Life and we must not add to it nor diminish from it but acquiesce in it and make it the sole Rule and Measure of our Faith imposing nothing upon our own or other men's Consciences but what is manifestly consentaneous and agreeable to the Doctrine contained therein Thus ye see that our Righteousness must be thoroughly purged and cleansed from all those Defects with which the Righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees was defiled But still all this is not sufficient if our Righteousness doth not exceed theirs infinitely more than thus it will be nothing worth we shall in no case enter into the Kingdom of Heaven That Righteousness which must bring us thither must be absolutely compleat and perfect without Spot or Blemish such as the All seeing Eye of God can discern no Defect in and that it is impossible for us ever to find such a Righteousness as this in our selves I have already shewed you and yet such a Righteousness we must all of us have or else never expect Salvation for without Holiness ay and perfect Holiness too no man shall see the Lord. Since therefore we our selves are not able to perform such a Righteousness as this and yet such an one is absolutely necessary to bring us unto Heaven we must seek it from some other person and to whom should we have recourse for it but to Christ our Saviour who of God is made unto us Wisdom and Righteousness and Sanctification and Redemption Let us therefore if we desire to be saved not trust in our own Merits as the Pharisees did for by the Works of the Law shall no flesh be justified but with the Hand of a true and lively Faith let us put on the Robe of Christs Righteousness which will be sure to hide our faults and to present us holy blameless and undefiled in the Presence of God But let us not deceive our selves neither and pretend to have this Faith and consequently that we have an interest in the Righteousness of Christ when there is no such Matter but let us try and examine our Faith whether it be a true and lively Faith or no. If it be not a Faith that Works by love if it be not fruitful and productive of good Works it is dead and insignificant it will stand us in no stead at all but if we pretend so to lay hold on Christ we shall only grasp a shadow No though we must not relie upon our own performances yet we must work ay and work as heartily as if our Works were Meritorious too but when we have done all we must utterly disclaim our own Righteousness trusting only in the Merits of Christ and desiring with S. Paul that we may be found in him not having our own Righteousness which is of the Law but that which is through the Faith of Christ the Righteousness which is of God by Faith This is such a Righteousness as will never fail us but whereas the Righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees and of all other Hypocrites and Dissemblers with God shall sink them into the bottomless Pit this Righteousness of Faith will refresh our Souls and chear our Hearts with the sweet Hopes and comfortable Expectation here and bless them hereafter eternally with the joyfull Fruition of that Glory which God hath prepared for all them that love him SERMON X. 1 PET. IV. 18. And if the Righteous scarcely be saved where shall the Ungodly and the Sinner appear THAT there shall be another Life after this in which all Mankind shall reap the Fruit of their Actions done in the Flesh and be adjudged to an unalterable State either of Happiness or Misery to all Eternity is not only an Article of Faith amongst Christians but a Truth of which the wiser sort of the Heathens were generally convinced This I say is a Truth which all Christians profess firmly to believe but yet alas how small is the Number of those that demonstrate the Truth and Sincerity of their Faith by their Holy Lives and Conversations We all of us know and are assured that there is a just God who will render to every man according to his deeds Rom. 2.6 and will by no means clear the guilty Exod. 34.7 We believe that there is an Heaven prepared for Saints and an Hell for Sinners and yet notwithstanding this belief how many thousands that are called by the Name of Christ run on head-long boldly and impudently in Wickedness and pursue with all imaginable Eagerness and Delight those fatal Paths that lead to Destruction as if the Joys of Heaven were a Trifle not worth our Acceptance or the Torments of Hell the object rather of our Desires than Fears But notwithstanding all this Obstinacy and Hardness of our Hearts the Lord God who is ever merciful and gracious long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth leaves us not to our selves but is continually calling and inviting us to Repentance by the preaching of his Word and by the secret and powerful Operations of his Holy Spirit Sometimes Heaven is pleased to smile upon us and as it were kindly to desire and intreat us to come and be its Inhabitants to accept of the glorious Liberty of the Children of God to be made Citizens of Sion and free Denizens of the New Jerusalem and at other times it frowns and awakens us with Thunder out of our sinful Lethargy God tries all ways imaginable to reclaim us and deliver us from the Jaws of Death Sometimes he pours down his Judgments upon our Heads that in our Affliction we may seek him early and sometimes he stretches forth the Arms of his Mercy to embrace us and draws us to him with the Cords of a Man with the Bands of Love Hos 11.4 Sometimes he holds forth the golden Scepter to us and graciously invites us to come and kiss the Son lest he be angry and sometimes he shakes his Rod of Iron over our Backs and threatens to dash us in pieces if we will not hear the Rod and who hath appointed it Hence are those many and gracious Invitations to Repentance which God hath made to us in his Word and those terrible Threatnings which he hath therein denounced to affright us from Sin amongst all which there is scarce one to be found that is more emphatical and piercing than this of my Text which must needs fill the Hearts of all obstinate and impenitent Sinners with Horrour yea and it strikes a Terrour even into the Godly themselves and makes them work out their Salvation with fear and trembling It thunders Hell certain and inevitable Damnation to the Wicked and hardly admits the Righteous into Heaven And if the Righteous scarcely be saved where shall the Vngodly and the Sinner appear The words are propounded by way of interrogation a thing very frequent in Scripture and generally used for the more powerful enforcing of some weighty and material Argument What could have been done more to my Vineyard that I have not done in it
thing I propounded to speak of which is the Person unto whom we are invited to come for help and that is Christ And here we must understand that by coming unto Christ is not meant any corporeal approach as if we were obliged to see him with our Eyes or to touch him with our hands for alass how can we that are but worms upon earth come thus unto him who is exalted unto the Right-hand of God in the highest Heavens But though we cannot come thus to him yet we may come nearer to him than thus even so near as to be one with him to be members of his Body of his flesh and of his bones Eph. 5.30 And this is that coming unto Christ which is here meant in my Text a coming to him and laying hold on him by a true and lively faith This is the only way that we can come unto Christ so as to receive any benefit from him For as his hands were tied while he was here upon Earth so that he could not work any Miracles where he found not faith so are they tied still upon the same account now he is in Heaven so that he cannot save us he cannot ease us of our Burden except we believe we have his own word for it Mark 16.16 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved but he that believeth not shall be damned And if this be all that is required of us in coming to Christ to believe that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners and to acknowledge our selves to be such who then shall not be saved surely then the way to Heaven is much easier than it is generally represented to be and few there be that shall not find it But our blessed Saviour hath assured us of the contrary and told us expresly that few there be that shall find it Matth. 7.14 And therefore it is more than a bare historical faith that is required of us if we will come unto Christ aright so as to find rest unto our souls and this is plain from the words in the Verse after my Text Take my Yoke upon you and learn of me for I am meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find rest unto your Souls Here is something implied more than just coming unto Christ for we must not only come to him but we must resolve also to do something for him which he expects we should do if ever we look for salvation from him and that is to be obedient to those most holy Laws and to follow as far as we are able through the Assistance of his Grace that most excellent Example which in his last Will and Testament he hath left us for the Rule of our Life and Conversation I will not deny but that it is faith alone by which we are justified and saved for S. Paul tells us more than once in his Epistles that the just shall live by faith But then he tells us what this faith is Gal. 5.6 It is faith which works by love and 1 Thess 1.3 he calls it the work of faith and Labour of Love If then faith be a work it must needs be more than a bare assent to and belief of the truth of the Gospel together with a groundless application of the promises therein contained to our selves which too many men are apt to think to be a faith sufficient to salvation For what work is this to believe the truth of a Store when there are most unanswerable Arguments to prove it though indeed it is a work and an hard work too the Devils work to perswade us to apply those precious promises which are made in that sacred Story to our selves when they do not at all concern us Let us take heed therefore of deceiving our selves and thinking that we have faith when we have it not but if we desire to approve our faith in the sight of God and Men and Angels and to the quiet and satisfaction of our own Consciences let us follow the advice both of S. James and S. Peter The former tells us that Faith without works is dead and that by works Faith is made perfect And the latter upon the substantial and never failing foundation of a true faith raises a most noble Structure by which we may gradually ascend into those Mansions of Glory which our blessed Saviour hath prepared for all those that love his appearing 2 Peter 1.5 Add saith he to your faith virtue and to virtue knowledge and to knowledge temperance and to temperance patience and to patience godliness and to godliness brotherly kindness and to brotherly kindness charity For if these things be in you and abound they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ But he that lacketh these things i. e. any one of them is blind and cannot see a far off and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old Sins Wherefore the rather brethren give Diligence to make your calling and election sure for if ye do these things ye shall never fall For so an entrance shall be ministred unto you abundantly into the everlasting knigdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ From hence ye may plainly see that the faith which is here meant by coming unto Christ is more than a bare belief of the truth of the Gospel more than a bare recumbency and leaning upon Christ for Salvation and applying his Merits to our selves as it were at a venture right or wrong whether we have any interest in him or no. Such a faith as this many men trust to that have been strangers all their life-time to the perfect Law of Liberty by which S. James tells us that we must all be judged at the last But the faith which our Saviour here requires in all that come unto him implies besides a full and steadfast belief of all that is contained in the Gospel a firm purpose and resolution and a chearful endeavour to the best of our power throughout the whole course of our Life to be obedient and conformable to all those rules and precepts and Laws which the Gospel injoyns us to perform to imitate that most holy example which our blessed Lord hath sett us striving to be perfect as he was perfect and when we have done all this still to acknowledge that we are unprofitable servants utterly disowning any Merits or Righteousness in our selves but desiring with S. Paul to be found in Christ not having our own Righteousness which is of the Law but that which is through the Faith of Christ the Righteousness which is of God by faith Phil. 3.9 This is a true and saving Faith indeed and whosoever thus comes unto Christ may assure himself that he shall be heartily welcome he shall most certainly obtain the benefit of this invitation and shall find rest unto his Soul And this brings me to my third and last particular which is the end wherefore all that labour and
part of the World the Man of Sin should be worshipped as a Saint than that by another the Holy One of God should be rejected as an Impostour For the blessed Spirit of Truth who alone can guide us into all Truth hath told us expresly that in the latter times some shall depart from the Faith giving heed to seducing Spirits and Doctrines of Daemons That there shall arise a great one in the Earth that shall oppose and exalt himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped so that he as God shall sit in the Temple of God shewing himself that he is God Whose coming shall be after the working of Satan with all Power and Signs and lying Wonders and with all Deceivableness of Unrighteousness in them that perish because they received not the Love of the Truth that they might be saved And that for this cause God shall send them strong Delusion that they should believe a lye that they all might be damned who believed not the Truth but had pleasure in Vnrighteousness And since this Prophecy must needs be fulfulled it was highly necessary that the Holy Ghost should forewarn us to beware of all those false Doctrines and corrupt and abominable Practices which this grand Impostour should endeavour to obtrude upon the Church of Christ as necessary to Salvation one of which the Apostle cautions us against in the words of my Text. Let no Man beguile you of your Reward c. The Text in the Original is something difficult and hath therefore occasioned some difference in Translations though none so great but that any one of them that I have seen and I have consulted several contains as direct a Prohibition of the Worshipping of Angels as the Greek it self For whether we render the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Let no Man judge against you as Beza or Let no Man condemn you as Diodate or Let no Man master or govern you as the French or Let no Man seduce you as the Vulgar Latin and the Rhemish Translation or Let no Man beguile you of your Reward as our Translatours have rendered it it comes all to one and the same thing viz. that no Man upon Earth hath any Power to impose upon us the Worship of Angels but whosoever goeth about to do so puts a dangerous cheat upon us to the hazarding of our Eternal Salvation The main difference that I can observe consists in joining the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as it may be indifferently either to the preceeding or following words If we join it to the words that go before it the Sense will be this Let no man beguile you of your Reward or condemn or master or seduce you willingly arbitrarily usurping over you a Power and Authority which was never committed unto him and so they will look with a malignant Aspect upon his Holinesses pretended Supremacy If we join it to the words that follow it the Sense will be as our Translatours have rendered it in a voluntary humility or being a voluntary in humility and so the Worship of Angels will appear to be but Will-worship having no Foundation in Scripture These things being premised I shall confine my self to our English Translation which in my Judgment is of all that I have seen the most faithfully rendered according to the Original and out of the words of my Text I shall observe this that no Man whatsoever hath any Authority to impose upon us the Worship of Angels being a thing absolutely unlawful and repugnant to the Will of God for the proof of which proposition besides some other Arguments which we may produce the Apostle furnishes us with four in my Text. 1. This Worship of Angels is a false and voluntary Humility a Will-worship invented by Man not enjoined by God 2. It proceeds from a real and carnal Pride He that goes about to impose it upon us intrudes into those things which he hath not seen vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind 3. It is highly injurious to the incommunicable Honour and Prerogative of our Lord Jesus Christ they that are guilty of it hold not the Head 4. It is destructive and deadly to our own Souls and the End of it will be Damnation for he that prevails with us to join in this Worship beguiles us of our Reward First This Worship of Angels is a false and voluntary Humility a Will-worship invented by Man and not enjoyned by God Of all the Temptations with which Satan is wont to assault our Souls there are none so dangerous as those which he offers to us under colour of Religion The common Baits of sensual Pleasures of worldly Profit or Honour and the like sinell so rank of the old Serpent that he that hath but half an Eye may discern that there is an Hook under them and it is merely the Predominance of his Corruptions that prevails with any Man to swallow it But when he assumes the Habit of an Angel of Light when instead of tempting us to Vice he recommends to us some extraordinary Grace and Virtue as being not yet sully understood nor practised by us according to the true intent and meaning of the Gospel it is not every Man that will look for a cloven Foot nor be able to discover it under such a sanctified Disguise and it is no marvel that even some learned Men have been imposed upon by the Stratagem Now of all those Excellent Graces which the Gospel requires of us there is none more lovely and amiable none that doth more adorn and beautifie our Souls and renders them more pleasing and acceptable in the sight of God through the Merits of Christ than Humility and therefore no Temptation could be more likely to prevail with Persons inclinable to Devotion than one that was gilded with the specious Pretence and Shew of so incomparable a Virtue Upon this plausible Foundation the grand Enemy of our Salvation established the Worship of Angels among some Hereticks very early even in the Apostle's Time which was the occasion of S. Paul's giving the Colossians this necessary Caution against it here in my Text. Theodoret upon the place informs us that they that maintained it necessary to observe the Law introduced also the Worship of angels affirming that the Law was given by them And this wickedness was long practised in Phrygia and Pisidia Wherefore the Council of Laodicea which is the Metropolis of Phrygia made a Canon on purpose to prohibit praying to Angels And even to this day saith he there are to be seen amongst them and their neighbours Oratories of S. Michael Now saith he they did this upon pretence of Humility saying That whereas God Almighty was invisible incomprehensible and inaccessible therefore we ought humbly to sue for his favour through the intercession of Angels Now I would fain know the difference betwixt that Worship of Angels which the Church of Rome calls Catholick and hath declared to be good and profitable for us and this
undoubtedly saved Now it is as certain by God's Word that no Man can be saved but by Grace and then it follows on the one hand that all Infants in their baptism do receive Grace or else by virtue of their baptism without it they cannot be saved and it follows likewise on the other hand that they that have received grace may fall from it or else no Children that have been baptized can be damned which no Man living will admit of It is manifest therefore that they that have Grace may fall away from it And if so then certainly it is every Mans Duty to take heed lest he do so fall And this is the second thing I propounded to speak of Let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall To fall let it be in what manner it will always implies danger and mischief but to fall from Grace is the most dangerous and dreadful fall imaginable It is a fall from Christ a fall from God a fall from Salvation a fall like that of Lucifer from the highest Heavens into the bottomless Pit a fall from the Glory and Light and Happiness of the bright Sons of the Morning into the Eternal Confusion and Horrour and Misery of the Children of Perdition Of all the rich Jewels which God hath to bestow upon us there is none so precious as that of Grace For upon whomsoever he bestows this upon him he designs to bestow Heaven it self Grace being the only sure and certain Guide to conduct us to those blessed Mansions of Everlasting Glory Without this we are able of our selves to do nothing at all that is good we cannot walk one step in the way of Life we cannot do a good Action nor think a good Thought except the Holy Spirit of God enable us Who works in us both to will and to do of his good Pleasure The Enemies of our Salvation are both numerous and powerful and the very weakest of them will be sure to be too strong for us if we be not assisted from on high For we wrestle not against Flesh and Blood but against Principalities against Powers against the Rulers of the Darkness of this World against Spiritual Wickedness in high Places against such Adversaries as if they were not restrained by the Omnipotent Power of God would quickly destroy the whole Race of Man and cause Confusion and Desolation throughout all the Earth How doth it behove us therefore that we may be able to overcome them to take unto us the whole Armour of God the Girdle of Truth the Breast-plate of Righteousness the Shield of Faith the Helmet of Salvation and the Sword of the Spirit It is Grace alone that can furnish us with these Weapons And so long as we are thus armed we may assure our selves that the Gates of Hell shall never be able to prevail against us But if once we fall from Grace and thereby disarm our selves of all this Spiritual Armour how can we expect then to fight the Lord's Battels when we have cast away the Weapons of our Warfare That roaring Lion that seeks to devour us and dares venture to assault us when we are armed Cap a pe with the Armour of Heaven though he dreads a Wound from the Sword of the Spirit and knows that the Shield of Faith is impregnable against all his fiery Darts will easily make a Prey of a naked and defenceless Soul a Soul that hath forsaken God and is therefore forsaken of him and delivered into the Hands of the Enemy to be taken Captive by him at his Will Let us take heed then lest having begun in the Spirit we end in the Flesh lest having once run well we turn aside and leave the Paths of Vprightness to walk in the ways of Darkness lest having for some time fought manfully under Christ's Banner the good Fight of Faith we afterwards grow weary and faint desert our Colours make shipwreck of our Faith and forsake the Captain of our Salvation Let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall And so I come to the last thing I undertook to do in handling these words which is To give you some necessary Rules and Directions to be observed by all that will take heed that they do not so fall First then that we may take heed that we do not fall let us remember that we may fall As there is a possibility for him that is already fallen to rise again for him that is at the present defiled with the pollutions of Sin to be washed again and sanctified and cleansed from those Pollutions for him that is at the present in the Gall of Bitterness and in the Bond of Iniquity entangled in the snare of Satan to be delivered from that Bondage into the Glorious Liberty of the Children of God and therefore we ought not to despair of the Salvation of any Man so likewise there is a possibility for him that for the present runs well the good race that is set before him to faint before he comes to the End of it and by so doing to lose his Prize for him that for a while believed in time of Temptation when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word to be offended and fall away for him who had once escaped the Pollutions of the World through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to be again entangled therein and overcome insomuch that his latter end shall be worse than the beginning and therefore no Man ought to be over confident and secure of his final Perseverance nor to presume that because at the present upon a strict Examination of his Conscience and of the Condition of his Soul he finds that he is in a State of Grace that that State is unalterable and that he shall infallibly continue in it unto his life's end for he that thinks he stands may fall And of what a dangerous Consequence such a presumption is we may see by the Example of S. Peter and indeed of all the rest of our Saviour's Disciples for as they all joyned with S. Peter in that good Resolution of never forsaking Christ for Peter said unto him Though I should die with thee yet will I not deny thee Likewise also said all the Disciples so they did all of them in effect joyn with him also in the denial of him for S. Matthew tells us that they all forsook him and fled But S. Peter that was the most confident of all denies him the most shamefully and basely of all with Oaths and Curses swearing that he knew him not Thus dangerous was Presumption to that great Saint and it will be as dangerous to every one of us if we entertain it in our Hearts He that thinks he stands so firm that he can never fall 't is much to be feared that he is fallen already and fallen so low that he is in danger never to rise again except it be by some extraordinary Act of Mercy such as our Saviour