speak to us by his servants the Prophets by his Son by his Apostles by sermons by spirituall books by thousands of homilies and arts of counsell and insinuation and we sit as unconcerned as the pillars of a Church and hear the sermons as the Athenians did a story or as we read a gazet and if ever it come to passe that we tremble as Felix did when we hear a sad story of death of righteousnesse and judgement to come then we put it off to another time or we forget it and think we had nothing to do but to give the good man a hearing and as Anacharsis said of the Greeks they used money for nothing but to cast account withall so our hearers make use of sermons and discourses Evangelical but to fill up void spaces of our time to help to tell an hour with or without tediousnesse The reason of this is a sad condemnation to such persons they have not yet entertained the Spirit of God they are in darknesse they were washed in water but never baptized with the Spirit for these things are spiritually discerned They would think the Preacher rude if he should say they are not Christians they are not within the Covenant of the Gospel but it is certain that the spirit of Manifestation is not yet upon them and that is the first effect of the Spirit whereby we can be called sons of God or relatives of Christ. If we do not apprehend and greedily suck in the precepts of this holy Discipline as aptly as Merchants do discourse of gain or Farmers of fair harvests we have nothing but the Name of Christians but we are no more such really then Mandrakes are men or spunges are living creatures 3. The Gospel is called Spirit because it consists of Spiritual Promises and Spiritual precepts and makes all men that embrace it truly to be Spiritual men and therefore S. Paul addes an Epithete beyond this calling it a quickening Spirit that is it puts life into our Spirits which the law could not The law bound us to punishment but did not help us to obedience because it gave not the promise of Eternal life to its Disciples The Spirit that is the Gospel onely does this and this alone is it which comforts afflicted mindes which puts activenesse into wearyed Spirits which inflames our cold desires and does 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 blows up sparks into live coles and coles up to flames and flames to perpetual burnings and it is impossible that any man who believes and considers the great the infinite the unspeakable the unimaginable the never ceasing joyes that are prepared for all the sons and daughters of the Gospel should not desire them and unlesse he be a fool he cannot but use means to obtain them effective hearty pursuances For it is not directly in the nature of a man to neglect so great a good there must be something in his manners some obliquity in his will or madnesse in his intellectuals or incapacity in his naturals that must make him sleep such a reward away or change it for the pleasure of a drunken feaver or the vanity of a Mistresse or the rage of a passion or the unreasonablenesse of any sin However this promise is the life of all our actions and the Spirit that first taught it is the life of our soules 4. But beyond this is the reason which is the consummation of all the faithful The Gospel is called the Spirit because by and in the Gospel God hath given to us not onely the Spirit of manifestation that is of instruction and of Catechisme of faith and confident assent but the Spirit of Confirmation or obsignation to all them that believe and obey the Gospel of Christ that is the power of God is come upon our hearts by which in an admirable manner we are made sure of a glorious inheritance made sure I say in the nature of the thing and our own persuasions also are confirmed with an excellent a comfortable a discerning and a reasonable hope in the strength of which and by whose ayde as we do not doubt of the performance of the promise so we vigorously pursue all the parts of the condition and are inabled to work all the work of God so as not to be affrighted with fear or seduced by vanity or oppressed by lust or drawn off by evil example or abused by riches or imprison'd by ambition and secular designes This the Spirit of God does work in all his Servants and is called the spirit of obsignation or the confirming spirit because it confirms our hope and assures our title to life eternall and by means of it and other its collateral assistances it also confirms us in our duty that we may not onely professe in word but live lives according to the Gospel And this is the sense of the Spirit mentionâ—d in the Text ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you That is if ye be made partakers of the Gospel or of the spirit of manifestation if ye be truly intitled to God and have received the promise of the Father then are ye not carnal men ye are spirituall ye are in the Spirit if ye have the Spirit in one sense to any purpose ye have it also in another if the Spirit be in you you are in it if it hath given you hope it hath also inabled and ascertainâ—d your duty For the Spirit of manifestation will but upbraid you in the shame and horrours of a sad eternity if you have not the Spirit of obsignation if the Holy Ghost be not come upon you to great purposes of holinesse all other pretences are vain ye are still in the flesh which shall never inherit the kingdom of God In the Spirit that is in the power of the spirit so the Greeks call him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 who is possessed by a spirit whom God hath filled with a coelestial immission he is said to be in God when God is in him and it is a similitude taken from persons encompassed with guards they are in custodiâ that is in their power under their command moved at their dispose they rest in their time and receive laws from their authority and admit visiters whom they appoint and must be employed as they shall suffer so are men who are in the Spirit that is they beleeve as he teaches they work as he inables they choose what he calls good they are friends of his friends and they hate with his hatred with this onely difference that persons in custody are forced to do what their keepers please and nothing is free but their wils but they that are under the command of the Spirit do all things which the Spirit commands but they do them cheerfully and their will is now the prisoner but it is in liberâ custodiâ the will is where it ought to be and where it desires to be and it cannot easily
that Christ prayes in Heaven for us and if we do not pray on earth in the same manner according to our measures we had as good hold our peace our prayers are an abominable sacrifice and send up to God no better a perfume then if wee burned assa faetida or the raw flesh of a murdered man upon the altar of incense 6. The spirit of Christ and of prayer helps our infirmities by giving us confidence and importunity I put them together For as our faith is and our trust in God so is our hope and so is our prayer weary or lasting long or short not in words but in works and in desires For the words of prayer are no part of the spirit of prayer words may be the body of it but the spirit of prayer alwayes consists in holinesse that is in holy desires and holy actions words are not properly capable of being holy all words are in themselves seâ—vants of things and the holinesse of a prayer is not at all concerned in the manner of its expression but in the spirit of it that is in the violence of its desires and the innocence of its ends and the continuence of its imployment this is the verification of that great Prophecie which Christ made that in all the world the true worshippers should worship in spirit and in truth that is with a pure minde with holy desires for spiritual things according to the minde of the spirit in imitation of Christs intercession with perseverance with charity or love That is the spirit of God and these are the spiritualities of the Gospel and the formalities of prayer as they are Christian and Evangelicall 7. Some men have thought of a seventh way and explicate our praying in the spirit by a mere volubilty of language which indeed is a direct undervaluing the spirit of God and of Christ the spirit of manifestation and intercession it is to return to the materiality and imperfection of the law it is to worship God in outward forms and to think that Gods service consists in shels and rinds in lips and voices in shadows and images of things it is to retire from Christ to Moses and at the best it is a going from real graces to imaginary gifts and when praying with the spirit hath in it so many excellencies and consists of so many parts of holinesse and sanctification and is an act of the inner man we shall be infinitely mistaken if we let go this substance and catch at a shadow and sit down and rest in the imagination of an improbable unnecessary uselesse gift of speaking to which the nature of many men and the art of all learned men and the very use and confidence of ignorant men is too abundantly sufficient Let us not so despise the spirit of Christ as to make it no other then the breath of our lungs * For though it might be possible that at the first and when formes of prayer were few and seldome the spirit of God might dictatethe very words to the Apostles and first Christians yet it follows not that therfore he does so still to all that pretend praying with the spirit For if he did not then at the first dictate words as we know not whether he did or no why shall he be supposâ—d to do so now If he did then it follows that he does not now because his doing it then was sufficient for all men since for so the formes taught by the spirit were paternes for others to imitate in all the descending ages of the Church There was once an occasion so great that the spirit of God did think it a work â—it for him to teach a man to weave silke or embroider gold or woke in brasse as it happened to Besaleel and Aholiab But then every weaver or worker in brasse may by the same reason pretend that he works by the spirit as that he prayes by the spirit if by prayer he means forming the words For although in the ease of working it was certain that the spirit did teach in the ease of inditing or forming the words it is not certain whether he did or no yet because in both it was extraordinary if it was at all and ever since in both it is infinitely needlesse to pretend the Spirit in forms of every mans making even though they be of contrary religions and pray one against the other it may serve an end of a phantastic and hypochondriacal religion or a secret ambition but not the ends of God or the honour of the Spirit The Jews in their declensions to folly and idolatry did worship the stone of imagination that is certain smooth images in which by art magic pictures and little faces were represented declaring hidden things and stoln goods and God severely forbad this basenesse but we also have taken up this folly and worship the stone of imagination we beget imperfect phantasmes and speculative images in our phansy and we fall down and worship them never considering that the spirit of God never appears through such spectres Prayer is one of the noblest exercises of Christian religion or rather is it that duty in which all graces are concentred Prayer is charity it is faith it is a conformity to Gods will a desiring according to the desires of Heaven an imitation of Christs intercession and prayer must suppose all holinesse or else it is nothing and therefore all that in which men need Gods Spirit all that is in order to prayer Baptisme is but a prayer and the holy Sacrament of the Lords Supper is but a prayer a prayer of sacrifice representative and a prayer of oblation and a prayer of intercession and a prayer of thanksgiving and obedience is a prayer and begs and procures blessings and if the Holy Ghost hath sanctified the whole man then he hath sanctified the prayer of the man and not till then and if ever there was or could be any other praying with the spirit it was such a one as a wicked man might have and therefore it cannot be a note of distinction between the good and bad between the saints and men of the world But this onely which I have described from the fountains of Scripture is that which a good man can have and therefore this is it in which we ought to rejoyce that he that glories may glory in the Lord. Thus I have as I could described the effluxes of the Holy Spirit upon us in his great chanels But the great effect of them is this That as by the arts of the spirits of darknesse and our own malice our souls are turned into flesh not in the naturall sense but in the morall and Theologicall and animalis homo is the same with carnalis that is his soul is a servant of the passions and desires of the flesh and is flesh in its operations and ends in its principles and actions So on the other side by the Grace of God and the promise of the
souls and swelling up to a treasure making us in this world rich by title and relation but it shall be produced in the great necessities of doomesday In the mean time if the fire be quenched the fire of Gods Spirit God will kindle another in his anger that shall never be quenched but if we entertain Gods Spirit with our own purities and imploy it diligently and serve it willingly for Gods Spirit is a loving Spirit then we shall really be turned into spirits Irenaeus had a proverbiall saying Perfecti sunt qui tria sine querelâ Deo exhibent They that present three things right to God they are perfect that is a chast body a righteous soul and a holy spirit and the event shall be this which Maimonides expressed not amisse though he did not at all understand the secret of this mystery The soul of a man in this life is in potentiâ ad esse spiritum it is designed to be a spirit but in the world to come it shall be actually as very a spirit as an Angel is and this state is expressed by the Apostle calling it the earnest of the spirit that is here it is begun and given us as an antepast of glory and a principle of Grace but then we shall have it in plenitudine regit idem spiritus artus Orbe alio Here and there it is the same but here we have the earnest there the riches and the inheritance But then if this be a new principle and be given us in order to the actions of a holy life we must take care that we receive not the Spirit of God in vain but remember it is a new life and as no man can pretend that a person is alive that doth not alwayes do the works of life so it is certain no man hath the Spirit of God but he that lives the life of grace and doth the works of the Spirit that is in all holinesse and justice and sobriety Spiritus qui accedit animo vel Dei est vel Daemonis said Tertullian Every man hath within him the Spirit of God or the spirit of the devil The spirit of fornication is an unclean devil and extremely contrary to the Spirit of God and so is the spirit of malice or uncharitablenesse for the Spirit of God is the Spirit of love for as purities Gods Spirit sanctifies the body so by love he purifies the soul and makes the soul grow into a spirit into a Divine nature But God knows that even in Christian societies we see the devils walk up and down every day and every hour the devil of uncleannesse and the devil of drunkennesse the devil of malice and the devil of rage the spirit of filthy speaking and the spirit of detraction a proud spirit and the spirit of rebellion and yet all call Christian. It is generally supposed that unclean spirits walk in the night and so it used to be for they that are drunk are drunk in the night said the Apostle but Suidas tels of certain Empusae that used to appear at Noon at such time as the Greeks did celebrate the Funerals of the Dead and at this day some of the Russians fear the Noon-day Devil which appeareth like a mourning widow to reapers of hay and corn and uses to break their arms and legs unlesse they worship her The Prophet David speaketh of both kindes Thou shalt not be afraid for the terrour by night and a ruinâ daemonio meridiano from the Devil at noon thou shalt be free It were happy if we were so but besides the solemn followers of the works of darknesse in the times and proper seasons of darknesse there are very many who act their Scenes of darknesse in the face of the Sun in open defiance of God and all lawes and all modesty There is in such men the spirit of impudence as well as of impiety And yet I might have expressed it higher for every habituall sin doth not onely put us into the power of the devil but turns us into his very nature just as the Holy Ghost transforms us into the image of God Here therefore I have a greater Argument to perswade you to holy living then Moses had to the sons of Israel Behold I have set before you life and death blessing and cursing so said Moses but I adde that I have upon the stock of this Scripture set before you the good Spirit and the bad God and the devil choose unto whose nature you will be likened and into whose inheritance you will be adopted and into whose possession you will enter If you commit sin ye are of your father the Devil ye are begot of his principles and follow his pattern and shall passe into his portion when ye are led captive by him at his will and remember what a sad thing it is to go into the portion of evil and accursed spirits the sad and eternall portion of Devils But he that hath the Spirit of God doth acknowledge God for his Father and his Lord he despises the world and hath no violent appetites for secular pleasures and is dead to the desires of this life and his hopes are spirituall and God is his joy and Christ is his pattern and his support and Religion is his imployment and godlinesse is his gain and this man understands the things of God and is ready to die for Christ and fears nothing but to sin against God and his will is filled with love and it springs out in obedience to God and in charity to his brother and of such a man we cannot make judgement by his fortune or by his acquaintance by his circumstances or by his adherencies for they are the appendages of a naturall man but the spirituall is judged of no man that is the rare excellencies that make him happy do not yet make him illustrious unlesse we will reckon Vertue to be a great fortune and holinesse to be great Wisedom and God to be the best Friend and Christ the best Relative and the Spirit the hugest advantage and Heaven the greatest Reward He that knows how to value these things may sit down and reckon the felicities of him that hath the Spirit of God The purpose of this Discourse is this That since the Spirit of God is a new nature and a new life put into us we are thereby taught and enabled to serve God by a constant course of holy living without the frequent returns and intervening of such actions which men are pleased to call sins of infirmity Whosoever hath the Spirit of God lives the life of grace The Spirit of God rules in him and is strong according to its age and abode and allows not of those often sins which we think unavoidable because we call them naturall infirmities But if Christ be in you the body is dead because of sin but the spirit is life because of righteousnesse The state of sin is a state of death the state of a man under
your danger with a sober spirit the fear of it would have half killed you If he had but told you how often God had sent out his Warrants to the exterminating Angel and our Blessed Saviour by his intercession hath obtained a reprieve that he might have the content of rejoycing at thy conversion and repentance If you had known from him the secrets of that providence which governs us in secret and how many thousand times the Devil would have done thee hurt and how often himself as a ministring spirit of Gods goodnesse and forbearance did interpose and abate or divert a mischief which was falling on thy head it must needs cover thy head with a cloud of shame and blushing at that ingratitude and that folly that neither will give God thanks nor secure thy own well being Hadst thou never any dangerous fall in thy intemperance then God shewed thee thy danger and that he was angry at thy sin but yet did so pity thy person that he would forbear thee a little longer else that fall had been into thy grave When thy gluttony gave thee a surfet and God gave thee a remedy his meaning then was that thy gluttony rather should be cured then thy surfet that repentance should have been thy remedy and abstinence and fasting should be thy cure Did ever thy proud or revengefull spirit engage the upon a Duell or a vexatious Law-suit and God brought thee off with life or peace his purpose then was that his mercy should teach thee charity and he that cannot read the purposes of God written with the finger of judgement for as yet his whole hand is not laid on either is consigned to eternall ruine because God will no more endeavour his cure or if his mercy still continues and goes on in long-suffering it shall be by such vexatious instruments such causticks and corrosives such tormenting and desperate medicaments such which in the very cure will soundly punish thy folly and ingratitude For deceive not your selves Gods mercy cannot be made a patron for any mans impiety the purpose of it is to bring us to repentance and God will do it by the mercies of his mercies or by the mercies of his judgements he will either break our hearts into a thousand fragments of contrition or break our bones in the ruines of the grave and hell And since God rejoyces in his mercy above all his works he will be most impatient that we shall despise that in which he most delights and in which we have the greatest reason to delight the riches of that goodnesse which is essentiall and part of his glory and is communicated to us to bring us to repentance that we may partake of that goodnesse and behold that glory Sermon XIII The mercies of the Divine Judgements Part II. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 long-suffering in this one word are contained all the treasures of the Divine goodnesse here is the length and extension of his mercy pertrahit spiritum super nos Dominus so the Syrian Interpreter reads Luk. 18. 7. God holds his breath He retains his anger within him lest it should come forth and blast us and here is also much of the Divine justice For although God suffers long yet he does not let us alone he forbears to destroy us but not to punish us and in both he by many accidents gives probation of his power according to the prayer of the Wise man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Thou art mercifull towards us all because thou canst do all things and thou passedst by the sins of men that they may repent And that God shall support our spirit and preserve our patience and nourish our hope and correct our stubbornnesse and mortifie our pride and bring us to him whether we will or no by such gracious violences and mercifull judgements which he uses towards us as his last remedies is not onely the demonstration of a mighty mercy but of an almighty power So hard a thing it is to make us leave our follies and become wise that were not the mercies of God an effective pity and clothed in all the way of its progresse with mightinesse and power every sinner should perish irrevocably But this is the fiery triall the last purgatory fire which God uses to burn the thistles and purifie the drosse When the gentle influence of a Sun-beam will not wither them nor the weeding hook of a short affliction cut them out then God comes with fire to burn us with the ax laid to the root of the tree but then observe that when we are under this state of cure we are so neer destruction that the same instrument that God uses for remedy to us is also prepared to destroy us the fire is as apt to burn us to ashes as to cleansing when we are so overgrown and the ax as instrumentall to cut us down for fewell as to square us for building in Gods temple and therefore when it comes thus far it will be hard discerning what the purpose of the ax is and whether the fire means to burn we shall know it by the change wrought upon our selves For what Plato said concerning his dream of Purgatory is true here Quicunque non purgatus migrat ad inferos jacebit in luto quicunque verò mitratus illuc accesserit habitabit cum Deis He that dies in his impurities shall lie in it for ever but he that descends to his grave purged and mitred that is having quitted his vices superinduens justitiam being clothed with righteousnesse shall dwell in light and immortality It is sad that we put God to such extremities and as it happens in long diseases those which Physitians use for the last remedies seldom prevail and when consumptive persons come to have their heads shaven they do not often escape So it is when we put God to his last remedies God indeed hath the glory of his patience and his long-suffering but we seldom have the benefit and the use of it For if when our sin was young and our strength more active and our habits lesse and vertue not so much a stranger to us we suffered sin to prevail upon us to grow stronger then the ruins of our spirit and to lesson us into the state of sicknesse and disability in the midst of all those remedies which God used to our beginning diseases much more desperate is our recovery when our disease is stronger and our faculties weaker when our sins raigne in us and our thoughts of vertue are not alive However although I say this and it is highly considerable to the purpose that we never suffered things to come to this extremity yet if it be upon us we must do as well as we can But then we are to look upon it as a designe of Gods last mercy beyond which if we protract our repentance our condition is desperately miserable The whole state of which mercy we understand by the parable of the King reckoning
over-lay thy infant-vertue or drown it with a flood of breast-milk Sermon XV. Of Growth in Grace Part II. 5. HE is well grown in or towards the state of grace who is more patient of a sharp reproof then of a secret flattery For a reprehension contains so much mortification to the pride and complacencies of a man is so great an affront to an easie and undisturbed person is so empty of pleasure and so full of profit that he must needs love vertue in a great degree who can take in that which onely serves her end and is displeasant to himself and all his gayeties A severe reprehender of anothers vice comes dressed like Jacob when he went to cozen his brother of the blessing his outside is rough and hairy but the voice is Jacobs voice rough hands and a healthfull language get the blessing even against the will of him that shall feel it but he that is patient and even not apt to excuse his fault that is lesse apt to anger or to scorn him that snatches him rudely from the flames of hell he is vertues Confessor and suffers these lesser stripes for that interest which will end in spirituall and eternall benedictions They who are furious against their monitors are incorrigible but it is one degree of meeknesse to suffer discipline and a meek man cannot easily be an ill man especially in the present instance he appears at least to have a healthfull constitution he hath good flesh to heal his spirit is capable of medicine and that man can never be despaired of who hath a disposition so neer his health as to improve all physick and whose nature is relieved by every good accident from without But that which I observe is That this is not onely a good disposition towards repentance and restitution but is a signe of growth in grace according as it becomes naturall easie and habituall Some men chide themselves for all their misdemeanours because they would be represented to the censures and opinions of other men with a fair Character and such as need not to be reproved others out of inconsideration sleep in their own dark rooms and untill the charity of a Guide or of a friend draws the curtain and lets in a beam of light dream on untill the graves open and hell devours them But if they be called upon by the grace of God let down with a sheet of counsels and friendly precepts they are presently inclined to be obedient to the heavenly monitions but unlesse they be dressed with circumstances of honour and civility with arts of entertainment and insinuation they are rejected utterly or received unwillingly Therefore although upon any termes to endure a sharp reproof be a good signe of amendment yet the growth of grace is not properly signified by every such sufferance For when this disposition begins amendment also begins and goes on in proportion to the increment of this To endure a reproof without adding a new sin is the first step to amendments that is to endure it without scorn or hatred or indignation 2. The next is to suffer reproof without excusing our selves For he that is apt to excuse himself is onely desirous in a civill manner to set the reproof aside and to represent the charitable monitour to be too hasty in his judgement and deceived in his information and the fault to dwell there not with himself 3. Then he that proceeds in this instance admits the reprovers sermon or discourse without a private regret he hath no secret murmurs or unwillingnesses to the humiliation but is onely ashamed that he should deserve it but for the reprehension it self that troubles him not but he looks on it as his own medicine and the others charity 4. But if to this he addes that he voluntary confesses his own fault and of his own accord vomits out the loads of his own intemperance and eases his spirit of the infection then it is certain he is not onely a professed and hearty enemy against sin but a zealous and a prudent and an active person against all its interest and never counts himself at ease but while he rests upon the banks of Sion or at the gates of the temple never pleased but in vertue and religion Then he knows the state of his soul and the state of his danger he reckons it no objection to be abased in the face of man so he may be gracious in the eyes of God And that 's a signe of a good grace and a holy wisdom That man is grown in the grace of God and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Justus in principio sermonis est accusator sui said the Wise man The righteous accuseth himself in the beginning that is quickly lest he be prevented And certain it is he cannot be either wise or good that had rather have a reall sin within him then that a good man should beleeve him to be a repenting sinner that had rather keep his crime then lose his reputation that is rather to be so then to be thought so rather be without the favour of God then of his neighbour Diogenes once spied a young man coming out of a Tavern or place of entertainment who perceiving himself observed by the Philosopher with some confusion stepped back again that he might if possible preserve his fame with that severe person But Diogenes told him Quanto magis intraveris tanto magis eris in cauponâ The more you go back the longer you are in the place where you are ashamed to be seen and he that conceals his sin still retains that which he counts his shame and his burden Hippocrates was noted for an ingenious person that he published and confessed his errour concerning the futures of the head and all ages since Saint Austin have called him pious for writing his book of retractations in which he published his former ignorances and mistakes and so set his shame off to the world invested with a garment of modesty and above half changed before they were seen I did the rather insist upon this particular because it is a consideration of huge concernment and yet much neglected in all its instances and degrees We neither confesse our shame nor endure it we are privately troubled and publikely excuse it we turn charity into bitternesse and our reproof into contumacy and scorne and who is there amongst us that can endure a personall charge or is not to be taught his personall duty by generall discoursings by parable and apologue by acts of insinuation and wary distances but by this state of persons we know the estate of our own spirits When God sent his Prophets to the people and they stoned them with stones and sawed them asunder and cast them into dungeons and made them beggers the people fell into the condition of Babylon Quam curavimus non est sanata We healed her said the Prophets But she would not be cured Derelinquamus eam that 's her
many particulars and yet if her children separate from her they may be unreasonable and impious 5. The wayes of direction which we have from holy Scripture to distinguish false Apostles from true are taken from their doctrine or their lives That of the doctrine is the most sure way if we can hit upon it but that also is the thing signified and needs to have other signes Saint John and Saint Paul took this way for they were able to do it infallibly All that confesse Jesus incarnate are of God said Saint John those men that deny it are hereticks avoid them and Saint Paul bids to observe them that cause divisions and offences against the doctrine delivered Them also avoid that do so And we might do so as easily as they if the world would onely take their depositum that doctrine which they delivered to all men that is the Creed and superinduce nothing else but suffer Christian faith to rest in its own perfect simplicity unmingled with arts and opinions and interests This course is plain and easie and I will not intricate it with more words but leave it directly in its own truth and certainty with this onely direction That when we are to choose our doctrine or our side we take that which is in the plain unexpounded words of Scripture for in that onely our religion can consist Secondly choose that which is most advantageous to a holy life to the proper graces of a Christian to humility to charity to forgivenesse and alms to obedience and complying with governments to the honour of God and the exaltation of his attributes and to the conservation and advantages of the publike societies of men and this last Saint Paul directs Let our be carefull to maintain good works for necessary uses for he that heartily pursues these proportions cannot be an ill man though he were accidentally and in the particular applications deceived 6. But because this is an act of wisdom rather then prudence and supposes science or knowledge rather then experience therefore it concerns the prudence of a Christian to observe the practise and the rules of practise their lives and pretences the designes and colours the arts of conduct and gaining proselytes which their Doctors and Catechists do use in order to their purposes and in their ministery about souls For although many signes are uncertain yet some are infallible and some are highly probable 7. Therefore those teachers that pretend to be guided by a private spirit are certainly false Doctors I remember what Simmias in Plutarch tels concerning Socrates that if he heard any man say he saw a divine vision he presently esteemed him vain and proud but if he pretended onely to have heard a voice or the word of God he listened to that religiously and would enquire of him with curiosity There was some reason in his fancy for God does not communicate himself by the eye to men but by the ear ye saw no figure but ye heard a voice said Moses to the people concerning God and therefore if any man pretends to speak the word of God we will enquire concerning it the man may the better be heard because he may be certainly reproved if he speaks amisse but if he pretends to visions and revelations to a private spirit and a mission extraordinary the man is proud and unlerned vicious and impudent No Scripture is of private interpretation saith S. Peter that is of private emission or declaration Gods words were delivered indeed by single men but such as were publikely designed Prophets remarked with a known character approved of by the high Priest and Sanhedrim indued with a publike spirit and his doctrines were alwayes agreeable to the other Scriptures But if any man pretends now to the spirit either it must be a private or publike if it be private it can but be usefull to himself alone and it may cozen him too if it be not assisted by the spirit of a publike man But if it be a publike spirit it must enter in at the publike door of ministeries and divine ordinances of Gods grace and mans endeavour it must be subject to the Prophets it is discernable and judicable by them and therefore may be rejected and then it must pretend no longer For he that will pretend to an extraordinary spirit and refuses to be tried by the ordinary wayes must either prophecy or work miracles or must have a voice from heaven to give him testimony The Prophets in the old Testament and the Apostles in the New and Christ between both had no other way of extraordinary probation and they that pretend to any thing extraordinary cannot ought not to be beleeved unlesse they have something more then their own word If I bear witnesse of my self my witnesse is not true said Truth it self our Blessed Lord. But secondly they that intend to teach by an extraordinary spirit if they pretend to teach according to Scripture must be examined by the measures of Scripture and then their extraordinary must be judged by the ordinary spirit and stands or falls by the rules of every good mans religion and publike government and then we are well enough But if they speak any thing against Scripture it is the spirit of Antichrist and the spirit of the Devil For if an Angel from heaven he certainly is a spirit preach any other doctrine let him be accursed But this pretence of a single and extraordinary spirit is nothing else but the spirit of pride errour and delusion a snare to catch easie and credulous souls which are willing to die for a gay word and a distorted face it is the parent of folly and giddy doctrine impossible to be proved and therefore uselesse to all purposes of religion reason or sober counsels it is like an invisible colour or musick without a sound it is and indeed is so intended to be a direct overthrow of order and government and publike ministeries It is bold to say any thing and resolved to prove nothing it imposes upon willing people after the same manner that Oracles and the lying Daemons did of old time abusing men not by proper efficacy of its own but because the men love to be abused it is a great disparagement to the sufficiency of Scripture and asperses the Divine providence for giving to so many ages of the Church an imperfect religion expressely against the truth of their words who said they had declared the whole truth of God and told all the will of God and it is an affront to the Spirit of God the Spirit of wisdom and knowledge of order and publike ministeries But the will furnishes out malice and the understanding sends out levity and they marry and produce a phantastick dream and the daughter sucking winde instead of the milk of the word growes up to madnesse and the spirit of reprobation Besides all this an extraordinary spirit is extremely unnecessary and God does not give immissions and miracles from heaven to