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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A27065	The vain religion of the formal hypocrite, and the mischief of an unbridled tongue (as against religion, rulers, or dissenters) described, in several sermons, preached at the Abby in Westminster, before many members of the Honourable House of Commons, 1660 ; and The fools prosperity, the occasion of his destruction : a sermon preached at Covent-Garden / by Richard Baxter.	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.; Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691. Fools prosperity.	1660 (1660)	Wing B1448; ESTC R13757	102,825	412

say that there is none of them all but when they shall come unto their beds of death and are to grapple immediately with the painful terrours of the King of fears and to stand or fall to the dreadful tribunal of the living God then except the Lord suffer them to fall into the fiery lake with senseless hearts and seared consciences would give ten thousand worlds were they all turned into gold pleasures and imperial crowns to change their former courses of vanity c. into a life of holy preciseness strictness sincerity and salvation Oh! when the heavens shall shrivel together like a scroll and the whole frame of nature flame about their ears when the great and mighty hills shall start out of their places like frighted men and the fearful reprobate cry and call upon this mountain and that rock to fall upon him when as no Dromedary of Egypt nor wings of the morning shall be able to carry them out of the reach of Gods revenging hand no top of Carmel no depth of sea or bottom of hell to hide them from the presence of him that sits upon the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb no rock nor mountain nor the great body of the whole earth to cover them from that unresistible power that laid the foundations of them no arm of flesh or armies of Angels to protect them from those infinite rivers of brimstone which shall be kept in everlasting flames by the anger of God when their poor and woeful souls shall infinitely desire rather to return into the loathed darkness of not being and to be hid for ever in the most abhorred state of annihilation then now to become the everliving objects of that unquenchable wrath which they shall never be able to avoid or to abide and to be chained up by the omnipotent band of God among the damned spirits in a place of flames and perpetual darkness where is torment without end and past imagination I say at that dreadful day and that day will come what do you think would they give for part in that Purity which now they persecute and for the comforts of true-hearted holiness that now they hate and yet without which as it will clearly appear when matters are brought before that high and everlasting Judge non shall ever see the Lord or dwell in the joyes of eternity Nay I verily think there are no desperate despisers of godliness or formal opposites to grace which do now hold Holiness to be Hypocrisie Sanctification singularity practice of sincerity too much preciseness but when the pit of d●struction hath once shut her mouth upon them and they are sunk irrecoverably into that dungeon of fire would be content with all their hearts to live a million of years as precisely as ever Saint did upon earth to redeem but one moment of that torment so p. 159. The common conceit of these men is that civil honest men are in the state of grace and that formal professors are very forward and without exception but true Christians indeed are Puritans Irregularists exorbitants transcendents to that ordinary pitch of formal piety which in their carnal comprehensions they hold high enough for heaven They either conceit them to be Hypocrites and so the only objects for the exercise of their Ministerial severity and the terrours of God or else though the Lord may at last pardon perhaps their singularities and excesses of zeal yet in the mean time they dissweeten and vex the comforts and glory of this life with much unnecessary strictness and abridgement Now of all others such Prophets as these are the only men with the Formal Hypocrite exactly fitted and suitable to his humour for however they may sometime declaim boysterously N. B. against gross and visible abominations and that is well yet they are no searchers into nor censurers of the state of Formality and therefore do rather secretly and silently encourage him to sit faster upon that sandy foundation then help to draw him forward to more forwardness c. See also his description of a Puritan p. 132. So in his Direct for walking with God p. 172. Good-fellow meetings and Ale-house revellings are the drunkards delight but all the while he sits at it he is perhaps in a bodily fear of the Puritan Constable Many such Passages tell you how the word Puritan was commonly interpreted in Oxford Northamptonshire and whereever Learned and Holy Mr. Bolton was acquainted And having mentioned his testimony of the use of that word I shall add somewhat of his discovery of this spirit of malignity and detraction that worketh in the Antipuritans In his Disc of Hap. p. 190 191. he saith The reverence and respectful carriage to godly Ministers which may sometimes be found in the Formal Hypocrite doth grow towards distast and disaffection when they press them by the powerful sense and piercing application of some quickning Scriptures to a fervency in spirit purity of heart preciseness in their walking supernatural singularity above ordinary and moral perfections excellency of zeal and a sacred violence in pursuit of the Crown of life to an holy strictness extraordinary striving to enter in at the strait gate and transcendent eminency over the formal righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees to a nearer familiarity with God by prayer daily examination of conscience private humiliations meditation upon the endless duration in a second life to a narrow watch over the stirrings and imaginations of the heart and expression of holiness in all the passages of both their callings c. Points and ponderations of which nature are ordinarily to him so many secret seeds of indignation and many times breed in his formal heart and cold affection exasperation and estrangement if not meditations of persecution and revenge Sanctification preciseness purity holiness zeal strictness power of godliness spiritual men holy brethren Saints in Christ Communion of Christians godly conferences conceived prayers sanctifying the Sabbath family exercises exercise of fasting and mortifying humiliations and such like are commonly to men of thus temporising temper and lukewarm constitution terms of secret terrour and open taunting And sometimes they villanously sport themselves with them and make them the matter of their hateful and accursed jeasts that so they may keep under as much as they can in disestimation and contempt the faithful Professors and Practisers thereof whom naturally they heartily hate and also seem thereby to bear out the heartless stourishes of their own formality with greater bravery Hereupon it is that if they take a child of God but tripping in the least infirmity against which too perhaps he strives and prayes with many tears c. slipping only in some unadvised precipitant passage of his negotiations c. they take on unmeasurably then they cry out These are your men of the spirit these are the holy brethren these are your precise fellows these are they which make such shew of Purity and forwardness you see now what they are

and therefore he will take as much of them as he can and dare But Religion is but his Physick and therefore he will take it as little and seldom as he dare Had he but seen the face of God by faith and had he but the heart of a true believer that is suited by holyness to the holy works that God commandeth as the heart of a true friend is suited to the will of him whom he loveth he would then be no longer Religious against his will and consequently in Vain but he would think the most pure and heavenly mind and life and the highest degree of love and holiness to be the best and most desirable state for his soul as every true believer doth Had this Hypocrite any true love to God as he deceitfully pretends to have he would love his Image and Word and wayes and then he would love best that kernel and marrow of Religion that life and soul of worship and obedience which now he savoureth not but shifteth●off as a needless or tedious or unattainable thing The nature and use of these Hypocrites Religion is to save them from Religion They carry an empty guilded scabberd accusing the sword of a dangerous keenness as a thing more perillous then necessary to their use When they seem most zealous they are but serving God that they may be excused from serving him and they worship him of purpose to shift off his worship They offer him the lips that the heart may be excused and complement him with cap and knee that they may excuse themselves from real holiness They offer him the empty purse for payment and tender him a sacrifice of husks and shells and lifeless carkasses They will abound in the shadow and ceremony that they may be excused from the spiritual life and substance Alas that dead hearted hypocrite that sits there and heareth all this is so great a stranger to the opening of the heart and the deep entertainment of saving truth and to the savoury relish of the searching healing quickening passages of holy doctrine and to the thankfull wellcoming of an offered Christ and to the lookings and longings of the soul after God and to the serious desires and hopes and labours of a gracious soul for life eternal that he is idle asleep and dead as to all this spiritual work and if he had not some customary service to perform and some ceremonies or external task to do and some bodily worship to be employed in he would find little or nothing to do in the Assemblies but might sit here as a bruit or as one of a strange language that comes but to see and to be seen And therefore if there be not somewhat more suitable to him then power and spirituality it seemeth as no worship to the formal hypocrite It is the pretty jingles and knacks of wit and the merry jears at the preciser sort or some scraps of Greek and Latin Authors or shreds of Fathers or Philosophy or at best an accurate well set speech that makes the Sermon good and acceptable to this hypocrites ears It is not spirit and life within him that brought him hither nor is it spirit and life that he savoureth and that he came for And therefore it is that this sort of hypocrites are usually most impatient of a misplaced word or of a worship performed in the primitive simplicity If a man deliver the Lords Supper but as Christ did and receive it but as the Apostles did or serve God but as the Churches in their dayes he will seem unreverent and slovenly and sordid to these self-deceiving Formalists They are set upon excess of ceremonies because they are defective in the vital parts and should have no Religion if they had not this All sober Christians are friends to outward decency and order But it s the empty self-deceiver that is most for the unwarrantable inventions of men and sticketh in the bark of Gods own Ordinances that taketh the garments for the man and useth the worship of God but as a Masque or Poppet play where there 's great doings with little life and to little purpose The chastest woman will wash her face but it s the harlot or wanton or deformed that will paint it The soberest and the comelyest will avoid a nasty or ridiculous habit which may make them seem uncomely when they are not But a curious dress and excessive care doth signifie a crooked or deformed body or a filthy skin or which is worse an empty soul that hath need of such a covering Consciousness of such greater want doth cause them to seek these poor supplies The gawdiness of mens Religion is not the best sign that it is sincere Simplicity is the ordinary attendant of sincerity It hath long been a proverb The more ceremony the less substance and the more complement the more craft And yet if it were only for want of inward true Religion that the hypocrite setteth up his shews it were bad enough but not so bad as with most of them or all it is For it is an enmity to Religion that accompanyeth their Religion As in lapsed man the body that was before the souls obedient attendant is become its Master and the enemy of its perfection and felicity so in the carnal Religion of the Hypocrite the outside which should be the ornament and attendant of the inward spiritual part hath got the Mastery and is used in an enmity against the more noble part which it should serve and much more are his humane inventions and mixtures thus destructively imployed His bellows do but blow out the candle under pretence of kindling the fire He sets the body against the soul and sometime the cloathing against both He useth forms to the destruction of knowledge and quenching of all seriousness and fervour of affection By Preaching he destroyeth Preaching and prayeth till prayer is become no prayer but the image or carkass of prayer at the best And useth his words to the destruction of the due Principle sense and ends Having still his carnal self for his end he preacheth and prayeth and serveth God in a manner that seems most suitable to his end so that it is not Gods means that he useth when he useth them but his own Nor doth he indeed worship God while he seems to worship him nor is indeed Religious but seems Religious It is materially perhaps Gods work that he doth and his means that he useth but Formally they are his own and not Gods at all when we meet with abundance of our people that are most nimble in their accustomed forms that know not what Religion or Christianity is nor who Christ is nor almost any of the substance of the Gospel it assures us that its easie to be Infidels with Christian expressions in their mouths and that its easier to teach a Parret to speak then to be a man As their bodies are but the prisons or dungeons of their souls so their formal words and

the Chappel of a Saint in Pilgrimage in carrying about them a bone or some other supposed relict of a supposed Saint In confessing their sins so often to a Priest and doing penance if he impose it on them And so while they live in whoredom or drunkenness or swearing or lying or all these and many other such it is but confessing and doing penance and to it again on which account whatever some of them say for the necessity of contrition it is usual with them to venture upon the sins of whoredom drunkenness and the rest because they have so easie and cheap a remedy at hand And therefore I wonder not that among Infidels who after Baptism Apostatize to deny the holy Scriptures and the immortality of the soul and the life to come and among common swearers and cursers and whoremongers and drunkards the Papists find their labours most successeful and that no fish will so easily take their bait Nor do I wonder that it is a point of the Popish faith that none but the Children of the Devil that are void of the love of God and are unjustified can possibly turn Papists For they tell us that all are such till they are Papists saving that they are many of them for the salvation of heathens A poor wretch that is captivated to his odious lusts and goes under a galled accusing conscience will be content to take a Popish cure and quiet his soul with a few complements and formalities But to bring one of these men to a through conversion to a true humiliation to a deep hatred of all sin and a love of holiness to close with Christ as his only refuge from the wrath of God and to give up himself without any reservation and all that he hath to the will and service of the Lord to love God as his portion and the infinite transcendent good to take all the honour and riches of the world as loss and dung and use all in due subserviency to everlasting happiness to crucifie the flesh and mortifie all his earthly inclinations and live a life of self-denyal and to walk with God and serve him as a Spirit in spirit and in truth and to keep a watch over thoughts affections words and deeds to live by faith upon a world and happiness that is to us unseen and to live in preparation for their death and wait in hope to live with Christ this is Christianity and true Religion and this is it that they will not so easily be brought to It s easier to make an hundred Papists then one true regenerate Christian Children can make them a baby of clouts And the statuary can make a man of Alabaster or stone But none can give life which is essential to a man indeed but God There needeth the Spirit of the living God by a supernatural operation and a kind of new creation to make a man a real holy Christian But to bring a man to make such a congee or wear such a vesture or say such and such words and make to himself a mimical Religion this may be done without any such supernatural work O therefore take heed of cheating your souls by hypocritical formalities instead of the life and power of Religion Vse 2. ANd now O that the Lord of life would help me so to apply this truth and help you so to apply it to your selves that it might be as a light set up in the Assembly and in all your consciences to undeceive the miserable self-deceivers and to bring poor Hypocrites into some better acquaintance with themselves and to turn their seeming Vain Religion into that which is real and serious and saving And now I am to search and convince the Hypocrite I could almost wish that all the upright tender souls that are causelesly in doubt of their own sincerity were out of the congregation lest they should misapply the Hypocrites portion to themselves and think it is their case that I am describing as it is usual with ignorant patients especially if they be a little melancholy when they hear or read the description of many dangerous diseases to think that all or some of them are theirs because they have some symptomes very like to some of those which they hear or read of Or lest their fearful souls should be too much terrified by hearing of the misery of the Hypocrite as a fearful child that 's innocent will cry when he sees another whipt that 's faulty But if thou wilt stay and hear the Hypocrites examination I charge thee poor humbled drooping soul that thou do not misunderstand me nor think that I am speaking those things to thee that are meant to the falshearted enemies of the Lord and do not imagine that thou art condemned in his condemnation nor put not thy self under the stroaks that are given him but rejoyce that thou art saved from this state of self-deceit and misery And that thou mayst have some shelter for thy conscience against the storm that must fall on others look back on the foregoing description of the Hypocrite and thou mayst find that thou hast the saving graces which I there discovered him to want Let these at present be before thine eyes and tell thee Thou art not the person that I mean 1. Thou art humbled to a loathing of thy self for thy transgressions 2. Thou art willing to give up thy self to Christ without reserve that as thy Saviour he may cure thy miserable soul upon his own terms 3. The favour of God is dearer to thee then the favour of the world or the pleasures and prosperity of sinners and thou longest more to love him better and to feel his love then for any of the honours or advancements that flesh and blood desire 4. It is the life to come that thou takest for thy portion and preferest before the matters of this transitory life 5. Thy Religion employeth thee about thy heart as much as about the out side and appearing part It is heart-sins that thou observest and lamentest and a better heart that thou daily longest and prayest and labourest for 6. Thou livest not in any gross and deadly sin and thou hast no infirmity but what thou longest and labourest to be rid of and goest on in the use of Christs holy means and remedies for a cure 7. Thou dislikest not the highest degree of holiness but lovest it and longest after it and hadst rather be more holy then be more honourable or more rich 8. Thou unfeignedly lovest the image of Christ on the souls of all his servants where thou canst discern it and seest a special excellency in a poor humble heavenly Christian though never so low or despicable in the world above all the pompe and splendor of the earth and thou lovest them with a special love and the holier they are the better dost thou love them 9. Thou lovest the most convincing searching Sermons and wouldest fain have help to know the worst that is in thy

He shall lean upon his house but it shall not stand he shall hold it fast but it shall not endure Or Can bull-rushes but by the rivers grow Can flags there flourish where no waters flow Yet they when green when yet untoucht of all That cloath the spring first hang their heads and fall So double-hearted Hypocrites so they Who God forget shall in their prime decay Their aery hopes as brittle as the thin And subtile webs which toyling spiders spin Their houses full of wealth and ryot shall Deceive their trust and crush them in their fall c. Job 36. 13. The Hypocrites in heart heap up wrath they cry not when he bindeth them Or as the Paraphrase For the deluder hastens his own fall Nor will in trouble on the Almighty call Who on the beds of sin supinely lie They in the summer of their age shall die And what we say of the Hypocrites hope we may say also of all his pleasures and delights He may now be as merry as the most righteous of his neighbours and seem the most happy because the most jocund and abound with medicines against melancholy and all wise and sober consideration even his business his cups his wantonness and uncleanness or at least his less disgracefull pleasures and recreations which fortifie his mind against the fears of death and judgement and all the threatenings of God As sleepy Opium fortifies the brain Against the sense of sicknesses and pain And if this mirth could alwaies last how happy a man were the self-deceiver But saith Solomon Eccles 7. 6. As the crackling of thorns under a pot so is the laughter of the fool As thorns beneath a Caldron catch the fire Blaze with a noise and suddenly expire Such is the causeless laughter of vain fools This vanity in their distemper rules And as Job 20. 4 5 6 7 8 9. Knowest thou not this of old since man was placed upon earth that the triumphing of the wicked is short and the joy of the Hypocrite for a moment Though his excellency mount up to the heavens and his head reacheth to the clouds yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung they which have seen him shall say Where is he He shall flee away as a dream and shall not be found yea he shall be chased away as a vision of the night The eye also which saw him shall see him no more neither shall his place any more behold him Or as the foresaid Paraphrase This is a truth which with the world began Since earth was first inhabited by man Sins triumph in swift misery concludes And flattering joy the Hypocrite deludes Although his excellence to heaven aspire Though radiant beams his shining brows attire He as his dung shall perish on the ground Nor shall th' impression of his steps be found But like a troubled dream shall take his flight And vanish as a vision of the night No mortal eye shall see his face again Nor sumptuous roofes their builder entertain Thus as the Hypocrites Religion is Vain so all his hopes and joyes will be vain and will deceive him as he deceiv'd himself As Zophar concludeth of him Job 11. 20. But the eyes of the wicked shall fail and they shall not escape and their hope shall be as the giving up of the Ghost Poor soul thy Religion is already so vain that it giveth thee no solid satisfaction or delight Thou art fain to go to thy lands or friends or pleasures or carnal accomodations for delight Thy Religion which should let thee into heaven and there refresh thee with the fore●asts of everlasting pleasures and should daily fetch thee fresh delights from the face of God alas is an impotent lifeless thing acquainted with shadows but strange to the invisible substance acquainted with formal shews and ceremonies but unacquainted with God acquainted with the letter but not with the Spirit familiar with the orders of the Churrh but strange to the fore●asts of heaven If thou hadst no other comfort but what thy dead Religion brings thee from the face of God thy pensive heart would be better to consideration and recovery then it is If thou hadst a faith that brought thee in any solid stablishing conten● what needst thou be hunting abroad the world among thy crowd of vanities and deceits to beg or borrow some short delight which thou must return with griping usury And what needest thou so many pittiful shifts to muzzle thy conscience and to keep that peace a little longer which will end in sorrow and will part with thee as the devil went out of the possessed person Mark 9. 26. that rent him and left him as a dead man That Religion is certainly vain that is not sufficient to acquaint the soul with matter of solid comfort and content but leaves that felicitating work to worldly transitory things while it self is used only as a skreen to keep hell fire from scorching the conscience or as childrens rackets to quiet them when they are apt to cry 2. But the vanity of a superficial Religion will most appear in the hour of extremity when their help as well as their hope and comfort will to them prove vain Prosperity will not alway last As sure as winter followeth summer and as the darksome night succeeds the day so sure will adversity take its turn sickness will follow the longest health and death succeed the longest life and your house of darkness in the dust will hold you longer then your present habitations And then when thou seest all things fail O what wouldst thou give for a hope and help that will not fail that thou mightest be received into the everlasting habitations The conscience that is now asleep will be shortly awakened in such a manner that it will be utterly past the skill and power of thy self and all the friends thou hast to cast it asleep or quiet it again And then what wouldst thou not give for a lenitive to pacifie it No wonder if thou sit here as senseless as if no harm were near thee It is now in thy power not to believe that there is a hell for hypocrites or that it is thy own inheritance But the day is near if a supernatural change prevent it not when it shall no more be in thy power but sight and feeling shall convince thee whether thou wilt or no. Now we must intreat thy own consideration and solicite thee for thy own consent to know thy grievous sin and misery and yet leave thee unconvinced because thou art unwilling to know the truth and because we cannot shew thee heaven and hell while we are speaking of them But then God will not ●●ave but force thy consideration nor will he ask thy consent to feel thy misery but the less thou art willing the more hast thou to feel And which way then wilt thou look for help which way ever it be it will be all in vain because thy Religion was but vain wilt