Selected quad for the lemma: virtue_n
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A61711
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Sermons and discourses upon several occasions by G. Stradling ... ; together with an account of the author.
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Stradling, George, 1621-1688.; Harrington, James, 1664-1693.
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1692
(1692)
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Wing S5783; ESTC R39104
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236,831
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593
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yet nothing is so loose as they in effect Trace these Worshippers of Bel by the print of their feet in the ashes and you shall find whither they go and what their pretended Abstinences end in And yet should they in the austerity of their Will-worship go beyond us I am sure Baal s Priests went beyond them such things make them not better than us or make Baal's Priests far better than them while they leave that which God commands them to doe that for which He will never thank them To this I might add as a great Motive to dissoluteness their Catholick implicit Faith while they require Men to believe at a venture as the Church does and so save them the labour of searching A Doctrine easie to flesh and bloud and excellently fitted to the designs as their perpetual Vow of Continency does promote the Lusts of it exposing some to an inevitable Temptation by denying them those remedies which the Gospel freely allows every Man 3. Can any thing more advance the pride of Nature than their Pharisaical Doctrines of Merit and Supererogation which teach Men to purchase their own Glory without being beholding to God's Mercy and by fulfilling his Law to out-brave his Justice Nay that they can doe more than they need and may if they please help their neighbours too What an excellent lesson is this to make Nature run mad of self-conceit while it is assured that it can carve out its own destiny by an exorbitant freedom of Will that Men can dispose themselves to Conversion work out their own Salvation without Christ's help or if not themselves with the assistance of others who can furnish them with a supply out of their super-abundant stock of Merits Thus while they run away with such fond conceits they become careless and negligent of doing any good themselves while they are made to believe that others can doe it for them as if the lashes of Saints supposing them such could heal us as Christ's stripes doe that God's Justice would suffer its self to be paid with any other coyn than that which bears his Son's image and superscription or that his bloud could not be able to cleanse us without being mixt with the water of our own or other men's tears What can be more effectual I say than this to puff up Men with spiritual pride or more derogatory or injurious to the Saviour of the World And yet this is the Doctrine of the false Prophets of Rome who stick not some of them blasphemously to affirm That we are more beholding to the Mother's milk than to the Son's bloud And as their Doctrine of Merit and Supererogation promotes spiritual pride so does that of the Pope's Infallibility and Supremacy as much foment their spiritual and carnal too while by the former they allow no more possibility of Error in St. Peter's than the Pharisees did in Moses's Chair and consequently exclude all hope of any Reformation of the Pope's abuses which all Men must swallow and digest as the dictates of God's Spirit to whom he entitles them and from which there lying no Appeal he may Lord it as he pleases over God's heritage let his pretended Predecessor say what he will to the contrary 1 Pet. 5. 3. and over all the Princes of the Earth too by vertue of his Dabo tibi claves in spight also of the same Apostle 1 Pet. 2. 13 14. Doctrines which serve to swell him up with Pride as that of Transubstantiation fills all his Emissaries with it too which giving them a power to make their God must needs make them look upon themselves as some great ones and the people admire and stand in awe of them who can create their Creator and which is worse sell him too as some of them doe at a lower price than Judas did his Saviour though others can sometimes raise the Market when they see occasion And surely there is nothing more certain than that they doe so as by vertue of this so of their other fore-mention'd Doctrines of Purgatory whereof the Pope keeps the Key as well as of Heaven and has kindled a fire there on purpose to make his Pot seeth of Masses for the Dead who are to be released thence by their own or friends Money and Indulgences to the Living that when they come thither they may also find a quick dispatch being in their description of it as hot though not so close a quarter as Hell its self wherein Men desiring to continue as short a time as possibly they can would be glad at any rate to provide themselves a Pass-port to an easier place To which Doctrines I might add their forbidding of Marriage to many degrees of Men a subtle way too of driving on their Trade of Merchandize For the more Prohibitions the more Dispensations and the more Dispensations the more Money No Peny no Pater-noster with them Thus doe their Doctrines empty themselves still into the Churches Treasury and the Sins of the whole World must be taxed to increase St. Peter's Patrimony though himself could tell us he had neither Silver nor Gold and rather than the Pope's Coffers shall stand empty he will set a price upon Damnation its self and the very Stews shall become Tributary to his Holiness's Purse that so that very Purse may maintain his Grandeur to the lessening of that of all other Princes That these are the aims of such-like Doctrines is plainly discernible by any that have not lost their Senses And surely Purgatory yields him so considerable a Rent that as Bishop Jewell well said the Pope would be content to lose Heaven and Hell too to save that And nothing can render his Indulgences tolerable but this one Consideration That they gave the first occasion to the Reformation of this and all other his Abuses The time would fail me to discover the aims of other Popish principles How some of them doe preach downright Falshood and Injustice such as are the Jusuitical Maximes of No Faith to be kept with Hereticks of Equivocations and mental Reservations whereby they can make any thing signifie any thing of Probabilities and rectifying of Intentions mentioned at large in the Provincial Letters and which the Jesuites have made such excellent use of for deciding Cases of Conscience To which I might add Their uncharitable and non-sensical Principle of their Particular Churches being the Universal Catholick one as the Pharisees and Donatists of old and our over-strict Precisians of late dooming all to Hell who are not of their cut and garb as if none could be saved that were out of their Ark Besides those innumerable burthensome and superstitious Ordinances they load men's Consciences with A yoke as they make it heavier than that of Moses whose whole loins are not so thick as their little finger But I forbear and shall conclude this part with a brief account of their Doctrine of Obedience to Magistrates which how destructive 't is to all civil Government will appear by the
they have the publick Seal upon them shall be as good and binding as the best that ever were established in the opinion of these Promoters of a moral Indifferency whereas in the Judgment of all Learned men humane Laws are then void and null when they do in the least swerve from that of Nature And 't is a great Error to think that men's Laws do make things morally good or bad whereas they do but declare them to be so supposing them to be such in their own Natures and deriving all their Vertue from that very supposition They take it for granted that there are such things as Vertue and Vice and add Rewards and Punishments to invite or deterr us from what naturally we are prone or averse to but would not so readily embrace or decline without these External motives or restraints All they do here is to graft on Natures stocks to cherish and nurse up those Seeds of Vertue which are already in our very Being and Constitution For before there were any positive Laws of men there were Natural certain moral Principles of Good and Evil which Reason obliged all men to As To do as we would be done to to worship God obey and honour Parents The latter so congenial to us that Moses and other Legislators have thought it superfluous to order any Punishment for parricide imagining none could be so unnatural as to commit it Such natural Obligations are antecedent to any humane Constitutions and in the Judgment of Aristotle as fixt and determined as any physical Beings So that as there will be Colours though there were no Eye to view them there will be such a thing as Virtue and Vice though there were no Law either for or against it Nor can any pretence of publick Interest alter their Property Utilitas prope justi mater aequi though in some sense very commendable for all Laws should aim at the publick good without which they should be no better than Snares and Traps yet in that wherein some take it 't is in no wise tolerable Their meaning by it being in short this that there is no Interest but what is merely secular that Vertue and Vice are in themselves insignificant things to be taken up or laid down as they are subservient to politick Ends As if God and Nature were to stoop to Mammon or that the distance between Honestum and Utile were so irreconcileable that 't were impossible for them to meet together An Error as old as Tully's Days which he complains of and confutes which excellently serves the turns of loose men who cannot better defame and exterminate Morality than by persuading the World 't is an useless thing as indeed it is to them that desire not to be bound up by it and therefore decry it in all others especially them who are to make Laws and see them executed who if they should be vertuous must of necessity shame and punish all those who resolve to be vitious But could these men once persuade Legislators that just and unjust were things indifferent and alterable at their pleasure they would no doubt at last as easily persuade themselves too that obedience and disobedience to them were as arbitrary and indifferent What disorder and confusion this one Principle would introduce into the World that Vertue and Vice were founded only in humane Constitutions and politick Interest and not in the Nature of the things themselves is easie to judge by putting this one Supposition Suppose the reverse of all we now call Vertue were solemnly enacted and the Practice of Fraud Perjury and Falseness to a man's word and all manner of Vice and Wickedness were established by a Law I ask now if the cafe between Vertue and Vice were thus altered would that we call Vice in process of time gain the reputation of Vertue and that which we call Vertue grow odious and contemptible to humane Nature If it would not then there is something in the Nature of Good and Evil of Vertue and Vice which does not depend upon the pleasure of Authority nor is subject to any Arbitrary Constitution But that it would not be thus is most certain because no Government could subsist upon such Terms For the very enjoyning of Fraud and Rapine Perjury and breach of Trust doth apparently destroy the greatest End of Government which is to preserve men in their Rights against the Encroachments of Fraud and Violence And this End being destroyed humane Societies would immediately fly in pieces and men would necessarily fall into a state of War Which plainly shows that Vertue and Vice are not Arbitrary things but that there is a natural immutable and eternal Reason for that we call moral Good and against that we call moral Evil. God has established these things upon as firm and solid a Basis as he has done the Earth which none can remove And therefore what Tertullian Ironically said of the Roman Senate that would not allow Christ a Room among their Gods at the Instance and recommendation of Tiberius Nisi homini Deus placuerit Deus non erit is applicable to all those who make the Wills of Legislators the Measure of Good and Evil Vertue must not be Vertue nor Vice Vice without men's Consent and Approbation 2. But besides these there is another sort of men who not content to make Good and Evil indifferent are so wickedly partial as to prefer Evil to Good These are all practical Epicureans who set up anti-Anti-tables in opposition to those of God and Nature live as if they aimed at being scandalous as well as vitious and loved the Guilt as well as the Pleasures of Sin that give all the reputation they can to Vice which is the natural Reward of Vertue decry all Goodness in themselves and others and stamp God's Image on Satan's Dross Such are all they who as St. Paul says glory in their shame Quorum novissima voluptus infamia est the Character which the Roman Historian gives of a prodigious Impiety that boast of their Infamy one of his Atheism another of the Trophies of his Drunkenness and a third of the Variety of his Uncleanness Pride compasseth them about like a Chain Psal. 73. 6. They deck themselves with it as with a Robe of Honour wear it as their Ornament and bring it forth into open view like Agrippa and Bernice in the Acts 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with much Pomp and State glorying as much in the Scars they receive in Satan's service as ever St. Paul did in the Marks of the Lord Jesus and have not so much as the Religion of Hypocrisie Sin is called the Work of Darkness because they who commit it usually hate the Light and therefore They that are drunk are drunk in the Night says the Apostle This was wont to be the Custom Vice durst not show its ugly Face by day But how many turn the Works of Darkness into Works of Light and produce them on the