is irrefragably proved by this one Argument That a man may Act vertuously against his Inclination but not against his Will He may be inclined to one thing and yet will another and therefore Inclination and Will are not the same For a man may be Naturally inclined to Pride Lust Anger and strongly inclined so too forasmuch as these Inclinations are founded in a Peculiar Crasis and Constitution of the Blood and Spirits and yet by a steady frequent Repetition of the Contrary Acts of Humility Chastity and Meekness carried thereto by his Will a Principle not to be Controlled by the Blood or Spirits he may at length plant in his Soul all those Contrary Habits of Vertue And therefore it is certain that while Inclination bends the Soul One way a Well-disposed and Resolved Will may effectually draw it Another A sufficient Demonstration doubtless that they are Two very Different things for where there may be a Contrariety there is certainly a Diversity A good Inclination is but the first Rude draught of Vertue but the finishing Strokes are from the Will Which if well-disposed will by Degrees perfect if ill-dispos'd will by the Super-induction of ill Habits quickly deface it God never accepts a good Inclination instead of a good Action where that Action may be done Nay so much the Contrary that if a good Inclination be not Seconded by a good Action the Want of that Action is thereby made so much the more Criminal and Inexcusable A man may be naturally well and vertuously inclined and yet never do One good or vertuous Action all his life A Bowl may lie still for all its Byass but it is impossible for a man to Will Vertue and Vertuous Actions Heartily but he must in the same Degree offer at the Practice of them Forasmuch as the Dictates of the Will are as we have shewn Despotical and Command the Whole man It being a Contradiction in Morality for the Will to go One way and the Man Another And thus as to the First Abuse or Mis-application of the great Rule mentioned in the Text about God's Accepting the Will I have shewn Three notable Mistakes which men are apt to entertain concerning the Will and proved that neither a Bare Approbation of nor a Mere Wishing or Unactive Complacency in nor lastly a Natural Inclination to Things Vertuous and Good can pass before God for a man's Willing of such things and consequently if men upon this account will needs take up and acquiesce in an airy ungrounded Persuasion that they Will those things which really they do not Will they fall thereby into a gross and fatal Delusion A Delusion that must and will shut the Door of Salvation against them They catch at Heaven but embrace a Cloud they mock God who will not be mocked and deceive their own Souls which God knows may too easily be both Deceived and Destroyed too Come we now in the next place to Consider the other way by which Men are prone to abuse and pervert this important Rule of God's accounting the Will for the Deed and that is by reckoning many things Impossible which in truth are not Impossible And this I shall make appear by shewing some of the Principal Instances of Duty for the Performance of which men commonly plead want of Power and thereupon persuade themselves that God and the Law rest satisfied with their Will Now these Instances are Four 1. In Duties of very Great and Hard Labour Labour is confessedly a great Part of the Curse and therefore no wonder if men fly from it Which they do with so great an Aversion that few men know their own strength for want of trying it and upon that account think themselves really unable to do many things which Experience would convince them they have more Ability to Effect than they have Will to Attempt It is Idleness that Creates Impossibilities and where men care not to Doe a Thing they shelter themselves under a persuasion that it cannot be done The shortest and the surest way to prove a Work possible is strenuously to set a-about it and no wonder if that proves it possible that for the most part makes it so Dig says the Unjust Steward I cannot but why Did either his Legs or his Arms fail him No but Day-labour was but an hard and a dry kind of Livelihood to a man that could get an Estate with two or three Strokes of his Pen and find so great a Treasure as he did without Digging for it But such excuses will not pass Muster with God who will allow no man's Humour or Idleness to be the measure of Possible or Impossible And to manifest the wretched Hypocrisie of such pretences those very things which upon the bare obligation of Duty are declined by men as Impossible presently become not only Possible but readily Practicable too in a Case of Extreme Necessity As no doubt that fore-mention'd Instance of Fraud and Laziness the Unjust Steward who pleaded that he could neither Dig nor Beg would quickly have been brought both to Dig and to Beg too rather than starve And if so what reason could such an one produce before God why he could not submit to the same Hardships rather than Cheat and Lye the former being but Destructive of the Body this latter of the Soul And certainly the Highest and Dearest Concerns of a Temporal Life are infinitely less Valuable than those of an Eternal and consequently ought without any Demurr at all to be Sacrificed to them whensoever they come in Competition with them He who can Digest any Labour rather than Die must refuse no Labour rather than Sin 2 dly The Second Instance shall be in Duties of great and apparent Danger Danger as the world goes generally absolves from duty This being a case in which most men according to a very ill Sence will needs be a Law to themselves And where it is not safe for them to be Religious their Religion shall be to be safe But Christianity teaches us a very different Lesson For if fear of suffering could take off the necessity of Obeying the Doctrine of the Cross would certainly be a very Idle and a Senceless thing and Christ would never have prayed Father if it be possible let this cup pass from me had the bitterness of the draught made it impossible to be Drunk of If Death and Danger are things that really cannot be endured no Man could ever be obliged to suffer for his Conscience or to die for his Religion it being altogether as absurd to imagine a man obliged to Suffer as to Doe Impossibilities But those Primitive Hero's of the Christian Church could not so easily blow off the Doctrine of Passive Obedience as to make the fear of being Passive a discharge from being Obedient No they found Martyrdom not only possible but in many cases a Duty also a Duty dressed up indeed with all that was terrible and afflictive to Human Nature yet not at all the less
TWELVE SERMONS Preached upon Several Occasions By ROBERT SOUTH D. D. Six of them never before Printed LONDON Printed by I. H. for Thomas Bennet at the Half Moon in St. Paul's Church-yard 1692. To the Right Honourable EDWARD Earl of CLARENDON Lord High Chancellor of England and Chancellor of the University of Oxon and one of His Majesties most Honourable Privy Council My Lord THough to prefix so great a Name to so mean a Piece seems like enlarging the Entrance of an House that affords no Reception yet since there is nothing can warrant the Publication of it but what can also command it the Work must think of no other Patronage than the same that adorns and protects its Author Some indeed vouch great Names because they think they deserve but I because I need such and had I not more occasion than many others to see and converse with your Lordship's Candor and Proneness to pardon there is none had greater cause to dread your Iudgment and thereby in some part I venture to commend my own For all know who know your Lordship that in a Nobler respect than either that of Government or Patronage you represent and head the best of Universities and have travelled over too many Nations and Authors to encourage any one that understands himself to appear an Author in your Hands who seldom read any Books to inform your self but only to countenance and credit them But my Lord what is here published pretends no Instruction but only Homage while it teaches many of the World it only describes your Lordship who have made the ways of Labour and Vertue of doing and doing Good your Business and your Recreation your Meat and your Drink and I may add also your Sleep My Lord the Subject here treated of is of that Nature that it would seem but a Chimera and a bold Paradox did it not in the very Front carry an Instance to exemplifie it and so by the Dedication convince the World that the Discourse it self was not impracticable For such ever was and is and will be the Temper of the generality of mankind that while I send men for Pleasure to Religion I cannot but expect that they will look upon me as only having a mind to be pleasant with them my self nor are Men to be Worded into new Tempers or Constitutions and he that thinks that any one can persuade but He that made the World will find that he does not well understand it My Lord I have obeyed your Command for such must I account your Desire and thereby Design not so much the Publication of my Sermon as of my Obedience for next to the Supreme Pleasure described in the ensuing Discourse I enjoy none greater than in having any opportunity to declare my self Your Lordship 's very humble Servant and obliged Chaplain ROBERT SOUTH The Contents of the Sermons SERMON I. PRoverbs III. 17 Her ways are ways of Pleasantness Page 1 SERMON II. Gen. I. 27 So God created man in his own Image in the Image of God created he him p. 53 SERMON III. Matth. X. 33 But whosoever shall deny me before men him will I deny before my Father which is in Heaven p. 101 SERMON IV. I Kings XIII 33 34. After this thing Jeroboam returned not from his evil way but made again of the lowest of the people Priests of the High places whosoever would he consecrated him and he became one of the Priests of the High places And this thing became sin unto the house of Jeroboam even to cut it off and to destroy it from off the face of the Earth p. 155 SERMON V. Titus II. ult These things speak and exhort and rebuke with all Authority Let no man despise thee p. 223 SERMON VI. John VII 17 If any man will do his Will he shall know of the Doctrine whether it be of God or whether I speak of my self p. 269 SERMON VII Psalm LXXXVII 2 God hath loved the Gates of Sion more than all the Dwellings of Iacob p. 323 SERMON VIII Prov. XVI 33 The lot is cast into the lap but the whole disposing of it is of the Lord. p. 373 SERMON IX 1 Cor. III. 19 For the Wisdom of this World is Foolishness with God p. 425 SERMON X. 2 Cor. VIII 12 For if there be first a willing Mind it is accepted according to that a Man hath and not according to that he hath not p. 477 SERMON XI Judges VIII 34 35. And the Children of Israel remembred not the Lord their God who had delivered them out of the hands of all their Enemies on every side Neither shewed they kindness to the House of Ierubbaal namely Gideon according to all the goodness which he had shewed unto Israel p. 535 SERMON XII Prov. XII 22 Lying Lips are abomination to the Lord. p. 587 A SERMON Preached at COURT c. PROV 3.17 Her Ways are Ways of Pleasantness THE Text relating to something going before must carry our Eye back to the 13th verse where we shall find that the thing of which these words are affirmed is Wisdome A Name by which the Spirit of God was here pleased to express to us Religion and thereby to tell the world what before it was not aware of and perhaps will not yet believe that those two great things that so engross the desires and designs of both the Nobler and Ignobler sort of mankind are to be found in Religion namely Wisdom and Pleasure and that the former is the direct way to the latter as Religion is to both That Pleasure is Man's chiefest good because indeed it is the perception of Good that is properly pleasure is an assertion most certainly true though under the common acceptance of it not only false but odious for according to this pleasure and sensuality pass for terms equivalent and therefore he that takes it in this sence alters the Subject of the discourse Sensuality is indeed a part or rather one kind of pleasure such an one as it is For Pleasure in general is the consequent apprehension of a sutable Object sutably applied to a rightly disposed faculty and so must be conversant both about the faculties of the Body and of the Soul respectively as being the result of the fruitions belonging to both Now amongst those many Arguments used to press upon men the exercise of Religion I know none that are like to be so succesful as those that answer and remove the prejudices that generally possess and barr up the Hearts of men against it amongst which there is none so prevalent in Truth though so little owned in Pretence as that it is an Enemy to mens pleasures that it bereaves them of all the sweets of Converse dooms them to an absurd and perpetual Melancholy designing to make the world nothing else but a great Monastery With which notion of Religion Nature and Reason seems to have great cause to be dissatisfied For since God never Created any faculty either in Soul or Body
of Truth put off with Similitudes Let him that says it is a trouble to refrain from a Debauch convince us that it is not a greater to undergoe one and that the Confessor did not impose a shrewd Penance upon the Drunken man by bidding him go and be drunk again and that lisping raging redness of Eyes and what is not fit to be named in such an Audience is not more toilsome than to be clean and quiet and discreet and respected for being so All the trouble that is in it is the trouble of being sound being cured and being recovered But if there be great arguments for Health then certainly there are the same for the obtaining of it and so keeping a due proportion between Spirituals and Temporals we neither have nor pretend to greater Arguments for Repentance Having thus now cleared off all that by way of Objection can lie against the Truth asserted by showing the proper Qualification of the Subject to whom only the ways of Wisdom can be ways of Pleasantness for the further prosecution of the matter in hand I shall show what are those properties that so peculiarly set off and enhance the Excellency of this Pleasure 1. The first is That it is the proper pleasure of that part of man which is the largest and most comprehensive of Pleasure and that is his mind a substance of a boundless comprehension The mind of man is an Image not only of God's Spirituality but of his Infinity It is not like any of the Sences limited to this or that kind of object as the sight intermedles not with that which affects the smell but with an universal superintendence it arbitrates upon and takes them in all It is as I may so say an Ocean into which all the little Rivulets of Sensation both External and Internal discharge themselves It is framed by God to receive all and more than Nature can afford it and so to be its own motive to seek for something above Nature Now this is that part of man to which the Pleasures of Religion properly belong and that in a double respect 1. In reference to Speculation as it sustains the name of Understanding 2. In reference to Practice as it sustains the name of Conscience 1. And first for Speculation the pleasures of which have been sometimes so great so intense so ingrossing of all the Powers of the Soul that there has been no room left for any other Pleasure It has so called together all the Spirits to that one Work that there has been no supply to carry on the Inferior operations of Nature Contemplation feels no Hunger nor is sensible of any Thirst but of that after knowledge How frequent and exalted a Pleasure did David find from his Meditation in the Divine Law all the day long it was the Theam of his Thoughts The affairs of State the government of his Kingdom might indeed employ but it was this only that refresh'd his mind How short of this are the delights of the Epicure how vastly disproportionate are the Pleasures of the Eating and of the Thinking man indeed as different as the silence of an Archimedes in the study of a Problem and the stilness of a Sow at her wash Nothing is comparable to the pleasure of an Active and a prevailing thought a thought prevailing over the difficulty and obscurity of the Object and refreshing the Soul with new discoveries and images of things and thereby extending the Bounds of Apprehension and as it were enlarging the Territories of Reason Now this pleasure of the Speculation of Divine things is advanced upon a double Account 1. The Greatness 2. The newness of the Object 1. And first for the greatnss of it It is no less than the great God himself and that both in his Nature and his Works For the Eye of Reason like that of the Eagle directs it self chiefly to the Sun to a glory that neither admits of a Superior nor an Equal Religion carries the Soul to the study of every Divine Attribute It poses it with the amazing thoughts of Omnipotence of a Power able to fetch up such a Glorious Fabrick as this of the world out of the Abyss of Vanity and Nothing and able to throw it back into the same Original Nothing again It drowns us in the speculation of the Divine Omniscience that can maintain a steady infallible comprehension of all Events in themselves Contingent and Accidental and certainly know that which does not certainly exist It confounds the greatest subtilties of Speculation with the Riddles of God's Omnipresence that can spread a single Individual substance through all spaces and yet without any commensuration of parts to any or circumscription within any though totally in every one And then for his Eternity which non-plusses the Strongest and Clearest Conception to comprehend how one single Act of Duration should measure all Periods and Portions of time without any of the distinguishing parts of Succession Likewise for his Justice which shall prey upon the sinner for ever satisfying it self by a perpetual Miracle rendring the Creature immortal in the midst of the flames always consuming but never consumed With the like wonders we may entertain our Speculations from his Mercy his Beloved his Triumphant Attribute an Atribute if it were possible something more than Infinite for even his Justice is so and his Mercy transcends that Lastly we may contemplate upon his supernatural astonishing works particularly in the Resurrection and reparation of the same numerical Body by a reunion of all the scattered Parts to be at length disposed of into an estate of Eternal Woe or Bliss as also the greatness and strangeness of the Beatifick Vision how a created Eye should be so fortified as to bear all those Glories that stream from the fountain of uncreated Light the meanest expression of which Light is that it is unexpressible Now what great and high Objects are these for a Rational Contemplation to busy it self upon Heights that scorn the reach of our Prospect and Depths in which the tallest Reason will never touch the Bottom yet surely the pleasure arising from thence is Great and Noble for as much as they afford perpetual matter and imployment to the inquisitiveness of Humane Reason and so are large enough for it to take its full scope and range in Which when it has suck'd and dreined the utmost of an Object naturally lays it aside and neglects it as a dry and an Empty thing 2. As the things belonging to Religion entertain our Speculation with great Objects so they entertain it also with new And novelty we know is the great parent of pleasure upon which account it is that men are so much pleased with Variety and Variety is nothing else but a continued Novelty The Athenians who were the profess'd and most diligent Improvers of their Reason made it their whole business to hear or to tell some new thing for the truth is Newness especially in great matters was a
unlimited range of my Thoughs and my Desires Nor is this kind of Pleasure only out of the reach of any outward Violence but even those things also that make a much closer impression upon us which are the irresistible Decays of Nature have yet no influence at all upon this For when Age it self which of all things in the world will not be baffled or defyed shall begin to arrest seize and remind us of our Mortality by Pains Aches Deadness of Limbs and Dulness of Senses yet then the pleasure of the mind shall be in its full Youth Vigour and Freshness A Palsie may as well shake an Oak or a Fever dry up a Fountain as either of them shake dry up or impair the delight of Conscience For it lies within it centers in the heart it grows into the very substance of the Soul so that it accompanies a man to his Grave he never out-lives it and that for this cause only because he cannot out-live himself And thus I have endeavour'd to describe the Excellency of that Pleasure that is to be found in the ways of a Religious Wisdom by those excellent properties that do attend it which whether they reach the Description that has been given them or no every man may convince himself by the best of Demonstrations which is his own tryal Now from all this Discourse this I am sure is a most natural and direct consequence That if the ways of Religion are ways of Pleasantness then such as are not ways of Pleasantness are not truly and properly ways of Religion Upon which ground it is easie to see what judgment is to be passed upon all those affected uncommanded absurd Austerities so much prized and exercised by some of the Romish Profession Pilgrimages going barefoot Hair-Shirts and Whips with other such Gospel-Artillery are their only helps to Devotion Things never enjoyned either by the Prophets under the Jewish or by the Apostles under the Christian Oeconomy who yet surely understood the proper and the most efficacious Instruments of Piety as well as any Confessor or Friar of all the Order of St. Francis or any Casuist whatsoever It seems that with them a man sometimes cannot be a Penitent unless he also turns Vagabond and foots it to Ierusalem or wanders over this or that part of the world to visit the Shrine of such or such a pretended Saint though perhaps in his Life ten times more ridiculous than themselves Thus that which was Cain's Curse is become their Religion He that thinks to expiate a Sin by going barefoot does the Penance of a Goose and only makes one Folly the Atonement of another Paul indeed was Scourged and Beaten by the Jews but we never read that he Beat or Scourged himself and if they think that his keeping under of his Body imports so much they must first prove that the Body cannot be kept under by a Vertuous mind and that the mind cannot be made Vertuous but by a Scourge and consequently that Thongs and Whipcord are means of Grace and things necessary to Salvation The Truth is if mens Religion lies no deeper than their Skin it is possible that they may Scourge themselves into very great Improvements But they will find that Bodily exercise touches not the Soul and that neither Pride nor Lust nor Covetousness nor any other Vice was ever Mortified by Corporal Disciplines 't is not the Back but the Heart that must Bleed for Sin and consequently that in this whole course they are like men out of their way let them Lash on never so fast they are not at all the nearer to their Journeys end and howsoever they deceive themselves and others they may as well expect to bring a Cart as a Soul to Heaven by such means What arguments they have to beguile poor Simple unstable Souls with I know not but surely the Practical Casuistical that is the Principal Vital part of their Religion savours very little of Spirituality And now upon the result of all I suppose that to exhort men to be Religious is only in other words to exhort them to take their Pleasure A pleasure High Rational and Angelical a pleasure embased with no appendant sting no consequent Loathing no Remorses or bitter farewells But such an one as being Honey in the Mouth never turns to Gall or Gravel in the Belly A pleasure made for the Soul and the Soul for that suitable to its Spirituality and equal to all its Capacities Such an one as grows fresher upon Enjoyment and though continually Fed upon yet is never Devoured A pleasure that a Man may call as properly his own as his Soul and his Conscience neither lyable to Accident nor exposed to Injury It is the fore-taste of Heaven and the Earnest of Eternity In a word it is such an one as being begun in Grace passes into Glory Blessedness and Immortality and those pleasures that neither Eye has seen nor Ear heard nor has it entred into the Heart of Man to Conceive To which God of his Mercy vouchsafe to bring us all to whom be rendred and ascribed as is most due all Praise Might Majesty and Dominion both now and for evermore Amen A SERMON Preached at the Cathedral Church of S. PAUL Novemb. 9 th 1662. To the Right Honourable The Lord Mayor and Aldermen Of the City of LONDON Right Honourable WHen I consider how impossible it is for a person of my condition to produce and consequently how imprudent to attempt any thing in proportion either to the Ampleness of the Body you represent or of the Places you bear I should be kept from venturing so poor a piece designed to live but an hour in so lasting a Publication did not what your Civility calls a Request your Greatness render a Command The truth is in things not unlawful great Persons cannot be properly said to request because all things considered they must not be denyed To me it was Honour enough to have your Audience enjoyment enough to behold your happy Change and to see the same City the Metropolis of Loyalty and of the Kingdom to behold the Glory of English Churches reformed that is delivered from the Reformers and to find at least the service of the Church repaired though not the buildings to see St. Paul's delivered from Beasts here as well as St. Paul at Ephesus and to view the Church thronged onely with Troops of Auditors not of Horse This I could fully have acquiesced in and received a large personal reward in my Particular share of the publick Ioy but since you are further pleased I will not say by your Iudgment to approve but by your Acceptance to encourage the raw Endeavours of a young Divine I shall take it for an Opportunity not as others in their sage Prudence use to do to quote three or four Texts of Scripture and to tell you how you are to Rule the City out of a Concordance no I bring not Instructions but what much better befits both
the fore-mentioned discouragements he casts into the Balance the promise of a Reward to such as should Execute and of Punishment to such as should Neglect their Commission The Reward in the former verse Whosoever shall confess me before men c. the punishment in this But whosoever shall deny c. As if by way of preoccupation he should have said Well here you see your Commission this is your Duty these are your Discouragements never seek for shifts and evasions from worldly afflictions this is your reward if you perform it this is your Doom if you decline it As for the Explication of the words they are clear and easie and their Originals in the Greek are of single signification without any ambiguity and therefore I shall not trouble you by proposing how they run in this or that Edition or straining for an interpretation where there is no difficulty or distinction where there is no difference The onely Exposition that I shall give of them will be to compare them to other Parallel Scriptures and peculiarly to that in the 8. Mark 38. Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed when he cometh in the glory of the Father with the holy Angels These words are a Comment upon my Text. 1. What is here in the Text called a denying of Christ is there termed a being ashamed of him that is in those words the Cause is expressed and here the Effect for therefore we deny a thing because we are ashamed of it First Peter is ashamed of Christ then he denies him 2. What is here termed a denying of Christ is there called a being ashamed of Christ and his words Christ's truths are his second Self And he that offers a contempt to a King's letters or edicts virtually affronts the King it strikes his words but it rebounds upon his Person 3. What is here said before men is there phrased in this adulterous and sinful generation These words import the hindrance of the duty enjoyned which therefore is here purposely enforced with a non obstante to all opposition The Term Adulterous I conceive may chiefly relate to the Jews who being nationally espoused to God by Covenant every sin of theirs was in a peculiar manner spiritual Adultery 4. What is here said I will deny him before my Father is there expressed I will be ashamed of him before my Father and his holy Angels that is when he shall come to Judgment when revenging Justice shall come in pomp attended with the glorious retinue of all the Host of Heaven In short the sentence pronounced declares the Judgment the solemnity of it the Terrour From the words we may deduce these Observations 1. We shall find strong motives and temptations from men to draw us to a denial of Christ. 2. No Terrors or Solicitations from men though never so great can Warrant or Excuse such a denial 3. To deny Christ's words is to deny Christ. But since these Observations are rather implyed than expressed in the words I shall wave them and in stead of deducing a doctrine distinct from the words prosecute the words themselves under this Doctrinal Paraphrase Whosoever shall deny disown or be ashamed of either the Person or truths of Iesus Christ for any fear or favour of man shall with shame be disowned and Eternally rejected by him at the dreadful judgment of the great day The discussion of this shall lie in these things 1. To shew how many ways Christ and his truths may be denyed and what is the denial here chiefly intended 2. To shew what are the causes that induce men to a denial of Christ and his truths 3. To shew how farr a man may consult his safety in time of persecution without denying Christ. 4. To shew what is imported in Christ's denying us before his Father in Heaven 5. To apply all to the present Occasion But before I enter upon these I must briefly premise this that though the Text and the Doctrine run peremptory and absolute Whosoever denies Christ shall assuredly be denied by him yet still there is a tacit condition in the words supposed unless repentance intervene For this and many other Scriptures though as to their formal terms they are Absolute yet as to their sence they are Conditional God in mercy has so framed and temper'd his word that we have for the most part a Reserve of mercy wrapp'd up in a Curse And the very first judgment that was pronounced upon fallen man was with the allay of a promise Wheresoever we find a Curse to the Guilty expressed in the same words Mercy to the Penitent is still understood This premised I come now to discuss the first thing viz. How many ways Christ and his truths may be denied c. Here first in general I assert that we may deny him in all those acts that are capable of being morally good or evil those are the proper Scene in which we act our confessions or denials of him Accordingly therefore all ways of denying Christ I shall comprise under these three 1. We may deny him and his truths by an Erroneous Heretical judgment I know it is doubted whether a bare error in judgment can condemn but since truths absolutely necessary to salvation are so clearly revealed that we cannot erre in them unless we be notoriously wanting to our selves herein the fault of the judgment is resolved into a precedent default in the will and so the case is put out of doubt But here it may be replied Are not truths of absolute and fundamental necessity very disputable as the Deity of Christ the Trinity of Persons if they are not in themselves disputable why are they so much disputed Indeed I believe if we trace these disputes to their original cause we shall find that they never sprung from a reluctancy in Reason to embrace them For this Reason it self dictates as most rational to assent to any thing though seemingly contrary to Reason if it is revealed by God and we are certain of the Revelation These two supposed these disputes must needs arise only from curiosity and singularity and these are faults of a diseased Will But some will further demand in behalf of these men whether such as assent to every word in Scripture for so will those that deny the natural Deity of Christ and the Spirit can be yet said in Doctrinals to deny Christ to this I answer since words abstracted from their proper sence and signification lose the nature of words and are only equivocally so called inasmuch as the persons we speak of take them thus and derive the letter from Christ but the signification from themselves they cannot be said properly to assent so much as to the words of the Scripture And so their case also is clear But yet more fully to state the matter how far a denial of Christ in belief and judgment is
in present ready money and so have no other way to improve them so that it may be suspected that the change of their Salary would be the strongest argument to change their opinion The truth is Interest is the grand wheel and spring that moves the whole Universe Let Christ and Truth say what they will if Interest will have it Gain must be Godliness if Enthusiasm is in request learning must be inconsistent with Grace If pay grows short the University Maintenance must be too great Rather than Pilate will be counted Caesar's enemy he will pronounce Christ innocent one hour and condemn him the next How Christ is made to truckle under the world and how his truths are denied and shuffled with for profit and pelf the clearest proof would be by Induction and Example But as it is the most clear so here it would be the most unpleasing Wherefore I shall pass this over since the world is now so peccant upon this account that I am afraid Instances would be mistaken for Invectives 3. The third Cause inducing Men to deny Christ in his truths is their apparent danger To confess Christ is the ready way to be cast out of the Synagogue The Church is a place of Graves as well as of Worship and Profession To be resolute in a good cause is to bring upon our selves the punishments due to a Bad. Truth indeed is a Possession of the highest value and therefore it must needs expose the owner to much danger Christ is sometimes pleased to make the profession of himself costly and a man cannot buy the truth but he must pay down his life and his dearest blood for it Christianity marks a man out for destruction and Christ sometimes chalks out such a way to Salvation as shall verify his own saying He that will save his life shall lose it The first Ages of the Church had a more abundant experience of this What Paul and the rest planted by their Preaching they watered with their Blood We know their usage was such as Christ foretold he sent them to Wolves and the common course then was Christianos ad Leones For a man to give his name to Christianity in those days was to list himself a Martyr and to bid farewell not only to the pleasures but also to the hopes of this life Neither was it a single death only that then attended this profession but the terrour and sharpness of it was redoubled in the manner and circumstance They had Persecutors whose Invention was as great as their cruelty Wit and Malice conspired to find out such tortures such deaths and those of such incredible anguish that only the manner of dying was the punishment Death it self the deliverance To be a Martyr signifies only to witness the truth of Christ but the witnessing of the truth was then so generally attended with this Event that Martyrdom now signifies not only to witness but to witness by death The word besides its own signification importing their practice And since Christians have been freed from Heathens Christians themselves have turned persecutors Since Rome from Heathen was turned Christian it has improved its persecution into an Inquisition Now when Christ and truth are upon these terms that men cannot confess him but upon pain of death the reason of their Apostacy and Denial is clear men will be wise and leave Truth and Misery to such as love it they are resolved to be Cunning let others run the hazard of being Sincere If they must be good at so high a rate they know they may be safe at a cheaper Si negare sufficiat quis erit Nocens If to deny Christ will save them the truth shall never make them guilty Let Christ and his flock lie open and exposed to all weather of persecution Foxes will be sure to have holes And if it comes to this that they must either renounce their Religion deny and Blaspheme Christ or forfeit their lives to the fire or the sword it is but inverting Iob's wife's advice Curse God and live 3. We proceed now to the Third thing which is to shew how farr a man may consult his safety c. This he may do two ways 1. By withdrawing his Person Martyrdom is an Heroick act of Faith An Atchievement beyond an Ordinary pitch of it to you says the Spirit it is given to suffer Phil. 1.29 It is a peculiar additional gift it is a distinguishing excellency of degree not an essential consequent of its Nature Be ye harmless as Doves says Christ and it is as Natural to them to take flight upon danger as to be Innocent Let every man throughly consult the temper of his faith and weigh his courage with his fears his weakness and his Resolutions together and take the measure of both and see which preponderates and if his spirit faints if his heart misgives and melts at the very thoughts of the fire let him flie and secure his own soul and Christ's honour Non negat Christum fugiendo qui ideò fugit né neget He does not deny Christ by flying who therefore flies that he may not deny him Nay he does not so much decline as rather change his Martyrdom He flies from the flame but repairs to a Desert to poverty and hunger in a wilderness Whereas if he would dispense with his conscience and deny his Lord or swallow down two or three Contradictory oaths he should neither fear the one nor be forced to the other 2. By concealing his judgment A man sometimes is no more bound to speak than to destroy himself and as Nature abhorrs this so Religion does not command that In the times of the Primitive Church when the Christians dwelt amongst Heathens it is reported of a certain Maid how she came from her Fathers house to one of the Tribunals of the Gentiles and declared herself a Christian spit in the Judges face and so provoked him to cause her to be executed But will any say that this was to confess Christ or die a Martyr He that uncalled for uncompelled comes and proclaims a Persecuted Truth for which he is sure to die only dies a Confessour of his own folly and a Sacrifice to his own rashness Martyrdom is stampt such only by God's command and he that ventures upon it without a call must endure it without a Reward Christ will say who required this at your hands His Gospel does not dictate imprudence No Evangelical Precept justles out that of a lawful self-preservation He therefore that thus throws himself upon the Sword runs to Heaven before he is sent for where though perhaps Christ may in mercy receive the man yet he will be sure to disown the Martyr And thus much concerning those lawful ways of securing our selves in time of Persecution not as if these were always lawfull For sometimes a man is bound to confess Christ openly though he dies for it and to conceal a Truth is to deny it But now to shew when it
was wrong'd trod upon stript of all Father I will that there be now a distinction made between such as have owned and confessed me with the loss of the world and those that have denyed persecuted and insulted over me It will be in vain then to come and creep for mercy and say Lord when did we insult over thee when did we see thee in our Courts and despised or oppressed thee Christ's reply will be then quick and sharp Verily in as much as you did it to one of these little poor despised ones ye did it unto Me. 2. Use is of information to shew us the danger as well as the baseness of a dastardly Spirit in asserting the interest and truth of Christ. Since Christ has made a Christian course a Warfare of all men living a Coward is the most unfit to make a Christian whose infamy is not so great but it is sometimes less than his peril A Coward does not alwaies scape with disgrace but sometimes also he loses his life wherefore let all such know as can enlarge their consciences like Hell and call any sinfull compliance submission and style a Cowardly silence in Christ's cause discretion and prudence I say let them know that Christ will one day scorn them and spit them with their policy and prudence into Hell and then let them consult how politick they were for a temporal Emolument to throw away Eternity The things which generally cause men to deny Christ are either the Enjoyments or the miseries of this life but alas at the day of Judgment all these will expire and as One well Observes what are we the better for pleasure or the worse for sorrow when it is past But then Sin and Guilt will be still fresh and Heaven and Hell will be then yet to begin If ever it was seasonable to preach Courage in the despised abused cause of Christ it is now when his truths are Reformed into nothing when the hands and hearts of his faithfull Ministers are weakned and even broke and his worship extirpated in a mockery that his honour may be advanced Well to establish our hearts in duty let us before-hand propose to our selves the worst that can happen Should God in his judgment suffer England to be transformed into a Munster Should the faithfull be every where Massacred Should the places of learning be demolished and our Colledges reduced not only as One in his Zeal would have it to Three but to none Yet assuredly Hell is worse than all this and is the portion of such as deny Christ wherefore let our discouragements be what they will loss of Places loss of Estates loss of Life and Relations yet still this sentence stands ratified in the Decrees of Heaven Cursed be that man that for any of these shall desert the truth and deny his Lord. ECCLESIASTICAL POLICY THE BEST POLICY OR RELIGION The best Reason of State In a Sermon preached before the Honourable Society of LINCOLNS-INN 1 KING XIII 33 34. After this thing Jeroboam returned not from his evil way but made again of the lowest of the people Priests of the High places whosoever would he consecrated him and he became one of the Priests of the High places And this thing became sin unto the house of Jeroboam even to cut it off and to destroy it from off the face of the Earth JEroboam from the name of a person become the character of impiety is reported to Posterity eminent or rather Infamous for two things Usurpation of Government and Innovation of Religion 'T is confessed the former is expresly said to have been from God but since God may order and dispose what he does not approve and use the wickedness of men while he forbids it the design of the first cause does not excuse the malignity of the second And therefore the advancement and Sceptre of Ieroboam was in that sence only the work of God in which it is said Amos 3.6 That there is no evil in the City which the Lord has not done But from his attempts upon the Civil Power he proceeds to innovate God's Worship and from the subjection of mens Bodies and Estates to enslave their Consciences as knowing that true Religion is no friend to an unjust Title Such was afterwards the way of Mahomet to the Tyrant to joyn the Impostor and what he had got by the Sword to confirm by the Alcoran raising his Empire upon two Pillars Conquest and Inspiration Ieroboam being thus advanced and thinking Policy the best Piety though indeed in nothing ever more befooled the nature of sin being not only to defile but to infatuate In the 11. chap. and the 27. v. he thus argues If this people go up to do Sacrifice in the house of the Lord at Ierusalem then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their Lord even unto Rehoboam King of Iudah and they shall kill me and go again unto Rehoboam King of Iudah As if he should have said The true Worship of God and the converse of those that use it dispose men to a considerate lawfull Subjection And therefore I must take another course my Practice must not be better than my Title what was won by Force must be continued by Delusion Thus sin is usually seconded with sin and a man seldom commits one sin to please but he commits another to defend himself As 't is frequent for the Adulterer to commit murder to conceal the shame of his Adultery But let us see Ieroboam's politick procedure in the next ver Whereupon the King took counsel and made two Calves of Gold and said unto them It is too much for you to go up to Ierusalem behold thy Gods O Israel As if he had made such an Edict I Ieroboam by the advice of my council considering the great distance of the Temple and the great charges that poor people are put to in going thither as also the intolerable burden of paying the first-fruits and tythes to the Priest have considered of a way that may be more easie and less burthensome to the people as also more comfortable to the Priests themselves and therefore strictly enjoyn that none henceforth presume to repair to the Temple at Jerusalem especially since God is not tyed to any place or form of Worship as also because the Devotion of men is apt to be clogged by such Ceremonies therefore both for the ease of the people as well as for the advancement of Religion we require and command that all henceforth forbear going up to Jerusalem Questionless these and such other Reasons the Impostor used to insinuate his devout Idolatry And thus the Calves were set up to which Oxen must be sacrificed the God and the Sacrifice out of the same Herd And because Israel was not to return to Egypt Egypt was brought back to them that is the Egyptian way of Worship the Apis or Serapis which was nothing but the Image of a Calf or Oxe as is clear from
I have in general shewn the utter inability of the Magistrate to attain the Ends of Government without the Aid of Religion But it may be here replied that many are not at all moved with arguments drawn from hence or with the happy or miserable state of the Soul after death and therefore this avails little to procure obedience and consequently to advance Government I answer by confession that this is true of Epicures Atheists and some pretended Philosophers who have stifled the Notions of a Deity and the Souls immortality but the Unprepossessed on the one hand and the well-disposed on the other who both together make much the major part of the world are very apt to be affected with a due fear of these things And Religion accommodating it self to the Generality though not to every particular temper sufficiently secures Government in as much as that stands or falls according to the Behaviour of the multitude And whatsoever Conscience makes the Generality obey to that Prudence will make the rest conform Wherefore having proved the dependence of Government upon Religion I shall now demonstrate That the safety of Government depends upon the Truth of Religion False Religion is in its nature the greatest bane and destruction to Government in the World The reason is because whatsoever is False is also Weak Ens and Verum in Philosophy are the same and so much as any Religion has of Falsity it loses of Strength and Existence Falsity gains Authority only from Ignorance and therefore is in danger to be known for from Being false the next immediate step is to be Known to be such And what prejudice this would be to the Civil Government is apparent if men should be awed into Obedience and affrighted from sin by Rewards and Punishments proposed to them in such a Religion which afterwards should be detected and found a mere falsitie and cheat for if one part be but found to be false it will make the whole suspicious And men will then not only cast off Obedience to the Civil Magistrate but they will do it with disdain and rage that they have been deceived so long and brought to do that out of Conscience which was imposed upon them out of design For though men are often willingly deceived yet still it must be under an Opinion of being instructed though they love the Deception yet they morrally hate it under that appearance Therefore it is no ways safe for a Magistrate who is to build his Dominion upon the Fears of men to build those fears upon a false Religion 'T is not to be doubted but the absurdity of Ieroboam's Calves made many Israelites turn subjects to Rehoboam's Government that they might be Proselytes to his Religion Herein the Weakness of the Turkish Religion appears That it urges Obedience upon the promise of such absurd Rewards as that after death they should have Palaces Gardens Beautifull Women with all the Luxury that could be as if those things that were the occasions and incentives of sin in this world could be the rewards of Holiness in the other Besides many other inventions false and absurd that are like so many chinks and holes to discover the rottenness of the whole Fabrick when God shall be pleased to give light to discover and open their reasons to discern them But you will say What Government more sure and absolute than the Turkish and yet what Religion more false Therefore certainly Government may stand sure and strong be the Religion professed never so absurd I answer that it may do so indeed by accident through the strange peculiar temper and gross ignorance of a people as we see it happens in the Turks the best part of whose Policy supposing the absurdity of their Religion is this That they prohibit Schools of Learning for this hinders Knowledge and Disputes which such a Religion would not bear But suppose we that the Learning of these Western Nations were as great there as here and the Alcoran as common to them as the Bible to us that they might have free recourse to search and examine the flaws and follies of it and withall that they were of as inquisitive a temper as we And who knows but as there are vicissitudes in the Government so there may happen the same also in the temper of a Nation If this should come to pass where would be their Religion And then let every one judge whether the Arcana imperii and Religionis would not fall together They have begun to totter already for Mahomet having promised to come and visit his Followers and translate them to Paradise after a thousand years this being expired many of the Persians began to doubt and smell the cheat till the Mufti or Chief Priest told them that it was a mistake in the figure and assured them that upon more diligent survey of the Records he found it Two thousand instead of One. When this is expired perhaps they will not be able to renew the Fallacy I say therefore that though this Government continues firm in the exercise of a false Religion yet this is by accident through the present genius of the people which may change but this does not prove but that the Nature of such a Religion of which we only now speak tends to subvert and betray the Civil Power Hence Machiavel himself in his Animadversions upon Livy makes it appear That the Weakness of Italy which was once so strong was caused by the corrupt practices of the Papacy in depraving and misusieng Religion to that purpose which he though himself a Papist says could not have hapned had the Christian Religion been kept in its first and native simplicity Thus much may suffice for the clearing of the first Proposition The Inferences from hence are two 1. If Government depends upon Religion then this shews the pestilential design of those that attempt to disjoyn the Civil and Ecclesiastical Interests setting the latter wholly out of the Tuition of the former But 't is clear that the Fanaticks know no other step to the Magistracy but through the ruine of the Ministery There is a great Analogy between the body Natural and Politick in which the Ecclesiastical or Spiritual part justly supplies the part of the soul and the violent separation of this from the other does as certainly inferr death and dissolution as the disjunction of the body and the soul in the Natural for when this once departs it leaves the body of the Common-wealth as carcase noysom and exposed to be devoured by Birds of prey The Ministery will be one day found according to Christ's word the salt of the earth the onely thing that keeps Societies of men from stench and corruption These two Interests are of that nature that 't is to be feared they cannot be divided but they will also prove opposite and not resting in a bare diversity quickly rise into a Contrariety These two are to the State what the Elements of Fire and Water to
upon what is below it The Sun is said to rule the day and the Moon to rule the night but do they not Rule them only by enlightning them Doctrine is that that must prepare men for Discipline and men never go on so chearfully as when they see where they go Nor is the dullness of the Scholar to extinguish but rather to inflame the charity of the Teacher for since it is not in men as in vessels that the smallest capacity is the soonest filled where the labour is doubled the value of the work is enhaunced for it is a sowing where a man never expects to reap any thing but the Comfort and Conscience of having done vertuously And yet we know moreover that God sometimes converts even the dull and the slow turning very Stones into Sons of Abraham where besides that the difficulty of the Conquest advances the Trophee of the Conquerer it often falls out that the backward Learner makes amends another way recompencing Sure for Sudden expiating his want of Docility with a deeper and a more rooted Retention Which alone were argument sufficient to enforce the Apostle's injunction of being instant in season and out of season even upon the highest and most exalted Ruler in the Church He that sits in Moses chair sits there to Instruct as well as to Rule and a General 's office engages him to Lead as well as to Command his Army In the first of Ecclesiastes Solomon represents himself both as Preacher and King of Israel and every soul that a Bishop gains is a new accession to the extent of his Power he preaches his Jurisdiction wider and enlarges his spiritual Diocess as he enlarges mens apprehensions The Teaching part indeed of a Romish Bishop is easie enough whose Grand business is onely to teach men to be Ignorant to instruct them how to know Nothing or which is all one to know upon Trust to believe implicitly and in a word to see with other mens eyes till they come to be lost in their own souls But our Religion is a Religion that dares to be understood that offers it self to the search of the Inquisitive to the inspection of the severest and the most awakened Reason for being secure of her substantial Truth and Purity she knows that for her to be seen and lookt into is to be embraced and admired as there needs no greater argument for men to love the light than to see it It needs no Legends no Service in an unknown tongue no inquisition against Scripture no purging out the heart and sence of Authors no altering or bribing the voice of Antiquity to speak for it it needs none of all these laborious Artifices of ignorance none of all these cloaks and coverings The Romish Faith indeed must be covered or it cannot be kept warm and their Clergy deal with their Religion as with a great Crime if it is discovered they are undone But there is no Bishop of the Church of England but accounts it his Interest as well as his Duty to comply with this Precept of the Apostle Paul to Titus These things teach and exhort Now this Teaching may be effected two ways 1. Immediately by himself 2. Mediately by others And first immediately by himself Where God gives a Talent the Episcopal Robe can be no Napkin to hide it in Change of Condition changes not the abilities of Nature but makes them more illustrious in their exercise and the Episcopal dignity added to a good Preaching faculty is like the erecting of a stately Fountain upon a Spring which still for all that remains as much a Spring as it was before and flows as plentifully onely it flows with the circumstance of greater State and Magnificence Height of place is intended only to stamp the endowments of a private condition with Lustre and Authority And thanks be to God neither the Church's profess'd enemies nor her pretended friends have any cause to asperse her in this respect as having over her such Bishops as are able to silence the Factious no less by their Preaching than by their Authority But then on the other hand let me add also That this is not so absolutely necessary as to be of the vital Constitution of this Function He may teach his Diocess who ceases to be able to preach to it for he may do it by appointing Teachers and by a vigilant exacting from them the care and the instruction of their respective Flocks He is the Spiritual Father of his Diocess and a Father may see his Children taught though he himself does not turn Schoolmaster It is not the gift of every Person nor of every Age to harangue the multitude to Voice it high and loud Dominari in Concionibus And since Experience fits for Government and Age usually brings Experience perhaps the most Governing years are the least Preaching years In the 2. Second place therefore there is a teaching Mediately by the Subordinate ministration of others in which since the Action of the Instrumental agent is upon all grounds of Reason to be ascribed to the Principal He who ordains and furnishes all his Churches with able Preachers is an Universal Teacher he instructs where he cannot be Present he speaks in every mouth of his Diocess and every Congregation of it every Sunday feels his Influence though it hears not his Voice That Master deprives not his Family of their food who orders a faithfull Steward to dispense it Teaching is not a Flow of Words nor the draining of an Hour-glass but an effectual procuring that a man comes to know something which he knew not before or to know it better And therefore Eloquence and Ability of Speech is to a Church-Governour as Tully said it was to a Philosopher Si afferatur non repudianda si absit non magnopere desideranda and to find fault with such an one for not being a Popular Speaker is to blame a Painter for not being a good Musician To Teach indeed must be confess'd his Duty but then there is a Teaching by Example by Authority by restraining Seducers and so removing the Hindrances of knowledge And a Bishop does his Church his Prince and Countrey more Service by ruling other mens Tongues than he can by imploying his own And thus much for the first Branch of the great Work belonging to a Pastor of the Church which was to Teach and to Exhort 2. The second is to Rule Expressed in these words Rebuke with all Authority By which I doubt not but the Apostle principally intends Church-Censures and so the Words are a Metonymy of the Part for the Whole giving an instance in Ecclesiastical Censures instead of all other Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction A Jurisdiction which in the Essentials of it is as old as Christianity and even in those Circumstantial Additions of secular encouragement with which the Piety and Wisdom of Christian Princes always thought necessary to support it against the Encroachments of the injurious World much Older and more Venerable than
this That nothing can be a reasonable Ground of Despising a man but some Fault or other chargeable upon him and nothing can be a Fault that is not Naturally in a man's power to prevent otherwise it is a man's Unhappiness his Mischance or Calamity but not his Fault Nothing can justly be Despised that cannot justly be Blamed and it is a most certain Rule in Reason and moral Philosophy That where there is no Choice there can be no Blame This premised we may take notice of two usual grounds of the Contempt men cast upon the Clergy and yet for which no man ought to think himself at all the more worthy to be Contemned 1. The first is their very Profession it self Concerning which it is a sad but an experimented Truth that the Names derived from it in the refined Language of the present Age are made but the Appellatives of Scorn This is not charged Universally upon all but experience will affirm or rather proclaim it of much the greater part of the World and men must perswade us that we have lost our Hearing and our common Sence before we can believe the Contrary But surely the Bottom and Foundation of this Behaviour towards Persons set apart for the Service of God that this very Relation should entitle them to such a peculiar Scorn can be nothing else but Atheism the growing rampant Sin of the Times For call a man Oppressor Griping Covetous or Over-reaching person and the Word indeed being ill befriended by Custom perhaps sounds not well but generally in the apprehension of the Hearer it signifies no more than that such an one is a Wise and a Thriving or in the common Phrase a Notable man which will certainly procure him a Respect And say of another that he is an Epicure a Loose or a Vicious man and it leaves in men no other Opinion of him than that he is a Merry Pleasant and a Gentile Person and that he that taxes him is but a Pedant an unexperienced and a Morose fellow one that does not know men nor understand what it is to Eat and Drink well But call a man Priest or Parson and you set him in some mens Esteem ten degrees below his own Servant But let us not be Discouraged or Displeased either with our Selves or our Profession upon this account Let the Vertuoso's Mock Insult and Despise on yet after all they shall never be able to Droll away the Nature of things to trample a Pearl into a Pebble nor to make Sacred things Contemptible any more than themselves by such speeches Honourable 2. Another groundless Cause of some mens despising the Governours of our Church is their loss of that former Grandeur and Privilege that they enjoyed But it is no real Disgrace to the Church merely to lose her privileges but to forfeit them by her Fault or Misdemeanor of which she is not conscious Whatsoever she injoyed in this kind she readily acknowledges to have streamed from the Royal Munificence and the favours of the Civil power shining upon the Spiritual which Favours the same power may retract and gather back into it self when it pleases And we envy not the Greatness and Lustre of the Romish Clergy neither their Scarlet Gowns nor their Scarlet Sins If our Church cannot be Great which is better she can be Humble and content to be Reformed into as low a Condition as men for their own private Advantage would have her who wisely tell her that it is best and safest for her to be without any power or Temporal advantage like the good Physician who out of tenderness to his Patient lest he should hurt himself by Drinking was so kind as to rob him of his silver Cup. The Church of England Glories in nothing more than that she is the truest Friend to Kings and to Kingly Government of any other Church in the World that they were the same Hands and Principles that took the Crown from the King's Head and the Mitre from the Bishop's It is indeed the Happiness of some Professions and Callings that they can equally square themselves to and thrive under all Revolutions of Government but the Clergy of England neither know nor affect that Happiness and are willing to be Despised for not doing so And so far is our Church from encroaching upon the Civil power as some who are Backfriends to both would maliciously insinuate that were it stript of the very Remainder of its Privileges and made as like the primitive Church for its Bareness as it is already for its purity it could Cheerfully and what is more Loyally want all such Privileges and in the want of them pray heartily that the Civil power may flourish as much and stand as secure from the Assaults of Fanatick Antimonarchical principles grown to such a dreadful height during the Churches late Confusions as it stood while the Church enjoyed those privileges And thus much for the two groundless Causes upon which Church Rulers are frequently Despised I descend now to the 3. And last thing which is to show those just Causes that would render them or indeed any other Rulers worthy to be Despised Many might be Assigned but I shall pitch only upon Four in Discoursing of which rather the Time than the Subject will force me to be very Brief 1. And the first is Ignorance We know how great an Absurdity our Saviour accounted it for the Blind to lead the Blind and to put him that cannot so much as See to discharge the Office of a Watch. Nothing more exposes to Contempt than Ignorance When Sampson's eyes were out of a publick Magistrate he was made a publick Sport And when Eli was blind we know how well he Govern'd his Sons and how well they Govern'd the Church under him But now the Blindness of the Understanding is Greater and more Scandalous especially in such a seeing Age as Ours in which the very Knowledge of former times passes but for Ignorance in a better Dress an Age that flies at all Learning and enquires into every thing but especially into Faults and Defects Ignorance indeed so far as it may be Resolved into Natural inability is as to men at least Inculpable and consequently not the Object of Scorn but Pity but in a Governour it cannot be without the Conjunction of the highest Impudence For who bid such an one aspire to Teach and to Govern A blind man sitting in the Chimney corner is pardonable enough but sitting at the Helm he is Intolerable If men will be Ignorant and Illiterate let them be so in Private and to themselves and not set their Defects in an high place to make them Visible and Conspicuous If Owls will not be hooted at let them keep close within the Tree and not perch upon the upper Boughs 2. A Second thing that makes a Governour justly despised is Viciousness and ill Morals Vertue is that which must tip the preacher's Tongue and the Ruler's Scepter with Authority And therefore with
Christianity But the Jewish was yet in possession and therefore that this might so enter as not to intrude it was to bring its Warrant from the same hand of Omnipotence And for this cause Christ that he might not make either a suspected or precarious address to mens understandings out-does Moses before he displaces him shews an Ascendent Spirit above him raises the Dead and cures more Plagues than he brought upon AEgypt casts out Devils and heals the Deaf speaking such Words as even gave ears to hear them cures the Blind and the Lame and makes the very Dumb to speak for the Truth of his Doctrine But what was the result of all this Why some look upon him as an Impostor and a Conjurer as an Agent for Beelzebub and therefore reject his Gospel hold fast their Law and will not let Moses give place to the Magician Now the Cause that Christ's Doctrine was rejected must of necessity be one of these two 1. An insufficiency in the Arguments brought by Christ to inforce it Or 2. An indisposition in the Persons to whom this Doctrine was addressed to receive it And for this Christ who had not onely an infinite Power to work miracles but also an equal Wisdom both to know the just force and measure of every argument or motive to persuade or cause Assent and withall to look through and through all the Dark Corners of the Soul of man all the Windings and Turnings and various Workings of his Faculties and to discern how and by what means they are to be wrought upon and what prevails upon them and what does not He I say states the whole matter upon this Issue That the Arguments by which his Doctrine addressed it self to the minds of men were proper adequate and sufficient to compass their respective ends in persuading or convincing the Persons to whom they were proposed and moreover that there was no such defect in the Natural light of man's understanding or Knowing faculty but that considered in it self it would be apt enough to close with and yield its assent to the Evidence of those Arguments duly offered to and laid before it And yet that after all this the Event proved otherwise and that notwithstanding both the Weight and fitness of the Arguments to persuade and the light of man's Intellect to meet this persuasive evidence with a sutable assent no Assent followed nor were men thereby actually persuaded he Charges it wholly upon the Corruption the Perverseness and Vitiosity of man's will as the onely Cause that rendred all the Arguments his Doctrine came cloathed with unsuccessfull And consequently he affirms here in the Text That men must love the Truth before they throughly believe it and that the Gospel has then onely a free admission into the Assent of the Understanding when it brings a Passport from a rightly disposed will as being the great faculty of Dominion that commands all that shuts out and lets in what Objects it pleases and in a Word keeps the Keys of the whole Soul This is the Design and purport of the Words which I shall draw forth and handle in the Prosecution of these four following Heads 1. I shall shew What the Doctrine of Christ was that the World so much stuck at and was so averse from Believing 2. I shall shew That mens unbelief of it was from no Defect or Insufficiency in the Arguments brought by Christ to inforce it 3. I shall shew What was the True and proper cause into which this unbelief was resolved 4. And lastly I shall shew That a Pious and well disposed mind attended with a readiness to obey the Known will of God is the surest and best means to enlighten the Understanding to a belief of Christianity Of these in their order and First for the Doctrine of Christ. We must take it in the Known and Common Division of it into matters of Belief and matters of Practice The matters of Belief related chiefly to his Person and Offices As that he was the Messias that should come into the World The Eternal Son of God begotten of him before all Worlds That in time he was made man and born of a pure Virgin That he should die and satisfie for the Sins of the World and that he should rise again from the Dead and ascend into Heaven and there sitting at the right hand of God hold the Government of the whole World till the great and last day in which he should judge both the Quick and the Dead raised to life again with the very same Bodies and then deliver up all Rule and Government into the hands of his Father These were the great Articles and Credenda of Christianity that so much startled the World and seemed to be such as not only brought in a New Religion amongst men but also required a New Reason to embrace it The other part of his Doctrine lay in matters of Practice Which we find contained in his several Sermons but Principally in that glorious full and admirable discourse upon the Mount recorded in the 5 6 and 7. Chapters of St. Matthew All which particulars if we would reduce to one general Comprehensive Head they are all wrapt up in the Doctrine of Self-denial prescribing to the World the most inward purity of Heart and a Constant Conflict with all our sensual Appetites and worldly Interests even to the quitting of all that is dear to us and the Sacrificing of Life it self rather than knowingly to omit the least Duty or commit the least Sin And this was that which grated harder upon and raised greater tumults and boilings in the Hearts of men than the strangeness and seeming unreasonableness of all the former Articles that took up Chiefly in Speculation and Belief And that this was so will appear from a Consideration of the state and condition the World was in as to religion when Christ promulged his Doctrine Nothing further than the outward Action was then lookt after and when that failed there was an Expiation ready in the Opus operatum of a Sacrifice So that all their Vertue and Religion lay in their Folds and their Stalls and what was wanting in the Innocence the Blood of Lambs was to supply The Scribes and Pharisees who were the great Doctors of the Jewish Church expounded the Law no further They accounted no man a murtherer but he that struck a Knife into his Brother's heart No man an Adulterer but He that actually defiled his neighbour's Bed They thought it no injustice nor irreligion to prosecute the Severest Retaliation or Revenge so that at the same time their outward man might be a Saint and their inward man a Devil No care at all was had to curb the Unruliness of Anger or the Exorbitance of Desire Amongst all their Sacrifices they never sacrificed so much as one Lust. Bulls and Goats bled apace but neither the Violence of the one nor the Wantonness of the other ever dyed a Victim at any of their Altars
So that no Wonder that a Doctrine that arraigned the Irregularities of the most inward motions and affections of the Soul and told men that anger and harsh Words were murder and looks and desires Adultery that a man might Stab with his Tongue and assassinate with his mind pollute himself with a Glance and forfeit Eternity by a cast of his eye No wonder I say that such a Doctrine made a strange bustle and disturbance in the World which then sat Warm and Easie in a free Enjoyment of their Lusts ordering matters so that they put a Trick upon the great Rule of Vertue the Law and made a Shift to think themselves guiltless in spite of all their Sins to break the Precept and at the same time to baffle the Curse Contriving to themselves such a sort of Holiness as should please God and themselves too justifie and save them harmless but never Sanctifie nor make them Better But the severe Notions of Christianity turned all this upside down filling all with Surprise and Amazement they came upon the World like light darting full upon the face of a man asleep who had a mind to sleep on and not to be disturbed They were terrible astonishing Alarms to Persons grown fat and wealthy by a long and successfull Imposture by suppressing the True sence of the Law by putting another Veil upon Moses and in a word persuading the World That men might be honest and Religious happy and Blessed though they never denyed nor mortified any one of their Corrupt Appetites And thus much for the first thing proposed which was to give you a brief Draught of the Doctrine of Christ that met with so little assent from the World in general and from the Jews in particular I come now to the Second thing proposed Which was to Shew That mens unbelief of Christ's doctrine was from no defect or insufficiency in the Arguments brought by Christ to inforce it This I shall make appear two ways 1. By shewing that the Arguments spoken of were in themselves Convincing and sufficient 2. By shewing that upon supposition they were not so yet their Insufficiency was not the Cause of their Rejection And first for the first of these That the Arguments brought by Christ for the Confirmation of his Doctrine were in themselves Convincing and Sufficient I shall insist only upon the Convincing Power of the two Principal One from the Prophecies recorded concerning him the other from the Miracles done by him Of both very briefly And for the former There was a full entire Harmony and Consent of all the Divine Predictions receiving their Completion in Christ. The strength of which Argument lies in this That it Evinces the Divine Mission of Christ's person and thereby proves him to be the Messias which by Consequence proves and asserts the Truth of his Doctrine For He that was so sent by God could declare nothing but the Will of God And so evidently do all the Prophecies agree to Christ that I dare with great Confidence affirm That if the Prophecies recorded of the Messiah are not fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth It is impossible to know or distinguish When a Prophecy is fulfilled and when not in any thing or Person whatsoever which would utterly evacuate the use of them But in Christ they all meet with such an invincible Lustre and Evidence as if they were not Predictions but after-Relations and the Pen-men of them not Prophets but Evangelists And now can any Kind of Rationcination allow Christ all the marks of the Messiah and yet deny him to be the Messiah could he have all the signs and yet not be the Thing signified could the Shadows that followed him and were cast from him belong to any other Body All these things are absurd and unnatural And therefore the force of this Argument was Undeniable Nor was that other from the Miracles done by him at all inferior The strength and force of which to prove the Things they are alledged for consists in this That a Miracle being a Work exceeding the power of any Created Agent and consequently being an effect of the Divine Omnipotence when it is done to give Credit and Authority to any Word or Doctrine declared to proceed from God either that Doctrine must really proceed from God as it is declared or God by that Work of his Almighty power must bear Witness to a falshood and so bring the Creature under the greatest Obligation that can possibly engage the Assent of a Rational Nature to believe and assent to a Lye For surely a greater Reason than this cannot be produced for the Belief of any thing than for a man to stand up and say This and This I tell you as the Mind and Word of God and to prove that it is so I will do that before your Eyes that you your selves shall confess can be done by nothing but the Almighty power of that God that can neither deceive nor be deceived Now if this be an irrefragable Way to Convince as the Reason of all Mankind must confess it to be then Christ's Doctrine came attended and enforced with the greatest means of Conviction imaginable Thus much for the Argument in Thesi and then for the Assumption that Christ did such Miraculous and Supernatural Works to Confirm what he said we need only repeat the Message sent by him to Iohn the Baptist That the Dumb spake the Blind saw the Lame walked and the Dead were Raised Which particulars none of his bitterest Enemies ever pretended to deny they being conveyed to them by an Evidence past all Exception even the Evidence of Sense nay of the quickest the surest and most authentick of all the Senses the Sight which if it be not certain in the Reports and representations it makes of things to the mind there neither is nor can be naturally any such thing as Certainty or Knowledge in the World And thus much for the first part of the second General thing proposed namely That the Arguments brought by Christ for the proof of his Doctrine were in themselves Convincing and Sufficient I come now to the other part of it which is to shew That admitting or supposing that they were not sufficient yet their insufficiency was not the Cause of their Actual Rejection Which will appear from these following Reasons First Because those who rejected Christ's Doctrine and the Arguments by which he confirmed it fully believed and assented to other things conveyed to them with less evidence Such as were even the Miracles of Moses himself upon the Credit and Authority of which stood the whole Oeconomy of the Jewish Constitution For though I grant that they believed his Miracles upon the Credit of constant unerring Tradition both written and unwritten and grant also that such Tradition was of as great Certainty as the Reports of Sense yet still I affirm that it was not of the same Evidence which yet is the greatest and most immediate ground of all Assent The Evidence of
and this their Understanding could not apply to if it were diverted and took off by their Will and their Will would be sure to divert and take it off being wholly possessed and governed by their Covetousness and Ambition which perfectly abhorr'd the Precepts of such a Doctrine And this is the very Account that our Saviour himself gives of this matter in Iohn 5.44 How can ye believe says he who receive honour One of Another He lookt upon it as a thing morally impossible for Persons infinitely Proud and Ambitious to frame their minds to an Impartial unbyassed Consideration of a Religion that taught nothing but Self-denial and the Cross That Humility was honour and that the Higher men Climb'd the further they were from Heaven They could not with patience so much as think of it and therefore you may be sure would never assent to it And again when Christ discoursed to them of Alms and a pious distribution of the goods and riches of this World in Luke 16. it is said in the 14. v. That the Pharisees who were Covetous heard all those things and derided him Charity and Liberality is a Paradox to the Covetous The Doctrine that teaches Alms and the Persons that need them are by such equally sent packing Tell a Miser of Bounty to a friend or Mercy to the Poor and point him out his Duty with an Evidence as bright and piercing as the Light yet he will not understand it but shuts his Eyes as close as he does his hands and resolves not to be Convinced In both these Cases there is an Incurable Blindness caused by a Resolution not to see And to all intents and purposes he who will not open his eyes is for the present as Blind as he that cannot And thus I have done with the third thing proposed and shown what was the true Cause of the Pharisees disbelief of Christ's Doctrine It was the Predominance of those two great Vices over their Will their Covetousness and Ambition Pass we now to the Fourth and Last Which is to shew That a Pious and well disposed Mind attended with a readiness to obey the known will of God is the surest and best Means to enlighten the Understanding to a belief of Christianity That it is so will appear upon a double Account First upon the Account of God's goodness and the method of its dealing with the Souls of men which is to reward every degree of sincere obedience to his will with a further discovery of it I understand more than the Ancients says David Psalm 119.100 verse But how did he attain to such an Excellency of understanding was it by longer Study or a greater quickness and felicity of Parts than was in those before him No he gives the Reason in the next Words It was because I keep thy Statutes He got the start of them in point of Obedience and thereby out stript them at length in point of Knowledge And who in old time were the men of Extraordinary Revelations but those who were also men of Extraordinary Piety who were made Privy to the Secrets of Heaven and the Hidden will of the Almighty but such as performed his Revealed will at an higher rate of Strictness than the rest of the World They were the Enochs the Abrahams the Elijahs and the Daniels such as the Scripture remarkably testifies of that they walked with God And surely he that walks with Another is in a likelier way to know and understand his mind than He that follows him at a distance Upon which account the Learned Jews still made this one of the Ingredients that went to Constitute a Prophet that he should be perfectus in moralibus A Person of exact Morals and unblameable in his Life The gift of Prophecy being a Ray of such a light as never darts it self upon a Dunghill And what I here observe occasionally of extraordinary Revelation and Prophecy will by Analogy and due Proportion extend even to those Communications of God's Will that are requisite to mens Salvation An honest hearty simplicity and proneness to do all that a man knows of God's Will is the ready certain and infallible way to know more of it For I am sure it may be said of the practical knowledge of Religion that to him that hath shall be given and he shall have more abundantly I dare not I confess joyn in that bold Assertion of some that Facienti quod in se est Deus nec debet nec potest denegare Gratiam Which indeed is no less than a direct contradiction in the very Terms for if Deus debet then id quod debetur non est gratia there being a perfect inconsistency between that which is of Debt and that which is of free Gift And therefore leaving the non debet and the non potest to those that can bind and loose the Almighty at their pleasure so much I think we may pronounce safely in this matter That the goodness and mercy of God is such that he never deserts a sincere Person nor suffers any one that shall live even according to these measures of sincerity up to what he knows to perish for want of any Knowledge necessary and what is more sufficient to save him If any one should here say Were there then none living up to these measures of sincerity amongst the Heathen and if there were did the goodness of God afford such persons Knowledge enough to save them My answer is according to that of St. Paul I judge not those that are without the Church they stand or fall to their own Master I have nothing to say of them Secret things belong to God it becomes us to be thankfull to God and charitable to Men. Secondly A pious and well-disposed Will is the readiest means to enlighten the Understanding to a Knowledge of the Truth of Christianity upon the account of a Natural Efficiency for as much as a Will so disposed will be sure to engage the mind in a severe Search into the great and concerning Truths of Religion nor will it only engage the mind in such a Search but it will also accompany that Search with two Dispositions directly tending to and principally productive of the Discoveries of Truth namely Diligence and Impartiality And 1. for the Diligence of the Search Diligence is the great Harbinger of Truth which rarely takes up in any mind till that has gone before and made room for it It is a steady constant and pertinacious Study that naturally leads the Soul into the Knowledge of that which at first seemed lockt up from it For this keeps the Understanding long in Converse with an object and long Converse brings Acquaintance Frequent Consideration of a Thing wears off the strangeness of it and shews it in its several lights and various ways of Appearance to the View of the Mind Truth is a great Strong-hold barr'd and fortified by God and Nature and Diligence is properly the Understanding's laying siege to it So
that as in a Kind of Warfare it must be perpetually upon the Watch observing all the Avenues and Passes to it and accordingly making its Approaches Sometimes it thinks it gains a point and presently again it finds it self baffled and beaten off yet still it renews the on-set attacks the Difficulty a fresh plants this reasoning and that Argument this consequence and that distinction like so many intellectual Batteries till at length it forces a Way and Passage into the obstinate enclosed Truth that so long withstood and defied all its Assaults The Jesuits have a Saying common amongst them touching the Institution of Youth in which their chief Strength and Talent lies that Vexatio dat intellectum As when the mind casts and turns it self restlesly from one thing to another strains this Power of the Soul to apprehend that to judge another to divide a fourth to remember thus tracing out the nice and scarce observable Difference of some things and the real Agreement of others till at length it brings all the Ends of a long and various Hypothesis together sees how one part coheres with and depends upon another and so clears off all the appearing Contrarieties and Contradictions that seemed to lie cross and uncouth and to make the whole unintelligible This is the Laborious and Vexatious Inquest that the Soul must make after Science For Truth like a stately Dame will not be seen nor shew her self at the first Visit nor match with the Understanding upon an ordinary Courtship or Address Long and tedious Attendances must be given and the hardest Fatigues endured and digested nor did ever the most pregnant Wit in the World bring forth any thing great lasting and considerable without some Pain and Travail some Pangs and Throwes before the Delivery Now all this that I have said is to shew the force of Diligence in the investigation of Truth and particularly of the Noblest of all Truths which is that of Religion But then as Diligence is the great Discoverer of Truth so is the Will the great Spring of Diligence For no man can heartily search after that which he is not very desirous to find Diligence is to the Understanding as the Whetstone to the Razor but the Will is the Hand that must apply one to the other What makes many men so strangely immerse themselves some in Chymical and some in Mathematical Enquiries but because they strangely love the things they labour in Their intent Study gives them Skill and Proficiency and their particular affection to these Kinds of Knowledge puts them upon such Study Accordingly let there be but the same Propensity and Bent of Will to Religion and there will be the same sedulity and indefatigable Industry in mens Enquiry into it And then in the Natural course of things the consequent of a sedulous Seeking is finding and the fruit of Enquiry is Information Secondly A pious and well disposed Will gives not only Diligence but also Impartiality to the Understanding in its Search into Religion which is as absolutely Necessary to give success to our Enquiries into Truth as the former It being scarce possible for that man to hit the Mark whose Eye is still glancing upon something beside it Partiality is properly the Understanding's judging according to the Inclination of the Will and Affections and not according to the Exact Truth of things or the Merits of the Cause before it Affection is still a Briber of the Judgment and it is hard for a man to admit a Reason against the Thing he loves or to confess the force of an Argument against an Interest In this case he prevaricates with his own Understanding and cannot seriously and sincerely set his mind to consider the Strength to poise the Weight and to discern the Evidence of the clearest and best Argumentations where they would conclude against the Darling of his Desires For still that beloved thing possesses and even engrosses him and like a Colour'd Glass before his Eyes casts its own Colour and Tincture upon all the Images and Idea's of things that pass from the Fancy to the Understanding and so absolutely does it sway that that if a strange irresistible Evidence of some unacceptable Truth should chance to surprise and force Reason to assent to the Premises Affection would yet step in at last and make it quit the Conclusion Upon which Account Socinus and his followers state the Reason of a man's believing or embracing Christianity upon the Natural goodness or Vertuous disposition of his mind which they sometimes call Naturalis Probitas and sometimes Animus in Virtutem Pronus For say they the whole Doctrine of Christianity teaches nothing but what is perfectly sutable to and coincident with the Ruling Principles that a vertuous and well inclined man is Acted by and with the main Interest that he proposes to himself So that as soon as ever it is declared to such an one he presently closes in accepts and complies with it As a prepared Soil eagerly takes in and firmly retains such seed or plants as particularly agree with it With ordinary minds such as much the greatest part of the World are 't is the Sutableness not the Evidence of a Truth that makes it to be assented to And it is seldom that any thing practically convinces a Man that does not please him first If you would be sure of him you must inform and gratifie him too But now Impartiality strips the mind of prejudice and passion keeps it tight and even from the Byass of Interest and Desire and so presents it like a Rasa Tabula equally disposed to the Reception of all Truth So that the Soul lies prepared and open to entertain it and prepossessed with Nothing that can oppose or thrust it out For where Diligence opens the Door of the Understanding and Impartiality keeps it Truth is sure to find both an Entrance and a Welcome too And thus I have done with the fourth and last General thing proposed and Proved by Argument that a Pious and well-disposed Mind attended with a Readiness to obey the known Will of God is the surest and best Means to enlighten the Understanding to a Belief of Christianity Now from the foregoing particulars by way of Use we may collect these two things First The true Cause of that Atheism that Scepticism and Cavilling at Religion that we see and have cause to lament in too many in these days It is not from any thing weak or wanting in our Religion to support and enable it to look the strongest Arguments and the severest and most Controlling Reason in the face But men are Atheistical because they are first Vitious and question the Truth of Christianity because they hate the Practice And therefore that they may seem to have some Pretence and Colour to sin on freely and to surrender up themselves wholly to their Sensuality without any Imputation upon their judgment and to quit their morals without any discredit to their Intellectuals they
fly to several stale trite pitifull Objections and Cavils some against Religion in general and some against Christianity in particular and some against the very first Principles of Morality to give them some poor Credit and Countenance in the pursuit of their bruitish Courses Few practical Errors in the world are embraced upon the Stock of Conviction but Inclination For though indeed the judgment may err upon the account of Weakness yet where there is one Error that enters in at this door ten are lett into it through the Will That for the most part being set upon those things which Truth is a direct obstacle to the Enjoyment of and where both cannot be had a man will be sure to buy his Enjoyment though he pays down Truth for the purchase For in this case the further from Truth the further from Trouble Since Truth shows such an one what he is unwilling to see and tells him what he hates to hear They are the same beams that shine and enlighten and are apt to scorch too and it is impossible for a man engaged in any wicked way to have a clear understanding of it and a quiet mind in it together But these Sons of Epicurus both for Voluptuousness and Irreligion also as it is hard to support the former without the latter these I say rest not here but if you will take them at their word they must also pass for the only Wits of the Age though greater Arguments I am sure may be produced against this than any they can alledge against the most improbable Article of Christianity But heretofore the Rate and Standard of Wit was very different from what it is now-a-days No man was then accounted a Wit for speaking such things as deserved to have the Tongue cut out that spake them Nor did any man pass for a Philosopher or a man of depth for talking atheistically or a man of Parts for imploying them against that God that gave them For then the World was generally better enclined Vertue was in so much Reputation as to be pretended to at least And Vertue whether in a Christian or in an Infidel can have no Interest to be served either by Atheism or Infidelity For which Cause could we but prevail with the greatest Debauchees amongst us to change their Lives we should find it no very hard matter to change their Judgments For notwithstanding all their talk of Reason and Philosophy which God knows they are deplorably strangers to and those unanswerable Doubts and Difficulties which over their Cups or their Coffee they pretend to have against Christianity persuade but the Covetous man not to deifie his money the Proud man not to adore himself the Lascivious man to throw off his lewd amours the Intemperate man to abandon his revels and so for any other vice that is apt to abuse and pervert the mind of man and I dare undertake that all their Giant-like objections against Christian Religion shall presently vanish and quit the field For he that is a good man is three quarters of his way towards the being a good Christian wheresoever he lives or whatsoever he is called Secondly In the next place we learn from hence the most effectual way and means of proficiency and growth in the Knowledge of the great and profound Truths of Religion and how to make us all not only good Christians but also expert Divines It is a knowledge that men are not so much to study as to live themselves into A knowledge that passes into the Head through the Heart I have heard of some that in their latter years through the feebleness of their Limbs have been forced to study upon their knees and I think it might well become the youngest and the strongest to doe so too Let them daily and incessantly pray to God for his Grace and if God gives grace they may be sure that knowledge will not stay long behind Since it is the same Spirit and Principle that purifies the Heart and clarifies the Understanding Let all their Enquiries into the deep and mysterious points of Theology be begun and carried on with fervent Petitions to God that he would dispose their minds to direct all their Skill and Knowledge to the Promotion of a good life both in themselves and others that he would use all their Noblest Speculations and most Refined Notions only as Instruments to move and set a Work the great Principles of Actions the Will and the Affections that he would convince them of the Infinite Vanity and uselessness of all that Learning that makes not the Possessor of it a Better man that He would keep them from those Sins that may grieve and provoke his holy Spirit the fountain of all true light and knowledge to withdraw from them and so seal them up under Darkness Blindness and Stupidity of mind For where the Heart is bent upon and held under the power of any vicious Course though Christ himself should take the contrary Vertue for his Doctrine and doe a miracle before such an ones Eyes for its Application yet he would not Practically gain his Assent but the Result of all would end in a non persuadebis etiamsi persuaseris Few Consider what a Degree of Sottishness and Confirmed Ignorance men may sin themselves into This was the case of the Pharisees And no doubt but this very Consideration also gives us the true Reason and full Explication of that notable and strange passage of Scripture in Luke 16. and the last verse That if men will not hear Moses and the Prophets neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the Dead That is where a strong inveterate Love of Sin has made any Doctrine or Proposition wholly unsutable to the Heart no Argument or Demonstration no nor miracle whatsoever shall be able to bring the Heart cordially to close with and receive it Whereas on the Contrary if the Heart be piously disposed the Natural goodness of any Doctrine is enough to vouch for the Truth of it for the Sutableness of it will endear it to the Will and by endearing it to the Will will naturally slide it into the Assent also For in Morals as well as in Metaphysicks there is nothing really good but has a Truth Commensurate to its Goodness The Truths of Christ crucified are the Christians Philosophy and a good life is the Christians Logick that great Instrumental introductive Art that must guide the mind into the former And where a long Course of Piety and close Communion with God has purged the Heart and rectified the Will and made all things ready for the Reception of God's Spirit Knowledge will break in upon such a Soul like the Sun shining in his full might with such a Victorious light that nothing shall be able to resist it If now at length some should object here that from what has been delivered it will follow That the most Pious men are still the most Knowing which yet seems contrary to common
Prince's taking a fancy to bathe himself at that time caused the interruption of his March and that interruption gave occasion to that great Victory that founded the Third Monarchy of the World In like manner how much of Casualty was there in the preservation of Romulus as soon as born exposed by his Uncle and took up and nourished by a Shepherd for the Story of the She-wolf is a Fable and yet in that one Accident was laid the Foundation of the Fourth Universal Monarchy How doubtfull a case was it whether Hannibal after the Battle of Cannae should march directly to Rome or divert into Campania Certain it is that there was more reason for the former and he was a Person that had sometimes the command of Reason as well as of Regiments yet his Reason deserted his Conduct at that time and by not going to Rome he gave occasion to those Recruits of the Roman strength that prevailed to the Conquest of his Countrey and at length to the Destruction of Carthage it self one of the most puissant Cities in the World And to descend to Occurrences within our own Nation How many strange Accidents concurred in the whole business of King Henry the Eighth's Divorce yet we see Providence directed it and them to an entire Change of the Affairs and State of the whole Kingdom And surely there could not be a greater Chance than that which brought to light the Powder Treason when Providence as it were snatch'd a King and Kingdom out of the very Jaws of Death only by the mistake of a Word in the Direction of a Letter But of all Cases in which Little Casualties produce great and strange Effects the chief is in War upon the Issues of which hangs the Fortune of States and Kingdoms Caesar I am sure whose great Sagacity and Conduct put his Success as much out of the power of Chance as Humane Reason could well do yet upon occasion of a Notable Experiment that had like to have lost him his whole Army at Dyrrachium tells us the Power of it in the Third Book of his Commentaries De Bello Civili Fortuna quae plurimum potest cùm in aliis rebus tum praecipuè in bello parvis momentis magnas rerum mutationes efficit Nay and a greater than Caesar even the Spirit of God himself in Eccles. 6.11 expresly declares That the Battle is not always to the strong So that upon this account every Warriour may in some sence be said to be a Souldier of Fortune and the best Commanders to have a kind of Lottery for their Work as amongst us they have for their Reward For how often have whole Armies been routed by a little Mistake or a suddain Fear raised in the Souldiers minds upon some trivial Ground or Occasion Sometimes the misunderstanding of a word has scattered and destroy'd those who have been even in possession of Victory and wholly turned the fortune of the day A spark of fire or an unexpected gust of Wind may ruine a Navy And sometimes a false senceless report has spread so far and sunk so deep into the Peoples minds as to cause a Tumult and that Tumult a Rebellion and that Rebellion has ended in the Subversion of a Government And in the late War between the King and some of his Rebel Subjects has it not sometimes been an even cast whether his Army should march this way or that way Whereas had it took that way which actually it did not things afterwards so fell out that in very high Probability of Reason it must have met with such success as would have put an happy Issue to that wretched War and thereby have continued the Crown upon that blessed Prince's Head and his Head upon his Shoulders Upon supposal of which Event most of those sad and strange alterations that have since happened would have been prevented the ruine of many honest men hindered the Punishment of many great villains hastned and the preferment of greater spoil'd Many passages happen in the world much like that little Cloud in 1 Kings 18. that appear'd at first to Elijah's Servant no bigger than a man's Hand but presently after grew and spread and blackned the face of the whole Heaven and then discharged it self in Thunder and Rain and a mighty Tempest So these accidents when they first happen seem but small and contemptible but by degrees they branch out and widen themselves into such a Numerous train of mischievous consequences one drawing after it another by a continued dependance and multiplication that the Plague becomes Victorious and Universal and a personal miscarriage determines in a National calamity For who that should view the small despicable Beginnings of some things and persons at first could imagine or Prognosticate those vast and stupendious encreases of fortune that have afterwards followed them Who that had lookt upon Agathocles first handling the Clay and making Pots under his Father and afterwards turning Robber could have thought that from such a condition he should come to be King of Sicily Who that had seen Masianello a poor Fisherman with his red Cap and his Angle could have reckon'd it possible to see such a pitifull thing within a Week after shining in his Cloth of Gold and with a Word or a Nod absolutely Commanding the whole City of Naples And who that had beheld such a Bankrupt Beggarly fellow as Cromwell first entring the Parliament-House with a Thread-bare Torn Cloak and a Greasy Hat and perhaps neither of them paid for could have suspected that in the space of so few years he should by the Murder of one King and the Banishment of another ascend the Throne be invested in the Royal Robes and want nothing of the state of a King but the changeing of his Hat into a Crown 'T is as it were the Sport of the Almighty thus to baffle and confound the Sons of men by such Events as both cross the methods of their actings and surpass the measure of their Expectations For according to both these Men still suppose a Gradual Natural Progress of things as that from great Things and Persons should grow greater till at length by many steps and ascents they come to be at greatest not considering that when Providence designs strange and mighty changes it gives men Wings instead of Legs and instead of Climbing leisurely makes them at once fly to the Top and Height of all Greatness and Power So that the world about them looking up to those Illustrious upstarts scarce knows who or whence they were nor they themselves where they are It were infinite to insist upon Particular instances Histories are full of them and Experience seals to the truth of History In the next place let us consider to what great purposes God directs these little Casualties with reference to particular Persons and those either Publick or Private 1. And first for publick Persons as Princes Was it not a mere accident that Pharaoh's Daughter met with Moses Yet it
resolves not to be And consequently it emploies all the Art and Industry imaginable to make good the Disguise and by false Appearances to render its Designs the less visible that so they may prove the more effectual And this is the Dissimulation here meant which is the very Ground-work of all worldly Policy The Superstructure of which being Folly it is but Reason that the Foundation of it should be Falsity In the Language of the Scripture it is Damnable Hypocrisie but of those who neither believe Scripture nor Damnation it is voted Wisdom nay the very Primum Mobile or great Wheel upon which all the various Arts of Policy move and turn The Soul or Spirit which as it were animates and runs through all the particular Designs and Contrivances by which the great Masters of this Mysterious Wisdom turn about the World So that he who hates his Neighbour mortally and wisely too must profess all the Dearness and Friendship all the Readiness to serve him as the Phrase now is that Words and Superficial Actions can express When he purposes one thing he must swear and lye and damn himself with ten thousand Protestations that he designs the clean contrary If he really intends to ruine and murther his Prince as Cromwell an Experienced Artist in that Perfidious and bloody Faculty once did he must weep and call upon God use all the Oaths and Imprecations all the Sanctifi'd Perjuries to perswade him that he resolves Nothing but his Safety Honour and Establishment as the same grand Exemplar of Hypocrisie did before If such Persons project the Ruine of Church and State they must appeal to God the Searcher of all Hearts that they are ready to sacrifice their dearest Blood for the Peace of the one and the Purity of the other And now if Men will be prevailed upon so far as to renounce the sure and impartial Judgment of Sense and Experience and to believe that Black is White provided there be somebody to swear that it is so they shall not want Arguments of this Sort good Store to convince them There being Knights of the Post and Holy Cheats enough in the World to swear the Truth of the broadest Contradictions and the highest Impossibilities where Interest and Pious Frauds shall give them an Extraordinary Call to it It is look'd upon as a great piece of Weakness and Unfitness for Business forsooth for a Man to be so clear and open as really to think not only what he says but what he swears And when he makes any Promise to have the least intent of performing it but when his Interest serves instead of Veracity and engages him rather to be true to another than false to himself He only now-a-days speaks like an Oracle who speaks Tricks and Ambiguities Nothing is thought beautifull that is not painted So that what between French Fashions and Italian Dissimulations the Old Generous English Spirit which heretofore made this Nation so great in the Eyes of all the World round about it seems utterly lost and extinct and we are degenerated into a mean sharking fallacious undermining Way of Converse there being a Snare and a Trapan almost in every Word we hear and every Action we see Men speak with Designs of Mischief and therefore they speak in the Dark In short this seems to be the true inward Judgment of all our Politick Sages That Speech was given to the Ordinary Sort of Men whereby to Communicate their Mind but to wise Men whereby to conceal it 2. The second Rule or Principle upon which this Policy or Wisdom of the World does proceed is That Conscience and Religion ought to lay no Restraint upon Men at all when it lies opposite to the Prosecution of their Interest The great Patron and Coryphaeus of this Tribe Nicholas Machiavel laid down this for a Master-rule in his political Scheme That the Shew of Religion was helpfull to the Politician but the Reality of it hurtfull and pernicious Accordingly having shewn how the former part of his Maxim has been followed by these Men in that first and fundamental Principle of Dissimulation already spoken to by us we come now to shew further that they cannot with more Art dissemble the Appearance of Religion than they can with Ease lay aside the Substance The Politician whose very Essence lies in this that he be a Person ready to doe any thing that he apprehends for his Advantage must first of all be sure to put himself into a State of Liberty as free and large as his Principles And so to provide Elbow-room enough for his Conscience to lay about and have its full play in And for that purpose he must resolve to shake off all inward Awe of Religion and by no means to suffer the Liberty of his Conscience to be enslaved and brought under the Bondage of observing Oaths or the Narrowness of Men's Opinions about Turpe Honestum which ought to vanish when they stand in Competition with any solid real Good that is in their Judgment such as concerns Eating or Drinking or Taking Money Upon which account these Children of Darkness seem excellently well to imitate the Wisdom of those Children of Light the great Illuminati of the late times who professedly laid down this as the Basis of all their Proceedings That whatsoever they said or did for the present under such a Measure of Light should oblige them no longer when a greater Measure of Light should give them other Discoveries And this Principle they professed was of great use to them as how could it be otherwise if it fell into skilfull hands For since this Light was to rest within them and the Judgment of it to remain wholly in themselves they might safely and uncontroulably pretend it greater or less as their Occasions should enlighten them If a Man has a prospect of a fair Estate and sees a way open to it but it must be through Fraud Violence and Oppression If he see large Preferments tendered him but conditionally upon his doing base and wicked Offices If he sees he may crush his Enemy but that it must be by slandering belying and giving him a Secret Blow and Conscience shall here according to its Office interpose and protest the Illegality and Injustice of such Actions and the Damnation that is expresly threatned to them by the Word of God The thorough pac'd Politician must presently laugh at the Squeamishness of his Conscience and read it another Lecture and tell it that Iust and Unjust are but Names grounded only upon Opinion and authorized by Custom by which the Wise and the Knowing part of the World serve themselves upon the Ignorant and Easie and that whatsoever fond Priests may talk There is no Devil like an Enemy in power no Damnation like being poor and no Hell like an empty Purse and therefore that those Courses by which a Man comes to rid himself of these Plagues are ipso facto prudent and consequently pious The former being with such
advance the practicers of them to the things they aspire to by them 1. And first for his first Principle That the Politician must maintain a constant Habitual dissimulation Concerning which I shall lay down this as certain That dissimulation can be no further usefull than it is concealed for as much as no man will trust a known Cheat And it is also as certain that as some men use dissimulation for their interest so others have an Interest as strongly engaging them to use all the art and industry they can to find it out and to assure themselves of the truth or falsehood of those with whom they deal which renders it infinitely hard if not morally impossible for a man to carry on a constant course of dissimulation without discovery And being once discovered it is not only no help but the greatest impediment of action in the world For since man is but of a very limited narrow power in his own person and consequently can effect no great matter merely by his own personal strength but as he acts in Society and conjunction with others and since no man can engage the active assistance of others without first engaging their trust and moreover since men will trust no further than they Judge a person for his Sincerity fit to be trusted it follows that a discover'd Dissembler can atchieve nothing great or considerable for not being able to gain mens Trust he cannot gain their concurrence and so is left alone to act singly and upon his own bottom and while that is the sphere of his activity all that he can do must needs be contemptible We know how successfull the late Usurper was while his army believed him real in his Zeal against Kingship But when they found out the Imposture upon his aspiring to the same himself he was presently deserted and opposed by them and never able to crown his Usurped greatness with the addition of that Title which he so passionately thirsted after Add to this the judgment of as great an English Author as ever wrote with great confidence affirming That the ablest men that ever were had all an o-penness and frankness of dealing and that if at any time such did dissemble their dissimulation took effect merely in the strength of that Reputation they had gained by their Veracity and clear dealing in the main From all which it follows that Dissimulation can be of no further use to a man than just to guard him within the compass of his own personal concerns which yet may be more easily and not less effectually done by that silence and Reservedness that every man may innocently practise without the putting on of any contrary disguise 2 ly The Politicians second principle was That Conscience or Religion ought never to stand between any man and his Temporal advantage Which indeed is properly Atheism and so far as it is practised tends to the dissolution of Society the bond of which is Religion For as much as a man's Happiness or Misery in his converse with other men depends chiefly upon their doing or not doing those things which human Laws can take no Cognizance of Such as are all actions capable of being done in Secret and out of the view of mankind which yet have the greatest Influence upon our Neighbour even in his nearest and dearest concerns And if there be no inward sense of Religion to awe men from the doing unjust Actions provided they can do them without discovery it is impossible for any man to sit secure or happy in the possession of any thing that he enjoys And this inconvenience the Politician must expect from others as well as they have felt from him unless he thinks that he can ingross this Principle to his own practice and that others cannot be as false and Atheistical as himself especially having had the advantage of his Copy to write after 3 ly The third Principle was That the Politician ought to make himself and not the publick the chief if not the sole end of all that he does But here we shall quickly find that the Private Spirit will prove as pernicious in Temporals as ever it did in Spirituals For while every particular member of the publick provides singly and solely for it self the several Joynts of the Body Politick do thereby separate and disunite and so become unable to support the whole and when the publick Interest once fails let private Interests subsist if they can and prevent an Universal Ruine from involving in it Particulars It is not a man's wealth that can be sure to save him if the Enemy be wise enough to refuse part of it tendred as a ransom when it is as easy for him to destroy the owner and to take the whole When the hand finds it self well warmed and covered let it refuse the trouble of feeding the mouth or guarding the Head till the Body be starved or killed and then we shall see how it will fare with the Hand The Athenians the Romans and all other Nations that grew great out of little or nothing did so merely by the publick-mindedness of particular Persons and the same courses that first raised Nations and Governments must support them So that were there no such thing as Religion Prudence were enough to enforce this upon all For our own parts let us reflect upon our glorious and renowned English Ancestours men eminent in Church and State and we shall find that this was the method by which they preserved both We have succeeded into their Labours and the fruits of them And it will both concern and become us to succeed also into their Principles For it is no Man's duty to be Safe or to be Rich but I am sure it is the duty of every one to make good his Trust. And it is a Calamity to a whole Nation that any Man should have a Place or an Employment more large and publick than his Spirit 4 ly The 4th and last Principle mentioned was That the Politician must not in doing kindnesses consider his Friends but only gratify Rich men or Enemies Which Principle as to that branch of it Relating to Enemies was certainly first borrowed and fetched up from the very bottom of Hell and utter'd no doubt by particular and immediate inspiration of the Devil And yet as much of the Divil as it carries in it it neither is nor can be more villainous and detestable than it is really silly Sensless and Impolitick But to go over the several parts of this Principle and to begin with the supposed Policy of Gratifying only the Rich and Opulent Does our wise man think that the grandee whom he so courts does not see through all the little Plots of his courtship as well as he himself and so at the same time while he accepts the gift laugh in his Sleeve at the design and despise the giver But for the neglect of Friends as it is the height of baseness so it can never be proved
deserving a Right or Claim to some good from the person of whom he deserves and as a Right in one to Claim this Good inferrs a Debt and Obligation in the other to pay it So certain it is by a direct Gradation of Consequences from this Principle of Merit that the Obligation to Gratitude flows from and is enjoyn'd by the first Dictates of Nature And the truth is the greatest and most Sacred ties of Duty that Man is capable of are founded upon Gratitude Such as are the Duties of a Child to his Parent and of a Subject to his Sovereign From the former of which there is required Love and Honour in recompence of Being and from the latter Obedience and Subjection in recompence of Protection and Well-being And in General if the conferring of a Kindness did not bind the person upon whom it was conferred to the returns of Gratitude why in the Universal Dialect of the World are Kindnesses still called Obligations And thus much for the first ground enforcing the Obligations of Gratitude namely the Law of Nature In the next Place 2. As for the Positive Law of God revealed in his Word it is evident that Gratitude must needs be enjoyned and made necessary by all those Scriptures that upbraid or forbid Ingratitude as in 2 Tim. 3.2 The Unthankfull stand reckoned among the highest and most enormous Sinners which sufficiently evinces the Vertue opposite to Unthankfulness to bear the same place in the rank of Duties that its contrary does in the Catalogue of Sins And the like by consequence is inferr'd from all those places in which we are commanded to Love our Enemies and to do good to those that hate us And therefore certainly much more are we by the same commanded to do good to those that have prevented us with good and actually obliged us So that it is manifest that by the Positive written Law of God no less than by the Law of Nature Gratitude is a Debt 3. In the Third and Last place As for the Laws of Men Enacted by the Civil Power it must be confessed that Gratitude is not enforced by them I say not enforced that is not enjoyned by the Sanction of Penalties to be inflicted upon the Person that shall not be found Gratefull I grant indeed that many Actions are punish'd by Law that are Acts of Ingratitude but this is merely accidental to them as they are such Acts for if they were punished properly under that Notion and upon that account the punishment would equally reach all Actions of the same kind but they are punish'd and provided against by Law as they are gross and dangerous Violations of Society and that Common Good that it is the Business of the Civil Laws of all Nations to protect and to take care of Which Good not being violated or endangered by every Omission of Gratitude between Man and Man the Laws make no peculiar provision to secure the Exercise of this Vertue but leave it as they found it sufficiently enjoyn'd and made a Duty by the Law of God and Nature Though in the Roman Law indeed there is this particular provision against the Breach of this Duty in case of Slaves That if a Lord Manumits and makes Free his Slave gross Ingratitude in the person so made Free forfeits his Freedom and Re-asserts him to his former Condition of Slavery Though perhaps even this also upon an Accurate consideration will be found not a Provision against Ingratitude properly and formally as such but as it is the Ingratitude of Slaves which if left unpunish'd in a Common-wealth where it was the Custom for Men to be served by Slaves as in Rome it was would quickly have been a Publick Nusance and Disturbance for such is the peculiar Insolence of this sort of Men such the uncorrigible Vileness of all slavish Spirits that though Freedom may rid them of the Baseness of their Condition yet it never takes off the Baseness of their Minds And now having shewn both what Gratitude is and the Ground and Reason of Men's obligation to it we have a full account of the proper and particular Nature of this Vertue as consisting adequately in these two Things First That it is a Debt and secondly That it is such a Debt as is left to every Man's Ingenuity in respect of any Legal Co-action whether he will pay or no for there lies no Action of Debt against him if he will not He is in danger of no Arrest bound over to no Assize nor forced to hold up his unworthy Hand the Instrument of his Ingratitude at any Barr. And this it is that shews the rare and distinguishing Excellency of Gratitude and sets it as a Crown upon the Head of all other Vertues that it should plant such an over-ruling Generosity in the Heart of Man as shall more effectually encline him to what is brave and becoming than the Terrour of any Penal Law whatsoever So that he shall feel a greater force upon himself from within and from the Controll of his own Principles to engage him to do worthily than all Threatnings and Punishments Racks and Tortures can have upon a low and servile Mind that never acts vertuously but as it is acted that knows no Principle of Doing well but Fear no Conscience but Constraint On the contrary the Gratefull person fears no Court or Judge no Sentence or Executioner but what he carries about him in his own Breast And being still the most severe exactor of Himself not only confesses but proclaims his Debts his Ingenuity is his Bond and his Conscience a thousand Witnesses So that the Debt must needs be sure yet he scorns to be Sued for it nay rather he is always suing importuning and even reproaching himself till he can clear accounts with his Benefactour His Heart is as it were in continual labour it even travails with the Obligation and is in pangs till it be delivered and as David in the overflowing Sense of God's Goodness to him cries out in the 116 Psalm verse 12. What shall I render unto the Lord for all his Benefits towards me So the Gratefull person pressed down under the apprehension of any great kindness done him eases his burthened mind a little by such Expostulations with himself as these What shall I do for such a Friend for such a Patron who has so frankly so generously so unconstrainedly relieved me in such a Distress supported me against such an Enemy supplied cherished and upheld me when Relations would not know me or at least could not help me and in a word has prevented my Desires and out-done my Necessities I can never do enough for him my own Conscience would spit in my face should I ever slight or forget such Favours These are the Expostulating Dialogues and Contests that every Gratefull every truly Noble and Magnanimous Person has with himself It was in part a brave Speech of Lu. Cornelius Sylla the Roman Dictator who said That He found no
of all Fetters of Pity and Compassion For all Relenting and Tenderness of heart makes a Man but a puny in this sin it spoils the Growth and cramps the last and Crowning exploits of this Vice Ingratitude indeed put the Ponyard into Brutus's hand but it was want of compassion which thrust it into Caesar's Heart When some fond easy Fathers think fit to strip themselves before they lie down to their long sleep and to settle their whole Estates upon their Sons has it not been too frequently seen that the Father has been requited with Want and Beggary Scorn and Contempt But now could bare Ingratitude think we have ever have made any one so Unnatural and Diabolical had not Cruelty and Want of Pity came in as a Second to its Assistance and clear'd the Villain 's Breast of all Remainders of Humanity Is it not this which has made so many Miserable Parents even curse their own Bowels for bringing forth Children that seem to have none Did not this make Agrippina Nero's Mother cry out to the Assassinate sent by her Son to Murder her to direct his Sword to her Belly as being the only Criminal for having brought forth such a Monster of Ingratitude into the world And to give you yet an higher instance of the Conjunction of these two Vices since nothing could transcend the Ingratitude and Cruelty of Nero but the Ingratitude and Cruelty of an Imperious Woman When Tullia Daughter of Servius Tullius 6 th King of Rome having marryed Tarquinius Superbus and put him first upon Killing her Father and then invading his Throne came through the Street where the Body of her Father lay newly Murdred and wallowing in his Blood She commanded her Trembling Coach-man to drive her Chariot and Horses over the Body of her King and Father triumphantly in the face of all Rome looking upon her with Astonishment and Detestation Such was the Tenderness Gratitude Filial Affection and good Nature of this weaker Vessel And then for Instances out of Sacred Story to go no further than this of Gideon Did not Ingratitude first make the Israelites forget the Kindness of the Father and then Cruelty make them imbrue their hands in the Blood of his Sons could Pharaoh's Butler so quickly have forgot Ioseph had not want of Gratitude to him as his Friend met with an equal want of compassion to him as his Fellow-Prisoner a poor innocent forlorn Stranger languishing in Durance upon the false accusations of a lying insolent whorish Woman I might even weary you with Examples of the like Nature both sacred and civil all of them representing Ingratitude as it were sitting in its Throne with Pride at its Right hand and Cruelty at its Left worthy Supporters of such a Stately Quality such a Reigning Impiety And it has been sometimes observed that persons signally and eminently obliged yet missing of the utmost of their greedy designs in Swallowing both Gifts and Giver too instead of Thanks for received Kindnesses have betook themselves to barbarous Threatnings for defeat of their insatiable Expectations Upon the whole matter we may firmly conclude That Ingratitude and Compassion never cohabit in the same Breast Which remark I do here so much insist upon to shew the Superlative malignity of this Vice and the baseness of the Mind in which it dwells for we may with great Confidence and equal Truth affirm That since there was such a thing as Mankind in the world there never was any heart truly great and generous that was not also tender and compassionate It is this noble Quality that makes all Men to be of one Kind for every Man would be as it were a distinct species to himself were there no sympathy amongst Individuals And thus I have done with the Fourth Thing proposed and shewn the Two Vices that inseparably attend Ingratitude and now if Falsehood also should chance to strike in as the Third and make up the Triumvirate of its attendants so that Ingratitude Pride Cruelty and Falsehood should all meet together and joyn forces in the same Person as not only very often but for the most part they doe in this case if the Devils themselves should take Bodies and come and live amongst us they could not be greater Plagues and Greivances to Society than such persons From what has been said let no man ever think to meet Ingratitude single and alone It is one of those Grapes of Gall mentioned by Moses Deuteron 32. v. 32. and therefore expect always to find it One of a Cluster I proceed now to the Fifth and Last thing proposed which is to draw some usefull Consequences by way of Application from the Premises As 1. Never enter into a League of Friendship with an ungratefull Person That is plant not thy Friendship upon a Dunghill It is too noble a Plant for so base a Soil Friendship consists properly in mutual offices and a generous strife in Alternate Acts of Kindness But he who does a Kindness to an ungratefull Person sets his Seal to a Flint and sows his Seed upon the Sand Upon the former he makes no Impression and from the latter he finds no Production The only Voice of Ingratitude is Give give but when the Gift is once received then like the Swine at his Trough it is silent and insatiable In a word the Ungratefull person is a Monster which is all Throat and Belly a kind of thorough-fare or common-shore for the good things of the world to pass into and of whom in respect of all Kindnesses conferr'd on him may be verified that Observation of the Lion's Den before which appeared the foot-steps of many that had gone in thither but no prints of any that ever came out thence The Ungratefull person is the only thing in Nature for which no body living is the better He lives to himself and subsists by the Good Nature of others of which he himself has not the least grain He is a mere encroachment upon Society and consequently ought to be thrust out of the World as a Pest and a Prodigy and a Creature of the Devil 's making and not of God's 2 dly As a man tolerably discreet ought by no means to attempt the making of such an one his Friend so neither is he in the next place to presume to think that he shall be able so much as to alter or meliorate the Humour of an Ungratefull person by any Acts of Kindness though never so frequent never so obliging Philosophy will teach the Learned and Experience may teach all that it is a thing hardly feasible For Love such an one and he shall despise you Commend him and as occasion serves he shall revile you Give to him and he shall but laugh at your easiness Save his life but when you have done look to your own The greatest Favours to such an one are but like the Motion of a Ship upon the Waves they leave no trace no sign behind them they neither soften nor win upon
from God who is Truth it self and with whom no shadow of Falshood can dwell He that telleth Lyes says David in Psalm 101.7 shall not tarry in my Sight and if not in the Sight of a poor Mortal man who could sometimes lye himself how much less in the Presence of the Infinite and All-knowing God A Wise and Good Prince or Governour will not vouchsafe a Lyar the Countenance of his Eye and much less the Privilege of his Ear. The Spirit of God seems to write this upon the very Gates of Heaven and to state the Condition of Men's Entrance into Glory chiefly upon their Veracity In Psalm 15.1 Who shall ascend into thy Holy Hill says the Psalmist To which it is answered in vers 2. He that worketh Righteousness and that speaketh the Truth from his Heart And on the other side how Emphatically is Hell described in the Two last Chapters of the Revelation by being the great Receptacle and Mansion-house of Lyars whom we shall find there ranged with the vilest and most detestable of all Sinners appointed to have their Portion in that Horrid place Revel 21.8 The Unbelieving and the Abominable and Murderers and Whoremongers and Sorcerers and Idolaters and all Lyars shall have their part in the Lake which burns with Fire and Brimstone And in Revel 22.15 Without are Dogs and Sorcerers c. and whosoever loveth and maketh a Lye Now let those consider this whose Tongue and Heart hold no Correspondence Who look upon it as a Piece of Art and Wisdom and the Master-piece of Conversation to over-reach and deceive and make a Prey of a credulous and well-meaning Honesty What do such Persons think Are Dogs Whoremongers and Sorcerers such desirable Company to take up with for ever Will the Burning Lake be found so tolerable Or will there be any one to drop Refreshment upon the false Tongue when it shall be tormented in those Flames Or do they think that God is a Lyar like themselves and that no such Things shall ever come to pass but that all these fiery Threatnings shall vanish into Smoak and this dreadfull Sentence blow off without Execution Few certainly can lye to their own Hearts so far as to imagine this But Hell is and must be granted to be the Deceiver's Portion not only by the Judgment of God but of his own Conscience too And comparing the Malignity of his Sin with the Nature of the Punishment allotted for him all that can be said of a Lyar lodged in the very Nethermost Hell is this That if the Vengeance of God could prepare any Place or Condition worse than Hell for Sinners Hell it self would be too good for him And now to summ up all in short I have shewn what a Lye is and wherein the Nature of Falshood does consist that it is a Thing absolutely and intrinsecally Evil that it is an Act of Injustice and a Violation of our Neighbour's Right And that the Vileness of its Nature is equalled by the Malignity of its Effects It being this That first brought Sin into the World and is since the Cause of all those Miseries and Calamities that disturb it and further that it tends utterly to dissolve and overthrow Society which is the greatest Temporal Blessing and Support of Mankind and which is yet worst of all that it has a strange and particular Efficacy above all other Sins to indispose the Heart to Religion And lastly That it is as dreadfull in its Punishments as it has been pernicious in its Effects For as much as it deprives a Man of all Credit and Belief and consequently of all Capacity of being usefull in any Station or Condition of Life whatsoever and next that it draws upon him the Just and Universal Hatred and Abhorrence of all Men here and finally subjects him to the Wrath of God and Eternal Damnation hereafter And now if none of all these Considerations can recommend and endear Truth to the Words and Practices of Men and work upon their Double Hearts so far as to convince and make them sensible of the Baseness of the Sin and Greatness of the Guilt that Fraud and Falshood leaves upon the Soul Let them Lye and Cheat on till they receive a fuller and more effectual Conviction of all these Things in that Place of Torment and Confusion prepared for the Devil and his Angels and all his Lying Retinue by the Decree and Sentence of that God who in his Threatnings as well as in his Promises will be True to his Word and cannot Lye To whom be rendred and ascribed as is most due all Praise Might Majesty and Dominion both now and for evermore Amen FINIS BOOKS Newly printed for Tho. Bennet at the Half-Moon in St. Paul's Church-Yard AThenae Oxonienses or an Exact History of all the Writers and Bishops who have had their Education in the Ancient and Famous University of Oxford from 1500 to the End of the Year 1690 Representing the Birth Fortune Preferments and Death of all those Authors and Prelates the great Accidents of their Lives the Fate and Character of their Writings The Work being so compleat that no Writer of Note of this Nation for near Two hundred years past is omitted fol. 2 Vol. Dr. Pocock on Ioel. With the rest of his Commentaries A Critical History of the Text and Versions of the New Testament wherein is firmly Establish'd the Truth of those Acts on which the Foundation of Christian Religion is laid By Father Simon of the Oratory Together with a Refutation of such Passages as seem contrary to the Doctrine and Practice of the Church of England Memoirs of the Court of France by the late famous French Lady The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus the Roman Emperor Translated out of Greek into English with Notes by Dr. Casaubon To this Edition is added the Life of the said Emperor with an Account of Stoick Philosophy As also Remarks on the Meditations All newly written by the famous Monsieur and Madam Dacier The Works of the Learned or an Historical Account and Impartial Judgment of the Books newly Printed both Foreign and Domestick together with the State of Learning in the World Published Monthly by I. de la Crose a late Author of the Universal Bibliotheque This first Volume beginning in August last is compleated this present April with Indexes to the whole The Bishop of Chester's Charge to his Clergy at his Primary Visitation May 5. 1691. Five Sermons before the King and Queen by Dr. Meggot Dean of Winchestor Mr. Atterbury's Sermon before the Queen May 29. 1692. * In the Parliament 1653 it being put to the Vote whether they should support and encourage A godly and learned Ministery the latter word was rejected and the vote passed for a Godly and Faithful Ministery * A noted Independant Divine when Ol. Cromwel was sick of which sickness he dyed declared that God had Revealed to him that he should recover and live 30 years longer for that God had raised him up for a work which could not be done in less time But Oliver's Death being published two days after the said Divine publickly in Prayer expostulated with God the Defeat of his Prophecy in these words Lord thou hast lyed unto us yea thou hast lyed unto us * Very credibly reported to have been done in an Independant Congregation at Oxon. * Whensoever any Petition was put up to the Parliament in the year 1653. for the Taking away of Tythes the thanks of the House were still returned to them and that by the Name and Elogy of the well-affected Petitioners * U. C. A Colonel of the Army the perfidious cause of Penruddock 's Death and sometime after High-Sheriff of Oxfordshire openly and frequently affirmed the uselessness of the Vniversities and that three Colledges were sufficient to answer the occasions of the Nation for the breeding of men up to Learning so farr as it was either necessary or usefull * Cromwel a lively Copy of Jeroboam did so * Gaspar Streso Cromwell ☜ * Of which last see an Instance in the 13 Session of this Council In which it Decrees with a non obstante to Christ's express Institution of the Blessed Eucharist in both Kinds That the contrary Custom and Practice of receiving it only in one Kind ought to be accounted and observed as a Law and that if the Priest should Administer it otherwise he was to be Excommunicated * Colonel Axtell * He particularly mention'd those of Brooks and Calamy ☞
value their practice in one of which places the Minister has been seen for mere want to mend shoes on the Saturday and been heard to preach on the Sunday In the other place stating the several orders of the Citizens they place their Ministers after their Apothecaries that is the Physician of the Soul after the Drugster of the Body a fit practice for those who if they were to rank Things as well as Persons would place their Religion after their Trade And thus much concerning the first way of Debasing the Ministers and Ministery 2. The second way is by admitting Ignorant Sordid Illiterate persons to this Function This is to give the Royal stamp to a piece of Lead I confess God has no need of any man's Parts or Learning but certainly then he has much less need of his Ignorance and ill Behaviour It is a sad thing when all other Employments shall empty themselves into the Ministery When men shall repair to it not for Preferment but Refuge like Malefactors flying to the Altar only to save their lives or like those of Eli's Race 1 Sam. 2.36 that should come crouching and seek to be put into the Priests Office that they might eat a piece of Bread Heretofore there was required splendour of Parentage to recommend any one to the Priesthood as Iosephus witnesses in a Treatise which he wrote of his own Life where he says To have right to deal in things Sacred was amongst them accounted an argument of a Noble and Illustrious Descent God would not accept the Offals of other Professions Doubtless many rejected Christ upon this thought That he was the Carpenter's Son who would have embraced him had they known him to have been the Son of David The preferring undeserving persons to this great service was eminently Ieroboam's Sin and how Ieroboam's practice and offence has been continued amongst us in another guise is not unknown For has not Learning unqualified men for approbation to the Ministery Have not Parts and Abilities been reputed Enemies to Grace and qualities no ways Ministerial While Friends Faction Well-meaning and little understanding have been Accomplishments beyond Study and the University and to falsifie a story of Conversion beyond pertinent Answers and clear Resolutions to the hardest and most concerning Questions So that matters have been brought to this pass That if a man amongst his Sons had any blind or disfigured he laid him aside for the Ministery and such an one was presently approved as having a mortified Countenance In short it was a fiery Furnace which often approved Dross and rejected Gold But thanks be to God those Spiritual Wickednesses are now discharged from their high places Hence it was that many rushed into the Ministery as being the only Calling that they could profess without serving an Apprenticeship Hence also we had those that could preach Sermons but not Defend them The reason of which is clear because the Works and Writings of Learned men might be borrowed but not the Abilities Had indeed the Old Levitical Hierarchy still continued in which it was part of the Ministerial Office to slay the Sacrifices to cleanse the Vessels to scour the Flesh-forks to sweep the Temple and carry the filth and rubbish to the Brook Kidron no persons living had been fitter for the Ministery and to serve in this nature at the Altar But since it is made a labour of the mind as to inform mens Judgments and move their Affections to resolve difficult places of Scripture to decide and clear off Controversies I cannot see how to be a Butcher Scavinger or any other such Trade does at all qualifie or prepare men for this work But as unfit as they were yet to clear a way for such into the Ministery we have had almost all Sermons full of gibes and scoffs at Humane Learning Away with vain Philosophy with the disputer of this world and the enticing words of man's wisdom and set up the foolishness of Preaching the simplicity of the Gospel Thus Divinity has been brought in upon the ruines of Humanity by forcing the Words of the Scripture from the sence and then haling them to the worst of drudgeries to set a Ius Divinum upon ignorance and imperfection and recommend Natural Weakness for Supernatural Grace Hereupon the Ignorant have took heart to venture upon this great Calling and instead of cutting their way to it according to the usual course through the knowledge of the tongues the Study of Philosophy School-divinity the Fathers and Councils they have taken another and a shorter Cut and having read perhaps a Treatise or two upon the heart the bruised Reed the Crumbs of Comfort Wollebius in English and some other little Authors the usual Furniture of Old Womens Closets they have set forth as accomplished Divines and forthwith they present themselves to the Service and there have not been wanting Ieroboam's as willing to consecrate and receive them as they to offer themselves And this has been one of the most fatal and almost irrecoverable blows that has been given to the Ministery And this may suffice concerning the second way of Embasing God's Ministers namely by entrusting the Ministery with raw unlearned ill-bred Persons so that what Solomon speaks of a Proverb in the mouth of a Fool the same may be said of the Ministery vested in them that it is like a Pearl in a swine's snout I proceed now to the second thing proposed in the Discussion of this Doctrine which is to shew how the Embasing of the Ministers tends to the destruction of Religion This it does two ways 1. Because it brings them under exceeding scorn and contempt and then let none think Religion it self secure For the Vulgar have not such Logical heads as to be able to Abstract such subtil conceptions as to separate the Man from the Minister or to consider the same person under a double capacity and so honour him as a Divine while they despise him as poor But suppose they could yet Actions cannot distinguish as Conceptions do and therefore every Act of Contempt strikes at both and unavoidably wounds the Ministery through the sides of the Minister And we must know that the least degree of Contempt weakens Religion because it is absolutely contrary to the nature of it Religion properly consisting in a reverential esteem of things Sacred Now that which in any measure weakens Religion will at length destroy it For the weakening of a thing is only a partial destruction of it Poverty and meanness of condition expose the Wisest to scorn it being natural for men to place their esteem rather upon things Great than Good and the Poet observes that this Infelix Paupertas has nothing in it more intolerable than this That it renders men Ridiculous And then how easie and natural it is for Contempt to pass from the Person to the Office from him that speaks to the thing that he speaks of Experience proves Counsel being seldom valued so much for the Truth
of the thing as the Credit of him that gives it Observe an excellent passage to this purpose in Eccl. 9.14 15. We have an account of a little City with few men in it besieged by a great and potent King and in the 15. v. we read that there was found in it a poor Wise man and he by his wisdom delivered the City A worthy service indeed and certainly we may expect that some honourable Recompence should follow it a Deliverer of his Country and that in such distress could not but be advanced but we find a contrary event in the next words of the same verse Yet none remembred that same poor man why what should be the reason Was he not a man of parts and Wisdom and is not Wisdom honourable Yes but he was poor But was he not also successfull as well as wise true but still he was poor And once grant this and you cannot keep off that unavoidable sequel in the next verse The poor man's wisdom is despised and his words are not heard We may believe it upon Solomon's word who was Rich as well as Wise and therefore knew the force of both and probably had it not been for his Riches the Queen of Sheba would never have come so far only to have heard his Wisdom Observe her behaviour when she came Though upon the hearing of Solomon's Wisdom and the resolution of her hard Questions she expressed a just admiration yet when Solomon afterward shew'd her his Palace his Treasures and the Temple which he had built 1 Kings 10.5 it is said there was no more spirit in her What was the cause of this certainly the magnificence the pomp and splendour of such a Structure it struck her into an Ecstasie beyond his wise Answers She estemed this as much above his Wisdom as Astonishment is beyond bare Admiration She admired his Wisdom but she adored his Magnificence So apt is the mind even of wise persons to be surprized with the superficies or circumstance of things and value or undervalue Spirituals according to the manner of their External Appearance When Circumstances fail the substance seldom long survives cloaths are no part of the Body yet take away cloaths and the Body will die Livy observes of Romulus that being to give Laws to his new Romans he found no better way to procure an esteem and reverence to them than by first procuring it to himself by splendour of Habit and Retinue and other signs of Royalty And the wise Numa his Successor took the same course to enforce his Religious Laws namely by giving the same Pomp to the Priest who was to dispense them Sacerdotem creavit insignique eum veste curuli Regiâ sellâ adornavit That is he adorned him with a rich Robe and a royal chair of State And in our Judicatures take away the Trumpet the Scarlet the Attendance and the Lordship which would be to make Justice Naked as well as Blind and the Law would lose much of its Terror and consequently of its Authority Let the Minister be abject and low his interest inconsiderable the Word will suffer for his sake The Message will still find reception according to the Dignity of the Messenger Imagine an Ambassadour presenting himself in a poor freize Jerkin and tattered cloaths certainly he would have but small Audience his Embassy would speed rather according to the weakness of him that brought than the Majesty of him that sent it It will fare alike with the Ambassadors of Christ the People will give them Audience according to their Presence A notable example of which we have in the Behaviour of some to Paul himself 1 Cor. c. 10. v. 10. Hence in the Jewish Church it was cautiously provided in the Law that none that was blind or lame or had any remarkable defect in his body was capable of the Priestly Office because these things naturally make a person contemned and this presently reflects upon the Function This therefore is the first way by which the low despised condition of the Ministers tends to the destruction of the Ministery and Religion namely because it subjects their Persons to scorn and consequently their Calling and it is not imaginable that men will be brought to Obey what they cannot Esteem 2. The Second way by which it tends to the ruine of the Ministery is because it discourages men of fit Parts and Abilities from undertaking it And certain it is that as the calling dignifies the man so the man much more advances his calling As a Garment though it warms the Body has a return with an advantage being much more warmed by it And how often a good cause may miscarry without a wise manager and the Faith for want of a Defender is or at least may be known 'T is not the Truth of an Assertion but the skill of the Disputant that keeps off a baffle not the Justness of a Cause but the Valour of the Souldiers that must win the Field When a Learned Paul was converted and undertook the Ministery it stopp'd the mouths of those that said None but poor weak Fisher-men Preached Christianity and so his Learning silenced the scandal as well as strengthned the Church Religion placed in a soul of exquisite knowledge and abilities as in a Castle finds not only habitation but defence And what a learned Foreign Divine said of the English Preaching may be said of all Plus est in Artifice quà m in Arte. So much of moment is there in the Professors of any thing to depress or raise the Profession What is it that kept the Church of Rome strong athletick and flourishing for so many Centuries but the happy succession of the choicest wits engaged to her service by sutable preferments And what strength do we think would that give to the True Religion that is able thus to establish a False Religion in a great measure stands or falls according to the abilities of those that assert it And if as some observe mens desires are usually as large as their Abilities what course have we took to allure the former that we might engage the latter to our assistance But we have took all Ways to affright and discourage Scholars from looking towards this sacred calling For will men lay out their Wit and Iudgment upon that employment for the undertaking of which both will be questioned would men not long since have spent toylsome days and watchfull nights in the laborious quest of knowledge preparative to this work at length to come and dance attendance for approbation upon a Iuncto of petty Tyrants acted by Party and Prejudice who denyed Fitness from Learning and Grace from Morality will a man exhaust his livelihood upon Books and his Health the best part of his life upon Study to be at length thrust into a poor Village where he shall have his due precariously and entreat for his own and when he has it live poorly and contemptibly upon it while the same or less
him they neither melt nor endear him but leave him as hard as rugged and as unconcerned as ever All Kindnesses descend upon such a Temper as Showers of Rain or Rivers of fresh Water falling into the main Sea The Sea swallows them all but is not at all changed or sweetned by them I may truly say of the Mind of an Ungratefull person that it is Kindness-proof It is impenetrable unconquerable Unconquerable by that which conquers all things else even by Love it self Flints may be melted we see it daily but an Ungratefull heart cannot no not by the strongest and noblest Flame After all your Attempts all your Experiments for any thing that Man can doe He that is Ungratefull will be Ungratefull still And the reason is manifest for you may remember that I told you that Ingratitude sprang from a Principle of Ill-nature Which being a thing founded in such a certain Constitution of Blood and Spirits as being born with a Man into the World and upon that account called Nature shall prevent all Remedies that can be applied by Education and leaves such a Byass upon the Mind as is before-hand with all Instruction So that you shall seldom or never meet with an Ungratefull person but if you look backward and trace him up to his Original you will find that he was born so and if you could look forward enough it is a Thousand to One but you will find that he also dies so for you shall never light upon an ill-natur'd Man who was not also an ill-natur'd Child and gave several Testimonies of his being so to discerning Persons long before the Use of his Reason The thread that Nature spins is seldom broken off by any thing but Death I do not by this limit the Operation of God's Grace for that may do Wonders But humanly speaking and according to the method of the World and the little Correctives supplied by Art and Discipline it seldom fails but an ill Principle has its Course and Nature makes good its Blow And therefore where Ingratitude begins remarkably to shew it self he surely judges most wisely who takes the Alarm betimes and arguing the Fountain from the Stream concludes that there is Ill-nature at the bottom and so reducing his Judgment into Practice timely withdraws his frustraneous baffled Kindnesses and sees the folly of Endeavouring to stroke a Tyger into a Lamb or to court an AEthiopian out of his Colour 3 dly In the Third and Last place Wheresoever you see a Man notoriously Ungratefull rest assured that there is no true Sense of Religion in that Person You know the Apostle's argument in 1 Iohn 4.20 He who loveth not his Brother whom he hath seen how can he love God whom he hath not seen So by an exact parity of Reason we may argue If a man has no Sense of those Kindnesses that pass upon him from One like himself whom he sees and knows and converses with sensibly how much less shall his Heart be affected with the gratefull Sense of his Favours whom he converses with only by imperfect Speculations by the Discourses of Reason or the Discoveries of Faith neither of which equal the quick and lively Impressions of Sense If the Apostles reasoning was Good and Concluding I am sure this must be Unavoidable But the thing is too evident to need any proof For shall that man pass for a Proficient in Christ's School who would have been Exploded in the School of Zeno or Epictetus Or shall he pretend to Religious Attainments who is defective and short in Moral Which yet are but the Rudiments the Beginnings and first Draught of Religion as Religion is the Perfection the Refinement and the Sublimation of Morality so that it still pre-supposes it it builds upon it and Grace never adds the Superstructure where Vertue has not laid the Foundation There may be Vertue indeed and yet no Grace but Grace is never without Vertue And therefore though Gratitude does not inferr Grace it is certain that Ingratitude does exclude it Think not to put God off by frequenting Prayers and Sermons and Sacraments while thy Brother has an Action against thee in the Court of Heaven an Action of Debt of that Clamorous and Great Debt of Gratitude Rather as our Saviour Commands Leave thy Gift upon the Altar and first go and clear accompts with thy Brother God scorns a Gift from him who has not paid his Debts Every Ungratefull person in the sight of God and Man is a Thief and let him not make the Altar his Receiver Where there is no Charity it is certain there can be no Religion and can that man be Charitable who is not so much as Just In every Benefaction between Man and Man Man is only the Dispencer but God the Benfactour and therefore let all Ungratefull Ones know that where Gratitude is the Debt God himself is the chief Creditor Who though he causes his Sun to shine and his Rain to fall upon the Evil and Unthankfull in this World has another kind of Reward for their Unthankfulness in the next To which God the great Searcher and Iudge of Hearts and Rewarder of Men according to their Deeds be rendred and ascribed as is most due all Praise Might Majesty and Dominion both now and for evermore Amen A SERMON Preached at CHRIST-CHURCH Oxon. Before the University Octob. 14. 1688. PROV XII 22 Lying Lips are abomination to the Lord. I Am very sensible that by discoursing of Lyes and Falshood which I have pitched upon for my present Subject I must needs fall into a very large Common Place though yet not by half so large and Common as the Practice Nothing in Nature being so Universally decryed and withall so Universally practised as Falshood So that most of those things that have the mightiest and most controlling Influence upon the Affairs and Course of the World are neither better nor worse than down-right Lyes For what is common Fame which sounds from all Quarters of the World and re-sounds back to them again but generally a Loud Ratling Impudent Overbearing Lye What are most of the Histories of the World but Lyes Lyes immortalized and consigned over as a perpetual Abuse and Flam upon Posterity What are most of the Promises of the World but Lyes Of which we need no other Proof but our own Experience And what are most of the Oaths in the World but Lyes And such as need rather a Pardon for being took than a Dispensation from being kept And lastly what are all the Religions of the World except Judaism and Christianity but Lyes And even in Christianity it self are there not those who teach warrant and defend Lying And scarce use the Bible for any other Purpose but to swear upon it and to lye against it Thus a mighty governing Lye goes round the World and has almost banish'd Truth out of it and so reigning Triumphantly in its stead is the True Source of most of those Confusions and dire Calamities that
infest and plague the Universe For look over them all and you shall find that the greatest Annoyance and Disturbance of Mankind has been from one of these Two things Force or Fraud Of which as boisterous and violent a Thing as Force is yet it rarely atchieves any thing considerable but under the Conduct of Fraud Slight of Hand has done that which Force of Hand could never do But why do we speak of Hands It is the Tongue that drives the World before it The Tongue and the Lying Lip which there is no Fence against For when that is the Weapon a Man may strike where he cannot reach and a Word shall do Execution both further and deeper than the mightiest Blow For the Hand can hardly lift up it self high enough to strike but it must be seen so that it warns while it threatens but a false insidious Tongue may whisper a Lye so close and low that though you have Ears to hear yet you shall not hear and indeed We generally come to know it not by hearing but by feeling what it says A Man perhaps casts his Eye this way and that way and looks round about him to spy out his Enemy and to defend himself but alass the fatal Mischief that would trip up his Heels is all the while under them It works invisibly and beneath And the Shocks of an Earthquake we know are much more dreadfull than the highest and loudest Blusters of a Storm For there may be some Shelter against the Violence of the One but no Security against the Hollowness of the Other which never opens its Bosom but for a killing Embrace The Bowels of the Earth in such Cases and the Mercies of the False in all being equally without Compassion Upon the whole Matter it is hard to assign any One Thing but Lying which God and Man so unanimously joyn in the Hatred of and it is as hard to tell whether it does a greater Dishonour to God or Mischief to Man It is certainly an Abomination to both And I hope to make it appear such in the following Discourse Though I must confess my self very unable to speak to the utmost Latitude of this Subject and I thank God that I am so Now the Words of the Text are a Plain Entire Categorical Proposition and therefore I shall not go about to darken them by any needless Explication but shall immediately cast the Prosecution of them under these Three following Particulars As 1 st I shall enquire into the Nature of a Lye and the proper essential Malignity of all Falshood 2 dly I shall shew the pernicious Effects of it And 3 dly And lastly I shall lay before you the Rewards and Punishments that will certainly attend or at least follow it Every one of which I suppose and much more all of them together will afford Arguments more than sufficient to prove though it were no Part of Holy Scripture that Lying Lips are an Abomination to the Lord. And first for the first of these 1. What a Lye is and wherein the Nature of it does consist A Lye is properly an outward signification of something contrary to or at least beside the Inward Sense of the Mind so that when One thing is signified or expressed and the same thing not meant or intended that is properly a Lye And forasmuch as God has endued Man with a Power or Faculty to institute or appoint Signs of his Thoughts and that by vertue hereof he can appoint not only Words but also Things Actions and Gestures to be signs of the inward thoughts and conceptions of his Mind it is evident that he may as really Lye and Deceive by Actions and Gestures as he can by Words for as much as in the Nature of them they are as capable of being made Signs and consequently of being as much abused and misapplied as the Other Though for Distinction Sake a Deceiving by Words is commonly called a Lye and a Deceiving by Actions Gestures or Behaviour is called Simulation or Hypocrisie The Nature of a Lye therefore consists in this That it is a false Signification knowingly and voluntarily used in which the Sign expressing is no ways agreeing with the Thought or Conception of the Mind pretended to be thereby expressed For Words signifie not immediately and primely Things themselves but the Conceptions of the Mind concerning things and therefore if there be an Agreement between our Words and our Thoughts we do not speak falsly though it sometimes so falls out that our Words agree not with the Things themselves Upon which Account though in so speaking we offend indeed against Truth yet we offend not properly by Falshood which is a speaking against our Thoughts but by Rashness which is an Affirming or Denying before we have sufficiently informed our selves of the Real and True Estate of those Things whereof we affirm or deny And thus having shewn What a Lye is and wherein it does consist the next Consideration is of the Lawfulness or Unlawfulness of it And in this we have but too sad and scandalous an Instance both of the Corruption and Weakness of Man's Reason and of the strange Byass that it still receives from Interest that such a Case as this both with Philosophers and Divines Heathens and Christians should be held disputable Plato accounted it lawfull for Statesmen and Governours and so did Cicero and Plutarch and the Stoicks as some say reckoned it amongst the Arts and Perfections of a Wise-man to lye dextrously in due Time and Place And for some of the Ancient Doctors of the Christian Church such as Origen Clemens Alexandrinus Tertullian Lactantius and Chrysostom and generally all before St. Austin several Passages have fallen from them that speak but too favourably of this ill Thing So that Paul Lay-man a Romish Casuist says That it is a Truth but lately known and received in the World That a Lye is absolutely sinfull and unlawfull I suppose he means that part of the World where the Scriptures are not read and where Men care not to know what they are not willing to practise But then for the Mitigation of what has proceeded from these great Men we must take in that Known and Celebrated Division of a Lye into those Three several Kinds of it As 1st The Pernicious Lye uttered for the Hurt or Disadvantage of our Neighbour 2dly The Officious Lye uttered for our Own or our Neighbour's Advantage And 3dly and lastly The Ludicrous and Iocose Lye uttered by way of Jest and only for Mirth's Sake in common Converse Now for the first of these which is the Pernicious Lye it was and is Universally condemned by all but the other Two have found some Patronage from the Writings of those forementioned Authors The Reason of which seems to be that those Persons did not estimate the Lawfulness or Unlawfulness of a Lye from the intrinsick Nature of the Thing it self but either from those External Effects that it produced or from those Ends to
begot it This gave it being whatsoever other Vice might give it Birth 3 dly As we have seen how much Lying and Falshood disturbs so in the next Place we shall see also how it tends utterly to dissolve Society There is no doubt but all the Safety Happiness and Convenience that Men enjoy in this Life is from the Combination of particular Persons into Societies or Corporations The Cause of which is Compact and the Band that knits together and supports all Compacts is Truth and Faithfulness So that the Soul and Spirit that animates and keeps up Society is mutual Trust and the Foundation of Trust is Truth either known or at least supposed in the Persons so trusted But now where Fraud and Falshood like a Plague or Canker comes once to invade Society the Band which held together the Parts compounding it presently breaks and Men are thereby put to a Loss where to league and to fasten their Dependances and so are forced to scatter and shift every one for himself Upon which Account every notoriously false Person ought to be look'd upon and detested as a Publick Enemy and to be pursued as a Wolf or a mad Dog and a Disturber of the Common Peace and Welfare of Mankind There being no particular Person whatsoever but has his private Interest concerned and endangered in the Mischief that such a Wretch does to the Publick For look into great Families and you shall find some one false paultry Tale-bearer who by carrying Stories from One to Another shall inflame the Minds and discompose the Quiet of the whole Family And from Families pass to Towns or Cities and Two or Three Pragmatical Intriguing Medling Fellows Men of Business some call them by the Venom of their false Tongues shall set the whole Neighbourhood together by the Ears Where Men practise Falshood and shew Tricks with one another there will be perpetual Suspicions evil Surmisings Doubts and Jealousies which by sowring the Minds of Men are the Bane and Pest of Society For still Society is built upon Trust and Trust upon the Confidence that Men have of one anothers Integrity And this is so evident that without Trusting there could not only be no Happiness but indeed no living in this World For in those very things that Minister to the daily Necessities of common Life how can any one be assured that the very meat and drink that he is to take into his Body and the Cloaths he is to put on are not Poyson'd and made unwholsome for him before ever they are brought to him Nay in some places with Horror be it spoke how can a Man be secure in taking the very Sacrament it Self For there have been those who have found something in this Spiritual Food that has proved very fatal to their Bodies and more than prepared them for another World I say how can any One warrant himself in the use of these things against such Suspicions but in the Trust he has in the common Honesty and Truth of men in general which ought and uses to keep them from such Villainies Nevertheless know this certainly before hand he cannot forasmuch as such things have been done and consequently may be done again And therefore as for any Infallible assurance to the contrary he can have none but in the great Concerns of Life and Health every Man must be forced to proceed upon Trust there being no knowing the Intention of the Cook or Baker any more than of the Priest himself And yet if a Man should forbear his Food or Raiment or most of his Business in the World till he had Science and Certainty of the Safeness of what he was going about he must starve and die Disputing for there is neither Eating nor Drinking nor Living by Demonstration Now this shews the high Malignity of Fraud and Falshood that in the direct and natural Course of it tends to the Destruction of common Life by destroying that Trust and mutual Confidence that Men should have in one another by which the common Entercourse of the World must be carried on and without which Men must first Distrust and then Divide Separate and stand upon their Guard with their Hand against every One and every ones Hand against them The Felicity of Societies and Bodies Politick consists in this That all Relations in them do regularly Discharge their respective Duties and Offices Such as are the Relation between Prince and Subject Master and Servant a Man and his Friend Husband and Wife Parent and Child Buyer and Seller and the like But now where Fraud and Falshood take place there is not one of all these that is not perverted and that does not from an help of Society directly become an hinderance For first it turns all above us into Tyranny and Barbarity and all of the same Region and Level with us into Discord and Confusion It is This alone that poysons that Sovereign and Divine Thing called Friendship so that when a Man thinks that he leans upon a Breast as loving and true to him as his own he finds that he relies upon a broken Reed that not onely basely fails but also cruelly pierces the Hand that rests upon it It is from this that when a Man thinks he has a Servant or Dependant an Instrument of his Affairs and a Defence of his Person he finds a Traytour and a Iudas an Enemy that eats his Bread and lies under his Roof and perhaps readier to doe him a Mischief and a shrewd Turn than an open and professed Adversary And lastly from this Deceit and Falshood it is that when a Man thinks himself matched to One who by the Laws of God and Nature should be a Comfort to him in all Conditions a Consort of his Cares and a Companion in all his Concerns instead thereof he finds in his Bosom a Beast a Serpent and a Devil In a word He that has to doe with a Lyar knows not where he is nor what he does nor with whom he deals He walks upon Bogs and Whirlpools wheresoever he treads he sinks and converses with a Bottomless Pit where it is impossible for him to fix or to be at any Certainty In fine He catches at an Apple of Sodom which though it may entertain his Eye with a florid jolly white and red yet upon the Touch it shall fill his Hand only with stench and foulness Fair in Look and rotten at Heart as the gayest and most taking Things and Persons in the World generally are Fourthly and Lastly Deceit and Falshood doe of all other ill Qualities most peculiarly indispose the Hearts of Men to the Impressions of Religion For these are Sins perfectly spiritual and so prepossess the proper Seat and Place of Religion which is the Soul or Spirit And when that is once filled and taken up with a Lye there will hardly be Admission or Room for Truth Christianity is known in Scripture by no Name so significantly as by the Simplicity of the Gospel And if
so Does it not look like the greatest Paradox and Prodigy in Nature for any one to pretend it lawfull to equivocate or lye for it To face God and Out-face Man with the Sacrament and a Lye in ones Mouth together Can a good Intention or rather a very wicked one so mis-called sanctifie and transform Perjury and Hypocrisie into Merit and Perfection Or can there be a greater Blot cast upon any Church or Religion whatsoever it be than by such a Practice For will not the World be induced to look upon my Religion as a Lye if I allow my self to lye for my Religion The very Life and Soul of all Religion is Sincerity And therefore the good ground in which alone The Immortal Seed of the Word sprang up to Perfection is said in St. Luke 8.15 to have been those That received it into an honest Heart that is a Plain Clear and Well-meaning Heart an Heart not doubled nor cast into the various Folds and Windings of a dodging shifting Hypocrisie For the Truth is the more spiritual and refined any Sin is the more hardly is the Soul cured of it because the more difficultly convinced And in all our spiritual Maladies Conviction must still begin the Cure Such Sins indeed as are acted by the Body do quickly shew and proclaim themselves and it is no such hard matter to convince or run down a Drunkard or an unclean Person and to stop their Mouths and to answer any Pretences that they can alledge for their Sin But Deceit is such a Sin as a Pharisee may be guilty of and yet stand fair for the Reputation of Zeal and Strictness and a more than Ordinary Exactness in Religion And though some have been apt to account none sinfull or vicious but such as wallow in the Mire and Dirt of gross Sensuality yet no doubt Deceit Falshood and Hypocrisie are more directly contrary to the very Essence and Design of Religion and carry in them more of the express Image and Superscription of the Devil than any bodily Sins whatsoever How did that false fasting imperious self-admiring or rather self-adoring Hypocrite in St. Luke 18.11 Crow and Insult over the poor Publican God I thank thee says he that I am not like other Men and God forbid say I that there should be many others like him for a glistering Out-side and a noysome Inside for Tything Mint and Cummin and for devouring Widows Houses that is for taking ten Parts from his Neighbour and putting God off with One. After all which had this Man of Merit and Mortification been called to Account for his Ungodly swallow in gorging down the Estates of helpless Widows and Orphans it is odds but he would have told you that it was all for Charitable Uses and to afford Pensions for Spies and Proselytes It being no ordinary Piece of spiritual good Husbandry to be Charitable at other Men's Cost But such Sons of Abraham how highly soever they may have the Luck to be thought of are far from being Israelites indeed for the Character that our Saviour gives us of such in the Person of Nathanael in Iohn 1.47 is That they are without Guile To be so I confess is generally reckoned of late Times especially a poor mean sneaking Thing and the contrary reputed Wit and Parts and Fitness for Business as the Word is Though I doubt not but it will be one Day found that only Honesty and Integrity can fit a Man for the main Business that he was sent into the World for and that he certainly is the greatest Wit who is wise to Salvation And thus much for the Second General Thing propos'd which was to shew the pernicious Effects of Lying and Falshood Come we now to the Third and Last which is to lay before you the Rewards or Punishments that will assuredly attend or at least follow this base Practice I shall mention Three As 1. An utter Loss of all Credit and Belief with sober and discreet Persons and consequently of all Capacity of being usefull in the Prime and Noblest Concerns of Life For there cannot be imagined in Nature a more forlorn useless and contemptible Tool or more unfit for any thing than a discovered Cheat. And let Men rest assured of this That there will be always some as able to discover and find out deceitfull Tricks as others can be to contrive them For God forbid that all the Wit and Cunning of the World should still run on the Deceiver's side and when such little Shifts and shuffling Arts come once to be ripped up and laid open how poorly and wretchedly must that Man needs sneak who finds himself both guilty and baffled too A Knave without Luck is certainly the worst Trade in the World But Truth makes the Face of that Person shine who speaks and owns it While a Lye is like a Vizard that may cover the Face indeed but can never become it nor yet does it cover it so but that it leaves it open enough for Shame It brands a Man with a lasting indelible Character of Ignominy and Reproach and that indeed so foul and odious that those usurping Hectors who pretend to Honour without Religion think the Charge of a Lye a Blot upon them not to be washed out but by the Blood of him that gives it For what Place can that Man fill in a Common-wealth whom no Body will either believe or employ And no Man can be considerable in himself who has not made himself usefull to others Nor can any Man be so who is uncapable of a Trust. He is neither fit for Counsel or Friendship for Service or Command to be in Office or in Honour but like Salt that has lost its Savour fit only to rot and perish upon a Dunghill For no man can rely upon such an One either with safety to his Affairs or without a slur to his Reputation since He that trusts a Knave has no other Recompence but to be accounted a Fool for his Pains And if he trusts himself into Ruine and Beggary he falls unpitied a Sacrifice to his own Folly and Credulity for He that suffers himself to be imposed upon by a known Deceiver goes partner in the Cheat and deceives himself He is despised and laugh'd at as a soft and easie Person and as unfit to be relyed upon for his Weakness as the other can be for his Falseness It is really a great Misery not to know whom to Trust but a much greater to behave ones self so as not to be Trusted But this is the Lyar's Lot He is accounted a Pest and a Nusance A Person marked out for Infamy and Scorn and abandon'd by all Men of Sense and Worth and such as will not abandon themselves 2 dly The second Reward or Punishment that attends the lying and deceitfull Person is the Hatred of all those whom he either has or would have Deceived I do not say that a Christian can lawfully hate any One and yet I affirm That