mention the Importance of their case and secondly the Danger that they are in of miscarrying and what they should do to escape it § 3. I. And indeed their condition as they prove good or bad is of unspeakable importance 1. To the Church and the Souls of men 2. To the Peace of the Kingdom 3. To themselves And 4. To their Parents above the common case of others § 4. 1. Of how great importance the Quality of the Clergy is to the Church and mens Salvation many thousands have found to their Joy and Happiness and I fear many more thousands to their sorrow and destruction And then of what importance the Quality of Scholars and Young Candidates is to the soundness of the Clergy I need not many words to make men of reason and experience know § 5. 2. God who hath instituted the sacred office and by his Spirit qualifieth men for the work doth usually work according to the fitness of their work and qualifications As he doth the works of Nature according to the fitness of Natural second causes giving more light by the Sun than by a Star or Candle c. so he doth the works of Morality according to the fitness of Moral Causes Holiness is the true Morality and usually wrought by holy means And though it be so supernatural in several respects as it is wrought by the supernatural revelation or doctrine or a supernatural Teacher Christ by the operation of the holy Ghost a supernatural Agent commonly called infusion and raising the soul to God a supernatural object and to a better state than that of corrupted nature yet we are natural recipients and agents and it is our natural faculties which Grace reneweth and being renewed exercise the acts of holiness and God worketh on us according to our nature and by causes suited to our capacities and to the work As he useth not to give men the knowledge of Languages Philosophy or any Art by the Teaching of the ignorant and unskilful so much as by Learned skilful Teachers we must say the same of our Teachers of sacred Truth and though Grace be the gift of the holy Ghost experience constraineth all sorts of Christians almost to acknowledge what I here assert Why else do they so earnestly contend that they may live under the Teachers which they count the best Will Hereticks teach men the Truth as well as the Orthodox why then is there such a stir made against Hereticks in the World and why are the Clergy so eager to silence such as Preach down that which they approve Will Papists choose Protestant Teachers or Protestants choose Papists And as men are unfit to teach others that which they know not themselves so unbelieving men and unholy men are far less fit to perswade the hearers to Faith and Holiness than believing holy Teachers are Though some of them may be furnished with the same notions and words which serious Godly Teachers use yet usually even in that they are greatly wanting because they have not so throughly studied saving Truth nor percieved its evidence nor set their hearts upon it nor deeply recieved and retained it For serious affection quickneth the mind to serious consideration and causeth men speedily and deeply to recieve that truth which others recieve but slowly superficially or not at all How eagerly and prosperously do men study that which they strongly love And how hardly do they learn that which they have no delight in much more which they hate and their very natures are against But if an Hypocrite should have good notions and words yet he will usually be greatly wanting in that serious delivery which is ordinarily needfull to make the Hearers serious Christians It seldom reacheth the heart of the Hearer which cometh not from the heart of the Speaker As light causeth light so heat causeth heat And the dead are unfit to generate Life The arrow will not go far or deep if both the Bow and Arm be not strong that shoot it constant experience telleth us undeniably of the different successe of the reading or saying of a Pulpit-lesson or a dull or a mere affected Speech of the judicious serious Explication application of well chosen matter which the experienced Speaker well understandeth and which he uttereth from the feeling of his Soul And the Love of a Benefice no nor of applause neither will not make a man preach in that manner as the love of God and the lively belief of heaven and hell and as the desire of saving Souls will do The means will be chosen and used and the work done agreeably to the principle and the end But if a Stage-Hypocrite should learn the knack or art of preaching with affected fervency and seeming zeal yet Art and Paint will not reach the power and beauty of Nature Usually affectation bewrayeth it self and when it is discerned the Hypocrisie is loathed And it faileth ordinarily in point of Constancie Will the Hypocrite pray alwaies Iob 27.10 Art will not hold out like Nature when the motives of Gain which is their Godliness ceaseth the pleasure of applause the means will cease Yea usually it turneth to a malignant reviling of the serious piety which they counterfeited before or of the persons whose applause they did affect For where the Hypocrisie of the Preacher is discovered by his contrary self-condemning words or life and the people accordingly judg of him as he is his proud heart cannot bear it but he turneth a malicious reproacher of those whose applause he sought thinking by disgraceing them to defend his own esteem by making their censure of him incredible or contemptible And if the Hypocrite should hold on his Stage affectation with plausible art yet it will not reach to an answerable discharge of the rest of his ministerial work It is from men that he expecteth his reward and in the sight of men on the publick Stage that he appeareth in his borrowed Glory But in his Family or his Conversation or his ministerial Duty to men in private he answereth not his publick shew He will not set himself to instruct and win the ignorant and impenitent and zealously to save men from their sins and to raise mens earthly minds to Heaven by praying with them and by heavenly discourse and by a heavenly Conversation nor will he be at much cost or labour to do good § 6. But alas the far greatest part of bad unexperienced Clergie men do prove so hurtful to the Church that they have not so much as the Hypocrites seeming Zeal and Holyness to cloak their sin or profit their people with The sad case of the Christian World proclaimeth this not only in the Southern and Eastern Churches Abassia Egypt Syria Armenia the Greeks and Moscovites c. nor only the Papists Priests in the West but too great a number in the Reformed Churches And it is more lamentable than wonderful For there goeth so much to the general planting of a worthy faithful Ministry
him early how to live and how to die and what to seek and what to shun You should have given him the Example of a holy and heavenly mind and life You should have watch'd over him for his safety and unweariedly instructed him for his Salvation But you led him the way to despise God's Word and set light by Christ and Holiness and Heaven to hate Instruction and Reproof to spend the Lords day in idleness or worldly vanity and to seek first the World and the prosperity of the Body and glut the Flesh with sinful pleasure What wonder if a Serpent breed a Serpent and quickly teach him to hiss and sting and if Swine teach their young to feed on dung and wallow in the mire This is part of the fruit of your worldliness fleshliness ungodliness and neglect of your own Salvation and your Childs Now he is as you are a slave of sin and an heir of Hell Was this it that you vowed him for to God in Baptism Was it to serve the Flesh the World and the Devil against our God our Saviour and our sanctifier Or did the mistake of the Liturgy deceive you to think that it was not you but the God-Fathers that were bound by Charge and Vow to bring him up in the Faith and Fear of God and teach him all that a Christian should know for his Soul's Health Was it not you that God bound to all this The sin and misery of your Child now is so far your curse as you are guilty of it and will add to your misery for ever Such are the sorrows that wicked Parents and wicked Children do prepare and heap on one another Such miseries will come but woe to those by whom they come it had been good for that man that he had never been born § 10. And it is no small grief to faithful Ministers to see their labour so much lost and to see so much evil among their flocks and such sad Prognosticks of worse to come He is no true Minister of Christ as to his own acceptance and Salvation whose heart is not set on the winning and sanctifying and saving of Souls What else do we study for preach for live for long for suffer for in our Work All faithful-Teachers can say with Paul that they are willing to spend and be spent for them and now we live if ye stand fast in the Lord. 2 Cor. 12.15 1 Thes. 3.8 He told them weeping of those that were Enemies to the Cross of Christ whose God was their Belly who glory in their shame and mind earthly things instead of a Conversation in Heaven Phil. 3.18 19. When God hath blessed us with the comfortable enjoyment of many ancient holy Christians who are the beauty and honour of the Assemblies and Death calls home one of them after another to Christ and the rest are ready to depart Alas Must a seed of Serpents come after them Must those take their places to our grief and shame who are bred up to the World and Flesh in Drunkenness Fornication and Enmity to God and a holy Life O what a woful change is this And if any be like to be the stain and Plague of the Church it is such as these If we preach holy truth to them Lust cannot love it If we tell them of Gods word the fleshly mind doth not savour it nor can be subject to it Rom. 8.5 6 7. If we reprove them sharply they smart and hate us If we call them to Confession and Repentance their Pride and Carnality cannot bear it If we excommunicate them for Impenitency as Christ requireth or but deny them the Sacrament as unmeet they rage against us as our fiercest Enemies If we neglect Discipline and admit Swine to the Communion of Saints we harden and deceive them and flatter them in their sin pollute the Church and endanger our Souls by displeasing the chief Pastor What then shall we do with these self-murthering ungodly men Many of them have so much Reverence of a Sacrament or so little regard of it that they never seek it but keep away themselves Perhaps they are afraid left they eat and drink damnation to themselves by the prophanation of holy things But do they think that it is safe to be out of the Church and Communion of Saints because it 's dangerous to abuse it Are Infidels safe because false hearted Christians perish What if breaking your Vows and Covenant be damnable Is it not so to be out of the holy Covenant What if God be a consuming fire to those that draw near him in unrepented heinous sin Is it therefore wise or safe to avoid him Neither those that come not to him nor those that come in their hypocrisie and reigning sin shall be saved And yet what to do with these self-suspenders we know not Are they still Members of the Churches or are they not If they are we are bound to call them to Repentance for forsaking the Communion of Saints in Christs commanded Ordinance If they are not we should make it known that Christians and no Christians may not be confounded and they themselves may understand their case And neither of these can they endure But for dwelling in the Parish and hearing the Liturgy and Sermons must still pass for Church Members lest Discipline should exasperate and further lose them This is that Discipline which is thought worthy the honour of Episcopal Dignity and Revennues and is supposed to make the Church of England the best in the world by the same men that would rage were Discipline exercised on them and must either be admitted to the Sacrament in a life of Fornication Drunkenness Sensuality and Prophaneness without any open Confession Repentance and Reformation or else must pass for Church Members without any exercise of Discipline while they shun the Sacramental Communion of the Church Such work doth wickedness make among us § 11. Indeed these are the men that are the trouble of Families the trouble of Neighbours the trouble of good Magistrates the shame of bad ones and the great danger of the Land All the foreign Enemies whom we talk so much against and fear are not so hurtful and dangerous to us as these These that spring out of your own bowels These that are bred up with care and tenderness and cost in your houses These that should succeed godly Ancestors in Wisdom and well doing and be their glory Who plot against us but home bred sinners Who more hate the good and persecute them Who are more malignant Enemies of Godliness and scorners of a holy Life and hinderers of the Word of God and Patrons of Prophaneness and of Ministers and People that are of the same mind If England be undone as the Eastern Churches and much of the Western are undone it will be by your own carnal ungodly Posterity He that is once a slave to Satan and his fleshly Lust is ready for preferment or a reward to be a slave
and most of Germany to what they are Such a Clergie have brought Ireland from the laudable State which it was in in the days of Malachias as Bernard described it into the barbarous briutish ignorance and bloody inhumanity at which it is now arrived and had the chief hand in the murder of two hundred thousand persons in the late Rebellious insurrection such a Clergy had a chief hand in the civil wars in England in the reign of William Rufus King Stephen Hen. 3. King Iohn c. the subject of Pryns History of the Treasons of Prelates And alas such a corrupt sort of Ministers keepeth up the division of the German Protestants under the name of Lutherans and Calvinists about Consubstantiation Church-Images and doctrines of Predestination not understood And had the Low-Countries ever had the stirs between Remonstrants and Contra-remonstrants or England and Scotland ever had the miserable contentions warres and cruelties between the former Episcopal parties and the Laudians or between them and the Presbyterians and Independents and all the silencings and woefull contentions and Schisms that have thence followed if the vices of the Clergy had not been the cause And had we continued in this case these twenty years last silencing reviling and prosecuting about two thousand conscionable Preachers and writing and preaching still for executing the Lawes against them and the prosecuted people flying from such a Clergy as ravening Wolves And some censuring the innocent with the guilty could all this have been done by a wise holy and peaceable Clergy that served God in selfdenyal and knew what it is to seek the good of Church and souls When we yet continue under the same distractions and convulsions and all cry out that a flood of misery is breaking in on the Land and like to overwhelm us all and still it is the Clergy that cannot or will not be reconciled but animate Rulers and people against each other and cannot or will not find the way of peace yea all would be soon healed in probability could the Nation but procure the Clergy to consent certainly there is some grievous disease in our selves which is like to pove mortal to such a Kingdom and that while so many pray and strive for peace Those men that have no more skill or will to heal the wounds and stop the blood of a fainting Church and State nor wil by any reason or humble importunity be intreated to consent to the cheap and necessary cure no nor to hold their hands from continued tearing of us do tell all the world that they are sadly wanting in fitness for their sacred office and that this unfitness is like to cost an endangered Nation dear Wo wo wo to that Church that hath Hypocrites Ungodly Unexperienced Proud Worldly Fleshly Unskilful unfaithful and Malignant Pastors and that hath Wolves instead of Shepherds wo to the Land that hath such Wo to the Prince and States that have and follow such Counsellors and to the Souls that are subverted by them Alas from a bad Clergy hath sprung the greatest calamities of the Churches in all places to this very day § 11. But will such mens sins prove less woful to themselves than others No. 1. It is the sin and guilt it self which is the greatest evil 2. They aggravate their sin and guilt by a perfidious violating a double vow their Baptismal Vow of Christianity and their Ordination Vow to be Faithful Ministers of Christ. 3. They aggravate their guilt by their nearness to God in their Office and Works as Aarons two Sons that were struck dead Lev. 10.2 3. For God will be sanctifyed in them that come nigh him and before all the people he will be glorifyed The examples of the Beth-shemites Vzza Vzziah the bad Priests and False Prophets of old are terrible 4. And it greatly addeth to the guilt to do all this or much of it as in the Name of God or by his Commission This is a dreadful taking of Gods Name in vain for which he will not hold them guiltless To pretend that it is by Gods command that they set up that which he abhorreth that they corrupt his Doctrine or Worship or Church Order that they set up their own wills and sinful Laws instead of and against his Laws that they tear his Church by proud Impositions and wicked Anathema's and Interdicts of whole Kingdoms Excommunicating and Deposing Kings Absolving men from their Oaths of Allegiance Tormenting and Murdering Godly men as Hereticks Silencing Faithful Ministers Smiting the Shepherds and scattering the Flocks and then reviling them as Schismaticks and all this to uphold a worldly Kingdom of their own and keep up their Pride Domination and self-will and to have Riches for provision for fleshly Lusts I say to do all this as in the Name of Christ with a sic dicit Dominus and as for the Church and Truth and Souls is a most heynous aggravation 5. Indeed while a poor blind Clergy man as his Trade for applause and gain doth Study and Preach that Word of God which is against him how dreadful is it to think how all that he doth and saith is self-condemnation and that out of his own mouth he must be judged and that all the woes which he pronounceth against Hypocrites and impenitent carnal worldly men his own Tongue pronounceth them against himself § 12. And when Satan hath once got such Instruments how great an advantage hath he for the success against themselves against the Flock and against the Church and Cause of Christ above what he might expect by other Servants 1. They are farre hardlier brought to Repentance than others 1. Because they have by Wit and Study bended that Doctrine to defend their sin which should be used to bring them to Repentance 2. And because their aggravated sin against Light doth most forfeit that help of Grace which should work Repentance in them 3. And because being taken for Wise Learned men and Preachers of Truth and Teachers of others and reprovers of Errors their Reputation is much concerned in it and their unhumbled Souls which look all others should Assent and Consent to their prescripts will hardly be brought to confesse sin and Errour but will sooner as Papists plead-infallibility or conclude as some Councils have done that a Lay man must not accuse a Clergy man be he never so bad Repentance is hard to all men of carnal interest but to few more than to an unhumbled Clergy man And 2. Whoever accuseth or reproveth them of sin will be represented as an Enemy to the Church a dishonourer of his Ghostly Fathers and one that openeth their nakedness which he should Cover and so their Ulcers are as a noli me tangere and fret as a Gangreen unremedied 3. And their Place Office Titles and Learning with many will give sin Reputation and Advantage If a Drunkard in the Alehouse deride Godly men as Hereticks Schismaticks Hypocrites or Puritanes Sober men will not much regard