him who will live such a Holy Life 114 CHAP. XIV That there is a Life of Retribution after this proved 119 CHAP. XV. Of the Intrinsecal Evils of SIN and of the PERPETVAL PVNISHMENT due to the Sinner by the undoubted Law of Nature 156 CHAP. XVI Of the present sinfull and miserable state of the World 176 CHAP. XVII What Naturall Light declareth of the Mercy of God to Sinners and of the Hopes and Means of Mans Recovery 182 PART II. Of CHRISTIANITY and Supernatural Revelation CHAP. I. OF the need of a clearer Light or fuller Revelation of the Will of God than all that hath been opened before p. 191 CHAP. II. Of the several RELIGIONS which are in the World 198 CHAP. III. Of the CHRISTIAN RELIGION and 1. What it is 204 CHAP. IV. Of the Nature and PROPERTIES of the Christian Religion 229 CHAP. V. Of the CONGRVITIES in the Christian Religion which make it the more easily credible and are great Preparatives to Faith 241 CHAP. VI. Of the WITNESS of JESVS CHRIST or the great demonstrative Evidence of his Verity and Authority viz. The SPIRIT In 4. parts 1. Antecedently by PROPHECY 2. Constitutively and Inherently the Image of God on his Person Life and Doctrine 3. Concomitantly by the Miraculous Power and Works of Christ and his Disciples 4. Subsequently in the actual Salvation of men by Renovation Opened Notes added 258 CHAP. VII Of the subservient Proofs and Means by which the forementioned Evidences are brought to our certain knowledge 302 How we know the antecedent Prophetical Testimony and the Constitutive Inherent Evidence How we know the Concomitant Testimony of Miracles 1. By Humane Testimony 2. By Evidence of Natural Certainty 3. By Divine attestation in the Testifyers Miracles The Proofs of that Divine attestation with the Witnesses 1. In the holy Constitution of their Souls and Doctrine 2. In their Miracles and Gifts 3. In the success of their Doctrine to mens sanctification How the Churches testimony of the Disciples Miracles and Doctrine is proved 1. By most credible Humane Testimony 2. By such as hath Natural Evidence of Certainty 3. By some further Divine attestation The way or Means of the Churches attestation and Tradition The Scriptures proved the same which the Apostles delivered and the Churches received How we may know the 4th part of the Spirits Testimony viz. The Successes of Christian Doctrine to mens sanctification What Sanctification is and the acts or parts of it Consectaries from p. 302. to 350 CHAP. VIII Of some other subservient and Collateral Arguments for the Christian Verity 350 CHAP. IX Yet Faith hath many Difficulties to overcome What they are and what their Causes 365 CHAP. X. The Intrinsecal Difficulties in the Christian Faith resolved or 24 Objections against Christianity answered 371 to 424 CHAP. XI The Extrinsecal Difficulties or 16 more Objections resolved 424 CHAP. XII The reasonable Conditions required of them who will overcome the Difficulties of Believing and will not undoe themselves by wilfull Infidelity 444 The summ of all in an Addresse to God 453 457 CHAP. XIII Consectaries I. What Party of Christians should we joyn with or be of seeing they are divided into so many Sects 464 CHAP. XIV II. Of the true Interest of Christ and his Church and the Souls of Men of the means to promote it and its Enemies and Impediments in the World Which being only named in brief Propositions should be the more heedfully perused by those that dare pretend the Interest of Religion and the Church for the proudest or the most dividing practices and those which most directly hinder the successefull preaching of the Gospel the pure Worshipping of God and the saving of Mens Souls 466. The Conclusion or an Appendix defending the Souls Immortality against the Somatists or Epicureans and other Pseudo-philosophers OBJECTION I. MAtter and Motion only may do all that which you ascribe to Souls p. 495 OBJECT II. By Sense Imagination Cogitation Reason you cannot prove the Soul to be incorporeal and immortal because the Bruits partake of all these 523 OBJECT III. Humane Souls are but Forms and Forms are but the qualities or modes of Substances and therefore perish when seperated from Bodies 535 OBJECT IV. The Soul is material and consequently mortal because it dependeth upon matter in its Operations and therefore in its Essence 539 OBJECT V. No immaterial Substance moveth that which is material as a principle of its Operations but the Soul so moveth the Body Ergo 540 OBJECT VI. The Soul in our sleep acteth irrationally according to the fortuitous motion of the spirits Ergo 543 OBJECT VII Reason is no proof of the Souls Immateriality because Sense which the Bruits have is the more perfect apprehension 543 OBJECT VIII Sensation and Intellection are both but Reception The Passivity therefore of the Soul doth shew its Materiality 544 OBJECT IX There is nothing in the Intellect which was not first in the Sense c. Ergo the Soul that can reach but things corporeal is such it self 547 OBJECT X. That which things Corporeal work on is Corporeal but c. 551 OBJECT XI That is not incorporeal which knoweth not it self to be so nor hath any notion but Negative and Metaphorical of Incorporeal Beings 551 OBJECT XII The Soul is generated Ergo corruptible 555 OBJECT XIII Omne quod oritur interit That which is not eternal as to past duration is not eternal as to future duration But c. 567 OBJECT XIV You have none but Moral Arguments for the Souls Immortality 568 OBJECT XV. You seem to confess that it is not the endless duration of the Soul but only a future state of Retribution which you can prove from Nature alone 568 OBJECT XVI Both Soul and Body are like a Candle in fluxu continuo Ergo being not long the same are uncapable of a Life of Retribution 569 OBJECT XVII The Soul returneth to the Anima Mundi or Element of Souls and so loseth its Individuation and is uncapable of Retribution 571 OBJECT XVIII The Fictions of the Platonists about their several Vehicles and such like do make their Doctrine the more to be suspected 574 OBJECT XIX The Souls actings will not be such as they are now by Corporeal Spirits and Idea's Ergo it will be uncapable of Retribution 578 OBJECT XX. The belief of the Souls Immortality doth fill men with fears and draw them to superstition and trouble the Peace of Kingdoms c. 579 In Objection about the Worlds Eternity What Christianity saith about it 582 The Testimony of Socrates and Zenocrates of the Souls Immortality 589 â—icero's Doctrine and his redargution of the Somatists at large 590 The Stoicks neerness to the Doctrine of Christianity with their particular Moral Tenets and their Praises by the Learned and Pious Mr. T. Gataker 595 The Stoicks Platonists and other Philosophers opinion of the sufficiency of Virtue to be Mans Felicity against the Epicurean Doctrine of Pleasure Vindicated It importeth a
Covenant of Grace confirming his Doctrine by abundant uncontrolled Miracles contemning the World he exposed himself to the malice and fury and contempt of sinners and gave up himself a Sacrifice for our sins and a Ransom for us in suffering death on a Cross to reconcile us to God He was buryed and went in Soul to the Souls departed And the third day he rose again having conquered death And after forty dayes having instructed and authorized his Apostles in their Office he ascended up into Heaven in their sight where he remaineth Glorified and is Lord of all the chief Priest and Prophet and King of his Church interceding for us teaching and governing us by his Spirit Ministers and Word 5. The New Law and Covenant which Christ hath procured made and sealed by his Blood his Sacraments and his Spirit is this That to all them who by true Repentance and Faith do forsake the Flesh the World and the Devil and give up themselves to God the Father Son and Holy Spirit their Creator Redeemer and Sanctifier he will give Himself in these Relations and take them as his reconciled Children pardoning their sins and giving them his grace and title to Everlasting Happiness and will glorifie all that thus persevere But will condemn the unbelievers impenitent and ungodly to everlasting punishment This Covenant he hath commanded his Ministers to proclaim and offer to all the World and to baptize all that consent thereunto to invest them Sacramentally in all these benefits and enter them into his holy Catholick Church 6. The Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son did first inspire and guide the Prophets Apostles and Evangelists that they might truly and fully reveal the Doctrine of Christ and deliver it in Scripture to the Church as the Rule of our Faith and Life and by abundance of evident uncontrolled Miracles and gifts to be the great witness of Christ and of the truth of his holy Word 7. Where the Gospel is made known the HOLY SPIRIT doth by it illuminate the minds of such as shall be saved and opening and softening their hearts doth draw them to believe in Christ and turneth them from the power of Satan unto God Whereupon they are joyned to Christ the Head and into the Holy Catholick Church which is his Body consisting of all true Believers and are freely justified and made the Sons of God and a sanctified peculiar people unto him and do Love him above all and serve him sincerely in holiness and righteousness loving and desiring the Communion of Saints overcoming the Flesh the World and the Devil and living in Hope of the coming of Christ and of Everlasting life 8. At death the Souls of the Justified go to Happiness with Christ and the Souls of the wicked to misery And at the end of this World the Lord Jesus Christ will come again and will raise the Bodies of all men from the dead and will judge all the World according to the good or evil which they have done And the righteous shall go into Everlasting Life where they shall see Gods Glory and being perfected in Holiness shall love and praise and please him perfectly and be loved by him for evermore and the Wicked shall go into Everlasting punishment with the Devil II. According to this Belief we do deliberately and seriously by unfeigned consent of Will take this One God the infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness the Father Son and Holy Spirit for our only God our reconciled Father our Saviour and our Sanctifyer and resolvedly give up our selves to him accordingly entering into his Church under the hands of his Ministers by the solemnization of this Covenant in the Sacrament of Baptism And in prosecution of this Covenant we proceed to stirre up our DESIRES by daily PRAYER to God in the Name of Christ by the help of the Holy Spirit in the order following 1. We desire the glorifying and hallowing of the Name of God that he may be known and loved and honoured by the World and may be well-pleased in us and we may delight in Him which is our ultimate end 2. That his Kingdom of Grace may be enlarged and his Kingdom of Glory as to the Perfected Church of the sanctified may come That Mankinde may more universally subject themselves to God their Creator and Redeemer and be saved by him 3. That this Earth which is grown too like to Hell may be made liker to the Holy ones in Heaven by a holy conformity to Gods Will and Obedience to all his Laws denying and mortifying their own fleshly desires wills and minds 4. That our Natures may have necessary support protection and provision in our daily service of God and passage through this World with which we ought to be content 5. That all our sins may be forgiven us through our Redeemer as we our selves are ready to pardon wrongs 6. That we may be kept from Temptations and delivered from sin and misery from Satan from wicked men and from our selves Concluding our Prayers with the joyfull Praises of God our Heavenly Father acknowledging his Kingdom Power and Glory for ever III. The Laws of Christian PRACTICE are these 1. That our Souls do firmly adhere to God our Creator Redeemer and Sanctifyer by Faith Love Confidence and Delight that we seek him by desire obedience and hope meditating on himself his word and works of Creation Redemption and Sanctification of Death Judgement Heaven and Hell exercising Repentance and mortifying sin especially atheism unbelief and unholiness hardness of heart disobedience and unthankfulness pride worldliness and flesh-pleasing Examining our hearts about our Graces our Duties and our sins Watchfully governing our thoughts affections passions senses appetites words and outward actions Resisting temptations and serving God with all our faculties and glorifying him in our Hearts our Speeches and our Lives 2. That we worship God according to his Holiness and his Word in Spirit and Truth and not with Fopperies and Imagery according to our own devices which may dishonour him and lead us to Idolatry 3. That we ever use his Name with special Reverence especially in appealing to him by an Oath abhorring prophaneness perjury and breach of Vows and Covenants to God 4. That we meet in Holy Assemblies for his more solemn Worship where the Pastors teach his Word to their Flocks and lead them in Prayer and Praise to God administer the Sacrament of Communion and are the Guides of the Church in Holy things whom the people must hear obey and honour especially the Lords Day must be thus spent in Holiness 5. That Parents educate their Children in the Knowledge and Fear of God and in obedience of his Laws and that Princes Masters and all Superiours govern in Holiness and Justice for the glory of God and the common good according to his Laws And that Children love honour and obey their Parents and all Subjects their Rulers in due subordination unto God 6. That
I prove you foolish in your Infidelity And if you will conjecture then that there may as many of those other Regions be damned 1. You shew your selves much more harsh in your censures than the Christians are whose harshness you are now reproving Yea you conjecture this without all ground or probability And will you say then For ought I know it may be so Ergo Christianity is incredible Can a groundless conjecture allow any rational man such a Conclusion Obj. But you say your selves that many of the Angels fell and are now Devils Answ But we say not how many we never said that it is the whole number of the Glorious Inhabitants of all the superiour World who are called Angels as Messengers or Officers about man we know not how small a part of them comparatively it may be And of them we know not how few fell Augustine conjectured that it was the tenth part but we have no ground for any such conjecture Obj. But it is incredible that the World should perish for one mans sin whom they never knew nor could prevent Ans 1. To them that know what Generation is and what the Son is to the Father it is not incredible at all that the unholy Parents do not beget holy Children nor convey to them that which they have not themselves nor yet that God should hate the unholy Nor that the Parents choice should signifie much for their Childrens state who have no wills of their own fit for actual choice nor that restored imperfect holiness should not be conveyed to Children by natural propagation which came to the Parents by Regeneration nor that the Children of Traytors should be disinherited for their Fathers faults nor that the Children of Drunkards and Gluttons should be naturally diseased 2. No man in the World doth perish for Adams sin alone without his own Though we judge the case of Infants to allow you no exception yet to carry the controversie to them into the dark and to argue à minus notis is not the property of such as seek impartially for truth Christ hath procured a new Covenant upon which all those that hear the Gospel shall again be tryed for life or death And those that hear it not have divers means which have a tendency to their recovery and are under undenyable Obligations to use those means in order to their recovery which if they do not faithfully they perish for their own sin Should it not make Christianity the more easily credible when certain experience assureth us how prone even Infants are to sin and how universally the World is drown'd in wickedness and then to finde so admirable and suitable a Remedy revealed Obj. But Punishment is to warn others from sinning But after this life there will be none to warn therefore there will be no punishment because the end of punishing ceaseth Answ 1. It is a false position that punishment is only or chiefly to be a warning to others It is chiefly for the ultimate end of Government which secundum quid among men is the bonum publicum but simpliciter in Gods Government it is the Glorifying or demonstration of the Holiness and Justice of God the universal Governour to the pleasure of his holy will 2. It is the Penalty as Threatned in the Law and not the penalty as executed which is the first necessary means to deterre others from offending And then the execution is secondarily necessary because the Law must be fulfilled It is not the actual hanging of a murderer which is the first necessary instrument or means to restrain murderers But it is the Penalty in the Law which saith that Murderers shall be hanged And the commination of the Law would be no restraint if it were not that it relateth to a just execution So that it was necessary to the restraint of sinners in this world that God should threaten Hell in his Law And therefore it is necessary that he execute that Law or else it would be delusory and contemptible 3. How know we who shall survive this present World to whom God may make mans Hell a warning Are not the Devils now set out in Scripture for a warning to Man And how know we what other Creatures God hath to whom these punished sinners may be a warning Or whether the New Earth wherein Righteousness must dwell according to Gods Promise 2 Pet. 3.12 13. shall not have use of this warning to keep them in their righteousness As long as all these things are probable and the contrary utterly uncertain how foolish a thing is it to go from the light of a plain Revelation and Scripture and argue from our dark uncertainties and improbabilities against that light And all because self-love and guilt doth make sinners unwilling to believe the truth So much for the Objection against Hell Obj. VIII But it is incredible that all those shall be damned that live honestly and soberly and do no body harm if they do not also live a holy and heavenly life and forsake all for another World Answ It is but selfishness and blindness which maketh men call him an honest man and speak lightly of his wickedness who preferreth the dung and trifles of this World before his Maker and Everlasting glory What if a pack of Murderers Thieves and Rebels do live together in love and do one another no harm shall that excuse their murders or rebellions and give them the name of honest men What is the Creature to the Creator what greater wickedness can man commit than to deny despise and disobey his Maker and to preferre the most contemptible vanity before him and to choose the transitory pleasure of sinning before the endless fruition of his God what is wronging a Neighbour in comparison of this wrong shall a sinner refuse his everlasting happiness when it is offered him and then think to have it when he can possess the pleasure of sin no longer and all because he did no man wrong Doth he think to refuse Heaven and yet to have it If he refuse the Love of God and perfection of Holiness he refuseth Heaven It is so far from being incredible that the unholy should be damned and the Holy only saved that the contrary is impossible I would not believe an Angel from Heaven if he should tell me that one unholy Soul in sensu composito while such shall be saved and have the heavenly felicity because it is a meer contradiction For to be blessed in Heaven is to be happy in the perfect Love of God And to love God without Holiness signifieth to love him without loving him Are these the Objections of unbelief Obj. IX The Resurrection of these Numerical Bodies when they are devoured and turned into the substance of other bodies is a thing incredible Answ 1. If it be neither against the Power the Wisdom or the Will of God it is not incredible at all But it is not against any of
effect of any politick Confederacy between him and them but the effect of Gods Power Light and Love so that it should be a great confirmation to our Faith to consider that those multitudes believed by the wonderfull testimony and work of the Holy Ghost upon the Disciples when Christ had been crucified in despight who yet believed not before but were his Crucifiers It was not so hard nor honourable an act to believe in him when he went about working Miracles and seemed in a possibility to restore their temporal Kingdom as to believe in him after he had been crucified among Malefactors He therefore that could after this by the Spirit and Miracles bring so many thousands to believe did shew that he was alive himself and in full power 3. And that the Apostles were mean unlearned men is a great confirmation to our Faith For now it is apparent that they had their abilities wisdom and successes from the Spirit and Power of God But if they had been Philosophers or cunning men it might have been more suspected to be a laid contrivance between Christ and them Indeed for all his Miracles they began to be in doubt of him themselves when he was dead and buryed till they saw him risen again and had the Spirit came upon them and this last undenyable evidence and this heavenly insuperable Call and Conviction was it which miraculously setled them in the Faith 4. And that Saviour who came not to make us Worldlings but to save us from this present evil World and to cure our esteem and love of worldly things did think it meetest both to appear in the form of a poor man himself and to choose Disciples of the like condition and not to choose the worldly wise and great and honourable to be the first attesters of his miracles or preachers of his Gospel Though he had some that were of place and quality in the World as Nicodemus Joseph Cornelius Sergius Paulus c. yet his Power needed not such Instruments As he would not teach us to magnifie worldly Pomp nor value things by outward appearance as the deluded dreaming world doth so he would shew us that he needeth not Kings nor Philosophers by worldly power or wisdom to set up his Kingdom He giveth power but he receiveth none He setteth up Kings and by him they reign but they set not up him nor doth he reign by any of them Nor will he be beholden to great men or learned men for their help to promote his cause and interest in the World The largeness of his mercy indeed extendeth to Kings and all in Authority as well as to the poor and if they will not reject it nor break his bonds but kiss the Son before his wrath break forth against them they may be saved as well as others Psal 2.1 2 9 10. 1 Tim. 2.1 2. But he will not use them in the first setting up of his Church in the World lest men should think that it was set up by the Learning Policy or Power of man 1 Cor. 1.26 27 28 29. and 2.5 6 7 10 13. 13.19 c. And therefore he would not be voted one of the Gods by Tyberius or Adrians Senate nor accept of the worship of Alexander Sevâ—rus who in his Lararium worshipped him as one of his Demi-gods nor receive any such beggarly Deity from man but when Constantine acknowledged him as God indeed he accepted his acknowledgement Those unlearned men whom he used were made wiser in an hour by the Holy Ghost than all the Philosophers in the World And those mean contemned persons overcame the Learning and Power of the World and not by Arms as Mahomet but against Arms and Arguments wit and rage by the Spirit alone they subdued the greatest powers to their Lord. Obj. XIV But it doth sapere scenam sound like a Poetical fiction that God should satisfie his own Justice and Christ should die instead of our being damned and this to appease the wrath of God as if God were angry and delighted in the blood or sufferings of the innocent Answ Ignorance is the great cause of unbelief This objection cometh from many errours and false conceits about the things of which it speaketh 1. If the word Satisfaction offend you use only the Scripture-words that Christ was a Sacrifice an Atonement a Propitiation a Price c. And if this be incredible how came it to pass that sacrificing was the custom of all the world Doth not this objection as much militate against this was God angry or was he delighted in the bloud and sufferings of harmless sheep and other cattel and must these either satisfie him or appease his wrath What think you should be the cause that sacrificing was thus commonly used in all ages through all the earth if it savoured but of poetical fiction 2. God hath no such thing as a passion of anger to be appeased nor is he at all delighted in the bloud or sufferings of the worst much less of the innocent nor doth he sell his mercy for bloud nor is his satisfaction any reparation of any loss of his which he receiveth from another But 1. Do you understand what Government is and what Divine Government is and what is the end of it even the pleasing of the will of God in the demonstrations of his own perfections if you do you will know that it was necessary that God's penal Laws should not be broken by a rebel world without being executed on them according to their true intent and meaning or without such an equivalent demonstration of his Justice as might vindicate the Law and Law-giver from contempt and the imputation of ignorance or levity and might attain the ends of Government as much as if all sinners had suffered themselves And this is it that we mean by a Sacrifice Ransom or Satisfaction Shall God be a Governour and have no Laws or shall he have Laws that have no penalties or shall he set up a lying scar-crow to frighten sinners by deceit and have Laws which are never meant for execution Are any of these becoming God Or shall he let the Devil go for true who told Eve at first You shall not die and let the world sin on with boldness and laugh at his Laws and say God did but frighten us with a few words which he never intended to fulfill or should God have damned all the world according to their desert If none of all this be credible to you then certainly nothing should be more credible than that his wisdom hath found out some way to exercise pardoning saving mercy without any injury to his governing justice and truth and without exposing his Laws and himself to the contempt of sinners or emboldening them in their sins even a way which shall vindicate his honour and attain his ends of government as well as if we had been all punished with death and hell and yet may save us with the great
Farewell vain World As thou hast been to me Dust a Shadow those I leave with thee The unseen Vitall Substance I committ To him that 's Substance Light Life to it The Leaves Fruit here dropt are holy seed Heaven's heirs to generate to heale feed Them also thou wilt flatter molest But shalt not keep from Everlasting Rest THE REASONS OF THE Christian Religion The FIRST PART OF GODLINESS Proving by NATVRAL EVIDENCE the Being of GOD the Necessity of HOLINESS and a future Life of Retribution the Sinfulness of the World the Desert of Hell and what hope of Recovery Mercies intimate The SECOND PART OF CHRISTIANITY Proving by Evidence Supernatural and Natural the certain Truth of the CHRISTIAN Belief and answering the Objections of Vnbelievers First meditated for the well-setling of his own Belief and now published for the benefit of others By RICHARD BAXTER It openeth also the true Resolution of the Christian Faith Also an APPENDIX defending the Soul's Immortality against the Somatists or Epicureans and other Pseudo-philosophers LONDON Printed by R. White for Fran. Titon at the three Daggers in Fleet-street 1667. TO THE CHRISTIAN READER BEcause there are some who judging of others by themselves will say what need this labour among Christians to prove a God a Life to come and the Truth of the Gospel Or at least what need is there of it after so much already written I take my self obliged to give you an account of this attempt For my own Reason is much against over-doing and wasting our little time in things superfluous which is but enough for necessary things But it hath recorded this among the indubitata Boni rarò nimis optimi nunquam indifferentes saepissimè mali semper The true Reasons of this work are no fewer than these following 1. Quod cogitamus loquimur That which is most and deepest in my thoughts is aptest to break forth to others Man is a communicative Creature Though it be to my shame I must confesse that necessity through perplexed thoughts hath made this Subject much of my Meditations It is the Subject which I have found most necessary and most usefull to my self And I have reason enough to think that many others may be as weak as I. And I would fain have those partake of my satisfaction who have partaked of my difficulties 2. I perceive that because it is taken for a shame to doubt of our Christianity and the Life to come this hindereth many from uttering their doubts who never get them well resolved but remain half Infidels within whilest the Ensigns of Christ are hanged without and need much help though they are ashamed to tell their needs And prudent Charity will relieve those who are ashamed to beg 3. As the true knowledge of God is the beginning and maintainer of all holinesse and honesty of Heart and Life so latent Atheisme and Infidelity in the mindes of Hypocrites in the Church is the root of their prophanenesse dishonesty and wickednesse Did they seriously Believe as Christians they would not live as the Enemies of Christianity I take it therefore to be the surest and most expeditious Cure of the security presumption pride perfidiousnesse sensuality and wickednesse of these Hypocrites to convince them that there is a God and a Life to come and that the Gospel is true 4. And this prophaneness and sensuality tendeth to greater Infidelity They that will not live as they profess to Believe may most easily be drawn to Believe and profess as they are willing to live And therefore this Prognostick commandeth me to endeavour to prevent mens open profession of Infidelity lest the present torrent of ungodlinesse selfishnesse malice uncharitablenesse perjury treachery faction whoredom and other sensualities should fall into this gulf or one that is not much unlike it 5. The best complain of the imperfection of their Faith And too many good Christians especially if Melancholy surprise them are haunted with such temptations to Atheisme blasphemy and unbelief as make their lives a burden to them And one that hath heard so many of their complaints as I have done is excusable for desiring to relieve them It hath many a time been matter of wonder to me to observe that there is scarce one deep melancholy person among ten religious or not religious before but is followed with violent suggestions to doubt of the God-head and of the truth of the Gospel or to utter some word of Blasphemy against God And he that must pray Lord increase my Faith and help my Unbelief must use other means as well as pray 6. The imperfection of our Faith even about the Gospel and the Life to come is the secret root of all our faults of the weaknesse of every other grace of our yielding to temptations and of the carelesnesse badnesse and barrennesse of our Lives So Transcendent are the Concernments of the Life to come that a certain clear and firm belief of them would even deride temptations and bear down all the trifles of this World by what names or titles soever dignified as things not worthy of a look or thought What manner of person will that man be in all holy Conversation and Godliness who believing that all these things must be dissolved doth look for the coming of Christ and for the Blessed Consequents 2 Pet. 3.11 12 14. 2 Thess 1.10 O what a life would that man live what Prayers what Prayses what holy discourse would employ his tongue with what abhorrence would he reject the baits of sin who did but see but once see those unseen and future things which every Christian professeth to believe How contemptibly would he think and speak both of the pleasures and the sufferings of this dreaming life in comparison of the everlasting things What serious desires and labours and joyes and patience would such a sight procure How much more holy and Heavenly would it make even those that by the purblind World are thought to exceed herein already And if we took our Belief to be as certain as our sight Believing would do greater matters than it doth I oft think what one told me that an Infidel answered him when he asked him How he could quiet his Conscience in such a desperate state saith he I rather wonder how you can quiet your Conscience in such a common careless course of life believing as you do If I believed such things as you do I should think no care and diligence and holiness could be enough 7. The Soul in flesh is so much desirous of a sensitive way of apprehension and sensible things being still before us do so increase this Malady and divert the minde from spiritual things that we have all great need of the clearest evidence and the most suitable and frequent and taking explication of them that possibly can be given us not only to make us Believe things unseen but to make us serious and practical and affectionate about the things which in a
It is not one part of the Sun that moveth and another which illuminateth and another which heateth But the whole Sun if it be wholly Fire or aethereal matter doth move the whole illuminateth and the whole doth heat And Motion Light and Heat are not Qualities inherent in it But Motion Illumination and Calefaction are Acts flowing immediately from its Essence as containing the faculties or powers of such acts He that could write a perfect method of Physicks and Morality would shew us Trinity in Unity through all its parts from first to last But as the Veins Arteries and Nerves the Vessels of the Natural Vital and Animal humours and spirits are easily discernable in their trunks and greater branches but not so when they are minute and multiplied into thousands so is it in this Method But I must desire the Reader to observe that though I here explain this Trinity of Active Principles in the Divine Essence which is so evident to Natural Reason it self as to be past all controversie Yet whether indeed the Trinity of Hypostases or Persons which is part of the Christian Faith be not somewhat distinct from this is a question which here I am not to meddle with till I come to the second part of the Treatise Nor is it my purpose to deny it but only to prepare for the better understanding of it Of which more shall there afterward be said § 32. And thus all Creatures and especially our selves declare that there is a first Being and Cause of them all who is a Substance Life a Spirit or Minde an Active Power Vnderstanding and Will perfect eternall independent and self-sufficient not compounded not passible not mutable corruptible or mortall Immense Omnipresent Incomprehensible only One Omnipotent Omniscient and most Good most Happy in Being Himself in Knowing himself and enjoying him most Holy transcending all the Creatures of a Perfect Will the Fountain of all Morall Good Love or Benigne having a Trinity of essential Transcendent Principles in unity of Essence which have made their adumbration or appearance on the World whereof though he be not the constitutive form or Soul He is to it much more the first Efficient Dirigent and ultimate final Cause of all That is THERE IS A GOD. CHAP. VI. Of GOD as RELATED to his Creatures especially to Man And I. as his OWNER PAssing by all that is doubtfull and controverted among men truly Rational and taking before me only that which is certain undenyable and clear and wherein my own Soul is past all doubt I shall proceed in the same method secundum ordinem cognoscendi non essendi The word GOD doth not only signifie all that I have been proving viz. The perfect nature of the first Cause but also his Relations to us his Creatures And therefore till I have opened and proved those Relations I have done but part of my work to prove that THERE IS A GOD. § 1. GOD having produced Man and all the World by his Power Vnderstanding and Will is by immediate resultancy Related to him as his CREATOR Though he made his Body of pre-existent Matter yet was that Matter made of nothing and therefore God is properly Mans CREATOR and not his Fabricator only And a CREATURE is a Relation which inferreth the Correlate a CREATOR as a Son doth a Father This therefore is Gods first grand Relation unto Man which hath no cause to produce it but his actual Creation which is its fundamentum § 2. This Grand prime Relation inferreth a Trinity of Grand Relations viz. That God is our OWNER our RVLER and our BENEFACTOR of which we are now to speak in order That these Three are justly distinguished from each other is past doubt to all that understand what is meant by the terms An Owner as such is not a Ruler or Benefactor a Ruler as such is not an Owner or a Benefactor A Benefactor as such is neither an Owner nor a Ruler And the enumeration is sufficient All humane affairs or actions of converse and society belong to Man in one of these three Relations or such as are subordinate to them and meer dependents on them or compounded of them They are in some respect the Genera and in some as it were the Elements of all other Relations And from the manner of men they are applyed to God with as much propriety of speech as any terms that man can use concerning him And he that could draw a true scheme or method of the Body of Morality or Theology for all is one with me would reduce all the dealings of God with Man which are subsequent to the fundamental Act of Creation to these three Relations and accordingly distinguish of them all Yet in the Mixt acts as most are such distinguishing only of the compounding Elements I mean the interest of these three Relations as making up the several acts § 3. A full Owner or Proprietor is called Dominus in the strictest sense and is one that hath a Jus possidendi disponendi utendi a right of having or possessing disposing and using without any copartner or superior Proprietor to restrain him The meaning is better known by the bare terms of denomination through common use than by definition We know what it meaneth when a man saith of any thing It is mine own There are defective half-proprieties of Co-partners and subordinate Proprietors which belong not to our present case The word Dominus Dominuim is sometime taken laxely as comprehending both Propriety and Rule and sometime improperly for Government or Command it self But among Lawyers it is most commonly taken properly and strictly for an OWNER as such But lest any be contentious about the use of the word I here put instead of it the word Owner and Proprietor as being more free from ambiguity § 4. GOD is jure Creationis Conservationis the most absolute Owner or Proprietor of Man and the whole Creation It is not possible that there should be a more full and certain title to propriety than Creation and total conservation is He that giveth the World all its Being and that of nothing and continueth that being and was beholden to no pre-existent matter nor to any co-ordinate concause nor dependent on any superiour cause in his causation but is himself the first independent efficient total cause of being and well-being and all the means thereto must needs be the absolute Owner of all without the least limitation or exception It is not the supereminency of Gods nature excelling all created beings that is the foundation of this his Propriety in the creature For Excellency is no title to Propriety And yet he that is unicus in capacitate possidendi that is so transcendently excellent as to have no Copartner in a claim might by Occupation be sole Proprietor in that kinde of Propriety secundum quid which Man is capable of Because there is no other whom he can be said to wrong But GOD hath a
future Blessedness may weigh down all the riches and pleasures of the World But take away the respect to the life to come and weak man would meet with no such comforts It is true also that Virtue and Piety is most desirable even for it self But that is especially as it will be it self indeed in a life of fuller perfection than this For here it is so weak and clogged with so many corruptions and infirmities that the comfort of it is little perceived But as a Childe in infancy hath less pleasure than a Bruite for all his Reason and as young Scholars for a time do meet with more trouble than pleasure in their Learning and half-witted Artists are oft more incommodious than none and no one would much seek after Arts or Learning for all its excellency if they had not hopes to ascend above that troublesome smattering degree Even so in the present Case though the least Virtue be in it self more valuable than all sensual pleasure yet considered as Good to us we should never be able to preferre it if we had not hopes of a higher measure than most of the truly virtuous and obedient do here attain Either it is fleshly worldly pleasure or it is the pleasing and enjoying of God in Holiness and Love which is Mans ultimate end If it be the former then certainly the sensual and wicked are in a better condition than the obedient For they have much more of that kinde of delight while the best are oft tormented and persecuted by their cruelty But if it be the latter then it is sure to be enjoyed hereafter seeing we have here so small a measure and also finde that all the Virtue and Holiness of this life consisteth much more in desire and seeking than in delightfull enjoying And our Delights are for the most part the effects of Hope of what we shall possess hereafter more than of the sense of our present happiness There is no righteous Governour on Earth that will suffer if he can help it his disobedient Subjects to persecute those that most carefully obey him and to make them a common scorn and to imprison them torment them burn them at Stakes or banish them and then say That their obedience is in its own nature so much better than disobedience that it is Reward enough of it self It is not the work of a Ruler only to see that no man be a loser by him or his service in point of commutative Justice but to see that by distributive Justice such a difference be made between the obedient and disobedient as the difference of their actions do require in order to the ends of Government Justice giveth every one his due Mercy it self when it remitteth a penalty doth it for the same ends and upon such reasonable considerations of repentance confession satisfaction reparation according to power that it may be called a Just Mercy God is such a Lover of Holiness that he will in his Government manifest that Love and such a hater of sin that he will signifie his hatred of it to the sinner Moreover the Body it self is part of the Man and that part which hath no small interest in the sin It seemeth therefore unjust that the Bodies and sensitive powers of the disobedient should have all kinde of pleasures and the Bodies and sense of the obedient have the pain of Fasting self-denyal persecutions cruelties and no further Judgement to make a more equal Retribution In a word I think there are few that compare the life of an Emperour of Turkie or Tartary or any wicked sensual Worldling with the life of many a thousand persecuted and tormented Saints but will confess that no Distributive Justice doth make in this life so sufficient a difference as may make men know the Justice of the Governour the desirableness of a holy state or the danger of the contrary it was the observation of this that made most of the Atheists of the world think that there was no God or that he exercised no moral Government over men and that made even the innocent often to stagger and tempted them to think their labours and sufferings were all in vain till they look'd before them to the end And if God's Justice make not a sufficient difference here it is certain that there is another life where he will do it because else he should not be just his Laws would be delusory and his Government would be defective and successful only by deceit Obj. God is not obliged to do Justice to men any more than to any other creatures he suffereth the Dog to kill the Hare the Deer and innocent Sheep the Kite to kill the harmless Doves and Chickens the ravenous Birds and Beasts and Fishes to devour and live upon the rest and Man upon all and he is not bound to do them Justice Answ The Bruits are no subjects capable of moral Government and consequently of Propriety of Right or of Wrong God that made them uncapable of Government thereby declared that he intended them not for it Let no man here play with ambiguities and say that God governeth all the creatures The word Government is taken equivocally when it is applied to a dead or bruitish subject a Ship a Coach a Horse a Dog and meaneth not the same thing which we discourse of It is Moral Government by Laws and Judgment which we treat of When God had made Man a Governable Creature he thereby declared his will to be himself his Governour which is all the obligation that God is capable of as to actions ad extra He therefore that made the rational world his Kingdom did thereby engage himself to govern them in Justice there is therefore no comparison between the case of men and bruits who never were subjects but utensils in his Kingdom § 2. II. If there were no retribution in the life to come the secret sins and duties of the heart and life would be under no sufficient Government But the secret sins and duties of the heart and life are under a sufficient Government Therefore there is a Retribution in the life to come This Argument is a particular instance to clear the former general Argument The Major is proved by experience the Heart is the Fountain of Good and Evil man cannot see it and therefore pretendeth not to govern it or make Laws for it if they did it would be all in vain The heart may be guilty of Atheism Blasphemy Idolatry Malice Contrivements and desires of Treason Murder Incest Adultery Fraud Oppression and all the Villany in the world and no man can know or punish it and God doth not do it ordinarily in this life with any sufficient act of Justice So also all those sins which men are but able to hide as secret Murders Treasons Revenge Slanders Fraud c. do escape all punishment from man And God hath no observable ordinary course of outward Justice in this world but
their lives to rob and kill as if they were of little worth yea when they know that they must die how desperately go they to the gallows and how little make they of their lives It s true as was aforesaid that nature abhorreth death but we see among Souldiers that he that at first is timerous when he hath been used a while to kill men or to see them kill'd by thousands groweth senseless almost regardless of his life and will make as it were a jest of death And when it is so ordinary a thing with men to kill birds and fishes and beasts for their daily food and pleasure why should they not easily bear their own if they look for nothing after death A beast loveth his life as well as we and our death is no more painful than theirs and we should have as much courage as a beast Especially men that live a poor and miserable life on earth would little fear that death which endeth it and so humane Government it self would be in vain He that would have an instrument to revenge him on his enemy to kill his Governour or do any villany in the world if it were not for fear of another world might find enow among Poor villains that by misery or melancholly are a-weary of their lives At least as long as they run but a hazard like a Souldier in fight and may possibly scape by craft or flight or friends or strength what wickedness will they not commit What Prince so just that hath not some rebellious Subject or some Enemy that seeks his life What man so good that is not maliced by some Who hath mony or an estate which one or other doth not desire and if there were nothing but death and annihilation to restrain men what Prince what person had any security of his life or estate If a Rogue once grow but sensual and idle he will deliberately resolve I will venture my life to live in pleasure rather than live in certain toil and misery a short life and a sweet is better than a longer which is miserable and must end at last We see if once men be perswaded that they shall die like beasts that they are not much troubled at it because they think that when they have no being they shall have no fear nor care nor grief nor trouble nor pain nor want And though right improved Reason which hath higher expectations makes a greater matter of the loss of them yet sensual men so brutine themselves that they grow contented with the felicity of a Bruit and are not much troubled that they have no more Annihilation therefore certainly is a penalty utterly insufficient even to keep any common Order in the World as I proved before And therefore it is certain that the penalty inflicted hereafter will be greater than Annihilation And if so it must contain with the Being of the Creature a suffering worse than the loss of Being § 35. The Belief of a Hell or endless punishment being that which is de facto the restraint of the Obedient part of the World and that which proveth too weak with the Disobedient part it thence followeth that a Hell or endless punishment will be inflicted The Reasons I have given before 1. Because that Experience sheweth that the Threatning of Hell is necessary in the Law therefore it self is necessary in the execution 2. Because God doth not govern the World by deceit § 36. God will inflict more punishment for the final rejection of his Government than Kings do for treason and rebellion against thousands There is no proportion between God and Man and between a fault against God and against Man Therefore if racks torments and death be justly inflicted for Treason against a King much more may be expected for rebellion against God Obj. But mens sins do God no hurt as they do the King Answ They do wrong where they do no hurt It is not for want of Malignity in sin but through the perfections of God that they do not hurt him But they displease him and injure him and they hurt the World and the sinner himself who is not his own A Child is to be corrected for many faults which do his Father no harm It is not hurting God that is the Cause that sin is punished Obj. But God is mercifull as well as just Answ True and therefore he shewed mercy to sinners in the day of Mercy And it is for the contempt and abuse of mercy that he condemneth them If the Mercy abused had been less the sin and punishment had been less A mercifull King and Judge will hang a Murderer or Traytor Mercy to the good requireth punishment of the bad Gods Attributes are not contrary He is mercifull to the due Objects of mercy and hath penal Justice for the Objects of that Justice Obj. But after this life the ends of punishment cease therefore so will the punishment For there will be none in the next World to be warned by it nor any further sin to be restrained unless it be a Castigatory Purgatory for the sinner himself Answ 1. I have proved that the Law was necessary to the Government of this World And if it was necessary that God say everlasting death shall be the wages of sin then his Truth and Justice make the execution necessary afterwards 2. When this life is ended we look for a New Heaven and a New Earth wherein dwelleth righteousness And the penalties of the sinners of this World may be a means of that righteousness of the next as the punishment of the Devils is a warning to us and proposed to us for our terror and restraint 3. How little know we whether thousands of the Orbs which we see are not inhabited and whether the penalties of Earthly sinners may not be a warning to any of those superiour Worlds God hath not acquainted us with all the uses that he can make of sinners punishments And therefore when Nature telleth us what is due it is folly to say it will not be because God hath no use for it Obj. But Hell is a cruelty which expresseth tyranny rather than wise justice Answ That 's but the voice of Folly partiality and guilt Every thief that is hanged is like enough to think the same of his own Punishment and Judge If you think it such a cruelty why was not the threatning of it enough to govern you and to counterpoise a Feather the trifles of sordid fleshly pleasure Why did you choose it in the choice of sin were you not told of it and was not Life and Death offered to your choice Would you choose that which you think it is cruelty to inflict who is it that is cruel to you but your selves Why will you now be so cruel to your own souls and then call God cruel for giving you your choice O sinners as you are wise as you are men as ever you care what becometh of you for ever
have mercy upon your selves and do not refuse and obstinately refuse the mercy of God and then call him unmercifull Have pity on your own Souls Be not so cruel against your selves as to run into endless misery for nothing and then think to lay the blame on God! God calleth now to you in your sin and wilfulness and intreateth you to have mercy on your selves and then he will have mercy on you in the day of your distress But if you will not hear him but will have none of his mercy now wonder not if in vain you cry to him for it then Obj. But I would not so use an Enemy of my own Answ 1. He doth not deserve it for you are not Gods 2. You are not Governours of the World and so his fault respecteth not any such Law and Judgement of yours by which the World must be governed 3. Nor have you the Wisdom and Justice of God to do that which is right to all Yet are you not bound your selves to take complacency in the evil of your Enemies but to use just means to bring him to a better minde and state § 37. The summ of all here proved is that all sin deserveth endless misery and naturally induceth to it and that all ungodly impenitent souls shall certainly undergoe it and that none can be saved from this misery but by turning to God and being saved from their sins CHAP. XVI Of the present sinfull and miserable state of this World § 1. THough all men may know all this before said to be their duty and sin to be so evil and to deserve such punishment yet none do live perfectly without sin according to the Law of Nature I have heard but of few that pretend to such perfection and those few have confuted their own pretenses and been the furthest from it of many others And therefore this I have no need to prove § 2. The greatest part of the World do bend their mindes and lives to the satisfying of their flesh and live in ungodliness intemperance and unrighteousness neglecting God and future happiness and that Holy life which is the way thereto This being a matter of publick or common fact doth need no other proof than acquaintance with the people of the World § 3. Yea there is an aversness and enmity in them to the life which God in Nature doth prescribe them and a strong inclination to a fleshly Life There needeth no other proof of this than the wonderfull difficulty which we find in perswading men to change their Lives to live to God and to forsake their sensuality and worldliness and the abundance of Reason and labour that is lost upon them when we cannot so much as make them willing § 4. It is evident in the effect that much of this cometh with us into the World 1. How else should it be so universal as it is How should it be found in all sorts of Constitutions and Complexions and in every Countrey and Age till now 2. How should it work so early in Children as commonly it doth 3. How cometh it to prevail against the best Education Helps and Means Certainly all of us feel from our childhood too much of the truth of this § 5. This natural pravity is quickly encreased by the advantage of sensuality which is active before Reason cometh to any power of resistance and so getteth stronger possession by Custom and groweth to a confirmed habit § 6. And if vicious Education by vicious Parents be added and bad company second that and the vulgar course or Rulers countenance concurr the corrupt inclination is quickly more radicated and next to a Nature § 7. Many so farr prevail against the light and law of Nature as to grow strange to God and to themselves to their end and their work Even to doubt whether there be a God or whether they have any other life to live and whether Holiness be good and necessary and sin be bad and deserve any punishment § 8. There is a great deal of sottish unteachableness on the minds and wills of men which hindereth their conviction and reformation § 9. There is a great deal of senseless stupidity and hard-heartedness on men which maketh them sleepily neglect the greatest things which they are convinced of § 10. There is in most a marvellous Inconsiderateness as if they had not their Reason awake to use so that they will not soberly and seriously think of the things which deeplyest concern them § 11. Most men are so taken up with the concernments of their Bodies that their Minds are pre-occupyed and made unfit for higher things All this is proved if we walk but in the World with open eyes § 12. The Love of the World and fleshly pleasure is so powerfull in the most that they love not the Holy Law of God which forbiddeth them that sensuality and commandeth them a holy and temperate life They are like Children that cry for what they love and will not be restrained by telling them that its unwholsom Reason signifieth nothing with them as long as Sense and Appetite gainsay it They are angry with all that crosseth their Appetites though it be to save their Lives The Sense is become the predominant power in them and Reason is dethroned and hath left its power Therefore Gods Law is unacceptable and hatefull to these bruitish people because it is quite against their inclination and that which the Flesh doth call their Interest and Good § 13. Therefore they love not those who press them to the Obedience of this Law which is so ungratefull to them and who condemn their sin by the holiness of their lives and that awaken their guilty Consciences by the serious mention of the Retributions of the life to come All this is bitter to the taste and the Reasonableness necessity and future benefits are things that they are much insensible of § 14. Therefore they love not God himself as he is Holy and Governeth them by a Holy Law which is so much against their inclinations as he forbiddeth them all their sinfull pleasure and threatneth damnation to them if they rebell Especially as his Justice will execute this Indeed their aversation from God in these respects is no less than a Hating Him as God § 15. These Vices working continually in mens hearts do fill them with deceiving thoughts and distracting passions and unquietness and engage them in self-troubling wayes and deprive them of the Comforts of the Love of God and of a Holy life and of the well-grounded hope of future blessedness Though they have such a present pleasure as prevaileth with them it bringeth speedy smart and trouble Just like the pleasure of scratching to a man that hath the Itch which is quickly recompensed with smart if he go deep Or like the pleasure of drinking cold water to a man in a Feaver or a Dropsie which increaseth the disease
Sin is their sickness and corrupteth their appetites and though it have its proper pleasure it depriveth them of the pleasures and benefits of health § 16. These vices also so deprave sometimes making every wicked man to be principally for HIMSELF and for his LVSTS that they are commonly distracted with envy malice contention persecutions the fruits of Pride and Covetousness and sensuality and these diseases are still troubling them till they work their ruine where they do prevail § 17. The same vices set Kingdoms and other Common-wealths together in bloody Warrs and cause men to study to destroy one another and glory in the success and fill the World with rapine and violence by Sea and Land and make it seem as necessary to their own preservation to kill one another as their enemies as to kill Toads and Serpents Wolves and Tygers and much more and with much more care and cost and industry is it done § 18. If any wise and charitable persons would heal these vices and reconcile these contentions and perswade persons and Nations to a holy sober peaceable course they are commonly hated and persecuted they seldom succeed nor can their counsel be heard through the multitude and fury of the vicious whose folly and violence beareth down all § 19. And God himself doth give the sinfull World a taste of his displeasure by painfull sicknesses consuming Plagues Famines Poverty and many the like Calamities which fall upon mankinde § 20. But his sorest Judgements are the forsaking of Mens souls and leaving them in all this folly and disorder this sin and misery to destroy themselves The principal Mercies and Punishments of this Life are found on the Souls of men themselves The greatest present Reward of Obedience is when God doth more illuminate the mind and send in more of his celestial beams and shed abroad his Love upon the heart and fill it with the Love of Goodness and delight it in himself and confirm the will against temptations And the greatest punishment is when God in displeasure for mens disobedience doth withdraw this grace and leave men to themselves that they that love not his grace should be without it and follow their foolish self-destroying lusts § 21. God cannot pardon an uncapable subject nor any but on terms consistent with the honour of his Justice Laws and Government Nor is there any that can deliver a sinner from his punishment upon any other terms whatsoever § 22. The conclusion is that the sin and misery of Mankinde in Generall is great and lamentable and their recovery a work of exceeding difficulty Obj. All this sheweth that mans Nature was not made for a Holy life nor for a World to come Else their aversness to it would not be so great and common Answ This is fully answered before It is proved that Nature and Reason do fully bear witness against his wickedness and declare his obligations to a better life and his capacity of higher things and that all this is his rebellion against Nature and Reason And it no more proveth your Conclusion than your Children or Servants aversness to obedience peace and labour proveth that these are not their duty or Subjects rebellion proveth that they are not obliged to be loyal Obj. But it is incredible that God should thus far forsake his own Creation Answ 1. There is no disputing against the light of the Sun and the experience of all the World It is a thing visible and undenyable that this case they are de facto in and therefore that thus farr they are forsaken It is no Wisdom to say that is not which all the World seeth to be so because we think it unmeet that it should be so 2. Is it incredible that God doth further than this forsake the wicked in the World of punishment If he may further forsake Hell he may thus far forsake Earth upon their great provocations We have no certainty of it but it is not at all unlikely that the innumerable fixed Starrs and Planets are inhabited Orbs who have dwellers answerable to their nature and preeminence And if God do totally forsake Hell as to his Mercy and next to Hell do much forsake a sinfull Earth that is likest and neerest unto Hell and do glorifie his more abundant Mercy upon the more holy and happy inhabitants of all or almost all the other Orbs what matter of discontent should this be to us 3. But God hath not left even this dark and wicked Earth it self without all remedy as shall be further shewed Read Cicero's third Book de Nat. Deor. and you will see in Cotta's speech that the notoriously depraved Reason of man and the prevalency and prosperity of wickedness was the great argument of the Atheists against God and Providence which they thought unanswerable because they looked no further than this life and did not foresee the time of full universal Justice And whereas Cotta saith that if there be a God he should have made most men good and prevented all the evil in the World and not only punish men when it is done I shall answer that among the objections in the Second Tome and I before shewed how little reason men have to expect that God should make every man as good as he could make him or make man indefectible or to argue from mans sin against Gods goodness The free Creator Lord and Benefactor may vary his creatures and benefits as he seeth meet and may be proved good though he make not man Angelical and though he permit his sin and punish him for sinning CHAP. XVII What Natural Light declareth of the Mercy of God to Sinners and of the Means and Hopes of Mans Recovery § 1. NOtwithstanding all this forementioned sin and guilt and misery of man and Justice of God Experience assureth all the Earth that Great Mercy is still continued to them and that they have to do with a Most Merciful God Mens Lives are continued even while they sin Patience endureth them Time is vouchsafed them Food and rayment and Friends and Habitations and health and ease and liberty is given them The Sun sendeth them its moving influence its Light and Heat The Earth supporteth them and affordeth them fruit and maintenance and pleasure The Clouds yield them rain the Air breath and the Sea it self is not unkind and incommodious to them Beasts Birds and Fishes and all inferiour Creatures serve them And yet much more mercy they receive from God § 2. It is therefore manifest that God dealeth not with the sinfull World according to the utmost rigor of Justice nor punisheth them as much as they deserve For all these Mercies they have forfeited and deserved to be deprived of them Obj. But it is no mercy which hardeneth them in sin and endeth in misery It is rather a punishment as to give cold water to a man in a Feaver Answ 1. If it hardened them of
Via and manifold mercies helps and means do generally perswade the Consciences of men that there are certain Duties required of them and certain Means to be used by them in order to procure their recovery and salvation and to scape the misery deserved He that shall deny this will turn the Earth into a Hell he will teach men to forbear all means and duties which tend to their conversion pardon and salvation and to justifie themselves in it and desperately give over all Religion and begin the horrours and language of the damned § 9. The very command of God to use his appointed means for mens recovery doth imply that it shall not be in vain and doth not only shew a possibility but so great a hopefulness of the success to the obedient as may encourage them cheerfully to undertake it and carry it through No man that is wise and merciful will appoint his subject a course of means to be used for a thing impossible to be got or will say Labour thus all thy life for it but thou shalt be never the nearer it if thou do If such an Omniscient Physician do but bid me use such means for my cure and health I may take his command for half a promise if I obey § 10. Conscience doth bear witness against impenitent sinners that the cause of their sin and the hinderance of their recovery is in themselves and that God is not unwilling to forgive and save them if they were but meet for forgiveness and salvation Even now mens consciences take God's part against themselves and tell them that the Infinite Good that communicateth all the Goodness to the creature which it hath is not so likely to be the cause of so odious a thing as sin nor of mans destruction as he himself If I see a Sheep lie torn in the high-way I will sooner suspect the Wolf than a Lamb to be the cause if I see them both stand by and if I see a Child drown'd in scalding water I will sooner suspect that he fell in by folly and heedlesness himself than that his Mother wilfully cast him in Is not silly naughty man much liker to be the cause of sin and misery than the wise and gracious God Much more hereafter will the sinners conscience justifie God § 11. God hath planted in the common nature of mankind an inseparable inclination to Truth as Truth and to Good as Good and a Love to themselves and a desire to be happy and a lothness to be miserable together with some reverence and honour of God till they have extinguished the belief of his being and a hatred and horrour of the Devil while they believe he is All which are a fit Stock to plant Reforming-truths in and Principles fit to be improved for mens conversion and the excitation and improvement of them is much of that recovering work § 12. Frequent and deep consideration being a great means of mans recovery by improving the truth which he considereth and restoring Reason to the Throne it is a great advantage to man that he is naturally a Reasoning and Thoughtful creature his Intellect being propense to activity and knowledge § 13. And it is his great advantage that his frequent and great afflictions have a great tendency to awake his Reason to consideration and to bring it to the heart and make it effectual And consequently that God casteth us into such a Sea and wilderness of troubles that we should have these quickening Monitors still at hand § 14. And it is man's great advantage for his recovery that Vanity and Vexation are so legibly written on all things here below and that frustrated expectations and unsatisfied minds and the fore-knowledge of the end of all and bodily pains which find no ease with multitudes of bitter experiences do so abundantly help him to escape the snare the love of present things For all men that perish are condemned for loving the creature above the Creator and therefore such a world which appeareth so evidently to be vain and empty and deceitful and vexatious and which all men know will turn them off at last with as little comfort as if they had never seen a day of pleasure in it I say such a world one would think should give us an antidote against its own deceit and sufficiently wean us from its inordinate love At least this is a very great advantage § 15. It is also a common and great advantage for man's recovery that his life here is so short and his death so certain as that reason must needs tell him that the pleasures of sin are also short and that he should always live as parting with this world and ready to enter into another The nearness of things maketh them to work on the mind of man the more powerfully distant things though sure and great do hardly awaken the mind to their reception and due consideration If men lived 600 or 1000 years in the world it were no wonder if covetousness and carnality and security made them like Devils and worse than wild beasts to one another But when men cannot chuse but know that they must certainly and shortly see the end of all that ever this world will do for them and are never sure of another hour this is so great a help to sober consideration and conversion that it must be monstrous stupidity and brutishness that must overcome it § 16. It is also a great advantage for man's conversion that all the world revealeth God to him and every thing telleth him of the Power and Wisdom and Goodness and Love of God and of his constant Presence and so sheweth him an object which should as easily over-power all sensual objects which would seduce his soul as a mountain will weigh down a feather Though we see not God which would sure put an end to the controversie whether we should be sensual or holy yet while we have a glass as big as all the world which doth continually represent him to us one would think that no reasonable creature should so much over-look him as to be carried from him with the trifles of this world § 17. Men that have not only the foresaid obligations to Holiness Justice and Sobriety in their natures but also all these Hopes and Helps and Means of their recovery from sin to God and yet frustrate all and continue in ungodliness unrighteousness or intemperance impenitently to the end are utterly destitute of all just excuse why God should not punish them with endless misery which is the case of all that perish § 18. All men shall be judged by the Law which was given them of God to live by For it is the same Law which is Regula Officii Judicii God will not condemn men for not believing a truth which mediately or immediately was never revealed to them and which they had no means to know nor for not obeying a Law which was never promulgated to them
nor they could not come to be acquainted with Physical impossibilities are not the matter of crimes or of condemnation § 19. If any persons are brought by these means alone to repent unfeignedly of an ungodly uncharitable and intemperate life and to love God unfeignedly as their God above all and to live a holy obedient life God will not condemn such persons though they wanted supernatural Revelation of his will As I shewed before § 6. § 20. When sinners stand at many degrees distant from God and a holy life and mercy would draw them nearer him by degrees they that have help and mercy sufficient in suo genere to have drawn them nearer God and refused to obey it do forfeit the further helps of mercy and may justly perish and be forsaken by him though their help was not immediately sufficient to all the further degrees of duty which they were to do These things as clear in their proper light I stand not to prove because I would not be unnecessarily tedious to the Reader And so much of GODLINESS or Religion as revealed by Natural Light Obj. But all Heathens and Infidels find not all this in the Book of Nature which you say is there Answ I speak not of what men do see but what they may see if they will improve their Reason All this is undeniably legible in the Book of Nature but the infant the ideot the illiterate the scholar the smatterer the Doctor the considerate the inconsiderate the sensual the blinded and the willing diligent enquirer do not equally see and read that which is written in the same characters to all PART II. Of CHRISTIANITY and Supernatural Revelation CHAP. I. Of the great need of a clearer Light or fuller Revelation of the Will of God than all that hath been opened before WHILST I resolved upon a deep and faithful search into the grounds of all Religion and a review and trial of all that I had my self believed I thought meet first to pass by Persons and shut up my Books and with retired Reason to read the Book of Nature only and what I have there found I have justly told you in the former Part purposely omitting all that might be controverted by any considerable sober reason that I might neither stop my self nor my Reader in the way and that I might not deceive my self with plausible consequences of unsound or questionable antecedents nor discourage my Reader by the casting of some doubtful passages in his way which might tempt him to question all the rest For I know what a deal of handsome structure may fall through the falsness of some one of the supports which seemed to stand a great way out of sight And I have been wearied my self with subtil discourses of learned men who in a long series of Ergo's have thought that they have left all sure behind them when a few false suppositions were the life of all And I know that he who interposeth any doubtful things doth raise a diffidence in the Reader 's mind which maketh him suspect that the ground he standeth on is not firm and whether all that he readeth be not meer uncertain things Therefore leaving things controvertable for a fitter place and time I have thus far taken up so much as is plain and sure which I find of more importance and usefulness to my own information and confirmation than any of those controvertible points would be if I could never so certainly determine them And now having perused the Book of Nature I shall cast up the account and try what is yet wanting and look abroad into the opinions of others in the world and search whence that which is yet wanting may be most fully and safely and certainly supplied § 1. And first when I look throughout the world I find that though all the evidence aforesaid for the necessity of a holy virtuous life be unquestionable in naturâ rerum yet most of the world observe it not or discern but little of it nor much regard the light without or the secret witness of their consciences within Natural light or evidence is so unsuccessful in the world that it loudly telleth us something is yet wanting what ever it is We can discern what it is which is necessary to man's happiness but we can hardly discern whether de facto any considerable number at best do by the teaching of nature alone attain it When we enquire into the Writings of the best of the Philosophers we find so little evidence of real holiness that is of the foresaid Resignation Subjection and Love to God as God that it leaveth us much in doubt whether indeed they were holy themselves or not and whether they made the Knowledge Love Obedience and Praise of God the end and business of their lives However there is too great evidence that the world lieth in darkness and wickedness where there is no more than natural light § 2. I find therefore that the discovery of the will of God concerning our duty and our end called The Law of Nature is a matter of very great difficulty to them that have no supernatural light to help them Though all this is legible in Nature which I have thence transcribed yet if I had not had another Teacher I know not whether ever I should have found it there Nature is now a very hard book when I have learnt it by my Teachers help I can tell partly what is there but at the first perusal I could not understand it It requireth a great deal of time and study and help to understand that which when we do understand it is as plain to us as the high-way § 3. Thence it must needs follow that it will be but few that will attain to understand the necessary parts of the Law of Nature aright by that means alone and the multitude will be lest in darkness still The common people have not leisure for so deep and long a search into nature as a few Philosophers made nor are they disposed to it And though reason obligeth them in so necessary a case to break through all difficulties they have not so full use of their reason as to do it Obj. But as Christian Teachers do instruct the people in that which they cannot have leisure to search out themselves so why may not Philosophers who have leisure for the search in s truct the people quickly who have not leisure to find out the truth without instruction Answ Much might be done if all men did their best But 1. The difficulty is such that the learned themselves are lamentably imperfect and unsatisfi'd as I shall further shew 2. Though the vulgar cannot search out the truth without help yet is it necessary that by help they come to see with their own eyes and rest not in a humane belief alone especially when their Teachers are of so many minds that they know not which of them to believe To learn the truth
Exaltation whereupon the woman seeing the beauty of the Fruit and desiring Knowledge believed the Devil and did eat of that which God forbad The sin being so hainous for a new-made Rational Creature to believe that God was false and bad a lyar and envious which is indeed the nature of the Devil and to depart from his Love and Obedience for so small a matter God did in Justice presently sentence the Offenders to punishment yet would not so lose his new-made Creature nor cast off Mankind by the full execution of his deserved punishment but he resolved to commit the Recovery and Conduct of Mankind to a Redeemer who should better perform the work of salvation than the first Man Adam had done the work of adhaesion and obedience This Saviour is the Eternal Wisdom and Word of God who was in due time to assume the Nature of Man and in the mean time to stay the stroke of Justice and to be the invisible Law-giver and Guide of Souls communicating such measures of mercy light and spirit for their recovery as he saw fit Of whom more anon so that henceforward God did no longer Govern man as a spotless innocent Creature by the meer Law of entire-Nature but as a lapsed guilty depraved Creature who must be pardoned reconciled and renewed and have Laws and Means made suitable to his corrupted miserable state Hereupon God published the Promise of a Saviour to be sent in due time who should confound the Devil that had accused God of falshood and of envying the good of man and had by lying murdered mankind and should overcome all his deceits and power and rescue God's injur'd Honour and the Souls of sinners and bring them safe to the everlasting blessedness which they were made for Thus God as man's Redeemer and not only as his Creator governeth him He taught Adam first to worship him now by Sacrifice both in acknowledgment of the Creator and to teach him to believe in and expect the Redeemer who in his assumed humanity was to become a Sacrifice for sin This Worship by Sacrifice Adam taught his two sons Cain and Abel who were the early instances types and beginnings of the two sorts of persons which thence-forward would be in the world viz. The holy Seed of Christ and the wicked Seed of Satan Cain the elder as corruption now is before Regeneration offering the fruits of his land only to his Creator and Abel the younger sacrificing the firstlings of his flock of sheep to his Redeemer with a purified mind God rejected the offering of Cain and accepted the sacrifice of Abel Whereupon Cain in imitation of the Devil envied his Brother and in envy slew him to foretell the world what the corrupted nature of man would prove and how malignant it would be against the sanctified and what the holy Seed that are accepted of God must look for in this world for the hope of an everlasting blessedness with God After this God's patience waited on mankind not executing the threatned death upon their bodies till they had lived seven or eight or nine hundred years a piece which mercy was abused to their greater sin the length of their lives occasioning their excessive sensuality worldliness and contempt of God and life eternal so that the number of the holy Seed was at last so small and the wickedness of mankind so great that God resolved to drown the world Only righteous Noah and his family eight persons he saved in an Ark which he directed him to make for the preservation of himself and the species of Aereal and Terrestrial Animals After which Floud the earth was peopled in time from Noah to whom God gave Precepts of Piety and Justice which by tradition came down to his posterity through the world But still the greater part did corrupt their ways and followed Satan and the holy Seed was the smaller part of whom Abraham being exemplary in holiness and righteousness with his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob God did in special approbation of their righteousness renew his gracious covenant with them and enlarge it with the addition of many temporal blessings and special priviledges to their posterity after them promising that they should possess the Land of Canaan and be to him a peculiar people above all the people of the earth The children of Jacob being afterward by a famine removed into Egypt there multiplied to a great people The King of Egypt therefore oppressed them and used them as slaves to make his brick by cruel impositions Till at last God raised them up Moses for a deliverer to whom God committed his message to the King and to whom he gave power to work miracles for their deliverance and whom he made their Captain to lead them out of Egypt towards the promised Land Ten times did Moses with Aaron his Brother go to Pharaoh the King in vain though each time they wrought publick miracles to convince him till at last when God had in a night destroyed all the first-born in the land of Egypt Pharaoh did unwillingly let the Seed of Jacob or Israel go But repenting quickly he pursued after them with his Host and overtook them just at the Red-sea where God wrought a miracle opening the Sea which the Israelites past through on dry ground but the King with his Host who were hardned to pursue them were all drowned by the return of the waters when the Israelites were over Then Moses led them on in the Wilderness towards the promised Land but the great difficulties of the Wilderness tempted them to murmuring against him that had brought them thither and to unbelief against God as if he could not have provided for them This provoked God to kill many thousands of them by Plagues and Serpents and to delay them forty years in that Wilderness before he gave them the Land of Promise so that only two which came out of Egypt Caleb and Joshua did live to enter it But to confute their unbelief God wrought many miracles for them in this Wilderness He caused the Rocks to give them water He fed them with Manna from above Their shooes and cloaths did not wear in forty years In this Wilderness Moses received from God a Law by which they were to be governed In mount Sinai in flames of fire with terrible thunder God appeared so far to Moses as to speak to him and instruct him in all that he would have him do He gave him the chief part of his Law in two Tables of Stone containing Ten Commandments engraven thereon by God himself or by Angelical ministration The rest he instructed him in by word of voice Moses was made their Captain and Aaron their High Priest and all the Forms of God's Worship setled with abundance of Laws for Sacrifices and Ceremonies to typifie the Sacrifice and Reign of Christ When Moses and Aaron were dead in the Wilderness God chose Joshua Moses his Servant
among themselves who are his disciples How to mortifie sin and to contemn the wealth and honours of the world and to deny the flesh its hurtful desires and lusts and how to suffer any thing that we shall be called to for obedience to God and the hopes of Heaven To tell us what shall be after death how all men shall be judged and what shall become both of soul and body to everlasting But his great work was by the great demonstrations of the Goodness and Love of God to lost mankind in their free pardon and offered salvation to win up mens hearts to the love of God and to raise their hopes and desires up to that blessed life where they shall see his glory and love him and be beloved by him for ever At last when he had finished the work of his ministration in the flesh he told his Disciples of his approaching Suffering and Resurrection and instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Bloud in Bread and Wine which he commandeth them to use for the renewing of their covenant with him and remembrance of him and for the maintaining and signifying their communion with him and with each other After this his time being come the Jews apprehended him and though upon a word of his mouth to shew his power they fell all to the ground yet did they rise again and lay hands on him and brought him before Pilate the Roman Governour and vehemently urged him to crucifie him contrary to his own mind and conscience They accused him of blasphemy for saying he was the Son of God and of impiety for saying Destroy this Temple and in three days I will re-build it he meant his Body and of treason against Caesar for calling himself a King though he told them that his Kingdom was not worldly but spiritual Hereupon they condemned him and clothed him in purple like a King in scorn and set a Crown of thorns on his head and put a Reed for a Scepter into his hand and led him about to be a derision They cover'd his eyes and smote him and buffeted him and bid him tell who strake him At last they nailed him upon a Cross and put him to open shame and death betwixt two Malefactors of whom one of them reviled him and the other believed on him they gave him gall and vinegar to drink The Souldiers pierced his side with a Spear when he was dead All his Disciples forsook him and fled Peter having before denied thrice that ever he knew him when he was in danger When he was dead the earth trembled the rocks and the vail of the Temple rent and darkness was upon the earth though their was no natural Eclipse which made the Captain of the Souldiers say Verily this was the Son of God When he was taken down from the Cross and laid in a stone-Sepulchre they set a guard of Souldiers to watch the grave having a stone upon it which they sealed because he had fore-told them that he would rise again On the morning of the third day being the first day of the week an Angel terrified the Souldiers and rolled away the stone and sate upon it and when his Disciples came they found that Jesus was not there And the Angel told them that he was risen and would appear to them Accordingly he oft appeared to them sometimes as they walked by the way and once as they were fishing but usually when they were assembled together Thomas who was one of them being absent at his first appearance to the rest told them he would not believe it unless he saw the print of the nails and might put his finger into his wounded side The next first day of the week when they were assembled Jesus appeared to them the doors being shut and called Thomas and bad him put his fingers into his side and view the prints of the nails in his hands and feet and not be faithless but believing After this he oft appeared to them and once to above five hundred brethren at once He earnestly prest Peter to shew the love that he bare to himself by the feeding of his flock He instructed his Apostles in the matters of their employment He gave them Commission to go into all the world and preach the Gospel and gave them the tenour of the New Covenant of Grace and made them the Rulers of his Church requiring them by Baptism solemnly to enter all into his Covenant who consent to the terms of it and to assure them of pardon by his Blood and of salvation if they persevere He required them to teach his Disciples to observe all things which he had commanded them and promised them that he would be with them by his Spirit and grace and powerful defence to the end of the world And when he had been seen of them forty days speaking of the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God being assembled with them he commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem but wait till the holy Spirit came down upon them which he had promised them But they being tainted with some of the worldly expectations of the Jews and thinking that he who could rise from the dead would sure now make himself and his followers glorious in the world began to ask him whether he would at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel But he answered them It is not for you to know the times or seasons which the Father hath put in his own power But ye shall receive power after that the holy Ghost is come upon you and ye shall be witnesses to me both at Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth And when he had said this while they beheld he was taken up and a cloud received him out of their sight And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up two men stood by them in white apparel and said Why gaze ye up into Heaven This same Jesus which is taken up from you into Heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into Heaven Upon this they returned to Jerusalem and continued together till ten days after as they were all together both the Apostles and all the rest of the Disciples suddenly there came a sound from Heaven as of a rushing mighty wind and the likeness of fiery cloven tongues sate on them all and they were filled with the holy Ghost and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them utterance By this they were enabled both to preach to people of several languages and to work other miracles to confirm their doctrine so that from this time forward the holy Spirit which Christ sent down upon Believers was his great Witness and Agent in the world and procured the belief and entertainment of the Gospel wheresoever it came For by this extraordinary reception of the Spirit the Apostles themselves were much fullier instructed in the doctrine of salvation than
they were before notwithstanding their long converse with Christ in person it being his pleasure to illuminate them by supernatural infusion that it might appear to be no contrived design to deceive the world And they were enabled to preach the word with power and by this Spirit were infallibly guided in the performance of the work of their Commissions to settle Christ's Church in a holy order and to leave on record the doctrine which he had commanded them to teach Also they themselves did heal the sick and cast out devils and prophesie and by the laying on of their hands the same holy Spirit was ordinarily given to others that believed so that Christians had all one gift or other of that Spirit by which they convinced and converted a great part of the world in a short time and all that were sincere had the gift of sanctification and were regenerate by the Spirit as well as by Baptismal water and had the love of God shed abroad in their hearts by the holy Ghost which was given them A holy and heavenly mind and life with mortification contempt of the world self-denial patience and love to one another and to all men was the constant badge of all Christ's followers The first Sermon that Peter preached did convert three thousand of those sinful Jews that had crucified Christ And after that many thousands of them more were converted One of their bloody persecutors Saul a Pharisee that had been one of the murderers of the first Martyr Stephen and had haled many of them to prisons as he was going on this business was struck down by the high-way a light from Heaven shining round about him and a voice saying to him Saul Saul why persecutest thou me And he said Who art thou Lord And the Lord said I am Jesus whom thou persecutest it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks And he trembling and astonished said Lord what wilt thou have me to do And the Lord said Arise and go into the City and it shall be told thee what thou must do And the men that journeyed with him stood speechless hearing a voice but seeing no man And so Saul was led blind to Damascus where one Ananias had a vision commanding him to Baptize him and his eyes were opened This Convert called Paul did hence-forward preach the Gospel of Christ from Country to Country in Syria in Asia at Rome and a great part of the world in marvellous unwearied labours and sufferings abuses and imprisonments converting multitudes and planting Churches in many great Cities and Countries and working abundance of miracles where he went His History is laid down in part of the New Testament There are also many of his Epistles to Rome to Corinth Galatia Ephesus Philippi Coloss Thessalonica to Timothy to Titus and to Philemon and the Hebrews as is supposed There are also the Epistles of Peter James John and Jude with the Revelation of John containing many mysterious Prophesies An Eunuch who was of great power under the Queen of Ethiopia was converted by Philip and carried the Gospel into his Country The rest of the Apostles and other Disciples carried it abroad a great part of the world especially in the Roman Empire and though every where they met with opposition and persecution yet by the power of the holy Ghost appearing in their Holiness Languages and Miracles they prevailed and planted abundance of Churches of which the most populous were at Jerusalem Antioch Rome and Alexandria And though they were all dispersed abroad the world and out of the reach of mutual converse yet did they never disagree in their Doctrine in the smallest point but proceeded through sufferings in Unity and Holiness in the work of saving Souls till most of them were put to death for the sake of Christ having left the Churches under the Government of their several Pastors according to the will of Christ This is the abstract of the History of the holy Scriptures § 14. The summ of the Doctrine of Christianity is contained in these Articles following consisting of three general Heads I. Things to be known and believed II. Things to be willed and desired and hoped III. Things to be done I. 1. There is one only GOD in Essence in Three Essential Principles POWER UNDERSTANDING and WILL or OMNIPOTENCY OMNISCIENCE and GOODNESS in Three Subsistences or Persons the FATHER the SON and the HOLY SPIRIT who is a Mind or Spirit and therefore is most Simple Incorruptible Immortal Impassionate Invisible Intactible c. and is Indivisible Eternal Immense Necessary Independent Self-sufficient Immutable Absolute and Infinite in all Perfections The Principal Efficient Dirigent and Final Cause of all the world The CREATOR of all and therefore our Absolute OWNER or Supreme RULER and our Total BENEFACTOR and CHIEF GOOD and END 2. GOD made Man for himself not to supply any want of his own but for the pleasing of his own Will and Love in the Glory of his Perfections shining forth in his works In his own Image that is with Vital Power Understanding and Free-will Able Wise and Good with Dominion over the Inferiour Creatures as being in subordination to God their OWNER their GOVERNOUR and their BENEFACTOR and END And he bound him by the Law of his Nature to adhere to GOD his MAKER by Resignation Devotion and Submission to him as his OWNER by Believing Honouring and Obeying him as his RULER and by Loving him Trusting and Seeking him Delighting in him Thanksgiving to him and Praising him as his Grand BENEFACTOR chief Good and ultimate end to exercise Charity and Justice to each other and to Govern all his inferiour faculties by Reason according to his Makers will that he so might please him and be Happy in his Love And to try him he particularly forbad him to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil upon pain of death 3. Man being tempted by Satan to break this Law of God did believe the Tempter who promised him impunity and advancement in Knowledge and who accused God as false in his threatning and as envying Man this great advancement And so by wilfull sinning against him he fell from God and his uprightness and happiness under the displeasure of God the penalty of his Law and the power of Satan And hence we are all conceived in sin averse to good and prone to evil and condemnation is passed upon all and no meer Creature is able to deliver us 4. God so loved the World that he gave his only SON to be their REDEEMER who being the Eternal WISDOM and WORD of God and so truly GOD and one in Essence with the FATHER did assume our Nature and became Man being conceived by the HOLY SPIRIT in the Virgin Mary and born of her and called JESVS CHRIST who being Holy and without all sin did conquer the Tempter and the World fulfilling all righteousness He enacted and preached the Law or
we do nothing against our Neighbours Life or Bodily welfare but carefully preserve it as our own 7. That no man defile his Neighbours wife nor commit Fornication but preserve our own and others Chastity in thought word and deed 8. That we wrong not another in his Estate by stealing fraud or any other means but preserve our Neighbours Estate as our own 9. That we pervert not Justice by false witness or otherwise nor wrong our neighbour in his Name by slanders backbiting or reproach That we lie not but speak the truth in love and preserve our neighbours right and honour as our own 10. That we be not selfish setting up our selves and our own against our Neighbour and his good desiring to draw from him unto our selves But that we love our Neighbour as our selves desiring his welfare as our own doing to others as regularly we would have them do to us forbearing and forgiving one another loving even our enemies and doing good to all according to our power both for their Bodies and their Souls This is the Substance of the CHRISTIAN RELIGION § 15. II. The summ or Abstract of the Christian Religion is contained in three short Forms The first called The Creed containing the matter of the Christian Belief The second called The Lords Prayer containing the matter of Christian Desires and hope The third called The Law or Decalogue containing the summ of Morall Duties which are as followeth The BELIEF 1. I believe in God the Father Almighty Maker of Heaven and Earth 2. And in Iesus Christ his only Son our Lord who was conceived by the Holy Ghost born of the Virgin Mary suffered under Pontius Pilate was crucified dead and buried descended to Hell the third day he rose again from the dead he ascended into Heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty from thence he shall come again to judge the quick and the dead 3. I believe in the Holy Ghost the Holy Catholick Church the Communion of Saints the Forgiveness of sins the Resurrection of the body and the Life Everlasting The LORDS PRAYER Our FATHER which art in Heaven hallowed be thy Name Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil For thine is the Kingdom the Power and the Glory for ever Amen The Ten COMMANDEMENTS God spake all these words saying I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out of the Land of Egypt out of the house of bondage 1. Thou shalt have no other Gods before me 2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven Image or any likeness of any thing in Heaven above or that is in the Earth beneath or that is in the water under the Earth Thou shalt not vow down thy self to them nor serve them For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God visiting the iniquities of the Fathers upon the Children to the third and fourth generation of them that hate me and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my Commandements 3. Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his Name in vain 4. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy six dayes shalt thou labour and do all thy work but the Seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God in it thou shalt not do any work thou nor thy Son nor thy Daughter thy Man-servant nor thy Maid-servant nor thy Cattel nor the Stranger that is within thy gates For in six dayes the Lord made Heaven and Earth the Sea and all that in them is and rested the Seventh day wherefore the Lord blessed the Seventh day and hallowed it 5. Honour thy Father and thy Mother that thy dayes may be long upon the Land which the Lord thy God giveth thee 6. Thou shalt not kill 7. Thou shalt not commit Adultery 8. Thou shalt not Steal 9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy Neighbour 10. Thou shalt not covet thy Neighbours House thou shalt not covet thy Neighbours Wife nor his Man-servant nor his Maid-servant nor his Oxe nor his Ass nor any thing that is thy Neighbours § 16. The ten Commandements are summed up by Christ into these two Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and might and Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self § 17. These Commandements being first delivered to the Jews are continued by Christ as the summ of the Law of Nature only instead of Deliverance of the Jews from Egypt he hath made our Redemption from sin and Satan which was thereby typified to be the fundamental motive And he hath removed the memorial of the Creation-Rest from the seventh day-Sabbath to be kept on the Lords day which is the first with the Commemoration of his Resurrection and our Redemption in the solemn Worship of his holy Assemblies § 18. III. The briefest Summary of the Christian Religion containing the Essentials only is in the Sacramental Covenant of Grace Wherein the Penitent Believer renouncing the Flesh the World and the Devil doth solemnly give up himself to God the Father Son and Holy Spirit as his only God his Father his Saviour and his Sanctifier engaging himself hereby to a Holy life of Resignation Obedience and Love and receiving the pardon of all his sins and title to the further helps of grace to the favour of God and everlasting life This Covenant is first entered by the Sacrament of Baptisme and after renewed in our communion with the Church in the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ So that the Christian Religion is but Faith in God our Creator Redeemer and Sanctifyer producing the hope of Life Everlasting and possessing us with the love of God and Man And all this expressed in the genuine fruits of Patience Obedience and Praise to God and works of Charity and Justice unto Man § 19. That all this Religion might be the better understood received and practised by us the Word of God came down into Flesh and gave us a perfect Example of it in his most perfect Life in perfect holiness and innocency conquering all temptations contemning the honours riches and pleasures of the World in perfect patience and meekness and condescension and in the perfect Love of God and Man When perfect Doctrine is seconded by Perfect Exemplariness of Life there can be no greater Light set before us to lead us out of our state of darkness into the everlasting Light And had it not been a pattern of holy Power Wisdom and Goodness of Self-denyall Obedience and Love of Patience and of Truth and Prudence and of contempt of all inferiour things even of Life it self for the Love of God and for Life eternal it
would not have been a full exemplification of his Doctrine nor a perfect Revelation of it to the World Example bringeth Doctrine neer our Senses and thereby maketh it more clear and powerfull § 20. It is the undertaken Office of Jesus Christ to send the Holy Spirit into Believers mindes and to write out the substance of this Law upon their hearts and give them such holy and heavenly inclinations that it may become as it were a Natural Law unto them and they obey it with love facility and delight though not in perfection till they arrive at the state of Perfection So much to shew WHAT the Christian Religion is CHAP. IV. Of the Nature and Properties of the Christian Religion HAving understood the matter and words of the Christian Religion before I proceeded any further I thought it meet to pass a judgment upon the nature temperament constitution and properties of it And therein I found that which must needs be a great preparative to belief § 1. And first I found that it is a most holy and spiritual Religion resolved into the most excellent Principles and Ends glorifying God and humbling man and teaching us the most divine and heavenly life in the love and patient service of our Creator 1. It is most Holy for it calleth us up entirely unto God and consisteth in our absolute dedication and devotedness to him 2. It is most Spiritual leading us from things carnal and terrene and being principally about the government of the Soul and placing all our felicity in things spiritual and not in fleshly pleasures with the Epicureans and Mahometans It teacheth us to worship God in a spiritual manner and not either irrationally toyishly or irreverently And it directeth our lives to a daily converse with God in holiness 3. The Principles of it are the three Essentialities of God in Unity viz. the Infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness and the three grand Relations of God to Man as founded in his three most famous works viz as our Creator our Redeemer and our Regenerater or Sanctifier and the three great Relations arising from Creation and also from Redemption viz. as he is our Owner our Ruler and our Benefactor or chiefest Good and End 4. The Ends of the Christian Religion I find are proximately the saving of man from Satan and the Justice of God the sanctifying them to God and purifying them from sin the pardon of their sins and the everlasting happiness of their Souls in the pleasing and fruition of God for ever In a word it is but the redeeming us from our carnal self the world and the devil to the love and service of our Creator 5. Nothing can be spoken more honourably of God in all his perfections in the language of poor mortals than what the Christian Religion speaketh of him 6. And no Religion so much humbleth man by opening the malignity both of his original and actual sin and declaring the displeasure of God against it 7. It teacheth us who once lived as without God in the world to live wholly unto God and to make nothing of all the world in comparison of him 8. And it teacheth us to live upon the hopes of heaven and fetch our motives and our comforts from it § 2. I find that the Christian Religion is the most pure and clean and utterly opposite to all that is evil There is no vertue which it commendeth not nor duty which it commandeth not nor vice which it condemneth not nor sin which it forbiddeth not The chief thing in it which occasioneth the rebellion and displeasure of the world against it is the purity and goodness of it which is contrary to their sensual nature and as Physick to their licentious lives would it indulge their vices and give them leave to sin they could endure it § 3. Particularly it most vehemently condemneth the grand vices of Pride Worldliness and Sensuality and all their polluting and pernicious fruits 1. No Religion doth so much to teach men Humility and make Pride appear an odious thing It openeth the malignity of it as it lifteth up the mind against God or Man it condemneth it as Satans image it giveth us a multitude of humbling precepts and motives and secondeth them all with the strangest example of condescension and lowliness in Christ that was ever presented to the view of man Whereas I find even in the famousest of the Roman Heathens that a great deal of pride was taken for a virtue and men were instructed and exhorted to be proud under pretence of maintaining and vindicating their honour and true Humility was taken for disgraceful baseness and men were driven from it by the scorn not only of the vulgar but of Philosophers themselves 2. And there is no Religion that is fitted so much to the destruction of Worldliness or of the love of Riches as Christianity is for it teacheth men most effectually the vanity of the world it appointeth them a holy life so hateful to worldly men as will occasion them to feel the vexation of the world it openeth to them the hopes of a life so much better as may teach them to take all the wealth and glory of this world for a shadow a feather or a dream It condemneth worldly love as the sin inconsistent with the love of God and the certain mark of a drossy unsanctified miserable soul It setteth before us such an example of Christ as must needs shame worldliness with all true believers 3. And for Sensuality it openeth the shame of its beastiality and maketh the carnal mind and life to be enmity to God and the contrary to that spiritual mind and life which is the property of all that shall be saved It strictly and vehemently condemneth all gluttony and excess of drink all ryotting and time-wasting needless sports all fornication and ribald talk and wanton carriage words or thoughts Whereas I find among Heathens and Mahometans that inordinate sensuality was much indulged excess of eating and drinking was made a matter of no great blame time-wasting Plays were as little accused as if men had no greater matter to do in the world than to pass away time in some sensual or fantastical delight either by fornication or many wives at once their lust was gratified and so their minds were debased polluted and called down and made unfit for spiritual contemplation and a holy life From whence no doubt it came to pass that they were so dark about things spiritual and divine and so overspread with errors about many plain and necessary things § 4. There is no Religion which so notably detecteth and disgraceth the sin of SELFISHNESS nor so effectually teacheth SELF-DENIAL as the Christian Religion doth It maketh man understand the nature of his corrupt depraved state that it is a falling from GOD to SELF and that his recovery lieth in returning from SELF to GOD. It sheweth him how selfishness is the principle of divisions enmity
wrath contentions envy malice covetousness injustice oppression wars uncharitableness and all the iniquity of the world And how self is the grand enemy of God and Man and of the Publick good and peace and contrary to the love of God and our neighbour and the Common-wealth It giveth us so many precepts for self-denial as no other Religion did ever mention and such an example against it in Jesus Christ as is the astonishment of Men and Angels And therefore all other Religions did in vain attempt the true purifying of heart and life or the pacifying of the divided minds of men while they let alone this sin of selfishness or lightly touch'd it which is the root and heart of all the rest § 5. No Religion doth so much reveal to us the Nature of God and his works for Man and Relations to him as the Christian Religion doth And doubtless that is the most excellent doctrine which maketh known God most to mans mind and that is the best Religion which bringeth man nearest to his Creator in love and purity Few of the Heathens knew God in his Unity and fewer in the Trinity of his Essential Primalities many question'd his particular Providence and Government they knew not man's relation or duty to him while they were distracted with the observance of a multitude of Gods they indeed had none Though God be incomprehensible to us all yet is there a great deal of the glory of his perfections revealed to us in the light of Christianity which we may seek in vain with any other sort of men § 6. No Religion doth so wonderfully open and magnifie and reconcile God's Justice and Mercy to Mankind as Christianity doth It sheweth how his Justice is founded in his Holiness and his governing Relation it justifieth it by opening the purity of his Nature the evil of sin and the use of punishment to the right government of the world and it magnifieth it by opening the dreadfulness and certainty of his penalties and the sufferings of our Redeemer when he made himself a Sacrifice for our sins By the revelation of justice sin and misery it revealeth the wonderful greatness of Gods mercy it openeth those operations and effects of it which Heathenism and Mahometanism are utter strangers to they speak diminutively both of Mercy and Justice and cannot tell how to make God merciful without making him vnjust nor to make him just without obscuring the glory of his mercy which is peculiarly set forth in the work of Redemption and the Covenant of Grace and promise of everlasting Blessedness § 7. The Christian Religion openeth many other parts of holy doctrine which are unknown to men that learned them not from thence Such as the doctrin of the Creation and the Fall and of original sin and of Justification Sanctification Adoption and the right worshipping of God of which mention is made before more distinctly § 8. No Religion can be more Charitable for it wholly consisteth in the love of God and one another and in the means to kindle and maintain this love The whole Law of Christ is fulfilled in love even in loving God for himself above all and our neighbours as our selves for the sake of God yea our enemies so far as there is any thing amiable in them The end of all the Commandments is love out of a pure heart and a good conscience and unfeigned faith And all Christians are obliged to love each other with a pure heart and fervently yea to shew that love which they profess to Christ himself by the loving of one another How frequently and earnestly is this great duty pressed by Christ and his Apostles how great a stress doth he lay upon it He maketh it the evidence of our love to God He promiseth salvation to it He forbiddeth selfishness that it may not hinder it He commandeth us to live in the constant expression of it and to provoke one another to love and to good works He hath made himself the most matchless and wonderful example of it He hath told us that according to mens charity he will judge them at the last day How dry and barren are all Religions and Writings that we have ever come to the knowledge of in the world in the point of love and the fruits of love in comparison of the Gospel of Jesus Christ § 9. I find that the Christian Religion is most for Vnity and Peace of any Religion in the world most vehemently commanding them and appointing the fittest means for the attaining of them 1. All Christians are commanded to be of one mind to think the same things and speak the same things and discord and division and contention is earnestly forbidden them and condemned and all occasions which may lead them thereunto 2. And they have one Head and Centre one God and Saviour who is their common Governour End and Interest in whom therefore they may all unite when most others in the world do shew a man no further end than self-preservation and so while self is each mans end and interest there are as many ends as men and how then is it possible that such should have any true unity and concord But to every true Christian the pleasing and glorifying of God and the promoting of his Kingdom for the salvation of the world is above all self-interest whatsoever and therefore in this they are all united And though they all seek their own felicity and salvation it is only in the seeking of this higher end which is finis amantis sed creaturae amantis creatorem the end of a lover which desireth unity and respecteth both the lover and the beloved but it is not the end of the love of equals but of the creature to the Creator who therefore preferreth his beloved before himself in his intentions So that it is only this holy centring in God that can ever make men all of a mind and agree the disagreeing world While Self is every mans end they will have such constant contrariety of interests that it will be impossible for them to agree but covetousness ambition and sensuality will keep them in factions contentions and wars continually Moreover it is Christianity that most urgeth and effectually giveth a hearty love to one another and teacheth them to love their neighbours as themselves and to do as they would have others to do by them and this is the true root and spring of concord And it is Christianity which most teacheth the forgiving of wrongs and loving of enemies and forbearing that revenge which Heathens were wont to account an honour And it is Christianity which teacheth men to contemn all the riches and honours of the world which is the bone that worldly dogs do fight for and the great occasion of their strife and it teacheth them to mortifie all those vices which feed mens divisions and contentions So that if any man live as a Christian he must needs be a man of unity
and peace If you say that the contrary appeareth in the practice of Christians I shall answer that with the rest of the objections by themselves I shall only say now That if this that I have laid down be certainly the doctrin of Christ then it is as certain that the contrary is contrary to Christianity and that so far such persons are no Christians It is hypocrites that take up the name of Christians for worldly advantage and are no Christians indeed who live thus contrary to the nature and precepts of Christianity which they profess § 10. The Christian Religion is most exactly just in its Rules and Precepts and vehemently condemneth all injustice fraud persecution and oppression What juster Rule can there be than to suit all our actions to the perfect Law of Primitive Justice and to do as we would be done by What more effectual principle of Justice can there be than Charity and Self-denial to love all men for God and to account our neighbours welfare as our own Bring all men but to love their neighbours as themselves and they will have little inclination to cruelty oppression fraud or any other injuries And when Heaven is made the reward of Justice and Mercy and Hell the reward of Injustice and Cruelty we have the greatest Motives that humane nature is capable of § 11. The Christian Religion is the most excellent Rule for order and government in the world and for the peace of Kingdoms and their stability in that it prescribeth the only method of true Government and condemneth both impiety and tyranny in the Governours and all sedition and rebellion in the subjects 1. It setteth Government on the only foundation the Authority which men receive from God and teacheth men to rule as the Officers of the Universal King in due subordination to him for his glory and according to his Laws and letteth them know that they have no power but from God and therefore none against him and that they must be judged by him themselves for all their Government and that all oppression tyranny and persecution will be to their own confusion in the end 2. It teacheth Subjects to honour their Superiours and to obey them in all things in which they disobey not God and to be patient under all oppressions and to avoid all murmurings tumults and rebellions and this for fear of God's condemnation And certainly these are the most powerful means for peace and for the happy order and government of Societies § 12. The Christian Religion greatly condemneth all fierceness and impatience and discontentedness and requireth a meek and patient frame of minde and therefore must needs conduce to the forementioned Vnity and Peace § 13. It is wholly for sincerity and uprightness of heart and greatly condemneth all hypocrisie It giveth Laws for the very disposition of the minde and for the government of the secretest thoughts affections and actions and condemeth every sin which the World observeth not or condemneth not § 14. I finde that the Christian Religion is not fitted to any Worldly designs but only to the sanctifying of mens hearts and lives and the saving of their Souls Christ did not contrive by dominion or riches to win the ungodly multitude to be his admirers but by holy Precepts and Discipline to make his Disciples good and happy Mahomet took the way of violence and fleshly baits and blinde obedience to bring in the multitude and to advance a Worldly Kingdom But Christ goeth the clean contrary way He calleth men to a life of Self-denyal and patient suffering in the World he calleth them to contemn the riches honours and pleasures of the World and to forsake all even life it self for him and telleth them that they can on no lower terms than these be Disciples He hath set up a Discipline in his Church to cast out all Drunkards Fornicators Covetous-persons Railers and other such scandalous sinners who are impenitent and will have none in his true mystical Church but such as are truly holy nor none in his visible Church but such as are professed to be so He turneth away all that come not up to his spiritual and holy terms and he casteth out all that notoriously violate them if they do not repent § 15. The Christian Religion containeth all things Necessary to mans happiness and taketh men off unprofitable speculations and doth not overwhelme the mindes of men with multitudes of needless things It is for the most things unnecessary as well as uncertain with which the Philosophers have troubled the World They have lost true wisdom in a Wilderness of fruitless controversies But Christianity is a Religion to make men holy and happy and therefore it containeth these necessary substantial Precepts which conduce hereunto And it taketh men off unnecessary things which else would take up their mindes and talk and time from things necessary And so it s suited to the generality of men and not only to a few that have nothing else to do but wander in a Wilderness of vain Speculations and it is fitted to Mans best and ultimate end and not to a phantastical delight § 16. It tendeth to exalt the minde of man to the most high and heavenly elevation that it is capable of in this life For it teacheth men as is aforesaid to live in the Spirit upon the things above in the continual Love of God and desires and endeavours for everlasting glory Than which mans minde hath nothing more high and honourable and excellent to be employed about § 17. It leadeth men to the joyfullest Life that humane Nature is capable of on Earth For it leadeth us to the assurance of the Love of God and of the pardon of all our sins and of endless glory when we die It assureth us that we shall live for ever in the sight of the glory of God with Jesus Christ and be like the Angels and be perfected in holiness and happiness and be employed in the Love and Praises of God for evermore It commandeth us to live in the foresight of these everlasting Pleasures and to keep the taste of them alwayes upon our mindes and in daily meditation on the Love of God to live in the daily Returns of Love and to make this our continual Feast and Pleasure And can the minde of man on Earth have higher and greater delights than these § 18. The Christian Religion forbiddeth men no Bodily pleasure but that which hindereth their greater pleasure and tendeth to their pain or sorrow nor doth it deny them any earthly thing which is truly for their good Indeed it taketh the bruitish appetite and flesh to be an unfit Judge of what is truly good and desireable for us And it forbiddeth much which the Flesh doth crave Because either it tendeth to the wrong of others or the breach of order in the World or to the corrupting of mans minde and diverting it from things sublime and
agreeableness to his opinions ways or interest self-love self-conceit self-esteem self-will and self-seeking is the soul and business of the world And therefore no wonder that it is a divided and contentious world when it hath as many ends as men and every man is for himself and draweth his own way No wonder that there is such variety of apprehensions that no two men are in all things of a mind and that the world is like a company of drunken men together by the ears or of blind men fighting with they know not whom and for they know not what And that ignorant sects and contentious wranglers and furious fighters are the bulkie parts of it And that striving who shall Rule or be Greatest or have his will is the worlds employment It is a dreaming and distracted world that spend their days and cares for nothing and are as serious in following a feather and in the pursuit of that which they confess is vanity and dying in their hands as if indeed they knew it to be true felicity they are like children busie in hunting butterflies or like boys at foot-ball as eager in the pursuit and in over-turning one another as if it were for their lives or for some great desirable prize or liker to a heap of Ants that gad about as busily and make as much ado for sticks and dust as if they were about some magnificent work Thus doth the vain deceived world lay out their thoughts and time upon impertinencies and talk and walk like so many Noctambulo's in their sleep they study and care and weep and laugh and labour and fight as men in a dream and will hardly be perswaded but it is reality which they pursue till death come and awake them Like a Stage-play or a Poppet-play where all things seem to be what they are not and all parties seem to do what they do not and then depart and are all disroab'd and unmask'd such is the life of the most of this world who spend their days in a serious jeasting and in a busie doing nothing It is a malignant world that hath an inbred radicated enmity to all that virtue and goodness which they want they are so captivated to their fleshly pleasures and worldly interests that the first sight approach or motion of reason holiness mortification and self-denial is met by them with heart-rising indignation and opposition in which their fury beareth down all argument and neither giveth them leave considerately to use their own reason or hearken to anothers there are few that are truly wise and good and heavenly that escape their hatred and beastly rage And when Countries have thought to remedy this plague by changing their forms of Government experience hath told them that the vice and root of their calamity lieth in the blindness and wickedness of corrupted nature which no form of Government will cure and that the Doves that are governed by Hawkes and Kites must be their prey whether it be one or many that hath the Sovereignty Yea it is an unthankful world that in the exercise of this malignant cruelty will begin with those that deserve best at their hands He that would instruct them and stop them in their sin and save their souls doth ordinarily make himself a prey and they are not content to take away their lives but they will among their credulous rabble take away the reputation of their honesty and no wisdom or learning was ever so great no innocency so unspotted no honesty justice or charity so untainted no holiness so venerable that could ever priviledge the owners from their rage or make the possessors to escape their malice Even Jesus Christ that never committed sin and that came into the world with the most matchless love and to do them the greatest good was yet prosecuted furiously to a shameful death and not only so but in his humiliation his judgement was taken away and he was condemned as an evil doer who was the greatest enemy to sin that ever was born into the World He was accused of Blasphemy for calling himself the Son of God of Impiety for talking of destroying the Temple and of Treason for saying he was a King And his Apostles that went about the World to save mens Souls and proclaim to them the joyfull tydings of salvation had little better entertainment wherever they came bonds and afflictions did abide them And if they had not been taught to rejoyce in tribulations they could have expected little joy on earth And it was not only Christians that were thus used but honesty in the Heathens was usually met with opposition and reproach as Seneca himself doth oft complain Yea how few have there been that have been famous for any excellency of wit or learning or any addition to the Worlds understanding but their reward hath been reproach imprisonment or death Did Socrates die in his bed Or was he not murdered by the rage of wicked Hypocrites Plato durst not speak his minde for fear of his Masters reward Aristippus left Athens ne bis peccarent in Philosophiam not only Solon but most benefactors to any Common-wealth have suffered for their beneficence Demosthenes Cato Cicero Seneca could none of them save their lives from fury by their great learning or honesty Yea among nominal Christians he that told them of an Antipodes was excommunicated by the Papal Authority for an Heretick And a Savonarola Arnoldus de Villa Nova Paulus Scaliger c. could not be wiser than their Neighbours but to their cost No nor Arias Montanus himself Campanella was fain in prison to compile his New Philosophy and with the pleasure of his inventions to bear the torments which were their sowre sauce Even Galilaeus that discovered so many new Orbs and taught this World the way of clearer acquaintance with its neighbours could not escape the Reverend Justice of the Papalists but must lie in a Prison as if O sapientia had been written on his doors as the old Woman cryed out to Thales when he fell into a ditch while he was by his instrument taking the height of a Starr And Sir Walter Rawleigh could not save his head by his Learned History of the World but must be one part of its History himself nor yet by his great observation how Antipater is taken for a bloody Tyrant for killing Demosthenes and how Arts and Learning have power to disgrace any man that doth evil to the famous Masters of them Peter Ramus that had done so much in Phylosophy for the Learned World was requited by a butcherly barbarous murder being one of the 30000 or 40000 that were so used in the French Massacre And many a holy person perished in the 200000 murdered by the Irish It were endless to instance the ungratefull cruelties of the World and what entertainment it hath given to wise and godly men even those whom it superstitiously adoreth when it hath murdered them And in all
earthly things as is necessary to them that will attain it For few men will seek with their utmost labour or let go all other things to attain a happiness which they are not well perswaded of the reality of And though sound reason might well perswade them of it yet reason is now become so blind and unsound and partial and enslaved to the flesh that it is not fit for such an office according to our necessity without some heavenly Revelation § 9. And it is exceeding congruous to mans necessity who is faln under the power and fears of death as well as the doubts and estrangedness to the other world that he that will save and heal us do himself in our nature rise from the dead and ascend up into heaven to give us thereby a visible demonstration that indeed there is a Resurrection and a life to come for us to look for Though God was not obliged to do thus much for us yet Reason telleth us that if he will do it it is very suitable to our necessities For all the reasonings in the world do not satisfie in such things so much as ocular demonstration when we either see a man that is risen from the dead or have certain testimony of it it facilitateth the belief of our own resurrection and he that is gone into Heaven before us assureth us that a Heaven there is § 10. When God in mercy would forgive and save a sinful people it was very congruous to reason that there should be some fit means provided to demonstrate his holiness in his justice and to vindicate the honour of his Laws and Government and so to secure the ends of both For if God make a penal Law and execute it not but let man sin with impunity and do nothing which may deter him nor demonstrate his Justice as much as the sinners sufferings would do it would tell the world that he that gave them the Law and thereby told them that he would rule and judge them by it did but deceive them and meant not as he spake And it would bring both the Law and Governour into contempt and perswade men to sin without any fear and he that was question'd for the second crime would say I ventured because I suffered not for the first It was the devils first way of tempting men to sin to perswade mankind that God meant not as he spake in his threatning of their death but that they should not die though God had threatned it And if God himself should by his actions say the same it would tempt them more to sin than Sathan could as his credibility is greater Therefore he that is a Governour must be just as well as merciful and if God should have pardoned sinners without such a sacrifice or substitute means as might preserve the honour of his Law and Government and the future innocency of his Subjects as well as their punishment in the full sense of the Law would have done the consequents would have been such as I will leave to your own judgements § 11. And it was very congruous to reason that so odious a thing as sin should be publickly condemned and put to shame although the sinner be forgiven As it was done in the life and death of Christ For the purity of God is irreconcileable to sin though not to the sinner and therefore it was meet that the sin have all the publick shame though the sinner escape and that God be not like weak imperfect man who cannot do good without doing or encouraging evil § 12. It is congruous to our condition that seeing even the upright do renew their sins their consciences should have some remedy for the renewal of their peace and comfort that it sink them not into desperation which is most suitably provided for them in Jesus Christ For when we were pardoned once and again and oft and yet shall sin he that knoweth the desert of sin and purity of God will have need also to know of some stated certain course of remedy § 13. It was meet that the sinful world have not only a certain Teacher but also a perfect pattern before them of righteousness love self-denial meekness patience contempt of lower things c. which is given us by Jesus Christ alone And therefore the Gospel is written Historically with Doctrins intermixt that we might have both perfect Precepts and Pattern § 14. It was very congruous to a world universally lapsed that God should make with it a new Law and Covenant of Grace and that this Covenant should tender us the pardon of our sins and be a conditional act of oblivion And that sinners be not left to the meer Law of perfect Nature which was to preserve that innocency which they have already lost To say Thou shalt perfectly obey to a man that hath already disobeyed and is unfitted for perfect obedience is no sufficient direction for his pardon and recovery Perhaps you 'l say That God's gracious Nature is instead of a Law of Grace or Promise But though that be the spring of all our hopes yet that cannot justly quiet the sinner of it self alone because he is just as well as merciful and Justice hath its objects and pardon dependeth on the free-will of God which cannot be known to us without its proper signs The Devils may say that the Nature of God is good and gracious and so may any condemned malefactor say of a good and gracious Judge and King and yet that is but a slender reason to prove his impunity or pardon All will confess that absolute pardon of all men would be unbeseeming a wise and righteous Governour And if it must be conditional who but God can tell what must be the condition If you say That Nature telleth us That converting Repentance is the condition I answer 1 Nature telleth us That God cannot damn a holy loving Soul that hath his Image but yet it telleth us not That this is the only or whole condition 2. It is not such a Repentance as lieth but in a frightned wish that the sin had not been done but such a one as consisteth in the change of the mind and heart and life and containeth a hatred to the sin repented of and a love to God and Holiness and we have as much need of a Saviour to help us to this repentance as to help us to a pardon § 15. It is very congruous to our miserable state that the Condition of this Covenant of Grace should be on our part the acknowledgment of our Benefactor and the thankful acceptance of the benefit and a hearty consent for the future to follow his conduct and use his appointed means in order to our full recovery which is the condition of the Christian Covenant § 16. Seeing man's fall was from his God unto himself especially in point of love and his real recovery must be by bringing up his soul to the love of God again
our confessions as well without it and when the tongue is made the natural instrument to express the mind and there are variety of other signs it is incredible that all the world should ever even so early hit upon this one strange way of expression without some special revelation or command of God 2. And it cannot be said with any credibility that God made any other revelation of his will to the world for Sacrificing beside what is made in Nature and in holy Scripture for who ever dreamt of such a thing or hath delivered us any such revelation and told us when and to whom and how it was made 3. And it is not credible that it was taken up erroneously by all the world as their vices or superstitions are for though it is past question that error hath caused the abuse of it through the world yet for the thing it self there is no probability of such an original For what can we imagin should induce men to it and make all Nations how various soever their Idols are to agree in this way of worshipping and propitiating them There is nothing of sensuality in it that by gratifying a lust of the flesh might have such an universal effect And it must be some universal Light or some universal Lust or Interest that must cause such an universal concord Nay on the contrary you shall find that Tradition and the custom of their Fore-fathers is the common argument pleaded for sacrificing through all the world even in the Ancients Historical reports of it 4. Therefore it remaineth very probable at least that they received it indeed by tradition from their fore-fathers and that could be from none originally but the universal progenitor of mankind who was capable of conveying it to all his posterity for no History mentioneth any later original nor could any later than Adam or Noah have made it so universal And no man can imagine why God should institute it if it were not to intimate the translating of our punishment into our Redeemer and to point us to the great Sacrifice which is truly propitiatory and is the great demonstration of his Justice who in Mercy doth forgive § 7. II. The second Witness of the Spirit which is inherent and constitutive to the Gospel of Christ is that image of God the unimitable character of Divinity which by the holy Spirit is put into the doctrin of Christ as the very life or soul of it together with the same on the pattern of his own life 1. On Christ himself the unimitable Image of God in his Perfection is a testimony of his veracity which I ascribe to the holy Spirit as the ultimate Operator in the Trinity even that holy Spirit by which he was conceived and which fell upon him at his Baptism and which Matth. 12. his enemies did blaspheme Many men have so lived that no notable sin of commission hath been found or observed in them by the world at a distance But the most vertuous except Christ was never without discernable infirmities and sins of omission No man ever convicted him of any sin either in word or deed His obedience to the Law of God was every way perfect He was the most excellent Representative of the Divine Perfections The Omnipotency of God appeared in his Miracles The Wisdom of God in his holy Doctrin and the Love of God in his matchless expressions of Love and in all the Holiness of his life He was so far from pride worldliness sensuality malice impatiency or any sin that the world had never such a pattern of self-denial humility contempt of all the wealth and honours of the world charity meekness patience c. as in him He obeyed his Father to the death He healed mens bodies and shewed his pity to their souls and opened the way of life even to his enemies He instructed the ignorant and preached repentance to the impenitent and suffered patiently the unthankful requitals of them that rendred him evil for good He endured patiently to be reviled scorned buffeted spit upon crowned with thorns nailed to a cross and put to death and this upon the false accusation and imputation of being an evil doer In a word He was perfect and sinless and manifested first all that obedience and holiness in his life which he put into his Laws and prescribed unto others And such Perfection is inseparable from Veracity Obj. How know we what faults he might have which come not to our knowledge Answ 1. You may see by his enemies accusations partly what he was free from when you see all that malice could invent to charge him with 2. If the Narrative of his Life in the Gospel have that evident proof which I shall anon produce there can remain no doubt of the perfect holiness and innocency of Christ in his Person and his Life Object We find him accused of many crimes as of being a gluttonous person and a Wine-bibber of blasphemy and impiety and treason Answ The very accusations are such as shew their falshood and his innocency He is called a gluttonous person and a Wine-bibber because he did eat and drink as other men in temperance and sobriety and did not tie himself to a wilderness life of austerity in total abstinence from common meats and wine as John Baptist did and as they thought he that professed extraordinary sanctity should have done They accused him of eating with publicans and sinners because he went to them as a Physician to heal their souls and lived a sociable charitable life and did not observe the Laws of proud Pharisaical separation They accused him of blasphemy and treason for saying the truth that he was the Son of God and the King of Israel And of impiety for talking of pulling down the Temple when he did but prophesie of his own death and resurrection And this was all that malice had to say Object He carried himself contemptuously to Magistrates He called Herod the King That Fox The Scribes and Pharisees he railed at and called them hypocrites painted sepulchres a generation of vipers c. When he was called to answer whether they should pay tribute to Cesar he doth but put off the resolution by ambiguity instead of an open exhorting them to obedience and saith Give to Caesar the things that are Caesars And when he was called to for tribute for him he payeth it but as a way to avoid offence having pleaded first his own immunity Answ 1. His speeches of Herod and the Scribes and Pharisees are not revilings but a free and just reprehension of their sin which being done by God's commission and in his Name and for his cause is no more to be called reviling than an arrest of a Felon or Traitor in the Kings name or an accusation put in against him for his crimes should be so called God will not forbear damning impenitent rebels though they call it cruelty nor will he forbear the reprehension and shaming of their
villanies though they call it railing nor will he flatter proud rebellious dust though they call flattery a necessary civility nor will he give leave to his Messengers to leave sin in honour and to let the proud do what their list and quietly damn themselves and others without plain reproof though it be called unreverent sawciness or sedition 2. And he that considereth how little Title Caesar had to the Kingdom of the Jews and that the sword alone is a better proof of force and strength than of Authority and is a Plea which an Usurper may have on his side will rather praise the submission and peaceableness of Christ than blame him as disloyal But for the doctrin of Obedience in general who hath ever taught it more plainly and pressingly than Christ and his Apostles 2. The Gospel or doctrin of Christ it self also hath the very Image and Superscription of God I will not say imprinted on it for that is too little but intrinsecally animating and constituting it which is apparent in the Matter and the Method and the Stile 1. The Matter and Design containeth the most wonderful expression of the Wisdom of God that ever was made to man on earth All is mysterious yet admirably fit consistent and congruous as is before declared That a world which is visibly and undeniably fallen into wickedness and misery should have a Redeemer Saviour and Mediator towards God! That he should be one that is near enough to God and unto us and hath the nature of both that he should be the second Adam the Root of the Redeemed and Regenerate that God should give all mercy from himself from his own bounty and fulness and not as unwilling be perswaded to it by another and therefore that the Redeemer be not any Angel or intermediate person but God himself that thus God come nearer unto man who is revolted from him to draw up man again to Him that he lose not the world and yet do not violate his governing Justice that he be so merciful as not to be unrighteous nor permit his Laws and Government to be despised and yet so just as to save the penitent renewed souls that he give man a new Law and conditions of salvation suitable to his lapsed guilty state and leave him not under a Law and conditions which were fitted to the innocent that he revealed himself to the apostate world in that way which only is fit for their recovery that is in his admirable love and goodness that so love might win our love and attract those hearts which under guilt and the terrors of condemning justice would never have been brought to love him that guilty souls have such evidence of God's reconciliation to encourage them to expect his pardon and to come to him with joy and boldness in their addresses having a Mediator to trust in and his Sacrifice Merits and acceptable Name to plead with God that Justice and Mercy are so admirably conjoyned in these effects that Satan and the world and death should be so conquered in a suffering way and man have so perfect a pattern to imitate for self-denial humility contempt of honour wealth and life and exact obedience and resignation to the will of God with perfect love to God and man that the world should be under such an universal Administrator and the Church be all united in such a Head and have one in their nature that hath risen from the dead to be in possession of the glory which they are going to and thence to send down his Spirit to sanctifie them and fit them for Heaven and afterward to be their Judge and to receive them unto blessedness and that sinners now be not condemned meerly for want of innocency but for rejecting the grace and mercy which would have saved them that we have all this taught us by a Messenger from Heaven and a perfect rule of life delivered to us by him and all this sealed by a Divine attestation that this doctrin is suited to the capacity of the weakest and yet so mysterious as to exercise the strongest wits and is delivered to us not by an imposing force but by the exhortations and perswasions of men like our selves commissioned to open the evidences of truth and necessity in the Gospel All this is no less than the Image and wonderful effect of the Wisdom of God And his Goodness and Love is as resplendent in it all for this is the effect of the whole design to set up a Glass in the work of our Redemption in which God's Love and Goodness should be as wonderfully represented to mankind as his Power was in the works of Creation Here sinful man is saved by a means which he never thought of or desired he is fetch'd up from the gates of hell redeemed from the Sentence of the righteous violated Law of God and the execution of his Justice The Eternal Word so condescendeth to man in the assumption of our nature as that the greatness of the love and mercy incomprehensible to man becomes the greatest difficulty to our belief He revealeth to us the things of the world above and bringeth life and immortality to light He dwelleth with men He converseth with the meanest He preacheth the glad tidings of Salvation to the world He refuseth not such familiarity with the poorest or the worst as is needful to their cure He spendeth his time in doing good and healing all manner of bodily diseases He refuseth the honours and riches of the world and the pleasures of the flesh to work out our salvation He beareth the ingratitude and abuse of sinners and endureth to be scorned buffeted spit upon tormented and crucified by those to whom he had done no greater wrong than to seek their salvation He maketh himself a Sacrifice for sin to shew the world what sin deserved and to save them from the deserved punishment God had at first decreed and declared that death should be the punishment of sin and Satan had maliciously drawn man to it by contradicting this threatning of God and making man believe that God would falsifie his word and that he did envy man the felicity of his advancement to be liker God in knowledge And now Christ will first justifie the truth and righteousness of God and will demonstrate himself by dying in our stead that death is indeed the wages of sin and will shew the world that God is so far from envying their felicity that he will purchase it at the dearest rate and deliver them freely from the misery which sin and Sathan had involved them in Thus Enemies are reconciled by the sufferings of him whom they offended even by his sufferings in the flesh whose Godhead could not suffer and by his death as Man who as God was most immortal As soon as he was risen he first appear'd to a Woman who had been a sinner and sent her as his first messenger with words of love and comfort to his
disconsolate Disciples who had but lately sinfully forsaken him He giveth them no upbraiding words but meltingly saith to her Go to my brethren and say unto them I ascend unto my Father and your Father to my God and your God He after this familiarly converseth with them and instructeth them in the things concerning the Kingdom of God He maketh an Vniversal Pardon or Act of Oblivion in a Covenant of Grace for all the world that will not reject it and appointeth Messengers to preach it unto all and what ever pains or suffering it cost them to go through all with patience and alacrity and to stick at nothing for the saving of mens souls He gave the holy Spirit miraculously to them to enable them to carry on this work and to leave upon record to the world the infallible narrative of his Life and Doctrine His Gospel is filled up with matter of consolation with the promises of mercy pardon and salvation the description of the priviledges of holy Souls justification adoption peace and joy and finally He governeth and defendeth his Church and pleadeth our cause and secureth our interest in Heaven according to the promises of this his word Thus is the Gospel the very Image of the Wisdom and Goodness of God And such a Doctrin from such a Person must needs be Divine 2. And the Method and Style of it is most excellent because most suitable to its holy ends not with the excellency of frothy wit which is but to express a wanton fancy and please the ears of aery persons who play with words when they should close with wisdom and heavenly light such excellency of speech must receive its estimate by its use and end But as the end is most Divine so the light that shineth in the Gospel is Heavenly and Divine the Method of the Books themselves is various according to the time and occasions of their writing the objections against them are to be answered by themselves anon But the Method of the whole Doctrin of Christianity set together is the most admirable and perfect in the world beginning with God in Unity of Essence proceeding to his Trinity of Essential Active Principles and of Persons and so to his Trinity of Works Creation Redemption and Regeneration and of Relations of God and Man accordingly and to the second Trinity of Relations as he is our Owner Ruler and Chief Good And hence it brancheth it self into a multitude of benefits flowing from all these Relations of God to Man and a multitude of answerable duties flowing from our Correlations to God and all in perfect method twisted and inoculated into each other making a kind of cirulation between Mercies and Duties as in mans body there is of the arterial and venal bloud and spirits till in the issue as all Mercy came from God and Duty subordinately from man so Mercy and Duty do terminate in the Everlasting Pleasure of God ultimately and man subordinately in that mutual love which is here begun and there is perfected This method you may somewhat perceive in the description of the Christian Religion before laid down 3. And the style also is suited to the end and matter not to the pleasing of curious ears but to the declaring of heavenly mysteries not to the conceits of Logicians who have put their understandings into the fetters of their own ill-devised notions and expect that all men that will be accounted wise should use the same notions which they have thus devised and about which they are utterly disagreed among themselves But in a Language suitable both to the subject and to the world of persons to whom this word is sent who are commonly ignorant and unlearned and dull That being the best Physick which is most suitable to the Patients temper and disease And though the particular Writers of the Sacred Scriptures have their several Styles yet is there in them all in common a Style which is spiritual powerfull and divine which beareth its testimony proportionably of that Spirit which is the common Author in them all But of this more among the Difficulties and Objections anon But for the discerning of all this Image of God in the Doctrine of Jesus Christ Reason will allow me to expect these necessary qualifications in him that must discern it 1. That before he come to supernatural Revelations he be not unacquainted with those natural Revelations which are antecedent and should be foreknown as I have in this book explained them with their evidence For there is no coming to the highest step of the Ladder without beginning at the lowest Men ignorant of things knowable by Natural Reason are unprepared for higher things 2. It is reasonably expected that he be one that is not treacherous and false to those Natural Truths which he hath received For how can he be expected to be impartial and faithfull in seeking after more Truth who is unfaithfull to that which he is convinced of or that he should receive that Truth which he doth not yet know who is false to that which he already knoweth Or that he should discern the evidence of extraordinary Revelation who opposeth with enmity the ordinary light or Law of Nature Or that God should vouchsafe his further light and conduct to that Man who willfully sinneth against him in despight of all his former teachings 3. It is requisite that he be one that is not a stranger to himself but acquainted with the case of his heart and life and know his sins and his corrupt inclinations and that guilt and disorder and misery in which his need of mercy doth consist For he is no fit Judge of the Prescripts of his Physician who knoweth not his own disease and temperature But of this more anon § 8. III. The third way of the Spirits witness to Jesus Christ is Concomitantly by the miraculous gifts and works of Himself and his Disciples which are a cogent Evidence of Gods attestation to the truth of his Doctrine § 9. By the Miracles of Christ I mean 1. His miraculous actions upon others 2. His miracles in his Death and Resurrection 3. His predictions The appearance of the Angel to Zachary and his dumbness his Prophesie and Elizabeth's with the Angels appearance to Mary the Angels appearance and Evangelizing to the Shepherds the Prophesie of Simeon and of Anna the Star and the testimony of the wise Men of the East the testimony of John Baptist that Christ should baptize with the Holy Ghost and with Fire and that he was the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the World These and more such I pass by as presupposed At twelve years of age he disputed with the Doctors in the Temple to their admiration At his Baptism the Holy Ghost came down upon him in the likeness of a Dove and a voice from Heaven said Thou art my beloved Son in Thee I am well-pleased When he was baptized he fasted forty dayes and nights and
themselves as being wholly his own 3. It absolutely subjecteth the Soul to God and sitteth up his Authority as absolute over our thoughts and words and all our actions And maketh the Christians life a course of careful obedience to his Laws so far as they understand them 4. It taketh up a Christians mind with the thankful sense of his Redemption so that the pardon of his sins and his deliverance from hell and his hopes of everlasting glory do form his soul to a holy gratitude and make the expressions of it to be his work 5. It giveth man a sense of the love of God as his gracious Redeemer and so of the goodness and mercifulness of his Nature It causeth them to think of God as their greatest Benefactor and as one that loveth them and as LOVE it self and so it reconcileth their estranged alienated minds to him and maketh the love of God to be the very constitution and life of the Soul 6. It causeth men to believe that there is an everlasting Glory to be enjoyed by holy Souls where we shall see the glory of God and be filled with his love and exercised in perfect love and praise and be with Christ his Angels and Saints for evermore It causeth them to take this felicity for their portion and to set their hearts upon it and to make it the chief care and business of all their lives to seek it 1. It causeth them to live in the joyful hopes and foresight of this blessedness and to do all that they do as means thereunto and thus it sweetneth all their lives and maketh Religion their chief delight 8. It accordingly employeth their thoughts and tongues so that the praises of God and the mention of their everlasting blessedness and of the way thereto is their most delightful conference as it beseemeth travellers to the City of God and so their political converse is in heaven 9. And thus it abateth the fears of death as being but their passage to everlasting life And those that are confirmed Christians indeed do joyfully entertain it and long to see their glorified Lord and the blessed Majesty of their great Creator 10. It causeth men to love all sanctified persons with a special love of complacency and all mankind with a love of benevolence even to love our neighbours as our selves and to abhor that selfishness which would engage us against our neighbours good 11. It causeth men to love their enemies and to forgive and forbear and to avoid all unjust and unmerciful revenge It maketh men meek long-suffering and patient though not impassionate insensible or void of that anger which is the necessary opposer of sin and folly 12. It employeth men in doing all the good they can it maketh them long for the holiness and happiness of one another's souls and desirous to do good to those that are in need according to our power 13. This true Regeneration by the Spirit of Christ doth make those Superiours that hath it even Princes Magistrates Parents and Masters to Rule those under them in holiness love and justice with self-denial seeking more the pleasing of God and the happiness of their Subjects for soul and body than any carnal selfish interest of their own and therefore it must needs be the blessing of that happy Kingdom Society or Family which hath such a holy Governour O that they were not so few 14. It maketh subjects and children and servants submissive and conscionable in all the duties of their Relations and to honour their Superiours as the Officers of God and to obey them in all just subordination to him 15. It causeth men to love Justice and to do as they would be done by and to desire the welfare of the souls bodies estates and honour of their neighbours as their own 16. It causeth men to subdue their adpetites and lusts and fleshly desires and to set up the government of God and sanctified Reason over them and to take their flesh for that greatest enemy in our corrupted state which we must chiefly watch against and master as being a Rebel against God and Reason It alloweth a man so much sensitive pleasure as God forbiddeth not and as tendeth to the holiness of the soul and furthereth us in God's service and all the rest it rebuketh and resisteth 17. It causeth men to estimate all the wealth and honour and dignities of the world as they have respect to God and a better world and as they either help or hinder us in the pleasing of God and seeking immortality and as they are against God and our spiritual work and happiness it causeth us to account them but as meer vanity loss and dung 18. It keepeth men in a life of watchfulness against all those temptations which would draw them from this holy course and in a continual warfare against Satan and his Kingdom under conduct of Jesus Christ 19. It causeth men to prepare for sufferings in this world and to look for no great matters here to expect persecutions crosses losses wants defamations injuries and painful sicknesses and death and to spend their time in preparing all that furniture of mind which is necessary to their support and comfort in such a day of trial that they may be patient and joyful in tribulation and bodily distress as having a comfortable relation to God and Heaven which will incomparably weigh down all 20. It causeth men to acknowledge that all this grace and mercy is from the love of God alone and to depend on him for it by faith in Christ and to devote and refer all to himself again and make it our ultimate end to please him and thus to subserve him as the first Efficient the chief Dirigent and the ultimate final Cause of all of whom and through whom and to whom are all things to whom be Glory for ever Amen This is the true description of that Regenerate Sanctified state which the Spirit of Christ doth work on all whom he will save and that are Christians indeed and not in Name only And certainly this is the Image of God's Holiness and the just constitution and use of a reasonable Soul And therefore he that bringeth men to this is a Real Saviour of whom more anon II. And it is very considerable by what means and in what manner all this is done It is done by the preaching of the Gospel of Christ and that in plainness and simplicity The curiosity of artificial oratory doth usually but hinder the success as painting doth the light of windows It was a few plain men that came with spiritual power and not with the entising words of humane wisdom or curiosities of vain Philosophy who did more in this work than any of their successors have done since As in Naturals every thing is apt to communicate its own nature and not anothers heat causeth heat and cold causeth cold so wit by communication causeth wit and common learning causeth common
senses these present things will be a strong temptation to us Prosperity and plenty wealth and honour ease and pleasure are accommodated to the desires of the flesh partly to its natural appetite and much more to it as inordinate by corruption And the flesh careth not for Reason how much soever it gainsay And then all these entising things are neer us and still present with us and before our eyes when Heavenly things are all unseen And the sweetness of honour wealth and pleasure is known by feeling and therefore known easily and by all when the goodness of things spiritual is known only by Reason and believing All which laid together with sad experience do fully shew that it must be a very great work to overcome this World and raise the heart above it to a better and so to sanctifie a soul 2. And worldly men do rise up against this Holy work as as well as worldly things Undenyable experience assureth us that through all the World ungodly sensual men have a marvellous implacable hatred to Godlyness and true mortification and will by flattery or slanders or scorns or plots or cruel violence do all that they are able to resist it So that he that will live a holy temperate life must make himself a scorn if not a prey The foolish wit of the ungodly is bent to reason men out of Faith Hope and Holiness and to cavill against our obedience to God and to disgrace all that course of life which is necessary to salvation And it is a great work to overcome all these temptations of the foolish and furious World Great I say because of the great folly and corruption of unregenerate men on whom it must be wrought though it would be smaller to a wise and considerate person To be made as an Owl and hunted as a Partridge or a beast of Prey by those that we converse with when we might have their favour and friendship and Preferments if we would say and do as they this is not easie to flesh and blood But its easie to the Spirit of God 3. The Devil is so notoriously an enemy to this sanctifying work that it is a strong discovery that Christ was sent from God to do it What a stir doth he first make to keep out the Gospel that it may not be Preached to the Nations of the World And where that will not serve what a stir doth he make to debauch Christs Ministers and corrupt them by ignorance heresie error schism domineering pride sensuality covetousness slothfulness and negligence that they may do the work of Christ deceitfully as if they did it not Yea and if it may be to win them to his service to destroy the Church by Oppression or Division under pretense of serving Christ And what cunning and industry doth this Serpent use to insinuate into great ones and Rulers of the Earth a prejudice against Christ and Godliness and to make them believe that all that are seriously Godly are their enemies and are against some interest of theirs that so he might take the sword which God hath put into their hands and turn it to his own service against him that gave it How cunning and diligent is he to seduce men that begin to set themselves to a Religious life into some false Opinions or dividing Sects or scandalous unjustifiable practice that thereby he may triumph against Christ and have something to say against Religion from the faults of men when he hath nothing to say against it justly from it self and that he may have something to say to those Rulers and People with whom he would fain make Religion odious How cunningly doth he engage ungodly men to be his Servants in seducing others and making them such as they are themselves and in standing up for sin and darkness against the light and life of Faith So that ungodly men are but the Souldiers and Preachers of the Devil in all parts employed to fight against God and draw men from holiness and justice and temperance to sin and to damnation So that it is a very discernable thing that Satan is the Head of one party in the World as the Destroying Prince of Darkness and deceit and that Christ is the Head of the other party as the Prince of light and truth and holiness And that there is a continued war or opposition between these two Kingdoms or Armies in all parts and ages of the World of which I have fullyer treated in another Book If any shall say How know you that all this is the work of Satan I shall have fitter occasion to answer that anon I shall now say but this that the nature of the work the tendency of it the irrationall erroneous or brutish tyrannical manner of doing it the internal importunity and manner of his suggestions and the effects of all and the contrariety of it to God and Man will soon shew a considerate man the author Though more shall be anon added V. All this aforegoing will shew a reasonable man that the Spirits Regenerating work is such as is a full attestation of God to that Doctrine by which it is effected And if any now say How prove you that all this is to be ascribed to Jesus Christ any more than to Socrates or to Seneca or Cicero I answer 1. So much truth of a sacred tendency as Plato or Pythagoras or Socrates or any Philosopher taught might do some good and work some reformation according to its quality and degree But as it was a lame imperfect doctrine which they taught so was it a very lame imperfect reformation which they wrought unlike the effects of the Doctrine and Spirit of Jesus Christ I need to say no more of this than to desire any man to make an impartial and judicious comparison between them And besides much more he shall quickly finde these differences following 1. That the Philosophers Disciples had a very poor dark disordered knowledge of God in comparison of the Christians and that mixt with odious fopperies either blasphemous or idolatrous 2. The Philosophers spake of God and the Life to come almost altogether notionally as they did of Logick or Physicks and very few of them Practically as a thing that mans happiness or misery was so much concerned in 3. They spake very jejunely and dryly about a holy state and course of life and the duty of Man to God in resignation devotedness obedience and love 4. They said little comparatively to the true humbling of a Soul nor in the just discovery of the evil of sin nor for self-denyall 5. They gave too great countenance to Pride and Worldliness and pleasing the senses by excess 6. The Doctrine of true Love to one another is taught by them exceeding lamely and defectively 7. Revenge is too much indulged by them and loving our Enemies and forgiving great wrongs was little known or taught or practised 8. They were so pitifully unacquainted with the certainty
and blessedness of the Life to come that they say nothing of it that is ever likely to make any considerable number set their hearts on Heaven and to live a heavenly Life 9. They were so unacquainted with the nature and will of God that they taught and used such a manner of Worship as tended rather to delude and corrupt men than to sanctifie them 10. They medled so little with the inward sins and duties of the heart especially about the holy Love of God and their goodness was so much in outward acts and in meer respect to men that they were not like to sanctifie the Soul or make the Man good that his actions might be good but only to polish men for Civil Societies with the addition of a little Varnish of Superstition and Hypocrisie 11. Their very style is either suitable to dead speculation as a Lecture of Metaphysicks or sleight and dull and unlike to be effectual to convert and sanctifie mens Souls 12. Almost all is done in such a disputing sophistical way and clogg'd with so many obscurities uncertainties and self-contradictions and mixt in heaps of Physical and Logical Subtilties that they were unfit for the common peoples benefit and could tend but to the benefit of a few 13. Experience taught and still teacheth the World that Holy Souls and Lives that were sincerely set upon God and Heaven were strangers amongst the Disciples of the Philosophers and other Heathens Or if it be thought that there were some such among them certainly they were very few in comparison of true Christians and those few very dark and diseased and defective with us a Childe at ten years old will know more of God and shew more true piety than did any of their Philosophers with us poor women and labouring persons do live in that holiness and heavenliness of minde and conversation which the wisest of the Philosophers never did attain I spake of this before but here also thought meet to shew you the difference between the effect of Christs doctrine and the Philosophers 2. And that all this is justly to be imputed to Christ himself I shall now prove 1. He gave them a perfect pattern for his holy obedient heavenly Life in his own person and his conversation here on Earth 2. His Doctrine and Law requireth all this holiness which I described to you You finde the Prescript in his Word of which the holy Souls and Lives of men are but a transcript 3. All his Institutions and Ordinances are but means and helps to this 4. He hath made it the condition of mans Salvation to be thus holy in sincerity and to desire and seek after perfection in it He taketh no other for true Christians indeed nor will save any other at the last 5. All his comforting Promises of mercy and defence are made only to such 6. He hath made it the Office of his Ministers through the World to perswade and draw men to this Holiness And if you hear the Sermons and read the Books which any faithfull Minister of Christ doth preach or write you will soon see that this is the business of them all And you may soon perceive that these Ministers have another kinde of preaching and writing than the Philosophers had more clear more congruous more spiritual more powerfull and likely to win men to Holiness and Heavenliness When our Divines and their Philosophers are compared as to their promoting of true Holiness verily the latter seem to be but as Glow-worms and the former to be the Candles for the Family of God And yet I truly value the wisdom and virtue which I finde in a Plato a Seneca a Cicero an Antonine or any of them If you say our advantage is because coming after all we have the helps of all even of those Philosophers I answer mark in our Books and Sermons whether it be any thing but Christianity which we preach It is from Christ and Scripture that we fetch our Doctrine and not from the Philosophers we use their helps in Logick Physicks c. But that 's nothing to our Doctrine He that taught me to speak English did not teach me the Doctrine which I preach in English And he that teacheth me to use the Instruments of Logick doth not teach me the doctrine about which I use them And why did not those Philosophers by all their art attain to that skill in this Sacred work as the Ministers of Christ do when they had as much or more of the Arts than we I read indeed of many good Orations then used even in those of the Emperour Julian there is much good and in Antonine Arrian Epictetus Plutarch more And I read of much taking-Oratory of the Bonzii in Japan c. But compared to the endeavours of Christian Divines they are poor pedantick barren things and little sparks and the success of them is but answerable 7. Christ did before hand promise to send his Spirit into mens Souls to do all this work upon all his Chosen And as he promised just so he doth 8. And we finde by experience that it is the preaching of Christs doctrine by which the work is done It is by the reading of the sacred Scripture or hearing the Doctrine of it opened and applyed to us that Souls are thus changed as is before described And if it be by the medicines which he sendeth us himself by the hands of his own Servants that we are healed we need not doubt whether it be he that healed us His Doctrine doth it as the instrumental Cause for we finde it adapted thereunto and we finde nothing done upon us but by that Doctrine nor any remaining effect but what is the impression of it But his Spirit inwardly reneweth us as the Principal cause and worketh with and by the Word For we finde that the Word doth not work upon all nor upon all alike that are alike prepared But we easily perceive a voluntary distinguishing choice in the operation And we finde a power more than can be in the words alone in the effect upon our selves The heart is like the Wax and the Word like the Seal and the Spirit like the hand that strongly applyeth it We feel upon our hearts that though nothing is done without the Seal yet a greater force doth make the impression than the weight of the Seal alone could cause By this time it is evident that this work of Sanctification is the attestation of God by which he publickly owneth the Gospel and declareth to the World that Christ is the Saviour and his Word is true For 1. It is certain that this work of Renovation is the work of God For 1. It is his Image on the Soul It is the life of the Soul as flowing from his Holy Life wherein are contained the Trinity of Perfections It is the Power of the Soul by which it can overcome the Flesh the World and the Devil which without it none is able to do It is the
Wisdom of the Soul produced by his Light and Wisdom by which we know the difference between Good and Evil and our Reason is restored to its dominion over fleshly sense It is the Goodness of the Soul by which it is made suitable to the Eternal Good and fit to know him love him praise him serve him and enjoy him And therefore nothing lower than his Goodness can be its principal Cause 2. It subserveth the Interest of God in the World And recovereth the apostate Soul to himself It disposeth it to honour him love him and obey him It delivereth up the whole man to him as his own It casteth down all that rebelleth against him It casteth out all which was preferred before him It rejecteth all which standeth up against him and would seduce and tempt us from him And therefore it is certainly his work 3. Whose else should it be Would Satan or any evil cause produce so excellent an effect would the worst of beings do the best of works It is the best that is done in this lower world Would any enemy of God so much honour him and promote his interest and restore him his own would any enemy of mankind thus advance us and bring us up to a life of the highest honour and delights that we are capable of on earth and give us the hopes of life eternal And if any good Angel or other Cause should do it all reason will confess that they do it but as the Messengers or Instruments of God and as second causes and not as the first Cause for otherwise we should make them gods For my own part my Soul perceiveth that it is God himself that hath imprinted this his Image on me and hath hereby as it were written upon me his Name and Mark even HOLINESS TO THE LORD and I bear about me continually a Witness of Himself his Son and holy Spirit a Witness within me which is the Seal of God and the pledge of his love and the earnest of my heavenly inheritance And if our Sanctification be thus of GOD it is certainly his attestation to the truth of Christ and to his Gospel for 1. No man that knoweth the perfections of God will ever believe that he would bless a deceiver and a lie to be the means of the most holy and excellent work that ever was done in the world If Christ were a Deceiver his crime would be so execrable as would engage the Justice of God against him as he is the righteous Governour of the world And therefore he would not so highly honour him to be his chiefest instrument for the worlds Renovation He is not impotent to need such instruments he is not ignorant that he should so mistake in the choice of instruments he is not bad that he should love and use such Instruments and comply with their deceits These things are all so clear and sure that I cannot doubt of them 2. No man that knoweth the mercifulness of God and the Justice of his Government can believe that he would give up Mankind so remedilesly to seduction yea and be the principal causer of it himself For if besides Prophecie and a holy Doctrine and a multitude of famous Miracles a Deceiver might also be the great Renewer and Sanctifier of the world to bring man back to the obedience of God and to repair his Image on Mankind what possibility were there of our discovery of that deceit Or rather should we not say he were a blessed Deceiver that had deceived us from our sin and misery and brought back our straying souls to God 3. Nay when Christ fore-told men that he would send his Spirit to do all this work and would renew men for eternal life and thus be with us to the end of the world and when I see all this done I must needs believe that he that can send down a Sanctifying Spirit a Spirit of Life a Spirit of Power Light and Love to make his Doctrine in the mouths of his Ministers effectual to mens Regeneration and Sanctification is no less himself than God or certainly no less than his certain Administrator 4. What need I more to prove the Cause than the adequate effect When I find that Christ doth actually save me shall I question whether he be my Saviour When I find that he saveth thousands about me and offereth the same to others shall I doubt whether he be the Saviour of the world Sure he that healeth us all and that so wonderfully and so cheaply may well be called our Physician If he had promised only to save us I might have doubted whether he would perform it and consequently whether he be indeed the Saviour But when he performeth it on my self and performeth it on thousands round about me to doubt yet whether he be the Saviour when he actually saveth us is to be ignorant in despite of Reason and Experience I conclude therefore that the Spirit of Sanctification is the infallible Witness of the Verity of the Gospel and the Veracity of Jesus Christ 5. And I entreat all that read this further to observe the great use and advantage of this testimony above others in that it is continued from Generation to Generation and not as the gift and testimony of Miracles which continued plentifully but one Age and with diminution somewhat after this is Christ's witness to the end of the world in every Country and to every Soul yea and continually dwelling in them For if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his Rom. 8.9 He that is not able to examine the History which reporteth the Miracles to him may be able to find upon his Soul the Image of God imprinted by the Gospel and to know that the Gospel hath that Image in it self which it imprinteth upon others and that it cometh from God which leadeth men so directly unto God and that it is certainly his own means which he blesseth to so great and excellent ends 6. Note also that part of the work of the Spirit of God in succeeding the Doctrine of Jesus Christ doth consist in the effectual production of Faith it self for though the work be wrought by the Reasons of the Gospel and the Evidences of Truth yet is it also wrought by the Spirit of God concurring with that evidence and as the internal Efficient exciting the sluggish faculties to do their office and illustrating the understanding and fitting the will to entertain the truth for the difficulties are so great and the temptations to unbelief so subtil and violent and our own indisposedness through corruption the greatest impediment of all that the bare Word alone would not produce a belief of that lively vigorous nature as is necessary to its noble effects and ends without the internal co-operation of the Spirit So that Christ doth not only teach us the Christian Faith and Religion but doth give it us and work it in us by his Spirit And he that can do
so doth prove the Divine approbation of his Doctrine without which he could not have the command of mens Souls 7. Note also that the Gospel proposeth to the Soul of man both Truth and Goodness and the Truth is in order to the Good and subservient to it That Christ is indeed the Saviour and his Word infallibly true is believed that we may be made partakers of his Salvation and of the Grace and Glory promised And when the Spirit by the Gospel hath regenerated and renewed any Soul he hath given him part of that grace in possession and hath procreated in him the habitual love of God and of holiness with a love to that Saviour and holy Word which brought him to it So that this Love is now become as a new Nature to the Soul and this being done the Soul cleaveth now as fast to Christ and the Gospel by Love as by Belief not that love becometh an irrational causless love nor continueth without the continuance of Belief or Belief without the Reasons and Evidence of Verity and Credibility But Love now by concurrence greatly assisteth Faith it self and is the faster hold of the two so that the Soul that is very weak in its Reasoning faculty and may oft lose the sight of these Evidences of truth which it did once perceive may still hold fast by this holy Love As the man that by reasoning hath been convinced that hony is sweet will easilier change his mind than he that hath tasted it so Love is the Souls taste which causeth its fastest adherence to God and to the Gospel If a caviller dispute with a loving child or parent or friend to alienate their hearts from one another and would perswade them that it is but dissembled love that is professed to them by their relations and friends Love will do more here to hinder the belief of such a slander than Reason alone can do and where Reason is not strong enough to answer all that the caviller can say yet Love may be strong enough to reject it And here I must observe how oft I have noted the great mercy of God to abundance of poor people whose reasoning faculty would have failed them in temptations to Atheism and Infidelity if they had not had a stronger hold than that and their Faith had not been radicated in the Will by Love I have known a great number of women who never read a Treatise that pleaded the Cause of the Christian Religion nor were able to answer a crafty Infidel that yet in the very decaying time of Nature at fourscore years of age and upward have lived in that sense of the Love of God and in such Love to him and to their Saviour as that they have longed to die and be with Christ and lived in all humility charity and piety such blameless exemplary heavenly Lives in the joyfull expectation of their Change as hath shewed the firmness of their Faith and the Love and Experience which was in them would have rejected a temptation to Atheism and Unbelief more effectually than the strongest Reason alone could ever do Yet none have cause to reproach such and say Their Wills lead their Vnderstandings and they customarily and obstinately believe they know not why for they have known sufficient reason to believe and their understandings have been illuminated to see the truth of true Religion and it was this knowledge of Faith which bred their Love and Experience but when that is done as Love is the more noble and perfect operation of the Soul having the most excellent object so it will act more powerfully and prevailingly and hath the strongest hold Nor are all they without Light and Reason for their belief who cannot form it into arguments and answer all that is said against it Obj. But may not all this which you call Regeneration and the Image of God be the meer power of fantasie and affectation and may not all these people force themselves like melancholy persons to conceit that they have that which indeed they have not Answ 1. They are not melancholly persons that I speak of but those that are as capable as any others to know their own minds and what is upon their own hearts 2. It is not one or two but millions 3. Nature hath given man so great acquaintance with himself by a power of perceiving his own operations that his own cogitations and desires are the first thing that naturally he can know and therefore if he cannot know them he can know nothing If I cannot know what I think and what I love and hate I can know nothing at all 4. That they are really minded and affected as they seem and have in them that love to God and Heaven and Holiness which they profess they shew to all the world by the effects 1. In that it ruleth the main course of their lives and disposeth of them in the world 2. In that these apprehensions and affections over-rule all their worldly fleshly interest and cause them to deny the pleasures of the flesh and the profits and honours of the world 3. In that they are constant in it to the death and have no other mind in their distress when as Seneca saith Nothing feigned is of long continuance for all forc'd things are bending back to their natural state 4. In that they will lay down their lives and forsake all the world for the hopes which faith in Christ begetteth in them And if the objectors mean that all this is true and yet it is but upon delusion or mistake that they raise these hopes and raise these affections I answer This is the thing that I am disproving 1. The love of God and a holy mind and life is not a dream of the Soul or a deliration I have proved from Natural reason in the first Book that it is the end and use and perfection of man's faculties that if God be God and man be man we are to love him above all and to obey him as our absolute Sovereign and to live as devoted to him and to delight in his love Man were more ignoble or miserable than a beast if this were not his work And is that a dream or a delusion which causeth a man to live as a man to the ends that he was made for and according to the nature and use of his reason and all his faculties 2. While the proofs of the excellency and necessity of a holy life are so fully before laid down from natural and supernatural revelation the Objector doth but refuse to see in the open light when he satisfieth himself with a bare assertion that all this is no sufficient ground for a holy life but that it is taken up upon mistake 3. All the world is convinced at one time or other that on the contrary it is the unholy fleshly worldly life which is the dream and dotage and is caused by the grossest error and deceit Object But how
shall I know that there is indeed such holiness in Christians as you mention and that it is not dissembled and counterfeit Answ I have told you in the fore-going answer 1. If you were truly Christians you might know it by possession in your selves as you know that you love your friend or a learned man knoweth that he hath learning 2. If you have it not your selves you may see that others do not dissemble when you see them as afore-said make it the drift of all their lives and prefer it before their worldly interest and their lives and hold on constantly in it to the death When you see a holy life what reason have you to question a holy heart especially among so great a number you may well know that if some be dissemblers all the rest are not so Obj. But I see no Christians that are really so holy I see nothing in the best of them above civility but only self-conceit and affectation and strictness in their several forms and modes of Worship Answ 1. If you are no better than such your self it is the greatest shame and plague of heart that you could have confessed and it must needs be because you have been false to the very light of Nature and of Grace 2. If you know no Christians that are truly holy it must needs be either because you are unacquainted with them or because your malice will not give you leave to see any good in these that you dislike And if you have acquainted your self with no Christians that were truly holy what could it be but malice or sensuality that turned you away from their acquaintance when there have been so many round about you If you have been intimate with them and known their secret and open conversation and yet have not seen any holiness in them it can be no better than wilful malice that hath blinded you And because a negative witness that knoweth not whether it be so or not is not to be regarded against an affirming witness who knoweth what he saith I will here leave my testimony as in the presence of God the searcher of hearts and the revenger of a lie yea even of lies pretended for his glory I have considered of the characters of a Christian in the twenty particulars before expressed in this Chapter § 10. and I have examined my soul concerning them all and as far as I am able to know my self I must profess in humble thankfulness to my Redeemer that there is none of them which I find not in me And seeing God hath given me his testimony within me to the truth of the Gospel of his Son I take it to be my duty in the profession of it to give my testimony of it to unbelievers And I must as solemnly profess that I have had acquaintance with hundreds if not thousands on whom I have seen such evidences of a holy heavenly mind which nothing but uncharitable and unrighteous censure could deny And I have had special intimate familiarity with very many in all whom I have discerned the Image of God in such innocency charity justice holiness contempt of the world mortification self-denial humility patience and heavenly mindedness in such a measure that I have seen no cause to question their sincerity but great cause to love and honour them as the Saints of God yea I bless the Lord that most of my converse in the world since the 22d year of my age hath been with such and much of it six years sooner Therefore for my own part I cannot be ignorant that Christ hath a sanctified people upon earth Object But how can one man know another's heart to be sincere Answ I pretend not to know by an infallible certainty the heart of any single individual person But 1. I have in such a course of effects as is mentioned before great reason to be very confident of it and no reason to deny it concerning very many A child cannot be infallibly certain that his father or mother loveth him because he knoweth not the heart But when he considereth of the ordinariness of natural affection and hath always found such usage as dearest love doth use to cause he hath much reason to be confident of it and none to deny it 2. There may be a certainty that all conjunctly do not counterfeit when you have no certainty of any single individual As I can be sure that all the mothers in the world do not counterfeit love to their children though I cannot be certain of it in any individual Object But it is not all Christians nor most that are thus holy Answ It is all that are Christians in deed and truth Christ is so far from owning any other that he will condemn them the more for abusing his Name to the covering of their sins All are not Christians who have the name of Christians in all professions the vulgar rabble of the ignorant and ungodly do use to joyn with the party that is uppermost and seem to be of the Religion which is most for their worldly ends be it right or wrong when indeed they are of none at all Hypocrites are no true Christians but the persons that Christ is most displeased with Judge but by his precepts and example and you will see who they are that are Christians indeed Object But what if the preaching or writings of a Minister do convert and sanctifie men it doth not follow that they are Saviours of the world Answ What ever they do they do it as the Ministers and Messengers of Christ by his Doctrine and not by any of their own by his Commission and in his Name and by his Power or Spirit Therefore it witnesseth to his truth and honour who is indeed the Saviour which they never affirmed of themselves Object What if Pythagoras Socrates Plato the Japonian Bonzii the Indian Bramenes c. do bring any souls to a holy state as its like they did it will not follow that they were all Saviours of the world Answ 1. They have but an imperfect Doctrine and consequently make on the minds of men but a lame defective change and that change but upon few and that but for a few Ages and then another Sect succeedeth them So that they have no such attestation and approbation of God as Christ hath in the renovation of so many thousands all abroad the world and that for so many ages together 2. They did not affirm themselves to be the Sons of God and the Saviours of the world if they had God would not have annexed such a testimony to their word as he doth to Christs 3. The mercy of God is over all his works He hath compassion upon all Nations and setteth up some candles where the Sun is not yet risen The Light and Law of Nature are his as well as the Light and Law of Supernatural Revelation and accordingly he hath his instruments for the communication of them to
heard and did things which were nothing so for so long together nor yet so subtile as to be able to lay such a deceiving plot and carry it on so closely to the end And they that suspect the Apostles and first Disciples to be the Authors of the plot will not suspect all the Churches too For if there were Deceivers there must be some to be deceived by them If Christ deceived the Disciples then the Disciples could not be wilfull deceivers themselves For if they were themselves deceived they could not therein be wilfull deceivers And then how came they to confirm their testimony by Miracles If the Apostles only were deceivers then all the Disciples and Evangelists who assisted them must be deceived and not wilfull deceivers And then how came they also to do miracles If all the Apostles and Disciples of the first Edition were wilfull Deceivers then all the Churches through the World which were gathered by them were deceived by them and then they were not wilsul deceivers themselves which is all that I am now proving having proved before that they were not deceived § 47. 2. If they had been cunning enough it is most inprobable that so many thousands in so many Nations should be so bad as to desire and endeavour at such a rate as their own temporal and eternal ruine to deceive all the world into a blasphemy without any benefit to themselves which might be rationally sufficient to seem a tempting compensation to them § 48. For all these Churches which witnessed the Apostles Miracles 1. Did profess to believe lying and deceiving to be a heinous sin 2. And to believe an everlasting punishment for liars 3. They were taught by their Religion to expect calamity in this world 4. They had experience enough to confirm them in that expectation Therefore they had no motive which could be sufficient to make them guilty of so costly a deceit For 1. Operari sequitur esse A man will do ill but according to the measure that he is ill and as bad as humane nature is it is not yet so much depraved as that thousands through the world could agree without any commodity to move them to it to ruine their own estates and lives and souls for ever meerly to make the world believe that other men did miracles and to draw them to believe a known untruth And 2. as free as the will is it is yet a thing that hath its nature and inclination and cannot act without a cause and object which must be some apparent good Therefore when there is no good-appearing but wickedness and misery it cannot will it So that this seemeth inconsistent with humane nature § 49. And the certain history of their lives doth shew that they were persons extraordinary good and conscionable being holy heavenly and contemners of this world and ready to suffer for their Religion and therefore could not be so extremely bad as to ruine themselves only to do mischief to the world and their posterity § 50. And their enemies bare them witness that they did and suffered all this in the hopes of a reward in heaven which proveth that they were not wilful liars and deceivers for no man can look for a reward in heaven for the greatest known-villany on earth even for suffering to cheat all the world into a blasphemy Even Lucian scoffeth at the Christians for running into sufferings and hoping to be rewarded for it with a life everlasting § 51. 3. If they had been never so cunning and so bad yet was it impossible that they should be able for the successful execution of such a deceit as will appear by all these following evidences § 52. 1. It was impossible that so many thousands at such a distance who never saw each others faces could lay the plot in a way of concord but one would have been of one mind and another of another § 53. 2. It is impossible that they should agree in carrying it on and keeping it secret through all the world if they had accorded in the first contrivance and attempts § 54. 3. It is impossible that all the thousands of adversaries among them who were eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses as well as they should not discover the deceit All those Parthians Medes Elamites and other Country-men mentioned Act. 2. were not Christians and the Christians though many were but a small part of the Cities and Countries where they dwelt And Paul saith that Tongues and Miracles were for the sake of unbelievers and unbelievers were ordinarily admitted into the Christian assemblies and the Christians went among them to preach and most of the miracles were wrought in their sight and hearing § 55. 4. It is impossible that the falling out of Christians among themselves among so many thousands in several Nations should never have detected the deceit if they had been all such deceivers § 56. 5. It is impossible but some of the multitudes of the perverted exasperated separating or excommunicate Hereticks which were then in most Countries where there were Christians and opposed the Orthodox and were opposed by them should have detected this deceit if it had been such § 57. 6. It is impossible but some of the Apostates of those times who are supposed to have joyned in the deceit would have detected it to the world when they fell off from Christianity § 58. 7. It is scarce possible among so many thousands in several Lands that none of their own consciences living or dying should be constrained in remorse and terrour to detect so great an evil to the world § 59. 8. Much more impossible is it that under the conscience of such a villany they should live and suffer and die rejoycingly and think it a happy exchange to forsake life and all for the hopes of a reward in heaven for this very thing § 60. 9. Lastly it is impossible that these thousands of Christians should be able to deceive many more than themselves into the belief of the same untruths in the very time and place where the things were said to be done and where the detection of the deceit had been easie yea unavoidable Christianity was then upon the increase they that were converted did convert more than themselves Suppose in Jerusalem Ephesus Corinth Rome c. some thousands believed by the preaching of the Apostles in a few years at the first in a few years more there were as many more added Now supposing all this had been but a cheat if the Christians had told their neighbours Among us unlearned men speak in the Languages of all Countries they cast out devils they cure all diseases with prayer and annointing they prophesie and interpret Tongues they do many other miracles and the same Spirit is given to others by their imposition of hands and all this in the Name and by the Power of Jesus would not their neighbours easily know whether this were true or not And if it were false would they not
A Sellius his milkie Veines and Pecquets Receptacle of the Chyle and Bartholines Glandules and the Vasa Lymphatica are of late discovery Galilaeus his Glasses and his four Medicaean Planets and the Lunary mutations of Venus and the strange either opacous parts and shape of Saturn or the proximity of two other Stars which mishape it to our sight the shadowy parts of the Moon c. with the innumerable Stars in the Via Lactea c. were all unknown to former ages Gilberts magnetical discoveries I speak not of those questionable Inferences which Campanella and others contradict the nature of many Minerals and Plants the chief operations and effects of Chymistry abundance of secrets for the cure of many diseases even the most excellent medicaments are all of very late invention Almost all Arts and Sciences are encreasing neerer towards Perfection Ocular demonstrations by the Telescope and sensible experiments are daily multiplyed Yea the World it self is not all discovered to any one part but a great part of it was but lately made known even to the Europeans whose knowledge is greatest by Columbus and Americus Vesputianus and it is not long since it was first measured by a Circumnavigation If the World had been eternall or of much longer duration than the Scripture speaketh it is not credible that multiplyed experiences would not have brought it above that Infancy of knowledge in which it so long continued Obj. Cursed Warrs by Fire and Depopulation consume all Antiquities and put the World still to begin anew Answ It doth indeed do much this way but it is not so much that Warre could do For when it is in one Countrey others are free and some would fly or lie hid or survive who would preserve Arts and Sciences and be teachers of the rest Who can think now that any Wars are like to make America or Galilaeus's Stars unknown again or any of the forenamed Inventions to be lost 2. Moreover it is strange if the World were eternall or much elder than Scripture speaketh that no part of the World should shew us any elder Monument of Antiquity no engraven Stones or Plates no Mausolus Pyramids or Pillars no Books no Chronological Tables no Histories or Genealogies or other Memorials and Records I know to this also cursed Warrs may contribute much But not so much as to leave nothing to inquisitive Successors § 2. II. It greatly confirmeth my belief of the Holy Scriptures to finde by certain experience the Original and Vniversal pravity of mans nature how great it is and wherein it doth consist exactly agreeing with this Sacred Word when no others have made such a full discovery of it This I have opened and proved before and he is a stranger to the World and to himself that seeth it not Were it not lest I weary the Reader with length how fully and plainly could I manifest it § 3. III. The certain observation of the universal Spiritual Warre which hath been carryed on according to the first Gospel between the Woman's and the Serpent's seed doth much confirm me of the truth of the Scriptures Such a contrariety there is even between Cain and Abel Children of the same Father such an implacable enmity throughout all the World in almost all wicked men against Godliness it self and those that sincerely love and follow it such a hatred in those that are Orthodoxly bred against the true power use and practice of the Religion which they themselves profess such a resolute resistance of all that is seriously good and holy and tendeth but to the saving of the resisters that it is but a publick visible acting of all those things which the Scripture speaketh of and a fulfilling them in all ages and places in the sight of all the World Of which having treated largely in my Treatise against Infidelity of the sin against the Holy Ghost I referre you thither § 4. IV. It much confirmeth me to finde that there is no other Religion professed in the World that an impartial rational man can rest in That man is made for another life the light of Nature proveth to all men And some way or other there must be opened to us to attain it Mahometanisme I think not worthy a confutation Judaisme must be much beholden to Christianity for its proofs and is but the introduction to it inclusively considered The Heathens or meer Naturalists are so blinde so idolatrous so divided into innumerable sects so lost and bewildred in uncertainties and shew us so little holy fruit of their Theology that I can incline to no more than to take those natural Verities which they confess and which they cast among the rubbish of their fopperies and wickedness and to wipe them clean and take them for some part of my Religion Christianity or nothing is the way § 5. V. It much confirmeth me to observe that commonly the most true and serious Christians are the holyest and most honest righteous men and that the worse men are the greater enemies they are to true Christianity And then to think how incredible it is that God should lead all the worst men into the truth and leave the best and godlyest in an error In small matters or common secular things this were no wonder But in the matter of Believing worshipping and pleasing God and saving of Souls it is not credible As for the belief of a Life to come no men are so far from it as the vilest Whoremongers Drunkards perjured persons Murderers Oppressors Tyrants Thieves Rebels or if any other name can denote the worst of men And none so much believe a Life to come as the most godly honest-hearted persons And can a man that knoweth that there is a God believe that he will leave all good men in so great an error and rightly inform and guide all these Beasts or living walking images of the Devil The same in a great measure is true of the friends and enemies of Christianity § 6. VI. It hath been a great convincing argument with me against both Atheisme and Infidelity to observe the marvelous Providences of God for divers of his servants and the strange answer of Prayers which I my self and ordinarily other Christians have had I have been and am as backward to ungrounded credulity about wonders as most men that will not strive against knowledge But I have been oft convinced by great experience and testimonies which I believed equally with my eye-sight of such actions of God as I think would have convinced most that should know as much of them as I did But few of them are fit to mention For some of them so much concern my self that strangers may be tempted to think that they savour of self-esteem and some of them the factions and parties in these times will by their interest be engaged to distaste And some of them have been done on persons whose after scandalous Crimes have made me think it unfit to mention them lest I should seem
to put honour on a scandalous sinner or seem to dishonour Gods Works by mentioning such an object of them And I have much observed that whatever wonder I ever knew done in answer to Prayer or attestation of any good the Devil hath with marvellous subtilty endeavoured by some error or scandal of men to turn it all against Christ and to his own advantage But yet God declareth the truth of his Promises by the deliverances of his Servants and the granting of prayers which are put up to him in the name of Christ I will not dispute whether these actions shall be called Miracles or not It is enough for my purpose if they be but attesting Providences All Church-History telleth us of many such heretofore how great things have been done and deliverances wrought upon Christians earnest Prayer to God The success of the Thundering Legion in the Army of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus in Germany is commonly mentioned You may see it in the Apolog. of Justin Martyr and Tertullian See more in Pamelius's Notes on Tertull. N. 64. Cyprian saith to Demetrius pag. 328 of the Christians casting out of Devils O si audire velles videre quando a nobis adjurantur torqientur spiritalibus flagris verborum tormentis de obsessis corporibus ejiciuntur quando ejulantes gementes voce humanâ potestate divinâ flagella verbera sentientes venturum judicium confitentur Veni cognosce vera esse quae dicimus quia sic Deos colere te dicis vel ipsis quos colis crede aut si volueris tiâ—i credere de te ipso loquetur audiente te qui nunc tuum pectus obsedit Videlis nos rogari ab eis quos tu rogas tamen ab eis quos tu adoras videbis sub manu nostra stare vinctos tremere captivos quos tu suspicis veneraris ut Dominos certè vel sic confundi in istis erroribus tuis poteris cum conspexeris audieris deos tuos quid sint interrogatione nostra statim prodere c. But it were tedious to recite all that Antiquity telleth us of this kinde Later times have their testimonies also Bayname could tell the Papists that burned him in the midst of his flames Lo ye Papists here is a Miracle I feel no more pain in this fire than in a bed of Down it is as sweet to me as a bed of Roses Bishop Farrar could say when he went to the fire If I stirre in the fire believe not my doctrine and accordingly remain'd unmoved Many more you may see in Martyrologies and Church-history It was the mercifull Providence of God to Mris. Honywood who in her passionate self-accusations when the Minister was perswading her of the pardon of her sin threw the glass which was in her hand up to the wall saying she was as certainly an hypocrite as that glass would break and it fell to the ground and remained unbroken They were convincing Providences which God exercised on the leading women of the Familistical Sect which troubled New-England when one of them Mris. Dyer brought forth a Monster that had the parts of Man Beast Birds and Fishes and the other their Prophetess Mris. Hutchinson brought forth about thirty mishapen lumps or births at once and thereby the Land was awakened and delivered from the danger My own deliverances by prayer because they were my own I think not fit here to express Nor many other persons that were familiar with me some yet living and some dead Nor would I mention such small things as corporal deliverances and cures but only because they are matters of sense and somewhat unusual and not as supposing them the great matters which Christians have to look after or expect in answer to their prayers they are far greater things which prayer brings to all true Christians the strength of the Spirit against temptations the mortification of those sins which nature constitution temperature custom and interest would most strongly draw them to the special assistances of God in duty the information of the mind by a light which sheweth the evidence of truth in a special clearness the resolution of doubts the conquest of passions the elevation of the soul in divine love and praises the joy of the holy Ghost and comfortable thoughts of the coming of Christ and our endless blessedness with God in Heaven These are the Answers of Prayer which are the fulfilling of the promises of Christ and which are of greater moment than Miracles of which we have ordinary experience § 7. VII It confirmeth my belief of the Gospel to observe the connaturality and suitableness which it hath to the best holiest souls that by how much the better in true honesty and charity and heavenliness any man is by so much the more is the Gospel beloved pleasant and suitable to him as humane food is to humane nature My much converse in the world with men of all sorts but most with the persons now described hath given me opportunity to be fully assured of the truth of this experiment beyond all doubt And that which is the best in man is certainly of God and therefore that which is suitable and connatural to the best in man must be of God also § 8. VIII It confirmeth my belief of the Gospel to find it so very suitable to the worlds diseases necessities and business to reconcile them to God and fill them with love and heavenly mindedness which other Religions do meddle with so little and superficially and ineffectually § 9. IX The matter of the Gospel is so holy and spiritual and against all sin and evil spirits that it is incredible that evil spirits or very bad men should be the inventers of it And yet to forge so many miracles and matters of fact and call a man God and to perplex the world with needless delusory strictnesses and to father all this on God himself would have been a villany so transcendent that none but men extremely bad could do it Therefore it must needs be the design of Heaven and not of Men. § 10. X. When I deeply consider the evidence of verity in the Gospel it hath as much to convince me as I could have chosen or desired § 11. 1. If I had been put myself to choose by what means God should open to man the things of the unseen world I could have desired no more than that a messenger might come to us from heaven to tell it us unless we had either sight and sense or immediate vision and fruition And I am fully satisfied 1. That spiritual things are invisible and are no objects of corporeal sense 2. That it is not meet and honourable to God's Wisdom and Justice to govern rational free Agents in via by sight and sense It would be no trial or thanks to the most sensual wretch to forbear his sin if Heaven and Hell were open to his sight 3. That spiritual vision and
fruition is our state in patriâ our end and perfection and not fit for the state of trial and travellers in the way § 12. 2. If I had been to choose who this Messenger should be I could have preferred none before him who is the very Wisdom Truth and Word of God Had it been but an Angel I might have thought that his Indefectibility and Veracity is uncertain to mankind on earth but Wisdom and Truth it self can never lie § 13. 3. If I had been to choose in what way this Messenger should converse with man as an effectual and suitable Teacher of these Mysteries and how the work of Mediation between God and man should be performed I could have desired no fitter way than that he should assume our nature and in that nature familiarly instruct us and be our example and our High Priest toward God by his Merit Sacrifice and Intercession § 14. 4. Had I been to choose what way he should prove his Message to be of God I could not have chosen a more satisfying way than that of Prophecy Sanctity and open numerous and uncontrouled Miracles with his own Resurrection and Ascension and giving the holy Ghost to be his Advocate and Witness continually to the world § 15. 5. I could not have expected that these Miracles should be done in the sight of all the persons in the world in every place and age for then they would be but as common works but rather before such chosen Witnesses as were fit to communicate them to others § 16. 6. Nor could I have chosen a fitter way for such Witnesses to confirm their testimony by than by the same Spirit of holiness and power and by such a stream of Miracles as the Apostles wrought and such success in the actual renovation of their followers § 17. 7. Nor could I well have chosen a more meet and convincing way of History or Tradition to convey down all these things to us than that before described which hath been used by God § 18. 8. Nor could I have chosen any one standing Seal and Witness of Christ so fit for all persons learned and unlearned and to endure through all generations as is the actual saving of men by the real renovation of their hearts and lives by the holy Spirit reclaiming them from selfishness sensuality worldliness and other sin and bringing them up to the Image of God's holiness in love and heavenliness which is the continued work of Christ So that when God hath done all things so as my very reason is constrained to acknowledge best what should I desire more I confess I feel still that my nature would fain be satisfied by the way of sight and sense Could I see heaven and hell I think it would most effectually end all doubts But my Reason is satisfied that it is a thing unmeet and utterly unsuitable to a world that must be morally governed and conducted to their end § 19. XI The temptations of Satan by which he would hinder us from faith love and obedience are so palpable malicious and importunate that they do much to confirm me of the truth and goodness of that word and way which he so much resisteth I think that there are few men good or bad if they will observe both the inward suggestions with which they are oft solicited for matter manner and season and the outward impediments to every good work and invitations to evil which they meet with in their conversations but may be convinced that there are malicious spirits who are enemies to Christ and us and continually by temptations fight against him § 20. XII The Devils contracts with Witches opposing Christ and engaging them to renounce their Baptism and to forsake his ways is some confirmation of the Christian verity That Witches really there are as I said before he that will read Remigius and Bodin only may be satisfied as also the Malleus maleficorum Danaeus c. and the numerous instances in Suffolk and Essex about 21 years ago may further satisfie them And that the Devil draweth them to such renunciations of the Covenant and Ordinances of Christ the many Histories of it are full proof § 21. XIII Though many such reports are fabulous and delusory yet there have been certainly proved in all ages such Apparitions as either by opposition or defence have born some testimony to the Christian faith Of both these last see what I have written in my Treat of Infidelity and in the Saints Rest Part 2. And read Lavater de Spectris Zanchius tom 3. lib. 4 cap. 10. and cap. 20. Daelrio c. And what I said before especially the Narrative called The Devil of Mascon and Dr. Moor of Atheism § 22. XIV The speeches and actions of persons possessed by the Devil usually raging blasphemously against Christ doth somewhat confirm the Christian verity That there are and have been many such there hath been unquestionable evidence See my Saints Rest part 2. page 258 c. Zanchius tom 3. lib. 4. cap. 10. page 288. Forestus de Venenis observ 8. in Schol. Pet. Mart. Loc. Com. Clas 1. cap. 9. Fernel de abdit rerum causis lib. 2. cap. 16. Platerus observ pag. 20. de stupore Doemon c. Tertul. Apol. cap. 23. Cyprian Epis ad Demetrium Origen in Matth. 17. Augustin de Divinat Doemon c. § 23. XV. Lastly the testimony of the enemies of Christianity is some encouragement to faith What conjectures there be that Pythagoras had his knowledge from the Jews and Plato was not a stranger to Moses's writings hath been shewed by many How plain it is that the wiser and better any Heathens have been the nearer they have come in their doctrines to that of Jesus Christ I need not say much to convince the considerate that are men of reading How the Jews were convinced of the miracles of Christ and fled to the accusation of Christ as a Magician is already shewed The wisest and best of the Roman Emperours favoured them Dion Cassius in the life of Nerva Cocceius page 1. saith Caeterum Nerva omnes qui impietatis in Deos rei fuerant eos absolvi voluit exules in patriam reduxit These that were called Impietatis rei were the Jews and Christians who refused to sacrifice to Idols And he addeth Et ne servi de caetero dominos criminarentur edicto vetuit neve liceret aut impietatis aut Judaicae sectae quemquam dehinc insimulari It seemeth by this that when displeased servants would be revenged on their masters they used to accuse them of Christianity or Judaism Trajan did something against the Christians being provoked by the Jews who saith Dion Cassius in vita Trajani did make one Andrew their Captain and about Cyrene murdered of Greeks and Romans above two hundred thousand men But upon Pliny's information of the Christians innocency and unjust sufferings their persecutions were moderated Adrian also was exasperated by the Jews who
And that so great a change and so holy a life is necessary to salvation hath proved a difficulty to some § 11. 9. The doctrine of the Resurrection of the Body is one of the greatest difficulties of all § 12. 10. So is Christ's coming into the World so late and the revealing of his Gospel to so few by Prophecy before and by Preaching since § 13. 11. So also was the appearing Meanness of the Person of Christ and of his Parentage place and condition in the World together with the manner of his birth § 14 12. The manner of his sufferings and death upon a Cross as a Malefactor under the charge of Blasphemy Impiety and Treason hath still been a stumbling-block both to Jews and Gentiles § 15. 13. So hath the fewness and meanness of his followers and the number and worldly preeminence and prosperity of unbelievers and enemies of Christ § 16. 14. The want of excellency of speech and art in the holy Scriptures that they equall not other Writings in Logical method and exactness and in Oratorical elegancies is a great offence to unbelievers § 17. 15. As also that the Physicks of Scripture so much differeth from Philosophers § 18. 16. As also the seeming Contradictions of the Scripture do much offend them § 19. 17. And it offendeth them that Faith in Christ himself is made a thing of such excellency and necessity to salvation § 20. 18. And it is hard to believe that present adversity and undoing in the World is for our benefit and everlasting good § 21. 19. And it offendeth many that the doctrine of Christ doth seem not suited to Kingdoms and Civil Government but only for a few private persons § 22. 20. Lastly the Prophesies which seem not intelligible or not fulfilled prove matter of difficulty and offence There are intrinsecal difficulties of Faith § 23. II. The outward adventitious impediments to the Belief of the Christian Faith are such as these 1. Because many Christians especially the Papists have corrupted the doctrine of Faith and propose gross falshoods contrary to common sense and reason as necessary points of Christian Faith as in the point of Transubstantiation § 24. 2. They have given the World either false or insufficient reasons and motives for the belief of the Christian Verity which being discerned confirmeth them in Infidelity § 25. 3. They have corrupted Gods Worship and have turned it from rational and spiritual into a multitude of irrational ceremonious fopperies fitted to move contempt and laughter in unbelievers § 26. 4. They have corrupted the doctrine of Morality and thereby hidden much of the holyness and purity of the Christian Religion § 27. 5. They have corrupted Church-history obtruding or divulging a multitude of ridiculous falshoods in their Legends and Books of Miracles contrived purposely by Satan to tempt men to disbelieve the Miracles of Christ and his Apostles § 28. 6. They make Christianity odious by upholding their own Sect and power by fire and blood and inhumane Cruelties § 29. 7. They openly manifest that ambition and worldly dignities and prosperity in the Clergy is their very Religion and withall pretend that their party or Sect is all the Church § 30. 8. And the great disagreement among Christians is a stumbling-block to unbelievers while the Greeks and Romans strive who shall be the greatest and both they and many others Sects are condemning unchurching and reproaching one another § 31. 9. The undisciplined Churches and wicked lives of the greatest part of professed Christians especially in the Greek and Latine Churches is a great confirmation of Infidels in their unbelief § 32. 10. And it tempteth many to Apostasie to observe the scandalous errors and miscarriages of many who seemed more godly than the rest § 33. 11. It is an impediment to Christianity that the richest and greatest the learned and the far greatest number in the World have been still against it § 34. 12. The custom of the Countrey and Tradition of their Fathers and the reasonings and cavils of men that have both ability and opportunity and advantage doth bear down the truth in the Countreys while Infidels prevail § 35. 13. The Tyranny of cruel persecuting Princes in the Mahometane and Heathen parts of the World is the grand Impediment to the progress of Christianity by keeping away the means of knowledge And of this the Roman party of Christians hath given them an incouraging example dealing more cruelly with their fellow-Christians than the Turks and some Heathen Princes do So that Tyranny is the great sin which keepeth out the Gospel from most parts of the Earth § 36. III But no Impediments of Faith are so great as those within us As 1. the natural strangeness of all corrupted mindes to God and their blindeness in all spiritual things § 37. 2. Most persons in the World have weak injudicious unfurnished heads wanting the common natural preparatives to Faith not able to see the force of a reason in things beyond the reach of sense § 38. 3. The carnal minde is enmity against the Holiness of Christianity and therefore will still oppose the receiving of its principles § 39. 4. By the advantages of Nature Education Custom and Company men are early possest with prejudices and false conceits against a life of Faith and Holiness which keep out reforming truths § 40. 5. It is very natural to incorporated Souls to desire a sensible way of satisfaction and to take up with things present and seen and to be little affected with things unseen and above our senses § 41. 6 Our strangeness to the Language Idiomes Proverbial speeches then used doth disadvantage us as to the understanding of the Scriptures § 42. 7. So doth our strangeness to the Places and Customs of the Countrey and many other matters of fact § 43. 8. Our distance from those Ages doth make it necessary that matters of fact be received by humane report and Historical Evidence And too few are well acquainted with such History § 44. 9. Most men do forfeit the helps of Grace by wilfull sinning and make Atheism and Infidelity seem to be desireable to their carnal Interest and so are willing to be deceived and forsaking God they are forsaken of him flying from the Light and overcoming Truth and debauching Conscience and disabling Reason for their sensual delights § 45. 10. Those men that have most need of means and help are so averse and lazy that they will not be at the pains and patience to read and conferre and consider and pray and use the means which is needfull to their information but settle their judgement by slight and slothfull thoughts § 46. 11. Yet are the same men proud and self-conceited and unacquainted with the weakness of their own understandings and pass a quick and confident judgement on things which they never understood It being natural to men to judge according to what they do actually apprehend and not according to what they should
all this is at all incredible But it is indeed incredible till conscience have humbled him that the Thief or Murderer should like this penalty or think well of the Judge or that a sinner who judgeth of good and evil in others as Dogs do by the interest of his throat or flesh and thinks them good only that love him and bad that hurt him and are against him should ever believe that it is the amiable goodness of God which causeth him in justice to condemn the wicked 2. But yet let not misunderstanding make this seem harder to you than indeed it is Do not think that souls in hell are hanged up in flames as beasts are hanged in a butchers shambles or that souls have any pain but what is suitable to souls and that 's more than bodies bear It is an affliction in rational ways which falls on rational spirits Devils are now in torment and yet have a malignant kingdom and order and rule in the children of disobedience and go up and down seeking whom they may devour We know not the particular manner of their sufferings but that they are forsaken of God and deprived of his complacential love and mercy and have the rational misery before described and such also as shall be suitable to such kind of bodies as they shall have And while they are immortal no wonder if their misery be so Object VII Who can believe that the damned shall be far more than the saved and the devil have more than God How will this stand with the infinite goodness of God Answ I have fully answered this before in Part 1. chap. 11. and should now adde but this 1. In our enquiries we must begin with the primum cognita or notissima as aforesaid that God is most good and also just and punisheth sinners is before proved to be among the notissima or primum cognita and therefore it is most certain that these are no way contradictory to each other 2. And if it be no contradiction to God's goodness to punish and cast off for ever the lesser part of the world then it is none to punish or cast off the greater part The inequality of number will not alter the case 3. It is no way against the goodness of humane Governours in some cases to punish even the greater number according to their deserts 4. Can any man that openeth his eyes deny it in matter of fact that the far greater part of the world is actually ungodly worldly sensual and disobedient Or that such are meet for punishment and unmeet for the love and holy fruition of God When I see that most men are ungodly and uncapable of Heaven is it not harder to reason to believe that these shall have that joy and employment of which they are uncapable than that they shall have the punishment which agreeth with their capacity desert and choice Must I believe that God's enemies shall love him for ever meerly because they are the greater number If one man that dieth unrenewed be capable of heaven another is so and all are so Therefore I must either believe that no impenitent ungodly person is saved or that all be saved The number therefore is nothing to the deciding of the case 5. Can any man in his wits deny that it is as sure that God permitteth sin in the world as that the Sun shineth on us yea that he permitteth that universal enormous deluge of wickedness which the world groaneth under at this day And that this sin is the souls calamity and to a right judgment is much worse than punishment what ever beastly sensuality may gainsay If then the visible wickedness of the world be permitted by God without any impeachment of his goodness then certainly his goodness may consist with punishment which as such is good when sin is evil And much of this punishment also is but materially permitted by God and executed by sinners upon themselves 6. The wisdom and goodness of God saw it meet for the right government of this world to put the threatnings of an everlasting punishment in his Law and how can that man have the face to say it was needless or too much in the Law with whom it proved not enough to weigh down the trifling interests of the flesh And if it was meet to put that penalty in the Law it is just and meet to put that Law into execution how many soever fall under the penalty of it as hath been proved 7. The goodness of God consisteth not in a Will to make all his creatures as great or good and happy as he can but it is essentially in his infinite perfections and expressively in the communication of so much to his creatures as he seeth meet and in the accomplishment of his own pleasure by such ways of Benignity and Justice as are most suitable to his Wisdom and Holiness Man's personal interest is an unfit rule and measure of God's goodness 8. To recite what I said and speak it plainlier I confess it greatly quieteth my mind against this great objection of the numbers that are damned and cast off for ever to consider how small a part this earth is of God's creation as well as how sinful and impenitent Ask any Astronomer that hath considered the innumerable number of the fixed Stars and Planets with their distances and magnitude and glory and the uncertainty that we have whether there be not as many more or an hundred or thousand times as many unseen to man as all those which we see considering the defectiveness of man's sight and the Planets about Jupiter with the innumerable Stars in the Milky way which the Tube hath lately discovered which man's eyes without it could not see I say ask any man who knoweth these things whether all this earth be any more in comparison of the whole creation than one Prison is to a Kingdom or Empire or the paring of one nail or a little mole or wart or a hair in comparison of the whole body And if God should cast off all this earth and use all the sinners in it as they deserve it is no more sign of a want of benignity or mercy in him than it is for a King to cast one subject of a million into a Jail and to hang him for his murder or treason or rebellion or for a man to kill one louse which is but a molestation to the body which beareth it or than it is to pare a mans nails or cut off a wart or a hair or to pull out a rotten aking tooth I know it is a thing uncertain and unrevealed to us whether all these Globes be inhabited or not but he that considereth that there is scarce any uninhabitable place on earth or in the water or air but men or beasts or birds or fishes or flies or worms and moles do take up almost all will think it a probability so near a certainty as not to be
of all this Bible uno intuitu in a perfect scheme as it is truly intended by the Spirit of God if you saw all begin the Divine Unity and branch out it self into the Trinity and thence into the Trinity of Relations and Correlations and thence into the multiplied branches of Mercy and Precepts and all these accepted and improved in Duty and Gratitude by man and returned up in Love to the blessed Trinity and Unity again and all this in perfect order proportion and harmony you would see the most admirable perfect method that ever was set before you in the world The resemblance of it is in the circular motion of the humours and spirits in mans body which are delivered on from vessel to vessel and perfected in all their motions I know there are many systems and schemes attempted which shew not this but that is because the wisdom of this method is so exceeding great that it is yet but imperfectly understood for my own part I may say as those that have made some progress in Anatomy beyond their Ancestors that they have no thought that they have yet discovered all but rejoyce in what they have discovered which shewed them the hopes and possibility of more So I am far from a perfect comprehension of this wonderful method of Divinity but I have seen that which truly assureth me that it excelleth all the art of Philosophers and Orators and that it is really a most beautiful frame and harmonious consort and that more is within my prospect than I am yet come to 4. Moreover it is Christ who gave all men all the gifts they have to Logicians Orators Astronomers Grammarians Physicians and Musicians c. what ever gifts are suited to mens just ends and callings he bestoweth on them and to his Apostles he gave those gifts which were most suitable to their work I do not undervalue the gifts of Nature or Art in any I make it not with Aristotle an argument for the contempt of Musick Jovem neque canere neque cytharam pulsare but I may say that as God hath greater excellencies in himself so hath he greater gifts to give and such gifts as were fittest for the confirmation of the truth of the Gospel and first planting of the Churches he gave to the Apostles and such as were fit for the edifying of the Church he giveth to his Ministers ever since And such as were fit for the improvement of Nature in lower things he gave the Philosophers and Artists of the world Object XVII The Scripture hath many contradictions in it in points of History Chronology and other things Therefore it is not the word of God Answ Nothing but ignorance maketh men think so understand once the true meaning and allow for the errors of Printers Transcribers and Translators and there will no such thing be found Young Students in all Sciences think their books are full of contradictions which they can easily reconcile when they come to understand them Books that have been so oft translated into so many Languages and the Originals and Translations so oft transcribed may easily fall into some disagreement between the Original and Translations and the various Copies may have divers inconsiderable verbal differences But all the world must needs confess that in all these Books there is no contradiction in any point of Doctrine much less in such as our salvation resteth on There are two opinions among Christians about the Books of the holy Scripture the one is That the Scriptures are so entirely and perfectly the product of the Spirit 's Inspiration that there is no word in them which is not infallibly true The other is That the Spirit was promised and given to the Apostles to enable them to preach to the world the true Doctrine of the Gospel and to teach men to observe what ever Christ commanded and truly to deliver the History of his Life and Sufferings and Resurrection which they have done accordingly But not to make them perfect and indefectible in every word which they should speak or write no not about Sacred things but only in that which they delivered to the Church as necessary to salvation and as the Rule of Faith and Life but every Chronological and Historical narrative is not the Rule of Faith or Life I think that the first opinion is right and that no one errour or contradiction in any matter can be proved in the Scriptures yet all are agreed in this that it is so of Divine Inspiration as yet in the manner and method and style to partake of the various abilities of the Writers and consequently of their humane imperfections And that it is a meer mistake which Infidels deceive themselves by to think that the Writings cannot be of Divine Inspiration unless the Book in order and style and all other excellencies be as perfect as God himself could make it Though we should grant that it is less Logical than Aristotle and less Oratorical and Grammatical and exact in words than Demosthenes or Cicero it would be no disparagement to the certain truth of all that is in it It doth not follow that David must be the ablest man for strength nor that he must use the weapons which in themselves are most excellent if he be called of God to overcome Goliah but rather that it may be known that he is called of God he shall do it with less excellence of strength and weapons than other men and so there may be some real weakness not culpable in the Writings of the several Prophets and Apostles in point of style and method which shall shew the more that they are sent of God to do great things by little humane excellency of speech and yet that humane excellency be never the more to be disliked no more than a sword because David used but a sling and stone If Amos have one degree of parts and Jeremiah another and Isaiah another c. God doth not equal them all by Inspiration but only cause every man to speak his saving truth in their own language and dialect and style As the body of Adam was made of the common earth though God breathed into him a rational soul and so is the body of every Saint even such as may partake of the infirmities of parents so Scripture hath its style and language and methods so from God as we have our bodies even so that there may be in them the effects of humane imperfection and it is not so extraordinarily of God as the truth of the Doctrine is All is so from God as to be suitable to its proper ends but the body of Scripture is not so extraordinarily from him as the soul of it is as if it were the most excellent and exact in every kind of ornament and perfection The Truth and Goodness is the soul of the Scripture together with the power manifested in it and in these it doth indeed excel So that variety of gifts in the Prophets and
you before the judgment-seats Christianity teacheth us to lament the sin of Tyranny the grand crime which keepeth out the Gospel from the Nations of Infidels and Pagans through the earth and eclipseth its glory in the Popish Principalities It teacheth us to resist tyrannical Usurpers in the defence of our true and lawful Kings But if it teach men patiently to suffer rather than rebelliously resist that is not from baseness but true nobleness of spirit exceeding both the Greek and Roman genius in that it proceedeth from a contempt of those inferiour trifles which they rebell for and from that satisfaction in the hopes of endless glory which maketh it easie to them to bear the loss of liberty life or any thing on earth and from obedience to their highest Lord. But in a lawful way they can defend their Countries and liberties as gallantly as ever Heathens did Object IX If your Religion had reason for it what need it be kept up by cruelty and bloud how many thousands and hundred thousands hath sword and fire and inquisition devoured as for the supporting of Religion and when they are thus compelled how know you who believeth Christianity indeed Answ This is none of the way or work of Christianity but of that sect which is raised by worldly interest and design and must accordingly be kept up In Christ's own family two of his Disciples would have called for fire from heaven to consume those that rejected him but he rebuked them and told them that they knew not what manner of spirit they were of and that he came not to destroy mens lives but to save them Will you now lay the blame of that consuming zeal on Christ which he so rebuketh The same two men would have been preferred before the rest to sit at his right hand and his left hand in his Kingdom and his Disciples strove who should be the greatest Did Christ countenance this or did he not sharply reprehend them and tell them that they must not have titles and domination as secular Princes have but be as little children in humility and their greatness must consist in being greatliest serviceable even in being servants to all If men after this will take no warning but fight and kill and burn and torment men in carnal zeal and pride and tyranny shall this be imputed to Christ who in his doctrine and life hath form'd such a testimony against this crime as never was done by any else in the world and as is become an offence to unbelievers Object X. We see not that the Leaders in the Christian Religion do really themselves believe it Pope Leo the tenth called it Fabula de Christo What do men make of it but a Trade to live by a means to get Abbies and Bishopricks and Benefices and to live at ease and fleshly pleasure and what do Secular Rulers make of it but a means to keep their subjects in awe Answ He that knoweth no other Christians in the world but such as these knoweth none at all and is unfit to judge of those whom he knoweth not True Christians are men that place all their happiness and hopes in the life to come and use this life in order to the next and contemn all the wealth and glory of the world in comparison of the love of God and their salvation True Pastors and Bishops of the Church do thirst after the conversion and happiness of sinners and spend their lives in diligent labours to these ends not thinking it too much to stoop to the poorest for their good nor regarding worldly wealth and glory in comparison of the winning of one soul nor counting their lives dear if they may but finish their course and ministery with joy Luk. 15. Act. 20. Heb. 13.7.17 c. They are hypocrites and not true Christians whom the objection doth describe by what names or titles soever they be dignified and are more disowned by Christ than by any other in the world Object XI Christians are divided into so many sects among themselves and every one condemning others that we have reason to suspect them all for how know we which of them to believe or follow Answ 1. Christianity is but One and easily known and all Christians do indeed hold this as certain by common agreement and consent they differ not at all about that which I am pleading for there may be a difference whether the Pope of Rome or the Patriarch of Constantinople be the greater or whether one Bishop must rule over all and such like matters of carnal quarrel but there is no difference whether Christ be the Saviour of the world or whether all his doctrine be infallibly true and the more they quarrel about their personal interests and by-opinions the most valid is their testimony in the things wherein they all agree it is not those things which they differ about that I am now pleading for or perswading any to embrace but those wherein they all consent 2. But if they agree not in all the Integrals of their Religion it is no wonder nor inferreth any more than that they are not all perfect in the knowledge of such high and mysterious things and when no man understandeth all that is in Aristotle nor no two interpreters of him agree in every exposition no nor any two men in all the world agree in every opinion who hold any thing of their own what wonder if Christians differ in many points of difficulty 3. But their differences are nothing in comparison of the Heathen Philosophers who were of so many minds and ways that there was scarce any coherence among them nor many things which they could ever agree in 4. The very differences of abundance of honest Christians is occasioned by their earnest desire to please God and do nothing but what is just and right and their high esteem of piety and honesty while the imperfection of their judgments keepeth them from knowing in all things what it is which indeed is that good and righteous way which they should take If children do differ and fall out if it be but in striving who shall do best and please their father it is the more excusable enemies do not so ideots fall not out in School-disputes or Philosophical controversies swine will not fall out for gold or jewels if they be cast before them in the streets but it 's like that men may 5. But the great sidings and factions kept up in the world and the cruelties exercised thereupon are from worldly hypocrites who under the mask of Christianity are playing their own game And why must Christ be answerable for those whom he most abhorreth and will most terribly condemn Object XII You boast of the holiness of Christians and we see not but they are worse than Heathens and Mahometans they are more drunken and greater deceivers in their dealings as lustful and unclean as covetous and carnal as proud and ambitious as tyrannical and
perfidious as cruel and contentious insomuch as among the Turkish Mahometans and the Indian Banians the wickedness of Christians is the grand cause that they abhor Christianity and it keepeth out your Religion from most Nations of the earth so that it is a proverb among them when any is suspected of treachery What do you think I am a Christian And Acosta witnesseth the like of the West-Indies Answ 1. Every man knoweth that the vulgar rabble who indeed are of no Religion will seem to be of the Religion which is most for their worldly advantage or else which their Ancestors and Custom have delivered to them And who can expect that such should live as Christians who are no Christians You may as well blame men because Images do not labour and are not learned wise and virtuous We never took all for Christians indeed who for carnal interest or custom or tradition take up the bare name and desire to be called Christians rebels may affect the name of loyal subjects and thieves and robbers the name of true and honest men Shall loyalty truth and honesty therefore be judged of by such as them Nothing can be more unrighteous than to judge of Christianity by those hypocrites whom Christ hath told us shall be condemned to the sorest punishment and whom he hateth above all sorts of sinners What if Julian Celsus Porphyry or any of these objectors should call themselves Christians and live in drunkenness cruelty perjury or deceit is it any reason that Christ should be reproached for their crimes Christianity is not a dead opinion or name but an active heavenly principle renewing and governing heart and life I have before shewed what Christianity is 2. In the Dominions of the Turks and other Infidel Princes the Christians by oppression are kept without the means of knowledge and so their ignorance hath caused them to degenerate for the greater part into a sensual sottish sort of people unlike to Christians And in the Dominions of the Moscovite tyranny hath set up a jealousie of the Gospel and suppressed Preaching for fear lest Preachers should injure the Emperour And in the West the usurpation and tyranny of the Papacy hath lock'd up the Scriptures from that people in an unknown tongue that they know no more what Christ saith than the Priest thinks meet to tell them lest they should be loosened from their dependance on the Roman Oracle And thus Ignorance with the most destroyeth Christianity and leaveth men but the shadow image and name For belief is an intellectual act and a sort of knowing and no man can believe really he knoweth not what If any Disciples in the School of Christ have met with such Teachers as think it their vertue and proficiency to be ignorant call not such Christians as know not what Christianity is and judge not of Christ's doctrine by them that never read or heard it or are not able to give you any good account of it But blessed be the Lord there are many thousand better Christians Object XIII But it is not the ignorant rabble only but many of your most zealous Professors of Christianity who have been as false as proud and turbulent and seditious as any others Answ 1. That the true genuine Christian is not so you may see past doubt by the doctrine and life of Christ and his Apostles And that there are thousands and millions of humble holy faithful Christians in the world is a truth which nothing but ignorance or malice can deny 2. Hypocrites are no true Christians what zeal soever they pretend There is a zeal for self and interest which is oft masked with the name of zeal for Christ It is not the seeming but the real Christian which we have to justifie 3. It is commonly a few young unexperienc'd novices which are tempted into disorders But Christ will bring them to repentance for all before he will forgive and save them Look into the Scripture and see whether it do not disown and contradict every fault both great and small which ever you knew any Christian commit If it do as visibly it doth why must Christ be blamed for our faults when he is condemning them and reproving us and curing us of them Object XIV The greater part of the world is against Christianity Heathens and Infidels are the far greater part of the earth and the greatest Princes and learnedst Philosophers have been and are on the other side Answ 1. The greater number of the world are not Kings nor Philosophers nor wise nor good men and yet that is no disparagement to Kings or learned or good men 2. The most of the world do not know what Christianity is nor ever heard the reasons of it and therefore no wonder if they are not Christians And if the most of the world be ignorant and carnal and such as have subjected their reason to their lusts no wonder if they are not wise 3. There is no where in the world so much learning as among the Christians experience puts that past dispute with those that have any true knowledge of the world Mahomitanism cannot endure the light of learning and therefore doth suppress or sleight it The old Greeks and Romans had much learning which did but prepare for the reception of Christianity at whose service it hath continued ever since But barbarous ignorance hath over spread almost all the rest of the world even the learning of the Chinenses and the Pythagoreans of the East is but childishness and dotage in comparison of the learning of the present Christians Object XV. For all that you say when we hear subtil arguings against Christianity it staggereth us and we are not able to confute them Answ That is indeed the common case of tempted men their own weakness and ignorance is their enemies strength But your ignorance should be lamented and not the Christian cause accused it is a dishonour to your selves but it is none to Christ Do your duty and you may be more capable of discerning the evidence of truth Object XVI But the sufferings which attend Christianity are so great that we cannot bear them in most places it is persecuted by Princes and Magistrates and it restraineth us from our pleasures and putteth us upon an ungrateful troublesome life and we are not souls that have no bodies and therefore cannot sleight these things Answ But you have souls that were made to rule your bodies and are more worthy and durable than they and were your souls such as reason telleth you they should be no life on earth would be so delectable to you as that which you account so troublesome And if you will chuse things perishing for your portion be content with the momentary pleasures of a dream you must patiently undergo the fruits of such a foolish choice And if eternal glory will not compensate what ever you can lose by the wrath of man or by the crossing of your fleshly minds you
must give light to Christianity and prepare men to receive it And they think to know what is in Heaven before they will learn what they are themselves and what it is to be a man Cond 4. Get a true Anatomy Analysis or Description of Christianity in your minds for if you know not the true nature of it first you will be lamentably disadvantaged in enquiring into the truth of it For Christianity well understood in the quiddity will illustrate the mind with such a winning beauty as will make us meet its evidence half-way and will do much to convince us by its proper light Cond 5. When you have got the true method of the Christian doctrine or Analysis of faith begin at the Essentials or primitive truths and proceed in order according to the dependencies of truths and do not begin at the latter end nor study the conclusion before the premises Cond 6. Yet look on the whole scheme or frame of causes and evidences and take them entirely and conjunct and not as peevish factious men who in splenish zeal against another sect reject and vilifie the evidence which they plead This is the Devils gain by the raising of sects and contentions in the Church he will engage a Papist for the meer interest of his sect to speak lightly of the Scripture and the Spirit and many Protestants in meer opposition to the Papists to sleight Tradition and the testimony of the Church denying it its proper authority and use As if in the setting of a Watch or Clock one would be for one wheel and another for another and each in peevishness cast away that which another would make use of when it will never go true without them all Faction and contentions are deadly enemies to truth Cond 7. Mark well the suitableness of the remedy to the disease that is of Christianity to the depraved state of man and mark well the lamentable effects of that universal depravation that your experience may tell you how unquestionable it is Cond 8. Mark well how connaturally Christianity doth relish with holy souls and how well it suiteth with honest principles and hearts so that the better any man is the better it pleaseth him And how potently all debauchery villany and vice befriendeth the cause of Atheists and unbelievers Cond 9. Take a considerate just survey of the common enmity against Christianity and Holiness in all the wicked of the world and the notorious war which is every where managed between Christ and the Devil and their several followers that you may know Christ partly by his enemies Cond 10. Impartially mark the effects of Christian doctrine where ever it is sincerely entertain'd and see what Religion maketh the best men and judge not of serious Christians at a distance by false reports of ignorant or malicious adversaries And then you will see that Christ is actually the Saviour of souls Cond 11. Be not liars your selves lest it dispose you to think all others to be liars and to judge of the words of others by your own Cond 12. Be-think you truly what persons you should be your selves and what lives you should live if you did not believe the Christian doctrine or if you doe not believe it mark what effect your unbelief hath on your lives For my own part I am assured if it were not for the Christian doctrine my heart and life would be much worse than it is though I had read Epictetus Arrian Plato Plotinus Jamblichus Proclus Seneca Cicero Plutarch every word and those few of my neighbourhood who have fallen off to infidelity have at once fallen to debauchery and abuse of their nearest relations and differed as much in their lives from what they were before in their profession of Christianity though unsound as a leprous body differeth from one in comeliness and health Cond 13. Be well acquainted if possible with Church-History that you may understand by what Tradition Christianity hath descended to us For he that knoweth nothing but what he hath seen or receiveth a Bible or the Creed without knowing any further whence and which way it cometh to us is greatly disadvantaged as to the reception of the faith Cond 14. In all your reading of the holy Scriptures allow still for your ignorance in the languages proverbs customs and circumstances which are needful to the understanding of particular Texts and when difficulties stop you be sure that no such ignorance remain the cause He that will but read Brugensis Grotius Hammond and many other that open such phrases and circumstances with Topographers and Bochartus and such others as write of the Animals Utensils and other circumstances of those times will see what gross errors the opening of some one word or phrase may deliver the Reader from Cond 15. Vnderstand what excellencies and perfections they be which the Spirit of God intended to adorn the holy Scriptures with and also what sort of humane imperfections are consistent with these its proper perfections that so false expectations may not tempt you into unbelief It seduceth many to infidelity to imagine that if Scripture be the word of God it must needs be most perfect in every accident and mode which were never intended to be part of its perfection Whereas God did purposely make use of those men and of that style and manner of expression which was defective in some points of natural excellency that so the supernatural excellency might be the more apparent As Christ cured the blind with clay and spittle and David slew Goliah with a sling The excellency of the means must be estimated by its aptitude to its end Cond 16. If you see the evidences of the truth of Christianity in the whole let that suffice you for the belief of the several parts when you see not the true answer to particular exceptions If you see it soundly proved that Christ is the Messenger of the Father and that his word is true and that the holy Scripture is his word this is enough to quiet any sober mind when it cannot confute every particular objection or else no man should ever hold fast any thing in the world if he must let all go after the fullest proof upon every exception which he cannot answer The inference is sure If the whole be true the parts are true Cond 17. Observe well the many effects of Angels ministration and the evidences of a communion between us and the spirits of the unseen world for this will much facilitate your belief Cond 18. Over-look not the plain evidences of the Apparitions Witches and wonderful events which fall out in the times and places where you live and what reflections they have upon the Christian cause Cond 19. Observe well the notable answers of Prayers in matters internal and external in others and in your selves Cond 20. Be well studied at home about the capacity use and tendency of all your faculties and you will find that your very nature pointeth you up to
of my life in converse with such truly sanctified persons and in preaching this Gospel through the great mercy of God with such success upon no small numbers so that I am certain by full experience of the reality of that holy change which cannot be done but with the co-operation of God I have seen that this change is another matter than fancy opinion or factious conjunction with a Sect Even the setting up God in the soul as God as our Owner Ruler and Chief Good and the devoting of the soul to him in Resignation Obedience and thankful Love the seeking of an everlasting felicity in his glorious sight and love in heaven the contempt of this world as it pleaseth the flesh and the holy use of it as the way to our felicity and pleasing God the subduing and denying all carnal desires which would rebel against God and reason and restoring Reason to the government of the lower faculties the denying of that inordinate selfishness which setteth up our interest against our neighbours and the respecting and loving our neighbours as our selves and doing to others as we would be done by and doing good to all men as far as we have power the holy governing of our inferiours and obeying our superiours in order to these ends living soberly righteously and godly in this world and in the patient bearing of all afflictions and diligent serving God in our several places to redeem our time and prepare for death and wait with longing for the everlasting glory the hope of which is caused in us by faith in Christ our Ransome Reconciler Example Teacher Governour and Judge This is the true nature of the Religion expressed in the Gospel and impressed on the souls of sanctified men By this effect I know that Christ is the Saviour of the world and no deceiver as I know a man to be a true Physician and no deceiver when I see him ordinarily and throughly perform the cures which he undertaketh He saveth us actually from the power of our sins and bringeth up our hearts to God and therefore we may boldly say He is our Saviour This witness through his mercy I have in my self and is alway with me and in those whom I converse with round about me I have also upon just enquiry found that the witnesses of Christ's Resurrection and Miracles have delivered us their testimony with a three-fold evidence 1. The evidence of just credibility to a humane belief 2. The evidence of natural certainty in the natural impossibilities of deceit 3. The evidence of supernatural divine attestation in 1. The Image of God on their hearts and doctrine 2. Their miracles and 3. Their sanctifying success And I have found that the witnesses of the Miracles of the Apostles themselves have also given us the same three degrees of proof of the Verity of their testimony though Miracles continue not now as then And I have look'd round about me in the world as diligently and impartially as I could to see whether Christ and the way which he hath prescribed us have any competitor which may make it difficult to resolve which to prefer and follow And as I have found that none but GOD alone hath absolute Dominion and Sovereignty over us and is our chief Benefactor nor fit to be our felicity and ultimate end so I have found that there is no one so fit to be taken for our Mediator and the Way to God as Jesus Christ none else that hath a natural aptitude none else among men that is perfect without sin that hath conquered Satan the world and death that is a Messenger from Heaven so infallible and sure whose Doctrine and Life is suited to our case none else that is become a Sacrifice for our sins and hath risen from the dead and ascended into Glory and doth govern and preserve us and will judge the world and hath power to give the holy Ghost both for Gifts and Graces nor that actually giveth it to the sanctifying of all his sincere followers none else that hath such a Church and Kingdom contemning the world and contemned by the world and so truly fitted to the pleasing of God and the future fruition of him in Glory I see that Judaism is but the porch of Christianity and if Christ had not confirmed the verity of the Old Testament to me I should have found the difficulty of believing it much greater And as for Mahometanism besides the common truths which it retaineth of the Unity of the Godhead the Verity of Christ and the Life to come c. there is nothing else which at all inviteth my understanding And as for Heathenism the case that it hath brought the miserable world into is much to be pitied and deplored Much precious truth is revealed to us by Nature but experience telleth us of the need of more and Christianity hath all which Nature teacheth with a great deal more So that Christianity hath no considerable competitor And as for worldly wealth and honour superiority and command of others the favour applause and praise of great ones or of the multitude voluptuousness and fleshly delights c. ease long life or any accommodations of the flesh yea learning it self as it is but the pleasing of the fancy in the knowledge of unnecessary things all these I have perused and found them to be deceit and trouble a glimpse of heaven a taste of the love of God in Christ yea a fervent desire after God yea a penitent tear is better than them all and yieldeth a delight which leaveth a better taste behind it and which my Reason more approveth in the review and the vanity of all inferiour pleasures appeareth to me in the common effects they distract and corrupt the minds of those that have the greatest measure of them and make them the calamity of their times the furious afflicters of the upright and the pity of all sober standers-by who see them turn the world into a Bedlam and how all their honour wealth and sport will leave them at a dying hour and with what dejected minds unwelcome death will be entertain'd by them and with what sad reviews they will look back upon all their lives and in what sordid dust and darkness they must leave the rotting flesh when their souls are gone to receive their doom before the Judge of all the world All these are things which were past all doubt with me since I had any solid use of reason and things which are still before my eyes Wherefore my God I look to Thee I come to Thee to Thee alone No man no worldly creature Made me none of them did Redeem me none of them did Renew my soul none of them will justifie me at thy Bar nor forgive my sin nor save me from thy penal Justice none of them will be a full or a perpetual felicity or portion for my soul I am not a stranger to their promises and performances I have trusted them too
me who I know canst neither be deceived or by any falshood or seduction deceive On thee therefore O my dear Redeemer do I cast and trust this sinful soul with Thee and with thy holy Spirit I renew my Covenant I know no other I have no other I can have no other Saviour but thy self To thee I deliver up this soul which thou hast redeemed not to be advanced to the wealth and honours and pleasures of this world but to be delivered from them and to be healed of sin and brought to God and to be saved from this present evil world which is the portion of the ungodly and unbelievers to be washed in thy Bloud and illuminated quickned and confirmed by thy SPIRIT and conducted in the ways of holiness and love and at last to be presented justified and spotless to the Father of spirits and possessed of the glory which thou hast promised O thou that hast prepared so dear a medicine for the clensing of polluted guilty souls leave not this unworthy soul in its guilt or in its pollution O thou that knowest the Father and his Will and art nearest to him and most beloved of him cause me in my degree to know the Father acquaint me with so much of his will as concerneth my duty or my just encouragement leave not my soul to groap in darkness seeing thou art the Sun and Lord of Light O heal my estranged thoughts of God! is he my light and life and all my hope and must I dwell with him for ever and yet shall I know him no better than thus shall I learn no more that have such a Teacher and shall I get no nearer him while I have a Saviour and a Head so near O give my faith a clearer prospect into that better world and let me not be so much unacquainted with the place in which I must abide for ever And as thou hast prepared a Heaven for holy souls prepare this too-unprepared soul for Heaven which hath not long to stay on earth And when at death I resign it into thy hands receive it as thine own and finish the work which thou hast begun in placing it among the blessed Spirits who are filled with the sight and love of God I trust thee living let me trust thee dying and never be ashamed of my trust And unto Thee the Eternal Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son the Communicative LOVE who condescendest to make Perfect the Elect of God do I deliver up this dark imperfect soul to be further renewed confirmed and perfected according to the holy Covenant Refuse not to bless it with thine indwelling and operations quicken it with thy life irradiate it by thy light sanctifie it by thy love actuate it purely powerfully and constantly by thy holy motions And though the way of this thy sacred influx be beyond the reach of humane apprehension yet let me know the reality and saving power of it by the happy effects Thou art more to fouls than souls to bodies than light to eyes O leave not my soul as a carrion destitute of thy life nor its eyes as useless destitute of thy light nor leave it as a senseless block without thy motion The remembrance of what I was without thee doth make me fear lest thou shouldest with-hold thy grace Alass I feel I daily feel that I am dead to all good and all that 's good is dead to me if thou be not the life of all Teachings and reproofs mercies and corrections yea the Gospel it self and all the liveliest Books and Sermons are dead to me because I am dead to them yea God is as no God to me and Heaven as no Heaven and Christ as no Christ and the clearest evidences of Scripture verity are as no proofs at all if thou represent them not with light and power to my soul Even as all the glory of the world is as nothing to me without the light by which it 's seen O thou that hast begun and given me those heavenly intimations and desires which flesh and bloud could never give me suffer not my folly to quench these sparks nor this bruitish flesh to prevail against thee nor the powers of hell to stifle and kill such a heavenly seed O pardon that folly and wilfulness which hath too often too obdurately and too unthankfully striven against thy grace and depart not from an unkind and sinful soul I remember with grief and shame how I wilfully bore down thy motions punish it not with desertion and give me not over to my self Art thou not in Covenant with me as my Sanctifier and Confirmer and Comforter I never undertook to do these things for my self but I consent that thou shouldest work them on me As thou art the Agent and Advocate of Jesus my Lord O plead his cause effectually in my soul against the suggestions of Satan and my unbelief and finish his healing saving work and let not the flesh or world prevail Be in me the resident witness of my Lord the Author of my Prayers the Spirit of Adoption the Seal of God and the earnest of mine inheritance Let not my nights be so long and my days so short nor sin eclipse those beams which have often illuminated my soul Without thee Books are senseless scrawls studies are dreams learning is a glow-worm and wit is but wantonness impertinency and folly Transcribe those sacred precepts on my heart which by thy dictates and inspirations are recorded in thy holy word I refuse not thy help for tears and groans but O shed abroad that love upon my heart which may keep it in a continual life of love And teach me the work which I must do in Heaven refresh my soul with the delights of holiness and the joys which arise from the believing hopes of the everlasting Joys Exercise my heart and tongue in the holy praises of my Lord. Strengthen me in sufferings and conquer the terrors of death and hell Make me the more heavenly by how much the faster I am hastening to heaven and let my last thoughts words and works on earth be likest to those which shall be my first in the state of glorious immortality where the Kingdom is delivered up to the Father and GOD will for ever be All and In all of whom and through whom and to whom are all things To whom be glory for ever Amen CHAP. XIII Consectaries 1. What Party of Christians should we joyn with or be of seeing they are divided into so many Sects I Shall briefly dispatch the Answer of this Question in these following Propositions § 1. GODLYNESS and CHRISTIANITY is our only Religion and if any party have any other we must renounce it § 2. The Church of Christ being his Body is but One and hath many Parts but should have no Parties but Vnity and Concord without Division § 3. Therefore no Christian must be of a Party or Sect as such that is as
even so the bruitish grossness of the Somatists driveth some Philosophers into Platonick dreams and the Platonick fictions harden the Epicureans in a far worser way Lactantius de ira Dei cap. 13. thinks that Epicurus was moved to his opinion against Providence by seeing the hurt that good men and Religious endure from the woâ—ser sort here in this world But why should you run out on one side the way because other men run out on the other why do you not rather argue from the doctrine in the sober mean that it is true than from the extreams that the truth is falshood When reason will allow you to conclude no more than that those extremes are falshood But surely I had rather hold Plato's Anima mundi or Aristotle's Intellectus agens and his moving Intelligences than Epicurus his Atoms and motion only And I had rather think with Alexander Arphad that omnis actio corporis est ab incorporeo principio yea or the Stoicks doctrine of Intellectual Fire doing all than Gassendus his doctrine that no incorporeal thing can move a corporeal or that Atoms and their motion only do all that we find done in nature When I look over and about me I find it a thing quite past my power to think that the glorious parts above us are not replenished with much nobler creatures than we And therefore if the Platonists and the ancient Platonick Fathers of the Church did all think that they lived in communion with Angels and had much to do with them and that the superiour intelligences were a nobler part of their studies than meer bodies they shall have the full approbation of my reason in this though I would not run with them into any of their presumptions and uncertain or unsound conceits Saith Aeneas Gazaeus pag. 778. when he had told us that Plato Pythagoras Plotinus and Numenius were for the passing of men's souls into bruits but Porphyry and Jamblichus were against it and thought that they passed only into men Ego quidem hac ipsa de causa filium aut famulum ob id quod commiserint peccatum puniens antequam de ipsis supplicium sumam praemoneo ut meminerint ne posthac unquam in eadem mala recurrant Deus autem quando ultima supplicia decernit non edocet eos qui poenarum causas sed scelerum memoriam omnem tollet vide pag. 382. For this reason and many others we assume not their conceit of the soul's pre-existence and think all such unproved fancies to be but snares to trouble the world with We think not that God punisheth men for sin in another world while he totally obliterateth the memory of the other world and of their sin When he hath told us that In Adam all die and By one mans disobedience many are made sinners and so condemnation passed upon all Rom. 5. Nor will we with Origen thus tempt men to look for more such changes hereafter which we can give them no proof of Nor will we distribute the Angelical Hierarchy into all the degrees which the pseudo-Dionysius doth nor with the Gnosticks Basilidians Saturninians Valentinians and abundance of those antient Hereticks corrupt Christianity with the mixture of fanatick dreams about the unrevealed Powers and worlds above us either worshipping Angels or prying into those things which he hath not seen and are not revealed vainly puft up by his fleshly mind or without cause puffed up by the imagination of his own flesh as Dr. Hammond translateth it Col. 2.18 Nor will we make a Religion with Paracelsus Behmen the Rosicrucians or the rest described by Christ Beckman Exercit. of the Philosophical whimsies of an over-stretch'd imagination And yet we will not reject the saying of Athenagoras Apol. pag. 57. Magnum numerum Angelorum Ministrorum Dei esse fatemur quos opifex architectus mundi Deus Verbo suo tanquam in classes ordinavit centuriavitque ut elementa coelos mundum quae in mundo sunt vicesque ordinem omnium moderarent Though we may adde with Junilius Africanus that Whether the Angels meddle with the government of the world of stablished creatures is a difficult question OBJECTION XIX IF the soul do continue individuate yet its actings will not be such as they are now in the body because they have not spirits to act by And as Gassendus thinketh that the reason of oblivion in old men is the wearing out of the vestigia of the former spirits by the continual flux or transition of matter so we may conceive that all memory will cease to separated souls on the same account and therefore they will be unfit for Rewards or Punishments as not remembring the cause Answ 1. Iâ— Gassendus his opinion were true men should forget all things once a year if not once a month considering how many pounds of matter are spent every 24 hours And why then do we better when we are old remember the things which we did between nine or ten years old and twenty than most of the later passages of our lives as I do for my part very sensibly 2. What is mans memory for with bruits we meddle not but scientia praeteritorum Is not remembring a knowing of things past surely we may perceive that it is and that it is of the same kind of action with the knowing of things present And therefore we may make not memory a third faculty because it is the same with the understanding 3. We have little reason to think that the surviving soul will lose any of its essential powers and grow by its change not only impotent but another thing Therefore it will be still an intelligent power And though remote actions and effects such as writing fighting c. are done by instruments which being removed we cannot do them without yet essential acts are nothing so which flow immediately from the essence of the agent as light heat and motion of the fire If there be but due objects these will be performed without such instruments Nor will the Creator who continueth at an active intelligent power continue it so in vain by denying it necessaries for its operations There is like to be much difference in many respects between the soul's actings here and hereafter but the acts flowing from its essence immediately as knowledge volition complacency called Love and Displacencie c. will be the same How far the soul here doth act without any idea or instrument I have spoken before And the manner of our acting hereafter no man doth now fully understand But that which is essentially an intellectual volitive power will not be idle in its active essence for want of a body to be its instrument If we may so far ascribe to God himself such Affections or Passions as the ingenious Mr. Samuel Parker in his Teutam Phil. l. 2. c. 8. p. 333 c. hath notably opened we have no reason to think that scientia praeteritorum is not to be ascribed
plenum non potest fideli prudentia confitemur Junilius African de part div Leg. l. 2. c. 30. Q. Unde probamus libros Religionis nostrae divina esse in spiratione conscriptos R. Ex multis quorum primum est ipsius Scripturae veritas deinde ordo rerum consonantia praeceptorum modus locutionis fine ambitu puritasque verborum Additur conscribentium praedicantium qualitas quod divina homines excelsa vates infacundi subtilia non nisi divino repleti spiritu tradidissent Tum praedicationis virtus quam dum praedicaretur licet à paucis despectis obtinuit Accedunt his rectificatio contrariorum ut Sybillarum vel Philosophorum expulsio adversariorum utilitas consequentium exitus eorum quae per acceptationes figuras praedictiones quae praedicta sunt ad postremum miracula jugiter facta donee Scriptura ipsa susciperetur à gentibus De qua hoc nunc ad proximum miraculum sufficit quod ab omnibus suscepta cognoscitur Junilius African de part div Leg. l. 2. c. 29. Heb. 10.15 1 Pet. 1.10 2 Pet. 1.19 20 Lege Disputationem Gregentii cum Herbano Judeo See Whately on the Types and Lud. Crocii Epicris and most largely Micrelius's Judas or second Part of his Book against Infidels All Christians agree in the main Doctrins of a holy life Leg. Marc. Eremit de Lege Spirituali Dorothei Doctrinas Benedicti Instrumenta virtutum Macarii Homil. Hesychii Presb. ad Theodul Centuriae Tho. Kempis Thauleri opera and of the later true Papists Sales Introduction to a devout life Benedicti de Benedict Regul Barbanson de Amore Dei Parsons of Resolution Cressy's Sancta Sophia c. And among the Protestants the number of holy Treatises is so great that I shall not name any in so numerous a Treasury So that however the spirit of contention causeth many of them to over-look the good that is in one another and aggravate the evil yet Holiness is the Doctrin of all the Christians in the world and the practice of all that are sincere And while the Sects and Hypocrites do rail at one another yet in all they speak against sin I have oft thought Why is it that as Christians man live together in love but as Parties when they come to the interest of their Sects they hate revile and persecute one another And I answer it Because as Christians they give no cause of hatred to each other but as Sects and Parties they leave God's way and shew their selfishness and loathsome faults and are enclined to injure one another and so do again suffer by those whom they have injured But the Wisdom from above is pure and peaceable c. Leg. etiam Thalessi Centuriae Nili Paraenesis Cum Dominus pelam dicit Ego n medio vestri sum sicut qui ministrat quis adeo saevus aut mentis inop est ut omnem nâ—ox fastum ambitionem non respuat Cui universa sancta menâ—coue ratione praedita creatura cultum ministerium defert quique eadem prorsus cum Deo Patie Majestate potestate pollet is Ministri persona sumptâ— discipulorum pedes lavat Tâ—tus Bostrenso in Luc. cap. 21. Diligens Lector intelliget unam faciem esse Eloquiorum Sacrorum cum distincte considerabit quid sit admonitio quid sit preceptum quid prohibitio quid remissio haec nec se invicem impugnare nec à seipsis distare sed in omnibus sanitatis remed um moderare Hildebert Canoman Epist 83. argum Joh. 20.17 Duo sine pluribus faciunt hominem sanctum viz. Cognitio Amor hoc est Cognitio Veritatis Amor bonitatis Sed ad cognitionem Dei qui est Veritas non pote venire nisi per cognitionem tuiâ—ipsius nec ad amorem Dei qui est bonitas nisi per amorem proximi tui Ad cognitionem tui-ipsius potes pervenire per frequentem meditationem ad cognitionem Dei per puram contemplationem Edmund Cantuar Specul Eccles cap. 3. vid. plura c. 29. c. Luk. 2.46 Luk. 3.22 Luk. 4. Mat. 4. At qui causas causis partes partibus volumus aequaâ—e magis nos valemus ostendere quid in Christo fuerimus secuti quam in Philosophis quid vos Ac nos quidem in illo secuti haec sumus Opera illa magnifica potentissimafque virtutes quas variis edidit exhibuâ—tque miraculis quibus quivis posset ad necessitatem credulitatis adduci judicare fideliter non esse quae fierent hominis sed Divinae alicujus incognitae porestatis Vos in Philosophis virtutes secuti quas estis ut magis voâ—illis quam nos Christo oportuerit credere Quisquam ne illorum aliquando verbo uno potuit aut unius imperii jussione non dicam maris insanias aut tempestatum furores prohibere compescere non coecis restituere lumina non ad vitam revocare defurcâ—os non annosas dissovere passiones sed quod levissimum est furenculum scabiem aut inhaerentem spinulam callo una interdictione sanare Personarum contentio non est eloquentiae viribus sed gestorum operum virtute pendenda Arnob. adv Gent. l. 2. Tâ—ia totus mundus mirabatur Christum post mortem surrex isse cum caâ—ne coelum ascendisse per duodecim Apostolos Piscatores mundum convertissâ— Chrysost in Math. Ideo non omnibus sanctis miracula attribuuntur ne perniciosissimo errore decipiantur infirmi aestimantes in talibus factis esse majora bona quam in operibus justitiae quibus vita aeterna comparatur Aug. de Civ Dei 33. Christianity is thus truly and orderly described by Augustine de Agon cap. 18. Fides est prima quae subjugat animam Deo deinde praecepta dat vivendi quibus custoditis spes nostra firmatur nutritur cum quod cognitio actio beatum faciunt in cognitione cavendus est error in actione nequitia Ille justus sancti vivit qui rerum in teger aestimator est Ipse est qui ordinatam habet charitatem ne aut diligat quod non est diligendum aut non diligat quod est diligendum aut amplius diligat quod minus est diligendum aut minus diligat quod amplius est diligendum aut minus aut amplius quod aeque diligendum est August de Doctr. Christian Apud Christianos non qui patitur sed qui facit injuriam miser est Hâ—eâ—on Sanctitatis causa servanda sunt pudicitia corporis castitas animae veritas doctrinae Aug. ibid. Fidâ—s attingit inaccessa deprehendit ignota comprehendit immensa apprehendit novissima Ipsam denique aeternitatem suo illo vastissimo sinu quodammodo circumcludit Bern. in Cant. Quatuor mirabilis fecit Deus de Piscatore primum Ecclesiae pastorem de persecutore magistrum doctorem gentium de publicano primum Evangelistam de latrone primum Coelicolam Chrysost in Matth. Multo melius est ex