I have in general shewn the utter inability of the Magistrate to attain the Ends of Government without the Aid of Religion But it may be here replied that many are not at all moved with arguments drawn from hence or with the happy or miserable state of the Soul after death and therefore this avails little to procure obedience and consequently to advance Government I answer by confession that this is true of Epicures Atheists and some pretended Philosophers who have stifled the Notions of a Deity and the Souls immortality but the Unprepossessed on the one hand and the well-disposed on the other who both together make much the major part of the world are very apt to be affected with a due fear of these things And Religion accommodating it self to the Generality though not to every particular temper sufficiently secures Government in as much as that stands or falls according to the Behaviour of the multitude And whatsoever Conscience makes the Generality obey to that Prudence will make the rest conform Wherefore having proved the dependence of Government upon Religion I shall now demonstrate That the safety of Government depends upon the Truth of Religion False Religion is in its nature the greatest bane and destruction to Government in the World The reason is because whatsoever is False is also Weak Ens and Verum in Philosophy are the same and so much as any Religion has of Falsity it loses of Strength and Existence Falsity gains Authority only from Ignorance and therefore is in danger to be known for from Being false the next immediate step is to be Known to be such And what prejudice this would be to the Civil Government is apparent if men should be awed into Obedience and affrighted from sin by Rewards and Punishments proposed to them in such a Religion which afterwards should be detected and found a mere falsitie and cheat for if one part be but found to be false it will make the whole suspicious And men will then not only cast off Obedience to the Civil Magistrate but they will do it with disdain and rage that they have been deceived so long and brought to do that out of Conscience which was imposed upon them out of design For though men are often willingly deceived yet still it must be under an Opinion of being instructed though they love the Deception yet they morrally hate it under that appearance Therefore it is no ways safe for a Magistrate who is to build his Dominion upon the Fears of men to build those fears upon a false Religion 'T is not to be doubted but the absurdity of Ieroboam's Calves made many Israelites turn subjects to Rehoboam's Government that they might be Proselytes to his Religion Herein the Weakness of the Turkish Religion appears That it urges Obedience upon the promise of such absurd Rewards as that after death they should have Palaces Gardens Beautifull Women with all the Luxury that could be as if those things that were the occasions and incentives of sin in this world could be the rewards of Holiness in the other Besides many other inventions false and absurd that are like so many chinks and holes to discover the rottenness of the whole Fabrick when God shall be pleased to give light to discover and open their reasons to discern them But you will say What Government more sure and absolute than the Turkish and yet what Religion more false Therefore certainly Government may stand sure and strong be the Religion professed never so absurd I answer that it may do so indeed by accident through the strange peculiar temper and gross ignorance of a people as we see it happens in the Turks the best part of whose Policy supposing the absurdity of their Religion is this That they prohibit Schools of Learning for this hinders Knowledge and Disputes which such a Religion would not bear But suppose we that the Learning of these Western Nations were as great there as here and the Alcoran as common to them as the Bible to us that they might have free recourse to search and examine the flaws and follies of it and withall that they were of as inquisitive a temper as we And who knows but as there are vicissitudes in the Government so there may happen the same also in the temper of a Nation If this should come to pass where would be their Religion And then let every one judge whether the Arcana imperii and Religionis would not fall together They have begun to totter already for Mahomet having promised to come and visit his Followers and translate them to Paradise after a thousand years this being expired many of the Persians began to doubt and smell the cheat till the Mufti or Chief Priest told them that it was a mistake in the figure and assured them that upon more diligent survey of the Records he found it Two thousand instead of One. When this is expired perhaps they will not be able to renew the Fallacy I say therefore that though this Government continues firm in the exercise of a false Religion yet this is by accident through the present genius of the people which may change but this does not prove but that the Nature of such a Religion of which we only now speak tends to subvert and betray the Civil Power Hence Machiavel himself in his Animadversions upon Livy makes it appear That the Weakness of Italy which was once so strong was caused by the corrupt practices of the Papacy in depraving and misusieng Religion to that purpose which he though himself a Papist says could not have hapned had the Christian Religion been kept in its first and native simplicity Thus much may suffice for the clearing of the first Proposition The Inferences from hence are two 1. If Government depends upon Religion then this shews the pestilential design of those that attempt to disjoyn the Civil and Ecclesiastical Interests setting the latter wholly out of the Tuition of the former But 't is clear that the Fanaticks know no other step to the Magistracy but through the ruine of the Ministery There is a great Analogy between the body Natural and Politick in which the Ecclesiastical or Spiritual part justly supplies the part of the soul and the violent separation of this from the other does as certainly inferr death and dissolution as the disjunction of the body and the soul in the Natural for when this once departs it leaves the body of the Common-wealth as carcase noysom and exposed to be devoured by Birds of prey The Ministery will be one day found according to Christ's word the salt of the earth the onely thing that keeps Societies of men from stench and corruption These two Interests are of that nature that 't is to be feared they cannot be divided but they will also prove opposite and not resting in a bare diversity quickly rise into a Contrariety These two are to the State what the Elements of Fire and Water to
TWELVE SERMONS Preached upon Several Occasions By ROBERT SOUTH D. D. Six of them never before Printed LONDON Printed by I. H. for Thomas Bennet at the Half Moon in St. Paul's Church-yard 1692. To the Right Honourable EDWARD Earl of CLARENDON Lord High Chancellor of England and Chancellor of the University of Oxon and one of His Majesties most Honourable Privy Council My Lord THough to prefix so great a Name to so mean a Piece seems like enlarging the Entrance of an House that affords no Reception yet since there is nothing can warrant the Publication of it but what can also command it the Work must think of no other Patronage than the same that adorns and protects its Author Some indeed vouch great Names because they think they deserve but I because I need such and had I not more occasion than many others to see and converse with your Lordship's Candor and Proneness to pardon there is none had greater cause to dread your Iudgment and thereby in some part I venture to commend my own For all know who know your Lordship that in a Nobler respect than either that of Government or Patronage you represent and head the best of Universities and have travelled over too many Nations and Authors to encourage any one that understands himself to appear an Author in your Hands who seldom read any Books to inform your self but only to countenance and credit them But my Lord what is here published pretends no Instruction but only Homage while it teaches many of the World it only describes your Lordship who have made the ways of Labour and Vertue of doing and doing Good your Business and your Recreation your Meat and your Drink and I may add also your Sleep My Lord the Subject here treated of is of that Nature that it would seem but a Chimera and a bold Paradox did it not in the very Front carry an Instance to exemplifie it and so by the Dedication convince the World that the Discourse it self was not impracticable For such ever was and is and will be the Temper of the generality of mankind that while I send men for Pleasure to Religion I cannot but expect that they will look upon me as only having a mind to be pleasant with them my self nor are Men to be Worded into new Tempers or Constitutions and he that thinks that any one can persuade but He that made the World will find that he does not well understand it My Lord I have obeyed your Command for such must I account your Desire and thereby Design not so much the Publication of my Sermon as of my Obedience for next to the Supreme Pleasure described in the ensuing Discourse I enjoy none greater than in having any opportunity to declare my self Your Lordship 's very humble Servant and obliged Chaplain ROBERT SOUTH The Contents of the Sermons SERMON I. PRoverbs III. 17 Her ways are ways of Pleasantness Page 1 SERMON II. Gen. I. 27 So God created man in his own Image in the Image of God created he him p. 53 SERMON III. Matth. X. 33 But whosoever shall deny me before men him will I deny before my Father which is in Heaven p. 101 SERMON IV. I Kings XIII 33 34. After this thing Jeroboam returned not from his evil way but made again of the lowest of the people Priests of the High places whosoever would he consecrated him and he became one of the Priests of the High places And this thing became sin unto the house of Jeroboam even to cut it off and to destroy it from off the face of the Earth p. 155 SERMON V. Titus II. ult These things speak and exhort and rebuke with all Authority Let no man despise thee p. 223 SERMON VI. John VII 17 If any man will do his Will he shall know of the Doctrine whether it be of God or whether I speak of my self p. 269 SERMON VII Psalm LXXXVII 2 God hath loved the Gates of Sion more than all the Dwellings of Iacob p. 323 SERMON VIII Prov. XVI 33 The lot is cast into the lap but the whole disposing of it is of the Lord. p. 373 SERMON IX 1 Cor. III. 19 For the Wisdom of this World is Foolishness with God p. 425 SERMON X. 2 Cor. VIII 12 For if there be first a willing Mind it is accepted according to that a Man hath and not according to that he hath not p. 477 SERMON XI Judges VIII 34 35. And the Children of Israel remembred not the Lord their God who had delivered them out of the hands of all their Enemies on every side Neither shewed they kindness to the House of Ierubbaal namely Gideon according to all the goodness which he had shewed unto Israel p. 535 SERMON XII Prov. XII 22 Lying Lips are abomination to the Lord. p. 587 A SERMON Preached at COURT c. PROV 3.17 Her Ways are Ways of Pleasantness THE Text relating to something going before must carry our Eye back to the 13th verse where we shall find that the thing of which these words are affirmed is Wisdome A Name by which the Spirit of God was here pleased to express to us Religion and thereby to tell the world what before it was not aware of and perhaps will not yet believe that those two great things that so engross the desires and designs of both the Nobler and Ignobler sort of mankind are to be found in Religion namely Wisdom and Pleasure and that the former is the direct way to the latter as Religion is to both That Pleasure is Man's chiefest good because indeed it is the perception of Good that is properly pleasure is an assertion most certainly true though under the common acceptance of it not only false but odious for according to this pleasure and sensuality pass for terms equivalent and therefore he that takes it in this sence alters the Subject of the discourse Sensuality is indeed a part or rather one kind of pleasure such an one as it is For Pleasure in general is the consequent apprehension of a sutable Object sutably applied to a rightly disposed faculty and so must be conversant both about the faculties of the Body and of the Soul respectively as being the result of the fruitions belonging to both Now amongst those many Arguments used to press upon men the exercise of Religion I know none that are like to be so succesful as those that answer and remove the prejudices that generally possess and barr up the Hearts of men against it amongst which there is none so prevalent in Truth though so little owned in Pretence as that it is an Enemy to mens pleasures that it bereaves them of all the sweets of Converse dooms them to an absurd and perpetual Melancholy designing to make the world nothing else but a great Monastery With which notion of Religion Nature and Reason seems to have great cause to be dissatisfied For since God never Created any faculty either in Soul or Body
of Truth and the substance of Fruition It did not run out in voice or undecent eruptions but filled the Soul as God does the Universe silently and without noise It was refreshing but composed like the pleasantness of youth tempered with the gravity of age or the mirth of a festival mannaged with the silence of contemplation And on the other side for Sorrow Had any loss or disaster made but room for grief it would have moved according to the severe allowances of Prudence and the proportions of the provocation It would not have sallied out into complaint or loudness nor spread it self upon the face and writ sad stories upon the forehead No wringing of the hands knocking the breast or wishing ones self unborn all which are but the ceremonies of sorrow the pomp and ostentation of an effeminate grief which speak not so much the greatness of the misery as the smallness of the mind Tears may spoil the eyes but not wash away the affliction Sighs may exhaust the man but not eject the burthen Sorrow then would have been as silent as Thoughts as severe as Philosophy It would have rested in inward senses tacit dislikes and the whole scene of it been transacted in sad and silent reflections Then again for Hope Though indeed the fullness and affluence of man's enjoyments in the state of Innocence might seem to leave no place for hope in respect of any further addition but only of the prorogation and future continuance of what already he possessed Yet doubtless God who made no faculty but also provided it with a proper object upon which it might exercise and lay out it self even in its greatest innocence did then exercise man's hopes with the expectations of a better Paradise or a more intimate admission to himself For it is not imaginable that Adam could fix upon such poor thin enjoyments as riches pleasure and the gayeties of an animal life Hope indeed was always the Anchor of the Soul yet certainly it was not to catch or fasten upon such mud And if as the Apostle says no man hopes for that which he sees much less could Adam then hope for such things as he saw through And lastly for the affection of Fear It was then the instrument of caution not of anxiety a guard and not a torment to the breast that had it It is now indeed an unhappiness the disease of the Soul it flies from a shadow and makes more dangers than it avoids it weakens the Judgment and betrays the succours of reason So hard is it to tremble and not to erre and to hit the mark with a shaking hand Then it fixed upon him who is only to be feared God and yet with a filial fear which at the same time both fears and loves It was awe without amazement dread without distraction There was then a beauty even in this very paleness It was the colour of devotion giving a lustre to reverence and a gloss to humility Thus did the Passions then act without any of their present jarrs combats or repugnances all moving with the beauty of uniformity and the stilness of composure Like a well-governed Army not for fighting but for rank and order I confess the Scripture does not expresly attribute these several endowments to Adam in his first estate But all that I have said and much more may be drawn out of that short Aphorism God made man upright Eccl. 7.29 And since the opposite Weaknesses now infest the nature of Man faln if we will be true to the rule of contraries we must conclude That those perfections were the lot of man innocent Now from this so exact and regular composure of the faculties all moving in their due place each striking in its proper time there arose by natural consequence the crowning perfection of all A good conscience For as in the Body when the principal parts as the Heart and Liver do their offices and all the inferiour smaller vessels act orderly and duly there arises a sweet enjoyment upon the whole which we call Health So in the Soul when the supreme faculties of the Will and Understanding move regularly the inferiour Passions and Affections following there arises a serenity and complacency upon the whole Soul infinitely beyond the greatest bodily pleasures the highest quintessence and Elixir of worldly delights There is in this case a kind of fragrancy and spiritual perfume upon the Conscience much like what Isaac spoke of his son's garments That the scent of them was like the smell of a field which the Lord had blessed Such a freshness and flavour is there upon the Soul when daily watered with the actions of a vertuous life Whatsoever is pure is also pleasant Having thus surveyed the Image of God in the Soul of Man we are not to omit now those characters of Majesty that God imprinted upon the Body He drew some traces of his Image upon this also as much as a spiritual Substance could be pictured upon a corporeal As for the Sect of the Anthropomorphites who from hence ascribe to God the figure of a Man eyes hands feet and the like they are too ridiculous to deserve a confutation They would seem to draw this impiety from the letter of the Scripture sometimes speaking of God in this manner Absurdly as if the mercy of Scripture-expressions ought to warrant the blasphemy of our Opinions And not rather shew us that God condescends to us only to draw us to himself and cloathes himself in our likeness only to win us to his own The practice of the Papists is much of the same nature in their absurd and impious picturing of God Almighty but the wonder in them is the less since the Image of a Deity may be a proper object for that which is but the Image of a Religion But to the purpose Adam was then no less glorious in his Externals he had a beautifull Body as well as an immortal Soul The whole compound was like a well built Temple stately without and sacred within The Elements were at perfect union and agreement in his Body and their contrary qualities served not for the dissolution of the compound but the variety of the composure Galen who had no more Divinity than what his Physick taught him barely upon the consideration of this so exact frame of the Body challenges any one upon an hundred years study to find how any the least fibre or most minute particle might be more commodiously placed either for the advantage of use or comeliness His stature erect and tending upwards to his Centre his Countenance Majestick and Comely with the lustre of a native Beauty that scorned the poor Assistance of Art or the Attempts of Imitation his Body of so much quickness and agility that it did not only contain but also represent the Soul for we might well suppose that where God did deposit so rich a Jewel he would sutably adorn the Case It was a fit Work-house for spritely vivid faculties to
for all this these Bents and Propensities and Inclinations will not do the Business the bare bending of the Bow will not hit the Mark without shooting the Arrow and Men are not called to Will but to Work out their Salvation But what then Is it not as Certain from the Text that God sometimes accepts the Will as it is from those forementioned Scriptures that God commands the Deed Yes no doubt Since it is impossible for the Holy Ghost to contradict that in one place of Scripture which he had affirmed in another In all the foregoing places Doing is expresly commanded and no Happiness allowed to any thing short of it and yet here God is said to accept of the Will and can both these stand together without manifest contradiction That which enjoyns the Deed is certainly God's Law and it is also as certain that the Scripture that allows of the Will is neither the Abrogation nor Derogation nor Dispensation nor Relaxation of that Law In order to the clearing of which I shall lay down these Two Assertions 1. That every Law of God commands the Obedience of the Whole Man 2. That the Will is never accepted by God but as it is the Obedience of the Whole Man So that the Allowance or Acceptance of the Will mentioned in the Text takes off Nothing from the Obligation of those Laws in which the Deed is so plainly and positively enjoyned but is only an Interpretation or Declaration of the true Sence of those Laws shewing the Equity of them Which is as really Essential to Every Law and gives it its obliging Force as much as the Justice of it and indeed is not another or a distinct thing from the Justice of it any more than a Particular Case is from an Universal Rule But you will say How can the Obedience of the Will ever be proved to be the Obedience of the Whole Man For answer to which we are first to consider Every Man as a Moral and consequently as a Rational Agent and then to consider what is the Office and Influence of the Will in Every Moral Action Now the Morality of an Action is founded in the Freedom of that Principle by virtue of which it is in the Agent 's Power having all things ready and requisite to the performance of an Action either to perform or not to perform it And as the Will is endued with this Freedom so is it also endued with a Power to Command all the other Faculties both of Soul and Body to Execute what it has so Will'd or Decreed and that without Resistance So that upon the last Dictate of the Will for the Doing of such or such a thing all the other Faculties proceed immediately to act according to their respective Offices By which it is manifest that in point of Action the Will is Virtually the Whole Man as containing in it all that which by virtue of his other Faculties he is able to do Just as the Spring of a Watch is virtually the whole Motion of the Watch forasmuch as it imparts a Motion to all the Wheels of it Thus as to the Soul If the Will bids the Understanding Think Study and Consider it will accordingly apply it self to Thought Study and Consideration If it bids the Affections Love Rejoyce or be Angry an Act of Love Joy or Anger will follow And then for the Body if the Will bids the Leg go it goes if it bids the Hand do this it does it So that a Man is a Moral Agent only as he is endued with and acts by a Free and Commanding Principle of Will And therefore when God says My Son give me thy Heart which there signifies the Will it is as much as if he had commanded the Service of the Whole Man for whatsoever the Will commands the Whole Man must do the Empire or Dominion of the Will over all the Faculties of Soul and Body as to most of the Operations of each of them being absolutely Over-ruling and Despotical From whence it follows That when the Will has exerted an Act of Command upon any Faculty of the Soul or Member of the Body it has by so doing done all that the Whole Man as a Moral Agent can do for the Actual Exercise or Employment of such a Faculty or Member And if so then what is not done in such a case is certainly not in a man's Power to doe and consequently is no part of the Obedience required of him No man being commanded or obliged to obey beyond his Power And therefore the Obedience of the Will to God's Commands is the Obedience of the whole Man forasmuch as it includes and inferrs it which was the Assertion that we undertook to prove But you will say If the Prerogative of the Will be such that where it commands the Hand to give an Alms the Leg to Kneel or to go to Church or the Tongue to utter a Prayer all these things will infallibly be done Suppose we now a man be bound hand and foot by some outward violence or be laid up with the Gout or disabled for any of these Functions by a Palsy can the Will by its Command make a man in such a condition utter a Prayer or Kneel or go to Church No 't is manifest it cannot but then you are to know also that neither is Vocal Prayer or Bodily Kneeling or going to Church in such a case any part of the Obedience required of such a person But that Act of his Will hitherto spoken of that would have put his Body upon all these Actions had there been no impediment is that man's whole Obedience and for that very Cause that it is so and for no other it stands here accepted by God From all which Discourse this must naturally and directly be inferr'd as a certain Truth and the chief foundation of all that can be said upon this Subject namely That whosoever Wills the Doing of a thing if the Doing of it be in his power he will certainly Doe it and whosoever does not doe that Thing which he has in his power to doe does not really and properly Will it For though the Act of the Will Commanding and the Act of any other faculty of Soul or Body executing that which is so Commanded be Physically and in the Precise Nature of things distinct and several yet Morally as they proceed in Subordination from one Entire Free Moral Agent both in Divinity and Morality they pass but for one and the same Action Now that from the foregoing Particulars we may come to understand how far this Rule of God's accepting the Will for the Deed holds good in the Sence of the Apostle we must consider in it these Three things 1. The Original Ground and Reason of it 2. The just Measure and Bounds of it And 3. The Abuse or Misapplication of it And first for the Original Ground and Reason of this Rule it is founded upon that Great Self-evident and Eternal Truth that
is irrefragably proved by this one Argument That a man may Act vertuously against his Inclination but not against his Will He may be inclined to one thing and yet will another and therefore Inclination and Will are not the same For a man may be Naturally inclined to Pride Lust Anger and strongly inclined so too forasmuch as these Inclinations are founded in a Peculiar Crasis and Constitution of the Blood and Spirits and yet by a steady frequent Repetition of the Contrary Acts of Humility Chastity and Meekness carried thereto by his Will a Principle not to be Controlled by the Blood or Spirits he may at length plant in his Soul all those Contrary Habits of Vertue And therefore it is certain that while Inclination bends the Soul One way a Well-disposed and Resolved Will may effectually draw it Another A sufficient Demonstration doubtless that they are Two very Different things for where there may be a Contrariety there is certainly a Diversity A good Inclination is but the first Rude draught of Vertue but the finishing Strokes are from the Will Which if well-disposed will by Degrees perfect if ill-dispos'd will by the Super-induction of ill Habits quickly deface it God never accepts a good Inclination instead of a good Action where that Action may be done Nay so much the Contrary that if a good Inclination be not Seconded by a good Action the Want of that Action is thereby made so much the more Criminal and Inexcusable A man may be naturally well and vertuously inclined and yet never do One good or vertuous Action all his life A Bowl may lie still for all its Byass but it is impossible for a man to Will Vertue and Vertuous Actions Heartily but he must in the same Degree offer at the Practice of them Forasmuch as the Dictates of the Will are as we have shewn Despotical and Command the Whole man It being a Contradiction in Morality for the Will to go One way and the Man Another And thus as to the First Abuse or Mis-application of the great Rule mentioned in the Text about God's Accepting the Will I have shewn Three notable Mistakes which men are apt to entertain concerning the Will and proved that neither a Bare Approbation of nor a Mere Wishing or Unactive Complacency in nor lastly a Natural Inclination to Things Vertuous and Good can pass before God for a man's Willing of such things and consequently if men upon this account will needs take up and acquiesce in an airy ungrounded Persuasion that they Will those things which really they do not Will they fall thereby into a gross and fatal Delusion A Delusion that must and will shut the Door of Salvation against them They catch at Heaven but embrace a Cloud they mock God who will not be mocked and deceive their own Souls which God knows may too easily be both Deceived and Destroyed too Come we now in the next place to Consider the other way by which Men are prone to abuse and pervert this important Rule of God's accounting the Will for the Deed and that is by reckoning many things Impossible which in truth are not Impossible And this I shall make appear by shewing some of the Principal Instances of Duty for the Performance of which men commonly plead want of Power and thereupon persuade themselves that God and the Law rest satisfied with their Will Now these Instances are Four 1. In Duties of very Great and Hard Labour Labour is confessedly a great Part of the Curse and therefore no wonder if men fly from it Which they do with so great an Aversion that few men know their own strength for want of trying it and upon that account think themselves really unable to do many things which Experience would convince them they have more Ability to Effect than they have Will to Attempt It is Idleness that Creates Impossibilities and where men care not to Doe a Thing they shelter themselves under a persuasion that it cannot be done The shortest and the surest way to prove a Work possible is strenuously to set a-about it and no wonder if that proves it possible that for the most part makes it so Dig says the Unjust Steward I cannot but why Did either his Legs or his Arms fail him No but Day-labour was but an hard and a dry kind of Livelihood to a man that could get an Estate with two or three Strokes of his Pen and find so great a Treasure as he did without Digging for it But such excuses will not pass Muster with God who will allow no man's Humour or Idleness to be the measure of Possible or Impossible And to manifest the wretched Hypocrisie of such pretences those very things which upon the bare obligation of Duty are declined by men as Impossible presently become not only Possible but readily Practicable too in a Case of Extreme Necessity As no doubt that fore-mention'd Instance of Fraud and Laziness the Unjust Steward who pleaded that he could neither Dig nor Beg would quickly have been brought both to Dig and to Beg too rather than starve And if so what reason could such an one produce before God why he could not submit to the same Hardships rather than Cheat and Lye the former being but Destructive of the Body this latter of the Soul And certainly the Highest and Dearest Concerns of a Temporal Life are infinitely less Valuable than those of an Eternal and consequently ought without any Demurr at all to be Sacrificed to them whensoever they come in Competition with them He who can Digest any Labour rather than Die must refuse no Labour rather than Sin 2 dly The Second Instance shall be in Duties of great and apparent Danger Danger as the world goes generally absolves from duty This being a case in which most men according to a very ill Sence will needs be a Law to themselves And where it is not safe for them to be Religious their Religion shall be to be safe But Christianity teaches us a very different Lesson For if fear of suffering could take off the necessity of Obeying the Doctrine of the Cross would certainly be a very Idle and a Senceless thing and Christ would never have prayed Father if it be possible let this cup pass from me had the bitterness of the draught made it impossible to be Drunk of If Death and Danger are things that really cannot be endured no Man could ever be obliged to suffer for his Conscience or to die for his Religion it being altogether as absurd to imagine a man obliged to Suffer as to Doe Impossibilities But those Primitive Hero's of the Christian Church could not so easily blow off the Doctrine of Passive Obedience as to make the fear of being Passive a discharge from being Obedient No they found Martyrdom not only possible but in many cases a Duty also a Duty dressed up indeed with all that was terrible and afflictive to Human Nature yet not at all the less