that will rule them and not â—e ruled by them that will not suffer them to take their pleasure nor enjoy their riches but hold them to a life which they cannot endure and even undo them in the world he is then no longer a guest for them Whereas if Christ had been received as Christ and Truth and Godliness deliberately entertained for their welldiscerned Excellency and Necessity the deep rooting would have prevented this Apostacie and cured such Hypocrifie § 4. But alas poor Ministers find by sad experience that all prove not Saints that flock to hear them and make up the crowd nor that for a season rejoyce in their light and magnifie them and take their parts The blossom hath its beauty and sweetness but all that blossometh or appeareth in the bud doth not come to perfect fruit Some will be blasted and some blown down some nipt with â—â—osts some eaten by Worms some quickly fall and some hang on till the strongest blasts do cast them down some are deceived and poysoned by false Teachers some by worldly cares and the deceitfulness of riches become unfruitful and are turned aside The lusts of some had deeper rooting then the Word And the friends of some had greater interest in them than Christ and therefore they forsake him to satisfie their importunity some are corrupted by the hopes of preferment or the favour of man some feared from Christ by their threats and frowns and choose to venture on damnation to scape persecution And some are so worldly wise that they can see reason to remit their zeal and can save their souls and bodies too and prove that to be their duty which other men call sin if the end will but answer their expectations And some grow weary of truth and duty as a dull and common thing being not supplyed with that variety which might still continue the delights of Novelty § 5. Yet mistake not what I have said as if all the affection furthered by Novelty and abated by Commonness and use were a sign that the person is but an Hypocrite I know that there is something in the Nature of man remaining in the best which disposeth us to be much more passionately affected with things when they seem New to us and are first apprehended than when they are old and we have known or used them long There is not I believe one man of a thousand but is much more delighted in the Light of Truth when it first appeareth to him than when it is trite and familiarly known and is much more affected with a powerful Minister at first than when he hath long â—ate under him The same Sermon that even transported them at the first hearing would affect them less if they had heard it preach'd an hundred times The same Books which greatly affected us at the first or second reading will affect us less when we have read them over twenty times The same words of Prayer that take much with us when seldom used do less move our affections when they are daily used all the year At our first conversion we have more passionate sorrow for our sin and love to the godly than we can afterwards retain And all this is the case of learned and unlearned the sound and unsound though not of all alike Even Heaven it self is spoken of by Christ as if it did participate of this when he saith that Joy shall be in Heaven over One sinner that repenteth more than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance Luke 15. 7 10. And I know it is the duty of Ministers to take notice of this disposition in their hearers and not to dull them with giving them still the same but to profit them by a pleasant and profitable variety Not by preaching to them another Christ or a new Gospel It is the same God and Christ and Spirit and Scripture and the same Heaven the same Church the same faith and hope and repentance and obedience that we must preach to them as long as we live Though they say we have heard this an hundred times Let them hear it still and bring them not a new Creed If they hear so oft of God and Christ and Heaven till by Faith and Love and Fruition they attain them as their end they have heard well But yet there is a grateful variety of subordinate particulars and of words and methods and seasonable applications necessary to the right performance of our Ministry and to the profitting of the flocks Though the Physicion use the same Apothecaries Shop and Dispensatory and Drugs yet how great a variety must he use of compositions and times and manner of administration § 6. But for all this though the best are affected most with things that seem new and are dulled with the long and frequent use of the same expressions yet they are never weary of the substance of their Religion so as to desire a change And though they are not so passionately affected with the same Sermons and Books or with the thoughts or mention of the same substantial matters of Religion as at first they were Yet do their Iudgements more solidly and tenaciously embrace them and esteem them and their wills as Resolvedly adhere to them and use them and in their lives they practise them better than before Whereas they that take up their Religion but for Novelty will lay it down when it ceaseth to be New to them and must either change for a Newer or have none at all § 7. And as unsound are they that are Religious only because their education or their friends or the Laws or judgement of their Rulers or the Custom of the Countrey hath made it necessary to their Reputation These are Hypocrites at the first setting out and therefore cannot be saved by continuance in such a carnal Religiousness as this I know Law and Custom and education and friends when they side with Godliness are a great advantage to it by affording helps and removing those impediments that might stick much with carnal minds But truth is not your own till it be received in its proper evidence nor your faith divine till you believe what you believe because God is true who dâ—th reveal it nor are you the Children of God till you Love him for himself nor are you truly Religious till the Truth and Goodness of Religion it self be the principal thing that maketh you Religious It helpeth much to discover a mans sincerity when he is not only Religious among the Religious but among the prophane and the enemies and scorners and persecutors of Religion And when a man doth not pray only in a praying family but among the prayerless and the deriders of fervent constant prayer And when a man is heavenly among them that are earthly and temperate among the intemperate and riotous and holdeth the truth among those that reproach it and that hold the contrary When a man is not carried only by a stream of
our passions are and therefore that it is some Idol of the imagination that is so loved But 1. If they mean that his pure Essence in it self is not the immediate object of a passion they may say the same of the Will it self For man at lâ—ast in flesh can have no other Vâ—litiâ—n of God but as he is apprehended by the Intellect And if by an Idol they mean the Image of God in the mind gathered from the appearances of God in creatures man in flesh hath no other knowledge of him For here we know him but darkly aenigmatically and as in a glass and have no formal proper conception of him in his essence So that the Rational powers themselves do no otherwise knâ—w and will Gods essence but as represented to us in a glass 2. And thus we may also love him passionately it being God in his objective being as apprehended by the Intellect that we both Will and passionately Love The Motion of the soul in flesh may raise passions by the instrumentality of the corporeal Spirits towards an immaterial object which is called the object of those passions not meerly as Passions but as the Passions of a Rational Agent it being more nearly or primarily the object of the Intellect and Will and then of the Passions as first apprehended by these superiour powers A man may Delight in God or else how is he our felicity and yet we know of no Delight which is not Passion A man may love his own soul with a passionate Love and yet it is immaterial when I passionately love my friend it is his immaterial soul and his wisdom and holiness which I chiefly love § 5. 3. It is not only for his Excellencies and Perfections in himself nor only for his Love and benefit to What 〈◊〉 God 〈…〉 Love us that Grace doth cause a sinner to Love God But it is for both conjunctly as he is good and doth good especially to us in the greatest things § 6. 4. Our first special Love to God is orderly and rationally to be raised by the belief of his Goodness What is the 〈◊〉 of our first â—â—â—â—e to God in him self and his common Love and Mercy to sinners manifested in his giving of his Son for the world and giving men the Conditional promise of pardon and salvation and offering them Christ and life eternal and all this to us as well as others and not to be caused by the belief or perswasion of his special peculiar electing redeeming or saving love to us above others that have the same invitations and offers It is the knowledge of Common Love and Mercy and not of special Love and Mercy to us as already possessed that is appointed to be the motive of our first special Love to God Yet there is in it an apprehension that he is our only possible felicity and that he will give us a special interest in his favour if we return by faith in Christ unto him For 1. Every man is bound to Love God with a special Love but every man is not specially beloved by him And no man is bound to Love God as one that specially Loveth him but those that indeed are so beloved by him For else they were bound to believe a falshood and to Love that which is not and grace should be an error and deceit The object is before the act Gods special Love must in it self be before its Revelation and as Revealed it must go before our belief of it and as believed it must go before our Loving it or Loving him as such or for it 2. The first saving faith is inseparably conjunct with special Love For Christ is believed in and willed as the Way or Means to God as the End otherwise it is no true faith And the Volition of the End which is Love is in order of nature before the choice or Vse of the Means as such And if we must Love God as one that specially Loveth us in our first Love then we must Believe in him as such by our first faith And if so it must be to us a Revealed Truth But as it is false to most that are bound to believe so it is not Revealed to the Elect themselves For if it be it is either by ordinary or extraordinary revelation If by ordinary either by Scripture directly or by Evidences in our selves which Scripture maketh the Characters of his Love But neither of these For Scripture promiseth not salvation to named but described persons And evidence of special Love there is none before Faith and Repentance and the first Love to God And extraordinary Revelations from Heaven by inspiration or Angel is not the ordinary begetter of faith For faith is the Belief of God speaking to us now by his written Word So that where there is no Object of Love there can be no Love And where there is no Revelation of it to the understanding there is no object for the will And till a man first believe and Love God he hath no Revelation that God doth specially Love him Search as long as you will you will find no other 3. If the wicked were condemned for not Loving a false or feigned object it would quiet their consciences in Hell when they had detected the deceit and seen the natural impossibility and contradiction 4. The first Love to God is more a Love of Desire than of Possession And therefore it may suffice to raise it that we see a possibility of being for ever happy in God and enjoying him in special Love though yet we know not that we possess any such Love The Nature of the thing proclaimeth it most Rational and due that we Love the Infinite Good that hath done so much by the death of his Son to remove the impediments of our salvation and is so far Reconciled to the world in his death as by a message of Reconciliation to intreat them to accept of Christ and pardon and salvation freely offered them 2 Cor. 5. 19 20. and is himself the offered Happiness of the soul. He that dare say that this much hath not an Objective sufficiency to engage the soul in special Love is a blind under-valuer of wonderful mercy 5. The first special Grace bringeth no new Object for faith or Love but causeth a new act upon the formerly revealed object § 7. 5. But our Love to God is greatly increased and advantaged afterwards by the assurance or perswasion of his peculiar special Love to us And therefore all Christians should greatly value such assurance as the appointed means of advancing them to greater Love to God § 8. 6. As we know God here in the glass of his Son and Word and Creatures so we most sensibly Love him here as his Goodness appeareth in his Works and Graces and his Word and Son § 9. 7. The nearer we come to perfection the more we shall Love God for himself and his infinite Natural Goodness and perfections not casting away
to make further enquiry and so when the soul is come so far as to see the same truths by supernatural Grace in the supernatural revelation of the Holy Scriptures then they become more effectual and saâ—ing which before were known but preparatorily And so the same Truths are then both the objects of Knowledge and of faith § 20. 4. Having acquainted you with mans ultimate End and Happiness in the life to come the 4. To know that Christ faith Repentance and obedience is the way to it next thing to be taught you by the Ministers of Christ is that Christ as our Saviour and faith and repentance and sincere obedience to be performed by us through his grace is the way to Heaven or the means by which we must attain this end Though the Knowledge of the Preachers wisdom piety and credibility remove some impediments which would make the receiving of this the more difficult to you yet you are not to take it barely on his word as a point of humane faith but you are to call for his proof of it that you may see better reasons than his affirmations for the entertainment of it § 21. 5. The proof that he will give you is in these two Propositions 1. Gods Revelations are all 5. To know that this is True because God hath revealed it or it is his Word true 2. This is one of Gods Revelations This is an argument Whatsoever God saith is true But this God saith Therefore this is true The first Proposition you â—re not to take upon the trust of his word but to learn of him as a Teacher to know it in its proper Evidence For it is the formal object of your faith The veracity of God is first known to you by the same Evidence and means as you know that there is a God And then it is by the force of this that you believe the particular truths which are the material object of faith 2. And the second Proposition that God hath revealed this is orderly to be first proved and so received upon its proper evidence and not taken meerly upon your Teachers word Yet if you do believe him by a humane faith as a man that is likely to know what he saith and this in order to a Divine faith it will not hinder but help your Divine faith and salvation and is indeed no more than is your duty § 22. Here not 1. That primarily these two Great Principles of faith God is True and this is Gods revelation are not themselves Credenda the Material objects of Divine faith but of Knowledge ☞ 2. That yet the result of both is de fide matter of faith 3. And the same principles are secondarily de fide as it is that there is a God For though they are first to be known by natural evidence yet when the Scripture is opened to us we shall find them there revealed And so the same thing may be the object both of knowledge and of faith 4. And Faith it self is a sort of Knowledge For though humane faith have that uncertainty in its premises for the most part as forbiddeth us to say properly I know this to be true because such a man said it Yet Divine faith hath that certainty which may make it an excellent sort of Knowledge as I have proved copiously elsewhere In believing man we argue thus Whatsoever so wise and honest a man saith is credible that is most ☞ likely to be true But this he saith Therefore c. But in believing God we argue thus Whatever God saith is credible that is as infallible truth But this God saith Therefore c. So that the word Credible signifieth not the same thing in the two arguments nor is Divine Faith and Humane faith the same § 23. 6. The next thing that the Preacher hath to teach you is the proof of the foresaid Minor 6. To knâ—w that the Gospel is his Word Proposition for the Major was proved in the proof of a Deity And that is thus The Gospel which Christ and his Apostles first Preached and is now delivered in the Sacred Scriptures is the Word or infallible revelation of God But this doctrine that Christ with faith and Repentance and obedience on our parts are the way to life Eternal is the Gospel which Christ and his Apostles first Preached c. Therefore it is the Word of God For the Minor you need not take your Teachers word if you can read for you may see it in the Books of which more anon But the Major is that which all men will desire to be assured of that the Gospel is Gods word And for that though a Belief of your Teacher is a help and good preparatory yet you are not there to stop but to use him as a Teacher to shew you the Truth of it in the proofs else you must take any thing for Gods Word which your Teacher affirmeth to be such And the proof which he will give you must be some Divine attestation which may be shewed to those whom we would convince § 24. 7. This Divine attestation which he is next to shew you hath many parts that it may be 7. The Divine attestation of the Gospel compleat and satisfactory 1. Gods antecedent Testimony 2. His inherent or impressed testimony 3. His adherent concomitant Testimony 4. His subsequent Testimony 1. Gods Antecedent Testimony by which he attesteth the Gospel is the train of Promises Prophesies Types and the preparing Ministry of Iohn which all foretold Christ and were fulfilled in him 2. Gods impressed ☞ testimony is that Image and superscription of God in his Governing-wisdom Holiness and Love which is unimmitably engraven on the Gospel as an Image upon a seal which is thereby made the Instrument to imprint the same on other things Thus as the Sun the Gospel shineth and proveth it self by its proper light 3. The conâ—omitant attestation of God is that of multitudes of certain uncontrouled miracles done by Christ and his Apostles which proved the approving hand of God and oblige all rational creatures to believe a testimony so confirmed to them Among these Christs own Resurrection and Ascension and the Gifts of his Apostles are the chief 4. The subsequent attestation of God is the power and efficacy of the Gospel in calling and sanctifying unto Christ a peculiar people zealous of good works and directing and confirming them against all temptations and torments to the end Producing that same Image of God on the souls of his Elect which is more perfectly engraven on the word it self making such changes and gathering such a people unto God as no other doctrine ever did And all these four attestations are but one even the Holy Spirit ☞ who is become the great witness of Christ and his Gospel in the World viz. 1. The spirit of Prophesie is the antecedent attestation 2. The Holy Image which the spirit hath Printed on the Gospel it self
understood which is the chief the other cannot be referred to it When two things materially good come together and both cannot be done the greater must take place and the lesser is no duty at that time but a sin as preferred before the greater Therefore it is one of the commonest difficulties among Cases of Conscience to know which duty is the greater and to be preferred Upon this ground Christ healed on the Sabbath day and pleaded for his Disciples rubbing the ears of corn and for Davids eating the shew bread and telleth them that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath and that God will have mercy and not Sacrifice Divinity is a curious well composed frame As it is not enough that you have all the parts of your Watch or Clock but you must see that every part be in its proper place or else it will not go or answer its end so it is not enough that you know the several parts of Divinity or duty unless you know them in their true order and place You may be confounded before you are aware and led into many dangerous errors by mistaking the Order of several Truths And you may be misguided into heinous sins by mistaking the Degrees and Order of Duties As when duties of Piety and Charity seem to be competitors And when you think that the commands of men contradict the commands of God and when the substance and the circumstances or modes of duty are in question before you as inconsistent or when the means seemeth to cease to be a means by crossing of the end and in abundance of such cases you cannot easily conceive what a snare it may prove to you to be ignorant of the Methods and Ranks of duty § 2. Object If that he so what man can choose but be confounded in his Religion when there be so few that observe any Method at all and few that agree in Method and none that hath published a Scheme or Method so exact and clear as to be commonly approved by Divines themselves What then can ignorant Christians do Answ. Divinity is like a Tree that hath one Trunk and thence a few greater arms or boughs and Stoici dâ—â—unt virtutes sibi invicem ita esse connexas ut qui unam habuerit omnes habâ—at â—â—â—â—â—ius â—n 〈◊〉 thence a thousand smaller branches Or like the veins or nervs or arteries in the body that have first one or few trunks divided into more and those into a few more and those into more till they multiply at last into more than can easily be seen or numbered Now it is easie for any man to begin at the chief trunk and to discern the first divisions and the next though not to comprehend the number and order of all the extream and smaller branches So is it in Divinity It is not very hard to begin at the Unity of the Eternal God-head and see there a Trinity of Persons and of Primary attributes and of Relations and to arise to the principal attributes and works of God as in these Relations and to the Relations of man to God and to the great Duties of these Relations to discern Gods Covenants and chiefest Laws and the duty of man in obedience thereto and the Judgement of God in the execution of his sanctions though yet many particular truths be not understood And he that beginneth and proceedeth as he ought doth know methodically so much as he knoweth And he is in the right way to the knowledge of more And the great Mercy of God hath laid so great a necessity on us to know these few points that are easily known and so much less need of knowing the many small particulars that a mean Christian may live uprightly and holily and comfortably that well understandeth his Catechism or the Creed Lords Prayer and ten Commandments and may find daily work and consolation in the use of these § 3. A sound and well composed Catechism studied well and kept in memory would be a good measure of knowledge to ordinary Christians and make them solid and orderly in their understanding and in their proceeding to the smaller points and would prevent a great deal of â—rror and miscarriage that many by ill teaching are cast upon to their own and the Churches grief Yea it were to be wished that some Teachers of late had learnt so much and orderly themselves Direct 4. BEgin not too early with Controversies in Religion and when you come to them let them Direct 4. have but their due proportion of your time and zeal But live daily upon these certain great substantials which all Christians are agreed in § 1. I. Plunge not your selves too soon into Controversies For 1. It will be exceedingly to your loss by diverting your souls from greater and more necessary things You may get more encrease of holiness and spend your time more pleasingly to God by drinking in deeper the substantials of Religion and improving them on your hearts and lives 2. It will corrupt your minds and instead of humility charity holiness and heavenly mindedness it will feed your Pride and kindle faction and a dividing zeal and quench your charity and possess you with a wrangling contentious Spirit and you will make a Religion of these sins and lamentable distempers 3. And it is the way to deceive and corrupt your judgements and make you erroneous or heretical to your own perdition and the disturbance of the Church For it 's two to one but either you presently err or else get such an itch after Notions and Opinions that will lead you to error at the last Because you are not yet ripe and able to judge of those things till your minds are prepared by those truths that are first in order to be received When you undertake a work that you cannot do no wonder if it be ill done and must be all undone again or worse Perhaps you will say That you must not take your Religion upon trust but must prove all things and held fast that which is good Answ. Though your Religion must not be taken upon trust there are many controverted smaller Opinions that you must take upon trust till you are capable of discerning them in their proper evidence Till you can reach them your selves you must take them on trust or not at all Though you must believe all things of common necessity to salvation with a Divine faith yet many subservient truths must be received first by a humane faith or not received at all till you are more capable of them Nay there is a humane faith necessarily subservient to the Divine faith about the substance of Religion and the Officers of Christ are to be trusted in their Office as helpers of your faith Nay let me tell you that while you are young and ignorant you are not fit for Controversies about the fundamentals of Religion themselves You may believe that there is a God long before you are fit
to hear an Atheist proving that there is no God You may believe the Scripture to be the Word of God and Christ to be the Saviour and the soul to be immortal long before you will be fit to manage or study Controversies hereupon For nothing is so false or bad which a wanton or wicked Wit may not put a plausible gloss upon And your raw unfurnished understandings will scarce be able to see through the pretence or escape the cheat When you cannot answer the Arguments of Seducers you will find them leave a doubting in your minds For you know not how plain the answer of them is to wiser men And though you must prove all things you must do it in due order and as you are able and stay till your furnished minds are capable of the tryal If you will need read before you know your Letters or pretend to judge of Greek and Hebrew Authors before you can read English you will but become ridiculous in your undertaking § 2. II. When you do come to smaller Controverted points let them have but their due proportion of your time and zeal And that will not be one hour in many dayes with the generality of private Christians By that time you have well learned the more necessary truths and practised daily the more necessary duties you will find that there will be but little time to spare for lesser Controversies Opinionists that spend most of their Time in studying and talking of such points do steal that time from greater matters and therefore from God and from themselves Better work is undone the while And they that here lay out their chiefest zeal divert their zeal from things more necessary and turn their natural heat into a Feavor § 3. III. The Essential necessary Truths of your Religion must imprint the Image of God upon your hearts and must dwell there continually and you must live upon them as your bread and drink and daily necessary food All other points must be studied in subserviency to those All lesser duties must be used as the exercise of the Love of God or man and of a humble heavenly mind The Articles of your Creed and points of Catechism are fountains ever running affording you matter for the continual exercise of Grace It is both plentiful and solid nourishment to the soul which these great substantial points afford To know God the Creator Redeemer and Sanctifier the Laws and Covenant of God and his Judgement and Rewards and Punishments with the parts and method of the Lords Prayer which must be the daily exercise of our desires and Love this is the Wisdom of a Christian and in these must he be continually exercised You 'l say perhaps that the Apostle saith Heb. 6. 1. Leaving the Principles of the doctrine of Christ let us go on to perfection not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works c. Answ. 1. By leaving he meaneth not passing over the practice of them as men that have done with them and are past them But his leaving at that time to discourse of them or his supposing them taught already Though he lay not the foundation again yet he doth not pluck it up 2. By Principles he meaneth the first points to be taught and learnt and practised And indeed Regeneration and Baptism is not to be done again But the Essentials of Religion which I am speaking of contain much more especially to live in the love of God which Paul calls the more excellent way 1 Cor. 12. 13. 3. Going on to perfection is not by ceasing to believe and Love God but by a more distinct knowledge of the mysteries of salvation to perfect our Faith and Love and Obedience The points that Opinionists call Higher and think to be the principal matter of their growth and advancement in understanding are usually but some smaller less necessary truths if not some uncertain doubtful questions Mark well 1 Tim. 1. 4. 6. 4. 2 Tim. 2. 23. Tit. 3. 9. compared with Iohn 17. 3. Rom. 13. 8 9 10. 1 Cor. 13. 1 Iohn 3. 1 Cor. 1. 23. 15. 1 2 3. 2. 2. Gal. 6. 14. Iames 2. 3. 1. Direct 5. BE very thankful for the great mercy of your Conversion but yet overvalue not your Direct 5. first degrees of knowledge or holiness but remember that you are yet but in your infancy and must expect your growth and ripeness as the consequent of Time and Diligence § 1. You have great reason to be more glad and thankful for the least measure of true Grace than if you had been made the Rulers of the Earth it being of a far more excellent nature and entitling you to more than all the Kingdoms of the world See my Sermon called Right Rejoycing on those words of Christ Rejoyce not that the Spirits are subject to you but rather rejoyce because your names are written in Heaven Luke 10. 20. Christ will warrant you to Rejoyce though enemies envy you and repine both at your victory and triumph If there be joy in Heaven in the presence of the Angels at your Conversion there is great reason you should be glad your selves If the Prodigals Father will needs have the best Robe and Ring brought forth and the fat Calf killed and the Musick to attend the Feast that they may eat and be merry Luke 15. 23. there is great reason that the Prodigal Son himself should not have the smallest share of joy though his Brother repine § 2. But yet take heed lest you think the measure of your first endowments to be greater than it Fear is a cautelous preserving grace I aâ—rt saith of Cleanthes Cum aliquando probro illi daretur quod esset timidus At ideo inquit parum pecco is Grace imitateth Nature in beginning usually with small Degrees and growing up to maturity by leisurely proceeding We are not new born in a state of manhood as Adam was created Though those Texts that liken the Kingdom of God to a grain of Mustard-seed and to a little leaven Matth. 13. 31 33. be principally meant of the small beginnings and great encrease of the Church or Kingdom of Christ in the world yet it is true also of his Grace or Kingdom in the soul. Our first Stature is but to be New born babes desiring the sincere milk of the word that we may grow by it 1 Pet. 2. 2. Note here that the new birth bringeth forth but babes but growth is by degrees by feeding on the Word The Word is received by the heart as seed into the ground Matth. 13. And seed useth not to bring forth the blade and fruit to ripeness in a day § 3. Yet I deny not but that some men as Paul may have more Grace at their first Conversion than many others have at their full growth For God is free in the giving of his Own and may give more or less as pleaseth himself But yet in Paul himself
head-strong Horse that must be kept in at first and is hardly restrained if it once break loose and get the head If you are bred up in temperance and modesty where there are no great temptations to gluttony drinking sports or wantonness you may think a while that your natures have little or none of this concupiscence and so may walk without a guard But when you come where baits of lust abound where Women and Playes and Feasts and Drunkards are the Devils snares and tinder and bellows to enflame your lusts you may then find to your sorrow that you had need of watchfulness and that all is not mortified that is asleep or quiet in you As a man that goeth with a Candle among Gunpowder or near Thatch should never be careless because he goeth in continual danger so you that are young and have naturally eager appetites and lusts should remember that you carry fire and Gunpowder still about you and are never out of danger while you have such an enemy to watch § 2. And if once you suffer the fire to kindle alas what work may it make ere you are aware James 1. 14 15. Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed Then when lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin and sin when it is finished bringeth forth death Little knoweth the Fish when he is catching or nibling at the bait that he is swallowing the hook which will lay him presently on the bank When you are looking on the cup or gazing on alluring beauty or wantonly dallying and pleasing your senses with things unsafe you little know how far beyond your intentions you may be drawn and how deep the wound may prove how great the smart or how long and difficult the cure As you love your souls observe Pauls counsel 2 Tim. 2. 22. Flee youthful lusts Keep at a full distance Come not near the bait If you get a wound in your consciences by any wilful heinous sin O what a case will you be in How heartless unto secret duty afraid of God that should be your joy deprived of the comforts of his presence and all the pleasure of his wayes How miserably will you be tormented between the tyranny of your own concupiscence the sting of sin the gripes of conscience and the terrors of the Lord How much of the life of faith and love and heavenly zeal will be quenched in a moment I am to speak more afterwards of this and therefore shall only say at present to all young Converts that care for their salvation Mortifie the flesh and alwayes watch and avoid temptations Direct 15. BE exceeding wary not only what Teachers you commit the guidance of your souls unto Direct 15. Nam si falsi solo nomine tumidi non modo non consulendi sed vitandi sunt quibus nihil est importunius nihil insu siâ—s c. Pâ—tâ—a câ— Dâ—al 117. li. 2. but also with what company you familiarly converse That they be neither such as would corrupt your minds with error or your hearts with viciousness profâ—neness lukewarmness or with a feavorish factious zeal But choose if possible judicious holy heavenly humble unblameable self-denying persons to be your ordinary companions and familiars but especially for your near Relations § 1. It is a matter of very great importance what Teachers you choose in order to your salvation In this the free grace of God much differenceth some from others For as poor Heathens and Infidels have none that know more than what the Book of Nature teacheth if so much so in the several Nations of Christians it is hard for the people to have any but such as the Sword of the Magistrate forceth on them or the stream of their Countreys Custom recommendeth to them And it is a wonder Scientiâ— est posse dâ—cere Provâ—â—b Sub indocto tamen doctus evadâ—re potes â—fflaâ—u aliquo divino ut Ciâ—â—ro loquitur Augustinus de seipso testatur cui non omnia credere nefas est quod Aristotelicas Categorias quae inter difficillima numerantur artes liberales quas singulas a praeceptoribus didicisse magnum dicitur nullo tradeâ—te omnes intellexit â—â—â—â—ardus item vir doctrina sanctitate clarissimus omnes suas literas quarum inter cunctos sui temporis abundantissimus fuâ—â— in sâ—lvis in agris didicit non hominum magisterio sed meditando orando nec ullos unquam alios praeceptores habuit quam quercus sagos Pâ—trâ—â—ch li. 2. Dialog 40. if pure Truth and Holiness be countenanced by either of these But when and where his mercy pleaseth God sendeth wise and holy Teachers with compassion and diligence to seek the saving of mens souls so that none but the malignant and obstinate are deprived of their help § 2. Ambitious proud covetous licentious ungodly men are not to be chosen for your Teachers if you have your choice In a Nation where true Religion is in credit and hath the Magistrates countenance or the Major Vote some graceless men may joyn with better in preaching and defending the purity of doctrine and holiness of life And they may be very serviceable to the Church herein especially in expounding and disputing for the truth But even there more experienced spiritual Teachers are much more desirable They will speak most feelingly who feel what they speak And they are fittest to bring others to faith and love who believe and love God and holiness themselves They that have life will speak more lively than the dead And in most places of the world the ungodliness of such Teachers makes them enemies to the Truth which is according to godliness Their natures are at enmity to the life and power of the doctrine which they should preach And they will do their worst to corrupt the Magistrates and make them of their mind And if they can but get the Sword to favour them they are usually the cruellest persecutors of the sincere As it is notorious among the Papists that the baits of Power and Honour and Wealth have so vitiated the body of their Clergy that they conspire to uphold a worldly Government and Religion and in express contradiction to Sense and Reason and to Antiquity and the judgement of the Church and to the holy Scriptures they captivate the ignorant and sensual to their tyranny and false worship and use the seduced Magistrates and multitude to the persecuting of those that will not follow them to sin and to perdition Take heed of proud and worldly Guides § 3. And yet it is not every one that pretendeth Piety and Zeal that is to be heard or taken for a Teacher But 1. Such as preach ordinarily the substantial Truths which all Christians are agreed in 2. Such as make it the drift of their preaching to raise your souls to the Love of God and to a holy heavenly life and are zealous against confessed sins 3. Such as contradict not the
that there is a God that he is infinite in his Immensity and 〈…〉 that they â—â—d 〈…〉 〈…〉 Deos 〈…〉 impâ—â—baâ—â— Sâ—â—â—â—a statuas ex disciplinae instituto è medio â—uâ—isse And that some thought that the Jews came from them p. 4. 6 And 〈◊〉 himâ—â—lf â—aiâ—h to these that make Oâ—phâ—â—â—â— the first Philosopher Vâ—deant câ—râ—e qui ita â—â—lunt quo sit ceâ—sâ—ndus nomine qui Dâ—â—â—â—â—â—cta hoâ—â—nâ—m viâ—â— quae â—aro â— turpibus quibusque â—lagitiosis hominibus geruntur ascâ—iâ—it pag. 4. He saith also that the said Mâ—â— hâ—â—d and 〈◊〉 with them that men should live again and become immortal The like he saith of many other Sects It is a thing most irrational to doubt of the being of the unseen worlds and the more excellent inhabitants thereof when we consider that this lâ—w and little part of Gods Creation is so full of inhabitants If a Microscope will shew your very eyes a thousand visible creatures which you could never see without iâ— nor know that they had any being will you not allow the pure intellectual sight to go much 〈◊〉 beyond your Microscope Eternity in his Power Wisdom and Goodness that he is the first Cause and Ultimate End of all things that he is the Preserver and over ruling disposer of all things and the Supream Governour of the Rational world and the great Benefactor of all mankind and the special Favourer and Rewarder of such as truly love him seek him and obey him Also that the soul of man is immortal and that there is a life of Reward or punishment to come and that this life is but preparatory unto that that man is bound to Love God his Maker and serve him with all his heart and might and to believe that this Labour is not vain that we must do our best to know Gods will that we may do it This with much more of which some part was mentioned Chap. 1. § 2 3 c. is of Natural Revelation which Inâ—idels may know 8. There is so admirable a concord and correspondency of Natural Divinity with supernatural the T 〈…〉 in 〈…〉 Aâ—uiâ—aâ—â—â—â—â— i 〈…〉 Anâ—iquiâ—â—mum omnium â—â—â—â—â—â—â—â— Deus 〈◊〉 us â—â—â—â—â—â—â—â—â—â—lâ—â—â—â—imum â—â—unduâ— De◠〈…〉 Maximum locus capit enim omnia Velocissimum meus nam per universa discurrit Fortissimum necessitas cuncta enim supeâ—a◠〈◊〉 tempâ—s iâ—vâ—â—â—â—t namque omnia Q. Utrum prius factum nox an dies R. Nâ—x una priuâ— diâ— Q. Latet ne Deos homo mâ—â—â—â— agâ—â—â—â— R. N cogitâ—â—â—â— quidem Q. Quid difficile â— R. Seipsum noscere Q. Quid facile â— Ab a â—o moveri Q. Quid suavâ—ssimum R. â—â—ui Q. Quid Deus R. Quod initio fine caret p. 14. 20 21. natural leading towards the supernatural and the supernatural falling in so meet where the natural endeth or falls short or is defective that it greatly advantageth us in the Belief of supernatural Divinity Nay as the Law of Nature was exactly fitted to man in his natural innocent estate so the Law and Way of Grace in Christ is so admirably and exactly fitted to the state of lapsed man for his Recovery and Salvation that the experience which man hath of his sin and misery may greatly prepare him to perceive and believe this most suitable Gospel or Doctrine of Recovery And though it may not be called Natural as if it were fitted to innocent Nature or as if it were revealed by Natural ordinary means yet may it be so called as it is exactly suited to the restoration of lapsed miserable nature even as Lazarus his restored soul though supernaturally restored was the most natural associate of his body or as bread or milk or wine though it should fall from Heaven is in it self the most natural food for man 9. The same things in Divinity which are revealed Naturally to all are again revealed supernaturally in the Gospel and therefore may and must be the matter both of natural knowledge and of faith 10. When the maliâ—ious Tempter casteth in doubts of a Deity or other points of natural Certainty it so much discrediteth his suggestions as may help us much to reject them when withal he tempteth us to doubt of the truth of the Gospel 11. There are many needful appurtenances to the objects of a Divine faith which are the matter of a humane faith Of which more anon 12. Christ as Mediator is the Way or principal means to God as coming to restore man to his Maker And so faith in Christ is but the Means to bring us to the Love of God though in Time they are connexed 13. Knowledge and Faith are the eye of the new creature and Love is the Heart There is no more spiritual Wisdom than there is Faith and there is no more life or acceptable qualification or amiableness than there is Love to God 14. All truths in Divinity are revealed in order to a holy life Both Faith and Love are the Principles and Springs of practice 15. Practice affordeth such experience to a believing soul as may confirm him greatly in the belief of those supernatural revelations which he before received without that help 16. The everlasting fruition of God in Glory being the end of all Religion must be next the heart and most in our eye and must objectively animate our whole Religion and actuate us in every duty 17. The pleasing of God being also our End and both of these Enjoying him and Pleasing him being in some sâ—â—alâ— foretastes attainable in this life the endeavour of our souls and lives must be by FAITH to exercise LOVE and OBEDIENCE for thus God is Pleased and Enjoyed 18. All things in Religion are fitted to the good of man and nothing to his hurt God doth not command Conjungi vult nos inter nos atque connecti per mutua beneficia Charitatis Adeo ut tota justitia praeceptum hoc Dei communis sit utilitas hominum O miram clementiam Domini O inesfabilem Dei benignitatem Praemium nobis pollicetur fi nos invicem diligamus id est fi nos ea praestemus invicem quorum vicissim indigemus nos superbo ingrato animo ejus renittimur voluntati cujus etiam imperium beneficium est Hieron ad Câ—laâ—t See my Book of the Reasons of the Christian Religion us to honour him by any thing which would make us miserable but by closing with and magnifying his Love and Grace 19. But yet it is his own revelation by which we must judge what is finally for our good or hurt and we may not imagine that our shallow or deceivable wit is sufficient to discern without his Word what is best or worst for us Nor can we rationally argue from any present temporal adversity or unpleasing bitterness in the means that This is worst for us and therefore it is not from the Goodness of God But we must argue in such cases This is from the Goodness and
is we must first know what Truth is and what is the What Truth is Use of Speech Truth is considerable 1. As it is in the things known and spoken of 2. As it is in the conception or knowledge of the mind 3. As it is in the expressions of the tongue 1. Truth Vid. Aquin. de Veritat in the things known is nothing but their Reality that indeed they are that which their names import or the mind apprehendeth them to be This is that which is called both Physical and Metaphysical Truth 2. Truth in the conception or knowledge of the mind is nothing else but the agreement or conformity of the knowledge to the thing known To conceive of it truly is to conceive of it as it is Mistake or error is contrary to this Truth 3. Truth as it is in the expressions is indeed a twofold relation 1. The primary relation is of our words or writings to the matter expressed And so Truth of speech is nothing but the agreeableness of our words to the things expressed when we speak of them as they are 2. The secondary relation of our words is to the mind of the Speaker For the natural use of the tongue is to express the mind as well as the matter And thus Truth of Speech is nothing but the agreeableness of our words to our thoughts or judgements Truth as it is the agreement of Thoughts or words to the matter may be called Logical Truth And this is but the common Matter of Moral or Ethical Truth which may be â—ound partly in a Clock or Watch or Weather-cock or a Seamans Chart. The agreement of our words to our minds is the more proper or special matter of Moral Truth The form of it as a Moral Virtue is its agreement to the Law of the God of Truth And as the Terminus entereth the definition of relations so our words have respect to the Mind of the hearer or reader as their proper Terminus their use being to acquaint him 1. With the matter expressed 2. With our minds concerning it Therefore it is necessary to the Logical Truth of speech that it have an aptitude rightly to inform the hearer and to the Ethical Truth that it be intended by the speaker really to inform him and not to deceive him Supposing that it is another that we speak to § 2. You see then that to a Moral Truth all these things are necessary 1. That it be an agreement of the words with the matter expressed as far as we are obliged to know the matter 2. That it be an agreement of the words with the speakers mind or judgement 3. That the expressions have an aptitude to inform the hearer of both the former truths 4. That we really intend them to inform him of the truth so far as we speak it 5. That it be agreeable to the Law of God which is the Rule of duty and discoverer of sin § 3. In some speeches the Truth of our words as agreeing to the Matter and to the Mind is all one viz. when our own conception or judgement of a thing is all that we assert As when we say I think or I believe or I judge that such a thing is so Here it is no whit necessary to the Truth of my words that the Thing be so as I think it to be For I affirm it not to be so but that indeed I think as I say I think But that our words and minds agree is alwayes and inseparably necessary to all Moral Truth § 4. We are not bound to make known all that is true for then no man must keep a secret How far we are bound to speak the truth much less to every man that asketh us Therefore we are not bound to endeavour the Cure of every mans ignorance or error in every matter For we are not bound to talk at all to every man And if I be not bound to make known the truth at all or my mind at all I am not bound to make known all the truth or all that is in my mind No not to all those to whom I am bound to make known part of both If I find a man in an ignorance or error which I am not bound to cure nay possibly it were my sin to cure it as to open the secrets of the Kings Counsels or Armies to his Enemies c. I may and must so fit my speech to that man even about those matters as not to make him know what he should not know either of the matter or of my mind I may either be silent or speak darkly or speak words which he understandeth not through his own imperfection or which I know his weakness will misunderstand But I must speak no falshood to him Also there is a great difference between speaking so as not to cure the ignorance or error of the hearer which I found him in and so speaking as to lead him into some new error I may do the former in many cases in which I may not do the latter And there is great difference between speaking such words as in the common use of men are apt to inform the hearers of the truth though I may know that through some weakness of their own they will misunderstand them and be deceived by them and the speaking of words which in common use of men have another signification than that which I use them to By the former way the hearer sometime is the deceiver of himself and not the speaker when the speaker is not bound to reveal any more to him But by the later way the speaker is the deceiver Also there is great difference to be made between my speaking to one to whom it is my duty to reveal the truth and my speaking to a man to whom I am not bound to reveal it yea from whom my duty to God and my King or Country bind me to conceal it By these grounds and distinctions you may know what a Lye is and may resolve the ordinary doubts that are used to be raised about our speaking truth or falshood As § 5. Quest. 1. Am I bound to speak the Truth to every one that asketh me Answ. You are not Quest. 1. bound to speak at all in every case to every one that asketh you And he that is silent speaketh not the truth § 6. Quest. 2. Am I bound to speak the Truth to every one that I answer to Answ. Your Answer Quest. 2. may sometimes be such as signifieth but a denying to answer or to reveal what is demanded of you § 7. Quest. 3. Am I bound to speak all the Truth when ever I speak part of it Answ. No It is Quest. 3. Gods Word that must tell you when and how much you must reveal to others And if you go as 〈…〉 â—6 63. Maâ— 1â— 61. 15. 5 Luke 23. 9. Jâ—â—n 19 9. â—â—r 8 26 27. far as God alloweth you it followeth not that
Make sure of the sincerity of your Charity and hold it fast and then no error that you hold will be destructive to you But if you know more than others and use your knowledge to the weakning of your Love you are but as our first Parents deceived and destroyed by a dâ—sire of fleshly uneffectual knowledge Such knowledge puffeth up but charity edifieth 1 Cor. 8. 1. To contend for Truth to the lâ—ss of Love in your selves and the destruction of it among others is but to choak your selves with excellent food and to imitate that Orthodox Catholick Physicion that gloried that he killed his Patients secundum artem by the most accurate method and excellent Rules of Art that men could dye by § 11. Direct 10. Pretend no Truth against the power and practice of Godliness For this also is Direct 10. its prâ—pâ—â— End Iâ—â—â— be not Truth that is accâ—rding to Godliness it is no truth worthy our seeking or 1 Tim. 6 3. Tâ—â— 1. 1. 1 Tiâ— 4. 7 8 1 Tim. 6. 5 6 11. câ—ntending â—or And if it be contrary to Godliness in it self it is no truth at all Therefore if it be used agaiâ—st Godliness it is used contrary to the Ends of Truth Those men that suppress or hinder tâ—e 〈◊〉 Knowledge and Holiness and Concord and Edification under pretence of securing dâ—â—â—â—nding or propâ—gating the Orthâ—dâ—x belief will find one day that God will give them as 2 Pet. 1. â— 3. 11. little thanks for their blâ—â—d prâ—posterous zeal â—oâ— truth as a tender Father would do to a Physicion that killed his Children bâ—câ—usâ— they distasted or spit out his Medicines It is usually a pitiful defence of Truth that is made by the Enemies of Godliness More near and particular Directions against Error § 12. Direct 1. Begin at the Greatest most Evident Certain and Necessary Truths and so proceed Direct 1. orderly to the knowledge of the less by the help of these As you climb by the Body of the Tree unto See Ch. 2. D. 3. the branches If you begin at those truths which spring out of greater common truths and know not the premises while yoâ— plead for the conclusion you abuse your Reason and lose the Truth and your labour both For thâ—re is no way to the branches but by ascending from the stock The Principles wâ—ll laid must bâ— your help to all your following knowledge § 13. Direct 2. The two first Things which you are to learn are what man is and what God is Direct 2. the Nâ—ture and Relâ—tion of the two Parties is the first thing to be known in order to the knowledge of the Câ—venant it self and all following transâ—ctions between God and man One error here will introduce abundance A thousand other points in Natural Philosophy you may safely be ignorant of bâ—t if you know not what Man is what Reason is what Natural Free-will is and what the inferiâ—ur sensitive U Deum noâ—is etâ—â— ignâ—â—â—â—s â—cum faâ—iem 〈◊〉 â—bi â—â—â—â—â—â— noâ—um eslâ—â—◠〈◊〉 etiamsi â—gâ—oreâ— â—â—cum 〈…〉 Direct 3. Nulla â—â—ga Dâ—â—â—â— pâ—â—â—â—â— est nisi hâ—nâ—stâ—â—â— nâ—mâ—nâ— Dâ—oâ—â—m ac 〈…〉 o Plaâ—â— facultiâ—s are as to their Uses it will lay you open to innumerable errors In the Nature of man you must see the foundation of his relations unto God And if you know not those Great Relâ—â—iâ—ns the duties of which must take up all our lives you may easily foresee the consâ—quents of such ignorance or error So if you know not what God is and what his Relations to us are so far as is necessary to our living in the duties of those Relations the consequents of your ignorance will bâ— sad If learned men be but perverted in their apprehensions of some onâ— Attribuâ—e of God as those that think his Goâ—dness is nothing but his Benignity or proneness to do good or that he is a Nâ—â—â—â—sâ—â—ry agâ—â—t dâ—ing good ad ultimum posse c. what abundance of hoâ—rid and impious consequâ—nts will follow § 14. Direct 3. Hâ—ving sâ—undly understood both these and other Principles of Religion try all the subsequent truths â—erâ—â—y and receive nothing as truth that is certainly inconsistent with any of these principles Even Principles that are not of sense may be disputed till they are wâ—ll râ—ceived and with those that have â—â—t received them But afterward they are not to be called iâ— question for then you wâ—uld never proceed â—or build higher if you still stand questioning all your grounds Indeed no truth is inconsistent with any other truth But yet when two dark or doubâ—ful points are compared together it is hard to know which of them to reject But here it is easie Nothing that contradicteth the trâ—e Nature of Gâ—d or man or any Principle must be hâ—ld § 15. Direct 4. Bâ—lieve notâ—ing which certainly contradicteth the End of all Religion If it be of a Direct 4. naâ—â—râ—l or necessary tendency to ungodliness against the Love of God or against a holy and heavenly mind and conversation it cannot bâ— truth what ever it preâ—end § 16. Direct 5. Be sure to distinguish well betwixt revealed and unrevealed things And before you Direct 5. dispute any question search first whetâ—er thâ—â—â—solution be Revealed oâ— not And if it be not lay it ☞ by and take it as part of your necessary submission to be ignorant of what God would have you ignorant as it is part of your obedience to labour to know what God would have you know And when some things unrâ—veâ—lâ—d are mixed in the controversie take out those and lay them by before you go any further and see that the resolution of the râ—st be not laid upon them nor twisted with them to â—ntangle the whole in uncertainty or confusion Thus God instructed Iob by convincing him of Job 38. 39. 40. 41. Non 1 sumu quâ—bâ—s nihil vâ—rum essvâ—dâ—aâ—uâ— sâ—d ii qui â—â—â—â—bâ—s â—â—â—â—â— faâ—sae â—â—aeâ—am adjunâ—â—â—â— est 〈◊〉 camuâ— â—an â simâ—â—â—â—â—â—â— uâ— c. Ciâ— dâ— Nat. Dâ—or p. 7. his ignorance and shâ—wing him how many things were past his knowledge Thus Christ instructed Nic dâ—mus about the work of Regeneration so as to let him know that though the Necessity of it must be known yâ—t the manner of the Spirits accâ—sses to the soul cannot be known Iohn 3. 7 8. And Paul in his discâ—urse of Election takes notice of the unsearchable depths and the creatures unfitness to dispute with God Rom. 9. When you find any dispuâ—es about Predetermination or Predestination resolved into such points as thâ—se Whether God do by physical premoving influx or by concourse or by moral operation ut finiâ— determine or spâ—cifie moral acts of man Whether a Positive Decâ—ee quoad actum be necessary to the Nâ—gation of effects as that such a one shall not have grace given him or be câ—â—verted or saved that all the millions of possible persons names and things shall not be
a Zeal against Error and for Truth Object V. Are all these Numerous Directions to be found in Scripture Shew us them in Scripture or you trouble the Church with your own inventions Answ. 1. Are all your Sermons in the Scripture And all the good Books of your Library in the Scripture 2. Will you have none but Readers in the Church and put down Preachers Sure it is the Reader that delivereth all and only the Scripture 3. Are we not Men before we are Christians And is not the Light and Law of Nature Divine And was the Scripture written to be instead of Reason or of a Logick or other subservient Sciences Or must they not all be sanctified and used for Divinity 4. But I think that as all good Commentaries and Sermons and Systems of Theology are in Scripture so is the Directory here given and is proved by the evidence of the very thing discourst of or by the plainest Texts Object VI. You confound your Reader by Curiosity of distinctions Answ. 1. If they are vain or false shame them by detecting it or you shame your selves by blaming them when you cannot shew the error Expose not your selves to laughter by avoiding just distinction to escape confusion that is avoiding knowledge to escape Ignorance or Light to escape darkness 2. It is ambiguity and confusion that breedeth and feedeth almost all our pernitious Controversies And even those that bring in error by vain distinction must be confuted by better distinguishers and not by ignorant Confounders I will believe the Holy Ghost 2 Tim. 2. 14 15 16. that Logomachie is the plague by which the hearers are subverted and ungodliness increased and that Orthotomie or right dividing the Word of Truth is the Cure And Heb. 5. 15. Discerning both good and evil is the work of long and well exercised senses Object VII Is this your reducing our faith to the primitive simplicity and to the Creed What a toilsome task do you make Religion by overdoing Is any man able to remember all these numberless Directions Answ. 1. I pray mistake not all these for Articles of Faith I am more zealous than ever I was for the reduction of the Christian faith to the primitive simplicity and more confident that the Church will never have Peace and Concord till it be so done as to the test of mens Faith and Communion But he that will have no Books but his Creed and Bible may follow that Sectary who when he had burnt all his other Books as bumane inventions at last burnt the Bible when he grew Learned enough to understand that the translation of that was Humane too 2 If men think not all the Tools in their Shops and all the Furniture of their Houses or the number of their Sheep or Cattle or Lands nor the number of Truths received by a Learning intellect c. to be a trouble and toil why should they think so of the number of Helps to facilitate the practice of their duty If all the Books in your Libraries make your Studies or Religion toilsome why do you keep them and do not come to the Vulgar Religion that would hear no more but Think well speak well and do well or Love God and your neighbour and do as you would be done by He that doth this truly shall be saved But there goeth more to the building of a house than to say Lay the foundation and raise the superstructure Universals exist not but in individuals and the whole consisteth of all the parts 3. It is not expected that any man remember all these Directions Therefore I wrote them because men cannot remember them that they may upon every necessary occasion go to that which they have present use for and cannot otherwise remember In summ to my quarrelsome Brethren I have two requests 1. That instead of their unconscionable and yet unreformed custome of backbiting they would tell me to my face of my offences by convincing evidence and not tempt the hearers to think them envious and 2. That what I do amiss they would do better and not be such as will neither laboriously serve the Church themselves nor suffer others and that they will not be guilty of Idleness themselves nor tempt me to be a slothful servant who have so little time to spend For I dare not stand before God under that guilt And that they will not joyn with the enemies and resisters of the publication of the Word of God And to the Readers my request is 1. That what ever for Quantity or Quality in this Book is an impediment to their regular universal obedience and to a truly holy life they would neglect and cast away 2. But that which is truly Instructing and Helpful they would diligently Digest and Practice And I encourage them by my testimony that by long experience I am assured that this PRACTICAL RELIGION will afford both to Church State and Conscience more certain and more solid Peace than contending Disputers with all their pretences of Orthodoxness and Zeal against Errors for the Truth will ever bring or did ever attain to I crave your pardon for this long Apology It is an Age where the Objections are not feigned and where our greatest and most costly services of God are charged on us as our greatest sins and where at once I am accused of Conscience for doing no more and of men for doing so much Being really A most unworthy Servant of so good a Master RICHARD BAXTER THE CONTENTS OF THE First TOME Christian Ethicks The Introduction page 1 2. CHAP. I. DIrections to Unconverted graceless sinners for the attainment of saving Grace § 1. What is presupposed in the Reader of these Directions p. 3 Containing Reasons against Atheism and Ungodliness § 2 Twenty Directions p. 6 § 3. Thirty Temptations by which Satan hindereth mens conversion p. 26 Ten Temptations by which he would perswade men that their heinous mortal sins which prove them unconverted are but the pardoned infirmities of the penitent p. 33 CHAP. II. Directions to weak Christians for their establishment and growth p. 36 Direct 1. Against receiving Religion meerly for the Novelty or Reputation of it ibid. Direct 2. Let Judgement Zeal and Practice go equally together p. 38 Direct 3. Keep a short Method of Divinity or a Catechism still in your memory p. 39 Direct 4. Certain Cautions about Controversies in Religion Heb. 6. 1. opened p. 40 Direct 5. Think not too highly of your first degrees of Grace or Gifts Time and diligence are necessary to growth How the Spirit doth illuminate The danger of this sin p 41 Direct 6. Let neither difficulties nor oppositions in the beginning discourage you Reasons p. 43 Direct 7. Value and use a Powerful faithful Mininistry Reasons Objections answered p. 45 Direct 8. For Charity Unity and Catholicism against Schism Pretences for Schism confuted p. 47 Direct 9. Let not sufferings make you sin by passion or dishonouring authority p. 49 Direct 10. Take
minded man being denominated from what is predominant in him And yet because he knoweth that he must dye and for ought he knows he may then find against his will that there is another life which he must enter upon leâ—t the Gospel should prove true he must have some Religion And therefore he will take up as much as will stand with his temporal welfare hoping that he may have both thaâ— and Heaven hereafter and he will be as Religious as the predominant interest of the flesh will give him leave He is resolved rather to venture his soul than to be here undone and that 's his first principle But he is resolved to be as godly as will stand with a worldly fleshly life that 's his second principle And he will hope for Heaven as the end of such a way as this that 's his third Therefore he will place most of his Religion in those things which are most consistent with worldliness and carnality and will not cost his flesh too dear as in being as this or that opinion Church or party whether Papist Prot 〈…〉 t or some smaller party in adhering to that party and being zealous for them in acquiring and usiâ—g such parts and gifts as may make him highly esteemed by others and in doing such good works as cost him not too dear and in forbearing such sins as would procure his disgrace and shame and cost his flesh dearer to commit them than forbear them and such other as his flesh can spare This is his fourth principle And he is resolved when tryal calleth him to part with God and his conscience or with the world that he will rather let go God and Conscience and venture upon the pains hereafter which he thinks to be uncertain than to run upon a certain calamity or undoing here At least he hath no Resolution to the contrary which will carry him out in a day of tryal This is his fifth principle And his sixth principle is That yet he will not torment himself or blot his name with confessing himself a temporizing worldling resolved to turn any way to save himself And therefore he will be sure to believe nothing to be Truth and duty that is dangerous but will furnish himself with Arguments to prove that it is not the will of God and that sin is no sin Yea perhaps conscience and duty shall be pleaded for his sin It shall be out of tenderness and piety and charity to others that he will sin and will charge them to be the sinners that comply not and do not wickedly as well as he He will be one that shall first make a Controversie of every sin which his flesh calls necessary and of every Duty which his flesh counts intollerably dear And then when it is a Controversie and many reputed Wise and some reputed Good are on his side he thinks he is on equal terms with the most honest and sincere He hath got a burrow for his Conscience and his Credit He will not believe himself to be an Hypocrite and no one else must think him one lest they be uncharitable For then the censure must fall on the whole party and then it is sufficient to defend his reputation of piety to say Though we differ in opinion we must not differ in affection and must not condemn each other for such differences A very great Truth where rightly applyed But what is it O Hypocrite that makes thee differ in cases where thy flesh is interessed rather than in any other And why wast thou never of that mind till now that thy worldly interest requireth it And how cometh it to pass that thou artâ— alwayes on the self-saving opinion And whence is it that thou consultest with those only that are of the opinion which thou desirest should be true and either not at all or partially and slightly with those that are against it Wast thou ever conscious to thy self that thou hast accounted what it might cost thee to be saved and reckoned on the worst and resolved in the strength of grace to go through all Didst thou ever meddle with much of the self-denying part of Religion or any duties that would cost thee dear May not thy Conscience tell thee that thou never didst believe that thou shouldst suffer much for thy Religion that is thou hadst a secret purpose to avoid it § 3. O Sirs take warning from the mouth of Christ who hath so oft and plainly warned you of this sin and danger and told you how necessary self-denyal and a suffering disposition is to all that are his Disciples and that the worldly fleshly principle predominant in the Hypocrite is manifest by his self-saving course He must take up his Cross and follow him in a Conformity to his sufferings that will indeed be his Disciple We must suffer with him if we will reign with him Rom. 8. 17 18. Mat. 13. 20 21 22. He that received the seed in stony places the same is he that heareth the word and anon with joy receiveth it yet hath he not root in himself but dureth for a while for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word by and by he is offended He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word and the care of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word and he becometh unfruitful If thou have not taken Heaven for thy part and art not resolved to let go all that would keep thee from it I must say to thy Conscience as Christ to one of thy Predecessors Luke 18. 22. Yet lâ—ckest thou one thing and such a One as thou wilt find of flat necessity to thy salvation And it 's likely some trying time even in this life will detect thine Hypocrisie and make thee Go away sorrowful for thy riches sake as he ver 23. If godliness with contentment seem not sufficient gain to thee thou wilt make thy Gain go instead of Godliness that is thy Gain shall be next thy heart and have the precedency which Godliness should have and thy gain shall choose thee thy Religion and over-rule thy Conscience and sway thy life O Sirs take warning by the Apostates and temporizing hypocrites that have lookt behind them and with Demas for the world forsaken their duty and are set up by Justice as Pillars of Salt for your warning and remembrance And as ever you would make sure work in turning to God and escape the too late repentance of the hypocrite see that you go to the root and resign the world to the will of God and reckon what it may cost you to be followers of Christ and look not after any portion but the favour of God and life eternal and see that there be no secret reserve in your hearts for your worldly interest or prosperity and think not of halfing it between God and the world nor making your Religion complyant with the desires and interest of the flesh Take God
company or outward advantages to his Religion nor avoideth sin for want of a temptation but is Religious though against the stream and innocent when cast unwillingly upon temptations and is Godly where Godliness is accounted singularity hypocrisie faction humour disobedience or heresie and will rather let go the reputation of his honesty than his honesty it self Direct 2. TAke heed of being Religious only in Opinion without Zeal and holy practice or only in Direct 2. Zealous affection without a sound well grounded judgement But see that Iudgement Zeal and practice â—e conjunct § 1. Of the first part of this advice against a bare Opinionative Religion I have spoken already in my Directions for a Sound Conversion To change your Opinions is an easier matter than to change the Heart and Life A holding of the truth will save no man without a Love and practice of the truth This is the meaning of Iames 2. where he speaketh so much of the unprofitableness of a dead uneffectual belief that worketh not by love and commandeth not the soul to practice and obedience To believe that there is a God while you neglect him and disobey him is unlike to please him To believe that there is a Heaven while you neglect it and prefer the world before it will never bring you thither To believe your duty and not to perform it and to believe that sin is evil and yet to live in it is to sin with aggravation and have no excuse and not the way to be accepted or justified with God To be of the same Belief with holy men without the same hearts and conversations will never bring you to the same felicity He that knoweth his Masters will and doth it not shall be so far from being accepted for it that he shall be beaten with many stripes To believe that Holiness and Obedience is the best way will never save the disobedient and unholy § 2. And yet if Iudgement be not your Guide the most zealous affections will but precipitate you Scientiâ— quae est 〈…〉 ota à just 〈…〉 caâ—â—iditaâ— poâ—â—us quam sapientia 〈◊〉 est ◠〈◊〉 Of the necessity of Pâ—udence in Religious men â—ead 〈…〉 The unprudenciâ—s of welâ—-meaning men have done as much hurt to the Church sometimeâ— as the persecution of enemies e. g. When Coâ—stantine the Son of Constans was Emperour some busie men would prove from the Orthodoâ— Doctrine of the Trinity That his two Brethren Tibtrius and Heraclius should reign with him saying Si iâ— Trinitate creâ—iâ—â—is â—res etiam 〈…〉 which cost the chief of them a hanging Abbas Urspergens Edit Melancth p. 162. and make you run though quite out of the way like the Horses when they have cast the Coachman or the Riders To ride Post when you are quite out of the way is but laboriously to lose your time and to prepare for further labour The Jews that persecuted Christ and his Apostles had the testimony of Paul himself that they had a zeal of God but not according to knowledge And Paul saith of the deceivers and troublers of the Galathians whom he wisheth even cut off that they did zealously affect them but not well Rom. 10. 2. Gal. 4. 17. And he saith of himself while he persecuted Christians to prison and to death I was zealous towards God as ye are all this day Acts 22. 3 4. Was not the Papists Saint Dominick that stirred up the persecution against the Christians in France and Savoy to the murdering of many thousands of them a very zealous man And are not the Butchers of the inquisition zealous men And were not the Authors of the third Canon of the General Council at the Laterane under Pope Innocent the third very zealous men that decreed that the Pope should depose Temporal Lords and give away their Dominions and absolve their Subjects if they would not exterminate the godly called Hereticks Were not the Papists Powder-Plotters zealous men Hath not zeal caused many of later times to rise up against their lawful Governours and many to persecute the Church of God and depriue the people of their faithful Pastors without compassion on the peoples souls Doth not Christ say of such Zealots The time cometh when whosoever killeth you will think he doth God service John 16. 2. or offereth a service acceptable to God Therefore Paul saith It is good to be zealously affected alwayes in a good matter Gal. 4. 18. Shewing you that zeal indeed is good if sound judgement be its guide Your first question must be Whether you are in the right way and your second Whether you go apace It is sad to observe what odious actions are committed in all Ages of the world by the instigation of mis-guided zeal And what a shame an imprudent Zealot is to his profession while making himself ridiculous in the eyes of the adversaries he brings his prosession it self into contempt and maketh the ungodly think that the Religious are but a company of transported brain-sick Zealots And thus they are hardened to their perdition How many things doth unadvised affection provoke well-meaning people to that afterwards will be their shame and sorrow § 3. Labour therefore for knowledge and soundness of understanding that you may know truth from falshood good from evil and may walk confidently while you walk safely and that you become not a shame to your profession by a furious prosecution of that which you must afterwards confess to be an error by drawing others to that which you would after wish that you had never known your selves And yet see that all your knowledge have its efficacy upon your heart and life And take every truth as an instrument of God to reveal himself to you or to draw your heart to him and conform you to his holy will Direct 3. LAbour to understand the true Method of Divinity and see Truths in their several degrees Leg. Acost l. 4. c. 21. 22 de fructu catechizandi Et Li. 5. and order that you take not the last for the first nor the lesser for the greater Therefore see that you be well grounded in the Catechism and refuse not to learn some Catechism that is sound and full and keep it in memory while you live § 1. Method or right order exceedingly helpeth understanding memory and practice Truths Opas est imprimis duplici Catechismo Uno compendaâ—io brevi quem memoâ—iter addiscant ubi summa sit eorum omnium quae ad fidem mores Christiano sunt necessaria altero ubeâ—iore ubi eadem amplius dilucidiusque dicantur copiosius confirmentur Ut ille prioâ— discipulis potius hic posterior ipsâ— praeceptoribus usu sit Acosta l. 5. c. 14. p 490. have a dependance on each other The lesser branches spring out of the greater and those out of the stock and root Some duties are but means to other duties or subservient to them and to be measured accordingly And if it be not
Essential Truths by errors of their own nor the doctrine of Godliness by wicked malicious applications 4. Such as drive not on any ambitious tyrannical designs of their own but deny themselves and aim at your salvation 5. Such as are not too hot in proselyting you to any singular opinion of their own it being the prediction of Paul to the Ephesians Acts 20. 30. Of your own selves shall men arise speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them 6. Such as are judicious with holy zeal and zealous with judgement 7. Such as are of experience in the things of God and not young beginners or Novices in Religion 8. Such as bear reverence to the judgements of the generality of wise and godly men and are tender of the Unity of the Church and not such as would draw you into a Sect or party to the contempt of other Christians no not to a party that hath the favour of Rulers and the people to promote them 9. Such as are gentle peaceable and charitable and not such as burn with hellish malice against their Brethren nor with an ungodly or cruel consuming zeal 10. Such as not live not sensually and wickedly contrary to the doctrine which they preach but shew by their lives that they believe what they say and feel the power of the truths which they preach § 4. And your familiar companions have great advantage to help or hinder your salvation as well Imperat Reâ— ut nostrae religionis illorum mensa nullum communem haberent neque cum Catholicis omino vescerentur Quae res non ipâ—â—s aliquod praestitit beneficium sed nobis maximum conâ—ulit lucrum Nam si sermo â—oâ—â—m sicut cancer consuevit serpere quanto magis communis mensa ciborum potuit inquinare cum dicat Apostolus cum nefariis nec cibum habere communem Victor Utic p. 418. Magnum virtutis praesidium societas bonoâ—um socius exemplo excitat sermone recreat consilio instâ—uiâ— orationibus adjuvat autoritate continet quae omnia so itudini desunt Ios. Acosta l. 4. c. 13. Dicunt Stoici Amicitiam solos inter bonâ—s quos sibi invicem studiorum similitudo conciliet posse consistere Porro amicitiam ipsam societatem quandam esse dicunt omnium quae sunt ad vitam necessaria cum amicis ut nobismet ipsis utamur atque ob id amicum eligendum amicorumque multitudinem â—â—â—â—er expetenda ponunt inter malos non posse constare amicitiam Laert. in Zenone as your Teachers The matter is not so great whom you meet by the way or travell with or trade and buy and sell with as whom you make your intimate or familiar friends For such have both the advantage of their interest in your affections and also the advantage of their nearness and familiarity and if they have but also the advantage of higher abilities than you they may be powerful instruments of your good or hurt If you have a familiar friend that will defend you from error and help you against temptations and lovingly reprove your sin and feelingly speak of God and the life to come inditing his discourse from the inward power of faith and love and holy experience the benefit of such a friend may be more to you than of the learnedst or greatest in the world How sweetly will their speeches relish of the Spirit from which they come How deeply may they pierce a careless heart How powerfully may they kindle in you a love and zeal to God and his Commandments How seasonably may they discover a temptation prevent your fall reprove an error and recover your souls How faithfully will they watch over you How profitably will they provoke and put you on and pray with you fervently when you are cold and mind you of the Truth and duty and mercy which you forget It is a very great mercy to have a judicious solid faithful companion in the way to Heaven § 5. But if your ears are daily filled with froth and folly with ribaldry or idle stories with Oaths and Curses with furious words or scorns and jears against the godly or with the Sophistry of deceivers is it likely this should leave a pleasant or wholsome relish on your minds Is it likely that the effect should not be seen in your lean or leprous hearts and lives as well as the effects of an infected or unwholsome air or diet will be seen upon your diseased bodies He is ungodly that liketh such company best And he is proud and presumptuous that will unnecessarily cast himself upon it in confidence that he shall receive no hurt And he is careless of himself that will not cautelously avoid it And few that long converse with such come off without some notable loss except when we live with such as Lot did in Sodom grieving for their sin and misery or as Christ conversed with publicans and sinners with a holy zeal and diligence to convert and save them or as those that have not liberty who bear that which they have not power to avoid § 6. Among the rest your danger is not least from that are eager to proselite you to some party or unsound opinion that they think they are in the right and that they do it in love and that they think it necessary to your salvation and that Truth or Godliness are the things which they profess all this makes the danger much the greater to you if it be not Truth and Godliness indeed which they propose and plead for And none are in more danger than the ungrounded and unexperienced that yet are so wise in their own esteem as to be confident that they know Truth from Error when they hear it and are not afraid of any deceit nor much suspicious of their own understandings But of this before § 7. The like danger there is of the familiar company of lukewarm ones or the prophane At Non tamen at corporum sic animorum moâ—bi transseunt ad nolentes Imo vero nobilis animus viâ—iorum odro ad amorem vâ—rtutis accâ—nditur Petraâ—â—h Dialog de aâ—iâ— moriâ— first you may be troubled at their sinful or unsavoury discourse and make some resistance against the infection But before you are aware it may so cool and damp your graces as will make your decay discernable to others First You will hear them with less offence and then you will grow indifferent what company you are in and then you will laugh at their sin and folly and then you will begin to speak as they and then you will grow cold and seldomer in prayer and other holy duties and if God prevent it not at last your judgements will grow blind and you will think all this allowable § 8. But of all bad company the nearest is the worst If you choose such into your families or into your nearest conjugal relations you cast water upon the fire you imprison your selves in such â—etters as will gall and grieve
Father of lyes and error than for the School of Christ. Except Conversion make men as little children that come not to caâ—p and cavil but to learn they are not meet for the Kingdom of Christ. Matth. 18. 3. John 3. 3 5. Know how blind and ignorant you are and how dull of learning and humbly beg of the Heavenly Teacher that he will accept you and illuminate you and give up your understandings absolutely to be informed by him and your Hearts to be the Tables in which his Spirit shall write his Law Believing his doctrine upon the bare account of his infallible Veracity and resolving to obey it and this is to be the Disciples of Christ indeed and such as shall be taught of God § 11. Direct 10. Come to the School of Christ with honest willing hearts that Love the truth and Direct 10. â—ain would know it that they may obey it and not with false and byassed hearts which secretly hinder the understanding from entertaining the truth because they love it not as being contrary to their carnal inclinations and interest The word that was received into Honest hearts was it that was as the seed that brought forth plentifully Matth. 13. 23. When the Heart saith unfeignedly Speak Lord for thy servant heareth Teach me to know and do thy will God will not leave such a Learner in the dark Most of the damnable ignorance and error of the world is from a wicked heart that perceiveth that the Truth of God is against their fleshly interest and lusts and therefore is unwilling to obey it and unwilling to believe it lest it torment them because they disobey it A will that 's secretly poysoned with the Love of the world or of any sinful lusts and pleasures is the most potent impediment to the believing of the truth § 12. Direct 11. Learn with quietness and peace in the School of Christ and make not divisions and Direct 11. meddle not with others lessons and matters but with your own Silence and quietness and minding your own business is the way to profit The turbulent wranglers that are quarrelling with others and are religions contentiously in envy and strife are liker to be corrected or ejected than to be edified Read Iames 3. § 13. Direct 12. Remember that the School of Christ hath a Rod and therefore learn with fear and Direct 12. reverence Heb. 12. 28 29. Phil. 2. 12. Christ will sharply rebuke his own if they grow negligent and oftend And if he should cast thee out and forsake thee thou art undone for ever See therefore that ye refuse not him that speaketh for if they sâ—aped not that refused him that spake on earth much more shall not we if we refuse him that is from Heaven Heb. 12. 25. For how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation which at first began to be spoken by the Lord and was confirmed to us by them that â—eard him God also bearing them witness both with signs and wonders and divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost according to his own will Heb. 2. 3 4. Serve the Lord therefore with fear and rejoyce with trembling Kiss the Son left he be angry and you perish in the kindling of his wrath Psal. 2. 11 12. DIRECT VIII Gr. Dir. 6. To obev Christ as our Physicion in his healing work and his Spirit in its cleansing mortifying work Remember that you are Related to Christ as the Physicion of your souls and to the Holy Ghost as your Sanctifier Make it therefore your serious study to be cured by Christ and cleansed by his Spirit of all the sinful diseases and defilements of your hearts and lives § 1. THough I did before speak of our Believing in the Holy Ghost and using his help for our access to God and converse with him yet I deferred to speak fully of the Cleansing and Mortifying part of his work of Sanctification till now and shall treat of it here as it is the same with the Curing work of Christ related to us as the Physicion of our souls it being part of our Subjection and Obedience to him to be Ruled by him in order to our cure And what I shall here write against sin in general will be of a twofold use The one is to help us against the inward corruptions of our hearts and for the outward obedience of our lives and so to further the work of Sanctification and prevent our sinning The other is to help us to Repentance and Humiliation habitual and actual for the sins which are in us and which we have already at any time committed § 2. The General Directions for this curing and cleansing of the soul from sin are contained for the most part in what is said already and many of the particular Directions also may be fetcht from the sixth Direction before going I shall now add but two General Directions and many more Particular ones Direct 1. I. The two General Directions are these 1. Know what corruptions the soul of man is naturally Direct 1. defiled with And this containeth the knowledge of those faculties that are the seat of thâ—se corruptions and the knowledge of the corruptions that have tainted and perverted the several faculties Direct 2. 2. Know what sin is in its nature or intrinsick evil as well as in the effects Direct 2. How the several faculties of the soul are corrupted and diseased § 3. 1. The Parts or faculties to be cleansed and cured are both the Superiour and Inferiour 1. The Understanding though not the first in the sin must be first in the cure For all that is done upon the Lower faculties must be by the Governing power of the will And all that is done upon the will ac cording to the order of humane nature must be done by the Understanding But the Understanding hath its own diseases which must be known and cured It s malady in general is Ignorance which is not only a privation of actual knowledge but an undisposedness also of the understanding to know the truth A man may be deprived of some actual knowledge that hath no disease in his mind that causeeth In what cases a sound understanding may be ignorant it as in case that either the object be absent and out of reach or that there be no sufficient Revelation of it or that the mind be taken up wholly upon some other thing or in case a man shut out the thoughts of such an object or refuse the evidence which is the act of the will even as a man that is not blind may yet not see a particular object 1. In case it be out of his natural reach 2. Or if it be night and he want extrinsick light 3. Or in case he be wholly taken up with the observation of other things 4. Or in case he wilfully either shut or turn away his eyes It is a very hard question to resolve how far and wherein the
believeth a Testimony that is not to be believed So that you see by what is said that the diseases of the Mind to be cured are 1. Meer ignorance 2. Error thinking truth to be falshood and falshood truth 3. Unbelief 4. Disbelief and 5. Misbelief But as the Goodness is of chief regard in the object so the discerning of the Truth about Good and â—â—m 8. 5 6 7. Evil is the chiefest office of the understanding And therefore its Disesteem of God and Glory and Grace and its Misesteem of the fleshly pleasure and worldly prosperity wealth and honour is the principal malady of the mind § 5. 2. The diseases of the Will are in its Inclination and its Acts 1. An inordinate Inclination to the pleasing of the fleshly appetite and fantasie and to all Carnal baits and Temporal things that tend to please it and inordinate acts of desire accordingly 2. An irrational backwardness to God and grace and spiritual good and a Refusal or Nolition in act accordingly These are in the will 1. Because it is become much subject to the sensitive appetite and hath debased it self and contracted by its sinful acts a sensual inclination the flesh having the dominion in a corrupted soul. 2. Because the Intellect being also corrupted oft times mis-leadeth it by over-valuing transient things 3. Because the Will is become destitute in its corrupted state of the power of Divine Love or an Inclination to God and holy things which should countermand the seduction of carnal objects 4. And the understanding is much destitute of the Light that should lead them higher 5. Because the rage of the corrupted appetite is still seducing it Mark therefore for the right understanding of this our greatest malady § 6. 1. That the will never desireth evil as evil but as a carnal or a seeming good 2. Nor doth it hate good as good but as a seeming evil because God and grace do seem to be his enemies and to hurt him by hindering him of the good of carnal pleasure which he now preferreth 3. Nay at the same time that he loveth evil as it pleaseth the flesh he hath naturally as a man some averseness to it so far as he apprehendeth it to be Evil And when he hateth God and holiness as evil for hindering him of his carnal pleasure he naturally loveth them so far as he apprehendeth them to be good So that there is some love to God and good and some hatred to evil in the ungodly For while Man is Man he will have Naturally an Inclination to good as good and against evil as evil 4. But the apprehension of sensitive good is the strongest in him and the apprehension of spiritual good is weakest and therefore the will receiving a greater impress from the Carnal Appetite and Mind than from the weak apprehensions of spiritual good is more inclined to that which indeed is worst and so things carnal have got the dominion or chief commanding interest in the soul. 5. Note also that sin receiveth its formality or moral evil first in the will and not in the Intellect or sensitive appetite For it is not sin till it be positively or privatively immediately or mediately voluntary But the first motions to sin are not in the will but in the sensitive appetite Though there as first it be not formally sin 6. Note that neither Intellect Object Appetite or Sense necessitate naturally the will to sin but it remaineth the first in the sin and guilt § 7. It is a matter of great difficulty to understand how sin first entred into the innocent soul And it is of great importance because an error here is of dangerous consequence Two sorts seem to me to make God so much the necessitating cause of Adams first sin and so of all sin as that it was as naturally impossible for Adam to have forborn it according to their doctrine as to have conquered God 1. Those that assert the Dominican immediate Physical pre-determining pre-motion which no created power can resist 2. And those that say the Will acts as Necessitated by the Intellect in all its Acts and so is necessitated in all its Omissions and that the Intellect is necessitated by Objects as no doubt it is unless as its acts are sub imperio voluntatis and all those objects are caused and disposed of by God But it is certain that God is not the cause of sin and therefore this certainty over-ruleth the case against these Tenets § 8. At present it seemeth to me that sin entred in this method 1. Sense perceiveth the forbidden thing 2. The appetite desireth it 3. The imagination thinketh on its desirableness yet further 4. The intellect conceiveth of it truly as good by a simple apprehension 5. The Will accordingly willeth it by a simple complacency or volition Thus far there was no sin But 6. The Will here adhered to it too much and took in it an excess of Complacency when it had power to do otherwise And here sin begun 7. And so when the Cogitations should have been called off 8. And the Intellect should have minded God and his Command and proceed from a simple apprehension to the comparing Act and said The favour of God is better and his will should rule it omitted all these acts because the will omitted to command them yea and hindered them 9. And so the intellect was next guilty of a non-renuo I will not forbid or hinder it and the will accordingly 10. And next of a positive deception and the will of consent unto the sin and so it being finished brought forth death If you say The wills first sinful adhaesion in the sixth instance could not be unless the Intellect first directed it so to do I deny that because the will is the first principle in mens actions quoad exercitium though the Intellect be the first as to specification And therefore the will could suspend its exercise and its excitation of the mind In all this I go upon common principles But I leave it to further enquiry 1. How far the sensitive appetite may move the Locomotive faculty without the Wills command while the will doth not forbid And whether Reason be not given man as the Rider to the Horse not to enable him to move but to Rule his motion so that as the Horse can go if the Rider hinder not so the sensitive appetite can cause the actions of eating drinking thinking speaking sensually if Reason do but drop asleep or not hinder 2. And so whether in the first sin and ordinarily the sensitive appetite fantasie and passion be not the active mover and the Rational powers first guilty only by omitting their restraining Government which they were able to have exercised 3. And so whether sin be not ordinarily a brutish motion or a voluntary unmanning of our selves the Rational powers in the beginning being guilty only of omission or privation of restraint but afterwards brought over to subserve the sensitive
destroying the Kingdom of the Devil and next the purifying his peculiar people and calling home all that are ordained to eternal life § 60. But more particularly he looketh principally at the heart to plant there 1. Holy Knowledge 2. Faith 3. Godlyness or holy devotedness to God and Love to him above all 4. Thankfulness 5. Obedience 6. Humility 7. Heavenly-mindedness 8. Love to others 9. Self-denial and Mortification and contentment 10. Patience And in all these 1. sincerity 2. tenderness of heart 3. â—eal and holy strength and resolution And withal to make us actually serviceable and diligent in our masters work for our own and others salvation § 61. II. Christs order in working is direct and not backward as the Devils is He first revealeth saving truth to the understanding and affecteth the will â—â— shewing the Goodness of the things revealed And these employ the Thoughts and Passions and Senses and the whole body reducing the inferiour faculties to obedience and casting out by degrees those images which had deceived and prepossessed them § 62. The matter which Christ presenteth to the Soul is 1. Certain Truth from the Father of Lights set up against the Prince and Kingdom of darkness ignorance error and deceit 2. Spiritual and everlasting Good even God himself to be seen and Loved and Enjoyed for ever against the Tempters temporal corporal and seeming good Christs Kingdom and work are advanced by Light He is for the promoting of all useful knowledge and therefore for clear and convincing Preaching for reading the Scriptures in a known tongue and meditating in them day and night and for exhorting one another daily which Satan is against § 63. III. The Means by which he worketh against Satan are such as these 1. Sometime he maketh use of the very temper of the body as a preparative and being Lord of all he giveth such a temperature as will be most serviceable to the soul As a sober deliberate meek quiet and patient disposition But sometime he honoureth his Grace by the conquest of such sins as even bodily disposition doth entertain and cherish § 64. 2. Sometimes by his providence he withdraweth the matter of temptations that they shall not be too strong for feeble souls But sometimes his Grace doth make advantage of them all and leave them for the magnifying of its frequent victories § 65. 3. Sometimes he giveth his cause the major vote among the people so that it shall be a matter of dishonourable singularity not to be a professed Christian and somtime but exceeding rarely it is so with the life of Godliness and practice of Christianity also But ordinarily in the most places of the world Custom and the Multitude are against him and his grace is honoured by prevailing against these bands of Satan § 66. 4. He maketh his Ministers his principal Instruments qualifying disposing and calling them to his work and helping them in it and prospering it in their hands § 67. 5. He maketh it the duty of every Christian to do his part to carry on the work and furnisheth them with Love and Compassion and Knowledge and Zeal in their several measures § 68. 6. He giveth a very strict charge to Parents to devote their Children with themselves to God encouraging them with the promise of his accepting and blessing them and commandeth them to teach them the word of God with greatest diligence and to bring them up in the nurture and fear of God § 69. 7. He giveth Princes and Magistrates their power to promote his Kingdom and protect his servants and encourage the good and suppress iniquity and further the obedience of his Laws Though in most of the world they turn his enemies and he carrieth on his work without them and against their cruel persecuting opposition § 70. 8. His Light detecteth the nakedness of the Devils cause and among the Sons of Light it is odious and a common shame And as wisdom is justified of her children so the judgement of holy men condemning sin doth much to keep it under in the world § 71. 9. His providence usually casteth the sinner that he will do good to into the bosome and communion of his holy Church and the familiar company and acquaintance of the Godly who may help him by instruction affection and example § 72. 10. His providence fitteth all conditions to their good but especially helpeth them by seasonable quickning afflictions These are the means which ordinarily he useth But the powerful inward operations of his Spirit give efficacy to them all Tit. 2. Temptations to particular sins with Directions for preservation and Remedy IN Chapter 1. Part 2. I have opened the Temptations which hinder sinners from Conversion to God I shall now proceed to those which draw men to particular sins Here Satans Art is exercised 1. In fitting his baits to his particular use 2. In applying them thereto § 1. Tempt 1. The Devil fitteth his Temptations to the sinners age The same bait is not suitable Tempt 1. to all Children he tempteth to excess of playfullness lying disobedience unwillingness to learn the things that belong to their salvation and a senselesness of the great concernments of their souls He tempteth youth to wantonness rudeness gulosity unruliness and foolish inconsiderateness In the beginning of manhood he tempteth to lust voluptuousness and luxury or if these take not to designs of worldliness and ambition The aged he tempteth to covetousness and unmoveableness in their error and unteachableness and obstinacy in their ignorance and sin Thus every age hath its peculiar snare § 2. Direct 1. The Remedy against this is 1. To be distinctly acquainted with the Temptations of Direct 1. your own age and watch against them with a special heedfullness and fear 2. To know the special duties and advantages of your own age and turn your thoughts wholly unto those Scripture hath various precepts for the various ages study your own part The young have more time to learn their duty and less care and business to divert them Let them therefore be taken up in obedient learning The middle age hath most vigor of body and mind and therefore should do their masters work with the greatest vigor activity and zeal The Aged should have most judgement and experience and acquaintedness with Death and Heaven and therefore should teach the younger both by word and holy life § 3. Tempt 2. The Tempter also fitteth his Temptations to mens several bodily tempers as I Tempt â— shewed § 22. The hot and strong he tempteth to lust The sad and fearful to discouragement and continual self-vexations and to the Fear of Men and Devils Those that have strong appetites to Gluttony and Drunkenness Children and Women and weak-headed people to Pride of Apparel and trifling Complement And masculine wicked-unbelievers to Pride of Honour Parts and Grandeur and to an ambitious seeking of Rule and Greatness The meek and gentle he tempteth to a yieldingness unto the perswasions
a name above every name that at the name of Iesus every knee should bow of things in Heaven and things in Earth and things under the Earth and that every tongue should confess that Iesus is Christ to the glory of God the Father Phil. 2. 9 10 11. Pray therefore that the God of our Lord Iesus Christ the Father of glory may give you the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation in the acknowledgement of him the eyes of your understanding being enlightned that ye may know what is the hope of his calling and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the Saints and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe according to the working of his mighty power which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead and set him at his right hand in the coelestials fâ—r above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named not only in this world but in that which is to come and hath put all things under his feet and gave him to be Head over all things to his Church Eph. 1. 17 c. The Father hath glorified his name in his Son Iohn 12. 28. 13. 31 32. 14. 13. 17. 1. § 6. Direct 4. Behold God as the End of the whole Creation and intend him as the End of all the Direct 4. actions of thy life You honour him not as God if you practically esteem him not as your ultimate end even the Pleasing of his will and the honouring him in the world If any thing else be made your chiefest end you honour it before him and make a God of it § 7. Direct 5. Answer all his blessed attributes with suitable affections as I have directed in my Direct 5. Treatise of the Knowledge of God and here briefly Dir. 4. and his Relations to us with the duty which they command subjection Love c. as I have opened in the foregoing Directions We glorifie him in our hearts when the Image of his Attributes is there received § 8. Direct 6. Behold him by faith as allways present with you And then every Attribute will Direct 6. the more affect you and you will not admit dishonourable thoughts of him Pray to him as if you saw him and you will speak to him with reverence Speak of him as if you saw him and you dare not take his name in vain nor talk of God with a common frame of mind nor in a common manner as of common things By faith Moses forsook Egypt not fearing the wrath of the King for he endured as seeing him that is invisible Heb. 11. 27. God is contemned by them that think they are behind his back § 9. Direct 7. Think of him as in Heaven where he is revealed in Glory to the blessed and magnified Direct 7. by their high everlasting Praise Nothing so much helpeth us to Glorifie God in our minds as by faith to behold him where he is most Glorious The very reading over the description of the Glory of the New Ierusalem Rev. 21. 22. will much affect a believing mind with a sense of the Gloriousness of God Suppose with Stephen we saw Heaven opened and the ancient of daies the Great Jehovah Gloriously illustrating the City of God and Jesus in Glory at his right hand and the innumerable army of Glorifyed Spirits before his throne Praysing and magnifying him with the highest admirations and joyfullest acclamations that creatures are capable of would it not raise us to some of the same admirations The soul that by faith is much above doth most Glorifie God as being neerest to his Glory § 10. Direct 8. Foresee by faith the coming of Christ and the day of the universal Iudgement when Direct 8. Christ shall come in flaming fire with thousands of his holy Angels to be Glorified in his Saints and admired in all them that do believe 2 Thes. 1. 10. § 11. Direct 9. Abhor all Doctrines which blaspheam or dishonour the name of God and would Direct 9. blemish and hide the Glory of his Majesty I give you this rule for your own preservation and not in imitation of uncharitable firebrands and dividers of the Church to exercise your pride and imperious humour in condemning all men to whose opinions you can maliciously affix a blasphemous consequence which either followeth but in your own imagination or is not acknowledged but hated by those on whom you do affix it Let it suffice you to detest false doctrines without detesting the persons that you imagine guilty of them who profess to believe the contrary truth as stedfastly as you your selves § 12. Direct 10. Take heed of sinking into flesh and earth and being diverted by things sensible from Direct 10. the daily contemplation of the Glory of God If your belly become your God and you mind earthly things and are set upon the honours or profits or pleasures of the world when your conversation should be in Heaven you will be glorying in your shame when you should be admiring the Glory of your Maker Phil. 3. 18 19 20. and you will have so much to do on earth that you will find no leisure because you have no hearts to look up seriously to God Directions for Glorifying God with our tongues in his Praises § 13. Direct 1. Conceive of this duty of Praising God according to its superlative excellencies as being Direct 11. the highest service that the tongue of men or Angels can perform To Bless or Praise or Magnifie How great a duty Praising God is God is not to make him Greater or better or happier than he is but to declare and extol his Greatness Goodness and felicity And that your hearts may be inflamed to this excellent work I will here shew you how great and necessary how high and acceptable a work it is § 14. 1. It is the giving to God his chiefest due A speaking of him as he is And when we have Christianus est homo dicens faciâ—â—â—â—â—â—grata diabolo oâ—nans 〈…〉 am Dâ—â— â—â—â—â—oris vitae à salutis suae Bâ—choâ—â—â—â— spoken the highest how far fall we short of the due expression of his glorious perfections O how great Praise doth that Allmightiness deserve which created and conserveth all the world and over-ruleth all the sons of men and is able to do whatsoever he will Great is the Lord and Greatly to be praised and his Greatness is unsearchable One Generation shall praise his works to another and declare his mighty acts I will speak of the glorious honour of thy Majesty and of thy wondrous works And men shall speak of the might of thy terrible acts and I will declare thy Greatness Psalm 145. 3 4 5. What Praise doth that knowledge deserve which extendeth to all things that are or were or ever shall be and that wisdom which ordereth all the world He knoweth every thought of man
Unhumbledness Impurity Unreformedness and all sin in general as sin In the ninth you are directed against †Of Presumption and false hope enough is said in the Saints Rest and here about Temptation Hope and other Heads afterward Security Unwatchfulness and yielding to temptations and in general against all danger to the soul. In the tenth you are directed against Barrenness Unprofitableness and Sloth and Uncharitableness and against mistakes in matter of duty or good works In the eleventh you are directed against all Aversness Disaffection or cold Indifferency of heart to God In the twelfth you are directed against Distrust and sinful Cares and Fears and Sorrows In the thirteenth you are directed against an over sad or heartless serving of God as meerly from fear or forcedly without delight In the fourteenth you are directed against Unthankfulness In the fifteenth you are directed against all unholy or dishonourable thoughts of God and against all injurious speeches of him or barrenness of the tongue and against all scandal or barrenness of life In the Books referred to in the sixteenth and seventeenth you are directed against selfishness self-esteem self-love self-conceit self-will self-seeking and against all worldliness and fleshliness of mind or life But yet leâ—t any necessary helps should be wanting against such heinous sins I shall add some more particular Directions against such of them as were not fully spoken to before PART I. Directions against UNBELIEF § 1. I Know that most poor troubled Christians when they complain of the sin of Unbelief do mean by it their not Believing that they are sincere believers and personally justified and shall be saved â— Whether not to believe that my sins are pardoned â—e indeed Unbelieâ— And I know that some Divines have affirmed that the sense of that Article of the Creed I believe the Remission of sins is I believe my sins are actually forgiven But the truth is to believe that I am elect or justified or that my sins are forgiven or that I am a sincere Believer is not to Believe any word of God at all For no word of God doth say any of these nor any thing equivalent nor any thing out of which it can be gathered For it is a Rational Conclusion and one of the premises which do infer it must be found in my self by reflexion or internal sense and self-knowledge The Scripture only saith He that truly believeth is justified and shall be saved But it is Conscience and not Belief of Scripture which must say I do sincerely believe Therefore the Conclusion that I am justified and shall be saved is a Rational Collection from what I find in Scripture and in my self set together and resulting from both can be no firmer or surer than is the weaker of the premises Now Certainty is objective or subjective in the Thing or in my Apprehension As to Objective Certainty in the thing it self all truths are equally true But all Truths are not equally discernable there being much more cause of doubting concerning some which are less evident than concerning others which are more evident And so the Truth of Gods promise of Justification to believers is more certain that is hath fuller surer Evidence to be discerned by than the Truth of my sincere believing And that I sincerely believe is the more Debile of the premises and therefore the conclusion followeth this in its Debility And so can be no article of faith And as to the subjective Certainty that varyeth according to mens various apprehensions The premises as in their evidence or aptitude to ascertain us are the cause of the Conclusion as evident or knowable And the premises as apprehended are the Cause of the Conclusion as known Now it is a great doubt with some Whether a man can possibly be more certain that he believeth Whether a man can be more certain that he believeth than he is that the thing believed is true than he is that the thing believed is true because the act can extend no further than the object and to be sure I believe is but to be sure that I take the thing believed to be true But I shall grant the contrary that a man may possibly be surer that he believeth than he is that the thing believed is true because my believing is not alwayes a full subjective certainty that the thing is true but a believing that its true And though you are fully certain that all Gods word is true yet you may believe that this is his word with some mixture of unbelief or doubting And so the question is but this Whether you may not certainly without doubting know that you Believe the Word of God to be true though with some doubting And it seems you may But then it is a further question Whether you can be surer of the saving sincerity of your faith than you are that this Word of God is true And that ordinarily men doubt of the first as much as they doubt of the later I think is an experimented truth But yet grant that with some it may be otherwise Because he believeth sincerely that so far believeth the Word of God as to trust his life and soul upon it and forsake all in obedience to it And that I do so I may know with less doubting than I yet have about the Truth of the Word so believed All that will follow is but this That of those men that doubt of their Iustification and Salvation some of their doubts are caused more by their doubting of Gods Word than by the doubting whether they sincerely though doubtingly believe it and the doubts of others whether they are justified and shall be saved is caused much more by their doubting of their own sincere belief than by their doubting of the truth of Scriptures And the far greatest number of Christians seem to themselves to be of this later sort For no doubt but though a man of clear understanding can scarcely believe and yet not know that he believeth yet he may believe sincerely and not know that he believeth sincerely But still the knowledge of our own justification is but the effect or progeny of our Belief of the Word of God and of our Knowledge that we do sincerely believe it which conjunctly are the Parents and Causes of it And it can be no stronger than the weaker of the Parents which in esse cognoscibili is our faith but in esse cognito is sometime the one and sometime the other And the effect is not the cause The effect of faith and knowledge conjunct is not faith it self It is not a Believing the Word of God to believe that you believe or that you are Iustified But yet because that faith is one of the Parents of it some call it by the name of faith though they should call it but an effect of faith as one of the causes And well may our doubtings of our own salvation be said to be from Unbelief because
Unbelief is one of the Causes of them and the sinfullest Cause § 2. And that the Article of Remission of sin is to be Believed with application to our selves is certain The Article of Remission of sin to be believed applyingly But not with the application of Assurance Perswasion or Belief that we are already pardoned but with an applying Acceptance of an offered pardon and Consent to the Covenant which maketh it ours We believe that Christ hath purchased Remission of sin and made a Conditional Grant of it in his Gospel to all viz. if they will Repent and Believe in him or take him for their Saviour or become Penitent Christians And we consent to do so and to accept it on these terms And we believe that all are actually pardoned that thus consent § 3. By all this you may perceive that those troubled Christians which doubt not of the truth of the Word of God but only of their own sincerity and consequently of their Justification and Salvation do ignorantly complain that they have not faith or that they cannot believe For it is no act of unbelief at all for me to doubt whether my own heart be sincere This is my ignorance of my self but it is not any degree of unbelief For Gods Word doth no where say that I am sincere and therefore I may doubt of this without doubting of Gods Word at all And let all troubled Christians know that they have no more unbelief in them than they have doubting or unbelief of the truth of the Word of God Even that despair it self which hath none of this in it hath no unbelief in it iâ— there be any such I thought it needful thus far to tell you what unbelief is before I come to give you Directions against it And though the meer doubting of our own sincerity be no unbelief at all yet real unbelief of the very truth of the Holy Scriptures is so common and dangerous a sin and some degree of it is latent in the best that I think we can no way so much further the work of Grace as by destroying this The weakness of our faith in the truth of Scriptures and the remnant of our unbelief of it is the principal cause of all the languishings of our Love and Obedience and every Grace and to strengthen faith is to strengthen all What I have â—ullier written in my Saints Rest Part 2. and my Treatise against Infidelity I here suppose § 4. Direct 1. Consider well how much of Religion Nature it self teacheth and Reason without Direct 1. supernatural Revelation must needs confess as that there is another life which man was made for and that he is obliged to the fullest Love and Obedience to God and the rest before laid down 〈…〉 in the world are perpetual visible Evidences in my eyes of the truth of the Holy Scriptures 1 That there should be so Universal and implacable a hatred against the godly in the common sort â—f unrenewed men in all Agâ—â— and Nations of the Earâ—h when thâ—se men deserve so well of them and do them no wrong â—s a visible proof of Adams fall and he 〈◊〉 of a Saviour and a Sanctifier 2 That all those who are seriously Christians should be so far renewed and recovered from the common corruption as their heavenly â—inds and lives and their wonderful difference from other men sheweth this is a visible proof that Christianity is of God 3. That God doth â—o â—lainly shew a particular special Providence in the converting and confirming souls by differencing Grace and work on the soul as the sanctified feel doth shew that indeed the work is his 4. That God doth so plainly grant many of his Servants prayers by special Providences doth prove his owning them and his 〈◊〉 5. That God suffereth his Servants in all times and places ordinarily to suffer so much for his Love and Service from the world and flâ—sh dâ—â—h shew that there is a Judgement and Rewards and Punishments hereafter Or else our highest duty would be our greatest losâ— and thâ—n how should his Government of men be just 6. That the Renewed Nature which maketh men better and therefore is of God doth wholly look at the life to come and lead us to â—t and live upon it this sheweth that such a life there is or else this would be delusory and vain and Goodness it self would be a deceit 7. When it is undenyable that de facto esse the world is not Governed without the Hopes and Fears of another life almost all Nations among the Heathens believing iâ— and shewing by their very worshipping their dead Heroes as Gods that they believed that their soulâ— did live and even the wicked generally being restrained by those hopes and fears in themselves And also that de posse it is not pâ—â—â—â—ible the world should be governed agreeably to mans rational nature without the hopes and fears of another life But men would be wâ—â—se than Beasts and all Villanies would be the allowed practice of the world As every man may feel in himself what he were like to be and do if he had no such restraint And there being no Doctrine or Life comparable to Christianity in their tendency to the life to come All these are visible staâ—ding evidences assisted so much by common sense and reason and still apparent to all that they leave Infidelity without excuse and are ever at hand to help our faith and resist temptations to unbelief 8. And if the world had not had a Beginning according to the Scriptures 1. We should have found Monuments of Antiquity above sâ—x thousand years old 2. Arts and Sciences would have come to more perfection and Printing Guns c. not have been of so late invention 3. And so much of America and other parts of the world would not have been yet uninhabited unplanted or undiscovered Of Aâ—heâ—sm I have spoken before in the Introduction and Nature so clearly revealeth a God that I take it as almost needless to say much of it to sober men in the Introduction And then observe how congruously the doctrine of Christ comes in to help where Nature is at a loss and how exactly it suits with Natural Truths and how clearly it explaineth them and fully containeth so much of them as are necessary to salvation and how suitable and proper a means it is to attain their Ends and how great a testimony the Doctrines of Nature and Grace do give unto each other § 5. Direct 2. Consider that mans End being in the life to come and God being the righteous and Direct 2. merciful Governour of man in order to that End it must needs be that God will give him sufficient means to know his will in order to that end And that the clearest fullest means must needs demonstrate most of the Government and Mercy of God § 6. Direct 3. Consider what full and sad experience the world hath of its pravity and great
called A Saint or a â—â—â—â—it certainly are possessed by nobler inhabitants He that seeth every corner of earth and sea and air inhabited and thinks what earth is in comparison of all the great and glorious Orbes above it will hardly once dream that they are all void of inhabitants or that there is not room enough for souls § 27. Direct 24. The ministry of Angels of which particular providences give us a great probability Direct 24. doth give some help to that doctrine which telleth us that we must live with Angels and that we shall ascend to more familiarity with them who condeâ—cend to so great service now for us § 28. Direct 25. The universal wonderful implacable enmity of corrupted man to the holy doctrine Direct 25. and waies and servants of Christ and the open war which in every Kingdom and the secret war which in every heart is kept up between Christ and Satan through the world with the tendency of every temptation their violence constancie in all ages to all persons all making against Christ and Heaven and Holiness do notoriously declare that the Christian doctrine and life do tend to our salvation which the Devil so maliciously and uncessantly opposeth And thus his Temptations give great advantage to the tempted soul against the Tempter For it is not for nothing that the enemy of our souls makes so much opposition And that there is such a Devil that thus opposeth Christ and tempteth us not only sensible Apparitions and Witch-crafts prove but the too sensible temptations which by their Matter and Manner plainly tell us whence they come Especially when all the world is formed as into two hostile Armies the one fighting under Christ and the other under the Devil and so have continued since â—â—in and Abel to this day § 29. Direct 26. The prophecies of Christ himself of the destruction of Jerusalem and the gathering of his Church and the cruel usage of it through the world do give great assistance to our faith when we see them all so punctually fulfilled § 30. Direct 27. Mark whether it be not a respect to things temporal that assaulteth thy Belief and Direct 27. câ—me not with a byassed sensual mind to search into so great a mysterie Worldliness and pride and sensuality are deadly enemies to faith and where they prevail they will shew their enmity and blind the mind If the soul be sunk into mud and filth it cannot see the things of God § 31. Direct 28. Come with humility and a sense of your ignorance and not with arrogance and Direct 28. self-conceit as if all must needs be wrong that your empty foolish minds cannot presently perceive to be right The famousest Apostates that ever I knew were all men of notorious Pride and self-conceitedness § 32. Direct 29. Provoke not God by willful sinning against the Light which thou hast allready received Direct 29. to forsake thee and give thee over to infidelity 2 Thes. 2. 10 11 12. Because men receive not the Lâ—ve of the truth that they might be saved for this cause God sends them strong delusions to believe a lie that they all might â—e damned who believed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness Obey Christs doctrine so far as you know it and you shall fullier know it to be of God Iohn 7. 17. 10. 4. § 33. Direct 30. Tempt not your selves to Infidelity by pretended Humility in abâ—sing your Natural Direct 30. facultiâ—s when you should be humbled for your moral pravity Vilifying the soul and its Reason and Natural Freewill doth tend to Infidelity by making us think that we are but as other inferiour animals uncapable of a life above with God When as self-abâ—sing because of the corruption of Reason and Free-will doth tend to shew us the need of a Physiciâ—n and so assist our faith in Christ. § 34. Direct 31. Iudge not of so great a thing by sudden apprehensions or the surprize of a temptatiâ—n Direct 31. when you have not leisure to look up all the evidences of faith and lay them together and take a full deliberate view of all the cause It is a mystery so great as requireth a clear and vacant mind delivered from prejudice abstracted from diverting and deceiving things which upon the best assistance and with the greatest diligence must lay all together to discern the truth And if upon the best assistance and consideration you have been convinced of the truth and then will let every sudden thought or temptation or difficulty seem enough to question all again this is unfaithfulness to the truth and the way to resist the clearest evidences and never to have done It is like as if you should answer your adversary in the Court when your witnesses are all dismist or out of the way and all your evidences are absent and perhaps your Counsellor and Advocate too It is like the casting up of a long and intricate account which a man hath finished by study and time and when he hath done all one questioneth this particular and another that when his accounts are absent It is not fit for him to answer all particulars nor question his own accounts till he have as full opportunity and help to cast up all again § 35. Direct 32. If the work seem too hard for you go and consult with the wisest most experienced Christians Direct 32. who can easily answer the difficulties which most pâ—rplex and tempt you Modesty will tell you that the advantage of study and experience may make every one wisest in his own profession and set others above you while you have lâ—ss of these § 36. Direct 33. Remember that Christianity being the surest way to secure your eternal hopes and Direct 33. the matters of this life which cause men to forsake it being such transitory â—â—ifles you can be no losers by it and therefore if you doubted yet you might be sure that its the safest way § 37. Direct 34. Iudge not of so great a cause in a time of Melanâ—holy when fears and confusions Direct 34. make you unfit But in such a case as that as also when ever Satan would disturb your setled faith or tempt you at his pleasure to be still new questioning resolved cases and discerned truths abhor his suggestions and give them no entertainment in your thoughts but cast them back into the Tempters face There is not one Melancholy person of a multitude but is violently assaulted with temptations to blasphemy and unbelief when they have but half the use of Reason and no composedness of mind to debate such controversies with the Devil It is not fit for them in this incapacity to hearken to any of those suggestions which draw them to dispute the foundations of their faith but to cast them away with resolute abhorrence Nor should any Christian that is soundly setled on the true foundation gratifie the Devil so much as to dispute with
him when ever he provoketh us to it but only endeavour to strengthen our Faith and destroy the remnants of unbelief § 38. Direct 35. Remember that Christ doth propagate his Religion conjunctly by his spirit and his Direct 35. word and effecteth himself the faith which he commandeth For though there be sufficient evidence of credibility in his word yet the blinded Mind and corrupt perverted hearts of men do need the cure of his medicinal Grace before they will effectually and savingly believe a doctrine which is so holy high and heavenly and doth so much control their lusts See therefore that you distrust your corrupted hearts and earnestly beg the Spirit of Christ. § 39. Direct 36. Labour earnestly for the Love of every Truth which you believe and to feel the Direct 36. renewing power of it upon your hearts and the reforming power on your lives especially that you may be advanced to the Love of God and to a Heavenly mind and life And this will be a most excellent help against all temptations to unbelief For the Heart holdeth the Gospel much faster than the Head alone The seed that is cast into the earth if it quicken and take root is best preserved and the dâ—eper rooted the surer it abideth but if it die it perisheth and is gone When the seed of the holy word hath produced the new creature it is sure and safe But when it is retained only in the brain as a dead Opinion every temptation can overturn it It is an excellent advantage that the serious practical Christian hath above all hypocrites and unsanctified men Love will hold faster than dead belief Love is the Grace that abideth for ever and that is the enduring faith which works by Love The experienced Christian hath felt so much of the power and Goodness oâ— the wâ—rd that if you puzzle his head with subtile reasonings against it yet his heart and experience will not suffer him to let it go He hath taâ—ted it so sweet that he will not Believe it to be bitter though he cannot answer all that is said against it If another would perswade you to believe ill of your dearest friend or Father Love and experience would better preserve you from his deceit than reasoning would do The new creature or new nature in believers and the experience of Gods Love communicated by Jesus Christ unto their souls are constant witnesses to the word of God He that believeth hath the witness in himself that is The Holy Ghost which was given him which is an objective testimony or an evidence and an effective Of this see my Treat of Infidelity Unsanctified men may be 〈◊〉 turned to Infidelity For they never felt the renewed quickning work of faith nor were â—vâ—â— brought by it to the Love of God and a holy and heavenly mind and â—iâ—â— They that never were Christians at the Heart are soonest turned from being Christians in opinion and name Quest. BY what Reason evidence or obligation were the Iews bound to believe the Prophets Seing Isaiah Jeremy Ezekiel c. wrought no miracles and there were false Prophets in their daies How then câ—uld any man know that indeed they were sent of God when they nakedly affirmed it Answ. I mention this objection or case because in my book of the Reas. of Christian Religion to which for all the rest I refer the Reader it is forgotten And because it is one of the hardest questions about our faith 1. Those that think that every book of Scripture doth now prove it self to be Divine propâ—ia luce by its own matter stile and other properties will accordingly say that by Hearing the Prophets then as well as by Reading them now this intrinsick satisfactory evidence was discâ—â—nable All that I can say of this is that there are such Characters in the Prophecies as are a help to faith as making it the more easily credible that they are of God but not such as I could have been ascertained by especially as delivered by parcels then if there had been no more 2. Nor do I acquiâ—sce in their answer who say that Those that have the same spirit know the stile of the spirit in the Prophets For 1. This would suppose none capable of believing them groundedly that had not the same spirit 2. And the spirit of sanctification is not enough to our discerning Prophetical inspirations as reason and experience fully proveth The guist of discerning spirits 1 Cor. 12. 10. was not common to all the sanctified 3. It is much to be observed that God never sent any Prophet to make a Law or Covenant on which the salvation of the people did depend without the attestation of unquestionable Miracles Moses wrought numerous open miracles and such as controlled and confuted the contradictors seeming Miracles in Egypt And Christ and his Apostles wrought more than Moses So that these Laws and Covenants by which God would rule and judge the people were all confirmed beyond all just exception 4. It must be noted that many other Prophets also wrought Miracles to confirm their doctrine and prove that they were sent of God as did Elias and Elisha 5. It must be noted that there were Schools of Prophets or Societies of them in those times 1 Sam. 10. 10. 19. 20. 1 Kings 20. 35 41. 22. 13. 2 Kings 2. 3 5 7 15. 4. 1 38. 5. 22. 6. 1. 9. 1. 1 Cor. 14. 32. Who were educated in such a way as fiâ—ted them to the reception of prophetical inspirations when it pleased God to give them Not that meer education made any one a Prophet nor that the Prophets had at all times the present actual guiâ—t of prophesie But God was pleased so far to own mens commanded diligence as to joyn his blessing to a meet education and at such times as he thought meet to illuminate such by Visions and revelations above all others And therefore it is spoken of Amos as a thing extraordinary that he was made a Prophet of a herdsman 6. Therefore a Prophet among the Jews was known to be such usually before these Recorded Prophecies of theirs which we have now in the Holy Scriptures 1. The spirits of the Prophets which are subject to the Prophets were judged of by those Prophets that had indeed the Spirit And so the people had the testimony of the other Prophets concerning them 2. The Lords own direction to know a true Prophet by Deut. 18. 22. is the coming to pass of that which he foretelleth Now it is like that before they were received into the number of Prophets they had given satisfaction to the societies of the Prophets by the events of things before foretold by them 3. Or they might have wrought miracles before to have satisfied the members of the Colledge of their calling though these Miracles are not all mentioned in the Scripture 4. Or the other Prophets might have some Divine testimony concerning them by visions revelations or
member above and so against the rest either superiors and so against the fifth command or equals against the rest § 5. HUMILITY is contrary to pride and therefore consisteth 1. In a contentedness with Humility what that degree and state which God hath assigned us 2. In mean thoughts of our selves esteeming our selves no Greater Wiser or Better than we are 3. In a willingness and desire that others should not think of us or speak of us or use us as greater or wiser or better than we are that they should give us no more honour praise or Love than is our due the redundancie being but a deceit or lie and an abuse of us and them 4. In the avoiding of all inordinate aspiring endeavors and a contented exercise of our assigned offices and doing the meanest works of our own places 5. In the avoiding of all ostentation or appearance of that greatness wisdom or goodness which we have not and fitting our speeches apparel provisions furniture and all our deportment and behaviour to the meanness of our parts and place and worth This is the very Nature of Humility The more particular signs I shall open afterwards § 6. II. Pride lying in the heart is oft mis-judged of by others that see but the outward appearances The Inward se â—â—nâ—â— of Pride that are noâ—â—â— and sometime by the person himself that understandeth not the nature of it The inward appearances that are mistaken for pride and are not it are such as these 1. When a man in power and Government hath a spirit suitable to his place and work This is not Pride but vertue 2. When natural strength and vigor of spirits expelleth pusillanimity especially when faith beholding God expelleth all inordinate respect to men and fear of all that they can do this is not pride but Christian magnanimity and fortitude and the contrary is not humility but weakness and pusillanimity and cowardize 3. When a wise man knoweth in what measure he is wise and in what measure other men are ignorant or erroneous and when he is conscious of his knowledge and delighted and pleased in it through the love of truth and thankful to God for revealing it to him and blessing so far his studies and endeavours all this is mercy and duty and not pride For truth is amiable and delectable in it self And he that knoweth must needs know that he knoweth as he that seeth doth perceive by seeing that he seeth And if it be a fault to know that I know it must be a fault to know at all Bâ—t some knowledge is necessary and unresistible and we cannot avoid it And that which is good â—â—â—â—t be vâ—lued and we must be thankful for it Humility doth no more require that a wise man think â—â—â—â— knowledge equal with a fools or ignorant mans than that a sound man take himself to be sick â—â— When a wise man valueth the useful knowledge which God hath given him above all the glory and vanities of the world which are indeed of lower worth this is not Pride but a due estimation of things 5. When a wise man desireth that others were of his mind for their own good and the propagating of the truth this is not Pride but Charity and love of truth Else preachers were the 〈…〉 Hâ—mâ—lâ—aâ— enim ut reliquae virâ—utes opus est voluntatis Nam sicut virtutes per ra ionem cognoscimus ita per di 〈…〉 nobis sâ—â—â—â—unt Tâ—â—â—â—â— â—â—â—â— c. 7 p 103 104. prâ—udest men and Paul had done ill in labouring so much for mens conversion and saying to Agripâ—a Aâ—â—s 2â— 29. I would to God that not only thou but also all that hear me this day were both allmost aâ—d allâ—â—â—â—ther such as I am except these â—onds 6. When an innocent man is conscious of his innocency and a holy person is conscious of his holiness and assured of his state in grace and rejoyceth in it and is thankful for it this is not Pride but an excellent priviledge and duty If Angels rejoyce at the conversion of a sinner Luke 15. the sinner hath reason to rejoyce himself And iâ— it be a sin to be unthankful for our daily bread much more for grace and the hope of Glory 7. When we value our good name and the honour that is indeed our due as we do other outward common mercies not fâ—r themselves but so far as they honour God or tend to the good of others or the promoting of truth or piety among men desiring no more than is indeed our due nor over-valuing it as that which we cannot spare but submitting it to the will of God as that which we can be without this is not Pride but a right estimation of the thing § â— The outward seemings which are oft mistaken for the signs and fruits of Pride by others are The outward appâ—aâ—anâ—eâ—â—â— Pride that are not it such as these 1. When a Magistrate or other Governour doth maintain the honour of his place which is necessary to his succesful Government and liveth according to his degree When Princes and Rulâ—rs and Masters and Parents do keep that distance from their subjects and servants and scholars and children which is meet and needful to their good it is usually mis-judged to be their Pride 2. When a sinner is convinced of the necessity of Holiness in a time and place where it is rare and infidelity or prophaness and ungodliness is the common road the necessary singularity of such a one in giving up himself to the will of God is commonly charged on him as his pride As if he were proud that cannot be contented to be damned in Hell for company with the most or to despise salvation if most despise it and to forsake his God when most forsake him and to serve the Devil when See 〈◊〉 Tâ—act How a man may â—â—aâ—se himself without 〈◊〉 bâ—ame 〈…〉 304. most men serve him If you will not swear and be drunk and game and spend your time even the Lords day in vanity and sensuality as if you were afraid of being saved and as if it were your busyness to work out your damnation the world will call you proud and singular and think it strange that you run not with them to excess of riot speaking evil â—f you 1 Pet. 4. 4. You shall quickly hear them say What will you be wiser than all the Town What a Saint What a holy precisian is this When â—â—t was grieved for the filthiness of Sodom they scorn him as a proud controller Gen. 19. 9. This one fellow came in to sâ—journ and he will needs be a Iudge And what thought they of Noaâ— that walked with God in so great singularity when the world was drowned in and for their wickedness When David humbled his soul with fasting they turned it to his reproach Psalm 69. 10. 35. 13. Especially when any of the servants of Christ do press towards the highest degree of holiness
they shall be sure to be accounted Proud and Hypocrites And yet they accuse not that child or servant of Pride who excelleth all the rest in pleasing them and doing their work Nâ—r do they take a sick man to be proud if he be carefuller than others to recover his health But he that will do mosâ— for Heaven and most carefully avoideth sin and Hell and is most serious in his Religion and most industrious to please his God this man shall be accounted Proud 3. He that will not forsake his God and betray the truth and wound his conscience by willful sin but will do as Daniel and the three confessors did Dan. 6. 3. and answer as they answered will be accounted Proud But it is no Pride to prefer God before men and to fear damnation more than imprisonment or death The army of Martyrs did not in Pride prefer their own judgements before their superiors that condemned them but they did it in obedience to God and truth when that was revealed to babâ—s which was hid from the wise and prudent and great and noble of the world 4. When those that are faithful to the honour of Christs soverainty dare not approve of Papâ—l usurpations against his Laws and over his Church and the Consciences of his Subjects they shall by the Popish usurpers be called Proud and despisers of Government as if a Usurper of the Kingly power should call us proud because we dare not consent to his pride or call us Traytors for not being Traytors as he is himself 5. When a man that hath the sense of the matters of God and mens salvation upon his heart is zealous and diligent to teach them to others and if he be a Minister be servent and laborious in his ministry he is called Proud as one that must needs have all men of his mind Though compassion to souls and aptness to teach and Preaching instantly in season and out of season be his necessary duty required of God And what is the Ministry for but to change mens minds and bring them to the full obedience of the truth 6. If a man understandeth the truth in any point of Divinity better than most others and holdeth any truth which is not there in credit or commonly received he shall be accounted Proud for presuming to be so singular and seeming wiser than those that think they are wiser than he But Humility teacheth us not to err for company nor to grow no wiser when once we arrive at the common stature nor to forsake the truth which others understand not nor to forbear to teach it because it is not known allready If some of the Pastors in Abassia Syria Armenia Russia Greece or Italy or Spain were as wise as the Ministers in England are it were no evidence of their Pride 7. If a man that understandeth any thing contrary to the judgement of another cannot forsake it Siquid agere instituis lenâ—e progredere in eo autem quod elegeâ—â—s firmiter persiste Bias in Laâ—rt and think or say as another would have him especially if you contradict him in disputation he will take it to be your pride and overvaluing your own understanding and being too tenacious of your own conceits Erroneous men that in their Pride are over eager to have others of their mind will call you Proud because you yield not to their pride They think that the evidence is so clear on their side that if you were not Proud you could not choose but think as they do 8. Some humble men are naturally of a warm and earnest manner of discourse and their natural Pertinaâ—ior tamen erat Chrysanthius nec de sententia â—acile discedebat inquit Eunapius humilitatem ejus laudans heat and eagerness of speech is frequently mis-judged to come from pride till fuller acquaintance with their humble lives do rectifie the mistake It is written of Bishop Hooper the Martyr that those that visited him once condemned him of over-austerity they that repaired to him twice only suspected him of the same those that conversed with him constantly not only acquitted him of all morosity but commended him for sweetness of manners So that his ill nature consisted in other mens little acquaintance with him Tho. Fullers Church Hist. lib. 7. pag. 402. and Godwin in Glocest. Bishops The same is true of very many worthy men Bullingero ob eruditionem non contemnendam morumque tam sanctitatem quam suavitatem percharus fuit pag 591. 9. If we zealously contend for the saith or the Peace of the Church against Heretical or Dividing persons and their dangerous waies they will call us Proud though God command it us Iud. 2. 3. especially if we avoid them and bid them not Good speed Tit. 3. 10. 2 Joh. 10. 10. When a man of understanding openeth the ignorance of another and speaketh words of pity concerning him though it be no more than truth and charity command they will be taken to be the words of supercilious pride 11. That plain dealing in reproof which God commandeth especially to his Ministers towards high and low great and small and which the Prophets and Servants of God have used will be misjudged as arrogancie and Pride Amos 7. 12 13. 2 Chron. 25. 16. Acts 23. 4. As if it were Pride to Gen. 19. 8 9 10. be true to God and to pity souls and seek to save them and tell them in time of that which conscience will more closely and terribly tell them of when it is too late 12. Self-idolizing Papists accuse their inferiors for Pride if they do but modestly exercise a judgement Cum humilitatis causa mentiris si non eras peccator antequam mentiris mentiendo efficiens quod evitaâ—as Augustin de Verb. Apost of discretion about the matters that their salvation is concerned in and do not implicitly believe as they believe and forbear to prove or try their sayings and swallow not all without any chewing and offer to object the commands of God against any unlawful commands of men As if God were contented to suspend his Laws when ever mens commands do contradict them or humility required us to please and obey men at the price of the loss of our salvation They think that we should not busy our selves to enquire into such matters but trust them with our souls and that the Scriptures are not for the laity to read but they must wholly relie upon the clergie And if a lay man enquire into their Doctrine or Commands they say as Davids brother to him 1 Sam. 17. 28. With whom hast thou left the sheep in the wilderness I know thy pride and the naughtiness of thy heart 13. If a zealous humble preacher of the Gospel that preacheth not himself but Christ be highly esteemed and honoured for his works sake and crowded after and greatly followed by those that are 1 Thes. 5. 12 13. edified by him it is ordinary for the envious
all that he hath to do with If there were Laws or Canons to be made he would have the making of them He would have all men take his counsel as an Oracle He would have all the world of his opinion and sets more by those that thus esteem him and are of his opinion and yield to all that he saith and doth than by those that most earnestly desire to conform their minds to the Word of God and differ from him in the understanding of any part of it He loveth them better that enquire of him and take his word than them that enquire of the Word of God Though he cannot deny but it is Gods Prerogative to be infallible and the Rule of the world § 27. Sign 17. A proud man affecteth the reputation of Gods Immutability as well as his Infallibility Sign 17. He will stand to an error when once he hath vented it and resist the Truth when once he hath appeared against it to avoid the dishonour of being accounted Mutable or one that formerly was deceived His pride keepeth him from Repenting of any fault or error that he can but find a cloak for If he have done wrong to God and mischief to the Church he will do as much more to make it good and justifie it by any cruelty or violence If he have once done you wrong he will do more for fear of seeming to have wronged you If he have slandered you he will stab or hang you if he can to justifie his slander rather than seem so mutable as to retract it § 28. Sign 18. A proud man affecteth a participation of Gods Omniscience and is eager to know Sign 18. more than God revealeth if he be an enquiring man whose pride runneth this way Thus our first Parents sinned by desiring to be as God in knowledge This hath filled the world with proud contentions and the Church with divisions while proud Wits heretically make things unrevealed the matter of their ostentation imposition censures or furious disputes while humble souls are taken up in studying and practising things revealed and keep themselves within Gods bounds as knowing that God best knoweth the measure fittest for them and that knowledge is to be desired and sought but so far as it is useful to our serving or enjoying God and the Good which Truth revealeth to us and that knowledge may else become our sorrow Eccles. 1. 1 8. and Truth the instrument to torment us as it doth the miserable souls in Hell § 29. Sign 19. A proud man is discontented with his Degree especially if it be low He would be Sign 19. higher in power and honour and wealth yea he is never so high but he would fain be one step higher If he had a Kingdom he would have another and if he had the Dominions of the Turkish or Tartarian Emperour he would desire to enlarge them and to have more and would not be satisfied till he had all the world Men feel not this in their low condition They think If I had but so much or so much I would be content But this is their ignorance of the insatiable Pride that dwelleth in them Do you not see the greatest Emperours on Earth still seeking to be greater Every man naturally would be a Pope the Universal Monarch of the world And every such Pope would have both Swords and have Princes and people wholly at their will And when they have no mind to hurt they would have power to hurt that all the world might hold their Estates and Liberties and Lives as by their clemency and gift and they might be as God to other men And if they had attained this Pride would not stop till it had caused them to aspire to all the prerogatives of God and to depose him and dethrone him of his Godhead and Majesty that they might have his place § 30. Sign 20. A proud man would fain have Gods Independency Though need make him stoop Sign 20. yet he would willingly be beholden to none Not only because in prudence he would keep his liberty and not be unnecessarily the servant of men nor under obligations to serve them in any evil way For so the humblest would fain be Independant But because he would be so great and high as to scorn to lean on any other Thus you see how Pride is that great Idolatry that sets up man as in the place of God Signs of the next Degrees of Pride as against God § 31. Sign 1. A Proud heart is very hardly brought to see the greatness of its sins or to know its Sign 1. emptiness of Grace or to be convinced of its unpardoned miserable state or of the Justice of God Men sick in mind as witless fools and loose persons and unjust and injurious think noâ— that that they do amâ—ss and sin c. Plutarâ—h Tract thaâ— Maladies oâ— the mind are worse than those of the body if he should damn it to everlasting torments Concerning others it may confess all this but hardly of it self It s own unbelief and aversness from God and holiness seemeth to it a small and tollerable fault It s own pride and lust and worldliness and sensuality seem not to be so bad as to deserve damnation Much less the smallest sin which it committeth Though customarily they may say that God were just if he did condemn them yet they believe it not at the heart The most convincing Preacher shall have much ado to bring a proud man heartily to confess that he is an enemy to God a child of wrath and under the guilt of all his sins and sure to be condemned unless he be converted He will confess that he is a sinner or any thing else which the most godly must confess or which doth not conclude him to be in a damnable unrenewed state But to make an ungodly man know that he is ungodly and an impenitent person know that he is impenitent and and unsanctified person know that he is unsanctified is wonderful hard because that Pride hath dominion in them Are we blind also Say the proud incorrigible Pharisees to Christ Ioh. 9. 40. § 32. Sign 2. A proud heart doth so much overvalue all that is in it self that every common Sign 2. grace or duty doth seem to it to be a state of godliness Their common knowledge seemeth to them to be saving illumination Every little sorrow for their sin or wish that they had done better when they have had all the sweetness of it doth go with them for true Repentance Their heartless lip-labour goes for acceptable prayer Their Image of Religion seemeth to them to be the life of godliness They take their own presumption for true faith and their false expectation for Christian Hope and their carnal security and blockish stupidity for spiritual peace of conscience and their desperate venturing their souls upon deceit they take for a Trusting them with God If they forbear but such
22. 3. A prudent man foreseeth the evil and hideth himself but the simple pass on and are punished § 41. Sign 11. Pride maketh men murmure if the work of God be never so well done if they Sign 11. had not the doing of it and sometimes by contending to have the honour of doing it they destroy the work If they are officers of Christ they look more at the Power than their obligation at the Dignity than at the Duty and at what the people owe to them than what they owe to God and to the people They are like dogs that snarl at any other that would partake with them or come into the house They say not as Moses would all the Lords people were prophets Yea the peace and unity of Church and state is often sacrificed to this cursed pride § 42. Sign 12. Pride makes men ashamed of the service of God in a time and place where it is Sign 12. disgraced by the world and if it have dominion Christ and holiness shall be denyed or forsaken by them rather than their honour with men shall be forsaken If they come to Jesus it is as Nicodemus did by night They are ashamed to own a reproached truth or scorned cause or servant of Christ If men will but mock them with the nick-names or calumnies hatcht in Hell they will do as others or forbear their duty A scorn will do more to make them forbear praying in their families to God than the Lyons den would do with Daniel or the fiery-furnace with the three Confessors Dan. 3. 6. Especially if they be persons of honour and greatness in the world then God must be merciful to them while they bow down in the house of Rimmon As the Rich man Luke 18. 23. when he heard Christs terms was very sorrowful for he was very rich so these because their honours and dignities are so great do think them too good to let go for the sake of Christ Had they but the proportion of the obscure vulgar to lay down they could forsake it but they cannot forsake so fair a portion nor endure the reproach of so honourable a name But O what contemptible things are these to a humble soul He marvelleth what dreaming worldlings find in the doting thoughts and breath of fools which men call Honour that they should prefer it before the honour of God and their real honour When Christ hath told them Mark 8. 38. That whosoever shall be ashamed of him and his words in an adulterous and sinful generation of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed when he cometh in the glory of his Father with his holy Angels I now proceed to the signs of Pride in particular duties The Signs of Pride in and about Religious duties § 43. Sign 1. A Proud person is most sollicitous in and about that part of duty which is visible to Sign 1. man and tendeth to advance him in mens esteem And therefore he is more regardful of the outside His ergo qui loquendi arte caeteris hominibus excellere videntur sedulo monendi sunt ut humilitate induti Christianâ discant non contemnere quos cognoverint morum vitia quam verbâ—rum amplius devitare Aug. de Cat. â—udib c. 9. than of the inside of the words than of the heart He taketh much pains if he be a preacher to cast his sermon into such a form as tendeth to set forth his parts according to the quality of them that he would please If he live where wit is valued above grace or pedantick gingling above a solid clear judicious masculine discourse he bends himself to the humour of his auditors and acts his part as a stage-player for applause If he live where serious earnest exhortations are in more request he studieth to put an affected fervency into his stile which may make the hearers believe that he believes himself and to seem to be what indeed he is not and to feel what he feeleth not But all this while about his Heart he is little sollicitous and takes small pains to affect it with the reverence of God and with a due estimation of his truth and a due compassion of mens souls and indeed to believe and feel what he would seem to believe and feel So also in prayer and discourse his chief study is to speak so as may best procure applause And it is seldom that he is so cunning as to hide this his design from the observation of judicious men that know him They may usually perceive that he is the Image of a Preacher or Christian by affectation forcing himself to that which he is not truly serious in He is sounding brass a tinkling Cymbal a bladder full of wind a skin full of words wise and devout in publick on the stage but at home and with his companions in his ordinary converse he is but common if not unclean He is the admiration of fools and the compassion of the wise An Oracle at the first congress to those that know him not and the pity of those that have seen him at home and without his mask He is like proud Gentlewomen that bestow a great part of the morning in mundifying and adorning themselves when they are to be seen and go abroad but at home are very homely And usually the Proud being Hypocrites are secret haters of the most serious and judicious Christians because these are more quick-sighted than others to see through the cloak of their Hypocrisie Unless as their Charity constraining them to conceal their fears and jealousies may reconcile the Hypocrite to them § 44. Sign 2. Proud men art apt to put on themseves to any publick duty which may tend to magnifie Sign 2. them or set out their parts and think themselves fitter to be preferred before others and imployed than indeed they are They are forward to speak in preaching or praying among others or Non potest non indoctus esse qui se doctum credit Hermar Barbarus in ordinary talk A little knowledge maketh them think that they are fit to be preachers Whereas the humble say with Moses who am I that I should go unto Pharaoh c. Exod. 3. 11. I am not eloquent but slow of speech O my Lord send I pray thee by the hand of him whom thou wilt send Exod. 4. 10 13. Or as Isaiah 16. 5. Wâ— is me for I am undone because I am a man of unclean lips c. or as Paul 2 Cor. 2. 16. Who is sufficient for these things How many a Sermon hath Pride both studied and preached And how many a prayer hath it formed And how well are they like to be heard of God § 45. Sign 3. The Proud are loath to be clouded by the greater abilities of others They are content Sign 3. that weaker men pray or preach with them that will not obscure but put off their parts that they Pliny saith In commending another you
the final obstinate refusers of Christ and life 4. That he that so far believeth the truth of the Gospel as to Consent to the Covenant of Grace even that God the Father be his Lord and Reconciled Father and Christ his savior and the Holy Ghost his sanctifier hath true saving faith and right to the blessing of the Covenant 5. That the day of Grace is so far commensurate or equal to our Life time that whosoever truly Repenteth and Consenteth to the Covenant of Grace before his death is certainly pardoned and in a state of life and that it is every mans duty so to do that pardon may be theirs 6. That Satans temptations are none of our sins but only our yielding to them 7. That the effects of natural sickness or diseasedness is not in it self a sin 8. That those are the smallest sins formally and least like to condemn us which we are most unwilling of and are least in Love or liking of 9. That no sin shall condemn us which we hate more than love and which we had rather leave and be delivered from than keep For this is true Repentance 10. That he is truly sanctified who had rather be perfect in Holiness of heart and life in Loving God and Living by Faith than to have the greatest pleasures riches or honours of the world taking in the Means also by which both are attained 11. That he who hath this Grace and desire may know that he is elect and the making of our Calling sure by our Consenting to the holy Covenant is the making of our Election sure 12. That the same thing which is a great duty to others may be no duty to one who by bodily distemper as Feavors Phrensies Melancholy is unable to perform it § 6. Direct 2. Take heed of worldly cares and sorrows and discontents Set not so much by earthly things as to enable them to disquiet you But learn to cast your cares on God You can have less peace in an affliction which cometh by such a carnal sinful means It s much more safe to be distracted with cares for Heaven than for Earth § 7. Direct 3. Meditation is no duty at all for a melancholy person except some few that are able to Direct 3. bear a diverting meditation which must be of something farthest from the matter which troubled them Or except it be short meditations like ejaculatory prayers A set and serious meditation will but confound you and disturb you and disable you to other duties If a man have a broken leg he must not go on it till it s knit lest all the body fare the worse It is your Thinking faculty or your Imagination which is the broken pained part and therefore you must not use it about the things that trouble you Perhaps you 'll say That this is to be prophane and forget God and your soul and let the tempter have his will But I answer No It is but to forbear that which you cannot do at present that by doing other things which you can do you may come again to do this which you now cannot do It is but to forbear attempting that which will but make you less able to do all other duties And at the present you may conduct the affairs of your soul by holy Reason I perswade you not from Repenting or Believing but from set and long and deep Meditations which will but hurt you § 8. Direct 4. Be not too long in any secret duty which you find you are not able to bear Prayer Direct 4. it self when you are unable must be performed but as you can Short confessions and requests to God must serve instead of longer secret prayers when you are unable to do more If sickness may excuse a man for being short where nature will not hold out the case is the same here in the sickness of the brain and spirits God hath appointed no means to do you hurt § 9. Direct 5. Where you find your selves unable for a secret duty struggle not too hard with your Direct 5. selves but go that pace that you are able to go quietly For as every striving doth not enable you but vex you and make duty wearisom to you and disable you more by increasing your disease Like an Ox that draweth unquietly and a Horse that chaseth himself that quickly tireth Preserve your willingness to duty and avoid that which makes it grievous to you As to a sick stomach it is not eating much but digesting well that tends to health and little must be eaten when much cannot be digested So it is here in case of your meditations and secret prayers § 10. Direct 6. Be most in those dutys which you are best able to bear which with most is Prayer Direct 6. with others hearing and good discourse As a sick man whose stomach is against other meats must eat of that which he can eat of And God hath provided variety of means that one may do the work when the other are wanting Do not misunderstand me In cases of absolute necessity I say again you must strive to do it whatever come of it If you are backward to believe to Repent to Love God and your neighbour to live soberly righteously and godly to pray at all here you must strive and not excuse it by any backwardness for it is that which must needs be done or you are lost But a man that cannot read may be saved without his reading and a man in prison or sickness may be saved without hearing the word and without the Church-communion of Saints And so a man disabled by melancholy may be saved by shorter thoughts and ejaculations without set and long meditations and secret prayers And other duties which he is able for will supply the want of these Even as nature hath provided two eyes and two ears and two nostrils and two reins and lungs that when one is stopt or faulty the other may supply its wants for a time So is it here § 11. Direct 7. Avoid all unnecessary solitariness and be as much as possible in honest chearful company Direct 7. You have need of others and are not sufficient for your selves And God will use and honour others as his hands to deliver us his blessings Solitariness is to those that are fit for it an excellent season for meditation and converse with God and with our hearts But to you it is the season of temptation and danger if Satan tempted Christ himself when he had him fasting and solitary in a wilderness much more will he take this as his opportunity against you Solitude is the season of musings and thoughtfulness which are the things which you must fly from if you will not be deprived of all § 12. Direct 8. When blasphemâ—us or disturbing thoughts look in or fruitless musings presently meet Direct 8. them and use that authority of Reason which is left you to cast them and command them out If you
to needless recreations and from the deadly plague of youthful lusts when your daily labour is a greater pleasure to you § 21. Direct 10. Get some judicious man to draw you up the titles of a threefold Common-place-Book Direct 10. One part for definitions distinctions axioms and necessary doctrines Another part for what is useful for ornament and oratory And another for References as a common Index to all the Books of that Science which you read For memory will not serve for all § 22. Ordinarily Students have not judgement enough to form their own Common-place-Books till they are old in Studies and have read most of the authors which they would remember And therefore the young must here have a judicious helper And when they have done injudiciousness will be apt to fill it with less necessary things and to make an unmeet choice of matter if they have not care and an instructer § 23. Direct 11. Highly esteem of a just Method in Divinity and in all your studies and labour to Direct 11. get an accurate Scheme or Skeleton where at once you may see every part in its proper place But remember Since the writing of this I have begun a Methodus Theologiae that if it be not sound it will be a snare and one error in your Scheme or Method will be apt to introduce abundance more § 24. It s a poor and pitiful kind of knowledge to know many loose parcels and broken members of truth without knowing the whole or the place and relation which they have to the rest To know letters and not syllables or syllables and not words or words and not sentences or sentences and not the scope of the discourse are all but an unprofitable knowledge He knoweth no Science rightly that hath not anatomized it and carryeth not a true Scheme or Method of it in his mind But among the many that are extant to commend any one to you which I most esteem or take to be without error is more than I dare do § 25. Direct 12. Still keep the primitive fundamental verities in your mind and see every other Direct 12. truth which you learn as springing out of them and receiving their life and nourishment from them And Read well Vincentius Lirinencâ—sis still keep in your minds a clear distinction between the Truths of several Degrees both of Necessity and Certainty alwayes reducing the less Necessary to the more Necessary and the less certain to the more certain and not contrarily § 26. If God had made all points of faith or Scripture revelation of equal necessity our Baptism would not only have mentioned our Belief in the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost nor should we ever have seen the antient Creed nor the ten Commandments And if all points were of equall Evidence and plainness and certainty to us we should not have some so much controverted above others Some things in Scripture are hard to be understood but not all things 2 Pet. 3. 16. To pretend that any Truth is more necessary than it is doth tend to uncharitableness and contention And to say that any is less necessary than it is doth tend to the neglect of it and to the danger of souls To pretend any point to be more plain and certain than it is doth but shew our pride and ignorance But to set up uncertain and unnecessary points and make a Religion of them and reduce things certain or necessary to them this is the method of turbulent Hereticks § 27. Direct 13. Take nothing as universally Necessary in Religion which was not so taken in the Direct 13. dayes of the Apostles and Primitive Church and take that for the safest way to Heaven which the Apostles went who certainly are there value the Apostolical purity simplicity charity and unity and follow not them that by being wise and pious overmuch corrupt our sacred pattern by their additions and fill the Church with uncharitableness and strife § 28. If it were not a thing too evident that Dominion and Riches go for Religion with them and gain for Godliness and honour and money instead of argument it would be a most stupendious wonder that so many learned men should be found among Christians in the world to hinder the peace and unity of the Church as do it vehemently and implacably in the Church of Rome when so easie a thing and so reasonable would unite almost all the Christian world as is the requiring no more as necessary to our Union than what was made necessary in the dayes of the Apostles and the obtruding nothing as necessary to salvation which the Apostles and primitive Church were saved without This easie reasonable thing which no man hath any thing of seeming sense and weight to speak against would end all the ruinating differences among Christians § 29. Direct 14. Be desirous to know all that God would have you know and be willing to be ignorant Direct 14. of all that God would have you ignorant of and pry not into unrevealed things and much less make them the matter of any uncharitable strife § 30. Abundance of contentious Volumes between the Dominicans and Jesuites and many others are stuft with bold enquiries wranglings or determinations of unsearchable mysteries utterly unknown to those that voluminously debate them and never revealed in the Word or Works of God Keep off with reverence from concealed mysteries Talk not as boldly of the Divine influx and the priority posteriority dependance or reason of Gods Decrees as if you were talking of your common affairs Come with great reverence when you are called of God to search into those high and holy truths which he hath revealed But pretend not to know that which is not to be known For you will but discover your ignorance and arrogance and know never the more when you have doted about Questions never so long § 31. Direct 15. Avoid both extreams of them that study no more but to know what others have Direct 15. written and held before them and of them that little regard the discoveries of others Learn all of your Teachers and Authors that they can teach you but make all your own and see things in their proper evidence and improve their discoveries by the utmost of your diligence abhorring a proud desire of singularity or to seem wiser than you are § 32. Most Students through slothfulness look no further for knowledge than into their Books and their learning lyeth but in knowing what others have written or said or held before them especially where the least differing from the judgement of the party which is uppermost or in reputation doth tend to hazzard a mans honour or preferments there men think it dangerous to seem to know more than is commonly known and therefore think it needless to study to know it Men are backward to take much pains to know that which tendeth to their ruine to be known but doth
them no harm while they can but keep themselves ignorant of it Which makes the opposed Truth have so few entertainers or Students among the Papists or any that persecute or reproach it And others discerning this extream do run into the contrary and under pretence of the loveliness of Truth and the need of liberty of judging do think the edifying way is first to pull down all that others have built before them and little regard the judgement of their predecessors but think they must take nothing on trust from others but begin all from the very ground themselves And usually their pride makes them so little regard the most approved Authors that they have not patience to read them till they throughly understand them but reject that which is received before they understand it meerly because it was the received way And while they say that nothing must be taken upon trust they presently take upon trust themselves that very opinion and with it the other opinions of those Novelists that teach them this And believing what such say in disgrace of others withal they believe what they hold in opposition to those that they have disgraced But it is easie to see how sad a case mankind were in if every man must be a fabricator of all his knowledge himself and posterity should be never the better for the discoveries of their ancestors and the greatest labours of the wisest men and their highest attainments must be no profit to any but themselves Why do they use a Teacher if they must do all themselves If they believe not their Tutors and take nothing on trust it seems they must know every Truth before they will learn it And what difference is there between believing a Tutor and an Author And is not that more credible which upon long experience is approved by many Nations and Ages than that which is recommended to you but by one or few These Students should have made themselves an Alphabet or Grammer and not have taken the common ones on trust It is easier to add to other mens inventions than to begin and carry on all our selves By their course of study the world would never grow wiser but every age and person be still beginning and none proceed beyond their rudiments § 33. Direct 16. Be sure you make choice of meet Teachers and companions for your studies and your Direct 16. lives That they be such as will assist you in the holy practice of what you know as well as in your knowledge And shun as a plague the familiarity 1. Of sensual idle brutish persons 2. And of carnal ambitious ones who know no higher end than preferment and applause 3. And of proud hereticall contentious wits whose wisdom and Religion is nothing but censuring reproaching and vilifying them that are wiser and better than themselves § 34. Bad company is the common ruine of youth Their own sensuality is easily stirred up by the temptations of the sensual and their consciences over-born by the examples of other mens voluptuous lives It emboldneth them to sin to see others sin before them as Cowards themselves are drawn on in an Army to run upon the face of death by seeing others do it and to avoid the reproach of cowardize And the noise of mirth and ranting language are the Drums and Trumpets of the Devils by which their ears are kept from hearing the cryes of wounded dying men the lamentations of those that have found the error of that way And there is in corrupted nature so strong an inclination to the prosperity and vain-glory of the world that makes them quickly take the bait especially when the Devil doth offer it them by a fit instrument which shall not deter them as it would do if he had offered it them himself It is a pleasant thing to flesh and blood to be rich and great and generally applauded and a grievous thing to be poor and despised and afflicted The rawness also and unsetledness of youth who want well furnished understandings and experience is a great advantage to Hereticks and deceivers who still sweep many such away whereever they come Sana consultatio est ex eruditia multarumque rerum peritia experientia Plato in Laâ—rt and have but opportunity Children are easily tost up and down and carried to and froâ— with every wind of doctrine by the cunning slight and subtility of them that lye in wait to deceive Ephes. 4. 14. Deceivers have their Methods and Methods are the common instruments of deceit which are not easily detected by the unexperienced On the contrary the benefit of wise and staid and sober and peaceable meek humble holy heavenly companions is exceeding great especially to youth Such will lead them in safe paths and be still preserving them and promoting the most necessary parts of knowledge and quickning them to holy practice which is the End of all § 35. Direct 17. In all your studies be jealous of both extreams and distinctly discern which are the Direct 17. extreams that you run not into one while you avoid the other And be specially careful that you imagine not co-ordinates or subordinates to be opposites and throw not away every truth which you Cum opiniones tam variae sint inter se dissidentes alterum â—ieri potest ut earum nulla alterum certe non potest ut plus una vera sit Cicero de Nat. Dâ—oâ— pag. 5. cannot presently place rightly in the frame and see it fall in agreeably with the rest For a further insight into true Method attained but by very few may reconcile you to that which now offendeth you What God hath joyned together be sure that you never put asunder though yet you cannot find their proper places § 36. There is scarce any error more common among Students than supposing those Truths to be inconsistent which indeed have a necessary dependance on each other and a casting truth away as error because they cannot reconcile it to some other truth And there is nothing so much causeth this as want of a true Method He that hath no Method considerable or after much curious labour hath fallen upon a false Method or a Method that in any one considerable point is out of joynt will deal thus by many certain truths As an ignorant person that is to set all the scattered parts of a Clock or Watch together if he misplace one will be unable rightly to place all the rest and then when he finds that they fit not the place which he thinks they must be in he casteth them away and thinks they are not the right and is searching for or making something else to fit that place False Method rejecteth many a truth § 37. And unless it be in Loving God or other acts of the superiour faculties about their ultimate end and highest object there is scarce any thing in morality but hath its extreams And where they are not discerned they are seldom well
of the world III. If laying the hand on the Book and Kissing it be unlawful for any special matter or manner forbidden more than other significant acts it is for some of the reasons named by you which now I will answer I. Object It savoureth of the Romish superstition Answ. 1. Not at all Prove that if you can 2. Superstition is the feigning of things to be Pleasing or Displeasing to God which are not and using or disusing them accordingly whatever be the Etymologie of the word Superstitum Cultus or supra Statutum c. it is certain that the common use of it among Heathens as Plutark at large and Christians was for an erroneous undue fear of God thinking this or that was displeasing or pleasing to him to be done or to be avoided which was not so but was the conceit of a frightned mistaking mind Therefore to say that God is displeased with this signification of the mind when it is not so nor can be proved is superstition And this is not the solitary instance of Satans introducing superstition under pretense of avoiding superstition 3. The sense of the Law is to be judged of by the Law and by the notorious doctrine and profession of the Law-makers and of the Land which here renounceth the superstitious use of it But I confess I was more afraid that the Papists had too much derogated from the Scripture than given too much to it And they profess that they swear not by a creature Vid. Perer. ubi sup in Gen. 24. 2. Object But Paraeus c. in Gen. 24. 2. saith Non absque superstitione fit cum super crucifixum aut codicem Evangelii digitis impositis juratur ut fit in Papatu Answ. 1. But that same Act which in Papatu is superstitious because of superstitious conceits and ends is not so in all others that have none such 2. It is no new thing to be quick in accusing our adversaries But Paraeus addeth not a syllable of proof And if he had it must have been such as toucht not us or else invalid Object Some good men have scrupled it Answ. 1. Ten thousand to one such have not scrupled it 2. They are not our Gods nor Law 3. The Quakers and the old Anabaptists and they say Origen scrupled yea condemned all swearing or all imposed Oaths And if we avoid all as sin which some good men have scrupled we shall make superstition a great part of our Religion And when on the same grounds we have but practised all as Duty which some good men have taken for Duty we shall quite out-go the Papists He that readeth Beda Boniface and abundance such pious writers will soon see that Godly or Fanatical Religious persons dreams visions strict opinions confident assertions and credulous believing one another with the hope of improving such things against Pagans and Jews for Christianity brought in almost all the Legends and superstitions of the Papists II. Object 2. Our Common-Law Commissions that give authority to examine persons direct it to be Object done super sacramenta sua per sancta Dei evangelia fideliter prestanda And in the form of Administrations in Ecclesiastical Courts the words are Ad sancta Dei Evangelia rite legitime jurati Whether these forms do not infer that in their first use at least persons either swore by the Evangelists or offended in that mode of swearing And our Common-Law calls it a Corporal Oath from touching the Book Answ. 1. To know the sense of our present Law it is not necessary that we know the sense of the Answ. first users of the form For the Law is not now the Kings Law that first made it He hath no Law that hath no Government but the Kings Law that now Reigneth and beareth his sense 2. To justifie our obedience to a Law it is not necessary that we prove every phrase in that Law to be fitly expressed 3. But examine it well and try whether it be not also fit and laudable 1. There are three things conjoyned in the Oaths in question 1. A testimony assertory or a promise 2. An Oath 3. An Imprecation The Assertory Testimony here is the first thing intended and the Oath and Imprecation are but as a means to make that Testimony or Promise valid 2. The published Doctrine of England in the 39. Articles the book of Ordination c. is that the Holy Scriptures contain all things necessary to Salvation as being Gods Law or Rule of our Faith and Life All our Duty to God is there commanded All the promises on which we hope are there contained All the punishments which the perjured or any sinner must feel and should fear are there threatned Therefore 3. The Laying on the hand and Kissing the book is an Action directly related to the Imprecation and not to the Oath but only by consequence as the Imprecation is subservient to the Oath as the Oath is to the Assertion So that this is the plain paraphrase of the whole I do believe that God the Ruler of all the world is the Iudge of secrets which are above mans judgement the searcher of hearts and the hater and avenger of perjury according to this his holy word by which he governeth us And to this God I appeal as to the truth of this my testimony consenting my self to lose all the benefit of his promises to the just and to bear all the punishments here threatned to the Perjured if I lie And what could be said more fitly 1. To own the Protestant doctrine that the Scripture is Gods perfect word that the evil to be feared and the good to be hoped for is all there contained and is all the fulfilling of that word 2. And to put the word in its due subordination to God And our ordinary form of swearing sheweth this So help you God and the Contents of this Book Whether you will call this swearing upon or by the Gospel or call it a corporal Oath or a spiritual Oath is only de nomine and is nothing to the matter thus truly described Sacramentum signifieth the Oath it self and Ad sancta evangelia is a fit phrase or if super sacramenta signifie the two Sacraments of the Gospel it can mean no more than As one that by the reception of the Sacrament doth profess to believe this Gospel to be true I do renounce the benefits of it if I lie And in this sense it hath been some mens custom to receive the Sacrament when they would solemnly swear III. Object Some seem to object against kissing the Book as having the greater appearance of giving Object too much to it or putting some adoration on it and because this Ceremony of kissing is held to be of later date than laying on the hand Answ. The Ceremony signifieth that I love and approve the Gospel and place the hope of my salvation Answ. in it And the publick Doctrine of the Kingdom before cited sheweth as a
Laws for the preservation of so excellent a thing as Truth he should not secure the happiness of the world As to the securing of mens lives it is not enough to make a Law that you shall not kill men without just cause though that be all that the Law intendeth to attain for then every man being left to judge would think there were just cause whenever his passion or interest told him so But the Law is You shall not kill at all without the judgement of the Magistrate So if the Law against Lying did intend no more than the securing men from the injuries of errour and deceit yet would it not have been a sufficient means to have said only You shall not injure men by Lying for then men would have judged of the injury by their own interests and passions But much more is it needful to have a stricter Law when Truth it self is the thing that God intendeth to secure as well as the interest of men In the eyes of Christians and Heathens and all mankind that have not unmand themselves there appeareth a singular beauty and excellency in Truth Aristotle could say that the Nature of man is made for Truth Cicero could say that Qâ—â—d verum simplex sincerumque est id naturae bominis accommodatissimum est Verity and Virtue were ever taken as the inseparable perfections of man Pythagoras could say that to Love Truth and do Good were the two things that made man likest to God and therefore were his two most excellent gifts Plato could say that Truth was the best rhetorick and the sweetest oration Epictetus could say that Truth is a thing immortal eternal of all things most precious better than friendship as being less obnoxious to blind affections Iamblichus could say that as Light naturally and constantly accompanyeth the Sun so Truth accompanyeth God and all that follow him Epaminondas is praised for that he would not Lye no not in jeast Pomponius Atâ—icus was so great a hater of a lye that all his friends were desirous to Trust him with their â—â—â—â—y lye iâ— evil and to be avoided saâ—â—h Aristot. Eâ—hâ—c l 4 See Psal. 5. â— Prov. 6 17 19. 12. 22. 19. 5 9. 21 18 Rev. 21. 27. 22 15. Joh. 8. 44. Col. 3. 9. business and use him as their Counsellor He knoweth not what use mans understanding or his tongue were made for that knoweth not the excellency of Truth Let a Pilate only ask as a stranger what is Truth Joh. 18. 38. as Pharaoh asked who is the Lord For this end Christ himself came into the world to bear witness to the Truth and every one that is of the Truth will hear him Joh. 18. 37. He is the Truth Joh. 14. 6. and full of Grace and Truth Joh. 1. 14. Grace and Truth came by him Joh. 1. 17. His spirit is given to guide his servants into the Truth Joh. 16. 13. and to sanctifie them by the truth Joh. 17. 19. that knowing the truth it might make them free Joh. 8. 32. The fruit of the spirit is in all truth Ephes. 5. 9. His Ministers can do nothing against the truth but for the truth 2 Cor. 13. 8. Truth is the girdle that must gird our loins Ephes 6. 14. The Church is the pillar and ground of Truth 1 Tim. 3. 15. The faithful are they that believe and know the Truth 1 Tim. 4. 3. Speaking the truth in Love is the way of the Churches growth and edification Ephes. 4. 15. Repentance is given men to the acknowledging of the Truth that they may escape out of the power of the Devil 2 Tim. 2. 25 26. The dullards are they that are never able to come to the knowledge of the truth 2 Tim. 3. 7. They are men of perverse minds that resist the Truth 2 Tim. 3. 8. They that receive not the Truth in the Love of it cannot be saved 2 Thes. 2. 10. All they are damned that believe not the Truth 2 Thes. 2. 12 13. You see what Truth is in the judgement of God and all the sober world Therefore a Lye that is contrary to Truth as darkness to Light must be equally odious as truth is amiable No wonder therefore if it be absolutely forbidden of God § 21. 3. You may the easilyer perceive this by considering that other faults of the tongue as idle talk swâ—aring and such like are forbidden not only because they are a hurt to others but for the intrinsical evil in the thing it self Great reason therefore that it should be so in this § 22. 4. Lying is a vice which maketh us most unlike to God For he is called the God of truth Psal. 31. 5. Deut. 32. 4. All his ways are mercy and truth Psal. 25. 10. His judgement is according to truth Rom. 2. 2. It is impossible for God to lye Heb. 6. 18. Tit. 1. 2. His word is the word Numb 23. 19. 1 Sam. 15. 29. 1 Joh. 5. 10. of truth Psal. 119. 43. Col. 1. 5. 2 Tim. 2. 15. Jam. 1. 15. 2 Cor. 6. 7. And who shall dwell in his Tabernacle but thâ—se that speak the truth in their hearts Psal. 15. 2. The disconformity of the soul to God then being its greatest dâ—formity in things wherein it is made to be conform to him it may hence appear that Lying is an odious sin And this may the easilyer appear if you consider what a case the world were in if God could lye and were not of undoubted truth we should then be sure of nothing and therefore could have no sure information by his word no sure direction and guidance by his precepts and no sure consâ—lation in any of his promises Therefore that which maketh us so unlike to the true and holy God must needs be odious § 23. 5. Lying is the Image or work of the Devil and Lyars are his Children in a special sort For Christ telleth us that he abode not in the truth for there is no truth in him when he speaketh a lye he speaketh of his own for he is a lyar and the father of it Joh. 8. 44. The Proud the Malicious and 1 King 22. 22 23. I will be a lying spirit in the moâ—â—hâ— of all his Prophets 2 Chron 18. 21 22. the Lyars are in a special sort the Children of the Devil for these three are in Scripture in a special manner made the Devils sins Therefore sure there is an intrinsical evil and odiousness in a lye It was Satan that filled the hearts of Ananias and Saphira to Lye to the Holy Ghost Act. 5. 3. To change the Truth of God into a lye and to make God a lyar are therefore the most odious sins Rom. 1. 25. 1 Joh. 5. 10. because it is a feigning him to be like the Devil And should we make our selves like him then by the same vice If you love not the Devils sin and image love not a lye § 24. 6. Lying destroyeth humane converse and bringeth
most pernicious confusion into the affairs of mankind Iâ— Truth be excluded men cannot buy and sell and trade and live together It would It was one of the Roman Lawâ— â—aâ— 12. Qui â—aâ—sâ—m tâ—stâ—monium dâ—â—â—â—se convictus erit e saâ—o Taâ—pâ—iâ— dejiciatur be sufficient to destroy their rational converse if they had no tongues But much more to have false tongues Silence openeth not the mind at all Lying openeth it not when it pretendeth to open it and falsly representeth it to be what it is not And therefore though you say that your Lyes do no such hurt yet seeing this is the nature and tendency of Lying as such it is just and merciful in the Righteous God to banish all Lying by the strictest Laws As the whole nature of Serpents is so far at enmity with the nature of man that we hate and kill them though they never did hurt us because it is in their nature to hurt us so God hath justly and mercifully condemned all lying because it 's nature tendeth to the desolation and confusion of the World and if any indulgence were given to it all iniquity and injustice would presently like an inundation overwhelm us all § 25. 7. Lying tendeth directly to perjury it self It is the same God that forbiddeth them both And when once the heart is hardened in the one it is but a step further to the other Cicero could observe that He that is used to lye will easily be perjured A sâ—ared Conscience that tollerateth one will easily be brought to bear the other § 26. 8. There is a partiality in the Lyar that condemneth himself and the sin in another which in himself he justifieth For there is no man that would have another lye to him As Austin saith Hic autem homâ—nes fallunâ— falluntur Misericres suâ—t cum mentiendo fallunt quam cum mentientibus credendo falluntur Uâ—que adeo tamen rationalis natura refugit falsitatem quantum potest devitat errorem ut falli nolint etiam quicunque amant fallere August Enchyrid c. 17. I have known many that would deceive but never any that would be deceived If it be good why should not all others lye to thee If it be bad why wilt thou lye to others Is not thy tongue under the same Law as theirs Dost thou like it in thy Children and in thy Servants If not it should seem much worse to thee in thy self as thou art most concerned in thy own actions § 27. 9. Iudge what lying is by thy own desire and expectation to be believed Wouldst thou not have men believe thee whether thou speak truth or not I know thou wouldst For the Lyar loseth his end if he be known to lye and be not believed And is it a reasonable desire or expectation in thee to have men to believe a Lye If thou wouldst be believed speak that which is to be believed § 28. 10. Lying maketh thee to be always incredible and so to be useless or dangerous to others For he that will lye doth leave men uncertain whether ever he speak truth unless there be better Evidence of it than his credibility As Aristotle saith A Lyar gets this by Lying that no body will believe him when he speaks the truth How shall I know that he speaketh true to day who lyed yesterday unless open Repentance recover his credibility Truth will defend it self and credit him that owneth it at last But falshood is indefensible and will shame its Patrons Saith Petrarch excellently Petrarâ—h l 1. de vit solit As Truth is immortal so a fiction and lye endureth not long Dissembled matters are quickly opened as the hair that is combed and set with great diligence is ruffled with a little blast of wind and the paint that is laid on the face with a deal of labour is washed off with a little sweat the craftyest lye cannot stand before the truth but is transparent to him that neerly looketh into it every thing that is covered is soon uncovered shadows pass away and the native colour of things remaineth It is a great labour to keep hidden long No man can long live under water he must needs come forth and shew the face which he concealed At the farthest God in the day of judgement will lay open all § 29. Direct 2. If you would avoid lying take heed of guilt Unclean bodies need a cover Direct 2. and are most ashamed to be seen Faultiness causeth Lying and Lying increaseth the fault When Sâ—epe delinquentibus promptissimum est mentiri Ciâ—â—r men have done that which they are afraid or ashamed to make known they think there is a necessity of using their art to keep it secret But wit and craft is no good substitute for honesty such patches make the rent much worse But because the corrupted heart of man will be thus working and flying to deceitful shifts prevent the cause and occasion of your lying Commit not the fault that needs a lye Avoiding it is much better than hiding it if you were sure to keep it never so close As indeed you are not for commonly truth will come to light It is the best way in the World to avoid lying to be innocent and do nothing which doth fear the light Truth and honesty do not blush nor desire to be hid Children and Servants are much addicted to this crime when their folly or wantonness or appetites or slothfulness or carelesness hath made them faulty they presently study a lye to hide it with which is to go to the Devil to intreat him to defend or cover his own works But wise and obedient and careful and diligent and conscionable Children and Servants have need of no such miserable shifts § 30. Direct 3. Fear God more than man if you would not be Lyars The excessive fear of man Direct 3. is a common cause of Lying This maketh Children so apt to lye to escape the rod and most persons Iâ—â—e veâ—â—tatâ—â— Defeâ—â—or esse debeâ— quâ— cum râ—cteâ—â—â—â—ntâ— loquâ— non metuâ—t nec erubeâ—â—â—â—t Ambâ— â—yarâ— are â—aliant against God cowardâ— against men Montaâ—â—a â—sâ— that are obnoxious to much hurt from others are in danger of Lying to avoid their displeasure But why fear you not God more whose displeasure is unspeakably more terrible Your Parents or Master will be angry and threaten to correct you But God threatneth to damn you and his wrath is a consuming fire No mans displeasure can reach your souls and extend to eternity will you run into Hell to escape punishment on Earth Remember whenever you are tempted to escape any danger by a lye that you run into a thousand fold greater danger and that no hurt that you escape by it can possibly be half so great as the hurt it bringeth It 's as foolish a course as to cure the tooth-ach by cutting off the head § 31. Direct 4. Get down your Pride and overmuch regard
as all metaphors are equivocal and yet may be used 2. When the equivocal sense is the most usual or obvious and if it be not understood it is through the hearers fault or extraordinary dulness 3. When a Robber or usurping Tyrant or any cruel enemy that hath no authority to do it shall seek to ensnare my life by questions I may lawfully answer him in such doubtful words as purposely are intended to deceive him or leave him ignorant of my sense so be it they be not lies or false in the ordinary usage of those words 4. And to such a person I may answer doubtfully when it is apparent that it is a doubtful answer and that I do it as professing that I will answer him no more particularly nor plainly but will conceal the rest Quest. 6. Whether all mental reservation be unlawful Quest. 6. Answ. This needeth no other answer than the former If the expressed words be a Lie the mental Answ. reservation will not make them justifiable as a truth But if the expressed words of themselves be true then the mental reservation may be lawful when it is no more than a concealment of part of the truth in a case where we are not bound to reveal it But of both these cases I must refer the Reader to what I have said about Vows Tom. 3. Chap. 5. Tit. 2. without which he will not know my meaning Quest. 7. May Children Servants or Subjects in danger use words which tend to hide their faults Quest. 7. Answ. 1. When they are bound not to hide the fault they may not Which is 1. When due obedience Answ. or 2. the greater good which will follow require them to open it 2. When they are not bound to open it they may hide it by just means but not by Lies or any evil In what cases they may hide a fault by just means I shall here say no more to Quest. 8. May I speak that which I think is true but am not sure Quest. 8. Answ. If you have a just call you may say you think it is true but not flatly that it is so Answ. Quest. 9. May I believe and speak that of another by way of news discourse or character which I hear Quest. 9. reported by godly credible persons or by many Answ. 1. The main doubt is when you have a call to speak it which is answered after Tom. 4. at Answ. large 2. You may not so easily believe and report evil of another as good 3. You must not believe ill of another any further than evidence doth constrain you Yet you may believe it according to the degree of evidence or credibility and make use of the report for just caution or for good But not to defame another upon uncertainty or without a call 4. The sin of Receiving and spreading false reports of others upon hearsay is now so common among those that do profess Sobriety and Religion that all men should take heed of it in all company as they would do of the Plague in an infectious time And now it is so notorious that false news and slanders of others are so common neither good mens words nor common fame will allow you or excuse you to believe or report any evil of another till you are able to prove that it is your duty But all Christians should joyn in Lamenting and reproving this common uncharitable sin Tit. 4. Special Directions against Idle talk and Babling § 1. Direct 1. UNderstand well what is idle talk For many take that to be vain which is not Direct 1. and many take not that to be vain which is I shall therefore open this before I go any further § 2. The judgement of infidels and impious men here are of little regard 1. Some of them What is not idle talk think prayer to be but vain words because God knoweth our wants and hearts Iob. 22. 2 3. and our service is not profitable to him As if he had bid us seek him in vain Isa. 45. 19. These I have elsewhere Jâ—b 21 15. Mal. 3. â—4 confuted 2. Others think frequent preaching vain and say as the Infidels of Paul Act. 17. 18. What will this Babler say and as Pharaoh Exod. 5. 9. Let them not regard vain words But God saith Deut. 32. 46 47. Set your hearts to all the words which I testifie among you for it is not a vain thing for you because it is your life 3. Some carnal wretches think all vain in Gods service which is spiritual and which they understand not or which is above the reach of a fleshly mind 4. And some think all vain in Preaching Conference Writing or Prayer which is long But Christ spake Job 34 9 Heb. 13. â—5 no vain words when he prayed all night Luk. 6. 12. Nor are we bid pray in vain when we are bid pray continually instantly and importunately 1 Thes. 5. 17. Act. 6. 4. Luk. 18. 1 2. Nor did Paul speak idly when he preacht till midnight Act. 20. Godliness is not vain which is profitable to all things 1 Tim. 4. 8. Indeed as to their own salvation the wicked may make our preaching vain but the word of God returneth not empty The oblations of the disobedient are vain Isa. 1. 13. and the prayer of the wicked abominable to the Lord but the prayer of the upright is his delight Prov. 15. 8. 4. Some think all preaching vain of that which they know already whereas they have most need to hear of that lest they condemn themselves by sinning against their knowledge 2 Pet. 1. 12 13. Rom. 14. 22. 6. Some think it vain if the same things be often preached on or repeated see Phil. 3. 1. though yet they never received and obeyed them Or if the same words be oft repeated in prayer though it be not from emptiness or affectation but fervencie Mark 14. 39. Psalm 136. 119. 7. Unbelievers Isa. 49. 4â— 5. think our boasting in God is vain 2 King 18. 20. 8. And some malitious adversaries charge it on Ministers as Preaching in vain whenever the hearers are not converted See Heb. 4. 2. Gal. 5. 2. 3. 4. 4. 11. Isa. 53. 1. § 3. On the other side many that are godly mistake in thinking 1. That all talk is vain which is not of absolute necessity to some great use and end 2. And that all mirth and pleasant discourse 1 King 18 27. Prov. 29. 9. is vain Whereas the Holy Ghost saith Prov. 17. 22. A merry heart doth good like a medicine but a broken spirit dryeth the bones Prov. 15. 13. A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken Gen. 26. 8. King Abimelech saw Isaack sporting with Rebekah his wife Laughing as the Hebrew is or playing as the Chaldee and Samaritan and Sept. or jeasting as the Syriack Arabick and Vulgar Latine § 4. Observe these
been tempted to But you are sure that Heaven is better than Earth and that it is far better for them to be with Christ. 6. You allwayes knew that your friends must die To grieve that they were mortal is but to grieve that they were but men 7. If their mortality or death be grievous to you you should rejoice that they are arrived at the state of Immortality where they must Live indeed and die no more 8. Remember how quickly you must be with them again The expectation of living long your selves is the cause of your excessive grief for the death of friends If you lookt your selves to die to morrow or within a few weeks you would lâ—ss grieve that your friends are gone before you 9. Remember that the world is not for one Generation only Others must have our places when we are gone God will be served by successive Generations and not only by one 10. If you are Christians indeed it is the highest of all your Desires and Hopes to be in Heaven And will you so grieve that your friends are gone thither where you most Desire and Hope to be § 19. Obj. All this is reason if my friend were gone to Heaven But he dyed impenitently and Object how should I be comforted for a soul that I have cause to think is damned Answ. Their misery must be your grief But not such a grief as shall deprive you of your greater Answ. Joyes or disable you for your greater duties 1. God is fitter than you to judge of the measures Helps to moderate our sorrow for the dâ—mned of his mercy and his judgements and you must neither pretend to be more merciful than he nor to reprehend his Justice 2. All the works of God are Good and all that is Good is amiable Though the misery of the creature be Bad to it yet the works of Justice declare the Wisdom and Holiness of God and the perfecter we are the more they will be amiable to us For 3 God himself and Christ who is the merciful Saviour of the World approve of the damnation of the finally ungodly 4. And the Saints and Angels in Heaven do know more of the misery of the souls in Hell than we do And yet it abateth not their Joyes And the perfecter any is the more he is like-minded unto God 5. How glad and thankful should you be to think that God hath delivered your selves from those eternal flâ—mes The misery of others should excite your Thankfulness 6. And should not the Joyes of all the Saints and Angels be your Ioy as well as the sufferings of the wicked be your sorrows But above all the thoughts of the Blessedness and Glory of God himself should over-top all the concernments of the creature with you If you will mourn more for the Thieves and Murderers that are hanged than you will rejoice in the Justice prosperity and honour of the King and the wellfare of all his faithful subjects you behave not your selves as faithful subjects 7. Shortly you hope to come to Heaven Mourn now for the damned as you shall do then or at least let not the difference be too great when that and not this is your perfect state A Form of Exhortation to the Ungodly in their Sickness or those that we fear are such DEar Friend The God that must dispose of us and all things doth threaten by this sickness to call away your soul and put an end to the time of your pilgrimage and therefore your friends that Love and pity you must not now be silent if they can speak any thing for your preparation and salvation because it must be Now or Never When a few days are past they must never have any such opportunity more If now we prevail not with you you are likely to be quickly out of hearing and past our advice and help for ever And because I know your weakness bids me be but short and your memory is not to be burdened with too much and yet your Necessity must not be neglected I shall reduce all that I have to say to you to these four heads 1. Of the change which you seem near to and the world which you are going to 2. Of the Preparation that must be made by all that will be saved and who they be that the Gospel doth Iustifie or Condemn 3. I would fain help you to understand which of these conditions you are in and what will become of your soul if it thus goeth hence And 4. If your case be bad I would direct you how you may come out of it and what is yet to be done while there remaineth any time and hope And I pray you set your heart to what I say for I will speak nothing but the certain truth of God revealed to the world by his son and spirit expressed in the Scripture and believed by all the Church of Christ. I. God knoweth the change is great which you are near You are leaving this world where you have spent the dayes of your preparation for eternity and leaving this flesh to corrupt and turn to common earth and must here converse with man no more You are going now to see that world which the Gospel told you of and you have often heard of but neither you nor we did ever see Before your friends have laid your body in the grave your soul must enter into its endless state and at the Resurrection your Body be joyned with it Either Heaven or Hell must be your lot for ever If it be Heaven you will there find a world of Light and Love and Peace A world of Angels and glorified souls who are all made perfect in Knowledge and Holiness living in the perfect flames of Love to their Glorious Creator Redeemer and Regenerater And with them you will be thus perfected your self your soul will see the Glory of God and be rapt up in his Love and filled with his Joyes and employed triumphantly in his Maâ— 13. 2 Thes 1. 6 7 8 9 10 11. praises and this for ever If Hell should be your portion you will there be thrust away as a hated thing from the face of God and there you will find a world of Devils and unholy damned miserable souls among whom you must dwell in the flames of the wrath of God and the horrours of your own Conscience remembring with anguish the mercy which you once rejected and the warnings and time which once you lost and at the Resurrection your Soul and Body must be reunited and live there in torment and despair for ever I know these things are but half believed by the â—ngodly world while they profess to believe them And therefore they must feel that which they refuseâ— to believe But God hath revealed it to us and we will believe our Maker You are now going to see the great difference between the end of Holiness and of sin between the Godly and the ungodly and to
united your Heart unto himself and turned it from sin to Holiness from the world to God and from Earth to Heaven and made you a new creature to live for Heaven as you did for earth Surely this is not so small and indiscernable a work or change but he that hath felt it on himself may know it It is a great work to bring a sinner to feel his unrighteousness and misery and to apply himself to Christ for Righteousness and life It is a great work to take off the heart from all the felicity of this world and to set it unfeignedly upon God and to cause him to place and seek his happiness in another world what ever become of all the prosperity or pleasure of the flesh It is thus with every true Believer for all the remnant of his sins and weaknesses And may you not know whether it be thus or not with you One of these is your case And it 's now time to know which of them it is when God is ready to tell you by his judgement If indeed you are in Christ and his Spirit be in you and hath renewed you and sanctified you and turned your heart and life to God I have then nothing more than Peace and Comfort to speak to you as in the following Exhortation But if it be otherwise and you are yet in a carnal state and were never renewed by the spirit of Christ Will you give me leave to deal faithfully with you as is necessary with one in your condition and to set before you at once your sin and your Remedy and to tell you what yet you must do if you will be saved IV. And first will you here lay to heart your folly and unfeignedly lament your sinful life before the Lord Not only this or that particular sin but principally your fleshly heart and life that in the main you have lived to this corruptible flesh and loved and sought and served the world before your God and the happiness of your soul. Alas friend did you not know that you had an immortal soul that must live in joy or misery for ever Did you not know that you were made to Love and serve and honour your maker and that you had the little time of this life given you to try and prepare you for your endless life and that as you lived here it must go with you in heaven or hell for ever If you did not believe these things why did you not come and give your Reasons against them to some judicious Divine that was able to have shewed you the Evidence of their truth If you did believe them alas how was it possible that you could forget them Could you believe a Heaven and a Hell and not regard them or suffer any transitory worldly vanity to be more regarded by you Did you know what you had to do in the world and yet is it all undone till now Were you never warned of this day Did never Preacher nor Scripture nor book nor friend nor conscience tell you of your end and tell you what would be the fruit of sin and of your contempt and slighting of Christ and of his grace Did you know that you must Love God above the world if ever you would be saved and that you must to that end be partaker of Christ and renewed by his spirit and yet would you let out your heart upon the world and follow the bruitish pleasures of the flesh and never earnestly seek after that Christ and spirit that should thus renew and sanctifie you Do you not think now that it had been wiser to have sought Christ and grace and set your affections first on the things above and to have made sure work for your soul against such a day as this than to have hardened your heart against Gods grace and despised Christ and Heaven and your salvation for a thing of nought You see now what it was that you preferred before Heaven what have you now got by all your sinful Love of the world where now is all your fleshly pleasure Will it all now serve turn to save you from death or the wrath of God and everlasting misery will it now go with you to another world Or do you think it will comfort a soul in Hell to remember the wealth which he gathered and left behind him upon earth would it not now have been much more comfortable to you if you could say My dayes were spent in Holiness in the Love of my dear Redeemer and in the hearty service of my God in praising him and praying to him in learning and obeying his holy word and will My business in the world was to please God and seek a better world and while I followed my lawful trade or calling my eye was chiefly on eternal life Instead of pleasing the flesh I delighted my soul in the Love and praise and service of my Redeemer and in the hopes of my eternal blessedness and now I am going to enjoy that God and happiness which I believ'd and sought Would not this be more comfortable to you now than to look back on your time as spent in a worldly fleshly life which you preferred before your God and your salvation Christ would not have forsaken you in the time of your extremity as the world doth if you had cleaved faithfully to him You little know what peace and comfort you might have found even on earth in a holy life How sweet would the word of God have been to you How sweet would prayer and meditation and holy conference have been Do you think it is not more pleasant to a true Believer to read the promises of eternal life and to think and talk of that blessed state when they shall dwell with God in Ioy for ever than it was to you to think and talk of worldly trash and vanity If you had used the world as a traveller doth the necessaries of his journey the thought of heaven would have offorded you solid rational comfort all the way O little do you know the sweetness of the Love of God in Christ and how good a Christian findeth it when he can but exercise and increase his knowledge and faith and Love to God and thankfulness for mercy and hopes of Heaven and walk with God in a heavenly conversation Do you not wish now that this had been your course But that which is done cannot be undone and time that is past can never be called back But yet there is a sure Remedy for your soul if you have but a heart to entertain and use it God so loved the world Joh. 3. 16 18. that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever Believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life Iesus Christ being God and Man is the Mediator between God and man His death is a sufficient Sacrifice for our sins It is his Office to save all those that come to God by him Do but unfeignedly
man may be made a Priest that hath sinned mortally after baptism and Si is qui taâ— in Episcopaâ—â—â—el Presbyteriâ— positus mortale pâ—â—catâ—â— aâ—â—â—â—od admâ—â—â—â—rit noâ— debâ—t oâ—â—â—â—rre pâ—â—es Domino quaâ—to magis patienter retrahat se ab hoc non tam honore quam onere aliorum locum qui digni sunt non ambiat occupaâ—e Qui cuim in erudiendiâ— instituendis ad virtutem populis praeest â—ecesse est ut in omnibus sanctus sit in nullo reprehensibilis habeatur Qui enim aliquem de peccato arguit ipse a peccâ—o debet esse immuniâ— Auct Bib. Paâ— To. 2. p. Sâ— If there were somewhat too much strictness in the ancient exclusion of them that heynously sinnâ—d after Baptism from the Priesthood let not us be as much too loose God of this world having blinded their minds It must be no small matter that must satisâ—ie a serious Christian to cast his soul upon any hurtful or dangerous disadvantage Though Daniel and his company may live well on pulse yea and Ezekiel upon bread baked with dung when God will have it so yet no wise man will choose such a dyet especially if his diseases require the exactest dyet or his weakness the most restorative and all toâ— little which alas is the common case Yet this caution you must here take with you 1. That you pretend not your own Benefit to the common loss or hurt of others 2. And that you consider as well where you may do most good as where you may get most For the way of greatest service is the way of Greatest gain § 12. Direct 5. Understand what sort and measure of Belief it is that you owe to your Teachers that Direct 5. so your incredulity hinder not your faith in Christ nor your overmuch credulity betray you not to heresie nor make you the servants of men contrary to Matth. 23. 8 9 10. Ephes. 4. 13. 2 Cor. 1. 24. Act. 20. 30. We see on one side how many poor souls are cheated into Schism and dangerous â—rrours by forsaking their â—eachers and refusing their necessary help and all upon this pretence that they must not make men the Lords of their faith nor pin their faith on the Ministers sleeve nor take their Religion upon trust And on the other side we see among the Papists and in every Sect what lamentable work is made by an overmuch credulity and belief of ambitious worldly factious The Order and Credit of Ministerial Teaching the doctrine of salvation proud and erroneous Guides That you may escape both these extreams you must observe the truth of these conclusions following which shew you what it is that your Teachers have to Reveal unto you and in what Order and how far the several particulars are or are not to be taken upon their words § 13. And first as a preparative it is presupposed 1. That you find your self ignorant and one that needeth a Teacher For iâ— you think you know all that you need to know already you are like a full bottle that will hold no more 2. It is presupposed that you take the man that you learn of to be wiser than your self and fit to teach you either because fame or other mens reports have told you so as the Woman Ioh. 4. drew the Samaritans to Christ or because his own Profession of skill doth make you think so as you will hearken to him that professeth to be able to Teach you any Art or Science Or else because your present hearing his discourse doth convince you of his Wisdom By one of these means you are brought to think that he is one that you may learn of and is fit for you to hear so that here is no need that first you take him to be infallible or that you know which is the true Church as the Papists say These are presupposed § 14. The Doctrines which he is to teach you are these and in this method to be taught 1. He 1. To know your self will teach you the natural knowledge of your self that being a man you are a Rational free agâ—nt made by another for his will and use and by him to be Ruled in order to your ultimate end being wholly his and at his dispose § 15. 2. He will next teach you that there is a God that made you and what he is and what 2. To know God and Holiness relation he standeth in to you and you to him as your Creatour your Owner your Ruler and your Benefactor and your End And what duty you owe him in these Relations to submit to him and resign your selves to him as his own to be obedient to all his Laws and to Love him and delight in him and this with all your heart and soul and might even to serve him with all the Powers of your soul and Body and with your estates and all his blessings § 16. 3. He will next teach you that this God hath made your souls immortal and that there is 3. To know â—â—â—â— Life to come a lite after this where everlasting Happiness or Mâ—sery will be your part and where the Great Rewards and Punishments are executed by the Judge oâ— all the World as men have behaved themselves in this present life That your End and happiness is not here but in the life to come and that this Life is thâ— way and time of preparation in which everlasting Happiness is won or lost § 17. Thus far he needeth no supernatural proof of what he saith but can prove it all to you from the light of nature And these things you are not primarily to receive of him as a Testifier by mâ—er Believing him but as a Teacher by Learning of him the Evidences by which you may by degrees come to know these things your selves § 18. Yet it is supposed that all along you give him so much credit as the difference between his Knowledge and yours doth require so far as it appeareth to you As you will hear a Physicion a Lawyer a Philosopher or any man with reverence while he discourseth of the matters of his own profession as confessing his judgement to be better than yours and therefore more suspecting your own apprehensions than his Not but that the Truth may compell you to discern it though you should come with no such reverence or respect to him but then you cast your self upon much disadvantage irrationally And this humane belief of him is but a medium to your Learning and so to the knowledge of the matter so that you do not stop and rest in his authority or credibility but only use it in order to your discovery of that evidence which you rest in which as a Teacher he acquaints you with § 19. These things being thus far revealed by natural light are usually at first apprehended by natural reason not so as presently to put or prove the soul in a state of saving grace but so as to awaken it
Here is the sum of what I have been saying § 30. 2. Observe also the great difference between us and the Papists in this controversie of using Tradition in the resolution of our Faith 1. They decide the main question in gross by Tradition viz. Whether the Scripture be the Word of God But we only decide the questions about history or matters of fact by it which are subservient to the other 2. The Tradition which most of them plead is nothing but the Authoritative judgement of the successive Pastors of the Church in a General Council confirmed by the Pope and as another faction among them saith The reception of the whole Church both Laity and Clergie and this Church must be only the Roman faction But the Tradition which we plead is the concurrent Testimony of friends and foes Orthodox and Hereticks and of all the Churches throughout the world both Greek and Latine Ethiopian Armenian Protestants c. And this Testimony we plead not meerly as a humane testimony much less as such as is credible chiefly for the meer Power real or pretended of the Testifiers but as such as by a concurrence of testimonies and circumstances hath besides the Teachers authority the evidences of infallible moral certainty in the very History as we have of the Statutes of the Realm § 31. Direct 6. Understand what kind and measure of Obedience it is that you owe your lawful Pastors Direct 6. that you neither prove Schismatical and unruly nor yet have a hand in setting up Idols and usurpations in the Church This you may learn from the foregoing description of the Pastors work The kind of your obedience is commensurate to the kind of his Office and Work You are not to obey your We may not offer any violence but only perswade We have not so great authority given us by the Laws as to repress offenders and if it were lawful for us so to do we have no use of any such 〈◊〉 power for that Christ crowneth them which abstain from sin not of a forced but of a willing mind and purpose Chrys. â—itaâ—te Bilson of Subjection p. 526. Et ibid. ex Hilar. If this violence were used for the true faith the Doctrine of Bishops would be against it God needeth no forced service He requireth no constrained confession I cannot receive any man but him that is willing I cannot give ear but to him that intreateth c. Ita Origen ibid. citat Pastors as Civil Magistrates that bear the Sword nor as Physicions to tell you what you must do for your health nor as Artificers to command you how to plow and sow and trade c. except in the Morality of these But it is as your Teachers and Guides in the matters of salvation that you must obey them And that not as Prophets or Law-givers to the Church but as the stated Officers of Christ to open and apply the Laws that he hath given and determine of such circumstances as are subservient thereunto Not as those that have dominion of your faith or may preach another 2 Cor. 1. 24. Gal. 1. 7 8. Gospel or contradict any truth of God which by Scripture or Nature he hath revealed or can dispence with any duty which he hath commanded But as those that have all their power from God 2 Cor. 10. 8. 13 10. and for God and your salvation and the good of other mens souls to edification only and not to destruction Particular cases I here purposely forbear § 32. Direct 7. Be sure that you look on them as the Officers of Christ in all that they do as such Direct 7. and see not only their natural but their Ecclesiastical Persons that through them you may have to do with God Especially in Preaching and Administring the Sacraments and binding the impenitent and absolving the penitent and comforting the sad and humbled souls All the holiness and life and power of your spiritual converse with them consisteth in your seeing and conversing with God in them and using them as his Messengers or Officers that deliver his message and do his work and not their own If you disobey them in his work it is God that you disobey And if they Teach you his Word or deliver you Christ and his benefits in the Sacraments it is Christ himself that doth it by them as by his instruments so far as they do it according to his Commission and his Will This observing Christ in their Teaching will possess you with due reverence and care and cause you to do it as a holy work And to see Christ in them delivering and sealing his Covenant to you will very much increase your joy when Man as Man is but a shadow Direct 8. § 33. Direct 8. Make use of their help in private and not in publick only As the use of a Physicion is not only to read a Lecture of Physick to his Patients but to be ready to direct every person according to their particular case there being such variety of temperatures diseases and accidents that in dangerous cases the direction of the judicious is needful in the application So here it is not the least of the Pastoral work to oversee the individuals and to give them personally such particular advice as their case requireth Never expect that all thy Books or Sermons or Prayers or Meditations should serve thy turn without the counsel of thy Pastors in greater cases for that were but to devise how to prove Gods Officers needless to his Church If thou be an ignorant or unconverted sinner go to the Minister and ask him what thou must do to be saved And resolve to follow his sound advice If thou be in doubt of any weighty point of faith or godliness or assaulted perillously by any adversary or need his advice for thy setled Peace thy assurance of Pardon and Salvation and thy preparation for death go ask counsel of thy Pastors and receive their help with readiness and thankfulness Or if thou live where there is none that is able and willing thus to help thee remove to them that are such if lawfully thou canst § 34. Direct 9. Assist your Pastors in the work of God by the duties of your places which tend Direct 9. thereto Labour by your holy serious conference to instruct the ignorant and convince the unbelieving Acts 18. 24 26 27. and convert the ungodly and strengthen the weak with whom you have fit opportunity for Rom. 16. 3. â—ohn 3. 8. Eph. 4. 29. 1 Pet. 4. 11. Phil. 2. 15. Matth. 5. 16. 1 Pet. 3. 1 2. 2 Pet. 3. 11. 1 Pet. 1. 15 16. 2. 12. Heb. 3. 13. Heb. 10. 24. Direct 10. 1 Thess. 5. 12 13. such work Labour by your holy examples by Love and Concord and Meekness and Sobriety and contempt of the world and a heavenly life to shine as lights in the midst of a dark and crooked Generation Preach all of you
by the examples of your blameless humble holy lives O how abundantly would this course promote the success of the publick preaching of the Gospel If you would cause those men to see the glory and power of the Gospel in your holy and heavenly lives who cannot see it in it self Then many that would not be won by the Word might be won without it to seek after it at least by your conversations Thus all must preach and be helpers of the Ministers of Christ. § 35. Direct 10. Forsake not your faithful Pastors to follow deceivers but adhere to them who spend and are spent for you Defend their innocency against false accusers and refuse them not such maintenance as is needful to their entire giving up themselves to that holy work to which they are devoted Read and study well Ephes. 4. 13 14 15. Acts 20. 30. It is for your sakes that your faithful 2 Tim. 2. 10. 2 Cor. 4. 15. 1 Thess. 3. 9. 1 Thess. 1. 5. Matth. 26. 56. 2 Tim. 4. 16. Gal. 6. 6 10. 1 Cor. 9. Col. 1. 24. Pastors are singled out in the world to bear the slanders and contradictions of the wicked and to lead the way in the fiery tryal If they would forsake you and that sacred truth and duty that is needful to your salvation and sell you up into the hands of cruell and deceitful men it were as easie for them to have the applause of men and the prosperity of the world as others It is perfidious ingratitude to forsake them in every tryal that must lose their lives and all the world rather then forsake you or betray your souls Or to grudge them food and rayment that lay by the gainful employments of the world that they may attend continually on the service of your souls CHAP. VII Directions for the discovery of the Truth among Contenders and the escape of Heresie and Deceit § 1. THough Truth be naturally the Object of mans Understanding to which it hath a certain Niâ—ebatur Socrates summo ingenii acumine non tam illos ex sententia reâ—ellere quam ipse quid verum esset invenâ—re inclination and though it be a delightful thing to know the truth yet that which is saving meeteth with so much opposition in the flesh and in the world that while it is applauded in the general it is resisted and rejected in particulars And yet while the Use of holy truth is hated and obstinately cast away the name and the barren profession of it is made the matter of the glorying of hypocrites and the occasion of reproaching dissenters as Hereticks and the world is filled with bloody persecutions and inhumane implacable enmities and divisions by a wonderful zeal for the Name of Truth even by those men that will rather venture on damnation than they will obey the Truth which they so contend for Multitudes of men have Laert. iâ— Socrat. tormented or murdered others as Hereticks who themselves must be tormented in Hell for not being Christians It concerneth us therefore to deal very wisely and cautelously in this business § 2. Direct 1. Take heed lest there be any carnal interest or lust which maketh you unwilling to Direct 1. receive the truth or inclineth you to error that it may serve that interest or lust It is no small number of men that are strangers or enemies to the truth not because they cannot attain the knowledge of it but because they would not have it to be truth And men of great learning and natural parts are frequently thus deceived and led into error by a naughty carnal byassed heart Either because that error is the vulgar opinion and necessary to maintain their popular reputation and avoid reproach or because it is the way of men in power and necessary to their preferment and greatness in the world or because the Truth is contrary to their fleshly lusts and pleasures or contrary to their honour and worldly interest and would hazard their reputations or their lives How loth Heb 12. 14. 2 Cor. 5. 17. Rom. 8. 9 13. is a sensual ungodly man to believe that without Holiness none shall see God and that he that is in Christ is a new creature and that if any man have not the Spirit of Christ the same is none of his and that if they live after the flesh they shall dye How loth is the ambitious Minister to believe that the way of Christs service lyeth not in worldly pomp or ease or pleasures but in taking up the Cross and following Christ in self-denyal and in being as the servant of all in the unwearied performance of careful oversight and compassionate exhortations unto all the flock Let a controversie be raised about any of these points and the mind of lazy ambitious men doth presently fall in with that part which gratifieth their fleshly lusts and excuseth them from that toilsome way of duty which they already hate The secret lusts and vices of a false hypocritical heart are the commonest and the powerfullest arguments for error And such men are glad that Great men or Learned men will give so much ease to their consciences and shelter to their reputations as to countenance or make a Controversie at least of that which their lusts desire to be true Above all therefore see that you come not to enquire after Truth with an unsanctified heart and unmortified lusts which are a byass to your minds and make you warp from the truth which you enquire after For if the carnal mind neither is nor can be subject to the Law of God you may easily perceive that it will be loth to believe it when in so doing they believe their own condemnation An honest sanctified heart is fittest to entertain the truth § 3. Direct 2. Seek after the truth for the love of truth and love it especially for its special use as Direct 2. it formeth the heart and life to the Image and Will of God and not for the fanciful delight of knowing Socrates de Ethâ—ce in Offiâ—inis in publico quotidie Philosophans ea potius inquirenda hortabatur quae mores instruerent quorum usus nobis domi esset necessarius Laert. in Socrat. much less for carnal worldly ends No means are used at all as means where the End is not first determined of And to do the same thing materially to another end is not indeed to do the same For thereby it s made another thing Your Physicion will come to you if you you seek to him as a Physicion but not if you send to him to mend your Shoos So if you seek knowledge for the true ends of knowledge to fill your hearts with the Love of God and guide your lives in holiness and righteousness God is engaged to help you in the search But if you seek it only for to please your pride or fansie no wonder if you miss of it and it is no great matter
whether you find it or not for any good its like to do you Every Truth of God is appointed to be his Instrument to do some holy work upon your heart Let the Love of Holiness be it that maketh you search after Truth and then you may expect that God should be your teacher § 4. Direct 3. Seek after Truth without too great or too small regard to the judgement of others neither contemn them nor be captivated to them Use the help of the wise but give not up your Direct 3. Reason absolutely to any Engage not your selves in a Party so as to espouse their errors or Non tam autoritatis in disputando quam rationis momenta quaerenda sunt Cic. Nat. Deo p. 6. Obest plerumque iis qui discere volunt autoritas eorum qui se docere profitentur Desinunt enim suum judicium adhibere Id habent ratum quod ab eo quem probant judicatum vident Cic. de Nat. Deo p. 7. implicitely to believe whatever they say For this breedeth in you a secret desire to please your party and interesseth you in their dividing interest and maketh you betray the Truth to be accounted Orthodox by those you value § 5. Direct 4. Take heed of Pride which will make you dote upon your own conceits and cause Direct 4. you to slight the weightiest reasons that are brought by others for your conviction And if once you have espoused an error it will engage all your wit and zeal and diligence to maintain it It will make you uncharitable and furious against all that cross you in your way and so make you either Persecutors if you stand on the higher ground or Sect-leaders or Church-dividers and turbulent and censorious if you are on the lower ground There is very great reason in Pauls advice for the choice of a Bishop 1 Tim. 3. 6. Not a Novice lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the Devil It is no more wonder to see a Proud man erroneous and in the confidence of his own understanding to rage against all that tell him he is mistaken than to hear a drunken man boasting of his wit to the increase of his shame § 6. Direct 5. Take heed of slothfulness and impatience in searching after Truth and think not Direct 5. to find it in difficult cases without both hard and patient studies and ripeness of understanding to enable you therein And suspect all opinions which are the off-spring of idleness and ease what ever Divine illumination they may pretend except as you take them from others upon trust in a slothful way who attained them by diligent studies For God that hath called men to labour doth use to give his blessing to the laborious And he that hath said by his Spirit 1 Tim. 4. 15. Meditate upon these things give thy self wholly to them that thy profiting may appear to all doth accordingly cause those men to profit who seek it in this laborious way of his appointment And he that hath said The desire of the slothful killeth him doth not use to bless the slothful with his teachings He that Prov. 24. 30. Prov. 21. 25. Matth. 25. 26. will say to him in judgement Thou wicked and slothful servant will not encourage the slothfulness which he condemneth My Son if thou wilt receive my words and hide my commandments with thee so that thou incline thine ear to wisdom and apply thine heart to understanding Yea if thou cryest after knowledge and liftest up thy voice for understanding If thou seekest her as Silver and searchest for her as for hid treasures Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God For the Lord giveth Wisdom Prov. 2. 1 2 3 4 5 6. Mark here to whom God giveth wisdom All the godly are taught of God But mark here how it is that he teacheth them Not while they scorn at Studies and Universities and look that their knowledge should cost them nothing or that the Spirit should be instead of serious studies or that their understandings should discern what 's true or false at the first appearance But while they think no pains or patience too great to learn the truth in the School of Christ. § 7. Direct 6. Keep out Passion from your Disputes and in the management of all your controversies Direct 6. in Religion For though Passion be useful both antecedently to the the Resolution of the Will and consequently Quae duae virtutes in Disputatore primae sunt eas ambas in Hubero deprehendi Patientiam adversarium prolixe sua explicantem audiendi lenitatem etiam aspere dicta perserendi inq Scultetus post disâ— Cuâ—â—ic p. 33. to the effectual execution of its Resolutions yet it is commonly a very great seducer of the understanding and strangely blindeth and perverteth judgement so that a Passionate man is seldome so far from the truth as when he is most confident he is defending it When Passion hath done boyling and the heart is cooled and leaveth the judgement to do its work without any clamour and disturbance its strange to see how things will appear to you to be quite of another tendency and reason than in your Passion you esteemed them § 8. Direct 7. Keep up a sense of the evil and danger of both extreams and be not so wholly intent Direct 7. upon the avoiding of one extream as to be fearless of the other The narrow minds of unexperienced men are hardly brought to look on both sides them and to be duly sensible of the danger of both extreams But while they are taken up only with the hating and opposing one sort of errors they forget those on the other side And usually the sin or error which we observe not is more dangerous to us than that which we do observe if the wind of temptation sit that way Direct 8. § 9. Direct 8. When you detect any antient error or corruption enquire into its original and see whether Reformation consist not rather in a restitution of the primitive state than in an extirpation of the whole Even in Popery it self there are many errors and ill customs which are but the corruption of some weighty truth and the degenerating of some duty of Gods appointment And to reduce all in such cases to the primitive verity is the way of wise and true reformation and not to throw away that which is Gods because it is fallen into the dirt of humane depravation But in cases where all is bad there all must be rejected § 10. Direct 9. Pretend not Truth and Orthodoxness against Christian Love and Peace and so follow Direct 9. Rom. 12. 13. 1 Cor. 13. Truth as that you lose not Love and Peace by it As much as in you lyeth live peaceably with all men Charity is the End of Truth And it is a mad use of Means to use them against the End
more to be regarded in many points which require experience than many of the younger sort that are yet more zealous and of quicker understanding and expression than the elder So those that we call the Fathers or Ancients were indeed in the younger ages of the Church and we that are faln into the later and more exprienced age have all the helps of the wisdom and experience of the Ages that were before us And therefore God will require at our hands an account of these greater talents which we have received As it were unexcusable now in a Physicion that hath the help of such Voluminous institutions observations and experiments of former ages to know no more than those former times that had no such helps so would it be as unexcusable for this present age of the Church to be no wiser than those former ages When Aquinas Scotus Ariminensis and other Schoolmen delivered the Doctrine of Christianity to the Church in a dress so far different from Ignatius Irenaeus Tertullian Cyprian or any of those former ages they certainly thought that they had attained to a far greater excellency and accurateness in the Knowledge of Divinity than those their Ancestors had attained And whatever they swear in the Trent Oâ—th of not expounding any Scripture otherwise than the Fathers do I doubt not but Suarez and Vasquez and others of their modern Schoolmen thought so too and would have been loth to be accounted wise in the measure only of those ancients The later and elder ages of the Church have had abundant experience e. g. of the tendâ—ncy of Ambition and Papal aspirings and usurpations of the mischiefs of composing and imposing the Popish Missals and numerous ceremonies and of their implicite faith and their concealment of the Scriptures from the Vulgar and many such points And if we are never the wiser for all this experience we are the more unexcusable and may be judged as the neglâ—cters of our greater helps § 32. Direct 21. In Controversies which depend most upon skill in the Languages Philosophy or other Direct 21. parts of common learning prefer the judgement of a few that are the most Learned in those matters before the judgement of the most ancient or the most Godly or of the greatest numbers even whole Churches that are unlearned In this case neither Numbers nor Antiquity nor Godliness will serve turn but as one clear eye will see further then ten thousand that are purblind so one Hierome or Origen may judge better of a translation or the Grammatical sense of a Text than a hundred of the other Fathers could One man that understandeth a Language is fitter to judge of it than a whole Nation that understand it not One Philosopher is fitter to judge of a philosophical question than a thousand illiterate persons Every man is most to be regarded in the matters which he is best acquainted with § 33. Direct 22. In Controversies of great difficulty where Divines themselves are disagreed and a Direct 22. clear and piercing wit is necessary regard more the judgement of a few acute judicious well studied Divines that are well verst in those Controversies than of a multitude of dull and common wits that think to carry it by the reputation of their number It is too certainly attested by experience that Judicious Satis triumphâ—t Vâ—ritas si apud paucos bonosque accepta nec indoles ejus est placere multis Lipsius men are very few and that the multitude of the injudicious that have not wit enough to underderstand them nor humility enough to confess it and to learn of them have yet pride and arrogoncy enough to contradict them and often malice enough to vilifie them In such differences it is not only a sign of a wise man to be content with the approbation of a few but also to have but few approvers except where the injudicious do implicitly believe those few that are judicious Commonly a very few that are wiser than the multitude are fain to stand by and compassionate not only the World but the Church and see the disease and the easie remedy and all in vain while they are but neglected or despised by the rest that will not be made wiser by them § 34. Direct 23. In all contentions hold close to that which all sides are agreed in There is so Direct 23. much agreed on even between the Papists and the Protestants as would certainly save them all if all of them did sincerely believe Love and Practise it For they all confess that the whole Canonical Scripture is true Therefore be more studious sincerely to hold and improve those common truths which they all profess than to oppose the particular opinions of any further than that common truth requireth it See that the Articles of the common Creed which all profess be unfeignedly believed by you and that the Petitions in the Lords Prayer be sincerâ—ly and earnestly put up to God and that the ten Commandments be heartily and entirely obeyed and then no errour or difference will be damning to you § 35. Direct 24. Take nothing as necessary to salvation in point of faith nor as universally necessary Direct 24. in point of practice which the universal Church in every age since Christ did not receive For if any thing be necessary to salvation which the Church received not in every age then the Church it self of that age could not be saved and then the Church was indeed no Church For Christ is the Saviour of his body But certainly Christ had in every age a Church of saved-ones who openly professed all that was of common necessity to salvation An opinion may be true which accuseth the generality in the Church of some errour or imperfection For it is most certain that the Church on Earth is composed of none that have the use of reason but erring and imperfect members But no opinion can be true that condemneth all the Church to Hell in any one age For the Head and Husband of the Church must be her Judge § 36. Direct 25. Be not born down by the censoriousness of any to overrun your own understanding Direct 25. and the truth and to comply with them in their errours and extreams But hold to the truth Thus Peter and Barâ—abas erred Gal. 2. and keep your station Jer. 15. 19. Let them return unto thee but return not thou unto them It is too usual for the younger and more injudicious sort of Christians to be most zealous about some little Opinions Ceremonies and Words and to censure all those that differ from them with such bitter censures as ungodly flashearted c. that hereupon some of the more judicious forsake the truth and simplicity of the Gospel to comply with these censurers meerly to escape them or as some say that they may keep an interest in them to do them good But such carnal compliances though with the most zealous men will bring
nothing home at last but repentance and shame Truth which is the means of the good of souls must not be betrayed as for the good of souls § 37. Direct 26. Doubt not of well proved Truths for every difficulty that appeareth against them Direct 26. There is scarce any truth in the World so plain but in your own thoughts or in the câ—vâ—ls of a wrangling wit there may such difficulties be raised as as you can hardly answer And there is scarce any thing so evident that some will not dispute against You see that even the learnedst Jesuits and all the Clergy of the Roman Kingdom will not stick to dispute all the World if they could out of the belief of all their senses while they maintain that Bread is not Bread and wine is not wine And yet how many Princes Lords and Rulers follow them and many millions of the people because they be not able to confute them If they had said that a man is no man but a warm Psal. 22. 6. they might in reason have expected as much belief § 38. Direct 27. Abuse not your own knowledge by subjecting it to your carnal interest or sensuality Direct 27. He that will sin against his Conscience and will not obey the Knowledge which he hath doth Maâ—â—5 29. Rom. 14. 22. deserve to be given over to blindness and deceit and to lose even that which he hath and to be forsaken till he believe and defend a lye that all they might be damned who obeyed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness 2 Thes. 2. 10 11 12. God will not hold him guiltless who debaseth his sacred truth so far as to make it stoop to his commodity and â—ust where he is a Teacher he will be a King and sendeth his Truth as the instrument of his Government and not as a slave or pandor to the flesh He that will do Gods will shall know it Joh. 7. 17. But the carnal mind that cannot be subject to Gods Law is unfit to receive it because it is spiritually discerned Rom. 8. 7. 1 Cor. 2. 14. CHAP. VIII Directions for the Union and Communion of Saints and the avoiding unpeaceableness and Schism THE PEACE and CONCORD of Believers is a thing that almost all those plead Of this subjâ—ct I have written already 1. My Univâ—â—sal Concord 2. My Catholiâ—k Unity 3. Of the True Catholick Châ—râ—h 4. My Châ—istiaâ— Coâ—â—ord for who call themselves Believers and yet a thing that almost all men hinder and resist while they commend it The Discord and DIVISIONS of believers are as commonly spoken against and by the same men as commonly fomented The few that are sincere both Rulers and private men desire Concord and hate Divisions in Love to Holiness which is promoted by it and in Love to the Church and good of souls and the honour of Religion and the Glâ—ry of God And the few of those few that are experienced wise judicious persons do choose the means that is fittest to attain these ends and do prudently and constantly prosecute them accordingly But these being in the World as a spoonful of fresh water cast into the Sea or a spoonful of water cast into the flames of a house on fire no wonder if the brinish Sea be not sweetened by them nor the consuming raging fire quenched by them The other Rulers of the world and of the Churches are for Concord and against Division because this tendeth to the quieting of the people under them Read over Sr. Fr. Bacoâ—s third Essaâ— and Hales of Schism and the making of men submissive and obedient to their wills and so to confirm their dignities dominions and interests And all men that are not Hâ—ly being predominantly SELFISH they would all be themselves the Center of that Union and bond of that concord which they desire And they would have it accomplished upon such terms â—â—d by such means as are most agreeable to their principles and Ends In which there are almost a many minds as Men so that among all the Commenders of UNITY and concord there are none that take the way to attain it but those that would center it all in GOD and seek it upon his terms and in his way The rest are all tearing Unity and Peace in pieces while they commend it and they fight against it while they seek it every man seeking it for Himself and upon his own terms and in his own way which are so various and inconsistent that East and West may sooner meet than they § 2. Yet must the sons of God be still the sons of Peace and continue their prayers and endeavours for UNITY how small soever be the hopes of their success If it be possible as much as in us lyeth Rom. 12 18. we must live peaceably with all men So far must they be from being guilty of any Schismes or unlawful Divisions of the Church that they must make it a great part of their care and work to preserve the Unity and peace of Christians In this therefore I shall next Direct them § 3. Direct 1. Understand first wherein the Unity of Christians and Churches doth consist Or else Direct 1. you will neither know how to preserve it nor when you violate it Christians are said to be United In vâ—ste Christi varietas siâ— sâ—issura non sit They be two things Unity and Uniformity â— Bacoâ— Essay 3. to Christ when they are entered into Covenant with him and are become his Disciples his Subjects and the members of his Political Body They are united to one another when they are united to Christ their common head and when they have that spirit that faith that Love which is communicated to every living member of the body This Union is not the making of many to be One Christian but of many Christians to be one Church which is considerable either as to its Internal Life or its external order and profession In the former respect the bonds of our Union are 1. The heart-Covenant or faith 2. And the spirit The Consent of Christ and of our selves concurring doth make the match or marriage between us and the spirit communicated from him to us is as the nerves or ligaments of the body or rather as the spirits which pass through all The Union of the Church considered Visibly in its outward Policy is either that of the whole Church or of the Particular Churches within themselves or of divers particular Churches accidentally united 1. The Union of the whâ—le is Essential integral or accidental The essential Union is that Relation of a Head and members which is between Christ and all the visible members of his Church The foundation of it is the mutual Covenant between Christ and them considered on their part as made Externally whether sincerely or not This is usually done in Baptism and is the chiefest act of their Profession of the faith Thus the Baptismal Covenant doth constitute us
unheard or upon rash presumption Prop. 12. Christianity and Heresie being personal qualities and no where found but in individuals Ezek. 18 17. Gen. 18 3 24 â—5 nor one man guilty of anothers error it followeth that it is single persons upon personal guilt that must be judged Prop. 13. Any man may judge another to be a Christian or Heretick by a private judgement of 1 Cor. â—0 1â— Acts 1. 19. 1 Cor. â— 3 4 5. 1 Cor. 11. 3. Mat. 5. 11 12. John 16. 2. discerning or the reason which guideth all humane actions But only Church Rulers may judge him by that publick Judgement which giveth or denyeth him his publick priviledges and Communion Prop. 14. If by notorious injustice Church Rulers condemn Christians as no Christians though they may thereby deny them communion with those publick Assemblies which they govern yet do they not oblige the people to take such injured persons for no Christians Else they might oblige all to believe a lye to consent to malicious injuries and might disoblige the people from Truth Righteousness and Charity Prop. 15. There is no one Natural or Collective Head and Governour of all the Churches in the 1 Cor. 12. 27 28 29. world the Universal Church but Jesus Christ And therefore there is none that by such Governing power can excommunicate any man out of the Universal Church And such Usurpation would Eph. 4. 5 6 7. 1 Cor. 1. 12 13 3. 22 23. be Treason against Christ whose Prerogative it is Prop. 16. Yet he that deserveth to be excommunicated from one Church deserveth to be Ephes. 5. 23. 4 15. excommunicated by and from all if it be upon a Cause common to all or that nullifieth his Christianity Col. 1. 18. 2. 19. Prop. 17. And where neighbour Churches are Consociate and live in Order and Concord he that 3 John is orderly excommunicate from one Church and it be notified to the rest should not be taken into the communion of any of the rest till he be cleared or become fit for their communion But Ephes. 5. 11. 1 Cor. 5. 1â— this obligation ariseth but from the Concord of Consociate Churches and not from the Power of one over the rest And it cannot reach all the world where the person cometh not nor was ever known but only to those who through neighbourhood are capable of just notice and of giving or denying communion to that person Prop. 18. From all this it is clear that it is not either Papists alone or Greeks alone or Protestants alone or any party of Christians who are the Universal Church seeing that Church containeth All 1 Cor. 1â— 12. John 13. 3â— 1 Cor. 13 1 2 c. Christians And that reviling others yea whole Nations as Hereticks Schismaticks and no Christians or Churches will no more prove the Revilers to be the only Church or Christians than Want of Love will prove a man to be one of Christs Disciples who by Love are known to all men to be his Prop. 19. It is therefore the shameful language of distracted men to cry out against other Christian Nations It is not you but we that are the Catholick or Universal Church And our shameful Controversie which of them is the Catholick is no wiser than to question Whether it be this house or that which is the Street Or this Street or that which is the City Or whether it be the 1 Cor. 12. 12. 1 Cor. 6. 17. 10. 17. Kitchin or the Hall or the Parlour which is the House Or the Hand or Foot or Eye which is the Man O when will God bring distracting Teachers to Repentance and distracted people to their wits Ephes. 4. 3 c. Prop. 20. There is great difference in the Purity or soundness of the several parts of the Universal Church some being more Orthodox and holy and some deâ—â—led with so many Errours and sins Gal. 4. 11 12. as to make it difficult to discern whether they do not deny the very essentials Prop. 21. The Reformed Churches are the soundest and purest that we know in the world and Rev. 3 8 9 10 11 12. 2 10 11. Act. 14 22. Tit. 1 5. Rom. 16. 4 16. 1 Cor. 7 17. 11. 16. 14. 3â— 34. 2 Thes. 1. 4. Rev. 2. 23. therefore their priviledge exceeding great though they are not all the Universal Church Prop. 22. Particular Churches consisting of Lawful Pastors and Christian people associated for personal Communion in Worship and holy living are societies or true Churches of Christâ— institution and the chief parts of the Universal Church As Cities and Corporations are of the Kingdom Prop. 23. There are thousands of these in the world and a man may be saved in one as well as in another Only the purest give him the best advantages for his salvation And therefore should be preferred by all that are wise and love their souls so far as they are free to choose their Communion Prop. 24. The case then being easily resolved which is the true Church viz. All Christians ☜ as Christians are the Catholick or Universal Church and All Congregations afore described of 1 Cor. 1. 13. Rom. 16. 17. Act. 20. 30. true Pastors and Christians being particular true Churches differing only in degrees of purity he is to be suspected as a designing deceiver and troubler of the world that pretending to be a Learned man and a Teacher doth still perplex the Consciences of the ignorant with this frivolous question and would muddy and obscure this clear state of the case lest the people should rest in the discerned truth Prop. 25. The Papal Church as such being no true Church of Christs institution of which by it self anon it followeth that a Papist as a Papist is no member of the Church of Christ that is Acts 2. 44. 1 Cor. 1. 10. 1 Thes. 5. 12 13. no Christian. But yet whether the same person may not be a Papist and a Christian and so a member of the Catholick Church we shall anon enquire Prop. 26. There are many things which go to make up the fitness and desireablness of that particular Heb. 10. 25. 1 Tim. 3. 7. 3 Joh. 12. Church which we should prefer or choose for our ordinary personal Communion As 1. That it be the Church of that place where we dwell If the place be so happy as to have no divided Churches that it be the sole Church there However that it be so neerâ—â— to be fit for our Communion 2. That it be a Church which holdeth Communion with other neighbour Churches and is not singular or divided from them Or at least not from the Generality of the Churches of Christ nor Act 16 32 34. Act 10. 2. 22. Act. 18. 8. Col. 4. 15. differeth in any great matters from those that are most pure 3. That it be under the Reputation of soundness with the other Churches aforesaid
by decisive Iudicial â—entence Nor any Universal Civil Monarch of the world 2. The publick Governing Decisive judgement obliging others belongeth to publick persons or Officers Eph. 4. 7 13 14 15 16. of God and not to any private man 1 Cor. 12. 28 29. 17. 3. The publick decision of Doubts or Controversies about Faith it self or the true sense of Gods Word and Laws as obliging the whole Church on Earth to believe that decision or not gainsay it Acts 15. See my Key for Catholicks because of the Infallibility or Governing authority of the Deciders belongeth to none but Jesus Christ Because as is said he hath made no Universal Governour nor Infallible Expositor It belongeth to the Law-giver only to make such an Universally obliging Exposition of his own Laws 4. True Bishops or Pastors in their own particular Churches are Authorized Teachers and Guides in Expounding the Laws and Word of Christ And the people are bound as Learners to reverence their Teaching and not contradict it without true cause yea and to believe them fide humanâ in things pertinent to their Office For oportet discentem credere 5. No such Pastors are to be Absolutely believed nor in any case of notorious Error or Heresie where the Word of God is discerned to be against them 6. For all the people as Reasonable creatures have a judgement of private discerning to judge what they must Receive as Truth and to discern their own duty by the help of the Word of God and of their Teachers 7. The same power of Governing-Iudgement Lawful Synods have over their several flocks as a Pastor over his own but with greater advantage 8. The power of Judging in many Consociate Churches who is to be taken into Communion as Orthodox and who to be refused by those Churches as Hereticks in specie that is what Doctrine they will judge sound or unsound as it is Iudicium discernendi belongeth to every one of the Council â—ingly As it is a Iudgement obliging themselves by Contract and not of Governing each other it is in the Contracters and Consenters And for peace and order usually in the Major Vote But with the Limitations before expressed 9. Every true Christian believeth all the Essentials of Christianity with a Divine faith and not by a meer humane belief of his Teachers though by their Help and Teaching his faith is generated and confirmed and preserved Therefore no essential Article of Christianity is left to any obliging decision of any Church but only to a subservient obliging Teaching As whether there be a God a Christ a Heaven a Hell an Immortality of souls whether God be to be believed loved feared obeyed before man Whether the Scripture be Gods Word and true Whether those that contradict it are to be believed therein Whether Pastors Assemblies publick Worship Baptism Sacrament of the Lords Supper be Divine institutions And the same I may say of any known Word of God No mortals may judge in partem utramliâ—et but the Pastors are only Authorized Teachers and helpers of the peoples faith And so they be partly to one another 10. If the Pope or his Council were the Infallible or the Governing Expositors of all Gods Laws and Scriptures 1. God would have enabled them to do it by an Universal Commentary which all men should be obliged to believe or at least not to contradict For there is no Authority and Obligation given to men yea to so many successively to do that for the needful decision of Controversies which they never have Ability given them to do For that were to oblige them to things impossible 2. And the Pope and his Council would be the most treacherous miscreants on earth that in so many hundred years would never write such an Infallible nor Governing Commentary to end the differences of the Christian world Indeed they have judged with others against Arrius that Christ is true God and one with the Father in substance c. But if they had said the contrary must we have taken it for Gods truth or have believed them 11. To judge who for Heresie or Seandal shall be punished by the Sword belongeth to none but the Magistrate in his own dominions As to judge who shall have Communion or be excommunicated from the Church belongeth as aforesaid to the Pastors And the said Magistrate hath first as a man his own Iudgement of discerning what is Heresie and who of his subjects are guilty of it in order to his publick Governing Judgement 12. The Civil Supream Ruler may Antecedently exercise this Judgement of Discerning by the Teaching of their proper Teachers in order to his consequent sentences on offenders And so in his Laws may tell the subjects what Doctrines and practices he will either Tolerate or punish And thus may the Church Pastors do in their Canons to their several flocks in relation to Communion or non-communion 13. He that will condemn particular persons as Hereticks or offenders must allow them to speak for themselves and hear the proofs and give them that which justice requireth c. And if the Pope can do so at the Antipodes and in all the world either per se or per alium without giveing that other his essential claimed power let him prove it by better experience than we have had 14. As the prime and sole-universal Legislation belongeth to Jesus Christ so the final Judgement universal and particular belongeth to him which only will end all Controversies and from which there is no appeal Quest. 29. Whether a Parents power over his Children or a Pastor or many Pastors or Bishops over the same Children as parts of their flock be greater or more obliging in matters of Religion and publick Worship THis being toucht on somewhere else I only now say 1. That if the case were my own I would 1. Labour to know their different Powers as to the matter commanded and obey each in that which is proper to his place 2. If I were young and ignorant Natural necessity and natural obligation together would give my Parents with whom I lived such an advantage above the Minister whom I seldome see or understand as would determine the case de eventu and much de jure 3. If my Parents commanded me to hear a Teacher who is against Ceremonies or certain Forms and to hear none that are for them natural necessity here also ordinarily would make it my duty first to hear and obey my Parents And in many other cases till I came to understand the greater power of the Pastors in their own place and work 4. But when I come to Church or know that the judgement of all Concordant Godly Pastors condemneth such a thing as damnable Heresie or Sin which any Father commandeth me to receive and profess I would more believe and follow the Judgement of the Pastors and Churches Quest. 30. May an Office Teacher or Pastor be at once in a stated Relation of a Pastor and a
but a loss of that benefit which they received and hold only by another It is not so properly called a punishment for anothers Sin as a non-deliverance or a non-continuance of their deliverance which they were to receive on the condition of anothers duty Obj. But the Church retaineth them as her members and so their right is not lost by the fault or apostasie of the Parents Answ. 1. Lost it is one way or other with multitudes of true Christians Children who never shew any signes of grace and prove sometimes the worst of men And God breaketh not his Covenant 2. How doth the Church keep the Greeks Children that are made Janizaries 3. No man stayeth in the Church without title If the Church or any Christians take them as their own that 's another matter I will not now stay to discuss the question whether Apostate's Baptized Infants be still Church-members But what I have said of their right before God seemeth plain 4. And mark that on whomsoever you build an Infants Right you may as well say that he may suffer for other mens default For if you build it on the Magistrate the Minister the Church the God-fathers any of them may fail They may deny him Baptism it self They may fail in his education Shall he suffer then for want of baptism or good education when it is their faults Whoever a Child or man is to receive a benefit by the failing of that person may deprive him of that benefit More objections I must pretermit to avoid prolixity Quest. 44. Doth Baptism alwayes oblige us at the present and give Grace at the present And is the Grace which is not given till long after given by Baptism or an effect of Baptism Answ. I Add this Case for two Reasons 1. To open their pernicious error who think that a Covenant or Promise made by us to God only for a future distant duty as to Repent and believe before we dye is all that is essential to our Baptismal Covenanting 2. To open the ordinary saying of many Divines who say that baptism worketh not alwayes at the present but sometimes only long afterward The truth I think may be thus expressed 1. It is not baptism if there be not the profession of a present belief a present consent and a present dedition or resignation or dedication of the person to God by the adult for themselves and by Parents for their Infants He that only saith I promise to believe repent and obey only at twenty or thirty years of age is not morally baptized for it is another Covenant of his own which he would make which God accepteth not 2. It is not only a future but a present Relation to God as his Own his Subjects his Children by Redemption to which the baptized person doth consent 3. It is a present correlation and not a future only to which God consenteth on his paâ—t to be their Father Saviour and Sâ—nctifier their Owner peculiarly their Ruler gratiously and their chief Benefactor and Felicity and End 4. It is not only a future but a present Remission of sin and Adoption and right to temporal and eternal mercies which God giveth to true Consenters by his Covenant and Baptism 5. But those mercies which we are not at that present capable of are not to be given at the present but afterward when we are capable As the particular assistances of the Spirit necessary upon all future particular occasions c. The pardon of future sins Actual Glorification c. Rom. 6. 1 â— 6 7 c. 6. And the Duties which are to be performed only for the future we must promise at present to perform only for the future in their season to our lives end Therefore we cannot promise that Infants shall believe obey or Love God till they are naturally capable of doing it 7. If any hypocrite do not indeed Repent Believe or Consent when he is baptized or baptizeth his child he so far faileth in the Covenant professed And so much of baptism is undone And God Acts 8 37 3â— 13. 20 21 22 23. doth not enter into the present Covenant-Relations to him as being uncapable thereof 8. If this person afterwards Repent and Believe it is a doing of the same thing which was omitted in baptism and a making of the same Covenant But not as a part of his Baptism it self which is long past 9. Nor is he hereupon to be Re-baptized Because the external part was done before and is not to be twice done But the Internal part which was omitted is now to be done not as a part of baptism old or new but as a Part of Penitence for his omission Object If Covenanting be a part of Baptism then this person whose Covenant is never a part of his Baptism doth live and dye unbaptized Answ. As baptism signifieth only the external Ordinance heart-covenanting is no part of it but the Profession of it is And if there was no Profession of faith made by word or sign the person is unbaptized But as baptism signifieth the Internal part with the external so he will be no baptized person while he liveth that is One that in baptism did truly Consent and Receive the spiritual Relations to God But he will have the same thing in another way of Gods appointment 10. When this person is after sanctified it is by Gods performance of the same Covenant in specie which baptism is made to seal that God doth pardon justifie and adopt him But this is not by his past baptism as a Cause but by after grace and Absolution The same Covenant doth it but not baptism Because indeed the Covenant or Promise saith When ever thou believest and repentest I will forgive thee But Baptism saith Because thou now believest I do forgive thee and wash away thy sin and maketh present application 11. So if an Infant or adult person live without grace and at age be ungodly his Baptismal Covenant is violated And his after Conversion or faith and repentance is neither the fulfilling of Gods Covenant nor of his baptism neither The reason is because though Pardon and Adoption be given by that Conditional Covenant of Grace which baptism sealeth yet so is not that first Grace of Faith and Repentance which is the Condition of Pardon and Adoption and the title to baptism it self Else Infidels should have right to baptism and thereby to faith and repentance But these are only the free Gifts of God to the Elect and the fulfilling of some Absolute predictions concerning the Calling of the Elect and the fulfilling of Gods Will or Covenant to Christ the Mediator that He shall see the travail of his soul and be satisfied and possess those that are given him by the Father 12. But when the Condition of the Covenant is at first performed by the Parent for the Infant and this Covenant never broken on this childs behalf notwithstanding sins of Infirmity in this case the first Actual
state and condition of Christians And where the Reasons and Case is the same the Obligations will be the same In a word the Text it self will one way or other shew us when a Command or Example is universally and durably obligatory and when not Quest. 137. How much of the Scripture is necessary to Salvation to be believed and understood Answ. THis question is the more worthy consideration that we may withal understand the use of Catechisms Confessions and Creeds of which after and the great and tender mercies of God to the weak and may be able to answer the Cavils of the Papists against the Scriptures as insufficient to be the Rule of Faith and Life because much of it is hard to be understood 1. He that believeth God to be true and the Scripture to be his Word must needs believe all to be true which he believeth to be his Word 2. All the Scripture is profitable to our knowledge love and practice and none of it to be neglected but all to be loved reverenced and studied in due time and order by them that have time and capacity to do it 3. All the Holy Scriptures either as to matter or words are not so necessary as that no man can be saved who doth not either believe or understand them But some parts of it are more necessary than others 4. It is not of necessity to salvation to believe every Book or Verse in Scripture to be Canonical or written by the Spirit of God For as the Papists Canon is larger than that which the Protestants own so if our Canon should prove defective of any one Book it would not follow that we could not be saved for want of a sufficient faith The Churches immediately after the Apostles time had not each one all their Writings but they were brought together in time and received by degrees as they had proof of their being written by authorized inspired persons The second of Peter Iames Iude Hebrews and Revelations were received in many Churches since the rest And if some Book be lost as Henocks Prophecy or Pauls Epistle to the Laodiceans or any other of his Epistles not named in the rest or if any hereafter should be lost or doubted of as the Canticles or the second or third Epistles of Iohn the Epistle of Iude c. it would not follow that all true faith and hope of salvation were lost with it It is a Controversie whether 1 Iohn 5. 7. and some other particular Verses be Canonical or not because some Greek Copies have them and some are without them But who ever erreth in that only may be saved 5. There are many hundred or thousand Texts of Scripture which a man may possibly be ignorant of the meaning of and yet have a saving faith and be in a state of salvation For no man living understandeth it all 6. The holy Scripture is an entire comely body which containeth not only the essential parts of the true Religion but also the Integral parts and the ornaments and many accidents which must be Rom. 14. 17 18. Rom. 13. 8 9 10. 1 Cor. 15. 2 3 4 5 6. Mar. 16. 16. distinguished and not all taken to be equal 7. So much as containeth the Essentials of true Religion must be understood and believed of necessity to salvation And so much as containeth the Integrals of Religion doth greatly conduce to our salvation both that we may be the surer and the better Christians as having greater helps to both 8. The very adjuncts also have their use to make us the more adorned Christians and to promote our knowledge of greater things Quest. 138. How may we know the Fundamentals Essentials or what parts are necessary to Salvation And is the Papists way allowable that some of them deny that distinction and make the difference to be only in the degrees of mens opportunities of knowledge Answ. 1. THâ—se Papists perverseness can mean no better than that Christianity it self is not necessary to salvation to those that have not opportunity to know it As Iohnsons Rejoynd to me and Sancta Clara and many others plainly intimate And were that never so true and certain it were nothing to the question between them and us which is What are the Essentials of Christianity And what is necessary to salvation where Christianity is necessary or where the Christian Religion is made known and men may come to the knowledge of it if they will do their best This is the true state of our Controversie with them And whereas they would make all the parts of Christian faith and practice equally necessary where men have a capacity and ability to know believe and practise them It is a gross deceit unworthy of men pretending to a mediocrity of knowledge in the nature of Religion And thereby they make all sins and errors as equal as all duties and James 3. 2. 1 John 1. ult truths Whereas 1. There is no man that hath not some error and some sin 2. There is no man that doth all that ever he was able to do to understand all the truth 3. Therefore there is no man whose errors themselves are not many of them at least culpable or sinful 4. And they that distinguish between Mortal and Venial sins and yet will not distinguish between Mortal and Venial Errors are either blind or would keep others blind As it is not so damning a sin for a man to think a vain thought or to speak a vain word as not to Love God or Holiness no though he was more able to have forborn that idle word than to have Loved God So it is not so mortal a sin that is inconsistent with a justified state to mistake in a small matter as who was the Father of Arpâ—â—xad or what year the world was drowned in c. as to blaspheme the Holy Ghost or deny Jesus Christ to be the Saviour of the world or to deny that there is a God or everlasting life or a difference between Good and Evil. All sins are not equal in magnitude or danger Therefore all errors are not equal in magnitude sinfulness or danger 2. And what Priest is able to know whom to take for a Christian and baptizable upon such terms as these Who knoweth just what opportunities of knowledge other men have had and what impediments And will they indeed baptize a man that is a Heathen because he had not opportunity to come to the knowledge of Christianity I think they will not Or will they deny Baptism to one that knoweth and believeth only all the Articles of the Creed and the chief points of Religion because he knoweth not as much more as he had opportunity to know I think not Do not these men perceive how they condemn themselves For do they not say themselves that Baptism to the due receiver washeth away sin and puts the person in a state of life O when will God deliver his poor Church from factious deceivers
you do evil with double violence and with blasphemous fathering your sins on God and with impenitence and justification of your sin This made Paul mad in persecuting the Church Prov. 15. 21. Folly is joy to him that is destitute of wisdom but a man of understanding walketh uprightly No man can do that well which he understandeth not well Therefore you must study and take unwearied pains for knowledge Wisdom never grew up with idleness though the conceit of wisdom doth no where more prosper This age hath told us to what desperate precipices men will be carryed by ignorant zeal 2. And the understanding must be large or it cannot be solid When many particulars are concerned in an action the over-looking of some one may spoil the work Narrow minded men are turned as the weather-cock with the wind of the times or of every temptation and they seldome avoid one sin but by falling into another It is Prudence that must manage an upright life And Prudence seeth all that must be seen and putteth every circumstance into the ballance For want of which much mischief may be done while you seem to be doing the greatest good The prudent man looketh well to his going Prov. 14. 15 See therefore that ye walk circumspectly at a hairs breadth not as fools but as wise 6. But because you will object that alas few even of the upright have wits so strong as to be fit Psal. 119. 98. Prov. 1 6 7. 8. 12. 15 18. 13. 1. 14 20. 15. 2. 7 12. 31. 22. 17. 25. 12. Eccles. 12. 11. Dan. 12. 3 10. Matth. 24. 45. Psal. 37. 30. Eccles. 2. 13. Isa. 33. 6. Matth. 12. 42. Luke 1. 17. 21. 15. Acts 6. 3. 2 Pet. 3. 15. Mal. 2. 6 7. 1 Thess. 5. 12 13. Heb. 13. 7 17. Tit. 1. 9 13. 2. 1 8. 2 Tim. 4. 3. for this I add that he that will walk uprightly must in the great essential parts of Religion have this foresaid knowledge of his own and in the rest at least he must have the conduct of the wise And therefore 1. He must be wise in the great matters of his salvation though he be weak in other things 2. And he must labour to be truly acquainted who are indeed wise men that are meet to be his guides And he must have recourse to such in Cases of Conscience as a sick man to his Physicion It is a great mercy to be so far wise as to know a wise man from a fool and a Counsellor from a deceiver 7. He that will walk uprightly must be the master of his passions not stupid but calm and sober Though some passion is needful to excite the understanding to its duty yet that which is Prov. 14. 29. Col. 3. 8. inordinate doth powerfully deceive the mind Men are very apt to be confident of what they passionately apprehend And passionate judgements are frequently mistaken and ever to be suspected It being exceeding difficult to entertain any passion which shall not in some measure pervert our reason which is one great reason why the most confident are ordinarily the most erroneous and blind Be sure therefore when ever you are injured or passion any way engaged to set a double guard upon your judgements 8. He that will walk uprightly must not only difference between simple Good and Evil but between a greater Good and a less For most sin in the world consisteth in preferring a Lesser Good before Matth. 9. 13. 12. 7. Psal. 40. 6. 51. 16. 1 Sam. 15. 22. a Greater He must still keep the ballance in his hand and compare good with good Otherwise he will make himself a Religion of sin and preferr Sacrifice before mercy and will hinder the Gospel and mens salvation for a ceremony and violate the bonds of love and faithfulness for every opinion which he calleth Truth and will tythe Mint and Cummin while he neglecteth the great things of the Law When a lesser good is preferred before a greater it is a sin and the common way of sinning It is not then a duty when it is inconsistent with a greater good 2 Cor. 10. 8. 13. 10. Rom. 15. 2. 14. 19. 1 Cor. 14. 26. 2 Cor. 12. 19. Rom. 3. 8. Eph. 4. 12 c. 1 Cor. 12. 9. He must ever have a conjunct respect to the Command and the End The good of some actions is but little discernable any where but in the Command and others are evidently good because of the good they tend to We must neither do evil and break a Law that good may come by it Nor yet pretend obedience to do mischief as if God had made his Laws for Destruction of the Church or mens souls and not for Edification 10. He must keep in Union with the Universal Church and preferr its interest before the interest of any party whatsoever and do nothing that tendeth to its hurt 11. He must love his neighbour as himself and do as he would be done by and love his enemies and Matth. 22 39. 5. 43 44. 7. 12. forgive wrongs and hear their defamations as his own 12. He must be Impartial and not lose his Iudgement and Charity in the opinion or interest of a Jam. 3. 15 16 17 18. Party or Sect Nor think all right that is Held or Done by those that he best liketh nor all wrong that is held or done by those that are his adversaries But judge of the Words and Deeds of those Gal. 2 13 14. Deut. 25. 16. 1 Cor. 6. 9. that are against him as if they had been said or done by those of his own side Else he will live in slâ—ndering backbiting and gross unrighteousness 13. He must be deliberate in judging of Things and Persons not rash or hasty in believing reports Matth. 7. 1 2. John 7. 24. Râ— 14. 10 13. 1 Pet. 1. 17. or receiving opinions not judging of Truths by the first appearance but search into the naked evidence Nor judging of persons by prejudice fame and common talk 14. He must be willing to receive and obey the Truth at the dearest rate especially of laborious Luke 14. 26. 33. 1â— 4. Prov. 23. 23. Matth. 1â— 3. Prov. 26. 12. 16 28 11. 1 Cor. 3. 18 Prov. â— 7. study and a self-denying life Not taking all to be Truth that costeth men dear nor yet thinking that Truth indeed can be over-prized 15. He must be Humble and self-suspicious and come to Christs School as a little child and not have a proud over-valuing of himself and his own understanding The proud and selfish are blind and cross and have usually some opinions or interests of their own that lye cross to duty and to other mens good 16. He must have an eye to posterity and not only to the present time or age and to other Nations Judg. 8. 27. 1 Cor. 7. 35. 1 King 14. 16. 15. 26.
Quest. 7. Answ. No not by private assault or violence But if the crime be so great that the Law of the Land doth punish it with death if that Law be just you may in some cases seek to bring the offendor to publick justice But that is rare and otherwise you may not do it For 1. It belongeth only to the Magistrate and not to you to be the avenger 2. And killing a man can be no meet defence against calumny or slander For if you will kill a man for prevention you kill the innocent If you kill him afterward it is no Defence but an unprofitable revenge which vindicateth not your honour but dishonoureth you more Your patience is your honour and your bloody revenge doth shew you to be so like the Devil the destroyer that it is your greatest shame 3. It is odious Pride which maketh men over-value their reputation among men and think that a mans life is a just compensation to them for their dishonour Such bloody Sacrifices are fit to appâ—ase only the blood-thirsty Spirit But what is it that Pride will not do and justifie CHAP. XI Special Directions to escape the guilt of persecuting Determining also the case about Liberty in matters of Religion THough this be a subject which the guilty cannot endure to hear of yet the misery of persecutors the blood and grones and ruines of the Church and the lamentable divisions of profâ—ssed Christians do all command me not to pass it by in silence but to tell them the truth whether they will hear or whether they will forbear though they were such as Ezek. 3. 7 8 9 11. § 1. Direct 1. If you would escape this dreadful guilt Understand well what Persecution is Else Direct 1. you may either run into it ignorantly or oppose a duty as if it were persecution § 2. The Verb Persequor is often taken in a good sence for no more than continuato motu vel ad extremum sequor and sometime for the blameless prosecution of a delinquent But we take it here as the English word Persecute is most commonly taken for inimico affectu insequor for a malicious or injurious hurting or prosecuting another and that for the sake of Religion or Righteousness For it is not common injuries which we here intend to speak of Three things then go to make up Persecution 1. That it be the Hurting of another in his Body liberty relations estate or reputation 2. That it be done injuriously to one who deserveth it not in the particular which is the cause 3. That it be for the cause of Religion or of Righteousness that is for the Truth of God which we hold or utter or for the worship of God which we perform or for obedience to the will of God revealed in his Laws This is the cause on the sufferers part what ever is intended by the Persecuter § 3. There are divers sorts of Persecution As to the Principles of the Persecutors 1. There is a Persecution which is openly professed to be for the cause of Religion As Heathens and Mahometans persecute Christians as Christians And there is an Hypocritical Persecution when the pretended cause is some odious crime but the real cause is mens Religion or obedience to God This is the common Persecution which nominal Christians exercise on serious Christians or on one another They will not say that they Persecute them because they are Godly or serious Christians but that is the true cause For if they will but set them above God and obey them against God they will abate their Persecution Many of the Heathens thus persecuted the Christians too under the name of Ungodly and evil doers But the true cause was because they obeyed not their commands in the Worshipping of their Idol Gods So do the Papists persecute and murder men not as Professours of the truth which is the true cause but under the name of Hereticks and Schâ—smaticks or Rebels against the Pope or what ever their malice pleaseth to accuse them of And prophane nominal Christians seldome persecute the serious and sincere directly by that name but under some Nickname which they set upon them or under the name of Hypocrites or self-conceited or factious persons or such like And if they live in a place and Age where there are many Civil Wars or differences they are sure to fetch some odious name or accusation thence Which side soever it be that they are on or if they meddle not on any side they are sure by every party whom they please not to hear Religion loaded with such reproaches as the times will allow them to vent against it Even the Papists who take this course with Protestants it seems by Acosta are so used themselves not by the Heathens but by one another yea by the multitude yea by their Priests For so saith he speaking of the Parish Priests Priests among the Indians having reproved their Diceing Carding Hunting Idleness Lib. 4 c. 15. pag. 404 405. Itaque is cui Pastoralis Indorum cura committitur non solum contra diaboli machinas naturae incentiva pugnare debet sed jam etiam confirmatae hominum consuetudini tempore turba praepotenti sese objicere ad excipienda invidorum ac malevolorum tela forte pectus opponere qui siquid à profano suo instituto abhorrentem viderint proditorem hypocritam hostem clamaâ—t that is He therefore to whom the Pastoral care of the Indians is committed must not only fight against the Engines of the Devil and the incentives of nature but also now must object or set himself against the confirmed custome of men which is grown very powerful both by time and by the multitude and must valiantly oppose his breast to receive the darts of the envious and malevolent who if they see any thing contrary to their profane fashion or breeding cry out A Traitor An Hypocrite an Enemy It seems then that this is a common course § 4. 2. Persecution is either done in Ignorance or Knowledge The commonest persecution is that which is done in Ignorance and errour when men think a Good cause to be bad or a bad cause to be good and so persecute Truth while they take it to be falshood or good while they take it to be evil or obtrude by violence their Errours for Truths and their evils as good and necessary things Thus Peter testifieth of the Jews who killed the Prince of life Act. 3. 13 14 17. I know that through Ignorance you did it as did also your Rulers And Paul 1 Cor. 2. 8. which none of the Princes of this world knâ—w for had they known it they would not have Crucified the Lord of glory And Christ himself saith Joh. 16. 3. These things will they do unto you because they have not known the Father or me And Paul saith of himself Act. 26. 9. I thought verily with my self that I ought to do many things contrary to the name
enough to implant it in all the hearers why do your Children go so long to School and after that to the Universities and why are you so long Preaching to all your Parishioners Sure you preach not novelties to them as long as you live And yet thirty or fourty years painful preaching even of the same fundamentals of Religion shall leave many ignorant of them in the best Parishes in the Land There must be a right and ripe disposition in the hearers or else the clearest reasoning may be uneffectual A disused or unfurnished mind that hath not received all the truths which are presupposed to those which you deliver or hath not digested them into a clear understanding may long hear the truest reasons and never apprehend their weight There is need of more adoe than a bare unfolding of the truth to make a man receive it in its proper evidence Perhaps he hath been long pre-possessed with contrary opinions which are not easily rooted out Or if he be but confident of the truth of some one opinion which is inconsistent with yours no wonder if he cannot receive that which is contrary to what he so verily believeth to be the truth There is a marvellous variety of mens apprehensions of the same opinions or reasons as they are variously represented to men and variously pondered and as the natural capacity of men is various and as the whole course of their lives their education company and conversation have variously formed their minds It is like the setting together all the parts of Watch when it is in pieces If any one part of many be misplaced it may necessitate the misplacing of those that follow without any wilful obstinacy in him that doth it If in the whole frame of sacred Truth there be but some one misunderstood it may bring in other mistakes and keep out many truths even from an honest willing mind And who is there that can say he is free from errour Have not you perceived in your selves that the truths which you heard an hundred times over to little purpose when you were Children were received more convincingly and satisfyingly when you were men And that you have found a delightful clearness in some points on a sudden which before you either resisted or held with little observation or regard And yet it is common with the scandalizers of souls to cry out against all that conform not to their opinions and will as soon as they have heard their reasons that they are stubborn and refractory and wilful and factious and so turn from arguments to Clubs as if they had never known themselves or others nor how weak and dark the understandings of almost all men are But they shall have judgement without mercy who shew no mercy And when their own errours shall all be opened to them by the Lord they will be loth they should all be imputed to their wilful obstinacy And perhaps these very censorious men may prove themselves to have beenonthe wrong side For Pride and uncharitableness are usually erroneous § 34. Direct 12. Engage not your selves in an evil cause For if you do it will engage you to Direct 12. draw in others You will expect your friends should take your part and think as you think and say as you say though it be never so much against truth or righteousness § 35. Direct 13. Speak not rashly against any cause or persons before you are acquainted with Direct 13. them or have well considered what you say Especially take heed how you believe what a man of any Sect in Religion doth speak or write against his Adversaries of a contrary sect If experience had not proved it in our dayes beyond contradiction it would seem incredible how little men are to be believed Psal. 119. 69. in this case and how the falsest reports will run among the people of a Sect against those whom the interest of their opinion and party engageth them to mis-represent Think not that you are excusable for receiving or venting an ill report because you can say he was an honest man that spoke it For many that are otherwise honest do make it a part of their honesty to be dishonest in this They think they are not zealous enough for those opinions which they call their Religion unless Vix equidem credar sed cum sint praemia falsi Nulla â—atam dâ—bet testis habere fidem Oâ—iâ— l. Rom. 3. 7 8. Jam. 3. 14. â—â—â—â—â— â— 8. they are easie in believing and speaking evil of those that are the Adversaries of it When it may be upon a just tryal all proveth false And then all the words which you ignorantly utter against the truth or those that follow it are scandals or stumbling blocks to the hearers to turn them from it and make them hate it I am not speaking against a just credulity There must be humane belief or else there can be no humane converse But ever suspect partiality in a party For the interest of their Religion is a more powerful charm to the Consciences of evil speakers than personal interest or bribes would be How many Legends tell us this how easily some men counted Godly have been prevailed with to Lie for God § 36. Direct 14. Take heed of mocking at a Religious life yea or of breaking any jeasts or scorns Diâ—â—â—â— 14. at the weaknesses of any in Religious exercises which may possibly reflect upon the exercises themselves Many a thousand souls have been kept from a holy life by the scorns of the vulgar that speak of it as a matter of derision or sport Reading the Scriptures and holy conference and prayer and instructing our families and the holy observation of the Lords day and Church-discipline are commonly the derision of ungodly persons who can scorn that which they can neither confute nor learn And weak people are greatly moved by such senseless means A mock or jear doth more with them than an argument They cannot endure to be made a laughing-stock Thus was the name of a Crucified God the derision of the Heathens and the scandal of the World both Jews and Gentiles And there is scarce a greater scandal or stumbling block at this day which keepeth multitudes from Heaven than when the Devil can make it either a matter of danger or of shame to be a Christian or to live a holy mortified life Persecution and Derision are the great successful scandals of the World And therefore seeing men are so apt to be turned off from Christ and Godliness never speak unreverently or disrespectfully of them It is a prophane and scandalous course of some that if a Preacher have but an unhansome tone or gesture they make a jeast of it and say He whined or he spoke through the nose or some such scorn they cast upon him which the hearers quickly apply to all others and turn to a scorn of Preaching or Prayer or Religion it self Or if men differ from each other
man is bound to punish himself As when the Law against Swearing Cursing or the like doth give the poor a certain mulct which is the penalty He ought to give that money himself And in cases where it is a necessary cure to himself And in any case where the publick good requireth it As if a Magistrate offend whom none else will punish or who is the Judge in his own cause he should so far punish himself as is necessary to the suppression of sin and to the preserving of the honour of the Laws As I have heard of a Justice that swore twenty Oaths and paid his twenty shillings for it 2. A man may be bound in such a Divine Vengeance or Judgement as seeketh after his particular sin to offer himself to be a sacrifice to Justice to stop the Judgement As Ionah and Achan did 3. A man may be bound to confess his guilt and offer himself to Justice to save the innocent who is falsly accused and condemned for his crime 4. But in ordinary cases a man is not bound to be his own publick accuser or executioner Quest. 10. May a Witness voluntarily speak that truth which he knoweth will further an unrighteous Quest. 10. cause and be made use of to oppress the innocent Answ. He may never do it as a confederate in that intention Nor may he do it when he knoweth that it will tend to such an event though threatned or commanded except when some weightier accident doth preponderate for the doing it As the avoiding of a greater hurt to others than it will bring on the oppressed c. Quest. 11. May a witness conceal some part of the truth Quest. 11. Answ. Not when he sweaâ—â—â—â—h to deliver the whole truth Nor when a good cause is like to suffer or a bad cause to be furâ—â—â—â—ered by the concealment Nor when he is under any other obligation to reveal the whole Quest. 12. Must a Iudge and Iury proceed secundum allegata probata according to evidence and Quest. 12. proof when they know the witness to be false and the truth to be contrary to the testimony but are not able to evince it Answ. Distinguish between the Negative and the Positive part of the Verdict or Sentence In the Negative they must go according to the evidence and testimonies unless the Law of the Land leave the case to their private knowledge As for example They must not sentence a Thief or Murderer to be punished upon their secret unproved knowledge They must not adjudge either Moneys or Lands to the true Owner from another without sufficient evidence and proof They must forbear doing Iustice because they are not called to it nor enabled But Positively they may do no Injustice upon any evidence or witness against their own knowledge of the truth As they may not upon known false witness give away any mans Lands or Money or condemn the innocent But must in such a case renounce the Office The Judge must come off the Bench and the Jury protest that they will not meddle or give any Verdict what ever come of it Because God and the Law of Nature prohibit their injustice Object It is the Law that doth it and not we Answ. It is the Law and you And the Law cannot justifie your agency in any unrighteous sentenâ—e The case is plain and past dispute Tit. 2. Directions against Contentious Suits False Witnessing and Oppressive Iudgements § 1. Direct 1. THe first Cure for all these sins is to know the intrinsick evil of them Good Direct 1. thoughts of sin are its life and strength When it is well known it will be hated and when it is hated it is so far cured § 2. I. The Evil of Contentious and unjust Law-Suits 1. Such contentious Suits do shew the power of selfishness in the sinner How much self-interest is inordinately esteemed 2. They shew the excessive love of the world How much men over-value the things which they contend for 3. They shew mens want of Love to their neighbours How little they regard another mans interest in comparison of their own 4. They shew how little such mens care for the publick good which is maintained by the concord and love of neighbours 5. Such contentions are powerful Engines of the Devil to destroy all Christian Love on both sides and to stir up mutual enmity and wrath and so to involve men in a course of sin by further uncharitableness and injuries both in heart and word and deed 6. Poor men are hereby robbed of their necessary maintenance and their innocent families subjected to distress 7. Unconscionable Lawyers and Court-Officers who live upon the peoples sins are hereby maintained encouraged and kept up 8. Laws and Courts of Justice are perverted to do men wrong which were made to right them 9. And the offender declareth how little sense he hath of the authority or Love of God and how little sense of the grace of our Redeemer And how far he is from being himself forgiven through the blood of Christ who can no better forgive another § 3. II. The Evil of False Witness 1. By False Witness the innocent are injured Robbery and Murder are committed under pretence of truth and justice 2. The Name of God is horribly abused by the crying sin of Perjury of which before 3 The Presence and Justice of God are contemned When sinners dare in his sight and hearing appeal to his Tribunal in the attesting of a lye 4. Vengeance is begged or consented to by the sinner who bringeth Gods curse upon himself and as it were desireth God to plague or damn him if he lye 5. Satan the Prince of malice and injustice and the Father of lyes and murders and oppression is hereby gratified and eminently served 6. God himself is openly injured who is the Father and Patron of the innocent and the cause of every righteous prson is more the cause of God than of man 7. All Government is frustrated and Laws abused and all mens security for their reputations or estates or lives is overthrown by false witnesses And consequently humane converse is made undesirable and unsafe What good can Law or right or innocency or the honesty of the Judge do any man where false-witnesses combine against him What security hath the most innocent or worthy person for his fame or liberty or estate or life if false witnesses conspire to defame him or destroy him And then how shall men endure to converse with one another Either the innocent must seek out a Wilderness and flye from the face of men as we do from Lyons and Tygers or else Peace will be worse than War For in War a ma 〈…〉 ay fight for his life but against false witnesses he hath no defence But God is the avenger of the innocent and above most other sins doth seldome suffer this to go unpunished even in this present world but often beginneth their Hell on Earth to such perjured
Sedition among the people and accounting them as the filth and off-scouring of the world That zeal which murdered and destroyed many hundred thousand of the Waldenses and Albigenses and thirty thousand or forty thousand in one French Massacre and two hundred thousand in one Irish Massacre and which kindled the Marian Bonefires in England and made the Powder Mine and burnt the City of London and keepeth up the Inquisition I say that zeal will certainly think it a service to the Church that is their Sect to write the most odious lyes and slanders of Luther Zuinglius Calvin Beza and any such excellent servants of the Lord. So full of horrid impudent lyes are the writings of not one but many Sects against those that were their chief opposers that I still admonish all posterity to see good evidence for it before they believe the hard sayings of any factious Historian or Divine against those that are against his party It is only men of eminent conscience and candour and veracity and impartiality who are to be believed in their bad report of others except where notoriety or very good evidence doth command belief above their own authority and veracity A siding factious zeal which is hotter for any Sect or party than for the common Christianity and Catholick Church is alwayes a railing a lying and a slandering zeal and is notably described Iames 3. as earthly sensual and devilish causing envy strife and confusion and every evil work Direct 4. Observe well the Commonness of this sin of backbiting that it may make you the more afraid Direct 4. of falling into that which so few do scape I will not say among high and low rich and poor Court and Countrey how common is this sin but among men professing the greatest zeal and strictness in Religion how few make conscience of it Mark in all companies that you come into how common it is to take liberty to say what they think of all men yea to report what they hear though they dare not say that they believe it And how commonly the relating of other mens faults and telling what this man or that man is or did or said is part of the chatt to waste the hour in And if it be but true they think they sin not Nay nor if they did but hear that it is true For my part I must profess that my conscience having brought me to a custome of rebuking such backbiters I am ordinarily censured for it either as one that loveth contradiction or one that defendeth sin and wickedness by taking part with wicked men And all because I would stop the course of this common vice of evil-speaking and backbiting where men have no call And I must thankfully profess that among all other sins in the world the sins of SELFISHNESSE PRIDE and BACKBITING I have been most brought to hate and fear by the observation of the commonness of them even in persons seeming godly Nothing hath fixed an apprehension of their odiousness so deeply in me nor engaged my heart against them above all other sins so much as this lamentable experience of their prevalence in the world among the more Religious and not only in the prophane Direct 5. Take not the honesty of the person as sufficient cause to hear or believe a bad report of Direct 5. others It is lamentable to hear how far men otherwise honest do too often here offend Suspect evil speakers and be not over-credulous of them Charity thinketh not evil not easily and hastily believeth it Lyars are more used to evil speaking than men of truth and credit are It is no wrong to the best that you believe him not when he backbiteth without good evidence Direct 6. Rebuke backbiters and encourage them not by hearkning to their tales Prov. 25. 23. Direct 6. The north wind driveth away rain So doth an angry countenance a backbiting tongue It may be they think themselves religious persons and will take it for an injury to be driven away with an angry countenance But God himself who loveth his servants better than we is more offended at their sin and that which offendeth him must offend us We must not hurt their souls and displease God by drawing upon us the guilt of their sins for fear of displeasing them Tell them how God doth hate backbiting and advise them if they know any hurt by others to go to them privately and tell them of it in a way that tendeth to their repentance Direct 7. Use to make mention of the good which is in others except it be unseasonable and will Direct 7. seem to be a promoting of their sin Gods giâ—ts in every man deserve commendations And we have allowance to mention mens vertues oftner than to mention their vices Indeed when a bad man is praised in order to the disparagement of the good or to honour some wicked cause or action against truth and godliness we must not concur in such malitious praists But otherwise we must commend that which is truly commendable in all And this custome will have a double benefit against backbiting It will use your own tongues to a contrary course and it will rebuke the evil tongues of others and be an example to them of more charitable language Direct 8. Understand your selves and speak often to others of the sinfulness of evil speaking and Direct 8. backbiting Shew them the Scriptures which condemn it and the intrinsecal malignity which is in it as here followeth Direct 9. Make conscience of just reproof and exhorting finners to their faces Go tell them of Direct 9. it privately and lovingly and it will have better effects and bring you more comfort and cure the sin of backbiting Tit. 3. The Evil of Backbiting and Evil Speaking § 1. 1. IT is forbidden of God among the heinous damning sins and made the character of a notorious wicked person and the avoiding of it is made the mark of such as are accepted of God and shall be saved Rom. 1. 29 30. it is made the mark of a reprobate mind and joyned with murder and hating God viz. full of envy debate deceit malignity whisperers backbiters Psal. 15. 2 3. Lord who shall abide in thy tabernacle Who shall dwell in thy holy hill He that backbiteth not with his tongue nor doth evil to his neighbour nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour And when Paul describeth those whom he must sharply rebuke and censure he just describeth the factious sort of Christians of our times 2 Cor. 12. 20. For I fear lest when I come I shall not find you such as I would and that I shall be found unto you such as ye would not Lest there be debates envyings wraths strifes backbitings whisperings swellings tumults Ephes. 4. 31. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamour and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice and be kind one to another and tender hearted § 2. 2. It is
bind me to judge men better than they are Answ. Charity bindeth you 1. Rather to observe the best in them than the worst 2. And as I said to judge of no mans faults uncalled 3. Nor to judge of that which is not evident but out of sight And thus consequently it bindeth you to judge some men to be better than they are but not directly Object Then a man is bound to err and to believe an untruth Answ. No You are not bound to believe that it is certainly true that such a man is better than he is Because you have no evidence of its certain truth But you are bound to believe it a thing probable or verisimile likely to be true by an opinion or fallible humane faith And this is not a falshood For that is likely and probable to you which hath the more probable evidence and more for it than against it So that the thing which you are to believe immediately is this proposition There is more evidence to me to prove it likely that this man is sincere than contrary And consequently you believe this and believe not the contrary because the contrary hath no evidence But you are not to take it as a certain thing that the contrary hath no latent reality Quest. 2. How far may I judge ill of one by outward appearances as by the countenance gestures and Quest. 2. other uncertain but suspicious signs Answ. There are some signs which are not so much as probable but a little suspicious and which men are very ordinarily mistaken by As those that will judge of a man at the first look by his face And those that will judge a studious serious person a Lawyer a Judge or a Divine to be morose or proud because they are not complemental but of few words or because they have not patience to waste pretious hours in hearing an empty vessel sound an ignorant self-conceited person talk foolishly Such censures are but the effects of injudiciousness unrighteousness and rash haste There are other signs which make it probable to a wise and charitable person that the man is bad e. g. proud or covetous or an hypocrite If with these there are as great signs to make the contrary probable we must rather incline to the better than the worse But if not we may fear the worst of that person but not conclude it as a certainty And therefore we may not in publick censures proceed upon such uncertainties nor venture to divulge them but only use them to help us for due caution and pity and prayer and endeavour for such a ones recovery and help Quest. 3. How far may I censure upon the report of others Quest. 3. Answ. According to the degree of the credibility of the persons and evidence of the narrative not simply in themselves but as compared with all that is to be heard on the contrary part Else you are partial and unjust Quest. 4. Doth not the fifth Command oblige me in honour to Parents and Princes to judge them to be better than their lives declare them to be Quest. 4. Answ. You are gradually to honour them more than others and therefore to be more afraid of dishonouring them and must not sit in judgement on them to believe any harm of them which evidence doth not compell you to believe But you are not to judge any sin the less because it is theirs nor to judge contrary to evidence nor to call evil good nor to be wilfully blind nor to flatter any in their sin Quest. 5. Whom must we judge for sincere and sanctified Christians Quest. 5. Answ. 1. All those that Profess to be such whom you cannot disprove 2. But as there are several degrees of evidence and probability so must there be several degrees of your good opinion of others Of some who give you the highest probability you may have the strongest confidence short of certainty Of others you may have less and of some you may have much more fear than hope 3. And yet in matters of Church-rights and publick communion your fears will not allow you to use them as no Christians For their profession of faith and repentance is certain And as long as your fears of their hypocrisie or unsoundness is but uncertain it must not on that account prevail to deprive another of his right Quest. 6. But is not my error my sin if I prove mistaken and take that man for a sincere Christian Quest. 6. who is none Answ. If you judged it to be certain your judgement and error was your sin But if you only judged him a Professor of Christianity and one that on that account you were bound to have Church-communion with as if he were sincere because you cannot prove the contrary this was no error Or if you erred for want of sufficient evidence to know the truth this error is not in it self a sin Quest. 7. Whom must I judge a visible member of the Church with whom I am thus bound to hold communion Quest. 7. Answ. 1. If you are the Pastor of the Church who are made the Judge at his admittance by Baptism or afterwards you must so judge of every one who maketh a credible profession of true Christianity that is of his present Consent to the Sacramental Covenant And that profession is credible which is 1. Understood by him that maketh it 2. Deliberate 3. Voluntary 4. Seemingly serious 5. And is not disproved by valid evidence of the contrary These are the true measures of Church communion For every man next God is the Judge of his own heart And God would have every man the Chooser or Refuser of his own mercies 2. But if you are but a private member of the Church you are to judge that person a visible member of the Church whom the Pastor hath taken in by Baptism and not cast out again by excommunication Except the contrary be notorious And even then you are oft obliged for order sake to carry your self towards him as a visible member till he be regularly cast out Quest. 8. Whom must I judge a true worshipper of God and whom not Quest. 8. Answ. Him that professeth true Christianity and joyneth in true Worship with a Christian Church or privately when hindered acknowledgeth the true God in all his Essential Attributes and heareth his Word and prayeth to him for all things necessary to salvation and praiseth him accordingly not giving the Worship proper to God unto any creature And doth all this as a sinner redeemed by Jesus Christ trusting in his Merits Sacrifice and intercession and giveth not his Office to any other And he is a false Worshipper who denyeth any essential Attribute of God or essential part of the Office of Christ or giveth these to any other or refuseth his Word or excludeth in his prayers any thing essential to Christianity or absolutely necessary to salvation But secundum quid in lesser parts or circumstances or
consenting to it which is Repentance and saith being the very condition of the present reception of these benefits And therefore it is that the antient Writers still affirmed that all the Baptized were regenerated justified and adopted Whether an adult person be truly fit for Baptism Lege quamplutima veterum testimonia in D. Gatakero contra Davenantium de Baptismo or not the Pastor that baptizeth is to judge And he must see the credible signs of true faith and repentance before he baptize him which are no other than his understanding voluntary sober profession of consent to the Baptismal Covenant But when he is baptized and professeth to stand to that Covenant once made he is to be judged a godly person by all the Church-members who have not sufficient proof of the contrary Because if he be sincere in what he did and still professeth he is certainly godly And whether he be sincere or not he himself is the best and regular Judge or discerner so far as to put in his claim to Baptism which the Pastor is obliged not to deny him without disproving him And the Pastor is Judge as to his actual admittance And therefore the people have nothing necessarily to do but know whether he be baptized and stand to his baptism For which they are to take him as sincere Unless by his notorious discovery of the contrary they can disprove him These are not only the true terms of Church-communion but of Love to the godly And though this goeth hardly down with some good men who observe how few of the baptized seem to be seriously religious and therefore they think that a Visible Church member as such is not at all to be accounted sincere that is to be believed in his profession and that we owe him not the special love which is due to the godly but only a common love due only to professors without respect to their sincerity Yet this opinion will not hold true Nor is a profession required without respect to the truth or falshood of it the credibility of it being the very reason that it is requisite Nor is it any other faith or consent to the Covenant below that which is sincere and saving which must be professed by all that will be taken for Church-members And though those that are of the contrary opinion are afraid leâ—t this will occasion too much strictness in the Pastors in judging whose Profession is credible and consequently will countenance separation in the people yet God hath provided a sufficient remedy against that fear by making every man the opener of his own heart and tying us by the Law of Nature and of Scripture to take every mans Profession for credible which is sober understanding and voluntary unless they can disprove it or prove him a lyar and perfidious and incredible And whereas it is a latitude of Charity which bringeth them to the contrary opinion for fear lest the incredible professors of Christianity should be all excluded from the Visible Church yet indeed it is but the Image of Charity to bring Catechumens into the Church as to set the Boys of the lowest Form among them that are in their Greek and to deny all special Christian Love to all Visible members of the Church as such and to think that we are not bound to take any of them as Disputations of Right to Sacraments such to be sincere or in the favour of God or justified for fear of excluding those that are not But of this I have written largely in a Treatise on this subject Quest. 5. Must we take all Visible-Church-members alike to be godly and love them equally Quest. 5. Answ. No There are as many various degrees of credit due to their profession as there are various degrees of credibility in it Some manifest their sincerity by such full and excellent evidences in a holy life that we are next to certain that they are sincere And some make a profession so ignorantly so coldly and blot it by so many false Opinions and Vices that our fear of them may be greater than our hope Of whom we can only say that we are not altogether hopeless of their sincerity and therefore must use them as godly men because we cannot prove the contrary but yet admonish them of their danger as having much cause to fear the worst And there may be many notorious wicked men in some Churches through the Pastors fault for want of Discipline And these for order sake we must assemble with but not dissemble with them and our own consciences so as to take them for godly men when the contrary is notorious nor yet to admit them to our familiarity The Pastor hath the keys of the Church but we have the keyes of our own houses and hearts Quest. 6. Must we love all equally that seem truly godly the strong and the weak Quest. 6. Answ. No he that loveth men for their holiness will love them according to the degrees of their holiness as far as he can discern it Quest. 7. Must we love him more who hath much grace or holiness and is little useful for want of Quest. 7. gifts or him that hath less grace and eminent useful gifts Answ. They must both be loved according to the diversity of their goodness He that hath most grace is best and therefore most to be loved in himself But as a Means to the conversion of souls and the honour of God in the good of others the man that hath the most eminent gifts must be most loved The first is more loved in and for his own goodness The second is more lovely propter aliud as a means to that which is more loved than either of them Quest. 8. Must we love him as a godly man who liveth in any great or mortal sin Quest. 8. Answ. Every man must be loved as he is If by a mortal sin be meant a sin inconsistent with the Love of God and a state of grace then the question is no question it being a contradiction which is in question But if by a great and mortal sin be meant only this or that act of sinning and the question be Whether that act be mortal that is inconsistent with true grace or not Then the particular act with the circumstances must be considered before that question can be answered Murder is one of the most heinous sins And one man may be guilty of it out of deliberate habituate malice and another through a sudden passion and another through meer inadvertency carelesness and negligence Stealing may be done by one man presumptuously and by another meerly to save the life of himself or his children These will not equally prove a man in a state of death and without true grace And which is a mortal sin inconsistent with the life of Grace and which not is before spoken to and belongeth not to this place Only I shall say that the sin be it great or
here is not meant the substance of the Christian belief or any one necessary Article of it But a Belief of the indifferency of such things as Paul spake of in meats and drinks If thou know these things to be Lawful when thy weak brother doth not and so thou be wiser than he thank God for thy knowledge and use it to thy own salvation but do not proudly or uncharitably contend for it and use it uncharitably to the danger of anothers soul much less to the wrong of the Church and Gospel and the hinderance of greater truths 2 Tim 2. 14. Of these things put them in remembrance that is of the Saints hope in Gods faithfulness charging them before the Lord that they strive not about words to no profit but the subverting of the hearers Yet for the faith we must earnestly contend Jude 2 3. So 2 Tim. 2. 2. 23 24. But foolish and unlearned questi 〈…〉 avoid knowing that they do gender strife And the servant of the Lord must not strive but be gentle to all men § 8. But that which is the chiefest matter of our Profession is The being and perfections of God himself His love to man and power over him and mans subjection and obligations unto God The person and office and works and benefits of our Redeemer with all the duty that we owe to him in perfect holiness and all the hopes that we have in him the happiness of the Saints the odiousness of sin and the misery of the wicked These and such as these are things that we are called to Profess yet so as not to deny or renounce the smallest truth § 9. Direct 3. Understand also the manner how we must make Profession of Religion 1. There is Direct 3. a Professing by words and a professing by Actions 2. There is a solemn profession by Gods publick ordinances and an occasional or privater profession by conference or by our conversations And all these wayes must Religion be professed § 10. Direct 4. Understand also the season of each sort of Profession that you omit not the season nor do it Direct 4. unseasonably 1. Profession by Baptism Lords Supper and Church-assemblies must be done in their season which the Church-guides are the conducters of 2. Profession by an innocent blameless obedient life is never out of season 3. Profession by private conference and by occasional acts of piety must be when opportunity inviteth us and they are likely to attain their ends 4. The whole frame of a Believers life should be so Holy and Heavenly and mortified and above the world as may amount to a serious profession that he liveth in confident hope of the life to come and may shew the world the difference between a Worldling and an heir of Heaven between corrupted nature and true grace The Professors of Godliness must be a peculiar people zealous of good works and adorned with them Tit. 2. 14. 1 Tim. 2. 10. § 11. Direct 5. Take special care that your Profession be sincere and that you be your selves as good Direct 5. as you profess to be Otherwise 1. Your profession will condemn your selves 2. And it will dishonour the truth which you deceitfully profess There can scarce a greater injury befall a good cause than to have a bad and shameful patron to defend it Rom. 2. 3. And thinkest thou this O man that judgest them which do such things and dost the same that thou shalt escape the judgement of God Vers. 13. to 25. Thou that makest thy boast of the Law through breaking the Law dishonourest thou God For the name of God is blaspheamed among the Gentiles through you § 12. Direct 6. Let not your profession be so much of your own sincerity as of God and his excellencies Direct 6. Boast not of your selves but of God and Christ and the promise and the Hope of true believers and do it to Gods praise and not for your own Be sure that in all your profession of Religion you be seeking honour to God and not unto your selves And then in this manner he that doubteth of his own sincerity yet may and must make profession of Christ and true Religion when you cannot proclaim the uprightness of your own hearts you may boldly proclaim the excellencies of Religion and the happiness of Saints § 13. Direct 7. Live upon God alone and trust his Alsufficiency and abhor that pusillanimity and Direct 7. baseness of spirit which maketh men afraid or ashamed openly to own the truth Remember the example of your Lord who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession 1 Tim. 6. 13. who came for this end into the world to bear witness to the truth Fear not the face of man whose breath is in his Joh. 18. 37. The Arrians under Valens and the Vandal◠still silenced the Orthodox Preachers and forbad their meetings and yet the people adhered to their Pastors and kept their meetings while they could Saepius prohibitum est ut sacerdotes vestri conventus minime celebrarent nec sua seditione animas subverterent Chistianas Praecept Hunner in Victor◠uticers p. 414. nostrils and is perishing even while he is threatning If thou believe not that Christ can secure thee from the rage of man thou believest not indeed in Christ If thou believe not that Heaven will satisfie for all that by scorns or cruelties thou sufferest from sinners thou hast not indeed the hope of a believer And no wonder if thou profess not that which thou believest not But if thou believe that God is God and Christ is Christ and Heaven is Heaven and the Gospel is true thou hast enough in thy Belief to secure thee against all the scorns and cruelties of man and to tell thee that Christ will bear thy charges in all that thou sufferest for his sake O what abundance are secretly convinced of the truth and their Consciences bear witness to the wisdom of the Saints and a holy life and yet they dare not openly own and stand to the truth which they are convinced of for fear of being mockt by the tongues of the profane or for fear of losing their places and preferments O wretch dost thou not tremble when thou art ashamed of Christ to think of the day when he will be ashamed of thee Then when he comes in Glory none will be ashamed of him Then where is the tongue that mockt him and his servants Who then will deride his holy wayes Then that will be the greatest Glory which thou art now ashamed of Canst thou believe that day and yet hide thy profession through cowardly fear or shame of man Is man so great and is Christ no greater in thine eyes than so If he be not more regardable than man believe not in him If he be regard him more and let not a worm be preferred before thy Saviour § 14. Direct 8. If any doubt arise whether thou shouldst now make particular Profession of
the truth Direct 8. as in the presence of scorners or when required by magistrates or others c. let not the advise or interest Mat. 10. 18 23 32 33 38 39. 12. 14 15. 14. 13. Joh. 10. 39. Heb. 11. 27. Act. 9. 25. of the flesh have any hand at all in the resolving of the case but let it be wholly determined as the interest of Christ requireth Spare thy self when the interest of Christ requireth it not for thy self but for him But when his interest is most promoted by thy suffering rejoice that thou art any way capable of serving him § 15. Direct 9. Though sometimes a particular profession of the faith may be unseasonable yet you Direct 9. must never make any profession of the contrary either by words or actions Truth may be sometimes silenced but a Lye may never be professed or approved § 16. Direct 10. If any that Profess Christianity reproach you for the profession of Holiness and Diligence convince them that they Hypocritically profess the same and that Holiness is essential to Christianity Open their Baptismal Covenant to them and the Lords Prayer in which they daily pray that Gods will may be done on earth even as it is in Heaven which is more strictly than the best of us can reach The difference between them and you is but this whether we should be Christians hypocritically in jeast or in good earnest CHAP. V. Directions about Vows and particular Covenants with God Tit. 1. Directions for the right making such Vows and Covenants § 1. Direct 1. UNderstand the Nature of a Vow and the Use to which it is appointed What a Vow is A Vow is a Promise made to God 1. It is not a bare Assertion or Negation 2. It is not a meer Pollicitation or expression of the purpose or resolution of the mind For he that saith or meaneth no more than I am purposed or resolved to do this may upon sufficient reason do the contrary For he may change his mind and resolution without any untruth or injury to any 3. It is not a meer Devoting of a thing to God for the present by actual resignation For the present actual Delivery of a thing to Sacred Uses is no Promise for the future Though we usually joyn them both together yet Devovere may be separated from Vovâ—re 4. It must be therefore a Promise which is A voluntary obliging ones self to another de futuro for some Good 5. It is therefore implyed that it be the Act of a Rational creature and of one that in that act hath some competent use of Reason and not of a fool or ideot or mad man or a child that hath Viris gravibus vehementer displicere animadveâ—ti quod ab Indis testimonium jurejurando exigitur cum constet eos facillime pejeraâ—e utpote qui neque juramenti vim sentiant neque veritatis studio tanganâ—ur sed testimonium eo modo dicant quâ— credunt Judici gratissimum fore â—ut a primo suae factionis homine edocti sunt Hos igitur jurare compellere ipsis exitiosum propter perjuria c. Aâ—osta p. 345. not reason for such an act no nor of a brainsick or melancholy person who though he be caetera sanus is either delirant in that business or is irresistibly born down and necessitated by his Disease to Vow against the sober deliberate conclusion of his reason at other times having at the Time of Vowing Reason enough to strive against the Act but not self-government enough to restrain a passionate Melancholy Vow 6. Whereas some Casuists make Deliberation necessary it must be understood that to the Being of a Vow so much Deliberation is requisite as may make it a rational humane act it must be an act of Reason but for any further Deliberation it is necessary only to the well-being and not to the being of a Vow and without it it is a Rash Vow but not No Vow 7. When we say It must be a Voluntary Act the meaning is not that it must be totally and absolutely Voluntary without any fear or threatning to induce us to it but only that it be really Voluntary that is an act of choice by a free agent that considering all things doth choose so to do He that hath a Sword set to his breast and doth Swear or Vow to save his life doth do it Voluntarily as choosing rather to do it than to dye Man having free-will may choose rather to dye than Vow if he think best His will may be moved by fear but cannot be forced by any one or any means whatsoever 8. When I say that a Vow is a Promise I imply that the Matter of it is necessarily some real or supposed good to be good or to do good or not to do evil Evil may be the matter of an Oath but it is not properly a Vow if the matter be not supposed good 9. It is a promise made to God that we are now speaking of Whether the name of a Vow belong to a promise made only to man is a question de nomine which we need not stop at § 2. A Vow is either a simple Promise to God or a Promise bound with an Oath or imprecation The sorts of Vows Some would appropriate the Name of a Vow to this last sort only when men swear they will do this or that Which indeed is the most formidable sort of vowing but the true nature of a Vow is found also in a simple self-obliging Promise § 3. The true Reason and Use of Vows is but for the more certain and effectual performance of The Use of Vows our Duties not to make new Laws and Duties and Religions for us but to drive on the backward lingering soul to do its duty and to break over difficulties and delayes that by strengthening our bonds and setting the danger before our eyes we may be excited to escape it § 4. It is a great question whether our own Vows can add any new obligation to that which before The Obligation of Vows lay upon us from the command of God Amesius saith Cas. Consc. l. 4. c. 16. Non addituâ— prâ—prie in istis nova obligatio neque augetur in se prior sed magis agn scitur recipitur a nobis Passive in istis aeque fuimus antea obligati sed activa recognitione arctivùs nobis applicatur a nobismeâ—ipsis Others commonly speak of an additional obligation And indeed there is a double obligation added by a Vow to that which God before had laid on us to the Matter of that Vow Premising this distinction between Obligatio imponentis a Governing obligation which is the effect of Governing right or Authority and obligatio consentientis a self-obliging by voluntary consent which is the effect of that dominion which a Rational free agent hath over his own actions I say 1. He that ☜ voweth doth oblige himself who before was obliged