Men were grounded all their Sacrifices and Rites of Expiation and Lustration The use of which has been so General both as to Times and Places that there is no Age or Nation of the World in which they have not been used as Principal Parts of Religious Worship Now these six Grand Truths were the Talent entrusted and deposited by God in the hands of the Gentiles for them to Traffick with to his Honour and their own Happiness But what little Improvement they made of this Noble Talent shall now be shewn in the next Particular namely Their holding of it in Unrighteousness Which they did several ways As 1. By not Acting up to what they knew As in many Things their Knowledge was short of the Truth so almost in all Things their Practice fell short of their Knowledge The Principles by which they walked were as much below those by which they judged as their Feet were below their Head By the one they looked upwards while they placed the other in the Dirt. Their Writings sufficiently shew what raised and sublime Notions they had of the Divine Nature while they imployed their Reason about that Glorious Object and what Excellent Discourses of Vertue and Morality the same Reason enabled them to furnish the World with But when they came to transcribe these Theories into Practice One seemed to be of no other use to them at all but only to reproach them for the Other For they neither depended upon this God as if he were Almighty nor worshipped him as if they believed him Holy but in both prevaricated with their own Principles to that degree that their Practice was a direct Contradiction to their Speculations For the proof of which go over all the Heathen Temples and take a survey of the Absurdities and Impieties of their Worship their monstrous Sacrifices their ridiculous Rites and Ceremonies In all which Common Sence and Reason could not but tell them that the Good and Gracious God could not be pleased nor consequently worshipped with any thing Barbarous or Cruel nor the most Holy God with any thing Filthy and Unclean nor a God infinitely Wise with any thing Sottish or Ridiculous and yet these were the worthy Qualifications of the Heathen Worship even amongst not by this assert Contradictions making a Deity only to such a measure perfect whereas a Deity as such implies Perfection beyond all Measure or Limitation Nor could they in the next place have slid into those brutish Immoralities of Life had they duly manured those first Practical Notions and Dictates of Right Reason which the Nature of Man is Originally furnish'd with there being not any one of them but what is naturally productive of many more But they quickly stifled and over-laid those Infant-principles those Seeds of Piety and Vertue sown by God and Nature in their Hearts so that they brought a voluntary Darkness and Stupidity upon their Minds and by not Exercising their Senses to discern between Good and Evil came at length to lose all Sense and Discernment of either Whereupon as the Apostle says of them in the 21st Verse of this Chapter to the Romans Their foolish Heart was darkned And that not only by the Just Judgment of God but also by the very Course of Nature Nothing being more evident from Experience than that the not using or imploying any Faculty or Power either of Body or Soul does insensibly weaken and impair that Faculty As a Sword by long lying still will contract a Rust which shall not only deface its Brightness but by degrees also consume its very Substance Doing Nothing naturally ends in being Nothing It holds in all Operative Principles whatsoever but especially in such as relate to Morality in which not to proceed is certainly to go backward there being no third Estate between not advancing and retreating in a vertuous Course Growth is of the very Essence and Nature of some Things To be and to Thrive is all one with them and they know no middle Season between their Spring and their Fall And therefore as it is said in Matth. 13. 12. That from him who hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath So he who neglects the Practice shall in the end also lose the very Power and Faculty of Doing well That which stops a man's Actual Breathing very long will in the Issue take away his very Power of Breathing too To hide one's Talent in the ground is to bury it and the Burial of a Thing either finds it dead or will quickly make it so 3 ly These Men held the Truth in Unrighteousness by concealing what they knew For how rightly soever they might conceive of God and of Vertue yet the illiterate Multitude who in such things must see with better Eyes than their own or not see at all were never the wiser for it Whatsoever the inward Sentiments of those Sophisters were they kept them wholly to themselves hiding all those important Truths all those usefull Notions from the People and teaching the World much otherwise from what they judged themselves Though I think a greater Truth than this cannot well be uttered That never any Thing or Person was really good which was good only to it self But from hence it was That even in a Literal sense Sin came to be Established by a Law For amongst the Gentiles the Laws themselves were the greatest Offenders They made little or no provision for Vertue but very much for Vice For the Early and Universal Practice of Sin had turned it into a Custom and Custom especially in Sin quickly passed into Common Law Socrates was the only Martyr for the Testimony of any Truth that we read of amongst the Heathens who chose rather to be Condemned and to die than either to renounce or conceal his Judgment touching the Unity of the Godhead But as for the rest of them even Zeno and Chrysippus Plato and Aristotle and generally all those Heroes in Philosophy they swam with the Stream as foul as it ran leaving the poor Vulgar as Ignorant and Sottish as Vicious and Idolatrous as they first found them But it has been always the Practice of the Governing Cheats of all Religions to keep the People in as gross Ignorance as possibly they could For we see the Heathen Impostors used it before the Christian Impostors took it up and improved it Si populus decipi vult decipiatur was ever a Gold and Silver Rule amongst them all though the Pope's Legate first turned it into a Benediction And a very strange one it was and enough one would think to have made all that heard it look about them and begin to bless themselves For as Demetrius a great Master in such Arts told his
acting while those Principles of Activity flag No man begins and ends a long Journey with the same pace But now when Prayer has lost its due fervour and attention which indeed are the very Vitals of it it is but the Carkase of a Prayer and consequently must needs be loathsome and offensive to God Nay though the greatest part of it should be enlivened and carried on with an actual Attention yet if that Attention fails to enliven any one part of it the whole is but a joyning of the Living and the Dead together for which Conjunction the Dead is not at all the better but the Living very much the worse It is not length nor copiousness of Language that is Devotion any more than Bulk and Bigness is Valour or Flesh the measure of the Spirit A short Sentence may be oftentimes a large and a mighty Prayer Devotion so managed being like Water in a Well where you have fullness in a little compass which surely is much nobler than the same carried out into many petit creeping Rivulets with length and shallowness together Let him who prays bestow all that strength fervour and attention upon Shortness and Significance that would otherwise run out and lose it self in Length and Luxuriancy of Speech to no purpose Let not his Tongue out-strip his Heart nor presume to carry a Message to the Throne of Grace while that stays behind Let him not think to support so hard and weighty a Duty with a tired languishing and be-jaded Devotion To avoid which let a Man contract his Expression where he cannot enlarge his Affection still remembring that nothing can be more absurd in it self nor more unacceptable to God than for one engaged in the great Work of Prayer to hold on speaking after he has left off praying and to keep the lips at work when the spirit can do no more 4 ly The fourth Argument for shortness or conciseness of Speech in Prayer shall be drawn from this That it is the most natural and lively way of expressing the utmost Agonies and Out-cries of the Soul to God upon a quick pungent sense either of a pressing Necessity or an approaching Calamity which we know are generally the chief Occasions of Prayer and the most effectual Motives to bring Men upon their Knees in a vigorous Application of themselves to this great Duty A person ready to sink under his Wants has neither time nor heart to Rhetoricate or make Flourishes No Man begins a long Grace when he is ready to starve Such an one's Prayers are like the Relief he needs quick and suddain short and immediate He is like a Man in Torture upon the Rack whose Pains are too acute to let his Words be many and whose Desires of Deliverance too impatient to delay the things he begs for by the manner of his begging it It is a Common Saying If a Man does not know how to Pray let him go to Sea and that will teach him And we have a notable Instance of what kind of prayers Men are taught in that School even in the Disciples themselves when a Storm arose and the Sea raged and the Ship was ready to be cast away in the 8 th of Matthew In which Case we doe not find that they fell presently to harangue it about Seas and Winds and that dismal face of things that must needs appear all over the devouring Element at such a time All which and the like might no doubt have been very plentifull Topicks of Eloquence to a Man who should have lookt upon these things from the Shoar or discoursed of Wrecks and Tempests safe and warm in his Parlour But these poor Wretches who were now entring as they thought into the very Jaws of Death and struggling with the last Efforts of Nature upon the Sense of a departing Life and consequently could neither speak nor think any thing low or ordinary in such a Condition presently rallied up and discharged the whole Concern of their desponding Souls in that short Prayer of but three words though much fuller and more forcible than one of three thousand in the 25th Verse of the fore-mentioned Chapter Save us Lord or we perish Death makes short work when it comes and will teach him who would prevent it to make shorter For surely no Man who thinks himself just a perishing can be at leisure to be Eloquent or judge it either Sense or Devotion to begin a long Prayer when in all likelihood he shall conclude his Life before it 5 ly The fifth and last Argument that I shall produce for Brevity of Speech or Fewness of Words in Prayer shall be taken from the Examples which we find in Scripture of such as have been remarkable for Brevity and of such as have been noted for Prolixity of Speech in the discharge of this Duty 1. And first for Brevity To omit all those notable Examples which the Old Testament affords us of it and to confine our selves only to the New in which we are undoubtedly most concerned Was not this way of Praying not only Warranted but Sanctified and set above all that the Will of Man could possibly except against it by that infinitely exact Form of Prayer prescribed by the Greatest the Holiest and the Wisest Man that ever lived even Christ himself the Son of God and Saviour of the World Was it not an instance both of the truest Devotion and the fullest and most comprehensive Reason that ever proceeded from the Mouth of Man And yet withall the shortest and most succinct Model that ever grasped all the Needs and Occasions of Mankind both Spiritual and Temporal into so small a compass Doubtless had our Saviour thought fit to amplifie or be prolix He in whom were hid all the Treasures of Wisdom could not want Matter nor he who was himself the Word want Variety of the fittest to have expressed his Mind by But He chose rather to contract the whole Concern of both Worlds into a few Lines and to unite both Heaven and Earth in his Prayer as he had done before in his Person And indeed one was a kind of Copy or Representation of the other So then we see here Brevity in the Rule or Pattern let us see it next in the Practice and after that in the Success of Prayer And first we have the Practice as well as the Pattern of it in our Saviour himself and that in the most signal passage of his whole Life even his Preparation for his approaching Death In which dolorous Scene when his whole Soul was nothing but Sorrow that great moving Spring of Invention and Elocution and when Nature was put to its last and utmost stretch and so had no refuge or relief but in Prayer yet even then all this Horror Agony and Distress of Spirit delivers it self but in two very short Sentences in Matth. 26. 39. O my Father if it be possible let this Cup pass from me nevertheless not as I will but as thou wilt And
who per fas nefas gets as much as He can But for all this let Atheists and Sensualists satisfie themselves as they are able The former of which will find that as long as Reason keeps Her ground Religion neither can nor will lose Hers. And for the Sensual Epicure he also will find That there is a certain living spark within him which all the Drink he can pour in will never be able to quench or put out nor will his rotten abused Body have it in it's power to convey any putrefying consuming rotting Quality to the Soul No there is no Drinking or Swearing or Ranting or Fluxing a Soul out of its Immortality But that must and will survive and abide in spight of Death and the Grave and live for ever to convince such wretches to their eternal Woe That the so much repeated ornament and flourish of their former speeches God damn 'em was commonly the truest word they spoke though least believed by them while they spoke it 2dly The other thing deducible from the foregoing particulars shall be to inform us of the way of attaining to that excellent Privilege so justly valued by those who have it and so much talked of by those who have it not which is Assurance Assurance is properly that perswasion or Confidence which a man takes up of the pardon of his sins and his interest in God's favour upon such Grounds and Terms as the Scripture lays down But now since the Scripture promises eternal Happiness and Pardon of sin upon the sole condition of Faith and sincere Obedience it is evident that he onely can plead a Title to such a Pardon whose conscience impartially tells him that he has performed the required Condition And this is the only rational Assurance which a man can with any safety rely or rest himself upon He who in this Case would believe surely must first walk surely and to do so is to walk uprightly And what that is we have sufficiently marked out to us in those plain and legible lines of Duty requiring us to Demean our selves to God humbly and devoutly to our Governours obediently and to our Neighbours justly and to our selves soberly and temperately All other Pretences being infinitely vain in themselves and fatal in their Consequences It was indeed the way of many in the late times to bolster up their Crazy doating Consciences with I know not what odd Confidences founded upon inward whispers of the Spirit stories of something which they called conversion and marks of Predestination All of them as they understood them mere delusions Trifles and Fig leaves and such as would be sure to fall off and leave them naked before that fiery Tribunal which knows no other way of Iudging men but according to their works Obedience and Upright Walking are such Substantial Vital parts of Religion as if they be wanting can never be made up or commuted for by any formalities of Phantastick looks or language And the great Question when we come hereafter to be judged will not be How demurely have you looked or How boldly have you believed With what length have you prayed and With what loudness and vehemence have you preached But How holily have you lived and How uprightly have you walked For this and this only with the Merits of Christ's Righteousness will come into Account before that great Iudge who will pass Sentence upon every man according to what he has done here in the Flesh whether it be good or whether it be evil and there is no respect of Persons with Him To whom therefore be rendred and ascribed as is most due all Praise Might Majesty and Dominion both now and for evermore Amen A SERMON PREACHED Before the University AT Christ-Church Oxon. 1664. JOHN XV. 15. Henceforth I call you not Servants for the Servant knows not what his Lord doth But I have called you Friends for all things that I have heard of my father have I made known unto you WE have here an Account of Christ's friendship to his Disciples that is we have the best of things represented in the greatest of Examples In other men we see the Excellency but in Christ the Divinity of Friendship By our Baptism and Church-Communion we are made one Body with Christ but by This we become one soul. Love is the greatest of Humane Affections and Friendship is the Noblest and most Refined Improvement of Love a quality of the largest Compass And it is here admirable to observe the ascending gradation of the Love which Christ bore to his Disciples The strange and superlative greatness of which will appear from those several degrees of kindness that it has manifested to man in the several Periods of His Condition As 1 st If we consider him antecedently to his Creation while he yet lay in the barren Womb of Nothing and only in the Number of Possibilities and consequently could have nothing to recommend him to Christ's affection nor shew any thing lovely but what he should afterwards receive from the stamp of a preventing Love Yet even then did the Love of Christ begin to work and to commence in the first Emanations and purposes of goodness towards Man designing to provide matter for it self to work upon to create its own object and like the Sun in the production of some Animals first to give a being and then to shine upon it 2dly Let us take the Love of Christ as directing it self to Man actually Created and brought into the World and so all those glorious Endowments of Humane Nature in its Original State and Innocence were so many Demonstrations of the munificent goodness of Him by whom God first made as well as afterwards redeemed the world There was a Consult of the whole Trinity for the making of Man that so He might shine as a Master-piece not only of the Art but also of the kindness of his Creator with a noble and a clear understanding a rightly disposed Will and a Train of Affections regular and obsequious and perfectly conformable to the Dictates of that high and divine Principle Right Reason So that upon the whole matter he stept forth not only the work of God's hands but also the Copy of his perfections a kind of Image or representation of the Deity in small Infinity contracted into flesh and blood and as I may so speak the Preludium and first Essay towards the Incarnation of the Divine Nature But 3dly and Lastly Let us look upon man not only as created and brought into the World with all these great Advantages superadded to his Being but also as depraved and faln from them as an Out-law and a Rebel and one that could plead a Title to nothing but to the highest Severities of a Sin-revenging Justice Yet even in this estate also the Boundless Love of Christ began to have warm thoughts and actings towards so wretched a Creature at this time not onely not Amiable but highly Odious While indeed man was yet uncreated and
That the vast and infinite Distance between God and Him ought to create in him all imaginable Awe and Reverence in such his Addresses to God 3 ly and Lastly That this Reverence required of him is to consist in a serious preparation of his Thoughts and a sober government of his Expressions Neither is his mouth to be rash nor his heart to be hasty in uttering any thing before God These three Things I shew were evidently contained in the Words and did as evidently contain the whole Sense of them But I gathered them all into this one Proposition Namely That Premeditation of Thought and Brevity of Expression are the great Ingredients of that Reverence that is required to a pious acceptable and devout Prayer The first of these which is Premeditation of Thought I then fully treated of and dispatched and shall now proceed to the other which is a pertinent Brevity of Expression Therefore let thy words be few Concerning which we shall observe first in General That to be able to express our Minds briefly and fully too is absolutely the greatest Perfection and Commendation that Speech is capable of such a mutual Communication of our Thoughts being as I may so speak the next approach to Intuition and the nearest Imitation of the Converse of blessed Spirits made perfect that our Condition in this World can possibly raise us to Certainly the greatest and the wisest Conceptions that ever issued from the Mind of Man have been couched under and delivered in a few close home and significant Words But to derive the Credit of this way of speaking much higher and from an Example infinitely greater than the greatest humane Wisdom was it not authorized and ennobled by God himself in his making of the World Was not the Work of all the six days transacted in so many Words There was no Circumlocution or Amplification in the Case which makes the Rhetorician Longinus in his Book of the Loftiness of Speech so much admire the Height and Grandeur of Moses's Style in his first Chapter of Genesis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Law-giver of the Iews says he meaning Moses was no ordinary Man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because says he he set forth the Divine Power sutably to the Majesty and Greatness of it But how did he this Why 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. For that says he in the very Entrance of his Laws he gives us this short and present Account of the whole Creation God said Let there be Light and there was Light Let there be an Earth a Sea and a Firmament and there was so So that all this high Elogy and Encomium given by this Heathen of Moses sprang only from the Majestick Brevity of this one Expression an Expression so suted to the Greatness of a Creator and so Expressive of his boundless creative Power as a Power infinitely above all Controll or possibility of finding the least obstacle or delay in atchieving its mightiest and most stupendious Works Heaven and Earth and all the Host of both as it were dropt from his Mouth and Nature it self was but the product of a Word a Word not designed to Express but to Constitute and give a Being and not so much the Representation as the Cause of what it signified This was God's way of speaking in his first forming of the Universe And was it not so in the next grand Instance of his Power his Governing of it too For are not the great Instruments of Government his Laws drawn up and digested into a few Sentences the whole Body of them containing but Ten Commandments and some of those Commandments not so many words Nay and have we not these also brought into yet a narrower Compass by him who best understood them Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy Heart and with all thy Soul and thy Neighbour as thy self Precepts nothing like the Tedious Endless Confused Trash of Humane Laws Laws so numerous that they not only exceed men's Practice but also surpass their Arithmetick and so voluminous that no mortal Head nor Shoulders neither must ever pretend themselves able to bear them In God's Laws the Words are few the Sense vast and infinite In Humane Laws you shall be sure to have Words enough but for the most part to discern the Sense and Reason of them you had need read them with a Microscope And thus having shewn how the Almighty utters himself when he speaks and that upon the greatest Occasions let us now descend from Heaven to Earth from God to Man and shew That it is no presumption for us to Conform our Words as well as our Actions to the supreme Pattern and according to our poor measures to imitate the Wisdom that we adore And for this has it not been noted by the best Observers and the ablest Judges both of Things and Persons that the Wisdom of any People or Nation has been most seen in the Proverbs and short Sayings commonly received amongst them And what is a Proverb but the Experience and Observation of several Ages gathered and summ'd up into one Expression The Scripture vouches Solomon for the wisest of Men and they are his Proverbs that prove him so The Seven Wife men of Greece so famous for their Wisdom all the World over acquired all that Fame each of them by a single Sentence consisting of two or three Words And 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 still lives and flourishes in the Mouths of all while many vast Volumes are extinct and sunk into Dust and utter Oblivion And then for Books we shall generally find that the most Excellent in any Art or Science have been still the smallest and most compendious And this not without ground for it is an Argument that the Author was a Master of what he wrote and had a clear Notion and a full Comprehension of the Subject before him For the Reason of Things lies in a little compass if the Mind could at any time be so happy as to light upon it Most of the Writings and Discourses in the World are but Illustration and Rhetorick which signifies as much as nothing to a Mind eager in pursuit after the Causes and Philosophical Truth of Things It is the work of Fancy to enlarge but of Judgment to shorten and contract and therefore this must needs be as far above the other as Judgment is a greater and a nobler Faculty than Fancy or Imagination All Philosophy is reduced to a few Principles and those Principles comprized in a few Propositions And as the whole Structure of Speculation rests upon three or four Axioms or Maxims so that of Practice also bears upon a very small number of Rules And surely there was never yet any Rule or Maxim that filled a Volume or took up a Week's time to be got by Heart No these are the Apices Rerum the Tops and Summs the very Spirit and Life of Things extracted and abridged just as all the Lines drawn from the vastest
again the second time with the like Brevity and the like Words O my Father if this Cup may not pass from me except I drink it thy Will be done And lastly the third time also he used the same short form again and yet in all this he was as we may say without a Metaphor even praying for Life so far as the great business he was then about to wit the Redemption of the World would suffer him to pray for it All which Prayers of our Saviour and others of like Brevity are properly such as we call Ejaculations an elegant Similitude from a Dart or Arrow shot or thrown out and such an one we know of a Yard long will fly farther and strike deeper than one of Twenty And then in the last place for the Success of such brief Prayers I shall give you but three Instances of this but they shall be of Persons praying under the Pressure of as great Miseries as humane Nature could well be afflicted with And the first shall be of the Leper Matth. 8. 2. or as St. Luke describes him a Man full of Leprosie who came to our Saviour and Worshipped him and as St. Luke again has it more particularly fell on his face before him which is the lowest and most devout of all Postures of Worship saying Lord if thou wilt thou canst make me clean This was all his Prayer And the Answer to it was That he was immediately cleansed The next Instance shall be of the poor blind Man in Luke 18. 28. following our Saviour with this earnest Prayer Iesus thou Son of David have Mercy upon me His whole Prayer was no more For it is said in the next verse that he went on repeating it again and again Iesus thou Son of David have Mercy upon me And the Answer he received was That his Eyes were opened and his Sight restored The third and last Instance shall be of the Publican in the same Chapter of St. Luke praying under a lively sense of as great a Leprosie and Blindness of Soul as the other two could have of Body in the 13th Verse He smote upon his Breast saying God be mercifull to me a sinner He spoke no more though 't is said in the 10th Verse that he went solemnly and purposely up to the Temple to pray The issue and success of which Prayer was That he went home justified before one of those whom all the Iewish Church revered as absolutely the highest and most heroick Examples of Piety and most beloved Favourites of Heaven in the whole World And now if the force and vertue of these short Prayers could rise so high as to cleanse a Leper to give sight to the Blind and to justify a Publican and if the Worth of a Prayer may at all be measured by the Success of it I suppose no Prayers whatsoever can do more and I never yet heard or read of any long Prayer that did so much Which brings on the other part of this our fifth and last Argument which was to be drawn from the Examples of such as have been noted in Scripture for Prolixity or Length of Prayer And of this there are only two mentioned The Heathens and the Pharisees The first the grand Instance of Idolatry the other of Hypocrisy But Christ forbids us the Imitation of both When ye pray says our Saviour in the 6th of Matthew be ye not like the Heathens But in what Why in this That they think they shall be heard for their much speaking in the 7th Verse It is not the Multitude that prevails in Armies and much less in Words And then for the Pharisees whom our Saviour represents as the very vilest of Men and the greatest of Cheats We have them amusing the World with pretences of a more refin'd Devotion while their Heart was all that time in their Neighbour's Coffers For does not our Saviour expressly tell us in Luke 20. and the two last Verses That the great Tools the Hooks or Engines by which they compass'd their worst their wickedest and most rapacious Designs were Long Prayers Prayers made only for a shew or colour and that to the basest and most degenerous sort of Villainy even the robbing the Spittle and devouring the Houses of poor helpless forlorn Widows Their Devotion serv'd all along but as an Instrument to their Avarice as a Factor or Under-Agent to their Extortion A Practice which duly seen into and stript of its Hypocritical Blinds could not but look very odiously and ill-favouredly and therefore in come their long Robes and their long Prayers together and cover all And the truth is neither the Length of one nor of the other is ever found so usefull as when there is something more than ordinary that would not be seen This was the gainfull Godliness of the Pharisees and I believe upon good Observation you will hardly find any like the Pharisees for their long Prayers who are not also extremely like them for something else And thus having given you five Arguments for Brevity and against Prolixity of Prayer let us now make this our other great Rule whereby to judge of the Prayers of our Church and the Prayers of those who Dissent and Divide from it And First For that excellent Body of Prayers contained in our Liturgy and both compiled and enjoyned by Publick Authority Have we not here a great Instance of Brevity and Fulness together cast into several short significant Collects each containing a distinct entire and well-managed Petition The whole Sett of them being like a string of Pearls exceeding rich in Conjunction and therefore of no small price or value even single and by themselves Nothing could have been composed with greater Judgment Every Prayer being so short that it is impossible it should weary and withall so pertinent that it is impossible it should cloy the Devotion And indeed so admirably fitted are they all to the common Concerns of a Christian Society that when the Rubrick enjoyns but the use of some of them our Worship is not imperfect and when we use them all there is none of them superfluous And the Reason assigned by some learned Men for the Preference of many short Prayers before a continued long one is unanswerable Namely That by the former there is a more frequently repeated mention made of the Name and some great Attribute of God as the encouraging Ground of our praying to Him and withall of the Merits and Mediation of Christ as the only thing that can promise us success in what we pray for Every distinct Petition beginning with the former and ending with the latter By thus annexing of which to each particular thing that we ask for we doe manifestly confess and declare That we cannot expect to obtain any one thing at the hands of God but with a particular renewed respect to the Merits of a Mediator and withall re-mind the Congregation of the same by making it their part to renew a distinct Amen to every
as to take pleasure in other men's Sins For we know what a foul Sin David committed and what a Crime St. Peter himself fell into both of them no doubt fully and clearly against the Dictates of their Conscience yet we do not find that either of them was thereby brought to such an impious frame of Heart as to delight in their own Sins and much less in other men's And therefore it is not every sinfull Violation of Conscience that can quench the Spirit to such a degree as we have been speaking of but it must be a long inveterate Course and Custom of Sinning after this manner that at length produces and ends in such a cursed Effect For this is so great a Master-piece in Sin that no Man begins with it He must have pass'd his Tyrocinium or Novitiate in Sinning before he can come to this be he never so quick a Proficient No man can mount so fast as to set his Foot upon the highest step of the Ladder at first Before a man can come to be pleased with a Sin because he sees his Neighbour commit it he must have had such a long Acquaintance with it himself as to create a kind of Intimacy or Friendship between him and That and then we know a Man is Naturally glad to see his Old friend not only at his own House but wheresoever he meets him It is generally the Property of an Old Sinner to find a delight in re-viewing his own Villainies in the Practice of other Men to see his Sin and himself as it were in Reversion and to find a greater satisfaction in beholding him who succeeds him in his Vice than him who is to succeed him in his Estate In the matter of Sin Age makes a greater Change upon the Soul than it does or can upon the Body And as in this if we compare the Picture of a Man drawn at the Years of Seventeen or Eighteen with the Picture of the same person at Threescore and Ten hardly the least Trace or Similitude of one Face can be found in the other So for the Soul the Difference of the Dispositions and Qualities of the Inner Man will be found much greater Compare the Harmlesness the Credulity the Tenderness the Modesty and the Ingenuous pliableness to vertuous Counsels which is in Youth as it comes fresh and untainted out of the hands of Nature with the Mischievousness the Slyness the Craft the Impudence the Falshood and the confirmed Obstinacy in most sorts of Sin that is to be found in an aged long-practised Sinner and you will confess the Complexion and Hue of his Soul to be altered more than that of his Face Age has given him another Body and Custom another Mind All those Seeds of Vertue and good Morality that were the Natural Endowments of our first Years are lost and dead for ever And in respect of the Native Innocence of Childhood no man through Old Age becomes twice a Child The Vices of Old Age have in them the stiffness of it too And as it is the unfittest Time to learn in so the unfitness of it to unlearn will be found much greater Which Considerations joyned with that of its Imbecillity make it the proper Season for a super-annuated Sinner to enjoy the Delights of Sin in the Rebound and to supply the Impotence of Practice by the airy phantastick Pleasure of Memory and Reflection For all that can be allowed him now is to refresh his decrepit effete Sensuality with the Transcript and History of his former Life recognized and read over by him in the vitious Rants of the vigorous youthfull Debauchees of the present time whom with an odd kind of Passion mixed of Pleasure and Envy too he sees flourishing in all the bravery and prime of their Age and Vice An old Wrestler loves to look on and to be near the Lists though Feebleness will not let him offer at the Prize An old Huntsman finds a Musick in the Noise of Hounds though he cannot follow the Chace An old Drunkard loves a Tavern though he cannot go to it but as he is supported and led by another just as some are observed to come from thence And an old Wanton will be doating upon Women when he can scarce see them without Spectacles And to shew the true Love and faithfull Allegiance that the Old Servants and Subjects of Vice ever after bear to it nothing is more usual and frequent than to hear that such as have been Strumpets in their Youth turn Procurers in their Age. Their great Concern is that the Vice may still go on 4 ly A fourth Cause of men's taking pleasure in the Sins of others is from that meanness and poor-spiritedness that naturally and inseparably accompanies all Guilt Whosoever is conscious to himself of Sin feels in himself whether he will own it or no a proportionable Shame and a secret Depression of Spirit thereupon And this is so irksome and uneasie to Man's mind that he is restless to relieve and rid himself from it For which he finds no way so effectual as to get Company in the same Sin For Company in any Action gives both Credit to that and Countenance to the Agent and so much as the Sinner gets of this so much he casts off of Shame Singularity in Sin puts it out of fashion since to be alone in any Practice seems to make the Judgment of the World against it but the Concurrence of others is a Tacit Approbation of that in which they concurr Solitude is a kind of Nakedness and the Result of that we know is Shame 'T is Company only that can bear a Man out in an ill Thing and he who is to encounter and fight the Law will be sure to need a Second No wonder therefore if some take delight in the Immoralities and Baseness of others for nothing can support their Minds drooping and sneaking and inwardly reproaching them from a sense of their own guilt but to see others as bad as themselves To be Vitious amongst the Vertuous is a double disgrace and misery but where the whole Company is vitious and debauched they presently like or at least easily pardon one another And as it is observed by some that there is none so homely but loves a Looking-glass so it is certain that there is no man so vicious but delights to see the Image of his Vice reflected upon him from one who exceeds or at least equals him in the same Sin in it self is not only shamefull but also weak and it seeks a Remedy for both in Society For it is this that must give it both Colour and Support But on the contrary how great and as I may so speak how Self-sufficient a thing is Vertue It needs no Credit from Abroad no Countenance from the Multitude Were there but one vertuous man in the World he would hold up his Head with Confidence and Honour He would shame the World and not the World him For according to
that excellent and great Saying Prov. 14. 14. A good Man shall be satisfied from himself He needs look no further But if he desires to see the same Vertue propagated and diffused to those about him it is for their sakes not his own It is his Charity that wishes and not his Necessity that requires it For Solitude and Singularity can neither daunt nor disgrace him unless we could suppose it a disgrace for a man to be singularly good But a vicious Person like the basest sort of Beasts never enjoys himself but in the Herd Company he thinks lessens the shame of Vice by sharing it and abates the Torrent of a common Odium by deriving it into many Channels And therefore if he cannot wholly avoid the Eye of the Observer he hopes to distract it at least by a multiplicity of the Object These I confess are poor Shifts and miserable Shelters for a Sick and a Self-upbraiding Conscience to fly to and yet they are some of the best that the Debauchee has to chear up his Spirits with in this World For if after all he must needs be seen and took notice of with all his Filth and Noisomeness about him he promises himself however that it will be some allay to his Reproach to be but one of many to march in a Troop and by a preposterous kind of Ambition to be seen in bad Company 5. The fifth and last Cause that I shall mention inducing Men to take pleasure in the Sins of others is a certain peculiar unaccountable Malignity that is in some Natures and Dispositions I know no other Name or Word to express it by But the thing it self is frequently seen in the Temporal Concerns of this World For are there not some who find an inward secret Rejoycing in themselves when they see or hear of the loss or calamity of their Neighbour though no imaginable Interest or Advantage of their own is or can be served thereby But it seems there is a base Wolvish Principle within that is fed and gratified with another's Misery and no other Account or Reason in the World can be given of its being so but that it is the Nature of the Beast to delight in such things And as this occurrs frequently in Temporals so there is no doubt but that with some few persons it acts the same way also in Spirituals I say with some few persons for thanks be to God the common known Corruption of humane Nature upon the bare stock of its Original Depravation does not usually proceed so far Such an one for instance was that Wretch who made a poor Captive renounce his Religion in order to the saving of his Life and when he had so done presently run him through glorying that he had thereby destroyed his Enemy both Body and Soul But more remarkably such was that Monster of Diabolical Baseness here in England who some years since in the Reign of King Charles the First suffered Death for Crimes scarce ever heard of before having frequently boasted that as several Men had their several Pleasures and Recreations so his peculiar Pleasure and Recreation was to destroy Souls and accordingly to put men upon such Practices as he knew would assuredly doe it But above all the late Saying of some of the Dissenting Brotherhood ought to be proclaimed and celebrated to their Eternal Honour who while there was another New Oath preparing which they both supposed and hoped most of the Clergy would not take in a most insulting manner gave out thereupon That they were resolved either to have our Livings or to Damn our Souls An Expression so fraught with all the Spight and Poyson which the Devil himself could infuse into Words that it ought to remain as a Monument of the Humanity Charity and Christianity of this sort of men for ever Now such a Temper or Principle as these and the like Passages doe import I call a peculiar Malignity of Nature since it is evident that neither the inveterate Love of Vice nor yet the long Practice of it and that even against the Reluctancies and Light of Conscience can of it self have this devilish effect upon the Mind but as it falls in with such a villainous preter-natural Disposition as I have mentioned For to instance in the Particular Case of Parents and Children let a Father be never so Vitious yet generally speaking he would not have his Child so Nay it is certain that some who have been as corrupt in their Morals as Vice could make them have yet been infinitely solicitous to have their Children soberly vertuously and piously brought up So that although they have begot Sons after their own likeness yet they are not willing to breed them so too Which by the way is the most pregnant demonstration in the World of that Self-condemning Sentence that is perpetually sounding in every great Sinner's Breast and of that inward grating dislike of the very thing he practises that he should abhorr to see the same in any one whose Good he nearly tenders and whose Person he wishes well to But if now on the other side we should chance to find a Father corrupting his Son or a Mother debauching her Daughter as God knows such Monsters have been seen within the four Seas we must not charge this barely upon an high Predominance of Vice in these persons but much more upon a peculiar Anomaly and Baseness of Nature If the Name of Nature may be allowed to that which seems to be an utter cashiering of it a Deviation from and a Contradiction to the common Principles of Humanity For this is such a Disposition as strips the Father of the Man as makes him Sacrifice his Children to Molech and as much out-do the cruelty of a Cannibal or a Saturn as it is more barbarous and unhumane to damn a Child than to devour him We sometimes read and hear of Monstrous Births but we may often see a greater Monstrosity in Educations thus when a Father has begot a Man he trains him up into a Beast Making even his own House a Stews a Bordell and a School of Lewdness to instill the Rudiments of Vice into the unwary flexible years of his poor Children poisoning their tender minds with the irresistible authentick Venom of his base Example so that all the Instruction they find within their Father's Walls shall be only to be disciplined to an earlier Practice of Sin to be catechised into all the Mysteries of Iniquity and at length confirmed in a mature grown up incorrigible state of Debauchery And this some Parents call a teaching their Children to know the World and to study Men Thus leading them as it were by the hand through all the Forms and Classes all the Varieties and Modes of Villainy till at length they make them ten times more the Children of the Devil than of themselves Now I say if the unparallell'd Wickedness of the Age should at any time cast us upon such blemishes of Mankind as these
those Protestants whom they most hate and whom alone they fear It being no unheard of Trick for a Thief when he is closely pursued to cry out Stop the Thief and thereby diverting the suspicion from himself to get clear away It is also worth our while to consider with what Terms of Respect and Commendation Knaves and Sots will speak of their own Fraternity As What an honest what a worthy Man is such an one And What a Good-natur'd Person is another According to which Terms such as are Factious by worthy Men mean only such as are of the same Faction and united in the same Designs against the Government with themselves And such as are Brothers of the Pot by a Good-natur'd Person mean only a true trusty Debauchee who never stands out at a Merry-meeting so long as he is able to stand at all nor ever refuses an Health while he has enough of his own to pledge it with and in a word is as honest as Drunkenness and Debauchery want of Sence and Reason Vertue and Sobriety can possibly make Him 2 ly The other way by which some Men encourage others in their Sins is by Preferment As when Men shall be advanced to Places of Trust and Honour for those Qualities that render them unworthy of so much as sober and civil Company When a Lord or Master shall cast his Favours and Rewards upon such Beasts and Blemishes of Society as live only to the Dishonour of him who made them and the Reproach of him who maintains them None certainly can love to see Vice in Power but such as love to see it also in Practice Place and Honour do of all things most mis-become it and a Goat or a Swine in a Chair of State cannot be more odious than ridiculous It is reported of Caesar that passing through a certain Town and seeing all the Women of it standing at their Doors with Monkeys in their Arms he asked whether the Women of that Country used to have any Children or no thereby wittily and sarcastically reproaching them for misplacing that Affection upon Brutes which could only become a Mother to her Child So when we come into a great Family or Government and see this Place of Honour allotted to a Murtherer another filled with an Atheist or Blasphemer and a third with a filthy Parasite may we not as appositely and properly ask the Question Whether there be any such thing as Vertue Sobriety or Religion amongst such a People with whom Vice wears those Rewards Honours and Privileges which in other Nations the Common Judgment of Reason awards only to the Vertuous the Sober and Religious And certainly it is too flagrant a Demonstration how much Vice is the Darling of any People when many amongst them are preferred for those Practices for which in other places they can scarce be pardoned And thus I have finished the Third and Last General thing proposed for the handling of the Words which was To shew the several Sorts or Kinds of Men which fall under the Charge and Character of taking pleasure in other Men's Sins Now the Inferences from the foregoing Particulars shall be Twofold 1. Such as concern particular Persons And 2. Such as concern Communities or Bodies of Men. And first for the Malignity of such a disposition of Mind as induces a Man to delight in other men's Sins with reference to the Effects of it upon particular Persons As 1. It quite alters and depraves the Natural Frame of a man's Heart For there is that Naturally in the Heart of Man which abhorrs Sin as Sin and consequently would make him detest it both in himself and in others too The first and most genuine Principles of Reason are certainly averse to it and find a secret Grief and Remorse from every invasion that Sin makes upon a man's Innocence and that must needs render the first Entrance and Admission of Sin uneasie because disagreeable Yet Time we see and Custom of Sinning can bring a man to such a pass that it shall be more difficult and grievous to him to part with his Sin than ever it was to him to admit it It shall get so far into and lodge it self so deep within his Heart that it shall be his Business and his Recreation his Companion and his other Self and the very dividing between his Flesh and his Bones or rather between his Body and his Soul shall be less terrible and afflictive to him than to be took off from his Vice Nevertheless as Unnatural as this Effect of Sin is there is one yet more so For that innate Principle of Self-love that very easily and often blinds a Man as to any impartial Reflection upon himself yet for the most part leaves his Eyes open enough to judge truly of the same thing in his Neighbour and to hate that in others which he allows and cherishes in himself And therefore when it shall come to this that he also approves embraces and delights in Sin as he observes it even in the Person and Practice of other Men this shews that the Man is wholly transformed from the Creature that God first made him nay that he has consumed those poor Remainders of Good that the Sin of Adam left him that he has worn off the very remote Dispositions and Possibilities to Vertue and in a word turned Grace first and afterwards Nature it self out of Doors No man knows at his first Entrance upon any Sin how far it may carry him and where it will stop the Commission of Sin being generally like the pouring out of Water which when once poured out knows no other Bounds but to run as far as it can 2 ly A second Effect of this Disposition of Mind is that it peculiarly indisposes a man to repent and recover himself from it For the first step to Repentance is a man's dislike of his Sin And how can we expect that a man should conceive any through dislike of that which has took such an absolute possession of his Heart and Affections that he likes and loves it not only in his own Practice but also in other men's Nay that he is pleased with it though he is past the Practice of it Such a Temper of Mind is a down-right Contradiction to Repentance as being founded in the Destruction of those Qualities which are the only Dispositions and Preparatives to it For that Natural Tenderness of Conscience which must first create in the Soul a Sence of Sin and from thence produce a Sorrow for it and at length cause a Relinquishment of it That I say we have already shewn is took away by a customary repeated Course of Sinning against Conscience So that the very first Foundation of Vertue which is the Natural Power of distinguishing between the Moral Good and Evil of any Action is in effect pluckt up and destroyed And the Spirit of God finds nothing in the Heart of such an one to apply the Means of Grace to All Tast Relish and
be Manners The very Rules of Worldly Civility might instruct Men how to order their Addresses to God For who that is to appear before his Prince or Patron would not view and re-view himself over and over with all imaginable Care and Solicitude that there be nothing justly offensive in his Habit Language or Behaviour But especially if he be vouchsafed the Honour of his Table it would be infinitely more absurd and shamefull to appear foul and sordid there and in the Dress of the Kitchin receive the Entertainments of the Parlour What previous Cleansings and Consecrations and what peculiar Vestments were the Priests under the Law enjoyned to use when they were to appear before God in the Sanctuary And all this upon no less a penalty than Death This and this they were to doe lest they died lest God should strike them dead upon the spot as we read in Levit. 8. 35. and in many other places in the Books of Moses And so exact were the Iews in their Preparations for the Solemn Times of God's Worship that every 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 had its 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is a part of the Sixth Day from the Hour of Six in the Evening to fit them for the Duties of the Seventh Day Nor was this all but they had also a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 beginning about Three in the Afternoon to prepare them for that And indeed the whole Day was in a manner but Preparative to the next several Works being disallow'd and forborn amongst them on that Day which were not so upon any of the foregoing Five So carefull even to Scrupulosity were they to keep their Sabbath with due Reverence and Devotion that they must not only have a Time to prepare them for that but a further Time also to prepare them for their very Preparations Nay and the Heathens many of them at least when they were to Sacrifice to their greatest and most Revered Deities used on the Evening before to have a certain Preparative Rite or Ceremony called by them Coena pura That is a Supper consisting of some peculiar Meats in which they imagined a kind of Holiness and by Eating of which they thought themselves Sanctified and fitted to officiate about the Mysteries of the ensuing Festival And what were all their Lustrations but so many Solemn Purifyings to render both themselves and their Sacrifices acceptable to their Gods So that we see here a Concurrence both of the Iews and Heathens in this Practice before Christianity ever appeared Which to me is a kind of Demonstration That the Necessity of men's preparing themselves for the Sacred Offices of Religion was a Lesson which the meer Light and Dictates of Common Reason without the help of Revelation taught all the knowing and intelligent part of the World I will wash my Hands in Innocency says David and so will I compass thine Altar Psal. 26. 6. And as the Apostle told the Hebrews Heb. 13. 10. We also We Christians have an Altar as well as they an Altar as Sacred an Altar to be approached with as much Awe and Reverence and though there be no fire upon it yet there is a dreadfull one that follows it A fire that does not indeed consume the Offering but such an one as will be sure to seize and prey upon the unworthy Offerer I will be sanctified says God in them that come nigh me Levit. 10. 3. And God then accounts himself sanctified in such persons when they sanctifie themselves Nadab and Abihu were a dreadfull Exposition of this Text. And for what concerns our selves He that shall throughly consider what the Heart of Man is what Sin and the World is and what it is to approve one's self to an All-searching Eye in so sublime a Duty as the Sacrament must acknowledge that a Man may as well go about it without a Soul as without Preparation For the holyest Man living by conversing with the World insensibly draws something of Soil and Taint from it The very Air and Meen the Way and Business of the World still as it were rubbing something upon the Soul which must be fetched off again before it can be able heartily to converse with God Many secret Indispositions Coldnesses and Aversions to Duty will undiscernibly steal upon it and it will require both Time and close Application of Mind to recover it to such a Frame as shall dispose and fit it for the Spiritualities of Religion And such as have made trial find it neither so easie nor so ready a passage from the Noise the Din and Hurry of Business to the Retirements of Devotion from the Exchange to the Closet and from the Freedoms of Conversation to the Recollections and Disciplines of the Spirit The Iews as soon as they came from Markets or any other such promiscuous Resorts would be sure to use accurate and more than ordinary Washings And had their Washings soak'd through the Body into the Soul and had not their Inside reproached their Outside I see nothing in this Custom but what was allowable enough and in a People which needed Washing so much very commendable Nevertheless whatsoever it might have in it peculiar to the Genius of that Nation the spiritual Use and Improvement of it I am sure may very well reach the best of us So that if the Iews thought this Practice requisite before they sat down to their own Tables let us Christians think it absolutely necessary when we come to God's Table not to eat till we have washed And when I have said so I suppose I need not add that our Washing is to be like our Eating both of them Spiritual that we are to carry it from the Hand to the Heart to improve a Ceremonial Nicety into a Substantial Duty and the Modes of Civility into the Realities of Religion And thus much for the First Thing That a Preparation in General is Necessary But then 2 ly The other Thing imported in the Proposition is That every Preparation is not sufficient It must be a sutable Preparation none but a Wedding-garment will serve the turn a Garment as much fitted to the Solemnity as to the Body it self that wears it Now all Fitness lies in a particular Commensuration or Proportion of one thing to another and that such an one as is founded in the very Nature of Things themselves and not in the Opinions of Men concerning them And for this Cause it is that the Soul no less than the Body must have its several distinct Postures and Dispositions fitting it for several distinct Offices and Performances And as no Man comes with folded Arms to fight or wrestle nor prepares himself for the Battle as he would compose himself to Sleep so upon a true estimate of Things it will be found every whit as absurd and irrational for a Man to discharge the most extraordinary Duty of his Religion at the Rate of an ordinary Devotion For this is really a
assurance conclude That he who is not frequently upon his Knees before he comes to that holy Table Kneels to very little purpose when he is there But then Fourthly Because Prayer is not only one of the highest and hardest Duties in it self but ought to be more than ordinarily servent and vigorous before the Sacrament Let the Body be also called in as an Assistant to the Soul and Abstinence and Fasting added to promote and heighten her Devotions Prayer is a kind of Wrestling with God and he who would win the Prize at that Exercise must be severely dieted for that purpose The truth is Fasting was ever acknowledged by the Church in all Ages as a singular Instrument of Religion and a particular Preparative to the Sacrament And hardly was there ever any thing Great or Heroick either done or attempted in Religion without it Thus when Moses received the Law from God it was with Fasting Deut. 9. 9. When Christ entred upon the great Office of his Mediatorship it was with Fasting Matth. 4. 2. And when Paul and Barnabas were separated to that high and difficult Charge of Preaching to the Gentiles Acts 13. 2. still it was managed with Fasting And we know the Rubrick of our own Church always almost enjoyns a Fast to prepare us for a Festival Bodily Abstinence is certainly a great help to the Spirit and the Experience of all wise and good Men has ever found it so The Ways of Nature and the Methods of Grace are vastly different Good Men themselves are never so surprized as in the midst of their Jollities nor so fatally over-taken and caught as when the Table is made the Snare Even our first Parents ate themselves out of Paradise and Iob's Children junketted and feasted together often but the Reckoning cost them dear at last The Heart of the Wise says Solomon is in the House of Mourning and the House of Fasting adjoyns to it In a word Fasting is the Diet of Angels the Food and Refection of Souls and the richest and highest Aliment of Grace And he who Fasts for the sake of Religion Hungers and Thirsts after Righteousness without a Metaphor Fifthly Since every Devout Prayer is designed to ascend and fly up to Heaven as Fasting according to St. Austin's Allusion has given it one Wing so let Alms-giving to the Poor supply it with another And both these together will not only carry it up Triumphant to Heaven but if need require bring Heaven it self down to the Devout Person who sends it thither As while Cornelius was Fasting and Praying to which he still joyned giving Alms an Angel from Heaven was dispatched to him with this happy Message Acts 10. 4. Thy Prayers and thine Alms are come up for a Memorial before God And nothing certainly can give a greater Efficacy to Prayer and a more peculiar Fitness for the Sacrament than an Hearty and Conscientious Practice of this Duty without which all that has been mentioned hitherto is nothing but Wind and Air Pageantry and Hypocrisie For if there be any truer Measure of a Man than by what he does it must be by what he gives He who is truly Pious will account it a Wedding-supper to Feed the Hungry and a Wedding-garment to Cloath the Naked And God and Man will find it a very unfit Garment for such a purpose which has not in it a Purse or Pocket for the Poor But so far are some from considering the Poor before the Sacrament that they have been observed to give nothing to the Poor even at the Sacrament And those such that if Rich Cloaths might pass for a Wedding-garment none could appear better fitted for such a Solemnity than themselves yet some such I say I my self have seen at a Communion drop nothing into the Poor's Bason But good God! What is the Heart of such Worldlings made of and what a Mind doe they bring with them to so Holy an Ordinance An Ordinance in which none can be qualified to receive whose Heart does not serve them also to give From such indeed as have nothing God expects nothing but where God has given as I may say with both Hands and Men return with None such must know that the Poor have an Action of Debt against them and that God Himself will undertake and prosecute their Suit for them and if he does since they could not find in their Hearts to proportion their Charity to their Estates nothing can be more just than for God to proportion their Estates to their Charity and by so doing he cannot well give them a shrewder and a shorter Cut. In the mean time let such know further That whosoever dares upon so Sacred and Solemn an Occasion approach the Altar with Bowels so shut up as to leave nothing behind him there for the Poor shall be sure to carry something away with him from thence which will doe him but little good Sixthly Since the Charity of the Hand signifies but little unless it springs form the Heart and flows through the Mouth let the Pious Communicant both in Heart and Tongue Thoughts and Speech put on a Charitable Friendly Christian Temper of Mind and Carriage towards all Wrath and Envy Malice and Backbiting and the like are direct Contradictions to the very Spirit of Christianity and fit a Man for the Sacrament just as much as a Stomach over-flowed with Gall would help him to digest his Meat St. Paul often Rebukes and Schools such Disturbers of the World very sharply correcting a base Humour by a very generous Rule Phil. 2. 3. Let each says he esteem others better than themselves No Man doubtless shall ever be Condemned of God for not Iudging his Brother For be thy Brother or Neighbour never so wicked and ungodly satisfie thy self with this That another's Wickedness shall never Damn thee but thy own Bitterness and Rancour may and continued in certainly will Rather let his want of Grace give thee occasion to exercise Thine if thou hast any in Thinking and Speaking better of him than he deserves And if thy Charity proves mistaken assure thy self that God will accept the Charity and over-look the Mistake But if in Judging him whom thou hast nothing to doe with thou chancest to Judge one way and God and Truth to Judge another take heed of that Dreadfull Tribunal where it will not be enough to say That I thought this or I heard that and where no Man's mistake will be able to warrant an unjust Surmise and much less justifie a false Censure Such would find it much better for them to retreat inwards and view themselves in the Law of God and their own Consciences and that will tell them their own impartially that will fetch off all their paint and shew them a foul Face in a true Glass Let them read over their Catechism and lay aside Spight and Virulence Gossipping and Medling Calumny and Detraction and let not all about them be Villains and Reprobates because they themselves are Envious
Commission of Sin be not prevented whether ever it will come to be pardoned In order to the clearing of which I shall lay down these Two Considerations 1. That if Sin be not thus prevented it will certainly be committed And the Reason is because on the Sinner's part there will be always a strong inclination to Sin So that if other things concurr and Providence cuts not off the opportunity the Act of Sin must needs follow For an active Principle seconded with the Opportunities of Action will infallibly exert it self 2 ly The other Consideration is That in every Sin deliberately committed there are generally speaking many more Degrees of Probability that That Sin will never come to be pardoned than that it will And this shall be made appear upon these Three following Accounts 1. Because every Commission of Sin introduces into the Soul a certain degree of Hardness and an Aptness to continue in that Sin It is a known maxim That it is much more difficult to throw out than not to let in Every degree of Entrance is a degree of Possession Sin taken into the Soul is like a Liquor poured into a Vessel so much of it as it fills it also seasons The Touch and Tincture go together So that although the Body of the Liquor should be poured out again yet still it leaves that Tang behind it which makes the Vessel fitter for that than for any other In like manner every Act of Sin strangely transforms and works over the Soul to its own likeness Sin in this being to the Soul like fire to combustible matter It assimilates before it destroys it 2 ly A second Reason is Because every Commission of Sin imprints upon the Soul a further disposition and proneness to Sin As the second third and fourth Degrees of Heat are more easily introduced than the first Every one is both a preparative and a step to the next Drinking both quenches the present Thirst and provokes it for the future When the Soul is beaten from its first Station and the Mounds and Out-works of Vertue are once broken down it becomes quite another thing from what it was before In one single Eating of the forbidden Fruit when the Act is over yet the Relish remains and the Remembrance of the first Repast is an easie Allurement to the second One Visit is enough to begin an Acquaintance and this Point is gained by it that when the Visitant comes again he is no more a Stranger 3 ly The third and grand Reason is Because the only thing that can entitle the Sinner to Pardon which is Repentance is not in the Sinner's power And he who goes about the Work will find it so It is the Gift of God And though God has certainly promised Forgiveness of Sin to every one who Repents yet he has not promised to any one to give him Grace to Repent This is the Sinner's hard Lot that the same thing which makes him need Repentance makes him also in danger of not obtaining it For it provokes and offends that Holy Spirit which alone can bestow this Grace As the same Treason which puts a Traytor in need of his Prince's Mercy is a great and a just Provocation to his Prince to deny it him Now let these Three things be put together First That every Commission of Sin in some degree hardens the Soul in that Sin Secondly That every Commission of Sin disposes the Soul to proceed further in Sin And Thirdly That to repent and turn from Sin without which all Pardon is impossible is not in the Sinner's power And then I suppose there cannot but appear a greater likelihood that a Sin once committed will in the issue not be pardon'd than that it will To all which add the Confirmation of general Experience and the real Event of Things That where one Man ever comes to Repent an hundred I might say a thousand at least end their days in final Impenitence All which considered surely there cannot need a more pregnant Argument of the Greatness of this Preventing Mercy if it did no more for a man than this That his grand immortal Concern more valuable to him than ten thousand Worlds is not thrown upon a Critical Point that he is not bronght to his last Stake that he is rescued from the first Descents into Hell and the high Probabilities of Damnation For whatsoever the Issue proves it is certainly a miserable thing to be forced to cast Lots for one's Life yet in every Sin a man does the same for Eternity And therefore let the boldest Sinner take this one Consideration along with him when he is going to Sin That whether the Sin he is about to act ever comes to be pardoned or no yet as soon as it is acted it quite turns the Balance puts his Salvation upon the venture leaves him but one Cast for all and which is yet much more dreadfull makes it ten to one odds against him But let us now alter the state of the matter so as to leave no doubt in the case But suppose that the Sin which upon non-prevention comes to be committed comes also to be repented of and consequently to be pardoned Yet in the Fourth and Last place The Greatness of this Preventing-Mercy is eminently proved from those Advantages accruing to the Soul from the Prevention of Sin above what can be had from the bare Pardon of it And that in these Two great Respects 1. Of the Clearness of a man's Condition 2. Of the Satisfaction of his Mind And First For the Clearness of his Condition If innocence be preferrible to Repentance and to be clean be more desirable than to be cleansed then surely Prevention of Sin ought to have the Precedence of its Pardon For so much of Prevention so much of Innocence There are indeed various Degrees of it and God in his Infinite Wisdom does not deal forth the same measure of his Preventing Grace to All. Sometimes he may suffer the Soul but just to begin the sinfull production in reflecting upon a Sin suggested by the Imagination with some Complacency and Delight which in the Apostle's phrase is to conceive Sin and then in these early imperfect Beginnings God perhaps may presently dash and extinguish it Or possibly he may permit the Sinfull Conception to receive Life and Form by passing into a purpose of committing it and then he may make it prove Abortive by stifling it before ever it comes to the Birth Or perhaps God may think fit to let it come even to the Birth by some strong Endeavours to commit it and yet then deny it strength to bring forth so that it never comes into Actual Commission Or lastly God may suffer it to be Born and see the World by permitting the Endeavour of Sin to pass into the Commission of it And this is the last fatal step but one which is by frequent Repetition of the sinfull Act to continue and persist in it till at length it settles
a man such a faithfull Account of himself as shall never shame nor lurch the Confidence which he shall take up from it Nevertheless to prevent all mistakes in so critical a Case and so high a Concern I shall close up the foregoing Particulars with this twofold Caution First Let no man think that every Doubting or Mis-giving about the Safety of his Spiritual Estate over-throws the Confidence hitherto spoken of For as I shew before the Confidence mentioned in the Text is not properly Assurance but only a Rational well-grounded Hope And therefore may very well consist with some Returns of Doubting For we know in that Pious and Excellent Confession and Prayer made by the poor Man to our Saviour in Mark 9. 24. how in the very same Breath in which he says Lord I believe He says also Lord help my unbelief So that we see here that the Sincerity of our Faith or Confidence will not secure us against all Vicissitudes of Wavering or Distrust indeed no more than a strong Athletick Constitution of Body will secure a man always against Heats and Colds and Rheums and such-like Indispositions And one great Reason of this is Because such a Faith or Confidence as we have been treating of resides in the Soul or Conscience as an Habit. And Habits we know are by no means either inconsistent with or destroyed by every contrary Act. But especially in the Case now before us where the Truth and Strength of our Confidence towards God does not consist so much in the present Act by which it exerts it self no nor yet in the Habit producing this Act as it does in the Ground or Reason which this Confidence is built upon which being the standing sincerity of a man's Heart though the present Act be interrupted as no doubt through Infirmity or Temptation it may be very often yet so long as that sincerity upon which this Confidence was first founded does continue as soon as the Temptation is removed and gone the fore-mentioned Faith or Affiance will by renewed vigorous and fresh Acts recover and exert it self and with great comfort and satisfaction of mind give a man confidence towards God Which though it be indeed a lower and a lesser thing than Assurance yet as to all the Purposes of a Pious Life may for ought I see prove much more usefull as both affording a man due comfort and yet leaving room for due caution too which are Two of the principal Uses that Religion serves for in this World 2. The other Caution with reference to the foregoing Discourse is this Let no man from what has been said reckon a bare silence of Conscience in not accusing or disturbing him a sufficient Argument for Confidence towards God For such a Silence is so far from being always so that it is usually worse than the fiercest and loudest Accusations since it may and for the most part does proceed from a kind of numbness or stupidity of Conscience and an absolute Dominion obtained by Sin over the Soul so that it shall not so much as dare to complain or make a stir For as our Saviour says Luke 11. 21. while the strong Man armed keeps his Palace his Goods are in peace So while Sin rules and governs with a strong Hand and has wholly subdued the Conscience to a slavish Subjection to its Tyrannical Yoke the Soul shall be at Peace such a false Peace as it is but for that very Cause worse a great deal and more destructive than when by continual Alarms and Assaults it gives a man neither Peace nor Truce Quiet nor Intermission And therefore it is very remarkable that the Text expresses the sound Estate of the Heart or the Conscience here spoken of not barely by its not accusing but by it s not condemning us which word imports properly an Acquitment or Discharge of a man upon some precedent Accusation and a full Trial and Cognizance of his Cause had thereupon For as Condemnation being a Law Term and so relating to the Judicial Proceedings of Law Courts must still pre-suppose an Hearing of the Cause before any Sentence can pass so likewise in the Court of Conscience there must be a strict and impartial Enquiry into all a man's Actions and a through heaving of all that can be pleaded for and against him before Conscience can rationally either condemn or discharge him And if indeed upon such a fair and full Trial he can come off he is then Rectus in curiâ clear and innocent and consequently may reap all that satisfaction from himself which it is Natural for Innocence to afford the person who has it I do not here speak of a Legal Innocence none but Sots and Quakers dream of such things For as St. Paul says Galat. 2. 16. By the Works of the Law shall no flesh living be justified But I speak of an Evangelical Innocence such an one as the Oeconomy of the Gospel accepts whatsoever the Law enjoyns and though mingled with several Infirmities and Defects yet amounts to such a pitch of Righteousness as we call Sincerity And whosoever has this shall never be Damned for want of the other And now how vastly does it concern all those who shall think it worth their while to be in earnest with their Immortal Souls not to abuse and delude themselves with a false Confidence a thing so easily taken up and so hardly laid down Let no man conclude because his Conscience says nothing to him that therefore it has nothing to say Possibly some never so much as doubted of the safety of their Spiritual Estate in all their Lives and if so let them not flatter themselves but rest assured that they have so much the more reason a great deal to doubt of it now For the Causes of such a profound stillness are generally gross Ignorance or long Custom of Sinning or both and these are very dreadfull Symptoms indeed to such as are not Hell and Damnation-proof When a man's Wounds cease to smart only because he has lost his feeling they are never the less mortal for his not seeing his Need of a Chirurgeon It is not meer actual present Ease but Ease after Pain which brings the most durable and solid Comfort Acquitment before Trial can be no security Great and strange Calms usually portend and go before the most violent Storms And therefore since Storms and Calms especially with reference to the State of the Soul doe always follow one another Certainly of the Two it is much more Eligible to have the Storm first and the Calm afterwards Since a Calm before a Storm is commonly a Peace of a man 's own making but a Calm after a Storm a Peace of God's To which God who only can speak such Peace to us as neither the World not the Devil shall be able to take from us be rendred and ascribed as is most due all Praise Might Majesty and Dominion both now and for ever-more Amen A Further ACCOUNT OF THE Nature