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
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