and meaning another but a present profession of love to God and Religion without a cordial renouncing of every thing that is contrary to him and it or a great heat and forwardness to some things that God commands which are easie and more suitable to a mans gust and humor with a coldness to other things that are more difficult and contrary to his nature and interest There is an extraordinary measure of Zeal for some matters required to its constitution else they in whom it is would not be so confident as they are that they are good Christians but then this zeal is not equally destributed through the whole man and doth not animate and quicken him to all his duty and that is it which makes it to be Hypocrisie and not true Religion As for example if a man have this partial zeal in hearing of Gods word and diligent attending upon Sermons this may make him take himself for a Saint whereas his frozenness to meditation and secret converse with God and diligent examination of all his actions renders him a meer hypocrite So if he be partially zealous for the purging of himself from superstitious conceits and Popish tenents but yet remain a Mammonist a Lucifer a murtherer of his Brethren by hatred and uncharitable censuring of others that differ from him this is the same disease though he take himself for a man excellently pious And on the contrary if a man be just in his dealing and carefull not to cheat but yet be all bedaubed with the world and laden with thick clay stick fast in covetousness or neglect many religious duties to Godward he is but an hypocritical Religionist though he keep his Church and pay the Mininister his dues as well as others 7. And if you should ask me why this good conceit that men have of their Piety may not be easily beaten down when it is so visible that they live in great sins and have not denyed abundance of their earthly affections I answer that their first resolutions to undertake some duties of Religion are commonly very warm if not hot and fiery which inspires them presently with a perswasion that they are dearly beloved of God because they feel such a difference in themselves from what they were before in their total coldness Now though they continue to live in many sins yet this perswasion doth not abate 1. Because this zeal doth continue and hold on afterwards through the concurrence of their particular Temper with it which inclines them to that sort of actions or doth not make them averse from them And 2 Then they may think it to be a Temptation of the Devil to doubt of their good estate after they have had such great assurance as they imagine from God And 3 They find a desire to do those things that they do not which they take to be a great sign of grace Especially seeing 4 That they are troubled for the not doing of them and they have now and then some sad thoughts about it Yea 5 Their Conscience perhaps is much against it when they do it and they commit such sins not without great reluctance and difficulty Which indeed renders their condition the worse because they can sin even against conscience but they take it to be a sign of their tenderness not of their sins strength And 6 Perhaps they have learnt to call such sins their Infirmities and hearing that all have their failings these they think are theirs And 7 By their Confessions and Prayers and outward humiliations they hope to gain pardon for all or 8 Perhaps they think there is no need but by a device beyond all these they imagine Jesus Christ hath done all for them long ago And so the less they do the more they shall be beholden to him and the more honour they do him by putting more upon his account then others dare do who will be doing more themselves 8. Thus I say do they ratifie that Decree which they have passed for themselves in heaven They having so certainly fore-ordained that they shall inherit eternal joyes none of those foul blemishes that are in their actions can blot out their names which they have written in the Book of life But though they think that nothing can hinder their admission to that blessed place which they have designed for themselves yet God I am sure hath chosen no such persons to salvation If the holy Apostle be not less infallible then they you had better believe him 2 Thes 2.13 when he saith that God hath chosen us to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth and when he prayes that the whole Spirit 1 Thes 5.23 Soul and Body may be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus These men may mount up while they are in some holy exercise as high as the third heavens and think verily that they are in Gods embraces But they will find shortly that all their hopes will fall to the ground as that Turk did from the top of the Mosque who perswaded the people that he could fly And therefore let us be sure to lay the foundations of a solid and entire Religion in our souls and take heed we do not deceive our selves with some flashy devotions and a lame halting obedience To mortifie all our carnal affections to put off the body of sin is the work of a Christian and because of the multitude of our enemies and the infirmities of our flesh we shall find it a matter hard and difficult How insuperable then will this work be if our Religion it self do conspire with the Flesh and if that which should serve for the destroying of sin do by a great many false Principles exceedingly promote it That it may not do so but that our Religion may be in us a Divine nature I shall now proceed to shew you what the counterfeits of it are and how small a matter if we be not serious will tickle us with a belief that we are good Christians without a total change of our hearts and lives CAP. XVIII 1. The story of the Jews in the New Testament to be minded as well as in the Old and we find them great Professors 2. But their Religion was only talk 3. And with such windy Religion still men deceive themselves Good words may move a mans affections and so cozen him 4. Others delight only in high-flown and obscure language 5. An high proficiency they take themselves to have made if they dare leap into a Pulpit 6. The sins of such men A short description of True Religion in reference to this matter 1. NOW for the more full discovery of the several kinds of this Hypocrisie I think it will be best to examine the New Testament story as I have done the Old and see what the temper of the Jews was in our Saviours and the Apostles time who will give us as perfect a character of this false spirit as their fore-fathers
cleansing of the inward parts by purging physick to carry away bad humours should conduce much to a cure So likewise it is with sinful men they are loth to have their hearts throughly searched and such severe and sharp medicines that will eat away all the dead flesh all their base lusts and desires applyed but they love smooth and oily things that will mitigate the pains and asswage the grief and flatter them into a meer conceit of a cure They would not have the inward and more latent cause removed nor the foulness of their souls medled withall but they content themselves with an outward amendment and desire only that the lips of their wound may be closed that they may not cry out against them A plaister of the blood of Christ they can well like that shall be clapt upon their sore and cool the rage and anger of their conscience but to be purified and refined by the Spirit of burning and judgement is a way of healing that they are not willing to submit unto They would have a robe of Christs righteousness cast over them that should hide the rottenness and putrefaction of their wounds but his righteousness in them which should recover their health and restore them to soundness is a thing far from their desires if not from their thoughts 5. But supposing that men are willing to undergo any thing for a cure and fall into the hands of honest Physitians also yet it is possible that they may not understand the whole cause of the distemper and so apply but imperfect remedies and administer medicines proper but for one particular affect By which means the disease may not only continue but be increased and turn into a worse For so it happens to many souls who begin to think their condition is very bad and resolve for to amend they are put upon the practice of some Religious duties and are followed most with such advices that make them think these are sufficient to work their amendment They easily imagine that if they can but weep when they pray or hear a Sermon those tears have a rare faculty to wash supple and cleanse all their sinful wounds But while they use not all Christs prescriptions they fall into a more dangerous distemper and the hardest of all to be cured The sore eats deeper the heart becomes rotten and unsound makes a man to labour with hypocrisie of which few do ever recover And so it is likewise with politick bodies the corruptions which seem most notorious in the eyes of the present Governors are commonly lamented and in some degree reformed but then under the comfortable shadow of that reformation a thousand other sins walk securely and enjoy their freedom and protection from having any hands laid upon them 6. The state of our Nation is at present so very sick and weak and so desirous now we are of a cure and yet so willing to have our hurt healed slightly that the most ordinary understanding can apply what hath been said unto its case and condition Our sins have brought us down under a great number of diseases and laid us upon a bed of affliction Great gaps are made in our body our bones are broken and sore vexed the last drop of our vital blood is ready to issue forth If I should but represent to you how the treasures of the Nation are exhausted which Statesmen call its blood and spirits it would make any heart ake to see how pale and wan we look without any colour in our cheeks But besides that Trading is dead Justice also is sore maimed Charity and Love is broken Piety is dismembered the very frame of our Government is dissolved and a whole deluge of miseries threaten to flow in at these wide breaches Jer. 8.15 22. Long have we looked for peace but no good comes and for a time of health but behold trouble Is there no Balm for such wounds as ours Is there no Physitian in the English Nation Why then is not the health of it before this time recovered Whether we have not tampered too much with State-Doctors who sought by meer power and worldly policy to settle our discomposures I leave to every serious man to consider And whether we have not been backward to take the advice of our spiritual Physitians and to follow their directions is a thing that may be soon determined That which I shall enquire into shall be this whether even among the spiritual Physitians some have not been sought unto who considered not the chief cause of our maladies but applyed those things most unto us which did accidentally feed our diseases and make them to be more dangerous And so we shall find out what will compleatly remedy all our evils and restore us to an healthy constitution again 7. Now in this matter I know not how to take a better course then to imitate Physitians who consult not meer reason but likewise the experience of former times And where they find the same symptoms and all indications of a disease which an exact Author hath described though many hundred years ago they conclude the same remedies and medicines are to be used which are consigned to them by his Probatum est I shall therefore search into the records of divine History and observe what the state of the Jews used to be and what method they were wont to take for the healing of their Nation when any publick calamity did befall them and as Physitians truly say Curatio indicat morbum by their cure we shall certainly know what their disease was and give a guess also at our own both disease and remedy But many ineffectual applications there were which the holy Writ takes notice of and therefore I shall divide my discourse into two parts and first shew you what things were not of sufficient vertue to cure them though otherwise they were good and healing And secondly what God did particularly direct them unto for a perfect recovery of their strength when it was decayed and a binding up of their wounds when they were sorely broken CAP. II. 1. The seventh of Zachary opened with many other Scriptures which shew the grounds of their appointing Fasts 2. Gods slighting of them 3. Which discovers this was one of the ineffectual courses they took to appease him though they were very ceremonious in this performance 4. Under which mistake the world still labours 5. The true ends and uses of Fasting are discoursed of in regard to the time past 6. And to the time to come 7. And to the time present 8. Which we ought seriously to mind 1. AND you shall find both the one and the other of these insisted upon in the seventh Chapter of the Prophet Zachary out of which I will take the foundation and ground-work of my ensuing discourse For the understanding of which you must remember how God for their sins had forsaken his house and left his heritage and given the dearly beloved of his
but be glad they might think that such good friends of his grew rich on any fashion seeing he was not like to lose but to get by it For if you look into Matth. 23. you cannot but observe that they were monstrous extortioners and as full of covetous desires as a drunkards cup is full of drink Besides they were abominably proud undervaluing all men in compare with themselves And so many wayes also they had of disanulling all Gods commands as if by their prayers they had obtained a power from God to wipe and cross what they pleased out of his Law They took God to be so much beholden to them for their pains and sweat in praying to him that they thought he was bound to let them make themselves an amends some other wayes And because it cost them much to be so devout they thought their labour was as pretious with him and that he put the same value upon it In short so little there was in all this devotion that if a man had had a mind to deny himself in little or nothing his best way had been to have put himself into the garb of a Pharisee and buy a grant of God to do what he list by many prayers Which was just as if a man should think by giving his neighbour many good morrows to make him overlook the breaking of his hedges and the stealing of his goods or as if a man should beseech another not to be offended with him though he beat his children and took upon him to do what he listed in his house 4. And such there have been in the Christian world who have delighted in praying and offering up continual petitions to heaven whom the earth could not bear because of their vile and wicked lives As John Basilides Duke of Muscovy whom Dr. Casaubon instances in who loved to be continually upon his knees and lifting up his hands to God when they were not employed in some butcherous and bloody action or other And Hacket here in England in the dayes of Queen Elizabeth of whom Saravia saith that he seemed to have a divine heat in him when he prayed though it is known to all the world with what wild fires he was acted For there is a natural ardor may do much this way as that Doctor speaks or rather a Religious melancholy as Mr. More hath shewn in his excellent Treatise of Enthusiasm For that humour will work and boil up even to an Exstasie and where it meets with some spice of Religion it may do strange feats by way of devotion Ignatius the Jesuites tell us was sometimes lifted up four cubits above the ground when he was at prayer and he might possibly seem to himself so to be if that be true which Eunapius reports of Jamblicus how that when he was a praying Eunap in vita Jambl. V. etiam in vita Aedesii he was heaved up from the earth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 above ten cubits and his rayment seemed to shine with a brightness like to gold But above all I desire the Reader to take notice of what Theodoret saith of the Mossaliani or Prayers that they used to do nothing else and would not follow any calling but when they did not pray they fell asleep L. 4. Eccles hist cap. 10. L. 4. haeret fab cap. 11. And then they thought that they beheld Visions and could prophesie and saw the sacred Trinity with their eyes They said that there was an evil spirit in all men which must be cast out by prayers and then the holy Spirit of God comes in after which there was no need of fasting for to humble the body nor of any doctrine or teaching which bridles and guides the motion of the body but the Spirit doth all One egg is not more like another then those men were like them among us who say they are above all Ordinances They feel some heat in their hearts when they pray and they are lifted up in some kind of pious thoughts by the strong workings of their own melancholy fancies and then they think that this is to them instead of all other things so that the Lords Supper is but a carnal Feast and the Scriptures themselves are but dead letters and Ministers are but School-masters for children and fools 5. So much of the Pharisee is still among us that it would make any godly soul blush to see what foul things are done by those that make very fair pretences to God in their prayers The measure of which many times is length and loudness many words and much heat whilest there is no true spiritual life and sense of God which breaths forth their souls unto him Men care not to be as long in confessing of their sins as they intend to be in leaving of them if it will but pass current for Religion They will pray for forgiveness of their sins as often as God pleases so they may but have leave when they see occasion to commit them They will call for that strength and power which they never mean to use for that Spirit of holiness which they would not have so kind as to come and trouble them in their enjoyments They pray for that light which they would not have to look too broad in their faces for that purity and sanctity which they will bestow no more upon then a prayer to obtain and if they knew what they prayed for they would be loth to have an Answer They beg that comfort the spring of which they would be loth should dwell within them that righteousness of Christ which they would have to cover all their filthiness and keep them warm in their sins that blood of Jesus which should quench the fiery indignation which they say but think not that their sins do deserve 6. And yet I have told you the best of this sort of Religionists for there are that think they shall be heard for their much babling and are little better then heathenish worshippers They are rude and sensless in their Tautologies without any real and unforc't affection Their prayers are a confused indigested heap of words rash and bold expressions irreverent and unbecoming addresses to the glorious majesty of heaven fulsome and nauseating language savouring of an unprepared though hasty careless though confident mind They are measured by the glass and must be stretched though by heathenish repetitions i. e. without any order or handsom zeal to such a certain length And if a childish tone like that when they say their lessons can help out these devotions it is accounted a great token of good affection and a sign that a man is more then ordinarily moved If the voice likewise be loud sonorous most people are apt to think the heavens will hear those prayers sooner then others as coming from the greatest zeal and fervency of Spirit But all good Christians whose hearts are in their prayers feel that the sence of Gods Glory as well as his
to hazzard your selves in a good cause Be as consciencious in following the Ministers Doctrine as in paying of him his tithes and speaking well of him As zealous in doing as you are in hearing as carefull to use Gods grace as to beg it to live to God as to pray to him And Saint James gives us the reason Jam. 1.22 That we shall otherwise deceive our own souls We shall have only so much religion as will serve to cozen our selves as many a man doth who hears Gods word and prayes and is much affected but makes no conscience of laying it to his heart by serious consideration and working of it into the frame of his spririt that he may live according to it CAP. XXIV 1. The distinctions which the Pharisees had to elude Gods commands 2. One more notable then the rest that if they kept one precept well they need not keep all others 3. The fleshly Christian hath his jugling tricks He distinguishes between the letter and the Spirit of a duty 4. Or saith he follows Providence 5. Or that he hath an Impulse 6. Or he pleads Necessity 7. Or that he doth it for Gods glory 8. Or hath liberty from Free-grace 9. Or from the Examples of good men 10. We must not believe every pretender 11. Observe how they change and turn about 12. Especially how loth they are to suffer and how impatient under it 1. BUT you may well wonder how men so knowing as they were should overlook the most necessary things which are so legible in the Book of God and perswade themselves that they were pious notwithstanding such palpable neglects Sure these men had a most notable wit which could invent such cunning distinctions as should allow them to break all Gods Commandments while they seemed to keep them And so they had as our Saviour tells Mat 23 16 17 c. where you may see that they did absolve men even from their oaths that were made by holy things viz the Temple and the Altar if they were not made by that which they most loved the Gold and the Gift It is so senseless a distinction whereby they freed men who had solemny sworn as our Saviour plainly proves to them that we cannot but think it was invented by gross covetousness and yet with a shew of devotion to God in preferring the Gold that was brought to his treasury and the gifts to his Altar above all other things in sacredness And so they defeated another command concerning the giving of honour to our Parents by making a vow that all they got should be as a Sacred thing to their parents i. e. it should be as unlawfull for them to have any of their goods as to enjoy that which was devoted to God For so they that are best skilled in the Jewish learning do expound that place V. J. r Coch. in duns Tit. Talmud cap. 7. Sanhedr Mat. 15.5 though some of the Fathers as I have already said think that it speaks of consecrating their goods to the treasury of God This was a rare way to be rich by vowing not so much as to give their parents a mite of their goods and a great piece of religion no question they thought it to keep such a vow when they had made it This was a subtile Art to be covetous and under a religious tye both together 2. But these are no more then trifles in compare with that transcendent trick which absolves a man at once from as many duties as he pleases That rare device was this That if a man observed but one command well it was not absolutely necessary that he should keep the rest Vid Tit. Maccoth cap. 3. So R. Chanania saith that God would have Israel increase in merits and therefore it was that he multiplied so many precepts It was not absolutely necessary that they should observe them all but they should merit exceedingly if they did For so Maimon observes in his Comment upon that place cited in the margin If any of Israel keep one of the six hundred and thirteen precepts as he ought out of love and without a mixture of worldly designs he shall have a portion in the world to come Many evasions will mens own lusts and desires suggest to them for the casting off the weight of any duty that lyes upon them but this is such a notorious gloss that by it they might slip their necks from the yoke of every command but that which they could be content to practice 3. And you must not think the fleshly Christian is at a loss for the like distinctions interpretations and glosses for to serve the dear interest of his sins Loth he is to break a Law unless he seem to himself to keep it and therefore here his wit steps in and offers its help to salve his conscience and his profit or pleasure both together I shall take the liberty to instance in a few which are easie to observe because I doubt men will make a shift to understand nothing that concerns them by all that I say unless I descend to particulars First therefore if a man have use for a sin as suppose the breaking of an oath he can distinguish between the Letter and the Spirit of it He can easily perswade himself that he keeps the prime meaning which is according as he pleases to have it though he go contrary to the sound of the words and the sense in which men commonly understand it And thus those persons in New England who made so great a disturbance See Mr. Welds relation An. 1636. evacuated and blotted out the whole body of Christian precepts and did not leave so much as the Pharisees who thought obedience to one precept at least to be necessary saying That the letter of all the Scriptures were for a Covenant of works but the Spirit of them held forth a Covenant of free grace This was a rare answer when they were urged with several places of Holy Writ that proved the necessity of Sanctification and inward righteousness which they turned out of doors under the pretence of letting in Christ If it were said that we must become new creatures the Answer was ready that by the new creature is meant Christ and therefore we must only get into Christ If it were said we must be holy as God is holy this was the return that Christ is our sanctification and that there is no inherent righteousness in us but only in him And whereas the Scripture saith Blessed are the poor in Spirit c. they said a man might have all grace and yet want Christ This was the secret sense the Spirit of the Scriptures That we need do nothing and Christ hath done all This was holding forth naked Christ as they called it so naked indeed that it is a shame to speak of it 4. If men cannot attain to this height of secret intelligence which the old Gnosticks likewise boasted of but they must acknowledge that