require strong Faith and many Prayers and much Time and great Watchfulness and invincible Resolution Imploy these heartily and though thou now and then mayst receive a foyl yet give not off so but rise again in the strength of God implore new aid and fortifie thy self with more considerations and deeper resolves and then renew the Combat upon the encouragement of Divine Assistance and Christ's Merits and Intercession and the promise that sin shall not have dominion over us Rom. 6. 14. Remember that this is the great work and the biggest difficulty if this be not overcome all our other labour hath been in vain and will be lost If this root remain it will still bear poysonous fruit which will be matter for Temptation and occasion of continual falling and we shall be in danger of being reconciled again to our old sins and to undo all and so our latter end will be worse than our beginning 2 Pet. 2. 20. Or at least though we stand at a stay and satisfie our selves with that yet though we are contented our condition is not safe If we will endeavour to any purpose of duty or security we must proceed still after our lesser conquests till the sins of Complexion are laid dead at our feet He that is born of God sinneth not and he cannot sin 1 Joh. 3. 9. Till we come to this we are but strugling in the Birth Such a perfection as is mortifying of vitious temper is I hope attainable and 't is no doubt that which Religion aims at and though it be a difficult height yet we must not sit down this side At least we must be always pressing on to this Mark if Providence cut off our days before we have arrived to it we may expect acceptance of the sincerity of our endeavours upon the account of the merits of our Saviour For he hath procured favour for those sincere Believers and Endeavourers whose Day is done before their work is compleated this I mean of subduing the darling sins of their particular Natures But then if we rest and please our selves with the little Victories and Attainments and let these our great Enemies quietly alone 't is an argument our endeavours are not sincere but much short of that striving which will procure an entrance into the strait Gate The next thing and 't is the last I shall mention which is implyed in striving is 4. To furnish our selves through Divine Grace with the Habits and Inclinations of Holiness and Vertue For Goodness to become a kind of Nature to the Soul is an height indeed but such a one as may be reacht the new Nature and New Creature Gal. 6. 15. are not meer names We have observ'd that some men are of a Natural Generosity Veracity and Sweetness and they cannot act contrary to these Native Vertues without a mighty Violence why now should not the New Nature be as powerful as the Old And why may not the Spirit of God working by an active Faith and Endeavour fix Habits and Inclinations on the Soul as prevalent as those No doubt it may and doth upon the Diviner Souls For whom to do a wicked or unworthy Action 't would be as violent and unnatural as for the meek and compassionate temper to butcher the innocent or for him that is naturally just to oppress and make a prey of the Fatherless and the Widow I say such a degree of perfection as this should be aim'd at Heb. 6. 1. and we should not slacken or intermit our endeavours till it be attain'd In order to it we are to use frequent meditation on the excellency and pleasure of Vertue and Religion and earnest Prayer for the Grace of God and diligent attendance upon the publick worship and pious Company and Converses For this great design these helps are requisite and if we exercise our selves in them as we ought they will fire our Souls with the love of God and Goodness and so at last all Christian Vertues will become as natural to us as sin was before And to one that is so prepared the Gate of Happiness will be open and of easie entrance the difficulties are overcome and from henceforth the way is pleasant and plain before him Prov. 3. 17. Thus I have shewn that the formidable difficulties may be overcome and How 't is a plain course I have directed that will not puzzle mens understandings with needless niceties nor distract their memories with multitudes Let us walk in this way and do it constantly with vigour and alacrity and there is no fear but in the Strength of God through the merits and mediation of his Son we shall overcome and at last enter I had now done with this general Head but that 't is necessary to note three things more 1. Those Instruments of our Happiness which we must use in striving viz. Faith Prayer and active Endeavour must all of them be imployed Not any one singly will do the great work nor can the others if any one be wanting If we believe and do not pray or pray and do not endeavour or endeavour without those the Difficulties will remain and 't will be impossible for us to enter 2. We must be diligent in our course If we do not exercise Faith vigorously and pray heartily and endeavour with our whole might the means will not succeed and 't is as good not at all as not to purpose The Difficulties will not be overcome by cold Faith or sleepy Prayers or remiss Endeavours A very intense degree of these is necessary 3. Our striving must be constant we must not begin and look back Heb. 10. 38. or run a while and stop in midd course 1 Cor. 9. 24. and content our selves with some attainments and think we have arrived Phil. 3. 14. If we do so we shall find our selves dangerously mistaken The Crown is at the end of the Warfare and the Prize at the end of the Race If we will succeed we must hold on The life of one that strives as he ought must be a continual motion forwards always proceeding always growing If we strive thus we cannot fail if any of these qualifications be wanting we cannot but miscarry And hence no doubt it is that many that seek to enter shall not be able and the presumed sons of the Kingdom are shut out Mat. 8. 12. They seek and are very desirous to be admitted They do some thing and strive but their striving is partial or careless or short by reason of which defects they do not overcome and shall not enter This is a dangerous Rock and perhaps there are as many undone by cold and half striving as by not striving at all He that hath done some thing presumes he is secure He goes the round of ordinary Duties but advanceth nothing in his way He overcometh none of the great Difficulties none of the Habits or depraved Inclinations He is contented with other things that make a more glorious shew though they signifie less
simplicity of Life and Faith and 't was most peoples business to chatter like Pyes rather than to live like Christians or like Men. If Religion had been computed by mens talk and dispute about it those later days of the declining World had been its best and this in its growth and ways of highest improvement when all things else were verging to their Set and Period But alas the Tongue was the most if not the only religious Member And many of the Pretenders like the Aegyptian Temples were fair without but Beasts and Serpents and Crocodiles within Or like the Bird of Paradise they had Wings to flye in the Clouds of Imagination but no Feet to walk on the Ground of a vertuous practice Yea some had found the way to swim to Heaven in the Current of their appetites and to reconcile Covetousness Rapine Cruelty and Spiritual Pride with the glorious names of the Elect the People of God the Church of Christ and the good Party Religion with Rebellion and Sacriledge with Saintship Men had learnt to be godly without goodness and Christians without Christianity They were lovers of God and yet haters of their Brother haters of open Prophaneness but not of spiritual wickedness Very godly though cruel and unjust True penitents though they returned to their sins as soon as they had complain'd and wept Their hearts were good though their actions were dishonest and they had the root of the matter in them though that root were a dry stump and had no branches They were regenerated but not reformed converted but not a jot the better Devout Worshippers but bad Neighbours Lovers of God but no haters of Covetousness Had power in Heaven but none over themselves They were Gods Servants though they obeyed their appetites and his children though no better than those that are of their Father the Devil Thus had men got the knack to be religious without religion and were in the way to be saved without salvation These were gross disorders whereby Religion was taken from its foundation of Vertue and Holy living and placed in emotions raptures and swelling words of vanity And when these had kindled the imagination and raised the fansie to the Clouds to flutter there in mystical non-sense and when that was mounted on the Wings of the Wind and got into the Revelations to loosen the seals pour out the vials and phantastically to interpret the fates of Kingdoms when it flew into the Tongue in an extravagant ramble and abused the Name and Word of God mingling it with canting unintelligible babble I say when the diseased and disturbed phansie thus variously displayed it self many made themselves believe that they were acted by the Spirit and that those wild agitations of sick Imaginations were divine motions And when this fire was descended from the fansie to the affections and these being exceedingly moved by those vain and proud conceits caused tremblings and foamings convulsions and ecstasies in the body all which are but natural diseases if not worse and just like those odd ecstatical motions of the Devils Priests when they came foaming from his Altars these I say the wild phantasticks had learnt to ascribe to the blessed and adorable Spirit And when their phansies being full of turgid notions and their bodies in an ecstasie they dream'd of strange sights voices and wonderful discoveries which were nothing but the unquiet agitations of their own disordered brains These also were taken for divine Revelations and the effects of the Spirit of God shewing it self miraculously in them Briefly and in sum Every humour and phantastick unaccountable motion was by some represented as the work of that Spirit to which they are most opposite Thus when warm and brisk sanguine presented a cheerful Scene and filled the imagination with pleasant Dreams these were divine Illapses the Joys and Incomes of the Holy Ghost When heated Melancholy had kindled the busie and active phansie the Enthusiast talks of Illuminations New Lights Revelations and many wonderful fine things which were ascribed to the same Spirit and when Phlegm prevailed and had quencht the phantastick Fire rendring the Mad man more dull and unactive then the Spirit was withdrawn and the man under spiritual darkness and desertion And when again Choler was boyled up into rage and fury against every thing that was not of the Fanatique genius this also was presumed to be an Holy Fervour kindled by that Spirit whose real Fruits are gentleness and love And now after that which I have said on this occasion it may perhaps be necessary to add that I hope none here will be so uncharitable or so unjust as to think that I go about to disparage the Spirit of God and its influence which as I ought I adore and reverence and because I do so I think it fit to represent and shame the blasphemous abuses of it which would expose the most Divine things to scorn and make them ridiculous And that the Holy Spirit hath been thus traduced and injured and is still by great numbers among us 't would be shameful not to acknowledge And I add that my zeal and reverence for the realities make me thus justly sharp against the Counterfeits Nor do I think that folly and phantastry is to be spared because they wear the stollen Livery of things venerable and sacred Therefore to go on such a Religion had the corruption of it bred among us A Religion conceived in the Imagination and begot by Pride and Self-Love which gilded the Professors of it with all the glorious names and priviledges of the Gospel And when they had encircled their Heads with their own phantastick rays and swoln their Imaginations into a Tympany of ridiculous greatness they scornfully contemned all but their Darling-selves under the notion of the Formal the Moral and the Wicked and proudly pitied the poor and carnal World that is all that were not of their conceited pitch and elevation And having thus dignified themselves and debased others they herded together drew the Church into their little Corners and withdrew from the communion of others who had less conceit though more Christianity They bid us stand off lest we should have polluted them by our unhallowed approaches and having made us as the Heathen and the Publican they cried Come out from among them The true Church soundness of Judgement purity of Doctrine and of Worship if men would believe them was confined to their clans just as they wee to the Corners of Africa of old when their Friends the Donatists were there Thus did the Votaries of each Sect swell in their Imaginations till some other sort as well conceited as themselves endeavoured to take their Plumes from them and to appropriate those glorious prerogatives to their own party And this went for the power of Godliness and the spirituality of Religion under pretence of which all reverence to things sacred was destroyed For when this Spirit had got into the Pulpit and set up the Cry of
that Spirit to which they are most opposite Thus when warm and brisk Sanguine presents a chearful Scene and fills the imagination with pleasant dreams these are taken for divine illapses for the joys and incomes of the Holy Ghost When heated Melancholly hath kindled the busie and active fancy the Enthusiast then talks of Illuminations New Lights Revelations and many wonderful fine things which are ascribed to the same Spirit But when Flegm predominates and quencheth the Fantastick Fire rendering the mad man more dull lumpish and unactive then the Spirit is withdrawn and the man under spiritual darkness and desertion And when again choler is boiled up into rage and fury against every thing that is not of the Fantastick cut and measure this also is presumed to be an holy fervour kindled by that Spirit whose real fruits are Gentleness and Love Thus then doth the Devil devise to disgrace the Spirit of God and its influence by those numerous vile and vain pretensions which he thinks a likely means to extirpate the belief of the agency of the Spirit and to render it ridiculous But again 4. Satan deviseth against Gods own glory by designing against his worship Which he doth by endeavouring to destroy its reverence under pretence of Spirituality God requires to be glorified in body and in soul which are his and Satan sets the worship of one against the other that he may destroy both Thus when under the Law Religion required the Pomp and Solemnity of external Rites and Usages the subtle designer drives it on in that method so far that at last the Spirit of Religion was lost in the ceremony and the life and substance in the circumstance But when Christianity came into the world to abolish that ceremonial oeconomy in order to the establishing a more spiritual frame of Worship then doth Satan turn with the Tyde and puts on the semblance of a Zealot for Spirituality which he prosecutes so far till at last in the Gnosticks and other aiery Hereticks he had run Religion out into meer empty Fantastick Notionality In like manner where in these latter ages the world hath been disabused and hath detected the vanity of the formal outside Religion of Rome There doth the designer fall in with the Current sets up for a Reformer and mightily contends for the Spirituality of Worship He gets into the Pulpit and there with hot and sweating zeal he crys up the purity the purity of Religion and never leaves canting on the subject till he hath fired mens tongues against every matter of decency and order as formal and Antichristian And when he is shut out of those high places he creeps into corners and inflames the Spirits of the zealous and the ignorant against all harmless circumstances of Reverence and Decorum And so far hath he prevailed in this device as to drive those of warm affections and weak heads from all due external Reverence to God and things Sacred For these well-meaning people being frighted by the terrible noise of Popery Antichristianism Superstition things they have learnt to hate but not to understand boggle and fly off from every thing their furious Guides have marked with this abhorred Character And thus a rude and slovenly kind of Religion hath made its way into the world and such a sordid carlesness in matters of divine worship that should a stranger come into the assemblies that are acted by this Spirit He could not by their carriage imagine what they were a doing and that they were about holy Offices would perhaps be one of the last things he could conjecture Thus bold and sawcy talk hath crept into mens prayers under the pretence of holy familiarity with God nauseous impertinent bawling under the cover of praying by the Spirit and all kind of irreverences in external demeanour under the shelter of a pretended Spiritual worship And thus the design of Satan is successfully carried on in the world which is to subtilize Religion till he hath destroyed it To make it invisible that he may make it nothing And this is another way whereby be betrays those who are Ignorant of his Devices And thus I have dispatcht the first General viz. Satans Devices against Gods glory From which I descend to the second viz. Satans devices against the Peace of the Church which while it stands in its main and united body is like a mighty mountain unconcern'd in the tumults in the air while the blustering winds and tempests assault but cannot prejudice or disorder it And therefore the Designer endeavours to divide what he cannot deal with in its knit and combined strength He strives to crumble it into Sects and Atoms that this mountain may become an heap of Sands which he may blow up and down and scatter with his winds and so at last become a plain before him For which Design he hath two main instruments and Devices viz. 1. Pharisaical Pride under the cover of Religious strictness And 2. Intemperate Heat under the notion of Holy and Divine Zeal These are the chief Engines for the dividing purposes 1. Then he hatches and fosters a Spirit of Pride and Sectarian Insolence a sure and fatal Divider under the specious pretence of Religious strictness For where he perceives he cannot succeed in his designs of debauching the world and propagating open prophaneness and Impiety He shifts his shape puts on the cloathing of light and wraps himself in a Cloak spun of strict and severe pretensions and in this habit puts himself among the proud and conceited Professors These he and their own vanity gild and adorn with all the glorious names and priviledges of the Gospel and when they have incircled their heads with their own Fantastick Rays and are swoln in their imaginations with a tympany of ridiculous greatness They then proudly contemn all but their darling selves under the notion of the formal the moral and the wicked and scornfully pity the poor and carnal world that is all that are not arrived to their conceited pitch and elevation and now having thus dignified themselves and debased others they herd together draw the Church into their little corners and proudly withdraw from the Communion of others who have less conceit though more Christianity They bid us stand off lest we pollute them with our unhallowed approaches and having made us as the Heathen and Publican they cry Come out from among them The true Church Soundness of Judgement Purity of Doctrine and of worship if we will believe them is confined to their Gange just as it was to the corners of Africa of old when their friends the Gnosticks were there Thus they swell and swagger in their fantastick imaginations till some other Sect as well conceited as themselves endeavour to take their Plumes from them and to appropriate these glorious Prerogatives unto their own party and then they bustle and contend Here 's the Church crys one nay but 't is here crys another till a third gives the lye to them
place seems to cross all that hath been said about the Difficulties of Religion And 't is true it hath such an appearance but 't is no more For the words look as cross to the expressions of the same Divine Author concerning the straitness of the Gate and narrowness of the Way as to any thing I have delivered from those infallible sayings Therefore to remove the semblance of contrariety which the objected Text seems to have to those others and to my Discourse we may observe That when our Saviour saith that his yoke is easie the word we read is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifieth very good excellent gracious and the meaning I suppose is That his Precepts had a native beauty and goodness in them That they are congruous and sutable to our reasonable Natures and apt instruments to make us happy In which sense this expression hath no antipathy to the Text or to any thing I have said And whereas 't is added My Burden is light I think by this we are to understand That his Commands are not of that burdensome nature that the Ceremonies of the Jewish Laws were Those were very cumbersome and had nothing in their nature to make them pleasant and agreeable whereas his Religion had no expensive troublesome Rites appendant to it nor did it require any thing but our observation of those Laws which eternal Reason obligeth us to and which of our selves we should choose to live under were we freed from the intanglements of the World and interests of Flesh So that neither doth this Objection signifie any thing against the scope of my Discourse ANd now I come to Apply what I have said and the things I have to add will be comprehended under these two Generals 1. Inferences and 2. plain Advice in order to practice I begin with the Inferences and Corollaries that arise from the whole Discourse And 1. We may collect What is the state of Nature and What the state of Grace We have seen that 't is the great business of Religion to overcome evil Inclinations and the prevailing influence of sense and passion and evil customs and example and worldly affections And therefore the state of Nature consists in the power and prevalency of These This is that the Scripture calls the Old man Eph. 4. 22. The Image of the earthy 1 Cor. 15. Flesh Gal. 5. 17. Death Rom. 7. 24. Darkness Joh. 3. 19. and old leven 1 Cor. 5. 7. On the contrary The state of Grace is a state of sincere striving against them which if it keeps on ends in Victory And this is call'd Conversion Acts 3. 19. and Renovation while 't is in its first motions And the Divine Nature 2 Pet. 1. 4. the Image of the Heavenly 1 Cor. 15. 20. The Spirit Gal. 5. 16. Light Ephes 5. 8. and Life 1 Joh. 3. 14. when 't is arriv'd to more compleatness and perfection For our fuller understanding this we may consider That Grace is taken 1. for Divine favour 2. for Christian Vertue As it signifies Divine favour so it is used 1. For those helps and aids God affords us viz. the Gospel Joh. 1. 17. and the influences of his Spirit 1 Cor. 12. 9. In this sense we are deliver'd from the state of Nature by Baptism viz. We are intitled to divine helps which is a kind of regeneration for we are born in a condition of impotence and weakness and destitution of spiritual assistances This is the world of meer nature But then in Baptism we are brought into the world of the Spirit that is are put under its influences and are assured of its aids and so are morally born again Not that this Regeneration alone will save us without our endeavours it imports only an external relation and right to priviledges and by these we may be powerfully assisted in our striving if we use them But then 2. Grace as it signifies divine favour implies his special love and kindness such as he vouchsafes to holy and vertuous men so that we may observe that there may be a distinction between a state of Grace and a state of salvation A state of Grace in the former sense is a condition assisted by the influences of Gods Spirit and all baptized persons are in that But if they use not those helps they are not in Gods special favour and so not in a state of Salvation But when those assistances are duly imployed and join'd with our sincere endeavour then the person so using them is in a state of Salvation also and in God's special love and favour Thus of the state of Grace in the first sense as taken for divine favour 2. The word is also used for Christian Vertue 2 Pet. 3. 18. and Vertue is call'd Grace because 't is wrought in us by the assistance of Gods Spirit and the light of the Gospel which are divine favours and to be in a state of grace in this sense is to be a virtuous man which supposeth divine aids and intitles to divine love These things I have taken an occasion thus briefly to state because there is oft-times much confusion in means discourses about Grace and Nature from which much trouble and many controversies have arisen And by what I have said also in these brief hints the doctrine of our Church in the office of Baptism may be understood clearly and will appear to be very sound and true notwithstanding the petty exceptions of confident Dissenters II. I may infer That the great Design of Religion and the Gospel is to perfect humane nature The perfection of our natures consists in the subjection and subordination of the affections and passions to the Mind as it is enlightned and directed by the divine Laws and those of Reason This is the state of integrity in which we were first made and we lost it by the rebellion of our senses and inferiour powers which have usurpt the government of us ever since Here is the imperfection and corruption of our natures Now Religion designs to remove and cure these and to restore us to our first and happy state It s business is not to reform our looks and our language or to model our actions and gestures into a devout appearance not only to restrain the practice of open prophaneness and villany nor to comfort us with the assurance of Gods loving us we know not why But to cure our ill natures to govern our passions to moderate our desires to throw out pride and envy and all uncharitable surmisals with the other spiritual sorts of wickedness and thereby to make us like unto God in whom there is no shadow of sin or imperfection and so to render us fit objects of his delight and love So that whatever doth not tend to the making us some way or other really better better in our selves and better in all Relations as fathers and children and husbands and wives and subjects and governours and neighbours and friends is not Religion It may
the Purity and Spirituality of Worship it never left canting on the Subject till mens Tongues and Minds were fired against every matter of decency and order as formal and Antichristian And so far had it prevailed as to drive those of warm affections and weak heads from all external Reverence to God and Holy things And the well meaning people being frighted with the terrible noise of Popery Superstition and Antichristianism words they had learnt to hate though not to understand boggled and flew off from every thing their furious Guides had marked with these abhorred Characters though it were never so innocent and becoming And thus a rude and slovenly Religion had made its way into the World and such a sordid carelessness in matters of divine Worship that should a Stranger have come into the Assemblies that were acted by this Spirit he would not have imagined what they had been doing and that they were about Holy Offices would perhaps have been one of the last things in his Conjecture Thus bold and sawcy talk had crept into mens Prayers under pretence of Holy Familiarity with God nauseous impertinent Gibberish under the notion of Praying by the Spirit and all kind of irreverences in external demeanour under the shelter of a pretended spiritual Worship Men had subtilized Religion till they had destroyed it made it first invisible and then Nothing AND now it being thus multiplied corrupted and debaucht being made the Game of the Tongue and the Frolick of Imagination phantastick in its principles sordid in its practices separated from the foundation of a vertuous life and made to serve the ends of Pride and Avarice what was like to follow according to the nature and order of things but Atheism and contempt of all Religion And when one says here 's Religion and another says there 's Religion a third will scornfully ask where 's Religion and what 's Religion When the Heathen Deities were so multiplied that every thing was made a God Protagoras Diagoras and others first began to question and next to affirm that there was NONE Religions have been multiplied in our days as much as Gods in theirs and we have seen much of the same fatal event and issue They made their Gods contemptible and vile by deifying things that were so and we had no less detracted from the credit of Religion by bringing it down to things of the lowest and vilest rank and nature Our Idolized Opinions were no better than their Garlick and Onyons The diseases of the Mind Phrensie and Enthusiasm which our days have worshipped were no better than those of the Body which they adored And they never raised Altars to worse Vices than REBELLION FRAUD and VIOLENCE which our Age hath hallowed and made sacred So that notwithstanding all the glorious pretensions of those Times Religion was among many taken off all its Foundations and the World prepared for Atheism The Follies and Divisions of one Age make way for Atheism in the next Thus also briefly of the Condition of our RELIGION AND thus I have shewn how much RESISTANCE of the Authority that is over us is against our DUTY and our INTEREST The former God hath plainly told us and the latter we have sadly felt It remains that we humble our selves under the sense of the publick guilt as well as complain of the consequent miseries That we may not draw down new judgements by repeating old provocations and adding our particular sins to the common score And I think we shall do well to consider what we who abhor Rebellion have contributed to the fatal evils that followed it We can perhaps be well enough content that the visible actors of those mischiefs should be lasht and exposed and it may be are well pleased and tickled with our reprehensions in which we think our selves not concerned But if we will be just if we will have this Fast to signifie we must turn our reproofs upon our selves also and with grief and shame acknowledge that our sins and Debauches our contempt of God and scorn of Religion have helpt towards the plucking down that sad judgement upon the Nation which we lament this Day And it must be confest that there were those that fought against the KING who yet spent their blood in his service and many by their vices endeavoured to engage Heaven against that Cause which themselves strove in another way to less purpose to promote And therefore we ought not to think that this Fast is appointed to inveigh against the faults of others and to make them and their actions odious but to humble our selves under the apprehension of our own and to teach us to shew our love to the King and readiness to obey him by subjecting our selves first unto God whose Vice-gerent HE is And we may be assured that they that are not Loyal to the UNIVERSAL LORD of all the World can scarce possibly be so to their particular SOVEREIGN And 't will need a great deal of Charity to help us to believe that those who make no scruple to blaspheme the Name of God and to break the plainest most earnest and most express of his Laws will be withheld by considerations of Duty or Conscience from rebelling against their King or affronting His when there is any powerful interest to oblige them to it If therefore we would give any evidence of a serious humiliation at present or any security of a future loyalty let us do so by confessing our particular sins and forsaking them and then there will be hope that the Authority of God may oblige us quietly and peaceably to submit to his MINISTER and in doing so we shall be blest with his influence and deserve his protection And thus demeaning our selves like Professors of the Gospel of Peace and Subjects of the Prince of Peace the Peace He left with his Disciples will be with us here and everlasting Peace will encircle our heads with rays of glory in the Kingdom of Peace And so the Peace of God which passeth all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus To whom with God the Father and God the Holy Ghost be ascribed all Glory Honour and adoration henceforth and for ever Amen and Amen SERMON IV. THE SIN and DANGER OF SCOFFING AT RELIGION The Second Edition SERMON IV. AGAINST SCOFFING AT RELIGION 2 PET. III. 3. There shall come in the last days Scoffers walking after their own Lusts IT is a question that hath much exercised the wits of the Curious whether there be any decay in nature or whether all things are not still as they were from the beginning in all their kinds and in all the degrees of their vigour and perfection I shall not undertake to determine ought in this Theory Be the matter how it will as to the natural world we have cause to believe that there are degeneracies in the moral This our Saviour supposeth in the Question Luke 18. 8. When the Son of man cometh shall he find
any thing of it that is not rapt up into the ecstasie of admiring it Who would think now that such a Spirit as this that so highly pretends to exalt Grace should really disparage it and undermine it Who would think that the enemy of Gods Grace blew in this humour upon the world and kinled this mighty zeal that seems so gloriously to illustrate and recommend it And yet we may see reason to believe so when we shall consider that this Free Grace that is so magnificently talkt of is infinitely unworthy God and prejudicial to his Glory both in the notion of Free and in the notion of Grace For a thus admired thus celebrated freeness is but an humoursome doating on a party which self-admirers are pleas'd to call the Elect that is those of their own fashion and likeness They first fansie themselves the favourites and special darlings of Heaven not from any reason they have to think so from the goodness of their lives but the strength of their imaginations which furnish them with strong and proud presumptions and then they admire and well they may the freeness of that grace which chooseth them to be the darlings and peculiar people with as little reason as they can conceit themselves to be so And thus the freeness they commend in God is that we call childish and unreasonable fondness in our selves which is infinitely unbecoming him who is a lover of Righteousness and no respecter of persons who acts by the eternal Laws of Right and Good and not by the feminine measures of impotent humour and indulgence and the freeness of whose Grace consists not in loving or favouring us without reason but for reasons drawn from the benignity and perfection of his own nature which communicates without external motive or constraint without bounds or possibility of impediment And thus we see how a corrupt and abusive notion of the freedom of Gods grace hath been insinuated by this device to the prejudice of his Glory And as free grace has been misrepresented in the notion of Free so also hath it been corruptly taught in the notion of Grace which some have represented as a violence the divine power offers unto our wills at least superinducing a foreign quality upon us to which we contribute nothing which makes us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Heathen expresses it Good and happy by a certain fate So that good men are but a better sort of Engines By which notion of grace God is supposed to contradict the laws himself hath establisht in the Universe which have provided that every thing act consonantly to the rules of their own natures Besides which such an irresistible impulse as this defeats the doctrine of Rewards and Punishments For who is rewarded for actions that are prefectly anothers or who is punish'd for what he could not help And if grace be such a force as makes men good irresistibly and this Grace bestow'd only on one here and another there meerly as arbitrary Will shall dispose it the greatest part of men for ought I see will have fair apology for their sins at least for their neglects since they wanted that which was necessary to make them better and God alone could have given them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was the Apology of the Heathen and might be all mens else upon this supposal And to this I add that such a notion of Gods grace lays a foundation for sloth and remission of all endeavour For whoever believes that the grace of God where it comes is like a mighty current that bears down all before it irresistibly forceth our wills to a compliance and makes such sudden and miraculous changes upon our natures I say whoever believes this and thinks also that this grace is necessary to make him good and happy and that nothing he can do can obtain it or draw it near him what can we expect but that such a man should neglect all care and diligence in order to the making himself better in expectation of this necessary irresistible Grace without which his endeavours are at the best impertinent and who is so ridiculous to digg for the wind to fill his Sails or to endeavour to set to Sea without it We see then how the fulness and glory of the divine grace have been undermined by plausible and dangerous conceits that have crept into the world under the notion of free grace dishonourable to God and injurious to the interest of mens Souls And this is the second device I proposed to detect Thirdly then another design Satan manageth against Gods glory is to disparage and vilifie his Spirit which he doth by ascribing to it the foolish and sometimes wicked impulses the fond and extravagant conceits of the sons of imagination For as of old when he perceived he could not overcome the belief and acknowledgement of a Deity He multiplied Gods and Deified things of the meanest and vilest rank and nature even stocks and stones vices and diseases in like manner perceiving now that he cannot hinder the influence of the Spirit of God from being acknowledg'd in the world He crys up every folly and hot imagination for the work of the Spirit He entitles it to boyling passion under the name of zeal and to the diseases of mens fancies melancholy and phrensie under the name of the Spirits motions Thus when kindled melancholly hath inflamed the imagination with hot and scalding conceits and the fired Fancy gets into the Revelations opens the Seals pours out the Viols and fantastically interprets the Fates of Kingdoms when 't is mounted on the Wings of the Wind flys into the Clouds and flutters there in Mystical non-sense when it flows into the tongue in an extravagant ramble and abuseth the name and word of God mingling it with canting unintelligible babble I say when the diseased and the disturbed Fancy thus variously displays it self Satan makes men believe they are acted by the Spirit and that those wild agitations of sick imagination are divine motions And when this fire is descended from the fancy to the affections and these being extreamly moved by those vain and proud conceits cause tremblings and foamings convulsions and ecstasies in the body all which are but natural diseases if not worse and just such as were those odd ecstatical motions of the Devils Priests when they came foaming from his Altars These I say the same wicked Designer hath taught these wild Phantasticks blasphemously to ascribe to the blessed and adorable Spirit And when their fancies being full of turgid notions and their bodies in an ecstasie they dream of strange sights voices and wonderful discoveries which are nothing but the unquiet agitations of their disorder'd brains These also Satan perswades them to be divine Revelations and effects of the Spirit of God shewing it self miraculously in them Briefly then and in summ Every humour and Fantastick unaccountable motion hath by this device been represented as the work of
justifying implys more viz. an entire obedience to the Gospel Such a Faith as this is that which St. James writes so earnestly against as dead and unsignifying of it self alone to the purpose of Justification and acceptance with God Again the imputed Righteousness of Christ is a great truth rightly understood but by divers Sectaries 't is abused to this false notion that all Righteousness that Christ wrought is formally and properly ours as if we had done it So that we may be holy and vertuous by his holiness though we have none of our own contrary to that of St. John Little Children let no man deceive you he that doth righteousness is righteous even as he is righteous 1 Joh. 3. 7. But these fancy they are righteous without doing Righteousness if they can lay hold on Christ roll upon him as they phrase it and firmly believe that he is theirs they are then compleatly righteous by the imputation of his though they have none of their own which Solifidian Antinomian Notions that are lately spread among the Sects place Religion in the fancy as the Popish Doctrines do in some external services and as effectually as theirs take away the necessity of real reformation and true goodness I might add a great deal more under this head as their Doctrines of Infirmities by which they excuse themselves in their Spiritual sins their decrying morality as a dull low graceless thing the immoral practices of Schism Disobedience c. that they indulge and defend themselves in These are impurities that are contrary to that Faith which was once deliver'd to the Saints But now the Church of England teacheth all the duties we owe to God our Neighbour and our selves in the just latitude and extent of them It hath no shifts or evasions of Repentance and Reformation It allows no hopes of Salvation but upon those terms It teacheth no practice that is impious or immoral nor indulgeth any whoever is an evil man in this Church knows he is so by his own Principles he is condemn'd and hath no hopes of Salvation but what are grounded on effectual Repentance and Reformation 3. The Faith deliver'd to the Saints is peaceable Those Saints were so Sheep Lambs Doves Such was their Lord the Prince of Peace and his Religion the wisdome from above pure and peaceable By this Character also Popery is confuted which tends to the destruction both of Ecclesiastical and civil peace The former the peace of the Church they pretend to have best provided for by the Supremacy and Infallibility they have erected in theirs And by these all Controversies in Religion are they tell us quickly ended But the misery on 't is that that which should end the Controversies is it self one and the greatest They have an effectual Engine for Union but they themselves are not agreed where it is and they are incurably divided about this their ground of uniting For some place the Supremacy and Infallibility in the Pope some in the Council some in both and this hath not been only the opposition of petty Doctors and Disputers but Church is against Church The French and the German for one and the Spaniard and the Italian for another Yea Pope hath decreed against Pope in this matter and Pope and General Council against Pope and General Council Lo here is the Catholick Union the certain and infallible way of ending Controversies in Religion A way they have but they cannot find it Yea they are together by the ears about that Infallible way of ending all strife And notwithstanding this rare receipt that is in their hands the disease the great differences and disputes of their several disorders remains still uncured And indeed that Church hath laid a foundation for everlasting differences and disagreements by bringing numerary speculative and doubtful Tenents into their Creeds an Engine for endless divisions There is no possible uniting but upon the few main certain Articles contain'd in the Primitive Creeds Additions to these are the chief grounds of the Divisions of Christendome So that the Roman Church provides not for Ecclesiastical Peace but destroys it by its disputable Articles of Faith and further so by its other intollerable terms of Communion the various Idolatries and Superstitions it imposeth by which they drive the best and most intelligent Christians from them And so are themselves the Schismaticks They make the breaches in the Church they complain of And for civil peace 't is clear in all Histories that the Popes and their Agents and Emissaries especially the Jesuites have been the great embroylers and Incendiaries of Christendome The combustions and troubles of every nation in it can sadly witness this The fore-mention'd Doctrines of Deposing Kings and absolving the people from their Allegiance are principles of everlasting Rebellions and disturbance But let us look on the other side How is it with the Sects in respect of peaceableness why they may say unto strife Thou art our Mother and to Feuds and Animosities you have brought us into the world Unpeaceabless of principles and temper breed and maintain them They are broken from the Church and divided each from other and amongst themselves subdivided minc't almost into Atoms There is nothing but endless divisions animosities jarrings disputes among them The ways of peace they have not known they will not know They have causlesly separated from the Communion of the Church of England and for the same reasons must have left the Fellowship of the Saints mention'd in the Text and of all the Christians of the Primitive times to whom both in doctrine and many practices they are most unlike And upon the same principles new Sects grow out of them that divided first and more evils spring from those others from time to time to the worlds end I deny not but that there are diverse misled abused persons of peaceable and quiet Spirits drawn in among them and we are to pray and to endeavour that such may be regain'd and if the Government should think fit to abate some lesser things in consideration of such to satisfie and recover them it would be charity and kindness that I know not who would dislike But those that are of the right Sectarian stamp and temper will never rest or settle any where nor be satisfied with any concession God Almighty may change their hearts and minds by his power but nothing less can and all that we can do is to pray to him for them Nothing less than their whole wills and an entire subjection to their fancies will content them and if those were granted we could not be assured they would please them long nothing useth to do so They are Clouds carried about with winds Jude v. 12. Let the wind be where it will to day no one can say from what point it will blow to morrow They are acted by a private Spirit that is as little certain The opinions it suggests are numerous and all accounted divine and sacred Gods truth Gospel