Selected quad for the lemma: world_n
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A27438
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Of revelation and the Messias a sermon preached at the publick commencement at Cambridge, July 5th, 1696 / by Richard Bentley ...
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Bentley, Richard, 1662-1742.
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1696
(1696)
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Wing B1942; ESTC R5633
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15,739
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38
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that nation were of all others the most sutable to the design of the Messias For since it was fit and necessary that Prophecies should foretell of him long before his coming that his pedegree and extraction should be accurately deduced through a long series of Ancestors and other such marks be assigned of him that men might know This was He what more proper to those purposes than the state of the Jews that peculiar people secluded and distinguish'd one tribe from another and the whole from all the rest of Mankind by the very frame of their polity So that the Genealogies were less confused the Histories and Prophecies more faithfully recorded and the accomplishment of all more certain and illustrious than they could have been in any other Nation upon Earth all of which within that long compass of time were blended together by mutual commerce and mutual conquest and other omnifarious causes of mixture and confusion And then as to that other surmise that God would have proposed fair and equal means of general salvation and not upon such narrow and insufficient terms as an actual Faith in the person of Jesus a condition impossible to the much greater part of Mankind we acknowledge it to be true infallibly true Faith in Christ Jesus the only way to Salvation since the preaching of the Gospel so as whosoever rejects that when it is duly declared to him and refuses his assent and obedience to it can have no portion in the Kingdom of Heaven But for those that never once heard of the Lord of Life that 's an undecided case which we do not determine For who has authority to give sentence where God and Scripture are silent Thus far we are assured there that let the future condition of those be as God pleases at least he will not condemn them for invincible ignorance For there is no respect of persons with Him but as many as have sinned without Law shall perish without Law The meaning whereof is that the Gentile world shall not be judged and condemned for the breach of the law of Moses which never was given them but for sins against the law of Nature and the common light of Conscience We may inferr then by parity of argument That as many as shall sin without the Gospel shall perish without the Gospel that is not because they believed not in Jesus whom they had not the least notice of but they will be tried and sentenced for sins against natural Reason for things within their power and capacity because when they knew God they glorified him not as God because they held the truth in unrighteousness so that they are without excuse But if the Deist shall still insist that though we have justified God from the calumny as if he would condemn the Gentiles for want of impossible Faith yet still he maintains it to be unjust and incredible that while one small part of Mankind enjoys the favour of the Gospel all under the state of Nature shall have the hard measure of Summum Ius must be all damn'd by rigid inflexible Justice without equity or mercy without any act of pardon or the least room for Repentance if he will rather obstinately believe or hope or wish that the God of tender compassions who loveth all things that he hath made who will not require much where little has been given cannot be so extreme with the Gentile world as to mark all that is done amiss and yet to slight and overlook those shining examples of vertue not unfrequent among them If this be all he sticks at God forbid that on this single account he should exclude himself from the Communion of Faith We can allow him this opinion as at worst a charitable error as some indication of a large heart and a generous love of Mankind But then he must always remember that even those virtuous Heathens whom he would so gladly place in some part of Heaven can be saved on no other account than by the merits and mediation of Jesus their Saviour For without his satisfaction there is no remission of sins nor acceptation of repentance and without remission of sins by the deeds of the Law and natural Righteousness no flesh can be justified in the sight of God They are saved therefore if they be saved at all by the sole benefit of Christ though in this life they could not know nor thank their Benefactor For though they lived in the earliest ages of time long before his Incarnation yet even then they might be purified by the blood of the Lamb manifested indeed in latter times but pre-ordained before the foundation of the world so that from the first origin of it he might extend and impart to all that were worthy the efficacy of his Merits and the privileges of Faith and Grace and a share in the inheritance of Glory and Immortality II. And now we may expect that our Adversaries will put off the garb and character of Deists and make a new attempt for the fortune of the day under the arms and conduct of the Jews It must be granted on all hands that the Messias whensoever he is manifested to the world must appear in that very manner as the Jewish Prophets describe him All the characters must hit and correspond one to another the same features the same lineaments visible in both the one the shadow and picture and the other the substance Now say they it is evident from the Prophets That the Messias is to be a temporal Prince to sit on the throne of David his royal ancestor and to make Ierusalem the seat of an universal and perpetual Empire But the character of Jesus is as different from this description as a stable from a palace 'T is true we Christians endeavour to shew a similitude between them by figurative interpretations of Scripture which we call the spiritual and mystical sense but they call arbitrary and precarious as having no foundation in the native and naked Letter which is not to be racked and wrested from its obvious meaning little credit being to be given to such extorted confessions Thus far our Objectors But I suppose the Prophetick language and character is better understood than that this surmise should pass without a just answer Indeed if it were in this case alone that the expressions of the Prophets need a figurative interpretation the exception might appear fair and plausible But it cannot be denied that on many other occasions besides the matter of the Messias their discourse after the genius of the Eastern nations is thick set with metaphor and allegory the same bold comparisons and dithyrambick liberty of stile every-where occurr Which is an easie and natural account besides the more secret reasons that the Holy Spirit might have why the kingdom of Messias though really spiritual and not of this world is so often dressed and painted by them with the glories of secular Empire For when the spirit of God came
us even to the confines of Heaven beyond the limits of Reason But if the Deists think to oblige us to give a natural account of those mysteries without the authority of Scripture for that we must beg their excuse We will argue from strict Reason as much as they can pretend to but we must not submit that our adversaries shall confine us to improper topicks and impossible ways of proof It appears therefore that though we should decline and despair to give any account at all of the reasons and methods of God's counsel in the mission of his Son and only appeal to the sentence of Scripture yet the Deists ought to be satisfied with that proof since the Doctrine is so expresly taught in the oracles of God But besides this what if even natural Light shall discover to us some faint but yet certain views of that mysterious instance of divine Wisdom and Goodness and exhibit to us a rational account Why the Son of God should condescend to be our Mediator and Redeemer But before we engage in this attempt let it be lawfull to implore the candor of our Friends if while we endeavour to win over our Enemies we may seem to some To do too little or perhaps to others To venture too far and to advance beyond our Lines To discern then some reasons of this wonderfull Mystery we must take our prospect from the highest mountain of Nature from the first Creation and origin of human Race GOD who at the beginning viewed all the works of his hands and behold all things were very good made Man also upright and compleat without any defect in his whole composition without any original perversness of Soul or false byass of Will or Judgment without any natural obliquity or enormity of Inclinations He made him an intelligent Being to know God and Himself to understand and feel present happiness and to secure it by consideration and contrivance for the future He endow'd him with liberty of mind that he might act not of necessity nor blind instinct like the Brutes but with consciousness and voluntary choice He implanted in him diverse Appetites and Affections all usefull instruments of his happiness if fitly imployed and none vitious and culpable radically and in their whole nature but then only when they are applied to wrong objects or in right ones are raised or sunk beside their due temper and measure I say it again for the justification of our Creator that not one of the simple affections of the Soul no not Concupiscence Hatred Anger Revenge are in themselves criminal and sinfull Some of the Affections 't is true have very bad names but those are either mere excesses of simple Passions or else mix'd and compound ones which have no proper real essence but are only notional terms as Envy for example a very bad thing indeed but 't is an evil of our own product and not of God's creating For the real constituent parts of it are Hatred and Grief very usefull and lawfull affections but the evil of it is our own when we entertain that Hatred and Grief at the good that befalls others which is what we express by the complex name of Envy God therefore having so created Man in every capacity pure and perfect might justly require of him that he should maintain and preserve this original rectitude that in all his desires designs and actions he should constantly adhere to the dictates of Reason and Nature so as the least deviation would make him obnoxious to God's displeasure and nothing less than compleat obedience recommend him to his favour according to the terms proposed to Cain If thou dost well shalt thou not be accepted and if thou dost not well sin lies at the door God I say might expect and require of man such a perfect obedience to the Law of Nature because it was both reasonable and possible for Man to perform it Reasonable it was because every Statute of that Law promotes the true interest and felicity of Mankind even in the very performance 'T is true in the present posture of human affairs a man's duty is frequently inconsistent with his temporal interest But from the beginning it was not so neither would it be now if the whole world at once could be just and innocent For 't is not my keeping the Law but anothers transgressing it that involves me in any misery The scope and tendency of the Law it self is always mine and every man's advantage For 't is not a thing foreign and aliene to our nature imposed on us purely to try our obedience but it all results from our very frame and constitution The general preservation of man's Natural good is the sole root and fountain of the Moral the universal Profit and Pleasure the publick Happiness of human Life gives being and denomination to every virtue and vice and the true rules and directions to preserve and secure that happiness make up the whole Volume the Code and Pandect of the Law of Nature Without doubt then it was reasonable to obey where nothing was commanded us but to pursue our own interest nothing forbidden us but not to do our selves harm And secondly it was possible for man to perform that entire obedience For since as we have proved before all his natural faculties are right and good and the Law it self accommodated and proportion'd to those faculties there appears no necessary intrinsic impediment why he may not adequately observe it If every particular precept be possible to be done 't is not absolutely impossible to fulfill the universal And methinks they that on other accounts acknowledge that God requires such perfect obedience upon the terms of the Law of Nature should be very averse from believing that there is a natural and fundamental insufficiency in man to perform it For certainly the just God cannot be so importune and unreasonable a Master as to enjoyn us what is physically impossible to expect to reap where he has not sown to require Bricks without allowance of Straw But then though there was no such original and natural disability in Man yet there arose a moral and circumstantial one an accidental incapacity supervening to his Nature an impossibility from event that ever any person from the beginning of the world to the last period of it always excepting the Man Christ Iesus should be wholly pure and free from the contagion of Sin For our first Parents having fallen from their native state of innocence the tincture of evil like an hereditary disease infected all their posterity and the leaven of sin having once corrupted the whole Mass of Mankind all the species ever after would be sowred and tainted with it the vitious ferment perpetually diffusing and propagating it self through all generations For let us but consider the state of human life first a perpetual conversation among evil Examples and the strongest principle of our nature Imitation and then the ignorance and prejudices of Childhood the