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spirit_n	abide_v	able_a	matter_n	26	3	4.9781	4	false

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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

the evil of vertiginous mutability in Religion and therefore he may be much resolved to continue what he is and may cast many a jeer at the weather-cocks of the times and the unconstancy and levity of ignorant or temporizing men and may stand to his party and profession against much opposition as glorying in his constancy and being ashamed to be thought a changling or such a turn-coat as others whom he merrily derideth 5. An Hypocrite that hath no other Religion but delusory and vain may observe the weaknesses of persons that are of lower education and parts and may loath their indiscretion in conference and behaviour and their unhansome expressions in prayer and other duties and shake the head at them as silly contemptible self-conceited fellows and his heart may rise against their disorder tautologies and affectations And its like enough that hereupon he will jeast at conceived prayer or extemporate as they call it and bless himself as safe in his Parrot-like devotions because the same spirit teacheth not fine words and rhetorical language to all that it teacheth to pray with unutterable sighs and groans Rom. 8. 26 27. though the searcher of hearts who is not delighted with complements and set speeches doth well understand the meaning of the spirit 5. The self-deceiving Hypocrite doth frequently pretend to be a man of moderation in matters of Religion as distasting the hair-braind zealots as he counteth them that cannot be content to have their faith and Religion to themselves before God and to live and talk as others do but must be singular and make a stir with their Religion and turn the world upside down The true zeal of the godly is usually distastefull to him and the corrupt zeal of Schismatical persons doth cause him to bless himself in his lukewarmness and to take his most odious indifferency and want of fervent love to God and his holy ways to be his vertue 6. This self-deceiving Hypocrite doth frequently pretend to an exceeding great Reverence in the managing of the outward part of worship and to an extraordinary zeal about the Circumstantials of Religion He accounts them all schismatical and prophane that place not as much of their Religion as he doth in gestures and forms and other accidents of worship acquainting us that the Pharisaical temper in religion is natural and will still continue in the world 7. If the temptation of the Hypocrite lie on the other side he can withdraw himself into some small or separating society and place his Religion in the singularity of his opinions or in the strictness of the way and party that he owneth and in his conceited ability in his conceived or ready expressions in prayer and can cry out as much upon the Formalist as the Formal Hypocrite upon him and glory in his zeal as the other in his moderation It is in the Heart that Hypocrisie hath its throne from whence it can command the outward acts into any shapes that are agreeable to its ends and can use materials of divers natures as the fewell and nutriment of its malignity And what ever party such are joined to and what ever way they have been trained up to whether Formality or schism or more regular sober equal wayes in all of them their Religion is but Vain and they do but deceive themselvs by all 8. The Religion that is but delusory and Vain may be accompanied with much Alms and works of seeming Justice and Charity Mat. 6. 1 2. Luke 18. 11 12. He may have many vertues called moral and be a man of much esteem with others even with the best and wisest for his seeming Wisdom and piety and justice He may be no extortioner unjust adulterer but as to gross sins seem blameless Luke 18. 11 12. Phil. 3. 6. and be much in reproaching the scandalous lives of others and thank God that he is none such Luke 18. 11. 9. He that hath but a vain Religion may in his judgement approve of saving grace and like the more zealous upright self-denying heavenly lives of others and wish that he might but die their death and wish himself as happy as they so it might be had on his own terms And he may have some counterseit of every grace and think that it is true Numb 23. 10. Jam. 2. 14 c. 1 Cor. 13. 1 2 3. Mark 6. 20. 10. None will be more forward to call another Hypocrite then the Hypocrite nor to extoll sincerity and uprightness of heart and life And thus you see what this Vain Religion is made up with 2. IF you marvell what the Hypocrite yet wants that makes his Religion delusory and Vain I shall now tell you I hope to your conviction and satisfaction 1. For all his forementioned Religion he wants the Spirit of Christ to dwell as his sanctifier within him And if any man have not the Spirit of Christ the same is none of his Rom. 8. 9. But because this is known by the effects I add 2. He wants that spiritual new birth by which he should be made spiritual as his first birth made him carnal John 3. 5 6. Rom. 8. 6 7 8. He is born of the will of the flesh and of man but not of God John 1. 13. Form the first man Adam he is become a living soul but by the second man Christ the Lord from heaven he is not yet quickned in the Spirit 1 Cor. 15. 45 46. He is not born again of the incorruptible seed the word of God that liveth and abideth for ever 1 Pet. 1. 23. He is not yet saved by the washing of Regeneration save only as to the outward baptism and by renewing of the Holy Ghost which is shed by Christ on all his members that being justified by his grace they should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life Tit. 3. 5 6. They are not new creatures old things being not past away and all things with them become new and therefore it is certain that they are not in Christ 2 Cor. 5. 17. They have not put off the old man with his deceitfull lusts and deeds nor have put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness Eph. 3. 22 23 24. Col. 3. 9 10. They have but patcht up the old unsanctified hearts and smooth'd over their carnal conversations with civility and plausible deportment and so much Religion as may cheat themselves as well as blind the eyes of others But they are strangers to the life of God Ephes 4. 18. and never were made partakers of the Divine nature which all the children of God partake of 2 Pet. 1. 4. nor of that Holiness without which none shall see the Lord Heb. 12. 14. 3. Though he make a slight and customary confession of his sins unworthiness and misery yet is he not kindly humbled at the heart nor made truly vile in his own eyes nor contrite and broken-hearted nor emptyed of himself as seeing himself undone

when matters come out and their dealings are discovered when it comes to the tryal indeed or to a matter of commodity c. Are not they proud are not they malicious are not they hard-hearted and covetous as well as others c. When by the mercies of God in their sense they are neither so nor so but such censures as these are very often the meer evaporations of pure malice and the bitter ebullitions and overflowings of their gall c. And p. 164. The ordinary conceit which unregenerate men entertain of these experimental Ministers is that they are troublers of Israel Preachers of terrour transgressors of policy unfit to Prophesie at Court or in the Kings Chappel pestilent fellows Seditioners Factionists born only to disquiet the world and vex mens consciences In these dayes of ours especially which are strangely prophane and desperately naught in what man soever the power of grace undaunted zeal resolute sincerity are more working eminent and remarkable ordinarily the more and more implacable outragious and inflamed Opposites shall that man find wheresoever he lives And p. 10. The formal Hypocrite is moved to think his state good and the way of his life to be right from a prejudice which he conceives from the imputations which the world layeth upon the children of God such as are Pride Hypocrisie singularity melancholy simplicity c. Page 38. His form of godliness in his conceit is the only true state of Salvation Whatsoever is short of him is prophaness whatsoever is above him is preciseness But when upon his death-bed he awaketh And Direct for Walk p. 131. The more forward he is in the narrow way the more furiously is he persecuted by the spite of tongues The most resolute for Gods glory and in good causes is ordinarily most railed against and reviled The foul spirit of good fellowship as they call it is still foaming out against Gods chiefest favourites the foulest censures that they are Hypocrites Humorists Factionists Traitors Pestilent fellows and all that 's naught There is no creature that ever God made not Satan himself excepted which is more maliciously set against and censured then good men Neither should any have so bad a name as they could the hellish mists of virulent tongues obscure and stain the glory of their reputation And p. 43. At this day professors of the gracious way be in greatest disgrace with the most and a drunkard and swaggering good fellow an Vsurer a son or daughter of Belial shall find more favour applause and approbation with the world then a man which makes conscience of his waies c. Page 350. They cry These forward Professors will all turn phantastical Familists Anabaptists Arrians any thing which cry awakes the eye of State jealousie and so by an unworthy consequent draws upon those who are true of heart even Gods best servants and the Kings best subjects discountenance suspicions if not molestations unnecessarily causelesly And p. 351 352. out of Austins Epist 137. he shews that it was so in his time They every way and infinitely labour that when some Professors of holiness have foully fallen indeed or be only so slandered the world would believe that they are all such Do you not think in his time the world did thus exult and exclaim or in the like manner upon Lots fall Here now you see Puritane Lot who could not endure the good fellowship of the Sodomites he is now himself seized on by incest They are all such I warrant you citing du Bartas translat by Silvester p. 412. Base busie stranger comest thou hither thus Controler-like to prate and preach to us No Puritan thou shalt not here do so c Thus you hear from a conformable Divine how men calling themselves Christians and being some of them Formally Religious do prove themselves self-deceiving Hypocrites by their unbridled tongues in reviling at those as Puritans and too precise that will not be self-deceiving Formalists as well as they I shall only add some of Bishop Halls characters of an Hypocrite that you may see what Formality is in the judgement of knowing men Page 169. Walking early up into the City he turns into the great Church and salutes one of the pillars on one knee worshipping that God which at home he cares nor for while his eye is fixed on some window or some passenger and his heart knows not whither his lips go He rises and looking about with admiration complains on our frozen charity commends the ancient with the superfluity of his usury he builds an Hospital and harbours them whom his extortion hath spoiled so while he makes many beggars he keeps some He turneth all gnats into Camels and cares not to undo the world for a circumstance Flesh on a Friday is more abomination to him then his neighbours bed He abhors more not to uncover at the name of Jesus then to swear by the name of God c. So Bishop Hall But perhaps you 'l say These persons whom you describe that will make a mock of godliness it self are not to be numbred with Hypocrites but with the openly prophane To which I answer 1. Even these profess themselves to be Christians and therefore are Hypocrites when they are not what they do profess 2. They perswade themselves that they are as truly godly as those that they reproach and do not think that it is godliness indeed for which they do reproach them But for engrossing the name or reputation of Godliness to themselves and for some differing manner or way of worship For this is one of the most notable cheats by which the devil undoes the empty Formal Hypocrite Finding that this man doth own Christianity in his Opinion but is void of the true Spirit and power and life of Christian Religion he raiseth some controversies between the serious Christian and the Hypocrite about some controvertible points of doctrine or about some modes or circumstances of Discipline and external worship and when they fall into two sides the Hypocrite thinks that it is but in these controversies that the difference lyes The question thinks he is not whether men should be regenerate godly and Religious But whether my way of Religion or the Puritans and Precisians be better And presently he hence concludes that indeed it is he that is the more truly Religious For saith he my judgement is sound and the Puritans is erroneous I am of the judgement of the Church which he is against The Reverend Prelates or Doctors are more of my side then on his I am for order and he is for confusion and unreverence and followeth the humours and fancies of his own brain And thus the Devil turneth his eye from the main difference and makes him believe that it is these controversies that are all that sets them at a distance But alas man thou overlookest the point that thy life and soul lyeth on Agree first in the serious hearty entertainment and practice of the substance of