the Spirit among Christians is witnessed maintained and strengthened by their holy communion of Love and Peace one with another but is darkened weakened and lessened by their uncharitable Dissentions Hence it is evident that the Unity here commended is primarily that of the Church in its internal and invisible State or the Union and Communion of Saints having in themselves the Spirit and Life and Power of Christianity T is the unity of the Spirit we are charged to keep in the bond of Peace But concord in any external order with a vital Union with Christ and holy Souls his living members is not the unity of the Spirit which is to partake of the same new Nature and Divine Life Secondarily it is the Unity of the Church in its external and visible State which is consequent and subservient to the internal and stands in the profession and appearance of it in the professed observation of the duties arising from it Where there is not a credible Profession of Faith unfeigned and true Holiness there is not so much as the external and visible Unity of the Spirit Therefore a sensual Earthly generation of men who are apparently lead by the Spirit of the World and not by the Spirit that is of God have little cause to glory in their adhering to an external Church order whatsoever it be Holy love which is unselfed and impartial is the Life and Soul of this unity without which it is but a dead thing as the Body without the Soul is dead And this love is the bond of perfectness that Cement that holds altogether in this mystical Society For this being seated in the several members disposeth them to look not to their own things but also to the things of others and not to the undue advancement of a Party but to the common good of the whole Body Whosoever wants this love hath no vital Union with Christ and the Church and no part in the Communion of Saints The Church is much more ennobled strengthened and every way blessed by the Communion of holy love among all its living members or real Christians than by an outside uniformity in the minute circumstances or accidental modes of Religion By this love it is more beautifull and lovely in the eyes of all intelligent beholders than by outward pomp and ornament or any worldly splendor The Unity of the Church as visible whether Catholick or particular may be considered in a three-fold respect or in three very different points The first and chief point thereof is in the essentials and all weighty matters of Christian Faith and Life The second and next in account is in the essentials and integrals of Church state that is in the Christian Church-Worship Ministery and Discipline considered as of Christs institution and abstracted from all things superadded by men The third and lowest point is in those extrinsecal and accidental Forms and Orders of Religion which are necessary in genere but left in specie to human determination Of these several points of Unity there is to be a different valuation according to their different value Our first and chief regard is due to the first and chief point which respects Christian Faith and Life The next regard is due to that which is next in value that which respects the very constitution or frame of a Church And regard is to be had of that also which respects the accidentals of Religion yet in its due place and not before things of greater weight and worth Things are of a very different nature and importance to the Churches good Estate and a greater or lesser stress must be laid upon Unity in them as the things themselves are of greater or lesser moment The Rule or Law of Church Unity is not the will of man but the will of God Whosoever keeps that Unity which hath Gods word for its Rule keeps the Unity of the Spirit And whosoever boasts of a Unity that is not squared by this Rule his boasting is but vain An Hypothesis that nothing in the Service of God is lawfull but what is expresly prescribed in Scripture is by some falsly ascribed to a sort of men who earnestly contend for the Scriptures sufficiency and perfection for the regulating of Divine Worship and the whole state of Religion God in his Word hath prescribed all those parts of his Worship that are necessary to be performed to him He hath likewise therein instituted those Officers that are to be the Administrators of his publick Worship in Church Assemblies and hath defined the authority and duty of those Officers and all the essentials and integrals of Church state As for the circumstantials and accidentals belonging to all the things aforesaid he hath laid down general Rules for the regulation thereof the particulars being both needless and impossible to be enumerated and defined In this point God hath declared his mind Deut. 4. 2. Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you neither shall ye diminish ought from it Deut. 12. 32. What soever thing I command you observe to do it Thou shalt not add thereto nor diminish from it The prohibition is not meerly of altering the Rule Gods written Word by addition or diminution but of doing more or less than the Rule required as the precept is not of preserving the Rule but of observing what is commanded in it Such human institutions in Divine Worship as be in meer subserviency to Divine institutions for the necessary and convenient modifying and ordering thereof are not properly additions to Gods commandments For they are of things which are not of the same nature end and use with the things which God hath commanded but of meer circumstantials and accidentals belonging to those things And these circumstantials are in genere necessary to the performance of Divine Institutions and are generally commanded in the Word though not in particular but are to be determined in specie by those to whom the power of such determination belongs They that assert and stand to this only Rule provide best for the Unity of Religion and the Peace of the Church For they are ready to reject whatsoever they find contrary to this Rule they are more easily kept within the bounds of acceptable Worship and all warrantable obedience they lay the greatest weight on things of the greatest worth and moment they carefully regard all Divine institutions and whatsoever God hath commanded and they maintain Love and Peace and mutual forbearance towards one another in the more inconsiderable diversities of Opinion and Practice Those things that are left to human determination the Pastors Bishops or Elders did anciently determine for their own particular Churches And indeed it is very reasonable and naturally convenient that they who are the Administrators of Divine institutions and have the conduct of the People in Divine Worship and know best what is most expedient for their own Society should be intrusted with the determination of necessary circumstances within their
Spiritual strain which is most agreeable to the things of the Spirit of God and which as coming from life and Spirit is better discerned than described There is a speaking not in words which mans wisdom teacheth but which the Holy Ghost teacheth And though this more eminently took place in the Apostles and such other extraordinary persons yet there is no sufficient reason to restrain it to them alone St. Paul may well be understood to speak of this as a gift received by them that had received not the Spirit of the world but that which is of God and as something suted to the perception and taste of all Spiritual men It doth not exclude the use of human wisdom though the wisdom of the Spirit sway in chief For no doubt even Paul's human learning and prudence was herein serviceable though in subserviency to the influence and conduct of the Spirit This Spirituality of expression is conformable to that of the Spirit of God in Scripture though not confined to the words thereof Surely the mysteries of Salvation cannot be better handled than in those terms in which they were first delivered to wit in Scripture expressions or others consonant thereto solidly and pertinently used and to call this canting savours to much of that Spirit to which holy language is unsavory Without controversie the strongest reason is of greatest force to gain the wills of men to imbrace true Religion For that which crosseth sensuality selfishness and all the depraved appetite of our lapsed nature as Religion doth must needs have its greatest strength next under the power of divine grace in the force of right reason But care and skill is requisite that it be so prepared offered and set home that it may be sutable to them that should receive it and that the cogency thereof may so reach unto and fasten upon their judgments as to gain their wills Philosophical ratiocinations are too remote not only from low and dull capacities but also from the greater part of them that are competently apprehensive and intelligent and so being too much estranged from them they do not touch them to the quick A familiar natural plain and obvious way of reasoning comes home to all men and is most felt at the heart and that by Scholars themselves though their intellect may be more delighted in more accurate or reserved Speculations Scriptural preaching is indeed the most rational as coming with such reason as is of greatest force with men in matters of Salvation For Gods written word is a treasure of divine wisdom that throughly furnisheth the man of God Besides the infallible testimony thereof hath more authority than Philosophical reason though sound and true can have upon Christian hearers and it peirceth deeper and sticks closer And arguments taken and words spoken from Scripture wherewith the people converse dayly are more easily apprehended and retained and so are more instructive and every way more usefull than other reasonings Though numerous citations of sentences out of human Authors be an unprofitable kind of ostentation yet the Sentences of Holy Writ which is the evidence of our Christian hope and the testimony of him who is truth it self are most effectual to edification And whosoever is able to speak reason in divine matters is to make a rational use of Scripture and if any quote it impertinently and absurdly it is through defect of reason and they would be as injudicious in their Sermons without those quotations But nice and haughty wits mostly cavil without cause and charge profitable Preachers with injudiciousness meerly through their own vain curiosity and inconsiderateness Scripture quotations are sometimes used by way of allusion or for illustration not for strict proof and that which is brought for proof if it be not full and cogent yet it may add some weight and then it is not abused Besides if a passage be used in a sound and pious though not in its proper sense it is pardonable It is fit indeed that in citing Texts we know their true import and go more by weight than number shunning impertinency and superfluity yet it is not unfit to note that all sound and good Preachers are not alike judicious and those that are very solid may be guilty of some oversights and 't is a bad matter that their Ministery which God hath owned and honoured with good success in his Service should be set at nought for a few mistakes perhaps more pretended than real about the sense of some Scripture when it is not applyed otherwise than the Analogy of faith will bear and nothing is defended but known truth I have known a pious but strangely mistaken sense of a Scripture sentence cast into the mind and there fixed to have been the first occasion of seriousness in Religion to one that afterward lived and dyed a godly Christian. Now that which was causal in this conversion was the godly truth it self which was written in Gods word and the mistaking it to lie in such a sentence where it did not being but accidental was no hinderance I do in no wise countenance the irrational use of Scripture but am sensible of the importance of good judgment and due care about the sense thereof yet I cannot approve the scornful haughtiness of some men who deride godly persons well instructed in the Scripture as having nothing but words and Phrases and senseless notions either because they come short of Scholar-like exactness or because they speak of the things of God in a more Evangelicall and Spiritual strain than these can well bear In speaking the best use of art is to speak to best purpose and for that end in divine matters to speak with greatest Majesty and authority And this is done not by ostentation of wit by puerile and effeminate rhetorications by a rapsody of flanting words by starched speech by cadency of sounds or any too elaborate politeness that please the shallow fancy but by the evidence of reason set forth in a masculine and unaffected Eloquence that hath power over the wills of men which are tough and knotty peices Perspicuity is a great vertue and felicity in discourse for hereby what is offered gains attention and enters the mind and abides therein but intricacy and obscurity is a bar to its entrance and entertainment Hereunto an easie and obvious method evident coherence and plainness of expression conduceth mainly Wherefore he that minds what he hath to do is not careful by a more curious artifice to please the fancies of some itching hearers but hath most regard to that composure that makes most for a general benefit and edification And for this cause as he would not multiply words without need and become tedious so he would not be too succinct and close and by that means either too dark or too quick to inform or effect the people In vulgar auditories a dilating of the matter is most necessary so that idle tautologies and prolixity be avoided and it may be
chiefest point thereof being in the essentials and weighty matters of Christian Faith and Life the highest violation thereof and the chiefest point of Schism lies in denying or enormously violating the said essentials or weighty matters And it is directly a violation of the Unity of the Catholick Church and not of particular Churches only Not only particular Persons but Churches yea a large combination of Churches bearing the Christian name may in their Doctrine Worship and other avowed Practice greatly violate the essentials or very weighty matters of Christian Faith and Life and be found guilty of the most enormous breach of Unity It is no Schism to withdraw or depart from any the largest combination or collective body of Churches though for their amplitude they presume to stile their combination the Catholick Church that maintain and avow any Doctrine or Practice which directly or by near and palpable consequence overthrows the said essentials The next point of external Unity being about the essentials and integrals of Church state the Sacraments and other publick Worship the Ministery and Discipline of the Church considered as of Christs institution the next chief point of Schism is the breach hereof And this may be either against the Catholick or a particular Church Of such Schism against the state of the Catholick Church there are these instances 1. When any one part of professed Christians how numerous soever combined by any other terms of Catholick Unity than what Christ hath made account themselves the only Catholick Church excluding all Persons and Churches that are not of their combination 2. When a false Catholick Unity is devised or contended for viz. a devised Unity of Government for the Catholick Church under one terrene Head personal or collective assuming a proper governing power over all Christians upon the face of the whole Earth 3. When there is an utter disowning of most of the true visible Churches in the World as having no true Church state no not the essentials thereof and an utter breaking off from communion with them accordingly Of Schism against a particular Church in point of its Church state there be these instances 1. The renouncing of a true Church as no Church although it be much corrupted much more if it be a purer Church though somewhat faulty 2. An utter refusing of all acts of communion with a true Church when we may have communion with it either in whole or in part without our personal sin of commission or omission 3. The causing of any Divisions or Distempers in the state or frame of a true Church contrary to the Unity of the Spirit But it is no Schism to disown a corrupt frame of Polity supervenient to the essentials and integrals of Church state in any particular Church or combination of Churches like a leprosie in the Body that doth grosly deprave them and in great part frustrate the ends of their constitution The last and lowest point of external Unity lying in the accidental modes of Religion and matters of meer order extrinsick to the essentials and integrals of Church-State the violation thereof is the least and lowest point of Schism I mean in it self considered and not in such aggravating circumstances as it may be in Those accidental Forms and Orders of Religion which are necessary in genere but left in specie to human determination are allowed of God when they are determined according to prudence and charity for Peace and Edification and accordingly they are to be submitted to Consequently it is one point of Schism to make a Division from or in a Church upon the accountal of accident Forms and Orders so determined according to Gods allowance But if any of the accidentals be unlawfull and the maintaining or practicing thereof be imposed upon us as the terms of our communion it is no Schism but Duty to abstain from communion in that case For explicitly and personally to own errors and corruptions even in smaller points is evil in it self which must not be committed that good may come In this case not he that withdraws but he that imposes causeth the Division And this holds of things sinfull either in themselves or by just consequence And herein he that is to act is to discern and judge for his own practice whether the things imposed be such For Gods Law supposeth us rational creatures able to discern its meaning and to apply it for the regulating of our own actions else the Law were given us in vain Submission and reverence towards Superiors obligeth no man to resign his understanding to their determinations or in compliance with them to violate his own conscience Persons meek humble peaceable and throughly conscientious and of competent judgment may not be able by their diligent and impartial search to see the lawfulness of things injoyned and t is a hard case if they should thereupon be declared contumacious Seeing there be several points of Unity the valuation whereof is to be made according to their different value mens judgment and estimation of Unity and Schism is very preposterous who lay the greatest stress on those points that are of least moment and raise things of the lowest rank to the highest in their valuation and set light by things of the greatest moment and highest value as indeed they do who set light by soundness of Faith and holiness of Life and consciencious observance of Divine institutions where there is not also unanimity and uniformity in unscriptural Doctrines and human ceremonies And they that make such an estimate of things and deal with Ministers accordingly do therein little advance the Unity of the Spirit or indeavour to keep it in the bond of Peace Seeing the word of God is the rule of Church Unity a breach is made upon it when other bounds thereof are set than this rule allows An instance hereof is the devising of other terms of Church-communion and Ministerial liberty than God hath commanded or allowed in his Word to be made the terms thereof Also any casting or keeping out of the Church or Ministery such as Gods Word doth not exclude from either but signifies to be qualified and called thereunto God doth not allow on the part of the Imposer such tearms of Church communion or Ministerial station as are neither Scriptural nor necessary to Peace and Edification nor are any part of that necessary order and decency without which the Service of God would be undecent nor are in any regard so necessary but that they may be dispensed with for a greater benefit and the avoiding of a greater mischief And they are found guilty of Schism that urge such unscriptural and unnecessary things unto a breach in the Church Such Imposers are not only an occasion of the breach that follows but a culpable cause thereof because they impose without and against Christs warrant who will not have his Church to be burdened nor the consciences of his Servants intangled with things unnecessary Nevertheless such unscriptural or
steddiness purity and soberness This new nature while it is lodg'd in the earthly tabernacle is clogg'd with many adverse things especially the relicks of the old nature which cause much vanity of thoughts indisposedness of mind motions to evil and aversations from good and somtimes more sensible disorders of affections and eruptions of unruly passion and aberrations in life and conversation The same divine principal is in some Christians more firm lively and active than in others yet it is habitually prevalent in them all and it resists and overcomes the contrary principle even in the case of most beloved sins and strongest temptations and perseveres in earnest and fearful indeavours of perfecting holiness in the fear of God And whatsoever degree of sanctity is obtained it ascribes wholly to the praise of Gods grace in Christ and the power of his spirit Christianity being known what it is it may easily be known what it is not and so the false disguises of it may easily be detected Forasmuch as it looks far higher than the temporal interests of mankind in the settlings of this life though it doth not overlook them it cannot be thought to have done its work in making men meerly just-dealers good neighbours and profitable members of the Common-wealth for such may be some of them that are without Christ without the hope of the Gospel and without God in the world Moreover it cannot lie so low as in a bare belief of the Gospel and an observance of its external institutes accompanied with a civil conversation As for such as rest in these things what are they more in the eye of God than the heathens that know him not And wherein do they differ from them except in a dead faith and outward form taken up by education tradition example custom of the country and other such like motives Nor doth it lie in unwritten doctrines and ordinances of worship devised by men nor yet in curiosities of opinion or accidental modes of Worship discipline or Church-government nor in ones being of this or that Sector party nor in meer Orthodoxality all which being rested in are but the false coverings of hypocrites It is not the lax and easie low and large rule by which Libertines and Formalists yea some pretended perfectionists do measure their own righteousness who assert their perfectness by disannulling or lessening the law of God In a word it is not any kind of morality or vertue whatsoever which is not true holiness or intire dedication to God and therefore much less is it that loose and jolly religion of the sensual gang who keep up a superficial devotion in some external forms but give up themselves to real irreligion and profaneness and bid defiance to a circumspect walking and serious course of Godliness And now it is too apparent what multitudes of them that prophess the faith of Christ are Christians in name only and not indeed Their alienation from the life of God and their enmity against it and their conformity to the course of this world in the lusts thereof doth testifie that they have not received the grace of God in truth But Christians indeed according to the nature of Christianity above expressed which is now in them though not in the highest yet in a prevalent degree do make it their utmost end to know love honour and please God to be conformable to him and to have the fruition of him in the perfection of which conformity and fruition they place the perfection of their blessedness In the sence of their native bondage under the guilt and power of sin they come to the Mediator Jesus Christ and rest upon him by the satisfaction and merit of his obedience and suffering to reconcile and sanctifie them to God and accordingly they give up themselves to him as their absolute Teacher and Ruler all-sufficient Saviour Having received not the Spirit of the world but that which is of God they are crucified to the honours profits and pleasures of the world and have their conversation in heaven and rejoyce in the hope of glory and prepare for sufferings in this life and by faith overcome them The law of God is in their hearts and it is the directory of their practice from day to day by the touchstone of Gods word they prove their own works and come to the light thereof that their deeds may be made manifest to be wrought in God They draw nigh to God in the acts of religious worship of his appointment that they may glorifie him and enjoy spiritual communion with him and be blessed of him especially with spiritual blessings in Christ and as God is a Spirit they worship him in Spirit and in truth It is their aim care and exercise to keep consciences void of offence towards God and towards men and to render to all their dues both in their publick and private capacities and to walk in love towards all not excluding enemies and to do all the good they can both to the souls and bodies of men but those that fear God they more highly prise and favour The remainder of corruption within themselves they know feelingly and watch and pray and strive that they enter not into temptation and maintain a continual warfare against the Devil the world and the flesh under the conduct of Jesus Christ their Leader according to the laws of their holy profession with patience and perseverance In the midst of a crooked and perverse generation they indeavour to be blameless and harmless as the Sons of God and to shine as lights in the world and by the influence of their good conversation to turn others to righteousness Such is the Character of those persons upon whose souls the holy doctrine of the Gospel is impressed and in whom the Christian religion hath its real being force and vertue These are partakers of the heavenly calling and set apart for God to do him service in the present world and afterwards to live in glory with him for ever These are the true Church of God the Church being here taken as mystical not as visible and these are all joyned together by one Spirit in one Body under Christ their Head in the same new nature having one rule of their profession and one hope of their calling These are a great multitude which no man can number of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues yet hitherto not proportionable to the rest of mankind And they continue throughout all ages but in greater or lesser numbers and more or less refined from Superstition or other corruptions and more or less severed from the external communion of the Antichristian State according to the brightness or darkness of the times and places wherein they live CHAP. II. Things pertaining to the Sound State of Religion And first holy Doctrine THe advancement of the Christian life which hath its beginning in the new birth being the great end propounded in this discourse in reference to this end
the things here principally looked after are the receiving and propagating of holy Doctrine drawn out of the pure fountain of Sacred Scripture the right administration of true Gospel worship by which God is glorified as God and the worshippers are made more godly The due preaching of Gods word and dispensation of other divine ordinances by personslawfully called thereunto for the conversion of sinners and edification of converts Holy discipline truly and faithfully administred by the Pastors as the necessity of the Church requires and the State thereof will bear Religious family government Private mutual exhortations pious conferences and profitable conversation The predominant influence of religion in the civil government of a nation yet without usurpation or incroachment upon the civil rights of any especially of the higher Powers The unity of Christians and their mutual charity conspicuous and illustrious and lastly in order to all these intents a good frame of Ecclesiastical polity Holy Doctrine is the incorruptible seed of Regeneration by which the new creature is begotten It is not here intended to represent a perfect scheme thereof for it sufficeth to signifie that extracts thereof from holy Scripture are drawn out in the ancient Catholik Creeds and in the harmonious confessions of the present Reformed Churches Nevertheless our design requires the observation of some most important things about the Doctrine of Salvation As that there be first an earnest and hearty belief of the existence and providence of God and his government of mankind by laws congruous to their nature and of the immortallity of human souls and of a life of retribution in the world to come which is the foundation of all religion 2ly Right apprehensions of Gods nature and attributes more especially of his Holiness comprehending as well his purity and justice as his mercy and goodness that as he is ready to procure his creatures happiness and refuseth none that come unto him so that he cannot deny himself and that he receiveth note but upon terms agreeable to his Holiness 3ly An Idea of Godliness in themind not as shaped by any private conceptions but as expressed by the Holy Ghost whose workmanship it is that Christianity in the hearts and lives of men may be the same with Christianity in the Scriptures 4. The receiving of the great mystery of Godliness not as allegorized in the fancies of some Enthusiasts wherein it vanisheth to nothing but as verisied in the truth of the History wherein it becomes the power of God to Salvation and so not to sever the internal spirit of the Christian Religion from its external frame the basis whereof is the Doctrine of the Trinity in the Unity of the Godhead and of the incarnation of the eternal word Lastly Soundness of judgment in those great Gospel verities that are written for the exalting of Gods grace and the promoting of true godliness and the incouraging of the godly in opposition to ungracious ungodly and uncomfortable errours of which sort are these following truths That the study and knowledge of the Scriptures is the duty and priviledge of all Christians that according to their several capacities being skilfull in the word of righteousness they may discern between truth and falshood between good and evil and offer to God a reasonable service according to his revealed will That internal illumination is necessary to the saving knowledge of God the Holy spirit in that regard not inspiring new revelations but inabling to discern savingly what is already revealed in nature and Scripture That man was created after the image of God in righteousness and true holyness and that in this state he was indued with a self-determining principle called Freewill and thereby made capable of abiding holy and happy or of falling into sin and misery according to his own choice and that God left him to the freedom of his own choice having given him whatsoever power or assistance was necessary to his standing That the first man being set in this capacity fell from God and it pleased God not to annihilate him nor to prevent his propagating of an issue in the same fallen state which would follow upon his fall but left the condition of mankind to pass according to the course of nature being now fallen That by the sin of Adam all men are made sinners and corrupt in their whole nature and are under the curse of the Law and liable to eternal condemnation and being left to the wicked bent of their own wills are continually adding to their original sin a heap of actual transgressions and so are of themselves in a miserable and helpless condition That the Lord Jesus Christ according to his full intention and his Fathers commandment hath made propitiation for the sins of the whole world so far as thereby to procure pardon of sin and Salvation of soul to all that do unfeignedly believe and repent That man being dead in sin cannot be quickned to the divine life but by the power of Gods grace raising him above the impotency of lapsed nature That the culpable impotency of lapsed nature to saving good lies in the fixed full aversation of the will by a deplorable obstinacy nilling that good to which the natural faculties can reach and ought to incline as to their due object That the root of godliness lies in regeneration and inward Sanctification That God calleth some by the help of that special grace which infallibly effecteth their conversion and adhesion to him without any impeachment of the natural liberty of the will That whatsoever God doth in time and in whatsoever order he doth it he decreed from eternity to do the same and in the same order and so he decreed from eternity to give that special grace to some and by it to bring them to glory which decree is eternal election to which is opposite the pure negative of Non-election As for preordination to everlasting punishment it passeth not upon any but on the foresight and consideration of their final abode in the state of sin That the more common convictions inclinations and endeavours towards God in persons unregenerate are good in their degree and the ordinary preparative to a saving change and they are the effects of that divine grace which is called common That deligent seeking after God by the help of common grace is not in vain it being the means to some further attainment towards the souls recovery and it is regarded of God in its degree and God doth not deny men further degrees of help till they refuse to follow after him by not using the help already given them and by resisting his further aid That God hath made all men savable and though he doth not simply and absolutely will the conversion and Salvation of all yet he willeth it so far and in such manner as is sufficient to encourage the diligent in their endeavours and to convict the careless of being inexcusable despisers of his grace towards them That there is an
trifle with holy things he shuns vanity and curiosity and doth not ramble into impertinences and cares not to utter any thing for ostentation He hath in his eye the end of his Ministry and the usefulness and importance of what he hath to communicate that as it said of the Scripture from whence he takes it it may be profitable for Doctrine for Reproof for Correction for instruction in Righteousness that it may come home to the hearts and lives of men and be fit to raise their attention by their own concernment in it He considers withall what the hearers can best receive that is not what the flesh can well digest for then the most necessary truths must be forborn but that which carries its own evidence to that it must be owned or the gain-sayers must be self-condemned And this is to prepare mens minds and to make way for such harder sayings and stricter precepts as must be manifested in due season Moreover the Dispensation of the word of God should be as the word it self is quick and powerfull and in all reason that is to be most esteemed such which is most apt to be effectual to the end for which God hath ordained it which is to open mens eyes and to turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among them that be sanctified through faith in Christ. That kind of preaching that hath most tendency to convince direct and move toward this end is without controversie the most powerfull The pressing of Doctrines with solid and cogent reason provided they be made plain and obvious to the capacity of the hearers appertains to this manner of preaching and in a chief point therein Strong reason may be so delivered as to be too hard and strong for plain people to receive and digest it Here Condescention is a great Duty and perspicuity a great Gift But the bare evidence of reason doth not all For to gain the Will which is the man besides the judgment the fancy and affections had need be gained We find it the condescention of God himself in his word to deal very much with these lower faculties which belonging not to brutes only but to men also it is not brutish but human to be moved by them in subordination to the judgment Even the most learned and prudent men are found to take no small impression from them and therefore the most proper ways of soliciting and exciting them are not to be neglected much less contemned Now dry reason though strong enough is not so fit to take the affections or raise the fancy Wherefore some other helps among which there are comparatively little things are herein used as familiar expressions apt similitudes expostulations lively representations and such like to which may be added a voluble tongue a moving tone and taking gesture And though much noise and action make not a powerfull Preacher yet earnestness of speech and elevation of the voice is not of little force and especially with vulgar hearers who being the greatest number in most Auditories are very regarnable And truly the weight of the business requires due fervour Should the matters of life and death eternal be delivered without feeling as by men half asleep And people's drowsiness doth no less require it Yea possibly the apprehensions and affections of the common people may better be roused up by a somewhat boysterous way of excitation which for this reason should not displease the learned or most judicious sort who are in this case to consider not what would most affect themselves but the greater multitude who stand in greatest need of help and whose souls are not less precious nor redeemed with a lesser price than the souls of the greatest Scholars and Sages of this world Indeed much judgment and and circumspection is here called for that all rudeness and homeliness of expression all curiosity levity and loathsom affectation and all manner of undecency be avoided and that what is comely and congruous and apt to convince and move be used and that nothing be overstrained And in this matter self-distrust if not too excessive will do better than Self-confidence and conceitedness Here it should be considered that very worthy men may have some indecencies in voice and gesture which they cannot well remedy and others who are very usefull and whose Service in Gods Church could not be well spared may be liable to some lesser mistakes and incongruities in expression which critical hearers may discern yet they hinder not the efficacy of the word And withall let it be considered whose work they do that aggravate such weaknesses to make sport for themselves and others to the contempt of Gods ordinance And for them that pour out scorn upon the most Pious Serious Solid and profitable kind of Preaching and make ridiculous representations of it to the world because it suits not their seeming wisdom I am rather inclined to lament their folly then to emulate their Wit or envy their Applause with some men We read that the wise Preacher sought out acceptable words that is words pleasing to edification that would reach home and were piercing as goads and nails The Preachers inward feeling of what he speaks hath a secret force to cause his words to be felt by others and what comes from the heart is aptest to go to the heart by a Sympathy in the Spirits of men And that any should speak of Seeing and Feeling in some sort the things that are written in Gods word will not seem strange to them who have tasted that the Lord is gracious The powerfull dispensing of the word depends chiefly on the assistance of the Holy Spirit though both natural and acquired parts and the industrious exercise thereof be likewise necessary For which cause the spiritual man hath unspeakable advantage of the meerly natural man in this Service The special presence of the Spirit with him and the grace of God in him causeth him to speak in a strain more apposite and sutable to the forming of the new creature Yea such illumination and conviction and tast of heavenly things as proceeds from a more common or less than regenerating grace will do more in this business with less abilities of art and nature than far greater abilities in those kinds can do by themselves alone The common Sense of the faithfull is a witness to the truth hereof And it must needs be so that he who hath some savour of the things of God should speak more Savorily of them then he can to whom they are tastless or unsavory Wherefore there is a Spiritual kind of preaching not indeed opposite to rational nor taken so to be by any that talk of it with understanding though the Assertors of it have been abusively personated as holding such a dotage They do not say that the Spirit shews any thing about the sense of Scripture or divine matters which is
not consonant to right reason or that whatsoever is darted into their mind is to be taken for an irradiation from the Holy Ghost or that any may presume upon the Spirits immediate help in the neglect of rational search and Study But their meaning is that as heretofore in extraordinary persons there were extraordinary inspirations so there have been are and always shall be the ordinary teachings and inspirations of the Spirit in regard whereof it is stiled in Scripture the Spirit of wisdom and revelation which teaching as all the Faithfull stand in need of so more especially the Ministers of the Gospel and that this divine assistance doth elevate or heighten the gifts of nature and learning and guides us to sound reasoning yea and sometimes brings things into the mind without previous reasoning yet rational and found to be so upon due Scanning There is no great evidence in reason that St. Pauls demonstration of the Spirit and power is to be restrained to the miraculous confirmation of his Doctrine or any extraordinary gift though that sense be not excluded For the contexture of his discourse in that Chapter sets forth a certain faculty perceptive and expressive of the things of the Spirit of God belonging unto spiritual men as such And they are no Fanaticks that to this day own the more common interpretation of the words namely to Preach from the special help of the illuminating and quickning Spirit with a lively perception and feeling of the things that are delivered But whatsoever the meaning of those words be verily they are besotted with reason that in the pride thereof regard not this illumination from above and scoff at those that look after it To Preach Christ is the matter of this dispensation and to Preach moral duties is not extraneous to the Preaching of Christ but comprized under it Yet it must be acknowledged that morality in its best estate as it is vulgarly taken for temperance and righteousness towards men and other vertues of that rank as proceeding from a meerly natural principle which an Aristotle might describe in his Ethicks is far below Christianity For it is found in many that are alienated from the life of God and lead meerly by the Spirit of this world But this name may be given to some higher thing as first to the whole observation of Gods moral law founded in our Creation and that not only in the outward work after a common manner performable by the unregenerate but in a duemannerfrom a right principle to a right end that is from the love of God unto his glory And in this sense we acknowledge that it is a great part but not the whole of the Christian Religion nor indeed the whole of morality taken not vulgarly but Theologically and that in its full extent For so taken it is no other then the conformity of our minds and actions to God and his laws and faith in Christ is a main part thereof Indeed to preach Christ is to preach the whole Duty of man and more especially those duties that are consequent to and founded in our redemption as also to set forth the whole mystery of the Gospel which is the ground and reason of our duty For God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself and accordingly hath ordained the Ministery of reconciliation by which there is made known the lapsed and lost estate of mankind the abundant grace of God in Christ for their recovery remission of sins and free justification through his righteousness regeneration and inward sanctification the inhabitation of the spirit in believers and their mystical union with Christ their living by the faith of him and deriving of spiritual life and strength from him and growing up into him till they be filled with all the fulness of God in him their spiritual warfare and conflicts between the flesh and spirit within them their temptations desertions and renewed consolations and the earnest and sealing of the Holy Spirit given unto them Surely these are fit Subjects to behand led by a Gospel Preacher though the Preaching of these matters or of many of them is by some called Canting and phrase Divinity yet they are the Sacred expressions of the Holy Ghost in Scripture And dare any say they are but a sound of words without matter agreeable to the Stile No they are real and deep mysteries and intelligible to them that obey the truth It is heartily here asserted and earnestly contended for that the Gospel calls us as much to vertue as to glory and that its true intent is to reduce us to a holy life yet withall the Counsel of God therein is to set forth the glory of his free grace the all-fulness of Jesus Christ and the mighty working of his Spirit and the wonderfulness of Salvation through him to the intent that we might glory not in our selves but in him who of God is made unto us Wisdom Righteousness Sanctification and Redemption And indeed who do more powerfully and successfully preach Christian duty than they that most insist on this unspeakable grace and lay open the treasures thereof The love of Christ is so to be spoken of as to beget in us a love towards him not imaginary and conceited but real and substantial made good by an intire subjection to him And therefore the Doctrines of free grace and of good works are to be sounding together in our Pulpits What Christ hath done for us is not to save us the pains of a continual mortification and of the agony to be endured therein and of aspiring to the most perfect state of holiness that is attainable We are to live as strictly as if we were to be saved by the perfection of our own obedience And indeed none lead more holy lives than they that desire to be found in Christ and when they have done all that they can rely wholly upon the mercy of God in him It is most true that Gospel mysteries do not lie in meer Phrases nor is new matter always brought with new forms of speech nor are people much the wiser by having their heads filled with them There are empty sounds and terms unintelligible swelling words with windy notions expressions that seem to draw deep whose meaning is but shallow There is a sollicitous stating of points with a seeming exactness that is indeed weak and injudicious and a niceness in distinguishing which is but frivolous Many controversies much agitated are but a strife of words and too great stress is often laid upon little fancies And a greater mischief there is that in cloudy language pernicious doctrines take shelter and dangerous Sects are known to hide themselves in this covert And therefore he that doth his work rightly will know the true significancy and import of what he utters He vents not meer words but sound matter and good substance for the souls of men are fed with solid sense and not with phrases Howbeit as touching expressions there is a certain
spread forth in such fulness and plainess of speech as will not be unacceptable even to Scholars that are not wise in their own conceit But the careless and confused speaking of incoherent and undigested matter rudeness or baldness of expression is no part of this commended plainness which is orderly comely and weighty agreeable to the Majesty of Gods word A true Preacher of the Gospel rightly divides the word of truth and gives to all their portion He doth not make distinction where the rule of faith makes no difference nor doth he confound things that ought to be distinguished He is not partial towards parties for interest or affection And so he doth not promiscuously justifie or condemn the evil and the good together on any side but as he accounts it an odious thing to rail upon one party in the ambiguous terms of false Church false Worship false Ministry Idolatry Superstition Formality so he accounts it no less odious confusedly to inveigh against those of an other persuasion under the no less ambiguous terms as they are now commonly used of Hypocrites Pharisees Fanaticks Enthusiasts Separatists Humorists and such like He is constant in Preaching the word instant in season and out of season For in Preaching frequently he doth not do the work of the Lord negligently but duely feeds the flock and that with better prepared food than they use to bring that Preach but seldom upon pretence of greater preparation He watcheth over the flock with diligence and naturally cares for their estate for he knows the worth of precious souls He condescends to persons of low degree and is concerned for the souls of the poor and simple and illiterate as well as of the noble rich and learned for he knows their Redeemer paid alike dear for both And however the proud and covetous judge he doth not think it below him to intermeddle for the reducing of the simple that go astray and he seeks to recover them with gentleness and patience for he prefers the gaining of one Soul before all the preferments of this world He earnestly looks after that which some do little regard to wit the Seal of his Ministery in the saving efficacy thereof on the hearers and when he finds it he makes it the crown of his rejoycing And this Seal he takes not to be their meer owning of Sound doctrine or following an Orthodox party much less their abounding in notions their talking and outward Guarb of profession but their new birth or their Spiritual growth the promoting whereof is the scope of his labours and the dayly travell of his Soul CHAP. V. The due performance of Publick Prayer PRayer being a main part of Gods worship and chief act of devotion and such as doth accompany and Sanctifie every other Religious duty and the publick management thereof pertaining to the work of the Ministry its due performance must needs be of no small import to the increase of true Piety and no small part of the Ministerial excellency and sufficiency Among Spiritual gifts I doubt not to number the gift of Prayer also and I judge they speak too low of it that make it only a natural gift or acquired by practice and imitation Much indeed may lie in natural parts and observation and exercise but not all for over and above these things the Spirit of Christ presiding perpetually over his Church sets in and by a secret influence on men designed of God for this service indues them with a peculiar aptness of knowledge and utterance as well in Prayer as Preaching for the edifying of the Church And some unsanctified persons being thus gifted may preach and pray with a notable tendency to the saving of others when themselves prove cast-aways Private Christians also according to their measure are partakers of this gift in much diversity of degrees God giving to every man severally as he will Besides this there is a special and saving gift the Spirit of Prayer and Praying in the Holy Ghost or by his gracious assistance in a holy manner according to the will of God which is indeed lively and powerfull and apt to kindle a holy fervour in them that joyn in the service so performed And why that which is performed in such a manner and by such assistance may not be called a praying by the Spirit I see no reason They who thankfully acknowledge and bless God for so great a gift of his grace do not intend thereby a miraculous inspiration or an absolute infallible guidance of the Holy Ghost Much less do they think that their prayers are such dictates of the Spirit as would infer that the very matter and wordâ— thereof being written would become Canonical Scripture to which is requisite not only an infallible Spirit but also an attestation thereof by the same Spirit sufficient to convince others But this they maintain that the Spirit helps them against their indisposedness of mind and deadness of heart and manifold infirmities and strengthens their faculties and quickens their graces and enlarges their desires and elevates their souls and brings things to their remembrace specially the divine promises yea and in some particulars may guide the heart and tongue by a present immediate suggestion For why must the Spirit of God be thought to do less in exciting to good then the Devill ordinarily doth in prompting to evil And yet they are not to depend on the Spirits immediate suggestion for matter words and method without taking care or thought before hand It is an ordinary and not miraculous assistance which they expect and which is usually given according to mens preparations and suted to their several capacities The Spirit of Prayer is not confined to this or that exterior frame or order of Prayer but is ever found there where the heart hath a due sense of the matter A particular form whether stinted or not stinted is not of the essence of Prayer but only its outward shape and it pertains to it not as it is a Sacred thing but as an action in general and for that no action can possibly be performed but in some particular mode this holy action cannot otherwise be performed And whereas there are divers modes thereof they may be used as they are congruous to the substance of the duty according to mens choice and judgment unless they were as indeed they are not bound up to one by a divine determination The lawfulness of Set-Forms is further evinced from the Lords Prayer and other forms in Scripture and as much is owned by the general custom of singing Davids Psalms Wherefore to turn the back upon the publick Prayers of the Church meerly because performed in this manner is unwarrantable And there is aâ— little warrant to restrain all publick Prayer to a stinted Liturgy and leave no liberty at all to the Ministers godly zeal and prudence In this particular the interest of true godliness will be much better advanced by moderation than by contests and rigor on
either hand For it is very discernable that the Antipathy against either way is mainly caused by the animosity and mutual opposition between the parties of different persuasions and inclinations in this matter They are too weak and ill-advised at least if not humorous and self-conceited that reject all Sett-Forms and on the other hand to suppress the gift of Prayer in our selves or others is to sin against the grace of God and to hinder much good The use of a Set-Form without an imperious restraint of Prayer thereto will obviate the objection of Stinting the Spirit which means if there be any thing to the purpose in that Phrase a suppressing or undue restraining of this Spiritual gift against which a caution is here given In our addresses to the great God it concerns us to look well both to thoughts and words that in both he may be Sanctified by us and glorified as God indeed And in our publick addresses to him a more special care must be had that nothing be uttered before him that is unmeet to be offered to his dreadfull Majesty Rude clownish and homely expressions as also quibling jingling and all levity and trifling is very loathsome in Preaching but in Prayer much more Affectation of words curiosity and politeness becomes not the weightiness and awfulness of this duty Yea abruptness obscurity and all incongruity of speaking is to be shunned herein as much as possible and that only is to be used which is plain clear seemly weighty savory and affectionate In like manner all indecency of voice and gesture is to be watched against as an offensive thing and apt to expose the Service to the derision of proud scorners Yet a seasonable elevation of the voice or other apt expression of earnestness is not to be counted rudeness Sometimes a worthy man may not be aware of some uncomeliness in his tone or in the posture of his countenance or some other bodily gesture by reason of the fervour of his Spirit in the duty joyned with inadvertency towards those exterior and lesser things And sometimes an ill habit or custom is not easily broken off These inconveniencies are prevented or redressed by a wariness of disposition and a moderate self-distrust and the actual observation of what is gracefull or uncomely in others Prayer is a holy Converse with God wherein an humble confidence and Son-like freedom of Spirit with him is acceptable yet withall it calls for the greatest prostration of soul and the deepest reverence and Subjection Wherefore humbly to expostulate with God is no sauciness The whole current of the Prayers of Saints in Scripture doth warrant it and that not only now and then in extraordinary cases Indeed our ordinary concerns with God are no less than the safety of our immortal Souls the pardoning of our great and numberless offences the subduing of inveterate corruptions our escaping of many deadly dangers our victory over the adverse world the powerfull presence of his Grace the light of his Countenance as also the interests of his glory and of his Church and people and of the world in general that poor Souls may be delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of his dear Son all which are of the highest moment and of themselves exceeding difficult though to God all things are possible and they all require vehemence and importunity not as if God needed to be moved or stirred up but that we may declare our selves duely affected Howbeit even the best things may be over-done and this over-doing is the marring thereof If in the expostulations of Prayer men shall utter perverse or frivolous things or speak absurdly daringly or irreverently they are highly culpable and guilty of abusing the most holy things and of contemning the most glorious and fearfull name of the Lord their God Our freedom of access to God and converse with him must not be turned into an irreverent and presumptuous familiarity Those that are guilty of this rashness are worthy of great rebuke But I-know well that the Spirit of Luke-warmness and profaness doth usually cast reproaches and scorns upon that zeal and fervency of Spirit that well becomes the Servants of the Lord and labours to make the most accceptable and profitable kind of Prayer to seem ridiculous It is against reason to think that the Ministers of the present age brought up under such eminent advantage for Ministerial abilities should not be able to speak to God in good and solid sense in an orderly method and in affective grave and seemly language as becomes the Solemnity of Gods Worship Experience will justifie the sufficiency of serious pious and painfull Preachers in general though the captious and curious and such as love to cavil have found fault and despised the profitable endeavours of those whom God hath owned Besides the offences that are committed in this matter proceed more from inadvertency and imprudence than from insufficiency and may be corrected by care and causion and good advice And it is no vanity to suppose such a competency of prudence easily attainable by all those that are competently qualified for this Office Indeed it cannot be expected but that some will be less able and less perfect than others in this performance and that the same persons may not be alike perfect therein at all times nevertheless there is no such want of Security that the Churches service will be well performed if any Prayer be used in the Church besides a prescribed Form For who can doubt but that persons of competent ability and prudence may upon due incouragement be spread throughout a Nation in such an Age of learning and knowledge And to say otherwise were to disparage the Reformed Religion And there is no just cause of doubt but that an able Minister may make use either of a precomposed or of an immediately conceived Form of words Yet in this matter there is great diversity of judgment and affection even unto much prejudice and opposition But the same minds might well be conciliated to both ways if rightly ordered The Question is here supposed to be of the outward mode in which two things are mainly to be regarded to wit that it be reverend and affective Such as are best persuaded of a pre-composed Form and find it expedient for them doubtless may rightly manage it to the edifying of themselves and others For which end they must needs in some parts thereof make use of occasional variation and inlargement though premeditated as minding the more particular requiries of several times and occasions But others by a habit of ready utterance and much exercise are well prepared to pray by the immediate conceptions of their mind in proper and decent words and can do it without any straining of invention and with much freedom of Spirit No more is here spoken that what impartial men will grant And why should any forbid them that are thus qualified to use their gift But if any should be
rash with their mouths and hasty to utter any thing before God that is unmeet they are subject to the discipline of the Church to be censured for their errour Moreover heightened affections inlarge the heart and open the mouth and do not make a man at a stand for want of words Indeed astonishing affection or an extasie of Spirit may put one to such a stand but that rarely takes hold of any in a pubick performance But a calm admiration and reverence of God and seriousness and earnestness of address to him doth not hinder but further apâ—expressions For the use of one constant Form it hath been pleaded that a stranger may thereby the better know how we Worship God and that the people better understand and remember that to which they are continually used But on the other hand variety and newness of matter and words are more apt to quicken the affection and perfect the understanding also especially of the attentive whenas under the constant rehersal of one thing the faculties grow flat and dull Besides in the use of this liberty and variety the Prayer being ordinarily the same for substance in the main the vulgar apprehension and memory is help'd by the sameness of the main substance and scope and the affections are raised and the understanding further edified by that which is new in the frame and method and particular matter and the peoples more particular variable concernments are provided for by a more peculiar accommodation and respect thereto as occasions vary And by the received doctrine of Faith a stranger may be sufficiently ascertain'd of the substance of the Worship to be celebrated For a Doctrine of a Church governs its Worship and it is well known that one the same tenor thereof will pass through the several congregations of a nation that are not confined to a stinted Form yet combined in the same faith and order And when all is said that management and performance of this Service is the best that is most effectual to make the Comers thereunto more perfect in knowledge more devout and zealous towards God more pious and blameless in their conversation and every way more perfect in the divine life and it will be so acknowledged by them that are discerning and serious in the things of God But to conciliate the minds of men diversly affected in this matter and to prevent the inconveniencies and to obtain the good of either way a prescribed Form and a free Prayer will do best together in reference to the Churches peace and edification CHAP. VI. The right Administration of Ecclesiastical discipline THe Ministers of Christ and Stewards of the mysteries of God are Pastors of the Church and Pastoral authority includes both teaching and ruling and implies the peoples subjection in the Lord to their Doctrine and discipline To bereave the Church of discipline is to leave it unfurnished of that means which is necessary to the preservation of all orderly Socities of mankind It is to turn the Garden of the Lord by plucking up the fence thereof into a Common or Wilderness The power intrinsecal to this Office is not secular and coercive by temporal penalties but purely Spiritual which is in the name of Christ and by authority from him the chief Pastor to watch over the Flock to encourage them that live conformably to the Gospel by the consolations thereof and to warn them that walk disorderly and if any continue obstinate therein to declare them unworthy of Church-Communion and Christian converse and to require the faithful to have no fellowship with them to the intent that they may be humbled and reformed As the Discipline of all Societies is to be regulated by their true interest and and chief scope so is this of the Church of God Now the Christian Church looks mainly to the honour of Christ and the glory of Gods grace in him and to the Salvation of men for which ends it was ordained And consequently its true interest lies in the conservation and augmentation of true Christianity or the power of godliness but that Church interest which is elsewhere fixed and levelled to an other mark appertains to a carnal and worldly State set up in the room and pretence of this Spiritual Society The Churches true and proper excellency lies not in worldly splendor opulency and power nor in outward rites and formal unity nor in the stability and amplitude of a meer external State but in the inward light and life in the unfained faith and love in the purity and Spiritual unity of believers and in the security and advancement of this internal State and of the external State in order to the internal Wherefore the right end of discipline is not to promote temporal glory and opinions and formalities thereunto subservient but the Apostolick faith and worship and the regeneration of the professors thereof and their sincere devotion Godly unity Sobriety Righteousness Brotherly-kindness and common Charity and all the vital parts of Christianity and to keep and cast out Heresie Superstition Profaness Unrighteousness and all wicked error and practice that tends to frustrate the designs of Christs Gospel as also to prevent and remedy the causless tearing and renting of Churches and those alienations and animosities among Christians that proceed only from the wills and lusts of men And the management hereof to this right end is of far greater consequence than any scrupulosity or preciseness about its external form and order Nay if an external order could be proved to be primitive and Apostolical and were perverted and abused to inforce corrupt doctrines scandalous and insnaring inventions and impositions and in a Ceremonial strictness to indulge real profaness and discourage true Godliness it were no other then the mystery of a carnal state under a Spiritual name having a form of godliness but denying and suppressing the power thereof The right end of Discipline being such as hath been declared it follows that its proper work is to incourage Godliness and to disgrace open sin Accordingly being rightly managed it admonisheth the unruly casts out the obstinate and restores the penitent About these things it is active watchfull and vigorous What severity it hath it exerciseth in correcting real scandals and gross breaches of Gods Law and in maintaining the Churches peace against those that cause divisions and offences contrary to the Doctrine which we have received that is the Doctrine of Christ and his Apostles But it careth little for those matters wherein the life and power of Religion and the Churches peace and edification is unconcerned Much less doth it seek to quench godly zeal and to hinder the necessary means of the increase of true godliness or to afflict peaceable and pious Christians by any needless rigors CHAP. VII Religious Family-government IN the time of the Law the solemn Dedication of houses was in use the Solemnity expressing that holy exercises should be performed in it and that the houshold should be
knowest not whether shall prosper this or that or whether they shall be alike good Whatsoever scornfull or careless Men conceit hereof the Divine Wisdom hath made it praise-worthy and precious The tongue of the just is as choice silver and the lips of the righteous feed many And to good Hearts this Practice will not be burdensom for they will recreate their Minds herewith as an holy divertisement and serious Pastime while others spend their leasure in that mirth and laughter which the Wise Man calls madness CHAP. IX The Prevalence of Religion or real Godliness in the Civil Government of a Nation IN Christian States and Kingdoms Religion being Gods interest ought to have the preeminence in all things And its Preeminence is no incroachment upon the Rights of the Higher Powers but their Establishment God alone hath an underived and unlimited Empire over Man his creature The People are primarily Gods Subjects and then are subject to Princes as to his Vicegerents and obedience to him is the grand interest both of Prince and People None can doubt that God hath made his own Glory and mans Salvation the supreme ends of government and subjection And consequently that is the best Policy which gives these ends the highest place and makes temporal advantages and the wellfare of the outward Man subordinate thereunto And this requires that the Constitution give the highest regards to Gods Laws and maintain their Authority and that the whole publick Administration tend to the promoting of Righteousness and true Holiness and to the suppressing of all unrighteous and impious Practice As it is the Church's duty and honour to teach and command her Children to do whatsoever Christ hath commanded so it is the proper work and chiefest glory of the Magistrate who is Gods Minister to defend the Faith and uphold the Ordinances of the Gospel and to further the most lively and powerfull Dispensation of them and to incourage and command obedience to the Divine Law written in Nature or Scripture In subserviency hereunto his Power is to determine such things as are requisit in general but in particular are left undetermined of God and therefore called indifferent and are to be ordered by human Prudence according to the general Rules of Gods word And for these ends the chief Magistrate hath a Supremacy in all causes and over all persons Civil and Ecclesiastical But it is no diminution of his Authority to remove from it things unnecessary unprofitablē and offensive in their use and for their doubtfull nature apt to perplex the Subjects conscience And he is the general Bishop of his Dominions in a political sense without any incroachment upon that Authority wherewith Christ the King of the Church hath invested spiritual Pastors As he is such an Officer it is worthy of his chiefest care to provide and send forth able and faithfull Dispensers of the Word that may teach the People the good knowledge of God after the example of the good King Jehoshaphat and to see that every one who hath the Cure of Souls be resident with his Flock and constantly instruct them by preaching the Word and Catechizing them in the Principles of Religion and not to suffer Pluralists to seise upon several Congregations as a prey to fleece but not to feed them to incourage laborious Ministers that watch for the Peoples Souls as those that must give an account and strictly to injoyn the Sanctification of the Lords Day which was sanctified to the publick Worship of God by the Apostles of our Lord who were guided by an infallible Spirit in setling this as all other Ordinances pertaining to Christs Kingdom and was observed by the Apostolick Churches and so hath continued in all Ages and in all places of Christianity and is conveyed down to us by as unquestionable Tradition as the Scripture it self It is not of little moment to suppress or at least to bring into disgrace whatsoever customs serve for nought but to feed inordinate Sensuality and to make those that use them profane vicious and licentious There are frequented shews and pastimes well known that increase unto all ungodliness and may be called the Devils ordinances Those that wish well to Piety have an ill part to act when they take upon them to defend some exercises from which an extreem abuse is inseperable and which are made a trade of gain arising from the impurity and profaness of them and therefore are incorrigible and can admit no reformation The Piety of any Nation is not to be measured by formalities and opinions and uniformity in little things but by substantial Devotion by solid zeal in the weighty matters of the Law and main concerns of Religion by righteousness of life by sobriety purity modesty by peace and concord with mutual forbearance in those differences that should not and need not make breaches among Brethren by dutifulness in all relations by industry frugality and by abounding Charity that is full of good Works Happy is that State where religious influence is predominant where the pious and prudent bear sway not by intrusion but by lawfull Admission also where it ariseth to that strength as to carry along with it the affection and interest of a Nation not by setting up the Faction of a few but by making the generality or at least the greater number of considerable men some of them truly regenerate Christians and the rest orderly and well affected One would think it were out of question that it were more desirable that Religiousness should be in fashion than open dissoluteness and profaness For uncontrolled profaness will run down all Religion But when those that reach not the Power of Godliness indeed come so far as to take up an outward garb thereof it is a great external advantage to true Religion and shews its prevalent Influence on the publick State If any should demur upon this Assertion by making it a question whether Phariseim or Profaness be the worser evil let him know first that profane and dissolute Christians are notorious Hypocrites for professing to know God when in works they deny him Besides Phariseism is not simple insincerity but a compound hypocrisie wherein malignity and enmity against the Power of Godliness is the chief ingredient it is a kind of strict externalness that seeks to destroy the inward life and spirit of that Religion which it pretends to own I have no list to say that such malignity is less mischievous than filthy lewdness or debauchery But the garb of strict Profession here mentioned is of another nature and serviceable to the Churches good though we must continually and strictly charge all Men to beware of resting in it to the ruine of their own Souls CHAP. X. Christian Unity and Concord ALl faithfull Christians are Members of one mystical Body having all one Spirit one Lord and Head one Faith one Baptism and one God and Father of them all one Hope of their Calling and one Heaven to receive them all
Doctrine depraves the mind and begets a false notion of Godliness or Christianity when Regeneration or true Conversion is prevented by being made in effect no more than Civility joyned with a dead conformity to the exterior part of the Christian Institution when Religion is placed in an outside Pharisaical Holiness in some bodily severity and it may be in meer forms and empty shews without internal and real Mortification and Devotion when the exterior Ordinances of the Gospel are retained but used after another manner than what becomes the Gospel-Church or sutes the ends of Gospel-Worship when a sapless and fruitless Generation of Men are nourished in holy Orders who cherish the People in ignorance profaness or lukewarmness who shew them a way to Heaven that is smooth broad and easie to the Flesh who serve or at least spare the lusts of Men who humour the vulgar Sort in rude follies who give absolution upon formal and loose terms and therewith a false repose to poor deluded Souls when the great interest of Churchmen is to promote Superstition blind Devotion and implicit Faith and to hold People in the chains of spiritual darkness and in the pleasing bondage of carnal liberty their Consciences being in the mean time secured by the belief of certain Tenents and Articles of Religion and the devout Observance of certain external Ordinances When the Policy of the Church is contrived to maintain fleshly ease and pleasure worldly pomp and power and the chiefest glory of the Ecclesiastical State lies in outward order without inward life and spirit in sacred Administration When the weapons of its warfare are not spiritual but carnal sutable to an earthly and sensual State When submission to the wills of Masters upon Earth is called obedience and their peaceable possession of Wealth and Honor is taken for the Churches Peace When concord in the unprofitable or hurtfull dictates of Men is made to pass for the unity of the Spirit When the Constitution it self the general corruption of Mankind being considered is found defective for the true end of Government and le ts loose the rains of depraved Appetite and by carnal Allurements alienates the mind from the things of the Spirit of God and turns it after the pomps and vanities of the World and serves the voluptuosness covetousness and pride of its adherents for which cause its yoke is easie to the sensual part of men but it is scandalous to them that know the truth and becomes a Stepmother to the most serious and conscientious when these and the like things prevail the Christian Religion is turned into another thing than what it is indeed by men of corrupt minds who serve their own lusts and by the wisdom that descends not from above but is Earthly Sensual Devilish square out to themselves and those that live under their influence a loose Form of Christianity not after Christ but after the course of this world But this corruption is more or less enormous in different Ages and Countries according to its greater or nearer distance from the times and means of purer knowledge And a less corrupt state may be severed from that which is more grosly vicious and impure and yet remain a degeneration in the same kind though in a lower degree And let this be noted that in a degenerate state the doctrines and institutions of Christ may be so far retained as to contain things absolutely necessary to Christian faith and life which may beget and preserve the vitals of Christianity in them that do not mingle with the other poisonous ingredients or at least not in their full extent Yea the Degeneration may happen to be in a lower degree and less pernicious and perhaps only as a Scab upon some part and not overspreading the whole Body of the Church and great multitudes therein may profess and practice the truth as it is in Jesus Thus the Judaical Church in its corrupt state retained the vitals of true Religion which were a sufficient means of grace to them that escaped the pollutions of those times and were not seasoned with the leaven of false Teachers CHAP. XIII The Sectarian and Fanatical Degeneration THe other deviation lies more out of the common rode of the generality of carnal Gospellers and this is usually stiled Sectarian whereof the particular by paths are numberless But let this be noted that whatsoever way swerves from the main ends of Religion and the great design of the Gospel is no other than a Sect or Faction yea though it spread so far and wide as that they who walk therein do for their huge multitudes presume to appropriate to themselves alone the Title of the Catholick Church Wherever the interest of a Party bears sway to the detriment of the universal Church and the common cause of Godliness where inventions false or useless are made the necessary Symbols of Religion there a Sectarian interest bears Sway and the gaining of the Secular power will not wipe off the blot of such a Party The name of Sectaries may fit proud usurpers as well as blind zealots This necessary proviso being made it remains to speak in this place of the more incoherent unstable and ungovernable sort of Sects The root of the evil in this kind is commonly a heightened fancy and complexional Zeal bearing Rule instead of Sober judgment and a more intellectual Spiritual and pure love It shall suffice to set down some notable instances for it were endless to recount them all Some have been so far transported with the hatred of Church Tyranny and persecuting Pride and cruelty that they mind not the good of Church unity order and government and they run so far from implicit faith in the dictates of proud men that themselves have proudly slighted the Churches directive judgment and all Pastoral Authority as a thing of no value and have fiercely impugned it as opposite to Christian liberty Of the like strain are they that upon pretence of higher attainments and greater Spirituality have rejected external ordinances as the dispensation of the Word and Sacraments and the publick Ministery and Ecclesiastical discipline as low and beggarly rudiments while they declare themselves hereby to be carnal and vainly puffed up in their fleshly minds Some through abuse and mistake of Divine promises concerning the Spirits Teaching have forsaken the sure guidance of Gods Law and betaken themselves to the uncertain intimations of Providence and the dangerous impulses of their own Spirits and pretended immediate inspirations which are for the most part the delusions of an exalted Fancy and sometimes they have really fallen under Satanical impressions Because there is the fleshly wisdom of the carnal mind that is enmity against God some have disclaimed reason it self as corrupt and carnal and in the mean while follow their own wilfull imagination under the pretence of the Light within them and delight in things irrational and unintelligible and render themselves uncapable of sound instruction A Fanatick fury
hath hurried some under pretence of erecting the fift Monarchy to rend and tear Kingdoms and Nations to attempt the dissolving of all Government in Church and State which is indeed the most ready way to subvert Gods Kingdom by the subversion of Christian Magistracy and Ministery and to dispossess the Gospel of the Territories it hath gained Some have proceeded so far in the pretended Reign of the Spirit as to abrogate the external Frame of the Christian Religion and to turn the Gospel History into mystical Allegories yet such as might be conceived and shaped in a vulgar fancy and are low and despicable things in comparison of the great mystery of Godliness according to the Historical sense of Scripture And which is yet worse some have been so gross as to turn into an Allegory the great hope of our Christian calling even the Resurrection of the dead and the life of the World to come and so pervert the mysteries of the Gospel into a mysterious Infidelity and Apostacy from Jesus Christ. Yea some perverting the high expressions of fellowship with God and dwelling in God and being made partakers of the Divine nature and the like have impiously talked of their begodded condition and blasphemously intituled the most High and Holy One to their abominable extravagancies and impurities And besides all these some are perpetual Seekers having no fixed belief in the most important points Persons so far inlightened as not to see the necessity of a higher way than the common dead formality and having some tast of Spiritual things and thereby raised above the general indifferency and Luke-warmness unto a kind of strictness seriousness and fervour of Spirit in Religion yet falling short of true Conversion and especially if they be well conceited of their own gifts and parts and seeming graces are apt to be carried away with a full gale of fancy into the gulf of these delusions And a tincture of this contagion though in a lower degree may sease on some who stand in the true grace of God being deceived by a shew of purity and Spirituality and peradventure lying under the disadvantage of some insnaring occasions which work upon the remainder of pride levity curiosity and other corruptions which the present imperfect State leaves in the hearts of real Christians And some of these may sooner fall into absurd opinions than many that receive not the truth in love who may easily abide among the Orthodox either because they do not concern themselves in Religious inquiries or because they are held by worldly advantages which stand on truths side The fancy is sooner filled with notions and the affections thereby raised than the judgment is well informed and the heart established in grace Hence proceed a sickliness in the Souls appetite a satiety of plain Saving truths and of sound wholsom Preaching a desire of novelty Self-conceitedness pragmatical confidence rash censures partiality in hearing the Word a lessening of the Pastoral Authority incroachments upon the Pastors Office dividing principles and practices and innumerable inconveniences Moreover well meaning People associated in a stricter profession are apt to be sequacious of some leading persons among them and some will follow the rest for company And the high pretensions and heightened confidence of Enthusiasts is a kind of Enchantment to bewitch those that unwarrantably approach to near them especially such as are predisposed by temper or complexion towards Enthusiasm In these things men forsake the Law and the Testimony to walk by false Lights and to follow blind Guides The Holy Ghost bids us trie the Spirits and hath given us an infallible rule of Tryal and leaves us not to any unaccountable impulse or impression The whole Tenor of Evangelical Doctrine shews that the Christian Spirit is both pure and peaceable that it doth not divide break and scatter a Christian people but unites heals and settles them that it doth not overturn Churches and civil States nor inflame Rulers against subjects nor subjects against Rulers nor dissolve Magistracy and Ministery but that it turns the hearts of the Fathers to the Children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the Just and conciliates the minds of Magistrates and Ministers and People of all degrees in righteousness and peace which is the right and sure way of erecting Gods Kingdom It doth not cancel reason but maintain its interest in Religion as being under the power of God and the great prop and proof of the Christian Faith It is a Spirit of judgment and soberness and suppresseth the wild Dominion of the unruly imagination It doth not turn men from humanity and civil behaviour unto a surly and cynical pride and Fanatick melancholy and austerity but it disposeth them to all the duties of human life and civil Converse But there must be Heresies and it is impossible but that offences should come Where the light of the Gospel is broken forth Sectarianism and Fanaticism is the Devils After-Game So it sprung up in Germany upon the birth of Protestantism so it sprung up in the Primitive Church upon the birth of Christianity in the Gnosticks and such like Sectaries and so it continues in our times These irregularities and extravagancies are a great dammage and reproach to a serious zealous and strict profession and it is a stone of stumbling before many Nevertheless the greatest and most dangerous Degeneration from the Sound state of Religion lies not this way The conceptions and motions of Fanaticism having a kind of Spiritual strain though in a delusion take not with the greater number whether of high or low degree the learned or unlearned sort And in case it seases on a greater multitude it may trouble and unsettle a State but it can never settle it self and if it domineer a while its Tyranny cannot hold because it hath no foundation and it can never obtain to be a national Religion because it is inconsistent with the stability of civil Government It s greatest mischief to a State is that it may serve the designs of others to work out a more lasting misery For which cause the Romish Emissaries under a vizor have overacted this wild Spirit that by its confusion and Anarchy they might make way to introduce their own Tyranny But the more extensive dangerous and lasting depravation of Christianity lies on the same side with Popery which is formidable indeed being founded in power and policy and suted to worldly interests and to which mens innate propensions do generally more incline them For that their fancies and affections are inveagled with its outward wealth and glory and their consciences laid a sleep by its loose principles and lifeless forme of devotion CHAP. XIV The way of preserving Religion uncorrupt THe truth and purity of Religion lies in its conformity to its rule which is Gods revealed will or law and its deviation from it is its depravation From this rule men are easily drawn aside being inticed by their own vain imaginations perverse inclinations
Men stupid and foolish that they may the better Lord it over them as besotted Vassals It cannot invite or ingage any to its Side by â—arnal allurements and provisions made for â—he lusts of Men. The making of such Provisions would extinguish its life and power and bring forth a spurious carnal Brood that always with deadly hatred pursues its true Proâ—essors It cannot lift up it self by serving the deâ—â—gns and lusts of earthly Potentates though it â—ives them their due honour to the full yet it â—empts them not by flattery to think of themselves above what they are nor doth it proâ—itute its Sacred Rules to patronize any enorâ—ities in their Conversations or political Adâ—inistrations It cannot subdue a People and hold them unâ—er by armed violence and usurpation for his were to subvert it self and undermine its â—wn foundation which is truth meekness and â—â—ghteousness It seeks not by any irregular motions to perâ—rb a settled State though adverse and injurious to it It cannot enter into the recesses 〈◊〉 wicked Policy its principles will not bear 〈◊〉 out in the cunning and close ways of dishonâ—… sty It abhors such ingagements as draw oâ—… necessity of proceeding in unrighteous or daâ—… gerous Counsels and especially such iniquiâ—… as would not pass away in a transient action but would hold up a lasting usurpation or iâ—… jury to its perpetual reproach and repugnanâ—… to it self It neither hath nor in human judgment 〈◊〉 like to have the sufficiency of an arm of Flesâ—… or worldly Puissance for its intrinsick and aâ—… biding strength untill it comes in a more exâ—… tensive power and more ample victory that hath been yet manifested in the World Thâ—… mutable Advantages of certain times and occaâ—… sions are but loose and hollow ground and nâ—… settled foundation for it to build upon It is not furthered by a course of subtilties and of intricate and cloudy projects which be get suspition of evil but by an openess an frankness of dealing in all certainty and clearness For in it self it is clear as the Sun anâ—… regular and certain as the ordinances of Heâ—… ven or the Motions of the Celestial Bodies Whatsoever degree of obliquity or uncertainty happeneth to it is only extrinsical proceeding from Mens corruptions and frailties who neâ—… ther are can be here absolutely exact and perfect in it It rejects the fury of passion bitterness clamours wrath tumult and all outrage In a word it can admit nothing that is inconsistent with intire honesty And it is not weakened by this strictness For Truth is great and powerfull and by a weak and gentle yet sound and solid manifestation of it self it maintains a conquest answerable to its own condition in this present World CHAP. XVIII The Interest of true Religion lies much in its venerable Estimation among Men. A Corrupt state of Religion nourishing Pride and Sensuality and yielding it self managable to the designs of Men after the course of the World is commonly upheld by an arm of Secular power which by ways of its own it can make sure to it self But pure Religion abhorring base compliances and residing in the hitherto lesser number that walk in the narrow way is not so well suted for a settled and continued potency in that kind Wherefore by how much the more it fails of an assurance of worldly Power and Greatness by so much the more it needs the advantage of venerable estimation for its own intrinsick excellence A desire of vain glory and an ambitious catching at the praise of Men is opposite to this interest and destroys the ends thereof But because things that appear not are of the same reason with things that are not in regard of influence upon the minds of Men Christianity should be made appear to be what it is indeed that it is not a meer Idea in the imagination or intellect but a wisdom and power that may be practiced and its glory is displaid in a Life of integrity purity and charity by the brightness of which graces in the primitive Times it became illustrious and was exalted over all the learning and vertue and potency of the Heathen World in such an Age as had all civil disciplines in their perfection and it is never so much indangered as when the sanctity of its Professors is fallen or exposed to scandal Eminent Holiness is after miracles the next great testimony to the truth and is now in the room of Miracles and its influence is very powerfull Wheresoever it is it invigorates others of this Fellowship that are near it and it commands aw and reverence from all Men. T is a great happiness when Persons indued herewith are in proportionable number fixed like stars of the first magnitude throughout the firmament of the Church when there are Men of strong Parts much prudence active spirits firm resolution who are filled with the Holy Spirit inflamed with love to God and devoted to seek the things that are Christs and fitted thereunto by real mortification and self-denial also when Persons of a lower sphere for the perfections of Nature or Learning have attained to a large measure of the primitive Spirit of Faith love meekness brotherly kindness and charity whereby they are made ready to every good work and provoke others thereunto As the eminent piety of some so the approâ—ed piety of the generality of serious Professors imports exceedingly to the reputation and reverence of true Religion The spiritual Man discerneth the excellency of the Divine life and the beauty of Holiness and the natural Man also can discern humility chastity temâ—erance patience charity integrity as things morally good and profitable to Men and by â—…ese things the truth is vindicated and mainâ—…ined To defile the purity of this Professiâ—… is to stain its glory and to stain iâ—s glory is 〈◊〉 render it weak and despicable None thereâ—…re may pass for the allowed Disciples of this â—ay but such as keep themselves pure from 〈◊〉 foul sins of Sensuality and from all palpaâ—… dishonesty Howbeit the lawfull favour â—…d assistance of any others may with due cauâ—… be admitted in its concernments A harmless life if barren and unprofitable is of little value in it self and also of little force to advance any Profession Nay a fruitless life is scandalous and unchristian They are the words of Christ herein is my Father glorified that ye bear much fruit so shall ye be my Disciples The root of such fruitfulness in good works is love out of a pure heart and good conscience and faith unfeigned to which belong those praises that it is the end of the Commandment and the fulfilling of the Law Now because they that walk circumspectly are often censured by the looser Sort to be uncharitable it doth the more concern them really to shew forth the laudible fruits of Charity and to maintain all good works before Men though not to be seen of Men and to hate narrowness of Soul and base selfishness What do ye more
state as a Jewel that hath its greatest lustre by the brightest light is maintain'd by the clearest knowledge In bright times the impostures and carnal designs of devised Doctrines and superstitious vanities will be made manifest and the hypocrisie being detected the Merchandize thereof will be quite marr'd In such times even the vulgar sort will expect from those in sacred Functions at least the appearance of a sober righteous and godly conversation with diligence in holy administrations Then the enemies of real Sanctity are put to hard shifts and forc'd to appear either in some colours of Truth or in the shame of their own nakedness For this cause the Followers of Truth make it their special interest as throughly to promote the most ample diffusion and universal increase of Knowledge among all ranks and sorts of Men as the Adverse partly seek to oppose and debase it We do not hereby mean an intermedling in difficult matters a smattering in controversies and certain curiosities of Opinions a store of unnecessary notions and of meer words and phrases which things are commonly erroneous and at the best but injudicious and puff up the half-witted and self-conceited and make them troublesom to themselves and others But that which is here commended for an universal increase and propagation is to understand the Principles of the Essential Truths of Christianity to see their evidence to judge rightly of their weight and worth and to view their coherence and besides these to know so much of other Truths as the different Capacities of Men will inable them for the bettering of their Knowledge in the Essentials The means of diffusing this Light are well known as the constant Preaching of the Word and the opening of the Principles of Religion in a due form of Cathechism the strict observation of the Lords Day repetition of Sermons â—…ious Conferences reading the Word and Prayer in Families profitable Communication among neighbour-Christians in their daily converse the spreading of practical Books written by Men of sound judgment and Ministers private applications to those of their own Charges with prudence and meekness For the same end that main Principle of Protestanism the judgment of Discretion as â—elonging to all Christians is to be asserted and â—…indicated against that Popish and brutish Doâ—…trine of implicit Faith in the Church's deâ—…rminations This is not to subject matters of â—aith to a private Spirit but to refer them to â—…e divine Authority of the holy Scriptures to â—…e apprehended in the due and right use of â—eason which is a publick and evident thing â—…d lies open to the tryal and judgment of all Men. And to Men of sober minds serious for the saving of their own Souls the Analogy of Faith in the current of Scripture is easily discernable Moreover the general increase of Knowledge lies much in the ingenuous Education and condition of the common People in opposition to sordidness slavery and brutish rudeness Though some look upon the vulgar sort with contempt and seem to value them no more than brute Animals and think it enough that their Governors understand and consider for them and not they for themselves yet Christ hath shed his Blood as much for the redemption of that Sort as of the Noble and Mighty and Prudent and he hath made no difference between the one and the other in the conditions of Salvation and in the priviledges and ordinances of his Kingdom As for the receiving of the Grace of God the Scripture casts the advantage on the poorer and meaner side Not many wise Men after the flesh not many mighty not many noble are called was the observation of St. Paul and St. James witnesseth that God hath chosen the Poor of this world rich in Faith and Heirs of his Kingdom And those whom God hath chosen must needs be instructed in his Will That reasonable service that he requires none can perform without Knowledge Ignorance is opposite to the nature and being of true Christian Piety which is not at all where it is not received with understanding This general increase of Knowledge hath fallen under a great suspicion of evil and it may be under the jealousie of Rulers as disposing Men to Sedition Rebellion Herisie and Schism But how great a reproach is hereby cast upon human Nature or political Government or both that the more rationally apprehensive the Body of a People are they are so much the more ungovernable as if Government could not stand with the proper dignity and felicity of human Nature What manner of civil State is that which degrades the Subjects from Men to Beasts for a more absolute Dominion over them What manner of Christian Church is that which to prevent Heresie and Schism takes order that its Members be no Christians It is an unchristian inhuman policy in Church or State the foundation whereof is laid in the Peoples ignorance As for the true interest of Rulers it is not weakened but strengthened by their Peoples knowledge which in its right and proper tendency makes them more conscientious and however more circumspect and considerate and consequently more easily manageable by a just and prudent Government But gross ignorance tends to make them barbarous and belluine and in their mutinies and discontents uncounsellable and untameable and therefore very incongruous to a State governed by the Principles of Christianity or Humanity CHAP. XX. The advantage of Human Learning to the same end THough Religion rests not on human Learning as its main support yet it seeks and claims the necessary help thereof Those whom God designs for eminent service he indues with eminent gifts either by means or miracle and he gives every intrusted Servant a measure answerable to his degree The Apostles who laid the foundation were wise Master-builders and surely it was not the mind of Christ that Wisdom should die with them when he settled his Church to indure throughout all Ages and promised to be with it to the end of the World It is said indeed that the foolishness of God is wiser than Men and the weakness of God is stronger than Men. But that which is so called is not foolishness and weakness indeed but only so accounted by the pride of carnal Wisdom In this Learned age the Antichristian State in Christendom is forced to advance Learning in its own defence And now without Learning either divinely inspired or acquired by means we cannot defend our selves against it Wherefore to destroy the supports of Learning is the way to subvert Religion Yea though we were not ingaged by such strength of the Adversary to provide for our own defence yet solid human Learning doth of it self notably advance Divine Truth The Learning that was spread over the World in the primitive times of Christianity apparently made way for that sudden and ample spreading of the Gospel And the Reviving thereof after an universal decay no less apparently made way for the breaking forth of this clearer Light of the Gospel
after the long night of Popery Unlearned and barbarous times are noted among the causes of depraving Religion with multiplied Superstitious absurdities and deformities Indeed that great Mystery of Iniquity the Romish Synagogue is favoured by many wise and learned Ones but the interest of great Power and Wealth and other carnal alâ—urements ingage them to uphold that Babel and so to detain the Truth of God in their own â—nrighteousness The Papal Kingdom of darkness hath amply provided for an eminent measure of Learning in their Superior Clergy and certain religious Orders designed for Theological controversies and the propagation of the Roman â—aith being necessitated thereunto by the learnedness of the present Age. But for the vulgar Priests who dayly converse with the common People that are ignorant and unlearned it matters not how little Knowledge they have and the Grandees care not that they should be conversant in learned Books no not in their own Bellarmine As for the Laity t is a Principle in that Church that Ignorance is the mother of Devotion A corrupt Ecclesiastical State upheld for worldly ends hath no reason to desire the advancement of Learning any further than is requisite to defend it selâ— against learned Adversaries and to hold the Vulgar in admiration of it It would havâ— the People wholly to trust their Teachers and it is not well relished when learned Gentle men of the Laity are exact and studious iâ— Theological inquiries The supports and rewards of Learning may be so inordinately apportioned and confeâ—… red as to exalt boundless ambition and avariâ—… in some and to nourish a dronish idleness and Epicurism in others and to cast the residueâ—… and those the greatest number into ignorancâ— beggary baseness and superfluity of naughtâ—… ness Such a disposition of things besides thâ—… ruine of Religion would in the ruines thereâ—… bury Learning it self as it hath done in for mer Ages if the industry of some were nâ—… kept waking by the increase of Knowledge aâ—… mong another sort of Men. But whatsoeveâ— abuse corrupts that which in it self is excellent the supports of Learning are always necessary in the true Church and to settle a way for a perpetual succession of wise and learned Guides of the Flock in this intire and sound state of Religion is to build the same on a Rock The spirit of this Profession being sober solid and serious is happy in disposing towards the attainment of much Perfection in all profitable science and especially towards that which is most excellent and usefull in human affairs to wit solid and deep judgement In this respect the Children of true Wisdom stand upon the vantage ground and the scope of their business directs them to excell in the more substantial part of Learning which perfects reason and falls in with practice and makes them able effectually to converse with Men both in Religious and Civil matters These do not spend their days in a cloyster living to themselves alone but are seasonably called forth to sacred or civil Functions and so by Study in conjunction with practice and experience they become more perfect in Science The same â—ntents and purposes direct them to understand the end and use of their acquisitions and to have their Learning at command and maâ—ageable for present business CHAP. XXI The general civility or common honesty of a Nation makes it more generally receptive of real Christianity or Godliness REligion having considerateness and soberness in its nature hath great advantage by the sober and serious temper of a Nation City or Country where its advancement and propagation is designed Civility is a good preparative to Piety and experience witnesseth that among the serious temperate sort of People and in the most civilized places Religion takes best and that it takes least in those places where debauchery and Sensuality raign in those of the higher rank and a Heathen-like rudeness and stupidity seiseth the common multitude Wherefore that sort of Men whose spirit or interest leads them to uphold a corrupt and carnal Church-state seek to gratifie the most sensual and vicious part of a Nation because they cannot so easily gain the considerate and soberminded who are more inquisitive into the principles and practices of different Parties and look more than others into the inside of mens Devotions A Nation may be generally brought to civil conversation and the external part of Religion For the restraining of filthy lewdness gross excesses and rudeness best comports with the health of the Body the security of the estate and the quietness of the mind Therefore when it is in use it is no burden but an ease even to unregenerate Nature and so may pass generally among a People Likewise natural Men being convinced and awakened will easily observe Religious duties so far as the peace of the natural Conscience doth require The Conversation of the Pious is exemplary and of great authority especially when their strictness and seriousness is tempered with the amiable vertues of Meekness and Moderation By this they may do much towards the civilizing of those that live about them and to conciliate the minds of Men towards them and bring them to good thoughts of Religion But the harshness of some rigid honest Men may exasperate and beget hatred in some whom condescension and sweetness of conversation might have gained or at least molâ—ified Likewise by a discreet and seasonable use of christian liberty in the temperate injoyments of outward comforts in harmless Recreations and sober cheerfulness in honest Company the Religious may bring over others to a friendly converse with them and may be a means to keep them from the more gross and scandalous Pollutions of the world Yet as they ought to shun an excessive reservedness and austerity so they must take heed of too great compliance with others in carnal liberty upon pretence of a friendly converse with them They may not spend their time in recreations fruitless visits merry meetings and the like exercises wherein there is enough of idleness and vanity even when there is nothing of dissoluteness or gross immorallity For by such a trade of life they would lose themselves in a sober kind of Epicurism or Sensuality under a form of Godliness and they would harden others in their loose walking or make them think that Professors are but as other men except in a name and outward Form Wherefore they may be sociable no otherwise than that it may appear they make Religion their business and walk circumspectly and redeem their time from vanity for the serious Duties of their general and particular callings It may be further noted that whatsoever promoteth knowledge among the meaner sort promotes Civility Likewise where a people are generally settled in a way of industry and frugality and those of higher extract or education are bent unto exercises truly noble and worthy that Nation will be disposed to a more considerate and apprehensive habit of mind and to a more
common remisness in this matter is deplorable Sometimes the manner of opposition against Seducers is unadvised and prejudicial To contend for truth by wrath and clamour and contumelious language and usage inhanceth the price of Error and adds to its reputation But the surest way is to converse much with our plain hearted People and to season them with right principles and to detect the subtile methods of deceitfull workers and the dangerous issues of their allurements and by honest and inoffensive applications to prepossess those holds of which deceivers seek to possess themselves And here it is of chief importance that the influence of the Pastors and other prudent and able Persons upon the common multitude of professors be more prevailing than the influence of the common multitude upon the Pastors and other prudent Leaders Servile temporizing with vulgar fancies degrades the Authority and Wisdom of prudent Guides and lifts up a vulgar Spirit and will bring it to that pass that the weakest and most inconsiderate shall sway the Churches Interest Let Persons of approved worth be more faithful and noble than by such servility and treachery to raise to themselves a power in the hearts of the weaker sort Let them rather commend themselves by their known Integrity Wisdom and Goodness and by being ready also in all condescention to serve and please them to their Edification And such faithfulness is the surest means to gain them love and honour Let the Religious beware of seeking to be admired and magnified among one another or of overprizing each others esteem This latter seems to be the cause that drew Peter to a fit of dissimulation and separation from the believing Gentiles while he sought too much to please them that were of the Circumcision Sometimes we know not our own Spirits It is good to beware of provocations like to be given or taken Upon a supposed affront or injury men of parts have been hurried into dangerous contests and to make head against petty passionate opposition they have run beyond their own thoughts and wrought strange confusion Discretion and charity seeks to convince and satisfie and not to exasperate an offended Brother It is well observed that no turbulent Opinion or Party doth usually arise in the Church but by the Church's neglect of some truth or duty Wherefore if an evil spirit seek an occasion of mischief reform the abuse and so prevent his working upon the simple And forasmuch as some of upright hearts being deceived with a fancy of a more sublime and perfect way may pass into the tents of Sectaries so far as conceâ—ns Church Order and external Worship a compassionate regard must be had of such as walk honestly and retain those fundamental Truths that may be a ground-work for saving Faith and godly Life Now towards such the greatest charity is exercised in labouring to remove the stumbling-block of their error and to make it plain before them that the Faithfull whose Communion they forsake contend for the Perfection of holy Scripture and the explicit Knowledge of the doctrine of Salvation and the reasonable service of God according to his Word and spiritual Worship sutable to the Gospel Dispensation and the lively use of holy Ordinances in opposition to unwritten Traditions Mens inventions implicit Faith ignorant devotion and meer formality That they declare by word and deed against the iniquity and impiety of this evil World and therefore the world hates them that they insist upon no forms or usages in Religion but what are commanded by the positive Laws of Christ or are necessary in their general reason by the law of Nature that they seek no worldly advantages or advancements in the Church but what are necessary for the support of the Truth according to Gods ordinary Providence and lastly that human infirmities must not be thought strange in them that have not obtained Angelical perfection These and the like things should be laid open before honest People that have been seduced into Sectarian error CHAP. XXV The advancement of the sound State of Religion by making it National and the settled interest of Nation CHrists little Flock cannot go out of the World nor retire within themselves alone from the Nations of the Earth but they must needs remain a part of Kingdoms Commonwealths with the World in general They must take themselves to be concerned in the civil Powers for the Powers that are will take themselves to be concerned in them and their ways For which cause their aims and actions as far as their Sacred Rule allows must be fitted to the capacity of the civil Government and directed unto the generall peace and quietness of the nation whereof they are in which they enjoy their civil rights By this means religions interest may incorporate with the general interest of a nation run in the same channel That pure Religion may take root and spread and prosper it is necessary to bring its external frame to the consistency of a National settlement The just â—aâ—aude hereof is laid in the doctrine of Faith and substantials of Divine Worship and things necessary to Church unity and order but it goes not beyond these And being fixed in this extent it is in a way to gain besides the support and power of the Law the Nations unstrained compliance and approbation As on the one hand Ecclesiastical tyranny is a root of bitterness always bearing gall and wormwood so on the other hand unfixedness and unlimited liberty consists not with that stability wherein all prudent Governors would settle their own affairs as also with that general tranquillity and repose which is the health of any People If one were raised to empire by a meer Fanatick Party he cannot settle himself nor stand upon firm ground till he wind his interest out of their hands and turn himself to the way of general satisfaction To the same intent and purpose it is of great importance so to fix the terms of Church Communion as not to set a perpetual bar against the main body of the People A Church state so barr'd though it were asserted with a veterane Army and could inclose all preferments both of honor and profit within it self to be at its disposal yet it is hard to see how it could ever obtain a firm establishment For a Christian Nation in general being shut out of the Church or barr'd of such Privileges as are supposed to belong to them as Christians are inraged and likely to be ingaged as one Man to oppose that which they take for intolerable oppression Or if they care not to be admitted they will turn to a contrary interest and Party in Religion or to infidelity Barbarism Atheism or some destructive way or other Now the intention here propounded may take effect if the Constitution shut out none from Sacred and Spiritual Priviledges but such as make not Profession of true Christianity or be destitute of that knowledge which is absolutely necessary to true
time as the present case requires As the Wisdom of a Housholder will direct him how far to bear with faults and weaknesses in his Family so the Magistrate by Wisdom will discern what may be born with in his Common-Wealth so far as is sufficient to the true and just ends of Government CHAP. XXXIII The Churche's true interest to be pursued by Ecclesiastical Persons NOthing is more precious and among Christians nothing should be more valued than the good of Gods Church for it is Christs and Gods great interest in the world but the misery is that the Churches name is abused and its interest mistaken most perversly For none have more pretended for the Church than they whose business is to get and keep worldly pomp and power with carnal ease and pleasure and to make laws and rules serviceable to these ends and to corrupt the minds and debauch the lives of men that they may bring them into blind obedience to such laws and maintain their worldly dominion over Christs heritage and who value all men howsoever qualified as they stand affected to their estate and accordingly stick not to reject the eminently good and to receive the notoriously bad In the Romish Church all this is palpable Now let these be called the Church by them that list to give that name to a state of Pride and Luxury of Tyranny and oppression of carnal and Devilish Policy under which the souls of people are betray'd to everlasting perdition Wherefore those in the Ministery that are sollicitous of the Churches welfare should state the interest thereof aright which indeed is not for the service of the flesh or the carnal mind but for the promoting of the Divine life in men and the increase of the mystical Society of Regenerate Persons united in Christ their Head by his Spirit dwelling in them and in order thereunto for the increase of the visible Society of persons externally owning such an internal State And therefore it is to promote and propagate the sound knowledge of God in Christ and to make the people of their charge really good and to advance them what they can in grace and wisdom according to their several capacities and to deal with them in meekness and love and to walk before them as examples of all purity and goodness and to be more sensible and sollicitous about the corruptions and sinfull disorders than the sufferings of the Church and to be more zealous for Gods honour and the good of Souls than for their own honour wealth or power and in a word to seek the things of Christ more than their own things The Ministers that discharge their Office well are in Scripture declared Worthy of double honour And that they be indowed with honorable settled maintenance is necessary for the support of a Religion that for its excellency requires to be supported by the help of excellent Gifts as Learning Eloquence and Prudence not now to be obtained by Miracles but in the ordinary use of means with much cost and labour And questionless the withdrawing of these supports tends to the Churches ruine nevertheless an inordinate and licentious collation and accumulation of Preferments making for the Service of Covetousness Ambition and depraved appetite and for the decay of Sobriety Vigilancy and Industry in the Pastors is no less dangerous This exorbitancy after the Roman Empire became Christian allured and brought in the men of this World who have their Portion in this life and gave them advantage by carnal arts to possess themselves of the chief Seats of Power in the Church by which means Religion degenerated into externalness and carnality and that which was then named the Church was at length turned into a worldly State which grew more and more corrupt till the mystery of iniquity was fulfilled in it Where Christianity hath recovered it self out of the degeneracy of the later times and knowledge is generally diffused among the people the sufficiency industry and faithfulness of Ecclesiastical persons will be inquired after negligence in their Administrations and irregularities in their lives will not pass without noting the ignorant idle and scandalous will fall into contempt outward Formalities will be no covering as in darker times they were distinctive Habits and Reverend Titles alone will not procure veneration the Ecclesiastical Authority will sink and fall without remedy if real worth doth not uphold it In such times men will not be to learn that an arm of flesh doth not constitute a Christian Church and that the aid of the secular Power is not enough to prove one Party to be Orthodox and the rest Heretical or Schismatical External violence which is the common support of false Religions will in this case do little good but it will render them that call for it the more odious and more discover the weakness of their Cause Wherefore the Clergy must resolve to do Worthily and fulfill their Ministery or they must extinguish the Light of the Gospel or the Light of the Gospel will extinguish them But if as faithfull Shepherds they watch over the Flock and tender the state thereof if they labour in the Word and Doctrine and Teach with meekness and patience if they pitty and succour the weak and heal that which is lame that it may not be turned out of the way if they use the rod of Discipline with judgment and Paternal affection if they discard and lay by mens unprofitable institutes and maintain all Divine ordinances in their due honour and chiefly urge the observance of the indispensable Commands of God and turn men from externalness and make it their chief aim that Christ by his Word and Spirit may Reign in the hearts of Professed Christians then shall they magnifie their Office and establish their Authority and hold their Flocks in an unfeigned Reverence and submission as feeling the force of the Ministerial warfare in their Consciences And the inferior differences shall not be able to cause disgust or aversation or break those strong bonds of the Peoples sincere regard toward their Pastors but they would rather be swallowed up in love which is the bond of Perfectness The Conclusion NO greater thing can fall under the consideration of Mankind than the Security and increase of true Religion The Glory of God among men and their eternal Salvation depends upon it T is as far above the concernments of the Kingdoms of this World and their Politick Administrations all Secular Affairs and Philosophical speculations as the Heavens are high above the Earth An inquiry into the Sound state and true interest thereof is a contemplation worthy of the greatest minds and the advancement of it is the chiefest honour of the highest Powers T is the Royal interest of that Potentate who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords and of that Blessed Society which are incorporated under him their Lord and Head And who that in any degree hath truly known the felicity of this Kingdom and hopes for a
Lot of inheritance in the glory of it doth not value the concerns thereof above all his chief joys that are but of this World A zeal for the common Faith and a constraning love to all the Faithfull hath excited a very mean and weak one to do what he was able on this important Subject impartially searching after their common good Let the Prince of this Society one of whose names is Counsellour deliver his Flock from all dangerous and disadvantageous error and from wandring in broken Parties by unstable and divided Counsels and shew them graciously the right way of maintaining a consistency among themselves and of gaining upon the reconcilable part of men And forasmuch as this Prince and Leader is the Lamb of God whose Banner is Love let his people every where be acted by the Spirit of Love and shew forth the meekness of Wisdom in all good Conversation with Humility Patience and Long-suffering having this Principle deeply imprinted in them The Wrath of Man worketh not the Righteousness of God The point of CHURCH-UNITY AND SCHISM Discuss'd CHAP. I. Of the Church and its Polity THe Church is a Spiritual Common-wealth which according to its primary and invisible State is a Society of regenerate Persons who are joyned to the Lord Christ their Head and one to another as fellow Members by a mystical Union through the Holy Spirit and are justified Sanctified and adopted to the inheritance of Eternal Life but according to its secondary and visible state it is a Society of Persons professing Christianity or Regeration and externally joyned to Christ and to one another by the Symbals of that Profession and made partakers of the external priviledges thereunto belonging There is one Catholick Church which according to the invisible Form is the whole company of true Believers throughout the World and according to its visible Form is the whole company of visible Believers throughout the World or Believers according to human judgment This Church hath one Head and Supream Lord even Christ and one Charter and System of Laws the Word of God and Members that are free Denizons of the whole Society and one Form of Admission or solemn Initiation for its Members and one kind of Ministery and Ecclesiastical Power This Church hath not the power of its own Fundamental Constitution or of the Laws and Officers and Administrations intrinsecally belonging to it but hath received all these from Christ its Head King and Lawgiver and is limited by him in them all Nevertheless it hath according to the capacity of its acting that is according to its several parts a power of making Secondary Laws or Canons either to impress the Laws of Christ upon its Members or to regulate circumstantials and accidentals in Religion by determining things necessary in genere not determined of Christ in specie As the Scripture sets forth one Catholick Church so also many particular Churches as so many Political Societies distinct from each other yet all compacted together as parts of that one ample Society the Catholick Church Each of these particular Churches have their proper Elder or Elders Pastor or Pastors having authority of teaching and ruling them in Christs name An Ecclesiastical Order of Presbyters or Elders that are not Bishops is not found in holy Scripture For all Presbyters or Elders being of a sacred Order in the Gospel Church that are any where mentioned in Scripture are therein set forth as Bishops truly and properly so called and are no where set forth as less than Bishops These Elders or Bishops are Personally to Superintend all their Flock and there is no grant from Christ to discharge the same by Delegates or Substitutes A distinction between Bishops and Presbyters and a Superiority of the former over the latter was after the Scripture times anciently and generally received in the Christian Church Yet it was not a diversity of Orders or Offices essentially different but of degrees in the same Office the essential nature whereof is in both The Bishop of the first Ages was a Bishop not of a multitude of Churches but of one stated Ecclesiastical Society or single Church whereof he was an immediate Pastor and he performed the work of a Bishop or immediate Pastor towards them all in his own Person and not by Delegates and Substitutes and he governed not alone but in conjunction with the Presbyters of his Church he being the President Though several Cities in the same Kingdom have their different municipal Laws and Priviledges according to the diversity of their Charters yet particular Churches have no Divine Laws and Priviledges diverse from each other but the same in common to them all because they have all the same Charter in specie from Christ. Therefore each of them have the same power of Government within themselves And the qualifications requisite to make men Members or Ministers of the Universal Church do according to Christs Law sufficiently qualifie them to be Members or Ministers of any particular Church to which they have a due and orderly call Local presential Communion in Gods Ordinances being a main end of erecting particular Churches they should in all reason consist of Persons who by their cohabitation in a vicinity are capable of such Communion and there may not be a greater local distance of the Persons than can stand with it A Bishops Church was anciently made up of the Christians of a City or Town and the adjacent Villages who might and did Personally meet together both for Worship and Discipline All Christians of the same local Precinct are most conveniently brought into one and the same stated Church that there might be the greatest Union among them and that the occasion of straggling and running into several Parties might be avoided Yet this local partition of Churches is not of absolute necessity and invariable but if there be some insuperable impediment thereof the partition must be made as the state of things will admit No Bishop or Pastor can by Divine right or warrant claim any assigned circuit of Ground as his propriety for Ecclesiastical Government as a Prince claims certain Territories as his propriety for Civil Government so that no other Bishop or Pastor may without his Licence do the work of the Ministery in any case whatsoever within that Circuit It is not the conjunction of a Bishop or Pastor with the generallity or the greater number of the People that of it self declares the only rightfull Pastor or true Church within this or that Circuit For many causes may require and justifie the being of other Churches therein Seeing particular Churches are so many integral parts of the Catholick Church and stand in need of each others help in things that concern them joyntly and severally and they have all an influence on each other the Law of Nature leads them to Associations or Combinations greater and lesser according to their capacities And the orderly state that is requisite in all Associations doth naturally require some regular
Subordination in the several parts thereof either in way of proper authority or of mutual agreement And the Associated Churches and particular Members therein are naturally bound to maintain the orderly state of the whole Association and to comply with the Rules thereof when they are not repugnant to the Word of God A Bishop or Pastor and the People adhering to him are not declared to be the only true Church and Pastor within such a Precinct by their conjunction with the largest Combination of Bishops or Pastors and their Churches For the greater number of Bishops may in such manner err in their Constitutions as to make rightly informed Persons uncapable of their Combination A National Church is not a particular Church properly so called but a Combination or Coagmentation of particular Churches united under one Civil Supream either Personal as in a Monarchy or Collective as in a Republick And the true notion thereof lies not in any Combination purely Ecclesiastical and Intrinsecal but Civil and Extrinsecal as of so many Churches that are collected under one that hath the Civil Supremacy over them The National Church of England truly denotes all the Churches in England united under one Supream Civil Church-Governour the Kings Majesty Civil Magistrates as such are no Constitutive parts of the Church The Christian Church stood for several Centuries without the support of their authority But Supream Magistrates have a Civil Supremacy in all Ecclesiastical matters and a political extrinsecal Episcopacy over all the Pastors of the Churches in their Dominions and may compell them to the performance of their Duties and punish them for negligence and mal-Administration and they may reform the Churches when they stand in need of Reformation The possession of the Tithes and Temples doth not of it self declare the true Pastor and Church nor doth the Privation thereof declare no Pastor and no Church For these are disposed of by the secular power which of it self can neither make nor make void a Pastor or Church A Diocess is a collective body of many Parishes under the Government of one Diocesan If the several Parishes be so many particular Churces and if their proper and immediate Presbyters be of the same order with those which in Scripture are mentioned by that name and were no other than Bishops or Pastors then a Diocess is not a particular Church but a Combination of Churches and the Diocesan is a Bishop of Bishops or a Governour over many Churches and their immediate Bishops If the Parishes be not acknowledged to be Churches nor their Presbyters to be realy Bishops or Pastors but the Diocess be held to be the lowest Political Church and the Diocesan to be a Bishop of the lowest rank and the sole Bishop or Pastor of all the included Parishes I confess I have no knowledge of the Divine right of such a Church or Bishop or of any precept or precedent thereof in Scripture For every particular Church mentioned in Scripture was but one distinct stated Society having its own proper and immediate Bishop or Bishops Elder or Elders Pastor or Pastors who did Personally and immediately Superintend over the whole Flock which ordinarily held either at once together or by turns Personal present Communion with each other in Gods Worship But a Diocess consists of several stated Societies to wit the Parishes which are Constituted severally of a proper and immediate Presbyter or Elder having cure of Souls and commonly called a Rector and the People which are his proper and â—…rge or cure And the People of thâ—… not live under the Personal and inâ—…rsight of their Diocesan but under â—…legates and Substitutes Nor do they oâ—…ly hold Personal present Communion with each other in Gods Worship either at once together or by turns Nevertheless which way soever a Diocess be considered I have nothing to object against submission to the Government of the Diocesan as an Ecclesiastical Officer established by the Law of the Land under the Kings Supremacy There is nothing in the nature of the Office of Presbyterate which according to the Scripture is a Pastoral Office that shewe it ought to be exercised no otherwise than in Subordination to a Diocesan Bishop Christ who is the Author and only proper giver of all Spiritual Authority in the Church hath not so limited the said Office and men cannot by any act of theirs enlarge or lessen it as to its nature or essential state or define it otherwise than it is stated of Christ in his word No power Ecclesiastical or Civil can discharge any Minister of Christ from the exercise of his Ministery in those circumstances wherein Christ commands him to exercise it nor any Christians from those duties of Religion to which the Command of Christ obligeth them As the Magistrate is to judge what Laws touching Religion are fit for him to enact and execute so the Ministers of Christ are to use a judgment of discretion about their own Pastoral acts and all Christians are to do the same about their own acts of Church-Communion The too common abuse of the judgment of discretion cannot abrogate the right use thereof it being so necessary that without it men cannot act as men nor offer to God a reasonable Service CHAP. II. Of true Church-Unity WHen the names of Unity and Schism are by partiality and selfishness commonly and grosly abused and misapplied the nature of the things to which those names do of right belong ought to be diligently inquired into and clearly and distinctly laid open For a groundwork in this inquiry I fix upon two very noted texts of Scripture The one is Eph. 4. 3. Indeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of Peace The other is Rom. 16. 17. Mark them that cause Divisions and Offences contrary to the Doctrine that ye have learned and avoid them The former guides us to the knowledge of true Church-unity and the latter shews us the true nature of Schism By the former of these Texts all Christians are obliged to maintain that Spiritual Unity which they have one with another under Christ their Head by the Holy Ghost in all due acts of holy Communion in Peace and Concord Several important things are here to be taken notice of 1. There is a Spiritual unity between all Christians in the form of one mystical Body as there is a natural unity between all the members of the natural Body The members being many are one body and members one of another 2. This Unity is under Christ as the Head of it What the head is to the natural Body that is Christ and much more to his mystical Body the Church 3. This Unity of Christians one with another under Christ is by the Holy Ghost and therefore called the Unity of the Spirit The Spirit of Christ the Head doth seize upon and reside in all the Faithfull by which they become Christs mystical Body and are joyned one to another as fellow-members 4. This Unity of
own Sphere But forasmuch as the Supream Magistrate is intrusted of God with the care of Religion within his Dominions and hath a Civil Supremacy in Eclesiastical affairs and a great concern in the orderly management of publick Assemblies he is authorized of God to oversee the determinations and actings of Ecclesiastical Persons and may assume to himself the determination of the aforesaid circumstantials for the honour of God the Churches edification and the publick Peace keeping within the general rules prescribed in Gods Word For the maintaining of Church-Unity that is according to Gods word it is the part of Subjects to submit to what their Governours have determined so far as their submission is allowable by the said rule and it is the part of Governours to consider well the warrantableness of their determinations More especially their wisdom and care is much required in settling the right bounds of Unity In this regard the terms of admission to the Communion and Ministery of the Church must be no other than what the declared will of God hath made the terms of those priviledges and which will shut out none whom God hath qualified for and called to the same The setting of other boundaries besides the iniquity thereof will inevitably cause divisions The Apostles Elders and Brethren assembled at Jerusalem Acts 15. 28. writing to the blieving Gentiles declare It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things From which it is evidently inferred that the burden of things unnecessary ought not to be laid on the Churches The things injoyned by that Assembly were antecedently to their Decree either necessary in themselves or in their consequents according to the state of things in those times and places And whatsoever is made the matter of a strict injunction especially a condition of Church Communion and Priviledges ought to have some kind of necessity in it antecedent to its imposition Symbolical Rites or Ceremonies instituted by man to signifie Grace or Duty are none of those things which being necessary in general are left to human determination for this or that kind thereof They have no necessary Subserviency to Divine institutions they are no parts of that necessary decency and order in Divine Worship without which the Service would be undecent And indeed they are not necessary to be instituted or rigidly urged in any time or place whatsoever The being and well being of any rightly constituted Church of Christ may stand without them St. Paul resolves upon the cases of using or refusing of meats and the observance or non-observance of days which God had neither commanded nor forbidden and of eating of those meats which had been offered in Sacrifice to Idols Rom. 14. and 1 Cor. 8. That no man put a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in his Brothers way The Command here given extends to Pastors and Governours as well as to other Christians and is to be observed in acts of Governments as well as in other acts St. Paul was a Church Governour and of high authority yet he would not use his own liberty in eating Flesh much less would he impose in things unnecessary to make his Brother to offend In the cases aforementioned there was a greater appearance of reason for despising censuring or offending others than there can be for some impositions now in question among us viz. on the one side a fear of partaking in Idolatry or of eating meats that God had forbidden or of neglecting days that God had commanded as they thought on the other side a fear of being driven from the Christian Liberty and of restoring the Ceremonial Law Nevertheless the Apostle gives a severe charge against censuring despising or offending others of different Persuasions in those cases And if it were a Sin to censure or despise one another much more is it a Sin to shut out of the Communion or Ministery of the Church for such matters The word of God which is the Rule of Church-Unity evidently shews that the unity of external order must always be Subservient to Faith and Holiness and may be required no further than is consistent with the Churches Peace and Edification The Churches true Interest lies in the increase of regenerate Christians who are her true and living Members and in their mutual love peace and concord in receiving one another upon those terms which Christ hath made the bond of this Union The true Church Unity is comprized by the Apostle in these following Unities One Body one Spirit one Hope One Lord one Faith one Baptism one God But there is nothing said of one ritual or set Form of Sacred Offices one policy or model of Rules and Orders that are but circumstantial and accidental in a Church state and very various and alterable while the Church abides the same CHAP. III. Of Schism truly so called HEre I lay down general positions about Schism without making application thereof Whether these positions be right or wrong Gods Word will shew and who are or are not concerned in them the state of things will shew Schism is a violation of the Unity of the Spirit or of that Church-Unity which is of Gods making or approving This Definition I ground on the afore-cited Text Mark them that cause Divisions and Offences contrary to the Doctrine that ye have learned Separation and Schism are not of equal extent There may be a Separation or Secession where there is no Schism For Schism is always a Sin but Separation may be a Duty as the Separation of the Protestants from the Church of Rome Moreover there may be Schism where there is no Separation The violation of Unity or the causing of Divisions may be not only by withdrawing but by any causing of others to withdraw from the Communion of the Church or by the undue casting or keeping of others out of the Church or by making of any breaches in Religion contrary to the Unity of the Spirit By looking back to the nature and rule and requisites of true Church-Unity we shall understand the true nature and the several kinds and degrees of Schism As holy love is the life and Soul of Church-Unity so that aversation and opposition which is contrary to love is that which animates the sin of Schism and is as it were the heart root of it Whosoever maintains love and makes no breach therein and whose dissenting or withdrawing from a Church is no other than what may stand with love in its extent is no Schismatick The Unity of the Spirit being primarily that of the Church as mystically the breach thereof lies primarily in being destitute of the Spirit and Life Spiritual much more in being opposite thereunto under the shew of Christianity also in the languishing or lessening of Spiritual Life especially of the acts of holy love The Unity of the Spirit being secondarily that of the Church as visible in its external state and the first and
those bounds Subjects may not by coercive power reform the publick State and change the Laws which is the work of the Supream Magistrate But let it be considered whether they may not have their voluntary Assemblies for Gods Worship when they are driven from the communion of the legal Churches by the imposition of unlawfull terms or unnecessary terms apprehended by them to be unlawfull For in this case they are forced either to hold such Assemblies or to abide perpetually without those Spiritual priviledges which are their due and the ordinary means of their Salvation There is a great difference between inimical Separation like Sedition in a Common-wealth and Secregation upon necessary causes without breach of charity And among the necessary causes this may be one that all sober Christians who for conscience sake cannot submit to the way of the Established Churches may be relieved and that none may be exposed for lack of that relief to be lead aside into the error of the wicked as Heresie Infidelity or any other course of Impiety Indeed here is some variation from the ordinarily regular bounding of Churches But the partition of one Church from another by local bounds is not of absolute necessity and invariable but naturally eligible from the convenience thereof when it may be had But the state of some Christians may be such as to compel them to vary from it The scope hereof is not to set up Churches against Churches but either occasional and temporary Assemblies or at the most but divers Churches distinguished by their several places of assembling or by diversity of external order as the allowed Congregations of Foreigners in London are distinguished from the Parish Churches If any object the inconveniencies that may follow the permitting of Church Assemblies besides those of the Established Order the answer is That the wisdom and clemency of Rulers in any Nation where this case may be supposed can provide that as few as may be should stand in need of that permission by fixing the terms of Church communion and Ministerial liberty to such a latitude as may comprehend all the more moderate Dissenters And after such comprehension Christian charity will plead that all tolerable Dissenters that is all who believe and live as Christians may be tolerated within such limits as may stand with publick Peace and safety That which is here proposed may make for the relief of many thousand serious Christians without breach of the external order which is necessary to be maintained and is not set up to the hinderance of things more necessary It is to be noted that the offenders expresly marked out by the Apostle in the Text Rom. 16. 17. were ungodly men that opposed or perverted the Christian Doctrine and being Sensualists and deceivers disturbed and polluted the Christian Societies and seduced the simple into destructive error and practice Wherefore the Text is ill applied to the rigorous condemnation of honest and peaceable men that dissent only in some accidental or inferior points of Religion for which the Apostle forbids Christians to despise or judge one another Yet not only false Teachers but all Schismaticks are here condemned under this description viz. those that cause Divisions and Offences And though they be not direct opposers of sound Doctrine yet being Dividers or Disturbers they practice contrary to the Doctrine of Christ which teacheth Unity Love and Peace But still it must be observed that the reality of Schism lies not in being divided or disordered but in causing the division or disturbance or in a voluntary violation of or departing from true Church-Unity They that cause Divisions are not excused from Schism by the support of Secular Power nor are others convicted of it meerly by the want of that Support The Magistrates power in Sacred things is accumulative not destructive or diminitive to the rights of Christs Ministers and People It takes not from them any thing that Christ hath granted them but gives them a better capacity to make use thereof CHAP. IV. Of the Schisms that were in the more ancient times of the Church and the different case of the Nonconformists in these times OF those parties which were anciently reputed Schismaticks as violating the Unity of the Church yet not Hereticks as denying any Fundamental point of the Christian Faith the Novatians and Donatists are of the chiefest note Forasmuch as both these are looked upon as the greatest instances of Schism it may be requisite for me to consider the true state of their separation from the main body of the Christian Church passing by accidental matters and insisting on the merits of their cause according to their main Principles and Practices As concerning the Donatists the breach made by them had this rise Donatus with his Complices vehemently opposed Cecilianus who had been chosen Bishop of Carthage in design to thrust him out of his Bishoprick They accuse him of being ordained by one that had been a Proditor and of having admitted into Ecclesiastical Office one that was guilty of the like fault This Cause was by the Emperor Constantine's appointment heard before several Councils and many Judges The Accusers still fail in their Proofs of the things objected Cecilianus is acquitted and confirmed in his Office The Party of Donatus failing in their design were carried in a boundless rage of opposition to a total and irreclaimable Separation from all the Churches that were not of their Faction and became very numerous upon a pretence of shunning the contagion of the wicked in the Communion of the Sacraments Their principles were that the Church of Christ was no where to be found but among themselves in a corner of Africa also that true Baptism was not Administred but in their Sect. Likewise they proceeded to great tumult and violence and rapine And a sort of them called Circumcelliones gloried in a furious kind of Martyrdom partly by forcing others to kill them and partly by killing themselves The Novatians took their name and beginning from Novatus a Presbyter first at Carthage afterwards at Rome who held that they who lapsed in times of Persecution unto the denying of Christ were not to be readmitted unto the Communion of the Church though they repented and submitted to the Ecclesiastical Discipline of Pennance He separated from the Roman Church and was made a Bishop by Bishops of his own judgment in opposition to Cornelius Bishop of Rome Cyprian gives a very bad character of him as a turbulent arrogant and avaritious Person But of what Spirit soever he was his Judgment and Canon was received among many that were of stricter lives and he himself is reported to have suffered death in the persecution under Valerian At the Council of Nice Acesius Bishop of the Novatians being asked by Constantine whether he assented to the same Faith with the Council and to the observation of Easter as was there derceed answered that he fully assented to both Then being again asked by the Emperor why
as Studious of the Churches Peace and Concord as any others And though they have not the same latitude of judgment with others in some points yet they have a right Catholick Spirit to promote the common Interest of Religion and more especially the Protestant Reformation and dread the weakning and shattering of it by needless Divisions and are ready to go as far as conscience will allow in compliance with the injunctions of Rulers But they are cast and kept out of the Established Order by the injunction of some terms which in regard of their present judgment they can not comply with but under the guilt of so great a sin as dissembling in the matter of Religion Touching Church-Government they admit the Episcopacy that was of ancient Ecclesiastical custom in the time of Ignatius yea or of Cyprian Bishop Usher's model of Government by Bishops and Arch-bishops with their Presbyters was by some of them presented to the Kings Majesty for a ground-work of Accommodation They acknowledge the Kings Ecclesiastical Supremacy according to the Oath in that case required His Majesty in his gracious Declaration concerning Ecclesiastical Affairs gives a Testimony concerning the Ministers that attended him in Holland in these words viz. To our great satisfaction and comfort We found them Persons full of affection to Us and of zeal to the Peace of Church and State and neither Enemies as they had been given out to be to Episcopacy or Liturgy but modestly to desire such alterations in either as without shaking foundations might best allay the present Distempers They are ready to engage that they will not disturb the Peace of the Church nor indeavour any point of alteration in its Government by Rebellious Seditions or any unlawfull ways Those points of Conformity wherein they are dissatisfied are but some accidentals of Religion and external modes and the Declarations and Subscriptions importing an allowance of all and every thing contained in the Liturgy And they think that these points are not so necessary in themselves or in their consequents but they are very dispensable as the Wisdom of Governours shall see cause If it be objected that if any thing should be yielded to them there would be no end of their cravings that which I have to say is That reasonable men will be satisfied with reasonable concessions and if Subjects know not what is fit for them to ask Governours know what is fit for them to give By granting the desired relaxation the Church would not as some alledge be self-condemned as confessing the unlawfulness of her injunctions or as justifying the Opinions of the Dissenters For it can signifie from her no more than either her indulgence to the weak or her moderation in things less necessary and more controverted which would not turn to her reproach but to her greater justification I have here nothing to say to them that object against any relaxation after that manner as if they desired not our Conformity but our perpetual exclusion Such may be answered in due season And I have here nothing to do with those that argue against us from Politick considerations respecting a particular Interest too narrow for an adequate foundation of Church-Peace and Christian-Concord But my scope is to consider what may be done by the Higher Powers and Church Guides for the healing of breaches according to the Wisdom which is from above which is first pure then peaceable gentle and easie to be intreated full of mercy and good fruits without partiality and without hypocrisie I have made particular observation of those too most remarkable Parties which have been looked upon as the chief instances of Schism in the more ancient times The other Schisms that I find of any remark in those times were raised sometimes by Persons cast out of the Church for their Crimes and thereupon drawing Disciples after them as was that of Meletius a Bishop in Egypt who was desposed for having sacrificed to Idols Sometimes by offence unjustly taken at some supposed faultiness in a Bishop as was that of an Orthodox Party in Antioch against another Meletius an Orthodox and right worthy Bishop of that City only because he was at first brought in by the Arrians sometimes by the exasperations of the People for injuries done to them or their Pastors and outrages committed by their opposites as was that of the Johannites at Constantinople upon the banishment of Chrysostom and somtimes by meer animosity and humor of discontentment as was that of Lucifer a Bishop in Sardinia who separated from Eusebius Bishop of Vertellis and others because they disliked his rash act of Ordaining Paulinus to be Bishop of Antioch as tending to perpetuate the Schism there begun Touching all the said Parties it may be observed that they did not plead that any Opinions or Forms were imposed on them to which their consciences did reluctate nor did they desire others forbearance towards them in such things as might bear too hard upon them but they themselves would not bear with others in that which they supposed faulty but did nither choose wholly to abandon the Communion of the Churches and did not seek nor care for accomodation with them But this is not the case of at least a great part of the Dissenters of these times For they importune an accommodation with the Churches of the Established Order and for Peace sake are willing to bear with the practice of others in that which themselves dislike or doubt of but they cannot obtain a Dispensation from others in some things which are very dispensable points according to their judgment but are forced to abide in a severed state unless they will profess what they believe not or practice what they allow not Now because the judgment and practice of antiquity is much insisted on I pray that it may be considered whether in the Primitive or ancient times of Christianity men yea many hundreds of men duly qualified for the Ministery by sound Faith and good Life as also by their Learning and Industry and offering all reasonable security for their submissive and peaceable demeanure were or would have been cast and kept out of the Church for their Nonconformity to some Opinions Forms and Ceremonies which at the best are but the accidentals of Religion and of the truth or lawfulness whereof the Dissenters were wholly dissatisfied and which the Imposers judged to be but things in themselves indifferent And I further pray that it may be considered whether it be easier for the Nonconformists to be self-condemned in Conforming to some injunctions against their consciences and in deserting the Ministery to which they are dedicated than for Superiours either by some relaxation to make them capable of Conforming or to bear with their peaceable exercise of the Ministery in a state of Nonconformity while some of their injunctions confine them to that state CHAP. V. Of making a right estimate of the guilt of Schism and something more of taking the right way to