pious whom by duty we are obliged to tender with no lesse prudence then charinesse But I shall passe them by as Bees over Hemlock with advice onely to all such as have thus far taken Scorpions in stead of good fish and embraced Hyaena's through mistake of friends seriously to consider that as there is nothing more sincere than Religion and one that liveth in the true Rules and duties thereof so when corruption falls thereinto nothing proves more dangerous and hurtful And as Domestick Armes are much more to be feared than outward Hostility so who sees not but that being now in the haven surprized with a grievous storm of Sects and Errors amongst our selves it must not onely snatch from us our comfort but like ill managed weapons turn against our own breast to the rending out of our own entrails yea even to the very subversion of our souls since our divisions are so much the more dangerous beyond common wars as the Spirit is above the Body He that endeavoreth to divide Religion hath none at all He that admitteth but one leak drowns a ship and he that resolves to believe but a part and not the whole believes nothing since all comes from the same Authority and must be equally received There is but one word saith Tertullian Tert. de Praescript cont Haeres to determine all sort of disputations with such men Do but ask them whither they will renounce their Baptisme and Christianity if so let them wear the Turbant and go amongst the heathen But if they make profession of one same Christ and one same Religion why do they belye their profession But surely Art will not it is onely Grace and the gift of God which can charm such Basilisks being creatures amongst all others hard to be enchanted It is only a divine light and guidance which must direct those who thus lose their faith in their Reason and bury their heaert in their brains who have recourse to their own fancies more than to the divine oracles of that written word inspired from heaven who think the Ministers thereof Antichristian or at least wise since differing with them to be too strait-laced in their opinions and making the way to heaven narrower than God ever meant it who to be eminent amongst men leave the beaten tract neglecting the good old way and to guide their steps by the dim lanthorns as they call them of the Antient tread in the new paths of their own inventions who think to pretend Religion is to do any thing to seem holy is to be what we will there being no face so foul which that mask cannot cleanly colour who because they think themselves more holy more wise better gifted more enlightened than their neighbors think they may justly over-look them with contempt and censure and not onely in publike meetings bur in ordinary conversation avoid the contagion of such common breath And however the zeal of some scrupulous Preachers as they say is pleas'd to make the worst of their slips yet have they certain favourable circumstances if not wholy to excuse them yet sufficiently to rebate the edge of divine severity Let us take then the ballance in our hand and judge if it be not worse then a barbarous ingratitude thus to worship our own fancies to steal the silver and gold of God and make idols to Baal to light our lamp at his Altar and afterwards to make pillage of his Temple which assuredly they do when they not onely pride themselves in their shame but abuse all the gifts of heaven in ambitious impiety It was good advice which one gave to a soul desirous of advancement namely to remember three things First To addict it self much to the presence of God The second To take the holy Scripture for the rule of our actions And the third to hold firm footing in constancy Would those who pretend themselves the most refined spirits of the times whose mouths and hearts notwithstanding resemble Cyclopes Caverns rather then the Temples of Peace and Truth would those I say who make the smoothness of their tongue an Engine to credit their designs and with Absolom cover their Rebellion with a fit of devotion to pay their vows but seriously consider those few advertisements they would not so often personate the Saint to play the devil neither make their good words so often to become their sins Would they who being no way washed from their own leprosie puddle the sacred springs of wholesome doctrine and like Sorcerers endeavor to cast mists on the fairest morning but bethink themselves if Nadab and Abihu for putting false fire into their Incensories when they came to the Altar of the Synagogue were devoured as unfortunate Victims with the proper coals of their own Sacrifice what will become of them who adore Christ to crucisie him in his Truths and who thus irreverently presume to approach the Altar of the eternal Testament will not their sacrifice prove their punishment since they have made a sin of their propitiation And as prosperous victories ill disciplined bring with them more damage then defeatments do will not those divine Mysteries which were formerly beheld clouded in darkness but are now more apparently observed in a clear sky occasion their greater ruine who under so glorious a Sun-shine thus turn prety into scoffs and retain nothing of it but a Phantasme to serve their own ends and to lacquay in their vile affections Would those who seem to breath nothing but Stoicisme and spiritual-mindedness who bear a vicious mind in a fair ornament of body and cover a leaden weapon in an Ivory sheath but seriously consider that to be godly is to be honest and to be pious is to be just godliness and honesty being divine in conjunction but divided from one another are most abominable things would they I say with their Janus faces think they can worship God so long as they hate and prove false to their neighbor whom they may plunder in love and persecute their body to save their souls Who observes not that those men who thus stray from the Rules of heavenly wisdom precipitate themselves into devious enormitie and caliginous observations such spirits being willing to be found anywhere than where they may observe Christian duties Devotion Temperance Christian Charity and other vertues are not now accounted of in the souls of such dissolute Liberties as if the bare reputation of being devout might draw upon it some suspition of weaknesse yea how many now adays are troubled that nature hath not made them impudent enough to shake off the sting of a good conscience as if hell were no other then in picture with them Nor could it otherwise be that so many uncollected spirits now a days as if they would frame the whole work of Religion to their own humor should make it their gloty to act all against the hair to oppose the most sound opinions and to give the lye even to heaven it self yea as if they were
once clouded with bodily pleasures thicken and become wholly unable for things divine And we may rest assured that those whose designs under pretext of Religion seek nothing but the advancement of their Temporal affairs and whose goodly humane Policy admitting Religion according to the times and their own fancies makes use of God as a mask for their wickedness will at last prove no other then a stroke of Thunder which leaves nothing on earth behind it but noise and stench Were it not madness then to pass through a garden of fair flowers and to take their poyson and leave their honey Surely Manna it self turns into worms and the wine of Angels into vinegar and lees when it is received into impure vessels healthful medicines if abused by the incapacities of a healthless body often increase the distemperature from indisposition to a sharpe disease and shall we then call that the spirit of prophesying which is the spirit of lying and those things to be Revelations which are nothing but meer dreams and the fond productions of Hypocondriacal devotion Yea how many absurd fancies coming in the likeness of visions and under pretence of raptures do we meet with even from those the Sun it self producing serpents when it reflects on the mud of Nilus who seem to have been long softned under the continual droppings of the word though at last all ends in pride or some dangerous remptation self-conceit having also been not the least rise of such fond and unheard of productions It being a sure rule that whatsoever heights of piety any one pretends to it proceeds from the devil unless the greater the pretence be the greater be the humility of the man it being no Paradox to him that said Satan had more a do to win the simple then the subtile the worldly wise being sooner enraged then won by the Ministry of the word which crosses the contentments of the world neither is pride the least stratagem of hell to keep the people from profitableness under the Ministry of the word though one of the mighty methods of Satan to perswade them to charge the cause anywhere then where they ought on their own heart And may we not have just cause to question and suspect the variety of those dispensations groundlesly through too much confidence appropriated by distempered fancies since shaking off those excellent patterns of truth and sincerity in Religion and deviating from those paths which God hath graciously chalkt out unto us in his Word and Ministry for his Saints to walk in there being no other course whatsoever they mean by Gods revealing himself I mean not what he can extraordinarily do but in his usual way then by those saving Truths so much now oppos'd and under reproach and the dispensers thereof accounted a burthen fit to be ejected Surely a constant Travellers pace over-takes and out-goes many violent men whose hot and ill-grounded zeal is quickly tired these times affording too many ignorant Artists whose zeal hath been too blind to go right yet too active to stand still and however the wrinkles of their spreading errors were far better confest then painted had much rather shelter themselves under the branible of divison then the Olive of peace whose swarthiness we need not light a candle to discover Those that forsake the good old way to walk in the paths of their own crooked farcies seldom meet at leastwise with good company And may not God leave such as clash with his Word and Ordinances to loose themselves in the dark corners of their own dolusions yea take from them the true light they thrust from themselves in forsaking the fountain of living waters and hewing out broken cisterns to themselves may he not suffer those who scorn to strike the sails of their own wills and interest to his sacred truth and refuse to eat of the plain food of his word to be choaked with the bones of their own inventions And oh with what eye of patience can we behold the verities and maxims of God which the Prophets foretold us the Apostles denounced the Confessors professed and so many thousands of Martyrs have maintained in the midst of their flames their racks and tortures to be now adayes made the sport of giddy spirits and the aim and reproach of profane Lips who void of wit or shame thus invade holy things Surely if our opinion so often deceive us as that we discern little or nothing a right if all the perfections of this life have some imperfections mixed with them yea no knowledge of ours is void of darkness and ignorance the humble abasement of our selves being onely the securest way to heaven how ought we to beware of those who thus brave it in the shops when there is little in the ware-house holding out gaudy fairings the better to colour inward falsities and suborn the truth the Sun whereof being once set in our land an irrecoverable midnight of spiritual darkness must needs succeed If we loose our estates we may recover them if we loose our friends God can raise us up others if we loose our lives we may exchange them for a better but if we once make shipwrack of the faith we are lost for ever And may it not be fear'd that the distempered fancies and the precipitate headlong discourses now on foot to the infamous reproach of this age being so full of errors and factious spirits instead of sound and Orthodox truths as might much rather have invited silence then our late contentions and the too much mingling of humane interests with Religion all being but like the Winters Sun which shines clear but warms not will at last rend the seamless coat of the Church and deface the Image which Christ hath stamped upon it making Christian Religion another thing then what he design'd it to be when it is so far from making us live good lives that it self is made a pretence to all manner of impiety and a stratagem to serve the ends of covetousness ambition and revenge And O how great is the vanity of those who have thus forsaken God to serve their own ends and the more seeing they pretend to be Saints before they have put off the sinner and with Simon Magus and the Pharisees appear the fouler for being cleansed Too often is the crime aggravated by the incivility of the circumstance and as Abafuerus said of Haman Will he ravish the Queen in my own house the place of Gods worship made the receptacle of buyers and sellers there being not a few now a dayes who thus kiss a danger under a design of vertue and for their own advantage hug an opportunity of sin under pretence of piety Yea how sad it is to see those who pretend themselves to be the onely friends of the Church so violently to affect the rich and pompous Revenews and Prelacies which they seem eagerly to oppose and not onely like those Ecclesiasticks in Saint Bernards time who pursued their own preferment not the
be willing to spare and keep it in the losse of the true Religion so must he deeds be sorry that ever he entred into the world when he considers the time to which God had reserved his Age to see the disasters and desolation of a place or people abandoned to the fury of Rapinous hands and the prophanation of the impious to see ravenous Harpys fatted with humane ruines to rush into those well feathered Nests which they built not to see whole Families loaded with injuries and the props of buildings to tremble with loud blasphemies yea to behold such fatal Comets which shall portend nothing but fire and sword to Church and State What an Edict do we finde published by an Apostle invested with Thunder and lightning 1 Cor. 6.6 And were he sent again into the world by Providence what would he imagine who then wanted patience to see a controversie about a field perhaps or a house if he should now behold those that claim the title of the faithful to oppose not a house or City one against another but even strive to precipitate whole Provinces yea a Nation into Rapes disorders and priviledged Plunders He that would not suffer one brother to go to law with another but rather to suffer wrong and sustain fraud would he have countenanced such inhumane spectacles with a Declatation of allowance as now appear visible in the face of this Age And if our Saviour enjoyned a removal of all scandals from his Kingdom dooming the Authors thereof to have a Mill-stone hanged about their Necks and their bodies cast into the Sea what will become of those who through their own ambitious ends as if God were bound to define all things according to their sense and will fall into division among themselves withdraw from each other and censure one another Wo and alas will brethren forgetful of their Covenant forgetfull of their Name and unmindfull of their Relations thus rage contemne yea destroy those which they ought not to hate Will not the people seeing so many Religions held forth as they think and so many severall wayes and minds think it is as good be of none as adventure among so many What just occasion of offence will hereby be given to the ignorant to the prophane and such as are yet unsetled in their judgement when either through pride or petulancy they shall see men change their opinions which a while ago they seemed to be so zealous for doth not this make them think that the rest may be as uncertain as those Surely it s an extream rage and furious dispair which thus expects nothing but the height of evils for its Remedy and how great a scandal the Lives of such Professors will at last throw upon the Church of God I wish the sad experience of the times may not too plainly manifest many no doubt having been kept off from the practice and approving of a godly life through the unhappy differences among our selves But that which is the soul of misfortune is the great contempt of that high Calling for which the Apostle thought none sufficient It is not denied but that God can make his Oracles speak without a voice and Oh what a great thing is nothing in the hands of God who can teach without a School and in a moment change ignorants into Doctors and Pesants into Prophets But what shall we neglect the ordinary means appointed in his word to lead us to him What can we expect from a Physitian that discourseth of war or a bare Scholar treating of the secret designs of Princes No more may we look for from those late Chaplains of Satans ordering who pretend good to do mischief and act his part in the attire of an Angel The spirit also is promised to lead us into all truth but not by fanatick Enthusiasmas The spirit of God speaks to us in and by but not besides or beyond the Scripture to hold therefore extraordinary Revelations whereby things were formerly made known to the Prophets or to pretend to immediate inspirations without the word is a delusion as monstruous as detestable and ought to be rejected as an instrument of Satan 2 Thess 2.2 and as the usual pretences of Impostors against whose fanatical conceits God hath sufficiently forewarned us 1 John 4.1 Galathians 1.8 The Scripture being written for our learning we are commanded there to search as the Conduit of Life and power of God unto salvation Of whom we are not taught to enquite at the Oracles of our lusts and Phantasies nor to be led by opinions of our own framing And surely the punishment of the Mongrel-blasphemer Levit. 24. should make all conscionable men afraid how they adventure this way to make bold with Gods sacred Name least perchance like the sons of Sceva they meet with some mad devils to whip them from their presumptious folly And yet to the sad reproach of a sinfull Nation may it be spoken none are now adayes more cried up then such as were never brought up in the Schools of the Prophets nor lawfully ordained to the Ministry which is now so commonly slandered by our Jesuited Sectaries telling the people that their Priests have deluded them that they have falsified the word which alas they themselves have too fouly wrested yea some of them have been pleased to call the greatest cheat could be put upon Christians But let the manifest punishment from heaven upon Vzziah serve among many other instances which might be produced as an example of terror to such secular Powers as will incroah upon Ministry and break the barriers that Providence hath established for the differencing of the spiritual and temporal authority Neither let the priviledge of Times though the barres of impudence seem broken down be made a colour to excuse any from Sacrilegious boldness who mingle mysteriously divine reasons with their own humane Fancies which as Queen and Governess ought to be chief Ruler and not suffragant in so sacred and holy a Subject Besides is it not an unseemly thing to see the sacred volume of our Belief-mysteries tossed up and down and plaid withall in every shop or kitching and that those divine Oracles which heretofore have been accounted Mysteries should be thus abused by such as go about sowing of schism setting of Errors and spreading of faction Surely so serious and venerable a study should not thus tumultuarily be discussed Gods word being a History religiously to be adored awfully feared and not fabulously reported The Jews and Mahometans and almost all Nations are with reverence wedded unto the bare language wherein their Religion had originally been conceived all change and translation having been directly forbidden And one of our Grecian Historians doth not without appearance of reason accuse his Age for so much as the secrets of Christrain Religion were so farre dispenced in publike as that every man might at his pleasure dispute of it and at randome vent his opinion of the same And certainly it should be
so many Archimedes who seek for a place out of the world to set foot in of purpose to turn the world topsie turvey it would not be that so many hideous monsters of heresies of impiety and Atheism should so uncontrolably throw forth Blasphemies against Religion And doth not Religion and the glory of God herein suffer diminution doth not our Nation labor under general convulsions Hath it not been wasted through unheard of lacerations Is it not I say through the terrible and monstruous spreadings of Atheism and self-will'd opinions under which the Church of God now laboreth and the oppressive sighs of a mourning people are almoost tired out with tedious disappointments Surely he that sees the Church of God once glorious and triumphing to be now so full of rubbish and desormity he that sees her now complaining bedew'd with tears sitting in the dust and almost drown'd in cares and sorrows must needs cry out with the Prophet Lam. 1.1 How doth the City sit solitary that was full of people how is she becom as a widdow she that was great among the Nations and Princess among the Provinces how is she become tributary All that is just prudent and moderate now tasteth too much of common other paths must be found to heaven new ways must be cut out from God under the mould of our own Fancy to make him known unto us every one thinking that opinion most probable which he hath taken upon byasse of his own understanding And hence is it that so often we court a fancy or body of smoak thinking to entertain a Truth having much of affectation but least of effect since we tie our selves to a rotten branch in stead of adhering to the body of the Tree Hence is it that we see so many in the seemings of affected Piety who so well act all countenances as if with such merchandize Paradise were to be purchased being yet in heart like those pearls which in stead of a solid body have nothing but the husk And is it not from this that so many take devotion as a slight pastime others but as a slight complement that some bend that way for complacency of humors others for vain-glory yea too many are thereto transported for some slender cloak of liberty and certain accommodations of their proper interest expressing an unseemly devotion of Apish tricks which consist in a certain light and childish imitation of countenances and gestures without any solidity in the interior Oprodigy now adays to see so many who are only bold to do ill but in undertakings made for God and his truth have hearts of wax and souls trembling like leaves under the breath of windes As there is almost nothing so pittiful as a Prince disarmed who serves onely as a But to reproaches and a sport to insolency so what Rock would not be mollified among so many direful objects what eye office would not melt among so many spectacles of sadness to behold God disroabed of his Honor his Truths his Ordinances by those who being drowned in the inundation of impleties follow him by a muddy search rather then by a clear acquist Is not this to betray Religion which of it self is fair and glorious And do we not hereby give occasion to exorbitant souls to justifie their sins by our evil deportments who think that by depainting vice with a coal in another they make themselves as white as snow what need we thus go about to entertain ill-grounded fantasies and as sorceresses darken the glorious eye of the day with their charms to cloud our faith by renouncing the light of truth by embracing the dusky vapors of our own inventions Are not the Truths of God hitherto held forth unto us sufficient Why then by disentombing those Heresies which were long since enterred do we draw on us the Character of Infidels which will at last serve us to no other purpose but to reproach us in the eternity of our pains with the exorbitance of our infamy They who adulterate metals and poison the sources of lively fountains do less hurt then those who use their own interest for Text their ignorance for glosse and their passion for commentary Neither do those who desire to establish false things gain ought else upon the credulity of humane spirits but to make Truth to be the more doubted For as ill habites are easily made to slide into the hearts of children by imitation of parents or corruption of evil company so error illaqueates some men and opinion sets the complexion upon the procedures of the most And what is this but to oppose the shadow to the light and a lye to the truth Nay do we not herein set up Reason as Judge and resolve our Faith into Reason an error of too many in these dayes Do we not give vice the colour of vertue and keep truth in Iron chains yea which is worse imitate the sorcerers who imploy the Bible to fortifie their enchantments Experience hath of late too sadly told us that there is nothing which so much tempts Curiosity as Religion from whence it comes that as Jonah's ship every one seems to call upon his own God that the figure so much encroacheth upon the body and that like men smitten with blindnesse we are led into Samaria in stead of going to Dothan 2 King 6.19 But where we see any thus pretend to have new instincts towards discoveries above and beyond Scripture let us with the Apostle Col. 2.18 19. make it a marke of seducers to intrude into things they have not seen and however in the esteem of some they are as eminent as Apostles or an Angel of God yet if they once throw aside this glass introducing new and strange Doctrines though under great humility and shews of love if they go about to cause divisions if they forsake Ordinances vilifie Ministers and the old way of holy walking with God we are bound not to receive but to avoid them least we be deceived as Adam was and lose that knowledge of God which once we had Alas why should we thus betray the glory of God why do we thus batter his inheritance Are not our continued divisions the cause that the wayes to Sion do mourn that her Priests sigh and she is afflicted that all her beauty is departed her princes are become like Harts that finde no pasture and are gone without strength before the pursuer Lament 1.4.6 Have not our breaches been the inrode of so many licentious enormities Is it not from the fruitful mother of dissentions that so many impieties and the Authors thereof have increast amongst us and though not acted by command yet tolerated by connivance What is it â—he that hath so much disobliged the desires and frustrated the expectations of all men How comes it that their minds are dejected and their vertues disheartned whence comes it that the Magistracy is so vilipended the Ministry contemn'd and all things seem perverted was it not by the too furious
kin under any root or opinion which hath the least shadow of probability such an ignorant zeal being too blind to go right and too active to stand still and like rasae tabulae or unsealed wax ready to take any impression And however some may possibly pretend holiness towards God for the setting up of their Ensings as signs in the midst of Gods Sanctuary and for the breaking down at once the carved work thereof with axes and hammers Psal 74.4 6. and at last root up all that they may take the Houses of God into their own possession and like brutish doegs fall upon Gods Priests that they may have the greatest share in the plundering of their means yet surely this their pretended goodness seems but as the morning cloud and as the early dew will passe a-away Hos 6.4 seeing the staves of Beauty are hereby broken in pieces and the entire bands of Christian Truth Order and Peace quite cut asunder even to the making shipwrack of faith and a good conscience and the extream hazard of our immortal souls O let us not thus be flattered into a security of our excesses since the whole head is sick the whole heart is heavy and nothing is safe nothing is pleasant among such calamities where the worst of evils is the rejoycing and where the eyes of Truth have been of late put out by the dust and rubbish which hath been made through the fall of so great and ancient a Fabrick And who ere they be that strive against the peaceable wishes of the Church by railing at reviling and undermining the pillars thereof by reproaching their persons decrying their office by abating and exclaiming against their maintenance by supporting and countenancing Errors and heresies before their wholesomer Doctrine and whereby to ruin them and their Religion by making a wide gap for blasphemy Atheism and prophaneness let them also take heed least some grievous hand fall upon them from heaven and that meeting with unhappy events in all their undertakings their life becomes not troublesome and their death not doubtful If we consult with history how various are the examples on either hand we shall not onely find a busie Achitophel paid the just wages of his Traiterous Counsels with an infamous halter We shall not onely finde Alexander who thrust his souldiers into Battels beyond the progresse of the Sunne and the limits of the Sea to perish by poison from his own Domesticks neither Hannibal alone who so long weaved the inextricable web of war to shorten the date of his contempts with voluntary poyson but surely all those who thus think to please themselves in an ill-rectified devotion and formal profession will prove no other than barren Trees which make a great noise and never beare Fruit. And how sad will their account be who thus prick their fingers whilest they are gathering of Roses How sad will it be with us when we shall for thus betraying the most holy things curse the womb that bare us and the breasts that gave us suck the Church that Christened us and the Minister that Catechized us and when we shall beshrew the day that ever we heard a good Sermon Alas that our misery should be heightned from our means of being once happy That we should bewail our very knowledge and repent us even of our Grace O how will they then blush when that Jer. 23.24 God who fills heaven and earth shall have a Candle in every mans bosom even their own consciences who strive to make their sins look vertuously by making them well-favoured who embrace schism under the notion of Truth and too often take complexion for Religion will it not be easier for the Gentiles which know not God than such as thus worship him O strange delusion to take the greatest vice for the greatest vertue all the out-side of our godlinesse this way rendring us but the worse before God! Heresie the key of Atheism may for a time indeed make arrows of any wood to hit the marks of their interest and like a fawning servant be ever ready to observe his Masters will in such ill offices wherein his own advantage concurreth Though all at last will be consumed like Abortives in their birth and no otherwise stead them than as Woods and Forests shelter Theeves only to cover their crimes Since he that this way thinks to pacifie Divine Majesty insenseth it He that with Saul offers up the golden mountains of impiety and injustice doth but offer to God the Sacrifices of disobedience which defile rather then adorn the Altats of God seeing they onely garnish the ambition of man But as peaceable dispositions sometimes surfet of rest because the natural inclination to change makes felicity it self to become tedious so troublesome heads alwayes account quietnesse their greatest enemy no way considering that our approach to God ought to be a fixed a purposed and setled Action to which our heart should be ever so solemnly adjoyned neither ought he to be commixed with any of our Actions but with an awfull reverence and attention full of horror and respect And though there are many Endyminions to be found who embrace the Moon whose hearts are ever and anon wheeling about in endlesse Labyrinths surchaged with changeable fancies and whose spirits are perpetually attended with turbulencies and gnawn with the itch of novelty yet let all our ends and endeavors be recollected in God as beams in the Sun It is the nature of Quick-silver to tremble up and down and never leaveth untill it hath found gold wherewith to mingle so the heart of man boundeth and leapeth here and there in all its troubles and disturbances there being nothing but ebbs and floods untill such time as it is united to its Creatour the Temple of all repose And let all such know who seem to catch the world with a hook who rejoyce in their own crime as if it were a vertue and make Sacrifices with the instruments of mischief who judge of happiness by the multitude of Preys and acknowledge no other God but their good fortune that however they think to prosper in their own imaginations and worldly affairs being yet inwardly disunited from the eternal wisdom of God they are no other than Icarusses who seek to counterfeit Birds with waxen wings the least ray proceeding from the throne of heaven being able to burn them and make their heigth serve to no other use than to render their fall the more remarkable or like the golden precipices of Heliogabalus which were not devised but to make his ruine the more memorable It is said the very seathers of the Eagle are so imperious that they will not mix with the Plumage of other Birds without consuming them and shall we think to mingle God who is an incomprehensible wisdom a riches inexhaustible and a purity infinite with our feeble pretension which have frenzy for beginnins misery for inheritance and impurity for ornament If we are not to appropriate to our selves