of their offences through the deceitfulness of sin vers 13. And this effect is obvious and ordinary for not only the nature of things but even the just judgement of God concur to it Nothing being more common than for those men who hold the truth as S t Paul sayes in unrighteousness of living and even whil'st they know God do not glorifie him by their service and obedience which are due to him and are our way of glorifying him as God nor are thankfull in their hearts and actions to lose that knowledge and to become vain in their imaginations their foolish heart being darkned by Gods giving them over to a reprobate mind or a mind void of all true judgment to do those things which are not convenient not knowing they are so Rom. 1.18 21 28. But now as for these prejudices which get into our consciences and perswasions not through any force of reason which compells but through the witchcraft of lusts and vices which enveagle and make us willing and desirous to believe them they will not excuse us because they are themselves sinfull and deserve damnation For they enter at an ill door and win upon us through a reigning lust or a damning sin and therefore they are so far from excusing those transgressions which flow from them that in themselves they are instances and effects of a deadly offence and if repentance intervene not will certainly prove desperate and damning S t Paul in breathing out threatnings against all believers and in persecuting of the Church acted only according to the best of his own Judgment and Opinion For he verily thought with himself that he not only might but ought to do several things contrary to the Name of Jesus of Nazareth Acts 26.9 But as this Opinion was his sin so would his transgressions upon it have proved his condemnation had not God shewn pity on him in calling him to repentance and conversion whereby alone it was that he obtained mercy and pardon I was sayes he a persecutor and injurious but I obtained mercy by that Grace of God conferr'd upon me at my conversion which was exceeding abundant with these two fundamental Graces which are a most prolifick spring of all the rest viz. Faith and Love which is in Jesus Christ 1 Tim. 1.13 14. The Jews who blasphemed and crucified our Saviour did nothing against their own conscience for their Opinion bore them out in all that practice in regard they judged it to be no sinfull murther but a most necessary act of Justice upon a great impostor and a most laudable and legal execution I wot Brethren sayes S t Peter that through ignorance ye did it as did not you only but also your rulers Acts 3.14 15 17. But forasmuch as this Ignorance was their own fault and their prejudices were owing to their own vices in regard that for this reason alone their minds would not receive a true belief of Christ and his Laws because they plainly contradicted their sinfull lusts and practices therefore should it by no means excuse them but if their repentance did not prevent it it would most certainly in the end prove deadly and damning For their crucifixion of him he tells them was by wicked hands Acts 2.23 and it was only upon their repentance and conversion that their sins of blasphemy and murder should be blotted out Acts 3.19 Again the transgressions of the Pharisees were justified by their own Opinions for they looked upon themselves notwithstanding them to be holy men and favourites of Heaven But proceeding as we have seen they did from unmortified lusts and a wicked life they rendred them obnoxious to damnation How can you escape the damnation of hell Mat. 23.33 The sins of the Gnosticks notwithstanding they were warranted by their disobedient Principles were of a damnable nature for their heresies and disobedient Principles themselves being the effects of disobedient and wicked hearts deserved damnation and are called by S t Peter in that Chapter where he recounts them and with great zeal inveighs against them damnable heresies 2 Pet. 2.1 They are works of the flesh or the products of unmortified lusts and carnal practices and must therefore share in the same judgment with other fleshâ—â— works amongst whom they are reckon'd The works of the flesh sayes S t Paul are manifest seditions heresies envyings murders drunkenness of the which I tell you that they which do such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God Gal. 5.19 20 21. If we will transgress our Duty by disbelieving it first and giving credit to such Opinions as destroy the obligation of it our disbelief of our Duty will by no means excuse our sin or rescue us from condemnation For to disbelieve the Laws and threatnings of Christ is the very worst part of unbelief and the most hatefull and deadly instance of infidelity And as for unbelievers sayes S t John or those men who will not believe Religion or the best part of it Laws and Duties but seek to evade its force after that God has plainly told them of it they shall have their part in the Lake which burns with fire and brimstone Rev. 21.8 Men without understanding who will not see their Duty because they are blinded by such lusts as fight against it in the judgment of God are worthy of death Rom. 1.31 32. The reason why their consciences adhere to such Opinions as utterly destroy their Duty is only because their lusts and vices have made them hate and turn away from it And as for every such prejudice against a Duty as proceeds from our aversation to it it is of a great guilt and liable to a very severe punishment For in this S t Paul is peremptory All they shall be damned who believe a lye and believe not the truth through the pleasure which they take in unrighteousness They shall perish because they receive not the LOVE of the Truth that they may be saved by it 2 Thess. 2.10 11 12. When our disobedient prejudices therefore enter upon this score and are begot in us through a wicked heart and through some reigning lusts and vices which are served by them but not by any weakness of understanding or such fallibility of means as may betray even an honest heart into them they are subject to a sad doom and a severe censure they will by no means plead our excuse but are an Article of our condemnation And as for some marks whereby to judge whether our disobedient prejudices proceed from this deadly Principle our unmortified lusts and vices and thereupon are of this dangerous and damning nature or no we may observe these Characters and judge according to these measures First If that Lust or Sin whereto our prejudice is subservient be strong and powerfull if it reign in us and in the ordinary course and custome of our lives gives laws to us the corruption and disobedience of our heart is plainly the cause of
of both these so that unto it there is required First An honest heart Secondly An honest industry First In all involuntary ignorance it is necessary that we have an honest heart We have S t Paul's word for it that our receiving of the love of the truth is necessary to a saving belief and understanding of it They who believed not the truth but believed lyes fell into that miscarriage by this means says he because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved 2 Thess. 2.10 11 12. And our Saviour has taught us that an obedient heart is the surest step to a right understanding If any man will or is willing to do God's will he shall know of the Doctrine which I preach whether it be of God John 7.17 The heart or will must in the first place be obedient and unfeignedly desirous to know Gods will not that it may question and dispute but practise and obey it For a failure here spoils all besides because the Heart and Will is the Principle of all our actions and if it be against obeying any Law it will be also against understanding it and so will be sure to make us neglect and omit more or less the means of coming to the knowledge of it To prevent therefore all wilful defects afterwards care must be taken in the first place that our hearts be honest and truly desirous to be shewn our Duty be it what it will They must entertain no Lusts which will prejudice them against Gods Laws and make them willing either to overlook or to pervert them But they must come with an entire obedience and resignation being ready and desirous to hearken to whatsoever God shall say and resolv'd to practise it whensoever they shall understand it Of their sincerity in which last besides their own sense and feeling they cannot have a greater Argument than their being careful to be found in the practice of so much as they know already without which it is not to be expected that they should be perfecter in their practice by knowing more This Honesty and obedience of the Heart then is necessary in the first place to make our ignorance involuntary because we should wilfully omit the means of knowledge and become thereby wilfully ignorant if we wanted it But then as an effect of this Honesty of the heart to make our ignorance involuntary and innocent there is yet further required Secondly An honest Industry For the knowledge of our Duty as was observed is not to be got without our own search but we must inquire after it and make use of the means of obtaining it before we shall be possessed of it We must read good Books which will teach us Gods Will but especially the Bible we must be constant and careful to hear Sermons attend diligently to the instructions of our spiritual Guides whom God has set over us for that very purpose We must submit our selves to be catechised by our Governours taught by our Superiours and admonished by our Equals begging always a Blessing from God to set home upon our Souls all their instructions And after all we must be careful without prejudice or partiality to think and meditate upon those things which we read or hear that we may the better understand them and that they may not suddenly slip from us but we may remember and retain them All these are such means as God has appointed for the attainment of spiritual knowledge and laid in our way to a right understanding of his Will And they are such as he has placed in every mans power for any of us to use who are so minded So that if we are ignorant of our Duty through the want of them we are ignorant because we our selves would have it so But if ever we expect that our ignorance should be judged involuntary we must industriously use all those means of knowledge which are under the power of our own wills whereby we may prevent it And as for the measures of this industry viz. what time is to be laid out upon it and what pains are to be taken in it that is so much as in every one according to their several abilities and opportunities would be interpreted an effect of an honestly obedient heart and of an unfeigned desire to know our duty by any honest man For God has not given all men either the same abilities or opportunities for knowledge and since he has not he doth not expect the same measures from them He doth not reap where he has not sown but that which he exacts is that every man according to his opportunities should use and improve that talent be it more or less which was intrusted with him as we are taught in the Parable of the Talents Mat. 25. And to name that once for all we have this laid down by our Saviour as an universal maxime of Gods Government unto whomsoever much is given of them shall much be required Which is the very same equitable proceeding that is daily in use among our selves For to whom men have committed much of him they will exact the more Luk. 12.48 If any man therefore is industrious after the knowledge of Gods will according to the measure of those abilities and opportunities which God has given him he is industrious according to that measure which God requires of him All men have not the same leisure for some are necessarily taken up by their place and way of life in much business some in less some have their time at their own disposal some are subject to the ordering of others And all have not the same abilities and opportunities for some are able by study and reading to inform themselves some have constant need of the help and instruction of others some have most wise and understanding teachers and may have their assistance when they will others have men of meaner parts and attainments and opportunity of hearing them more seldom But now of all these whose leisure and opportunities are thus different God doth not in any wise exact the same measure No one shall be excused for what another shall be punished but if every man endeavours according to his opportunities he has done his Duty and God has accepted him And in the proportioning of this where there is first an honest heart God is not hard to please For he knows that besides their Duty men have much other business to mind which his own constitution of Humane Nature has made necessary and he allows of it The endeavours which he exacts of us are not the endeavours of Angels but of men who are soon wearied and much distracted having so many other things to employ us But he accepts of such a measure of industry in the use of all the means of knowledge as would be interpreted for an effect of an hearty desire to know his Laws by any honest man For where there is first an obedient heart God will not be equalled and
regard them Neither can it be collected beforehand from any fixt rule or reason seeing it observes none And what neither our greatest wisdom can foretel nor our exactest care prevent it is wholly to no purpose to make a matter of our study and enquiry But as for the Everlasting happiness or misery of our Souls and Bodies in the other Life and at the Resurrection they are not left at random nor fall out by accident but are dispensed by a wise hand and according to a fixt and established rule For it is God who distributes them and this distribution is in Judgment and the procedure in that is by Laws and those laws are unalterably fixt for us and most plainly declared and published to us in the Gospel So that now it is no impossible no nor extream difficult thing for us to understand which shall be our own state in the next world For the laws are well known proclaimed daily to every ear by a whole order of men set apart for that purpose their sence and meaning is obvious to any common understanding and the Judgment according to them at that day will be true and faithful God will Absolve all those whom his Gospel acquits but Condemn every man whom it accuses There will be no perverting of Justice through fear or favour no Sentence passed through partiality or ill will but a Tryal every way unbyassed and uncorrupt where Every one shall receive according to the things done in the body 2 Cor. 5.10 And Judgment shall pass upon all men according to their works Rom. 2.6 And thus as the belief of the two former Articles the immortal state either of Bliss or Misery for our Souls and the Resurrection of our Bodies will inflame us with restless desires so if we seriously believe it will this third Article of the great and general Judgment possess us with sure hopes of being satisfyed in this great enquiry which of the two States will fall to our own share And as this belief of the last Judgment will be the most effectual means to encourage so will it be withal the surest to guide our Enquiries after it It chalks us out a method for our search and directs us to the readiest course for satisfaction For if the happiness and misery of the next world is to be dispensed to every man for a reward or punishment according to the direction of those Laws which promise or threaten them then have we nothing more to do in this enquiry but to examine well what those laws are what obedience they require what allowances and mitigations they will bear and what lot and condition they assign us For in that day we shall be look'd upon to be what they declare us and be doom'd to that state which they pronounce for us What they speak to us all now that the Judge of all the world will pronounce upon us all then their sentence shall be his and what they denounce he will execute He will judge us by no other measure but his own Laws those very Laws which he has taken so much care to proclaim to us and continually to press upon us which he has put into every one of our hands and made to be sounding daily in our ears the laws and sanctions of the Gospel Our blessed Saviour Christ the Judge himself has told us this long ago The word that I have spoken the same shall judge men at the last day Joh. 12.48 And his great Apostle Paul has again confirmed it Rom. 2. God shall judge the world at that day according to my Gospel vers 16. If we perform what those Laws peremptorily require they now already declare us blessed and such at the last day will Christ pronounce us But if by sinning against them we fall short of it they denounce nothing but everlasting woes and miseries and those he will execute For he tells us plainly that when he shall come to judgment in the Glory of his Father with his holy Angels he will reward every man according to his works Mat. 16.27 To them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and immortality he will give eternal life Rom. 2.7 But to them who obey not the Truth but obey unrighteousness indignation and wrath tribulation and anguish and that upon every man whether he be Jew or Gentile vers 8 9. For all this shall be acted in the greatest integrity without preferring one before an other It is only the difference in mens works which shall difference their conditions but they who have been equal in their sins shall be equal also in their sufferings For at the appearance of Jesus Christ God as S t Peter tells us without any respect of persons judges according to every mans work 1 Pet. 1.7.17 The way then whereby to satisfie our selves in this great matter is this To look well into the Gospel there to learn what we should be and into our own hearts and lives there to see what indeed we are and thence to conclude what in the next world whether in a state of Life or Death we shall be And to shew this to every man and to let him see now beforehand how he stands prepared for the next world and whether if he should be called away presently to the Bar of that Judgment he would be everlastingly acquitted or condemned in it is my present business and design It is to let us see our Eternal Condition before we enter on it and to make it evident to every man who is both capable and willing to be instructed what shall be his endless doom of Life or Death before the Judge pronounce it And since the Rule of that Court whereby we must all be tryed and which must measure out to us either Life or Death is as we have seen none other than the Gospel of our Judge and Saviour Jesus Christ that I may manage this enquiry with the greater light and clearness I will proceed in this method First I will enquire What is that condition of our happiness or misery which the Gospel indispensably exacts Secondly What are its mitigations and allowances those defects which it pardons and bears with And when at any time we fall short of this condition and thereby forfeit all right and title to that happiness and pardon which is promised to us upon it Then Thirdly What are those remedies and means of recovery which it points us out for restoring our selves again unto a state of Grace and Favour and whereupon we shall be reconciled And having by this means discovered what in the great and general judgment shall really and truly determine our last estate what shall be connived at in it and when once 't is lost what shall restore to it I shall in the Fourth and last place Remove those groundless doubts and scruples which perplex the minds of good and safe but yet erring and misguided people concerniâ—â— it And having in this manner cleared up all thâ—se
either we soften our sin by excuses or justifie it by arguments or overlook it by ignorance heedless inconsideration and forgetfulness Either we will act it rashly through the power of a strong lust and not consider it at all or else think of it only to lessen or defend it And when by the opposition of our Lusts to the perfecting and performing of our Duty our spiritual strengths are thus weakned and our lusts advanced when our passions rise and our minds plead against it then is the strife and there 's the toil and difficulty of obedience And because in this obedience of our works and actions there is so much difficulty therefore are most people so desirous to shift it off and so forward to take up with any thing which will save them the labour of it They perswade themselves that God will admit of easier terms and build their hopes upon cheaper services in particular upon these Four First A true belief or orthodox opinions Secondly An obedience of idle desires and ineffective wishes And if for all these they continue still to do what God forbids and to work disobedience then their hope is to be saved notwithstanding it because Thirdly Their falling is through the power of a great and overpowering temptation which they see and resist but cannot prevail over So that Fourthly Their transgression is with reluctance and unwillingness their service of Sin is an unwilling and a slavish service 1. The first false ground whereby men elude all the necessity of serving God with their strength or executive powers in outward works and operations is their confidence of being saved for a true belief or a right knowledge in religious matters and orthodox opinions They turn all Religion into a matter of study and speculation as if it required only a good head and a discerning judgment They make it a matter of skill but not of practice an exercise of wit and parts but not a rule of action For the faith which they expect should save them with some men goes no further than the mind and consists barely in right notions and apprehensions They take it to be nothing more but an understanding what Christ has said a being able to reason upon it and to argue for it and in their own minds approving and consenting to it And that not to all that Christ has revealed neither For the Precepts or Commands it overlooks and doth not meddle with the threatnings it either considers not at all or if it do it takes them not to be due to that whereunto God has fixed them viz. disobedience of practice but only to ignorance and unbelief But all that which their faith eyes and which their minds solely or at least principally approve of is the historical passages of Christs life and death the doctrinal points which he has told us concerning God or himself and the comfortable promises of the Gospel They believe what Christ is what he has done and suffered for us and what he has promised to us they think right in all the Religious Controversies that are on foot in the world joyning themselves with the Orthodox men and siding as they presume with the true Opinion they profess Christs Religion and are Members of his Church and adhere to the right party of Christians and to the purest Congregation and that they conclude is enough to bring them to Heaven But if any think as God be praised many do that God requires more than the bare service of our minds and right apprehensions yet even a great part of them fancy that all which he requires besides is only the obedience of their tongues and discourses If they believe with the mind and confess with the mouth although they are rebellious and reprobate in their practice they are satisfied of their Godly estate and presume that God is so too Their Religion is made up of lip-service for they think to content God by heavenly talk and pious conference by larding all their discourses with the Name of God and shreds of Scripture all their conversation is holy phrase and sanctified form of speaking and this they hope will attone for all the lewdness and disobedience of their lives and actions And if they proceed yet further to a Faith that reacheth beyond the mind and the tongue and think it necessary that it sink down from the head into the heart yet there they will allow God to expect no great matters They hope he will be well pleased although it summon not up all our Affections for his service if it produce in us these two easie passions which are raised without much adoe and may well be spared viz. a strong confidence and a warm zeal If to make it saving it must imply a joynt concurrence of our Affections it shall be only of these two It shall add hope to knowledge and be a belief that God will save sinners with a special hope and fancifull confidence that he will in particular save them It shall add Zeal to Orthodoxy a warm heart to a sound head and be no more but a maintaining of and stickling for right opinions and against erroneous and false ones with heat and fierceness Thus do men delude themselves into great confidences and vain expectations from a faith that is without fruit from an orthodox but empty knowledge which is void of all obedient practice But a knowledge and belief which is not more comprehensive in its nature nor has other effects than these they will find to their cost in the event of things is miserably delusive and vain It will serve to no other end but the heightning of their crimes and the encreasing of their condemnation For do but consider If we will believe and understand Christs Doctrines and his Promises but overlook or deny his Laws and Precepts what is this but instead of honour and service to affront and renounce him By picking and choosing at this rate we cast off his power of molding for us a Religion and fixing the terms of his own mercy and make to our selves a condition of our own salvation We follow him so far only as we please our selves but no further The compass of our belief it self is not bounded by his authority or measured according to his mind but our own For we understand and assent not to every thing that he has said but only to what we our selves like We refuse to take every thing upon his word and credit him in what he speaks no longer than it agrees with us If we believe him it is only where we matter not whether what he sayes be true or no but we either give no heed to him or flatly disbelieve him where we have any temptation His veracity and truth it self has no power over our very minds beyond what our own lusts and beloved sins will suffer it but the Devil and the World must be served in the first place by our Opinions and God must be forced to
take up with their leavings Nay what is yet more by such a partial and squeamish belief as this we do not only give or take at our own liking from that attribute of his which in believing we would be thought to honour viz. his Truth but even where we seem to submit to it we wrong and pervert it For we wrest his sense and spoil his meaning and undermine all that he intends So that even that which we do believe is not his mind but our own For the true meaning of his Promises which run all upon condition of our Obedience we pervert the force of all his threatnings which denounce woes to every sin and transgression we cancel We do as much as in us lies to corrupt his Word and to belie his very Gospel We make his whole Religion signifie another thing than what he intended For we make it allow what he forbids and encourage such as he threatens and save those whom at the day of Judgment he will condemn And since this perverse faith and knowledge which believes what it likes and is infidel to all the rest which sets up one part of his Word against another by making his Promises to undermine his Precepts and the Truth of his Doctrines to render all his threatnings false and useless I say since such an untowardly partial and gainsaying knowledge and belief as this is in very deed so plain a Libel to his Person so hateful a violence to his Truth and such a contradicting piece of Infidelity to his Gospel it can never be thought to be that Obedience which he commands and encourages but such a piece of contumelious flattery and fawning disobedience as he will most severely punish and condemn But if we believe his whole Gospel and besides the faith of his Doctrines and Promises take moreover all his Precepts to be such as he injoyns and all his threatnings in their true meaning to be such as he will execute and yet for all that in our works and practice despise and sin against them then is such our faith and knowledge so far from rendring our condition safe and comfortable that in very deed it makes it quite desperate and utterly bereft of all colour and excuse For it takes from us all plea for disobedience and leaves us not so much as the common refuge of all misdoing the pretence that we did offend but did not know it It makes every sin which we commit to be acted with a high hand and all our offences to become contempt our disobedience rebellion and our transgressions presumptuous For we sin then with open eyes we know Gods Commands but refuse to practise them we discern our duty but despise it It makes us not only to renounce his Authority but also to defie his Power For we know his Almighty Strength but we will not fear it we see his dreadfull threatnings but yet dare to commit the things which he has threatned in despite of them We see and believe that our Death is entailed upon our disobedience but for all that we choose and run upon it We contemn all his Commands and set light by all his Promises and despise all his Threatnings We see and believe them all but prefer the pleasure of our sins before them and transgress in open affront to them And such a state as this every man must needs see is so far from gaining his favour and ascertaining his acceptance that in reality it is a continued heightning of every provocation an habitual hostility and state of crying sin But if ever our Orthodox Faith and Professions avail us unto Life and Pardon they must end in our Obedient Works and Actions We must do that which we know God requires and practise that Pure Religion which we profess If ye know these things sayes our Saviour happy are ye if ye do them Joh. 13.17 It is not every verbal Professor every one that saith unto me or calls me Lord Lord that shall enter into the kingdom of heaven but he only that doth the will of my Father which is in Heaven Mat. 7.21 We are condemn'd out of our own mouths if we commend Christs Religion whilst we contemn and disobey it Every word which we speak in its behalf is a charge against our own selves and every Plea which we make for it is to us an accusation For if it be a Religion so pure so good so worthy of God and so beneficial to men as we profess it is the more unpardonable wretches we that transgress and act against it All the praises which we heap upon our Duty are a most bitter invective upon our own practice and the more we commend Christs Religion and Laws the more we condemn our own transgressions so that now God in exacting the punishment be it as severe as it well can only executes our own sentence We are made the worse for our knowledge if our Actions are not ruled by it for it shews plainly that our Lusts are most obstinate and our wills most wicked when for all we are clearly shewed the Laws the Promises and the threats of God we can yet despise them all and for the short pleasure of a silly sin transgress and act against them And since it doth thus enhanse our Sin we may be sure that it will proportionably encrease our punishment For he that knows his masters will and doth it not shall be beaten with many stripes Luk. 12.47 And thus we see that this thinking to be saved by the labour of our minds without any works of our lives and practice and coming to Heaven barely by a True Belief and Orthodox Opinions and Right Professions without ever obeying in our works and actions is one of those false and delusive grounds whereupon men shift off the necessity of this service with all their strength the service of their Actions And another false ground of shifting off the same service is 2. The delusive confidence which wicked men have of being saved at the last Day for an obedience of idle desires and ineffective wishes It is a strange conceit which some people have been taught viz. that the desire of Grace is Grace and that God will at the last Day judge men to have obeyed although they have not wrought but only desired it There is a complaisant sort of Casuistry and a much easier than ever God made that has been brought into the World which bids men to hope well though they do nothing so long as they find in themselves a desire that they could do it They wish they were what God expects and that they performed what he commands but they do no more but wish it They sit still and work no more now they have wished it than they did before Theirs is a weakly infant-desire it just lives but that is all it can effect nothing For the smallest lust is too strong for it and the least temptation over-bears it the desire of the Vertue is hush'd when
words proposed to them but with the latter a plain proposal is not enough but besides that there is need withal of a confutation of the erroneous prejudices which make against it 1. To a mind that is open and free not incensed by any repugnant lust nor misled by any contrary opinion nothing more is needful to make it understand and believe its Duty than to have a revelation of it from God in plain words and a clear and evident proposal For such men are ready and willing not only to hear and believe what God says but also to take his meaning from the obvious and simple sence of his own words and not from any agreement with their own bye-inclinations and prepossessions They are not biassed by any lust or made a party by any opinions which should make them lean to one sence but are unconcerned on one side or another and therefore they have no temptation to pervert Gods Words and misinterpret them and to make them speak not what according to their usual and open sence they should but what to gratifie their private lusts or opinions they wish they might do Their minds in themselves are free to any impression and wait for the plain and simple meaning of such expressions as God shall use to determine them So that he need do nothing more to give them a right apprehension of his will than to utter it in such plain and intelligible words as in their usual and obvious sence are expressive of it A plain and clear proposal then of any Duty is sufficient to make these ingenuously honest and free minds to understand it and nothing is a greater Argument that the expressions wherein our Duty is revealed are ambiguous or obscure and that the proposal is incompetent than that these teachable minds which have nothing but the inevidence of the revelation to misguide them do not rightly conceive and apprehend it But 2. To a mind that is prejudiced and prepossessed and through a love to some former opinions and anticipations of Judgment which are inconsistent with it unwilling to understand and assent to it a plain and evident proposal of any Duty is not enough but besides it there is need moreover of silencing those doubts and confuting those opinions which make against it To such minds I say a plain expression and evident proposal of Gods will is not sufficient to make them believe and rightly apprehend it For their prejudice is a Bar against it and makes them not to admit but overlook the most natural and open sence even of plain and clear expressions which they do not because the words do not obviously express but because their prejudicate opinion cannot consist with it For their own opinion they believe is true and that in their own sence which what it is they know most certainly And whilst they do think this a truth they cannot believe that to be a true although never so plain and obvious a sence of any other words which convinces it of falshood So that in this Case of clashing and contradiction between a prejudicate opinion and a new proposal so long as the prejudice is adhered to one of these two things must of necessity be chosen either for the sake of such contradiction to throw away the new proposal or to mitigate it by some sence that is reconcileable to the prejudicate belief And if the Proposer were any way of a suspected credit and a person liable to errour and mistake such interfering proposals would be rejected without more ado and not admit of any long debate But if the person who brings them be of unquestionable credit both for the untaintedness of his integrity which cannot deceive us and also for the perfection of his knowledg whereby he is not subject to be deceived himself as God is in all those truths which his Word declares and in all those Duties which his Law enjoins us then is there no way left if we stick still to our opinion but to seek out for some amicable and consistent interpretation of his words whereby they may be made to comport with it And here the natural defect of words and the universal imperfection of all speech befriends us For scarce any Sentence is so plain and full for one sense but that through the witty arts of some and the irregular and improper use of others it may be shown capable to speak another And that other sence we shall be sure to put upon it although it be never so remote and foreign from that true and obvious interpretation wherein God meant it Nay if we cannot readily fix upon it any other than the plain sence which clashes with our own opinion and yet dare not suspect its truth in that sense be it what it will wherein God intended it yet so long as we are true to our prejudicate Principle we must suspect that it hath another which although we cannot hit upon at present yet others or at another time it may be we our selves may This I say we must do because so long as we think our own opinion true we cannot judge another to be true too so far as it contradicts it so that if for his sake who proposes it we must esteem it to be true likewise that cannot otherwise be than by softening it into such a sence as our own opinion whereby we judge of it can consist with As for such interfering Truths or Laws then we shall not interpret them by the plain and obvious sence of those words which express them but by the consistence of our own prejudicate belief whereby we measure the sence and meaning of them A plain expression then of any Law of God is not sufficient to make us rightly apprehend nor a clear proposal able of it self to make us understand it against a prejudice which opposes the plain and true sence of it Because our prejudice so long as we adhere to it will make us reject and overlook the plain and true meaning of the Law which opposes it and take up with any other false or maimed sence although it be never so remote improper or imperfect which agrees with it But that our Duty may be owned and understood in its true and full meaning 't is necessary not only that it be clearly proposed but also that our own doubts be silenced and our prejudicate principle confuted which impairs and undermines it The true and full meaning of the Duty will not enter into our minds till the gainsaying prejudice is thrown out of them For in all our judgments of things this is the natural and necessary course which God himself has set us viz. to put a sence or to pass a sentence upon any thing that is proposed to us according as we find it to clash or agree with such received opinions and standard-perswasions of our own minds whereby we judg of it If they infer it we approve but if they overthrow it we disbelieve it For it
is against the Laws of all reasoning and the Rules of Argument and Discourse to reject the plain and necessary consequence of an allowed Principle So that till we renounce the prejudice which manifestly destroys a Law we must needs evacuate or in great part impair the Law which is opposed by it But to make the Law be understood in its plain meaning and believed in its full extent 't is necessary that the Principle be rejected which thwarts or excludes it All our Arguments for it must be answered or overborn and all our exceptions either against the truth or fulness of our plain Duty must be taken off and our belief must be won to it by new light and encrease of Argument And to conquer all our backwardness and silence all our doubts we must be showed that God doth indeed intend his Law in that plain and full sence which his own words obviously express but our prejudice opposes by the importunity and confirmed use of a repeated proof and revelation Our prejudices then or anticipated opinions which are looked upon as great Truths and Rules of Judgment will in all likelihood make us ignorant of several Duties or at least of several parts of Duty which are plainly enough revealed They will make us to overlook either some whole Laws or a great part of the compass and extent of them and to think several actions to be exempt from them which are really bound up by them Which I say we shall do because we shall not judge of our Duty from those plain words that express it which is certainly the safest course whereby to have a full sense of it but from our own foreconceived Notions and Opinions which oftentimes and in several instances and degrees if not altogether evacuate and impair it To help our apprehensions in this abstract Discourse we will look a little into the practice of men and that will shew us plainly how bad an influence prejudices have upon their minds in making them ignorant either of several Duties or of the sinfulness of several actions which are restrained by them For we shall find great numbers of men of all sorts to have taken up several false opinions which are inconsistent with some Vertues and which make those Laws that they are against to have no force at all or very little upon their Conscience nor any effect upon their practice So that they misinterpret that to be no Duty which God has made one and transgress boldly and securely without fear or remorse For some out of a certain timerousness of mind have entertained a wrong belief That nothing is lawful in God's Worship but what either some authentick Example recorded in Scripture has approved or some Command has made necessary So that when any Law of their Governours comes to enjoin any Circumstance or Ceremony in Gods service which God and the Scriptures had left indifferent although when once such Law has past the plain and known Precepts of obedience to Laws and submission to Governours of peace and unity among Fellow Christians enjoyn it they account the fulfilling of it to be no longer a matter of obedience and Duty but unlawful and a sin For their mistaken Notion of things being made lawful only by some Example or Law that warrants them and not on the contrary being lawful and at liberty antecedent to all Laws and Precedents because no Law forbids them is the Rule whereby they measure the obligation of all these Duties and it plainly overthrows them So that in a confident belief thereof they securely transgress these Laws and break the unity and disturb the peace of men thinking that they obey God in so doing Others have given way to a false opinion that Religion is so much every mans care as that not only Kings and Governours whose Office and Title it is to be Defenders of the Faith but also every private Christian should contrive and act for the publick maintenance and protection of it They are not content in securing it to keep within their own sphere and to do what they are bound in Duty towards it as private Christians That is to pray to God earnestly and importunately that he would preserve it and to endeavour industriously in their own place after it by their own lively and exemplary practice of it by a careful instruction of other men in the reasons of it by exhorting them to a close adherence to it and by pressing upon them all the motives of Heaven and another World to perswade them to a conscientious taking up the Cross when it shall please God to lay it in their way and a patient and couragious suffering for it When God by his Providence brings a National Religion into danger these are the Duties whereto he calls every private man and it is his present honour and shall be his immortal happiness conscientiously to discharge it And would they content themselves with this all were well and laudable But when once they have imbibed this opinion that they are not only private Promoters but also publick Contrivers and Protectors of the Faith they run beyond all these private means into a censuring of the administration of affairs and the prudence of Governours into endless fears and jealousies murmurings and complaints and other instances of pragmaticalness irreverence and contempt of higher Powers and disturbance of the publick Peace All these their Principle justifies and therefore in assurance of it they boldly venture on them So that although the Commands of studying to be quiet and to do their own business against a pragmatical medling in the affairs and disturbing the quiet of other men are expressed in words most plain and easily intelligible yet do they overlook them and in all those instances wherein their prejudice leads them to transgress quite evacuate all their plain force and obvious Obligation Some for a long time neglect the dutiful use of one Sacrament because they think that they have a pious reason against it and many other humble and well-meaning minds omit a dutiful participation of the other as scarce ever thinking themselves to be sufficiently prepared for it Their false opinion carries them into their sinful neglect and makes them disobey those Laws which require the use of them by making them first to think that they would offend God if they should observe them These breaches of Duty and indulged acts of sin well-meaning and honestly obedient minds are oft-times drawn into through erroneous conceits and prejudicate Opinions For some men of honest hearts and of humble modest tempers who are ready to comply in every thing wherein their consciences allow them are insnared into them and disobey only because they judge obedience to be unlawful And that which makes them judge so is not any lust or sin which is harboured and unmortified in their hearts which should be ministred to by such erroneous judgment But the Opinion took possession of their souls by the education of their
fallibility of the means of knowledge and these do not destroy but consist with a state of Grace and Salvation They get not into mens understandings by means of an evil and disobedient heart For it is not any love which they have for the damning sins of pride ambition sensuality covetousness unpeaceableness faction or the like which makes them willing to believe those Opinions true that are in favour of them When they take up their prejudice they do not see so far as these ill effects nor discern how any of these sins is served by it and therefore they cannot be thought to admit it with this design to serve them in it Nay further what is the best sign of all that lust or disobedience which the prejudice happens to minister to in some instance is mortified and subdued in them and so cannot have any such influence upon them For sometimes those very men who in such instances as their prejudice avows it are irreverent and disrespectful pragmatical and disobedient to their Governours or the like in all other cases wherein their Opinion is unconcerned are most respectfull quiet and obedient Humility and modesty peaceableness and quietness submission and obedience are both their temper and their practice For they love and approve and in the ordinary course and constant tenour of their lives conscientiously observe them and nothing under such prejudicate Opinion as makes them believe them to be unlawfull in some cases could over-rule that love and obedience which they have for them and prevail upon them so far as to act against them So that with these men it is not the disobedient temper of their hearts which makes their conscience err but the errour and prejudice of their conscience which makes their practice disobedient In such men therefore as are thus qualified who do not see those sins which their prejudice ministers to when they admit it and in all the other actions of their lives except where by this prejudice they are over-ruled shew plainly that they have mortified and overcome it 't is clear that the prejudice did not get into their consciences by any influence of an evil and disobedient heart But that which made way for it was only their natural weakness of understanding or the fallibility of the means of knowledge They are not of an understanding sufficient to examine things exactly when they embrace their prejudice for their Reason then is dim and short-sighted weak and unexperienced unable throughly to search into the natures of things and to judge of the various weight and just force of reasons to sift and ransack separate and distinguish between solidity and show truth and falsehood But those arguments whereupon they believe and upon the credit whereof they take up Opinions are education and converse the instruction of spiritual guides the short reasonings of their neighbours and acquaintance or the authority of such books or persons as they are ordered to read and directed to submit to These are the motives to their belief and the arguments whereupon they are induced to think one Opinion right and another wrong and the only means which they have of discerning between truth and falsehood But now all these means are in no wise certain they are an argument of belief indeed and the best that such men have but yet they are far from being infallibly conclusive Sometimes they lead men right but at other times they lead them wrong for they are not at all determined one way but in several men and at several times according as it happens they minister both to truth and falsehood In matters that are primarily of belief and speculation in Religion they lead a hundred men to errour where they lead one to Truth For there are an hundred Religions in the world whereof one alone is true and every one has this to plead in its own behalf that it is the Religion of the Place and Party where it is believed The Professors of it are drawn to assent to it upon these Arguments viz. because they have been Bred up to it by the care of their Parents and Teachers and confirmed in it by long Vse and Converse It was Education and Custome the Authority of their Spiritual Guides and the common Perswasion of their Countrey which made them both at first to believe and still to adhere to it And every one in these points having these Arguments to plead for his own belief against the belief of every other man who differs from him since of all these different Beliefs one alone is true these Arguments must be allow'd indeed to minister to Truth in that but in all the rest to serve the Interest of Falsehood In matters of Duty and Practice 't is true there is infinitely more accord and good agreement For almost all the laws of nature w ch make up by far the greatest part of every Christians Duty are the Catholick Religion of all sober Sects and Parties in the world So that these Arguments of Custome and Education are tolerably good and right guides to mens Consciences how ill soever they are to their speculative Opinions because although they carry them into a wrong belief yet will they lead them into a righteous practice But although in these practical Notions and Opinions they are commonly a right yet sometimes and to several persons they prove a wrong instrument For even in matters of Duty and Practice men are no more secure from errour than they are from disobedience nor more certain that they shall have no mistakes about them than that they shall not go beyond them They have and till they come to Heaven ever will have erroneous Opinions as well as practices so that these motives Education and Custome and Authority will never be wanting in the world to instill into weak and undiscerning minds such Opinions as will in some instances and degrees evacuate and undermine some duties And since there will never be wanting in the world such fallible Arguments and means of knowing nor such weak and unexperienced understandings as must of necessity make use of them 't is plain that several disobedient prejudices will in all times get into mens minds not through any wickedness or disobedience of their hearts but only through the natural weakness of their minds and the fallibility of the means of knowledge And when any prejudices which lead to disobedience enter this way they do not put us out of Gods favour or destroy a state of Grace and Salvation but consist with it For in our whole action of disobedience upon them there is nothing that should provoke Gods wrath and punitive displeasure against us He will not be at enmity with us either for acting according to our erroneous Conscience or if the errour was thus innocent for having an erroneous conscience for our rule of action He will not be offended at us I say for acting according to our erroneous conscience for whether our conscience be true or
much of the sinfulness of that action which we commit as to scruple its lawfulness and to be enlightned so far as really to doubt of it then is the case quite alter'd and we cannot plead that we did it ignorantly because we knew so much by it at least as should have made us forbear it For if indeed we doubted of it we knew it was as likely to be a Sin as to be an innocent Action because that is properly Doubting when we suspend our Assent and cannot tell which way to determine when we judge one to be as likely as the other and do not positively and determinately believe the truth of either And when this is our case concerning any Action if we venture on it whilst the doubt remains we are guilty of sin and must expect to suffer punishment For by so doing we shew plainly that we will do more for sin than we will for God and that it has a greater interest with us than he because even whilst we apprehend it as likely to be our sin as our liberty yet for the sins sake we chuse to venture on it rather than for Gods sake to abstain from it This Contempt of God there is in it in the Nature of the very thing it self although God had no ways expressed himself concerning it But we must know further that whensoever we are in this estate of doubt and unresolvedness God has given us a peremptory Command that we should not act what we fear is sinful but omit it Abstain saith he from all appearance of evil 1 Thess. 5.22 So that if after all our Disputes and Demurs we venture at last to commit the Action which we doubted of we do not only slight God by running the hazard of Disobedience to one Law whereof we are uncertain but we wilfully disobey him in transgressing of this other Law whereof we all either are or may be certain if we will And if in this estate we presume thus to disobey we shall be sure to suffer for our Disobedience And in this case St. Paul is plain For if there be any thing whose lawfulness our Consciences are unresolved and unperswaded of whilst that unresolvedness remains he tells us plainly that our commission of it is utterly unlawful Whatsoever says he is not of Faith or proceeding from a belief and perswasion of its lawfulness is sin So that if it be about the eating of meats for Instance he that doubts is damn'd both of God and of himself if he eat because he eateth not of Faith Rom. 14.23 If our minds therefore are so far enlightned concerning any sinful Action as that we are come to doubt of it we are no longer innocently and excusably ignorant For we see enough by it to make us chuse to abstain from it and if for all this we presume still to venture on it sin lyes at the door and we must answer for it We are no longer within the excuse of Ignorance but we are guilty of a wilful sin and are got within the bounds of Death and Damnation But if in any Action we know nothing at all of the Law which forbids it or after we have known that if we are still ignorant of its being contain'd under it if we are not come to doubt but are either in Ignorance or Errour concerning it our Ignorance shall excuse our Fault and deliver us from Condemnation We do not chuse the sin which we do thus ignorantly commit and therefore we shall not suffer that Punishment which is threatned to it but our unknown offence is a pardonable slip such as according to the gracious Terms of Christs Gospel shall surely go uncondemned And this is true not only of simple Ignorance but likewise of the two particular Modes of Ignorance viz. First Forgetfulness Secondly Errour 1. Our sins of Ignorance will be born with if we venture upon the sinful Action through Ignorance of its sinfulness which we knew formerly but at the time of acting have forgotten For a slip of Forgetfulness is no more than befel an Apostle who was for all that a blessed Saint and an Heir of Life still St. Paul himself reviles the High-Priest forgetting both his Duty and that that man was he whom he spoke to I wist not Brethren says he that he was the High-Priest for had I bethought my self I should not have spoke so disrespectfully to him it being thus written Thou shalt not speak evil of the Ruler of thy People Act. 23.5 2. Our sins of Ignorance shall be dispensed with if we are led to commit them through a mistake of their innocence when indeed they are sinful which is an acting of them through errour For no less a man than Peter was drawn into a sinful dissimulation through an erroneous conceit that his giving no offence but keeping in with the Jews which was the thing that he aimed at by it would justifie and bear him out in it For which S t Paul tells us when he came to Antioch he withstood him to the face because he was to be blamed Gal. 2.11 12 13. But yet for all this S t Peter was at that time a true good Saint and if it had pleased God then to call for him he had been undoubtedly an Heir of salvation And to mention no more upon this Point as there were constant atonements for the errours of the people under the Law so is there provision made for them under the Gospel For Christ who is our High Priest as S t Paul assures us can have compassion on the ignorant and erroneous or them who are out of the way Heb. 5.2 So long therefore we see as our ignorance of any kind whether of the Law it self or of our present actions being comprehended by it is involuntary and innocent so long shall we be born with for all such slips as we incur under it For God will never be severe upon us for weakness of understanding or for want of parts whilst there is nothing in us of a wicked heart and therefore if our ignorance it self is innocent our offences under it shall go unpunished But here we must observe that all this allowance for our ignorance is so far only as it is involuntary and faultless but if we chuse to be ignorant our ignorance is in it self our sin and will make all our following offences damnable For we must answer for any thing of our own choice and therefore if we chuse the ignorance we shall be interpreted to chuse and so put to answer for all those ill effects which it produces Those sins which are voluntary in their cause are interpreted to us as we have seen and put upon our score so that if we chuse the ignorance which brings them we shall be adjudged to suffer for them Now as for the ignorance and errour of many men which is the cause of their sins and transgressions it is plainly of their own chusing They have a mind to
utterly unpardonable and hopeless For our Lord himself in this very Chapter encourages their hopes by giving them a promise that some further means should still be used to cure their Infidelity after that they had blasphemed this telling these very men that the sign of his Death and Resurrection with the other evidences of the Holy Ghost which were to ensue upon it should be a further argument to satisfie them in what they inquired after viz. his being the Messiah or the Son of God For when certain of the Pharisees presently upon his finishing this Discourse of their Blaspheming of the Holy Spirit v. 37 made Answer to him saying Master we would see a sign from thee to confirm to us the truth of that pretension he answered as S t Matthew goes on an evil and an Adulterous Generation seeketh a sign and there shall no further sign be given it but only the sign of the Prophet Jonas and that indeed shall For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the Whales Belly and was afterwards deliver'd out of it to go and preach to the Ninevites so shall the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth and after that rise again to preach by his Apostles to you and all the world sending to you for a further evidence still the Holy Ghost v. 38 39 40. So that as for this blasphemy of the spirit wherewith the Pharisees reviled it it was not utterly unpardonable but was still within the possibility of pardon For after they had committed it Christ promised them a further Argument in his Resurrection after the Example of Jonas which should be a new sign added to all that they had already seen to gain them over to faith or belief and thereby to pardon and forgiveness every sin being pardonable to him that believeth And this pardonableness of blaspheming of the spirit our Lord further intimates in that very place by a wary change of the phrase when he comes to speak of the unpardonableness of it calling the unpardonable blasphemy not a blasphemy against the spirit although it was the spirit which was indeed blasphemed v. 24 and whereof he had just made mention v. 28 but a blasphemy against the Holy Ghost which being as S t John says not yet given could not yet be blasphemed v. 31 32. But Thirdly The desperate and unpardonable sin here mentioned which shall never be forgiven neither in this world nor in that which is to come is a sin against the last and greatest evidence of all viz. the gift of tongues of prophecy and of other things called the Holy Ghost In all the other evidence that came before to win men to a belief of Christ's Religion which is the only means of pardon to the World God had still a reserve and resolved upon some further course if they proved ineffectual If the testimony of John Baptist to Christ's being the Lamb of God if the message of an Angel at his conception the Star at his birth and the Quire of Angels at his entrance into the World if the innocency of his life the wisdom of his words and the mightiness of his wonders in commanding the winds and seas in curing diseases in casting out Devils in restoring the weak to strength and the dead to life if all these prove unsuccessful and unable to perswade an Infidel and perverse Generation yet still God resolves to try one means more which before that time the World never saw nor heard of and that is the ample and most full effusion of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles at Pentecost and upon others at the imposition of their hands for a long time after This further evidence shall still be given to subdue the stubbornness of mens unbelief which had proved too hard for all the former When I am departed from you says our Saviour to his Apostles I will send the Holy Ghost who is the Comforter or Advocate unto you And when he is come he shall plead my Cause more convincingly than the operations of the Spirit have done hitherto For he shall reprove and convince the world and those who remained Infidels after they had seen all the evidence of the Spirit of their own sin in not believing on me and of my righteousness and truth in saying I am the Messiah because he shall shew that I am owned above and am gone to my Father whence I have sent him down so plentifully upon you John 16.8 9 10. But when once God had given this proof he had done all that he designed for this is the last remedy which he had decreed to make use of to cure the infidelity of an unbelieving Age. So that if men shall use it as they have done all that went before and if instead of being perswaded by it they shall proceed not only to sleight and despise but what is more to revile and blaspheme it as they have already done with the Spirit then is the irreversible Decree gone out against them and God is unalterably resolved to strive no more with them but to let them dye in their unbelief If they should be won by it indeed and believe upon it be their former offences what they will no less than a blaspheming of the Spirit yet may they justly expect to be pardoned For the offer of Grace is universal Whosoever believes and is baptized shall be saved Mark 16.16 and nothing is impossible to him that believeth Mark 9.23 But when once men have gone so far as to be guilty of it their sin is unpardonable because their Faith is impossible For they have rejected all the evidence which any man can urge for their conviction seeing they have despised all that which God has offered Their infidelity is stronger than can be cured by any Argument that Christ either has or will afford to prevail over it so that they must dye in their sin and there is no hope for them Indeed if God so please there is no question but that after they have once blasphemed it he can still so melt and soften fashion and prepare their minds that afterwards they shall hearken to the incomparable evidence of the Spirit and the Holy Ghost which to any honest mind are irresistible But this sin is of so provoking a nature that when once they are guilty of it he will not He has past an irreversible Decree upon them never more to meddle with them so that they never will be pardoned because as things stand they never will be reclaimed Which is the very reason which the Apostle himself gives of the desperate state of Apostate Christians For by renouncing of that faith which upon the evidence both of the spirit and the Holy Ghost they had been before convinced of they despite says he the Spirit of Grace as it implies both the Spirit and the Holy Ghost too so that as for them it is impossible to renew them again unto