be set for the support which should be the confusion of Dagon Do we find him so severely upbraid the hypocrisie of the Iews that stole murdered committed adultery and swore falsly and yet came and stood before him in his house Jer. 7. 9. and shall we hope he will connive at it in Christians Was it intolerable profanation in them to account his house a den of robbers and shall we be permitted to make it so they are sent to Shiloh to read their own destiny and surely we are as likely to find ours there too to be deprived of those advantages which we have so unworthily abus'd nor can we expect that though God cause the natural Sun to rise still as well on the evil as the good yet that the Sun of righteousness shall continue to shine on those who will only bask themselves in his Rays grow Aethiops from his neighbourhood but will not work by his light WHEN all this is consider'd what a sad abode does it make When the blasphemies of the Profane the sensualities of the Voluptuous and the mockeries of the Hypocrite send as it were daily challenges to Heaven we cannot but look it should at last overcome its long-suffering awake God to vindicate the honour of his Name and not suffer it any longer to be thus prostituted and polluted that when he sees his light serve only to aid us the more subtilly to contrive our deeds of darkness he should withdraw it smite us with blindness like the Sodomites whom he finds in such impure pursuits and were that blindness such as our Saviour speaks of Io. 9. 41. that inferr'd the no sin 't were a desirable infliction but alas it has none of that property That which is design'd for the punishment can never be the extenuation of our guilt but as in Hell there is an happy Separation of effects the scorching of the flame without the light and the blackness of night without the rest so in this nearest approach to it this Portal to those Chambers of death there is the ignorance without the excuse the darkness divested of its native quality of hiding and when we are enter'd among Heathens here we must yet expect the sadder portion of Apostatiz'd Christians hereafter AND O that this consideration might at last have its proper operation rouse and awake us timely to prevent those evils which it will be impossible to cure That by bringing forth some more genuine and kindly fruits we may avert that dismal sentence Cut it down why cumbreth it the ground That men would generally lay to heart both the sin and infamy of being promoters of publick ruine and quench that fire with their tears which their sins have kindled that the fasting and prayers the sighs and groans of the Primitive Christians may supplant the profane luxuries the carnal Jollities of the Modern and that Sackcloth and Ashes may become the universal mode the only fashionable dress among us This both Reason and Religion suggest as matter of our most importunate wishes would God our hopes were but half as pregnant BUT the less appearance there is of this universal reformation the more jealously ought every single person to look on himself lest he be one that obstruct it for so he does who stays till it be a fashion but neglects to contribute his part to the making it so Men are willing to discourage themselves from attempts of this kind and with an unseasonable modesty can reflect what a nothing one man is to so many millions when alas all that vast Empire Vice has got in the world is founded in the pravity of single persons would certainly be ruin'd by their reformation The more reasonable Collection would be that he who considers himself but as one should not suffer himself to grow into less to fall from that Unit to a Cypher by permitting sloth or cowardize to enfeeble and Emasculate him but on the contrary should recollect his spirits actuate all his strength and therefore be sure to do his utmost because that utmost is but a little AND to this certainly there want not encouragements we see in common affairs the wonders that industry and resolution are able to effect and a single courage being exerted has often without Romance overcome giantly difficulties 'T is a great prejudice is cast upon vertue by the pusillanimity of those that like but dare not abet her When most men commit all impieties daringly and openly and those few that do mourn for it do it but in secret the example of the one is contagious but the other has no means to diffuse its self Would men stoutly own duty and not like Peter follow Christ afar off they might yet hope to make a party and gain ground in the world And how noble an attempt were this thus to encounter Satan in his highest triumph and recover a lost field and methinks those who have any warmth of Piety glowing within may easily thus improve it into a flame 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 adde to their faith vertue as that signifies courage and then readily would succeed that train of Christian excellencies reckon'd up by St. Peter 2 Ep. 1. 5. knowledge temperance patience godliness and superstruct on these as it there follows brotherly kindness and the most comprehensive charity We should be not only devout towards God but zealous towards Men endeavouring by all prudent means to recover them out of those snares of the Devil whereby they are taken captive And since among all those snares there is none more entangling than the creditableness and repute of customary vices to set themselves especially against that overgrown covering and ornament those Locks wherein its great its Sampson-like strength lies and strive to render it as contemn'd as it is base and to this purpose nothing is so apt as the exalting its competitor fetching vertue out of the Dungeon that darkness and obscurity wherein it has long lain forgotten and by making it illustriously visible in their own practice put it into the possibility of attracting others Indeed there only it appears in its true splendor they are but dead colours the Sublimest speculation can put on it he that would draw it to the life must imprint it upon his own And thus every pious person may nay ought to be a Noah a preacher of righteousness and if it be his fortune to have as imperswasible an Auditory if he cannot avert the deluge it will yet be the providing himself an Ark the delivering yea advancing his own soul if he cannot benefit other mens NAY this being a Noah may qualifie him to be a Moses too give him such an interest with Heaven that he may be sit to stand in the gap to be an intercessor and Mediator for a provoking people And God knows never any generation more needed that office nor any part of this more than our sinful Nation which having long been in the furnace is indeed now come out but so unpurified
the heathen World is now baffled in its own Quarters beaten from its Works and driven to seek shelter in obscure corners immures its self in some few private breasts and so like an exil'd Prince makes only shift to live when it should reign But alas shall we for ever suffer our selves to be thus befool'd shall this his stale stratagem after so many hundred years use nay and detection too lose nothing of its Efficacy Must we always waste our strength in forging shackles for our selves This is such an infatuation as Hosea speaks of Chap. 9. 7. The Prophet is a fool the Spiritual man is mad Would God we would once put our selves under the discipline of serious recollection it might perhaps cure the Phrensie Let him who has with unwearied diligence watcht all advantage against his Antagonist rack'd and tortured every period of his discourse to make it confess an absurdity Let him I say consider how much better that industry had been employed in discovering the fallacies of our common Adversary that old Sophister who puts the most abusive Elenchs on us whilest we are most busie in putting them upon one another Good God how might true vital Christianity at this day have flourisht if we would have bestowed our pains the right way At how much a cheaper rate might we have cherisht than we destroy her All parties pretend to be very careful of this Vine are very busie in setting traps for the little Foxes all whom they are pleas'd to call Hereticks and in the mean time take no care of the wild Boar let that not only spoil her branches but stock up her roots suffer the most savage beastial vices to destroy both Power and Form of Godliness together Thus unhappily do we divert our intentions from our most important concerns And as Archimedes is said to have been so vehemently intent upon a Geometrical figure that he heard not of the taking of the City till an Enemy gave him his information and death together So do we so busie our selves in drawing our several Schemes of Religion every of which will pretend to no less than Demonstration that in the mean that which alone is true Religion is expos'd to the fury of the Enemy sack'd ruinated and like the plough'd up Iewish Sanctuary not one stone left upon another Certainly most of the questions which at this day disturb Christendom have in respect of their matter no Propriety toward the propagating good Life but in reference to their way of managery all aptness to hinder it how much were it then for our Ease as well as profit to turn us into the plain road where none of these Thorny difficulties will encumber us Alas why should the Romanist so sweat to maintain his Purgatory flame as if he already felt its heat and would in this world antedate those pains when the same Industry bestowed here to purifie himself from all filthiness of flesh and spirit would substract the matter of that Fire and leave little for that furnace to refine which were doubtless a much securer way even according to his own principles than to trust to the uncertain devotion of others to fetch him out when once deeply ingulph't 'T is surely much better to starve that Fire by ones own innocence than to leave it to be extinguisht by the Tears and Piety of surviving friends Why should the Socinian so eagerly contend for the possibility of keeping the Law when one example would convince more than a thousand arguments Let him bend his study to make himself an instance of his own doctrine and then though he do finally fail in proving his Hypothesis yet if he do his utmost he will not fail of a better triumph than that which the Schools can give and so will even from his error extract advantage his very straying will by a happy Antiperistasis lead him into the way Why does the Predestinarian so adventerously climb into Heaven to ransack the celestial Archives read Gods hidden Decrees when with less labour he may secure an Authentick transcript within himself let him according to Saint Peters advice add to his faith vertue and to vertue knowledge and to knowledge temperance c. and that chain of vertues will stand him in much more stead than if he could as infallibly as some have confidently demonstrate every link of Predestination 'T is the assiduous practice of Duty will make his calling and election sure and unless he can confute that divine Axiome that without holiness none shall see the Lord he cannot but confess he may more profitably busie his thoughts in labouring to become holy than in disputing whether he can chuse to be so or not Or lastly why do we Christians of several perswasions so fiercely argue against the salvability of each other as if it were not only our Opinion but our Interest and our Wish that all should be damn'd but those of our particular Sect when God knows not only every society but every single person has enough to do to work out his own salvation which if we will take the Apostles word is to be done with fear and trembling Phil. 2. 12. A temper very widely distant from that of censuring and judging And sure we should not think that malefactor more meriting or more likely to be acquitted who should leap from the Bar to the Bench and there condemn the whole Goal but himself 'T was a sober and Christian reply of a late learned Gentleman who being askt by one whether a Papist might be saved answered you may be saved without knowing that And would we confine our cares and enquiries to those things which concern that one great Interest we might take less pains and yet do more work be less busie-bodies but more fruitful Christians and then sure 't is time we ask our selves the Wise mans question Eccles. 5. 16. What profit hath he that laboureth for the wind and at last give over this unthriving diligence and not so emulate the most stupid of Beasts as to make our selves burthens only that we may couch under them AND were this only Issachars lot 't were the less to be regretted but also Zabulon herein invades his portion 't is they that handle the pen of the Writer that have engrost this error and will not suffer it to be a Plebeian one None do so much this way mis-employ the two vulgar talents of Time and Industry as those who have a third superadded to them that of Extraordinary Faculties and endowments which they do as prodigally lavish as either of the former The Beginners or Abettors of contentions have generally been Persons of the most acute refin'd wits and excellent learning which has enabled them for those quirks and subtilties of which grosser understandings would have remain'd more happily ignorant A strange production that the greatest beauties of Nature and Art should ingender the foulest deformity in Religion Thus alas have Satans altars the pre-emption of Gods the fattest Oblation
their particular rancors But this is a Subject neither grateful nor necessary to be more distinctly spoken to One may however in the general say that where these private Animosities are any thing violent they usually beat down all Consideration of publick good Historians observe of Themistocles that he always thwarted the Councils of Aristides not that he thought it the Interest of the Common-wealth but his own to keep down the growing reputation of his Competitor And I fear that envious artifice has been too often transcrib'd as well in Ecclesiastick as in Civil Transactions No detriment is thought so formidable to a malicious mind as the prosperity of his Adversary and publick Ruptures shall still be allowed to widen till they swallow up the whole rather than he will close with his Antagonist The History of the Scottish Church gives an apposite Example of this in a ruling Presbyter who being by King Iames advis'd with about the readmitting Marquess Huntley and prest with the present exigencies of Church and State which requir'd it gave his final answer in these terms Well Sir I see you resolve to take Huntley in favour if you do I will oppose it chuse whether you will lose him or me for both you cannot have Some may think the greatest propriety of this instance lies to shew the insolence of that Tribe towards Majesty but however 't is not impertinent to the matter in hand also and shews how light the greatest publick concerns are when malice is the counterpoize And indeed the Naturalists experiment that flame will not mingle with flame never justifies its self better than when applied to minds thus accended which however they may meet in mutual flashes can never unite and incorporate The sadness of it is that they should only conspire to common vastation and make the Church its self a burnt-offering THUS fatal have our several sorts of prepossions been to our Religion for as if that were the common Enemy our most distant contrary Affections our love and our hate equally annoy it those brutish parts of us our Passions which like the beasts under the Law were never to be brought into the Temple but for sacrifice are now found there upon a far differing account not to be slain but ador'd like the Aegyptian Isis and Osyris enshrin'd to receive our Devotions for that the Zeal we pretend elsewhere is really paid to them is alas too manifest CHAP. XVII A survey of the Causes of Disputes Fifthly Zeal TO these several causes of our distractions we my add another which though in its original it may seem more innocent yet is in its consequents no less pernicious and that is a mistaken Zeal which as it is fire to all about it so is it wind to its self fans and irritates its own flames and by a confidence that it does well gathers still fresh vigour to do more How great the force of such an Erroneous perswasion is we may collect from our Saviours premonition to his Disciples when he tells them that those who kill'd them should think they did God service and if Murder and that of Apostles too could by the Magick of blind Zeal be so transform'd we must not wonder to find other Crimes so too And what Christ thus foretold was after eminently exemplified in St. Paul whom the Holy Writ represents under all the Phrases that may denote a virulent persecutor as breathing out threatnings and slaughter making havock of the Church and in his own words Persecuting that way unto the Death and being exceedingly mad against them and all this he did being Zealous towards God and out of a perswasion that he ought to do many things contrary to the name of Iesus as we find in his Apology to his countrey-men and King Agrippa Act. 22. 2. 26. 9. AND of the abettors of those Novel doctrines which after times produced we have reason to think many were of this Sort especially in those Heresies which though they carried secret venome in them had yet a plausible appearance of Sanctity and Devotion such was that of the Encratites which seem'd to be founded in the veneration of two great Vertues Continence and Temperance though by extending them beyond the due limits they lost that Sobriety they too strictly embraced and became inordinate in their Continence and excessive in their Abstinence Such again were the Euchitae or Massalians who made the whole business not only of religion but even of life to consist in praying and though by it they evacuated all other ends of both yet having the letter of a Precept and the pretence of Devotion on their side 't was a proper bait for those who had much Zeal and little Knowledge In like manner the Novatians Heresie had so glorious an inscription of Purity as was very apt to attract well meaning Souls who seeing it bid such express defiance to Apostacy could not suspect that it was its self any defection from the faith and accordingly some of that Sect approved their constancy in times both of Heathen and Arian persecutions Nor must we be so uncharitable to the modern times as not to believe many have acted upon the like Principles and meant truth and piety even while they actually promoted the contrary But how sincere soever the purposes of such seduced Persons were yet 't is evident the Church has suffer'd no less by them than by the more crafty designers their misguided piety has made as great and incurable Ruptures as the most flagitious blasphemies of others And when a rent is once made it matters little whether it were done by error or malice nay perhaps as to the hopes of repairing the former may be the more desperate for whereas he that knowingly commits an Ill has the Upbraidings of his own Conscience towards his reducing these on the other side have its Cherishings and Encouragements to confirm and animate them And doubtless they are great advantages which Satan has in all ages made of Such Persons whom he seems to have deluded in the same manner that Medea is said to have done the daughters of Peleas whom she perswaded to hack their aged Father in pieces in hope that by her Magick he should not only recover life but youth so these rend and tear their Mother the Church out of a hope no less delusive of restoring her pristine beauty and vigor how far the Event parallels it also the dying state of Christianity does too sadly testifie NOR has it only been the Heat of Erring persons that has been thus mischievous but sometimes men of right judgments have too much contributed to the breach of Unity and the intemperate and imprudent Zeal of these hath serv'd to exasperate the mistaking earnestness of the other this happens sometimes for want of distinguishing between the Essentials and Circumstantials of Religion and so looking upon a mistake in the later with the detestation proper only to the perverting of the former by this means those who